By Rabbanit Coty Bitton

We are very close to Rosh Hashana, the day on which we will be judged. Then come the Aseret Yeme Teshuba, the days of repentance, which end on Yom Kippur. Our Teshuba has to be accompanied by Tefila, our prayer asking HaShem to forgive us and give us the chance to remain in His book of life.

I would like to share a few thoughts about Tefila. As a Jewish woman, I have always taken pride in our matriarchs. One of them was Chana, the mother of Shemuel, the first prophet of Israel. In the Haftara of Rosh Hashana we read Chana’s story and Chana’s Tefila.

Having children did not come easily to Chana. It was a problem almost all our matriarchs shared. Our Chakhamim reflected on this and said that “HaShem desires the Tefila of the righteous.” That is why He sometimes presents good people with very hard challenges. Chana is the classic case. Her situation forced her to be creative. And she composed one of the most beautiful and eloquent Tefilot ever written. Let us look at it.

Chana was desperate. She had Elqana, a husband who adored her, but she could not have children. It was painful every time she saw Penina, Elqana’s other wife, who made no effort to hide how busy she was with her seven children. Penina talked of nothing else, and she was not sensitive to Chana’s pain. In Shilo, where Elqana and his family went to visit the Mishkan, Chana prayed to HaShem with great fervor to grant her a son. From this Tefila our Sages learned many technical details that we apply to nothing less than our own Amida (saying the Tefila standing; moving the lips without raising the voice; not drinking alcohol before praying, and so on).

And we also learn, perhaps mainly, from Chana’s eloquence.

When she prayed, Chana did not simply “ask” HaShem for a son. She “presented” her case before HaShem with intelligent, solid, creative arguments.

1. Chana was the first to use a new name for HaShem. She addressed the Almighty as “God of hosts.” Our Chakhamim explain that “hosts” here means the hosts of heaven, the stars and the galaxies, which, like a human army, move with precision and harmony, obeying the orders of their commander in chief, HaShem. Chana said to HaShem: “You, God of hosts, who created billions of stars and gigantic celestial bodies, what does it cost You to grant me one small baby?”
2. Chana also said to HaShem: “I am a woman. You gave me breasts and the organs of reproduction. But what use is my woman’s body if I cannot conceive and nurse a child?”
3. According to the Midrash, Chana also argued: “I have kept the three Mitsvot of a woman (the name Chana is an acrostic of three Mitsvot: Challa, setting aside a piece of the bread dough for the Kohen; Nidda, family purity; and Hadlaqat haNer, lighting the candles before Shabbat). Do I not deserve, then, that You give me a son?”

From Chana we learn that when we pray to HaShem and ask for what we need, we have to be persistent. And, with great respect, to use every argument we can to show that we deserve a positive answer to our request, just as Chana did.

Finally, we learn one more lesson from Chana, and a very important one. As we know, in the end HaShem grants her a son. And then Chana prays again. This time with more devotion and far more eloquence. Because now Chana prays to thank HaShem. From here we learn that just as we pray to HaShem with all our heart, begging Him to give us everything we need and want, we must not forget to pray to HaShem to thank Him for everything He has given us and gives us, and especially when our requests are answered.

During these Yamim Noraim, let us take Chana’s Tefila as our model. Let us pour out our hearts to HaShem, begging Him to inscribe us in the book of life. And let us not forget to thank Him for everything we receive from Him.

מִי אֵל כָּמוֹךָ נֹשֵׂא עָוֹן וְעֹבֵר עַל פֶּשַׁע לִשְׁאֵרִית נַחֲלָתוֹ לֹא הֶחֱזִיק לָעַד אַפּוֹ כִּי חָפֵץ חֶסֶד הוּא יָשׁוּב יְרַחֲמֵנוּ יִכְבֹּשׁ עֲוֹנֹתֵינוּ וְתַשְׁלִיךְ בִּמְצֻלוֹת יָם כָּל חַטֹּאתָם

Who is like You, [HaShem], who forgives iniquity and passes over the transgression of His people? He does not hold on to His anger forever, because He desires the kindness [of forgiving]. He will again have compassion on us, He will cover our transgressions, and He will cast all the sins of His people into the depths of the sea. (Mikha 7:18–19)

On the afternoon of the first day of Rosh HaShana (or on the second day, Sunday, when the first day falls on Shabbat, as it does this year), we perform a ceremony called Tashlikh. People go to a body of water: the sea, a river, or even a pool. There they recite a series of prayers, including the words of the prophet Mikha, chapter 7:18-19: “Who is like You, O God, who forgives sin and overlooks the transgressions of His people [Israel]? [Who is like You, HaShem,] whose anger does not last forever, because You wish to forgive us and [every year] You have compassion on us once again. You overlook our sins [when we repent] and cast all our transgressions into the depths of the sea.”

