 So, all of us probably understand and realize that there is a world of difference between our New Year's and January 1st New Year's in this society that we're living in. I heard a rabbi once mention that he was speaking with a non-Jewish neighbor of his and mentioning that the Jewish New Year is coming up very soon. And he mentioned to this fellow that, you know, we Jews, we have two days of our New Year. And the fellow looked at him and said, you have two days of New Year's? He was trying to imagine January 1st and doing that for two days. You know, how much can you drink and how much can you party? And he felt, how did Jews survive two days of their New Year's? So the truth is that if you just try to conjure up in your imagination, what is the stereotypical scene from January 1st, right? So you probably would imagine people wearing little party hats and little horn. Well, I guess they have their horns too. But, you know, and streamers and office parties and lots of drinking and lots of partying. And that seems to be pretty much the ethos of January 1st. I know certainly in North America that's the case. I'm not sure what happens in other parts of the world. But I think that at least for us in this part of the planet, January 1st, the secular New Year, is essentially a day of partying. Now when we look at our New Year's, Rosh Hashanah, it's radically different. I mean, essentially the way we as Jews spend our New Year's is in a synagogue praying and meditating almost the entire time for two days. Of course, we have our meals, but the meals also are not parties, right? The meals are Yom Tov holiday meals with prayers and with talking about the Torah and focusing on the themes of the holiday. But on some level, Rosh Hashanah is a fairly serious experience. The truth is that the mood of Rosh Hashanah, the mood of the Jewish New Year, is complicated. Like a lot of things in life. It's complicated. You know, if you try to imagine what is the mood of a wedding? When someone gets married, what is the mood of the wedding day? So, you can't really say that the mood of a person's wedding day is party, celebrate, let's have a, you know, there is that aspect to it. On the other hand, a wedding day is a pretty serious, heavy day, right? It's in some ways, it's the first day of the rest of your life. And it's a little bit scary because you're embarking on a tremendously challenging and exciting and new and different and potentially scary kind of an endeavor. So there's a side to a wedding that is serious, that's heavy. And yet, on the other hand, there's a side to a wedding day that is incredibly joyous and celebratory. And so the same really is true of the Jewish New Year, Rosh Hashanah. It's not really appropriate to say it's entirely doom and gloom. It's a heavy day, it's a serious day. We even speak about Rosh Hashanah as Yom HaDin, the day of judgment. So if it was really a day of judgment, why would we be celebrating by having celebratory meals? We certainly don't fast on our day of judgment, right? Many people, if they have to go to a really, really scary court date, they may not be able to eat in the morning. They're probably freaking out. And yet we are supposed to celebrate Rosh Hashanah. It's a Yom Tov, it's a holiday that has a celebratory nature to it. So there is this sort of dual experience of Rosh Hashanah. But I wanted to really reflect on the contrast between January 1st and Rosh Hashanah, the Jewish New Year. Why are they so different? Why are they experienced in such different ways? And I think the reason is that if you get down to the nitty-gritty of what is a new year? What is a new year celebration? What is a new year mark? So essentially what a new year is marking is the passage of time. A year has passed and now we're about to embark on a new year. In many ways it's like a birthday, right? On a birthday, I've reached another milestone in my life. I'm now 38 or I'm 67 or whatever the age is. And what's happening when you go through these kinds of milestones like a birthday or a new year, on some level what you're coming to experience is the fact that you've now turned a page on another year of life. And as you get older, because young people certainly don't get this, but as you get older, what happens when you experience the passage of time is you're confronting your mortality. Now someone in their 20s, they can't relate to this because and that's healthy, right? It's healthy to be able to start out your life feeling, you know, I have the world as my oyster and there's no boundaries and there's no limits and I can do anything. That's good because I think the Torah wants us to feel ambitious about our lives. But at a certain point in life, reality hits and you come to realize we're not here forever. Our lives are actually very short. And so the new year experience at its most basic level marks the passage of another year from our life and what happens is we begin to confront our mortality. And I think that January 1st and Rosh Hashanah are two very different ways of confronting the passage of time and our own very limited time in this world. And they're expressed by two very different philosophies in life. January 1st was I believe best expressed the philosophy of January 1st by the Greek philosopher Epicurus who said, eat, drink and be merry for tomorrow you shall die. That's a philosophy. It's saying if tomorrow you might die, meaning if today might be your last day on the planet, so how do you spend your last day here? So Epicurus says, live it up, party, have a great time. So I think that the philosophy of January 1st of party and party hard and have a great blast and live it up and go for the gusto, that January 1st philosophy I believe comes from the Epicurian approach to facing our mortality. That if we're not going to be here forever, enjoy yourself while you're here. Where does Rosh Hashanah come from? Where does the philosophy of Rosh Hashanah expressed? So I believe it was expressed best by Rabbi Eliezer in Perke Avos Ethics of the Fathers Chapter 2, Mission F-15, where he says, shuv yom echad