Rosh Hashanah: Inscribe Us in the Book of Life

Good evening, dear friends. We are practically on the eve of Rosh Hashanah, and we continue with the theme of this New Year, which I hope will see all our worries vanish first and foremost — for it is a rather particular Rosh Hashanah: Rosh Hashanah in lockdown is a little frustrating. The blessings of the Rosh Hashanah Amidah voice a wish that returns again and again: the wish to be inscribed for life. In the first blessing of the Amidah: Zokhrenu le-chayim, Melekh chafetz ba-chayim, ve-khotvenu be-sefer ha-chayim, lema’ankha Elokim chayim — “Remember us for life, O King who desires life, and inscribe us in the book of life, for Your sake, living G-d.” In fact, if I were to translate literally, I would say: “for Your sake, Elokim Chayim, G-d of life, Eternal One of life.”

Now the second blessing. The first blessing, you see, is the one attributed to Avraham, which bears the imprint of chesed, of kindness. The one that appeals to gevurah, to justice, is the blessing of Yitzchak — the second blessing. And there the addition reads: “Who is like You, merciful Father, who remembers His creatures for life in mercy.” So once again, our desire to be inscribed for life. The concluding blessings of the Amidah are likewise adorned with this request, but with a slight nuance: U-khtov le-chayim tovim kol benei veritekha. As we give thanks to the Eternal, we ask Him to inscribe us for a life filled with happiness, and this for all the children of Your covenant. The nuance is that until now we have spoken of life, plain and simple; now we speak of a life of happiness.

Literally: a good life. Is there, then, a good life and a cursed life? Well, then. The last blessing: Be-sefer chayim, berakhah ve-shalom u-farnasah tovah, yeshu’ah ve-nechamah u-gzerot tovot, nizakher ve-nikatev lefanekha, anachnu ve-khol amkha beit Yisrael, le-chayim tovim u-le-shalom — “May we and all the House of Israel be remembered and inscribed in the book of life, of blessing, of peace, of prosperity, of happiness, of salvation, of consolation and of contentment.” A fine year-end greeting card: life, health, consolation, prosperity, happiness — all of this is familiar to us. A first remark: Judaism does not call us to renounce the world or any form of enjoyment, but rather to take full advantage of life, on condition that we join heaven and earth within that life. For chayim is a dual word in Hebrew. There is no single life: we always live a double life — inner and outer; a life in this world and a life in the world beyond; a life in reality and a life in the imagination, in the dream. We always live at the measure of Yaakov’s ladder, which goes up and comes down. The angels who ascend and descend — that is us; we are those angels who people the ladder. In this life one must know how to rise, on the one hand, but also how to come back down — to have the wisdom to be able to descend and to take life as a gift […]; to desire it in this world, for life is the greatest blessing, the perfect blessing. To show this, I am going to read you a passage of the Talmud that asks about the difference between the first Tablets of the Law and the second Tablets, with regard to honoring one’s parents — honoring one’s parents in the sense of respecting the heritage of the fathers, of belonging to the tradition of the fathers, to the Torah of the fathers. For the covenant of Mount Sinai bound our fathers, our children and all our descendants; no one escapes this covenant.

This covenant, which was imposed under constraint at Mount Sinai, the people embraced and subscribed to willingly in the days of King Achashverosh, at Purim. So in the end there was a free choice, a free adherence on the part of the people to this Torah given at Mount Sinai, by way of a covenant. A covenant — and note that there are three covenants that the Holy One, blessed be He, contracted with man. First, the covenant with Noah, in which the Creator of the world commits Himself never again to bring a flood upon the earth, never again to destroy His work. But He sets as a condition the observance of the seven Noahide laws transmitted to Noah — and this time He asks for no approval from man.

The world cannot stand without the observance of these Noahide laws, so Noah is obliged to subscribe to them. There is a second covenant, the one He concludes with Avraham. The covenant He concludes with Avraham requires a physical mark: circumcision. The approval of this covenant — or, if you prefer, the subscription to it — passes through what represents the foundation of the human being in his creation and in his procreation: the milah. There is a third covenant, again requested by G-d: that of Mount Sinai, which binds the entire people of Israel. But this time, paradoxically, the people of Israel is asked to adhere to it voluntarily. The people consents to adhere to the Law, and three times it says: “All that the Eternal has spoken, we will do.” Very well. Paradoxically, when we conclude the year’s reading of the Torah before Rosh Hashanah, we read a parashah that says: Atem nitzavim ha-yom kulkhem — “You are all standing here today.” Ha-yom, “today,” our Sages understood as the day of Rosh Hashanah. Le-ovrekha bi-vrit Hashem Elokekha — “that you may enter anew into the covenant of the Eternal your G-d.”

