Monthly Archives: October 2014

The First Rashi

23 Thursday Oct 2014

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Rashi [Bereshit 1:1] notes — in the name of ‘Rabbi Yitzchak’ — that it would have been logical for the Torah to begin with the first Commandment “This month for you is the beginning of months” [Shmot 12:2]. Why then does the Torah begin with the story of Creation?

The Torah began with the story of Creation because it wished to convey the message of the verse “The power of His acts He told to His people, in order to give them the estate of nations” [Tehillim 111:6]. If the nations of the world will say to Israel ‘You are bandits for you conquered the lands of the seven nations who inhabited Canaan’, Israel will respond that the whole world belongs to G-d. He created it and He gave it to whoever was proper in his eyes. By His wish He gave it to them and by His wish He took it from them and gave it to us. These are the words of Rashi.

Rashi’s first point is that since the Torah is meant primarily to teach laws, it should have started with the first law in the Torah.  But why doesn’t Rashi propose that it start with the more central laws of the Torah, like for example the ten commandments?  One answer would be that Rashi is simply choosing the place where a law first appears in the Torah, and that law happens to be the law prescribing the sanctification of the new moon, kiddush hahodesh. Or perhaps this law is chosen because it shows the central place of the Jew in the law, for it is the Jew, the Sanhedrin that proclaims the new month and hence the calendar. There cannot be a calendar without the Jews creating it and therefore all the holidays are dependent on man. Man and God are partners in Torah.  But there is a still deeper connection to the law of Kiddush HaHodesh.

In the story of the creation of the moon it is written: There shall be lights in the heavenly sky to divide between day and night. They shall serve as signs [to define] festivals, days and years. (1:14) So we see that particularly, the moon and the sun were destined from inception to be observed and used as holiday markers by the Jews.  Creation itself was built for the halachic use of the Jew. Rashi’s thought is that the Torah should start with the application of halachic to creation. But this would imply that creation’s only value is for the use of man.  But creation has an intrinsic value for God. And so Rashi explains that creation is a manifestation of God’s strength (Psalms 111:6). And that is independent of the Jews particular needs. Furthermore, God gave the Land of Israel to another nation before he gave it to Jews. Jews are not the sole focus of creation.

God’s world is a fact.  It is the choice of the Jews and the Gentiles whether they will participate in God’s plan.  There are no guarantees for us. But the world is constant. To quote George Carlin, “The world doesn’t need saving, we need saving.”

One Judge is Better than Three – Talmud Sanhedrin 5a

22 Wednesday Oct 2014

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TB Sanhedrin 5a brings that one expert can be a judge in monetary cases and that he is equivalent to a normal court of 3.  The Talmud then questions whether the expert also needs to be authorized by the rabbinical establishment for his decisions to be considered final. (The gemara assumes that de facto anyone can deliver a judgement, but if he was not allowed to, de jure, then if he errs, the decision can be cancelled.)  It is proven that his decisions are final even where he has not be granted authority, assuming he is an expert, from the case where a expert who erred was told to personally pay the defendant back his money.  Since the decision was not simply cancelled and the plaintiff not made to return the money, we learn that an expert’s decisions are in fact final, even where he has no official authority.  Were he to have authority, he would also not be required to personally pay the defendant.

Tosfot  (ד”ה מומחה) compare our sugia to a passage on page 23a which starts off by rebuffing Rabbi Meir, and telling him that a litigant cannot reject a judge that is an expert, implying that Rabbi Meir believes you can reject such an expert judge. The Gemara then corrects the statement to be merely telling Rabbi Meir that you cannot reject a judge who was given the status of expert without being an expert.  Rabbi Meir then only differs in holding that such a non-expert expert can be rejected, but all agree that a true expert cannot be rejected.   Tosfot point out that the sugia there (23a) does not mean to imply you must have experts on every court.  This seems obvious to me.  Then Tosfot say that in fact, even average people, once they are composing a court of 3, will, for the purposes of that court, be considered experts, even without being extremely learned. We might object to Tosfot, if every court is considered to be composed of experts, as Tosfot say, then how can the gemara on 23a state that expert judges cannot be rejected? They are all always experts!  Rather, when they are still being appointed to the court, they are not yet experts and so can be rejected, but not after they are sitting. Tosfot are bolstering the court and denying the possibility of invalidating judges once they have been composed into a sitting court, Aside from reconciling the sugia on 23a, we can say that tosfot have broaden the definition of expert so that all courts will have the same validity and cannot be invalidated after the fact.

