Gates, Locked and Unlocked

Rabbi Eliezer said: Since the destruction of the Temple, the gates of prayer are locked, for it is written, Also when I cry out, He shuts out my prayer (Lamentations 3:8). Yet though the gates of prayer are locked, the gates of tears are not,

 for it is written, Hear my prayer, O Lord, and give ear unto my cry, hold not your peace at my tears (Psalms 39:13)...

Rav Hisda said: All gates are locked, excepting the gates [through which pass the cries of those suffering] wrongs, for it is written, Behold the Lord stood by a wall of wrongs, and in his hand were the wrongs (Amos 7:7).

(Bava Metziya 59a)

 

Rabbi Hanina bar Papa asked Rav Shmuel bar Nahman: What is the meaning of the verse, But as for me, let my prayers be unto You in an acceptable time (Psalms 69:14)?

He replied: The gates of prayer are sometimes open and sometimes closed, but the gates of repentance always remained open.

He then asked him: Whence [do you know this]?

[Rav Shmuel replied:] Because it is written, You answered us in righteousness with wondrous works, O God of our salvation; You [who are] the confidence of all the ends of the earth, and of the far distant seas (Psalms 65: 6). Just as the ritual bath is sometimes open and sometimes closed, so too are the gates of prayer sometimes open and sometimes closed; but as the sea ever remains open, so is the hand of God ever open to receive the penitent.

(Devarim Rabbah 2:12)

 

Rabban Shimon ben Gamliel said: There were no better days for Israel than the fifteenth of Av and Yom Kippur.

Yom Kippur makes sense - it offers forgiveness and atonement, [it is] the day when the second Tablets were given. But what is there to the fifteenth of Av?

Rav Yehudah said in the name of Shmuel: It was the day when the tribes were allowed to intermarry.

How is it learned from a verse? This is the word that the Lord instructed the daughters of Tzelofhad (Bamidbar 36:6) - This thing will only be observed in the present generation.

(Ta'anit 30b)

 

The matter of Yom Kippur and Ne'ila is like a parable: one makes a chest and closet; when they are completed a lock is made for them to guard their contents.

(R. Naftali Tzvi Horowitz's Zera Kodesh, quoted by S.Y. Agnon in his Yamim Nora'im, pg. 362)

 

And why is it called Ne'ila? Because then [during the Ne'ila service] the righteous of the generation lock themselves up alone with the Holy One blessed be He in a special closed-off hall, and they will not allow any accuser to enter (God forbid!)

(R. Zvi HaKohen MiRimnov in the Mimkha Elekha mahzor, edited by Yonadav Kaplan)

 

 

 

Between the Shofar Blasts

Shmuel Reiner

Our sensual lives are accompanied by sounds, sights, smells, and feelings. The Days of Awe are intensively accompanied by the sound of the shofar, an exalted sound that produces different and even opposing emotions in those who hear it: fear on the one hand, and longing on the other.

In my father's house the blowing of the shofar was accompanied by anxiety. Perhaps you won't hear the blasts of the shofar properly; perhaps the person who blows the shofar will not produce the proper sounds, perhaps you might speak during the time between the first blessing on the shofar and the last sound produced by it. With the years, old anxieties have been replaced with new ones; the fear of halakhah has been replaced by the terror of judgment. The sound of the shofar alleviates that terror.

Even though the sounding of the shofar on Rosh Hashanah is a Torah decree, it does hint at a message: Awake - slumberers - from your sleep, and drowsy ones - stir from your doze, and search your ways, and turn in repentance and remember your Creator, those who forget the truth in the follies of time and err throughout their life in nonsense and emptiness which offer no benefit and no salvation; look to your souls and improve your ways and your actions, and let each of you abandon his bad way and his useless thoughts. (RaMBaM, Hilkhot Teshuvah 3:4)

The blowing of the shofar is first referred to as a "Torah decree" [gzerat hakatuv] - a religious obligation lacking a rationale or meaning. Next RaMBaM suggests that man can lend meaning to the sound of the shofar as a sound calling out to him: "Repent your wicked deeds." It is as if RaMBaM himself was blowing the shofar in order to communicate with people. There is something frightening and even threatening about this sound. RaMBaM refers to this explanation as a "hint" - remez.

Indeed, when the blowing of the shofar is just a commandment of the day, a halakhic act, our principal attention is devoted towards the halakhic observance of the commandment alone. (Is the teru'a as long as the shevarim, and so on). One only encounters the sound and really listens to it through a "hint."

There is a stage in our lives when we are sufficiently confident about fulfilling the "Torah decree" and turn our attention towards adding an additional dimension to it - that of the "hint." We seek the place where we will want to hear the shofar; we may even take a further step after the RaMBaM's words and become ourselves the ones who blow the shofar - we are the awakeners!

This notion, in which the blowing of the shofar is man's turning to God, already appears in the words of the Sages: "On Rosh HaShanah utter malkhiyot, zikhronot, and shofarot before Me. Malkhiyot - in order for you to make me a King [shetamlikheni] over you. Zikhronot - on order for you to bring up the memory of you [zikhronekhem] before Me for the good. And how? With the shofar. R. Abahu said: Why do we blow a ram's horn? The Holy One blessed be He said: "Blow a ram's horn before Me so that I will remember the binding of Abraham's son Isaac for your sake, and I shall account it for you as if you had bound up yourselves before Me." (Rosh HaShanah 16a).

Via our shofar, our memory and that of the binding of Isaac rise up before God. Here the shofar has a new meaning; the shofar is an instrument for reminding God of the People Israel. Man blows the shofar and God is the one who hears it. The instrument itself - the ram's horn - plays an important role. This idea serves as the basis for the formulation of the concluding sentences of the special benedictions found in the Rosh HaShanah service. The benediction of zikhronot section ends with: "May You mercifully remember today the binding of Isaac for the sake of his offspring. Blessed are You, Lord, Who remembers the covenant." And the benediction of the shofarot: "For You hear the sound of the shofar and You give ear to the teru'a...Blessed are You, Lord, Who hears the shofar-sound of His people Israel with mercy." The shofar speaks with a national voice, and the memory of the binding of Isaac is a national memory.

The reversal of the shofar-blower from a divine to a human voice takes a central role in Hassidism, but in a different way. The moan of the shofar as an instrument of national expression that speaks of Isaac's binding is replaced by the personal voice of the individual who cries out in his loneliness. Consider a story attributed to the Ba'al Shem Tov:

The teki'a sound of the shofar is a simple sound, the simple cry from the depths of one's heart when he departs from "God is one," etc. It is made with an animal's horn in reference to [the verse], Lord save man and beast...

The Ba'al Shem Tov clarified this metaphor [with the following parable]: There was a king who had an only son. [The son] studied well and was beloved by him as the apple of his eye. The king decided that his son would travel to other countries to learn different kinds of wisdom and to know how to lead people in order that he become able to lead the country in a wonderful manner. His father gave him ministers and servants and great wealth so that he would be able to go and tour the countries and the islands of the sea and thus achieve a higher level than that he had while residing at home with his father. After a long time everything his father had given him had been spent on luxurious travel expenses, since he was used to living in luxury. Most of it was lost because he added desire upon desire for many things - he spent so much on these that he eventually sold everything he owned. Meanwhile the son had journeyed to a land so distant that even his father was unknown there. When he told them that he was the son of king so-and-so, not only did they not believe him - they did not even recognize his father's name. When he saw that there remained no remedies to enliven his soul in its troubles, he decided to return to his father's country. However, due to the long time that had passed, he had forgotten his country's language. [And the king would sit everyday by the palace window, watching for his son's return. And all his ministers would tell the king: "Surely that son has died and will never return."] When he reached his country, what could he do, having forgotten its language? He began to signal to them that he was their king's son, and he became a joke to them: How could it be that the son of such a great king should go so ragged and worn!? They beat him on his head and by the time he reached the king's court he was covered with wounds and injuries and bruises. He started signaling to them [to the king's guards] that he was the son of the king, but they paid no attention to him. Then he began crying out loudly so that the king would recognize his voice. When the king heard the sound of his cries and weeping, he said: "That is the voice of my son crying out in his distress!" The love for his son awoke within him and he brought him into his home and embraced him and kissed him..." (Keter Shem Tov, Kahat Publishers 5768, addendum 194)

