The world has seen some ugly battles fought recently over religion-related buildings. From the destruction of the Buddhist monastery at Bamiyan to the conflict over the so-called ground zero mosque, going back to Kristalnacht, the attempt at dehumanization of adherents to a religion frequently begins with a strike against the buildings associated with that faith. On the other hand, some of the most important architectural achievements of humanity across the globe, from Wat Phra Khao to Notre Dame, are a result of spiritual ardor manifested in stone. It would appear that religious structures can provide solace or evoke resistance. What does the Jewish tradition teach us about the role of buildings in spiritual life?

We will see that from the very start, from the Torah text itself, a conflicted reading of the importance or challenge of religious buildings per se is presented. The Torah text provides very lengthy and detailed descriptions for the building of the Mishkan, the portable temple carried by the freed Israelites in their journey through the desert. These details, with instructions regarding the building of the temple walls, roof, altars, ark, and other items related to the sacrificial service, are spread out over five perashiyot (Torah sections, as divided for weekly communal reading). We will see that this organization of the text itself teaches rather surprising and profound lessons about the values of sacred space and its rituals.

“And these are the laws you shall place before them” (Shemot 21:1).

What legitimates a “law”? To this day the question of the steering and ordering of society by law is one which leads to violent protest and international conflagurations. One of the major anti-war issues today involves the legitimacy of unprovoked attacks by one sovereign domain over another. Is it legal by American law, does that trump international law? What does “legal” even mean? This question of ‘legality’ is closely tied to that of the legitimacy of the society itself. How far can you push in creating laws, or bending them, before society itself breaks?

This is an issue deep at the heart of interdenominational religious politics. The question of change in halacha, ‘law’ or minhag ‘custom’, such as the matter of women’s roles, for example generates rather extreme gut reactions in many people. I do not think the issue is necessarily that of this specific ruling or another per se; what is at stake is the question of legitimacy. How much change can a system tolerate before it is an alternative system altogether? On the other hand, from the perspective of the members of that society, up until what point will the individual tolerate “problematic” rulings before deciding to throw off the yoke of that legislature? When is it time to revolt and start a new society?

Any ordering of society requires the ground of legitimacy; legitimacy of the greater processes which in return leads to the internalized willingness by the citizens to surrender some degree of civil autonomy. The twentieth century has been bloodied by failed experiments in this area; the title of Habermas’ work on this subject, “Legitimation Crisis” (which we will cite from later) is an apt description of the situation of governance in many lands and in its relation to many parts of our lives. It is to this matter which we will turn this week, and we have an interesting test model, a society in formation, the people of Israel now out from under the exploitative yoke of Egypt, deterritorialized and reteritorializing under a new law, a new attempt at societal rebirth and regeneration.

I. Yitro’s Visit As Response:

This week’s reading is a momentous one, it contains the narrative of the revelation at Mt Sinai and the giving of the Ten Commandments, as described in the longer essay below. What is striking is that this week’s reading doesn’t begin with that crucial section, it actually begins with a family visit of Moshe’s father-in-law, Yitro, and in fact, this central reading is not known in traditional circles as “Sinai” or “Giving of the Torah” but as Perashat Yitro, by the name of an outsider, described as a foreign Priest!

Even if the division of the weekly readings is viewed as accidental, still, why is this the section immediately preceding the central section of the Torah, in fact, some of the medieval commentators argue that the meeting with Yitro actually happened after Sinai. Thus placing Yitro’s visit ahead of the revelation of Sinai is meant to be intentional.

The Tiferet Shelomo sees this meeting with Yitro as a prologue to Sinai, in a Buddhist like teaching.  The Tiferet Shelomo explains that we must be like Yitro in the way we approach Torah.  Every day, we must approach our Torah study and observance as though this moment is the first time we are hearing Torah; we must eternal present ourself to study as though we were complete outsiders with no preconceptions, in a state of  humility and with an open mind.

It seems appropriate that sitting down and finally getting this particular shiur down on paper seemed like an impossible mission. Several times I fired up the computer and stared at the untitled document in front of me, jumped to the couch, came back, checked email, ate, and then tried again. For this shiur is about the near impossibility of writing, particularly original writing, specifically poetry.

I will attempt a presentation of the void that must be crossed, or split if you will, in order to create a new utterance, a phrase as of yet unheard, a new thought. I suspect that to many of the Hasidic thinkers I will cite, there is no difference between poetry and what they were endeavoring to say in their readings, other than a formal one. Hence, only because I am construing from my own experience, I can’t help but hope that in some sense there is human truth, perhaps ‘universal’ autobiography in these readings, as close that Hasidic masters came to revealing their own truth in creative struggle, a truth of one’s own that they sensed is also true for everyone, a description of how these masters grappled with their own need for, and fear of, their own creativity.

The old frog leaps

Into the silent pool

Splash!

-Basho

Everyone from childhood is familiar with the story line of the Ten Plagues. We are familiar with them from childhood because they are almost amusing. God smites the fierce Egyptian people not with Godzilla and King Kong, but with bugs, hail, and frogs. Frogs! At any rate, it is hard to envision just what kind of ‘plague’ throwing frogs around might be. Other than some minor damage to agriculture, they aren’t particularly pesky little fellas. So our goal is to discover what other meanings may be inherent in this plague of frogs.

Before thinking about the relationship between animals and plagues, perhaps it might be valuable to the relationship between animals and us, or the concept of animality, in general. The initial impulse would be to try find the Freudian frog, situate frog symbolism in some sort of psychoanalytic way. The frog would follow the the horse in the manner of Freud’s Little Hans case; the reaction of the child to the mistreatment and death of the horse would be understood as ‘really’ referring to underlying drives. Or the wolf, in the Wolfman case, which wasn’t about wolves at all but about castration. Thus we would have to find some neurotic process which could be adequately symbolized by a frog. In the classical psychoanalytic viewpoint, then, interpreting the frog would be interpreting some signified process or drive in man, but would have very little to do with the actual frog or ‘frogness’.

