This Fall 2024 UAlbany’s Family Weekend falls just a few days before Rosh Hashanah. What’s the message, lesson, connection?
If you look at a Rosh Hashanah prayer service, there are two striking aspects, and you can say that one is represented by family, the other by college (the academics side, at least). Let me explain:
On Rosh Hashanah the prayers are much longer than usual. There’s a lot more readings, fancy flowery liturgical poetry, the prayers have much more sophistication and higher word count than most of the rest of the year. You might say that can be compared the the college experience with all of its many required readings and essays (with all the effort to increase the word and page count). You can even compare the “reader and congregation” to obligatory discussion board posts and group presentations in class. And all on a higher more sophisticated level than usual speak.
Then there’s the Shofar. It’s not one bit sophisticated, its a primordial cry, a cry from the heart, one that can’t always be explained and articulated. It communicates on a much deeper wavelength, wordlessly, simply, essentially. Shofar is more like family. It’s a connection at the essence, at the core. Even if we can’t explain or rationalize, even when it doesn’t make much sense. The connection is there in a deep way (with rare exception, of course), even when it can feel weird, strange or uncomfortable at the surface.
So this 2024 at UAlbany we have Family Weekend at College – where these two worlds meet. Just as they do on Rosh Hashanah: the piercing inner call of the Shofar, along and against the backdrop of the many words of the Machzor prayers.
May these two worlds/wavelengths/approaches jive on Family Weekend, and may they also jive with one another for us this Rosh Hashanah, so we can hopefully benefit from the best of both!