Confusing Satan

Rabbi Sacks:

Friends, let me explain what I want to try and do today. I want to try and say something about the book itself. Ceremony and Celebration is about the major festivals and is a collection of the prefaces I’ve done for each of the machzorim. So what I want to do tonight is say something I haven’t said before, and I want to explain what I’m going to try and do. I’m always trying to look at the big picture, you know, not just what and how, but why, why do we do the things we do? And can we see the forest not just the trees? And sometimes I try and do something, which is like a literary equivalent of being an archaeologist. Can you dig just beneath the surface of the text to find something extraordinary, unexpected, and very beautiful that you never saw before because you were just looking at the surface?

And I want to do that in relation to Rosh Hashanah itself. And we will see that if we peel back the layers of the texts, we will see something extraordinary and remarkable, a drama that happened in Jewish history at a particular time in Jewish history that I regard as personally, spiritually and philosophically, one of the most remarkable things in the entire history of Judaism and it’s there lying covered just beneath the surface. And let’s do it, and let’s begin at the beginning. The simple stuff first, what does Rosh Hashanah commemorate? Okay? We know what Pesach commemorates – Exodus from Egypt, Shavuos – giving of the Torah, Succos – 40 years in the wilderness. What does Kippur commemorate? Anyone know?

Audience member:

[inaudible]

Rabbi Sacks:

No, no, Yom Kippur represents the first great plea for forgiveness and atonement in the history of the Jewish people. Anyone know what was the first big collective sin?

Audience member:

The eigel hazahav.

Rabbi Sacks:

The Golden Calf exactly, cheit ha’eigel, and Moshe Rabbeinu goes up the mountain and prays to God 40 days, 40 nights and all the rest of it. And eventually God forgives the people and says to Moses I will give you a new set of tablets to replace, you know, Moses and the tablets, a tiny bit like me and doing the washing up at the beginning of our marriage. And so they’re all in fragments and Hashem gives Moshe Rabbeinu the luchot shniyot, the second set of tablets. And Moses comes down with these second tablets, the symbol of Divine forgiveness on the 10th of Tishrei, which is the date of Yom Kippur. So Yom Kippur commemorates the first great moment of sin-atonement-forgiveness in the history of the Jewish people. What historical event therefore does Rosh Hashanah commemorate?

Audience member:

Birth of the world.

Rabbi Sacks: Pardon?

Audience member:

Birth of man.

Rabbi Sacks:

Birth of the world, birth of man. Excellent, excellent, excellent. Let’s have a look. In our prayers we say hayom haras olam, today the universe was born. But in fact, if you look carefully at source one (Pesikta deRav Kahannna 23), can you see? It’s the boldfaced and underlined words, Tani Rabbi Eliezer, be’esrim vechamisha be’Elul nivra ha’olam. Rabbi Eliezer taught more precisely, Rosh Hashanah was not the big bang, it was not the birth of the universe, the universe was created on the 25th of Ellul. So on the first of Tishrei, which is Rosh Hashanah, what happened? Nimtzeit amar beRosh Hashanah nivra Adam haRishon, the first human being was created on Rosh Hashanah. Rosh Hashanah is the anniversary of the creation of humankind. That’s simple, that’s straightforward.

Now, number two, what is the mitzvah on Rosh Hashanah? is the Torah tells us very simply, see source 2. Can you see the two places in which the mitzvah is given? Daber el b’nei Yisrael leimor, bachodesh hashevi’I be’eachad lachodesh yihyeh lachem shabbaton zichron teruah mikra kodesh (Vayikra 23:24). It is a moment of commemoration or remembrance of teruah, the particular sound that we call teruah, and later in Bamidbar, uvachodesh hashevi’i be’echad lachodesh (Bamidbar 29:1), “on the first day of the seventh month,” mikra kodesh… kol melechet avodah… yom teruah yihyeh lachem, “it should be a day of making this sound.” So Rosh Hashanah is not called Rosh Hashanah, not in the Torah, not in Tanach, it’s a late designation, but it is Yom Teruah and Zichron Teruah. And does anyone know, is there any reference to shofar here by the way in either of those verses?

Audience member:

Sure.

Rabbi Sacks:

No, there’s a reference only to the sound, not to the instrument that produces the sound, it’s teruah, but that doesn’t necessarily mean a shofar. Because if you look in Bamidbar chapter 10, God commands Moses to make two silver trumpets on which to blow, sometimes a tekiah to assemble the people, sometimes a teruah, which was a sign that they had to journey on. So, we don’t know if it’s a shofar or if it’s a silver trumpet. Just think, if we’d got it the other way around, then we’d all be Louis Armstrong, you ever think about that? So how do we know that on Rosh Hashanah you have to blow with a shofar? And the answer is in source three. There is another reference to teruah, this time, not on Rosh Hashanah, but on Yom Kippur. Which Yom Kippur? The Yom Kippur of the Jubilee year. And here is the verse, veha’avarta shofar teruah bachodesh hashevi’i (Vayikra 25:9), “you shall sound with a shofar the teruah, the sound that is called the teruah, on the seventh month, on the 10th of the month on Yom Kippur you shall cause the sound of the shofar to sound throughout the land.” What’s the next verse? It’s on the Liberty bell in Philadelphia, “Proclaim Liberty to the land and their inhabitants thereof.” I love the Liberty bell in Philadelphia, because it was made in England, and the first time they rang it, it cracked. You know, it’s got this wonderful crack there. And, as the late Leonard Cohen used to say, “it’s the cracks in the world that let the light in.” Anyway, that’s another story all together.

