The decision to birth children is an anticipation of joy accompanied by risk. So was God's decision to create the world. | |
| Rosh Hashanah 5785 | ראש השנה תשפ"ה |
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| | Crying With God | Rabbi Gordon Tucker Vice Chancellor for Religious Life and Engagement, JTS | |
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| In an essay some years ago, the Israeli teacher and poet Sara Friedland ben Arza asked us to focus on the prayer Hayom Harat Olam (Today the World Stands as at Birth) in the Rosh Hashanah liturgy. She asks why, in a religious tradition that moved away so notably from ancient mythological motifs, is there a rare reference to the “birthing” of the world? And why is that short prayer placed just after the shofar is blown? In fact, she makes another very perceptive observation. The imagery of the conception and birthing of children, so unusual in a liturgy that is mostly about God’s sovereignty and judgment, is actually at the very heart of every one of the scriptural readings for this holiday: Sarah and Isaac, Abraham and Ishmael, Hannah and Samuel, and Rachel and her exiled children. What, in the end, is this focus on the wish for, and fears for, children all about? Ben Arza’s answer is that by analogizing our relationship to God to the relationship of parents and children and using these vivid narratives to evoke spiritual and ethical depth on these days, the tradition is trying to direct our thoughts to God through things that we already know in the human realm.
The decision to birth children is an anticipation of joy accompanied by risk—we hope that our children will walk a road of goodness and righteousness and that we will be able to provide for them and protect them from the dangers of the world. What joy there is when all these hopes are fulfilled, and what inconsolable grief there is when they are not, when children go astray, or when we are unable to keep them safe. And so it is with God, whose decision to birth a world was from the beginning an act of love and delight in creation, but also—this poem teaches us—fraught with the very same perils that we face in our lives and families. | Continue reading ➔ | | | | | | | | The publication and distribution of the JTS Parashah Commentary is made possible by a generous grant from Rita Dee (z”l) and Harold Hassenfeld (z”l). | |
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