HaAkud

He never really paid much attention to me before. Sure, he threw a big party for me when I was weaned, but that was more about him proving what a big man he was, not really about me. The only person who paid attention to me that day and played with me was my older brother Ishmael, and my mother, whose picture is in the dictionary next to the word “overprotective,” got so jealous because she hated his mother, my Aunt Hagar, for sleeping with my father AT HER REQUEST that she had both of them sent into the wilderness. Worst day ever.

Well, until that fateful day when my father took me and a couple of servants and the family donkey on a trip to make a sacrifice. The three days’ journey was great, camping out under the stars. It’s the first time he really paid attention to me as anything other than a prop for his fantasy of being a rich wealthy family man.  Or so I thought. Once he and I set out to climb the mountain, with me carrying the wood, naturally, it slowly dawned on me that he didn’t leave the others behind to spend quality father-son time together. No – he was going to sacrifice me – I later found out because the Holy Terror in the Sky told him to. And he nearly went through with it, too, until that angel stopped it!

We ended up sacrificing a ram caught in the thicket. It smelled soooo good – I’ve loved wild game ever since. But when it came time to go back, I knew I had to run away – no way could I spend another minute with that sociopath.

It was hard and I had to find my own way – but it was the best decision I ever made. I never spoke to him again – and now that he is gone, I do not regret that decision one bit.

I eventually realized that the Holy Terror in the Sky wasn’t the G!d I came to know and I learned to pray in the field in the evening when I go out to meditate. But finding G!d was very much in spite of my father, and not because of it. And I will never forget how distant G!d felt in that moment when the knife was descending to kill me.

I still wake up in a cold sweat sometimes, feeling the ropes binding me to the cold sharp stones of the altar.

Ahavah and the Need for Gevurah

Today, in a chasidus shiur with Rabbi Nissan Antine, we looked at a piece by the Sfas Emes on Noach, but it came up that the gematria for אהבה, love, and אחד, one, are the same - 13.

It occurs to me that in the Akedah, G!d tells Avraham to offer your son, your only one יְחִֽידְךָ֤, whom you love אָהַ֙בְתָּ֙, Yitzchok - with the two middle words derived from אהבה, love, and אחד, one.

Avraham is associated with chesed, or lovingkindness (hard to translate), and unbounded, this can lead to a lack of boundaries that can result in harm to others - as it did, clearly, with Yitzchok in the Akedah, who did not return with his father and never spoke with him again in the Torah. I think of Magen Avraham, the shield of Avraham, in the end of the first blessing of the Amidah, as being as much about shielding others from Avraham's harm as it is about shielding Avraham from harm by others.

G!d can navigate Oneness and Love through Tzimtzum, withdrawal, to allow others to thrive - but we must have Gevurah, strength/boundary-setting (associated with Yitzchok), to be able to express it appropriately.

And the Princes of Pharaoh Saw Her: The Permutation of the Divine Name for Tishri

There is a kabbalistic practice found in some Chasidic siddurim in which, during Musaf of Rosh Chodesh, there are four-word phrases taken from different verses in the Tanach, whose first or last letters spell out a permutation of the Tetragrammaton. There is a different permutation and corresponding phrase for each of the twelve months of the year, with all twelve being used in Adar Sheni in leap years. The phrase for Tishri is from Genesis/Bereshit 12:16, וַיִּרְא֤וּ אֹתָהּ֙ שָׂרֵ֣י פַרְעֹ֔ה - “and the princes of Pharaoh saw her [Sarah]” – and it contains important insights for the month of Tishri.

This phrase is taken from the account of Avraham and Sarah going down to Egypt during a famine to find food. Avraham fears that if the Egyptians know that she is his wife they will kill him, and so he decides that they will dishonestly say instead that they are brother and sister. (I realize that there is a rabbinic interpretation that they really are half-siblings so that it isn’t an outright lie – but even if this is the case (I’m not convinced that it is), concealing the primary relationship, which is spousal, is still a form of profoundly deceitfulness.) Predictably, Pharaoh’s princes see her and how beautiful she is, with the result that Pharaoh attempts to marry her. He is struck with some sort of plague, along with his household, and returns Sarah to Avraham, expels them, sending them away with gifts.

