Rosh Hashanah Paradox - Tehila Gimpel: The Land of Israel Fellowship

hi everybody so with all the excitement and anticipation of the new year coming upon us at the same time this season for me brings a lot of questions maybe more questions than answers and I'm sure I'm not alone in feeling like this is a day filled with Paradox at least for me I often feel like you know we're we're suddenly you know Russia sh is come we say oh gosh I better I better do Chua I better think about you know where it can be better and I make all these new year's re resolutions just to come back and you know the next year say well has anything really changed have I really changed this past year I uh I right before rashishana I wrote a notebook with all of the big resolutions that I had all of the my goals and I even uh was supposed to be giving a class on Sim Tora about setting spiritual goals for the new year so I you know I took my little notebook in my bag and I was walking to the synagogue and as I'm getting closer to the synagogue I see people being you know men being called up and horrible newses trickling in and you can imagine that that notebook both physically and metaphorically stayed in that bag uh BAS basically permanently and and that those goals were pretty much forgotten in the you know chaos of this past very difficult year but even in years that aren't so difficult how often do we think back to what the goals we set last year and say did did I even change is this is anything even happening you know we envision Hashem with his scales objectively weighing our deeds and making a decree on us Hashem knows what we deserve are we really going to like what are we doing here are we changing anything with our our actions are we really affecting any kind of meaningful change and you know even the word sh Ros sh even the word Shah has in it this Paradox the Hebrew word for year actually means both change something sh is something different but also L like it means to repeat well are we just mice on a wheel repeating ourselves year after year or are we actually sh are we actually making a difference in some kind of change I I don't know this sort of was weighing on me and I saw a passage in the talmo that at first didn't really answer my question it just made my frustration a little bit greater in the Babylonian talm tra rashishana On Da page 17b there's a passage that's sort of struggling with one of these paradoxes and it says you know well let's say there's a person that really did a lot of Chuan rashishana and Hashem forgives him and gives him decides to give him a blessed year but then that person's a real jerk well are they still going to get all those blessings and what about the opposite they didn't really do chuva they didn't get you know such a good decree for the coming year but then after that they really worked on themselves after Russia well is their judgment all messed up now or are they going to be cursed even though they're working really hard to be better the words of the Talon goes follows it says if much rain was decreed but the people do not act righteously the rain will fall in places where it is not needed such as over the seas or over the desert however if only a small amount of rain was decreed but the people acted righteously that little bit of rain will fall in places where it is needed and it will be enough to sustain them well I'm going to ask you does that really answer the question like on on first read it just made me even more absurd is this just one big joke to Hashem is this some kind of theater to him that I didn't even buy a ticket for this you know in Israel we have a joke about the former prime minister Levy ESO that when he was a finance minister someone said to him you know when you were making all your election promises you promised to you know give funding for this and funding for that he goes yeah I promised but I didn't promise to keep my promise and that always became the sort of quintessential joke about politics they make promises but they don't promise to keep their promises is that what the gamar is saying about Hashem like I promised it would rain but I didn't promise it would fall in the fields I'm just going to scooch the clouds over the med on you know over there on the Mediterranean where they won't do anything for you and the jok's on you if hasem is just reshuffling his judgment ad hoc to make things make sense to him so like why do we need a judgment day in the first in in the first place like hasm is just going to do whatever he wants so it it didn't really answer my questions it just made me even more confused but sometimes when we feel that feeling of frustration it's not to upset us or to feel like the gabbara is just you know sending us off in the wrong direction it's actually an invitation to dig a little bit deeper so when you want to let like you know when you want to start unpacking a strange passage in the T the first thing we want to do is ask ourselves well okay well what stands out what stands out what is what what is our attention being called to and for me the first thing that stood out was why are kazal why are the sages fixating here on water this is tra rashash the context of the gamar is talking about rashash water is something we pray for on Suk on rashash we also you know pray for blessing but water doesn't get a a you know a prominent Place let's say in the in the rashishana prayers it could have just said well you know whatever Hashem decreed on you will be given to you in an unuseful way if you're bad and it'll be given to you in a useful way if you're good that's not what the tment says it's fixating on water and that got me thinking let's rewind a little bit and think about the biblical holidays all of the biblical holidays are commemorating something not every great event or every great miracle gets its own holiday but we can say that every holiday or every special day has something great that it's commemorating and why is that it's because sometimes you when Hashem makes him makes his presence manifests in the world and create some kind of Miracle or some sort of Salvation that is so powerful that it actually can create a stamp in time it can change the fabric of time such that when we come back to that time of year we can actually touch a little bit of the echo of that a little bit of a reverberation of that thing that happened so if Hashem revealed himself at Sinai and shabot it's not that he just revealed himself on Shabu every Shabu if we're tuning Our antenna into that sort of into that biblical calendar into that that connection with hashem's time then we're