Author: Rivki

Excerpted from Rabbi Shmuel Goldin’s ‘Unlocking The Torah Text: An In-Depth Journey Into The Weekly Parsha- Bereishit‘, co-published by OU Press and Gefen Publishers

Context

One of the strangest and most disturbing episodes in the entire Torah is recorded immediately before the destruction of the city of Sodom. Two of the three angels who earlier visited Avraham now arrive at his nephew Lot’s doorstep in Sodom. Lot showers them with hospitality as he invites them into the protection of his home. It does not take long, however, before the evil inhabitants of the city learn of the angels’ presence and surround Lot’s house demanding that the strangers be given up to them. Seeking to protect his guests from the danger confronting them, Lot reasons with the mob and offers his two unmarried daughters in their stead. The Sodomites refuse the offer, and prepare to storm the house. The angels miraculously afflict their potential attackers with blindness, and then inform Lot that to protect himself and his family he must now leave Sodom.

Questions

How are we to understand Lot’s bizarre behavior? He welcomes strangers into his home, but is then willing to sacrifice his own daughters to mob violence.

Does this episode provide us with any kind of window into Lot’s personality and soul? If so, what does a glimpse through that window reveal?

Approaches

A

With the story of Lot, we are confronted with one of those occasions where a simple, careful, straightforward reading of the biblical text reveals easily missed significance. We must first, however, back up to gain an overview. When we do so, a tragic pattern begins to emerge. This pattern, spanning a number of chapters in the text, enables us to understand Lot and his frightening journey.

B

Our story begins in Parshat Lech Lecha at the point when Avraham and his nephew part ways.

Responding to a dispute that erupts between Avraham’s and Lot’s shepherds, the patriarch turns to his nephew and says: “Let there not be a dispute between you and me and between my shepherds and your shepherds, for we are brothers. Behold, all of the land is before you. Separate yourself from me. If you go left then I will go right, and if you go right I will go left.”

Given the opportunity to choose anywhere within the land of Canaan, Lot chooses the fertile Jordan plain and the Torah states, Va’ye’ehal ad Sodom, “And he tented until Sodom.”

C

Two elements of this phrase immediately catch our attention.

1. First of all, the Torah uses the verb va’ye’ehal, “and he tented,” to describe Lot’s relationship to the land near Sodom.

The two words normally used by the Torah to indicate residence in a particular location are lashevet, “to live,” which connotes permanent residence, and lagur, “to dwell,” which connotes impermanent residence.

Here, however, the Torah chooses to use an even more transient term – “tenting.” Why?

2. Secondly, the word ad, “until,” is an inherently ambiguous one and its use here seems strange.

The rabbis tell us that ad can mean one of two things depending upon context. The word sometimes means “up to and including,” and sometimes means “up to but not including.” (For example, if Jewish law says that a certain object is acceptable ad, “up to,” a height of forty amot [a halachic measurement], the rabbis will still have to define what that means. Is an object forty amot high acceptable, or must the object be, at most, 39.999 amot high?)

By stating that Lot tents “ad Sodom,” the Torah deliberately leaves his situation vague. Is Lot in the city or outside the city? The facts are unclear. The Torah goes out of its way to convey a sense of ambivalence on Lot’s part as he considers his relationship to the city of Sodom. The reasons for this ambivalence are made abundantly clear in the Torah’s very next sentence: “And the citizens of Sodom were greatly evil and sinful towards God.”

Lot is aware of the true nature of the city before him and consciously tents at its border. He literally has one foot in the city and one foot out. He believes that he can live on the edge of Sodom without being affected by its evil.

D

We next encounter Lot a chapter later, when he is taken captive during a war involving Sodom. The Torah states: “And they took Lot and all of his wealth, the son of Avraham’s brother, and they went. V’hu yoshev b’Sodom, and he was living in Sodom.”

The seemingly superfluous phrase v’hu yoshev b’Sodom, “and he is living in Sodom,” is actually chronicling an important transformation. By this point, Lot is no longer living at the edge of the city, but rather “in Sodom.” At first ambivalent about his relationship with Sodom, Lot is now comfortable as a full citizen within its borders.

E

Finally, we meet Lot yet again, this time in Parshat Vayeira five chapters later. The occasion is the event with which we began: the visit of the angels to Sodom. The Torah introduces this event in the following fashion: “And the two angels came to Sodom in the evening; and Lot was sitting b’sha’ar Sodom, in the gates of Sodom.”

You could easily miss it, but the Torah is conveying a very significant point with the two words b’sha’ar Sodom, “in the gates of Sodom.” Only specific people had the privilege of sitting in the gates of a city in biblical times: the elders and officials of that city. By now, Lot’s transformation is complete. He has moved from the edge of the city to its center. Lot is now a respected elder of the evil city of Sodom. The man who felt that he would be able to withstand the lure of the city has fallen prey to its power.

F

With the pattern of Lot’s personal transformation as a backdrop, we can now begin to understand his seemingly inexplicable behavior when confronted with the threatening mob outside his door.

Lot is not an evil, but, rather, a weak man. His most fatal flaw, in fact, is his failure to recognize his own vulnerability. He believes that he can withstand the temptations of Sodom. Without realizing it, however, he is sucked in and indelibly transformed by the city around him. The Torah testifies that you cannot live near Sodom and remain unchanged.

At the most critical juncture of his life, Lot displays the aberrant behavior of a man who is trying to reconcile the irreconcilable. On the one hand, he desperately attempts to hold true to the traditions he witnessed in his Uncle Avraham’s tent. He welcomes guests and treats them royally. He is willing to go to any lengths to protect them. At the same time, however, he seamlessly crosses over into the horrific world of Sodom and offers to sacrifice his own daughters to a brutal fate. Lot fails because he believes that he can live in two worlds at once – in two worlds which simply cannot coexist.

Points to Ponder

Over the course of several chapters, the Torah clearly chronicles Lot’s step- by- step transformation: an unwitting journey into the hell that is Sodom.

Lot’s story remains a cautionary tale concerning the effects of external environment on our lives. We must be ever aware of the world that surrounds us, and we must actively reject those elements of our surroundings that are incompatible with our own standards.

Through such vigilance, we will escape Lot’s fate.

Excerpted from Dr. Mandell Ganchow Coming of Age: An Anthology of Divrei Torah for Bar and Bat Mitzvah 

Parshat Lech Lecha

by Rabbi Steven Weil

After discovering God, Avraham Avinu found his mission in life— he “made souls.” Together with his wife Sarah, he successfully brought thousands of pagan idolaters under the wings of the Shechinah by lovingly and logically teaching them about the One True God. Avraham did not care about nationality, social status, age or gender; he only cared about enlightening the masses and spreading the truth of monotheism to as many people as he could reach. Avraham was God’s number-one kiruv person, single-handedly transforming a society. That is why it is so difficult to understand why God instructed Avraham, “Lech lecha.” God told him to leave his home, his birthplace, the place where he was having an outstanding impact and go to an unknown, sparsely populated destination. Avraham was doing God’s work. Why would God want him to abandon that?

Another curious statement from God comes years later. The four kings, who waged war against the five kings, lured Avraham into the battle by kidnapping his nephew, Lot. Against all odds, Avraham was victorious. He not only rescued Lot and other prisoners of war, but he pursued the most powerful armies of the world all the way into Syria. After the war, he was greeted personally by the king of Sodom and honored by Malki Zedek the priest. Avraham already enjoyed a fine reputation as a generous, charismatic man, but after this stunning victory in a world war, he also became known as an awe-inspiring man of power, someone whose might and strength were to be feared. So why, right after this battle, does Hashem say to him, “Al tira Avram—Do not fear, Avram” (Bereishit 15:1)? What could Avraham—one of the most feared men alive—possibly be afraid of?

The third puzzling statement comes from Avraham himself. After Hashem promises, “Do not fear, Avram, I am your shield; your reward will be very great” (Bereishit 15:1), Avraham responds uncharacteristically: “What can You give me, seeing that I go childless?” he says to Hashem (Bereishit 15:2).

Avraham endured many tests to his faith: he left his home, survived a famine and his wife’s abduction, lost his nephew to a foreign value system, and was drawn into a world war—all without ever questioning or doubting Hashem’s plan. But when Hashem promises him great things, Avraham is dismissive. This is the first time Avraham complains to Hashem, and the first time he seems to be bothered by the fact that he is childless. Why has this never before been an issue for Avraham, and why does it take on suddenly take on such urgency?

Rav Yosef Dov Soloveitchik addresses these questions, and shares with us a very relevant insight into the nature of Avraham’s mission—which is our mission as well. Avraham faced an existential crisis, a crisis of identity and purpose, during his battle against the kings. Until this war, Avraham had understood that his mission in life was to transform humanity and bring the knowledge of God to the peoples of the world. Avraham loved all mankind and envisioned a world united in the belief in a singular God of morals and values. Numerous followers proved his success.

But what scared Avraham was that the world he loved and cared about so much, the world that he dedicated his life to teaching, turned against him in this epic world war. Avraham had faced adversaries before, like Nimrod and Pharaoh, but they were individuals. This was the first time entire kingdoms united against him. Notably, it is the first time the Torah uses the adjective “ivri” to describe Avraham (Bereishit 14:13). Ivri is a variation of the word “eiver,” which means “other side.” For the first time, Avraham felt that the world stood on one side, and he on the other. He felt like an outcast. The idea that he would not be able to fulfill his mission, that he would always be at odds with—instead of at one with—the world, terrified him.

That is why Hashem reassures him, “Do not fear… your reward will be very great.” But Avraham protests that Hashem’s rewards are wasted since he has no children. Up until this point, Avraham was not pained by his childlessness; he considered all of mankind to be his children, who would perpetuate his teachings when he no longer could. But after this war, once he saw himself estranged from mankind, having his own biological child suddenly became monumentally important.

Hashem responds to this, too. “Look now toward the heavens and count the stars if you are able to count them… so shall your offspring be” (Bereishit 15:5). Hashem promises Avraham that he will have his own children. Avraham’s mission to turn the world into a monotheistic community is noble and necessary, but it is not enough. Hashem commanded Avraham to leave his home and the great work he was doing there because to really have an impact on the world, to really transform humanity, to really leave behind an enduring legacy, Avraham had to first teach one little boy named Yitzchak. The world needs to know that there is One God, and that He has expectations of humanity and ethical and moral standards to uphold. But we, the descendants of Avraham, need to know that often times the world is against us, and no matter how great our impact on the world at large may be, the greatest impact we can ever have is on our own children—children like you, the bar mitzvah bachur.

Eight days shy of thirteen years ago you entered into the covenant of Avraham Avinu at your brit milah. Now you stand at the next stage, bar mitzvah, where you become responsible for the beautiful system of mitzvoth that you have been taught by your teachers, parents and grandparents. Their mission, like Avraham’s, was to teach one little boy, and raise him with a solid commitment to the ideals and values of a Godly life. While their mission continues, yours is just beginning. You, too, must be a kiddush Hashem to the world at large, and continue to learn, continue to grow, continue to be the living fulfillment of Avraham’s dream.

