SHEMA YISRAEL – LISTEN, ISRAEL We now reach the supreme moment of Divine–human encounter in the entire Jewish year. For a day we have fasted in penitence and prayer. We have petitioned, pleaded, confessed our faults and sins, admitted our utter insignificance in the totality of things, spoken to God in the complete lexicon of relationship from self-abasement to impassioned love, and now the gates have almost closed. The day is at an end. The verdict has been written and sealed. There is no prayer left to pray. Instead our words are transfigured into something else. This is an affirmation of faith. We cry out to God that He is ours and we are His. There is no artistry here, no carefully constructed poetics of prayer. This is the cri de coeur of the God-intoxicated people who, for generation after generation, risked their existence on the covenant their ancestors made with God at Mount Sinai and which they never abandoned in all the dark centuries despite the defeats, exiles, tragedies and persecutions. The “stiff-necked people,” once obstinate in faithlessness, became yet more obstinate in their faith. They held fast to God with an awesome tenacity. This is our people and this our faith, our loyalty and love. We do not know exactly when, where and why this affirmation entered the liturgy of Yom Kippur. It is first mentioned in the eleventh century, in the school of Rashi. At first there were multiple variants. Some said “Listen, Israel” three times, though this was frowned upon. The unity of God needs no repetition. Some added “Blessed be the name…,” and then the phrase “The Lord He is God” began to appear, at first said twice, but eventually the custom was to say it seven times. The medieval authorities explained the declaration as follows: “Listen, Israel” represents the unity of God. The threefold, “Blessed be the name” represents the three dimensions of time: past, present and future. The sevenfold “The Lord He is God” represents the seven dimensions of space (the “seven heavens,” or the cosmos created in seven days). Taken together the three lines mean that God is One through and beyond all time, in and beyond all space. Modern thinkers point out the close similarity between this and the deathbed confession. In the closing words of Yom Kippur it is as if we were saying: Whether You have sealed me for life or not, still I will declare my faith in You. I will praise You as long as I have the breath to do so. The world and its worries have fallen away. We have ceased to think about ourselves. Our gaze is turned outward and upward. We are because God is. In His forgiveness is our hope; in His will, our freedom; in His redemption, our deliverance; in His unity, our integrity; in His love, our life. Infinitesimally small though we may be, for a moment we stand bathed in the radiance of Infinity. שְׁמַע יִשְׂרָאֵל, יהוה אֱלֹהֵֽינוּ, יהוה אֶחָד Listen, Israel: the Lord is our God, the Lord is One. The first Hebrew words we learn as children, and the last words we say at the end of our life, the words Jewish martyrs said as they prepared to die for their faith. They are the words engraved on the Jewish soul. In this context they mean more than that God is One. They mean, “God alone.” You, God of the universe, are our God. We have no other. Our ancestors put their faith in You. We put our faith in You. You are the focus of our lives. You are the breath we breathe, the strength we feel, the voice we hear, the horizon of our hopes. There were times when we drifted, days when we forgot You; there may even have been times when we doubted You. But now we say with every breath in our body: it is You and You alone. As the gates are closing, do not leave us. As we face the coming year, do not leave us. Rabbi Levi Yitzḥak of Berditchev expressed this in a prayer he used to say: Master of the universe, Master of the universe, I would like to sing a song to You: Where shall I find You, and where shall I not find You? Where can one find You and where can one not find You? Wherever I go, it is You. Wherever I stand, it is You. Only You, just You. Either You or You. If it is good, it is You. If, God forbid, it is not good, still it is You. Heaven – You. Earth – You. Above – You. Below – You. Wherever I go, wherever I turn: You, You, You.

בָּרוּךְ שֵׁם Blessed be the name. These are the words the people said when they heard the priests say the Shema in the Temple, or when, on Yom Kippur, the High Priest uttered the holiest name of God. According to one rabbinic legend they are the words Moses heard the angels say when he ascended to heaven to receive the Torah. According to another they are the words of relief Jacob said on his deathbed when he heard all his children declare their faith in God. “Listen, Israel” is about God in Himself. “Blessed be the name” is about the relationship between God and the world. Blessed refers to the flow of energy through which He sustains the cosmos. Name is how God is known by His creations. Glorious is the respect in which He is held by humanity. Kingdom is God’s sovereignty over all.

יהוה הוּא הָאֱלֹהִים The Lord He is God. We have explained that “Listen, Israel” is about God, and “Blessed be the name” is the line connecting God and the world. “The Lord He is God” is about the Jewish people and its faith. The words come from a fraught moment in Jewish history (see I Kings 18). Under King Ahab and his idolatrous wife Jezebel, Baal worship had reappeared among the people. The Israelites were gradually drifting toward the idolatry of their pagan neighbors. At this moment the prophet Elijah sensed a potential catastrophe. He summoned the prophets of Baal to a trial on Mount Carmel. Addressing the assembled crowd he challenged them: “How long will you equivocate, hovering between two opinions? You cannot have it both ways. Either you are for God or for Baal. You must make the choice.” He proposed a test. Each side would prepare a sacrifice and call on its god. The one that sent fire from heaven to consume the sacrifice would have proven Himself to be the true God. Sacrifices were prepared. The prophets of Baal then called on their god. Nothing happened. They prayed harder. They lacerated themselves but to no avail. “Pray louder,” said Elijah in a rare moment of humor. “Perhaps your god has gone elsewhere. Perhaps he is asleep.” They cried louder but nothing happened. Then Elijah prayed a short prayer to God and immediately fire came down from heaven. The people, seized by the power of that moment, cried out: “The Lord He is God, the Lord He is God.” In that moment the people knew: You have to make a choice. You cannot equivocate. That day the people declared its loyalty to God.

