Rosh HaShanah Drasha, 5772

Spoken at Seaside Jewish Community, Rehoboth Beach, DE
Shana Tova, Boker tov! I want to take this opportunity to teach a little Torah, to teach about some texts on Rosh HaShanah.

Rosh HaShanah, we understand, means the head of the year, but shanah can also mean change, so we can read it as the beginning of change. Or perhaps, a change of head, a change to our way of thinking. I hope this Rosh HaShanah will bring a change.

In the Zohar, there is a drasha, a sermon, by Rabbi Elazar, the son of Rabbi Shimon Bar Yochai (Parshat Bo 32b). He begins with the first line of the book of Job: “One day, the children of God came to attend Him...”

‘One day’ – Rabbi Elazar says, this is Rosh Hashanah, when God arises to judge all the world. The day the angels gathered, that day was the first day of Rosh HaShanah. ‘And the children of God’ – these are the ministering angels, who are sent to examine the acts of humans in this world… For angels are messengers, they are sent to examine the deeds of humans, they travel the world and add all the actions together, and on the day of judgment they go up to the heavenly court to become the prosecutors, to accuse humanity. When the deeds of Israel are found to be wanting, these ministering angels wish to point out the iniquities of Israel, to bring them to God’s attention. When Israel do deeds that are not good deeds, then God’s Power is weakened, but when Israel do GOOD deeds, God’s power and strength return. And of this is written in the Psalms, “Give strength to God, for upon Israel is His pride and His strength is in the highest heavens” (Ps 68:35).

Remember that, we’ll get back to it in a moment.

In the Talmud Yerushalmi, there is a fascinating discussion about Rosh HaShanah that I learned last week. You know, there are two talmudim, the Bavli, the Babylonian Talmud, which is bigger and more authoritative, and there is the Yerushalmi, The Palestinian Talmud, which was earlier and has less halachic authority, but still contains many interesting discussions.

In Biblical times, Rosh HaShanah had almost no content. In the book of Leviticus, it is called the day of the memorial of the horn call. In the book of Numbers it is called the day of the horn call, Yom Teruah. It has only one extra sacrifice. Other than that, Rosh HaShanah is only mentioned in the Psalm we quoted in our service, psalm 81, and only indirectly: תקעו בחודש שופר, בכסה ליום חגינו Tiku vachodesh shofar bakeseh leyom Chageinu, – Tiku vachodesh shofar – Blow the Shofar on the New Moon, bakeseh leyom Chageinu – on the covering day of our Chag – the day the moon of our Holiday, Sukkot, is covered, on the new moon of Tishrei.

But the rabbis of the Talmud, or perhaps the leaders of the Jewish people during the Second Temple period, they wanted to add some content to Rosh HaShanah, some moral content. They declared that Rosh HaShanah commemorates the creation, not the creation of the world, but the sixth day, the creation of Adam, of the human being. There is no way to know this from the Tanakh, from the Holy Scripture. Today, we have a two day liturgy based upon the idea that this day, the commemoration of our own creation by God, is the Day of Judgement. For what are we to be judged?

In the Talmud Yerushalmi, this is discussed at length: Rabbi Simon says, it is written in Deuteronomy ch. 4 מי גוי גדול אשר לו חוקים ומשפטים צדיקים mi goy gadol asher lo chokim umishpatim tzadikim “What a great nation which has such righteous laws and judgments” etc. In other words, the Torah self-identifies here as a system of laws that other peoples, looking at the Jews, should be envious of. Rabbi Simon quotes: According to R. Chama son of R. Hanina and R. Hoshaiah, one might say: What Nation is like this nation – we have our own special practice. While among the nations of the world there are people who, knowing they must face a court in judgement, they wear black and wrap themselves in black and grow their beards, for they know not their verdict. Not so Israel, he says, who wear white clothes and wrap ourselves in white and shave our beards (shave our beards!) and feast and drink and are happy knowing that God grants us miracles. In other words, THEY wear black because they are afraid, WE wear white because we are sure God will grant us a miracle.

