Rosh Hashanah

 

Rosh Hashanah Coinciding with Shabbat: Living in the Tension of Judgment and Joy

Rabbi Josh Cahan, 5764

I thank Rabbi Yehonatan Chipman for sharing this idea with me.

This year, as it has in three of the past four years, the first day of Rosh Hashanah falls on a Shabbat. I heard in the name of Rabbi Zalman Shachter that Shabbat and the Eve of Rosh Hashanah represent two polar opposites. Shabbat symbolizes fullness, perfection, God's presence in the world, the tangible presence of holiness. Rosh Hashanah, and especially its eve, symbolizes uncertainty, incompleteness, even anxiety, a sense of being in a kind of limbo awaiting the judgment of "The One who suspends the universe over the abyss" (תֹּלֶה אֶרֶץ עַל בְּלִימָה).

This incompatibility is alluded to in the fact that though Rosh Hashanah is also Rosh Hodesh, the New Moon, the latter is somehow "concealed" on Rosh Hashanah: there is no blessing of the New Moon on the preceding Shabbat; there is only the most fleeting mention of the Rosh Hodesh sacrifice in the Musaf prayer. A Talmudic midrash teaches (Rosh Hashanah 34a):

"'Blow the ram's horn on the new moon, on the day of concealment (ba-kesseh) for our festival day' [Ps 81:4]. What festival is it that the new moon is concealed therein? Rosh Hashanah".

"תִּקְעוּ בַחֹדֶשׁ שׁוֹפָר בַּכֵּסֶה לְיוֹם חַגֵּנוּ" [תהילים פא:ד]:  אי זהו חג שהחדש מתכסה בו? הוי אומר זה ראש השנה.

That is, the aspect of the New Moon is itself concealed on that day.

What does this mean? The day of the New Moon is seen as a day of promise and assurance of the future. Not so Rosh Hashanah. Unlike other New Moons, it is seen as a day of insecurity and uncertainty, when the very life of the coming year has not yet been renewed. It is Yom ha-Din, the Day of Judgment, when every individual, every nation, and indeed the entire world stand in limbo. How will God judge us? What if we do not find favor in God's eyes?

The day's uncertainty is captured in the Rabbinic tradition that the universe was created on the 25th day of Elul (VaYiqra Rabbah 29:1). This was the "first day" of Bereshit. Thus, the sixth day of creation, the day on which humankind was created, was the 1st of Tishrei, Rosh Hashanah. It was on Rosh Hashanah, therefore that Adam and Eve were created, that she encountered the serpent and was tempted to eat of the forbidden fruit, that they both disobeyed their Creator, were judged, and expelled from the Edenic world of childlike perfection, gratification, and contentment into the adult world of ambiguity and moral choice. Thus, since the very beginning of time, Rosh Hashanah is depicted as a day of judgment, and Man, who was created on that day, has been a problematic, existentially insecure creature.

But there is another idea as well: that, despite being a day of judgment, Rosh Hashanah is also a day of feasting and joy.

Talmud Yerushalmi Rosh Hashanah 1:3 (57b)	תלמוד ירושלמי ראש השנה א:ג (נז:)
In common practice in the rest of the world, when people know that they will be judged, they dress in black and wrap themselves in black and grow their beards, for they don't know what verdict will come out. But Israel aren't like that, rather, they wear white and wrap themselves in white and shave and eat and drink and rejoice, for they know that the Holy One does miracles for them.	בנוהג שבעולם אדם יודע שיש לו דין לובש שחורים ומתעטף שחורים ומגדל זקנו שאינו יודע היאך דינו יוצא. אבל ישראל אינן כן אלא לובשים לבנים ומתעטפן לבנים ומגלחין זקנם ואוכלין ושותין ושמחים יודעין שהקב"ה עושה להן ניסים.

Nowhere is this duality more evident than when Rosh Hashanah falls on the Shabbat. On the one hand, the Shabbat day as such inspires joy, peace, wholeness, contentment, and rest. Perhaps that is why the shofar is not blown on that day: the sound of an alarm, of this harsh, shocking, crude instrument signifying weeping and desperate prayer, contradicts the very essence of Shabbat. Nevertheless, it is a day of uncertainty, of trepidation about what the future will bring, of pleading before the Almighty for our very life.

It is in this spirit that we enter the synagogue on Rosh Hashanah, balanced delicately between joy and fear, between feeling the beauty of our special closeness to God on this day and the feeling of how much depends on the prayers we can find in our hearts to offer.