Shabbat Hol Hamo’ed Sukkot 5773: Editing God, Editing Ourselves

For better or worse, I am a natural editor.  I tend to find typographical errors - they jump out at me whenever I come across them in newspapers or books (or love letters / emails from my wife), and it makes it difficult for me to concentrate on the subject at hand. (Of course, as I am posting this on a blog for all to see, I'm now hoping that there are no embarrassing typos.)

Traditionally speaking, Judaism has never accepted the idea that there are errors in the Torah.  The Torah is not a newspaper or a printed book.  During my years of critical study of the Hebrew Bible at the Jewish Theological Seminary, I learned a different approach, but in general, the rabbinic method has been to assume that the text of the Torah is infallible.  

 

The traditional line of thinking is thus: those things that we might see in the text of the Torah that look like errors -- garbled words, or inconsistent language, or things that seem to be missing -- are deliberate, put there during the holy transmission process from God to Moses on Mt. Sinai.  Incomprehensible or seemingly “mis-spelled” words are not incomprehensible to God; they are, rather, a challenge to us to understand them, to try to figure out what exactly was meant.  It’s all part of the large intellectual puzzle that we are meant to solve as we engage in the mitzvah of talmud torah, learning the ideas and concepts of our tradition.  (I spoke about this over the High Holidays as being one of the three essential reasons to be Jewish.)

Tefillah / prayer, however, is an entirely human enterprise.  God wrote the Torah, but we wrote the siddur.  With the exception of those passages that are directly quoted from the Tanakh, like the three paragraphs of the Shema or the Psalms, there is consensus that all of the tefillot in our siddur / prayerbook were written by people.  Yes, the words of tefillah are borrowed from the Tanakh, but they are re-arranged and transmogrified to suit the needs of the composer.  Much of the time the phrases in the siddur deliberately call to mind passages in the Torah to which they relate.

But sometimes, the phrases in the siddur consciously edit the text.  Sometimes, our tradition deliberately mis-quotes the words of the Torah.  And a particularly well-known example appeared in today’s reading.  It’s a text that is surely familiar to everybody here, but I’d like us all to take a look at it right now.  It’s in your humash (Etz Hayim) on page 541, verses 6 and 7:

וַיַּֽעֲבֹ֨ר יְהוָ֥ה ׀ עַל־פָּנָיו֮ וַיִּקְרָא֒ יְהוָ֣ה ׀ יְהוָ֔ה אֵ֥ל רַח֖וּם וְחַנּ֑וּן אֶ֥רֶךְ אַפַּ֖יִם וְרַב־חֶ֥סֶד וֶֽאֱמֶֽת׃

נֹצֵ֥ר חֶ֨סֶד֙ לָֽאֲלָפִ֔ים נֹשֵׂ֥א עָו֛‍ֹן וָפֶ֖שַׁע וְחַטָּאָ֑ה וְנַקֵּה֙ לֹ֣א יְנַקֶּ֔ה פֹּקֵ֣ד ׀ עֲו֣‍ֹן אָב֗וֹת עַל־בָּנִים֙ וְעַל־בְּנֵ֣י בָנִ֔ים עַל־שִׁלֵּשִׁ֖ים וְעַל־רִבֵּעִֽים׃ 

The Lord passed before [Moses] and proclaimed: “The Lord! The Lord! a God compassionate and gracious, slow to anger, abounding in kindness and faithfulness, extending kindness to the thousandth generation, forgiving iniquity, transgression, and sin; yet He does not remit all punishment, but visits the iniquity of parents upon children and children’s children, upon the third and fourth generations.”
(Ex. 34:6-7)

Reading from the Torah, does that sound correct?  Not exactly what we expected, right?  We said this passage (well, most of it) over and over on the Yamim Nora’im, the High Holidays, and that end of what we just read seems to take a sudden about-face.  Holding the children and grandchildren responsible for the sins of the parents?  This seems curious, particularly following that long list of positive attributes.

Over the course of the holiday season, we hear this passage recited over and over in our liturgy.  It is known as the “shelosh esreh middot,” the Thirteen Attributes of God.  We chant it three times when we take the Torah out on festival weekday mornings, and over the course of Yom Kippur we chanted it perhaps as many as fifteen times over the course of the day, repeating it a couple of times during the Selihot prayers appended to every Amidah.  It’s also read from the Torah on minor fast days, like the 17th of Tammuz and Tzom Gedaliah, and the congregation chants this passage aloud before the ba’al qeri’ah, the Torah reader does so.

