Second Day of Festivals at the Worship and Study Minyan - Part 1

Recently, there was an exchange on our Discussion list about the Second Day of Yom Tov in the Diaspora—in Hebrew: yom tov sheni shel galuyot. The posts offered thoughtful reflections on our current practice, which has developed over time in response to Rabbi Gold’s decision, many years ago, that the minyan, like congregations in Israel and in the Reform movement, would observe a single day of festivals. (As with Israeli and many Reform congregations, we would continue to celebrate a second day of Rosh Hashanah.) This issue may seem somewhat rarified, but it raises significant practical and ideological questions.

In practical terms, when the eighth day of Pesach falls on a Shabbat, Israel and the Reform movement continue on with the Torah-reading cycle and are thus “out of sync” with the rest of the Jewish world for several weeks or, as will happen in 2016, for several months. A lesser challenge is the need to combine the rituals of Sh’mini Atzeret and Simchat Torah into a single, lengthy, and tonally-disjointed service.

Turning to ideology, I have attempted to reconstruct Rabbi Gold’s original decision on the basis of various conversations and the posts on the list serve. If other members have recollections of conversations with Rabbi Gold or, even better, access to a written record of his thoughts on these questions, I would very much like to hear from them. As far as I understand, his decision stemmed primarily from a rejection of any notion of the inferiority of “diaspora” Judaism. If Israeli Jews were no longer in galut (exile--a loaded term in Israel-diaspora relations to be sure!), neither were diaspora Jews who had built glorious Jewish civilizations across the world. Therefore, there should be consistent practice across all Jewish communities, and since the second day of the festivals had been characterized in some rabbinic responsa as an extra burden on diaspora Jews to encourage them to yearn for Zion (or, after the establishment of the State of Israel, to encourage Aliyah), that consistent practice should be to observe a single day of the festivals.

Moving from this admittedly thin reconstruction of Rabbi Gold’s reasoning to our own exploration of the issue, several questions arise:

1. If our goal, like Rabbi Gold’s apparently was, is at least in part to assert the dignity of diaspora Jewry, why wouldn’t we also want to assert the dignity of diaspora practice, which from the earliest periods of rabbinic Judaism—itself largely the product of diaspora—was to observe two days?

2. Given that the second day of the festivals places an extra burden on diaspora Jews, how does the principle of “tircha al hatzibur” (avoiding an undue burden on the community) factor into our thinking?

3. Finally, if the Israeli practice meant being “out of sync” with the diaspora Torah-reading cycle for weeks or months after Pesach in certain years, why do we (unlike our Reform brothers and sisters) immediately revert to the diaspora cycle?

Before addressing these questions directly in the context of our minyan and its practice, however, I think it makes sense to review the concept of yom tov sheni in general.

According to the Babylonian Talmud (Beitzah, 4b), yom tov sheni emerged from the potential confusion that might arise if far flung communities of Jews were not to receive word of the proper day of a festival in time for the celebration. To address this doubt (s’feika deyoma), the custom (minhag) was to observe two days of festivals. In practical terms, these included the first and final days of Pesach, the first and final days of Sukkot (the latter being Sh’mini Atzeret), Shavuot, and Rosh Hashanah. Yom Kippur was not doubled, given that a fast day would be too much of a burden. In the land of Israel, by contrast, Jews maintained the biblical practice of celebrating holidays for one day. The exception would prove to be Rosh Hashanah, in theory because there might reasonably be doubt about the first day of Tishrei even in the Land of Israel, although scholars suggest that the practice become widespread in Palestine only after the migration of a population of Jews from Provence in the 11th century.

One might immediately point out the slight absurdity of fixing Yom Kippur without concern for doubt five days before reasserting doubt about the beginning (and ending) of Sukkot. Indeed, for the Rabbis named in Beitzah, this custom was no longer technically necessary, since the rabbis had determined a system for calculating the calendar without reference to the physical movement of the moon. The reason for persisting in celebrating the second day was formulated as follows:

Because they sent [word] from there [Palestine]: Give heed to the customs of your ancestors which have come down to you; for it might happen that the government might issue a decree and it will cause confusion [in ritual].

This answer is interesting for a number of reasons. First of all, it comes from Palestine, suggesting that the rabbis there had an interest in maintaining distinct customs for communities inside and outside of the Land. Of course, we find this dictum in the Babylonian Talmud, which suggests that the authorities who compiled the gemara shared this interest in maintaining the distinction. Second, it clearly locates the practice in the realm of minhag (custom)—although functionally, the distinction between custom and law can be vanishingly small. Third, it justifies a conservative practice by reference to governmental persecution, which was much more of a given in Roman-controlled Palestine than in Babylonia.

