Shlomo’s Drash Parshat Vethanan 5767: Bindings

Deuteronomy 3:23-7:11

In this week's portion, Moses finishes his first speech, reminiscing what it was like at Sinai, and mentioning several times that he will not be going into the land because of the people's guilt. Moses also repeats a theme several times of observing the commandments of God and things will be good. If the people do not, then things will be bad. But he also tells them that even when things are bad, things can become good again, by going back to the mitzvot. Moses repeats the Ten Commandments, and then some words which we are all familiar with: (Deuteronomy 6:4-9)

Hear Oh, Israel, the Lord is God the Lord is one! Love the Lord your God with all your heart, all your soul-life and all your might. These words which I command you today will be on your heart. You will teach them and speak of them when you dwell in your house, when going on the road, when you lie down and when you rise up. You will bind them for a sign on your hand, and they will be bindings between your eyes. You will write them on the doorposts of your house and on your gates.

There is so much I do here and there is so much that I do not. I struggle with the Shema. We say these lines but how much do I do? The Torah geek I am, I do speak and teach at the drop of a hat. I have mezuzot on my doorposts, including my office door. It is You will bind them for a sign on your hand, and they will be bindings between your eyes that makes me struggle the most. It is the mitzvah of tefillin that I struggle with so much I’m even having a hard time writing this week, one of the many problems about getting this out late.

Tefillin of course are leather containers with straps that fit on one’s head and arm. Contained inside are four passages from the Torah. Two are from Exodus (13:1-10, 13:11-16) and two are from Deuteronomy, (6:4-9 11:13-21). They have in common some variation of the theme of bindings and signs:

Exodus 13:9. And it shall be for a sign to you upon your hand, and for a memorial between your eyes, that the Lord’s Torah may be in your mouth; for with a strong hand has the Lord brought you out of Egypt.

Exodus 13:16. And it shall be for a sign upon your hand, and for frontlets between your eyes; for by strength of hand the Lord brought us forth out of Egypt.

Deuteronomy 6:8. And you shall bind them for a sign upon your hand, and they shall be as frontlets between your eyes.

Deuteronomy 11:18. Therefore shall you lay up these my words in your heart and in your soul, and bind them for a sign upon your hand, that they may be as frontlets between your eyes.

All of these passages contain two common elements: “sign upon your hand” and “frontlets between your eyes.” Beyond that there is variation between each one. The two Exodus passages mention reasons for the mitzvah explicitly: to remember the Exodus from Egypt. In the context of the Exodus passages, these are really about the observance of Passover, and indeed both are prefaced by two of the four sons of the Passover table, the son who does not ask(13:8) and the simple son (13:14) . Interestingly this pattern extends to Deuteronomy 6 as well, with the wise son asking the question, several verses later in 6:20.

From the word binding, found in each of these texts, the rabbis believe that the words should be actually tied to the person. Because of some interesting word plays with the word L’totafot, The rabbis also decided that the head tefillin needed four compartments, one for each of the different passages. The details of the tefillin's construction and use make up a section of Talmud found in Tractate Menachot, one I am for my last final for grad school busy trying to explain. But in explaining tefillin I am also bothered by tefillin and my past with tefillin.

Another reason this is late is a business trip I needed to take this week to the town where I went to College. While the school was obviously closed for the summer, on a trip down memory lane I did stop at some of my old haunts in town and did remember thing from almost two decades ago, some good and some bad. I ate dinner at creperie in town which was the favorite date spot of most from campus. I remembered one date which ended in a very romantically. Unfortunately, that also brought back the bad memories as well, as this same woman became a nightmare in my life. After eating dinner in this place, I walked over to where my apartment was, or should I say used to be. It is now a parking lot, completely paved over in asphalt and “free parking” signs. Much of the town I knew is closed and shuttered.

I realized the town had changed and so had I. The guy who walked across the campus had no Jewish identity. In my time in college and for years afterwards I rejected my Jewish identity. I was, in my mind, a Taoist. Thinking back to that time I needed a spiritual religion a religion where I was in deep connection to a divine source. The Conservative Judaism of my youth never provided that. In the Orthodox schools and conservative (or Conservadox) synagogues of my teen years, there was obligations. There was resentment and ridicule if I did not do things. This was the religion of heartless Halakah. Tefillin were mandatory, and not wearing them got me looks of hatred from the more religious. The problem with such a system is that you need to know how to do something exactly right in order to be approved of. I was so shy and scared of looking like a bigger idiot by doing thing wrong, I never put them on. The ridicule continued. I realized like the son missing from the tefillin, the wicked son who asks “what is this service to you?” I was the outsider, and like the English translations of the Haggadah we used for much of my youth, even asking that question made such a horrible human being I should not be a Jew.

So I wasn’t. I stopped being a Jew.

Instead I was someone, taking from Chinese mysticism, who believed in a transcendent unifying divinity, one I could paradoxically never completely comprehend given its infinite nature but could connect to. I could give all of my soul mind and effort to connecting with this unification called Tao. I think back to what I wanted then and am still surprised at it. Today I would summarize that belief differently than in verses from the Tao Te Ching. Today I would quote this week's parsha:

Hear Oh, Israel, the Lord is God the Lord is one! Love the Lord your God with all your heart, all your soul-life and all your might. These words which I command you today will be on your heart.

I always remember the canned tomato sauce commercial which declares “it’s in there!” In the last twelve years, I learned that describes Judaism well. There was a whole side of Jewish thought that has been missing from my and I believe many people’s education. The Baal Shem Tov reminded many of this in the 18^th century. Some great thinkers in this century, notably Abraham Joshua Heschel and Martin Buber, has reminded us that Judaism is not just Halakah, law, but also Aggadah, story, theology and belief. Jews, for various reasons continually forget this, and when they do, it is not passed on to the next generation.

Tefillin however are a galvanizing symbol of the struggle between halacha and aggadah. Its literally internal message of remembering ourselves once as slaves and of transmitting our culture to the next generation seems to have been lost. Instead it had become a symbol of fundamentalism. Men who wear tefillin and those who don’t is equivalent to observant and non observant, even Jew and non Jew. Whether one wears tefillin or not binds to one or the other pole. I do not wear tefillin because I do not want them to be a symbol of mindless obedience, but a love note to God, and they cannot be that. The emotional impact is too great. I have had many times where I have gotten stares of hatred from ultra-orthodox men because of my refusal. The Lubabvitchers on the street corners trying to get me to wear them look at me as though I am a neo-Nazi. In one time I will never forget, I was not counted in a minyan. I was not considered Jewish, because I refused to put on tefillin.

My harsh feelings for tefillin have not abated; their use as a fundamentalist symbol remains. Yet I do obsess about the one way that their fundamentalist stigma can be broken, it is a constant theme of my Jewish related paintings. I believe fundamentalism can be destroyed by feminism. I never draw a man in tefillin, but instead a woman. Women are not banned from wearing tefillin; they are exempt under the time-bound Mitzvah exemption. To the fundamentalist, there is no difference, since women are for making and caring for babies. For them to have time to pray Shacharit with tefillin and talit on is just wrong. Yet to anyone else, exemption means they don’t have to, but if they wanted to, they could. I’m still single, but the day I pray with tefillin on will be the day I am standing next to my wife, in tefillin and talit, and we are praying together. Before that, the pain of mindless fundamentalist halakah, of the religious behaviorism Heschel wrote about will prevent me from ever laying tefillin.

It’s sad, but those who most want to follow a mitzvah, destroy the mitzvah for everyone else.

Parshat D’varim 5767: Who Wrote Deuteronomy?

Deuteronomy 1:1-3:22

This week we begin the book of Deuteronomy, the last and most intriguing book of the Torah. Also known as the Mishnah Torah, it repeats and summarizes everything that came before it from the time of Sinai until the people reach the east bank of the Jordan. Deuteronomy ends with the death of Moses.

This week instead of commenting on the text I’m going to look at the entire book. Actually there is a rather odd question that I’m going to ask: Who wrote this book? It’s writing style and grammar is different that any other book of the Torah. Nowhere before Deuteronomy do we hear certain phrases, which will be reflected in later texts but never here. “All your heart and all your soul” is only here in Torah. Oddities about the text abound. It gets so odd, the documentary hypothesis of Torah which assigns authors like J and E to parts of the other four books doesn’t work here. They had to make up a new author “D.” But who is D?

The rabbis of the Talmud do believe they know who D is.

