“He went and slept among the graves”

We are two days away from Rosh Hashana. So we will study matters that belong to Rosh Hashana, and we will also touch on parashat Haazinu, which speaks of these very things.

And since people always ask why we do not also study Gemara, we will begin precisely with a sugya from tractate Berakhot, page 18b, which bears directly on the day we are entering.

The Gemara examines a question there: do the dead know what happens among us, in this world?

The question is far from theoretical, and it is tied to Rosh Hashana. For one of the things we say on that day is: “the books of the living and the books of the dead are open before You.” In other words, on that day the living are not the only ones brought to judgment: the dead are judged too, and what they left behind in the world is examined.

The underlying question remains: over the course of the year, do the dead know what happens to us? It is an elementary question — for if the answer were no, why hold an azkara, why go to the cemetery at all? The Gemara faces the question, and it does so by telling a story. A story that takes place on erev Rosh Hashana.

Here, then, is a pious man whose material situation is not good. And in spite of that, on erev Rosh Hashana, he gives a dinar to a poor man. That dinar was very likely all the money left in the house.

His wife does not let it go. They are sitting on the night of Rosh Hashana at the table, with whatever there is to eat — that is, very little. And she keeps returning to it: you can see that we have no money, that we have nothing to eat, and you go and give the tzedaka.

No less than that. He gets up in the middle of the meal, on the night of Rosh Hashana, he walks out — and goes to sleep in the cemetery, among the graves. And there he hears two souls speaking.

One says to the other: come, let us roam the world and hear from behind the pargod what calamity is coming to the world. The other answers: I cannot, for I am buried in a mat of reeds.

That is to say: when a person is buried, they are buried in tachrichim, and the hevra kadisha always asks what the family wants, for there are plain tachrichim and finer ones. But she was poor, and her family had no means to buy her proper tachrichim. They wrapped her in a mat and buried her that way. And because of this her soul does not have the faculty of going out and returning as the other one does.

So she says: you go, and whatever you hear, come and tell me. And all this while the man is lying between the two graves, hearing everything.

The spirit goes, roams the world, comes back. Her companion asks: what did you hear from behind the pargod? She answers: I heard that whoever sows at the first rain, hail will strike him.

That is: let the farmers hurry and sow right after Sukkot, and hail will come down and destroy everything sown. Better to wait for the second rain.

The following year he goes back to sleep in the same place, to hear how matters stand. The same exchange takes place: come, let us roam the world and hear from behind the pargod. And the same answer: I cannot, I am buried in a mat of reeds — you go, and tell me.

This time what is heard is exactly the reverse: whoever sows at the second rain, blight will strike him.

Now the farmers, burned by the previous year, said to themselves: we will wait, we will sow later. He, who heard, sows at the first rain. Everyone is struck by blight, and he is not. And a second time, he became very wealthy.

His wife eventually asks him: how is it that last year everyone was struck and you were not, and this year everyone was blighted and you were not? He has no way out: he tells her everything. The cemetery, the two spirits, what he heard.

Not many days later, a quarrel breaks out between the hasid’s wife and the mother of the girl buried in the mat of reeds. And in the middle of the argument, the hasid’s wife throws at her: come, let me show you your daughter, she is buried in a mat of reeds.

In the third year the man returns to the cemetery. And he hears:

I no longer wish to speak, she says: there is someone here sleeping between us who hears everything we say. From this the Gemara establishes that the dead do indeed know what happens among the living. So much for the sugya.

So far everything is clear — and yet nothing has been understood. Several questions arise.

The first jumps out at you: on the night of Rosh Hashana he goes to sleep in the cemetery? What is this? He quarrelled with his wife, fine. But one does not go to sleep in a cemetery on the night of Rosh Hashana. It is a night of yom tov.

And even looking for a practical solution: you fell out with your wife, go to a friend. “Listen, things are a little complicated at home tonight, can I sleep here?” — and it is settled. That is the most normal thing in the world. What is not normal is going to sleep in the cemetery.