So, we now know that on Rosh Hashanah, you sound the teruah and you use a shofar. Now, anyone know what that sound was supposed to represent? This is the issue, what does the teruah sounded on a shofar represent? I need you to think about this one.

Audience member:

It’s the place where Avraham starts to sacrifice his son and God stopped him.

Rabbi Sacks:

Binding of Isaac. Any other offers?

Audience member:

[inaudible]Rabbi Sacks:

Pardon?
Audience member:

[inaudible]

Rabbi Sacks:

God’s what?

Audience member:

Drawing down, like sending thoughts,

Rabbi Sacks:

Maybe. Any other offers?

Audience member:

Tears

Rabbi Sacks:

Pardon? Tears. Okay. I want you to focus very carefully. We have very, very clear indication in the book of Psalms as to what a teruah sounded on a shofar represents. One of the Psalms is Psalm 47. You remember on Rosh Hashanah morning, before we blow the first notes on the shofar, we say a Psalm, Psalm 47. Some say it seven times, I think, what’s it say in the machzor? We all say it seven times. Dayan Binstock and I agreed that if not everyone follows the same custom, we would write the words “some say,” but I think they all say it seven times. So here it is in source four, (Psalms 47:3) ki Hashem elyon Norah, “God, most high is awesome.” Sorry, having spent four years in America, I know that everything is awesome, but especially Hakadosh Baruch Hu. Melech gadol al kol ha’retz, He is the great King over all the earth. Alah Elokim biteruah, “God has ascended with the teruah, the sound,” Hashem bekol shofar, “God has ascended to the sound of the shofar,” zamru Elokim zameru zamru lemalkenu zameru. Ki Melech kol ha’aretz Elokim zamru maskil. “God is King over all the earth,” right? (Psalms 47: 6-8)

This is a privilege that used to come to Elaine and myself through being Chief Rabbi and Chief Rebbetzin – you get to meet royalty. As far as I’m concerned, all of you are royalty, but there’s this other thing called the House of Windsor. When the Queen is about to enter, what do they do? They sound a clarion. It’s what they do when the Queen comes, it’s what they do when the Lord Mayor of London comes, when there’s a Lord Mayor’s banquet at the Guild Hall. That’s when you sound the proclamation that royalty is about to come. And that is exactly what Psalm 47 is saying, alah Elokim biteruah. Three times in that quote I’ve just given you, God is called King, malkenu, our King and King over the earth. And that is what the Psalm is. Or you may be perhaps more familiar with the Psalm we sing every Kabbalat Shabbat. What does it say? bechatzotzrot, it’s there in source five, (Psalm 98:6) bechatzotrot, “with trumpets,” vekol shofar, “and the sound of the shofar,” hari’u lifnei haMelech Hashem.

God is coming as King, and therefore with trumpets and the sound of the shofar. Hari’u, that means blow a teruah before God is coming. And why is God coming? Lifnei Hashem ki va lishpot ha’aretz, “He is coming to judge the earth,” yishpot tevel betzedek ve’amim bemeisharim (Psalm 98:9). That’s what He does, beginning on Rosh Hashanah extending for 10 days, culminating in Yom Kippur, ki va lishpot ha’aretz, “He is coming to judge the earth.” And that is what the shofar represented for the whole of the biblical era. It is the sound of God in his role as King, as our King, as King over the world.

What is the key word of the prayers on Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur? Hamelech. All of the prayers have that in their centre. And what is the Mussaf on Rosh Hashanah? It’s got three central paragraphs – Malchiyos, Zichronos and Shofaros – verses about God as King, verses of God reading the records, the Zichronot, the memorial books telling Him what we’ve been doing in this past year. And the Shofarot, the sound of the shofar announcing that the King is sitting, lehavdil elef havdalos, where Her Majesty the Queen sits when she gives The Queen’s Speech in that golden throne, in the House of Lords, which is only ever used that once a year. It’s a very nice throne, we should all be so lucky, et cetera, et cetera. And there it is, God is here as King, sitting in the throne of judgement, about to judge the earth and the sign that the court is in session, and God is sitting in the throne of justice, is the Shofarot. That’s why the Mussaf Amidah has the form it has – Malchiyos, Zichronos and Shofaros. The entire sound of the shofar is the clarion announcing, “the King is here, the court is in session and we are being judged.” That is what the shofar is about. However, and here is the first discordant note, we now turn to the Talmud, and here is the Talmud. Have you got it? Source seven.

