I have driven through these suburbs of Copenhagen and I had no idea that there was such a pattern to the streets and homes. I didn’t have the perspective of this aerial photograph, and couldn’t see the broader picture.

It’s not much different from the way we perceive most of the situations in our lives. We see things from our perspective, often forgetting that there are numerous views of the same situation.

The Netziv (Ha’amak Davar, Genesis 45:5) points out that even after the brothers saw Joseph as the viceroy of Egypt, able to save his entire family, they refused to accept that they had been wrong to sell him! They believed that they were right all along, even in choosing to sell him as they did, because their actions led to his rise to greatness. Even when they had “perspective,” they could not see themselves clearly. They needed to fly up in a helicopter and photograph a bird’s eye view of history to gain true perspective.

I often see how all of us become so caught up in a situation, that we lose perspective. We remain stuck in the way we perceive a conversation or event, and have difficulty repairing relationships with someone who has a different perspective. It’s even more frightening to me when I, or someone else, is willing to be open to a different perspective, but lack the bird’s eye view of the story.

Rosh Hashanah is a perfect opportunity to gain real perspective: When we examine the past year through God’s perspective, we will be able to see the patterns in our behaviors. We will see both the beautiful and the ugly perspectives that we so often miss.

Zichronot connects us to our entire history, stretching back to the first moments of Creation. It offers us the opportunity to fly up in the air and see the much broader picture, often one of great beauty and surprise.

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My friend came to visit from Florida, and rented a bright yellow Camaro. He claims that it was the only car available, but we know the truth. Little did I know how much I would benefit from his rental car:

A stranger stopped me in front of my house, and said, “I understand that you are the most unusual Rabbi. May I ask you some questions?”

“You may ask away. I’m not sure that I am all that unusual.”

“Well, one of your neighbors told me, ‘You must meet my rabbi; he’s the only rabbi I know who drives a bright yellow Camaro!’ So, here I am.”

I spent the next thirty minutes answering a series of profound questions, and made a new friend in the process, all because of Alan’s Camaro.

It’s amazing how simple occurrences can have significant consequences. I realized that I am so wrapped up in evaluating the past year that I have focused only on the big things, and have forgotten the many smaller moments, many of which were as important, if not more, than the big events.

I have decided to take three days to focus on the Camaro events of the past year, so as to remember the significance of even the small, seemingly less important moments. I want to begin treating them with the same respect and attention as I do to the big events. Who knows which will end up being the more important?

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Let us keep in mind what Thrasea, the mildest of men and for that reason also the greatest, often used to say: “Who hates faults, hates mankind.”

- Pliny the Younger, Letters 8.22.2-3

Especially our own faults!

I picture the moment when Chana stoop up to Eli, and defended herself from his confused accusations, as the moment when she stopped hating her failings, and ceased to hate herself.

Her prayers were heard only once she stopped hating herself.

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Checkerboard pieces are indifferent. Dice are indifferent. How do I know in what way they will fall? But once the dice have fallen, to use that cast carefully and skillfully –that is indeed my business.

So also in life, the central task is this: distinguish things, stand them apart, and say, “externals are not in my power; the ability to choose is in my power. Where shall I search after the good and the bad? Within, in what belongs to me.”

But in what is foreign to you, never call anything either good or bad, or profit or loss, or anything like that.

- Epictetus, Discourses 2.5.3-5

“And so, too, the righteous will see and be glad, the upright will exult, and the devout will be mirthful with glad song. Iniquity will close its mouth and all wickedness will evaporate like smoke, when You will remove evil’s domination from the earth.”

The paragraph’s final phrase implies that there are different stages in the end of evil: 1) “You will remove evil’s domination from the earth,” 2) “Iniquity will close its mouth,” and, 3) “Wickedness will evaporate like smoke.” What are the three stages?

1) “When You will remove evil’s domination,” begins when we can recognize that evil is foreign to us: “But in what is foreign to you, never call anything either good or bad, or profit or loss, or anything like that.” We do not need to declare something as evil, but as foreign, not pertinent or meaningful.

We define one of the three major evils as Avodah Zarah, or, worship which is strange to us. Evil’s domination begins with distraction. The Evil Inclination wants us to search out the unnecessary and unimportant so that we lose perspective, and cannot focus on what is important for us.

The moment we realize that its temptations are foreign, we have ended its domination, but not it’s power.

2) “Iniquity will close its mouth,” when we stop paying attention to all of the Evil Inclination’s “well-meaning” seductions. We only stop listening when we realize that the Yetzer Harah is indifferent to us. It doesn’t care about us. It cares for us no more than does a checkerboard piece or dice: “Checkerboard pieces are indifferent. Dice are indifferent.”

