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)

When I was a child, I remember asking my father what his favorite holiday was, to which he replied, without blinking an eye: Yom Kippur. I thought he was just being his usual contrarian self, but later found that indeed, the Talmud agrees with him, stating that Yom Kippur was one of the two happiest days of the year for the people of Israel¹. Why should a day we traditionally experience as being somber be considered the happiest day of the year? It would appear that there are two reasons. The first being that in antiquity, at this time of the day, just after musaf on Yom Kippur, there was a big dance event, all the single women would dress in white and dance in the fields for the single men who would choose among them and subsequently marry. Unfortunately, this is no longer a part of our Yom Kippur experience, but perhaps the Book of Jonah might point to our other source of joy on this day.

It is an odd little book. Most of us know the part about a whale, but in short, the story relates how Gd appears to the prophet Jonah ben Amitai and tells him he needs to go abroad to save a city from destruction. Prophesizing to the surrounding nations is not unusual for the classical prophets, they are all recorded as doing it, but this time, rather than raining doom upon enemies, Jonah is told to go save the most wicked and nasty of Israel’s enemies, the people of Ninveh. Jonah knows just how bad these people will ultimately become, because he is described in the book of Kings II as prophesizing  how they will conquer Israel and destroy the Temple, imagine a nationalist prophet having to go save someone like Ahmadinejad. So his response is to board a boat and go in exactly the opposite direction. This part of the story we all know; there’s a storm and ultimately Jonah is thrown overboard. Incidentally, this text may be the first and last description of polite sailors… At any rate, Gd “rubs it in” by having Jonah saved via a big fish, the fish being the symbol of Ninveh (“nun” in Aramaic means “fish”). So after being spit out, Jonah obediently makes his way to Ninveh, delivers his message of “repent or die” and to his dismay, the people of Ninveh, all the way up to the king, indeed repent and are saved. Jonah sulks outside of the city, where he finds some shade under a “kikayon” bush. Gd, completing his message to us, sends a worm which sucks the life out of the bush, and Jonah throws a fit. Gd says to him, so you are upset over the loss of this bush that helped you out this one time? Jonah answers, yes, I’m REALLY upset, to which Gd replies, this one time favor, the way this bush helped you out NOW is what is crucial to your feelings about it? Well, RIGHT NOW this city has repented. What happened in the past has been atoned, and what will come in the future is still subject to change, but RIGHT NOW I will not destroy them because of your political grievances.

And this , I submit, is the cause of the joy of Yom Kippur. We can look at our lives, see the mistakes we’ve made, and say, I can’t change the past, and who knows what the future will hold, but I can say that RIGHT NOW, just before our beautiful Neila service², that I want to be a better person, that I want to change my life, and RIGHT NOW that’s really all one needs to turn one’s life around. There really is no greater happiness than that.

¹Tu B’Av being the other, see our essay on Perashat Ekev for a “feminist” reading of this link to Tu B’Av.

²Rabbi Felipe Goodman of Temple Beth Shalom has created a unique custom for his congregation of filing before the open ark during the neila service that is quite striking and should be more well known.

In the shiur regarding Rosh Hashana, we saw how the shofar connected us to a moment unlimited by, or outside of, time. This radicalization of the perception of time bears an even more immediate relationship to the concept of Yom Kippur and its central component, Teshuva, or repentance, as the word teshuva is roughly translated.

The unlinkage of our normal perception of the flow of time is made evident right in the initial textual ambiguity regarding the day of Yom Hakippurim. This ambiguity is nicely presented in BT Pesahim 68:

Mar son of Ravina would fast on all the days of the year except for Purim, Shavuout, and the eve of Yom Kippur,(the ninth of Tishrei, as opposed to the tenth, which is the date of Yom Kippur), since it says (Vayikra 23:32) “v’initem et nafshotayhem batisha’ lahodesh”- “and you shall deprive yourselves on the ninth of the month”- Is the fast actually on the ninth? No, the fast is on the tenth (Vayikra 23:26)! So this text comes to teach us, that one who eats and drinks on the ninth, it is as if one fasted for two days consecutively…

Essentially, the text provides, within the space of several verses, two different dates for the “soul deprivation”. To reconcile this contradiction, a special status was granted for the ninth, the day before the fast, in which the act of eating becomes consecrated. The noteworthy element is that the otherwise joyous act of eating is here considered an “innui”, a deprivation, an act related to suffering, the term usually reserved for fasting.

Well, if the act of eating is considered an “innui”, then what is the day in which we fast considered? The BT in Taanit 26: , in a passage which we analyzed in depth regarding the fifteenth of Av, explains:

There were no happier days for Israel than Yom Kippur and the 15th of Av, as a result the women would dance through the vineyards… “Bishlama”(This is obvious) regarding Yom Kippur, since it is the day of forgiveness, (“sliha and mehila”), …

In other words, here the Talmud considers the fast day, the day of “innui”, to be the holiday.

The passages brought above illustrate two points. First of all, they support our hypothesis about the out-of-time nature of Yom Kippur. I’d like to suggest a second message within these texts, a supplementary tangential point about the meaning of “innui”.

The term “innui” to which we’ve referred several times is usually rendered along the lines of “torment”, “suffering”, “affliction”, etc. How can this type of term be applied to activities usually considered enjoyable, such as eating? To reconcile these passages, I would suggest a reconsideration of what the goals of the day are. While commonly one views the fasting on Yom Kippur as a kind of suffering or punishment, but we will argue that the act of fasting on Yom Kippur is not meant to serve as scourge or torture, retribution or punishment, but rather it reflects a joyous act of liberation, a liberation from the suffering of the physical. The non-eating and non-drinking of Yom Kippur signifies and elevation of the totality of our being to a place where we do not require material sustenance. Rav Tzadok proposes many times in his writings that so many of the commandments are related to eating because it is both a flawed activity, at the root of flawed desires as seen at the very first sin, that of Adam and Hava, and at the same time a route of union with all things, a way to integrate all material being within our own spiritual activity. On Yom Kippur, however, we get to experience the consummation and transcendence of this world transforming endeavour. Moshe Haim Luzzatto in Daat Tevunot stresses that the “fall” of Adam and Hava as a result of sin was one of the spirit, symbolized by exile from the “garden”, meaning that what we experience as the “spiritual” in our current state was earlier the “material” for Adam and Hava, and their “spiritual” was some grander stated not normally within our consciousness. This level is potentially attained on Yom Kippur. This then explains why the act of eating, to those with greatly rarified souls, such as Mar, son of Ravina, on the day before the fast, this necessary eating to enable the subsequent fast, is recognition of the as-yet unperfected nature of human existence. When we eat, we recall our still unperfected nature, when we not-eat on Yom Kippur, we get the chance to experience a higher stage in our future development. Thus the eating is the “innui” and the non-eating is the “day of joy”.

Returning to our central thesis, regarding the outside-of-time nature of Yom Kippur, we have other, more literal prooftexts. Stating this proposition directly, the Tana D’vei Eliyahu, an early midrash, begins with the teaching based on a verse in Tehillim: (139:16) “my unformed body was forseen by You, for in your book all are written, the days they will be made, and one of them was for it as well”. The important clause for us is the last one, ambiguous enough in terms of meaning, but rendered more confusing due to the textual variant preserved by the Masora- the Hebrew phrase reads: yamim yutzaru, v’lo echad bahem. The word “v’lo” can be read with the letter vav at the end, meaning “and for it”, a third person possessive, but can also be read, with an aleph at the end “and it is not”. The Tana D’vei Eliyahu opts for the negating version, reading the verse as: “days were fashioned but this day is not one of them”, and explains that this verse is referring to Yom Kippur, which is a day that is not a “day”, rather it is a day outside of the normal flow of time.