And God willing, one day, you will be able to teach everything you know and everything you are to your own little boys and little girls. Then you will know the joy and nachat of Avraham and of every parent that has borne that privilege and led his son to this day.

Rabbi Steven Weil is Senior Managing Director of the Orthodox Union.

Excerpted from Rabbi Shmuel Goldin’s ‘Unlocking The Torah Text: An In-Depth Journey Into The Weekly Parsha- Bereishit,  co-published by OU Press and Gefen Publishers 

Context

A series of slight textual variations appear in the flow of the Noach story.

The Torah describes the entry of Noach’s family into the ark by stating, “Noach and his sons and his wife and his sons’ wives entered the ark, because of the waters of the flood.”

When God commands Noach to exit the ark after the flood has ended He states, “Go out from the ark: you and your wife and your sons and your sons’ wives with you.”

Finally, when Noach actually leaves the ark, the text reads as follows: “And Noach went out and his sons and his wife, and his sons’ wives with him.”

Questions

Why is the Torah inconsistent in its description of the order of entry into and exit from the ark? Why is it that when Noach enters the ark, husbands and wives are listed separately; when God commands the departure from the ark, husbands and wives are listed together; and, finally, when the actual departure from the ark takes place, husbands and wives are again listed separately?

Approaches

A

These seemingly unimportant variations serve as a reminder that, when it comes to the Torah, nothing should be taken for granted. Each subtle nuance of the text carries significant lessons and ideas which are too easily missed in a less than careful reading.

B

Commenting on the separation of the men and women as Noach’s family enters the ark, Rashi immediately states, “The men separately, and the women separately: marital relations were prohibited during a time when the world was engulfed in sorrow and tragedy.”

It would have been totally inappropriate, the Torah hints, for Noach and his family to carry on life as normal, complete with the pleasures of intimate relations, at a time when destruction literally rained down upon the world. In spite of the inevitability of the flood, and in spite of the unimaginable evil that caused it, Noach and his family members are forbidden to ignore the pain and suffering outside the ark. The Torah indeed often indicates (as it does here through nuance) that it is immoral for man to live in a vacuum. We are forbidden to ignore the pain and suffering of others.

We can now also understand why God switches the familial order when He instructs Noach’s family to exit the ark at the end of the flood: “You and your wife, and your sons and their wives,” God commands Noach, “men and women together.” The flood is over. Rebuilding civilization and repopulating the world have become the order of the day. The resumption of family relations is not only a right, God states, but an obligation.

C

At this point, however, the logical pattern seems to break down.

The Torah indicates that as Noach’s family departs the ark, men and women remain separate, in apparent defiance of God’s wishes. Why is this gender separation consciously maintained by Noach’s family even now that the flood has ended?

This apparent problem actually provides a key to the final phases of Noach’s story. We must, however, read the story in human terms.

Imagine the scene of total devastation that greets the members of Noach’s family as they begin to exit the ark. How deep their despair must have been and how overwhelming their sense of aloneness. In the face of such tragedy and destruction how can one possibly trust in the future? How can one even contemplate the thought of rebuilding, of beginning again?

Noach and his children are paralyzed by the scene before them. They trust neither God nor themselves. They do not believe that they can be successful in building a new world; and they are unable to imagine the benevolent protection of a God Who could visit such destruction upon mankind.

Men and women leave the ark separately, because they simply cannot contemplate the future.

D

A careful reading of the continuing text shows that God feels compelled to respond in a number of ways:

He promises that He will never again curse the earth because of man’s actions.

He blesses Noach and his sons and commands them, not once but twice, to be fruitful and to multiply.

He constructs and commands a series of laws, establishing a basic morality for mankind. Hopefully, these laws will ensure that the kind of evil that characterized the generation of the flood will never again mark civilization.

He establishes a visible covenant with mankind, symbolized by the rainbow, and promises that He will remember that covenant and never again destroy the world through flood.

God directly responds to the paralysis Noach and his family are experiencing. He urges, encourages and cajoles them to move beyond the moment, to realize that the future can and must be built.

Everything hinges upon how Noach and his family respond at this juncture. The world that God intends to create will depend on this last human remnant’s ability to move forward.

E

The results are mixed. On the one hand, civilization continues. Noach’s children have children, and the world is populated in the aftermath of the flood.

On the other hand, on a personal level, Noach never moves past the tragedy of the world’s destruction. The text chronicles his spiritual descent as he plants a vineyard, drinks from its wine and falls into a drunken stupor. Unable to face what the world has become, Noach apparently escapes in the only way that he can.

The man who has saved the world at God’s command is transformed into a tragic figure right before our eyes.

Points to Ponder

Noach’s struggle and failure in the aftermath of the flood should move us to consider the spiritual heroism of a generation of our own time.

In the aftermath of World War ii, survivors of the Shoah emerged, one by one, from ghettos, concentration camps, forests and other places of hiding, to face a world similar to Noach’s after the flood. These survivors had witnessed unspeakable cruelty and horror. Their world had been totally destroyed, their families murdered.

Who could have blamed these survivors had they given up on the world? Who would have called them to task had they said, “We have lost faith: lost faith in the world, in our God, even in ourselves.”

How understandable it would have been had they been paralyzed, like Noach, unable to continue.

Almost to a one, however, that was not their response. With unimaginable strength and indomitable spirit, these survivors rebuilt their worlds. They married, had children and grandchildren, and successfully created professions and careers. They refused to succumb to hatred and bitterness, all the while courageously living decent, moral lives.

The contributions made by this generation to the Jewish community at large, and to the State of Israel, in particular, are immeasurable; and the families that they built, in the aftermath of their own indescribable personal tragedies, will continue to shape the story of our people for generations to come.

Where Noach failed, they succeeded.

Excerpted from Rabbi Norman Lamm’s Festivals of Faith: Reflections on the Jewish Holidays, co-published by OU Press and Ktav Publishers

The theme that dominates these days is that of farewell.

Shemini Atzeret comes at the tail end of the Sukkot holiday, which itself is the conclusion of the whole High Holiday season, including Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur. The Rabbis explain Shemini Atzeret, this one-day celebration at the end of the holiday season, as a special day set aside by God. He may be compared, they say, to a king who invited his children for a feast for a number of days. When the time came for him to take leave of them, he said to them, Beni be-bakkashah mikkem, ikkevu immi yom ehad, kashah alai pereidatkhem, “My children, please stay with me for a while, even for only one more day; it is so difficult to take leave of you” (Rashi to Lev. 23:36).

And the biblical figure who dominates this holiday, when we read the last portion of the Torah, is of course Moses, delivering his last discourse and then facing his death.

There is something particularly pathetic about Moses in this role. He is a man who looms larger than life itself. Yet his death is so very human! He wants so desperately to live, that he is even reduced to begging: Va-ethanan el Hashem, “And I pleaded with the Lord at that time, saying . . . let me, please, cross over and see that good land” (Deut. 3:23).

The Rabbis fill in the gaps in this biblical account of the dialogue between God and Moses, and they add that Moses said: “If I cannot come in as the leader, let me come in at the end of the procession as an ordinary Jew. And if I cannot come in alive, let me at least come in dead, to be buried in the promised land” (Sifra, Be-midbar, 135; Mekhilta, Amalek, 22).

But the divine response was, No! Ve-shammah lo ta‘avor (Deut. 34:4), “you shall not cross over there.” Moreover, the tradition adds, Moses wrote the last words of the Torah by himself, with his quill dipped into an ink made of his own tears (Bava Batra 15a). Va-yamat sham Mosheh, “And Moses died there”— there, on the plains of Moab, not in his Promised Land (Deut. 34:5).

When the Rabbis approach this story of the death of Moses, they make a number of interesting remarks, one of which (in Sotah 14a) has always astonished me. “Rabbi Samlai taught: The Torah begins with an act of loving-kindness (gemilut hasadim), and concludes with an act of loving-kindness. It begins with gemilut hasadim, as it is written, ‘And the Lord God made for Adam and for his wife garments of skins, and clothed them’ (Gen. 3:21). And it ends with gemilut hasadim, as it is written, ‘And He buried him in the valley’ (Deut. 34:6).”

Now, I can understand why the Rabbis saw the beginning of the Torah as characterized by divine charitableness. Providing clothing for primitive man was a way of giving him warmth, protection against the elements—and, even more, a sense of dignity which raised man above the natural order and elevated him above the animals. Clothing is a response to a sense of shame, and that is one of the things that makes mankind human.

But how, and why should the verse “And He buried him in the valley” be regarded as gemilut hasadim, an act of divine loving-kindness?

I can imagine that if some medieval churchman had written this story, it would have offered a script in which Moses bodily ascends to Heaven, in the company of a chorus of singing angels, leaving only a halo to mark the spot of his ascension. Had Mohammedans reworked this story, they would have had Moses charging the Gates of Heaven, his sword held aloft, whilst astride a white Arabian steed. A Greek tragedian would have brought Moses’ life to a grand, tragic, smashing climax—perhaps a duel with Satan, who finally pierces the heart of Moses, which gushes forth blood endlessly, across the ages. A modern scenario for Moses would have had him awarded him a Nobel Prize; or, as our country recently did for George Washington, posthumously granted him the rank of a six-star general; or invited him to address the assembled United Nations from the same rostrum that was dignified by the appearance of Yasir Arafat.

Instead, the Bible offers us nothing but an utterly simple farewell. No act of bravery, no dramatic climax—Moses just lies down and dies.

The Midrash describes the scene in a manner that is pathetic in its simplicity (Sifra, Ha’azinu 339). God says to Moses, “Moses, lie down.” And Moses lies down. “Moses, fold your hands across your chest.” And Moses folds his hands across his chest. “Moses, close your eyes.” And Moses closes his eyes. Where-upon, God softly kisses Moses, and thus withdraws his soul from his body. And so, Moses is dead. No witnesses, no audience, no long list of obituaries in the New York Times, no fancy mausoleum, no unveiling in the company of family and friends. Instead, no one knows his burial place until this very day. For thirty days the people mourned him. At the end of this period, “And the days of the mourning for Moses came to an end.” Finis, it is all over.

And this, according to the Rabbis, is an act of gemilut hasadim, of loving-kindness!

My own intuitive feeling has always been that this was an unkind cut, a cruel blow. This powerful, titanic figure, this Moses who flouted the might of Egypt and forced the Pharaoh and his empire to their knees, who gathered up this pitiful group of slaves and molded a nation out of them, who dealt a mortal blow to the hold of paganism on the ancient world and turned civilization around, ushering in a new age—this historic giant was reduced to begging for a few more days of life! I find it heartbreaking that Moses must plead for these extra favors. I can almost imagine what went on in Moses’ heart, if not on his lips: “God, I gave my sweat and my blood for this people, I suffered through every kind of agony because of them and received nothing in turn but ingratitude. Shall I be deprived of this one bit of pleasure? This obstreperous and obstinate people, who never forgave me for elevating them to greatness, who awarded my forty years of service with rebelliousness and accusations against me—accusing me of adultery, of stealing their donkeys—may I not even have the privilege of seeing their felicity? And God, was it I who wanted this mission? Did I not respond to you (Ex. 4:13), shelah na be-yad tishlah—send them through someone else, but leave me alone? Was it not You who insisted that I be their shepherd? Will you now deny me this one bit of nahas, this one last act of satisfaction? Kill me if You will, O Lord, but at least bury me there!” And the answer comes: No! Ve-shammah lo ta‘avor—You shall not cross over; and the Lord buried him in the valley. Not even on the mountaintop, but down deep, in the valley!

