This has been a difficult year for Jews. Anti-Semitism is way up. Thousands are demonstrating against the war, against Israel, against Jews. In this milieu, I found Jonathan Charles Fox’s …
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This has been a difficult year for Jews. Anti-Semitism is way up. Thousands are demonstrating against the war, against Israel, against Jews. In this milieu, I found Jonathan Charles Fox’s article on Rosh Hashanah disturbing.
Disturbing to see how little Jonathan knows about his own traditions, although he was obviously raised in a synagogue—but even more so, how little he cares to school himself so that he can write a piece about his own holiday worthy of his considerable talent as a journalist.
Rather than take this task seriously, he chose to be cute and concern himself with the spelling of Rosh Hashanah in English—which is irrelevant because it is a Hebrew word.
This year of all years Jews, grappling with a long history of bloodshed, are taking their own history and rituals seriously.
I realize “Rosh Hashanah 2.0. Bread Upon The Water” was a recycled article. Perhaps, given the context, the River Reporter should have had something new written.
Rosh Hashanah does not mean “first of the year,” as Jonathan states, but head of the year. The word Rosh means “head.” This is important because the Talmud says that God opens three books on Rosh Hashanah. The book of the righteous, the book of the wicked and the book of those in between. The wicked will surely die. The righteous will be given another year of life and the “in between,” which is just about everyone, will have to think how to make amends, so that by Yom Kippur they can be given a new lease on their life.
This is a thinking task, thus the head allusion.
The notion that we Jews who pray for life on Rosh Hashanah are now in a struggle with a death cult in Hamas is not without its ironies these days.
And here’s where the shofar comes in. We are commanded in the Bible to blow the shofar on Rosh Hashanah to awaken us to reflect on transgressions that we might have committed.
Here is a beautiful tradition, where one is committed to rethink one’s actions of the previous year before being given another one. This concept of introspection is powerful and deep within the Jewish soul. No wonder, Freud, the father of Psychoanalysis, was a Jew.
The shofar, blown on the High Holidays, is an instrument of awakening. According to Maimonides, the sounds of the shofar are supposed to jolt those who are spiritually sleeping to reflection and thought. After reading Jonathan’s article, making light of ancient Jewish rituals so publicly and in such a precarious time, I wanted to knock on his door and sound the shofar in his yard.
There are 101 hostages, dead and alive in Gaza. There are many fronts in a war against a small state the size of New Jersey. There are 100,000 displaced people in Israel, a Jewish state surrounded by 22 Muslim countries, and judged by a U.N. that sides with the Arabs.
This year 100,000 Jews prayed at the Western Wall the night before Yom Kipppur, and more prayed for the souls of Jews and non-Jews, all killed in a bloody unnecessary war that they did not start. And all Jonathan can write about is how baffled he is by online articles about Rosh Hashanah that tell him nothing.
I think the River Reporter can do better.
Judith Maidenbaum
Kauneonga Lake, NY
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