Tosfot (ד”ה דן אפילו יחידי) demonstrate that the discussion of what or who makes a court is really a question of making a court that can force people to appear before it (and presumably, force them to comply with its decisions). For if the litigants all consent to be judged by a man, even an average man, then his decision is binding on them (assuming the judge pronounces a correct judgement). Tosfot therefore conclude that a single expert or a court of 3 average people can force litigants to court. Interestingly, the court of 3 average people is compare to a single expert, not the reverse, thereby implying that a single expert as judge is the primary law (an interesting inversion). Shmuel’s case of a court of 2 (non experts) that are called “presumptuous” can likewise force litigants.  And the case of זבל”א on 23a is where 2 judges exist and the third one is voluntarily chosen by (in one opinion) the litigants. If the litigant can choose judges, doesn’t that mean the litigant must be there voluntarily? Couldn’t he choose not to be there just the same? To this Tosfot answer that he can choose only who will judge him, but he cannot choose to no come to any court.

Pirke Avot advises not to judge alone because you might err.  So how could Rav Nachman and Rav Hiya say they judge alone?  Tosfot (כגון אנא) answer, they are only saying they are capable of judging, but don’t actually judge alone.  Alternatively, they do judge alone, but because they are constantly involved in judgments, they won’t err.  This gives us a new category, a well practiced expert.

Rashi holds that an expert דלא נקיט רשותא who errs must pay if the litigants asked him to judge them “according to the Torah law” if they didn’t accept upon themselves possible errors in judgment. Tosfot (ואי לא) argue from the gemara דן את הדין on 6a that this law would apply even to one who is not an expert (even according to rashi there). Tosfot say that the teaching here is that since this is a case of an expert judge, even where the litigants did not agree to the judge at all, if he errs, the judge must pay the defendant and his judgement cannot be reversed.  Were the judge also to have נקיט רשותא it would have saved him from having to pay. Rashi was only able to explain the necessity for the judge to repay by the litigants’ request for the judge to apply correct Torah law which the judge failed to do. If they had not accepted the judge at all, where an error has occurred, the judgment would be nullified. Tosfot instead have granted even a non-authorized expert the ability to force the litigants to court and therefore they do not need this to be a case of acceptance (based on Tosfot ד”ה דן אפילו יחידי ). What prevents Rashi from accepting tosfot’s explanation? Does Rashi hold that an expert can force, but only if he produces the correct judgment?  Otherwise an expert’s forcing does not count? It is a strange mix for rashi to agree to the forcing (assuming he does) yet invalidate the din when the judge erred. But we find a precedent for this kind of rule in the law that a man can execute his own judgment if he knows he is right (עביד איניש דינא לנפשיה) BT BK 27b

יש לאדם לעשות דין לעצמו אם יש בידו כח, הואיל וכדת וכהלכה הוא עושה – אינו חייב לטרוח ולבוא לבית דין, אף על פי שלא היה שם הפסד בנכסיו אילו נתאחר ובא לבית דין, לפיכך אם קבל עליו בעל דינו והביאו לבית דין ודרשו ומצאו שעשה כהלכה ודין אמת דן לעצמו – אין סותרין את דינו

(משנה תורה, הלכות סנהדרין, פרק ב’, י”ב)

Tosfot ask if Bavel rabbinic authorization is valid in Israel, but not the reverse, implying Bavel is more authoritative, doesn’t that contradict Pesachim 51a that Bavel is said to be subsidiary to Israel regarding customs?  See also 24a here. Tosfot answer that although the Rabbis of Israel are more learned and they are to be followed in some matters, regarding money matters, Bavel has more authority, because Bavel’s authority derives from the sons of David, not the daughters.  Other Rishonim say the authority is from the the secular powers that grant more power in Bavel.  The gemara in Pesachim is convoluted, for it allows Bavel to have a different custom from Israel because Bavel is subsidiary to Israel.  But if that is the case, then Bavel should change to be in accord with Israel.  Why doesn’t it. Apparently they are independent of each other.

