Podcast #32 Drasha For Rosh Hashana

Shalom Shlomo and Elisha discuss their last podcast of the Hebrew year, which coincides with Rosh Hashanah. They talk about the spiritual experience of praying in the park and the importance of being in tune with nature during the month of Elul. They share stories about the significance of returning and not overthinking, emphasizing the need for fresh and new thoughts. They also discuss the importance of looking backward to gain clarity and self-validation as they look forward to the new year. Shalom Shlomo! Shalom Elisha! And today is a special day because it's the last podcast of this year, the Hebrew year of course. And it's Rosh Hashanah. Rosh Hashanah is coming up this Friday. And I'll just tell everyone we're back at the park. So if you happen to be in Israel, if you listen to the Sifo Rosh Hashanah and if you're in Israel, join us at our amazing, amazing park for the Rosh Hashanah services and Yom Kippur as well. So Shlomo, this year is coming to a close. What are we going to be talking about? Just a word about the park Elisha. So COVID brought us to the park unnecessarily and it became a spiritual experience under this beautiful leafy ficus tree. Looking at the sky and feeling the wind, it's a spiritual experience to pray on Rosh Hashanah in the open. And the little kids are running around and playing. It's just beautiful. It is. And someone who is not a huge fan of the park, most people love the experience of davening in the park. But there are one or two who prefer the walled in experience. And she said, you know, it's hard for me to concentrate. I keep on looking at the trees. That's beautiful. That is wonderful. You know, what's more spiritual than that? You know, you're praying to God. The trees were created by God too. What a good reason to be out there in the park. Exactly. Elisha, I have lots of questions. So we're discussing your Rosh Hashanah from 2019, a fateful year just before the pandemic. And I have two questions to begin with. Elisha, what is the personal process that you go through in the month of Elul as you prepare yourself for Rosh Hashanah? What is your Avodah She'alev, your inner working, your inner reflection? Hmm. You didn't prepare me for that. Okay, let me think a little bit. So without, you know, without, I'm going to answer without any preparation, obviously. So I think one of the most amazing things is that when, at least in Israel, and I think also in America, certainly in the Massachusetts area, in New York, New Jersey, in the Northeast, you really feel the fall season in the air. And it's a season of, it's a season, we've actually even discussed it here, I think, last week or two weeks ago. It's a season that calls on you to return back, to return. Do tshuva, tshuva is to return and have a little story. You love stories, so I feel comfortable sharing stories. Good. When I was a shaliach, an emissary, and again, I may have shared that as well in the past, a shaliach in California, in order to keep my sanity, I spent one day a week, and only for the first year that I was there, then I didn't have time for that anymore. But one day a week, working in gardening. Yeah, I remember, I think I did share the story, but I'll go ahead. Not everybody listened to it. And every Sunday, I used to go out, I had a boss, an amazing woman, a horticulturalist, who sent me off to different gardens to, sometimes we set up gardens, sometimes we just had to manicure the gardens, and they were very, very, very wealthy customers. It was in the Bay Area, and they had mansions that kind of end down in the water, with their yacht parked, docked, just by their own private garden. And I remember one particular customer, whom I went there every week to do some deadheading and cleaning and all that. And when the fall season came, he asked my boss, he told her, listen, do whatever it takes, I want flowers, I want flowers in my garden. Now, he didn't say, look, I have the money, I'm paying you, you get me flowers. I don't think he used that language, I was there when that conversation took place. And she responded in the most amazing, amazing way. She was this young Catholic woman who became very close friends, and she said to him, she said, listen, this is not a time for flowers. Your garden right now is the fall season. Your garden now is shedding all of its leaves. The energy of life, the life force, after being out there in the summer, producing flowers and fruit and more leaves, the energy, the life force is now receding back from the extremities, from the tiny little branches, back to the trunk, back to the roots, in order that in the spring season it will once again go out and produce new flowers, new fruit and grow. She said, you know, I can go out and buy flowers, but it means you're going to have a garden that's going to be out of sync with the cosmos, with what's really going on. I love that story, that was so beautiful. And he agreed, he accepted that. Yes, yes, yes, he did. She was more of an educator and a therapist than a gardener. And I think this is what this season is about. So I almost don't have to do too much, because everything around, it's still hot outside, but nevertheless, my wife and I, we try and go to the beach early in the morning, as often as we can, like really early