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Two people can live through the same year and emerge with two completely different stories.
Why?
Because we do not simply remember what happened to us; we choose, often unconsciously, which moments will define what happened to us.
Drawing on Daniel Kahneman’s groundbreaking distinction between the “experiencing self” and the “remembering self,” this sermon explores a profound truth about the human condition:
We can experience a thousand blessings and allow one disappointment to become the story.
We can live inside a miracle and remember the bad Wi-Fi.
We can stand in an overflowing room and spend the night thinking about the one empty chair.
Rosh Hashanah, Yom HaZikaron, challenges us to reclaim the story of our lives.
Judaism does not ask us to deny the empty chair, the disappointment, or the pain.
It asks us not to allow them to erase everything else that is true.
That is why Judaism is so concerned with how things end: a meal ends with gratitude, a day with Shema, a week with Shabbat.
And this year, when Rosh Hashanah falls on Shabbat, the Torah calls it Zichron Teruah—the remembrance of the shofar.
We may not hear the shofar, but that itself contains the message: the deepest sound is the one that remains after the sound has disappeared.
As we enter a new year, the question is not only, “What will I change?”
It is something even more intimate:
What will I choose to remember—and what story will I allow those memories to write about my life?
