"There is a crack...

"אין שלם מלב שבור; אין זעקה גדולה מהדממה; אין ישר מסולם עקום"

"There is nothing as complete as a broken heart, no cry as great as silence and nothing as straight as a bent ladder."

Rav Menachem Mendel of Kotzk

We enter Rosh Hashanah this year, more than other years as a broken and traumatized nation. Broken by our losses, scarred by the trauma and shocked by the rapid and unrelenting global anti-Semitism no one would blame us for succumbing to despair.

The brokenness of the teruah sound reverberates lucidly in our psyche. And yet we are not broken or downtrodden, we lift ourselves up, elevated and inspired, and perhaps even surprised at the unity and courage we demonstrated. We are aghast at our own resilience and conviction. It is the tekia - the stable unified sound of crying together as a nation, the unending echo of eternity, the cry of promise and a better tomorrow that gives birth to our continued existence.

Human nature oscillates between despair and hope. As meaning-seeking animals we possess an interpretive faculty that allows us to frame our reality. That means despite empirical evidence pointing in one direction, humans are endowed with the capacity to see beyond the given. Whilst animals respond to the immediacy of their conditions and reality, humans are able to step back, to provide perspective, to impose meaning and to read their reality within a much wider and more comprehensive vantage point. Because we are future-oriented there is always room for hope. There is always space for a panacea to an immediate fracturing. In Hebrew when someone is grieving we say המקום ינחם אותכם - usually translated as "God will comfort you"– but could equally mean 'space/time/perspective'. The greatest gift we have been given by המקום – God, is the gift of place, space, time. Though time never fully heals, it allows us to learn HOW to live with fragmentation. It endows us with perspective, and teaches us that life is full of ebbs and flows, brokenness and wholeness, grief and joy. The secret of human survival is not in bypassing the brokenness but in learning how to create wholeness from the depths of our fragmented reality. This dialectical existence of brokenness and wholeness is not only the story of our people, but the experience of each thinking individual and it finds expression in the cries of the Shofar blast on Rosh Hashanah.

The challenge of a fragmented Existence:

The dichotomy of existence finds expression in God's words to Adam and Chava on their departure from Gan Eden:

יט בְּזֵעַת אַפֶּיךָ, תֹּאכַל לֶחֶם, עַד שׁוּבְךָ אֶל-הָאֲדָמָה, כִּי מִמֶּנָּה לֻקָּחְתָּ: כִּי-עָפָר אַתָּה, וְאֶל-עָפָר תָּשׁוּב.

By the sweat of your brow shall you eat bread until you return to the ground, from which you were taken: For you are dust and to dust shall you return. (Bereshit 3)

It seems from Man's inception he is destined to struggle with the meaning he attaches to his existence. He clothes himself in so many superficialities in order to escape the torment of unanswered questions. He searches for wholeness, for completion and harmony and instead encounters fragmentation and discord.

The fact of death is not something alien to the Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur liturgy; a dominant theme in much of the liturgy during the Days of Awe is centered around the theme of life and death. The Rabbis give voice to the volatile nature of mankind, but also the human ability to rise above this primordial existence. As we chant so often in our prayers "ותשובה ותפילה וצדקה מעבירין את רוע הגזרה" - Repentance, prayer, and charity can waver the evil decree' – being free, humans are given the ability to shape their destiny through action; to stand on the abyss and look into it without falling; to affirm the fragmentary nature of our existence and yet build foundations. To live with the fragments whilst searching for the whole - this tension finds expression best in the famous Unetane Tokef prayer:

אָדָם יְסוֹדוֹ מֵעָפָר, וְסופו לֶעָפָר - בנַפְשׁו יָבִיא לַחְמו - מָשׁוּל כְּחֶרֶס הַנִּשְׁבָּר - כחָצִיר יָבֵשׁ וּכְצִיץ נובֵל - כְּצֵל עוֹבֵר וּכְעָנָן כָּלָה - וּכְרוּחַ נושָׁבֶת וּכְאָבָק פּורֵחַ - וכַחֲלוֹם יָעוּף.

A man's origin is from dust and his destiny is back to dust, at risk of his life he earns his bread; he is likened to a broken shard, withering grass, a fading flower, a passing shade, a dissipating cloud, a blowing wind, flying dust, and a fleeting dream.

It is interesting that the source of these few verses in the prayer originate from the book of Job (7:1, 14:1) and Ecclesiastes (6:12. 12:7), both books which focus on the suffering, crisis and almost transitory nature of existence. We are described as a broken vessel. That is man, broken, transitory, fragmented and tormented by visions of his own death.