The first year one can still understand: he had no money, his wife had lost her temper with him over the tzedaka. Fine. But we have just been told that as a result of this he became very wealthy.

So why, in the second year, does he go back to sleep in the cemetery? His wife has no reason left to quarrel with him: they are wealthy, he sowed at the right moment, he was the only one with something to sell. All is well. And he goes back to sleep in the cemetery on the night of Rosh Hashana?

We explained it once: the word rosh shares its root with roshen, the tadpole. How is a frog born? In the water, at first all you see is a head and a tail.

The same is true of a man’s seed: under the microscope you see a head and a filament. But what is in that head? Everything that will later come out of the man, all the DNA, absolutely everything, is already in there.

A seed put into the ground is a tiny thing. But a grain of wheat already holds everything needed for wheat to come out of it. An avocado stone: what can come out of it? An avocado tree — because everything is in it.

One of the things our Sages insist on most for Rosh Hashana is not to lose one’s temper, not to get angry, not to quarrel. Not with one’s wife, not with one’s children, not with the neighbours, not with anyone. Not in the beit haknesset, not with the hazan, not with the gabbai, not with the man sitting next to you — he wants the air conditioning, he does not want it, say nothing, why get involved?

All of that has to be set aside. Why? Because you are sowing the seed of anger and of accusation for the whole year.

And this is exactly what the hasid understands. He says to himself: my wife is angry with me because I gave tzedaka on erev Rosh Hashana. But I meant to give it on erev Rosh Hashana. I put a seed into the ground. Out of that dinar a tree will come. I knew what I was doing — only my wife did not follow me all the way.

He comes home, his wife is angry. What does he do? Not only does he not answer back, he prefers to leave rather than enter into all that turmoil.

The question remains: why the cemetery? Why not a friend’s house? Because at a friend’s house they ask: what happened? And he would have to answer: I had a bit of an argument with my wife. And the next day his wife would hear the whole story back from other people.

And the second year? There was no quarrel any more. This is where the dimension we spoke of has to be added.

What is a cemetery? The place where people are buried. In other words: as long as I am a living man, speaking, eating, working, enjoying what I have — all is well. There is only one situation in which I am no longer here: when I am in the cemetery. End of the line.

The masters of mussar tell us: on Rosh Hashana, go to the inner cemetery. Consider yourself as absolutely nothing. That is the zero point. And there, if you are there, you will be able to hear the spirits speaking.

For a living man does not hear souls speak: we are in two parallel worlds. To meet the world of the dead you have to be dead — just as to meet the world of the living you have to be alive. Our only way of connecting to that world, where there are no games left, is to count ourselves as nothing.

On the plain level he had nothing to look for there in the second year. But according to what we are learning here, a great deal is at stake, and the message is: go to the cemetery.

What I have just said sounds very bleak. On Rosh Hashana we dress up, we renew ourselves, there is a fine table, fine vessels, it is a yom tov. Nothing else can be said of Rosh Hashana: it is a yom tov, and on it we crown the Holy One blessed be He.

But there is no contradiction. To feel the joy of Rosh Hashana truly, and to crown the King, one has to go back to zero. One has to take the “me, me, me” and set it aside. Only then does one feel the renewal, the creation, the world beginning again.

A minute before Adam was created, he was not. And when was he born? On Rosh Hashana. One reaches the state of life and renewal only by not being here first. To reach flowering, the seed we spoke of must first come undone in the earth; then it grows. But not out of sadness — out of joy.

But to feel properly how the Holy One blessed be He pours His kingship over Israel, I say: I am not here. I want only to receive that flow, without taking up room inside the matter.

The end of the story remains, and it teaches something else. The hasid could have told his wife everything: I heard two spirits, one wanted to go out and the other could not. Did he have to add why she could not? Did he have to add that detail, that colourful detail, to the account?

Now to Haazinu. We will not read it this Shabbat, since it is Rosh Hashana: we will read it bein kesse le-assor, between Rosh Hashana and Yom Kippur.

Why do we say kesse?

