Dear Friends;

I hope that you’ll enjoy the following Dvar Torah on Rosh Hashanah;

Rosh Hashanah is the beginning of the “aseret yemei teshuva”, the ten days of repentance. Although we start the Selichot prayers from a month before Rosh Hashanah, but that is only considered as a preparation for repenting. The actual repentance  process starts from Rosh Hashanah and ends at  Yom Kipppur. It’s during these ten days that we reflect on the past year, recall the bad we did and the good we failed to do, apologise, confess and ask for forgiveness.

Yet there’s almost none of this on Rosh Hashanah. There is no confession, no “tachanun” is recited, no reference to the sins committed over the past year and no looking back. The only references to the process of Teshuva is a prayer reminding us that today our fate is being written for the next year: who will live and who will die, etc……

Surely the beginning of the days of repentance should begin with repentance?! So why there is no mention of Teshuva on Rosh Hashanah?! Lord  Rabbi Jonathan Sacks, the former Chief Rabbi of Great Britain, gives an answer to this question by the following quote: To mend the past,  first you have to secure the future.

This idea could be seen in the characters of the Torah such as Noah. After the flood, Hashem tells Noah to go out of the Ark and fill up the earth once again. But it seems that instead of looking forward, Noah looked back. Overwhelmed by grief, he found refuge in wine.  Before the flood he was the only person in the whole of Bible to be called righteous, yet he ended his days drunk and ashamed in front of his children.

But the opposite could be seen in Abraham. When Sarah died, Abraham was 137 years old. He lost the woman who had shared his life’s journey with him.  He might have been paralysed by grief. But the Torah says: “Abraham came to mourn for Sarah and weep for her. Then Abraham rose from beside his dead wife”.  Then we read how Abraham bought the first plot of land in Israel and arranged for a wife for his son. G-d had promised him before that the land of Israel is his and that his descendants will be as numerous as the stars in the sky, yet when Sarah died, he owned no land and had one unmarried child. Instead of complaining to G-d that He had not fulfilled his promises, he understood that he had to take the first step. First he had to build the future. Only then, he could honor the past.

And that’s what we do on Rosh Hashanah. The Torah reading is about the birth of Isaac, which is one of the forefathers of the future Am Yisrael. We pray that our names would be written in the book of life. We pray for prosperity and good health. We pray for peace in Israel and all over the world and we pray for our children. Only when we have finished praying for our future on Rosh Hashanah, only then, on the intervening days and Yom Kippur we can turn and apologise for last year.  In Judaism the future comes before the past!

We can see this phenomena taking place in our generations too.  After the Holocaust, Jews didn’t sit paralysed by grief. They built the future, above all the land and state of Israel. Also, when our fathers left Iran, they did not sit back and and grieve for what they’ve left behind, but rather, immediately they started to build the future for their family and their children. And now we are enjoying the fruits of their labor. And this is what Rosh Hashanah is all about ……… building our future!

Accordingly, I would like to take this opportunity to wish all of you Shanah Tovah U’Metukah. May this year be a year of health, happiness, prosperity and above all, peace in the land of Israel and across the world. A year that the sweet taste of honey stays with you throughout the year. A year that we build a better future for our children and we see them grow.  And only then, may we move forward towards Yom Kippur and regret the past and ask for forgiveness!

Shana Tova, Shabbat Shalom & Regards;

Martin