RABBI ARTHUR SEGAL:Eikev:JEWISH SPIRITUAL RENEWAL:JEWISH SPIRITUALITY:ZIMZUM

RABBI ARTHUR SEGAL:Eikev:JEWISH SPIRITUAL RENEWAL:JEWISH SPIRITUALITY:ZIMZUM

 

Jewish Spiritual Renewal:Shabbat 8/8/09:Torah,TaNaK,Talmud:Ethics,Spiritual View

 

Shalom and an Easy Fast:

 

I am writing this on Tisha B'Av. I was blessed this morning to have some friends come over and pray a bit but more importantly read from the Book of Lamentations and from the Talmud Tractate Gitten in the dafs in mid 50s about how our sinat chinam, our baseless hatred of Jew v. Jew, to even include party snubs, caused us to loose the Temple, Jerusalem, and the very land of Israel.

 

Have we learned anything in 2000 or so years? Well, we can look at our own behaviors. We might all say we treat folks inside our synagogues or inside our sects of Judaism well, but how do we treat Jews who are not members of our in-group?

 

Some Torah: Lev. 11:19, and Deut: 14:19: Twice in the Torah we are given lists of birds, which according to the dietary laws, are not to be  eaten—the chassida is mentioned as an unkosher bird. 

The great medieval Biblical commentator Rashi, following an earlier Talmudic source, asks, "Why was this bird called chassida? Because it  does acts of chesed (loving-kindness), in sharing its food with other storks."

A 19th century rabbi asked, "Well, then, why isn't it Kosher? Because it does acts of loving-kindness with other storks, only with other storks and not with any other birds."

I would like to suggest that the stork here may be a symbol for religious  communities—their great strength, but also their problematic nature. The strength of closely-knit religious (or, for that matter, ethnic or other) communities is the mutual help and support they give to members of the in-group.

Unfortunately, they do not always behave in such humane ways towards outsiders or members of  other communities. The challenge for our Jewish communities is to behave towards each other like human beings, not like storks.

 

This is the lesson of the Rabbinic sages  and what G!D wants for us.

 

So ask ourselves this Tisha B'Av,  are we better than storks? We were created in G!D's holy image. {Not birds, although our parrot is convinced he is a good Jewish boy, and if you call him a bird, he will tell you "I am a cute good boy.'').  We are to love our fellow. What is hateful unto us we are not to do to another,  Rabbi Hillel teaches in our Talmud. He says this the "whole of Torah!." Do we owe anyone teshuvah who we treated without chesed with the excuse that he or she or they we not members of our in-group, or our Synagogue?

 

Some Talmud: Yerushalmi Tractate Beracoth 2:4 :"On the day that the Holy Temple was destroyed,(Tisha B'Av)  a Jew was plowing his field when his cow suddenly called out. An Arab was passing by and heard the call of the cow. Said the Arab to the Jew: "Son of Judah! Unyoke your cow, free the stake of your plow, for your Holy Temple has now been destroyed." The cow then called a second time. Said the Arab to the Jew: "Son of Judah! Yoke your cow, reset the stake of your plow, for Moshiach has now been born."

 

Tradition holds that even though both Temples were destroyed on Tisha B'Av, and other bad events, from the Hebrews being told they would wander for 39 years and not see the promised land because they believed the lashon ha ra of 10 of the 12 spies, or the beginning of the Spanish Expulsion, of the start of WW One, which some historians says is the cause of WW Two and hence the Nazi Holocaust, we Hebrews then, the Jews now, always, are promised redemption...even the birth of the Jewish Messiah.  Just like the New Moon, rosh chodesh, that we celebrate each month, our lives, our history, waxes and wanes.

 

We never give up hope. I never give hope on my fellow Jews. I am imperfect yet each day I ask G!d to help me over come my defects of character. G!d has granted us teshuvah, amends. We Jews have been beating each other up for a long time. Genesis if full of brothers not getting along and uncles cheating nephews, and a daughter-in-law seducing her husband's father. But with the right leadership, teaching us ethics, and spirituality, and with our willingness to do better, we can do better, a bit each day.

Some Talmud: Bavli Tractate Bava Batra 60b:When the Temple was destroyed many Jews decided to refrain from eating meat and drinking wine as a sign of mourning for the destruction of the Temple.  Rabbi Yehoshua asked them, "Why are you not eating meat nor drinking wine?" They replied, "How can we eat meat which was once sacrificed on the Temple Altar?  How can we drink wine which was once poured on the Holy Altar?"

 

Rabbi Yehoshua said to them, "In that case you should not eat grapes or figs, for they too were brought to the Temple as "First Fruits?  Do not eat bread, because bread was used in the Temple service."  Rabbi Yehoshua explained to them that although one must grieve for the destruction of the Temple, one must not do so excessively. 

 

While we mourn the destruction on Tisha B'Av, we should not forget that the performance of the mitzvoth on this day and all year long is to be performed with joy and happiness. Be nice to a Jew today, who is not a member of your clique or particular shul.

 

Now because we have the saddest day of the Jewish Calendar on the 9th of Av, we are blessed with the happiest day on the Calendar on the 15th of Av. That is less than a week which has significance in itself as our sages, did not want us to wait, what is a normal period of time, a week, for joy. It is called Tu B'Av.

 

The below was published a few days ago on the Shalom Center of Philadelphia's web site by its director Rabbi Arthur Waskow and was mailed to its list serve. I was chosen to study with him one-on-one. I am the author of the below.

 

The holiday of Tu B'Av, the 15th of the month of Av, is a purely Talmudic Rabbinic Holiday is said to be the happiest day on the Jewish Calendar. It comes less than a week after the saddest day on the Calendar, the 9th of Av. As we explore it, we can see that it was and is purely Eco-Judaic, as well as promoting feminist equality, two-plus millennia before its time.  

 

The Gemorahs in the Talmuds Yerushalmi and Bavli have a different ''take'' on the holiday and its spiritual significance as well as its historical roots.

