How can we understand the secret of Rosh Hashanah?
The “secret” of Rosh Hashanah can be understood through one sentence of the Sages that concentrates almost the entire day:
“Say before Me on Rosh Hashanah kingship, remembrance and shofar verses. Kingship, so that you make Me king over you. Remembrance, so that your remembrance rises before Me for good. And by what means? By the shofar.”
So it is said in the Babylonian Talmud, Rosh Hashanah 16a.
In other words, the Sages give us three gates through which to understand Rosh Hashanah: kingship (malchuyot), remembrance (zichronot) and shofar (shofarot).
1. Kingship - the question is not only “what did I do?”, but “who runs my life?”
On Rosh Hashanah a person does not begin, first of all, with the list of their sins. They go back to the root: is the Holy One truly king in my world? Are my decisions, my money, my anger, my ambitions and my relationships conducted out of a sense that the world has a master?
This is one interpretation of the idea “so that you make Me king over you”: making God king is not merely something said with the mouth, but an attempt to move the self away from the center of the world.
2. Remembrance - Rosh Hashanah is the day on which life receives meaning.
The Mishnah says precisely: “On Rosh Hashanah all who come into the world pass before Him like sheep in single file” (Mishnah Rosh Hashanah 1:2).
That is, like sheep passing through a narrow opening, one by one (Rosh Hashanah 18a and Rashi there).
There is a shaking idea here: all year long a person can hide inside the crowd. On Rosh Hashanah they stand as an individual. The question is not only what happened in the world, but what did you do with the year you received? What kind of person did you become? Whom did you benefit? What did you build within yourself?
3. Shofar - after all the words comes a sound that has no words in it.
The Torah itself names the day: “yom teru’ah yihyeh lachem”, “a day of sounding the shofar it shall be for you” (Numbers 29:1).
And here, as a homiletic idea, something deep can be said: there are places in the soul that words no longer reach. A person can explain, justify and promise. The sound of the shofar bypasses all the explanations. It is as if it asks: beneath all the stories you tell yourself, do you still want to come closer?
4. And precisely for that reason, judgment is not the opposite of love.
If my life has no importance, there is also nothing to judge me for. The fact that a person’s deeds are weighed means that they are significant. A small decision can matter. A small repair can matter. Even a person who has fallen many times still stands at the head of a new year facing a new possibility.
And this is perhaps one of the great keys to the secret of the day:
Rosh Hashanah is not only the day on which it is decided what will happen to you in the coming year. It is the day on which you are required to decide who you want to be in the coming year.
Notice the order of the Sages: first kingship, then remembrance, and finally shofar. The order can be read this way: first I remember that there is a King, then I understand that my life stands before Him and has meaning, and then the shofar comes and awakens in me the point that is still capable of beginning again.
And so perhaps the strongest question a person can take with them into Rosh Hashanah is not only “what do I need to ask forgiveness for?”, but:
If I were certain that the coming year is an opportunity given to me especially, what would I do differently with it?
That is already a question that can turn Rosh Hashanah from a day on the calendar into a true head of a new year.