He was 137 years old. He had been through two traumatic events involving the people most precious to him in the world. The first involved the son for whom he had waited for a lifetime, Isaac. He and Sarah had given up hope, yet God told them both that they would have a son together, and it would be he who would continue the covenant. The years passed. Sarah did not conceive. She had grown old, yet God still insisted they would have a child.
Eventually it came. There was rejoicing. Sarah said: “God has brought me laughter, and everyone who hears about this will laugh with me.” Then came the terrifying moment when God said to Abraham: “Take your son, your only one, the one you love,” and offer him as a sacrifice. Abraham did not dissent, protest or delay. Father and son traveled together, and only at the last moment did the command come from heaven saying, “Stop”. How does a father, let alone a son, survive a trauma like that?
Then came grief. Sarah, Abraham’s beloved wife, died. She had been his constant companion, sharing the journey with him as they left behind all they knew, their land, their birthplace and their families. Twice she saved Abraham’s life by pretending to be his sister.
What does a man of 137 do – the Torah calls him “old and advanced in years” – after such a trauma and such a bereavement? We would not be surprised to find that he spent the rest of his days in sadness and memory. He had done what God had asked of him. Yet he could hardly say that God’s promises had been fulfilled. Seven times he had been promised the land of Canaan, yet when Sarah died he owned not one square-inch of it, not even a place in which to bury his wife. God had promised him many children, a great nation, many nations, as many as the grains of sand in the sea shore and the stars in the sky. Yet he had only one son of the covenant, Isaac, whom he had almost lost, and who was still unmarried at the age of thirty-seven. Abraham had every reason to sit and grieve.
Yet he did not. In one of the most extraordinary sequences of words in the Torah, his grief is described in a mere five Hebrew words: in English, “Abraham came to mourn for Sarah and to weep for her.” Then immediately we read, “And Abraham rose from his grief.” From then on, he engaged in a flurry of activity with two aims in mind: first to buy a plot of land in which to bury Sarah, second to find a wife for his son. Note that these correspond precisely to the two Divine blessings: of land and descendants. Abraham did not wait for God to act. He understood one of the profoundest truths of Judaism: that God is waiting for us to act.
How did Abraham overcome the trauma and the grief? How do you survive almost losing your child and actually losing your life-partner and still have the energy to keep going? What gave Abraham his resilience, his ability to survive, his spirit intact?
I learned the answer from the people who became my mentors in moral courage, namely the Holocaust survivors I had the privilege to know. How, I wondered, did they keep going, knowing what they knew, seeing what they saw? We know that the British and American soldiers who liberated the camps never forgot what they witnessed. According to Niall Fergusson’s new biography of Henry Kissinger, who entered the camps as an American soldier, the sight that met his eyes transformed his life. If this was true of those who merely saw Bergen-Belsen and the other camps, how almost infinitely more so, those who lived there and saw so many die there. Yet the survivors I knew had the most tenacious hold on life. I wanted to understand how they kept going.
Eventually I discovered. Most of them did not talk about the past, even to their marriage partners, even to their children. Instead they set about creating a new life in a new land. They learned its language and customs. They found work. They built careers. They married and had children. Having lost their own families, the survivors became an extended family to one another. They looked forward, not back. First they built a future. Only then – sometimes forty or fifty years later – did they speak about the past. That was when they told their story, first to their families, then to the world. First you have to build a future. Only then can you mourn the past.
Two people in the Torah looked back, one explicitly, the other by implication. Noah, the most righteous man of his generation, ended his life by making wine and becoming drunk. The Torah does not say why but we can guess. He had lost an entire world. While he and his family were safe on board the ark, everyone else – all his contemporaries – had drowned. It is not hard to imagine this righteous man overwhelmed by grief as he replayed in his mind all that had happened, wondering whether he might have done something to save more lives or avert the catastrophe.
Lot’s wife, against the instruction of the angels, actually did look back as the cities of the plain disappeared under fire and brimstone and the anger of God. Immediately she was turned into a pillar of salt, the Torah’s graphic description of a woman so overwhelmed by shock and grief as to be unable to move on.
It is the background of these two stories that helps us understand Abraham after the death of Sarah. He set the precedent: first build the future, and only then can you mourn the past. If you reverse the order, you will be held captive by the past. You will be unable to move on. You will become like Lot’s wife.
Something of this deep truth drove the work of one of the most remarkable survivors of the Holocaust, the psychotherapist Viktor Frankl. Frankl lived through Auschwitz, dedicating himself to giving other prisoners the will to live. He tells the story in several books, most famously in Man’s Search for Meaning. He did this by finding for each of them a task that was calling to them, something they had not yet done but that only they could do. In effect, he gave them a future. This allowed them to survive the present and turn their minds away from the past.
Frankl lived his teachings. After the liberation of Auschwitz he built a school of psychotherapy called Logotherapy, based on the human search for meaning. It was almost an inversion of the work of Freud. Freudian psychoanalysis had encouraged people to think about their very early past. Frankl taught people to build a future, or more precisely, to hear the future calling to them. Like Abraham, Frankl lived a long and good life, gaining worldwide recognition and dying at the age of 92.
Abraham heard the future calling to him. Sarah had died. Isaac was unmarried. Abraham had neither land nor grandchildren. He did not cry out, in anger or anguish, to God. Instead, he heard the still, small voice saying: The next step depends on you. You must create a future that I will fill with My spirit. That is how Abraham survived the shock and grief. God forbid that we experience any of this, but if we do, this is how to survive.
God enters our lives as a call from the future. It is as if we hear him beckoning to us from the far horizon of time, urging us to take a journey and undertake a task that, in ways we cannot fully understand, we were created for. That is the meaning of the word vocation, literally “a calling”, a mission,a task to which we are summoned.
We are not here by accident. We are here because God wanted us to be, and because there is a task we were meant to fulfill. Discovering what that is, is not easy, and often takes many years and false starts. But for each of us there is something God is calling on us to do, a future not yet made that awaits our making. It is future-orientation that defines Judaism as a faith, as I explain in the last chapter of my book, Future Tense.
So much of the anger, hatred and resentments of this world are brought about by people obsessed by the past and who, like Lot’s wife, are unable to move on. There is no good ending to this kind of story, only more tears and more tragedy. The way of Abraham in Chayei Sarah is different. First build the future. Only then can you mourn the past. SHABBAT SHALOM
A Moment with Rabbi Avigdor Miller Zt"l #301 This was transcribed from questions that were posed to Harav Miller by the audience at the Thursday night lectures.
To listen to the audio of this Q & A please dial: 201-676-3210
QUESTION:
How can a Rebbi help a weaker student succeed in learning?
ANSWER:
The first thing is, to encourage him. A very big factor in learning is not to give up hope. The truth is, everybody can succeed in learning, it doesn't mean that you'll become a world renowned Gaon, but everybody can succeed in becoming a lamdan. It's only when people find it difficult and they despair, then they can lose out. A Rebbi, if he encourages boys, he'll be surprised with the results. Of course you need help too, but encouragement is a very important factor.
Parents should encourage their children (they should help them too), "keep it up, you're succeeding, you'll be something," and eventually it's going to happen. I remember when I was a boy, one of my Rabbeim who used to talk to me always and give me encouragement when he saw me sitting with a sefer. I cannot forget him, I'll always be grateful, for those words were a source of strength, because people need that more than anything else. Of course they need instruction, but encouragement is what we have to give, and by the way, not only in learning.
The husband needs encouragement when he goes to work; money doesn't grow on trees, it's very hard to make a living. When he comes home from work, the wife should encourage him, and even though he tells her of his failures and difficulties, she should say, "don't worry, eventually we'll make it, eventually we'll pay all our bills, we'll be settled, we'll be happy." These words are like a balm, like a salve, to help the husband maintain the struggle of his existence. And by the way, there's nobody in the world that doesn't have any troubles, everybody has some troubles, and everybody needs encouragement.
Women need encouragement in the home, housework is many times very difficult. People that are not well need encouragement, that despite their illness a few kind words will help many people better than medicine. Therefore, me'oded anavim Hashem, Hashem encourages the humble, encourages the meek; a very important function, to encourage people. If you make it a career to encourage people, you should know you're going to have a tremendous schar for this great form of chessed.
Bais Hamussar #497 This Dvar Torah is dedicated l'refuas Ruchoma Kaila Rivka bas Simab'soch sha'ar cholei Yisroel.
Following Noach's exodus from the teivah, the Torah tells us, "Noach became mundane and planted a vineyard" (Bereishis 9:20). Chazal (Bereishis Rabba 36:4 cited by Rashi) explain that he should have first planted wheat or another more essential food. In other words, the planting of the vineyard was not a problem per se; rather, the planting of other crops should have taken priority and only afterward should he have planted a vineyard. Rav Wolbe (Daas Shlomo) comments that an error simply in the proper order of events, caused Noach - referred to earlier in the parsha as "righteous and pure" - to become mundane!
It appears that acting with seder (proper orderliness), is not merely an added plus, it is an imperative aspect of one's avodas Hashem. Chazal tell us (Shabbos 31a) that when one arrives in the Next World, the very first questions he is asked are, "Were you honest in your business dealings?" and "Did you designate time for learning?" However, in Sanhedrin (7a) Chazal assert that the judgment in the Next World focuses first not on a person's honesty in business; rather it focuses on one's Torah learning.
