Rosh Hashanah and the philosophical challenges of petitonary prayer

 In conversation with Rabbi David Silverstein

In a few short days, most of us will be gearing up for our biggest ‘’Prayer-thon” of the year. But how much time have we spent thinking about what prayer is and how it works?

• Are we somehow attempting to change God’s mind through our prayers?
• To persuade Him to through our words and feelings to improve our lot in the coming year?
• Can our words and thoughts really impact the fortunes of others we look to pray for?

In this conversation with Rabbi David Silverstein of Yeshivat Orayta, we explore the thoughts of Rambam, Rabbi S. R. Hirsch and Rabbi Yosef Albo among others as to the function and mechanism of petitionary prayer. What are the relative advantages of each of these approaches and how can we combine and draw upon all of them to enrich our prayers this Rosh Hashanah?

First posted on Facebook 15 September 2020, here.

A Jew for all seasons: does Judaism need synagogues?

 The peculiarities of Yomim Noraim services during the Covid-19 era have led many to re-evaluate their relationship with shul on the High Holy Days (“Weren’t shorter brighter services a breath of fresh air this year? Can they perhaps be similarly adapted on a more regular basis?”). Writing two centuries ago in Germany, Rabbi S. R. Hirsch had his own deep reservations about the nature of the Yomim Noraim services and, particularly, the impression of Judaism that they left less traditional Jews with.

For R’ Hirsch the phenomenon of Jews who only visited the Synagogue three days a year (or for formal rites of passage) was a double-edged sword. On the one hand, even this partial acquaintance has gratifying effects of demonstrating and enhancing Jewish identity and continuity. Nevertheless:

this sporadic relationship with Judaism has an exceptionally troublesome effect for it is limited to special times and occasions. If for a period of years our sole contact with Jewish institutions is limited to Rosh Hashanah or the Day of Atonement, and we behold Judaism only in the white vestments of the dead, then our relationship with Judaism dissipates even before we reach the happy festival of the booths and the happy Torah-celebration…the poetry of Judaism becomes reduced to eulogies and confessions of sin – and everything about Judaism becomes so bleak that we are unable to use it in our bright, fresh, happy, pulsating lives.

Judaism is a splendid life symphony of the times of the year, of which Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur are only solemn introductions…the Jewish veneration of God does not peak with the Rosh Hashanah mood. God seeks the joyful sound of the soul…the joyous Sukkoth festival.

R’ Hirsch teaches that Judaism is about infusing our lives with meaning and vibrancy. Living and celebrating the Torah’s moral, spiritual and intellectual teachings. While the High Holy Days perform a crucial function of directing us to focus inwards and reassess our life goals and direction, it is the joyous festival of Sukkot which is more quintessentially ‘’Jewish’’ than the austere and intimidating aura prevalent in many Synagogues on Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur.

This essay got me thinking: how applicable are R’ Hirsch’s observations in today’s generation? My impression of less observant Jews is that their Judaism certainly contains more positive elements than what R’ Hirsch describes. These may include identifying with or advocacy for Israel, Chanukah parties and communal social activities. Although I have also read about how a not-insignificant part of Jewish identity – particularly in the previous generation – lurks in the dark shadow of the Holocaust and national suffering.

In truth however, R’ Hirsch’s broader message is applicable just as much to fully observant Orthodox Jews – and perhaps particularly to them. A related teaching of R’ Hirsch implores his readers not to imagine that Judaism is primarily concentrated in the solemn confines of synagogues and study halls. Rather its moral and spiritual teachings must infuse and guide our every thought and action. How we conduct ourselves in the streets outside of the synagogues, how we interact with those around us in our lives – and particularly in our own homes. We must uncompromisingly reject the unspoken notion that regular attendance in Shul and Yom Kippur chest-beating somehow furnishes us with a “Get Out Of Fail Free” card which excuses undesirable behaviour at other times.

This year’s abrupt and painful shock to Jewish observance and communal prayer provides us a rare opportunity to re-evaluate not the length of our services nor the tunes of our Chazzan. But rather the relative degrees of importance that we place on the Synagogue within our broader Jewish lives, and on the solemn meditations of the Yomim Noraim versus a year-long embodiment of the Torah’s moral, spiritual and intellectual riches.