ABRAHAM ABINU

Tashlikh is a relatively new tradition. It is not mentioned in the Talmud, nor in Maimonides’ Mishne Torah, nor in Rabbi Yosef Caro’s Shulhan Arukh. The first to mention it was the Maharil (1365–1427), Rabbi Yaaqob ben Moshe Levi Moelin, famous for his works recording the customs of the Jews of Ashkenaz in the Middle Ages. According to the Maharil, Tashlikh consists of visiting a river on Rosh HaShana in order to remember the binding of Yitshaq. The Midrash tells that when Abraham Abinu was on his way to Mount Moriah to carry out God’s command, he came upon a river that should not have been there, and when he tried to cross it, the water reached up to his nose… Even though he had the perfect excuse to call off the sacrifice of Yitshaq, which in the end was canceled by Divine order, Abraham crossed the water and went ahead with God’s command. Tashlikh thus reminds us of the binding of Yitshaq, which took place on Rosh HaShana. That is why we mention it in the Tefilot of the day, and ask HaShem to take into account the merit of our patriarch’s act of unconditional obedience and judge us with kindness.

THE MYSTICAL SIDE OF TASHLIKH

Over time, and after the Ari HaQadosh praised this custom, the Tashlikh ceremony was adopted by virtually all Sephardic communities. But the meaning of the ritual gradually shifted, focusing more on repentance than on the memory of the binding of Yitshaq. The masters of Kabbala linked Tashlikh to the verse from the prophet Mikha quoted above, which says that HaShem “will cast all our transgressions into the depths of the sea.” What does this idea mean? That when we do Teshuba, when we sincerely repent of our sins and transgressions, God will erase them completely and “throw them to the bottom of the sea,” a poetic and metaphorical expression for what every penitent dreams of: the total deletion of the record of our transgressions. Notice that the prophet Mikha speaks entirely in the future: He will again have compassion on us, He will subdue our iniquities, He will cast our sins into the sea. Nothing in the verse says that our sins are already gone. And this explains something about the timing of Tashlikh. We do it on Rosh HaShana, the first of the ten days, when we have not yet apologized to anyone, confessed anything, or changed anything. Tashlikh is not the end of Teshuba. It is an opening prayer: before we begin, we ask HaShem that once we have repented, He will throw away whatever we leave behind.

THE OPPOSITION

Some famous rabbis, such as the Vilna Gaon and Rabbi Yehiel Epstein, author of the Arukh HaShulhan, opposed Tashlikh. So did many Yemenite Jews, who follow Maimonides strictly, and the Sephardic Jews of the Spanish-Portuguese communities of Amsterdam and London. Why did they oppose Tashlikh? In some cases, such as the Spanish-Portuguese community, they left out of the traditional liturgy, that is, out of the formal prayers, many of the customs that came from Kabbala. Why? Because after what happened with Shabetay Tsebi, the false Messiah who abused Kabbala and turned it into superstition to lend credibility to his false claims, they decided not to allow deep mystical ideas into the service, so that they would not be misunderstood by the less informed.

I believe that in the case of Tashlikh, those fears are not unfounded! Why? Because many people innocently believe that by doing Tashlikh they are “throwing their sins into the sea,” and are thereby magically absolved of their transgressions. As if Tashlikh were a substitute for Teshuba. This is completely false. It is not what the prophet Mikha says, nor what the Sages who formulated this custom intended. The process of Teshuba, repentance, is very serious, and this mistaken but very popular view of Tashlikh trivializes it.

GENUINE TESHUBA

Teshuba is a transformative process through which we change not only what we do but also who we are. We devote ten days to Teshuba, from the beginning of Rosh HaShana to the end of Yom Kippur. Here, briefly, are the main steps of real Teshuba:

1. When I hear the Shofar, I must wake up from my spiritual slumber and picture myself standing before God, who, as my Creator, is also my Judge (the One who evaluates whether or not it was worth creating me).
2. I must acknowledge before the Supreme Judge that I am responsible for my actions.
3. I must admit my mistakes and recognize the bad decisions I made this past year.
4. I must also identify my bad habits, some of which have already become part of my personality.
5. During the days between Rosh HaShana and Yom Kippur, I must repair and compensate those I have harmed, and apologize and ask forgiveness from those I have offended or hurt.
6. On Yom Kippur, I must confess my wrongdoings, articulating in a low voice, and feeling that I am standing before God, my mistakes, my bad habits, and my addictions.
7. I must ask the Creator to forgive me and give me another chance.
8. And finally, I must make the decision to change and improve, and plan a serious, workable strategy so that the changes are real and lasting, and my resolutions are not just empty words.

