From Mourning to Joy

This story originally appeared on Beliefnet for Rosh Hashanah 2002.

Rosh Hashanah often seems like the Jewish communal season of deja vu. The holiday, celebrating the beginning of the new year, is about cycles--the cycles of time, the calendar, and the endless cyclical passing of the seasons. Every year, we spend this same set of holidays at the same synagogue, seeing the same people again (although they look a little older than last year), reciting the same prayers, and eating the same traditional foods.

And every year, we go through a period of reflection, called in Hebrew, heshbon nefesh, which literally means "taking stock of our souls." It is the time when we ask: Where are we? What are we doing here, and how did we get here? And perhaps even more important, is where we are right now where we want to be or need to be?

Yet this annual period of reflection reminds us how different each year really is. This past year exemplified new challenges and new needs for reflection. The entire country, if not the world, will experience the need for heshbon nefesh this year. The terrorist attacks of September 11th last year, just before the High Holy Days, threw us into an uproar, as the destiny of our nation departed from the expected script. All of us, to one degree or another, were plunged into shock, pain, and profound sadness and mourning.

Our nation has survived the year with a sense of dignity, confidence, and resolve. We discovered we actually are an American people. We all share the same national destiny--and tragedy. Rosh Hashanah allows us to reflect on all that we have managed to endure, and to transform this time of mourning and despair into hope and confidence in the future. As the Psalmist sang, "I will praise you, Adonai, for you raised me up and did not permit my foes to rejoice over my downfall...In my ease, I thought to myself, 'nothing can shake my security!'" (Psalm 30)

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