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September 16, 2009
Why do religion columns say so little about religion? Business sections describe business and sports pages give us sports, but religion articles report on denominational organizations, new trends in prayer, and what rabbis are saying from the pulpit — not religion itself.
That is not the fault of columnists whose job it is to provide the news; it is a function of religion, where news is hard to come by, since religion hasn’t changed since God first asked Adam, “Where are you?” At its core, religion is that repetitive question, an insistent constant, year in and year out — especially on Rosh Hashana, when God asks again, “Where are you?”
This is hardly a request for coordinates in the physics of space-time; it is a triangulation of metaphysical readings that are revealed by an anomaly in the Rosh Hashana liturgy.
Our central prayer is the Amida, a set of 18 benedictions (the Shemona Esrei) on weekdays, but just seven — the first and last three, plus a central one on the theme of the day — on Shabbat and holidays. Rosh Hashana, however, adds three middle blessings, not just one, called, malhuyot (“sovereignty”), zihronot (“remembrance”), and shofarot (“sounding of the shofar”). “Sovereignty,” “remembrance,” and “shofar” are the three coordinates that map the answer to “Where are you?”
“Sovereignty” is “theology,” a doctrine of God (from the Greek theos, “god”), traditionally viewed as our sovereign. Admittedly, that metaphor requires reimaging, but the idea is simple enough: However much we humans may manage to master the world, we are not (in the end) in charge. We are dependent on a universe whose rules we may come to better understand, but will not ever completely control. “Sovereignty” affirms an ultimate cause and purpose beyond ourselves, an existence Jews call God. Define it however you wish — a personal deity, an impersonal force, an inner light, a mystery — Judaism allows imaginative leeway. It rejects, however, the hubris of naming ourselves sovereign rulers of what is. “Where are we?” should prompt the response, “We are mortal creatures in league with an eternal called God.”
“Remembrance” is “anthropology,” not the social-science kind, but the religious variety (from anthropos, “man”). We worry too much about God’s eternality (which we cannot capture), too little about human transience (which we cannot escape). Human beings are uniquely marked by identities, definitions of self that collect over time and depend on memory. We inevitably act with time and memory in mind, our reasons (the past) and our goals (the future): the identity compiled out of what we once did and what we hope to do.
Identities are biographies in process, and biographies have moral consequences. “Remembrance” is our way of saying we will be judged in retrospect, by what we have chosen to become. Rosh Hashana is Yom Hadin, the Day of Judgment, but also Yom Hazikaron, the Day of Remembering. “Where are we?” prompts this anthropological answer: “We are creatures who shape identities, manufacture memories, and prepare to be remembered.”
“Shofar” is more difficult to define. It is the instrument we sound on Rosh Hashana — but only as rehearsal for a final sound that tradition locates as the announcement of a messianic end of time. It is, therefore, an affirmation of the kind of universe we inhabit, our cosmology (from cosmos, “universe”). The universe is not static, and the part of it we occupy gets measured in something called history, where we human beings have a starring role. Neither the anthropology of human memory nor the cosmology of historical time should be taken for granted. Together, they supply us with purpose, meaning, and reasons to live.
The shofar holds us responsible for the role we play in the world and its history, its potential beauty and capacity for life, but also the devastation we can inflict and the cruelty we either cause by what we do or sanction by what we don’t. “Where are you?” requests an admission that we inhabit a global home whose well-being is in our hands.
Religion is a redundant question that is appropriate any time of year, but required on Rosh Hashana. “Where are you?” — a combination of theology, anthropology and cosmology.
Here’s the Jewish response: “I live at the intersection of three truths: the reality of God, the necessity of memory, and the responsibility for history. Together, they supply me with transcendent purpose.”
That answer hasn’t changed since the day God first asked the question of Adam. So it’s not news. But it is all that matters.
Rabbi Lawrence Hoffman, cofounder of Synagogue 3000, is the Barbara and Stephen Friedman Professor of Liturgy, Worship, and Ritual at the Hebrew Union College in New York. He is the coeditor, with David Arnow, of My People’s Passover Haggadah: Traditional Texts, Modern Commentaries (Jewish Lights).
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