The Person Who Will Live This Year

On Rosh Hashanah we say a line that does not match the calendar. Zeh hayom techilas maasecha, zikaron l'yom rishon – today is the beginning of Your works, a remembrance of the first day. Creation began five days earlier, on the twenty-fifth of Elul. By the time Rosh Hashanah arrived there was light and darkness, sky and sea, trees and stars and animals, an entire world already running. Rosh Hashanah was the sixth day. What began on Rosh Hashanah was Adam.

Rav Moshe Shapiro, zt"l, explained that this is what it means to call the day the beginning of Hashem's works, and most of what follows here I learned from him. The world existed before Adam appeared. Creation had not yet reached the one creature able to recognize it, answer to it, and take part in what it would become.

Most of us walk into Rosh Hashanah with a list. Be more patient. Put the phone down at dinner. Daven like I mean it. Call my brother. Stop the thing I have already promised twice to stop. Sitting with people through Elul, year after year, I have come to trust those lists less than the people writing them do. The items are usually accurate. Someone has thought honestly about where his life is lacking. What a list cannot tell you is who will be keeping it in Cheshvan, when the person who wrote it and the person living that particular Tuesday afternoon are barely on speaking terms.

Rosh Hashanah starts underneath the list. Before asking what I will do differently this year, it asks who the person is who is going to live it. A year is a full cycle of existence. When it ends, creation does not simply roll forward into more of the same; it returns to its beginning and is renewed. Because the day marks the creation of Adam, its judgment reaches past an accounting of the last twelve months. My life is brought back before the One who gave it. The Yerushalmi describes Klal Yisrael coming out of the judgment of Rosh Hashanah as a briah chadasha, a new creation. That is a heavier idea than an annual performance review, and a much larger one. The person who will inhabit this year is himself being placed before Hashem.

And that person is specific. The Mishna says lefichach nivra Adam yechidi, that man was created alone. We usually quote what comes next, that a single life is a whole world. But the fact that Adam stood alone also means something. One human being stood in front of an entire world that had been handed to him in particular, and everyone since stands in some version of that position.

Chazal note that though we all descend from one man, no two faces are alike, and neither are any two minds. Every person is an olam malei, a full world, meeting reality from a vantage point nobody else occupies. So, the day does not stand me next to anyone else. It puts this life in front of me. A great deal of what people bring into a therapy office is the wish to have been given different materials – a different temperament, a different family, a different set of limitations. Some of that grief is real and deserves its room. But a year cannot be lived with somebody else's equipment, and there are things no one else can answer for in my place.

Being a distinct person and being a coherent one are two different achievements. A life scatters easily. I can care about something in the morning and live by something else that afternoon. In one room I am patient and thoughtful; in another, people who know me might barely recognize me. I can name what matters most to me and still watch myself spend the evening on something I barely value.

The phrasing I hear most often for this is some version of, “I don't know why I did that. It didn't feel like me.” Rav Shapiro described the same condition in four words: rega kach, rega kach, one moment this way, the next moment that way. The decision and the regret that follows it can seem to belong to two different people. When the pieces do not join, he said, this is not yet the full tzuras Adam, the form of a human being.

A whole person still has contradictions. We are generous and selfish, brave and frightened, hungry for closeness and worn out by what closeness costs. The work is not to eliminate one side of ourselves so that only the acceptable one remains. It is to develop an ani, an “I,” with enough room to know what is there and still decide. That is also the question Malchuyos puts to us.

Rav Shapiro distinguishes between malchus, kingship, and memshalah, imposed rule. A ruler can enforce his will whether anyone accepts him or not. A king is different. Kingship exists through acceptance. Malchuyos therefore depends on human choice rather than overriding it, because there is no accepting Hashem's kingship without a person capable of saying yes or no. The day places our freedom in front of us and asks what we are willing to let govern us.

Melech also carries molich, one who leads. A nation contains many people and many competing interests, and the king draws them in one direction. Without that center you get the end of Sefer Shoftim – ish hayashar b'einav ya'aseh, each man doing what is right in his own eyes. The inner version of that disorder is familiar enough. Fear wants one thing and appetite wants another. Ambition pulls one way while resentment pulls the other. My values are in there too, though they do not always get to decide what happens next. Each of these can set itself up as a small kingdom.

