Rosh Hashanah is the commemoration/recapitulation of our collective creation. It is also an opportunity to relive our fall from grace into the matrix of history. What happened? Why did we eat from the fruit? Is it good that we fell? Was it avoidable? If we relive our creation on Rosh Hashanah, must we also relive the fall? Or should we try to avoid it?
The serpent promised us 'if you eat of the tree, you shall be as gods…' As Tanhuma presents it, the serpent tells Chava, 'just as He creates worlds, so shall you create worlds.' And we do - we create worlds around us constantly - with our thoughts, words, and actions. This is an amazing privilege, and it is as it should be - we should be creating worlds. But they should be healthy, productive worlds. Sometimes they are not.
The tendency is to create the world in our own image - to use our own standards to judge, assess, destroy and create. If we were perfect, the worlds that we create would be perfect. But we are not, and they are not: the worlds we create bear our flaws. We might tend to perceive and judge the world from our own place of shame, anger, or frustration. We might project self-hatred onto others. We fabricate connections that do not exist, and then live as if they are real. We give explanations to absences of information, and act is if it is fact. We tell stories about ourselves that we come to believe.
On the other hand, though we are all imperfect, we are each endowed with great gifts. Many of us are conscious, give or take, of that gift, and make effort to nurture it. We try to use that gift to enhance the qualities of this world and each other, to help each other grow and evolve.
On Rosh Hashanah, when we step back behind the veil, we are empowered to enjoy those precious few moments before we eat. During that time, we are not creators. We are creatures. And this we have in common with everyone and everything. It is a blessed feeling.
On Rosh Hashanah, let us enjoy for as long as possible not needing to create reality. Though we will eventually need to create - and hopefully we will create positively - the more we enjoy our role as creatures, the more we will be empowered to create in synergy with G-d's vision for creation.
But wait a second - our creations have been both positive and negative! Are we to toss away the good with the bad? And what if we are right about our assessments? What if we are in fact well-honed in our intuitions, clear of ego-interference, positive in our motives? Are we to let go of our perceptions just the same? The answer is yes. Anything useful will come back in its time. Anything useless will fall away.
The more people that do this simultaneously, the better. In these delicate times, one person's deep work can be rendered useless by another person's insensitivity. As we step 'back' to Eden, we are all vulnerable. We have worked hard to relieve ourselves of our perceptions. But those perceptions are 'crouching at the door', waiting to spring back on us. If we all transform together, then we have a better chance of staying longer in Eden.
This is why many people gather around tzaddikim on Rosh Hashanah - in hopes that we can move together toward a more sustained and sustainable ideal.
But what do we do with actual material we have created - the many, many kilobytes of information we have stored within us, the zeros and ones of personality and identity? How do we reconcile that with the news that the whole world is being recreated, and all of that information is for the moment outdated? The answer is the shofar.
This can be compared to a pressure-cooker. The pressure builds from the inherent incongruity between our perception of reality and reality itself. Though we may try our hardest not to think what we think - perhaps not to think at all - we are still using the same brain, and it is not working. What do we do with all that information and emotion, with our participation in the paradox called independent existence? We poke a hole in the side of the pressure cooker, put a shofar over the hole, and let it blow. All of our frustrations, delusions, hopes and prayers come out at once in one single deep cry: aaaaaaaaaaaarrrrrrrgggggggghhhhhhhhhhhhhh…
And in that moment of opening, so many things can come in. By merely admitting the incongruity between our perception of reality and reality 'itself', we connect to G-d in the most honest and human way, and we open to the Torah of how to live on that razor's edge more effectively.
Rav Gavriel Goldfeder
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Rav Gavriel Goldfeder is one of the first semicha recipients of the yeshiva. A graduate of Drew University in Religious Studies, he came to Bat Ayin after stints in other yeshivot and found a spiritual and intellectual home. Here he met his wife, Ketriellah, who was a student in our short-lived Women's Yeshiva. Upon graduation, Gavriel took the position of rabbi of the Aish Kodesh Congregation in Boulder, Colorado and together with Ketriellah and their growing family, they are busy creating (in Gavriel's words), "a community infused with Torah values, passion for learning and prayer, consideration of one another, and action, as well as deep celebration of the joys of life." |