Spanning Time and Timelessness – Rosh Hashana 5787

When I sit in the window seat of an airplane or train just as it begins to pull away, my mind sometimes plays a trick on me. For a moment, it seems as though everything outside the window is moving while I remain perfectly still.

It is so convincing that I find myself wondering: Are we the ones in motion, or is everything moving around us?

As individuals, we are quite obviously in motion. We move through the world, hopefully shaping it in profound and Godly ways. We span time, age, grow, change, and physically move each and every day.

Rosh Hashanah, the great timestamp of the Jewish year, reminds us of this perpetual motion. It calls us to look back at where we have been, recognize how we have changed, and consider where we are going.

But perhaps this frame of thought takes on a different meaning when we consider ourselves not merely as individuals, but in the collective, as a people.

Consider for a moment the contrast; being fixed in place in a world that is constantly in motion and evolving.

The Jewish people have continued to hold fast to Torah, to mitzvot, and to the covenant that has bound us to God and to one another for thousands of years.

While the world has changed around us, our commitment to the Torah and our observing of its mitzvot has remained a constant.

On Rosh Hashana, a day where we commemorate the creation of man, we recall the original sin.

Perhaps what Adam and humanity ultimately lost in the Garden of Eden was not simply innocence, but a sense of timelessness.

As a result of eating from the tree of knowledge, mankind becomes aware of their own mortality.

That is the fundamental human condition; living in space and time.

Everything around us changes.

Generations come and go, civilizations rise and fall, and technology transforms the way we live.

But Judaism gives us something remarkable within all of that which does not move with the rest of the world: Torah.

We honor the same Torah, recite the same words, celebrate the same holidays, and perform the same mitzvot.

We are timebound, but we are bound to something timeless.

Yes, in many respects, we have changed and evolved enormously.

We have lived in different lands, spoken different languages, been immersed in different cultures, and we experience a world that looks nothing like the world of our ancestors.

Yet through all of that movement, we have remained anchored to something, the core of our essence, that does not move.

The world changes. We change. But our covenant endures.

And on Rosh Hashanah and the days of awe, we return to it.

Shana Tova and Shabbat Shalom