Rosh haShana – Dreaming of a Better You Rabbi Hanan Schlesinger The famed Rabbi Nachman of Braslav had a fantastically vivid imagination that expressed itself not only while he was awake but while he was asleep as well. With the rising of the sun pencil would be put to paper and his nocturnal flights of fancy would be recorded. To this day, over two hundred years after the death of the founder of their movement, Braslaver Hasidim have a custom of studying the dreams of their revered master during the Hebrew month of Elul preceding Rosh haShana. Rosh haShana is about renewal, about the opening up of previously unimagined vistas. The possibilities of who we can become and what we can accomplish are almost unlimited. But we are very often stuck in the limited reality that we have known since childhood or created for ourselves since then. For Braslaver Hasidim immersion in the strange dreams of Rabbi Nachman is about release from the constricted horizons that we mistakenly permit to define us; it is an emotional trigger that shows the soul a different reality, thereby allowing it to break free from what we have wrongly convinced ourselves is the only possible way things can be. And here we come to an apparent paradox. Rosh haShana is all about the future, yet in the liturgy – based on a passage in the Book of Leviticus – it is called the Day of Remembrance. Remembrance of course brings us back to the past. Just about all Jewish holidays are remembrances of the past. Take for example the three pilgrimage festivals of the Torah. On Pesach we remember the Exodus. On Shavuot we recall the Giving of the Torah at Sinai. Sucot is to remind us of the forty years during which our forefathers dwelled in Sucot –booths in the desert. On these sacred days we lovingly hold fast to the past and transfer it into the continuing present. We preserve memory, we relive what was, and ritually re-enact it anew every year such that it becomes part of our spiritual DNA. But on Rosh haShana we dwell on the past not in order to re-experience it but rather in order to negate it, in order to make every effort not to relive it or repeat it. We break with the past and move towards self-renewal. Passover, Shavuot and Succot are about continuity with the past; Rosh haShana is about discontinuity. The three festivals are about reconnection to tradition; Rosh haShana is about innovation, self re-invention. We still have the last few days of the month of Elul, and then we have the two days of Rosh haShana itself. Dredge up the past, remember what you’ve done, examine your deeds, make amends. But don’t stop there. Don’t just correct what needs to be corrected. Dream! Dream vividly, even wildly. Conjure up new possibilities for yourself. Replace the tired patterns of the past with something entirely new! Do the soul work necessary to find the inner reserves to identify and pursue your dreams. And with the dawn of the new year, go forth and turn fantasy into reality! I wish all of our readers a Shana Tova!
Posted on: Mon, 02 Sep 2013 16:33:48 +0000
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