He Who Breaks Enemies…

Before we finish looking at the Shemonah Esrei, and I leave you to learn from the book on your own, we need to look at the prayer which deals with the ‘slanderers’. There is an important and interesting bit of history involved in this prayer. It is one that we should all know about.

…hvqt yht la ,ynyslmlv

And for the slanderers let there be no hope, and may all evil be instantly destroyed. And all of Your enemies should be quickly cut off, and the rebellious sinners You should quickly uproot, and smash, and break, and humble quickly in our day. Blessed are You, HaShem, who breaks enemies and humbles rebellious sinners.

What are we to make of this prayer? To begin with, we have simply “turned the other cheek” – for whatever reason, this is not something that we believe in, in any wholesale manner. We did this far too many times in our history and perhaps we finally earned our lesson 70 years ago in 1939. Never again! But back to the question: we ask G-d to break our enemies and to humble the sinners. Note the difference. We, as Jews, are sensitive to the difference between the person and the evil that they commit. We pray for evil to be destroyed.

Now this prayer was directed toward our fellow Jews! And we believe that he may have been caught up in the negative aspects of life that were, at that time, all around him (or her). But we will look at the historical aspect in a moment. Remember for now that when we pray we are asking for HaShem to remove the conceit or arrogance from the person so that these aspects of the Yetzer Hara will not have the influence to propel him into doing evil.

Now the background of this prayer is that it was not one of the 18 (the original 18 prayers that were instituted by the Great Assembly c3441 or about 315 BCE); however its historical basis eventually made it worthy of inclusion. And why is that? Well we find that in the Talmud there are discussions about this prayer and there is an allusion to the significance to the number 18 [which we find in Psalm 29] where it says that G-d’s name is mentioned eighteen times in reference to the Creation. So the eighteen prayers are a parallel to the number of times that we mention HaShem. So when we pray the Shemoneh Esrai we are recognizing G-d as Creator and Sustainer of everything.

Of course there is another opinion. That one says that the 18 prayers are a parallel to the eighteen times that the name of G-d is mentioned in the Sh’ma.

Then the Talmud teaches that there are really nineteen blessings in the Shemoneh Esrai. For in Psalm 29 there is a nineteenth mention of G-d (even though that is a mention of another Name!). The 19^th mention alludes to His attribute of justice and so the extra prayer [wherein we ask G-d to execute justice on His enemies and rebellious sinners].

As to the ‘other’ opinion regarding the Sh’ma: the first verse, you know reads- “Hear Israel, the L-rd is our G-d, the L-rd is One.” The word “One” is another (veiled?) reference to HaShem thereby making nineteen mentions of HaShem in the Sh’ma also.

The 19^th mention relates to those who oppose the Jewish people, those whom we ask G-d to destroy in this additional prayer. The Talmud further refers to this 19^th prayer as “the blessing of the Sadducees”. It is also refers to the heretics.

The Sadducees were those people who maintained that the Written Torah was given at Mt. Sinai but they maintained that the Oral Torah was not divinely given. It was not enough that they held this belief but they attempted to enforce their belief on everyone else and went to the foreign occupying government power and informed on Jews (who continued to believe in the divinity of the Oral Torah). The result being the murder and death of so many Jews! Jews informing on Jews. Jew vs. Jew. Will it ever end?

This prayer was instituted during the time of Rabbi Gamliel II in the city of Yavneh sometime after the destruction of the Second Temple. The rabbi believed that the Sadducees’s informing on believing Jews was an intolerable situation and that it was necessary to pray to G-d to take the heretics from their midst. As it turned out, it was Shmuel HaKatan (so called because of his extreme modesty) who created the structure of the nineteenth prayer.

Now the Sadducees eventually died out (which is another story in itself that we won’t go into here) and the prayer seemed to not be required anymore. However we find that the threat that they posed continues to take different forms even today. It has come from Jews who converted to Catholicism [those who were “forced” to Catholicism often continued to be “Hidden Jews” for the rest of their lives!]. At another time if come for the “Enlightened” Jews (for which you can provide different names, if you wish), as well as from the so called: Messianic Jews and Jews for Jesus and the like. And, as we have seen, in more direct forms in Germany and now is Iran. We continue to see threat from both within and without the Jewish people and we can not allow this nineteenth blessing to become obsolete. No not. Not until the Messiah comes.

Is there any wonder that we hear: “We want Moshiach Now!” For truly, Moshiach Matters.

B’Shalom,

What are we learning?

...from our week-day morning prayers:

"With abounding love You have loved us, Oh L*rd our G_d, with exceeding compassion You have shown us Your mercy. Oh our Father, our King, for the sake of our fathers who trusted in You and whom You did teach the statues of life, be gracious to us also and teach us. Oh our Father - our merciful Father - have mercy on us and prepare our hearts to understand, to discern, to hearken and to learn to teach and observe, to practice and to fulfill, in love, all the words of instruction contained in Your Law. Enlighten us through Your Torah and cause us to cleave to Your commandments, Your mitzvot, and unite our hearts to love and revere Your name so that we may never suffer humiliation..."