 

Talmud Yerushalmi Tractate Ta'anit 4:7 teaches that the happiest day in the Jewish calendar is the fifteenth of Av. Young women and young men would dance in the vineyards and orchards and meet each other. The girls would all wear the same white simple dress so that rich girl, and poor girl ,would all look alike, none adorned with jewelry or make up, so that the males would get to know them for their intelligence and chesed, and not for their external attributes.

The Yerushalmi Talmud gives its historic etiology:  

''On the eve of each ninth of Av in the wilderness, Moses would announce through the entire camp, 'Go out for the grave digging!  Go out for the grave digging!'  They would go out and dig graves for themselves and go to sleep.  In the morning they would get up and find themselves 15,000 fewer. But in the last year they did so and arose and found themselves whole. No one had died.

They said:  Is it possible we have made an error in counting?

So they did the same on the 10th, 11th, 12th, 13th, 14th and 15th of Av.

When the full moon on the 15th came, they said:  It would appear that the Holy One Blessed be He, has annulled the evil decree against us. They arose and declared that day a holiday. (Talmud Yerushalmi Ta'anit 4:7)

 

We need to recall, that one of the evils that befell our people on Tisha B'Av, the 9th of Av, came from our Hebrew ancestors, accepting the bad reports of ten of the twelve spies, and their loosing faith in their ability to conquer the "Promised Land." Hence, God decreed that they would wander for 39 more years in B'midbar, and none of them would enter ''the land.''

 

Hence the section of Talmud Yerushalmi is describing their deaths each year on the 9th of Av, and how these deaths stopped 39 years later on Tu B'av, the 15th of Av.

 

 

Tu B'av, was the most joyous holiday on our calendar and somehow we have forgotten it. By  the time of the Shulkan Aruk, of the 16th century, it was just another day but without the daily repentance prayers, tachanun. The other joyous day was Yom Kippur. Most look at that day as a day of drudgery, and not  a day when God's love for us is so manifest that He is the all Forgiving Parent and we should be rejoicing.

 

The 15th of Av has an interesting Talmudic view from 2500 years ago, especially when juxtaposed against what we see today in our advertisements towards the horrid objectification of  women. As mentioned above, Jewish single young women went out, all dressed in the same simple white dress, no make up, no jewels, so that no one could tell a rich girl from a poor girl, and only their personalities, their chesed, would be available to be discerned. This allowed Jewish  young men to fall in love for the 'right' reasons.[ Talmud Bavli Tractate Ta'anit 30b-31a.]

 

But, girls would still try to find a way around this egalitarian  ruling of the sages and promote themselves thusly:

''What would the beautiful ones among them say? "Look for beauty, for a woman is for beauty."

What would those of prestigious lineage say? "Look for family, for a woman is for children."

What would the ugly ones say? "Make your acquisition for the sake of Heaven, as long as you decorate us with jewels" (Talmud Bavli Tractate Ta'anit 31a).''

The Gemorah, ibid 26b, as always, puts a spiritual spin on this.

"A woman is for beauty," call these souls to God; take us as Your bride, and You will be rewarded by the pleasure You derive when Your creations realize the potential for perfection You have invested in them.

Then there are the souls of "prestigious lineage." They have hereditary love which God has implanted in all of us. "A woman is for children": our relationship will bear fruit -- the mitzvoth generated by our natural love for You.  For is not our ultimate purpose in creation that we humans  fulfill God's will? 

"Do for Your sake, if not for ours," call the "ugly" souls of Israel. Only You know what lies behind our appearance, and only You know the truth of what You can inspire in us. For You know that, in truth, "The daughters of Israel are beautiful, it is only that spiritual  poverty obscures their beauty.You know that our "ugliness" is not our true essence, but imposed upon us by spiritual poverty.

When any Jew is decorated with the jewels of Torah learning, he or she is not ugly.''

The sages found that those who married for beauty were most often unhappy. We read that the rabbis (Talmud Bavli Tractate Bava Batra 110a) advised interviewing  the brothers of the prospective bride, for they taught that sons will turn out like the brothers of the bride. The rabbis  advise marrying the daughter of a Talmud scholar (Talmud Bavli Tractate Pesachim 49a). This is the reason that the Talmud Bavli in Tractate Ta'anit 26b only quotes the girls from good families, as their words were the most true in the minds of the rabbis.

R' Yishmael (Talmud Bavli Tractate Nedarim 9:10) said: "The daughters of Israel are all beautiful, only that poverty makes them unbecoming." The rabbis were teaching long along the exact opposite of what our society today teaches, i.e. the objectification of women. While beautify was not shunned, chesed and intelligence were traits to be admired.

Note how this Tu B'Av, the releasing of a death decree, becomes a fertility ritual half way between the summer solstice and autumnal equinox. Boys and girls are not just meeting anywhere, but they are meeting in vineyards and orchards where life is continually being manifest. The above Gemorah mentions how women bear fruit, and children in the TaNaK have been called ''the fruit of the womb.'' [Ps. 127:3] Without orchards and vineyards, without the earth yielding its fruit, we humans can not mate and yield our fruit. If we destroy our fruit bearing trees and our vineyards and ruin the soil from which they gain nutrients, we destroy the next generation of humankind.

"Twenty is the age for chasing" (Talmud Bavli Tractate Pirkei Avot 5:18). Many, if not most young men chase young women for the wrong reasons and the wrong attributes. Tu B'Av teaches us what is meaningful in a person, and what is truly 'attractive.'  We rabbis can use this holiday to teach what our rabbis tried to teach two millennia ago.

R. Zvi Elimelech of Dinov (1783-1841), the author of the work "Bnei  Yissachar, " explains that Tu B'Av is a day of deep-rooted significance because it falls forty days before the date of the world's creation.  The sixth day of creation was Rosh Hashanah. On that day God created man. Six days before this is the Twenty-fifth of Elul, and forty days ahead of this is Tu B'Av (the Fifteenth of Av). The rabbis teach: "Forty days before the formation of the infant an announcement is made in heaven: "The daughter of so-and-so is matched up with so-and-so." Tu B'Av, too, because it comes forty days before the creation of the world, is a day of much importance as it has a unique capacity to initiate life not only for the bride and groom, but for the orchards, the trees, and the vines, indeed the whole eco-sphere, that these young boys and girls are meeting. 

