Post by Rabbi Neil on Dec 31, 2021 21:52:30 GMT
What will be different between today and tomorrow, apart from a layer of snow? Tomorrow is currently laden with hope, with the potential of a new year in the secular calendar in which anything could conceivably happen. All of our tzuras, all of the things that we struggle with at the moment, have at the very least the potential to disappear next year. We may not even have a plan yet on how to make them disappear, but the reality is that they are currently with us and there is a chance that they won’t be with us in the future, so that allows us the opportunity to hope that in the coming year they will disappear. Tomorrow apparently has more hope than today.
The difference between the Jewish New Year and the secular New Year are very interesting to me. Both are laden with hope and the possibility of change, but we address that change very differently. With the Jewish New Year, we spend a month preparing ourselves, reflecting on our own behavior, we set a vision of change, change ourselves around that vision, make amends for our mistakes, and then resolve to be different. The secular New Year also carries the idea of hope, but instead of the preparation, it’s usually accompanied by resolutions. What is a resolution? It’s a pledge to oneself, a statement of intent, that guides future action and assumes a change in behavior. For the last few years, I’ve written down my resolutions for the coming secular year. I would resolve to lose weight, and might for a while but would then gain it back again. I would resolve to work on my book, and I rarely had time. One year, I pledged to get the number of unpainted minis under a certain number – five years later I have four times as many unpainted minis as when I made that resolution!
What’s going on here? Despite what many people believe, hope isn’t a statement of intent. People often take it to be that way – “I hope that this happens,” or “I hope that this doesn’t happen,” but in Judaism that isn’t really hope. In Talmud, Tractate Berachot (60a), we learn of a bracha l’vatala, a vain prayer. For example, “One whose wife was pregnant and who says, “May it be God’s will that my wife give birth to a male child” – such words are called a vain prayer. The text continues that in the first forty days one may pray to affect the gender of the child but after that one should only pray that it be born healthily, and any prayer relating to the gender of the fetus is after forty days a vain prayer. Another example is given on the same page of Talmud. “One who was walking on the way and heard a scream from the city, if that person says, ‘May it be God’s will that this scream not have come from my house,’ that is a vain prayer.” What these Talmudic passages teach us is hoping for something that has already come to pass, or hoping for something that is already set in motion, is not really hope at all, it’s wishful thinking that ignores reality.So, why did I not lose weight despite hoping to? Because I didn’t substantially change my eating habits or exercise habits. It was a vain resolution. Why didn’t I reduce the number of unpainted miniatures? Because I knew I had already bought countless others that were on the way. Why didn’t I work on my book? Because I didn’t carve out time to do so and prioritized other things instead. In Judaism, hope doesn’t lead to action, hope comes from action. A resolution without preparation is just as likely to fail as it is to succeed because it’s ungrounded, unbalanced, and easily toppled whenever challenged.
So, if preparation is key, then that may be the profound difference between the Jewish New Year and the secular New Year. On both occasions, people tend to pledge to change their behavior, but with one there’s a month of preparation, and with other there’s usually very little. The month of Elul before Rosh Hashanah helps us address why we behave in certain ways that we want to change, so that we can then change the underlying cause before changing the behavior pattern. It’s like the old story of pulling people out of the river that Archbishop Desmond Tutu, who died this week, used to tell - “There comes a point,” he would say, “where we need to stop just pulling people out of the river. We need to go upstream and find out why they’re falling in.” To me, new year’s resolutions without preparation feels like fishing people out of the river, while new year’s resolutions with preparation feels like going upstream and stopping people from falling in. One leads to temporary change and the likelihood of returning to the same, the other to more permanent change and less likelihood of relapse.
But it doesn’t have to be that way. There’s no reason why we can’t have spent the month of December deciding the way ahead. I certainly have this year, but only because I’ll be on Sabbatical from tomorrow. I have a plan for my Sabbatical, which ranges from better health to finishing my book to painting miniatures to exploring my own spirituality to updating my family tree to renewing our expired passports to hanging all the art in our house. What I’ve done to prepare for that is very little, other than create the time for it. And maybe that’s a large part of this – time. Before Rosh Hashanah we carve out time, but before or after the secular new year we rarely do. What’s the difference between today and tomorrow? Meteorologically, a likely layer of 5-8” of snow, but astronomically, there’s no difference between the earth being in one place and in another in relation to the sun. There’s nothing really to celebrate, except for time itself. Even though we usually express the hope of the New Year as being hope for things to change, maybe the real hope is that we’ll have time to change things ourselves.
In Pirke Avot (2:4), Hillel says, “Do not trust in yourself until the day of your death…. and do not say “When I have leisure I will study” because perhaps you will not have leisure.” Maybe Hillel understood new year’s resolutions more than anyone else! Don’t make a resolution and assume you’ll just stick to it – don’t trust in yourself – he says. But, instead, make time for it. Shabbat is a wonderful time for that, but many of our new year’s resolutions are life-long habits. You can’t eat cake all week long and diet on Shabbat and wonder why you’re not shedding the pounds. You can’t resolve to study Torah on Shabbat and then sleep your way through the day of rest and wonder why you’re not learning anything. Shabbat is time, but it’s not enough time.
