a few Rosh Hashana links

[cellio]

Sunday evening our associate rabbi gave a sermon (video link) on how we use words to include or exclude. Readers of this journal will recognize the talmudic tale she includes. (So will lots of other people; it's kind of famous.) It's easy for discourses on this topic to be pat bordering on dismissive of real human complexities, but this talk was more nuanced. When she posts a text copy I'll add a link, but for now all I have is a video (~20 minutes).

Monday morning our senior rabbi spoke about pachad, deep fear (video link, ~21 minutes; text). I'm not going to try to summarize it.

I chanted torah on the second day. I didn't realize it was being streamed/recorded until somebody told me on Shabbat. Since it was, I'll share video evidence for anybody who wants to know what I'm talking about when I talk about chanting torah. (That's high-holy-day trop or cantillation, which is different from how we chant on Shabbat.) I decided fairly late to do my own translation from the scroll; by default my rabbi would have read it out of the book. It's not a hard translation, but word order is different between Hebrew and English, which is why there are some brief pauses in places you might not expect just knowing the English. (Also, I never really did settle on a good English word for rakiah; I've heard several.)

Comments

[goljerp]

What intrigued me was the torah text. Obviously Genesis 1:1, and since Rosh Hashanah is, in some rabbinic texts[1], the anniversary of creation, very appropriate. On the other hand, the traditional text is the exile of Ishmael on the first day of Rosh Hashannah, and the binding of Isaac on the second day. For some strange reason, the concept of children being placed into danger resonated this year especially. (And was commented on).

Now, I was aware that there were communities which didn't do the traditional Torah readings on Yom Kippur (which deal with forbidden sexual relationships), but I wasn't aware of communities doing a different Rosh Hashanah reading. So I learned something!

[1] I was reading that there are some commentators who say that Rosh Hashannah is actually the anniversary of the 6th day of creation, but that's probably a minority view. And y'all read the 6th day, too, so that's covered. :-)

[sine_nomine]

Fascinating re the growth of 2nd day.

And I believe that it's spelled trope. :-)