Rosh Hashanah Day 2: Making God King

Rosh Hashanah Day 2: Making God King
Rebbe Nahman of Breslav told of a certain king who had a wise man. The king said to the wise man:
"There is one king who signs himself as being 'mighty, great and a man of truth and humility'. As for his being mighty, I know he is mighty because his kingdom is surrounded by the sea and in the sea stands a fleet of warships with cannons, which will not allow anyone to draw near. Inland from the sea is a deep moat that goes around the whole kingdom. To get in, there is only one tiny pathway wide enough for only one man, and there too stand cannons. If someone comes to make war, they fire with the cannons. It is impossible to get near.
"However, as for his signing himself 'a man of truth and humility', I don't know. I therefore want you to bring me a portrait of that king."
This was because this king had portraits of all the kings, but there was no portrait of that king in any king's collection. The reason was that he was hidden from everybody. He sat behind a veil, remote from the people of his country.
The wise man went to the country. He realized that he needed to find out the nature of the country. How do you find out the nature of a country? You find it out through the people's humor. When you want to know something, you should find out how people laugh and joke about it.
There are different kinds of jokes. Sometimes a person may really want to hurt another with words, but when the other takes exception to his words, he says, "I only meant it as a joke". "Like one who exerts himself to cast firebrands and arrows. and then says, I am only joking" (Proverbs 26:18-19) . There are other times when a person may say something that is truly intended as a lighthearted joke, yet his friend is hurt by his words. Thus there are various different kinds of jokes and humor.
And among all the different kingdoms there is one kingdom that includes all kingdoms. In that kingdom is one city that includes all the cities of the entire kingdom that includes all kingdoms. In that city is one house which includes all the houses of the whole city that includes all the cities of the kingdom that includes all kingdoms. And there is one man who includes everything in that entire house. And there is also someone who produces all the mockery and joking of the kingdom.
The wise man took with him a large sum of money and went there and saw how they were mocking and joking in various ways. From the humor, he understood that the entire kingdom was full of lies from beginning to end. He saw the way they would joke about how people defrauded and deceived others in business, and how the injured party would sue in the lower courts where everything was lies and bribery. He would then go to a higher court, where everything was also lies. They used to put on comedies about all these kinds of things.
Through their humor the sage understood that the entire kingdom was filled with lies and deceptions and that there was no truth anywhere. He did some business in the kingdom, allowing himself to be defrauded in the transaction. He took the case to court, but the court was all lies and bribes. One day he would give them a bribe but the next day they would not recognize him. He went to a higher court, and there too it was all lies. Eventually he came before the Supreme Court, but they too were full of lies and bribery. Finally he came to the king himself.
When he came to the king, he said, "Who are you king over? The whole kingdom is full of lies from beginning to end and there's no truth in it."
He began enumerating all the lies in the kingdom. When the king heard his words, he turned his ear to the veil to hear what he was saying. The king was surprised that there was anyone who knew about all the lies in the kingdom.
The ministers of state who heard what he was saying were very angry with him. Yet he went on telling about all the lies in the kingdom.
"It would be proper to say," declared the wise man, "that the king too is like them - that he loves falsehood just as his kingdom does . But from this I see that you are a man of truth: you are far from them because you cannot stand the falsehood of the country."
The wise man began to praise the king greatly. But the king was very humble, and "in the place of His greatness, there is His humility" ( Megilah 31a) . Such is the way of the humble person. The more he is praised and magnified , the smaller and humbler he becomes. Because of the sage's great praise, extolling and magnifying him, the king reached the utmost humility and smallness until he became literally nothing. He could not contain himself, and he threw aside the veil to see who this wise man was that knew and understood all this.
His face was revealed, and the sage saw it and brought his portrait back to the king. [Trans. Avraham greenbaum]
The story is a metaphor. The mighty king is God, hidden behind a veil such that none of us can see him, divorced from reality.
And the kingdom of lies is this world, a world run by greed and injustice, people trying to make as much money off each other in whatever way they can, and where courts and government officials are corrupt.
Where is God in such a world, in a world where 15 million children die of hunger each year, in a world where millionaires control 39% of the world’s wealth but over 3 billion people live on less than $2.50 a day, where Russian and Asian women and children are trafficked as slaves, where dictators in Syria, Libya, Iran, and North Korea are willing to murder thousands of civilians to retain their grip on power, and where people walk into crowded theatres and spray people with bullets?
And the answer, from this story, is: he’s nowhere to be found. He’s hiding. Because this is a world run on the basis of lies and injustice, not on truth and mercy. The world as we know it is a realm of lies, of corruption. God is an absent king, and we are holding the steering wheel.
