Joy from the Proper Place
It is interesting to note that the Chasam Sofer in his drashos speaks about this:
The Chasam Sofer notes that crying on Rosh Hashanah due to fear of a painful judgment doesn’t help, it only harms. “The tears must be those of joy and cleaving to Hashem only, as the pasuk tells us, מעוזכם, היא ה' חדות כי תעצבו אל do not be sad; the enjoyment of Hashem is your strength. The Chasam Sofer then brings the words of the Midrash: “On Rosh Hashanah, the Satan says, “Your children are thieves,” and on Yom Kippur he says, “Your children are like the angels in the Heavens.”
What does the Satan mean by this? On Rosh Hashanah, there’s a mitzvah to be joyful to show that we are confident of a positive outcome. But the Satan claims that this joy is not the joy of Hashem, derived from our true bitachon that He will give us a good year, but rather we are joyful because we are distracted from the awesomeness of the din. Therefore, to counter this accusation, we treat Erev Rosh Hashanah with great awe as well. Many have the custom to fast on that day. We daven lengthily, saying that indeed, we have sinned, and we worry about the fallout from those aveiros. And this illustrates that on Rosh Hashanah itself, our joy does stem from our trust in Hashem—not because we’re apathetic.
On Yom Kippur, the Satan claims, we fast not because we were commanded to fast, but because we’re so afraid of the din that we’re unable to eat. Therefore, we eat festively on Erev Yom Kippur to show that we’re confident of a good outcome—and our fasting on the following day is solely because we were commanded to do so.
Thus, we see clearly that, sometimes, a person may be joyful on Rosh Hashanah—but it doesn’t come from true bitachon; rather, it stems from the wrong place—his apathy about the Yom HaDin, a distraction from the awesomeness of the judgment. It is only when we show our seriousness on Erev Rosh Hashanah that we demonstrate that the joy of Rosh Hashanah is rooted in bitachon.
Hence, we must understand: How do we achieve that balance between bitachon and tranquility on the one hand, and feeling the awesomeness of the mishpat on the other? Let us relearn the basic tenets of bitachon—in order to take that first step, and, b’ezras Hashem, the Ribbono shel Olam will inspire us on Rosh Hashanah so that we will know what and how to think.
