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September 10, 1999/29 Elul 5759, Vol. 52, No. 1
Rosh Hashana reminds us of divine and human power
Torah Study
RABBI SHLOMO RISKIN
Rosh Hashana
Will the real Rosh Hashana please step forward?
Rosh Hashana is biblically called Yom T'ruah - usually translated as the day of the blowing of the shofar (ram's horn). The literal meaning of t'ruah is a broken staccato sound, defined in the Talmud as a three-fold sigh, a nine-fold wail, or a combination of the two.
Rosh Hashana celebrates the Jewish New Year, the anniversary of the creation of the world, or more precisely, of the creation of the first human being. Yet the t'ruah sound acknowledges that we live in a world of lamentations, a world in which pain and suffering are real and palpable, where the innocent as well as the wicked are often destroyed in natural disasters, such as the recent devastating earthquake in Turkey. The victims' collective sob is a t'ruah to God.
But if our sages wanted us, during Rosh Hashana, to think of the world only in terms of a long day's journey into a night of death and despair, then why the additional designation HaYom Harat Olam (Today the world is being born), which expresses the optimism of a new beginning? On Rosh Hashana, we celebrate the world as a newborn creation, dazzling in its beauty, freshness and innocence. It is a festival of joy, celebrated with special foods and holiday dress.
How do we reconcile the concept of the day of the sigh-sob with the act of celebrating the world's re-creation? The answer lies in a second meaning of the blowing of the shofar, the instrument by which we proclaim God's power. The predominant sound of the shofar central to Rosh Hashana is the t'kiyah, a straight, uninterrupted, exultant blast of affirmation, not the wail of t'ruah. Indeed, we are required to sound two t'kiyot for every t'ruah blast.
We prepare to blow the shofar by reciting a blessing that commands us "to understand the sound of the shofar." We understand that Rosh Hashana is the Jewish New Year, anniversary of the birth of humanity, and that it is also the day of the t'ruah, the sigh-sob, because we find ourselves in a world of darkness as well as light, of chaos as well as order, of evil as well as goodness, a world in which the face of God is often hidden behind clouds of tragedy and iniquity.
God has also created human beings in the Divine image and has given us the gift of Torah, which offers the possibility and the power to perfect the imperfect world, to bring light into the places of darkness, to make the hidden God manifest once again throughout the universe. On Rosh Hashana we glimpse the potential in the new-born world and proclaim the power - and the challenge - to help to re-create that world.
On Rosh Hashana, perhaps more than any other festival, our partnership with God is made manifest. Consider the ram's horn we are commanded to blow - the short staccato gasp of the t'ruah and the extended, majestic t'kiyah. The strength of the ram is embodied in the horn, with which it attacks and defends itself. And so on Rosh Hashana, the baal t'kiya (shofar blower) lifts this symbol of pure animal power and tames it by eliciting specifically prescribed sounds. In the act of putting the shofar to his lips, the baal t'kiyah demonstrates precisely the relationship between the human being and the world that God has created. The ram represents God's reality, sometimes pastoral, sometimes benign, sometimes deadly.
One never knows how the wind blows. Our job is to harness that wind as we do the ram's horn, to give it the shape and sounds that God has commanded. We shape sounds; we impose order and delineate the limits of the ram's brute force. When we pick up the ram's horn, we become God's partners. Just as we can perfect and guide the brute strength of the ram, an achievement symbolized by the sounds of the shofar, so too can we perfect and guide the brute strength of other aspects of God's creation.
The shofar reminds us of the stark reality of the world in which we find ourselves, but also gives us the symbolic means to uplift, re-order and recreate the physical reality in order to perfect the world and to honor God.
Rabbi Shlomo Riskin is the spiritual leader of the Jewish community in Efrat, Israel.
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