But in each of those cases, we cut it off after the word “venaqqeh,” which seems to mean, “God cleanses us of our sin.”  The difficulty is that in doing so, we not only cut off in mid-phrase, but we actually make that final attribute mean the opposite of what it says in the Torah.  It’s kind of like if I were interviewed by a journalist about traditional Ashkenazi cuisine, and, when questioned about chopped liver (which, although my family members enthusiastically urged me to taste over and over throughout my childhood, I never learned to appreciate), I said, “I must confess that I do not love chopped liver.”  And when the article about Rabbi Adelson’s favorite Jewish holiday foods comes out, I am quoted as saying, “I must confess that I... love chopped liver!”  That is the extent to which we modify this quote.

Let’s take a closer look.  

First the Hebrew.  Look at p. 541, three lines up from the bottom of the Hebrew.  On the word, “venaqqeh,” you’ll see a ta’am, a trope mark, known as a pashta (it looks like a slightly-curved hook extending up from the upper-left corner of the heh).  Anybody who knows anything about trope knows that the pashta (although it is a slightly disjunctive trope) connects that word with the words that follow it; it makes a musical phrase out of “venaqqeh lo yenaqqeh.”  To cut off after the pashta makes no sense.  (Trope is, by the way, the most basic form of Torah commentary.)

Grammatically speaking, those three words together (“venaqqeh lo yenaqqeh”) are a unit.  It is called an infinitive absolute, where the infinitive form appears first, and then an imperfect form follows.  Naqqeh is the infinitive, and yenaqqeh is the imperfect.  Taken together, naqqeh yenaqqeh would mean, “God shall surely cleanse.”  (Many of us are familiar with a similar structure in the opening of the second paragraph of the Shema: “Vehayah im shamoa tishme’u el mitzvotai” - “If you shall surely heed my mitzvot...”  But the “lo” in our case makes it mean precisely the opposite: “God shall surely NOT cleanse.”  

Now, the ancient commentators looked at the list of Thirteen Attributes, and saw that the first twelve are positive (God is compassionate, gracious, slow to anger, etc.) and then at Number Thirteen, and figured that something is wrong here.  They tried to explain this away by doing the grammatically impermissible: by splitting the infinitive absolute into two words: naqqeh, God cleanses, and lo yenaqqeh, God does not cleanse.  There is an opinion in the Talmud (Yoma 86a) that this means that God cleanses those who return, who seek teshuvah / repentance, and God does not cleanse those who do not return.  

The medieval commentators follow the Talmudic example by softening the blow in other ways: Rashi tells us this means that the punishment described is meted out a little bit at a time, rather than all at once.  Ibn Ezra tells us that even for those of us who repent, we are never entirely cleansed of our sins.

The translation in our humash, the New Jewish Publication Society translation (NJPS) actually pulls a punch here.  It translates “venaqqeh lo yenaqqeh” as “yet He does not remit all punishment.”  This is an attempt to incorporate the ideas of the commentators - that the Torah is not telling us that God surely does not cleanse, but rather that God does not always entirely forgive.

All of this indicates clearly that nobody agrees with the plain meaning of the text, that this line is actually calling out to be edited.  And that is exactly what we do.  

Take a look at what it says in our siddur, in the middle of p. 140.  This is what we chanted three times on Monday and Tuesday morning when we took out the Torah on the first two days of Sukkot, and we’ll do the same for Shemini Atzeret and Simhat Torah in a few days.  The Thirteen Attributes are cut off in the middle of that infinitive absolute: venaqqeh.  Says the translation, “and granting pardon.”  End of story.

There is an essential message here: that we have edited God.  That when we invoke God’s name, we call out to the God of compassion, of grace, and of pardon, not the God of punishment, of vengeance, of retribution.  Our God is the one that cleanses us of our sins, not the one that makes our great-grandchildren suffer on our behalf.

And you know what?  That is exactly how it should be.  

We create our relationship to the Divine:  Each one of us understands our Creator through the prism of own experience.  We use our traditional texts to help understand what we cannot perceive directly through tangible evidence, and we each fashion our own framework through which we relate to God.  

