Yom Kippur Katan Reflection - Menachem Av 5783

A meaningful Yom Kippur Katan to all who observe. This is the last Yom Kippur Katan for three months, until Cheshvan, since it is not observed in Elul or Tishri.

Numbers/Bamidbar 28 – 29 contain a list of the regular sacrifices made for all the people for each day, Shabbat, Rosh Chodesh, chag, Rosh Hashanah, and Yom Kippur. No chatat offering (usually translated as a “sin offering” and is brought to atone for unintentional sins) is brought as part of the daily and Shabbat sacrifices, and the sin offerings for the chagim (Pesach, Shavuot, and Sukkot), Rosh Hashanah, and Yom Kippur are either mentioned without an indication on whose behalf they are being offered or else are offered “to cover over you” (literal) or “to atone on your behalf.” However, the Rosh Chodesh chatat offering is offered “LaShem” – “for/to HaShem.” The pshat, or plain meaning, is probably that is being offered TO G!d – but it is read midrashically as being brought to atone on G!d’s behalf, for an unintentional sin that G!d committed.

What is the sin? Well, the rabbis connect it, since it is related to the month, to the moon. In Genesis/Bereshit 1:16, it states that G!d made two great lights – the greater light to rule the day and the lesser light to rule the night – and there is midrash explaining that G!d diminished the moon after making it one of the two great lights by assigning it to the night and causing it to xax and wane, with this diminishment damaging the moon. (There is also kabbalistic teaching relating this to tzimtzum, which I will leave to another time to explore.)

I want to ask these questions that might help us to utilize this opportunity for cheshbon hanefesh, accounting of the soul.

1. How have I diminished others and thereby damage them?

2. How have I been diminished by others and been damaged?

3. How have I diminished and damaged myself?

May the cheshbon hanefesh of this Yom Kippur Katan of Menachem Av lead to a time of deep reflection and teshuvah as we enter Elul.

Kiddushin daf 2 - Erusin/Betrothal to G!d

Learning the first daf of Kiddushin makes me uncomfortable, with the one-sided way that men have the power in the relationship and I’m not fond of the language of acquisition, comparing betrothing a woman to acquiring a field. I believe marriage should be conceived in egalitarian (and not strictly heteronormative) ways.

However, be that as it may, when I think of erusin, betrothal, I naturally think of Hosea 2:21-22:

וְאֵרַשְׂתִּ֥יךְ לִ֖י לְעוֹלָ֑ם וְאֵרַשְׂתִּ֥יךְ לִי֙ בְּצֶ֣דֶק וּבְמִשְׁפָּ֔ט וּבְחֶ֖סֶד וּֽבְרַחֲמִֽים׃

And I will betroth thee unto Me for ever; Yea, I will betroth thee unto Me in righteousness, and in justice, And in lovingkindness, and in compassion.

וְאֵרַשְׂתִּ֥יךְ לִ֖י בֶּאֱמוּנָ֑ה וְיָדַ֖עַתְּ אֶת־יְהֹוָֽה׃ {פ}

And I will betroth thee unto Me in faithfulness; And thou shalt know the LORD.

These verses are said by adult Jews when wrapping tefillin and come from a passage where G!d is the speaker, saying G!d will betroth Israel to G!dself. By wrapping the strap of the tefillin around our finger, we imitate kiddushin (if not erusin, strictly speaking) with the giving of a ring. 

I wonder, given today’s daf, which of the three methods of acquisition G!d is using to betroth us, collectively as Israel and individually in our neshamos, to G!d.

Perhaps the tefillin strap is an item worth more than a pruta (if you’ve priced tefillin lately, you will know that it’s definitely worth more than a pruta!).

Perhaps the Torah is the shtar. There is a tradition that the Torah is the ketubah for kiddushin, which occurred on Shavuot. Maybe the texts written on the scrolls placed inside the tefillin are the shtar for erusin – and meditating on those – both loving G!d (v’ahavta) and living the life commanded (v’hayah im shamoa) are stipulated, and the other two look back to the redemption and exodus from Egypt (Kadesh li) and forward to coming into the land (v’hayah ki y’viacha).

But perhaps the strongest is biah – sexual intimacy – because it says that “you will know Hashem” – and the verb for “know” – in both Hebrew and English – can mean “know biblically.” 

How do each of these three ways of G!d betrothing us to G!dself resonate – or not – with you? How might thinking of this make you see your relationship with G!d differently?