Tosafos deals with this seeming contradiction, and explains that the Gemara in Sanhedrin is referring to someone who had not learned Torah at all, while the Gemara in Shabbos deals with someone who learned Torah but did not set aside a specific time for Torah study. While he might have studied Torah regularly, he is judged specifically whether or not he set aside a designated time for learning, because seder is so crucial. Whether the subject is planting crops or learning Torah; random performance leaves room for error.
Furthermore, in tefillas ma'ariv we praise Hashem for, "setting the stars in a specific order in their heavenly constellations as He wills." Orderliness testifies to the will and intent of the one who arranged the order. (Parenthetically, Rav Wolbe adds, that this idea is one of the clearest proofs that there is a Creator. The fact that the entire universe is arranged so methodically and all of nature runs so systematically proves that there must be Someone who organized it all.) If a person lacks orderliness in his Torah study or his avodas Hashem, he must make an honest reckoning whether he has a genuine interest in serving Hashem or perhaps his Torah and mitzvos are performed without a clear sense of direction.
The month of Cheshvan affords us the opportunity to "get back on schedule." For some, the return to Yeshiva or Kollel allows them to designate specific times for Torah learning that might have been lacking during bein hazmanim. For others, the steady weekly schedule of the winter months that was absent during the month of Tishrei, provides them with continuity that enables them to actualize their kabbalos for the new year. Cheshvan is the time to take the spiritual gains of the Yamim Noraim and create seder in our avodah, thereby showing Hashem that it is our true desire to serve Him!
Parshas Noach 5776
This was transcribed from questions that were posed to Harav Miller by the audience at the Thursday night lectures. To listen to the audio of this Q & A please dial: 201-676-3210
QUESTION:
Why did Hashem divide the oceans?
ANSWER:
First of all, most of the oceans are one. The Atlantic and Pacific are connected and therefore they are like one ocean. Inland seas are separate. But I want to tell you this; even the oceans themselves have different climates and different inhabitants. The purpose is, Hakadosh Baruch Hu wanted His world to be a department store from which nothing is lacking. The world is supplied with every kind of marine animal like it has almost every kind of land animal, and all these help to complete the perfection of Hashem's creation.
When people see so many things, especially so many different kinds of fish, like Rashi says in mesechta Rosh Hashana (31a) when you see so many different types of fish, bachamishi omrim harninu, on the fifth day you say, "Make song to Hashem". Why make song on the fifth day? Because He created fish and fowl. And Rashi says because when you see different kinds of fish, various fish and various birds you are struck, you are overwhelmed by what you see. You see the greatness of Hashem's creation and you sing to Him.
If you see only one kind, it's monotonous, you don't notice it. When you see all kinds of birds and all kinds of fish, it makes your mind awake; you're stirred to awareness of the greatness of Hashem, and you sing harninu, sing to Hashem. That's the purpose why there are different kinds of climates in the sea, because different kind of fish and different kinds of marine animals flourish in different parts of the sea.
By: Rabbi Jonathan Sacks
For each of us there are milestones on our spiritual journey that change the direction of our life and set us on a new path. For me one such moment came when I was a rabbinical student at Jews' College and thus had the privilege of studying with one of the great rabbinic scholars of our time, Rabbi Dr Nachum Rabinovitch.
He was, and is, a giant: one the most profound Maimonidean scholars of the modern age, equally at home with virtually every secular discipline as with the entire rabbinic literature, and one of the boldest and most independent of poskim, as his several published volumes of Responsa show. He also showed what it was to have spiritual and intellectual courage, and that in our time has proved, sadly, all too rare.
The occasion was not special. He was merely giving us one of his regular divrei Torah. The week was parshat Noach. But the Midrash he quoted to us was extraordinary. In fact it is quite hard to find. It appears in the book known as Buber’s Tanhuma, published in 1885 by Martin Buber’s grandfather Shlomo from ancient manuscripts. It is a very early text – some say as early as the fifth century – and it has some overlap with an ancient Midrash of which we no longer have the full text, known as Midrash Yelamdenu.
The text is in two parts, and it is a commentary on God’s words to Noah: “ Then God said to Noah, ‘Come out of the ark’” (Gen. 8:16). On this the Midrash says: “Noah said to himself, Since I only entered the ark with permission (from God), shall I leave without permission? The Holy One blessed be He said, to him: Are you looking for permission? In that case I give you permission, as it says, ‘Then God said to Noah, Come out of the ark.’”
The Midrash then adds: “Said Rabbi Judah bar Ilai, If I had been there I would have smashed down [the doors of] the ark and taken myself out of it.”[1]
The moral Rabbi Rabinovitch drew – indeed the only one possible – was that when it comes to rebuilding a shattered world, you do not wait for permission. God gives us permission. He expects us to go on ahead.
This was, of course, part of an ancient tradition, mentioned by Rashi in his commentary (to Gen. 6:9), and central to the sages’ understanding of why God began the Jewish people not with Noah but with Abraham. Noah, says the Torah, “walked with God” (6:9). But God said to Abraham, “Walk on ahead of Me …” (Gen. 17:1). So the point was not new, but the drama and power of the Midrash were stunning.
Suddenly I understood that this is a significant part of what faith is in Judaism: to have the courage to pioneer, to do something new, to take the road less travelled, to venture out into the unknown. That is what Abraham and Sarah had done when they left their land, their home and their father’s house. It is what the Israelites did in the days of Moses when they journeyed forth into the wilderness, guided only by a pillar of cloud by day and fire by night.
Faith is precisely the courage to take a risk, knowing that “Though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I will fear no evil, for You are with me” (Ps. 23:4). It took faith to challenge the religions of the ancient world, especially when they were embodied in the greatest empires of their time. It took faith to stay Jewish in the Hellenistic age, when Jews and Judaism must have seemed small and parochial when set against the cosmopolitan culture of ancient Greece and the Alexandrian empire.
It took the faith of Rabbi Yehoshua ben Gamla to build, already in the first century, the world’s first ever system of universal, compulsory education (Baba Batra 21a), and the faith of Rabban Yohanan ben Zakkai to realise that Judaism could survive the loss of independence, land and Temple, on the basis of an academy of scholars and a culture of scholarship.
In the modern age, even though many of Jewry’s most distinguished minds either lost or abandoned their faith, nonetheless that ancient reflex survived. How else are we to understand the phenomenon that a tiny minority in Europe and the United States was able to produce so many shapers of the modern mind, each of them a pioneer in his or her own way: Einstein in physics, Durkheim in sociology, Levi-Strauss in anthropology, Mahler and Schoenberg in music, and a whole string of innovative economists from David Ricardo (the law of comparative advantage) to John von Neumann (Game Theory) to Milton Friedman (monetary theory), to Daniel Kahneman and Amos Tversky (behavioural economics).
They dominated the fields of psychiatry, psychotherapy and psychoanalysis, from Freud and his circle to Viktor Frankl (Logotherapy), Aaron T. Beck (Cognitive Behavioural Therapy) and Martin Seligman (Positive Psychology). The pioneers of Hollywood and film were almost all Jewish. Even in popular music the achievement is stunning, from Irving Berlin and George Gershwin, masters of the American musical, to Bob Dylan and Leonard Cohen, the two supreme poets of popular music in the twentieth century.
In many cases – such is the fate of innovators – the people concerned had to face a barrage of criticism, disdain, opposition or disregard. You have to be prepared to be lonely, at best misunderstood, at worst vilified and defamed. As Einstein said, “If my theory of relativity is proven successful, Germany will claim me as a German and France will declare me a citizen of the world. Should my theory prove untrue, France will say that I am a German, and Germany will declare that I am a Jew.” To be a pioneer – as Jews know from our history - you have to be prepared to spend a long time in the wilderness.
That was the faith of the early Zionists. They knew early on, some from the 1860s, others after the pogroms of the 1880s, Herzl after the Dreyfus trial, that European Enlightenment and Emancipation had failed, that despite its immense scientific and political achievements, mainland Europe still had no place for the Jew. Some Zionists were religious, others were secular, but most importantly they all knew what the Midrash Tanhuma made so clear: when it comes to rebuilding a shattered world or a broken dream, you don’t wait for permission from Heaven. Heaven is telling you to go ahead.
That is not carte blanche to do whatever we like. Not all innovation is constructive. Some can be very destructive indeed. But this principle of “Walk on ahead”, the idea that the Creator wants us, His greatest creation, to be creative, is what makes Judaism unique in the high value it places on the human person and the human condition.
Faith is the courage to take a risk for the sake of God or the Jewish people; to begin a journey to a distant destination knowing that there will be hazards along the way, but knowing also that God is with us, giving us strength if we align our will with His. Faith is not certainty, but the courage to live with uncertainty.
Parshas Berieshis 5776- transcribed from questions that were posed to Harav Miller by the audience at the Thursday night lectures. To listen to the audio of this Q & A please dial: 201-676-3210
QUESTION:
If Adam and Chava would not have sinned would they still have been required to wear clothing?
