Rosh Hashanah

Dear friends,

The next letter that you will receive from me will be BE”H after Rosh Hashanah. I wrote the letter last night, on the 25th day of Elul, the day the world actually came into being. No holiday is observed on the anniversary of literally the most transformative moment in the world’s history-its coming into being! Why doesn’t the Torah not have a World Day?

Step back and focus on any physical object, such as a plastic cup. You will notice that it is made of a specific material (plastic), has a shape, (hollow cylinder) and finally it has a purpose (containing liquid). The entire universe works with the same three components, material, form, and purpose, that the cup has. In the first moment of creation, the root of everything in the physical world was brought into being. The form that they eventually take was generated by Hashem’s will in each day of creation. That only leaves one more component.

Purpose.

Us. You and me. All humans are the offspring of Adam and Chava whose creation took place on Rosh Hashanah.

Humans are the end goal of a world we have yet to fully explore or understand. We live in a world in which there is concealment – struggle, mortality, and the deadening repetition of nature that makes searching for its source feel optional. This all began on the first day of creation, the 25th of Elul. The next day, the spiritual source of life, which is called the Higher Waters, meaning the way Hashem’s compassion nurtures all reality, was separated from the ordinary H2O that you drink. The empty space between them, the place where you can choose to be awake, and open your heart to emunah, or you can be so absorbed by the gorgeous, lush place we call earth that you don’t have room for its Creator. The next day, vegetation, and after that the cosmos with its vast mysterious presence.

This summer we spent a few days in Rosh Pinah, a charming small town just north of Tzfat. My husband’s friend has a serious telescope, the kind that fills half a room. He let us look at the black night through its lenses. Words like “a hundred light years” passed between him and us. All of it was put into place on the fourth day. On the fifth day, lower species of animals and finally the higher species all were created for you. And me. And the rest of us.

This is why (as the Talmud tells you) that instinctively each of us thinks that the world is here for none other than yours truly and her friends, you.  If you are really alive and awake, you will sense Hashem’s presence wherever you are. If you are asleep, there is only room for you. It’s not hard to sleep through life.
 
The shofar is there to wake you up.

The Torah’s text doesn’t give you much information about how this works. Rabbenu Bachaya tells us that the fewer words the text provides, the more deeply the profundity of the mitzvah is hidden.

He quotes the text phrase by phrase
1-On the first of the month, there shall be a Shabbaton, a time where things cease.
2-A commemoration of the truah (sound of the shofar)
3-It shall be a time that calls out sanctity to you
MEANING
1-The words, “the first” hint at Avraham who was the first one to be fully awake to Hashem’s unity and presence in His world
2 Remembering the truah is Yitzchak, - a ram was sacrificed in his place, and the shofar is made of a ram’s horn, which produces the sound that you hear to awaken you.
3-Calling out sanctity, is Yaakov,

BEING AWAKE BEGINS BY FEELING THE PART OF YOU THAT STILL HAS A SPARK OF THEM – PEOPLE WHO DID NOT SLEEP THROUGH LIFE. HEAR THE SHOFAR AS YITZCHAK’S VOICE, HIS SPIRITUAL ALARM CLOCK RINGING IN YOUR SOUL.

Yitzchak was utterly devoted to Hashem, was strong enough to have no “self” or autonomy holding him back. He was 37 years old at the time Avraham took him to Mount Moriah. He could have easily just told his father that he has no plans to be an offering to Hashem and walked away. His didn’t-he wanted to serve

Hashem on His terms.

Are you like him? If the answer is one, you prefer to keep to yourself, then go back to step one. Find the part of you that is like Avraham. Let your willingness to see Him in His world and through His creation inspire you. Skip to step three. Yaakov’s holiness, his ability to find Hashem in each situation he faced in life, in the individual nature of all 12 of his sons, and in the world itself is also part of you. They surround the Yitzchak in you. What does this mean?

​What Rabbenu Bachaya tells you, is that the part of you that really isn’t actualized yet, the imperfect not-yet Yitzchak part, that could be the source of feeling endlessly guilty, doesn’t stand-alone. Hashem never forgets Yitzchak’s devotion, but when he looks at you or at me, he simultaneously remembers the merit of seeking for Him when you are coming from a distant place, the way Avraham did, and the fact that He promised Yaakov that something of him would be in his descendants. This is why the shofar is blown as Zichron truah, memory and sound.

What should the voice of the shofar tell you as you hear it? You hear the voice of awe, and even fear, and at the same time the voice of joy in Hashem’s love. The first comes through the broken notes that are called truah. The second from the smooth unbroken sound called tekia.

Both sounds are sounds of life, sounds that can wake you up to a life of brachah, goodness and Shanah Tovah

Love,
Tziporah