1.
Jewish time has the power to pull us away from the stress of life and bring us back to our foundations, to the source from which we exist as individuals and as a nation. Jewish time is not linear but circular and brings us back to the point we began from. But each year, we return full, richer from what we have toiled for and harvested, from our failures and successes, from the breadth of our knowledge, and from the strength of our forgetfulness. This circular line does not stay the same, but grows thicker and stronger and rises in a personal and national spiral.
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On every Shabbat and holiday and on the going out of Shabbat and holiday, throughout the long history of our people, everywhere we were, as individuals, at moments of joy and as death approached, and even in the Nazi aktzias that defiled our honor, we stood an instructed time – you are sacred and you are profane. The most important blessings when the Sabbath and the holiday come in are: Mekadesh ha'Shabbat (who sanctifies Shabbat) and Mekadesh Yisrael Vehazmanin (who sanctifies Israel and the times).
2.
The Mishna describes how in the Second Temple era the new month was sanctified as a legal process that took place on the Supreme Court on the Temple Mount. Our forefathers didn't use a fixed calendar (even though they knew how to use it) and time was dependent on the new moon. They questioned witnesses who had seen the emerging crescent moon. This was so important that even the Shabbat could be violated for this purpose.
Video: Pre-Rosh Hashanah prayers at the Western Wall / Credit: Western Wall Heritage Foundation
"How do they examine the witnesses who come to testify about the new moon? They deal with them in order, as the pair of witnesses that arrives first they examine first. They bring in the greater of the two witnesses, and they say to him: Say how you saw the moon. Was it in front of the sun or behind the sun? To its north or to its south? How high was the moon over the horizon, and in which direction did it tilt?... And after they finish hearing the first witness's testimony, they would bring in the second witness and examine him in a similar manner. If their statements match, their testimony is accepted and the court sanctifies the New Moon. And the court then asks all the other pairs of witnesses certain general matters, without probing into all the details. They do this not because they require the additional testimony, but so that the witnesses should not leave disappointed, and so that the witnesses should be accustomed to coming to testify, and will not hesitate to come the next time when they might be needed… After the witnesses have been examined and their testimony accepted, the head of the court says: It is sanctified. And all the people respond after him: It is sanctified; it is sanctified" (Mishna, Tractate Rosh Hashanah 2:6-7).
3.
What is the profound meaning of this phenomenon? People rile against time which consumes everything, they set its boundaries and meaning; they decided whether it is sacred or profane and they change their behavior and routine pursuant to this. The significance is that it is not time that controls us, but it is we who control time because it too is subordinate to He who spoke and created the world. Think about the hope that this gives us as we face our mortality, about how this lifts the human spirit. This is the pre-condition that takes us to Shaul Tchernichovsky who wrote: "Rejoice, rejoice now in the dreams/ I the dreamer am he who speaks/ Rejoice, for I'll have faith in mankind/ For in mankind I believe." The poet expressed the zeitgeist in Europe, the freedom of thought that would lead to the emancipation of the Jewish People. But to free ourselves of our chains and become free, we had to have faith in the ability of man and of the people to control time and to remain present in history. That is God's gift and thus declared His belief in man. A people that puts boundaries on time, defeats time, and becomes an eternal people.
And what is the Hebrew name of God that is written but not said, if not "past, present and future", in other words: time? "(Time) counts and number all the openings and closings and all the places that never knew the touch of a whisper… time that makes pomegranates hang heavily and figs split open and moves light toward things.. because time is God.. and we are His changing subjects," wrote the late poet Hava Pinhas-Cohen in her profound poem "The Gardner."
4.
From here, we can understand a famous term from the creation story: "So God created man in his own image, in the image of God he created him" (Genesis 1:27). The Torah always fought against idols, against the anthropomorphization of God, and thus it is clear that the intention was not to a physical similarity such as in Greek and Western mythology. So what is it that man received that makes him "in God's image?" It is his ability to control time and defeat it.