Sarah is led into deceit about who she is – into living inauthentically, at least at that time – by Avraham. When we allow others – even and especially those closest to us – to cause us to live a lie – to live inauthentically, serious problems follow, both for us (Sarah is taken by Pharaoh) and others (Pharaoh and his household are struck with plagues for treating her as if she is someone other than her authentic self).

It's interesting that the letters for the word for “princes” are the same as for Sarah’s name at this point in Bereshit/Genesis, שרי/Sarai. Vocalized differently, this could be read as “They saw her, Sarai of Pharaoh.” So by living inauthentically, she comes to be seen as especially associated with the king of Mitzrayim – read midrashically as “narrow places” – the very places of oppression from which the Jewish people are redeemed in the exodus. By being intimately associated with Pharaoh, she ceases to be seen as a full human being created b’tzelem Elokim – in the image of G!d – but rather as an appendage to Pharaoh, a very narrow place indeed.

What does this have to do with Tishri?

First, the High Holy Days of Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur are the time for intense teshuvah. We learn from this phrase about Sarah that we are meant to be our authentic selves –and yet we live inauthentically and are seen as someone else, as Sarah was – with disastrous results. The Chasidic Rebbe Zusha lay dying and was weeping, and when his chasidim asked why, he said, “I’m not worried that G!d will ask me why I was not more like Moshe Rabbenu or David HaMelech – I’m worried G!d will ask me why I was not more like Zusha!” This is how G!d judges us each Yom Kippur (and every day, truth be told) – why are we not more like our authentic selves? The teshuvah/repentance/return we must do is to return to who we really are – as unique human beings – and not as the inauthentic selves we develop in the hope that it will preserve us from problems with others.

Second, Sukkot reminds us of the impermanence of life – we dwell in shacks that provide only temporary shelter, for a week. Sarah and Avraham go to Egypt temporarily during a famine, yet they find the need during this temporary sojourn to live inauthentically. Sukkot is zman simchatenu, the time of our joy – and joy cannot come from inauthenticity. To find true joy in this temporary life, we must be who we truly are – that is the message of this phrase for Sukkot.

Finally, it is interesting that the first two letters and the last two letters of the Tetragramaton are inverted – rather than yud-kay-vav-kay, it becomes vay-kay-yuk-kay. This reversal of the two pairs points to the reversal of true priorities – living as our authentic selves must come before how we are seen by others. Only when we do this, can the Divine Name be restored to its correct order.

May we take the lessons of this phrase and this permutation of G!d’s Name into our teshuvah and our simchah.

Thanks to Joey Eisman, with whom I have discussed the importance of returning to our authentic selves as part of teshuvah, and to Rabbi Ben Greenberg, Cantor Naomi Hirsch, Charles Schnur, and Shirley C in remembering who the story about Reb Zusha was told about.

Akedah 5783: The Quest for the [Un]/Binding of Isaac

I have been a part of a number of different religious groups in my life (I’m now referring to this as my “sectually promiscuous” past) and, at one point in my very early thirties, was a part of a Roman Catholic religious order. One priest in the order who did not like me wrote what he thought was a negative comment in an evaluation that said “Tim seems to be on a spiritual quest” – and this was one of the most puzzling things I have ever read – I couldn’t imagine (and still can’t imagine) how any clergyperson of any religious tradition could be worth their salt WITHOUT being on a spiritual quest. I took a class at a local synagogue last spring that studied Rabbi Abraham Joshua Heschel’s book Man’s Quest for God and shared this story in the first session and was heartened to learn that the rabbi teaching the class and the other participants share my view.

I have also been obsessed with the Akedah for three decades, since in some ways it seems to serve as a parable for my own childhood, in which my fundamentalist Christian minister father was willing to metaphorically sacrifice me to his ministry and religious mania. I believe Avraham failed the test (he should have argued with G!d as he did for the residents of Sodom and Gomorrah) and read the story through a lens of the trauma Yitzchak experienced. Yet I still see new insights in the story and the reading of the Akedah on this year’s second day of Rosh Hashanah landed differently for me this year.

