Reflections on Rosh Hashana

 A 3 Part Sermon excerpt: Rosh-Hashanah: Insights for Personal Change Part 1 & 2

Shana Tova! The Jewish holiday of Rosh-Hashanah marks the beginning of the New Year in the traditional Jewish culture. Most importantly, in the Jewish faith, it is the start of the ten days when humanity needs to earnestly seek to repair its relationship with God, in order to preserve righteousness and justice, thereby maintaining our hope and promise for the future.

According to Jewish tradition, the ten days that span Rosh Hashanah to Yom Kippur are the days when the Book Of Life is opened and when each person’s life is reviewed and weighed. During this time, your lifetime ledger or your moral balance sheet is studied— our merits and our faults examined, and our coming fate measured out to us for the next year– according to our actions and our deeds. 

As a corollary, during this ten day time period, we are also given the opportunity to cancel our debts, and reconcile our faults by enacting or carrying through on works of forgiveness, kindness, and charity. By making a sincere pledge of personal reform, we can balance our books and be restored to righteousness, peace, and wholeness. 

Each day during the ten days of the New year, the faithful are summoned to collective worship by the sound of the ram’s horn or the Shofar. This trumpeting sounds the call to the faithful to “look within the depths of their souls and to leave the old ways of sin and selfishness behind and return their hearts to God.” The rites and rituals of Rosh-Hashanah declare to us that it is in the act of remembrance that we first begin to change.

How does this ancient time of ritual observances relate to us today?? According to some of the most prevalent psychological theories, it is a highly recommended practice that each of us takes some time to periodically assess the progression of our lives. In and through this process of reexamination and evaluation, we would engage in a review of our past, in light of our present, and with our plans for our future; in order that we might better develop decision-making skills and learn to benefit from our experiences. 

While this is a process that can be done alone, some people decide to enlist the assistance of a close friend, minister, therapist, or a spiritual director as facilitators for your insights and ideas. Others choose a more solitary route, that might include self-assessment tests, journal keeping, dream logs, and other helpful techniques.

 It is also the ideal time for taking up various spiritual disciplines such as yoga, prayer, meditation, fasting, etc. No matter what methods one might employ, the importance of reworking one’s perspectives on their life, time, work and relationships, etc., cannot be overestimated.

None of us is immune to the necessity for change, or are exempt from the need to “take a good look at ourselves.” Each of us has had their share of triumph and tears, joys and sorrows, each experience that calls us to a deeper understanding and to discover the fuller, richer meaning those experiences might hold for us. 

All of our experiences, whether they are chosen or imposed, have contributed to our understanding of who and what and where we are today. With self-assessment, they can serve the next steps and new directions we would like to pursue tomorrow.

Part II: Rosh Hashana and Renewal:

Insights on Change from Family Systems Therapy

According to family systems theorists, change that follows these spiritual directions often goes through three general stages: Mourning, Second, Stabilization, and Anticipation.

Each stage is a part of the whole cycle of change. From them.,we can resolve our past, secure our present, and plan for our future. They are circular, not linear, and they are interdependent, much like the cycles within the Jewish year.

The progress towards meaningful change begins with a mourning period…

This is an introspective time when we ask ourselves those deeper questions about what has happened to us, and we can make the best of it. It is also the time when we see answers for what might have been, and how we can restore, if possible, those possibilities and potentials.

The mourning period, then, is a time for remembrance and for release; a time for forgiving, accepting, and for letting go. It enables us to look back, and if we allow it, it will stir or raise some painful reminders that will serve to instruct and guide us;

If we are storing or harboring any lingering resentments, unresolved guilt, shame or remorse, this is the time for courage and compassion; so that we can see through these flaws and faults and to begin to turn them into flare and facets.

When we are willing to work through our past perceptions and experiences, we can begin to make sense of them, identify and control them. In that honest way, we can bring ourselves to more peace of heart and mind about our lives and the course it has taken so far…

If we try to avoid, omit, postpone, or gloss over this period of vital reworking, we can risk adding to our emotional debts, discomfort, and dependencies. We must assure ourselves that we are not just rehearsing some past negative pattern, and that we are striving to go past sentiment to understanding. We need to avoid getting stuck in asking those futile questions of “If Only? How Come? Why?

If we adopt the attitude that when we bravely look inside to behold the truth, and the essential, soulful lessons of wisdom, compassion, and insight that these experiences contain, then the benefits of freedom will outweigh whatever discomfort or pangs of conscience that we have raised. This act of remembrance lead to greater self-esteem, acceptance, integrity, growth, and maturity.

Regardless if you find yourself mourning your youth, your parents, your religious upbringing, lovers, career failures, and other losses, we can be freed of their burdens by knowing that each of us shares a similar story; and that these struggles are all a part of our human existence. This is the perpetual theological battle and the spiritual imperative that faces each of us.

The second stage or plateau stage is called stabilization. Here we begin to build on what we have learned, what we have resolved from our past, and begin to concretely apply it to our present situation and to our daily living and interactions.

It involves living in “the here and now,” as informed by the past. It can be a waiting period that assesses and evaluates the next steps in our lives, for it holds the glimmer of promise that lies in our future.

But any promises can be delayed until we satisfactorily “make friends” with the present. This time of reassessing is highly individual- it could be days, weeks, months, even years depending on the intensity and the importance of the next steps.

The duration will often be in proportion to our willingness and readiness to make those changes we find ourselves required to make. It is also a waiting time that asks us to develop sufficient motivation to infuse our lives with the truth of our self-discoveries.

Since this theory was taught to me during training in family therapy many years ago, I will give you an example from that context: People who have just been widowed or divorced might involve themselves in a flurry of social and intimate relationships. This activity, while appearing to be healing and resourceful, can effectively avoid the need to step back and appraise their actions; Carefully appraise their attitudes, their realistic needs, and their deeper values, concerning whom I will become involved with the next time, and if this introspective process is not done, it could prematurely sentence them to live out the same mistakes! Without giving proper time to mourning, and to regaining a sense of self and its stability, we can unwittingly set ourselves up for avoidable difficulties.

The central question is this: Can we ever be too involved that we cannot take the time to repair our own self-respect, our relationship with God, to assess ourselves and to outgrow the negatives in our past?

I consider it an elaborate deception that we can play on ourselves, to declare that we need not wait. I feel that each of us needs to ponder and assess our lives deeply and well!

From my own experiences, I know that it can be a long, intricate, and demanding struggle to let go of our past, and to secure an objective, loving appreciation of ourselves and others. There are no easy ways, convenient answers, but there are first steps. These steps come from our willingness to change, the decision to maintain our openness and courage, and to see through to hope, despite any obstacles.

Lastly, Anticipation is the third stage in personal change. It is the readiness to invite newness, to risk involvement, and to respond positively to the possibilities of our future. This final stage welcomes opportunity, new discoveries, and new people back into our lives in new and more meaningful ways.

Anticipation allows us to reach out, to explore, to risk and to welcome the developments of trust, intimacy, and love. The goal of this concluding stage is to adopt an attitude of holy innocence: an outlook that accepts life for what it is- which includes the risk of potential heartache and disappointment!

Anticipation is our willingness to reach for what life offers, and not be swayed by past doubts and anxieties. Here the emphasis is on how you, yourself, can live more freely, apart from your earlier limits and fears. It is from this savoring of life, this expectancy, and the active welcoming of the good that we grow, learn and love anew.