Clinging to Our Three Foot World on Rosh Hashanah

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Mark Owen, one of the Navy SEALs on the team that found Osama Bin Laden in his cave in Pakistan nine years ago has a few books in which he recounts some of the pieces of his journey as a soldier and his mission to find the world’s most wanted terrorist.

In his book, No Hero, he speaks about a life-changing moment during his army training. He and his team were in the Nevada desert training to climb and they were asked to scale a sheer cliff. Owen, despite being a tough and well-trained soldier, was afraid of heights making this task quite daunting. He began the climb and things were going well but then, at a certain point, he took his eyes off the rock that was right in front of him and that’s when he panicked!! He was really high! He saw the Las Vegas Strip in the distance and the desert stretching all the way to the horizon. He saw his officer way down at the foot of the cliff below as tiny as a small garden gnome.

His chances of keeping his fear under control were slipping away just as his hands were slipping off the rocks. Thoughts of his past and his future were racing through his mind and he was frozen. In that moment, the rock-climbing instructor that was with them climbed up right beside him and said something that became Mark’s mantra in climbing and that I think could be our mantra this Rosh Hashanah as we think about our past and our future.

On the first day of Rosh Hashanah we will read the story of the banishment of Hagar and Yishmael from Avraham Avinu’s home. One has to wonder why, at the most serious and life alerting moments of the year, we are asked to read such a story about a character in the Torah who is not even our forebear, and about an incident that has no relevance to the themes of the day!?

Chazal explain, that we read this story because it reveals to us something important about the nature of din, of judgement, on Rosh Hashanah.

After Avraham sends Hagar and Yishmael off into the wilderness and their water runs out, Hagar throws Yishmael under a bush and sits off at a distance so that she would not have to watch him die. In that moment, Hashem listens to the cry of that child, Yishmael, and he decides to save his life:

When the angel appears to Hagar to share this amazing news and tell her not to worry anymore and to go pick up her child who would live, the pasuk adds one small detail, three extra words, which describe the way or the reason why Hashem listened to Yishmael’s cry. The pasuk says:

It was not just that Hashem listened to him, but, specifically, that He listened to him as he was right then and there.

Those extra three words באשר הוא שם help to answer a deep theological question raised in the Heavens at that moment. The Midrash says:

With the words באשר הוא שם, the angel was declaring to Hagar (and to us!) that Yishamel’s future behavior would have no bearing on the way Hashem saw him and judged him in that moment.

The Gemara in Masechet Rosh Hashanah concludes that באשר הוא שם is not some special dispensation for Yishmael or something unique to this story, but is a broad principle about the way in which Hashem views and judges each and every one of us as well:

Our future behavior has no bearing on how Hashem judges us now: He judges us based on .באשר הוא שם, where we are in this moment only.

Rabenu Chananel on that Gemara in Rosh Hashanna quotes the Talmud Yerushalmi’s version of this sugya which reiterates the same principle of באשר הוא שם but takes it even one step further:

The Yerushalmi’s version suggests that not only does the principle of באשר הוא שם imply that Hashem will ignore our faulty future when judging us, but also that he will ignore our faulty past as well!

According to Chazal, we read the story of Yishmael on Rosh Hashanah, to remind us that on Rosh Hashanah when Hashem judges us, Hashem does NOT look at our prior actions OR at our future actions but simply looks at a snapshot of us in that specific moment, on that specific day, באשר הוא שם.

This is absolutely revolutionary!! This is so counter intuitive because we normally think of Rosh Hashanah as a day that is very much about past and future.

Rav Shlomo Wolbe in his Sefer Alei Shur explains that, yes, our past and our future actions are important to Hashem all year long and do play a critical role in our Teshuva process as we regret our past mistakes and make resolutions about our future (like the Rambam says in Hilchot Teshuva), but it is not what interests Hashem on Rosh Hashanah. What Hashem is most concerned with on Rosh Hashanah is who we are now באשר הוא שם in this one singular moment and snapshot in time, a snapshot so powerful that it can determine and define our fate in the coming year.

If for Hashem, Rosh Hashanah is a day of באשר הוא שם , a day to focus on the present and being in the moment then perhaps it should be that kind of a day for US as well.

