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ShareMore than any other year in my memory, I am acutely aware that this greeting is not saying, what a good and sweet year it has been. Let's hope that the year ahead will be as good and sweet as the one we just ended. I am so acutely aware that when I say Shanah tovah u-metukah, may you have a good and sweet year, I am more fervently praying that this year will be one of goodness and sweetness, because this past year has been filled with so much pain and bitterness.
So we stand at the edge (the Tail) of one year and at the beginning (the Head) of the next. Beginning tonight and for the next ten days, through the end of Yom Kippur, we are in a sense "between the years." It may be the beginning of the new year, but what this year coming will look like, we don't know. It is the "not knowing" that gives me hope after a difficult and challenging year.
We say about Rosh Hashanah: Hayom Harat Olam, which is often rendered as "Today is the birthday of the world," which sounds nice, like a Hallmark greeting card. According to the ancient sage Rabbi Eliezer, Rosh Hashanah is the day upon which the world was created. But that is not phrase that we will sing six times over the next two days. We don't say "Hayom Nivra Ha-olam / Today the world was created." We sing Hayom Harat Olam right after the shofar blasts during the repetition of Musaf. What is the connection between the blasts of the shofar and this phrase "Hayom Harat Olam"?
The phrase is taken from the book of Jeremiah, who often felt despair at his prophetic calling.
אֲשֶׁ֥ר לֹא־מוֹתְתַ֖נִי מֵרָ֑חֶם וַתְּהִי־לִ֤י אִמִּי֙ קִבְרִ֔י וְרַחְמָ֖הֿ הֲרַ֥ת עוֹלָֽם׃
Because [God] did not kill me before birth
So that my mother might be my grave,
And her womb big [with me] for all time.
Rabbi Jonathan Sacks: "[Moses] was not the only person in Tanakh who felt so alone that he prayed to die. So did Elijah when Jezebel issued a warrant for his arrest and death after his confrontation with the prophets of Baal (I Kings 19:4). So did Jeremiah when the people repeatedly failed to heed his warnings (Jer. 20:14–18). So did Jonah when God forgave the people of Nineveh, seemingly making nonsense of his warning that in forty days the city would be destroyed (Jonah 4:1–3). The prophets felt alone and unheard. They carried a heavy burden of solitude. They felt they could not go on. Few books explore this territory more profoundly than Psalms."
The Rabbis answer? No. The world will not be this way forever. Things can change. We must never give in to despair. As Rabbi Nachman of Breslau puts it: There is no despair in the world.
I think when the authors of our Mahzor took this phrase from Jeremiah, they were pulling it out of context and deliberately flipping its contextual meaning on its head, which gives us another aspect of Hayom Harat Olam.
Today is filled with infinite potential. Rosh Hashanah is not about the past year, but primarily about the future, the year that lays before us. The year that has just ended is gone, done, over, and we do not know what the coming year holds for any of us, for good or for ill. In a way, the pregnant moments that are Rosh Hashanah through Yom Kippur are like Shroedinger's Cat.
Schrödinger's Cat is a thought experiment in quantum mechanics that illustrates the concept of uncertainty, the limits of what can be known. In this thought experiment, a cat is placed in a box with a mechanism that could randomly release poison, killing the cat, or leaving it alive. Until the box is opened, the cat is considered simultaneously both alive and dead, because we cannot know its state.
The world began in a state of tohu va-vohu / chaos, and, in the words of Alan Morinis, a teacher of Mussar, "Rosh Hashana reminds us that the world we know emerged from primordial chaos, and if chaos was the birthplace of the complexity, order and beauty that we see all around us, then we are reassured that the chaos of the present moment is also pregnant with new and magnificent life."
The coming year has not yet come to light, and until it does so, we will not know what it will bring us. But this is not a passive endeavor that we are enslaved to. We may not know what the coming year will bring, but we also have in these moments - impregnated with possibility - what we are capable of bringing (or even birthing) into the world. We each have in our power to shape the world in some way, each of us according to our own sphere of influence, which may only be ourselves (and goodness knows that is more than enough sometimes), and maybe beyond that.
