Comfort and contentment: Va'Etchanan 5784

This week, with Shabbat Nachamu we begin a cycle of comfort and consolation following the weeks of sadness and mourning over the past tragedies of the Jewish people. The next seven weeks of comfort and healing will lead us into the new year that awaits us. But we begin, in this week’s parsha, with a synopsis and summary of all Judaism: the Ten Commandments, the Shema and the explanation of the Exodus from Egypt that we give to the wise son at the Pesach seder. 

Broadly speaking, this parsha encapsulates the entire structure of Torah and Jewish life. Since the reading of Va’etchanan invariably falls on Shabbat Nachamu, we can see how the Torah is teaching us that comfort and consolation are spiritual values and attainments: these things do not necessarily depend on material wealth or worldly success. Our society, so rich in material goods and advanced technology, suffers greatly from all sorts of mental and social dysfunction. Depression is the “black dog” (as Churchill described his recurring bouts of this condition) that affects over a third of the citizens of the Western world at some time in their lives. True comfort and serenity are difficult for human beings to achieve and even harder to sustain. 

This week’s Torah reading offers us a formula to achieve the elusive goal of contentment. And it lies within the parameters of those three principles of Jewish faith which it outlines. 

The Ten Commandments establish a structure of belief and morality to which every individual can ascribe and aspire, no matter how decadent the society in which we are enmeshed. The moral strictures that protect life, person and property are the basic rules of Jewish life and faith. Given the dysfunction between parents and children, a commercial world that never sleeps, acceptance of robbery and corruption as social norms, daily murders and a sexually dissolute society, how can one avoid being depressed?  Though civilization teeters on the brink of self-destruction, the Ten Commandments point the way out of the social morass into which we are sinking. The Shema is the vehicle of connection of our soul with the Creator who fashioned us and gave us life. Belief in the one and universal God, the omniscient and omnipotent ruler, is the greatest gift of the Jews to the human race. This belief gives us discipline and security, purity and nobility, the whiff of immortality and a sense of purpose in knowing that life is never in vain. 

Finally, understanding the uniqueness of Israel in God’s scheme of things as represented in the story of the Exodus from Egypt, gives structure and perspective to our national and personal lives. But it takes wisdom and knowledge—a wise son—to appreciate and treasure this memory of the distant past. This memory alone can also give us a sense of comfort and well-being and contribute towards the consolation and contentment we so ardently seek. 

Shabbat shalom, Rabbi Berel Wein

Dark Clouds Above, Faith Below

Last night, before mincha katana, Rabbi Moshe Taragin introduced a deeply moving video, Serving on All Fronts, as the final part of Beit Knesset Hanassi's Tisha be'Av program. He also spoke about his book, Dark Clouds Above, Faith Below, which sets out at length the four tiers of challenge that we face today as we grapple with immediate realities and eternal truths.

The synopsis of this book, which you can also buy from Rabbi Taragin himself, is summarized on its Amazon page as follows:

Nothing could have prepared us for the nightmarish horrors of October 7th. This is a seminal moment in the history of our people. Dark clouds have descended upon us, and our faith is being severely tested. Faith and Meaning can be found in the pages of the past if we peer deeply into the heart of Tanach and of Chazal. Redeeming history is a long process, but we know how it ends. One day we will have clarity. Until then, we have faith…

All proceeds of sale go to Yeshivat Har Etzion.

 

Aish Tukad Bekirbi: personal reflections on a Tisha be'Av Kinah

[Jeremy Phillips writes] On Tisha be'Av 5784 I was asked to prepare some comments on Aish Tukad Bekirbi, one of the better-known kinot. A couple of people wanted to discuss these comments with me and/or to get hold of a copy. This is what I said: 

My task is to introduce the 14^th kinah we’re reciting today. Some of you may by now be suffering from Kinah Fatigue. Perhaps you are sitting here out of a sense of duty or respect for tradition, maybe losing attention a little bit and secretly wanting the whole thing to be over and done with. These feelings are natural. We are only human, after all. But is this what we should be feeling?

Incidentally, it’s not just Tisha be’Av and the seemingly endless kinot that we wait to end. Some of our fellow Jews here in Israel have said to me over the past few days that they just wish the Iranians would get on with their revenge attack, so that we can get it over and done with and get back to normal.  But both with kinot and with attacks from our enemies, there is no normal to get back to. Barring a miracle—for which we should be fervently praying—when we wake up tomorrow we will still be missing our Bet HaMikdash. There will still be no korbanot and our Kohanim will still be duchaning here in Rechavia and not down the road in the Ir Atikah.  Likewise, even after Iran and Hizbollah do whatever they do, if they ever do it, we will still have the same enemies and face the same problems. In each case we look forward to The Day After, but do we  have an action plan for what to do with the Day After when it comes?

