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Rabbi Arthur Segal

Rabbi Arthur Segal’s love of people, humanity, and Judaism has him sharing with others “The Wisdom of the Ages” that has been passed on to him. His writings for modern Jews offer Spiritual, Ethical, and eco-Judaic lessons in plain English and with relevance to contemporary lifestyles. He is the author of countless articles, editorials, letters, and blog posts, and he has recently published two books:

The Handbook to Jewish Spiritual Renewal: A Path of Transformation for the Modern Jew

and

A Spiritual and Ethical Compendium to the Torah and Talmud

You can learn more about these books at:

www.JewishSpiritualRenewal.org
ALL ENTRIES ARE (C) AND PUBLISHED BY RABBI ARTHUR SEGAL JEWISH SPIRITUAL RENEWAL, INC, AND NOT BY ANY INDIVIDUAL EMPLOYEE OF SAID CORPORATION. THIS APPLIES TO 3 OTHER BLOGS (CHUMASH, ECO, SPIRITUALITY) AND WEB SITES PUBLISHED BY SAID CORPORATION.
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Monday, August 18, 2025

DO WE BLOW THE SHOFAR ON YOM KIPPUR, OR ROSH HASHANAH IF IT'S SHABBAT? RABBI DR ARTHUR SEGAL

 DO WE BLOW THE SHOFAR ON YOM KIPPUR, OR ROSH HASHANAH, IF IT'S SHABBAT? RABBI DR ARTHUR SEGAL


The following essay, by Rabbi Arthur Segal, may take some effort to follow, but provides rich insight into the relationship of shofar and shabbat. 


SHOFAR USE ON SHABBAT YOM TOV? 


A question was posed to me a few days ago by a fellow rabbi, a good friend, he being on the bimah of a Reform temple. ''With Yom Kippur falling on Shabbat in this year, 2010, what do we do, if we can't blow the shofar on Shabbat? 

But the question is a really a trick question. And as we say in Ivrit, "Abracadabra," meaning "I create (A'bra) what (ca) I speak (dab'ra)." And as one of my Rebbe's reminded me recently, a Rav must know his audience, or if not, will be inflicted with their ire. And as I am reminded way too often, we rabbis wear targets on our backs. 

While we see rules about not blowing the shofar when Rosh ha Shana falls on Shabbat, we do not see any rules about what to do if Yom Kippur falls on a Shabbat. This is because, we never ever blow the Shofar on Yom Kippur!! Even when we announce the Yovel, every 50 years, on Yom Kippur, we are not blowing the Shofar on the actual Yom Kippur. 

But, many a  congregation would yell, "Horse feathers...we have heard the Shofar blown every Yom Kippur at the end of services.'' Perhaps, but that is only in non-traditional temples ending Yom Kippur early. In Emet, we blow the Shofar after Ne'ilah. As we are well aware, Ne'ilah, the 'closing' prayer, when the 'gates of prayer'' are closed, starts a little bit before sunset and ends a bit after sunset. We then say the Shema and then blow the shofar. In actuality, the shofar blowing is not on Yom Kippur, but is in the first few minutes of the 11th of Tishrei. For 2010, when Yom Kippur is on Saturday, Shabbat, after the Shofar blowing, we then do havdallah, and then break the fast. Traditionally breaking of the fast, is always on the 11th of Tishrei as well.


The confusion comes with non-traditional Jews, ending Yom Kippur early, while still on the 10th of Tishrei, breaking fast before the sun sets.  Hence if Yom Kippur, is on Shabbat, if they want to do what is correct regarding  the Shofar v Shabbat, they find themselves stuck on the 'horns of a dilemma'' [pun poorly intended], of either keeping their Yom Kippur service to a traditional time table, or blow the Shofar, after they break their fast, and it becomes nightfall.


Of course the question becomes moot in a non-traditional congregation, which picks and chooses what halakah, if any, it wishes to follow or not, with so- called ''ritual committees.'' [When I was ritual chair of a Reform congregation, and just started intense study which would lead to my semicha,  I proudly told one of my Traditional  rabbinic teachers  that I was ritual chair of a Reform Temple . He said this was an ''oxymoron.'' ]


For traditional Jews, the problem of the Shofar blowing  is not if Yom Kippur falls on Shabbat, but if Yom Kippur ends on Erev Shabbat!  If Kol Nidre starts at sun down on a Thursday night, and Ne'ilah ends at the beginning of Erev Shabbat, one has the problem of blowing the Shofar during the first few minutes of Shabbat. But this question is not addressed in Halakah for the simple reason that Rabbi Hillel, II, in 358 CE, set our calendar in such a way that the day of Yom Kippur will never be on a Friday!!


