Fish Heads, for Rosh HaShana 5780
Delivered at Congregation Jewish Community North, Spring, Texas
Fish Heads. Fish. Heads.
Roly-Poly Fish Heads.
Fish Heads, Fish Heads. Eat them up, Yum.
(Barnes and Barnes, “Fish Heads”, 1979)
It is a tradition in some Jewish communities to serve fish heads at Rosh HaShana. More than a delicacy, it is a symbol of good luck — for everyone but the fish, I suppose. But even there, in the romantic mind of our tradition, it is considered a blessing for something destined to be eaten to be eaten by people who appreciate the sacrifice and use it to sanctify G-d’s creation.
Fish themselves are an important ancient symbol in Judaism; they represent good luck, prosperity, and because they don’t have eyelids, like G-d they are always watching. And unlike us, Fish have no eyelids so they can’t choose to be blind. So that is part of the story.
The other part, the head part, is pretty on-the-nose. After all, it is “Rosh” HaShana, the head of the year. We use the word “Rosh” in much the same way Latin uses Capitalis, German, Haupt; and English, Head. It can refer to the part of the body or the primary city of a state or a function in governance. Interestingly we differentiate between these and the ‘heart’ of a matter. Remember that our ancestors thought the heart was the seat of thoughts. We now know thoughts are literally produced in our mind, centered in our brains, found in our head.
The Hebrew letter “Resh” is itself derived from a pictogram representing somebody’s head in profile. So the very word “Rosh” starts with a picture of somebody’s “Rosh”.
This evening begins our celebration of the Anniversary of creation. If you’re paying attention you’ll notice that this begins the Seventh month of the Jewish calendar, and this might not make sense. After all, shouldn’t Rosh HaShana begin on the first day of the first month, which for us is Nisan, the month of Passover?
Only if you assume that everything is about the Jews. But it’s not. Everything is not about us all the time. As the rabbis point out, there are many new years, and we easily see this in our day as well. School years, fiscal years, calendar years, sports seasons, all start and end on different days. Rosh HaShana is an example of Universal thinking by our particular people. Our observance of Rosh HaShana when we observe it is a practical reminder that we are not the only people on the planet, not the only culture, and we should respect that fact.
Our story of creation begins with the word “Bereishit”, and after that first initial “Bet” we find the word “Reishit”, based on “Rosh”, right there. The rabbis make great efforts to explain what exactly this tells us, and draw analogies from other places in scripture, all the other times the word “reishit” is used about something, comparing Moses’ primacy as Prophet and Israel’s chosen-ness, but the medieval sage Nachmanides sums it up like this:
“And this midrash of our Rabbis is very sealed and [obscure], since they found many things that were called reishit and about all of them are there words of midrash; and they are so many that [even] those of little [understanding] will speak about them. “ Ramban Ber. 1:1
In general, anyone trying to fully explain how exactly all this came to be, or why things may be the way they are, is ultimately a fool’s errand, and we are cautioned to use our time and energy in more productive ways. Many of you may already know the teaching about the letter bet that begins bereishit being closed on three sides so we only focus on what is before us, not things that are literally over our head, too deep, or in our past.
Our teacher Nachmanides goes on to explain how seemingly mundane or ritualistic practices are connected to greater more mysterious aspects of creation. Ramban then brings up one of the basic and most popular ideas in Jewish Mystical tradition, a concept that seeks to explain how Divine energy manifests itself in creation and in the aspects of creation that we can experience. So we read about the thinking of these rabbis:
“And their intention here is that the word, bereishit, hints that the world was created with ten mystical spheres (sefirot) and it hints to the sphere called ‘wisdom,’ which is the foundation for everything;” ibid
There is certainly a connection between the word Reishit, beginning, and Hochma, wisdom, as expressed by Psalm 110: The beginning of wisdom is awe of G-d, all who practice it gain solid understanding
רֵ֘אשִׁ֤ית חׇכְמָ֨ה ׀ יִרְאַ֬ת יְהוָ֗ה שֵׂ֣כֶל טֹ֖וב לְכׇל־עֹשֵׂיהֶ֑ם תְּ֝הִלָּתֹ֗ו עֹמֶ֥דֶת לָעַֽד׃
This phrase, and variations, arse found throughout our Talmud and midrashic writings;
One commentary by the 18th century Moroccan Rabbi known as Or HaChayim suggests the world was created for the sake of Awe of God. We have here been given an answer for the ancient question, “Why are we here?” That answer is, “Because God is amazing”. The follow up question is, “What should we do with ourselves?” And the answer suggested by the Psalms, and by Nachmanides, is “seek wisdom and understanding.”