To match human fertility with the earth's via fruit trees and  fruits of the vine, which both have their own special beracoth, helps remind us, us to treat the earth with kindness and love and generosity,  as we would when we are courting, and when we are in love with that special person.

But there is something happening on a deeper level. Comparing Tu B'Av to Yom Kippur, the Mishna Ta'anit 4:8 reads: '' Likewise it says, "Go forth, O ye daughters of Zion, and gaze upon King Solomon, even upon the crown wherewith his mother hath crowned him on the day of his wedding, and on the day of the gladness of his heart" (Song of Songs 3:11). "On the day of his wedding": This refers to the day of the giving of the Law. "And on the day of the gladness of his heart": this refers to the building of the Temple; may it be rebuilt speedily in our days.''

This Mishnah explains the reason for joy on Yom Kippur: "'On the day of his wedding': This refers to the day of the giving of Torah." Rashi explains that "'the day of the giving of Torah" refers to the Day of Atonement, for it was in this day that the second set of Tablets of the Covenant were given. On that occasion there was great joy because the Sin of the Golden Calf had been forgiven and the second tablets were given.

The fifteenth of Av is hinted at by the Mishnah in the phrase "'And on the day of the gladness of his heart'. This refers to the building of the Temple. " This is aligned with the tradition  which says that the future Temple will be built in the month of Av and the tradition that says the Messiah will be born on Tisha B'Av. This is what the Mishnah means when it says "may it be rebuilt speedily in our days."

However, the Mishnah does not teach what the reason for joy on the fifteenth of Av was.   So we are missing the reason for  joy on the fifteenth of Av. The Talmud itself raises this question (Talmud Bavli Tractate Taanit 30b): "I can understand the Day of Atonement, because it is a day of forgiveness and pardon and on it the second Tablets of the Covenant were given, but what happened on the fifteenth of Av?"

So while Israel's real wedding day was to be on Tammuz 17, but instead had its Ketubah, the Ten Commandments, smashed, when Moses saw the Golden Calf, in the future, the wedding day of Israel, for all eternity, will be Tu B'Av, with the rebuilding of the Temple and the Messianic age. In another Gemara the rabbis said that "whoever enjoys a wedding feast and gladdens the bride and groom it is as though he built one of the ruins of Jerusalem" (Talmud Bavli Tractate Beracoth 6b). When one takes part in a wedding feast and realizes the joy of this event, he is taking part in rebuilding the world. The rabbis specified "the ruins of Jerusalem" to show that the rebuilding must be anchored in history. The rebirth must grow out of the past and not destroy the past. Our living on earth must grow out of the bounty of the earth, but must not destroy it, and better still, repair it, in the process.

The Temple in Jerusalem is a metaphor for a perfect world, even though our history shows it was far from perfect and our rabbis said the Shechinah, God's holy presence, didn't even dwell in Ezra's Temple. "The world can be compared to a human eyeball - The white of the eye is the ocean surrounding the world - The iris is this continent - The pupil is Jerusalem - And the image in the pupil is the Holy Temple." [Derech Eretz Zuta 9]. Tu B'Av is another holy day leading us to the kabbalistic concept of Tikun Olam, of repairing God's face, His holy sparks, covered over by husks, when He contracted Himself, when He created the world.

The Talmud Yerushalmi gives the reason for Tu B'av as a '''death decree'' that God put on the Hebrews, on every 9th of Av,[Tisha b'Av] where 15,000 died on that day, that ended one year, but they did not discover that it truly ended until the full moon in the mid month on the 15th of Av (Tu B'Av).
 
Now we can search through the Torah and not see this story at all.
 
The Talmud does have illusions to other events involving massive death and mass burials however for this date:
 
The Talmud states that there were no holy days as happy for the Jews as Tu B'Av and Yom Kippur. Various reasons for celebrating on Tu B'Av are cited by the Talmud and Talmudic commentators (Talmud Yerushalmi Tractate Ta'anit , 4:7, 4:8 and   Talmud Bavli Tractate Ta'anit 30b and 31a),and  of course, Rashi of the 11th century France.

While the Jews wandered in the desert for forty years, female orphans without brothers could only marry within their tribe, to prevent their father's inherited land in the Land of Israel from passing on to other tribes. On the fifteenth of Av of the fortieth year, this ban was lifted. This is according to Rav Yehudah in the name of Shmuel in Talmud Bavli Tractate Ta'anit 30b.

That same year, the last of the generation of the sin of the spies which had been forbidden to enter the Promised Land, died out. This is according to Rabbah Bar Hanah  in the name of R. Yochanan in Talmud Bavli Tractate Ta'anit 30b.

The Tribe of Benjamin was allowed to intermarry with the other tribes after the incident of the Concubine of Gibeah (see Judges chapters 19-21), R. Yoseph said in the name of R. Nahman, in Talmud Bavli Tractate Ta'anit 30b. 

Rabah and R. Yoseph both said that the cutting of the wood for the main altar in the Temple was completed for the year. The event was celebrated with feasting and rejoicing (as is the custom upon the conclusion of a holy endeavor) and included a ceremonial breaking of the axes which gave the day its name, the Day of the Breaking of the Ax. ''It is the day on which [every year] they discontinued to fell trees for the altar. It has been taught: R. Eliezer the elder says: From the fifteenth of Av onwards the strength of the sun grows less and they no longer felled trees for the altar, because they would not dry [sufficiently]. R. Menashya said: And they called it the Day of the Breaking of the Axe.'' (Talmud Bavli Tractate Ta'anit 30b).

