Guiding Our Broken Hearts into the New Year

Rosh Hashanah Musaf: Malkhuyot, Zikhronot, Shofarot Services

Ayelet Cohen, Pearl Resnick Dean of The Rabbinical School and Dean of the Division of Religious Leadership

We approach the New Year in a time characterized more by brokenheartedness than anticipation. It is a time of fear, and loss, and moral reckoning for the Jewish people. While many of us feel spiritually shattered this year, our tradition and our liturgy can guide us on this journey through our brokenness into a new year.

Three ancient sections lie at the core of the Rosh Hashanah Musaf service: Malkhuyot, Zikhronot, and Shofarot. Each consists of a series of biblical verses, framed by liturgy and punctuated by the sounding of the shofar. The Mishnah and Gemara dictate that verses describing divine fury or punishment are not appropriate for Rosh Hashanah liturgy. The verses are not intended to scare us but rather to help us connect to God and explore the internal work we each need to do.

The first section, Malkuyot (Sovereignty), is about the wonder of creation, God’s sovereignty over the earth, and our smallness in the universe. While some contemporary Jews find this aspect of God alienating, Malkhuyot may be easier to access in times like these when we are so in touch with our own powerlessness over global forces, when there is so much that we cannot control and fear we cannot change. But we do not dwell in that powerlessness.

We turn the page to Zikhronot (Remembrances) like a comforting voice from a safer time. While Zikhronot is associated with divine judgement, it draws on biblical verses that tell of God remembering our ancestors in times of suffering. As Jews, we carry the memory and the legacy of tragedy, antisemitism, and exile. The mahzor reminds us of the good. We awaken to the possibility of God’s lovingkindness, which can keep us from succumbing to despair and callousness even as we continue to witness and experience terrible things.

This is where the act of remembering intersects with the work of teshuvah. We perform an accounting of our souls as we consider where we are in comparison to years past. Nearly two years into the Gaza war and nine months into the current US administration, Zikhronot invites us to examine what we have learned and what choices we will make in the year ahead to try to repair the brokenness in ourselves, our people, and our world. It urges us to take action to bring more lovingkindness into our relationships and in the world.

The final section, Shofarot, represents the fusion of voice and action necessary to move forward with hopefulness. The call of the shofar accompanied revelation. In broken times it is the cry that accompanies war, but it can also represent laughter and joy. It is the voice we need to amplify that will sound one day for peace, justice, and redemption.

We can hear this message in the words of Rabbi Akiva in a foundational talmudic story set in the aftermath of the destruction of the Second Temple. Rabban Gamaliel, R. Elazar ben Azariah, R. Yehoshua, and Rabbi Akiva were standing together near the ruins of the Temple, when they saw a fox running from the wreckage where the holy of holies once stood. The first three Rabbis began to weep, but Rabbi Akiva laughed. Stunned, his colleagues asked how he could laugh. Rabbi Akiva asked them, “Why do you weep?”

“How can we not weep,” they said, “when we see the curse from the book of Eicha (Lam.) enacted before us?[1]

“That’s why I’m laughing,” answered Rabbi Akiva. “Before these terrible prophecies came to be, we were afraid to believe the visions of good from our prophets; but now, since we see all of these things coming to pass, can we possibly doubt the eventual fulfillment of the consolation of Zion?” And his friends were comforted.[2]

As Jews, we are realists who recognize brokenness in the world and ourselves. Our tradition also asks us to have faith. Our mahzor guides us to draw from the pain of our past, remember the Divine and human capacity for generosity and compassion, and choose to act for a better future. The wisdom and courage of Rabbi Akiva, which allows him to laugh even in devastating times, teaches us that though terrible things may happen, we can promote goodness and justice in the wake of the wreckage. 

The Israeli writer David Grossman once wrote, “The battle lines today are drawn not between Israelis and Palestinians, but rather between those who are unwilling to come to terms with despair and those who wish to turn it into a way of life.”[3] Later, eulogizing his son, Uri, who was killed in 2006 in Lebanon War, Grossman said:

I learned from Uri . . . that we need to defend ourselves, but in two senses: to defend our bodies, and not to surrender our souls. Not to surrender to the temptations of force and simplistic thinking, to the corruption of cynicism. Not to surrender to boorishness and contempt for others, which are the really great curses of the person who lives his entire life in a disaster area like ours.[4]

Grossman’s words are apt for Shofarot, which refuses to come to terms with despair. Its verses urge us to find the courage to be hopeful. Hope comes easily in simple times. But Malkhuyot, Zikhronot, and Shofarot remind us to be hopeful in the midst of real suffering and fear and to cultivate the strength we so desperately need to build a more just and compassionate world.

[1] For the mountain of Zion, which is desolate, the foxes walked upon it.” (Lam. 5:18)

[2] Based on BT Makkot 24b

[3] Grossman, Death as a Way of Life: From Oslo to the Geneva Agreement (New York: Picador, 2004), xi.

[4] Excerpted and adapted from the translation by Haim Weizman, printed in the Washington Post, Sunday, August 27, 2006.