Who wrote the Scriptures? — Moses wrote his own book, the portions of Balaam and Job. Joshua wrote the book which bears his name and [the last] eight verses of the Pentateuch. [Baba Batra 14b]

Moses, except for the recounting of his death, wrote Deuteronomy according to the Sages. This, however, is not conclusive. Some object to this statement thinking that Moses wrote the whole thing, He prophesized his own death thus writing those last lines in tears. [Baba Batra15a] Among those lines, we read

10. And there has not arisen since in Israel a prophet like Moses, whom the Lord knew face to face,[Deut 34]

Interestingly someone else had an obituary similar to this:

25. And like him was there no king before him, that turned to the Lord with all his heart, and with all his soul, and with all his might, according to all the Torah of Moses; neither after him arose there any like him.[II K 34]

This is only the second time in the entire Tanach that the phrase “all his heart, all his soul and all his might” shows up. The first of courses is in the Shema:

And you shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your might. [Deut 6:4]

This may not be a coincidence. The obituary in II Kings is for King Josiah. Josiah was a righteous king of Judah, a few decades before the destruction of the first temple. In the later part of his life he became one of the most righteous kings of all time by destroying all the idolatrous sites in Judah, centralizing Jewish observance in Jerusalem and even making incursions in the former northern kingdom. His zeal started around the eighteenth year of his reign with a payroll audit. After several years of idolatrous kings, the Temple needed some renovation, and Josiah had workers begin the renovation effort. He sends Shapan the scribe to deal with the payroll issues, who’s met at the Temple by the High priest Hilkiah:

8. And Hilkiah the high priest said to Shaphan the scribe, I have found a book of Torah in the house of the Lord. And Hilkiah gave the book to Shaphan, and he read it. 9. And Shaphan the scribe came to the king, and brought the king word again, and said, Your servants have gathered the money that was found in the house, and have delivered it to the hand of the workmen, who supervise the house of the Lord. 10. And Shaphan the scribe told the king, saying, Hilkiah the priest has delivered me a book. And Shaphan read it before the king. 11. And it came to pass, when the king had heard the words of the book of the Torah, that he tore his clothes. [II Kings 22]

What could have caused such a commotion? Was this the whole Torah, or a part of it? The repetition of this story in II Chronicles adds one more detail:

14. And when they brought out the money that was brought to the house of the Lord, Hilkiah the priest found a Book of Torah of the Lord by the hand of Moses. [II Chron 34:14]

Moses wrote this. While Torah mentions Moses transmitted individual things from god by his hand, no where is there something that would upset a king. However,

1. These are the words which Moses spoke to all Israel on this side of the Jordan in the wilderness…3. And it came to pass in the fortieth year, in the eleventh month, on the first day of the month, that Moses spoke to the people of Israel, according to all that the Lord had given him in commandment to them;[Deuteronomy1 ]

At the end of Deuteronomy we read:

24. And it came to pass, when Moses had finished writing the words of this Torah in a book, until they were finished, 25. That Moses commanded the Levites, who carried the ark of the covenant of the Lord, saying, 26. Take this book of the Torah, and put it in the side of the ark of the covenant of the Lord your God, that it may be there for a witness against you. [Deut 33]

Like the rabbis said, it looks very much like Moses wrote Deuteronomy with his own hand. The book of Torah which is specifically Moses’ is Deuteronomy. There are other places in Torah where we are told do good and you get good, and do bad and things are going to go very bad, including exile. It is only in Deuteronomy that we see one particular wrinkle which would get a king upset enough to tear his garments:

36. The Lord shall bring you, and your king which you shall set over you, to a nation which neither you nor your fathers have known; and there shall you serve other gods, of wood and stone. 37. And you shall become astonishment, a proverb, and a byword, among all nations where the Lord shall lead you. [Deuteronomy 28]

Here we see a mention of a king which could of course make a king upset. Josiah sends the text to a prophet to verify the prophecy. Since apparently Jeremiah is out of town, Josiah sends the scroll with a delegation to the prophetess Hulda, who’s also interestingly enough Hilkiah’s cousin. She tells his envoys is that since Josiah’s been a good boy, this prophecy is true but will not happen during his reign.[22:19] Given this and several other mentions of kings in Deuteronomy, very likely the book Hilkiah and Shapan find is Deuteronomy.

Josiah’s reaction is to destroy every idolatrous thing in the entire kingdom, and brings a massive scorched earth policy of removing Idolatry. Among the things he destroys is the Bamot, the high places which served as local sacrificial altars. Prior to Josiah, there altars served both idolatrous and non idolatrous purposes. Elijah uses one at Mt. Carmel is his contest with the Priests of Baal. Joshua sets one up at Mt. Ebal in accordance to directives from Moses. Several times in the book of Judges including Samson’s parents and Gideon people perform sacrifices to God at bamot.

Yet Gideon’s case shows part of the problem. Around this altar is Ashera, idolatrous wood posts or trees. Gideon uses them for kindling. Functionally however, the Bamot allowed local communities to makes sacrifices as a community and not schlep all the way to Jerusalem every time a sacrifice was needed. Such communal sacrifice was so needed no other king before Josiah was ever as successful as he was with destroying the Bamot.

Josiah did something else as well. He mandated all Levitical and priestly activity to be in Jerusalem at the temple. Sacrifices outside of the temple were completely banned. Economically, the results are obvious. All offerings were coming to the Temple now, not the high places. Jerusalem benefited at the cost of the local priests.

So who wrote Deuteronomy? For some, looking at the evidence of Josiah’s story, there are the streaks of conspiracy in the air. The temple needs money for rennovation, the priests need power and Josiah needs to consolidate his power as well. It is rather convenient at that exact moment such a document from Moses shows up. The document dictates that everything needs to be centralized in Jerusalem, and if it doesn’t happen, everyone’s going to die or be exiled. For much of the nineteenth and early 20^th century everyone thought D was a member of Josiah’s court. Shapan could have written it, or edited and expanded an earlier document Joshua used to set up the bamot at Mt. Ebal. So too could the prophetess Hulda, whose husband had access to many hidden nooks and crannies in the temple. Mid 20^th century scholars thought the conspiracy went back further to the time of King Hezekiah, who like Josiah, also tried a reformation, though not as successfully. It was the priesthood of the family of Zadok, Hilkiah’s and Hulda’s family, grabbing the power of the priesthood during the time of Hezekiah was the theory.

However, I need to look at the events that happened after the discovery of Deuteronomy. Something odd happened. When people were told to stop making sacrifices anywhere but the Temple, they did. But they still couldn’t go up to the temple for every little mandated sacrifice. So they did something else. Josiah was obviously affected by this Torah of Moses, so instead of making offerings, the people began to read communally this document. They found a few items in Deuteronomy that appeared to make good reading for a daily service and a Shabbat service. The Shema [6:4-9, 11:13-21] and the Ten Commandments [Deut 5:6-19] became more than readings. They became communal liturgy.

This new idea, praying instead of killing animals or burning incense had a lot of pragmatic merit. It was cheap, since no animals were necessary, and maintenance of the high places wasn’t needed either. All you needed was to gather a bunch of people and start chanting or reading. In the next couple of decades it stuck with many people. Unlike the time after Hezekiah when the High places are rebuilt, the high places disappear at this point and never exist again. Assemblies of people begin to replace them.

The idea stuck in the next several decades. By the time of the destruction of the Temple it was already habit. One of the exiled, Daniel, would pray towards Jerusalem three times a day.[Daniel 6:10] Prayer, unlike the Temple or even a High place, was very portable. A liturgy coordinated everyone to pray together and made an organized language of prayer. All of this made Judaism a portable religion, one of the few that has survived millennia. When the exiles return to the Second Temple to celebrate the first Rosh Hashanah there, we do not hear in Nehemiah of new sacrifices, but of a Torah reading not very different from todays, including translation and possibly a D’var Torah as well:

5. And Ezra opened the book in the sight of all the people; for he was above all the people; and when he opened it, all the people stood up; 6. And Ezra blessed the Lord, the great God. And all the people answered, Amen, Amen, lifting up their hands; and they bowed their heads, and worshipped the Lord with their faces to the ground. 7. Also Jeshua, and Bani, and Sherebiah, Jamin, Akkub, Shabbethai, Hodijah, Maaseiah, Kelita, Azariah, Jozabad, Hanan, Pelaiah, and the Levites, helped the people to understand the Torah; while the people stood in their places. 8. So they read in the book in the Torah of God clearly, and gave the interpretation, so that they understood the reading.

By the time of these readings, not only was prayer and Torah readings a substitute for a folk religion of bamot, it was the ritual of the elite.

So who wrote Deuteronomy? Who was D? Moses? Joshua? Shapan? Hilkiah? Huldah? Was it a conspiracy to find it in the Temple in Josiah’s time, or just an accident? I believe it was a conspiracy, but the culprit is a suspect not in the list so far. A Talmudic sage, a man who saw the world both as a warrior and as a rabbi, Resh Lakish once said:

The Holy One, blessed be He, does not smite Israel unless He has created for them a healing beforehand, as it says . When I have healed Israel, then is the iniquity of Ephraim uncovered. [B. Megilah 13b]

Resh Lakish notes the reversal in Hoshea 7:1. The Northern kingdom is described by two common terms: Israel, and its dominant tribe Ephraim. But the healing is before the affliction here. Resh Lakish concludes that God makes sure there is a way to survive any affliction before he brings down that affliction. No nation who made sacrifice the critical element of their religion ever survived exile. Decades before the Exile and destruction of the temple, the discovery of Deuteronomy by Josiah’s court caused a crisis. The result of that crisis was the replacement of the Bamot with the Beit Knesset, the Synagogue. It was the right time for the right idea. Had Deuteronomy not been found exactly then, it’s likely there would not have been a Jewish people after that first exile.

For me it’s not the issue of who was D, but instead who put D and everyone else at the right place at the right time to get exactly the results that came about, which has saved the Jewish people until the present day. So the true culprit is of course…

God.