lifnei moshcha, return or repent or get your life in order, shuv is a hard word to translate into English, but basically get your life in order. Get yourself together, repent if you want to use an English word, return to who you really can be, but do that one day before you die. So that's again his expression of confronting immortality. If you're going to die tomorrow, what should you do today? Get your house in order. And Rabbi Eliezer's students asked him obviously the obvious question, but teacher, you don't know when you're going to die and he said, good question, grasshoppers. And that's why you should be doing this every day. Every day a person should really be focused seriously on thinking about their life and the quality of their life and how they're doing and how they can improve and what they did wrong. And the truth is that when you think about all of our holidays, every single Jewish holiday, every day of the year should be every holiday, meaning that Passover marks our liberation from Egypt, the fact that God took us out of Egypt. So when should we think about that? The truth is, every single day of our life. And we actually do. There's a commandment to remember the Exodus from Egypt every day of our life. And in the same way, if you wanted a secular holiday, when should Mother's Day be? Every day should be Mother's Day, right? And when should Rosh Hashanah be? The day where we think about who I am and how I'm doing and can I improve and what's the quality of my life? When should I be doing that? Rabbi Eliezer says basically every day, if it's worth doing today, it's worth doing every day. The problem is in reality, if all of our holidays are important, if every day should be Shabbat and every day should be Passover and every day Rosh Hashanah, you couldn't really get anything right. You're living in a chillent. So what the Torah has us do, the Torah says that we're going to spend certain times during the year really focusing on certain themes. So even though it's true every day of the year, we should be thinking about Passover, but we do spend an entire week really immersed in Passover-ness. And we have to prepare for it, right? We have to spend weeks getting ready for Passover. But there's a part of the year where that's the theme, it's Passover time. And then we have this time of the year where we're now in the month before Rosh Hashanah, the month of Elul. And so this whole month is like a mini Rosh Hashanah. If Rosh Hashanah is an incredibly important day, in the same way your wedding day is incredibly important. So you get ready for your wedding, you prepare for it. And so we get ready for Rosh Hashanah. This time of the year now is sort of a mini Rosh Hashanah, prepping for Rosh Hashanah. But this is the theme specifically now, even though we should be doing this every day of the year. Now where do these two approaches come from? Why do you have this disagreement between Rabbi Eliezer and Epicurus? What is the foundation, conceptually, of their disagreement? It's based upon something. Every argument, every disagreement is not just, you know, people being contrary for the sake of being contrary. You know, you say, A, I say, no, B, you know, Y, because, you know, I like to disagree. There's usually much more to it than that. When you study Talmud and you see every page that Talmud has disagreements, what Talmud students do is try to understand, well, why are they arguing? What is the, what's the crux? What's the core issue about which they're disagreeing? And you could really almost reduce any disagreement to its core conceptual issue. And so what is the real issue at heart between Rabbi Eliezer and Epicurus? And I think that the, what's at stake is the question of, how did we get here? Rosh Hashanah is an interesting day because we know every Jewish holiday has a historical antecedent, meaning that every Jewish holiday commemorates something in history. Hanukkah was the victory of the Hashmonoyim. And Sukkot marks the fact that when we were going through the desert, we had booths that we lived in these booths. And Passover is our liberation from Egypt. And Shavuot is the receiving of the Torah, right? Purim is our victory over Haman and the Malachites who wanted to destroy us. Every holiday has something that we celebrate. So what is the event of Rosh Hashanah? What is Rosh Hashanah celebrating? And so what we say in our liturgy, in our prayers on Rosh Hashanah, is we say, Hayyom Harat Olam. Today is the birthday of the world. So Rosh Hashanah, if we want to think about what happened on this day, so we believe that it marks the creation of the world. And so I think Rosh Hashanah is based upon this idea that the world was created by God. The world was created by God. And when we speak about creation by a creator, we're assuming that it wasn't just some casual thing that God did or did it accidentally. Our assumption is that creation was a purposeful act, an intentional act, and that everything that was created has a purpose, has a goal, has a plan. And just like there's a plan and a purpose and a goal for creation in general, there's a purpose and a goal for each one of our lives. We're here, each one of us, there is a reason why we're here. Is that some random experience? Each one of us is here for a reason and for a purpose, there's a plan to each one of our lives. And so Rabbi Eliezer basically says, you know what, if we're here for a specific purpose and there should be a goal to our life, doesn't it make sense? It's just sort of reasonable to occasionally stop for a moment and think about, am I really living up to what my life is supposed to be about? If there is a purpose and a goal to my life, the same way any business person, once a year maybe is going to do inventory, every company is going to have a review, I mean to go through your life without ever thinking about your life, right? It was the Greek philosophers, Socrates, who said the unexamined life is not worth living. So it just makes sense that if we're put here for a reason and for a purpose to spend some time during our life