The Knowledge behind: The Art of Jewish Prayer

So far we have looked at “Standing in HaShems Presence” and asking that; “…my mouth be opened to tell (of) Your Praise.” And we have looked at the Shield of Abraham (Avraham) – the ‘Avot’. And we have looked at the Resurrection of the Dead. We have read the words, heard the words, and discussed the words. But have he learned? Have we assimilated the words? Have the words entered into our essence and become part of us? There is a difference between ‘DAAT’ and ‘BINAH’, and that is what we seek – to combine knowledge and wisdom! So let us continue.

We are still learning from the wonderful book “The Art of Jewish Prayer” by Yitzchok Kirzner with Lisa Aiken, and this week we ‘look at’ Chapter 6 which is concerned with The Holy G-d… “You are holy, and Your Name is holy, and holy ones praise You every day, forever. Blessed are You, G-d, the holy G-d”. And even before we look at the text, I want you to think for a period: “What does ‘HOLY’ mean?” Send a little time ruminating on what that word means – to you in particular. How do you understand that word? Perhaps you need to consider the Hebrew word. Does that make a difference to your data and binah? Kadosh.

There is a Midrash that tells us that this prayer’s concluding blessing was first uttered by the angels when Jacob had his first prophetic vision. He had come to the place on which the temple was later to be built, and he saw a ladder with angels ascending and descending on it. At the top of the ladder he saw the Gates of compassion open. This vision inspired him to sanctify G-d’s Name, at which time the angels declared, “Blessed are You, G-d, the holy G-d.”

You will, of course, find additional comments and information in the book beginning on page 83, through page 87. Let me just leave you with one idea; the word ‘holy’ (kadosh) carries with it the concept of separate, separateness, set aside, different…




Now is it not interesting that this blessing is followed by one that asks for knowledge and understanding? Now, especially at this time of the Hebrew calendar when we begin anew reading B’reshit, it is so important that we assimilate this concept of the Creation with a prayer for knowledge and understanding! Think of Adam and Chava eating from the tree of knowledge and even though that brought the expulsion it gave man the capacity to turn his knowledge into wisdom. Granted that has not all been for the good but that is the price we pay. Without knowledge man would not have ‘split the atom’ (IS there a relationship between: Adam and atom?) to generate power for electricity and other forms of ‘good’ – but it take great wisdom to keep that power from destructive uses.

“YOU graciously give man discerning knowledge, and teach people understanding. Graciously grant us from Yourself discerning knowledge, understanding and intellect. Blessed are You, G-d, who graciously grants discerning knowledge.”
Another understanding expresses it this way-
“YOU generously grand man perception and teach mankind understanding. Generously grant us, from You, perception, understanding and wisdom. Blessed are You, HaShem, Generous Granter of knowledge.”

But there is something else that is bothering me and perhaps you can help me to understand this. We are taught that in Gan Eden that, as the midrash says; “…if you eat from the tree of knowledge… you will surely die.” Here is the problem as I see it: Adam and Chava were the first persons to live. What would be their concept of death? They had never seen death. They have never lost a parent (or a child- yet!). If someone – even HaShem – were to tell you something that is beyond your experience, what would it mean to you? So, if HaShem tell you (Adam) that; “if you do this, you will die”, does it have any meaning to you? Has G-d already granted Adam and Chava data and binah? Where does it tell us that?

Let’s stop to ponder where this Torah is leading us vis-à-vis our learning of the Silent Amidah….

What are you Learning?

Nu? What are you learning?

This is taken from an essay, by Rabbi Daniel Bouskila, found in a recent edition of
The Jewish Journal of Greater Los Angeles

Nine years ago while attending the United Jewish Communities’ General Assembly [GA] in Chicago, I had the privilege and pleasure of hearing Pulitzer Prize-winning author Herman Wouk (now residing in the Palm Springs area, jp) known for bestsellers like “The Cain Mutiny” and “The Winds of War” address the opening plenary. What many do not know is that Wouk is a yeshiva-trained Orthodox Jew who studies Talmud daily.

In his address to the GA, Wouk described the way people who haven’t seen one another for a long time typically greet each other, “How’s the family, how’s your health, how’s your business?” – these are some of the typical greetings, Wouk told us.

“Let me tell you about the world that I come from,” Wouk said. “I come from the yeshiva world, where people bond though the study of Torah texts, and friendships are shaped based on learning together. Therefore, if one bumps into an old friend or rabbi from yeshiva and they haven’t seen each other for many years; the greeting we typically exchange is ‘What are you learning?’”