Parshat Matot-Masei 5767: Endings

Numbers 30:2-36:13

This week, ironically, my life parallels Torah. We end the book of Numbers, and in effect the journey that is the exodus from Egypt. Deuteronomy begins next week, with Moses’ review of all the mitzvot. With the exception of the death of Moses, the narrative is over in Torah.
So too with my life. A part of my life is over, one that went on for what seemed like 40 years, though it was only five. Thursday afternoon I finished the last class for my Masters in Jewish Studies degree. I only have one more take-home final exam (which I’ll talk about in the upcoming weeks). When I turn that in, I have finished grad school.
I felt weird leaving the building. I procrastinated leaving, spending a lot of time schmoozing with other students before walking out the door. When I did walk out the door, I cried. Nothing will ever be same now. I did a lot of thinking and fretting this week. What now? Will all of this work really come to a new career in Jewish education, books and speaking engagements as I’ve so wanted for years? I’ve been hiding behind books and papers for so long. Can I even live a real life like other people?
I think similar questions were brewing in the minds of the Israelites in this week’s portion. Not like those questions weren’t there before. The reason why it’s been a forty year trek for them was how they answered those questions 38 years earlier. Back in Shelach Lecha, when the spies came back from exploring the land, the majority gave a negative report. Of that night we read:

1. And all the congregation lifted up their voice, and cried; and the people wept that night. 2. And all the people of Israel murmured against Moses and against Aaron; and the whole congregation said to them, Would God that we had died in the land of Egypt! or would God we had died in this wilderness! 3. And why has the Lord brought us to this land, to fall by the sword, that our wives and our children should be a prey? were it not better for us to return into Egypt? [Num 14:1-3]

There is Midrash that tells us more about that night. God was certainly not pleased with that crying over nothing, and says “I’ll give you something to cry about.” [Genesis Rabbah 16:20] We are then told the date those people cried: The 9th of Av. For their tears and fear not only was there 40 years in the wilderness but two temples destroyed, the expulsion from Spain, and the first trainload of Jews from the Warsaw Ghetto left for Treblinka. The up coming 9th of Av is a sad day in Jewish history.
While the rabbis could never have imagined the Shoah, I think the Rabbis of the Midrash are making a very important point here. You can only go forward. Whining and wanting to keeps things as they are just doesn’t work. It actually is harmful not only in the short term, but the long term as well.
With that in mind, it is a rather interesting request Moses gets from The Tribes of Reuben and Gad.

4. The country which the Lord struck before the congregation of Israel, is a land for cattle, and your servants have cattle; 5. Therefore, said they, if we have found grace in your sight, let this land be given to your servants for a possession, and bring us not over the Jordan.[Numbers 32:4-5]

Moses is not a happy camper when he hears this. He reminds Gad and Reuben of the Spies 38 years earlier and the mess that caused. While they don’t say it, it’s clear in Moses’ mind what going on. These are people afraid to go on, to make the final leap across the river. So Gad and Reuben propose a solution.

16. And they came near to him, and said, We will build sheepfolds here for our cattle, and cities for our little ones; 17. But we ourselves will go ready armed before the people of Israel, until we have brought them to their place; and our little ones shall live in the fortified cities because of the inhabitants of the land. 18. We will not return to our houses, until the people of Israel have inherited every man his inheritance. 19. For we will not inherit with them on the other side of the Jordan, and beyond, because our inheritance has fallen to us on this east side of the Jordan.

They will be the shock troops in taking the land, “before” really meaning the ones on the front lines. They will do the scariest most dangerous work, and in return have the land on the other side. To that proposal, if they face their fear they get to stay behind, Moses agrees. So half a third tribe, Manasseh, along with Gad and Reuben settle on the west side.

The last chapter of Numbers brings up that third tribe who like Gad and Reuben don’t want things to change. And the chief fathers of the families of the sons of Gilead, the son of Machir, the son of Manasseh, of the families of the sons of Joseph, came near, and spoke before Moses, and before the princes, the chief fathers of the people of Israel;

2. And they said, The Lord commanded my lord to give the land for an inheritance by lot to the people of Israel; and my lord was commanded by the Lord to give the inheritance of Zelophehad our brother to his daughters. 3. And if they are married to any of the sons of the other tribes of the people of Israel, then shall their inheritance be taken from the inheritance of our fathers, and shall be given to the inheritance of the tribe where they are received; so shall it be taken from the lot of our inheritance. 4. And when the jubilee of the people of Israel shall be, then shall their inheritance be given to the inheritance of the tribe where they are received; so shall their inheritance be taken away from the inheritance of the tribe of our fathers.

The issue of the daughters of Zelophehad is raised again. The males of their families are not happy at losing land to other tribes through marriage, and want the rule overturned. They want things to stay the same that the guys get everything. Yet here they don’t get to go back either, there is compromise. There is an issue, no doubt. But the result is there will be a limitation to the original ruling.

8. And every daughter, who possesses an inheritance in any tribe of the people of Israel, shall be the wife to one of the family of the tribe of her father, that the people of Israel may enjoy every man the inheritance of his fathers.

In one sense something new occurs here, though still from God. The beginnings of the Oral law and the cycle of Mitzvah, objection, modification followed by more objections and modifications begins. As my last class was Talmud, it is a pattern near and dear to my heart right now as it is the heart of Talmud. Yet at the same time we have a tribe who has their foot in two phases of life at the same time. One can compare it to a balding old man with grey hair who keeps wearing a red toupee.
Biblical history tells us the result of such thinking. Neither Gad, Rueben nor Manasseh are around any more. When one faces a new phase of life, the best thing to do is face it fully. Many at Spertus go straight from the Master’s program into the Doctoral program, we even joke about the seamless transition. Many have asked me when I was going to start on my doctorate. Knowing these people well, I know they are not like Gad or Manasseh, but instead like the rabbis, deeply committed to learning. Most have a life outside of Spertus, and they come to Chicago twice a year from a deep love of Jewish learning. As much as I’m tempted, I can’t be one of those who continue school – I need that seam. I have been Gad and Reuben, hiding from what is on the other side of the Jordan. I’ve never settled on the other side, the side of fully living. As much as I want what’s on the other side, I run away from it back to my books at the first possibility.
I’m finding it very scary crossing that river, having a life like anyone else. Yet, I will cross into the scary parts. I think at various stages in each of our lives we have felt the same. There are times where we hit a barrier between phases and are afraid to cross. But crossing is inevitable. Not crossing may even be harmful.
Even though the narrative of Torah virtually ends this week, it is not the end of the narrative. There’s lot to do on the other side, and Joshua, the Judges, Samuel, David, Solomon and the prophets will have quite the journey ahead of them. It’s just a different journey, a new road, and way of journeying. In our own lives, it’s good to remember that.

Parshat Pinhas 5767: The New Generation

Among the many activities of this week’s portion, there is a census similar to the one that began the book of Numbers back at Sinai. That census completes with:

63. These are those who were counted by Moses and Eleazar the priest, who counted the people of Israel in the plains of Moab by the Jordan near Jericho. 64. But among these there was not a man of them whom Moses and Aaron the priest counted, when they counted the people of Israel in the wilderness of Sinai. 65. For the Lord had said of them, They shall surely die in the wilderness. And there was not left a man of them, save Caleb the son of Jephunneh, and Joshua the son of Nun.

The generation who will enter into the land is ready to do so, and throughout this portion we have examples of why this generation is ready. To begin we have Pinhas, who stopped the plague of Peor single handedly.

11. Pinhas, the son of Eleazar, the son of Aaron the priest, has turned my anger away from the people of Israel, while he was zealous for my sake among them, that I consumed not the people of Israel in my jealousy. 12. Therefore say, Behold, I give to him my covenant of peace;13. And he shall have it, and his seed after him, the covenant of an everlasting priesthood; because he was zealous for his God, and made atonement for the people of Israel.

During the census we learn one more interesting detail about the Korah rebellion:

11. But the sons of Korah did not die.

Given the numerous Psalms in their names, there arose a rabbinic tradition that while their father was rebelling they were singing psalms of praise. After the census we have the first true halakic debate, brought by the daughters of Zelophehad.

1. Then came the daughters of Zelophehad, the son of Hepher, the son of Gilead, the son of Machir, the son of Manasseh, of the families of Manasseh the son of Joseph; and these are the names of his daughters; Mahlah, Noah, and Hoglah, and Milcah, and Tirzah. 2. And they stood before Moses, and before Eleazar the priest, and before the princes and all the congregation, by the door of the Tent of Meeting, saying, 3. Our father died in the wilderness, and he was not in the company of those who gathered themselves together against the Lord in the company of Korah; but died in his own sin, and had no sons. 4. Why should the name of our father be taken away from among his family, because he had no sons? Give to us therefore a possession among the brothers of our father. 5. And Moses brought their cause before the Lord. 6. And the Lord spoke to Moses, saying, 7. The daughters of Zelophehad speak right; you shall surely give them a possession of an inheritance among their father’s brothers; and you shall cause the inheritance of their father to pass to them.[Numbers 27]

There was one thing I implied last week, but never said. While God did get angry in the matter of Peor, nowhere in the Torah never does it say that God struck the people with a plague. Not only in my environmental health role can I see that the plague of Peor was self imposed. So was its solution: Pinhas made a very pointed argument. Aaron’s grandson, Korah's sons and Zeolphehad’s daughters do not wait for some one else to do something: they act and act righteously, not just for their own good but the good of God and the whole community. If the daughters had not the courage to speak up as mere girls, would the case for inheritance by daughter ever be brought up?

Over and over again their parents’ generation continually talk about being provided for, mostly provided for by the Egyptian slave masters. They romanticize this former life over and over again, talking about the abundance they got to eat as slaves. Their parent’s generation was the one who continually whined Moses brought them to die in the Wilderness. None of them have faith to either God or Moses.

On the other hand Zeolphehad’s daughters take a mitzvah and ask a question about a possible problem with it. Only a chapter before, we are told the land will be portioned by the names on the census, which are all males of military age (Numbers 26:52-55). But, ask these girls, how does inheritance work when there are no sons but only daughters? Moses does not know and has to ask God.

According to the rabbinic view, the Sons of Korah acted similarly. They saw their father’s rebellion all around them, but responded with deep proclamations of faith.

Like a deadly wound in my bones, my enemies taunt me;
While they say daily to me, Where is your God?
Why are you cast down, O my soul?
Why are you disquieted within me?
Hope in God; for I shall again praise him,
Who is the health of my countenance, and my God.
[Ps. 42:11-12]

When even Moses is unable to act, Pinhas slays someone involved with a tasteless exhibitionist act in the Mishkan. All three of these cases point to two things. This is a generation who is not afraid to act. This is also a generation who does so not for themselves but for God and the Mitzvot of God.

