Rosh Hashanah Torah Readings:
Why These? Why Now?
Zoe Fertik
Torah
Maftir
Haftarah
Day 1
Readings
Sarah has a child
Genesis 12:1-34
Rosh Hashanah
Numbers 29:1-6
Hannah has a child
1 Samuel 1:1-2:10
Day 2
Readings
Sarah’s child is threatened
Genesis 22:1-24
Rosh Hashanah
Numbers 29:1-6
Rachel’s children are threatened
Jeremiah 31:1-19
Rosh Hashanah is the celebration of the anniversary of God’s creation of the world. One might have guessed that the Torah reading for Rosh Hashanah would have been Genesis Chapter 1, the creation story. But it’s not.
A good second guess for what could have been selected for the Rosh Hashanah Torah readings would be the section of the Torah about Rosh Hashanah itself. It would make sense to hear the verses about the holiday during the holiday. These verses -- Numbers 29:1-6 -- do make a tiny cameo as the maftir, the brief extra reading, on both the first and second days of Rosh Hashanah. But these verses are in no way the main event of the Torah service.
So what takes center stage during the Torah service on the first and second days of Rosh Hashanah? The sections selected are surprising and can help us understand the themes that our tradition wanted us to grapple with each New Year.
On Day 1 of Rosh Hashanah, we read two stories. First, we read Genesis 21, the story of Sarah being given the impossible blessing of having a child, Isaac, in her old age. Then, in the haftarah, we read a similar story of blessing from the first chapter of the Book of Samuel. This is the story of Hannah being told that she will no longer struggle with infertility and she too will have a child, Samuel.
The protagonists of the first day of Rosh Hashanah are both women. Sarah and Hannah are two persistent women who both struggled with infertility but whose desire for children could not be suppressed and who were eventually, against all odds, given a child. Their stories are reminders that pregnancy is a miracle and that childbearing is not a given. Having children is a testament to God’s grace and a reminder to all of us to have faith in the impossible. The miraculousness of creation best exemplifies these theological ideals.
Our tradition determined that Sarah and Hannah’s stories would be read on the holiday that commemorates the world being created because these women were trying to create new worlds. Mothers are humanity’s example of the human capacity to be creators ourselves. And so these are the stories we read: the stories of women who want children, who believe in humanity’s power to create the future, and who do not give up until that future is secured.
And yet, as any parent knows, the future is never truly secure. The second day of Rosh Hashanah reminds us of the fragility of the children whose conception was narrated as a blessing just the day before. First, we turn the page to Genesis 22, where Sarah’s son Isaac is bound at the altar and almost sacrificed. Then we read a haftarah about the exile of the sons of Israel, and we hear Israel’s wife Rachel weeping as she watches her children’s possible destruction.
If the first day of Rosh Hashanah tells the stories of life being created, then the second day of Rosh Hashanah tells the stories of life being threatened. This duality rings loudly throughout the Jewish New Year liturgy. As we wish each other the formulaic greeting of “G’mar Chatimah Tovah” (“a good final sealing,” meaning that we should be sealed in the Book of Life), we assert the truth that each year can bring both life or death to any of us. The future we work so hard to secure is the most delicate reality of all. Yesterday, there was birth, yet tomorrow, the creations might all slip away.
No one knows this better than mothers. Sarah knew it, Hannah knew it, and Rachel knew it. I know it. In this last year, 5784, we watched the mothers of the hostages in Gaza, brutally abducted on October 7, wait in excruciating torment for news of their children. I watch the news in agony for mothers in mourning, and I hug my daughters with an emotion I can only describe as the combination of love and terror. It is a blessing that our children are born, and yet protecting them is always a precarious and perhaps impossible endeavor.
On Rosh Hashanah, our tradition commemorates the awe-ful tension of creation by reciting stories of motherhood. Our matriarch Sarah became a new mother at 90 years old only to have her husband take Isaac to the top of the mountaintop and bind him on the altar. Hannah became a mother after years of infertility only to have her son’s generation bring destruction to the Children of Israel. Through these women, we hear both sides of the story of being human creators: both the blessing of bringing children into this world and the danger of the world for our children. Such is the reality of being mothers, of being creators, of being alive for another year.