We tend to think (or at least I do) that davening is one of two things. Either we’re asking for something to change in the future, or we’re trying to fix up something from the past. And assuming we’re trying to accomplish anything at all when we daven, those are pretty good goals.
But the din of Rosh Hashana, we’re told, isn’t about either one. It’s about something else entirely, and we read the story of Yishmael and Hagar specifically on Rosh Hashana to point us in the right direction.
Yishamel’s past wasn’t great. The Torah tells us he was “m’tzachek,” and that’s what got him thrown out of Avraham’s house. Rashi explains that behind that one word were the three cardinal sins: idolatry, murder, and illicit relationships. He was barely a bar mitzvah boy and off to quite a start.
His future wasn’t looking much better either. When Hagar cried out, certain her son was about to die of thirst in the desert, Hashem opened her eyes to a well that had apparently been there the whole time. And Chazal tell us the malachim objected. Why save this kid? His descendants, they argued, would one day cause Jewish children to die of thirst. Rashi fills in when: during the Babylonian exile, when Nevuchadnetzar drove the Jews from their land, and the descendants of Yishmael offered them salted meat and what looked like full waterskins, but were really just air. Jews died reaching for water that wasn’t there.
So Yishmael had a rough past behind him and, according to the malachim, a rough future ahead of him. By any accounting that runs backward or forward, the case against him wrote itself.
But Hashem didn’t look backward or forward. He looked at the moment in front of Him. The halacha, so to speak, that comes out of this episode, is that Hashem judges people “ba’asher hu sham,” as they are. Yishmael was judged based on who he was right then, in that specific moment, dying of thirst in the desert. Not who he’d been. Not who his descendants would become. Just him, right there. And because of that, he lived.
Rav Avraham Tzvi Kluger, in his masterpiece Yichud HaHisbodedus, looks at this from the other direction. We need to bring Hashem into our present the same way. Not to only talk to him about what needs fixing and what we feel sorry about. Because the present, he points out, is the only thing that’s actually real. The past already happened, it’s gone, you can’t touch it anymore. The future hasn’t arrived yet, you can’t touch that either. All you ever really have is now.
The way he says it: A Jew’s past and future are meant to serve his present, rather than his future serving his past and future.
I can’t claim to be sure what that line means, but I’d like to suggest what it might mean, and I invite all readers to come up with their own p’shat.
We carry our past into every present moment like a verdict already handed down. A mistake from ten years ago becomes evidence in every argument we have with ourselves today. A pattern of failure becomes proof that today’s attempt will fail too. We let who we were decide who we’re allowed to be right now.
And we do the same thing with the future, just aiming in the other direction. We think of an accomplishment that we can manage right now, but become dissuaded when we realize we might not be able to keep it up tomorrow. We give value to the present moment only if it will lead to something we deem as amazing down the line.
That’s what it means for the past and future to be your masters instead of your servants. They’re not supposed to run the show. They’re supposed to be resources you draw on when useful, and set down when they’re not.
Yishmael’s past should have disqualified him. His future should have sealed the verdict twice over. But Hashem judged the person standing there, thirsty and scared, in that exact moment, and that person deserved to live.
This is worth remembering walking into Rosh Hashana. Many of us walk into shul tallying up the year’s failures like a prosecutor building a case. We worry about who we’ll fail to become next year. Both of those have their place, teshuva does require looking back, and planning does require looking forward.
But the judgement is about who you are in this moment, standing there, however imperfect, however uncertain about what’s coming. How much are you willing to let Hashem look at you as is, and see you the way you are?
He judges you ba’asher hu sham. Let’s judge ourselves the same way.
This article was found in Nekuda Tova Issue 98 – Rosh Hashana.
