Rosh Hashona Drash

This is a time of rebirth, a new universe. All year God takes one breath and now we have a glorious echo of a pause before the inhale. The gift is that we get to see the pause, to hear it, to know it. As Rabbi Akiba says…Beloved is the human since he was created in God’s image. Greater is that love in that it was made known to him that he was created in God’s image.

What I like about the Torah portions for Rosh Hashonah, Genesis 21 and 22, is that they reflect this circularity. They begin with the birth of Isaac and the sending away of Hagar, continue with the Akedah (the almost sacrifice of Isaac) and end with God’s covenant with Abraham and his return home. We travel from birth to physical to spiritual survival, to sight (in other words to knowledge) and then back to the core of radiance.

The thing about a circle is that you can jump in anywhere. First though I’d like to discuss physical and spiritual survival. So often, we feel there’s a conflict, a dichotomy, that we have to give one up for the other. We get carried away; decide to strip our soul to feed our body. Or, we forget this world, hang out on mountain tops and never come down. But really, how many divine sparks can we gift to God before our sons (like Nabav and Abihu) are zapped? What is the ultimate sacrifice? How much light can we gift right up to the sacrifice of our most beloved child?

Let’s look at the birth of this child, of Isaac, at the beginning of chapter 21. And the Lord remembered Sarah as He had said and the Lord did unto Sarah as He had spoken. Clearly, there’s repetition here, highly circular language. First, there’s a memory sprouting into action. Next, that which is said is growing into the greater body of having been spoken. So already, before we even meet Isaac, we have the seed of thought, yes, conception and perhaps even the embryonic growth. We have language that emphasizes natural spheres. Later, Sarah laughs. And Sarah said, God hath made laughter for me; everyone that heareth will laugh on account of me. What happens when we laugh? Light bubbles up from our bellies and comes out as music. Here, it becomes contagious, exquisite, a symphony. It reflects our joy this New Year, our celebration. It can be seen as a mini‐sacrifice, as the flow and gift of our love to God. But there isn’t any sacrifice without pain. And there isn’t pain without birth. Here, pain is in the white space, between the lines. The message is not to get stuck in it. We just want to be aware.

After birth, we circle into the shock of physical survival. Sarah exiles the slave‐woman Hagar and her son, Ishmael. It’s hard to understand. It seems cruel. But, like so many of us, Sarah is thinking about the basics. Is this a bad thing? Not in Torah. Both Ishmael and Isaac end up being blessed. Both boys (seemingly in conflict) are now connected through the blessing. As a reflection, our body and our spirit (seemingly in conflict) are now connected through the blessing. So, shock is brought to balance and turned into joy. Later, when Ishmael seems to be dyeing Hagar does not say…please do not let him die. She says, let me not look upon the death of the child. In her minds‐eye, in the non linear time in Torah, Ishmael is already dead. Then, Ishmael is alive. Hagar is therefore a witness to the rebirth of her child. The possibility of rebirth is established. We can now circle into spiritual survival and the Akedah.

Chapter 22 begins like this: And it came to pass after these things, that God did prove Abraham…. Grammatically, Abraham is to be proven. His existence is to be verified. And how? God tells him to sacrifice his son. This seems like a pretty outrageous request. We might wonder, how can a sacrifice prove our love for the divine, prove that we are here? This leads us back to the idea of laughter. Rashi points out that the word Yitzak or Isaac is closely related to the Hebrew will laugh. Clearly, Abraham is being told to offer up those divine sparks. But how many can we sacrifice before we also sacrifice our sites, our bodies? How close to God can we get before we are farther than ever before? In Genesis 22 a spirit/body balance is found. God, with Abraham’s help, sets it for the rest of time. And we discover this: There is no limit to how close we can be with God. The ultimate gift goes beyond our children or ourselves, beyond life and death, beyond a burnt offering, a finite request. We don’t need to sacrifice Isaac. We can do more than life. We can give more that. And it’s this acceptance of infinite sacrifice, of love beyond the physical, and of the mystery that allows for our spiritual survival and our rebirth. As it says in the Haftorah…Yes, I have loved you with an everlasting love; therefore I draw you close to me
with loving kindness. I will build you again and you will be restored.

But what if we lose balance? What if, for even the best reason, we reject our potential and limit
ourselves, our sacrifice? Well, we can hear and see. We can pick up where we left off. There will be a ram in the bushes and we will take part in teshuvah, to turn around. Like Hagar,we will witness the miracle of God’s love for us. And at that place, on that mountain (that Abraham later titles Adonai Yir’eh or God Will See) our body and our spirit merge with divine consciousness. On that mountain we hear the echo between inhale and exhale, the laughter of Isaac, the rams horn. We go forth in the dances of the merrymakers, rejoice in our knowledge, own that moment of pain and joy, that wake up call. We do exist. We are proven. We are one. We are on that mountain now. With our divine sparks flowing from our eyes, our ears, our hearts, we are all God’s people. And God wants us to know that there are no boundaries to His love, that the circle is endless, seamless, beautiful and carries our return to Him. We just need to do the work and enjoy the ride.

So may the rams horn remind us that we all have as many children as there are stars in the heavens, that we need not fear ourselves as sites of sacrifice. May we have the knowledge to forgive ourselves and each other and to pick up where we left off. May we all have gratitude. May we know peace. And may we envision ourselves this coming year, day to day and moment to moment, as beautiful spirits carrying infinite light to God and to each other. L’shana tova. Happy New Year.