….

Maimonides teaches: “Moses established a system for the Jewish people, that they should read from the Torah in public on Shabbat, plus every Monday and Thursday morning, so that they should never go for three days without hearing words of Torah” (Mishneh Torah, Laws of Prayer, 12:1).


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Talmud Torah Lishmah: Study of Torah for Its own Sake…
or: “Nu! Lomir lernen a shtikl Torah."


There is a story that I recently learned about a great Polish rabbi from Gur. He saw many of his colleagues and family members perish in the Shoah. He survived that horrible page in 20th Century (CE) history and made his way to Eretz Israel where he continued his life as a scholar. He did learn that of all of his family, only one nephew had survived the fiery furnaces of Nazi Germany. Even so it was many years later before this nephew, now a rabbi himself, was able to journey to Israel to meet his famous uncle and Talmud Scholar.

As his nephew approached the door of his uncle, he took a few moments reflecting on this event and finally knocked on the door. His uncle opened the door and they stood there looking at each other for several long moments and finally this scholarly elderly man said to his only living relative, “It has been so long… you have suffered much and now you have traveled far. You must go at once to the Beit Midrash and learn. Go! There is much to study. Go, and do not waste time. Go and learn, my beloved nephew; go.”


You are interpreters; you are poets; you are mad. Only gradually will you learn to know it, only gradually, because your lifetime is to be a preparation for interpreting. Every lifetime well spent is a life of study – wherever that study may be applied: in the streets, in the household, in the law courts, in the laboratory, in the labor unions, in the prisons, in the parliaments, in the marketplace, in the house of prayer, in the solitude of oneself. But all of this is dangerous.
…from the Second Jewish Catalog


Go.
Learn.

A Nother New Beginning

A(nother) New Beginning


This Shabbos which leads us into our Jewish High Holy Days will be our last Shabbos Torah Study Group – UNTIL Succot begins on October Third. And, this Shabbos is another new beginning in our learning. This week will only be an introduction into our studies and learning on Jewish Prayer. And what we will be learning is The Art of Jewish Prayer [Yitzchok Kirzner with Lisa Aikens].

We shall be learning about the central Prayer(s) in our liturgy: The Shemoneh Esrai. There are Jews who have been fortunate enough to have been raised with a solid Jewish education, and there are Jews who are either new to the world of Jewish prayer, or who have rarely studied prayer in any way that was/is meaningful. Our greatest link to our religion is through our prayer services. There are Jews who disavow any link to the religion of our forefather, but for our new line of learning, we will not consider what it is that they know or do not know. Certainly what they do not know is very meaningful and a great loss to them – and an even greater loss to the Jewish people. But we are here to learn and they are not. Our ‘Social Action’ and our ‘Our Outreach’ must be confined to a different aspect of our lives… unless you personally know someone who may benefit by becoming part of this group.

As I mentioned, our greatest link to our religion is through our (Communal) Prayer sessions. Still, you may leave our Shul raised to a higher level – or you may leave feeling no moore inspired or spiritually aware, or awake, than you were before davenning. The purpose, then, of this undertaking is to make our Jewish prayer more comprehensible and more relevant to all of us, whether we come from traditional frumm families, we are Baal Teshuvah, or we have little or no Jewish education.


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This last session of STSG then is an introduction (and a teaser) to our new series of learning. So this is our last session – as I said – until after the H”H. And so we begin by looking at the Purpose of Prayer.

What let me ask you, do you perceive the task of prayer to be? Is it, as many think, to get HaShem to change? Is it, as many pray, to get HaShem to give us what they want [or what they think they want]? Or is it to help ourselves to become better people through reaching out in order to be closer to HaShem?

If we ask HaShem for something and we actually receive it, we are reinforcing ourselves into thinking that we deserve it and HaShem gave it to us because we were ‘entitled’!!! And that word “entitled” is very important to our understanding to what our relationship to HaShem is and on what it is based!!! This word that we hear everywhere on the street today [“But, I’m entitled!”], is so dangerous and stupid that the concept should be banned to mankind. And what has this to do with our study of the Shemoneh Esrei?

Well, perhaps when we receive a gift from HaShem we might consider it as: HaShem intended it so that we would elevate ourselves spiritually; instead of seeing it as a satisfaction and a justification of our physical and material – our hedonistic - desires.

The purpose, then, of prayer is not to get HaShem to change simply because He does not change. Ever. The purpose and the task then is for us to become better through our encounters with HaShem.

