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The Value of an Explanatory Prayer Service

Rabbi Hayyim Angel

The Value of an Explanatory Prayer Service

Rabbi Hayyim Angel

This past Shabbat (April 30, 2022), I had the privilege to lead a newly-opened explanatory prayer service at Congregation Beth Aaron in Teaneck, New Jersey. The service is dedicated to the memory of Andy Dimond, who passed away last year. Raised in a largely secular Jewish family, Andy became observant in his adulthood and was deeply dedicated to inspiring others religiously.

It is striking that in a highly observant community as Teaneck, there is a profound thirst for learning more about Torah and prayer. Some sixty people were in attendance, and we learned about the weekly Torah reading and prayer. It was inspiring to see so many people take the step to learn more about the services they attend regularly.

Here is a summary of the main talk I gave, pertaining to the value of an explanatory service and the goals of prayer.

Prayer is hard! Even for those of us who attend synagogue services regularly, there are a number of fundamental impediments to prayer.

For many, the Hebrew language is a barrier. Despite the fact that Jewish law permits prayer in any language one understands, our public prayers are recited in Hebrew.

Although thanking God can be understood as an expression of good manners and gratitude, what do words of praise and petition actually achieve? Furthermore, we pray from a fixed text, and recite the same prayers whether at times of great joy or when we are beset by crisis.

For many, analysis is more stimulating than prayer, making Torah study a more meaningful religious encounter. The same holds true for acts of tzedakah and hesed toward others, where we immediately feel a sense of religious fulfillment.

While we may confront different challenges than did earlier generations, our struggle to attain religious devotion is hardly a uniquely modern problem. Let us consider one remarkable passage from the Jerusalem Talmud:

R. Hiyya said, “I never concentrated during prayer in all my days! Once I wanted to concentrate, but I thought about who will meet the king first: [a Persian high official] or the Exilarch.” Shemuel said, “I count chicks.” R. Bun b. Hiyya said, “I count bricks.” R. Matnaya said, “I am grateful to my head, because it bows by itself when I reach Modim (Berakhot 2:4, 16a).

One commentary entitled Toledot Yitzhak (by Rabbi Yitzhak Karo, the brother of Rabbi Yosef Karo) remarks that the Talmud teaches that even the greatest Sages struggled with the issue of proper intention and focus during prayer. Their struggles should inspire us to improve our focus, and not to despair when we find prayer difficult.

In addition to our efforts, we need God’s help to pray. We begin each Amidah with the introductory petition: “O Lord, open my lips, that my mouth may declare Your praise” (Psalms 51:17). We pray to God to enable us to pray! Once we recognize some of the inherent challenges in prayer, we may begin to address those challenges and enhance our ability to pray.

One of the most incredible aspects of seeing a starry night is the concept of light years. We are looking at the stars right now, but we see one star as it appeared 20 years ago, another as it appeared 40 years ago, another as it appeared 100 years ago, and so on. It creates a staggering feeling of time-transcendence.

The prayer book offers a similar phenomenon. It is an anthology of sacred texts, which includes passages from the Torah, later books of the Bible incorporated in the Prophets and the Holy Writings, Mishnah, Talmud, the medieval period, sixteenth-century mystical traditions—all the way to prayers for the modern State of Israel. When we pray, we engage God in a relationship right now, but we also transcend time by seamlessly moving through the set order of prayers.

Engagement with the traditional prayer book connects us with communities everywhere and all time. Without this fixed text, we would have lost our shared identity long ago.

The great mystic Rabbi Hayyim Vital (1542-1620), upon entering the synagogue, would say, “I now am ready to fulfill the commandment of loving my neighbor as myself.” Although the commandment “love your neighbor as yourself” (Leviticus 19:18) is a celebrated tenet of the Torah, it seems surprising that Rabbi Vital would call attention to this commandment in the particular context of prayer.

Rabbi Vital teaches a profound lesson about prayer. Communal prayer creates shared lives, built around God, the Torah, education, and community service. Prayers express our greatest ideas and ideals. If we truly can pray, we truly can love others on the highest plane.

A great measure of the success of a prayer service is how people behave outside of the synagogue in day-to-day life. Are we bringing religious values to every aspect of our lives? Are we more sensitive, better people?

Learning to pray requires making ourselves vulnerable to accept that we need help praying. It inspires us to transcend ourselves and our time and connect to eternity. And it prods us to look beyond the walls of our synagogues to develop religious and communal engagement in all areas of our lives.

Together...Uniquely: Thoughts for Parashat Naso

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Angel for Shabbat, Parashat Naso

By Rabbi Marc D. Angel

When the Almighty calls on Moses to command the priests to bless the people of Israel, the instructions are in the plural (emor lahem). When the blessing is concluded, the Almighty indicates: “and I will bless them” (va-ani avarakhem)—also in the plural. The setting of the priestly blessing, then, is clearly to be a public event intended for the entire collective.

Yet, the tripartite blessing itself is entirely in the singular form. Although the blessing is intended for the plurality of Israel, it is aimed at each individual separately. It prays that God will bless and protect each of us; that God’s countenance should shine on each Israelite and grant each one of us peace—shalom.

The formulation of the priestly blessing is alluding to a profound truth. The blessings are given to the entire community…not as an anonymous mass of people, but as an assembly of individual human beings. The emphasis is on the uniqueness of each person, the desire that each of us finds blessing and fulfillment in life. The goal is shalom…peace, wholeness, personal satisfaction.

God’s infinite wisdom encompasses all…but focuses on each. This idea is underscored in a Talmudic teaching (Berakhot 58a) that requires the recitation of a special blessing when witnessing a vast throng of Jews. We are to praise the Almighty Who is hakham harazim, the One who understands the root and inner thoughts of each individual. “Their thoughts are not alike and their appearance is not alike.” The Creator made each person as a unique being. He expected and wanted diversity of thought, and we bless Him for having created this diversity among us.

Religious life entails participating in a community, observing shared rituals, following traditional patterns. It can happen that one’s individuality may seem compromised or lost in the process. The overwhelming emphasis on communal mores tends to diminish the uniqueness of each individual. The priestly blessing reminds us of the need to be part of the community…but to retain our own distinctive individuality.

In his famous essay, “Self-Reliance,” Ralph Waldo Emerson taught: “There is a time in every man’s education when he arrives at the conviction that envy is ignorance; that imitation is suicide; that he must take himself for better, for worse, as his portion.” We each are who we are; to squelch our individuality in order to imitate others is self-destructive. Emerson lamented the tendency to forfeit one’s ideas, ideals and values in order to blend in with the dominant group. Rather, one should be true to him/herself.

Poignantly, Emerson wrote: “Man is timid and apologetic. He is no longer upright. He dares not say ‘I think,’ ‘I am,’ but quotes some saint or sage.” These words, proclaimed in the mid-19th century, continue to ring true nearly 200 years later. So many religious people, including rabbis, are reluctant to express an original opinion unless it is authenticated by sages of earlier generations. Instead of relying on their own thinking, they seek to amass sources of earlier “authorities.”

The framework of the priestly blessing provides a vital dynamic. We are a community; we stand together in our beliefs and observances. At the same time, though, we are each unique individuals with our own particular thoughts, sensitivities and needs. While we—as members of a community—receive the blessings from the priests and from God, those blessings are directed to each of us separately.

This is not merely a blessing on us. It is a challenge for us.

* * *

Rabbi Marc Angel has a youtube series on religion and literature, with the first session dealing with the teachings of Ralph Waldo Emerson: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bqP9UMJOwmk

Thoughts on the Akedah

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Alex Harris lives in Washington, DC, and is in the Master's program for Israel Education at George Washington University and a researcher at the Washington Institute. He is currently writing a book on contemporary Jewish thought. This article appears in issue 39 of Conversations, the journal of the Institute for Jewish Ideas and Ideals.

Above all the Torah is a story. It is our story. It is replete with heroes, villains, drama, and ethical dilemmas. The Torah devotes a good deal of time talking about these characters and their trials, but more often than not, when reading these stories we learn less about the characters and more about ourselves. That’s because we weigh ourselves against the actions of our forefathers and foremothers. We ask ourselves: “Would I have done the same thing had I been in his or her position?” “Did he or she do the right thing?”

No story in the Torah exemplifies this better than Akedat Yitzhak, the binding of Isaac.¹ On the surface, this story appears to be one of a conflict between obeying a divine commandment from God—“Take your son, your only son, whom you love, Yitzhak, and go to the land of Moriah and raise him up there as a sacrifice” (Genesis 22:2)—and a moral prohibition against murder and child sacrifice. In other words, Avraham is forced to decide between moral and divine considerations.

For 2,000 years, this story has plagued and intrigued Jews and non-Jews alike by drawing forth questions inside of us regarding Avraham’s actions: “Did Avraham do the right thing?” “Why was he rewarded?” “Would I have done the same?”

One common traditional interpretation is that Avraham “passed the test” by putting blind faith in God and by being willing to sacrifice his son to serve God. Avraham is held up as the paramount oved hashem, servant of God.

Another interpretation is that the Akedah was a punishment or reaction for Avraham’s actions. This interpretation is supported by Rabbi Yossi Ben Zimra in Sanhedrin 89b:

[To what does “after” refer?] Rabbi Yochanan said in the name of Rabbi Yossi ben Zimra: “After the words of Satan.” For it says (Gen 21:8), “And the child grew up and was weaned.” Satan said to the Almighty: “Sovereign of the universe! To this old man You graciously granted the fruit of the womb at the age of a hundred, yet of all that banquet which he prepared, he did not have one turtle-dove or pigeon to sacrifice before you!” God replied, “Yet were I to say to him, ‘Sacrifice your son before me,’ he would do so without hesitation.” Straightway, “God did test Abraham… And he said, ‘Take, I pray, your son’ [Gen 22:1].”

In Sanhedrin 89b, the Akedah is a reaction to Avraham’s failure to provide a sacrifice for God following the birth of Yitzhak. Rabbi Yossi ben Zimra imagines Satan questioning the depths of Avraham’s loyalty to God. Therefore, God seeks to prove Satan wrong by commanding Avraham to give the ultimate sacrifice: his own son, Yitzhak.

A second interpretation that views the Akedah as a punishment comes from Rashbam, who views the Akedah as a response to Avraham’s problematic treaty with Gerar in Genesis 21:22–32.

Both of these interpretations rely on the curious line, “And it was after these things” (Genesis 22:1). Rabbi Yossi ben Zimra and Rashbam read their peirushim into these four words.

Other interpretations also hinge on these four words. The Targum Pseudo-Jonathan imagines a conversation between Yishmael and Yitzhak:

Ishmael answered and said: “I am more righteous than you, because I was circumcised when thirteen years old; and if it had been my wish to refuse, I would not have handed myself over to be circumcised.” Isaac answered and said: “Am I not now thirty-seven years old? If the Holy One, blessed be He, demanded all my members I would not hesitate.” Immediately, these words were heard before the Lord of the universe, and immediately, the word of the Lord tested Abraham, and said unto him, “Abraham,” and he said, “Here I am.”²

Finally, Rambam (and other Rishonim) viewed the Akedah as the prooftext for the reliability of prophecy on the same level as a logical deduction. It teaches us that prophecy should be heeded just as any empirical experience of the world.

Now, turning to the contemporary world, we have several interpretations from Yeshayahu Leibowitz, Rav Kook, Rabbi Shimon Gershon Rosenberg (Rav Shagar), and Rabbi Dr. Walter Wurzburger.

For Yeshayahu Leibowitz, the Akedah is primarily about obedience to a divine command that stands contradictory to ethics.³

Rav Kook and Rav Shagar have similar interpretations of the Akedah that are based on a Midrash of the Akedah. The Midrash goes,

As [Abraham and Isaac] were walking, Satan appeared to Abraham and said to him, “Old man, are you out of your mind? You’re going to slaughter the son God gave you at the age of one hundred?! It was I who deceived you and said to you, ‘Take now [your son]….’”⁴

In this scenario, Satan approaches Avraham and attempts to convince him that it was not God who asked Avraham to sacrifice his son, but rather Satan himself. This is Satan’s attempt to dissuade Avraham from sacrificing Yitzhak. Rav Kook explains that Satan here is actually Avraham’s conscience.⁵

Rav Shagar goes a bit further. He concedes that it is possible that Satan represents Avraham’s conscience. Rav Shagar then states that this argument, this doubt is the central message of the Akedah. He argues that Avraham was unsure of whether he truly was commanded by God to sacrifice his son, but that he persevered through doubt to serve God. Rav Shagar concludes,

The lesson is clear: A conceited, all-knowing religious stance renders the trial, and with it the entire religious endeavor, a sham. The trial, along with a religious lifestyle and a connection to God, can exist only in the context of a humble personality that is content in not knowing. A conceited stance stems from pride, and it is the voice of Satan. The trial will forever be associated with a subject who by nature is in the dark.⁶

Action despite doubt is the essence of faith and the true victory of Avraham.

As well, Rabbi Dr. Walter Wurzburger argues that human morality is limited and that the act of the Akedah was not immoral. He critiques the Kantian categorical imperative that Kant describes as, “objective, rationally necessary and unconditional principle that we must always follow despite any natural desires or inclinations we may have to the contrary.”⁷ In other words, ethics are governed by rationally constructed, mutually recognized norms. Rabbi Wurzburger sees this view on ethics as limiting. He argues that humans have a “covenantal imperative” that is ethically correct even if we can’t rationalize it. Human morality is limited. Divine morality is not.⁸

Rabbi Wurzburger argues with Ramban’s interpretation of Devarim 6:18, “Do what is right and good in the sight of Hashem,” as a divine commandment to act morally, but qualifies this commandment by saying that there are times when human understanding of morality is insufficient to fulfill the “covenantal imperative.”

Finally, there are several contemporary non-rabbinic interpretations of the Akedah that are worth addressing.

The first comes from Jon D. Levenson, the Albert A. List Professor of Jewish Studies at the Harvard Divinity School. Levenson argues that child sacrifice was not morally problematic during the time of Avraham. Levenson believes that the purpose of the Akedah was to show us that child sacrifice was not acceptable.⁹

Aaron Koller in his work Unbinding Isaac understands the Akedah to be a moment in which God not only demands but desires the sacrifice of Isaac as a testament to Abraham’s ultimate faith in God’s promise of progeny. However, God values the individual human life more than he desires Abraham’s sacrificial act. Koller relates, “Consider a health-conscious person looking at a piece of cake. He may want the cake, although in the end, he won’t eat it. The rejection of the cake is a statement not of its despicability or fundamental abhorrence, but of a desire for health that is even more powerful than the desire for the confection.”¹⁰

This motif is recorded in rabbinic literature, as Koller cites,

R. El’azar b. ‘Azariah says: How do I know that a person should not say, “I don’t want to wear sha’atnez [the forbidden mixture of wool and linen],” or “I don’t want to eat pork,” or “I don’t want to have that illicit sexual relationship,” but rather, “I do want to! But what can I do? My Father in heaven decreed against it.” This is what is taught, “I separated you from the nations, to be Mine.” Thus one distances oneself from a sin and therefore accepts the yoke of heaven.¹¹

Lastly, we have the interpretation of the Danish Christian philosopher, Søren Kierkegaard.¹² In his seminal work, “Fear and Trembling” (1843), Kierkegaard offers his explanation. In his mind, Avraham’s actions were morally wrong, yet they were meritorious because of Avraham’s absolute subservience to God, what Kierkegaard terms “the teleological suspension of the ethical.” Avraham pushes ethical considerations to the side for the purpose of serving God.

All of the aforementioned peirushim are interesting and offer much insight into the troubling story of the Akedah. But none of them resonates with me. I take issue with both their incongruity with Avraham’s character as well as my own moral sensibilities. I will discuss each of these critiques in turn.