Which brings up a third aspect of Hayom Harat Olam - Today begins the birthing of the world, which includes the cries of the mother birthing a child. Why do we sing Hayom Harat Olam right after we blow the shofar during Musaf? Perhaps dimension of the shofar blasts is that they are like the cry from the pangs of labor that often come during birth. After all, if we are talking about an image of God birthing the world, then the image of God as Divine Mother seems apt for Rosh Hashanah. After all, we have the tears of mothers throughout Rosh Hashanah: Hagar's tears from the Expulsion of Ishmael; Hannah's tears from her inability to bear children and her willingness to even give up a son should she have one, Sarah's tears and Divine tears in rabbinic midrash from the Binding of Isaac shed over what happens to Isaac, and Rachel's tears in the second day's Haftarah, grieving her children going into exile). God's cries and tears seem fitting amidst all of these, and perhaps the shofar can be compared to these Divine tears and cries that reflect not only the pain of the moment of the beginning of the year, but also expresses pain from the past year.
I want to share with you a midrash from Dirshuni, a collection of modern midrashim written by Israeli scholars and poets, that captures this image based on traditional midrashim re-read and re-interpreted in a new way.
אֶת־הַכֹּל עָשָׂה יָפֶה בְעִתּוֹ' (קהלת ג, יא)
(ג) 'בְּרֵאשִׁית בָּרָא אֱלֹהִים אֵת הַשָּׁמַיִם וְאֵת הָאָֽרֶץ. וְהָאָרֶץ הָיְתָה תֹהוּ וָבֹהוּ וְחֹשֶׁךְ עַל־פְּנֵי תְהוֹם וְרוּחַ אֱלֹהִים מְרַחֶפֶת עַל־פְּנֵי הַמָּֽיִם' (בראשית א, א-ב)
אָמַר רַבִּי אַבָּהוּ מִכָּאן שֶׁהָיָה הַקָּדוֹשׁ בָּרוּךְ הוּא בּוֹנֶה עוֹלָמוֹת וּמַחֲרִיבָן, בּוֹרֵא עוֹלָמוֹת וּמַחֲרִיבָן, עַד שֶׁבָּרָא אֶת אֵלּוּ. (קהלת רבה ג, י"א:א)
(ד) ותרא ה' כל עולמותיה נפולים לרגליה, ותאמר בלבה: אניח ללבי ליפול עמהם ואשב במחשכים כמתי עולם. היו דמעותיה ודמיה מתפזרים בחלל והיו מחזרים אחר אדמה שתאספם ובוכים אף הם לרסיסי רסיסים, עד שהיה היקום כולו ענן וערפל של תהום רבה. ביקשה ה' לראות שוב את חורבות עולמותיה ולא עלה בידה. כיסתה עצמה בתהום זו, שנאמר 'תהום כלבוש כסיתו' (תהלים קד, ו) והייתה טופחת על לבה ומייבבת: כי שממות עולם אהיה.
(ה) אותה שעה שלא עלה בידה לראות את אותן עולמות שאבדו, מה עלה על לבה? הייתה נזכרת שעליה נאמר 'ותחולל ארץ ותבל' (תהלים צ, ב) ו'ורחמה הרת עולם. (ירמיה כ, יז) והייתה רואה שבניה ובנותיה מבקשים להיוולד ולומר בתודה 'אשר לא מותתני מרחם' (שם). עצמה עיניה, הבליעה הכאב בגרונה, ביקשה על עצמה שתמצא בתוכה עוד חסד ואמונה, שנאמר 'כי אמרתי עולם חסד יבנה שמים תכן אמונתך בהם' (תהלים פט, ג), ומתוך כך הלכה ובראה שמים חדשים וארץ חדשה.
עמדו להם שמים וארץ תוהים ובוהים, פשטה אותו לבוש של תהום שהייתה מתכסה בו, והייתה תהום זו של ענן וערפל דמיה ודמעותיה הולכת ונקווית שוב למים חיים, והיא מרחפת עליהם הלוך ושוב, שנאמר 'והארץ היתה תהו ובהו וחשך על פני תהום ורוח אלהים מרחפת על פני המים' (בראשית א, ב).
