1.
The blistering summer is already being dotted with the odd autumn day, and the Jewish new year is at our doorstep, asking the forgiveness of the exiting year and taking up residence in our homes. It is ready to taste the holiday delicacies. May we be a head and not a tail and renew ourselves for a happy and sweet new year.
It is not easy to celebrate the special occasions on the Jewish calendar without reflecting on our place in the religious traditions. Technically, it's possible to just go to the holiday dinner on Rosh Hashanah because that's what everyone does at the start of a new year. But these occasions have the power to thrust us out of our mundane existence and pose piercing questions about our identity. What exactly are we celebrating?
Jewish law and Jewish tradition are not just folklore. Halachah, or Jewish law, is the "subconscious" of Judaism, the revered Israeli journalist Adam Baruch once said. The traditions and customs are embedded into Jewish law and interpretation in the Midrash and Talmud – they are the dominant part of our collective Jewish personality, just as the subconscious is far wider and greater than the conscious mind. It is impossible to address the Jewish people, their past and future, their hopes and dreams, without taking into account these invaluable spiritual treasures. Even a completely secular atheist needs to at least be familiar with that part of our national and religious spirit in order to be able to say anything of value about us.
2.
There are people who can't handle it and flee abroad whenever the terror of the holidays rolls around, just like Jonah fled from God. But like in Jonah's case, this is a futile endeavor. There, in foreign lands, the Hebrew time is absent. The Jewish autumn is just September or October there. In our people's history, many have managed to flee and fully integrate into the bloodstream of other peoples. But as a collective, we have never been able to escape our identity. Every time we think we've done it, and we can board that boat to Tarshish, the way Jonah did, and escape, a storm comes – sometimes a minor one and sometimes a devastating one – and wreaks havoc on us.
The peoples that we became shipwrecked among, in our efforts to flee the voice calling on us, ejected us into the sea. They expelled us. And if we resisted, they slaughtered us. In the sea of history, we were swallowed for a moment, or for a thousand years and more, until the sea spat us out against our will onto solid ground. We returned to our homeland.
3.
The Bible starts counting each year on the anniversary of the birth of our nation, in the month of Nisan, when the Israelites left Egypt – the watershed event in our nation's history that shaped everything that came after it to this day. If we begin in Nisan, then Tishrei is the seventh month, so why do we celebrate Rosh Hashanah, the new year, in Tishrei? Our sages taught us that Tishrei is the seventh month after our redemption from Egypt, and Nisan is the "first" in the sense that it is most important, not the beginning. This is a perfect example of the divergence between personal time and national time. Every year, our personal renewal coincides with the seasons. After the arid summer comes a time of cleansing, fertilization and birth.
4.
The Torah assigned a unique name to the first day of the seventh month: yom teruah or zichron teruah (day of sounding the trumpet). Our sages gleaned from this that there is a commandment to blow the shofar on this day. The shofar was an instrument used to gather the people together during emergencies. But emergencies aren't planned ahead, so what is all this about?
One thing you can do is to remove yourself from the collective party and flee abroad, or you can decide to stay and enjoy the folklore and the traditional foods and wish people a happy new year like everyone else. But that's not enough. We need to wake up and experience an emotional, psychological, spiritual and intellectual renewal at least once a year. That's what the shofar is there to do. It wakes us up to be reborn at the beginning of the year – to remove the restrictions from our souls, to bid farewell to memories that bind us, to forgive our own weaknesses and those of others who hurt us and purify. The shofar revives our spirit.
5.
The word shofar can be interpreted as referring to the Hebrew word shafir – the membrane that surrounds the fetus – representing our renewing soul deep in our collective identity, preparing for a new time. Knocking and calling "wake up and come out."
It is not only our souls and spirits being reborn. After the shofar is sounded on Rosh Hashanah, we recite the prayer Hayom Harat Olam. Today the world is pregnant. Harat, or pregnancy, means that this day carries the world like a fetus. The creation of the world means a turn outward from man toward the metaphysical world, toward that which exists beyond the physical. An escape from the prison of thought and the crutch of rationalism, putting the main focus on emotion rather than logic. Understanding that we need to put more of an emphasis on the mythology – the important stories in our culture that make up our people's history. They are far more important than the calculations of logic.
And still, our sages set the 25th of Elul as the day the world was created, which makes the first of Tishrei the sixth day of creation. That is the day when man was created. Again we are shifting between the collective and the personal, between the universal and the particular, between the creation of the world and the creation of the individual. The Hebrew calendar, therefore, marks the days of the first man – not necessarily the first human, but rather the first man who introduced a moral message of bettering the world and the collective and the individuals within it. The Hebrew method of dating a "moral count" – it is not chronological, scientific or archaeological. This allows us to go back millions of years and learn what existed before that first man.
6.
Since renewal and rebirth are the dominant symbols in the celebration of the new year, our sages commanded us to read on this occasion the Torah portion about the birth of Isaac (Genesis, chapter 21). At the end of portion, we read a haftarah about the birth of Samuel the prophet to his mother Hannah (I Samuel, chapters 1-2). If we are curious, it is recommended to read on, because the story in the next chapter is one of the most moving texts in the bible.
It tells the story of the first time that Samuel, as a child, hears God speaking to him, and doesn't understand what's happening. He thought it was Eli the high priest, with whom he lived, that was calling to him. Eli realizes that the boy is destined for greatness and guides him. Samuel doesn't flee, because he is still a child. His captivating innocence gives us additional tools to help us hear the voice that is now calling on us to renew ourselves on this day. Every time I read this portion with my children, they identify and are moved. This story is not about the famous Samuel, the prophet; it is about a little boy just starting out.
7.
"And the child Samuel ministered unto the Lord before Eli. And the word of the Lord was precious in those days; there was no frequent vision. And it came to pass at that time, when Eli was laid down in his place – now his eyes had begun to wax dim, that he could not see – and the lamp of God was not yet gone out, and Samuel was laid down to sleep in the temple of the Lord, where the ark of God was, that the Lord called Samuel; and he said: 'Here am I.' And he ran unto Eli, and said: 'Here am I; for thou didst call me.' And he said: 'I called not; lie down again.' And he went and lay down. And the LORD called yet again Samuel. And Samuel arose and went to Eli, and said: 'Here am I; for thou didst call me.' And he answered: 'I called not, my son; lie down again.' Now Samuel did not yet know the Lord, neither was the word of the Lord yet revealed unto him. And the Lord called Samuel again the third time. And he arose and went to Eli, and said: 'Here am I; for thou didst call me.' And Eli perceived that the Lord was calling the child. Eli said unto Samuel: 'Go, lie down; and it shall be, if thou be called, that thou shalt say: Speak, Lord; for thy servant heareth.' So Samuel went and lay down in his place. And the Lord came, and stood, and called as at other times: 'Samuel, Samuel.' Then Samuel said: 'Speak; for thy servant heareth.'" (I Samuel 3:1-10)
Rosh Hashanah is an opportunity to begin anew, to dare to go to new places within ourselves instead of cleaving to the familiar and the comfortable and the safe. Here, too, the shofar jolts us from our complacency. It amplifies our inner voice, calling us to renew. May the next year be better than the last.
