ROSH HASHANA: A TIME OF REFLECTION

BY CHANA YAGOD, DAUGHTER OF RABBI YITZCHOK AND REBBETZIN FRIMET SHAYNA YAGOD, CONGREGATION TIFERES ISRAEL, MONCTON, NB

Rosh Hashana is a time of reflection on the year past and reorienting ourselves to focus on improving ourselves for a better year ahead. At first glance, it looks like only our routine is different, and vibrantly so.

Rosh Hashana is when we go to shul for half the day, we say the longest Shemoneh Esrei of the year, go home for a Yom Tov meal featuring apples dipped in honey, apple or honey themed desserts, and a main course of fish with the head kept on as a symbol for a good year. In shul we use the high holiday Machzor with a service different from all year, listen to the Yomim Noraim Chazzan lead the davening with familiar tunes special for that time of year, and say various prayers responsively—Shir Hamaalos after Yishtabach, Hayom Tamtzeinu and Melech Elyon.

It's an auspicious, serious day, and at the same time a happy one. It says about the day that our focus should be “Gilu BiRe’adah”, with means a happiness that’s interwoven with a sense of deep awe and reverence. This goes hand in hand with introspection and a reflectiveness on the previous and upcoming years, as is customary at this turning point in the calendar.

The past 1.5 years of dealing with the worsts of COVID and as well thank G-d the global steady recovery from the pandemic as countries the world over got progressively immunized and immune and at last people have not been getting sick with quite a quick pace and have been recovering. As a result, we have discovered what it means to have a great happiness that is simultaneously gravely serious; we are grateful for the decline of the pandemic and the improving state of the world, the resultant reprieve from constant death and illness now at a vastly reduced percentage; yet aware of how much toll and suffering took place before this decline, and unable to forget.

We take the memories of the suffering and the gratitude of happier times, with us into Rosh Hashana as we pray to G-d for a much, much better year than the last, to keep us in mind for the Book of Life not the Book of Death, the Book of Health and not the Book of Sickness, and the Book of Salvation not the Book of Suffering and Plague. And B’Ezrat HaShem may it be a wonderful, sweet new year dramatically better than the last full of all the blessings we pray for this Yom Tov Rosh Hashana.

Gemar Chasimah Tovah!