Which Rock is your Gd? (Derashah: Haazinu 5769)

What an unbelievable day it's been. Long, long story... but the derashah is done.
This is actually a derashah for a Bar Mitzvah this Shabbos, but I'll omit the Bar Mitzvah-specific details here.


Chaim, walking in the woods, suddenly encountered a bear. He froze - and then he watched in amazement as the bear put on a yarmulke and began to daven.
Chaim thought to himself, “I’m saved, I’ve found the only Jewish bear in the world!” He began to bentch gomel, thanking Gd… and he finished the berachah just in time to hear the bear finish his own last words: “המוציא לחם מן הארץ.”


Our parshah and haftorah also present “last words” - the closing songs of Moshe Rabbeinu and Dovid haMelech.

Moshe and Dovid, although separated by some 500 years, lived very similar lives:
• They started out as shepherds, where they showed great מסירות נפש, great self-sacrifice, on behalf of their flocks.
• They were both very humble. When HaShem tried to appoint Moshe to lead the Jewish people, Moshe refused; when Shemuel came to annoint a son of Yishai, Dovid assumed it must be one of his brothers.
• Moshe and Dovid both led the Jews for forty tumultuous years.
• Both Moshe and Dovid were stopped just short of their goals, Moshe prevented from entering Israel, Dovid prevented from building the Beis haMikdash.
• And both present their final messages to the Jewish people in emotional, evocative verse.

But when it comes to those final words, Moshe and Dovid take strikingly different paths in describing the Gd who had led them all of their lives - Moshe gives Gd the title of צור, and Dovid adds the title of סלע.


Moshe sees Gd as a צור.

A צור is a rock; hence the description מעוז צור ישועתי, that Gd is the Rock of my salvation, and hundreds of similar usages in Tanach and in our davening.

A rock is inscrutable; as the pasuk says, מי יאמר אליו מה תעשה, who can tell Gd what to do? Like the eagle Moshe envisions hovering over its young, Gd is physically near, but inherently distant and unreachable.

Moshe refers to Gd as צור several times in our parshah, repeatedly in association with the Divine Names of קל and אלוקים - Names which connote power and justice, not warmth and mercy. The same is true elsewhere in Tanach.


Dovid also depicts Gd as a צור, but he adds a title which Moshe never uses: סלע.

Technically, סלע also means “rock,” but in a different way. As Malbim explains, the סלע is המקום שעליו תעמוד המצודה על שן סלע גבוה - סלע is the high boulder on which our fortress stands. Yes, Gd is a stern protector, but Gd also lifts me up, HaShem elevates me.

It is not accidental that where the name צור is associated with אלקים, Justice, the name סלע is associated repeatedly in Tanach with the four-letter Name of HaShem, the יקוק which represents Mercy.

Dovid names HaShem as a merciful, supportive Gd.


It is striking (so to speak) that Moshe was twice told to draw water from a stone, but the stone went by different names on the two occasions. In the first instance the stone was described as a צור; in the second instance the stone was described as a סלע.

The first time, Moshe was told to hit the stone - this was a צור, a hard stone. The second time, though, Gd told him to talk to a סלע - because a סלע helps and assists. And when Moshe hit the סלע, treating it as a צור rather than speaking to it, he lost his chance to lead the Jewish people.


Why, though, does Moshe describe Gd in his last words as a harsh protector, where Dovid sees Gd as closer, more helpful?

Moshe does not lack for appreciation of Gd - indeed, even as Gd is about to take his life, Moshe performs צידוק הדין, acknowledging that Gd is just and fair!

And why does Dovid see Gd as a loving nurturer? Dovid the warrior, Dovid the fugitive, Dovid the besieged father, certainly knew his share of danger and trouble and strife, the times when Gd did not appear to be near!

Perhaps the difference is that Dovid had one relationship with Gd which Moshe never had: Dovid personally experienced Divine mechilah, Divine forgiveness. Moshe was never forgiven.

Moshe earned forgiveness for the Jews, as a nation, many times over - but never for himself.
• When Moshe refused the job of leading the Jews initially, Gd reacted harshly and revoked his כהונה.
• When Moshe grew angry at the nation, Gd removed some of his Torah knowledge.
• And when Moshe struck the סלע, Gd removed his leadership position.

Contrast that with Dovid; after Dovid’s incident with Batsheva, HaShem told him explicitly that he was forgiven. True, Dovid suffered punishment as well, but he was told, “ה' העביר חטאתך, HaShem has removed your sin.” Moshe never received such a message; for reasons that are not at all clear but that may relate to the unique relationship he had with Gd, Moshe was never forgiven.


Divine forgiveness is a transformative element in our relationship with Gd.

In Moshe’s experience Gd is a protective צור, punishing Egypt, splitting the sea, raining down bread from the heavens and levelling mountains to ease our travel, for whom we are obligated in את ה' אלקיך תירא and ואהבת את ה' אלקיך - we are obligated to have awe for Gd, and to love Gd.

But this is an incomplete presentation of the relationship promised by Judaism, by a Gd who also declares, “I love you back,” אהבתי אתכם אמר ה'.

Judaism promises:
• a universe in which Man, capital M, is cosmically important and cosmically potent,
• a universe in which our souls are חלק אלוק ממעל, carved from the Divine throne itself,
• a universe in which we are not merely an insignificant protectorate of a benevolent Gd but בנים אתם לה' אלקיכם, we are children of this Living Gd,
• a universe in which Gd is not only מלכנו, our King, but also אבינו, our Father.

This is beautifully illustrated by the reality of Divine forgiveness. A monarch does not forgive an insignificant or distant protectorate. Either their sins are beneath his notice, or their sins are a violation of his law and deserve punishment.
• Forgiveness is reserved for relationships, for people about whom you care, for whom you love.
• Forgiveness enables us to grow and not be bogged down in our past, it even turns our sins into merits, buoying us onward and upward.
• Forgiveness lights up the face of the Kohen Gadol when he emerges from the Beis haMikdash on Yom Kippur.

This is one reason why a crimson thread hangs in the Beis haMikdash on Yom Kippur, and it turns white when HaShem forgives us. It is important for us to see the forgiveness from Gd, to have that visualization, so that we will understand Dovid haMelech’s סלע, that Gd loves us and forgives us.

(Bar Mitzvah part here)

We are now coming to Succos, which we call זמן שמחתינו, the time of our joy. Unlike for other Yomim Tovim, the Torah says “You shall be happy” three times regarding Succos. A midrash explains that Succos earns these special mentions of joy because, among other things, we celebrate having been forgiven on Yom Kippur. This is the joy which Dovid expressed in the Haftorah, this is the joy of a relationship with Gd, this is the joy which we feel when we recognize that HaShem is more than our protective צור - HaShem is also our loving סלע.

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Notes:
1. Credit for the opening joke goes to Jack, here.

1. The Malbim's explanation of סלע is on the other version of our Haftorah, in Tehillim 18:3.

2. The midrash about Succos is in Psikta d'Rav Kahana.

3. Remarkably, the string in the Beit haMikdash was tied to a stone at one point - and the stone is identified (Rosh HaShanah 31b) as a סלע.

4. One point I don't really address: Why wasn't Moshe given the same chance for forgiveness? Even if we can explain away the incident with the stone as consequence rather than punishment, as some mefarshim do, we must still explain the other circumstances. (See my notes in comment #4 to this post; I might have the beginning of an idea there.)

5. While giving this derashah on Shabbos, it occurred to me that it sounds very Christian. Interesting.

Yom Kippur 2008/5769 - Yom Kippur Greeting Cards

I find the idea of Rosh HaShanah cards a little odd; Rosh HaShanah is a nervewracking time, by the lights of Jewish tradition. Classically, some even fasted on Rosh HaShanah, although that is no longer in halachic vogue. It's the Day of Judgment, books of living and the dead, angels trembling... So why are we sending happy cards full of smiling faces to each other?

לו איישר חילי, I would abolish them.

(Except for this cute card I received: "How's your New Year going?" "Shofar, so good!" I really enjoyed that one, Ralph.)

On the other hand, Yom Kippur cards make a lot of sense. This is, per the gemara at the end of Taanis, one of the greatest days on the Jewish calendar. We should walk through the day with a big smile (except when whacking ourselves on the heart for our sins; then, a grimace may be permitted).

We are all unified, we pray together, what could be better (aside from a big burger with fries)?

I could even see a sort of fill-in-the-blank Yom Kippur card, customizable to request or grant forgiveness for anything you choose:

Dear ____________________,

We have been thinking about the past year, and we regret some of the things we said and did. Specifically, we want to ask your forgiveness for:

(Here would be a big space for those who have a lot to list. Those who prefer not to list anything could draw a picture, or insert a family photograph.)

In contemplating the past year, we also recall some of the ___________ (intense adjective) things you did. Rest assured that we forgive you for those as well, even including:

(Again, feel to write as much or as little as you like.)

This coming year, we hope, will be a better one. Whether you are voting for the right candidate or the other one, whether you are making aliyah or joining American Friends of Peace Now, whether you are a fan of my team or any other, whether you are inviting me to your daughter’s Bat Mitzvah or not, whether you ___________________ or whether you ___________________, we pray that Gd will give all of us a happy and healthy new year.

Smile - it's Yom Kippur!

Sincerely,

______________________


Perhaps Aish or NJOP will come up with one next year.

Until then: Have an easy and meaningful fast, צום קל ומועיל, and גמר חתימה טובה,
Mordechai

Daf: Gittin 73-78 – Divorce psychology

Avoiding preparing a derashah for Shabbos Haazinu, I will instead catch up a little more in these notes on Daf Yomi. There isn’t much here for the non-Daf reader, except perhaps for the note on Gittin 74a on the Talmud’s view of the psychology of divorce. If you are looking for more colorful material, may I suggest my post below on the Unity Kollel concept – and why I think we can already do this, in Israel.