Tzitzis and Tefillin at Mincha on Tisha B'Av

I anticipated that it would feel weird and I would feel bereft by not wrapping tefillin and praying with a tallis at shacharis on Tisha B'Av - and I was right - the lack of gathering tzitzis from the four corners of tallis in the blessing before the Shema and holding them together for the Shema and into the blessing after indeed underlined the fragmentation the day mourns, including the fragmentation of oneself and the fragmentation of the relationship between G!d and the Jewish people.

But what I was not prepared for was the weird sense of alienation wearing the tallis and tefillin at Mincha would bring. The Shema is not recited at Mincha, and so the gathering together of the tzitzis did not occur - nor were any of the passages from the Torah about tefillin or tzitzis recited. Wearing them felt mostly empty and bereft of the meaning that recitation of these passages, gathering the tzitzis together, and touching the tefillin at their metion give to wearing them. So wearing them at Mincha helped ritualize the continued mourning, albeit more subdued mourning than the night and morning of Tisha B'Av.

Reflection on Kinah 41

 I gave this reflection at the South Philadelphia Shtiebel on Tisha B'Av, 5783, when Shtiebelers are invited to introduce different kinot

As many of you know, I was raised in a fundamentalist evangelical Christian home. I was taught that humanity is completely cut off from G!d and that all who don’t become evangelical Christians will experience eternal conscious torment in hell. My parents and churches taught that they and they alone had the truth – and all other religious viewpoints were not only wrong, but evil.

I rejected this view and majored in Judaic studies with a minor in Hebrew in college. I found several teachings in the Talmud that transformed my life, even as I remained Christian, ultimately becoming clergy, albeit a very liberal one who believed that other religions, particularly Judaism, taught truth. I attended my first Tisha B’Av service around that time, at the Temple on Peachtree, a historic Reform synagogue in Atlanta, and it was a powerful and meaningful service. The knowledge that the synagogue had been bombed during the civil rights era made it even more powerful.

Many years later, I found myself drawn to worship regularly in Jewish spaces, and I attended several more Tisha B’Av services, including the Zoom service from the Shtiebel in 2020 when the mezuzot were taken down from the first location on Passayunk, and I continued to be moved by the observance. But nothing prepared me for the Tisha B’Av service in 2021.

As we sat on the floor of Rabbanit Dasi’s home on 13^th Street, surrounded by burning candles, I found myself weeping, brushing away tears, hoping no one would notice. Despite all the study of the tragedies that befell the Jewish people over the millennia, only there, sitting on the floor, did it fully hit home. And a big part of the pain was the recognition that much of the horrific persecution of the Jewish people came at the hands of the Christianity I had been a part of my whole life. I had known this intellectually for a long time – but this was the first time I felt it in the depths of my soul. And I knew that even as I had been trying for my entire adult life to change the Christian church, to help rid it of its deep drive to persecute those who are different, that I could not make much of a dent.

And it shattered me.

The next day, Chaim Fruchter gave an introduction to this kinah, which laments the burning of 12,000 copies of the Talmud (among other sacred Jewish texts) by King Louis IX of France, at the urging of Pope Gregory IX, in a time before the printing press when manuscripts were precious. I became angry as I realized that many Christians – including many liberal Christian denominations – regard this wicked man as a saint – for example, he is the person “Saint” Louis, Missouri is named for and the Catholic Cathedral there is dedicated to him.

I finally decided to become Jewish earlier this year, converting a few days before Shavuot. There is so much of profound value in Judaism that nourishes my soul, and I have found, over the past several years, that being a part of the Jewish community enables me to thrive in a way I never did before.

But as a convert, part of the profound pain of the day for me is the realization that my ancestors and the religion they believed in – and that was my spiritual home for most of my life – is the source of much of the pain of this day. I mourn the loss of the Torah that was destroyed, in France and elsewhere.

May my mourning – our mourning - serve as a tikkun to help bring about geulah shleimah – complete redemption.

 

On being a glutton with a half-empty stomach

Powerful Tisha B'Av service tonight.

What hit me the hardest was Lamentations 1:11 - the Artscroll translation in the Tisha B'Av siddur I was using has this translation:

All her people are sighing, searching for bread. They traded their treasures for food to stay alive. "Look, HASHEM, and behold what a glutton I have become!"

The Koren Tisha B'Av siddur, which I also had with me, translated the last phrase instead as, "look how abject I have become."

The word in question, זוֹלֵלָֽה, which I looked up when I got home, could legitimately be translated either way - and the 2006 JPS Tanakh has "how abject" with a footnote saying it could be, with bitter irony, "what a glutton" and notes that the word is used in that sense in Proverbs 23:20-21.

