Letter From Crown Heights: The High Holidays 5780

Rosh Hashanah

            “L’Shana tova tikaseiv v’seichaseim.”

            “L’Shana tova tikaseiv v’seichaseim.”

            We exchanged the traditional Rosh Hashanah night blessing: “May you be written and sealed for a good year.” I said it to whomever I saw as I made my way out of the Frankel Shul – even to the Israeli guy who usually scowled at me.

According to the Torah, G-d writes the contract for the new year that night, at least for some people, such as tzaddikim, the righteous. It’s sort of like winning the World Series after the first game. After the first night of Rosh Hashanah we no longer wish each other to be signed and sealed for a good year because the signing has already begun and is only pending the final seal. Instead we say, “G’mar chassimah tova” (“May you have a good final sealing.”)

I saw my friend, Gavriel Greenberg, and wished him the first night blessing with an outstretched hand. I improvised a follow-up blessing. Not wanting to say something trite to my good friend and sports addict, I said something silly instead: “May all your teams be winners this year.” I got a reply in kind: “Hey, don’t give up on your Chiefs, Moish. I still think they’re going all the way this year.”

On Rosh Hashanah we’re enjoined to keep idle talk to a minimum. Not only were thoughts of touchdown passes now in my head, but I had become Gavriel’s Rosh Hashanah enabler. Just then young Chaim Horowitz, a consummate Yankees fan, passed by Gavriel, well into a full sports monologue. Chaim, who would have been talking incessantly with Gavriel about baseball had this been a regular Shabbos or holiday, just looked at him and shook his head.

Signed, sealed and delivered, or not, the lengthy daytime praying started the next morning at 9:30 … Standing with my shoes together, head bent down and the Rosh Hashanah prayer book close to my face, I started praying the Rosh Hashanah Shemoneh Esrei (Amidah) prayer quietly to myself: “… instill fear of You over all You have made … all the created beings will  prostrate themselves before You, and they all will form a single band to carry out Your will with a perfect heart.”

            It gets me every time. On the day in which we accept G-d as King over us (the Jewish people), we pray that the whole world bow down in awe before Him, revealed in all His splendor. The world the Rosh Hashanah Shemoneh Esrei depicts is no less than the Days of Mashiach.

… The scene shifted. Quiet anticipation, a hush, descended. Attention turned to the center of the shul for the Mitzvah of the Day.

Standing at the bima, the Baal Tekiah (Shofar blower), white tallis wrapped around his medium frame, pronounced Psalm 47 – “… All you nations join hands – sound the shofar to G-d with a cry of joy …” – seven times in his throaty voice with the congregation joining in. Eight more verses were said in unison.

The Baal Tekiah then made two blessings and sounded the Shofar: “tekiah-shevarim-teruah-tekiah  …”

            The Shofar blowing man, Phivel Caplan, blew loud, long and clear, making holy sound in physical space. The Frankel Shul, like the ocean, holds treasures that no one besides its members sees. Phivel is the whale shark of our ocean: a humble guy, serious about Torah law, generous to those in need, with the lung capacity of Louis Armstrong.

Yom Kippur

            Before we began praying Shacharis, the morning service, the rabbi led us in singing “Avinu Malkeinu” (“Our Father, Our King”): “Our Father, our King, we have no King. We have no King but You.” Those words are what Yom Kippur is all about – returning to the essential point, the one nation reuniting with the One G-d.

… Yossie Blumenfeld, the shul caretaker, sitting next to a stack of folded bath towels in a clothes basket, tossed a towel to everybody at our table, like a dutiful gym teacher, for us to bow down on.  In the Temple on Yom Kippur the Jews would prostrate themselves to G-d whenever they heard the Kohen Gadol (High Priest] pronounce the Divine Name. We, too, bowed four times, three when the prayer book described the Temple prostrating and once in the Aleinu prayer.

The prostrating was a two-step process. First, I got down on my knees, landing on the towel I had spread out in front of me; then I bent forward, my forehead touching the floor (without the intervention of a bath towel). To make contact on the floor with my forehead, I had to lift the brim of my hat at the last second.           

            After we finished prostrating, the praying continued throughout the afternoon and into evening: 80 men praying and fasting for 10 hours – in addition to the praying-fasting the night before starting at sundown – with only one break. Like a team of astronauts traveling together in a tight compartment, we remained in the Frankel Shul until our mission – securing atonement for our transgressions – was completed.