thinking about, am I living up to that purpose? I tell a wonderful story that I love sharing about the Alta Rebbe, the first Lubava Alta Rebbe, that like many good rabbis in his time, he was thrown into prison and he had a Russian jailer, a guard that was taking care of him, watching to him. And the jailer would see that, you know, this is not any regular prisoner. He noticed that there were many wondrous, mysterious things going on. He would see the rabbi spending his whole day meditating and praying. He would see the little rats carrying his slippers to him in the morning. He had a sense that he had a very special ward in his prison cell. Anyway, he comes to the rabbi one day and he says, you know, rabbi, I see you're a very serious person that you're very studious, you're always studying your holy books. He says to the rabbi, you know, rabbi, I also, I like to study the Bible. And the rabbi says, that's great. That's wonderful. He says, I always had a question. I never understood, maybe you can help me answer this question for me. So the rabbi says, ask. So the fellow says to the rabbi, you know, in the beginning of the Bible, God creates Adam and Eve, puts them in the Garden of Eden. He says that there is a special tree, right, the tree of knowledge of good and evil. All the other trees you can eat from this tree of knowledge of good and evil, you can't eat from that tree. Of course, what does Adam and Eve do? That's the first tree they go for. They eat from the tree of knowledge of good and evil. Their eyes are open. They realize that they're, that they're naked. They go and hide. And then the first question that God asks them is, where are you, Ayyaka? So this jailer says to the altar rabbi, he says, I don't understand. God is omnipotent. God is omniscient. God knows everything. God created every Adam in existence. Why does God have to ask them where they are? Like God needs Adam and Eve to say, psst, we're hiding behind the big tree on the left-hand side of the garden. You know, like God invented GPS. We don't need Adam and Eve to clue us, clue me into where they are. So the jailer says, I can't understand. What is this question God is asking them? So the rabbi said, you know what, it's a great question. It's a wonderful question. And he said, Adam and Eve were the first human beings. They represent every man. Adam and Eve is you and Adam and Eve is me. And God created them again intentionally with a purpose, with a plan. God says to them, where are you? Meaning, where are you in your life? How are you doing? What have you accomplished in the time that you've been here? Have you grown? Have you fulfilled any of your potential? He's asking them not for a coordinates in the physical realm. He's asking them a spiritual question. Where are you spiritually? Where are you holding? How far have you come in your life? And the rabbi said that question is the first question in the Bible. And therefore it's the most important question in the Bible. It's the question that each one of us has to ask ourselves every single day of our lives. Where am I? Where am I? In my life, where am I? He said to the jailer, you've been here 46 years. He says to the jailer, where are you? The jailer, we're told in the story, freaked out. How does he know how old I am? But the rabbi knew. And the rabbi is saying that this is really the essence of Rosh Hashanah, the Jewish New Year. To spend the day asking ourselves, where are we? How are we doing? Evaluating our lives. So according to Rabbi Eliezer, who says you should spend the New Year reflecting and meditating and thinking and evaluating and doing stock taking and just measuring how you're doing, that makes sense because if Rosh Hashanah marks the creation of the world with a plan and with a purpose and with an agenda and with goals, so it makes sense on the anniversary of the creation of the world, we should spend the day asking ourselves, how are we doing? On the other hand, January 1st is based upon a radically different assumption. January 1st is based upon the assumption that the world got here through a big bang. And after the big bang, there was a random collision of gases and particles and atomic, subatomic particles. Thinking basically that we see is an accident. It wasn't created on purpose with an intrinsic meaning to it. There is no intrinsic meaning to life. There can't be because everything that we see, everything in existence is random. It's an accident. It's meaningless. So why knock yourself out asking about the meaning of life and how am I doing? There is no real meaning. Of course, we each will create our own meaning out of life. We'll each come up with something, otherwise we'll go mad. But there's no intrinsic planned created meaning. And so January 1st, I believe, makes a lot of sense. If there is no ultimate intrinsic planned meaning to life, then according to this view, have a good time. Live it up. It's to me, it's a reasonable philosophy. Everyone enjoys having a good time. So why not? We're not here forever. We are 70, 80, 90 years, maybe. So while you're here, enjoy yourself. Have a great time. Don't overthink life because you're not going to really ever come up with any good answers. There are no answers. Now, I mentioned that Rosh Hashanah is a day of judgment. So the question is this. How often does God really judge us? Think about this. Let's say you're married. How often are you judging your spouse? How often do you judge them? Do you size them up? Do you evaluate them? How often do you think about how they're doing and how you think about them? How often do we think about those we love? The answer is all the time, all the time. No one that's really in love with someone only thinks about them once every year. If we care about people, a parent thinks about their child all the time. How's my child doing? Can they improve? How can I help them correct themselves? So when we think about Rosh Hashanah as a day of judgment, it's a little bit peculiar because the truth is that God is always judging us. Our sages teach us that there are two kinds of judgment. There