Well, Rosh Hashanah, really this whole holiday season is one of judgment. There are those who will say that Rosh Hashanah is the day that Gd completed the creation of the universe. There are disputes in the public arena about just how long this took.

That’s not very interesting. What is interesting is the argument in the Talmud regarding exactly when creation was actually completed, Rosh Hashanah or the first of Nissan, around Passover. You’d think this wouldn’t be much of an argument, but as it goes on, surprisingly, Gd finished up around the first of Nissan.

Then why celebrate Rosh Hashanah on the first of Tishrei? I’ll let someone else take that, because I have jury duty tomorrow and I’m not in the best mood.

The other interesting part of Rosh Hashanah is that, although we talk about the creation of the universe, we really never get to talking about the exact nature of that universe. In other words, what’s it like, what are the rules? The Torah is pretty open about this. In a certain way of looking at the universe, the shofar, the apples and honey can only be symbols of some quality or wish. To me, though,symbols are basically empty. It occurred to me that the shofar, for instance, is a commandment, is discovered through intense heart sweat, and therefore could not be merely a symbol.

So I began to rethink of my conception of the universe, molding it like clay, until I began to see the world in such a way where the shofar is high technology. And the more I did this, all of the anomaly laws, called Chukim, began to disappear. In other words, they fit. They made sense. They were no longer anomalies.

I think this can be done with every religion, although I wouldn’t know for certain. However, in the Jewish view of the universe, consciousness is the primary force. And as a force, a force we continually emit (but it’s not a force limited to humans), it has consequences—which appear to us as Karma, as human history, as Jewish history. It’s a force that we haven’t mastered, and consequently, we screw up a lot. A whole lot. There must be a mechanism for us to fix our broken consciousness. And that’s why the sages say that Gd invented Teshuvah, the ability to change and heal, before the world was created.

And so, on these holidays (from Rosh Hashanah to Succot) we try to examine our consciousness—for some it is simply to become aware of our consciousness. And through our examination, we try to fix what is broken. We are using some very sophisticated tools to accomplish this. The more we repair ourselves, the more we repair all of Israel, all of the world. That is essentially the order of the prayers, the only order they can take, beginning with the self and moving outwards.

In western civilization, the only tools we have that affect consciousness (which remains completely undefined), are psychotropic drugs, and recreational drugs. Maybe jazz. I dig jazz. But that’s about it. Small tool belt when we have such a big job to do.

However, the Torah gives us the complete tool belt, and this includes recognizing and using tools from other cultures, such as acupuncture or New Physics. It’s a big job, and therefore, we call these days ‘The Days of Awe’.