And this, the Rabbis tell us, is sofah gemilut hasadim, the charitable and loving way in which the Bible ends! How can we account for their interpretation?

I suggest three ways in which to understand this rabbinic tradition.

First, the gemilut hasadim the Rabbis refer to was not an act of loving-kindness for Moses, but for all the rest of mankind, for all of posterity, for you and for me. They are teaching us that life’s work is never done, that no career is ever perfect, that no achievement is ever complete. There are always faults, always gaps, always lacunae, always flaws in the painting and chips in the statues that we build and conceive of. It is not only a sobering thought, but also a consolation to all the rest of us, that even a Moses was not perfect, even a Moses did not reach his Promised Land, even a Moses was not fully successful.

Had Moses completely succeeded and attained the full realization of his vision by crossing into the Promised Land, life would have become unbearable for the rest of us. Knowing that perfection is humanly possible, and full success is humanly attainable, it would have made nervous wrecks of us, even those who are not obsessively compulsive. It is, therefore, a gemilut hasadim to us when we recognize, through the biography of Moses, that failure and imperfection are essentials of the human condition. With the knowledge that no life and no endeavor can be perfect, even that of a Moses, we can allay our anxieties about our own imperfections, our own lack of full achievement and absolute success. Hence, sofah gemilut hasadim, this story at the end of the Torah is indeed an act of charity to all of mankind.

The second answer would be that the utterly simple farewell of Moses was an act of gemilut hasadim primarily for Joshua, the successor of Moses.

As is, it was extremely difficult for any man to follow a Moses. I do not envy a Joshua! Anything but a simple farewell would have made it literally impossible for a Joshua to function as a leader and for the loyalties of the people to be transferred from Moses to Joshua. A triumphant march into Eretz Israel, capping Moses’ prophetic career with a brilliant victory, or even a dramatic death, would have rendered the transition from Moses to Joshua virtually impossible.

So it was an act of gemilut hasadim for Joshua—and also for the Children of Israel—that Moses’ death was undramatic and uneventful. Even more, it was in this sense an act of kindness for Moses too, for his goal was not to enhance his own reputation and add to his own prestige, not caring what went on after him—après moi le deluge. His goal was the eternity of Israel and the perpetuation of Torah. By having his last wish denied, by understating his death, Providence assured that his mission would continue, his life’s work would be perpetuated. Gemilut hasadim!

Third, and finally, the simple farewell was an act of loving-kindness to Moses by virtue of its very simplicity. Why? Because Moses needed no heroic act to signify heroic ends, for all his life was an exercise in heroic holiness. His quiet, uneventful death highlighted and emphasized by contrast the dramatic quality and the heroic texture of his whole life. Courage and valor were his everyday companions. Hardihood of spirit, fortitude of character, firmness of backbone were his daily experience and daily equipment. He needed no closing act, no grand finale, no heroics or histrionics, for no death could be as great as his life, as impressive as his teachings.

When a man is remembered for one act, no matter what it be, he has lived for but a moment. But if he is remembered for his whole life, he has achieved immortality.

No wonder that the Torah says of Moses that lo kahatah eino ve-lo nas leho, “his eye was not dimmed and his vigor was not abated” (Deut. 34:7). Moses was too busy living to begin to die. The Rabbis tell us that he ascended the fifteen steps to the peak of Mount Nebo, where he died, bi-pesi‘ah ahat, in one quick step or leap (Sotah 13b). His end came quickly and simply. It was not really death, but simply the cessation of life.

To appreciate why this was a gemilut hasadim, an act of loving-kindness, consider what would have happened had he experienced a dramatic death, whether of victory or of defeat. This man Moses, who spent his life reproaching his people, urging them to repentance, disturbing their peace, goading them, restlessly prodding them on from level to level, denying them peace of mind— all his life would have been vitiated by a dramatic farewell that would have been the only thing the Israelites remembered! The Israelites would have been all too prone to forget his whole life, all his teachings, all of his message, all the annoying irritations that constituted Moses’ mission, in favor of mythologizing and dramatizing and reenacting his death.

It was therefore a favor to Moses to force him to a simple farewell, and thus perpetuate the nobility of his whole life and his whole prophetic career.

Indeed, no parent wants to be remembered only for the way he died, no matter how noble; he wants the whole of his life and what he lived for to be perpetuated. No teacher wants to be remembered only by his last lecture, no rabbi by his last sermon.

To summarize, then, this simple farewell was gemilut hasadim for three reasons. First, it was an act of kindness to all men and women thereafter, in order to reassure us that no life or career is perfect, that we must do the best we can and be grateful for it.

Second, it was an act of gemilut hasadim to Joshua—and even to Israel and Moses himself—to make it possible for someone else to begin with a fair chance for success, and not impose upon the successor the excessive burden of a glorious climax of a predecessor.

Finally, it was an act of gemilut hasadim to Moses, so that the dramatic conclusion not obscure and outshine the far more significant achievements of his whole life, not to let the people forget his historic service.

So, the theme of farewell is suffused with charity and gentleness and goodness.

God, as it were, closes the holiday somewhat sadly: Kashah alai pereidatkhem, “it is difficult for Me to say farewell to you,” and yet hopefully and warmly: Ikkevu me‘at, “stay on for a while,” brace yourself for the long winter to come, and wait for the next yamim tovim, the next festivals, to begin.

And the Books of Moses, like the life and mission of Moses, come to an end.

Somewhat sadly and longingly, but also lovingly and hopefully—and even joyously, with simhah on this Simhat Torah—we close the book of Moses, and open up the next one, the book of Moses’ successor Joshua, and we listen intently and hear and respond, with our hearts full of devotion and sensitivity and the purest of sentiment, to the words Rak hazak ve-ematz me’od, “Be very strong and courageous” (Josh. 1: 7).

And may God bless you all.

Excerpted from Dr. Mandell Ganchow Coming of Age: An Anthology of Divrei Torah for Bar and Bat Mitzvah

by Rabbi Yosef Grossman

The legendary great ga’on, Rav Yitzchok Hutner, in his classic sefer, Pachad Yitzchak (Rosh Hashanah, ma’amar yud, p. 80), points out that Chag Ha-Sukkot is the culmination of two festival cycles. It is the last of the Shalosh Regalim, and it also closes the Yerach Ha-Eitanim that began with Rosh Hashanah and continued through Yom Kippur.

The joyous festival of Simchat Torah brings Sukkot to its conclusion. It is thus the special day each year that leads both festival cycles to their glorious climax.

I believe there is an important lesson to be learned from these special yamim tovim concerning our passion to perform mitzvot, a lesson I would like to share with you as you accept upon yourself the joyous duty of performing mitzvot. It is a lesson which I hope will stay with you for your entire long and productive life.

One of the piyyutim on Simchat Torah contains an enigmatic statement: “Let us rejoice and delight in this Torah, for she is strength and light for us.”
What is the meaning of “be-zot ha-Torah—this Torah”? Should we not merely say “Let us rejoice and delight in the Torah”?

Perhaps the answer can be found in the pasuk we recite when the Torah is raised aloft at the conclusion of its reading. In clarion voice we call out, “ve-zot ha-Torah—And this is the Torah that Moshe set before the children of Israel” (Devarim 4:44). This pasuk immediately follows the parashah concerning the arei miklat, the cities to which one who killed by accident could flee. What is the connection?

The Ma’asei La-Melech, a commentary on the Chafetz Chayyim Al ha- Torah, explains as follows: The pasuk at the beginning of the parashah states that Moshe would assign three cities on the eastern side of the Jordan to be arei miklat. Moshe did this even though he knew that the status of these three cities would not go into effect until Yehoshua crossed over the Jordan and set aside another three cities in Eretz Yisrael proper. Moshe could have rationalized to himself, “Why bother? Let Yehoshua designate all six at one time.” Rather, Moshe Rabbenu said, “A mitzvah that I can accomplish, I will accomplish” (Rashi, Devarim 4:41). If the only part of the mitzvah that Moshe could fulfill was the mere designation of the three cities, he would accomplish even that portion of the mitzvah.

Therefore, the Ma’asei La-Melech tells us, after Moshe designates the three arei miklat, the pasuk declares “ve-zot ha-Torah.” This is the Torah that Moshe placed in front of them—a dedication to the performance of mitzvot which encompasses the diligent pursuit of even a fragment of a mitzvah.

Perhaps we can add to the Ma’asei La-Melech’s beautiful thought. In Kohelet 5:9, Shlomo ha-Melech declares, “He that loves money will never be satisfied with money.” This pasuk, Chazal tell us, refers to Moshe Rabbenu. Money refers to mitzvot—he who loves mitzvot will never have enough mitzvot. Ve-zot ha-Torah teaches us that not only a pauper in mitzvot should pursue every mitzvah, no matter how “small,” but the billionaire in mitzvot should do so as well.

Rebbe Simla’i (Sotah 14a) wonders: Why did Moshe have this burning desire to enter Eretz Yisrael? Did he need to eat the luscious fruit of Eretz Yisrael? Moshe understood that there are many mitzvot that can only be performed in Eretz Yisrael, and he wanted to perform these mitzvot, too. Although Moshe Rabbenu at the end of his life was a mitzvah billionaire, he still had an unsatiated desire to perform more mitzvot. This passion for mitzvah performance propelled Moshe to undertake a fragment of a mitzvah for which someone else would get the credit. This is the Torah which Moshe placed in front of the Bnei Yisrael—in front of us!

This lesson comes to mind during Sukkot and Simchat Torah. Sukkot is saturated with mitzvot. We have the mitzvah of dwelling in the sukkah; the Four Species—etrog, lulav, hadasim and aravot; the mitzvah of the aravah on Hoshanah Rabbah, which originated from the Prophets; and the mitzvah, “vesamachta be-chagecha,” to rejoice during the festival. During Temple times we had the additional mitzvah of nissuch ha-mayim—the drawing and libation of water on the altar—as well as the offering of the special holiday korbanot of chagigah and shalmei simchah.

We are so rich in mitzvot during Sukkot, and yet when Shemini Atzeret and Simchat Torah come we haven’t had enough. We don’t run home happy that our yoke of mitzvot has been completed. Rather we stay in Yerushalayim to celebrate with Hashem. He and us. He and me. The nations of the world are absent. This is the meaning of the aforementioned piyyut: “Let us rejoice and delight in this Torah”—the Torah of Moshe Rabbenu, the Torah of never being satisfied with mitzvah performance. With great passion and desire we look forward to doing more and more mitzvot. We look forward to performing even a fragment of a mitzvah for which we will not receive full credit.

