Ask Haviv Anything - Episode 44: Fateful choices to make in the new year, a comment for Rosh Hashanah

Episode Date: September 22, 2025

Rosh Hashanah is the only Jewish holiday that falls on the first day of the lunar month - that begins in darkness. It is also the holiday most associated in Jewish tradition with great turning-points and new beginnings.The coming year will be a time of great change and momentous decisions. Israel will have some fundamental choices to make.This is a reflection on the holiday, on the state of the war, and on the responsibility that Judaism places upon us to shape our destiny.Today’s episode is sponsored by Unpacking Israeli History, a podcast from Unpacked, an OpenDor Media brand — and one I’ve had the pleasure of joining several times as a guest. Unpacking Israeli History, hosted by my friend Noam Weissman, takes listeners on a journey through Israel’s most fascinating and sometimes controversial moments, offering a fact-based understanding of Israel’s past and present that is both informative and really entertaining.If you’ve been here a while, you know how much I value talking about and learning about Israel without oversimplification. Unpacking Israeli History does just that. It’s smart, nuanced, and it never shies away from complexity. Noam does a remarkable job of taking the headlines we all know, and peeling them back to uncover the deeper story of how we got here.I’m also proud to be a partner of OpenDor Media, the team behind Unpacking Israeli History. Their mission is to meet young Jews and their peers where they are with media that deepens understanding of Israel, Judaism, and the Jewish experience — embracing complexity and fostering informed perspectives. So if you want more of the kind of thoughtful conversation we have here, go follow Unpacking Israeli History at https://unpacked.bio/havivUIH. I think you’ll find it as engaging and meaningful as I do.To support Ask Haviv Anything, please join us on Patreon: ⁠https://www.patreon.com/AskHavivAnything⁠.If you would like to sponsor an episode, please email us at [e-mail]⁠.Musical intro by Adam Ben Amitai.

Hi, everybody. Welcome to Ask Haviv Anything. It's September 22nd, just a few hours before Rosh Hashanah. I was on a two-week speaking to her overseas. I came back home and immediately got my whole family sick. So we missed an episode last week, or this past week, and I wasn't planning on recording anything right now. But I've had a lot of thoughts leading into this Rosh Hashanah, into the holiday that begins now, the Jewish New Year. It's a very special day, and it's a very special, it's frame. with some very important ideas that I think are really going to open a window into how we judge or understand our role in the coming year, a year that is going to be a year of war, a year of disruption, a year of anti-Semitism, a year of suffering of civilians,

a year of a lot of unanswered questions within Israeli society in the Jewish communities of the world, it's going to be a significant year of decisions that will, I think, shape our history for the coming generation. And I want to talk about it, and specifically to talk about what Rosh Hashanah teaches us about these pivots that we face in history. Rosh Hashanah is the only Jewish holiday that falls on a moonless night, right at the beginning of a month on a lunar calendar, meaning when there is no moon in the sky. In a world before electricity, that's the moment of blackest darkness. So what is it about? What does Rosh Hashanah tell us, um, a about ourselves, about our understanding of the world, and therefore about the coming year,

the war in Gaza, the recognition of Palestinian statehood, the state of Israeli politics, our personal lives, ourselves, our enemies, the civilians caught in the middle, the grand questions of this moment, all of them from beginning to end. But first I want to tell you that today's episode is sponsored by good friends of mine, unpacking Israeli history, a podcast from Unpacked, which is part of Open Door Media. It's a podcast I've had the pleasure of joining several times as a guest. It's a podcast I've learned from over the past couple of years. It is hosted by my friend Noam Weissman who takes listeners on a journey through Israel's most fascinating, sometimes most controversial moments.

It is a podcast that strives to offer a fact-based understanding of Israel's past and present that's informative. It's also very well done with a high production value and really entertaining. and the sheer views these videos get kind of tells that story. If you've been here a while and ask Chaviv anything, you know that I value talking about and learning about Israel without oversimplification. Nothing is simple. And if your thoughts on Israel are simple,

you're missing a lot of the story. Real people live in very complex lives and spaces and intersecting problems. Unpacking Israeli history believes that as well and doesn't offer simplification. It offers all the complexities so that you can see the many different signs of things.

