Waiting for Rain: Reflections at the Turning of the Year

Chapter Four The Symphony of Return

Chapter Four
The Symphony of Return
The historical significance of Rosh Hashanah is shrouded in mystery . As opposed to the other Jewish festivals, it is not singled out in the Torah as a milestone date in the history of the Jewish people. The Rabbis offered a variety of suggestions as to what took place on that day: Rosh Hashanah was the day of Adam’s reprieve; the day that Joseph was released from prison; the day the edict of slavery in Egypt was rescinded; and the day that Sarah, Rachel, and Hannah conceived . All of these incidents are examples of judgments that were dramatically reversed. These cases illustrate that hope can shine forth even when all seems lost. Yet nowhere in the Bible are we told that any of these occurrences in fact took place on Rosh Hashanah. There are, however, two significant historical events that are recorded in the Bible as having transpired on the first day of the month of Tishrei: one is the building of the altar upon the return to Zion, described in Ezra, chapter 3, and the second is the hak’hel—a public gathering for the reading of the Torah, carried out by Ezra and recorded in Nehemiah, chapter 8. For the Rabbis, the public study of Torah was central and hak’hel was the paradigm of this notion. As we shall see, what Ezra and 71 Nehemiah succeeded in achieving in the hak’hel ceremony was resonant with their own agenda of saving the Torah by engaging the entire community, through love, understanding, and observance. The Rabbis teach that on one occasion, R. Yohanan b. Beroka and R. Eleazar b. Hisma set out to visit their teacher R. Joshua in Pekiin. When they arrived, R. Joshua asked them to share with him some innovative idea they had learned. Taken aback by this request, they turned to their rebbe and said, “But we are your disciples and your waters do we drink!” Refusing to take no for an answer, he insisted, “Even so, it is impossible for a beit midrash to be without some novel teaching!” He then asked them whose Shabbat it had been, hoping to hear words of Torah from the most recent discourse that had been delivered that week. They answered that it had been the week of R. Eleazar b. Azariah, who had spoken about hak’hel, the commandment of publicly reading the Torah before the entire nation, as outlined in Deuteronomy 31: And Moses instructed them as follows: Every seventh year, the year set for remission, at the Feast of Booths, when all Israel comes to appear before the LORD your God in the place that He will choose, you shall read this Torah aloud in the presence of all Israel. Gather the people—men, women, children, [italics added] and the strangers in your communities—that they may hear and so learn to revere the LORD your God and to observe faithfully every word of this Torah. Their children, too, who have not had the experience, shall hear and learn to revere the LORD your God as long as they live in the land that you are about to cross the Jordan to possess. (Deut. 31:10–13) The biblical commandment stipulates gathering all of Israel— men, women, and children—to hear the Torah publicly read by the king on the holiday of Sukkot. R. Eleazar b. Azariah had questioned the curious fact that men, women, and even children were expected to attend. He offered the following rationale: 72
Waiting for Rain The men came to learn, the women came to listen; but why did the little children have to come? He answered: in order to grant reward to those that bring them. (B. Hag. 3a) When the students completed the derashah (teaching), R. Joshua was so overwhelmed, he exclaimed: “There was a precious pearl in your hand and you sought to deprive me of it!?” One wonders if R. Joshua’s enthusiastic reaction was precipitated by R. Eleazar’s encouragement to bring children to hear the Torah in order to grant reward to their parents, since we are told (in J. Yev. 1:6) that his Torah education began just that way: “I remember that his [R. Joshua’s] mother used to bring him in his cradle to synagogue so his ears would absorb words of Torah.” The heartwarming incident in which this derashah is framed...