I took a class with Rabbanit Goldie Guy on Rebbe Nachman last year and she introduced me to his teaching about Ayeh/Where, in which he teaches that discovering that one is in a place of filth far from G!d and asking, “Ayeh/Where is the place of G!d’s glory?” (from the Musaf Kedusha for Shabbat), “this, this, is the essence of his rectification and ascent” (Likutei Moharan, Part 2, 12:11). He goes on to say that Yitzchak’s question to Avraham as they ascend Mt. Moriah, “Where is the lamb for the olah/burnt-offering?” shows that this is the means of spiritual ascent (“olah” also means “ascent”):

This is also the concept of the olah (burnt-offering), as in “but ayeh (where) is the lamb for the olah?” (Genesis 22:7). [Asking] “Ayeh?” is itself the concept of the lamb for the olah to rectify and atone for those thoughts in the heart that stem from the “filthy places.” For it is through the concept of Ayeh that a person is rectified and oleh (ascends) from there, as mentioned above. (Likutei Moharan 12:16)

Learning this shifted my understanding of the Akedah (see http://www.timcravens.com/2022/02/where-is-lamb-for-ascent.html for my first response to this learning).

Today, it shifted again for me slightly – “Where?” is the lamb for the ascent – the means of ascent – because it is the invitation to a spiritual quest to answer the question. Yitzchak does not return with Avraham to join the servants and goes his separate way – possibly to a yeshiva (one midrash), possibly to join his brother Yishmael (a more modern theory), possibly to do something else. But he must follow this quest – because it is his raising this question that begins his spiritual quest that is the REAL sacrifice. (NOT the pshat/literal meaning of the text – I believe he was young and did not have agency in the literal text, which is why I read it as trauma – but seen in a more midrashic way, I can see it as a partially voluntary acceptance of the sacrifice as a response to the abusive actions of his father.)

And here is an interesting thing that I realized today – in Gen. 22:9, it states that Avraham bound Yitzchok and placed him on the altar on top of the wood. However, the text does NOT say that Avraham UNbound Yitzchak – even though the ram was offered instead. Yet even the word “tachat” – translated (correctly for the literal meaning) “instead of” in v. 13 – “Avraham took the ram and offered it as a burnt-offering ‘instead of” his son” – also means “under” – so, spiritually and metaphorically and midrashically, I think one can read it as the ram being the physical olah/burnt-offering under the spiritual olah/offering-of-ascent of Yitzchak – the beginning of his spiritual quest.

There are readings of the story of Yitzchak that see his life as a sacrifice (for example, unlike Avraham, Yaakov, and the twelve sons of Yaakov, he never leaves Eretz Yisrael) – and I think seeing his making the question “Where?” the offering that began a life of sacrifice and spiritual quest is one way to read this. (I am grateful to Daniel Krupka who has shared the understandings of Yitzchak as sacrifice with me.) In this reading, the Akedah still involves Yitzchak being offered as an olah/offering-of-ascent – only transformed from a physical sacrifice involved death to a living sacrifice involving a constant quest for G!d.

I recite verses for two names that are significant to me (Tomer and Michael) at the end of the Amidah, as is a minhag (albeit a minhag introduced in a Sabbatean text, Kitzur Shelah, but that is a discussion for another time) – and at Musaf, I was inspired to also read the verse in my machzor for Yitzchak (or any name beginning with yud and ending in kuf): “[G-d] brought them out of darkness and the shadow of death and broke their bonds asunder” (Psalm 107:14). So the binding of Yitzchak is done by Avraham (albeit with partial consent from Yitzchak) – but the unbinding can only be accomplished by G!d – and is the ultimate result of the quest of Yitzchak begun on Mount Moriah

My Experience on Tisha B'Av, 5781

[Written on Tisha B'Av, 5781/2021]

For a non-Jew, I’ve had a lot of Jewish experiences, starting with my first visit to an Orthodox synagogue in 1981 when I was in high school (accompanied by my first purchase of Jewish prayer books). I majored in Judaic studies with a minor in Hebrew in college and took many Jewish studies courses in divinity school, including three with a Chasidic rebbe in Maimonides in which I was the only non-Jewish student in the class (in at least one, the only one not an Orthodox Jewish man). I’ve attended at least 25 Passover seders, 3 Tu B’Shevat seders (four if you count the one on Zoom last year during the pandemic), at least 9 years of in-person High Holy Day services (15 if you count livestreaming), and many, many Shabbat services. Even two Shalom Zachor celebrations and a bris. This was my fourth Tisha B’Av. I’ve learned daf yomi (daily Talmud) for over a year now, have completed the first year of the Center for Contemporary Mussar program, and have been attending a chasidus shiur for a few months. I own 84 Jewish prayerbooks, not counting a dozen and a half haggadahs for Passaover (and one for Tu B’Shevat). And a lot of other Jewish books. I’ve carried a tiny copy of Tehillim (Psalms) in my wallet for going on three decades.

