By Jonathan Rosenblum    
Why "fear" is actually rooted in optimism
http://www.JewishWorldReview.com | Each of us has some mission in life that is ours and ours alone. No two human beings are born with the same talents or the same challenges; no two are born into the same familial situation or the identical time and place in human history. These unique aspects of each of us constitute the raw material within which our mission in life will unfold.
Targum Onekolos translates the words "a living being" in the verse (Genesis 2:7) ". . . And G-d blew into his nostrils the breath of life, and man became a living being, as "l'ruach m'mal'la" — a speaking being. The ability to speak is thus intimately connected with the Divine soul that the Divine breathed into Adam. Each of us was brought into the world to "speak," to proclaim some aspect of G-d that no one else could. That proclamation is our mission in life.  
In the section of the Rosh Hashanah prayers known as zichronos (remembrances), a similar idea appears. The prayer describes how "the remembrance of everything fashioned comes before You: everyone's deed and mission ( ma'aseh ish u'pikudaso)."
The Hebrew root pey-kuf-daled when used as a verb denotes an act of remembrance or recall. With respect to the Divine, there is no remembrance or recall in the same sense as with human beings, since G-d is incapable of forgetting. Rather it means that He focuses His attention, as it were, on some event or state that from a human perspective is in the past.
The same three-letter root in its noun form refers to a mission (pekuda) or task (tafkid). Thus the Divine's recall or remembrance, as on Rosh Hashanah, is connected to our unique mission in life.
Rabbi Shraga Feivel Mendlowitz, the Jewish education pioneer, used to stress that there are two aspects to G-d's remembrance on Rosh Hashanah. The first is a person's deeds, which refers to his or her religious observance (ma'aseh ish). The second is to the fulfillment of his or her unique mission in life (u'pikudaso). We might think that the former is the most important aspect of our judgment on Rosh Hashanah. But, Rabbi Shraga Feivel taught, that is not the case. The way that we fulfill our mission is often most determinative of our judgment on Rosh Hashanah.  
The Divine's remembrance or recall is most often associated with His mercy. Both the Torah and Haftorah readings of the first day of Rosh Hashanah use terms of G-d's remembrance in connection with His answering the prayers of barren women.
"Ve'Hashem pakad es Sarah — And G-d remembered Sarah;" "Va'yizkareha Hashem — He remembered her [i.e., Channah]."
We beseech G-d on Rosh Hashanah to remember the Binding of Isaac and the ashes of Isaac. And it is clear enough how the remembrance of the Binding would arouse G-d's mercy towards their descendants. But we also invoke G-d's remembrance of our unique mission. What is there about that that unique mission that should arouse Divine mercy?
I would suggest that the remembrance that we were created with a specific mission serves, as it were, to "remind" the Divine of all the high hopes He invested in us at the moment of our Creation, when He implanted within us our Divine soul. Perhaps too it serves to remind G-d that He, so to speak, needs us, and that the purpose of Creation — the Revelation of the Divine's glory — depends in some measure upon every single one of us.
Neither G-d's high hopes for us, or even His "need" for us, contradicts the possibility of profound disappointment on His part at how far we have fallen short of fulfilling our assignment. Yet knowledge that each of us has been given such an assignment, and that we have a role to play in the Divine symphony should fill us with optimism.
That optimism is part of the elevation we feel in the period leading up to Rosh Hashanah. From Tisha B'Av, when we commemorate the destruction of the two Holy Temples, until Rosh Hashanah, we read the seven haftoros of consolation from the prophet Isaiah. Coming after the utter destruction of Tisha B'Av, the words of Isaiah hold out the possibility of rectification and forgiveness.
The possibility of forgiveness is no guarantee. And so the hope we feel as Rosh Hashanah approaches is tempered by our fear. Indeed our optimism is the cause of our fear, as it say's in the holy day's prayers: "For with You is [the power of ] forgiveness, in order that you should be feared." Without the possibility of forgiveness, there is no reason to fear. If we have lost the possibility of forgiveness, there is no further reason to guard our actions, since, in any event, complete destruction awaits us.
Our hopes for Rosh Hashanah are intimately bound to our unique mission in life since remembrance of that mission has the capacity to arouse G-d's mercy. But only if we do our part and attach ourselves to that mission.
That means reflecting deeply about everything that makes us unique in order that we discover our individual goal in life. It requires knowing our weaknesses, but, even more importantly, according to the founder of the Jewish ethics movement, Rabbi Yisrael Salanter, knowing our strengths, since those strengths are the primary material which we possess to execute our mission. And it means asking what our fellow Jews and/or the larger society are lacking, and which of those things that are lacking we have the ability to provide.
In order that the remembrance of our Divine mission pass favorably before Him, it must first fully engage us, as we prepare for the Day of Judgement.
May we be inscribed in the Book of Life.
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