אִם יִרְצֶה הַשֵּׁם
Precis. Rosh Hashanah's avodah is malchiyos: coronating HKBH as King. Do mechilah and teshuvah before the day. Bein adam l'chaveiro is the bulk of a Jew's work, but without HKBH Melech it has no kiyum and earns no Olam Haba. Use the two days to recharge awareness that HKBH watches, commands kindness, and owns the world. Then, bli neder, each act of chessed should be done as ratzon HKBH, emulating the Creator Who is חָפֵץ חֶסֶד.
Rav Avigdor Miller zt"l asks the question everyone feels on Rosh Hashanah: with parnassah, health, and life itself being sealed, why is the avodah of the day almost only malchiyos (proclaiming HKBH Melech) instead of bakashos and al cheit?
His answer is the foundation of all foundations: without HKBH Melech, even the greatest bein adam l'chaveiro has no kiyum and no Olam Haba.
I. Enthroning the King
Open the seder hatefillah of Rosh Hashanah and you see it at once. The core of the day is malchiyos. Zichronos and shofros and whatever else we say are tied back to that first element. We can safely say that the avodah of the day is HKBH Melech.
That raises a hard question. Is that really the best use of the day? This is when everything is being decreed: health and sickness, parnassah or lack of it, the good and the bad, chas v'shalom. Many people are nichtav v'nechtam now. It is a day of great sakanah. Wouldn't we think a great part of the day should be spent asking, beseeching, begging for our future?
Where is the teshuvah?
Maybe you will say: we cannot be busy with bakashos because first we need a big teshuvah. That is what the decree depends on most. Fine. Then at least that we should be doing: al cheits, vidui, charatah, kabalah l'asid, asking mechilah. Instead we proclaim HKBH Melech all day long: tefillah and piyutim about the Kingship of HKBH.
Of course every sane person does teshuvah before Rosh Hashanah. You must ask mechilah before Rosh Hashanah. Don't delay. If you are in Eretz Yisrael and your mother is here, call her long distance and ask: "Mother, remember when I was thirteen and you asked me to carry out the garbage and I said, 'Let Dovid do it'? Please forgive me." A mother is a mother; she will forgive you.
If you said something mean to your wife or husband, ask mechilah. R' Itzele Peterberger, every erev Rosh Hashanah when he left home for the beis haknesses, turned to his wife and said, "Zeit mir mochel." And she said, "Zeit mir mochel."
A good idea for everyone: before you set out to daven Maariv on Rosh Hashanah, turn back and say, "Rochel, forgive me." And she says, "Chaim, forgive me." That is an excellent way to go into Rosh Hashanah, with teshuvah and mechilah.
Missing the merkaz
But once we enter the day, that subject disappears. It is only HKBH Melech: the piyutim, the brachos. It seems ha'ikar chaseir min hasefer. All that precious time could be used taking sins off the side of the scale that threatens our future.
If it were up to us, instead of
וְתִמְלֹךְ אַתָּה ה׳ מְהֵרָה לְבַדֶּךָ
we would fill the machzor with piyutim about shemiras halashon, kibud av v'eim, greeting a fellow Jew b'sever panim yafos, shalom bayis, and how someone else's property is kodesh. Instead of the chazzan singing about the malachei marom proclaiming HKBH King, let him sing about how HKBH wants us to treat people.
After all, bein adam l'chaveiro is the obligation we have to worry about most. The majority of our mitzvos and aveiros live in interpersonal relationships. A Jew sometimes imagines he will walk into shul and commune with HKBH like a monk in his cell. Oh no. That is not Judaism.
Judaism 101
Yahadus means living with everybody else properly. Take in visitors. Give tzedakah. Do chessed. Speak kindly. Be careful what you say. Greet people you know in the street. Keep the other person's desires in mind.
וְאָהַבְתָּ לְרֵעֲךָ כָּמוֹךָ
Just as you want regard and respect, that is how you must react to others (Vayikra 19:18).
That is the difficulty of being a Jew: to deal with your fellow man properly.
Bein adam l'chaveiro is heavy lifting, all-encompassing, and severe. S'iz shver tzu zein a Yid. Man was created to serve HKBH primarily by means of his fellow Jews, and that is where most people are nichshal most constantly.
That is why the old-time maggid spoke primarily about that. Everybody kept Shabbos, kashrus, tzitzis, tznius. The maggid did not have to say, "Cover your head." He spoke about bein adam l'chaveiro, because that obligation is number one that HKBH wants of man.
