This past summer, both our country and the world celebrated an important milestone: the 40th anniversary of the Apollo 11 mission, the mission that took us to the moon. I will confess that I was not yet born when Neil Armstrong, Buzz Aldrin, and Michael Collins took that momentous journey, so I had no memories of the event to reminisce over as we reached the anniversary. However, between July 16th and July 24th this year—the dates of the journey, including the launch, the trip, the landing, and the return, it was difficult to turn on a television, go online, or open a newspaper without there being some mention of the anniversary. Everywhere I turned, it seemed, I saw images from the moon landing, heard recordings of the back and forth between Houston and the Command Module, or read of events commemorating and celebrating the anniversary of this incredible accomplishment. Over the course of those nine days, as I watched, listened, and read about Apollo 11, I came to feel more connected to the events of July 1969. After my week of unintended immersion in the story of the moon landing, I now knew the excitement of watching the Saturn 5 rocket lift off with a fiery explosion. I was newly amazed at our capacity for scientific advancement, as mission control spoke to the astronauts who were two hundred thousand miles away as though they were on the phone next door. I felt invigorated by how our sense of discovery and adventure drove the space race and pushed us to explore what had originally seemed like an unattainable frontier. And I felt the poignancy of succeeding in a mission imagined by a visionary president whose untimely demise prevented him from seeing its realization. By participating in the 40th anniversary of the moon landing, not only did I feel a little like I had been there, but I felt more American.

Anniversaries are like that. They take us back to that first moment, and give us a chance to relive it. Anniversaries are a yearly reminder that significant experiences stick with us. Each year, as we come back to them, they come alive, again. Sometimes this yearly iteration of our formative moments gives us a chance to engage in joyous celebration, like we do with birthdays. Some of us even love one birthday so much that we celebrate it over and over—my Great Uncle Lester, ז"ל (zikhrono livrakhah, of blessed memory), celebrated his 39th birthday every year for as long as I knew him (though undoubtedly not before he was actually 39). Other times, our yearly anniversaries can be bittersweet or even painful, as we often experience with Yahrzeits. Whatever the occasion, anniversaries have the power to transport us back in time, refreshing our recollections from years past, even giving us the chance to relive those moments.

As my experience with the 40th anniversary of Apollo 11 illustrates, you don’t need to participate in the original event to benefit from the power of anniversaries. This idea is evident in many places throughout the Jewish tradition. Each and every Pesah we are commanded to see ourselves as though we left Egypt. By participating in a seder, eating matzah and ridding our houses of ḥametz, we connect to our ancestors, to how they felt as they were liberated from slavery. The core experience of Pesaḥ is not only to celebrate the Exodus, but to relive it.

Another example: At the beginning of the book of Deuteronomy, Devarim, Moshe gathers the people together. Having reached the end of their journey, the people are poised on the border of the Promised Land. It is the 40th anniversary, if you will, of their departure from Egypt. To mark this occasion, Moshe recounts their story, beginning with how they left Sinai, then how they showed a spectacular lack of confidence in the spies who went to scout out the land to prepare for their entrance, and finally how they persevered, surviving and continuing their journey even after that great breach of trust.

Just as significant as Moshe’s chosen method for commemorating the 40th anniversary is his audience. None of them, except Moshe himself, Joshua and Caleb, experienced the events that Moshe was recounting. Remember, after the fiasco of the spies, the people were condemned to wander in the desert for another 38 years. No one who had doubted the spies, no one who had been alive when they left Egypt, would survive to see the end of their journey. Like me experiencing the wonder and excitement of the moonwalk vicariously on its 40th anniversary, B’nei Yisrael were experiencing a part of their history 40 years later, through the recollections of someone who lived through it.

Moreover, they were experiencing it as though they had actually been there. Moshe’s speech was in the second person—he spoke to them as though he was reminding them of their own deeds, their own past, rather than the history of their predecessors. Moshe’s story was not a pretty one, and implicit in his words was a charge to the people: do not repeat the mistakes of those who came before you. This may be where you came from, but you have the power to take yourselves in a better direction.

At that moment, with Moshe’s words fresh in their ears, B’nei Yisrael became, if we can say this, more Israelite. As the anniversary of the foundational events of the people of Israel drew near, Moshe helped the next generation of Israelites participate in those events, connecting them to the cyclical story of our people. What’s more, he urged them to accept their past, even as he challenged them to transcend it. This is the deeper power of celebrating anniversaries. We don’t only go back to the event we’re commemorating; we see how far we’ve come since then.

This year, our community celebrates a momentous anniversary—our 50th. Over the course of this year, we will return to the moment of our shul’s genesis many times. For some of us, this will bring back fond memories; for those of us who were not a part of that original experience, it will give us a sense of what it was like to be a part of Temple Emunah’s beginnings. We will also explore the many ways that we have grown and progressed as a community. I hope you will all join me in taking this opportunity to celebrate and honor our milestone.

Tonight begins another major anniversary, as we welcome Rosh Hashanah, the beginning of a New Year. Today, and for the next two days, we celebrate the anniversary of the Creation of the World. To be sure, we will see many allusions and references to this significant moment at the beginning of time in the words of our prayers. But just as anniversaries help us look back, they also drive us ahead.

Never more powerfully do we feel that simultaneous backward-forward pull than at this season. We look back not only to the Creation of the World, but through our past year. We ask ourselves a series of questions. How was this year different from those that came before it? What have we achieved? Where have we encountered challenges? How have we grown, in our relationships with others and in our relationship with God? Exploring these questions is part of an important annual check-in with ourselves.

The next part of this annual process is to look forward. What would we like to accomplish this coming year? What tools can we employ to help us achieve our goals? Where do we need to do better? How can we spur ourselves onward, to continued growth and development?

At this moment, with this most powerful of anniversaries upon us, we stand poised between our past and our future, and we find comfort in the fact that we are not facing these questions alone. As we look backward, may we be warmed by memories that make us smile, and touched by those that cause us to shed a tear. As we look forward, may we experience anew the mysteries of the natural world and the ingenuity of humankind. May we continue to ask ourselves the important questions and set aside meaningful time for serious reflection.

Shanah Tovah