ANSWER:
No: They would have not been required to wear any clothing, because then they would have had the full seichel. You have to know Adam and Chava lost daas by the sin. The eitz ha'daas was only a temptation. It was a daas of tov and rah, a knowledge of wavering between good and bad, which means to choose; it was a temptation.
Adam wanted to know how could it be that anybody should be so stupid as to choose rah. He was told that from this tree he would get that attitude of wavering, he wanted to sense what it means. What does it mean to waver? It seemed to him insane for anybody to waver. As soon as he tasted of the fruit, he lost the previous daas and now he wavered. Had it been the previous daas, they would see as clearly as possible who Adam is. His neshama would be shining through his body like a light from a lantern, and it would illuminate his body and everybody could see that he is a divine creature.
It was only after the chet that the light of the soul became dimmed and now the neshama didn't shine out of his body anymore and it was possible to think that he was an animal.
By: Rabbi Jonathan Sacks
What exactly was the first sin? What was the Tree of Knowledge of good and evil? Is this kind of knowledge a bad thing such that it had to be forbidden, and was only acquired through sin? Isn’t knowing the difference between good and evil essential to being human? Isn’t it one of the highest forms of knowledge? Surely God would want humans to have it? Why then did He forbid the fruit that produced it?
In any case, did not Adam and Eve already have this knowledge before eating the fruit, precisely in virtue of being “in the image and likeness of God? Surely this was implied in the very fact that they were commanded by God: Be fruitful and multiply. Have dominion over nature. Do not eat from the tree. For someone to understand a command, they must know it is good to obey and bad to disobey. So they already had, at least potentially, the knowledge of good and evil. What then changed when they ate the fruit? These questions go so deep that they threaten to make the entire narrative incomprehensible.
Maimonides understood this. That is why he turned to this episode at almost the very beginning of The Guide for the Perplexed (Book 1, Chapter 2). His answer though, is perplexing. Before eating the fruit, he says, the first humans knew the difference between truth and falsehood. What they acquired by eating the fruit was knowledge of “things generally accepted.” But what does Maimonides mean by “things generally accepted.” It is generally accepted that murder is evil, and honesty good. Does Maimonides mean that morality is mere convention? Surely not. What he means is that after eating the fruit, the man and woman were embarrassed that they were naked, and that is a mere matter of social convention because not everyone is embarrassed by nudity. But how can we equate being embarrassed that you are naked with “knowledge of good and evil”? It does not seem to be that sort of thing at all. Conventions of dress have more to do with aesthetics than ethics.
It is all very unclear, or at least it was to me until I came across one of the more fascinating moments in the history of the Second World War.
After the attack on Pearl Harbour in December 1941, Americans knew they were about to enter a war against a nation, Japan, whose culture they did not understand. So they commissioned one of the great anthropologists of the twentieth century, Ruth Benedict, to explain the Japanese to them, which she did. After the war, she published her ideas in a book, The Chrysanthemum and the Sword. One of her central insights was the difference between shame cultures and guilt cultures. In shame cultures the highest value is honour. In guilt cultures it is righteousness. Shame is feeling bad that we have failed to live up to the expectations others have of us. Guilt is what we feel when we fail to live up to what our own conscience demands of us. Shame is other-directed. Guilt is inner-directed.
Philosophers, among them Bernard Williams, have pointed out that shame cultures are usually visual. Shame itself has to do with how you appear (or imagine you appear) in other peoples’ eyes. The instinctive reaction to shame is to wish you were invisible, or somewhere else. Guilt, by contrast, is much more internal. You cannot escape it by becoming invisible or being elsewhere. Your conscience accompanies you wherever you go, regardless of whether you are seen by others. Guilt cultures are cultures of the ear, not the eye.
With this contrast in mind we can now understand the story of the first sin. It is all about appearances, shame, vision and the eye. The serpent says to the woman: “God knows that on the day you eat from it, your eyes will be opened, and you will be like God, knowing good and evil.” That is, in fact, what happens: “The eyes of both of them were opened, and they realised that they were naked.” It was appearance of the tree that the Torah emphasises: “The woman saw that the tree was good to eat and desirable to the eyes, and that the tree was attractive as a means to gain intelligence.” The key emotion in the story is shame. Before eating the fruit the couple were “naked, but unashamed.” After eating it they feel shame and seek to hide. Every element of the story – the fruit, the tree, the nakedness, the shame – has the visual element typical of a shame culture.
But in Judaism we believe that God is heard not seen. The first humans “heard God's voice moving about in the garden with the wind of the day.” Replying to God, the man says, “I heard Your voice in the garden and I was afraid because I was naked, so I hid.” Note the deliberate, even humorous irony of what the couple did. They heard God’s voice in the garden, and they “hid themselves from God among the trees of the garden.” But you can’t hide from a voice. Hiding means trying not to be seen. It is an immediate, intuitive response to shame. But the Torah is the supreme example of a culture of guilt, not shame, and you cannot escape guilt by hiding. Guilt has nothing to do with appearances and everything to do with conscience, the voice of God in the human heart.
The sin of the first humans in the Garden of Eden was that they followed their eyes, not their ears. Their actions were determined by what they saw, the beauty of the tree, not by what they heard, namely the word of God commanding them not to eat from it. The result was that they did indeed acquire a knowledge of good and evil, but it was the wrong kind. They acquired an ethic of shame, not guilt; of appearances not conscience. That, I believe, is what Maimonides meant by his distinction between true-and-false and “things generally accepted.” A guilt ethic is about the inner voice that tells you, “This is right, that is wrong,” as clearly as “This is true, that is false.” But a shame ethic is about social convention. It is a matter of meeting or not meeting the expectations others have of you.
Shame cultures are essentially codes of social conformity. They belong to groups where socialisation takes the form of internalising the values of the group such that you feel shame – an acute form of embarrassment – when you break them, knowing that if people discover what you have done you will lose honour and ‘face’.
Judaism is precisely not that kind of morality, because Jews do not conform to what everyone else does. Abraham was willing, say the sages, to be on one side while all the rest of the world was on the other. Haman says about Jews, “Their customs are different from those of all other people” (Esther 3:8). Jews have often been iconoclasts, challenging the idols of the age, the received wisdom, the “spirit of the age”, the politically correct.
If Jews had followed the majority, they would have disappeared long ago. In the biblical age they were the only monotheists in a pagan world. For most of the post-biblical age they lived in societies in which they and their faith were shared by only a tiny minority of the population. Judaism is a living protest against the herd instinct. Ours is the dissenting voice in the conversation of humankind. Hence the ethic of Judaism is not a matter of appearances, of honour and shame. It is a matter of hearing and heeding the voice of God in the depths of the soul.
The drama of Adam and Eve is not about apples or sex or original sin or “the Fall” – interpretations the non-Jewish West has given to it. It is about something deeper. It is about the kind of morality we are called on to live. Are we to be governed by what everyone else does, as if morality were like politics: the will of the majority? Will our emotional horizon be bounded by honour and shame, two profoundly social feelings? Is our key value appearance: how we seem to others? Or is it something else altogether, a willingness to heed the word and will of God? Adam and Eve in Eden faced the archetypal human choice between what their eyes saw (the tree and its fruit) and what their ears heard (God’s command). Because they chose the first, they felt shame, not guilt. That is one form of “knowledge of good and evil”, but from a Jewish perspective, it is the wrong form.
Judaism is a religion of listening, not seeing. That is not to say there are no visual elements in Judaism. There are, but they are not primary. Listening is the sacred task. The most famous command in Judaism is Shema Yisrael, “Listen, Israel.” What made Abraham, Moses and the prophets different from their contemporaries was that they heard the voice that to others was inaudible. In one of the great dramatic scenes of the Bible God teaches Elijah that He is not in the whirlwind, the earthquake or the fire, but in the “still, small voice”.
It takes training, focus and the ability to create silence in the soul to learn how to listen, whether to God or to a fellow human being. Seeing shows us the beauty of the created world, but listening connects us to the soul of another, and sometimes to the soul of the Other, God as He speaks to us, calls to us, summoning us to our task in the world.
If I were asked how to find God, I would say, Learn to listen. Listen to the song of the universe in the call of birds, the rustle of trees, the crash and heave of the waves. Listen to the poetry of prayer, the music of the Psalms. Listen deeply to those you love and who love you. Listen to the words of God in the Torah and hear them speak to you. Listen to the debates of the sages through the centuries as they tried to hear the texts’ intimations and inflections.
Don’t worry about how you or others look. The world of appearances is a false world of masks, disguises and concealments. Listening is not easy. I confess I find it formidably hard. But listening alone bridges the abyss between soul and soul, self and other, I and the Divine.
A dvar Torah for Shabbat Chol Hamoed Sukkot
By: Rabbi Jonathan Sacks
The brutal murder of Rabbi Eitam and Naama Henkin in the presence of their four young children has shocked us all. It is hard to enter the spirit of zeman simchatenu, our festival of joy, in the midst of such lacerating grief. Our thoughts are with their children, and with their parents, Chanan and Hila Armony and Rabbi Yehudah and Rebbanit Chana Henkin, two of the great Jewish role models of our time. We ask, Zu Torah vezu sechorah, is this the Torah and this its reward? But we know better than to wait for an answer. In the end all we can do is to join the bereaved in our prayers. These words are dedicated to the memory of those who were killed.
