September 29, 2012

Parashat Ha·azinu/Deuteronomy 32:1–32:52

This week's commentary was written by Rabbi Marc Wolf, Vice Chancellor and Director of Community Engagement, JTS.

Every morning when I daven Shaharit—the morning service—in my home office, I face a picture that my father took from the vantage point of Har Nabo—the peak on which God took Moshe's life, and where he was gathered to his ancestors. It looks into Israel and toward Jerusalem or, as Parashat Ha·azinu describes the scene, "Ascend these heights of Abarim to Mount Nebo, which is in the land of Moab facing Jericho, and view the land of Canaan, which I am giving the Israelites as their holding . . . You may view the land from a distance, but you shall not enter it—the land that I am giving to the Israelite people" (32:49, 52).

The scene is simply heartbreaking. After years of dedicated service, Moses knows he is not to take the final steps into Israel with his People. He is not to cross the Jordan River and conclude the Exodus from Egypt with this generation of the Children of Israel. We cannot begin to fathom the extent of emotion that must have rushed through Moses as he faced the reality that he was not to enter the Land, but "die on the mountain" that he was about to ascend. What words were exchanged between Moses and God? What conversation is not recorded in the Torah? One of the most moving midrashim I encountered during rabbinical school was taught to me by my rabbi and teacher, Rabbi Alan Kensky. The commentary known as Midrash Petirat Moshe—the Death of Moses—adds pages upon pages of dialogue, debate, argument, and reason between Moses and God. It fills in the gaps in the narrative and, as Rabbi Kensky taught us, describes a scene that remarkably parallels the five stages of grief that Elisabeth Kübler-Ross has enumerated for those coming face-to-face with the reality of death: denial, anger, bargaining, depression, and acceptance. Notwithstanding the intense emotional scene, Moshe is composed, and delivers one of the most compelling sermons of his career as the leader of the Children of Israel.

Give ear, O heavens, let me speak; 
Let the earth hear the words I utter! 
May my discourse come down as the rain,
My speech distill as the dew,
Like showers on young growth,
Like droplets on the grass. 
For the name of the Lord, I proclaim: 
Give glory to our God! (Deut. 32:1–3)

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September 22, 2012

 Shabbat Shuvah

This week's commentary was written by Rabbi David Hoffman, Assistant Professor, Department of Talmud and Rabbinics and Scholar-in-Residence, Development Department, JTS.

Ultimate Questions 

"Live the questions now."
—Rainier Maria Rilke, Letters to a Young Poet, 1903

There are some who expect religion to provide answers. The religious experience is thought to be a refuge from the messiness of life; a peaceful, ordered worldview that may help explain life's daunting moments. In this way, faith offers the believer comfort that life is as it was meant to be, and that one's spiritual work centers on acceptance and "finding" one's path.

Judaism turns these ideas on their head.

From Abraham and Sarah, Moses and Isaiah to Rabbi Akivah and Rabbi Abraham Joshua Heschel in the 20th century, Judaism has never been about acceptance. The greatest teaching that Judaism offers the world is that the way things are is not the way things have to be. The course of our lives and the condition of the world are not inevitable realities. God, through the Torah's commandments and the protest of the prophets, created a vision of the world as it was meant to be, but is not yet. This is true on the micro level and on the macro level. That is to say, there is a version of ourselves who we are not yet, but our families and communities need us to be. The Rabbis of the Talmud continued this work of envisioning more just and compassionate versions of the world and gave this dream a name—redemption. However, the Rabbis never intended that we ignore the world in front of us in favor of this dream. We are asked to be present for the world in all of its brokenness, while simultaneously holding the vision of the world as it should be.

This, perhaps, is the core religious commitment of a Jew: to live with an awareness of this sacred tension between the reality of our world and lives and the dream of what they should be.

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September 15, 2012

This week's commentary was written by Professor Arnold M. Eisen, Chancellor, JTS.

The high point of the Kol Nidrei service comes at its beginning, as the haunting melody and incantatory language of the Kol Nidrei prayer
ushers us dramatically into the solemnity and consequence of the Day of Atonement. Dusk is falling outside the synagogue and, within, all stands
in readiness. The gates of forgiveness stand open, but the following evening, at Ne‘ilah, they may close. It is a time of reckoning.

"By the authority of the court on high and by the authority of this court below, with divine consent and with the consent of this congregation, we grant permission to pray with those who have transgressed. Kol Nidrei .
. . "

I want to focus my reflections on this remarkable declaration, and particularly on one implication that seems especially relevant at this High Holiday season. The importance of "permission to pray with those who have transgressed," recited immediately before chanting Kol Nidrei, is underlined in some congregations by the practice of repeating the words three times for added emphasis. The declaration clearly has enormous rhetorical power. But what does it mean? How can
these words, this claim, help propel us forward into Kol Nidrei and beyond?