{Yom Kippur also doesn't fall on a Sunday nor a Tuesday as well, as that would set in motion for Yom Kippur to eventually fall on a Friday. Rosh ha Shana only can be on a Saturday, Monday, Tuesday, or Thursday. This keeps Hosanna Rabbah from falling on a Shabbat and keeps the first day of Sukkoth when there is a full moon. But again, if I were trying to teach this in answering the posed question, I'd be lynched. And while the Rambam in his Hilchot Kiddush Ha Chodesh 11:04,  says that understanding the Jewish calendar would only take a child  3 days of study, I explain the Jewish calendar so the Modern Jew can understand it in my essay on Parasha Bo on pages 129 -133 in a A Spiritual and Ethical Compendium to the Torah and Talmud  in an hour or less}.


On the other hand, {and isn't there always another hand?}, when Yom Kippur does fall on Shabbat as it will in 2010, there are changes in the service. We add some prayers and delete others.


But our calendar doesn't preclude Rosh ha Shana from falling on a Shabbat and hence when it does, we are not to blow the Shofar. The Shofar in a shul on Shabbat or a Rosh ha Shana which is on a Shabbat becomes keli she-melachto l'issur and is muktzeh. In a traditional sense, just showing a beautiful Shofar on Shabbat, and leaving it out, where one, ignorant of Shabbat law's, could have picked it up, and blown it, would be a mega no-no in a traditional shul, as not only does it break Melacoth rules of Shabbat, but also would be Lifne Iver, putting a stumbling block before a 'religiously' blind congregant and leading him to sin. Ouch. :-)


But there is a greater spiritual and ethical aspect in all of this, and that is where my interest lies. When any holiday coincides with Shabbat there would be changes at least minimally to the prayers. But on the Shabbat of Sukkoth we don't shake the Lulav and Etrog, we omit or change the 'circle' called Hoshanot on Shabbat, we omit the priestly blessings on the Shabbat of the holiday etc. There are many  changes, omissions or additions. But the spiritual lesson is we do these changes, including not blowing the Shofar on a Shabbat, because most of these are not necessary BECAUSE of Shabbat!!


What am I speaking about? Hang in there with me please. Not withstanding other reasons our sages have put forth for the various changes e.g. not blowing the Shofar on Shabbat because a person might carry it in the street on Shabbat and thereby desecrating the Shabbat, and this would be the same with the Luluv and Etrog. Hence by accomplishing the mitzvah of Shofar blowing or Shaking the Four Species on Sukkoth,  on Shabbat, we are doing so through desecrating the Shabbat. This would negate the positive affects of the Mitzvah because the Mitzvah only came about due to the desecration.


Let's use the Shofar as an example if we blow it on Rosh ha Shana if the New Year is on Shabbat. (Keep in mind that I explained why the sages don't discuss the problem of blowing  on Yom Kippur, as it can't happen with their rabbinic calendar). Our sages have explained that a person might accidentally carry the Shofar to synagogue on Shabbat in order to blow it, or  ask a Rabbi if the Shofar is a kosher one and this is prohibited on Shabbat. Or it may break or be clogged, and need to be fixed, and this also is not allowed on Shabbat. This would be akin to stealing wood in order to build a sukkah or stealing a luluv or etrog in order to make the beracoth to Ha Shem for  them. Or as a  newspaper, had a full color picture of, a town's Rabbi , hammering nails on Shabbat to erect a sukkah.  It is what is known as a Mitzvah haba b'aveira, a mitzvah that comes about through a sin. (Now I am putting aside a long discourse on Sabbatai Zvi , Kabbalah, enantiodromia, and the Jewish idea that good can be born from evil as I discuss in detail in my D'var Torah on Parasha  Eikev on pages  390 to 398 in a A Spiritual and Ethical Compendium to the Torah and Talmud )


So what is this spiritual lesson I was referring to three paragraphs above? Here is it: "On Shabbat all of our work is done for us, already accomplished by GOD," our sages teach. By NOT hearing the  Shofar on a Rosh Ha Shana on Shabbat, we ARE hearing it!!