And I don’t believe I’ve ever been as deeply emotionally affected as I was by this year’s Tisha B’Av observance.

To be sure, the other years were meaningful. The first two times, I only attended one service (the evening service). Last year, I participated in two evening services by Zoom, sitting on the floor by candlelight for the first and being moved by the removal of mezuzot from a year-old shtiebel’s first location, as well as a couple of Zoom classes the next day. (And another year, I had a wonderful conversation on Tisha B’Av morning with an Orthodox coworker who had not taken the day off but was fasting – he had great insights.)

A large part of what made it so powerful for me this year was being there in person for all three services of the day (and Maariv of Motzei Tisha B’Av) as well as for the afternoon program of four classes (and another one on Zoom when I was home in between morning and afternoon sessions) – spending 11 or 12 hours with Orthodox Jewish friends observing the day with a great deal of kavannah certainly influenced my experience. I did not fast, but from leaving the house at 2 until sitting down to dinner a little after 9, I had no food or drink – the mild hunger was not bad, but the lack of beverages did affect me. The services and classes were all very well done and quite meaningful. The arc of the day, from the intensity of the evening service in dim light sitting on the floor with candles about, punctuated by thunder and lightning, with a packed room of mostly younger people seriously mourning, leaving in silence, to the quieter morning service, still sitting on the floor, followed by reflections on the kinnot (I actually gave one myself and was quite moved by the others), to the afternoon where we returned to furniture. The rabbanit made the point that the day was to feel like a shiva call, and it did feel like a funeral observance, moving from more intense mourning to the sort of quiet remembrance with mixed laughter and tears.

But what affected me the most was the burden of centuries of Christian anti-Semitism. I’ve read the inspirational Easter sermon of John Chrysostom and heard it read at Easter Vigils – and the knowledge that his virulent hateful screeds against the Jews were able to be reprinted by the Nazis eliminates the possibility of any of his writings being sacred to me. The simplicity of the Good Friday liturgy has a stark beauty to it – but the knowledge that it at one time had anti-Jewish elements that inspired Christian mobs to attack and murder and loot their Jewish neighbors makes me grieve in a rather different way than the liturgy intends. Martin Luther made necessary reforms, necessitating a break from a church that had become thoroughly corrupt – and, again, wrote anti-Jewish attacks so vicious the Nazis printed them. I love the music of Johann Sebastian Bach inspired by Lutheran liturgy. I appreciate that many Lutheran churches have engaged in repentance of their part in anti-Semitism and in helping foster an environment that made the Holocaust possible – and yet I wonder if any act short of stripping Luther’s name from their churches can be enough. The Roman Catholic denomination commendably repented at Vatican II with Nostra Aetate, and yet anti-Semitism remains – I know someone who in this millennium studied in a diocesan seminary with a professor who has publicly defended the kidnapping of a Jewish child baptized secretly by a maid against the will of his parents and raised as a Catholic. And the evangelical world in which I was raised attempts to convert the Jews to their version of Christianity and have no problem with using the word “crusade” to describe their evangelistic efforts. I’m regularly asked by Jews if I have Jewish ancestry – and, given the fact that my ancestors are almost all from England and Scotland, who expelled the Jews in the thirteenth century, I must shake my head no. France and Spain followed suit, with Roman Catholic clergy leading the Inquisition in Spain, forcing Jews to convert, flee, or die, with only a minority of the Jewish population surviving with their Judaism intact. And the Eastern Orthodox, unlike Catholics, Anglicans, and many Protestants, have never reckoned with their anti-Semitism and history of pogroms and their liturgy remains intact with hatred of the Jewish people being a major theme of the Holy Week liturgy.

