Pshat and Drash: The Shofar of Hearing and the Shofar of Doing
A Jewish man, I’m not going to name a name, gave his supervisor a list of all the yontifs and told her he needs to take those days off. The supervisor absolutely refused. The guy then brought the matter to HR, who also quickly said no. The employee is no wilting flower, and after some pushing, he got a meeting with the president of the corporation.
The moment the man walks into the office, the president told him, “Enough with this nonsense. You’re the rabbi!”
During my first home visit with Sam Cohen z”l, a former Adath Israel president who passed away in early July, he told me that as a young man getting started in Toronto, he was told that if you don’t work Saturday, don’t bother coming in Monday. I’m sure some of you remember that era and I’m sure even more of you can list examples from your own lives, like when important meetings or events were scheduled for Jewish holidays or when you had to fight for you right not to write an exam on Shabbat.
Thank God, that intolerant time was long ago… right?
I asked ChatGPT the other day to list every antisemitic event in Canada since Oct 7th. You want to hear the response? “Every incident is bigger than we can fit in one message”. Bigger? Bigger in number for sure, but also it seems bigger in severity as well.
I know that and you know that, but I don’t think that the rest of Canada knows that. And often the perpetrators of these crimes are the selfsame ones who deny their very antisemitic nature. The ones who claim their activism is only directed against Israel and not against Jews.
To be crystal clear, one can obviously disagree with a government without being antisemitic. A million Israelis march against Bibi every week.
But the vociferousness, the coded use of Zionist in lieu of Jew, the double standards. We have no illusions about our experience.
This morning, I want to talk about Jewish life since October 7th, a life that has been challenging and heart-wrenching and exhausting, but not a life that I think is or will ever be like the one Sam Cohen experienced. I want to talk about our Jewish lives since October 7th, and I want to do so in a very specific way.
The brachah that I recited not long ago over the shofar was ברוך אתה... לשמוע קול שופר, Blessed are you God who commands us to hear the shofar.
And that’s what we usually do. We hear, and hearing is passive, it’s our default setting. The halakhah is actually so hands-off that a Jew walking by a shul on Rosh Hashanah who just happens to hear the shofar blowing, so long as he thinks to himself, ‘oh right, the shofar, it’s Rosh Hashanah’, has fulfilled his obligation. The world does its thing, and you literally have to do… nothing.
Today though I want us to hear and to do, to listen and to act. Today, this year, it isn’t enough to click ‘hear the shofar’ off your Rosh Hashanah to do list. Hearing the shofar this year is necessary, but not sufficient. This year, there are other things that we need to add to our to-do list.
The Rambam tells us the shofar is a wake-up call to the soul.
So, yes, let’s listen, but let’s also rise with the sound, let’s join with it, let’s become it. Just as the shofar transforms breath into sacred sound, let the sound of the shofar transform us into sacred instruments of change.
And to help us do that, with each call of the shofar, let’s consider both its pshat and its drash – its surface level meaning and deeper understanding.
That pshat level, that surface level meaning, is the sound of the shofar in your ears. The drash level, the deeper understanding, is the shofar’s sound waves penetrating your bones.
Let’s start with Shevarim. It means broken. We can all relate to that.
It’s how we feel when we see propaganda videos of gaunt hostages digging their own graves. It’s how we feel at the premature, virtue-signalling, and ultimately unhelpful Canadian formal recognition of a Palestinian state.
Shevarim is disconnection. It’s the break. It’s the gap between how we see the conflict and how it is seen by others. It is the widening chasm between us and them. Friend and foe. Ally and enemy.
And yes, Shevarim should also be the cracks in our hearts for Palestinian children and scenes of devastation.
To have empathy for the innocents is not a sign of weakness. It is a strength of our values. Values that require warring armies to balance likely casualties against military necessity, even when faced with an enemy who chooses to embed themselves within hospitals and schools. Values that require Israel and Egypt to act responsibly in the provision of humanitarian aid, even when faced with an enemy who pilfers food from those who need it.
All of this is surface level Shevarim, the pshat.
The deeper level, the drash of Shevarim is the rhythm of stepping up –step, step, step:
It is the sound of canvassing for pro-Jewish school board candidates. It is the sound of accompanying Jewish students after an antisemitic event.
Shevarim is rally, rest, repeat.
Shevarim is the way we give of our time and money to shuls, camps, and Hillels, and then give again.
I know that many of us have felt helpless over the last two years. But there is so much that so many of us have done. There is so much that so many of us can still do.
This is the Shevarim we need. Delve into the sound as we delve ever deeper into ourselves.
From the Shevarim let the tikkun begin. This year, pick something and do it. Answer the call of the Shevarim. Be the action that it demands.
