One verse, five voices. Edited by Nina Litvak and Salvador Litvak, the Accidental Talmudist
And the Lord remembered Sarah as He had said, and the Lord did to Sarah as He had spoken.
– Genesis 21:1
Gila Ross
Author: “Living Beautifully” & “Unbroken”
Rosh Hashanah. One of the most important days of the year. We pull out the Torah and read: “G-d remembered Sarah.” Wait. What? Is this the equivalent of G-d saying: “Oh no! Sarah! I knew there was something I was supposed to do today.” That can’t be right. The word used, pakad, as Ramban explains, means to remember and turn one’s attention toward the thing being remembered. Here’s the difference.
When you’re in something – you’re praying, you’re doing everything you are supposed to do, and it is still so hard – it can feel like we’ve been forgotten. Sarah expresses this: “Am I going to lose my hope in my Creator?” She had been waiting for a child for years! Was it still going to happen? Had Hashem forgotten her? Sarah makes a different choice – she decides to “exult in the God of my salvation.” She holds onto hope during difficulties.
Hashem responds: “You have not lost hope,” and He turns His attention to her and gives her the child she was desperately waiting for.
Choosing to trust whilst being in the hard part is … well, hard. It’s easy to feel so alone in these times. Has Hashem forgotten me? Will my time ever come? Perhaps we read this on Rosh Hashana as a reminder that even when it feels so lonely, we are not alone. Waiting does not mean that we are forgotten. May you soon rejoice in your salvation.
Rabbi Gershon Schusterman
Author, “Why God Why?”
G-d had promised Abraham (at age 70) that “Your offspring will be as uncountable as the heavenly stars.” Now, almost 30 years had passed and Sarah was approaching 90. G-d remembered His promise; she conceived and gave birth to Isaac, and the rest is Jewish history. G-d keeps His word, even if doing so requires a miracle.
The Talmud teaches that Sarah conceived Isaac on Rosh Hashanah, which is why this is the opening verse of the day’s Torah reading. The question begs itself: Why did this birth have to defy nature?
Therein lies the answer. The very existence of the Jewish nation is supernatural and is thus inherent in the spiritual DNA of the first Jew born to Jewish parents 3,738 years ago.
Those of us who grew up in the USA over the last 75 years may have grown complacent because of the security we felt in “Di Goldene Medina.” Sadly, we have been rudely awakened from our reverie, realizing that that period was an exception to the rule. But we are not abandoned. We always have our Father in heaven, who comes through for us — often miraculously.
Our Sages liken the existence of the Jewish people to a “solitary sheep that finds itself surrounded by 70 wolves. Great is the Shepherd who protects His flock.” Consequently, the continued existence of the Jewish people depends upon miraculous means, under the watchful eye of the “Great Shepherd.” May the “Great Shepherd” sound the Great Shofar, heralding our ultimate redemption.
Rabbi Benjamin Blech
Professor of Talmud, Yeshiva University
You would have thought the Torah reading for Rosh Hashanah is obvious. Of course, the day commemorating the creation of the world must be the opening of the story of Bereshit. Yet remarkably enough it is not. On Rosh Hashanah, instead of taking us to the creation of the universe the Rabbis take us into the home of Abraham and Sarah — to one elderly, childless woman whose private destiny matters infinitely to God. And the Haftarah intensifies the same idea: Hannah stands before God with one intensely personal request — “Give me a child.”
Strange. Yet it captures perhaps the most important concept of Judaism’s understanding of creation: The greatness of God is not merely that the whole world is His concern. It is that, to God, no human being is ever merely part of the whole.
Or, even more sharply: God does not merely rule the world; He has a relationship with every person in it. The King of the universe is also the God of the individual. The Creator of everyone is simultaneously the God of someone. God’s infinity means that His concern for humanity as a whole does not diminish His attention to the individual. God does not have to divide His attention among 8 billion people. Each person can stand before Him with the immediacy of an only child before a parent.
As C.S. Lewis pointedly wrote, “You are as much alone with Him as if you were the only being He had ever created.” Perhaps that is why the Torah does not tell us on Rosh Hashanah merely how God created the world. It tells us how God remembered one woman – Sarah. The God who created billions of human beings heard the longing of one.
That makes “And God remembered Sarah” – a remarkable commentary on Rosh Hashanah: the Creator of everyone is simultaneously the God of someone. And remember – that someone is YOU!
Rabbi Yoni Dahlen
Spiritual Leader / Congregation Shaarey Zedek, Southfield, Mich.
There is an expression in our tradition that, at its essence, Judaism is nine Jews looking for one, and one Jew looking for nine.
While we may need a minyan (made up of 10 Jewish adults) to say certain prayers within our liturgy, the statement is actually about something so much bigger than prayer or law. It is about remembering one another. About understanding that none of this (tradition, community, meaning … life as we know it) is possible alone. That the true purpose of our lives is not to transcend our existence and connect on some singular higher plain, but rather to recognize the holiness of human relationship.
There is a reason that so much of our liturgical language throughout the Days of Awe is in the plural form. We confess our missteps. We pray for our deliverance. We celebrate our renewal. Because in Judaism, our path to the Divine is not through monasticism or the rejection of society; it is through one another.
God remembering Sarah establishes the expectation for God’s people. In a religious system that challenges us to emulate our Creator’s middot or divine attributes, this becomes the fountainhead from which all other acts of chessed or kindness flow. As we enter into a new year, a time for renewal and recommitment, how do we find our way back home to God? By remembering one another. By loving one another. By seeking … always seeking. Nine Jews in search of one. And one Jew in search of nine.
Elazar Bergman
Author of “Where Earth and Heaven Kiss” & “The Daven Better Handbook”
This verse, the opening verse of Torah reading for the year, is about openings: of the year, the heart, the mouth, the shofar and the birth canal.
That’s right, I said “birth canal.” It’s not the first thing you associate with a shofar, but the two are similar in form (narrow on one side, wide on the other) and function, receiving something minimal and delivering something momentous. A noiseless puff of air produces an alarming blast that awakens us. We are shoved out of the womb of complacency, of thinking that we are fully developed Jews, to confront the frightening reality that we are know-nothing babies.
The upside is that newborns are excused their shortcomings. Additionally, being newborn is a Divine invitation to begin developing our Hashem-consciousness, mature our character and expand our capacity to do good works. This is what our ancestors Abraham and Sarah aspired to, toiled and sacrificed for. If we listen well to the sounding of the Rosh Hashanah shofar, we will open our mouths all year long to honestly plead with Hashem that we embrace their path and succeed as they did. Their promised child, Yitzchak Avinu, was named for the laughter that he brought to the world. May HaShem help us to emulate our ancestors and give birth to a year filled with sacred laughter. Amen. A sweet, happy and healthy year to you and yours. May we all be immediately written and sealed in The Book of Life.
