“I don’t want Rosh Hashanah to come,” a friend told me on the eve of the holiday last year. “I’m not ready for it yet.” Puzzled, I asked him what he meant. He replied: “I still don’t have a kabbalah—a personal resolution—for the shofar blowing on the second day.”
One can dismiss this as quibbling over details, but I think his words capture something real: the inner state with which many of us approach Rosh Hashanah today. They reflect a deep spiritual mood worth examining. We tend to think of preparation for Rosh Hashanah as an inner transformation. Without some personal “acceptance,” the day risks losing meaning. Yet a close look at the original avodah of Rosh Hashanah—the labor Chazal set for us—shows that something very different is required of us.
So what is the avodah of Rosh Hashanah? To pray, to sound the shofar, and to bring ourselves to remembrance before Hashem. Chazal describe the day in these terms: “Say before Me verses of Kingship, so that you will crown Me over you; Remembrances, so that your remembrance should come before Me for good. And with what? With the shofar” (Rosh Hashanah 16a). Rosh Hashanah is thus a day of standing before God, of making His presence felt in the public sphere, of entering His remembrance. This is indeed “labor”—a spiritual effort of concentration and attentiveness. But it is not the labor we have become accustomed to: not the inner labor of soul-searching and anxious resolutions for the future.
If the essence of the Days of Awe is an internal process of self-examination and repair of thought and heart, then what role does God play?
Today, the service of Rosh Hashanah has been relocated. What Chazal placed in the external realm—prayers, mitzvot, shofar blasts—has been shifted inward, into the chambers of the heart. That shift raises two difficulties. The first is theological. If the essence of the Days of Awe is an internal process of self-examination and repair of thought and heart, then what role does God play? We find ourselves standing not before Him but before ourselves—measuring how “good” we were in the past year and how we might improve in the next. Why must this reckoning take place specifically before God?
The second problem is psychological. The inward turn often makes the Days of Awe feel oppressive. For many, they become days of dread. In yeshivot, the atmosphere becomes tense and anxious, less an elevation of spirit before God than the pressure of probing the dark recesses of our own frailty. The demand for internal change, the relentless introspection, weighs heavily. As my friend admitted, we sometimes wish the days would not arrive at all.
In this essay, I aim to reopen another possibility: a service of God that extends not only within but also beyond the internal sphere. I want to ask what it means to stand before Hashem on Rosh Hashanah without reducing every act to an inward metaphor.
This is not to say that the turn inward is mistaken, or that we can simply abandon it to recover some “original” state. If our modern consciousness has shifted the center of gravity inward, it must be for good reason; something significant in our inner world demanded it. This is part of a profound process in the history of Jewish—and human—thought, one we cannot wish away.
My aim, then, is to return to the avodah of Chazal from within our modern perspective. Precisely starting from the inward focus that so characterizes us, I want to ask: what place does God hold in our avodah today? I seek Hashem within our service—not by retreating to a lost world, but by recovering His presence here and now.
The Turn Toward the Self, and the Turn Toward God
As noted, the “relocation” of spiritual life from the external to the internal reflects a profound shift in consciousness. In our contemporary perception, spiritual processes do not unfold in some external, parallel sphere of metaphysical reality, but within us: in our inner lives, our personalities, our souls, our awareness. As a result, we struggle to see the meaning of actions that seem merely “external,” performed from the lips outward.
This shift has followed, and continues to follow, the centrality of the human being in our picture of the world. Once man stands at the center of the cosmological order, spiritual events are absorbed inward, into his psyche. Yet here a question arises: if inner repair is the main goal, why must it involve turning to God?
Some years ago, at a seminar on the Days of Awe, I asked Rabbi Eliyahu Meir Feivelson this very question. I said to him: You teach us that the human being, his feelings and experiences, his inner world, is the primary address of religious work. Likewise, sin is understood as an inner blemish upon the soul. If this is true, how then does the service of Yom Kippur help? In what way do confession, fasting, and prayer repair a flaw that lies within the soul?
In the service of Yom Kippur, we frame sin and repentance as actions performed before God, even though they appear to take place within us, in the heart. We confess before Him and seek forgiveness, pardon, and atonement. But if the flaw lies in our souls, why should its repair require God? Put simply: if sin is a corruption within us, why involve Him at all?