The popular idea that Tashlikh replaces Teshuba is scandalous and counterproductive. How can we tolerate the idea of replacing the entire process of drawing close to God, introspection, repentance, and growth with the notion that one can symbolically “throw all one’s sins into the sea”?

CONCLUSION

Tashlikh is a deeply rooted custom, especially in Sephardic communities, and that is why it is ESSENTIAL that teachers and rabbinic leaders explain to their communities that Tashlikh does NOT make our transgressions magically disappear. We recite Tashlikh to remind ourselves that the process of Teshuba is very serious: our transgressions remain recorded in the Divine memory. But if we repent and change, then we ask HaShem, not ourselves, to “cast our sins into the sea,” so that the records disappear “as if the sea had swallowed them.”

A modern comparison may help. When we delete a file on the computer, it does not disappear: it goes to the trash, and from there it can be recovered. Only when we empty the trash is the file permanently out of the system.

Teshuba works the same way. We do the first part: recognizing the mistake, regretting it, confessing it, deciding to change. That is sending the sin to the trash. But as long as the file is there, it still exists. Emptying the trash of our transgressions is not in our hands. Only HaShem can do that.

And that is exactly what we ask of Him in Tashlikh, before the ten days of Teshuba begin: that after we have done our part, and we have sent our sins to the trash, HaShem will empty it. That they will be gone from the system for good.

וּבַחֹ֨דֶשׁ הַשְּׁבִיעִ֜י בְּאֶחָ֣ד לַחֹ֗דֶשׁ מִֽקְרָא־קֹ֙דֶשׁ֙ יִהְיֶ֣ה לָכֶ֔ם כל־מְלֶ֥אכֶת עֲבֹדָ֖ה לֹ֣א תַעֲשׂ֑וּ י֥וֹם תְּרוּעָ֖ה יִהְיֶ֥ה לָכֶֽם

“In the seventh month, on the first of the month, you shall have a sacred assembly. You shall do no work. It shall be for you Yom Teru’a, a day of the sound of the Teru’a.” (Bamidbar 29:1)

Hearing the Shofar is the central and most characteristic mitsva of Rosh HaShana. In the Bible, shofar refers to a horn used as an instrument to produce a sound. The Torah also mentions another wind instrument, the chatsotserot, trumpets made of metal.

The question for today is this. Many animals have horns, and many of those horns can be used to produce sound. Which one do we need for the mitsva of Shofar on Rosh HaShana? Will any animal horn that makes the right sound do, or does it have to come from a specific animal?

The ram’s horn

For centuries the characteristic Shofar of Rosh HaShana has been the ram’s horn, qeren hakebasim.

Our Sages debated this almost 2,000 years ago. The Mishna examines which horns qualify for this mitsva, and the halakha excludes, among others, the horn of a cow or a bull (qeren shel para). The Gemara (Rosh HaShana 26a) gives several explanations. One of the best known is the principle אין קטיגור נעשה סניגור, en kategor na’ase sanegor, “the prosecutor cannot become the defense attorney.” The bull inevitably evokes the sin of the Golden Calf, and we do not want to bring up that memory precisely when we are seeking HaShem’s favor.

With the ram it is the reverse. Its horn calls up one of the most positive memories we can invoke: the ‘Aqedat Itschaq, the binding of Itschaq Abinu.

After our patriarch Abraham passed the hardest test of his life and showed he was willing to sacrifice what he loved most in order to do HaShem’s will, he lifted his eyes and saw a ram whose horns were caught in a thicket. Abraham took that ram and offered it in place of his son Itschaq (Bereshit 22:13).

Our Sages tied this episode directly to the Shofar. The Gemara says (Rosh HaShana 16a): why do we blow a ram’s horn on Rosh HaShana? So that HaShem will remember for our sake the ‘Aqedat Itschaq ben Abraham, and count it as though we ourselves were prepared to make such a sacrifice.

After the ‘Aqeda, Abraham received an extraordinary blessing: “I will bless you and multiply your descendants like the stars of the sky and like the sand of the sea… and because you listened to My voice, all the nations of the earth will be blessed through your descendants” (Bereshit 22:17-18).

