Rosh Hashanah is the day on which we crown Hashem as King.
The verses of Malchuyot, Kingship, stand at the heart of the Mussaf prayer, and again and again we ask: “Reign over the entire world in Your glory”; “Let everything that has breath in its nostrils declare: Hashem, God of Israel, is King, and His sovereignty rules over all.”
Yet this raises a fundamental question: What does it mean for us to crown Hashem? Does His kingship somehow depend upon us?
Hashem is King with or without us. As we so often say, “Hashem is King, Hashem was King, Hashem shall be King forever and ever.” We do not confer kingship upon Him, and it is inconceivable that anything could be lacking in His perfection for us to supply. And yet the Torah describes humanity—and the Jewish people in particular—as though we were created, so to speak, for Him: “This people I fashioned for Myself, that they might declare My praise” (Yeshayahu 43:21); “Everyone who is called by My name, whom I created for My glory, whom I formed, indeed whom I made” (43:7).
Chazal go further still. Commenting on Moshe’s plea after the sin of the spies, “And now, let the power of Hashem be magnified,” the Midrash teaches: “This is Moshe, who magnifies the power of the Almighty… Whenever the righteous perform the will of the Omnipresent, they add strength to the Divine might, as it says, ‘And now, let the power of Hashem be magnified’; but if not, then, as it were, ‘You weakened the Rock who bore you.’”
The formulation is almost unimaginable: man can “add strength” Above.
Hashem lacks nothing; there is therefore no distance between what He is and what He ought to be. There can be no process of improvement, growth, or repair in Him. Man, by contrast, is defined precisely by the gap.
How are we to understand such a statement? What could a human being possibly add to the perfect and infinite God?
The answer relates to the distinction between a state of perfection and a process of becoming—or, in the language of Rav Kook, between shlemut, perfection, and hishtalmut, perfecting oneself. Hashem lacks nothing; there is therefore no distance between what He is and what He ought to be. There can be no process of improvement, growth, or repair in Him. Man, by contrast, is defined precisely by the gap. He is not only what he is; he is also what he might become. Human life unfolds continually between what is and what ought to be, between flaw and repair, between the person we are and the person we are called to become.
Perhaps the secret of man’s creation lies precisely here.
The Unfinished Creature
As we approach the heart of the Neilah prayer, we say: “You distinguished man from the beginning and recognized him worthy to stand before You.”
In what sense was man distinguished? Why was he, specifically, chosen to “stand before” Hashem?
We might suggest that man differs from the rest of creation precisely because he was created unfinished. A mountain does not ask whether it is a sufficiently good mountain. A tree is not called upon to repent for having failed to grow differently. An animal acts according to its nature and does not seek to construct for itself a new moral character. Man alone can look at himself and say: I do not wish to remain as I am.
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This is the source of his weakness, but also of his greatness. Man can sin because he is imperfect; but for precisely the same reason, he can perform teshuvah. He can fall, and therefore he can rise. He can grow distant, and therefore he can draw near.
Imperfection is not merely a defect in the human system. It is the condition that makes movement and change possible.
This allows us to read anew one of the most remarkable Midrashim concerning the creation of man.
Bereishit Rabbah describes a dispute among the ministering angels over whether man should be created at all. Chesed, lovingkindness, says, “Let him be created,” because man performs acts of kindness. Truth says, “Let him not be created,” because he is full of falsehood. Righteousness says, “Let him be created,” because he performs righteous deeds; Peace says, “Let him not be created,” because he is full of strife.
Creation appears almost to emerge from a consultation process that has reached an impasse: one camp against another, virtues weighed against failings.
Then Hashem does something astonishing: “He took Truth and cast it to the earth.”
The angels protest: “Master of the Universe, why do You disgrace Your seal?” And Hashem answers: “Let Truth rise from the earth,” as the verse says, “Truth shall spring from the earth.”
What does this answer mean?
Truth’s objection appears to be correct. Man is indeed full of falsehood. Casting Truth to the earth does not refute the claim; if anything, it seems almost to confirm it. The Midrash may therefore be telling us not that Truth’s argument was rejected, but that Truth itself was given a new form.
Heavenly truth is complete, absolute, without distance or deficiency. But for that very reason, it does not grow. It already exists in perfection. “Truth shall spring from the earth” is truth of another kind—not different in its content, but different in the manner of its appearance. In the human world, truth is not presented to us as a finished state. It must grow.
Heavenly truth is complete, absolute, without distance or deficiency. But for that very reason, it does not grow. It already exists in perfection. “Truth shall spring from the earth” is truth of another kind—not different in its content, but different in the manner of its appearance. In the human world, truth is not presented to us as a finished state. It must grow.
The earth is not a place of perfection. It is a place of dust and resistance, of time, error, and repair; a place of human relationships in which the possibility of falsehood is woven into the very fabric of our existence. Yet it is precisely there that truth is planted—and precisely there that it is called upon to rise.
Hashem does not ask man to produce the truth of angels. He already has angels. He asks for human truth: truth that struggles against falsehood; kindness chosen when one could have withdrawn into oneself; loyalty built despite the temptation to betray; justice fashioned within a reality that is not inherently just.
Not perfection, but perfecting.
Man Does Not Grow Alone
Yet such a process cannot take place within a person sealed inside himself. We cannot truly break through the boundaries of the self unless there is an other standing before us, demanding something that is not already contained within our own world.