Deleuze and Guattari offer an alternative reading in these cases. They argue that there is a more immediate relation to animality that is more than just a signifier for an unconscious drive. Here is their dissension from Freud:

‘The horses blinders are the father’s eyeglasses, the black around its mouth is his moustache, its kicks are the parents’ ‘lovemaking’. Not one word about Hans’s relation to the street, on how the street was forbidden to him, on what it is for a child to see the spectacle ‘a horse is proud, a blinded horse pulls, a horse falls, a horse is whipped” Psychoanalysis has no feeling for unnatural participations’

Deleuze and Guattari postulate that the relationship to animals is that of an ‘assemblage’, that is, a structuralist construct whereby aspects of animal behaviour are abstracted and incorporated into the individuals being. Their language is wonderful and thus hard to summarize, a summary would sound something like: the individual’s abstract machine (abstract here being a verb, that is, the person unconstructs the actual thing observed and takes from it certain structures and relations) reconstructing for themselves a Body Without Organs, these new behaviours would become lines of flight, deterritorializations. This appropriation they call the ‘becoming-animal’. When an actor barks like a dog, he is not metamorphosizing into a dog, or trying to, rather, he is taking on to himself an abstracted characteristic of dogs. This process is identical to other becomings, such as the ‘becoming-woman’. Images and stereotypes of what woman means are what are assumed by the individual who ‘becomes-woman’. Becoming woman is not imitating this entity or even transforming oneself into it… The child does not become the adult any more than the girl becomes a woman; the girl is the becoming-woman of each sex, just at the child is the becoming-young of every age…

This analysis leads in several interesting directions, for example, they point out that these becomings tend to be of minorities, there is less becoming-man than there is becoming-woman, or becoming-Black or becoming-Jew. These becomings, since they are by nature acts of reterritorialization, tend to relate to ‘minoritarian’ processes. Thus:

In the case of some terms, people might have doubts as to whether they’re names or descriptions; like “God”—does it describe God as the unique divine being or is it a name of God? (Saul A Kripke, Naming and Necessity, p. 27)

Our text seems to be preoccupied with names. Moshe (Moses) went to Pharoah as instructed, and instead of freeing the slave people, Pharoah makes their life even more miserable. Moshe complains to God about the suffering of the people and the failure of his mission, but God wants to talk about names. The text relates (Shemot 2:6):

And God spoke to Moshe, saying: I am ADNY. I have revealed myself to Avraham, Yitzhak, and Yaakov as El Shaddai, but with the name ADNY I had not revealed myself to them.

Moshe wants to know how the people will be freed, and God answers with a seemingly irrelevant discourse on names. Why does it matter with which name revelation was conducted in the past? In attempting to find meaning in this emphasis upon ancient names, we will find ourselves confronting very contemporary issues regarding faith and science.

Even as we focus upon the centrality of names in the current verse, we can’t help noticing the preoccupation with names in the early part of the book of Shemot (Exodus). This book begins with an enumeration of the names of the tribes, then Moshe names his children, then Moshe is concerned in his first dialogue with God that the Israelites will ask of him what God’s name is, and here again, in this speech announcing the deliverance from Egypt, God begins by announcing a new previously undisclosed name. It is fitting, I suppose, that this book, called Exodus in Greek, is traditionally known as Sefer Shemot, the Book of Names, in Hebrew. What’s all this business about names?

This week’s essay is very timely, as it deals with the role of women in society (in this case, revolutionary society), offering a set of traditional readings whose authors would likely be horrified at the recent events in Bet Shemesh, and perhaps provide for us a Torah viewpoint on the subject of “biopolitics”, the way health and access to healthcare has become a central issue of modern society, and some hints about bio-control and gender.

The opening sections of the Book of Shemot (Exodus) sketch the rapid transformation of the mighty tribes of Jacob into the despised slave chattel of Egypt. Within a few short sentences, we are told how the new administration of Egypt decides to transform a group of successful outsiders into a subservient drone class. This societal transformation was so successful that it continued for hundreds of years without resistance, until a Moshe arises and ignites emancipatory fervor. However, there is one episode, apparently towards the end of the enslavement epoch (though the text itself does not provide a date), which details an apparently small pocket of resistance led by two women, described as Israelite midwives named Shifra and Pu’ah.

Given the importance of the Moshe narrative immediately following, less attention has been given to these few verses. Given current developments in history, and with the growing centrality of issues related to autonomy of the body, the time has come to award these passages a more careful reading. I was initially drawn to these verses by a curious Midrash and its interpretation by the Tiferet Shelomo. However, upon further examination of this problematic passage and some of the classic Hasidic expositions upon it, I found myself overwhelmed with an entire set of positions regarding martyrdom, death, bio-ethics, government control of medical resources, definitions of truth, the overall ethical position of the Other and the power of the sovereign and society.

“Disclosure, however, does not simply result in something disclosed as unclosed. Instead, the dis-closure is at the same time an en-closure…. Disclosure- that now means to bring into a sheltering enclosure….” Heidegger, Parmenides pp133.

Nothing regarding Torah goes unnoticed and unexamined by the commentators, not even spacing on the written line. This week’s Perasha (Torah reading) begins, “Vayehi Yaakov B’eretz Mitzrayim“; And Yaakov (Jacob) dwelled (lit., “lived”) in the land of Egypt. The authors of the Midrash note that normally there are nine letters between the end of one perasha introducing the perasha that follows, whereas here there are no extra spaces at all. This perasha is thus “setuma”, closed off, oblique, which is unique, usually there is some form of spacing in the written text that marks off the beginning of a new portion, here there is none. Is this lack of indentation itself a commentary, does it signify a silence or hidden-ness within the context of the story of the death of Jacob and the beginning of the enslavement of a people?

This week’s  perasha (Torah portion) begins at a moment of climax- All seems lost. An innocent descent to Egypt to purchase food has ended up with youngest brother Benyamin in prison, and it seems that due to the actions of the brothers, the children of Rachel are at risk of total decimation (with Yosef believed dead and Binyamin in a place worse than death), which they know would compound their father’s already unrelieved grief to beyond mortal tolerance.

In an act of desperation, Yehudah steps forward and begins to plead with the hostile sovereign for his brother’s life. The text uses some unusual language- its says  Vayigash Elav Yehudah, Yehudah “encountered” him. The use of the term vayigash, from the root hagasha, (to come close, also to prepare) is somewhat unusual, both linguistically and even in terms of the action, given that they were in the same room. And to whom is the  second word in the phrase, Elav, “to him”, referring to?

In fact, why does the text need to quote Yehuda’s speech at such length? There is seemingly nothing new revealed in terms of the linear development of the plot; we are given no new facts about the brothers’ history, and no new personal revelations. Yet this speech is very extensively analyzed by the Midrashim. The Midrash choreographs entire dialogues lurking behind the words of Yehudah, referring to all sorts of hidden meanings within his every word, both conciliatory and threatening words; the prelude in the Midrash Rabbah (BR 93:3) insists that the words of Yehudah “can be interpreted from every angle”. We will find that the words of Yehuda teach us several useful lessons for the fight against societal injustice.

In which the strange actions of Joseph towards his brothers are read as a guide to societal transformation.

This week’s Torah reading begins, as does that of last week, with the recounting of dreams. This time, however, it is Pharoah who has a troubling dream, which is then interpreted by Yosef (Joseph) who is pulled out of prison in order to do the reading. Pharoah likes the interpretation, and by royal edict brings about a rags to riches denouement leading to the sort-of happy end to this story, with a reunion of Yosef and his brothers who sold him into slavery. However, this isn’t the kind of reunion anyone would want to have been invited to. Yosef will put all his brothers and his father through a great deal of grief before revealing himself to them. He will accuse them of being spies, lock one of them up for safe keeping, frame his youngest brother for stealing royal property by placing a goblet in his pack, and then make them drag their old long suffering father all the way from Canaan as terms for the brother’s bail.

It’s a rough story; I feel that the truth is with the classic Yiddish joke about an old woman, who cries the first time she reads this story of the sale of Yosef in her Tzena Urena (the accepted volume of paraphrased Bible stories in Yiddish, back in the days when that was all the learning permitted for women). The first time she read the story, she wept bitterly over Yosef’s being sold into slavery; the next year, when she read the episode, she got angry, because instead of going out to his brothers “again”, by now he shoulda known better.

In other words, our familiarity with the stories breeds an acceptance of things we would not tolerate in reality. Are we comfortable with this “revenge story”, the vengeance Yosef metes out to his brothers and father? (Interestingly, there has been a wave in Korean cinema of “revenge” films based around family tragedies that wouldn’t be far from a literal reading of this passage, just with more slo-mo violence and blood).

The Beer Mayim Hayim is not comfortable with this reading; in line with his normal rejection of suffering as acceptable, particularly in the sacred literature. In his extended reading of this episode, he presents a version of Yosef’s actions as revealing truths about how to respond to a world of dissolving identity, and how a community can maintain its individuality in a world of nihilism.

An Edom!
Ein Jahrtausend schon und länger,
Dulden wir uns brüderlich,
Du, du duldest, daß ich atme,
Dass du rasest, dulde Ich.
Manchmal nur, in dunkeln Zeiten,
Ward dir wunderlich zu Mut,
Und die liebefrommen Tätzchen
Färbtest du mit meinem Blut!
Jetzt wird unsre Freundschaft fester,
Und noch täglich nimmt sie zu;
Denn ich selbst begann zu rasen,
Und ich werde fast wie Du. Heinrich Heine

What is the meaning of Chanukka? Is it a religious holiday? A nationalist holiday? Does it mean anything like what we think it does? Given its new place as the major Jewish holiday in the United States, the standard version of the story of Chanukka is now well known. The “Greeks” conquer the Jews, a small gang of freedom fighters repulse them, cleanse the Temple, find a flask of oil which burns for eight days, and now everyone gets presents, and plays a dreidle made of clay. This holiday has taken on a major role, of course, not because of its message, but because of its proximity to Christmas, allowing marketers to broaden their audience as Jewish parents try to create a substitute for the majority holiday, inescapable in particular for children who watch any TV at all. So in a sense, Chanukka, now morphing into Chrismukka, as per the popular TV program, has become a holiday through which the Jewish community can now feel part of the larger community; it has become a feel-good festival of assimilation.

Great texts are about more than simply telling tales, there is an understanding that there are lessons to be learned, responses to emulate or avoid, and leadership roles to strive towards. In this week’s reading we are presented with two lives developing in parallel, one wise and righteous, the other errant and potentially destructive. Yet, the text does not make the obvious choice of whom to celebrate or who to condemn.

This week’s perasha gives us the first picture of the newly settled Yaakov homestead. He buys a plot of land, the text tells us, all rather matter of factly, and then builds an altar. There is nothing to prepare us for the horror episode that follows, and I suspect that the text means to shock us with its rather abrupt narration, which begins innocently enough with Dinah going out to see what the local girls are doing. We will see how some of the commonly cited readings of this text may shock us even more, and present alternatives from within the tradition that will be more palatable and sensible.

It might be easiest to break this analysis into two parts. First, there is the depiction of the crime against Dinah, and then upon the commentators’ response to the action taken in response by Shimon and Levi and their father Jacob’s response (I refrain from the term revenge or retribution, since that too is already a position).

A word on methodology. I am not trying to recreate a literal historical event, to present some kind of naïve version of “what actually happened” in the biblical story, I’m not sure that is desirable if it is even possible. My concern in the following analysis is what Benveniste would label the “place of enunciation” of the commentators; a recognition that reading any text involves not merely some kind of empirical textual explication but a worldview which underlies them (Gadamer’s “pre-understanding”). We can’t read and understand without involving who we are, we are always reading through a lens made up of our own viewpoint. Thus, in a sense, we want to attempt a meta-parshanut, if you will, by looking at the views of the commentators on this episode and examining what this reading might reveal about the minds of the commentators themselves with regards to women and crimes against women.

When I reached manhood, I saw rising and growing upon the wall shared between life and death, a ladder barer all the time, invested with an unique power of evulsion: this was the dream….Now see darkness draw away, and LIVING become, in the form of a harsh allegorical asceticism, the conquest of extraordinary powers by which we feel ourselves confusedly crossed, but which we only express incompletely, lacking loyalty, cruel perception, and perseverance….

Rene Char, Fureur et Mystere

Last week, we discussed the confusion surrounding the blessings given by Yizhak in terms of the texts’ “concretization”, the way textual blessings might take on interpretations based on changes in their historical actualization. This week, we will leap beyond blessings into dreams and from dreams into reality, and perhaps, back again, by focusing upon the episode of Yaakov (Jacob)’s dream of the ladder ascending to heaven as narrated at the start of this week’s Torah reading.

There are several midrashim which will guide us on our exploration of dreams. The Midrash latches on to an extraneous word in the verse- “and he chanced upon the place and rested there”. The Midrash explains the word vayifga, “and he chanced upon”, as meaning “he prayed there”, using as a proof text the use of the same term in the Jeremiah 7:16 and 27:18. The Midrash states that there, in that place where Yaakov rested, Yaakov created the evening prayer, the Arvit service, described by R. Shmuel bar Nahman as embodying “May it be Thy will that You remove me from darkness to light”. A second curious midrash is found on verse 28:16, which reads “and Yaakov awoke from his sleep, mishenato“. The Midrash alters it to miMIshnato, from his studies, from his “learning”. At first glance, one might suspect a surprising anti-study, anti-intellectual message, likening study to sleep, in that Midrashic reading. Why is the midrash linking study to sleep?