are actually many more than that, but two that I want to reflect on for a minute. Rabbi Eliyahu Dessler, who's a great Mashiach in England, and then he went to Israel, he speaks about the idea that for judgment to be meaningful, we obviously have to have free will. If human beings were not endowed with free will, it would be meaningless for God to judge us. If our lives were programmed and we didn't have the ability to choose, then why could we be judged? How could we be judged? It doesn't make any sense. So the fact is that as human beings, we have free will. And people often assume that free will is absolute. That's an often assumption that people make. That free will is across the board, it's absolute, and it doesn't have any parameters. Rabbi Dessler said it's not really true. According to his view, free will is actually quite limited. It's really quite limited. Why is that? So Rabbi Dessler explained that in life, there are certain things that for us, each one of us, it's a no-brainer, it's a no-brainer. I passed that already. I'll just give you a simple example. So when I was in my first year of university, I decided that I would try out living a Jewish life. And I made a resolution that on my third semester, when I left home to go back to school in Chicago, I got on the plane and I said, I'm going to start keeping kosher. That's the first time in my life, I'm going to start keeping kosher. So I get on the plane and I want to know where's the kosher food? And so maybe I didn't think I had to order it, whatever. Maybe I did order it. But anyway, it turns out there was no food for me, either because I didn't order it or they forgot it or something happened, there's no kosher food. Now the truth is I'm going from Newark Airport to Chicago, so nothing's going to happen. I'm not going from here to Sydney, Australia. But the fact is that at that point in my life, when I heard the news that there's no kosher food for you, do you think there was a possibility? I might have said to myself, okay, I'll start officially when I get to Chicago. I could have said that, I could have said, all right, at first I thought I would start now getting on the plane, but okay, there's no kosher food, I like rather not eat for the whole flight. Everyone else is eating, I'm going to feel left out and they're going to make me hungry. I could have said that to myself. I could have said I'll start keeping kosher when I get to Chicago. I didn't. I girded my loins and I had water and put out peanuts for the hour. But imagine now, it's a long time, it's 50-something years later. So now I get on a plane, not to Chicago, now I'm going to fly to England, it's five or six hours, and they tell me the bad news, sorry, no kosher food. Is there any chance in the world I'm going to say, okay, I'll take whatever you have? It's not going to happen now. Meaning that at a certain point in my life, whether I'm going to eat kosher food or not, it was a question, it was a struggle, I had to choose. But at this point in my life, it's no longer an issue, it's been decided I'm beyond that. It's not even a, nothing like a test anymore. So Robert Desler says that for many things in our lives, it's not a question of free will, there is no more free will, right? I think for most of us, if you are going to get a try and get a parking spot, you know, at the supermarket and someone jumps ahead of you and takes your spot, I don't think that you would even consider getting out of the car and grabbing the, you know, the jack from the back of your car and smashing a person over the head and killing them. I don't think it's part of your repertoire. I don't think it's possible that anyone would think about doing that. There are people in the world that would be a possibility that if someone cuts them off, they would, I remember I was once in a cab going from Brooklyn to Queens and my cabby was aggressive and he cut someone off and this guy zoomed around right in front of my cab, locked the cab, he ran out of his car, he opened up the door or the window, whatever he did, I forget what happened, and he started beating my cabby in the head. I thought he was going to kill him. I didn't know what to do, I froze in the back seat, my back actually went out, that's how afraid I was because I thought after he kills him he's going to kill me. But finally I said, leave him alone already, I think he did enough damage. But here was someone who literally could have ripped this guy's head off. For him it was an option, it was on the menu for him. I think for most of us it's not going to happen, we might curse the person, we might, you know, raise our voice, whatever, whatever we're going to do. So Desliff says that for us in life there are things about which there's no longer any free will. We've eliminated many things from our realm of free will. It's not for us an issue anymore because we're past that. That's conquered territory. The analogy he gives is to trench warfare in World War I. He says if you think about how they fought in World War I, so they had the French and the Germans, whatever, they had trenches, right, and they would pop their head up once in a while and take a shot and duck, that's how they fought. The truth is that from the German point of view, right, for the Germans, Berlin, there's no fight in Berlin, Berlin was firmly under their control, right? So there was no fighting there, there was no battle there. The battle was where? Here at the trenches, where the trenches meet. And for the Germans at those trenches, England, right, London, was, there's no fighting going on there. For these people at the trenches, they're far, far away. I mean, they've got to go quite far to be able to be shooting people in London, the streets of London, right? There are things in our lives about which not that we have conquered those areas already. It's not even for us, we're not even playing at that level yet. You know, the villain of going, so they say that he would not waste any time in his life. And at the end of the year, he would somehow calculate how many minutes he wasted