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The Voice of Torah: Rosh Hashana |
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Written by Rabbi Chaim Goldberger
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 The first day of the New Year is called ROSH Hashanah – Head of the Year. This seems strange. There are other ways to indicate that a new cycle is beginning than by calling it the “head”. Why not
call it TECHILAT Hashanah – Beginning of the Year, or REISHIT Hashanah – First of the Year? Why invoke the symbol of the head?
What the term is clearly saying is that if Rosh Hashanah is the head of the year, the rest of the year is to be seen as its body.
What is the significance of this designation?
The relationship of head to body is one of control. Everything that happens in the body is determined by the head. The brain sends an impulse, and the action response takes place somewhere out in the body.
What the Torah is telling us is that our entire year is controlled by what happens on Rosh Hashanah. Life and death in the coming year is determined on Rosh Hashanah. Our income for the year is determined on Rosh Hashanah. And, just as if one would suffer brain damage the effect would be felt somewhere in the body, so too if a flaw occurs in one’s Rosh Hashanah, the effect will be felt at some point in the year.
These are reasons to take extra care to aim for a flawless Rosh Hashanah – arriving on time to shul, focusing on our prayers, acting toward others with deference and kindness, conducting our meals with dignity, and undertaking meaningful commitments toward genuine teshuva.
This idea of Rosh Hashana as “head” will also help explain the surprising use of symbols at the holiday meal. We eat honey to have a sweet year. We eat fish so we can proliferate in the year ahead. We eat dates because the Hebrew word for “date” is homophonically related to the word for “destroy [our enemies]”. (One well-known rabbi eats a piece of lettuce, half a raisin, and celery, reciting, “May it be God’s will to let-us have-a-raise-in salary.”) Is Rosh Hashanah a time for playing games?
These aren’t games. The broad, sweeping motion that might take place in our limbs looked nothing like that in our brain as it was being formulated and dictated. It was just an electrical impulse along a synapse – a symbol, as it were, of the action to result. We, too, prod our “head of the year” with symbols designed to stimulate desired outcomes in its “body”. Barring spiritual sickness, the body that is our year should respond to its head.
Lettuce all take full advantage of this incredible two-day journey into the wizardry that animates our annum – and emerge with our systems all keyed up and ready for a year of sweetness, accomplishment, and life.
Shana Tova u’metuka,
Rabbi Chaim Goldberger
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