Teruah and shvarim: Brokenness and Crisis:

This existential crisis finds expression in the sound of the 'teruah' blasts. We are told in Torah that the 'teruah' is sounded in times of crisis:

And when you go to war in your land against the adversary that oppresses you, then you should blow a teruah blast with the trumpets. Also in the day of your gladness, and in your appointed seasons, and in your new moons, ye shall blow with the trumpets (ותְקַעְתֶּם) over your burnt-offerings, and over the sacrifices of your peace-offerings; and they shall be to you for a memorial before your God: I am the LORD your God.

(Number 10:9)

The term tekiah is used for happy times and teruah as a warning of a crisis - a time for war.

It is interesting to note that the term Rosh Hashanah is never specifically used in the Tanach, rather the day is described as Yom Teruah - the day of brokenness. There is a discussion amongst the Sages in Masechet Rosh Hashanah as to how the teruah blast must be sounded:

But it has been taught, "The length of the teruah is equal to three shebarim? — Abaye said: Here there is really a difference of opinion. It is written, It shall be a day of teru'ah unto you, and we translate [in Aramaic], a day of yebaba, and it is written of the mother of Sisera, Through the window she looked forth [wa-teyabab]. One authority thought that this means drawing a long sigh, and the other that it means uttering short piercing cries. (Talmud Bavli Rosh Hashanah 32b)

The debate centers on the type of blast a teruah is and what it represents. Is it a short piercing cry (like shvarim) or a long sigh-like cry? The Halacha decides for both which is why today we sound both the teruah and the shvarim. Central to the debate is the idea that teruah and shvarim both represent a type of cry - an echo of a human sound that cannot be expressed in words, a breaking point, a crisis, a call for help. As broken beings we approach the complete whole one. Our sense of mortality and incompleteness has the potential for despair or elevation. We can remain stuck in the fractured sound of the teruah or move on to the purity and wholeness of the tekiah.

The interpretive human act allows us to look at a situation and read it in two ways. This is reflected beautifully in the Hebrew word for crisis – shever. In the bible the word is used with varied meanings. For example when Yaakov urges his sons to go to Egypt to get food the text says (הנה שמעתי כי יש שבר במצריםbereshit 42:2) . He has heard that there is a break in the famine there. The bench used by women to give birth is also called a mashber. The moment of pain and suffering gives fruit to life. Shvarim and teruah lead to tekiah. That is not to say by any means that we must suffer in order to come out stronger, as we know Halacha forbids us to harm ourselves in any way. However, the Torah acknowledges from the onset, that existence in and of itself will naturally lead to many forms of crisis, be that psychological, physical or existential. The fact of our birth leads to thoughts of our death and with it a fragmentary perspective of life. Yet the resounding cries of the Shofar remind us that from depths of our struggles and pain, from the depth of our pain, a crack is formed and in leaning into that crack we will and can move towards the tekiah – a wholeness once more.

In Tehillim 34 we are told: "קרוב ה למשברי לב - God is close to the broken hearted", it is often in the broken, shattered perspective of life that we plumb the depths of our relationship to the Divine, and realize its true complexity. In facing the complexity of our human experience we are able to build a resilience and a depth that defies the empirical facts on the ground.

Thus Rosh Hashanah – Yom Teruah is a deliberate attempt to force man to face these feelings and recognize the imperative to strive towards completeness whilst conceding his brokenness. It is the age-old obligation of Tikkun Olam, which requires that we live, feel and breath the brokenness so that we can respond to the call to fix it. And though we know that an absolute mending may never be possible, it is in the oscillation between tekia - teruah – tekia, the dialectical swing between brokenness and wholeness that something new is formed. The tekiah does not ask to return to the wholeness before the teruah and shevarim, it asks us to create a new wholeness, one that makes space for the brokenness, one that is deeper, more authentic and real than the 'whole' that came before. There is a Japanese art called Kintsugi that repairs broken pottery by mending the areas of breakage with gold or silver. The breakage of the object is seen to be central to its essence rather than something to disguise. We are told that the fragments of the broken tablets (luchot) lay in the ark with the whole ones, an eternal reminder that flaws and fallibility have the potential to create a more profound and deeper connection.

At this time of year, in this moment of Jewish history we would do well to remind ourselves of these central Jewish and human messages of resilience, perspective, crisis and hope and never forget that prayer is the human cry that affirms our belief in the ability to change the future.

May God hear our prayers, answer our call and give us the strength to act in accordance with his will and mission for us on earth.

Dr. Tanya White is a lecturer of Tanach and Jewish Philosophy at Bar Ilan University and serves as a senior lecturer at the Matan Women's Institute of Torah Learning and the London School of Jewish Studies. She was appointed a Sacks Scholar in the inaugural cohort of the Rabbi Sacks Scholars program. Tanya is also the founder and host of the forthcoming podcast series: Books and Beyond: The Rabbi Sacks Audio-Series with Tanya White. Her extensive collection of articles and lectures can be accessed at www.tanyawhite.org