SHOFAR Since at least the eighth century, it has been the custom to blow the shofar at the end of Yom Kippur, though there are differences of opinion as to why we do so, when we do so, and how. Some say it is a reminder of the Jubilee year, the year of freedom when ancestral land returned to its original owners: “Have the horn sounded everywhere on the tenth day of the seventh month; on the Day of Atonement sound the trumpet throughout your land. Consecrate the fiftieth year and proclaim liberty throughout the land to all its inhabitants. It shall be a jubilee for you; each one of you is to return to his family property and each to his own clan” (Lev. 25:9–10). Since we no longer know exactly which year is the fiftieth we sound the shofar because of the possibility that this may be it; or simply as a reminder of that institution. Others say that just as we sounded the shofar on Rosh HaShana to signal the beginning of the process of judgment, so we sound it after Ne’ila to signal that the trial has ended and the Judge is about to leave. They cite the verse: “God is gone up with a shout, the Lord with the sound of a horn” (Ps. 47:6). Another view is that it is to “confuse Satan” (accusation, temptation) as we recommence ordinary life after a period of intense holiness; or simply to signal the end of the fast so that children can be fed and a meal made ready. The most expansive explanation is that it recalls the end of Moses’ forty-day sojourn on Mount Sinai when he secured forgiveness for the people. The shofar was sounded at the beginning of his ascent and at the end when he came down the mountain holding the second set of tablets, the symbol of a new beginning. Rabbi Soloveitchik argued that it represents our final wordless cry at the end of the day when we have exhausted the lexicon of penitential words. One way or another it is the period punctuating the end of one paragraph of time and beginning the next. Some sound a single blast, tekia gedola; others four notes, tekia,shevarim,terua,tekia; yet others a cycle of ten notes. There are also different practices as to when it is sounded. Many communities do so at the end of Ne’ila, before, during or after the final Kaddish. The original custom, still observed by many, was to sound it at the end of Ma’ariv.

לַשָּׁנָה הַבָּאָה בִּירוּשָׁלַֽיִם הַבְּנוּיָה *Next year in Jerusalem rebuilt!*Twice we say these words: on Pesaḥ and Yom Kippur. Pesaḥ is the great festival of Jewish history, Yom Kippur the cleansing of the Jewish soul. There is no phenomenon quite like the Jewish attachment to Jerusalem. It is where Isaac was bound, where King David built his capital and King Solomon the Temple. It is the epicenter of holiness, the home of the Divine Presence, the locus and focus of all Jewish prayer. Twenty-six centuries ago, weeping by the waters of Babylon, our ancestors vowed: “If I forget you, O Jerusalem, may my right hand forget its skill. May my tongue cling to the roof of my mouth if I do not remember you, if I do not consider Jerusalem my highest joy” (Ps. 137:5–6). Wherever Jews were they prayed toward Jerusalem. Wherever they lived they left a fragment of their house unfinished in memory of its destruction. At every wedding the groom breaks a glass to signal that as long as the Temple is not rebuilt our joy is not complete. Every Tisha B’Av we sit like mourners and weep over its destruction as if it happened yesterday. Napoleon is said to have remarked that a people who can weep for Jerusalem so long will one day have it restored to them. And so it was. Each year throughout the centuries the shofar was sounded at the end of Yom Kippur in Jerusalem by the Kotel, the Western Wall that in ancient times surrounded the Temple courtyard. In 1929 the British Mandatory government, yielding to anti-Jewish pressure, banned the practice. The shofar continued to be blown none the less despite the fact that those who did so were often arrested and imprisoned. In 1967 Jews once again found themselves able to worship at the Kotel. Chief Rabbi Shlomo Goren, sounding the shofar, said these words: I am speaking to you from the Western Wall, remnant of our holy Temple… This day we have redeemed the vow of the generations: ‘If I forget you, O Jerusalem, may my right hand forget its skill.’ We did not forget you, Jerusalem our holy city, home of our glory… To the nations of the world we declare: We shall respectfully protect the holy places of all faiths, and their doors shall be open to all. To Zion and to the remnant of our Temple we say: your children have returned to their borders. Our feet now stand within your gates, Jerusalem: the city joined together once more with the new Jerusalem; the perfection of beauty, joy of the whole earth; capital city of the eternal state of Israel. In the name of the entire community of Jewry in Israel and the Diaspora I pronounce the blessing with joy: ‘Blessed are You, Lord our God, King of the universe, who has given us life, sustained us and brought us to this day.’ This year in Jerusalem rebuilt.