Hayom Harat Olam — Today the Universe Was Conceived
By Rabbi Joel Rembaum, September 23, 2025, Rosh Hashanah Day 1, 5786
The prayer beginning with the words hayom harat olam is read three times in the repetition of the rosh hashanah musaf amidah — each after the sounding the shofar at the conclusion of malkhuyot, zikhronot, and shofarot, respectively.
I will read it to you in Hebrew and in English.
הַיּוֹם הֲרַת עוֹלָם. הַיּוֹם יַעֲמִיד בַּמִּשְׁפָּט כָּל יְצוּרֵי עוֹלָמִים. אִם כְּבָנִים. אִם
כַּעֲבָדִים. אִם כְּבָנִים רַחֲמֵֽנוּ כְּרַחֵם אָב עַל בָּנִים. וְאִם כַּעֲבָדִים עֵינֵֽינוּ לְךָ
.תְלוּיוֹת. עַד שֶׁתְּחָנֵּֽנוּ וְתוֹצִיא כָאוֹר מִשְׁפָּטֵֽנוּ אָיּוֹם קָדוֹשׁ
Today the world was conceived. Today all creation is called to judgment, whether as your children or as your servants. If as your children, be compassionate with us as a parent is compassionate with children. If as your servants, we look to you expectantly, waiting for you to be gracious to us and, as day emerges from night, to bring forth a favorable judgment on our behalf, awesome and holy one.
The words harat olam are taken from Jeremiah 20:17, words uttered by the prophet Jeremiah during a terrible personal crisis he experienced. In verse 17 he wishes he were a dead fetus in his mother’s womb which is in a state of perpetual pregnancy — this is the plain meaning of harat = pregnancy, olam = perpetual, eternal; and in verse 18 he says he wishes he were never born. The verb harah means “conceive, impregnate, pregnant.” It does not mean “create.”
Why did the author of our little prayer choose to begin with these words — hayom harat olam, thereby radically changing the meaning words to mean: today the world was conceived? I suggest that, given what lies before us over the next ten days, he wants us to feel as if we, like Jeremiah, are in the midst of a personal crisis. The difference is that our crisis revolves around our feeling that we have a bundle of unresolved sins that require atonement. So hayom harat olam — today, the first day of Tishrei — the day the process of the creation of the universe began — is, for us, also the day of the beginning of the process of our moral and spiritual re-creation.
While the prayer begins with a reference to all creatures standing in judgment before God, it is clear that humans are the real focal point. This mirrors the process presented in Genesis, chapter 1: humans are the culmination of the physical creation of universe. We were the last creatures created on day six, and we were created in the image of God. Thus, we have a unique and special relationship with God. This is why our sinfulness should weigh so heavily upon us. Borrowing midrashically the words of the prophet Amos (ch 3), it is as if God is saying to us, “only you have I known among the creatures on the earth, therefore I will call you to account for all your sins.”
There are, however, two hopeful elements that bring the Genesis creation account to a rousing conclusion: God proclaims at the end of day six: henei tov me’od, behold, it is very good. And on day seven, God sanctifies the 7th day as a day of cessation from labor, which we humans will inherit in the form of Shabbat. This give us hope that we can do a proper teshuvah, repentance, and, thereby, receive forgiveness from the Almighty, and forgive those who had caused us pain and had fully repented. Thus, Rosh Hashanah is “the day of conception” of a 10 day process called aseret yemei teshuvah — the ten days of repentance, or, as noted above, our ten days of re-creation. And this process, like the seven days of creation, can end on a positive note as the burden of guilt is lifted off of our shoulders.
At the same time, the association of this ten-day period with the creation reminds us that we are standing before a God mighty enough to create by merely speaking. When Elohim was finished, the entire universe was running like a finely tuned Rolex, and god had not even “worked up a sweat.” This is the God who is the Supreme Judge before whom angels quiver and we quake as we know God as ayom venora, awesome and fearsome. Thus, the author concludes the prayer alluding to god as ayom kadosh, Awesome, Holy.
But the author also reminds us that God is compassionate and gracious, and this fills us with hope. There is an allusion in the prayer to two approaches that we, as individuals or groups, can take, depending upon how we understand how our relationship with God operates: ahavat Hamakom — love of “the Place,” i.e. God; or Yirat Shamayim — Fear of Heaven. The author writes: im k’ven, if as a ben, son — God, a loving Father, will be compassionate; im k’eved, if as a servant — God, a Fearsome Master, will be gracious. Either way, forgiveness awaits.
Rambam, in his “Order of the Blessings” (at the end of his Hilkhot Tefilah “Laws of Prayer”), quotes the hayom harat olam without commentary. The fact that he provides us with an almost complete quotation, rather than a very partial one, is an indication that he truly resonated with it. I wonder if he saw in the three words that announce the prayer a verbal equivalent of the sounding of the shofar that immediately precedes it in the mahzor. And surely, in the balance of the prayer, with its urgent reminder of the judgment that lies ahead and the possibility that God will forgive, Rambam found great meaning.
As one of the great teachers of what God’s compassion and forgiveness are and how they operate, Rambam, in his Hilkhot Teshuvah, “Laws of Repentance,” has many lessons for us. Two in particular are relevant to the hayom harat olam prayer and our purpose for being here today:
1. The meaning of the shofar.
2. The scope of repentance.
- For Rambam, the sounding of the shofar, like the words hayom harat olam, is a wakeup call: “awake you sinners….” He continues — to paraphrase — “get on with the job of repenting. If done seriously, you can rest assured that God will forgive.”
- Regarding teshuvah, two details stand out.
- Teshuvah must take place on a daily basis; the ten days are for those transgressions that were not immediately addressed. In Maimonidean terms, the virtues of repenting and forgiving can be embedded in a person’s soul only if regularly practiced.
- The scope of repentance includes sins against God, and sins against people; and for some, the latter may comprise the majority of their sins. Repenting of sins against people is actually more challenging: it requires face to face engagement, the parties involved have either caused or experienced pain, and in many instances the pain is so great that it is hard for the wronged person to forgive. But it must be done, because unrequited sin can fester and re-emerge in the souls in either of those involved in the sin’s first manifestation. And finally, the miasma of the sin must be purged from the souls it affected, because sin against a human is also sin against God. Each human is, after all, in the image of God.
I suspect the author had people-to-people sins in mind, because Jeremiah’s suffering was at the hands of people.
So, I think our author would agree that we if take our teshuvah seriously, and, over the course of the ten days, we clean the slate, our process of moral and spiritual re-creation will end just as the seven days of creation ended — on a high and joyous note. There will be joy in knowing that our efforts were successful and our relationships with god and humans will have been restored. And there is great satisfaction in knowing that our efforts bore sweet fruit. And the sounds of the shofar, the ominous sounds of the shofar on Rosh Hashanah, will be replaced by the joyous sounds of the shofar at the end of Ne’ilah on Yom Kippur.
L’shana tova tikavu