And Chorana, another scholar, said, What Nation is like this nation means this: when the court calls the case for today and the bandits say no, let’s do it tomorrow. Don’t we listen to the court? But the Holy One of Blessing is not like this. If the Bet Din says today is Rosh HaShanah, God tells the ministering angels put up a stage, bring forth prosecutors and defense attorneys, for my children have declared today to be the new year. But if the Bet Din decides to move it to tomorrow, God says to the Angels move the stage and all the rest to tomorrow, as my children have so decided. As it is written, in Psalm 81 again – the next line from the same psalm we mentioned before, כי חוק לישראל הוא Ki Chok LeYisrael Hu – It is a law for Israel, משפט לאלקי יעקב mishpat le’elohei Ya’akov, a sentence for the God of Jacob – [ and now this Rabbi Chorana says something really Radical] if it is not law for Israel, then it is not a sentence for the God of Jacob. In other words, if the law doesn’t work for the people of Israel, it isn’t the Holy Law. That’s a radical statement! Like the statement of the Zohar we read, but 5 or 6 hundred years earlier, this text of the Yerushalmi is recording a statement that removes the authority from God, and puts it in the hands of humanity. Now the Rabbis have given themselves permission to add their content to Rosh Hashana.

The rabbis of the Talmud love to ask למה הדבר דומה lemah hadavar domeh, to what can this be compared? So in the case of human responsibility, they now try to come up with the perfect parable for God granting us responsibility and authority:

Rabbi Levi said, it is like a King who had a fine watch. When his son came of age, he gave it to him.

Rabbi Jose bar Hanina said, it is like a king who had a watchtower. When his son came of age, he gave it to him.

Rabbi Aha said, it is like a king who had a signet ring. When his son came of age, he gave it to him.

Rabbi Hiyya bar Ba said, it is like a carpenter who had some woodworking tools. When his son came of age, he gave them to him.

Said Rabbi Isaac, like a King who had treasures. When his son came of age, he gave them to him.

The Sages said, like a doctor who has a bag of cures. When his son came of age, he gave it to him.

For on Rosh HaShana all the people of the world stand before Him in judgement.

Which is to say, on Rosh HaShanah, we are being judged on how well we dealt with the world, How well we applied the tools that God has given us to the problems that face us? Did we squander the treasure? Did we break the tools? Did we sign off on a few too many blank checks?

Climate change, global warming… you have heard that rising seas and higher ocean temperatures are causing hurricanes to become more severe. Maybe Irene wasn’t too bad here in Delaware, but Vermonters haven’t seen that kind of flooding in generations. Scientists are unanimous that human activity is impinging on natural processes and making them worse.

In the course of my own lifetime, Cod have almost disappeared from the North Atlantic. In the last twenty years alone, enough plastic trash has accumulated in the oceans to form huge gyres, the largest twice the size of Texas, one in the Atlantic and seven in the Pacific. The human population of the world has more than doubled. All those seven billion people want to live comfortably. According to some economists, we are already exceeding the carrying capacity of the earth by 50%, and that’s with two billion of us still living in abject poverty.

So how are we to be judged?

The Rosh HaShanah liturgy provides us with a model to look at our environmental responsibilities. מלכויות Malkhuyot, זכרונות Zichronot, שופרות Shofarot – the three sections of this morning’s shofar service.

Let’s see how we can apply them here: Malkhuyot – the verses refering to God’s sovereignty. Our tradition is clear that THIS world should be seen as Malkhut, as God’s kingdom. It’s not ours, whether we see it as a treasure to be guarded, or as a watchtower to look out from, or a set of tools or medications to be used, God has given it to us on condition that we use it well. Are we using it well?

Zichronot – the verses in which God remembers the covenant with His people. We’ve been found wanting, and now we want God to remember how much He loves us. We want the blasts of the shofar to jog God’s memory, as it were, so that God will move from the Throne of Judgement to the Throne of Mercy.  We remember the good old days, in a way. I can’t guess how God’s memory works, but I know that in my 47 year old memory, there are a lot of things that I miss from simpler, earlier times, things that I could reintroduce into my life – growing my own vegetable garden, cooking from scratch, spending time outdoors … So much has changed in the world, but we are still human, and the world is still the world. We must ask ourselves, Will our children remember this time in the way we remember “the good old days”? What do we want them to remember? What skills do we need to pass on to them?