I will have to confront a bias right at the start. In any reading, this portion of the Torah raises several issues which are difficult for us to confront. “Confront”, as in “confrontation”, for there is not an element in this narrative that is not problematic at a very visceral level. I don’t feel able to confront the presentation of the way the “birthright” finally comes into the possession of Jacob, not the original purchase, nor the act of camouflage that ultimately leads the blessings to reach Jacob’s possession.

It is hard to judge across several thousand years; in Chinese and Indian literature there are many ancient heroes who appear to us today as vile tricksters, certainly it would be hard to look to Krishna and the Gopis as an inspiration for male-female interactions. In “foreign” texts, it is easy to suspend anachronistic judgements and say that those texts represent an ancient ethos, but we are concerned here with a text that must mean something for us today, at this moment. Thus, we must aspire to some kind of reading that resolves this problematic. Especially since at the core, there is a suggestion of what we might call a genetic element to the difference between Yaakov and Esav, with all that that implies. If Esav is truly bad at the core, and Yaakov “born good”, then what can we learn from this entire segment? What does genetic (or racial) predetermination mean to us anyway, today (aside from the difficulty in assuming them as the founders of different people with different genetic proclivities, given how we understand biology today)?

Man who… has a monopoly on the symbolic, has given no thought to his body or his flesh… –Luce Irrigary

One fortunate result of the San Francisco bill attempting to ban circumcision is the resurgence of dialogue about this tradition and its meaning in contemporary society. Arguments have been put forward that this practice should be abandoned by Jews; a writer in Tikkun argued that Maimonides’ posited explanation for the practice, that it may weaken sexual desire, is itself adequate reason to cease inflicting circumcision on infants, and some maintain that the male nature of this custom is a sign of the patriarchal nature of Jewish society. But can we view circumcision in fact, as an act of protest against Western gender roles and preconceptions?

It is well known that “brit milah,” the “covenant of circumcision,” is a defining characteristic of “being Jewish.” Martyrdom in defense of this commandment is something all Jewish day school students learn from childhood; the holiday of Hanukkah is a commemoration of the resistance to Hellenistic edicts which included a ban on circumcision. The Talmud compares the value of keeping this commandment as being equal to all the other commandments in the Torah, and in fact, legally, the need to perform circumcision outweighs the Sabbath. While Maimonides did suggest one “rational” explanation for milah as being a means to curb sexual desire, consistent with the medieval worldview of holiness as achieving asceticism, his alternative explanation, which he himself deems “equal to or more important than the first” is that it is a sign, a bond which connects those who carry that inscription on their bodies. It is certainly that latter reasoning which resonated with Jews through the centuries.

The point is not the points, the point is the poetry….

Marc Smith, founder of Slam Poetry

The concerns of the book of Bereishit now seems to shift. Perhaps having given up on the expediency of world shaking totalizing cataclysmic events as a way to improve or even impress humanity, the narrative becomes more local, away from grandiose spectacles, more concerned with the daily life of individuals (individuals of great spiritual and moral grandeur, to be sure), from Hollywood to mumblecore, as it were. Even when world war ensues, or events that are remniscent of the earlier sections of Bereishit, such as the destruction of Sedom and Amorra, the perspective is presented from that of our small cast of characters, down to seemingly minor concerns with food, etc.

The two perashiyot, Lech Lekha and Vayera, with which we will now deal, make up what might be called the trials of Avraham and his family. Even as the midrash expands the “nisyonot”, what we will tentatively translate as the “tests” or “trials” of Avraham to a total of ten, with their need to make a greater superhero out of Avraham (his emergence out of the inferno to which he was cast by an idolatrous king, for example), certainly there are two trials, which stand above the others, and justify the midrashic multiplication of passed tests. Both are narrated with great detail in the text, linked by similarities of language; we are speaking of the trial at the beginning of this week’s perasha, the command to peregrinate across the ancient near east from the place of his birth to start anew in the Western lands, and the one closing next week’s perasha, the trial of the Akedah, the “binding” of Yitzhak. Although it might seem apparent that the rougher trial is that of the Akedah, the Midrash (BR 55:7), noting the recurrent similar linguistic motifs in both (the phrase lekh lekha, for example), sees fit to query which is the “greater” test. A detailed analysis of the latter trial will be presented in the following essay; in this one we are will question the relationship between trial, reward, society, and language.

The specter lurking behind every hagiography, behind every narration of perceived spiritual greatness, is that raised by Derrida in his “The Gift of Death”. Derrida is concerned with the the “economy” of religion, whereby every worldy renunciation, can be seen simply as a path to a much greater payback. If one is certain that performing a religious act will bring about a great reward, or some other benefit, how can this act be viewed as a sacrifice to be commended? Certainly our small mortal contribution if compensated by an infinite divine reward is an unequal deal in our favor. Coming back to our perasha, then, what is so commendable about Avraham’s willingness to move from one country to another, if Gd promises him fame, fortune, offspring who will become a great nation, and so on in return? Wouldn’t you do as you were told with this kind of promise heard directly from Gd? (Many of us who have moved to Israel made this type of move with much less promised as reward…)

The story of Noah’s ark is known to all, it is a popular design for children’s toys as well as the theme of many books and cartoons (two of the best that come to mind are Disney’s Silly Symphony version of the 1930s, and the Lois Lenski book, Mr. and Mrs. Noah).

The imagery of the boat full of animals, the dove with the olive branch, and the rainbow, are simply irresistible. The only problem with these festive bedspread patterns, however, is that, at the core, it represents a horrible story. Essentially, after roughly ten generations of mankind, Gd decides that his creation was a failure, and wipes everyone out, man, woman, and toddler, in a nasty flood, saving only one family, that of Noah, and a representative set of animals, to repopulate the devastated world. Aside from the technological difficulty the ark represents, there doesn’t seem much of a lesson to the story other than ‘be good or learn to swim’, which is far from the usual more sublime message offered in the Torah. No wonder, then, that the medieval Jewish thinkers had no problem labeling this episode a metaphor.

Is there any way, then, to rescue the passage? A frequent Hassidic approach is to read this episode as referring not to a historical catastrophe but to personal travail, and one of the more influential Hassidic meditations pertaining to personal prayer is derived from the text of this episode. The Baal Shem Tov is cited in multiple sources as reading the phrase ‘tzohar taaseh latevah’, which literally refers to Gd telling Noah to “put a window into the boat”, as actually containing a teaching on how to pray. By way of a midrashic reading, cited in Rashi, which states that the unusual word tzohar can mean either “a window” or a type of “light emitting jewel”, the Baal Shem Tov reads the verse as follows: tzohar, illumination, teasah latevah, shall you produce around the letters (tevah=ark but also means letters, as in letters of the alphabet). In other words, not only the meaning, but the actual letters, as you pray, should be visualized in luminescence. (An interesting parallel is found in a Tibetan meditation which details how to meditatively view illuminated letters.) There are many variations on this theme found in the Hassidic literature, and it is a beautiful one (and worthy of personal experimentation), but let us return to the inherent difficulty in reading (or accepting) the flood story as it is written.

