Thoughts for the New Year: “Man Was Created on Rosh Hashanah” and “Of Uman, Community and 21st Century ‘I’”

With the high holidays approaching, the Schechter Institutes wish you and your loved ones a most festive and meaningful holiday experience. Dr. Persico has contributed two pieces to this month’s Faculty Forum. Touching upon both “heaven and earth”, they provide a thoughtful bridge to guide us as we prepare for the Holidays of Tishrei – our Days of Awe.

Man Was Created on Rosh Hashanah

I. The first man was created on Rosh Hashanah (Psikta d’Rav Kahana 23:1)

The year does not begin in the month of Nisan, to mark the redemption from Egypt, nor does it mark the creation of the world (which was on the 25th of Elul); it is set to mark specifically the creation of Adam and the human race. The creation of man is the beginning of the Kingdom of God in His world. Although the world existed before Adam, it was a world without consciousness and without choice. Only with the appearance of man could there be an awareness of the existence of God.

(Rabbi Adin Steinsaltz, The Siddur and Prayer, Yediot Aharonot Publishing, p. 166).

II. You shall love the Lord your God

If God exists, there cannot be any proof of Him, because God wants man to love Him, and love is an act of freedom. If there were proof of His existence, man would be forced to acknowledge Him and to strive to love Him, and nothing is more pitiful than love born of effort. Therefore, if there were proof of God’s existence, then ipso facto He could not exist. (Or, if He did, He would not be interested in man’s love of Him, or in man’s will to do good. Such a God is a lifeless abstraction). Since there is no proof of God, His existence is a possibility.

The first man was created on Rosh Hashanah

If God indeed exists, then according to Jewish tradition He created man on Rosh Hashanah. To paraphrase, the year begins from the moment man existed. Time began when choice was born (thus we can also say: time began when the possibility of love was born). As Rabbi Steinsaltz writes above, the creation of man is the beginning of the Kingdom of God in His world. Thus, from the Jewish perspective, though the world was created as a Divine act of choice, it takes on meaning (and becomes complete) through the human act of choosing.

Everything is in the hands of Heaven, except the fear of Heaven

At the end of the day, human choice is always Divine choice, for there is nothing else. This is not to say that man’s power to choose is null, but that man understands that his choice is an expression of Divine choice. The world thus becomes a joint undertaking of many who are one, and One who is many. But, strangely enough, when we are unaware of this, we choose badly. Our attempt to become aware is a blind choice, the best and perhaps the only blind choice we could hope for.

Choose Life

Since the world is continually created anew, each moment is the first, that is, we are given an opportunity each moment to choose our life. On Rosh Hashanah we remember that first instant, the first of the chain of all moments, and the first time a choice was made of the myriads of choices that have since blossomed on the tree of choices. This is not a chance metaphor, for the first choice made was that to eat of the fruit of the Tree of Knowledge. This happened on the first Rosh Hashanah, but on every Rosh Hashanah since then, we are invited to make a conscious choice to be aware of our partnership with God – to choose the Tree of Life.

Shana tova, and let’s get to work.

This piece first appeared on “Lord Loop”, the blog of Dr. Persico.

English translation: Penina Goldschmidt

Of Uman, Community and the 21st Century “I”

Some years ago I celebrated Rosh Hashanah in Uman. I went there out of curiosity and a wish to understand the trend. But when I began to wander around the town among the thousands of Jews engaged in prayer, something happened to me: I became one of them. There was something contagious about the gathering together, or perhaps the brotherhood of men, or the mass prayer, and I was captivated by the intoxicating charm that pervaded the place like unseen fog. I took pleasure in the immersion into it, and let myself fall in love with the whirling goings-on around me.

There are many reasons why Uman is a special religious event, but in truth one need not travel that far in order to feel an integral part of community prayer. It can be found in every synagogue, every day. Especially on holidays – and even more so on the High Holidays – many Israelis who never attend synagogue during the year come to be part of the festival. It is not surprising, I think, that the Yom Kippur services attract so many. The ‘holiest day of the year’ somehow compels us to gather together. It is worth trying to understand why.

Let us look at the question from the opposite side: Can the High Holidays be celebrated alone? Not from a Halakhic perspective, or even from the question of social feasibility, but mainly from an existential-religious point of view: can Rosh Hashanah, Yom Kippur or Sukkot be celebrated by the lone individual? Festivals are generally designed to be community events and it is easy to understand how holiday traditions strengthen ties between community members. It is also known that holidays are troubled times for those without family or community with whom they can celebrate. But our question addresses a different issue: is there a religious, spiritual meaning to the community celebration?