So what was the reason that the joy so great? It would appear that there is a symbolic reason here. The wood for the altar is the source of the altar's fire. And our people new then the value of forests and trees, not just for their use, but for maintaining their 'world,' what we would call today, their eco-system. They already had laws pertaining to not chopping down fruit bearing trees during war, which was extending to not wasting any resource.  When the strength of the sun grows less , which begins to happen in the middle of Av as we head towards Autumn, fire, or in a sense 'sun' from the inside of a dry tree's wood is needed. By doing God's will and keeping His earth alive, to harvest, but not to waste, makes Tu B'Av a "day of the gladness" for the heart.

The nights, traditionally the ideal time for Torah study  are lengthened again after the summer solstice , permitting more study. Rabbi Joseph said that one who studies more Torah will have his life prolonged. (Talmud Bavli Tractate Ta'anit 30b). After all, Torah is a tree of life to those who hold fast to her.

The Roman occupiers permitted the victims of the massacre at Bethar of 133 CE to be buried .The bodies  exposed for years had not decomposed (148 CE), according to Rabbi  Mattenah. ( Talmud Bavli Tractate Ta'anit 30b). After  some years after the battle of 133 CE, Rabban Gamliel and the Sanhedrin fasted and prayed for many days and Rabban Gamliel gave his inheritance in order to satisfy the Romans.

Rabbi Ulla taught in Talmud Bavli Tractate Ta'anit 30b  that King Hosea ben Eilah opened the roads to Jerusalem.  Following the death of King Solomon  ( 931 BCE), Jeroboam ben Nebat, ruler of the breakaway Northern Kingdom of Israel, set up roadblocks to prevent his citizens from making the thrice-yearly pilgrimage to the  Temple in Jerusalem, capital of the Southern Kingdom of Judea. These were finally removed more than 200 years later by Hosea ben Eilah, the last king of the Northern Kingdom, on Av 15 (721 BCE). He only reigned for circa 10 years and was defeated by the Assyrian  King Shalmaneser, starting a series of events which quickly lead to what we today call the "Ten Lost Tribes.''

I respectfully opine that the story in Yerushalmi is a combination of Bethar and the last of the generation of the Spies dying. The 9th of Av is already a horrid day with two Temples destroyed, and the rabbis are still adding to the Gemorah after Bar Kochba's failed revolt and the Martyred ten rabbis circa 135 CE.
 
Unlike the Bavli which places blame for the second Temple's destruction on Jerusalem's non-Jewish behavior, the Talmud Yerushalmi, finds that the 9th of Av is decreed by God long ago in B'Midbar, to be a bad day for the Jews.
 
So each year, 15000 Jews of the old generation all die on the same day, the 9th of Av, according to Yerushalmi. On one 15th of Av, the Hebrews realized it stopped, and hence all of the old generation had died.
 
We are taught only Joshua and Caleb, not even Moses, Aaron or Miriam, were the only ones of the old generation that crossed into Jordan. Further we are taught that 600,000 able bodied men left with Moses from Egypt.  When we add to that their wives, children, and non- able bodied parents and grand parents, plus the mixed multitude that came with them, which the Talmud said numbered 3 million, we would need , even subtracting the folks who died in Korach's rebellion, and other tragedies,  190 years in the desert, not just 40, for 15000 to die out on each 9th of Av.

One of the ancient and most practical reasons of Tu B'Av is according R. Eliezer ben Hyrcanus of the first century (Megillat Ta'anit, 5.) is that it was the Great Day of Wood-Offering, when both priests and people brought kindling-wood in large quantities to the altar, for use in the burning of sacrifices during the whole year. This day being Mid-summer Day, when the solar heat reached its climax, the people stopped hewing wood in the forest, until the Fifteenth Day of Shevaṭ , Tu B'Shevat, the New-year's Day of the trees  because the new sap of spring entered vegetation on that day. The actual explanation is given in Megillat Ta'anit, 5. and Mishnah, 4:5, according to which nine families of Judah brought at certain times during the year the wood for the burning of the sacrifices on the altar.  According to  Neh.10:34; on the Fifteenth Day of Av, however, all the people, the priests as well as the Levites, took part in the wood-offering.

We have to look at this in historical context. At the beginning of the Second Temple period, the Land of Israel lay almost totally waste, and the wood needed to burn the sacrifices and for the eternal flame that had to burn on the altar was almost impossible to obtain. Hence, these nine families took it upon themselves to bring wood to the Temple. The Judeans and those who lived in Judea while they were in captivity in Babylon for 70 years, were not good caretakers of the earth.

Josephus also mentions this festival, and calls it the Feast of Xylophory ("Wood-bearing"), but places it on the Fourteenth of Av, saying that "it was the custom for every one to bring wood for the altar on that day so that there should never be any lack of fuel for the eternal fire."

We can see that again Judaism, using synchronicity wisely, took pagan mid-summer and mid-winter festivals and assigned them Judaic spiritual significance, which we today, can assign Eco-Judaic and social reeducation significance. {Syrians still celebrate their ancient mid summer fertility festival with bon fires similar to our mid-winter Tu B'Shevat festival. It is called Midsummer Day, De Syria Dea.} 

In reality, I think the holiday was kept alive by the rabbis, as this is also the beginning of the 7 weeks of comfort, Nachamu, to keep folks' minds off Tisha b'Av's events, and focus on the future. And what better way to do think of the future, then to have a fertility party, with the hopes of children and grandchildren? And what better way for us, now, when we are still in galut, and facing a true galut of being spit off the planet, and not just out of the 'land,' to use this day, as another day, 6 months before and after Tu B'Shevat as a holiday to remind us that we are married to the earth , to God, and to each other.

I'd like to end on a  Jewish Spiritual Renewal aspect of the Holiday....the fact that it is in the middle of the month, and is always when there is a full bright moon.
 
How can we  explain Rabbi Shimon's amazing statement that "There were no greater festivals for Israel" in Talmud Bavli Tractate Ta'anit?  In what way is the 15th of Av greater than Passover, or Shavuot, or even the other "great festival," Yom Kippur?

It has to do with our lunar calendar.  The Zohar explains that we mark time with the moon because '' we rise and fall through the nights of history knowing times of growth and diminution, our moments of luminous fullness alternating with moments of obscurity and darkness. And like the moon, our every regression and defeat is but a prelude to yet another rebirth, yet another renewal.''