My Kinah this year—Aish Tukad Bekirbi—is a very special one and I’ll soon tell you why. But first I want to say something about Tisha be’Av last year that applies to this year too. When I introduced my kinah then, I was quite critical of it.  What I was actually trying to say was that Tisha be’Av is a time of national and personal mourning for tragedies that continue to be felt, but my kinah did not move me. It was an elaborate and poetical account of the sincere feelings of someone who was not there at the time of the Churban and it seemed to me to be somehow wrong for me to recite someone else’s feelings in order to conjure up in my heart the emotions evoked by words that were appropriate for him on this day, but that did not work for for me.

We’re not always very good at showing our national grief, and I sometimes wonder if we are not even very good at feeling it. For me the ninth day of the month of Menachem Av is a day for acknowledging the pain we should be feeling in our hearts. It is not the date of the Annual General Meeting of the Jewish chapter of the Dead Poets Society. In saying this, I’ll just quote what R’ Kenigsberg said at se’udat shelishit this week: the recitation of kinot should be “an understandable and meaningful experience”.  Yes, we must ensure that the kinot are “understandable and meaningful”—but we must also make them an “experience”.  Are we experiencing the pain, the anguish, and a sense of loss and of personal failure because our generation hasn’t been able to restore the Beit HaMikdash—or are we just a bunch of comfortable old folk who are going through the motions? We must make that effort to make our recitation of the kinot as moving as the explanations that precede them.

Fortunately I do not have any problems with my kinah for this year. Aish Tukad BeKirbi, is, I believe, the epitome of what an effective and meaningful kinah should be. An anonymous kinah, it has rhyme and rhythm, it is memorable. Being built with words and phrases we know or which we can identify, it needs scarcely any explanatory commentary at all, since so many of the textual allusions are drawn from Tanach. In short, this kinah packs a punch and leaves its mark. More than that, it finishes on a positive note that leaves us on a high, with something to which we fervently look forward: the complete and triumphant return of klal Yisrael to Yerushalayim Ir HaKodesh. This is our scenario for the Day After. And we already have our plan for the Day After: to make the Beit HaMikdash a fit and proper place for the Shechinah to dwell—among us, here in Yerushalayim, the capital of a safe, secure and united Eretz Yisrael. And that is why, in so many congregations, this kinah is sung with defiance and resolution. Yes, we have to accept God’s judgement on us—but we still look forward to His ultimate redemption.

The structure of Aish Tukad BeKirbi is worthy of note. Like many other kinot and piyyutim it is arranged in acrostic fashion, with the verses being ordered from aleph to tav. Although the aleph-bet has only 22 letters, this kinah has 23 verses since it opens with two successive verses that begin with aleph. Each of the 23 verses is split into two halves of equal length. The first half ends with the words betzeti miMitzrayim, “when I went out from Egypt”. The second in contrast ends with betzeti miYerushalayim, “when I went out from Jerusalem”.  In every verse, each of the two lines is itself broken further into two rhyming segments, again both adding power to the metre of each line and making it easier to recite and remember.

The bifurcated arrangement of each stanza, setting off the exodus from Egypt with the long trek from Yerushalayim and into exile, is the reason why this kinah is so clever and so suitable for recitation: we have a Torah mitzvah of remembering the yetziat mitzrayim every day and at the seder we are charged with envisioning ourselves as though it is we who were personally leaving Egypt. In contrast, though there is no Torah mitzvah of remembering the yetziat miYerushalayim, when we recite the second half of each verse we still have the vivid imagery of Yirmeyahu’s depiction of this disaster in Megillat Eicha at the forefront of our minds. So it is not hard for us, or shouldn’t be hard for us, to see ourselves both as marching exultantly into the midbar under the leadership of Moshe Rabbenu and at the same time straggling down the mountain tracks that lead away from our once-impregnable holy city. The contrast between these two treks is actually enhanced and emphasized by the metre and balance of each verse: in stanza after stanza the pounding rhythm of each triumph, each benefit and each gain is precisely cancelled out by the symmetry of the line that follows it and hammers out our loss, our disgrace and our degradation.

I’ve one final thought to leave you with. Most of us here are, shall we say, a little bit on the elderly side. But we were not always so. Many of us, as children of the ’60s and ‘70s, have likely absorbed many messages from that era.  Here’s one that has stuck with me throughout my adult life. Some of you may recall a lyric from a Joni Mitchell number back in 1970, a song called Big Yellow Taxi. There the chorus repeats the words:

“Don’t it always seem to go
That you don’t know what you’ve got ‘till it’s gone”.