In the aleynu, which we say every day but we say with a special ceremony today on the high holidays, we declare vehaya adonai lemelech, we look forward to the day when God will be king. Because, in a sense, he is not. God does not rule the world. People rule the world. People destroy the environment. People create inequality. People create violence and slavery.
The aleynu says that on that day God will be one and his name will be one. So what is he now? Fractured. Deeply fractured. Rashi says that as long as the forces of evil are in the world, God’s name is not complete. Not only is God not in charge, but even God himself is broken and incomplete. Because a God who is not in charge of the universe is not fully himself. He’s not yet king.
Rosh Hashanah is not just a day we celebrate God as king, it is a day on which we make God king. The midrash says that if we don’t make god king—im ein mamlichim oti—he is not king.
So how do we make God king?
First of all, we envision a world which is truly a kingdom of God. Not in the sense of a theocracy ruled by some religious elite who force everyone else to follow strict religious rules, like the Taliban, but in the sense of a domain where every transaction is governed by the divine attributes of truth, justice, and mercy. Where business dealings are fair and not deceptive, and people help each other to be able to pursue their own livelihood, where there is no corruption among people in power, where there is no war or oppression, where every human being is able to lead a life of safety and dignity, where animals and the environment are respected, cared for, cherished.
On Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur, this visualization is the centerpiece of the liturgy. On page 135, paragraph 4, there is a large addition to the third prayer of the amidah, visualizing a state of being where God has become king.
In the first paragraph, “and now,” uvchen in the Hebrew, we envision all of humanity uniting to fulfill the divine will, no longer serving the idols of power, greed, corruption, and violence. Not that everyone has to be the same religion, but that all religions actually take seriously the divine imperative at their core, to love their fellow human being, to care for the earth.
In the second paragraph, we visualize what this will mean for our people, who have continually been pushed around the world and threatened by massive, violent regimes. Iran is, sadly, not new; we have been threatened before and we have survived, and we will outlive Ahmedenijad. But we imagine a day when we can live in peace as a nation, we imagine what Israel would look like, the joyful partying of Jerusalem at peace. Can you imagine the party when we finally make peace with the Palestinians? We need to be able to imagine this, to believe it can become a reality. Maybe when we are davenning this we can add our own details, paint a picture in our minds of what it will look like.
In the third paragraph, we imagine evil vanishing from history and from the human soul. The roots of evil are buried in the human soul from birth, in what Freud called the death instinct and Judaism called the yetzer hara, the drive to destroy, to hate, to harm. We imagine a day when this is eradicated from our souls, from our neighbor’s souls, from all of humanity. This really can happen. We need to make this happen.
Why all the imagination, all the visualization? Is it just a fantasy? Yes, but fantasy is a powerful tool. It gives us a sense where we are going, and helps us believe we can get there. It helps free us from the tyranny of reality, of thinking this is just how things are.
We also envision what it would mean for God to be king in our own lives. The next paragraph says “you alone will rule over all your works.” What would it look like if I made all my decisions by what God really wants? What would I eat? How would I spend my time? How much time would I spend exercising, studying, helping others? Who would I spend my time with? How much time and attention would I give to my spouse, my children, my friends? How would I treat them? Where would I shop, what products would I buy?
The shofar blasts are part of the coronation, too. Every festival has a mitzvah unique to it, and the mitzvah of Rosh Hashanah is hearing the shofar. The shofar is used both to signify military victory, and coronation. It is a profound expression of the divine victory over the forces of evil:
In Psalm 47, for example, God is depicted as ascending up the temple mount to be enthroned as king of all the earth. " God has gone up with a shout, the Lord with the sound of a trumpet [shofar]" (Ps 47:5).
The sound of the shofar also is symbolic of the messianic era: "And in that day a great trumpet [shofar] will be blown, and those who were lost in the land of Assyria and those who were driven out of the land of Egypt will come and worship the Lord on the holy mountain at Jerusalem" (Is 27:13).
Zechariah also writes that "Then the Lord will appear over them, and his arrow go forth like lightening; the Lord God will sound the shofar, and march forth in the whirlwinds of the south" (Zech 9:14).
To make God king, in Hebrew mamlichim, means
to declare god king, as in saying the kedusha on p. 134,
but more importantly:
to envision a world transformed into the kingdom of God,
and to make God king at least over the few square feet of the world I control, over my life, over my interactions.
Judaism does not claim that everything every human being does is ordained by God. God gives humans free choice, and some people make bad or even evil decisions which hurt other people. Perhaps God mourns with us, suffers with us, grieves with us at the state of the world. And perhaps God also dreams with us, fantasizes with us, shares in our hoping and yearning for the kind of world this could be, for the kind of lives each of us could live.
May we all dream with God, and do a little bit to make that dream come true.
Shanah Tovah,
Have a wonderful new year