Rosh Hashanah Torah and Haftorah thoughts

First day Torah reading:

Three episodes related in this torah portion.  1. God remembers שרה and יצחק is born.  2. שרה convinces אברהם to banish הגר and ישמאל, subsequently God sees the suffering of ישמאל and responds to הגר’s prayer to save ישמאל.  3. אברהם and אבימלך make a deal over disputed land and then are able to live in peace together. 

What is the connection in today’s torah reading which contains these three seemingly separate stories to ראש השנה? 

The torah tells us to follow in God’s ways, and that our actions should emulate God at all times.  Just as God has compassion on people so should we, and just as God is forgiving, so should we be.  Today’s torah portion is teaching us an expansive version of forgiveness which relates to how we treat all people. 

It begins with the famous ה' פקד את שרה, God remembered Sarah.  On ראש השנה we want God to remember us and answer our prayers just like he did for שרה.  This is the simplest form of forgiveness, the righteous person who hasn’t necessarily done anything wrong.

In the next story we see ישמאל as a child dying of thirst.  And God hears his mother’s call and saves them.  The midrash says that the angels said to God, how can you save this child, his descendants will be enemies of your children Israel someday, and God’s answer is as the verse says, that God judges people, באשר הוא שם, in the way he is in the moment.  We too should learn how to be forgiving and expansive in our relationships even when we are afraid for the future, to act Godly is to always give someone the benefit of the doubt. 

It’s one thing to say that God can judge people the way they are today, but can we act the same way, don’t we need to protect ourselves?

The last story is an example of this type of behavior by אברהם.  אבימלך or someone connected to him had done wrong to אברהם and buried the wells that אברהם had dug, nevertheless, אברהם was willing to reconcile with him and make a new deal for the future.  And the last verse of today’s torah reading says that אברהם dwelled in the land of the philistines for many years.  He was able to live in peace, even though common sense might have told him not to trust אבימלך.

Human nature will tell us to protect ourselves at all costs, to only trust those that are close to us, and to not associate with those who have hurt us in the past or might hurt us in the future.  Today’s torah reading is giving us an example of radically different way to live.  Rather than narrowing the potential relationships for us to have, acting Godly is to always seek new ways to associate with strangers and pursue forgiveness as a way of life, even to those who have wronged us in the past.

Not that we all need to always act in ways that can possibly come back to hurt us, but this torah reading is such a powerful challenge for us to consider on a day when we are begging God to forgive us and continue his relationship with us in the coming year.

Haftorah:

In the haftorah portion read today is the story about how Hannah, a barren woman, prayed for God to give her a child.  She longed to be a mother with all of her heart and soul for so long, and had spent so many years barren, a woman of unanswered prayers.  After her husband told her that he had given up hope of their prayers being answered her longing reached new heights.  She went to the temple and there, with all of her heart and soul issued a prayer which has become the paradigm of all jewish prayers.  She was the first person to actually say the prayers of her heart, to move her lips.  Her fervor was so intense that the high priest almost threw her out thinking that she was drunk.  Eventually God did hear her prayers, she was given a son and that son was Samuel, one of the greatest of prophets in Jewish history.

I think we read this haftorah today, on a day dedicated to prayer, not to try to inspire us to pray like Hannah so that God will answer our prayers, but to give us something to grasp on to.  Hannah was one of the most righteous women of all time, and the son born to her as a result of her prayer became one of the greatest leaders the Jewish people would ever know.  It’s not realistic for us to pray just like her.  But we should at least yearn to pray like her.  On Rosh Hashanah, we should feel a longing to be able to pray like Hannah.  Hopefully, that longing will inspire us to reach the heights of prayer that each of us is capable of. 

Second day Torah reading:

This morning’s torah reading is one of the most famous portions of the entire torah.  This portion is called “עקידת יצחק,” the binding of Isaac.  The story begins with a statement in the Torah that God wanted to test Abraham again, so he tells Abraham to take his beloved son Yitzchak to a mountain and prepare him for a ritual slaughter.  Abraham of course does this, and only at the point where he had his knife in hand and was about to follow through does an angel command Abraham to not actually follow through with the deed. 

One element of this story that is focused on in so much of western literature is Abraham’s commitment to God that he was even willing to kill his son when commanded to do so. 

There is a lot less attention payed to Isaac in this story.  Yet, Isaac’s identity and life are defined by this moment.  Later in Genesis, when Isaac’s son Jacob is referring to the God of his father he doesn’t use the word God, instead he refers to the Fear of Isaac, פחד יצחק.  There is no question that this episode would have caused anyone, Isaac included, significant psychological trauma.  And yet, Isaac does not waver in his dedication to God.  One of Isaac’s main contributions is that he re-dug the wells his father Abraham had dug, which is understood by our tradition to mean that Abraham had started the work of spreading monotheistic spirituality and Isaac followed in his footsteps exactly. 

Isaac’s fear was something he took with him and defined his religious perspective, but it didn’t cause in him anger towards God or his father, he turned it into a great spiritual strength. 

On the second day of Rosh Hashanah, we are realizing that no matter how much we pray, no matter how sincere and heartfelt our requests to God are, we may still unfortunately (חס ושלום) experience misfortune in the coming year.  Isaac is a model of the ultimate acceptance of what happens to us in life.  Nothing is too much for us to handle, we may not have control over what happens to us, but this story is reminding us that we have control over how we respond.

Haftorah:
To me the Haftorah of the second day is a comforting one.  The haftorah describes God’s love for us as an eternal love.  An unconditional love, we should realize that this day is not only about fear and forgiveness.  But it is about the most intimate of relationships.  The relationship between the Jewish people and God in our tradition is often compared to that between and husband and wife.  Rosh Hashanah is when we are closest to God and God is closest to us.  The haftorah is like the and they lived happily ever after part of a fairy tale.  It talks about the rebuilding of the nation, celebration for the renewal of a people, and an ultimate redemption.

One of the most powerful lines from the haftorah is בבכי יבאו ובתחנונים אובילם, with weeping they will come and through supplications I will bring them.  The Rav in an essay on the high holidays says about this line, “the ultimate redemption of Israel is the return of Israel to God, and this return will be accompanied by weeping.  When the Jews will come to the recognition that they are internally and eternally bound to their creator, that under no conditions can they separate, only then will the complete redemption take place. 

This is what our experience and celebration on Rosh Hashanah, we weep in prayer, but this prayer brings us close to God.  We celebrate the creation of the world on Rosh Hashanah and our desire to be close to God in hopes that we and the whole world will find redemption this year.