The Still Small Voice: Longing, Waiting, and Living- Rosh Hashanah 5783 Day 1

I remember the first night we were home after Elisheva was born. I know Joseph and I both felt relieved and grateful that we were healthy; glad to be back in our own space; exhausted, overwhelmed, and totally terrified. All feelings that I knew were normal, and that I had expected to feel in those early days. But I remember that there were also twinges of sadness that caught me by surprise. Sitting in the rocking chair, holding this tiny creature in my arms at 1, 2, 3 o’clock in the morning. I remember looking at this brand-new person, and weeping. Just bursting wide open. Thinking to myself, and out-loud to Joseph and Elisheva, both, that one day, she was going to leave. That if we were lucky enough to see her grow up, she would do just that– grow up, and want to leave home. I felt so overcome with grief, and so shocked, so jolted by the sudden arrival of this great-big future sadness. 

Though, at some point, my sadness gave way to guilt. Why in these precious new moments of motherhood, was I already distracted by all the things that come next? Why couldn’t I be more present? Why wasn’t I able to just sit and let myself be totally consumed by the miracle of bringing our daughter home? It seemed to me, in those moments of mixed-up joy and grief, that I was longing for and simultaneously rejecting a future time, a series of milestones that I couldn’t quite wrap my head around. And it felt in so many ways, that now that Elisheva was out in the world, that we had begun a terribly long process of saying goodbye to one another. And that, I was, and am still, not ready for. 

Waiting, looking ahead to the future, is an important part of our experience as Jews. We wait for so many things– the yearly, and steady cycle of the holidays; we wait for children to be born; for sickness to pass; for grief to transform into something more permanent and familiar. Each week we anticipate the arrival of Shabbat– of that temporary moment in time and space when we are shielded from the imperfection and violence of the wider world– sustained instead by the perfection of the wholeness of creation. The low points in our collective history as Jews have also helped us develop a sort of muscle memory that keeps us looking forward– a coping mechanism or some kind of armor, resiliency– as we ask ourselves: when will Jews be safe, when will we strike that balance between assimilation and difference? When will we emerge from the crucible of forging our paths and identities in new places and contexts, over and over and over again? At what future point will we not have to worry? 

In the Kedusha for the Shacharit Amidah on Shabbat and Holidays, we recite:

מִמְּקוֹמְךָ מַלְכֵּֽנוּ תוֹפִֽיעַ וְתִמְלוֹךְ עָלֵֽינוּ כִּי מְחַכִּים אֲנַחְנוּ לָךְ מָתַי תִּמְלוֹךְ בְּצִיּוֹן בְּקָרוֹב בְּיָמֵֽינוּ לְעוֹלָם וָעֶד תִּשְׁכּוֹן:

Our Sovereign, manifest Yourself from wherever You dwell, and rule over us, for we await you. When shall You rule in Zion? Let it be soon, in our day, and throughout all time.

For we await you. We ask, almost demand to know, when will the Divine dwell once more in Jerusalem, because we are eager, desperate even for that day to come. We beg to know when we will yet again experience closeness with the Divine– a time that perhaps at any given moment in our lives feels far away, impossibly distant, perhaps even implausible. 

I like to imagine the first time that these words were uttered, called out with frenetic and fervent urgency, when is this promise going to come true? How long must we wait? In the Kedusha, we express our longing for a more perfect future– and that waiting is active and lived; it’s busy and urgent. 

Maimonides expands on this idea in his Thirteen Principles of Faith, the twelfth of which reads:

אֲנִי מַאֲמִין בֶּאֱמוּנָה שְׁלֵמָה בְּבִיאַת הַמָּשִׁיחַ וְאַף עַל פִּי שֶׁיִּתְמַהְמֵהַּ עִם כָּל זֶה אֲחַכֶּה לּוֹ בְּכָל יוֹם שֶׁיָּבוֹא:

I believe with complete faith in the coming of the Messiah and even though he may tarry, nevertheless, I wait every day for his coming.

Here, Mainimodies captures the emotional experience of waiting for this future event– our longing. Our visceral, almost painful desire for our dreamed-about future to come as quickly as possible. The prophetic texts are replete with calls for the arrival of the messianic age, for the unfolding of perfection, of human progress– a longing for a time that brings wholeness, peace, and meaning to the whole world; a return from exile, clarity about the world and our true purpose in it. But inherent in all of this hope, all of this optimism for the future we long for, is an innate sense of grief. Grief that we are not yet there; mourning for the millions of lost opportunities to draw us closer to that time; a sadness that we have to wait at all.

