Memories and Prayers
Erev Rosh Ha-Shanah Sermon 5783
By Rabbi Boaz D. Heilman
September 25, 2022
One of the questions that Albert Einstein often had to answer wasn’t actually about science, but rather whether he believed in God. Einstein’s usual reply was that he believed in the God of Spinoza.
This is one of the cleverest ways I know of avoiding a direct answer. For Spinoza’s view on God is not clear and has been debated for more than 300 years now. In his monumental work, Ethics, Spinoza famously uses the phrase “God or Nature,” meaning—perhaps—that the two—God and Nature—are one and the same.
Where Spinoza, the ultimate rationalist, stopped, was in expressing belief in any force beyond nature, something or someone that in fact created Nature, put in place all that we see and know, ordained bounds and regulations, and gave us human beings the Bible and the Commandments.
Faith and science are not always the same. Science relies on reason as it tries to explain what we see and know about the universe. Faith tries to go beyond that, reaching into a realm that cannot be proven by reason alone but that has to accepted, agreed upon, and commonly held.
For as long as it has existed, Judaism has found itself at the crossroads between these two concepts, between God and Nature, between faith and science. Hardcore believers see God’s hand in everything that happens. Rationalists, on the other hand, stop with Nature, though not without ceasing to wonder every once in a while if there actually might not be a God behind it all.
Judaism does not impose a dogma, any one way of thinking or believing. From its very beginning, while holding on to its belief in a Creator, Judaism has also encouraged people to think for themselves, to explore, to learn, to expand our understanding of the universe.
Regardless of our individual modes of believing and worshipping, most Jews accept that there are universal laws out there, laws that extend far beyond ourselves, even if we don’t know why they are there, or who or what set them there in the first place.
In Jewish belief, eternity turned into time at the instant of the Big Bang, when God began to create Nature and set it on its infinite course.
When Rosh Ha-Shanah was first set in our Jewish calendar over 3000 years ago, it wasn’t meant to carry the weight or meaning it does today. The Torah refers to it only as a “Day of Remembrance.” We are commanded never to forget or turn our backs on the God who not only created the world around us, but who also gave us moral and ethical laws, the Commandments, which to this day guide us through life’s many challenges.
But memories tend to accumulate. The universe isn’t inanimate. It is filled with life, light and love. Woven into the universal truths that Rosh Ha-Shanah has us remember are also the life stories of every single human being who ever lived. Unseen but not forgotten, told and retold, are the memories of our ancestors, to which, with every breath we take, we add our narratives too.
I remember in particular one Rosh Ha-Shanah, when I was still a small child growing up in Israel. My family wasn’t religious; we observed many of the holiday traditions, but we didn’t make it a point to go to services. And so, perhaps out of curiosity, or perhaps something more, one year I went by myself, hoping to see for myself what the whole thing was all about. To this day, I still recall the strangeness of it all, the amassed crowd of men, what they wore and the unfamiliar smells that came from these clothes, so different from what they wore the rest of the year. I remember how they swayed, like the ocean, and the unfamiliar singsong of their prayers that rose and fell like waves.
I remember being filled with a sense of unease. For one thing, I couldn’t understand the prayers. They were in Hebrew, yes, but it wasn’t the Hebrew that I knew from home or school. Years later I learned that many of these prayers go back to the 1st and 2nd centuries. Called piyyutim, or fervent religious poetry, they were meant to be enigmatic, intended to form mystical bridges between our own, physical, experience and the spiritual being we call God. It was the transcendent and timeless power of these prayers which moved the people around me to sway and surge as they did.
And yet, even though I felt overwhelmed by the sights, smells and sounds that surrounded me, I knew even then that this was my people’s experience, a powerful encounter between a people and their God, between what is and what might be. And without knowing why or how, I also understood that one day, this experience would draw me in too, and become mine as well.
This is one of my earliest memories of Rosh Ha-Shanah, and it is deeply embedded in my consciousness.
But there’s more to remember, so much more that Rosh Ha-Shanah is and encompasses today. Every family and every home has its own memories and traditions, its own special foods, recipes and smells, culled from our culture, from family and neighbors, and the part of the world we came from and live in today: The round challah, representing our hope for a full, round year of life and health; honey—for sweetness; and carrots—for fruitfulness and prosperity; apples of course, representing not only the abundance of nature, but also our constant thirst for knowledge and understanding.
And, yes, we also remember the long hours spent in prayer at services; and the deeply moving music, some of which we hear only this one time during the year, on Rosh ha-Shanah.
And of course, with special awe we remember the sound of the shofar.
A few years ago I visited an elderly patient in a memory unit. He had long forgotten many of the details of his life; yet when I blew the shofar, tears rolled down his furrowed cheeks. Who knows what memories the sound of the shofar evoked in his mind and heart. Ancient yet always also new, the shofar’s song is life—steady, at times broken-hearted, yet ultimately triumphant. Its echo takes us back both to our most ancient days but also far into the future. It reminds us of the Covenant between God and our People; of the ram caught in the thicket and offering its life for that of Isaac; and the tears of our ancestors whose children’s lives were not so spared.
But the shofar’s deep and powerful sound also reassures us, reinforcing our fervent belief that it will be this sound—the shofar’s call—that will announce the coming of the Messiah—the end of days, when all questions will be answered, when war and privation, hunger and thirst, sickness and all suffering will at long-last disappear from the earth.
When the early Rabbis transformed Judaism into the religion and way of life that we know today, they added a new component to Rosh Ha-Shanah: From Yom Zikaron—Day of Remembrance—they turned it into a holiday celebrating the beginning of Creation. With that, they opened a new doorway for us, enabling us to look not only at the past, but also at our future selves. Whether we believe in God or science, on this day we measure our lives against a timeless course that we are part of. We scrutinize the choices and decisions we made in the past year and look to see how we can improve on them in the days and months ahead. We compare who and what we are today to the person we were hoping to be; how true we have been to ourselves? How far we have wandered from—or returned to—our People and traditions?
Whether we believe in the God of Abraham or the God of Einstein and Spinoza, in the laws of Nature or the Commandments of God: On Rosh Ha-Shanah we are given a chance not only to look back and remember, but also to contemplate the future and our role in it. However it came to be, for whatever reason or purpose, the gift this Sacred Day gives us is the awareness that we have the ability not only to obey our instincts and basic impulses, but also to make our own choices. We can continue to accept things as they always have been, or we can choose to make ourselves and the world around us better.
On Rosh Ha-Shanah a window opens for us, and through it we can see a million stars: some that are now long gone, others that have yet to be. Each is both a memory but also a goal to aspire to. The constellations woven into the sky above us are like the many communities of our people all over the world. As individuals, we are here both for ourselves and for one another. Together, we are strengthened by our common vision and ideals.
May all our prayers on this Sacred Day of Remembrance be fulfilled. May this Rosh Ha-Shanah bring us the blessing of a bright new day, a new beginning filled with love, hope and good health.
L'shana tova tikatevu—May we be inscribed for a good New Year.
© 2022 by Boaz D. Heilman
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