I.
Jews cannot agree about anything.
Looking around today, at our shul, at other congregations in this city, and at synagogues of every denomination and every variety in every corner of the world, you might think that there was no controversy about this day, Rosh Hashanah, being the “birthday of the world” – the anniversary of Creation itself.
But this too is a debate in the Talmud.
Rabbi Eliezer taught that God created the world in the Hebrew month of Tishrei. Rabbi Yehoshua taught that the world was created in the Hebrew month of Nissan.
And so, I want to wish a Shannah Tovah to everyone who is celebrating the New Year today according to Rabbi Eliezer. And, I wish to offer a belated Shanah Tovah to anyone here who celebrated six months ago according to the opinion of Rabbi Yehoshua.
It isn’t so strange to have multiple new years for multiple purposes. The Mishnah in tractate Rosh Hashanah teaches that there are actually four different new years – each one with its own purposes and contexts in which it serves as a new year. This is similar to the way that the civil calendar year begins in January but the fiscal year may begin in July and the academic year begins in September.
But the dispute between Rabbi Eliezer and Rabbi Yehoshua is not a dispute about the diversity of new years days – but is, seemingly, a dispute about cosmic history. When was the world created? Rabbi Eliezer says Tishrei and Rabbi Yehoshua says Nissan.
Rabbi Moshe Sokolow – the teacher who first sparked my interest in parshanut, has suggested that the dispute between Rabbi Eliezer and Rabbi Yehoshua reflects the two different accounts of creation at the beginning of Genesis. The first chapter of Genesis describes human beings created and immediately placed in a lush garden – the way we find the world in Tishrei at the bountiful end of summer. The second chapter of Genesis depicts humanity placed in a barren world on the cusp of flowering and growth – as we find the world in Nissan at the start of spring. Both chapters are part of Genesis. Is there a way resolve the dispute between Rabbi Eliezer and Rabbi Yehoshua? Can we choose one chapter of Genesis over another?
Rabbeinu Tam, the great 12th century French rabbi observed that our liturgy, in particular the piyutim – the special liturgical poetry – that we recite in Tishrei assume that the world was created in Tishrei. And the piyutim that we recite in Nissan assume that the world was created in Nissan. And, to make things even more confusing – Rabbeinu Tam reminds us that the great Jewish poet Elazar HaKallir was the author of both of these poems. For those who have studied Tosafot -the Talmudic commentaries authored by Rabbeinu Tam and his students, this is a classic dialectic contradiction. Two sources, each one equally reliable and authoritative, teach something that contradicts the other without an obvious way to reconcile them. Here, the question does not concern a detail of talmudic law, but a question of existential importance to humanity: when was the world created?
So… when was the world created? Rabbeinu Tam answers, “Elu v’Elu Divrei Elokim Hayim – both of these opinions are the words of the Living God– for the idea of creation first arose in the Mind of God in Tishrei but the actual creation itself took place in Nissan.”
And now things begin to fall into place. Tishrei and Nissan are two stages of Divine creation – thought and actualizing that thought into action. The two seasons of newness in the Jewish calendar, Rosh Hashanah and the Tishrei holidays, and Pesach and the month of Nissan, commemorate two different aspects of creation and two different origin stories.
Creation in thought alone is abstract and necessarily vague. Creation in actuality requires particularity – because no existing human being is a generic and universal human being. We all are born with a family and culture and a skin color and gender and a nationality. Tishrei celebrates creation as a universal event in the history of humanity. Nissan, the season of the exodus from Egypt, celebrates creation as it unfolded within the Jewish people’s history.
Therefore, this day, Rosh Hashanah, celebrated in Tishrei, is the universal New Year. Today is the Jewish celebration of universalism. Today is the least Jewish of any Jewish holiday.
II.