It's smart, it's nuanced, it doesn't ever shy away from complexity. And Noam does a remarkable job of taking the headlines we all know and see and hear, sometimes incessantly, sometimes even when we're trying to avoid them, and peeling them back

to uncover the deeper story, the more interesting story about how we got here. I'm proud to be a partner of Open Door Media. the team behind the podcast. I've worked with them on several projects having to do with educating young Jews. That's their mission, to meet young Jews,

to meet their peers of young Jews, the social spaces young Jews move in around the world, to meet them where they are with media that deepens their understanding of Israel, of Judaism, of the Jewish experience, of themselves and their story, in ways that embrace complexity, that give them informed perspectives,

in ways that allow them to take, to have agency, to take control of their narrative. What's wonderful about Open Door Media's content on YouTube is that it's not going to turn a left winger into a right winger or a right winger into a left winger. But it will allow the two to talk to each other because they will have a basic understanding of the baseline from which the different narratives emerge. And that is exactly what we're trying to do here. If you want more of the kind of thoughtful conversations that you hopefully are finding here, follow unpacking Israeli history at unpacked.b-B-I-O-O-B-I-H-H-H-V-H-V-H-V-A-V-V-U-I-H. I think you'll find it as engaging and as meaningful as I do. Let's get into Rosh Hashanah.

Rosh Hashanah, the sages tell us, is a day of tremendous pivots. It is the day, the Talmud says, in which Joseph was released from Pharaoh's prison. That's the beginning of a tremendous shift in the state of, certainly in Joseph's life, but in the story of the Jews and in the story of Egypt. It's the day in which Abraham bound Isaac in order to sacrifice him to God. When God himself had to then intervene, an angel had to call out Abraham's name twice, to stop that sacrificial impulse, that deep faith that was willing to sacrifice a child. One of the evils that ethical monotheism tried to root out in the ancient world took a specific stand against.

It is from those dark places that a new light kindles, that a new year is born. There's another thing that happened on Rosh Hashanah according to the tradition. God made the first human, who then stood before the world, placed there by God, and began to name it, and began to build meaning out of this emptiness, out of this thing that they found themselves in, out of a meaning-neutral universe. That storytelling capacity of the human to create meaning was born on Rosh Hashanah as well. It is a day described in the Torah as Yom Trua, the day of the sounding, of the horn, its oldest descriptor and purpose. The name that came before, all the interpretations

and all the stories placed on it by the sages, was that the shofar blast sounds on that day. The ram's horn is blown on that day. And we are told that that ram's horn, that sounding of the trumpet, if you will, the ancient trumpet, is meant to awaken us to repentance and to awe, awe in the old sense of fear of great things, fear of the ground of the great and the numinous. And that awakening then turns us to introspection, repentance, and correction ten days later on Yom Kippur. Walshoshana is the day of the jarring cry of the ramshorn in the deepest darkest night, and the awakening to new light that that causes,

through correction, through the choosing of a new path. It's not an accident, by the way, that it's a ram's horn in the story. It's a reminder that Talmud says of the ram in the thicket at the binding of Isaac. After the angel tells Abraham not to sacrifice Isaac, Abraham lifts his eyes and sees a ram in the thicket and sacrifices the ram instead of the son, instead of his child. And the Talmud tells us, the sages tell us, that ram had been in that thicket from creation itself.

In other words, there was never not another way. The ram's horn, the to-a-a, the cry that the Torah says is the heart of this day, is meant to jar us, to startle us, to make us look around, to see that there's always a ram in the thicket, or there's always an alternate path, that the new year is a fork in the road,

always and forever. It is never not a moment for pivoting, for questioning, for noticing that alternatives were built into creation itself. Welcome to Rosh Hashanah. We are in the depths of war, despair, rage, disruption, dysfunction. We all live on social media, constantly being fed the insanity. There's new anti-Semitism out there in the world, making massive headwinds. Jews are suddenly questioning their position, even in Western,

societies, there is pain all around, uncertainty all around. And in this darkness, in this darkest of holidays, in the pivot when man was first made, in the fulcrum of things, I'll get to the point. The birth of new light becomes possible. New paths are revealed, and we are startled by the blows of the horn into seeing them, into seeing the more beautiful, sweet, or safer, more peaceful, even if it seems impossible now, path forward. I want to just make a couple of comments in this vein about what's happening right now. There's a diplomatic storm out there of recognition of a Palestinian state. Kirstarmer of Britain and Macron of France and Australia and Portugal, and I'm sure I missed half of you, and I apologize if I missed some country that

