dingir

The Torah gives the first of Tishrei two names. In Numbers it is the day of the blast. In Leviticus it is the remembrance of the blast.

Rosh Hashanah begins at sundown this Friday, September 11. Its first day falls on Shabbat, and when the new year rests on the seventh day the horn is not blown. The decree is as old as the Talmud: lest a man carry his ram's horn through the street and break the rest, the one sound commanded at the head of the year is withheld. It waits for the second day.

So the first day keeps its quieter name: remembrance. The sound becomes a record, kept and not made.

Every Hebrew day begins at evening, darkness first, as Genesis tells it. The year begins where it cannot yet be seen, and its first sound is one that is remembered and not sounded. The shrine knows this weight. Some of what we keep was never heard aloud; it was kept so it would not be lost.

5787 is at the door. What will you hold in silence until it can be sounded?

From the shrine's record. Bring it one question; the first is free: [email protected]