Rosh Hashanah: A Mission of Mindfulness, with Rabbi Ezra Balsam

we achieve the best possible judgment this coming year and i want to begin with a story about a fellow who walks into the yad vashem museum 1978 on holocaust memorial day and he walks up to the clerk who's sitting at her desk and he pulls out of his pocket an envelope with some crumpled sackcloth pieces of of cloth with that have hebrew inscriptions written all over them and he takes pulls this out like it's his most cherished possession and he hands it to the clerk sitting there and the clerk gives him this look like what is this and he goes on to tell his story and he says that years ago he was the khasan he was the cantor for the kahilat rm synagogue of satmar romania and he said that year after year he would inspire the people with the staffilos he would inspire the people with with his daughter and people would come from wide and far to hear him pray on rosh hashanah in the most beautiful tones tunes in the most inspiring songs and it came a time 1944 when the nazis eventually they took over romania and he and his wife and his four children they were sent to auschwitz and in a horrendous display of inhumanity his wife and his four kids they were all killed in the gas chambers and he was sent on he was considered a strong person at age 34 he was sent on to a work camp called wolf spark and in wolfsburg he was forced to dig tunnels and trenchless and he was a work to his max to work work to his absolute end and he was con and he was given very little food to eat very little very little to drink and he was running on almost no energy and it came the months before rosh hashanah and the months before rosh hashanah he spent trying to pull together whatever he can he sold off his rations and he traded his rations he collected them day after day whatever he can scrap together and absolute least he needed to survive and he saved these rations and he sold his daily rations for a pencil and then he gathered together more and more of the rations that he could and he sold that for these pieces of sackcloth that he can put together and from what he knew by heart he wrote on the sackcloth with the pencil that he bought he wrote down whatever he remembered of the rosh hashanah prayers and it was right before rosh hashanah that the nazis for whatever reason they allowed the jews to gather and to give the rosh hashanah services and this this man naftali stern he led these prayers he led the rosh hashanah services and in an act of incredible sacrifice before an overflowing crowd of exhausted forlorn jews naftali stern the prisoner once again became naftali stern and he lifted his voice and using his treasured handmade monster to raise their spirits to raise the prisoners spirits and storm the gates of heaven with their tears and eventually it came time that the people were liberated that the jews were liberated and he eventually he made aliyah he moved up to israel into benebrach and he restarted his family and every single year rosh hashanah he would take this master that he had hand written and he would place it under the newly printed master that he would pray out of and he held it in his hand for 30 years every single rosh hashanah he would hold on to his master was considered his most cherished possession and now he turns to the clerk and he says this is my most cherished possession please make sure to take care of it until this day this master is on display at the yad vashem museum and the point i want to make is that naftali stern he was able to make hashem his king in the most hopeless in the most inhumane and the most chaotic conditions known to mankind and for 30 years he looked back at this moment and he said this was the moment where i was able to make hashem my king this was the moment where i was able to show my allegiance was able to show my absolute loyalty to hashem and this year that we're standing in 2020 is the year when we are able to make hashem our king despite the most detached despite the most hopeless despite the most chaotic times that we've experienced in our lifetimes if we are able to make hashem our king during this time if we're able to show hashem you are in full control despite all the craziness that's going on around us then for years after we're going to look back and we're going to remember this as the time this as the ultimate coronation of hashem and this is what we're going to use to fuel us year after year during our rosh hashanah prayers so i want to talk a little bit about the origins of rosh hashanah we say in the rosh hashanah prayers in the rosh hashanah liturgy we say hayom haras olam today is the day that the world was conceived and we say a little bit later we say today is the beginning of your handiwork it's when your creations were first created and when we look at the midrash when we look at the commentaries they say that rosh hashanah is the day when adam was created when the first person was created he says they say that the world was created on the 25th day of elo and then six days later god created man on this day on rosh hashanah marks the birthday it marks the first creation of men and the midrash says that on the first hour of the sixth day hashem had the idea to create man the idea entered his mind and then on the second hour hashem took counsel with the angels and decided together should we create man nasa adam and then on the third hour he assembled adam's dust on the fourth hour he needed um adam on the fifth hour he began to shape adam on the sixth hour he made him into a lifeless body on the seventh hour um he breathed a soul into adam and now gave him life on the eighth hour he brought adam into the garden of eden on the ninth hour god commanded adam not to eat from the forbidden fruits the tree of knowledge on the tenth hour adam transgressed uh god's command on the 11th hour adam was judged and on the 12th hour adam was pardoned so we see that the totality of the experience of adam from creation shaping man until him um transgressing the word of god and being forgiven being judged all that happened on this day on rosh hashanah on the 1st of tishrei and if we look at it the jewish calendar we don't look at as you know linear we don't look at the jewish calendar as linear we look at it as a spiral the jewish candle calendar we come back to the same point of time every year year after year after year we come back to that same moment so when god created man he gave him life so to every rosh hashanah when we come back to