            Finally, we could see through the windows it was dark out. According to the clock, Yom Kippur was over. Confident the Heavenly Court had reached a verdict of “Not Guilty,” we danced around the bima singing Napoleon’s March, the tune we used to sing at the conclusion of Yom Kippur in 770 with the Rebbe.

I pictured that scene: The Rebbe has climbed to the top of a step ladder perched on top of a raised platform so people can see him. Dressed in a special white robe for Yom Kippur, called a kittel, covered by a white tallis, the Rebbe sways to the singing, clapping his hands, as the singing builds to a crescendo.

            “Our Father, our King. We have no King. We have no King but You.” May the king, King Mashiach, be revealed now.

Sukkos

            It was 7:00 am, and I was going to bed. I had spent the last six hours reading Psalms out loud – make that all of the 150 psalms in King David’s Book of Psalms. It took me that long because I’m a slow reader, at least of Hebrew. Those tiny marks, called nekudos, which vowelize the Hebrew consonants, slow me down. Actually, I don’t know why I read so slowly. Once when I was in elementary school, my friend Jerry Esrig’s grandfather tested our Hebrew reading speed. Jerry blew me away. I guess I never recovered.

            I had been saying Psalms in the shul, starting at midnight, because that’s what we do on Hoshana Rabbah night. You see, even after Rosh Hashanah, the Ten Days of Repentance and Yom Kippur, there’s still one more day of judgement on the final day of Sukkos – Hoshana Rabbah. I guess a more positive way of looking at it is that G-d keeps giving us chances to repent. (According to one opinion, the final judgement doesn’t come until Chanukah.)

            I set my alarm for 10:30 to make sure I would pray Shacharis, the morning prayer service, before midday – knowing full well there was little chance I’d wake up after three-and-a-half hours of sleep. I woke up at 11:30, grabbed my Lulav and Esrog and rushed to 770, Lubavitch Central.

            Hundreds of Lubavitcher chassidim were standing on the service road in front of 770, outside a big tent erected so that when 770 was filled to capacity the rest of us would have a place to pray. The tent must have been filled to capacity. I immediately found a man trying to start a minyan – a quorum of 10 men, the minimum required for group prayer. I stood there in the street praying, my pocket-size prayer book in my right hand and my Lulav and Esrog in the left. An Israeli yeshiva student came up to me and asked in Hebrew if he could use the Lulav and Esrog. I said, sure, and watched him disappear into the crowd. I was glad to help him but felt uneasy not having my eye on him and my precious mitzvah items.

I prayed on, but the Israeli yeshiva student didn’t return. It started to rain, and the big crowd ran to the tent, squeezing under the roof at the end nearest us. “Great,” I thought, “I’m never going to find him now.” Then another, much bigger, Israeli yeshiva student ran over to me and, laughing, handed me my Lulav holder, without the Lulav inside and no Esrog. I was really mad now: “Where’s the Lulav and Esrog?” He pointed in the direction the other student had run off in. I felt I was being made the butt of somebody’s Hoshana Rabbah joke. I pictured a hundred Israeli yeshiva students passing around my Lulav and Esrog, making blessings, shaking – and laughing their heads off.

Now I would have to go around asking to borrow a Lulav and Esrog when they came up in the praying. A while passed, then the big Israeli student tapped me on the shoulder. He pointed behind him. There in the tent stood a third Israeli yeshivah student praying with my Lulav and Esrog. I approached him. He handed over the goods.

Reunited with my Four Species, I thanked G-d for returning them to me. I decided to return to the Frankel Shul where the atmosphere would be calmer.

The Hoshana Rabbah praying is long. It’s the last chance during this month of fast and festival to beseech G-d to grant us and the Jewish people a year of peace, joy and Mashiach. I finally finished, smacking the Hoshaanos – five willow branches tied together – five times on the floor of the shul to “sweeten the judgement,” the culminating act of the Hoshana Rabbah praying.

I picked up my Lulav and Esrog, their role as mitzvahs over, and walked home. I looked ahead to the remainder of the holiday: no more pleading; no more extended praying. This was not the time for sharp analysis, deep thinking or meditation. Tonight we would dance with the Torah.

