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Happy New Book

One thing that’s often bothered me about Rosh Hashanah is that so much of it is focused on the self. The way I see it, we’re already pretty obsessed with ourselves — do we really need more of that?
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September 16, 2009

One thing that’s often bothered me about Rosh Hashanah is that so much of it is focused on the self. The way I see it, we’re already pretty obsessed with ourselves — do we really need more of that?

As it says on Aish.com, this time of year is “an important period of introspection, of clarifying life’s goals, and of coming closer to God.” It’s a time when “many people perform a daily cheshbon — a spiritual accounting — where we step back and look at ourselves critically and honestly, with the intention of improving.”

It’s also a time to worry about whether we’ll live to see another year: “On Rosh Hashanah, the Books of Life and Death are open on the heavenly desk. On this ‘Day of Judgment,’ we each stand before God and offer our best case for being ‘created anew’ — i.e. granted another year of life.”

It’s no wonder, then, that our greetings are so personal — “Have a sweet New Year” and “May you be inscribed in the Book of Life.”

Many rabbis, of course, push us to go beyond the self. I saw a good example of this last Saturday night during Selichot services at Valley Beth Shalom, where Rabbis Ed Feinstein and Harold Schulweis had a lively pre-holiday conversation on “The Power of Listening.”

Feinstein took us through some of the texts of the High Holy Days to elicit the tension between the self and the other. He later explained that “if our prayers are successful, they will turn us from the self to the other” — especially the helpless other, whose voice God always hears.

In fact, one of the better-known organizations that reaches out to the helpless other — Jewish World Watch — was launched in a sermon given by Rabbi Schulweis precisely on a Rosh Hashanah. And here in Pico-Robertson, I’ve heard many High Holy Day sermons that have connected spiritual introspection with social and communal responsibility.

And yet, even when the messages have been focused on the other, I’ve often felt there was something missing. 

This missing element came into focus the other day when my friend Rabbi Daniel Bouskila came by to put up mezuzahs in my new home and brought me a Rosh Hashanah gift.

His gift wasn’t a honey cake, though. It was a book.

The book is “Days of Awe,” by Nobel prizewinner S.Y. Agnon. As explained in the introduction, “From more than one thousand books, Agnon has assembled homilies, comments, laws, reflections, letters, recollections, conversations, critical observations, word-of-mouth reports — whatever refracted something of the authentic light of the Yamim Noraim (Days of Awe).

The introduction says it took Agnon “two and a half years of 16 hours per day to compose this book … an assembly of all the voices of Israel, the demanding and the soft spoken, the very early and the ones off the beaten track along with the later and those on the main route of this extraordinary tradition, that loves the world and therefore rebukes it.”

As I sampled the remarkable diversity contained in the book, I started thinking about the man behind all this. A thousand books? What kind of super-human curiosity is this?

So I wondered: Is it possible that in all the noise at this time of year about becoming better Jews, getting closer to God and helping the other, we have forgotten one important attribute — becoming more curious? 

To prepare his book on the High Holy Days, Agnon opened himself up to the teachings of a thousand books and thinkers, many of whom I’m sure were not part of his yeshiva curriculum.

How many of us can honestly say that we seek out books outside of our usual curriculum? How many Modern Orthodox rabbis, for example, who are passionate about their “Rav” — Josef Soloveitchik — will seek out the deep and lyrical books of Abraham Joshua Heschel?

How many Chabad rabbis who are obsessed with their Rebbe will seek out the wise teachings and unique stories of another Rebbe, Rabbi Nachman of Breslov? How many Ashkenazim will study great Sephardic thinkers, and vice versa?

In short, how many of us will seek out the stories and teachings of Jews who are not like us?

The truth is, it’s easier to give than to receive, because we give what is familiar to us. We stay in control. Who wants to risk the instability that can come from receiving the unfamiliar?

But if this is a time of year when we’re encouraged to think big and dream about changing ourselves and the world, well, one way we can start is by giving others a chance to give to us and enrich us.

We can give to a homeless person by hearing his story. We can give to our spouse by seeking his or her advice. We can give to our grandparents by embracing their wisdom.

And in the Jewish community, we can give to one another by hearing each other’s voices, and, yes, even seek to be inscribed in each other’s book of life.

David Suissa, an advertising executive, is founder of OLAM magazine, Meals4Israel.com and Ads4Israel.com. He can be reached at dsuissa@olam.org.

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