So even though our Exodus process began on Nissan One, we celebrate it on Nissan 15 when the actual Exodus occurred. Even though One Tishrei is Rosh HaShanah,  we truly rejoice on Sukkoth, the 15th of Tishrei. The Talmud tells us to ''sound the shofar on the moon's renewal, which is concealed until the day of our festival, Sukkoth.''

The full moon is a sign of comfort, nachamu, for us, after the horrible events of the 9th of Av. The full moon of Tu B'av gives Tikvah, hope, to the Jews, in Galut. More than this is that the 15th of Av is also the holiday of the ''Destruction of the Ax's.'' We used the axes to make the fire wood for the altar for the Temple.

Why break the axes? Why not store them for next year's cutting? Because the ax represents the very opposite of what the Altar, and for which the Temple as a whole, stood.

"When you build a stone altar for Me, do not build it of cut stone; for if your sword has been lifted upon it, you have profaned it"; "Do not lift iron upon it… The altar of God shall be built of whole stones" (Ex. 20:22; Deut. 27:5-6) If any metal implement as much as touched a stone, that stone was rendered unfit for use in the making of the altar.

Our rabbis explain: "Iron was created to shorten the life of man, and the Altar was created to lengthen the life of man; so it is not fitting that that which shortens should be lifted upon that which lengthens" (Talmud Bavli Tractate Middot 3:4). Iron, the instrument of war and destruction, has no place in the making of the instrument whose function is to bring eternal peace and harmony to the world. And we cannot have peace in the world, if we have no world. Hence Eco-Judaic concepts are built into Talmudic Rabbinic Judaism as well as Hebraism.

The ax is a symbol of weapons used upon man versus man and man versus earth. We cannot afford to take an ax to the earth anymore, [if we ever truly could], nor can we afford to take an ax to another human anymore, [if we ever truly could], be it in war, or be it in racism or sexism.

Tu B'Av can be recaptured as a modern holiday for Spiritually Renewed Jews to promote Eco-Judaism and the correct values regarding love, sex, gender issues, and treatment of one another.

While, it seems to be our destiny to wax and wane like the moon, I do pray that we have more days and years like a full bright moon, with no instruments of war aimed at us, or forced into our hands to defend ourselves, and that our shovels and backs are used to plant fruit trees and not to dig graves. Amen.

Shalom and happy Tu B'Av, the 15th of Av.

Rabbi Arthur Segal
Via Shamash Org on-line class service
Jewish Renewal
Jewish Spiritual Renewal
Jewish Spirituality
Eco Judaism
Hilton Head Island, SC, Bluffton, SC, Savannah, GA
 

 

Parasha Eikev: Deuteronomy 7:12-11:26

"Shas Happens"

"Yes, I wish that for just one time you could stand inside my shoes. You'd know what a drag it is to see you."

 

Rabbi Arthur Segal
Via Shamash Org on-line class service
Jewish Renewal
Jewish Spiritual Renewal
Jewish Spirituality
Eco Judaism
Hilton Head Island, SC, Bluffton, SC, Savannah, GA

 

"Beware for yourselves lest your heart be seduced and you turn astray...Then the wrath of God will blaze against you. He will restrain the heaven so there will be no rain, and the ground will not yield its produce, and you will be swiftly banished from the goodly land that God gives you." (Deut. 11:16- 17). Ouch!

A liberal  movement  of Judaism deleted this portion of the Shema from their prayer books. They did not believe, post-Shoah, in a God who dishes out reward and punishment. Neither do I.  Yes, God is the God of all. He is One. But life is not a bowl of matzoh ball soup and if it were, some would be fluffy and float and others would sink to the bottom. 

Not so long ago, Shas Rabbi Ovadiah Yosef said that the six million who died in the hands of the Nazis, may their names be blotted out, were "all the reincarnation of earlier souls, who sinned and caused others to sin and did all sorts of forbidden acts...They came back to do atonement for their sins." And God, as promised in the verses quoted above, got them all rounded up by Nazis and sent them to their deaths in the slaughterhouses of Germany and Eastern Europe. The next day guards were stationed around this Shas rabbi's home as a man was caught climbing into his home through a window. Rabbi Yosef was extremely influential among the Sephardim community and his Shas party had 17 members in the Israeli Knesset. Did God send this intruder through his window for punishment?

Why does mankind suffer? Is it divine payback for our sins as the Torah teaches? The Kabbalah gives a much different answer. Mankind suffers because God suffers. It is not mankind who suffers, but God. The suffering we feel is not our suffering but God's suffering experienced through us as if it were our own. Therefore, the Kabbalah teaches, before we can liberate ourselves from suffering, we most first liberate God from His suffering.

The Zohar teaches that we know God suffers because mankind suffers. Genesis 1:27 says, "God created man in the image of Himself, in the image of God He created him." Therefore, as the Ba'al Shem Tov, the then-leftist reform founder of the now-rightist orthodox Chassidic movement said, "Man is a part of God, and the want that is in the part is in the whole, and the whole suffers the same want as the part." We can infer that God suffers because we know that mankind suffers.

"From what does God suffer?" the rabbis ask. God suffers from His exile from Himself. He suffers the separation in His Name - the "YH" divided from the "VH" - that took place when He created the world. He suffers to return to the Unity - the wholeness in Himself - that was shattered when He created the world. Therefore God suffers and man is commissioned to redeem Him from His suffering by returning Him to His former state of unity. This is what the Kabbalists say we mean when we say in the Aleinu adoration prayer: "On that day the Lord shall be One and His name One." (Psalm 22:29).

The rabbis then ask, "How can we liberate God from His suffering? How can we return Him to Himself?" The answer is that we must be watchful and alert all the time for God. As King David wrote, "at dawn I hold myself in readiness for You." (Psalm 5:3). We need to listen for God's voice: "I am listening. What is God saying?" (Psalm 85:8). Then we must speak the words that we hear God tell us and follow them. This is the Guidance that we get from meditation.

