ROSH HASHANAH SECOND DAY: T’FILLAH, T’SHUVAH, ACTION!
(Torah discussion led by Rabbi J.B. Sacks)
Introduction to Study/Exploration
Our custom here at Am HaYam is to begin the year by studying together on Second Day Rosh HaShanah. In general, I try to place before us three texts that come from three different places, even three different time frames. We not only explore each, but we try to discover connections between them and discern messages for ourselves as we begin a new year.
Introduction to Text #1
Our first text is by Israeli poet Amir Gilboa. Gilboa was born Berl Feldmann in a small town in the Ukrainian province of Volhynia. This area means a lot to me, because of lot of my family on my father’s side was from there. Most were killed in the Shoah. Most of the few who survived joined a partisan group.
In his youth Gilboa was taught Hebrew and the classical texts by a local tutor. In his teen years he spent time at a hachsharah encampment—a “preparatory” village that readied Jewish youth for aliyah and life on a kibbutz. In late 1937 he joined a group of forty who made a successful attempt at illegal immigration to Eretz Yisrael. Around 20 years old, he worked a variety of jobs: in orchards and quarries, and on road building projects. He joining the Great Britain’s Eighth Army in 1942,taking part in the North Africa campaign and later in Italy. In 1944, he joined the Jewish Brigade. He was later involved in Israel’s 1948-49 War of Independence.
Apparently Gilboa returned to Eretz Yisrael from World War II with nearly 100 poems written on various battlefields. These works included elegies on the deaths of his parents, brothers, and sisters, all victims of the Holocaust.
In addition to his poetry, he served for 20 years as a member of the editorial staff of the Masada Publishing Company in Tel Aviv. In this role he was able to encourage the publication of works by several of Israel’s younger poets. He was the recipient of many honors, include the Israel Prize for literature (1982).
This poem is from his 1968 volume From I Wanted to Write the Lips of Sleepers. Many of the poems are concerned with with the poet’s feelings about the power or powerlessness of expression. The poems contemplate things beyond human control: life’s swift passing, the impersonality of time, feelings of isolation. The poet seems caught in a kind of limbo between knowing and fear, insight and helplessness. He suffers conflict and ambivalence; he wavers between affirmation and negation. This ambiguity is marked by the poems’ structure: many have no firm ending; verses are constituted of intermingled phrases that flow into one another without any clarifying punctuation. We readers grope for coherence, for a proper sense of phrasing, a reasonable division of words. This, perhaps, helps us to empathize in some way with the poet’s plight.
Now I’ll read our first text on your handout, first in Hebrew, then in English.
Text #1: “Ani Mit-palleI” (“I Pray”) by Amir Gilboa (1917-1984)
אני מתפלל מתוך הלב סדור
קרוע שולים וכל המלים החסרות אני
רואן מתעופפות כבר זמן רב מתעופפות
ומבקשות מנוח לכף הרגל איך
אביא להן מזור ולב
סדורי אכול שולים
אזל וערם
I pray within my heart a siddur,
one with torn edges and all its missing words I
see have long since flown away, flown away
and seeking a resting-place. How
shall I bring a bandage for them
when my heart’s siddur with eaten edges
still goes naked?
Questions to Consider:
- What do you consider to be the poem’s main theme?
- What might be the import of the image of a siddur within the human heart?
- What might this poem tell us about Gilboa?
- In what ways might Gilboa (or the implied speaker of the poem) be wanting to access tradition and participate in it, and in what ways do we sense this is difficult for him?
- What message/s might this poem convey to us on this Rosh HaShanah?
Introduction to Text #2
The founder of CHaBaD Chassidism, Reb Schneur Zalman of Liadi (1745-1812), told his grandson, Rabbi Menacham Mendel Schneersohn of Lubavitch (1789-1866, the third head of CHaBaD) something about Reb Zushya. Reb Zushya was in the third generation of Chassidic masters, following the generation of the Baal Shem Tov and then his disciples. Rabbi Zusha was known for his deep emotional approach towards prayer and his great piety.
In any event, Reb Shneur Zalman of Liadi told his grandson that Reb Zushya said, simply, “I cannot reach the level of t’shuvah, “return,” that our Rebbe has described. I would rather divide t’shuvah into five parts.” So Reb Zushya picked five biblical verses, each of which represents a different aspect of T’shuvah that Reb Zushya identified, each beginning with one letter of the word t’shuvah, which serves as a portal to that quality of return. Assembling disparate verses together creates a new poem, and hence gives us a new experience or view into t’shuvah, for the new work is more than the sum of its five parts. As I read the verses in Hebrew and then English, see what aspects Reb Zushya feels are important.
