Rosh Hashana derash

October 4 * 2005 *

* 1 Tishre * 5766 *

* Jody Myers

Today is the day of remembrance – yom hazikaron. Remembering what, though? And who is doing the remembering? Answering this question, I am going to start with a story from our past.

There is one passage in the Bible that actually describes what occurred once on the first two days of the seventh month. It is in the Book of Nehemiah. The Persian king Cyrus encourages the Judahites who had been exiled to Babylon to return to their land. With Nehemiah as their leader, some go back home, rebuild the Temple and reestablish Jewish rule in Judea. But a few years later, there are troubling developments: the Jews of Judea are violating the laws of the Torah. Word of this situation travels back to Babylon, and it prompts Ezra, a local kohen and scribe, to go to Judea and set things aright. Ezra plans to launch his reform effort in the seventh month, and leading up to the Rosh hodesh he makes preparations: he builds a wooden tower topped by a platform on the wall of Jerusalem at the Water Gate, and he spreads the word that all the residents of Judea should appear there at the crack of dawn on the first day of the seventh month. The day comes, and men, women, and children old enough to understand assemble at the Water Gate. Ezra stands up on the platform overlooking the people below, opens the scroll of the Torah, and reads it to them. We don’t know where he begins his reading, but he reads the Torah from first light until midday, and he does this every day for at least seven days. The scribes and the Levites translate the Torah and explain it in simpler language so that all can understand.

And how did the people react? On the first day, according to Nehemiah, "All the people were weeping as they listened to the words of the Torah." They mourned and they grieved.

Why this reaction? Keep in mind that the people in attendance were the children of the Jews who had returned from Babylon. Their parents had come back to a Jerusalem in ruins and hostile people all about, and they had rebuilt the Temple and started over. But their children, the people listening to Ezra, had been raised in relative security and possessed a sense of entitlement. They did what they wanted, they pleased themselves. And now, listening to Ezra, they are pulled back into the story of their ancestors. They learn about the conflict between Abraham, Sarah, and Hagar; they witness Isaac’s near death and watch the clever maneuvering of Rebecca, Rachel, and Leah. They go hungry along with Jacob’s sons and follow them into Egypt. They exult in the triumph of the Exodus, they feel the awe at Sinai, and they get weary listening to the forty years of wandering in the desert, the uprisings and the plagues and the earth that swallowed up rebels. Like their ancestors listening to Moses’ long sermon in Deuteronomy while perched on the edge of the mountains of Moab, they listen to their own Moses-like Ezra. So why do they cry? I imagine it is because there are no longer 12 tribes. Ten were punished by exile and vanished, never to return. I imagine that they cry because they are overwhelmed by embarrassment. They realize that they don’t really deserve to be secure in their land, according to the terms of the ancient agreement between God and the Jews. They have been neglecting those laws that God had commanded so long ago – in fact, we read that they are surprised when they hear, for the first time, the basic laws of the holiday of Sukkot. So they mourned, grieved, and wept in shame.

The next thing that happens is very important. Ezra and the other leaders say to the people, "Hush. . . . This day is sacred to God: you must not mourn or weep. . . . Go, eat choice foods, drink sweet drinks, and send portions to those with nothing prepared. . . . Do not be sad, for your rejoicing in the Lord is the source of your strength." The leaders’ response is the key to our survival: shame and grieving can bond people together, but only temporarily. Indeed, a sense of shared shame will eventually make people recoil from each other; a sense of shared shame will make individuals break away and start over again elsewhere.

The people obey Ezra. They rejoice and eat, they continue to listen daily as the Torah is being read. They change their behavior: they celebrate Sukkot according to the laws they learned.

Ezra’s seventh month gathering does share some features with ours. We look back at the events of the year, and we feel shame. We mourn the loved ones who are missing. We tell each other to rejoice, to focus on the sweet year ahead. We share our food and we feast. From near and far, Jews gather together. We pack ourselves into rooms, sing and read in unison, look each other over, share stories. We once again become a nation. It is yom hazikaron – the day of remembrance, the day of becoming a member again, re-membering.