We who have been raised, educated and live in a western, democratic society share a worldview that places the individual – his rights, obligations and above all, his autonomy – at the center. The monolithic, autocratic status of the individual is an assumed prerequisite of our justice system, economy and form of government. The logic upon which all this is based is straightforward: The individual is responsible for his opinions and accountable for his acts, for which he alone reaps reward or punishment.

To understand how vastly different this worldview is from one that is family or tribal-oriented, one need only examine the ancient customs and laws of society that assigned collective responsibility for the deeds, good and bad, of its members. The practice of blood revenge and honor killing make sense and can be perceived as just only if the entire tribe assumes responsibility for all its members, or because the family is seen as one social and legal entity. Yibum, the levirate marriage laws, is another example; it is appropriate only if brothers are bound to the perpetuation of each other’s names. Today, of course, the situation is very different. The individual – not the family, despite our fondness for saying so – is the cornerstone of modern society.

It is apparent to us that holding the individual responsible for his deeds represents a moral leap forward in the social and legal realms (a fitting answer to the prophet’s cry, “If the fathers ate sour grapes should the child’s teeth be set on edge?”). But from a spiritual-religious point of view, individualism lacks a vital dimension. Our modern eyes view a religious individual as one who has a personal relationship, whether more or less intimate, with God. Or we may speak of someone who is ‘on a spiritual journey,’ expected to bring that person to a loftier plane, through a private, internal transformation. Yet I maintain that by shifting from communal to private religiosity, we have lost an important element in our spiritual lives.

To clarify the matter, I refer to Emile Durkheim (1858-1917), whose writings form a basis for research on religion as a social feature. Durkheim spoke of man as Homo Duplex, the “double man”, i.e., an individual and a social being in one. Each of us has these two sides and none of us can be understood by looking at only one dimension of identity. Durkheim goes on to observe the difference between a religion rooted in the individual, dependent upon his choice and designed according to his needs, and a religion of community, bequeathed to the individual by his ancestors, that first and foremost answers communal needs. Though related, they are distinct.

The process of secularization experienced by the West over the last few hundred years has significantly weakened the latter (which has split into a growing variety of streams and movements) and has brought an unprecedented measure of popularity to the former (consider, for example, New Age spiritual circles). As a sociologist it is easy to guess that for Durkheim, the communal ceremony was the formative premise of the community. But Durkheim posited another important argument: that the collective ceremony was also the formative premise of religion and religious experience.

According to Durkheim,

The very act of congregating is an exceptionally powerful stimulant. Once the individuals are gathered together, a sort of electricity is generated from their closeness and quickly launches them to an extraordinary height of exaltation. Every emotion expressed resonates without interference in consciousnesses that are wide open to external impressions, each one echoing the others.
(Elementary Forms of Religious Life, p. 217)

Gatherings thus have more than just a social aspect; they have experiential meaning. The individual who celebrates as part of the community heightens his powers of perceptiveness and the force of his emotions, and when these are directed towards the Divine dimension, a powerful religious experience is produced. Thus, celebration of a festival by an isolated individual poses not only a technical Halakhic and social difficulty but also results in a deficient religious experience. Without reducing our religiosity to solely the experiential, we can still establish that communal prayer and celebration carries religious added value. The spiritual resonance between members of a community at a ceremony or prayer is conducive to an emotional receptiveness that enables us to reach a much more heightened sensitivity than we could reach alone.

We can therefore see that collective ritual practice not only shapes the community, it also fulfills each individual’s need for community. In other words, we need community not only in order to survive or to meet the challenges of life more efficiently, but also in order to develop culturally, spiritually and religiously. We are communal creatures no less than we are individuals. Without understanding ourselves as Homo Duplex, comprised of two active identities – the personal and the communal – we cannot comprehend how vital the collective religious ceremony is for us.

To return to the High Holidays: The communal prayer services on Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur, the family meals, the welcoming of guests in the Sukkah, all these bring us together to address our God in concert. Not by chance are the festivals designed thus, and not by chance is the community present in the synagogue on the High Holidays in increased numbers. Our ability to truly celebrate the holidays is dependent upon our doing so with others. The singular sanctity of these days and the desire of the many to make them special bring added emphasis upon their communal observance. The start of a new year is intensified by shared celebration.

Dr. Tomer Persico, a respected researcher and lecturer on contemporary spiritual culture and frequent contributor to Israeli media, joined the Schechter faculty last year with the launch of our newest M.A. specialization – Spiritual Education. He is also a popular lecturer in TALI’s spiritual education program –  Neshama Yetiera.

(English translation: Penina Goldschmidt)