Rosh Hashanah 2015 - Rebirth and a New Brain

Imageo Dei image from this video: http://bit.ly/1MpkrAU

Rosh Hashanah is, among other things, a birthday celebration. Whose birthday? The entire world's birthday. Like we say over and over in the High Holiday prayer book, "This is the first day of Your works" and "Today the world was conceived". It's also the birthday of the first human being, the day on which human conscious was breathed into G d's creation.

Each year, reality is provided a license to exist for just that year and no longer. The license expires and reality has to reapply again, year after year.  But in order to have a reality, you need to have an identity. Over the past year, though, our identity becomes rather worn out and murky. So God just creates a new identity for us for the coming year. In fact, it plays neatly into the theme of the renewal of humankind. Problem is, how do you renew your identity if you don't have an identity? Something like a person in a coma reviving itself. So we have to petition G-d for a renewal on existence.

That's what it means to "crown G-d as King": We're out to convince G-d that G-d should continue running a world, a.k.a. reality, with us inside it, and G-d should really enjoy doing it, too.

Remember, G-d is not the authoritarian, top-down dictator type. G-d needs us as co-creators. G-d is constantly consulting with us, God’s own creations.

That’s a nice thought, but Rabbi Moshe Cordovero points out in Pardes Rimonim, that G-d couldn't even be thinking of this earth place with souls walking about without it all spontaneously springing into existence. So why bother to say that G-d is consulting us?

The simple answer is: In the real thing, that thought of "what sort of pleasure would I get out of creating a possible world"—that is the primordial thought from which all souls are conceived. As the Maggid of Mezritch taught, that is the Imageo Dei—the image that inspired creation, the thought of a breath of G-d’s self returning to God’s self from within a distant place called “world”.

With that image G-d consulted and determined to ponder a possible world. And that image is the essence-core of the human soul. It is a thought G-d thinks within G-d’s self, without extending beyond G-d’s self in any way, about nothing more than, "what shall I decide should please Me?" And so it is called G-d’s child—just as a parent looks at a child and says, "that is me, but that is not me. That is me as I have left myself and entered the world outside of me."

Every Rosh Hashanah, that seminal thought of creation rises to the fore.  And since, for G-d, a year is but a fleeting moment, the beginning of the year is that nanoment in which G-d’s decision is made once again.

This is why we blow the shofar: because our inner core cannot be expressed in any prose or poetry, not even in a soulful melody. Nothing of any form can reach the depths of the coma we find ourselves in after a year of toiling, pain, drudgery. Only in the primal scream, the raw cry of an animal's horn, broken and shattered into scattered fragments of heart piercing sound, there the soul awakens. And it says, "Here I am, Your dear child as You first imagined me, returning to You from within Your world with all my heart. And I bring with me all the artifacts of this world in which You have placed me, as an offering of love." And G-d takes a whiff of that fragrant offering, opens both eyes and says, "Neat world, isn't it? Let's play it again."

By Tzvi Freeman, sort of

The year also has a brain -- the 48 hours of Rosh Hashanah. That's what the Hebrew words "rosh hashanah" literally mean -- "head of the year." On Rosh Hashanah, we crown G-d Ruler of the Universe. On Rosh Hashanah, G-d is aroused, once again, with the desire to create the world. Channels of vitality and awareness connect the 48 hours of Rosh Hashanah to each of the hundreds of days, thousands of hours and millions of seconds of the year, like those that join the brain to its body.

It's also the birthday of the first human being, the day on which human conscious was breathed into G-d's creation. So Rosh Hashanah isn't just about reality emerging into being, it's about our human experience of that reality as well.

Each year, reality is provided a license to exist for just that year and no longer. The license expires and reality has to reapply again, year after year.

So too our identities expire and we must apply for a whole new existence, leaving the past behind and becoming new creatures through the re-creation of G-d. The old has passed away, behold! newness comes. That's why the two days of Rosh Hashanah are so special: the impact of our every action, word and thought increases thousand-fold. If we're kind on Rosh Hashanah, we'll be kinder people throughout the year. If we weigh our words carefully during these two days, our speech will be more refined throughout the year. If we focus on a certain weakness of ours and resolve to make a stronger effort, we'll find our resolution translating into action far more effectively than resolutions made at other times.

If we can access the brain, we can do just about anything. We can waken memories, restore lapsed talents, alleviate fears, magnify joys, abolish prejudices, stimulate interest and charge up motivation. We can basically re-program our lives ... at least for a year.

- The 48-Hour Brain (sort of) by Yanki Tauber