Although the Ten Days of Teshuvah between Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur are known as days of awe and judgement, nonetheless, the final purpose of all the spiritual work of these days is to come closer to God and to feel that closeness in the very depths of our being.
A Spiritual Paradigm for the Holidays
In this spirit, the Arizal created a paradigm that encapsulates and expresses this great desire to be close to God in the most intimate of ways, comparing various stages of intimacy to the order of the holidays of the month of Tishrei.[1] As a basis for this paradigm he used the model of Adam and Eve and their evolving relationship in the Garden of Eden. The Arizal called this model “the secret of the severing” (סוֹד הַנְּסִירָה) after the model’s middle stage of separation between Adam and Eve, as will be explained.
The actual events surrounding Adam’s creation and the subsequent separation of Eve from their one unified body occurred according to tradition on Rosh HaShanah. The Arizal borrows the stages of Adam and Eve’s relationship as described in the Torah to model and better appreciate the process we go through from Rosh HaShanah until the eighth day of Sukkot, Shemini Atzeret (and beyond). The idea is that this model—the secret of the severing, or Nessirah, in Hebrew—serves as a parable for the relationship between God and every individual. Additionally, this very same paradigm can serve as a basis for understanding the relationship between the body and the soul.
Creation and Separation
According to tradition Adam and Eve were originally created as one being, back-to-back, like a pair of conjoined twins. In this state, no real dialogue or deepening of relationship was possible as they could not face each other. They were therefore connected on some unconscious or inherent level yet utterly disconnected on the more conscious levels of being, which require open, face-to-face communication. This reality corresponds to Rosh HaShanah, the beginning of the holidays of Tishrei, when we are metaphorically in a relatively back-to-back relationship with God.
After Adam and Eve’s being initially one entity, the Torah describes how the feminine aspect was separated from the masculine aspect, creating two separate beings.[2] This middle stage of separation and individuation, according to the Arizal, is called the nessirah, which literally means a severing. The stage of cutting and separation ends on Yom Kippur the pinnacle of the intense spiritual work of the Ten Days of Teshuvah between Rosh HaShanah and Yom Kippur, when we prepare ourselves to be fully seen and heard by God on Yom Kippur.[3]
Two Become One
Once Adam and Eve were two distinct self-aware personalities, the next stage of their developing relationship was to turn from the relatively distant type of relationship, represented by being back-to-back, and encounter each other face-to-face. This stage corresponds to the four days between Yom Kippur and the festival of Sukkot.
The next image the Arizal provides in this paradigm is that the masculine and feminine aspects reunite and come together in a loving embrace. This occurs during the holiday of Sukkot when we are enveloped, and in a sense, hugged by God through the surrounding walls and the schach covering of the sukkah.
The seventh day of Sukkot is known as Hoshana Rabbah when, after seven revolutions around the bimah—the central table upon which we read the Torah—we put down our four species and pick up five willow branches. Each of the four species represents a different part of the body: the lulav (the date palm) represents the spine, the etrog (citron) represents the heart, the hadasim (myrtle branches) represent the eyes, and the aravot (willow branches) represent the lips.[4] Based on this, the Arizal compares the taking of the willow branches on Hoshana Rabbah to the next stage of coming close, that of kissing.
Finally, the eighth day of Sukkot, which is actually a separate festival known as Shemini Atzeret (and Simchat Torah) symbolizes the culmination of all the holidays and the process of evolving intimacy that leads to marital union.
Thus, the Arizal has provided us with a very tangible and descriptive visualisation through which we can relate to the holidays of Tishrei as a developing process of the soul as it comes close to God in love and intimacy. Building good and deep relationships takes time, effort and energy. It is no different whether we mean to build our relationship with God, with other people, or even when reflecting on the relationship between our own body and soul. Relationships normally begin with a back-to-back state with a goal of learning to not only coexist, but to eventually arrive at a level of cooperation, love, and integration.
