ROSH HASHANA 5784
Touching the Neshama Rabbi Andrew Shaw Chief Executive, Mizrachi UK
Tonight is Rosh Hashana. Thirty days ago, we began our preparations with the sounding of the Shofar after Shacharit. More recently we began reciting Selichot and then tonight, on Friday night, Yom Ha Din finally begins. For me, up until this year, there used to be other preparations for Rosh Hashanah. Writing the numerous drashot, insights and ideas that I would be sharing in the various services I would be officiating. Planning, with the gabbayim of the services, the timetables, working out which books I needed to bring, handouts for the congregants etc. However, this year, there are no communal preparations for me to do. For the first time in twenty-three years, I will not be officiating at a shul for Rosh Hashanah. I will simply go to my shul, Edgware Adath on Shabbat morning, first day Rosh Hashanah, find my seat in my service, open my machzor and daven. It will feel very strange, but very familiar. It is what Rosh Hashana was for the first twenty-eight years of my life. Of course, the initial few were probably spent at home, too young to be taken to shul. However then came the children service years and as I moved into secondary school it became the day that I saw loads more young people in shul than I did during the rest of the year. I always wondered why they came, but hardly went into shul! I remember it was the day I got my first Aliyah l Torah as a Bar Mitzvah boy, my Hebrew Birthday is 29th Ellul. The service was held in the shul hall not the main
shul, as back then in the 1980’s, Kingsbury needed two services to fit everyone. That reminds me of my favourite answer to the Tishrei Quiz that I used to run for Tribe. I once asked. ‘What is the name of the additional service on Yom Kippur? A kid put his hand up and answered, ‘The overflow service’. We all know that we need extra services for all the people that come on Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur. For some reason the Yamim Noraim speaks to the Jewish soul. The question is, when they come, are their souls filled? I spent my Kingsbury youth years davening next to my brother. I remember they services being long and as I had a machzor with just Hebrew, I didn’t fully understand what I was saying. However, things certainly changed a few years later, as my brother got more into the tefillot on his return from Yeshiva. This really enhanced my davening and a few years later I could see why. That first Rosh Hashana in Yeshivat Hakotel was awe inspiring. For years in Kingsbury, I had been a spectator. Now I was a participant. There was a realisation that something powerful was occurring, there was an intensity that was tangible. We had been told to purchase an ArtScroll machzor so we could understand the tefillot we were saying. I realise it now, but everything I tried to do in both Stanmore and Edgware Shul over the last twenty-three years was to bring that experience into the services. To use the Yamim Noraim to touch their souls. There was nothing like Neilah in Yeshiva, to hear Rav Katz, the Rosh Kollel, pouring out his heart to Hashem, pleading with remarkable emotion during the final Avinu Malcenu. This normally quiet and humble man was suddenly transformed into a passionate spiritual giant in communication with the Divine. For an eighteen-yearold, I had never experience anything like it, it was transformative. I have never forgotten. And it is not just Yamim Noraim . So much of what Mizrachi does is to attempt to connect people to Judaism with not just the head but the heart and the Neshama. Over the last two weeks we have been performing ‘Call of the Shofar’. A magical experience taking the community through the songs and tefillot of the Yamim Noraim accompanied by powerful images and inspiring words. The feedback has been tremendous, people telling us they never realised the power and beauty in Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur. Similarly, Mizrachi and YAM (Edgware) had a moving First night Selichot where the emphasis was on the involvement of all. No Chazan, just a Shaliach Tzibbur – as was the case for all those years in Yeshiva. One of the major focuses of Rosh Hashanah, this year on second day only, is the Shofar. Again, we see that the core of theChag, is an experience – to listen to the sound of the Shofar. It is not enough to just hear it, as Rabbi Sacks explains – listening is active, hearing is passive. The Rambam famously says the Shofar is there to waken us up to our responsibilities and our obligations. Awakening us to shake ourselves out of our empty dream world. Awakening us to find our way back from crooked to straight,
from disobedience to faithfulness, from hedonism to spirituality. Awakened by a sound so pure that it pierces straight to our soul. That is the shofar – that is the goal of Rosh Hashana – to awaken the soul. That is the lesson I received from Yeshiva and tried to impart each and every year while officiating. Everyone in the community needs to feel the connection, to touch our Neshama and realise the need to return to Hashem. I hope and pray as a congregant, that I and my son will be inspired by theShaliach Tzibbur, the kehillah and the Shofar to connect to the power of the day and to begin the Aseret Yemei Teshuva with a recognition of Hashem as Melech . I will also be thinking about my eldest who is this year experiencing that Yeshiva experience in Yerushalayim for the first time and hoping my son next to me will eventually have that experience, which please God, like his father, will last a lifetime. Shabbat Shalom and Shana Tova from all of us at Mizrachi UK
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