This week I’m finishing the penultimate paper of my master’s degree. I remember one class I took a few years back where the professor started the class with “prepare to be depressed.” Jewish demographics are very alarming and depressing. Whether through, intermarriage, conversion to other religions or outright apathy, the Jewish population is dwindling. Nothing seems to work. Yet this generation to inherit the land points out what does work. Believe in God and serve God. Do not just talk, but act. Question and further develop the Mitzvot into Halakah. In our modern times, I wonder if there will be a generation that will arise to see that. There are inroads, but hopefully not too little too late.

Hopefully others will see the lessons as did the generation that inherited the land.

Parshat Balak 5767: The Peor Outbreak

Numbers 22:2-25:9

In this portion, King Balak of Moab watches all of his neighbors go down to defeat militarily at the hands of the Israelites. He sends envoys to the greatest magician in the area, Balaam, to curse the advancing Israelites. After a series of adventures, Balaam meets up with Balak, and sets up the curse. Three times in a row, the curse ends up as a blessing, the most famous now known as the prayer “ma tovu” and Balak is furious. But Balaam comes up with a plan for biological warfare. At the very end of this section, we read:

Israel stayed in Shittim, and the people began to commit harlotry with the daughters of Moab. They called the people to the sacrifices of their gods; so the people ate, and bowed down to their gods. Then Israel attached himself to Baal-Peor; and the anger of the Lord was kindled against Israel. [Numbers 25:1-3]

A plague ensues, killing 24,000 people, more than any other plague. The plague ends in a bizarre manner:

And, behold, one of the people of Israel came and brought to his brothers a Midianite woman in the sight of Moses, and in the sight of all the congregation of the people of Israel, who were weeping before the door of the Tent of Meeting. When Pinhas, the son of Eleazar, the son of Aaron the priest, saw it, he rose up from among the congregation, and took a javelin in his hand;

He went after the man of Israel into the tent, and thrust both of them through, the man of Israel, and the woman through her belly. So the plague ceased from the people of Israel. [Numbers 25-6:8]

I’m obsessed about this plague. Actually I’m intrigued by what the rabbis did with it. There are two clues in the text that explain how they come to their conclusions. The first is the name of the pagan god, Baal Peor. Baal in Hebrew means master or lord, and the common beginning of a number of such pagan god-names. So in Hebrew for example Zebuv means flies. Thus the Baal Zebuv (Beelzebub in Greek) of II Kings 1 can be translated the lord of the flies. Breaking the word Peor into syllables we have Peh meaning opening and Ohr meaning skin. Thus Baal Peor is lord of the skin orifices.

The second is a phrase in the text the people ate, and bowed down to their gods [Numbers 25:3] The Rabbis believed that there was significance to this sequence, best explained in the following story:

Rab Judah said in Rab's name: A gentile woman once fell sick. She vowed, “If I recover, I will go and serve every idol in the world.” She recovered, and proceeded to serve all idols. On reaching Peor, she asked its priests, “How is this worshipped?” They replied, “People eat beets, drink strong drink, and then uncover themselves before it. She replied, I would rather fall sick again than serve an idol in such a manner.” [Sanh. 64a]

As an Environmental Health professional I see this as an outbreak from fecal sources. When one eats and sacrifices in a room full of sewage bad things are going to happen.

Last week I began a speech at my professional association’s conference with the Peor incident. In Hebrew there is no word for enforcement, the modern word actually is a word for oppression. The point of my speech was good EH people modify the behavior of others instead of enforcing behavior. Health inspectors need to be more story tellers and less cops.

While attending sessions at the National Environmental Health Association (NEHA) Education Conference and talking to many people between sessions, I kept getting a sinking feeling. Environmental Health Professionals, what some people call health inspectors or sanitarians get a bum rap. We either get ignored or blamed for not doing the right thing. Yet we are rarely given the resources to do our job properly in the first place. From government regulators to industry auditors, the story was the same. Environmental heath is the under funded orphan of public health.

We are often confused with environmental protection. Environmental protection might be described as protecting the planet from environmental contaminants. On the other hand environmental heath is protecting people from biological and chemical contaminants in the environment.

Environmental Health is a prevention, investigation and education activity, and thus its benefit is difficult to see. If done well, nothing happens. It thus becomes the last thing to be funded either in industry or in government.

Yet this is not the frame of mind in Biblical thinking. Prevention, from the fence on the roof to the fence around Torah is deeply rooted in biblical tradition. One example given not long after the Baal Peor incident is this one:

You shall have a place also outside the camp, where you shall go out to it; You shall have a spade among your weapons; and it shall be when you will ease yourself outside, you shall dig with it, and shall turn back and cover your excrement;[Deut 23:13-14]

It is a matter of environmental heath to keep fecal matter away from public areas and to dispose of it properly. It’s a commandment to dispose of sewage properly.

The lead character in the biblical environmental health story is the Priest, which throughout both Leviticus and Numbers we hear of the number of health related issues the priest was responsible for. Yet the priest who was responsible was not the High Priest, but the vice priest. The High Priest, in order to do his sacrificial duties, could not be involved with public health. Too many situations required quarantine and decontamination procedures which would make him unfit for performing sacrifice. Instead it was the second in command who did these things.

The man who stops the plague of Baal Peor is none other than the vice priest, Pinhas. He stops it by killing just one Israelite having sex with a Midianite in the Mishkan. In doing so he changes the minds of everyone who was seduced into Baal Peor worship. The seduction had reached the point of addiction according to the rabbis. By changing people attitudes he saves everyone. In my mind Pinhas is the first Environmental Health official, the first good Sanitarian.

While I don’t condone throwing javelins through health regulation offenders, Pinhas begins a model which we find throughout the tradition. Balaam in this section is involved with magic and in many places in the Torah we find prohibitions against magic. Yet, there is one kind that the Talmud condones: Magic that keeps people healthy. Such practices can be curative, but even more important is preventative magic. Pinchas in killing one person broke Balaam’s spell of seduction. Exposure to the pathogens hovering around Baal Peor’s temple stopped, and contamination waned. It was miraculous, but it also was good science through prevention and behavioral science. Following the ideal of building a fence around Torah, the Rabbis did the same thing for human beings, noting preventative practices. Describing many of the microorganisms of today as demons they instituted many policies that still stand the test of time. For example, they advised against spending time in swamps or sewers, advocated washing hands before eating, and prohibited eating food which has sat out too long or under a bed.

When I wonder about environmental health I go back to the ancient sources, and see that it has always been there. It may have been demons instead of microorganisms back then, but the world still had EH in some form or another. We in EH have been protecting the population since the Exodus from Egypt, and I truly hope we will do so till the end of time.

Parshat Korach 5767: Too Rational to Live

Numbers 16:1-18:32

This week we have the story of the Korach rebellion and its aftermath. Korach, Dathan and Abiram, along with 250 of the leading figures in the community rebel against Moses and Aaron, and want to be included as priests.

3. And they gathered themselves together against Moses and against Aaron, and said to them, You take too much upon you, seeing all the congregation are holy, every one of them, and the Lord is among them. Why then do you lift up yourselves above the congregation of the Lord? 4. And when Moses heard it, he fell upon his face; [Numbers 16:1-4]

Moses tries to dissuade them, but is unsuccessful. In a contest the next morning, the rebels light incense in their censers, to determine who is chosen by God. Korach, Dathan and Abiram are swallowed up by the earth, literally going straight to hell, and the 250 men are burned alive by a fire from God.

Something bothers me about this story. Korach is too rational to live.

Korach is making a good rational argument. Before the revelation on Mount Sinai, God told Moses to tell the people you shall be to me a kingdom of priests, and a holy nation [Exodus 19:6]. God also states I will dwell among the children of Israel, and will be their God [Exodus 29:45]. If this is true, argues Korach, then they should all have the duties of the priesthood, not an elite. Nice rational argument, yet it leads to the death of the conspirators. Korach was too rational, and did not see the irrational, which was just as important.

For a little over a year I’ve been on a strange journey which has taken me to some rather unexpected places. It started with a sex scandal involving someone I knew. At the time I wondered how such a thing could happen.

I’ve done a lot of research since then. I’ve studied seduction, pick up artists, and social psychology. I learned a few magic tricks. I’ve read dozens of marketing books and books on influencing people’s decisions. While they all have their own themes and ideas there’s one thing that I find true of all of these books and workshops I’ve experienced in the last year. Man is not completely rational. Ironically, one of the most irrational things humans do is believe they are rational. Pick up artists, con men, salesmen and politicians all exploit this. I’ve learned the more we think ourselves rational the more submissive to mind control we become.

There is more to life than rational. But it would be a mistake to believe that we are totally irrational either. Completely emotional, experiential situations can be just as dangerous. Reading case studies about the mass suicide of members of the People’s Temple in Guyana or cult indoctrination strategies, I realize how far people will go to irrationally follow the lead of another.

In one story that has become one of my favorites in the Talmud, the two sides of this in Jewish thought become clear.

