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A spiritual comment and prayer to begin the day with Rabbi Warren Elf

Good morning, Shabbat shalom and Happy New Year.

Happy New Year because the Jewish New Year started this week, the year 5 thousand, 7 hundred and eighty three. At least that is the number of years since the creation of the world according to the Rabbis of old, using the information they gleaned from the Bible. However I would want to agree with this figure in scientific or geological terms.

And that’s not the only anomaly in terms of the Jewish year. Our New Year, Rosh Hashanah, is actually the first day of the seventh month of the Hebrew calendar.

The Torah tells us that the first day of the seventh month is holy and a special day. But Torah, our holy scripture, does not tell us why. The early Rabbis, worked out, or maybe chose, that God created the world on that day because it sort of fitted and they probably needed to ascribe some significance to this special day referred to in the Bible.

Either way, we are now in the 10 days we call The Days of Awe, leading up to Yom Kippur, the Day of Atonement. Which means that our New Year is not a time of massive celebration and parties – of course there is food; there is food with every Jewish festival.

But this is a time of year where we can review our lives, say sorry for things we have done wrong and possibly press the reset button! We can return to the lives we want to lead or believe that we should be leading. And today, Shabbat Shuvah, the Sabbath between Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur is the day traditionally Rabbis give one of the longest sermons of the year to remind people of our responsibility to repent, and aim to be better this coming year.

So God, I pray that I do not go on too long today in the synagogue but that I am succinct in encouraging myself and my fellow worshippers to make use of these ten days to review our lives. I pray that You help us to resolve to be the best people we can be and to try to help make our world a better place.