Work in progress
Hillel told the ger who wanted the whole Torah on one foot (Shabbos 31a):
דַּעֲלָךְ סְנֵי לְחַבְרָךְ לָא תַּעֲבֵד
What you dislike done to you, do not do to them.
זוֹ הִיא כָּל הַתּוֹרָה כֻּלָּהּ
That is the whole Torah.
וְאִידַּךְ פֵּרוּשָׁהּ … זִיל גְּמֹר
The rest is commentary. Go learn.
Bava Kamma, Bava Metzia, Bava Basra. Brachos, Shabbos, Eiruvin, Pesachim. The entire Torah is a commentary on this principle.
R' Yisroel Salanter said you have to learn and learn in order to know how to be yotzei with your fellow man. Rav Miller once met a talmid chacham who shook his hand and talked into his face while describing a two-week cold. "My friend, you have a lot to learn. If you have a cold, you don't shake hands and you don't talk into someone's face. You're a mazik."
Bein adam l'chaveiro is the great majority of our Torah obligations, our accomplishments in this world, and our reward in the World to Come. So when you ask HKBH for forgiveness, know that the most important forgiveness you seek is for sins bein adam l'chaveiro. The biggest part of your kabalah l'asid is in those details.
Why is it important?
Then how can we spend the day proclaiming HKBH the King? Say it once and sit around tables studying Bava Kamma? Make niggunim for
לְעוֹלָם יְהֵא אָדָם זָהִיר בְּאוֹנָאַת אִשְׁתּוֹ
Be careful not to hurt your wife's feelings (Bava Metzia 59a)?
The answer: it is very important. But number one is to understand why it is important.
Why kevod ishto? Why careful with feelings, property, shemiras halashon? Because HKBH Melech. And otherwise it is worthless.
Without the ingredient of HKBH Melech, all your teshuvah for bein adam l'chaveiro and all your planning to be better next year ends up worthless. That is the subject of Rosh Hashanah.
II. Fearing the King
Don't walk out when you hear that decency and kindness can be nothing. Two reasons.
The King is watching
Number one: without HKBH Melech, bein adam l'chaveiro will not have a kiyum. It will not last. Only if there is a Melech can there be such a thing; otherwise it fades into nothing.
ה׳ מֶלֶךְ יִרְגְּזוּ עַמִּים
When HKBH is King, the nations tremble (Tehillim 99:1).
When a person knows there is din v'cheshbon, that he will stand before a King Who is not mevater, that is the only way to become perfect l'chaveiro. Awareness of a King on a Throne dispensing judgment is what restrains middos and emotions.
So the one who stands in shul all day on Rosh Hashanah shouting that HKBH is the King is the one most liable to be a mentch all year, if he listens to what he is saying. If he is only keeping the tune or thinking about the seudas Yom Tov, it does not go in. But if he utilizes the davening, those words (HKBH Melech) and all their variations become the foundation for his bein adam l'chaveiro during the year.
Empty ethics
Included in that reason is something more. It is not only fear of the demanding King. The entire concept of bein adam l'chaveiro is a creation of HKBH. When HKBH made the world, He created ethics. Just as the world is created by Him, the ideals are created by Him. Without believing in the Creator, "being righteous" is as silly as could be.
Rav Miller recalled Reform rabbis gathering in Boston to criticize America for lacking ethics, each one repeating "ethics, ethics." But without a Creator Who created the concepts, there is no basis. The ideals entered the world through people who believed in a Borei and in the Chumash.
The evolutionists and humanists have no reason for ethics. If men are accidents derived from frogs, what is wrong if A mistreats B? A frog has no ethics. When a professor scolds a cheating student for hurting classmates, the student can answer: "Didn't you teach us we descended from algae? What ethics are there in a mud puddle? The only thing wrong is getting caught."
Without HKBH Who teaches universal concepts, the world is chaos. Words like "liberty," "equality," and "justice" are holdovers from generations that still believed in HKBH, repeating words that no longer have a foundation.
A shaky ladder
It is like a man who climbs a ladder, then kicks it away and imagines he will remain high in the air. Plop, down he goes. The liberals climbed a ladder erected by the Torah, which taught what is right. Then they kicked the ladder away and still imagine they have ethics. How long do you remain in the air after that?
Don't believe the humanist who writes that he needs no HKBH because his conscience guides him. What conscience guided Hitler? What conscience guides every bum who abuses and murders? Is that the guide you want to rely on?