Another justification for maintaining the practice comes a few lines earlier, when the gemara asks if R. Assi regards the two days of the festival as “one continuous holiness.” This concept of continuous holiness appears quite often in explanations about the festivals (at least from a diaspora perspective!!). If the second day of a festival is truly as holy as the first, who are we to cancel it, thus destroying moments of holiness? Indeed, for those Jews who can manage it (and in this country, many of those people work in the Jewish community!), the second day of festivals truly increases joy and celebration, even as it increases the burdens on individual Jews who feel compelled to choose between their Jewish practice and their livelihood and on congregations who often struggle to make a minyan on the second day of festivals.

Regardless, until the establishment of the State of Israel, the preponderance of Jewish life qualified as diaspora—galut. (As I’ve already noted, galut can also be translated as “exile”; which translation you choose can affect your opinion of yom tov sheni, a topic I’ll have more to say about in another post!) As such, there were very few communities who did not follow the diaspora calendar, at least officially. Even today, when both the Reform movement worldwide and essentially all Israeli congregations follow the biblical calendar, the diaspora calendar remains the default. I have tried and failed to find an Israeli luach (schedule of religious observances) online. In general, books and websites about Jewish holidays (at least those aimed beyond a Reform audience) mention the Israeli and Reform practice, but assume yom tov sheni as a default. Although there is a fair amount of dissatisfaction with yom tov sheni shel galuyot in this and other (small c) conservative congregations, the reality is that most of them will, at least officially, continue to maintain the holiness of the second day.

In future posts on this topic, I plan to have a look at the legal codes and other texts relevant to this discussion, including responsa from the Reform and Conservative movements. I will also explore, through the prism of the three questions I outlined above, the dilemmas we face in our current practice and some others we would face if our practice were to change.

However, since I am writing during the season of Sh’mini Atzeret/Simchat Torah, I want to raise it as an example as to the complexity of this issue. Simchat Torah itself (as a festival distinct from Sh’mini Atzeret rather than a repetition of it) arose only in the Middle Ages when the annual Torah-reading cycle become predominant over its rival triennial system (which ended every third Pesach and was quite distinct from our triennial system, which simply divides each of the annual system’s weekly sidras into three). Since Judaism was at that time by default a diaspora phenomenon, so too was Simchat Torah. Therefore, the process of integrating Simchat Torah into Sh’mini Atzeret was not a return to biblical or pre-exilic practice but an attempt to adapt the principle of a single day of the festival in the Land of Israel to practices that emerged in the diaspora. I mention this not to valorize one practice over another but rather to point out the complex—and ongoing—interplay between diaspora and center in the life of the Jewish people.

In this context, I’ll share a paragraph from a Chabad website:

Following the custom of the holy Arizal, many in Israel participate in hakafot sh'niyot ("second hakafot") on the night following the one-day holiday—thus joining their Diaspora brothers and sisters in their celebration of the Torah. These second hakafot have an advantage: since it is no longer a holiday, the singing can be accompanied by live music. If you are in Israel for the holiday, you might want to make your way on this night to the Western Wall, where the singing and dancing lasts well into the night.

(http://www.chabad.org/holidays/JewishNewYear/template_cdo/aid/1288162/jewish/A-Deeper-Look-at-Shemini-Atzeret-Simchat-Torah.htm)

May your fall be filled with the blessings of joy, peace, and dancing!

Rabbi Jim

Interfaith Accompanying

Rarely would I express gratitude for weather that pushes me off my bicycle and on to the T: late, crowded trains; jostling passengers; travel times increased from 25 minutes to 55 or more.  But today, I'm grateful I took the T, because I found a tweet that intrigued me:

Rev. Laura Everett ‏@RevEverett

Crowd sourcing #Lent : what are you adding/giving up for 40 days? Thinking maybe for me- no glowing screens 2 hrs before bed?

I responded:

Jim Morgan ‏@RabbiJimM

@RevEverett Love it (although of course I don't do lent)--but I think I should do that all the time!! Not giving up tv but taking sleep!

