Rabbi Hyim Shafner

This week’s Torah portion is Ha’azinu: Deuteronomy 32:1 — 32:52

In this week’s Torah portion, Ha’azinu, Moses writes: “When God gave nations their homes and set the divisions of humankind, the boundaries of peoples were fixed in relation to Israel’s numbers.” This perplexing verse is explained by some of the commentaries to mean that in a spiritual way the Jewish people are a model for the nations, and I would add, entrusted with being responsible ultimately for their redemption and that of our world. Though the Torah is primarily about the Jewish people, it begins with the creation of humankind. Thus, Israel’s election is set within, not against, a universal horizon.

The Talmud records a debate between Rabbi Eliezer and Rabbi Yehoshua as to when the world was created, and correspondingly, when the ultimate redemption will come. One says in the month of Nissan (the month in which the Exodus from Egypt took place). The other says in Tishrei, the month when Rosh Hashanah falls.

I believe that at its core this is an argument about universalism and particularism, and God’s plan for humanity. Is the world ideally to be one that is unified under a Jewish banner, symbolized by the month of Nissan, or a more general, universal one symbolized by the month of Tishrei when the world was created?

This question is also the subject of the paragraphs we add at the beginning of the High Holiday Amidah:

First, the universal vision: “Grant that Your awe be upon all Your works, and Your dread upon all You have created … and may they all form a single band to do Your will with a perfect heart.”

Second, the particularistic: “Grant honor to Your people, praise to those who fear You … and all wickedness will vanish like smoke, when You remove the rule of evil from the earth.”

Lastly, a combination — a universalism achieved through the particular: “You alone will reign over all Your works. On Mount Zion, the dwelling place of Your glory, and in Jerusalem, city of Your sanctuary.”

Rabbi Moshe Avigdor Amiel, the chief rabbi of Tel Aviv from 1936 to 1945, warned that our world had become too particular:
“They have forgotten the birthday of the first man, and only we, the children of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, remember it well, for we are not only the children of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, but also the children of Adam and Eve. There is but one nation, the nation of Israel, whose New Year is reckoned … from the creation of the first person. And what is more, it celebrates a New Year festival that is really the New Year for others and not for itself, for ‘The kings of Israel are counted from Nissan,’ and only ‘The kings of the nations of the world are counted from Tishrei’ (see the opening of Tractate Rosh Hashanah). And whereas all nations know only of national holidays, for the Jewish People, the very first festival is not a national holiday at all, but a festival of all humanity …”

He lived in an era of nationalism and particularism which almost destroyed the world. Perhaps it is the case that too much universalism, the erasure of particularities, can also destroy the world. Maybe Rosh Hashanah’s message is that we must first celebrate the universal, the month of Tishrei, for all people are made in the image of God and have one parent, but we must also, six months later, celebrate Passover, our particular story, and thereby exemplify the value of each nation’s particularity.

May we merit this year to have a world of both, the particular and the universal, in peace.

Shanah Tovah!

Rabbi Hyim Shafner is the rabbi of Kesher Israel: The Georgetown Synagogue. He is also a licensed psychotherapist.