This is part of the depth of the verse, “It is not good for man to be alone.” This is not merely a social or marital observation. Left entirely alone, a person remains imprisoned within his own character traits, habits, and assumptions. He determines the questions, and he supplies the answers. The presence of another compels him to leave that enclosure.
A relationship with another human being demands kindness, concession, listening, loyalty, responsibility. It exposes the boundaries of the self and invites us to transcend them. In this sense, every deep human relationship is an engine of hishtalmut—of growth toward greater wholeness.
And the deepest and most primordial relationship is man’s relationship with Hashem: the relationship first recorded in the Gan Eden and, after the expulsion from Eden, hidden within the Torah, which remains “a Tree of Life to those who grasp it.”
Hashem stands before man as the One who calls him beyond himself. He commands, demands, promises, enters into covenant. He tells man: Do not remain merely what you are. Become what you can be, and what you are meant to be.
Hashem stands before man as the One who calls him beyond himself. He commands, demands, promises, enters into covenant. He tells man: Do not remain merely what you are. Become what you can be, and what you are meant to be.
The Torah is not merely a system of instructions regulating the life of an already existing person. It is a relationship that seeks to create a new human being. “You shall be holy” is not a description of a state; it is a summons to movement.
Perhaps this is also one of the deeper meanings of covenant. Man is called not merely to obey his God, but to live before Him—and through that encounter, to grow.
What Is Kingship?
We can now return to Rosh Hashanah and to the idea of Divine kingship.
When we say, “Reign over the entire world in Your glory,” we are not asking Hashem to create a kingship that does not yet exist. “Master of the world, who reigned before any creature was formed.” Yet without creation, that kingship remains without revelation: “When all was made according to His will, then was His name proclaimed King.”
What we seek, then, is revelation: that His kingship become manifest within our world, precisely in the place of flaw and deficiency.
On the verse “This is My name forever,” Chazal teach that Hashem’s name is concealed from us in this world. Indeed, this world is compared to night—a reality in which Divine perfection is not apparent. Quite the opposite: the world is filled with fracture, contradiction, selfishness, violence, and injustice.
How can the Kingdom of Heaven become manifest in such a place?
Through man. Humanity.
This is precisely our task: to illuminate the world with Hashem’s light, to reveal His kingship through our lives.
Imperfect man becomes the instrument through which a perfection that is not his own is revealed. Not because man himself becomes perfect, but because from within his imperfection he is capable of moving toward perfection. He can turn judgment into mercy, selfishness into kindness, crookedness into truth. With every such movement, something of the Divine good becomes manifest upon the earth—something of the Kingdom of Heaven.
Perhaps this is what Chazal mean when they say that the righteous “add strength to the Divine might.” They certainly add nothing to Divine perfection itself. But they add to its presence in the world. They enable another part of reality to bear the imprint of truth, righteousness, and justice.
In other words, Hashem does not need us in order to be perfect. But He asks for us so that His perfection may become present within a world that is not perfect.
This is the unique contribution of man.
This is the building of Malchut.
“That They Might Declare My Praise”
We can now understand anew the verse, “This people I fashioned for Myself, that they might declare My praise.”
We generally hear the words “declare My praise” as a command to praise Hashem verbally. But perhaps they can be understood more broadly: man declares the praise of Hashem through the way he lives.
A person who chooses truth when he could have lied reveals something of Divine truth. A person who relinquishes revenge reveals something of mercy. One who assumes responsibility even when it is inconvenient reveals something of justice. A society capable of correcting injustice and building kindness into its public institutions becomes, in itself, a declaration of praise.
Not all praise is spoken.
Some praise rises from the shape of a life.
In this sense, a person does not praise Hashem only when he says Halleluyah. He praises Him when his life becomes a place in which Divine goodness takes form. The same is true of a people. A nation can become “the people I fashioned for Myself” when its institutions, relationships, and decisions become vessels for truth, justice, kindness, and holiness.
These things are entrusted to us. They depend upon us.
And they are urgent.
Rosh Hashanah: A Day of Direction
Perhaps this is why Rosh Hashanah precedes Yom Kippur.
On Yom Kippur we confront failure: Where have we sinned? What have we damaged? What requires atonement?
But before the question of failure comes a more fundamental question: Where are we trying to go? What is the good toward which our lives are directed?
To crown Hashem is to choose a direction.
Man says: I am not perfect, but I want the movement of my life to be directed toward You. I am prepared to become part of the process by which truth springs from the earth.
This also reveals the deep connection between Rosh Hashanah and teshuvah. Teshuvah is not merely the correction of transgressions. It is the very capacity of a human being to live in motion—to refuse to regard the present self as final.
Hashem does not ask us to appear before Him on Rosh Hashanah as perfect creatures. If that were the demand, we would have no hope. He asks something far more human—and, in a certain sense, something greater: That we be capable of moving.
Hashem does not ask us to appear before Him on Rosh Hashanah as perfect creatures. If that were the demand, we would have no hope. He asks something far more human—and, in a certain sense, something greater: That we be capable of moving.
To become a little more truthful. A little more generous. A little more responsible. A little less imprisoned within ourselves.
To grow.
This is the unique thing that man can bring into God’s world. Not perfection—for perfection already exists—but the striving toward it. Good chosen in the presence of evil; truth growing within a reality that contains falsehood; holiness taking shape within a world that is not holy by itself.
Truth shall spring from the earth.
And this, too, is what it means to crown Hashem: not to add anything to His kingship in Heaven, but to give that kingship a place upon the earth.