My fervent blessing to you is that this passionate desire to perform Hashem’s mitzvot, the same passion you felt the first time you put on tefillin, remains with you for 120 years. Thereby, you will continue to be a great source of nachat to your dear parents, grandparents, to all of Klal Yisrael, and to Hashem.

Rabbi Grossman is Senior Rabbinic Coordinator at the OU and Director of its Kosher Education Department. He is the editor of the OU’s Daf HaKashrus and the author of Sefer Ohr HaOros and Mourning Over Churban.

Excerpted from Rabbi Norman Lamm’s Festivals of Faith: Reflections on the Jewish Holidays Click here to buy the book

In its formulation of prayer, the Jewish tradition is somewhat more mystical than rationalistic, and its teaching strikes us intuitively as attractive and religiously valid. Normally, we assume that it makes no difference when a man prays, provided that he knows what he says and is sincere in his devotion. But Judaism tells us that there is more required than the participation of the heart and the genuineness of the spirit, although they are, of course, indispensable. A man must also know le-khavven et ha-sha‘ah, how to guess or strike the right hour (Berakhot 7a).

Time, the tradition means to tell us, is not uniform. Certain hours are more accessible to particular prayers than others. Certain prayers are more suited to certain times than to others. A good prayer has its right time, and the one who prays must have a sense of the appropriateness of what he says to the time it is said. Thus, bakkashat tzerakhim, asking for the fulfillment of one’s needs, must not be uttered on the Sabbath. Prayers celebrating God’s sovereignty over nature are normally recited at the change of the day—at dawn and dusk—or the change of the month, at Rosh Hodesh. Certain propitiatory prayers, such as Tahanun, may not be recited at night.

In the same vein, Maimonides, in his Laws of Repentance (2: 6), tells us concerning the repentance and the prayer of individuals: “Although repentance and prayer are always appropriate, during the ten days from Rosh Hashanah to Yom Kippur they are especially beautiful and immediately accepted.” This penitential period, which reaches its climax on this day, is especially suitable and appropriate for prayer.

Hence, the verse which we repeat every day during this High Holy Day season: Avinu Malkenu, tehei ha-sha‘ah ha-zot she‘at rahamim ve-et ratzon millefanekha, “Our Father, our King, may this hour prove to be an hour of mercy and a time of grace before Thee.”

There are certain times that are particularly susceptible to certain movements of the spirit, and if we miss them, then those exquisite moments of spiritual efficacy and exhilaration are lost to us forever. These spiritual moments are irretrievable.

What I am trying to say is this: the world of the spirit teaches what the practical world already knows—that certain opportunities are singular; they arise, never to return. If we are wise, we know how to exploit these opportunities. If we are not, they are lost and cannot be recaptured.

The same idea has been expressed in a beautiful fashion and a different way. The Talmud teaches (Avodah Zarah 17a): Rebbi [R. Judah ha-Nassi] bakhah ve-amar: Yesh koneh olamo be-kammah shanim, ve-yesh koneh olamo be-sha‘ah ahat—Rebbi wept and exclaimed that there are some people who must work all their lives in order to win their share in the World-to-Come, while others, whose lives may be spent in dereliction of duty, can, in one hour of strenuous and heroic effort, win their world, the World-to-Come.

The great rabbi of Lublin, Rabbi Meir Shapiro, asked a simple and obvious question: Why, if indeed a man can change his destiny in one hour, should that cause Rebbi to weep? On the contrary, he should have been overjoyed that man is afforded such opportunities that, in but one hour, he may change the course of his destiny. The Lubliner answered: Rebbi cried because it is possible for that hour to come into the life of a man and the man be unaware of it. The hour may come, the man sleeps, and the hour departs—forever. The opportunity for immortality arises for but one hour, and the hour may be lost.

It is with this in mind that I turn to the high school and college students who are here this day. You are the victims of social and economic circumstances beyond your control, which have forced you into an unnaturally prolonged adolescence. Because of this unnatural state, many of your contemporaries have fallen prey to a mass hysteria of irrationalism, disguised as noble idealism. I need not enumerate the ways in which this neurosis expresses itself. But I plead with you: Do not fall victim to it. Do not imagine that you can live a life of nonsense or abandon, leaving your religious development to later in life. No, that sha‘ah ahat, that hour of golden opportunity, is at hand now; it may not return later on. Now, in the full flush of your strength and enthusiasm, in the full bloom of your young idealism, now is the time for you heroically to show how a true Jew lives on the campus—despite the difficulty, despite the ridicule, despite the discomfort, despite the burden of differentness it places upon you. It is almost a prophetic mission—to be the models of Jewish conduct for your peers—but it is an exciting one and a creative one. And now is the time—this hour.

As the Rabbis taught in Avot (2:5), Al tomar le-ke-she-efneh eshneh, shema lo tifneh, “Do not say that when I have time I shall study; you may never have the time.”

I would direct my remarks in the same vein to young men who are at the beginning or the middle of their business or professional careers, chalking up one success after another. There is a natural tendency to become so absorbed in your work that you neglect all other portions of your personality that do not deal with the empirical and the pragmatic world. But these talents and propensities do not last forever. You will not always have the ability to develop a warm relationship with wife and children. You will not always have the kind of artistic or aesthetic bent you may now have. Above all else, remember that there is a spiritual side to personality—and I do not only refer to outward religious observances. There is an aspect of life itself that speaks of inner sensitivity, of a mystic longing, of a spiritual yearning. Do not neglect it. Now is the sha‘ah ahat in which you must begin to develop this side of your lives. If you do not, it may very well wither away. I know that you are busy. In our period of life, busy-ness is both the blessing and the bane of our existence. Never must busy-ness allow us to neglect our own higher, nonmaterial development.

A rather depressing story was told to me by a colleague of mine. He was returning from the funeral of a dear friend in the same car with the deceased’s son, who had been very close to his father. The son seemed even more upset than the circumstances called for, and much more than his personality would lead one to expect. My colleague inquired of him as to whether there was any special reason for his disturbance. “Yes,” answered the young man. “I was told that shortly before he passed away, my father felt the urge to speak with me. He wanted to tell me something important. So, from his hospital bed, he picked up the telephone and rang my number. But my line was busy. By the time I was free, he was dead.” Rebbi bakhah ve-amar: Yesh koneh olamo be-kamah shanim, ve-yesh koneh olamo be-sha‘ah ahat. How sad, that during that hour, that precious and cherished and great hour—our lines are busy. And the hour never returns.

Before Yizkor, our thoughts inevitably turn to parents and children. Discord, irritation, and differences are normal in relations between parents and children. But they must never be permitted to get out of hand, to strike below the surface. To children I would say: You have your parents only for a limited time. They themselves will shortly say Yizkor for their parents. Make up your minds that this year will be your sha‘ah ahat, your special time to exploit for the great Jewish and universal ideal of Kabbed et avikha ve-et immekha. Devote this year more than ever before to honoring and giving comfort and satisfaction to your parents—with sensitivity, with patience, with grace.

And to parents I would say: Children are really all we have. The time that we can influence them is severely limited—relatively a sha‘ah ahat, or infrequent hours spread throughout life. Try to be wise in discharging your duties. Do not relinquish your parental role as teacher and guide. But do not bear down too hard, do not interfere with the development of a child’s natural, healthy personality. If his goals are right, allow him to achieve these goals in his own way. Do not abuse and lose this golden opportunity for developing a healthy relationship with a child, a warm and loving one, that will always remain as the great source of strength for future guidance.

Now is the opportunity. Now, and perhaps never again. Ve-im lo akhshav eimatai—if not now, when? (Avot 1:14).

In all these instances, simple awareness of opportunities is insufficient. What is more important is the willingness to exploit them, to work and exert yourself in order to take advantage of opportunities.

In the first chapter of Bava Metzia (9a), the Talmud tells us the various laws of metzi’ot, finds. In one law, we are told of two people going on the way. One is a rokhev al gabbei behemah, riding on an animal, and the other walks, leading the animal, and they chance upon a metzi’ah. The rider sees it first—but the pedestrian picks it up first. Both claim the find and come to court. What is the law? The Talmud decides the Halakhah: natelah ve-amar ani zakhiti bah zakhah—the one who picks it up first and says “It is mine” is the rightful and legal owner.

There are many metzi’ot in life—in business, in family happiness, in community work, in friendship, in the simple opportunity to help someone when he most needs it. In every instance, merely being aware and articulating the opportunity does not mean that we have taken advantage of it. We must be willing to work, to labor; if you permit me the appropriate colloquialism, a man must be willing to get off his high horse in order to exploit the rare hour of opportunity.

Perhaps the most crucial instance of a sha‘ah ahat that we dare not ignore is the possibility of a religious renaissance in the State of Israel since the Six- Day War.

Before the war, many or even most Israelis were afflicted with a dogmatic agnosticism, almost an irritating and arrogant cynicism. The war changed that for many—and it changed it deeply. One small symptom of the phenomenal change was a slim volume which has become a classic in Israel: Siah Lohamim, the testimony of the young paratroopers who first conquered the Western Wall. These were the children of the extreme Left kibbutzim, and yet what they had to say revealed a dimension of historical affiliation and spiritual orientation that they themselves were unaware of. Generally, the war served to detach the cynics from their cynicism, to disorient the dogmatic secularist, and has made especially the young question the wisdom of their parents, who raised them more on Marx than on Moses.

Here was an answer to our prayer, Avinu malkenu tehei ha-sha ‘ah ha-zot she ‘at rahamim ve-et ratozon millefanekhah. Here was the great sha‘ah ahat for teshuvat ha-tzibbur, a repentance of the entire community.

Yet we have largely let it pass without exploiting it. And because of our indifference, old routines of thought and conduct, old habits of speech and deed, have returned to their former niches. The situation has unfortunately “stabilized” in the old pattern. Religious Jewry so far has failed to exploit this miraculous but rare opportunity.

Measured in historical time, fifty-eight minutes of this sha‘ah ahat have passed; we have two minutes to go if a beginning is to be made in talking to the nonobservant portions of Israeli Jewry. The distance and the alienation between the datiyyim (religious) and the hillonim (secularists) is not only a religiously pernicious phenomenon, it is also a nationally and socially destructive threat. The fabric of the State of Israel is threatened by it. So we must make a beginning in an effort to bridge the gap between the two communities. We must not lose this sha‘ah ahat.

Today I tell you: I take this challenge personally. I feel that I too must make my modest contribution to exploiting this great sha‘ah ahat. For if I fail to try, then bakhah Rebbi—this rabbi knows that he will deserve to weep.

For this reason I am taking a three-month leave from The Jewish Center to join my effort to those of other colleagues, both rabbinic and academic, acting through several groups, primarily one called Gesher (which means “bridge”), to make this great beginning. The task is a formidable one, a difficult one, and an arduous one, that will take more than three months or three years or even ten years. But we have only a sha‘ah ahat in which to begin.