this moment hashem renews us with life on this moment he judges us he forgives us he looks at us as a new human being and instills in us new life for this coming year and in judaism we say everything goes after the beginning everything has to do with the start of that thing when you look at um somebody god forbid he injures himself right so it might not be a big deal but if it's a fetus right if it's something that's just beginning that's just starting to take life so then that's going to be critical right that same damage to an adult is much more critical to a fetus because it's just beginning in this world and so too we have a concept of the zygote right which is uh the cell where everything comes out of right where everything's conceived from um in the dna you can find right from the beginning exactly how a person is gonna grow exactly what's gonna happen to that person and so too on this day on rosh hashanah hashem decides for us it's the zygote of the year hashem decides for us exactly what's going to sprout forth exactly what's going to come out this coming year and rosh hashanah is a time when we get to renew ourselves it's a time when we come back to this moment of time and hashem gives us new life but he wants to see that we've become new people that we've become a new version of ourselves and so hashem gives us the power this day of year to become the 2.0 version the updated version of yourself right you're not the same person that you were last year now you're a new version of yourself just like you know on your galaxy or your iphone you get system update 46.0 so too as human beings every year we get that system update every year we get to update ourselves to become a new person and because the beginning is so important we have to make sure on this day that we tap into the essence the mission the purpose of what this day is all about and when we recognize that we were created on this day so we have to recognize to get in touch with our mission for what we were created for and what were we created for we're all hired by the largest company in the world we're hired by this 7.5 billion person company called world incorporated and hashem created humanity he created this world he created mankind to give us the opportunity to have us work in this company to have us bring down his mission of making this world more kind more friendly more pure more compassionate more loving more godly more positive more uplifting our mission in this world is to bring all those godly attributes to bring hashem down in this world and on rosh hashanah we're judged by our capacity to fulfill that mission by how we can bring down hashem's godliness in this world and so our mission on rosh hashanah is to bring down hashem's kingship to get in touch with our purpose our mission our goals that hashem wants from us to bring hashem down into this world to make this world more positive to reach out a hand to your friend to make things more positive more uplifting more compassionate to make things more spiritually pure to bring hashem down into our lives and into the lives of others and on rosh hashanah we're judged based on this capacity and that's why it's so important that's why on this day the main thing that we focus on is hashem is what's called marthu which is the kingship of heaven we focus on the kingship on it on our mission to make this world more godly and we accept hashem as our king above and over everything else to get in touch with what hashem hired us for what our part in this amazing world incorporated company and on rosh hashanah we're celebrating our part in this company and if you think about it it's so funny it's like we're praying our hearts out on rosh hashanah things are so serious right we're all crying out to hashem hashem remember us for life o king who loves life right we're doing it for your sake we're crying out hashem the tone at the rosh hashanah prayers is so serious and then right after show ends you know all of a sudden things lighten up a little bit you know we're all telling each other have an amazing year a sweet new year and then we go home and we have this lavish meal all kinds of food and then we have these interesting simulin right we have these new fruits that we bring in and then we dip the apple in the honey sweet new year and everybody's having a great time and that question is like you know on one hand it's so serious it's judgment day and on judgement day you know you're having a good time you're having a good meal you're enjoying yourself really on judgment day we should be shaking we should be so nervous hashem is judging us how can we possibly sit down to a meal and enjoy ourselves and relax and the answer is that yes rosh hashanah is an extremely serious day it's very heady has to be taken with a lot of seriousness and that's why when we're in synagogue we pray right we pray and we're serious and we cry out to hashem but at the same time we also remember that we're celebrating we're celebrating our responsibility we're celebrating our role our mission as human being our part that we get to take in the creation of this world and that's something to celebrate and rosh hashanah in a way is like a company party right everybody's celebrating you know being part of you know this corporation that they're part of so too we celebrate being part of this world incorporated of being part of hashem's mission of why he brought us down there we're celebrating being part of hashem's company and that's what we're celebrating on rosh hashanah we're celebrating being part of hashem's company being part of hashem's mission what he wants from this world we get to play a part in that we get to take responsibility for our actions we get to grow we get to become bigger we get to make this world more godly there's so much for us to accomplish and on rosh hashanah we're celebrating the work ethic we're celebrating what humanity is all about and what we were created for and that's as well why we blow the shofar on rosh hashanah if you look through tanakh torah the prophets the scriptures you always find that they below the shofar in order to coordinate the new king to make the new king to set him as their leader and you'll find it by king saul you'll find it by king solomon david king yeshu they're always blowing the shofar in order to proclaim this person as our new king and that's why this time of year on rosh hashanah when we're renewed with life we want to now tap into our mission in life we want to tap into being hashem's workers we