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Rosh Hashana
I didn't connect so much with last night's service, but I really did this morning. At several points I felt I was truly in the presence of the divine king, and I spent a lot of time thinking about things in the past year that I ought've done differently.
My torah reading went really well, and I got many compliments -- including two people telling me that they'd gotten chills listening to me. Those are good chills; I was reading the climax of the binding of Yitzchak and trying to do it expressively. I guess I succeeded. :-) I backed off a bit when I got up there and found a mike right there in my face, only an inch or two from my mouth; I was worried about overblowing it when the angel shouts to Avraham. But still, it worked.
My rabbi's sermon this morning was good and thought-provoking, and I don't know how well I can summarize. With luck he'll publish later and if so I'll post a link, but broadly, it centered around what he called the four questions of Rosh Hashana. (So nu, you thought only Pesach gets four questions?) The first three are:
- "Where are you?" (From the garden of Eden, right after Adam and Chava have learned that they're naked.) Do we respond as they did, looking to blame someone else for our sins?
- "Where is your brother?" (Kayin and Hevel.) Do we improve on Kayin's "not my problem" response? (He said a lot of good things here about scope, too -- we shouldn't just be concerned with DNA-sharing family, after all.)
- "What do you seek?" (Yosef on the way to find his brothers.)
And the final one, tying to today's portion, is: "Avraham?". This requires some elucidation. When the angel comes to stop Avraham, he says Avraham's name twice -- leading to much speculation about why. My rabbi and I discussed an interpretation in which the first is a shout (to get his attention) and the second, after that failed to work, is a more gentle "hey there, are you listening to me?" kind of question. When shouting doesn't work, calling a person gently by name sometimes does (and did here). And Avraham answered "hineni" -- "here I am". My rabbi talked a lot about listening and about being there when people call. I can't do it justice.
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lefkowitzga came for lunch and we got to spend a couple
hours chatting. That was very nice; we haven't been able to just
sit down and talk in a while.
- challah
- apples and honey (I used Honeycrisp and Gala apples)
- a nice sweet Muscato wine (hey, I prefer white to red -- but more importantly, I wanted a sweet wine to go with the holiday theme, and the only reds I have on hand are toward the dry end)
- raw carrots and cauliflower with hummus
- brisket a la goljerp (hey, he's the one who taught me
how to cook it other than in an oven)
- baked acorn squash stuffed with apples and brown sugar
- salad with broccoli, red peppers, onions, carrots, oil
- orange cake (I find most honey cake too heavy)
- dried fruits
I've heard a little informal talk in the congregation about possibly going to a two-day Rosh Hashana at some to-be-defined future time. If that suggestion makes its way to the worship committee it should make for some interesting discussion. There are several points of view to consider:
On the one hand, we keep one day of Rosh Hashana, just like the torah tells us to. The reason for a second day is (historically) calendar uncertainty, but that no longer applies.
On the other hand, we generally say that we follow Israeli practice on holidays, and they keep two days -- even the Reform and Masorti congregations there do, for the most part.
On the third hand, will American Reform Jews come to a second day of services? And on that same hand, are we going to get flack from the folks who think any change in the direction of more practice means we're "going Orthodox"? (Personally, I think such people miss all sorts of important points, but they too are members of the congregation.)
On the fourth hand, we should be guided by principle first; if we say "they won't come" and thus don't do it, we guarantee that they won't come. So if it's important, we should do it even if only 20 people come. That said, is it important? Open question.
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(Not sure if that applies to a Reform shul or not, but hey, it's a reason...)
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Ah, here we go -- Ohr Somayach, citing Shulchan Aruch and Ran to Tractate Rosh Hashana, says the reason for no shofar is because of carrying. I know I've read this in many other places too.
In our case, not only do we not carry the shofar (it stays in the synagogue), but we have an eiruv so even if we did move it, it would be ok. So we don't believe we have a problem with melacha.
