Be the change you hope to see

Rabbi Howard S. Herman DD

As Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur come into focus, we find ourselves faced with immense and seemingly insurmountable challenges to which our attention gravitates. As Jews, we are generally counseled to use this period of time in a reflective manner and we tend to concentrate our energies on how to make things better, or at least what we need to do in order to bring about some kind of change, be it in ourselves or in our environment. We are urged in popular psychology to “be the change you wish to see.” In other words, take the lead and institute the change in yourself first and then allow your example to spread to others.

You might think to yourself, “that is really a slow way of achieving an effect but perhaps the changes that come about slowly and deliberately are the ones that last the longest.” As much as we hope we might convince others to change, our powers only extend over ourselves. Our influence and our example, on the other hand, do allow the possibility to spread to other like souls who might also be searching to change something about themselves in this new Jewish year.

No one else sees life or the world exactly the way you do, so you need to make change happen on the basis of what you see.

How do we motivate change? To begin with, one must personally feel the need or desire for change to occur. One way we accomplish this is by strengthening our capacity for vision and imagination. In other words, we need to envision or imagine what it is we wish to become. What do we want to build and how are we going to execute it? The upheavals we experience give us a glimpse of what we hope something better might look like. What does a better me or a better world look like and how shall I make that happen? These are questions that only you can answer for yourself as life continues to unfold in front of your eyes. No one else sees life or the world exactly the way you do, so you need to make change happen on the basis of what you see.

If you can ally others to your vision, then you might have the chance to bring about these changes as a team. You can attract others by paying attention to their voices crying out for some kind of change. At this time of year, the shofar is blown many times in an attempt to get us to stop and pay attention. We need to listen and hear others who are crying out for the same things that we might be needing.

Maimonides, in his Laws of Repentance, says that as God judges the world annually before Yom Kippur, God finds it perfectly balanced between its sins and good deeds. God’s judgement is withheld until your mitzvot are put on the scale. If your good deeds and bad actions are equal, you just need one more good deed to tip your scale to the greater positive and, in turn, the world’s. It doesn’t have to be a big one. It just needs to be big enough to tilt the scale in one direction. What Maimonides is saying here is that every person and every person’s little action makes a difference to the whole world.

All the traditions for the High Holidays underscore the theme of “beginning.” So, this is a time for significant initiatives. It is an opportunity to recreate ourselves in some significant way that might bring us closer to God. The overarching theme of these days is “change.” No one expects 100% change but, hopefully, we can bring about some kind of change where the motif behind it is accountability. We are responsible for our actions; we don’t live in a vacuum. What we do or say has an impact and a resonance in the world.

We are not eternally condemned to follow a certain habitual path; we do have the ability and wherewithal to, if we choose, change our ways. In the Talmud (Nedarim), we are told “teshuva” change, also translated as repentance, was created before the world was created. It means that the idea of a person changing themselves and changing their course is an integral part of Creation — the world could not exist without it.

Shanah Tovah U’metukah.

Rabbi Howard S. Herman DD serves at Naples Jewish Congregation.