This Shabbat on the eve of the secular new year, let us pray for time. Time to replenish ourselves, time to make serious structural changes to the negative parts of our lives, time to be deliberate in the way we lead our lives. Let us pray not just that we have that time, but that we use that time well. Let us celebrate the time that we have together, and let us plan for the times when we will return together. And may this Shabbat, and the secular New Year, be a time of reflection, change and growth for us all. And let us say, Amen.
The difference between the Jewish New Year and the secular New Year are very interesting to me. Both are laden with hope and the possibility of change, but we address that change very differently. With the Jewish New Year, we spend a month preparing ourselves, reflecting on our own behavior, we set a vision of change, change ourselves around that vision, make amends for our mistakes, and then resolve to be different. The secular New Year also carries the idea of hope, but instead of the preparation, it’s usually accompanied by resolutions. What is a resolution? It’s a pledge to oneself, a statement of intent, that guides future action and assumes a change in behavior. For the last few years, I’ve written down my resolutions for the coming secular year. I would resolve to lose weight, and might for a while but would then gain it back again. I would resolve to work on my book, and I rarely had time. One year, I pledged to get the number of unpainted minis under a certain number – five years later I have four times as many unpainted minis as when I made that resolution!
What’s going on here? Despite what many people believe, hope isn’t a statement of intent. People often take it to be that way – “I hope that this happens,” or “I hope that this doesn’t happen,” but in Judaism that isn’t really hope. In Talmud, Tractate Berachot (60a), we learn of a bracha l’vatala, a vain prayer. For example, “One whose wife was pregnant and who says, “May it be God’s will that my wife give birth to a male child” – such words are called a vain prayer. The text continues that in the first forty days one may pray to affect the gender of the child but after that one should only pray that it be born healthily, and any prayer relating to the gender of the fetus is after forty days a vain prayer. Another example is given on the same page of Talmud. “One who was walking on the way and heard a scream from the city, if that person says, ‘May it be God’s will that this scream not have come from my house,’ that is a vain prayer.” What these Talmudic passages teach us is hoping for something that has already come to pass, or hoping for something that is already set in motion, is not really hope at all, it’s wishful thinking that ignores reality.So, why did I not lose weight despite hoping to? Because I didn’t substantially change my eating habits or exercise habits. It was a vain resolution. Why didn’t I reduce the number of unpainted miniatures? Because I knew I had already bought countless others that were on the way. Why didn’t I work on my book? Because I didn’t carve out time to do so and prioritized other things instead. In Judaism, hope doesn’t lead to action, hope comes from action. A resolution without preparation is just as likely to fail as it is to succeed because it’s ungrounded, unbalanced, and easily toppled whenever challenged.
So, if preparation is key, then that may be the profound difference between the Jewish New Year and the secular New Year. On both occasions, people tend to pledge to change their behavior, but with one there’s a month of preparation, and with other there’s usually very little. The month of Elul before Rosh Hashanah helps us address why we behave in certain ways that we want to change, so that we can then change the underlying cause before changing the behavior pattern. It’s like the old story of pulling people out of the river that Archbishop Desmond Tutu, who died this week, used to tell - “There comes a point,” he would say, “where we need to stop just pulling people out of the river. We need to go upstream and find out why they’re falling in.” To me, new year’s resolutions without preparation feels like fishing people out of the river, while new year’s resolutions with preparation feels like going upstream and stopping people from falling in. One leads to temporary change and the likelihood of returning to the same, the other to more permanent change and less likelihood of relapse.
But it doesn’t have to be that way. There’s no reason why we can’t have spent the month of December deciding the way ahead. I certainly have this year, but only because I’ll be on Sabbatical from tomorrow. I have a plan for my Sabbatical, which ranges from better health to finishing my book to painting miniatures to exploring my own spirituality to updating my family tree to renewing our expired passports to hanging all the art in our house. What I’ve done to prepare for that is very little, other than create the time for it. And maybe that’s a large part of this – time. Before Rosh Hashanah we carve out time, but before or after the secular new year we rarely do. What’s the difference between today and tomorrow? Meteorologically, a likely layer of 5-8” of snow, but astronomically, there’s no difference between the earth being in one place and in another in relation to the sun. There’s nothing really to celebrate, except for time itself. Even though we usually express the hope of the New Year as being hope for things to change, maybe the real hope is that we’ll have time to change things ourselves.
In Pirke Avot (2:4), Hillel says, “Do not trust in yourself until the day of your death…. and do not say “When I have leisure I will study” because perhaps you will not have leisure.” Maybe Hillel understood new year’s resolutions more than anyone else! Don’t make a resolution and assume you’ll just stick to it – don’t trust in yourself – he says. But, instead, make time for it. Shabbat is a wonderful time for that, but many of our new year’s resolutions are life-long habits. You can’t eat cake all week long and diet on Shabbat and wonder why you’re not shedding the pounds. You can’t resolve to study Torah on Shabbat and then sleep your way through the day of rest and wonder why you’re not learning anything. Shabbat is time, but it’s not enough time.
This Shabbat on the eve of the secular new year, let us pray for time. Time to replenish ourselves, time to make serious structural changes to the negative parts of our lives, time to be deliberate in the way we lead our lives. Let us pray not just that we have that time, but that we use that time well. Let us celebrate the time that we have together, and let us plan for the times when we will return together. And may this Shabbat, and the secular New Year, be a time of reflection, change and growth for us all. And let us say, Amen.