I find it hard to believe that Avraham would not know that child sacrifice is wrong. Avraham has a highly developed moral conscience. The entire Parashat Vayera is designed to show this fact. Avraham’s generous welcoming of the three messengers and his intercession on behalf of Sodom and Gomorrah serve as key examples to Avraham’s keen moral sense.¹³Avraham’s compassion and generosity are highlighted in numerous Midrashim.¹⁴ To think that he would suddenly accept child sacrifice as morally acceptable is simply not likely.

Instead, I argue that not only did God not intend Avraham to sacrifice Yitzhak but that Avraham intuited this and went along with it as a testament to his devotion to God. At no point during the story of the Akedah did Avraham truly believe that he was going to sacrifice his son. There is some indication of this interpretation in the text.

Firstly, it is not clear in the text that God asked Avraham to sacrifice Yitzhak. Rather, it is possible that God commanded Avraham to raise Yitzhak as an offering but never intended to kill him. We can derive a proof of this interpretation from the text itself.

The original command was to “raise him up as a sacrifice,” but was never explicitly to sacrifice Yitzhak.¹⁵

Furthermore, when asked by Yitzhak where the animal was that they would sacrifice, Avraham responded, “God will see to the sheep for His burnt offering, my son” (Genesis 22:8). Avraham indicated that he was not worried about the eventual sacrifice, since God would attend to it. In my opinion, this is Avraham tacitly revealing his belief that God would not make him sacrifice his son and that Avraham believes that there will be some force that will intercede and prevent the final action.

Also, Avraham never even began the downward stroke of the blade that would kill his son. He only raises the knife, “And Abraham picked up the knife to slay his son.” (Genesis 22:10).

But he never brought it down. He never began the act that he knew he would not have to do. Yes, an angel interceded, but this was Avraham’s belief all along.

Avraham’s reward at the end of the Akedah was not for his blind faith in God and sacrifice of moral considerations, but rather Avraham’s commitment to both his faith in God and his own moral judgment. In Avraham’s eyes, God was morally perfect and would never command Avraham to commit a morally abhorrent act. His faith in God was the faith that God was morally perfect. This, I believe, is the message of the Akedah.

The idea that God never intended Avraham to sacrifice Yitzhak is not my original thought. The suggestion that God never intended Avraham to sacrifice Yitzhak is found in a Midrash in Taanit 4a: “And never entered my mind” – this refers to Isaac the son of Abraham.”

Another source for this interpretation comes from Rabbi Acha’s reading of Genesis Rabbah 56:8:

“When I said to you ‘take your son’ I never said to slaughter him. I merely said to ‘raise him up.’ I said this to you to demonstrate your belovedness, and you did my bidding. Now take him down.”

And finally, from Tanchuma 17:2,

“Abraham’s ram was created at twilight,” meaning from the beginning of creation God never intended Avraham to sacrifice Yitzhak for the ram that took Yitzhak’s place had already been created.

A final, striking insight comes from Israeli philosopher Yoram Hazony, who argues that the name that Avraham gives to the site of his ordeal is indicative of his understanding. Hazony comments,

As it turns out, Abraham does not leave the terrible scene at Moria without comment. He gives the place a name, and in so doing, tells us precisely what he believes is significant about what happened there. The name he gives the place is “The Lord Will See [adonai yireh],” this being a reference to his own words, reported a few lines earlier, when he tells Isaac that “God will see [elohim yireh] to the sheep for an offering himself.” The meaning here is unmistakable. For Abraham, there is one and only one thing that is worthy of remembering here and passing to future generations: That is the fact that he had held fast to the conviction that God would provide the ram so that there would be no human sacrifice — and that God had indeed come through for him, providing a ram in place of his son, as Abraham had believed he would.¹⁶

My hiddush, reinterpretation, is that Avraham, due to his acute knowledge of God and highly developed moral conscience, intuited that this was God’s plan. His “willingness” to sacrifice Yitzhak was not an expression of his willingness to blindly follow God’s commandments especially when they transgress Avraham’s moral code. Instead, it is an expression of Avraham’s willingness to follow God’s commandments knowing that they are in line with moral correctness.¹⁷

Two final points: The first is that human morality resembles divine morality. We can asymptotically approach divine morality by honing our own moral sensibilities much as Avraham did. In this way, we can better live our lives in accordance with divine morality and save ourselves from the error of human subjectivity. Avraham’s morality very closely approximated God’s morality because Avraham had worked hard on developing his moral conscience (See Sotah 14a).

Lastly, this is my interpretation. It speaks to me as I believe that human understanding of morality is central to Jewish, ethical life. Any interpretation of the Akedah that asks me to believe that Avraham desires or attempts to commit a morally abhorrent act is one that I cannot accept. Others may disagree with me and that is both expected and welcomed. The legacy and marvel of Judaism is its openness to multiple opinions. This, too, is a message of the Akedah.

As Rav Soloveitchik said, “The drama of the Akedah is multi-semantic, lending itself to many interpretations. God demands that man bring the supreme sacrifice, but the fashion in which the challenge is met is for man to determine.”¹⁸

I hope that all can find an interpretation of the Akedah that speaks to them, and I hope that in the process of listening to the words of Torah, we can hear ourselves and our souls whisper who we truly are.

Notes

1 One should not overlook the irony that the story is known as Akedat Yitzhak, the Binding of Isaac, when Isaac is almost a completely passive character. See Aaron Koller Unbinding Isaac “The Erasure of Isaac” and Stolle, “Levinas and the Akedah,” 137–139 cited in Koller.

2 Targum Pseudo Jonathan on Genesis 22:1–19.

3 “[Leibowitz’s] glorification of the Akedah—the binding of Isaac—which is the heart of the existential moment of true worship of God for its own sake, comes into focus as an alternative theology of redemption. The Akedah is understood as the ultimate redemptive act. The rational and the ethical, therefore, are suspended and, finally, transcended when one fully accepts the yoke of Torah and Mitzvot.” See also Rechnitzer, Haim O. “Redemptive Theology in the Thought of Yeshayahu Leibowitz.” Israel Studies, vol. 13, no. 3, 2008, p.138-139. JSTOR, www.jstor.org/stable/30245835. Accessed 6 Sept. 2020. Note that this is also part of the Malbim’s understanding. See Malbim on Breishit 22:5.

4 Solomon Buber, ed., Midrash Aggada (Vienna 1894), Vayera 22. Cited in “Faith Shattered and Restored” Magid Books. Translated by Elie Leshem.

5 Riskin, Shlomo. “Parashat Veyera: Listening to the right voice.” Jerusalem Post. 17 Oct 2013. https://www.jpost.com/opinion/columnists/parashat-veyera-listening-to-the-right-voice-328994

Accessed 6 Sep 2020.

6 Rosenberg, Shimon Gerson. “Uncertainty as the Trial of the Akeda” Faith Shattered and Restored. Maggid 15 July 2017.

7 “Kant’s Moral Philosophy” Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy. 7 July 2016. Accessed 21 May 2020 https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/kant-moral/

8 See Wurzburger, Walter S. Covenantal Imperatives. Edited by Eliezer L. Jacobs and Shalom Carmy. Urim Publications 1 Sep 2008.

9 Levenson, Jon D. Inheriting Abraham: The Legacy of the Patriarch in Judaism, Christianity, and Islam. Princeton University Press. 2012 p. 59.

10 Koller, Aaron. Unbinding Isaac: The Significance of the Akedah for Modern Jewish Thought. Jewish Publication Society: 2020 p. 139.

11 Ibid.

12 For a more comprehensive explanation of Kierkegaard’s view and modern Jewish thinkers who were deeply affected by his writings on the Akedah see Unbinding Isaac by Aaron Koller.

13 David Hartman puts Abraham’s intercession on behalf of Sodom and Gomorrah as a balance to the story of the Akedah. The former puts forth the prophetic mode of protest, rebuke, and subjective moral sense. The latter emphasizes submission, acquiescence, and the objective, even inscrutable, divine will. David Hartman A Heart of Many Rooms p. 14.

14 Bereishit Rabbah 38, 48.

15 See Rabbi Levi ben Gershon (Ralbag) “Interpretation of the Words,” on Bereishit 22:1.

16 Hazony, Yoram. Philosophy of the Hebrew Scriptures. Cambridge University Press: 2012. p. 164.

17 An alternative reading of the Akedah that I am partial to is that Abraham deeply struggled with the conflict between his own moral intuition and the seemingly amoral divine command to sacrifice his son. Though he hoped that God would provide a deus ex machina to solve his moral quandary, Abraham was ultimately unsure of both the impending outcome and God’s desire. In this view, it is argued that God did not want Abraham to actually sacrifice his son, but rather wanted to test Abraham’s devotion to Him. In the climactic moment of the Akedah, Abraham, not seeing a way out from his internal struggle, submits himself to divine will and attempts to sacrifice his son. Whereupon realizing that Abraham chose submission rather than protest, God ends the test, seeing that Abraham has made his decision. In this reading, it appears that Abraham failed the test by submitting to the will of God instead of protesting against the immoral decree. This is evident in the text as God never speaks to Abraham again.

18 Student, Gil. “Rav Soloveitchik on the Akedah” Torah Musings. 31 Jan 2008. Accessed 21 May 2020. https://www.torahmusings.com/2008/01/rav-soloveitchik-on-akedah/

Interpretation and the Talmud: The Goal of Study

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Yehuda Goldfeder grew up in Monsey, NY. He graduated from Yeshiva College in 2020, where he majored in Computer Science and Math and minored in Jewish Studies. Currently he is an MA student at Columbia University, studying Artificial Intelligence. This article appears in issue 39 of Conversations, the journal of the Institute for Jewish Ideas and Ideals.

When reading any text, whether a work of literature or a legal work, there are broadly speaking two possible goals. The goal may be to understand what the author was trying to convey. Alternatively, the goal may be to extract meaning for the reader. Of course, these are two extremes, and a range of options exist in the middle.

The Talmud, and indeed all of rabbinic literature, is an extremely complex and deep corpus, and has been continually studied by Jews for thousands of years. The goal of the study, however, is not so simple. In this essay, I will examine how these texts ought to be approached, both according to their authors and prominent interpreters.

It may be natural to think that the ultimate goal in studying the Talmud is objective truth. As a religious act, the reader is attempting to understand God’s word, and thus the goal should be arriving at the meaning originally intended by the authors. However, the issue is far more complex, and as a result has theological implications.

Before looking at any specific piece, it is noteworthy to examine the very structure of the Mishna. The Mishna, like the Talmud after it, is noteworthy in its meticulous inclusion of all opinions, even those conclusively refuted. Unlike other law codes and religious works, the Talmud and Midrashim celebrate conflict, and preserve a multiplicity of opinions. The Mishna in Eduyot 1:4-6 explains why minority opinions are included:

And why do they record the opinions of Shammai and Hillel for naught? To teach the following generations that a man should not [always] persist in his opinion, for behold, the fathers of the world did not persist in their opinion.
And why do they record the opinion of a single person among the many, when the halakha must be according to the opinion of the many? So that if a court prefers the opinion of the single person it may depend on him. For no court may set aside the decision of another court unless it is greater than it in wisdom and in number. If it was greater than it in wisdom but not in number, in number but not in wisdom, it may not set aside its decision, unless it is greater than it in wisdom and in number. Rabbi Judah said: “If so, why do they record the opinion of a single person among the many to set it aside? So that if a man shall say, ‘Thus have I received the tradition’, it may be said to him, ‘According to the [refuted] opinion of that individual did you hear it.’”

We can extract three reasons. Including the minority opinion teaches the important lesson that even the greatest scholars are sometimes wrong. It also allows for a later court to uphold a minority opinion. And further, it keeps a record of what has been refuted, so that such a position is not considered a second time.

From Eduyot alone, the reasons seem purely pragmatic. However, Eruvin 13b gives a more detailed picture.

Rabbi Abba said that Shemuel said: For three years Bet Shammai and Bet Hillel disagreed. These said: The halakha is in accordance with our opinion, and these said: The halakha is in accordance with our opinion. Ultimately, a Divine Voice emerged and proclaimed: Both these and those are the words of the living God. However, the halakha is in accordance with the opinion of Bet Hillel.^{^[1]}

Here, we are given a theological reason for the inclusion of minority opinions, for they, too, are the word of the living God.² Similarly, Hagiga 3b states:

“Those that are composed in collections [ba’alei asufot]”: These are Torah scholars who sit in many groups [asupot] and engage in Torah study. There are often debates among these groups, as some of these Sages render an object or person ritually impure and these render it pure; these prohibit an action and these permit it; these deem an item invalid and these deem it valid. Lest a person say: Now, how can I study Torah when it contains so many different opinions? The verse states that they are all “given from one shepherd.” One God gave them; one leader, i.e., Moses, said them from the mouth of the Master of all creation, Blessed be He, as it is written: “And God spoke all these words.”

From the above sources, something remarkable emerges. All responsible opinions in a debate are deemed valid. While the halakha must follow one side, that does not make that opinion more correct. Bet Hillel is followed not because they are more correct but because they were more accepting, as Eruvin 13b goes on to explain:

The Gemara asks: Since both these and those are the words of the living God, why were Bet Hillel privileged to have the halakha established in accordance with their opinion? The reason is that they were agreeable and forbearing, showing restraint when affronted, and when they taught the halakha they would teach both their own statements and the statements of Bet Shammai. Moreover, when they formulated their teachings and cited a dispute, they prioritized the statements of Bet Shammai to their own statements, in deference to Bet Shammai.

In fact, not only are both sides of such a debate valid, but the debate itself is considered a good thing! This idea is beautifully formulated in Avot 5:17:

Every dispute that is for the sake of Heaven, will in the end endure; But one that is not for the sake of Heaven, will not endure. Which is the controversy that is for the sake of Heaven? Such was the controversy of Hillel and Shammai. And which is the controversy that is not for the sake of Heaven? Such was the controversy of Korah and all his congregation.

This Mishna establishes another important principle. While we ascribe value to both sides of a debate, that does not apply to all opinions. Some opinions are indeed deemed illegitimate. These debates are termed “not for the sake of heaven,” although such a designation is difficult to define precisely.

The above sources establish both pragmatic and theological reasons for keeping both sides of the debate in the dialogue. Still, from the above one would assume that the ultimate purpose of both sides is to determine what God meant. However, one of the most famous passages in the Talmud shatters this notion, the story of the oven of Akhnai in Baba Metzia 59a–59b. The Gemara relates a debate between Rabbi Eliezer and the Rabbi’s regarding the purity status of an earthenware oven that had been disassembled. Rabbi Eliezer, failing to convince his colleagues of his opinion, resorted to supernatural means to prove his position. After performing several miracles, conditioning their occurrence on his opinion being correct, the Rabbis remained unimpressed. Finally, Rabbi Eliezer resorted to an even more extreme means of proof:

Rabbi Eliezer then said to them: If the halakha is in accordance with my opinion, Heaven will prove it. A Divine Voice emerged from Heaven and said: Why are you differing with Rabbi Eliezer, as the halakha is in accordance with his opinion in every place that he expresses an opinion?

Rabbi Yehoshua stood on his feet and said: It is written: “It is not in heaven” (Deuteronomy 30:12). The Gemara asks: What is the relevance of the phrase “It is not in heaven” in this context? Rabbi Yirmeya says: Since the Torah was already given at Mount Sinai, we do not regard a Divine Voice, as You already wrote at Mount Sinai, in the Torah: “After a majority to incline” (Exodus 23:2). Since the majority of Rabbis disagreed with Rabbi Eliezer’s opinion, the halakha is not ruled in accordance with his opinion.

A literal read of the passage is shocking. Once God gave us the Torah, His intent is no longer the important question, but rather our interpretation. This takes the notion of Eilu v’Eilu (they are both words of the living God) a step further. Even if it weren't God’s word, it is still Torah! Or perhaps more accurately, God accepts all interpretations as His word. Indeed, the passage continues to say that God Himself was pleased with this outcome, saying “My children have triumphed over Me.”

One interpretation of this story, adopted by some medieval commentators, is that the goal is understanding God’s original intent as best as possible, but supernatural means are not a legitimate part of this process. This theory is a result of the uncomfortable implications of removing God’s intent from the picture, but is undermined by the simple reading of the texts cited above. Further, this clashes with several tendencies of the Talmud. For example, the Talmud is wont to interpret a Mishna or Beraita in accordance with the accepted opinion despite such a read going against the simple understanding of the text. Further, when defending an opinion from attacks based on earlier sources, often highly nuanced and convoluted reads are accepted as a defense, the simple read of the earlier source notwithstanding.

However, it would be a gross mis-categorization to claim that the Talmud places no value on authorial intent. Not all interpretation and debate is legitimate, as the Mishna in Avot so clearly indicates. The careful categorization of Stam Mishnayot with their authors, the precise exploration of and preservation of the words of earlier authorities, and the whole notion of the

mesora (tradition) demonstrates the implausibility of such an argument. But it is equally clear that a standard notion of authorial intent is decidedly not the goal. So which one is it?

The solution emerges from an analysis of the Talmud’s notion of fact and fiction. Whenever trying to establish a fact, the Talmud has two options, empirical observation, and canonical sources.

Whenever both exist, the latter is exclusively chosen, even in cases when observations are readily available. Counterintuitively, canon is deemed superior to observable fact.

So what is the Talmud’s reason for this inversion? The halakha does not operate in the observable world, but in an abstract one of ideals. This distinction, the subject of Rabbi

Soloveitchik’s Halakhic Man, has made its way into modern halakhic literature as well, as can be reflected in the attitudes of many contemporary decisors regarding dealing with halakhic ideas that have been empirically refuted, such as spontaneous generation. Its notion of truth, at least in the halakhic realm, exists in this abstract world of ideas.

Thus, it is not at all surprising that this phenomenon extends into authorial intent. This is precisely the idea of Eilu v’Eilu. The author’s intent is a key factor, but it is not judged by the empirical shackles of this terrestrial world but by the idealized conception of the author as reflected in the canon. In other words, authorial intent is everything in the Talmud, but its process at identifying it operates under foreign axioms.

This theory raises two fundamental questions that must be addressed. First, what exactly are these axioms, and how do they operate? Obviously not all interpretations are valid, so what rubric is used? Second, what is to be made of this idealized reality? What motivated the Rabbis to form this bifurcation and choose their idealized version over empiricism? How can this decision be justified?

My response to the first question is best posed with an analogy. Judaism holds the text of the Bible to be sacred. However, throughout history, two different schools have sought to protect its authenticity. While both are part of one whole, in a way they represent two different traditions.

On the one hand, we have the scribes, who faithfully transcribe the text word for word. Concurrently, we have the ba’alei keri’a, the members of the community whose job it is to read the Torah scroll. One theory of the origin of Kerei u’Ketiv is divergence between these two schools. While that theory has many issues with it, it illustrates this point perfectly. For, leaving aside the origins of Kerei u’Ketiv, it remains true that in the preservation of the Torah, we have those reading it and those writing it, but the two groups are indeed preserving a slightly different text.

Regarding Torah Sheba’al Peh, the same phenomenon is present. Originally, the Oral law remained oral. However, post the redaction of the Mishna, the mesora began to be transmitted in two concurrent forms, that of texts and that of people interpreting the texts. It may be the case that the two are not always identical, but the latter still remains a valid, indeed the only valid, interpretation of the former.This is reflected by the tendency to interpret mishnayot in accordance with the accepted halakha even if they do not seem to be. The accepted norms, as part of the oral tradition, remain as a key factor in the interpretation of texts.^{^[2]}

In recognition of this, the Talmud views as legitimate later innovative interpretations of earlier authorities, even as it acknowledges their novelty, as expressed poignantly in the story of Moshe and Rabbi Akiva in Menahot 29b:

Rav Yehuda says that Rav says: When Moses ascended on High, he found the Holy One,

Blessed be He, sitting and tying crowns on the letters of the Torah. Moses said before God: Master of the Universe, who is preventing You from giving the Torah without these additions? God said to him: There is a man who is destined to be born after several generations, and Akiva ben Yosef is his name; he is destined to derive from each and every thorn of these crowns mounds upon mounds of halakhot. It is for his sake that the crowns must be added to the letters of the Torah. Moses said before God: Master of the Universe, show him to me. God said to him: Return behind you. Moses went and sat at the end of the eighth row in Rabbi Akiva’s study hall and did not understand what they were saying. Moses’ strength waned, as he thought his Torah knowledge was deficient. When Rabbi Akiva arrived at the discussion of one matter, his students said to him: My teacher, from where do you derive this? Rabbi Akiva said to them: It is a halakha transmitted to Moses from Sinai. When Moses heard this, his mind was put at ease, as this too was part of the Torah that he was to receive. Moses returned and came before the Holy One, Blessed be He, and said before Him: Master of the Universe, You have a man as great as this and yet You still choose to give the Torah through me. Why? God said to him: Be silent; this intention arose before Me.

As to what may have influenced Hazal to form this conceptualization of the halakha, it seems this arises in part from the text of the Tanakh itself. Several laws point in this direction. The most obvious example is the biblical institution of testimony, which requires several extreme formalities, such as both witnesses being males, seeing each other, and concurring even regarding ancillary facts. The massive gap between these laws and the requirements of having a functioning judicial system is obvious. Hazal recognized this, instituting super-judicial^{^[3]}means of bridging the gap between the ideal and concrete by creating the kippah (Sanhedrin 81b).

This idea is far from limited to the above illuminating example. In a much broader sense, the very notion of rabbinic and biblical law, a dichotomy all across the Talmud, is much the same idea. Rabbinic law’s very existenceis an admission that the biblical law as it stands is too far from reality, and needs a bridge of sorts, or perhaps a fence, to ensure its effectiveness.^{^[4]}

When faced with this reality, there are two philosophical positions that potentially emerge. The first is that biblical law is flawed. Obviously, this is not even considered in the Talmud. The other recourse is to postulate that Torah Law pertains exclusively to an idealized plane, and is perfect in this abstract universe, even if it sometimes comes into conflict with the reality of daily life.

With this context, we can attempt to understand the enigmatic imperative of Torah Study for its own sake. This ideal as the goal of Talmud Torah is expressed quite clearly in Avot 6:1.^{^[5]}

Rabbi Meir says: “Anyone who engages in Torah for its own sake merits many things, and moreover makes the entire world worthwhile.”

A warning of failure to do this can be found in Avot 4:5, which states:

Do not make the Torah a crown to magnify yourself with, or a spade with which to dig. So would Hillel say: “One who make personal use of the crown [of Torah] shall perish.” Hence, one who benefits oneself from the words of Torah removes one’s life from the world.

This ideal reaches its most famous form in Pesahim 50b:

Rav Yehuda said in the name of Rav: “A person should always be engaged in Torah and

mitzvoth, even she-lo lishmah, for doing so she-lo lishmah leads one to doing so lishmah.”

The precise meaning of this term is subject of much debate. It seems the simplest understanding is Torah learning not for any personal reward, gain, or practical benefit. It means Torah learning is not a means but an end. In light of the above analysis, this phrase takes on a new meaning. For the goal of learning Torah is not merely reconstructing an earlier historical position, but the further development of its own internal canon, to be understood in its ideal universe. Thus, in a very literal and real way, the only goal of Talmud Torah is its own sake.^{^[6]}

^{^[1]} All excerpts of the Talmud are from the William Davidson edition, which can be found for free on Sefaria.org.

^{^[2]} An integral part of this is the belief that the mesora, the way we interpret God’s word, is guided over by His providence, making this method of interpretation the only valid one. And thus, a valid opinion is defined as one in accordance with this living tradition. The Hazon Ish made the argument that new manuscripts should not affect the halakha, since presumably God arranged history as it was for a reason. Since whatever transpires is God’s will, the way Torah is understood by its legitimate scholars is thus implicitly given his approval.

^{^[3]} Note the fine distinction between super-judicial and extra-judicial. These laws, while not “normal procedure,” were codified all the same.

^{^[4]} See Moreh Nevukhim 3:34 for what I believe is a philosophical restatement of this same idea, namely that law addresses an ideal plane.

^{^[5]} Several other sources in the Talmud make a similar point. See Sanhedrin 99a, Sukka 49b, Taanit 7a.

^{^[6]} It must be emphasized, Hazal firmly linked Talmud Torah to Ma’aseh, application of one’s learning. This essay does not mean to undermine that. It is not contradictory for the system to function in an abstract internal sense even as it is a concrete blueprint for how to act. Of course, halakha emerges from Talmud study.

Going Out on a Limb: Joha

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Dr. Jane Mushabac teaches Creative Writing at City Tech, a CUNY college. She is the author of the 2016 novel, His Hundred Years, A Tale, which she wrote with the pen name Shalach Manot. A Mellon Fellowship gave her time away from teaching to write the novel. This review essay originally appeared in 2003 in Midstream magazine in one of its ground-breaking Yiddish-Ladino issues.

Folktales of Joha, Jewish Trickster, collected and edited by Matilda Koén-Sarano. Translated from the Judeo-Spanish (Ladino) by David Herman. Philadelphia: The Jewish Publication Society, 2003, 296 pp., $30.

In a world saturated with sophisticated entertainment, it would seem we are well beyond Joha, and wouldn’t need Matilda Koén-Sarano’s 2003 collection of tales about this celebrated Middle Eastern-Sephardic wise fool. Think again.

Pronounced Joe Hah, with the accent on Hah, this underdog doesn’t really promise big laughs. The punch lines are anticlimactic, the situations silly, the scope limited. Joha, in fact, in many of the tales, has no money, no work, no food, nothing but a donkey, or an olive he keeps chasing around the plate to get on his fork. And yet Joha is Joha; when his Turkish friend gets the olive with one deft stab, he cheerfully says, “Don’t forget, if I hadn’t tired it out you would never have managed to catch it.”

Reading through this collection, we go from one tricky quandary to the next. When you write the number three hundred thirty-three, which three do you put first? Do you sleep with your beard under the covers or on top? At the end of the final Ne’ilah prayer, which word is it, echad or acher, and as soon as you’ve got the answer the two words keep going back and forth in your head, so you’ve got to chase the rabbi to ask him again, and again—and again. How do you get the rich man to serve you the big fish instead of the little one, when he charitably invites you to Shabbat dinner? And what do you do, when beneath a big ugly stone you find a bag of gold, and suddenly you are the rich man? If you are Joha, you keep a fancy little box with dung in it, and each day you open it to remind you of what it was like to have nothing.

Joha is the self before the self was invented. He is the self with no self, no borders or boundaries. He is the fool liberated from the terrible fear that plagues most people most of the time—the fear of looking foolish. Sent to buy sweets, he eats all but one before he gets home, and when asked how he could do that, he demonstrates by eating the last one. He lights all the matches to make sure they all work. He talks to his donkey and to the train. He stamps the behinds of the thieves who come to relieve themselves on his grave, then rounds them up after his faked death, and proves they are all his branded servants.

I grew up with the stories of Joha, told by my father. My father, known for his outgoing charm and warmth, didn’t know how to tell a joke but that never stopped him. He would get the wording wrong, tell the same story many times. A punchline was as uncharacteristic of him as a punch.

Two Joha stories were favorites, nonetheless, at our dinner table in a two-bedroom second-floor apartment in the 1950s. To call them stories is like calling a grain of kosher salt a diamond, but they managed to season and ornament a childhood, even provide a sense of self and a worldview—what an Ashkenazi might call a Weltanschauung, a word a Turkish Jew would not use and never heard of and would not be caught saying. Joha is sitting on a branch, sawing away, and when he is warned that he’s cutting off the branch he’s sitting on, he scoffs, and keeps sawing away. Sure enough, when he finally cuts through the branch, he falls to the ground. Instead of complaining and crying in pain, he is astounded by the person who had been warning him. “Fortuneteller! This man is a fortune-teller!” he shouts. “A genius!”

It turns out that the story continues, somewhat elaborately. However, for this one listener, if the rest of this tale was ever told, it went unheard. It probably wasn’t ever told in the hubbub of the dinner table: amidst the various hectoring complaints that are such an important part of family life; the political news; the gobbling up of juicy zucchini with tomatoes, lively salads with olives, onions, cucumbers, and generous fistfuls of parsley. The images from Joha’s world that remained over the years were of Joha cutting off the branch he is sitting on and the sage warning him he’ll fall—and the point: Joha isn’t fixated on his mistakes; without missing a beat, he cheerfully moves on.

The second favorite is even simpler. Joha wants to count the donkeys he is bringing to market, and so he does. He carefully counts one, two, three, four, five. But he is supposed to have six. So he gets off his donkey, and counts again, slowly, deliberately, and this time there are six. When he gets back on his donkey, it is five again. Joha can’t figure it out.

Obviously here we are not speaking of jokes. We are hardly even speaking of humorous stories, although that’s what they are. Jokes and humorous stories are different. Jokes must have come in with the Enlightenment, with the scientific method. They are efficient, establish credibility, lead you along, build to a climax, then boom: “You see, it’s working already.” That’s the one about the Russian who asked the Jew how come Jews are so smart, it’s because we eat herring, would you happen to know where I could get some herring. I happen to have some here—we all know this one—how much would it cost, well, three rubles, and after he finishes it, the Russian suddenly says, I could have bought that same herring in the market for two rubles, then “You see, it’s working already.”

You don’t want to know how this “joke” is told in Koén-Sarano’s collection. The narrator of this particular tale flubs it, flunks the science of jokes. And the one about the man—in another tradition it would be Hershele Ostropoler—who threatens the innkeeper that he will do what his father did, frightens the innkeeper so badly that the innkeeper provides a great meal, and after he is finished eating, when the innkeeper timidly asks what it was the man’s father would have done if he had been denied the meal, Hershele says, “He would have gone away hungry.”

Told as a Joha story, it’s not about a meal, but a jacket. He would have “bought himself a new jacket,” especially if you know the other version, just does not cut it. You wince, you cover your eyes. Perhaps this is actually a story that modern Joha raconteurs have taken from eighteenth-century Eastern Europe, changing a Hershele into a Joha, but let’s not go there—because it’s the genius of Joha that we want, not grafts (or branches) from or to other trees.

Who is Joha? He is from before television, before Einstein, the sewing machine, Isaac Newton, the Enlightenment, Shakespeare. He is from before the Inquisition, the Crusades, before the automobile, the pressure cooker, and Dannon’s packaging of yogurt, which used to be made in a big pot swaddled in blankets left to sit for eight hours in a warm spot. Joha is from the ninth century, and from medieval Turkey. This folk hero, perhaps little talked about in Manhattan, is known in about 35 countries, by a different name in each culture, but each derived from the Turkish wise fool Nasreddin (Nas reh deen) D’Hodja. Hodja means teacher, and this legendary or historical popular figure was said to be born in thirteenth-century Turkey, and to have died in the Turkish town of Aksheir, which in our own times still celebrates an annual Nasreddin festival. His grave there is famous for having a large locked gate attached to no fence.

Sephardic Jews, forced to flee Spain in the fifteenth century were, as we know, welcomed to settle in the Ottoman Empire. Many did, while others went to Portugal, then Amsterdam and other cities of Western Europe. Spain was foolishly and brutally depopulating itself at the same time that the Ottoman Turks were seeking to populate a vast new territory, and one of the treasures of the new land for Jews who survived and went East to Turkey was the Turkish folk hero, Nasreddin. Sephardic culture was transmitted in Ladino and Hebrew, in prayers and songs, and the many languages of the new home—Turkish, Greek, Armenian—but it also found expression in the tales of Nasreddin, called by a variety of names by the Jews: the Hodja, Nas al-din, and Joha.

Adopting the Hodja was a way of mediating with Turkish culture, and of finding familiar folk values, pleasures, and realities, an overlapping that is all the more of interest in our own time, with its Muslim-Christian-Jewish tensions. The stories are simple, yet at the same time, extensive, rich, varied, energetic, a cultural feast of insubordination, stubborn survival, cheerful unmovable optimism and play. Joha is always what people have needed to survive. Joha is Jewish play with Middle-Eastern yichus (pedigree).

For a Jew growing up in New York City with bits and pieces of Joha stories, the word Joha cut two ways. If you said someone was a real Joha, it was no compliment; it meant, what a dope!! But on the other side, unspoken, never mentioned, was the daring, wit, and totally unselfconscious audacity of Joha, the liberation of Joha. Joha has deep Jewish meaning. The laugh and a cheerful approach to life represent a core Jewish religious belief. It is liberating to hear stories about someone who circumvents rationality, and effortlessly embraces the folly that is wisdom. But more specifically, Joha’s stories represent the willingness and the daring, in the best sense, of going out on a limb. Abraham left the sophisticated civilization of Ur, Sarah laughed, David took a slingshot to Goliath. Joha is the other, who laughs and calls life as he sees it. Joha flouts the arrogant assumption that rationality trumps all.

Matilda Koén-Sarano has given us a great gift with this collection in English, Folktales of Joha: Jewish Trickster. The excellent introduction by Tamar Alexander contextualizes Joha in the Turkish tradition, and provides a brief thoughtful folkloric analysis. Alexander holds the Estelle Frankfurter Chair for Sephardic Culture, and is Chair of the Folklore Program of the Hebrew Literature Department, Ben-Gurion University of the Negev. Alexander dates Joha to ninth-century Arabic, although one wonders when Jews first encountered this folk hero, if he came with the Arabic that Jews spoke beginning in the ninth century, or if he was only a post-1492 treasure.

Koén-Sarano is a writer, scholar, poet, storyteller, and broadcaster for the Israeli radio station Kol Israel. She reports the news in Ladino, and entertains listeners with Sephardic music, poetry, and tales. An eminent, prolific folklorist devoted to preserving Sephardic oral culture, she has been collecting Joha stories since 1979; her first collection, a 400-page compilation, was published in Jerusalem in Ladino and Hebrew (Kana, 1986, 1991).

One of the most satisfying aspects of her collection is her respect for the narrators, their wording, and their individuality. The description of the narrators at the end of this 2003 volume is a good read. Move over Goldberg and Greenberg. Welcome Avzaradel, Babani, Bahbout, Bardavid. Diversity has a different geography here. Koén-Sarano’s narrators come from Tripoli, Salonika, Istanbul, Milan, Oran, Russhuk, Sliven, Cairo, Beirut, Buenos Aires, Izmir, Tunis, Bursa, Marseilles, Beit Shean, Jaffa, Tel Aviv, Jerusalem. The 82 narrators, the folk who have told the tales, were born between 1898 and 1993. Perhaps because many are women from an era before careers, the listing tells the schools and universities the male and female narrators attended, and so emphasizes institutions of cultural transmission, in itself a fascinating survival story; occasional glimpses let us know they studied many things from Italian literature to ritual slaughter to classical dance. There are, yes, a couple of lawyers, a violinist, a professor at Tufts (the only narrator from New York City), but the bios for all of them are folk bios, a couple of times with the neighborhood of birth thrown in, (“Born in Jerusalem in the Shama neighborhood at the foot of Mount Zion, 1910”), once with the number of grandchildren (12 in Koén-Sarano’s case), one Salonika man’s World War II survival of eleven concentration camps, another’s exile by the Turks from Palestine to Syria, and the somber fact that one man—Pinhas Tokatly—was killed by a suicide bomb attack in Jerusalem last year.

Just folks. It’s a refreshing change from the professional bios we’re used to reading, with awards, titles, organizational affiliations, a lot of careerist huffing and puffing. “Dios nos lleva a Yerushalayim,” says the 13-verse Ladino Passover song; many of the narrators have had several migrations in their lives, for instance, from Istanbul to Marseilles to Turin, but three quarters of them by birth or eventual nationality are Israelis.

Hank Halio’s Ladino Reveries (The Foundation for the Advancement of Sephardic Studies and Culture, 1996) is another good source of Joha or Djoha stories, a couple of dozen of them sprinkled in Ladino and English into a chatty collection of proverbs and reminiscences.

But when we read Koén-Sarano’s collection, we don’t stop off for a meldado or the recipe for Turkish coffee. It’s straight, 300 short takes ranging from a few lines to a few pages, and presented in chapters on school, work, animals, the law, and so on. When you read about Joha, you don’t expect to laugh out loud. But you’ll be with a character who is first cousin to all the underdog wise fools from around the world. It’s an immersion, like a novel before the first novel. The narrations are refreshingly direct, and as Koén-Sarano notes of Joha in one of the best tales she herself narrates, “pure of heart.”

In a tale I recently heard, Joha was spooning yogurt into a lake. The story was told to me by a Turkish Jew who grew up in Istanbul in the 1950s, before television had arrived, and who said he and his friends used to read Hodja stories all the time. There were lots of collections of the tales, and it was great fun. They loved them. But he doesn’t tell the stories to his daughters growing up on Long Island, because, well, they wouldn’t laugh. A man asked Joha what he was doing, and then asked him why. Joha said he wanted to turn the lake into yogurt. But the man said “That isn’t possible, is it, for a little yogurt to turn a whole lake into yogurt.” “No,” said Joha, “but what if it does?”

A few spoons of inspired foolery can shape the way we view the world. In terrible times, dare we waste time on humor? Dare we not?

One more, from Koén-Sarano.

“Thieves entered Joha’s house. Joha already knew that he was poor and had nothing in the house. The Thieves were searching very slowly. Joha got out of bed and started to search behind them, slowly, slowly. When they reached the corner, he said: ‘Look, if you find something. . .fifty-fifty!’”

Postscript

In 2014, Eliezer Papo, Director of The Sephardic Studies Research Institute, Ben-Gurion University of the Negev, spoke at the JCC of Manhattan about the difference between Ashkenazic and Sephardic humor. His talk resonated with me. I can be irritated and nonplussed, for instance, by a kind of Ashkenazic humor that is smart-alecky and depressed. Some Joha stories of course are over-the-top feeble, but nonetheless Joha is a gift. With a free hand, Joha cuts us loose from solemnity and pretentiousness.

Papo said Ashkenazic humor comes from the harsh climate (and pogroms) of Eastern Europe, while Sephardic humor comes from Mediterranean Ottoman lands with their relative tolerance and mild weather, plus the luscious fruit on the trees and the fish in the sea, free for the picking. Perhaps what’s considered lowbrow about Joha is its optimism, an attitude that may be antithetical to what’s widely known as “Jewish humor.” In an article about Jewish humor (by which he means Ashkenazic humor since he speaks of nothing else), Joseph Epstein says optimism is foreign to it. (“Jokes: A Genre of Thought,” Jewish Review of Books, Winter 2017).

Joha in fact is absurdly optimistic. Joha is cheerful, idiotically cheerful, and his good cheer, because of its patent absurdity, is balm for all of us caught in the net of what I as a child named “disaster orientation.”

The odd thing is that the instinctive habitual love of cheer, the desire to sing, the desire to tell stories and talk, the refusal to give up a chance to join in an argument, even when Joha, for instance, is happily presumed dead and is being carried home on a stretcher in a procession of the whole community, is so natural. Well, the neighbors carrying his stretcher are arguing about the shortest route to his house! Joha’s inclinations and instincts ring true. And what’s more, his responses are at home in a culture that accepts religion in a natural uncomplicated way. The luscious fruit of spiritual gratitude frees Joha.

Incidentally, perhaps the proof of the pudding for a Joha story is not a laugh out loud, but a little gleam of understanding in the eye accompanied by a compulsion to reply in kind. And so, when a Sephardic friend read my 2003 Joha article when it first came out, and loved it, of course he had to tell me about when Joha finds a glittering shard of a broken mirror on the ground. Joha picks it up with excitement and holds it up to his face to admire it. But when he sees a face in it, “That’s ugly,” he says with repugnance. “No wonder someone threw that away!”

Other notes:

Folktales of Joha: Jewish Trickster is currently available at over 1400 libraries worldwide (WorldCat database).

Matilda Koén-Sarano’s prolific output of works on Sephardic culture continues apace since 2003 with publications in Jerusalem, Istanbul, Paris, Berlin, Buenos Aires, and Genoa; in Ladino, Ladino and Hebrew, Ladino and French, and Italian, including CDs and books ranging from Gizar kon Gozo and a Hebrew-Ladino Dictionary to a Ladino conversation manual expected out soon (Wikipedia, Nov. 21, 2016; CV, March 2017).

In 2015, Tamar Alexander was appointed chairperson of the National Council for Ladino Culture, replacing Yitzhak Navon, chair until then.

The Turkish-American Jew who told the story of Joha spooning yogurt into a lake, is Selim Sadaka. His father, Haim Vitali Sadacca, is a Ladino poet published by the the Foundation for the Advancement of Sephardic Studies and Culture; his daughter Janine Sadaka has remarkably transcribed a Ladino short story of mine into Solitreo.

If you wondered how Joha can date from both the ninth century and the thirteenth century, Tamar Alexander’s statement in her “Introduction” explains: “The origin of the name is unclear,” she says of Joha, “but we do know that he is first mentioned in Arabic stories dating from the ninth century. A similar character, Nasr-a-din Hodja, appears in medieval Turkish stories. According to Turkish literary tradition such a man really existed…Eventually the two characters’ names merged” (Folktales of Joha: Jewish Trickster).

The Sephardic Jewish Brotherhood of America, active over the past century and now energetically revived by Director Rabbi Nissim Elnecavé, features a weekly Joha story in its online newsletter. Each brief tale is presented in Ladino, English, and a Ladino voice recording by Rachel Bortnick (Devin Naar, “The Sephardic Jewish Brotherhood of America Celebrates its Centennial,” Tablet, Sept. 22, 2016; La Boz Sefaradi: The Sephardic Voice).

Finally, for your information: Koén-Sarano herself provides 40 of the stories in her collection, Beki Bardavid 27, Eliezer Papo 19, and Gloria Ascher is the New York City-born narrator who contributes one story—in verse: this Tufts University professor has been teaching Ladino and the Sephardic Tradition at Tufts for years; she founded the Judaic Studies program there and has been its long-time Co-Director.

The Farhud--Remembering a Tragic Time for Iraqi Jews

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Dr. Edy Cohen is a research fellow at Bar-Ilan University

On June 1, 1941, on the holiday of Shavuot, the Farhud took place in Iraq -- a pogrom against the Jews carried out be an incited, raging Muslim majority that was the result of the Third Reich's Nazi propaganda. Hundreds of Jews were murdered in Baghdad and elsewhere, and thousands more were injured. Jewish property was looted, and many homes were burned down. The Iraqi government established an investigation committee to look into the riots, and the findings revealed that Jerusalem Grand Mufti Haj Amin al-Husseini and the Nazi Arabic-language propaganda broadcast on the radio from Berlin were the main causes behind the massacre.

The mufti's followers were the ones who carried out the pogrom due to the failure of the coup he helped to orchestrate after fleeing Palestine. That is why the frustrated mufti decided to settle the score with Iraq's Jews. In his memoirs, he even justified the Farhud, writing, "The Fifth Column had a great influence on the failure of the Iraqi movement, and was comprised of many elements, most importantly, the Jews of Iraq.

During the fighting, [Lebanese diplomat] George Antonius told me that Jews employed in the telephone department were recording important and official telephone conversations and passing them to the British embassy in Baghdad. Jewish workers in the post and telegram departments acted in a similar fashion, forwarding the messages and letters they received to the embassy."

Thus Husseini decided to punish the Jews for allegedly cooperating with the British and causing his revolt to fail.

Later, when the survivors of the Farhud immigrated to Israel, Israeli authorities flatly refused to recognize them as victims of Nazism. Even today, anyone who tries to expose the injustice done to Jews from Arab lands is blamed for attempting to provoke ethnic clashes. And so, for many years, they managed to silence anyone who attempted to bring the issue to light, and the culture, leaders, authors, poets and spiritual life of Jews from Arab countries were not integrated into the school curriculum (in contrast to the history of European Jews). In this context, one must also recall the Yemenite Children Affair (in which hundreds of Yemenite babies were kidnapped upon their families' arrival in Israel and given to Ashkenazi families), which is a part of history that is still mainly untold and unknown.

The Farhud is inseparable from the Nazi atrocities. It was carried out by Arabs who were directly incited by Joseph Goebbels' Nazi propaganda -- according to Iraq's own investigation. Despite this, Israel "cleansed" the Nazis of these crimes over a period of several years. A lot of money was invested and paid to senior academics to determine that the Farhud was an "Arab" incident. Throughout history, there is no incident similar to the Farhud, which was carried out to harm Jews in an Arab state. There is no doubt that the Nazi propaganda is what incited and caused the murder of Jews.

Today, the situation is beginning to change -- justice has finally won, if a bit late. Finance Minister Moshe Kahlon made the administrative decision to end the injustice, stating that anyone born in Iraq up until the Farhud would be eligible to receive an annual grant, among other benefits. Additionally, thousands of Jews of Iraqi heritage have been fighting for compensation for years, with the help of attorney David Yadid, in a suit that is awaiting a ruling shortly.

The benefits and efforts to correct the injustice done to Jews from Arab countries will not be determined solely by the court's ruling. Education Minister Naftali Bennett has established a committee led by poet and Israel Prize laureate Erez Biton, to review efforts for the further integration of content about the Jewish communities from Arab countries into the curriculum, out of a desire to expose Israeli students of all ages to the cultural, social and historical wealth of these communities.

We must remember that Jews from Arab countries and their descendants are not a minority, rather, they now make up more than 50% of Israel's Jewish population.

The Universalistic Vision of Judaism

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Rabbi Marc D. Angel is Founder and Director of the Institute for Jewish Ideas and Ideals, and Editor of its journal, Conversations.

At the Revelation at Mount Sinai, God chose the people of Israel to receive the Torah. This unique and unprecedented covenant between God and a group of human beings was to have an immense influence on human civilization. The Torah prescribed a specific way of life for the Jewish people. Yet, the Revelation—though experienced directly by Israel--was also concerned with humanity as a whole.

A fascinating Midrash points out that at the Revelation the voice of God divided into seventy languages, representing the seventy nations of the world i.e. all of humanity. The Torah, while containing a particular message for the people of Israel, also includes a universal message for all human beings.

Paul Johnson, in his History of the Jews, has noted that “the world without the Jews would have been a radically different place.... To them we owe the idea of equality before the law, both divine and human; of the sanctity of life and the dignity of the human person; of the individual conscience and so of personal redemption; of the collective conscience and so of social responsibility; of peace as an abstract ideal and love as a foundation of justice, and many other items which constitute the basic moral furniture of the human mind. Without the Jews, it might have been a much emptier place.”

The Jewish enterprise, then, has been both particularistic and universalistic. The Torah and rabbinic tradition have been the guiding forces animating Jewish life over the millenia. The halakha (Jewish law) has been understood by the Jewish people as a Divinely-bestowed way of life. Through living a life of righteousness based on Torah and halakha, Jews thereby serve as “a light unto the nations”. The achievement of this ideal is dependent upon faithfulness to the particular teachings of the Torah as well as a universalistic vision for the well-being of all humanity.

Maintaining this equilibrium is a basic desideratum of Judaism. Yet, this vital balance is threatened by various trends in modern Jewish life.

On the one hand are those who stress universalism, while playing down particularism as much as possible. They advocate Jewish ethics, but denigrate the need to fulfill the specific ritual commandments of the Torah. On the other hand are those who are devoted to the ceremonial rituals, but who are very little involved with the world at large. They retreat into their own spiritual and physical ghettos, often trying to drive as many wedges as possible between themselves and the rest of society. Both of these approaches represent a deviation from the harmonious balance implicit in classic Judaism. Our ethical teachings are rooted in the mitzvot. An ethical universalism outside the context of observance of the mitzvot is not true to the Jewish religious genius. Likewise, a parochial commitment to rituals, without a concomitant concern for universalistic ethics, is also an aberration. Judaism emptied of its particularistic mitzvot is hollow; Judaism robbed of its unversalistic vision is cult-like, rather than a world religion.

The current tendency within the traditionally-observant community has been toward particularism. This tendency manifests itself in the phenomenal growth of the hareidi (right-wing) community, as well as its pervasive influence throughout contemporary Orthodox Jewish life. Religious self-sufficiency and spiritual isolationism are dominant themes in the right-wing Orthodox way of thinking.

The turn inward within contemporary traditional Judaism actually has deep roots in Jewish history. It reflects centuries of anti-Jewish persecution. In the face of vast hostility and cruelty committed against Jews since antiquity, it was natural for Jews to turn inward, and to develop negative attitudes toward their non-Jewish oppressors. Could Jews fully trust non-Jews whose societies denigrated Jews and Judaism, forced Jews into ghettoes, compelled Jews to forsake Judaism by converting to the dominant religion of the land, and deprived Jews of elementary civil rights? Centuries of persecution taught Jews to be suspicious of the non-Jewish world, to focus on their own internal Jewish needs, and leave the non-Jews to take care of themselves.

The negative attitude toward the non-Jewish world found expression in rabbinic literature. For example, the Mishna (Sanhedrin 4:5) teaches that God began humanity by creating an individual human being, Adam, “to teach that if anyone destroy a single soul from humankind, Scripture charges him as though he had destroyed a whole world, and whoever saves a single soul from humankind, Scripture credits him as though he had saved a whole world.” This is certainly a universalistic teaching on the value of human life. Yet, at some point, the text of this Mishna was revised, so that many editions read that Adam was created alone “to teach that if anyone destroy a single soul from Israel, Scripture charges him as though he had destroyed a whole world, and whoever saves a single soul from Israel, Scripture credits him as though he had saved a whole world.” The text has thus been transformed to a quite particularist teaching about the value of a Jewish life, rather than the value of all human life.

The negative attitudes toward the non-Jewish world have led to a serious distortion of the original teachings of Judaism. A narrow, xenophobic approach has developed, especially among those Jews who have felt most alienated and threatened by non-Jews.

Rabbi Aharon Soloveichik offered a more nuanced approach in an address to a conference of the Union of Orthodox Jewish Congregations of America in 1966, in which he dealt with the extent of Jewish responsibility toward non-Jews. He argued that Jews are obliged to love fellow Jews unconditionally, and are absolutely responsible for the welfare of all Jews. When it comes to non-Jews, though, the obligation is not identical. Since all human beings are created in the image of God, Jews obviously have to respect this fact when dealing with non-Jews. Yet, the extent of responsibility toward non-Jews is conditional: if they act properly toward us, we are obliged to act properly toward them. But if non-Jews hate us or persecute us, we have no obligation to be kind to them or work for their well-being. These sentiments reflect Jewish caution when dealing with a non-Jewish world that has a long history of persecuting Jews.

During the modern period, when Jews gained full civil rights in the Western countries, efforts have been made to shake off the mistrust of the centuries, and to strengthen the universalistic impulse within Judaism. Yet, these efforts have met resistance in the more traditionally-oriented Jewish communities. Those modern Jews who have been most identified with universalistic attitudes have also tended to be those who have moved away from traditional religious beliefs and observances. Thus, universalism has been identified with assimilation and loss of Jewish religious integrity.

Although the tendency toward isolationism may be understandable from a historical and sociological perspective, nevertheless, it is a tendency which needs to be corrected. Vibrant religious Jewish life needs to look outward as well as inward, and to regain its spiritual vision that focuses on all humanity.

The Torah (Devarim 4:6-7) tells the Israelites to observe and fulfill the commandments: “For this is your wisdom and your understanding in the sight of the peoples, that, when they hear all these statutes shall say: ‘surely this great nation is a wise and understanding people’; for what great nation is there that has God so near unto them, as the Lord our God is whenever we call upon Him?” Interestingly, the Torah is concerned that the Israelites be perceived in a positive light by the nations of the world. The medieval Italian commentator, Rabbi Obadia Seforno, comments on verse seven: “The reason it is appropriate to be concerned that you should be considered wise and understanding in the eyes of the nations is that God, may He be blessed, is close to us when we call upon Him. This shows that He chose us from all the nations. And if the nations should think that you are fools, it will be a desecration of God’s Name, for they will say: ‘This is God’s people.’ Since the people of the world look upon the Jews as the bearers of God’s Torah, the Israelites’ behavior reflects back upon the Almighty. If the Israelites are righteous and wise, then they sanctify God’s name; conversely, if they are foolish and unrighteous, they profane God’s name. The Israelites, thus, are not given the option of living in isolation without caring about the opinions of others. On the contrary, they need to see themselves as emissaries of the Almighty.

These passages in Devarim are cited by a great 19th century sage, Rabbi Eliyahu Hazan (Taalumot Lev 1:4). Rabbi Hazan had opened a school in Tripoli in which Jewish children were given instruction in religious topics, as well as in other subjects - including several languages. He pointed out that “it is the praise of our holy nation that the peoples of the world will say that this is surely a wise and understanding great nation with righteous laws and statutes, who should live among them. And if the scattered Jewish people would not know or understand the language of the people (among whom they live), they would be--Heaven forbid--a laughing stock, a derision and a shame among the nations.” In this responsum, Rabbi Hazan has indicated that Torah law requires that Jews be perceived as a wise people. They are obligated to be understood by their non-Jewish neighbors. Although Jews have their own distinctive religious way of life, they nevertheless must interrelate constructively with the non-Jewish community.

But the Jewish responsibility to the non-Jewish world is not merely that of setting a good example of wisdom and righteousness. The Jewish tradition teaches a principled and active responsibility for all people. All human beings are created in the image of God.

The Midrash, commenting on the Song of Songs (4:1) observes that the people of Israel offered 70 sacrifices in the holy Temple during the festival of Succoth. These sacrifices were offered by the Jewish people to seek atonement for all the nations of the world (symbolized by the number 70). Praying for the well-being of the nations is a powerful statement of concern and responsibility.

The Talmud (Gittin 61a) records the law that Jews are obligated to support the poor of the non-Jews along with the poor of the Jewish community. Moreover, Jews are obligated to visit the non-Jewish sick and to bury their dead. The Talmud specifies that these deeds of compassion and loving-kindness are to be done “because of the ways of peace.” In order to maintain a harmonious society, people need to care for each other and to offer help to those in need. Rabbi Haim David Halevy, late Sephardic Chief Rabbi of Tel Aviv, has pointed out that our responsibility toward Muslims and Christians (as well as other non-idolaters) does not stem from expedience, but rather from a firmly established ethical imperative (Aseh Lekha Rav, 9:30 and 9:33).

Jews are commanded to be constructive members of society. The Torah demands that we be righteous and compassionate. This responsibility is not confined merely to the broad category of social justice, but extends to the general upbuilding of human civilization as a whole. Rabbi Benzion Uziel (Hegyonei Uziel, Vol. 2, p. 98) discussed the classic concept of “yishuvo shel olam,” responsibility to help in the upbuilding of human civilization. This involves practical society building, but also includes expanding human knowledge. Scientific research, for example, helps us gain a deeper appreciation of God’s wisdom. It also leads to technological discoveries which improve the quality of life. Working to improve the human condition is a Jewish religious imperative.

As noted earlier, the Jewish impact on human civilization has been vast. We have given the world many ideas and ideals. On the other hand, we have also learned from the non-Jewish world. And we have been strengthened by non-Jews who have converted to Judaism. In the words of Rabbi Eliyahu Benamozegh (Israel and Humanity, trans. Maxwell Luria), “each proselyte in becoming converted has contributed his own impulses and personal sentiments to the Israelite heritage.” Rabbi Benamozegh argued that “in order to achieve the concept of a universal Providence extending to all peoples and sanctioning the legitimate rights of each, men must cease to believe that the national or ethnic group is all that counts, that mankind has no significant existence apart from the nation or tribe….We should not be surprised that such has not been the case with Hebraism, which teaches that all mankind has the same origin and thus that a single Providence looks over all.”

Victor Hugo observed that “narrow horizons beget stunted ideas.” Classic Judaism has included an idealistic universalistic world-view. Judaism’s horizons have been great; and it has begotten great ideas. The challenge to modern Jews is to remain faithful to their distinctive mitzvot while maintaining a universalistic ethical idealism.

“A Spirit of Inquiry:” Grace Aguilar’s Private Spirituality and Progressive Orthodoxy

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Ronda Angel Arking is the Language Arts Program Manager for an international education company and is the Managing Editor of Conversations. She is an active member of Congregation Netivot Shalom in Baltimore, where she teaches several courses in biblical literature. This article appears in issue 3, 13 and 29 of Conversations, the journal of the Institute for Jewish Ideas and Ideals.

One of the most influential writers of Jewish philosophy, theology, and fiction during the early Victorian period was Grace Aguilar. A traditional Spanish and Portuguese Jew, Aguilar spent most of her short life living outside of a structured Jewish community. Yet her vast knowledge of biblical, and even some rabbinical, texts—as well as her highly Romantic prose—brought her works to a wide audience of both Jews and Christians. Her popular novels were read all over England and the United States, as were her works of history, theology, and biblical criticism. In The Origin of the Modern Jewish Woman Writer, Michael Galchinsky asserts that Aguilar “was recognized by Christians and Jews alike as the writer who best defined the Anglo-Jewish response to the challenge to enter the modern world” (135).

Aguilar’s works reflect a philosophy that merges traditional Orthodoxy with progressive thinking, elevates the role of women while stressing their domestic roles, and focuses on the individual nature of spirituality while at once identifying with a larger peoplehood. Aguilar’s traditional upbringing and theology resonate throughout her works—as do her Romanticism and passion. It is her way of framing social and theological issues that defines her as a progressive traditionalist; a woman who, within the framework of traditional Judaism and gender roles, sees opportunities for spiritual development of men and women alike. She promotes questioning and personal biblical interpretation, as well as the evolution of the halakhic process to address contemporary realities.

The Women of Israel (and England)

Free to assert their right as immortal children of the living God, let not the women of Israel be backward in proving that they, too, have a station to uphold, and a “mission” to perform, not alone as daughters, wives, and mothers, but as witnesses of that faith which first raised, cherished, and defended them…. Let us then endeavor to convince the nations of the high privileges we enjoy, in common with our fathers, brothers, and husbands, as the first-born of the Lord, by the peculiar sanctity, spirituality, and inexpressible consolation of our belief. (The Women of Israel, 12–13)

Aguilar had a short—but prolific—life. Many of her novels were published after her death at age 31. She was born in 1816 in London and died in 1847 in Germany, having gone to spas there on the advice of her doctors. Her parents were of Spanish and Portuguese descent, and practiced traditional Judaism. Emmanuel Aguilar, Grace’s father, was the Parnas, or president, of the Spanish and Portuguese Synagogue in London until the family moved to Devonshire in 1828, due to Emmanuel’s poor health.

“A mother, whose heart is in her work will find many opportunities, which properly improved, will lead her little charge to God. … A mother’s lips should teach [prayers and Bible] to her child, and not leave the first impressions of religion to be received from a Christian nurse. Were the associations of a mother connected with the act of praying, associations of such long continuance that the child knew not when they were implanted: the piety of maturer years would not be so likely to waver.” (The Spirit of Judaism, 225)

Aguilar faced several issues as a traditional Jewish woman. First, she was denied access to rabbinical texts. Although Jews were relatively emancipated in English society, Jewish women were not fully emancipated in traditional Jewish circles. Second, she felt the pressures of conversionists. According to Milton Kerker, missionaries often targeted Jewish women, “under the perception that these were more spiritual and chafed under the shackles of a rigid, male-dominated creed” (36). Aguilar wrote, therefore, to help women stand strong against conversionist pressures. For example, in her novel The Vale of Cedars, Aguilar presents a heroic main character who chooses to give up the (Christian) love of her life—and ultimately suffers at the hands of Inquisitors—in order to remain true to her Jewish faith. In addition to showing resistance to conversionists, Aguilar also tells of the history of the Jews of Spain, creating sympathy and understanding of her culture and history in her readers.

What Jewish women needed, according to Aguilar, was to be strengthened in their Judaism, and to feel fulfilled intellectually and spiritually. She wrote The Women of Israel as an apologetic text; in it, she “proves” women’s equality in Judaism—stressing that even the idea of ideal Victorian womanhood can be found in Jewish texts. Jewish women, she argues, should not be seduced by missionaries’ arguments that Judaism relegates them to second-class citizens.

The Women of Israel became a very popular book among Jewish and Christian readers. It highlights some of Aguilar’s theological ideas, her social values, and some of the tensions inherent in her enlightened traditionalism.

Public Religion vs. Private Spirituality

Aguilar exalts the feminine, private aspects of Judaism in her work, The Women of Israel. When examining the lives of biblical women, Aguilar glorifies the domestic sphere as the arena of true spirituality and communion with God. For example, in retelling the story of the matriarch Sarah, Aguilar envisions a Victorian model of domesticity—who is at the same time equal in God’s eyes to her husband, Abraham:

The beautiful confidence and true affection subsisting between Abram and Sarai, marks unanswerably their equality; that his wife was to Abram friend as well as partner; and yet, that Sarai knew perfectly her own station, and never attempted to push herself forward in unseemly counsel, or use the influence which she so largely possessed for any weak or sinful purpose….There is no pride so dangerous and subtle as spiritual pride….But in Sarai there was none of this… it is not always the most blessed and distinguished woman who attends the most faithfully to her domestic duties, and preserves unharmed and untainted that meekness and integrity which is her greatest charm. (The Women of Israel, 49)

To a modern reader, the idea that a meek, domestic wife has attained equality with her husband seems odd. Aguilar is here promoting Victorian ideals of womanhood alongside a Jewish philosophy that holds women equal in status and responsibility to men. Although Aguilar believes that women and men necessarily have different “stations,” or prescribed social roles, she emphasizes women’s spiritual equality, or her equality in worth as a human being in the eyes of God.

In Aguilar’s description of Hannah for example, she lauds Hannah’s ability to privately utter her own prayers: her poetry shows her intellect, as her poem is “a forcible illustration of the intellectual as well as the spiritual piety which characterized the women of Israel, and which in its very existence denies the possibility of degradation applying to women, either individually, socially, or domestically” (The Women of Israel, 260). Additionally, Hannah is able to enter the Temple, showing that she has equal access to holy places. Hannah’s private, quiet prayer—the first of its type—is used by rabbis as the model of prayer in general. Aguilar praises Hannah’s prayer for its quiet modesty and its feeling and intellectual composition, thus elevating a woman’s role to the paradigm of all prayers said by Jewish men and women.