And finally, Shofarot – the verses in which the shofar is mentioned, in which God is enthroned with pomp and fanfare. The Shofar is not the Trumpet, חצוצרה hatzotzra. Hatzotzra comes from the root ח' צ' ה Chet tzadik heh, to cut in half. Trumpet fanfares in the Hebrew understanding cut the enemy in two. The Shofar, however, does something else. The root ש' פ' ר Shin, peh, resh means “to improve”. The Shofar asks: What can we improve? What can we change this year? This is where we can begin to think – how will we improve this world for our children and grandchildren?  What can WE, as individuals do?

Rabbi Nachman of Bratzlav, that great teacher of optimism, says – if you believe that you can break it, believe that you can repair it. Take small steps, baby steps, because the task is immense. Rabbi Tarfon famously said, לא עליך המלאכה לגמור Lo Aleicha HaMelacha Ligmor, you don’t need to complete the task yourself, ולא אתה בן חורין להיבטל ממנה veLo ata ben chorin lehibatel mimena, but neither are you allowed to desist from it. Baby steps. Three steps: reduce, reuse, recycle.

Reduce: buy less packaging, less pre-prepared food, less meat. Author Michael Pollan says “eat food, not too much, mostly plants.” Reduction of consumption is the best way we can make a difference. Rabbi Chanina famously lived from one shabbat to the next on a single bucket of carob beans. We don’t have to be ascetics, but we can all make do with less.  

ReUse: the second step is Reusage. What can we reuse? Almost everything. At Kibbutz Lotan, our slogan is: Give your garbage a second chance. We teach composting, natural design and organic gardening. Compost your food waste. Are you too lazy to compost? Dig a hole and bury it in your garden (but not the meat). Do you live in a building? Get a worm bin, the worms will do the work for you.

I want to bring your attention to Hazon, a Jewish Organization that is connecting Synagogue communities with local farms to shorten the commercial food chain and reinvolve Jewish communities in food production: but you don’t need my friend Nigel from New York to take you across the street from your shul to Rustic Acres farm here. It’s right there. Cross the street, ask the farmers, maybe they’ll be glad to take your food scraps for their animals, or for their compost piles.

And, of course, recycle. But recycling is the last on the list for a good reason. Recycling uses a great deal of energy. Reduction saves energy throughout the whole cycle, ReUse saves energy, too.

There are  a few more Rs here, though. Our hope lies in Renewable sources of energy. Our job lies in Reshaping our values, Realigning our priorities, if we don’t we might not be able to Recover.

The 2nd paragraph of the Shema used to disturb me:

“Take care lest you be tempted to stray, and to worship false gods, For then God’s wrath will be directed against you. God will close the heavens and hold back the rain; the earth will not yield it’s produce. You will soon disappear from the good land which has been given to you.” I don’t like to believe that ill fortune or bad weather is a punishment from God. But reading this passage through the lens of the three R’s … we have strayed, we have abused the good earth which was entrusted to us, and now we are Reaping the Results in unnatural natural disasters. This is the year to rededicate ourselves to this cause, not just with words and lip service, but with real action.

Three Small steps, Baby steps. Steps that don’t stop, but can lead on the journey of a lifetime.

The Talmud text I spoke about says God grants us miracles, but the Zohar with which I began says we give strength to God – we charge God’s battery as it were, through our actions and our words. In other words, ALEYNU, it is up to us. We can’t rely on an external God – we can’t expect the change to come from the outside. Gandhi said, we must be the change we want to see in the world. In our Torah reading this morning, Hagar felt powerless, seeing only through her fear. But Hagar changed. How did she change? Through prayer – after her prayer, she was able to see the well, to drink and give her son water, to take control of her own destiny.

Let the sound of the Shofar be the catalyst for change – let this Rosh HaShana be the beginning of change – to believe that you can make a difference, to repair some of the damage, to improve the world. 

Notes: 

Rabbi Ethan Tucker - introduction to Berg lectures, 2010 "Core Issues in Jewish Law" 

Rabbi Suri Levow Krieger - Ma'yan Tikvah

Binny Talmi, sources taught at the annual meeting of the Cooperative stream of the Kibbutz Movement, Kibbutz Lavi, September, 2011