First posted to Facebook 30 September 2020, here.

Rosh Hashanah: how new is the Jewish New Year?

By Daniel Abraham and Shmuli Phillips

The holiday season which spans Rosh Hashanah through Simchat Torah lies at the heart of modern Judaism. Various scholarly critiques have attempted to portray these celebrations as post-biblical rabbinic innovations. Last year this group featured a response (based on an essay in Judaism Reclaimed), to claims that Sukkot was never celebrated in the first Temple era (linked in comments).

This post addresses an article from Project TABS which claims that Rosh Hashanah – featuring shofar- blowing and divine judgement – has no basis in the Torah and was not observed as the Jewish New Year until the late second Temple period. As with several articles that we have previously analysed from the thetorah .com website, we demonstrate that this claim (attributed to “Project TABS Editors”) can be effectively countered both from archaeological discoveries and biblical sources.

Archaeological Sources

Starting with the archaeological evidence for Jewish observance of Rosh Hashanah as a new year and day of judgment, an Egyptian papyrus from the mid-4th century BCE (known as Papyrus Amherst 63) contains three prayers that originated in the Kingdom of Israel before the fall of Samaria in 722 BCE. This papyrus provides a valuable insight into the beliefs and practices of the early Israelites, describing a day of the New Moon on which there is a solemn banquet for the God during which He determines destinies for the year to come. The prayers also focus on the theme of appointing God as King and celebrate God’s kingship over all other gods. In combination, these various elements point to a New Year’s festival— which scholars understand to be evidence of the historicity of the early Jewish celebration of Rosh Hashanah (read more about the papyrus here).

A second piece of archaeological evidence points to Tishrei as the time of the Jewish new year. A small clay tablet was found during the archaeological excavations of Tel Gezer, an important biblical city in central Israel. Bearing a Hebrew inscription from the mid-First Temple period, the tablet (known as the Gezer Calendar) is currently on display at the Istanbul Museum of Archaeology. Not only does it clearly place Tishrei at the start of the Jewish calendar but, fittingly, the calendar refers to the start of this agricultural year as a time of “asīf”. This is the precise term used twice by the Torah to refer to the “harvest-gathering festival” at the beginning of the new Jewish year (we will return to this shortly). More about this calendar can be read here (https://blogs.timesofisrael.com/rosh-hashanah-and-the-mystery-of-the-gezer-calendar/).

Finally, it has been convincingly argued by Edwin R. Thiele in The Mysterious Numbers of the Hebrew Kings, that the Kings of Judah counted the years of their reigns from Tishrei, suggesting that this was seen as some form of new year in the first Temple period in the Judaean kingdom too. Though this theory is not unanimously accepted, it has gained a wide acceptance among scholars.

Biblical Sources

The claim by “Project TABS Editors” that Rosh Hashanah was a post-biblical, rabbinic invention, is based on the absence of any biblical description of such a Jewish new year, coupled with a lack of reference to it in biblical accounts of Jewish first Temple history. Against the backdrop of scholarly evidence for Rosh Hashanah as a Jewish new year – a time of divine judgment and recognising God’s kingship – we will now examine some important biblical sources.

While the project TABS article is correct in noting that Rosh Hashanah is not included in the list of festivals in the book of Exodus, we do however find that both references to Sukkot in this book describe it as being celebrated at the turn of the year (23:16, 34:22). These passages in Exodus (along with Deuteronomy 16), are primarily focused on the laws of the pilgrimage to the Temple and therefore address only with laws unique to the three Pilgrimage Festivals. They nevertheless make it clear that Sukkot is celebrated at the time of the Jewish new year.

Other passages containing further laws of the festivals, which can be found in the books of Leviticus and Numbers, make explicit reference to a celebration on the first day of Tishrei as a “Yom Teruah” and “Yom Zichron Teruah”. What might be the nature and significance of such a special festive “Yom Teruah” – a celebration that, we have seen from the book of Exodus, takes place at the time of the Jewish new year?