The ram’s horn, then, does not only produce the sound of the Shofar. It also brings to our memory, and so to speak before HaShem, the merit of Abraham Abinu and the ‘Aqedat Itschaq. It is hard to imagine a more fitting memory for Rosh HaShana, the day our actions and our merits are weighed.

The popular “Yemenite Shofar”

A different kind of Shofar has become very popular in our day: the kudu horn, from a large African antelope, commonly called the “Yemenite Shofar.” It is impressive to look at. It can be three or four times longer than a ram’s horn, has a distinctive twist, and produces a deep, powerful sound.

Now that we understand why the ram’s horn matters, a practical question follows. Can we use a kudu Shofar, or one from another animal, on Rosh HaShana? Or must we use a ram’s horn and nothing else?

For Selichot and during the month of Elul, those who blow the Shofar may use a kudu horn without the same difficulty, since there we are not fulfilling the biblical mitsva of hearing the Shofar of Rosh HaShana.

On Rosh HaShana itself, the answer depends on an important difference between the halakhic authorities.

Maimonides and the Shulchan Arukh

Maimonides is strict. He opens the laws of Shofar this way:

שׁוֹפָר שֶׁתּוֹקְעִין בּוֹ… הוּא קֶרֶן הַכְּבָשִׂים הַכָּפוּף, וְכָל הַשּׁוֹפָרוֹת פְּסוּלִין חוּץ מִקֶּרֶן הַכֶּבֶשׂ

“The Shofar we blow is the curved horn of a ram, and all other shofarot are invalid except the ram’s horn” (Mishne Torah, Hilkhot Shofar 1:1).

For Maimonides, the ram’s horn is not simply the preferred option. It is the Shofar required to fulfill the mitsva.

The Shulchan Arukh (Orach Chayim 586:1) is less restrictive. It rules that ideally, lekhatechila, the mitsva should be fulfilled with a curved ram’s horn. But bedi’abad, if none is available, other shofarot that meet the remaining halakhic conditions may be used. Cow and bull horns remain excluded, along with other horns whose structure disqualifies them.

In short: according to Maimonides, on Rosh HaShana we must use a ram’s horn specifically. According to the Shulchan Arukh, the ram’s horn is the first and best option, but if it is not available, another halakhically valid Shofar will do.

So the preference for the ram is not a matter of taste or mere custom. When we hear that horn on Rosh HaShana we are not hearing only a sound. We are also calling up one of the most extraordinary moments of our history, the ‘Aqedat Itschaq, Abraham Abinu’s surrender and the merit of our patriarchs, on the very day we most need that merit to be remembered by God.

HOW IS A SHOFAR MADE?

The most important mitsva of Rosh HaShana is hearing the Shofar. A Shofar is an animal horn that has been modified into a wind instrument. To prepare one, the inner core is removed from the horn sheath, and then a mouthpiece is opened and shaped at the narrow end.

This video, in Hebrew, shows the whole production process:

TUTORIAL: HOW DO YOU BLOW A SHOFAR?

So how do you actually get a sound out of it?

Do not put the mouthpiece inside your mouth, between your lips, as though you were inflating a balloon. If you simply blow air into the Shofar that way, you generally will not get the right sound.

The Shofar rests against closed lips, to one side of the mouth (the right side if possible) or in the center. Once the mouthpiece is against the lips, blow while keeping the lips pressed firmly together and making them vibrate, as if you were repeatedly pronouncing the letter “P.” This is basically the same technique used to play a trumpet.

This video shows it clearly:

Do not puff out your cheeks or take in an exaggerated amount of air. Breathe as normally as possible. The hard part is finding the exact position and angle of the mouthpiece on your lips so that air does not escape out the sides. That takes some practice.

The basic steps:

1. Close and press the lips together.
2. Make the lips vibrate with a sound like the letter “P.”
3. Rest the mouthpiece of the Shofar on the lips.
4. Move the Shofar slightly and adjust its position until you find the point where it produces a clean, steady sound.

THE VOICES OF THE SHOFAR (QOLOT)

Every Shofar has its own “voice,” the way every person has a particular voice. Still, a given Shofar produces basically one musical note. On Rosh HaShana that note is articulated in three different ways, which our Sages call qolot, “voices.”

The first voice is the teqi’a. A long, continuous, unbroken sound.

The second is shebarim. Three shorter, broken sounds. To produce them, you interrupt the stream of air into the Shofar several times.

