Rosh Hashanah: Every second counts
I just returned from Israel last night. My lungs still full of the air of the Holy Land, my tongue is still covered with the taste of the stones of the Holy Wall and my heart is still bursting with the infinite love and longing for every Jew and every human being.
The last few days before Rosh Hashanah are like twilight. Every afternoon when the sun sets, out holy rabbis teach us, the sun is red, red with shame that another day passed without Moshiach coming. So we all am a little bit red and ashamed, that, with all the miracles Hashem showed us this year, I guess we still don’t have our act together. On the other hand, we are so proud of Israel, we are so proud of every Jew. Is there a country like ours? Are there people like us? The holy ones, the chosen ones, the blessed ones? So our deepest hope for next year is that we should finally learn how really holy the land is, how really holy every Jew is, and how absolutely holy the whole world is.
Our holy rabbis teach us that when we blow the shofar, G-d is blowing a new soul into us. And aren’t we all longing to become new people? How much would we pay to remove our perverseness? To takeout all the negativity, the pettiness and the selfishness from our heart? We can make it happen on Rosh Hashanah. But still we have a choice. We can tell HaShem, I don’t like my new soul, give me back my old kvetchy soul. One can tell Hashem that his greatest joy is telling bad things to people. And the Master of the World says, “Is that what you want? Please do so, but write your name in the other book.” Woe, woe, woe! Who wants to be in “that” book? I bless you and me to inscribe our names in the Book of Life. It’s so good to be alive, so good to be full of joy. It’s so important only to say good things to each other. You know I’m sure; G-d needs a maid to clean the world. To be covered with the garbage of the world. But don’t you want to be HaShem’s right hand man or woman rather than the garbage collector? So we pray Rosh Hashanah night, make me into the head, not a tail. There is a definite need for a tail but I’d like to be the head. I bless you and me to lift our heads, to lift our spirits, to lift up each other, and to lift up the world. And do you know, my beautiful friends, that physically the higher you fly, the further you get from the earth. But spiritually the higher you are, the closer you are to the earth, the closer you are to every human being, the closer you are to every one of Hashem’s creatures.
On Rosh Hashanah every second counts. Every person has one moment when they are judged in heaven. Let heaven not catch us faltering at that moment. Is there anything unimportant and unholy at this awesome moment?
I can’t wait for us to daven together with tears; a little bit of sadness, but mostly with joy that we have such a great Father in Heaven who will give us hopefully the best year ever.
The first thing we are doing on Rosh Hashanah night is eating apples with honey. The apples, the fruit, these are our children, the next generation. We pray just for their sake that the world be filled with honey. Let the Yiddishkeit that we are teaching them taste as sweet in their mouths.
Reprinted from Kehilat Jacob News Let’s Start Again High New York, Elul 5751
Popularity: 2% [?]
related:
