Home Correspondences with Siegel, Dr. Seymour / Library / Correspondences / Correspondences with Siegel, Dr. Seymour / The Call to Sanity (1960)

Synagogue Sermon

September 23, 1960

The Call to Sanity (1960)

Rosh Hashanah
View The Text

This content is currently available in its original PDF format. As we expand the library, we plan to add a text version as well.

RELATED CONTENT

Synagogue Sermon

A Call to Consciousness - editor's title (1964)

The special significance of the Shofar, or ram’s horn, which will be sounded during services these next two days of Rosh Hashanah, was explained by Maimonides as follows: Uru yeshenim mi-shenatkhem, “You who are asleep, wake up! You who are slumbering, arise! Search your deeds and repent. Remember your Creator, you who forget the truth in vanities of the times…. Improve your ways, and abandon your evil deeds and thoughts.” (Hil. Teshuvah, 3:4). What kind of sleep is it that Shofar seeks to rouse us from? A moral slumber, of course – a spiritual stupor in which our sensitivities are silenced and the soul sleeps. It is a diminishing consciousness, when God calls – as indeed the sound of the shofar accompanied God’s revelation at Mt. Sinai – but man fails to answer; when we are where we are because we are – unaware; unaware of God, unaware of fellow man, unaware even of our real selves. Do you recall the aftermath of Jacob’s lofty dream of angels ascending and descending the ladder that reached from earth to heaven? He woke up in a dreadful fright, because, as the Bible tells us, “indeed the Lord is in this place, v’anokhi lo yadati, and I did not know” (Gen. 28:16-17). Jacob was shocked at his own capacity for not being aware; for standing in the presence of his Creator, and yet making his bed thoughtlessly; for finding himself in a place of high holiness, and going to sleep calmly and unperturbed. “And I did not know” – this is the self-accusation of the father of the Jewish people, and it is the challenge of the Shofar to all people at the beginning of the Jewish New Year.How urgent that stirring call is for us today! Most of us are rarely knowingly malicious; we are, rather, neglectful. We suffer not from bad intention, but from inattention. Our failure is not so much of conscience as of consciousness. We are, too often, blind to the sublime in life, insensitive to the holy, indifferent to the opportunities for noble achievement. The fault of so many of us is that…

Synagogue Sermon

The Meaning of Our Times (1960)

It is a truism that we live in stormy times. This is an age of tension and stress, when civilization itself stands at the brink of disaster, when new nations are being created amidst convulsions of terror and threaten to engulf the whole world in the flames of revolutionary passions. Life has become increasingly complex and difficult for all of us. At a time of this sort, we each of us wonder: what does all this mean? Is there any significance to it? Does it make sense? It is right that this question be asked in and of the synagogue, and it is only fair to expect that we make a serious effort to explain to our people the meaning of the upheavals which we are experiencing. The key to the understanding of the nature of our times is an intriguing passage in an ancient and revered text of the Jewish tradition, which expresses remarkably well the whole outlook of our Rabbis. In the Tanna de'bei Eliyahu we read that our civilization will reach an age of 6,000 years, and that this period of human history is divided into three cycles of about 2,000 years each. The first cycle is called Tohu ---- Chaos --- because during these 2,000 years, beginning with creation, the spirit has not yet crystallized in the world and the life of man is essentially chaotic. The second cycle is called Torah, for during this time man begins to show receptivity to the word of G-d, and G-d Himself becomes more accessible to mankind. The last cycle of approximately 20 centuries, the one during which we now live, is called Mashiach, or the days of the Messiah. During thid period, the forces of Torah and Tohu -- Sprit and Chaos - - are locked in a death-grip, battling for supremacy. Upon the outcome of this battle depends the redemption of the history of mankind. Mashiach or Messiah will come only when the struggle between Torah and Tohu is decided by the final triumph of Torah. And the exact time of that •victory is to be determined only by usI We can, by our own actions, either hasten or delay the…
Rosh Hashanah

Synagogue Sermon

The Revelation of Man (1963)

One of the most popular and beloved phrases in all the Mahzor is: ha-yom harat olam, which we recite in response to the three times the Shofar is sounded during the Cantor’s repetition of the Musaf. All the congregation joins in unison in reciting it warmly, lovingly, and reverently. Yet there is something puzzling about it. For these words mean, “Today is the birthday of the world.” But what does the doctrine of the creation of the world have to do with Shofar? In what way is ha-yom harat olam a reaction to the message of the Shofar? Perhaps we can understand it by referring to the only time that the words harat olam appear in the Bible – and that, in a radically different context.The Prophet Jeremiah had warned his people against engaging in treacherous power politics, and summoned them to a noble and decent ethical life lest their land be utterly destroyed. His reward for acting as a voice of conscience was that he was imprisoned, beaten, and tortured. Upon his release, he again warns of the impending doom of the nation and, broken in body and in spirit, he utters a lament of despair which rivals in power and eloquence the greatest passages of Job, Arur ha-yom asher yuladeti bo, he cries out: “cursed be the day wherein I was born.” If this must be my fate, if all my dedication and sacrifice must be so futile, then why was I ever brought into the world? Why did not G-d slay me before I was born; or ve’rahmah harat olam – why was not my mother’s pregnancy an eternal one so that I would never have seen the light of day!This, then, is the meaning of harat olam in the 20th Chapter of Jeremiah – for harat means not only birth but, more often, the conception and carrying of the child before birth; and olam means not only “world” but “ever,” eternity. Harat olam in Jeremiah means the exact opposite of what it does in the Mahzor. For the Prophet it means never being born, eternal waiting, an unending potentiality that never culminates in the creative act of birth and rea…
Rosh Hashanah