We find in the Torah reference to NOT blowing the shofar on Rosh Ha Shana! The Torah at one point [Lev 23:24] uses the expression, "Zichron Teruah", a remembrance of the Teruah ( shofar blast). We see that there are times when we merely remember the blast and don't actually blow it. On a more spiritual level, we know that the Shabbat is the day that the Divine 'rested.' Better said, because One Who is Omnipotent does not need to rest, He imbued  Shabbat with holiness, as we state in the kiddush on Friday nights.


[While the Talmud Bavli Rosh Ha Shana 29b initially assumes that "Yom Teruah" refers to Rosh Ha Shana that falls on a weekday (hence the active "day" of blowing) and "Zichron Teruah" refers to Rosh Ha Shana that coincides with Shabbat (on which the Shofar is not blown; hence the mere "remembrance" of blowing), the  Talmud ultimately concludes that the disparity of language does not actually teach the abstention from Shofar blowing on Shabbat. Rather, the cancellation of Shofar blowing on Shabbat is a function of a Rabbinic – not Biblical – injunction, enacted out of fear that one might come to carry a Shofar in a reshut ha Rabim (public domain, where an eruv has not been established).


In coming to this conclusion, however, the Sages make no mention of what the disparity of language , "Yom Teruah" versus "Zichron Teruah,''  teaches us. Note also, that  Talmud Yerushalmi concludes that the abstention from Shofar on Shabbat is indeed a Biblical commandment, derived from the aforementioned verses.] 


[Talmud Bavli Tractate Rosh Ha Shana 26b, instructs us that a Shofar should be bent. But it is Rashi, based on the Gemarra, who explains that a bent Shofar resembles a person bent in humility and submission during tephila . Apparently, the Shofar fulfills a role strikingly similar to that of tephila and hence the Mitzvah of hearing it, is not enough, but must be done, as with tephila, with spiritual internal "kiyum She'Ba'Lev" (fulfillment of this mitzvah through our heart), and requires kavenah.


If we are not moved to an emotional state during hearing the Shofar, we have not completed the mitzvah. This leads  to another question:  which takes precedence, the Torah mitzvoth of hearing the shofar, or the rabbinic mitzvoth of tephila? The Talmud, ibid, 34b, answers ''the shofar,'' but then Rashi in Lev.  23. says that many Tephila are not just rabbinic, but commanded in the Torah as well.]


Spiritually in regard to 'work' that is forbidden on Shabbat, we know that it is to remember that God is the Creator and Master of the world and just as He did not need to 'work' on Shabbat  so too we need not work. This what our sages meant with the above quote of :  "On Shabbat all of our work is done for us, already accomplished by God."[Mekhilta Masekhta Ba Chosesh].


So if we spiritually extrapolate, using simple Kal Vachomer , [literally translated as light and heavy, or lenient and stringent,Talmud Bavli Tractate Sotah 29a],  this premise that 'all of our work is done' to the prohibition of blowing the shofar (or other such activities prohibited on the various holidays) and we now understand that there are times when the Divine takes care of these items for us.


A point in fact would be that when Rosh Ha Shana falls on Shabbat it causes a spiritual elevation to that particular Rosh Ha Shana. It is taught that the first Mishkan in B'Midbar was constructed during a year when Rosh Ha Shana was on a Shabbat. And some sages postulate that it elevates the entire year spiritually!  Why?? Because it is God Himself  that accomplishes these Mitzvoth  for us that we cannot do ourselves because a holiday falls on Shabbat. 


God is blowing the Shofar for us!!  God is shaking the Luluv with the Etrog for us!!! 


Now, the spiritual rhetorical question: who can do these Mitzvoth better... us or Him? So really there is no NEED for us to do these actions when the holiday falls on Shabbat. Our NOT doing them, has more spiritual significance if we understand and have transformed via Jewish Spiritual Renewal.The Handbook to Jewish Spiritual Renewal: A Path of Transformation for the Modern Jew 


Rabbi Arthur Segal 
www.jewishspiritualrenewal.org   
 
SHALOM and BLESSINGS:
RABBI DR ARTHUR SEGAL,retired
WWW.JEWISHSPIRITUALRENEWAL.COM/books 
 https://www.facebook.com/arthur.l.segal



SHALOM and BLESSINGS:
RABBI DR ARTHUR SEGAL,retired
WWW.JEWISHSPIRITUALRENEWAL.COM/books 
 https://www.facebook.com/arthur.l.segal

i found this on the web. it was from a lecture i gave 15 years ago at hebrew college


The following essay, by Rabbi Arthur Segal, may take some effort to follow, but provides rich insight into the relationship of shofar and shabbat. 