Is there a way to relate to the Deluge as it is narrated, and derive some kind of meaningful message from it? I would like to focus on a remarkable set of teachings by R. Tzadok HaCohen of Lublin, made all the more interesting in that the core of the teaching apparently first presents itself to him as a dream, which he states appeared to him in Izbice, when at the court of the Mei Shiloach. This dream, he states, in the ‘dream notebook’ which is appended to his work Resisei Layla, he felt related to the essence of his soul. From this dream reading, which weaves together a series of Midrashic and Talmudic teachings related to the Noah story, emerge a series of interwoven teachings which deal with the problems of leadership, community and relationship of these to Gd, which become particularly pertinent for these troubled times. I will first translate the dream as it is narrated in the text:

A dream I had while in Izbice in which were revealed to me issues pertaining to the essence of my soul- among the things I was told was that the generation of the Messiah will be the very same souls of the generation that followed Moshe into the Wilderness (as Moshiach is the soul of Moshe Rabbeinu as it states in the Raaya Mehemna), and these are in fact the same souls of the generation of the flood (Moshe himself was also lost in the flood, as it states in the Zohar and in the Talmud Hulin 139: that Beshagam= Moshe numerically), but at that time the generation destroyed itself through the sin known as ‘the sin of youth’, as it is said of them, that Man’s inclination is evil from the days of his youth, but this was rectified by the generation of the exodus, their following Moshe into the wilderness being referred to as the goodness of their youth. The generation of Mashiach will be that suggested by the verse (Psalm 103:5) ‘they will be rejuvenated like the eagle’, meaning that they will be the same generation of the goodness of youth, that will be renewed again. This is what I remember [of that dream]‘

Before we read any further, I’d like to borrow a distinction between two models of readings, from George Steiner’s Grammars of Creation. He distinguishes between the Biblical presentation of Creation and that of the Greek mythologies, labeling the first a ‘rhetoric’, with the approach of the Greeks being the ‘erotic’:

In the Hebraic perspective, creation is a rhetoric, a literal speech-act, ‘The making of being is a saying. The ruah Elohim, the breath or pneuma of the Creator speaks the world. He might have thought it in a single instant’ but He spoke creation, and because discourse is sequential in time, the making took six days ‘Why this insistence on the unison of divine creation and divine articulacy?’ The Judaic answer, today renewed in Levinas’s ethics, is profoundly suggestive. Speech demands a listener, and, if possible, a respondent.

On the other hand, continues Steiner:

If the Hebraic reading of creation is a rhetoric, that of ancient Greek cosmogonies is ‘an erotic’. Aetiology and process are, as in the psychoanalytic theory of the creative, libidinal. The etymology of Greek chaos is that of a ‘rent’, of a violent ‘tear’ as in a ‘cloth’.

In this reading, Gd in the Torah is perceived as being primarily concerned with a dialogical relationship with creation, whereby in mythology, the gods relate to creation in an ‘erotic’ or libidinal manner, whereby the gods want something and get it or destroy. Certainly there are a whole host of Greek myths whereby the gods descend to the mortal world looking for women, etc., and when not satisfied or when refused, the woman comes to an unusual end. This ‘rhetorical’ reading works for most of the Torah, but is problematic when applied to the Noach episode, which would seem much more in tune with the ‘erotic’ characterization of the divine, in that Gd suddenly decides mankind are no good and decides to wipe them out, all except His favorite.

The Talmud and Midrash were sensitive to this aberration, and attempts to restore a ‘rhetorical’ reading. The Mishna in Avot 5 states that there were ten generations from Adam to the flood, the number 10 always being significant. The Midrash (Shemot Rabba 30) suggests that this generation was so great that had they changed their ways they could have brought about the giving of the Torah. However, because of their great technological advancements (the Midrash states they only needed to plant grain once every 40 years), they became decadent, uncaring, with no regard for human relationships (thus, in various Midrashim this generation stands accused of aberrant relationships– on the sexual plane of onanism, and on the legal plane of devising means of stealing from one another without incurring legal indemnity).

Certainly the oddest midrashic teaching suggesting the high level of this generation, is the text found in the Talmud, Hulin 139: which asks– Where do we find reference to Moshe in the Torah? The answer given, is the verse ‘beshagum hu basar‘ (a text specifically referring to the sins of the generation of the deluge), with the word beshagum being numerically equivalent to the word Moshe! Now this text is puzzling on several fronts. For one thing, Moshe is a central character of the Torah, after all, he’s mentioned hundreds of times. So then, perhaps, the question is, where in the first book, Bereishit (Genesis), is there a reference to Moshe? The surprising answer, is that Moshe is found right there in the deluge narrative, right at the heart of the sin which brought about Gd’s wrath in the first place. In other words, explains R. Zadok, not only was the generation of the flood one ready to receive the Torah, but there was Moshe as well, among them!

Given the greatness in potentia of this generation, according to the Talmud, in Sanhedrin 108:, Gd attempted to dialogue with them, in order to turn them around and save them. The Talmud teaches that Gd, in order to move the people to repent, first changed the route of the sun, having it rise in the west and set in the east. When that failed, Gd altered time, and when that failed, we are told, Gd gave that generation ‘a taste of the world to come’. However, none of these spectacular alterations in creation moved the people; they were too decadent to be impressed. The Midrash states that Gd tried to instruct the people with four routes to salvation– Torah, redemptive suffering, sacrifices, and prayer, but, like the natural signs, these specifically dialogical moves on the part of Gd were unheeded by the people, and by their potential leader, someone who could have been a Moshe.

Returning to R. Zadok’s dream, we can now understand the impact the coming together of these teachings set off in his dream. R. Zadok understood that the generation of the Flood was the generation that left Egypt, and was the generation that would ultimately be that of final salvation– in other words, every generation could be that which transforms history in one direction or the other. What matters is the coalescence of the generation and its leadership. In the generation of the flood, neither the people nor its leadership were able to transcend their corrupt nature, while in the generation of the Exodus, the people were not ready, but their leader, Moshe, was. In the generation of the Messiah, in other words, in that generation which brings about universal social justice, both the leadership and the people will have reached their transformative potential, together.