The Jewish holidays are private occasions that we are meant to experience as intimate, loving encounters between Israel and God. On Pesach we read Shir HaShirim Song of Songs and understand the romance and love that exists between God and the Jewish People. On Shavuot we reenact our eternal marriage to God in which Mt. Sinai served as our Chupah. On Sukkot, we leave our homes and entrust ourselves to God’s Presence filling the Sukkah. On Hanukah and Purim we celebrate and express our gratitude for events that happened to us and to us alone – She’Assa Nissim La’avoteinu – the miracles that occurred to our ancestors. On Yom Kippur, the focus of the day, revolved around the atonement that was achieved on our behalf by the efforts of one man, the Kohen Gadol – the high priest – operating in one building, the Beit HaMikdash. Even today, our aovodah our prayerful service on Yom Kippur is structured as a replacement for the work of the Kohen Gadol in the Beit HaMikdash.
But Rosh Hashanah is different. Tishrei, is the season of universal creation and our solidarity with all humanity as fellow creations of One Creator, fills the pages of our machzor. In the Malchiot, Kingship, blessing we assert that God’s kingship over Israel will be matched by God’s sovereignty and relationship with all humanity: “Then shall the Lord be King over all the earth. On that day the Lord shall be One and God’s name One.”
וְהָיָ֧ה ה לְמֶ֖לְֶ עַל־כָל־הָאָ֑רץ בַי֣ום הַה֗וא יִהְיֶ֧ה ה אֶחָ֖ד ושְמ֥ו אֶחָֽד׃
In the Shofarot blessing we include all humanity in our confidence that Redemption will be the final chapter of history:
“All inhabitants of the earth, all who live upon the land, see when the banner is raised – listen to the sound of the shofar.”
כָל־יֹשְבֵי תֵבֵל וְשֹכְנֵי אָרץ כִנְשֹא־נֵס הָרים תִראו וְכִתְקעַ שופָר תִשְמָעו׃
But perhaps the most striking, even shocking universal theme in the Rosh Hashanah liturgy occurs in the opening paragraph of the Zikhronot blessing:
“Ve’Gam et Noach b’ahavah zacharta”
“And Noah also, You remembered with love, and You came to him with words of salvation, compassion, when You brought on the waters of the great flood…And so let Noah’s memory come to You, Lord our God, that you multiply his children like the dust of the earth, his descendants like sand of the sea.”
On Rosh Hashanah we acknowledge how God remembered Noah – with love. That additional word, “b’ahava,” exists nowhere else in Jewish literature in reference to Noah. One of my colleagues checked very carefully and I am confident that he is correct. It’s not there. In the Torah, God does not remember Noah with love. In the Talmud God does not remember Noah with love. In the midrashim God does not remember Noah with love. But in the machzor, God remembers Noah with love. The universal thrust of the day itself pushed the author of the machzor to invoke God’s loving recall of Noah.
The passage concludes: “to increase Noah’s progeny like the dust of the Earth, and his descendants like the sand of the Sea.”
Who is usually spoken of in reference to his descendants and progeny “ tze’tze’av” “zera”? Who multiplies like the dust of the Earth and sands of the Sea? We do! In today’s Torah reading, and throughout the book of Genesis, we read about Avraham’s special love- ahava – for Yitzchak and God’s promise that the family of Avraham and Yitzchak will increase and multiply and be the subject of God’s special concern and attention.
The machzor displaces Avraham and Yitzchak, and replaces them with Noah. On this day each and every human being stands before God. On this day, the anniversary of universal abstract creation, God’s focus is on humanity writ large and our Jewish identities are somewhat secondary. Today is the day to celebrate God’s love for the world.
And we celebrate God’s love for the world through imitating and echoing that love in ourselves. Rosh Hashanah is the Jewish holiday when we are meant to fall in love with the world.
This year, the image of Noah and his family, dependent on God’s protective memory as they sheltered on the ark through stormy seas, evokes a strong association with the plight of the millions of refugees fleeing conflict or famine in their home countries. There are three million more refugees in the world today than there were as recently as 2010. Hundreds of refugees have died at sea in the past year. In the hours before Rosh Hashanah began, I heard a news report on the radio that yet another boat had capsized in the Mediterranean. Thirty four people, many of them children, drowned at sea.