tried to join in on it. The question for people like me, for most Israelis, I think, isn't whether the recognition of a Palestinian state is a good thing or a bad thing in some inherent fundamental sense. It is which Palestinian state you're recognizing. What comes of it? What will actually be its practical effect? Hamas has already declared and announced multiple times. This is a great victory for its decision to stick out the war. It's a great victory for its decision as Hamas accounts, including the Kuds News Network, including Razi Hamad himself, the spokesman of Hamas at this moment, talked about how the importance of the sacrifice of the martyrs of Gaza, the destruction of Gaza through this strategy, of tunnels and never-ending

explanations to Israelis that this is a zero-sum war that goes on forever until their destruction. And the deep burying at a scale unprecedented in the history of warfare, of all military assets. Gaza's 500 kilometers of tunnels into which this immense bomb shelter system, into which no civilian has been allowed to step foot in 23 months. That whole strategy of massive sacrifice.

That strategy has been vindicated. Hamas has said out loud, explicitly, publicly, and repeatedly. It then published videos of itself assassinating Palestinians who opposed them. On the day of the recognition by France, in Britain. It tried in Gaza to make sure that the story of the recognition is the story of

Hamas's triumph and the inadvisibility of standing against them. And so it's deep folly. It's foolish. It's understandable. What could Britain possibly do? What could France possibly do? And if you do nothing, there are these domestic constituencies that'll be angry with you. You don't trust the Israelis to do the right thing in the end, so you want to do something. something, but what they actually chose to do incentivizes both sides to continue the fighting. The Israelis have less to lose. What do you got on them? Recognition of a Palestinian state?

And Hamas is absolutely vindicated. I think it genuinely believes that. It's not spin. Starmor and Macron and others have said, no, no, this is going to sideline Hamas. Our demand for this new state is that it not have Hamas in its politics. no role, I think was the quote from Starmor, as if Starmor has any say, as if Hamas doesn't make that decision. It's deeply foolish. I'll say more than that.

If you're serious about a future Palestinian state in which Hamas has no role, the only path there anyone has been able to articulate, this is a challenge. Kamadas articulate a better path. The only path anyone has been able to articulate is the actual defeat of Hamas. if it is impossible, as some have argued,

then there is no path without a Hamas dominated Palestinian state. If it is possible, the Israelis had better accomplish it, if only to allow the establishment of a Palestinian state, even if Netanyahu has come out now and said there won't be one. But the only chance it could possibly have of a different constellation of Israeli politics, establishing any kind of Palestinian state, stepping back enough for there to be a palatinaw not believing, as most is the vast majority of Israelis do now,

that a Palestinian state is a Hamas state that will be in a forever war in a zero-sum pattern until one of side dies. That is what Israelis believe Hamas is capable of doing and is the only thing Hamas is capable of doing. There's no other option or path before us as long as Hamas is there. You'd need a whole new Israeli understanding

and it would have to be driven by a whole new Palestinian understanding and none of that becomes possible until you create the space for it by the destruction of Hamas. And so Netanyahu's strategy and the Macron's Starmer strategy are not opposite strategies.

Even if they claim to be, even they pretend to be, even if they each, for their domestic constituencies have to posture in that way, they are actually all headed in the same direction. And it's a direction

that offers very, very little good news for Gaza in the coming months. It's a direction in which Hamas actually has to be crowbarred out, even as it is told by every single pro-Palestinian or sympathetic voice

out there in the world, that it is right to stick it out. It is a perfect storm. If you assume the Israelis are heartless, don't give Hamas every incentive to continue. and if you believe the Israelis are doing their best and don't have other options or are amenable to another way to handle this if Hamas can actually be convinced to leave then convince Hamas to leave pressure it to leave

tell a story in which it is losing Palestine not winning Palestine the trouble of course is that those who need to hear all that who need to understand that Hamas negates international pressure on Israel by forever telling Israelis this is a zero-sum war to the death for all time aren't going to take it seriously when I say it or when any Israeli says it. But it's true whether or not the international community understands it. The recognition of Palestine isn't the problem. 140 countries recognize Palestine before this whole wave.

