Rosh Hashanah and the 3am Knock on the Door
I, and I’m sure many others, as well, get very excited as Rosh Hashanah approaches, eager to seize the opportunity to pray for a good year. I look forward to praying for the health and wellbeing of my parents. I look forward to praying for my wife and for my children, that my family should be blessed with happiness, health and prosperity. As a Rabbi, I look forward to the opportunity to pray for all the people in the community who struggle, either with health issues, with financial problems, with troubled marriages, with difficult children, or other personal hardships. I look forward to the opportunity to pray for my many present and past students, that they should grow, mature and follow the path of Torah. As the onset of the new year approaches, I eagerly welcome the privilege of being able to stand before Hashem and ask that I, my family and my community should be blessed with a wonderful year.
But then, when Rosh Hashanah arrives and I open my mahzor, I realize that this is not what we pray for.
If we look carefully at the words of the Rosh Hashanah prayers, we see very, very few requests for livelihood, for health and for shidduchim for our children. The bulk of the prayer service deals with lofty concepts of divine kingship, the notion that G-d is King over the universe, that all people are His subjects, and that the Jewish People are His chosen nation. We come to the synagogue eager to pray for a great year, and eager to resolve to improve ourselves during the coming year, but this is not what we do. Instead, we speak repeatedly about how Hashem is the King. Why?
It’s Not About Us
I have a very good friend whom I’ve known for a long time, and with whom I speak and text quite often. This man has dealt with numerous difficult challenges throughout his life, including financial hardships and a child with a serious illness, and I frequently find that he has more faith in Hashem than I do.
Once, out of the blue, he sent me the following text: “Joey, if your best friend knocked on your door at 3am when you’re sound asleep to ask for a favor, what you would do?”
I wrote back that I didn’t know, and I didn’t understand his point.
He then replied, “If my best friend knocked on the door at 3am to ask for a favor, I’d be psyched to do it. I’d be thrilled to be able to show him how much I love him and how much our friendship means. Well, G-d is knocking on my door at 3am. When there is a problem in my life, it is G-d knocking in the middle of the night, giving me an opportunity to show Him how much I love Him. So it doesn’t matter how badly the business is going, or how many days I need to spend with my kid in the hospital – I am happy to show G-d how much I love Him.”
This is the primary theme of Rosh Hashanah. On the first day of the year, on the day that the first human being was created, we stand before G-d and we acknowledge that life is not about us, but about something far greater. We specifically do not rush to Him to ask for everything we need and want. Instead, we put all that aside and focus on Him, on the fact that He is King, that we are His subjects, who have been placed on this world to serve Him. When we come to the synagogue to pray on Rosh Hashanah, we are not coming to pray for our livelihood and for our children’s success. To the contrary, we come to proclaim that whether our job or business is going well or isn’t going well, and whether our children are succeeding in school or not, we are unconditionally devoted to G-d. We come to proclaim that when He comes knocking at 3am, when He wants a “favor” from us even under difficult, inconvenient circumstances, we are there for Him unconditionally and unhesitatingly.
Of course, this is very difficult to do. We are naturally programmed to be selfish and self-absorbed, to focus on our own personal issues, to worry about our bank account, our portfolio, our children, our leak in the roof, and all the other problems that we deal with over the course of daily life. And justifiably, this is our primary point of focus throughout the year. But on Rosh Hashanah, when we celebrate our creation, we need to stop and reflect, and realize that we are created for something much larger than ourselves. We focus on the fact that it’s not about us, but about Him.
תשובה, תפילה, צדקה
The Gemara, in a famous passage in Masechet Rosh Hashanah, teaches that we have three ways to avoid a harsh judgment on Rosh Hashanah: תשובה – repentance, תפילה – prayer, and צדקה – charity.
When considering the three items on this list, we readily understand why the first two help us as we stand in judgment. It is clear that since the judgment is based upon our deeds, we help secure a favorable judgment through repentance, by regretting our wrongdoing and committing ourselves to try to improve. And, of course, we pray to Hashem, pleading with Him to forgive, to have compassion, and to grant us a favorable judgment even if we are unworthy. The third item on this list, however, seems puzzling. It goes without saying that charity is an important and precious mitzvah. But why does this mitzvah in particular, more so than all others, help us earn a favorable judgment on the Days of Awe?
