Arthur Kurzweil - Author, Teacher, Genealogist, Magician

“Our self-examinations and personal soul-searching are not for Rosh Hashanah”

Arthur Kurzweil — Wed, 08 Sep 2010 04:02:11 +0000

“On Rosh Hashanah we plead with God to go on running the world’s business and be our King.

Our little self-examinations and personal soul-searching are not for Rosh Hashanah.

We have the whole month of Elul, which comes before Rosh Hashanah, to devote to repentance and to return to God.

Rosh Hashanah involves something else.

Having finished the world’s annual stock taking, we are ready, through forgetting and remembrance, to start a new page of history and welcome God.

This is why most of the holiday rituals, including the shofar blasts, are designed to solemnly proclaim the arrival of the King and make way for Him.

This is the meaning of Psalm 24, which is recited often on Rosh Hashanah:

‘O gate, lift up your heads! Up high you everlasting doors, so that the King of glory may come in.’

This is exactly what we do on Rosh Hashanah.

We open the gates of the year, so that God may enter.

–Rabbi Adin Steinsaltz

From “The Days of Awe,” p. 30-31, in The Seven Lights on the Major Jewish Festivals by Rabbi Adin Steinsaltz

“Why is the New Year period called the ‘Days of Awe,’ when it has nothing to do with fear?”

Arthur Kurzweil — Tue, 07 Sep 2010 04:02:47 +0000

Why is the New Year period called the "Days of Awe," when it has nothing to do with fear?

The concept of "awe" refers to Divine transcendence, which is the true meaning of what is usually called "fear of God."

"Fearing" God means being conscious of His transcendence.

This explains why Jews go to the synagogue on Rosh Hashanah without quite knowing why.

Divine transcendence, Kingship, is not always a conscious matter.

–Rabbi Adin Steinsaltz

From The Seven Lights, p.19, by Rabbi Adin Steinsaltz

“The fundamental problems of life today are the same as those of three thousand years ago”

Arthur Kurzweil — Mon, 06 Sep 2010 04:02:32 +0000

Many of the Jews who come to the synagogue on the holy days of Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur are not regular worshipers; they don't attend prayer services during the rest of the year.

And no less than these are the many who would like to come but who do not have the heart to do so.

Both of these kinds of Jews wonder whether it is at all possible for a contemporary person to pray.

How can a modern man do such a thing?

Of course, this question is usually asked surreptitiously, being the sort of question a person puts only to himself.

At times it belongs to the unspoken queries of the heart that never emerge at all but assume a certain urgency at this season of the year.

The truth is that this question has a considerable degree of naiveté about it.

And naiveté does not necessarily belong only to the innocent or the unlearned.

There is another kind of naiveté, that of the intellectual (both the genuine and the make-believe).

A person can be very well educated, sharp and discerning in many fields, and at the same time display surprising innocence in other areas of life, especially those with which he has had little contact.

It is generally believed that in our generation, when "spiritual" persons show themselves to be sharp and clever about their financial affairs, and when sex is a commonplace and tedious subject of conversation, there is not much room for innocence and simplicity.

But it is not so.

Our contemporary society, which may be bringing to light areas of life that were once kept hidden, is still concealing from it self many critical aspects of mind and heart.

In our time, when the mention of God's name or even thinking of Him is intellectually out of bounds for so many people, this entire realm is obscured in a mantle of secrecy and kept discreetly out of the framework of decent conversation.

It is therefore hardly surprising if certain individuals seek their satisfac¬tion elsewhere and get themselves involved with strange cults and faiths.

With all the changes and differences, the achievements, sins, and distortions of modern man (and so few are really new), he has still not transcended the basic limitations of his humanity.

The fundamental problems of life today are the same as those of one thousand and three thousand years ago.

There is the same wretchedness and suffering of the heart as ever.

The only difference is that many people keep God out of bounds–even when they are really looking for Him everywhere.

–Rabbi Adin Steinsaltz

From On Being Free, p.90, by Rabbi Adin Steinsaltz

“Again I feel that I am short of so much time”

Arthur Kurzweil — Sun, 05 Sep 2010 04:02:19 +0000

"The day is short, and the work is great…" (Mishna : Pirkei Avot 2:15)

That "the day is short" is a discovery which I make daily.

I wake up in the morning, and within a very short time I discover that it is midnight or 2:00 A.M.

And I wonder: What has happened to this day?

Where did it evaporate to?

Every Rosh Hashanah I regret that there is no double leap year, with a second month of Elul.

Had there been a second Elul, I might have been able to finish something before Rosh Hashanah.

But there is no second Elul, and again I feel that I am short of so much time.

The day is short, amazingly short, and it ends in tremendous speed; and thus go by weeks and months and years.

"And the work is great," and for some reason it does not seem to diminish as I keep working at it.

–Rabbi Adin Steinsaltz

From Pebbles of Wisdom from Rabbi Adin Steinsaltz

“Rosh Hashanah is both the last gasp of agony and the trauma of birth”

Arthur Kurzweil — Fri, 03 Sep 2010 04:02:00 +0000

When the Sages say that a man's star sees what escapes man's notice, they mean that if our souls were sensitive to everything that takes place in the universe or could perceive the immense range of phenomena around us, they would sense that the year is dying.

Rosh Hashanah is both the last gasp of agony and the trauma of birth.

It seems to me that what motivates so many Jews to go to the synagogue on Rosh Hashanah is the uncanny, ill-defined feeling of experiencing the death-birth of time, and hence Divine Presence.

This is why they can proclaim Divine Kingship on Rosh Hashanah.

It is a spontaneous, unplanned gesture, like so many kinds of human behavior.

–Rabbi Adin Steinsaltz

From The Seven Lights, p. 20, by Rabbi Adin Steinsaltz

“We have the privileges of children”

Arthur Kurzweil — Thu, 02 Sep 2010 04:03:43 +0000

Our real privilege is that we are both sons and servants.

We are permitted to "stray" a little from God, an idea woven into the Rosh Hashanah prayers.

When the observant Jew and the individual who is satisfied simply to pray on Rosh Hashanah stand in judgment before the King of Kings, they are both in the same situation and share the same degree of anxiety.

Both are before God and say to Him: "Be my King."

What did they do to deserve it?

Rabbi Aaron of Karlin was preparing for the morning service on Rosh Hashanah, which begins with the words, "0 King."

When he spoke these words, Rabbi Aaron fainted.

When he regained consciousness, his followers asked him, "Why did you faint?"

Rabbi Aaron replied, "Just as I was saying '0 King,' I remembered an anecdote.

A rabbi came to Vespasian before the latter was made Emperor and greeted him with '0 Emperor!'

To this Vespasian said, 'If you knew that I am the Emperor, why did you not come to see me sooner?"

The Emperor's question provides a good clue as to why these ten days are called the "Days of Awe."

What could cause you to feel more riddled with anxiety than to hear your king ask:

"Where have you been all this time?

Where were you?

Why didn't you come to see me sooner?"

This is how we feel as servants.

As sons, however, we have the privileges of children.

Regardless of what children do, even if they leave home for the whole year, they are still children.

This is our only excuse.

For in our position as servants, what could we say for ourselves on Rosh Hashanah?

–Rabbi Adin Steinsaltz

From The Seven Lights, p. 23, by Rabbi Adin Steinsaltz

“The ‘program’ of the year is conceptualized and stored in memory on Rosh Hashanah”

Arthur Kurzweil — Wed, 01 Sep 2010 04:02:30 +0000

Time is like a plant.

The year only refines and develops the seed that is born on Rosh Hashanah and that will grow over the entire year.

To borrow a metaphor from computer science, we could say that the "program" of the year is conceptualized and stored in memory on Rosh Hashanah and that the 364 other days of the year are simply spent running the program.

–Rabbi Adin Steinsaltz

From The Seven Lghts, p. 14, by Rabbi Adin Steinsaltz

“Each has its own life, dimension, and tonality”

Arthur Kurzweil — Tue, 31 Aug 2010 04:02:50 +0000

Time is both discontinuous and cyclical.

For example, every day there are two cycles of twelve hours forming the hours of the day and the hours of the night.

But no given hour is like another.

Each has its own life, dimension, and tonality.

According to kabbalists this reflects the twelve different configurations of the four letters of the Tetragrammaton.

Each hour is governed by one of these configurations.

In other words, each hour has its own code, a unique code, just the way each instant is unique.

The second cycle is the cycle of days.

Here again each day forms a complete cycle, a self-contained entity, and each morning is a new birth.

This explains the importance of the prayer that celebrates this birth.

In a similar fashion, the week has its cycle, and the month, whose birth is connected to the moon.

Finally, we have the cycle of the year.

However, there is a fundamental difference between this cycle and the others.

All the other temporal organizations are cyclical, but Rosh Hashanah is an absolute beginning.

Recall that shanah ("year") comes from a root that means "doubling," "repetition."

Indeed, what happens is a repetition of the act of creation and a total renewal of time.

–Rabbi Adin Steinsaltz

From The Seven Lights, p. 11, by Rabbi Adin Steinsaltz

“Repentance is not a recipe that one follows”

Arthur Kurzweil — Mon, 30 Aug 2010 04:02:30 +0000

The essence of repentance is not a specific action.

It is not a recipe that one follows: so much charity, so many self afflictions, so many fasts.

Essentially, repentance is a feeling of the heart—regret over the past and a resolution for the future.

The greater the depths of a person’s mind and the development of his maturity, the more clearly he can recognize his problems and the more profoundly he can see each flaw.

And then his previous repentance may no longer seem to be enough, for he looks downward to levels of imperfection that his previous repentance had not been able to reach.

–Rabbi Adin Steinsaltz

From Understanding the Tanya, p. 51, by Rabbi Adin Steinsaltz

“Is it reasonable to expect a response to our prayers?”

Arthur Kurzweil — Sun, 29 Aug 2010 04:02:03 +0000

Even when we accept the premise that God hears everything, including our prayers, another question arises: is it reasonable to expect a response?

Somehow, people have the idea that their prayers deserve a response that will be the fulfillment of that prayer.

In our world, however, everyone knows that a petition may be received and read, and the answer may still be "No."

So, too, it may happen with prayer; there is a possibility that the answer to a prayer—even if prayed fervently and with all goodwill and sincere intentions—will just be "No."

Often people have an expectation that whenever they ask for something–or at least when they ask God for it–they must get it.

This may be called "the spoiled brat philosophy."

In prayer, too, one pleads for an answer, or for an explanation, but the response may not satisfy the request.

Only very occasionally does one get a direct, explicit answer.

Sometimes a partial answer comes to us many years later.

Something I once did, which at the time seemed pointless or wrong, in retrospect may turn out to have been a very important and successful action.

I may expect lightning to strike me whenever I do something wrong, but the lightning may come in God's good time, which is, most probably, when I least expect it.

Many times, the answer–which is the most appropriate one–is silence.

And we may very well go through life—at least life in this world–without getting any answer whatsoever.

–Rabbi Adin Steinsaltz

From Simple Words, p. 93., by Rabbi Adin Steinsaltz