פרשת כי תבא וענייני יום הדין
This week’s Parsha alludes to the lofty concept of accepting God as our unequivocal king and leader. The verse says “אתה ה’ האמרת להיות לך לאלוקים…” . Tosafos explain that this word is an indication of kingship and of the acceptance of God as our king. Similarly the Seforno explains in this week’s Parsha how a person can reach the level where he accepts God as his king. He writes that when a person reaches the level where he has no desires for himself, but rather all of his desires are to do the will of God and further his service of God, this emotional and financial commitment demonstrates a total subjugation of self-will which is the ultimate declaration of acceptance of God’s sovereignty.
During Rosh Hashana as well, the primary focus of the day is to accept God as our ruler. We are commanded during Rosh Hashana to recite verses of kingliness in order to present God as our king. Similarly, one of the main reasons the Shofar is sounded is because this is what is done during a coronation ceremony. We must therefore understand why it is that the acceptance of God as our king is of such a crucial nature during the awesome days and why we choose this approach as opposed to trying to defend ourselves from being punished for our bad choices during the year. Furthermore, we must explain the fact that the day of Rosh Hashana seems to be a conflicted day. On the one hand, the Tur explains that the day of Rosh Hashana is a frightening day by virtue of the fact that we must face judgment for all the deeds we have performed during the entire year. On the other hand we are instructed to be happy and jovial during this day, eating festive meals and drinking wine and we should feel confident that we will emerge from the judgment victorious. How are we to understand this dichotomy?
In order to explain the importance of accepting God as our king on Rosh Hashana, perhaps we could look to the inspiring words of the Vilna Gaon. The verse says, “The kingdom belongs to God, and He rules over the nations”. The Gaon explains, whereas regarding the nations of the world, God rules them against their will, when it comes to the Jews, we accept God’s rule upon us willingly. According to the Gaon, we must are required to physically demonstrate our desire for Hashem to rule us to for us to be his loyal subjects. When is the most appropriate time to do this? On the first day of every year which commemorates the first day of creation we perform a ceremony to coronate Hashem as our king. From this Gaon we see that Rosh Hashana is actually a coronation ceremony in which we celebrate the fact that we have an all-powerful king ruling over us and protecting us and we reiterate our faithfulness to Him. This explanation answers our question why this acceptance is so important on the day of Rosh Hashana. It also explains why we can be so happy on such an awesome day. We are scared about the outcome of our judgment, but at the same time, we feel elated that we are lucky enough to have such a lofty ruler for a king and we are excited to coronate Him. (Indeed, the Gaon himself was observed to be very jovial during the shofar blasts).
I would like to now explain why the recognition of God as our monarch is such a powerful defense for the Jewish people based on the Nefesh Hachayim, the student of the Gaon. The Nefesh Hachayim explains in chapter 3 when a person accepts upon himself to dedicate his life to keeping the entire Torah, without considering the personal restrictions such a decision will place on his lifestyle, God in turn removes all obstacles from his path. On Rosh Hashana, when the prosecuting attorney has a lot of material to indict us with, the best defense is to accept upon ourselves this career and to be pardoned on account of our position as the King’s assistant. This behavior by God is very understandable. Picture a man who was working for an American based company and was sent to Tokyo to represent his company there and to do business for his company. While there, he goes about his business not paying any attention to the living expenses that he is accruing. But before he leaves, he decides that while he is in Tokyo, he might as well spend the last week touring the sites of the land. At the end of that week, the hotel manager approaches him for the bill for that week. He asks them what the nature of this bill is. The Manager explains to the businessman that so long as he was a representative of the company, the company was happy to settle all the expenses that he incurred, knowing that he is making them more money then he is costing them. But for the last week, he was on his own and therefore the expenses are his alone as well. Similarly with the Jewish people – so long as we are “company people” watching out only for the interests of God’s “company”, we continue to enjoy the endless “credit” extended to us. But the minute we cease to be these “company people”, and our interests lie in satisfying ourselves, we can no longer expect to have all of our expenditures settled for us. Indeed, during World War II, R’ Chaim himself was completely confident in this particular piece of advice and used to travel freely throughout Europe, convinced that the Nazis couldn’t hurt him due to his complete acceptance of the yoke of Heaven. It once happened that while traveling in an automobile, him and his party where stopped by the accursed Nazis in order to be inspected. R’ Chaim turned to his fellow travelers and declared that someone amongst them had failed to accept the yoke of Heaven properly and this was why they were being stopped. Shortly thereafter, the Nazis let them all go free
May Hashem help us to fully accept Him as our king and merit a good and sweet year!!