We are supposed to pray three times a day – as ordained by Chazal for these reasons: When we awaken we need to recognize that this new day is, indeed, another gift and we should therefore include HaShem in our lives. That awareness helps us to be better more ethical and loving people because we appreciate this gift. By the middle of the day we have been busy at work or doing the daily routine and chores and we tend to forget our relationship with HaShem, so we pause and insert our second prayer session making a statement that we see our success and our abilities as blessings from HaShem. Finally, in the evening hours we learn from our evening prayer that, although we have not accomplished everything that we wanted to, that He will grant us new opportunities for accomplishments in the morning.

If we only prayed when we felt like it, we would soon be far removed from prayer and the source of our being. All of this is a preview of, and introduction to, the Shemoneh Eshrei which the Great Assembly redacted for us – and for Jews at all times and places – with both prophetic knowledge and with divine wisdom.

If you will take the High Holy Day season as a time to reflect upon these prayers remember that the Hebrew word lihiparrel, which is usually translated as: “to pray” also means: “to judge oneself”. Think, at this time: “What am I doing with my life and how can I adapt it to improve my spiritual growth?” “Avodah shebelev”, or the work of the heart, calls for prayer to transform us. The traditional Jewish understanding of the heart is that it is the center of da’at – of knowledge and of understanding. The head does not rule our true understanding – it is centered in the heart, with love.

If we continue to ask HaShem for ‘things’ because: “I want it. I need it. I am entitled to it!” we are only feeding our narcissism and that, my friends, is not prayer.

When we return to our learning we are going to first consider why we need to vocalize – to verbalize – our prayers. Until then, may you be written in the Book of Life, may you have a meaningful Fast, may you accept my apology for anything that I may have done, knowingly or not, to anger you or cause you anguish.

b’Shalom,
James

Fear of HaShem - What does it mean?

We Have Nothing to Fear
Except…

To Fear G-d. And just what does that mean? Why should we fear HaShem? We are taught from a young age that G-d is Loving and Kind, full of compassion and all those wonderful attributes. These are the kind of attributes that we, hopefully, saw in our parents. So why should we ‘fear’ a G-d that we know is even better than our “bestest” and most wonderful parent?

The rabbis wanted to teach that we should fear G-d but they did not know how to teach that we should fear a beneficent G-d who was invisible and ultimately unknowable. How could they communicate this concept to the average Jew? G-d was an abstraction and, was and is everything that we know about G-d and at once nothing that we know about G-d. A conundrum.

Then a rabbi sitting the far corner suggested this: “If we are summoned before the king, we have absolutely no idea why. The only thing that we know about the king is that he has absolute control over all of his subjects… he alone controls whether we live or die [think about what you would feel if a couple of black suits and dark glasses showed up at your door, talking to their sleeve, and said that you will go with them. Now!].” “So,” the rabbi continued, “if HaShem is like our King, we should fear Him because He, too, has absolute control over every aspect of our lives.”

HaShem, as we say in our H”H liturgy, controls who will live and who will die; who be fire and who by sword; who by earthquake and so on.

It seems then that that rabbi was right. If for no other reason than the uncertainties of life, we should fear G-d. But is that the only reason? Are there other aspects of ‘fear’ that we should consider?

Someone suggested that we should think of ‘fear’ of HaShem in terms of the ‘awe’ in which we hold Him. I disagree. Awe is a term that has been degraded in usage. We stand in awe of the Grand Canyon – okay, that is HaShem’s creation; but we also stand in awe of Lance Armstrong’ achievements: 7-time winner of the most grueling bicycle race in the world/testicular cancer survivor and return competitor in the same race and still coming in to stand on the podium with much younger men! Maybe you can say that that too is HaShem’s achievement and it is because Lance, with the help of G-d overcame his cancer and it was really G-d who gave Lance the ability in the first place. But is he had not stood in the ‘fear of G-d’, perhaps he would never have made those goals.

So what other words in the English language might give us a better idea of what it means to ‘fear G-d’? From the thesaurus we find: Terror; Dread; Fright; Trepidation; Wonder; Admiration; Respect; Amazement; Surprise; Wonderment; Astonishment… how about this quotation?

“We serve the deities… by drawing near to our ancestors, by purifying ourselves of our sins and stain, in leaving self behind to unite with the public, and in 'dying to self' to become one with the ‘State’.”
From the Japanese Kokutai ni Hongi. Sacred Texts of the World1982, "Purity and Awe" (Ninian Smart and Richard D. Hecht (eds.)