What is covered? The moon. On the night of Rosh Hashana it is there, but it is covered. Then, from the entry of the festival, it begins to be revealed a little, then a little more on the second day, up to the fifteenth of the month. And what do we have on the fifteenth? Sukkot.

This process of the moon is like the needle, the barometer between us and the Holy One blessed be He. At the beginning of Rosh Hashana, kesse: the moon is covered, and the accusation is very strong. It is the day of the beginning of Your works, the remembrance of the first day, the day the whole world stands in judgment. Then, as we go forward, hesed and mercy begin to be revealed, like the moon.

Then we move bein kesse le-assor towards Yom Kippur, the tenth of Tishrei: salahti kidvarekha, and the light is almost whole. And on the fifteenth we are at peace with the Holy One blessed be He, sitting with Him in the sukka like a hatan and a kalla, betzila dimehemnuta, in the shade of faith.

Why was the day of judgment set precisely on Rosh Hashana? Because that is the day Adam was judged.

Adam was created on the sixth day of creation. On the very day he was created he sinned, was judged and was pardoned, all before Shabbat came in. That year the sixth day was a Friday, erev Shabbat — a day apart from the configuration we have this year.

What does naval mean? From the continuation of the verse — velo hakham — one would spontaneously say it means a fool. But then the two words would say the same thing.

The Or HaHaim HaKadosh reads it from the opening of the verse: ha-la-Hashem tigmelu zot — is it to Hashem that you repay this? The verb is ligmol, to repay. Repay what? Evil for good. A naval, then, is an ingrate, a man who repays evil for good.

And the proof is in the parasha itself, with the same root: “he forsook the God who made him, and vayenabel the Rock of his salvation” (Devarim 32:15). This is not foolishness, but kindness repaid with ingratitude.

Who was the first ingrate in Tanakh? Adam.

The Holy One blessed be He catches him in the act: what did I command, and what did you do? And he answers: the woman. Yet it was to him that the command had been given, not to her. He could have said: I will not, it is out of the question. He would not take responsibility.

What good did he deny? The Holy One blessed be He gave him a woman, a helper opposite him: she looks after him, she prepares for him, she does everything for him. And in that fall he says: it is her. There is no “it is her”. Take responsibility upon yourself.

And the words “min ha-etz va-okhal” must be weighed. M. Himi relates that she pressed him — striking him with the wood — until he ate. The Or HaHaim HaKadosh moves in that direction on this verse: Adam knew nothing, he had no reason to suspect the woman God Himself had given him, and there is in him only an inadvertent sin — “and perhaps even the status of one compelled”.

And yet. The command had been given to him, directly. Even under blows he should have said: I will not eat. But from that he could not escape: he was going to eat, there was no way out. Where, then, is his sin?

And there is a gradation in the consequences: the serpent goes on its belly and eats dust, the woman gives birth in pain, the man eats his bread by the sweat of his brow. Note too what Hava had added on her own: the Holy One blessed be He had said not to eat, she added “and do not touch it”. The serpent pushed her, she touched — you see, you did not die — and she ate.

Our Sages say: one who denies the good his fellow did him will end by denying the good the Almighty does him.

This is why all of this belongs to Rosh Hashana. Adam did this precisely on Rosh Hashana. And here you are, on Rosh Hashana, being told: this is the day of judgment, make an accounting of the soul.

Very well. I have sinned. But why did I sin? Because they made me stumble, because they enticed me, because they told me stories. You are not saying “I have sinned” — you are saying “it was not me”.

There is no vidui on Rosh Hashana, but one must think about teshuva on it: between the tekiot, all day long, ask what I can repair. Not “I am short-tempered because they angered me”, but: the trait of anger is in me, and I have work to do on it. That they angered you is a fact; whether you get angry is your choice. Keep quiet, let it go, or go and sleep in the cemetery — but do not enter the quarrel. That is your choice. And the hasid of the Gemara, what did he choose?

Rosh Hashana is the day one places a mirror in front of one’s own face. You see yourself. Not everyone you have been blaming for a year.