in the morning, for an early morning swim and then off to work. And it's a huge difference. The sea is already colder, outside it gets a bit cooler, the sea is a bit rougher even, and the kids go back to school. There's a whole sense of return, of returning. So I just want to say that just being attuned to nature around us already does a lot of the work. Beyond that, I think more than anything else, the one thing I try to do, but that's not only in Elul, but that's throughout the year, but Elul even more so, is to think a little bit less. Just think a little bit less. It's like thinking creatures, we're thinking and thinking, and usually the thoughts are not that interesting, and the thoughts are not that fresh and new. We seem to rev up old thoughts and old patterns, and we rarely change. So one of the things I do try and do in the time of Elul, or whenever there's time for reflection, is to get as much as possible in the mode of non-thinking, not to think too much, and then something amazing happens. New thoughts make their way. And that's one of the secrets, I think, of Chuva, when we return back to the trunk, back to the roots, then new energy, new life force, new messages, new thoughts can make their way, and I love that process. I think that's brilliant, Alisha, and it's very revealing not to overthink, because we tend to treat Elul as a time when you think more deeply, when you really, really think. I have a story also. So when I was young, I was kind of small, I'm kind of a weakling, I really wanted to be an athlete, because in school, of course, all the boys were admired for their athletic ability, and I didn't have any. So I approached it really academically. I was going to be a tennis player. I got up early in the morning, went out to the court, practiced, did serves, read all the books. I had a library, Alisha, of tennis books. And you know what? I never was worth a darn as a tennis player, because I was overthinking it. You know, when you play a sport, you need to relax your body and just go with the flow. If you're trying to think all the time, is my backhand exactly right? I learned the lesson much too late, but it fits exactly with what you're saying. We can overthink, sometimes underthink, when we're younger. Maybe when we're older, a little bit overthinking. Let's just go with it, and observe, and be part of the world, and renew our energy, which is what the world is doing in the fall. Right. So in other words, it's about returning back to life. Thoughts are creative, and I'm not against thoughts. We're thinking creatures. God created the world through thinking, through thought, and we're creating God's image, so we think our lives into existence. But the problem with thoughts is that they're not fresh. There's nothing novel about them, and you're the expert in creativity. And most of us, we've discussed this in the past, most of us try to, Einstein said, we all try and solve the problems that our own thoughts have created in the first place, and it requires new thinking, fresh thinking. Exactly. And how do we do this process, this process of thinking? So another story, Alicia. Every two weeks, I go to Tel Aviv on the train. I go to meet a friend, former student, brilliant person, highly creative, and he told me a little story. He, too, takes the train sometimes. Now, when you travel on the train, Alicia, you can sit looking forward, or some sit to look back. Most people want to look where they're going. They sit looking forward. I always try to sit looking backward. Wow. I sit looking backward for two reasons. The first reason is I really like to look at the faces of people who are facing forward, and I tell myself little stories about them. Maybe that man is a surgeon or a great scholar or a brilliant rabbi or a famous athlete, just to pass the time, but I also look out the window, and my friend, the creative person, had the same experience. All the seats were taken looking forward, so he had to sit looking backward, and he realized that, Alicia, when you sit facing backward on the train, you see things much more clearly than when you sit looking forward. Really? Yeah, there's a reason for that. When you look backward, your eyes fasten on something outside the window, and then you watch it, and you follow it as it recedes, and so you have a period of time when you can actually look at what you're seeing outside the window. When you face forward, you look out the window, and you see something, and in an instant, because the train is going 80 miles an hour, what you're looking at passes into the distance, and so all you're looking at is a blur of things as you look out the window. Rosh Hashanah is like that. We look forward, and we look backward. We look backward and search our souls and validate ourselves. We'll talk about that in a moment. It's in your drashah. It's beautiful. We can see more clearly as we look backward and review the past, looking forward. It's a pure fog, and the best we can do is, as you suggest in your drashah, self-validation so that we have the strength and energy as we renew our energy to deal with whatever life throws at us. As a great philosopher once said, stuff happens. It happens to all of us. I guess it was John Lennon who said that life is what happens when you plan everything otherwise. We