Tonight is Rosh Hashanah, the Jewish New Year. We’ll dip an apple in honey hoping that the sweetness of one tempers the sharpness of the other and we’ll pray to be written in the book of life.

We call Rosh Hashanah the anniversary of the creation of the universe; and you would have thought that our ancestors would have chosen the obvious biblical reading: Genesis 1: “In the beginning God created.”

But we don’t. Instead we read about Sarah and the birth of Isaac, about Hannah and the birth of Samuel: two childless women who late in life had a child. I suspect the reason is that if, as we believe, a single life is like a universe, then the birth of a new life is like the birth of the universe.

Stephen Hawking in his Brief History of Time wrote that if we eventually find a complete scientific theory of everything, we’d know the mind of God. I think there are easier ways of knowing the mind of God. If God is a creator and we’re His creations, if God is a parent and we’re His children, then the closest we come to understanding the divine is to be the parent of a new child, knowing what it is for love to create new life.

In the midst of tense and troubled times, these past three years have held special delight for my wife Elaine and me. We’ve become grandparents, that strange condition that turns otherwise rational human beings into shameless sentimentalists. Seeing our little granddaughter and even littler grandson I’ve been, in Wordsworth phrase, “surprised by joy.” I never dreamt life could be that good; and I’ve learned the lesson of Rosh Hashanah all over again.

The great choice of any civilization is the story we tell about the human condition. On the one hand there’s the story told by some contemporary scientists as well as the ancient Greeks, that the universe is blind to our existence, deaf to our prayers, indifferent to our fate. On the other is the Jewish vision of Rosh Hashanah that we are here because someone wanted us to be; that creation is an act of love. The first vision gives us the tragic sense of life, the second gives us hope. On Rosh Hashanah God summons us to a future not yet written, to a new beginning. That’s what I see in our grandchildren: a sense of wonder and possibility – which is what faith strives to sustain. For our children’s sake and ours may God grant us Shanah tovah, a good new year.

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