The third is the teru’a, a series of very short, consecutive sounds. Traditionally about nine of them. A common way to do it is to make quick little interruptions with the tongue while blowing.

In this video, especially between seconds 6 and 9, you can clearly hear one of the most common ways of producing the teru’a:

There are other traditions for the teru’a. In some communities, instead of separating each small sound with taps of the tongue, the player rapidly changes air pressure or lip position, creating a kind of wavering sound that is less clearly divided.

This form of teru’a is characteristic of many Yemenite Jews, among other communities, and is also found in some Syrian traditions.

You can hear it in this video:

THE 100 SOUNDS

The basic combination of Shofar sounds on Rosh HaShana is:

• Teqi’a / Shebarim-Teru’a / Teqi’a: 4 sounds.
• Teqi’a / Shebarim / Teqi’a: 3 sounds.
• Teqi’a / Teru’a / Teqi’a: 3 sounds.

Ten sounds in all.

The series is repeated several times over Rosh HaShana: before Musaf, during the Tefila of Musaf, during the repetition of Musaf, and again at the end. That is how we traditionally reach 100 voices of the Shofar, מאה קולות, meah qolot, on Rosh HaShana. This year only on Sunday, the second day of Rosh HaShana.

So behind every sound of the Shofar there is much more than technique. There is a precise tradition about how to produce its different “voices,” how to combine them, and above all how to hear them, in order to fulfill the central mitsva of Rosh HaShana.

MOSHE’S LAST ASSEMBLY

In many Jewish homes the same conversation comes up every week. Do we bring the kids to synagogue or not? The service goes on for hours. They get bored. They don’t understand a word. And they can be a distraction for the adults. So more often than not, the decision is to leave them home. When they’re older and can follow what’s going on, we’ll bring them.

This week the Torah answers that question. And the answer is 3,500 years old.

Parashat Nitsabim-Vayelekh takes place as Moshe is about to die. He knows he will not enter the land of Israel. And one of the last things he does is neither a warning nor a farewell. He convenes an assembly, one to be held every seven years.

That mitsva is called Hakhel, “gather.” At the end of the Shemita year, during Sukkot, the entire people of Israel was to come together in the Bet HaMiqdash to hear the Torah read aloud. And the Torah spells out who has to be there:

“Gather the people: the men, the women, the little children (hataf), and the stranger who lives in your cities, so that they hear and learn, and revere HaShem your God, and take care to fulfill all the words of this Torah” (Debarim 31:12).

The men, of course. The women, too. But hataf means little children: four-, five-, six-year-olds, toddlers who don’t talk yet, babies carried in arms or pushed in a stroller. Why would the Torah command us to bring them to the Temple, to an event that consists of listening to a text they cannot possibly understand?

IT IS ALL ABOUT THE EXPERIENCE

Maimonides explains why (Mishne Torah, Hilkhot Hagiga 3:6), and his explanation changes the meaning of the whole event.

Hakhel is not a Torah class. If it were a class, where you are expected to understand everything, someone who doesn’t know the language would have no business being there. But Maimonides writes that even the foreigner or the convert who does not understand Hebrew is obligated to show up, pay attention, and listen “with the joy and the trembling of the day the Torah was given at Sinai.” And at the other extreme: even the great sages who already know the entire Torah must listen with total concentration. Every person, Maimonides says, “should see himself as if the Torah were being revealed to him at this very moment, and he were hearing it from the mouth of the Almighty.”

Hakhel is the mitsva of being present at a collective spiritual event. It is a reenactment of Mount Sinai, the day the entire people of Israel, men, women, and children, stood at the foot of the mountain. At Sinai, nobody asked whether the children understood. They were there. That was what mattered. Because that is what Jewish continuity depends on: not on what a child understands, but on where a child has been.

A CRADLE IN THE HOUSE OF STUDY

The Talmud Yerushalmi (Yebamot 1:6) preserves a memory of the childhood of Rabbi Yehoshua ben Hananya, one of the great sages of the Mishna. It comes from Rabbi Dosa ben Harkinas, a very old sage who had known him as a boy:

“I remember that his mother used to bring his cradle to the house of study, so that his ears would cling to words of Torah.”

Rabbi Yehoshua’s mother did not wait for her son to understand. She wheeled in the stroller, so to speak, and there the baby soaked up the melodies of Torah and heard voices arguing in a language he did not yet know. That baby grew up to be one of the greatest sages of the Mishna, the man of whom Rabban Yohanan ben Zakkai said: “Happy is she who gave birth to him” (Avot 2:8).