Rabbi Feivelson answered that although the human being is indeed the primary addressee of religious life, he is not its only one. Man is bound in covenant with God, and religious practice is the enactment of that covenant. A transgression, therefore, is not merely a personal flaw; it is also a breach of covenant with the Divine. Yet the question lingers. A covenantal breach, like a personal failing, contains both external and internal dimensions. Consider someone who has wronged his family or wife. He must, of course, apologize and make amends, but his deeper work lies in becoming a better person. His behavior reflects an inner corruption, and being a worthy partner to the covenant requires self-repair above all. Why then, on Yom Kippur, is Divine forgiveness enough?
A shofar blast that takes place “out there,” or a confession that seems to project our flaws outward before God, feel hollow; they do not reach us
This, I think, explains part of the unease we feel in the Days of Awe. The external dimension of the religious act does not speak to us easily. We instinctively search for its impact on the inner self. A shofar blast that takes place “out there,” or a confession that seems to project our flaws outward before God, feel hollow; they do not reach us. The question, then, is whether we can shift our perspective: whether we can recalibrate our understanding so that turning to Hashem on Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur once again speaks to our hearts and fills us with genuine spiritual satisfaction.
Externalizing Our Inner Life
In the religious worldview reflected in Scripture and the literature of the Sages, the reality of God is taken for granted. Even if He cannot be sensed with our physical faculties, even if He defies conceptual definition, His presence is beyond doubt. God’s reality is experienced by a person with the same certainty as his own existence. Not “I think, therefore I am,” but rather, “I exist, therefore God exists.” The individual’s existence is not conceived as separate from the greater order of existence. This consciousness allows God to be perceived both as external to man and, at the same time, as part of his very experience of being.
Where we speak of “conscience” urging us to act rightly (even when that action is God’s will), or “pangs of conscience” leading us to repentance, the Torah and Sages describe God Himself as the One calling man to repent
What we today consider to be inner processes of the human heart are, in the language of Torah, part of man’s relationship with God. The inner demand we feel — to do good, to be moral, to rise higher, to be sanctified — is described by the Torah as God’s demand of man. Likewise, when a person sins, it is God who is angered and punishes. The word “conscience” does not appear in the Torah or the Talmud. Its place is taken, simply and naturally, by “God.” Where we speak of “conscience” urging us to act rightly (even when that action is God’s will), or “pangs of conscience” leading us to repentance, the Torah and Sages describe God Himself as the One calling man to repent.
What I propose is that we translate this worldview back into our own day. That we take all that we now describe as inner conflict within the self, and reframe it as the human being’s relationship with God. We must stop performing “soul-accounting” with ourselves and return to doing it with God. Instead of sitting alone in a room berating ourselves for our sins, we must allow God to be the One who reproves us. When we make a reckoning of our deeds, it ought truly to be a conversation with God — and that, indeed, is precisely what confession is.
In the Torah’s world, it is God who calls us to goodness and to the repair of our ways. We must once again let Him do the same for us. We must return the conscience to God
Of course, translating the language of Torah into contemporary terms yields a very complex picture, with a rich vocabulary. Translation it remains: we cannot return to the biblical worldview, and we cannot erase the inner world that has become second nature to us. But we can translate that biblical view back into our day. In the Torah’s world, it is God who calls us to goodness and to the repair of our ways. We must once again let Him do the same for us. We must return the conscience to God.
Letting God Be the One Who Demands
Why is it important that the moral demand come from God? When a person takes both roles upon himself — both prosecutor and executor — he wrongs himself. He tries to fashion himself into a commander, an autonomous moral agent, but he cannot. He ignores his weakness, forgetting that he cannot sustain himself on his own.
Man’s role is to act; the demand comes from God. For the modern person, even the religious one, this perspective is difficult to embrace. Unlike in former times, today a person hears the demand from within himself. Moreover, if he did not hear it inwardly, he would not feel bound by it. Conscience has become so deeply ingrained in us that it is hard to imagine any moral act not arising from it. It therefore takes effort to bring God back into the very heart of our inner experience.
If you try to construct your own moral stature from within yourself alone, you are bound to fail. You will be at war with yourself, consumed by guilt and self-loathing, which do not elevate but only debilitate
That effort, the Torah teaches, is worthwhile. If you try to construct your own moral stature from within yourself alone, you are bound to fail. You will be at war with yourself, consumed by guilt and self-loathing, which do not elevate but only debilitate. In such a state, the demand to become better and higher will never be fulfilled. Let it go. Do not wrestle endlessly with yourself. Allow God to do it.
