Unetanah tokef (Rosh Hashana)

[cellio]

(This is an expansion of a comment I made in a friend's journal.)

Unetanah tokef is a powerful prayer -- one of the highlights of the morning service on Rosh Hashana. Excerpt:

On Rosh Hashanah it is inscribed,
And on Yom Kippur it is sealed.
How many shall pass away and how many shall be born,
Who shall live and who shall die,
Who shall reach the end of his days and who shall not,
Who shall perish by water and who by fire,
Who by sword and who by wild beast,
[etc]

Does God really decide who shall die by fire and who by flood, etc? I don't think so -- not individually, for sure, and not literally. But does God set challenges before us that we have to take a hand in addressing? Yes, and maybe we can read this as more about challenges than about verdicts. After all, we're told at the end that bad decrees can be averted, and if you're there praying it then you've already taken one of the necessary steps.

(The passage ends thus: "But repentance, prayer and righteousness avert the severe decree.")

One of the images that I like, and that the Reform movement uses in its machzor, is that God doesn't write our names in the book of life (or the other one) -- we write ourselves into one of the books through our deeds, and God but opens the books up on Rosh Hashana and acts on what he sees. While I do believe in an all-powerful God, I take comfort in the idea that he's chosen to leave some things to us. We choose to live well or badly, and those choices have conseqences. As it says in Netzavim (last week's portion, and what the Reform movement reads on Yom Kippur instead of the details of the high priest's service), "I set before you this day blessing and curse, life and death -- choose life".

Comments

[cahwyguy.livejournal.com]

Rabbi Hronsky at our congregation did a sermon on that prayer, as part of getting the congregation for the year of prayer study as part of our moving to Mishkon Tephilo. Alas, I don't think I could get a copy of it.