My wife Coty likes to tell the story of a little boy whose mother took him to a Torah class that was obviously over his head. And yet his eyes lit up every time he went. One day his mother asked him: “Do you understand anything this rabbi is saying?” And the boy answered: “No. But his words taste like ice cream!”

Ask any adult what they remember of the Rosh HaShana of their childhood. Almost nobody remembers the rabbi’s sermon. But everyone remembers the sound of the Shofar. The melody, and the tears, of Oqed Vehane’eqad. The Kohanim on the Dukhan, barefoot, their heads covered. Standing under a father’s or a grandfather’s talet, his hands resting on their heads in blessing. Everything a child takes home from the synagogue comes in through the ears and the eyes, not through the intellect. And those are exactly the things they will want to come back to, twenty or thirty years later, when they decide they want their own children to have them too.

Moshe did not summon the children to the Temple for what they would learn. He summoned them so they would be there, enjoy it, and want to come back.

THE PRACTICAL DILEMMA

Most of the synagogues I know have a children’s program, so that the kids are not running around during Tefila or the Torah reading, when the adults need to concentrate with as little noise as possible. It doesn’t always work perfectly, because there is no such thing as a soundproof synagogue when there are children in the building. But it is essential that the children come to the Bet HaKeneset. And that they enjoy it: that what they remember of the synagogue is not an adult yelling at them, but a place where they are welcome, with prizes and activities made for them.

A synagogue without children has no future. And no present. Children are to a synagogue what flowers were to the Bet HaMiqdash: they give it life, color, and joy. If at times there is a little more noise, that is a small price to pay for having them there, and for letting them experience Hakhel: gathering with their elders before God, listening to the Torah.

We should encourage children’s minyanim, with prizes and gifts, so that they leave the synagogue wanting to come back. So that they associate the Bet HaKeneset with happiness, not with being scolded. There is no better formula for the future of a community than encouraging children to read from the Torah when they are little, to read the Maftir at four or five years old, as we do in my Bet HaKeneset, where we throw a party and give gifts every time a child reads for the first time.

The future of Am Israel depends on our children connecting to the Bet HaKeneset with joy.

SYNAGOGUE AND GRANDPARENTS

Whenever I see a little boy or girl playing on the steps that lead up to the Aron HaQodesh, I am reminded of this story, which I believe is true.

It is told that in the Spain of the Inquisition, the king, who wanted to persuade Don Isaac Abravanel to convert to Christianity, asked him one day: “How do you explain that in church there is absolute respect and silence, from the adults down to the smallest children, while in your synagogue there are always kids running up and down the aisles?” Abravanel answered him without mincing words: “Your Majesty, at a wake, people stand before the dead in silence, in fear and with the utmost reverence. Everything is very formal, and nobody moves from his seat. But in their grandparents’ house, children feel at home, and sometimes they jump around and play and have a good time. For our children,” he said, “the synagogue is not a house of mourning. It is their grandparents’ house.”

This Shabbat we read two Parashiyot together: Nitsabim and Vayelekh.

EXILE

As Moshe’s life draws to a close, he gathers the entire people of Israel, the men, women, and children of the new generation, to reaffirm the Covenant (berit) with HaShem that had been made forty years earlier at Mount Sinai, where it was established that the people of Israel is God’s nation. Moshe reminded them that this Covenant would endure for all generations, and warned them not to be tempted by the idolatrous way of life they had seen in Egypt, among the nations they met on their journey through the desert, and among those they would find in the land of Canaan. Moshe warned the people of their collective responsibility, and told them that if they did not follow God’s path, they would not be able to remain in the land of Israel and would be exiled because of their sins.

TESHUBA (= RETURN TO ISRAEL)

This remarkable section of the Torah also foresees that, in the end, from exile, the people of Israel will return to God with all their heart, and He will help them come back to Israel from the farthest corners of the earth and restore them to the land of their ancestors, where they will live under His protection and with His blessing. When HaShem gathers the exiles of His people, the Jews will serve Him again and will be blessed with abundance in the work of their hands, in the fruit of their womb, of their land, and of their livestock.

THE TORAH IS WITHIN REACH

Moshe urged the people to follow the precepts of the Covenant (= the Torah), telling them that it “is not beyond you, nor is it out of your reach. It is not in heaven… nor across the sea… rather, it is very close to you, in your mouth and in your heart, so that you can fulfill it.” Moshe tells the people of Israel that they are free to choose between good and evil, life and death. Their choice will determine whether or not they receive HaShem’s blessings. Moshe implored the people of Israel to choose life.

