The
Beginning of a New Beginning
Posted on September 18, 2020 (5780) By Rabbi
Label Lam | Series: Dvar
Torah| Level: Beginner
All beginnings are hard… Rashi
I once asked a young Rosh
HaYeshiva about a phenomenon that I found to be at odds with a famous statement
by Rashi. “All beginnings are hard”. Clearly Rashi says “all” and that means every beginning
is open for examination. I asked him, “How come it is that we find at the
beginning of the Yeshiva Zman, that start of the year there is great
enthusiasm, everybody is psyched, and then after a while that energy begins to
wane? It should be the opposite! The beginning should be unsteady and low
energy and then the momentum and steam should build up after that!”
That was my simple
question. He gave me an answer that was so sharp, that if I told you it was
said by the Kotzker Rebbe you might be tempted
to believe it, but it wasn’t. He said, “For many it’s not the beginning at
the beginning, it’s already the end!” Ouch!
How often have we
witnessed that the Bar Mitzvah, in spite
of the enormous amount of money spent on the affair, rather than being a
launching of a career of Torah and Mitzvos, ended
up sadly being a goodbye party for G-d!? Tragically,
a wedding can be the same, an end rather than a beginning. Rosh HaShana too is
a big blast but we want it to last! How does one ensure that it’s a beginning
and not an end?
Rebbe Nachman says, “A person should turn to his Creator
and declare, ‘Today I begin to cleave to YOU!’, because everything goes after
the start. (Now even if he has disappointed himself before with many false
starts) Either way, if before it was good then this time it will be better and
if it has not worked out well before, then for certain he needs to make a brand
new start.” In another place he says that a person has to begin and begin and
keep beginning, sometimes many times in the same day.
Perhaps this is what is
hinted at in the sound of Shofar on Rosh HaShana. Maybe this is the message. In
order to have qualified as having fulfilled the Mitzvah of
hearing the Shofar it’s not sufficient to hear one single long blast. One must
also hear some combination of the two broken sounds which include three half
note sobbing sounds and/or a nine beat short staccato sound and then that has
to be followed and concluded by another long single blast. That is the series
that is required to have heard the Shofar. What is the message implied in this
Morse Code Message?
The beginning may be a
blast but it is not enough to carry us through to the very end. One needs to
start and start again and again, and sometimes many times in one day. Those are
the short and broken sounds. Then after trying and trying and beginning again
and again there is a breakthrough and the original beginning after stuttering
and stopping and beginning again is finally realized. Then that initial blast,
the launching, was not an end at all, but rather the beginning of a new
beginning.
Am I
Fulfilling My Purpose?
Posted on September 23, 2022 (5782) By Rabbi
Yaakov Menken | Series: Lifeline | Level: Beginner
Rosh Hashanah, the Day of Judgment, is also, per the
majority opinion in the Talmud, the sixth and final
day of Creation. It is on this day that Adam and Eve, the first couple, were
brought into the world. And as we know, Adam was initially Created as a single
individual, literally the only human being on earth.
The Mishnah says
(Sanhedrin 4:5) that among the reasons why humanity started from a single
individual is that looking at people around us can lead us to appreciate G-d’s
greatness… and even our own. “A person can mint many coins using one mould, and
all of them are similar, one to the other. But the King of Kings, the Holy One
Blessed be He, mints each person in the mold of the first man, and none of them
are similar to his friend. And for this reason, every person must say, ‘for my
sake the world was created.’”
So when, for example, the
Mesilas Yesharim, the Path of the Just by Rabbi Moshe Chaim Luzzato,
teaches us that the world was created for the service of man, he does not mean
man in general, all humanity. He means it personally: the world was created
for your service and growth. Hashem is
able to orchestrate all the events on earth to deliver to you an entirely
customized set of experiences and choices for you to make. Despite the billions
of other people on earth today, He sets your circumstances before you just as
He did for Adam.
No one ever had, or will
have, your life!
This is simultaneously
empowering and frightening. Empowering, because clearly we are critically
important to G-d, because He is orchestrating the universe to
provide me, as an individual, with a customized set of choices that, in their
totality, no one else will ever have. And frightening, because it is as if the
whole universe depends upon me!
Rosh Hashanah is an opportunity to judge ourselves,
contemplating that G-d judges the whole
universe, and thus us, today as well. Are we filling our purpose? Hashem placed tests great and small over the
past year. How did we respond, and, most importantly, how can we respond better
in the year ahead?
May we take fullest
advantage of the Day of Judgment to look within ourselves, and set a straighter
path for a coming year of success and blessing.
Wishing you (personally!)
that success, blessing, and spiritual growth,
Yaakov Menken
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