And I found myself tearing up at Maariv as we davened and listened to the chanting of Eicha, the biblical book of Lamentations, and the kinnot, the dirges that are a major part of the day’s liturgy. I would have sobbed had I not wanted to attract attention. The next morning, several of us gave reflections on different kinnot (myself included). One in particular that really affected me was a reflection on a kinnah mourning the burning of many copies of the Talmud during the reign of Louis IX the king of France in the thirteenth century. How horrifying to me that anyone could be so evil as to destroy a sacred work, even if it is a sacred work of another religion - and this was in the days before printing, when there were far fewer copies of such works, all written in manuscript form. The fact that my friend who gave this reflection celebrated completion of studying the entire Talmud about a week and a half ago (which he mentioned as a reason he chose this kinnah to reflect upon) made this all the more poignant - and I am grateful I was able to attend the celebratory feast, or siyyum, commemorating his achievement.

I study daf yomi, a daily page of Talmud through this shul and have been doing so a little over a year (after a couple of unsuccessful attempts to read on my own). I enjoy it, get a lot out of it spiritually, and have become friends with my fellow students. After hearing this during this morning's service, I am even more glad to be engaged in Talmud study, which I hope can serve as an act of tikkun or repair in response to the destruction of this sacred text, both in France in the 13th century and in other times and places.

When I got home from the morning service, I looked up Louis IX and it sickens me to my stomach that this wicked man is commemorated as a “saint” not only by the Roman Catholic denomination (thanks to a thirteenth-century pope who not only canonized this vile genocidal tyrant but kicked a member of his court in the head and threw ashes in the eyes of an archbishop he didn’t like), but by the Episcopal Church as well.  I want to tell my Episcopal priest friends, for whom celebration of his feast is optional, that if they celebrate Mass of his feast or commemorate him in the office (and this latter goes for religious and laity as well), they are committing a sin in doing so – same goes for the Independent Sacramental Movement of which I am a part.

Last Sunday, I went to Lakewood, NJ, with friends as a road trip. Lakewood is a heavily Jewish town, with the world's second largest yeshiva, and we visited an amazing Jewish bookstore. I only bought one book, but I was drawn to buy it when I saw it - the Esh Kodesh of Rabbi Kalonymus Kalmish Shapira, the Piaseczner Rebbe, z"tz"l - sometimes referred to as the "Warsaw Ghetto Rebbe". I had been wanting to read his writings. He helped keep the Jewish community going in the Warsaw Ghetto during the dark days of the Holocaust and was himself murdered by the Nazis. The remarkable thing about this book, a collection of teachings he gave on Shabbat afternoons, was that he put the manuscript in a metal canister with a note to forward the teachings and buried it. Miraculously, it was found and the teachings have been published. This miraculous story came to mind as we were reading the kinnah.

When the murder at the Poway Chabad shul happened in 2019, in addition to sending a small donation (as I had done for the Pittsburgh synagogue as well), I bought a number of books from Chabad’s publishing arm. This might have been self-serving, but I’m glad I did – because anti-Semites seek not only to destroy Jews but Jewish books as well, and I want to take a stand against that hatred. I’m glad I have Tanya and the Chabad machzor and Haggadah and a pocket book of Tehillim that I carry in my shirt pocket when I am in Jewish spaces (and use regularly – including at Minchah, when we davened for someone who was undergoing surgery and I pulled it out for Psalm 121 which we chanted together).

Tisha B'Av this year was one of the most emotionally intense Jewish experiences I've had. I started writing up my experiences just now to share, but after writing 1,716 words and not getting everything down on paper and those words being too raw to share, I'm not ready to share yet. [I'm sharing it almost a year later.] Let's just say that I really felt intensely the very shameful burden of well over a millennium and a half of quite violent and vicious Christian persecution of the Jewish people.

Thoughts about Kinah 11 - 5781, shared at South Philadelphia Shtiebel on Tisha B'Av

This kinah is based on Eicha 4, which tradition believes Yirmiyahu wrote as lament for killing of Yoshiyahu in battle. The first word of each verse of Eicha 4 is used as the first word of each verse of this kinah. It is not a kinah lamenting the destruction of the Beis HaMikdash, but of the killing of a tzaddik, which the rabbis teach is like the destruction of the Beis HaMikdash.

Yoshiyahu’s father Amon assassinated when Yoshiyahu was 8 years old, and he became king. A Sefer Torah was found and he set about abolishing avodah zarah from Yehudah and restoring the observance of Torah and mitzvot to Israel.

