A. Sh’mini Atzeret, the eighth-day festival of assembly at the end of Sukkot, is marked by t’fillat geshem, the prayer for rain. The officiant wears the white robe used on the High Holydays, the prayer is full of pathos and meaning, and it is clear that rain is a most serious subject of discussion with the Divine Creator.

In ancient times the lack of rain in the rainy season was an unmitigated disaster, which is why the Mishnah records the solemnity with which people would fast and pray in time of drought. The first page of the Talmudic tractate Ta’anit notes that rain is one of three key things which remain in God’s possession; the others are the miracles of childbirth and the resurrection of the dead.

Praying for rain therefore acknowledges that there are some things which only God controls, and it is thanks to Him that we enjoy life and all its blessings. For all that there is what the philosophers call the problem of evil (do we deserve the evil we see in the world?), there is also a problem of good (what have we done to merit so much beauty and blessing?).

There is another sense in which atzor is used in rabbinic commentary in relation to Sh’mini Atzeret, Atzarti et’chem etzli… Kashah alai p’ridat’chem – “I (says God) want you to stay longer with Me; it is hard for Me to see you depart” (Rashi on Lev. 23:36; cf. Sukkah 55b). In that sense, Sh’mini Atzeret is the Jewish people holding on to the festive season, reluctant to leave it behind.

The Yizkor memorial prayers we recite on Sh’mini Atzeret symbolise an extension of this thought to the wider experience of being human. We are all reluctant to say “goodbye” to dear ones and friends, but no matter how long we try to hold on, there comes that moment when there is no choice but to say “goodbye”. It’s hard, but it’s a fact of life.

And it raises another hard question. What do you do after you have had to say “goodbye”?

There are some who say, “After what has happened, my life is finished too.” We understand, but our tradition has a different approach. It says, “After the Temple was destroyed, the Divine Presence continued to hover over the ruins”. Something similar was said by the American poet, Henry Ward Beecher: “When the sun goes down, the heavens glow for a full hour after his departure”. The physical presence has departed, but we remain blessed by the memory that remains.

Listen to this story from an article by Jack Riemer in the “Houston Chronicle” of 10 February, 2001:

“On 18 November, 1995, Itzhak Perlman, the violinist, came on stage to give a concert at Lincoln Center in New York City. If you have ever been to a Perlman concert, you know that getting on stage is no small achievement for him. He was stricken with polio as a child, and so he has braces on both legs and walks with the aid of two crutches. To see him walk across the stage one step at a time, painfully and slowly, is an awesome sight. He walks painfully, yet majestically, until he reaches his chair. Then he sits down, slowly, puts his crutches on the floor, undoes the clasps on his legs, tucks one foot back and extends the other foot forward. Then he bends down and picks up the violin, puts it under his chin, nods to the conductor and proceeds to play.

“By now, the audience is used to this ritual. They sit quietly while he makes his way across the stage to his chair. They remain reverently silent while he undoes the clasps on his legs. They wait until he is ready to play. But this time, something went wrong.

“Just as he finished the first few bars, one of the strings on his violin broke. You could hear it snap – it went off like gunfire across the room. There was no mistaking what that sound meant. There was no mistaking what he had to do.

“People who were there that night thought to themselves: ‘We figured that he would have to get up, put on the clasps again, pick up the crutches and limp his way off stage – to either find another violin or else find another string for this one.’

“But he didn’t. Instead, he waited a moment, closed his eyes and then signaled the conductor to begin again. The orchestra began, and he played from where he had left off. And he played with such passion and such power and such purity as they had never heard before.

“Of course, anyone knows that it is impossible to play a symphonic work with just three strings. I know that, and you know that, but that night Itzhak Perlman refused to know that. You could see him modulating, changing, re-composing the piece in his head. At one point, it sounded like he was de-tuning the strings to get new sounds from them that they had never made before.

“When he finished, there was an awesome silence in the room. And then people rose and cheered. There was an extraordinary outburst of applause from every corner of the auditorium. We were all on our feet, screaming and cheering, doing everything we could to show how much we appreciated what he had done.

“He smiled, wiped the sweat from this brow, raised his bow to quiet us, and then he said – not boastfully, but in a quiet, pensive, reverent tone – ‘You know, sometimes it is the artist’s task to find out how much music you can still make with what you have left.’”

It’s not only a violin string that is sometimes gone. Nor is it only a loved one or a dear friend. It can be a person’s health, or money, or career. One can be obsessed with what has gone, and with good reason. But the Itzhak Perlman principle is, “How much music do I still have in me? How much music can I still make with what I have left?”