What are we learning?
What shall we learn?
And when shall we learn, understand, discern... and teach?
If not now; when?

Hiatus

This week, having taken last weeks injunction of Lech Lecha - GO... I have done so: gone to procure my appointment for (the 2nd) eye surgery. Therefore, I will be unable to facilitate our Shabbos Torah Study Group discussion and learning this week.

See you all next week, that being that HaShem wills it. Selah.


The picture above is Avraham and Sarah in their tent, offering hospitality. Sarah stayed in the tent, and Avraham rushed out to greet guests. According to the Midrash, when Sarah was alive (and then later again when Rivka moved into the tent) her Shabbat candles burned all week long, her challah didn't go stale all week, and G-d's presence hung over her tent in the form of a cloud.

NOTICE

First you need to read about the INfluences... and THEN the later post about The Gracious 1

The Gracious 1 – Who forgives Abundantly

We say: Forgive us, our Father, for we have sinned unintentionally. Pardon us, our King, for we have purposely sinned, for You pardon and forgive. Blessed are You, G-d, the gracious one who forgives abundantly.

Before we go any further, it is important to define the words that we are using here (in English) – for there is and can be quite a difference in understanding of exactly what they mean… and what they mean to us.

Here’s a slightly different translation - and this has a whole different ‘coloration’ in meaning:
Pardon us, our Father, for we have done wrong; forgive us our King, for we have sinned, because forgiving and pardoning are You. Blessed are You, HaShem, Generous One, Who abundantly forgives.

We say: “…we have sinned unintentionally.” or “…we have done wrong…” So which is it? If we talk about ‘sin’, the usual Hebraic term means something like “missing the mark”… so how do we miss the mark unintentionally? Can we intentionally miss the mark? So would not every ‘sin’ be unintentional? Is the “we have done wrong” phrase better express what we feel and mean to say? But then the prayer becomes redundant when we say that “we have purposely sinned”. So, again, perhaps the second translation better expresses our prayer and our hopes for it first says that we did wrong and then says that we have “missed the mark” by sin.

S’lakh lanu avenue che khataun… for us, here in America, it is important that we derive a true understanding of what we are trying to say in the language that we best know and understand. So (as with all of the prayers and blessings in the Silent Amidah) we do need to have a grasp of what our forefathers said when they used the Lashon haKodesh – the Holy Hebrew words.

And so again, we look at the historical aspects of this prayer as well as the theme of the prayer. Here we find Judah (the fourth son of Jacob) who was married to Shua and had three sons [Er, Onan, & Shelah]. Er married Tamar, but he sinned and was taken from the world. Onan then married Tamar, with whom he was supposed to have children in order to perpetuate Er’s name. However, Onan was punished for not wanting to have children that would be ‘credited’ to his brother’s name and he too died. The obligation then, according to levirate laws, fell to Shelah.

Judah, having seen two of his sons married to Tamar and both having died, he was naturally concerned for his remaining son, Shelah. And so he had no intention in allowing Shelah to marry her and used a delaying tactic by telling Tamar that Shelah was still (too) young and she should wait… After waiting some years, Tamar realized that Judah had no intention in allowing the marriage. However, in the meantime, Judah’s wife died. After mourning her, Judah journeyed and on his way he found Tamar, whom he did not recognize as she had disguised herself as a prostitute. She then seduced him and became pregnant by him.

[This becomes a lengthy story and needs to be read in full from pp 113 to 116
to see the relationship between Ruben and his life-long repentance and that of Judah which shows the difference between (Reven’s) association with the prayer for Repentance and (Judah’s) association with the prayer for forgiveness!]

--

Let us now look at the meaning of “Blessed Are You, G-d, the Gracious One Who forgive abundantly.” Gracious (chanun) and abundantly are both attributes of HaShem. In Exodus 22:26 we see: “He will cry to me and I will hear, for I am gracious.” As for “abundantly” we can view this on (at least) two different levels: G-d is marbeh lisloach [G-d has many ‘forgivenesses’ available in a quantitative as well as in a qualitative sense], and when we desire to make teshuvah He grants in abundance.

Next time, the Gracious 1 is also the Redeemer of Israel. Who is Israel?

