WEBVTT
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Good morning, good afternoon, good evening.
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This is Bob Mendelssohn, and this is the Bob's Your Uncle Podcast.
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Of course, that's the music of J.S.
00:00:18.640 --> 00:00:21.600
Bach, his heir on the G string.
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And this is season eight, episode 13 of the Bob's Your Uncle podcast.
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Today we're going to talk about starting over, it's the year 5787, Rosha Shana, Yom Turua.
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We're going to talk about 9-11, some memories that I have, some memories you might have as well.
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Let's see where this will take us today.
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In 1974, Emperor Haile Selassie of Ethiopia was deposed by the Derg Committee of Revolutionary Soldiers.
00:01:44.959 --> 00:01:54.319
In 1959, the TV series Bonanza premiered on NBC and it became one of the longest-running westerns in broadcast history.
00:01:54.560 --> 00:01:56.400
In 1953, U.S.
00:01:56.560 --> 00:01:59.280
Senator and future president John F.
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Kennedy married Jacqueline Bouvier in Newport, Rhode Island.
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Not in the United States.
00:02:06.000 --> 00:02:15.919
In 1943, Grand Sasso Raid, this was the German paratroopers rescuing the deposed Italian dictator Benito Mussolini.
00:02:16.400 --> 00:02:20.240
In 1683, the Siege of Vienna took place.
00:02:20.400 --> 00:02:30.719
It ended after a combined force led by Sobiski of Poland, who defeated the Turkish invaders, and that's the historical marker of the week.
00:03:10.719 --> 00:03:23.280
I remember that because strangely enough we were watching a fictional American president and a fictional White House when within minutes of the episode ending the real world broke into our evening.
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It was about a quarter to eleven that night here in Sydney.
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Program finished, and less than four minutes later we were watching American news.
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Something had happened in New York City.
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I thought it was a promo for next week's show, but no, a plane had actually flown into one of the towers of the World Trade Center.
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At first, like everybody else, we we didn't understand what we were seeing.
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Was it an accident?
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A terrible navigational error?
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How could an airliner possibly fly into one of those enormous buildings?
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We'd live there nine years of our life, and to see this was just so odd.
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Seventeen minutes after the first plane hit, another plane flew into the second tower.
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And suddenly we knew this was not an accident.
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The first plane had struck the North Tower at 8 46 in the morning, and at 9 03 the second plane struck the South Tower.
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Then came the Pentagon, then the news of another plane crashing into a field in Pennsylvania, and then those buildings that seemed permanent, part of the New York skyline, part of America came down.
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2,900 people and more were killed that day.
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Patty and I stayed up until about three o'clock in the morning.
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Going to bed seemed inappropriate.
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How could you turn off the television and go to sleep?
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Because I'm an American living in Australia, messages were going back and forth.
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Friends were writing and calling.
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People wanted to know what other people knew.
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We wanted to know who was safe.
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We wanted to make contact.
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And like millions of people around the world, we prayed.
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Shock, sadness, disbelief.
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And somewhere underneath all of that was a question that would take a very long time to answer.
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How do you start over after something like this?
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Here we are 25 years later.
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I think that's still a good question.
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And it connects for me anyway with something else happening right now.
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The Jewish community and we are celebrating what we normally call Rosh Hashanah, the head of the year.
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But I'm going to call it by its biblical name, Yom Turua.
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Because interestingly, the Bible never calls this holiday Rosh Hashanah.
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In Leviticus 23, it's described as Zichron Turuah, a remembrance marked by the sounding of the trumpet.
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And Numbers chapter 29 calls it Yom Turua, a day of trumpet blasts.
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Turua is a sound, it's an interruption.
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The shofar is not background music.
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Nobody puts on a recording of the shofar to help them relax at night.
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It's designed, it's supposed to get your attention.
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Wake up.
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Remember, pay attention.
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Something's happening.
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Something is changing, and perhaps start again.
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Look, I've been Jewish for a long time, all my life, actually.
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And one of the things you notice when you've lived as long as I have is that communities change.
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Words change, customs change.
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The things we emphasize change.
