ROSH HASHANAH:

A Rosh Hashanah Sermon

Hayom harat olam--Today marks the birth, or (more literally) the conception of the world. So ends the first and most central of the unique additions to the Rosh Hashanah service, the liturgical block we know as malchuyot--the celebration of God's sovereignty. Most central it is, for throughout this day, and the ten days of return and renewal that it introduces, we remind ourselves countless times that God is our sovereign, from the blessing formula hamelech hakadosh to avinu malkenu. It is a fitting coda to these reflections on sovereignty to recall the birth or conception of the universe with those three words hayom harat olam, because the fact that the universe is already a cause for wonder, for acknowledgment, for worshipful thanks, and for responsibility.

Is it hard to think about the birth and early days of our world? Is that too removed from us? You have, I am sure, experienced pieces of it. Or you could. Imagine this: you are standing at a seashore in the darkness 2 hours before dawn, near the very end of the Hebrew month, with only the light of the dome of stars above you. At the water's edge, looking out at mayim she'ein lahem sof--water that cannot be seen to end, you are standing at a spot that has probably not changed much since the 6 days of creation, and you hear also the unending sound of the sea and its waves, a sound that has not ceased since those days of the birth of the world. You look down and feel the wonder of the dry land in the midst of the darkness covering the vast deep. Then, perhaps 90 minutes before dawn, a blood-red left crescent of moon begins to rise over the waters, and as it changes from red, to orange, to gold, to white, it tells of the wonder of color, and more: it gives promise of greater light that will sustain you and all other life. That light breaks through, finally, as the awesome disk of the sun inches above the horizon over the waters, and the power and subtlety of what you now see comes into full view. The power becomes evident as your foot touches a piece of fulgurite on the beach, a lump of hard, molded sand, which you remember is produced by lightning striking the beach and, in microseconds, fusing sand together at a temperature exceeding 3200 degrees Fahrenheit. And the subtlety and complexity hits you as you look out at the water and see dolphins dotting the waves, perhaps the great fish that, Psalm 104 tells us, God "created to play with". And always, through these several hours of reliving the wonder, of harat olam, the primeval sound of the waves persists, "the voice of God over the waters", reaching your ears from a second before, or from eons before--it's impossible to tell.

You've had experiences like this, I am sure. If not at the seashore, then in a desert, in majestic mountains, in tropical forests, or perhaps just in your mind's eye. One could almost fulfill the obligation to recite the service by simply standing at such a spot and truly taking it in.

It's at that moment of being filled to the brim with the sights and sounds of the creation, of harat olam, that we must take the final step. At the seashore, it means turning around, finally, to see the houses, or the roads, or the power lines, that we humans have created, and acknowledging that we are not separate from that pre-dawn scene. It is of us, and we are of it, and part of the challenge of malchuyot is to be able to pursue our task of working the world without eclipsing the wonder that the first humans felt standing on that beach, or that we should feel with each day and with each task.

Hayom harat olam--Birth always inspires us with awe and wonder. The birth of a child is such an event. How could it happen? How and why are we formed the way we are? What meaning are we to take from such a moment? But today we are to reflect not on the birth of a single child, not on the mystery of our own existences, not even just on the existence of whole species of life, but rather on the conception and the birth of the entire universe.

Some questions are asked so that answers will be provided. *Why is the sky blue?" is one of them. Other questions are asked precisely so that the magnitude of the question itself, and the elusiveness of answers, will become evident. Martin Heidegger said that the most fundamental question of metaphysics is, "Why is there something rather than nothing?". Rosh Hashanah is, perhaps, the day to confront this daunting question. For without reflecting on that fundamental puzzle, even if only to be stumped by it, or to stand in awe before it, we cannot fully appreciate the wonder and the responsibility of who we are, and what we are here to do.

In a recent book entitled The Life of the Cosmos, Lee Smolin sets out for us just what it means for there to be a universe with enough complexity to produce that beach, the water, the dolphins, and the houses and roads behind. For there to be that complexity, and for there to be life, we need complex elements--carbon, oxygen, and even weightier ones. These need to be created--forged--in factories that we call stars. And those stars, our first glimmers of light on the pre-dawn beach, have to reach enormous temperatures, and have enough fuel to produce such temperatures for billions of years.

Smolin then asks us to imagine ourselves standing in front of a control panel with some twenty different knobs. By turning these knobs, we can choose some of the range of values that could describe the masses, electrical charges, and other characteristics of the fundamental particles of the universe -- the protons, the electrons, the neutrons, the neutrinos. Those values can, consistent with the laws of physics, vary significantly. But which of those many allowable values -- or more precisely, how many of those allowable values will result in a universe with stars, that is, with light? Or, to put it another way, how probable is it that those values would have resulted in even a first day of creation ("Let there be light")? Here, Smolin is asking not "Why is there something rather than nothing", but rather, "How probable is it that there would be something rather than nothing?"

The answer: of all the possible universes, the chances that one would produce life are about 1 out of 10²²⁹! What does such an amazingly low probability mean? It can, perhaps, best be understood as follows: It is as if you purchased a lottery ticket along with a billion other people, and you won first prize in that lottery not once, but 26 times in a row!

Surely this is, without the added intricacies of particle physics, what Abraham Joshua Heschel meant when he wrote of the fundamental religious phenomenon of radical amazement. Here is what he wrote: "Any act of has as its object a selected segment of reality... [but] radical amazement refers to all of reality, not only to what we see, but also to the very act of seeing ... even the minimum of perception is a maximum of enigma. The most incomprehensible fact is the fact that we comprehend at all. And then this: "The way to faith leads through acts of wonder and radical amazement". Radical amazement is what you felt on that imagined sea shore. But as Heschel said, the way to faith does not end with that amazement, but leads through it. But to what must it lead? What should we take away from the amazing realization that each one of us has won 26 absurdly improbable lotteries in a row?

Lee Smolin is a physicist. It was not his intention to derive a conclusion about God as creator from his amazing calculations about the probability of our being here at all. But whether you adopt as your primary perspective his scientist's stance, or Heschel's theistic stance, the wonder that we comprehend at all should lead us to something, to a sense of responsibility that is born of the sense of wonder and awe. A universe filled with the precious gifts we have been born into is as easy to rebuild and duplicate as it is to win 26 more world-wide lotteries. That surely leads beyond sheer wonder to what Heschel called "response through deeds". And so Heschel asks the question: "What way of living is compatible with the grandeur and mystery of living?"

One important answer may be found in the "Lu'ah", the synagogue calendar that details all of the various prayers and observances for the entire year. Since Rosh Hashanah this year falls on a Thursday and Friday, the Lu'ah this year contains the following note for Friday, the second day: "We take care not to lengthen either the prayers or the holiday meal afterwards, so as not to infringe on the preparations for Shabbat." Now this ought to strike you as odd. Cut back on the Rosh Hashanah observances a little--Shabbat is coming! The high moment of the Jewish year somehow has to yield a bit to the necessities of the routine, the everyday, the week-in-and-week-out Shabbat. (Indeed, think back to last year [and to roughly 30% of our years], when Rosh Hashanah coincided with Shabbat, and the necessities of the routine Shabbat eliminated the sounding of the Shofar, and produced a Rosh Hashanah day without its central symbol and sound!) Why is that? What is the logic?

Now halakhah, Jewish law, will give you its own answers. One may cook and transport items on Yom Tov, but not on Shabbat, and it is preferable to take time from the holiday, and in some years set aside the ritual object that defines it, rather than risk desecrating the sanctity of Shabbat. Yes, but this in a sense begs the question. Why should Shabbat have that priority over Rosh Hashanah, so that it can infringe on its prayers and its central observances?

It is simply this: Shabbat is the day each week that recalls for us maaseh breishit-- the wondrous work of creation. But it doesn't simply ask us to close our eyes and imagine the scenes I have asked you to imagine. It doesn't simply ask us to feel the wonder of the world's existence and ours. It doesn't simply ask us to be amazed at our ability to sense, and at the fact that there are things to be sensed. Rather, Shabbat asks us to respond through deeds to that wonder. It is Shabbat that recalls for us each week that we humans were created near twilight on the sixth day, after all of the complex beauty we imagined on that beach, and it reminds us, should we ever get too proprietary about the world and its riches, that the gnat has seniority over us. It is Shabbat, through its rules, that trains us each week to respect this glorious and oh-so-improbable universe by giving it and ourselves a rest, by desisting from interfering with nature, by returning the world to the sovereignty of God. It is Shabbat, by taking us away from our work, that impresses on us that we are not essential to the existence of the universe, even though we are capable of destroying it. And it is Shabbat that requires us to respond, through deeds of commission and omission, to the responsibilities for preserving the world and its delicate ecosystems that the wonder of creation places on us.

To dwell at length on malchuyot, to blow the Shofar, and ignore the approach or the presence of Shabbat, is therefore to prefer symbol to action and substance. To marvel at the miracle of the birth of a child and not to care, regularly and urgently, for the child's welfare, is to betray the sense of the mystery. And to wonder, as we are asked to today, at harat olam, the conception and birth of the universe--at the amazing fact that there is something rather than nothing--and not commit to the humility and restraint that Shabbat imposes on us, is to betray the wonder of creation and the Creator.

Heschel once again, provides the key words: "As civilization advances, the sense of wonder declines. Such decline is an alarming symptom of our state of mind. Mankind (sic) will not perish for want of information; but only for want of appreciation."

There is so much at which to marvel, and for which to be thankful, on this Rosh Hashanah. Let us not forget to wonder at existence itself. But above all, let us obey the Lu'ah, and remember that Shabbat is coming, inescapably, every week--and that our responsibility to preserve this world are likewise inescapable. May we accept them with joy and love.