Let’s have a look at source seven, can you see that? (Talmud Bavli Rosh Hashanah 16a) Tanya amar Rabbi Yehuda mishum Rabbi Akiva, “Rabbi Yehuda said in the name of Rabbi Akiva,” Rabbi Akiva is explaining why we do what we do on the various festivals, mipnei mah amrah Torah naschu mayyim bechag – amar Hakadosh Baruch Hu, naschu…” Why did they do the water drawing festival on Succos,” so that the rain of the year should be blessed, ve’imru lefanai, “and God says, say before Me” on Rosh Hashanah – Malchiyos, Zichronos veShofaros, these three central blessings. Malchiyos – “in order that you recognise me as King,” it’s a coronation ceremony. Zichronos – kedei sheya’aleh zichroneichem lefanai letovah, the verses about memory “so that I will remember you for good.” Bameh, “and how do you do all this? Beshofar, “with the shofar.” That is how the shofar was sounded – with those three associations of s Malchiyos, Zichronos and Shofaros.

Okay? However it is now….whoa, oh, can you see source six? Who said binding of Isaac? Somebody said binding of Isaac. Yeah, excellent, I mean, you’re a hundred percent right. Have a look at source six, (Talmud Bavli Rosh Hashanah 16a) Amar Rabbi Abahu, “Rabbi Abahu said,” lama tokim beshofar shel ayil, “why do we sound the ram’s horn?” Amar Hakadosh Baruch Hu: tik’u lefanai beshofar shel ayil, “the Holy One, blessed be He said this, blow before me on a ram’s horn,” kedei she’ezkor lachem akeidas Yitzchak ben Avraham, “so that I should remember for your merit, the binding of Isaac, the son of Abraham,” u’ma’aleh ani aleichem ke’ilu akadetem atzmechem lefanai, “and I will count it to you as if you had sacrificed yourself to Me.” Do you hear this? Here is Rabbi Abahu in the Babylonian Talmud connecting the shofar, not with God’s kingship, but with the binding of Isaac. Yeah, are you with me? This is the first time this idea appears in the Babylonian Talmud. I want to know why.

Tell me, did Abraham blow on the shofar? No, it was a ram caught by its horn, right? He didn’t blow on it. There was no blowing, there was no teruah. When did the binding of Isaac take place? Well, we assume the binding of Isaac took place on Rosh Hashanah, but the earliest sources do not. They don’t connect the binding of Isaac with Rosh Hashanah. Truth be told the Book of Jubilees, second century BCE connects the binding of Isaac with Pesach. So the connection between the binding of Isaac and Rosh Hashanah is not something said anywhere in the whole of Torah, anywhere in the whole of Tanach. There wasn’t a blowing of a horn, there wasn’t a sounding of teruah. We don’t know that it happened on Rosh Hashanah, and that is the first hint that something is going on here that is deeper than superficially meets the eye. God sitting in the Guild Hall or in the House of Lords or in the Supreme Court judging the universe, is a different scenario from Abraham in his lonely trial with his son, Isaac on the top of Mount Moriah. These are two different scenarios and it is this Talmudic passage that for the first time connects these two epic events.

And this is what should set us wondering. Okay, are you with me? I hope you see the difference. These are two really different dramas, they’re completely different. I need to understand this. And now I want us to understand something really extraordinary. What is the mitzvah of the day? I mean, hang on Yom Teruah, right? Which sounds like you blow once, okay? Yom Teruah, you sound a teruah. How many times do we in fact blow the shofar? According to the Routledge machzor 42 times, according to other machzorim 60 times, Chabadniks and other Chassidim blow it 90 times. And it’s become more recently our custom to blow it a hundred times. And yet the Torah just says, Yom Teruah, one blast should suffice. Any idea how we got so many teruahs?

Okay, okay, let’s begin. We’re going do some easy mathematics here, but we’re going to hit a drama very soon. Number one, how many references were there to teruah in the month of Tishrei in the Bible, in the Torah? We saw two verses relating to Rosh Hashanah, one verse relating to Yom Kippur. So for the sake of three verses in the Torah, let’s blow the terah three times. Okay, you buy that? Secondly, we’re not entirely sure what a teruah is. Some say it’s a sigh, shevarim, three sighs, others say it’s a series of sobs. Others say it’s a series of sighs followed by a series of sobs. So that shevarim, teruah and shevarim-teruah, so we’ve got now, how many are we doing now? Do each of those three times, we’re up to 12? Yeah. There is an oral tradition that every teruah must be preceded and followed by a tekiah, a plain note just to announce it’s coming and it’s just gone. So, for every one of those, so we’ve got tekiah-shevarim-tekiah, tekiah-teruah-tekiah, tekiah-shevarim-teruah-tekiah, which is how many? So we’ve got 30, okay. 30 is the basic sounding of the shofar.