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For instance, when I was a kid around this time of year, remember the greeting?
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Now we make it svarti tikatev techatemu.
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May you be inscribed and sealed for a good year.
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In Yiddish, it was just a good nore, a good year to you.
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But uh this tikatevu, this inscribing, the tehatemu and sealing.
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It's an interesting greeting.
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Because if I say to you, may you be inscribed, there's an obvious question, where should I be inscribed?
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The answer in Jewish tradition is in the book of life.
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The traditional greeting is connected with the idea that God is judge, that our lives are before him, that there is accountability, that these days of awe are serious days leading towards Yom Kippur.
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Traditional Jewish practice still knows that greeting and its meaning, may you be written and sealed for a good year.
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But I've noticed something over my lifetime, more and more what I hear is Shana Tovah Umituka.
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Have a good and sweet year.
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And there's nothing wrong with that.
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Please don't misunderstand me.
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I like sweet.
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Honey on apples, I'm there.
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Honey cake?
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Absolutely.
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A sweet year, I'll take as many as I can.
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But I find the change fascinating.
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We seem to have moved from a greeting that asks, Where do I stand before God?
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to one that says, I hope you have a nice year.
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From inscription to sweetness, from a measure of accountability before God to a general wish for well-being.
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And I wonder whether that says something about the Jewish community in which I grew up and the Jewish community in which I live today.
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Maybe it says something about all of us, because we'd much rather have sweetness than judgment.
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We'd rather talk about a new beginning and talk about why we need one.
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We like starting over.
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We just don't particularly like looking back.
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And yet the Bible will not let us do that.
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Again and again God tells the Jewish people, remember.
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Remember you were slaves in Egypt.
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Remember the wilderness, what a malek did to you, remember the covenant, remember what God has done, where you went wrong.
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Remember.
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Jewish faith is built on memories.
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And that brings me back to nine eleven.
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One of the phrases that came out of nine eleven was a repeat from the Holocaust.
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Never forget.
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And we shouldn't.
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Twenty five years have passed.
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There are adults alive today who weren't even born when those towers came down.
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There are children whose parents weren't old enough to remember it, but some of us do remember exactly where we were.
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Sydney, Tuesday night, the West Wing, the news, the towers.
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Then hours, staring at a television screen, trying to comprehend something that didn't seem comprehensible.
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I remember.
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But here's the thing.
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Remembering cannot mean that you stay forever on September 11, 2001.
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America had to wake up on September 12.
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People had to bury their dead.
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Children had to grow up without parents.
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Businesses had to reopen.
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Airplanes had to fly again.
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People had to go back to work.
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Life had to go on, but somehow people had to start over.
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Maybe that's one of the messages I hear in Yom Trua.
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Remember, but don't stay there.
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The shofar is not God's eraser, it's God's alarm clock.
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It doesn't say yesterday didn't happen.
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It says wake up, today is here.
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That's an important distinction.
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Starting over does not mean pretending the past didn't happen.
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Sometimes people want a clean slate because they don't want to deal with what's written on the old one.
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That's not repentance.
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The Hebrew word we often use during this season is chuva, return.
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Turn around, come back.
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And you can't return unless you recognize that you've gone the wrong way.
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You can't turn around unless you acknowledge that you're facing the wrong direction.
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That's why remembrance and starting over belong together.
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The Bible's idea of a new beginning is not amnesia.
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Israel leaves Egypt but remembers Egypt.
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Israel enters the promised land, but we remember the wilderness.
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Israel returns from Babylon, but remembers the exile.
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The past does not disappear.
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Instead, God takes people with a past and gives us a future.
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And that's where, as a Jewish believer in Yeshua, this becomes really personal for me.
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I don't believe that faith in Yeshua means that my past did not happen.
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I don't believe grace means that sin doesn't matter.
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In fact, quite the opposite.
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Grace only makes sense because sin matters.
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Forgiveness only means something if there's something that needs forgiving.
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And starting over only means something if I know that where I've been isn't where I want to remain.
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Yeshua, the Jewish Messiah, had a message.
