A LITTLE LOWER THAN THE ANGELS… A Message for Rosh HaShana 5787
זה היום תחלת מעשיך
This day is [the anniversary of] the first of Your handiwork
These words are articulated in the Rosh haShana Musaph prayer. But are they accurate? Isn’t Rosh haShana the birthday of Man. And didn’t six creation days precede Adam? Was Man the “first” of G-D’s handiwork?
A passage in the Talmud (Sanhedrin 38a) will shed light on our conundrum. There we are told that heaven and earth, fruit-trees and vegetation, luminaries, sea-creatures, birds and beasts were all created for the sake of Man. Just as at a surprise birthday party, the guests are instructed to arrive in advance of the celebrated ‘birthday-boy’, so Adam entered the world with everything in place to celebrate his arrival. In that sense, Man was the first, foremost and most exalted exemplar of G-D’s creativity, fashioned in the image of his Creator!
But the same Gemara passage says something else as well: If man’s mind becomes arrogant, one says to him: even the mosquito preceded you in the order of Creation!
Indeed humankind is capable of reaching for the heavens – and also descending to the depravity of bloodsucking, hellish destruction.
This past year, we Jews in Australia have witnessed the best and the worst of humankind, Two hate-fuelled, bloodsucking ‘mosquitos’ in human form, a father and a son, opened fire at a gathering of Jews celebrating Chanuka on Bondi Beach and took fifteen innocent lives while maiming dozens of others. Synagogues have been vandalised, defiled and defaced. Jewish schoolchildren have been attacked, abused and bullied. Social media platforms have been polluted by a tsunami of hate. The pages of the Australian Jewish News have been filled, week after week, with antisemitism, antisemitism, antisemitism …..
But thankfully that has not been all.
On board the Celebrity Edge as trans-Australia cruise rabbi last Chanuka, I was overwhelmed by the number of people, mostly Aussies, approaching me, expressing their horror in the wake of the Bondi Beach outrage and their empathy at our loss. This unsolicited engagement continued to manifest in local public spaces in the weeks following, strengthening my belief in the enduring “silent majority” of decent Australians.
But most heartwarming and incredible of all, to my mind, has been the reaction of the section of our community most ravaged of all – the local Chabad community, It has requited hate with love. Instead of vowing revenge, it has propagated goodness and kindness. Rather than give up on Australia, it has ventured forth, urging the performance of mitsvot which, for the wider community, means the Noachide code of ethics and morality. Rabbi Eli Schlanger hyd’s lasting legacy affording him a semblance of immortality in this world – concretised in his commendable book Conversations With My Rabbi (in consort with Nikki Goldstein) – has served as the inspiration for his fellow-Chabad rabbis, rebbetsins, educators and outreach workers, to spread the light that has succeeded in conquering much of the darkness.
In the shadow of the sobering testimonies proffered at the Royal Commission on Antisemitism, it is challenging for us to stay positive. But hopefully in the year ahead – a year which, please G-D, will be free of anything rembling Bondi Beach last Chanuka – we will see less saturation coverage of toxic antisemitism in the Jewish press and more heartwarming stories of the spread of acts of Godliness, kindness and love.
The Psalmist declares: What is frail mortal man that You should take cognizance of him …yet You have made him just a little lower than the angels.
In the wake of the most heinous, devilish evil, we have witnessed in our own Jewish community angels in human form.
May mosquitoid demons from without, as well as our own ‘demons’ in the form of our embedded trauma, be banished and may we see only angels both in human and Divine manifestation in the year to come. And may Mashiakh Tsidkeinu reveal himself imminently. We need him now!
May G-D inscribe and seal us all for a year of peace and blessing!
