Thought for Rosh Hashanah 5766/2005

Sometimes, one has been so busy before Rosh Hashanah that we have not quite got round to remembering why we are sat in shul that day or wherever we are, feel that we should be feeling or thinking something. I hope that the following two thoughts help.

The first comes from my teacher Rabbi John Rayner z"l from his Yom Kippur Sermon at the Liberal Jewish Synagogue in 1993:

"Religion is fundamentally an attitude to reality: a response of the whole of our being - mind, heart and soul - to the world in which we are placed.  It is a sense of awe and wonder, an apprehension of the mystery beyond the commonplace, that produces, if only in rare moments, a feeling of joy too deep to be communicated except in music, poetry and prayer.

To be religious is to feel reverential respect for the cosmos and its Creator, for humanity and its individual members. But it doesn't stop there.  It doesn't lose itself in mere contemplation.  It is also an active response to that which elicits reverence.  It is not merely a feeling of the heart but a decision of the will, as commitment to a task, a self-enrolment in a great adventure."

The second concerns the 'Book of Life:'

At the centre point of every service during the Yamim Noraim (Days of Awe), we ask God: "Remember us for life, for You, O Sovereign, delight in life; and inscribe us in the Book of Life, for Your sake, O God of life." (e.g. page 63 of Mahzor Ruach Chadashah). Have you ever stopped to ask yourself what this Book of Life is that we ask to be inscribed in? One response came from the Sefat Emet, the Gerer Rebbe who wrote at the end of the nineteenth century.

"Inscribe us for life." There is a holy point in each Jewish person's heart. This is the living soul of which it says: "God has implanted eternal life within us." But over the course of each year, as we become accustomed to sinning, the material self overpowers and hides that holy point. We then have to seek compassion from the Blessed Holy One, asking that this imprint in our heart be renewed on Rosh Hashanah. This is what we mean when we say: "Inscribe us for life."

Arthur Green, a modern day mystic comments on this teaching of the Gerer Rebbe: "The Book of Life is within you, the Sefat Emet teaches. God needs to write 'Life!' on the tablets of your heart each year. Your task is to keep those inner tablets free enough from the accumulated grime caused by sin, guilt, the insanely fast pace at which we live and all the rest, so that you have time to read (and follow!) that holy word."