We are all afraid of being judged. But Rosh Hashana, the Jewish new year which is also known as the Day of Judgment, need not be a day of fear.
None of us is perfect. Each of us has said or done things of which we are not proud. We are aware that if our file is opened and our record is scrutinized, there will be items that we would like to expunge.
As Rosh Hashana approaches, we begin to fidget. We feel a twinge of anxiety as our ‘trial’ nears. As the story goes, we will stand before the heavenly tribunal in all of our human imperfection, our merits will be weighed against our sins, and our sentence will determine the nature and quality of the year ahead. Are we worthy of life, or no? If we live, will it be in health or sickness? Will we flourish, or will we struggle? As it is inscribed in the book of life, so will our life unfold.
Jews are accustomed to asking for forgiveness at this time - forgive me if this story leaves me less inspired than I would like to be. Forgive me if I choose not to fear for my life and beg for my needs on this high holy day.
It is not that I have any doubt that God holds my fate in His fingers and that His determination on Rosh Hashana will dictate everything that happens to me and around me in the year ahead. It is not that I lack respect, reverence, and awe for His omnipotence, or that I question the fact that all I have is the result of His generosity. It is certainly not that I deny my failings or question my liability to damages and retribution.
Rather, I question the very conception of the Creator as a stern and punitive figure who desires our fear and insecurity. I don’t believe that His design for this holy day is the wailing of His children as we grovel for our needs and treat Him like some medieval monarch who demands fealty and flattery from His obsequious vassals. I believe that we diminish and deface God’s glorious image with this facile narrative that reduces the awesome power and opportunity of this holiday into a (forgive me again) santa’s list of personal desires and the bribery of “being good and being sorry” in order to get what we want.
What if the judgment of Rosh Hashana is not His judgment of us, but rather our judgment of Him?
Perhaps our task at this time is to reevaluate how we conceive of God, to consider whether we have become confused and somehow created an image of Him in our likeness rather than vice versa. Forgive me for irreverence yet again, but the god we commonly speak about and tell stories about sounds far more human than the God that I ultimately believe in.
What is God, and what does He want from us?!
Again, as the simple story goes, God wants our tears, our shame, our sincere repentance. Give Him these, and in His consummate mercy, He will forgive us and grant us another chance.
There are good reasons for simple stories. Simple stories can help us through difficult times. They provide us elemental truths from which we can learn and develop and explore further. There is no question that this understanding of God and our relationship with Him is true. The question is whether there is a higher truth beyond this, something more that we can aspire to as we begin a new year and seek greater understanding and growth.
The primary theme of the high holy days is indeed teshuvah, which is commonly translated as ‘repentance.’ And tears certainly do have their place - our sages teach that one who does not cry during this period has not properly fulfilled his service. But what is teshuvah and how do we accomplish it? What is this need for crying, and what do our tears represent? Are they, as the simple reading might suggest, an expression of pain, grief, and guilt? Are we truly to enter this holy season with dread and shame and self-deprecation? Can we genuinely be inspired by these painful and unwelcome emotions? Can we embrace a ‘truth’ that seems to be so negative, so judgmental, so guilt inducing?
To be sure, there is distinct beauty in the fact that Hashem forgives us in spite of our wrongdoing; that we have been 'bad,' but He is nevertheless consummate goodness and kindness. However, this still places us in the unwelcome position of constant failure. So even if we recognize His unfailing love for us, even if this inspires us to be better because He is so generous to us, still it leaves us with that nagging sense of shame and self-judgment that is not conducive to living with joy and passion and love.
Furthermore, this conception must lead us to question why Hashem would create us this way. Why would He create ‘sinners’ who will inevitably sin and be forced to live with the pain of their constant humiliation. It's as though He set us up for failure and forces us to constantly bear the guilt of the weakness and unworthiness that He implanted within us. He created us with desires for things that He forbids us; He exposes us to them regularly; He tempts us and then commands us to cry when we give in to these temptations.
What kind of cruelty, or trickery, are we ascribing to the Supreme Being, to our loving Father in heaven, to the One of Whom we say repeatedly “His kindness is everlasting” (Psalms, 136) and “No evil descends from above” (Breishis Rabba, 51:3)?
