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September 22, 2006
Tishri 1: Unetanetokef
All Yamim Noraim posts here, including one post a day from Rosh Chodesh Ellul 5766 through Yom Kippur 5767. All chagim posts here, including one post a day from the first day of Sukkot through Simchat Torah 5767. (Each of these include a mp3 of Jewish music from a wide variety of sources and genres.)
Rosh Hashanah starts this evening. It's also Shabbat, so we won't blow the shofar or perform Tashlich until Sunday.
Leonard Cohen transformed the Unetanetokef into a sombre folk song, with his usual female chorus. The original recording is a bit stiff. This stunning version of "Who By Fire"
is live from Austin City Limits. I was living in Austin then, and one of my minor regrets is that I could have gone to that concert and didn't.
The Unetaneh Tokef is the central liturgy of Rosh Hashanah, a thorny bit of theology with which we must wrestle every year. It reverberates in our hearts throughout the 10 days of teshuvah, and we also recite it on Yom Kippur.
Paul links to two scholarly articles on the real history of the piyyut as opposed to the legend, and some liguistic investigation which supports a modification of its apparent theology.
Rachel teases out more subtle readings than seemingly linear cause and effect, through poetic interpretation:
Think about how your transformations and changes will happen in the coming year: will they be stormy or tranquil? Raging like fire, or gentle like water on stone? Will your choices make you feel deadened, or enlivened? Will your changes weigh you down, or lift you up? And how could the trio of prayer (the service of the heart), repentance (truly turning yourself toward the Source of All) and righteousness (right action, walking in right paths, acting in ways that align you with the Most High) change the way you experience the coming year?RELATED: A Jewish woman marks her losses with "Who By Fire?"
Last year, on the day before Rosh HaShanah, my son came home from school in the middle of the afternoon because his classmate, a popular, smart and talented young man, had died. While unclear at first what had transpired, it turned out that he had taken his own life. “Who by his own hand?”In November, I sat with my dear friend Sharon in her apartment. Ravaged by ovarian cancer, her face was sunken in, her mouth and teeth seemingly too large for her tiny face. “Who by very slow decay?”
. . . . On a cold day in January, my nephew Phillip’s body rested against white satin pillows in a coffin on view in Jasper, Ind. Posters containing photographs of Phillip were scattered throughout: Phillip in the swimming pool, pretending to be a shark; Phillip with a broad grin … holding a baby … doing the Macarena at my son’s bar mitzvah. He had been killed in a car accident a few miles from home the Saturday before. Not wearing a seat belt, he was thrown from car, landing in the only stream of water for miles around, face down. “Who by water… Who by accident?”
Judith | 09/22/06 at 06:05 PM | Categories: - Yamim Noraim
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