There is so much desperate longing in the world right now. For over two years, we have grown weary with waiting, wishing for the pandemic to end, for a return to collective public health. We long for civility and quiet amidst endless discord. We yearn for peace, for an end to violence, manipulation, and corruption. We hope for a time, some indistinct and indeterminate time, when all people can feel safe, cared for, respected, and protected by their communities and governments. We are waiting for our climate to heal. There is so much that has to change. So much that we are waiting for. 

Our Torah and Haftarah readings for today are built on the notion of longing. Wishes and outcomes that would be impossible without hope, without anticipation. Sarah and Hannah both long for children– and as they do, they each radically transform the notion of prayer. These women yearn desperately for a future of fertility, of motherhood– for a time when they will be undeniably and permanently tethered to the covenant and lineage of the Jewish people. And throughout the months of Elul and Tishrei, through the ebb and flow of the High Holiday season, we too, long for a different future– a different future that only becomes possible when we engage in the limitless and lifelong process of doing Teshuvah– of reflecting, of interrogating our behaviors and values; of striving to grow into wholly new and changed postures of living in the world. We long to be forgiven, to achieve personal and communal wholeness. We long for a year better than the last. 

I feel drawn by the hopeful pull of progress, by the radical optimism, and near-irrationality, of trusting, with a Maimonidean faith, an emunah shelemah, a full and complete faith, that the world can change, that we can change. That things can in fact get better. That the future is worth waiting for. 

But this pull also makes me feel restless. Makes me feel compelled not only in a spiritual sense, but pulled physically and emotionally, too. I want that future right now. And almost, like a child who struggles to hear the word no, I feel a sense of injustice that we are meant, perhaps even expected, to wait even a moment more than is necessary for the vision of the prophets to be realized. I feel like I am constantly running toward something far away and unseen, and all the while, time stands still.

And this restlessness often leads me to distraction. To feeling drawn out of and away from the present moment. In all of the anticipation for this imagined future, I run the risk of turning so fully away from what is happening now, in this moment. I run the risk of forgetting to actually live my life.

Waiting can itself be a form of escapism. Escape from the bad news, the ongoing cycle of disappointment and frustration. When the world continues to batter us with tragedy, how can we possibly live fully in the moment? We are pulled in so many different directions; we have so much to worry about.  And so waiting then becomes a radical way for us to reject the untenable status quo, to assert with a full faith that the world can and must change. 

But in the face of so much waiting, so much hope for a distant and far-off future, our High Holiday liturgy reminds us that our time here on earth is temporary and so precious. That waiting may very well be an exercise in futility. Our desperate optimism for what’s next, tempered by the very real, humbling, and sometimes harsh reality that we may never actually see that future realized. The Unetaneh Tokef prayer, the centerpiece of the Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur Musaf service, prompts us to consider our own mortality, to reckon with and accept the uncertainty, the unpredictability of our existence. In this text that appears just before the Kedusha, we read:

On Rosh Hashanah it is inscribed, and on Yom Kippur it is sealed - how many shall pass away and how many shall be born, who shall live and who shall die, who by fire and who by water, who by warfare and who by wild beasts, who by hunger and who by thirst, who by earthquake and who by plague, who by strangling and who by stoning. Who will rest and who will wander, who will be tranquil and who will be troubled. Who will be calm and who will be tormented, who will be exalted and who humbled, who will be rich and who will be poor?

This is the theological and liturgical climax of our service. And we wonder, with quite a lot of drama, who will live and who will die; who will suffer and who will live a life of relative ease and comfort. Who will we be; what will be taken from us, what will be given? In this text alone, we grapple with those essential questions of human life and nature. And in its intensity, the text of the Unetaneh Tokef may further paralyze us; may make it even more difficult for us to live in the present moment. How can I be expected to contemplate my own mortality and simultaneously be present to the unpredictabilities and the constants and the beauties of the here and now?

So how do we manage the overwhelming dualism of our lives? How do we live in the space between past and present? Between waiting and standing still? Between paralysis and hope? Between patience and restlessness?

The answer to this fundamental challenge of our lives is hinted at earlier in the Unetaneh Tokef:

וּבְשׁוֹפָר גָּדוֹל יִתָּקַע וְקוֹל דְּמָמָה דַקָּה יִשָׁמַע…

And with a great shofar it is sounded, and the still small voice is heard.

