ROSH HASHANAH MESSAGE FROM RABBI FINE

Rosh Hashanah 5767

There is a widespread custom to visit the graves of loved ones during the days before Rosh Hashanah. Visiting the graves of loved ones evokes a mood of sombreness, thoughtfulness, seriousness. As we walk through the cemetery, we come into a relationship with the community of the dead, the generations of the past. We feel the mysterious pull of the dead on our lives. Their lives have been completed – yet their influence lingers on.

The custom of visiting graves goes back a long way in Jewish history. In the Talmud there is a debate between two sages concerning the reason for going to the cemetery at a time of crisis. Rabbi Levi Bar Hama offers the opinion that by standing among the graves we are symbolically telling G-d that we are ourselves considered as though we are dead before G-d. That is, our lives have so little significance; we are totally dependent upon G-d for our salvation.

Rabbi Chaninah suggests a different reason: “So that the dead should plead for mercy on our behalves.” We wish to make the dead aware that our lives are in peril. We assume that our troubles are somehow also their concern. There is an interrelationship of the generations.

This custom, then, has two different lessons for us. The first we must recognise our own smallness and insignificance. By visiting the cemetery, we are reminded to be humble. We, too, will join the ranks of the dead. Our lives are short, ephemeral.

The second lesson may be included in the term “Zechut Avot”, the merit of our ancestors. Praying at the graves of parents should never be understood as a prayer to the dead, but rather a prayer to G-d for the merit of these righteous people. We offer our prayers not on the basis of our own worthiness, but on the basis of the merit of our ancestors who lived faithfully in their commitment to G-d and Torah.

In visiting cemeteries, we feel a nearness to the departed, a sense of shared community. Yet, we also feel a great distance. The world of the dead and the world of the living are separated by a profound void. We walk away with a regained sense of community and, at the same time, a regained awareness of separateness. The dead are part of our lives and are not forgotten. They remind us of our own mortality, of the flow of life and death. Confronting our mortality serves as a prod to us; we have so much to do before we will be ready to face our death.

Tradition teaches us that in Solomon’s Temple there was a courtyard with gates on either side. People stood in the courtyard while mourners entered from one gate and brides and grooms entered from the other gate. They turned in one direction to console the mourners and in the other direction to rejoice with brides and grooms. Life and death go hand in hand, happiness and sadness are intertwined.

Rosh Hashanah is a season to remind ourselves of the fleeting nature of life, of the foolishness of trivial vanities, petty gossip, false pride and egotism. It is a time to remember our dead, to value the time we have left in our own lives, to build for the future.

The Jewish custom of visiting graves of loved ones before Rosh Hashanah provides us with the emotional framework for this holy day. May the insights we gain during this holy season inspire us to live with greater wisdom.

Rabbi Yisroel Fine.

Rosh Hashanah Message From The Chief Rabbi

On Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur we say: tefillah (prayer), teshuvah (penitence) and tzedakah (charity) avert the evil decree. No decree is final; no fate is inexorable. Our lives can become different, better. We can change.

We do so by changing our fundamental relationships. Prayer is our relationship with G-d. Penitence is our relationship with ourself. Charity is our relationship with others. If these change, we will find – not immediately, but ultimately – that our lives take on a sense of meaning and purpose they did not have before.
Teshuvah (penitence, or more literally “return”) is something we recognise. Ours is a generation of baalei teshuvah, people who have found their way to tradition. Many today seek more Jewish content in their lives, not less. For the first time in centuries, children are often more religious than their parents.

Tzedakah, too, we understand. The Jewish community Is generous to charitable causes out of all proportion to its numbers. Because of this, we support a greater range of services – schools, youth groups, welfare institutions, educational and cultural institutions – than at any previous time in the 350 years of British Jewry. We have enriched Jewish life and it has enriched us.

For many, though, tefillah, prayer, remains a problem. Often people tell me that they find synagogue services too long, too boring, too unintelligible. Later in the coming year I will be presenting our community with the gift of a new siddur with a new translation and commentary. I will be asking all our communities to undertake activities designed to deepen our understanding of Jewish prayer. We all need ways to find G-d, and prayer helps us focus on living in His presence.

Prayer, tefillah, davenning, can be a transformative experience. It has helped me through difficult times.

Natan Scharansky has told the moving story of how the Book of Psalms given to him by his wife Avital helped him to survive his years of imprisonment by the KGB. I have heard from Holocaust survivors how prayer gave them strength in the time of darkness. And there is by now a large body of medical research showing the positive effects regular attendance at a house of worship has on health and even longevity.

The eleventh century poet Judah Halevi said that prayer is to the soul what food is to the body. Starve the body of food and it grows weak. Starve the soul of prayer and it withers. Prayer is our “Bluetooth” connection to the Divine creative energy at the heart of being. To pray is to discover that we are here for a reason. Our existence is not an accident. The universe is not deaf to our hopes and fears. When we speak from the depths of our soul, what we say is heard and heeded. “G-d is close to all who call on Him, to all who call on Him in truth.”

In these difficult, uncertain, stressful times we need the strength that comes from prayer. It sustained our ancestors through some of the hardest challenges ever faced by a people – and it will sustain us. In the year to come, may G-d give us the courage and confidence to pray from the heart, the wisdom and understanding to pray with the mind, and may He hear our prayers, writing us, our families, and our people in the Book of Life. Shanah Tovah.

Chief Rabbi Sir Jonathan Sacks
Rosh Hashanah 5767