during the whole year, it ended up like five minutes in the whole year. Imagine someone, he wrote books about mathematics in the bathroom. That's what he was doing with his time. He didn't waste any time. I would imagine for most of us, if we were to think about how much time we waste over the course of a year, we're not measuring it in increments of minutes. We're not at that level yet. Where for me, I'm fighting on the level of how many minutes did I waste this year? No, for most people, I would imagine they're measuring it in increments of days, weeks, months. That's where we're fighting the battle. So there are things that are just for most of us, not even within the realm of possibility. There are people that are great, great, great righteous people. They're fighting the battle, not here at the trenches. They're already in the streets of Berlin. But for most people, their range of free will is very constricted. It's either stuff that they've already gotten past and it's no longer within the realm of free will, or they're not there yet. They're not even ready to fight those battles yet. Here's where we're fighting. So he says that what happens in the course of the war, so the commander, the sergeant in the trenches, he might give the signal, okay, on the count of ten, everyone's going to get up and take a shot. And maybe he'll say, you know, you, when I give the signal, you'll throw a hand grenade to try and get into the other guy's trench. But that's the kind of fighting that's going on. He says, however, that aside from the sergeant or whoever, the lieutenant in the trench, there's someone up in a spotter plane. And maybe once in a while, the person in the spotter plane is going to say, you know what? You've got a chance now, for whatever reason, you could actually get out of your trench and you can move. You're going to move the trenches now. You're going to be able to advance a hundred yards. So now you're not fighting within your trench. There are times in the battle where the army is able to actually pick up and move the trenches. So as an example, imagine a gang member, right? Someone in a street gang in Chicago. So for that person in the street gang in Chicago, what are the free will decisions that they're struggling with every day? Like, what is the question that's really on their plate? So it could be that their question is, for them, am I going to participate in the drive-by shooting? Maybe for them, that's their free will issue. Or maybe the question is going to be, when we go out to fight the other gang, am I going to try and kill the other people or just wound them, right? What are the issues they're dealing with? Because those are their trenches. When the person is in that kind of environment, they have a certain kind of struggle that they're facing. And that's what they're going to be dealing with all the time. They have a certain level of engagement in terms of moral choices. But what would happen if one of those gang members decided, you know what? I'm leaving the gang and I'm going to go to university. Or I'm leaving the gang and I'm going to get married. So do you imagine that their choices are going to change radically, the kinds of choices they're going to have to make? Much different choices. Now their big struggle is going to be, oh, do I go to the party tonight or should I stay home and do my homework? That's very different than the choices they had a few weeks ago. When a person, let's say, is living here in Toronto and they have a certain life here in Toronto and questions that they have to deal with and they decide, you know what, I'm making aliyah. I'm moving to Israel. So the trenches have been moved. It's a radically different life there in Israel. Different questions, different issues, different struggles. And so Robert Desler explains that every day during the year God is judging us based upon what's happening in the trench. I'm in my trench and I've got to deal with certain challenges and certain issues. But there are certain times in life when we have the ability or we are given the opportunity to just move the trenches. Getting married, making aliyah, making a big change in our life. Where all the choices now change dramatically. And that's what happens on Rosh Hashanah. Rosh Hashanah is a day and this time of the year in general is when we get a chance to move the trenches. That's the kind of judgment that's taking place. And our sages give a very, very dramatic imagery for this. They say on Rosh Hashanah, the books are opened. There's the book of life and there's the book of death. And there's a pen that's going to be the quill, is going to be writing your name in the book of death. And we tend to think about the idea that God is judging me and God is going to inscribe me next year in the book of life or the book of death. And the Baal Shem Tov explained that that's maybe not really what happens at this time of the year. He says that you know who's holding the pen? You are. Each one of us is holding that quill. And each one of us on Rosh Hashanah is going to decide what book we're going to write ourselves into. Rosh Hashanah, interestingly, we call it Yom Harat Olam. Now, to say a birthday in Hebrew, we say Yom Huledet. We don't call Rosh Hashanah Yom Briyat Olam the day of the creation of the world. We call it Yom Harat Olam. Harayon is pregnancy. It's more conception than birth. So really, Rosh Hashanah is the day of the conception of my world. The day where what happens today, I conceive of what kind of life I would like to live next year. That's how I'm going to be judged. Because what happened last year, we've been judged about already. What's happening today on Rosh Hashanah is how do I imagine my life in the coming year? What kind of life would I like to live? How do I picture my existence in the coming year? And God's going to decide whether or not that plan of action is one that He wants to back. The centerpiece of Rosh Hashanah in terms of, if you want to call it the ritual of Rosh Hashanah, it's the hearing of the shofar. It's very interesting that the Torah