Gittin 73b
The gemara gives examples of scenes one might witness, in which we would or wouldn’t be concerned that there was inappropriate sexual conduct. One of the cases is that we saw her “sleeping by the legs of his bed.” One of my Daffies noted the similarity to Ruth 3:14, where we also say nothing inappropriate happened.

Note that Abbaye here opposes changing editions in order to solve a problem. Elsewhere Abbaye is the one who offers an answer by changing an edition, and someone else (generally Rava) calls him on it.


Gittin 74a
Talmudic Psychology of Divorce: Rashi indicates here (אבל גט), based on the gemara, that in a normal case of divorce the husband does not wish to divorce his wife, but is compelled to do so. On the other hand, Rashi on Gitin 74b (דלצעורה איכוון) indicates that divorce arises from enmity.


Gittin 74b
This gemara’s account of Hillel’s enactment shows that the law of בתי ערי חומה (in which houses in Israeli walled cities may be reclaimed by their sellers, unilaterally, within a year of sale, by refunding the purchase price) was followed in the second Beit haMikdash. This is one of the proofs brought by Tosafot (בזמן) on Gittin 36a to show that all of the Yovel-related laws were practiced during the second Beit haMikdash. Ramban there, though, says it was practiced as a rabbinic law, not a biblical law. One practical ramification of this disagreement is in the question of how Prozbul works.


Gittin 75b
The gemara says Rav Huna quoted Rav, which is fine, but in the margin that is amended to Rav Huna quoting Rebbe. If so, I believe it should say משום רבי, not אמר רבי, since Rav Huna would not have met Rebbe.

The gemara presents an apparent conflict between our mishnah and a braita. Our mishnah says that if a woman’s get is conditional upon nursing a child, she must nurse the child for two years (the talmudic norm, per a gemara in Ketuvot). A braita, though, says she must only do it for a day in order to fulfill her condition.
Rava says there is no conflict – the braita is where no time was specified, the mishnah is where he specified two years. But I am confused: If such is the case, why would we need our mishnah? פשיטא, it would be obvious that two years would be the requirement!


Gittin 76a
One view in the gemara says that since the Torah goes out of its way to show both positive and negative language being used in many instances of contract conditions (such as regarding Reuven/Gad with Moshe, and the Sotah’s condition), that proves that this excessive language is not really needed for normal contracts. Had the Torah only stated it in one case, I would have said that the Torah meant for me to expand automatically to all other cases.
I am bothered by this proof – after all, some of the cited cases are simply citations of actual language, such as Avraham’s contract with Eliezer. Should the Torah have altered his language?


Gittin 77b
About ten lines up from the bottom, I think the word should be קיימה rather than קיימא – it is describing a woman standing in a yard.


Gittin 78a
Tosafot אינו is interesting.

Our blank spaces in the Torah (Derashah Yom Kippur 5769)

I like the strong images in this derashah - the blank parchment, the missing al cheit, the פסקא באמצע פסוק - but, overall, I consider this year's Kol Nidrei derashah, posted below, a better derashah. Part of it is that I prefer the passion of the Kol Nidrei derashah. See more in notes 2 & 3 at the end.

Just short of entering Israel, months away from escaping the desert, the Jews were attacked by a plague of serpents, a punishment for their harsh speech against Gd. Many died - until Moshe, as instructed by Gd, formed a copper statue of a serpent and placed it atop a pole. The nation looked heavenward and remembered to pray to Gd, and the plague stopped. Afterward, Moshe kept the copper serpent in order to remind the nation of the price of rebellion.

Fast-forward some six hundred years. The Jews were now living in that promised land. The Jews of the north strayed into Canaanite idolatry, but the Jews of the south, led by righteous kings, primarily followed the Torah. Then a small idolatrous sect sprang up around that copper serpent. The cult persisted until King Chizkiyah boldly destroyed that historic heirloom, the work of Moshe Rabbeinu’s own hands.

The sages of the Talmud were shocked: How could Chizkiyah have decided to destroy an historic treasure, the handiwork of Moshe, an artifact from the Torah itself? If the serpent was actually an idol, wouldn’t his predecessors, the righteous kings Yehoshafat and Asa, have destroyed it themselves?

To which the sages answered, מקום הניחו לו אבותיו להתגדר בו, Chizkiyah’s ancestors did wish to destroy the statue, but they held back in order to leave him a place to make his own mark, to apply the Torah’s principles to the world of his day. Chizkiyah was challenged, by his ancestors, to convert the Torah’s words into action, on his own.


A second story:
Moshe came down from Har Sinai with a set of Luchos/Tablets, and found the Jews celebrating with a Golden Calf. He smashed those Luchos, then prayed to Gd to forgive the Jews. Gd acquiesced, and told Moshe we would have another chance, on the very first Yom Kippur, to receive the Luchos. But Gd told Moshe, oddly, פסל לך, chisel these new tablets for yourself.

The sages explained that HaShem told Moshe, “Chisel out these precious stones, form the tablets, for yourself; you get to keep the valuable leftover material, to enrich yourself.”

I can’t take that midrash only literally, though; what use did Moshe have for gems? He had food, he had clothing, he had a place to live, there were no luxuries to buy! Gd knew that Moshe would never make it out of the desert, so there would be no future need, either!

So I would explain that talmudic passage homiletically: Gd enriched Moshe in that He gave Moshe the valuable space around the Torah’s letters.

The letters were HaShem’s message to the Jews; the stone around them, carved away, was the space left for Moshe to become Moshe Rabbeinu, to give his own counsel and lessons and guidance to the nation, to teach the nation how to apply HaShem’s words in their world, how to create a Jewish society.

מקום הניח לו למשה להתגדר בו, HaShem enriched Moshe with this opportunity in which to achieve greatness.


That opportunity for greatness, for applying the Torah to our lives, is not limited to Moshe - it is an opportunity for all of us, as codified in the laws of writing a Sefer Torah:

• Each letter in a Torah must be מוקף גויל, surrounded by parchment. No letter may run to the edge of the klaf, and no two letters may be joined.
• No word may run into the next, either; every word must be evenly spaced.
• Every פרשה, every paragraph, too, must be separated from the next by a prescribed space.

Those spaces - between letters, words and paragraphs - are our מקום להתגדר בו, the place in which we achieve greatness.


King Chizkiyah was meant to achieve greatness by eliminating an ancient idol.
Moshe was meant to achieve greatness by teaching the Jews how to apply the Torah.
Neither of those apply to us. So what greatness are we meant to achieve, what are supposed to be the contents of our spaces?

Based on the writings of Rambam and Ramban, those spaces are where we define and apply our social relationships.

Rambam wrote that the Torah’s mitzvah of “Love your neighbor as yourself” was meant to imply all of the ways we would find to implement that overall ethic. Gd gave us the starting point; we develop ways to implement this Divine instruction.

Ramban wrote, “אי אפשר להזכיר בתורה כל הנהגות האדם עם שכניו ורעיו, וכל משאו ומתנו ותקוני היישוב והמדינות כלם - It would be impossible to include in the Torah all of human social behavior and interactions, and the rules necessary for society and nations to function.” Therefore, the Torah mentioned some starting rules, such as “You shall not peddle gossip,” “You shall not take revenge or bear a grudge,” “You shall not stand by the blood of your brother,” “You shall not curse the deaf,” “Rise before the aged,” and then it gave us a general rule: ועשית הישר והטוב, Do what is just and good.

Love your neighbor, Practice the good and the just - that’s what is in those spaces. That’s what is in our spaces.

In our spaces, we recognize that our money is a means of aiding others, and use it to help the needy.
In our spaces, we recognize that we share our environment and resources with others, and we preserve and share them.
In our spaces, we recognize that all Jews are part of one family and one covenant, and we act on our special responsibility to each other.

This is our opportunity for greatness. As Yeshayah said in the haftorah moments ago, “Open the chains of wickedness, untie the yoke, let the oppressed go free… break your bread for the hungry, bring the desperate poor into your home, clothe the unclothed and do not turn away from your flesh.”

(See Note 1 below.)

But we all miss opportunities to fill those spaces. What’s worse, these opportunities, once missed, tend to disappear forever. As the Chafetz Chaim noted, we can repent for violating laws, but how will we repent for missing opportunities? Even if we regret our inaction, the opportunity is still lost, the person or persons who needed our help still didn’t receive it!

I call this “the missing Al Cheit.” The list of “al cheit” sins in our machzor includes apologies for all sorts of actions, but there is no apology for, “על חטא שחטאנו לפניך באי-פעולה, The sin we have committed before You, Gd, through inaction.” This “Al Cheit” is not there, because it would be useless; saying “I’m sorry” doesn’t change the fact that we failed to act; we cannot atone until we heal the abused worker, restore the wasted environment, give to the ignored pauper.

The 10th day of Tishrei, Yom Kippur, can’t do anything, can’t forgive anything, on its own, in these areas. Instead, we need to wake up the next day, tomorrow, the 11th of Tishrei, and use our power to transcend our past mistakes and live up to the charge of filling in those blank spaces in the Torah with our own ethical practices:
• To start speaking more positively about other people;
• To stop wasting the resources we all share;
• To use our money for others, rather than hoard it for ourselves.


Our ancestors had spaces of their own in the Torah; they, too, were given these opportunities for greatness. At Yizkor, especially on Yom Kippur when all of the living and deceased are judged and forgiven for their sins, we remember with love those parents, grandparents and other relatives who made good in their own chances to act. But those lives and their chances were cut off at some point.