I relate much better to the God that heals the sick and comforts the bereaved than the God that rewards the good and punishes the wicked.  And, since clear evidence of any of those things is hard to come by, I relate even better to the God that maintains the laws of physics and thermodynamics and sustains us with billions of tiny, molecular miracles every instant.

But I don’t want to tell you what to believe.  Your relationship with God is yours.  And if the God that is presented in the Torah works for you, then go with that.  If not, then you are allowed to edit.  We edit our tefillot so that they suit our understanding of God as forgiving; we have the option to edit even further.    

And you know what?  That God -- the compassionate God, the God of little miracles, the God who heals the sick -- that’s the God that we want to emulate.  Just as we edit God, qal vahomer, all the moreso, can we edit ourselves.  We can dedicate more of our energy to be loving, forgiving, caring, to bringing tiny moments of joy and miraculousness into all others who are around us.  

This entire week has been dedicated to the unbridled joy of Sukkot, to the notion that in the wake of achieving forgiveness for our sins, we can celebrate unabashedly this festival of welcoming guests and of fashionable sukkah dinner parties.  It is a time that we can recall not the stern countenance of the God of judgment, but the soft features of the God that wants us to live lives that are satisfying, upright, and beneficial to all.

Shabbat shalom.  Mo’adim lesimhah!

~

Rabbi Seth Adelson

(Originally delivered at Temple Israel of Great Neck, Shabbat morning, October 6, 2012.)

Shabbat Shuvah 5773: Kick It Up A Notch

This is always a nail-biter of a week.  Shabbat Shuvah, the Shabbat of return, falls in the middle of the Aseret Yemei Teshuvah, the Ten Days of Repentance, bracketed by Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur.  We have spent two days acclaiming God’s kingship and judgment, and every day in our tefillot we remind ourselves of “Sefer HaHayyim,” the Book of Life, and where our names may be inscribed and sealed.  We are supposed to be thinking about selihah, forgiveness, and teshuvah, repentance, and the whole range of human emotions surrounding those activities.  

And I hope that at least some of us are thinking about what will make this coming year, 5773, different from 5772.  If these Ten Days come and go without any deep consideration, then why go through the High Holy Day motions?  Why pray or fast or listen to the shofar?

Amidst all of this, we read this week Parashat Vayelekh, which rarely stands on its own, because it is usually coupled with Parashat Nitzavim.  It is not a particularly substantive chapter, being relatively short, but it does include this curious verse:

Deut. 31:19

וְעַתָּ֗ה כִּתְב֤וּ לָכֶם֙ אֶת־הַשִּׁירָ֣ה הַזֹּ֔את וְלַמְּדָ֥הּ אֶת־בְּנֵֽי־יִשְׂרָאֵ֖ל שִׂימָ֣הּ בְּפִיהֶ֑ם לְמַ֨עַן תִּֽהְיֶה־לִּ֜י הַשִּׁירָ֥ה הַזֹּ֛את לְעֵ֖ד בִּבְנֵ֥י יִשְׂרָאֵֽל׃

Therefore, write down this poem and teach it to the people of Israel; put it in their mouths, in order that this poem may be My witness against the people of Israel.

Here in the Torah, God’s command is delivered in the plural imperative (“kitvu” = “you (pl.) shall write”).  It seems to be addressed to Moses and Joshua, who have been called into an executive session with God.  Some commentators understand this to refer to the “poem” that we read next Shabbat in Parashat Haazinu, following immediately in the Torah after what we read today.  But the verse is interpreted in the Talmud (Sanhedrin 21b) by the 4th century sage Rabbah as the mitzvah / commandment that we must each individually write our own personal copy of a sefer Torah.  Elsewhere in the Talmud (Nedarim 38a) the reason given that the whole Torah is required rather than just the Haazinu poem is that the latter is not a sufficient “witness against the people Israel,” as the verse suggests.  Only the entire Torah can fulfill that role.

Of course, the vast majority of us are unable to write our own sifrei Torah because of the intense training that it requires, so many of us fulfill this mitzvah through various other means, like contributing funds to help purchase a sefer Torah, or by filling in a letter in a new scroll with the help of a sofer / scribe.

 

What I love about this particular mitzvah, regardless of how we may fulfill it, is the implication that we should not be Jewish by proxy.  Judaism is a do-it-yourself tradition, or perhaps more accurately "do-it-yourself-in-the-context-of-your-community."  We build our own sukkot (actually, I’m building mine on Sunday; yes, I know it’s a little early, but we should never hesitate to fulfill a mitzvah), we lead our own Pesah sedarim, we atone for our own sins.