The great shofar that is sounded, this is the drama of our lives: our birth, our death, the jubilation and tragedy. The epic highs and cataclysmic lows. But then, the still small voice is heard– everything in our lives that comes between. The small moments, the tiny, almost imperceptible joys of living, are sounded in the open spaces, in the quiet, between the loudest blasts of the shofar. 

Our challenge, in this impossibly beautiful and broken world, is to pay attention. To be awake to the moments of high drama, and equally wide awake to those small, intimate, hidden moments that themselves are a source of great awe, and meaning, and blessing. To be spiritually awake is to live in a world in which goodness and change are possible. To be spiritually awake means to embody a posture of living that is rooted in chesed, acts of service and lovingkindness. To be spiritually awake is to embrace each and every part of living– and to pay extra close attention to the stillness of our extraordinary and miraculous lives. 

My teacher, and modern theologian, Rabbi Shai Held writes:

Everything that we have and are is a gift. None of us ever did anything– none of us could ever have done anything– to earn the gifts that are life and consciousness. This, I would suggest, is a key component of the spiritual awareness that Judaism seeks to instill…to be spiritually awake is to ask, why is there something rather than nothing? Because, Judaism teaches, of G-d’s grace. To take the world for granted, to see it as a mere brute fact, is to betray a kind of spiritual deadness…A theological claim– G-d created the world out of nothing– is inextricably woven with a spiritual perception and commitment– life is a wondrous gift for which we much be perpetually grateful. 

One of the best pieces of advice that we got after Elisheva was born, was to write down as much as we could. Not the kinds of documenting we were already doing– recording every feed and diaper change– but taking the time to pause, and reflect on all the magic we were witnessing, all the time. The kinds of things that might go unnoticed, or unremembered, but are so incredibly miraculous in their own way– The little noises, the discoveries of hands and feet; her reactions to music and our voices. The first smile, the first fit of laughter. Rolling over for the first time. I recently read a letter that my mom had written to me just after I was born. My dad had unearthed this humble document in my mom’s sock drawer when he was cleaning out the house after she passed away. He gave me the letter, and I put it away, in a drawer of my own. For years, I was afraid to read that letter. Afraid that it would be so intense, so emotional, and send me back into the spiral of my grief. I finally read that letter a few weeks ago. And I was relieved to find that this letter was a collection of small details, that started with bringing me home from the hospital– how it was to drive home; how it felt for my parents to hold me, to watch each other become parents– with those same relieved, grateful, and terrified feelings; who we met back at the house, how we celebrated that first week as a family together. The gifts, the new family rituals. It was a letter that was all about living. All about those small details that are so much larger, so much more important than we realize. 

The shofar serves a dual purpose on Rosh Hashanah– it serves as a reminder of the great spectacle of our lives, but also as our cosmic wake-up call, a spiritual alarm clock meant to draw us out of ourselves, out of our own worry and fatigue, out from beneath the heavy weight of living in this world. A reminder that the in-between, ordinary moments of our lives are not so ordinary after all. 

In his central work on Jewish Law, the Mishneh Torah, Maimonides writes on the significance of the Shofar, saying that its blasts are meant to conjure up in us a feeling of wakefulness. Each time the shofar is blown, it calls out:

“Wake up, sleepers, from your sleep! And slumberers, arise from your slumber!” 

Throughout the Rosh Hashanah service, we hear the shofar sounded a total of 100 times. 100 times we are called to wake up, reminded of all the living we have to do. Reminded of what it takes to bring about the future that we long for. While we wait for that far-off time, it is living that is done in the meantime. And in all of the waiting that is required of us, we may very well forget to live. The Shofar, is the radical reminder that we mustn’t forget. 

In these last few years, each of us has battled with the world. We have overdrawn our spiritual reserves. We are rightfully tired; rightfully exhausted and overwhelmed. And I am right there with you. I am only now just emerging from my own spiritual rut that has lasted for two and a half very long years. I am standing right beside you, in the breech. The brokenness of the world has the potential to break our spirits, to slowly blunt our edges, to numb us, desensitize us. And in learning how to cope with the difficulties of these last few years, we have grown weary, unsurprised by bad news. Our project, the essential journey and challenge of our lives, is to live in such a way that rejects this sleepy status quo. To assert, even in the face of ongoing disconnect and hopelessness, that I am wide awake to the wonders of the world, however unusual or surprising or small.