In a few cases in the Torah, we find a פסקא באמצע פסוק, an abrupt break, a blank space, right in the middle of a sentence. This is what happens when a person dies - it is an abrupt break in mid-sentence, and all projects, acts of kindness, social interactions, all of them come to a full stop.

That abrupt break is a tragedy, a loss - but, after the grief, it becomes an opportunity. That is מקום הניחו לנו אבותינו, the place our ancestors left for us to work, to grow, to accomplish. Like Chizkiyah, like Moshe, like every generation of Jews and human beings, we have been given the ability and space to accomplish great things. Let’s not end up saying an impotent על חטא for inaction - rather, let’s follow Yeshayah’s charge, let’s follow the counsel of Rambam and Ramban, let’s pick up where our ancestors and relatives left off, and so earn a גמר חתימה טובה.


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Notes:
1. I also used this derashah to talk about Agriprocessors/Rubashkin (where I wrote "See Note 1 below"), but I have not included it here because the derashah is better without it. I only did it in shul to address specific questions which have come up locally.

2. One of the reasons I'm not 100% thrilled with this derashah is the homiletic regarding Moshe and the leftover material from the luchos. To me, pshat in the leftover material is, indeed, that it was to enrich Moshe. What I did here is within normal homiletic bounds, but I don't really like doing it.

3. Another reason I'm not 100% comfortable: I like my derashos to be less abstract, more concrete in their recommendations.

4. Some sources: The gemara on Chizkiyah is Chullin 6b-7a. Gd's gift to Moshe is in Yerushalmi Shekalim 5:2. The Rambam's note is in Mishneh Torah Hilchos Avel 14:1, and Ramban's note is on Devarim 6:18 - ועשית הישר והטוב. The Chafetz Chaim's quote came from a biography of his, I don't recall which one anymore. It might have been in כל כתבי.

Teach me to look, Teach me to feel (Kol Nidrei 5769)

Once there was a pauper who went door to door, begging for money with which to support himself, his wife, and his two children. In his youth he had worked lugging firewood and well-water, but age now kept him from those tasks, and so, every day, he rose early in the morning and began his rounds, walking from home to home, from town to town, absorbing abuse, eating little if anything, until he returned home at the end of the day with a few coins.

One night, as the pauper slept, he dreamed that he was now king. But where we might have expected this to be a happy dream for that poor man, it was actually a nightmare. “My Gd!” he wailed in the dream. “As it is now, I go door to door, town to town, just to get some small amount of food for my family! How will I ever beg for enough money to be able to support my soldiers, to maintain a palace, to run a government?!”


Rav Klonymus Kalman Shapiro told this story in order to make a point regarding the way our minds work.

Rav Shapiro, the Piaseczner Rebbe, was one of the leaders of Polish Jewry before the Holocaust. He led a yeshiva, where he argued for modernizing educational methods to meet the needs of his generation’s youth. He said that each child must be taught “a vision of his own potential greatness,” and be “an active participant in his own development.”

Then came the war, though. Rav Shapiro lost his only son, his daughter-in-law and his sister-in-law, in the Nazi bombing of Warsaw. After the Nazi invasion he was interned in the Warsaw Ghetto, until the Ghetto was liquidated; while in the Ghetto he wrote an intense work, אש קודש, his most famous book, acknowledging and addressing the suffering and the religious doubts of Jews around him in the ghetto. When the Ghetto was liquidated he was transferred to the Trawniki work camp, until he was shot to death, along with the rest of the Jews there, on November 3, 1943.

While in the Ghetto, this giant of spirituality, who understood so much of life, was approached by young men who wished to refine their spiritual awareness, their sensitivity to holiness in their lives. In response, he wrote a book called בני מחשבה טובה, “The Conscious Community.” A translation is even available on-line.

In this book, Rav Shapiro described our own insensitivity to Gd, and to that which is godly in our lives and in our actions. He presented the story of that foolish pauper to make the point that we don’t see Gd, we don’t notice a bedrock layer of our existence, because our minds are focussed elsewhere.

That pauper in Rav Shapiro’s story lives in a world in which people earn money by begging - and he cannot envision any other way he might function. He is only aware of his box, his experiences, and is unable to transcend that life.

We are similarly limited; in our box we focus on what we can see, hear and touch, in which actions are everything and thoughts matter only insofar as they lead to action - so that many of us cannot see Gd in a waterfall or a sunset, cannot envision the value and impact of a mood or a moment of inspiration, cannot sense the spirituality involved in eating, in talking, or even in davening.


But Rav Shapiro offered a simple psychological prescription to treat our limitedness, to broaden our box. Rav Shapiro wrote, “In order to serve God, a Jew needs …to expand his thought, and to be able to feel passionately.” In other words: We need to open our minds, and we need to open our hearts.

Rav Shapiro charged his followers and readers to take advantage of strong emotions we feel at various moments. Whether the joy of a business deal that went well or the pain of a stock price that plummeted, whether the laughter of seeing a small child playing or the sorrow of attending a funeral, in these many moments we feel the beginnings of passion. So Rav Shapiro argued that rather than do the socially acceptable thing and bury the passion and move on, we need to build that emotion, so that our minds become trained and sensitized to feeling more powerfully, more acutely. Once we introduce these strong feelings into our box, we will be able to summon that passion whenever we wish.

At that stage, we will enter into prayer and envision the things that matter most to us - our most vivid fears and concerns and loves and worries. We will be open to feeling, really feeling, the illnesses and economic needs and loves and relationships and remorse and repentance that are on our minds and in our hearts. Then we will look at the words of our prayers and realize that we are standing before Gd, Gd who hears all weeping, that it’s okay for us to pray, to sing, to cry, to feel.


Tonight, with as much emotion as our box permits us to muster, we will recite our private Amidah, and the Ashamnu/Bagadnu and Al Cheit paragraphs in which we enumerate our wrongdoings. We will be invited to cast aside foolish justifications and rationalizations, and reflect honestly - and passionately! - on the lives we have lived.

We will continue with the statement, “עד שלא נוצרתי איני כדאי, ועכשיו שנוצרתי כאילו לא נוצרתי, Before I was created I was unworthy, and now that I have been created, it is as though I had not been created.” We will have the opportunity to demand of ourselves: “Is the world a better place for our presence? How much have I accomplished, in the great mission that is my life? Do I even know what that mission is?”

We will recite apologetic Selichos, in which we will describe ourselves as clay in the hands of the potter, and begin the humble acknowledgement that, no, we did not create ourselves, that we are not the ultimate rulers of our lives.

In those Selichos we will cast Gd not in the role of judge, but in the role of plaintiff, of wounded party, recognizing that we have a relationship, that Gd cares what we do, watches us, and longs for our repentance.

We will quote psukim from the Torah which identify Gd as merciful, invoking in particular the 13 attributes of Divine mercy, the ways in which Gd is prepared to welcome us back.

And we will cap that with Avinu Malkeinu, a prayer which begins with the frank admission, “אבינו מלכנו חטאנו לפניך, Our Father and King, we have sinned before You.”

These prayers contain so much which could resonate within us and call forth our emotions -
• so much which speaks to our own rarely-acknowledged misgivings about our behavior;
• so much which addresses our relationship with a Gd we can neither see nor touch, but who shapes our lives;
• so much which underlies our spiritual lives and the goals we have for ourselves and our families.
• Individual passages like “אנו סגולתך ואתה אלקינו, We are Your treasure and You are our Gd.”
• Thematic poems like “כי הנה כחומר ביד היוצר,” placing our trust in that Gd who shapes our lives.
• Biblical passages which pledge that our records, though red with sin, may yet be whitened of wrongdoing.

All of these have the power to evoke strong emotion - if only we will allow and encourage it.


In April 2007, the Washington Post staged a psychological experiment in a Washington DC subway station. They hired world-class violinist Joshua Bell, dressed him in jeans, a T-shirt and a baseball cap, and had him play in the station, like any other subway musician. Bell ordinarily plays to sold-out concert halls; just a week after his foray into subway symphonics, he played a sold-out concert at Boston Symphony Hall, where the cheapest tickets would have set you back $100. He played not a cheap fiddle, but a three million dollar Stradivarius violin. The goal of the Washington Post’s experiment was to see whether anyone would stop, would take notice of Bell’s beautiful artistry, would allow themselves to be emotionally drawn by music acknowledged as among the world’s best.

Well, if the Washington Post’s findings are any indication, we’re in trouble. Joshua Bell played for 43 minutes. 1070 commuters passed his way; you can see the video of it on YouTube. Out of those 1070 commuters, 27 gave money, totally thirty-two dollars and change. Only 7 stopped what they were doing for more than a minute, to listen. Almost no one stopped, almost no one allowed themselves to feel something.

However, tonight, here, we have some advantages that they did not have in the experiment.
Tonight we read the Joshua Bell of our liturgy not in a DC subway station but in a beautiful shul, not distracted by work or school or food but focussed on fasting and repentance, not buffeted by rushing commuters but surrounded and reinforced by others who are doing just what we are.

Tonight we can allow ourselves - and push ourselves - to be moved.


As Rav Shapiro wrote:
Know how to look. Know how to look at everything that is occurring within you and outside of you…
We have many feelings that flow shallowly and weakly. If we broaden such feelings and bring them into full being, they will turn into a great river whose waters, with those of its tributaries, will never run dry. But if we do not expand these feelings, they will disappear without ever having seen the light of the sun…
Therefore, we advise you: Teach yourself to look.

Tonight, let’s not imitate the foolish pauper and the Washington DC commuters; rather, let’s follow the counsel of Rav Klonymous Kalman Shapiro, and teach ourselves to look, to listen, to sing, to feel, to daven for real, and so earn a Gmar Chasimah Tovah.