We sing songs and connect with ancient texts expressing our love for and appreciation of the Creator and Creation. We take stock of our behavior within that Creation and towards our fellow Creatures and towards our higher selves, the good ones and the poor ones. It is wise do do so. Judaism is about a lot of things; gratitude, responsibility, service, conscious living; but all these actions are best made not out of fear but out of wisdom.
Fear of God is the beginning of wisdom but it is not wisdom. Being scared of fire is sensible to a point, especially as a child, but as we grow we learn to respect fire, to benefit from it’s gifts and life-sustaining and enhancing properties while being cautious of the fact that we can lose control of it and that it has tremendous destructive power. As a strange coincidence, the word for Fire, “Esh” is right in the middle of “Reishit”.
Perhaps it is not so coincidental that fire is a central component of nearly all our religious observances. An eternal flame is present in every synagogue.
We too often view failure as we do a fire. It is an important part of growing and learning, and it’s usefulness centers, again, not coincidentally, in how we think about it. If we see failure as something to be avoided at all costs at all times, we will never grow beyond what we are now. If we see failure as part of the process it becomes part of success. If you are afraid to admit mistakes and refuse to allow any information or experience to change your view of an issue, a conflict, or even a belief, you are incapable of achieving true wisdom.
Fear is the beginning of wisdom, but it can also be its enemy. If we are afraid to be wrong, afraid to have been ignorant, or foolish, then friends, we are driven by fear, not a desire for understanding. The human soul is amazing as well; it too is compared to a fire, the flame in a lamp, but not just any lamp. It is the lamp of G-d as expressed by Proverbs: “God’s lamp is the soul of man” which is to say that when our souls trouble us, it is perhaps how we experience God examining our thoughts and behaviors. Our conscience is not the same as God, to be sure, but it is a gift of God, a feature baked into humanity by its Maker. Healthy guilt is a good thing: it means we want to do better.
If we seek to change habits or behavior, If we truly want to grow and improve and reach our potential, we must allow experience, information, and reason to change our minds. But that is far, far easier said than done.
A number of scientific studies in recent years provide some frankly disturbing observations. Facts don’t matter and reason doesn’t have any affect if someone likes their story. As reported in the New Yorker, (Why Facts Don’t Change Our Minds: New discoveries about the human mind show the limitations of reason, Elizabeth Kolbert, February 19, 2017) an experiment gave students a task that was graded in a completely fake manner. They were then told it was all a charade. There was no correlation between their score and their actual acumen or insight. It was a set-up. But something curious happened when they asked the participants how they felt they would do if the task had been real.
The students in the high-score group said that they thought they had, in fact, done quite well — significantly better than the average student — even though, as they’d just been told, they had zero grounds for believing this. Conversely, those who’d been assigned to the low-score group said that they thought they had done significantly worse than the average student — a conclusion that was equally unfounded.
“Once formed,” the researchers observed dryly, “impressions are remarkably perseverant.”
That same article reviews a book by a pair of cognitive scientists called “The Enigma of Reason”
Imagine, Mercier and Sperber suggest, a mouse that thinks the way we do. Such a mouse, “bent on confirming its belief that there are no cats around,” would soon be dinner. To the extent that confirmation bias leads people to dismiss evidence of new or underappreciated threats — the human equivalent of the cat around the corner — it’s a trait that should have been selected against. The fact that both we and it survive, Mercier and Sperber argue, proves that it must have some adaptive function, and that function, they maintain, is related to our “hypersociability.”
Mercier and Sperber prefer the term “myside bias.” Humans, they point out, aren’t randomly credulous. Presented with someone else’s argument, we’re quite adept at spotting the weaknesses. Almost invariably, the positions we’re blind about are our own.
Open mindedness is not a character flaw, it is a virtue, but it is counter to our basic nature. As Jews, we are called upon to master and improve upon our basic nature. Even though we fail at it a lot. Every day is a new beginning, especially on this eve of new beginnings.
New beginnings like the first beginning start Be-Reishit, with the head of things. Where the head goes, the rest of a creature follows. As we begin this season of self-reflection, of renewal, of learning from our failures, in the spirit of morale boosting let us once again turn to some wisdom found quite by accident in a silly song about fish heads.
In the morning, laughing, happy fish heads
In the evening, floating in the soup
So true; such is our destiny, if we are blessed to enjoy a happy life and even a long one, at the end of the day, we are destined, like the fish head, to be floating in the soup of eternity. Let us make the most of our mornings because evening will come.
Ask a fish head anything you want to
They won’t answer, they can’t talk
And this is equally true, we will not find answers in fish heads, symbolic though they be. And even if they could, would we listen? Wisdom must be found elsewhere, but let us seek it together.
