Musaf Rosh Hashanah

In the Musaf service of Rosh Hashanah, the Hineni prayer leads to the repetition of the Amidah, which includes the special prayers of Unetaneh Tokef and Aleinu, and concludes with the Kaddish Shalem. In my thoughts on Rosh Hashanah, I intend to walk through the themes, personal feelings and music of these sacred prayers. 

HINENI

Rabbi Barry Cytron, a legendary figure in Conservative Judaism and a mentor of mine at Macalester College in St. Paul, Minnesota, volunteered me to do the most important task of my life, one which I would then do every year of my life moving forward: lead our college’s High Holiday service prayers.

In his reasoning, I could read Hebrew and I was in choir, therefore, why not spend a significant part of the year learning the liturgy? (I think learning High Holidays liturgy may have been, at the end of the day, a massive part of my college experience.) He gave me the nusakh, or liturgical mode, tapes from Cantor Pinchas Spiro, and told me to go and learn, which I did by ear. And I performed them. 

Here is Spiro’s Ochila La’el, the prayer that leads us to the dramatic Aleinu of Rosh Hashanah:

Towards the end of my time at Macalester, I remember my friend Jon suggesting that I should become a cantor, not a rabbi. As a member of a rabbinic family and someone who really found myself consumed by Maimonides and Midrash, I have to admit that I found the idea somewhat insulting. “What do you mean I shouldn’t be a rabbi?” I thought to myself. 

And so I ended up in rabbinical school, but the only job I was ever regularly hired for was cantor, officiating at High Holiday services.

These jobs provided me with some of my most memorable experiences. I recall when I led Ne’ilah at UCLA Hillel, and after I sang the concluding “Adonai Hu Elohim” and heard Mayim Bialik blow the shofar (yes this is really what happened), I felt my soul leaping out of my body, an experience I had never had before or again. It felt like I had to physically contain myself to prevent myself from dying.

Here is an example of the drama of Adonai Hu Elohim from the Park Avenue Synagogue:

Twice I was the leader of services for a synagogue in Wilmington, North Carolina. The first year, I managed to do Rosh Hashanah before fleeing from a hurricane. (I ended up doing the entire Yom Kippur service for my family in our living room.) 

The second time, I completed the whole cycle. That time, I’ll never forget an older lady rushing to me after Ne’ilah and exclaiming, “you made me feel spiritual for the first time in my life!” I was too exhausted, to be honest, to really be able to react. She became upset at me. “This is a big deal!” I straightened up and responded to her more intently.

At the end of my rabbinic journey at American Jewish University, Rabbi Cytron presented me as the rabbi that I had become. In his speech, he didn’t exactly lead with any reference to my rabbinate; rather, he quoted a description of King David from the Second Book of Samuel, “the sweet singer of Israel” and labelled me as such. And though I have been a rabbi for 6 years, I find myself drifting towards the music I turned away from.

I tremble at the task before me, quite literally as people who see me this week can attest to; this is a feeling reflected in Hineni, the prayer said by the Cantor before Musaf, that he should represent the congregation well and properly before our Creator. 

Here is the great cantor Yossele Rosenblatt’s Hineni:

This first section of my column serves as my Hineni. I have been running away from my calling of actually becoming a cantor every year of my life, because of pride and foolishness, a calling that comes from the people who hire me, who listen to me, who pray with me. I have been singing, but I have been hard of hearing; not listening to my rabbi, not to my congregation, not to the flight of my own soul, not to my compulsive trembling before these Days. 

I have resolved to study to become a cantor over the coming years, with the help of mentors in the world of Jewish music, and with my very musical family.

I commit my devotion to the music of our people, with an emphasis on the special music of khazzones, the traditional Ashkenazi cantorial art form.

This is how I stand before you.

UNETANEH TOKEF

The prayer Unetaneh Tokef asks the question, do you understand the power of this day?

On Rosh Hashanah, we are written into Life or Death, but on Yom Kippur our fates are sealed. We are so written because of what we have done, and who we have become.