Maybe we shall not succeed. But, as I have often said from this pulpit, there is nothing morally wrong with trying and failing; there is everything morally shameful about failing to try.

My leave from The Jewish Center will represent the combination of such opportunities. It will be a sha‘ah ahat for young children to be exposed to life in Eretz Yisra’el, where hopefully they will learn to love it. It will be an opportunity for me to acquaint myself with Israelis, both leaders and ordinary folk, my first such genuine opportunity. And no one who aspires to any kind of leadership in the American Jewish community can afford not to know Israel. It will mean an opportunity to study and read and learn on a more sustained basis than a busy rabbinate in America affords me.

But above all else, it will be an opportunity, even if but an hour measured in the longer perspective, to try to open a dialogue between the observant and the nonobservant, between the Diaspora and the State of Israel, an attempt to present the message of Torah without political motivation, even without missionary intent, but simply with the desire to increase mutual respect between all Jews, an endeavor based on the faith and the confidence that if this mutual respect is achieved, the Torah will “sell” itself.

To the leadership of The Jewish Center and all The Center Family goes my endless appreciation for their understanding of the historic need of the novel situation of the Jewish world today.

May I assure you that, despite the beauty and the excitement of living in Jerusalem—and there is nothing quite as beautiful and exciting—I shall miss you sorely.

I shall keep all of you in mind, and when I pray at the places where our ancestors trod on the holy soil of the land of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, and when I approach the Wall behind which our fathers ministered in the Temple of Solomon and at the foot of which generations of our people—from royalty and priesthood to weary pilgrims and refugees—offered their deepest devotions, I shall offer my tefillot for each and every member of The Center Family: that when I return three months hence, im yirtzeh Hashem, I find the sick restored to health, the weak to strength, the mourners consoled, the lonely encouraged; that all strife will vanish and all unhappiness will disappear.

And in return, I ask you for your prayers that my work be crowned with success, and that I return im yirtzeh Hashem with my family reinvigorated, ready to rededicate myself to The Center, to the community, and to Torah with renewed strength.

Because I plan to leave tomorrow im yirtzeh Hashem, I will not have the chance to bid farewell to each of you personally. So let me address you collectively, and intend each and every one of you individually: may you be blessed with a gemar hatimah tovah and a shenat hayyim ve-shalom, a year of life and peace.

Shalom u-le-hitra’ot and Yivarekhekha Hashem mei-Tziyyon. May God bless you from Zion.

Avinu Malkenu, tehei ha-sha‘ah ha-zot she‘at rahamim ve-et ratzon millefanekha.

Excerpted from Erica Brown’s Return: Daily Inspiration for the Days of Awe 

Day One: Faith

“For the sin we committed before You by throwing off the yoke of heaven.”

On the first day of Rosh HaShana, our Torah reading is dominated by an unlikely character, a foreign servant woman who becomes a key player in the fertility struggle of Abraham and Sarah: Hagar. Her appearance takes us off guard. She receives not one chapter in the unfolding of Genesis, but two. The story of her promotion to wife and then first mother, followed by her sudden banishment, is painful and uncomfortable to read. She seems to be a pawn in a story far greater than herself. Her story strangely occupies a large emotional space in Abraham’s narratives of faith, and it is reviewed on one of our most solemn liturgical occasions.

Hagar is introduced as an Egyptian maidservant with a name that means “stranger”; everything about her is remote and distant. She comes from elsewhere and occupies a low station in Abraham’s household. Midrashim about her former position as princess notwithstanding, the text presents a woman with no status whatsoever. Hagar is introduced in our story only after Abraham has already toyed with possible solutions to his problem of an heir. Sarah’s infertility is mentioned early on, when we first meet the future matriarch: “Now Sarai was barren, she had no child” (Genesis 11:30). By the time Abraham is tasked with creating a nation, the reader already understands the challenges ahead. As a first solution, Abraham takes his nephew Lot with him, and his name is mentioned in Abraham’s travels to Canaan before Sarah’s is. He is clearly regarded as the likely heir until the two parties have property skirmishes and separate. Abraham then asks God if his house servant Eliezer should be his heir, but God rejects this option. In Genesis 15, Abraham is told explicitly that the solution to his problem will come from his belly, literally: “None but your very own issue shall be your heir” (15:4). The child is to come from him. It will not be Lot. It will not be Eliezer. But the child will not necessarily be the offspring of Sarah, either, since it is Abraham’s “womb” and not Sarah’s that God specifies.

Perhaps Sarah overheard this conversation or it was reported to her; whatever precipitates her action, she decides at this juncture to take fate into her own hands. She gives her maidservant to Abraham. She does not perform this as an act of generosity to help her husband fulfill the divine promise of Genesis 12 that Abraham will father a nation. Each nation begins with one. And Abraham, try as he might, cannot come up with the first one. Genesis 16 explicitly states Sarah’s motive in her own words: “Perhaps I shall have a son through her [lit. “be built up through her”]” (16:2). Abraham will get an heir, she reckons, as part of some larger divine scheme, but she chances not being part of this majestic, historic tale. Sarah has to act to guarantee her own place. Maybe, just maybe, she can have a son through surrogacy, solving her emotional anguish and also cementing her historic significance as the mother of a nation.

Sarah gives her maid over as a wife rather than a concubine, a term in rabbinic parlance that implies a wife but one without the financial security of a marriage contract. In doing this, Sarah changes Hagar’s status monumentally, moving her from a subordinate figure in the household to one almost on par with herself. When Hagar gets pregnant and then ridicules Sarah, Hagar has, of her own accord, shifted the power balance again, lording her new position in the house as first mother over her former mistress. In actuality, Hagar could have belittled Sarah with- out much effort. Seeing Hagar’s growing stomach is signal enough for Sarah to experience inadequacy. Phyllis Trible describes the changing scales of power in the Sarah/Hagar story beautifully in her book Texts of Terror: a woman of little significance is suddenly moved to center stage, pushing aside the female protagonist who could not deliver.

Sarah’s indignity at her sudden change in position is a source of outrage. She turns to Abraham with her humiliation: “The wrong done me is your fault! I myself put my maid in your bosom; now that she sees that she is pregnant, I am lowered in her esteem. The Lord decide between me and you!” (16:5). Sarah had thought she was helping the family with this arrangement, but she comes to realize the mistake of it all. In Sarah’s failed attempt to build herself up through Hagar, she is ironically made small though her. The Bible commentator Rabbi Meir Leibush (1809–1879), known by the acronym Malbim, understood Hagar’s dismissal of Sarah as linked to the fact that Hagar conceived immediately; one might think Hagar was more righteous than her mistress. Sarah blames her indignity on Abraham; perhaps his own happiness at becoming a father was too much for Sarah. Hagar’s arrogance – or her very existence – becomes Sarah’s new blight. Sarah creates a challenge for Abraham. Rather than position herself against Hagar, Sarah gives Abraham a choice. He must choose a life with Sarah and her infertility, which means letting go of God’s larger vision of Abraham’s future, or choose the leadership role God determined for him, which he must pursue without her. Sarah can no longer see a way for Abraham to have his national, spiritual dream and to keep their relationship intact when she could not provide an heir.

Abraham, wise patriarch that he was, responds to Sarah’s humiliation: “Your maid is in your hands. Deal with her as you think right” (16:6). This is Abraham’s clever way of telling his wife that this plan was her idea, not his. He had no emotional attachment to Hagar; just as she easily shifted from being Sarah’s maid to Abraham’s wife, Hagar can shift back to her old role without Abraham being invested in her change of status. Then Abraham tells Sarah to do with Hagar as she deems right, returning to Sarah all the power she once had over this woman. There is irony in this statement. Sarah afflicts her maid, not knowing how to return this woman, pregnant with her husband’s heir, back to her former role without the use of verbal or physical violence; we are unsure how exactly to read the postscript: “Sarah treated her harshly, and she ran away from her” (16:6). Having tasted a modicum of freedom, Hagar is not prepared to redress the new imbalance and return to the indignity of servitude.

This inverse story of Exodus, in which an Israelite enslaves an Egyptian, treats her harshly (using the same Hebrew terminology used to describe Pharaoh’s oppression of the Israelites), and forces her to run off to the wilderness to escape, has a different end than our national narrative. Hagar finds herself near a spring and encounters an angel. He tells her to return to her place of anguish even though she will suffer there, because she will birth her own nation, beginning with Abraham’s first child, Ishmael. The child, the angel tells her, will be a “wild animal of a man; his hand against everyone and everyone’s hand against him” (16:12). The promise of a child of violence hardly seems a motivation to return unless, of course, Hagar believes that as a powerless slave, this is her best chance for her own future defense. Finally her defenselessness can become her empowerment; she has recourse to combat violence with violence, all to fulfill a larger vision of a nation: her own. The angel presages the message with what must have seemed a preposterous promise: “I will greatly increase your offspring, and they will be too many to count” (16:10). Oddly, Hagar is the only woman in the Hebrew Bible to receive the female version of Abraham’s blessing of multitudes. This promise unlocks the mystery of why we read Hagar’s story on Rosh HaShana, one of our holiest days.

To understand the promise, we have to telescope forward to the text of Hagar that is included in our Maĥzor: Genesis 21. Ishmael is likely seventeen, on the cusp of adulthood; his half-brother Isaac is being celebrated by his parents. Isaac, the miracle child, has been weaned, and Abraham makes a large feast. With Isaac’s viability, the issue of who will be Abraham’s heir comes into peak narrative tension. Sarah, at the height of her happiness, sees “the son whom Hagar the Egyptian had borne to Abraham playing” (21:9) and is reviled. Using a more subordinate Hebrew name for slave than was used in Genesis 16, Sarah once again gives Abraham an unambiguous mandate: “Cast out that slave woman and her son, for the son of that slave shall not share in the inheritance with my son Isaac” (21:10). Neither son is called the child of Abraham; there is only the son of Hagar and the son of Sarah, pitted in Sarah’s mind in an intense competition for succession. Now that Ishmael is an adult and technically fit to be heir, Sarah sees his playing as either an erotic danger (as posited in one midrash), a strange childish aberration for a young adult, or a status problem for her son. Banishing Ishmael would leave only one child behind, Isaac, as if the birthright were a matter of geographic accessibility. Where Abraham listened to his wife before without emotional investment, here the text renders his anguish: “Abraham was greatly distressed for it concerned a son of his” (21:12). Sarah may have easily cut out Abraham’s role as father in discussing Ishmael, but Abraham could not. The child was also his child.

God tells Abraham to listen to his wife, and Abraham dutifully sends out Hagar and Ishmael into an unforeseen future in the wilderness. He gives Hagar bread and a skin of water, putting it on her shoulder – a last act of tenderness – and mother and son set off. Many medieval commentators on this story question Abraham’s parsimony. When a slave was set free in the laws framed in Deuteronomy, he was entitled to more than this woman – who was first a slave and then a wife – received from her master/husband for her ignominious exit.