But this time the covenant is not asked for by the Holy One, blessed be He. It is Moshe who feels the need to renew the covenant and to bind the present generation and the generation to come […]. Whoever stands here today and whoever is not here is bound by this covenant. And who asks for it? It is no longer the Holy One, blessed be He — it is Moshe Rabbenu. What has happened? We were in a state of gestation. We were children. We needed an education that was somewhat constraining. We have now reached the threshold of the Promised Land after forty years in the desert — and when I say “in the desert,” one should say “in the desert of the nations.” And Moshe says: this time it is not G-d who asks for a covenant; it is we who seek to renew this covenant. For we have reached such a state of maturity that our faith no longer consists in waiting for G-d to act on our behalf to satisfy our needs, but above all in responding to what G-d expects of us.

And we stand present, ready to answer these questions. That is why we ask to be inscribed in the register of life. I said a moment ago that this register of life appears, paradoxically, in the commandment to honor one’s parents — in faithfulness to the tradition of the fathers, in the desire to invest oneself in perpetuating this work begun by the fathers and in bringing it to completion. Now there it is said: lema’an ya’arikhun yamekha. In the first Tablets of the Law it is said: “that your days may be prolonged.” But in the second Decalogue the same commandment is repeated, and this time it says: lema’an ya’arikhun yamekha u-lema’an yitav lakh al ha-adamah asher Hashem Elokekha noten lakh — “that your days may be prolonged, and that it may go well with you, on the land that the Eternal your G-d is giving you.”

Always this promise of life, understood as the good, is bound to the land. Adam, Adamah: our dimension as Adam — which never dissolves, which is conjugated in no other way, and which accepts no declension, no plural and no feminine: Adam in its total dimension — is perfect only within the bounds of the Promised Land. So much so that our Sages said that the mitzvot are but markers for the return to our land, because it is there that Israel reaches its full dimension. It is a fact that on foreign soil the Torah is amputated of all the laws relating to the land and to the Sanctuary, and as a result we find ourselves amputated, as it were, of a spiritual part of ourselves.

So this phenomenon of full and complete identity, which binds Adam, the human being, to his matrix, Adamah, is enough to justify the will to live, the free choice of life. For in the parashah with which we conclude the year it is also said: “I call heaven and earth to witness against you this day: I have set before you life and death, the blessing and the curse — and you shall choose life.” Would we choose death? Of course we are going to choose life! The tiniest insect struggles to preserve, to save its existence from every threat. We cling to life. But no — what is at stake is the spiritual content we give to this life: where shamayim va-aretz, heaven and earth, the spiritual and the material, are fused into one and the same life; where the life of the world beyond, the future life, and the life here present intersect and intertwine, and we lead this life in permanent happiness. We would not even need to add a qualifier to life and say chayim tovim, a good life, a life of happiness, a life of blessing. Life in itself is a blessing, because life is the means that allows us to enjoy closeness to the Divine — since the Divine is Elokim Chayim: He is the source of life, the essence of life.

So I return to this text of the Talmud — Rabbi Chanina ben Agil; it is in Bava Kamma, for those who wish to consult the text afterwards, page 54b. Rabbi Chanina ben Agil asked Rabbi Chiya bar Abba: why is it that in the first Decalogue the word tov, “good,” is not said, whereas in the second Decalogue it says tov — lema’an yitav lakh, “that it may go well with you”? Not only “that you may live,” but “that you may taste life.” He asks why this precision in the second Decalogue. The one being asked does not know what he is talking about, and says to him: “Before you ask me why tov is said there, ask me whether tov is said there at all!” — since you are asking me why it is said, and why “good” is not said in the first Decalogue…

“I do not know whether the word tov appears there, whether in the end this word tov exists at all.” What does he mean? He does not know precisely that there is a difference between the first and the second Decalogue — hence his reply: “I do not know whether tov is mentioned in the second Decalogue.” And then he sends him off and tells him: “Go to Rabbi Tanchum bar Chanilai. I cannot answer you; go to the master of aggadah” — the master of legends, you would say; the master of thought, the master of the philosophy of the time — “and put this question to him.” He went to see him, and he said: “I heard nothing from him directly, but this is what Shmuel bar Nachum told me” — it is still Rabbi Chanina ben Agil who asked the question — “I was told that tov is not written in the first Decalogue because they were destined to be broken. And since they were destined to be broken, they did not merit the qualifier tov.” Curious, isn’t it?