itself is very terse when it comes to describing Rosh Hashanah. If you go through the Torah itself, it says virtually nothing about this day. All we're told is that on the first day of the seventh month, it's a Yom trua. And it's not even clear what that means. Yom trua, let's translate it as a day of blasting, of blowing. What are you supposed to blow? And how? It's like very, very, almost nothing is being said. The Torah describes it as a day of zikron trua, of remembrance of the blasting. But it's a mysterious phrase, and it's only understood in the teachings of our sages. So what I'd like to conclude with is just some reflections on the significance of the shofar and how it can help us in this day. Before we blow the shofar, the blessing that's pronounced, the blessing that's said before the blowing of the shofar is lishmoa kol shofar. The blessing is not that the commandment today, we say that God commanded us this day to blow the shofar. That's what you would think that we would say. Blessed are thou, our Lord our God, King of the universe, who commanded us to blow the shofar. To sound that, no. We say the blessing is that that God made us holy with His commandments and commanded us to listen, lishmoa kol shofar, to listen to the sound, to the voice of the shofar, to pay attention to the message of the shofar. It's a day of very deep listening. Rosh Hashanah is a day of very deep listening. What is the message of the shofar? Ruf Hutner explained that the shofar, when we think about how it works, is that we direct our breath into a very narrow part of a hollow vessel. We blow over here, where it's narrow, and we with force produce sounds out of the wider part of the shofar. Ruf Hutner explained that what this recalls is the creation of the first human being. Because how did God create us? We were a lifeless form. Human being was created out of the dust of the ground, and God shaped it into a humanoid, into a physical form. But then God blew into that physical form the breath of life. And so Ruf Hutner says, if on this day of Rosh Hashanah, which marks the creation of the world, we should also think about the fact that it's the creation of the miniature world. Each one of us is a world. Each individual human being is an entire world. That's why we say that if you save one human life, it's as if you save the entire world. Because only one person was created originally. And so the shofar reminds us of the fact that on this day we were created. We're sort of re-enacting on Rosh Hashanah the creation of the first human being. The word shofar itself comes from the rootless chapere, which means to improve. So the shofar, I mean it could be just a random arbitrary term, but the shofar speaks about the idea of improvement. And it's interesting that there are different notes that are sounded. So basically we're not going to go through all the variations of notes, but basically we blow three sounds. And each of the rounds that we will blow starts off with a tekia, a long straight sound. And then there are two broken sounds, the shwaram and the trua, and it's followed by again the straight tekia. The explanation that's given is that we are created straight. We're created essentially not flawed. The human being is pure, we say in every morning in our prayers, God the soul that you gave me is pure. We're not tainted, we're not broken. We're created whole, complete, pure. It's a straight, even complete sound, a complete sound. But then we acknowledge that our lives become broken, and then we blow the three broken sounds. Because that's the reality of life that Torah says, the Bible says, there isn't a righteous person in the world who only does good and never sins. Every person makes mistakes, every person sins, every person breaks themselves. And we acknowledge that. And then we blow a sound which the Talmud says sounds like we're weeping. We start to almost weep hysterically. And so we cry. Our souls, when we think about the fact that we've broken our lives, we've turned away from what our lives could be, it should produce tremendous regret and crying. But then the effect of all of that is restoration. And that's why the cycle concludes with the straight sound at the end of Takia. So one of the things that happens on Rosh Hashanah, is we again act this out, we blow the shofar a hundred times on Rosh Hashanah. And throughout the entire day we're just constantly driving home the fact that, you know what, God doesn't make junk. And I came out pretty good. As a matter of fact I came out perfect as far as God's concerned. But then we corrupt our lives. And we sell ourselves short. And we have failures. And that's part of what happens during these 40 days, as we're supposed to get in touch with that. You know they say that Rosh Hashanah only works if you're honest with yourself. Someone once came to the ruptured Serebi and said, you know I have a friend. I've got a friend. And he did something horrible last year. And he wants to know what he should do to get himself back good graces with God. And the Rebbe said to him, you know your friend's foolish person. Because your friend could have come to meet directly by himself and pretended to ask about some other person. So we often are not very honest with ourselves. It's hard to admit the truth. But during these 40 days to think about the fact that I was okay. And that my life was straight. And to think about how we messed it up. And to regret those things. But interestingly, if you look at the liturgy of Rosh Hashanah, go through the whole Mahsur, the whole prayer book for Rosh Hashanah. It's a day that doesn't mention sins. We don't beat our heart and regret. We save that for Yom Kippur. Rosh Hashanah, there's none of that going on. If you look at the Mahsur for Rosh Hashanah. It's very interesting that it focuses almost exclusively on painting a picture of what the world should look like and what the world could look like. We describe in the prayers of Rosh Hashanah a utopian world. We describe the messianic vision of what the planet should look like. Because on Rosh Hashanah, we