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Calendars can be funny things.  Otherwise bland and seemingly objectively simple, the calendar sometimes creates clashes of emotions and ideas that we would not otherwise face were it not for the pure accident of timing.  And with the Jewish calendar’s mix of solar and lunar systems, we have the amazing opportunity to always experience our holidays in new ways.  Rosh Hashanah falling in early September, like last year, feels much different, to me anyway, than when it falls in early October.  And this year, with disengagement just completed, Hurricanes Katrina and Rita, a key figure in the AIPAC scandal pleading guilty and Iraqi elections around the corner (I’ll leave aside baseball playoffs for now), the calendar presents us with a lot to consider this year.  But while the dates and issues may change, the questions that Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur ask are unwavering: what have you done these – and many other – issues in the past, and what will you do in the future? 

One of the rituals most closely associated with the High Holidays, other than the Yom Kippur fast, is the blowing of the shofar.  After all, it is hard not to focus on someone blowing 100 notes per day from a ram’s horn (and wondering how long they will be able to hold that last note – more on the notes in a minute) .  But there is perhaps an even more obvious, yet largely unrecognized as such, High Holiday ritual that truly underlies these “Days of Awe,” as they are often called.  Community gathering.  Though it is our individual lives that God considers on Rosh Hashanah and then seals in the Book of Life on Yom Kippur, these are days that we face together. 

So in this coming together we have the momentary chance to stop, truly stop, as a community and consider, not just what we each have done and will do, but where we are and where we will go, as a community.  And with so many fractious issues lingering and looming, the calendar’s gift to us all, I ask whether we are ready for this moment.  Will we go through this year as any other, using the same rituals and words, finding the same meanings as we have before?  Or will we search within them to find new meanings? 

Consider the two Israel-related issues I mentioned above.  Andrew and I, along with many of you, have discussed disengagement individually – and extensively — on this site. But the High Holidays present the first opportunity for the entire community to come together to deal with disengagement.  In many communities, I imagine the focus will continue to be on the losses of the settlers, the division of Jews that disengagement brought, the opening of Gaza to control by Hamas.  In others, there will be the consistent insistence that Gaza must only be the first step, that oppression in the West Bank continues, that the settlers were to blame for so much tragedy that their losses simply do not measure up. 

In nearly all communities, I fear that these Days of Awe will be a moment for communal redoubling of old efforts vis-a-vis Israel and the Palestinians, of hardening old positions, of confirming old beliefs with recent developments.   Or, as I said in a previous post, of practicing Judaism with an agenda.   

So too with the guilty plea by Lawrence Franklin, the ex-Pentagon official who was accused of passing classified information on to 2 senior AIPAC officials, who in turn allegedly passed the information on to journalists and a “foreign power,” which sources have confirmed is Israel.  The 2 AIPAC officials are scheduled to go on trial in January.   

What to make of this story?  For some, this has been a moment of joy.  To see AIPAC, an organization that has grown into one of the country’s most powerful lobbies and is at the center of American policy in Israel, Palestine and throughout the Middle East, injured offers a rare chance to see the powerful take a body shot.  To read press releases, not about how dangerous the Palestinians are, but about how dangerous AIPAC itself can be.  To see the organization most (but not entirely) responsible for insuring that American policy remains narrowly tied to the wises of the Israeli government (as long as that government is not run by Labor), rather than what we believe to be the interests of the Israeli and Palestinian people, have to backtrack, sidestep and face this pressure is, in many ways, as sweet as the apples and honey we will eat later this month. 

But, no matter the harm some of us believe AIPAC has caused, is that the right way to approach the story, given that we must approach it in the midst of the High Holidays?  Sure, AIPAC has sinned.  But so have we all.  And as one of the central prayers of these days, the “Vidui” or “Ashamnu,” teaches us, our sins are both individual and collective.  That is the power of our being together in community to go through this period.  

So I ask you, as I have been asking myself in the context of High Holiday preparation, is feeling joy at AIPAC’s suffering akin to “siding” more with those who believe in Jews-control-everything conspiracy theories, with AIPAC often seen at the center of the conspiracies, than with the organization that, aside from its positions on the conflict, has been responsible for the U.S. government’s strong defense of Israel, for much of the critical support Israel has received from the American government and people in the last 20 years (AIPAC has been around longer, but its ascent to power really began in the late 70s/early 80s – Forward editor JJ Goldberg’s 1996 book Jewish Power is still the authority on the subject, in my mind)?   

To express joy at AIPAC’s suffering here, much as some of us might like to, is also an act of personal judgment.  And judgment in this time of year should be reserved for God.  Although AIPAC and its supporters might not always extend the same courtesy in return, to take the opportunity to not judge me as “self-hating” or otherwise interested in the end of Israel, Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur are not based on reciprocity, on doing only when you receive.  They are based on doing good in the world, on acknowledging our sins and moving away from them in the coming year.  And difficult as it may be, that may require us to change. 

The Reconstructionist Prayer Book for the High Holidays contains a reading from Rabbi Herman Keival.  Kieval tells us that the medieval Spanish Rabbi Isaac Arama saw the three different notes blown from the shofar as follows:

The tekiyah, with its simple and straightforward sound, is intended for the righteous, arousing feelings of confidence and inner peace.

 

The teruah, with its wailing sound, is aimed at the wicked, moving them to fear and trembling.

 

The shevarim, with its broken and uncertain sound, is designed for the average person, neither saint nor sinner, who may find in it a message of either hope or despair.

I, and I believe most of us, fall in the “average” category here.  And what Rabbi Arama teaches us is that, in our world, the notes are broken.  The world is complex and difficult.  And we must choose what we do, choose what we believe.  And each year, we will go back to hear those “shevarim” notes again in the synagogue.  And when we do, we must choose again.  Rethink what we found in those notes the previous year and try hope where before we found despair, or perhaps despair where once we found hope.   

But no matter what we did or thought last year, we are all obliged to stand together, as a community, listen to those notes, and choose.  And act.  May we all listen and respond with our whole hearts.  And do so in peace. 

My sincerest wishes for a happy, healthy and peaceful New Year for everyone.