R. Abbahu and R. Hiyya b. Abba once came to a place; R. Abbahu expounded Aggada and R. Hiyya b. Abba expounded legal lore. All the people left R. Hiyya b. Abba and went to hear R. Abbahu, so that the former was upset. [R. Abbahu] said to him: ‘I will give you a parable. To what is the matter like? To two men, one of whom was selling precious stones and the other various kinds of small ware. To whom will the people hurry? Is it not to the seller of various kinds of small ware?’ [Sotah 40a]

In Jewish thought we have two ways of thinking. One is Agada, the story. The other is law, Halacha. R. Abbahu compares these to ceramic jars and diamonds. Abraham Joshua Heschel in God in Search of Man describes them differently:

Halacha represents the strength to shape one's life according to a fixed pattern; it is a form-giving force. Agada is the expression of man's ceaseless striving which often defies all limitations. Halacha is the rationalization and schematization of living; it defines, speci­fies, sets measure and limit, placing life into an exact system. Agada deals with man's ineffable relations to God, to other men, and to the world. Halacha deals with details, with each commandment separately; agada with the whole of life, with the totality of re­ligious life. Halacha deals with the law; agada with the meaning of the law. Halacha deals with subjects that can be expressed literally; agada introduces us to a realm which lies beyond the range of ex­pression. Halacha teaches us how to perform common acts; agada tells us how to participate in the eternal drama. Halacha gives us knowledge; agada gives us aspiration. (336)

Yet neither is sufficient by itself. “Halacha without agada is dead, agada without halacha is wild.” Heschel writes. They are not mutually exclusive, but instead a polarity. Neither dominates and within one is the seed of the other. It is a blending and balance of the two which is optimal.

Everything has it place. Rationality may let us look at an issue with diamond clarity. But rationality does not allow us to be in awe of the world around us, to ask new questions, only derive answers from old answers. It is not rational to say WOW! Proverbs 9:10 describes the polarity: The Awe of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom; and the knowledge of holy matters is understanding. Understanding may be rational knowledge, but wisdom comes from the irrational, from what Heschel calls it radical amazement: being able to say WOW!

Neither Korach nor any of his party could say WOW! When exposed to the ultimate WOW! Korach and the rest could not withstand such an event, and died. Trying to define and categorize that which cannot be defined leads to confusion. It is something quantifiable logic cannot handle. To those who try to quantify, they fail, and might even lose their mind and life.

There were three survivors of the Korach rebellion however. They do the opposite of Korach: They get irrational. In Numbers 26:11 we will read but the Sons of Korach did not die. They were musicians. Their lyrics we still have preserved in the book of Psalms.

As the deer longs for water streams,
So does my soul long for you, O God.

My soul thirsts for God, for the living God;
When shall I come and appear before God?

My tears have been my bread day and night,
While they continually say to me, Where is your God?

When I remember these things, I pour out my soul;
How I went with the multitude,
leading them in procession to the house of God,
With the voice of joy and praise,
A crowd keeping the festival.

Why are you cast down, O my soul?
Why are you disquieted within me?
Hope in God;
For I shall again praise him
for the help of his countenance. [Ps 42:2-6]

This is not rational thinking but emotional longing, it is not logical and objective but personal and subjective. Most of the songs of Korach’s sons are in a similar vein, often about the longing of the soul to cleave to God. Yet they also wrote

My mouth shall speak of wisdom;
And the meditation of my heart shall be understanding.

I will incline my ear to a parable;
I will open my riddle to the lyre. [49:4-5]

They understood the polarity, that wisdom and understanding are related to story and song. We move seamlessly from one to the other. There is knowledge and law, there is story and ethics. Both are necessary, both are needed by the other. We live interdependent lives, a tapestry of all things. Our lives are full when we remember that. When we forget this, as did Korach and his rebellion, we are headed for disaster.

Parshat Sh’lach-Lecha 5767: How to Doggedly Get Over Fear.

Numbers 13:1-15:41

This week, we have the portion of the spies. God authorizes a recon mission into the land of Canaan, and twelve spies, including Joshua and Caleb enter the land of Canaan. When they return, they bring back amazing things, like enormous grapes, and seemingly bad news. Ten of the spies report that the people of the land are unconquerable. Two spies, Joshua of the tribe of Ephraim and Caleb of Judah, report the opposite: that because God is on their side, this will be a piece of cake. But they are shouted down by the ten spies, who magnify their claims. All of Israel spends the night crying in their tents. In the morning Joshua, Caleb and Moses almost get killed when a riot breaks out. God intercedes, and condemns the Israelites to wander in the desert for forty years, one year for every day the spies were in Canaan. After this incident, a man goes and gathers sticks on the Sabbath, and is punished by being stoned to death. Finally, God gives the mitzvot of tzitzit.

For Many Jewish adults, there is one protion of the year which is dearer to them than any other. Like the ten spies, the first time they looked at that portion they freak. But, like Joshua and Caleb, most stick to it, and somewhere near their 13^th birthday, they get up in front of the congregation at their Bar or Bat mitzvah and read Torah and Haftorah. Shelach Lecha is my Bar mitzvah portion…and a lot more.

It also is the first D’var Torah I gave at a synagogue, though not at my bar mitzvah. It was twenty years later, celebrating the 20^th anniversary of my bar mitzvah and my return to Judaism. If you would have asked me back when I was 13, I would have told you that I didn’t give any speech since I found the traditional “Today I am a man” speech trite and meaningless. But the truth is I was so painfully shy and afraid to get up in front of the twenty or so people at my Bar Mitzvah I didn’t have a D’var. Twenty years later things had changed – a lot. It’s been eight years since that first D’var, and in two weeks I’m getting up at my professional conference and speaking to a ballroom (hopefully) full of people. How things have changed!

Shelach’s meaning is not merely in my reading the mafitr and Haftorah in Hebrew of this portion. Its meaning continues to challenge me personally every day. To be honest, I’m scared about doing that lecture in a few weeks. This is my second time speaking at this conference, and my last performance was stellar – Standing room only into the hallways. Yet given my topic and a disastrous presentation the last time I had a sophomore effort at a conference I’m a bit scared.

That’s when I read the words of Caleb:

And Caleb quieted the people against Moses. He then said “we can surely go and posses it, because we surely can.” [Numbers 13:30]

Caleb rather short answer radiates confidence and strength. He knows they will succeed. Yet when the people do try to take the land after a lot of whining, they fail miserably. They miss one of the critical things Caleb is trying to convey. “We” includes God. This is not false confidence but a measured response to every situation. Joshua, as he trains and leads the troops in every campaign both on the east and west sides of the Jordan, shows such measured response.

For my presentation, I’m nervous, so I did send out spies in a sense. This week I ran a trial run of my presentation. A lot went well, but there were things that didn’t. I could fret that the whole will collapse because of this. I don’t. Instead, I’ve learned from Caleb to take the next two weeks to correct them.

While in public speaking and in much of my professional life I’ve gotten good at this, there is still one place that the fear still overwhelms me. I still am incredibly afraid of going up to another person I don’t know and starting a conversation. I wrote about that last year in this Drash actually, and made it my goal at this same conference, which I was very confident about the speech I gave, but very uncertain in my abilities to converse with others. I didn’t do too hot in that arena, I was still too afriad. Like the Israelites I’m still left to wander in the wilderness.

We all have our fears, many of them keeping us from our goals. I was thinking of fear this weekend when my niece was afraid of a thunderstorm that rolled by. My fears are different than the fears of a child, but they are real to me. Yours are probably real to you. I’ve had many fears in my life from roller coasters to thunderstorms to fireworks. All have become thrills and joys instead of fears. Public speaking in not only a thrill for me now, it’s a living.

Caleb and Joshua, the day after they return from their mission, and a night after the people have spent the whole night in defeatist disappointment says something incredible.

7. And they spoke to all the company of the people of Israel, saying, The land, which we passed through to spy, is an exceedingly good land. 8. If the Lord delights in us, then he will bring us into this land, and give it to us; a land which flows with milk and honey. 9. Only do not rebel against the Lord, nor fear the people of the land; for they are bread for us; their defense is departed from them, and the Lord is with us; fear them not. [Numbers 14:7-9]

We must believe in God. God will provide one thing we need more than miracles, the strength and confidence to complete our goals. God is a source of strength. When we know that, our enemies, our own fears, we will eat like bread. Saying God is out to get us like the Israelites do is assuring defeat. Saying God is with us provides us with an extra added amount of confidence, and that shows in our actions. The root word for Caleb means dog. Caleb was doggedly stubborn at getting to the goal, and even more than fellow spy Joshua, succeeds brilliantly.

As I did last year before my speech, as I did at my bar mitzvah, in two weeks I will say a blessing before this presentation I am giving. I need to thank God before I begin to present. That I even got to this time, let alone how I perform. Maybe a blessing or prayer before every time I try to approach a stranger in conversation, to remember who is with me brings that confidence I find so hard to have.

Fear is strong, but with the inner strength of devekeut, we can accomplish what would otherwise seem impossible.

May you accomplish the impossible.

Parshat Beha'alotcha 5767: Should We Toot our Horn?

Numbers 8:1-12:16

This week's portion is full of many stories. In the middle of this, God instructs Moses how to play the trumpet:

1. And the Lord spoke to Moses, saying, 2. Make two trumpets of silver; of a whole piece shall you make them; that you may use them for calling the assembly, and for the journeying of the camps. 3. And when they shall blow with them, all the assembly shall assemble to you at the door of the Tent of Meeting. 4. And if they blow but with one trumpet, then the princes, which are chiefs of the thousands of Israel, shall gather themselves to you. 5. When you blow an alarm, then the camps that lie on the east parts shall go forward. 6. When you blow an alarm the second time, then the camps that lie on the south side shall take their journey; they shall blow an alarm for their journeys. 7. But when the congregation is to be gathered together, you shall blow, but you shall not sound an alarm. 8. And the sons of Aaron, the priests, shall blow with the trumpets; and they shall be to you for an ordinance forever throughout your generations. [Numbers 10:1-8]

We are all familiar in some extent with the blowing of these horns. The silver trumpets of the Temple were replaced with the shofar of the High Holiday service. The blowing of the horn in this text is tikiah and the blowing of the alarm was t'ruah or possibly tikiah t'ruah. The one point where everyone from the youngest to the oldest person in any congregation is in the same room is to hear the shofar.

