Joy and Judgment on Rosh Hashanah
“The essential purpose of Rosh ha-Shanah prayers is that his great Name be sanctified in the universe.” This one line from the traditional Ashkenazi siddur, Nehora ha-Shalem, sums up the whole Rosh Hashanah tefillah. Its succinctness must have appealed to S. Y. Agnon, who wove the line into Days of Awe, his classic compendium of texts about the High Holidays. But there are at least two ways of interpreting Nehora ha-Shalem. On one hand, the prayers are an occasion for terror because throughout the year God’s great Name is profaned, time and again. On the other, what could be more joyful than sanctifying God’s Name?
Both fear of judgment and joy in thanksgiving have their rationale. That duality explains why a great sage trembles in prayer on Rosh Hashanah and yet goes home to a sumptuous meal in high spirits. This October, when we are supposed to wish each other a happy New Year, the Jewish world finds itself wracked by fear and sorrow, reckoning with profound mistakes. A look at one instance of the age-old tension between joy and judgment on Rosh Hashanah, as it plays out in the prayers themselves, can offer a vision for how to reconcile ourselves to both moods this High Holiday season.
In Masekhet Sofrim (19:7), we learn: “מקלסין ימים טובים בתפלה”—”on holidays (yamim tovim) we praise [God] in our prayers.” How do we praise God? We add to the Amidah expressions of God’s goodness (for example, “Blessed are You Who sanctifies Your people Israel, the festival of joy, the seasons, and sacred convocations”) and petitions to God to remember us in his compassion. These are joyful praises and requests, full of thanks for the goodness, gladness, and felicity the people Israel experience.
It is strange, then, that these expressions contract or disappear in the various versions of the Rosh Hashanah Amidah. Is Rosh Hashanah not a yom tov, a holiday? As the historian of Jewish prayer Ismar Elbogen points out, “the Mishnah leaves no doubt about the matter.” Mishnah Rosh Hashanah (4) begins with the scenario “יום טוב של ראש השנה שחל להיות בשבת,” that is, what to do when the festival (yom tov) of Rosh Hashanah falls on Shabbat. The status of Rosh Hashanah as a yom tov is unambiguous. Why remove the customary additions?
According to Masekhet Arachin (10b), the angels asked God a similar question: “‘Why don’t the Jewish people sing a song before You on Rosh Hashana and Yom Kippur?’ He answered them: ‘Would it be possible that the King sits on the throne of judgment with the books of those destined to live and those destined to die before Him and the people of Israel sing a song before Me?!’” The story appears in a debate over when to recite Hallel, the quintessential prayer of praise and thanksgiving. While Rosh Hashanah is a festival, too much hangs in the balance, the Gemara suggests, to justify a burst of hosannas.
The Gemara’s attitude may explain the loss of the expressions stipulated in Masekhet Sofrim. “The view came to the fore,” Ismar Elbogen explains of the Jewish liturgical tradition, “that Rosh Hashanah, as a day of judgment, is more a day for repentance than a festival day.” However, as Elbogen himself notes in his Jewish Liturgy: A Comprehensive History, that view isn’t the whole story.
The early halakhic code, the Arba’ah Turim (Tur, Orach Chaim 582) reveals that a variety of approaches to the additional expressions once prevailed across the Jewish world. In particular, the community in Jerusalem sparked curiosity among their counterparts in Europe because, unlike them, the Jerusalemites retained the “והשיאנו” prayer for Rosh Hashanah, which contains the lines (in the Artscroll translation) “Bestow upon us, O Hashem, our God, the blessing of Your appointed Festivals for life and for peace, for gladness and for joy, as You desired and promised to bless us.” Evidently, not everywhere had let the mood of repentance outweigh that of joy. It is as if different parts of the Jewish world existed to uplift and remember distinct aspects of our laws and rituals, something that one homogeneous community can’t do.
Today it feels like the roles are reversed. Jerusalem doesn’t enter Rosh Hashanah in a spirit of joy. The murderous rampage that Israelis suffered a year ago, the toll of the war, the unredeemed hostages, the spinelessness of allies combine to cast a pall over the holidays. God would hardly be alone in admonishing the singers of praises this year. And we abroad, while it’s not as if we basked in joy, forgetting the plight of the hostages and the insecurity of our Israeli brethren—many of us, nevertheless, aren’t burdened the same way.
As the twisty saga of the holiday additions indicates, our tradition tells us that this split is okay. Just as particular communities came to their own conclusions about the place of joy and judgment in the liturgy, so, too, B’nei Yisrael experiences different, maybe even contrasting moods across its breadth. If a part of B’nei Yisrael can’t experience joy as they should on this holiday, another part embraces what joy it can. We are a plural Israel, capable at once of experiencing joy and feeling the weight of judgment. In either case, we strive to sanctify his great Name.