Malchuyos asks whether all of it can be gathered into one life, with the tension and the personality still intact. Adam was created yechidi, and a person who accepts Hashem's kingship stays irreducibly himself. Particularity without direction can turn into fragmentation. Malchus gives this particular life somewhere to go.

The particulars still matter. Malchus has to reach Tuesday afternoon eventually: how I speak when I am irritated, what I do with my hours when nobody is watching, what I do with my money, what I choose when fear and conviction point in different directions. Those choices belong to a life, and the life is what is being placed in front of me. Is my time simply mine? Are my abilities simply mine? Are the people in my life interruptions to the life I had planned, or are they part of the life I was given? When I know what I want, is that the end of the question, or does the wanting answer to something beyond itself?

The day does not open by handing us new promises. It opens with creation. Hashem made Adam on this day, and every year we come back to that beginning: these children, these relationships, these gifts, these unfinished places, this Torah, this work, this body, this mind. There will be habits to change once the year starts, promises to keep and repairs to make. First the day returns me to the question human existence began with, Naaseh Adam, and asks whether everything I have been given can be gathered into one life before the One who gave it.

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A (Companion) Inner Guide to Rosh Hashanah

Rosh Hashanah davening can be overwhelming. There are so many words and themes, and so much we may be carrying into shul. It is easy to spend the day trying to concentrate harder, feel more, or mentally review everything we hope will change in the year ahead.

You do not have to hold all of it at once. The machzor itself gives us places to stand. The suggestions below are not formal kavanos, and they are not meant to replace the meaning of the tefillos. They are ways of pausing inside familiar words and allowing them to work on us.

Several of the ideas here are drawn especially from the teachings of Rav Moshe Shapiro, zt”l, and other Torah sources on Rosh Hashanah. The central starting point is that Rosh Hashanah returns us each year to the creation of Adam, as mentioned above.

Zeh Hayom Techilas Maasecha – Receive the Beginning

We say, “Zeh hayom techilas maasecha, zikaron l’yom rishon” – today is the beginning of Your works, a remembrance of the first day. Yet creation began five days before Rosh Hashanah. By the first of Tishrei there was already light and darkness, sky and sea, plants and animals. What happened on Rosh Hashanah was the creation of Adam.

The year brings us back toward that beginning. Jewish time does not simply stretch forward indefinitely; the cycle completes and returns to its source. The Yerushalmi describes Klal Yisrael emerging from the judgment of Rosh Hashanah as though they have been made into a briah chadasha, a new creation.

So before going through everything that needs fixing, pause over something more basic. This year is not merely last year continuing for another twelve months. This life is being placed before you again.

Hold this question: What would it mean to receive this life again rather than assume that I already know what it can become?

Veyeda Kol Pa’ul Ki Atah Pe’alto – Know Yourself as Created

The Rosh Hashanah tefillos do not only ask that creation know Hashem. We ask that every created being know that You created it.

Most days, I begin with what I experience as mine: my schedule, personality, strengths and weaknesses, relationships, problems and plans. Rosh Hashanah asks me to recognize something prior to all of them. I did not give myself this life.

That does not make the life less mine. It changes how I hold it. My temperament, abilities, limitations, body, history and relationships become not merely circumstances I ended up with, but the particular materials within which I am being asked to answer Hashem.

A great deal of human suffering comes with the wish to have been given different materials. Some of that grief is real and deserves its room. But the coming year cannot be lived with somebody else’s equipment.

Hold this question: What changes when I experience my life as something entrusted to me rather than simply possessed by me?

Kivnei Maron – Stand in Your Own Place

Chazal describe all of creation passing before Hashem on Rosh Hashanah “kivnei maron,” one by one. There is something frightening about that image, but there is dignity in it too.

Adam was created yechidi. Human beings may share one origin, but no two faces are alike, and no two minds encounter the world in precisely the same way. Rosh Hashanah does not ask why I am not somebody else.