Shortly after the Leviticus reference to the first day of Tishrei as a day of “teruah”, we find a description of a different “teruah” requirement in the Tishrei of the Jubilee Year (the “Yovel”): “You shall proclaim [with] the shofar-teruah, in the seventh month, on the tenth of the month…”. A clear connection between “teruah” and shofar blasts. And what might be the significance of Shofar blasts at the time of the Jewish new year?

The book of Psalms provides a crucial missing link here, with Psalm 98 stating:

“Blast [a word that shares the same root as teruah] with trumpets and the sound of a shofar before God the King....Before the Lord, for He has come to judge the earth; He will judge the inhabited world justly...”

We have therefore found explicit reference in the Torah to the start of Tishrei as a new year, a day of shofar blasts -- blasts which the book of Psalms connects to the theme of recognising God’s sovereignty and passing judgment over the world. This is precisely the sort of celebration that archaeological sources indicate was observed by ancient Israelites in the first Temple period.

While it is true, as the TABS article points out, that Nechemiah’s Temple dedication in Tishrei does not make mention of a Rosh Hashanah celebration (including the biblically mandated shofar blasts), this is likely to be because the passage is only describing aspects of celebration which relate explicitly to the unique dedication events of that year (as discussed by Dov Zakhjem in Nehemiah: Statesman and Sage, Maggid Press, p 158). The Nechemiah celebrations, in the context of the festival of Sukkot, are discussed here.

In conclusion, despite the superficially persuasive presentation of this attack on the authenticity of Jewish tradition, careful analysis of the biblical text in the context of available archaeological evidence demonstrates that it is deeply flawed. The concept of Rosh Hashanah as a Jewish new year in Tishrei considerably precedes the extra-biblical Second -Temple sources that the Project TABS article cites extensively. It must be questioned whether this essay from Project TABS (“Torah and Biblical Scholarship”) accurately portrays either Torah or true scholarship on this matter.

First posted on Facebook 19 September 2021, here. 

All rea

A Rosh Hashanah showdown in the Holy Land

Anyone witnessing the wide-eyed panic of Israeli shoppers in the Machane Yehuda market last week would have been quickly reminded of the fact that a two-day celebration in the Holy Land is a relatively rare occurrence. While Jews living in the Diaspora are accustomed to repeating festive days on account of an ancient calendrical doubt whose results remain enshrined in Jewish law, this phenomenon was never instituted for Jews in the Land of Israel – except that is for Rosh Hashanah.

Or was it?

In the course of my recent research into the formation and authority of the Babylonian Talmud, I came across a fascinating passage contained in the Me’or Hakattan commentary of Rabbi Zerachyah Halevy. Reviewing the Rif’s codification of the Talmudic ruling that Rosh Hashanah must be observed for two days – even in the land of Israel – Rabbi Zerachyah notes that this law was not observed in Israel throughout the Geonic era.

The calendar had always been within the jurisdiction of the original Sanhedrin that sat in the land of Israel, an institution which ceased to exist only with the migration of Jews to Bavel in the fourth century. Perhaps for this reason, the attempt by Babylonian sages to impose a second day of Rosh Hashanah upon the community in Palestine was resisted so strongly, even though this ruling was apparently formalised within the Babylonian Talmud. Rabbi Zerachyah recounts how Rav Hai Gaon attempted unsuccessfully to convince Palestinian communities to observe a second day of the festival in accordance with his understanding of the Babylonian Talmud, but that they had only finally acquiesced to the two-day observance rule in “recent” times at the persuasion of rabbis from Provence. [Rabbi Zerachyah lived circa 1115 to 1186. Rav Hai Gaon lived from 939-1038 CE.]

Ran in his commentary to this ruling of the Rif points out that both sides of this dispute could be seen as legitimate interpretations of the Babylonian Talmud which only rules concerning an era in which the Sanhedrin fixed the calendar according to witnessed sightings of the new moon. Nevertheless, the matter evidently evolved into a question of authority between the Babylonian Geonim and their understanding of the Talmud and the Palestinian community who wished to maintain their tradition of celebrating for one day only.

