Disorienting Tears: A Biblical Trio and the Shofar this Year

For months, I have been dreading Rosh Chodesh Elul.

Up until now, each year, I eagerly awaited this day. As crisp fall air would gradually make its presence felt in the early mornings, Elul would be a time to cue up my special Playlist on Spotify, take out my Yamim Noraim sefarim and await the first sounds of the Shofar.

Yet, this year, the thought of those first sounds fills me with angst.

While the shofar’s first blasts have always brought me to tears, the tears of this Elul, Elul 5784, will be painfully and dramatically different. These will be tears of loss, of heaviness and of a world that seems stuck in sadness.
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I was not sure I could be ready for this shofar moment until I thought of the lives of three Biblical figures, Noach, Daniel and Iyyov, and realized that if they could face catastrophe, so must we.

The Torah mentions Noach three times in one pasuk (Bereshit 6:9)

נח ו, ט: אֵ֚לֶּה תּֽוֹלְדֹ֣ת נֹ֔חַ נֹ֗חַ אִ֥ישׁ צַדִּ֛יק תָּמִ֥ים הָיָ֖ה בְּדֹֽרֹתָ֑יו אֶת־הָֽאֱלֹהִ֖ים הִתְהַלֶּךְ־נֹֽחַ.
These are the generations of Noach, Noach was a righteous man; he was perfect in his generations; Noach walked with God

The Midrash asks: why?

Tanhuma Noach 5
תנחומא נח ה: אלה תולדות נח נח וגו’ את האלהים התהלך נח, ג’ פעמים בפסוק למה? זה אחד משלשה שראו ג’ עולמות נח, ודניאל, ואיוב. נח ראה עולם בישובו, וראהו בחרבנו, וחזר וראהו בישובו, דניאל ראה בנין בית ראשון וראהו חרב וחזר וראהו בנוי בבנין בית שני, איוב ראה בנין ביתו וחרבנו וחזר וראה בישובו.

Tanchuma Noach, 5: Why are there three mentions of Noach in one Pasuk? Noach was one of three people who saw three worlds, Noach, Daniel and Iyyov (Job). Noach saw a world in its establishment, in peace. He then saw it destroyed and then again saw it established. Daniel saw the building of the First Temple, saw it destroyed and then again saw it built as the Second Temple Job saw the building of his home and family, saw it destroyed, and then again saw it restored.

Each figure in this Midrash lived, in many ways, three lives. There was the before, the during and the after. And while so many biblical characters lived many chapters, the choice of these three is significant. Noach lived a life that was shaped by global disaster, Daniel lived one shaped by military defeat and national destruction and Iyyov’s life was shaped by personal struggle and family tragedy.

In his brilliant book, Spirituality of the Psalms, Walter Brueggemann could have been reflecting upnn this Midrash. He comments that Tehillim encompasses these three lenses, the universal, the national and the individual. And, most significantly, he shares three models of Tehillim that also characterize three phases of the human condition.

The first type are Psalms of orientation. This is the model where the world seems to make sense, where God’s incredible creation evokes “coherence and reliability” and seems basically predictable. These chapters describe creation, power, nature and order–concepts and moments that ground us in the goodness and the workings of the world.

The second type of human experience expressed in Psalms is that of disorientation. These chapters challenge the predictable world of orientation. They show that life is marked by incoherence and disorder. Disorientation is an “anguished…move into disarray and dislocation…a candid…embrace of a new situation of chaos.” These moments are the “dangerous acknowledgement of how life really is.” They are the moments of seeing worlds washed away in flood, temples destroyed and families broken by unspeakable tragedy.

The last type of Psalm is one of reorientation or “new orientation”. This is what happens on the other side of disarray. There is a new understanding and a new connection. It is a surprising gift of new life just when none had been expected. The new orientation is not a return to the old stable orientation, for there is no going back.” It is a new “awareness about our lives and about our God. We have moved out of the unfamiliar into a welcome place. We accept the new normal and understand that it is God who has brought us here.” (Lisa Skopil)
Entering this phase of reorientation would never be something chosen. People are thrust into that space – one that so often comes from dark, terrifying and unwanted events and circumstances. And yet, a new day rises – a new orientation, one with new vineyards, new structures and new relationships. These new chapters that follow unimaginable loss and sorrow can even contain some light and a degree of nechama, of comfort.

Brueggemann’s orient-disorient-reorient approach to Tehillim, has also allowed me to feel a measure of comfort in hearing the familiar tekiah-shevarim/teruah-tekiah sounds of the shofar.

The tekiah is the introductory sound, it is the yishuv – the rooted and the established. The root taf-kuf-ayin, means to thrust or to insert. It is to ground something. This is the world of orienting. It is the first stage, that creation moment where the world, while never simple, seems structured and mostly understood. The tekiah places us firmly in the world.
The second stage of the shofar blasts, the shevarim/teruah, is the disorientation – the unwanted and unpredictable confusion, chaos and destruction. As the Talmud tells us, this sound of the shofar has its roots in the biblical story of the mother of Sisera, in tears, looking for her son, whom she realizes will never return.

