A Rosh Hashanah of Pain and Hope

Teachings from the Holocaust for Today

This Rosh Hashanah is different from anything most of us can recall. We are faced with a new challenge: how do we enter the celebration of Rosh Hashanah as our hearts are heavy with the burden, pain and suffering of the past year? How can we look to the elevated ideals and hopes of Rosh Hashanah when our minds and hearts are so preoccupied with pain, war, human conflict and suffering? How does the burden of an entire year make room for new beginnings, hope and aspiration?

The fact is our generation is not the first generation to confront this challenge. I would like to share with you a Rosh Hashanah homily, delivered in Israel, in 1940 by Rabbi Eliezer Waldenberg, author of the Ziz Eliezer responsa. At the time, the mind was filled with Nazi horrors. This fascinating homily demonstrates how one can make room for suffering as well as for hope and spiritual aspiration in one heart, in one prayer and in the one common practice of blowing the Shofar. Circumstances may seem different, and yet there is much in common, and therefore much to learn from how Rabbi Waldenberg approaches this moment spiritually. Rabbi Waldenberg provides us with keys and intentions with which to enter the most painful Rosh Hashana since the State of Israel was founded. 

I would like to offer here a translation of about a third of this inspiring homily. Some sentences were bolded by me, to evoke our present moment.

As Rabbi Waldenberg himself states: may the year and its curses end, and the new year and its blessings begin.

Responsa Ziz Eliezer, Part 22, Section 30

A homily in the synagogue, on the first day of Rosh Hashanah 1940, before the blowing of the shofar.

2. On this day one can see Israel (i.e. the Jewish people) in all its beauty, in its sanctity, in its purity, in its faith. On this day the holy spark of love between Israel and their heavenly father, is set aflame. This spark is contained and fully present deep within the heart of each and every Jew, and many waters cannot extinguish it. It is this spark that comes out of its concealment and breaks a pathway into the arteries and veins (of a person) and takes every person beyond mundane life, removing from him all coverings of material life, and awakening him with the bonds of love to the life of the spirit. 

3. Such a deep feeling the soul of the Jewish person feels during these days of awe, when the gates of heaven are open to our prayers and to the prayers of each and every person in Israel, as the spark in the human soul is awoken with enthusiasm and alights all of a person’s powers, his senses and feelings in the light of faith, and holy yearning, “my soul thirst for you, my body yearns for you “ Ps. 63,2), so much so that the soul becomes love sick…and the soul does not give a person rest and freedom until it achieves its desire to shake him off the dust, even if only for several moments. 

4. In these great moments in the life of the person and the nation, during the hours of twilight of the passing year and the hours of the break of dawn of the coming year, light and darkness serve together, in our thought and ideas. Within all these pleasant and wonderful feelings, horrible and shocking thoughts of sorrow and grief are commingled in a person’s thoughts and spirit. 

On the one hand we proclaim the essential sanctity of the day, that is full of awe. One feels sublime holiness that has taken form in the days of awe, and one wishes to hold on to it, and to draw to one’s innermost self its holiness and purity. And a great spiritual revolution takes place in the interiority of the person, on account of the supernal divine spirit, that seeks to take hold of a person’s powers, senses and feelings, to sway them and to bring them under the wings of its influence and to guide them in such paths that will find favor and approbation in the eyes of God and man. 

On the other hand, we see in the flight of the imagination distant horizons through which we can see from one side of the world to the other. And days and days of suffering and hardships of the people and of all of humanity, throughout the entire year, are reflected in it. And as in a vision, one sees a world of blood, fire and pillars of smoke, in all its horrors, and before one’s eyes are figured various horrifying quantities of two legged predators, who have removed from themselves with disdain the yoke of faith and the bridle of humanity, and who set as their goal to force the entire world to accept their novel teaching (torah) of venomous hatred for the Jewish race, and whoever uses more force rules. And all means are legitimate in order to realize their intentions, to harm and to destroy, to break and to uproot, to turn the entire world to chaos and to make it vacant, so that no feeling of dignity for him who was created in the image of God remains, no feeling of compassion and kindness is left, nor any spark of justice and righteousness. And in the ears rings the terrible sound of those who sigh and heave, who are killed and are slaughtered, who are burned and drowned, and who are destroyed in the din of the falling bombs and explosives. And they also hear the sounds of destruction of the Jewish centers in the world, one after the other. And in the heart within, a disturbing and scary thought is found : who knows how many more will pass and how many will be born (from Netane Tokef prayer), and what form of a destructive Satan still lurks behind us. Fear and great darkness fall upon all. The strings of the heart are opened as the ark of the Torah is opened and horrible cries of “who will live, and who will die; who is at his end and who is not at his end who (will perish) by fire and who by fire; who in hunger and who in thirst; who (will die) by choking and who by stoning.” (Netane Tokef). These cries rip and break through the air, and ascend to the heavens. And from all hearts and mouths bursts forth the great plea: “may the year and its curses end; may the year and its blessings commence”. May God rebuke Satan already )Zach. 3,2) as well as all the odd personalities that appear in the world as Satan’s agents, and may he tell the angel of destruction to desist. May His fear fall upon all His creatures, and his awe upon all his handiwork (Rosh Hashana prayer), so that either through the fear of punishment or the awe of God, no creature can raise his hand or his foot to do evil in the world and to push back the feet of the divine presence of the creator of all, whose glory fills the entire earth. May the light of the faith in the living God appear already in the world, and may the name of the king of kings be sanctified and aggrandized, “and may you rule alone upon all your handiwork” (Rosh Hashana prayer). For this will only come after God’s name will be exalted above all, and after the clear recognition of the entire world of the Creator’s greatness and union, who is holy and awesome, and there is no God besides him, and he appoints king and the kingship is his alone, and the heart of kings and ministers is in his hands, and rulership is before him and power and might are in his hand. 

