2012 - The Shofer's Cry - A Rosh Hashanah Reflection

The Shofer's Cry  - A Rosh Hashanah Reflection:

The mitzvah (commandment) of Rosh Hashanah is to listen to the Shofar’s cry.  In the Talmud (Rosh Hashanah 33b) the Rabbi’s discuss what the sounds of the shofar are.  They explain that the day of crying is like the cry of Sisera’s mother who cried for her son (Judges 5:28). They question the sound saying “Should the Shofar sound be like shevarim, like sobs, or like terua, like wailing, a constant but broken cry when one has been crying for a long time.

Who is Sisera and what does his mother’s cry have to do with Rosh Hashanah? 

To answer the first question, Sisera was a commander of a Canaanite army, who oppressed the Jewish People and was killed by Yael. For more of this story see Judges chapter 4. 

There are many places in Tanach (Hebrew scriptures) where we find someone crying.   We find Jacob being overcome when he meets Rachel for the first time and he weeps (Genesis 29:11), Chana weeping because she is barren (Samuel I 1:10), and we find Hagar crying when she thinks that her son will die of thirst (Genesis 21:16). 

As we prepare to listen to the shofar, it is fascinating to me that the Rabbis argument about which sound the shofar needs to make is based on the cry of the mother of the Israelites’ enemy, and I wonder what is this here to teach us? 

Rabbi Moshe Cordovero, a sixteenth century kabbalist, in his Book Tomer Devorah Chapter one, explains* that with every action a person does, they create an energy field connected to the action and thought they have taken. When one commits a good deed then good energy is created and when one commits a negative one, negative energy is created.  He then continues by saying that this energy field is sustained by God.

My understanding of this writing from the Ramak (short for Rabbi Moshe Cordovero) is that when we do something beautiful in the world, we create positive energy which mixes and mingles with the other positive energy we have created before, and with the positive energy that exists in the world by others actions. This beautiful energy brings forth life and healings into the world. 

And, visa versa when we do something hurtful to another human being, or to ourselves, we create a negative energy force that combines with the other negative energy we have created before, and with the negative energy of the world. This energy has a life of its own and brings forth the hate and hurt that is then felt in the greater world through violence in all its forms, including prejudice... 

Every action we take impacts the world and what is going on around us. If I may be so bold, I say that we are responsible for everything that happens in the world.  We are liable for the pain and suffering either because we have not done anything to stop it, or because of the negative energy we have created that aided the creation of that suffering. 

Taking this a little further, the Israelites were behaving in a way that gave Sisera the power to hurt them and Sisera wanted to hurt them. The animosity on both sides created more than enough negative energy in the world. When Sisera attempted to slay the Israelites, their ferocious intent to kill him caused Sisera to run away from the battle. He slipped into Yael’s tent, and when the opportunity occurred, Yael killed Sisera. When the news of Sisera’s death arrives, we are told of the Israelites rejoicing as well as Sisera’s mothers tears. 

When we blow the shofar on Rosh Hashana it may be easy to notice the cry of our heart, whether it is the joy of Jacob, the longing of Chana, or the defeat of Hagar. But to hear the cry of Sisera’s mom, we must take responsibility for the evil he did as a result of our actions.  In other words, whether intentional or not, our actions have consequences. We must hold ourselves accountable for the times we have missed the mark, and we must stand together and honor the fact that we are all connected. 

This, then is the cry of the shofar, to remember that we are interconnected, and that every action we take creates a chain of events that reach far beyond our imagination. In physics, this is called the butterfly effect; the idea is that a butterfly flapping its wings in Rio de Janeiro can determine the weather in Seattle, Washington. It’s also something we can see in our lives: someone is rude to us. Sometimes, we are able to quickly shake it off and return to a healthy state of being. Other times, we get stuck and we pass the rudeness on to others. Perhaps the sound of this shofar this day can serve as an internal reminder of the opportunity to reset ourselves in these situations; to have compassion for the person who was rude so that we spread compassion to all we meet in the wake of the incident. 

May we all be blessed, that when we hear the sound of the shofar, we remember the responsibility we have to the world, and hold each other accountable for that.