Mina's Musings: Rosh Hashanah Day 1, 2014
Rosh Hashanah 2014
Shanah Tovah. Thirteen years ago as I wandered through a store selling religious materials, I saw a poster that caught my eye. It was, I presume, a poster to be used in a Sunday school class with a cartoon depiction of a boy wearing what looked like knight’s armor. Above his head were the words “Armor of God” with a quotation from Christian scripture urging the reader to be strong in the Lord, put on the full armor of God, and to stand firm against evil in the world. Near each item, the helmet, the shield, the belt, there were additional quotes describing what spiritual quality each piece represented. Though it wasn’t from a Jewish source, the idea of spiritual armor resonated deep within my soul. A few weeks later the world was turned upside down with the events of 9/11, and I went from loving the idea of the armor to wanting such armor for me, my family, congregation, and country. For over a dozen years, as various crises have struck here in the United States, in Israel, as well as other communities around the world my mind has turned to that armor. And as Operation Protective Edge began this summer, with anti-Israel demonstrations taking place in Europe and here in the US which sometimes degenerated into blatant displays of anti-Semitism, the idea of such armor came to me again and again.
You can imagine then how I felt then when, upon skimming a new translation and commentary of the prophet Isaiah that I had gotten for the class I will be teaching on Thursday nights this year, my eyes alighted on a verse I must have read before, but somehow overlooked. The verse in chapter 59 (verse 17) says: “He [God] donned righteousness like armor and a helmet of salvation on his head: and He donned garments of vengeance as His attire and clothed Himself in zealousness like a coat.”
Here was the imagery of God’s armor that I had longed for and it was there all along. Not only was the armor of God right in Isaiah, the commentary in my edition noted that the verse was the basis for a piyyut – or poem - said on Rosh Hashanah. And indeed, when I looked through the mahzor I easily found the piyyut on page 83 in our Mahzor Lev Shalem, and it is indeed, clearly based on the verse from Isaiah. Those of you were here early this morning read with me: “You are our God in heaven and earth, powerful and revered…. You dwell in secret, crowned with salvation, You are attired in righteousness, wrapped in zeal, and armed with retribution.”
Having found the passages in Isaiah and the mahzor, I began looking around to see if this imagery is elsewhere in our scripture. And lo and behold there are several other verses in the Tanakh that speak of such spiritual armor. Job (29:4) describes himself as clothed in righteousness, with justice as his cloak and turban. And Isaiah (11:5) says elsewhere that righteousness and faith serve as belts and girdles around one’s body. Finding these passages was a wonderful surprise for me, and reminded me that sometimes we are all blind to what we are seeing. Indeed, discovering what had been in front of me all along reminded me of the midrash that said that the burning bush had been burning for a while, with Moses looking up at it many times, until finally he opened his eyes and saw what he needed to see. Throughout the summer and its many tense moments concerning Israel and world Jewry, I spoke with a number of friends and congregants who seemed a little battered by world events. I was thinking about how to provide such spiritual armor for my congregants, and suddenly I saw that I didn’t need to search, it was already there for us to clothe ourselves with.
Some of you were here this summer when I did an exercise regarding over 50 Jewish values, beliefs, and ritual observances. I believe that our Jewish values and beliefs, each one of them represents part of the spiritual armor we can garb ourselves in daily, during good times and challenging times in this wonderful, crazy, scary, and delightful world of God’s and ours.
Speaking of the world, the rabbis of the Talmud taught that Rosh Hashanah falls on the anniversary of the day human beings were created. As such the first value I’d like to discuss today, one of the most important components of our spiritual armor is the idea that we human beings are made b’tzelem Elohim, in God’s image.
We hear the phrase “made in God’s image” regularly, but rarely do we stop to think about what it means in all its complexity. This is a mistake, for of all the animating ideas in the Torah, this belief is one of the most important, for from it we derive many other values. Concerning the verse in the Torah in which God declares His intent to make human beings in God’s own likeness, the 16th century Italian commentator S’forno once explained that this means many things. These include the fact that human beings, created with God’s own breath possess a neshamah, an eternal soul, just as God is eternal. Human beings, made in the image of a being intelligent enough to create an ordered world, are intelligent and intellectual beings who must exercise our knowledge through limud - study and Torah. Human beings, like God and unlike angels and most animals, possess the gift of b’hirah – choice, free will. However, S’forno points out that while God always chooses to be good, to exhibit Tovah – goodness and integrity - yosher, sometimes we human beings fail to make the right choices though they are there for us to choose. So S’forno teaches us that the belief that we are made B’tzelem Elohim actually encompasses a minimum of six of the values.
