A Rocket Scientist Explains the Jewish High Holidays
To the casual observer, the Jewish High Holidays that we will be observing next month are a potpourri of festivals. The first holiday is Rosh Hashanah (September 16-17, 2023), the Jewish New Year. This day is observed by blowing the ram’s horn (shofar), dipping an apple in honey, and eating copiously. Yom Kippur, the Day of Atonement, follows eight days after Rosh Hashanah.
Yom Kippur is the most solemn day of the year during which for twenty-five hours it is forbidden to eat, drink, wash or even wear leather shoes. The brunt of Yom Kippur is spent in the synagogue. Five days after Yom Kippur is the holiday of Sukkot (Booths).
For seven days, we move our residence to a sukkah, a temporary hut in our back yard where we eat copiously, drink (also copiously) and sleep. The last holiday in the bunch is Simchat Torah, a day that celebrates the completion of the yearly reading of the Torah. On Simchat Torah, we dance with the Torah scrolls and continue to eat copiously.
After Simchat Torah, Jews spend the next month or so digesting and vowing to lose weight. Fifty days after Yom Kippur is the holiday of the Sigd, celebrated predominantly by the Ethiopian Jews but making inroads into the larger population. We’ll leave this one out for now.
THEME OF REPENTANCE
Each of these holidays seem so different. Some are solemn and some are joyous, on some we eat copiously and on others we do not eat at all. Is there any way to look at them holistically? It turns out that there is a theme that runs like a golden thread through each of the holidays. That theme is repentance.
According to Jewish legend, repentance was created on the sixth day of creation, just before G-d put down His tools and called it a day. The Hebrew word for repentance is “teshuvah” which literally means return, as if turning back to something you’ve strayed or looked away from. Teshuva opens a path in which we can return to who we truly were before we sullied our ways, Teshuva is a way home. The High Holidays are sequence of days that guide us home.
CELEBRATING THE HIGH HOLIDAYS
On Rosh Hashanah, we celebrate the new year, the anniversary of the creation of the world. As the world was created by G-d, we extoll Him and compliment Him on what a wonderful world He has created. We thank Him for making us a part of it. We coronate Him as King of the Universe and, in classic English style, we sound the ram’s horn as part of the coronation ceremony.
But wait a minute – if G-d is such an omnipotent and wonderful king, how can we explain our less than exemplary behavior over the past year? When we blow the shofar, we begin to sense a feeling of hypocrisy and perhaps even a sense of danger. After all, we are bearing our necks before a jealous King with a very sharp sword. This feeling is the first stirring of repentance.
For the next ten days, we enter the “Days of Repentance”. During these days, we wake up before dawn to say special prayers of penitence called “Selichot”. We bare our souls, crying out, reciting words that paraphrase the prophet Jonah: “Son of man, why do you sleep? Rise up and voice your pleas!
Pour out your words, seek forgiveness from the Master of All!” We are extra pedantic with commandments, taking upon ourselves stringencies that we do not have the stamina to take upon ourselves during the rest of the year, admitting to ourselves and to G-d that we can do better. We prepare ourselves for the Day of Atonement, a day in which G-d will determine who will live and who will die. In the words of Leonard Cohen:
And who by fire, who by water
Who in the sunshine, who in the night time
Who by high ordeal, who by common trial
Who in your merry merry month of may
Who by very slow decay
And who shall I say is calling?
We spend the entire day of Yom Kippur in prayer, again and again calling out our own sins and pleading with G-d to forgive them. And forgive He does.
There is nothing more cathartic than watching the sun set on Yom Kippur, when at the end of the “Ne’ila” prayer, as the gates of heaven are locked, we know in our heart of hearts that our prayers have been answered, that we have been forgiven. We blow one last blast of the shofar. I blow the shofar for our community and I have a special shofar that I blow on Yom Kippur. It is a kudu horn, about a yard long and twisted like a strand of DNA. It is the sound of life, the sound of rebirth. After the shofar is blown, we dance and we sing “Next Year in Jerusalem”, joyous in hearing our verdict of innocence.
AN EMOTIONAL ROLLER COASTER
What a better way to celebrate our renewed vows to G-d than by leaving the artificial comfort of our homes and experiencing G-d face-to-face? On Sukkot, we build a small hut and there, under the stars – according to Jewish Law, the stars must be visible from within the sukkah – we become guests in G-d’s home. We do not welcome G-d into our sukkah as much as we welcome ourselves into His.
After Sukkot, we leave G-d’s abode but before we return to our own mundane lives for yet another year, we remember that G-d has given us something to remember Him by: His Torah.
In Jewish thought, the Torah is more than just a book of laws or a book of stories or even a book of ethics. The Kabbalists tell us that the Torah is the reflection – a mathematical projection – of G-dliness in our corporeal world. It is the conduit that connects us to the source. And it is eminently transportable. I do not have to go anywhere to experience G-d.
All I have to do is to read from the Torah and I can feel His Hand on my shoulder. The rejoicing on Simchat Torah is like no other rejoicing. The ecstasy is so thick in the air it can be cut with a knife. Our G-d, the omnipotent King of the entire universe, Who is willing to forgive and to purify, Who has opened His doors to us, has given us His Torah, a hotline to His own personal phone. Is this not reason to celebrate?
From coronation to catharsis to connection to rapture. The High Holidays are indeed an emotional roller coaster. They light the fire in our hearts to prepare us for the cold winter ahead.
Wishing You a Happy New Year,
Ari Sacher
About Ari: He is a rocket scientist who also works as a Senior Policy Advisor for JH Israel’s sister organization- U.S. Israel Education Association (USIEA).
