Contrary to the conventional image, Rosh Hashanah in Lyady was a festival of joy and devotion. Guests streamed to the Rebbe from the far corners of the country; the Rebbe, dressed in white silk garments, sang a melody of devotion "to the point of the soul's expiring," blew the shofar himself, and at Tashlich the Hasidim formed "a long chain, two living walls."
"The days of Rosh Hashanah in Lyady, my native town, were not Days of Awe at all but days of light and joy together with the service of God and Hasidic devotion." AZR, "Rosh Hashanah in Lyady" (chapters of memoirs), Ben-Yehuda read/19878.
And here, a warm sociological insight — Hasidism as a lifeline for the poor of the people:
"Whoever knows the terrible distress that beset the Jews of Russia in those days… can appreciate the anchor of rescue that Hasidism extended to the world's downtrodden, for it made them forget the bitterness of reality and lifted them to upper worlds where there is no exile and no humiliations." Ibid. (Compare "Lyady, Hasidism, Zion, and Compassion.")
He loved to hear the Musaf prayer from the cantor of his townlet, "Yisrael Shabtiles," a gaunt schoolteacher with a pleasant voice, whose power lay precisely in restraint:
"He did not sing, but only gave emphasis to the words, and the words would penetrate of themselves into the inside, into the heart." Ibid. (The same ideal of "restraint" (tsimtsum) that AZR praised in Bialik; see "AZR the Educator.")
Hearing the "Malchuyot" verses ("His kingdom rules over all"), AZR hears a natural order — day and night, the seasons, the water cycle — which only man has corrupted. And from there straight to exile and the land:
"Only human beings have corrupted the order. And here we are, the children of Israel, in exile — that is not order. We ought to dwell in our land and work our soil. In working the soil we recognize the kingdom of Heaven… and because of our sins we were exiled from our land… and we trade and sell… corrupting the laws of nature and becoming corrupted ourselves." Ibid.
This is, in essence, the whole of AZR's teaching — honest agricultural labor as the recognition of the kingdom of Heaven, and the mercantile exile as a distortion — voiced here not as a manifesto but as an echo of the prayer of his childhood.
In the "Zichronot" verses arises the legend (Genesis Rabbah 39) of Abraham choosing precisely the land whose inhabitants work:
"He saw them eating and drinking and carousing; he said: May I have no portion in this land. And when he reached the Ladder of Tyre… he saw them busy weeding… hoeing… he said: May my portion be in this land." Ibid. (Genesis Rabbah 39:8) — the choice of the laboring land as a foundation.
And in the "Shofarot" verses the cantor's voice becomes demanding, not pleading:
"Enough of Israel's degeneration in exile — the time of redemption has come: 'Sound the great shofar for our freedom, and raise a banner to gather our exiles'… Let the lost ones come, let them come!" Ibid. And it closes with "This day, strengthen us" ("HaYom Te'amtzenu"), at which "we wanted to break into dance then and there."