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Good morning dear friends,
It's my pleasure to initiate this year's installment of our
Machzor Minute series, through which we highlight central passages of the Rosh HaShana and Yom Kippur davening to help prepare us for the chagim to come.
Before I begin, I want to share a note that I sent to my friend Pastor J Edgar Boyd and to our partners at First AME earlier this morning. As we discussed at the Nosh n Drosh this past Shabbat, expressing solidarity with fellow communities as they suffer through a violent hate crime is both the right and the good thing to do.
Good morning Pastor Boyd and all of our friends at FAME,
Both personally and on behalf of our congregation, I want to express our deep sorrow and horror over the hate-driven murder of three members of Jacksonville’s Black community on Saturday. The dreadful significance of these murders is tragically amplified by their having occurred literally as the 60th anniversary of the March on Washington was being marked. As fellow human beings, and specifically as Jews we express our solidarity, empathy, and support.
We pray along with you for comfort, and for better and more enlightened days ahead.
Rabbi Yosef
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The first, dramatic word of Shacharit on Rosh HaShana is "Ha Melech", "The King", (and I cannot urge you strongly enough to be present when it is intoned, at about 8:50 AM). This is one of countless references in the Machzor to God as King. As central as this motif is to Rosh HaShana, we often find it to be an inaccessible one. This is due both to our lack of personal experience with monarchs, and to the generally negative impression we have about the imperious and uncaring qualities of those who have historically occupied human thrones. Which leaves asking, "What feelings and thoughts is the Machzor hoping to arouse within us with the HaMelech imagery, and how do we best turn it to our prayer benefit?"
To begin, I think that it's both fascinating and very significant that nowhere - not when speaking with the patriarchs and not when speaking with Moshe or with Israel - does God ever introduce Himself as melech. Which is to say that, (a) God doesn't self-identify with the image, and that (b) human beings (both in the Torah, throughout Tanach, and beyond) have made an intentional decision to invoke and apply it for any one of a variety of reasons. And while there's no question that one of the reasons we invoke it on Rosh HaShana is to evoke the "Yom HaDin" imagery, there is no doubt that another, no less important reason is davka to underscore the categorical difference between God-as-King and human-as-king. Nowhere is this point more explicitly made than in the poem "Melech Elyon", which we sing in Shacharit on Day Two:
The Supreme King:
Who opens His hands and provides sustenance, Who gathers up waters and causes them to flow..... Who heeds the destitute and listens to supplication, Who extends goodwill and limits wrath...May He reign forever [in contrast with "Melech Evyon", the mortal king...]
The central point that this brings me to is that the ultimate purpose of our invoking "Melech" again and again in the Rosh HaShana machzor is neither to flatter God nor to fill ourselves with dread. It is rather to move and motivate ourselves to become more faithful and active "subjects" of the King who is like no other, who is abundantly kind and true, whose path is truth and whose seal is truth, May He reign forever.
When the Machzor proclaims "Hamelech", our hearts can respond "Hineni, Here I am".
(P.S. Just a moment ago, as it happens, Pastor Boyd replied to me, asking if members of our community would have "the time and will to join a small group of like-minded people of goodwill, in a constructive discussion on how best to confront this present evil?")
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