SHOFAR USE ON SHABBAT YOM TOV? 


A question was posed to me a few days ago by a fellow rabbi, a good friend, he being on the bimah of a Reform temple. ''With Yom Kippur falling on Shabbat in this year, 2010, what do we do, if we can't blow the shofar on Shabbat? 

But the question is a really a trick question. And as we say in Ivrit, "Abracadabra," meaning "I create (A'bra) what (ca) I speak (dab'ra)." And as one of my Rebbe's reminded me recently, a Rav must know his audience, or if not, will be inflicted with their ire. And as I am reminded way too often, we rabbis wear targets on our backs. 

While we see rules about not blowing the shofar when Rosh ha Shana falls on Shabbat, we do not see any rules about what to do if Yom Kippur falls on a Shabbat. This is because, we never ever blow the Shofar on Yom Kippur!! Even when we announce the Yovel, every 50 years, on Yom Kippur, we are not blowing the Shofar on the actual Yom Kippur. 

But, many a  congregation would yell, "Horse feathers...we have heard the Shofar blown every Yom Kippur at the end of services.'' Perhaps, but that is only in non-traditional temples ending Yom Kippur early. In Emet, we blow the Shofar after Ne'ilah. As we are well aware, Ne'ilah, the 'closing' prayer, when the 'gates of prayer'' are closed, starts a little bit before sunset and ends a bit after sunset. We then say the Shema and then blow the shofar. In actuality, the shofar blowing is not on Yom Kippur, but is in the first few minutes of the 11th of Tishrei. For 2010, when Yom Kippur is on Saturday, Shabbat, after the Shofar blowing, we then do havdallah, and then break the fast. Traditionally breaking of the fast, is always on the 11th of Tishrei as well.


The confusion comes with non-traditional Jews, ending Yom Kippur early, while still on the 10th of Tishrei, breaking fast before the sun sets.  Hence if Yom Kippur, is on Shabbat, if they want to do what is correct regarding  the Shofar v Shabbat, they find themselves stuck on the 'horns of a dilemma'' [pun poorly intended], of either keeping their Yom Kippur service to a traditional time table, or blow the Shofar, after they break their fast, and it becomes nightfall.


Of course the question becomes moot in a non-traditional congregation, which picks and chooses what halakah, if any, it wishes to follow or not, with so- called ''ritual committees.'' [When I was ritual chair of a Reform congregation, and just started intense study which would lead to my semicha,  I proudly told one of my Traditional  rabbinic teachers  that I was ritual chair of a Reform Temple . He said this was an ''oxymoron.'' ]


For traditional Jews, the problem of the Shofar blowing  is not if Yom Kippur falls on Shabbat, but if Yom Kippur ends on Erev Shabbat!  If Kol Nidre starts at sun down on a Thursday night, and Ne'ilah ends at the beginning of Erev Shabbat, one has the problem of blowing the Shofar during the first few minutes of Shabbat. But this question is not addressed in Halakah for the simple reason that Rabbi Hillel, II, in 358 CE, set our calendar in such a way that the day of Yom Kippur will never be on a Friday!!


{Yom Kippur also doesn't fall on a Sunday nor a Tuesday as well, as that would set in motion for Yom Kippur to eventually fall on a Friday. Rosh ha Shana only can be on a Saturday, Monday, Tuesday, or Thursday. This keeps Hosanna Rabbah from falling on a Shabbat and keeps the first day of Sukkoth when there is a full moon. But again, if I were trying to teach this in answering the posed question, I'd be lynched. And while the Rambam in his Hilchot Kiddush Ha Chodesh 11:04,  says that understanding the Jewish calendar would only take a child  3 days of study, I explain the Jewish calendar so the Modern Jew can understand it in my essay on Parasha Bo on pages 129 -133 in a A Spiritual and Ethical Compendium to the Torah and Talmud  in an hour or less}.


On the other hand, {and isn't there always another hand?}, when Yom Kippur does fall on Shabbat as it will in 2010, there are changes in the service. We add some prayers and delete others.


