Rabbi Andrea’s Sermon – Rosh Hashanah morning sermon 1st Tishri 5787

There is something new this year

We are all accustomed to associating the colour white with Rosh Hashanah. We see white on the bimah, white on the Torah scrolls, sometimes white in the clothes people wear.

 And, as so often with Jewish customs, it is interesting to trace the idea backwards.

The first source of this custom is biblical. There is in the Book of Isaiah a powerful verse. God speaks to the Israelites and says: “Though your sins be like scarlet, they shall become white as snow; though they be red like crimson, they shall become white like wool.” (Isaiah 1:18).

The verse begins by comparing sins and transgressions to a scarlet stain. But then it goes on to explain that such a stain does not have to be permanent. What we have done is part of our lives, but it need not determine our future.  White is the colour of transformation.

Then the Halachah adds an interesting comparison. To understand the customs of Rosh Hashanah, we are asked to imagine somebody about to appear in court. 

Normally, such a person will neglect their appearance and wait anxiously, because they have no idea what the verdict will be. So they dress modestly, mournfully, in black.

But the Jewish people, on Rosh Hashanah, when they stand before God do exactly the opposite. We prepare ourselves, we put on perfume, we eat, we drink and -since we are Jewish- we wear nice clothes. Literally, we dress in white.

It may sound strange. Rosh Hashanah is, after all, Yom ha-Din, the Day of Judgement. Davka, as they say, we dress in white.  We are going to judgement but we approach that judgement with confidence. We believe that the Judge before whom we stand is also a God of mercy. [See Shulchan Arukh, Orach Chayim 581:4]

As you can see, white is the colour of a very particular kind of Jewish faith: the Emunah. Trust. Trust in God. 

We know that we have something to answer for, and yet we believe that if we properly repent and repair the damage we have done, change and forgiveness are possible.

And then the Kabbalists gave white another, deeper meaning. In the language of the Zohar, colours represent different dimensions of divine reality, different faces of God. This is the reason, by the way, why Chanukkah candles are often of very bright colours. As for the verse of Isaiah (“Though your sins be like scarlet”), red is associated with the severity of God’s judgement. You know the feeling you had at school when you saw the teacher marking your written essay in red? That kind of feeling. [see Zohar Shemot 50:361] While, according to the Kabbalists, white is the colour of God’s loving-kindness and mercy — chesed, as it is called. 

But the Kabbalah offers us also a deeper insight. Because we need white to understand properly all the colours. You need white if you want to see, to perceive every colour. As every person in the textile industry knows, to see a colour properly you need to see the coloured item against a white background.

That is the power of white. White is primordial. White represents something prior to the differentiation of colours. In the language of the Zohar, white is the possibility from which the different colours can emerge.

If this is true for colours, it is even more true for the written word. Normally, when we read a book, we think that the information is contained in the letters. But the Kabbalists teach us that we also need the white page. Without the white page there could be no letters, no words, no spaces between words, no text at all. The white appears empty, but in fact white is what makes everything else possible.  [Devarim Rabbah 3:12] 

So now we begin to understand why white is such an appropriate colour for Rosh Hashanah. It is not the colour of having no past. It is the colour of possibility. It is the white page before the next sentence has been written.

We arrive at Rosh Hashanah with plenty already written behind us — some of it beautiful, some of it less so. And in our lives there are things we would happily erase if we could. We would love to turn white certain pages of the book of our lives. But life does not give you an eraser. Erasure of the past is never possible. What is done is done.

As human beings, we need something else. We need something rather more interesting, which Judaism can offer us. We need another page.

White is the colour of the page before we begin to write upon it. White suggests possibility, openness. White tells us that something has not yet been determined.

For all these reasons, the synagogue is traditionally dressed in white for Rosh Hashanah. But this year, as you will have noticed, there is rather more than white decoration around us. We have a rather different entrance. We have a new and more working heating system.

The whole building has changed. It has been renewed and refreshed. And our synagogue itself has a new visual identity. If you have seen the new brochure, you will already have noticed our new logo. Everywhere we look, there is a sense of renewal.

In a way, we have managed to turn the traditional Rosh Hashanah greeting into something visible. This year the building itself seems to be saying Shanah Tovah. “May you be inscribed in the Book of Life” “May your future be sweet!”

Yet Rosh Hashanah has a rather curious relationship with the idea of the new.

You see, on Rosh Hashanah we do not celebrate the new by throwing away the old. Quite the opposite. The prayers that we recite on these days are very old. The machzor may be new — printed in the 1980s or very recently … and apologies if we ran out of the new one and you have to handle that piece of vintage instead… really sorry! 

But the wording itself is very, very old. Thousands of years old, indeed.

On this day we recite blessings that generations of Jews have recited before us. We tell stories that we already know. We listen to the same ancient sound of the shofar — the most primitive sound in Jewish worship.

Think of the paradox. We welcome the new year by returning to the oldest things we possess. There is an important distinction here, the distinction between renewal and replacement.

On Rosh Hashanah we enter into a new year, but such a year does not replace the old one. This is possibly the main difference between Rosh Hashanah and the other New Year’s Day, you know, December 31.

On December 31 we look at the future with a countdown, the dance, the toast, etc… and then the old year is simply gone. In some cultures they even burn it, usually a big monster, with the features of an old person that symbolises the old.  While on the Jewish New Year’s Day we look at the future and we are aware of the past. We do not begin again by pretending not to think of what was before.