Perhaps there is a sort of teshuva that we must engage in on Rosh Hashanna which is not focused on past or future (as teshuva normally is), but on the present.

That kind of teshuva which focuses solely on the present can sometimes be helpful in our journeys to change because while past and future are important, they can sometimes be a distraction or impediment to teshuva.

When we focus too much on our past mistakes and failures it tends to weigh us down and make us feel hopeless about the prospects for our success making real change and improvement less likely to be attainable in the present.

Yet, at the very same time when we focus too much on our future prospects and goals we run the risk of detracting from the authenticity of our teshuva and we run the risk of bowing out of the hard work we need to do in the present.

Kelly McGonigal, a psychologist at Stanford is cited in a New York Times article from 2012 called “Bad Habits? My Future Self Will Deal With That.” She says that her research has shown that when we are trying to get rid of bad habits there is a disconnect between how we think of our current selves and how we think of our future selves. People avoid change in the present and bank on the fact that they will do good things in the future since it’s easier to put that burden on their future selves than on their current selves. It gets their current selves off the hook for the heavy lifting.

McGonigal did a study in which students were asked to donate time to a good cause:

• Those who were told it had to be done that semester volunteered an average of 27

  minutes of time,

• Those who were told that it could be done the following semester signed up to give

  85 minutes of time

• And those who were told they could assign someone else to do the good....signed

  them up for 120 minutes!

With idealistic eyes we imagine and plan for our future selves to do lots of good but have a hard time making that happen. When we focus too much on the future we overcommit and overreach in a way that isn’t feasible or real.

Both dwelling too much on the past or on the future can hamper our ability to change in the present and so Hashem asks us once a year to simply focus on באשר הוא שם - on the present, just like Mark Owen’s instructor did on that cliff.

When Mark Owen was clinging for his life to that cliff in the Nevada desert, he had made this very mistake. He was paralyzed and unable to be successful because he was looking so far up the daunting cliff and so far down the very scary abyss below, so far out of his zone, so far into the past and the future of his climb (so to speak) that he got stuck! His instructor said something transformative to him that became his mantra for climbing and for life. He said:

“Mark– just stay in your three-foot world. Mark -Stop looking so far up and so far down – just stay in your three foot world.”

We are a people deeply invested in past and future, we are not a people whose mantra is “stay in our three -foot world.” We are so heavily tied to the past and so hopeful about the future. Nevertheless, once a year on Rosh Hashanah we follow Hashem’s lead and take that approach and say to ourselves: Today is not about past or future, today is about being the best we can be today... באשר הוא שם! Today IS about staying in our three-foot world!

On Rosh Hashanah, Hashem says to us: Today, drop everything outside of this moment. Drop all of what came before this moment and after this moment, drop all of the excuses and the distractions and the rationalizing and the guilt over the past and the planning for things in the future that will never come to fruition and take a good honest look at yourself now stripped of all of that and just show me who you really are and what you are really capable of.

On Rosh Hashanah, Hashem says to us: Today, Hayom Harat Olam, today is the day of the creation of humanity and therefore the day of the continuous recreation of humanity. This is the day when you have the chance to start from scratch and recreate yourself unhindered by anything you have done before or anything you will do after.

On Rosh Hashanah, Hashem says to us: Today, live not in the shadow of your past or in the dream of your future but live right now in this moment. Fully and honestly and passionately figure out who you are, who you would like to be, and how ready you are to do the right thing...how ready you are to crown Hashem as your king and then...Be that person even just for today...

AND THAT IS WHAT I WILL JUDGE YOU ON

What an amazing gift! What a privilege! What a liberating thought! For one day we are freed of the burden of past and future and get to live to the max in this moment and to stay in our three- foot world. What a brilliant strategy for real change.

In many ways this is the year that such a philosophy might be more within our reach because if there is anything that living in a COVID world has taught us, it is that we must do just that.

COVID has taught us by force that the past and the future are elusive, and beyond our reach, and beyond our control and that the only thing that is certain is the present.

Six months ago, our whole world changed. One might even say our whole world fell apart. Our world came to a screeching halt and completely stopped perhaps for the very first time (in my lifetime).

