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PRAYER AS METAPHOR Rosh Hashana 5762 by Brett Krichiver I'd like to start by having everyone think about the following phrases for a moment. These are phrases we've read out of our machzor each year for Rosh Hashanah. God is full of awe, the mighty God; the still small voice; God remembers our deeds; God is the source of life. God is our judge. Okay. Were some of these images harder to imagine than others? Do you relate to some of them more than others? These are all images we find as we flip through the pages of our High Holy Day liturgy. The prayers become rote, and we focus more on the beautiful melodies led by Carolyn, and less on the meaning of the phrases. Of course it is easy to ignore the images as they fly past, but I would bet that for each phrase, you immediately find a visual representation for it. Even if you're not thinking about them, these symbols bring us closer to an understanding of what God is to us. As we understand it, "metaphor," is, "a comparison or an analogy; figurative language." Prayer is metaphor. It is language that doesn't fit perfectly, it mostly fits, as long as we remember not to take it literally. Metaphors work very well for prayer, we actually find that every Western religion uses metaphor as the language of prayer, because we don't have adequate language to talk about God in any other terms. The danger with using metaphor, is that all too often we forget that it's not an exact fit. What does this have to do with Rosh Hashanah? There are some kinuim, names or metaphors for God, which appear quite frequently in our High Holy Day liturgy, and which are troubling. Once we start to look at a phrase by itself, we realize that each is a powerful theological statement. If we are going to read it, and pray it, let's take just a minute to think about what we're saying. Let's start with some common names for God. Just before the Amidah we sang about God being the, "Rock of Israel: Tzur Yisrael." It is simple to understand the metaphor in this phrase. Another relatively simple metaphor, and an important one is: the Lion of Judah. When we use the word, "Lion," we see God as being very powerful, strong and mighty, and able to defend us, his young. Created in God's image, we need God to be strong for us, so that we may find strength. But another major theme of the High Holy Days is God's judgment, and a heavenly justice. This theme is much more complex, much more difficult to unpack, but I think, just as powerful. "In truth God is Judge and Arbiter, Counsel and Witness," we pray in the Unetaneh Tokef, the most famous Rosh Hashanah prayer. The ideas of judgment and justice are linked together, and a picture of a heavenly court unfolds in our prayers. We see God handing down judgment, and we imagine the justice inherent in God's thoughts. We see this same scene played out in many places during the High Holy Days. This is a dangerous metaphor. It is much more difficult to stay away from a literal sense of God's judgment. God does judge us. There is a right, and a wrong, and we learn the difference through religious teachings. Judgment and justice don't make sense to us as metaphor, but as real, concrete ideas. "So what?" you may be asking. God's justice, God as judge, isn't this what we learn from the earliest ages? Is it wrong to think that we are all held accountable to a greater power? Do we truly believe that God rules the universe with justice, or can we accept that this too is a metaphor? Is it symbolic, or real? Inevitably, as we grow up in this world, we learn that bad things do indeed happen to good people. Where do we find God's judgment in the world? How can we understand the liturgy of the Amidah, in which our fates are listed off: "who by fire, and who by water, who by earthquake, and who by stoning; who shall be rich, and who shall be poor. . ." Can this comprehensive list of human suffering really speak of God's justice? Or is it all meant to be taken figuratively? The significant answer appears in the last line of the list. "Repentance, Prayer, and Kindness temper judgment's severe decree." At first glance, this appears to be an impossible theology. Pray enough, repent enough, and give enough to others, and you'll change your fortune from bad to good. But when we look at the original Hebrew, we develop a more sophisticated understanding than the English translation offers. The phrase is "Ma'avirin et Rah hag'zeirah," Repentance, prayer, and acts of kindness to others can change not our fate, but rather, our reaction, our attitude, the quality of our lives; and we therefore lessen the severity of God's decree. Whether we look at what's happening as evil, whether we view God at any given moment as being too harsh or unreasonable, is not what the prayer addresses. We cannot change our destiny, but we can control our actions and attitudes. The laundry list of fates is a metaphor to show us that there are some things in this world we cannot control. Some from our community will suffer in the coming year. We illustrate the suffering on Rosh Hashanah to try to defend ourselves and our loved ones, but in the end we know our defenses are never enough. Our actions in this world may seem unimportant when faced with a heavenly justice we cannot comprehend, cannot understand. As we seek to acknowledge the inevitable, we pray that our acts of prayer, kindness, and repentance may make some bit of difference in our own lives, and in the lives of others who are suffering. We use the metaphor of God's judgment to understand our own sense of right and wrong. I cannot believe that my acts change my fate for the coming year. But I do believe that I hold in my hands a powerful defense. When I dedicate my life to introspection/ prayer, the kindness and charity of reaching out to others, and the important work of making peace through repentance, I change the quality of my own life, and the lives around me. The rabbis teach us that we understand God's justice by trying to create a sense of justice on Earth. We strive to judge others and ourselves b'tzelem Elohim, in the image of God. During our High Holy Days, we hold our lives up to the light of our inner sense of justice: to evaluate, to criticize, and to praise our own successes and failures. The metaphor of judgment on Rosh Hashanah is that we are our own judge. We cannot control the heavenly courts, which determine who shall live, and who shall die. But we can take account of our own lives, and we can work to create a better world through prayer, repentance, and acts of kindness. During the Aseret Yemei Tshuvah, the ten days of repentance between Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur, we use prayer to evaluate our lives, and set goals for the coming year. We are taught that our actions during these days can affect our lives in the future. Our prayers are simply metaphors for the way we desire to act. We pray for God's strength so that we may be strengthened. We pray for God's mercy so that we may remember to be merciful. And we pray for God's judgment and justice, so that we may renew our lives to the fight for human justice, and so that we may judge our own lives with compassion. May your prayers help you reflect on your life during the next ten days, so that when we come back together for Yom Kippur, we may all be renewed for a joyous year. Blessed may you be in your coming in, and blessed may you be in your going out. Kein yihi ratzon, may this be God's will. Shana Tovah |