Adapted by Channie Koplowitz Stein
Two medrashim seem to offer conflicting perspectives on our observance of Rosh Hashanah. In the first medrash, the angels ask Hashem why Bnei Yisroel is not singing Your praises by reciting Hallel on these days. Hashem’s logical response is how can they sing when the King is sitting in judgment of life and death over them?
However, the contrasting medrash states that, contrary to members of other nations awaiting such judgment who sit in apparent mourning and fear, Bnei Yisroel wear white and celebrate with festive meals, for they are confident in a positive outcome from Hakodosh Boruch Hu.
A corollary question emerges, points out Rabbi Weissblum in Heorat Derech. Each day we accept the sovereignty of Heaven, Hashem’s Kingship, when we recite Shema and the various blessings throughout the day. How is our declaration of Hashem’s sovereignty on Rosh Hashanah different from that of the other days? What exactly do we mean that the theme of Rosh Hashanah is Malchuyot, Hashem’s sovereignty?
Rabbi Bernstein, citing Rabbi Wolbe zt”l, explains that the essence of Hashem’s Kingship on Rosh Hashanah is judgment. We validate this theme throughout our prayers during this season, substituting HaMelech Hamishpat for HaMelech Hakadosh in Shemoneh Esrai, for example. Rosh Hashanah demands that we put the proper perspective on the world and our proper relationship with Hashem, that Hashem is at the center and we revolve around Him. In other words, ‘Hamelech’ is the essence of the ‘mishpat’.
Malchuyot is about the revelation of Hashem in the world. It is our purpose to recognize Him and see His immanence even in every grain of sand. Not to recognize His presence is heresy, writes Rabbi Wolbe zt”l. For Hashem’s presence exists not just in the grand miracles, like the splitting of the Sea, or in great revelations, like at Sinai, but within each of us. As the gentile prophet Bilaam declared, “[Hashem] perceived no iniquity in Yaakov… and תרועת מלך בו/the friendship of the King is within him.” Hashem his God is not external to Bnei Yisroel, but within each of us [just as Hashem wanted us to build a sanctuary so He could dwell not in it but בתוכם, within them, CKS]. From our forefathers and the tzadikim of every generation, we must learn to recognize and call out in the Name of Hashem.
In that context, writes Rabbi Wolfson zt”l in Festivals of Faith, we must coronate Hashem as King over ourselves. While we declare Him our King twice daily by reciting Shema, the intensity of the Rosh Hashanah declaration needs to impact us the whole year.
The goal of Rosh Hashanah is to coronate Hashem as King over all, even over the evil. While the Torah reading of the second day of Rosh Hashanah focuses on the akeidah, the binding of Yitzchak, the Haftorah ends by mentioning the birth of twelve reshaim, twelve wicked men. The last one listed is מעכה, an acronym for מלוך על כל העולם, rule over the entire world, even over these evil men.
Hashem is already King, reminds us Rabbi Weissblum. However, we tend to forget that reality. Therefore, in the viduy/Confession, we ask to be forgiven “for the sin of throwing off Your yoke.” All year, we return to the energy of Rosh Hashanah, for every year, the world is symbolically destroyed and recreated. We are given a new lease on our new life [as we would sign a new lease on a new car. Rebbetzin Smiles]. Hashem breathes new life into us as He breathed life into the Adam, the first man. That is what blowing the shofar, forcing our breath of life through the shofar, represents. We are beginning life anew, with new direction.
Hashem initially thought to create the world with the attribute of din, strict justice. Knowing the world wouldn’t survive that way, He added the attribute of mercy. As the world is being recreated every Rosh Hashanah, Hashem again begins with the attribute of justice. In fact, one of the names of this festival is Yom Hadin, the Day of Judgment. But with the blowing of the shofar, we again introduce Hashem’s attribute of mercy.
The prayers and verses we recite are not meant to be merely lip service, but are meant to invigorate us with specific energy to withstand the influence of the yetzer horo. As Rabbi Meislish notes, each of the verses we recite in connection with Malchuyot is meant to imbue us with a perspective and strength that will help us tap into the sanctity within and render us more accepting of Hashem’s sovereignty. We are instilled with fear and awe, and that very fear of judgment gives us merit before the Judge.
While Hashem is judging the entire world as a whole, He is simultaneously judging each of us individually in every aspect of our lives. It is for this reason, writes Rabbi Eiseman zt”l, that I must introspect, to judge myself and judge how truly sincere and personal my service to Hashem is, and how invested I am in that service. Rabbi Eiseman cites Rabbi Abramsky zt”l in highlighting one part of the Yom Kippur Temple service. The kohain Gadol would change his clothes multiple times upon entering the kadosh kodoshim on Yom Kippur. For his last entry, he would change into white clothes to remove the dustpan and ashes from the incense pan. As Rabbi Eisenman notes, there is no room for emptiness where pure sanctity must enter. Just so, we must remove the “ashes” and imperfections within ourselves and make room for Hashem’s spirit.
