Where He Is
This post was written and scheduled before Rosh Hashanah began.
We took the red-eye out of Los Angeles on Tuesday night and landed in Atlanta on Wednesday morning. A kid behind me kicked the seat and coughed the whole way across the country. But, like, what can you do.
We’re staying with friends. Their family calls the guest room “our room,” which tells you how often we’re in it. I haven’t done much around town since we landed. My husband is making the challah rounds today — some with raisins, some without — for dinner tonight and for tomorrow. A twice-baked potato with artichokes is definitely on the menu. The rest of it we haven’t figured out, and it’s Friday.
What I’ve mostly been doing is getting ready for a week or so without work. I notice that thinking about it makes me a bit happy. We pray every day regardless. What the week adds is time around it — to read, to reflect, to sit with things that get pushed to the edges of a working week and give them the middle of the day for once.
Tomorrow morning we’ll be at Beth Shalom. It’s our first time back since our rabbi retired. I’m sure the new rabbi is lovely. It’s still a change, and I’m a little apprehensive about walking in. He’ll have a room full of people who knew the man before him, and we don’t want to be the ones who make that harder.
This is my second Rosh Hashanah as a Jew. Last year everything was a first, and I counted it that way. This year I feel more Jewish than I did, which is honestly not a thing I expected to be able to measure.
So that’s the state of things walking in. A new man at the front of the room, and me a year further along than last Rosh Hashanah. And the Torah reading that morning is about a boy in the desert.
On the first day of Rosh Hashanah the reading is the twenty-first chapter of Bereshit, in place of the week’s parsha. The rabbis say Sarah was remembered on Rosh Hashanah, and the chapter opens with her son being born. Then most of it goes to Hagar and Yishmael, sent out into the wilderness of Be’er Sheva with bread and a skin of water. The water runs out. She puts the boy under a bush and sits down a bowshot away so she won’t have to watch. Then this:
וַיִּשְׁמַ֣ע אֱלֹהִים֮ אֶת־ק֣וֹל הַנַּ֒עַר֒ וַיִּקְרָא֩ מַלְאַ֨ךְ אֱלֹהִ֤ים ׀ אֶל־הָגָר֙ מִן־הַשָּׁמַ֔יִם וַיֹּ֥אמֶר לָ֖הּ מַה־לָּ֣ךְ הָגָ֑ר אַל־תִּ֣ירְאִ֔י כִּֽי־שָׁמַ֧ע אֱלֹהִ֛ים אֶל־ק֥וֹל הַנַּ֖עַר בַּאֲשֶׁ֥ר הוּא־שָֽׁם׃
God heard the cry of the boy, and an angel of God called to Hagar from heaven and said to her, “What troubles you, Hagar? Fear not, for God has heeded the cry of the boy where he is.
Ba’asher hu sham. Where he is. Rashi, bringing the midrash, says the angels objected. This is the boy whose descendants will one day let Your children die of thirst — and You are going to find him water? And God asks what he is right now. Righteous or wicked? Right now, righteous. Then I judge him by right now.
His name is in the verse before the angel opens his mouth. Yishmael — God will hear. Vayishma Elohim — and God heard. An angel gave Hagar that name for him before he was born, the first time she ran off into the wilderness, and here in the desert it does exactly what it says.
The Gemara in Rosh Hashanah takes that verse and makes a rule out of it: a person is judged only by his deeds at that hour. Of all the verses about books opening and deeds being weighed, the one we hear read from the scroll on the day of judgment is God refusing to grade a child on his grandchildren.
I find that steadying, given where I’ll be sitting. The question on the table tomorrow is what I am now. Where I am. A year further along than last Rosh Hashanah, however you count it, and that is what gets heard.
It’s the new rabbi’s first Rosh Hashanah in that room, too. The reading applies to him as much as to anybody in the pews.
Two verses on, the second thing happens.
וַיִּפְקַ֤ח אֱלֹהִים֙ אֶת־עֵינֶ֔יהָ וַתֵּ֖רֶא בְּאֵ֣ר מָ֑יִם וַתֵּ֜לֶךְ וַתְּמַלֵּ֤א אֶת־הַחֵ֙מֶת֙ מַ֔יִם וַתַּ֖שְׁקְ אֶת־הַנָּֽעַר׃
Then God opened her eyes and she saw a well of water. She went and filled the skin with water, and let the boy drink.
The well was already there. What changes in the verse is Hagar. Her eyes open and she sees what she has been sitting a bowshot away from.
That’s the part I keep coming back to with a week of no work in front of me. Nobody is digging that time for me. It was there the whole year, a short walk from the desk, and I mostly sat with my back to it. What the week changes is where I’m looking.
Tomorrow the challah goes on the table, round, some with raisins and some without, and we drive over to a shul where the man at the front is new and the two of us are a year further in. The reading will say what it says about the boy. Then Hagar’s eyes will open, and there will be water right where she was already sitting.
Shanah tovah.
Shabbat shalom.
— Uriel ben Avraham