Yom Kippur: G-d’s Laundromat is open
It’s another Rosh Hashanah. It’s another year and sometimes we’re so old and so much not alive that we don’t even have vessels for newness anymore. So I bless you, myself and all Israel and the whole world. Because to have vessels for newness is the hardest thing in the world. Because what’s really different? It’s the same as yesterday. Everything is always the same. So I want you to know that beginnings are the greatest gift from Heaven.
Our holy rabbis tell us the middle is in our hands, but beginnings are only in G-d’s hands. Then it’s up to me what I do with it. How do I begin on Rosh Hashanah? Sadly enough, a lot of people think Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur, especially Rosh Hashanah is a time to regret what I did wrong and to promise G-d I’ll be better. All cute and sweet but don’t waste your time with that on Rosh Hashanah. Rosh Hashanah is not a time for cleaning. Yom Kippur, G-d’s Laundromat is open. Rosh Hashanah is so much deeper. The beginning of all beginnings is connecting the deepest, deepest depth of your being to that which is above that that which is above the above of the above.
Rosh Hashanah is the beginning of all beginnings. You know beautiful friends if someone said I promised G-d to be good last year and I didn’t keep it it’s not my promise that wasn’t real. It was my beginning that wasn’t real because if I really began then I’m a new person and I have all the strength in the world to fix my entire life. You know we live in such a broken world.Marriages break apart, friendships are broken, parents and children don’t talk to each other… and it’s all because they don’t know how to begin again. So here our holy rabbis tell us that as long as our hearts are full of anger we don’t have the vessels for new beginnings. As long as your heart is filled with sadness there is no way for you to begin and as long as your heart is filled with jealousy, beginnings will never help you.
So friends in these few days we still have left before Rosh Hashanah & on Rosh Hashanah itself, I bless you and me and I’m begging you and I’m begging myself –let’s get all the “anger” out of our heart…
all the jealousy…
all the pettiness.
You know if I’m petty with other people, G-d forbid, then G-d is petty with me. But if I’m big enough, the more I open my heart for other people, the more I open the gates for myself. Friends, the blessing people give each other on Rosh Hashanah is so deep, so forceful, so very awesome. On Rosh Hashanah every person can open gates for another person if you really mean it. I want to bless you and me that we should open gates for our husbands, wives, children and the entire world this Rosh Hashanah.
Friends, I’m begging you, I’m begging you, don’t be angry, not even at yourself. Just let’s cleanse our hair, let’s cleanse our thoughts… our holy rabbis tell us, the greatest joy in the world is when you “fargen”, you rejoice when something good happens for another person.
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On Rosh Hashanah, the acid test is, how much are you praying for someone else? In the Rosh Hashanah prayers, it’s never singular, always plural. Because I’m standing before G-d and I’m saying unless you give life to the entire world, please don’t give it to me. Unless you make everyone rich, please I don’t want to be the only rich man. Unless you give peace to the whole world, don’t give me anything, unless you give it to my husband, my wife, my children, unless you give it to Yerushalayim. Friends! Let this year be a “real” beginning not the same beginning we go through every year. Let’s not begin the old record over again — let there be a “new” record.
New teachings.
New words.
New thoughts.
Let every breath we take feel like we never breathed before. The holy Sokhatshov says when we blow shofar, G-d “absolutely” blows a new soul into us. Let’s keep this new soul so “holy” and so beautiful and let’s inscribe each other into the book of life.
Reprinted from Kehilat Jacob News New York, Elul 5746.
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