able to kind of reach into and feel a little bit of that taste of Revelation on shab if Hashem freed Us in the Exodus if hasem freed Us in The Exodus on Passover so we can still taste a little bit of Freedom if we're spiritually sensitive when Passover comes around now what are the great events that happened on rashash Shana what what happened so it doesn't tell us directly in the written Torah but in the oral Torah we have a tradition in the midash going back thousands of years of oral tra of oral you know uh um you know being passed down orally from generation to generation that these this that rashash Shana is is is on rashash Shana two things happened number one was the creation of Adam and number two was that God remembered Noah and started to Reed The Waters and you know we don't actually uh have a lot of mention of Noah in the prayer book The the time that Noah is actually mentioned in the prayer book is in the special prayers of rashash Shana so if rashash Shana is commemorating the creation of man and commemorating the remembrance of Noah what do these two events happen have in common what were they stamping into the fabric of time so if we look back in Genesis chapter 2 there's something we sort of often Overlook right before uh the creation of man and it was you know that and it was all about water what I'm going to argue is that both of these stories of the creation of man and the remembrance of Noah are actually stories that incredibly just like this passage in the talmud are talking about water being put in the beginning in the wrong place and then channeled to be in the right place what am I trying to say look at Genesis how much attention is given to water in the creation story in the beginning it's not that there was nothing the spirit of God was hovering over the water Hashem Hashem was um you know uh took the creation gives so much attention to this idea of separating chaotic toou Vu water and creating order out of the water look how much attention is given in the Genesis story first we have the upper Waters separating from the lower Waters we have the land separating from the water we have Rivers coming out of Eden the whole creation is this story of this just abundant chaotic water being everywhere and then if we look at the flood the opposite happens Hashem is sort of rolling back creation all the water that's in the right place ends up going into the wrong place so now on the day of the creation of Adam we always think what was Adam doing on his first day we think of him naming the animals but if we read carefully right before Adam is created there's a problem Hashem had sort of set everything into motion but it says in in chapter 2: 6 that there was there were no plants actually growing because while there was all this water as we've read about in the beginning of creation a rain didn't come and actually water the plants and so what was the the first thing that Adam did when he was created Rashi tells us the first thing Adam did when he was created it wasn't like oh hey world oh look cool animals the first thing according to Rashi that Adam did when he was created was to pray for water it says that there was no man to there was no man to uh you know to recognize the importance of rain and To Pray For Rain Adam came and on rashash Shana what was he doing he was praying for this rain that already existed this blessing that had already come into the world but hadn't it been channeled to the right place he was playing praying for it to be channeled to the right place and as a result of Adam's first action which was to pray to Hashem for hashem's abundance to go into the right place it rained and the plant and then it says that the Earth sprouted plants that's really incredible now let's look at Noah what is the story of Noah why did Hashem remember Noah Hashem once again created chaos of water all over the place not in the right places and then Noah through his righteousness that was remembered by Hashem was actually able to get the water to recede what was happening we're having like a redo of creation water is once again going to the right places where it's not bringing death and destruction and and chaos but where it's bringing life so if we go back to what the talmud is telling us how interesting is it it's like the talmud is giving us a hyperlink referencing us don't forget what rashash Shana is about what is rashash Shana about think back to Adam what was the first first thing Adam did think back to Noah what did they do what they were essentially doing was taking the tremendous potential that Hashem put into the world and through their prayers and through their actions channeling that energy to go into the right places so Hashem created all of the potential but their job was to interact with that because that potential however wonderful it is can come as a blessing or come as a curse depending on how it's used you know water is a great metaphor because we all intuitively understand it not not even intuitively in front of our very eyes we can see now what's happening on the East Coast we we know that water when it's in too much abundance is just a curse and water when it's sent to the right place will sustain life but we don't always think about all of our blessings in life in that way right like when we think about money no one's like well I hope I don't get too much money with water we hope we don't you know we want to get just the right amount in just the right place if it's in the wrong amount or the wrong place we know that that's going to be bad how many of us are ever you know saying well Hashem I want money but don't give me too much money or I want success but not too much success right because we think about those things as just being the more the marrier but water is a great metaphor for all of hashem's blessings because every blessing if given in the wrong if used in the wrong place in the wrong quantity at the wrong time can be the opposite of blessing I remember one of the first cases I got as an intern when I was you know becoming a lawyer was of a woman who was indicted for uh uh for assault because she got really upset with somebody at with the principal of her daughter's school and she threw money because she was upset about you know the parent payments and you know rightfully perhaps so and she was you know really struggling and and they were forcing her to you know pay these very heavy uh School tuition payments and she came and she threw the money at the the you know the the the bills at the principal and the principal uh you know uh filed a complaint against her and the police for assault