Rosh Hashanah Reflections

Rosh Hashanah is the holiday we need right now.  

On Rosh Hashanah, the shofar blasts through the noise of our day-to-day lives — a spiritual alarm clock awakening us anew, and urging us to confront ways we’ve been complacent and accepted the status quo. With the shofar’s primordial sounds, we connect back to ourselves, to our community, and to the stories that have carried our people into and through each new year.

The biblical narratives we read on Rosh Hashanah feature women, children, and families navigating periods of uncertainty and fear. On Rosh Hashanah, we tell the stories of Sarah, Hagar, and Hannah, women whose experiences are shaped by their struggles to become parents and to provide for their children’s wellbeing. 

Sarah, after years of hardship, laughs at the prospect of giving birth at advanced maternal age. Cruelly expelled from her home, Hagar tries to create the best life possible for her son. And Hannah struggles for years to conceive, praying with all her might to bring a child into the world, making many sacrifices along the way.

It is impossible to encounter their narratives of longing and loss and not think of the parallels to so many stories unfolding today in our own backyards. We face a maternal health care crisis in one of the most advanced countries in the world. And the issues that are core to our movement — demanding reproductive freedom, fostering safer communities, and ensuring basic dignity for all — feel more urgent than many of us can recall in our lifetimes. 

Every year on Rosh Hashanah, we encounter Sarah, Hagar, and Hannah in our Torah and Haftarah readings. We consider what their struggles, prayers, and hopes for the future generations might call up from us as the inheritors of their stories. 

At NCJW, we work every day to make the world safer for the modern-day versions of these biblical characters. We know that stories like theirs are all too common today — that too many women, children, and families are struggling to meet their basic needs and to live with dignity. And we know, too, that this reality is neither acceptable nor inevitable. 

Rosh Hashanah is indeed a time of looking backward, and reflecting on our past — individually and communally. But critically, it is also a holiday dedicated to looking forward with a sense of hope and possibility. It is a time of insisting through word and deed, that the world can be more just and more loving. 

When the shofar blasts, we remember that we are not the first, and not the last. But we, as links in an enduring chain, must continue to dare to move forward. 

Shanah tovah u’metukah, may this be a good and sweet year.