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.