But our calendar doesn't preclude Rosh ha Shana from falling on a Shabbat and hence when it does, we are not to blow the Shofar. The Shofar in a shul on Shabbat or a Rosh ha Shana which is on a Shabbat becomes keli she-melachto l'issur and is muktzeh. In a traditional sense, just showing a beautiful Shofar on Shabbat, and leaving it out, where one, ignorant of Shabbat law's, could have picked it up, and blown it, would be a mega no-no in a traditional shul, as not only does it break Melacoth rules of Shabbat, but also would be Lifne Iver, putting a stumbling block before a 'religiously' blind congregant and leading him to sin. Ouch. :-)


But there is a greater spiritual and ethical aspect in all of this, and that is where my interest lies. When any holiday coincides with Shabbat there would be changes at least minimally to the prayers. But on the Shabbat of Sukkoth we don't shake the Lulav and Etrog, we omit or change the 'circle' called Hoshanot on Shabbat, we omit the priestly blessings on the Shabbat of the holiday etc. There are many  changes, omissions or additions. But the spiritual lesson is we do these changes, including not blowing the Shofar on a Shabbat, because most of these are not necessary BECAUSE of Shabbat!!


What am I speaking about? Hang in there with me please. Not withstanding other reasons our sages have put forth for the various changes e.g. not blowing the Shofar on Shabbat because a person might carry it in the street on Shabbat and thereby desecrating the Shabbat, and this would be the same with the Luluv and Etrog. Hence by accomplishing the mitzvah of Shofar blowing or Shaking the Four Species on Sukkoth,  on Shabbat, we are doing so through desecrating the Shabbat. This would negate the positive affects of the Mitzvah because the Mitzvah only came about due to the desecration.


Let's use the Shofar as an example if we blow it on Rosh ha Shana if the New Year is on Shabbat. (Keep in mind that I explained why the sages don't discuss the problem of blowing  on Yom Kippur, as it can't happen with their rabbinic calendar). Our sages have explained that a person might accidentally carry the Shofar to synagogue on Shabbat in order to blow it, or  ask a Rabbi if the Shofar is a kosher one and this is prohibited on Shabbat. Or it may break or be clogged, and need to be fixed, and this also is not allowed on Shabbat. This would be akin to stealing wood in order to build a sukkah or stealing a luluv or etrog in order to make the beracoth to Ha Shem for  them. Or as a  newspaper, had a full color picture of, a town's Rabbi , hammering nails on Shabbat to erect a sukkah.  It is what is known as a Mitzvah haba b'aveira, a mitzvah that comes about through a sin. (Now I am putting aside a long discourse on Sabbatai Zvi , Kabbalah, enantiodromia, and the Jewish idea that good can be born from evil as I discuss in detail in my D'var Torah on Parasha  Eikev on pages  390 to 398 in a A Spiritual and Ethical Compendium to the Torah and Talmud )


So what is this spiritual lesson I was referring to three paragraphs above? Here is it: "On Shabbat all of our work is done for us, already accomplished by GOD," our sages teach. By NOT hearing the  Shofar on a Rosh Ha Shana on Shabbat, we ARE hearing it!!


We find in the Torah reference to NOT blowing the shofar on Rosh Ha Shana! The Torah at one point [Lev 23:24] uses the expression, "Zichron Teruah", a remembrance of the Teruah ( shofar blast). We see that there are times when we merely remember the blast and don't actually blow it. On a more spiritual level, we know that the Shabbat is the day that the Divine 'rested.' Better said, because One Who is Omnipotent does not need to rest, He imbued  Shabbat with holiness, as we state in the kiddush on Friday nights.


[While the Talmud Bavli Rosh Ha Shana 29b initially assumes that "Yom Teruah" refers to Rosh Ha Shana that falls on a weekday (hence the active "day" of blowing) and "Zichron Teruah" refers to Rosh Ha Shana that coincides with Shabbat (on which the Shofar is not blown; hence the mere "remembrance" of blowing), the  Talmud ultimately concludes that the disparity of language does not actually teach the abstention from Shofar blowing on Shabbat. Rather, the cancellation of Shofar blowing on Shabbat is a function of a Rabbinic – not Biblical – injunction, enacted out of fear that one might come to carry a Shofar in a reshut ha Rabim (public domain, where an eruv has not been established).


In coming to this conclusion, however, the Sages make no mention of what the disparity of language , "Yom Teruah" versus "Zichron Teruah,''  teaches us. Note also, that  Talmud Yerushalmi concludes that the abstention from Shofar on Shabbat is indeed a Biblical commandment, derived from the aforementioned verses.] 


