Insuring a Happy New Year

Rabbi Yaakov Bieler

Yamim Noraim, 5765

        Rosh HaShana, and Yom HaKippurim, as well as the other holidays of the Jewish year, are richly associated with both spiritual and sensual experiences. Even as our very souls are challenged to repent and strengthen our connections to God and His Tora, our senses are bombarded with the sounds of the Shofar and the liturgy of the Days of Awe, the tastes of honey, tzimmus, teiglach, and the other traditional foods of the season, as well as two days (Yom HaKippurim and Tzom Gedalya) of deprivation of these tastes, and the sights of kittels, worshippers engaged in deep and concentrated devotions, bodies of water at which the Tashlich prayers are recited.

            The Talmud in Horiyot 12a and Keritut 6a provides an authoritative basis for some of the practices that engage our senses on Rosh HaShana. On the one hand, we read about an ancient custom that may very well be associated with our Tashlich ritual.

The Rabbis taught: Kings are to be anointed next to a spring in order to symbolize the continuity of their dynasty. As it is written, (I Kings 1:33) “And the king (David) said to them, ‘Take with you the servants of your master…and take him (Solomon) down to the Gichon (the most important source of water for Jerusalem, located to the east of the city).”

MaHaRShA comments that such a practice was particularly significant during times when rulership was being contested, as in the case of Solomon, who was being challenged by his half-brother Adoniyahu (see I Kings 1:5 ff.) concerning who would succeed David on the throne. Just as the waters of the spring flow unceasingly, so too by anointing a king on such a site, we are conveying our hopes that his reign will continue in an uninterrupted fashion. As for Tashlich on Rosh HaShana, since one of the themes of the holiday is God’s Kingship over all of His Creation—the first of the three central sections of the Mussaf prayers is entitled Malchiyot (Kingship) and contains ten verses drawn from throughout the Bible, expressing different aspects of Divine Rule—by reciting prayers next to this type of water source, we are at least symbolically enacting a coronation of HaShem at this time of year.

            A few lines later in the two Talmudic sources, we encounter an unequivocal reference to our practice to eat (the Talmud contains an alternate reading which calls for merely looking at, rather than actually consuming) a number of symbolic foods on Rosh HaShana:

Said Abaye: Now that you have taken the position that engaging in symbolism is meaningful (as opposed to shrugging off such behavior as mere superstition), a person should always be accustomed at the beginning of the year to eat/see: 1) squash, 2) fenugreek (an herb of the pea family used to flavor curry; there are those who substitute black-eyed peas for this herb), 3) leeks, 4) beets, and 5) dates.

Commentators on this Talmudic passage suggest that by virtue of these vegetables, herbs, and fruits growing quickly and/or tall, eating/seeing them will reinforce our hopes and prayers for parallel fruitfulness and growth during the coming year.

However, when we consider the section in the Talmudic sources that appears between the recording of the practice to anoint kings next to flowing springs on the one hand, and the eating/viewing of various symbolic foods on the other, there is cause for concern that all of these practices are actually informed by assumptions that run contrary to the beliefs of a traditional Jew!

Said R. Ami: 1) An individual who wishes to know if he will live through the next year or not, should light a candle during the Ten Days of Repentance between Rosh HaShana and Yom HaKippurim in his home where there is draft. If the flame remains lit, s/he will know that s/he will live through the coming year.

2) A person who wishes to begin a business venture, and wishes to know if the coming year will prove successful or not, let him/her raise a chicken. If the chicken becomes fat and robust, s/he will know that the enterprise will be successful.

3) Someone who is considering undertaking a journey, and wishes to know if s/he will return to his/her home or not, let him/her enter a darkened house. If s/he sees his/her shadow, s/he knows that s/he will return to his/her house.

BUT THESE PRACTICES ARE NOT TO BE TAKEN SERIOUSLY—SINCE IF S/HE BECOMES FAINTHEARTED (as a result of the flame being extinguished, the chicken not thriving, and the failure to observe one’s shadow) HIS/HER “MAZAL” (lit. planet, connoting fate, astrological influences) WILL BE ADVERSELY AFFECTED.