So he raises the question and says to him: after all, even if they were destined to be broken because of the sin of the Golden Calf, what does it matter? Why not write it? And he answers him: no — chas ve-shalom paskah tovah mi-Yisrael: had they been broken, the good would, heaven forbid, have ceased from Israel. We do not understand the meaning of this question and of this answer; and even if we accept the question, we do not see why the good would have ceased from Israel. The answer is very simple. As I told you a moment ago, life in itself is a source of blessing; it calls for no other qualifier. Through life, man is given the possibility of bringing about this encounter with the Divine, with the spiritual, of fulfilling a mission that G-d has entrusted to him. Now, is everyone capable of grasping this notion? No. A people that, after the first Tablets of the Law, after G-d’s revelation on Mount Sinai, after this encounter between man and the Divine, found a way to bow down before a golden calf proved that it was not yet able to receive this revelation of G-d. It needed some sweetness, a softening of life, a promise — promises of good things.

It is not unlike promising a child, or an adult, a reward in exchange for doing his duty. And this is why, in the first text, respect for one’s lineage is required without any compensation. The only compensation is life; the only blessing is life — this possibility offered to me of taking part in building G-d’s work, in bringing G-d’s work to completion. But since man is not capable of reaching that level, he needs rewards, compensation. So in the second Decalogue, G-d once again came down to the level of the human being and said to him: not only lema’an ya’arikhun yamekha, not only “that your days may be lengthened,” but lema’an yitav lakh.

“I promise you that you will enjoy good things, happiness, benefits.” And so now, my dear friends, I invite you to look with different eyes at the first two blessings — at the two additions to the first blessings: Zokhrenu le-chayim, “Remember us for life,” Melekh chafetz ba-chayim, “King who desires life,” inscribe us in the book of life, for You, O G-d, are the G-d of life. The same is true in the second blessing: “Merciful Father, who remembers His creatures le-chayim, for life, in mercy.” We have gone through the Amidah, but we know that there is always something that eludes us in what we desire and in what we want to be.

I will make this clearer in a moment. And then we say: U-khtov le-chayim tovim — “Inscribe us for a good life, a life of goodness.” We are not capable of grasping life as a full and complete source of blessing. We need sweetness, promises; we need kalkalah and parnasah — sustenance and livelihood — happiness; we want immediate rewards. This is the human being not in his full development but in his moments of weakness — or, let us say, in his moments of humility. Let me explain. I said a moment ago that the movement of return to G-d implies the desire to return to the land, because the promise of descendants is always bound to the promise of the land.

“For to you and to your descendants I will give all these lands.” One day we will have the occasion to speak of the Land of Israel and of what this matrie, this motherland, represents. For others speak of a fatherland; we speak of a motherland — it is our feminine side. Likewise Knesset Yisrael, the Assembly of Israel: when it finds itself again within the borders of the country promised to it, it is like a man who recovers the part of himself that was torn from him. It regains the land of which it had been deprived because it did not prove equal to the demands of its spouse, or to the virtues of its spouse. And so there is a kind of rejection, something like a divorce: there is exile; one leaves the house.

And then there is, indeed, the return home — because the covenant of the people of Israel with the land is exactly that of a man with his wife. “As a young man weds a maiden, so shall your children wed you.” The expression is strong — the verb ba’al denotes marital union, forgive me the term — and so your children become, in a certain way, your partners. And this, incidentally, is why teshuvah (return) is first a collective and national phenomenon before it is an individual one. This is also what is emphasized in Parashat Nitzavim, which concludes the reading of the Torah before Rosh Hashanah: the solidarity of the Jewish people as a whole. We form one entity, a single one, without distinction.

There are, of course, levels — but they are levels of mission, levels of charge, levels of responsibility, levels of obligation, and each person must fulfill his mission. Only, in a collectivity, however hard I try, even making every effort to discharge my duty, I am not certain that the other will follow and do so in the same way. And that is precisely the grievance of the people of Israel: we are always paying for others who have not properly discharged their mission. And we are condemned to exile for a kind of recycling, for a renewal of our covenant, for a maturing of our spirit. But why? The problem is that in adhering to a covenant there is always a free electron, a root that does not follow the movement.

