Rosh Hashanah: The Beginning of Change

There is something deeply unique about Rosh Hashanah. The synagogue is full, we are surrounded by familiar faces, and we hear the same melodies and the same words that generations before us have recited. And yet, there is a dimension to these days in which each of us inevitably finds ourselves alone. 

There are decisions that no one can make for us. There are questions that we can answer only in an intimate conversation with ourselves. And perhaps that is why Rosh Hashanah, even as it brings us together as a community, places us face-to-face with our own lives.

I remember a small story from my childhood. I must have been six or seven years old when, with complete innocence, I asked my parents to reveal my signature to me. I assumed that, just as we were born with a name, we must also have come into this world with a signature already given to us. My parents explained that it did not work that way: a signature was something personal, something each person develops for themselves, something no one else could know for them.

Over the years, I came to understand that their answer contained a much deeper truth. There are things we receive without choosing them: a name, a family, a history, a tradition, experiences and circumstances. But there comes a moment when we must decide what we will do with everything we have received. We must write our own signature.

Rosh Hashanah is one of those moments.

Rabbinic tradition teaches that during these days our destiny is written and sealed. But it also reminds us that there are actions capable of changing what may have seemed already determined: teshuvah, tzedakah, tefilah—in other words, the transformation of our behavior. We are not passive spectators in our own lives. We, too, have a hand in writing that story.

Perhaps, then, the most important question of Rosh Hashanah is not simply what will happen to us during the coming year, but what are we willing to change so that the coming year will be different?

The Torah readings of these days help us formulate that question. On Rosh Hashanah, we do not read the story of Creation, even though we symbolically celebrate the anniversary of the creation of the human being. On the first day, we read about the birth of Yitzchak. On the second, we read about the Akedah, the binding of Yitzchak.

Birth and trial. Beginning and transformation. Life received and responsibility for what we do with it.

The birth of Yitzchak reminds us that every beginning contains a possibility. Something that did not exist before comes into the world. Yet that same chapter forces us to look beyond our own story: Hagar and Ishmael also appear, as does Ishmael's cry, which God hears.

Perhaps this is not accidental.

Whenever we begin something new—a year, a new stage of life, a new way of living our identity—we must also ask ourselves who is being left outside of what we are building.

Our identity should not require the denial of someone else in order to affirm itself. We can know who we are without failing to recognize the humanity of those who are different from us. We can deeply love our tradition without turning it into a wall that prevents us from listening.

But the story also forces us to ask what we do with what we have received—with the commands, with what has been handed down to us. A living tradition is not one that simply repeats. To transmit does not mean to copy. An inheritance acquires true meaning when we are capable of receiving it, studying it, questioning it, and deciding what must be preserved and what must be transformed.

We do not choose everything we inherit. But we can choose what we will do with it.

And here we encounter an ancient Jewish image that I find especially powerful: the shofar.

The Mishnah teaches that a person who blows the shofar inside a pit fulfills the mitzvah only if they hear the true sound of the shofar. If they hear only its echo, they have not fulfilled the mitzvah.

We, too, can live surrounded by echoes.

We can repeat words spoken by others, preserve stories lived by others, and hold on to symbols whose meaning no longer transforms us. We can speak about our Jewish identity and, at the same time, allow Judaism to remain only in the realm of emotion or memory.

But an echo is not a voice.

Rosh Hashanah asks us whether we are truly hearing the shofar—or merely its echo.

Because Judaism was never meant to live only in the heart. It needs to find expression in our hands, our eyes, our feet, our mouths and our choices. In what we do with our time, with our relationships, with our families, with our communities, and with the way we treat others.

And perhaps this becomes even more important when we arrive at these days having lived through disappointments.

We all know that experience. There are things we hoped for that never happened. People from whom we expected something disappointed us. Projects we imagined unfolding one way ended up taking another course. Doors we thought were open closed instead. And sometimes, we may have disappointed others—or even disappointed ourselves.

Disappointments can leave us stuck. We can remain looking at what never was, at what we lost, or at what we imagined our lives would be.

But teshuvah offers us another possibility.

We cannot change what happened. We cannot rebuild exactly what we once imagined. We cannot even change those around us who, for one reason or another, did not live up to our expectations.

But we can put ourselves back together.

Putting ourselves back together does not mean denying our wounds or pretending that nothing happened. It means gathering up what remains after disappointment and asking ourselves what we can build from it.

Perhaps this is one of the deepest forms of Jewish hope: our lives do not have to have been perfect for us to build something meaningful from them.

The Talmud teaches that teshuvah has the power to transform our relationship with the past. Not because it erases what happened, but because it allows us to give it new meaning. What yesterday seemed like nothing but failure can become a lesson. What was pain can become sensitivity. What was a fall can teach us where we need to find our footing in order to rise again.

That is why Rosh Hashanah does not ask us to begin from scratch.

It asks us to begin again from where we are.

And that takes courage.

The courage to acknowledge what did not go well. To ask for forgiveness. To forgive ourselves. To walk away from what no longer serves us. To try again. To accept that some things will never be the way they were—and still believe that they can become something different.

That is why Rosh Hashanah can also become, for us, Rosh HaShinui: the beginning of change.

We do not know what the new year will bring. No one can know in advance all the joys, losses, challenges and opportunities we will encounter.

But we can decide how we want to walk through it.

We can choose to listen more and react less. We can choose to repair before walking away. We can choose to ask before judging. We can choose to transform what we have inherited into something meaningful for those who will come after us.

And we can ask ourselves what kind of world we are helping to create.

Because Creation did not end with the first chapter of Genesis. We continue creating every single day.

We create with our words and with our silences. With our choices. With what we teach and also with what we communicate without realizing it. We create when we give trust, when we open a door, when we extend a hand, and when we choose to rise again.

The world we inherit is a legacy.

But it is also a responsibility.

And the world we leave behind will, in some measure, bear our signature.

May this Rosh Hashanah allow us to truly hear the voice of the shofar, and not merely its echo. May we look honestly at our past without becoming prisoners of it. May we find the strength to overcome disappointment, gather our scattered pieces, and build again.

May we know what deserves to be preserved and have the courage to transform what needs to change.

May we begin again—not from zero, but from everything we have learned.

And may we write our signature in this new year with the knowledge that something fundamental remains in our hands: the ability to choose what we will do with the story we have been given.

Shanah Tovah U’Metukah.

May it be a year of peace, health, hope, prosperity, and good news. May there be peace for Israel and for all who live in that land. And may this new year find us with the strength to rise, the wisdom to learn, the generosity to stand beside one another, and the courage to build.

Rabbi Gustavo Geier