[Talmud Bavli Tractate Rosh Ha Shana 26b, instructs us that a Shofar should be bent. But it is Rashi, based on the Gemarra, who explains that a bent Shofar resembles a person bent in humility and submission during tephila . Apparently, the Shofar fulfills a role strikingly similar to that of tephila and hence the Mitzvah of hearing it, is not enough, but must be done, as with tephila, with spiritual internal "kiyum She'Ba'Lev" (fulfillment of this mitzvah through our heart), and requires kavenah.


If we are not moved to an emotional state during hearing the Shofar, we have not completed the mitzvah. This leads  to another question:  which takes precedence, the Torah mitzvoth of hearing the shofar, or the rabbinic mitzvoth of tephila? The Talmud, ibid, 34b, answers ''the shofar,'' but then Rashi in Lev.  23. says that many Tephila are not just rabbinic, but commanded in the Torah as well.]


Spiritually in regard to 'work' that is forbidden on Shabbat, we know that it is to remember that God is the Creator and Master of the world and just as He did not need to 'work' on Shabbat  so too we need not work. This what our sages meant with the above quote of :  "On Shabbat all of our work is done for us, already accomplished by God."[Mekhilta Masekhta Ba Chosesh].


So if we spiritually extrapolate, using simple Kal Vachomer , [literally translated as light and heavy, or lenient and stringent,Talmud Bavli Tractate Sotah 29a],  this premise that 'all of our work is done' to the prohibition of blowing the shofar (or other such activities prohibited on the various holidays) and we now understand that there are times when the Divine takes care of these items for us.


A point in fact would be that when Rosh Ha Shana falls on Shabbat it causes a spiritual elevation to that particular Rosh Ha Shana. It is taught that the first Mishkan in B'Midbar was constructed during a year when Rosh Ha Shana was on a Shabbat. And some sages postulate that it elevates the entire year spiritually!  Why?? Because it is God Himself  that accomplishes these Mitzvoth  for us that we cannot do ourselves because a holiday falls on Shabbat. 


God is blowing the Shofar for us!!  God is shaking the Luluv with the Etrog for us!!! 


Now, the spiritual rhetorical question: who can do these Mitzvoth better... us or Him? So really there is no NEED for us to do these actions when the holiday falls on Shabbat. Our NOT doing them, has more spiritual significance if we understand and have transformed via Jewish Spiritual Renewal.The Handbook to Jewish Spiritual Renewal: A Path of Transformation for the Modern Jew 


Rabbi Arthur Segal 
www.jewishspiritualrenewal.org   
www.jewishrenewal.info


SHALOM and BLESSINGS:
RABBI DR ARTHUR SEGAL,retired
WWW.JEWISHSPIRITUALRENEWAL.COM/books 
 https://www.facebook.com/arthur.l.segal

Saturday, July 13, 2019

WHO WILL BE AMERICA'S REV DIETRICH BONHOEFFER In the age of TRUMP? RABBI ARTHUR SEGAL

WHO WILL BE AMERICA'S 
REV DIETRICH BONHOEFFER   in  the age of TRUMP?

Rabbi Arthur Segal

Shalom: All of us have struggles. As my dear friend Lisa Segal (no relation, but a wonderful Cantor and woman) wrote, "How we respond to our struggles is what truly matters." We have discussed many times that the Torah teaches us to help one another deal with life's hardships. Sometimes, the way to choose life has unfortunately been to choose death. The life of Dietrich Bonhoeffer lends us some modern insights.

When Great Britain's retIred Prime Minister Tony Blair was asked, "Which German figure past or present, do you admire most?" he replied, "Dietrich Bonhoeffer, the German pastor, who spoke out against the Nazis and died in a concentration camp." Bonhoeffer was one of the few church leaders who stood in courageous opposition to Hitler. His experience under Nazism thrust him into profound conflict with much of his religious tradition. He raised questions that he was unable to resolve before he was killed in Flossenburg on April 9, 1945. Like most Christians of his generation, he believed that God's special destiny for the Jews included their eventual acceptance of Jesus as the Messiah.

Jewish and Christian scholars evaluate Bonhoeffer's legacy differently. To Christians, his resistance against the Nazis and his writings offered new ethics to the Protestant church. Some Jewish scholars contend that Bonhoeffer acted out of patriotism on behalf of his church and not for the sake of the Jews.

Dietrich Bonhoeffer was born on February 4, 1906 in Breslau, Germany. His mother was university educated and his father was a psychiatrist. He graduated from the Union Seminary of New York. In 1939 he taught theology in Berlin. His church, German Evangelical Protestantism, was shaped by obedience to state authority and by nationalism. Most church leaders welcomed the rise of Nazism as a response to the liberalism and chaos of the Weimar Republic.

