Humility Matters: The Rosh Hashana Haftarah

The Complete Artscroll Machzor, Rosh Hashana, a new translation and anthologized commentary by Rabbi Nosson Scherman, Sefard Edition, page 412

A Haftarah's subject is similar to that of the Torah reading or is related to the theme of the day. The present Haftarah has borth virtues. The Torah reading tells how Sarah was remembered with a child after a lifetime of barrenness; the Haftarah tells of Hannah who was similarly blessed with a son who was to become one of Israel's foremost prophets. Additionally, the story of Hannah demonstrates that sincere prayer can bring Divine compassion that overcomes all adversity, a theme that is at the essence of Rosh Hashanah. Also, as the Talmud (Megillah 31a) teaches, Sarah and Hannah were both remembered on Rosh Hashanah.

"Eli the High Priest" by Nissan Mindel on Chabad.org

Eli was also the only one in those early days in the history of our people who wore two crowns, for he was both Judge (Shofet) and High Priest. He became judge at the age of 58 years, after the death of Samson (Shimshon) in the year 2830 (or 2831), holding this office for forty years, until his tragic death at the age of 98 years.

In those days the Mishkan (Sanctuary) stood in Shiloh, which was the center of the religious life of the people. There was the residence of Eli, the High Priest, fourth in line of the unbroken chain of Oral Law (Massorah), beginning with Moshe Rabbeinu and continuing through Joshua and Pinehas.

The Family Midrash Says: The Book of Shmuel 1, page 24

The Vilna Gaon (Kol Eliyahu) explains that Eli had a reason [for not judging Chana favorably]. He asked Hashem through the Urim Vetumim to explain her strange behavior. The following letters lit up on the choshen mishpat [breastplate]: הכרש. Eli needed ruach hakodesh [divine inspiration] to combine the letters correctly in order to know the answer. He understood the answer to be שכרה/ a drunken woman. He was sure that this was the correct answer and therefore told Chana very definitely that she was drunk. But Chana replied, "You have no ruach hakodesh; you didn't assemble the letters correctly." The real answer was כשרה, like Sara, meaning this is a childless woman like (our mother) Sara.

The Leader as Servant by Rabbi Jonathan Sacks

Even a king in Jewish law—the office that comes closest to status—is commanded to be humble. He is to carry a Torah scroll with him and read it all the days of his life “so that he may learn to revere the L‑rd his G‑d and follow carefully all the words of this law and these decrees, and not consider himself better than his fellow Israelites.”9

In Judaism, leadership is not a matter of status but of function. A leader is not one who holds himself higher than those he or she leads. That, in Judaism, is a moral failing, not a mark of stature.

The Moral Bucket List by David Brooks, New York Times columnist

It occurred to me that there were two sets of virtues, the résumé virtues and the eulogy virtues. The résumé virtues are the skills you bring to the marketplace. The eulogy virtues are the ones that are talked about at your funeral — whether you were kind, brave, honest or faithful. Were you capable of deep love?

We all know that the eulogy virtues are more important than the résumé ones. But our culture and our educational systems spend more time teaching the skills and strategies you need for career success than the qualities you need to radiate that sort of inner light. Many of us are clearer on how to build an external career than on how to build inner character.

But if you live for external achievement, years pass and the deepest parts of you go unexplored and unstructured. You lack a moral vocabulary. It is easy to slip into a self-satisfied moral mediocrity. You grade yourself on a forgiving curve. You figure as long as you are not obviously hurting anybody and people seem to like you, you must be O.K. But you live with an unconscious boredom, separated from the deepest meaning of life and the highest moral joys. Gradually, a humiliating gap opens between your actual self and your desired self, between you and those incandescent souls you sometimes meet.

So a few years ago I set out to discover how those deeply good people got that way. I didn’t know if I could follow their road to character (I’m a pundit, more or less paid to appear smarter and better than I really am). But I at least wanted to know what the road looked like.

I came to the conclusion that wonderful people are made, not born — that the people I admired had achieved an unfakeable inner virtue, built slowly from specific moral and spiritual accomplishments.

If we wanted to be gimmicky, we could say these accomplishments amounted to a moral bucket list, the experiences one should have on the way toward the richest possible inner life. Here, quickly, are some of them.

THE HUMILITY SHIFT: We live in the culture of the Big Me. The meritocracy wants you to promote yourself. Social media wants you to broadcast a highlight reel of your life. Your parents and teachers were always telling you how wonderful you were.

But all the people I’ve ever deeply admired are profoundly honest about their own weaknesses. They have identified their core sin, whether it is selfishness, the desperate need for approval, cowardice, hardheartedness or whatever. They have traced how that core sin leads to the behavior that makes them feel ashamed. They have achieved a profound humility, which has best been defined as an intense self-awareness from a position of other-centeredness.

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