Thoughts on Zichronot (Remembrance) ~ Rosh Hashanah 5767

Note: The following is the text of a talk I gave last Friday night, on the first night of Rosh Hashanah, at Harvard Hillel's Student Conservative Minyan

Teaching for the Student Conservative Minyan ~ Rosh Hashanah 5767

It is an honor to have the opportunity to speak at SCM tonight, at the beginning of Rosh Hashanah, and I want to thank Arielle Kagan (class of ’07) for inviting me.

Tonight, I’d like to focus on the theme of zichronot – remembrance. Or, in the words of comedian Steven Wright:

“Whenever I think of the past, it brings back so many memories.”

Tonight, I’ll provide a brief overview of some overarching themes of Rosh Hashanah, along with its placement in the calendar. Then, I’ll look at a specific part of the Rosh Hashanah liturgy, with a particular focus on the theme of remembrance. Finally, I’ll connect remembrance with the sounding of the shofar, and note how, together, these form a call to action.


Opening on Shofar and Remembering
Each year, the High Holidays provide us with an opportunity to ask ourselves whether we have truly worked to transcend our comfort zones. We reflect upon the past year, we think about ways in which we have done well, and fallen short, and think about how we might stretch ourselves to a level of atonement, or, as I recently heard Hillel’s Director, Bernie Steinberg, call it:

“at – one – ment”

“At one” with ourselves, “at one” with one another, “at one” with the world and with the Creator of the world.

In the spirit of stretching ourselves a bit, I’d like to ask each of you to take a moment to think of the shofar, the ram’s horn that is a central symbol of these High Holidays. Listen, in your mind, to the sound of the shofar blowing. Maybe you heard it this past week. Maybe you heard it last Yom Kippur. Maybe you haven’t heard it for years, or at all. Can you hear it in your thoughts? When you think of hearing it, what do you remember? Let your mind flow for a moment – if you’re comfortable, close your eyes while you allow your thoughts to float along. Try to focus on what it is you are remembering. Maybe it is a feeling, or a person, or a place, or something that happened. Try to engage with all of the senses that were affected by that memory of the shofar.

(Pause)

Now, for just one minute, turn to the person or the couple of people next to you and, after you tell him/her your name, take turns sharing just a bit of what you were remembering about the shofar.

(Pause)

Keep these thoughts in mind as we reflect on remembering and the shofar…


Introduction to the Idea of Teshuvah on Rosh Hashanah
Rosh Hashanah and the High Holidays are filled with a rich abundance of themes and content, far too much for me to cover in a brief teaching – especially when this teaching also stands between you and tonight’s festive first-night meal! But I do need to mention teshuvah. Teshuvah is often mistranslated as “repentance”. By mistranslated, I don’t mean that calling teshuvah “repentance” is incorrect; it’s just too limited of an understanding. Teshuvah is a process, an action, an approach. Teshuvah holds within it the Hebrew word for returning. When we connect the idea of returning with this time of year – Rosh Ha-Shanah, the New Year – we also connect it with renewal.

The concept of renewal relates to the context of Rosh Hashanah within the Jewish calendar. On a simple, literal level, Rosh Hashanah is the New Year. Literally, the words mean “Head of the Year”. Agriculturally and meteorologically, we know that this is a time of year of a change of seasons. It’s a new beginning; of course, it is also the end of the previous year.

But zoom in to just this time of year, and we see that Rosh Hashanah is actually in the middle. Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur are bookends of a process that encompasses what is known as the asara yamei teshuvah – the Ten Days of Teshuvah.

Zoom out a bit. When you look at the whole process of teshuvah, going back to the start of the month of Elul (exactly one month ago), we begin to blow the shofar in morning services each day. Go forward a couple of weeks from now, and we move through Yom Kippur and Sukkot to Hoshana Rabba, which by tradition is the moment when the “Gates of Teshuvah” actually close for the year.

Now zoom out further – or, put another way, turn the kaleidoscope, and we see that Rosh Hashanah is the midpoint for the year, which starts with the first of the month of Nisan. According to the Torah, this is the “actual” New Year, and the first holiday is Passover. Rosh Hashanah in fact comes on the first day of the seventh month, and so the New Year actually opens in the middle of the year.

So we are at the middle. But we are also at the beginning. And we are at the ending. We are at a moment when memories and hopes, regrets and promises, the shadows of the past and the open vastness of the future all collide and converge.


Themes of Rosh Hashanah - General
Rosh Hashanah is known by other names, besides being the “New Year”. In the Talmud, it is referred to as the birthday of the world – the day both literally and figuratively that commemorates ma’aseh Breishit – God’s Creation of the universe (or universes, for the quantum physicists among us).