Ever seen those ads in Jewish newspapers about saying qaddish?  All you have to do is send a few bucks to some yeshivah in Israel or maybe Brooklyn, and a reliable, trustworthy, and frum yeshiva-bokhur will recite qaddish for your loved one on your behalf.

This practice is condoned by the Shulhan Arukh, Yoreh De’ah 376:4, but really only as a last resort.  Rabbi Isaac Klein, in his standard Conservative compendium of halakhah / Jewish law, A Guide to Jewish Religious Practice, suggests that this should be “discouraged unless there is no alternative.”  The Conservative movement’s brand-new authoritative work on halakhah, The Observant Life (which all of you should own), recommends against this practice as follows:

In the end, saying Kaddish serves a deeply therapeutic function for the mourner.  Knowing that a good friend, either of the mourner or of the decedent, is saying Kaddish can serve that function only slightly.  Paying a stranger to say Kaddish for a parent cannot serve that function at all.

As much as is possible, ours is a tradition of personal action.  While there are some cases where it is customary or even mandatory for somebody else to fulfill a mitzvah on your behalf, the vast majority of mitzvot are meant to be performed by the obligated party.

My very first student pulpit, when I was in cantorial school, was at a smaller synagogue in Old Bridge, New Jersey.  Once a month I would stay with Rabbi Jonathan Lubliner and lead Shabbat services.  It was about a mile’s walk from his house to the synagogue, and I remember walking with him several times on Shabbat morning when we would be greeted by congregants who were driving to shul.  Occasionally, they would even drive slowly alongside us and chat.  Rabbi Lubliner pointed out to me, “They don’t feel the the need to walk to synagogue, but they think it’s very important that their rabbi does so.”

Now, I understand that not everybody can live the way the rabbi does, and our community does not expect that.  But I suppose that we could raise ourselves up as a community, that we could be an inspiration to one another and to other congregations like this one, if we were to aim higher.  Why not “kick it up a notch”?  Select a mitzvah that particularly speaks to you but that you have never taken on.  Can’t think of a mitzvah to tackle?  Come talk to me and we’ll find one that will inspire you.

Here is a suggestion for a New Year’s resolution.  Make your relationship with Judaism (and God) more active.  Here are some do-it-yourself ideas:

• Build your own sukkah (it's not too late!)
• Have some friends to Shabbat dinner
• Pick one day a week to come to morning minyan (we need people!  Wednesday we had to call three)
• Join us on Midnight Run as we go into the city to distribute food and clothing to needy people
• Learn to read Torah or lead a service
• Come to one of the new adult learning offerings to expand your Jewish horizons
• Make it a point to discuss a piece of Jewish text at your Shabbat table.  If you need material, you can use the weekly thought that Rabbi Stecker or I send out in the Thursday afternoon email from Temple Israel (Have you never opened that email? You should.)
• Go visit Israel (again, if you've already been)

But wait! You’ve all heard me say things like this before.  Here is something new:

Write your own Torah.  And by this I do not necessarily mean a sefer Torah.  I mean, metaphorically inscribe a piece of Torah on your soul.

The medieval halakhic authority known as the Rosh, Rabbeinu Asher ben Yehiel, a German halakhist of the 13th and early 14th centuries, actually interpreted the mitzvah of writing a sefer Torah differently from most other commentators.  He understood the verse quoted above not as referring to the scrolls that we use for reading, but the books that we use for study: the humash (printed Pentateuch) that you all followed along with this morning as we read the Torah, or the volumes of Mishnah or Talmud or all the other works of rabbinic literature.  The point, argues the Rosh, is that if the purpose of this mitzvah is to make sure that we learn the words of Torah, then producing a scroll that is used only for chanting in the synagogue will not fulfill that role.  But purchasing books that have been produced for study will fulfill the mitzvah.

And I’m going to take the Rosh’s suggestion a bit further.  Call it a New Year’s resolution if you will, but I would like to suggest the following:

1.  Spend a few moments over the remainder of the Aseret Yemei Teshuvah (or, failing that, let’s say you have until Hoshanah Rabbah, the seventh day of Sukkot, which is traditionally thought of as the last day to seek repentance for the past year) finding a Jewish text that resonates with you.  Going with the Rosh, t doesn't need to be from Torah itself.  (If you want suggestions, give me a call or send me an email.  I will gladly suggest something appropriate.)