want to get in touch with the fact that there is a potential for the world. And when we think about that, it should help us plug ourselves into that. If the world can look like a better place, if we can imagine again, Rosh Hashanah is a day of imagining and picturing what could life be like. Our prayer books cannot give us a picture of what each individual life should look like, but our prayer books describe what the world could look like. A world of peace, a world of unity, a world where people get along with each other, a world where everyone acknowledges the kingship of God, a world where God is front and center in the life of every human being. We paint a picture of what a planet can look like, ideally. And then it becomes easier for us to imagine, well, how do I fit into that? Another part about the blowing of the chauffeur is that the chauffeur's sound is a sound of coronation. We're coronating God as king. Now, the interesting thing is that it's very easy for all of us to say, God is Melech Ha'olam. God is the king of the universe. We see that in all of our blessings. Baruch Atah Hashem alokhenu Melech Ha'olam. When we think about God as being the king of the universe, that's easy. Anyone can say that. But the goal of Rosh Hashanah is to make God the king over my life. Is God really the ruler of my life? That's not so simple. Because I'd rather not be bothered all the time. I'd rather not have to always have someone that's cramping my style. I'd rather not always have to be wondering about what does God think about my behavior. It's sometimes very easy to fall into the very sort of tempting thought that no one sees me. No one sees me. I can do whatever I want in life. Rosh Hashanah is a day where we coronate God as the king, not just over the universe, but over my life personally. The truth is that deep down inside, every single one of us has a spiritual core. Each one of us has a spiritual core that is pure and it's holy. And that we tend to forget about it. And the goal of Rosh Hashanah is to really help ignite that spiritual core that is at the center of our beings. Rosh Hashanah helps us get in touch with that spiritual core of our lives. The Gomorrah asks a very interesting question. Atelmud asks in Tractate Rosh Hashanah, what happens if you place one shofar inside another shofar and you blow them both? So have you fulfilled the commandment of blowing shofar if you do that? So Atelmud says that if you hear the inner shofar, then you have fulfilled the commandment of blowing shofar. If you only heard the outer shofar, you haven't fulfilled the commandment of blowing shofar. The truth is that each one of us hears various voices in our lives. We hear the outer voice, the outer sounds of the street, of the culture, of so many things that are outside of our small little world. And then there's the inner voice that we're supposed to be in touch with. And so what Atelmud says is that if on Rosh Hashanah you're able to get past the outer voice, the outer sound of materialism, of the distractions of this world and you're able to listen to the inner voice, then you've fulfilled the commandment of Rosh Hashanah. I want to end with a story. It's actually my favorite Rosh Hashanah story. And I'll ask you to indulge me. I'm going to just read it to you because Deborah Gordon Zaslow tells it much better than I could. And I think that it really helps us get in touch with, I think, one of the most important aspects of the shofar. So the story is about a king. And the king had an only child who was a daughter, and the king doted on this daughter and took her with him wherever he went. They would eat together and walk together and they'd do everything together. But their favorite thing to do was to tell stories. That was the most favorite thing that they would do together. The king would tell the princess stories with witches and fairies and demons and magic and every kind of story imaginable. And the princess would simply say, Papa, tell me a story. And it seemed that almost no matter what the king was doing, he would stop and launch into another tale. The princess's favorite story was about a brother and a sister who each had a shofar from the head of the same ram. And when one shofar was blown, the other shofar would vibrate and hum. She would beg her father over and over, but tell me this shofar story again. And he would tell it to her again and again and again. It happened that one evening the princess and the king were in a royal carriage returning from some occasion. They were riding on a narrow road that round through the forest on the edge of a steep ravine. It began to rain and gusts of wind started to blow. The carriage swayed and the horses winnied. The storm grew heavier and the rain louder and the road muddier. Thunder sounded and lightning streaked across the sky. The horses bolted and the royal carriage toppled over. The king was thrown out and not unconscious, not far from the road. But the princess was thrown far down into the steep ravine. The next day when the king awoke in his bed, he demanded to see the princess immediately, but he was told that she had not been found. The king bellowed, send out all my men. Come every inch of the forest. You've got to find my daughter. And so they searched the forest for days, but the ground was slick and muddy and the rains had washed away any tracks. After two weeks the men returned and the king was told that the princess must surely be dead. The king withdrew into his chambers. He refused to eat. He couldn't sleep and he would speak to no one. But the princess was not dead. She had fallen over the side of the ravine and landed into a crevice between two rocks. She lay unmoving for two days. When she awoke she was stiff, aching, bleeding and hungry. She looked around her and recognized nothing. She wandered through the forest all day crying pitifully. When she could go no further she found an empty cave where she laid down and cried herself to sleep. When she awoke she was staring into the faces of a band of thieves. They peered at her in surprise. Who is this