want to tap into our responsibility into the work that work ethic that hashem has set for us and therefore we blow the shofar to coronate hashem to tell hashem you are our king you are our boss you're our leader we follow you for our directive in life you're the one who sets a mis our mission in life and we blow the shofar to symbolize that hashem we are accepting you as our king we are coronating you it is you we follow and nothing else and i want to ask you the following question the talmud says that the main purpose of rosh hashanah what we're really supposed to be focusing on on this day is to coordinate hashem the talmud says qadish i want you to make me your king and the question i want to ask like do we really have an alternative do we really believe you know that there's other options that there's other gods you know gone are the days when we believe in other gods gone are the days of polytheism i remember i was traveling in vietnam once and i see this huge stone statue with like all this fan all these fans on this woman's head and i asked the person next to me you know i was so perplexed so interested you know a good jewish boy coming from the western world and i asked this the the person standing next to me i said what is this you know who who is this what is it and she says like she starts explaining to me what is what she's all about this goddess um and she said that they bring in this crane and they dip in this massive stone statue they like dip it into the lake next to it to make a fertile and to bring blessings upon everybody but we're so far from that right do we really believe that there's other gods there's other options there's other powers to believe in what does it mean to make hashem our king my rebbe ravitzuk berkowitz answers the following and he quotes the book called hovosalavovo's duties of our heart who says that we all have in our bodies an undercover agent who's infiltrated our highest ranks he's now our closest advisor and he's telling us the wrong thing he's giving us the wrong message he's giving us the wrong story and he says who is that who is this undercover at egypt who's messing us up in life he says that is the yetzer hara the evil inclination it's our physical primal desires our desires for just physical pleasure to do what feels good in the moment what satiates you right now and he says that that person he's become so much part of us that we consider it now him and he gives the following example he says that your alarm goes off in the morning right so you have these two sides right you're like yes i gotta get up attack the day i have so much to accomplish so much to do i i can you know make people's days i can do so much faster i can pray to hashem i can connect with hashem to others i can be nice to my wife there's so much potential in this day and then you have the other side you have the yates of heart you have the evil inclination you have your desires your instincts and it's pulling you down and say no don't get up stay here just a couple more minutes you know hit that button one more time um and we have these two voices inside of us and they're always competing with each other which one do we consider us which one do we consider us which one is the one that's saying you need this and i think that the one saying it's us is really our yate zahara he's the person he's infiltrated our ranks he's now our closest advisor he's now giving us the narrative he's saying i want to i want to sleep in i want that you know unhealthy food that i know is going to bring me up nowhere and make me feel sick i want um this desire i want you know to fulfill this need i want to speak gossip about other people to speak negatively because it feels good in the moment and this yatsahara this our instincts has penetrated through us the point where we now believe that we're him and he tells us the biggest lie he tells us that there's two roads in life you know you can follow the road of hashem the road of doing the right thing the right of overcoming what feels good in the moment and choosing what's good for us long term but he says you know that work comes with a lot of hard work we tell ourselves as uh you know hashem is offering us the world to come but this world is gonna be so difficult we're gonna have to wake up early we're gonna have to spend that time and pray we're gonna have to you know keep to these food restrictions kind of all that good food we're gonna have to dress like a nerd we're gonna kind of fun at the company party we can't let loose can't date whoever you want there's so much sacrifice that comes with us and then he tells us you know and then there's the easy road there's the road where you're free you have a great time you can eat whatever you want speak whatever's on your mind wake up whenever you feel like it look and behave like everyone else and what do we do we turn that voice into our king we say like hashem doesn't really want what's best for us you know really we want something else and now this person he's our fidel castro he's our freedom fighter you know he's a fight fighting for the he's the head of the opposition hashem doesn't want what's best for us yes long term if you want to think long term but in the moment you know this feels so good it's such a good alternative but in essence it's such a lie we know time after time it just leaves us with emptiness it leaves us with unsatisfaction it's just a temporary fix it's a temporary pleasure and then it's all over when have you ever felt better from sleeping in when have you ever felt better from you know parting a little bit more letting loose a little bit more going against what you know internally is good for you a funny example um but i have a two-year-old son and my wife cooks the most amazing double chocolate espresso cookies and erav chavis it's before shabbos she cooks these cookies and they're rich they're decadent they taste so good and the smell the aroma fills the root fills the house before shabbos and my two-year-old he wakes up from his nap and he knows you know those cookies are out there somewhere so he's running around trying to find these cookies and i'm setting up in this study where this tray of cookies is on the desk there i'm setting up to pray before shabbos and my kid runs into this room and his eyes make eye contact with these cookies and they light up and then he looks back at me and i give him the head nod and you know he's like oh okay um and he just leans against the desk you know ever so casually um and