Part of the answer is the famous verse in Mishleh, וצדקה תציל ממות – “and charity saves from death.” Giving charity has the special ability to help a person avert a decree of death. Indeed, the Gemara in Masechet Shabbat tells two stories of people who were supposed to die, but were saved in the merit of their charity. The more famous of these two stories is that of Rabbi Akiva’s daughter. Astrologers warned Rabbi Akiva that his daughter would die on her wedding day, but she survived. It turned out that after her wedding, she removed the pin from her hair and thrust it into a crevice the wall of her home, unknowingly killing a poisonous snake that hid in the crevice and which would have otherwise bitten her. Rabbi Akiva later discovered that a pauper had come to his daughter’s door on the day of the wedding, and she gave the man the food that had been prepared for her for the wedding. In this merit, her life was saved.
The question, however, remains, why does charity save one from death? Why does this mitzvah in particular have such special power?
The answer is that when a person gives charity, he shows that he recognizes that there is more than his little world. When a person invests time and hard work to earn a living, and he shares his resources with other people, he demonstrates that his mind is not focused solely on his own circle, on his own family and his own needs and interests. When we support other people or important causes, we make a very powerful announcement, saying that we are part of something grander and greater, that we live as part of a nation, as part of a large group, and not just for ourselves.
Rosh Hashanah is the time when we focus on this theme. It is certainly permissible to make personal requests on Rosh Hashanah, and indeed, our Sages incorporated a small number of such requests into the prayer service. But this is not the primary theme of Rosh Hashanah. The primary theme of this day is selflessness, broadening our awareness, recognizing that we are part of something bigger, that our lives are not just about ourselves, our own interests, and our families, but about being part of the Jewish Nation and serving Hashem.
The Ripple Effect
Several years ago, on a regular morning in December, 2012, a customer of a drive-through Tim Hortons coffee shop in Winnipeg decided when paying for her order to also pay for the stranger in the car behind her. When the customer behind her came to the window, and discovered that his order had been paid for, he decided to pay for the customer behind him. The next customer did the same. For three hours, 226 customers paid for somebody else’s order, for the stranger in the car behind them.
This story is a beautiful expression of the “ripple effect” of kindness and generosity, how a charitable, giving mindset can be contagious and trigger selflessness and giving in others. The powerful impact of generosity is made not only through the assistance given to the recipient, but also through the feeling of community and togetherness that it engenders. It is doubtful whether any of those customers at the drive-through coffee shop benefitted in any substantive way from having somebody else pick up their $5 tab. But what makes this story so beautiful is the fact that people came together. We can only imagine the great feeling these customers must have had knowing that they were part of a chain of kindness, a large group of people who wanted to connect with one another. This is what makes the gift of charity so precious, beyond the actual assistance provided to a person in need.
I am asked countless times every year whether it is proper on Rosh Hashanah to make personal requests for livelihood, health, shidduchim, and so on. And my answer is that this is certainly appropriate, but only as long as we understand that this is not what the day is about. Rosh Hashanah is about seeing ourselves as part of G-d’s large world, and thinking about how we can do more for that world, how we can extend beyond ourselves to contribute, to help out, and to make an impact.
Our tradition teaches that on the day Adam was created, he committed the sin of the forbidden tree, and on that same day, G-d decided to allow him to continue living. Rosh Hashanah, then, is not only the anniversary of man’s creation, but also the anniversary of the first “reset button,” the first time G-d gave man a second chance after he made a grave mistake. This is our opportunity on Rosh Hashanah – to “reset” our minds, to redirect our focus from our own little worlds towards the bigger picture. It is the time to start again, recognizing that life is not just about us, but about our nation and our world, and to make sure that even if the knock comes at 3am, when G-d gives us a job at the worst time and under the most difficult conditions, we will answer the call and get the job done to the best of our ability.