To quote the Ba'al Shem Tov again: "When I fix my thoughts on the Creator, I let my mouth speak what it will, for the words are bound by higher roots. The Holy sparks that fell from Himself when God built and destroyed worlds, man shall raise and purify back to their source: All things of this world desire with all their might to draw near man in order that the sparks of Holiness that are in them should be raised by Him back to their source. And who with good strength of his spirit is able to raise the Holy spark from stone to plant, from plant to animal, from animal to speaking being? Man leads it to freedom, and no setting free of captives is greater than this. It is as when a king's son is rescued from captivity and brought to his father. Then you will release God from His suffering and He, in turn, will 'fill your mouths with laughter and your lips with song' (Psalm 126:2)."

This is the Kabbalistic concept of Tikun Olam, repair of the world, which is a credo of  some modern Jewish movements, and therefore cannot philosophically exist side-by-side with the second part of the Shema that we find in this week's parasha, in their opinion.

Please note however, that it is my experience that most who use this phrase Tikun Olam are using it incorrectly. They are using it as a synonym for either tsaddakah (charity), good deeds, or even acts of chesed (kindness). It is a much more spiritual concept because every time we bring two people together in God's love, we help peal back a husk that has been formed on one of the many sparks of light that left His face on the day of creation. If an hour later, we treat someone else with disrespect, we have just negated all the good we have done. Tikun Olam implies a way of life, a way of walking with God every moment. It is true derech eretz (literally walking the earth, but meaning living by treating  every human with love and in an Eco-Judaic sense, treating the earth that we walk upon, with love as well.)

"Nowhere is this enantiodromia - this conflagration between good and evil - more clearly seen than in the constant interplay of the two opposing Sephirot (ten manifestations of God), Chesed (good) and Gevurah (evil) - which individually constitute the Right and the Left sides - light and darkness, the yin and yang of the Tree of the Ten Sephirot," writes Rabbi Yakov Ha Kohain. It is out of this balancing act that this Tree is born.

Our Tikun must not only include acts that appear to be overtly good to our fellows, but acts that literally help repair the earth, and not continue to harm it. In reality, Tikun Olam, literally repair of the world, is repairing God's face, which was contracted while He created the world and all of its inhabitants.

Humankind's continual consumption of the earth, gobbling it as if we were death row inmates at our last meal, actually will cause us,   with in time, to be looking at our last meal brought from the earth. If we gobble food, especially  fruit, and do not bless God for it, the Talmud calls us thieves (Talmud Bavli Tractate Beracoth 35b). More so, because in Kabbalistic terms the sephirah tree's ninth level, yesod, or foundation,  also contains regenerative powers. Hence it is assigned the  male element, or phallus, or lingam in Vedic terms. The female component,  is the tenth level of the sephirah, the malkhu, or yoni in Vedic terms.

The Zohar, the Kabbalah's book of Radiance, teaches that while the female tree bears the fruit, the male  fruit is needed for fertilization.

Hence, when we eat a fruit and do not bless God, we are not thanking God for His abundance, and are being ungrateful. This ingratitude causes the angel who would normally begin to help the process of producing another fruit, does not. Hence we have robbed from our fellows, our parents and even God. So when Jeremiah 51:44: says: "I will make him disgorge what he has swallowed, " and Job 20:15 reads:"the riches he swallows, he vomits," literally becomes true for we humans who consume without limits and not caring about the earth for our fellows, or even for ourselves for ''tomorrow.''

We truly become , as Proverbs 28:24 says a ''comrade of the Destroyer,'' in Talmudic terms having our yetzer ha ra rule us in pure selfishness and self seeking, or in Vedic terms, become ''Death, the Destroyer of worlds. '' (Quoting Vishnu  in the Bhagavad Gita, chapter 11, verses 31-33).

Now, if Judaism calls us Destroyers of the World, just by us forgetting a beracha over a piece of fruit, imagine how more so we are doing negative Tikun Olam, when we waste the earth's nutrients on cattle production, or produce emissions from methane or fossil fuels, or pollute our waters, or chop down trees that bear fruit, or cut down forests that are holding nutrients in the soil so they are not washed away by hard rains.

The part of the Shema that is removed is truth. Whether one wants to believe in a stern Hebraic God that is doing the banishing from the land, and indeed removing humankind from the planet, or a Talmud Judaic God that has given us good orderly directions to live by, so that when we ignore them, we bring our own punishment on ourselves.  Living a life, thinking that our actions do not matter, and have no cause or effect, is plain delusion. It frankly is life that is without  God, and no life at all.

We suffer, and hence God suffers along with us.

The idea of a suffering God is not only part of Christian theology. It is part and parcel of Judaism as well. Jewish philosophy believes that God, the Father (not His "son," as we are all children of God) suffers not on a cross on earth, but in Heaven. But we humans suffer on earth and can literally loose the earth. He suffers not because we sin, but because of His separation from Himself. His former Unity has been shattered. His Holy Queen, the Sheckinah, has fallen and She yearns to be lifted up and returned to Her King. This is why in Pirkei Avot one reads so many references to the ways one can bring back the Sheckinah, i.e. studying Torah with another, discussing Torah while three or more eat together, etc.

For Tikun Olam to be done, for God to know and repair Himself, He first must be known by man. But for man to know himself, he first must know God as well. The Torah shows us how God perfects man in increments. God perfects man in order that man may perfect Him, in Zohar terms. This is what Karl Jung meant when he wrote, "God must become man precisely because He has done man a wrong through Job. He, the guardian of justice, knows that every wrong must be expiated and Wisdom knows that moral law is above even God. Because His creature has surpassed Him, God must regenerate Himself."

According to the Kabbalah, God went from being whole to fragmentary during the act of creation. His "face" was shattered during His choice to contract, zimzum,  to make room for the earth and its creatures, including us.  He needs man as His partner to end His suffering and do the Tikun (repair). Liberal movements in Judaism agree that humans have a responsibility to fix our globe  and are not concerned that doing ritual or not doing ritual determines if good or evil things to occur. Yet in practice because Talmudic Judaic study is rarely done, and many Jews at best know just enough Hebraic Torah to become bar or bat mitzvah, their homes and even temples are built on land that had fruit trees cut down to make room for buildings, not realizing this in a negative mitzvah.