look forward, look backward, and we steel ourselves for life. We pray for life, and that we have the strength to overcome whatever life throws at us during the year. Yes, that's an interesting thought. I have to think about that one. Looking forward, looking backward. I'm going to try that. I don't ride the train that much, which is maybe unfortunate, but I might actually even take myself on the train just to experience the difference between looking forward and looking backward. I'm also among those who love sitting looking forward, and I'm usually very disappointed because all I have is a seat that takes me back. I'm going to really look at that. I think the question is, when we look backwards, when we look back, what is it? You've used it as a metaphor. When we look back at this past year, what is it that we choose to look at? What is it that we choose to see? Here, you hinted at the idea of validation. Here's really an important tip for all of us, certainly for myself. We very often look back and we're very critical of ourselves. We usually look back and we see mostly things that were not that great. We rarely look back and think about what was good this year, unless there's someone spiritual or cute around us who says, well, why don't we all share something good that happened this year? It's a good practice, but our natural tendency is to look back and say, I missed an opportunity there. I messed up there. Next year, I've got to get my act together. I really have to get it. Then we start making all these New Year resolutions, which I have a big problem with. I'm wondering if we can look backwards, just like we're sitting on a train, and using the metaphor you brought to its fullest. In other words, when we sit back, like driving backwards on the train and looking at things getting further and further away, we don't usually see, let's say, this beautiful tree, and as it goes past, we don't judge it. On the contrary, we really appreciate it and we look at it, ah, you know what? Actually, from a distance, it's even that much prettier and it makes even more sense. I think the real value of looking and reflecting back is actually for the purpose of validation, saying, okay, I know I beat myself up over this issue, but a few months have passed since then. Can I now look back and think, well, you know what? Number one, this was the best that I knew how to do at that particular moment. A moment later, I may have thought, ooh, this is not a good idea, but at that particular moment, I did the best that I possibly could. And furthermore, looking back at it, maybe it wasn't that bad. Maybe it also brought about some really interesting change and then it's really worth reflecting, looking backward. So let me quote Yodrasha and you make this beautifully clear and very, an important insight, quoting you, self-validation is the biggest gift of life we can give ourselves this holiday. To me, that's a creative, innovative angle on Tuva, which is often focusing on repentance and sin and what I did wrong, self-validation. It is the beginning, the Rosh, of the changes that are truly meant to happen. Validation is our ultimate task. It is a religious mitzvah. We have no other. It is not at all easy. It is much harder than all of the diets. That's for sure. Self-validation, that's an important thought for Rosh Hashanah. To validate our self, our self-efficacy, our self-worth. Without a strong self-worth, we can't do anything, truly. Right, right, yes. The more we un-validate ourselves, the more we put ourselves down, the less creative we get and the more stressed we get. That's of no use. There are a lot of people who say, self-validation, that's a form of being in denial. How will you improve? How will you correct your ways if you're busy just validating yourself? To those people, and I have a voice inside my head that says the same thing. It's not like I wasn't born as a self-validator. It took me many, many years to realize that invalidation is harmful and validation is a beautiful boost. I think the way it works is that when we, I really follow Rav Kok here, that our inherent nature is goodness. That's, I think, a deep Jewish idea that we're not evil in our inherent, like inherently. And so if we are inherently good, then don't worry. The goodness will shine and that which is good wants to come out. So when we invalidate ourselves, we actually block the goodness. When we validate ourselves, we allow that which is good inside of us to seek to be even better, to seek to come out and shine. So don't, don't think that you are putting yourself to sleep when you validate yourself, that you're blocking your own creativity by being too good to yourself. The exact opposite is true. Yes, and self-validation is not contradictory to humility. Self-worth actually strengthens humility because you realize your own worth and you realize the worth of others. And at least I think this is like an addendum to self-validation, validating others as well. We need to validate ourselves but also see the good in other people, not just in ourselves. Sometimes that's harder because it's so easy to be judgmental and not to see the good in other people. And I wonder, I really wonder, Shlomo, if there's a connection, if we know how to validate ourselves, my gut feeling is that we