Post Rosh Hashana Thoughts

A couple of thoughts on our way from Rosh Hashana to Yom Kippur.

• First, a recommendation. I read most of the YU produced Rosh Hashana To Go booklet, and while I enjoyed some articles more than others, the overall quality of the publication was outstanding. Many of the articles are still relevant for Yom Kippur, and there are still copies in a box outside the Student Activity Center. A specific highlight for me was a sermon by Rabbi Norman Lamm that he gave in 1962 about the three different women whose crying we discuss on Rosh Hashana. He masterfully contrasts the tears weaving top notch drash with relevant, timeless lessons and fascinating political messages about Cuba, communism and Soviet Jewry that provide an interesting window into his world nearly 50 years ago. I can't wait for the Sukkot edition which we will have available next week, highlighted by an article by our own Mrs. Knoll.
• My first year in Maayanot at the Yom Iyun I gave a shiur tracing the roots of Rosh Hashana as a Yom Teshuva, as we don't find it described that day. My theory was pretty involved, and went back to Mitzrayim. While I stand by the shiur, I wonder if it might trace back even further. We repeatedly refer to RH as the day that the Earth was created (which should be familiar to many of you from your 9th grade Gemara class). This is one opinion among the tana'im, but even according to this tana, it would be the the anniversary of the creation of man on day 6 - not heaven and Earth on day 1. If so, RH is also the anniversary of the first sin - the disaster of the Eitz Hada'at. The Midrash teaches that Adam did Teshuva for this sin, and was forgiven. While I don't know when he did the Teshuva, at the very least it is the anniversary of sin, which is a good reason by itself to institute it as a Yom Teshuva.
• I hope you all saw the inaugural edition of this year's Maayanei Torah, under the new leadership of Mrs. Shapiro and Talia Friedman. It was a great issue, highlighted by two consecutive essays about the connection between Purim and Yom Kippur (Yom kiPurim). Some other answers that I like are the following: Generally, Jewish holidays are split between Torah and prayer on one hand, and festive celebration, expressed by eating and drinking on the other. Purim and Yom Kippur split the two days, where we have Taanit Esther preceding Purim, and a mitzva to eat on erev Yom Kippur. My favorite approach is that just as on Purim we where masks & costumes to symbolize that our bodies are also fake coverings that mask our true selves, our souls. That is why we (not you!) drink, because the wine reveals the true individual (נכנס יין יצא סוד). So too on Yom Kippur, we dress and act like angels, but our message to Hashem is that today is not the day of charades - this is the true us. Really, at our core, we are pure (אלקי נשמה שנתת בי טהורה היא). It is the rest of the year that we masquerade as sinners due to the difficulties that we encounter revealing this true self, but our essence is the Yom Kippur version.