Our Rosh Hashana liturgy makes no mention of Ezra’s seventh month convocation. Instead, we are told the story of Sarah, Abraham, and Hagar. Each one of these people has an experience in which their memory is tapped. Today’s Torah portion signals this by opening with a reference to God’s memory: "God remembered Sarah, just as he had promised," and she conceived and bore a child. After a while, things go badly, and Sarah takes the steps that lead to the expulsion of Hagar from the household. Many people are very disturbed by the tale of Hagar’s banishment, but I think we are given ample evidence – beginning with Chapter 16, and now in Chapter 21 – that it is a wise move. What happens is that Sarah has a child and then she remembers who she is: she is Abraham’s wife; she was his wife from the beginning, she accompanied him when they left Mesopotamia, and she will be the mother of a great nation with him. Back during the infertile years when she was named Sarai, she had said, "I will have a child through her," but instead, "a child was born to Abram." That is, it did not work out the way she had expected, and Sarah began to realize that it had been a mistake to encourage her husband to have a baby with another woman in her own household. It is especially harmful because this other woman is insolent and sets herself apart and above her. And how could Hagar’s attitude not have had some influence on Ishmael? So Sarah – who has not had her mother nearby for many many years – eventually remembers what is means to be a mother and a wife, what it requires of her. Sarah’s two rememberings lead to a re-membering. The original family is re-constituted. The future nation now has clear lineage: we, the Jewish people, are not the children of Abraham; we are the children of Abraham and Sarah.

What does Hagar remember? Hagar, Sarah’s Egyptian servant, never did fit that well into the household – she had a different origin and language. Although she was a servant, she had a strong sense of self, and she could not blend in without giving up something essential to her. When she became pregnant, her anger at her position flared up, and she ran away from Sarah’s rebuke for a while. When Isaac was born, she again could not hold back – probably she is angry at both Abraham and Sarah, and this time she was banished. In her outrage and misery, she separates herself from Ishmael, raises her voice and weeps in self-pity. Then Hagar remembers. Hagar remembers her child, she remembers that she is a mother, she remembers that she is a strong woman capable of getting the two of them to Paran. This remembering also is about membership. Hagar recognizes that she is not a member of Abraham and Sarah’s people; she is the mother of a nation of her own. This is what God told her years earlier, after the birth of Ishmael, and she finally remembers it.

What does Abraham remember? Throughout these stories, he seems to have forgotten what he is about. Sarah tells him what to do, Hagar certainly must have told him what to do, God tells him to heed Sarah’s voice. Earlier Abraham had argued with God on behalf of the residents of Sodom and Amorah – but would he ever speak out for himself and his family? To show this, I suggest we interpret the near-sacrifice of Isaac in a different way than usual. Typically, we read the sentences about the events on top of the mountain in quick succession, without pauses: Abraham built an altar, laid out the wood, bound his son, lay him on the altar, picks up his knife to kill his son, and then an angel calls out and stops him, saying, "You don’t have to raise your hand and do him damage. Now I know you have not withheld your son from me." That is, we read it as if Abraham was willing and ready to kill his son, and as if God approved of that willingness.

I would like to suggest an alternate reading, a new midrash. It involves putting pauses into the action and different nuances into the speech: Abraham built an altar, laid out the wood, bound his son, lay him on the altar, picked up his knife to kill his son – and paused. He pauses for a long time. He remembers that he is a father, and a father does not kill his son. He remembers that he will be a father of a great nation through Isaac. God had said so. He realizes that God had been trying to awaken him, and Abraham stops. When the angel calls, Abraham says, "I am here." Then the angel says, "Okay, so don’t raise your hand against the boy, don’t do him any damage. Good. I see that you’re not going to withhold your son from me." That is, it’s good that you’re not going to kill Isaac. Because killing Isaac would have been an act of withholding him from God. Keeping him alive means that Abraham gives Isaac to God, because it will be through the living Isaac that God will carry out his plan to make a nation.