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His first message was not try to feel better about yourself, or something good is going to happen today, or the best is yet in front of you.
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No, he his first message was repent, turn around and believe the good news.
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That's Shuva.
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And perhaps that's what we need to hear when the shofar sounds.
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Not have a good year, although certainly I hope you do, but something more.
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Wake up, look back and remember.
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Ask some difficult questions.
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Where where have I been this year?
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What have I become?
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Whom have I hurt?
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What have I neglected?
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Where has God been speaking and I've been too very busy to listen?
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What am I carrying into another year that really ought to be left behind?
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Those are not comfortable questions.
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But perhaps Yom Trua isn't supposed to be comfortable.
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A chauffeur is supposed to disturb the peace.
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Twenty-five years ago, on an ordinary Tuesday night in Sydney, our television disturbed the peace.
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Patty and I watched events thousands of kilometers away that we knew would change things, and they did.
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The world after seven after September eleven was not the world of September 10th.
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There was no going back.
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But there was going forward.
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That's different.
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And perhaps that's the choice before every one of us.
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We can't go back.
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I'd love sometimes to go back and change things I've said, things I've done, decisions I've made, opportunities missed.
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Maybe you'd like to do that too.
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Yesterday is not coming back.
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What we have is today, and by the grace of God tomorrow.
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So maybe my greeting this year needs a little more than sweetness.
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Yes, Shannatova Umatuka.
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May you have a good and sweet year.
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But I also want some of that old greeting.
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The Shannatova Tikatevu.
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May you be inscribed for a good year.
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Because that reminds me that my life is lived before God.
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That another year is not something I'm owed.
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It reminds me that life is precious.
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And it reminds me that starting over is not simply turning the page on a calendar.
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It's turning ourselves towards God.
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Twenty-five years later, I can still picture that night, the television, the shock, the prayers.
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Staying awake till three in the morning, and now another Yom Turwa is here, another year, another signing of this shofar.
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We begin again.
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So when you hear the shofar, this Yom Turwah, or even if you never hear one, maybe ask yourself, what do I need to remember?
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What do I need to leave behind?
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And where is God giving me an opportunity to start over?com.
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And maybe you're listening to us on the uh on all not just podcasts, but uh maybe you're following along on the realbobm.com.
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That's my website.
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You can get Bible commentaries from Matthew.
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I think we're up to chapter seven of Matthew, up to chapter 12 of Jeremiah, up to chapter um 11, maybe 7, of Revelation.
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Um, I hope you'll you'll follow along and uh the blog and all kinds of things, whatever we can do to help share with you things that we think matters.
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So look, uh let me hear from you.
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Tell me what matters to you.
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Tell me where you've got to start over in 5787, or maybe just because it's a new day, or what your fears are, and let's try to talk about it.
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Is that fair enough?
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Hey, wherever you are, when things seem bleak or uncertain, look up to God.
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He's in his heaven, and Bob's your uncle.
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Hello from Sydney.
00:00:00.320 --> 00:00:02.720
Good morning, good afternoon, good evening.
00:00:02.799 --> 00:00:07.440
This is Bob Mendelssohn, and this is the Bob's Your Uncle Podcast.
00:00:16.000 --> 00:00:18.399
Of course, that's the music of J.S.
00:00:18.640 --> 00:00:21.600
Bach, his heir on the G string.
00:00:22.480 --> 00:00:29.199
And this is season eight, episode 13 of the Bob's Your Uncle podcast.
00:00:29.359 --> 00:00:37.119
Today we're going to talk about starting over, it's the year 5787, Rosha Shana, Yom Turua.
00:00:37.280 --> 00:00:43.679
We're going to talk about 9-11, some memories that I have, some memories you might have as well.
00:00:43.920 --> 00:00:46.240
Let's see where this will take us today.
00:01:35.280 --> 00:01:44.719
In 1974, Emperor Haile Selassie of Ethiopia was deposed by the Derg Committee of Revolutionary Soldiers.
00:01:44.959 --> 00:01:54.319
In 1959, the TV series Bonanza premiered on NBC and it became one of the longest-running westerns in broadcast history.
