What's The Emoji for Rosh Hashanah?
Tech Tribe Dispatch #215
💡 Think:
I like emojis. I’m even trying to create one. One summer I spent two days using only Emoji for my personal communications. It was rather challenging - but something I still think about.
What, one may ask, does this have to do with Rosh Hashanah, the start of the Jewish New Year and one of the holiest days on the calendar?
Everything.
What is Rosh Hashanah?
A day of repentance? Perhaps, but is that role not also filled by Yom Kippur — the day of atonement?
The start of a new year? True in a literal sense — but how do the commandments of the day, the prayers, the blasts of the shofar, connect to a new year?
The Chasidic masters teach that Creation can not continue without desire. It is the desire that G-d has to create a world, to make a place where the essence of the Creator can be felt and revealed in the most mundane settings, that allows the world to continue to exist.
It is our expression of desire in G-d that in return arouses G-d’s desire for us, for reality as we know it.
But how do we express this desire? Not through words, though we pray with heartfelt words. Not with song, though we may sing uplifting melodies.
Rather, we turn to the shofar, the most primitive of instruments, to express the most primal of sounds.
The Baal Shem Tov compared the call of the shofar to the primal scream within each and every one of us.
We can not find the words to express the essence of our souls, the essence of our being. Like a child in pain calling out to her father, the complexity of thought and intricacies of complex ideas no longer matter. It is the raw unvarnished voice, unshackled and unfettered, that the father hears.
Using emoji for those two days I noticed something. Perhaps a call back to far older ways of expressing thought, emoji were a poor tool in expressing complex ideas. It’s hard to debate anyone with emoji.
What they were good for was showing simple ideas — emotions, needs and objects — all abstracted to their more basic components. Pure, raw, uncomplicated by words or complexity, yet utterly complex in their ability to show a share emotion and thought.
The call of the shofar on Rosh Hashanah is that primordial scream, the eternal voiceless call of the soul expressing its desire to return to its Creator.
“I am a Jew. I am here,” it says. “I don’t want to hide or conceal my essence any more.”
Later we can find words for that call, but now all I can do is cry out — and then the King, our Father, will come to us. We will be united and renewed for a year of sweetness and blessings.
🏃 DO:
🐟 Hear the shofar, take part in the tashlich ceremony - join us for our annual Rosh Hashanah experience on Sunday, September 17th at the Brooklyn Botanic Garden!
🤝 Please consider joining our High Holiday Appeal!
🍎 SOLD OUT Join our bespoke Rosh Hashanah meal, Friday, September 15th. Welcome in the Jewish new year with a sumptuous meal.
🌴 Join us either Night One or Night Two of Sukkot for a delicious meal under the stars!
🎉 Mazel:
Mazel Tov to Jeff Pulver on his birthday!
Mazel Tov to Adam Loewy on his birthday!
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📚 Read:
🍎 Why Is Rosh Hashanah Before Yom Kippur?
Is it possible we've gotten these holidays all wrong?
🥩 Orthodox Union certifies Israeli brand of lab-grown meat as kosher — but not pareve
🪛 Let There Be Microchips
The semiconductor and its near-divine creation story.
🇮🇸 Iceland only has one rabbi. In a world filled with hate, he leads with kindness.
🦘 How roving rabbis help the few Jews of rural Australia celebrate Rosh Hashanah
🔥 Lit:
This week, light Rosh Hashanah & Shabbat candles in NYC at 6:47PM
For Shabbat candle-lighting time in your area click here.
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