Compassion without HKBH
A clear historical example: the Nihilists and Bolsheviks who threw bombs in the name of injustice and love of the downtrodden. Many Jews, with bein adam l'chaveiro in their bones from home and cheder, were drawn in. They imagined that without HKBH they could build a utopia of kindness.
What happened? When the Bolsheviks seized power, they murdered on a scale the world had not yet seen. Rav Miller heard from an eyewitness in Yanoveh: a metal box on wheels, filled with "capitalists" (even a poor shoemaker with an apprentice), shot through holes in the box to save bullets, then dumped in the stream. The people they claimed to help were destroyed. Eventually almost all the Jewish communist leaders were "liquidated" in places like Lubyanka.
Standing with a gun in his face, the Jewish communist learned the lesson too late: the Bolshevik love of the proletariat was a hoax, because there was no HKBH. Social justice and bein adam l'chaveiro without HKBH Melech ends that way. Only when you know that HKBH said "this is tov and this is not," and that He will dispense justice in this world and the Next, can a person live with real bein adam l'chaveiro.
Corruption on Kings Highway
That is why you see people sample a grape or a peanut at a fruit stand and walk away with no hargasha of stealing. Rav Miller saw a woman on Kings Highway eat half an apricot and put it back, then buy other apricots. He told her she was stealing. Nothing went in: a head empty of HKBH Melech.
A frum Jew has a hargasha. Why? Because he was in shul on Rosh Hashanah listening: HKBH is in charge. It is a tremendous accomplishment to say HKBH Melech a thousand times (even a thousand is not enough) until it settles into our thick skulls that there is a Melech Ha'olam watching everything, demanding His requirements of bein adam l'chaveiro.
III. Honoring the King
That principle (no foundation and no kiyum for bein adam l'chaveiro without being mamlich HKBH) is only the beginning. There is a second, more important reason.
A worthless perfection
Suppose someone could somehow stay careful with bein adam l'chaveiro forever without regard to a King. Impossible, but imagine it. Even then it is worthless. The most kind, helpful, considerate, generous person, perfect in bein adam l'chaveiro, if he is not doing it because the King commanded it, then it is nothing.
One clarification:
אֵין הַקָּדוֹשׁ בָּרוּךְ הוּא מְקַפֵּחַ שְׂכַר כָּל בְּרִיָּה
HKBH does not withhold the reward of any creature (Bava Kamma 38b).
If someone is kind and helpful, HKBH sees to it that he is compensated. But it is a meager reward: paid off only in this world. He did it only for this world, so he gets it only here.
Fruit in Olam Hazeh
That is the Mishnah (Pe'ah 1:1): there are good deeds whose פֵּרוֹתֵיהֶם בָּעוֹלָם הַזֶּה (fruits a person eats in this world), mostly bein adam l'chaveiro.
The Rambam gives a pragmatic yesod: it is "natural." If you are pleasant and do favors, people will be the same with you. Don't think that is stam. It is the dvar HKBH built into the world: kindness redounds to your benefit. Be good to your spouse and your spouse will be good to you. Menoras Hamaor says to women: make your husband a king and he will make you a queen. The same with neighbors, co-workers, people in shul. Smile, listen, don't hurt feelings, and you become popular and well treated.
"That's My decree," HKBH says. "I want people encouraged to behave properly, so the kind will be rewarded with kindness in this world."
The big rub
But here is the rub. If you do it only like a liberal, because it is nice to be nice, that is the extent of your reward. HKBH says: people liked you? Treated you well? Finished. Paid off. The real reward, הַקֶּרֶן קַיֶּמֶת לָעוֹלָם הַבָּא, you are shut out from entirely.
To be with HKBH in Olam Haba is only if you are serving HKBH. Kindhearted but agnostic means nothing beyond a few dollars of popularity. A big waste of life. The one purpose is
לַעֲשׂוֹת רְצוֹנְךָ אֱלֹקַי חָפָצְתִּי
I want to do Your will (Tehillim 40:9).
Chessed is built on
כִּי חָפֵץ חֶסֶד הוּא
HKBH desires kindness (Michah 7:18).
Subtract HKBH and the ideal becomes empty.
The first teshuvah
So we understand why Rosh Hashanah is all about HKBH Melech. New year, new opportunities: start from the foundation. Certainly do a big teshuvah. Certainly learn the dinim of bein adam l'chaveiro. But first we are busy with the yesod hayesodos.