Why this? Why of all the things that happens during services is the Shofar so important? When I was young, all I remember is that everyone made big deal over this silly ram horn. Some might give the answer that it is time to wake up, but that answer has never satisfied me – why do the little ones need to wake up?

In the modern service, the shofar for me is just show, razzle dazzle which keeps the crowds coming in who are not there to say the Shema or Amidah. I may be immensely cynical here but it is the shofar and Yizkor which fills synagogues on the high holidays, some obligation to do those two things that are not done at daily or Shabbat services. I believe we are trained from an early age to find obligation in hearing the shofar. Indeed the rabbis of the Mishnah require hearing the Shofar. Yet the Rabbis are very clear in requiring the Amidah and Shema daily. For some reason people come running to hear the shofar but are hard pressed to say the Shema even once a week.

One answer is in its novelty. It is a part of a tradition which only occurs at a certain part of the year. The Shema is a part of the mundane, said at least twice daily if you are observant. Such mundane tasks are forgotten in much of modernity, yet the novel event, like the shofar is remembered just because it is different.

Yet the sounds of the horns or shofars of biblical times were very different than modernity. They were the mass communication of the day. While they might not be sounded every day, they were sounded each time the cloud moved from above the Mishkan, not just once but twice. One half, referred to as the east camps would begin to move on the first tikiah t’ruah. When the second tikiah t’ruah was made the south camps moved. When the cloud was at rest the sound of tikiah gathered the people together for worship and teaching. It was an occasion that happened often in the time in the wilderness. It happened when moving from place to place or before sacrificing at the festivals in the desert.

The sound of tikiah and t'ruah were the sounds of coordination. Today in many synagogues, they are merely the sounds of tradition and obligation. We tech them to the children sitting there excitedly because it instills in them some sense of meaning of tradition, yet in most congregations we do not gather at the high holidays to say the Shema as a family. The Shema, shouted at the tops of lungs, with our hands over our eyes can have just as much meaning and sound as the Shofar – and it can be done every day by anyone.

As far as children and shofars go, we are also told by the rabbis:

Children need not be stopped from blowing; on the contrary, they may be helped till they learn how to blow. [Rosh Hashana 33a]

Even among children it is not an issue of hearing as much as doing, even it if is done wrong or at the wrong time. While one can witness the shofar it is even better to train the next generation to sound it with the kavvanah only children seem to have. Numbers 9:8 tells us this is “for all generations” and for it to be for all generations we must in each and every generation practice, practice and then practice again.

What I read in this text is something that disturbs me. A tradition of coordination and community changes into a tradition of mere entertainment. What the prophets complained about sacrifices being superficial, I can complain about the shofar. Like I said I may be merely cynical or cranky this week. The only saving grace for me is that in that entertainment there is some sense of wonder. There is always the possibility there kids sitting down there in front of the bimah kids who might just say “I want to do that!” and begin to practice. For most adults that will not happen, but the imagination of a child and their lack of “can’t” that adults have learned over the years does not stop them. Maybe from the shofar those kids will learn to practice others things, even the Shema.

I can only hope.

Shavuot 5767: Perception is the Key to Revelation

Shavuot is the day we commemorate the giving of the Ten Commandments. Immediately after the recitation of the Ten Commandments, we read

15. And all the people saw the thunderings, and the lightnings, and the sound of the shofar, and the mountain smoking; and when the people saw it, they were shaken, and stood far away. [Exodus 20, 15]

How does one see thunder or the sound of the shofar? One way is that the word for seein Hebrew means to perceive. In that case, hearing would be including in perception. So I looked into the Targums to see what the Aramaic translation. Had they had problems with this word, they would have changed it. They might have used hear or another word for perceive in their translations. I found that the Targums Onkelos, Neofiti and Pseudo Jonathan use the word which only means see. None used the word for see that could mean realize or perceive. Targum Pseudo Jonathan, adding a bit to the verse, translates:

15) And all the people saw the thunder how they were changed in the hearing of each and every one of them, and how they were coming out from within the fire, and the sound of the shofar how it revived the dead, and the mountain smoking. All the people saw and trembled so they stood twelve miles away. [Ps-J Ex: 20:15]

It didn’t make much sense. I checked the word thunderings in Midrash Rabbah. It clarifies the above, but starts with another problem with this text.

It says: And all the people perceived the thunderings (Ex. XX, 15). Note that it does not say ‘the thunder ‘, but ’ the thunderings ‘; wherefore R. Johanan said that God's voice, as it was uttered, split up into seventy voices, in seventy languages, so that all the nations should understand. When each nation heard the Voice in their own vernacular their souls departed, save Israel who heard but who were not hurt. [Ex. R. 5:9]

The rabbis play on the word for thunder, which is a plural for sounds or voices. Since it is in the plural, it must mean more than one. It was not thunder at all but the Voice of God translated into every language simultaneously. That way, everyone would understand. This apparently overwhelmed everyone but the Israelites. The Midrash continues:

Just see how the Voice went forth-coming to each Israelite with a force proportioned to his individual strength-to the old, according to their strength, and to the young, according to theirs; to the children, to the babes and to the women, according to their strength, and even to Moses according to his strength, as it is said: Moses spoke, and God answered him by a voice (Ex. XIX, 19), that is, with a voice which he could endure. Similarly, it says: The voice of the Lord is with power (Ps. XXIX, 4)3; not ‘with His power’, but ’with power’, i.e. with the power of each individual, even to pregnant women according to their strength. Thus to each person it was according to his strength. [Ex. R. 5:9]

Revelation at Sinai was not the same for everyone. It was according to how that person could understand without being overwhelmed. God did not change the people to understand one message. God changed the message so that each person understood it.

Lately, I have been looking at how individuals perceive the world. There are three primary senses: sight (Visual), hearing (Auditory) and touch (Kinesthetic). I conducted a survey of sensory preferences last week of the Shlomo’s Drash e-list. Earlier that week, I tried the same thing on restaurant managers. This week and next I am surveying health inspectors. My goal is to see whether different occupations or activities have a tendency towards one preference. God changed his message to the individual at Sinai. Can people do the same when communicating?

What I found among these groups was rather interesting. My first shock was the restaurant managers. 85 percent of them had split preference for the visual and the kinesthetic. While data is still preliminary, it looks like the inspectors will be strongly Visual. All but one in the survey are Visuals, and that one is Visual-Kinesthetic. Among Shlomo’s Drash readers who responded, approximately 24% were Kinesthetic, 20% were split Visual-Kinesthetic and 20% were visual.

Anybody notice what’s missing?

Indeed the smallest numbers on any of the groups I surveyed are Auditory preferences. This is reflected on the national survey I researched. A vast majority of people do not use their hearing as their preferred way of perceiving the world. Close to 65% of you reading this use your auditory channel the least of the three. Yet the text in Exodus 20:1 reads And God spoke all these words, saying. God giving the Ten Commandments verbally is the worst way to communicate.

Thus I believe that the use of see the thunders was more than just changing its strength for each and every person. It changed into the modality that each person could understand the best. Anochi Hashem Eloqecha was not just sounds. It was visions and it was feelings as well. Everyone had the experience of divine revelation. No one person had the same experience. As these were former slaves and thus physical laborers, it is likely they too were Kinesthetics. Many felt the sound and trembled, then did a very kinesthetic thing – they moved away.

Divine revelation, either at the moment at Sinai, or today is given in one particular way. More likely than not, God rarely talks directly to someone. Instead God communicates in the modality that makes the most sense to the receiver.

Shavuot is the time when we commemorate the giving of Torah at Sinai, through the act of divine revelation. We thus commemorate divine revelation itself. We remember that every day God gives us Torah. Indeed the Maharal of Prague noted that in the Torah blessings we do not use the past tense who gave us the Torah. Instead we use the present tense who gives us the Torah. Each of us does not perceive the daily giving of Torah the same way. Thus God sends a different message to each one of us. We need only to pay attention and see.

Or Hear…or Feel…

Parshat B’midbar 5767: In the Word,In the Story

Numbers 1:1-4:20

I want to talk about story.

This week, we begin the book of Numbers, B’midbar in Hebrew. It starts on a very boring note: census data. Parshat B’midbar is seemingly not the most exiting stuff in the world. The book B'midbar will contain many stories. Indeed most of the book is story.

Funny thing is, looking at the census data, it too is story. Once you being to look at the all this information you begin to see things. People’s names in particular.

7. From Judah: Nahshon the son of Amminadab. [1:7]

3. And on the east side toward the rising of the sun shall they of the standard of the camp of Judah camp their armies; and Nahshon, the son of Amminadab, shall be captain of the sons of Judah. [2:3]

Stories can be put together from many places. So we read of Nahshon back in Exodus

23. And Aaron took him Elisheba, daughter of Amminadab, sister of Nahshon, to wife; and she bore him Nadab, and Abihu, Eleazar, and Ithamar. (Ex. 6:23)

Nahshon is Aaron’s brother-in law. If we read a later text we find:

20. And Amminadab fathered Nahshon, and Nahshon fathered Salmon, 21. And Salmon fathered Boaz, and Boaz fathered Obed, 22. And Obed fathered Jesse, and Jesse fathered David. [Ruth 4:20-21]

Nahshon is the Grandfather of Boaz, who will marry Ruth. Ruth and Boaz in turn will be the great grandparents of King David. In the book of Ruth, we also find that Nahshon was descended from Tamar and Judah.