Text #2: T’shuvah Verses, Reb Zusha of Hanipol (1718-1800)
תָּמִ֣ים תִּֽהְיֶ֔ה עִ֖ם יְהֹוָ֥ה אֱלֹהֶֽיךָ׃ (Deuteronomy 18:13)
שִׁוִּ֬יתִי יְהֹוָ֣ה לְנֶגְדִּ֣י תָמִ֑יד כִּ֥י מִֽ֝ימִינִ֗י בַּל־אֶמּֽוֹט׃ (Psalm 16:8)
(Leviticus 19:18) וְאָֽהַבְתָּ֥ לְרֵעֲךָ֖ כָּמ֑וֹךָ
(Proverbs 3:6) בְּכׇל־דְּרָכֶ֥יךָ דָעֵ֑הוּ
(Micah 6:8) הַצְנֵ֥עַ לֶ֖כֶת עִם־אֱלֹהֶֽיךָ׃
T: You shall be wholly present with your G!d A-d-nai.
SH: I am ever mindful of HaShem; at my side, I am unshakeable.
U: Love your fellow being as yourself.
V: Know the Source on all your paths.
H: Walk modestly with your G!d.
Questions to Consider:
- What does Reb Zushya consider important for doing t’shuvah?
- Are these verses connected to each other in any way? What flow (if any) do you discern from the first through the fifth verse?
- How does being “wholly present” lead, at least eventually, to “walking modestly”?
- Do you think Reb Zushya is emphasizing our relationship with G!d, as suggested by using four verses about G!d, or is Reb Zushya emphasizing our relationship with people, evidenced by placing it in the middle, the core, of the poem?
- What linkages do you find between Gilboa’s poem and Reb Zushya’s?
- What does this poem teach us about t’shuvah that we may not have known or otherwise considered?
- What message/s might this poem convey to us on this Rosh HaShanah?
Introduction to Text #3
David Whyte (b. 2 November 1955) is an Anglo-Irish poet. He is known for the spirituality that his poems evoke. He is close friends with Irish poet and philosopher John O’Donohue, who has popularized Celtic spirituality. O’Donohue’s writings has inspired any number of the prayer introductions I have created for the High Holy Days over the past number of years.
During his twenties, Whyte worked as a naturalist and lived in the Galápagos Islands, where he experienced a near drowning on the southern shore of Hood Island.
Whyte has written ten volumes of poetry and four books of prose. He explains that his poetry is based on “the conversational nature of reality.” He is not Jewish. Whyte defines poetry as “Language against which we have no defenses.”
This poem is from the volume River Flow: New and Selected Poems (2007, rev. 2012).
He suggests here that when doing something we sometimes get stuck at the first step. As our tradition knows, Kol hat-chalot kashot, “all beginnings are difficult.” Yet we can only know the path before us by taking that first step.
The challenge of this poem is about engaging in what Whyte calls “the courageous conversation,” which he states is about how we live authentically listening to our own hearts desires and truly living from our own souls.
Text #3: “Start Close In” by David Whyte (b. 1955)
Start close in, becomes an
don’t take the second step intimate
or the third, private ear
start with the first that can
thing really listen
close in, to another.
the step
you don’t want to take. Start right now
take a small step
Start with you can call your own
the ground don’t follow
you know, someone else’s
the pale ground heroics, be humble
beneath your feet, and focused,
your own start close in,
way to begin don’t mistake
the conversation. that other
for your own.
Start with your own
question, Start close in,
give up on other don’t take
people’s questions, the second step
don’t let them or the third,
smother something start with the first
simple. thing
close in,
To hear the step
another’s voice, you don’t want to take.
follow
your own voice,
wait until
that voice
Questions to Consider:
- How would you articulate Whyte’s central theme here?
- What phrases or images resonate most with you? Why might that be?
- Five of the six stanzas begin with the word “Start,” which appears seven times. These stanzas surround a stanza all about listening. What, for you, is the relationship between listening and starting in doing our personal growth work?
- In what ways is this poem best coupled with Gilboa’s, and in what ways is it best coupled with Reb Zushya’s?
- What message/s might this poem convey to us on this Rosh HaShanah?
Concluding Questions to Consider:
- Do you see these three poems as offering three different/discrete perspectives? Or do these poems offer or flow about something, or something closer to a point of view?
- What have you gained for yourself as we start the New Year by exploring these poems?
- What commitment to yourself might you make for this New Year, perhaps starting today, as you pray “a siddur within your heart,” learn to “walk modestly,” and “start close in”?
I pray that this discussion will continue after we get home and seek to use the Days of T’shuvah ahead of us to implement the ideas and suggestions inspired by these texts. Amen.