A group of German Christians, called Deutsche Christen, was the voice of Nazi ideology within the Protestant Church, and removed the Old Testament from the Bible, claiming that it was "too Jewish." In 1933, when the Nuremberg laws prevented non-Aryans from being in civil service, they also forbade non-Aryans from being ministers or religious teachers. For example, a Protestant, with one Jewish grandparent, could not teach or preach in their "pure Aryan" German church. But they went further. Repudiating Gospel teachings, they said that the non-Aryan Jews were banned from converting to Christianity.

Bonhoeffer's opposition to this Aryan anti-Semitic Deutsche Christen was not based upon disagreement with the Nazi's racial policies, but upon the group's repudiating Church policy as defined in the Gospel. It was a battle of Church independence from Nazism. The church avoided the deeper issue of the rights of German Jews. Many of the church leaders who were against the Deutsche Christen were in favor of the Nazi Aryan policies.

Bonhoeffer opposed the Deutsche Christen, saying that they surrendered Christian precepts to Nazi ideology. He said if non-Aryan Christians could not be in the German Protestant church, he would start a new church, called the "Confessing Church." This church would be free of Nazi influence. This was a minority view. Most German bishops wanted to avoid antagonizing the Nazi regime. As the Nazis became stronger, Bonhoeffer's Confessing Church became paralyzed.

In his essay The Church and the Jewish Question, published in 1933, Bonhoeffer called upon the church to defend the Jews. He did so not because of moral or humanitarian concerns, but because the church needed the Jews to accept Jesus. He says the homecoming of Jesus happens "in the conversion of Israel to Christ." But he also broke new ground in saying that the church must fight political injustice and to help victims of injustice whether they were members of his church or not. His essay became an explicit ethical commitment to all those persecuted by the Nazis. He even drafted a message to Rabbi Stephen Wise, head of the Reform Jewish Movement in the United States.

Theologically, Bonhoeffer still felt the Jewish question would be resolved if all the Jews converted and Judaism no longer existed. This was against the Nazi and Deutsche German view of exterminating anyone with Jewish blood and not accepting their conversion or their grandparents' conversion. Bonhoeffer's struggle became more with his own church than with the Nazis. He enlisted help from churches outside of Germany. He attended the World Alliance Christian ecumenical meeting in Sofia, Bulgaria, and convinced the delegates to pass the following resolution in April 1933: "We especially deplore the fact that the State measures against the Jews in Germany had such an effect on public opinion that, in some circles, Jewish race is considered a race of inferior status."

However, when Bonhoeffer's sister asked him to conduct a Christian funeral for her husband's brother who, like her husband, was a converted Jew, Bonhoeffer succumbed to pressure from his church superintendent and refused. By November 1933, he regretted this decision and apologized to his sister. He turned down a parish post in Berlin and moved to London. His church in London became a haven for both Christian and Jewish refugees. In April 1935, he returned to Germany to help his Confessing Church. One of his members, deaconess Marga Meusel, no longer just denounced the church and the Nazis for their treatment of Jews who converted to Christianity. She denounced the Nazis and the church for their treatment against all Jews. Some leaders of Bonhoeffer's own church wanted to dispute Meusel's beliefs and only defend Jews who converted. They actually wanted to go so far as to agree that the Nazis could do what they wished with non-Christian Jews. This would have given sanction to the Nuremberg laws by Bonhoeffer's church. His church's synod met and dismissed Meusel's view and avoided discussions about the Nazi regime. They simply decided to support the baptism of Jews and support non-Aryan Christians.

For the next two years, Bonhoeffer taught quietly at the seminary of his Confessing Church at Finkenwalde. In 1937, the Gestapo declared his school illegal, as it opposed their Jewish blood laws. Twenty-seven of Bonhoeffer's students were arrested. During the next two years, Bonhoeffer traveled around Germany in secret supervising his students who were working illegally in small rural parishes. In 1938, the Gestapo banned him from Berlin and in 1940 forbade him from speaking publicly.

During the period from 1938 to 1940, Bonhoeffer's philosophy changed. For the first time he described Judaism using the same terminology as he used for Christianity. He said that in God's eyes the church and synagogue were equal. He said that Jews were the brothers of Christians, and that Jews were the "children of the covenant." These were radical statements. The regular Protestant movement in Germany just had culminated their 1939 conference on "Researching the Removal of Jewish Influence on the Religious Life of the German People."

