For Rosh Hashanah

These thoughts were initiated as a result of a lecture given by Rabbi Mendel Blachman of the Yeshiva Kerem B'Yavne at the New Synagogue (Macdonald) regarding the spirit of Rosh Hashanah.  He was speaking specifically about Malchiut, which roughly translated is perhaps "the Kingdom of God."  Even though I would like to give a summary of his presentation, I cannot do it justice because I lack the necessary frame of reference.  I think I understood his arguments, even though I can only present the thoughts he evoked in my secular frame of reference.   

There are three aspects of every society and individual that form an interactive matrix.  Religon or belief system, ethnic group or culture and tribal loyalty or national identity.   As religions evolve and influence each other, so do ethnic groups and tribes or nations evolve and influence each other.  For example, Judaism as it was described in the Bible bears little resemblance to what it is today after many changes.  Not only the historical loss of the Temple and the priesthood, but the development of Rabbinical Judaism and the influences of Hellenism, including such things as the theater and drama that were Greek inventions.  But, Judaism thru Christianity, that started as a reformist Judaic movement, has reciprocally influenced and largely replaced Greek and Roman culture. 

The term Jew is ambiguous, because it signifies three things together, religion, ethnic group or culture and nationhood.  In the Diaspora/ Galut the latter was greatly weakened and in the 19th century with the development of representative government and citizenship, it became possible to think of Jews as purely a religious identification, in other words Englishmen or Germans of the Judaic persuasion.  But remnants of a distinctive culture and tribal/national identity remained, especially where Jews formed a large minority, such as in Eastern Europe. Of course this only became a primary motivation thru Zionism, where the religious aspect was reduced and replaced to a large extent by the national aspect.  

Even though a religious or frum Jew may wish for the earlier Malchiut, of God's transcendence as conceived in the Talmud, he cannot really wish for it, because his view of the world and of God has been changed by the intervening transformation.  Nevertheless, a religious Jew must make of his spiritual journey what he can, recognizing that things can never be what they were.