Now this small root, which does not fully adhere or which holds back, little by little eats away at the vital forces of the whole nation, and we all find ourselves condemned to a fate we did not want, and the righteous one pays too for those who neglected their obligation, their life. In the parashah, Hashem seems in a way to tell us that G-d takes account of what escapes us. But no — for if G-d took account of what escapes us, He would at the very least save us before we found ourselves in a state of total decline; He would fish us out. He does not fish us out. On the other hand, He tells us: beware — what happens outside is the man or the woman who has decided not to follow the movement, to live apart, to trace his own path otherwise: a shoresh poreh rosh ve-la’anah, “a root bearing gall and wormwood,” which distills its poison little by little until it weakens the potential of the nation. This happens even at the level of the individual. The individual himself — however much we want to be perfect beings, righteous people; however much we aspire to extraordinary situations, to found a family that can withstand every trial, the finest story, to succeed in life, since we have invested everything in it —

we do not have all our means at the disposal of our free will. There is always an element that escapes our grasp. It is an element we cannot master, and we are aware of it. For even today, when I formulate my prayer, when I make my mea culpa and take good resolutions for the future, I know that tomorrow I will not change completely from one extreme to the other. There will always remain something I do not master. There are imponderables; there are, indeed, the unforeseen. And there is everything in a life that makes our freedom, whether we like it or not, somewhat amputated of a part. And that part, if we do not master it and do not take charge of it, risks becoming the shoresh poreh rosh ve-la’anah, the root that distills a poison and will drag me further down.

And this is a mystery that I like to evoke. Consequently, what is our wish on the eve of Rosh Hashanah? It is to benefit from this help, from this support of G-d, so that the hold of what we cannot manage by our free will — within the proof of maturity that we give — we may somehow integrate, and so that it does not succeed in dragging us down. This is why we invoke the Akedat Yitzchak, the binding of Yitzchak, the devotion of Yitzchak. We are Yitzchak; we are this people that is laid upon the altar of the nations, and this for the salvation of humanity. But we are aware that we are not perfect. And when it comes to renewing the covenant, it is a matter of showing maturity and at the same time of saying that, despite everything, the whole cannot depend on me alone. There is a partner in what I undertake, and it is not only my fellow — and my fellow is first and foremost my ben zug, my spouse, feminine or masculine — but the Divine. That is the third dimension with which I live. And likewise, when I recite the Thirteen Attributes of G-d, which I call to my aid, it is with the awareness that I can do nothing but turn to the One who possesses them perfectly and completely, so that He may let me benefit from these attributes at the moment when I feel myself failing.

So Rosh Hashanah is for us a moment in which we recycle our covenant, with the conviction that, just as a tiny microbe can physically destroy an entire life, the same holds on the spiritual plane: a small failing, if I leave it unchecked, unmastered, throughout my life, will destroy me spiritually. But also with the conviction that, in the same way, a single act — a good act, a positive act — can also change a whole… let us say, not only my own person, but my family unit, my social unit. It was the Rebbe […] who said: if you believe that one can destroy, then you must also be convinced that you can restore everything, rebuild everything. And that is it. The third element that takes part in our life is the One we call upon so that the act we perform on the day of Rosh Hashanah — for everything follows the head of the year, and we have said that Rosh Hashanah is the head, the brain, of the year; everything follows from this self-determination — with the conviction, the faith, that this gift of self, this devotion of one’s being, is good; one must not underestimate it. It is chayim tovim: it can truly bring a good life to all those around us. And with that, I wish you… If you have questions, with pleasure. — Yes, sir. First of all, thank you for all these words, all these words of love — they are always words of love for life. I think exactly as you do, and I am truly convinced that youth without G-d is youth lost. But I always wonder: it is sometimes so very difficult to share this notion of the spirituality of life, because there is a whole segment — there always has been — a whole segment of young people who are so disconnected from any form of spirituality. I keep asking myself how to convince them, when I believe that a form of spirituality is truly a love of life, and that it is being fully alive.