After the November 9, 1938 Kristallnacht, Bonhoeffer protested the Church leaders who said that this pogrom was "the curse which has haunted Jews since Jesus' death on the cross." Bonhoeffer rejected this vehemently and said it was sheer violence revealing Nazism's godless face. Bonhoeffer then organized his members. Pastor Heinrich Gruber helped 2000 Jews escape Germany. Confessing Christians who were expelled from Germany worked with their German colleagues. One was Adolf Fruedenberg, who helped from Switzerland. Another was Henry Leiper from the United States, who was an outspoken critic of Nazism and urged a boycott of the 1936 Berlin Olympics. He worked with Jewish groups to spread the word about what was really happening in Germany.

In 1939, Bonhoeffer's other brother-in-law, Hans von Dohnanyl, became a high- ranking member of the German Military Intelligence under Admiral Wilheim Canaris. Secretly, Dohnanyl was a member of the resistance. Dohnanyl told Bonhoeffer that war was imminent. Bonhoeffer left for New York to teach at the Union Seminary in 1939. By the time he arrived in America, he realized that his place was in Germany fighting the Nazis and helping the Jews. He returned to the belly of the beast one month later in July 1939. Reverend Dietrich Bonhoeffer made an important, crucial decision. He joined the resistance.

Bonhoeffer became a double agent for the resistance by working for his brother-in-law at German military intelligence. The Nazis thought Bonhoeffer would use his church connections to help the Reich. Instead, he helped the resistance gain support as he traveled in Italy, Switzerland, and Scandinavia in 1941 and 1942. However, the Allies treated him with distrust, because the German generals against Hitler wanted guarantees of German territorial integrity and their own positions in power after the war. In 1943, Churchill and Roosevelt said that only unconditional surrender of the Nazis would end the war and did not wish to help the German resistance movement of the anti-Hitler Army officers.

When Jewish deportation started on October 15, 1941, Bonhoeffer wrote detailed memos about it that were smuggled out of Germany on October 18th. Dohnanyl and Canaris, while running the German intelligence office, ran Operation Seven. This secret project smuggled 11 converted Jews and 3 Jews to Switzerland. Using Jews in the Intelligence under the Nazis was not unusual. Hitler himself ordered Canaris to use Jews as spies and send them to the United States. Canaris was happy to oblige. The only orders he gave the Jewish spies was to escape as soon as they got out of Germany. The Gestapo discovered this operation by a trail of money leaving Germany to help the refugees. They arrested Dohnanyl and Bonhoeffer in 1943 on charges of corruption. Later they realized they were smuggling Jews.

In July 1944, an attempt by Canaris's group to kill Hitler failed. It was only after the conspirators' arrest that the Nazis learned of Bonhoeffer's true involvement. He was hung at Flossenburg concentration camp in April 1945, together with his brother Klaus, Canaris, his brother-in-law Dohnanyl, and others.

In his essay Who Stands Firm, Bonhoeffer wrote, "Only the one for whom the final standard is not his reason, his principles, his conscience, his freedom, his virtue, but who is ready to sacrifice all these, when in faith and sole allegiance to God he is called to obedient and responsible action: the responsible person, whose life will be nothing but an answer to God's question and call."

This parasha says that all of us are "standing today" (Deut. 29:9). Our covenant with God was sealed not just with those standing with Moses circa 3,300 years ago, but "with whoever is not here with us today" (Deut. 29:14). Our covenant is binding upon unborn generations. We have a choice whether to accept Torah's ethical teachings or not. Dietrich Bonhoeffer is an example of a man who, after some starts and stops, decided to choose life. He gave up his own life for the greater good.

Let us determine to do our best to choose life-affirming actions. Let us work toward tzedakah (justice) and chesed (kindness). As the prophet Isaiah says, "For Zion's sake, I will not be silent, and for Jerusalem's sake I will not be still, until her righteousness shall go forth like a bright light." (Is. 62:01).

Let us begin, or continue, by doing good within our homes, workplaces and synagogues. Let us begin our own Jewish Spiritual Renewal. Let us "beat down the highway, clear it of stone, and raise a banner over all the peoples" (Is. 62:10) that will bring about Tikun Olam (repair of the world) speedily in our days.



SHALOM and BLESSINGS:
RABBI DR ARTHUR SEGAL
WWW.JEWISHSPIRITUALRENEWAL.COM 
https://www.facebook.com/arthur.l.segal

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