In honor of Rosh HaShanah, the ASF’s Sephardi World Weekly is pleased to offer the following “Letter from the Land of Israel”:
One of the defining features of the Rosh HaShanah holiday is the blowing of the shofar.
Why do we blow the shofar on Rosh HaShanah?
According to Rabbi Se’adya Gaon, the Egyptian-born and Babylonian-based 9th century scholar, poet, thinker, and political leader, there are ten reasons. One of those reasons is to awaken the dream of the in-gathering of the exiles to the Land of Israel, a dream articulated in the ancient prayer recited three times daily: “Sound the great shofar for our freedom; raise a banner to gather our exiles, and bring us quickly together from the four corners of the earth into our land. Blessed are You Lord, who gathers the dispersed of His people Israel.”
In R’ Se’adya’s time the in-gathering was, indeed, only a dream. Thanks to the Zionistmovement and the re-establishment of the State of Israel that dream has become a reality. Jewish communities from the four corners of the earth have returned, and continue to return, to the land of their ancestors. However, we often take that astounding new reality for granted.
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The Chief Rabbi of Salonika and first Sephardi Chief Rabbi of Israel, Hakham Rabbi Ben-Zion Meir Hai Uziel (1880-1953), lived through the awesome time of the founding of the modern State of Israel and the great in-gathering of the exiles to Israel, including Greater Sephardic Jews from Arab and Muslim lands. A few weeks before he passed away in 1953, R’ Uziel composed a “Spiritual Will to the Jewish People,” in which he shared his deepest hopes for the people to whom he had dedicated his life. Gravely ill, R’ Uziel used his remaining energy to urge future generations to never lose sight of the miracle that happened, and continues to happen, in our time:
Heed me, my brothers and members of my people, and God will heed you. A great and wondrous merit has become manifest in our present generation, when God’s mighty but long-hidden hand was openly revealed on behalf of His chosen people, when He gathered us in from our scattered state and brought us up to the land that is the heritage of our ancestors. And there we have become a people that dwells upon its soil.
Remember this. Contemplate it seriously. Know and believe that God’s hand wrought this in order to fulfill His word through His sainted prophets for the eternal peace of the Jewish people and for world peace, which is contingent upon Israel’s observance of the Torah and its commandments, through which the name of the Holy One and Redeemer of Israel is sanctified. Thus, all of the nations will learn and know of belief in God and of His singularity, which will bring in its wake true peace to our camp and stable peace among all the nations. No wickedness or destructiveness will be perpetrated between man and man, kingdom and kingdom, or nation and nation, for all will know Him, and the earth will be covered in knowledge of God as water covers the sea.
As we prepare for Rosh HaShanah and the sounding of the shofar heralding the beginning of 5782, the American Sephardi Federation (ASF) is very happy to once again share with our readers the inspiring and still-relevant words of Hakham R’ Uziel.
May this upcoming year be a year full of blessings, and no less important, the appreciation of those blessings, for the people of Israel, the United States, and for all the nations of the world.
Anyada Buena, Dulse i Alegre! The American Sephardi Federation
The great Jerusalem payytan Moshe Habusha gives a heart-rending, virtuoso vocal performance of R’Yehuda Ibn Abas’ 12th century Rosh HaShanah piyyut, “Eyt Sha’arei Ratson Lehitpa’tayyach” (“When the Gates of Mercy Open”), a plea for God “to remember on my behalf, on the day of judgment, the one who bound (Abraham), the one who was bound (Isaac), and the altar.”
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