A further ancient practice of the Palestinian-influenced communities which ceased at around this point was the triennial cycle of Torah reading. The triennial cycle was the practice in Israel, whereas in Babylonia the entire Torah was read in the synagogue in the course of a single year. As late as 1170, Benjamin of Tudela recounted how Egyptian congregations took three years to read the Torah.

It would seem that Babylonian authority over communities in Palestine was a sore and contentious point. During the early generations of Amoraim, scholarship and academies in the land of Israel had rivalled and perhaps even eclipsed those of Bavel, with its sitting Sanhedrin and Yerushalmi Talmud which was produced by Rabbi Yochanan in the 4th century. Subsequent religious persecution led to a significant wave of migration to Bavel and with it the inclusion of numerous Palestinian voices and rulings in the Babylonian Talmud. Nevertheless, Jews in the land of Israel for centuries to come did not fully accept the notion that they were bound by the conclusions of the Babylonian Talmud rather than its Palestinian counterpart. They seem to have maintained that the two Talmuds bore equal legal force, since each represented a legitimate representation of the same underlying oral tradition. This was the situation until the establishment of the caliphate in Baghdad in the eighth century, when Abassid Babylonia became the centre not only of Arabic but also of Jewish culture. From then on, the influence of the Babylonian Talmud gradually began to overwhelm that of the Palestinian Talmud.

Ultimately, the Crusades thoroughly weakened the Jewish community in the land of Israel. This, coupled with a sustained campaign on the part of students of the Rif, appears to have ended whatever resistance had remained to the universal acceptance of the Babylonian Talmud as an exclusive binding source of Jewish law. However, the existence of a precise historical point at which it could be deemed “universally accepted by all of Israel”, as Rambam maintains in his introduction to Mishneh Torah, is a matter which might be subject to some debate.

First posted to Facebook 28 September 2022, here.

Rosh Hashanah, Rambam and the concept of a "Day of Judgement"

One of the recurring theological questions that Jewish thinkers have long been forced to grapple with is the need to reconcile a deity whose existence transcends all notions of space and time with the God of the Torah whose relationship with us is firmly focused around holy spaces and times.

As Judaism Reclaimed explores, the earliest traditional source to tackle this conundrum head on is King Solomon in his dedication speech for the First Temple.

"Can God really dwell on earth? ... the Heaven and the Heaven of Heavens cannot contain You, and surely not this Temple that I have built!" (I Kings 8:27)

The answer is found both in the continuation of Shlomo's speech (“But may you turn to the prayer … that Your servant shall pray towards this place”) and by God's subsequent response. God's 'residing' in a particular location represents, metaphorically, the notion that people’s prayers will be answered there, thereby making His existence more tangible to them.

The Maharal (Gur Aryeh Bereishit 6:6) expands upon this theme, explaining that God indeed “fills the Earth” and cannot be confined to a specific place. One who claims, however, that all places are therefore equal to worship Him is attacking a core tenet of the Torah: the principle that God designates as 'holy' certain “hashgacha hotspots” in which He enables people to relate to Him more easily.

But it is not only the dimension of physical space which presents a theological challenge to the philosophical notion of an infinite and transcendent God. How are we to comprehend the idea of God choosing one day a year on which to judge all of humanity? Is there a parallel to “hashgacha hotspots” in the dimension of time through which our ability to relate to God is altered or heightened at certain specific points in our calendar? What would this even mean in terms of our being judged – how would it differ from the axiomatic religious teaching that our actions always have providential consequences and are thus “being judged”.

One important traditional commentator who pursues this line of thinking is the Meiri, who writes that divine judgment is constant and unaffected by time. The function of Rosh Hashanah, he continues, is Judaism’s way of concentrating our minds on the concept of judgment and the consequences of our actions – something that we should truly be aware of the entire year but will typically allow to slip from our consciousness. While Rambam does not address this matter explicitly, certain teachings in Hilchot Teshuva could be seen as supporting Meiri’s approach:

“Just as a person's merits and sins are weighed at the time of his death, so, too, the sins of every inhabitant of the world together with his merits are weighed on the festival of Rosh HaShanah… Therefore, throughout the entire year, a person should always look at himself as equally balanced between merit and sin and the world as equally balanced between merit and sin. If he performs one sin, he tips his balance and that of the entire world to the side of guilt and brings destruction upon himself.” [Hilchot Teshuva 3:3-4]

If this is true, then it would fit an existing pattern within the Jewish calendar. We are commanded to recall the Exodus the entire year – yet one festival is dedicated to burning this idea into our religious consciousness. Our thoughts are supposed to always bear an element of mourning for the destruction of the Mikdash – yet one specific day in the calendar is set aside to concentrate on this tragedy. The same might be said for the command to remember Amalek’s evil. Might the same be true regarding the core religious requirement that we be aware of God’s judgement and therefore the consequences of our actions?

