Rosh Hashanah

The concept that people generally relate to Rosh Hashana is that of reward and punishment. The idea being, that your relative levels of reward and punishment for the upcoming year, will be based on the mitzvoth and sins your committed in the past year.

The Talmud is quite clear, that this is not the correct way to look at things. The Talmud says that mitzvoth cannot be rewarded in this world; the commentators explain that there is not enough pleasure in this world to compensate you for the performance of even a single mitzvah.

The Book of Life and Book of Death don’t relate 1:1 to good and evil. Many good people die every year, and many evil ones live. Good people who have not yet earned the merit for entrance into the world to come are written into the Book of Life to compensate them for past good deeds, and to give them a chance to do more good deeds so that they can merit entrance into the World to Come in the future.

So then just what is the judgment being don e in Rosh Hashana? The best way to look at it is as an investment model. On Rosh Hashana it is decided how much Divine energy will be invested in you this year. Just like the amount of grant money that will be granted to a researcher is based on how well he used the money last year and how good a plan he has for the coming year; on Rosh HaShana, we all stand before G-d and are Judged on how well we used the opportunities of the past year, then present our plan to G-d on how we will use what is given to us this year.

Remember that the ultimate goal is to earn as much pleasure as possible in the world to come, and the way to do that is by performing mitzvoth in this world. So question is, will G-d hand us these opportunities, or will we have to work harder to find them?

This year, when we all stand before G-d may we receive a judgment that will afford us many opportunities to earn a favorable place in the world to come.