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Rosh
HaShana,
5771/2010
A
Teaching by Sarah Yehudit Schneider
R.
Kruspedai said in the name of R. Johanan: Three books
are opened [in heaven] on Rosh HaShana, one for the
wicked, one for the righteous, and one for the
benoni.1 The thoroughly righteous and
the thoroughly wicked are inscribed straightaway, the
former in the Book of Life and the later in the Book of
Death. The benoni’s fate hangs in the scales
until the final reckoning on Yom Kippur. If he
uses that time to generate merit, he’ll be written into
the Book of Life. But if his demerits supersede,
his name appears in the Book of Death. (TB RH
16b)
This
teaching on Rosh HaShana is certainly true, but not
obviously so, for its exceptions outnumber its proofs.
There are just too many holy souls fated with early
demise, and far too many psychopaths that prosper year
after year. And then there is the holocaust (and pogroms
and the like) where righteous millions die in their
prime while their slayers live to a ripe old age. The
Talmud is teaching a much more subtle
truth.
There
is quantity of life and quality of life, and the Talmud,
here, speaks to the latter. Yet while quantity of life
is easy to measure, quality of life is hard to pin down.
Its criteria vary from person to person and also shift
with the stages of life.
A survey of folks throughout the world identified nine
ingredients to Quality of Life: 1) health, 2) nurturing
and stable family life, 3) community affiliation, 4)
material wellbeing, 5) political stability, 6) climactic
comfort, 7) job security, 8) political freedom, 9)
gender parity.2 Yet even these
“universal” keys to the good life cannot be what
the Talmud has in mind. True, our Rosh Hashana
liturgy does include prayers for these things in
its litany of requests. Yet, is that really how we
gauge whether a person made the cut—whether he entered
the category of tsadik3 and earned an
inscription in the Book of Life? If a person has a hard
year or dies young do we assume he was judged wicked on
the Days of Awe? No, it is clearly not that
simple. There are just too many exceptions to make
lack-of-suffering a meaningful benchmark of spiritual
standing.
So if it doesn’t guarantee longevity or freedom from
travail then what is the point of this Book of Life? Why
should I strive to be listed there? To answer that
question we need to explore the Talmud’s definition of
“life” which most likely derives from the Torah’s use of
that term:
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“…Life and death I set before
you... Choose life!”(Deut.
30:19) |
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When
the Torah urges us to choose life, it is not merely
banning suicide. It is directing us to choose eternal
life, to prefer options that enhance the soul, for these
are everlasting acquisitions. Material profits are
finite. We cannot take them past the grave. They are
subject to death. Self-actualization, integrity,
generosity, courage, wisdom—these are gains that enrich
the soul, and as such, they are permanent possessions.
They are death-resistant profits. The Torah is not
asking us to renounce the world and become ascetics, but
it is exhorting us to give priority to eternally
enduring benefits when calculating the pros and cons of
a range of options. “Choose life” means: invest your
assets in death-resistant securities, in ventures that
enrich the soul.
Throughout the ten Days of Awe we add requests for
“life” into our daily Amida.4 (This is
apart from the special liturgy recited on the holydays
of Rosh HaShana and Yom Kippur
themselves):
“Remember
us for life, O King Who desires life, and
inscribe us in the Book of Life, for your sake, O
Living G‑d.” [inserted into 1st
blessing of Amida].
“Who
is like you…Who recalls His creatures mercifully for
life.” [inserted into 2nd blessing of
Amida].
“Inscribe
all the children of your covenant for a good
life.” [Inserted into 18th blessing of
Amida].
“In
the book of life, blessing, and peace, good
livelihood, good decrees, salvations and consolations,
may we be remembered and inscribed before You—we and
Your entire people the Family of Israel for a good
life and for peace.” [inserted into
19th blessing of
Amida].
It is clear that the primary striving of these special
New Year’s prayers is to be inscribed in the coveted
(and mysterious) Book of Life. Yet, while most of us
interpret this as a plea for health and longevity, this
is probably not the Talmud’s prime intent.
It seems more correct to view these words as a prayer
for HaShem to help us accomplish the tikunim that
are going to appear on our task list this year through
life-empowering choices. The Torah’s #1 key to quality
of life does not show up in the nine-point survey
mentioned above. It is the gift of identifying the most
spiritually productive option in any given moment and
then picking it with a whole heart because that really
is our first choice. It is the boon of genuinely
preferring the option that packs the most “life”—that is
maximally in line with spiritual law—for that is the one
that is sure to produce the most enduring good.
Every
soul comes into the world with a list of sparks that it
must raise. A spark is a
sliver of consciousness. The totality
of sparks attached to our soul is the sum-total of
lessons we will absorb in our days whether from life
experience or book learning. We acquire wisdom
through wrong choices as well as right ones. When
we grab for a glittery pleasure and it turns to grit in
our mouth or we suffer purgation for a wrong action that
nobody even saw—the discomforting consequences of these
mistakes burn spiritual law into our nerve net, and
thus, despite ourselves, sparks get raised. Yet this
journey through the underworld is not the path of life,
for so much of the energy expended and pleasure enjoyed
gets obliterated in the purgation. The residue of
eternally enduring value is minute compared to the drama
of the ordeal and the losses (i.e., death) it
produced. Some portion of the sparks of every life
will be raised through this adverse route. (And
for some unfortunate souls, it could even be the bulk.)
Yet, the point is to learn from these falls and failures
and make wiser decisions next time…to better recognize
the path of life and choose it at the next
turn.
For
we also gather sparks along the high road, by
sacrificing for integrity and picking the most
spiritually productive option. That is the “path
of life” and that is what it means to be written into
the Book of Life: where our commitment to life, as
demonstrated by our deeds and sincerity of prayer,
evokes a reciprocal response from on high. HaShem
commits Himself to help us choose life, by providing
opportunities from without and guidance from within.
So
I want to bless us, as individuals, as a community and
as members of the larger world community that we should
cultivate an insatiable taste for life (in the Torah’s
sense of the word)….a passion for life that is pure
enough and potent enough and integrated enough to get us
inscribed in the Book of Life, so that every decision we
make this year should take us along the path of life and
bring us, via the most efficient and least painful route
possible, to the Tree of Life. And together we should
greet the harbinger of life…the messianic redeemer who
will carry us across the threshold to the era of eternal
life.
כתיבה
וחתימה טובה לכל העולם כולו
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1Benoni – Literally, Intermediate Person.
The Talmud uses the term here to indicate someone whose
merits and debits are equally
balanced.
2
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quality-of-life_index.
3
Tsadik is the Hebrew term for the
thoroughly righteous person in the Talmudic quote
above.
4 Amida is the standing
prayer of (now) nineteen blessings that is the central
prayer in the liturgy. | 
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