According to the ancient text of the Midrash, Veyikra Rabbah (29:1), "It was taught in the name of Rabbi Eliezer, 'The world was created on the twenty-fifth of Elul.' If so, the first of the month of Tishrei is the sixth day of the creation. It was on Rosh Hashanah therefore that man was created, the crown of the creation from whom human history begins and upon whom moral, political, and scientific development depends. "Be fruitful and multiply and fill the earth and subdue it" (Genesis 1:28). In the 13th century, the Ramban (Nachmanides) interpreted this as "He gave them power and government over the land to do as they please with the beasts and vermin and reptiles, and to build and uproot the planted and to mine copper from its mountains..."
On the day that man was created, he was told not to eat from the tree of knowledge in the Garden of Eden. He violated that order, faced trial, was convicted but pardoned. "The Holy One, blessed be He, said to Adam, 'This is a sign for your children: In the same way that you stood in front of Me in judgment on this day and were pardoned, so too in the future will your children stand in front of Me in judgment on this day and be pardoned in front of Me.' When? 'On the seventh month (Tishrei) on the first of the month (Rosh Hashanah)" (Veyikra Rabbah, ibid). Rosh Hashanah is known also as the Day of Judgement and the Day of Remembrance – not only God remembers man, but man remembers the roots of his existence, his ability to overcome time, with the hope for his renewal.
That is why we blow the shofar, not just to crown God, but to remind man of his role as the representative of the King, as his ambassador, as one who has received the injunction to improve the creation. The shofar reminds man of the various times in life – routine times with a simple blast (tekiah), times of crisis that break us up (shevarim), and times of joy and uplifting of the spirit (T'ruah(.
The Mishnah defines the length and style of the blasts of the shofar: "The order of the blasts is three sets of three blasts each, which are: Tekia, teruah, and tekiah. The length of a tekia is equal to the length of three teruot, and the length of a terua is equal to the length of three whimpers" (Mishna, Tractate Rosh Hashanah 4:9). The Torah defines Rosh Hashanah as Yom Terua the Day of Trumpets (Numbers 29:1). It is defined by the Targum, the first century CE Aramaic translation of the Bible, as Yom Yebabah, a day of crying. The Talmud is split, does this crying mean "moan" (Rashi: "as a man moaning from his heart, just as the sick moan protractedly) or "lament" (Rashi: "As a man who cries and wails, in short, proximate bursts"). That is why we blow the shofar both in Terua and Shevarim. In any event, when someone blows the shofar, they use time and its division into units. The shofar reminds man of time and his ability to defeat it, as finally, he is blowing the shofar, and if he wishes he extends the sound, and if he wishes he shortens. In other words, our attitude to life and the passing of time depends on our interpretation, and how we relate to them.
5.
The files of the Spanish Inquisition contain the following testimony by Jacob Castellano about the conversion of Diego Arias de Avila, head of the royal audit office in the court of Henry IV, King of Castille, who was born as a Jew, Ysaque (Isaac) Abenacar: "Diego Arias de Avila… came to the town, where he stayed in the house of Francisco Ruiz. And being there with him in his lodgings, as that was a Sabbath or a festival day that the Jews celebrate, Diego Arias expelled all the Christians from the room he was in with the Jews … and he had the door of the room barred… he put the cloths over his head in the way the Jewish chaplain puts on the large tallit when he prays. And he began to sing in a low voice a lament, which the Jews say on the Sabbath or other festivals…he was singing in Hebrew for a quarter of an hour. When he finished he got down off the bench, sighing and saying: 'Oh Jews, Jews. When you are celebrating the Sabbath on Friday night, and you are singing Vay chod lo asamy (Disruption of the Hebrew biblical quote: "Vayechulu Hashamayim…": The heavens and the earth were finished), the whole world belongs to you. Don't you know how to appreciate that?!"
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