i'm like and you know slowly he rolls around and he picks up his hand and then you know he's just fiddling with the cookies but he's not gonna actually eat any and then he starts breaking off a piece and you know eventually i'm like okay i gotta put an end to this so i like and i push him away from the cookies and in his last ditch effort he stuffs his fingers into the chocolate cookie pulls out this finger with like a gooping piece of chocolate and he runs off shrieking and cackling and glee as he licks his fingers with the chocolate and that is the story of ourselves and the yatzahara right we have our parents we have hashem who knows what's good for us right i didn't want my kid to eat the cookies you know not because i don't want him having joy in this world i just don't want him getting a stomachache i don't want him having what's bad for him i don't want him having junk food i want him to be healthy i want him to be fit i want him to live with energy and so too hashem he wants us to live with energy he doesn't want us eating junk food he doesn't want us giving in to our physical instincts our primal instincts that pull us down he wants us to choose good and so he gave us this book called the torah our manual for life and he says follow this book this is what's best for you this is what's going to bring you the most joy this is what's going to bring you the most vitality and energy and happiness in life this is what's going to make help you make good decisions in this world and what do we do we say yes you know that stuff maybe it's good for us but we don't see the big picture we're like that two-year-old you know we're living in the moment and we just want what's pleasurable we just want what's best for us now and so the it's our hara our evil inclination it brings us down the whole year and we make the yetzer hara our king and we give in time after time after time and we pull ourselves away further and further from hashem and then it comes this one day it comes rosh hashanah and our job on this day is to be hashem is to make hashem our king is to proclaim hashem as our ruler and we say hashem nothing else gives us satisfaction in this world nothing else we have no real alternative nothing else really matters the promise that our desires gives us it doesn't deliver it doesn't give us anything we're left with emptiness there is no alternative force and on this day we say hashem you are our real king israel hashem hashem is our god hashem is one it's the only thing that can give us satisfaction it's the only thing it's our only king in this world and so making hashem our king proclaiming that hashem is one it means not make not coordinating the yetzer hara saying that there is no alternative hashem you're the only source of anything that we can get in this world you're the only source of goodness of joy in this world nothing else that we choose can deliver and so we might have had a rough year and our day to hara might have taken us over the entire year and we might have made bad decision after bad decision and chose the wrong things but on this day we gain clarity on this day we say hashem you're our everything you're our source you're the source of everything everything eternal and everything finite we have nothing else that can deliver except for you and i remember this story that happened in world war ii there was a city in england that the nazis were coming in and they slowly started taking over and the leader the government they they all ran away and the people of the city they all raised their white flags and they gave in and they say up we're accepting the new nazi regime they took them down to the town square they pledged to be with the nazis and what happened was that eventually the english people they came back and they attacked back and they started fighting back and as soon as the townspeople saw the english people coming back they started fighting with the english and they said yes we pledged with the germans but that's not really where our hearts were our hearts were really with the english the whole time and they started fighting against the nazis and together with the english they were able to overcome the nazi regime and that's us on rosh hashanah on rosh hashanah we express our true allegiance is with hashem the whole time yes the eats are hard he's come he's taken over our ranks he's become our greatest advisor and we've given in to him so much but on rosh hashanah it's all about hashem hashem you are our all you are our everything you are our king and our full allegiance is with you and i want to conclude that this year more than any we should find the courage to proclaim hashem as our king we should find the courage to say hashem despite all the craziness that's going on despite all the unknowns that's going on i trust that you know what you're doing i trust that you're our king and that you have a master plan and i remember sitting on an egget bus in israel and as they spin around i don't know if anybody shared this experience but they spin around these roundabouts like 30 miles per hour you like feel the g-force like knock you against the wall and in those moments you know it's like a shamaya straw moment like hashem please save me you feel like you're about to die like you don't know what's going on you're getting flung against the side of the bus and i remember reminding myself that you know these people they've been through the army they've flown f-22 fighter jets you know they know what they're doing they have experience and that's us during this time we have to recognize yes it's great yes we're going through the craziest of times but hashem has experience he knows what he's doing he sees the big picture and to have that trust that faith in hashem and to make him our king to say hashem you are our king our life is in your hands you know what you're doing and we show our we are pledging our allegiance to you over anything else to you over our any instincts any desires any of the pleasures of this world that are meaningless the only thing that matters is you and fulfilling our mission fulfilling our purpose that you want from us and i want to finish with a blessing that we should turn this year from the most chaotic year to the most connected purposeful meaningful year and through our proclamation through our absolute loyalty to hashem proclaiming that hashem is our king hashem should respond that these are my people and bring us back with the coming of the third temple speedily in our days thank you all