00:01:54.560 --> 00:01:56.400
In 1953, U.S.
00:01:56.560 --> 00:01:59.280
Senator and future president John F.
00:01:59.439 --> 00:02:04.239
Kennedy married Jacqueline Bouvier in Newport, Rhode Island.
00:02:04.480 --> 00:02:05.840
Not in the United States.
00:02:06.000 --> 00:02:15.919
In 1943, Grand Sasso Raid, this was the German paratroopers rescuing the deposed Italian dictator Benito Mussolini.
00:02:16.400 --> 00:02:20.240
In 1683, the Siege of Vienna took place.
00:02:20.400 --> 00:02:30.719
It ended after a combined force led by Sobiski of Poland, who defeated the Turkish invaders, and that's the historical marker of the week.
00:03:10.719 --> 00:03:23.280
I remember that because strangely enough we were watching a fictional American president and a fictional White House when within minutes of the episode ending the real world broke into our evening.
00:03:23.599 --> 00:03:27.680
It was about a quarter to eleven that night here in Sydney.
00:03:28.080 --> 00:03:33.280
Program finished, and less than four minutes later we were watching American news.
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Something had happened in New York City.
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I thought it was a promo for next week's show, but no, a plane had actually flown into one of the towers of the World Trade Center.
00:03:44.960 --> 00:03:48.879
At first, like everybody else, we we didn't understand what we were seeing.
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Was it an accident?
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A terrible navigational error?
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How could an airliner possibly fly into one of those enormous buildings?
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We'd live there nine years of our life, and to see this was just so odd.
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Seventeen minutes after the first plane hit, another plane flew into the second tower.
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And suddenly we knew this was not an accident.
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The first plane had struck the North Tower at 8 46 in the morning, and at 9 03 the second plane struck the South Tower.
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Then came the Pentagon, then the news of another plane crashing into a field in Pennsylvania, and then those buildings that seemed permanent, part of the New York skyline, part of America came down.
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2,900 people and more were killed that day.
00:04:48.879 --> 00:04:52.480
Patty and I stayed up until about three o'clock in the morning.
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Going to bed seemed inappropriate.
00:04:55.600 --> 00:04:58.959
How could you turn off the television and go to sleep?
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Because I'm an American living in Australia, messages were going back and forth.
00:05:04.879 --> 00:05:07.199
Friends were writing and calling.
00:05:07.600 --> 00:05:09.839
People wanted to know what other people knew.
00:05:10.000 --> 00:05:11.680
We wanted to know who was safe.
00:05:11.839 --> 00:05:15.199
We wanted to make contact.
00:05:15.759 --> 00:05:19.279
And like millions of people around the world, we prayed.
00:05:19.600 --> 00:05:22.800
Shock, sadness, disbelief.
00:05:22.959 --> 00:05:28.800
And somewhere underneath all of that was a question that would take a very long time to answer.
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How do you start over after something like this?
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Here we are 25 years later.
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I think that's still a good question.
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And it connects for me anyway with something else happening right now.
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The Jewish community and we are celebrating what we normally call Rosh Hashanah, the head of the year.
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But I'm going to call it by its biblical name, Yom Turua.
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Because interestingly, the Bible never calls this holiday Rosh Hashanah.
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In Leviticus 23, it's described as Zichron Turuah, a remembrance marked by the sounding of the trumpet.
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And Numbers chapter 29 calls it Yom Turua, a day of trumpet blasts.
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Turua is a sound, it's an interruption.
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The shofar is not background music.
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Nobody puts on a recording of the shofar to help them relax at night.
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It's designed, it's supposed to get your attention.
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Wake up.
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Remember, pay attention.
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Something's happening.
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Something is changing, and perhaps start again.
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Look, I've been Jewish for a long time, all my life, actually.
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And one of the things you notice when you've lived as long as I have is that communities change.
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Words change, customs change.
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The things we emphasize change.
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For instance, when I was a kid around this time of year, remember the greeting?
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Now we make it svarti tikatev techatemu.
