Like the anchor in the sailor's hand;

If it pleases him, he holds it,

If it pleases him, he casts it away.

So too are we in Your hand,

Good and forgiving God.

Look to the covenant and take no notice of the evil inclination.

(From the service for Yom Kippur eve)

 

As this potter [treats his clay] can I not do to you, O house of Israel? says the Lord. Behold, as clay in the potter's hand, so are you in My hand, O house of Israel. (Jeremiah 18:6)

 

R. Hama said in the name of R. Hanina: But for these three texts, the feet of Israel's enemies [an obscure reference to Israel itself] would have slipped. One is Whom I have wronged; a second, Behold as the clay in the potter's hand, so are you in My hand, O house of Israel (Jeremiah 18); the third, And I will take away the stony heart out of your flesh, and I will give you a heart of flesh (Ezekiel 36). R. Papa said: We learn it from here: And I will put My spirit within you and cause you to walk in My statutes (Ezekiel 36)

(Berakhot 32a, Soncino translation)

 

 

I will yet gather others to him, together with his gathered ones

Shmuel Har

Beginning from the Sabbath following Tisha B'Av and up to Rosh Hashanah we read seven haftarot of consolation, all of which are taken from the second half of the Book of Isaiah.¹ After Shabbat Shuva we read another passage from this part of Isaiah on the morning of Yom Kippur; that haftara, however, is not concerned with consolation. In the second part of the haftara the prophet wants to call out with a full throat and not spare his people harsh rebuke for their crimes and sins.

Why did our forefathers see fit to have this rebuke read on a day that is completely devoted to love and peace between Israel and their Father in Heaven? The question becomes yet more puzzling once we see what kind of sin the prophet is talking about. The sin is linked directly with fasting. Seemingly, he demands that we go home, break our fasts and begin performing works of justice and kindness.

The people think it is enough to fast and they do not understand that their important business lies elsewhere - with doing justice and kindness.

The reading of such a haftara on Yom Kippur morning is a kind of anti-ceremonial ceremony, or a ceremony that critiques itself. With this reading the worshippers in the synagogue announce that they appreciate the gap between form and content.

Such ceremonies are typical of the world of the Sages. In Mishnah Ta'anit we read:

The elder among them addresses them with words of admonition [to repentance] thus: "Our bretheren, Scripture does not say of the people of Nineveh and God saw their sackcloth and their fasting, but, and God saw their works, that they turned from their evil way (Jonah 3). And in the Prophets it is said, And rend your heart and not your garments (Joel 2)."

But the entire tractate Ta'anit is devoted to a detailed description of the fast-day ritual! I think that the elder mentioned in the Mishnah is not only addressing those who fast; he is addressing, first and foremost, those who are studying the Mishnah. He confronts them with a reflexive text that illuminates the Mishnah itself in a critical light.

This scholarly culture in which questions are asked and doubts raised is reflected in many additional examples.²

There is even more going on here. The prophet is not merely complaining about hypocrisy and a failure to grasp what is genuinely important; this is not just about the gap between form and content. The prophet is addressing people who honestly seek out God on a daily basis. Such people really do not understand the problem. They ask the shocking question, "Why have we fasted, and You did not see; we have afflicted our soul and You do not know?" and the prophet throws back his answer to them: Behold, for quarrel and strife you fast, and to strike with a fist of wickedness. There is a kind of fasting, a kind of seeking intimacy with God, that does not open the heart to others, rather it shuts up the heart in the synagogue, full of self-righteousness and blindness. Such seeking after God leads Jonah away from the big city and its populace and towards the gourd. Instead, one should open one's heart. As the Sages said regarding the verse, And you draw out your soul to the hungry: "Say to him, 'My soul goes out for you.'" Such opening of the heart would open Jonah's eyes to see that God's world does not belong solely to zealots who shelter in the shade of a gourd.

God's loving-kindness cannot be fenced in; it affects all of creation.

The full significance of the prophet's words can only be appreciated when they are read in their broader context. Just before concluding the service, the prayer-leader reads a verse from a different prophecy by Isaiah: I will bring them to My holy mount, and I will cause them to rejoice in My house of prayer, their burnt offerings and their sacrifices shall be acceptable upon My altar, for My house shall be called a house of prayer for all peoples. This verse appears in close proximity to our own. God promises that He will bring gentiles to His holy mountain.

