I just finished reading Patterns in Time, Volume 1: Rosh Hashanah, by Rav Matis Weinberg. It is a remarkable work (as are all of his writings), developing a new way to look at Rosh haShanna through a myriad of sources from all of the different writings of Chazal. I cannot honestly say that I understand everything on the first reading. However, there was a passage near the end of the book that particularly caught my attention, that I would like to share with you. (Yes, you, the person who somehow reached this page).

Thie exerpt comes from chapter 14.4, pages 197-198 (italics from the original text. bold is from me):

But what distinguishes Yisrael is best understood through the most difficult aspect of shofar: the implications of the shofar of Yitzchak’s ram, more painful in their own way than the Akeida itself. For it is easy to lead lives that sleep in the tranquility of indifference. And it is also surprisingly easy to lead live of the Akeida, where all concerns of petty life fall away and only the weighty issues of supreme importance, of consequence undeniable, remain to be chosen – for life or for death. The world is all too full of martyrdom, of people living lives utterly dedicated to causes, some murderous and others just useless, sacrificing all normal existence. But the most demanding, difficult, and truly involved life seeks neither escape nor agrandizement, neither tranquility nor vainglory – nor even the honest reassurance of martyrdom. This was the most difficult part of the Akeida – to translate the moment of Truth into a lifetime of small truths, the moment of God’s seeing into an eternity of the montain [Bais haMikdash] where God will be seen (B;reishis 22:14). How hard it was to leave the altar:

Avraham! Avraham! – Avraham said, let me at least choke him…
Lay not your hand upon the lad… – and Avraham said, then let me just take a drop of blood…
Neither do anything at all to him! (B’reishis Raba 56:7)

It was at that moment that the ram appeared, and taught that the service of the Holy One lies in the small sacrifices made every day, in the belief that there can be no greater signigicance than the moment that is now, to be part of forever. The shofar brings us – along with passion, love, fear, responsibility, awareness – this most sobering of messages: that it is not enough to go up to the altar, but that one must know how to come down, leaving Rosh haShanah and its heights for the day-to-day toil and sweat in the fields of Din.

“I told you only to take him up for an offering B’reishis 22:2). You did that – now take him down! (B’reishis Rabba 56:8)

I know that Rosh haShanah has already passed, we are about to reach the Day of Atonement, Sukkot, Shemini Atzeret and Simkhat Torah. Then we will be able to get back to the ordinary day-to-day ocurrences of our lives. In so doing, I think that the message that Rav Matis transmits here is of supreme importance. All of our actions are important. Our mission as Jews is to be able to take the normalcy of every-day life and elevate it to have the importance of the Akeida.

Only so does the voice of the shofar grow ever more powerful, leading at last to the consciousness of a new world, where all Mankind will say, God has become Kind