A second prooftext is found in BT Yoma 20. The Talmud narrates a conversation between R. Yehuda and the prophet Eliyahu. This R. Yehuda, brother of R. Sela Hassida, apparently asked Eliyahu on Yom Kippur, while in some lofty spiritual state, how it is that despite it being Yom Kippur and everyone is in a state of repentance, that the Messiah hasn’t come (for after all, if the whole world is rectified, the Messiah ought to appear). Eliyahu reportedly answered that despite it being Yom Kippur, sexual violations were occurring even in Neharda’a, the big yeshiva town. Gd is willing to be more lenient, blaming it on the evil impulse, the “satan”, but the “satan” defends himself, stating that he isn’t the cause of people sinning, he has off on Yom Kippur- the word “hasatan” has the mathematical equivalent of 364, which means, the Talmud explains, that for 364 days the “satan” tempts the soul, but on Yom Kippur, it’s the soul’s own fault. In other words, the Talmud is saying, 1. Yom Kippur is a day outside of the normal flow of time, and 2. sin is not an externally mediated phenomenon alone; there is the potential within every person which can lead them astray, perhaps the physicality of being is inextricably burdened with drives and desires, without the need for external “tempting”.

Returning to the the issue of stepping outside of temporality, why is the necessary requirement for self-correction linked to a day outside of time? To answer this, we can uncover a deep insight into the core of the experience of teshuva, of the unique Jewish approach to self-correction.

Rav Kook, in Orot Hateshuva 6:5, writes:

The resulting reality, the choices the person makes, and their underlying will, are links in a great big chain, which are never disconnected. The will of a man is linked to his actions. Even the actions of the past are not disconnected from the ongoing being and the will at the root of the person. Since nothing comes loose, the person has the ability to place a new color even upon actions of the past. This is the secret meaning of Teshuva, which Gd created prior to creating the world, in other words, He extended the human spiritual creativity to encompass the past as well. The bad action rolls on forward, snowballing into more degradation and contempt, until this creative will transforms it into a new shade of meaning, that of the good, at which point it itself spins out of itself the positive, the grace of Gd and His light. (my translation).

This conception, that actions of the past can actually be changed by teshuva in the present, is not unique to R. Kook. Earlier support for this can be found in Takanat Hashavin of R. Zadok Hacohen of Lublin, who states at the beginning of Siman 5 that teshuva is the transformation in the present of sins that have already transpired in the past. This is not simply some kind of Hassidic innovation, in fact the prooftexts for these teachings are found in the Talmud, in BT Yoma 86: -Resh Lakish is quoted in two alternate citations:

1. “Great is Teshuva in that intentional misdeeds are reckoned as though they were unintentional misdeeds”, while the alternate version is even more radical:

2. Great is Teshuva in that intentional misdeeds are reckoned as though they were meritorious actions.

So how does this all work? We can understand the concept of forgiveness, or pardon, but what does it mean to say that one can reach back into the past and transform actions that have already transpired, to remake intentional violations into unintentional or even meritorious actions?

I propose that teshuva operates as does memory, outside of time. We have seen earlier that in order to recognize a melody, or to understand any event that unfolds in time, we must have the ability for cognitive activity outside of time. Some aspect of our being, that which Husserl couldn’t really define although he stated it must exist, that which we would call the neshama, the soul, has the capacity to reach to that place which is outside of time.This “place”, transcendent to normal time and space, is the place where Teshuva takes place. The Kabbalists, following the Talmudic teaching that Teshuva is prior to the creation of the world, gave this “place” a name, sefirat Binah. According to the Luzzatto, in his commentary to “Arimat Yadi b’tzlothun”, time itself is only a transient creation, created along with the universe, and reflecting only the lower aspects of creation (in kabbalistic terms: zeman is the numerical equivalent of ma”h and be”n, which are the divine names reflecting the lower aspects of creation), thus time is not operative at the spiritual place at which teshuva operates. Yom Kippur, Teshuva, the human:divine dialogue expedited by the shofar, itself outside of time – all these things work because they operate transtemporally. Thus, in a sense, the person reorienting his or her life is given the opportunity to reach beyond time allowing the past to be read in an entirely different fashion.This is not a merely fanciful, “spiritual” use of words to describe a religious experience, I believe that this makes sense on a literary and philosophical place as well. Here is Nietzche, talking of the route in which historical research operates:

Historia abscondita- Every great human being exerts a retroactive force: for his sake all of history is placed in the balance again, and a thousand secrets of the past crawl out of their hiding places- into his sunshine. There is no way of telling what may yet become part of history. Perhaps the past is still essentially undiscovered! So many retroactive forces are still needed! (The Gay Science 34, tr. Walter Kauffman)

Nietzsche recognizes that our constructs of history are subjectively determined; the outcome in essence determines what is worth studying retrospectively. PhD’s study the social and economic development of little towns in Europe because important people were born there, and not the reverse. The past is still “undiscovered”, because it is our actions in the present that will determine what will enter “History”. History in this sense shares many operations with the literary- when at the end of a novel the identity of the criminal is finally revealed, suddenly in one moment all the odd facts and seemingly irrelevant episodes narrated earlier take on new meaning. Only at the end of the book can we attribute sense to all that transpired earlier.

These then, as R. Kook explains, are the retroactive forces by which we are enabled to transform sins into merits. They are all links in a chain, as R. Kook put it, the full implications to which they connect are only understood later, at the end. Resh Lakish was originally a criminal, and so he would have been judged as such by anyone who knew him at that point in his life. Later, when he became a major Talmudic figure, the meaning of his earlier life becomes entirely reread into an entirely different narrative. This rerouting of our own narratives is what is made possible by the transtemporal nature of teshuva.

Thus, perhaps the sages were not merely being figurative when they talked about teshuva and this period of the year in terms of books:

R. Cruspedai taught in the name of R. Yohanan: Three books are opened on Rosh Hashana…the righteous are immediately inscribed in the book of life… (BT Rosh Hashana 16: ).

Perhaps they are alluding to this narrative function of teshuva. Note that the reflexive form of the verb is used (nechtavim, nechtamim) for the act of inscribing. These books, the books of our lives, are written by us, the actions inscribed in them are the result of our own choice; we are the authors who get to determine the outcome of the episodes narrated in the early sections of this “book”. Will there be happy ending? A tragic ending? The author who gets to decide how the ending turns out is revealed as none other than the major character about whom the book revolves.

Gmar Hatima Tova to all of you.

(Two postscripts: One, is that this recognition of the transtemporal nature of the shofar experience is also noted in R. Hutner’s Pahad Yitzchak, Rosh Hashana section 24. The other thing I’ve been thinking about, is how we’ve noted before that the “innui” is related by these texts specifically to eating. Could it be that eating is linked to memoire involuntaire, to the triggering of unanalyzed and unrectified past events, much as in the case of Proust’s madeleines?)

A thought for those not facing the holidays eagerly,  based on the above texts… Part 2- Yom Kippur

In the previous Rosh Hashana essay, we contemplated the position of one who feels lost and in despair , not in a space for the moment of joy or soul searching simply because such activities are mandated by the calendar (let us say that it was not a remarkable leap of novelistic imagination for me to sympathize with that situation). In that essay, using classic texts to highlight the alternative nature of time as it pertains to these holidays, we were able to construct using reading from the Sefat Emet a path towards an initial awakening possible for the individual made possible by the idea of judgment, where judgment is defined as an encounter, a desire to take seriously the meaning of the events of one’s own life and present them, as it were, for analysis, to perhaps have them reread in a different context, one of tovah, of the good.

It became clear to me, as I dealt with this set of feelings in my own life, that there was implicit in the texts of the Hassidic masters an arc that carries this approach through the set of holidays of this month, from Rosh Hashana to Yom Kippur and, contrary to the usual preconceptions, reaching an apogee at Sukkot.  Building upon the texts presented in the above Yom Kippur essay, which emphasized the day being one that stands outside of time and how that relates to the creation of personal narrative.  Tying these essays together I suggest that we can conceptualize a second step in the rebuilding of the individual. If the first step translates the term mishpat, judgment, into a therapeutic category of analysis, on Yom Kippur we might advocate a redefinition of the concept of tahara, purity, into one of individuation. For this we will follow a reading of the Tiferet Shlomo (TS).

TS begins with the Mishna in Talmud Yoma 85:, which begins with a statement  that the day of Yom Kippur itself produces atonement for certain types of sins, and provides two attempts to suggest prooftexts for this idea. The first is that of Rabbi Elazer ben Azariah, who cites the verse in Vayikra 16:30 that

…on this day, from all your sins you shall be atoned, lifnei Hashem titharu, you will be purified before Gd.

The mishna then cites a second supporting reading, that of  Rabbi Akiva who taught:

Fortunate are you O Israel, lifnei mi, before whom are you purified, and who purifies you? Your father in heaven as it says (Ezekiel 36:25) “I will sprinkle pure water upon you and you shall be purified of all you sins” and as it says (Jeremiah 17),” mikvah yisrael hashem- G-d is the mikvah (ritual purification waters) of Israel- for as the mikvah purifies the impure, so too does Gd purify the people of Israel”.

TS wonders what supplemental information is transmitted in the second proof text quoted by Rabbi Akiva. Rabbi Elazar in the first prooftext established a connection to purification and the day of Yom Kippur, and the text from Ezekiel supports a connection to ritual ablution, so why the third text relating to mikvah?

TS derives two central ideas from the flow of the Mishna’s reading. The first point R. Akiva makes  is a riff on the verse in Vayikra, where the word lifnei is used, and according to TS Rabbi Akiva is making a statement, rather than asking a question-  not lifnei mi, before whom are you purified?, but rather lifnei mi, beyond “mi” is where purification is accomplished.  The term mi in classical Kabbala represents the divine aspect of Binah, Wisdom (mi numerically equals 50, the 50 gates of wisdom). Thus “beyond binah” would be the space of the emanation of Keter, which is the highest spiritual level in the sephirotic tree, but important for our purposes, it is an area in which there is not yet any intermixture of evil, it is a space of pure Good (evil only emerges from binah). This, to TS, explains why we so frequently use the “higher” Kedusha prayer that begins with Keter (in the Nusach Sefard prayerbook favored by Chassidim) during Yom Kippur, also, conveniently, the word titharu, purified, has the same numerical value as keter, 420. In short, Rabbi Akiva first teaches that the moment of Yom Kippur transpires at a level which is shielded from the intrusion of evil, conflict, and despair.

The second text Rabbi Akiva brings, while again relating purification to water, changes the situational relationship to this water. In the earlier prooftext, the metaphor is one of water being sprinkled above, but this was inadequate a representation of Yom Kippur. Yom Kippur, in this reading, is not trickled from above like rain, but is rather an immersion. The mikvah requires total immersion of the body, it is a space that one enters with one’s totality. With this the metaphor is complete. On Yom Kippur we enter a safe zone, one that is devoid of conflict, a place where the despair that is the result of conflicted feelings within the individual can be resolved, and our true nature “purified” as it were, a protected temporal space for healing. He provides an interesting explanation for a curious line in the Sabbath prayer with this approach, that makes much sense. It states that “Gd’s mercy is eternal for splitting the Red Sea”, and then that   “Gd’s mercy is eternal  for leading the people of Israel through those split waters”, which appears redundant. The point according to TS is that the second phrase points to an important concept in the relation of Gd and humanity- that in the entering of that protected space within the split waters, the experience of an existential safe zone, entirely encompassing and immersing the individual and shielding one from all torment and strife, is possible and real.

In summary, we have two stages of psychological progress. The first moment, that of “judgment” on Rosh Hashana, is one of encounter with one’s own issues and conflicts, which alone can accomplish a level of personal transformation. The next step, of “purification”, of healing and resolution of internal conflict, doubt and the resulting harm to personal integrity, is accomplished by the withdrawal outside of the normal flow of time and the interpersonal processes that impact upon the individual; immersion in the protected space of Yom Kippur. The third stage we will discuss more at length in an essay on Sukkot, which will symbolize “joy”,  a protected space for the newly healed to achieve reinsertion into the social sphere.

The liturgical and ritual richness of the High Holiday season has produced a number of vibrant symbols which seem to maintain their ability to reverberate in consciousness repeatedly through the ages. After all, the theme of the period is the interplay of creation and judgment, reflection and repentance, concepts at the core of human existence; after all, it is traditional to look at Rosh Hashana as the day which determines life or death, as it were, for the coming year. So one would imagine that the prayerbook would, over the generations, become a listing of things people want for the coming year, a catalogue of needs to pray for. However, reading through the prayerbook one would quickly see that there’s very little petitionary prayer regarding mundane needs; the mystics in particular insist that the life we pray for on is not primarily the physical but the spiritual (cf Tikkunei Zohar 6). Interestingly, the attempt to repress what is clearly on most people’s mind led to even more creative re-symbolization such as the punning use of blessings over various fruits and vegetables to symbolize potential blessings for the upcoming year, of which the apple dipped in honey has taken on independent life as a signifier. The Sefat Emet adds another level of signification to these, so that the way that we extract these semantic hints from the names of the fruit instruct us how to see the possibilities of spirituality in every physical object. Perhaps it is the sense we have of these layers upon layers of meaning during the experience of the High Holidays that makes them a particularly moving time.

One image that is strongly associated with these holidays that has become particularly evocative and metonymic for the entire season is that which grew out of this Talmudic teaching:

R. Cruspedai taught in the name of R. Yohanan: Three books are opened on Rosh Hashana, one of the totally wicked, one of the totally righteous, and one for those in-between. The righteous are immediately inscribed and signed off in the book of life, the wicked are immediately inscribed and signed off in the book of death, and those in-between have their fate suspended until Yom Kippur- if they are worthy, they are inscribed in the book of life, and if not, in the book of death  (BT Rosh Hashana 16: ).

The imagery imagined in this text, of the book of life, has evolved into a central motif of the holiday, with the phrase “sefer hachayim”, book of life, appearing multiple times in the liturgy, as well as becoming part of the standard greeting for the holiday, and in countless greeting cards and supermarket advertisements. A dear friend tells me that as a child, if she would get restless during Rosh Hashana services, her mother would shoosh her saying “don’t you realize that the Book of Life is open?” What is it about this symbol of a book of life that resonates so deeply?

This image itself, of a book of life in which individual fates are inscribed, can be broken down into several component parts, such as the book itself, the act of writing, the content inscribed. The Kedushat Levi is stuck by the need for a “book”. In fact, he says, the book is secondary, as evidenced by the way this concept was incorporated into the liturgy. We say, multiple times during this period, “zachrenu l’chayim melech chafetz b’chayim, remember us for life, king who celebrates life, v’katvenu b’sefer hachayim, l’maancha elokim chayim, and inscribe us in the book of life for your sake, the living Elokim”. He sees the two phrases as reflecting two realities. In the true state of things, where our relationship with Gd would be direct and unimpeded, we would be like friends sharing things freely, and our shared gifts would be remembered without need for accounting. However, since we live in an unperfected world of sin and error, our actions need to be recorded, as in a court of law or an accounting audit, so that if there are prosecuting doubts, the written record can be provided. Thus, when we invoke Gd as direct king (melech), memory (zechira) is adequate, but if we are in the more distant relational state represented by the divine name Elokim, which is the divine name traditionally understood as representing Gd in the relationship with humanity of “judgment”, then we need the recourse to the printed record, the “book of life”. When the good is recorded as in a book, signed and sealed, that will cause those things that hinder our spiritual development to “back off” (his words, yasigu achor).

In turning to the “content” of this “book”, there is the obvious question, if indeed this teaching is to be read literally, then one must conclude that this is a book without significant impact. Our experience teaches us that it is certainly not the case that the evil perish and the righteous live on. So what then is the book of “life” about?  Or let us ask, what actions or “events” make up the content of this book?

The concept of “events” has become a hot topic of contemporary philosophical discourse, prompted by Alain Badiou’s book L’etre et l’evenment. In his presentation, our normal existence is constituted of the infinite items of our experience, undifferentiated and given, some things in our life are presented but not represented (things that don’t always fit into our given framework of lifestyle, society, etc). However, according to Badiou, there are transformative Events, which often appear to be ex-nihilo, since they appear to come out of the “void”, the component of the normal situation which is often suppressed or repressed (so in his case of the French Revolution, it would be the rabble that was not accounted for in the usual presentation of what French society at the time was). However, when the Event occurs, it becomes recognized as such by giving itself a name (ie the French Revolution) suddenly it gives retrospective meaning to the “void” (that excess of non-comprehended aspects of the pre-event life, ie, the exploited rabble), and most importantly, it actually “creates” the subject who participated in the Event (who are now Revolutionaries). For our purposes, there is a circle established between the Event, the recognition that an Event has transpired by those who “wager” that something transformative has happened, and the subject who is now in a sense transformed by the action that the subject participated in (or chose to recognize as such). Thus, not everything that happens in the normal flow of existence is an Event, the being of an Event is determined by those involved and is, at the same time, constitutive and transformative of those involved.

In this light, we can return to the “book of life”. The Tiferet Shlomo  explains, if I may borrow the above language, that the good we do in our lives makes up the Events of our lives. It is the actions we do, with the proper motivation, to improve the world, not for our reward, that make up the text of the book of life. These actions are registered in the “book of life” because actions of this sort are like living breathing organisms, full of “chiyut”, vital life force, that outlive our mere physical existence. And in fact, adds the Tiferet Shlomo, at this time of year, we examine our lives, our actions, and can “edit” our past actions and thus elevate them as well, his phrase is “give them wings to soar upward”. In this way, he reads the line from the liturgy cited earlier in connection with the Kedushat Levi as reading “write our actions in the book, the living ones (reading “write them in the book of life” as “write them in the book, the living/vital ones), the ones done for your sake Elokim…”

The Sefat Emet, following in this path states flatly that the life we are asking for on Rosh Hashana is that same spiritual vitality, the life of the soul. The 3 books mentioned in the Talmud correspond to the balance between material and spiritual in each individual. The book of “life”, of spiritual alive-ness,  represents those who have transcended the physical, as in the Talmudic dictum that the righteous even in death are considered “alive”, certainly one can understand how spiritual achievements take on an infinite life of their own beyond the mere physical existence of the body. On the other hand, those who have surrendered entirely to their physical being, are in the book of death, because of the ineluctable progress of the body towards aging sickness and death. Those who are in the middle ground, have the opportunity with the newness of the new year, Rosh Hashana, to evaluate which element of themselves will predominate and bring themselves as a totality over rekindled spiritual awareness and “life”. And this, according to the Sefat Emet, is a reciprocal process- the spiritual chiyut (vitality) we choose on Rosh Hashana is the spiritual life we are rewarded with.

May we all choose wisely. Shana Tova to all, and may all have a vital live year!

After the long speech by Moshe, a summation of the exodus and the wanderings through the desert, which constitutes the Mishne Torah, the fifth book of the Torah, Moshe decides to wrap things up with two things, a lengthy poem, which makes up the bulk of Perashat Ha’azinu and a set of blessings to the tribes which brings the book of Devarim to an end.

The blessings, we are told (Devarim 27:1), were given by Moshe prior to his death. From this language, the Sifri, quoted in Rashi, surmises that these blessings were given literally just before Moshe died, in the “if not now then when?” situation. It would seem from the commentators that these blessings are perceived in that sort of last minute sense. Most of the traditional commentators suggest that these blessings to the tribes are formulaic and ritualistic- Abraham, Isaac, and Yaakov did it (at the end of the Book of Bereishit), and Moshe continues in that mode. Ibn Ezra views these blessings as being prophetic in origin, implying that Moshe didn’t “compose” them at all, but was merely the vehicle for them. Following either approach, we can conclude that the last major act of Moshe was the composition of the long poem presented in Perashat Haazinu, with Perashat Zot Haberacha, which contains the blessings, to be more of an epilogue. In fact, the normative tradition seems to approach the blessings in just this way, in that the perasha of the blessings is not read on a regular Shabbat as are all the other sections of the Torah, rather it is read on Shemini Atzeret (or outside of Israel on the day after, on “Simchat Torah”), where it is conjoined to the beginning of the Torah, to Bereishit (which is then reread in full, akin to all the other perashiyot, on a regular Shabbat).

R. Zadok Hacohen explains this tradition as confirming the merely supplementary nature of Zot Heberacha, of Moshe’s blessings being merely a completion of Yaakov’s blessings, and thus not being equivalent to the rest of the Torah, and thus read only on a holiday, and not on a Shabbat (Of course, these days, when one states that a text is merely supplementary, one is almost inviting an orthodox deconstructionist to tell you why it is the most important part of the whole text; I welcome such a reading if any readers have one. My email is listed below…)

In summary, then, we see that Moshe, chooses, as his last conscious act, to end with a poem. Why a poem? After all, at this point in Moshe’s spiritual progress, after the Exodus, after Sinai, after leading the people across the desert and choosing their new leadership, one would have imagined that his choice would have been a direct restatement of some critical law, or some great ethical and spiritually reverberating directive. But in the end, what we get is- a poem? Furthermore, the text shows how insistent Moshe was on everyone hearing this poem, enlisting Yehoshua Ben Nun, his successor, to ensure that everyone learned the poem. So what is it about a poem that led Moshe to choose that form of literary expression for his public last words?

Before dealing with the matter of format, let us look at content. What do the words of the poem in Haazinu teach us, as text? The answer,  given in both halachic and midrashic statements, relates this poem to the centrality of Torah study and practice. In a legal teaching, the Talmud (BT Berachot 21.) uses the third line in our poem to source the following ruling, obligating a blessing prior to studying Torah:

“What is the source mandating a blessing before Torah study? (Devarim 32:3) I will call out Gd’s name, let us praise gloriously our Lord”.

Homiletically, as well, we have several teachings linking this poem to Torah study; for example, the Sifri on verse 32:2, “My lessons shall drop as the rain, my teachings shall drip as the dew”, presents a long series of lessons using rain and dew as metaphors for Torah- as the dew causes plant life to grow, so does Torah cause mankind to grow, as the dew falls on all sorts of plants, so does the Torah deal with holy, profane, permitted and forbidden things, etc. The Talmud (BT Taanit 7.) as well, uses this verse for a surprising teaching:

R. Bana’a used to say, all who study Torah for their own profit (shelo lishma), their study becomes for them as a deathly poison, as the verse says, (32:2) Ya’arof k’matar likchi, “My lessons shall drop as the rain” and ya’arof (the verb for rain dropping) also means to kill by decapitation…

Following these precedents, the Vilna Gaon composed a treatise whereby he derives all of the 613 Torah commandments from this poem, which, as it turns out, actually contains exactly 613 letters (I didn’t count them myself, but this information came to me through from my teacher, R. Moshe Tzuriel, who is an authority in this sort of thing). At any rate, we can see that this poem is read as an ode to Torah, and so states Rashi as well, explaining that this poem is “testimony that the Torah which I (Moshe) have put before Israel is like life to the world”. As the poem unfolds, keeping to this reading, it is then about life within or without connection to Torah.

So let us return to the structural format? Why a poem? Why not state all this information directly, without recourse to literary metaphors about dew, etc? The Sifri states simply:

Great is shira (poetry), for it contains within it the present, the past, the future and the world to come…

Is this so? What is there about a poem that enables it to contain all these different elements all at once?

I suppose that being so involved in the Poetry Slam movement for so many beautiful years allows me to wax, um, poetically about the virtues of verse; here I would like to suggest one approach (there is another approach which I will hopefully have the time to write up in the near future). I will not approach the myriad aspects of poetics per se- what matters for us is the concept of metaphor, which is at the core of the poetic experience.

Jacques Derrida, borrowing an idea from Anatole France, uses the term “White Mythology” to describe the attempt made by metaphysical philosophers to leave literary metaphors behind and come to a place of abstract ideations. He argues that the overall approach in Western culture is to prioritize the abstract conception lurking within language over the language and metaphor itself. I suppose the most obvious example is psychoanalysis, where the colorful images are all reduced to a common black and white set of meanings. Science, it would seem, may illustrate points with specific examples, but the “truth” is in the abstraction being illustrated. However, Derrida argues, that the reverse is true:

Metaphor is less in the philosophical text…than the philosophical text is within metaphor.

The “truth” is not some form of idealistic Platonism, in which there are concepts first and life is a secondary derivative experience, in which the lived world must experience some kind of “self destruction” or “death” in order for truth to be revealed, but rather it is lived experience, the world as it is, the world as disclosed by metaphor, which provides the raw material and impetus for theorizing. The metaphor, and by extension, the poem, is a reflection of the lived experience, life being more complex, variegated and full of meaning than any simple abstraction. The poem is an attempt, within a literary structure, of appropriation of the phenomenologicaly given, of conveying the manifold complexities of lived life.

Let us return to Moshe’s poem. Moshe’s poem, as we’ve seen, is concerned with Torah, and how it is lived. The teaching in BT Taanit cited above (in which Torah study may be equated to a deathly poison) is worth further reflection. The study of Torah is not merely “interesting” or “worthwhile”, but so critical to existence that a misstep can be life threatening. Our relationship to Torah is so involved, so intimate, that when misdirected, it can be, as it were, fatal. This teaching implies more than a riff off of poetic metaphor. Thus the poetic format– R. Zadok Hacohen recognizes the significance of the poem as being a unique form of text that can achieve the following synthesis of writing and life:

…Moshe composed this song, that is, it is a written text that contains within it as well the Oral Law…

What does it mean to include the Oral Law in a written text? Let us define “oral law”. Superficially understood, it seems like a set of laws derived from textual laws, established by the Rabbis. However, what is actually is, is the law as refracted through actual lived experience. There is a text, but a text cannot “mean” without being lived. A good example may be the world of medicine. Pick up any major textbook of medicine such as Harrison’s, or a cancer textbook like DeVita. The various illnesses are described in clean, cool scientific words. Then enter the medical ward, or visit the oncology department. Nothing in the text would have prepared you for the shock of real human suffering; no patient in the clinic is fully encompassed by the detached language of the textbook.

On the other hand, there is something about the metaphor, the poem, the work of art which contain within themselves the transmission of lived experience. This transformation of cold text into a vital life force is what Moshe wanted to create as his final action. Not another abstract conception, but rather the legitimization of real life, with its struggles, challenges, joys and sufferings. Oral Law is meant to bring about this reflection of life within the written text. R. Zadok insists that the poetic form, which unfolds the written text into something more vital, is meant to “transmit the ta’am, the taste or sense of the Torah”- a purely experiential concept. The Oral Law, as we’ve seen in its first case (see our shiur on Perashat Pinchas), that of the potential injustice that would have been inflicted upon the daughter’s of Zelophad in the allocation of the Land, is a reflection also of potential friction, of where the text seems to bring about injustice; “literal” readings may lead to immense suffering. The Oral Law is meant to be the remedy for this, taking into account the real needs of the people as history unfolds and the human drama differentiates in its myriad unexpected ways, uniquely for each individual. This is why Yehoshua, who represents the next generation, had to be centrally involved in the transmission of this poem.

In summary, we see that Moshe chose as his final public message to all the people and all of history, the form of the poem, that structure built of words which conveys not only some kind of abstract teaching, but reflects the evolving complexity of lived life in both its most public and most intimate nature. As the words of Sifri illustrate: the poem contains within it the present, the past, the future and the world to come…

…If all time is eternally Present, All time is unredeemable…               T. S. Eliot, Burnt Norton

Central to, or lurking behind, if you will, any discussion appropriate to Rosh Hashana is the problem of time. For while we all talk of Rosh Hashana as a celebration of the “New Year”, the texts, biblical and talmudic, are rather ambiguous as to what the actual date of creation is. One thing is certain– Rosh Hashana is not meant to be the date of the creation of the world per se. The talmudic debate offers the following alternatives: Was the world created in Nisan, half a year away from Rosh Hashana, or was the world created a week before Rosh Hashana, that is, Rosh Hashana commemorates the sixth day of creation, and as such we celebrate the creation of humanity? Perhaps this approach to Rosh Hashana, which in the proof text of Psalm 81:4 is referred to as “bakeseh”, the hidden or mysterious day, is meant to teach a lesson about time and its unreality.

Let us ponder that verse, Ps. 81:4 for a moment, as it also contains a link to the other critical symbol of this holiday, the shofar– The verse reads:

Tik’u bahodesh shofar, Sound on the day of the new month the shofar, bakeseh, when the moon is hidden, l’yom hagenu, on the festival day.

The Talmud in BT Rosh Hashana 8. proves that the new year corresponds to Tishrei by virtue of the link in this verse between the shofar and the hidden moon, which as Rashi points out is astronomically related to this season. There is a link between the beginning of time and the shofar.

This link is compounded in BT Rosh Hashana 16. :

…and on Rosh Hashana say before me “malchuyot”, “zichronot” and “shofarot”- Malchuyot- you shall crown me King over you; Zichronot- your memory shall rise before me for the good; and how? via the Shofar!

Here, an extra association is added. The New Year links Gd, memory, and the shofar. First of all, I should like to point out, as an aside, something frequently overlooked in the approach to this set of prayers, and that is its dialogical nature. By our act of crowning Gd, via the shofar, we attenuate our relationship with Gd. The Talmud suggests that prayer is not just human lip service (contra Leibovitch), but rather defines prayer as an act which evokes a response. Our recognition of Gd’s “kingship” evokes a recognition of our sentience. Returning to the issue of temporality, note that the Talmud creates an association linking Gd, memory, and the shofar to our consciousness of time, symbolized by the new year.

Before we proceed, however, we should define a term. What does “consciousness of time” mean? Philosophy has been interested in the time, well, since time began. However, the issue of the consciousness of time, from the standpoint of human subjectivity, as opposed to a naturalistic questioning of what time is per se, is a more recent inquiry; it really has its roots at the turn of this century, with Meinong and Brentano. Without getting too technical, we can explain the question in the following manner. How is the game “Name That Tune” possible? The game is predicated on my ability to recognize an entire sequence of notes based on the first few notes. But how is recognition of a tune even possible? I hear a tone, and then another one. What allows me to keep the “past” tone in consciousness and link it to the following tone, in the “present”, and extrapolate the third tone, the “future”? When do isolated tones become, say, the opening of Beethoven’s Fifth, so clearly delineated in four notes? Meinong felt that perception was always only of immediate moments, but that a separate act of consciousness occurs at some point which “embraces” the previous perceptions and creates the continuum, the melody. But that isn’t really how we experience a tune, is it? We don’t have sudden explosive moments at the end of a series of tonal pulsations, and we are also able to intuit the upcoming notes, otherwise we couldn’t play Name That Tune. Hence Brentano felt that there was some kind of immediate memory in which each tone is altered, in memory, by the preceding and upcoming note; the second note reproduces the original in memory and appends the current note, creating an alteration in the perception of the first note. Husserl attacks this entire approach by pointing out how stuck in the immediate it is; how Brentano’s approach does not allow for a memory of the past (I can only understand all three notes if my brain somehow makes all three notes present and associated in the now). Thus, Husserl struggled throughout his life with attempting some sort of phenomenology of time; at the end of his life he developed an interesting system of an “absolute time constituting flow of consciousness” which cannot be perceived directly as an object (since that apprehension would also be in time, and flow cannot be fixed in time like that), which is capable of “primal impression”, which is perception of the present, “retention”, which is in memory, and “protention”, which is a way of anticipating the future. This absolute flow, it seems to me, is pretty much what we call the soul. Thus, an inquiry into the consciousness of time from a philosophical position suddenly lands us back into the world of theology.

Perhaps this is about what the Talmud is trying to enlighten us. The Sefat Emet is rather emphatic about this, in attempting to explain why all these matters are linked to the shofar. Why does the shofar bring about this dialogue between humanity and the Creator?

The Sefat Emet quotes the Talmud in Rosh Hashana 26. There, in what appears to be a halachic midrash, is recorded the following debate:

Why can we use a shofar from any animal except the cow? The Rabbis say: it is as Rav Hisda taught. Rav Hisda asks: Why does the High Priest not wear the “priestly uniform of gold” into the Holy of Holies? Because a “prosecutor” cannot become the “defense attorney” (The gold in the outfit would recall the sin of the golden calf, thus the shofar coming from a cow, would also recollect the golden calf just on the day when we ask for forgiveness– Rashi…)

Fine, but that is true only of the moment when the Priest enters the Holy of Holies– certainly we know the High Priest can wear the gold uniform outside the Holy of Holies, and no one seems to recollect the past sin of the golden calf! So all we can derive is that a shofar made of cow horn can’t be blown in the Holy of Holies, but should be allowed in any other place on Rosh Hashana! The reply is: since the shofar’s role is for awakening “memory”, once it is blown on Rosh Hashana, no matter where we are it is as if we are in the Holy of Holies; the shofar signifies a transcendence of place and of time.

How does that happen? How does the shofar come to symbolize that which is outside of time and space? I think the answer is suggested by the following discussion in the Talmud (BT Rosh Hashana 32.):

Mishna: we do not say less than ten verses each for “malchuyot”, “zichronot” and “shofarot”. Gemara: Why ten?…R Yohanan says: The ten verses correspond to the ten utterences with which the world was created (utterances starting with “vayomer” such as: let there be light). However, the Talmud notes, if you actually count them, there are only nine utterances listed! The Talmud answers- the word “B’reishit” (In The Beginning) is also an utterance…

What kind of utterance is this word “in the beginning”? It is a pre-utterance utterance, the sense of intention and meaning that arises deep within prior to being limited by words. As a personal example, shared by most humans, we all know the feeling of inadequacy evoked when one wants to express the deeply felt affection one has, say, for a spouse; the emotion is felt with the sum total of ones existence, and yet when one tries to express this sentiment in words, the words come out trite, commonplace, and not expressive of what one “really wants to say”. The preverbal utterance of “In the beginning” expresses Gd’s will to do Good in creating the universe. This attempt to express one’s true being, which inevitably is devalued by speech, marginalized by social pressures, or corrupted by the other issues in life that keep us from recognizing that which is most authentic about ourselves, is what is symbolised by the shofar, the non-verbal cry of true self recognition. And this undifferentiated place, prior to the atomization into words, is one that is outside of time and space. The recognition of this ur-place, whereby there are truths deeper than the flow of time, is also what allows Teshuva, repentance, to take place, as we will see in the Yom Kippur shiur.

So what does this mean, that there is a place of truth beyond time and space?

In order to actualize this metaphysical sounding phrase, let us return to the discussion of the date of Rosh Hashana. While most people think of Rosh Hashana as a day of Judgement read: a sad solemn day, the Talmud presents a list of things that happened around Rosh Hashana that suggests an entirely different mood (BT, Rosh Hashana 10:,Pesikta D’Rav Kahana):

In Tishrei the Avot (Avraham, Yitzhaq, and Yaaqov) were born, as they were the beginning of the new world after the sins of the earlier generations. On Rosh Hashana Sarah, Rachel, and Hanna were “remembered”, as they were barren and Gd remembered them so that they should conceive. On Rosh Hashana Yosef was freed from the prison where he had been imprisoned for twelve years, and his light began to shine. On Rosh Hashana the work load was lifted from our ancestors in Egypt and the start of their redemption was perceived.

It is interesting that the text the Talmud uses to prove that Joseph was freed from prison on Rosh Hashana is the same used to link the shofar and Rosh Hashana, and unlike the Talmud editor’s usual practice of quoting just a few words of a verse, the Talmud quotes all three verses almost in their entirety, starting from “sound the shofar on the day of keseh” until the proof text, “a testimony to Yehosef…” which is meant to relate the liberation of Joseph to the shofar as well as to the day of Rosh Hashana.

There is another important source in the Talmud in which the shofar and liberation are linked. BT Rosh Hashana 33: -34., derives all the laws of the shofar on Rosh Hashana from the Jubilee year, the 50th year of the Hebrew calender in which all slaves go free, all land returns to its original owners, and “you shall proclaim liberty throughout the land…” This linkage might suggest, that the expression of one’s truest self as conveyed by the shofar, of our sounding the note of that truth which is beyond time and space, acts as an “auto-emancipation”, of our being freed from our own personal “prison sentence” (Ibn Ezra points out that Joseph in that verse refers to all of us, not just the historical Joseph), the prison sentence of time. Rosh Hashana as personal liberation is best expressed in the following aphorism from the Jerusalem Talmud (JT Rosh Hashana 4:8).

R. Lazer son of R Jose said in the name of R Jose bar Kussrita: In all other sacrifices the Torah states “and you shall sacrifice” but here (Rosh Hashana) the phrase “and you shall do/make” is used. Gd says– since you have entered before me for judgement on Rosh Hashana and you have left in peace, I look upon you as though you have recreated yourselves anew.

In summary, the Rosh Hashana experience, contains within it a blurring of concepts of time and place. This ability to see beyond the effects upon us of time and place may point us back to our most true self, as our “situation” is sometimes really the cause of our failures to be the individual we most truly want to be.

The shofar, that pre-verbal cry of personal authenticity, enables us, then, to listen to our deepest, truest voice, and as a result enables us to recreate ourselves in a more authentic existence, “to recreate ourselves anew”. Now we can return to the passage from the BT Rosh Hashana 16. quoted above, in which by our act of evoking Gd’s transcendence, we create a response in which we are remembered. We noted that this passage suggests that somehow a dialogical relationship between ourselves and Gd is facilitated by the shofar. In the auto-emancipatory nature of the shofar experience, through the recognition of a truth beyond the limitations of time and place, we are awakened to our own personal truth liberated from the limitations of reality as we have experienced it (or suffered from it), and recognize that there is an endless capacity for transfiguration, where we can create new worlds, new situations, and thus bring about personal and universal change. Let us greet one another this year with “shana tova”– literally, a wish for a good year, but let us read it as “shana tova”, shana sharing the root of shinui, change, transformation, and may we be the ones to bring about some positive change, now, this year, the sooner the better!

A thought for those not facing the holidays eagerly,  based on the above texts…

And what if despite the social pressure, the facebook need to present a happy face, the mandatory good cheer demanded at holidays, you don’t feel joy or awe facing Rosh Hashana? What if the sheer thought of contemplating what your life is or has become, leaves you emotionally cold, now more than any other time? What if all you want now is music that hurts? Perhaps you find yourself thinking, maybe this would be a good year not to get included in the book of life?  For some these days, there are obvious causes for a lack of joy at this time, but for many of us, is there not just some kind of deep sense of distress, malaise, something gnawing at our consciousness and our beliefs? What can we do, how can we feel this facing judgment when we don’t really feel that either outcome would be more favorable?

In my own personal little moment of darkness I stumbled across a teaching by the Sefat Emet that I had seen before but didn’t really catch. He is thinking about the quote from the Talmud inRosh Hashana 16. that we cited earlier:

(Say before me ) Zichronot– your memory shall rise before me for the good

And wonders (year 5639), First of all, why do we need to say anything? Do not all the texts tell us that whether we choose to participate or not, this is the universal day of judgment?  Furthermore, who can guarantee that the judgment will be for the good? Does not the concept of judgment by definition imply, a brutal moment of thumbs up, thumbs down? Who can be confidant of the outcome?

The Sefat Emet offers an intriguing response. He says that the important moment we are reminded of by this text is that in order for there to be judgment there must be memory. And that by the act of stepping forward during these days to be judged, “that alone is worthwhile simply so that we shall evoke our remembrance before Gd” .

We know how often in the aftermath of tragedy we are counseled, “life goes on”, and “you’ll get over it” but we all know that of all our lives experiences a trace is left behind, even when we have consciously forgotten what has provoked our sadness or anxiety there is a trace that remains, what Lyotard in his “Heidegger and ‘the jews’” describes as:

…a past located this side of the forgotten, much closer to the present moment than any past, at the same time that it is incapable of being solicited by voluntary and conscious memory- a past Deleuze says that is not past but is always there… (pp 12)

Lyotard continues that this effect is what Freud called “unconscious affect”. But what can that mean, a feeling that we have that we are not aware of, what is a feeling that is not felt?

…Something, however, will make itself understood, “later”… but without the subject recognizing it. It will be represented as something that has never been presented…as a symptom, a phobia…This will be understood as feeling, fear, anxiety, feeling of a threatening excess whose motive is obviously not in the present context…

To Freud, of course, the way to deal with these affections, these traces left upon the unconscious emotional makeup of the person is to in some way bring some aspect of this to consciousness, to discover in what way these traces impinge upon our behavior. To the Sefat Emet, we might say, it is the act of coming forward in memory. He explains that the simple act of standing forward and presenting oneself as an individual to be observed, to be heard and considered before Gd, that alone is already transformative, to make, as it were, Gd move from a position of severity (we will read for our purposes the Hebrew term “din” as anxiety) to a position of mercy, of healing. The Sefat Emet summarizes:

…Being remembered by Gd as part of judgment is itself a great gift of goodness…

So perhaps for those approaching the holiday with a heavy heart, for those who know that why they are at this moment without joy and for those who don’t know why but only sense an anomic emptiness, the response offered by the text is to stand forward, as you are. Simply being present means being seen and considered. The positive concept of being remembered means that you are not alone, and that alone may sometimes be good enough.

“Today you all stand before Gd, your chiefs, your elders…all of Israel, your children, wives, the strangers in your midst, from the woodchopper to the water carrier, to enter into a covenant with Gd…”

With these words, the covenant between Gd and the people of Israel is established, or re-established, as we shall suggest later in the shiur. However, the verse itself is problematic in several ways. First of all, there is that unusual word, “nitzavim”, meaning “standing”. Furthermore, the segment lists all these types of societal positions, then sums them all up in the superfluous phrase “all of Israel”, a phrase double enigmatic because it uses a singular voice- the clause is literally “kol ish yisrael”- every person of the people of Israel, after listing a plurality of professions.

In order to understand this passage, we will move from textual explanations to a novel reading of this episode in its entirety. Along the way, we will encounter some interesting ties to Rosh Hashana, as this perasha is traditionally read the week before the New Year.

Rashi presents three different readings of this passage. He begins with the “peshat”, the so-called literal reading of the text. He then offers two “midrashic” readings, the second of which explains the word “nitzavim”, standing, as derived from the word “matzevah”, which means monument, and explains that at this moment, Moshe made of the people a monument, in order to make them more ready to listen, or more obedient (Rashi points out that in later transfers of leadership the root “nitzav” is also used). The Shem M’Shmuel takes off from this nitzav=matzeva connection to build his approach. He explains that a mizbeach, the sacred altar of the Temple, was made up of many stones, whereas the matzevah, the earlier form of monument or altar, forbidden after the Temple was constructed, was made up of one stone. Thus, for the covenant to be established, the people, despite their individual differences, must come together like the single stone altar, as one people. In other words, the purpose of the textual play between multiple societal roles and singular language is to emphasize the need for all to come together as a united whole. Furthermore, he adds, the term “Nitzav” means to be without fear, as in Bamidbar 16:27, and when the people are unified there is nothing to fear. Unity is strength, as it were. This approach is found in many of the later Hassidic thinkers. Rav Zadok Hacohen believes this interplay between higher and lower class positions in society versus the singular “all of Israel” suggests a time in which the entire nation will reach such a high spiritual plateau that all attain equal spiritual awareness, as was the case at the splitting of the sea, where it is described that the most lowly maidservant experienced Gd as acutely as did the greatest prophets. The unity of peoplehood will raise up the status of every member of society.

In a similar fashion, the Sefat Emet reads these passages as reminding us of the crucial nature of unity. The “today” at the beginning of the verse means “today”, that is, now, at this very moment, we are all called to stand before Gd, and the way to best do so is for the individual to make himself part of the klal, to surrender himself unto the people as a whole. This is the message of the extra word “kulchem”, all of you, as a people. Continuing as per Rashi, our unity stands as a matzevah, as a monument and reminder for future generations as well, as the verses state; the remedy for an individual who wishes absolution from sin, is to stand together with the people. And the reverse, so to speak, is also true. In order to become a part of the klal, it is adequate to be willing to shoulder the responsibilities imposed by the brit, by the covenantal community. Thus, in the later Hassidic commentators, the emphasis is on the communal rather than the individual.

As we move towards earlier Hassidic commentators, we find the opposite approach. The Meor V’Shemesh, a Hassidic thinker of the middle generations, may serve as an illustrative middle ground, containing both positions. On the one hand, the communal side,he argues that the verse speaks to us now, reminding us that “we, the people, are standing today”, that is, still exist today because there is a unity among the people as a whole despite the societal distinctions- no matter what position in society the individual occupies, ultimately we all share a deep love for the entire people.

On the other hand, leaning towards the centrality of the individual, he suggests that the odd word “nitzavim” derives from the word “nitzav”, which is used uniquely in Judges 3:20 to refer to the haft of the sword, the handle which supports the cutting blade. This etymology is meant to suggest a reading whereby Moshe is telling the people that no matter what position in society their life has placed them, they are each individually capable of serving as the vehicle for the revelation of Gd’s message to the world. In other words, rather than emphasizing the group nature of the covenant, there is an emphasis on the individual within the group as being primary, or more importantly, there is a recognition that each individual is made up of an entire set of identities, what we would today refer to as polyvocality. To quote Kenneth Gergen, who argues that one of the effects of contemporary technology, especially information technology, upon the individual is a situation of “fractionated being”:

By dramatically expanding the range of information to which we are exposed, the range of persons with whom we have significant interchange, and the range of opinion available within multiple media sites, we become privy to and engaged within multiple realities. Or more simply, the comfort of parochial univocality is disturbed…to the extent that these standpoints are intelligible, they also enter the compendium of resources available for the individuals’s own deliberations. In a Bakhtinian vein, the individual approaches a state of radical polyvocality…in this move from the private interior to the social sphere, the presumption of a private self as a source of moral direction is subverted. If negotiating the complexities of multiplicity becomes normalized, so does the conception of mind as moral touchstone grow pale…

Or to put it more simply, here is Roland Barthes talking of himself:

Philosophically, it seems that you are a materialist (if the word doesn’t sound too old fashioned); ethically, you divide yourself, as for the body, you are a hedonist; as for violence, you would rather be something of a Buddhist! You want to have nothing to do with faith, yet you have a certain nostalgia for ritual, etc. You are a patchwork of reaction; is there anything primary in you?

