"Joy and Judgment on Rosh Hashanah." Times of Israel, October 3, 2024.
In my new role at Cleveland Hillel I have been delivering more shiurim and divrei Torah than in the past. As a way to share these thoughts and reflections, I will be blogging occasionally at Times of Israel. You can read my first piece, a shiur from the Shabbat before Rosh Hashanah, here.
The piece emerged from intensive study of the Rosh Hashanah prayers as I prepared to lead High Holiday services for the first time. It also emerged from a consideration of the spiritual climate in the Jewish world this year. The need not simply for a balance between joy and fear of judgment this Rosh Hashanah but almost, in fact, their delegation to different parts of the Jewish world feels urgent. Nevertheless, I hope I have not overstated the room for joy in the Diaspora, nor overstated the gloom in Eretz Israel.
One thing I couldn't explore is the halakhic status of Masekhet Sofrim, which is key to my discussion. I wasn't familiar with the text before coming across references to it in Hakham José Faur's Golden Doves with Silver Dots: Semiotics and Textuality in Rabbinic Tradition (1986), where it provides halakhic material crucial to his arguments. I got to study Sofrim more closely as I learned its stipulations regarding yom tov prayers. However, some research beyond the traditional sources suggests that there is debate about its provenance. I plan to look into Michael Higger's classic work on Sofrim to learn more about how the Rishonim understood and used it.
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