Rosh Hashana: Refining Ourselves

I don't think it is any coincidence that the past few parashot leading us up to Rosh Hashana have repeatedly placed very clear decisions before us:  Life or death.  A blessing or a curse.  Holiness or profanity.  Good or evil.

The choices are black and white.  There is no gray area.  We often think of life as a spectrum, but the Torah does not do so in these cases.

Perhaps this is to help us get in the right mindset for the holiday season.  To realize that it is never time for us to delay in our desire to refine ourselves, to become better people, to become more devoted to the Jewish way of life.  It is human nature to rationalize - to say that tomorrow you will do better, to say that you have a whole life in front of you, to say that someone else will do it if you don't, to say it just isn't that important.  The Torah portions leading up to Rosh Hashana remind us of this and gives us a time of year when we can reflect upon what we want to do differently in our lives.  But it is not merely a time of reflection and resolutions.  It is also meant to be the beginning of our change.  This isn't a time of year to decide that tomorrow we will start giving tzedekah, or tomorrow we will start volunteering, or next time I will help the old person up the stairs, later I can start my Jewish education, or next month I'll start keeping Kosher, next time I won't drive on Shabbat.  Now we must start those things.  We must actually make the change in our actions, not just understand the need to change. 

A rabbi that spoke at the Great Neck Kollel last week spoke about why Rosh Hashana is a yearly event -- why God calls us to judgement every year.  It is because we are supposed to have changed.  A judge doesn't judge the same case twice without a change in the evidence.  We are supposed to grow from year to year as Jews.  Having not improved is a step backwards.  God wants us to come before Him a little bit better than we did the previous year.  We are judged relative to our own selves last year, not on a universal scale.  God wants to see that we have changed -- not that we've made a decision to, but that we actually have.  That we are keeping Kosher, we are donating some tzedakah, we are watching what we say about others, we are working to put a smile on someone else's face. 

The choices before us are clear: Life or death.  A blessing or a curse.  Holiness or profanity.  Good or evil.  They manifest themselves differently in each of us.  We all have different areas in which we can and need to grow.  The Jewish new year is a time that our growth as people must be reflected in thought and deed, as we strive to be the best possible version of our selves.

Shana Tova u'Metukah!