Names lead us down the path of stories. Nahshon is only mentioned nine times in the entire biblical text. He is not a very big character himself. Yet he can be connected to just about every major figure in the bible. Stories are meant to be embellished, and indeed Nahshon’s story has one particular embellishment.

R. Judah b. R. Il'ai expounded: When Israel stood by the Red Sea the tribes stood contending with each other, one saying, ' I will go in first,’ and the other saying, ' I will go in first.’ Thereupon Nahshon leapt into the waves of the sea and waded in. [Numbers Rabbah 8:4, Sota 37a]

The rabbis couldn’t resist adding the story of Nahshon most people remember. He was the first into the drink, even before it split. He didn’t talk, he just acted, and it was his act that caused the miracle according to some stories. If you knew of Nahshon you probably didn’t know he was a grieving uncle when Nadab and Abihu died. But you did know the powerful lesson, one driving all of Judaism, that it is our actions that are paramount.

One story that I repeat far too often lately is the one of the Hasidic Rabbi Leib. Rabbi Leib went to study with the Great Maggid not to learn Torah, but to learn how the Maggid of Mezhirech ties his bootlaces. To know the deeds of sages in even the little acts of everyday life and to tell stories has a powerful effect. We might have explicit rules but we also need to have something else to get us to do those rules. Story, aggadah, is that thing. We in Judaism do not believe in enforcement. Indeed the verb root for enforcing a rule is the same word for oppression. Instead we look to a different way, we model the behavior of our best and brightest, and we communicate that behavior through story.

As one of the greatest models for much of Modern Jewish behavior, The Baal Shem Tov believed when one tells stories in praise of the tzaddikim, it is though he were engaged in something as powerful as Mystical study. Stories, unlike law, tend to stick to us, because we have the experience that the rest of the world has. There is something concrete, and something emotional about Nahshon’s story, which is so different than merely stating a principle of “deeds, not words.” Nahshon entering into the Red Sea for me brings back images of being afraid to be the first to dive into the camp swimming pool. The fear is there. It is a very real place and time in my memory. Your vision of the event like Nahshon’s may be different. Yet, I believe that most everyone had a time and place they felt like the Israelites at the Red Sea, whether they did what Nahshon did or what the Israelites did there.

Story is summarized by my tagline, “It is a matter of Torah and I am required to learn.” [Ber 62a] If tying shoelaces is not enough, R. Akiba and his students telling stories of the toilet habits on one’s teachers in these stories on folio 62a of Tractate Brachot crosses the line past the absurd. We learn something incredibly important in such absurdity however. Our bodies are creations of God, everything done with them can be done in holiness and intention. I can make the statement or tell the story. The story is what is remembered and understood.

B’midbar is a collection of such stories set in the wilderness, the chronicle of the journey from Sinai to being at the shores of the Jordan, ready to enter the land of Israel. We meet many people besides our main characters of Moses and Aaron. We will meet pagan magicians, talking donkeys, rebellious relatives, slanderous sisters, irritated father in laws, a guy who works on Shabbat and his brilliant daughters. We get Satan’s first appearance in the biblical text, and a consortium of bad guys. People will whine, argue, lie, get sick and many will die. In all of these stories we will also see a bunch of whiny slaves turn into an unstoppable fighting force, only to be stopped by an application of social psychology. By the end, we find a people who are responsible enough to begin a new journey and a new story, the story of living in the land.

While we do not live in the wilderness, sometimes the events in our lives make us feel that way, in the next few weeks we get to revisit stories which help in those times. We get the emotional relief that we are not the first to see an unknown land, be it a new job or school, and feel like grasshoppers compared to the inhabitants at first glance. At the same time we are told by Caleb not to fear for we can do this thing, merely because we can. God is with us.

Abraham Joshua Heschel decried the over-emphasis on Halakah, the law, over Aggadah, the stories where we get our motivations, ethics and theology to follow the Halakah. They need to be a polarity, not one or the other but a balance. As we enter into the wilderness with the stories of the Israelites, lets’ look for the beautiful gems of story that can improve our live by telling them and living them. Maybe we will become stories too.

Parshat Behar Behukotai 5767: Quid pro quo?

Leviticus 25:1-27:34

In a double portion, finishing up the book of Leviticus this week we read:

1. You shall make no idols or graven image, nor erect a pillar, nor shall you set up any image of stone in your land, to bow down to it; for I am the Lord your God. 2. You shall keep my Sabbaths, and reverence my sanctuary; I am the Lord. 3. If you walk in my statutes, and keep my commandments, and do them; 4. Then I will give you rain in due season, and the land shall yield her produce, and the trees of the field shall yield their fruit.[26:1-4]

While all the good things continue for a few verses, we then read these verses

14. But if you will not listen to me, and will not do all these commandments; 15. And if you shall despise my statutes, or if your soul loathes my judgments, so that you will not do all my commandments, but that you break my covenant; 16. I also will do this to you; I will appoint over you terror, consumption, and fever, that shall consume the eyes, and cause sorrow of heart; and you shall sow your seed in vain, for your enemies shall eat it. [26: 14-16]

This will lead to progressively worsening conditions from famine to invasion to exile, until what remnant would be left of the Israelites would become paranoid exiles in foreign lands, afraid of the rustling of leaves.

Last week I put a footnote about Haya Im Shmoah, the reading from Deuteronomy 11 that is often omitted in liberal liturgy of the Shema. Haya Im Shmoah begins:

13. And it shall come to pass, if you shall give heed diligently to my commandments which I command you this day, to love the Lord your God, and to serve him with all your heart and with all your soul, 14. That I will give you the rain of your land in its due season, the first rain and the latter rain, that you may gather in your grain, and your wine, and your oil. 15. And I will send grass in your fields for your cattle, that you may eat and be full. 16. Take heed to yourselves, that your heart be not deceived, and you turn aside, and serve other gods, and worship them; 17. And then the Lord’s anger be kindled against you, and he closed the skies, that there should be no rain, and that the land yield not her fruit; and lest you perish quickly from off the good land which the Lord gives you. [Deut. 11:13-17]

In both Leviticus 25 and Deuteronomy 11 there is a quid pro quo view of divine commandment and intervention. Do bad things and get bad. Do good things and get good. Some find this it a simple model of theodicy, the philosophy and theology of why bad things happen. There are preachers and rabbis who say that 9/11 or Katrina was a punishment for our misdeeds. For most however, this is simplistic and absurd, if not a heartless, painful way of describing such tragedies. So many people, not wanting to believe in such directness, reject such passages.

I’m not so sure rejection is wise. There are two issues that intrigue me about both passages I have a hard time ignoring. One is apparent only in the Hebrew. Unless one lives in the southern United States, in English “you” expresses both singular and plural. These sections are in the plural. They are addressed at a society as a whole. We as individuals cannot live to that expectation. We take the burden of all of society on our selves. We would need to be responsible for everything – and we can’t.

The specific transgression that causes the bad things is Idolatry. What is Idolatry? As we read repeatedly, Idols were physical objects which one bribed in order to get something in return. The Torah, given this understanding, makes another leap. Idolatry was not bribing a god at all but mere self absorption. Since there is nothing really there but a block of wood, the idol is a self delusion, a honoring of the Self instead of honoring the Creator of All.

Shabbat, the Sabbaticals and Jubilees we read about in this portion are about physical rest of people, economies and of course the land. They are also pauses from the regular grind to remind us we are in relationship with everything. In such pauses, we learn to be amazed at how wonderful and powerful such relationships are. Today it would be hard to find many people actually sacrificing to a wood or stone idol as a god. It is a different matter to think of self-absorption as idolatry. When we spend all of our time working or doing the stuff that matters to us personally and for our personal benefit only then we too are guilty of Idolatry.

Martin Buber believed we need to get away from the I-it experience of idolatry and move to the I-thou relationship, where the I was our perception of everything else. We hear repeatedly, from the first utterance at Sinai on, I am the Lord. There is a third possibility, I-I. We as limited beings are not everything, but instead part of an entire system of relationships, not one relationship, but infinite relationships with infinite things. God transcends these relationships. God created matter, but also created the relationships of all of these things. God is the entirety of those relationships. The first ‘I’ is the ‘I’ of I am the Lord, the entire system. That ‘I’ meets the ‘I’ of the limited human of I-Thou. I-I describes us as an integral and vital part of God. We are also an infinitely small part of God as well because everything else is too. As Heschel reminds us, we do carry two passages with us always, The world was made for my sake and I am but dust and ashes.

It was not because you were greater than any people that the Lord set His love upon you and chose you. The Holy One, blessed be He, said to Israel, I love you because even when I bestow greatness upon you, you humble yourselves before me. I bestowed greatness upon Abraham, yet he said to Me, I am but dust and ashes;(Gen 18:27)[Chullin 89a]

To proclaim the greatness of the Holy One, blessed be He: If a man strikes many coins from one mold, they all resemble one another, but the Supreme King of Kings, The Holy One, Blessed Be He, fashioned every man in the stamp of the first man, and yet not one of them resembles his fellow. Therefore every single person is obliged to say: The world was created for my sake. [Sanh. 37a]

When we lose this perspective then we move into idolatry. We must remember we are integral to every other relationship, and yet be very humble about that role. If our deeds are for the Self only, we stop caring how we affect all other relationships. When we stop caring, we cause damage. Such damage is cumulative, first affecting us in small ways then bigger ones, until our entire world is destroyed. Each one of us has the potential to do this. If a lot of people do the same the damage is worse. In whole societies we see the damage.