-
Notes:
1. My goal at Kol Nidrei is to help myself daven. If others benefit, so much the better. I don't even use it to discuss teshuvah in any direct way; I really focus on prayer.

2. The Joshua Bell experiment, and its potential tie-in to the work of R' Shapiro, was brought to my attention in a "drasha nugget" shared by Rabbi Marc Spivak with other rabbis, through the CJF's Yarchei Kallah resources.

3. The on-line translation of בני מחשבה טובה is available here. The Joshua Bell experiment is available here.

4. Of course, one may build up strong emotion and use it entirely inappropriately, not to react to Gd but to react to any other stimulus! This advice would fit equally well in a cult environment. That troubles me, but not so much that I wouldn't recommend the method for Jewish sensitivity and growth as well.

5. Added note, courtesy of a reader, Devorah: Seems that the Bell experiment was not the first time it was done; violinist Jacques Gordon did it in Chicago in 1930. For more see here.

The Unity Kollel - Let's do it in Israel

I'm going to ramble here a bit, as I continue to not write my Yom Kippur derashah. The fact that right after Yom Kippur we have a Bar Mitzvah here, followed by Succos, followed by Shabbos Chol haMoed, followed by Shemini Atzeres/Simchas Torah, is, oddly enough, not helping me concentrate on work...

My friend Alan Krinsky posted an essay on his Achrayus blog this past July proposing, among other things, a Unity Kollel, which he described as “centers of Jewish education and outreach consciously designed to include members from different Hashkafos.”

Alan continued to say, “Imagine if we created a kollel, and learning and teaching together we could find, just for example, a YU graduate, a Ner Yisrael grad, someone from a Chasidic group, and an individual from an explicitly Religious Zionist institution? Imagine the dynamic learning that would go on in such a kollel, and the effect such a group would have in outreach to the community!”

It’s a fascinating concept, albeit a non-starter. It’s a non-starter because the core members of some of those groups actually believe that the core members of some of the other groups are fundamentally and irredeemably wrong, on a level such that it would be a halachic violation to support, or in any way endorse, each other’s existence and appeal.

I'm not a pessimist; it's just that, L’havdil, this endeavor would be like asking Roman Catholic priests to study in equal partnership with Episcopalian priests; the idea would be anathema to them.

Of course, each group has members who are more tolerant and less certain of their own monopoly on truth, but those individuals don’t truly represent the group. The hardcore ideology of each group is exclusive of the others – and, again, on an halachic level.

Now, since Yom Kippur is coming up, someone may well protest that at Kol Nidrei we say, “אנו מתירין להתפלל עם העבריינים,” explicitly saying we will pray with the sinners? Surely, then, we could learn with them!

But this argument would be incorrect, on two levels:
First, that line is not really meant to welcome sinners. Rather, it’s meant to welcome in people who had been excommunicated by the community, and it’s contingent upon their having “seen the light” and repented.
Second, that’s a Yom Kippur tefillah in which the ausvorfen (oisvorfen? my yiddish is terrible) are explicitly labelled as sinners; that’s not the same thing as creating a joint beis medrash in which all will participate equally. If anything, use of the “sinners” label actually proves my point.

To return to the Unity Kollel, though: I’m not sure it’s necessary.

If our goal is, as Alan writes, Unity and an end to baseless hatred, perhaps we could try, instead, for a Unity supermarket. Or a Unity office building. Or a Unity city. A New Square planned with different groups living together in the same metropolitan area. Some space in which the different groups interact and, hopefully, learn to like each other.

Oh, wait. I think that exists. It’s Yerushalayim, right?

So perhaps the answer is for all of us to make aliyah, and work on developing our Unity City (or Unity Cities) there…

PS According to legend, the beit midrash of Yeshivat Kerem b’Yavneh was, originally, to be a “Unity Kollel” beit midrash. As I heard it when I was in yeshiva there, the beit midrash and campus were designed with various corners to encourage each of the European yeshivos to come set up shop in the beit midrash there, in its own niche. Can anyone confirm that legend?

Daf: Gittin 65-70 – Demonology, Rabbi Akiva, Talmudic medicine, More Demonology

Another installment of notes on Daf Yomi, falling farther and farther (further and further?) behind… If this isn’t your thing, check back later; I expect to post my thoughts on an interesting Unity Kollel concept.

Gittin 65b
The mishnah said that if a woman who is married to a kohen tells someone, “Receive my get in Location X,” she may eat terumah, as a fully married woman, until her agent arrives in Location X. In discussing the case, the gemara asks what would happen if the agent received the get in some other location, and ends up discussing a case in which she tells her agent, “Receive the get wherever you can, but it won’t be a get until you arrive in Location X.” This is problematic, though – for we require a specific act of transfer to validate the get, and the transfer into her possession doesn’t take place in Location X!
Tosafot גיטא suggests the somewhat convoluted explanation that she told her agent to tell the husband to appoint him as a delivery agent for the husband until he arrives in Location X, and then in Location X he will become the wife’s receiving agent. Alternatively, he acts as a receiving agent for an extended act of receiving, through the duration of that trip to Location X.


Gittin 66a
How are we to understand the demonology in the gemara's question here (“Should I be concerned that the voice in the pit saying ‘Divorce my wife for me’ is that of a demon?”), affecting this most practical area of law? Theoretically one could understand it as a matter of hallucination, and the gemara’s concern is that the passerby hallucinates seeing an outline in a pit and imagines hearing voices. However, this is hard to fit into the general framework of talmudic demonology.


Gittin 66b
Presumably, in the middle of the page, it should be משום רבי and not אמר רבי – Shemuel did not study under Rebbe, but could have cited things he learned in Rebbe’s name.


Gittin 67a
The gemara comments that Rabbi Akiva was like an אוצר בלום, a storehouse in which all items are stored in proper compartments (see Rashi on אוצר בלום). Rashi notes the division of R’ Akiva’s learning into the different bodies of midrash: Sifri, Sifra, etc.
It is worth noting that Rabbi Akiva’s students (the latter set, after the plague) ended up being the ones to record these bodies of midrash. There are a few different versions of the list of R’ Akiva’s students, but all versions include at least some of the names listed in Sanhedrin 86 as editors of those bodies of midrash: Rabbi Meir (teacher of Rebbe who edited the mishnah, and author of unattributed mishnayot), Rabbi Shimon (editor of Sifri), Rabbi Yehudah (editor of Sifra), Rabbi Nechemyah (editor of Tosefta) and Rabbi Yosi (editor of Seder Olam).


Gittin 67b
The gemara now begins a long record of medicines and therapies. Note Rav Hai Gaon’s teshuvah to students who wanted to implement these medicines; he strongly forbade it, saying that the sages were recording the medicine of their day, and it should not be used. I could discuss this much more, but some other time.

Some of the medicines and therapies we see here look very odd to us, but recall the gemara in Shabbat, regarding amulets: They only trusted treatments which they had seen work three times in a row, without an intervening failure. They were using classic empirical methods.


Gittin 68a
Here we get into some serious demonology. Note that Rav Hai Gaon - in a teshuvah – attributes talmudic demonology, which is more prevalent in the Babylonian Talmud than in the Talmud Yerushalmi, to influence of other cultures. He explains its relative sparseness in Yerushalmi as a result of being farther from Persian society.

Tosafot וכתיב notes that we have a speaker in the day of Shlomo haMelech quoting a pasuk which won’t appear for centuries, until the time of Hosheia! But he explains that the concept of the pasuk was knownlong before the prophecy in which it was recorded.

Gittin 70b
Tosafot וניחוש at the bottom of the page clearly indicates that our assumption, in handling agunah cases, must be on the side that will result in freeing an agunah. Note that he takes Rashi's definition of "agunah," that the husband is known and present but is not living with her in the manner of husband and wife (over Rashba's explanation that an agunah is a woman who is unsure whether or not she is married).

Judging by the calls I’m getting, I think this is an Obama Nation

[Haveil Havalim is out here.]

While I should be writing my Yom Kippur day derashah…

All right, I just hung up after my third call from an Obama campaign staffer - third in the past five days, that is. That, and I had a visit to my door yesterday, from a polite woman who immediately apologized when I explained it was my Sabbath. And I’ve been invited to an Obama Jewish Community Leadership Committee of the Lehigh Valley meeting for tomorrow night, with a fellow named Daniel Shapiro, billed as Senior Policy Advisor for Senator Barack Obama. (Can't make it - I'm too busy not writing my derashot, as you can see...)

No McCainers have called yet, though; rather surprising for a swing state like Pennsylvania, and the third-largest region therein. And, yes, I’m one of those supervoters the campaigns target. Where are they?!

Obama’s grassroots support here is strong, while McCain’s is invisible.

Of course, this little piece of anecdotal evidence doesn’t mean anything in the greater scheme of electoral politics, but it does cement my personal sense that this election is over; if they're not contesting Pennsylvania, what are they going to contest? Arizona??

The other piece of evidence is the way that McCain/Palin have resorted to Bill Ayers and similar personal attacks. If that’s the best you have, then the Republican campaign chest is as bankrupt as AIG and Lehman Brothers. This campaign could and should be won on issues and policies, whether Iraq and Afghanistan and North Korea and Iran or Wall Street and Healthcare and Energy Policy and the Environment, not on Bill Ayers.

So even if America is, by nature, a country of people who favor small government, limited taxation and government spending, and less regulation in every area, - and I believe it is - I still think we’re going to see a serious vote in favor of Obama/Biden, because of eight years of GWB and because of the Republican camp’s failure to present serious policies to clean up the current domestic and foreign mess.

I think we’re looking at a landslide, a spread on the order of 55%-45% or more nationwide. The pollsters with their six-to-eight-point spreads are actually erring conservatively.

