L’shanah tovah tikateivu is the traditional greeting at this season of the year: “May we be written for a good year.” The phrase is in the passive tense, as we are praying, hoping that God, the Source of All That Is, or Fate, will judge us worthy of blessing in the year ahead.
The Torah carries a strong theme: if you follow God’s way, the rains will fall in their season, and you will prosper. Stray from God’s path and you will suffer. Traditional liturgy reflects this in the second paragraph of the Shema prayer:
“If then, you obey the commandments that I enjoin upon you this day, loving your God יהוה and serving [God] with all your heart and soul, I will grant the rain for your land in season, the early rain and the late. You shall gather in your new grain and wine and oil—I will also provide grass in the fields for your cattle—and thus you shall eat your fill. Take care not to be lured away to serve other gods and bow to them. For the LORD’s anger will flare up against you, and He will shut up the skies so that there will be no rain and the ground will not yield its produce, and you will soon perish from the good land that the LORD is assigning to you.” (Deuteronomy 11:13–17)
The Reform movement removed this passage from its prayer book, rejecting the theology of reward and punishment, tit for tat, from God. For we see that seemingly good people, devout in observance and sincere in intention, may yet suffer tragedy. How, then, can we make sense of this? What steps may we take to ensure a good year?
During Elul, the month preceding Rosh Hashanah, and continuing through the Aseret Yamei Teshuvah (the ten days between Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur), our tradition grants us the opportunity to do as much as humanly possible to prepare ourselves for the year ahead. Just as we clear gutters before the rainy season and remove brush from around our homes before the heat and winds of summer, so too do we strive to remove what might harm us in the future. We take steps to repair broken relationships. We seek forgiveness from those we have wronged. We take stock of our lives, what is aligned and what has gone astray, and we chart a new course. These are the matters entrusted to us, the work that lies within our control.
Yes, events will unfold beyond our control. Yet actions have consequences, and if we labor to shape the year we desire, we increase the likelihood that it will be realized. Just as we wear seat belts to reduce harm in a crash and take blood pressure medication to diminish the risk of stroke, so too must we act with intention, proactively, to safeguard the life we seek.
Therefore, this year, perhaps rather than passively asking that we be written for a good year, let us affirm that some things are within our control. Let us also say:
L’shanah tovah nikatev atzmeinu: May we write ourselves for a good year.
Let us not wait for another, be it God, Fate, or circumstance, to save us. Let us take the steps to build the year, the future, for which we pray.
L’shanah tovah nikatev atzmeinu. May we write ourselves for a good year.
L’shanah tovah tikateivu. May we be written for a good year.
—Rabbi Jamie