As Jews, we are also part of an extraordinary record of national endurance that goes back nearly 4000 years. So many fragments from different layers of that unbroken past are deposited in our Mahzor. The High Holidays remind us of the intensity of Jewish piety, the grandeur of Jewish suffering, the richness of Jewish creativity. Historians can account for the individual parts of the story, but not for the story as a whole. We are awed and humbled by the totality of the Jewish experience and take refuge in theology to illuminate the mystery of our survival.
Records have a way of imposing obligations.
As Cal Ripken neared his goal, pitchers stopped throwing him inside and players sliding into second base kept their spikes away from him. No one wanted the burden of ending his pursuit of Gehrig's mark. Similarly, the unmatched antiquity of the Jewish people denies our generation the right to trash it. In greeting the new year with the sheheheyanu prayer, we not only thank God for having prolonged our collective and individual existence for another year, but also resolve to do our part so that we might continue to merit God's favor. I extend my warm good wishes for a shana tova u-metuka.