I don’t know whether to be happy or sad about this. I am glad Sarah Palin won’t be Vice President; she’s fun to watch, but I’m not particularly into electing people for the sake of entertainment, even if it is “just” the Vice Presidency. Four years of Dan Quayle in the national news was enough, thank you, and even returning SNL to the ranks of the funny is just not enough to justify it.

I’m Mordechai Torczyner, and I am not endorsing any candidate.

Rabbi Yochanan ben Zakkai, Vespasian and Me on Rosh HaShanah

Surprisingly, Rosh HaShanah was, thank Gd, a good one for me this year.

I always come in very nervous. Someone shook my hand after a pesichah on the first day and was surprised my hands were ice-cold. I told him I get nervous, to which he replied, “But you’re not new at this!” No, I’m not new at it… but I still get nervous. About my personal davening, about my rabbi role, about how shofar will go, about how my children will daven, about whether X will insult Y, about whether people will listen when I give my pre-shofar reminder for them to respect other people’s davening, etc.

But it went well, I’m glad to say. I was able to daven and feel kavvanah. The chazanim were excellent. I was proud to tears of the way my older two davened. The great, great majority of people were respectful of people who were davening, and stepped out if they needed to converse. Shofar was excellent. The derashot were well-received. No one, to the best of my knowledge, insulted or slugged anyone else (although I may only hear about it later today…). I cried my way through my “Dealing with Depression in others” speech, but I knew I was going to do that. If I’m not feeling the words of the derashah as I say them, it’s not a derashah.

And I had a stop-me-in-my-tracks moment during the Shmoneh Esreih of the first night:

It started right at the beginning of the amidah, with the identification of HaShem as “Gd of Avraham/Yitzchak/Yaakov.”

Like almost everything else in the amidah, that line is lifted from Tanach. It quotes HaShem’s first speech to Moshe, telling him (Shmot 3:15), “Go tell the Jews: The Gd of your fathers, Gd of Avraham, Gd of Yitzchak, Gd of Yaakov has sent me to you. This is My Name forever, this is the way to recall Me, from generation to generation.”

And so, in every generation, we pray for redemption using that verse. We say, “Gd, You are the Gd of our ancestors – and You are our Gd, too.” And I got caught up in it that night: Who am I, to say, “You are Avraham’s Gd and my Gd?” Does my faith or my service belong anywhere in the same universe as that of an Avraham? A Yitzchak? A Yaakov?! Talk about hubris!

Then I continued to describe Gd, “The powerful, the great…” And I thought to myself: When I sin with the same mouth that is now praising Gd in these terms, what am I thinking?!

But the kicker was when I reached the first time that we call HaShem “HaMelech,” “the King.” My mind leapt to the story of Rabban Yochanan ben Zakkai’s meeting with the Roman general Vespasian (Gittin 57b), before the second Beit haMikdash was destroyed, and the association was so sharp that I’m surprised I never thought of it before.

The Romans were besieging Jerusalem. The sages wanted to hold out or make a treaty with the Romans, but the zealots were pushing for a last-ditch fight. Rabban Yochanan ben Zakkai managed to get himself smuggled out of the city, and he met with Vespasian. He greeted Vespasian as one greets a king, because of his belief that Jerusalem could only fall to a king, and Vespasian replied, “If I am a king, why haven’t you come to me until now?”

To which R’ Yochanan ben Zakkai replied, “I couldn’t, because of the zealots among us.”
To which Vespasian said, “You should have destroyed the city to get rid of the zealots!”
And the gemara describes a dumbstruck R’ Yochanan, unable to respond.

I suddenly flashed into that gemara. Here I am, calling Gd “King.” But despite the regal assocations unique to Rosh HaShanah, Gd is always King – why haven’t I come to Gd as King until now?

And if I will blame my own zealots, the ego and arrogance and foolishness that keeps me away, won’t Gd have the same response for me: I should have demolished myself in order to get rid of those obstructing forces?

To which the answer is, possibly, the same one that the gemara says R’ Yochanan should have offered to Vespasian: We had hoped that You would come and get rid of the zealots.

As we say so often, השיבנו ה' אליך ונשובה, Bring us back to You, Gd, and then we will repent. I have been hoping all year that Gd would help me. But I have arrived at Rosh HaShanah without success, and so, at least today, I call Gd the King, I take that first step.

This moment made me feel good about my entire davening. I had an insight – into the davening, and into myself. I understand myself better now than I did before. I may even have a weapon for fighting my zealots.

What more could I want from Rosh HaShanah?

Daf: Gittin 61-64 – Tzedakah for all human beings, Halachic deception, Feed animals first

[Haveil Havalim is here...]

This is a feeble attempt to sort of catch up with my notes a little bit, in the middle of Yamim Noraim when I ought to be writing my Shabbos Shuvah derashah. If you’re not into the notes on the Daf, feel free to scroll down for other material, perhaps to speeches for Day 1 (Risk-taking) and Day 2 (Depression) of Rosh HaShanah. I won’t be offended.

Gittin 61a
The gemara says that there is a debate regarding the ownership of wild creatures caught in a trap which does not have a receptacle component, but I am not clear on why this is a debate. In the mishnah in Rosh HaShanah and Sanhedrin regarding disqualifying people from testimony for acts which are classified rabbinically as theft, we include people who lure birds from others’ dovecotes, even those the dovecotes do not hold the birds in receptacles.

In the story of Rav Kahana taking someone’s dates, he had the halachic status of a pauper because he was traveling on the road, and so he was entitled to them.

See Tosafot שדי אופיי, who disagrees with Rashi as to what Rav Kahana was doing to get the dates.

The gemara here approves of providing tzedakah for non-Jewish needy people when we provide it for Jewish needy people. Note that this does not qualify, though, for the maaser kesafim custom of giving 1/10. This is because we are dealing with two different practices here: Tzedakah obligates me to give to a needy person I see. Maaser Kesafim is a separate custom to separate 1/10 and find someone who needs it. (There are views that MK is more than a minhag, but I find the minhag explanation most compelling. See Prof. Cyril Domb’s excellent selection of resources on the topic in his book Maaser Kesafim.)


Gittin 61b
Note that Abayye here disagrees with Rava, but answers a challenge to Rava's view on his behalf.


Gittin 62a
The gemara here recommends that we tell an am ha’aretz that by touching dough he will return it to its untithed state, because we know he doesn’t take impurity seriously but he does take tithes seriously.
This idea of lying for halachic gain bothers me a great deal, especially when Tosafot שלמא further down the page says that one may not pretend to greet someone warmly when you are really greeting a third party, lest you be guilty of deception!

The gemara here notes that one should feed his animals before eating personally, from the order of HaShem’s promise that if you will follow the mitzvot, Hashem will give grass for your animals, and you will eat and be full. Note, though, that regarding drinking we say that people should drink first, since Rivkah gives water to Eliezer first, and only afterward to his camels.


Gittin 63b
In the middle of the page: I believe that the word should be ליישה rather than לישא. It’s a feminine verb for “kneading.”


Gittin 64a
We say here that if a man sends a proxy to betrothe an unspecified woman, and the proxy dies without informing him whom he betrothed (if any), then the man may not wed, lest he accidentally wed a relative of his betrothed. This is often cited as an explanation for how Lavan wished to destroy “everything,” as alleged in the Haggadah – since he and Betuel plotted to kill Eliezer, with the result that Yitzchak would now not have been able to wed. However, see my notes here explaining why this is not a concern, using Tosafot from Nazir 12a.


Gittin 64b
The gemara here says that the sages empowered an underage shifchah to acquire the meal of שיתופי מבואות on behalf of others, even though she is underage, since the entire construct is rabbinic. But I don’t understand – once they felt free to expand to an underage shifchah, why didn’t they also permit one’s underage children?
Perhaps it’s because then you have two problems – the fact that they are underage, and the fact that it isn’t actually a transaction, where they live in the parents’ home. (But then what if they live independently, and don’t depend on the parents’ table?)

Dealing with Depression - in others (Rosh HaShanah 5769 Day 2)

And Gd told Avraham to bring up his son, his only son, whom he loved, Yitzchak, as an offering on Har haMoriyah. And Avraham obeyed the Divine instruction. And Yitzchak, too, obeyed, and allowed himself to be bound hand and foot and placed atop the altar, atop the wood. And Avraham stretched out his hand and took the hatchet - and then an angel called out, “Avraham, Avraham! Don’t send your hand toward your child, don’t do him any harm!”

This is a story full of pain - father sacrificing son, Gd putting faithful followers to an excruciating test, a son offering up his own life for the sake of his father’s beliefs - but perhaps the greatest pain waits for the end of the story, the way in which the Akeidah is closely followed in the Torah by the death of Avraham’s wife, Yitzchak’s mother, Sarah. A medrash explains the association:

וישב אברהם לבאר שבע, Avraham returned home, without his son, Yitzchak; Yitzchak went off elsewhere. And Sarah -
the righteous woman who had abandoned home and family to travel where Gd would lead her;
the woman who was taken captive by kings and rescued by Divine decree;
the righteous woman who received a child at the age of ninety because, as we read yesterday, Gd had heard her prayers;
the prophetess regarding whom Gd told Avraham, “Do everything she tells you” -
this woman Sarah saw Avraham returning alone and believed that her husband had killed their precious son.
ותבך ותחנק ותמת מן הצרה, she wept, she strangled, she died in agony.

She died, in pain, not knowing that, in fact, her son was alive.
She died, in agony, not knowing that it had all been a Divine challenge.
She died - and the medrash allows us to believe it might even have been by her own hand - in the deepest depression imaginable, a mother who thought she had lost her child, her only child, whom she had loved, Yitzchak.