You are going to come into shul before the Melech Malchei Hamelachim and sing a piyut about shemiras halashon and kevod ishto? You are not ready yet. First make clear to yourself what it is all about.
Why do anything in this world? Who cares that it is a fellow Jew? Who is ishto? You put a ring on her finger and said הֲרֵי אַתְּ מְקֻדֶּשֶׁת. Done, forget it?
No. HKBH says: if you forget about that, you are forgetting about Me. I commanded you to honor your wife. I commanded you to honor your fellow Jew. You are honoring Me.
Honoring Who?
The Mishnah in Avos (4:1):
אֵיזֶהוּ מְכֻבָּד? הַמְּכַבֵּד אֶת הַבְּרִיּוֹת
Who is honored? One who honors people.
כִּי מְכַבְּדַי אֲכַבֵּד
Those who honor Me, I shall honor.
What kind of proof is that? Honoring HKBH is shul, esrog, Torah. How does honoring man prove that?
We see it is one thing. When you treat your fellow with kavod, help him, guard his feelings, that is called honoring HKBH. Why? Because that is what HKBH wants.
בְּצֶלֶם אֱלֹקִים עָשָׂה אֶת הָאָדָם (Bereishis 9:6)
חָבִיב אָדָם שֶׁנִּבְרָא בְצֶלֶם
How beloved is man, created as a tzelem.
חִבָּה יְתֵרָה … שֶׁנִּקְרְאוּ בָּנִים לַמָּקוֹם
Additional love: called children of HKBH (Avos 3:14).
Every Jew is a prince. Every Jew is kodesh kedoshim. That is an entirely new bein adam l'chaveiro, backed by HKBH Melech. וְהָלַכְתָּ בִּדְרָכָיו (Devarim 28:9). The one who utilizes Rosh Hashanah says all year:
זֶה אֵ-לִי וְאַנְוֵהוּ
This is my HKBH and I will be like Him.
מָה הוּא רַחוּם אַף אַתָּה רַחוּם (Shabbos 133b).
The King's world
HKBH Melech! Otherwise, what is so terrible if you cheat a friend, step on his lawn, use his rake without permission? Backed by HKBH Melech it is different.
לַה׳ הָאָרֶץ וּמְלוֹאָהּ
The earth and its fullness belong to HKBH (Tehillim 24:1).
וְהָאָרֶץ נָתַן לִבְנֵי אָדָם
He gave permission to use it (Tehillim 115:16), only with conditions.
Private property is really HKBH's property. What belongs to one person is kodesh. Use it without permission and you are taking what belongs to HKBH.
So from Rosh Hashanah davening, the world becomes a different world. Wife, friends, fellow Jews are tzelem Elokim, banim laMakom. You walk in HKBH's ways and are only a tov u'meitiv to them. Their property belongs to HKBH; He permitted ownership to the one who made a kinyan. Trespass against them is trespass against HKBH Melech.
The Rosh Hashanah recharge
Rosh Hashanah can breathe into man an entirely new spirit of how to live. Everyone needs a spiritual recharging of batteries from time to time, and you can never have enough. Pile up so much hargasha of HKBH Melech on these two days that all the good you do all year is the result of the yesod hayesodos you gained then.
The avodah of HKBH Melech, HKBH Malach, HKBH Yimloch L'Olam Va'ed can transform an almost worthless year into treasures. Everything afterward is backed by HKBH Melech. Not only Olam Hazeh anymore; now it is avodas HKBH. הַקֶּרֶן קַיֶּמֶת לוֹ לָעוֹלָם הַבָּא. Feet in both worlds at the same time.
Have a Kesivah v'Chasimah Tovah.
Let's Get Practical: At the King's Service
Although our very lives and livelihoods are determined on Rosh Hashanah, and thus it is appropriate to daven accordingly, the central focus of the day is not on temporal matters but on coronating HKBH as King. This sends a loud and clear message: all pursuits, including kindliness between man and his fellow, are devoid of meaning without HKBH Melech.
This year, bli neder, starting on Rosh Hashanah itself, whenever I do an act of kindness for another Jew, I will consciously remind myself that I am doing it because it is the ratzon HKBH that I should emulate Him, the Creator Who is חָפֵץ חֶסֶד.
Based on Toras Avigdor / tapes: 657 Shofar of Rosh Hashana | 754 The Day of Judgement | 945 All Glory is His | E-54 Honor is Mine, Says Hashem | E-76 Foundation of all Foundations. Structured for study from the weekly booklet; listen to the original tapes for full tone and nuance.