MOSHE’S LAST DAYS

Moshe informs the people that he is now 120 years old and will not be allowed to cross the Jordan River to accompany them into the land of Israel. Instead, Yehoshua will lead them, and HaShem will go before them and destroy their enemies in the conquest of Canaan. Moshe urged the Israelites to be strong and not to fear their enemies. Moshe summoned Yehoshua and told him to be strong and courageous, because HaShem would go before him and would not abandon him.

Then Moshe wrote down the entire Torah, the Five Books, and handed it to the Kohanim (priests) and the elders of Israel. Moshe commanded the people to gather every seven years, during the festival of Sukkot, all the men, women, and children, to hear the king read the Torah in public. (Over time, it was established that the Torah would be read publicly every Monday, Thursday, and Shabbat, in the morning and in the afternoon, and also on the festivals.)

A FINAL WARNING

HaShem commanded Moshe to enter the Ohel Moed together with Yehoshua. HaShem appeared to both of them and told them that in the future the Jewish people would abandon God’s path, betray the Covenant, and follow pagan gods. At that time, HaShem would hide His face, that is, His protection, and they would be left at the mercy of their enemies. Therefore HaShem says: “Write down this song,” which will be a testimony in their mouths, so that they remember that when God is not protecting them, it is not because He does not exist, but because the people have distanced themselves from Him. That song is next week’s Torah reading, Shabbat Shuba: Parashat Haazinu.

THE TORAH IS RECEIVED BY THE PEOPLE

Moshe took the newly completed Torah scroll and handed it to the Levites. He instructed them to place it next to the Ark that held the Tablets. Then Moshe gathered the entire nation to hear the song, in which he calls upon heaven and earth as witnesses that the Jewish people were warned about the consequences of their actions.

Zionism= The return of the Jewish people to the land of Israel to found there a Jewish State.

Many people today — friends and enemies of Israel alike — think that Zionism is a modern, secular, European invention. In this article I want to show that the idea of Zionism is much older than its name: it is written in the Torah itself, and it has a Biblical name: Teshuvah.

This Shabbat we read Parashat Nitsavim, and in it one of the most extraordinary chapters of the Torah: Debarim (Deuteronomy) chapter 30, known as “Parashat haTeshuvah,” the section of the Return. In these few verses the concept of Teshuvah — literally, “return” — is mentioned eight times. And here comes the surprise: the Teshuvah of this chapter is not the Teshuvah most of us have in mind.

When we hear the word “Teshuvah” we think of personal repentance: regretting our mistakes, confessing them and abandoning them. But that is not the peshat, the plain meaning, of our parashah. For Maimonides, personal repentance is the mitsvah of Vidui, confession, and its corresponding pasuk is in the book of Bemidbar: “and they shall confess the sin they have committed” (Bemidbar 5:7). In Debarim 30 the Torah is speaking about a different Teshuvah. Listen to the text itself: “Then HaShem your God will return your captivity and have mercy on you, and He will return and gather you from all the nations where HaShem your God has scattered you. Even if your dispersed are at the end of the heavens, from there HaShem your God will gather you, and from there He will take you” (Debarim 30:3–4).

The primary meaning of Teshuvah in the Torah is the return of the Jewish people to its land, after a long exile in the farthest corners of the world. The chapter describes a process: first a collective repentance, then a national reconciliation with HaShem, and then Teshuvah defines the way HaShem will “return” the Jewish people to their land. Just as the exile in the previous chapter (Debarim 29) was the result of the Jews abandoning HaShem, the return to the land of Israel is presented as the result of the reconciliation between Am Israel and HaShem, our God.

Now, this reading of Parashat haTeshuvah is not a modern invention created to justify Zionism. It is the opposite: modern Zionism was born from this reading. Let me introduce you to the man who saw it first.

While the term “Zionism” was coined by Nathan Birnbaum in 1890, Rabbi Yehuda Bibas (1776–1852) should be credited with the idea of modern Zionism. Rabbi Bibas was born in Gibraltar (an English colony). From his mother’s side, he was the grandson of the famous Moroccan rabbi Rabbenu Hayim ben Attar, the Or-haHayim-haQadosh (1696–1743), author of one of the classic commentaries on the Torah. His father belonged to the prestigious Bibas family of Tetuan, Spanish Morocco — a family of Rabbanim (rabbis), Dayanim (rabbinical judges) and Shohatim (ritual slaughterers). Rabbi Bibas was for many years the rabbi of the prominent and affluent Jewish community of Corfu, a beautiful island that today belongs to Greece.