I read this medrash and cannot help but be distraught. So tragic - and so wasteful, so unnecessary! In vain! How could Gd allow her to wallow in this depression until she passed away?
And yet, we allowed it to happen just yesterday. And today. And, if we don’t do anything about it, tomorrow as well. It happens every day, every minute of the day.
On a daily basis, people around us suffer from psychological pain, from the angst that comes with unemployment, with bankruptcy, with family trouble, with inability to cope, with stress and fear, with biochemical imbalance. Some of them find ways to manage, through counseling and friends and medicine. Far more never find ways to manage.
If we are torn by Sarah’s death, then we must do more than shed tears over this lost queen of Israel.
We had a breakfast program about this issue in February of 2006. I spoke about it on Yom Kippur last year, too. Nonetheless, I want to re-visit it: Our Judaism and our humanity obligates us to do more to prevent such deaths.

Our Torah obligates us to help.
In a series of paragraphs at the end of Sefer Vayyikra, the Torah speaks of our responsibility to help each other economically:
כי ימוך אחיך ומכר מאחוזתו - If your brother becomes impoverished and sells his ancestral fields…
כי ימוך אחיך ומטה ידו עמך - If your brother becomes impoverished and seeks a loan from you…
כי ימוך אחיך עמך ונמכר לך - If your brother becomes impoverished and is sold to you …
In each of these cases, we know what to do. If he sells his ancestral fields, redeem them for him. If he seeks a loan from you, lend him the money and be prepared to turn that loan into a gift. If he sells himself into servitude, treat him with respect and set him free. Yes, we know that we are obligated to help our economically destitute brethren, and we know how to do it.

But poverty comes in many forms, and economic poverty is nothing compared to emotional poverty, to a need which is often born of circumstances entirely beyond your brother or sister’s control. It can come from biochemistry. It can come from stress. In the end, the result is the same: A poverty that demands our help. There is no greater כי ימוך אחיך than when your neighbor is suffering emotional pain, is in the shoes of Sarah Imenu.
The Torah says that we are obligated to restore lost objects to their owners; how much more so, to restore lost control, lost stability, lost hope.

The mitzvah of tzedakah itself is contoured to provide not only financial help, but also emotional support. We are taught that it is better to give a penny, with a smile, than to give a dollar with a grimace. As the gemara explains, giving with a grimace is worse than giving nothing - it actually takes something away from the recipient.

Many other mitzvot instruct us to gladden others:
Every Jew is obligated to tithe Israeli produce, and part of that tithe is supposed to be shared with the needy. At the end of each tithing cycle, the Jew declares for all to hear, שמחתי ושימחתי אחרים, I rejoiced, and I helped others rejoice as well, with these tithes.
When a man gets married, he is obligated to fulfill the mitzvah of ושמח את אשתו, making his wife happy. And during the wedding and the immediately ensuing week, everyone is obligated in the mitzvah of שמחת חתן וכלה, gladdening the bride and groom.
On our national holidays, we are obligated in ושמחת בחגך, to gladden not only our families but also the strangers around us, and the widow and the orphan and anyone in need.
The Torah is filled with mitzvot related to bringing joy to others - because we dare not allow Sarah’s agony to recur. This is our obligation.

Of course, it’s easy to want to help - but often we don’t know how. Fortunately, though, the Torah also tells us how to help people in their emotional need, giving us the example of Yosef - a man who had a technicolor dream coat, and who was also an excellent empath:
One day, when Yosef was in jail, וירא אותם והנם זועפים, he noticed that two of his fellow prisoners, the former royal butler and former royal baker, were dejected.
Yosef’s reaction was immediate: He approached them and asked, מדוע פניכם רעים היום, “Why are you so down today?” They told him they had experienced frightening dreams, and Yosef offered to listen, and they took him up on the offer, and the rest is history and a Broadway show.
Yosef gave us two hints here, for preventing future Sarah’s from perishing in grief:

First, we take Notice. Yosef was almost killed by his brothers, then sold as a slave, then thrown into prison on false charges; he was certainly deep in his own troubles. He could be excused for missing the cues when his cellmates were down - but he didn’t. He saw their pain.

Second, We don’t tell people to snap out of it; we listen to them. Yosef didn’t tell the butler and baker to get over their problems, to pull themselves up by their bootstraps, to trust in Gd the way that he did. Rather, Yosef asked them to tell him what was wrong, and - when they were willing to talk - he listened carefully.

To these two pieces of advice I would add a third lesson of the Torah: Recognize that people who are depressed are not “crazy,” they are not out of touch with reality. They are, if anything, more realistic than the rest of us: This world is broken.

It’s certainly broken if you read the newspapers - Washington is broken, or so I’ve been told a few hundred times in this campaign season. The trans-Atlantic Alliance is broken, or so I’ve been told a few thousand times over the past eight years. The economy is broken, say the Democrats. Public morality is broken, reply the Republicans. And so on. And, in many ways, they are right. It’s no wonder that the rates of suicide and emotional dysfunction among highly intelligent people are reportedly higher than for the rest of the population; they are just reacting to what they are seeing.

Judaism, too, declares that we live in a broken world. The gemara calls it עולם הפוך, an upside-down world. Justice is rare and suffering is rampant and Gd is visible only if you look very, very hard.

Rav Kook noted evidence of this brokenness in the actual structure of the Talmud, the core of Jewish tradition. The Talmud is composed of six sections, each covering a different area of law. One section is called Nashim, and it deals, primarily, with marriage and divorce.
One might have expected the Marriage section to start with laws of betrothal and weddings - but it doesn’t. Instead, it begins with the laws of Yibbum, of levirate marriage, the case in which a man dies without children, and his wife marries his brother in an attempt to restore life after this devastation.
Rav Kook taught that the Marriage section begins with the laws of Yibbum in order to show that it is normal, we must expect it, to live in a ruptured, broken, world. The real world doesn’t have many neat marriages and well-adjusted children. The real world has death and childlessness and Yibbum - and this is the reality which many depressed people see.

This is why the concept of tikkun olam b’malchut Shakkai, repairing the world under Gd’s reign, is so important in Judaism. Judaism’s central mandate of repairing the world forces us to recognize that the world bequeathed to us by Gd is not a Panglossian best of all worlds; it is broken, and it’s waiting for us to fix it.

So when we see people who are dealing with Depression, we don’t dismiss them as crazy. Instead, we follow Yosef’s lead: Take Notice, and offer to Listen.

I readily admit that I am very flawed in this. I wouldn’t be surprised if there were people sitting here thinking, “I’ve been depressed for years, and the rabbi hasn’t taken any notice,” or, “I’ve tried to talk to him about it, and he hasn’t listened well.” I’m not the best at it - but I’m working on it.

CNN ran a story a few months ago about Yukio Shige, a retired Japanese police officer. Shige patrols Japan’s Tojinbo cliffs twice each day, to keep people from leaping off to kill themselves.

The story described a 34-year old man named Hiro who came to the cliffs one day, intending to jump off at sunset. His mother had died. He had no friends, and a great deal of debt. But as Hiro waited for sunset, Officer Shige came by and asked Hiro if he needed to talk. Shige listened, and then helped set him up with financial counselors. The key wasn’t in the financial counseling, though; Hiro, today, credits Shige with saving his life by showing him that someone would be upset if he died. It made all the difference - listening, showing that he mattered. That saved a life.
In four years, Shige has saved 129 lives this way.

Helping people is not an endless pursuit; we need not be afraid of being sucked into some vast, bottomless pit of emotional need. With friends and with medical help, people survive depression; I know numerous people who were on medication and are now off, who spent years dreading getting out of bed and are now healthy. It can and does happen - not in all cases, but in some.

Today we all wish each other a happy and healthy year. We pray to Gd for a happy and healthy new year, too. But if, by Rosh haShanah next year, we notice just one Sarah and offer her an on-going ear, then we will have done much more than wish and pray: Aided by the merit of our matriarch Sarah, we will have created a happy, and healthy, new year.

-
Notes:
1. I first started emphasizing this theme in response to the writings of Rivka at Ha'azina Tefilati.

2. The midrash about Sarah's death is cited, among other places, in Targum (pseudo)Yonatan. (Note that Ibn Ezra says Avraham and Yitzchak did, indeed, return together.)

3. On gladdening others with maaser, see Mishnah Maaser Sheni 5:12; Sifri Devarim 303.

4. On highly intelligent people experiencing Depression, Google it; it's all over.

5. The idea from Rav Kook was cited by Prof. Shlomo Carmy in a recent edition of Tradition.

6. The idea regarding Yosef's treatment of the butler and baker was sparked by a Yossy Goldman article I happened across here.

7. Yukio Shige's story is found here. Note that Tojinbo is also rendered, in some places, Tojimbo.

Gambling on Rosh HaShanah (Rosh haShanah, Day 1)

Credit where credit is fully due:
I once participated in a "Yarchei Kallah" program run by Rabbi J.J. Schacter, in which he mentored young rabbis in the art - and with him, it truly is an art form - of the Derashah. Yeshiva University's Center for the Jewish Future has since taken the program under its wing, and Rabbi Schacter continues to lead this program, and to help young rabbis become darshanim, and more.
The idea that triggered this derashah - the midrash about HaShem rejecting Emet and taking a risk on creating humanity - came from Rabbi Shalom Axelrod's development of an idea expressed by Rabbi Schacter at a Yarchei Kallah program. Rabbi Axelrod's derashah was printed in a tribute collection for Rabbi Schacter, "His mother didn't call him, 'Our Beloved Teacher.'"

The federal government has finally admitted the full extent of our economic shambles, congressmen are competing to describe the meltdown in the most dire terms possible, banks have closed or are threatening to go that route - and everyone is blaming the gambles of greedy banks, the audacity of greedy lenders, the risk-taking of a greedy market. Risk-taking has acquired a bad name over the past two weeks.
So it is with some trepidation that I say that one of the most important themes of Rosh HaShanah is this: Take audacious risks. Gamble with money, gamble with relationships, gamble with Judaism.