The question is which Palestine? Because one sort of Palestine is permanent self-destruption. A Palestine that refuses to live alongside in Israel, whose fundamental story and identity is Israel's destruction. The destruction of this tribe of refugees who know only one thing about history, which is that the only thing that ever saved them, was their own ability to stand shoulder to shoulder

and defend themselves. This is a Palestine that can never build itself and can never stop fighting to destroy Israel, and cannot destroy Israel, and therefore is a permanent trap, driven by a religious ideology and vision that drives Hamas. Don't lock Palestinians into that. Your pressure on Israel is meaningless as long as Hamas runs Palestine

and just saying the Palestine I recognize has no Hamas in it is you copping out of the responsibility to be wise. It is folly. But here's where it all connects to Rosh Hashanah. A great many Westerners seem to grasp this. seem to understand. Hamas is a problem, the problem, the great obstacle. There's an order of operations here.

A huge number of people on the left I personally have spoken to are totally amenable to the idea. Maybe I'm very convincing, or maybe they think this anyway, which is what I think is happening, that you must first remove Hamas when it is no longer reasonable for the Israelis to think that everything Palestinian is an argument for their own destruction, then you swing around the pressure on the Israelis.

But if you try and put the pressure on the Israelis, you build up Hamas and you neutralize your own pressure on the Israelis. There's an order of operations here. Most people get that, left and right out there in the West. There was a wonderful poll in the telegraph about the British recognition of Palestine, which I thought was astonishing. Not that the vast majority of conservatives in Britain, over 90%,

do not want a recognition of a Palestine that is without condition. In other words, without a condition that Hamas can't run it. But that 89% of labor voters don't want that kind of a recognition. Now, it's not clear what kind of condition Britain can put on the recognition. You recognize or you don't recognize. Britain has no say in who actually rules Gaza. But the sense that labor rights, labor voters, understand that Hamas is a problem

understand that the argument about the order of operations who you pressure first and who you pressure second is at least a reasonable argument given who and what Hamas are that tells me that there is enormous potential for an Israeli story to be effective in those audiences

to tell that story there's enormous potential to shape the policy environment in the international community in ways that actually pressure Hamas, rather than reinforce and bolster Hamas against its internal enemies so he can start murdering everyone

who stands against them within Palestinian society or against Israel. Israel not looking evil. That used to be a slogan at Google. Don't be evil. Israel not looking evil. Not talking in this bombast

to domestic constituencies in narrow parties, but talking about the day after in Gaza, the rebuilding of Gaza, the good future Gaza can have, is an Israel that can turn all great many of the people in the middle who are unsure, unconvinced, who don't think Israel is destroyable and do think Hamas is a recipe for permanent disaster. It's in Israel that can turn a great many of them against Israel's enemies.

Israel doesn't need the love of the world. We don't stand and beg for the right to exist. But at least deny the enemy. Deny the enemy, the support, given to the enemy by large parts of the world thinking that Israel is heartless, has no future for the Palestinians, sees no better day after, that there is no meaning to this demolition war in Gaza. A demolition war in a 40-kilometer territory penetrated and perforated by 500 kilometers of tunnels is a reasonable military strategy, but it is also a massively destructive one.

tell the story, the Allies' own story in Germany in World War II, massively destructive strategy, and a reasonable one. But the point was that Germany could be rebuilt after denotification, and Gaza can be rebuilt after denotification. And Nizhanyahu won't say that because of his coalition. And no Israeli is willing to establish a Palestinian state until it is a fundamentally different concept. And then the Palestinians one huge enormous advantage.