“Think about it…”


This was the presentation to our Shabbos Torah Study Group. We had a lively discussion. (pro & con) Much was left to be considered and discussed further... One comment was; "Not all rabbis got 'A's' in class."

The one thing that was NOT found was - Where did this statement FIRT originate?

Shoftim discussion

Shofetim 5769

…an Evening Prayer. With Ramifications.

It is praiseworthy for a person to forgive anyone who has wronged him or caused him any distress. This concept is expressed in this prayer recited before Keriat Shema.

R’bono sh’l olam! Master of the Universe! I hereby forgive any one who as angered or antagonized me, or who has done wrong against me, whether to my body, whether to my property, whether accidentally, whether intentionally, whether in speech, whether in action, whether in thought, whether contemplatively, whether in this existence, whether in another existence, I forgive any member of the nation of Yisrael, and may there not be punished any person on my account. Y’he rotzon… May it be there not be punished any person on my account. May it be Your will, HaShem, my Elokim and Elokim of my forefathers, that I not do wrong any more and whatever I have done wrong before You, erase in Your abundant mercy, but not through sufferings or afflictions that are evil. May they be an appeasement, [Yehyu l’ratzon emray fe, v’h’geyon lebey lfane’kh yhvh tzurey v’go-aley] the utterances of my mouth and the thought of my heart, before You, HaShem, my Rock and my Redeemer.


The individual then says
(Before the Keriat Shema):
Eil Melekh ne’aman.
El and King Who is trustworthy.



Now; what have we learned from this prayer? Before you answer, I want to first draw your attention to the words: “…whether in this existence, whether in another existence…”; does anyone have any ideas about who wrote this prayer; where; or when? And specifically what did the author (or authors) have in mind?
NOW; what have we learned from this prayer?

Source: Siddur Meor Yisrael Har Tov Publishers Jerusalem 5762 (pp361~362)

The Broken Vav

Throughout the halacha it is stressed that letters must be written as a complete guf (body) and if they are faded or partly illegible then the work is invalid.

Let us go back a couple of weeks to take another look at Parshat Pinchas...

vav k’ti’ah (the broken/severed vav)


However there is one exception were the scribe is mandated to make the letter incomplete. The letter in question in thevav in the word shalom in Numbers 25:12. This must be written with a break in the vertical line according to the Ritva (R. Yom Tov ben Avraham Ishbili Spain c. 1250-1330), though some think it either a small vav or a normal vav but a little shorter "in front".

The following six suggestions and graphic (left) come from Hadaf Hayomi (a regular newsletter on the talmud), explaining the possible options. I have added a few of my own thoughts in brackets:

1. It is a small vav (though this is not mentioned as one of the small letters and would be referred to as z’ira (small) and not k’tia)
2. The leg of the vav is shorter (though this in part would look a bit like a yud without the curve to the leg, so may be declared pasul because of that)
3. First a yud is written (though without the curve) and a space is left and then line is added to complete the vav.
4. A regular vav is written and then a crack is made in the leg by scraping out the ink and (this would divide it into two)
5. The same again, but this time the crack is a diagonal nick which doesn’t quite break the letter into two (I have a problem with 4 and 5 as it rather suggests chok tochot, carving out to form the letter as this particular letter form would be formed by scraping and not writing).
6. A vav with a slightly short leg is written then a small line is added to complete the length.
It would seem that 3 or 6 would be the most suitable.
The text concerns a covenant of peace (brit shalom) that is offered to Pinchas the somewhat over-zealous and fiery priest who skewered Zimri, the leader of the tribe of Shimon and Kozbi a midianite woman. Pinchas' act stopped both the Israelite's bout of immoral behaviour and the plague they had been suffering because of it, and he was rewarded for it.
However even the Massoretes must have been shocked by the violence of Pinchas' action as they made his blessing only partial through the broken vav which explains that true peace cannot be brought about through violence and that the two concepts are incompatible.
Similarly the Talmud (Kiddushin 66b) notes that the service of a person must be perfect and without blemish, by reading shalom without the vav as shalem - whole, perfect, sound and translate Numbers 25:12 as ‘behold I give to him my covenant of perfection’ - only when he is perfect and not found wanting.

