Hidden in a Holiday
Jan R. Uhrbach

A verse from Psalm 81 is featured prominently in the Rosh Hashanah evening service: Tiku bahodesh shofar, bakeseh l’yom chageinu, “Sound the shofar on the new moon, in the time appointed for our festival day.” The word bakeseh — translated here as “at the appointed time” — can also connote concealment, prompting some hasidic commentators (particularly the S’fat Emet) to dub Rosh Hashanah as the hidden, concealed holiday.

This idea of hiddenness is a powerful entree into the liturgy of Rosh Hashanah. Yom Kippur, with its one primary theme of atonement, is readily understandable. In contrast, Rosh Hashanah is complicated. It has many names and many themes.* In addition, the liturgy evokes two contrary moods, each of which obscures the other. Rosh Hashanah is a joyful festival celebrating renewal, and it is also Yom HaDin, the Day of Judgment, filled with pachad (terror) and yirah (fear and awe). Moreover, the fact that Rosh Hashanah is celebrated in the autumn teaches us that the “newness” we seek is a hidden one. Overt, external renewal happens in the spring; the renewal that occurs in autumn is underground. The timing thus highlights the distinction between the renewal of creation and the renewal of nature, and it focuses our attention on that which is within — the spiritual. It offers an exercise in interiority, in looking beneath and sensing the non-obvious.

The hiddenness of Rosh Hashanah locates us precisely where we need to be at the beginning of our process of teshuvah, which centers around cheshbon ha-nefesh, searching the soul. Paradoxically, however, the first step in self repair does not focus on the self, but on God. Indeed, Rosh Hashanah invites us to obscure the self — to get out of our own line of vision — in order to recognize (or remember) that beneath the surface, hidden, is God. This is the function of the service of Malkhuyot, and the theme of Rosh Hashanah as Coronation Day. To crown God as sovereign is to know deeply that the Divine is present.

To crown God as sovereign, however, is not a process whereby all will be revealed; on the contrary, it is a process of embracing God’s concealment. The liturgy of Rosh Hashanah challenges us to face the mysteries of life and death, of justice and judgment, but it doesn’t help us solve them. The prayer U-Netanah Tokef raises the most challenging questions of meaning, justice, and the vulnerability and uncertainty of life; it answers them by saying only, “But You are Sovereign, God, living and eternal.” The text offers no explanation of God’s ways; it simply affirms God’s eternal existence and presence, veiled in mystery.

This is the beginning of teshuvah and it paves the way for our next steps. Even as we shift our vision from ourselves to focus on God, we learn something about how to see ourselves. As we confront and celebrate the hiddenness of God, we begin to see ourselves, too, as fundamentally hidden and mysterious. At some point in the ten days between Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur, we will be ready to delve into the deepest parts of our souls and reveal what is hidden there. With great compassion, the liturgy of Rosh Hashanah doesn’t ask us to do that right away. On Rosh Hashanah, all we need do is acknowledge the hidden parts, and tolerate — indeed celebrate — our own unfathomability. Concealed within us are not just the things we find shameful, but also hidden potential, creativity, talent, yearning, and complexity. To be an unknowable mystery is one of the ways — perhaps the most profound way — in which we are b’tzelem Elohim, created in the image of God. Before we rush to uncover and reveal what is hidden within, the Rosh Hashanah liturgy allows us to simply stand in awe, and more than a little fear and trembling, at the mystery.

Tiku bahodesh shofar, bakeseh l’yom chageinu. “The shofar of renewal is blown within the hiddenness of the festival day.” (Psalms 81:4) The renewal, teshuvah, comes through our growing sensitivity to and treasuring of that which is hidden: the subtle hidden meanings of the themes of the holiday, the non-obvious in the world around us, the unknown and unknowable within the self and, most importantly, the One Who is hidden in everything.

* Rosh Hashanah is also called Yom HaDin, Yom HaZikaron, and Yom T’ru-ah, indicating the themes of the birth of the world, the day of judgment, the day of human and Divine remembering, and the blowing of the shofar. These last two themes, along with the the coronotion of God as sovereign, are also reflected in the Musaf services of Malkhuyot, Zikhronot, and Shofarot.

Jan R. Uhrbach, a Wexner Graduate Fellow, is an adjunct faculty member of the Jewish Theological Seminary and has taught for Wexner Heritage, the Skirball Center, and the 92nd Street Y. She is the founding rabbi of the Conservative Synagogue of the Hamptons, where she continues to serve part-time, and she is the sh’lichat tzibbur for the Kesher Minyan on the Upper West Side of Manhattan.