I well remember a Shabbat sermon I once gave about Ashrei, the alphabetical Psalm 145. I was impressed with myself and thought the sermon was quite well received. That is, until the Kiddush after the service. I had explained how Hebrew poets often structured their work with an aleph-bet framework as an aid to memory in days before printed books were available. I had pointed out that in Psalm 145 the alphabetical structure was deficient in that there was no nun verse. I spoke about how the Talmud explains the omission. I showed that the Greek version in the Septuagint supplied a nun verse. It was all very interesting, I thought, and very learned.

But then someone, a visitor to Sydney, came up to me at the Kiddush and said, “I hope you don’t mind, but I did not like your sermon. You spoke so much about what was missing. Surely it is more important to concentrate not on what isn’t there, but what is!” I was deflated, but I realised the visitor was right. True wisdom is in making music with what one still has.

“Why can’t you stay longer?” is what we yearn to say to anyone or anything that is on the way to departure. We yearn to say, Atzor! We yearn, in the words of the burial service, to say to the angel that is about to bear a dear one away, Heref yadecha – “Stay your hand!” But whether we achieve a delay or not, whether or not the harsh moment can be postponed, what is going to be will be, and we will need to say “goodbye”.

That’s when we have to remember Itzhak Perlman and say, “The art in life is to find out how much music you can still make with what you have left!”

The root of atzeret is a-tz-r, which usually means to cease or desist, with the extended meaning of to arrest. The 8th day is fundamentally a concluding festival that celebrates the end of the Tishri cycle of holydays. It has no intrinsic observance – nothing like matzot on Pesach and the lulav on Sukkot: prayers for rain were a later development.

What then is its purpose? Another verse provides an answer when it says that we should celebrate for seven days and be ach same’ach, “altogether joyous” (Deut. 16:15), so Sh’mini Atzeret is as it were a celebration of the blessing of being able to celebrate Sukkot. However, it is not counted as a day of Sukkot but is regel bif’nei atzmo – “a festival on its own” – with Simchat Torah as its 2nd day (except in Israel, where Sh’mini Atzeret and Simchat Torah are one and the same day).

The prayers for rain should technically have been said on the first day of Sukkot, but they were postponed until Sh’mini Atzeret because the halachah was sensitive to the needs and feelings of the Jewish people. On the first day people might not have prayed so sincerely for rain because it might spoil the meals in the sukkah.

The Midrash explains: on Sukkot, Israel offers sacrifices on behalf of the nations of the world, which in those days were thought to be 70 in number. By the end of the festival, we see that the nations are uninterested in whether anyone is praying and sacrificing for them, so God tells Israel to concentrate on itself and offer one bullock in its own name.

It is like a king who holds a series of banquets for his courtiers and citizens. After the series he says to his most intimate friend, “Come, let us have a banquet for just the two of us. We have been through so much together and done so much for others, but they still seem apathetic. It is time to celebrate between us, regardless of outsiders.”

The Jewish people try hard to be a light unto the nations, but the nations prefer their semi-darkness and there are nations and leaders that only want to wipe Jews and Israel off the map. God’s tragedy is that the nations are happier in a comfort zone without too much of the Divine precepts of truth, justice and peace. Not that Israel and the Jewish people are perfect. But they are perfectible and do their best to honour the God-given covenant. For the others, God is often not even part of the agenda.

But then someone came up from the back of the room. It was a little grey-haired man walking rather hesitantly. He picked up the old violin and wiped the dust off the instrument and the bow. Tightening the loose strings, he began to play. A melody came out as pure and sweet as the songs the angels sing.

The music came to an end. In a quiet voice the auctioneer said once more, “Now what am I offered? What am I bid for the old violin? A thousand dollars? Two thousand? Will someone make it three?” This time there were bids. There was energy in the room. The auctioneer responded. “Three thousand dollars, four thousand, five thousand – going, going, gone!”

The audience cheered. Somebody called out, “How come the price suddenly went up so much?” The reply was almost only a whisper, “What changed it? It was the touch of the master’s hand…”

There is many a violin that is so battered and dusty that no-one wants to be bothered with it. There is many an old person whose life also looks ended, wasted and worthless. But everything changes when the world sees what difference is made by the touch of the master’s hand.

This happens with old religions and old festivals too. It is so easy – so natural, almost – to say they are done, finished, worth nothing any more. On a day like Sh’mini Atzeret, the end of a long cycle of calendrical events, we want to say, “Aren’t I glad it’s all over!” But if the spark has been kindled, we see the touch of the Master’s hand. And nothing is ever the same again.