will also learn over time to validate others. And when we're very judgmental towards ourselves, we'll be very judgmental towards others and vice versa. If we're very judgmental towards others, it's a reflection of our own self-doubt and our own self-invalidation. So, yeah, there's a beautiful psalm, Mi Ya'ish Echafetz Chaim Who's the person who seeks life, who really wants to live? Refrain from Surmila, refrain from evil, ve'aseh tov, and do good. Leorotov, to see good. Right, exactly, to see good. That's right, that's right. So, yeah, being able to see good. Being able to see good, we need eyes that are able to see good. There's another aspect of Rosh Hashanah, which is beautiful. It's the birthday of the world, happy birthday world. Right, which happened yesterday. Yesterday was Chafey. Well, I'll just barge in one second. Sure. There are two Jewish ideas here, and there's an ongoing argument about that. One school of thought says that the world was created on Chafey Be'elul, which happens to be yesterday, where today we're Chafey Be'elul. Right. And that on Rosh Hashanah, the first human being was created. The other is that Rosh Hashanah is the creation of the world. Got it. So, we're celebrating creation, in any case, and Rabbi Sachs, our brilliant Rabbi Sachs, wrote this drashah 2004, almost 20 years ago, and speaks about creation. He says Rosh Hashanah is the festival of creation. If you want to understand the ethical implications of creation, don't study astrophysics, like the Big Bang. Think of the birth of a child. I'm a big fan of astrophysics. I'm an amateur. I'm interested in the Big Bang and quantum physics and black holes and so on, but he's right, and he explains this very clearly. I'll just read briefly this passage. If I were to choose one Jewish message for the world in these tense times, I would say forget power, pride, violence, revenge, wealth, prestige, honor, acclaim. Instead, ask one question. Will our next act make the world a little better for our children? That is the message of Rosh Hashanah, the day on which to understand the universe, we think about the birth of a child, which truly is an amazing event. I'm a little sad when I read this, because our planet is in such terrible shape. You and I just came in from outside. It's blazing hot. We're in the middle of September. At least, it's the fall, and it's a hum scene. It's hot, and it's going to continue to be hot for a few days. The world has the highest average temperature in history. We have 350 parts per million of carbon. At the start of the Industrial Revolution, we are now up to 415. We're going to 430 very soon, and that will be like wrapping the world in a warm blanket. This is what we've bequeathed to our children and to my grandchildren. It's upsetting. Yeah, yeah. So, here's where everything we talked about is now being questioned, in a way. So, at this point, there's a part of me that wants to say to you, wants to respond. Nevertheless, Shlomo, let's focus on the good. Let's really go with the good, because solutions are going to come from seeing goodness, from seeing good. That's where also good solutions are going to come from. Those who call out, you know, Gewalt, and I understand them, because it is a Gewalt. Not much good comes out of Gewalt. Only on really rare occasions, like real emergencies, Gewalt produces something. People press on the brakes really, really hard. But in terms of bringing about change, and positive change, Gewalt does not produce change. And I'm wondering, there's a part of me that really wants to complain about the heat outside, about the politics outside, about what's becoming of this world, and I just don't see the value in it. Now, others may say, what do you mean? Only if we drive home just how terrible the situation is, then maybe we'll wake up. Well, I'm not so sure. Looking back at history, I love history, I'm not so sure that people woke up when someone yelled Gewalt. I think people wake up when they connect to hope, when they connect to something which is really, really good. When we go to the beach, and we have a really good experience on the beach, we will do everything we can to protect that beach. When we go to the beach, and we see trash, or whatever, then we tend to give up. So, I would really suggest trying, and we can try it, and then maybe in our next podcast we can reflect how that worked for us. Really viewing the situation in the world right now, that which we're leaving to the next generation, viewing it from good eyes. What would that look like? Seeing a new baby born. What would that look like? But really being committed to it. Really being that every morning a new baby is born. And really being committed to that thinking, to that mode. Certainly we'll be left to spare. The question is, will we be more motivated to do even more good in the world? So, in your Drosha, you relate to this issue. We speak a lot about change. As a lecturer, I focused on innovation and the need for change. I want to mention a breakfast food, Alicia. It's relevant. So, in the morning, I always have a milky. For our listeners who may not be aware of this wonderful dish, all parents are aware, a milky is chocolate pudding with whipped cream on top. It's not the most healthy thing, but it's great for my soul. Absolutely terrific