M. Himi relates that Rav Adin Steinsaltz zatzal was once asked, on a programme just after Rosh Hashana, what he had prayed for. And he answered roughly this.

So what do we pray for? For capacity. We ask to be able — able to do the mitzvot, able to act, able to live. That, yes, we ask for, because it does not depend on us. Health, life — that is not mine, it is Yours.

But parnassa, a zivug? Sign up, meet people, make an effort — I have already put everything on the table. It is like a man who walks into a hall where the buffet is laid out, everything ready, and waits to be served. Start eating. That you should not choke — yes, that depends on Him. But eating is up to you: everything is already set before you.

We have in Tanakh a man who bears this name: Naval the Carmelite (Shmuel I 25). David’s men guarded his flocks; when David sends to ask for food, he answers: “who is David, and who is the son of Yishai?” His own wife, Avigail, will say of him: naval shemo unevala imo — Naval is his name, and disgrace is with him. That is ingratitude embodied in a man.

When Avigail tells him in the morning what she has done, “his heart died within him and he became like a stone”. A heart attack, we would say. But he does not die on the spot: “and it was about the ten days, and Hashem struck Naval, and he died” (Shmuel I 25:37-38). Our Sages say these are the ten days between Rosh Hashana and Yom Kippur — in today’s language, the ten days of teshuva.

So it is never too late, even at that level. The Holy One blessed be He gives a warning. And a mere awakening of teshuva does a great deal: move a little from where you were, go from ninety to ninety and a half, ninety-one — but change something.

Why does this matter so much? I said “El” instead of “Melekh”: where is the difference?

Rosh Hashana, besides being a day of judgment, is the day of crowning — the malkhuyot. And we crown Him not only over ourselves, nor only over Israel: “reign over the whole world in Your glory.” The King is crowned over the entire world.

Now when you say “HaEl HaKadosh”, everyone agrees: there is a God. The nations concede it. Even the man who calls himself secular and says there is no God concedes that there is something. The word El comes from eyalut, strength: Elokim means forces. Anyone with a little sense understands that this world does not stand on its own, that there are forces holding it up.

Fine: I know there is a God. And then? That God told the Jews that such and such a thing is forbidden on the night of Shabbat. The answer: I know He is there, I know He runs the world, but I do not have to listen to what He says.

The Muslims say Allahu akbar: they are not lying, they are saying there is a God. But that same God said that the land of Israel belongs to the people of Israel — and it is even written in their Quran that the Holy Land was assigned to the children of Israel. Why not honour that? The answer: I do not feel like honouring it.

Israel does not wait for the Mashiah to draw the conclusion. Every year on Rosh Hashana we crown Him anew and remind ourselves: Hashem is the King. This is also the order of the selihot: first Shema Yisrael, Hashem Elokenu, Hashem ehad; then Hashem hu haElokim; and only afterwards Hashem melekh, Hashem malakh, Hashem yimlokh le-olam va-ed. That Hashem is Elokim nobody disputes — and that is not enough. He is also the King.

And the first ones closed this circle before us: on leaving Egypt, the last verse of the Shirat HaYam is Hashem yimlokh le-olam va-ed (Shemot 15:18).

One last point.

There is first the familiar quip: hakham, as initials, hamor harif mimenu — a donkey is sharper than he is. That is a joke.

And then there is the meaning. We learned at the beginning of the shiur that Rosh Hashana is the roshen — the head from which the frog comes, the head of the seed, the small grain put into the earth from which a tree later comes. Rosh Hashana is therefore the head in which everything that will be for the whole year already lies.

And a precision: enav means two eyes. What is ayin worth? Ayin 70, yud 10, nun 50 — one hundred and thirty. And two eyes? Two hundred and sixty. That is ten times twenty-six, ten times the Name.

May it be granted, God willing, that this year and its curses come to an end and that a year and its blessings begin; that everything we have asked for be given us for good — health, parnassa, nahat, success and peace; that we be written and sealed for a good life; and that Hashem receive all our prayers with favour.