Aguilar’s concern is for the private, spiritual nature of Judaism and the individual’s ability to read Jewish texts and draw use these texts to preserve and strengthen one’s identity. For example, in discussing Yokheved, the mother of Moses, Aguilar follows the rabbinic interpretation that Moses was sent to live with his birth mother until he was weaned. In these few years, Yokheved was able to educate her son and create in him an identity that would enable him to become a great leader of the Jewish people. Home, the site of maternal love and education, is glorified as the only place a Jewish woman should desire to reside and lead:

[Mothers of Israel should] follow the example of the mother of Moses, and make their sons the receivers, and in their turn the promulgators, of that holy law which is their glorious inheritance. (The Women of Israel, 144)

In the nineteenth century, Jewish women were not taught Talmud; they were exempt from public prayer; and they could not hold positions of authority in the Jewish community. But rather than chase after a “male” type of emancipation, Aguilar raises the “female” spaces of the Jewish woman to a higher plane than that of Jewish men. Private, personal relationships with God are seen throughout the Bible; thus spirituality should be an individual, private affair.

But while spirituality is elevated as a private value for women and men, Aguilar believes that public societal positions should be left in the male domain; women should always remain in that spiritual, private sphere. The idea of gendered public and private life can be seen dramatically in Aguilar’s portrayal of Miriam, sister of Moses.

Miriam is one of the few biblical women who is referred to as a neviah, a prophet. She is a public figure among the Israelites; when she dies, the whole camp ceases its travels and mourns for seven days. Miriam leads the women in song after the miraculous splitting of the sea. Aguilar points to this incident and notes that neviah here means poet, not prophet, thus diminishing her public role in the community. Then, Aguilar focuses on Miriam’s sin: speaking gossip about Moses’ wife. She points to Miriam as what happens when women presume to live in the same sphere as the men in their lives, namely, they get punished for the sin of haughtiness: “Miriam sought to raise herself not only above her brother’s wife, but to an equality with that brother himself; and, by the infliction of a loathsome disease, she sank at once below the lowest of her people” (The Women of Israel, 208). At the same time, Aguilar argues that Miriam’s punishment shows women’s equality to men:

Were women in a degraded position, Miriam, in the first place, would not have had sufficient power for her seditious words to be of any consequence; and, in the next, it would have been incumbent on man to chastise—there needed no interference of the Lord. We see, therefore, the very sinfulness of Jewish women, as recorded in the Bible, is undeniable evidence of their equality, alike in their power to subdue sin, and in its responsibility before God. (The Women of Israel, 210)

The idea of women’s equality versus women’s sinful “nature” and private sphere, as illustrated in Aguilar’s interpretation of Miriam, is one of the tensions in Aguilar’s works. Galchinsky sums up this feminist/anti-feminist tension:

In the 1860s, when women’s rights debates grew strong, Aguilar’s work could appeal both to feminists and to anti-feminists. Feminists could support her work as a Jewish woman’s groundbreaking act of self-representation and advocacy, a stage on the way to liberation, while anti-feminists could support it as a model of modesty and domesticity. (187)

An additional tension comes from Aguilar’s promotion of women’s private roles as mothers and domestic teachers, while she herself tells of these ideas through the publication of books for a wide public. But this tension is an integral part of Aguilar’s upbringing and philosophy. Tradition and progress must go hand in hand—in perpetual tension; consistency is of secondary importance.

Toward a Progressive Orthodoxy

A new era is dawning for us. Persecution and intolerance have in so many lands ceased to predominate, that Israel may once more breathe in freedom…the voice of man need no longer be the vehicle of instruction from father to son, mingling with it unconsciously human opinions, till those opinions could scarcely be severed from the word of God… This need no longer be. The Bible may be perused in freedom… A spirit of inquiry, of patriotism, or earnestness in seeking to know the Lord and obey Him…is springing up. (The Women of Israel, 11–12)

Some criticize Aguilar’s theology in The Spirit of Judaism as “Jewish Protestantism” and note that Aguilar’s work shows a lack of deep knowledge of rabbinic texts. However, as a woman in a traditional Jewish community—where would she have found access to rabbinical texts? Scheinberg responds to the label “Jewish Protestant”:

Aguilar fervently believed that only through active “defensive” engagement with Christian culture could Jews and Judaism advance in Diaspora life; she took on this project of advancing Jewish learning despite the fact that she was excluded from traditional Jewish theology. If she sought strategies that could speak conclusively and inclusively to Christian readers, it was always part of a project of advancing Judaism and the Jewish people, a rhetorical strategy… rather than ideological commitment to Christian/Protestant doctrine.” (154)

In her writings Aguilar continually placed the Bible on a pedestal of unquestioned authority and simultaneously downgraded the Oral Law as having little importance. For example, she declared that “the Bible and reason are the only guides to which the child of Israel can look in security….those observances…for which no reason can be assigned save the ideas of our ancient fathers, cannot be compared in weight and consequence to the piety of the heart.” [The Spirit of Judaism, 228] Again she criticized Jews who, “earnest in the cause, yet mistaken in the means, search and believe the writings of the Rabbis, take as divine truths all they have suggested, and neglect the Bible as not to be compared with such learned dissertations” [The Spirit of Judaism, 51]. (190)

Aguilar’s emphasis on shifting academic study of Judaism to the Bible and reason, and away from rabbinic texts, is not necessarily a move toward Karaism. First, Aguilar emphasizes the resources to which she herself has access; it is only natural to value one’s own path of access above learning that one does not have the opportunity to delve into. Her belief in the Bible as a source of “unquestioned authority” stems from her traditional philosophy that the words of the Bible are divine. Second, Aguilar makes some very valid points in looking at Orthodox tradition—from a traditional perspective. Just because Aguilar criticizes the status quo in the Orthodox world does not, as some critics argue, make her a reformer. In fact, in progressive Orthodox circles today, these same claims are being made: There is too great a focus in the yeshiva world on the Oral Law; many yeshiva students do not have a basic knowledge of Tanakh, biblical writings.

Aguilar argues that “Circumstances demand the modification…of some of these Rabbinical statutes; and could the wise and pious originators have been consulted on the subject, they would have unhesitatingly adopted those measures” (The Spirit of Judaism, 31). Rather than reject rabbinic law, Aguilar promotes modification—based on contemporary realities. The process of halakhic decision-making is a fluid, changing structure. By viewing the Oral Law as “divine,” one discredits the whole nature of the halakhic process, which necessarily evolves as new realities crop up. Additionally, Aguilar notes, it is important to understand the backgrounds and biases of those rabbis who wrote the halakha: “There may be some observances which superstition and bigotry have introduced” (The Spirit of Judaism, 241). Looking at halakha as an evolving process, Aguilar demands an honest assessment of the origins and intellectual validity of each law as it is practiced. She thus encourages each Jew to go back to the original source—the Bible—to try to understand the essential spirit of the halakha. As a traditional Jew, Aguilar encourages a more rational, Bible and reason-based, evolving Orthodoxy that will be rich in tradition and spirituality for men and women alike.

Works Cited

Aguilar, Grace. The Women of Israel. New York: D. Appleton and Company, 1872.
Galchinsky, Michael. The Origin of the Modern Jewish Woman Writer: Romance and
Reform in Victorian England. Detroit: Wayne University Press, 1996.
———, ed. Grace Aguilar: Selected Writings. Orchard Park, NY: Broadview Press, 2003.
Hyman, Paula E. Gender and Assimilation in Modern Jewish History: The Roles and
Representations of Women. Seattle: University of Washington Press, 1995.
Kerker, Milton. “Grace Aguilar, A Woman of Israel.” Midstream 47:2 (2001): 35–37.
Scheinberg, Cynthia. Women’s Poetry and Religion in Victorian England: Jewish
Identity and Christian Culture. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2002.
Singer, Steven. “Jewish Religious Though in Early Victorian London.” AJS Review
10:2 (Autumn 1985): 181–210.
Zatlin, Linda Gertner. The Nineteenth-Century Anglo-Jewish Novel. Boston: Twayne
Publisher

Holiness: The Unique Form of Jewish Spirituality

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Dr. Steven Kepnes is the William Finard Chair of Jewish Studies at Colgate University, Hamilton New York. He is the author of six books, including "Liturgical Reasoning" (Oxford University Press, 2007); "Interpreting Judaism in a Postmodern Age," (NYU Press, 1996); and "The Text as Thou: Martin Buber's Hermeneutics, (Indiana, 1992). This article appears in issue 9 of Conversations, the journal of the Institute for Jewish Ideas and Ideals.

In a list of new developments in Judaism in the twenty-first century, one would have to include the search for Jewish spirituality. This includes the discovery of spiritual practices such as meditation, yoga, and prayer—often adapted from Eastern religions. In this essay, I will examine this phenomenon by employing a method of investigation that attempts to address contemporary issues through textual study called “Textual Reasoning” (http://etext.virginia.edu/journals/tr/). Textual Reasoning proceeds by identifying an important contemporary problem and engaging traditional methods of Talmud Torah—including text study in “havrutot,” small discussion groups—to find creative ways of addressing the problem.

In a number of Textual Reasoning sessions that I ran in Jerusalem this past summer (2010) we looked at issues of spirituality by relating them to notions of kedushah, or holiness. I am currently writing a Jewish theology of holiness (Blackwell Press, forthcoming), so I saw these Textual Reasoning sessions as a way to help me with this project. The word spirituality, “ruhaniut” does not exist in the Torah. There is, of course, ruah, “wind” or “spirit,” which seems to represent a vitalizing life force, and ruah Elohim, or ruah Adonai, the spirit of God, which represents the power, wisdom, and light of God. But there is far more attention given to the term “kodesh” and this term seems to be the closest Jewish parallel to what is meant by spirituality in the contemporary world.

We know, of course, that the term “Holy Spirit” was most significantly developed by Christianity as it became the third figure in the Christian Trinity and the continuingly available power of new life that is active in the Church and in the Christian community. Indeed, it may very well be that the interest in spirituality in the West began as an offshoot of a Christian concern, and then came to include elements from Eastern religions. However, our focus here is not Christianity but Judaism and its relation to contemporary forms of spirituality. As I said, in our Textual Reasoning study group, we decided to address this relationship by comparing notions of spirituality with kedushah.

To provide a focus for our text study, we looked at one of the central expressions
of the nature of kedushah in the Torah, vaYikrah 19, which Rashi, following Sifra Kedoshim, says contains the essence of the Torah (rov gufei haTorah). Our initial discussion of contemporary spirituality included a rather vague sense that spirituality involves a search of the individual for a religious experience, a mystical oneness with nature and/or God, or a special encounter with nature or humans that gives life meaning. These experiences are often presented as occurring outside of religious tradition. And thus we have the oft-heard phrase, “I am spiritual, but not religious.” I offered my sense that the “spiritual” included a large range of experiences from the unplanned spontaneous “peak experiences” that one might have in a visit to the Grand Canyon, to a more disciplined attempt to achieve “enlightenment” through meditation or yoga. In our first study session, a member mentioned that there was an “Institute for Jewish Spirituality” and that we ought to consult its website to get a more in depth sense of what Jewish spirituality is about. We did this and the reader will see that I include quotations from this website in this essay.

Our Textual Reasoning study sessions began by asking the following questions.

Is spiritual practice based on meditation congenial with traditional forms of Torah study and halakhic practice?
How is holiness like and unlike notions of spirituality?
Does Judaism have its own unique forms of spirituality? Is spirituality implicit in rabbinic holiness or must it be added to it from the outside?
In making this investigation, we acknowledged that the focus on vaYikra and its rabbinic commentaries might limit our ability to answer our questions about the relation of holiness to contemporary spirituality. We noted that a fuller study would require looking at other texts, most notably Kabbalah and Hassidut. But we began with the hypothesis that by looking at vaYikra some important insights and distinctions between Jewish notions of holiness and contemporary notions of spirituality could be found.

Textual Reasoning, in general, likes to function, somewhat like empirical science, with a hunch or hypothesis or intuition that is then subjected to experiment and deliberation through textual study to see if the hunch or hypothesis can be confirmed or disconfirmed. In this case, the hypothesis was that there is an important difference between holiness and spirituality and that holiness offers a unique form of Jewish religiosity that is often insufficiently articulated and appreciated by both Jews and non-Jews. Our text study involved looking at vaYikra 19 first, on its own, and then with a range of commentaries from Rashi, Ramban, to Haketav Vehakabalah,
Israel Salanter, and Hatam Sofer.

Spirituality: What Is It?

A quick and easy way to access what contemporary Jewish spirituality is concerned with is to look at the website of the “Institute for Jewish Spirituality.” The website describes its objectives in the following way.

The work of the Institute for Jewish Spirituality is the work of spiritual renewal and rejuvenation. It is the work of making the concepts, teachings and practices of Judaism lively, meaningful, and transformative for individuals and communities. It is a mode of careful attentiveness to the whole of one’s experience. It is a process of peacemaking and a path of justice making. It emphasizes telling the truth, respecting one’s experience, responding rather than reacting, and gently returning one’s attention again and again to the initial intention of the practice. It involves an awareness of impermanence, and the interconnection of all that is and a deep appreciation of the fact that every act has an intention and a consequence. We can use a variety of Jewish concepts to describe this work: healing the self and the world; bringing the light of the infinite into the finite; actualizing the divine qualities of wisdom and compassion; restoring a sense of wholeness to the fragmented.

From this quotation, we can see that the founders of the movement see spirituality in the context of an American Judaism that needs renewal and rejuvenation. As such, it is part of a larger movement sometimes referred to as “Jewish Renewal” that finds its origin in the “Havurah movement” of the 1960s and produced the rather well known “Jewish Catalogue” series of books. That movement began as a return to traditional aspects of Judaism mixed with elements of the 1960s counter-culture such as anti-war activism, freer sexual exploration, and openness to Jewish and Eastern forms of mysticism and meditation. The website goes on to describe meditation as the “core practice of Jewish spirituality” and it tells us how meditation came to occupy such a central place in its activities.

Meditation is a practice that entered the cultural vocabulary of the latter half of the twentieth century, a time of investigation of Eastern religions and philosophies. In one respect, the turn East epitomized for many the expression of a set of values opposed to American materialism, acquisitiveness, and busyness. In another respect, and perhaps particularly today, it represents a method of slowing down, of calming the mind, of relaxing the body in the face of our culture’s unrelenting pressure to “do.” If meditation were only to afford its practitioners that brief respite, the gift of just “being” as opposed to “doing,” it would be enough.

It is noteworthy that the Institute for Jewish Spirituality does not mention Torah or the God of Israel in its opening statement of its mission of Jewish rejuvenation. It is also noteworthy that it identifies the central problem that it is addressing as “American materialism, acquisitiveness, and busyness.” These are problems of the wealthy and the satisfied, and although the movement talks about a path of “justice making” there is no mention of actual problems of injustice or poverty in the Jewish or larger world. Since meditation is identified as the movement’s “core practice,” spirituality seems to be mainly an issue of self-healing and therapy for the individual and not the larger Jewish community. The Institute speaks of its particular type of meditation as “mindfulness meditation” and describes this as follows. “In this process we observe or witness the nature of mind, we see how conflict occurs, how illusion is born and grows, how connected each moment is to the next and how transient is every thought, experience, conclusion.” The goal of noticing these things is to learn how to “let go” of attachments to things, feelings, and thoughts that control us and thereby to open a sphere of tranquility, calmness, and equanimity. Thus, we are talking about an inward process of reflection and mind control. Those who want to practice meditation are encouraged to go to retreat centers away from the hustle and bustle of everyday life in which participants experience significant periods of silence. The Institute makes it clear that its meditation practice is an import from Eastern religions (most notably Tibetan Buddhism). Thus, the spirituality that is to cure what ails American Jews, finds its source outside of Jewish religious texts and culture in an inward individual practice outside of Jewish communal centers.