Of course this leads to the question, "Is God good?" The sages answer yes and quote Exodus 34:6: "God, God, a God of tenderness and compassion." But they further ask, "Why does He permit evil?" They answer that "evil is the throne of good," and that good comes from evil. "The indwelling Glory of God, embraces all worlds, good and evil...How can he then bear in Himself the opposites good and evil? But in truth there is no opposite, for evil is the throne of good." So if good comes from God, where does evil come from? Evil also comes from God. "Now the spirit of God left Saul and an evil spirit from God filled him." (1 Samuel 16:14). The perfection of God lies not in being merely one thing or another, but all things at all times. God is darkness and light and goodness and evil. He is One. Satan, according to traditional Jewish belief, is not an opposite of God, but part of God. He is the left-hand side of the Mind of God. He is the left side of the Tree of the Ten Sephirot. Satan is not a "he," but an adversarial thought in God's mind. Satan is God's yetzer ha ra, His evil inclination.

In the month of Av we are taught that great evil befell us on the ninth day (destructions of the Temples, etc.) but that great good came to us on the fifteenth day when no more people died in the wilderness of Sinai, peace came to the tribe of Benjamin, the northern tribes were allowed to travel south to Jerusalem again, and the martyrs of Behar (122 C.E.) were allowed to be buried. The Kabbalah says that good things are born from evil. They forecast that the Messiah will be born on the ninth of Av. Holiness must be found in impurity, just as we as Jews have made the mundane into the sacred. There is no Torah law commanding us to say a prayer before we eat. This mitzvah is a rabbinic Talmudic law from Talmud Bavli Tractate Berachot 35A. As stated above, the rabbis posit that one who eats before he says a prayer of thanks to God, is like one who steals from God. There is the mitzvah of saying grace after meals in this week's parasha (Deut. 8:10).

God loves us, but we are taught traditionally that He can also hate us. God even tried to kill Moses! "When Moses had halted for the night, God came to meet him and tried to kill him." (Exodus 4:24). Where as in the previous parasha we are commanded to love God, in this portion we are commanded to "fear God" (Deut. 10:12) as well as love Him. King David in Psalm 111:10 writes, "The fear of God is the beginning of wisdom, and they that have sound sense practice it." Or as Jung says, "Even the enlightened person remains what he is, and is never more than his own limited ego before the One who dwells within him, whose form has no knowable boundaries, who encompasses him on all sides, fathomless as the abysms of the earth and as vast as the sky."

How do we as modern Jews today reconcile these theological differences? What does it mean to us to be fearful of God? Do we walk around waiting for lightning to strike us because we drove on Shabbat? Do we curse God when bad things happen, or worse yet, accept the Shas rabbi's view that we sinned somewhere in the past and we are being justly punished?

The answer lies in this parasha. In Deuteronomy 8:11-17 we are told: "Guard yourself...lest you eat, be satisfied, build nice homes, live in them…and become haughty, and forget God... and say my own might and the strength of my hand have made me all of this wealth." Talmud Bavli Tractate Sotah 5A teaches that we are commanded not to be haughty. When we are arrogant and haughty, we are actually forgetting God. When we are arrogant, we gobble and consume. We do not think about our fellows or the generations  that came before us or will come after us. We do not think or even care if we harm the earth, and certainly do not care if we harm our fellows. We become spiritually disconnected and spiritually ill.

 

We as spiritual Jews need to remember the many blessings we do have from God and continually  thank our Creator for them. We need not do it in the traditional formalized prayer, but we do need to do it. If we forget about God by being haughty, and only call upon His name when bad things happen, then our understanding of God is shattered, as we only view Him as a selfish bandage for our suffering.

As spiritual Jews, we need to continually love God, be thankful to God, be ever mindful of God, be in awe of God, but not fear God. We must put these ideas into concrete action. We must do acts of love and peace towards our fellows, but also must continually do acts of love and peace and repair toward the earth.

The reformer, the Ba'al Shem Tov, says not to do mitzvoth because of fear of divine retribution. He says that is childlike. He says to do mitzvoth for our own spiritual growth. Talmud Tractate Berachot 39A says there is no tangible reward for doing mitzvoth other than a spiritual one. Rabbi Akiva in Talmud Tractate Beracoth 61B compares a Jew without God and Torah to a fish out of water. If we as modern Jews do not develop a healthy sense of spirituality when things are going well, it is awfully hard to do so when things are going poorly. This is the punishment of God's "blaze" and "banishment." It is of our own making. The second paragraph of the Shema needs to be reminded to us daily but in a Judaic light and not in a Hebraic one.

The parasha's name of Eikev has even caused much debate. In simple terms, it means "if," as in part of a contingency contract. Rashi translates it as "because." Onkelos translates it as "reward," and the Midrash says it means "heel."

What the Midrash is teaching is that it is not the big commandments that folks tend to forget. Almost all Jews go to synagogues on Yom Kippur and seders in homes on Passover. The rabbis are trying to teach that it is the ethical man-to-man laws that we tend to trample with our heels. Rabbi Aaron Kotler writes that in our day-to-day encounters we have many opportunities for good deeds that we trample under our feet in our pursuit of "greater" things in life. Simple kindness and manners are often overlooked. He writes that these seemingly insignificant encounters ultimately define us.

And one of the major items that we trample under our feet is the very earth we walk on!

As the songwriter Jackson Brown sang, "Our character is what we do when we think no one is looking." The Mishna asks, "what is the path that a person should cling to?" It does not answer, "halachah" (Jewish ritual law), which actually comes from the Hebrew word for "path." The rabbi's answer is, "shachein tov" (be a good neighbor!). A good neighbor would not destroy his next door neighbor's house. Yet we do, when we waste, destroy,  chop down fruit trees, block rivers, put pesticides into drinking water, etc. We may be each waiving hello and saying 'shalom' to our neighbors, but each of us in our own way, is being a Destroyer to them, their future offspring, and to ourselves as well.

