Category: Torah

Tikva Blaukopf-Shemini Atzeret: Breaking the cycle

7 + 1 = The helix of new beginnings

You know the feeling when you’re trying to get somewhere, you’re turning round one corner, another, studiously following your map, sure you’re making progress and suddenly you’re back where you started? Of course you do. We all do.

Shemini Atzeret is the opposite of that.

The seven days of Sukkot that prelude Shemini Atzeret are illustrative of the seven days of the week, the cyclicality that the calendar provides. Shemini Atzeret, as the name suggests (“eighth [day] of convocation”) goes above and beyond this circling of time, the seven days of being. The existence of an eighth day means that we are lifted up above and beyond our cyclical existence.

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Aliza Sperling-Sukkot: What is your heart’s desire?

After Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur, days spent in deep spiritual introspection, Sukkot feels incongruous. Are we really supposed to follow up our intense prayer and fasting with a harvest festival? Especially for those of us who are not farmers, the holiday can sometimes feel foreign: we will happily eat in our sukkot and wave our arba minim, but the meaning of the holiday can feel inaccessible. Is this really the culmination of our year of holidays and rituals? Is waving a lulav and etrog truly the pinnacle?

A close reading of the language describing the commandments of Sukkot can offer another perspective. In Leviticus 23:39-43, the Torah introduces the commandments of the four species and sitting in the Sukkah.

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Tikva Blaukopf-Singing out water from the rock (Haazinu)

“Write this song for yourselves and teach it to the Children of Israel — put it in your mouths…the mouths of your descendants will not forget it” (Deut. 31.19, 21).

This command to learn Haazinu off by heart lies heavy on my tongue yet the numbers of my Rosh Hashanahs pile up and, although year by year I commit a few more verses to memory, I am a sieve that loses more than it holds. The few nuggets that don’t slither out suffice for a haiku, a limerick, a brief ballad. Not what Haazinu deserves; Haazinu as poetic art is an ode to God, to our and Moses’ relationship with God and to the magnificence of Torah.

Testimonial to God’s power, testimony to the punishment awaiting if we sin, Haazinu is a meta-poetic perspective on the words of the Torah. It contains Moses’ lyrical last words as a leader, his verbal injunction to follow the written words of the Torah (Deut. 31.24, 30). The words form a strange “future perfect” retrospective of “you will have disobeyed me and this will have been your punishment.”

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Dena Freundlich-Reflect, repent, but don’t berate yourself (Yom Kippur)

Virtually all Jewish holidays revolve around an historical event. And our mandate on each holiday is not merely to remember that such an event once occurred, but to reenact that event and relive it annually ourselves. For example, at the Pesach seder, we eat bitter herbs and matzah, recline, drink four cups of wine, and more, all toward the goal of ultimately feeling as though we ourselves are marching triumphantly out of Egypt. On Sukkot, we literally move our tables, and often even our beds, into our own portable tabernacles to feel our closeness with and dependence upon God. Yom Kippur is anomalous in that it seems to lack any historical context. There is no reenactment, no fun foods to eat, or dramatizations to keep the kids (and the grownups!) awake and engaged. It is too austere and solemn a day for that, a no-frills day to spend hunched over in prayer, beating our chests for our wayward behaviors.

But maybe not.

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Jennifer Raskas-The tales we must tell ourselves (Vayelech)

In Parshat Vayelech, Moses, who knows he is about to die, is at a defining moment – he has recently outlined curses that will befall the people if they abandon God, and he has minimal time left on earth to mobilize not only the people before him, but also scores of future generations, to enduringly seek God and the Torah. A daunting task at best.

The steps Moses takes to mobilize the people in the final moments of his life are similar to steps outlined in a leadership practice called “public narrative,” designed by Professor Marshall Ganz of the Harvard Kennedy School of Government. Professor Ganz coaches leaders worldwide to inspire collective action by speaking to the collective about stories of the self (the leader), us (the collective), and now (the urgency of acting right now).

Ganz finds roots for this practice from the subjects of Hillel the Sage’s famous reflective questions:

“If I am not for myself, who will be for me? (Self)

But if I am only for myself, what am I? (Us)

And if not now, when?” (Now)

— Pirkei Avot 1:14

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Rachel Dratch-Fear, jealousy, and ego drive us apart-Fast of Gedaliah

There is this famous scene in Harry Potter when Professor Snape shows us that after all these years, even though his true love has died and even though she chose another, he still loves only her. After all these years, “always”…. It is a profoundly moving scene and reminds me of the Torah readings we encounter on Rosh Hashanah: when we confront G-d who operates according to His own plan and not necessarily ours, and then climaxing on Tzom Gedaliyah — when we are forced to confront the enemy that is ourselves.

On the first day of Rosh Hashanah, we read about the birth of Isaac — the dream of Abraham and Sarah, finally realized – and we hear a hint of Sarah’s discomfort, as she says: ”Anyone who hears of this will laugh.” This laughter can be joyous and celebratory, or mocking and shameful. She finally gets her dream of having a child, but at such a late age that she becomes famous as the strange old lady who had a baby. Certainly not what she had in mind when she asked for a child.

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