Questions for Seder HaAvodah on Yom Kippur

1. The night of Yom Kippur, the Cohen Gadol learns Divrei HaYamim/Chronicles (the first Kingdoms of Judah/Israel), Daniel (in exile), Ezra/Nechemiah (return from exile), and Iyov/Job (written by a non-Jew). What texts (Jewish or secular, written/visual art/music/dance/stage/film/TV) would be most helpful to you in preparing for the Avodah on Yom Kippur if you were the Cohen Gadol – and why? What selection of two to four such texts would represent the fullness of what you want to bring to the Avodah of Yom Kippur – and why?

2. The Cohen Gadol/High Priest presses down on the head of the bull (his sin-offering) and the goat sent to Azazel (the sins of Israel) and makes confession of sins – a total of three. Which three sins or other situations that separate you from G!d and/or others and/or yourself do you most want to press into the goat sent into the wilderness and be free from this year?

3. According to Tractate Yoma of the Mishnah and Talmud, Yom Kippur only atones for sins between a person and G!d – one must make peace with other people. What are the things you need to atone for with G!d? With others? With yourself?

4. What has been the best Yom Kippur observance for you and why? What can you bring from that experience into this year’s Yom Kippur?

Thought for the Siyyum of Masechet Sukkah

 "The Gemara relates that the Sages said of Yonatan ben Uzziel, the greatest of Hillel’s students, that when he sat and was engaged in Torah study, the sanctity that he generated was so intense that any bird that flew over him was immediately incinerated." (Sukkah 28a)

Rav Yonatan was the translator who produced Targum Yonatan, the Aramaic translation of the Prophets. The bird being incinerated by the holiness of the Torah study speaks to Torah study taking the place of the korban olah (burnt-offering) in the absence of the Temple.

May our Torah study and our translation of that Torah into the targum of our lives serve as a pleasing offering to G!d.

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Shabbos BeMidbar

When the Shtiebel started in-person services last year in the pandemic,

They asked that people bring their own siddurim.

I brought my Chumash with Shabbes prayers in the back

(with Tehillim in my shirt pocket).

 

The rabbanit, when she met me in person for the first time, said,

“Tim, you have a lot of frum books!”

 

Now we have our own building and lots of siddurim and chumashim,

The people passing out the chumashim smiling that the gentile has his own

But I keep bringing my own.

This page is wrinkled a little from that Friday night service next to the Acme when it rained.

The Shabbes liturgy is easy to find from the finger-worn stains.

I know where to look for the Yigdal on Friday night where my siddur has Adon Olam

And where to find Adon Olam on Saturday morning at the end where the siddur has none.

 

The ribbon travels through the Torah portions each week, moving toward the back of the chumash

Like the Israelites wandering in the desert

Like the Shtiebel moving from place to place to daven – eight places in a year

Like my wandering from the Egypt of my parents toward a Promised Land I haven’t yet found

 

But I get my double portion of manna each week – my soul fed by the psalms and Torah and singing Etz Chaim Hi and friendship and words of inspiration and jokes – my body fed by the cholent and lox and kugel and egg salad - and the Dr Pepper I have introduced into the shul

 

Sometimes I read each word of the reading, not always understanding every word

Sometimes I am stopped in awe and wonder – or anger and discomfort – or curiosity and questions – over a phrase, a verse, a word

Usually, I stay in the week’s portion – sometimes I go elsewhere (do I really care about the details of leprosy?) – sometimes I go to multiple portions at once

 

But the page, with its square letters of Torah and round Rashi script letters of commentary, takes me on a journey outside of myself – and deep into the center of myself – and I know, wherever I am in the desert, I’m in

Exactly. The. Right. Place.

St. Louis and the Talmud

(I especially urge all of my Christian friends, particularly Roman Catholic, Episcopal, and independent sacramental Christians, to read this, particularly in preparation for August 25.)

For a little over a year, most days I have participated in a daf yomi, or daily Talmud, class through the South Philadelphia Shtiebel, an Orthodox synagogue in Philadelphia. The rabbis of the Talmud discuss a wide variety of topics and we in the class add our own questions and thoughts to the discussion. I find it very enriching and frequently find theological meaning in the text, despite not being Jewish myself.