This relationship elevates us in two ways. First, as noted, man is weak. He cannot place upon himself a serious demand to do good. But when God demands it of him, the weight is infinitely greater. Now, when he mars his soul, he is not merely disappointing his own feeble aspirations, but also violating the word of God whose glory fills the earth. Realizing that God Himself calls upon him to rise and walk in greatness transforms his existence. The King Himself desires his flourishing. He can no longer sink into cheap nihilism: “What difference do my deeds make?” His actions matter, for Hashem has made them matter.
Second, the joy in doing good within such a framework is far greater. The pleasure of fulfilling a demand is not mere narcissistic self-satisfaction. It comes from knowing that one is fulfilling God’s will and answering His call. This is the joy of inner affirmation. It may be likened, in a measure, to marriage. The delight a husband feels in pleasing his wife, or a wife in pleasing her husband, is far deeper than what they would feel in simply pleasing themselves. The joy of acting out of love for another far surpasses that of self-love. So too, the elation in doing good for God cleanses the deed of petty self-interest and lifts it higher.
Man does not demand of himself. God is the One who demands, and He is also the One who rewards. Such a relationship mirrors the deepest truth of human existence.
Wallowing in Sin vs. Pleading with God
The advantage of externalizing the demand for goodness becomes even clearer when it comes to sin. When a person sins, if the sin is seen as nothing more than an inner disturbance between him and himself, then he has no way out. He despises himself for his transgression, with no path to repair. He sees himself as wicked, diminished, and beyond return to his former stature. The words of the Psalmist capture this torment:
“For my iniquities have gone over my head; like a weighty burden, they are too heavy for me. My wounds grow foul and fester because of my folly. I am bent and bowed down greatly; all day, I go about in mourning. For my loins are filled with burning, and there is no soundness in my flesh.” (Tehillim 38:5–8)
Sin consumes him from within, and he cannot free himself.
But when sin is understood as being against God, a measure of mercy opens. A person realizes he is only human. He cannot demand perfection of himself; it is God who demands it of him. If the summons to righteousness comes from God, then it is also God who stirs his sense of guilt when he falls short. And if so, the very same God can grant him forgiveness. This opens a door to compassion and return. Now he can say:
“Hashem, all my desire is before You, and my sighing is not hidden from You. My heart throbs, my strength fails me; as for the light of my eyes, it also is gone from me… But for You, Hashem, do I wait; You will answer, O Hashem my God… Do not forsake me, O Lord; my God, be not far from me. Make haste to help me, O Hashem, my salvation.” (ibid., 10–23)
He feels guilty — but guilt toward Someone makes repentance possible. He can say, “Against You alone have I sinned” (Tehillim 51:6), and this very acknowledgment allows him to plead for God’s pardon.
Never fight with yourself, for in the end someone will lose — either you, or yourself.
Rabbi Feivelson once shared with me something beautiful in the name of his teacher, Rabbi Zilberman, of blessed memory: “Never fight with yourself, for in the end someone will lose — either you, or yourself.” The Torah gives us a new language for navigating the tangled struggle we so often have with ourselves. What you think are your own inner demands are in truth the voice of God: “Make His will your own” (Avot 2:4). Our noblest desires are, in fact, God’s desires.
This shift in perspective does not alter human nature. Even here, man remains pulled in two directions. When he performs a mitzvah, he elevates his higher self; when he sins, he harms himself, his nobler part. But the question is one of consciousness. Does he fold all his spiritual striving inward, imagining it as something taking place solely between him and himself? Or does he bring God into the story? Does he do his cheshbon hanefesh (soul-accounting) alone with his notebook — or does he do it in prayer before God?
The Compassion Within Judgment
When we imagine God sitting in judgment over us, we usually see His fearsome face. The Judge of all the earth, who searches the innermost chambers of the heart, scrutinizes every person. Who can stand before Him? Nothing is hidden from Him, and as the Pasuk says, “There is no man so righteous on earth who does only good and never sins.” Who can emerge justified from such a trial?
And yet, the perspective we have developed here opens another dimension to divine judgment — that of compassion.