At the end of his life Moses set out the great choice faced not just by Jews but by humanity as a whole: “I call heaven and earth to witness against you today that I have set before you life and death, the blessing and the curse. Therefore choose life so that you and your children may live.”
Why did Moses need to say such a thing? Did we not know, without his telling us, to choose life? Is it not obvious that, given the choice, we would choose the blessing, not the curse? The answer is given in the book we will read tomorrow, Kohelet, one of the most profound of all reflections on the nature of life and death.
The keyword of Kohelet is hevel. It appears no less than thirty-eight times, five times in a single sentence: “Vanity of vanities, says Kohelet, vanity of vanities, all is vanity.” Hevel has been variously translated as “meaningless, pointless, futile,” as well as “vanity” in the seventeenth century sense, when it meant, not excessive self-regard but rather, “worthless.” Yet none of these is the primary meaning of the word.
Hevel means “a shallow breath.” The Hebrew words for soul – nefesh, ruach, neshamah – all have to do with the act of breathing. Hevel is a short, fleeting breath. What obsessed Kohelet was how fragile and vulnerable life is. We are biological beings of bewildering complexity, yet what separates being from non-being, life from death, is not complex at all. It is mere breath. When I read Kohelet I think of King Lear at the end of Shakespeare’s play, holding in his arms the lifeless body of his daughter Cordelia, weeping and saying, “Why should a dog, a horse, a rat have life / and thou no breath at all.”
Kohelet is, among other things, a midrash on the first two human children, whose story has become terribly relevant in our time. It is no accident that the victim of the first murder in the Torah was called Hevel (Abel). Hevel represents the fragility of life. All that separates us from the grave is the breath God breathed into us: “Then the Lord God formed man from the dust of the ground and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life, and the man became a living being.” That is all we are: hevel, mere breath. But it is God’s breath.
What eventually killed Hevel was Kayin (Cain). The Torah says explicitly why he was given this name. Chavah said, “I have acquired [kaniti] a man with God.” Kayin means “to acquire, to possess, to own.” In the end, unavoidably, this leads to conflict. Ownership is, in the short term, a zero sum game. The more you have, the less I have. Since we all want more, not less, the result will inevitably be violence, what Hobbes called “the war of every man against every man” in which life is “solitary, poor, nasty, brutish and short.” It is this scenario that is currently being played out in Syria, Iraq, Afghanistan, Nigeria, Somalia, Libya, and other bloodstained arenas throughout the world. It was just such a state that led God, before the flood, to “regret He had created man on earth, and He was pained to His very core.”
That is why, fundamental to the vision set forth in the Torah, is the principle that we own nothing. Everything – the land, its produce, power, sovereignty, children, life itself – belongs to God. We are mere trustees, guardians, on His behalf. We possess but we do not own. That is the basis of the infrastructure of social justice that made the Torah unique in its time and still transformative today.
Kayin means: I am what I own, and what I own gives me power. Cain was the first Nietzschean. His religion was the will to power. That is why God rejected his offering. The sacrifice God accepts, that of Abel/Hevel, is one that comes from the humility of mortality. “Ribono shel Olam, I am mere breath. But it is Your breath I breathe, not mine.” When religion becomes the pursuit of power, the result is bloodshed. To this, God says, “Your brother’s blood is crying to me from the ground.”
Even the great Kohelet – Shlomo, whose name means peace – at first sought happiness in what he owned: palaces, gardens, servants, wealth. None of these brought what he hoped for, since none makes us immortal, none defeats death. We remain mere breath. That is why Kohelet in the end finds meaning in the very fact of life itself. He finds joy in simple things: eating, drinking, work, and “seeing life with the woman you love.”
Joy comes not from what we own but from what we are. It comes from the fact that we are alive at all. We serve God by celebrating life, sanctifying life, choosing life. That is why Sukkot follows immediately from the days in which we pray to be written in the book of life. The Sukkah, exposed to the elements, the rain, the wind, the cold, the storm, is the symbol of the vulnerability of life. Yet even so, it is where we celebrate the festival of joy.
The great choice faced by humanity in every age is between the will to power and the will to life. No country in the world today is more eloquent testimony to the will to life than the State of Israel. It represents the collective affirmation of the Jewish people after the Holocaust, “I will not die, but live,” and thus give testimony to the God of life. Almost everything in which Israel has excelled, from agriculture to medicine to life-saving technologies, has been dedicated to enhancing, protecting or defending life.
Surrounding Israel, however, have been countries and cultures willing to sacrifice life to the pursuit of power. The result has been nothing short of devastation for all those caught in its vortex be they Jews, Christians, Muslims, Yazidis, Kurds, or other innocent human beings. The end result will be, as described by Shakespeare:
Then every thing includes itself in power,
Power into will, will into appetite,
And appetite, an universal wolf,
So doubly seconded with will and power,
Must make perforce an universal prey,
And last eat up himself.
Those who worship at the altar of power, in the end destroy themselves.
Sukkot tells us that life is vulnerable, yet it is all we have. We may be mere breath but it is God’s breath and it is sacred. The day will come when the world will see that the will to life must defeat the will to power if we are to survive at all, our humanity intact. Only when this happens will there be peace in the Middle East. Only when this happens will the children of the world have a future of hope.
Until then, we cherish the memory of two beautiful human beings who lived and taught the sanctity of life. May their example live in all our hearts.
Parshas Nitzavim 5775
This is transcribed from questions that were posed to Harav Miller by the audience at the Thursday night lectures. To listen to the audio of this Q & A please dial: 201-676-3210
QUESTION:
Why do we have to be tested in this world? Hashem knows beforehand what we're going to do.
ANSWER:
When Hakadosh Baruch Hu wants us to do certain things, it's not to find out what we're going to do, but the doing of the thing is our great opportunity to change ourselves, to mold ourselves; I'll explain.
The Ramban says this: There's a difference from having something in you b'koach, something potential, or it should be yotzo m'koach el hapoel, it should come out from the potential into actual practice.
Therefore, let's say you're a charitable fellow, you like to give tzedaka, but you don't have a poor man around; you'll get reward. Chisheiv la'asos mitzvah v'ne'enas vlo asu'uh, if a man wanted to do a mitzvah, he walked out with a pocket full of money looking for a meshulach, and he can't find one. Who'll accept money? Nobody wants any money. So ma'aleh aluv hakosuv keilu asu'uh, it's considered as if he did the mitzvah. But if you're still more worthy, Hashem sends along a poor Jew from Eretz Yisroel who has twelve children, and that Jew needs the money like nobody's business, that money means bread, and if he'll give let's say a hundred dollars to that Jew, the giving of that money takes his potential kindliness and chesed, his potential mitzvah and it makes it into an actual mitzvah and he becomes a new man; he's a different man. And that's a big zechus that he has.
That's why Hakadosh Baruch Hu gives us tests, for our benefit. That's what the midrash says, achar hadvorim ha'eileh ho'elokim niso es Avrohom, what does niso mean? Like it says, v'suh neis l'kabeitz goluseinu, raise up a banner, ness is a banner. The word nusuh, nun, sin, aleph, to carry, to lift up, and nun, samech, heh, to make a test, and nisayon are the same word. Elokim nisah es Avrohom, Elokim elevated him. How did He elevate him? By giving him an opportunity to do a thing in actual practice. Avrohom in his mind, he had the potential for the akeida, but when he was actually making the akeida, when he tied his son on the mizbeiach and he lifted a knife over his neck, then he gained something that was a great privilege, he was elevated.
This week’s parsha raises a question that goes to the heart of Judaism, but which was not asked for many centuries until raised by a great Spanish scholar of the fifteenth century, Rabbi Isaac Arama. Moses is almost at the end of his life. The people are about to cross the Jordan and enter the Promised Land. Moses knows he must do one thing more before he dies. He must renew the covenant between the people and God.
Their parents had entered into that commitment almost forty years before when they stood at Mount Sinai and said, “We will do and obey all that God has declared” (Ex. 24:7). But now Moses has to ensure that the next generation and all future generations will be bound by it. He wanted no-one to be able to say, “God made a covenant with my ancestors but not with me. I did not give my consent. I was not there. I am not bound.” That is why Moses says:
It is not with you alone that I am making this sworn covenant, but with whoever is standing here with us today before the Lord our God, and with whoever is not here with us today. (Deut. 29:13-14)
“Whoever is not here” cannot mean Israelites alive at the time who were somewhere else. The entire nation was present at the assembly. It means “generations not yet born.” That is why the Talmud says: we are all mushba ve-omed me-har Sinai, “foresworn from Sinai.”[1]
Hence one of the most fundamental facts about Judaism: converts excepted, we do not choose to be Jews. We are born as Jews. We become legal adults, subject to the commands, at age twelve for girls, thirteen for boys. But we are part of the covenant from birth. A bat or bar mitzvah is not a “confirmation.” It involves no voluntary acceptance of Jewish identity. That choice took place more than three thousand years ago when Moses said “It is not with you alone that I am making this sworn covenant, but with ... whoever is not here with us today,” meaning all future generations.
But how can this be so? There is no obligation without consent. How can we be subject to a commitment on the basis of a decision taken long ago by our distant ancestors? To be sure, in Jewish law you can confer a benefit on someone else without their consent. But though it is surely a benefit to be a Jew, it is also in some sense a liability, a restriction on our range of legitimate choices. Why then are we bound now by what the Israelites said then?