And we sign our own sentence:
 

אֱמֶת כִּי אַתָּה הוּא דַּיָּן וּמוֹכִיחַ וְיוֹדֵעַ וָעֵד וְכוֹתֵב וְחוֹתֵם וְסוֹפֵר וּמוֹנֶה וְתִזְכֹּר כָּל הַנִּשְׁכָּחוֹת וְתִפְתַּח אֶת סֵפֶר הַזִּכְרוֹנוֹת וּמֵאֵלָיו יִקָּרֵא וְחוֹתָם יַד כָּל אָדָם בּוֹ  

“It is true that you are the one who judges, and reproves, who knows all, and bears witness, who inscribes, and seals, who reckons and enumerates. You remember all that is forgotten. You open the book of records, and from it, all shall be read. In it lies each person's signature.”

We can change this fate by returning to God (Teshuvah), prayer (Tefilah) and charity (Tzedakah.) This three-part evolution is similar to an idea about the V’ahavta prayer, where we quote from the Torah that says we shall love God with “all our heart, all our soul and all our might” — and “might” means what we do financially. We must turn our heart back to God, devote our soul to God, and give in the name of God.

Don’t let this “God-talk” deceive you: It’s not about God — it’s about you.

I have noticed that in our tradition, humility is the secret spice of our music, of our spirituality. 

We must ask, have we lost sight that we come from the Earth and return to it? Meaning, not only that our lives are finite, but that everything we rely on in our lives: money, status, looks, etc. are of no intrinsic worth. When they become the source of our self-worth, we, in actuality, have nothing, because these things come and go, but we are always left with ourselves. 

Are we worthy? Have we invested the care that we put in how we present for the world to how we look to ourselves?

Look at yourself closely enough, and you will then and only then see the Source of your being to whom you may return to.

I think of this piece by the great American cantor Leibele Waldman, Adam Yesodo Meafar, “Humans are made of Dust,” which I intend to sing as part of Musaf.

The truth is that only God knows who comes and goes in this world and when, as our prayers say. Mi BaEsh, mi BaMayim? Who by fire? Who by water?

And so as it is says in Pirkei Avot, “repent one day before you die.” Which is to say, every day — but as Unetaneh Tokef emphasizes, especially this day.

ALEINU

On this day, we prostrate completely to the ground as we did in the days of Temple, during the prayer that we often pass by in our regular services: Aleinu.

This is part of the Rosh Hashanah service called Malchuyot, in which we recognize the sovereignty of God as a Jewish people.

It is however too simple to say that this is all we are accepting when we prostrate.

Aleinu “it is upon us” is a prayer of commitment to accept and promote healing and enlightenment in our world, for it is our responsibility. But how do we achieve this?

I’ve been thinking about an idea that I’ve been kicking around: “evolution management.” 

Normally when a business changes, you apply “change management” to it. You create the incentives for people to change as organizations adapt to new technologies or policies, and you set deadlines for it.

As I have been learning more about this, I can see that in many situations, businesses are not particularly incentivized to grow people as people if, in fact, they can get adoption of change through other means. Some organizations, to make things easy, fire everyone and hire new people who fit with the new requirements.

However, I wonder if it is possible that work, a place where we spend a solid portion of our lives, should be responsible for our spiritual growth? What if managers were primarily responsible for helping people grow as people (evolve) and not just as employees?

The core tenets behind this idea are trust and patience. When we watch a child grow, we place them on a path to more responsibility, which we allow them to take specifically by letting them step back and take it and grow, and are patient with them. If each person in an organization grows, those business books that talk about making employees buy into a culture of excellence will not be continuously and futilely written.

The primary enemy of “evolution management” is speed. People grow at their own pace. But its primary friend is durability. How many organizations paper over their problems with money or ideology instead of focusing on how to have people work better together? 

I intend to think more about this idea and flesh it out, but suffice to say, a business that cares about the spiritual wellbeing of its employees by definition believes in itself in the long-term, and in the people it serves. And ultimately, by believing in people, the goal is to have people believe in themselves, and for them to become responsible for passing on this vision.

In our modern world, this is what I believe is “Aleinu.” We shouldn’t have to separate our own being from our work.

KADDISH SHALEM

When Musaf ends, we sanctify God’s Name through the full Kaddish, which is sung joyfully. 

As part of the Kaddish, we ask one last time for our prayer to be accepted by God. “Titkabal Tzlothon,” accept our prayers!

And so I end my thoughts by asking you this: Accept an invitation to come be with us at Der Nister these High Holidays. I want to share with you my prayers, Rabbis Hollander and Rosenfeld’s poems and thoughts; I want to hear your voices and see your faces; I want to spend these sacred moments with you.

Here’s a small bit of my Unetaneh Tokef to go out with: