Rabbi Nachi Friedman's Rosh Hashanah Message for 2024

The New Year’s Resolution That Works

A story is told about a congregation and community that was plagued with a drought. Many families struggled with hunger as the crops could not be produced. But worse, many families in this town were farmers and relied on their crops not just for food, but for their livelihood. The community united and came to the Rabbi and asked him to help pray for rain. The Rabbi happily agreed and informed everyone to pray with him later this afternoon outside. When everyone arrived, the Rabbi merely shook his head and dismissed the crowd. He informed them to come again tomorrow. The next day the same thing occurred, the rabbi shook his head and told everyone we will try again tomorrow. After a week of this pattern, the community became angry with the Rabbi. “We are starving, our crops are all dying, why do you keep turning us away!” The Rabbi sincerely looked back at the community and said simply “Because no one brought an umbrella.”

For years we have all made New Year’s resolutions. Per a recent Pew study in 2024, 3/10 people make a New Year’s resolution every year. While very few see success in keeping this resolution, the trend appears to be to continue making these attempts. During the Yomim Noraim, the high holidays, we Jews make resolutions as well! For some, this is a perpetual cycle of the high holidays where we accept upon ourselves lofty spiritual goals with the knowledge they might not happen. For many, this seems fake and disingenuous as it’s a trivial game that we play. When the next Rosh Hashanah comes, we experience shame and disappointment in ourselves as we look at our lack of success with despondency.

Rabbi Dr. Schulman (2023) in his book Reimagining Repentance writes that there is a “Mistaken Belief” about high holidays that we are supposed to transform ourselves instantaneously and become completely righteous over 10 days. Rabbi Dr. Schulman writes “If we enter the day with the impossible expectations of instant perfection, we will quickly abandon our efforts”. Rather, our goal should be to approach the holiday looking for incremental improvements and changes that we can make to honestly and realistically improve over the coming year.

Advances in psychology continue to discover better approaches and strategies for “New Year’s resolutions”. Small incremental changes create lasting changes. Goals can be lofty, but the path to reaching our goal must be gradual. James Clear in his book Atomic Habits has a similar message “The difference a tiny improvement can make over time is astounding…a small win accumulates into something much more… Success is a product of daily habits, not once in a lifetime transformations.”

Our goal on Rosh Hashanah is to introspect and find ways to improve ourselves and our lives in small but impactful ways. Just like rain consists of small little drops that accumulate together to irrigate and give life to this world, so too do our small changes over time sustain and provide us a meaningful and successful life. As we prepare for the holy days of the High Holidays we must ask ourselves one question; did you bring your umbrella?

Rabbi Nachi Friedman is the Rabbi of Congregation Anshi Sfard in Mourningside/Virginia Highlands and the School Counselor at TDSA.