Jewishly, this is the ultimate question. How can religious identity be passed on from parent to child? If identity were merely ethnic, we could understand it. We inherit many things from our parents – most obviously our genes. But being Jewish is not a genetic condition. It is a set of religious obligations.
The sages gave an answer in the form of a tradition about today’s parsha. They said that the souls of all future generations were present at Sinai. As souls, they freely gave their consent, generations before they were born.[2] However, Arama argues that this cannot answer our question, since God’s covenant is not with souls only, but also with embodied human beings. We are physical beings with physical desires. We can understand that the soul would agree to the covenant. What does the soul desire if not closeness to God?[3]
But the assent that counts is that of living, breathing human beings with bodies, and we cannot assume that they would agree to the Torah with its many restrictions on eating, drinking, sexual relations and the rest. Not until we are born, and are old enough to understand what is being asked of us can we give our consent in a way that binds us. Therefore the fact that the unborn generations were present at Moses covenant ceremony does not give us the answer we need.
In essence, Arama was asking: why be Jewish? What is fascinating is that he was the first to ask this question since the age of the Talmud. Why was it not asked before? Why was it first asked in fifteenth century Spain? For many centuries the question, “Why be Jewish?” did not arise. The answer was self-evident. I am Jewish because that is what my parents were and theirs before them, back to the dawn of Jewish time. Existential questions arise only when we feel there is a choice. For much of history, Jewish identity was not a choice. It was a fact of birth, a fate, a destiny. It was not something you chose, any more than you choose to be born.
In fifteenth century Spain, Jews were faced with a choice. Spanish Jewry experienced its Kristallnacht in 1391, and from then on until the expulsion in 1492, Jews found themselves excluded from more and more areas of public life. There were immense pressures on them to convert, and some did so. Of these, some maintained their Jewish identity in secret, but others did not. For the first time in many centuries, staying Jewish came to be seen not just as a fate but as a choice. That is why Arama raised the question that had been unasked for so long. It is also why, in an age in which everything significant seems open to choice, it is being asked again in our time.
Arama gave one answer. I gave my own in my book A Letter in the Scroll.[4] But I also believe a large part of the answer lies in what Moses himself said at the end of his address: “I call heaven and earth as witnesses that I have set before you life and death, the blessing and the curse. Therefore choose life, that you and your children may live” (Deut. 30:19).
Choose life. No religion, no civilization, has insisted so strenuously and consistently that we can choose. We have it in us, says Maimonides, to be as righteous as Moses or as evil as Jeroboam.[5] We can be great. We can be small. We can choose.
The ancients with their belief in fate, fortune, moira, ananke, the influence of the stars or the arbitrariness of nature, did not fully believe in human freedom. For them true freedom meant, if you were religious, accepting fate, or if you were philosophical, the consciousness of necessity. Nor do most scientific atheists believe in it today. We are determined, they say, by our genes. Our fate is scripted in our DNA. Choice is an illusion of the conscious mind. It is the fiction we tell ourselves.
Judaism says No. Choice is like a muscle: use it or lose it. Jewish law is an ongoing training regime in willpower. Can you eat this and not that? Can you exercise spiritually three times a day? Can you rest one day in seven? Can you defer the gratification of instinct – what Freud took to be the mark of civilization? Can you practise self-control – according to the “marshmallow test”, the surest sign of future success in life?[6] To be a Jew means not going with the flow, not doing what others do just because they are doing it. It gives us 613 exercises in the power of will to shape our choices. That is how we, with God, become co-authors of our lives. “We have to be free”, said Isaac Bashevis Singer, “we have no choice!”
Choose life. In many other faiths, life down here on earth with its loves, losses, triumphs and defeats, is not the highest value. Heaven is to be found in life after death, or the soul in unbroken communion with God, or in acceptance of the world-that-is. Life is eternity, life is serenity, life is free of pain. But that, for Judaism, is not quite life. It may be noble, spiritual, sublime, but it is not life in all its passion, responsibility and risk.
Judaism teaches us how to find God down here on earth not up there in heaven. It means engaging with life, not taking refuge from it. It seeks, not so much happiness as joy: the joy of being with others and together with them making a blessing over life. It means taking the risk of love, commitment, loyalty. It means living for something larger than the pursuit of pleasure or success. It means daring greatly.
It does not deny pleasure. Judaism is not ascetic. It does not worship pleasure. Judaism is not hedonist. Instead it sanctifies pleasure. It brings the Divine presence into the most physical acts: eating, drinking, intimacy. We find God not just in the synagogue but in the home, the house of study and acts of kindness, in community, hospitality and wherever we mend some of the fractures of our human world.
No religion has ever held the human person in higher regard. We are not tainted by original sin. We are not a mere bundle of selfish genes. We are not an inconsequential life form lost in the vastness of the universe. We are the being on whom God has set his image and likeness. We are the people God has chosen to be his partners in the work of creation. We are the nation God married at Sinai with the Torah as our marriage contract. We are the people God called on to be his witnesses. We are the ambassadors of heaven in the country called earth.
We are not better, or worse, than others. We are simply different, because God values difference whereas for most of the time, human beings have sought to eliminate difference by imposing one faith, one regime or one empire on all humanity. Ours is one of the few faiths to hold that the righteous of all nations have a share in heaven because of what they do on earth.
Choose life. Nothing sounds easier yet nothing has proved more difficult over time. Instead, people choose substitutes for life. They pursue wealth, possessions, status, power, fame, and to these gods they make the supreme sacrifice, realising too late that true wealth is not what you own but what you are thankful for, that the highest status is not to care about status, and that influence is more powerful than power.
That is why, though few faiths are more demanding, most Jews at most times have stayed faithful to Judaism, living Jewish lives, building Jewish homes and continuing the Jewish story. That is why, with a faith as unshakeable as it has proved true, Moses was convinced that “Not with you alone do I make this covenant and this oath … but also with those who are not with us today.” His gift to us is that through worshipping something so much greater than ourselves we become so much greater than we would otherwise have been.
Why Judaism? Because there is no more challenging way of choosing life.
Here's a new shiur entitled "Ori B'Rosh Hashana" just in time for this special Yom Tov. We have also made the shiur on Yom Kippur from last year available in case you didn't yet have a chance to listen.
Our work at Ani Maamin never stops! While we continue to travel around the world strengthening Emunah in classrooms and homes, we have also been working tirelessly on producing updated and new material.
The newly revised and expanded series "Know What to Answer to Yourself" has been very well received. Those who already enjoyed the older version were especially delighted with the additional information. The new book "Emunah, A Refresher Course" will IY"H be in stores by Chanuka! The feedback from leading Mechanchim and Rabbonim who reviewed this project has been extremely positive and encouraging.
We daven and hope that these efforts and tools will enable all Yidden to continue strengthening their Emunah and the Emunah of those around them.
Wishing you a כתיבה וחתימה טובה און א גוט געבענטשט יאהר,
This is transcribed from questions that were posed to Harav Miller by the audience at the Thursday night lectures. To listen to the audio of this Q & A please dial: 201-676-3210
QUESTION:
We always talk about Yesh m'ayin as the greatest miracle of all time, but ifHashem existed already, so how do we say it's Yesh m'ayin; Hashem was there?
ANSWER:
Hashem was there, Hashem is the Ayin; when you say Ayin it means Hashem.M'ayin yovo ezri? From Hashem, that's the Ayin, because He's by himself, you don't see any gashmius at all. Yehi He said, then the gashmius that we know came into existence, but He is the Yesh, He's the only Yesh there is, there's no Yesh except Him.
Our yesh is only, b'dvar Hashem shamayim na'asu, by His word it came into existence. Whatever you see now is just dvar Hashem. L'olam Hashem d'vorcho nitzav ba'shomayim, Your word standsba'shomayim. Which word? Yehi, that word, is standing ba'shomayim. If you take back Your yehi, the whole shomayim will turn into nothing. So the whole world is nothing but the dvar Hashem, andHashem we call Ayin, but He is the only real Yesh there is. That's the Yesh.
Parshas Shoftim 5775
This email is transcribed from questions that were posed to Harav Miller by the audience at the Thursday night lectures.
To listen to the audio of this Q & A please dial: 201-676-3210
QUESTION:
Sonei matanos yichyeh, it means if you hate gifts from human beings you're going to live; please explain?
ANSWER:
And the idea is, what is life? Life is one thing, life is only bechira, free will; that's all life is. Life doesn't mean to be happy, because happiness really is in the next world, this world is not the real place. The true happiness is in the world to come. So why should a person worry if he's afraid he might die chalila? He's losing the opportunity to eat chicken? No. He's afraid because now he's going to lose that great gift of free will. That's what death means, death means your free will comes to an end. No more free will forever. Happiness, yes to no end in the next world, but no free will.
If you accept gifts from somebody you are giving up part of your free will, because you cannot speak up and say your mind anymore. If you take gifts like Reb Chaim Brisker said, when he came to Brisk for the rabbonus, the first baal habos who gave him a dollar burned a hole in his palm; it never healed, he said. It means he wanted more. Once you start taking from people, you lose your free will.
