Reflections for the High Holy Days
Reflections for the High Holy Days
Sept. 29, 2016
Editor's note: To prepare for the High Holy Days, Fresh Ideas reprints three prayers, unique to the Rosh Hashanah service, from Marcia Falk's book, "The Days Between: Blessings, Poems, and Directions of the Heart for the Jewish High Holiday Season," published in the HBI Series on Jewish Women. In her book, Falk recreates the holiday's key prayers from an inclusive perspective.
Introduction to Skofarot, Zikhronot, Malkhuyot: Calls, Recalling, Callings
Unique to the Rosh Hashanah service are three extended liturgical passages — Malkhuyot, Zikhronot, and Shofarot — each comprising a rabbinic poetic prologue, 10 biblical verses, and a concluding petition and blessing. After the reading of each passage, the shofar is sounded.
The themes of the traditional passages, in their original order, are as follows:
Malkhuyot (literally, "sovereignty"): God as ruler and creator; God’s power over all creation and, by extension, His role as judge of our actions.* The 10th biblical verse of Malkhuyot is Judaism's keynote, commonly referred to as the Sh’ma: Sh’ma, yisra’eyl, adonay elohe’ynu, adonay ehad, “Hear, O Israel, the Lord is our God, the Lord is one” (Deuteronomy 6:4), emphasizing God’s singular dominion over all.
Zikhronot (literally, "remembrances"): God's remembering (taking account of, being attentive to) all creatures, and His fidelity to His covenant with the people of Israel.
Shofarot (literally, "rams' horns"): The shofar calls out, and we hark to it. Some of the biblical verses describe with dramatic force God’s revelation of Himself to the world and His giving of the Ten Commandments to Israel. Other verses proclaim the advent of the festivals, including the New Moon and Rosh Hashanah.
*References to God as personified or gendered reflect the language and theology of the texts being quoted or paraphrased, not the perspective of this book.
The re-creation offered here reorders the sequence to create a progression of awareness. Each section is interpreted afresh, emphasizing the twin focus of the holiday: looking inward, to better know oneself, and looking outward, to strengthen one's relations with others. I have distilled the liturgical text to a few of its key biblical verses (the Sh’mais adapted), augmenting them with brief reflections. To these elements, I have added Deuteronomy 30:12-14 and a poem.
The themes are re-visioned as follows:
Shofarot (Calls): The call to awakening the self and to hearing others.
Zikhronot (Recalling): Memory, imagination, and the forming of the self; the emergence of relationships.
Malkhuyot (Callings): The values we hold above all else. The Sh’ma is reframed: finding our place in the greater one-ness.
Shofarot: Calls
Hearing and Attending
Sound the shofar on the New Moon,
on our holiday, when the moon is still hidden.
— Psalms 81:4
The shofar calls, the crescent rises.
The new year is upon us.
★
O inhabitants of the world,
you who dwell upon the earth:
When the flag is raised on the mountain — look!
When the shofar is sounded — listen!
— Isaiah 18:3
The shofar quiets us, wakening us
to the silence within.
★
In the clearing, where the mind flowers
and the world sprouts up at every side,
listen
for the sound in the bushes,
behind the grass.
The shofar takes us into the self
that is hidden from the self,
then returns us to the world.
In the silence we hear the voice of the other,
we hear what has gone unheard.
Zikhronot: Recalling
Memory, Self and Other
Recollections shape us, remind us who we are.
Imagination brings what is buried
to light.
With each moment recalled,
the kaleidoscope turns,
patterns change, colors shift places.
The selves within the self come into view.
★
I remember the lovingkindness of your youthful days,
your love when you were betrothed,
when you followed me in the wilderness,
in the land barren of seed.
— Jeremiah 2:2
From youth to age,
our bonds with others deepen,
become more truthful.
★
I will remember my covenant with you
from the days of your youth
and I will establish that covenant for eternity.
— Ezekiel 16:60
Reciprocity, fidelity:
the grounding of relationship.
Malkhuyot: Callings
Self and One
Lift up high, O gates,
lift the eternal portals!
— Psalms 24:7
The gates are open, portals
to possibilities:
What is it that reigns for us supreme?
★
It is not in the heavens, such that you might say:
Who among us can go up and get it for us and let us hear it so that we may do it?
And it is not across the sea, such that you might say:
Who will cross the sea for us and get it for us and let us hear it so that we may do it?
No, it is something very close to you,
in your mouth and in your heart,
for you to do.
— Deuteronomy 30:12-14
We turn back to ourselves,
listen for our callings.
★
Hear, O Israel —
The divine abounds everywhere
and dwells in everything.
Its faces are infinite,
its source suffuses all.
The many are One.
— Adapted from Deuteronomy 6:4
Marcia Falk is the author of "The Days Between: Blessings, Poems, and Directions of the Heart for the Jewish High Holiday Season."