Rosh Hashanah is also known as Yom Ha-Din – the Day of Judgment. And, in the Torah itself, it is called “Yom Ha-Zikaron” – the Day of Remembrance.

The central service of Rosh Hashanah is the mussaf service that comes after the Torah reading, and the central prayer within that service is, of course, the Amidah. Amidah means, literally, “standing.” When I was younger I thought that Amidah translated literally to “a very long time to be standing”. But in recent years I’ve learned that, well, first of all, it’s still a very long time to be standing. BUT – while we’re standing, we’re exploring three central themes of the holiday, and really of the entire High Holidays period. The first section of the Amidah deals with malchuyot – kingship; the second with zichronot – remembrance; and the third with shofarot – shofar blasts.


Themes of Rosh Hashanah – Specific: Zichronot
This year, for a few reasons, I’m drawn to the theme of zichronot - remembrance. Just over a week ago, we marked the fifth year since terrorists killed thousands of Americans and shattered the lives of thousands more on September 11, a national tragedy that is both a unique experience of suffering and an event that opened the unfolding chapter of history that we are now part of shaping. On a more personal and communal level, we look around with excitement at the new faces in our community, but we recall with fondness and perhaps a tinge of wistfulness the friends who have moved away, and we think with sadness of those family members and friends who are no longer with us.

Zichronot. Remembrance. Re-member.

In my “intensive” research for this teaching session, I did a cursory search on “Dictionary.com” of the word “remember”, and I found some definitions that were expected, and a couple that were not-so-expected.

“Remember” means:
* To recall to the mind with effort, to think of again, to retain in the memory
* To call to remembrance; to keep alive the memory of someone or something, as in a ceremony;
Now these all have the sense of “recollection”, the action of “recalling”.


Another definition:
* To keep in mind for attention or consideration
Now this has the sense of intention – remembering something connects it as important for me.

Yet another definition – this one labeled by Dictionary.com as an “engineering” term:

“Engineering: to return to (an original shape or form) after being deformed or altered.”We hear resonance of teshuvah, in this returning, this restoration of original shape or form.

The Zichronot section in the Machzor (High Holiday prayerbook) begins by bringing us back to the Beginning, by connecting this moment with the moment of Creation and the Creator:

You remember the deeds done in the universe and You recall all the creatures fashioned since earliest times. Before You all hidden things are revealed and the multitude of mysteries since the beginning of Creation, for there is no forgetfulness before Your Throne of Glory and nothing is hidden from before Your eyes. You remember everything ever done and not a single creature is hidden from You…. This day is the anniversary of the start of Your handiwork, a remembrance of the first day.

From this focus on Creation, we quickly move into the relationship between the individual and her Creator:

For when the remembrance of everything fashioned comes before You: everyone’s deed and mission, the accomplishments of man’s activity, man’s thoughts and schemes, and the motives behind man’s deeds - praiseworthy is the person who does not forget You, the human being who takes strength in You, for those who seek You will never stumble nor will those who take refuge in You ever be humiliated.

In this section on zichronot, as in the other two sections of the Amidah, there are ten pasukim (verses) taken from sources in the Tanakh. Among the reasons for having ten verses are that the number ten corresponds with the Ten Utterances with which God created the world – yet another connection to Creation.

We do not have time, of course, to look at each of these ten verses of Zichronot, but I’ll mention two that I find striking:

(1) (From Shemot – Exodus 2:24) And it is said: God heard their groaning, and God remembered His covenant with Abraham, with Isaac, and with Jacob.

This verse comes at the moment when the slavery of the Israelites in Egypt has become so unbearable that the people cry to God. God hears their suffering, and God remembers. And – the text continues in the Torah – v’elohim yeidah – “And God knew,”. God knew, in an intimate way, the experience of the Children of Israel.

The other verse:
(2) (from Yermiyahu – Jeremiah 31:19) And it is said: Is Ephraim My most precious son or a delightful child, that whenever I speak of him I remember him more and more? Therefore My inner self yearns for him, I will surely take pity on him – these are the words of God.

Here, there is a noticeable emphasis on the connection between “speech” and remembrance. The action of speaking about someone causes us to remember him more and more, and causes us to yearn for him. This, it seems, connects us directly with the actions of prayer on these High Holidays.

The zichronot section ends with the words:
“Blessed are You, God, Who remembers the covenant.”

