I always like to offer a small sermonette to get us thinking during the Holidays, and I will begin this evening with a vort from one of my favorite rebbes, country singer Tim McGraw: “I ain’t as good as I’m gonna get, but I’m better than I used to be.”

f nothing else these High Holidays, we should ask ourselves if we can say the same: “I ain’t as good as I’m gonna get, but I’m better than I used to be.”

In what ways are we better than we used to be? Have we changed at all in the past year? Have we addressed our challenges, or have we ignored them? If we can’t come up with a good answer to those questions, then there’s vital, truly essential work to be done. And if we have in fact become better during the past year, we have taken a step closer to G-d, and to the people around us, and to our own selves. A celebration is in order.

Soul-work and celebration. That’s what these holidays are for. “I ain’t as good as I’m gonna get, but I’m better than I used to be.” How good are we gonna get? How good could we get? What’s our ideal picture of ourselves? Do we even have one? What ideals are we trying to live up to?

Nehru, the founder of modern India, once remarked that “failure comes only when we forget our ideals.” We need to remember our ideals, remember the best we have ever dreamed of, and this holiday is all about remembering. In fact, Rosh Hashanah is also known as Yom Hazikaron, the Day of Remembering, par excellence.

“I ain’t as good as I’m gonna get, but I’m better than I used to be.” And what are we going to

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do to get to where we are as good as we’re gonna get? In Judaism, our ideals guide our actions, but our actions also help give life to our ideals. In fact, Rav Shimon ben Gamliel taught “lo hamidrash hu haikar, ella hamaaseh” – it is not contemplation that is essential, it is action.” (Pirkey Avot 1:17). Rosh Hashanah is not only a time to retreat from the world and contemplate the deepest of questions, sin and forgiveness, life and death. It is all that, to be sure. But even more—it is a time to redirect our energies, to focus on what really matters and to do something about it!!!

That’s the way—the only way—we’ll get better than we used to be. And as Tim McGraw would say, ken yehi ratzon, so may it be G-d’s will.

Amen, v’shanah tovah.