The Coronation Puzzle

Rosh HaShanah is usually translated as the New Year. More precisely, it is the “Head of the Year.” But I want to ask a simpler question: what actually happens on this day?

Our sages tell us that this is the day on which we crown the King. In the Musaf prayer we recite Malchuyot, Zichronot, and Shofarot—verses of Kingship, Remembrance, and Shofar. The Talmud supplies the logic, as if G-d were saying: recite Kingship “so that you crown Me King over you,” Remembrance so that your memory rise before Me for good—“and with what? With the shofar.”[1]

Why the shofar? Because that is how kings are crowned. When Solomon was anointed, “they blew the shofar, and all the people said, ‘Long live King Solomon!’”[2] Rosh HaShanah presents itself not merely as the birthday of humanity and the world,[3] but as an enthronement.

And here we run into a difficulty. Human coronations mark a change: the old king dies and an heir succeeds him; a dynasty falls; a new sovereign takes the throne. Yet Scripture says of G-d, “I, Havayah, have not changed” (Malachi 3:6). There is no old King to die, no heir to succeed, no rival to seize the throne. So what, exactly, changes?

The Kabbalistic answer is that the change is not in the Divine essence but in the relation between the Creator and the creation. The Alter Rebbe writes in Tanya that the light of each year withdraws to its source on the eve of Rosh HaShanah and that, through the shofar and the prayers, a new and more sublime light is drawn down—one that has not shone before.[4] The old year’s allotment has run out; a new Divine vitality enters the world. It is renewed Kingship.

Why should that renewal depend on us? Because, as Rabbeinu Bechaye writes, ein melech b’lo am—“there is no king without a nation.”[5] Kingship is a relation. A king may possess every royal quality in himself, but he is king only over subjects who recognize and accept him; without a people accepting the yoke of Heaven, G-d would be lacking, as it were, the title of King.[6] Hence the distinctive service of Rosh HaShanah: kabbalat ol malchut shamayim—accepting the yoke of Heaven. We do not make the King; we make ourselves His subjects, and thereby renew the relation in which He is King. And since G-d’s sovereignty is, on many accounts, the very purpose of creation, when creation is renewed on Rosh HaShanah its purpose must be renewed as well. The stakes are high: because creation is continuous (creatio continua),[7] a Kingship not renewed would mean not a lesser year but no year at all.

I find one Elul custom especially striking. Throughout Elul, the month preceding Rosh HaShanah, the shofar is sounded on weekday mornings, but on the eve of Rosh HaShanah it falls silent.[8] The halachic rationale is simple, yet the silence also speaks: preparation has stopped, and the commanded coronation has not yet begun. For one day the instrument of both is absent, marking the abrupt passage from the old year into the new.

So far, the theology. Now the physics.

Physicists describe such changes with the theory of phase transitions—a language lately borrowed even for revolutions and regime changes,[9] and one I have applied to Jewish history elsewhere.[10]

Some changes happen gradually; in thermodynamics these are called second-order, or continuous, transitions. Others prepare gradually and then happen all at once; these are first-order transitions. Water may cool degree by degree, yet remain liquid until freezing begins; once ice takes hold, the substance has entered a different state.

The most important idea for us is this: the old state can persist even when the new one has become possible. Very clean water can stay liquid well below its freezing point because there is no good place for an ice crystal to start; give it a speck of dust or a seed, and freezing begins.[11] There is, so to speak, a barrier between “ready to freeze” and “freezing.” The system has been prepared for change, but preparation is not yet transformation.

Figure 1. A first-order transition: the old state persists until the barrier is crossed; then the renewed state becomes stable.

A year grows old day by day; Elul prepares us one day after another; yet Rosh HaShanah still marks a genuine change of state. The preparation is gradual; the coronation is not.

Why Rosh HaShanah Is a First-Order Transition

Start with the light. The Alter Rebbe does not say that last year’s light........

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