Derasha
I remember a few years ago asking for a show of hands as to who had risen in the middle of the night to watch the royal wedding. Hands shot up right away, confirming that the monarchy continues to compel interest even as it has become more and more powerless. Yet it’s still worthwhile to pay attention, as everything we do in deference to monarchs is to spur comparisons. We go out of our way to witness a king or queen, the Gemora says, because of what it does for us in helping us compare to an eventual Jewish king. We squeeze whatever lessons we can out of the monarchy in order to train our imaginations. Rosh Hashana is coming, and so we need all of the help we can get to imagine a real king.
The British monarchy has been reduced to the status of pure celebrity, people who are famous for being famous but are ultimately almost entirely feckless. Since power transferred to parliament, some of the monarchs have been statesmen, and Bill Clinton called this Queen a savvy judge of affairs of state. But the monarch no longer has real power, so much so that it is questionable whether one still says a Beracha upon seeing her or him. He or she is a symbol, but of what it is hard to fathom anymore.
The remarkable thing about this queen was that she persevered, a national servant called on to serve really against her will, as her father had been before her. Unlike almost everyone else in her family, she thought that dutifully serving something bigger than herself was enough of a reason to carry on.
The chief rabbis, the only Jews to get a one-on-one glimpse of this queen, were always very polite and proper about it. R’ Mirvis said the other day that she was a mensch. R’ Sacks, a”h, found her religiously tolerant not just in word but in deed. R’ Jakobovits, a”h, on a visit here many years ago, recalled how effortlessly she pulled off the rituals of her daily life and office.
None of the rabbis, again always polite, raised the embarrassing issue of why she never visited Israel. This was a foreign matter, a decision of the foreign office, but also a sign of how deeply entrenched she was in the Britain of her youth. Those of her time and her class were always resentful of the way the Jews aggressively -- a nice understated way to put it -- pursued their state.
Now that she is gone, the focus on the rituals of transition, which are left over from the time when the monarchy mattered, do give us a chance to think about the real centerpiece of Rosh Hashana, which is a coronation, or a renewal of coronation.
What happens on that day? Well, we heard earlier that this is a birthday. The only birthday in the Torah is that of Paro. His birthday, the Midrash says, was on Rosh Hashana naturally. He thought of himself as a deity, as a Creator, so his birthday had to be on Rosh Hashana. He thought of that day as a kind of coronation. His activity on that day was to release the two prisoners, the butler and the baker, who were with Yosef in jail. One of them was released and restored to his job. The other was hung. The Torah refers to both decrees from Paro in the language of “Sa,” or lifting. One was lifted back into his position while the other was just lifted.
Paro used his birthday as a judgment day. He decided on that day who was furthering his goals and who was not. Everyone does a little of that on their birthday. But when it’s the king’s birthday, everyone is implicated, for better or worse.
The monarchy gives us a whiff of real kingship, and on the eve of Rosh Hashana that gives a chance to learn. It’s just a whiff, but that’s something. The British subjects will take on a king; that king recalls centuries and centuries of national honor; and they punctuate it with horns, lots of horns. It’s a whiff of Rosh Hashana, and gives us a chance to meditate on what those acts of coronation -- and of memory, and of Shofar -- mean when they are done in a way that holds real power.