Tosfot (נקיטנא) explain that there are two systems of authority: regular authorization from the leaders of Bavel or E. Israel and personal smicha from a rabbi who himself has received smicha. Tosfot then propose that possibly where there is a chief rabbi of a city, only he is allowed to give smicha.

Yitz Greenburg on Sukkot and Covenantial Responsibility

06 Monday Oct 2014

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Here is what I heard from Rabbi Yitz Greenburg today:

In the Guide for the Perplexed III 32 (see also III 24) Maimonides discusses Exodus 13:17. There God says he will take the Jewish people to Israel in an indirect route. Maimonides says this is to improve the nation and transform them from a slaves into brave soldiers capable of conquering the Philistines.

Rabbi Greenburg asks, God could have changed the nature of Jews or He could have changed the Philistines to be weaker.  In short, He could have achieved the goal of getting the Jewish people into the Land of Israel through miraculous means.

But God’s way is to give people what they need now, not coercing them but having them grow and internalize values.

This is central model of Judaism.  It carries over not just from desert to Israel but from Egypt to Israel. Coming to Israel the Jews faced the challenge of creating a society based on common values, justice, equality, and of covenantial responsibility. This is the journey we are on: to evolve toward this society through our own action and through our self-transformation.  That went on for a 1000 years, then they were exiled, then again they came back.  And is some way the they succeeded in that they survived, but they didn’t transform the world.  And this journey continues from ancient times to medieval times, to modern, to post modern times. And at each step in this journey we need to refine our society and bring it closer to that ideal state we seek.  And now we again have challenge of power.

Journey requires maturation.  And it must be over the course of generations.  One generation change leads to Stalinism, a non multi-party system, coercion, violence. And you get a society that is supposedly living by this ideal standard, but it is full of coercion and injustice.  So too today where people try to create an ideal Jihad based society overnight. You end up with a not perfect society, but one with a lot of killing and oppression. The price we need to pay for the slow transformation is to give legitimacy to the opposition.  So the journey is to deal with reality and to transform over time.  This is what the halacha is doing, the next best thing to the ideal, not total equality, but using taxes and tzadakka and shmitah to bring society closer to equality.

The Torah ideal is veganism. I Gan Eden (Gen. 1:29) even the animals are vegetarian, there is no predation. But we are not in that ideal state today, we need to compromise with real world, so the halacha allows only certain animals, a very limited number of species, killing is swift, can’t eat blood, i.e. I acknowledge that I don’t own the animal’s life, its blood,. No milk with meat to recognize that life and death is are in opposition, there is a penalty of eating meat, you must wait 6 hours to have milk.

In the real world, women are bought and sold.  There is a covenantial change. Look at Exodus 21.  It limits slavery:  6 year limit, and six day limit (on the sabbath slave are freed from work). Regarding women, only a father can sell his daughter, a stranger cannot, this prevents trafficking in women.  If the buyer doesn’t marry her, she is free, again this prevents trafficking.  But another covenantial step was taken regarding slavery, the Rabbis added restriction of hours, and comforts. They removed economic incentives.  The Rabbinic ketubah guarantees money in case of divorce. How does married life look if woman is afraid to be kicked out and destitute? The ketubah creates and equal relationship in the marriage.  This is the rabbinic role. Tikkun Olam

Best guarantee for a good loving marriage is a communal property law! So the rabbis pushed things toward a more ideal state.

But, if you can’t get there, so what to do? You have children, or teach other people’s children.  You pass on the covenantial responsibility. You convince the next generation to take on the task.

Devarim 29:  Losing Moses is a crisis. Nitzavim lists from the elite to the marginal member of the nation. They are entering the covenant. Covenant is not a one time event. “But with those who are not with us here this day.”  i.e. us! Not that our souls were really there back then but that we need to make the covenant now again in this generation. The verse is not saying that we were actually there, but that we can be there again now by reaffirming this covenant in this, the next generation. And by passing it on.

Kaddish, God’s kingdom will be established, that is universal equality.  So kaddish is a summery of all Judaism. The journey toward the ideal society. But why is it a prayer for the dead.  In my life I expected to complete the task.  But I didn’t. My life was a failure.  It was all useless.  But the answer is, no, it was not a failure if first of all I did as much as I could to move us toward goal, but also if I found someone to continue the task.  The one saying the kaddish is my continuation. He has taken up the mantle of covenantial responsibility. That my be my son or my student. Believing that I have to complete the journey means I am saying those others out there are jerks and won’t do it.  Have some trust in others, you are not the only one who has a vision of a better world. Depend on them, even on the future people you have never met. Respect other people’s capacities.  Covenant, the task, is open to future generations.