2.  Write it down on a piece of paper (or if you’re good with computers, print it out) in Hebrew, English, or the language of your choosing.

3.  Stick it on the fridge, or tape it to your computer monitor at work, or put it on a sticky note and attach it to your favorite credit card, or take a picture of it with your smartphone and make it your background screen.  Then, whenever you see it, you will reinforce the text.

4.  Commit it to memory, and make it part of you.  Imprint it on your soul.

I’ve picked my text already.  It’s from the Prophet Micah, one of the season’s favorites, and is enshrined on a lovely print just to the left of the water fountain downstairs.  We read it in the haftarah for Parashat Balaq:

הִגִּ֥יד לְךָ֛ אָדָ֖ם מַה־טּ֑וֹב וּמָֽה־יְהוָ֞ה דּוֹרֵ֣שׁ מִמְּךָ֗ כִּ֣י אִם־עֲשׂ֤וֹת מִשְׁפָּט֙ וְאַ֣הֲבַת חֶ֔סֶד וְהַצְנֵ֥עַ לֶ֖כֶת עִם־אֱלֹהֶֽיךָ׃

[God] has told you, O man, what is good
And what the Lord requires of you:
Only to do justice
And to love goodness
And to walk modestly with your God.

I think this is a sublime encapsulation of how we as Jews should go about life, and I would love to be able to refer back to it whenever I can.  So I’m going to make this verse a part of me for the coming year, in (partial) fulfillment of the Rosh’s understanding of the mitzvah from Parashat Vayelekh.

What’s your soul-text?  Find one.  Let me know if you need help.  Shabbat shalom, and gemar hatimah tovah.

~

Rabbi Seth Adelson

(Originally delivered at Temple Israel of Great Neck, Shabbat morning, Sept. 22, 2012.)

Name That Jewish Value - Terumah 5772

Welcome to Adar.  In the spirit of the season, I’d like to offer you the following:

A man was boasting about the piety of his rabbi.

“My rabbi, may he live to be 120, is so pious that he fasts every day - except, of course, for Saturdays and holidays.”

“How can that be true?” asked his friend.  “Why, just this morning I saw your rabbi eating breakfast.”

“That shows how much you know,” replied the first man.  “You see, my rabbi is very modest about his piety.  If he eats, it is only to hide from others the fact that he is fasting.”  [Big Book of Jewish Humor, Novak & Waldoks, p. 198]

I’ve been having an ongoing curricular discussion with Danny Mishkin, Temple Israel’s Director of the Youth House and Teen Engagement, on the subject of Jewish values.  In rethinking the Youth House, he has insisted that classes be focused on teaching these values, and as such has re-oriented my thinking about what we do here educationally.  His goal is to help teenagers build, if you will, “Jewish-colored glasses” - that is, to encourage them to view the world according to Jewish values, and act on them.  A secondary goal is to help parents of teens and the rest of the community appreciate what their children are learning, by having them present their work at the end of each unit, and thus bringing them into the conversation as well.

My question for you today is, “What is a Jewish value?”

Truth is, I had not thought too deeply about this until very recently.  Had I been asked that question 12 years ago, before I started cantorial school, I’m not sure if I would have known how to respond.  This is, of course, not a good sign, as I am a proud product of the Conservative movement.  I grew up attending a Conservative synagogue regularly on Shabbat and holidays, attending Hebrew school, becoming bar mitzvah, and continuing in the Hebrew High School at the same place; I also spent summers at Camp Ramah and participated in USY.  In college, I affiliated with Hillel and attended the Conservative minyan there.  After grad school, I taught Hebrew school at the Conservative congregation in Manchester, New Hampshire, and when I moved to Houston, single and in my mid-20s, I joined a Conservative congregation, read Torah regularly, and sang in the choir.

Even given all of that, had you forced me to identify Jewish values, I’m not sure I could have pointed to more than giving tzedaqah and the principle of 613 mitzvot, and I would have been hard-pressed to name a long list of these mitzvot.

So now I’m going to give what might be called a “pop quiz.”  Read the following passage from the Torah, Parashat Terumah, Exodus 25:1-8.  Can you infer any Jewish values from this text?