3) “And all wickedness will evaporate like smoke,” when we realize that, “I have the internal power to choose. I am responsible for my choices. My work must begin within me.” Evil will disappear when we say, “So also in life, the central task is this: distinguish things, stand them apart, and say, “externals are not in my power; the ability to choose is in my power. Where shall I search after the good and the bad? Within, in what belongs to me.”

The last time I can recall being looked at with such an unbearable hatred was when a gang of Muslims sent two dogs after me in Cologne, Germany, yelling, “Raus, Juden!” That is, until early this morning as Debbie and I were waiting in line at the security checkpoint in Newark Airport.”

The intense emotions immediately began to define my mood. I was angry, resentful and shaken. I personalized the experience and in doing so gave it dominion over me. I turned to the man who was still behind me in line, continuing to stare at me with pure hate, and laughed. I immediately regained control over my mood.

I wondered whether the man was still trying to drill holes in my back with the hatred in his eyes, so I turned around. The minute he saw that I didn’t care, he forgot about me. He was as indifferent as a checkerboard piece or dice. He only cared as long as I gave him the power to bother me..

The entire episode was an internal process. I quickly realized that I had chosen how to react from beginning to end.

How many of the issues I allow to fester in my gut are exactly the same; external, indifferent distractions from assuming Responsibility for my internal process?

How many of my desires for things I don’t need, things that can be dangerous to me, share those same qualities?

I find it interesting that this paragraph of the Rosh Hashanah Amidah begins, “”And so, too, the righteous will see and be glad, the upright will exult, and the devout will be mirthful with glad song.” The clarity necessary to fight the ether Harah, and for the victory that ensues, can only begin when we have found joy in our service of God.

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The preacher Harry Williams believed:

“We all have experience of two types of feeling. There is the feeling which unites us to our world and makes us rejoice in it, an experience of love, of acceptance, of communion. And there is the other kind of feeling which separates us from our world and makes us hate it, an experience of fear, of exile, of discord.

The first of these feelings belongs more truly to us than the second. We are profoundly satisfied by love and communion. We are exasperated by exile and hatred…

The difference between these two types of feeling is the difference between good and evil and evil is secondary, existing not in its own right but as thwarted goodness. ”

I observed people while waiting to be called for my flight. Some people, the ones my wife calls, “All American,” as praise, are warm and social. They are comfortable initiating conversation, sharing life information, and casually laughing and teasing. They are “Connectors,” who lived the “United,” in the U.S.

Then there are the others who, not because they are shy or withdrawn, keep others at a distance. They prefer separation to connection.

When we articulate the Rosh Hashanah version of the world, we speak of unity and connection. We believe tat unity is the natural state.

It’s worthwhile to include some reflection on whether we are primarily connectors or distancers in our Teshuva process. We must first understand and desire to be connectors before we can say, “And they will form on tightly bound group to do Your will with a full heart.” If we are distancers we will never be able to join with a full heart. Saying these words will only distance us from ourselves.

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A more earthbound version of the Devil appears in Dostoevsky’sThe Brothers Karamazov. His character Ivan had a very strong sense of the earth’s evil. Unable to bear the thought of being his father’s murderer, he is overtaken by a bout of fever. In his delirium Ivan meets the Devil in person:

“He was a gentleman, or rather a peculiarly Russian sort of gentleman, qui frisat la cinquantaine, going a little gray, with long thick hair and a pointed beard. He was wearing a brown jacket, well cut enough but already rather the worse for wear, at least three years old and thus completely out of fashion.

His linen and his long cravat all spoke of the well-dressed man, but on closer inspection the linen revealed itself as of a dubious cleanliness, and the cravat as much soiled. His check trousers sat well on him, but they were too light and too close-fitting – the sort nobody wears nowadays; his hat was a white felt one, quite out of keeping with the season. In short, a dandy fallen on bad times.

He looked like one of those landed proprietors who flourished during the days of serfdom; he had lived in good society, but bit by bit, impoverished by his youthful dissipations and the recent abolition of serfdom, he had become a sort of high-class sponger, admitted into the society of his former acquaintances because of his pliable disposition, as a man one need not be ashamed to know, whom one can invite to meet anybody, only fairly far down the table.”

He is unable to bear the thought of being his father’s murderer, and Ivan pictures the devil as faded gentleman, comfortable to invite to any celebration, as long as he sits “fairly far down the table!” I would imagine the devil who can seduce a son to kill his father as powerful, seductive, wealthy, attractive, but certainly not comfortable!

I think of the devil who pushed Peninah to use her religion and connection with God to do anything at all to get Chanah to pray for a child, even verbal torture, as the comfortable fellow in Ivan’s dream. It is the Yetzer Harah of comfortable beliefs practiced without thinking in ways that can hurt others almost kill!

I was sitting in synagogue and overheard someone say to a rabbi, “I really need to speak to you?”

“Why?”