Two hundred years later and over 1,000 miles away in Morocco, the commentator known by the name of his work Or Hachayim, also spent time discussing the significance of the idea that we are made b’tzelem Elohim. He taught that (in his commentary on Genesis 1:26-29) being made in God’s image means that we should imitate the specific thirteen attributes of God as described in our liturgy –
"Adonai, Adonai, God merciful and compassionate, patient, abounding in love and faithfulness, assuring love for thousands of generations, forgiving iniquity, willful sin, and error, and granting pardon.” In other words, Or Hachayim thought that being made in God’s image meant that we should exhibit our faith in God by leading our lives imitating God’s qualities. As God exhibits rahamim – mercy, we should be merciful. As God exhibits emet – truthfulness, we should be truthful, and on and on, meaning we should be merciful, act with grace, be willing to exhibit slihah, forgiveness, abound in love, be faithful, etc. And since two Hebrew names for God are used in this prayer, the one Adonai representing God’s mercy, and the other El representing God’s aspects of tzedakah, justice and righteousness, we must strive to exhibit both compassionate and just/righteous behaviors. This interpretation links us back to Isaiah, where I began, as we realize that as God dons righteousness so too should we.
As we begin to fashion our spiritual armor, we see that the one idea that we are made in God’s image yields nearly twenty distinct values that we can wrap around ourselves when the world is rough, when others hurt us, or when we are tempted to hurt others in some way.
Once we acknowledge that we are made in God’s image, the natural continuation of our Jewish values is the concept of Tikkun Olam – repairing the world, for the concept of Tikkun Olam is only possible because of our belief in B’tzelem Elohim. What do I mean? I mean quite simply that because we are made in God’s image we are able to do something incredible – serve as God’s partners in the ongoing work of creation. This is an incredibly chutzpahdik or audacious idea, and one which exemplifies the hopeful outlook of our tradition. It is not a coincidence that the national anthem of the state of Israel is Hatikvah, the Hope. Ours is an incredibly optimistic religion. We are taught as God’s partners that we have both the ability and the obligation to improve humanity and the world! So we know right off the bat that Tikkun Olam includes exemplifying tikvah, hope. It also includes the concepts of bal tashchit, not wasting or destroying wantonly, an understanding that we are here to tend the world and preserve nature, the belief that life and this world are a brachah, a blessing, the concept of avodah, service to God, others, and the world, the embracing of pashtut, simplicity, and perhaps most importantly, sakranut, curiosity. Only people who are curious about how the world works can figure out how to make the world a better place for all!
Woven together in the concepts of being made in God’s image and our obligation to repair the world we have gathered together nearly a full complement of spiritual armor. If each value is a garment we are at a couple dozen, far more than the number of actual garments I wear each day - even counting the individual rings or bracelets I wear!
The last piece of our spiritual armor is our prayer shawl and head covering – or in the verse from Isaiah, helmet - represented in my mind by the over-all concept of halachah – the Jewish way. Repeatedly in the Torah we are told to emulate God’s ways. Our way of doing that is through halachah. While some limit halachah to Jewish law, it can also include not only law, but when thought of as the “way,” all of our minhagim – customs, from holidays, Shabbat, kashrut, mikveh, prayer, tzedakah, study of Torah, debate, our devotion to Israel, the Jewish people, and more. How do these serve as garments of protection for us? Each time we perform an action our ancestors performed we link ourselves in a chain going back thousands of years. Knowing we are connected in such a way gives us strength. There is a reason the words of the prayer l’dor va’dor, from generation to generation, seem as profoundly etched into the soul of many Jews as the more central prayer Shema. Each mitzvah we perform, even ritual mitzvoth, has an ethical element involved, keeping us connected simultaneously to God, to those who came before us, to those who are with us now, and to those who will come after us. We are links in a chain of tradition going back thousands of year, one we know will continue for millennia after us. There is tremendous comfort and strength derived from knowing that we are part of such an incredibly strong, unbreakable chain. As we begin the new year of 5775 may you leave today, garbed in the beautiful and unbreakable garments of our Jewish tradition. Shanah Tovah.