Should I be confessing my sins on Rosh Hashanah?
By Rabbi Shalom Landau.
Rabbi Landau explains that Rosh Hashanah is not the day for confession. “We don’t bring up sins.” The day is about crowning the King.
He asks you to picture a coronation. Who would walk up to the new king and remind him of every time they betrayed or failed him? “That’s insanity.” At that moment, he says, the king “doesn’t want to hear your confession.” What he wants is “your loyalty, your presence, your voice declaring, ‘Long live the king!’”
So the focus of the day is not on your mistakes. “Today isn’t about mistakes, it’s about His majesty.”
Related concepts: A year that is for something · Believing you are forgiven
In A Soul at Peace: Crown the King, Don’t Confess: The Work of the New Year
Going deeper: Rabbi Landau's teaching, level by level
Surface claim
Rabbi Landau teaches that on Rosh Hashanah we don’t bring up sins.
What may be behind it
At a coronation, reminders of past betrayal are out of place. The King wants loyalty and presence.
Deepest human truth
The day is about His majesty, not about our mistakes.
More questions from this teaching
More answers: The Cycle of Renewal: Elul, Holidays, and Light · All questions · Questions about Rabbi Landau and Rivnitz