“I love you and respect you and may have done an indirect wrong. Please, please, can I talk to you?”

“Don’t worry, I forgive you,” and he walked away. His student was heartbroken.

The rabbi had an opportunity to teach and heal. His comfortable belief that we should all be naturally forgiving, hurt his student. The student was so hurt that he has not spoken to the rabbi in three years. The faded but comfortable devil stood at a safe distance and smiled.

Sarah observed Hagar’s “laughing,” and the Midrash seems to take that laugh on a roller-coaster of sins, from idol worship to adultery and murder. The Sages understood that the most dangerous devil is in the comfortable laugh, who doesn’t frighten us, in faded glory, and sitting at a distance. Long before Dostoyevsky, the Sages understood that the Devil who can convince Ivan to murder his own father, only gets a chuckle from us when we see him.

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Both the father and his son were different: The father prayed for years to have a child. I knew from numerous conversations that, no matter how much he wanted a child, he was even more desperate for his wife to bear a child. I observed him three times a day at prayer and could see his palpable desperation. Many of us who watched the consistent intensity and power of his prayers, were moved to pray for him and inspired to become better prayors.

His wife gave birth to a son almost twelve years after they married. I recall his words at the Brit Milah: “Our son is living proof of the power of prayer. Thank You, God, and thank you to all who prayed for us. My wife and I pledge to always try to interact with our son as the answer to our prayers.”

The baby is almost thirty years old. I watched him grow up, and carefully observed the interaction between father and son. The father kept the pledge he made at the Brit; he related to his son as the answer to tens of thousands of prayers. He had suffered for this b child. He had fought hard for this child. His relationship with his son is different.

The son is also different. He has been a powerful davener since he first opened a Siddur. He knows how to fight to get what he wants. He is not fazed by suffering.

I imagine that a Yitzchak Avinu (Isaac the Patriarch) who suffered and prayed for ten years before his sons were born was different from a Yitzchak who is simply granted a child. His relationship with his children is different, probably the source of his love for Eisav.

Both Eisav and Jacob are fighters. Both are familiar with suffering. Eisav was more fighter, while Jacob was more the man of prayer.

The Zohar teaches that Jacob stole the month of Elul from Eisav. The month has Eisav’s power to fight, Jacob’s power of prayer, and the ability to steal opportunities, and combine the fighting and the prayer.

Fighting, praying, stealing, and combining all three, are exactly the qualities we need in the month before Rosh Hashanah, as we review the past year and worry about the next.

We must fight ourselves as we confront our Evil Inclination. We must battle against the sense of lost causes just as the father fought for a child despite being told by one doctor after another that it was a lost cause. Yitzchak fought for a child when others would have given up on their lost cause. There is always a part of the Teshuva process that confronts the Lost Cause: we find ourselves facing sins and mistakes that are all too familiar, sins for which we have repented last year and the year before and the year before that. How many times can we face the same sins without feeling that we are a lost cause.

At this point we must call on the fighter of Elul. We call on the fighter who specializes in battling lost causes.

We use prayer to fight. We use prayer to overcome the sense of lost causes and transform the sins and patterns of sin into growth; we steal those moments back from the Eisavs of the world.

This is our final week of fighting, praying, and stealing. I wish us great success.

Please don’t tell Marshall and Ellie about this; I don’t want them to worry while I am staying in their home. (I did notice some extra locks.)

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“For the ways of God are straight.” (Hosea 14:10) the Shelah HaKodesh (Torah Ohr – Rosh Hashanah 3) asks why the word “straight” is in the plural form in Hebrew, “Yesharim,” rather than “Yashar.”

The Shelah answers that Hosea is describing two different creations of “Straight:” the first is that God creates us straight. We begin life with a tabula rasa, clean and pure. There is a second creation of Yashar, that when we do Teshuva, we can regain that perfect straightness.

I prefer the second Yashar to the first; I revel in the gift of being able to access the straightness that follows Teshuva, the restored bar, without dents or scars from its bend and repair. I love the sense of the Yashar that is always available, not just something that I once had.

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Most of us are familiar with two directions of service: “Itra’uta D’litata,” and “Itra’uta D’l'eila,” or, Stirrings from below, connections stirred by us, below here on earth towards God, and “Stirrings from Above,” initiated by God, Above, to reach out to us, here, below.

The Sefat Emet, (Likkutim L’Chodesh Elul) says that the only responsibility of a human being in Itra’uta D’litata is to choose to attach to God, all other stirrings will come from above to us.

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In praying for the whole world to repent, we are only following the example of Hashem, Who looks forward to the time when His ultimate plan for the creation – a world in which all mankind is righteous – will be realized, as the prophet Yeshayahu (46:10) proclaimed I foresee the end from the beginning . . . My entire wish [for all mankind to be righteous] will be fulfilled. (Sefat Emet – 5659)

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