RaShI, commenting on the last part of the Talmudic passage, states the following:

Sometimes, even if one does not see his/her shadow, s/he will return. Nevertheless (despite the lack of inevitability of failure and disaster suggested by the flame going out, the chicken not growing, and not noticing the shadow), these practices are not to be engaged in, because, e.g., in the event that one does not see the shadow, one becomes demoralized, his/her Mazal will be adversely affected (i.e., it becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy, and due to a newly experienced lack of confidence, the person will give in to obstacles and dangers, thereby realizing the dire implications of the symbolic action in which s/he engaged prior to the outset of the year, business venture, trip), and s/he will indeed not return. Conversely, had the test never been undertaken, there would not have been an opportunity to obtain a negative result, and the individual might have confronted the obstacles that s/he was likely to encounter more resolutely and courageously (this last line is a paraphrase).

It would appear that the three cases whereby a person attempts to determine what lies ahead are examples of “Nichush” or divination. The Tora in VaYikra 19:26 and Devarim 18:10 explicitly prohibits this type of soothsaying. In Beraishit 44:5, Yosef instructs his servant to explain to the brothers why the cup that he had secreted in Binyamin’s sack of grain was so important to the Egyptian ruler. “This from which my master drinks, he uses it to engage in divination. You have repaid the good that has been done on your behalf with evil!” R. S.R. Hirsch, with regard to this verse, suggests a rationale accounting for why the Tora would oppose “Nichush”:

…the ordinary man does, after all, have quite a lot to thank his fate for, and if he reaches the stage of believing that we have not to thank our “Tzedakot”, our moral worth, for our good fortune, then we easily ascribe it to supernatural forces and it is because of the demoralizing effect of “Nichush” that it is forbidden. For as soon as we believe that we can do something to effect our fate other than by being good, have to be afraid of something else than of doing wrong, we are at once in danger of becoming bad, omitting being good on account of “Nichush”, or doing bad trusting to “Nichush”. Then we no longer weigh our actions on the scales of Tora; cease to do that which we ought to do, because we believe that we can do something else to obtain our objects.

Meiri on Horiyot 12a claims that it is precisely in order to avoid misconceptions regarding the purpose of the seeing/eating of fruits and vegetables on Rosh HaShana, that the formulations, “Yehi Ratzon HaShem Elokeinu V’Elokai Avotainu She…” (Let it be Your Will, Lord, our God and God of our fathers that…) were added. The Talmud describes these practices as being relegated to nothing more than merely looking at/eating the produce. However, when we add to these rituals the prayers to HaShem in the hope that our wishes be fulfilled in the coming year, it is eminently clear that our successes and failures will depend not on our magically interacting with the symbolic foods alone, but rather on our earning HaShem’s Support by fulfilling His Law and living according to His Expectations. Consequently, we may consume all of the honey that we may choose, but guaranteeing a “sweet year” will depend upon far more substantive and meaningful behavior on each of our parts. And as for fast days, we can punctiliously make sure that we have fasted for exactly the right number of hours, but if the abnegation is unaccompanied by Teshuva (repentance), Tefilla (prayer) and Tzedaka (charity), then we may have been wasting our time.

During the Ten Days of Repentance, we both pray as well as enact our fervent wishes for the coming year. While we realize that HaShem prefers to sit on the Throne of Mercy rather than the Throne of Judgement (see Avoda Zora 3b), we must nevertheless commit ourselves to proving worthy of His Compassion and Confidence. Our sensory experiences during this awe-inspiring period should become self-fulfilling prophecies, not in the sense of discouraging us from meeting our responsibilities and dealing with problems that we may encounter, but rather as goals and states of mind that we will hopefully be able to achieve and maintain over the coming days and months as a result of our hard-earned heightened spirituality and ethical sensibility.

Gemar Chatima Tova to all!