When we say, well, ''we can afford it,'' (i.e. we  can afford the individual cost of the waste), I am reminded of R' Shimon bar Yochai's parable in  Midrash Vayikra Rabba  4:5 of the fellow on the boat, drilling a hole under his seat. When the other passengers screamed for him to stop it because they will all drown, the fellow said that it was his seat, and he was just drilling under it, and not theirs. "Similarly," says Rabbi Shimon, "a person must remember that we are all riding in the same life-boat.  Every good deed we do affects everyone and every sin we commit affects not only us but the entire world!"

All we as spiritual Jews can do is the best that we can do as people. As Isaiah, the author of this parasha's Haftarah says, "We are to be a light to the nations." (Is. 49:06). Our goodness and kindness to others will yield its own spiritual reward. Shas will happen. Our role as good Jews and good people is not to be haughty, but to do ahavath chesed, acts of loving kindness, to help each other when the inevitable bad things of life do occur, and to tend to our earth via Eco-Judaism. This is the essence of our Jewish way of life. This is how we can deal with the universal truth that "shas happens."

Shabbat Shalom,

Rabbi Arthur Segal
Via Shamash Org on-line class service
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A Short Snap Shot of Rabbi Arthur Segal

Rabbi Arthur Segal

United States

I am available for Shabbatons, and can speak on various aspects of Jewish history, (from the ancient past to modern day, and can be area specific, if a group wishes), Spirituality, developing a Personal Relationship with God, on the Jews of India and other 'exotic' communities, and on Talmud, Torah and other great texts. We have visited these exotic Jewish communities first hand. I adhere to the Mishna's edict of not using the Torah as a ''spade'', and do not ask for honorariums for my services. I am trans-denominational and renewal and spiritually centered.

 I am available to perform Jewish weddings,  and other life cycle events, ONLY IF, it is  a destination wedding and the local full time pulpit rabbi is unavailable, or if there is no local full time pulpit rabbi,  or it is in my local area and all of the full time pulpit rabbis are unavailable.

 My post-doc in Psych from Penn helps tremendously when I do Rabbinic counseling. My phone number and address will be made available once I am sure of one's sincerity in working with me.

Rabbi Segal is the author of three books and many articles on Torah, Talmud and TaNaK and Jewish history. His books are : The Handbook to Jewish Spiritual Renewal: A Path of Transformation for the Modern Jew, A Spiritual and Ethical Compendium to the Torah and Talmud, and  Spiritual Wisdom of our Talmudic Sages. The first two are published by Amazon through their publishing house, BookSurge.

For information on how to purchase these, please contact RabbiSegal@JewishSpiritualRenewal.net and visit WWW.JewishSpiritualRenewal.Net.  OR CLICK ON THE IMAGES BELOW. 

 Todah Rabah and Shalom uvracha. Rabbi Arthur Segal ,( Dr. Arthur Segal )RabbiASegal@aol.com . 

 

Click to Order	THE HANDBOOK TO JEWISH SPIRITUAL RENEWAL: A Path of Transformation for the Modern Jew Rabbi Dr. Arthur Segal distills millennia of sage advice into a step-by-step process to reclaim your Judaism and your spirituality in a concise easy-to-read and easy-to-follow manner. If you find yourself wishing for the strength to sustain you through the ups and downs of life; if you want to learn how to live life to its fullest without angst, worry, low self-esteem or fear; or if you wish that your relationships with family, friends and co-workers were based on love and service and free of ego, arguments, resentments and feelings of being unloved...this book is for you. Price: $19.99 254 Pages Published by: Amazon's BookSurge
Click to Order	A SPIRITUAL AND ETHICAL COMPENDIUM TO THE TORAH AND TALMUD Rabbi Dr. Arthur Segal dissects each of the Torah's weekly sections (parashot) using the Talmud and other rabbinic texts to show the true Jewish take on what the Torah is trying to teach us. This companion to The Handbook to Jewish Spiritual Renewal: A Path of Transformation for the Modern Jew brings the Torah alive with daily relevance to the Modern Jew. All of the Torah can be summed up in one word: Chesed. It means kindness. The Talmud teaches that the Torah is about loving our fellow man and that we are to go and study. The rest is commentary. This compendium clarifies the commentary and allows one to study Torah and Talmud to learn the Judaic ideals of love, forgiveness, kindness, mercy and peace. A must read for all Jews and deserves a place in every Jewish home. Price: $24.99 494 Pages Published by: Amazon's BookSurge

Welcome to Rabbi Arthur Segal's Jewish Spiritual Renewal bookstore. We invite you to create an account with us if you like, or shop as a guest. Either way, your shopping cart will be active until you leave the store.

You can purchase each book individually, but if you purchase them together as a set with the Tzadakkah Bundle, I will donate a portion of the sales price in your name to a tzadakkah of your choice, such as your synagogue.

Simply provide the donation information in the "Special Instructions" box during checkout. When doing so, please include the following:

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(001) The Handbook to Jewish Spiritual Renewal

In The Handbook to Jewish Spiritual Renewal: A Path of Transformation for the Modern Jew, Rabbi Dr. Arthur Segal distills millennia of sage advice to reclaim your Judaism and your spirituality.

• Price : $19.99

(002) A Spiritual and Ethical Compendium to the Torah and Talmud

A Spiritual and Ethical Compendium to the Torah and Talmud dissects each of the Torah's weekly sections (parashot) using the Talmud and other rabbinic texts to show the true Jewish take on what the Torah is trying to teach us.

• Price : $24.99

(003) Tzadakkah Bundle

The Handbook to Jewish Spiritual Renewal and A Spiritual and Ethical Compendium to the Torah and Talmud. Purchase both books as a set, and I will donate a portion of the sales price in your name to the tzadakkah of your choice. -- Rabbi Segal

• Price : $44.98

 

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Advance your Jewish education with an online course or degree at Hebrew College.
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