There is a custom to celebrate completion of a tractate, one of the divisions of the Talmud that may take a few weeks or months to complete, with a siyyum, or feast. Since I started this during the pandemic, our practice has been to perhaps start a little early and each offer an observation or teaching from the tractate and then share a l’chaim, or festive beverage, on Zoom. However, in July, my friend Harold Chaim Fruchter, at the completion of the tractate we were studying, also completed studying the entire Talmud, since that is the point where he joined daf yomi seven and a half years ago. He and his wife Rena hosted a wonderful dinner at their home and he gave a short talk about his experience as we finished the class. It was a very joyous occasion.

A week and a half later, I experienced something very different in the observance of Tisha B’Av, the saddest day of the Jewish year, mourning the destruction of both the first two Temples as well as many other calamities that befell the Jewish people through the millenia. One of the characteristics of this fast day is the recitation of kinot, or laments written to commemorate various tragedies through history. Different people (myself included) were asked to give a reflection on a particular kinah. All of the ones I heard others give were profoundly moving, but the one that affected me the most was the one Chaim gave, on a lament over the destruction of over 12,000 copies of the Talmud in France by orders of King Louis IX, at the urging of Pope Gregory IX. The juxtaposition of his siyyum and his reflection on the kinah was quite poignant. I do not understand the blasphemy inherent in destroying a sacred work of this nature and I was horrified. King Louis also led two crusades, which resulted in much death and destruction as well, as well as confiscating Jewish property and expelling some of the French Jews.

But what horrified me the most was the realization that Louis is still regarded as a saint in both the Roman Catholic and Episcopal churches, as well as by many in the independent sacramental movement. His feast is observed on August 25. He is regarded as a patron of the Third Order of St. Francis. To its credit, the Episcopal Church at least acknowledges his antisemitism and burning of the 12,000 copies of the Talmud, among other acts of violence against the Jews, in his biography in the liturgical book Lesser Feasts and Fasts. In both the modern Roman Catholic and Episcopal rites, the observance of the feast is optional. I hope and pray all churches may remove him from their calendars and cease to venerate him as a saint.

However, I would like to suggest to Roman Catholics, Episcopalians, independent sacramental Christians, and other Christians that this day be used as a day of repentance for Christian antisemitism and reflection on how Christians can combat this scourge, unfortunately still with us today. I would also like to suggest that Christians take the opportunity to learn from the Talmud, which has much spiritual wisdom to teach us, and to that end I offer one amazing teaching by the Talmudic sage Beruriah that has profoundly affected my spiritual life since I first learned it in college. When her husband prayed for vengeance against bandits who had robbed him, citing the last verse of Psalm 104, “Let sinners disappear from the earth, and the wicked be no more” – Beruriah said the reading should be “Let SINS disappear from the earth, and the wicked will be no more” – because they will have done teshuvah and no longer be wicked – and he did so and they repented. I have thought of this interpretation each time I have recited that psalm in the intervening 30-odd years! One excellent place to start to learn more is Rabbi Adin Steinsaltz’s (z”l) book The Essential Talmud.

May the shameful antisemitic legacy of King Louis IX be a lesson to all of us to abandon hatred, especially antisemitism.

The twelfth anniversary of my father's death

 Well, THAT was interesting.

This is the twelfth anniversary of the death of my father. As an evangelical minister (at various times Free Will Baptist, Cumberland Presbyterian, [these were before I came along], Southern Baptist [what he spent the most time as and what he was at his death], and Assemblies of God), he was of course obsessed with the Bible.

His death certificate says he died at 11:45 pm (which sounds about right from what I remember). I decided to note the moment (I know he died Central time, but I'm not going to stay up that late and observed Eastern time).

About a minute before, I was just looking at my phone and noticed a message on Slack for my daf yomi (daily Talmud study) class. In today's daf, there was a quotation from Esther (interesting timing given that Purim just happened) and, at the end of class, I asked if anyone had done a study of how often particular books of the Bible were quoted in the Talmud, and a very learned member of the class (who sometimes substitute teaches when the rabbanit who leads the class can't make it) said he could get the answer for me by tomorrow. It turns out that he had tonight posted an AWESOME spreadsheet he had put together from Sefaria with overall statistics, statistics for how often which book is quoted in which tractate, vice versa, really a work of beauty.