But I notice around me how foreign this very notion of spirituality sometimes is to so many people. I don’t know whether you understand my question, but it is very difficult. — What you are saying… at my age it is also much easier to go down the stairs than to climb them; I get out of breath very quickly, you see. Now, we have already said that we do not practice a Judaism for others. First of all we live it for ourselves: we respond to our own expectations, our hopes, our obligations, our duties. But know that you become, without meaning to, a model for your husband, for your children, for your grandchildren, and little by little it spreads. We do not proselytize; we do not seek to convert anyone. We live for ourselves, with the conviction that we have come to fulfill a mission, and we try to discharge it as well as we possibly can. Just as in life you make commitments — take the example of a household: we want that household to succeed wonderfully, and we are ready to give up many things, to cede ground, provided it succeeds; to show humility, to bear things ourselves, provided it succeeds.

Well then, let us tell ourselves that there was one […] who first set out to build his own house, and through his house he opened his doors to many people. So try to live your life on this double register, of material life and spiritual life at once. There is no gap, no split, no separation between them. That is how it is. You sometimes say: in life, I do not compromise. This is the path I have chosen and the one I intend to follow — for myself, for my house, for my home, for the model of society I want, the one in which I want to live.

Now, of course, we are assailed on all sides. It is not easy — it is not easy, because antisemitism is not only what persecutes Jews. Antisemitism is what persecutes our way of understanding our spirituality. We are fighting with it, suffering; it is not easy. But these are the choices we have made […]. — If I may pick up on what you said: so in fact we have no choice; only example can lead a generation to follow us? — I did not say that we have no choice. We have free will, yes. But […] it is limited.

We cannot say that we fully dispose of our free will. If you can affirm that, I will bow before you. But as for me, in any case, I am never sure of myself. I am always asking myself questions, even as I speak to you, and I detest lecturing people. Another question? — May I ask a question? Coming back to what the previous person said, about people who have no access to this spirituality, who cannot reach it — she was speaking of young people, perhaps, of the younger generations. Perhaps for such people there is a disguised access: when they love life, love nature, that is a way of loving the Creator, somewhat in disguise, I think. To be very sensitive, to live in joy, to know how to appreciate things — that is a kind of spirituality, not really intellectual, but a form of spirituality nonetheless, I find. What do you think? Since we are speaking of life, which is so precious, and of the love of life, of nature, of everything G-d has created — that is a form of recognizing G-d, an approach to spirituality, even if people do not know how to put words to it.

— Absolutely. But I say that the world is idolatrous on different levels. And indeed, marveling at the beauty of nature, or at the beauty of a musical work or of any art whatsoever, is also a way of paying homage to the Eternal, to the Divine. But the notion of faithfulness must be the common denominator of all these disciplines, all these beauties, all these arts — so as not to let them, as it were, fracture and be dissected; not to let them, I would say, be turned into idols, into little idols, each with his own idol. No. There is a whole. That is Elokim: Elokim is the G-d of nature — G-d in His manifestations, in all these natural manifestations. They must be made to converge toward the G-d of love and of kindness.

Now the G-d of love rejects “polyamory” — I put it somewhat crudely — because if today I love this aspect and tomorrow I turn to something else, you justify every infidelity and you accept living with it. What is needed is to make all these energies converge toward a single one, toward their source of energy. That is how you will sanctify them. That is what it means to say Hashem Echad u-Shemo Echad, “Hashem is One and His Name is One.” Shemo Echad: the things that bear His name are many; but Hashem Echad — in His essence He is One. One must therefore be able to bring them back to their source. And that is Judaism: the difference between Judaism and the other religions is this and this alone.

Otherwise, many philosophies are of equal worth, many religions are of equal worth in certain respects. In any case, since we ask of humanity only the observance of the Noahide laws — not the 613 commandments — that is enough: the essence of these Noahide laws is the minimal structure of existence. But these Noahide laws would have to converge toward one single life. There is not an artist’s life and, beside it, a life of I know not what else, is there? There are not different sequences of life; it is one life as a whole that crowns everything, and it breathes the same philosophy, the same beauty; the same breath runs through it all. That is how it is. And the one does not exclude the other. Another question.

— If I may, before we part: I looked at the calendar and found that we cannot meet before October 18, since every Sunday falls either right after a festival or right after Yom Kippur. So I am truly sorry, we will have to stop for a month, unless Manu and I find another solution. In any case, you will all be notified once we have spoken with Rav Benizri, and you will be notified through social media as usual. Thank you very much. — Thank you very much. — Thank you all very much. Goodbye. — Thank you very much. Goodbye. Happy New Year, everyone. A happy New Year, and a gmar chatimah tovah, a good final sealing. A good life.

Happy New Year, everyone. And well-being, well-being, well-being, for everyone. Happy New Year. Goodbye.