2023 Rosh Hashanah Morning: Habits

Every Friday evening and Saturday morning as part of Shabbat, we celebrate God’s act of creation. After creating the world and its inhabitants in six days, God rested. And so, on our day of rest, we take a step back and admire God’s handiwork.

But it’s not just on Shabbat or special holidays … Each and every morning and evening, Jewish liturgy focuses our thoughts and praise on creation. During the evening service, just after Bar’chu, we recite ma’ariv aravim, praising God for rolling light away from darkness and darkness from light, transforming day into night and distinguishing one from the other.

And during the morning service, also just after Bar’chu, we recite the yotzer prayer: In mercy, you illumine the world and those who live upon it. In your goodness, you daily renew creation.

These prayers aid us in feeling gratitude and appreciation. Sometimes, if I’m feeling stressed, or a bit down, these prayers do remind me of the grandeur and wonder of the world around me. And you know what, if these two prayers can help us cultivate a sense of thankfulness, dayenu. But there’s something else there.

The words of these prayers remind us that creation is change. The converse is also true: Change is creation. Morning and evening are created differently. God rolls light away from darkness and darkness from light. The words of the prayers change, depending on the time of day - depending on the creation that we experience around us. Creation changes throughout the day.

Change is a metaphysical building block of the universe.

And this is the one overarching theme that permeates our entire High Holiday season: change.

I don’t think I have to convince anyone that we all have something to change. It might be something that’s holding us back: perhaps you should listen more, or complain less, or do the dishes more routinely without being asked. Or perhaps you want to cultivate a skill or talent. Maybe you want to learn a foreign language, or play a musical instrument.

You may start doing one of these things, promising yourself that this time, the diet is going to stick, or that you will go to the gym three times a week. And you even make some progress. But then, invariably, there’s just no time, or a family member needs you, or work is particularly stressful … and you don’t continue. Oh well, you say, next time.

There’s a short phrase that’s repeated a few times in one of my favorite movies, Contact: Small moves. Small moves.

As James Clear writes in his wonderful book, Atomic Habits, changes that seem small and unimportant at first will compound into remarkable results … if you’re willing to stick with them.

Small moves.

Real and meaningful change, whether it be learning a skill or hobby, strengthening a relationship, or making amends, is about small, and constant, almost imperceptible changes. Again and again.

I want to give two examples. One is from the competitive world of cycling, and the other from Greek philosophy.

In 2003, British Cycling was struggling. One might say they were just spinning their wheels. Since 1908, they had only won a single gold medal at the Olympic Games, and in the 110 year history of the Tour de France, they had not won the event even once. But in 2003 the organization hired Dave Brailsford as the performance director. He employed a new strategy.

He wanted to find just a tiny margin of improvement in every single area of biking, from the fit of the helmet to the aerodynamics of the pedals. He wanted to improve every area by just one percent. What made him different from previous coaches was his relentless commitment to a strategy that he referred to as “the aggregation of marginal gains,” which was the philosophy of searching for a tiny margin of improvement in everything you do.

In 2008, they won more than half of the gold medals available. And this success continued. Presently, the country has six Tour de France victories.

The Greek philosopher Eubulides is most famous for creating seven so-called paradoxes.

One of them is known as the sorites paradox. Named after the Greek word for a heap of something, the sorites paradox imagines a large mound made from one million grains of sand.

If you were to take just one tiny grain of sand away, is there still a heap? Certainly. And then if you were to take another grain away, what about then? Of course. Even at 500,000 grains of sand, we’d still maintain the existence of a mound.

But let’s go the other way. One grain of sand doesn’t a mound make, nor two, nor three, nor 50. But at some point after adding one grain of sand to another and another and another, we will look up and voilà - we’ll notice a mound of sand.

The month of Elul consists of 29 days that precedes Rosh Hashanah. Its purpose is to create the aggregation of marginal gains. During its 29 days, we are meant to engage in a process of reflection and growth - nothing sudden - nothing huge … a short reading - a slight change of behavior here and there … and we do that every day for 29 days.

Taken individually, I hope that you found our Elul readings interesting and thoughtful. But taken together, making this part of your routine for the last month … you created a mound.

Immediately after Passover, we start the 49-day period that we call the counting of the Omer. During each of these days, we are meant to improve our middot, the ethical and character traits that are considered essential for personal and spiritual growth. There is this interesting idea that there are fifty levels of holiness, and during each day of the Omer we ascend just one level. But at the end of these seven weeks, we have slowly and consistently climbed high enough, and God will carry us just up the last step, and we are granted the Torah.

Judaism teaches: Mitzvah goreret Mitzvah: One Mitzvah leads to another. Again, small moves. It was small moves that changed Moses from being a man heavy of tongue to an outstanding leader and orator. Joseph’s journey to become the second in command of Egypt was driven by small actions, and these actions rescued his family from famine and ensured the survival of the Israelites. Similarly, it’s the small steps we take that contribute to a Shanah Tovah, not merely a year of goodness, but, as the phrase suggests, a year marked by transformation and change.

Judaism is our catalyst for creation and change. The shofar’s blasts may wake us out of our slumber to commit to change - to make the promise that this time, it will stick. But it is the shofar’s echoes that remind us to renew ourselves each day, much like creation … to change each day. Bit by bit.

In Leviticus, there’s a fascinating typographical curiosity at the beginning of its second portion, Tzav. In the portion, God gives instructions regarding the fire sacrifice. The word for the fire is mokdah, which starts with a mem. But if you look at the printed word in a Torah scroll, that mem is only about half the size of the other letters.

The small mem signifies that whatever we bring to the fire of creation… the fire of change, … is enough. But we have to bring something to it. Every. Day.

When initiating change in your life, remind yourself: You can do a little mem. Eventually, it sparks. It creates. It creates a mound of meaningful change. It creates you.