קול שופר

 .We had a wonderful Rosh HaShanah

First, the meals!  First night we got to eat at the Kashuks again. Tasty food of course, and good company.  The highlight of the evening though, was meeting Aryeh Leib “Eugene” Lebovitz.  I couldn’t possibly do this man justice with my words, but when you have a few minutes to be inspired, I recommend you click here and here to find out about his story.

The next day we had a reunion block party: lunch at our apartment with the Pollocks (who used to live about five houses down from us in HW) and Aviva Cohen/Brad Bernstein and Yonah (formerly across the street from us).  As “outsiders,” we were also fortunate to have Abe and Madi (Warshay) Truitt.  We double (quadruple) dipped, and also used the meal to celebrate some recent simhas: anniversaries for Benjamin & Allison and for Brad & Aviva, birthdays for Asaf and Brad.  By the time Sheryl’s delicious and plentiful meal was over we had a very short turnover before it was time for “dinner,” at which the four of us didn’t have much more than kiddush and a little challah with Kresch honey.

Day two we walked about 25 minutes to the Pat neighborhood (locale of Nishmat, Hannah’s home during her seminary year) to have lunch with former Akiva teachers Aviad and Leah Sanders and their four kids.  It was great catching up with them.

I seem to remember there was something else to Rosh HaShanah other than the meals?  Oh, right: shul.  So, to begin with, it didn’t occur to us that we would be paying for synagogue membership this year, but we did end up needing to buy tickets for Yomim Noraim.  It turns out that there are some Israelis who don’t actually go to shul all the time but show up for RH/YK, and so places get filled up.  Who knew?  

We ended up deciding on Nitzanim, which has been our primary synagogue so far.  By the time we got around to signing up, though, all that was left was room in the overflow service downstairs.  This might actually have ended up being the better choice; the chairs (plastic) aren’t as comfortable as upstairs, but it was less crowded and less talking than normal.  (And the price was half of what it would have been upstairs!)  The ‘backup’ prayer leaders/Torah readers/shofar blowers were all good, some quit so.  Overall a pretty intense (in a good way) and inspiring experience.

One of the unexpected highlights for me may in fact have been enhanced precisely from being in overflow.  The room downstairs has a sliding door to the outside, which was left open to allow the breeze (and kids) to easily come into the room.  The first afternoon, as we were finishing Torah reading, I heard the sound of the shofar from a nearby shul, or maybe just from the minyan upstairs.  (I had almost the exact experience on the second day.  I stepped out to do some reading during the rabbi’s sermon -- my Hebrew’s not as good as any of the women in my family, and I didn’t think I’d be able to fully follow it.  Standing there, I could hear another minyan’s shofar, the rabbi’s Dvar Torah, and some Sephardi piyut from the minyan in the bet midrash.)

The experience reminded me of a famous mishnah:

וכן מי שהיה עובר אחורי בית הכנסת. או שהיה ביתו סמוך לבית הכנסת ושמע קול שופר.... אם כיון לבו. יצא. ואם לאו לא יצא

And so he who was passing behind a synagogue, or whose house was adjacent to a synagogue, and heard the sound of a shofar ... if he concentrated his heart, he has fulfilled [his obligation], but if not, he has not fulfilled [his obligation].

The simple upshot of this mishnah is that it’s not enough to just hear the shofar blowing; you have to actively listen to it, with the intention of fulfilling the mitzvah of hearing the shoar.  

As with many halachic discussions, the “legalistic” arguments are often helpful in thinking about more “spiritual” matters as well.  In our case, when you are in between, moving from one place to another, intentionality is all important.  

And this is where we all are right now, during the Ten Days Teshuvah: standing in between.  We can hear the voice of the shofar, the words of our tradition, even our own prayers.  All of it is for naught, though, if we don’t have the right intention.  The Rabbis famously say that Yom Kippur is like Purim.  (It is a yom k’purim - literally, a day like Purim).  Identities and fate are in flux, covered up, and we have to decide whether or not we want to remove the masks we wear, which hide our true selves from others and ourselves.  It’s not easy work any way you cut it, but it’s impossible without the right intention.  May we all be able to garner the focus we need to help us become the people we want to become in the upcoming year.

OK, that’s the last dvar Torah for a while, I promise!  Next week back to regularly scheduled programming!  In the meantime, גמר חתימה טובה

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