October 20, 2012

Parashat No•ah, Genesis 6:9–11:32

This week's commentary was written by Rabbi Abigail Treu, Rabbinic Fellow and Director of Donor Relations, JTS.

 

The Windows by Constantine P. Cavafy, Greek poet, 1863–1933

In these darkened rooms, where
I spend oppressive days,
I pace to and fro to find the windows.
When a window opens, it will be a consolation.
But the windows cannot be found, or I cannot find them.
And maybe it is best that I do not find them. Maybe the light will be a new tyranny.
Who knows what new things it will reveal?


Hovering at the edge of the question of what life on the ark was like for Noah is the problem of the window.

But before we get to that: let's agree that the story of Noah and the ark is a parable, rife with symbolism of our own negotiation of transitions and traumas of all kinds. Let's agree that, like Noah, we struggle to understand that the world we once knew is not the world that endures for our entire lifespan. Let's agree that fear of change is the greatest human dread. And let's agree, too, that at some point in our own survival stories, we find a way to cope and begin again—just as Noah, in the end, sets foot on dry land and plants a vineyard there too.

And now, back to the window.

The ark's window bothered the Rabbis. It is a technical problem: in Genesis 8:6, Noah "opened the window (chalon) of the ark that he had made," but in the very thorough account of the construction of the ark earlier in the parashah, no window was ever made. "What window?" the Rabbis wonder. Rashi glosses that the window is the tzohar of 6:16, which is indisputable because no one knows what a tzohar is and the word does not appear again in all of Tanakh. It is translated by the Jewish Publication Society as "daylight," based on the tradition begun in Targum Onkelos, and picked up by the Rabbis, that it was something that illuminated the ark, perhaps a daylight, perhaps a precious glowing gem. The Vulgate—the Latin translation of the Bible, done in the fourth-century AD—translates it as fenestra, meaning "window," and the medieval Rabbis take that up as exemplified by Rashi's gloss: "The window of the ark that he had made: this is the tzohar, and not the opening of the ark made for entering and exiting." But on the peshat, the literal level, a chalon is not necessarily a tzohar (whatever that is), and if it were, wouldn't we find the same word in both places?

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October 13, 2012

Parashat Bereishit, Genesis 1:1–6:8

This week's commentary was written by Dr. Richard Kalmin, Theodore R. Racoosin Chair of Rabbinic Literature, JTS.

I want to share some thoughts about the difference between Adam and Eve before and after they ate of the fruit of the Tree of Knowledge. To state things up front, my claim is that Adam and Eve did not just undergo a fall, but also a significant rise; to make that claim, I'm going to argue that two of the main characters, the snake and God, have often been misunderstood. The snake has gotten a bum rap, and God has usually gotten off much too easily.

We can't understand the role of the snake in the story by focusing on the character of snakes here and now, since clearly the one in the garden was much different from those in our world, after God's curse. We must start with the Bible's description of the snake via the word arum, translated as "shrewd" in Genesis 3:1. The word arum occurs often in biblical literature. It refers to something respected in some contexts, where it's translated as "prudent" or "clever," but feared or condemned in others, where it's translated as "crafty" or "wily." It can also be an attribute that is respected and feared at the same time.

Shrewdness throughout the Bible is a powerful commodity that can be put to both good and bad uses, but is not inherently good or bad. It's necessary for survival in a hard world, and it is this trait that the snake introduced into the Garden of Eden. In a tremendous play on words, Genesis says that without the snake's arum-ness (shrewdness), Adam and Eve were totally arum (naked and innocent) [2:5]. To be truly human they had to eat the fruit—and it was the snake, who knew exactly what would happen to Eve if she ate, who enabled them to do that. It knew that Eve was wrong when she said that she would die if she ate of the fruit or touched it (3:3), and also knew that God was wrong (or lied) when He said to Adam and Eve that "You must not eat of the fruit, lest you die" (2:17). The serpent responds to Eve, "You are not going to die" (3:4), and of course Adam and Eve don't die when they partake of it. Even afterward, God has to banish them from the Garden, lest they eat from the Tree of Life and live forever (3:22). As far as I can tell, Adam and Eve are no more susceptible to death after they eat the fruit than they were before. It is only when God banishes them from the Garden and they have no more access to the Tree of Life that they are once and for all condemned to mortality.

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October 6, 2012

Parashat Sukkot Day Six

Exodus 33:12–34:26 and Numbers 29:23–31

This week’s commentary was written by Rabbi Ayelet Cohen (RS ’02), Director, The Center for Jewish Living at The JCC in Manhattan.

Immediately on the heels of the intense spiritual work of Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur, Sukkot challenges us to turn our lives inside out again, this time quite literally. The Talmud tells us that for the duration of Sukkot we must leave our permanent dwellings and reside in temporary dwellings (BT Sukkah 2b). By its very nature, the sukkah must feel temporary; we must experience the elements in a way that we do not when we are at home. By leaving the comfort and protection of our homes, making the temporary permanent and the permanent temporary for the duration of the holiday, we are more vulnerable and thus more open. We are able to meet the intention of tze ul’mad from the Passover seder, and, like the Israelites in the wilderness, in that interstitial space have the opportunity to experience revelation.

We are commanded to “rejoice on the festival,” leading us to think of the holidays as a time of family gathering and celebration: our closest friends and families crowded around an overflowing table. But the Rambam challenges us to go further, reframing our interpretation of celebrating the bounty of the holiday. 

When one eats and drinks one must also feed the stranger, the orphan, and the widow, along with all other poor and destitute. But one who locks the gates of one’s courtyard, and eats and drinks with one’s own family but does not feed the poor and disheartened, is not rejoicing in the commandment, rather rejoicing in one’s own belly. (Mishnah Torah Hilchot Yom Tov 6:18)

Especially on Sukkot, when we experience more than at any other time of the year what it means to be vulnerable to the elements, we must push ourselves to share our bounty with those who are disenfranchised and those who have no food or no homes. For far too many people, home is always fragile, and vulnerability is a permanent state. The12th-century scholar Rabbi Samuel ben Meir (Rashbam) believed that Sukkot helped reinforce the fact that our wealth and comfort is a gift from God. 

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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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