The Shofar in Three Dimensions

“Three books are opened on Rosh Hashana. One of the righteous, one of the wicked and one of the medium people. The righteous are immediately assigned to life, the wicked immediately to death and the medium people are pending and waiting until the day of atonement.”

(Talmud Bavli, Rosh Hashana.)

What is the meaning of this judgment, ask the early commentators, have evil people never lived past Rosh Hashana? Some suggest that this judgement is not played out in this physical world rather there is a judgment about the person's place in the world to come. This option is also difficult to understand. Why should there be an annual discussion about what will happen to a guy after he dies? Why not give the verdict post-mortem?

Moreover what does this description of the the judgement teach us about how to experience Rosh Hashana? How does the knowledge of the divine court translate into our relationship with G-d?

Perhaps these three groups of people are not out there in the world, rather the righteous, wicked and medium all reside in the individual soul. We each have at least a little bit of clarity of mind or a little bit of unwavering conscience. When that part of us is manifest we feel no struggle, we are with the Master of the world and that is it. We also each have a place inside where our ego is tenacious or even tyrannical, and place is seemingly selfish and God-less. And obviously we have that inner place of struggle where the different voices vie for control.

With the blast of the shofar on Rosh Hashana we receive help for each of these inner places.

What is the sound of the shofar? Is it shouting? Crying? Rejoicing? Why do we just listen to the sound and not blow the shofar ourselves?

The verses we say together with the mitzva of shofar begin to reveal meaning of the blasts. We recite verses of Kingship, of Remembrance and of Shofar, and there is a special blessing said following each set. One of the great kabalists writes that the verses of kingship correspond to the medium people, Remembrance to the righteous and shofar to wicked. We will attempt to clarify his words.

1) The Shofar affect the 'wicked' part of ourselves most directly. It awakens and shocks us out of our sad slumber of despair. There is a magic in waking up from a deep sleep, we can allow the sleeping beauty awake while keeping all the ogres asleep.

Besides for being a wake up bugle, the shofar is also a kind of desperate scream or wail. It that wordless primal energy directed towards the most high, using the horn of an animal. We scream so hard that something inside breaks; that obstinate piece of wickedness. We come to the knowledge that its just a parasite steal our mind and body. So then we do not want it anymore and it dissolves like smoke. That what our sages meant that in the judgement of Rosh Hashana the wicked are judged immediately to death. Perhaps it should be better termed euthanasia.

2) For that middle place in us where experience struggle and choice our main focus is the divine kingship. If we feel both sides of a choice with equal intensity, then how can we choose? The answer is that the commitment to the relationship with G-d is what gives us the power. In this context the blowing of the shofar is act of joyous celebration as we declare him our loving king.

['The medium people are pending until the day of atonement.' It is particularly the middle part in us, the part that chooses that requires time. Choice is real when developed and maintained over time. During the Ten days of Return we tell God that we are serious about the relationship.]

3) Then there is the totally righteous part inside. That part connects with the Remembrances. The Remembrances speak of God forever remembering us. It is about the covenant that is unaffected by choice. The mystical soul is not thinking in terms of duality; am I good or am I bad? Rather it is thinking about the Oneness; about us being in Him and Him being in us.

The Shofar of remembrance is not about crying and its not about celebrating, rather it's about listening deeply. We listen to the hidden unity of G-d until we actually see it, just like the Children of Israel's vision of the sounds at the foot of the fiery Mount Sinai.

The shofar transforms our whole person, speaking to the body, mind and spirit, each in its own language. On Rosh Hashana, the day of man's creation, the whole self is elevated, and more broadly the entire community; the holy, the wicked, and the normal.

heroism vs. feeling

The way of Yosef is the bring the full blooming of the Godliness of man. It is the way of heroism, not letting temporary situations overcome the inner spirit. When Yosef was in the most miserable place, in the Egyptian jail, he innocently asks his cell-mates, “Why is your face look sad today?”

Yet there is another way, a more feminine, the way of David. David did not ignore the troubles that he encountered. He deeply felt the pain and cried out to God, as we can see in the book of Tehilim. Feeling the pain allowed him to open up depths of the soul that would otherwise be totally hidden.

These two paths reveal the two types of greatness in man. The independence, dignity and strength on one hand, and and the complete dependence and trust in God on the other.

Adapted from Divrei Tora Bein Hametzarim, pp. 108-112, by R' Mottel Zilber shlit"a

Meah Shearim, Nachlaot, and Mashiach.

This past Rosh Hashana my wife and I davened at two different shuls. Upon reflecting together on our experiences I realized that the two shuls represented two perennial archetypes in Jewish life. I davvened in a chassidic Yerushalmi minyan and my wife davened in a colorful Carlebach influenced congregation.