30 is the basic sounding of the shofar. That covers all the options. And that, it seems, was the original custom. However, it appears that at a certain point in time, the Sages introduce a completely new institution. And they said, instead of blowing these 30 notes once, we are going to blow them twice, once before the Amidah and once during the repetition of the Amidah. That’s exactly as we do it, right? So you’ve got the 30 notes before, they’re called the tekiot demeyushav where we are not yet standing for the Amidah. So we’re sitting, those are the sitting tekios. And then a second time during the reader’s repetition of the Amidah known as the tekios deme’umad, the standing tekios. So here was a custom to blow 30 notes, and at some point, the Sages introduced – and doubled it – a second blowing, and this is source eight. Can you see it? (Talmud Bavli Rosh Hashanah 16a) Amar Rabbi Yitzchak, “Rabbi Yitzchak asked” the simple question, lama tokin beRosh Hashanah? “Rabbi Yitzchak asked, why do we blow shofar on Rosh Hashanah?” Lama tokin? Rachmana amar tiku! “What kind of question is that? Why do we blow shofar? Because God said blow shofar, so we blow shofar.” Ela lama tokin umeri’im keshehen yoshvin vetokin umeri’in keshen omdin,“why do we do the whole lot twice over?” That’s what Rabbi Yitzchak wanted to know. And this is his answer, kedei le’arvev hasatan, to confuse Satan.

This is the Talmudic passage that contains within it, as I want to show you, the most extraordinary drama, one of the most extraordinary dramas in the whole of Jewish history. Okay? Are you following so far? Now, what is Satan? Anyone know?

Audience member:

The Devil

Rabbi Sacks:

Pardon?

Audience member:

The Devil

Rabbi Sacks:

Satan in Christianity is the Devil, okay. But in Judaism, what is Satan?

Audience member:

Prosecuting Counsel.

Rabbi Sacks:

The Prosecuting Counsel. He’s the one who tells Hashem all the bad stuff we’ve done. He’s the Counsel for the Prosecution. Satan is a lawyer. No, I shouldn’t have said that. On the contrary, not at all, but he’s the Counsel for the Prosecution, that is what he is. Now Rabbi Yitzchak has noted that something has changed, that we do two complete sets of blowing shofar, and nobody knows why. And he tells us in order to confuse the Counsel for the Prosecution. Explain to me how blowing shofar, two sets of shofar confuses Satan.

I’m puzzled here. I mean, is he really so stupid that blowing shofar 60 times instead of 30 times throws his day completely. I mean, you know, I mean, this is Clint Eastwood right, you know, he doesn’t get thrown that easily, it’s very puzzling. Some Rishonim explained very simply, once the Accusing Counsel hears the first shofar blowing, he presents his case and we present our case and then he leaves, and having left the shul, we come back a second time and this time present our case without Satan presenting the Counsel for the Prosecution. Some Rishonim say this. Ramban says very specifically that Satan is only allowed to present the case against us once, whereas we make our plea for mercy to the court twice. So the second time we do so, we do so in the repetition of the Amidah and Satan is not there to countermand anything we say. And that’s Ramban and that too makes sense.

The Raavad says something even more powerful. He says, what confuses Satan? When Jews say, you know, Ribbono Shel Olam, I did it wrong. It doesn’t confuse Satan at all when we blame somebody else. But when we blame ourselves, that induces humility and Satan is powerless against humility. And so when we break our hearts twice, by hearing the sounds that terrify us twice, we get that extra measure of humility that confuses Satan. That is the Rishonim. However, when all the explanations are in, we still ask, was this really enough for the Sages at a certain point in Jewish history to take a mitzvah of the Torah and double it. It is strange and mysterious and somewhat mystical and enigmatic to say, this is confusing Satan. Here, if anywhere, we’ve sensed that there’s something buried underneath, and this is where we start digging. And we’re going to start very simply and say this, that with due respect to the tradition of the Devil, does Satan play a major role in Judaism?

The answer is no, compared to the role Satan plays in Christianity, which is huge. There’s a whole book on this, The Devil and the Jews by Joshua Trachtenberg, and Shaidan, the same word only transposed into Arabic, that Shaidan plays in Islam. So compared to the presence of Satan in Christianity in Islam, Satan plays almost no role in the whole of Judaism except in one book of the Torah, which book is that? It’s the book of Job, and this is going to be the key to the entire drama. So let us see how Satan sets the entire story of Job in motion. Do you have it? Where is it?

Source nine. (Job 1:6-11) Vayehi hayom, “the day arrived,” vayavo’u b’nei haElokim lehityatzev al Hashem, “when the angels presented themselves before the Lord and the Satan,” translated here as ‘the adversary’ “came along with them, and God said to Satan, where have you been? And Satan said, I’ve been roaming over the earth. And God said to Satan, have you seen my servant, Job? There’s no-one like him on earth, a blameless and upright man who fears God and shuns evil. And the adversary, Satan answered God. Doesn’t Job have every reason to fear you. You have blessed everything he has. You made him rich. You give him flocks and property and children. You blessed his efforts so that his possession spread out in the land. Of course he respects you. You have given him every reason to do so, but now take away from him what you’ve given to him. And you will see, he will blaspheme to your face.”

