Peshischa

Pshischa, not on the Parsha, but on Rosh Hashanah.

There's no Parsha this week, so we will do a couple quick ideas from the Katzger on Rosh Hashanah.

But Pshischa today is sponsored by Toby Schlossel, in loving memory of her late husband, Dr. Herschel Leib.

Schlossel's 19th Yahrzeit is the first day of Rosh Hashanah.

People remember that? Yeah, okay.

And he summons the reader to say such a Kaddish, and daven for ourselves and for Hashem, for the loss of Gruner, Akahi, Drezner, and so on.

If Agnon's image of Hashem in mourning seems quasi-heretical to you, know that Rav Simcha Bunim of Pshischa actually said it 150 years earlier, briefly describing Hashem as a king who loves his troops and mourns their loss and concluding that Kaddish is a tefillah to make Hashem's loss whole.

Agnon develops Rav Simcha Bunim's couple of sentences into an elegy on divine vulnerability.

And this idea also finds expression, on Rosh Hashanah in particular, in the thought of Rav Klonimus Kalman Shapira, the Piezetzne Rebbe, about the shofar.