for my soul. And it's wonderful. But milky is constantly being changed. They're adding little candy bits and strawberry and their most beautiful innovation. Sometimes, rarely you can buy milky that is only the whipped cream. That's why we eat the milky, right? For the whipped cream. Forget the chocolate pudding. But what's my point? Our companies are constantly advertising new and improved and fighting for shelf space by creating 200 variations on the same darn cereal. Change is not inherently a good thing. And you make this point clearly. You say, we don't really have to change or improve. We can. We don't have to. If it is right to do so in the time, it is good, fine. But if not, we are more or less just fine as we are. This is an important message in Chuva. Not everything has to be thrown out. Some things we retain, we strengthen. And it's an important part of how we pray and what we pray in Rosh Hashanah is to celebrate, is to celebrate the good. I'm reminded of this brilliant Quaker prayer that you're familiar with. Give us the courage to change what needs to be changed. The serenity to accept what can't be changed or what shouldn't be changed. And the wisdom to tell the difference. Yeah. Yeah. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yeah. Yeah. The grace is this whole idea of change. What should change? What shouldn't change? I'm a firm believer that we don't decide what needs to change. We can call it God. We can call it the inner workings of the universe. We can call it nature. I just call it God because it's a generic word for the infinite. And I have full trust. Full trust. I'm working on having it even fuller. Full trust in that which needs to change. That which should change. That which its time is to change will come to the surface, guide us, and change will happen. And if we try and change things based on our own limited thinking, which is in any case, as we said at the very beginning, which is just a regurgitation of old thinking, then I don't know if the quality of that change is that great. But if we're attentive, just noticing what's the change within that seeks to happen, that wants to happen. It's a very different kind of listening. And I have a lot of faith in that kind of change. Elisha, there is one thing I would like to wish for, to change. This is obliquely related to the Jewish calendar. I mentioned that last week, how brilliant the Jewish calendar is. And I'd like to briefly explain why it's so brilliant and why it leads me to wish for a change. We have a solar year. That's the time it takes the earth to revolve once around the sun and get back to the same place. It's 365 and a quarter days. We have a lunar year. That's 12 times that the moon revolves around the earth, 12 months, and it's 354 days. The calendar is lunar. If you look up at the moon, you always know what day of the month it is in the Jewish calendar. But wait a second. If we didn't fix the lunar calendar, every year, Pesach would be 11 days earlier. Pretty soon, we'd be celebrating Pesach in the winter. That wouldn't work. Right. We would be Australian. We'd be Australian. Exactly. So the rabbis in Babylon, in Bethel, in our diaspora, the rabbis developed the calendar and added a leap year, seven times out of 19 years. That adds 11 days on average and makes the lunar year equal to the solar year and everything is fine. But how did they get this? So there were great astronomers in Babel, Babylon, and obviously the rabbis consulted with them and studied with them. They had to. Otherwise, they couldn't have done the calendar. The calendar is an amazing feat of astronomy. Wait a second. The rabbis then were willing to study Torah and astronomy and other things. We have Rabbi Heschel, who was a great learned person. Rabbi Sachs, who was incredibly knowledgeable about everything. Rabbi Soloveitchik, a PhD in philosophy. We are great rabbis who are willing to open the windows and the doors and the Jewish people have always cultivated ideas outside the pale of the Torah and the Mishnah and the Talmud. And we seem to be losing that, Elisha. I wish we could open the doors and the windows so that our learned rabbis would be willing to cultivate all the wonderful bodies of knowledge that are outside the Talmud. Yeah, yeah. And it's just a question of who do we choose to listen to. You quote Rabbi Sachs very often. We've been studying him here in our key lab. So here we have this amazing, amazing rabbi who is very well learned. And there are many out there who, just like Rabbi Sachs, are deeply steeped in Western culture and even Eastern cultures. It's just who we choose to listen to. And my feeling is that those whose vision is really narrow and closed, there's only so much that the cosmos, the world, and God will be willing to tolerate such narrow-mindedness. Narrow-mindedness at some point collapses and dies. So I'm kind of optimistic. Good. So, Elisha, let's wish our wonderful listeners a Happy New Year, Shana Tova, a year of health and achievement and service to other people and fulfillment and self-validation. Amen, amen. And make sure next time you get on the train to sit in a seat facing back. You'll see the world very differently. And you'll see a very validated view of our beautiful world. So Shana Tova, everyone. Shana Tova. Todah Shalom.