The Talmud, in tractate Rosh Hashanah teaches: “Rabbi Yeshohua ben Levi said ‘All the words of Creation were created at their full height; they were created with their full knowledge and they were created according to their final form.”
I’ve struggled with what these words mean, because it’s possible to read in them the notion that we don’t need to do any work on ourselves. We can read in these words a type of achieved perfection; I am already exactly who I was created to be!
Well, yes and no. What I take from these rabbinic words is the important understanding that who we want to be, who we would like to grow into, is already inside of us. Our final form is not already done in the sense that we are a completed project, but in that every type of growth we’d like to achieve is encoded in our essence. That has always been a part of us.
This is one of the messages that feels so important to internalize going into Rosh Hashanah. So many of us enter the holidays with ideas about what we’d like the next year to bring, but we think it’s out of reach. We want to take on a new skill or we want to work on a character trait, yet we fear that it’s just not possible for us. We’re too old (too stubborn?), it’s too late. But this rabbinic teaching is meant to instill in us a sense of confidence, a sense of understanding that our essence, our core, already holds everything we need it to hold.
That is the essence of teshuvah - not simply repentance, but returning. In this season, we return, we uncover, we unpack, we dig deep inside of us, because likely, what we are searching for, is already inside. I pray that whatever you need out of your Rosh Hashanah experience you receive; I pray that you find clarity and understanding, I pray that you feel the deepest sense of compassion and love.
And most of all, I pray that you and your loved ones have a happy and healthy new year.
Rabbi Sarit
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