________the thoughts and ideas of Mortachai Pinchas

A Talmud overview

Talmud Bavli

This week, as a prelude to the Presentation scheduled for next Sunday, we will discuss a bit of the details of the Talmud in outline as an introduction – and hopefully this will give you a little taste of what you will see next week. Just in case you do not know about what I am referring to: Next Sunday (not tomorrow) The Men’s Club of Congregation Beth Shalom (Bermuda Dunes, CA) is having a catered kosher brunch at 10:30. They are putting this on with an open invitation to all who are interested. There is a $10. charge (or recommended donation) for members and $12. for non-members. But the interesting thing is that the morning is being presented in conjunction with our Shabbos Torah Study Group! After the brunch there is a no-charge video presentation on the Talmud. I have previewed this and I strongly recommend it – Rated ‘FFBB’ & ‘NOJ’ alike. There will also be some printed information available. S0… let’s take a peek at what we might see/learn next week.

There are, as you already know, two Talmuds. The Babylonian Talmud, which is the one that is usually referred to when we mention the Talmud. And there is the Jerusalem Talmud. Both were written concurrently & simultaneously too. This places the writings at the time of our Galut in Babylonian lands.

But let’s first look at the Tradition(s) here. First we received, as a Nation, the Written Law in the form of two tablets. At the same time we received the Oral Law which was passed from generation to generation (L’dor v’dor). And so the “Five Books of Moses” [Torah] were finally presented in written form – but you may not know that the form was not ‘set’ and canonized until about the year 500 CE!



Before that had happened, the Jews had dispersed in different directions and we find that Rabbi Judah HaNasa (c. 220 CE) wrote what we now know as the Mishnah. Next week the movie and our written materials will cover this in greater depth.

At the time of the Mishnah, we also find what is called the Berita (legal documents and materials). And the Teachers of the Berita are called Tanna.
Finally we arrive at the Talmud (c. 475 CE). The first Editor was Rav Ashi. At this time the Teachers of Talmud – or Gemara – were known as Amoraim (sing. Amora).

After the Talmud we find the Commentators and Codifiers. There are many of these men who labored to clarify the writings and to discourse with one another. The one that you find in every edition of the Chumah is… Rashi; he was extremely important to the understanding and is the most referred to Commentator in the Talmud. [In the Chumash, he shares the pages with another name which may or may not be familiar to you: Onchlos. We will discuss him at another time].

Other of the authors are, to mention briefly, all (but one) Sephardic Jews, and most of them lived in the Iberian territories. They include Rabbi Yehudah Alfasi; Rabbi Shlomo ben Yitzaki (who we know as Rashi); Tosafot; the great Maimonedes (known as Rambam); The ‘Rosh’ – or Rabbynu Asher and Joseph Karo.

It was not until the 16th Century CE that we find commentaries written to reflect the traditions of the Northern Jews – the Ashkenazi Jews.

But for a better understanding of the influences that we find on the authors of these commentaries, it is important to understand the travels of the Jews in the Galut (Golus), and especially how the Jewish Experience while in Muslim Spain- Al-Andalus. The history is so filled with wondrous adventures of our ancestors and we should spend more time learning about it! [Was Columbus a crypto-Jew in reality? Who was Ziryab? Why did the Christian Kings in Spain ignore the laws of the Pope regarding the Jews… and how did they get away with it all?] Fascinating stuff really…

Let me mention just a few other names of important Jews who, if they did not have a direct impact on the Talmud, had a strong indirect impact by laying down the basis and the framework for the Jews in the Mediterranean world. The built a position on which later Jewish thinkers would be able to stand!
Among the forceful personalities that led to the flowering of Hebrew poetry, prose, philosophy, and politics with an emphasis on the verbal rather than the pictorial, I would have to mention Hasdai (the Nasi) ibn Shaprut. It was he, whose written communications with Joseph, King of the Khazars, that led to the wholesale conversion of what was, in truth, the Nation of Israel – a Nation that extended from the Middle East, from the Mediterranean all the way into Russian! Then there was Samuel (Ha’Nagid) ibn Hagrela who became the Vizier of the Kingdom of Granada!

This is the briefest of overviews concerning the Talmud and I apologize for letting so much information “hanging” but I “Do not want to ‘give-away’ the store” because I do want you to attend this Sunday morning brunch and learning session. IF you are unavailable (show me a note from your mother…) and I will get a copy of the program and additional details to you in one manner or another. In the meantime, there is a book that gives you a grounding in the environment(s) in which these people found themselves and provides you with an understanding of how HaShem led these thoughts to germinate and flower until we find the rich tapestry of the Talmud.
That book is:
The Jews of Spain – A History of the Sephardic Experience by Jane S. Gerber [The Free Press Division of Macmillian, Inc. 1992]. Jane Gerber is professor of Jewish history and director of the Institute for Sephardic Studies at CUNY Graduate Center.
Shalom