Our lives, our routines, our schedules, our habits, our expectations, and our plans all got turned upside down and thrown to the wind as our world chaotically starting shifting this way and that way, up and down and inside out!

All of a sudden, the very basics of life had to be reevaluated and relearned: Everything from how to get toilet paper, to how to work remotely, to how to go to the grocery store, to how to safely go to the doctor or hospital, to how to walk in the street, to how to talk to a friend, to how to zoom and chat and hangout..., to how to live in your home that is unexpectedly a home, an office, a school, a restaurant, a movie theatre, and a gym all at the very same time!

This strange COVD reality isn’t comfortable for anyone and with all the turmoil:

• I know I am feeling trepidation about what could happen if my loved ones and congregants and friends get sick.
• I know I am feeling fear about having to make decisions for me and my kids and my community every day countless times a day that could have life or death consequences – decisions that often have no precedent and no right or wrong answers.
• I know I am feeling uncertain about where we go from here and how this all ends.
• I know I am feeling sad about the separation from family and dear friends especially around holidays and birthdays and yearly traditions.
• I know I am feeling surprised, maybe naively, about how this could happen in our advanced society.
• I know I am feeling vulnerable as I am reminded of how little control I have and we as a society have over the world and over our lives and over nature.

This is a very tough place to be in and in this tough place many of you, like me, probably spend much of your time thinking about any place but here and about any time but this one.

We spend time thinking about the past and how things used to be when we were able to walk without masks and fogged glasses and actually see people’s facial expressions, when we had Shabbos meals and shul and kiddush and smachot with friends and family. We spend a lot of time mourning for the lives we are currently unable to live.

And when we are not bemoaning the loss of the life of our past, we are dreaming about the future – when this will end, what it will look like and will our world return to the way it was or forever be different.

As our minds spin and spin from past to future and back to past again, I imagine that you, like me, always come back to the very same conclusion: I have no idea what will be.

The past is in the past, the future is uncertain and the only thing I have is the present:

• A present that is hard but is also quite real and honest.

• A present in which I have learned and discovered so many things about myself that were

  covered over for a long time and hidden by the distractions and busyness of life.

  • I have discovered the “warts,” the bad traits about myself that I got away with and

    let go of for way too long and ignored but now cannot escape.

  • I have also discovered some of the gifts and the treasures of my life, and my home, and my family that also got lost in the busy shuffle of the last many years.

  • I have discovered the beauty and simplicity of a quieter life that is more focused inwards on the home than outwards on the big wide world that is ours to conquer.

The changed reality, as hard as it is, has given us a chance to see ourselves for the first time from a new perspective. COVID has forced us to temporarily stop relying on the past and the future and live with honesty in this moment and confront who we really are right now and then try and be the best we can be.

This Rosh Hashanah we must do exactly the same. This Rosh Hashanah We must follow Hashem’s lead of באשר הוא שם and stop focusing our teshuva on the guilt over our past and the unattainable goals of our future and just focus on being fully honest about who we are right now and then try to be the best we can be in the present. Decide who you can be, what your best self looks like and then act that way for the one day of RH (or two days) and see how it feels.

A moment like that which is so lived in the present, which is so intense, which is so honest and pure.... is one to relish. A moment like that is a gift. A moment like that can transform us and our year ahead.

Moments like that will not come again – let’s not allow that moment on Rosh Hashanah to pass us by.

I would like to end with an amazing quote from R Wolbe. He says:

Every action we take on Rosh Hashanna sows a seed that will sprout into something in the year to come. What a gorgeous and powerful thought! I know I am going to keep thinking that over and over this Rosh Hashanna with the hope that it will help me rise to be my best self.

Let us all rise to be our best selves in the present of Rosh Hashanna and hope that every breath, movement, action, word, tefilla, mitzvah, of that day will sow thousand upon thousand of wonderful seeds of goodness that will sprout and flourish and shape the year ahead into one of beauty and safety and holiness and health for all of us.

May Hashem see our powerful moment of being in the present, of being our new recreated best selves that can reach as high as we want and may He smile, and may He kvell and may He realize how much potential we have to live more days that way and i”yh grant us the time to do so.

Wish you all a Shana Tova, Ktiva Vchatima Tova and good Yom Tov!