Perhaps the most important gamble in human history occurred on the very first Rosh haShanah - and the gambler was Gd.
On that first Rosh haShanah in history, 5768 years ago, Adam and Chavah ate the fruit they had been warned not to eat, the fruit regarding which Gd had said, “On the day you eat this, you will die.” But they didn’t die that day. What happened?
Gd opted to forgive Adam and Chavah. Gd took a chance on their future righteousness.
In fact, the midrash records that even before Gd created humanity, Gd was already gambling on us. As Gd determined to create us, the Divine attribute of Truth protested, arguing that human beings would tell lies - and Gd refused to listen, opting to gamble on us instead, arguing that, as the Kotzker explained, אמת שאומר אל יברא אינה אמת, Truth which refuses to create, to take a chance, to lose once in a while, is not truth.

Gambling is required, and losing is acceptable, because this world is not meant to be a place of perfection; Gd designed this world as a laboratory, and laboratory experiments fail.
We are taught in Pirkei Avot, העולם הזה דומה לפרוזדור, This world is a hallway, a preparation area, a lab for the next world. Certainly, we take this world seriously, we try to mend the world and improve it. And if we fail, the consequences for ourselves and for other people are real. But the message of Pirkei Avot and the Torah is that in this Research & Development lab, mistakes are part of the learning process.
Unlike the greedy banks and lenders, we take risks for the sake of noble values, for the sake of helping others - and then, if we fail, we can accept that, and Gd can accept that. Gd does not rig the table; He deals the cards, bets on our success, and lets the chips fall where they may.
This is why Gd can create Humanity and forgive Adam and Chavah, all the while knowing that they and their descendants will fail again: Because in the lab that is this world, it’s all right to take a risk and fail. We just get up again and keep on going.

Today, Rosh haShanah, the anniversary of the inauguration of this laboratory of chance, we ignore the calamitous market and we are inspired to take chances - financial, social, and spiritual.

First, a financial gamble.
This is a time of year when Jews traditionally pledge tzedakah - as we will say shortly, ותשובה ותפילה וצדקה מעבירין את רוע הגזירה - Repentance, Prayer and Tzedakah will remove the evil decree. Shlomo haMelech/King Solomon wrote, וצדקה תציל ממות, Tzedakah rescues us from death.
In this market, though, I’ll bet many of us are planning to reduce their tzedakah. That with the economy teetering, by all accounts, on the brink of collapse, with an ongoing recession and the new threat of a crash, with unemployment and shrinking retirement funds and lost scholarships and skyrocketing costs of staples, many of us - most of us, even - feel we just can’t do it anymore.
The cards will be on our seats next Wednesday evening at Kol Nidrei, and it’s a safe bet that some people who used to fold down 180 will have to think long and hard before doing that again. Some people who used to push 54 might not be able to convince themselves to do that, either. And won’t we be smart, won’t we be prudent, when we reduce the tzedakah we give? After all, our assets are in danger!
To which Rosh haShanah says “No.” Despite the market and the banks, despite our fears for the future, it is still time for us to gamble. We have been promised, and it’s actually recorded as law in Shulchan Aruch, לעולם אין אדם מעני מן הצדקה, We will never go broke giving tzedakah.
Giving tzedakah is not the same thing as gambling on sub-prime loans. The bankers, the lenders, were gambling for the sake of lining their pockets. We, on the other hand, gamble on helping other human beings. Supporting a shul, a school, a Jewish Family Service, a mikvah, a needy family in Israel.
I am not speaking glibly about something I am asking others to do, about some challenge for others to face. Over 40% of my take-home salary goes to tuition, and almost 20% goes to mortgage and real estate taxes. Add in gas and groceries and medicine and clothes for six and you realize that, yeah, Torczyner has a pretty good handle on what economic crisis means. But I believe that לעולם אין אדם מעני מן הצדקה, I will never go broke giving tzedakah, and Caren and I are going to act on that belief for Israeli tzedakot, for Federation, for the Mikvah, for Jewish Family Service, for JDS, for the shul.
Please understand: I am not saying that a family should take bread out of its own mouth in order to give tzedakah; the first and most important tzedakah is to one’s self and one’s family. There are more ways to help other people, piety should not be linked too closely to the pocketbook. Tomorrow we’ll talk about one way to help people, that has nothing to do with spending a single cent. And if you need assistance, please, please come to me - thank Gd, and thank our community, the Rabbi’s Benevolent Fund can help.
But if there is something left over after the immediate needs are met, then before locking down the savings account, remember the words of the prophet Malachi - ובחנוני נא בזאת, Test Gd on this: If you will separate out your tithes, then HaShem will open for you the storehouses of the heavens and rain down unlimited blessing upon you.

Tzedakah is one gamble we should make, even in this risky world. Here’s another one: It’s time to gamble on our families, on our most fundamental relationships.
There is not a single family that doesn’t harbor a broken relationship - siblings who have not spoken in years, a husband and wife who have become bitter over each other’s offenses, children who cannot stand the thought of speaking to their parents, parents who feel betrayed by their children, aunts and uncles who boycotted your wedding, cousins you wish had boycotted your wedding, you name it. This is normal in human relationships; relationships grow, and break. But they can also heal, and it’s amazing what an outstretched hand can do toward that end.
Three years ago today, I spoke about the reconciliation between Avraham and his exiled son, Yishmael.
There was good reason for this relationship to break, and remain broken.
*Avraham kicked out his seventeen year old son, giving him nothing of his vast estate but a loaf of bread and a jug of water. Avraham gave more to three anonymous passersby than he did to his own son!
*Yishmael, for his part, endangered the life of his brother, Yitzchak, and Gd personally approved of Avraham’s eviction of Yishmael.
If ever there was a reason for a relationship to break, and to remain broken, this was it!
But it did not remain broken; as the midrash tells us, Avraham pursued a reunion with his son Yishmael, and, eventually, not the first time but after a while, he got it. And when Avraham passed away, Yishmael was there - honoring his younger brother, Yitzchak, putting him first in the burial procession.
Avraham took a chance, reaching out to a son whom Gd had described as פרא אדם, a wild man, who in his youth had wandered off into idolatry, sexual immorality, and murder, a son who had lived a life far removed from Avraham’s דרך ה', his path of Gd.
Yishmael took a chance, too; he could have rejected Avraham’s advances. Yishmael could have berated Avraham for kicking him out of the house.
Avraham put his heart on the line and reached out - he was willing to risk losing, and because Gd taught us in creating and forgiving humanity that taking a chance is not only permissible, it is imperative.
And Yishmael responded.

And a third gamble: When it comes to our spiritual lives, we need to take chances in this laboratory world as well.
We spend so much of our religious lives working off of old ideas - stories we learned in grade school or Hebrew school and have not examined since, beliefs our parents conveyed to us and we never really questioned, empty stereotypes of Judaism, practices we perform regularly or ignore regularly. Of what value is a religious life unexamined?! Of what value is a Judaism that substitutes ritual for thought, scenery for substance, rote for re-examination?
Prayer which is unexamined rote needs risk-taking to shake it up. Shabbat without thought, whether spent in shul or at home or at the mall, needs risk-taking to shake it up. Every mitzvah is available for us to re-examine and re-invent at every opportunity, so that it is new every time.
All of us - those who are here for the first time since we sounded the shofar at the end of last Yom Kippur, and those who come here every morning and evening - all of us can take chances today. We are taught that Gd gives us the Torah היום, today, each and every day, בכל יום יהיו בעיניך כחדשים, each day these laws, these ideas, should be new in our eyes, like the first day we heard them, like the moment we stood at Sinai.
Of course, religious re-examination is hard; it’s a threat to the status quo. It might lead us to do more, it might lead us to do less. We might read the Torah and come away believers; we might read Richard Dawkins and come away heretics. That kind of unpredictability is uncomfortable. We love our stability.
But this is precisely why we must take chances - because the status quo is seductively comfortable, and profoundly unacceptable in its seduction. Yes, doing so risks making the wrong decision - but in creating humanity and in forgiving Adam and Chavah, Gd taught us that failure is acceptable, so long as we take a chance. The only falsehood is the decision of אל יברא, the decision not to gamble at all.
Some 2800 years ago a prophet named Eliyahu stood astride a mountain and challenged the priests of the Canaanite idol, the Baal. Right in the middle of their territory and under the nose of their royal supporters, Eliyahu dared the priests to bring a public offering to their god, and to summon fire from heaven, in front of the assembled nation, to consume the offering.
As the priests carried out their rituals Eliyahu taunted them, asking if they should not pray louder; maybe Baal was sleeping, or chatting with someone, or in the bathroom. He was Stephen Colbert and Jon Stewart and Billy Crystal in one, commenting on the Baal rituals for the amusement of all - and putting himself further and further out on a precarious limb, if he should fail to deliver in his own offering.
When the priests of Baal had failed, Eliyahu built an altar and had water poured all over it, once, twice, three times. Then he cried out, beseeching Gd to reveal His authenticity to the nation - and a fire came down from Heaven and consumed the offering, the wood, the stones, the dirt - and even the water.
Eliyahu took a massive risk. He lived at a time when prophets of Judaism were being slaughtered by the queen. He was in the distinct minority just for believing in HaShem! And he turned to his nation and said, “Look, folks, it’s time to decide what you believe: If you believe in Baal, go follow Baal. If you believe in Gd, come, follow Gd.”
Eliyahu bet his beliefs, he bet the beliefs of the public, he bet his very life, on a distinct longshot - because it wasn’t a selfish gamble for his own sake, it was a gamble for the sake of the nation. He was willing to bear defeat - and he didn’t lose, he won.