5. For this the entire collectivity of Israel, that is drowning in the pit, in the slimy deep, weeps and cries. It weeps for its children whose glory has been destroyed, who have become a mockery among the nations, and considered as sheep taken to be slaughtered…and for the cruel wicked ones, who harden their hearts to deny the light of faith in the divine, saying there is no hope and purpose…and it wallows in its suffering, groaning from the intensity of its pain, screaming bitterly to its creator (here verses are cited that precede the blowing of the shofar) “Hear my plea, do not shut your ear to my groan, to my cry” (Lamentations 3,56); “Guarantee your servant’s wellbeing, do not let the arrogant wrong me” (Ps. 119, 122); “pay back our neighbors sevenfold for the abuse they have flung at you” (Ps. 79,12), and for all they have done to us, leading to “all the nations you have made will come to bow down before you (Ps. 86,9) and they will know that your name Lord is supreme in the entire land (Ps. 83,19).” 

6. In all of Israel’s history, the shofar filled an important and noble purpose…the shofar breathes strength, courage, hope and power in the people, proclaiming and symbolizing  the prayer “call with a great shofar for our freedom”. And it confuses and mixes Satan up when he hears the sound of the shofar that serves as a sign of the coming war of the spirit against him, “not by might, nor by power, but by my spirit, said the Lord of Hosts” (Zach. 4,6), to eradicate from below God’s heaven the seed of the Amalekites that appear in every generation in different shapes and forms. At times, supposedly in the form of holiness and purity of religious fanatics…and at times in the form of tyranny and dictatorship that tramples with its pride all holiness, just as in our days. The common denominator is that their true face and purpose is murder, robbery, theft, injustice, and terrible cruelty in relation to whoever has not yet wiped away the divine image from his face, and has not denied his conscience, and in whom the feeling of humanity still throbs…and the divine throne is not whole until the seed of Amalek is wiped away, and human conscience is awoken, and, as one person, they will all arise with one aim and purpose ‘to remove the kingdom of wickedness from the earth” (Rosh Hashana prayer) and to put a stop to the dictatorship and tyranny of men having authority over men to treat them unjustly (Ecc. 8,9).

15. We look at this world, that is meant to be a dwelling place for the supernal Shekhina (divine dwelling), for the kingdom of holiness, and it has become a den of robbers and a snake pit. And we see before us in a living image what is described in the Netane Tokef prayer. The words: “who shall live and who shall die, who (shall die) by sword and who by hunger, who by animal and who by fire, who by suffocation and who by stoning” – these words are as if lifted from life and reality. We see and hear now in our spirit’s vision the groan of the dead, the convulsion of the slaughtered, the spasm of the crushed. And the terrible horror of those who are taken to be killed and cast alive into the grave, as well as the horror of their father and mother, who stand besides their children’s Akeda, we also hear. 

16. In the sound of the shofar we can hear the groans and murmurs of the dead and the wounded, and of the parents and relatives whose sound extends from one end of the world to the other. And through the sound of the shofar we cry out with a great and bitter cry on account of all the judgements and terrible things done to us, and we protest and demonstrate with a great sound, with horns and the sound of shofar against all the injustice and deceit, all wrongdoing and theft that are done to us. All the sons of Satan come out against us with swords and weapons, and we (respond) with the sound of the shofar, the sound of a calling to the one God who created us and who is father to us all. A call for justice and righteousness, to the dweller on high, who hears the sound of the shofar with compassion, so that the prophecy (of Gog and Magog) may be fulfilled –“Thus will I manifest My greatness and My holiness and make Myself known in the sight of many nations. And they shall know that I am the Lord (Ez. 38,23).