Let's say you're going to visit someone. You're rich, you have plenty to eat at home, but you visit him and eat on his table. If you eat at his table then you're bound, you cannot help it; you have to laugh at his jokes.
And if he says a d'var Torah, no matter how much it's lacking, you have to say...very good. Sometimes he says things that are not virtuous, but you can't help yourself because you're his guest. That's why if you hate gifts you are going to live longer. Hakadosh Baruch Hu sees you utilize your free will, so He says this man deserves to live more to practice more free will.
But from Hakadosh Baruch Hu you can take and take, because if you lose your free will towards Him, that's alright. If you're more humbled before Him, that's alright.
So sonei matanos from human beings, yichyeh; but from Hakadosh Baruch Hu we're already mortgaged up to our ears anyhow, so you might as well take and take.
The Mishnah tells us that: “No days were as festive for Israel as the 15th of Av and Yom Kippur.” (Tractate Ta’anit) What is Tu B’Av, the 15th of the Hebrew month of Av? In which way is it equivalent to Yom Kippur?
Our Sages explain: Yom Kippur symbolizes God’s forgiving Israel for the sin of the Golden Calf in the desert, for it was on that day that He finally accepted Moses’ plea for forgiveness of the nation, and on that same day Moses came down from the mountain with the new set of tablets.
Just as Yom Kippur symbolizes the atonement for the sin of the Golden Calf, Tu B’Av signifies the atonement for the sin of the Spies, where ten came bearing such negative reports which reduced the entire nation to panic. As a result of that sin, it was decreed by God that the nation would remain in the desert for 40 years, and that no person 20 or older would be allowed to enter Israel. On each Tisha B’Av of those 40 years, those who had reached the age of 60 that year died – 15,000 each Tisha B’Av.
This plague finally ended on Tu B’Av.
Six positive events occurred on Tu B’Av:
Event #1 – As noted above, the plague that had accompanied the Jews in the desert for 40 years ended. That last year, the last 15,000 people got ready to die. God, in His mercy, decided not to have that last group die, considering all the troubles they had gone through. Now, when the ninth of Av approached, all the members of the group got ready to die, but nothing happened. They then decided that they might have been wrong about the date, so they waited another day, and another…
Finally on the 15th of Av, when the full moon appeared, they realized definitely that the ninth of Av had come and gone, and that they were still alive. Then it was clear to them that God’s decree was over, and that He had finally forgiven the people for the sin of the Spies.
This is what was meant by our Sages when they said: “No days were as festive for Israel as the 15th of Av and Yom Kippur,” for there is no greater joy than having one’s sins forgiven – on Yom Kippur for the sin of the Golden Calf and on Tu B’Av for the sin of the spies. In the Book of Judges, Tu B’Av is referred to as a holiday (Judges 21:19).
In addition to this noteworthy event, five other events occurred on Tu B’Av:
Events #2 and 3 – Following the case of the daughters of Zelophehad (see Numbers, chapter 36), daughters who inherited from their father when there were no sons were forbidden to marry someone from a different tribe, so that land would not pass from one tribe to another. Generations later, after the story of the “Concubine of Giv’ah” (see Judges, chapters 19-21), the Children of Israel swore not to allow their daughters to marry anyone from the tribe of Benjamin. This posed a threat of annihilation to the tribe of Benjamin.
Each of these prohibitions were lifted on Tu B’Av. The people realized that if they kept to their prohibition, one of the 12 tribes might totally disappear. As to the oath that had been sworn, they pointed out that it only affected the generation that had taken the oath, and not subsequent generations. The same was applied to the prohibition of heiresses marrying outside their own tribe: this rule was applied only to the generation that had conquered and divided up the land under Joshua, but not future generations. This was the first expression of the merging of all the tribes, and was a cause for rejoicing. In the Book of Judges it is referred to as “a festival to the Lord.”
Over the generations, this day was described in Tractate Ta’anit as a day devoted to betrothals, so that new Jewish families would emerge.
Event #4 – After Jeroboam split off the kingdom of Israel with its ten tribes from the kingdom of Judea, he posted guards along all the roads leading to Jerusalem, to prevent his people from going up to the Holy City for the pilgrimage festivals, for he feared that such pilgrimages might undermine his authority. As a “substitute,” he set up places of worship which were purely idolatrous, in Dan and Beth-el. Thus the division between the two kingdoms became a fait accompli and lasted for generations.
The last king of the kingdom of Israel, Hosea ben Elah, wished to heal the breach, and removed all the guards from the roads leading to Jerusalem, thus allowing his people to make the pilgrimage again. This act took place on Tu B’Av.
Event #5 – At the beginning of the Second Temple period, the Land of Israel lay almost totally waste, and the wood needed to burn the sacrifices and for the eternal flame that had to burn on the altar was almost impossible to obtain. Each year a number of brave people volunteered to bring the wood needed from afar – a trip which was dangerous in the extreme.
Now, not just every wood could be brought. Wood which was wormy was not permitted. And dampness and cold are ideal conditions for the breeding of worms in wood. As a result, all the wood that would be needed until the following summer had to be collected before the cold set in. The last day that wood was brought in for storage over the winter months was Tu B’Av, and it was a festive occasion each year when the quota needed was filled by that day.
Event #6 – Long after the event, the Romans finally permitted the bodies of those who had been killed in the defense of Betar (in the Bar Kochba revolt) to be buried. This was a double miracle, in that, first, the Romans finally gave permission for the burial, and, second, in spite of the long period of time that had elapsed, the bodies had not decomposed. The permission was granted on Tu B’Av.
In gratitude for this double miracle, the fourth and last blessing of the Grace After Meals was added, which thanks God as “He Who is good and does good.” “He is good” – in that the bodies had not decomposed, “and does good” – in that permission was given for the burial.
To this day, we celebrate Tu B’Av as a minor festival. We do not say Tahanun on that day, nor are eulogies rendered. By the same token, if a couple are getting married on that day (and, as we will see below, it is the custom for the bride and groom to fast on their wedding day), neither fasts.
Beginning with Tu B’Av, we start preparing ourselves spiritually for the month of Elul, the prologue to the coming Days of Awe. The days begin to get shorter, the nights get longer. The weather, too, helps us to take spiritual stock: the hectic days of the harvest are over for the farmer, and the pace has slowed down considerably. Even on a physical level, the heat of the summer makes it hard to sit down and think things out, and now that the days and nights are cooler, it is easier to examine one’s actions.
In earlier times, it was the custom already from Tu B’Av to use as one’s greeting “May your inscription and seal be for good” (ketiva vahatima tova), the same blessing that we today use on Rosh Hashana. Those who work out the gematria values of different expressions found that phrase adds up to 928 – and so does the words for “15th of Av.”
About the Author: Yisrael Meir Lau is the Chairman of Yad Vashem and Chief Rabbi of Tel Aviv. He previously served as the Ashkenazi Chief Rabbi of Israel. At age 9, Rabbi Lau was the youngest person liberated from the Buchenwald concentration camp, and he came on the first boatload of Holocaust survivors to Israel. He is the author of numerous books and the recipient of the Israel Prize for lifetime achievements to the State of Israel.
Hilchos Tisha B’Av 5775 from Rabbi Weber, Rav of Clanton Park
Shabbos Chazon, July 25th, we daven Mincha at 5:50 p.m. The early Mincha allows time to return home for an appropriate pre-fast Seudah Shelishis. No classic pre-Tisha B’Av rules (i.e., eating on the floor, eggs, ashes et al) apply to this meal. The meal may include all foods, including meat and wine. Finish eating before sunset (8:48), when eating becomes prohibited. Other aspects of Tisha B’Av (low chair, non-leather shoes et al) are not, according to contemporary custom, applicable until after the Borchu of Maariv .
Motza’ei Shabbos is at 9:38. Wait until 9:38 and say baruch ha-mavdil bain kodesh le-chol before doing work or making any preparations for Motzaei Shabbos.
Our shul delays Maariv (followed by Eichah) until 9:55 to allow people to drive to shul after Shabbos.
If you begin to walk to shul for Maariv before Motzaei Shabbos (9:38), then wear your Shabbos clothes and shoes. In that case, bring Tisha B’Av shoes to shul before Shabbos, (bringing them on Shabbos for Motzaei Shabbos use is forbidden) so that you can slip into them right after the sheliach tzibbur says the Borchu of Motzaei Shabbos Maariv. Those who leave their homes after 9:38 and say baruch ha-mavdil bain kodesh le-chol can switch to Tisha B’Av shoes at home, although it better to wear proper shoes until after we begin Maariv.
We do not make a Motzaei Shabbos Havdalah. The aish-fire beracha is said, all by itself, on Motzaei Shabbos. The rest of Havdalah (without the introductory hinei) is said on Motzaei Tisha B’Av, Sunday night, without fire (done the prior night) or besamim (the besamim beracha is not said at all). We use grape juice/wine for this Havdalah, even though it is the night of the 10th of Av (when grape juice/wine is prohibited) because Havdalah is a mitzva . Ill people, who are eating on the fast, should use chamar medina (beer) rather than grape juice/wine for Havdalah. If need be, coffee or tea may be used. Cool the coffee/tea, so that you can drink them within the short time span required by halachah. Although the ill person says Havdalah and the aish-fire beracha on Tisha B'Av, he deletes the introductory hinei passage and besamim beracha. May the Beis ha-Mikdash be rebuilt speedily in our days.