(ו) ומה הייתה אומרת באותה השעה? 'ארץ על מכוניה בל תמוט עולם ועד' (תהלים קד, ה) והיו בניה ובנותיה הנולדים לה חוזרים ומצרפים תפילתם לתפילותיה והיו אומרים אף הם: 'בל תמוט עולם ועד', 'בל תמוט עולם ועד'.
He brings everything to pass precisely in its time (Eccl 3:11).
At the beginning God created the heaven and the earth. And the earth was tohu va-vohu, darkness over the face of the deep, and the spirit of God hovering over the face of the waters (Gen 1:1).
Rabbi Abahu said that we learn from here that The Holy Blessed One was building worlds and destroying them, creating worlds and destroying them, until he created these (Kohelet Rabbah, Vilna edition, sec. 3).
And God saw all Her worlds falling at Her feet, and She said to Herself: I will just let my heart fall along with them, and I will sit in darkness, like those long dead (Lam 3:6).
[Ed: God in this midrash identifies with these falling worlds - with this verse from Lamentation. In the original midrash, these are God's first worlds created and then destroyed. In this modern midrash, they are miscarriages, but this year, I cannot help but thing of every world lost as a human life lost, recalling the teaching that every human being is an entire world, and that losing one human life is like losing an entire world, and saving one human life is like saving an entire world.]
Her tears and blood were scattering in space, searching for land that would absorb them, and they wept to fragments and pieces, until all of existence was the cloud and fog of the great deep/tehom rabbah. God tried to look again at the ruins of Her worlds, and just couldn’t. She covered Herself with this great deep, as is written, "You made the deep, covered it as a garment" (Ps 104:6), and She beat Her chest and wailed: "for I shall be a desolation forever" (Jer 51:26).
[Ed: The word for wail is yevava, which is one way in which the sounds of the shofar are described, which connects them to the cries and wails of grieving mothers. One dimension of our shofar blasts this year can be the lament for all of the worlds/lives lost in the past year. And at the same time, the birth pangs of the possibility of a world filled with chesed/ lovingkindness in the year to come.]
What did She think at that moment, when She could no longer bear to look on those worlds? She remembered that it is said of Her, "You brought forth the earth and the world" (Ps 90:2) and rachmah harat olam / her womb, eternal (Jer 20:17), and She felt her sons and daughters straining to be born so that they could say in gratitude, "for I was not killed in the womb" (Jer 20:17).
She closed Her eyes, swallowed the pain lodged in Her throat, and pleaded for Herself, that She might find more chesed/loving-mercy, and emunah/faith, as is written, "I declare, olam chesed yibaneh, a world of loving-mercy will be built, Your faithfulness will be established in the heavens" (Ps 89:3). And from that She went and created new heavens and a new earth.
[Ed: Biala suggests that a woman mourning the loss of a pregnancy can find strength by means of chesed / loving-mercy—the desire to care for others—and emunah / faith—the awareness that there is always the hope of change and repair.]
When the heavens and earth stood, in wonderment and bewilderment, tohim uvohim, She took off the garment of the deep with which She had been covering Herself, and that deep of cloud and fog, made of Her blood and tears, went and gathered into living waters, and She hovered over them back and forth, as is written "when the earth was tohu vavohu, darkness over the face of the deep, and the spirit of God hovering over the face of the waters" (Gen 1:1).
And what was She saying at that moment? "That it should not totter and fall, forever" (Ps 104:5). And Her sons and daughters joined their prayers to Hers, and they themselves said: "That it should not totter and fall, forever; that it should not totter and fall, forever."
[Ed: God in this moment prays that the world that has emerged, a world of lovingkindness and faith, should endure, and God is joined by God's children, who also pray for this world to endure.]
- May this be a year where no one feels alone, isolated or in despair.
- May this be a year of infinite potential.
- May we all participate in birthing more lovingkindness, faith and trust into the world, creating hope.
- May we all do what we can do support this new world, so that it should not totter and fall, ever.
- May this be a good and sweet new year for all of us.