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May you be inscribed and sealed for a good year.
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In Yiddish, it was just a good nore, a good year to you.
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But uh this tikatevu, this inscribing, the tehatemu and sealing.
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It's an interesting greeting.
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Because if I say to you, may you be inscribed, there's an obvious question, where should I be inscribed?
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The answer in Jewish tradition is in the book of life.
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The traditional greeting is connected with the idea that God is judge, that our lives are before him, that there is accountability, that these days of awe are serious days leading towards Yom Kippur.
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Traditional Jewish practice still knows that greeting and its meaning, may you be written and sealed for a good year.
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But I've noticed something over my lifetime, more and more what I hear is Shana Tovah Umituka.
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Have a good and sweet year.
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And there's nothing wrong with that.
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Please don't misunderstand me.
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I like sweet.
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Honey on apples, I'm there.
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Honey cake?
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Absolutely.
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A sweet year, I'll take as many as I can.
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But I find the change fascinating.
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We seem to have moved from a greeting that asks, Where do I stand before God?
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to one that says, I hope you have a nice year.
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From inscription to sweetness, from a measure of accountability before God to a general wish for well-being.
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And I wonder whether that says something about the Jewish community in which I grew up and the Jewish community in which I live today.
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Maybe it says something about all of us, because we'd much rather have sweetness than judgment.
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We'd rather talk about a new beginning and talk about why we need one.
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We like starting over.
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We just don't particularly like looking back.
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And yet the Bible will not let us do that.
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Again and again God tells the Jewish people, remember.
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Remember you were slaves in Egypt.
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Remember the wilderness, what a malek did to you, remember the covenant, remember what God has done, where you went wrong.
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Remember.
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Jewish faith is built on memories.
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And that brings me back to nine eleven.
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One of the phrases that came out of nine eleven was a repeat from the Holocaust.
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Never forget.
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And we shouldn't.
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Twenty five years have passed.
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There are adults alive today who weren't even born when those towers came down.
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There are children whose parents weren't old enough to remember it, but some of us do remember exactly where we were.
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Sydney, Tuesday night, the West Wing, the news, the towers.
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Then hours, staring at a television screen, trying to comprehend something that didn't seem comprehensible.
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I remember.
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But here's the thing.
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Remembering cannot mean that you stay forever on September 11, 2001.
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America had to wake up on September 12.
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People had to bury their dead.
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Children had to grow up without parents.
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Businesses had to reopen.
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Airplanes had to fly again.
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People had to go back to work.
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Life had to go on, but somehow people had to start over.
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Maybe that's one of the messages I hear in Yom Trua.
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Remember, but don't stay there.
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The shofar is not God's eraser, it's God's alarm clock.
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It doesn't say yesterday didn't happen.
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It says wake up, today is here.
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That's an important distinction.
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Starting over does not mean pretending the past didn't happen.
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Sometimes people want a clean slate because they don't want to deal with what's written on the old one.
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That's not repentance.
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The Hebrew word we often use during this season is chuva, return.
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Turn around, come back.
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And you can't return unless you recognize that you've gone the wrong way.
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You can't turn around unless you acknowledge that you're facing the wrong direction.
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That's why remembrance and starting over belong together.
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The Bible's idea of a new beginning is not amnesia.
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Israel leaves Egypt but remembers Egypt.
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Israel enters the promised land, but we remember the wilderness.
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Israel returns from Babylon, but remembers the exile.
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The past does not disappear.
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Instead, God takes people with a past and gives us a future.
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And that's where, as a Jewish believer in Yeshua, this becomes really personal for me.
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I don't believe that faith in Yeshua means that my past did not happen.
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I don't believe grace means that sin doesn't matter.
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In fact, quite the opposite.
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Grace only makes sense because sin matters.
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Forgiveness only means something if there's something that needs forgiving.
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And starting over only means something if I know that where I've been isn't where I want to remain.
00:12:57.759 --> 00:13:01.759
Yeshua, the Jewish Messiah, had a message.
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His first message was not try to feel better about yourself, or something good is going to happen today, or the best is yet in front of you.
