Dear Friends,

It was wonderful to get to daven and share meals with so many of you over the two days of Rosh Hashanah—getting to see those of you I already know and meeting many of you for the first time.

Rosh Hashanah is the day when we crown Hashem as king, recognizing His sovereignty in our prayers and in our hearts. A number of the special piyutim, the poems inserted into our prayers on Rosh Hashanah, reflect this theme. Perhaps my favorite of these is the piyut “Veye’etayu,” whose last line, Veyitenu Lekha Keser Melukha “And they shall give You a crown of kingship” is repeated by the kehilah after the Chazzan sings each line of the poem. To me, this song, with the tune we used in shul this year, reflects the joy that is inherent in Rosh Hashanah. Along with the awe we feel on this Yom Hadin (Day of Judgment), it’s incredibly powerful to join with a room full of Jews to sing about the day when all the inhabitants on earth will recognize God and come together to crown Him as their king.

Crowning God as king isn’t something we just sing about in shul, it’s something we do through our actions. It’s beautiful on Rosh Hashanah to sing psalms and piyutim praising God as king, but even more important is that in the days after Rosh Hashanah, we choose to live lives that are a testament to Hashem’s sovereignty in the universe. Lives guided by morality, by kindness, by justice, and by spiritual sensitivity. If God is truly our king and we are His subjects, then we owe him much more than praise through words. Every time we perform an act of kindness, provide hospitality to a stranger, feed someone in need, visit the sick, we are acting as God’s subjects in deed as well as in word. Our actions serve to give God the crown of kingship that we sang about in shul on Rosh Hashanah.

Next week, on Yom Kippur, we will once again sing the piyut “Veye’etayu.” Between now and then, let us each strive to perform more acts of kindness and more mitzvot, so that when we once again sing the refrain, “and they shall give You a crown of kingship,” we can look back on these Ten Days of Repentance, and say that our actions served to give that crown of kingship to God.

May you be sealed in the book of life, health, blessing and peace,

Rabbi Garth Silberstein