Jewish academic and Hebrew scholar Irene Lancaster reflects on the Rosh Hashana service and the blowing of the shofar.
As we approach the Jewish New Year of 5785, we’re faced as usual with the three facets of the synagogue service: malchiyot, zichronot and shofarot. These translate as sovereignty, overviews and the sounding of the shofar.
What is the role of the sovereign? In his recent book about Queen Elizabeth II, A Voyage across the Queen, Craig Brown offers two contrasting images. To many, the Queen exuded radiance. To eminent paediatrician and psychoanalyst, Donald Winnicott (1896-1971), the prime expert in his day on the connection between moms and babies, the Queen was a ‘transitional object’. Just like ‘the child with a chunk of fabric (or comfort blanket) or teddy bear, she is important for security and happiness and symbolic of an ever-available mother.’ Shades of Paddington Bear, perhaps?
In addition, the Queen ‘gives rise to a sense of stability in a rustic where the political scene is in a state of turmoil because it periodically ought to be.’ And, ‘we want the formality, the deference, the dream-come-true paraphernalia.’
All these descriptions and more relate to the sensation of each awe and closeness we feel in the course of the Rosh Hashana service, which this 12 months starts late on October 2.
For Jews one other factor plays a vital role within the Rosh Hashana service. What are the several sounds made on the shofar that’s blown throughout the service on a ram’s horn?
The teruah sound reminds us of the siren. Sirens call us to attention as they disrupt our lives. In Israel sirens are ubiquitous, sounding danger, in order that we’re primed to run immediately to secure rooms and/or barracks, ready for war. The siren is sounded in preparation for battle. ‘Siren’ can be the name of a best selling short story, compulsory reading on the Israeli school syllabus. The query being, what exactly is the siren for?
To properly heed the sound of the siren blown at Rosh Hashana it have to be done not on a trumpet made by man, but on a ram’s horn. This reminds us of the final word sacrifice made by Abraham when his son Isaac was saved on the last minute by a ram entangled within the undergrowth. The ram replaced Abraham’s favourite son in the final word sacrifice, just as we want to simply accept G-d’s sovereignty, His radiance,in addition to His symbolic role for us as an ever-present parent figure.
At this time of 12 months the shofar also reminds us of the coronation of a recent king. At the identical time we’re crying out to this king. We are broken. We are also nevertheless sounding the voice of war as described in Exodus 32. And that is where the siren is available in. Rosh Hashana is above all of the the re-creation of the world when the siren is sounded. At this moment the world is turned the wrong way up and G-d is considered the Commander in Chief.
Recently the numerous northern Israeli towns of Haifa and Nazareth have been hit by rockets from Lebanon and as usual the sirens were sounded. People rushed to their secure rooms. I’ve worked in each places, that are a superb mixture ofJews, Christians, Muslims, Druze and Baha’i.
My friend in Haifa was extraordinarily upbeat as she really helpful a recent book to me once I phoned a few days ago. We each remember the 2nd Lebanon War of 2006, the last time Haifa was hit by rockets from Hezbollah in Lebanon and the sirens sounded day by day. Deaths occurred then as now.
This 12 months there was an excessive amount of sorrow and destruction for Rosh Hashana to not tackle a really special meaning. Here is where the sounds often known as ‘overviews’ will play such a distinguished part.
We’ll look over the 12 months since last October and remember all those that were murdered, those that fell in battle and people we knew personally who won’t ever return, from babies to people of their 90s.
My son-in-law has day by day been blowing the shofar for the parents of certainly one of the executed young hostages. Now, as well as, he prepares to take the service for the second day of Rosh Hashana, as requested by the Jerusalem community where they’re currently living, forcibly displaced from their home within the North.
One can only marvel on the resilience of the Jewish people who find themselves universally hated and despised for all they’ve achieved and for his or her heroic resilience within the face of total destruction. Truly we’re the ‘suffering servant’ as depicted within the Book of Isaiah.
At this time of 12 months it might be overly optimistic to hope for a change of heart in a world that wishes to destroy us. But the sound of the siren shofar will give us hope as we do not forget that G-d will all the time love and protect His chosen people.
When the remaining of the world abandons the Jewish people, we all know in our hearts that just as once we were all once helpless babies, our G-d won’t ever abandon us now.
As we cling to Him at this era of prayer and repentance, we all know that G-d will all the time be there for us, and it’s this information that can keep us, the Jewish people, going perpetually, in expectation of what the New Year of 5785 will bring.