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No, he his first message was repent, turn around and believe the good news.
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That's Shuva.
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And perhaps that's what we need to hear when the shofar sounds.
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Not have a good year, although certainly I hope you do, but something more.
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Wake up, look back and remember.
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Ask some difficult questions.
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Where where have I been this year?
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What have I become?
00:13:41.440 --> 00:13:43.120
Whom have I hurt?
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What have I neglected?
00:13:45.360 --> 00:13:50.879
Where has God been speaking and I've been too very busy to listen?
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What am I carrying into another year that really ought to be left behind?
00:13:56.320 --> 00:13:58.879
Those are not comfortable questions.
00:13:59.200 --> 00:14:03.120
But perhaps Yom Trua isn't supposed to be comfortable.
00:14:03.360 --> 00:14:06.720
A chauffeur is supposed to disturb the peace.
00:14:07.679 --> 00:14:15.360
Twenty-five years ago, on an ordinary Tuesday night in Sydney, our television disturbed the peace.
00:14:16.240 --> 00:14:22.720
Patty and I watched events thousands of kilometers away that we knew would change things, and they did.
00:14:23.440 --> 00:14:29.440
The world after seven after September eleven was not the world of September 10th.
00:14:29.600 --> 00:14:31.279
There was no going back.
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But there was going forward.
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That's different.
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And perhaps that's the choice before every one of us.
00:14:39.519 --> 00:14:40.879
We can't go back.
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I'd love sometimes to go back and change things I've said, things I've done, decisions I've made, opportunities missed.
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Maybe you'd like to do that too.
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Yesterday is not coming back.
00:14:56.720 --> 00:15:00.399
What we have is today, and by the grace of God tomorrow.
00:15:00.960 --> 00:15:04.399
So maybe my greeting this year needs a little more than sweetness.
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Yes, Shannatova Umatuka.
00:15:07.120 --> 00:15:09.440
May you have a good and sweet year.
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But I also want some of that old greeting.
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The Shannatova Tikatevu.
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May you be inscribed for a good year.
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Because that reminds me that my life is lived before God.
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That another year is not something I'm owed.
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It reminds me that life is precious.
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And it reminds me that starting over is not simply turning the page on a calendar.
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It's turning ourselves towards God.
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Twenty-five years later, I can still picture that night, the television, the shock, the prayers.
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Staying awake till three in the morning, and now another Yom Turwa is here, another year, another signing of this shofar.
00:15:52.080 --> 00:15:53.679
We begin again.
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So when you hear the shofar, this Yom Turwah, or even if you never hear one, maybe ask yourself, what do I need to remember?
00:16:03.039 --> 00:16:05.200
What do I need to leave behind?
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And where is God giving me an opportunity to start over?com.
00:16:48.799 --> 00:17:00.559
And maybe you're listening to us on the uh on all not just podcasts, but uh maybe you're following along on the realbobm.com.
00:17:00.720 --> 00:17:02.080
That's my website.
00:17:02.320 --> 00:17:05.039
You can get Bible commentaries from Matthew.
00:17:05.200 --> 00:17:17.039
I think we're up to chapter seven of Matthew, up to chapter 12 of Jeremiah, up to chapter um 11, maybe 7, of Revelation.
00:17:17.200 --> 00:17:27.680
Um, I hope you'll you'll follow along and uh the blog and all kinds of things, whatever we can do to help share with you things that we think matters.
00:17:27.920 --> 00:17:31.920
So look, uh let me hear from you.
00:17:33.440 --> 00:17:35.759
Tell me what matters to you.
00:17:36.079 --> 00:17:49.039
Tell me where you've got to start over in 5787, or maybe just because it's a new day, or what your fears are, and let's try to talk about it.
00:17:49.359 --> 00:17:50.880
Is that fair enough?
00:17:57.440 --> 00:18:03.119
Hey, wherever you are, when things seem bleak or uncertain, look up to God.
00:18:03.440 --> 00:18:06.160
He's in his heaven, and Bob's your uncle.
00:18:06.720 --> 00:18:08.240
Hello from Sydney.
