Torah and Haftorah Readings on the New Year
Torah and Haftorah Readings on the New Year

If they followed the general rule, the Haftarot (reading from Prophets after the Torah portion) for the two days of Rosh Hashanah would link up with the established themes of the festival. They would deal with Creation, God’s record books, the sounding of the shofar.

Actually a quite different principle has been brought to bear. There is a horizontal link with the Torah readings for the two days, and a vertical link with each other. Both Haftarot focus on the prayers of Bibical women. Both address the same subject – children. Taken together, they show how mothers think – their hope for their children, and their disappointment when their children’s lives do not seem a success.

If we take the two Yom Kippur Haftarot into consideration, we find an additional theme – redemption, assuring us that all will turn out well in the end. So together we have three themes – hope, disappointment, and redemption.

These themes are important enough in themselves, but additionally they link up with the major drama of the season, the blowing of the shofar. The first shofar note is "t’ki’ah" – hope. The second is "sh’varim/t’ru’ah", sometimes joined, sometimes separated – disappointment. The third note is a further "t’ki’ah" – it all turns out all-right in the end.  

The first day’s Haftarah is the prayer of Hannah (I Sam. 2). Hannah is childless. She is taunted and humiliated because she has no children. She prays that God may hear her petition. She has a child and harbours great hopes for him, proud that he will serve God in the Temple.

The second day we read the story of Rachel (Jer. 31). Longing for children, she becomes a mother at last. But her hopes do not endure. Her children are taken into exile. Rachel weeps, powerless to rescue them. All she can do is pray that the time when come when they will return home, with “hope for their latter end”. Psalm 30, part of the daily morning service, promises that instead of nights filled with tears, there will be joy in the morning, and it is Divine pledges such as this which save Rachel from complete disintegration.

The two Haftarot are a good choice as metaphors for the Jewish experience. Our history is an amalgam of laughter and tears, of hope and horror, of dreams and desolation. We measure time by our Rosh Hashanahs, the days when we rejoiced and the days when we mourned. We dread the disappointments, but we know that without them the hopes would have no meaning.

And in case anyone has not noticed, the two Haftarot demonstrate that the old canard is simply not true, the accusation that Judaism has no place for women. On the great mountain-top of the Jewish calendar, it is women who are gathered, women whose emotions are supreme, women who pray with a fervour that very few men can emulate. Note too that when it comes to the festive days of the year, one yom-tov after another is endowed with effect because of women – Esther on Purim, a shepherd girl on Pesach, Ruth on Shavuot. Leave the men to their synagogal practices and remember where the real power lies in Judaism – with the women.

GOD GIVES, GOD TAKES AWAY (ALMOST)

The hero of the Torah readings on both days of Rosh Hashanah is Abraham and Sarah’s son Isaac. On the first day we read the story of his birth to elderly parents who had given up hope of having a child. On the second day Isaac is almost lost; God tells Abraham to make Isaac an offering and only the intervention of an angel from On High saves the lad.

Michelangelo made two attempts at depicting the event. In one artistic representation we see the theatricality of a father boldly standing over his son with the sacrificial knife. In the other there is absolute agony on the father’s face as he prepares to see his dreams shattered and his future summarily severed.

It is understandable that Christian sources apply the episode to Jesus – understandable but wrong. For the Binding of Isaac is no crucifixion and Isaac does not suffer unbelievable anguish on the way to the altar, nor does he say, “My God, my God, why have You forsaken me?”. As Ignaz Maybaum points out in his monograph, “The Sacrifice of Isaac” (1959), the whole atmosphere of the story is calm and trusting. Both Abraham and Isaac walk humbly before God. Neither is trapped. Each is “free to return home. No compelling logic drives him to go on”.

This is not a day of inescapable dark clouds, a tragedy working inexorably towards its horrific climax. In the end there is relief. The future is saved. If God wishes there to be no future, His will is accepted calmly and trustingly. If He does wish there to be a future, that too is accepted with calm and trust.

THE TWOFOLD VOICE OF THE SHOFAR

The voice of the Lord is in the winds and rushing water, in the conscience, love and laughter of human beings, in the work of man in science, literature, art, music and poetry.

People are sometimes deaf to the call of God in its other forms. But none can pretend that they cannot hear the piercing blast of the shofar. The Divine shofar comes from Sinai, to proclaim the commandments. Through the prophets, to speak forth the dictates of truth and justice. To announce the Sabbath and its serenity, a foretaste of the redemptive World to Come.

Man responds with the shofar, proclaiming alertness to duty, love of God’s law, loyalty to tradition. It assures God that though frailty enmeshes us in the frivolities of the moment, our conscience is awake to seek forgiveness and forbearance.

How does God reply? He takes up His own shofar to say, “Wherever My name is remembered, I will come to you and will bless you”.

O God who calls with the shofar,
Make us receptive to the sound of Your call.
May we respond to You with love and loyalty.
May we merit Your revelation and redemption
When Messiah will come to the world
And all the children of flesh will call upon Your holy name.


Shanah Tovah