Rabbinic Reflection: Rabbi Jordan Helfman

This Moment Is Unique

How do we keep going in this moment?

How do we find the energy to keep going?

For me, Rosh Hashanah answers these basic questions by recognising where we are but pointing towards the future.  Take for instance our greeting, which focuses with optimism on the year ahead, “L’shana Tovah Tikateivu” –  “May you be written for a good year ahead”.

This Rosh Hashanah, we mark another year in the turning of the globe and focus on a new year of growth for our loved ones and ourselves.

Thought the celebration will be different, it will be differently special.  A microcosm of our current world, I can promise moments of joy and frustration.  Of disconnect and togetherness.

One of the things I am focusing on as we enter Rosh Hashanah is the majesty of so many little parts coming together to make a whole.

Often we don’t focus on each element, and how it all works, but the High Holy Days ask us to look beneath the surface.  Which shows you the wonder of how it all goes together:

In high school, I built a computer at a friend’s house, picking the right motherboard, power supply, graphics card, RAM, etc – weaving it all together with wires and connections to make a finely balanced network of computing potential.    In middle school, I took programming classes, syntactically connecting if-else ideas into text and images that flipped cards and provided mild entertainment.  And even when I remembered all of those things, I still didn’t really know how everything stays connected, so that my button push is readable as text to you, somewhere else not wired to my keyboard.

And this isn’t just true of computers.  No one alive today knows how to make a pencil.

And so, on Rosh Hashanah, the Birthday of the World, we take a moment to appreciate the connections of cells, veins and organs – of guilt and love and frustration and self – of food, racism, economy and nature which bring us to this moment in space and time.

And so we will say Shehechyanu – Thank you God for enabling us to reach this new moment, together.

Shanah Tovah –  We great this New Year with a newfound appreciation for life.