A Day of Judgment
Though the Written Torah does not explicitly associate Rosh HaShanah with judgment, the Oral Torah identifies it as the day of judgment for the entire world. The Sages point to the following verse as a textual allusion to the notion of judgment on Rosh Hashanah[5]: “[The Land of Israel is] a land that Havayah, your God, seeks out; the eyes of Havayah, your God, are always on it, from the beginning of the year until the year’s end.”[6]
The “eyes of God” is obviously an image and is meant to represent Divine Providence and the overall concept of judgment. According to this verse, spiritual surveillance or existential observation takes place at the beginning of the year and lasts to the end of the year, an obvious allusion to Rosh Hashanah. It is interesting to note that in this passage as it is written in the Torah, the word “beginning [of the year]” (מֵרֵשִׁית) is missing the letter alef. This missing letter alef, as we will explore at the end of the article, is connected to our next two subjects – Adam and the shofar.
The Paradox of God and Man
The letter alef is referred to as the “paradox of God and man.”[7] In the Zohar the letter alef symbolizes the “image of God” in which man is created.[8] Many of the names of God begin with the letter alef; more than any other letter.
The name for a human being, Adam, significantly also begins with an alef. The name Adam (אָדָם) can be divided into two syllables: alef (א) and dam (דָּם). The alef represents the Divine image in man, while the syllable dam, which means “blood,” symbolizes the physical, animal nature of man.[9] This duality is manifest in the soul and the body, respectively. The paradox of God and man is reflected in the ongoing meeting of the soul, rooted in the infinite and eternal nature of God, and the finite and temporal body, formed as it is from the “dust of the earth.”[10]
This is very significant to our discussion, because as mentioned earlier, according to tradition, Rosh HaShanah is the sixth day of Creation, the day on which man was created. It is also, according to some accounts, the day that Adam and Eve ate from the Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil and were judged, thus stamping Rosh Hashanah forever as a day of judgment.
The Shofar and the Soul
Of all the mitzvot, rituals and customs of Rosh HaShanah, blowing the shofar stands out as the most potent of all its symbols. The physical action of blowing the shofar entails breathing deeply in and then blowing out from one’s innermost depth. This action is reminiscent of the description of the formation of man in Genesis: “and God blew into his nostrils the soul of life.”[11] The Torah describes that God created the rest of Creation with speech. But He, as it were, blew man’s soul into him. A person can speak for hours without growing tired, but blowing air out of one’s lungs is taxing and cannot be done more than a couple of times in succession. According to Chasidic thought the difference between man and the rest of Creation lies in what each represents in the Creator. Whereas Creation reflects God’s exterior will, man’s soul represents God’s inner will and essence.
This idea is an essential foundation of Chasidut and is expressed in the teaching that the soul of man is “a portion of God Above.”[12] When Rosh Hashanah is called the “birthday of the world” in the prayers, it means not only the creation of the physical universe in general, but more specifically, it refers to the anniversary of the creation of man on the sixth day of creation and the revelation of God’s inner will and true intent in Creation. The blowing of the shofar on Rosh HaShanah also serves as a remembrance of God blowing the soul of life into man from His deepest essence.
The Missing Alef
The images here of God blowing into Adam a neshamah, the “soul of life,” and blowing the shofar on Rosh HaShanah, alludes to the revelation of a new energy in the New Year. The Arizal taught that every year a new energy that has never been present before is revealed on Rosh HaShanah and from there spreads to fill the entire coming year. The beginning of its revelation happens with the blowing of the shofar.[13]
The “missing” alef of the word “beginning [of the year]” (מֵרֵשִׁית) as discussed above, hints to energy of the previous year that is now over, making room, as it were, for a new influx of energy to the world in general, and to each soul as well. The sounds of the shofar blowing carry this new energy into our souls and additionally have the unique power to awaken the soul to come close to God.
[1]. Sod HaShem LiYerei’av, Chapter 40.
[2]. Genesis 2:21-24.
[3]. Sod Hashem LiYerei’av, loc. cit.
[4]. Vayikra Rabbah 30:14.
[5]. Rosh Hashanah 8a.
[6]. Deuteronomy 11:12.
[7]. The Hebrew Letters, s.v. alef.
[8]. 3:104b.
[9]. For more on how the word Adam relates to being created “in the image” of God see Yaiyn Yitzchak, Bereishit §28; Body, Mind and Soul, p.186.
[10]. Genesis 2:7.
[11]. Ibid.
[12]. Paraphrased from Job 31:2, as taught in the second chapter of Tanya.
[13]. From a class given on the 24th of Elul, 5779.