I'd like to suggest that they affirm a basic truth that is not only essential to the Kol Nidrei service that follows, but crucial to the work of self-examination and amends to which we dedicate ourselves on Yom Kippur. We are not without faults, and we belong to a community of people who in that fundamental respect are just like us.
Reminding ourselves that this is the case, we direct the search-light of scrutiny upon ourselves rather than focusing it on the shortcomings of others. Members in good standing of the community, we do the intensely personal work required on Yom Kippur without being distracted by the divisiveness of class, race, ideology, or party that is all too common at other times. We forego the pleasure of feeling superior to our neighbors. And—the aspect of communal membership that seems especially relevant this High Holiday season—we abjure the verbal signals and building blocks of self-righteousness: incivility, name-calling, insult,
condescension, scoring points at each other's expense, and reveling in the game of "gotcha."

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Posted by judy@jvillagenetwork.com at 9/11/2012 12:55 PM 

September 8, 2012

Parashat Ki Tavo/Deuteronomy 26:1–29:8

This week's commentary was written by Dr. Ofra A. Backenroth, Associate Dean, The William Davidson Graduate School of Jewish Education, JTS.

Ki Tavo: "When you enter the land that God is giving you" (Deut. 26:1).

This week's Torah parashah is concerned with the Israelites' entrance into the Promised Land. The parashah emphasizes that the Israelites should obey God's commandments faithfully, with all their heart and soul. Since the Covenant between God and Israel establishes mutually binding obligations for both God and the Israelites, God's commitments are also reaffirmed: the promise to make Israel a holy people. We find a long description detailing the ceremonies that the Israelites should perform once they enter the Land as a way to reaffirm the Covenant (27:1–14, 28:1–14), and curses (27:15–26, 28:15–53) that befall those who do not observe the laws.

According to tradition, vocal recitation of the Torah dates back to the time of Moses, who, according to the Rabbis, would read the Torah publicly on Shabbat, at festivals, and the beginning of the month. The Talmud says that it was Ezra the Scribe who established the practice of reading the Torah on Shabbat, a practice that continues to this day. 

However, the Torah is not simply recited, it is chanted by the reader according to the cantillation ("trope") marks that guide the singing of the sacred texts during public worship. To make it more complicated, these cantillation marks do not appear on the scroll. They are only printed in the text, and the reader needs to prepare the chanting before the performance. In Hebrew, the term for the cantillation marks is ta'am, which means sense. And indeed the pauses, pitch, and dynamics with which the text is recited help to highlight the meaning of that text. The style of cantillation varies according to different Jewish traditions, and there are different melodies connected to the cantillation marks for different sections of the Bible. Hence, the Torah and the haftarah sections use the same markings, but are sung with different notes.

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August 25, 2011

Parashat Shofetim/Deuteronomy 16:18–21:9

This week's commentary was written by Rabbi Robert Harris, Associate Professor of Bible, JTS.

"Alas, Poor Yorick": A Grave Affair 

"Alas, poor Yorick! I knew him, Horatio, a fellow of infinite jest, of most excellent fancy. He hath bore me on his back a thousand times, and now how abhorr'd in my imagination it is! My gorge rises at it." (Hamlet, act 5, scene 1, lines 185–188)

As most everyone knows, these lines (even as they are often misremembered) are spoken as Hamlet lifts the skull of his father's court jester from the grave, and contemplates the common fate—decay—of both kings and court jesters. And while this sentiment would be a worthy topic of its own (see Eccles. 11:7–8: "How sweet is the light, what a delight for the eyes to behold the sun! Even if a man lives many years, let him enjoy himself in all of them, remembering how many the days of darkness are going to be. The only future is nothingness!"), what, might you ask, has this to do with our weekly Torah portion?

A fair question, indeed. Among the far-ranging topics of our parashah is the following paragraph:

When you enter the land that the LORD your God is giving you, you shall not learn to imitate the abhorrent practices of those nations. Let no one be found among you who consigns his son or daughter to the fire, or who is an augur, a soothsayer, a diviner, a sorcerer, one who casts spells, or one who consults ghosts or familiar spirits, or one who inquires of the dead. For anyone who does such things is abhorrent to the LORD, and it is because of these abhorrent things that the LORD your God is dispossessing them before you. You must be wholehearted with the LORD your God. (Deut. 18:9–13)

I wish to call your attention specifically to the Torah's prohibition of "inquiring of the dead." Rashi seems to adumbrate Shakespeare, when he includes "one who asks questions of a skull" among the possible actions that would represent a violation of the biblical commandment. But the Torah is not imagining a philosophical discourse about life when it prohibits "inquiring of the dead," but rather, in what is likely its original context, necromancy—an act whereby a person would either approach or occupy a tomb (see Isa. 65:1–4) and seek the presence of the departed in order that she or he might give some specific information that would be of supposed benefit to the questioner, or that the dead might intercede with God on behalf of the questioner. This is likely the background of the "witch at Endor" narrative in 1 Samuel 28, when King Saul wishes to communicate with his dead prophet, Samuel, before the fateful battle with the Philistines. It might be such a practice that was characterized by the prophet Isaiah in the following words: "Then deep from the earth you shall speak, from low in the dust your words shall come; your voice shall come from the ground like the voice of a ghost, and your speech shall whisper out of the dust" (Isa. 29:4). This is the practice that the Torah prohibits, and it equates the "abhorrence" of such an act along with one who would "consign his son or daughter to the fire" and all of the other various proscribed practices on the list.

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