What will bring about this kind of utopian societal situation?  The Mishna in Avot, cited earlier, continues that there were ten generations more after Noah until Abraham, and when Abraham appeared, ‘he reaped the reward of all the previous generations’. Why was Abraham able to retroactively change history? Because Abraham is the representation of chesed, mercy, of positive human interaction. He saw Gd in the world around, and rather than isolate himself in a “religious” monastic search for meaning, he brought the message into society by creating a guesthouse, as we will see in subsequent texts. If the failure of the generation of the deluge was that of self absorption, as symbolized by the archetypical designator for self-love, onanism, as well as complete disregard for other’s property (as in the Midrashic story of theft and deceit accomplished by means which could not be prosecuted by law), Abraham, and later Moshe, symbolize responsibility for the Other, even at great personal risk. R. Zadok suggests that the period of slavery preceeding the next stage in human development (in the above cited teaching) was a necessary transition phase between a world destroying generation and a world transforming society, perhaps because the experience of suffering and exploitation of the liberated slave people would never allow a societal relapse back into the ‘erotic’ reading of the world, of decadence and self absorption. One might suggest that this movement from the ‘erotic’ to the ‘rhetorical’ is implicitly suggested by the text even in Gd, who renounces world destruction in speaking to Noach after the flood.

The editors of the Midrash Bereishit Rabba, were unsure of what the Talmudic teaching regarding Moshe’s presence in the flood verses might mean, and there they add that it was a recognition of the possibility of a potential Moshe who might impact in a redemptive manner upon society that led Gd to save some vestige of humankind. Perhaps both readings are complementary; we should despair of the human possibility wasted in our generations of meaningless loss of life, while holding on to the suggestion that even among the rubble may sprout a new message leading us out of this sorry condition; we might say that not only in every generation is there a potential Moshe, a potential spark of Messianic world transformation, but within each and every one of us.

…the Word is the Word,
the Word shows the extent of our
Verbal incapacity,
Cut off from reality,
The sound of these words serving us deceptively.
Yet the value of imagery,
What we put into these words…
Antonin Artaud

The problem with the opening passages of the Torah in a sense is the problem of being. As Rashi points out from the outset with the teaching of R. Yitzchak, the narration of the creation is meant to teach us not basic lessons in science and cosmology, but rather something about our being in the world (the fact that all through my early Jewish Day School years all the Rabbis seemed to be concerned with was attacking “evolution” is, I believe, a phenomenon of the internalization of certain Protestant agendas, but that’s a subject for some other discussion). At any rate, as this question of “being” is so fundamental an aspect of contemporary discourse, it is worth addressing, right at the Beginning, as it were.

Heidegger posed the question most influentially when he asked, following Schelling: Why is there Being rather than nothing? To him, the most urgent and overlooked question was what does it mean to “be” in the world, what does our existence mean, this recognition of nothingness, of our own impending non-being, our personal sense of uniqueness in the face of a world of mute and unconcerned objects? Heidegger posited that disconnection from this being, from Dasein, was at the core of our angst, of our disconnection from our authenticity in the universe to which we are thrown. This almost mystical conception, which has such a powerful hold on the imagination because it addresses that sense we have that there is something bigger and greater to our existence, became a full blown theological position in Heidegger’s later years, after the “Kehre”, when Being became essentially an independent existing thing that attempts to speak to us and through us (in Eco’s wonderful phrase: “this intensionally slippery being becomes a massive subject, albeit in the form of an obscure borborygmus wandering about in the bowels of the entities. It wants to speak and reveal itself”). This mystical sense of Being has been concealed by conventional metaphysics that wishes to make an object out of it, rather than a vital living force, and is only revealed by the Poets, who with their ability to name things as they are, reveal the truth of Being. (As a bonus aside, there is a teaching attributed to Rav Soloveitchik on this, which I heard second hand from his grandson, in which the episode in which Adam names the animals, and then suddenly senses loneliness and is given Chava as his mate, is directly a result of the recognition by Adam that objective zoological terms do not satisfactorily related to the Being that Adam senses that he is. He attempts to give them “names”, that is, personal names, but realizes rapidly that calling a cow “Betsy” does not mean anything to the cow, as far as we can tell they do not see themselves as individual beings to whom a “name” would matter. Thus he recognizes that he is alone without a partner, and is then ready for a mate, who he can appropriately call Chava.)

In my Vayera piece, we shall address one cardinal set of problems with Heidegger’s approach (and which may be related to deeper problems with Heidegger as a human being), as recognized by Levinas and Derrida, when we discuss the Akedah. For now, however, as what I am striving to present is a reading of the Kedushat Levi, we need to examine other possible explanations for what this angst derives from, and from where our sense of the missing mystery of our being may stem.

Umberto Eco’s recent work “Kant and the Platypus” begins with a long essay entitled “On Being”, which suggests convincingly that all the problems Heidegger solves by summoning up Being can be explained more fundamentally as a result of language, or more exactly our built in failure of language. In order to represent the world as it appears to us, we use language, which essentially works as a shorthand set of signs so that we can communicate in some way the objects we are presented with. We use the word “man” to cover the infinite variations and subtypes in genus, age, disposition, etc, in other words, all our words are very abstracted ciphers the use of which immediately robs the universe in front of us from all its variability. We impoverish our perceptions when we choose words, sacrificing all the elements presented to us in order to communicate. Technically, every object in every state would require a bundle of words to adequately be communicated. Thus, contra Aristotle and Plato, there are no essences at the core of being (neither subsistent nor derived), just hard choices. We should really even need to factor in changes in our mental states when using descriptive terms (say, the happiness we experience in smelling flowers when in that sort of mood, as opposed to how we see flowers when we aren’t in that sort of mood). This is why poetry works, it causes us to desist momentarily from what Vattimo calls the “suspension and shirking” of the perceived world that we are forced into in order to use language. Here is Eco:

…the language of the Poets seems to occupy a free zone. Liars by vocation, they are not those who say what being is but seem to be those who instead often permit themselves (and us) to deny its resistances- because for them tortoises can fly, and there can even be creatures that elude death. But their discourse, in telling us sometimes that even the impossibilia are possible, brings us face to face with the immoderate nature of our desire: by letting us glimpse what could be beyond the limit…

This is, as well, at the core of what is known as postmodern thought–the problem of legitimation. Since our discourse is really contingent on choices that we make in language, and there are infinite ways to present and represent, who can privilege and legitimate one approach to another? Midrash works in this manner. There are, in Midrash, many possible ways to read every text, every word, even the shapes and forms of the letters. (In the medieval period, the concept of “peshat”, a core meaning of the text was privileged for apologetic reasons, hence Midrash was not appreciated; it seems to have required the Hassidic hermeneutic to unleash Midrash again.) This Midrashic approach to reading is continued in the Zohar and the Tikkunei Zohar.