They're a great asset, the thing that remains when all the conversations are done, which is that there are millions of them and they are there and they're not going anywhere and the Israelis don't want them to be Israeli and they don't want to be Israeli. That remains and has to be dealt with and resolved and there are a hundred ways to do it. And I know I'm the last optimist in the Middle East on this point, but I still am one. And the benefits that accrue to Israel from a solution, from being amenable to a solution,

capable of a solution, without losing any of its assets, without losing any of its security, because a fundamental change was actually driven in Palestinian society, all of that becomes possible. Because Israel does not speak to the masses out there in the world, because it has no voice, because the prime minister doesn't lay out the case,

and Israel has no information war capability, of any kind, literally to the point of not having English language spokespeople of any competence. This week, the cabinet approved Cabinet Secretary, Zahi Braverman, to be the ambassador to Britain. I know nothing terrible about Zachie Braverman. I mean, there's a lot of complaints, but he's a man in the political system. Obviously, there's complaints. But he's replacing his predecessor, Cipi Hottovelli, and he shares with Cipi Hottowelie not such great English and not a very great interest in actually fighting a serious information war. We don't need ambassadors to carry letters between governments anymore. Everybody's got email. We need ambassadors to

manage the story. And we're appointing people who don't know how to manage the story, because it's just a job for people close to the prime minister. So Israel has no interest, no capacity to even imagine what an information war policy would look like. In the last two, three months, for the very first time Israel's ambassador to the United States. Yechir Leiter has been making some serious interviews saying some important things. That's it. I can't find a whole lot more happening out there. The foreign ministry does nothing.

And that means that the elites of the West, especially on the left, that lean against Israel, nobody really has to challenge that. Nobody really has to push his back against these elites who are ideologically convinced that the West is evil and Israel's an avatar of the West and therefore Israel itself can be dismissed as innately inherently evil because it's us and we hate ourselves. And just the simple point

that there's an order of operations. Hamas really will keep this war going forever even if the Israelis are good. If you think they're evil, war goes on forever with Hamas. If you think they're good, war still goes on forever with Hamas. We're seeing the effects of that. It's not just the recognition. Israel faces a vote about its membership in Waifa

and European soccer. There's a concerted push to remove Israel from Eurovision, the song contest. A great many of the conversations at the UN General Assembly on Israel, on the Palestinians, will be happening over Rosh Hashanah. Jews will not be in the room. Is that accidental? Maybe. Maybe not. Who cares?

The Jews are not in the room. The Israeli debate, discourse, argument is not in the room. If the publics understand out there in the West that Hamas really is evil, There's room for maneuver here. It's time for Israel to make the decision to seriously maneuver. It's time for it to have a story, choose its story for the future of Gaza, not leave it in a permanent state of Schrodinger's cat, of superposition of quantum states,

Smaltrich pushing from one end with Ben-Gvier, center-right pushing from another, the people who, the people who like Netanyahu want an alliance with Saudi Arabia, trying to kind of push but can't because they'll lose their coalition if smaltridge is convinced he can't potentially be fighting for Gaza free of Palestinians. The inability of Israel to make a decision. The inability of Israel to have a policy means it cannot tell a story, which means it cannot carve out the space that is available to it.

In the region, there are two countries that each represent opposite trajectories. We have Egypt massively arming in the Sinai. There are new runways being paved in the Sinai. There are underground missile silos being built in the Sinai. All of these are complete violations of the Israeli-Egyptian peace treaty of 1979. We have no evidence that there are missiles in those silos, but there are silos suddenly. This is all a report in Axios by Barack Ravid, in which the Israelis have been arguing to the Americans that all this new military infrastructure is a violation of the treaty but also is actually worrying.

Egypt is investing a lot in building war-fighting capabilities on its frontier with Israel. Why? Now, I did a whole episode with Maria Mwachba explaining the Egyptian government's precarious position, the Egyptian public's thinking on Israel after the Gaza war, explaining why it would have to look belligerent to the Israelis and why that doesn't mean that it wants war. But we also have a dozen officials at varying levels of government, including mayors in Sinai and including officials back in Cairo,

talking about the possibility of war with Israel explicitly. We have a country in freefall. So much of the economy is owned by the army, and so much of that military ownership of so many industries is so much of what's wrong with the Egyptian economy that prevents it from growing, that's sinking Egyptian society deeper and deeper into a crisis that is in economic crisis,

but also a social crisis. and so much Islamism is spreading in that society. If Egypt, a country of 120 million people, the most populous Arab state, explodes, if Sisi's government falls, 10 years down the road, is there really no war between Israel and Egypt? We're sure of that?