The Ba'al Shem Tov's parable lends another meaning to the sound made by a human addressing God. We always try to formulate our words in the most precise way possible, but the sound of the shofar does not convey a particular content - it is not composed of well-chosen words. The blast of the shofar is a naked cry lacking sophisticated content. Its very simplicity is its strength. The blast of the shofar is like the cry of the son who has forgotten his homeland's language and who expresses himself wordlessly in a way that is only understandable to his father, his father who finds his lost son in that cry. The blast of the shofar gains its force from its primordiality, from the primordial voice within it, a voice that arrives without words.

There are two processes of teshuvah [repentance]. There is teshuvah which concentrates on the improvements of actions that one is already accustomed to perform, as in the phrase, "Improve your deeds and do not break the covenant." This teshuvah focuses on the past and its correction. There is another kind of teshuvah which is founded upon the idea of starting everything afresh, to "rejuvenate," to forget everything and turn a new leaf which does not deal with that which was but rather with what shall be - innovation.

Each process of teshuvah has its own shofar-blower. Teshuvah that focuses on the improvement of the past and present requires a shofar that addresses man and calls upon him to correct his deeds: "Improve your ways and your actions." Teshuvah founded upon rebirth opens with man's call to his Father: "Once the Ba'al Shem Tov said: The shofar is like a son crying out, 'Father, father, save me!'" Let us start everything over again from the beginning, from the basic stage that still lacks words, from the beginning!

On the one hand, we try to understand the world and humanity in all their complexity, believing them to be somewhat understandable. On the other hand, we feel in our hearts that everything is mysterious and that the harder we try to understand everything the hazier it will get. At times like these we need two blasts of the shofar, both the blast that addresses God with the child's cry of "Father!" - the naïve voice shorn of any sophistication - as well as the other blast of the shofar, which is directed from above downwards and expects obedience and the improvement of deeds. This arena in which both sounds - the simple and primitive cry and the threatening alarm - meet, where the sounds of the shofar rising from below and descending from above join together - that is the introduction to the laws of teshuvah which we must write here and now.

Rabbi Shmuel Reiner, Mitzpe Netufa and Yeshivat haKibbutz HaDati in Ma'ale Gilboa.

 

Yom Kippur as His Wedding Day and as a "Taste" of the World to Come

Rabban Shimon ben Gamliel said: There were no better days for Israel than the 15^th of Av and Yom Kippur, for in them the daughters of Jerusalem would go out in borrowed white clothing in order to avoid embarrassing those who did not own any... and the daughters of Jerusalem would go out and dance in the vineyards... And thus he would say: Go out, O daughters of Zion, and gaze upon King Solomon, upon the crown with which his mother crowned him on his wedding day and on the day of the joy of his heart (Song of Songs 3). On his wedding day - that was the giving of the Torah. And on the day of the joy of his heart - that is the building of the Temple, may it be built soon and in our days, Amen.

(Mishnah Ta'anit 4:8)

 

Rabban Shimon ben Gamliel said: There were no better days for Israel than the fifteenth of Av and Yom Kippur.

Yom Kippur makes sense - it offers forgiveness and atonement, [it is] the day when the second Tablets were given. But what is there to the fifteenth of Av?

Rav Yehudah said in the name of Shmuel: It was the day when the tribes were allowed to intermarry...