That’s the same mood we experience today, in the renewed synagogue. There are memories in this building. People prayed here before us, people celebrated here, people said Kaddish here, people had their Bar and, recently, Bat Mitzvah here. Families who came through these doors at important moments of their lives.

The prayers themselves have been spoken here thousands of times. So when we look around today and see something new, we are not looking at a break with the past. 

We are looking at the next stage of our history.

This is what Rosh Hashanah is about. To become new by taking seriously everything that has brought us to this moment, and then deciding what we are going to write next. That tension between continuity and change is not only present in the day itself, or in the way we celebrate it. 

It is already there in the Torah reading chosen for Rosh Hashanah. If we read it carefully, the Akedah — the binding of Isaac — is also a story about entering a new religious world. 

Abraham goes up the mountain carrying with him one understanding of what God may demand from a human being, and then comes down with another.

The journey does not erase what came before; it transforms it. I think you know the story. Abraham received a terrible order from God: sacrifice his own son, his most beloved son. They travel to the place. Here is a very important details: there are servants with them. Throughout the journey the servants stay silent.

Then God gives Abraham another command: Don’t do it, do not sacrifice your son. God does not want this from you. 

Abraham lifts his eyes and sees a ram that had been there for a long time; possibly God placed it there at the moment of the Creation of the world  (Pirkei Avot 5:6). Which implies the problem of why Abraham did not see it….  Then Abraham sacrifices the ram in place of Isaac. That’s the reason why we blow the shofar, to remember that ram. (Talmud Bavli, Rosh Hashanah 16a)

I know the Torah tells it in a more meaningful way…  anyway, as I said there is one detail in the story that is particularly striking. Abraham does not travel alone. He takes with him Isaac and also two servants. They travel together for three days.

The servants say nothing. The Torah records no question, no protest, no expression of surprise when Abraham says to them “wait here, me and the lad will go up to the mountains to do our things” The servants do not question Abraham’s words.

Because the idea of sacrificing a child was not unimaginable for the servants and for the world they come from. They were not Jewish; Judaism was not around at that time. So the idea of a God who orders his devotee to sacrifice their children was not unusual for the servants.

Abraham walks up the mountain carrying an idea which belongs to the old religious world. But he does not come down the mountain with the same idea. 

At the decisive moment, when Abraham stretches out his hand, the voice from heaven says: “Do not raise your hand against the boy.” That may be the most important no in the Torah. 

This is the climax of the story. God stopping the killing. This is completely new. For Abraham and for humanity at that time.

But look more carefully. Abraham does not deny God.  This is not a story about making something new by pretending that there was no past. Abraham carries with him the religious world around him. Abraham believed in a God that asks for human sacrifices. 

Tragically, humanity has not entirely left that world behind, from child soldiers recruited by religious militias such as the Lord’s Resistance Army in Uganda to other forms of religious violence in our own time. Think of Hamas, for example.

Then Abraham comes down from the mountain with a different understanding of God’s demands. That will be the beginning of our faith, of Judaism, of the mitzvot, of the commandments, of the halacha.  All stemming from that commandment on Mount Moriah: “God does not demand the killing of your children”. And when Abraham hears that commandment, the world changes. Abraham does not say: “I received my instructions yesterday, and therefore nothing I hear today can possibly change them. Here I am, I have to carry on with the commandment, I will offer my son in sacrifice.”

No, Abraham remains attentive enough, humble enough, spiritually alive enough, to hear that the voice of God is now asking something different of him.

That tells us that obedience to God’s will is not enough. A religious person can be completely sincere and still fails if he has stopped listening.

Rosh Hashanah does not create a new world. But it teaches us to lift up our eyes, like Abraham did. 

We have entered the same building we have entered so many times before. We know the shape of the sanctuary. And yet today, suddenly, we see it differently. The building is recognisable, but it is not quite the same. The synagogue is new this morning. But new walls, new decoration, a new logo and a newly refreshed building do not mean very much if we enter it exactly as we were before. 

Can we, too, become a little like this building? Still carrying our memories, our scars, our mistakes… but at the same time capable of looking at the world in different way.

Capable, for example, of putting aside disagreements and quarrels which have lasted too long, of accepting that not every disagreement has to become permanent?

Capable, for example, of being a little more forgiving of other people because, after all, we too are conscious of our own limitations and our own mistakes.

Capable, for example, of donating more time and more resources to our synagogue.

There are so many different ways of being generous to a community. It has become very easy to belong to something at a distance, to receive the emails, read the notices and feel that we remain connected. 

But a Jewish community cannot ultimately exist at a distance. It needs people in the room. It needs people to attend the Shabbat services and the festivals.

So if this building is beginning the year looking renewed, I hope that we can begin it with a renewed relationship with us, the community that inhabits it.

Coming a little more often, participating a little more, offering a little more; not because everything here is perfect, and certainly not because we will suddenly agree about everything, but because this synagogue matters, and because in the difficult months ahead we will need it, and we will need one another.

May the new year bring only good news. I wish you a sweet future. Shanah Tovah.

NOTE. Interesting readings on the Akedat Yitzhak.  Jon D. Levenson, The Death and Resurrection of the Beloved Son: The Transformation of Child Sacrifice in Judaism and Christianity (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1993), 43–52, 111–24; Aaron Koller, Unbinding Isaac: The Significance of the Akedah for Modern Jewish Thought (Philadelphia: Jewish Publication Society; Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 2020), 113–54, especially 141–48; and Thomas Römer, “Sacrifice of the Son or Sons? Genesis 22 and the Question of Child Sacrifice in Ancient Israel,” Jewish Studies 23 (2024): 139–154.