 This refrain hits the nail on the head. Aish Tukad Bekkirbi is the song of how we didn’t know what we’d got till it’s gone. We didn’t realise how good our good times were; we didn’t know how much we appreciated them, till we finally had to accept that we had lost the lot, everything. But, unlike Joni Mitchell, the anonymous author of Aish Tukad Bekirbi reminds us of God’s promise that He will never leave us destitute. In triumph we shall return! And if not this year, please God the next.

Let’s now sing this kinah together. With passion and feeling!

Impossible demands?: Devarim and Shabbat Chazon 5784

The nine days of mourning for Jerusalem’s fall and the destruction of the Temples are upon us. This Shabbat, which always precedes Tisha b’Av, takes its name from the haftorah of the prophet Yeshayahu which we read this week in the synagogue. The words of the prophet condemn the social ills of his time and the society in which he lived: governmental corruption, unequal distribution of wealth and a lack of legal and social justice. But these are the same problems that have plagued all human society since time immemorial—and they are ever-present today. 

A first glance, one could conclude that the prophet is making impossible demands, since human behavior and social interaction can never eliminate these issues fully. However, as we well know, the Torah never demands the impossible of its human adherents. So what is the point of the prophet’s criticisms and harsh judgments? What is it that he really demands from us fallible mortals? 

I believe that what Yeshayahu demands of us is that we at least realize and recognize that these shortcomings are part of our reality. We may not be able to correct them all completely, but we should still know that they exist. We should never allow apathy the ability to overwhelm our better instincts or to arrest our never-ending quest for an improved social structure. 

The prophet demands that we remain relentless in trying to improve the social conditions of the world we live in, even if we know at the outset that complete success is beyond our human capabilities. By accepting our societal deficiencies without a murmur of regret or complaint we become complicit in our own eventual destruction. 

The Chafetz Chaim is reputed to have said that what motivated him to write his monumental work about the evils of slander and evil speech was that he noticed that people who had engaged in such speech no longer exuded a sigh of regret over their words. Evil speech had become socially acceptable: there was no sense of shame or embarrassment about engaging in such behavior. 

Shame is a great weapon for good. When it disappears from society, when brazen self-interest and greed become the norm, the prophet warns us of impending doom. Disgraced politicians openly vie again for public office as though serving one’s time in jail or being forced to resign from public office permanently wipes their slate clean. A society that knows no shame, whose leaders never recognize the moral turpitude of their behavior, dooms itself to the ills of favoritism, corruption and unfairness that will plague its existence. The prophet demands of us that, even if we are unable to correct all ills and right all wrongs, we should at least be ashamed that such ills and wrongs exist within our society. 

That recognition, and the sense of shame that accompanies it, serve as the bases for possible necessary improvement in social attitudes and societal behavior. Then the prophet’s optimistic prediction, “Zion shall be redeemed through justice and those who return to it will also find redemption through righteousness,“ might yet be fulfilled.

 Shabbat shalom,  

Rabbi Berel Wein    

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

The Teacher, by Zvi Kolitz (Book of the Month, Menachem Av 5784)

Beit Knesset Hanassi is home to many sefarim and English-language books, including the Marvin N. Hirschhorn collection. Professor Hirschhorn's library was given to Beit Knesset Hanassi after he died by his widow Myrna, and it contains many books of interest. We reproduce on the right the handsome ex libris plate that you will find inside the books that comprise this collection.

In this, the first in our new Book of the Month series, we feature a publication that features in this collection: The Teacher, by Tzvi Kolitz.

The author, Zvi Kolitz, was born into a prominent rabbinical family in Alytus, Lithuania. He studied at the nearby Yeshiva of Slobodka and then lived for several years in Italy, where he attended the University of Florence and the Naval Academy at Civitavecchia. Emigrating to Palestine in 1936, he led recruiting efforts for the Zionist Revisionist movement for which he was arrested by the British and jailed for his political activities. 

After Israel's independence in 1948, Kolitz became active in the state's literary and cultural life. In 2002, Kolitz died of natural causes in New York. He is best known for a classic of Holocaust literature, Yosl Rakover Talks to God.

Subtitled "An Existential Approach to the Bible", The Teacher is a challenging read that makes no allowances for the possibility that the reader may not be as well-read as the writer. Its 215 pages are packed with ideas and allusions, framed within the context of a narrative in which a gifted and unusual teacher, Ariel Halevi, gives a weekly class to a varied group of adults on the implications of the Torah for our lives today (i.e. the 1980s). 

The Reuven-Gad syndrome: Mattot-Masei 5784

This week’s public Torah reading brings to an end the fourth book of the Torah, Bamidbar. No longer do we have the slave generation that left Egypt in haste and, when faced with problems and difficulties, constantly longed to return there. In their place we find a new generation, standing poised and ready to enter the Land of Israel and fulfill God’s covenant with Avraham. However, once again, narrow personal interests becloud the general picture and weaken the necessary national resolve. 

