Rosh Hashanah as a Shamanic and Priestly Ritual

Today's Readings:

Liberating Rites – Tom F. Driver – “Priest and Shaman: Two Pathways of Religious Ritual” – pp. 52-75

Seasons of Our Joy – Arthur Waskow – “Rosh Hashanah” – pp. 1-25

According to Driver, shamanistic ritual involves “risk-taking.” While priestly ritual thrives on order, he says, shamanistic ritual thrives on transformation, on the change that the author so readily calls for in preceding chapters. Driver writes, “The shaman invokes; the priest represents” (75). While Driver’s priest shows a congregation what they should receive from a higher power, the shaman helps the individual find his or her own interpretation of a higher message.

Although Rosh Hashanah, like many Jewish holidays, has the prescribed order of priestly ritual, it runs on the seemingly shamanistic ritual of complete renewal. On Rosh Hashanah, we say specific prayers and listen to the words of a rabbi and cantor, but without Driver’s “risk-taking,” we cannot accomplish the goals of repentance and charity that are necessary for transcription in the Book of Life. During Elul, it is our responsibility to reflect on our sins and act accordingly to correct them before Yom Kippur. While we collectively listen to the shofar and to the story of Hagar and Ishmael on Rosh Hashanah, we can interpret their meanings in infinite ways. Rosh Hashanah began as a rejection of the collective worship of the material Babylonian king and the change to a worship of one that the Jews could more personally identify with. As Waskow writes, “If all of us are subjects of the one transcendent King, then no earthly king or boss or overseer, no president or premier, can truly rule us. Then each of us owes the others the respect due to an equal – and the redress due to an equal whom we damage” (3). We could consider the worship of God in a Rosh Hashanah service as a priestly demand or as a more shamanic invocation to simply find a personalized ruler for ourselves, a different direction or theme for each follower of Judaism.

Although the proceedings of Rosh Hashanah can be considered shamanic, and it is lovely to consider a holiday centered upon the chance to create a better self, the ideas of a literal Book of Life and Book of Death are quite daunting. If during Elul, God decides who will live and who will die according to how good or bad people are, how are we supposed to think about the deceased? Does every death have to do with wrongs that person committed? I would be interested in finding other explanations in Judaism for death or figuring out an interpretation that seems a little less bleak.