Who has the power?

Written by Rabbi Elliott Karstadt — 20 September 2025

Tuesday is Rosh Hashanah.

During Elul, we have been studying the shofar – what the shofar physically is, what the various calls of the Shofar mean, and yesterday we considered why we blow the shofar.

We often talk about how the blowing of the shofar is a wake-up call to us as Jews and as human beings. A wake-up call that reminds us of our responsibility to ourselves, to each other, and to the world – a wake-up call that we are about to be judged, so we better engage in some proper introspection – we better think about who we are and how we are currently engaging with our world. Rabbi Alan Leuw wrote a book about this called This is Real and You are Completely Unprepared. The call of the shofar lifts us out of our torpor and calls on us to face up to our lives – to know that this is real and we are responsible.

Speaking of our responsibility. In our study, we talked about whether the blowing of the shofar is to remind us that we have no power (in our submission to God) or whether in fact it is actually a reminder that we do have power – we have the power to change our lives and do things differently, to make a difference in the world around us – and the shofar is actually a reminder of that power.

If we recall the story of Abraham and Isaac, the shofar obviously relates to the ram who was sacrificed instead of Isaac. So, is it a reminder that Abraham was prepared to go through with God’s command that he slaughter his beloved son – or is it in fact a reminder that the ram was there all along, that Abraham always had other options that he was too blind to see until the angel intervenes?

This is a fundamental theological question we are presented with in this season: is the power ours or God’s?

One of the midrashim we studied puts the shoe on the other foot – arguing that the blowing of the shofar is not to wake us up but to wake God up. This teaching is attributed to a number of different rabbis, and says (Lev. Rabb. 29:10):

All the days of the year, Israel is engaged in their labour and on Rosh Hashanah they take their shofarot and sound them before the Holy Blessed One. God rises from the throne of justice to the throne of mercy and becomes filled with mercy for them.

In this reading, we blow the shofar because we know that we have sinned, and we are calling out for God’s mercy. If God were to remain on the throne of judgment, we would all be judged harshly. In the Talmud we read that if God sits in the Throne of Judgment for too long, God sees that we are all worthy of destruction and so is forced to move to the Throne of Mercy.

There is a theological point here – that we are inherently sinful – that it is simply our human nature to be so – and all we can rely upon and hope for is God’s mercy.

After all, in the Avinu Malkeinu prayer that also accompanies us through the High Holy Days, we will recite over and over:

Choneinu v’aneinu – have mercy upon us and answer us

Ki banu ma’asim – for we do not have deeds – meaning? We are unable to act on our own behalf, and so we ask God:

Aseh imanu ts’dakah vachesed v’hoshi’einu – deal with us in charity and kindness, and save us.

This question of human and divine power has rippled through the history of the Jewish people.

(Do we sometimes assume that our ancestors were more submissive to God and less rebellious towards God’s power than we are?)

The rabbis of the Talmud were very much aware of the tension between these two positions. In one striking passage, we are told (b.Eruvin 13b):

Our rabbis taught: For two and a half years, the House of Shammai and the House of Hillel disagreed. The House of Shammai would say: Better for humanity not to have been created than having been created. And the House of Hillel would say: Better for humanity to have been created than not having been created.

[Finally] they voted and concluded: Better for humanity not to have been created than having been created. Now that they have been created – let them investigate their deeds. And some say: Let them examine their deeds.

So we have here this binary presented: it was a net good that human beings were created on the one hand – it was a net bad that human beings were created on the other. Within that binary is the another binary – that human beings are inherently bad (that we don’t have the ability to change our ways so that we have a positive effect on the world) – or that human beings are inherently good (the downside of this is that we are not forced to acknowledge our own responsibility when things do go wrong – or don’t go perhaps as we would like).

The compromise position is to recognise that we do in fact have the power to change our lives – if only we investigate and examine our conduct. If we contemplate our role in the events of the world, then perhaps we can do better. And perhaps this is what the shofar is calling on us to do. It is calling us to think and reflect, so that in the next year we might use the limited power we have to make a difference.

A final midrash before I finish, from Pirkei d’Rabbi Eliezer (46:2):

For forty days Moses was occupied on the mountain, reading the Scriptures by day, and studying the Scriptures by night. After the forty days he took the tablets and went down into the camp on the 17th of Tammuz, and he smashed the tablets, and killed the sinners in Israel. He was then occupied for forty days in the camp, until he had burnt the calf, and powdered it like the dust of the earth, and he had destroyed the idol worship from Israel, and he instituted every tribe in its place.

And on the New Moon of Elul the Holy Blessed One said to him, ‘Come up to me on the mountain’ (Ex. 24:12), and let them sound the Shofar throughout the camp, for, behold, Moses has ascended the mount, so that they do not go astray again after the worship of idols. The Holy Blessed One was exalted with that Shofar, as it is said, ‘God is exalted with a shout, the Eternal with the sound of a horn (Psalm 47:6). Therefore, the sages instituted that the Shofar should be sounded on the New Moon of Elul every year.

Twice this midrash uses the word ‘instituted’ – first to describe Moses, and then to describe the ancient rabbis. Both times, ‘instituted’ is a translation of the Hebrew hitkin, which in turn is derived from the verb l’takein – to repair. Moses returns each tribe to its place in order to begin the process of repairing the relationship between the Jewish people and God following the sin of the Golden Calf.

And the Sages institute the law that we blow the shofar in the month of Elul – the month leading up to Rosh Hashanah – for the same reason – to institute a kind of repair. A taking stock of where we are – in which we take at least some responsibility for our own lives and our own world, and take steps to repair what can be repaired.

So, as we hear the shofar over the next week, let us find that middle position between despair and arrogance; let us contemplate our own power; let us begin that process of tikkun in whatever way we might find.

Shabbat Shalom, and Shanah Tovah