Now it is not the so-called fleshpots of Egypt that beckon. Rather, temptation comes from the rich pasture lands east of the Jordan River  that entice the cattle-raising tribes of Reuven and Gad to plead with Moshe that they remain there and not be compelled to cross the river and enter the promised Land of Israel. 

Moshe’s initial reaction to their request is one of shock and bitter disappointment. He reminds them that their parents’ generation was destroyed in the desert for disparaging the Land of Israel and for refusing to make any effort to possess its. He warns them that they have apparently learned little from the experiences of their forebears, embracing the prospect of making the same errors of judgment. Moshe is greatly frustrated by their attitude. Why can’t they see past their cattle, their personal gain, an imagined short-term benefit and the consequences of their refusal to acknowledge the grandeur of the Lord’s long-term vision for them and their land? It is this spiritual blindness, this unwillingness to appreciate the uniqueness of Israel, its people and its land that Moshe bemoans. 

Reuven and Gad get their way, but their gain is only temporary and it comes at a price. Separated from their brethren west of the Jordan, the breakaway tribes will struggle to defend themselves and will be the first tribes to be exiled. They produce no major leaders or heroes for the Jewish people and their dreams of prosperity and material success are only fleetingly realized. 

Criticized bitterly and for all time by the prophetess Devorah for standing aside in an hour of national Jewish peril, the tribes of Reuven and Gad become the prototype for Jewish indifference to the causes of Jewish survival and success. In the modern world they unfortunately have many heirs and disciples. Mordecai warned Esther not to stand apart and be passive in the face of Haman and his decrees. He warned her that, when the Jews would somehow escape from their troubles, she and her family would be doomed to extinction if she allowed her narrow self-interest to rule over her national duty for the preservation of Israel. 

Today too, narrow self-interests govern many Jews—even leaders who seemingly should know better—in their attitudes, policies and behavior regarding the existential problems that face the Jewish people and the Jewish state. The Talmud teaches us that Jerusalem always needs advocates for its cause. That certainly is the case today. Jewish apathy and alienation are our enemies. The current allure of political correctness in policy and mindset is not just misleading but dangerous. Standing at the cusp of great adventures and opportunities, we must take care to avoid suffering the Reuven-Gad syndrome. 

Shabbat shalom, Rabbi Berel Wein

 

Outer peace, inner peace: Pinchas 5784

The Lord promises Pinchas that most valuable and yet constantly elusive gift—the blessings of the covenant of peace. Over the millennia, the world has known very little peace. Strife and conflict, war and violence, these have been the staples of human existence since time immemorial. Many historians and social scientists maintain that war and violence are the natural and constant state of human affairs. If so, the promise of peace to Pinchas seems to be a little extravagant, especially since it appears that Pinchas earned this reward by committing an act of violence. Shall we say that a time of peace is merely the absence of war, a negative state of being that only marks the interval between episodes of war and violence?

We are well aware how difficult it is to achieve peace and how fragile is its existence when it is somehow achieved. The Torah attests to its fragility, by breaking the vav in the word ‘shalom.’  So we may ask: what in actual fact was God’s promise to Pinchas—and and how is it ever to be fulfilled? This perplexing issue is especially pertinent regarding Pinchas himself, since he participated in the wars that Israel conducted against Midian and later against the Canaanite tribes in the Land of Israel during the era of Yehoshua and the Judges. Where is the promised peace in the life of Pinchas, or indeed in the lives of the future generations of his descendants and the Jewish people as a whole?

Many Torah commentators defined God’s promise of peace to Pinchas and his descendants as a personal and individual state of inner being, of what we colloquially call “being at peace with oneself.” Pinchas is undoubtedly disturbed by the act of violence that he committed and by the widespread criticism of his actions by many of the Jewish people at that time. Nevertheless, the Lord tells him that he did the right thing and that history will later thank him for his boldness and alacrity in stemming the tide of immorality that threatened to overwhelm the Jewish people. So Pinchas acquires, through God’s blessing, peace of mind and the necessary inner confidence and conviction that the act he committed was deemed by Heaven to be justifiable, however unpopular it might be in the eyes of society.

President Harry Truman is reported to have said that he lost little sleep over the atomic bombing of Japan which concluded World War II because he believed that he saved millions of American and Japanese lives by his awesome decision. He never again agonized over that decision since he had achieved an inner peace regarding the matter. Our conscience always disturbs us when we make wrong decisions and pursue policies that fail, but it never rises to plague us when we have behaved correctly and select a course of action in a manner that is both wise and moral. It is this blessing and reward that the Lord bestowed upon Pinchas and his descendants—the blessing of inner peace and moral contentment.