Then Hagar gets lost and her water runs out. In despair, she puts her child, now a man, under a bush, not wanting to see her son die, presumably of dehydration. She sits a bow’s distance away and bursts into tears, but the angel this time only hears the weeping of the boy. The English rendering of the angel’s words sounds compassionate: “What troubles you, Hagar?” (21:17). The Hebrew is more remonstrative: “What is the matter with you, Hagar?” These three Hebrew words contain the key to unraveling this text and Hagar’s role in Abraham’s story.

Hagar’s behavior here provides an ancient literary foil to demonstrate the extent of Abraham’s faith. Abraham is given a promise: to become a nation in a homeland. He is successful in his role as homesteader, amassing wealth and cattle, digging wells, fighting wars, and making covenants with neighboring peoples. But he struggles for more than a dozen chapters to make good on the pledge of a nation because he cannot produce even one heir. He finally has one child and then another, then banishes one child and then almost offers the other as a sacrifice, making him once again almost childless. He turns to God for guidance and direction, even when he stares into the abyss of ambiguity. God points him to a sky full of stars on several occasions with hopefulness, and Abraham never doubts Him despite immense confusion. Sarah sarcastically laughs at the promise of a child past her childbearing years. She doubts. Abraham, too, laughs, but it is a different laugh. It is the laughter of joy and relief, the chuffing of optimism. Hers is the laugh of disbelief. His is the laugh of faith.

Hagar was given the same promise as Abraham, to be the progenitor of a nation, but when a simple physical obstruction stands in her way, she balks. She puts her child of promise near a bush, expecting him to die. When the angel comes to her, he opens Hagar’s eyes, and she beholds a well. The text does not say that God created a well, only that her eyes were opened, and she saw it for the first time. A solution lay right in front of her, but she lacked the ambition, the inspiration, or the faith to see it. Abraham, even when his vision was clouded, held on tightly to the promise and found the faith to surmount every obstacle until he achieved God’s word. Hagar let go too soon.

We read Hagar’s story nestled into Abraham’s on Rosh HaShana to point to our own choices within the framework of faith and trust. Do we have the faith to hold on to a vision of a better future or does that vision collapse the moment something stands in the way? How strong is our faith? How determined are we to live a life of promise?

Hagar acted as an ordinary mother would have – but she had been given an extraordinary promise. Rather than nurture it with extraordinary determination, she let it go, opting for tears of self-pity. Self-pity is an easy place to visit. Hagar did have a very difficult life. But she also received a blessing of abundance that required effort and belief. She could not see that because she was overwhelmed by her powerlessness. A well lay before her – a reservoir of blessing in the ancient Near East – but she was blind to it. And when we read how quickly Hagar gave up on a divine promise, we become more awed by the fact that Abraham never gave up despite problems much more significant than those faced by his wife’s former slave. If we could not understand why Soren Kierkegaard called Abraham a knight of faith before we read Genesis 21, we understand the philosopher now.

Sometimes we fall in love with our problems. They become us. We cannot live without the drama. We are too restless to appreciate the abundance that God has given us and instead of bowing deeply for Modim (our prayer of gratitude), we are stuck in one long Taĥanun (our supplication of lowliness). Our problems give us something to talk about and someone else to blame. We see problems recurring when a situation does not change but do not necessarily take responsibility for changing it. We do not accept our own complicit role in our problems. It was easy enough for Hagar to blame Abraham for not giving her enough water to sustain her, for sending her away, for making her a helpless player in a narrative far larger than herself. It is easy enough to sit down and cry and become so entangled in a problem that we don’t even think about how to change it. We can all do that. We blame others. We blame God. But it does not advance us. Blame was not going to save Ishmael, and it is not going to save us.

Faith demands patience in the face of a future that we cannot see and the determination to make good things happen. If we could know the future with certainty, we would not need faith. But because we cannot know, we have to trust in powers greater than ours to guide us. Our faith is not the passive faith of Hagar’s tears but the active joy of Abraham’s laugh. We admire his propulsion forward, his drive to create an ambitious, dream-worthy vision even if all of the particulars comprising that future were beyond his immediate understanding. Faith demands that we engage in a delicate dance of both relinquishing control to an authority above us and acting within our full human capacity to realize our dreams.

On Rosh HaShana we celebrate God’s kingship by acknowledging God’s authority. We recommit ourselves to being faithful servants of the king. A faithful servant does not wait for a better future but, in partnership, creates one.

Life Homework

Abraham’s faith demanded a contradictory blend of patience and impatience. Sometimes we need more patience to actualize ourselves and to make situations better. Sometimes we need impatience to achieve the same ends. We allow a situation to stay the same or fester because we do not take charge of shaping it. Wisdom demands that we know when to be patient and when to be impatient. Rosh HaShana offers us the opportunity to think about our own state of faith in the coming year.

Ask yourself:

• Where in your life do you need to be more patient? What will you do to express that patience in the future?

• Where in your life do you need to be more impatient? What will you do to express that impatience in the future?

Excerpted from Rabbi Norman Lamm’s Festivals of Faith: Reflections on the Jewish Holidays

 One of the most popular and beloved phrases in all of the mahzor is ha-yom harat olam, which we recite in response to the three times the shofar is sounded during the cantor’s repetition of the Musaf. All the congregation joins in unison in reciting it warmly, lovingly, and reverently.

Yet there is something puzzling about it. For these words mean “Today is the birthday of the world.” But what does the doctrine of the creation of the world have to do with shofar? In what way is ha-yom harat olam a reaction to the message of the shofar?

Perhaps we can understand it by referring to the only time that the words harat olam appear in the Bible—and that, in a radically different context.

The prophet Jeremiah had warned his people against engaging in treacherous power politics, and summoned them to a noble and decent ethical life lest their land be utterly destroyed. His reward for acting as a voice of conscience was that he was imprisoned, beaten, and tortured. Upon his release, he again warns of the impending doom of the nation, and, broken in body and in spirit, he utters a lament of despair which rivals in power and eloquence the greatest passages of Job. Arur ha-yom asher yulladti bo, he cries out, “Cursed be the day wherein I was born” (Jer. 20:14). If this must be my fate, if all my dedication and sacrifice must be so futile, then why was I ever brought into the world? Why did not God slay me before I was born; ve-rahmah harat olam (Jer. 20:17)—why was not my mother’s pregnancy an eternal one, so that I would never have seen the light of day!

This, then, is the meaning of harat olam in the twentieth chapter of Jeremiah— for harat means not only “birth” but, more often, the conception and carrying of the child before birth; and olam means not only “world” but “ever,” eternity. Harat olam in Jeremiah means the exact opposite of what it does in the mahzor. For the prophet, it means never being born, eternal waiting, an unending potentiality that never culminates in the creative act of birth and reality. For the prayerbook, on the contrary, it means ha-yom harat olam, today is the birth of the world, today a new world comes into being, today we make a new, creative, dynamic beginning. This is the choice that is given us as individuals, as Jews, as human beings on this birthday of the world. Each of us possesses wonderful native abilities and marvelous inner resources. Either we can opt for Jeremiah’s harat olam, remaining forever with our greatest human treasures locked up within our hearts and never brought to fruition, like a child prodigy for whom a brilliant future is foretold but who never manages to translate his genius into real achievement, or we can joyously proclaim ha-yom harat olam, that today we shall express those capacities into reality, for today we shall fulfill ourselves by giving birth to a new and fascinating world.

And it is this, in truth, which is the response to the challenge of the shofar. For the shofar was once also a call for the liberation of slaves. Our tradition considers the words shofar teru‘ah to be related to the word tero‘em, and thus meaning “the shofar’s call to break the chains and release the slaves” (Zohar, Pinehas). The shofar summons us to break the bonds of habit and indifference that keep our vast treasures locked up and our repositories of goodness and faith impounded within us, to transform the eternal waiting of Jeremiah’s harat olam into the living immediacy of the mahzor’s ha-yom harat olam. It is the call to release and emancipate our talents, our abilities, our greatness.

This year has been a historic one for the Negroes of our country. They have heard and responded to their shofar call. They have taken the decisive step from unrealized potential to a new and exhilarating reality. For the past hundred years, since the Emancipation Proclamation, all the vast talent of this great community has gone to waste. Who knows how many potential Einsteins and Oppenheimers, or George Washington Carvers or Ralph Bunches, may have been born, lived, and died unexpressed and undeveloped during this long and dark period of harat olam, of frustrated gestation of genius, of immense human riches always in the state of possibility and yet always coming to naught? This year, the community has decided to transform that possibility into actuality. They have announced to America: ha-yom harat olam, today we create a new society of dignity and honor, and even if we must lose lives of our innocent children, we shall break out of our stupor and enable our people to make their contributions to this land as freemen and the equals of all others.

I submit to you that what the Negroes have done politically, we Jews must this year do religiously. As the Divine Judge scrutinizes the records of each of us, I surmise that He will not find too many overtly evil acts that we have committed. For the major part, we shall have to answer for sins of omission. Le-bohen levavot be-yom din, le-goleh amukkot ba-din—on this Judgment Day, God uncovers the depths of our hearts and souls and castigates us for the inner goodness of which we were capable but never brought ourselves to express; the holiness that we could have brought to our society but somehow did not; the Word of God that struggled for release from within us but which we allowed to be silenced in the Jeremian harat olam.

For indeed, it is a fundamental teaching of Judaism that religion and faith are not something that need to be superimposed upon man from without, but already exist in the Jew as part of his nature and native character. The author of the Tanya spoke not only for Hasidism but for all of Judaism when he declared that each of us possesses an ahavah mesuteret she-hi ahavah ha-tiv‘it, a concealed and natural love of God that strives for liberation and release (Likkutei Amarim, 12). The greatest talent of the Jew is his religion, his Torah.

It is an article of faith with us that in the deepest levels of the self there is a core of purity, of goodness. Beneath the cynicism lies an uncorrupted idealism; beneath the layer of envy, gems of generosity; beneath the crude will for power, the noble desire to serve; beyond the doubt and confusion, certitude and faith; within the disillusioned adult, a precious, hopeful, bright-eyed child; within the hard-boiled shell beats a soft and warm human heart.

Psychoanalysis has taught us that we hardly know what is going on in our minds. Judaism teaches us that we are usually unaware of the treasures we possess in the soul and the heart. Psychotherapy attempts to make us reveal to ourselves the subconscious. The shofar tries to make us reveal the subconscience. Ha-yom harat olam, today, Rosh Hashanah, we must give birth to that wonderful world of Jewishness within us.

Is not all of education, in its deepest sense, the attempt to bring out inner talents rather than just putt in external information? Do we not, as parents, constantly observe our children, looking for any creative abilities that we can help them develop? We notice a daughter who shows a slight flair for music— so we run to give her piano lessons, voice lessons, ballet lessons. A son demonstrates a knack for science; we buy books for him, enroll him in an electronics club, have him tested, purchase all kinds of equipment. And that is as it should be. Now Judaism teaches us that each and every child has an enormous gift for ahavat Hashem, a genius for loving Torah, for devotion to his people, for Jewish honor and dignity, a faculty for Jewish steadfastness. Shall we allow these rich endowments of their Jewish hearts to be abused by neglect, to die of malnutrition, to remain harat olam, eternally pregnant with the possibilities of Jewish greatness but never realized in real life? Or shall we assist them in expressing these magnificent creative abilities of the spirit? Ha-yom harat olam. Let us give them a Rosh Hashanah of a new life. Ma‘aleh ani aleikhem ke-illu nivretem beri’ah hadashah, “I consider it as if you were reborn” (Yerushalmi, Rosh ha- Shanah 4:8).

There is something remarkable about the third of the three major sections of the Musaf, that of shofarot. It begins by relating how God, as it were, blew the shofar; the call of the ram’s horn came from heaven. And it concludes on a quite different note: Barukh attah Hashem shomea kol teru‘at ammo Yisra’el be-rahamim, “Blessed art Thou, O Lord, who heareth the sound of the shofar by His people Israel in love.” Why the change?

It is, I suggest, because shofar always accompanies revelation, for revelation too is liberation—from concealment and hiding. In the beginning, the mahzor tells us that the shofar recalls the revelation of God at Mount Sinai, when He gave us the Torah, and that that event was accompanied by the sound of the shofar. Attah nigleita ba-anan kevodekha, “Thou didst reveal Thyself in a cloud of glory”; hence u-be-kol shofar aleihem hofata, “Amidst the blasting of the shofar didst Thou appear to them.” When God emerged from within Himself, from His mysterious concealment which man could never penetrate, when He revealed His glory to Israel through the Torah, the shofar sounded. And therefore it was not man who blew the shofar, but God Himself who, as it were, was the ba‘al tokea.

But now, on Rosh Hashanah, it is we humans who sound the shofar; He is merely shomea kol teru‘at ammo Yisra’el, He listens to our shofar. And when we sound the shofar, then it is we who must reveal ourselves. That is what God tells us: Just as I revealed Myself to the sound of the shofar, so, now that you blow the shofar, it is up to you, O man, to reveal yourself! Let the call of shofar awaken your real, inner self, and reveal it for all the world to see. Let the shofar inspire you to tremble and to shake off the skin of sloth and cynicism and apathy which imprisons your idealism and spirituality, and let them emerge and stand revealed before your own unbelieving eyes! O Jew, attah nigleita, now you reveal your real self!

Never underestimate the Jewish heart. It is filled to the brim with sacred idealism. Never discount the pintele Yid—it is as alive as ever. We have all experienced at one time or another the wish that we could burst out in fervent, heartfelt prayer with kavvanah and hitlahavut and passion. Well, we can do it! According to Rav Kook, the soul is always in a state of prayer—tefillah hamatmedet shel ha-neshamah (Olat Re’iyyah, I:11). Shofar tells you to reveal that golden ability—ha-yom, today!—and offer your very heart as a gift to God.

What Jew does not possess the marvelous quality of hesed, of kindness and generosity and pity? You see a poor man stretching out his hand, and your heart instinctively moves you to help him. But then the other, external self intervenes, and you rationalize: he’s probably insincere, he may be secretly wealthier than I. And so we silence our inner hesed and keep it in never-ending waitfulness, Jeremiah’s harat olam. But shofar says ha-yom harat olam, today determine that you will be reborn, that you will give expression to those talents for goodness, and never, never turn down any request for help, for charity!

We each possess the precious quality of ahavat Yisra’el, love for our fellow Jews. During the difficult years of the founding of the State of Israel and its early struggle for survival, even the most alienated Jews showed the intensity of their ahavat Yisra’el. Yet today, we are in danger of keeping it locked up within us. If there is anything that shofar demands of us today, it is to wake up to our responsibilities to our fellow Jews in Russia. We dare not repeat the tragic error of our relative passivity during the Nazi destruction of our people. Why can we not assemble 200,000 people in a march on Washington? Why should we not storm the capital of every Western country to protest the oppression of Russian Jews, so many of whom this day risk person and reputation and livelihood to go to shul! Let us reveal our ahavat Yisra’el by resolving that we shall not rest until we have secured their civil and religious rights.

There is so much good in us that remains concealed, unborn within us, that shofar calls upon us to release. We are capable of deeper love for husband or wife, instead of the superficial sentiments that characterize domestic life today. We have a sense of loyalty, a knowledge that we should do more for and in the synagogue throughout the year instead of remaining strangers, alienated except for the High Holidays. We have quick, alert minds, curious intellects that we could and should use for studying Torah, attending a lecture, thinking of more serious matters. We each of us have a whole spiritual dimension that strives for birth into the real world of our personalities.

When the shofar sounds, let it become the prelude to a dramatic, momentous occasion in our lives. Let it challenge us to reveal ourselves, to break the chains of indifference and release the powers of holiness, of kedushah, that strain for emergence and birth. Ha-yom harat olam. Let us re-create ourselves, let us assist at the birth of a new spirit in the family, a new Jewish community, a new world!

Alah Elokim bi-teru‘ah, Hashem be-kol shofar (Ps. 47:6). With the sounding of the shofar, let the Godly and the Divine within us emerge to new life, to new hope, to new heights.

Excerpted from Erica Brown’s Return: Daily Inspiration for the Days of Awe

Day Three: Discipline

“For the sin we committed before You by eating and drinking.”

In the “Al Het” sin list we read multiple times over Yom Kippur, the appearance of a confession about eating and drinking seems odd; it feels prosaic and trivial next to unwarranted hatred or speaking ill of others. It takes physical strength to fast; it takes mental determination to quell physical desire. To have that determination, you need to know what you’re fasting for and why.

Tzom Gedalia, the fast of Gedalia, always follows Rosh HaShana. Most people are relieved for the break from food but do not necessarily understand why we observe this fast or what its significance is. In the annual words of my grandmother: “Who’s Gedalia, anyway?” So who is Gedalia, anyway, and why is this day significant?

Gedalia was a procurator of Judah, assigned by King Nebuchadnezzar to govern the remaining Jews in Israel after the exile. Nebuchadnezzar decimated our nation and then banished the remaining residents from their land after destroying the Temple; those few who stayed became a straggling remnant of a lost nation. This is recounted in the book of ii Kings: “Thus, Judah was exiled from its land. King Nebuchadnezzar of Babylon put Gedalia, son of Aĥikam son of Shaphan, in charge of the people whom he left in the land of Judah” (25:21–22). There was a great deal of anxiety about the treatment of this remnant, but Gedalia reassured a group of questioning officers that if the residents stayed in the land and followed the Babylonian authorities, “It will go well with you” (25:24). Seven months later, a day which some believe was actually Rosh HaShana, Ishmael ben Nethania – one of the officers who had initially approached Gedalia and who was himself of royal descent – came with ten men and murdered Gedalia and those with him. The rest of the people left Judah for Egypt, fearing the worst.

The story is recounted in greater detail in Jeremiah 41. The day after Gedalia was killed, when no one yet knew, a group of eighty men from the area came to see him, their garments torn and their bodies gashed. They were vulnerable and beaten, but they still came bearing offerings for the Temple, gifts that would never be given. The murderer Ishmael invited them into the town to see Gedalia and then slaughtered them and threw their bodies into a cistern. Ishmael then carried any remaining stragglers off in the direction of Ammon. A warrior, Johanan ben Karea, who set out to kill Ishmael, intervened and took the rest of the people to Egypt for protection. Ishmael got away. The rabbis declared a fast day to mourn not only the death of Gedalia but the death, in many ways, of the few remaining Jews in the land of Israel, killed essentially by their own, the worst possible way to end the enduring presence of the Jews in their homeland. The destruction of even one righteous person, they believed, was the equivalent of the destruction of the House of God.1 We fast for one – the destruction of the Temple; we must fast for the other – the destruction of a human life that represented the end of Jewish life in the land of Israel at the time. The fast is mentioned in the book of Zechariah with the climax at the end of the verse: “You must love honesty and integrity.”(8:19)

We mourn a righteous leader by fasting, but the fast is also intended to mourn the absence of Jews in the land of Israel long ago. Even when the Temple was destroyed, there was still a population of Jews inhabiting the land. After the exile, that population dwindled. But no Jews remained in their land after the murder of Gedalia. The fast offers us the opportunity, at a time of personal reflection, to think about collective losses of identity and how often we hurt ourselves more than outsiders ever could. Ishmael’s weakness made us all ultimately vulnerable.

We know the saying well. Ethics of the Fathers asks, “Who is strong?” and replies, “One who conquers his desires” (4:1). When we discipline ourselves to achieve our deepest goals, we have mastery over desire instead of its having mastery over us. Acting on impulse and the momentary need for gratification can unravel our best long-term personal objectives into a moral mess that is hard to clean up. It is not easy to face the consequences of our actions, particularly our transgressions. It takes emotional strength and resilience to face the worst of ourselves and improve our attitude and behavior without being overwhelmed by sadness or paralyzed by depression: “I just can’t do it.” And when we articulate those words, we really believe them. We have convinced ourselves that we have no willpower. We are weak, not strong. Personal weaknesses so often appear on a plate. Some commentaries on the Al Het list point to specific religious breaches connected to food. We eat without saying the appropriate blessings before and afterwards. We eat food that we shouldn’t, sneaking a taste of something prohibited for a kosher-only crowd. “I’m a bad Jew,” we might hear from someone who keeps kosher at home but loves a BLT on the road.

We can even get more talmudic and turn to a passage that suggests we are judged by the company we keep. A scholar, the Talmud recommends, should eat only with the wise, lest meals devolve into ribaldry and inappropriate trivialities, and lest others witness the scholar potentially compromising himself. On a similar note, Ethics of the Fathers advises that every meal involving three people be accompanied by a teaching moment to sanctify the food, a dvar Torah. We may confess on Yom Kippur for failing to make an ordinary meal into a time of shared study; we rushed a Shabbat meal to get a nap and did not sanctify that meal by sharing Torah. For that we confess.

And yet, despite all of the potential spiritual infractions possibly hinted at in this confession, there is another larger and looming question: am I eating and drinking the way that I should, the way that optimizes my health and minimizes any addictions or bad habits born of years of socialized behavior? We adopt food-related behaviors very early and may spend a lifetime fighting them or resigning ourselves to them but never quite relinquishing the residual emotional impact that this tension presents. Food is rarely an emotionally neutral subject, and when we speak about it in a prayer for self-improvement we understand that it is part of a larger conversation about self-discipline and achieving objectives incrementally, objectives that must be secured and maintained day after day after day.

Excerpted from Erica Brown’s Return: Daily Inspiration for the Days of Awe, co-published by OU Press and Maggid Books

Day Nine: Honesty

“For the sin we committed before You with verbal confession.”

