"So That Their Memory be Invoked Before Me"
So
that Their Memory be Invoked before Me
Based on a sicha by
HaRav
Adapted by
Translated by Rav Elli
Fischer
In numerous places, both in biblical verses and in sayings of
Chazal, it is implied that that there is a special merit in the very
invocation of our memory before God.
This is difficult to understand: Does God, the Master of the world, need
to be reminded about the nation of Israel? Does he not remember the
covenant, remember all deeds ever done and recall all past creatures? Do we
not say that there is nothing forgotten before His Throne of Glory, and nothing
hidden from His eyes?
Furthermore, we recite the following in our
prayers:
For the memory of all
creatures comes before you, human acts and purpose, and the contrivances of
mans travails; a persons calculations and strategies, and the motivations of
mans schemes; for the memory of all actions comes before You, and You seek out
all their deeds. (From the berakha of Zikhronot in mussaf
of Rosh Ha-shana)
To understand this, we must recall that the primary foundation of
akeidat Yitzchak was Avrahams response, Here I
am:
And the angel of God
called to him from the heavens, saying Avraham, Avraham; and he said: Here I
am. (Bereishit 22:11)
Avraham responded when
God called him by name.
As with the akeida, so it was in Gan Eden. After the
worlds first transgression, on the very first Rosh Ha-shana, God called
Adam:
And God called out to
Adam and said, Where are you? (Bereishit 3:9)
The first man was hiding
from his God, so God, as it were, had to search him out.
This question - Where are you? - is addressed to everyone at all times
and in all places. Sometimes it carries a special power; the Day of Judgment is
one of those times. The essence of
the judgment that takes place on Rosh Ha-shana is that very same question:
Where are you?
Together with that, there is something even more awful which constitutes
the source of our terror: forgetting.
According to one source, it can happen that a person forgets his name on
the Day of Judgment. The Reishit Chokhma (Shaar Ha-yira, end of chapter
12) cites the following in the name of Chazal:
They asked Rabbi
Eliezer: What is the judgment of the grave?
[He responded:] When a
person passes away, the Angel of Death arrives, hits his grave with his hand,
and says Tell me your name! He replies: It is revealed and known to the One
who Spoke and Created the World that I do not know my
name.
Esoteric works recommend that a person read, on a daily basis, eighteen
verses that mention his name. The holy Shelah adds (Kitzur Shelah
101b) that this is provides protection against forgetting ones name on the
day of final judgment.
The meaning of this is that every person must find his unique place
within the Torah. Give us our portion in Your Torah. As long as one has not
done so, has not discovered his special letter in the Torah, one remains in
exile, in a sense.
This idea also finds expression in the blowing of the shofar. The
shofar expresses the depths of the heart, the most inward, profound, and
unique place in the heart of every man.
The gemara in Rosh Ha-shana (27b) states the law regarding
a shofar within a shofar:
If one placed a
shofar within a shofar: if he hears the inner one, he has
fulfilled his obligation; if he hears the outer one, he has not fulfilled his
obligation.
If he heard the inner one - God longs to hear our inner
voice.
This is the true sound that we must make heard on Rosh Ha-shana. This is
implied by a different halakha that appears there:
If one coated [a
shofar] with gold on the inside it is disqualified. On the outside, if
its sound changed from what it was it is disqualified; if not it is
kosher.
We learn of something similar in the laws pertaining to the Temple
(Arakhin 10b):
Our sages taught: There
was an oboe in the Temple that was smooth, thin, made of reed, and from the
times of Moshe Rabbeinu. The king commanded that it be coated with gold, but
then its sound was no longer sweet. They removed its coating, and its sound was
as sweet as ever.
On the Day of Judgment, God wants to hear our real voices, not a
coated, counterfeit voice whose natural sound has been
altered.
Would that we knew how to reveal our real voices! If only we could bring
it forth from the depths of our hearts, in its pristine state, we would fulfill
our obligation.
(This sicha was delivered on the second day of
Rosh Ha-shana, 5737 [1976].)