Rosh HaShana 33b
דִּכְתִיב: ״יוֹם תְּרוּעָה יִהְיֶה לָכֶם״, וּמְתַרְגְּמִינַן: ״יוֹם יַבָּבָא יְהֵא לְכוֹן״. וּכְתִיב בְּאִימֵּיהּ דְּסִיסְרָא: ״בְּעַד הַחַלּוֹן נִשְׁקְפָה וַתְּיַבֵּב אֵם סִיסְרָא״. מָר סָבַר גַּנּוֹחֵי גַּנַּח. וּמָר סָבַר יַלּוֹלֵי יַלֵּיל.

As it is written: “It is a day of sounding [terua] the shofar to you” (Numbers 29:1), and we translate this verse in Aramaic as: It is a day of yebava to you. And to define a yebava, the Gemara quotes a verse that is written about the mother of Sisera: “Through the window she looked forth and wailed [vateyabev], the mother of Sisera” (Judges 5:28). One Sage, the tanna of the baraita, holds that this means moanings, broken sighs, as in the blasts called shevarim. And one Sage, the tanna of the mishna, holds that it means whimpers, as in the short blasts called teruot.

With this model, the shevarim/teruah represents a model of chaos and of loss – a reminder of inconsolable pain and unexpected, unpredicted suffering without consolation.

And yet, after the challenge, we return to the tekiah as the final sound. It is a new groundedness, a new implanting and a reorientation to life. This last tekiah tells us that while life will never be the same, God’s goodness comes in unusual ways, and divine comfort can still give us lives that are ones of holiness and meaning.

This year may be the most difficult of our lifetimes. There are countless tears of family loss, communal displacement and missing loved ones. Medinat Yisrael has witnessed horrific burnings and destructions of homes and structures, and Jews around the world have been exposed to hatred on levels that no one could have predicted. Finally, throughout the world, political, religious and environmental crises seem to be everpresent. We have been thrown into a world that is confusing and disorienting, a world of shevarim/teruah. We are lost.
But hopefully, the one consolation, if there is any, is that Noach, Daniel and Iyyov were also lost. They were disoriented. They saw worlds shattered. Life had handed them these horrible challenges and still, with tears and heartbreak, they integrated this pain into their lives, and continued to walk forward. They planted, they rebuilt.

Yirmiyahu shares a hope in promising that God will remember tragedy and will help rebuild.
Jeremiah 29:10, 14

כִּֽי־כֹה֙ אָמַ֣ר ה’……אֶפְקֹ֣ד אֶתְכֶ֑ם וַהֲקִמֹתִ֤י עֲלֵיכֶם֙ אֶת־דְּבָרִ֣י הַטּ֔וֹב לְהָשִׁ֣יב אֶתְכֶ֔ם אֶל־הַמָּק֖וֹם הַזֶּֽה

For thus said GOD: ….I will take note of you, and I will fulfill to you My promise of favor—to bring you back to this place.

וְנִמְצֵ֣אתִי לָכֶם֮ נְאֻם־ה’ וְשַׁבְתִּ֣י אֶת־[שְׁבוּתְכֶ֗ם] (שביתכם) וְקִבַּצְתִּ֣י אֶ֠תְכֶ֠ם מִֽכׇּל־הַגּוֹיִ֞ם וּמִכׇּל־הַמְּקוֹמ֗וֹת אֲשֶׁ֨ר הִדַּ֧חְתִּי אֶתְכֶ֛ם שָׁ֖ם נְאֻם־ה’ וַהֲשִׁבֹתִ֣י אֶתְכֶ֔ם אֶ֨ל־הַמָּק֔וֹם אֲשֶׁר־הִגְלֵ֥יתִי אֶתְכֶ֖ם מִשָּֽׁם׃

I will be at hand for you and I will restore your fortunes…… I will bring you back to the place from which I have exiled you.

And while God’s promise is never for an exact duplication of the original orientation, it can maintain our hope and trust in the future.

So, when we hear the shofar, when the shevarim/teruah inevitably follows that first tekiah, we pray that our faith in God will grant us the strength to be זֹּרְעִ֥ים בְּדִמְעָ֗ה׃, to sow our inevitable tears (Psalm 126:5). And with those tragic, seemingly boundless tears planted in the soil, we can aspire to live to see reoriented tekiahs that, in some ways, will be stronger, bolder and grander than ever before. These final tekiyot, some of which will become gedolot, will never forget or ignore the depth of the previous brokenness, but they will draw directly from it in fostering new beginnings, new energy, and new hope of fulfilling the dream of “reap[ing] in joy”, בְּרִנָּ֥ה יִקְצֹֽרוּ.