Together

We’re always getting together. We celebrate, join clubs, form leagues, “friend” people on Facebook, arrange play dates, schedule meetings, participate in after-school activities, throw parties, join parties, shop, make plans, do lunch, watch the game, camp out, go to a museum, go to the zoo, play video games, host, attend, give a shower (bridal or baby), organize, enter, sponsor, volunteer, chew the fat, call, email, text, message, Skype, tweet, post, comment, chat, follow, blog and go bowling.

            Today, seemingly, we have a greater ability to “love your fellow as yourself” and to unite with one and other than ever before. With 2.41 billion monthly active users connected through Facebook and five billion people worldwide hearing each other on mobile devices, the world has become, if not one big family, at least one big community center. The Internet has enabled us to extend our connections beyond our inner circles to circles conceivably as wide as the whole world.

            Our differences, on the other hand, breed conflict: mass shootings; terrorist attacks; religious intolerance; anti-religious bias; rancorous politics; nativism; political correctness; epidemic divorce rates; cyber bullying; racism; hate crimes; anti-Semitism; sexual harassment; nuclear tensions; war. Nature works against harmony. The world’s vast diversity creates an environment susceptible to clashes. No two things are alike in this world. Every life form carries its unique DNA, rendering multiple varieties of each creation and multiple ways of thinking, doing and being. There are 350,000 known species of beetles alone (and over 30 kinds of Coke)! It’s hard to keep all this multiplicity floating in the same, peaceful boat.

            The tension between the urge to connect and the fear and hatred provoked by our differences is natural. The world was created this way – on purpose. G-d created a world full of innumerable, seemingly autonomous creations, all of which are in truth one with Him and, consequently, with each other. We only see the objects, though, and not the unity, because the Creator conceals Himself from the Creation. In his work, the Tanya, Rabbi Schneur Zalman of Liadi provides an analogy to explain the separate-yet-unified world G-d created.

            Consider the sun and its rays. The ray in the atmosphere and on earth appears to be independent of the sun. But, of course, the ray can be tracked back to the sun, its source. The ray’s state of being in the body of the sun is different than its state outside the sun. In the sun, the ray merges with its source to the point that it can no longer be called “ray.” Because the ray is only the sun’s radiation and not the sun itself, it becomes nullified in the body of the sun. The only place where the ray is seen to exist is in the space between the sun and the earth where the body of the sun is not present.

            The world is like the ray of the sun. It appears here as light issuing from G-d. But in its source the world becomes nullified to the Divine light. The ray of the analogy, however, differs from the world in one significant way. Where the ray can be seen, the sun is absent. G-d, on the other hand, is everywhere, even in the place of the world. The world, then, is always one with G-d, even here where it appears to be independent. He hides His presence, though, to render us unaware of this constant unity so we can experience the world’s existence as separate from Him.

            The world of squirrels, condos, sunsets and cartoons G-d created is in actuality subservient to Him; but from our perspective the world is self-made and self-perpetuating. G-d designed a seemingly autonomous world because He wanted to make us partners in the ongoing perfection of His Creation. By concealing Himself from the Creation, by disguising His oneness with us, G-d enables us to help Him make the world a little more united. And every time we make a connection between two apparently disconnected things, we catch a glimpse of the One who holds it all together. Every purposeful act of unity demonstrates that the world is not random but interconnected by that oneness.

Although living in a fractured world can be painful, it’s comforting to know that we’re all in this together and that the reward for our efforts waits for us ahead. Our service of G-d in the darkness of His concealment readies us for the future when Mashiach will finally reveal G-d’s Infinite Light. We will then see with our very eyes how the entire world and all its multiplicity are bound to the Creator.

Today we improve the world by doing G-d’s will despite the lack of Divine revelation. In the Days of Mashiach we will serve G-d by knowing Him through direct revelation. But it won’t be until the Future Redemption that we will understand the greatness of our service in the darkness. Then, according to Rabbi Sholom Dovber Schneersohn, the fifth Lubavitcher Rebbe, we will long for the days of the Diaspora. We will sorely regret not having worked harder to serve G-d when doing so was a challenge.

One challenge is using technological innovations for the good. The Internet has definitely been used for both good and bad. It seems that the social network can be a force for good and might even be a prelude to the great experience we will share with the coming of Mashiach: “For then I will change the nations [to speak] a pure language so that they will proclaim the name of G-d, to worship Him with one resolve (Zephaniah 3:9).”

That will be some celebration. L’chaim!