Tears, Not Fears
Perhaps the tears that God asks from us are not tears of shame and pain. Perhaps the work that He requires of us at this season of teshuvah is not a process of beating ourselves up for our trespasses, of dreading His vengeance, and vowing to be better or face His wrath. Perhaps we have come to misunderstand His nature and, as suggested above, created a god in our own image - one who is angry, vengeful, and judgmental like mortal kings and leaders we have been subjected to (and like we ourselves tend to be from time to time).
Perhaps we are approaching this season with an attitude that is not as conducive to spiritual growth as it might be. Perhaps we have misunderstood what He wants from us. Perhaps He looks upon us, His children, with compassion and says 'no my loved ones, I don't want you to feel pain, to flagellate yourselves, to serve me out of guilt. I want you to be happy, to be free, to join with me because it makes you joyous to do so.'
A nice idea, but is it supported by our tradition, our scripture and liturgy?
In Psalms (90:3) it is written “Tashev enosh ad daka, vatomer shuvu bnei adam” – You (God) bring man back until he is crushed, and you say ‘return children of man.’ Here we find the word teshuva twice (tashev and shuvu), indicating that we might learn something from this verse about the nature of the service that we are supposed to be engaged in at this time.
What we see is that God “crushes”us in order to bring us back to Him. Why would He want to "crush" us? Does this not support the notion that it is through pain and punishment that He compels us to submit? What is this notion of teshuvah that leads us to being crushed?
In the first verse of the Torah portion Tetzaveh, God instructs Moses to prepare oil for the eternal light that is to burn in the tabernacle. This oil comes from the drops that are squeezed from the olive. The olive, the verse says must be ‘kasis lama’or’ – crushed in order to illuminate (Exodus 27:20). The Lubavitcher Rebbe teaches that similarly we must be “crushed” in order to illuminate. The idea is not that we must be harmed or humiliated, but rather that we must find a way to extricate our true, brilliant essence from the fleshy exterior and crust that hinders it from being manifest.
The husk must be broken in order to reveal the sweet fruit beneath. The fruit is squeezed so that the juice can come forth. The pure, light-providing oil that the olive expresses are the tears that flow from us when we perform teshuva properly.
The crying that the sages demand from us at this time of the high holy days need not be tears of pain or sadness or shame, but rather tears that flow with the experience of something true and awesome and overwhelming! We cannot help but cry when we encounter our inner essence that has been covered and suppressed. We cry in awe, in gratitude. It is like the tears of birth - the baby cries because it is cold and scared and new, but the parents cry because they have just created a new life, they have been part of a miraculous process of giving the world something incredibly precious, something the world has been waiting for and needs. Chassidus teaches that one’s birthday is the day that God determines that the world cannot exist another moment without the contribution that this soul was created to provide. Rosh Hashana is our annual rebirth, the birthday of humankind, the day when we slough off the grime and muck that has concealed us and reemerge to fulfill our holy task and express our divine potential.
The Bliss of Returning to our Source
Teshuvah, we realize, is therefore not about pain or shame. It is, as the Lubavicher Rebbe reminded us constantly, not repentance, but return. It is the bliss of finding what is our most precious gift, that which was lost and covered over throughout the past year. We cry because that greatness which is deep inside can no longer be contained.
God, we come to understand, is not anxious to chastise and punish us. He is not lording over us to keep us small and revel in His supremacy. Rather He is our father who patiently waits for us to be who He knows we are. He provides us this opportunity to reconnect with our truth and our essence – the part of Him that He has placed within us - so that we can fully enjoy and appreciate the majesty with which He has endowed us.
Fear, we can now appreciate, is not the posture with which we approach the Day of Judgment. We are not come to beg for our needs or justify our past shortcomings. We are not meant to dwell on how bad and lowly we have been, but rather to remember how good and holy we are. The judgment of this day is ours to make: who will be in the year ahead, how will we utilize the great potential we have been granted?
If we are afraid, we will continue to be constricted and unaware of our true nature and capability. When we recognize our essence, and its inherent connection to God’s true essence, we will have nothing to fear. We will pray for life, health, and success not because it is what we want but because it is what He wants for us in order that we can further pursue the unique mission that He has assigned us. In this way, when we stop thinking about our own concerns and needs and focus instead on what He desires of us, we will assure that the year ahead is blessed with everything we require to continue to do our work of perfecting His creation.
L’shana tova!