Have You Turned It Off And On Again?
Have You Turned It Off And On Again?
This Dvar Torah was originally published in Torah && Tech, the weekly newsletter I publish together with my good friend Ben Greenberg. To get the weekly issue delivered straight to your inbox click here.
It happened to all of us; the computer got slow and sluggish, simple tasks started taking forever, trying to run more than three apps at a time would cause everything to freeze up. You called tech support and the response was so stereotypical it made you laugh (or groan, depending on how frustrated you were at the time):
Did you turn it off and back on again?
Of course, there’s truth behind the stereotype. Our computers accumulate lots of baggage as they run, memory gets used up, garbage piles up, things get stuck in weird states. Most of the time just hitting the “reset” button is enough to iron out all the kinks and get everything back to a clean and fresh slate.
The world works similarly; bad things happen, negative energies accumulate. Every once in a while, it feels like we want just to hit the “reset” button and get things to how they were.
The Kabbalists say that that’s precisely what happens!
Once a year, on Rosh Hashanah (this year starting at Sunset this Sunday, September 29th, until nightfall of Tuesday night), G-d hits the reset button on the world, so to speak, and decides whether He wants to keep creating the world for another year. When the Jewish people crown G-d as their king by blowing the Shofar (a hollowed-out horn of a ram, goat, or another Kosher animal), that causes G-d to want to rule over us as well and to keep creating the world for another year.
The same is in our personal lives. Rosh Hashanah is the time for us to hit our own “reset” buttons, to take a break, to introspect and reflect on the last year and to see what needs to improve over the next year.
Let us all use our “off” time next week wisely so that when we turn back “on” after the Holidays we will have a much better 5780.
Shanah Tova!
Yechiel