Next comes Teruah – doo-doo-doo-doo-doo-doo-doo-doo-doo
Teruah is gunfire at its surface.
With violence this began. Fire and gunfire. Murder. Kidnapping. Rape. Not a single day of peace since. Not for Israel. Not for us.
The anti-Israel protests started the very next day. Shuls shot, firebombed. Institutions defaced, vandalized. Canada’s National Holocaust Monument defiled.
The pshat of Teruah. The echo of gunfire.
But the Teruah is more. The drash of Teruah is the hora’s pounding feet at a Jewish wedding. It is hands clapping in a sacred singing circle. It is children’s laughter at our Adath Israel Purim carnival. Each and every mitzvah done in courage and joy is the Teruah of Jewish pride that we make the whole world hear.
Understand though - there is no Jewish pride without Jewish identity and there is no Jewish identity without Jewish experience. Don’t just hear the Teruah, join in the Teruah. Join a class. Do an act of chesed. Learn a new skill. Join in the Teruah.
And then there’s the Tekiah. A single, full-bodied note that washes everything to the margins and beyond.
At its surface, the pshat of the Tekiah is a flowing sound that rushes toward us, a wave that can carry us up or that can crash down upon us and wash us away. Of all my concerns, for our community at this moment, it is this washing away, the shushing of Jews and Israelis, our erasure from public and professional life, that concerns me the most.
Erasure is telling seven Israeli chess players that they can compete, but not under their own flag. And erasure is even when relenting, choosing to fly the Palestinian flag in an event hall otherwise reserved for regional Spanish flags.
Erasure is the Israel-Premier Tech cycling team having no choice but to remove the name “Israel” from its jerseys. And erasure is even after doing so, having protesters throw objects and debris onto the course anyway.
Erasure is urging Tennis Canada to ban Israel from the Davis Cup. And erasure is Israel playing to an empty stadium in Halifax, where three synagogues were defaced on that same day.
We are citizens of this country, are we not? There are laws in place with police to enforce them. We must call upon our politicians and our law enforcement and demand that Jews and Israelis participate fully as equal citizens, residents, and visitors to this country.
We must never tolerate being treated as pariahs.
Certainly, let people protest. That is their right – and an important one – but one with legal limits. And should someone choose to break the law, they must suffer consequences. That is our right.
Erasure is the path of least resistance. They’d like us to hide, to not make waves. Erasure is the easy decision and the wrong decision.
The most nefarious examples of erasure are happening behind closed doors and in the subconscious minds of decision-makers.
It is simpler and easier to not choose the Israeli for the medical fellowship, so don’t select her. Nobody wants trouble for their team, so why hire or promote the Jew? Erasure, the path of least resistance.
That this is already happening, there is no doubt.
Oh, and if you’re a professor, definitely don’t collaborate with an Israeli colleague. Well, actually let me revise. We know from our friends at Hillel that it’s only the Rabinoviches and Bittons who are avoided. But partnering with Arab-Israeli professors? If anything, it’s a badge of honour. This of course gives lie to the claim that it is only Israel that is being boycotted.
Then there’s the drash of the Tekiah – that one long, lingering, powerful note – that is unity. It is togetherness.
It’s standing shoulder to shoulder with one another. It’s backbone, it’s standing upright, tall and proud, claiming space, never shrinking away from who we are. Tekiah is upholding our own standards and demanding that others do the same.
The Tekiah is a community come together. The Tekiah is כל ישראל ערבים זה בזה – the People of Israel responsible one for another.
In this, the year 5786, let us be this Tekiah.
To borrow from Kohelet, there is a time for working on ourselves and a time for working on the world.
At Sinai, our people declared, נעשה ונשמע, we will do and we will listen. They – indeed we, for our tradition teaches we were all at Sinai – declared their intention to act, to follow in God’s ways, even before they knew the specifics of what was being asked of them. It was faith first, follow-up second. Devotion, then details.
Today, let us all make this commitment together.
Today, on Rosh Hashanah, let’s not just pass by the shul, hear the sound of the shofar, and tick the mitzvah off our lists. Let us join with the sound of the shofar. Let is wave carry us beyond the surface, the simplest, and the easiest. This year, let us dive with it. This year, let it carry us to action.
Let’s be broken, let’s be brave. Let’s be pierced, let’s be proud. Let’s be slighted, but never silenced.
Let us be the voice of the shofar.
And as we reach the Tekiah Gedolah, let us join and rise together in action and in sound – loud, proud, and strong – clear across this land and this planet, to the heavens and beyond – let us be the response that is ‘bigger’ as if our very future depended on it.