That is what sets the entire 41 chapter drama of Job, one of the most gripping texts in all of religious literature, into motion. God singles out Job as an example of a righteous human being and Satan, the Counsel for the Prosecution, not a Devil, not a diabolic force, just the Counsel for the Prosecution says, “if you’re going to single out Job, as somebody who loves you and fears you, you really have no sound reason for doing so because he owes everything to you. Take it away and see if he still thanks you and believes in you.”

How does that passage begin? Can you see the opening words? Vayehi hayom. It’s a very, very emphatic statement. “The day came to pass.” What is the day? It wasn’t a day. It was the day, right? Have a look in source 10 (Rashi on Job 1:6) Vayehi hayom, there’s Rashi, oto yom shehaya Rosh Hashanah, that was Rosh Hashanah, that’s Rashi’s reading, it’s the Midrash reading, it’s the Targum reading, everyone reads it. When did Satan come to report back on humanity? On Rosh Hashanah. So we see there’s an early rabbinic tradition that connects the book of Job, which is the only book in which Satan has a major starring part, with Rosh Hashanah itself. And now I want to ask you a really, really tough question. Who is on trial in the book of Job?

And here I have to apologise for putting forward an interpretation which is different from any of the many, many commentaries that I’ve read on Job, I may have missed some. You’ll find my commentary on Job in a book I wrote called To Heal a Fractured World, in which I say very simply, everyone who reads this book assumes that Job is on trial. I say that whole hypothesis is completely untenable. The book tells us that there is no charge for Job to answer. We know Job is innocent. God knows that Job is innocent. This is no trial, there’s no crime of which he has been accused, there’s no sin that he has committed. The whole point of the book of Job is Job is an innocent man, everyone knows this. We know it from the opening of Job. I would not advise you when writing a whodunnit to tell us “who dunnit” in the opening chapter.

This cannot be the drama. It is not Job who is on trial, something else is on trial. What is on trial is a fundamental principle. Remind me, what is Rosh Hashanah the anniversary of? The creation of man. Let me ask you a simple question, was the creation of man a good idea or not? You might rightly say, “the jury is still out on that one.” And that is precisely how the Sages understood it. And this is source 11, and I’m not going to take you through it, you’ll read it another time. I’m going to paraphrase it. You remember how the story of creation goes, vayomer Elokim yehi, “and God said, let there be,” vayehi,”and there was” vayar Elokim ki tov, “and God saw that it was good.” That pattern, God speaks, Baruch she’amar vehaya ha’olam, God speaks and the universe comes into being, exists for every single creation except one. And that is the creation of man in which God does not say, let there be man, and there was, and God saw that it was good. Instead he speaks something aloud and this is what he says,na’aseh adam betzalmenu kidmutenu, “shall we, or we shall, let us create man in our image and our likeness.” Now there are two problems with that sentence. Number one, why does God reflect out loud before creating whereas in every other creation, he just goes ahead and creates? Number two, who is the us? There was at that time nobody else.

And the Sages in a wonderful Aggadic passage from the Talmud, tractate Sanhedrin Daf Lamed Ches (Talmud Bavli Sanhedrin 38b) said the following thing, God created a group of angels and said to them, shall we create man? The angels said, could you give us a bit of a hint as to what kind of things he’ll do? So God then played them a kind of you know, preview, trailer of human history. And the angels saw this and said ”Ribbono Shel Olam, besser nicht, not a good idea,” mah enosh ki tizkerenu uven adam ki tifkedenu (Psalms 8:5), “what is man that you created? Don’t do it.” God then destroyed the angels, He didn’t like their answer. God then created a second group of angels, this is all there in source 11. And he asked them the same question, they gave him the same answer, God destroyed the second group of angels. God then created a third group of angels and asked them the same question.

And the third group said, “Ribbono Shel Olam, you created two previous groups of angels, they told you what they thought, look what happened to them. We’re not going to even try, we say to you, the world is yours, do whatever you like, and you should be gezunt.” Okay, so God then created man. Then came the generation of the Flood, when the earth was filled with violence and God regretted that He created man, vayinachem Hashem ki asah et ha’adam (Bereishit 6:6), God regretted that He created man. And then He brought a Flood and then came the Tower of Babel and they started wanting to storm Heaven. And the third group of angels said Ribbono Shel Olam, ”forgive us, but we told you so,” and God replies, and we say this after Aleinu, ve’ad ziknah ani hu ve’ad seivah ani esbol, “I will remain patient until my hairs go grey.” You know? “Okay, it didn’t look like such a great idea, but I am not giving up. I am not giving up. Are you with me?”

And this is what is on trial in the book of Job. Satan, the accuser is saying to God, “show me one proof that you were right to create man in the first place, that your creation of the first Rosh Hashanah of all time was justified. Show me one human being who justifies your faith in humanity.” And God says, “I can show you that human being – his name is Job. He is innocent, he is blameless.” And Satan says, “that’s because you gave him so much, take it away and see what happens.”