Why are they arming? Why are they building? A country that can no longer feed its population without the world's help. As it sinks, one of the things I learned in my history studies at university is that when you see monumental, building, especially by empires with grand narratives of their own glory or dictatorships,

that's usually a sign of the beginnings of collapse. Athens built the Parthenon at the beginning of the collapse. Egypt has built in the last few years a spectacular sprawling presidential palace, even as the country struggles to feed its people. and at the same time you have another country, Syria. Syria's president is headed to the UN General Assembly for the first time ever.

The Assad family never went. It didn't want to face critique in New York. It sent a foreign minister, it sent some junior official to read the speech, but they never actually went. They didn't want to stand before the world, interact with the world. The new Syria wants to,

wants to interact with the world to build out a new future, and that future includes, even after Israeli airstrikes for many months, to remove for the possibility of in Syria there being a monster on the border, as Israeli officials put it, Anu Hezbollah, for example, even after that kind of Israeli operation, which to the Syrian government, the new Syrian government, is a humiliation. Nevertheless, Ashara is willing to have this relationship with Israel,

to move forward on an agreement with Israel. It is a Syria that wants to build itself anew, into a new and different country. Does that mean in 10 years the Islamism of Ashallah doesn't fundamentally define Syrian society and Syria and Israel-oriented loggerheads and possibly even war? I have no idea. Don't ask me about the future in the Middle East. But it is moving in the direction of interaction and of ceasefire and of at the very least a kind of military understanding

and possibly some kind of peace and normalization. I was once told by a Qabad rabbi, I believe he was trying to convince me to put on Thfielan at the time, that it's not about where you stand, it's about which way you're facing, which way you're headed. It is not unreasonable to worry that Egypt is standing with a peace treaty with Israel, close to Israel, and headed away. In Syria, technically a war with Israel, and in some ways more than technically, is facing in the other direction, and headed toward normalization, not out of a love for Israel, but out of a desire to build a new Syria. These are trends in which Israeli agency, once again, as with the publics in the West, can really play a profound role. Israel has options, decisions to make that matter.

And in Gaza itself, there is still the question of the day after and of telling the story of the war, to Israelis, by the way, not just to the war. world. One example from recent days really highlights that point. Gentlemen by the name of Husam Al-Hastal in eastern Han Yunus has something like a hundred gunman under his control and is established an anti-Chamas enclave in Han Yunus, similar to the Abu Shababa enclave in Rafah. He was interviewed on Israeli Channel 12 television and he said in Hebrew, quite good Hebrew by the way, that Hamas and chanunas are incredibly weak. Shattered. They basically run around shooting people in the leg because

then they look like they exist. But they don't actually exist in the sense of being able to actually fight him and destroy his enclave and push back against his gunmen. Lots of Ghazans aren't Hamas, he says. There are many kids. They need to live and grow up without war.

Hamas ruled Gaza for 18 years and brought nothing but war every two, three years, and promised nothing but war. This is him on Israeli television in Hebrew to Israelis. Even our money, he points out, is Israeli money. Gaza never left the shekel, because the shekel is the only stable currency available to it. It would never in its life dream of switching to Egyptian or Jordanian dinars or anything like that. They're not stable and strong enough.

Gaza's only future of prosperity and peace and happiness is a future integrated at least into the Israeli economy. Hussam al-Hastal said himself to the Israelis. Now, that's exactly what Israelis hoped to hear, and he probably understands that, and so we should take it with an enormous grain of salt. And yet, these enclaves are popping up, bottom up. The Israelis aren't doing it. The Israelis, once these enclaves exist,

appear to have been willing to sell them arms or hand them arms. But they didn't create these groups. These groups come from the clans themselves, from the families on the ground. There is potential for a day after in Gaza. Israel should start building it. Folks, Zionism is the idea at its heart, at its deepest, simplest, core, that it is by our own exertions, by our own efforts of our people, our soldiers, our planners, our citizens, our leaders.

It is by the hands of the Jews that the Jews' future will be decided. We must do the wise thing. We must choose the wise direction. all the sacrifices of this war will be retroactively validated if Hamas can be removed and a new day for Gaza can be built

and Israel can be shown as the great victor that can push back against the Islamism, the rot, the extremism that destabilizes everything it touches in the Middle East. And if we can't then it's just more pain as far as the eye can see,

it's time to start the counter campaign, both in the information war and on the ground in Gaza. To explain what it is Israel wants. And one final point. Back to the holiday. The Shma is the prayer uttered multiple times a day. It's the prayer that just says, Shema Israel, Hashem Eloquen, or Hashem I'm one.

