Mina's Musings: Rosh Hashanah Day One 2017 - Melekh Al Kol Ha-Aretz

Rosh Hashanah Day One 2017 – Melekh Al Kol Ha-Aretz

Shanah Tovah.  It is good to see all of you this Erev Rosh Hashanah.  After weeks of preparation - with the blowing of the shofar each weekday morning, selihot prayers, the psalm for the penitential season every day for a month and of course filling out the myriad forms for the holidays - here we are. 

With the tremendous importance we have placed on Rosh Hashanah, it may come as a shock to some of you when I tell you that this holiday doesn’t appear anywhere in the Torah.  It is true that in the book of Leviticus 23:23-25 we read: “23. And the Lord spoke to Moses, saying, 24. Speak to the people of Israel, saying, In the seventh month, in the first day of the month, shall you have a sabbath, a memorial of blowing of horns, a holy gathering. 25. You shall do no labor in it; but you shall offer an offering made by fire to the Lord.”

I have to confess.  That doesn’t seem much like Rosh Hashanah to me.  OK, there’s a day of blowing the shofar, praying, and refraining from work. But where’s new year, apples or challah in honey, crowning God as king, creation of the world, judgment, who shall live and who shall die etc.? It’s not there.

So how did we get from there to here?  According to Lesli Koppelman Ross, the author of a book on Jewish holidays called Celebrate!, prior to the Babylonian exile most Jews didn’t even know that the Torah had declared the first of Tishrei a holiday.  At that point in our history the People of the Book hadn’t yet become the People of the Book.  Most were ignorant of the Torah, its many commandments, and its holidays.  Moreover at that point in time, while the Temple was standing and all ritual took place there, anyone outside of Jerusalem would have been unable to observe the holiday even IF they knew about it.

All that changed after the Babylonian Exile began in 586BCE.  When they were allowed to return after 80 years, King Cyrus appointed the scholar & scribe Ezra to govern the land.  On the first of Tishrei in 450 BCE Ezra gathered the people and read the Torah from morning to night to the somewhat clueless Israelites.  The people wept when they realized how much they had lost by ignoring Torah.  Ezra and Nehemiah said:  “This day is holy to the LORD your God: you must not mourn or weep…” “Go, eat choice foods and drink sweet drinks and send portions to whoever has nothing prepared, for the day is holy to our Lord. Do not be sad, for your rejoicing in the LORD is the source of your strength.” I guess we have Ezra to thank for our wonderful Rosh Hashanah dinners – and especially our Rosh Hashanah desserts!

According to Ms. Ross:  “In essence, Ezra effected a rapprochement between the people of Israel and the God they had abandoned, and defined Rosh Hashanah for them.  It was a time to acknowledge God as their true ruler and to begin the return to Torah.” Simultaneously, during their time in Babylonia the Israelites learned that the Babylonians had a festival honoring their god Marduk on the first of Tishrei.  Between the idea of rapprochement with and the celebration of God, the essence of Rosh Hashanah as we know it was born.  

As Rabbi Ed Feinstein once wrote concerning this transition:  “Our ancestors witnessed [the Babylonian] rite, and were overwhelmed. So they borrowed the festival, washed it clean of its pagan symbols, and made it a Jewish holiday, Rosh Hashanah. As an answer to the narrow nationalism of the pagan rite, we will crown no earthly king today. Each one of us is created in God’s image.  So…. [throughout the holiday season] we will crown God ruler of the universe –melekh al kol ha-aretz...”

Rabbi Feinstein’s use of the words melekh al kol ha-aretz in his explanation of the transformation of this holiday is a reference to the concluding words of the fourth blessing of the Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur Amidah.  This blessing is very interesting but in order to understand HOW it is interesting we must first think about the blessings we say on a daily basis.   So I ask:  how do most blessings begin? With the six words Barukh Atah Adonai Eloheinu Melech Ha-Olam – Blessed are You Adonai OUR God ruler of the world etc.    

However, on Rosh Hashanah and again on Yom Kippur, a surprising thing happens.  On these holy days, during the conclusion of the fourth blessing of the Amidah, we flip it around.  We say, Barukh Atah Adonai Melekh Al Kol Ha-Aretz, M’kadesh Yisrael v’Yom Ha-Zikaron or Yom Kippur – “Blessed are You Adonai, ruler over ALL the earth, Who sanctifies Israel and the Day of Remembrance – or the Day of Atonement.” 

Did you catch the difference between the two?  Normally we say OUR God ruler over the world, but on the High Holidays in this blessing we say God is ruler over ALL the earth and THEN we specify that God sanctifies our people and the holy day.  Why do we do this and why does it matter? Quite simply we do this because during this ten day period of repentance we are asked to do something major – put God first and ourselves second. 

Recently Rabbi Donniel Hartman wrote a book entitled Putting God Second, whose premise is that in order for the world to be a better place, with less fighting over religion, we should do as the title says and put God second in our lives rather than put God first.  He believes that we must put ethical piety over ritual piety, that putting God first doesn’t accomplish that, and in fact hinders it.  Here’s the problem as I see it with his premise.  Most of us ALREADY put God (and I might say Jewish observance) second – or maybe even third.  Indeed I would say most of us RARELY put God first.  But Rosh Hashanah & Yom Kippur come and ask us for a short while to please put God first.  We do it not to become fanatics, ignore the suffering of others, or perish the thought – to make ourselves feel superior to others. No, we put God first in our liturgy for ten days to remind us what it actually means when we say that God m’kadesh Yisrael – sanctifies Israel.    

And what DOES it mean?  To be m’kadesh – sanctified - means to behave in the manner of the One who is truly kadosh, God. That is, to be kadosh  means to care for the poor, the sick, the orphan, the elderly, and to love our neighbor.  To be kadosh is to be rahum – merciful.  It is to be erech apayim - patient with others as God is patient with us.  It is to speak emet – truth rather than falseness.  It is to be full of hesed – compassion.  To be kadosh means to forgive others as we expect God to forgive us. It means to dan l’chaf z’chut – to judge people’s actions and motivations charitably – or at least as charitably as we judge ourselves!  To be kadosh means to never stand idly by the blood of our neighbors or look askance at the homeless.  To be kadosh means to give tzedakah to the best of our abilities, especially during times of disaster and regardless of the political affiliation, religion, color, sexuality, etc. of the recipients.    

According to Rabbi Feinstein, his mentor Rabbi Harold Schulweis once taught that “the unique contribution of Judaism to human consciousness was the worship of a God of all Creation. Loyalty to the Creator of all demands concomitant responsibility on the part of the believer. We worship a God of all by accepting responsibility for all. Anything short of that diminishes God.” 

May we live up to these responsibilities - to ourselves, our families, and our communities, today, throughout the season of repentance, and all the way through to the next Rosh Hashanah.

Shanah tovah tikatayvu.