And God takes it away. Everything he has and Job argues maintains his innocence, but doesn’t walk. He does not lose his faith in God. He does not lose his faith in the ultimate justice of the universe. And he refuses all the consolation of his friends. He knows that there’s something wrong here, but he will not walk. And in the end, of course, God vindicates Job. And in the end, that is what is me’arvev hasatan, what confuses and ultimately silences Satan. That Job continued to believe in God, even after he had lost everything. That is what justified the creation of the first Rosh Hashanah of all time, the creation of what Yuval Harari calls Sapiens. And you know how much, if you’ve read Yuval Harari and Jared Diamond, Guns, Germs, and Steel and all the rest of it, how much harm we have done one another and the universe God created, because everything else in the universe that God created, every planet, every chemical element, every subatomic particle, every life form obeys the laws that God set in motion at creation. We are the only beings in the whole, in almost infinite expansive space, capable of breaking God’s laws and thereby threatening the entire future of life on earth.

And therefore the question that Satan asks in the book of Job is a good question. And he has not stopped asking it to this day, but Job finally justifies God’s faith in man. Which bit of the Bible is Job in?

Audience member:

Ketuvim

Rabbi Sacks:

Ketuvim, at the end. Is there anything in the five books of the Torah remotely resembling the story of Job? The binding of Isaac – God has promised Avraham ve’esecha legoy gadol, I will make you a great nation. Your children will be like the dust of the earth. He takes Avram outside one night and says, “look at the sky, can you count the stars? If you can, that is how many your children will be.”

And then finally he says, “your name will no longer be Avram, but Avraham, ki av hamon goyim netaticha, “I will make you not a great nation, but the father of many nations, I will give you children.” How many children did he have? Two – one called Ishmael, one called Isaac. On the first day of Rosh Hashanah, we read the sending away of Ishmael. On the second day of Rosh Hashanah, we read the binding of Isaac. Every single thing that God had given Abraham that was most precious to him, don’t forget, what were the first words of Abraham to God? You know, the first words of God to Abraham, lech lecha me’artzecha, what were the first words of Abraham to God? Hashem Elokim mah titen li ve’anochi holech ariri, “Ribbono Shel Olam, what will you give me if I have no children?” This is what mattered most to Abraham and Sarah and they had children – Ishmael – send him away, Isaac – offer him up as a sacrifice. kach na et bincha et yechidcha asher ahavta et Yitzchak, “take your son, your only son, the one you love, Isaac and offer him up. This is the trial of Job in the Torah itself. The only difference being that in Avram’s case, God said “stop,” and in Job’s case, he didn’t say “stop.” But that is the only difference between them. And Avraham Avinu, like Job, never stops having faith in God. He may have had question after question and doubt after doubt, but he never stopped believing.

Recall what Satan said about Job. “Of course he believes in you, you’ve given him something, take it away and see what happens.” That is what God did with Avraham. “Take away his children and see what happens.” And Abraham did not walk, he stayed faithful. So just as Job justified God’s decision to create man. So did Avraham Avinu, at the binding of Isaac. And since Rosh Hashanah is the commemoration of the creation of man, that is the connection between Avraham and the binding of Isaac and Rosh Hashanah. And that is why Satan figures in Rabbi Yitzchak’s explanation for this double blowing, because Satan is the book of Job, and the book of Job is the justification of the creation of man.

And now I want you to go back in time to what I said half an hour ago, which sounds like several centuries ago, but I promise you, it was only half an hour ago. You remember what we said the shofar was about? It was the clarion announcing the King has come, He’s in His court, He’s in the throne of justice, He’s about to administer justice to all the earth. And where is that most obvious? In Israel itself, when we say on Avinu Malken, Avinu Malkenu ein lanu Melech ela atah, “we have no King, but you,” In Israel, God’s kingship was manifest.

And that is what happened during the whole of the biblical era. Either Israel had no kings, they had shoftim, they had Judges, charismatic military leaders, or they had kings beginning with Saul, David, Solomon. But uniquely in biblical kingship, biblical kingship is the only kingship of its kind in the ancient world, in the mediaeval world until relatively recently where a king had no legislative powers. Are you with me? A king in Israel had no legislative powers. The only legislator for Israel is Hashem, He gave us the laws. A king has no legislative powers, so even a king in Israel was under the kingship of God. So, so long as Israel was a nation in its land and had its independence and its capital and its temple and its king. Then when you, God is King over Israel and God by inference is King over all the earth.

And that was true for the whole of the biblical era. Israel was, as America calls itself today, ‘one nation under God,’ everyone knew it, it was straightforward. And that was the situation in the whole of the biblical era, interrupted only by 52 years for the Babylonian exile. And even that exile, God sent prophets, Isaiah, Jeremiah, Ezekiel telling them they would come back. And for the whole of the biblical period, that is what the shofar was about. God is our King and He has come to judge the earth. That is all the shofar was about. And then in the first and second centuries of the common era, a whole series of things happened in rapid succession. Number one, the great rebellion against Rome began in 66, collapsed in 70 with the destruction of the Second Temple Then came the rebellion, which happened throughout the Jewish world in the year 117, suppressed throughout Israel and the diaspora.