God, hear, O Israel, God is our God, God is one. But around those six words in Hebrew are several blessings before and several blessings after. And one of the blessings before includes the line, Amichadesh betuv o'o bechal yom, Tammid ma'sse breshit. Describing God, it says, who in his goodness every day renews the act of creation. The Talmud explains this verse.

God's creation is continuous. There is a proof of God, famous and controversial, because it's not a very strong proof, that there is cause and effect. There is a universe of cons in effect. Well, then there must have been a first cause. But that's a proof, so to speak, an argument that relies on time being launched at one moment and then the system running cleanly forevermore. That's not quite the Jewish perspective. That's a Greek philosophical argument. One of the questions that Jewish philosophers and Jewish thinkers and Jewish mystics,

this is a huge part of Kabbalah, have asked, is not just what started the system, but why should the system continue moment to moment and instant to instant? What gives order in the first place? Maimonides argued that when the Torah begins with, In the beginning, God created. Breshit Barra Eloquim. Breshit, in the beginning.

Technically in Hebrew could both mean in the beginning at the start, and it could mean with using Rishit, the Khasham-Rosh head, using the original source, the fountain head, God created. In other words, God is constantly creating through God's own capacity to create moment to moment. And this is something that my modalities himself reads into the verse, and he's discussing whether or not we should believe Aristotle that the universe was created in a moment in time or the universe is eternal. Aristotle thinks it's eternal and the Torah seems to think that it was created a moment in time and he says we have no way of knowing the actual phrasing of the Torah itself could both be an eternal universe that is created moment to moment for all time or a universe that has a beginning in time. Judaism has a lot of questions that it asks about existence, about being.

It's very strange being, a universe that is limited, created by an infinite unknowable creator beyond the bounds of existence. That doesn't exist in the sense that it cannot have definition because that would be limitation. The overflowing of an infinite perfection into a limited creation, a relationship between a knowable limited being and the infinite unknowable, chaotic thing beyond all order and being in limitation. How does that work? How does a universe exist beyond God so that we can stand in it and turn to God? It's the strange reality built into being itself. It's a paradox of being. We can know nothing about the unknowable thing at the end of all things, the Creator.

We can know nothing except for one great thing. in this paradoxical existence of order in the infinite unordered ultimate unknowable this bubble of being the only thing we can know about the creator is that the creator created this created us that we stand here looking for the creator

and from that point from the one knowable thing we actually have that data point about the creator that the creator created us, Judaism begins to construct a relationship with the infinite unknowable. So this sense of time and this sense of the world that is a much larger and richer question than where does the universe come from? If the Big Bang was the beginning of the universe, what started the Big Bang? Aha, God, no, it's not that simple. Why should physics continue from moment to moment? What allows a bubble of order and limitation to exist in the infinities that should

not be capable of producing orders, right, bubbles of order. There's a membrane between order and infinite chaos. What preserves the membrane? What keeps physics working moment to moment? And the sages tell us that we are renewed moment to moment by God. Creation, if it can happen in an instant, must happen at all times. And that is the precious gift. time. Time is the divine will

expressed in the creation. It is creation itself in the end. And therefore every moment mechadesh bachol yom ma'sse breschit who in his goodness renews daily continually the work of creation. And therefore every moment is a beginning. Every new year is a new creation. Every shofar blast is a jarring attempt to blast us out of our complacency, to jar us, to make us look up and see the ram and the thicket, to strip away from us our forgetting

that time is limited and precious. Our cathedrals are not in space, our cathedrals are in time, because that is the holy thing. and we rely on habits and assumptions and move through the world with inertia because we forget that every moment is the gift. Every moment is a moment of grace. May this Rosh Hashanah, this year of pain, may it give way to new paths, new alternatives, new wisdom, alternatives present since the creation, always available to us.

We are too clever, we were made too clever, to believe that we are ever stuck. May we have the wisdom to choose better, smarter paths. I don't claim to have laid them out here. There are people listening to this who are smarter than me and have better paths than I could even imagine. May we have the wisdom to find them and to pursue them. This is Judaism's great message and great gift,

this new year and every new year. And this moment and every moment. Shana Toba.