It’s been a tough year. With the ongoing wars in Ukraine, Israel and Gaza, the divisive presidential election season and so much fracturing in our society, we could all use some respite and hope. The power of ritual is to zap us out of our day-to-day lives, to connect us with community and to awaken ourselves to greater possibilities. As we approach the Jewish New Year, let us utilize the wisdom of our ancestors to find that much-needed peace and renewal to help make the coming year better than the one we’re leaving behind.
Rosh Hashanah is the anniversary of creation. Jewish tradition teaches that on the very first Rosh Hashanah some 5,785 years ago, “God saw all that God had made, and behold, it was very good.” What made it “very good?” In Midrash Tehillim (90:13), we’re taught that there were “974 iterations that were before the creation of the world.” If God had to make 974 mistakes before being able to describe creation as “very good,” how can we ever expect to get things right on our first or second or third try?
We can’t. Mistakes precede creation, and no matter how righteous we are, every human errs. Just like God, we all make mistakes, and when we do, we feel badly. Yet the essence of Hasidic thought is that God wants us to be joyful! And so, the purpose of the High Holidays, the “Ten Days of Teshuvah” from Rosh Hashanah through Yom Kippur, is not solely about repenting. Rather, the High Holidays are a time-tested, psychological tool to help us grow into our fullest potential. Many of us already spend a lot of time feeling sad and remorseful, and the High Holidays offer us the annual opportunity to begin anew with a clean slate and a peaceful mind.
It’s a common experience when attending Rosh Hashanah services to ask yourself those big life questions: How am I living up to expectations of myself? How can I improve? Too often, we offer the very same answers year after year. Over my lifetime, I’ve felt defeated as I realized how quickly the year went by and how little I grew from one Rosh Hashanah to the next. As with everything in life, the more effort we put into something, the more we get out of it. Attending services, hearing the shofar, casting away our sins at tashlikh — these can surely help and inspire us. Yet if we truly desire to change and to make this year better than the last, that requires sincere effort beyond the public sphere.
It’s no coincidence that the field of psychology was invented by Sigmund Freud, who had some experience with Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur services. Psychology invites us to talk through our issues, to learn about ourselves, to seek inner peace and to avoid going through life repeating the same mistakes. And that’s closely linked to the Jewish concept of teshuvah. Though often translated as “repentance,” I think “personal growth” is far more accurate. In order to change and grow, we must first identify our problematic behaviors and regret doing them. That’s the easy part;we probably know how we don’t live up to our expectations of ourselves and spend too much mental energy being remorseful. So how do we get from regret to growth?
The Jewish Mussar movement (ethical development) teaches that the problems we have in life — those that trouble us the most — are the very obstacles that we can and must overcome. Whether we’re trying to overcome an addiction, or to be more patient, or to spend more time with family, or anything else, the things we experience as “problems” should actually be viewed as “opportunities” for change and growth. While we don’t have the power to end the current wars or to unite our country, we do have the ability to ameliorate our mindsets: to be more understanding and accepting of others’ ideas or to look for points of similarity instead of disagreement. Rosh Hashanah offers the mitzvah of cheshbon hanefesh, an “accounting of our own souls,” to look back on all our interactions from the last year andstrive to be better in the coming one.
There’s a simple, four-step process for teshuvah (personal growth); it’s available to us every moment of every day. And as we enter the Jewish New Year, Jews all over the world are especially focused on bettering themselves by 1) stopping the bad behavior; 2) regretting the bad behavior; 3) apologizing for the bad behavior (to ourselves, to loved ones and/or to God); and 4) committing to behave better when facing a parallel dilemma in the future. Thousands of pages of Jewish wisdom on teshuvah can be distilled into four words: Stop, Regret, Say, Commit. The fourth step, commitment, is where the growth lies. Change is hard, and though we may stumble through it, the universe seems to always provide future opportunities for us to make better choices. For example, if you snapped at someone, you can commit to being more compassionate the next time they get on your nerves. As Reconstructionist Jews, our focus should not be on getting “inscribed in the Book of Life” this Rosh Hashanah; rather, we should engage in teshuvah because it connects us with ourselves, our family, our community and our ancestors. Most importantly, successful teshuvah gives us the sincerest sense of pride, personal growth and fulfillment.
Judaism doesn’t teach us to avoid our problems; instead, we’re commanded to engage with them, to fix them and to grow through them. In the words of Rabbi Tarfon 2,000 years ago: “It is not up to you to finish the work, but neither are you free to desist from it.” As we move through the High Holiday season this year, may we all come closer to realizing our fullest, most Divine potential.