Joshua 24: My neighbors are saying that the only way to get a good crop is the worship Baal.  Maybe they do get better crops, I am tempted.  So Joshua recounts Jewish history. This is the journey. Verse 13: You inherited towns, you relied on the previous generation.  Now you must chose to take on the covenant.  Make a choice. Continue work of your predecessors.

Skip 800 years forward.  Coming back from the Exile in Babylon, the nation celebrated sukkot, Nehemia 9:6. Why does Nehemia open with ‘God created all’? To embrace the entire story, not just the Jewish people, but all of creation. The human being is seen as a partner with God.  We will complete the ideal started in create.  We are part of humanities journey, and we have our own journey as well.

Nehemia 10:32, God never gave up on us, now write down covenant.  And all signed it.  Sense the journey journey. I as a Jew experience that I am carrying on a journey, the rituals are not the goal, but are signs of a covenantial life.  I am doing my stretch of the journey. I am carrying on, doing my part.

Covenant respects people and helps them grow   This covenant is not static. It is attuned to the capacities of the people (ref. Guide of the Perplexed 3:32).  When the people’s capacity changes, the rule, the roles of the covenant change. After 1800 years, the people are a capable of higher level of participation.  For example, the Biblical God who intervenes , send miracles is no more. There is no longer a open God. God becomes more hidden.  A self limited God, referred to as the shchina, can be closer to the individual. The term shchina is not found in the Tanach. It is more feminine, mothering.  Now you can meet God in your home. Any meal can bring the shchina to you.  When you visit the sick, the shchina is there at the head of the bed. When making love, when feeding the poor, praying, shchina is there.  There is no more prophecy, but we can speak to God now. He is closer to us.

How can we know what God wants from us? Study, use our minds. We can look at the past record of God’s communication and interpret. That means it has many levels of meaning,  we can uncover meanings that are uniquely for us.  How else can we use are minds? We can use past advice from the Bible and apply it differently. The ketuba of old was meant to ensure women’s dignity in marriage by putting them on a firm financial standing. How can we ensure women’s dignity right now? How can we draw an analogy?  Maybe a halachic prenuptial.  Maybe with greater equality in communal decision making, leadership roles. We can study God directly, but we can also study the past behavior of covenantial community, look to the goals they sought and apply their thinking to our times.

Blu says equality does not mean identical function.

We are now in another zimzum. God is completely hidden. We are completely responsible.  There are dangers and opportunities in this.

The journey is an unfinished journey.  Celebrate not just that journey, but that it continues and that I am taking responsibility to be a part of it. This is sobering, but the consolation is that just as there are setbacks there are gains. Sukkot is the holiday of happiness.  This is not a simple-minded glee, but happiness that comes from the fulfillment I get out of being a part of this journey and task.

The Exodus pattern: the 10 commandments are the basis of our relationship.  “I am the Lord, God who took you out of Egypt.”  Exodus is a core teaching.  What us the historicity of the Exodus?  If believe it never happened, how can I live through it, by it? We cannot predicate the Torah’s authority on its historicity. Creation too is not scientific. But the story is shaped by our capacity to hear.  Moses at Rabbi Akiva’s beit medrash.  It is a paradox. The revelation was there all the time.  R. Akiva created a receiver that could capture it. So the story is not a story of history, but a story of narrative. Existence is bigger than we are.  We are the latest show on that stage.  But we can join in and use our godlike capacities. Do it because you understand why God wants this, not because simply because God’s will in absolute morality. If we keep the Torah because God says to, you remove your personal responsibility. This is the danger of appeal to Torah on the grounds of absolute morality.

(This a very soft sell of halacha, merely as a sign of covenant. A Reform Jew can also be part of this kind of covenant.  This is unlike a hard sell that ethics can only be based on an absolute, the will of God.  That is an all or nothing approach.)