Then in 132 to 135, the Bar Kochba rebellion, which was suppressed again by the Romans, which led to Jerusalem being levelled and rebuilt as a Roman city Aelia Capitolina, from which Jews were banned except one day of the year, Tisha B’Av. And then came the Hadrianic persecutions, and the Hadrianic persecutions induced a crisis in Jewish faith, when it became illegal to practise and endangering to life, to practise Judaism in public. Can you have a look here in source 13? (Talmud Bavli Bava Batra 60b) This is a unique statement, look at this, from the day that the wicked kingdom ie Rome spread and decreed evil and harsh upon us and nullified Torah study and the performance of Brit Milah or Pidyon Haben, by rights, din hu shenigzor al atmenu shelo lisa ishah uleholid banim venimtza zar’oh shel Avraham Avinu kaleh me’eleav. “By rights,” said the rabbis, “we should issue a decree, there should be no more marriages, there will be no more Jewish children, there should be no more Jewish people in the world.” That is what the Talmud says in the Gemera in Bava Batra.

That is the biggest crisis in the history of Jewish faith. I don’t know any statement like this in the whole of Tanach. The Rabbis said, “by rights, we should give up right now.” And then it says, “what can we do? If we tell Jews to stop being Jews, nobody would listen to us, so we’ll keep shtum.” That’s what the Gemara says, hanach lahem… sheyiheyu shogegin ve’al yiheyu mezidin, “we won’t tell them because they won’t listen to us anyway.” his was a crisis of the most ultimate kind. Jews were the people whose land was given to them by God whose only King was God. And that kingship was symbolised by the shofar on Rosh Hashanah. But now Jews had lost everything, they’d lost their freedom, their sovereignty, their land they’d lost their Temple, their priests and their sacrifices. They lost the service of the Kohen Gadol on Yom Kippur. There was no bigger crisis in Jewish faith than this. It is frankly a miracle that Jews and Judaism survived. What do you do when you’ve lost everything?

And it was then somehow that the Jewish people created an act of reframing that I think is one of the most extraordinary things I’ve ever encountered. Here they are having lost everything. There’s a line we say in Neilah, which I find sends shivers down my spine. It says ein lanu shiyyur rak hatorah hazot, Jews get up in shul at the end of Yom Kippur and say, ”Ribbono Shel Olam, we’ve got nothing left. All we’ve got is this Sefer Torah, your covenant with us, that’s all we’ve got. We’ve got your words, nothing else, nothing else.” And suddenly they realised that actually what had happened to the Jewish people Is what happened to Job. He lost everything.

The whole Jewish people became like Job, we lost everything. And they suddenly realised that it was precisely when Job was physically, materially in the deepest of pits, that he reached the supreme and sublime spiritual heights, because having lost everything and having no reason to thank God, he stayed faithful. And suddenly they realised that having lost everything, we were on spiritual heights that we could never have had while we were a sovereign people in our land. Because if we stay loyal, we will have re-enacted in our lives the book of Job. And not just the book of Job, the story of Avraham Avinu when he almost lost his two children, Ishmael and Isaac. And Jews did lose their children in the Hadrianic persecutions and the suppression of the revolts – horrendous loss of life. And on Rosh Hashanah they said, “we are going to tell Hakadosh Baruch Hu we are still here for Him, even if it looks as if He is not still here for us.”

And it was that faith, the faith that recapitulated the faith of Job and the faith of Avraham Avinu that vindicated God’s decision to create man in the first place, because here was not one rare individual like Abraham or one rare Saint like Job, but an entire people who had lost everything and had no reason to thank God, and they were still maintaining their faith in God. And that is why throughout the whole of the biblical era, when all that mattered, all that was significant is God’s kingship, there was one set of shofar blasts, all of which were pronouncing His kingship, but after the destruction of the Temple, and the failure of the Bar Kochba revolt, and the Hadrianic persecutions at roughly this precise time, because this second set of tekiahs was instituted either at the very end of the Mishnaic period, according to some Rishonim, or at the beginning of the Amoraic period, according to other Rishonim, i.e. around the late second or early third century.

And that was when the Sages instituted the second set. And the second set were completely different from the first, because the first shofar blasts were to announce the sovereignty of God – He’s in His throne and we are in our land, but the second set was the sound of tears. And when God hears those tears, he accounts it as if we had offered up, as if we were Abraham at the binding of Isaac. Completely different shofar blasts, the teruah of tears, of sighs, and sobs. And in those three words, when Rabbi Yitzchak asked, “how all of a sudden did we stop blowing one set of blasts and blow two? Why do we blow once when we’re sitting and once when we’re standing?”

