Malchios, Zichronos, Shofros
Rosh HaShanah Musaf as bulk of Prep for RH class:
Two introductions:
The basic minhagim of RH. (actually, that’s a good way to begin each class, and provide a. halacha and b. a way for those who come late to still be at the beginning. Anyway….)
Malchius: (point of kabbalah is to say that our world is intended i.e. full of lessons on how it plays out physically as models, living metaphors in this world which hint to us the nature of upper worlds.) So, what we learned from the laws of the Jewish king is that our concept of king is more directed to leadership than the personal power of the king. In fact the law seeks to limit the kings personal power (and keep his ego in check!), and we also learned that the Jewish concept of Messiah is primarily a king, (king of the Jews et al.) and yet not only does that not conflict with his being a teacher, it au contraire’ simply makes Moshiach the most effective teacher, one that has the power to bring about actual change. One who has real power, the power of choice. The choice for good.
Yet interestingly enough we also saw that the Torah would have preferred us never ask for a king. It’s implied that if we hadn’t asked we didn’t really need. (Some say it’s how we asked etc.) And we learned that’s for the simple reason that G-d is our true King, and that to have a human king serving as that “living metaphor” it’s likely that we’re going to get screwed somewhere along the line. And really, the only reason we asked for one is that we lost sight of /faith in, G-d as our leader, our King and Savior. Who here would venture a guess as to why we lost the connection to G-d as a practical leader of our nation, our “Presidente`” and needed an actual, human leader/centralization of authority? Because we as a people had less unity of purpose than we had when we arrived fresh from the desert. We were less aware of G-d’s reality because we were less aware of our own.
When we were young as a nation we believed so strongly in G-d and in ourselves that we accomplished an amazing feat, we defeated seven wicked kingdoms of fierce and powerful peoples to fulfill the agreement that G-d, the only True owner, had made with Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob.
But when we got older, we weakened, had to become a little more like the nations that surrounded us.
Now, anyone who has lived or even spent time in our holy holy land of Israel, don’t you find it the most ironic of tragedies that the most effective marketing slogan there is “with an American taste”? These things go hand in hand. When a person loses a sense of him/herself, then we seek to have our identity anchored by something outside of ourselves, the society in which we live. (Some people may feel that such a motivation is also at the basis of organized religion. I would counter that a religion filled with so many nobodies would hardly qualify as organized, if that word is to imply a banding together for a purpose. I mean really, how much could they accomplish. Now compare what the Jews as a people have accomplished, and that’s for much of our history with the only organizing feature being our identity as Jews, and the struggles that implies. Yisroel.)
Zichronos:
What Zichronos do is make us be aware of our history. When we talk about purpose, we’re really talking about deepening our sense of our personal relationship to our national history#. Imagine the existence of the entire Klal Yisroel, the Jewish people, as a tree which has grown from a seed called Adam and Eve, with the first living sprout being Abraham and Sarah. That tree has many roots, a strong trunk, and myriads of branches and twigs, upon which are the millions of leaves and fruits, which are today’s living Jews. Zichronos makes the leaf aware of the twig, of the branch, of the trunk to the roots from which it really lives. It connects our sense of personal history to our origins. This is what “being Jewish” implies. Imagine now that when a leaf loses its sense of connectedness, it begins to wither, cut away from its source. Soon it falls, brown and dead, unto the ground to decay, and in it’s decay, bring life giving nutrients back through the ground into the roots and eventually all the way to the green green leaves. (This isn’t my metaphor, I read it in the Alai Shor). Now imagine that when a leaf has to potential to bud and become a fruit, it blossoms, becomes thicker, drawing more energy through the roots until is develops itself into something with by itself is life giving, a seed, surrounded by good, which when it’s finished has the potential to grow another tree. Until when we’re done we have an orchard, a garden.
Zichronos trace us back to the original family names, ben/bat Avraham/Sarah, Yitzchok/Rivka, Yisroel/Imahot, Their covenant with G-d beginning 4000 years ago being the underground spring from which your souls flow. bring us back to the seed from . , for after all, it’s not as if everything in the present has no precedent. We say that time is a creation, and therefore G-d, being the Creator, is not bound by time but rather is working with Creation as an entirety of time put together, and not in the fragmented sense that we have. There is reality to the idea that we can’t understand death and suffering in the sense of knowing why this or that individual is swallowed by it, I think it means that if we merit to see the entire tapestry of time woven together at last then we will finally understand why we are created the way in which we are. Zichronos paint that picture for us – a connection to the timelessness of our lives. Our eternity, our being a part of something so much greater than only now. Let’s face it, if life after death does exist, and there’s certainly more evidence that it does then that it doesn’t), then it’s just a matter of time until we discover it’s reality. It’s just like entering another room, you can guess all day what’s behind the door, but we don’t really know until we get there. And won’t it be a kick if what we are able to see is totally and perfectly a result of exactly who/what we are here, now? That’s reward and punishment. That’s the world to come. You’ve heard me say many times that everything in this world is a living metaphor for what is real in the spiritual world. That is because there aren’t, in reality, different worlds. There are simply different dimensions of the same world. We will be the exact result of us, because there is an aspect of us that doesn’t cease with death. It’s so different an experience than now that we have a hard time believing or even imagining it, but we don’t need to be trapped in time. The foundations (relativity) are set within our psyche to reach beyond time and space.
