Judaism- An Introduction, page 29
Creating the atmosphere
THE SOUND OF THE SHOFAR
Both words and the music of the services create the mood. The highlight of Rosh Hashanah and the characteristic sound of the whole period is the shofar (‘ram’s horn’). For an entire month before Rosh Hashanah, the shofar is sounded every morning except Shabbat. The purpose of this is to convey a sense of what is coming and a sense of something changing in the month of Ellul, leading up to the New Year. Some associate the shofar with the story of the binding of Isaac in which a ram is caught in a thicket by its horns (Genesis 22:13). The story of Abraham’s readiness to sacrifice is read on the second day of the festival. But no such association is needed for the sound to have its plaintive, pleading, and challenging effect. Maimonides stresses the capacity of the sound to rouse the spiritually inert.
Many imaginative explanations have been offered, encouraged perhaps by the three different kinds of note sounded. Since the third century, these notes have been combined to form a well-defined series. The first, tekiah, is a long, drawn-out, uninterrupted blast, representing a call for attention and a march in a new direction. The final tekiah is particularly long. The second, shevarim, consists of three broken sounds, and the third, teruah, has nine staccato sounds. Both shevarim and teruah are taken to represent the weeping of the penitent. Repentance is the overall aim and the overall sound matches the aim.
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Insight
Non-Jews often seem perplexed by the variety of explanations offered for Jewish symbolism. When told of the various suggestions for passing round the spice box at Havdalah they may ask: ‘Well, which is it then?’ The crucial thing is the combined richness of the experience for those participating in it.
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The following prayer from the Rosh Hashanah Musaf (additional service) captures the sense of awe:
The great shofar is sounded; a gentle whisper is heard; the angels, quaking with fear, declare: ‘The day of judgement is here to bring the hosts of heaven to justice!’ Indeed, even they are not guiltless in thy sight. All mankind passes before thee like a flock of sheep. As a shepherd seeks out his flock, making his sheep pass under his rod, so dost thou make all the living souls pass before thee; thou dost count and number thy creatures, fixing their lifetime and inscribing their destiny.
Interspersed with the blowing of the shofar at the Rosh Hashanah service are scriptural verses celebrating God’s kingship and judgement with the sound of the shofar. These include Exodus 19:16, where God reveals himself and initiates the covenant at Sinai, Isaiah 27:13, where God will gather people from other lands to worship him in Jerusalem, and Psalm 81:4–5, where the shofar proclaims the new moon. The Saadiah Gaon offers as one of ten reasons for the blowing of the shofar the use of trumpets at a king’s coronation. So, at the beginning of the year God is crowned as King. Certainly, the theme of kingship is vital to Rosh Hashanah. As creator, God is not to be thought of as simply having set the world going but also as the one who constantly calls human beings to obey his rule.
PRAYERS OF PENITENCE
Throughout Ellul, selihot (‘penitential prayers’) are said early in the morning. The aim is to summon up the concentration and spiritual energy demanded by the High Holy Days. The selihot cultivate self-examination and anticipation. The Reform Mahzor (prayer book for festivals) incorporates short readings and meditations for the whole period. A prayer of confession from a selihot service includes the words:
For not listening to Your voice within us
For denying the needs of our soul
For making this world a god
Forgive us, pardon us and grant us atonement …
For hoarding grudges and insults
For refusing to let go
For abandoning hope
Forgive us, pardon us and grant us atonement.
There is a certain ambiguity about the mood of Rosh Hashanah, stemming from the emphasis on God’s kingship, which includes both judgement and compassion. We can see this in the following meditation where the opening mood of awe and unworthiness changes to a sense of divine love and joy:
Poor in worthy deeds, I am horribly frightened in thy presence, who art enthroned and receiving praise from Israel … May our defaults be pardoned by thy love, since love draws a veil over all wrongdoing. Turn thou all afflictions into joy and gladness, life and peace, for us and for all Israel.
Yet this combination of the misery of estrangement and the joy of returning is crucial to the whole period. It is strikingly expressed in the way in which some communities sing, on Yom Kippur, a long communal confession of awful sins. A further tale sheds light on this. Hearing about a certain rabbi following this practice, the Baal Shem Tov:
sent after the rabbi and asked him, ‘Why do you sing the confessions joyfully?’ Said the rabbi to him, ‘Lo, a servant who is cleaning the courtyard of the king, if he loves the king, is very happy cleaning the refuse from the courtyard, and sings joyful melodies, for he is giving pleasure to the king.’
So on Rosh Hashanah too there is a great sense of festivity combined with an emphasis on the awe-inspiring day of judgement to come. It is not always easy to keep the balance, but it is important for the significance of the whole period where the key thoughts are human sin and divine grace in equal measure.
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Insight
This balance between sin and grace, awe and festivity, judgement and compassion is particularly difficult for non-Jews to grasp. As with the most profound parts of any religion, there are serious limits to analysing penitence rather than practising it.