It is not coincidental that this prophecy begins with the words, Fortunate is the man who will do this and the person who will hold fast to it. The prophet is opposing separatist and isolationist tendencies and presents God's Torah as being addressed to all humanity and bearing meaning for everyone. Opposing isolationism, the prophet promises in the name of the One Who gathers in the dispersed of Israel that He will will yet gather others to him, together with his gathered ones. That is to say that many additional peoples will join together with the Israelites and gentiles He has gathered together in Zion.

It is impossible for today's reader not feel that these words are also addressed to our own generation. How diligently the sages of the past two centuries have toiled to display the Torah's humane and beautiful aspects. It seems that our generation has dismissed this project as pointless apologetics which may have been appropriate for Diaspora Jews who had to placate the gentiles. Instead, today's scholars seek to finally reveal the Torah's "real" face - and it appears quite ugly. It is the face of an isolationist tribal law, interested solely in promoting the interests of its adherents.

Is it really true that the State of Israel's real problem is that gentiles throng at our gates, threatening to engulf us? Is the solution to surround ourselves with more and more fences?

Or might it be that those many fences will leave us - God forbid - locked in an accursed and arid bit of land, and every decent human being seeking a beam of light within it will take a different path?

More than a hundred years ago the Russian Orthodox philosopher Solovyov wrote an enthusiastic defense of the Talmud. He was well acquainted with all the isolationist and gentile-hating dicta found in the Talmud. He claimed - correctly - that if you poke around in any culture you can find similar statements, but that they were no longer relevant for Jewish culture or for his own Christian culture. As a counter-move, he cited tens of Talmudic dicta expressing love for mankind. He couldn't have imagined that a century later some rabbis would choose to champion precisely the rulings and quotations which the Rishonim and Aharonim had worked so hard to reinterpret or to relegate to oblivion.

We have no alternative but to decide whether we will have great joy over the gourd or we will turn ourselves towards humanity.

1. On the question of the unity of the scond half of Isaiah, see S. M. Paul, Yeshayahu Perakim 40-66, from the Mikra LeYisrael series, Tel Aviv, 2008, pp. 6-11.

2. Most perspicuously: the Mishnah in the end of the fourth chapter of Sanhedrin opposes capital punishment - when capital punishment is itself the central topic of that very tractate.

Shmuel Har teaches in Jerusalem's Shalom Hartman Institute.

 

God Takes Mercy on all His Creatures, and Especially on Man, who is His Glory

Then the Lord said: "You pitied the gourd" And even though he pitied the gourd only because of his own distress, this was like God who took pity on Nineveh for the sake of His glory, for the creatures are His glory, and humanity all the more so, for it is written, I created him for My glory. And even though we interpreted that verse as relating to Israel, in any case it speaks of the human race, just as He said, I formed him, even made him. However, since Israel recognizes God's glory more than the rest of humanity does - excepting the sages among them [among the rest of humanity], the verse was spoken in reference to Israel.

which you did not work for and which you did not grow People are sadder at the loss of things they have worked to produce. Even though the blessed God did not really work to create the creatures, the Torah speaks in the language of man so that its audience will understand it.

(ReDaK Jonah 4)

 

Our Father, our King, be gracious to us and answer us, though we have no worthy deeds; act with us in charity and loving-kindness and save us.

(From the Koren Siddur translation)

 

Then the Lord said: "You cared about the plant, which you did not work for and which you did not grow, which appeared overnight 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)

 

Freeing Ourselves from Bonds in Kol Nidrei

Just before dark on Yom Kippur eve, we recite the Kol Nidrei. What do we say in Kol Nidrei? "All personal vows, all personal oaths and pledges..." All the binds, pledges, belongings, labels, and definitions that I have placed upon myself and that I may place upon myself in the future - "Let them all be relinquished and abandoned, null and void, neither firm nor established" (Birnbaum translation). They will be undone, and nullified. From this moment I free myself from all of these, from both past and present, from this Yom Kippur until next Yom Kippur, may it come to us for good. A person can lend himself many names: he is an intellectual, he is pious, or not pious, he is unemotional. A person can limit himself: he deems himself incapable of certain tasks, there are topics which are not to be discussed or contemplated, there various matters which are none of his business. When he closes himself up tightly in such a shell, nothing can affect him.