We will now juxtapose the goals and practices of the Institute of Jewish Spirituality with the rules of the life of holiness as we have them in vaYikra 19. For brevity’s sake, we will end at verse 18.

vaYikra19:1–18
Chapter 19

1. And the Lord spoke to Moses, saying,

2. Speak to the entire congregation of the children of Israel, and say to them, You shall be holy, for I, the Lord, your God, am holy.

3. Every man shall fear his mother and his father, and you shall observe My Sabbaths. I am the Lord, your God.

4. You shall not turn to the worthless idols, nor shall you make molten deities for yourselves. I am the Lord, your God.

5. When you slaughter a peace offering to the Lord, you shall slaughter it for your acceptance.

6. It may be eaten on the day you slaughter it and on the morrow, but anything left over until the third day, shall be burned in fire.

7. And if it would be eaten on the third day, it is abominable; it shall not be accepted.

8. And whoever eats it shall bear his sin, because he has profaned what is holy to the Lord, and that person shall be cut off from his people.

9. When you reap the harvest of your land, you shall not fully reap the corner of your field, nor shall you gather the gleanings of your harvest.

10. And you shall not glean your vineyard, nor shall you collect the [fallen] individual grapes of your vineyard; you shall leave them for the poor and the stranger. I am the Lord, your God.

11. You shall not steal. You shall not deny falsely. You shall not lie, one man to his fellow.

12. You shall not swear falsely by My Name, thereby profaning the Name of your God. I am the Lord.

13. You shall not oppress your fellow. You shall not rob. The hired worker's wage shall not remain with you overnight until morning.

14. You shall not curse a deaf person. You shall not place a stumbling block before a blind person, and you shall fear your God. I am the Lord.

15. You shall commit no injustice in judgment; you shall not favor a poor person or respect a great man; you shall judge your fellow with righteousness.

16. You shall not go around as a gossipmonger amidst your people. You shall not stand by [the shedding of] your fellow's blood. I am the Lord.

17. You shall not hate your brother in your heart. You shall surely rebuke your fellow, but you shall not bear a sin on his account.

18. You shall neither take revenge from nor bear a grudge against the members of your people; you shall love your neighbor as yourself. I am the Lord.

In reading this text, one could say that it might be hard to find a text that is more different from the description of mindfulness meditation and the goals of the Institute of Jewish Spirituality. From the beginning “And the Lord Spoke to Moses” to the frequent refrain and last words quoted “I am the Lord,” the transcendent God of Israel makes the divine will known. Holiness begins with God and is brought to the people in the form of commands. It is issued from the outside, from the transcendent God in commandments that also stand outside the individual and are not found in his or her inner mind or soul. What the text suggests, is that holiness, in essence, is found in God and that humans can become holy, not by looking within, but by looking without to God. The statement “You shall be Holy, for I am Holy” suggests that being holy involves a process of imitatio Dei, of imitating God. And some rabbinic commentators (Sifra Kadoshim on 1:1) have made this explicit.

A significant contrast with spirituality is that holiness, as we find it in vaYikra, is not a matter for the individual alone. Indeed, vaYikra suggests quite the opposite; as Moses is instructed “Speak to the entire congregation of the children of Israel.” Being holy is then, in the main, a communal issue. Or perhaps, we can say it this way: Holiness requires a community in order to be achieved. From this text, we can also say that being holy is not a matter of contemplation; it is to be found as a result of actions, actions that take place in a social context. Respecting mother and father, observing Shabbat, properly bringing sacrifices, leaving gleanings for the poor, paying workers promptly, treating the deaf and blind rightly, rendering fair judgment in court, and finally living alongside the fellow-person without hatred or grudge, and, indeed, with love; these are the things that make one holy.

Comparing the practice of mindfulness meditation to the rule of holiness in vaYikra 19, one might rightly ask: Where is the self in all this? Indeed, instead of focusing on the “nature of mind,” instead of observing “how illusion is born and grows, how connected each moment is to the next and how transient is every thought, experience, conclusion,” vaYikra tells us that we are only holy when we focus on others.

Textual Reasoning with vaYikra19

When we began to study vaYikra 19 in our Textual Reasoning group, we noted one thing that was omitted. The holy act par excellence for Judaism is to study Torah. Thus, one of us said, that meditation, for the Torah, is first an act of textual study rather than a study of one’s mind. vaYikra 19:17–18 suggests that it is proper for the holy person to meditate on his relations with others. For example, figuring out how we are to rebuke a sinning friend might, indeed, require meditation. But it very well might be that in inserting the Torah text on rebuking a friend into our meditation we make that very act of meditation holy and we are then assisted by holy love when we carry out the act of rebuking.

One of our members suggested that we could take from Jewish spirituality the lesson of meditation and learn how to relate to our friends by meditating long and hard on these verses from vaYikra.

You shall not hate your brother in your heart. You shall surely rebuke your fellow, but you shall not bear a sin on his account. You shall neither take revenge from nor bear a grudge against the members of your people; you shall love your neighbor as yourself. I am the Lord.

Having studied these verses before our session, I remarked how they display an exquisite balance and deep psychological insight. The verses suggest the situation in which a brother or cousin or neighbor is committing a moral offense. What is your obligation here? Do you ignore it? Do you intervene? Should you be angry with him or her? If you must intervene, how do you do so? This is obviously a complex issue, and to assist you the Torah offers some guidelines. Do not hate your sinning brother, but still, you must rebuke him, for if not, you will incur the guilt of his sin. But when you rebuke him, do so not out of hate or revenge but only out of love.

The comment that one should meditate on verses 17 and 18 to learn how to relate to a sinning sibling or friend reminded another of us of an additional series of verses that we are commanded to meditate on—day and night, when we lie down and rise up, when we sit at home and when we walk along the way. These are the words of the Shema: Shema Yisrael Adonai Eloheinu Adonai Ehad, Hear O Israel, The Lord our God the Lord is One. As we considered the meditation that we are commanded to do on the words of the Shema, we discussed the extent to which meditation is part of the Jewish tradition or added to it from the outside. At this point someone recalled Isaac going out to the field to meditate (lasuah, see Bereshith 24:63) before meeting Rebecca. Another recalled Hanna’s prayers to God and her silent prayers before Eli (Shemuel 1: 2,1:10). Still others mentioned the Psalms as a series of long meditations on the trials and joys of the spiritual life, and finally another person spoke of the Lurianic Kabbalistic practice of meditating on God’s many names. At this point, some of us thought that meditation as a practice was both implicit in the Torah and further developed in Kabbalah. Yet others thought that meditation, particularly mindfulness meditation, was different from Jewish forms of meditation because the goal was to learn how to detach oneself from the worries of the world; Judaism seeks the opposite, to attach oneself to the world and to worry about its redemption at every moment. Thus, we had no definite conclusion on whether or not mindfulness meditation offers something of value to contemporary Jews that is not already available in Judaism.

The Commentary Material

In our next sessions, our Textual Reasoning group wanted to more deeply engage the text of vaYikra in the rabbinic tradition. We therefore focused on rabbinic commentaries. Here, we used commentary texts from a theological commentary on the Bible, “Reading the Bible for Meaning” that I am working on with Walter Herzberg, Professor of Bible and Parshanut at Jewish Theological Seminary. As we explored the commentary material, we found a wealth of interpretations that caused us to dwell on the meaning of verse 2: “You Shall be Holy, for I the Lord Your God am Holy.” When we studied the commentaries, we followed a suggestion Herzberg had made to me that they could be divided into two basic groups, one led by Rashi and Ramban and another rooted in early midrashic literature, but best represented by Israel Salanter.

Commentators: Group I—Rashi, Ramban, and Meklenburg

Rashi’s comment on the verse, “You Shall be Holy” took the discussion of holiness in a direction that most of us did not expect, especially as we were looking for a connection to spirituality. He inserts an element of self-restriction, especially in the area of sexual desire. His comments on this verse are as follows. To be holy, “separate yourselves from sexual immorality and from sin. For wherever you find restriction of sexual immorality [mentioned in the Torah], you find holiness [juxtaposed with it].” Rashi’s interpretation follows one of his typical interpretive moves—to place the verse in its textual context. His interpretation is then based on juxtaposing the commandment to be holy with the multiple restrictions on incest and other prohibited sexual relations in the chapter (18) that immediately precedes our chapter. Rashi seems to reason that since the previous chapter deals with prohibited sexual relations and the injunction to be holy follows immediately thereafter, holiness must have something to do with sexual restrictions.

As we discussed Rashi, I brought up the issue of purity in relation to holiness. Rashi brings up sexual purity laws related to permissible partners and appropriate times for sexual relations, taharat mishpaha. But we could also speak of all the laws of purity and impurity—those related to dietary practices, avoidance of blood and dead bodies, and the prohibitions and practices related to the bringing of sacrifices. This brought us to the recognition that holiness in Torah is a broader category than spirituality, including the distinction pure and impure and encompassing the larger categorizations of animals, rules of purification from sin, and whole series of practices that regulate marriage, sex, diet, and death. Unlike spirituality, which might come and go and can be limited to certain special practices, the holy must be inserted into all aspects of life. When placed in the larger context of the whole book of vaYikra and the larger system of halakha that emerges from the Torah, becoming holy can be seen as the goal of all of Judaism!

Ramban, indeed, sees the larger meaning of holiness, and he specifically takes on Rashi’s discussion of holiness relating to sexual prohibitions and radically expands it so that holiness comes to take on a kind of ascetic quality:

In my opinion, this abstinence does not refer only to restraint from acts of [sexual] immorality as the Rabbi [Rashi] wrote … The meaning is as follows: The Torah has admonished us against immorality and forbidden foods, but permitted sexual intercourse between man and his wife, and the eating of meat and wine. If so, a man of desire could consider this to be a permission to be passionately addicted to sexual intercourse with his wife or many wives, and be among winebibbers, among gluttonous eaters of flesh, and speak freely all profanities. This is so because these prohibitions have not been [expressly] mentioned in the Torah. Given this, a man could become a sordid person with the permission of the Torah (naval birshut haTorah)! Therefore, after having listed the matters that He prohibited altogether, the Torah followed them up by a general command that we practice moderation even in matters which are permitted…[Ramban Commentary on vaYikra 19, Chavel translation, emphasis mine]

This comment of Ramban indicates that he agrees with Rashi on two counts—that our understanding of holiness is based on thejuxtaposition to the previous chapter, and that holiness itself is a matter of separation, restraint, abstinence. However, the type of restraint or separation that Ramban suggests is very different from Rashi. For Rashi, holiness is attained by separating oneself from that which is explicitly forbidden by the Torah. According to Ramban, holiness involves going one step further—separating oneself from that which is permitted, and not indulging in excesses. For as Ramban states, the person who overindulges in technically permitted behavior is a naval birshut haTorah, a “sordid person with the permission of the Torah.” Ramban appears to get this ascetic view of holiness from the Talmud (Yebamoth 20a). He also mentions that we have a model of ascetic holiness in the figure of the Nazarite in the Torah. For the Nazir is separated from the general population and takes on ascetic practices e.g. refusing alcoholic drink, not cutting his hair and avoiding contact with the dead.

One of us noted that Ramban’s notion of holiness suggests that vaYikra 19:2 “You shall be holy” is not the preface to the series of commands that follow it (i.e., to respect parents, observe Shabbat, and so forth) but a separate commandment on its own that can be summarized as “separate yourself not only from what is prohibited, but also from what is permitted!” This means that holiness requires Israel to go beyond the letter of the law to understand its deeper purposes. This deeper purpose is to refine and elevate Jews, to free them from sordid obedience to physical desires of all sorts so that they approach the spiritual holiness of God. With his remarks, Ramban seems to be inserting an element of elitism along with asceticism to the understanding of holiness. He suggests that being holy requires one to rise above what the laws require by restricting oneself even in the realm of what is permitted by God.

Rabbi Jacob Zvi Meklenburg (1785–1865), the author of the commentary called the haKetav ve-haKabbalah, takes matters even further. He suggests that restraint from that which is permitted is not truly holiness, but is rather one level lower. True holiness is attained by an element of perishut described in the classic midrashic commentary on vaYikra called the Sifra. Here, one achieves holiness by separating oneself emotionally when performing commandments that involve physical pleasure. Meklenburg describes the ideal of these holy people as follows. They “indulge in sex exclusively for the purpose of procreation; they eat well on Shabbat only to fulfill the commandment of honoring the Sabbath. They do not indulge in pleasures per se but only as a product of activities designed for a loftier purpose (haKetav ve-haKabbalah on vaYikra 19:2 v.4 Eliahu Munk translation). Therefore, Meklenburg speaks of a level of intellectual or emotional discipline that leads to a form of restraint and separation not explicitly mentioned by Ramban.

As we discussed the positions of Rashi, Ramban, and Meklenburg on holiness, which include some obvious ascetic dimensions, a division developed in our group on whether this was closer or further from notions of contemporary spirituality. On the one hand, Eastern spiritual disciplines and values of non-materialism have some resonance with the ascetic interpretation of holiness of our commentators. Meklenburg’s sense that one should “separate oneself from physical pleasure” even when doing a mitzvah suggested to some that one needs to develop a form of self-control of the type that meditation could help cultivate. We know that there are ascetic values of Buddhist monks, and these very well might have parallels to rabbinic asceticism and to its further developments in Kabbalistic practices.

For others in our group, learning to do miztvoth solely to “fulfill the commandment of the Creator” is a different form of discipline than the one suggested by Eastern meditation since rabbinic practice requires the acknowledgement of God as creator and commander. Doing a mitzvah for the sake of God alone or because God commanded it is different from meditating for the sake of release from all attachments to physical realities.

Commentators: Group II: Israel Salanter, Hatam Sofer, Haim Benattar

While the commentators above all link the interpretation of “holiness” to the verses in vaYikra 18, which precede the exhortation to be holy, another group of commentators base their interpretations on the verses that follow the exhortation to be holy. These are the verses with laws to respect parents, observe the Sabbath, care for the poor and the handicapped, and so forth. The view that all of the commandments in vaYikra 19 supply something of a rule for the holy life is also found among the various midrashim in Sifra (10:2); but Israel Salanter (1810–1883), the great Lithuanian Mussar scholar, expands this position. He explicitly rejects the position of Rashi and Ramban. He admits that it is commonly “accepted in the [Jewish] world to associate the holy person with one who is great in Torah and Fear (of God).” However, he argues “that according to hazal there is another aspect to holiness—how one deals in money matters.” Referring to vaYikra 19 he says, it “establishes that the conditions for holiness are: Do not steal, do not lie, you shall not do an injustice in judgment.” He emphasizes that these are laws related to daily interaction in “commerce, work, and interpersonal relations.”[i] He supports his reading by noting that verse 2 links the command to be holy to God’s being holy: “You shall be holy for I, the Lord, your God, am holy.” But in his interpretation, this is done to make a distinction and not a connection between God and humans. “I God am holy, so to speak, in heaven, so if I require holiness of you, my intent is that you be holy in earthly, material matters.” Thus, Rabbi Salanter engages a polemic against a notion of holiness that is oriented solely toward heaven in favor of an earthly holiness that is oriented to relations between human and fellow human.