A. The prayers for rain make perfect sense in Israel, but in the Antipodes it might seem strange to speak of rain when summer is round the corner. Because the antipodean seasons are – from the northern hemisphere point of view – upside down, certain Australian congregations used to reverse the prayers for rain and dew, reciting the former on Pesach and the latter on Sh’mini Atzeret. This local custom has long since been abandoned, and the Antipodes do what the rest of the Jewish world does – with perfect logic, since so much of Judaism is linked to Israel.

Rain is one of the supreme Divine blessings. The Sh’ma promises it as a reward for obedience to God’s commands and says that disobedience may cost us the blessing of rain (Deut. 11:11-17). Elijah warns King Ahab that drought will come as a punishment (I Kings 17:1; cf. the Haftarah for the first day of Sukkot, Zech. 14:1-21). The Mishnah solemnly states that “the world is judged through water” (Rosh HaShanah 1:2). The Mishnah Ta’anit records how our ancestors prayed and fasted in time of drought.

There are many accounts of the piety of Choni the Circle-Drawer, who had such power of intercession with God that on a celebrated occasion he drew a circle around himself and refused to budge until the Almighty sent rain (but then, when too much rain fell, he had to plead with God not to be so generous!).

The Sh’mini Atzeret prayers for rain in the Ashkenazi tradition are by Elazar Kalir and remind God of the righteousness of the Patriarchs, of Moses, Aaron and the twelve tribes of Israel, adding, “For their sake, withhold not water.” The final words ask that the rain be “for blessing, and not for a curse; for life, and not for death; for abundance, and not for famine”: a reminder that every boon has the capacity to be a bane.

Rain is a precious gift that makes nature revive; it can also be a flood that engulfs and destroys. Fire can give warmth and light, enable us to prepare food, and drive industry; it can also devastate and cause havoc.

The human brain can think, plan, and achieve the miraculous; it can also cause suffering and calamity. The human heart can love passionately; it can also become fanatical and rob others of their dignity.

How, one might ask, does praying for dew or rain constitute doing something about the weather? Our method is not that of the rainmaker in some cultures, who uses the principles of imitative magic: “If they wish to make rain,” JG Frazer says in “The Golden Bough”, “they simulate it by sprinkling water, or mimicking clouds; if their object is to stop rain and cause drought, they avoid water and resort to warmth and fire for the sake of drying up the too abundant moisture”. What we do is to see God as the source of all blessing and to tell Him of our yearning for the blessing of the right weather at the right time.

But, it might be said, how can Jews in the southern hemisphere pray for rain on Sh’mini Atzeret which is the beginning of their summer?

In Australia this argument was actually taken seriously at one stage and the prayers were reversed, with the prayer for rain being said on Pesach and the prayer for dew on Sh’mini Atzeret “on account of the difference in the seasons between the hemispheres”. In recent decades the universal practice has been restored; Rabbi SM Lehrman wrote (“Jewish Chronicle”, 14 Oct., 1960), “The very act of praying for rain for the land of Israel, by worshippers who lived in countries that had more than their share of this precious commodity, linked the scattered fragments of the House of Israel into one corporate people.”

Hence when it rains in Israel, there is joy in Australia; when the water in the Kinneret is low, there is concern in Canada and Colombia. For this reason, Y’hudah HaLevi’s words are still true – “My heart is in the east: I am in the west”.

In religion too, the old-time Jew was a Jack of all trades. He went to synagogue to pray, to learn, to give tz’dakah. The smallest community had a Chevra Shass or Chevra T’hillim; the poorest house had an array of charity pushkes. A Jew wore tzitzit, put on t’fillin, bensched after meals. On Shabbat he was a king and his wife was a queen; the children were princes and princesses. In business all was honest and above board. At night one could face God and one’s conscience. These were all-round Jews; their hearts were whole with the Lord their God.

Today many lead a fragmented Jewish life. We support the synagogue but don’t pray, establish schools but don’t study, give to the Holy Land but don’t think of living there. We daven without understanding, refrain from food but speak lashon ha-ra on Yom Kippur, eat matzah on Pesach but ignore those who eat the bread of affliction all the year. We are Bar-Mitzvah, cemetery, food or humour Jews. We think because in other areas the Jack of all trades is outmoded, it is like that in Jewish life too. As a result, Judaism suffers; we all suffer, because we miss the full richness of the Jewish experience.

In Judaism you can have your own emphases, but you have to be a Jack (or Ya’akov) of all trades.