The Tikkunei Zohar is built around a set of readings of the first few words of our perasha, in which the letters of the word Bereishit are scrambled and broken down to reveal multiple possibilities. The Kedushat Levi (R. Levi Yitzchak of Berdichev) borrows one, where Bereishit, in the Beginning, is read as Bet Reishit, that is, two beginnings. Existence is composed of a split at its core. The plenitude of Gd, all the possible meanings and intentions encoded in creation, undergo a zimzum, a constriction, by virtue of language. Kol, raw sound, that is, the most basic response to the world, is constricted through speech, through choices of words that filter reality, “kol ehad lefi haratzon shelo”, every one’s choices corresponding to their will. Our choice of words, however, is from our prayers. On Rosh Hashana, which is our day of prayer relating to creation, we choose our world, so to speak, through Malchuyot, Zichronot, and Shofarot. As we said in the Rosh Hashana and Yom Kippur pieces, the first act of creation, as signified by the word Bereishit, the Ma’amar (speech act) that is prior to speech, represents the infinite set of possibilities that existence presents before limitation by speech. We reach back to that once a year by virtue of the shofar, that raw undifferentiated sound, prior to speech. From that point on, R. Levi Yitzhak explains, existence is carved out from the plenitude of being by the restriction and channel of language. This living grappling with reality is the second, “corresponding” Torah, Torah sheb’al peh, the Torah of words, our words, the set of readings that we choose and legitimize. Our choices in language determine our choice of shefa, of divine efflux; we create of the routes and funnels by which we experience Gd’s totality. Our prayer is this action, it is another act of creation, a creation anew of the modes by which we communicate with the world, and at the same time it is through prayer that we become capable of this act of creation. R. Pinchas of Koretz, one of the earliest Hassidic masters, used to say that just as Oral Law is Torah, and as such in essence an aspect of the Divine, then obviously prayer is a form of the Oral Law, and thus is also an aspect of the Divine Presence.

The creative aspect of prayer (in the sense that the sacrifices have become transvalued, or even sublated, into prayer) is clearly expressed in the Jerusalem Talmud, Rosh Hashana (chapt 4, halacha 8), the sacrifice of Rosh Hashana is commanded with a unique verb. In all other offerings the text says “you shall sacrifice”, in this one it commands “you shall make it”. Thus, the JT continues, by virtue of the Rosh Hashana observance it is as if you have created yourself anew. This concept of personal re-creation through words is at play in BT Sanhedrin 99:, in which teaching another Torah is described alternately as recreating the student, recreating Torah, and recreating yourself. Thus, every creative act is more than an expression of being, it is in fact an act of Creation in the fullest sense.

Perhaps, then, if prayer brings about creation, then now, more than ever we must pray for peace…

The period of time in the Hebrew calendar reaching from Rosh Hashana to Yom Kippur is thought of generally as one unit, in English commonly referred to as the High Holidays, whereas Sukkot, the festival which follows four days after Yom Kippur, is generally thought of as a festive holiday, one of the three biblical Temple festivals (Pesach, Shavuot, and Sukkot), entirely distinct from the Days of Awe which happen to precede it. The mystics, however, view the period from Rosh Hashana until the end of Sukkot as one long arc, not as distinct notes on the page but as one continuous unfolding melody reaching its crescendo not at Yom Kippur, as we might guess, but at Hoshana Rabba (the last day of Sukkot prior to the final festival of Shemini Atzeret and Simchat Torah). As this tradition is unfamiliar to most people, we may have an easier time in resacralizing it in a way that would be meaningful for our contemporary situation.

The first step would be to depart from our usual hierarchy regarding seriousness over joy. Mardi Gras is always first, followed by Lent; one parties first and then when that is done, one can graduate to solemnity. However, the difference to be emphasized here is that the apogee of repentance and life transformation comes not at Yom Kippur, during the ‘serious’ service, but at Sukkot, the holiday described biblically as ‘the time of our rejoicing’. Rather than attempt to summarize the roots of this concept, I will quote R. Pinchas of Koretz, one of the earliest Hassidic thinkers, who was contemporary with the Baal Shem Tov, and whose analogy is quite memorable:

‘the time of our rejoicing’: Sukkah is the unification of HVYH and ADNY (the male and female names of Gd- numerically Sukka=91=the two names of Gd combined). This unification brings about Da’at (which is the Kabbalistic term for the interface between the two highest male/female names of Gd, and literally means Understanding. For context, Moshe, who brings the Torah from Sinai, represents Da’at), and when there is knowledge, there is joy.

The proof (for the superiority of joy over sadness, sukkot over the high holy days)  is, that if one observes a newborn, who has very little understanding– already at birth he is capable of crying. It is only much later, when their understanding grows– that a baby can smile‘

Thus, there is a greater spiritual and cognitive message implicit in the joy of the Sukkah experience than in all the crying meant to occur during the High Holidays! Any baby can cry, but it takes deeper understanding to smile.  Perhaps we can understand this to be more than a cute metaphor when we recognize the reasoning behind it:  that the repentance and spiritual growth seen in the High Holidays is a personal, individual one, whereas the joy of Sukkot reflects an interpersonal, social level (the analogy to the newborn is even more apt using modern pediatric developmental terminology– this facial expression which the baby achieves as a significant milestone of development is referred to as the ‘social smile’).

There is support for the social nature of Sukkot back at the source; for example, the Torah tells us that the people were meant to gather with the king in the event known as ‘hakhel’ (‘congregate’) every seven years specifically on Sukkot. A global perspective is taken by the Talmud, as the seventy sacrificial cows brought on Sukkot during the Temple period were read as being offered for the sake of all the nations of the world. The Sukka itself, as an image, suggesting a remembrance of the plight of the refugee, can certainly be read in this way, as does the Midrash and the medieval thinkers, and as did Rabbi Arthur Waskow in a recent issue of The Nation. Rav Tzadok Hacohen of Lublin, in fact, explains that Sukkot follows the High Holiday period as a penitential exercise, that is, should we have been found guilty of sins requiring exile, we are, as it were, paying the price.

However, when one keeps in mind the emphasis on this being a time of joy, it seems more in tune with joy to read into the Sukka a “positive” value, that is, whereas the refugee imagery stresses the Sukka as symbolic of a “negative” value, a lack, a deficiency, (as per Hanna Arendt’s concept of the refugee being morally superior, given the lack of ability to oppress anyone, etc), clearly, to the mystics, a symbol associated with the highest Divine Union must contain within itself also a positive spiritual sense.