I think my father had a very distorted and misguided understanding of the Bible and of who God is. I find my understanding of both the Bible and God to be greatly enriched by the study of Talmud and consider my daf teacher and classmates some of my greatest teachers and love grappling with theology as it arises from the daf with them.

And, somehow, looking at the magnificent spreadsheet analyzing biblical quotations in the Talmud by book, seems like it was what I was meant to be doing at the moment of the twelfth anniversary of his death.

Judaism’s Best-Kept Secret

This appeared in the January, 2021 newsletter of the Center for Contemporary Mussar as the Student Platform.

Mussar is Judaism’s best-kept secret – not well-known within the Jewish community, much less outside of it. But as a non-Jew who is studying Mussar through the Center for Contemporary Mussar, I’m very grateful that I found it and can experience its life-transforming teaching. 

My father was a fundamentalist Christian minister, as were eight of his brothers, and growing up I came to know the text of the Bible, including the Hebrew Bible, very well. However, the fundamentalist approach did not work for me, particularly after realizing that I am gay when I was a teenager. In college, I took a Judaic studies course and found it so compelling that I became a Judaic studies major with a minor in Hebrew. I especially loved learning the rabbinic commentaries on the Tanach, seeing the text through a very different lens that enabled me to lay aside the unhelpful approach I had been taught in childhood and reclaim the text as my own sacred inheritance. Martin Buber’s I-Thou also deeply affected my thinking. I took more Jewish studies courses in divinity school. I also found my way to more progressive Christian communities and serve as volunteer clergy in an egalitarian lgbt-inclusive church.

However, my interest in Judaism never went away, and a few years ago I began live-streaming synagogue services and then attending services in person a couple of years ago. While I still serve as clergy in my progressive church, I am also very involved in two synagogues, attending services and classes regularly, including a daf yomi shiur. Another synagogue whose High Holiday services I attended with a friend held an introductory seminar on Mussar that I attended, and I was intrigued and began taking courses, with Carol Daniels as my madrichah, for which I am grateful. 

Mussar speaks to me because it places ethical conduct within a framework of relationship and because it gives the practitioner the tools to develop their soul through the middot. Rather than following a list of do’s and don’ts or even viewing others in a collective abstract, we are urged by Mussar to see each individual other as a person created in the image of God whose burden we are to bear – and, of course, to bear their burden, we must first understand what their burden is. The understanding of Yetzer haRa, traditionally understood as the “evil inclination” but understood in Mussar terms as “self-absorption,” as something that is sometimes necessary for self-protection but a problem when it is not needed, has transformed my thinking. Considering which of the middot to apply to a particular situation has been very helpful to me – and I look forward to deepening my understanding of them.

Just as traditional rabbinic commentary helped me reclaim the Tanach and find value and meaning in the text, so the Mussar lens of understanding Torah has added depth and relevance to my reading. Recently, in preparing the d’var Torah for class (one of my favorite things about studying Mussar!), I realized that the seal, cord, and staff of Judah which he gave to Tamar are a metaphor for our identity as those created in the image of God – a “Mussar driver’s license” – which we abandon when we treat others in a way that denies their creation in the image of God – and which we regain when we engage in Cheshbon haNefesh and Teshuvah.

I look forward to continuing in the program and deepening my understanding and practice of Mussar.

Tim Cravens lives in Philadelphia, where he works in planned giving for a social justice organization. He holds a BA in Judaic Studies with a minor in Hebrew from Emory University and an MDiv from Harvard University. He enjoys collecting liturgical books, having over 70 siddurim and machzorim in his collection, and learning about different varieties of religious practice. 

In Salem also is set His tabernacle

In a class on Psalm 76, we were asked to write a poem reinterpreting a verse.

I chose verse 3: Salem became His abode; Zion, His den.

The word "Salem" is related to the word for "whole" and the word for "abode" is "sukkah", the tabernacle/booth/hut from the festival of Sukkot (the plural of "sukkah").

Here is my poem:

In wholeness, God's sukkah

Wholeness is fleeting

Notice it? It's gone!

Wholeness is a Thou, not an it

Wholeness only comes when all 7 of your ushpizin selves

show up