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Reform does not say "we don't do X"; it says, rather, "you have to reach your own decision about X". This, however, must grant the possibility that some people will conclude "I don't do X" -- so if I'm the shofar-blower, and I don't carry on Shabbat, and I don't have an eiruv, a right-thinking congregation will let me store the shofar there, thus solving the problem without preventing the shofar service. So this is where we differ from the rabbis of the talmud -- we would allow a solution within the rules (store it there) and assume that people can avoid mistakes, while the rabbis said "forbidden lest someone make a mistake".
this doesn't make much sense, but
Anyway, the issue of carrying is Oral Torah, which is basically not accepted as binding on the community in a Reform framework. Eiruv, muktzeh, and carrying are all principles of a system that makes no sense in a Reform perspective (unlike, say, lighting a fire which is at least in the text of the Torah).
Maybe I rely too much on the Pittsburgh Platform, which is quite old, but I had thought that the basic principle was that things that could be viewed as historical accretion (oral law) rather than ethical core (some of the written law) are not binding on the community. You can choose to do something or other, but the community as a whole cannot be bound by your choice. Are there really Reform temples that make concessions in practice to traditionalist "sentiment"? (I think of the cafeteria at HUC, where there was no pretense of kashrut.)
Re: this doesn't make much sense, but
I think you're right about distinctions in Reform between oral and written torah, and that the community in general isn't going to make concessions for the formal. But some communities do make concessions for the factors their members have decided are important -- for example, in my congregation any catered congregational meal will have a vegetarian/dairy alternative for those who don't eat non-kosher meat. Ok, it probably helps that vegetarians would benefit. Here's another small one: we are currently renovating, and I won the argument against motion-sensor lights in the restrooms on the grounds that this would be a barrier for some people and not much of a benefit to the others. (And while we have a motion-sensor sink for those who have difficulty turning handles, it's only one per.) I think communities are willing to limit themselves when someone raises real and not hypothetical issues. It's a start.
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Just thought I'd add.
L'shana tova!
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Thanks. Actually, it should be attributed to my mother (and her mother, and probably her mother, which is why I'm using this usericon...)
The reason for a second day is (historically) calendar uncertainty, but that no longer applies.
I may be incorrect, but I thought the second day of Rosh Hashannah is because it's, esentially, a 2 day Rosh Chodesh. Some months are just like that; it has nothing to do with uncertainty, but rather to do with making the calendar work. (I.e. this year, Rosh Chodesh Kislev is one day; Rosh Chodesh Iyar is two.)
As you say, Israelis celebrate two days of Rosh Hashannah. The year I was there, they were all complaining because it was a Thursday-Friday Rosh Hashannah (which means, essentially, a 3 day holiday). I was less than totally sympathetic, because they didn't have to deal with that on Sukkot and Shmini Atzeret also. :-)
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Second day: the argument I was taught is that while, for the other holidays, there is time for the messengers to get word of the sighting of the new moon to all the towns in Israel (but not the diapora), on Rosh Hashana you can't even do that because it's the first day of the month. Additionally, you might find out that it's been Rosh Hashana for several hours and you've been doing melacha all this time because you didn't know. So, to be safe, it's two days everywhere.
Now the calendar is fixed and we know when all the two-day Roshei Chodesh are going to be because we can compute it. Before that, though, it depended on witnesses, right? The difference between Rosh Hashana and any other Rosh Chodesh is that finding out late doesn't cause you to violate commandments from Sinai. (At worst you miss rabbinic commandments, like the liturgical changes. Not that I'm sure the liturgy was fixed before the calendar-computation was.)
And actually, now that I've written this I find I'm a little confused about this computation. Normally, you get a two-day Rosh Chodesh following a 30-day month. A month must have 29 or 30 days; if it has 30 then Rosh Chodesh is day 30 and then day 1 of the next month. If the month has 29 days then Rosh Chodesh is one day, the first of the following month -- which "would" have been day 30 if the previous month had a day 30, so you can get most of the way through a day that's either RCh or RCh 1 without an answer.
Ok -- but that doesn't happen for Elul/Tishrei. Elul has 29 days and then Rosh Hashana is days 1 and 2 of Tishrei. Why? Shouldn't a two-day Rosh Hashana, in its guise as Rosh Chodesh Tishrei, fall on Elul 30 and Tishrei 1? Why is Elul mandated to be 29 days so "30 and 1" become "1 and 2"?