Rosh Hashanah Review

Shana tova! Rosh Hashana weekend was a whirlwind, but I'll share the highlights with you while the spirit's still in the air.

I davened at Kedem for most of the services (Friday night and Saturday and Sunday morning), which was really beautiful. I really enjoyed being in the company of other students (mostly from Pardes and the Conservative Yeshiva), especially because we all put our souls into the davening and made sure that we sang with energy! There was one particular piyut (a liturgical poem) that we sang that wasn't in the machzor (the RH/Yom Kippur prayerbook), but everyone was given the text on a handout. It was a call and response between the prayer leader and the congregation about crowning G-d king (a common theme in the RH liturgy), and it was so upbeat that people were dancing in the aisles!

All of the learning surrounding the themes of the high holidays during the past three weeks had a significant impact on my prayer experience this weekend. I was able to connect to the overarching structure of the liturgy much more easily than I had in years past, and the Hebrew came much more naturally. Nevertheless, the height of my prayer experience was during tekiat shofar (the blowing of the shofar - the ram's horn). The drama was heightened because we don't blow shofar on Shabbat, so we didn't hear the shofar until halfway through Sunday's services. The anticipation had certainly been building with each mention of the great sound of the shofar in the liturgy, and I was a bit nervous that hearing the shofar wasn't going to live up to my lofty expectations. It's a mitzvah just to hear the shofar on RH, and as my halakha teacher said, just hearing it is enough, even if it doesn't stir your soul in any particular way. But this Rosh Hashanah, as the tekiah gedolah (the sustained note on the shofar) was sounded, I truly felt G-d calling me to tshuva, to return to my true self.

The other major part of the weekend besides the davening was the eating - but feasting is more like it. I had four enormous meals over the course of the weekend with friends, families, and teachers (and their families), and sharing the experience of renewal in these intimate settings really rounded out the RH experience. And luckily for my stomach, tomorrow's a minor fast day! It's Tzom Gedaliah, and according to chabad.org, this means the "fast on the third of Tishrei, commemorating the assassination of Gedaliah ben Achikam, governor of the First Jewish Commonwealth in the Holy Land; after this assassination, Jewish autonomy came to an end." I was talking w/ some friends today about these minor fasts that appear on the calendar but don't get much attention from Sunday school teachers covering the Jewish holidays - this one in particular seems very obscure and hard to connect with, and one friend was saying how she may not fast tomorrow because she doesn't like to take on new practices without first studying their history and meaning. This sounds like a pretty reasonable position - why do something so obscure just to do it? Isn't it more meaningful if your practice is rooted in an informed context? On the other hand, there's a Jewish principle called "naaseh v'nishma" which means "We will do and then we will understand." Often Jewish practices have to be performed in order to experience the full meaning, even if a person doesn't fully understand all of the whys underlying them. Understanding comes through the fulfillment of the mitzvah (and in subsequent study).

What's your opinion on this concept? How do you experience taking on a new practice or ritual in your life?