Interestingly, even when using the “negative” reading of the Sukka, there is an implied positive undercurrent. Thus, for example, the Bat Ayin, who spins the negative transient quality of  Sukka living into a positive, for creating a permanent dwelling would impede the continuous ascent that we make; he reads the verse in Kohelet 7:23, which is read on the Sabbath of Sukkot– “I thought I would be wise (echkimah), but she is ever further from me”, as suggesting that the ideal is not reaching (or inhabiting) a fixed goal, but rather a more fluid, never-ending attainment of higher and higher divine states.

If not only a negative space, then what is the positive element signified by the Sukka? Geographically, as it were, the Sukka is viewed as encompassing a novel, even privileged spiritual space– ‘I love Sukkot because it is the one commandment which I can be immersed in with my boots on’ goes the line attributed to R. Shmelkie of Nicholsburg. This viewing of the material substance as reflecting a divine containment (the Hida points out that the word Sukka itself in Hebrew, contains the two names of Gd not only in its total numerical value, but in the form whereby the outside two letters, S-H, equal the male term, and the inner letters, V-K equal the female name) is that seized upon by the Tiferet Shlomo. In the biblical proof text instructing the people to sit in the Sukka, the verse which reads “In Sukkot teshvu (shall you sit) seven days, in order that your generations shall know”, he adds another possible reading of the word teshvu as being derived not only from lashevet, to sit, but from the word teshuva, return, repentance, and thus the knowledge, the da’at, the level of relationship with Gd that was vivdly experienced by the generation liberated from Egypt, can be recreated by the act of teshuva, repentance, specific to the Sukka.

But what is that element that is specific to the Sukka that brings about this unique and high level of spiritual attainment? For this the Tiferet Shlomo cites another verse with a word similar to Sukka (more specifically, to the Halachically critical aspect of the Sukka– it is not the walls of the Sukka that are central, but rather the Sechach, the ecologically signifying roof, which must be made of organic substances only). The word sechach used as a verb is found in the verse regarding the Cherubim, the sculpture of two winged angels,  which adorned the ark which held the Tablets upon which were inscribed the original ten commandments. These Cherubim were described as creating a canopy with their wings (sochichim b’kanfeihem) the covering of the ark (the kaporet, which is itself similar to the word kapara, atonement).

In other words, according to the Tiferest Shlomo, Sukkot is the highest possibility of repentance, of world transformation (his exact phrase is ‘Rosh Hashana and Yom Kippur are the hakdama, the prologue to Sukkot’), and the specific defining feature of the superiority of Sukkot is found in the continuation of the verse about the Cherubim- who are described as being situated ‘with their faces one to another’.

Thus, the possibility for change for the better is highest on Sukkot, because in the Sukka, at the table, one is contained within the same space as another, face to face as it were, and thus the emphasis must be one’s responsibility for the Other.

This concept, of Sukkot being primarily about the encounter with others, and not simply the spiritual growth of the Self, is seen in the well known, but not fully understood, tradition of the Ushpizin, the supernal visitors (Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, etc) who are welcomed into the Sukka each night. This tradition, which has become very widely accepted, is of late origin and is first found in the Zohar (III:103b). What is less well known is that this passage in the Zohar is meant to encourage the invitation of the needy to the festival table, to force contemplation of social justice. The Ushpizin come to partake not of the Sukka per se but of the meals placed for the poor, and as the Zohar states: ‘woe is he to whom a portion for the poor is not placed!’

This theme of inclusiveness as the central motif of the Sukkot experience is emphasized in the readings of the other unique symbol of this holiday, the four species which are bound together and waved originally as part of the Temple service, now during the synagogue prayers. There are a series of midrashim attempting to explain this odd agricultural service, but the one that concerns us likens the four species to differing types of people within the community: the etrog (citron), which is fragrant and tasty, represents those who are both well versed and act for the common good, the lulav (palm frond), produces edible fruit but has no fragrance, is like those who are well versed but don’t act for the common good, the hadassim (myrtle branches) are fragrant but produce no fruit, symbolizing those who do good but haven’t studies, whereas the aravah (willow branch), has neither fruit nor fragrance, and stands in for those members of the community who neither know nor volunteer. The midrash continues that together, they will atone one for another. It is not to be assumed, however, that the midrash means that the three more worthy types will atone for the ‘arava’, for that is not the language used, particularly in a parallel teaching in the Talmud (BT Menahot 27) which stresses that Israel does not achieve appeasement until all four are bound as one unity. The arava can’t be depreciated, even in the Midrashic reading, for in other Midrashim, brought in conjunction with this one, the arava is symbolic of any of the following highly positive references: the lips, Joseph, the matriarch Rachel, the court scribes, the name of Gd. Furthermore, on the final day of Sukkot, on the day which according to the Mishna the divine allotment of water for the whole world is decreed, the day on which (as a result of this Mishnaic view) according to the mystics, the absolutely final judgment on each individual is sealed (a view already found as early as Ramban), on this momentous day it is precisely the arava alone that is paraded around the altar, from Temple times to this very day.

So what, then, do the ‘aravot’, the unschooled, inactive people bring to the communal table? According to the Sefat Emet, they represent the ability to transcend the given situation of an individual, through prayer (hence the midrash comparing the arava to lips). Similarly, according to the Pri Ha’aretz, the arava symbolized pure emunah, pure faith, transcendent of the fragrance and flavor of either intellect or praxis. At any rate, we see that it is the total community, with its strengths and weaknesses, that are bound together in a mutually compensatory relationship. (In fact, according to the Tiferet Shlomo, the obscure custom of hitting the arava on the ground on Hoshana Rabba, a custom so obscure that it is labeled ‘of prophetic origin’, is meant to demonstrate that any segment of the people that breaks away from concern for all, that travels its own solitary way without regard for the others, as does the arava on its solo circuit around the altar on Hoshana Rabba, is doomed to a bad end.)

So perhaps we are not veering too far from the original message of Sukkot by suggesting that Hoshanna Rabba become synonymous with community-wide efforts to combat poverty. Perhaps that is a day when trans-denominational efforts to deal with local poverty, world-wide hunger, and an end to war, can be institutionalized and inscribed into the calendar, and celebrated as a holiday, perhaps the way it was originally intended. True joy is in the negation of suffering, it is the overcoming of sadness and grief we must celebrate.

(If anyone wants to seriously put this thought into action, I would be glad to be of assistance, contact me via email at mkirschb@yahoo.com)