And then…there are BLASTS OF THE SHOFAR (This year, of course, there will not be blasts of the shofar tomorrow, because the first day of Rosh Hashanah falls on Shabbat. For the full effect, you’ll need to come back Sunday).

The link between the themes of Zichronot – remembrance – and the Shofar are made abundantly clear in the halakhic legal masterpiece of the Rambam (Moses Maimonides, the 12th century rabbi and doctor who is widely considered one of the most important Jewish philosophers since the time of the first Moses. His two best known works are the Guide to the Perplexed, a philosophical treatise; and the Mishneh Torah, the first comprehensive codification of Jewish law). In the section of Mishneh Torah that deals with “Knowledge”, we have Hilchot Teshuvah, the first attempt by any Jewish thinker to codify the laws of teshuvah.

In Chapter 3, section 4, Rambam says the following:

Although the sounding of the shofar on the New Year is a decree (a law whose meaning is unknown or hidden) of the Written Law, still it has a deep meaning, as if saying, “Wake up! Wake up! O sleeper, from your sleep. O slumberers, arouse yourselves from your slumbers; examine your deeds, return in teshuvah, and remember your Creator. Those of you who forget the truth in the follies of the times and go astray the whole year in vanity and emptiness which neither profit nor redeem, look to your souls; improve your ways and works. Abandon, every one of you, his evil course and the thought that is not good.


Three inter-connected points resonate from this:
I. Arousal – The sleep here is “nirdamim,” the deep sleep that is connected to Adam and the creation of Chava (Eve); it’s also the deep sleep that is connected to Yonah when he flees his mission and tries to escape in the very lowest point of the boat, in the sea. It is a sleep that represents an escape from consciousness and memory. It raises the question of mindfulness – how AWAKE am I?
II. Creator – What is powerful here is that the Rambam takes the central thrust of the Zichronot liturgy, that of God remembering Israel - of God remembering us – and makes it reciprocal. Here, we are being commanded to remember our Creator, and to remember that we are created. Indeed, we are commanded to remember that we are human, and to consider what it means to be human.
III. Memory, remembrance: Finally, the remembering mentioned in this passage is that of penetrating into and through the layers of your mind, examining layers of prioritization. This connects to human agency – the ability to look back upon our experiences, and to look upon our current situation, and then to act. And to direct our actions toward renewal, re-commitment.

This is all connected to the shofar – quite literally, the section of Zichronot ends with blasts of the shofar, and leads into the liturgical section on Shofarot. The sound of the shofar that resonated in hundreds of different – and unique – ways for all of you is geared toward waking us up to a different level of consciousness.

Concluding Thoughts - Aftermath and Lecha Dodi
In closing, I want to mention an encounter I had a little over a week ago. Joel Meyerowitz is a noted photographer, writer, and filmmaker. He became renowned nearly 40 years ago for what was then a revolutionary emphasis on color photography as a medium of high art. He came here last week and told a small crowd of people, just across the way in Smith Hall, that in the aftermath of the attacks of 9/11, he felt helpless and impotent. He went to Ground Zero and witnessed the incredible work of recovery that was taking place, but felt that he could have no part of it. When he took out his camera and began snapping pictures, someone poked him on the shoulder. “No photography allowed here!” the policewoman said. “This is a crime scene.” That poke, he said, was like a wake-up call. He realized that, unless Ground Zero was captured in photographs, there would be an erasing of history. For the first time in his life, he saw that his artistic skill had an outlet of urgent social utility. For the first time, he integrated his passion and talent with an avenue for impacting his community and the world. The result is his extraordinary creation of the World Trade Center Archive, which is powerfully rendered in Meyerowitz’s new book, Aftermath.

For me – for us – Rosh Hashanah has arrived, and the shofar provides that poke – Wake Up! Wake up and ask yourself – “Who am I? Who do I wish to be? Do I hear a call to action? If so, what is calling me, and how do I respond to the call?”

This is a time of restoring the best versions of ourselves. On this Rosh Hashanah that happens to fall on Shabbat, perhaps the most resonant line of liturgy for me comes not from the Machzor but from the Siddur, from “Lecha Dodi” that welcomes Shabbat:

Hitoreri, hitoreri, ki va orech, kumi ori. Uri, uri, shir daberi, k’vod Adonai alayich Nigla.
Wake yourself up, wake yourself up! For your light has come – rise up, and shine!
Awaken, awaken, sing out a song, the glory of God is revealed upon you.


Hit’oreri, hit’oreri – Arise, awaken. Remember.

Restore and reclaim the best version of yourself.

G’mar chatima tova – may you be inscribed for goodness.

Shana tova, and Shabbat shalom!