The Egyptians wanted to travel through Yehudah to wage war with Assyria. Yirmiyahu advised Yoshiyahu to let them – but he did not, and fought them in battle, in which he was killed. He realized his sin and his last words are captured in Eicha 1:18 – HaShem is righteous, for I have rebelled against His word.

Why did he fail to heed the words of Yirmiyahu in a catastrophic way that cost him his life?

It must have been quite traumatic for him to lose his father to assassins at the early age of 8. I can only imagine the lack of trust he felt in others, particularly the Egyptians. And to discover the Sefer Torah and learn of the ways his father had sinned in stopping the sacrifices in the Beis HaMikdash and even burning the Torah. Reading of the redemption from Egypt – how could he allow them to come through?

Tragically, he was unable to heal the trauma from his childhood and learn new ways of interacting with others, including the Egyptians.

The kinah also mentions that he died because, although he ended public idolatry, the people continued avodah zarah in secret. It may seem unfair that he is punished for the sins of others of which he was unaware, but as the king, he was responsible for them.

How can we use Yoshiyahu’s life and death in our own lives to turn from the things that can prove to be our undoing and accept life?

We can learn that the traumas we have experienced affect us but do not define us, and learn to bring the wisdom of HaShem to each moment, listening to the wise counsel of others who, like Yirmiyahu, can help us to see clearly.

And we can do more cheshbon hanefesh, accounting of the soul, to uncover not just the obvious ways in which we turn from HaShem but the hidden avodah zarah that hides behind the doors of our hearts.

May we find refuah and teshuvah for our souls and our lives and may this Tisha B’Av be the beginning of redemption. Amen.

Thoughts on Masechet Chagigah

It might seem odd that I, raised evangelical and ordained in a liturgical Christian church, now find myself with daf yomi as one my principal and most meaningful spiritual practices - but that is where I find myself. Every now and then, I even find the Bat Kol whispering words of healing - tikkun - to my soul. There were many such moments in Chagigah - including the famous story of the four who went to Pardes, with one losing his life, another his sanity, another his faith, and only one emerging with all three intact - a story I first heard over three decades ago in college and which, along with the story of R Meir, R Beruriah, and her reading of the last verse of Tehillim 104, has influenced me profoundly - I have mentioned it many times in Christian settings! But perhaps the most healing moment learning it over the past few weeks was coming across this follow-up to that story - pointing to R Yochanan embodying the Thirteen Attributes of Mercy from Shemot 34 and the Thirteen Supernal Attributes of Mercy from Micah 7 (expounded beautifully in the first perek of Tomer Devorah) in ways we should all emulate: אָמַר רַבִּי יוֹחָנָן: גְּבוּרְתָּא לְמִיקְלֵי רַבֵּיהּ? חַד הֲוָה בֵּינַנָא וְלָא מָצֵינַן לְאַצּוֹלֵיהּ? אִינְקְטֵיהּ בְּיָד, מַאן מַרְמֵי לֵיהּ מִן. אָמַר: מָתַי אָמוּת, וַאֲכַבֶּה עָשָׁן מִקִּבְרוֹ. כִּי נָח נַפְשֵׁיהּ דְּרַבִּי יוֹחָנָן פְּסַק קוּטְרָא מִקִּבְרֵיהּ דְּאַחֵר. פְּתַח עֲלֵיהּ הַהוּא סַפְדָנָא: אֲפִילּוּ שׁוֹמֵר הַפֶּתַח לֹא עָמַד לְפָנֶיךָ, רַבֵּינוּ!

Rabbi Yoḥanan said: Was this a mighty deed on Rabbi Meir’s part, to burn his teacher? Was this the only remedy available? Can it be that there was one Sage among us who left the path and we cannot save him? If we hold him by the hand, who will remove him from our protection; who? Rabbi Yoḥanan continued and said: When I die I will have the smoke extinguished from his grave, as a sign that he has been released from the sentence of Gehenna and brought to the World-to-Come. Indeed, when Rabbi Yoḥanan passed away, the smoke ceased to rise up from the grave of Aḥer. A certain eulogizer began his eulogy of Rabbi Yoḥanan with the following: Even the guard at the entrance could not stand before you, our rabbi. The guard at the entrance to Gehenna could not prevent Rabbi Yoḥanan from arranging the release of Aḥer.