A person does not have to be old, respectable, wrinkled, or a bit overweight to dwell in such a shell; even a fourteen year old boy can cover himself with an impenetrable shell.

(R. Adin Steinsaltz: Or Penei Melekh, quoted in the introduction to Yonadav Kaplun's (ed.) Mahzor, Mimkha Eilekha)

 

The Thirteen Attributes are Always Effective

The Lord passed before him and proclaimed (Shemot 34) - Rabbi Yohanan said: Were this not actually written, it could not have been said. It teaches us that the Holy One, Blessed Be He, wrapped Himself like a shaliah tzibbur - a cantor - and showed Moses the order of prayer. He said to him: Whenever Israel sins, - let them recite this list before Me, and I will forgive them. The Lord, the Lord - I am He before man sinned, and I am He after man sins and repents. A compassionate and gracious God - Rabbi Yehuda said: A covenant was made promising that the Thirteen Attributes will never go unanswered, as is written; I hereby make a covenant (Shemot 34).

(Rosh Hashana 17b)

 

It is written in Sefer Yere'im:

How often do we see that we are wrapped in our prayer shawls and recite the Thirteen Attributes, yet we are not answered. But the meaning is that whenever Israel does according to this order of attributes which the Lord does, having mercy and being gracious to the poor, being slow to anger and doing kindness one to the other, waiving demands for rightful satisfaction, as in the words of the Sages: If one waives his demands for rightful satisfaction, his sins will be forgiven, then they [Israel] are assured that they will not remain empty-handed; but if they are cruel, and act immorally, certainly they will be condemned by their recitation of the Thirteen Attributes.

In other words, not only are the Thirteen Attributes not a magic means for atonement of sins; the mention of The Holy One's attributes by one who makes no effort to observe them actually calls attention to his sins. Not only do they not provide a remedy for man, they become a pitfall.

The rituals and ceremonies of reciting Selihot and mumbling confessions and the like are the outer trappings of repentance. RaMBaM states in connection with Yom Kippur: "All of these practices, and the fasts, are symbols that activate the soul to do repentance." RaMBaM includes among these the sacrifices brought in the Temple for accidental sins. None of these constitute repentance in itself, rather they are just symbols meant to arouse man to repent.

(Y. Leibowitz Sihot al Haggei Yisrael UMo'adin, pg. 185)

 

When is the Time for Ne'ila?

The rabbis of Caesarea say: Rav and R. Yohanan disagree about it.

Rav said: At the closing of the gates of Heaven.

R. Yohanan: At the closing of the gates of the Temple.

(Yerushalmi Berakhot 4:1)

 

And so they established a service following the minha service, performed only on the fast day, just as the sun sets, in order to increase pleas and requests because of the fast. This is the service known as Teffilat Ne'ila {literally: the locking prayer], in reference to the gates of Heaven, which then close behind the disappearing sun, since it is only performed at sunset.

(RaMBaM, Hilkhot Tefillah 1:7)

 

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)

 

 

So very open that it will never close again, so

very closed that it shall never reopen...

Forget, remember, forget

Open, close, open

(From Y. Amichai's Patuah, Sagur, Patuah)

 

 

 

All contributions to either the NIF or PEF should be marked as donor-advised to Oz ve'Shalom, the Shabbat Shalom project. For Donations to NIF, please mention that Oz veShalom is registered as no. 5708.

If you wish to subscribe to the email English editions of Shabbat Shalom, to print copies of it for distribution in your synagogue, to inquire regarding the dedication of an edition in someone’s honor or memory, to find out how to make tax-exempt donations, or to suggest additional helpful ideas, please call +972-52-3920206 or at ozshalom@netvision.net.il

If you enjoy Shabbat Shalom, please consider contributing towards its publication and distribution.

• Hebrew edition distributed in Israel $700
• English edition distributed via email $ 100

Issues may be dedicated in honor of an event, person, simcha, etc. Requests must be made 3-4 weeks in advance to appear in the Hebrew, 10 days in advance to appear in the English email.

 

About us

Oz Veshalom-Netivot Shalom is a movement dedicated to the advancement of a civil society in Israel. It is committed to promoting the ideals of tolerance, pluralism, and justice, concepts that have always been central to Jewish tradition and law.