[1]SA, OC, 652, 10
[1]Rema, OC, 652, 10
[1]Shemiras Shabbos ke’Hilchasah,
62, footnote 88
[1] As per Shemiras Shabbos ke’Hilchasah,
62, footnote 88
[1]SA, OC, 656
[1]Mishnah Berurah, 656, 3,
although see Arukh ha’Shulchan, 656, 2
[1] See Mikra’ei Kodesh, Pesach, 2,
47
The Laws of the Nine Days by Rabbi Avram Rothman, Rav of Thornhill Community Shul
In addition to the restrictions that apply to the three-week period, during the nine days (between
the 1st of Av until after Tisha B’Av) the following take effect:
Activities of Pleasure and Joy
1. One should not purchase an object of joy that will be available after Tisha B’Av for the same
price.
2. Building for beauty that is not required for dwelling should be suspended.
Eating Meat and Drinking Wine
1. The custom is to refrain from eating meat and poultry or drinking wine and grape juice during
the nine days.
2. The prohibition of meat includes foods cooked with meat or meat fat.
3. Eating meat and drinking wine is permitted for Shabbat. Even one who has ushered in the
Shabbat on Friday afternoon before sunset, or extends the third meal of Shabbat
Into Saturday night may also eat meat and drink wine.
4. One may drink the wine of Havdalah. Some have the custom to give the wine to a child of 6-9
years old, or to use beer for Havdalah.
5. Meat and wine are permitted at a meal in honour of a mitzvah like a brit milah or completing a
tractate of Talmud.
6. A person who requires meat because of weakness or illness, (including small children and
pregnant/nursing women) who have difficulty eating dairy, may eat meat. However, whenever
possible poultry is preferable.
Laundering
1. Laundering is prohibited even for use after Tisha B’Av. 2. The prohibition of laundering includes linens, tablecloths, and towels.
3. A person who has no clean clothes may wash what he needs.
4. Children’s diapers and clothing that constantly get dirty may be washed.
Wearing Freshly Laundered Clothing
1. It is forbidden to wear freshly laundered clothing during the nine days. This includes all
clothing except that which is worn to absorb perspiration.
2. Therefore, one must prepare before the nine days by wearing freshly laundered suits, pants,
shirts, dresses, blouses and the like for a short time so that they may be worn during the nine
days. Socks, undershirts and underwear need not be prepared.
3. One may wear freshly laundered Shabbat clothing, as well as use clean tablecloths and
towels.
4. Since one may wear freshly laundered garments on Shabbat, if one forgot or was unable to
prepare enough garments before the nine days, he may change for Friday night and then change
again on Shabbat morning. These garments may then be worn during the week.
Wearing, Buying and Making New Clothes, Repairing Garments
1. One may not buy new clothes or shoes even for use after Tisha B’Av, except in a case of
great necessity, for example, for one’s wedding .
2. Repairing torn garments or shoes is permitted.
Bathing and Swimming
1. The custom is not to bathe for pleasure even in cold water.
2. Bathing in cold water for medical reasons or to remove dirt or perspiration is permitted. (Where
cold water is required, hot water may be added to cold water as long as the mixture is no more
than warm.)
3. Soaping or shampooing and washing with hot water are prohibited, unless it is required
medically or to remove the dirt and perspiration.
4. One who bathes every Friday in honour of Shabbat with hot water, soap and shampoo may do
so on the Friday before Tisha B’Av.
The Laws of Tisha B’av – 2015 : By Rabbi Yossi Michalowicz, Westmount Shul
Tisha B’av Occurring on Shabbos:
Tisha B’av occurs on Shabbos this year. The fast is pushed off and commences at the
conclusion of Shabbos - 8:49 PM -lasting through to Sunday evening.
The prayer of “Av Harachamim” is said on Shabbos morning, but “Tzitdkoscha Tzedek is
not said in Shabbos afternoon.
Marital relations are prohibited on Shabbos unless Friday evening is when the wife is to
go to the Mikveh.
There is no “Seuda Mafsekes” prior to the fast. There are no restrictions on what one can
eat at Shalosh Seudos. One may even eat meat and drink wine and sing Zemiros during
Seudah Shlishis. However, the mood should be somewhat subdued. One must stop
eating before sunset, which is at 8:49 PM. It is permissible to eat Shalosh Seudos
together with your family at home or in Shul if that is what you are accustomed to doing
throughout the year. You may say Birchas Hamazon after sunset, but should try to wash
Mayim Acharonim before sunset, if possible. You may say Birchas Hamazon together with
Zimun. One does not sit on the floor or a low chair or change shoes before 9:39 PM.
Some Poskim permit the learning of any Torah on this Shabbos afternoon; while many
Poskim limit the learning to topics of torah which are permitted on Tisha B’av.
One who is in Shul when Shabbos ends, must wait until after “Borchu” to remove their
Shabbos shoes and put on Tisha B’av compliant shoes. The Chazzan should say “Baruch
Hamavdiul Bein Kodesh L’chol” , exchange his shoes, and then say “Borchu.” This all
must happen after Shabbos is over at 9:39 PM. Alternatively, everyone in Shul, after 9:39
PM, can say “Baruch Hamavdil Bein Kodesh L’chol’ and exchange their shoes before
Borchu. [One who is in Shul when Shabbos ends should, therefore, bring Tisha B’av
compliant shoes, an Eichah, and a comfortable low chair or pillow when coming to
Shul the day before on Friday for Mincha,]
When removing shoes, care should be taken not to touch them with your hands, because
that would require washing of the hands.
If you are at home at nightfall, say “Baruch Hamavdil Bein Kodesh L’chol” at 9:39 PM,
change your shoes, and then drive to Shul for Ma’ariv. Sitting on a chair is prohibited for
everyone at 9:39 PM.
The customary Havdallah is not said. After nightfall, the blessing of “Borei Meorei Ha’aish”
is said upon seeing candlelight. This should be said after Ma’ariv before the reading of
Eichah. The Brocha over spices is not said. “Atah Chonantanu” is said during Ma’ariv.
Women should be advised not to do any Melacha until they say “Baruch Hamavdil Bein
Kodesh L’chol” - as after any Shabbos. They may also say “Borei Meorei Ha’Aish.”
Tisha B’av Evening (10th of Av): 10. All other prohibitions of Tisha B’av begin at sunset. Sunset is at 8:49 P.M. this year
[2015].
One is permitted to drive to Shul and sit normally in the car.
On Tisha B’av it is prohibited to:
▪ Eat or drink
▪ Bathe or wash for pleasure
▪ Anoint oneself
▪ Have intimate relations
▪ Learn Torah [except for those portions which sadden the heart.]
!1
13. You should deprive yourself somewhat from a comfortable sleep - i.e. to sleep with no
pillows or one pillow less than usual.
Eating & Drinking:
A person, who is sick, or an old or weak person who may become ill if he does not eat or
drink [even if his illness will not endanger his life] is permitted to eat as much food as he
usually does.
A woman up to thirty days after giving birth [even if the baby was stillborn] is also
permitted to eat. She should try to postpone eating for a few hours, unless this causes
undue hardship.
Pregnant and nursing woman [thirty days after giving birth] should fast the entire day even
if they are suffering. However, if they are suffering greatly [even if there is no danger to
life], they should discontinue fasting. In all cases of doubt, contact your Rabbi.
Since Tisha B’av has been pushed off this year, there is more room for leniency for
unwell people to eat. Please consult with your Rabbi.
A person with only a headache or similar discomfort is required to fast.
If a person is not required to fast because it is dangerous, he is prohibited from fasting.
Boys under the age of 13 and girls under the age of 12 are not required to fast at all.
Swallowing capsules, bitter medicine tablets, or bitter liquid medicine without water is
permitted. According to some opinions, it is permitted to swallow a bit of water along with
the medication if the medication can not be swallowed otherwise.
Even those people, who are not required to fast, should not indulge or eat more than is
necessary to preserve their health.
One, who is accustomed to rinse his mouth or teeth daily, may do so only in an instance if
the bad taste in his mouth causes him great distress. Since care must be taken not to
swallow the water, he should bend over when rinsing.
Bathing & Washing:
All washing for pleasure on any part of the body is prohibited.
You may wash your hands or other portions of your body if they are dirtied or stained. You
may only wash the dirty or soiled portions, but not beyond the soiled area.
Upon awakening in the morning, you may wash your hands in the usual manner [three
times alternately on each hand]. However, you should be careful not to wash further
than the joints at the end of your fingers. While your hands are still moist after drying
them, you may pass them over your eyes. If your eyes contain glutinous substances, you
may wash them.
You are permitted to wash your hands after using the bathroom and/or touching a part of
your body that is normally covered. You should not wash further than the joints at the end
of your fingers.
You are permitted to wash your hands before davening. You should not wash further than
the joints at the end of your fingers.
If you are cooking or preparing food on Tisha B’av, you may wash a piece of meat and the
like – if necessary – even if your hands will get wet.
Washing for medical reasons is permitted.
