Happy New Year!

 Rosh Hashana Thoughts

 

Yes, yes, yes, I know it is not time for the “Jewish new year” and you probably think that I set my clock ahead 5 months instead of 1 hour but sometimes one cannot control when questions and thoughts arise. So read at your own peril.

I wondered if Rosh Hashana is about the “new” year when it is so centrally about repentance. I mean, why do we even call it by the name of the new year when that seems secondary to the days of awe. Look at the textual references to the day – they point out that this is the seventh month and never, biblically, do they associate a new year with this date. There is nothing in prayer about “new year”— there is one phrase that people like to use to connect to an idea of “new year” which is “hayom harat olam.” But that phrase more accurately means “today is the day of the conception of the world” or “today is the day of the pregnancy of the world.” There is nothing about the birth/beginning itself.

If one were to look in the Talmud to see why the date is also connected to a new year one would read up in tractate Rosh Hashana. The first mishna (explained on 8b) lists all sorts of things for which this date is a new year, including many mitzvot which require yearly observance. The Talmudic text explains some tenuous connections to how one knows that this is the date of this particular notion of new “year” (there are 3 other ways of considering the year, with 3 other dates) but the items that are defined in terms of a Rosh Hashana based year are mainly agricultural (Sabbatical and Jubilee computing, figuring the tithing cycle and the age of a tree in terms of permissibility beyond the first 3 years). So other than its coincidental placement on the day that is Yom T’ruah, there is nothing relevant, it seems to the celebration of the day that has to do with the year-computation cycle. The beginning of Nisan, which is the first day of the year for a number of practical purposes (a king's rule and the holiday-celebratory cycle) isn't celebrated as a new year in any prayers or with any fanfare and yet IT, because it governs our entire holiday schedule should be (one might think) a new year's marker to remember and celebrate.

But I think that the naming plays an important part in establishing our correct attitude towards our religious identity and purpose. By calling it by the name Rosh Hashana, and recognizing it in its roll of refreshing our obligations to nature, our servants/debtors and our fellow Jews we stress that the value of the day is in the opportunity to embrace and fulfill obligations. The primary purpose of the day can’t be the “asking for forgiveness” – if that were primary, we would have made sure to ask forgiveness at the close of the previous year so that we could start the new year with a clean slate. But our Yom HaDin is not until a week after this new year begins. And yet we celebrate the new year!  We aren’t asking forgiveness at the close of year, but at the BEGINNING because we are showing that forgiveness is not the central aim but instead, our acceptance of a whole new set of mitzvot and obligations which will drive our practice for the next year and our pre-emptory fear that we will fall short in fulfilling these obligations. This makes the month before Rosh Hashana vital in terms of clearing away sins and makes Rosh Hashana act as a forward thinking repentance. For a month we have asked for forgiveness for what is passed and now we accept that we have to start over again – the cycle is never done. So we focus on being written into the book of life through our zealousness regarding all the commandments which are refreshed. Tithes are about charity and we say in our prayers that Charity can remove the evil decree against us. We pray out loud because a loud voice in prayer has the same effect (Yom T’ruah can be understood as “a day of loud noise”). We have been repenting in order to go into the year and start new adherence properly.

Rosh Hashana is about moving forward into a new year, not being stuck in our pasts. We recognize this by calling it by that aspect of its identity which looks ahead to treating others and our world better.