(Ta'anit 30b)

 

...So the Sages said, "In the life hereafter, there is no eating, no drinking, no connubial intercourse, but the righteous sit with their crowns on their heads and enjoy the radiance of the Shekhinah." This passage clearly indicates that as there is no eating or drinking there, there is no physical body hereafter. The phrase "the righteous sit" is allegorical and means that the souls of the righteous exist there without labor or fatigue. The phrase "their crowns on their heads" refers to the knowledge they have acquired, and for the sake of which they have attained life in the world to come. This is their crown, in the same sense as where Solomon says the crown with which his mother crowned him (Song of Songs 3;11). And just as in the text, Everlasting joy shall be upon their heads (Isaiah 35;10), joy is not to be understood as a material substance that actually rests on the head, so the "crown" of which the Sages speak is not to be taken literally but refers to knowledge. And what is the meaning of the Sages' statement: "they enjoy the radiance of the Shekhinah"? It means that the righteous attain to a knowledge and realization of the truth concerning God to which they had not attained while they were in the murky and lowly body.

 (RaMBaM Hilkhot Teshuvah 5)

 

Our Father, our King, deal kindly with us and answer us, for we are without [good] deeds - treat us with charity and loving-kindness, and save us.

Then the Lord said: "You cared about the plant, which you did not work for and which you did not grow, which appeared over night and perished overnight. And should I not care about Nineveh, that great city, in which there are more than a hundred and twenty thousand persons who do not know their right hand from their left, and many beasts as well.

(Jonah 4:10-11)

 

God has mercy on man and beast, that is to say, on man as on the beast, and this reminds us of the parallel verse, You save man and beast, Lord (Psalms 36:7). That is to say, God's mercy and kindness are completely independent of man and his deeds, as the prophet said, for my plans are not your plans nor are My ways your ways... But as the heavens are high above the earth, so are My ways high above your ways (Isaiah 55:8-9). God's relationship to man and to the world are none other than what is termed "the Divine matter" which is above all human actions and behavior, even above man's acts of repentance.

(Y. Leibowitz, Sihot al Hagei Yisrael Ve'Moadav, pg. 193)

 

Readers Respond

Dr. Ariel Rathous's Torah article for parashat Shoftim, "Who are the Kings? Our Rabbis!" was really quite nice. However; a variety of worshippers attend the synagogue where I pray - the Mestrapokov Rebbe's "Sha'arei Yerushalaym" in Kiryat Moshe. There is an important Lithuanian rabbi who really does not like Shabbat sheets, especially those associated with religious Zionism, and he is always searching them for errors. Instead of reading Dr. Rathous's article in its entirety, he only read its conclusion: "The latter approach seems to oblige us to stand guard and refuse to surrender our powers of judgment..." It greatly upset him to read something like this that says, in effect, that one should not blindly and absolutely obey rabbis. He said these were heretical words and that Shabbat Shalom should not be allowed into the synagogue. I said I would read the article and comment on it, because it is an important Shabbat-sheet and it sanctifies the name of Heaven in public, that is to say - it is published without advertisements and is very positive.

Here are my comments: The article should have concluded thus: When the Temple is in existence and the Sanhedrin is in office, one must listen to them even if they say right is left and vice-versa, for the holy Spirit is upon them and they are also considered to be like a king. If they err, they must offer a sacrifice of "a forgotten thing" [he'elem davar], and the Omnipresent will be pleased with them. However, when the Temple is in ruins and there is no Sanhedrin, then the Jerusalem Talmud, which was also written after the destruction of the Temple, is correct and we are to obey the rabbis if they call "right" - "right" and "left" - "left." Other answers are to be approached with skepticism and we should not relinquish our faculty of judgment.

Shemaryahu Beckerman

 

Pinchas Leiser, editor of Shabbat Shalom, responds:

I thank Mr. Shemaryahu Beckerman for his response and important comments. God forbid that we should publish words of heresy in Shabbat Shalom and it should be assumed that my friend Dr. Ariel Rathous did not - God forbid - preach heresy.

Careful study of the article reveals the difference between the Babylonian and Jerusalem Talmuds, between the RaMBaN's approach and that of R. Meir Simkha MiDvinsk (who was also, of course, a Lithuanian). Differences of opinion on this issue continue into our day, and "Both these and these are the words of the Living God." I think that in the days of compassion, forgiveness, and repentance, it would be proper for us to adopt the approach of the House of Hillel and the House of Shammai, who, even though they disagreed on many points of principle, treated each other with respect.

 

 

 

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