We are always apologizing. New research contends that most of us apologize about four times a week. We say sorry all of the time. Reading the findings might lead us to believe that as people we are honest, generally contrite, humble, able to confront our mistakes and also take accountability for them – until you read further; we actually apologize 22 percent more to strangers than to romantic partners and family.

And, contrary to popular opinion, men will apologize just as often as women if they feel they’ve done something wrong. Therein lies the discrepancy. Women tend to believe that they’ve done something wrong more often than men. Women also tend to get offended more easily than men. This means that women both say they’re sorry and also need others to forgive them more often than men. In one study, 120 subjects imagined committing offenses, from being rude to a friend to inconveniencing another person they live with; researchers discovered that men apologized less frequently than women. The researchers concluded that men had a higher threshold for what they found offensive. “We don’t think that women are too sensitive or that men are insensitive,” says Karina Schumann, one of the study’s authors. “We just know that women are more sensitive.”

This new research on the act of saying sorry also deals with the content of apologies and what people need to hear in order to grant sincere forgiveness. A “comprehensive” apology is more likely to win forgiveness, researchers say. According to a study conducted by the University of Waterloo, comprehensive apologies consist of eight elements:

• Remorse

• Acceptance of responsibility

• Admission of wrongdoing

• Acknowledgment of harm

• Promise to behave better

• Request for forgiveness

• Offer of repair

• Explanation

If any piece of this process is absent, it could compromise the acceptance of an apology. Sorry alone is not enough. Sorry without regret or admission of wrongdoing will not change the future. We may think that most people who hear us apologize do not want an explanation. “Just say sorry. I don’t need to know why you did it.” But what we are learning is that sorry without an explanation can leave the recipient feeling empty and unsatisfied. Sometimes when people hurt us, even inadvertently, they become an enigma to us. It can be hard to understand how and why someone acts differently than we would, especially when it comes to shameful, hurtful, or offensive behavior.

For this reason, the act of confession forces us to be more honest with ourselves before we apologize. This season requires difficult self-confrontation. We read words that may or may not force us to revisit the darker sides of self in search of clarity or to rebuild a relationship. By externalizing the words in confession, we begin to hear them differently and get insight into how someone else might hear and receive our words of forgiveness.

The language of confession we use in our prayerbooks is excerpted in part from the book of Daniel. Daniel realized that his people were suffering and that he had failed to be as brutally honest as necessary in his leadership:

I turned my face to the Lord God, devoting myself to prayer and supplication, in fasting, in sackcloth and ashes. I prayed to the Lord my God, making confession thus: “O Lord, great and awesome God, who stays faithful to His covenant with those who love Him and keep His commandments! We have sinned; we have gone astray, we have acted wickedly; we have been rebellious and have deviated from Your commandments and Your rules, and have not obeyed Your servants the prophets who spoke in Your name to our kings, our officers, our fathers, and all the people of the land. (Daniel 9:3–6)

While the English may feel foreign, Daniel’s Hebrew is painfully familiar:

חטאנו ועוינו הרשענו ומרדנו; וסור ממצותך, וממשפטיך.

This is the language that jumps off the pages of the mahzor, our High Holiday prayerbook, and into our most vulnerable places. It is the language of confession, and it is thousands of years old. Maimonides writes that confession is an elemental aspect of repentance, and repentance cannot be complete without it. Why not?

Confession is another word for naming. Instead of a personal problem resting in the cloud of words not articulated, confession forces us to put a name on an issue. Often naming a problem creates a path out of the problem. Those struggling with addiction in one of its many forms often cannot confess to the problem. The minute they can finally name it, they can begin to solve it. Without a name, a problem will never be properly addressed. Without confession, there is no redemption. Rabbi Kook wrote that repentance actually begins the moment we commit a sin if we have an awareness of sin; the very recognition of an act of wrongdoing precipitates the beginning of teshuva, the road back to the self that is the emotionally and spiritually desired self.

Confession is a loaded English word that is not necessarily an accurate translation of the Hebrew word vidui. Naming, recognition, or acknowledgment may be more apt. In Deuteronomy, when Moses prepared the Israelites to enter the Promised Land, he told them that when they harvested their first fruits, they had to bring a basket of them to the Temple along with a verbal confession that begins with a brief history of our people. The history includes our most ancient ancestors, our servitude in Egypt, and the Exodus, and then finally our arrival in Israel and our new bounty. The food was to be left with God and then the person who brought it was to rejoice and “enjoy all the bounty that the Lord your God has bestowed upon you and your household” (26:11). This was a time of joy, not confession in its traditional, more oppressive sense. There is no confession of sin in this acknowledgment; merely a recognition, a naming, of all that has led up to this particular moment of gratitude. It is basket happiness – our joy is contained in something concrete that we are able to share with others.

The vidui bikurim, the name of this verbal offering, does review swaths of painful history. It mentions tribulations not worth repeating. And yet, each of those experiences must be mentioned because each went into the production and growth of every piece of fruit, as does every famine, rainfall, tragedy, and celebration. The pilgrimage would not have the same meaning, or the joy the same richness, if it all came easily. Confession helps us name all the parts of a process that lead up to a particular outcome.

Maimonides praised those who confessed in public, who had the courage to denounce personal wrongdoing to others. This was regarded as a higher level of commitment to teshuva precisely because exposing our weaknesses forces others to become witnesses to our transformation. But Maimonides also made a distinction between public confession of sins between human beings and sins between a person and God. In the latter category, he writes: “But sins between man and God should not be made public, and he is brazen-faced if he does so.” Public confession assumes a greater level of honesty unless it is about a public performance. No sincerity required. When confession acts as false piety it fails the lie detector test.

In his master work, On Repentance, Rabbi Joseph Soloveitchik pondered Maimonides’ distinction between God and fellow humans: “At times, a man may confess and declare his sins as a means of winning public approval, so that others will admire him and say, ‘what a righteous man he is!’…What the public thinks of him cannot matter when he stands ‘before God, blessed be He.’” If honesty is what we are ultimately seeking, then confession can be confession only if it provokes truth, not if it masks lies.

Facing the truth rather than masking a lie takes us to the bed of a virile King David, crippled by the news that the child born of his illicit relationship with Bathsheba was ill to the point of death. The chapter that relays the narrative begins with the ominous words: “But the Lord was displeased with what David had done” (ii Samuel 12:1). Nathan the prophet offered David a parable to help the king understand how wrong his affair with Bathsheba had been, a tale of sordid adultery, murder, and deception. Through the subtlety of Nathan’s parable, David was able to loosen his defenses and confess: “I stand guilty before the Lord” (12:13). David was able to hear Nathan because the prophet’s creative framework did not let David escape from confrontation with sin. Nathan added another dimension to his chastisement. He helped this confused king understand that he had overreached, that he had been blessed with so much that his greedy desire for this woman should have been curbed by his already overflowing bounty. Nathan expressed it as if from God’s very mouth:

It was I who anointed you king over Israel and it was I who rescued you from the hand of Saul. I gave you your master’s house and possession of your master’s wives; and I gave you the house of Israel and Judah and if that were not enough, I would give you twice as much. Why then have you flouted the command of the Lord and done what displeases Him? (12:7–9)

God gave David everything: power, prestige, and intelligence. Did David not have enough that he needed more, another man’s wife? Since David arranged for Uriah, Bathsheba’s husband, to be killed by the sword, he would suffer the sword’s ugliest wounds himself: “Therefore the sword shall never depart from your house…. I will make a calamity rise against you from within your own house” (12:10–11).

God’s words implied a military upheaval in the future, but God made no mention of the battlefield, the place of David’s many successes. David had approached Goliath with stones; his physical strength and military acumen were well-known by this point in his story. The battles David could not win were those that touched his own home life.

Nathan pronounced the punishment: “The child about to be born to you shall die” (12:14). After Nathan left the royal palace, the child became critically ill. David prayed and fasted. His servants tried to feed him, but he refused. A week after Nathan left, the child died, but David’s servants were too afraid to tell him. Since David had not listened to their adjurations to eat, they were certain he would not accept the bad news, that he would do something terrible. They were wrong. David saw the servants speaking in whispers to each other and then he understood what had happened. He forced them to be honest:

“Is the child dead?”

“Yes.”

We hear the anguish of the question and the anguish of the answer. There was no room for grey. Honesty stood starkly and painfully alone.

David washed and changed his clothes, went to pray, and then asked for a meal. The servants were again confused. How was it that their king rejected all food when this infant was sick but once the child died, he was able to eat? David responded with clarity. When the child was ill, perhaps there was still some small hope for compassion. But once the boy was dead, David knew that he had to face the brutal truth: “Now that the child is dead, why should I fast? Can I bring him back again? I shall go to him, but he shall never come back to me” (12:23).

The truth hurts. It hurts more than any lie we could tell ourselves. But the truth is not going away.

King Solomon saw this stubborn tendency when he finished building the First Temple and contemplated whether or not God could ever be limited to any space. King Solomon understood the function that the building might one day have far into the future, describing life not in the land of Israel but in the Diaspora at the hand of enemies. The Temple would then have a different function; it would become a holy space, only aspirational in nature, precisely because the pattern of sin and forgiveness is predictable:

When they sin against You – for there is no man who does not sin – and You are angry with them and deliver them to the enemy, and their captors carry them off to an enemy land, near or far, and they take it to heart in the land to which they have been carried off, and they repent and make supplication to You in the land of their captors, saying: “We have sinned, we have acted perversely, we have acted wickedly,” and they turn back to You with all their heart and soul, in the land of the enemies who have carried them off, and they pray to You in the direction of their land which You gave to their fathers, of the city which You have chosen, and of the house which I have built to Your name – give heed in Your heavenly abode to their prayer and supplication, uphold their cause, and pardon Your people who have sinned against You for all the transgressions that they have committed against You. Grant them mercy. (I Kings 8:46–50)

We turn our hearts away. We sin. We suffer. We turn our hearts towards. God hears. God redeems. We turn our hearts away…. King Solomon offers an ancient theological equivalent of “lather, rinse, repeat.” It happened before. It will happen again. And again.

As a result, we often hear an apology and judge it as insincere or simply false. It does not sound like the truth. After all, we apologize for a lot of reasons that have nothing to do with the truth: to get out of trouble, because it is expected, to end an argument, out of politeness, to repair a relationship, to move on. These are all valid reasons but are not honest responses; when we apologize for any of these reasons, we are not necessarily engaging in a serious reckoning on a specific problem. Just watch the way people ask for forgiveness in Jewish settings about this time of the year. I distinctly remember in high school the day before Yom Kippur, we would walk down the halls asking anyone and everyone for mehila, for forgiveness, with spitfire speed but with hardly a moment for any authentic response. We never anticipated someone turning around and saying, “Actually, you really hurt me this past year.” We waited for the hasty “yes” and for the question to be reciprocated at a fast enough pace to allow us to move on to someone else. The apology is regarded as the formal pass that lets us continue or progress. It’s not about process; it’s about a shallow fulfillment of a legal requirement. It’s not about truth; it’s about peace.