WORDS and NON-WORDS

Rabbi Donald P. Cashman

B’nai Sholom Reform Congregation, Albany, N.Y.
Rosh Hashanah Eve 5779 / September 9, 2018

INTRO
Gut Yuntiff, Everyone.
After all the anticipation and preparation, it’s nice to finally get the holidays
rolling. We’ve got a September and a Tishrei chock-full of holidays and the services to
go with them: Rosh Hashanah, Shabbat Shuvah, Yom Kippur, another Shabbat before
Sukkot, the Shabbat during Sukkot, and Simhat Torah, when we unfurl the entire Torah
scroll around the room, providing we have enough hands to hold it. Next year – you
might want to mark your calendars now – Rosh Hashanah begins on Sunday,
September 29, with the first day of Sukkot coming on Columbus Day.
Our holy days are determined by the moon, and the seasons by the sun, so the
calendar gets adjusted, frequently making us perceive the holidays either “early” or
“late.” I like to say that they always come on time, but they do vary in relation to the
solstice, not mention the entire Gregorian calendar.

WORDS I
Part of what we celebrate at this season, according to Jewish tradition, is the
creation of sun, moon, stars, plants, animals, and humans. The whole universe was
created in Tishrei, at Rosh Hashanah. There always being another opinion in Judaism,
one guy –Rabbi Abbaye, using the measurements of Rav Shmuel - said it was in not in
the fall but in spring, in Nisan, so once every 28 years we do a ritual for that opinion. But
every year, on Rosh Hashanah, we proclaim ‫“ היום הרת העולם‬today the world was
born.”
The universe was created, according to the Torah, by God proclaiming ‫יהי אור‬
“Let there be light!” Words cause it to happen. Spoken words bring about the universe.
God says “Let there be this, let there by that..” and everything just <poof!> happens.
What a great story!
At this season, we think about our deeds and mis-deeds. Again, by Jewish
tradition, the primary listing of positive deeds, and forbidden actions is delivered by God
in spoken words to Moses atop Mt. Sinai. Words govern our behavior.
Long gone are the days when Jews worshipped God by slaughtering, cooking,
and making offerings to God of rams, goats, oxen, fowl, wheat flour, and olive oil. “The
service of the heart” which replaced the sacrifices was prayer, spoken words of praise,
thanks, and petition. Today we will use words to bind ourselves to our heritage, to
remind ourselves of the values our people have made sacred, and to commit ourselves
to personal realignment to the paths of goodness and righteousness.
Our words have value.
Let’s hope we can hear them.

SHOFAR I
On Rosh Hashanah, it is not words the Torah says we should hear, but rather the
sound of the Shofar. The primary mitzvah, the primary religious obligation we have,

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according to the Torah, is to hear the Shofar blasts. The name of this holy day in the
Torah is “Yom Teruah,” (Num 29:1) the Day of the Horn-blast. It’s never called “Rosh
Hashanah” in the Torah. It is not our words that characterize this day, but the non-
words emanating from an oh-so primitive animal horn.

What do you hear when you hear the shofar?

Do you hear the raw sounds of an animal horn? Do you hear …music? Do you
hear …the patterns? Do you hear…another way to make the service longer? Do you
hear…a way of calling out to God? Do you hear…sounds that Jews have been listening
to in every generation since Moses stood at the foot of the mountain, and which greeted
him when he came down, as the people witnessed thunder and lightning, and saw the
mountain smoking?
Do you hear, as the rabbis heard, the sheva-a-a-rim sound as an old man
groaning, or the teruah-ah-ah-ah as a woman sighing? Do you hear a baby crying?
Do you hear…a wake up call?
These sounds have value.
Let’s hope we can hear them.

WORDS II
As significant, no, as crucial as the shofar is to Rosh Hashanah, we will spend
most of our worship time in the world of words. We’ll read and sing and chant words of
praise, thanks, and petition. Particular to this season, our words will urge us to
reflection, exhort us to repentance, and hopefully push us to change.
When I was younger, I had a brain problem. I would sometime operate my mouth
without first engaging my brain. I’ve overcome that, at least I think I have. During these
Days of Awe, we have to make sure our ears and our brains are in gear to hear the
words that are coming out of our mouths. The person on your right or left doesn’t have
to hear your prayers; I don’t have to hear your prayers; you have to hear your prayers.
And when you hear and understand and accept those words of prayer, then yes, your
prayers will be heard on High.
We all want to be better people in this New Year. We want more good feelings,
good experiences, good vibes, good humor, good deeds done by us, and for us. I would
like to suggest that before there is room in our lives for more goodness, we have to
purge all the bad feelings, guilt, baggage, we’ve managed to pick up during the past
year. Here are words we wish to eliminate from our lives: hate, foulness,
disparagement, slander, disgust, pessimism, and distain; so much negativity we’ve
picked up in recent times. It’s hard to get rid of all that, I know; we’re comfortable in our
misery because it seems to fit us like a second skin.
When our purge is done, we’ll have room to upload the good words: kindness,
thoughtfulness, support, concern, appreciation, gratitude, love. ‫ חסד‬Lovingkindness:
‫עולם חסד יבנה‬