For in truth, all of us already stand trial before a judge far harsher than God: ourselves. We are forever probing our own worth, wondering whether our lives have value or are devoid of meaning. That endless introspection is terrifying. Who knows what demons we will awaken when we lift the lid of our own Pandora’s box? It is no accident that so many people collapse into depression under the crushing weight of their own narcissistic self-scrutiny. As hard as it may be to stand trial before God, it is far harder to stand trial before ourselves.
A person is always harsher with himself, unable to see himself in the light of his own frailty. But God sees us as we truly are, with all our weaknesses, and He can also pardon, forgive, and restore us to the dignity of our existence
God does us a kindness. “I will judge you,” He says. When God sits in judgment, the human condition is infinitely better, “For He knows our nature; He remembers that we are dust” (Tehillim 103:14). A person is always harsher with himself, unable to see himself in the light of his own frailty. But God sees us as we truly are, with all our weaknesses, and He can also pardon, forgive, and restore us to the dignity of our existence.
And so, when a person succeeds in standing before God, the shofar blasts and the prayers of Rosh Hashanah become far clearer, far simpler. They no longer require translation into the inner vocabulary of psychological striving. To stand before God in prayer and shofar is itself the inner work. For that encounter penetrates to the deepest core of our being.
The Story of the Shofar
We can thus begin to approach the heart of Rosh Hashanah. Its essence, says the Torah, is the teruah: “It shall be a day of blowing for you” (Bamidbar 29:1); “A remembrance of blowing, a sacred convocation” (Vayikra 23:24). The Sages explained that through the teruah we are remembered before God for good. But what is this mysterious sound?
“Happy is the people who know the teruah.” Do not all nations know how to blow trumpets and horns? What makes Israel’s teruah unique? The Midrash teaches: it is the sound that stirs their Creator to rise from the Throne of Judgment and seat Himself on the Throne of Mercy.
What is the secret of this sound?
Perhaps the simplest answer is the one the Sages themselves gave: God listens. He “understands, hears, gazes, and hearkens to the sound of our shofar.” If He hears something in it, it must be because we are truly expressing something through it.
The teruah is not a clear message. It is not a single, coherent idea. Its very brokenness is its meaning: it is a cry in which a tangle of emotions and thoughts is all compressed. That is why the mitzvah is “to hear the voice of the shofar” — not to decipher it. To hear is to listen, to allow the broken sound to speak.
The tekiah tells us: Do not fear. Your brokenness is embraced. What you cannot make whole, I will. Bring Me your teruah, your fragmented self, and I will answer with a tekiah, a sound that is whole, steady, and redemptive
Personally, I find deep resonance in the Talmud’s description of the teruah as a groan and a wail (Rosh Hashanah 33b). The teruah is the human story: our fracture, our inability to produce a single, whole, steady voice. Into it we pour our unfinished projects, the words of Torah left in draft, our half-formed resolutions, our stuttered steps toward repentance, our scattered sparks of closeness to God. All of this together is one great teruah — a broken sound, fragmented and unsteady. That is the human condition. And that, says the Torah, is why Rosh Hashanah is Yom Teruah.
And yet, the Torah also commands a tekiah — a long, simple, unbroken blast — before and after the teruah. Perhaps because the tekiah is not ours at all: it is the voice of God. It is His strong, whole note that surrounds our human cry. The tekiah tells us: Do not fear. Your brokenness is embraced. What you cannot make whole, I will. Bring Me your teruah, your fragmented self, and I will answer with a tekiah, a sound that is whole, steady, and redemptive.
In that exchange, the dialogue of Rosh Hashanah comes alive. God’s tekiah calls out, sudden and demanding: “Where are you?” The human being answers: “I cannot match Your call. All I have are broken cries.” And God responds: “I have heard your cry. And I will bring wholeness in return.”
To stand before God with the cry of the teruah is to acknowledge our incompleteness. But in doing so, we discover something extraordinary: that even in our brokenness, even in our scattered and unfinished selves, we are received. The tekiah that follows is His promise that beyond our fragility lies His strength, and beyond our broken sound lies His wholeness.
This is the secret of Rosh Hashanah: the outer ritual of sound becomes the inner renewal of the soul. By sounding our cry before God, we find that we are lifted, given a new chance, embraced by His mercy. And that new beginning is nothing less than His gift.