Divine retribution is not quid pro quo. It is the consequence of our actions. We are responsible for everything, as God commanded humanity back in Genesis 2. We have a stewardship of our personal and professional relationships to our communal and environmental ones. Such stewardship requires us to do the right thing and have the right relationships. Each will affect the other. All too often we forget that. When I davven Haya Im Shmoah, or read a passage like this week’s I am reminded once again.

Parshat Emor 5767: How Do We Pray?

Leviticus 21:1-24:23

For the last two years of Parshat Emor, I wrote a rather startling sentence: I can't pray because I'm afraid of praying. At the time I wrote:

More accurately, I don't think of myself as praying, or having acceptable prayer towards God. My prayer ascends to heaven the very same way a brick does: not at all. In this weeks portion we are to learn that the offering to God must be perfect, without defects. And here I am unable to read the Hebrew prayer without flubbing every third word. I'll admit it's an improvement. Ten years ago I wouldn't have been able to do that since I couldn't read Hebrew. These words of our liturgy I cannot say perfectly, nor can I always have perfect intention, as my anxiety over my poor Hebrew reading skills overwhelms me. And somehow English doesn't work here; it's too much for me like giving a turtledove instead of an ox for sacrifice. That said I'm really good at faking it, I've been faking praying most of my life, though I feel like a fraud when I do.

In doing a lot of thinking about theology lately, I’ve been using the Song of Songs as a springboard. Thinking about Prayer, I am reminded of the following verse

Oh, my dove in concealment of the cliff in steep hiding places.
Show me your appearance let me listen to your voice
For your voice is sweet, and your appearance is beautiful. [Song of Songs 2:14]

While I have often looked at the Song in its literal sense, I also believe that it is underneath a theology, and since studying Heschel, I have come to put Heschel’s ideas of God in search of man to be the story within the Song of Songs. The song is an unrequited relationship between two very committed partners. The male protagonist, representing God, calls out to the hiding female, Israel, to listen to her voice, to talk to God, to pray.

But what is this thing called prayer? At its simplest it is talking to God. There is no one way to pray but a spectrum from personal prayer to liturgy said as Minyan. Yet in order to understand prayer I look to how I pray. I pray three ways: the liturgy in synagogue, the liturgy in private prayer, and my personal prayer to God. Each of these contains different elements of the idea of prayer.

Within prayer there is keva, the form of the prayer and kavvanah, the intention and passion of prayer. There is keva in a set liturgy, one solid enough I can pick up a prayer book and recite it out of the book. I don’t have to do anything other than recite it.

Yet intention is also important. Hasidism in particular elevated the idea of praying with intention, yet they were far from the first. Even the Talmudic rabbis saw the power of having deep intention while praying. The rabbis note:

One should not stand up to say tefillah [i.e. the amidah] save in a reverent frame of mind. The pious men of old used to wait an hour before praying in order that they might concentrate their thoughts upon their father in heaven. Even if a king greets him [while praying] he should not answer him: even if a snake is wound round his heel he should not break off [Brachot 30b].

In the Talmud, they explain this statement by claiming that one should pray like Hanna. Hanna was one of two wives of a man named Elkanah who was barren while her rival wife, Pennina was very fertile. After a stream of verbal abuse from Pennina, Hanna went to the Mishkan where Eli the high priest happened to be sitting and prayed:

10. And she was in bitterness of soul, and prayed to the Lord, and wept bitterly…13. And Hanna spoke in her heart; only her lips moved, but her voice was not heard; therefore Eli thought that she was drunk. [I Sam 1]

Hanna’s apparent drunkenness was the ideal state of prayer, so intense the outside world does not exist. Her lips move, but no sound comes out of them so concentrating on the words and the connection with God. Hanna models Kavvanah. She has an intention. She also has attentiveness to God. She has a deep, intimate, connection with God. Yet this is an ideal state. In reality, it is rather difficult to do or sustain. This is where Keva, the form and structure, helps. It is like a man on a journey with a map. He must rely on landmarks found on his map to orient himself and find his path. Liturgy is our map. The prayers we recite daily, every Shabbat or on holidays act as markers to the higher state of kavvanah. Such markers exist because we can get lost easily.

When I am not in a synagogue, but there is a set time to pray such as Friday evening, I pray alone, yet follow the liturgy. Besides acting as a map, liturgy has other purposes in prayer. For some prayers, such as the Shema I am commanded to say them. Others, like L’cha Dodi or V’shamru on Friday Night, are integral for creating the sanctity of Shabbat. In their absence, my prayer would neither be special nor commemorate the time. But liturgy is also the comfort of having a common Jewish prayer. It can be compared to a single traveler making his way on the road. He may use the unknown rarely traveled back roads, or he may use the well-traveled Interstate. If the traveler gets stuck or is low on gas, he is more likely to find help on the Interstate than on those back roads, hopelessly lost. By praying the liturgy, I have the ability to learn the way to pray, and in times of crisis I have prayer readily available in the nearest Siddur.

Yet there are times that I do pray without liturgy. These are times when I am like the traveler who see the snow capped mountain in the distance – he needs no map because the destination is so awesome and clear that no one can miss it in the terrain. In deep emotional times, both sadness and joy, there is a time for prayer. Hanna prayed directly from the heart, without liturgy. Hanna’s prayer, however, was a prayer of petition, one that wanted God to do something. Heschel in his last interview before his death in 1972 stated:

First of all, let us not misunderstand the nature of prayer, particularly in the Jewish tradition. The primary purpose of prayer is not to make requests. The primary purpose of is to praise to sing to chant. Because the essence of prayer is a song, and Man cannot live without a song. Prayer may not save us, but prayer may make us worthy of being saved.

Although intense and a prayer of pure kavvanah, Hanna’s petitionary prayer takes a second seat to praise. The song of radical amazement with creation is the highest prayer. We see how incredible this world is that God made, and sing out in joy. Yet even here, I sometimes fall back on liturgy or the biblical text. Sometimes it is merely a heartfelt ma’aseh Breshit (blessed is God who makes creation) sometimes a part of a psalm comes to mind, often for me from eternity to eternity you are God (Psalm 90:2). But this type of prayer is the most intense. In some ways it is the easiest, in that it is from the heart. There are no liturgies to memorize. Our prayer can be our own words. Yet it is also the hardest. We all too often in our busy lives miss the radical amazement around us, and never pray. Even when we try, our heart is the least disciplined part of our psyche, as we read in the Shema, that your heart be not deceived, and you turn aside [Deut. 11:16]*. It often leads us astray from our goal, where we head towards that awesome mountain, yet turn off the path to say “how beautiful is this tree.”

Then there is third type of prayer, the one we do in community. This connects us with God in a very different sense than that of individual prayer. It is in the Perkei Avot which describes this best: When there are ten sitting together and occupying themselves with Torah, the Shechinah abides among them. [Avot 3:6] It is the ten people for a minyan. We are all minted from the same coin, yet each unique. But one coin does not make a currency. People in a Minyan create a collaborative effort, and as such some prayers, like the Kaddish can only be done in such a collaborative effort. We each add to the prayer experience of the other. Where Kavvanah might be difficult to achieve for an individual, it is not so difficult when created by community. The spirit of the heart increases in the environment of collaborative kavvanah, the orchestra is more than the violin soloist. You can also compare this to a candle. One candle might burn bright. Ten candles, even when they do not burn individually as bright as that first candle collectively light the room far more than the one candle. Prayer as community provides us with a support, to bring more kavvanah to our prayer.

However, if we prayed our own personal prayer in community it would be chaos. Here too the keva of liturgy provides us with a way of coordinating our kavvanah. When we pray the Shema together, we speak in one voice, coordinated, whole and with intention. The liturgy contains moments of personal prayer, such as the silent Amidah, punctuated with moments of communal prayer in its repetition. Thus we create a fluctuating prayer liturgy that increases both the communal and the personal. Such an experience creates an environment where our attention to prayer can be brought higher than our personal prayer alone.

Yet there are difficulties. Communal prayer can become dogmatic. It can then have the least amount of kavvanah, with route recitation of the words. There are schools of thought that so emphasize rote recitation there is nothing but the keva. Heschel attacks this as “religious behaviorism,” where the supreme article of faith is a respect for tradition. “People are urged to observe the rituals or to attend services out of deference to what has come down to us from our ancestors.” Heschel attacks this as “grotesque and self defeating.” Such dogmas create an intense conformity, and are self limiting. Judaism realizes that what we believe in “surpasses the power and range of human expression” to find the great power of the community. All those different coins of different visages become the same coin of the same visage in fundamentalist belief, and the creative power and communal brightness of kavvanah dims.

Prayer may be a personal connection. It may also be the connection of Israel to God. This determines the when of prayer. We pray at set times of the day and we pray certain prayers to commemorate events of the Jewish people. As Heschel reminds us, Judaism is not anchored in space, but in time. We commemorate not places as much as events. The Sabbath is a commemoration of creation, and every seven days we remember and celebrate that. Part of that remembering is the recitation of prayer. We pray three times a day to commemorate the times of the sacrifices. We change that liturgy to commemorate Shabbat, as we add and subtract things for other holidays.

Abraham Joshua Heschel comments that the best way to learn how to pray is to pray near someone who knows how to pray. Sadly, there are not many who know anymore. Neither my fear of prayer nor ignorance of prayer should then be surprising. Yet, I still pray so God hears that beautiful voice God so strives to hear.

*I know some of you are not familiar with that verse. Some liturgy, such as Reform, removed the second paragraph of the Shema, the Haya im shmoah. It is a statement of direct cause between doing good and evil and divine reward and punishment, and some are uncomfortable with that. I don’t read it that way but rather we are stewards of this world and are responsible for it. I usually include it in my private prayer, since it is rare in the minyans I attend.