This approach, cognizant of the complex make up of each individual, is evident in several of the early Hassidic thinkers. For example, R. Nachman of Breslov reads this verse regarding the individual at prayer- he explains that the standing referred to in 29:9 is standing in prayer (as in BT Berachot 6: ), and the ten types of societal position refer to the ten fingers (in other words, they are a part of our own being), which clap during ecstatic prayer! Likewise, in the Or Penei Moshe, the ten job descriptions listed here actually refer to every individual’s spiritual levels. These spiritual levels are inherent in every member of the people (his argument runs: these levels all inhere in our forefather Jacob, also called Israel, as in the verse “all the souls to the house of Jacob” Bereshit 48:27, and consequently inhere in every one of us). All these levels need to be recognized in every individual person. (It is worth noting that R. Menachem Mendel Schneerson of Lubavitch, in one of his early lectures, synthesizes the Alter Rebbe’s approach, which refers to each person in the community as though they were an integral organ, ie, stressing the individual within society, with the later communal approach, and states that both the individual and the communal are perfected together, simultaneously, thus combining both approaches).

An attractive reading of this verse, addressing the polyvocal self, is found in the Tiferet Shelomo, where the verse is also linked to the High Holidays- the “hayom” , the “today”, in our verse, refers to a specific “today”, the big day of Rosh Hashana. The covenant is then read as a covenant regarding teshuva, repentance. In order to properly “stand before Gd”, in true contrition, one must analyze and recruit every aspect of one’s personality, explains the Tiferet Shelomo. He quotes the Magid of Zlotchov, who taught that “dividing up all the organs” of a sacrifice teaches us to align all the most innermost parts of our personality upon any action (it might be interesting to read this in terms of Deleuze’s “body without organs”). So, then, certainly on Rosh Hashana, when we are reexamining our lives, we need to involve and contemplate all the different aspects of our personality as part of what we call soul searching- but its not just the lofty soul aspects we involve here- the Tiferet Shelomo explains the phrase “kulchem”, all of you, as referring to both the physical body and the spirit, and explains the two trades listed, the wood hewer and the water carrier, not as referring to two different individuals, or as two different economic classes or strata- but as symbolic of every person’s journey, representing the starting point and goal within every individual trajectory: one starts out hacking away at the Tree of Life, as it were, referring to the spiritual Torah life, and ultimately one reaches the “water drawing” point where they draw forth the holy merciful efflux signified traditionally by water.

In this light, I would actually like to return to the text and suggest a more than metaphorical reading for our passage here in Perashat Nitzavim. Much has been written of the centrality of “covenantalism”, the covenant at Sinai; David Hartmann in his important book stresses the covenant at Sinai as central to the Jewish experience, and R. Soloveitchik speaks frequently of the concept. However, Rabbenu Bachye, following the Ramban, suggests that the covenant here in this section of the Torah, refers to an additional covenant that was enacted. (Technically, there needed to be a second covenant because the covenantal bond at Sinai was damaged by the sin of the golden calf.) This second covenant is defined by the Rabbis in BT Shavuout 39. as centering on the phrase in verse 13, which binds all future generations, not only to the commandments of Sinai, as in the initial covenant, but also includes within the “contract” a responsibility to relate to the imperatives of future societal challenges, including the enactments proposed by the Jewish leadership later in history (the example given is reading the Megilla on Purim). The binding covenant enacted here is that of the Oral Law, which derives its authority not from above, as in the Sinai covenant, but from the needs of the people, of the individual and societal challenges which arise over the course of a continued unfolding history. For this reason this text contains all these stringent warnings against division within the community which lead to breaking away from the people, as in verse 17. The Oral Law, as we’ve seen in previous perashiyot, is meant to ensure that any individual injustice within society is recognized and alleviated and prevented from recurring. Allegiance to the multiple voices and needs of all the different aspects of society, which as we’ve seen really means being true to the many voices we hear in that which we call our “selves”, and establishing a just society whereby all these elements are heard protected and cherished- that is the covenant Moshe established in our perasha, as his last words before the people were to enter the land, as the crucial message for the beginning of the Jewish People Project .

Nitzavim-Vayelech II. Face Hidden, Face Revealed

The opening verse of Perashat Nitzavim states: You are all standing together “lifnei”, before Gd. The Hebrew word “before” derives from the word “panim”, face.

The Kedushat Levi connects this opening use of the word panim in our perasha to the Talmudic explication (Rosh Hashana 16.) of the central prayers of the Rosh Hashana service. The Rosh Hashana service centers around three sets of verses dealing with the ideas of “malchuyot”- Gd’s kingly rule, “zichronot”-covenantal memory regarding the Jewish people, and “shofarot”-verses focusing on the use of the shofar. The Talmudic quote goes: Say ‘before me’ malchiyot…; in Hebrew the term ‘before me’ is again the term lifanay, deriving from “panim” “face”. The Kedushat Levi offers a set of definitions of the term “panim”, face, and its opposite, “achor”, which translates as “back of the head” connoting the face averted. He explains that when the term panim is used, it represents actions in accordance with Gd’s will, whereas achor is a signifier for not being in concord with Gd’s will. Hence, our desire on Rosh Hashana is that our our prayers should re-establish the covenantal moment of panim, that is, the signifying face representative of the positive relationship between man and the Divine Presence. The moment of our perasha is indeed that moment which established that covenantal relationship, as the verse states: You are all standing lifnei Hashem, before the “face” of Gd, basking in this divine good will meaning to benefit humanity. This is the desired state.

On the other hand, perashat Vayelech essentially ends (just prior to introducing Moshe’s last words, the poem that begins with the word Haazinu), with several repeats of the word panim in a negative context. In 31:17, we are warned that if the people become idolatrous, Gd will be angered and avert His face from them. Then, the people will say, because we have not Gd within us have we are in such trouble, (verse 18), and Gd will hide his face from them for all the evil they have done, in their turning to idolatry. The Ramban wonders why, after the first “hester panim”, where the people clearly understand, as the verse states, that they have betrayed Gd, why this second turning away on the part of Gd? His answer is that the people need to be brought to feel an even more profound sense of distance from Gd so that an even deeper level of repentance and subsequent “reconciliation” may be achieved.

R. Zadok Hacohen is unsatisfied with the Ramban’s answer, for after all, we believe that even the most preliminary unverbalized teshuva (“repentance”) is transformative, so why would Gd continue to bring about sufferings upon an already repentant community? He then offers a reading which is radically unique- that the “hastarat panim”, the “averted face” here refers not to Gd’s turning away from the people- rather it is a declaration that Gd will turn his face away from the people’s sins; that Gd will overlook even idolatry if the people are truly penitent and truly turn to Gd. In other words, verse 31:18 reads: On that day ( that is, after the people recognize that their plight is due to their failed relationship with Gd), Gd will turn his face away from all the evil the people have committed, overlook their mistakes even if they went as far off course as to worship false gods!

Thus, we suggest that the moments of the “turning away” by Gd may contain within them at the very same time the seeds of redemption and forgiveness; it is all a question of what is being turned away from. Perhaps we may be able to even re-incorporate the Ramban, who argues that increasing distance may bring about a greater reconciliation. This may be the great secret of the the schizophrenic nature of Rosh Hashana, being both a day of fear and awe, as well as being a holiday, a day of joy.

The Netivot Shalom (Slonim) points out the paradoxical nature of Rosh Hashanah as contained within one verse: tik’u bahodesh shofar, bakeseh l’yom haggeinu, “sound the shofar at the time when the month commences, as the new moon (literally the day the moon is hidden) signifies the holiday”- “bakeseh” means in the “hidden-ness”, and “yom hageinu” refers to a day of joy- we can read this verse as suggesting that Rosh Hashanah is an opportunity to meditate upon the state whereby we experience Gd’s keseh, “concealment”, the averted Face, the chasm created by sin between us and Gd. From that selfsame state of sorry distance we do not have far to travel, within this suffering lies the seed of joyous reunion. By reaching the existential despair of “concealment” we are brought back to a face to face relationship with Gd- and this is facilitated by virtue of the shofar, suggests the verse, because the shofar emits a simple sincere wordless cry from the heart, which symbolizes our true yearning for closeness to Gd, even as the tragedy of our lives renders us otherwise mute and unable to theorize or verbalize.