Yet such an approach surely fails to do justice to Jewish tradition, with its strong emphasis on both the importance and efficacy of repentance, prayer and charity on these specific days. As Rambam himself cites from the Talmud:

Even though repentance and calling out [to God] are desirable at all times, during the ten days between Rosh HaShanah and Yom Kippur, they are even more desirable and will be accepted immediately as Isaiah states: "Seek God when He is to be found." [Hilchot Teshuva 2:6]

It seems inescapable therefore that there is something inherently advantageous about repentance at this time of year. But are we able to explain this in a way that Meiri and the Rambam would find acceptable?

One possible path is that this heightened state of awareness of God’s judgement and the consequences of our actions in itself engineers a stronger providential interface and calendrical hotspot over Rosh Hashanah. This annual providential peak would be particularly strong when the heightened awareness of God is being practiced on a communal and even national scale. Rambam teaches towards the end of his Guide (3:51) that the intensity of our providential relationship with God is directly influenced by the quality and quantity of our mind’s awareness of Him. In the following chapter he states that it is through the very same “light” that we comprehend Him that He is constantly with us, examining and judging our deeds.

It follows from here that Rosh Hashanah can legitimately be viewed as a special day of judgment – not because God is inherently affected or changed by the dimensions of time and space to judge us more on one day than any other. But nor is Rosh Hashanah some artificial religious construct – a day on which it is useful for us to pretend is special as a superficial reading of the Meiri may imply. Rather when we as individuals, communities and a nation join together in concentrating our awareness on God’s rulership of the world, our collective and individual responsibilities and the consequences of our actions – this creates a very real heightened providential dynamic in which we are therefore judged more intensely than occurs on other days in the calendar. In this sense, God really is “to be found” among us during these ten days.

Rosh Hashanah therefore provides us with a focal point to self-examine, to improve, to dream and to aspire for substantial religious growth. In that spirit we present ourselves before God with greater clarity than we enjoy during the rest of the year. Our providential relationship of God – and thus our “judgment” is thus built upon this best version of ourselves. Rosh Hashanah thereby becomes the baseline and default of our relationship with God for the year ahead.

I would like to take this opportunity to wish all readers a Shana Tova, a wonderfully happy, healthy and inspiring year ahead!

First posted to Facebook 10 September 2023, here.

Grappling with suffering: will evil "evaporate like smoke?"

As I stood meditating over the Yom Kippur Amidah this week I was struck by the phrase “and all wickedness will evaporate like smoke when you remove the dominion of evil from upon the world”. These words were cited in A Guide for the Jewish Undecided a recent fascinating and thought-provoking analysis of the parameters of Orthodox theology by Rabbi Professor Sam Lebens.

In one of the later chapters of this book, Lebens looks to break new ground in theodicy – the old question of how to reconcile the religious notion of a good and loving God with the widespread evil and suffering that is very evident in this world. Having discussed why, in his view, traditional solutions to the question of theodicy fall short, Lebens proposes a radical new theory (developed along with Tyron Goldschmidt), built upon the premise that God’s omnipotence grants Him power to change the past: 

“Imagine that God gives us free will, and then, so to speak, He says, like a film director, “Take 1”. Then we live our lives. We do some good and we do some bad. All of it is of our own creation. At the end of time, God says, “Cut”. Imagine that scenes 1 and 3 are fantastic, but that scene 2 is horrific. Well then, wouldn’t God simply edit the film and cut out scene 2, because, even after the scene has happened, God can change the past? Admittedly, this would leave a gap in the history of the world. But then God can say “Scene 2, Take 2”. We’d then get another shot at linking scenes 1 and 3 together.”