In those three words, kedei le’arvev hasatan, “in order to confuse Satan,” the Sages were linking the tears of the Jewish people and connecting them all the way back to Job. And from him all the way back to Abraham and the binding of Isaac, and from then, all the way back to the moment when God refused to listen to the angels when they said, “don’t create man,” and God said, “I will create man, because I have faith that one day human beings will vindicate the faith I had in them.” And that is how a people can lose everything and stay loyal to God. And that vindicated God’s faith in humankind. Now we have answered all the questions. We now know why the Sages in the late second or early third century instituted a whole second set of blowing tekios. We know why those tekios were the sound of tears. We know the deep meaning of le’arvev hasatan, to answer the accusation of Satan, which is the accusation of the three groups of angels that wrestled with God when he first proposed creating man. We understand the connection that runs through the book of Job and the binding of Isaac to the day man was created against the doubts of the angels. And we now know how it is, that from the physical depths, the Jewish people reached the ultimate spiritual heights, and how the Sages rescued a vestige of hope in the darkest night of all of history. And that is the drama that happened around the second, third centuries that you uncover if you dig just beneath the surface of the Talmud. It’s [an] extraordinary story, I hope it has some resonance to you, but permit me to add one last little chapter.

You see Jews had a tough time of it. In particular, Christians were pretty tough on Jews. There was a lot of hostility in the early Church. It’s called the Adversus Judaeos literature, and a lot of antisemitism stems back to those days. And of course, within living memory of some, the Jewish people went through, perhaps in some ways, an even darker night in the Shoah. That really was the binding of Isaac. That really was the story of Job. We also know that 20 years after the Shoah, 20 years after the Holocaust, the Catholic Church engaged in profound soul-searching. “Did we in some way partially create this antisemitism that runs through Europe?” And they issued a declaration, not specifically about Jews, but it had one bit specifically about Jews called Nostra Aetate in 1965, 20 years after the Shoah, and that transformed Jewish-Catholic relations. So today we meet as, as friends, not as enemies. However, if you actually read Nostra Aetare, it wasn’t that great to be perfectly honest, it was good, but not great. Nostra Aetate declares the following,” the Jews are not a people, accursed of God as if that followed from Scripture.”

Okay? So we’re not accursed, guys. We may be obstinate, we may be stupid, we may be wrongheaded, we may be destined for the deepest hell, but we’re not intrinsically accursed of God. The actual text of Nostra Aetate goes a way, but not that far. However, four years ago, Elaine and I happened to be in Buenos Aires the day they picked, the Catholic church, picked the Bishop of Buenos Aires to be the next Pope. Some of the Christians there knowing of my Jewish-Christian relationships said to me, “how did you know there was going to be a vacancy?” We’ll let that pass. Anyway, Pope Francis became Pope. An Italian atheist journalist, called Dr. Eugenio Scalfari published in the Italian newspaper, La Republica, an open letter to Pope Francis exposing the faults of the Church over the centuries. And at the end of his letter, he wasn’t Jewish, ended his letter and culminated his letter by referring to the Church’s treatment of the Jews over the centuries. And in September 2013, four years ago, the Pope replied with another open letter, and I printed you a paragraph from that reply. Can you see in source 14?

He says, “at the end of your first article, you also asked me what to say to our Jewish brothers about the promise God made to them. Has this been forgotten? And this believe me is a question that radically involves us as Christians.” And then the Pope goes through the usual response of Popes and Catholics, which is to quote chapter 11 of Paul’s Epistle to the Romans, which says that, you know, the covenant still stands. And then he adds some words. I don’t know, you know, I was waiting for people to notice these words because they are totally unprecedented in the history of Christianity. I’m not sure that people were reading the small print by that stage, but I think they’re worth reciting to you now, can you see? “Through the terrible trials of these past centuries, the Jews have kept their faith in God. And for this, we will never be grateful enough to them as the Church, but also as humanity at large.” These are radically unprecedented words. They were said four years ago, the accusation, the satan hamekatreg of Christianity accused us of many things, but the least thing they accused us of was obstinacy in refusing to recognise the Mashiach, who is one of ours in any case.

They got it wrong, they’re obstinate. And what they never said ever, is that actually what the Jews were being was not obstinate, but loyal, loyal to God. The same loyalty that Job showed, the same loyalty that Abraham showed, the loyalty of a people who lost everything, but refused to lose faith in God, in the covenant he made with the Jewish people at Sinai, the covenant that Moshe Rabbeinu made with our ancestors, renewed by Joshua, renewed again by Josiah, renewed again by Ezra and Nehemiah, renewed again every Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur, when we come and say, ein lanu ela atah, “we have no other King but you.” For 2000 years, having lost everything, we stayed loyal to God. And the accuser said, “that’s obstinacy.” And for the first time in history, a Pope has said, “no, this is an example to us as Christians and not just to us as Christians, but to every single human being that Jews are a role model of what it is to stay loyal to God.” This was never said before, and that is kedei le’arvev hasatan of our time. That accuser and that accusation has been silenced forever because this statement, once said and published in public, can never be unsaid.

Jews stayed faithful after the destruction of the Second Temple. They stayed faithful after the Holocaust, and that tells us, and it also tells humanity that Hakadosh Baruch Hu was not wrong in that first Rosh Hashanah of all time to have faith in humankind, that one day humans would emerge, who stayed loyal to God, as God has always stayed loyal to us.

Friends, may the sound of the shofar this Rosh Hashanah be the only tears we hear in the coming year. May God write us and the Jewish people and all of humanity in the Book of Life.

Amen.