The yerushalmi shul was very family centered, with lots of children running around, all feeling part of what was going on , yet the adults were surprisingly calm, not getting too worked up about the awesomeness of the day. The enjoyed singing together the traditional songs and humming at key places in the tefila. The other minyan on the other hand was fully of fresh energy of people wanting to pray deeply and be transformed.

A superficial assessment would be that in the Yerushalaimer shul they were content and not really excited about Judaism as opposed to the baal tshuva shul where a fire burned in their hearts. Yet I feel that it is deeper than that . The yershalmim give the feeling that their calmness is not a result of laziness or lack of interest rather it reflects the essential spiritual nature. They are connected to the holiness of sameness and rootedness. That is one of the ways that God is revealed to us - the Eternal unchanging Lord. In order to manifest that aspect of the divine we need to find in our personal selves and in our society a point that doesn't change. A point of consciousness within that reflects the awesome reality of “You are God before the creation of the world and you are the same God after the creation of the world.” (One is reminded of the kabbalistic teaching that Shabbos is the the center with all the days of the week circling around her.) People who focus on this revelation tend rank the stillness of the soul over enthusiasm. The momentary enthusiasm contradicts the eternal chill. Also they focus a lot of energy on continuity, that their children should look and feel like their grandparents. Here too they seek to manifest the unchanging Eternal. This is not the conservatism that says the new is untested and dangerous, rather it is a denial of the whole concept of “new”. There is no newness in eternity.

The people of this camp can be seen fighting, both literally and figuratively, for Judaism in a way that can be mistaken for fanatic enthusiasm but when you look carefully you reveal that it is not that. They are on the defensive. They are protecting their community from what they perceive as forces of change that undermine this calm principle of eternity. It has nothing to do with missionary zeal.

The eternal sameness is a but a sliver of the Truth. There is newness and growth which is also a revelation of the divine. The world was created in order to make room for the possibility of birth, of development, of growth. The reigning in of the infinite allows the entity called change to exist. So there are people who work to manifest this revelation with a focus on renewal and growth. They spurn things set in stone; old thoughts and habits that hinder the transformation towards God.

So we have two contradictory ways of walking with God. And this contradiction is part of the plan and the warring parties will come to peace. The Prophet tells us that in the end of days the tribes of Yosef and Yehuda will be united and the enmity between them will be gone. Yosef is called the Tzadik, a solid rock unmoved by temptation. He is also the revealer of the divine aspect of Yesod meaning foundation, which is also related to reproduction- continuity, the physical manifestation of eternity.

Yehuda and is grandson David have a different way, the way of the Master of Return. They both fell and got up showing us that change is possible. And that God desires a new song. That we with our small growth and movement can make the entire project of constriction of the divine and the creation of the world worth the cost.

Who will fix this world? We are told that it is Mashiach ben David. For he is the singer , the dancer, and the renewer of the cosmos. He will pull us out of despair of ever changing.

But that is jumping to the end of the story, before that comes Mashiach ben Yosef to prepare the way. In order to make a divine transformation we need to connect to the eternal Divine.

(The disciples of the Gaon of Vilna said he had the soul of Mashiach ben Yosef, and the disciples of the Baal Shem Tov said he had the soul of Mashiach ben David. This was told over by Reb Y.M. Morgenstern shlit”a. )

One time the Arizal was in the fields and he communed with the souls of Shmaya and Avtalyon and they told him the following secret. In the Shmona Esre prayer at the words “and the throne of your servant David please prepare” one should pray that Mashiach ben Yosef should not be killed. Shmaya and Avtalyon were gerim, they were clearly of the way of newness. But they were telling the holy Ari, “Please pray for the way of old, the way of eternity that it should part of the redemption.” We need to connect so deeply to the unmoving infinity that when the newness of redemption comes it does not make us feel that the ground is being pulled out from under us, but rather we will feel that in some mysterious divine way the new redemption fits with the divine eternity.

On Succos the festival of joy there was a holy dance. It was the dance of the Chasidim and the Baalei Teshuva. The chasidim would sing “How happy are we that we lived our whole lives with unchanging purity.” The Baalei teshuva would sing “How happy are we that grew, and changed from the way of our youth.” Both groups would then sing together, “Happy is he who did not sin, and he who sinned let him return to God, and He will accept him.”

This was a miraculous moment when Yosef and Yehuda would look at each other and recognize the Godliness of there respective ways. It only happened in the joy of Simchas Beis Hashoeva when the divine spirit drawn.

Reb Mottel Zilber shlit"a

Reb Mottel is the one in the middle.

His chassidim publish his Toras every week. The weekly Torah can be received via email from toldosyehuda@yeshivanet.com

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