Sh’ma: Understanding Rosh Hashanah Prayers

This Sh’ma focuses on the musaf prayer of Rosh Hashanah. The musaf is divided into three sections—malkhuyot, zikhronot, and shofarot. We’ve invited writers to explore—as expansively as they wanted—the themes associated with each of these three authority, memory, and the call of the shofar to redemption. An exchange of letters between Rabbis David Ellenson and Sharon Brous explores themes of authority among rabbis today; Meesh Hammer-Kossoy looks at authority in ancient times and wonders out-loud about a liturgy constructed around images of Kingship. Tamar Biala writes a midrash focusing on memory (zikhronot) and a broken heart, and David Lazar writes about memory as an emblem of God’s caring for humanity — and the power of memory to hurt and heal. Finally, the musician Jeremiah Lockwood shares his associations with shofarot, the blasts that awaken our soul, create a “doorway into a holy place.”Our Roundtable explores the relationship of memory to repentance and also the notion that one needs to be in a state of temptation to wrestle with and overcome one’s impulses. Collective sin and repentance are addressed both in the Roundtable — in discussions about South Africa and Rawanda — and in a piece by Daniel Weiss who writes, “Each member of Israel therefore bears responsibility not only for sins committed in his or her own name, and not only for sins committed in the name of other individual members of Israel, but also for sins committed in the name of Israel as a whole.”