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ROSH HASHANAH 5763

"WHAT TOUCHES US MOST"

It was Tisha B'Av, the saddest day in the Jewish calendar, commemorating the destruction of the holy temple in Jerusalem. I was back at home in New York, we were all sitting on the floor. It is supposed to be a day of lamentation and crying, but very few people actually shed a tear. But I remember very well that there was one man who was different. He was crying hysterically, standing and sitting, and flapping his hands on his knees. He was truly moved by the Tisha B'Av experience.

My Rabbi back at home tells me that he remembers in the prayer books of Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur were drenched with the tears of the fine Jews who read from them. Today it is hard to find a tear on Rosh Hashanah or Yom Kippur. Yet today is the day of remembrance which in Aramaic translation is translated as a day of tears. On this day of tears we need to ask ourselves a question, what moves us most? What touches us so deeply that it makes us cry? I believe we can identify with three triggers for most of our tears during the course of the year. 

The first source of tears is death. This year death struck close to home as my father-in-law, Mr. Irving Zuckerbrot, passed away. I saw at first hand the pain of my wife which she lives with daily and thinking of the separation that was caused by his death. The first time tears are mentioned in the Torah speaks of Abraham mourning and weeping for the loss of his wife. He speaks of how Hagar crying over which he views as the impending death of her son. According to Midrash, Abraham cried heavy tears into the eyes of Isaac as he thought he was about to slaughter his own son. For many, as they enter the synagogue, they are touched and moved not only by the Cantor and the moving service, but also by those who are not here today, those who one used to sit next to, those who are no longer here. This year all Jews and all Americans were forced to shed many tears. We shed tears on September 11 and perhaps we should have shed more tears when we heard of the bombings in Israel, in the Pizzerias, at the Bar and Bas Mitzvahs, and the cafes and throughout Israel.

But the tears of Rosh Hashanah are not tears of sadness. As a matter of fact, Ezra the great sage in the 6th century BCE, taught that it is forbidden to weep too much on this day of Rosh Hashanah. The tears of Rosh Hashanah are not tears of depression but a call to action. As Maimonides says, the shofar calls on us to wake up from our slumber. Tears in death can very often be not the cause of depression but the cause of a drive in the rusha. There is something called the death drive, that which moves us and causes us to wake up in the morning to go and make something of our lives. Tomorrow may not be here. Today we need to take advantage of our relationships that we have. We need to love more. We need to do more. Akavna and Mehahallel of the Ethics of the Fathers (Pirkei Avos) says that if we look at three things we will never come to sin. One of them is where are you going. When we think of the day of death we are moved very often to avoid the frivolities and trivialities of the ho-hum life and to make something of every minute.

Tradition has it that we blow 100 shofar sounds today in order to remember the tears of the mother of an enemy general. She wept for him as she looked out the window and saw that his horses and chariots would not be coming home today. But our tears hopefully move us to action. The shofar calls on us to feel deeply but also to take action. 

The second source of emotion is tragedy. We all know that even watching or reading about a tragedy in fiction can lead us to tears. What is tragedy? Tragedy is a gap between the expected and the reality. A young person should not have to die. Those who love each other should not be separated. But there are less dramatic tragedies as well. Each individual has a saga behind their lives. The field of psychology, and Freud in particular, emphasizes that every human being has dreams every night. Every human being thinks in metaphors. Every human being has visions and hopes and aspirations. The shofar recalls these dreams. When we think of tragedy, we often think of taking out a tissue and wiping our tears. But the shofar says no. Don’t allow the tears to lead you to depression but get out and do something about it. Try to realize the dream. The shofar has a triangle of meaning to it. On one point of the triangle are our dreams and aspirations. It reminds us of Mt. Sinai where a mysterious shofar was heard. It reminds us of the shofar which will call on all Jews to return to Jerusalem and the coming of the Messiah. On the bottom corner of the triangle the shofar invokes on our deepest feelings and tears but in the middle point of this triangle the shofar invokes the theme which Maimonides underscored to wake up and bridge the gap between the tragic lives we lead and the dreams that we hope to obtain. 

The third source of emotion we see at times of joy, such as at weddings when we begin to cry. Who can explain it? Why do we cry when we are so happy? I believe that the movie, Fiddler on the Roof, got it right. When a person looks at a young lady getting married he begins to ask the question, is this the little girl I carried? He begins to ponder her childhood, her adolescence, her young adulthood and how she arrived at this day, and it is very moving. When we gain a perspective on all of life, we cry. When we see the beauty of the sweep of history, it can move us very deeply. 

There are times in my life, once on a plane, once at the end of Yom Kippur, once at a lecture, where suddenly I gained a perspective on my whole life and it passed before me and I was very moved by it. In the center piece of our amida, of our silent devotion today, we say that the remembrance of all deeds comes before you G-d, the deeds of every man and his actions. Today is a day of judgment. G-d will gain clarity over who we really are. Do we have more mitzvah or more sins. Are we basically evil or basically righteous. It is a big picture that concerns G-d’s day. What about us? Will we gain clarity about our lives? Will we begin to take a hard look at who we really are? You know there is a custom not to sleep on Rosh Hashanah. Generally it is explained that when G-d is judging us we should be awake. It is disrespectful to be sleeping. Perhaps it also means that if G-d is finally gaining a perspective on who we are and what we are all about, it behooves us to do the same. If we ask ourselves the question, what really moves us, the shofar gives three answers. It invokes the patokes and the tragedy of death and calls on us to live more meaningfully. It invokes a sense of tragedy in the gap between the soul and the body, between reality and our dreams, and it spurs us to achieve our dreams. The shofar also with its’ pure tekiah sound invokes the clarity which we hope to achieve about our own lives and the perspective we wish to gain.

This has been a year of many tears. We ask ourselves the question, have we done enough for Israel. Perhaps we need to ask a different question. The question is, do we feel deeply enough for Israel. Have we cried enough for Israel. On the day when we feel enough for Israel surely we will be moved to do something for Israel. Today is the day we ask ourselves the question, do we feel deeply enough, have we stirred our emotions and our feelings and our desires strongly enough to call us to action to do repentance in the ten days of repentance and on Yom Kippur, to build that Succah and shake that Lulav, or are we not there yet? It has been a year of tears and we pray to G-d that the year and its curses shall come to an end and the year and its blessings shall begin. Let this year, 5763, and its Hebrew acrostic stand for the following: May it be a year of the end of our exile. May all our dreams and prayers be fulfilled for the good and may we be blessed and inscribed in the Book of Life.