Rabbi Bibas saw the opportunity for the Jewish people to have their own state in the fact that many countries in those years (1820–1835) revolted against the ruling empires and thus gained their independence. Living in Corfu allowed Rabbi Bibas the privileged perspective of being a direct witness to the revolution of the Greeks against the Ottoman Empire and the victory that led to the creation of the independent Greek State. Israel, then called “Palestine,” was also under the rule of the Ottoman Empire. Rabbi Bibas estimated in 1835 that the Jews were able to gain their own independence, as the Ottoman Empire was increasingly weak politically and militarily. Rabbi Yehuda Bibas opined: “The Jews must conquer the land of Israel militarily from the Turks, just as the Greeks conquered their own land from the Turks.”

Rabbi Bibas traveled through Europe and North Africa, visiting Turkey, the Balkans, Vienna, London, Germany, Hungary, Prague and many more Jewish communities. And the main message he preached to all the Jews of the world was one word: “TESHUVAH” — a call to return as a Nation to the land of Israel and to found there a Jewish State. Rabbi Bibas was not giving the word a new meaning. He was recovering its first meaning, the meaning of Parashat Nitsavim.

Rabbi Bibas explained that by dwelling in the Diaspora: “We are turning our backs on HaShem (the opposite of ‘teshuvah,’ i.e., ‘facing’ HaShem. YB), as our rabbis explained: A Jew living outside Israel is like a Jew without God. And why are we living in exile? In order to seek our sustenance? Did not the Torah say that the land of Israel is a land that HaShem constantly monitors, a land in which bread will not be eaten with poverty, is it not a land that will not lack anything? Day after day, when eating a meal with bread, we thank HaShem for the land of abundance, Israel, that He has granted us…”

And Rabbi Bibas did not only preach Teshuvah: he lived it. At the end of his life he left his position and his community, went up to the land of Israel, and settled in Hebron, the city of our Patriarchs, where he passed away in 1852. He returned.

Rabbi Yehuda Alqalay (1798–1878) brought the ideas of Rabbi Yehuda Bibas to writing. Unlike Rabbi Bibas, who did not get to publish his ideas (or his books did not reach us, or were not spread…), Rabbi Alqalay was a prolific writer. Like Rabbi Bibas, Rab Alqalay did not conceive the return of the people of Israel to their land as a solution to the eternal problem of anti-Semitism, but essentially as a way of fulfilling the Jewish aspiration for political normalization: that is, the Jewish people, living in its land, Israel, ruled by its law, the Torah. Both rabbis understood that the people of Israel did not need to wait passively for the arrival of the Mashiah to realize this aspiration. Rather, we should actively seek the re-establishment of an independent Jewish State in the land of our ancestors as a way of advancing and facilitating the arrival of the Mashiah.

Rabbi Alqalay, inspired by Rabbi Bibas, formulated his plan and ideas for the restoration of the Jews in Israel in his book “Goral laHaShem,” published in Vienna in 1857. In this book Rabbi Alqalay designed a comprehensive plan with the religious foundations and the practical steps to bring to fruition a national “TESHUVAH”: the return of the Jewish nation to Israel. The book was published in three different editions and translated into many languages, including English.

And here history gives us a beautiful final detail. For decades Rabbi Alqalay served as the rabbi of Zemun, a small city near Belgrade. Among the members of his community was a Jew named Simon Loeb Herzl — the grandfather of Theodor Herzl. The ideas that the world would later know as “Herzl’s Zionism” were heard, a generation earlier, in the synagogue of a Sephardic rabbi. Rabbi Alqalay, like his teacher Rabbi Bibas, ended his days in the land of Israel: he settled in Jerusalem in 1874 and passed away there in 1878.

We read Parashat Nitsavim every year on the Shabbat before Rosh Hashanah, in the middle of the season of Teshuvah, when every Jew is occupied with his personal return: examining his actions, confessing, correcting. That personal work is indispensable. But as we do it, the parashah reminds us of the first and primary Teshuvah of the Torah: the return of Am Israel to its land, from the farthest corners of the world — a prophecy written more than three thousand years ago, which our generation has been privileged to see with its own eyes.

Shabechi Yerushalayim in the Sephardic tune, sung by Moreh Sammy Hajibai for MESA.

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Shelach Go’el, a Hebrew and Persian song, sung by Itai Hakimian for MESA.

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