Even as we shoulder the burden of Wall Street’s profligate gambles, remember that their mistakes should not dictate our future. A selfish gamble will never be rewarded - but using Gd’s forgiveness as a model, we endorse selfless gambling. Losing is acceptable, and part of the enterprise that is this world.
William Arthur Ward wrote a poem called “To risk” in which he summed up our message beautifully:
To laugh is to risk appearing a fool,
To weep is to risk appearing sentimental.
To reach out to another is to risk involvement,
To expose feelings is to risk exposing your true self.
To place your ideas and dreams before a crowd is to risk their loss.
To love is to risk not being loved in return,
To live is to risk dying,
To hope is to risk despair,
To try is to risk failure.
But risks must be taken because the greatest hazard in life is to risk nothing.
Gd gambled in creating us, and Gd did it again on Rosh haShanah 5768 years ago in forgiving Adam and Chavah; today, as we hear the Shofar blasts and contemplate our paths for the coming year, we are blessed with the opportunity to do the same.

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Notes:
1. The poem at the end also comes via Rabbi Axelrod. Avraham's reconciliation with Yishmael is a theme I first appreciated from Rabbi Schacter's elaboration thereon at a Yarchei Kallah program.

2. Ibn Ezra is the one who says HaShem forgave Adam and Chavah; others have other explanations. The midrash on Creation is from Bereishit Rabbah 8:5. The Shulchan Aruch's reassurance regarding tzedakah is Yoreh Deah 247:2.

3. I worry about being too cavalier for some people who are reluctant to ignore financial peril, and too harsh for others who cannot afford to ignore financial peril. But I truly believe in this ideal, I live it, and I believe it is my job as Rabbi to promote it.

4. I had a million topics to talk about today - Israel, Agriprocessors, various electoral issues, and so on. But, to me, Rosh HaShanah and Yom Kippur are fundamentally about working on ourselves, about making ourselves the best we can be, and so this is the route I chose to go. If I publish Day 2, you'll see the same thing there.

The week before Rosh HaShanah is a trouble magnet

I don't know how the universe knows. It was a leap year this year, and that should have fooled the universe, but nope, the universe knows.

It always knows that Rosh HaShanah is coming, and it holds the disasters for that week.

I, like a fool, write my Rosh HaShanah derashot three weeks in advance, to clear the table for work on Shabbat Shuvah, Yom Kippur and Succot. Then, right before Rosh HaShanah, the world turns upside down and I need to change my topic.

In 2001 it was the September 11th attack on the World Trade Center.
In 2002, if I remember correctly, the market tanked that week.
In 2005, a very close friend and key person in our community was killed in a car accident.
Other things in other years, I forget the specifics at the moment.
And this year, the banks collapse and the President gets on the television to let anyone who isn't already panicking know that it's now time to panic.

I don't mean to whine about speechwriting while the world burns, really. I'm certainly not trivializing the disasters I just mentioned.

I'm just feeling sorry for myself as I sit here on Thursday afternoon and try to write a derashah for Shabbos and another one for Rosh HaShanah, trying to say something new and meaningful to people who are scared that their retirement savings may disappear, that their investments for their children's college education are turning into so much toilet paper, that their jobs may be downsized or outsourced as companies are stressed beyond their limits.

What can you say that isn't:
infantile (market, shmarket, let's worry about teshuvah);
irrelevant (righteous people trust in HaShem);
meaningless (Shabbos 151b says poverty is cyclical);
or just plain silly (this is a punishment for that sin)?

Always, always, the week before Rosh HaShanah.

I know some don't like this phrase, but it's a gemara (Megilah 31b) so I'm justified: תכלה שנה וקללותיה, May the year and its curses come to an end.

תחל שנה וברכותיה, may the new year and its blessings begin.

Daf: Gittin 58-60 – The captive R’ Yishmael ben Elisa, ransoming captives, Recording Spoken Torah

Still trying to catch up on my Daf notes. It should be easier as we conclude the Tisha b'Av passages and move into more law-oriented material... For those who are looking for other material, jump down to read about my neurotic dream, or go here to read my rejection of the tyranny of 120.

Gittin 58a
I wonder if the 40 Seah and 9 Kav reference, regarding the quantity of tefillin of the Betar victims, is connected to the purification that comes from immersing in 40 Seah or, in certain cases, standing beneath a flow of 9 Kav of water.

R’ Yehoshua ben Chananiah is the one to encounter a Jewish prisoner in Rome because he was involved with the Roman aristocracy in general, as we see in many places in the gemara.

On the imprisoned child’s “ordered hair קווצותיו תלתלים,” see Nazir 4b on the righteous Nazir, who has the same description.

The imprisoned child, a young R’ Yishmael ben Elisha, completes the pasuk begun by R’ Yehoshua ben Chananiah. R’ Yehoshua ben Chananiah is impressed, and he declares that he Is certain this child is providing/will provide halachic rulings for Israel.
One standard explanation is that he is impressed by the child’s knowledge, as well as his acceptance of Divine judgment (as expressed in the pasuk he quoted).
However, note that in a similar passage in Nazir 29b with R’ Chanina, the child actually is offering a ruling with his statement, now. The same could be true here – perhaps the future R’ Yishmael ben Elisha is “providing a ruling” by completing the pasuk, reminding R’ Yehoshua ben Chananiah that one may not cite only half a pasuk.

Note that there are at least 2, and possibly 3, sages named R’ Yishmael ben Elisha, like this child in the story. See Tosafot Yevamot 104a אמר.

See Tosafot כל ממון on the problem of ransoming captives for an astronomical amount of money, and see my comments on another Tosafot here. Our Tosafot adds a justification to the three items already on the list of justifications in that other Tosafot: A captive whose life is in danger.


Gittin 59a
See Tosafot דכולהו on why Rebbe did not vote first in his beit din – as a matter of procedure, or as a matter of personal humility.


Gittin 59b
I think R’ Yitzchak Nafcha’s pasuk adds to Rav Matnah’s pasuk, because it is in a context of the kohanim receiving a gift – an honor which is like that of an aliyah.


Gittin 60a
The gemara here justifies the recording of works of aggada (extra-legal comments on Torah passages), despite the standing prohibition against recording the Spoken Torah, because otherwise people would forget them. This practice of writing things down preceded the recording of the mishnah; we find in the gemara references to מגילת סתרים, scrolls recorded and kept in secret, for example.
Sfat Emet to Megilah 3a notes that the prohibition was against publishing these scrolls, not against recording them.
Pnei Yehoshua to Megilah 3a observes that the concern that drove the sages to write down the Spoken Torah was not really about forgetting, but rather was about the intramural division and strife that would result from that forgetting.

Note that Rashi and Rambam disagree on the meaning of בסירוגין here.


Gittin 60b
The gemara talks about not having “shofar” rotate from place to place, lest people think it is being moved because of a problem at the first site. See Rashi’s two views on what they mean with the “shofar” here, and Tosafot’s reason for preferring his second explanation.

I'm dreaming of a pasul sefer torah

First, a few quick items:
1) The Kosher Cooking Carnival is here; thanks for the great billing, Isramom!
And while we’re on the topic of cooking, the wonderful Rebbetzin came across a great-looking Rosh HaShanah recipe, “Roasted Chicken, Apples and Leeks,” here at Real Simple.

2) You already know I love my ScienceDaily emails; here are two more reasons, from the “No Kidding!” department:
Fake Popup Warnings Fool Internet Users Even After Repeated Mistakes
and
Facebook Profiles Can Be Used To Detect Narcissism.
Thank you for making this possible with your tax dollars, and your contributions to your university’s endowment fund.

3) Oh, and one more weird one, from a Real Simple article on Apple-Picking:
Pack an old-fashioned bag-and-thermos lunch, but swap the typical PB & J for something more interesting, like Roasted Sweet Potato and Apple Soup and Cucumber and Goat Cheese Sandwiches.
Um… I guess you and I have different definitions of “Real Simple.”

But back to the topic of this post:
I had a dream last night, in which I was leining the pasuk, כי חלק ה' עמו יעקב חבל נחלתו, but the word נחלתו was missing. I hunted for it, and eventually found it written in the wrong place, a line before the spot in which it belonged. (Translation: The sentence was supposed to be, For Gd’s nation is His portion; Jacob is the portion of Gd’s inheritance. The word missing was of Gd’s inheritance. It’s Devarim 32:9.)

It’s not that unusual for me to experience a stress dream about having a Torah-reading problem. I am the shul’s regular baal keriah, I lein all the time, so this is the equivalent of a public speaker dreaming about getting up to speak and finding he can’t read his notes, or a chef dreaming about not being able to locate the salt.

The dream was also missing a key realistic element, which makes me more likely to dismiss it: That sentence comes from the shirah of Haazinu, which is written in the Torah in poetic columns, but in my dream it was in the Torah’s normal paragraph format. Even in the middle of the night I would remember that detail; Haazinu is one of my favorite segments in the Torah, with its beautiful poetry.

Still, the dream disturbs me.

What could it mean? Some possibilities:
It’s a reminder to speak about Israel, our נחלה/inheritance, more often.
It’s a reminder to speak about Jewish unity, which makes us a single portion of Gd.
It’s a warning of guilt for me; our status as Gd’s inheritance relies on the merit and covenant of our ancestors, and I am not living up to that merit and covenant.

I don’t know. I’m not about to declare a תענית חלום (taanit chalom, a fast undertaken to atone for one’s sins, triggered by a frightening dream) for myself, but I wonder what was going inside my head last night.

Lion of Zion, if you want to shed light on the leining issue, go ahead. Therapydoc, you're welcome to weigh in on the dream.