At Jewish High Holidays, seeking wisdom and rebirth
Rabbi Yisroel Serebrowski returned to a study table holding a polished black shofar, or ram's horn. He raised it to his lips and blew, sending out a series of high, squeaky notes.
Rabbi Yisroel Serebrowski returned to a study table holding a polished black shofar, or ram's horn.
He raised it to his lips and blew, sending out a series of high, squeaky notes.
He scowled.
"I could do better," he said.
He blew again, this time puffing his cheeks. This time, the shofar emitted a series of long, plaintive notes that filled the small sanctuary of Torah Links of South Jersey, his center for traditional Torah study in Cherry Hill.
"This is the sound of Rosh Hashanah," he said. "Just a simple cry. It's the inner yearning of the human being to be so much better."
The sound of the shofar will fill synagogues around the world Wednesday night as the Jewish High Holidays begin with Rosh Hashanah.
For the next 10 days, Jews will take stock of their relationships with God and humankind, atone for their failings, and pray for life in the new liturgical year that arrives with Yom Kippur.
The Days of Awe, as the High Holidays are also known, are a time of forgiveness and reconciliation, says Serebrowski, who is Orthodox.
Just as it took him two tries to hit the right notes on the shofar, he said, mystical Judaism teaches that most people need multiple attempts to get right with God.
"It's the concept of reincarnation," he told 11 adults gathered around tables Monday evening at Torah Links.
Reincarnation is not mentioned in Torah, but has been discussed in the Jewish mystical tradition known as Kabbalah for centuries.
"Maybe a person gets it right in a single lifetime," Serebrowski said. "Sometimes it takes several lives. . . . The Kabbalah says 99 percent of souls are recycled."
It has been 14 years since Serebrowski, born in Brooklyn, N.Y., and educated at Orthodox yeshivas in Lakewood, N.J., and Jerusalem, arrived in Cherry Hill to teach Torah to anyone who would listen.
Clean-shaven and 25, he was a rabbi on a mission. Ten years later, he was raising funds to build the compact but stately brick study center that is Torah Links, on Springdale Road near Kresson Road.
While Serebrowski remains faithful to his Orthodox roots, he avoids any denominational affiliation, calling himself "just a good old-fashioned Jew." Torah Links' small, book-lined sanctuary is filled not with pews but chairs set around long reading tables.
"We don't call it a synagogue," he said. "And we don't have members. We don't charge fees. It's 'just come.' We don't care where you pray, but study with us. That's our motto."
Reincarnation, called gilgul in Hebrew, is not a tenet of Reform or Conservative Judaism and is discussed only rarely at some Orthodox synagogues.
But it arose unexpectedly Monday as Serebrowski explored the concepts of atonement and reconciliation that lie at the heart of the High Holidays. On Yom Kippur, Jewish tradition holds, God decides who will be "written into the Book of Life" for the coming year.
"First we have Rosh Hashanah, when we reconnect" with God, he told the group. "Then we come back at Yom Kippur and atone for everything we did throughout the year. It's like going through a car wash, which I do once a year," he said to laughter.
Moments later, however, the discussion turned serious.
"We all try to get into the Book of Life," said a middle-aged woman. "But when a wonderful person dies young, we ask ourselves, 'Why wasn't he in the Book of Life?' It's very difficult." (She declined to give her name to a reporter.)
"Yes," said Dee Weiss, a Cherry Hill resident sitting across from her. "Why are tremendously holy people taken?"
Serebrowski, 39, thought for a moment, and slowly recalled 23-year-old Aaron Sofer, a devout yeshiva student from Lakewood who went missing in late August while walking in a Jerusalem forest.
Sofer's disappearance sparked fears that he had been abducted by enemies of Israel and sparked a massive search that lasted six days before his body was found in the forest. His death was attributed to complications from a fall.
"It's a barucha," a blessing, "to grow old," said Serebrowski, a friend of the Sofer family who had been their spokesman during their ordeal.
But as the Sofers sat shivah for Aaron at their Lakewood home a month ago, he told his listeners, a distinguished visitor arrived to remind the family not to lose sight of the "perfection of the soul" at the heart of Judaism.
It was Rabbi Yehudah Jacobs, longtime head of Beth Medrash Govoha, the 6,500-student Orthodox yeshiva where Sofer had studied Torah before he left for Jerusalem.
"In ninth grade, he was the weakest boy in the school," Serebrowski recalled Jacobs' telling the parents.
"He didn't understand anything, but he had desire," Jacobs said. "He was very frustrated, so I tried to give him courage to keep going. And from that day on, he worked on his studies again and again.
"And you know what?" Jacobs told the parents. "He became the best boy in the yeshiva. Literally. The crème de la crème. Here you had a boy in this short amount of time who used so much of his potential to become a bigger human being. So maybe in his 23 years he lived longer than most who live more years."
Serebrowski paused.
"That doesn't work," said a dark-haired woman who sat next to Weiss.
Serebrowski held up his hands.
"Let me finish," he said. "We have a way of thinking a person should live a certain number of years. But if we are here to perfect our souls, maybe Aaron's mission was accomplished."
By the same token, he said, Jewish mystical tradition holds that some people "might accomplish just 40 or 60 percent" of their perfection in one lifetime.
But Rosh Hashanah "is the day we remember why we were created, why I'm here," Serebrowski said. "It's the day we let our souls be drawn to the big magnet who is Hashem," or God.