Q&A: Rosh Hashanah
Rosh Hashanah
Question
1. What is the point of saying “For the sin that we have sinned before You…” — why are some sins listed and some not?
2. On Rosh Hashanah everyone passes in judgment like sheep in a flock. In what order does that work? By last names? Is it according to time at all? Meaning, is there a time during the holiday when I still haven’t been judged, a time when I am being judged, and a time after the judgment?
Answer
I’m not at all sure there is any judgment on Rosh Hashanah. Certainly I don’t know when or how it happens. In my estimation, nobody knows.
Discussion on Answer
Rabbi Shagar explains that memory itself is the judgment. That is, the very fact that the day is defined in the Torah as “a memorial of teruah” makes it a day of remembrance and therefore a day of judgment. The reason is that memory itself turns a person’s character from potential into actual, and therefore judges him as he is now.
It is also worth noting that the Torah itself relates to this period as the going out of the year, which leads into the beginning of the year; for example in Parashat Mishpatim: “and the Feast of Ingathering at the end of the year, when you gather in your produce from the field” (Exodus 23:16). And as Rabbi Yoel Bin-Nun suggested, the gap between the lunar year and the solar year of 10-plus days means that both Yom Kippur and Simchat Torah mark the end of the solar year relative to the previous year.
Maimonides writes that there is judgment on this day.