This is a book about tears—about the sacred dance of tears in our lives. Tears are not all the same; they come in many different forms and textures. Part of waking up is to learn to identify the nature of your tears and give them voice. To wake up is to become fluent in the language of tears. The Evolution of Tears is a profoundly original re-engagement with the Hebrew wisdom ritual of Rosh Hashanah, the New Year holy day. Best-selling author and educator Dr. Marc Gafni re-reads an entire corpus of biblical and mystical literature to unlock a hidden esoteric code that is the essence of the ritual—the code of tears. Dr. Gafni identifies eleven major forms of tears woven throughout the Rosh Hashanah liturgy, along with the archetypal figures who cry these different tears. This book invites you to enter this sacred code, to explore the depths of your own tears, and to awaken to their profound melody and meaning. Tears are our greatest teacher. But most of us are ashamed of our tears. We repress them. We don’t know how to interpret them. We don’t realize that they hold an important message for us. Tears are the colors with which the tapestry of our awakening is painted. Sometimes we cry surface tears in response to stuff that happens—good stuff and bad stuff. But the truest tears are those that well up from the deepest place, the place on the inside of the inside. They may be triggered by a specific event or image, but they are larger than any one event. Every time we cry these true tears, we cry for all the times we never cried before. True tears come only on occasion, but when they do, they are harbingers of great wisdom and guidance. Identifying the nature of our tears, giving them voice, is to know the language of tears. When we know that language, we wake up, hearkening to the melody and message of our tears. We find that we are guided by our tears in all their forms: tears of joy and tears of protest, tears of longing and tears of transformation, tears of prayer and tears of ecstasy, tears that break through and tears that break down, tears of expansion and tears of contraction, tears because it is all so big and tears because it is all so very small. More than a study of Hebrew wisdom ritual, The Evolution of Tears demonstrates how world religion as a context for our diversity can emerge from within classical Western traditions. World religion represents a deep ethos and commitment to a shared grammar of evolving value alongside a set of binding injunctions and practices. It stands steadfastly for Spirit in the world and it honors rituals and community—which embody value in themselves even as they are crucial in the transmission of value. This approach offers a post-postmodern framework of meaning for those who are engaged by Spirit but who can either no longer locate themselves in the traditions or for whom one religion can no longer be an exclusive home. Whether you are Jewish, spiritual-but-not-religious, or are simply seeking deeper meaning in life's rituals, this book provides a fresh lens for understanding both ancient wisdom and your own emotional landscape. Beyond its accessibility and highly engaging and transformative transmission, the text offers scholarly readers a rich collection of sophisticated insights drawn from the depths of esoteric Hebrew wisdom tradition.