According to Rashi, there is a trace of the Abraham-Isaac story in the commandment to commemorate the first day of the seventh month. Leviticus 23 describes that day as zichron teru’ah. This phrase is puzzling: what does it mean to remember the teru’ah? Why do we have to remember it – don’t we actually blow the shofar and hear the teru’ah? Rashi says that zichron teru’ah refers to our day of remembering the horn of the ram that Abraham sacrificed instead of Isaac. And I add, we are also remembering other sounds – quieter, but just as compelling: the sound of Sarah’s voice when she insists upon her and her son’s needs, and the sound of the water that Hagar scoops from the well and pours into her jar. These stories are read on yom hazikaron because they teach us that we have to act in such a way so as to keep ourselves and the next generation alive – but not just alive: we have to live on with integrity and perpetuate a nation that stands for something important.

What is it that triggers the kind of remembering that I’m talking about, a memory that clarifies who you really are as an individual and as a member of a group? What’s interesting is that, in these stories, prayer doesn’t have any role as a triggering agent. There is no prayer mentioned in Ezra’s assembly, and we don’t hear of Sarah, Abraham, or Hagar pleading with God for direction? Why is this? Perhaps prayer – petitionary prayer – is not the best way for us to recover our sense of who we are. Perhaps the best way for us to remember our core values – or to establish them – is to discuss our stories.

The rabbis understood that it is difficult to pray. For the rabbis of the Mishnah and Talmud, Torah study – not prayer – was the highest form of worship. Scholars, not the prayer virtuosos, were accorded the greatest respect. Some rabbis even admitted that they were failures at prayer. We hear about this in Talmud Yerushalmi, Berachot 16a:

So if you’re one of those people who have difficulties with prayer, you are in good company. The lesson here, though, is that Rabbi Hiyya, Shmuel, Rabbi Bun Bar Hiyya, and Rabbi Matnaya prayed anyway. And you do, too. You are here, after all. You came here because you want to be a member of this group. And you thought, perhaps, "maybe this year my prayer will flow out of me beautifully and sincerely, but if not, at least I’m there."

A fair amount of Jewish prayer involves the worshipers talking to each other. I don’t mean the between-prayers chatting, but the actual words of the liturgy. Our most important prayer, the Shema, is not really addressed to God. When you translate the Shema and understand it on a literal level, you realize we are talking to each other: Shema yisrael – Listen, all you Jews, our God is one. You need to love God with all your heart, with all your soul, and with all your might. You need to teach these words to your children, and so on. And then there is the Aleinu prayer. The first part of the Aleinu, like the Shema, is not petition and is not praise, it is affirmation:

I am suggesting that when we affirm beliefs in the presence of others, and we listen as others affirm our group beliefs in our hearing, we strengthen ourselves, we shore up our weak resolves, and if you’re Jewish, you not only say, "This is who I am." You also say, "This is who I belong to. I am part of that group of people who behaves in such a way. I am part of that nation which experienced those events. Their stories are my stories."

I think it is important to know that the Aleinu prayer was originally written for Rosh Hashana. It is the first prayer of the Malkhuyot section in the Musaf amidah. In that part of the Amidah we assert, again and again, that God is a king. According to some historians of the ancient Near East, that phrase in Leviticus, zichron teru’ah, should not be understood as Rashi suggests, as a day of remembering the ram’s horn. Rather, teru’ah – the blowing of the horns – indicates a coronation ceremony. It is the lingering reference to the fa ll new moon day when kings celebrated their enthronement. That certainly fits Rosh Hashana. It is yom hazikaron, the day of remembering and of affirming our membership in a nation ruled by God.

God is our king, and we are subjects. Often we are subjected to painful matters beyond our control: like Sarah, Hagar, and Abraham, we may suffer from infertility, family and friends who are not always kind to us, an inability to focus; or we may suffer from other hard things. God has a hand in this in some way, whether direct or indirect. After all, God is king. But that does not mean that we bear no responsibility, nor does it mean that we must be passive sufferers. Each year on Rosh Hashana we remind ourselves of these truths by assembling together and reading the stories of our ancestors in the Torah, by hearing the shofar, and by reciting and listening to the prayers. If we haven’t started doing it already, today we look back at our behavior and reflect and ask, "What have I lost? What did I do that was foolish, short-sighted, and a betrayal of my people’s values?" After a dose of grieving and self-reproach, we resolve to do better. At the next opportunity we make the right choice, and then we celebrate with our community. Shana tova.