Yom Kippur: In Mathematics We Find Forgiveness

02 Thursday Oct 2014

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There are no guilty men in prison. So it is said. No person considers himself to be a bad person. He thinks, ‘Even if I did something wrong once, I am still basically a good person.  And when you look at all the circumstances, you will see that I had no choice, so I am not to blame.’  This feeling is, fundamentally, essential for self-preservation. No one can last long thinking he is a downright evil guy. But a person’s healthy positive self-image should not blind him to his own wrong doings. But it does tend to, so it is necessary to investigate deeply and find one’s wrong doings.

But this investigation is only useful if it helps you to change. If you won’t change anyway, then better not to bother.  And so, in Maimonides’ description of repentance along with recounting one’s sins goes the resolve to change, tshuva. In fact, there are 4 elements, remorse for the past errors, restitution where needed, commitment not to repeat them in the future, and the verbalization of all them. In other words, you must list, out loud, all your past wrong doings and you must state your commitment not to do the anymore. Verbalizing your commitment makes it more real and more binding. And by repeating this often, you reinforce your commitment.  So like an AA member, a Jew should recommit himself to his new path, yearly, monthly, even daily. He should go over his past sins, remind himself of the harm he caused, remorse and resolve again never to repeat them.  This is called Cheshbon HaNefesh, literally, the mathematics of the soul, or to give a more useful translation, an accounting of the soul.

People often think of big sins and small sins.  I may do some things wrong, but the big stuff, the Ten Commandments, that stuff I do keep.  This is another way of feeling good about yourself.  You turn all your sins into trivial matters but the elusive, illusionary big stuff you keep.  What that big stuff really is, your are not sure.  But you keep it, or at least you think you keep it.  Maimonides provides a method for determining what the Torah considers to be something big or something little (or in between), and he describes how each is forgiven.  And so we reach some more soul math:

  1. If a person violates a positive command which is not punishable by premature death, he is forgiven at the moment he repents.
  2. If a person violates a prohibition which is not punishable by death, he is forgiven on the Yom Kippur following his repentance.
  3. If a person violates a law which is punishable by death, he must repent, live through a Yom Kippur, and endure suffering in this world to be forgiven.
  4. If a person sinned and desecrated Gods name in so doing, he must do the above, but he is not forgiven until he dies.

Always in this list, there must be repentance, whether big sin or little.  And so nothing can be left out of the Cheshbon HaNefesh, nothing can be trivialized.  But why exactly is Yom Kippur pushed into the equation? What does Yom Kippur do for us?  Is it just an arbitrary time frame to see if the person does not go back to his wrong ways? Perhaps.  Or maybe it just an appendix left over from a time when it was really used.

Let’s ask, ‘Can a person ever be forgiven without repenting?’  Yes …kind of.  The scapegoat, sent to the desert on Yom Kippur would atone for case 2 above without the person having to repent.  But that is because the High Priest in the Temple repented the sins of all the Jews before he took the goat out to the desert.  So the individual didn’t need to repent, but there did need to be a kind of surrogate repentance. Today without a Temple, the Jew must verbally repent his sins to be forgiven, and by doing this on Yom Kippur he gains atonement for case 2 and possible case 3 sins (what Jew hasn’t suffered a little?)  Let’s not think about case 4. In the past, Yom Kippur served an essential role for atonement.  Today, without a high priest, we must take a more active role in our own gaining forgiveness. As the mussaf prayer recounts the procedures the High Priest followed, we should put ourselves in his shoes, or rather, his bare feet.

It is worth noting that the High Priest could not possible have listed every particular sin each Jew committed.  He must have only listed general categories of sins, and this too worked.  This is the source for the current practice in the Yom Kippur prayer of confessing the acrostic list of categories of sin, Al Chet.  Like the High Priest, we can minimally fulfill our obligation to recount our particular sins by stating all their categories.

Math has its beginnings in counting. What role does counting, enumerating, recounting our sins have?  I once showed my resume to a friend.  He pointed out that I need to give numbers to things.  How many people did I mange, how many servers did I administer. Giving numbers gives a clearer idea of what is going on.  People might think they did nothing wrong, or worse they might think they did innumerable things wrong.  By counting our deeds, and putting a number on them, it brings us down to Earth. We see that the wrong things are not innumerable.  And suddenly we can fix them.  When we have a vague feeling of some things out there that we did, we can’t assess them and they start to seem larger than they are.  Counting makes our mission doable.