Dear Friends,
As I reflected to myself on what message to share with you as we prepare for this coming Rosh Hashana, I struggled whether to share words of optimism and positivity or words of realism, appreciating and understanding how much has changed for the Jewish people over the past year. With an understanding that this past year has been like no other in my lifetime, I think the message must be sobering, and this Rosh Hashana, perhaps our task even more intently than in year’s past, is to reflect on what we as individuals and as communities, can do better. These thoughts were hammered home to me this past Shabbos in listening to a chabura by my friend, Rabbi Dr. David Blass in my Shul. The words below are mostly his, but they resonate deeply within me. And I thought they were worthy of sharing.
As we try to prepare for the upcoming Yom HaDin and Y’mei HaT’shuva, I find myself – perhaps like many of you - seized by profound trepidation and uncertainty. Far more than other years, we find ourselves groping and searching, stumbling to find our bearings, uncertain of the most appropriate perspective to adopt. We find ourselves at the culmination of arguably the most difficult year that Am Yisrael has experienced since the Shoah. The atrocities and horrors of October 7 continue to be felt every minute of the day – or certainly should be. The vast, nearly unimaginable loss of life and limb, psychological and physical trauma, violations of all types, destruction of entire communities, entire swaths of Eretz Yisrael rendered literally uninhabitable, over 100 hostages still suffering in Hamas gehenom, tens of thousands of displaced people still in limbo, families stretched to their physical and psychological limits by protracted military service, children out of school for another year, and economic devastation. And now massive – although unfortunately not unprecedented – international vilification of Am Yisrael and unleashing of raw, animalistic – and now unashamed - social and political anti-Semitism reminiscent of the Middle Ages. All of the above has created a massive Chilul Hashem, a reality of what feels like profound hester panim of the highest order. And yes, we certainly have been witness to incredible miracles and seen ניסים ונפלאות גלויים throughout this year for which we need to feel intense hakoras hatov, at the end of the day the above-mentioned devastation happened, is still happening, we somehow did not merit even the basic shmirah and hashgacha that could have prevented this all. And while we believe from the depths of our hearts that וכל מאמינים שהוא כל יכול, but we seem to be very much mired in הלן בסתר בצל, ש-קי. And truthfully, the above list is just barely scratching the surface of how tragic and devastating the situation truly was and is.
So when I truly try to get my bearings and prepare for Rosh HaShana, תשפ"ה, I feel adrift - how am I to understand what happened on Rosh HaShana last year in order to do something different now? What went wrong? Beyond this question is a practical but equally fundamental one – as individuals, what can we do in the face of such an all-encompassing tragedy? What is the Avodas HaYachid in Teshuva in the face of national crisis?
Obviously, we cannot know precisely what the רבונו של עולם wants from us. But לבי אומר לי that our teshuva as individuals this year needs to somehow be very different, in order to somehow rise to the occasion and the challenge of this year’s events. In typical Teshuva, we “tinker at the margins” rather than promote a revolution. We may not know the exact focus of Teshuva that adequately addresses these historic times – but whatever we focus on, I think that for each of us there needs to be something very different, we need to feel that we are trying to change something more fundamental.
As the Jewish people throughout Israel and around the world yearn for just going back to normal, perhaps Hashem is telling us that we cannot go back to normal. The normal, the mundane, the day-to-day needs to be radically changed, and perhaps the call of the hour this year on Rosh Hashanah is to figure out how precisely we can exact such fundamental change!
Shanah tovah u’metuka,
Rav Shimon Isaacson
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