And that got us going on a twitter-only conversation (my first, by the way) in which Rev. Laura suggested that we "swap" Lent practices, even that she would take on kashrut during the 40 days (which is actually more because Sundays, it turns out, don't count).  First order of business, Laura said, was for me to obtain and consume a pancake for Fat Tuesday, i.e. today.  (Kimchi pancakes and potato pancakes--i.e. latkes--wouldn't do, but a crepe would be fine.)

Although I was very excited about the pancake, I wasn't entirely comfortable with a "swap," since it wouldn't do for me to take on a Lenten practice (awkward that, for a rabbi). So I suggested instead that we accompany one another during our periods of spiritual preparation for major holidays.  I would accompany her during Lent as she prepared for Easter through repentance and fasting.  Laura would then accompany me (beginning before Easter arrives, since the Jewish and Christian calendars do not coincide this year) during S'firat ha-Omer, the Counting of the Omer, a time of self-examination and partial mourning practices when Jews prepare for Shavuot--the holiday that celebrates our receiving of Torah.

We haven't discussed it in detail, but over twitter we started a list: we will learn each other's texts, help each other maintain our practices (she's giving up screens after 9:30 pm--I notice I'm writing at 10:30, so I'm not much help so far!), and visit the other's congregation.  I suggested that she join our minyan (Worship and Study Minyan at Harvard Hillel) for Shavuot, where we could offer a joint reflection on our experience of accompanying one another.  In my ignorance, I'm not sure when would be most appropriate for me to join her congregation--I am eager to learn.

And yes--I still made a point of eating a pancake tonight--a lemon and sugar crepe from Paris Creperie in Coolidge Corner (so delicious--I was happy for the dispensation!), and I hope Laura will nosh on hamentashen for Purim (perhaps she'll even join us at Hillel for the Megillah!).

And all of this learning and reflection because of the snow storm that kept me off my bicycle!

Engaging Difficult Jewish Stories - Sermon for Yom Kippur 5773

Rabbi Jim Morgan
Sermon for Kol Nidre, 5773
September 25, 2012
Worship and Study Minyan of Harvard Hillel

Shana Tova, and G’mar Hatimah Tovah.  I’m Rabbi Jim Morgan, and I am so glad to be with the Worship and Study minyan for my first yamim nora-im. 

These are the Days of Awe, days of terror, days when we look into ourselves and see all that is wanting.  Days on which review our actions, our decisions, and cannot help but ponder the things we did wrong, the things we would change if only we could.  And they are days for difficult conversations, both with our selves and with our loved ones and friends.  For our community, they are days for difficult stories, difficult and challenging texts in the synagogue.

Torah texts can always present challenges to our worldview, challenges to our assumptions.  Often we disagree intensely with the point of view Torah presents.  At other times, passages we disagree with intellectually somehow resonate with us emotionally, so we feel a crisis of ambivalence.  There are, of course, stories that we simply find disturbing, and we would prefer not to think about it, thank you very much.  Then there are those passages that we really just wish were not in scripture—they are so disturbing, so horrifying, that really wouldn’t be better simply to excise them?

The texts we read on the yamim noraim are just such texts—consider: at his wife’s behest, a father banishes his concubine and their son to the desert and to their likely death; the same father obeys God’s command to sacrifice his son, who is saved only at the last minute by that same God withdrawing the command; God then instructs the Jews in a confusing and disturbing ritual that will effect atonement for the community’s sins. 

On Yom Kippur afternoon, we are faced with a particular textual challenge: Leviticus 18 rehearses a list of forbidden sexual unions, culminating in a tripartite condemnation—and you’ll forgive me for quoting the King James Version, which was the basis for the "old" JPS translation:

And thou shalt not let any of thy seed pass through the fire to Molech, neither shall thou profane the name of thy God: I am the Lord.  Thou shalt not lie with mankind, as with womankind: it is an abomination. Neither shalt thou lie with any beast to defile thyself therewith: neither shall any woman stand before a beast to lie down thereto: it is confusion.  (KJV)

It’s hard to overestimate the hurt that these words have caused to humankind, both in their casual linkage of same-sex physical intimacy with child sacrifice and with bestiality and in the way that our tradition and its sibling traditions of Christianity and Islam have used them to oppress gay men and women.  Why, voices in our community, in our congregation will ask, should we read these horrible things? Is there not anything more edifying to read on the most solemn day of the year?  Well, indeed there is, and you can find it in our machzor, and indeed we will read it tomorrow.  Instead of Leviticus 18, we’ll skip to the next parasha and read chapter 19, from Kedoshim—you will be holy.

