Yeshiva Days In Brunoy

We call them Days of Awe. And yet, in many ways, Rosh Hashanah is commonly perceived as a contractual opportunity: We want happiness, good health, wealth, and all our needs met. We believe that G-d can provide these blessings, but we also know there are things that G-d demands of us—to elevate the world, to make it holy. We hope that if we make the effort to give G-d what He wants, He will give us what we want. 

We therefore come to these days with some trepidation. For we know that our behavior will be evaluated—how well have we fulfilled His expectations? The Unetaneh Tokef prayer explicitly lays out the sentencing decisions that G-d will make on this day: “who shall live and who shall die… who shall be poor and who shall be rich.” It’s only natural for the High Holidays to evoke dread.

But in my youth I met a man who had a dramatically different approach to these holy days. Yisroel Noach Belinitsky grew up in Russia and studied in Lubavitch before the First World War. Later he became a bookkeeper. But the material world had very little significance to him. His life was focused on G-d. He was drawn to Chasidic teachings that describe the beauty, joy, and delight of meditating on G-d’s presence in creation. 

One year, when I was a yeshiva student in Brunoy, France, this man—now in his 90s—asked me to sit next to him on Rosh Hashanah so that I could help him stand up and sit down throughout the service. I felt privileged to do this, and as I sat next to him, I could hear every word he was saying. I could also hear which prayers most moved him.

I was surprised that he did not express any particular emotion when it came to Unetaneh Tokef—usually regarded as the highlight of the service. He read it as one would read any prayer on any day of the year. 

But another prayer provoked such an outburst of sobbing that I had to hold his arm so that he would not fall down. The words of this prayer are: 

G-d and G-d of our Fathers, rule over the whole world in Your glory… And every creation will know and feel the vibrations of Your presence in their very being. And every creation will know that You formed it. And every creation with a soul in its body will cry out and say, “You are King, whose sovereignty rules over everything.”

That is what Belinitsky craved: a day when G-d’s presence would be revealed everywhere. He prayed with intense hope—not for his material needs, not even for life or health—but that G-d’s vision would be realized. He wanted what G-d wanted.

The other prayer that unexpectedly provoked intense emotion for him was the V’chol Ma’aminim—“And All Believe,” a chant that summarizes Jewish beliefs about G-d. Here too, I had to hold him tightly. At first, I wondered why this section moved him so. To me it seemed a dry statement of faith. 

Gradually I realized that this man was the embodiment of an elevated existence described in Chasidism. There are a number of ways in which the soul connects to G-d. The greatest of these is “yechidah”—an essential oneness. The relationship between the neshamah, the Jewish soul, and G-d at this level is so deep that it cannot be expressed in logic. It can be expressed only in faith. The words of this prayer resonated with the very depths of Belinitsky’s soul, for it describes the world as he understood it—in the language of faith.

That Rosh Hashanah I learned what the holiday is really about: to want for myself what G-d wants.

This article appears in the Autumn/Winter 2025 issue of Lubavitch International, to subscribe to the magazine, click here.