Hatam Sofer (1762–1839, Moses [Schreiber] Sofer)takes a similar approach to R. Salanter, highlighting the importance of involvement with people to holiness. He, however, takes the exhortation to be holy in a somewhat different direction by emphasizing the importance of communal involvement. He states that the holiness in our verse is “not holiness of separation and the Nazirite, but rather … holiness within the community and involvement with people.”[ii] He derives this interpretation from the important phrase in vaYikra 19:1 (which, by the way, occurs only once is the entire book of vaYikra). “Speak to the entire community of the children of Israel.” He believes that the words “entire community” signal that holiness must be sought in and through relations in the community and not outside it in some act of separation from the community.

The Hatam Sofer is not the only commentator who wonders why Moses is commanded to speak to the “entire community.” R Haim Benattar (1696–1743) in his Ohr haHayyim comments on this as well. However, he sees the fact that Moses addresses the entire community as a specific challenge to some of the elitist notions of holiness. He says that the Torah includes the words “the entire community” in order to teach us that “this commandment that He commanded ‘you shall be holy’ is a commandment that can be attained by each and every person… for there is no radical distinction among the people Israel that would preclude one from this achievement.” (Ohr haHayyim, my translation).

In this second group of commentators, our study group agreed that we see a real distinction between the search for spirituality and the search for holiness. Rabbi Salanter stresses that holiness is not really about the spiritual but the material dimension of life. For him, holiness is about how we deal with money! We see this theme carried forward in the comments of Hatam Sofer.

One of our members summarized this second group of commentators as saying something like this. ‘It is easy to be holy if you excuse yourself from the community, retreat from humanity, and remain silent. The real challenge is to be holy within the community, to preserve your holiness through relations with others and within the social world.’

I noted that if we put together the positions of the first and second groups of commentators, we actually have the traditional view that holiness requires both good relations of humans to God, bein adam laMakom and good relations of humans to humans, bein adam leHaveiro. As Jacob Milgram has argued in his great three-volume Anchor commentary on the book of vaYikra, holiness is a complex goal that includes both proper ritual and ethical practices that might take a life-time to achieve. As our group ended our discussions, a number of participants reiterated that it was not really fair to just focus on vaYikra as the point of comparison to the statements of the Institute for Jewish Spirituality. They noted that Judaism has a well established spiritual tradition grounded in the texts of the Kabbalah and of the various sects of the Hassidim. Had we chosen a text from the Zohar, or a Hassidic text such as the Sefat Emet or the Tanya or, even better, had we looked for manuals of Hassidic prayer and meditation practices, we would find far more points of contact.

Yet others in the group noted Rashi’s words that, in vaYikra 19, we had most of the “essence of the Torah” and that therefore vaYikra provides the foundations of the Jewish holy life that must be established first before Kabbalistic or Hassidic spiritual practices are developed. Where the Institute of Jewish Spirituality mentions that meditation is their “core practice,” it could never be seen as the core practice of Judaism. Instead, what we did together, study Torah, and what the text we studied suggested, fulfilling the will of God in doing mitzvoth, are the core practices of Judaism. Also, I said that the essentially communal nature of holiness, that holiness is constituted in a community, within a communal context and requires a community, is another vital point of difference with the quest for spirituality which seems to be a mainly individual search. Perhaps, we should consider meditation, like the tradition of Kabbalah in Judaism, as something that can be added to the life of mitzvoth to enhance and develop its spiritual dimensions more explicitly. But this would mean that meditation could never become a core practice to replace mitzvoth.

Another participant wanted to insist, before we closed our study session, that there seems to be a form of Jewish spirituality that specifically fulfills one of the Institute of Jewish Spirituality’s main stated goals: the goal of relaxing the body and concentrating the mind on the present so that one can just “be” in the face of our culture’s unrelenting pressure to “do.” This goal, she suggested, was the exact objective of Shabbat! What better way to “be” and not “do” than enjoying an afternoon of Shabbat rest? Indeed, there is perhaps no better way to slow time down than by being in a community where everyone stops working, stops driving cars, stops turning on and off electrical devices, and attends only to God, family, friends, Torah, and tefilla. This is a kind of joint communal holy practice that represents the unique spirituality of Judaism—a combination of bodily and spiritual revitalization where an entire community works together to create an ideal time and space where the community is allowed to “taste” and “glimpse” life redeemed.

It might very well be that contemporary spiritual practices have something to contribute to Judaism by helping remind us of what we already have. The contemporary search for spirituality recalls the old Jewish story of the man who searched long and far to find a treasure of riches only to discover that the treasure was there all along buried under his own house.

The Sefira Restrictions

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Rabbi Alan J. Yuter, a highly respected American Orthodox rabbi, went on Aliyah with his wife upon his retirement. They currently reside in Jerusalem. Rabbi Yuter is associated with Torat Reeva Jerusalem..

When we walk on the Streets of Boro Park. NY, or Park Heights, Baltimore, Md., we see some Orthodox men walking on the street with beards during the seven weeks between the Passover and Shavuot holidays. This season Is taken to be a period of mourning which seems to require a seasonal beard as well as a prohibition of music. According to the ultra-Orthodox decisor and spokesman, R. Yisroel Belsky,

“Lately, it has become a trend to take every possible pleasure that one can think of and figure out ways to make them permissible at all times. Whether it is the imitation of non-kosher foods, making all chometzdike delicacies kosher l’Pesach, or other similar things, we find this attitude now more than ever. People cannot live for one minute with compromising on pleasures that they are used to or wish to experience. Often, the heteirim

[dispensations] to permit such activities are, at best, based on very weak reasoning.

One such example is the desire to listen to music during Sefirah and The Three Weeks. It has become a trend to produce “Sefirah tapes,” referred to musically as ‘a cappella “ The wide acceptance of such tapes has not been with rabbinic approval. Indeed, many of the gedolei rabbonim [great rabbis] have ruled that one should not listen to this type of music during Sefirah and The Three Weeks. Unfortunately, because the music albums are being sold in the stores, people think that they must be glatt kosher. If they aren’t acceptable, people say, why would a Jewish store sell them?”

Rabbi Belsky assumes that hearing music during this season is a violation of Torah propriety. It is apparently also improper to have pleasures that are permitted if those pleasures show license or allow people to feel good. Digital music is also banned because

“For example, a click with one’s mouth, or a chhhh sound, can be equalized to sound like a drum. If the tonal balance is changed beyond the capabilities of what a human can do, then the music can no longer be considered human sounds, but rather computer-made sounds, and would be prohibited during Sefirah and The Three Weeks.”

Although some have objected to the observance of Yom Ha-Shoah, the day of commemoration for the murder of six million Jews during the Holocaust, because it falls out during the festive month of Nisan, other voices indicate that remembering the tragedies that befell the Jewish People during the period of Sefirat Ha-Omer has its precedents.

Official Religion Jewish Law

Orthodox Judaism not only professes commitment to Torah law, it requires the conscience driven conversation regarding the clarification of that law. The only law of the Sefirah period [from Passover to Shavuot] is the obligation to count Sefirah [Numbers 23:15]. Some consider this law as Scriptural and others Rabbinic. Since this Scripture is not designated as Rabbinic in the Oral Torah, it seems that Sefirah counting should be taken literally and as a Torah mandate.
bYevamot 62b reports a legend that 24,000 students of Rabbi Akiva died between Passover and Shavuot, with the deaths ending on the 33^rd day of the count. There is no Oral Torah legislation designating this period as a period of mourning. Furthermore, there is no independent attestation for the historicity of this aggadic/legendary claim, which may or may not have a historical core.
Mourning practices are first reported in the post-Talmudic Gaonic collection called Sha’arei Teshuva 278.

The Tur [OH 493] reports the Gaonic custom that weddings do not take place during the Sefirah season and some but not all communities restrict haircuts as well. The Tur treats this period as akin to the mournful month of Av when we diminish joy from the beginning of Av to the fast day on the 9^th of the month, [mTaanit 4:6] innovatively creating a new season of mourning unattested in the Oral Torah. Upon unpackaging the Tur we find that:

The original invented practice was to restrict weddings and at that time nothing else was restricted.
The restriction on haircuts is a later innovation or reform.
Shulhan Arukh (493:1-2) cites both of these customs which restrict weddings and haircuts. There is at this moment in the history of Halakha no mention of restrictions on music, shaving, or other pleasures the ignoring of which seems to bother Rabbi Belsky.
Unaddressed by Rabbi Belsky is the Babylonian Amora Samuel’s legal principle that the law follows the lenient view [and we do not search for strictures] in matters of mourning. [Moed Katan 20a].
The Sephardi Maimonides and the Ashkenazi Rashi’s school Mahzor Vitry know nothing of this season of mourning, indicating that neither of these plain sense and common sense sages believed that the innovative Sefirah mourning practices are normative and binding.

During the Middle Ages, these mourning practices became normative and were justified after the fact:

The Crusades made Jews feel insecure so the Jews made their Judaism understandably more morose. The Ashkenazi Yizkor memorial service dates from this period as well and was enacted over and against the competing Oral Law concern that mourning is not done on holidays.
Taz [OH 483:2] assigns the Medieval mourning practices to medieval decrees against Jewry. Rabbi Jacob Emden offers the same report in his Siddur. People had the practice to mourn during this period and were looking for contemporizing reasons.
While in medieval times, Judaism was allowed to contemporize classical values to their immediate present, in modernity, elements of Orthodoxy now object to Holocaust Day because it falls in the happy month of Nisan, which commemorates freedom and redemption. However, these same groups do not object to observing Sefirah mourning during Nisan or the Ashkenazi memorial Yizkor service that by convention is observed on the last day of Passover, when mourning is forbidden by law. Rabbi Haim David ha-Levi questioned the propriety of such prayers on happy Jewish festivals. This inconsistency actually reveals what is at stake in the conversation regarding Sefirah strictures; a living religion responds religiously to contemporary realities while insecure religion pines for a past that never was because it fears the present that it dreads to confront.
While religious innovations for spiritual expression are presented as forbidden in modern times, increased restrictions evolve in any case in spite of the Talmudic rule cited above that the Jewish mourning law prefers the lenient view.
Nowhere in the Oral Torah canon is music forbidden for personal mourning.
Rabbi Meir Kagan [Mishna Berura 493:3] allows a shiddukhin [engagement] repast during this period while disallowing dances. On one hand, R. Kagan cites as his source R. Abraham Gumbiner [Magen Avraham, supra. n. 1]. The latter sage innovates a restriction on dancing; the former sage innovatively adds a restriction on music.
It may be reasoned that since dancing reflects joy, all joy must innovatively be forbidden as per the Tur, and since music leads to dancing, music “must” be now forbidden as well.
Realizing that mimetic usage trumps Torah statute in the living religion of Orthodoxy, the Hareidi sage, R. Yitzchok Weiss [Minchas Yitzchok 1:111] astutely notes that music is not forbidden by statute but by custom, which is akin to a vow. Note well that the notion that mourning law is to be lenient is unaddressed, as is the right to establish innovative customs of restriction. In Oral Torah Judaism, vows must be articulated with the lips [Leviticus 5:4, Baba Mezia 36a, and codified by, Maimonides, Oaths, 2:10].
Rabbi Solomon Ganzfreid restricts music and dancing both during Sefirah and the three weeks between the 17^th of Tammuz and the 9^th of Av as well [Kitsur Shulhan Arukh 122:1].
Reflecting popular culture Orthodoxy that assumes that music is forbidden by rule, as assumed by Rabbi Belsky, R. Moses Feinstein [Ingot Moshe YD 2:137] extends the rule even further to include tape recordings, which could not have been forbidden when the practice first evolved. Innovative stringency has become acceptable, even if the innovation violates Halakhic principle, because stringency valorizes religious heroism which emerges as the “new spirituality.”
It is reported that R. Joseph B. Soloveitchik argued that new customs “must” follow pre-existing Halakhic paradigms [R. Herschel Schachter, Nefesh ha-Rav, 191]. On one hand, the Tur accesses the Mishnaic idiom regarding what in that Mishnah is an unspecified of decreasing joy in Av and innovatively assigns the stringency to the Sefirah; on the other hand, the Tur did not flinch from innovation and R. Soloveitchik proclaimed but did not demonstrate his requirement that customs must conform to pre-existing paradigms. In his web post, “Masorah and Change,” R. Schachter provides the operational rules of contemporary Orthodoxy; hiddush [innovation] that continues antecedent paradigms and are apparently not socially discordant are acceptable, while shinnui [change, reform] that projects discontinuity, is unacceptable. According to this paradigm, the religious benchmark is not the statute and principle but is located in the innovative and heroic zeal of social convention and collective mood as determined and approved by the Great Sage.
I was once asked by the MetroWest Federation to issue a ruling regarding the propriety of music during the Sefirah and I ruled leniently. A modern Orthodox rabbi then chided me for my ruling because Orthodox Jews could and would not participate. I responded that since music is forbidden during Sefirah by late, innovative convention, Orthodoxy may have a right to ask the larger community to observe Torah and Rabbinic law but ought not to impose latter day innovations that are disputed in the halakhic literature, and that if modern Orthodox laypeople were exposed to a historical halakhic conversation and not to social pressure to conform, they likely would agree that Orthodoxy should not waste its moral currency in order to impose a culture that is not law upon those not yet committed to Orthodoxy and Jewish law. At the 2011 International Rabbinic Fellowship conference, live music was permitted before the 33^rd Omer day, reflecting a principled rather than policy driven approach to Jewish ritual practice.

It has been reported there is a custom not to take a haircut during Sefirah. This restriction has been extended to shaving [Rabbi Feinstein, supra., OH 2:96]. Note that leniencies are available for those who have to work in a non-Jewish environment [Supra. 4:102]. If there was indeed a real rule here, outlawing shaving as opposed to restricting haircuts by custom, no leniency would be available. In point of fact, this “custom” was proclaimed but not promulgated as an official communal enactment and instead serves as an identity marker that identifies the truly Orthodox affiliate, i.e., the person who submits to discipline of the “really” Orthodox rabbis. It is reported that R. Soloveitchik argued that Sefirah cannot be more rigorous a period of mourning than the twelve month mourning period for the loss of a parent, and therefore permitted shaving daily. Given R. Soloveitchik’s larger concern for custom conformity, I suspect that his penchant for pragmatism led him to rule leniently on the matter of shaving.

In conclusion:

There is no legislated restriction regarding mourning restrictions during Sefirah.
The original customary practice disallowed weddings and not haircuts
Shaving is not the same as having a haircut; while customs should be respected, the ever increasing stringencies that are innovated in present times may rightly be questioned and rejected.
The law follows the lenient view in mourning; strictures require explanation, not merely declaration.
Individuals have a right to be heroically strict if they do so without arrogance.
On Israel Independence Day, one should not appear disheveled with unkempt beard of facial stubble, even if one would otherwise not shave at this time. Surely the State of Israel is at least as real as the Talmudic Aggadah regarding the demise of 24,000 students.
If it is proper to innovate a mourning custom and change Jewish practice in the Middle Ages [the halakhically questionable Ashkenazi Yizkor prayers], we have precedent for innovation [Israel Independence Day] in our time as well.
It is proper to observe communal customs; these customs are however not laws and since they are innovations, they are themselves subject to conversation and when appropriate, change. When we add restriction to restriction and erect fences around fences, Jewish law will be wrongly seen to be offensive.
Those who claim that today’s rabbis are not on the spiritual level don't have the right to have an opinion have themselves not reached the spiritual level whereby they are empowered to invalidate the considered, reasoned, and demonstrated opinions of others. According to the Orthodoxy of the Oral Torah, Halakhic legitimacy resides in the demonstrated logic of the law, not the charismatic intuition of the claimant.