א וַיְדַבֵּר יְהוָה, אֶל-מֹשֶׁה לֵּאמֹר.  ב דַּבֵּר אֶל-בְּנֵי יִשְׂרָאֵל, וְיִקְחוּ-לִי תְּרוּמָה:  מֵאֵת כָּל-אִישׁ אֲשֶׁר יִדְּבֶנּוּ לִבּוֹ, תִּקְחוּ אֶת-תְּרוּמָתִי.  ג וְזֹאת, הַתְּרוּמָה, אֲשֶׁר תִּקְחוּ, מֵאִתָּם:  זָהָב וָכֶסֶף, וּנְחֹשֶׁת.  ד וּתְכֵלֶת וְאַרְגָּמָן וְתוֹלַעַת שָׁנִי, וְשֵׁשׁ וְעִזִּים.  ה וְעֹרֹת אֵילִם מְאָדָּמִים וְעֹרֹת תְּחָשִׁים, וַעֲצֵי שִׁטִּים.  ו שֶׁמֶן, לַמָּאֹר; בְּשָׂמִים לְשֶׁמֶן הַמִּשְׁחָה, וְלִקְטֹרֶת הַסַּמִּים.  ז אַבְנֵי-שֹׁהַם, וְאַבְנֵי מִלֻּאִים, לָאֵפֹד, וְלַחֹשֶׁן.  ח וְעָשׂוּ לִי, מִקְדָּשׁ; וְשָׁכַנְתִּי, בְּתוֹכָם

The Lord spoke to Moses, saying: Tell the Israelite people to bring Me gifts; you shall accept gifts for Me from every person whose heart so moves him.  And these are the gifts that you shall accept from them: gold, silver, and copper; blue, purple and crimson yarns, fine linen, goats' hair; tanned ram skins, dolphin skins, and acacia wood; oil for lighting, spices for the anointing oil and for the aromatic incense; lapis lazuli and other stones for setting, for the ephod and for the breastpiece.  And let them make Me a sanctuary that I may dwell among them. (New JPS translation)

The values that I see immediately here are volunteering/generosity, community, building nice places in which to worship, and the presence of God.  If we dig a little deeper, we might find others.  

(BTW: Ramban (Spain/Israel 1194-1270 CE) says that the building of the mishkan, which immediately follows the episode at Sinai, is essentially a way for the Israelites to continue the conversation with God.  Perhaps this suggests the value of tefillah.)

What are the most important Jewish values that you can think of?

Tzedaqah
Mitzvot
Learning
Social action / Tiqqun Olam (“repairing the world”)
Holiness
Prayer
God
Limits
Modesty and piety (as with joke above)

Now, not all of these are exclusively Jewish, but they are all definitely principles that Judaism upholds.

Here are Danny’s top three Jewish values:

Hakhnasat Orhim - welcoming guests, and this might refer not just into your homes or into the synagogue, but also welcoming those on the periphery of the Jewish community into the center

Avoiding Avodah Zarah - not making idols, and perhaps more specifically the false idols of the wider society - pursuing material goods over good relationships, the whole range of activities that we undertake for selfish interests only

Im ein ani li mi li, ukhshe’ani le’atzmi mah ani? (Pirqei Avot 1:14) - your wants do not outweigh the needs of others

I think that this discussion speaks to the central question of Jewish identity in today’s world.  That is, how can we maintain our Jewishness when there are no barriers to complete assimilation into the wider society, and we are (on the whole) not committed to traditional Jewish practice?  (Aside: Poll numbers from Gallup released last week showed that among American religious groups, Jews have the highest well-being, and are also the least “religious.”)

There are, of course, many different ways to be Jewish, and many types of Jews.  Speaking not as a rabbi but as a lifelong Conservative Jew, I would say that all of us in the Conservative movement are committed to living a life that is distinctly Jewish but not isolated from the wider society.  That is, the vast majority of us embrace most holiday observances and lifecycle events, and we believe in teaching our children something about Judaism.  Many of us practice some form of kashrut.  But as far as an ongoing, daily commitment to every jot and tittle of traditional Jewish religious observance, most of us are not in the same place as many of those who identify as Orthodox.

So that leaves us with this essential question: how can we make our daily lives infused with Judaism, if many of us do not see ourselves as living within what the Rabbis called “arba amot shel halakhah,” the four cubits of personal observance of Jewish law*?  

