D’Var Torah
Erev Rosh haShanah 5787
Each holiday evening – we dramatically declare a verse from the Torah that describes the purpose of the holiday. Tonight, on erev Rosh haShanah we recite Psalms 81:4-5
תִּקְע֣וּ בַחֹ֣דֶשׁ שׁוֹפָ֑ר בַּ֝כֵּ֗סֶה לְי֣וֹם חַגֵּֽנוּ׃ כִּ֤י חֹ֣ק לְיִשְׂרָאֵ֣ל ה֑וּא מִ֝שְׁפָּ֗ט לֵאלֹהֵ֥י יַעֲקֹֽב׃
Sound the Shofar at the beginning of the month, our festival when the moon is hidden, for it is a hok, an inexplicable decree, for the people of Israel, a law of the God of Jacob.
We blow the shofar when the moon is hidden – that is what we do because our people have been doing so for as long as we can remember.
Even though we struggle to fully explain the reasons behind this law, this hok, as Jews we seek to offer explanations – not just one – but multiple.
Some associate the shofar with the moaning and crying of an ailing elder. Others associate the cry of the shofar with the voice of a heart-broken, loving mother like Sarah and Hagar in our Torah portion, or Hannah and Rachel in our Haftarah portions. Others still consider Isaac or Ishmael in the stories we will read over the next two mornings from Breishit and associate the cry of the shofar with the cry of a child.
What all of these explanations share is a felt-sense that the Shofar gives voice to our heart-felt hope for life. Life – Hayyim – is the unifying theme of the human hope we give voice to in the High Holiday Mahzor. We ask to be written in the book of life – and we conclude each Amidah with a prayer L’chaim Tovim U’lshalom – for good lives and for peace. The sounding of the Shofar – and the prayer and song which surrounds the sounds of the Shofar – offer us a time-tested technique for crying out from the bottom of our hearts with yearning for life.
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What does it mean to cry out for life in a world in which human beings have shown again and again how willing we are to destroy life?
As we celebrate Rosh haShanah this year, I am aware that today is 9/11 – 25 years from September 11th, 2001 – a day when terrible acts of cruelty killed thousands of people and set in motion waves of suffering that continue to be felt today.
In the 2½ decades since then, we have experienced years of devastating war that have led to the deaths of far too many soldiers and civilians. For those who were close to the attacks and escaped with their lives, trauma still casts a large shadow.
For many Americans, the horrifying violence of 9/11 shocked and appalled us to our core – we were devastated by the sheer cruelty and disregard for life these attacks demonstrated.
The coincidence of the 25th anniversary of September 11th and Rosh haShanah should push us to recommit ourselves to our Jewish tradition’s overwhelming focus on the value of human life. As we look back upon a horrible, deadly day, that has led to decades of deadly war, let us recommit ourselves to the sacred value of life: Hayyim.
Of course, as Jews, we have long held intimate knowledge of the cruelty that people are capable of. From ancient times to our own, we have learned again and again that people (even Jews) are tragically capable of incomprehensible acts of cruelty and violence.
Therefore, we have cultivated and passed along theological frameworks to help us relate to these terrible tragedies. Prominent among them is the language of Hester Panim – the hiddenness of G-d’s face.
Hester panim—the hiding of God’s face—is a way of naming those moments when suffering is so overwhelming that God’s presence becomes impossible for us to perceive.
Yet, even as Torah offers us this language of Hester Panim to help us in moments of sharp difficulty, our tradition insists that it is possible to seek and find G-d in the midst of this hiddenness.
The great Eastern-European spiritual master known as the Ba’al Shem Tov, of blessed memory, offered a parable which frames the blowing of the shofar as a practice for orienting ourselves amidst an experience of hester Panim – when G-d feels hidden and beyond our reach. In the words of his student Yaakov Yosef of Polnoyye, of blessed memory, in my translation:
| A parable the Ba’al Shem Tov said before the sounding of the shofar. There was a great, wise King who, through an illusion, built walls, towers, and gates, and commanded that his subjects should approach him by way of the gates and towers. |
| He instructed that treasures of the King should be scattered in each and every gate. Some would walk to the first gate, take the treasure, and return. Others would go to the second gate before returning, etc…. |
| Until the beloved son of the King mustered his strength to cry out directly to his father the King, then he saw that there was truly no barrier separating him and his father because it was all an optical illusion. |
The Holy Blessed One hides in many garments and barriers, but it is known that the whole world is filled with G-d’s Presence and that every movement and thought comes from the Blessed Source of Life. Despite the apparent hiddenness, in reality there is no barrier separating us from the Blessed Life-Source.
In this parable, G-d is hidden, and in order to reach G-d, we are told we must traverse many obstacles of different kinds, walls, towers, and gates. Sometimes, the obstacles are the difficulties of life. And sometimes they are the accumulated complexities of Judaism itself—the unfamiliar Hebrew, the mitzvot we struggle to understand, the institutions we must navigate, even our fear that we are not Jewish enough – or don’t know enough – to do things right.
No matter what the obstacles are that prevent us from feeling G-d’s closeness, along the way, we can find precious treasures. There are valuable lessons to be learned from both the difficulties of life and the challenges of Jewish tradition. Yet even good things can become distractions if they cause us to forget what we are ultimately seeking.
Also, this journey towards G0d- can be exhausting, or worse, the journey can become alienating and disorienting. How can it be so challenging to access what should be right within us, Hei haOlamim, the Life of All Worlds, as G-d is called?!
Here is where the cry of the son is the key to the gates. The sound of the shofar is like the cry of the son of the King. Seeing only obstacles, he feels irreconcilably far from his father. Yet, in the moment when he cries out with childlike simplicity, he sees that in reality, his father is there, with him;
So too, the Source of Life is within us. No matter how far we may feel from G0dliness, when we call out from the depths, we can rediscover the Divine spirit dwelling within us.
As we say in Psalm 130 during the 10 days of repentance:
מִמַּעֲמַקִּ֖ים קְרָאתִ֣יךָ יְהֹ׃
Out of the depths I call You, O ETERNAL One.
Rabbi Shlomo Wolbe, obm, speaks of a smoldering ember. Within each of us, our soul is a G-dly fire. Yet when God feels distant, that fire can seem reduced to nothing more than smoldering embers.
But when we reach out toward God, we give breath to those embers. We blow upon them with the force of life, until they can burst again into flame.
This act offers us profound warmth, brings light into the depth of darkness, and shines through illusions.
The breath which is pushed into the shofar can be thought of as blowing on these coals within each of us – trying to coax those hidden embers back into flame.
Today – since it is Shabbat – we won’t blow the Shofar – until Sunday. Yet, we will use our breath to cry out together in heartfelt prayer. From the depths of our souls, we will sing in prayer to the Soul of the World for Life, Goodness, and Peace – to write us in the Book of Life for another year.
As we pour our hearts into prayer, may we begin to see things more clearly. May the apparent obstacles between us and G-d, – and between us and our souls – come tumbling down. May we continue to embrace the sacred value of life.
L’CHAYIM TOVIM U’LSHALOM TIKATEVU v’tihatemu
May we all be written and sealed in the book of life.