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Thursday, October 22, 2009

Μήνας Elul

Last night was Erev Rosh Ḥodesh Elul, or the night of the new moon that inaugurates the month of אֱלוּל, or Elul, in the Hebrew Calendar. This is the last month of the year, and ends with Rosh HaShanah, the Jewish New Year, and the start of the High Holy Days (please, not High Holidays, which trivializes the sacredness of this time for us). Elul is a month for תְּשׁוּבָה (teshuvah), or introspection and repentance, where Jews settle their accounts with their Creator before the year ends, and their names are written either in the Book of Life (in which case they live for another year) or the Book of Death (in which case they die some time in the upcoming year). Most want to live another year, so they engage in a campaign over the course of the month of Elul to be the kind of people the GAOTU want to keep on the planet for another year, rather than the ones He’d rather get rid of.
To that end, we blow the shofar every morning during our morning prayers, and recite the 27th Psalm. Why blow the shofar?

Shofar
The sound of the shofar is meant to resemble the sound that emanated from Mount Sinai when Moses received his Revelation there. There is a midrash that every future Jew’s soul was there at that moment, heeding the Revelation, and consenting to live by the laws that Moses revealed there. We all heard the blast of the shofar, and whenever we hear it again, we are reminded of that day, and our consent to that Law. Medieval depictions of angels show them with long brass trumpets, but if you read the original Hebrew, angels are depicted blowing shofars.
(Aside: there’s a dating service for traditional Jews called “Saw You At Sinai“. Among Ashkenazi Jews, the Yiddish term בּאשערט, or basherte, refers to what is contemporarily called a “soulmate”. The idea of a basherte is that the two souls met at Mount Sinai as Moses was receiving his revelation, and fell in love, and planned to be born in the same era into different genders so that they could meet and fall in love and marry.)
I have a small shofar that I blow each morning this month, and I’m not that great at getting a solid sound out of it, but I do my best. I don’t want to wake up my landlady (who lives upstairs) with my morning prayers, so I blow it until I get a clear tone, and then I stop. There’s no mouthpiece on the end like a trumpet has, only a small hole. The embouchure is challenging, especially for a small shofar.
The 27th Psalm is very lovely, and I greatly enjoy reciting it. It speaks in David’s voice, clearly before he became King, when he was fighting for his life, beset by enemies on all sides. In such a precarious state, he puts his faith in the Lord, knowing that the violence visited upon him will only land on his attackers.
In the next verse, he humbly asks the Lord for one small privilege, but in truth that privilege is enormous: he asks to dwell in the house of the Lord all the days of his life, to gaze upon the beauty of the Lord, and to frequent His palace.
This request is so extraordinary that the Hebrew text has been put to music, and is sung as part of the Liturgy during the month of Elul:
ד אַחַת ׀ שָׁאַלְתִּי מֵאֵת־יְיָ
Aḥat sha’alti mei’eit-Adonai
4. One thing I ask of the Lord,
אוֹתָהּ׃אֲבַקֵּשׁ
otah avakeish
that I will seek after:
שִׁבְתִּי בְּבֵית־יְיָ
shiv’ti b’veit-Adonai
to live in the house of the Lord
כׇּל־יְמֵי חַיַּי
kol y’mei ḥayyai
all the days of my life;
לַחֲזוֹת בְּנֹעַם־יְיָ
laḥazot b’no’am-Adonai
to behold the beauty of the Lord,
וּלְבַקֵּר בְּהֵיכָלוֹ׃
ul’vakeir b’heiḥalo.
to frequent His palace.
I couldn’t find a copy of the tune, but it’s very pretty. It stays with you, and you find yourself repeating the words to yourself long after you’ve stopped singing, which is I guess the point. It’s a lovely sentiment to have floating in your head.
After a bit of triumphalism, David gets melancholy again. He remembers God’s commandment to “Seek My face,” and begs God not to hide His face from him, and never to forsake him, even though David’s mother and father have abandoned him. He speculates what his life would have been like if he never had the assurance that he would enjoy the goodness of the Lord in the land of the living, and the poem breaks off in dread.
The final verse, Psalm 27:14, resolves his confusion with an admonition:
יד קַוֵּה אֶל־יְיָ׃
Kavvei el-Adonai
14. Look to the Lord;
חֲזַק וְיַאֲמֵץ לִבֶּךָ׃
ḥazak v’ya’ameits libeḥa
be strong and of good courage!
וְקַוֵּה אֶל־יְיָ׃
v’kavveh el-Adonai!
O look to the Lord!
This is also sung, but I can’t remember the tune right now.
It seems to me that there is nothing in this psalm that any believer in the Grand Architect of the Universe can object to, which is why I share this psalm on a forum with other masons. I write a lot about the Jewish perspective, because it’s the only one I have direct experience of, but as a mason I feel that all who worship the GAOTU worship the same being (if there’s only one God, there’s only one God). I certainly have no wish to persuade anyone not Jewish that the Jewish perspective is superior to their own. Judaism is not an evangelical religion, and conversion to Judaism is nearly as complicated as gender reassignment. No traditional rabbi will perform a conversion unless he is convinced you were one of the souls at Mount Sinai, and somehow born into the womb of a non-Jew. Most traditional rabbis will beg you not to convert if you ask them, but you can break their resistance in a year or two of persistent effort.
I search my heart, and I’m not sure the Book of Life and Book of Death function the way traditional Jews describe. That’s OK. The Jewish faith is about deeds rather than beliefs, and if one obeys the commandments, how one is motivated to do so is a personal matter. But everyone, Jew or otherwise, can benefit from a month of personal introspection. Christians have Lent, Muslims have Ramadan, and I’m sure other traditions have their own extended period of self-reflection and re-commitment to be good. If you notice your Jewish brothers are a bit more quiet and thoughtful for the next month and a half, now you’ll know why.

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