September, 2023 Megillah
RABBI'S NOTES
This being the beginning of Elul as I write, I’ve been blowing the shofar every morning for the last week (many of you have zoomed in to join me, which has been a delight). Even though it is just a hollow horn, the shofar can make so many sounds. One can blow the three segments—tekiah (the long blast), shevarim (the three intermediate notes), and teruah (the nine short calls.)—and, depending on how the blower’s lips are held relative to the opening, the horn can purr, screech, shudder, weep and sing. The every-day-ness of sounding the shofar is interesting to me. I find it has a cumulative aspect, the sounds fresh each time but somehow accruing in my consciousness, getting stronger and more compelling.
I am supposed to wake up, more and more each day. And I wonder what that means. The classic eleventh-century text on the shofar comes from Maimonides, from his Laws of Repentance. I remember the waking up part, but hadn’t looked at the whole passage this year until just now:
Even though the blowing of the shofar on Rosh HaShanah is a Biblical decree, it hints at something, i.e., “Wake up, sleepers, from your sleep! And slumberers, arise from your slumber! Search your ways and return in teshuvah and remember your Creator! Those who forget the truth amidst the futility of the moment and are infatuated all their years with vanity and nothingness that will not help and will not save, examine your souls and improve your ways and your motivations! Let each of you abandon his wicked ways, and his thoughts which are no good."
Mishneh Torah, Repentance 3:4
That sounds pretty medieval in some ways, but, like the sound of the shofar, some of its notes vibrate deep within me: “Those who forget the truth amidst the futility of the moment.…” Hmmm, shofar has something to do with truth.
A lot of us have been thinking about truth in recent years (and all the millennia before then) because there is so much blatant untruth around in the public world. However, in the nearer realms where most of us live most of our lives, discerning what is true is a more complex matter. What does my friend mean when he says X? What will happen if I do Y? What will help in this situation? What do I want? What do you need? What is called for in this moment? Why am I nervous? Should I say yes or no? Or maybe or not today but tomorrow?
What is it to be awake when my friend says, “Okay, sure…,” but I kind of think she doesn’t mean it? How can I pay real attention? Attention to what? Should I ask more questions? Back off? Take her at her word? In these realms the search for truth is endless. There is always more truth to know, more of her soul to know, more of my own soul to know, more to understand about the moment. Not even to mention the larger context of power dynamics, class, race, gender, the moment in history, the eon, the natural order in which my friend says, “Okay, sure….”
What is it to be awake when I am annoyed or dutiful or hot to do something? How can I know what’s true here? How can I decide how to act? How can I pay real attention?
“Those who forget the truth amidst the futility of the moment….” The word translated here as futility is hevel. You may know the famous line from Ecclesiastes: “Vanity of vanities, all is vanity.” That’s hevel. it comes from a Hebrew root that means vapor. “Something evanescent, unsubstantial, worthless” says my biblical lexicon. Fog.
I think I live a fair amount of my life in fog of one kind or another, distracted, preoccupied, dulled by routine, worried about things that might happen, stuck in unexamined constraints, enchanted with some concept of what I think I want, beset by what I think I should do, conforming to ideas and expectations that surround me. The shofar calls me to wake up, to shake off the fog. Then what? Then to listen, to observe, to ask, to think, to wait, to wonder, to reflect, to study. To reach towards truth.
I don’t think we ever get to the fullness of truth, at least not with regard to anything intimate and serious. There is always more than we will understand because life is deep. But we can look below the surface of the pool, wipe the fog from the window.Sometimes what we find when the fog clears is not easy to deal with. But I think there is also an aspect of pleasure, or healing, or vitality in seeing and hearing clearly, in discerning what is more deeply true about another person, a situation, our own selves, the universe.
So TEKIAH! dear friends. Let’s look forward to awakening together in this world we inhabit with each other. L’shana tovah!
PAIGE NOTES
Happy full moon! We jump into September this year on the full moon of Elul, halfway through our month of daily shofar blasts andCheshbon HaNefesh, "taking stock of our soul." In exactly two weeks, on the new moon of Tishrei, the Rosh HaShanah portal will open, bringing us into the new year. We will journey through those ten Days of Awe, the Yamim Nora’im, and enter the Yom Kippur portal!
Traditionally, Yom Kippur serves not only as the Day of Repentance. but also as the Rehearsal for Our Death. Our tradition teaches us to pray on the day that we will die, but since we do not know what day we will die, we ought to pray every single day.
Our tradition also teaches us to rehearse for our death in the year that we will die, but since we do not know what year that will be, to rehearse it every year. So, on Yom Kippur, we fast and refrain from sexual encounters to let go of our physical bodies, since we do not eat or enjoy physical pleasure when dead. On Yom Kippur, we wear all white, similar to the traditional burial shroud we will be buried in. On Yom Kippur, we recite the Shema and Vidui, the last words we might recite on our deathbed. In a house of mourning, we cover the mirrors so on Yom Kippur we cover the mirrors to remind us that this time revolves around spiritual reflection, not physical reflection, around how we show up for one another energetically, not superficially. Mirrors capture only the two-dimensional world and we live in so many more dimensions than that. This High Holiday season proves to be our yearly excuse to reflect on how we’re showing up in this world, fully. So may this September be a moon cycle of looking for our true reflection: emotionally, mentally, and spiritually.
with blessings for a Shanah Tova (not only a “good year” but a “good change”),
erev rabbi paige lincenberg