A woman may wash the parts of her body which must be washed before beginning her
Seven Clean Days. A woman may not go to the Mikveh on Saturday night – but may go
to the Mikveh the night after.
!2
31. It is prohibited to cool yourself by placing your face or other portions of your body against
a pitcher or other utensil containing water. However, you may cool yourself by placing a
cool empty utensil, fruit, and the like against your face.
Anointing / Intimacy:
You may not rub or apply onto your body any substance – liquid or solid – commonly
applied to the body. Therefore, you may not apply onto your body oil, soap, hair tonic, or
cream, ointment, perfume and the like.
You are permitted to anoint for medical reasons such as skin conditions.
The use of deodorant or anti-perspirant to remove a bad odor is permitted.
Since intimacy is prohibited, a husband and wife may not even touch each other.
Wearing Leather Shoes:
It is prohibited to wear shoes that are made, even partially, out of leather.
Shoes made out of cloth, wood, rubber, plastic, and the like are permitted.
It is permitted to wear crocs.
Wearing leather shoes is permitted in the case of:
▪ A person who has to walk a long distance over stones or mud, and no other suitable
footwear is available.
▪ Medical reasons. ▪ Children who are too young to understand about the destruction of the Temple.
Learning Torah:
The heart rejoices from the study of Torah. Therefore you are prohibited to learn or teach
Torah – except for those topics which are relevant to Tisha B’av and mourning.
A Rav may rule only in those questions of Halacha which are required for Tisha B’av.
You are permitted to prepare the Torah reading for Tisha B’av.
You may say Tehillim for sick people or for the presently dangerous situation in Eretz
Yisroel.
Other prohibitions for the entire day:
It is extremely important to stay focused on the serious nature of the day by staying in
touch with your soul and not being distracted by other physical things. Therefore, there
are additional prohibitions.
Tisha B’av is not a time for socializing, idle chatter, schmoozing and the like.
You are prohibited to greet someone. Not only is enquiring after one’s well–being
prohibited, but even greeting a person with “good morning” and the like is prohibited. One,
who is greeted, should respond softly – to show that greeting is prohibited.
It is prohibited to give gifts. However, you may give a gift to a poor person.
Taking a walk or a trip for pleasure is prohibited.
Prohibitions until Halachik Mid-day – 1:24 P.M.:
49. It is prohibited to sit on a chair or bench that is 12’’ or higher. One may sit on the floor, a
cushion or on a low bench or chair.
!3
Any type of work which requires time to do is prohibited. This applies to skilled and
unskilled labor. Even housework should be postponed until after Halachik Mid-day.
Wherever possible, it should not be done the entire day.
If at all possible, one should avoid going to work / business the entire day. If one must go
to work, it should be after Halachik mid-day. The Rabbis say that he who works on
Tisha B’av will see no blessing from the money earned.
Preparation for the meal after Tisha B’av should not take place until after Halachik
Mid-day.
Talis & Tefillin:
The Talis and Tefillin are not worn at Shacharis. Your Talis Koton [Tzitzis] should be put on
in the morning, and you may make a blessing on it. Many have a custom to leave the
Tzitzis under one’s clothes until after Halachik mid-day.
The Talis and Tefillin are worn for Mincha.
Other Customs:
There is a custom to visit a cemetery after completion of the morning services.
There is a custom to wash the floors and clean the house in the afternoon. The custom is
based on a tradition that Moshiach will be born on Tisha B’av afternoon and that it is
therefore appropriate to commemorate the redemption and strengthen people’s hopes
and prayers.
Restrictions on the 11th of Av:
Generally speaking, all the restrictions of the 3 weeks and the Nine Days continue until
Halachik Mid-day of the 10th of Av. (although see point #59 below)
It is customary to perform “Kiddush Levana” [blessing the new moon] together with the
congregation on Sunday evening after Ma’ariv. Others say it privately after eating and
changing one’s shoes.
When Tisha B’av falls out on Shabbos and is postponed until Sunday (as is the
case this year), eating meat and drinking wine is permissible on Monday morning.
Bathing, washing clothing and taking haircuts and shaving are permitted on
Sunday night.
Some opinions permit listening to music on Sunday evening, but some permit only
on Monday morning.
This year Havdallah is said on a cup of wine, grape juice, or beer. The Havdallah
only consists of the Brocha on the wine, grape juice, or beer and “Baruch
Hamavdil.” Spices are not used. No blessing is made again on candlelight.
With the exception of water, it is forbidden to eat or drink anything before
Havdallah. This also applies to women.
▪ The fast and Tisha B’av restrictions end at 9:39 P.M. on Sunday evening. ▪ One who finds fasting difficult may eat at 9:30 P.M. ▪The Talmud teaches that “Whoever mourns over Jerusalem will merit to see her
happiness, and whoever does not mourn over Jerusalem will not merit to see her
happiness, May we all merit to experience the happiness of Jerusalem soon!
What should a person think when going, lo aleinu, to Tanchumei Avelim?
ANSWER:
He's going to say to them words, he mumbles the words Hamakom Yenachem Eschem; unfortunately he doesn't think what he's saying and they don't think what he's saying, but these are very important words. He's saying we're all aveilim, we're all aveilim! We're mourning for Yerushalayim. How can we be happy if Yerushalayim is in the hands of gentiles, the Bais Hamikdash is not in existence, the Malchus Bais Dovid is not there, the Shechina departed from us, we're all mourning. It's a very important lesson! So when you console him, after all you say tzoras raabim chatzi nechama, if everybody else is suffering, so your suffering is just part of the natural universal suffering of our Nation, we're all sad.
Now it says, tov laleches el bais eivel mei'leches el beis mishteh, it's better to go to the house of an avel than to go to a wedding. You go to a wedding, some people come out of the wedding drunk, and some come out confused, wasting time, leitsonus; of course it doesn't have to be that way, but it could be. When you go to a house of an avel, v'hachai yiten el libo, you learn the lesson of life that this world is only a prosdor lifnei ha'olam habah, this world is only a vestibule, a lobby before the world to come. That's a tremendous lesson that no matter how many times you hear the lesson, it's not enough. It's a tremendous lesson, that we're in this world only to prepare for our career, our main career is only in the world to come. So as you walk out of the house of the avel, you're thinking, from now on I'm going to get busy! As long as I can still walk, I can still talk, I'm going to accomplish something for myself as long as I'm still alive.
Now pay attention to the next thought: When you walk out of the house of the avel, hachai yiten el libo, you should think how lucky I am that I'm alive, and breathe deeply. Ahhhh, it's a pleasure to breathe air, pleasure to see the sunlight, tov l'einyaim liros es hashemesh, a pleasure to be alive, the happiness of life. When you go out of the bais avel get a new lease of life, a new understanding of the simchas hachayim. Now most people wouldn't like that idea, you go out of a house of an avel and you gain simcha? But that is one of the great lessons.
If you don't understand how lucky you are that you're alive in this world then you're missing the great lesson of chasdei Hashem.
Good Shabbos To All
This email is transcribed from questions that were posed to Harav Miller by the audience at the Thursday night lectures.
To listen to the audio of this Q & A please dial: 201-676-3210
What should one tell his wife or his daughters when they are influenced by styles to wear garments that are not according to tznius?
ANSWER:
Now that's a painful question to ask. Why do I say painful? Because the question should have never been asked. As soon as a man marries there's no doubt that he should lay down the law, this is how it's going to be. If the question is asked however by a person who married somebody when they were not frum and later became frum, so the question is, what to do then.
Now let's talk what happens however when someone decides to adjust themselves, so he has to explain to his wife and daughters. Look, I see you're very careful with milchig and fleishig; two sets of dishes. That's a kedusha, that's a holiness in the Jewish house, like it says in the Chumash, (Devorim 14.21) ki am kadosh ato la'shem elokecho lo sevashiel gedi bachaleiv imo, to keep milchig and fleishig separate you're an am kadosh. Where do you find such things? A nation that has two sets of dishes, and it's such a job to keep it apart, and they don't eat them together, they have to wait after fleishig to eat milchig. Wonderful, wonderful, wonderful. This your wife and your daughters appreciate, they understand that, and they are sometimes more kanoi (fanatic) then you are. "Don't do it, don't touch it they say, you're making it fleishig".
You have to explain to them however, that a dress that's not tzniusdik is a hundred times worse than milchig and fleishig mixed together. Milchig and fleishig is a matter of kedusha, it's not called tumah however, it's assur. Arayos is called tumah, immorality is called tumah in the Torah. Vnitma'uh, anything that smells of immorality is called tumah. When women or girls try to make themselves seductive to people who are not supposed to see them in that light, then they turn mi'us, they become smelling bad with the wickedness of tumah.
A woman should always dress well for her husband, always dress well. You have to make a hit with your husband always. But for other people? Especially by using garments that are not tzniusdik, it's like wearing in the street a chamberpot full of something. It's tumah! (Yevamos 12.a) Tumah kesiv bo k'arayos. And you explain to them, you're careful with milchig and fleishig, then al achas kama v'kama, how much more careful you have to be with the garment that you wear.
Good Shabbos To All
This email is transcribed from questions that were posed to Harav Miller by the audience at the Thursday night lectures. To listen to the audio of this Q & A please dial: 201-676-3210
Important Numbers