For the rest of the year, comparison slips easily into how we understand ourselves. I am doing better than this person, falling behind that one, more successful here, less spiritual there. None of those comparisons can answer what Hashem is asking from the life that is actually mine.

And yet standing individually does not mean standing alone. Each of us still belongs to Klal Yisrael, to a people whose life, covenant and destiny are larger than any one person. Individuality remains real without becoming isolation.

Hold this question: What is being asked of this particular life, from this particular place?

Malchuyos – Gather the Pieces

A person can be sincere and still be scattered. I can care deeply about something in the morning and live according to something else that afternoon. Fear wants one thing, appetite another. Ambition has its direction, resentment another. Love, conviction and responsibility are there too, but they do not always decide what happens next.

This is part of what makes Malchuyos so central to the day. Malchus is different from imposed rule. A ruler can force obedience. Kingship, in its deeper sense, involves acceptance. It therefore presupposes a human being who can choose. Hashem created Adam with the possibility of turning elsewhere, which is what makes the acceptance of Malchus meaningful.

A melech is also the one who leads. A nation contains many people, interests and forces, and kingship gathers them toward one direction. Without a center, Sefer Shoftim gives us the opposite picture: ish hayashar b’einav ya’aseh –each person doing what is right in his own eyes. The same can happen within a person. Each part becomes its own small kingdom.

Malchuyos does not ask us to stop having contradictions. It asks whether those contradictions can belong to one life.

Hold this question: What would it mean for my fears, desires, gifts, obligations and contradictions to be gathered into one direction before Hashem?

Meloch Al Kol Ha’olam Kulo – Choose What Will Lead

It is easy to hear kabbalas ol Malchus Shamayim as the surrender of freedom. But Malchus only has meaning because freedom remains. A creature with no possibility of doing otherwise can be controlled; it cannot truly choose a king. Our ability to say no is part of what gives the yes its significance.

This can also be relieving. You do not have to wait until you feel spiritually ready. One Torah description of the avodah of Malchus speaks of accepting Hashem’s kingship even when the heart is “asleep,” before love and awe are fully awake. The acceptance itself can come first.

We spend a lot of spiritual energy evaluating what we feel. Malchus asks a slightly different question: where will I stand, even while my feelings continue to change?

Hold this question: What am I willing to let lead me, even before every part of me has caught up?

Shofar – Let Yourself Be Called

Then, after so many words, Rosh Hashanah asks us simply to hear.

There is a reason not to overload those moments with another paragraph of thoughts. The shofar is a call. It reaches a person before he has organized an explanation for himself. Rosh Hashanah sources also link its sound to freedom—the shofar of Yovel that releases what has been enslaved, and ultimately the shofar gadol of a redemption still ahead.

For most of the year we live inside accumulated stories about ourselves: why I do what I do, what I am capable of, what will probably happen next. Some are accurate. Some were once accurate and have simply remained in place too long.

During one set of tekios, perhaps there is nothing to solve. Stop explaining and listen. Let the sound reach the person standing here now—not the person you meant to become last year, not the person others think you are, and not only the person your history predicts.

Try this: For one set of shofar blasts, do nothing except listen and allow yourself to be addressed.

Before You Leave – Let Malchus Reach Monday

Rosh Hashanah can feel far from ordinary life. The white, the machzor, the long davening, the shofar, the intensity of the day. Then the year begins, and eventually it is a regular Monday afternoon.

That is where the work becomes real. Malchus has to reach the conversation in which I am irritated, the hour nobody planned for, what I do with my money, what I reach for when I am anxious, and the moment when what I want and what I know point in different directions.

You do not need to leave Rosh Hashanah with the whole year solved. The aim is more basic: to leave with a center.

Before the day ends, look once more at the life being placed before you – these people, these capacities, these unfinished places, this Torah, this work, this body, this mind. Rosh Hashanah begins with the creation of Adam. Beneath all the promises about what we will do is the person who will be doing them.

Carry this question with you: If what I placed at the center today were a little more real on one ordinary Tuesday this year, what might be different?

(Dr. Bin Goldman)