This is a question that I wrestle with daily.

People often suggest (especially on weekdays when we don’t make a minyan) that the rabbi should speak more forcefully from the pulpit about fulfilling various aspects of halakhah, of Jewish law.  Although I have done this occasionally (for example, two years ago on Yom Kippur I spoke about “turning off” for Shabbat), I am not convinced that it is an effective use of this space.

Rabbi Stecker and I could stand up here on this pulpit and exhort this entire community (or at least the ones in the room) to pray three times daily in a minyan, to get all your suits checked for sha’atnez (the prohibited mixture of wool and linen), to commit to wearing tefillin (yes, even the women), not to spend money or drive anywhere (except to Temple Israel**) on Shabbat, and so forth.

But most of us are not likely to embrace significant changes in our Jewish practice, or at least, in accord with the philosopher Franz Rosenzweig’s famous pronouncement on the subject, “not yet.”  Most of us are comfortable with the moderate approach that has become the de facto, if not the ideological stance of the Conservative movement - that is, a traditional, egalitarian synagogue experience and some home rituals and lifecycle events, but without the communal expectations for public and private halakhic observance that the Orthodox world demands.

(By the way, did you see the article in the New York Times about Tibet’s favorite food?  Apparently, the Dalai Lama, who is expected to be a vegetarian in accordance with Buddhist values, occasionally eats meat outside of his compound in Dharamsala, India.  In other words, he keeps a kosher home, but eats treyf out.)

Returning to the question of maintaining Jewish identity, I think that Danny is onto something here, and that something is the set of Jewish values that we have already identified.  That is, we should try to orient our thinking such that we understand that everything that we do, that all the choices we make, can be seen as extensions of our Jewish selves.  If we envision our lives through the lens of these Jewish values, we have a better chance of maintaining an ongoing relationship with the set of principles that define Judaism.

Let’s take, for example, hakhnasat orhim, welcoming guests.  There are many ways we can act on this value.  Yes, we can open our homes to others, just as Avraham Avinu opened his tent to the strangers who were walking in the desert.  But what are some other ways to welcome?

Welcoming people in this building - making this a true place of comfort for all
Inviting “the other” into your life / activities
Getting to know your neighbors
Being involved with your community, and bringing others with you
Making school, work, synagogue, street, etc. a safe, welcoming space for everybody

All of these things, which can include many sub-activities (e.g. greeting somebody, giving directions to the sanctuary, engaging a visitor in conversation, and so forth), can all be understood as acting on the Jewish value of hakhnasat orhim.  

Point is, we can take all of the Jewish values that we have listed, and re-frame our thinking such that we see all of our daily activities as flowing from our Jewish identity.  These are things we can teach to our children, and speak of when we are at home and away.

Here’s a suggestion for an “assignment” that you might want to take on: find a Jewish value to which you would like to commit.  Print it out and stick it to your refrigerator door with a magnet.  Put it on a sticky note in your wallet.  And then pay attention to what you do every day, and see if you are living up to that value.

Behatzlahah!  Good luck.  Shabbat shalom!


~
Rabbi Seth Adelson

(Originally delivered at Temple Israel of Great Neck, Shabbat morning, February 25, 2012.)



* Talmud Bavli, Massekhet Berakhot 8a

הכי אמר רב חסדא מאי דכתי' (תהילים פז) אוהב ה' שערי ציון מכל משכנות יעקב אוהב ה' שערים המצויינים בהלכה יותר מבתי כנסיות ומבתי מדרשות

והיינו דאמר ר' חייא בר אמי משמיה דעולא מיום שחרב בית המקדש אין לו להקב"ה בעולמו אלא ארבע אמות של הלכה בלבד

Thus said R. Hisda: What is the meaning of the verse: “The Lord loves the gates of Zion more than all the dwellings of Jacob” (Psalm 87:2)? The Lord loves the gates that are distinguished through Halachah more than the Synagogues and Houses of study.  

And this conforms with the following saying of R. Hiyya b. Ammi in the name of Ulla: Since the day that the Temple was destroyed, the Holy One, blessed be He, has nothing in this world but the four cubits of Halachah alone.


** In 1950, the Rabbinical Assembly’s Committee on Jewish Law and Standards passed a teshuvah / responsum on the Shabbat that said that if you do not live within walking distance to a synagogue, it is better to drive than to stay at home for Shabbat.