While I totally identify with and embrace the motives which underpin this theory – an absolute refusal to countenance any trace of evil or suffering to be ultimately caused by a benevolent God – the practicalities of what is proposed are mindboggling. I recall a favourite film from my youth, A Matter of Life and Death, in which a celestial mishap causes a jettisoning World War II airman to be missed by the grim reaper. By the time this mistake is registered, the airman has fallen in love with a local lady and the notion of extracting him from history without upsetting other divine calculations becomes incalculably complex. With this in mind, the proposition that God could edit scenes without irreparably ruining the whole script of human history is hard to imagine. Placed on top of this, Jewish tradition often acknowledges crucial benefits which are gained from certain instances of suffering; as Judaism Reclaimed explores, the “iron crucible” of Egyptian servitude and other such episodes of Anti Semitism may be credited with the continuation of the Jewish people itself.

While Lebens certainly recognises and proposes fixes for some of these objections, my personal feeling is that he is too quick to dismiss the “free-will” model, in which God is understood to have created a world in which the primary purpose is the free-functioning of human free will. Success, righteousness and heroism is only meaningful – and perhaps even possible – in a setting which allows for the genuine possibility of failure and evil.

Objecting to this model, Lebens quotes an atheist philosopher, Stephen Maitzen, who argues that:

“To put it mildly, there is something less than perfect about letting a child suffer terrible for the primary benefit of someone else – whether for the benefit of a bystander who gets a hero’s chance to intervene, or for the benefit of a child-abuser who gets to exercise unchecked free will.”

Yet isolating this single incident presents us with a severely skewed set of scales. It is not only the bystander or abuser who can potentially gain from the existence of free will. It is every single human being alive; every person who has ever lived and will ever live – including the victim of the offense under consideration. All of their lives, according to Jewish theodicy as I understand it only stand to hold any meaning if humans are free-choosing creatures – who can reliably trust that the fruits of their pursuits will not be interfered . Once we add into the mix the notion of a World to Come with the prospects of unfathomable reward and punishment, we cannot possibly even know how to set the scales to weigh up humanity’s free will with the very real suffering of such victims. (How this may fit with the notion of Divine Providence has been addressed in a previous post).

Revisiting the evaporating cloud metaphor, perhaps a more apt interpretation would be to compare it to how the same phrase is used at the end of the Netaneh Tokef where humanity’s fragile and mortal existence is said, among other things, to be like “dissipating smoke”. This to my mind does not mean that our existence will one day be retroactively erased, rather it implies that our lives are brief and insignificant when compared to God’s everlasting existence.

The same notion can be applied to what I understand to be Jewish theodicy’s approach to evil. It is real, it is truly awful – and therefore it is something to be fought with all our might and all of our resources. But were we in a position to fathom and appreciate the rewards and pleasures of the World to Come which our tradition states are even beyond the comprehension of our prophets – such evil would be “like an evaporating cloud”.

On a related note, while we rightly protest and pray to God for His assistance in overcoming the forces of wickedness who take cruel pleasure in oppressing and tormenting others, Rambam emphasises in Moreh Nevuchim that the predominant cause of evil is humanity’s own doing. Collectively we must work unceasingly to educate and inspire; to use God’s great gift to humanity of free will to bring about the Messianic era in which:

Through awareness of the truth, enmity and hatred are removed and the inflicting of harm by people on one another is abolished. It [Tanach] holds out this promise, saying “And the wolf shall dwell with the lamb…”. Then it gives the reason for this, saying that the cause of the abolition of these enmities, these discords and these tyrannies, will be humanity’s knowledge of God… [Moreh, 3:31]

The primary and perhaps exclusive causes of warfare and misery are obsession with and competition over material possessions, power and pride. Once humanity becomes aware of this folly, its energies and capabilities will be channelled towards achieving universal happiness, thus “they will beat their swords into ploughshares…” and “your sons and daughters will prophesy”. When God’s teachings will reign supreme and “the dominion of evil will be removed from the world”.

First posted to Facebook 26 September 2023, here.