At

fruits of the trees, on Rosh

water.

(Mishnah Rosh Hashanah 1:2)

Only the God of Thoughts Can

Evaluate Who Is a Sinner, Who Is a Tzaddik

One whose sins exceed his merits dies immediately in his wickedness, as

is written, "For most of your sins", and so a society

whose sins are many is annihilated immediately, as is written: "The

outcry in Sodom and Amora – how great it is!", and similarly

the entire world, if their sins exceed their merits, they are destroyed

immediately, as is written: "Now God saw that great was humankind's

evildoing on earth". This weighing is not done according to the

number of merits and sins, but considers the relative weight of each sin and

merit; there is a merit which may outweigh a number of sins, as is written: "for

some good has been found in him", and there is a sin which

outweighs several merits, as is written: "A single error destroys much

of value" – and weighing is done only in the mind of the God of

thought, and He alone knows how to evaluate the merits as against the sins.

(Rambam,

Mishneh Torah, Laws of Repentance, 3:2)

Best Wishes for A Good Year

To Our Readers

To the Entire

House of Israel

 to All Mankind

A

Year of Peace and Tranquility

An

End to the Year with Its Curses

A

Beginning of a Year with Its Blessings

Inscribe Us in the Book of Life, for Your Sake, Living God

"UNETANEH

TOKEF"

Gili Zivan

Of all the piyyutim – liturgical poems

– of Rosh Hashanah, I choose with great love as my favorite "Unetaneh

Tokef". Every year I find myself looking forward to this

supreme king of the day's piyyutim, to "Unetaneh Tokef".

I repeatedly ask myself what it is in this ancient prayer that so excites and

thrills me since childhood.

At first it was the hair-raising story of R'

Amnon of Mayence. I – a girl of eight, or maybe ten – read the tiny lines on

the margin of the siddur, which relate the wonderful and frightening

tale of a far-away time and a distant place, about a courageous man, a giant of

the spirit.

Later, it may have been the intense silence

which pervaded the synagogue of my youth, right before the chazzan began

to chant "A-dam". A single word which melody turns into a whole human

story, beginning with the sound of a teruah – a trumpet blast – and

ending in the depths of the earth (the sobbing of violins). "Man, comes from dust and ends in dust;

he wins his bread at the risk of his life."

Since the mid-seventies, the trauma of the

Yom Kippur War asks to be squeezed into the pages of the machzor,

assisted by the wonderful melody of Yair Rosenblum. This melody is

simultaneously "the most Israeli" and "the most Jewish".

Whether heard ten times or a hundred times, it never ceases to affect me each

time anew.

With

the meaning of the short lines of the piyyut.

What is so unique about this piyyut? ´

Why, after hundreds of years, does it continue to cause hearts to tremble?

Why has it of late become the Rosh Hashanah

and Yom Kippur anthem for secular as well as religious Israelis? What is the

source of its power?

I think that one of the wonderful things

about this piyyut is the dramatic mid-poem transition from the feeling

of total dependence upon God to the belief that we still have the ability to

influence our world.

The worshipper suddenly switches from a

self-image of a powerless person, ruled totally by a higher power, to optimism

and trust in his ability to change the direction of life's flow.

The piyyut opens with a declaration of

the holiness of the day on which "thy throne shall be established on

mercy, and thou shall occupy it in truth." Already in this opening, the

duality springs forth: the Lord sits on "the throne of mercy", which

has the quality of forgiveness of his creations, alongside a description of the

Lord who sits "in truth" in the celestial court, opening the books of

memories of men and inscribing their sentences. The heavenly retinue awaits the

reading of the verdict with suspense, and behold! the sounding of the shofar of

the king who is also "judge and arbiter, discerner and witness" –

followed by a gentle whisper.

The picture of the judge determining fates

slowly dissolves, replaced by a softer picture. God is portrayed as a shepherd

who checks the lambs in his flock, deciding the fate of each lamb. But the

shepherd is not only a judge, he is a kind of compassionate father, who guards

and takes care of his flock.

From the image of the shepherd checking his

flocks, we move to the "inscribing of their destiny", and to the

dramatic section of the poem, which describes the feeling accompanying the

fateful verdict.

On

Rosh Hashanah their destiny is inscribed

And on

Yom Kippur it is sealed,

How

many shall pass away,

And

how many shall be brought into existence…

Who

shall have comfort and who shall be tormented,

Who

shall become poor and who shall become rich,

And then, suddenly, the sobbing, melancholy

melody changes; the cantor and the congregation cry out:

But

repentance, prayer and charity cancel the stern decree!