Now, when we read the Shulchan Aruch’s description (Orach Chaim 98?) we realize the medium to reach that within, is tephila. And the voice of the soul hidden in words, in a simple form, is the sound of crying, is the voice of the shofar.
What are the particular milestones of our history that we remember?
Shofros. Why do we call this “kol Shofar” the voice of the shofar? I believe I heard on a tape from R. Akiva Tatz that we can divide speech into two elements. There’s the words, and the voice. The voice, the tone, inflection, resonance, etc. lay the context of the words, and give them their intention. The voice is the sound of the will before it’s articulated, it’s primal, it’s inner. It’s the mind before the words. Tephila is a way to plug into that voice, your will, who you are inside. But we get trapped in layers of self absorption, self doubt, self loathing, escape, etc. The shofar is meant to melt away those layers of emotional blockage, and reveal the love you hold for life itself within you. As we learned last week, the entire point of Rosh Hashanah is to choose life. You can’t choose it, if you don’t really desire it. If you’re happy and you know it, clap you hands. So how does the shofar do this? Let’s examine the nature of the sounds.
The shofar draws together, punctuates and then releases. Tekiya (mouth one) teruah (again) tekiya. Imagine your own energy joining inward together, then let it go, let everything inside of you get loose, like with a good cry, and then release all the pieces you want to fall off. Your fear, your anger, your frustrations, your jealousy, your stubborness, your inability to accept love, your selfishness, your addictions, and gather together the real you, who is full of love, intent on purpose, motivated to achieve, and above all, cognizant of the Almighty, who is constantly showing you the needs of the world at large, as the Leadership of creation. So we say that the Shofar is also the announcement of the King, the King’s trumpets. We can see why. The King is always the King. Once a year we get together and proclaim that to the world. But here’s the kick. We do that internally. We bring it down, not by shouting or making a spectacle, but rather by becoming more aware of it. Rosh Hashanah says to the honest Jew, face it, either you believe in G-d or it’s a bunch of malarkey. But if it’s real, there should be nothing, nothing more central to our need to discover, than to know as much as we possibly can about G-d. Of course, we don’t mean G-ds essence, which is by necessity unknowable, but rather of the insights into our own created natures from the One who created us. There is wisdom to how we are made. The human being has a natural desire to be good. So what gets in the way? What is the enemy? The Talmud refers to it as Yetzer Harah, the shaper of evil (or instability) aka evil inclination, which the Talmud also equates with the angel of death and the Satan. What do these forces mean to us? Can we practically identify them in ourselves? Come on, be honest, aren’t their elements of your behavior that you know detract from the quality, the goodness of your life? But we all know that to really understand ourselves is such a difficult and deep task! There are entire bookstores that can be filled with self-help literature! So what’s a simple person to do? We read. “This mitzvah (teshuva, personal change) is not far from you, it’s not in the heavens …but in your mouth and your heart to do it.” The verse is clear, we are to find the answers in ourselves, in our mouth and in our heart, and the Talmud asks: “what is the service that’s in the heart, I would say that’s Tephilah (prayer).” Does that still seem vauge? Then the first thing you must realize is that this is a tremendous vote of confidence in you, in the healthiness of your soul and mind, that you will be able to find the truth, but moreover, and more to the point, it’s a statement of faith in G-d, and the Torah’s promise that those who seek G-d, with all their heart, will find. And last, but not least, it is true that we humans have lots and lots of crazy ways to think about concepts as abstract, broad, as this. So that’s where Torah study comes in. It’s to discover what is the straight way to “love your neighbor, to love G-d, to rest on Shabbos, to honor your parents, to love and raise your children, to build your home, to build yourself. In fact, one who studies without that intent can turn the Torah, elixer of life, into little more than an ego-trap, a potion for death (source).
So what is the yetzer harah? Id. Now, we can take a great clue to this from the fact that the Talmud says that children are all yetzer harah (source), it certainly doesn’t mean that they are all morally evil, or culpable for their actions. In fact, children aren’t even responsible to recompense damages that they cause until bar/bat mitzvah age! And as a rule humans are not punishable by the divine court until they are 20! (Source). And let’s be real, who is more innocent then children? Rather, Yetzer harah must be something deeper than moral corruption. It is simple the chaos present when there is no organizing force for good. It’s the instability that happens when you mix a lot of powerful emotions without sufficient cause, and let the strongest desire win.
more central to the innner understanding of the soul. Hence it’s a “wake up call.” Three sounds our blown through the Shofar. Tekiya, Truah, second Tekiya. The essence is that each Truah must be surrounded by a simple sound, the Tekiya. What are these sounds accomplishing? What do we learn from the laws of the Shofar. The Gem. (source) describes the The revelation. The climax of all of this history. Moshiach. Maatan Torah. Akeida. The seminal moments of becoming that are both the milestones and energy bases of our fulfillment. “We want to see our King!” The wake up call.