and I said I remember saying well I I would be happy to be assaulted with with with you know bills of money any day of the week that doesn't seem like an assault but in fact that was perceived as an assault how many of us know people who have more money uh than they should because they're not using it properly or it's causing them to become hoty or causing them to uh you know uh be fixated on on on material things we we think about wisdom you know oh Hashem give me wisdom give me understanding how many of us know people who are too smarty pants for their own good right every single blessing every single kind abundance that Hashem brings into the world can be used properly or improperly it can be channeled to become a flood or it can be channeled to the plants uh you know and and and Sprout the garden that's most needed you know the technology that's most associated with Israel is of course drip irrigation this Israeli uh invention and I think that's so cool it's so in fitting with fitting with what the the Talon is here coming to teach us because what did drip irrigation come and do up until then everyone's just watering the fields with sprinklers Israel only had a tiny bit of water but became an agricultural Powerhouse cuz they said well we're going to take that tiny bit of water and have it only drip directly onto the roots of the plants so that we take whatever little bit of resource we have and make it have as much bang for its buck as possible it's a great um analogy for what we're talking about because Hashem brings this abundance into the world but we have the choice we have the choice of how we're going to channel it and the work that we're doing on rashishana is the same work that Adam is doing it's the same work that Noah is doing it's to understand through our prayers through our actions how to take whatever abundance Hashem has decreed upon us and use it wisely to channel it to exactly where it needs to go I was really struggling with that you know talm mutic passage and the one who helped me understand this was my daughter who has a girl in her class who's really struggling she comes from you know a lot of domestic issues and and and money issues and she has a lot of learning disabilities and my daughter kind of tries to take this girl under her wing and it's very sweet my daughter was telling me she goes you know you know the school gave this little girl uh an assistant like an aid to Shadow her in class and to help her uh learn and and my daughter said you know who's my hero and I thought she was going to say you know uh you know somebody who's out you know in the front lines fighting and she goes you know who's my hero he goes the aid who helps my friend in class and I said well why is that and he said you know every day whenever my friend goes out to the bathroom I see her sneaking food in her bag because she knows that her mom doesn't really pack her food or doesn't pack her enough food and it's so embarrassing for her to like not have something to eat and she's hungry and so her Aid even though you know being an aid is definitely like on the totem pole of jobs that's not it's not a well-paying job it's not a job that comes with a lot of Honor or accolades you're not teaching a whole class you're like sitting with one girl and it's it's not like a great salary and she has children of her own to take care of you know the aid has children of her own to take care of and with whatever little resources she was given to help this little girl she's going out and no one's telling her to do this and she's not getting reimbursed but she's going on and buying food for this little girl so she won't be ashamed and my daughter said she is my hero and I said oh my God that is exactly what the gamarra is saying that's exactly what the tmic passage is saying to us it's it's not saying oh you know Hashem is playing some sort of sick joke on us we'll give you a decree and then blow the clouds over to the Mediterranean where they're not going to help you it's saying don't worry yourself don't fret over the Justice or Injustice of hashem's decree because in the end of of the day if somebody is you know was decreed to get abundance but they're not acting in a way that's worthy that abundance is going to be squandered but even if you were given for whatever reason Hashem decided to give you a struggle Hashem decided to give you uh limited you know resources for your coming year if you've worked on yourself properly if you've aligned yourself properly in the beginning of the year you've tapped into that energy of Adam on his first day of life and that energy of Noah when he's being remembered by Hashem if you tapped into that you will take whatever bit you've been given and just like drip irrigation you will Channel it for the most possible good and so I think what the talet is telling us is that our work on rashash our interaction with Hashem you know on the one hand yes Hashem is making this decree and sometimes it's going to be a decree that we're happy with we're going to get a lot of potential sometimes going to be a decree that we're you know that might be more of a struggle for us but the work that we do on rashash Shana it's not meaningless it's not empty we're not mice on a wheel our job starting our But continuing throughout the whole year is to take whatever potential Hashem has given us for that year whatever water Hashem has brought into the world and directly Channel it like a laser to exactly where it needs to be because whatever we're given just like my daughter's friend's assistant whatever we're given even in the most limited resources and if we're given the most grand resources everything can be either wasted or directed properly and created into you know and in an orderly way so I think that perhaps is what the message uh kazal are giving us through this very Elusive and um you know kind of cryptic uh passage that they're giving us that our relationship with Hashem on these days is to in fact say Hashem whatever you're giving me whatever potential you're bringing me into the year I am going to work on myself to maximize it no matter what it is and to do the best I can with the hand that I will be dealt so with that I wish us all a year both of abundance and blessing but also that with whatever we are given and whatever Hashem thinks is right for us and whatever he gives us we will make sure that that is directed and channeled onto the fields to grow a beautiful garden a beautiful Garden of Eden and not squander over the sea or over the desert and so I wish with that a sha filled with true transformative change bye guys