SHOFAR II
Rabbi Uziel Meizels, one of the early followers of the Baal Shem Tov in the 18 th
century, wrote that the shofar sounds were a secret language between the Jews and
God. God would hear the sounds the Jews were making, and would know what they

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mean. The powerful supernatural forces of evil in the universe that the Hasidim
believed existed, however, would not be able to understand.
I wonder if we can decode those sounds.
To advance in rank in as a Boy Scout, I had to learn Morse Code. I worked with
my father Z”L on this; not only had he been a scout, but he’d been in the Navy, so he
really knew Morse Code. In Morse Code, there are dots and dashes arranged in
patterns to make letters of the alphabet. Both the sender and receiver have to know the
code to accurately understand the message.
Can we decode the shofar’s sounds? God knows.
God hears the sounds at the same time that we recite sentences from the Bible
regarding God’s sovereignty, God remembering the deeds of our ancestors, and other
times that the ancient Israelites sounded the shofar. Presumably that will remind God
that we are here, and calling out.
But think about the sounds:
 Tekiah is a simple, plain blast. That, my friends, is who we are today. Simple,
plain people, presenting ourselves.
 Shevarim is the second call. Each lo-hi is 1/3 of a tekiah. Three of them are the
length of one tekiah. “Shevarim” means “broken.” Today, we begin to break
ourselves down in preparation for the Ten Days of Repentance. We admit that in
many ways, we are broken; we are not the wonderful humans that we were
created to be, that we have the possibility to become.
 Teruah, the third call, is an alarm. Three teruot equal one pair of shevarim, and
nine of the staccato notes are the length of one tekiyah. Not only are we broken,
we are fragmented, so very set apart from wholeness.
 Each line of blasts culminates with a recapitulating Tekiyah. The message that
we hope to convey is one of she’leimut: completeness. We wish to be returned to
the state of wholeness.
 And to emphasize that point, each major set is marked with a final Tekiyah
gedolah, a bolding, an underlining, an exclamation point to our message: “Return
us to completeness in every way: physical, emotional, psychological, and
spiritual.” Grant us more than we can expect, more than we are entitled to in the
New Year.

WORDS III
The sounds from of our shofarot are vessels that contain our Jewish truths of the
season. Our prayers, our words, may also be vessels of truth, but the proper kavvanah,
intention or thought, must support the words. Just saying words doesn’t make them
true. The pairing of “words” and “truth,” while precious to us – it’s in the 10
Commandments once if not twice that perjury is wrong - is apparently not precious to
all. Falsehood exists around us – more than ever it seems – and it’s seeping out of the
cesspools, polluting our society, polluting our lives.
The Hebrew for “truth,” ‫אמת‬, starts with the first letter of the Hebrew alef-bet,
ends with the last letter, and has one of the middle letter in the middle. In gematria, ‫אמת‬
has the value of 441, which is the same as the word ‫“ וכמעשה‬and like the deeds” in
Leviticus (18:3). The truth of our words is proven only by our actions.

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 It is not the words that matter: it is the deeds they lead to. Our good words must
lead to good deeds. Our confession tonight is ‫“ אבינו מלכנו אין בנו מעשים‬God, we haven’t
done good deeds.” We haven’t done enough of the things our tradition demands of us.
Not only do we have to put our ears in gear to hear what our mouth says, we have to
get our hands, and our hearts and our souls to go along too.

SHOFAR III
On that day, when all our words and our hands and our hearts and our souls are
synchronized to build the world of hesed, the shofar will sound one more time. It won’t
be like the warning of the Day of Judgement of which the prophet Zephaniah spoke,
(Zeph 1:16) as the Babylonians were coming to conquer and destroy. It will instead be
like Isaiah’s day of redemption and salvation: ֒ ‫ׁשֹופר גָדֹול‬
ָ֣ ָ ‫“ וְהָ יָ ָ֣ה ׀ בַּ יָ֣ ֹום הַּ ֗הּוא י ִָת ַּקע֮ ְב‬And in
that day, a great ram’s horn shall be sounded” (Is. 27:13).
May this New Year of 5779 be a year of more truth in words, and more hesed in
actions, so that the supernal light sown at creation, hidden for the righteous, may come
upon us and all the world, bringing blessing to all.

XXX

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