As God remembered Noah, we pray that God will remember these vulnerable men and women. And we will do more than pray. We will advocate, we will welcome, and we will donate our attention and our money to act with love on behalf of those whom God remembers with love.
Rosh Hashanah is the holiday in which we fall in love with the world. And therefore we arouse our compassion for the world. This is true across the globe and this is true in our own backyard. Falling in love with the world means falling in love with our neighborhood and our city.
III.
One of the ways that my childhood education in New York City was different from the educations that my children receive is a lesson that my entire fourth grade class attended – it was an all grade special assembly and workshop – on how to get mugged. We were reaching the age were we would soon, if we did not already, travel alone through the city, and random street crime was a routine part of life in New York City in 1990. It was taken as a given, as a matter of course, that each one of us, almost as a right of passage, would be the victim of a street robbery and so our school felt it would be wise to help us prepare for these crimes.
Fortunately, history turned out in a more positive direction for me and my friends and the story is a familiar one. Mayor David Dinkins was able to add several thousand police officers to New York City streets, crime began to drop, and it has continued to drop, in New York City and every other major American city to this very day. I suspect that fewer children need to receive school lessons anymore about how to get mugged. And as New York, and Chicago, and Los Angeles, and every major city in the United States has become safer, the desirability of urban life has increased. Ambitious professionals, successful families, upwardly mobile people no longer strive to escape the city. Now, American cities are understood to be a desirable place to live.
The positive transformation of American urban life has been crucial for this shul. Because more people want to live in Chicago, our shul can find dozens, hundreds, or even thousands of potential members in the streets surrounding this building. But the dynamic that I have described is necessary but not sufficient for a truly thriving shul.
This community will not live up to its potential, nor truly fulfill its responsibility, if we become a “lifestyle shul.” A “lifestyle shul” is a place where folks can davven and associate with other Jews during the years when they live here. In a lifestyle shul, people live in the city because living in the city is a convenient and enjoyable way to enhance their lives – but commitment to a neighborhood is paper thin.
That should not satisfy us. We want young people who come to the neighborhood for graduate school or for a first job, to fall in love with the community and stay here. We want young families to give up the convenience of a yard in the suburbs for the unique benefits of raising their children in the city. We want thoughtful and cultured individuals to experience the blessings added to their lives from living in the midst of the city as being readily apparent. We need empty-nesters and retirees to move back to the city and make this neighborhood the location where children and grandchildren come and visit.
In short, we need a shul filled with Jews who have fallen in love with the world and fallen in love with this corner of the world.
An urban shul needs an urban agenda. That means that the presence of this shul in this neighborhood changes the neighborhood for the better in significant and noticeable ways. It means that as individuals and collectively as a community we look for causes to support and arenas where we can exercise leadership in support of our values and in support of our neighborhood and in support of our city.
That sort of urban agenda will cultivate a commitment to this city and to this neighborhood that will inspire Jews to live here and to stay here – and even those who will make the choice to move on – will leave a greater impact behind.
Rosh Hashanah is a Jewish holiday whose focus extends beyond Jews. Celebrating our Jewishness together on this day makes us better Jews and also makes us better citizens and better neighbors.
Rosh Hashanah is the day when we are meant to fall in love with the world. We echo God’s loving creation by stepping forward to embrace God’s creation. We need to cultivate love for one another. We need to cultivate love for the wide world beyond, and we need to cultivate and act upon love for our neighbors.
Precisely because we have a strong and secure sense of who we are as people and our uniquely Jewish character, we are able to see beyond ourselves and reach out, in love, to the rest of humanity. And precisely because we share a common origin with all humanity – each one of us created in the image of God- we are able to develop our special characteristics as Jews.
Rabbi David Wolkenfeld 