Before Whom We Stand
Our Prayers on Rosh Hashanah
Rosh Hashanah is a day of recognizing the power and majesty of G-d. We stand before the Creator of the universe and acknowledge that our lives, our futures, and the world itself are in His hands.
Prayer is an expression of our belief that we matter and are worthy of G-d listening to us. Our individual voices matter. Our hopes, fears, disappointments, gratitude, and tears are worthy of being heard and seen.
Descartes said, “I think therefore I am.”
Rabbi Jonathan Sacks said “I pray, therefore I’m not alone.”
Prayer is not only about asking G-d to change something. It is about turning toward Him and knowing that we are not alone.
And Rosh Hashanah gives us an especially powerful way to understand and focus on this relationship.
Most of the Torah readings on RH are stories of parents and children, particularly mothers and their children.
We hear about Chana, who desperately longs for a child and pours out her heart in prayer.
We hear about Rachel, who cries and prays for her children (the Jewish people) to return to their homeland after being exiled after the destruction of the Temple in Jerusalem.
We read about Hagar, sent into the wilderness with her son, Yishmael. When their water runs out, they cry out and are both heard by G-d.
And then there is the tradition connecting the 100 blasts of the shofar to the 100 cries of Sisera's mother when she realizes that her son, a Canaanite army general, has been killed in battle. When she understands that he is not returning from battle against the Jews, she sobs 100 times. This we understand is why we blow the shofar 100 times on Rosh Hashana.
We read about the intense, loving and intimate human relationship that exists between a parent and child.
A mother knows what it means to love someone before that child can do anything. She worries. She hopes. She protects. She listens for the smallest cry. She celebrates her child's successes and aches over their suffering. She wants her child to flourish, to become who they are meant to become.
These stories give us a limited, deeply human anthropomorphic way of understanding the way G-d relates to us.
If we can begin to understand the depth of a parent's love for a child, perhaps we can begin to glimpse the depth of G-d's love for us.
G-d is both intimate and transcendent. He is our Parent, close enough to hear our cry, and our Creator and Ruler of the universe.
We blow the shofar.
The shofar is ultimately breath transformed into sound. It is such a primal prayer. We don't need words. We simply breathe out and cry from our deepest essence.
And that breath connects us back to the very source of our existence: the breath that G-d constantly breathes into us.
On Rosh Hashanah, we come before G-d with all that we are. With our hopes, our fears, our longing, our gratitude, and sometimes simply our tears.
We cry out. And we know that He hears us, that we matter and that we are not alone.
Perhaps that is one of the deepest gifts of prayer on Rosh Hashanah: not simply believing that G-d can answer us, but knowing that G-d desires a relationship with us. G-d invites us to turn toward Him. G-d listens and loves us like a loving parent to their beloved child.
Rosh Hashana is our opportunity to deeply focus on before whom we stand. To recognize the enormity of the relationship we are invited to have with the Creator of all and the One who is beyond anything we can possibly understand. And yet,we know that we are incredibly privileged to be heard, seen and loved for who we are.
Much love
Elissa
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