The glutton translation resonates with me not only because of the bitter irony that can be read in the verse but also because it speaks to the experience of oppression, whether abject physical poverty or emotional or spiritual abuse. When one can only barely - if even that - meet one's basic needs and must give up the luxuries that give life joy to do so, one can begin to see the meeting of one's basic needs as gluttony, rather than as basic needs. One experiences this in emotionally abusive relationships, where one is made to feel guilty for wanting the bare minimum needed for emotional and spiritual well-being, as if one were asking for too much and were somehow selfish for wanting it.

May we all experience redemption and never be made to feel like gluttons when our stomachs are half-empty.

Multiplicity and Unity in the blessings before the Shema - and Tisha B'Av

 A couple of thoughts from davening this morning:

1. Tallis gadol and tefillin will not be worn at Shacharit tomorrow for Tisha B'Av but at Mincha. I have written before about how the act of gathering the tzitzis from the four corners of the tallis gadol near the end of the second blessing before the Shema and holding them together while reciting the Shema is very meaningful for me, because I feel myself integrating the different parts of myself into one whole that is an image and likeness of the Oneness of G!d that we proclaim in the Shema. I wonder if not being able to do this tomorrow morning will intensify the feeling of destruction and alienation of Tisha B'Av - that, just as we don't have the Beis HaMikdash to connect us to G!d - so we don't have tefillin and tallis gadol either, at least for Shacharit. I will report back (likely on Friday) whether this intuition proves correct.

2. The first blessing begins with a misquote of Isaiah 45:7, talking about G!d's creation of both light and dark, and peace/wholeness and evil (in Isaiah)/everything (in the prayer). We say with the seraphim from Isaiah's vision in Isaiah 6, "Kadosh, kadosh, kadosh" - and the seraphim have six wings. We say with the voice Ezekiel heard, "Blessed is the glory of G!d from its Place" - and the voice is accompanied by the sound of the four wings each of the chayot that he saw in the first chapter. And the blessing ends with the chatimah blessing G!d for creating the Lights - of which there are two great ones, in Genesis 1 - the sun and the moon. Six, four, and two - in contrast to G!d being One. The blessing seems to go out of its way to emphasize the multiplicity of creation in contrast to the Oneness of G!d. And then, in the second blessing, we pray to be gathered from the four corners of the earth - and it ends blessing G!d for blessing the people Israel with love - ahavah - which has the same gematria (13) as One - echad (also 13).

My thoughts during davening today.

Tefillin, Patriarchs, and the Nine Days

 

Pannullo, Tommie Spain

Over the past couple of years, I've internalized the sequence of the seven patriarchs associated with the seven lower sefirot - Avraham/Chesed, Yitzchok/Gevurah, Yaakov/Tiferet, Moshe/Netzach, Aharon/Hod, Yosef/Yesod, and David/Malchut - and I tend to think of them whenever a sequence of seven comes up, for example, in the Amidah. *

Over the past couple of years, I've internalized the sequence of the seven patriarchs associated with the seven lower sefirot - Avraham/Chesed, Yitzchok/Gevurah, Yaakov/Tiferet, Moshe/Netzach, Aharon/Hod, Yosef/Yesod, and David/Malchut - and I tend to think of them whenever a sequence of seven comes up, for example, in the Amidah. *

Since I've become Jewish and started wrapping tefillin, I have silently in my mind gone through the list of patriarchs as I wrap seven times around my arm, a name with each wrapping, as a way of counting but in a more mindful and spiritually resonant way.

Today, as I did so, the signficant losses each patriarch experienced loomed large in my mind- Avraham losing Hagar, Yishmael, almost sacrificing Yitzchok, and Sarah; Yitzchok almost being sacrificed and experiencing the heartache associated with his sons; Yaakov fleeing his home, losing Leah and Rachel, and being separated from Yosef; Moshe not being able to go into the Promised Land; Aharon losing Nadav and Abihu and not being able to mourn; Yosef being betrayed by his brothers and falsely imprisoned; and David losing Yonatan and Avshalom. (This list is not comprehensive.

And this experience immersed my more deeply in the Nine Days.

* I realize that this is a very masculine association - several proposals have been made to associate matriarchs with the sefirot, but it is not unifor. The one that resonates with me is Tamar - since my Hebrew name is Tomer Yitzchok - and she is associated with Yosef and Yesod - Yosef is the only man in the Torah described as HaTzadik - the Righteous - and Yehudah says that Tamar is tzadkah mimeni - more righteous than I. I think that those wanting to adopt this practice with matriarchs will likely find the practice revealing great insight.