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. :-)

[cellio]

For a long time the Reform movement only observed one day of Rosh Hashana and read the Akeidah on it. In recent years there's been a push to do both days.¹ (No idea what proportion of congregations offer a second-day service.) When we added it at my congregation we decided to leave the Akeidah on the first day (which has vastly better attendance), and do creation on the second day. Apparently that's a common choice, as the new machzor includes three options for the torah portion(s) -- Yishmael, the Akeidah, and creation.

I don't know if the position that RH is the 6th day is minority; my rabbi presented it as "some say this, others say that" in his comments before the reading. But we're covered either way, as you said, because we read all seven days. :-)

For some strange reason, the concept of children being placed into danger resonated this year especially.

Indeed.

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¹ I can't speak for the larger movement, but there were a couple factors in my own congregation. First, we say that we follow the Israeli calendar and that's why we don't do the second day of yom tov -- but if we say that, we should be consistent: Israel does do two days for Rosh Hashana. Second, we reached a critical mass of people including our rabbis who were going to other congregations (usually Conservative, sometimes Orthodox) for the second day and we agreed that we should be offering to fill that need for our community.

[goljerp]

Ah, that makes sense. If you're coming from the position of "Akeidah on first day", Creation makes more sense for 2nd day than going back to the exile of Ishmael.

I don't know if the position that RH is the 6th day is minority

Hmm, I don't know why I thought that it was a minority opinon. It's not like I did a survey of the commentaries. I think what your Rabbi said is probably more accurate.

[magid]

The forbidden sexual relationships are only at mincha, traditionally. It's the one thing I really dislike about the mincha/neilah davening, because the text is so clearly only addressing men. I don't like being othered from the community at that time.

[goljerp]

Ah, I'd forgotten it was mincha. Possibly because I'm usually fasting during Yom Kippur? :-)

(Or, more likely, I often nap between services and so miss the mincha Torah reading...)

I read an interesting commentary a little while ago which looked at the language (which is kinda wierd) in this section and used that to build a case that originally the section included forbidden homosexual relationships (i.e. a man couldn't sleep with his uncle). They used that to reason that, at the time, other homosexual relationships were not forbidden. At some later point, the text was changed to what we have now.

However, as intellectually interesting as that may be, I can totally see not wanting to read that on Yom Kippur mincha.