This substitution is not a tradition that started in the Conservative movement.  Rather, by the early twentieth century the Reform Movement was reading selections from Leviticus 19 in the Union Prayer Book.  The practice extended to the Reconstructionist Movement, whose first machzor in the late forties designated Leviticus 19:1-18 with no option to read Chapter 18.  In the current Reconstructionist machzor, Kol Haneshama, the commentary explains that “The forbidden sexual relationships [in Leviticus 18] strike many contemporary Jews as inappropriate to the mood of the day, and they are objectionable in a number of their particulars, perhaps most notably in their condemnation of homosexual relationships.”[1]

To my ear, this commentary sounds anachronistic—certainly liberal Jews today are concerned with gay rights.  But in the post-war era, when the Reconstructionist Movement was editing its first machzor, there was no such concern.  Indeed I would imagine that by and large, all Jews, from Reform to Orthodox, were not focused on the ban on same-sex intimacy since it was entirely unremarkable and uncontroversial.

By the seventies, however, when Conservative movement published its new machzor—the one you have before you—gender and gay rights had begun to percolate into the general culture, and today it seems that otherwise traditionally-minded liberal Jews name this infamous verse as a primary reason to make the shift.

I understand this decision and I respect the rationale for it.  However, I disagree with it, both because it impoverishes our own conversations about the difficult aspects of our tradition and because it hampers our capacity to engage in the larger conversation about important issues, in this case, the religious case for or against the full inclusion of gays and lesbians in the life of our society, our communities, our congregations.

Let me take the second concern first, which is less pressing for me tonight.  A quick example: among the Republican presidential candidates was one who had a tendency to claim that if we legalize marriage between two men, then we would be on the road to legalizing marriage between a man and a dog.  When such talk was common in the media, I wondered how many people understood that this seemingly bizarre and clearly non-logical connection stemmed from our sequence of verses?  My guess is that most secular-minded people had no idea, but that people who read their bibles got the reference immediately.  I imagine it was not a serious concern, but rather a coded way to refer to the bible, to score points with this candidate’s bible-reading base while insulting his opponents in an infuriating and bewildering manner.

This evening I am more concerned about how our tendency to avoid difficult texts hampers our own, Jewish conversation, our own growth, both individually and as a community.  By avoiding this text in synagogues on the days with the highest attendance, we forgo an opportunity to struggle with some of the most disturbing aspects of our tradition, to wrestle, to question, to protest, but above all to engage.

Last week, in responding to a beautiful d’var Torah by Zvi Abusch, our friend Hilary Putnam mentioned that some liberal Jews of his acquaintance argue that, like Leviticus 18, the story of Abraham and Isaac, the Akedah, is too terrifying, too disturbing, and too violent for us to read on Rosh Hashana.  Indeed, in the Reform machzor, Gates of Repentance, congregations have a choice between the Akedah and the Creation story in Genesis.  The story of Hagar and Ismael, another disturbing text, is not included as an option.

Hilary would not agree with a decision not to read the Akedah, if I understood correctly—and Hilary I apologize in advance if I’m misrepresenting you—because God’s test of Abraham echoes the kinds of tests that we humans face every day.  Abraham’s example is not necessarily one to emulate, but his situation resonates with ours in cases when we face competing loyalties and unbearable choices.  Indeed, Abraham’s behavior echoes our relationships with our own children, not in the explicit threat of sacrifice, God forbid, but in the way we favor the demands of our own heart—our own God, so to speak—over their needs.

But what, some may ask, if we see the Akedah not descriptive so much as predictive or even prescriptive?  Does the fact that this congregation not only read the Akedah but engaged in three discussions about it over the two days of Rosh Hashana mean that we will unconsciously reenact it?  Or, rather, does our act of reading and discussing give us the tools to recognize Abraham’s dilemma as our own and to negotiate it without needing to rely on God’s last minute saving grace?

I found the inspiration for these questions in another passage by Margaret Atwood, whom I quoted last week as well. She asks:

Do stories free the human imagination or tie it up in chains by prescribing “right behavior”...?  Are narratives a means to enforce social control or a means of escape from it? Is the use of “story” as a synonym for “lie” justified, and if so, are some lies necessary? Are we the slaves of our own stories—our family narratives and dramas, for instance—which compel us to reenact them? Do stories optimistically help us shape our lives for the better or pessimistically doom us to tragic failure?[2]

By and large, I tend to side with those who would claim that a person’s reception of the story she reads determines its effect much more than the story itself.  Of course, the kind of Jewish engagement with our stories that will “help us shape our lives for the better” requires work, requires questioning, requires attention.