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GOD THE KING
The liturgy of Rosh Hashanah itself focuses less on human beings as sinners and more on God as king. Sin is scarcely mentioned, in fact. There is in the Musaf, a series of benedictions known as ‘kingships’. In the Reform Mahzor, these open as follows:
Let us think of the forces which rule our lives, the currents of instinct and longing which rise from the depths of our being, the tides of ambition and desire which sweep away our will, the little waves of habit and routine in which our vision drowns – yet the Lord is greater than these, and His still small voice louder than their roaring. On the New Year we acknowledge Him as king; may He reign over us and within us.
The image of an old man on the throne can create difficulties, but the language was designed to restore a sense of God in the world, the sense of the spiritual which is a prerequisite for atonement.
One might expect the train of thought to be in the opposite direction and the liturgy to start with cleaning out the sins and then to focus on the spiritual. Maimonides, for one, however, saw the danger of this. It could end in total self-preoccupation, as if God were somehow incidental to the process.
Returning
The concept which provides the vital link is repentance. The Hebrew for this, teshuvah, means literally ‘returning’. This returning to God can be in a very simple sense or it can involve profound inner development. An important expression of this in the liturgy comes in Psalm 51. Verse 10 reads:
Create in me a clean heart, O God
and put a new and right spirit within me.
Between Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur fall the penitential days of the Fast of Gedaliah and Shabbat Shuvah, (the ‘Sabbath of Returning’). On Shabbat Shuvah, the reading from the Prophets is Hosea 14 which appeals for Israel’s return to God and promises attendant forgiveness and prosperity.
There is in Judaism a tremendously profound sense of sin and yet it is always emphasized that sin is transient, for we have the choice and the capacity to turn back to God and achieve spiritual purity. The thought in Judaism is not of some innate tendency always to do wrong (unlike the concept of ‘original sin’ in Christianity), but of a constant struggle between good and bad inclinations. As Maimonides emphasizes: ‘Free will is bestowed on every human being. If one desires to turn toward the good way and be righteous, he has the power to do so.
TRUE REPENTANCE
In his Laws of Penitence, Maimonides is optimistic about change, but the change must be in attitudes, qualities and actions. Teshuvah is thus the focal point of this ten-day period, in the sense not simply of feeling sorry for certain wrongs done but also of a spiritual transformation, a recentring of life in God and his ethical demands.
God’s gracious forgiveness is contingent upon sincere personal contrition and deep resolve on the part of the penitent. Only then can God keep the promise of Isaiah 1:18: ‘… though your sins are like scarlet, they shall be like snow; though they are red like crimson, they shall become like wool.’ Not forgiveness, however, but reparation is the ultimate purpose and in this process choice and responsibility loom large.
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Insight
The essence of repentance is not wringing your hands with remorse, but consciously reorientating your attitudes and consequent behaviour, according to what God requires. Much of what commonly passes for ‘being sorry’ about something, without a resolve not to repeat the offence, does not qualify as ‘teshuvah’.
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In the so-called ‘Literature of Introspection’, which comes from the Lithuanian talmudic academies of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, we find a realism about this. There, Israel Salanter says that it is easier to study the entire Talmud than to correct a single aspect of one’s character. Salanter founded the movement known as Musar (‘discipline’), which strove to bring the religious world and its ethics into one’s own life and culture. The choice is put starkly in one of the Torah portions for Rosh Hashanah, Deuteronomy 30:
See, I have set before you today life and prosperity, death and adversity. If you obey the commandments of the LORD your God that I am commanding you today, by loving the LORD your God, walking in his ways, and observing his commandments, decrees, and ordinances, then you shall live … I call heaven and earth to witness against you today that I have set before you life and death, blessings and curses. Choose life … (verses 15–16,19)
TASHLIKH
A simple ceremony, carried out after the afternoon service on the first day of Rosh Hashanah (or, if this falls on Shabbat, on the second day), gives a very good sense of what can sometimes seem rather complicated ideas. It is known as Tashlikh (‘casting away’). Jews gather, often as a community, by a stream or sea to recite Micah 7:19 where God casts all sins ‘into the depths of the sea’.
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Insight
It is striking that although the human being does the physical throwing, the words from Micah 7:19 (like the words from Isaiah 1:18) make plain that it is God who is believed to wipe out the sins.
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Some find it helpful to make a physical demonstration of casting away all that is bad about their lives by emptying out crumbs or dust from their pockets. Long established in Orthodox communities, tashlikh has become increasingly common in Reform in recent times.
KAPPAROT
Another symbolic preparation for the Day of Atonement is observed now only by the very Orthodox. This is known as kapparot (‘atonements’), from the same root as Kippur. It is based on the ancient Temple ritual of this day, as described in Leviticus 16, whereby a goat was driven out of Jerusalem into the wilderness. The goat was thought to carry the sins of the people. After the destruction of the Temple, the custom developed of slaughtering a chicken instead and giving it to the poor for the festive meal held before Yom Kippur. Most people now give not a chicken but money instead. The ancient idea is remembered as people recognize that they have done wrong and need to make amends. Kapparot is never performed in Reform communities. Instead, charity is strongly encouraged in the form of inviting the lonely and needy to break the fast of Yom Kippur in someone else’s home or communally at the synagogue.
