Happy New Year!

 The first day of Tishri, the seventh month in the Jewish calendar, begins today at sundown. It is now celebrated as the first day of the New Year. Before it was treated as Rosh Hashanah, it was already set aside as a joyous festival, a day of complete rest, and an occasion for drawing God’s attention to his people. Quaint as it may seem, the purpose of sounding short blasts on the trumpet, whether in wartime under attack or in conjunction with the offering of slaughter on a holy day, was to draw God’s attention to what was happening. This is spelled out in Numbers 10:9-10.[1]

May God remember the Jewish people in the year which now begins. May the Lord take note of his people as he took note of Sarah (Gen 22:1). May the Lord raise up the horn of his people as he raised up the horn of Hannah (1 Sam 2:1).

The Torah reading for the second day of Rosh Hashanah (it’s a two day affair) is Gen 22:1-24. The Haftarah reading for the first day is 1 Sam 1:1-2:10.

The old Haftarah reading, according to the Talmud, began with Jer 31:20, and presumably continued through at least 31:34. That is part of one of the most amazing passages in the whole Bible, to be read nevertheless, as Emil Fackenheim pointed out in a famous essay, in conjunction with Jer 31:15.[2]

Here is Jer 31:20:

הֲבֵן יַקִּיר־לִי אֶפְרַיִם

אִם־יֶלֶד שַׁעֲשֻׁעִים

 

כִּי־מִדֵּי דַבְּרִי בֹּו

זָכֹר אֶזְכְּרֶנּוּ עוֹד

 

עַל־כֵּן הָמוּ מֵעַי־לֹו

רַחֵם אֲרַחֲמֶנּוּ

 

נְאֻם יהוה

Is Ephraim a son so dear to me,

a child of delight,

 

that no matter how often I speak harshly with him,

I lovingly remember him still?

 

That is why my gut aches for him,

why I’ll show him full compassion.

 

Oracle of the Lord.

 The pathos of this passage is overwhelming. Don’t ask me why I am the first to translate מעי ‘my viscera’ in all its glory. Why are we so afraid of a passionate God?

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[1] Leviticus 25:9 stipulates the sounding of the ram’s horn, or shofar, on Yom Kippur on the tenth of Tishri. Its sounding on the first day of the month as well was mandated post-biblically.

[2] Emil Fackenheim, “New Hearts and the Old Covenant: On Some Possibilities of a Fraternal Jewish-Christian Reading of the Jewish Bible Today,” in The Jewish Thought of Emil Fackenheim: A Reader (ed. and introd. Michael L. Morgan; Detroit: Wayne State University Press, 1987) 223-234; reprinted from The Divine Helmsman: Studies on God’s Control of Human Events (eds. James L. Crenshaw and Samuel Sandmel; New York: Ktav, 1980) 191-205.

Comments

[Jim Getz]

לשמה טובה

[J. K. Gayle]

Thanks for this!

ἐλεῶν ἐλεήσω

or ‘PITy-ing PITy’ is how the LXX translators translate מעי ‘my viscera’

And the pathos here just erupts out of the few verses earlier. The LXX gives these salient lines (in translation of MT verse 15):

φωνὴ ἐν Ραμα ἠκούσθη [θρήνου καὶ] κλαυθμοῦ καὶ ὀδυρμοῦ

Ραχηλ [ἀπο]κλαιο[μένη] οὐκ ἤθελεν [παύσασθαι ἐπὶ τοῖς υἱοῖς] αὐτῆς

ὅτι οὐκ εἰσίν

So Joshua's (aka Jesus's) disciple Matthew picks that up (in Matthew 2.18) as follows [with my brackets in LXX-Jeremiah and in Matthew showing their differences]:

φωνὴ ἐν Ῥαμὰ ἠκούσθη κλαυθμὸς καὶ ὀδυρμὸς [πολύς]

Ῥαχὴλ κλαίο[υσα τὰ τέκνα] αὐτῆς καὶ οὐκ ἤθελεν [παρακληθῆναι]

ὅτι οὐκ εἰσίν