And further on we read:

You

have no desire for anyone to die,

But

that he turn from his evil way and live

How can this be? How does something which

was, just a moment before, so deterministic and threatening, become so full of

hope? What has happened during the prayer?

What is the meaning of the words "But

repentance and prayer and charity cancel the stern decree"? Is this some

sort of magic?

May I suggest that the answer is to be found

on a totally different level.

True, on the face of it we do not control our

lives, everything is determined from above. But this is only one part of the

human experience. To be human does not only mean to be helpless; to be human means

to influence.

How? By our ability to change ourselves, to recreate ourselves. This is very difficult

psychological work, but it is possible. Traditional terminology calls this deep

psychological process "teshuva"

– repentance.

Teshuvah is the courage to acknowledge

those aspects of our personality which we want to change, to admit to our

weaknesses, and then to try – with little steps – to walk in new, unfamiliar

paths. This is a spiritual process of analysis, a psychological process which

drains energies and spiritual powers, but Judaism believes that it can be done.

This is the basic premise behind the concept of repentance and the "Days

of Repentance" which are currently reaching their climax.

What else is given us? "Prayer" – prayer is the expression of our decision; do

we continue to engage only in "the here and now", or do we seek

additional meanings to our lives? When we pray, we proclaim that there is

something beyond reality, there is somewhere to strive towards, there is a

reason for striving. Prayer means that we choose to relate not only to the

horizontal foundation (man-man), but also to the vertical foundation (man-God).

And the third foundation which cancels the

stern decree? "Charity". Charity

is our social responsibility. It is in our power to change economic reality,

ours and our neighbor's. It is in our power to help to those whose financial

collapse may have turned them into paupers for a while. Charity is the

traditional way of saying "How will your society look? It depends on you!"

The stern decree can be changed by the merit

of our actions.

God gave us humans the ability to shape the

community in which we live. The ability and

the responsibility. The institutions of charity we establish and the "gemillut

chasadim" we do will determine what kind of world this will be.

Jewish tradition, as is reflected in "Unetaneh

Tokef" and in the many other prayers of the Days of Awe,

believes in the ability of the individual to change, even in mid-life… in "teshuvah".

The picture of God, as reflected in the piyyut and throughout the

Rosh Hashanah Machzor, is that of a God who gives man a chance, "You

wait for him until his dying day; if he repents, you readily accept him."

God creates man, he knows their impulses, he is aware of their failings "for

they are but flesh and blood". He understands that his creation needs a 'second

chance'. This opportunity is granted time and again. The question is only do we

find the strength to take responsibility for our destiny.

If we return to the question with which we

began: what is the secret of the magic of "Unetaneh Tokef" ,

one of the answers in embedded precisely in this matter.

This ancient piyyut expresses better

than anything else the feeling of modern man, who experiences two opposing

feelings simultaneously: For one moment he feels himself to be a "zero",

like a marionette controlled by wondrous and powerful powers, he knows not what

the next day will bring, what catastrophe lies at his door. On the other hand –

he feels "all powerful". He conquers worlds, eradicates diseases,

leads to far-reaching changes in economics and in world policies.

In the words of R' Amnon of Mayence: Man "is like the potsherd that breaks, the

flies away", but he is also able – through "Repentance, Prayer, and Charity – to cancel the stern decree!"

Rabbi Soleveitchik wrote an excellent description of this bi-faceted

human and religious experience:

The first Adam is the man of glory,

domination, and success; the second Adam, the lonely man of faith, the man of

obedience and failure – these are not two different persons found in external

conflict, the "I' against "you" – they are one man in a state of

internal conflict… in every man there are two personalities, the first Adam,

creator and man of glory, and the second Adam, the subdued and the humble. (Man of Faith, pp. 49-50)

The motif of duality – dependence as against

independence, helplessness as against ability – is a frequent motif in the

Jewish calendar and in traditional texts, but in the month of Elul and the

festivals of Tishrei, this tension is emphasized sevenfold. We pass, almost

inadvertently, between moments which stress man's responsibility and ability,

to moments of dependence and futility.

For example, the concept of teshuva

is, by nature, optimistic, presupposing the individual's capability for change,

but a large part of the selichot expresses the experiencing of sin and

total failure, which can have no repair other than by God's forgiveness. All

the letters of the alef-bet cannot suffice to describe the extent of our

sins, and we repeat again and again the order of the alef-bet in the piyyutim

of confession – "Ashamnu, bagadnu" and "Al

chet shechatanu", etc., -but despite this, we assume that "In

the book of life and blessing, peace and prosperity, we will be inscribed and

remembered before you."

In the Yom Kippur liturgy, the feeling of

guilt reaches its peak in Ravva's supplication (Berachot 17):

My

God, before I was formed I was of no worth, and now that I have been formed it

is as if I have not been formed. Dust I am in life, and all the more so in

death. In thy sight, I am like an object filled with shame and disgrace…

From Rabba's prayer, conveying extreme worthlessness, we

move to the conclusion of Yom Kippur with the full-voiced proclamation "THE

LORD IS GOD!", to the joyful singing of "Lashana habaa"

– "The coming year in Yerushalayim", and then pass on to an

evening which is all doing and trust in the power of doing – the construction

of the Sukkah.

Will we have the wisdom to adopt this sober optimism also

outside the walls of the synagogue, to overcome the feelings of futility, to

influence future stages of Israeli society? Will we have the intelligence to

mold a society based on foundations of repentance, prayer, and charity, and

thereby to cancel the evil decree?

Dr. Gili Zivan is director

of the Yaakov Herzog Center for Jewish Studies in Kibbutz Ein Tsurim

When Is Man Judged?

It

is taught in a Barayta: All [things] are judged on Rosh Hashanah, and their

verdict is sealed on Yom Kippur, so said Rabbi Meir.

R'

Yehudah said: Everything is judged on Rosh Hashanah, but verdicts are sealed

for each in its own time; on Pesach for the grains, on Shavuot for the fruits

of the tree, on Sukkoth for water and man

is judged on Rosh Hashanah, and his verdict is sealed on Yom Kippur.

R'

Yossi says: Man is judged daily, as

is written (Job 7:18),

"You inspect him every morning."

R'

Natan says: Man is judged every hour,

as is written (ibid.)"Examine

him every minute".

 (Bavli, Rosh Hashanah 16a)

This

is the reason that the Day of Judgment of Rosh Hashanah is omitted [from the

parasha], so that man will not behave arbitrarily, adapting himself to sin all

days of the year, thinking to correct his ways as he approaches the Day of the

Lord on which He sits on the throne of judgment; he should rather imagine that

every day God sits on His throne for judgment, and he should check his record

book, and thereby he will constantly be in a state of repentance, and there is

the opinion which says "Man is judged daily" (Rosh Hashanah 16), as is written (Job 7:18) "You

inspect him every morning, examine him every second."

 (Kli Yakar, Vayikra 16)

And

this explains "man is judged every day" and not "they

is judged from within himself, as

though it [judgement] is conducted automatically…

(Arvei

Nachal, Parashat Nitzavim)

There

is no doubt that the statements by R' Yossi and R' Natan express the deepest

conception of faith. Man's standing in the world is not a matter of a verdict

imposed upon him on some specific date; it is an expression of man's constant

standing before God. There is not a moment in his life in which he is not being

judged. What, then, is the particular relevance of Rosh Hashanah here? Against

the background of the above, we can say that Rosh Hashanah is not a Day of

Judgment; it is a "Yom Teruah" – of sounding the shofar

– and a "reminder by shofar blasting", intended to

remind man of the fact that he is constantly

being judged.

(Y.

Leibowitz: Discussions of Israel's Festivals and Appointed Times, p.165)

Man Comes from Dust

At

first glance, this is a low view of man, to say that "man comes from dust

and ends in dust", but in truth these words denote praise of man, who was

hewn from a holy source, from our father Avraham, peace be upon him, as is

written (Bereishit 18),

"I am but earth and ashes", and he ends in dust – this

refers to the Days of Messiah, about which David said (Psalms 44) "For our soul is

bowed down to the dust".

 (Rabbi Yehoshua of Ostroveh; Sefer

Toldedot Adam. Quoted by S. Y. Agnon in Days

of Awe, p.86)

"You Edge Me Before and Behind"

Said R' Shim'on ben Lakish: Back to the

creation of the first day, and before to the creation of the last day, this is

the opinion of R' Shim'on ben Lakish, for R' Shim'on ben Lakish said: "The spirit of God hovering over the face of

the waters" – this is the

spirit of the Anointed King – the Messiah. How, then, to understand that which

is written, "And the spirit

of God will rest upon him?" – if

man merits, he will be told: You preceded the ministering angels, and if not,

he is told: The fly preceded you, the mosquito preceded you, this worm preceded

you.

 (Bereishit

Rabba, Parasha 8:1)

Editorial Board: Pinchas Leiser

(Editor), Miriam

Fine (Coordinator), Itzhak

Frankenthal and Dr. Menachem Klein

Translation: Kadish Goldberg

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