FIRST we discuss the INfluences on English

We American Jews have had our appreciation of Judaism deeply informed by the English language and one of the core texts of that language is what I call the Malakh Yankel Bible – or as you probably know it: the King James Bible. The KJB (not to be confused with the KGB although both use a form of Mr. Spock’s “Mind Meld”) used a variety of words that were commonly used in ‘English’, but have different meanings in Christian and Jewish contexts. The KJB (or MYB) took our Hebrew Holy Writings and re-interpreted them in English with a Christian slant. Now, in a recent talk given at an “ecumenical meeting" in Scotland, the speaker (a Jewish Rabbi) said that science recently was able to attach sensors to the brain of a bat and so come to an understanding of what a bat “saw” – BUT, he continued the scientists only came to understand – from a humans point of view what the bat was encountering and in no way were the human scientists able to comprehend the world as a bat! So, it’s not surprising that many of our understandings of the words that we use in English are colored by this Christian overlay. Though it bothers me, I can’t stop the Christians from misinterpreting our holy writings, but, it’s a shame for us Jews to accept the Christian view of the world and to misconstrue them the way that they do… rather than understand them the way we Jews have accepted them for millennia.
For example, the story of the Garden of Eden is used in Christianity to explain the existence and the meaning of “original sin”. But, no word (like) “sin” appears in the story! Adam and Eve misbehaved. So, what’s going on here? Why should we be tarnished by their actions if we “Ain’t Misbehavin’”
The point is that Christians do not know and cannot know what the Jewish experience is and when we Jews use the English language, which is infused with Christian thought, we are misunderstanding our own Hebrew prayers that have been “translated” into a foreign tongue.
Here is another example: “Do any of you have a doctor?” No you don’t. You do not own a doctor. And yet the English language is about possessing. The Hebrew language, on the other hand is not. The understanding of this phrase in Hebrew is something like: There is a doctor toward me which helps me with my medical needs.

With this in mind let us consider the prayers we have been discussing for the past several blogs... and try to think of them, if not in Hebrew, in a way that has meaning to the Jews because of our Jewish experience for some 5770 years.

We continue our journey into the Silent Amidah:

Last week we asked for knowledge and the wisdom to “make use of” that knowledge. Oh that mankind would one day have the true wisdom to do just that! Binah and Daat; knowledge and wisdom… and the heart to unite the two. But now we turn to (appropriately enough as we ask for help in making t’shuvah) to the prayer for One Who Desires Repentance.

RETURN us, our Father, to Your Torah, and bring us close, our King, to Your service, and return us with complete repentance before You, G-d, who desires repentance.

Here is a prayer blessed on what happened to Reuven, the firstborn son of Jacob (Israel). After the death of this stepmother, Reuben stressed to Jacob, his father, in what was an inappropriate manner; the he (his father) should be more ‘involved’ with his (Reuven’s) mother. Because of these remarks and actions he lost various spiritual benefits that (should have) accrued to him as firstborn son. Once he realized his error is addressing his father in that way, he repented for the rest of his life!

Later Moses blessed the tribes of Israel with words of G-d and he told the tribe of Reuven that; “Reuven will live in this world and not die in the world to come.” [Yechi Reuven v’al yamot:] This was an announcement that Reuven’s repentance was finally accepted by G-d. To which angels cried out; “Blessed are You, G-d, who desires repentance.”

The lesson to learn here are on several different and interlocking levels! So before we consider the relationship between this prayer and the one that precedes it, let’s consider some of the levels of understanding and meaning that we find here. First of all there is the plain meaning that we find in understanding the written word(s) alone.


We ask for help in returning to the path of study of Torah because we recognize that that is the way that G-d would have us travel, and we ask for His help because we (a) know that we cannot accomplish this on our own and (b) we believe that this is truly something that G-d desires.

Now on what other level of understanding can we consider this prayer? Is there a mystical aspect to this? Consider for a moment a rabbi of many years ago – one who arrives at least a half-hour early for minyan just so he can ‘prepare’ himself for the avodah shebelev [the (holy) work of the heart]. He then seriously and with deep emotion prayers the morning prayers, reads the words of Torah and concludes his prayers with another half-hour of meditation. He then goes home and studies Talmud for several hours before returning to the Beit Midrash to take part in collective studies. In the evening before going to bed he recites his prayers. The next morning, he arises early to recite Psalms before going to shul for minyan. If he feels the need to ask G-d for aid in making teshuvah… on what level of understanding does that take him?

Certainly he knows, in his heart, the words that he recites. Certainly he understands what he is asking for. So why does he pray so fervently for G-d’s help in this prayer? What is in this prayer that we are missing… or not understanding?

Now. Let us look at the relationship between this prayer and the previous one. In order for us to return to the study of Torah (which we recognize as something that G-d wants) we realize that we need the discriminating knowledge and insight to learn. Only after G-d grants us the facility to do so can we then apply them to the study of the learning of Torah. We now have the vehicle for study and the method by which we can return (come closer) to G-d.

Let me read a little from the bottom of page 105 and part of 106 [at this point you need the book to follow along...]

Final thoughts on this prayer: the Implications! In this prayer we are asking G-d to give us tools to effect changes in ourselves. The concept, the idea here teaches that whenever a person (feels a need to) change or improve a relationship, he must accept the responsibility for modifying his behavior himself.
If someone mouths these words without understanding the words and the essential meaning or the implications… then what?