On this day, our Machzor says, we pass before Hashem as sheep. Is this also the way we live our lives, asks Rabbi Wolbe? When the Judge asks us why we performed mitzvoth, will we answer because we were following everyone else, or were we trying to make a connection to Hashem through saying a blessing to praise Him, or to connect through the spirit and sanctity of Shabbat? If we were doing it mindlessly, like sheep following each other, how many of our brachot were empty, meaningless blessings, murmuring Hashem’s Name in vain? Every thought, every word, every action is recorded on the tape of our lives. Then Hashem “cuts and pastes” each posting in the appropriate book before Him. Rosh Hashanah is not just Hashem revealing Himself to the world, but revealing our selves. Our motivations as well as our actions are being judged.
Every time we perform a mitzvah, we create an angel, and the angel’s perfection mirrors the perfection of our mitzvah performance. As already noted, our Torah reading on the Second Day of Rosh Hashanah is the narrative of the binding of Yitzchak. While Hashem Himself commanded Avraham Avinu to bring his son and bind him as a sacrifice on the altar, it was an angel sent by Hashem to stop the actual slaughter of Yitzchak. Who was this special angel? Rabbi Druck tells us that this was the angel Avraham himself created by obeying Hashem’s command to take his beloved son Yitzchak and bind him as an offering to God. That is why the angle can say with certainty, “Now I know… that you have not withheld your son from me.” Because of his own perfection, the angel knew that Avraham had indeed obeyed Hashem’s command with perfection, both in thought and in action.
This explains why the angels themselves are terrified on this Day of Judgment, as we say in the Nesaneh Tokef in Mussaf. It is not just the quantity of our mitzvoth that are being judged and recorded, but the quality of the mitzvoth themselves. And this Hashem sees by examining the angels we have created, as we create a new angel each time we perform a mitzvah. Hashem is judging those angels as being fit to stand before Him. And because we, too, fear His judgment on Rosh Hashanah, we can join the angels in proclaiming aloud, “Kadosh, Kadosh, Kadosh, Holy, Holy, Holy is Hashem the Lord of hosts…” writes Rabbi Wachtfogel zt”l.
In Malchuyot, we stand before Hashem with humility as we feel His presence. In Zichronot, we must remember that He is in charge of our personal lives as well as in our national history. In shofrot, we must feel the trepidation Bnei Yisroel felt at Sinai as they heard the shofar blasts and stood from afar, writes Rav Aharon Kotler zt”l.
Every time we recite a brachah, especially on Rosh Hashanah, pay attention to the words, to “Hashem is our God, King of the world,” for we are to rejoice with the heavens and the earth and the seas that Hashem is the King Who is judging us, that it is Hashem our Father. Our shofar calls out in תרועה, in רעות, in friendship, writes Chochmat Hamnatzpun. As the Ohel Moshe writes, the Psalm we recite before the sounding of the shofar is all about joy, not about trepidation.
In Moda Labinah, Rabbi Rothberg cites the Maharal on Rashi to explain an ambiguous verse in Parshat Yitro. The verse states, אם/If [when] you build for Me an altar…” This terminology generally presents a choice, but here we know Hashem has commanded Bnei Yisroel to build an altar. The Maharal explains that while it is indeed a commandment to build the altar, Hashem wants us to desire to build the altar by choice, Hashem wants our minds and our hearts, and that desire to coronate Him as our King will temper any judgment against us.
So, these are dual themes that exist simultaneously for Rosh Hashanah. It is both a day of fear and judgment, and a day that expresses tremendous love between Hashem and Bnei Yisroel, a theme that generates tremendous joy. This is not the explosive joy of Simchat Torah, expressed externally in dancing, but the subdued, internal joy of connection and love.
Hashem is recreating the world. He checks the gifts He gave us for the previous year and examines how we used them. Based on that, He decides what to give us for the coming year. Further, adds Rabbi Friedlander zt”l in Rinas Chaim, we are judged by how we have maintained and built up the structure of the world that connects us to Hashem. Each of us adds bricks to the building through our mitzvoth and provides another link in the chain of generations. Hashem judges us for the future based on our past. How have we met that responsibility?
The dual nature of Rosh Hashanah is perfectly expressed in Psalm 2:11: “Serve Hashem with awe, [that you may] rejoice in trembling.” As Rabbi Reiss notes, there is no contraction between the trembling and the joy, for it is that awe that brings us closer to Hashem. Our Patriarch Yitzchak encapsulates this idea totally. Although there could be no greater awe and trembling than being bound on the altar awaiting his slaughter, yet his very name is defined as laughter and joy.
His father, too, held within him both these emotions, writes Rav Druck, explaining a medrash. Avraham felt joy in obeying Hashem’s command, yet, as a father, his eyes nevertheless filled with tears of compassion for his son, and Hashem answered the unuttered prayed conveyed by those tears.
From last Rosh Hashanah to this one, our people has experienced tremendous trauma and trembling, yet we have witnessed at least equally great miracles and salvations. In a country full of buildings, schools, shopping centers, the drones and missiles launched by our enemies fell mostly on open fields and empty building. This year we have incorporated within ourselves the dramatic dialectic of joy within our trembling.
Rabbi Friedlander zt”l notes how millennia ago the Prophet Zechariah predicted.”And the Eternal will appear over them, and His arrows will go forth like lightening, and Hashem Elokhim will sound the shofar… [and] will protect them.”
We have to live this dramatic dialectic, to coronate Hashem within ourselves this Rosh Hashanah and let it fuel us with energy for the entire year to come, and may it be a year filled with brachot, yeshuot, and shalom.
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