in our hideout? It's a little girl. I've never seen her before. She's bleeding and ragged and she's hurt. Who are you? Where'd you come from? But the princess could not remember who she was or where she had come from. She could only stare back at them and cry. The thieves took pity on her and fed her and cared for her. Eventually they took her in and raised her as one of their own. Time went on and the princess grew strong and healthy. Her adopted family was delighted with her because she was clever and charming. And she entertained them with all kinds of stories. Stories about witches and fairies and demons and magic. They would take her with them into the marketplace and she would engage the shopkeepers in conversation while the thieves stuffed their pockets with fruits and vegetables and anything else they needed. Sometimes the princess would question if it was right to steal. Is this the only way to live? She asked. But the thieves answered, this is all we know. It's good enough for us. So the princess didn't say it anymore. One day she was walking along the same road on the edge of the forest that she had tumbled from so many years before and she happened to see the king's carriage go by. Suddenly she was filled with a longing deep, deep inside of her. She felt that she had to be in the presence of the king. I've got to see the king. She walked all day until she came to the palace and stood in front of the palace gates for hours hoping to catch a glimpse of the king. But he did not come out. When she returned she told her adopted brothers and sisters what she had done. I don't know why I just felt I had to be near the king to be in the palace. They laughed at her. You had to be near the king? In the palace? You're beginning to live in one of your fairy stories. So the princess said no more but every chance she got she would steal away and stand outside the palace. Still she never saw the king. Though years had passed the king had never forgotten over the loss had never gotten over the loss of his daughter. He remained inconsolable. He didn't go out unless he had to and he spoke as little as possible. His advisors had tried everything to cheer him up. They brought in royal magicians and clowns and the best musicians but the king hardly noticed. One of the advisors recalled that long ago the king had loved stories. They decided to hold a storytelling contest. Whoever could tell the best story and gains the king's approval would become the royal storyteller and come to live in the palace. Word traveled fast about the storytelling contest and of course the princess heard about it. She was determined to enter the contest and she went into a frenzy practicing stories over and over. Again the thieves laughed at her. The royal storyteller. You're dreaming of living in the palace again. Why can't you stop living in your dream world but the princess did not care. She went into the forest alone and tried out all of her stories polishing every line until she was exhausted. When the first day of the contest arrived the princess walked all the way to the palace. Her heart raced in her throat as she waited. When her turn came she walked slowly up to the podium. From there she could see the king over in his chair not looking at her. She took a deep breath and began. Once there was but her voice did not ring out. Only a rough whisper emerged. She cleared her throat and began again. Once there was once but try as she might she could not speak. Someone yelled next and she was pulled off the stage. The next day she tried again. Again she walked to the palace and again her heart pounded as she waited her turn. Again she tried once there once once once and again her voice failed her but the princess could not give up. She continued to practice her stories working even harder than before and on the third and last day of the contest she returned and walked up to the podium again. She was standing in his chair staring into space unseeing. Her hand shook and her throat burned. She opened her mouth once but only the whisper escaped again. Someone in the crowd yelled her again get her off the stage and someone else shouted I've seen her in the marketplace with the band of thieves grab her. The king glanced up at the commotion and for an instant the princess met his eyes. Once there was and this time her voice emerged clear and true the guards ran to seize her but the king raised his hand let her speak. The princess continued slowly as if remembering something long forgotten and the crowd was silent. Once there was a brother and a sister who each had a shofar from the head of the same ram. When one of the chauffeurs was blown the other chauffeur would vibrate and hum. The two children would play and the chauffeur was all the time blowing them back and forth. One day the boy was playing in the woods with his friends and it began to get dark. His friends ran back home but the little boy stayed absorbed in his game. Soon it became quite dark and he realized that he was alone and could not find his way home. He wandered for a while but eventually he knew he would have to spend the night in the woods. He was cold and frightened and he sat down under a tree to rest. He opened up his knapsack to see if he had anything to eat and he found that he had his shofar. He knew then he was going to be saved. He picked up his shofar and blew a long low blast. Far away in the house, his sister heard her shofar hum. She knew her brother was in trouble and she picked up her shofar and blew back at him. They blew back and forth through the night until she guided her brother all the way back to her home. When the princess had finished the story the king rose from his throne. Tears flowing down his cheeks as he opened up his arms he drew his daughter gently to his heart and welcomed her back to her true home the place where she belonged. So whenever we hear the sound of the shofar something stirs within us deep and deeper and we longed to return home the home of our soul and we crowd to God even if you don't recognize our faces hear our voices hear our voices