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On Love and Marriage: Rosh HaShanah as a Reminder
As we enter the Yamim Noraim (Days of Awe) we are called on to recollect powerful moments in our people’s history. The תפילות (tefilot - liturgy) of the High Holy Days are meant to provide us with the fuel to consider these moments in the context of our lives. Specifically, during the Rosh HaShanah Musaf Amidah (the standing prayer), we evoke three powerful themes: מלכויות, זכרונות, שופרות. Malkuyot – verses dealing with God’s sovereignty (God as King), Zichronot – verses pertaining to God remembering, and of course Shofrot – verses in which a shofar or shofar blasts are mentioned.
Many of the scenes that are recalled in this central prayer are like the “greatest hits” of the Torah. Among the list of moments, God remembering Noach in the ark, God remembering the brit (covenant) after hearing Bnai Yisrael’s wails in Egypt, and of course – מעמד הר סיני – standing at Sinai. At Sinai, the Torah recalls Bnai Yisrael hearing the thunderous blasts of the shofar, which parallels our experience of hearing the shofar (at least) 100 times over the course of Rosh HaShanah. Each time the shofar blasts we recognize that we stand at the ready just as our ancestors did thousands of years ago.
The previous chief rabbi of England, Lord Rabbi Jonathan Sacks, of blessed memory, wrote extensively on the epic scene of Har Sinai, and Bnai Yisrael’s response: נעשה ונשמע – “We will do and we will listen.” According to Rabbi Sacks, Bnai Yisrael’s responding first by acknowledging that they will perform the mitzvot, and would only later hear or understand them, makes total sense. Rabbi Sacks explains that this bond, between God and the Jewish people, is like a marriage. One only truly understands marriage and the commitments therein once married (“The only way to understand leadership is to lead. The only way to understand marriage is to get married.”).
We understand roles by living them, and we understand a life informed by and guided by Torah only by living it. Sacks’ explanation meshes beautifully with John Dewey’s (the godfather of progressive education) characterization of learning: “Education is not preparation for life, it is life itself.”
Wishing us all a fruitful year שנה פוריה, filled with the fruit of the hard work, determination, and commitment that we will put in.