I want to affirm both our need to read these stories and to challenge them the way that Abraham challenges God in the midrash: God says “Take your son,” and Abraham says “which One”, God says “Your only one,” and Abraham says “I have two,” God says “The one you love,” and Abraham says I love both of them, so God has to specify “Isaac.”

Challenging the stories is equivalent to challenging God (and a lot more comfortable for people who aren’t sure about their belief in God!). -      As Alicia Suskin Ostriker writes: “The … God of what Christians call the Old Testament and Jews call, simply, the Bible or Torah, seems to like being challenged and called to account, and even rewards those who most boldly interrogate him [sic].”[3]

So that’s what I’d like us to do—to challenge and to interrogate these stories, these laws.  I don’t want us to stand idly by, letting other people determine the shape and the direction of the conversation.  Not reading it allows us not to think about it, to pretend that although gay men and lesbians continue to suffer oppression and exclusion, even here in Massachusetts, we are allowed to overlook the fact that we, our tradition, our heritage, played a role in enabling that oppression.  We must acknowledge and we must challenge.

So: Levticus 18 verse 22:  Thou shalt not lie with man, as with a woman: it is an abomination.

Baruch Levine, in his JPS commentary to Leviticus, links male on male sex with ancient Canaanites: the story of Sodom in Genesis and the concubine of Gibeah in Judges 19—truly terrible stories.  In both cases, male on male sex is a violent expression of xenophobia—as Levine comments: “This extreme fear of strangers induces a community to attack visitors.”[4]  Or, he should say, to sexually assault visitors.  Given the Torah’s emphasis on protecting the stranger, this extreme form of xenophobia aroused opposition to what came to be known as sodomy.

Rabbi Steven Greenberg also foregrounds the connection with Sodom, arguing that Leviticus 18 “prohibits the violent and demeaning ways people can engage in sexual relations.”[5]  In that sense, can we disagree with it?  In that sense, does the connection to bestiality and to Molech seem less unmotivated? He writes about Molech that “the practice of child sacrifice is the height of violence in the name of religion.”[6]  Indeed for me, the injunction against Molech resonates with the Akedah; it’s the Torah’s own internal challenge to Abraham’s—to God’s—impulse to child murder for the sake of obedience.  Just so, verse 22 is the Torah’s own challenge against the people of Sodom.  It is not a call for violence against homosexuals, even though too many people have invoked it as such.

There are many different ways to parse the halakhic implications of our verses, but none of them revokes the commandment incumbent upon us Jews—and upon Jewish communities—to protect kavod ha-briot: human dignity.[7]  In this particular case, we must to support gays and lesbians and to welcome them, truly welcome them, into our communities.  By omitting Leviticus 18, we forgo the chance to grapple with these difficult issues and thus to internalize the verse from Leviticus 19 that we will read at minchah tomorrow: “Do not stand idly by the blood of your neighbor…”

Shana tova and G’mar hatimah tova!

---

[1] Kol Haneshama: Prayerbook for the Days of Awe (Elkins Park, PA: Reconstructionist Press, 1999), 1044.

[2] Joyce Carol Oates, “Where No One Has Ever Gone,” review of Margaret Atwood, In Other Worlds: SF and the Human Imagination, New York Review of Books (March 22, 2012), p. 40.

[3] Alicia Suskin Ostriker, The Nakedness of the Fathers: Biblical Visions and Revisions (New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers, 1997), xi.

[4] Baruch Levine, The JPS Torah Commentary: Leviticus (Philadelphia: JPS, 1989), 123.

[5] Steven Greenberg, “Never Stand Idly By,” [in] Text Messages: A Torah Commentary for Teens, ed. Jeffrey K. Salkin (Woodstock, VT: Jewish Lights, 2012), 139.  Greenberg also argues against replacing Leviticus 18 on Yom Kippur: “Out of deference to gay people, some congregations have stopped reading that verse on Yom Kippur, but I think that just gives it more power. {Things you deny get bigger, not smaller.)”

[6] Greenberg, 140.

[7] See, for example, Elliot N. Dorff, Daniel S. Nevins, and Avram I. Reisner, “Homosexuality, Human Dignity & Halakhah: A Combined Responsum For The Committee On Jewish Law And Standards” (2006): http://www.rabbinicalassembly.org/sites/default/files/public/halakhah/teshuvot/20052010/dorff_nevins_reisner_dignity.pdf