Erev Rosh HaShanah: Nefesh Service & Seder
Sermon by Rabbi Tobias Moss
2020/5781
Conception Changes Perception
This has been a year full of separation and challenge, illness and anxiety, turmoil and tumult, difficulty and death — the difficulty and death that a normal year brings, compounded by the difficulty and death that a COVID year brings.
Of course there have been wonderful moments this year: births and virtual baby namings, Zoom b’nai mitzvah, more meaningful than you might think, technological innovations… But more importantly, human-to-human cultivation — checking in on neighbors, friends, and fellow humans, advocating for causes we believe in, finding ways to celebrate a 110th birthday in our community.
Still, the cheshbon, the accounting balance of the year, has seemed mostly to be in the red, pretty negative.
I keep seeing people on social media wish for this year to be over. One Jewish comedian, Eli Reiter, tweeted yesterday: “I’m lucky to be Jewish because it means there are only three days left to this dumpster fire of a year, and there are four more months for the rest of you.”
Most of us want this year to end, but a new year, with the same world, the same challenges that doesn’t solve much on its own. A year ends, a year begins, but does the world change?
Many of us have been susceptible to an error in Jewish translation, myself included. There’s Rosh Hashanah liturgy that says hayom harat olam — most frequently translated as “today the world is born.” Sounds totally fresh and new, suggesting Rosh HaShanah is the world’s birthday…not quite.
A better translation of hayom harat olam would be today the world is conceived. Today is the gestation of the world. Today we are invited to conceive of what could be, not necessarily tomorrow, but perhaps at the end of these 10 days of repentance, or perhaps what will be three months from now, six months, nine months. What the world could be after struggles and striving.
We are invited to see the world not as an “as is”— born, already in existence, an event.
But rather the world as “in becoming” — what could be, a process.
Quite obviously I don’t know the following firsthand, as I’m neither a parent today, nor a mother ever, but mothers have told me how much perspective changes at the moment of pregnancy — priorities, food choices, the body itself of course, the way you view the state and future of the world, etc.
This is what Rosh HaShanah asks of us: What needs to change for this new world to be born?
It always seems funny that Yom Kippur’s themes of judgment come after Rosh HaShanah. You might think it should be opposite: get your moral/spiritual/relationship affairs in order before the new year. But in fact, we need the eye-widening effect of Rosh HaShanah, a new year, a world that is still just in conception. This eye-widening allows us to see the possibilities of the world unfolding, and that in this great universe and world — a world in which black holes collide, and potential signs of life show up in unexpected places — that we have a role to play. It’s a bit part, but we got cast. We can be a parent, friend, aunt, uncle, cousin of the world that will one day be born.
Noah Ben Shea wrote collections of Jacob the Baker stories. Any of you know of this wise baker? For those who are not familiar, Jacob the Baker was a baker in a small town, whose great wisdom made him village famous — oh, how I’d die to be village famous.
This is one of the stories about him that reflects on the wisdom of a full life lived. This year was so overwhelmingly filled, over-wrought and overrun, that the story seems fitting for just the course of this year. Jacob the Baker:
And so one day, like many other days, kids shuffled over to Jacob’s bakery after school, plopped themselves down on some sacks of flour — the very gluten-filled version of a beanbag — and finally a boy found some courage, and asked Jacob, “Why do you often say, ‘A child sees what I only understand?’”
“A child sees what I only understand.”
Jacob paused, and then answered, his voice with a long-ago quality.
“Imagine a boy, sitting on a hill, looking out through his innocence on the expanse, mystery, and beauty of the world. Slowly the child begins to learn. He does this by collecting small stones of knowledge, placing one on top of the other. Over time, his learning becomes a wall, a wall he has built in front of himself.
Now, when he looks out, he can see his learning, but he has lost his view. And so he is now a man, no longer a boy. And this man is both proud and sad. The man looks at his predicament, this wall of learning, and decides to take down the wall. But to take down a wall takes time, and when he finally accomplishes the task, he has become an elder, an old man.
The old man rests on the hill and looks out through his experience on the beauty of the world. He understands what has happened to him. He understands what he sees. But he does not see the world the way he saw it as a child on that first clear morning.”
A young girl interjects, “But, but, certainly the old man can remember what he once saw!”
Jacob responds, “You are right, experience matures to memory. But memory is the gentlest of truths.”
“Are you afraid of growing old, Jacob?” asks a child, giggling.
“What grows never grows old,” said Jacob.
This parable speaks to the full span of life. But I believe it has much wisdom, to speak to the span of a year, especially this past one. A year that began with our hopes and wishes for that coming year. With 10 days of t’shuvah, repentance, t’filah, prayer, and tzedakah, charitable giving, we tried to get ourselves on a good track for the coming year. And then over the course of this year, challenges came upon us, one after another, stone upon stone, boulder upon boulder, until suddenly it was hard to look over that wall. It became hard to see anything besides the challenges of COVID, the challenges of America in distress, the challenges of keeping the public safe—the whole public, no individuals or groups excluded. Inevitably, these challenges blocked our sigh. Will we only be able to see after each is solved, one by one, like in the story?
Quite the opposite. In order to overcome these challenges we need to see, to imagine, to conceive. The offering of Rosh HaShanah is to see anew now. The year changes from 5780-5781. “Should we be afraid of the world growing older?” the little boy might ask. “What grows never grows old,” said Jacob. And this world, it keeps growing, it keeps changing. It invites us to join that process to see over the wall, see with wide, fresh eyes. To see possibility in the world, to see possibility in ourselves. Today the world is conceived, and we can see anew.
Rosh HaShanah is the reset moment on the shechecheyanu prayer: shechecheyanu, vikiymau, v’higiyanu lazman hazeh. From Rosh HaShanah on, we are asked to notice the first time we eat a fruit in this new year, acknowledge the coming of each holiday in this new year, bless the first time we’ve traveled to Israel this year, God willing.
We thank the Source of Life for having given us life, for helping us to withstand whatever could’ve knocked us down, and for reaching this time, this precious moment.
Some of you may have eaten an apple earlier today. Tonight or tomorrow that apple is no different. So why shechecheyanu? You are different. Your perspective is different