Fasting
THE PURPOSE OF YOM KIPPUR
One mark of a festival is a special meal. This is particularly true of Judaism. Rosh Hashanah is no exception. After the festival is welcomed with kiddush, it is customary to eat food containing honey, such as cake and biscuits, or apples dipped in honey. The hope is thus expressed that the new year will be a sweet one. Yom Kippur, however, is not only a festival but also a fast day and so cannot include any food or drink. It may seem odd to fast on a festival, but the point of the fast is not to punish yourself by making yourself miserable. The aim is to take your mind off physical needs to assist concentration on the spiritual. This is linked to three other reasons for fasting on Yom Kippur. It can be a penance for wrongs done, demonstrating a sincerity about one’s protestations of remorse. It can encourage self-discipline and self-control, much needed if the New Year resolutions are to be kept. It can promote compassion by giving a knowledge of what it means to go hungry if only for one day, and an awareness of the need to alleviate suffering. In all regards, fasting is not seen as an end in itself but as a way of fulfilling the purpose of Yom Kippur. The passage read from the Prophets on the day (Isaiah 57:14–58:14) makes plain that there is nothing automatically good about fasting:
Look, you fast only to quarrel and to fight and to strike with a wicked fist.
Such fasting as you do today will not make your voice heard on high.
Is such the fast that I choose, a day to humble oneself? Is it to bow down the head like a bulrush, and to lie in sackcloth and ashes?
Will you call this a fast, a day acceptable to the LORD?
Is not this the fast that I choose: to loose the bonds of injustice, to undo the thongs of the yoke, to let the oppressed go free, and to break every yoke?
Is it not to share your bread with the hungry, and to bring the homeless poor into your house:
when you see the naked, to cover them, and not to hide yourself from your own kin? …
Then you shall call, and the LORD will answer: you shall cry for help, and he will say, Here I am. (58:6–7,9)
THE ORIGIN OF YOM KIPPUR
It is Leviticus which gives the authority and the name for Yom Kippur. In the Talmud, it is simply called ‘The Day’ (Yoma 14b), indicating the rabbinic understanding of the day as the most important in the Jewish Year. Leviticus 23:27–28 reads:
Now, the tenth day of this seventh month is the day of atonement; it shall be a holy convocation for you: you shall deny yourselves … and you shall do no work during that entire day; for it is a day of atonement, to make atonement on your behalf before the LORD your God.
This verse clearly commands that no work be done, as on Rosh Hashanah and the first day(s) of other major festivals. (On Rosh Hashanah, Orthodoxy follows the same prohibitions as for Shabbat except that food can be cooked if it is to be consumed on the same day. Reform makes the same re-evaluation of prohibited activities as with Shabbat, regarding travel and the use of electricity, for example, as no longer constituting ‘work’.) The command in Leviticus 23:27 for self-denial or, as it is sometimes rendered, ‘affliction’, is interpreted by the Rabbis to forbid sexual intercourse, anointing (washing), the wearing of leather shoes (a sign of comfort), and, chiefly, eating and drinking. This is, then, the most important fast in Judaism, observed, except by the very young or where there is any threat to health, for 25 hours.
Atonement
Again it is through the texts that we can get closest to the significance of Yom Kippur. For every book on theology in a Christian study there will be in a Jewish study a bookcase on Law, that is, the Talmud. It is from the tradition and its expression in prayer that Jewish theology can be derived. This applies to the theology of atonement. Sin in Judaism is seen as separating and alienating people from God. As we have noted, the main purpose of this period of penitence, culminating in Yom Kippur, is not only forgiveness, significant though this is, but restoration. Teshuvah suggests a returning to the pristine purity of what we are. Through this, the thought is, the world may become as God intended and be re-sanctified. (The mysticism of Martin Buber and Abraham Isaac Kook in varying ways expands on this notion.) We see here then the two dimensions of the day. Unlike Tishah B’Av and other fasts, Yom Kippur is not a sad day. Because of the restoration aspect, there is joy in the day, as seen in the story of the man singing as he cleaned out the king’s courtyard.
KOL NIDREI
What he was singing, namely a confession of all sorts of sins, still forms the central feature of the Yom Kippur liturgy. Before the confession can begin, however, the worshippers need to feel released from the vows or promises which they have not been able to keep during the past year. To make a vow in Judaism is a solemn undertaking. Not being able to keep it can thus leave a sense of wrongdoing which needs to be erased. So on the eve of Yom Kippur the synagogues are full for a long service. The service begins with Kol Nidrei (‘All vows’), a prayer calling upon God to cancel all vows which have not been fulfilled. This prayer cannot be used to cancel commitments which Jews have simply failed to fulfil, such as repaying someone a debt. It relates only to vows between themselves and God, such as a voluntary fast (see Chapter 13) or other religious obligation, which they were unable to keep for good reason. Historically, the clearest example of such a vow comes from the Spanish Inquisition, when Jews were required to swear allegiance to the Christian Church to avoid persecution. The Kol Nidrei prayer enabled such Jews still to worship God without feeling that they had denied him. The ancient tune used for this prayer is a haunting reminder of the difficulties which Jews have often faced in being faithful. The thirteenth-century rabbi, Judah the Pious said:
