Wednesday, September 27, 2017

Kippurfest!

 You’d think the week leading up to Yom Kippur would be the time for Jews to be less judgemental, what with us all being Judged.

However, the raging topic on Frumbooki.e., religiously observant social media, is Rabbi Aaron Potek of GatherDC’s Alternative Yom Kippur service at Sauf Haus Bier Hall & Garten. Many were so shocked they let go of the chickens they were swinging over their heads! (BTW if you don’t spread the entrails on the roof like the Rema says [OH 605:1], aren’t you basically a goy anyway?)

Look, Rabbi Aaron Potek isn’t trying to poach any of your congregants. No one who was headed to your seven-hour morning service is skipping out to Dupont Circle at 11 A.M. This is specifically designed for people who are intimidated by the synagogue setting, a concept which is nothing new in Israel, where many community rec centers hold services at the beginning of Yom Kippur for Kol Nidrei and its conclusion for Ne’ila. Yes, the same place folks were doing yoga and meditation just a few hours earlier. (Sauf Haus has those too.)

But they’re making Yom Kippur into a frat-house party, you say: fasting is the most important part! Halakhically, that’s true. And the fasting of all adults is equal. So I hope you give as much respect to a 12-year-old girl fasting as some rosh yeshiva with a long, flowing white beard. And you always stress that is far better for a husband and father to never set foot in a synagogue on this day if that’s what his wife needs to bear fasting in her pregnant, postpartum or nursing state? Or an elderly parent to do the same? And if someone’s health is genuinely in danger and they MUST eat halakhically, do you tell them they’re not really keeping Yom Kippur?

The fact is, if you bother to read past the headline, you’ll see that there’s no food or drink served. Attendees will not be accosted by guards pawing through their bags, but the nourishment offered is purely spiritual in nature.

Ah, but the location! What sort of hipster nudnick of a “rabbi” would be caught in such an inappropriate place on Yom Kippur, of all days?!

Funny you should mention that:

Rabban Simeon ben Gamaliel said: Never were there any more joyous festivals in Israel than the 15th of Av and the Day of Atonement, for on them the maidens of Jerusalem used to go out dressed in white garments–borrowed ones, however, in order not to cause shame to those who had none of their own. These clothes were also to be previously immersed, and thus the maidens went out and danced in the vineyards, saying: Young men, look and observe well whom you are about to choose…(Mishna, Ta’anit 4:8)

Wow, that Rabban Simeon ben Gamaliel must have been some upstart iconoclast, Notorious RSBG, right? Actually, he was as establishment as you can get, the Nasi (Prince), direct descendant of Hillel and father of Rabbi Judah the Prince, author of the Mishna. He knows the tradition that Yom Kippur was the day Israel finally achieved atonement for the hedonistic dancing around the Golden Calf. He concludes that it’s a perfect day for doing so, but in holiness and purity.

As a child, he witnessed the violent repression of the final of three Jewish revolts in less than a century. His generation was the first to realize that unlike the First Temple, which was rebuilt after only seventy years, the Second Temple would lie in ruins far longer. He would not see a High Priest perform the Yom Kippur service. Nevertheless, he finds the joy and vitality. To put it bluntly, he makes Yom Kippur sexy again. In the vineyards.

Yes, for many of us, Yom Kippur is shaped by liturgy written a millennium after RSBG, sung to tunes only a few centuries, or even decades, old. Is that “traditional”? It certainly may be for you. But every tradition starts with a shattering of norms. And this one has quite a pedigree.

Thursday, September 7, 2017

Firstfruits: Giving Women a Voice

 The bikkurim (firstfruits) open this week’s Torah portion, as landowners are commanded to bring the premiere of their yield to the altar and make a declaration recognizing the long journey from “My father was a wandering Aramean” to the Promised Land (Deuteronomy 26:5-9). In fact, we all expound these verses (at least the first four) at the Passover Seder. (Haggada is the term for both recountings.) But whose mitzva is it? The Midrash (Mekhilta Exodus 23:19) expounds the verses in our passage thusly:

Which the LORD swore to our fathers” excludes gerim and [freed] slaves. “To give to us” excludes women, the intersex and the androgynous. The implication is that they are excluded from bringing and excluded from reading, but the verse says “You shall bring” [including all]. So what is the difference between these and those? These [native-born freemen] bring and read, while those bring but do not read.

Everyone who has produce, the Mekhilta makes clear, fulfills the mitzva of bringing bikkurim; the limitation to the traditional landowning class (freeborn male Israelites) only applies to the declaration.

However, over the course of the generations, the mitzva evolves. Consider the priests and Levites, who do not receive territory, but only cities scattered throughout the land. Nevertheless, in the Tosefta (Bikkurim 1:4), Rabbi Jose says that although his colleague would exclude members of the thirteenth tribe, he includes priests, Levites and Israelites equally in this mitzva.

Gerim — sojourners in Scripture, converts in rabbinic literature — also overcome their exclusion, as the Jerusalem Talmud (Bikkurim 1:4) explains:

It has been taught in the name of Rabbi Judah: “The convert himself may bring and read. What is the reason? ‘You shall be the father of a multitude of nations (Genesis 17:4)’ — in the past you were the father of Aramea, but now, henceforth, you are the father of all nations.”

But what about women? Their exclusion from landownership, after all, has a famous caveat, as stated in Num. 27: daughters inherit when they have no brothers. This would seem to indicate that they are included in the command “To these you shall apportion the land” (Nahmanides ibid. 26:46 says this explicitly), and such an heiress could certainly say: “The LORD swore to our fathers to give to us.”

Indeed, when one sage in the Jerusalem Talmud (ibid.) questions how a person whose father is not biologically Jewish makes the bikkurim declaration, “Does he not mean Abraham, Isaac and Jacob [when saying “The Lord swore to our fathers”]? Were Abraham, Isaac and Jacob their fathers? The Holy One, blessed be He, swore only to males!” the laconic response is “Perhaps to females.”

The clearest indication is the teaching of the Talmud (Gittin 47b): “‘And to your house’ — this teaches us that a man brings the firstfruits of his wife and recites.” 14th-century French Talmudist Rabbenu Crescas explains:

This case is different, as it says “And to your house.” This is no mere allusion, but a biblical decree. Even though the husband possesses no land of his own, his wife is like his body.

Five centuries later, Tiferet Yaakov sharpens the point:

By Torah law, the husband has no right to the fruits [of the land she brings into the marriage], but it is solely a biblical decree: a woman does not recite, and an agent does not recite, but a husband bringing his wife’s first fruits may bring and recite, as he could have a portion in the land and may bring and recite on his wife’s behalf with the status of an agent, because his wife is like his body, and it is as if she were reciting. On the contrary, in his view the language is quite precise: “This teaches us that a man brings the firstfruits of his wife.”

Facing a culture unused to a woman’s voice in public, the rabbis deputize her husband to be her mouthpiece–an elegant solution, despite the hermeneutical gymnastics it requires.

This is just one example of the true breadth of expounding and expanding the Torah: a millennia-long journey to widen the circle and hear the voices of all segments of society.

For more sources, see my parallel article at TheTorah.com, Between Bringing and Reciting: How the Rabbis Made Bikkurim More Inclusive.

Friday, September 1, 2017

Game of Throes

This has been a difficult week for many people who consider themselves to be in touch with bedrock principles of morality, as they ask the question: Am I OK with incest now?
Incest, after all, is supposed to be something we can all agree on. This week's Torah portion takes hot stepmoms off the table: "A man shall not take his father's wife, so that he does not uncover his father's nakedness" (Deut. 22:30). It's repeated and expanded on next week (27:20-23):
‘Cursed be anyone who lies with his father’s wife, because he has uncovered his father’s nakedness.’ And all the people shall say, ‘Amen. 'Cursed be anyone who lies with any kind of animal.’ And all the people shall say, ‘Amen.’ ‘Cursed be anyone who lies with his sister, whether the daughter of his father or the daughter of his mother.’ And all the people shall say, ‘Amen.’ ‘Cursed be anyone who lies with his mother-in-law.’ And all the people shall say, ‘Amen.’
However, the world's most popular television show (though some authorities rule "It's not TV, it's HBO") has a different view on the issue of incest. Game of Thrones' premiere episode ended with a boy thrown out a window for witnessing a man having sex with his twin sister (daughter of his father AND daughter of his mother). And that man, Jaime Lannister, is arguably the hero of the show, or at least the one who has exhibited the most growth over seven seasons. His sister Cersei is now the first ruling Queen of the Seven Kingdoms.
Still, audiences were supposed to be repelled by that relationship. Surely, in the finale of the penultimate season, we wouldn't witness a Game of Throes of passionate incest between our two noblest heroes, Dany and Jon? Well, here's the thing: turns out Dany is Jon's aunt. Oops.
But is it really such a shanda? After all, you've probably heard of a guy named Moses. His parents (Exodus 6:20) were aunt (Jochebed) and nephew (Amram). And the very founders of Judaism, Abraham and Sarah, were brother and sister (Genesis 20:12)--or, at least, uncle and niece (Talmud Megilla 14a). And the Davidic line traces all the way back to Judah sleeping with his daughter-in-law Tamar (Genesis 38).
Still, all that is pre-Sinai. It's not like anyone would suggest keeping it all in the family in a post-Revelation world, right?
Concerning him who loves his neighbors, who befriends his relatives, marries his sister's daughter and lends a sela' to a poor man in the hour of his need, Scripture says (Isaiah 58:9), Then you shall call, and the Lord will answer; you shall cry and He will say: 'Here I am'. (Talmud Yevamot 62b)
I know what you're wondering: but that's my sister's daughter, what about my brother's daughter? That's a matter of some dispute among medieval Talmudists (Tosafot ad loc.):
R. Samuel b. Meir says the same applies to his brother's daughter; it merely mentions his sister because she plies him with words and it common for him to marry her daughter.
Rabbenu Tam says that it is specifically his sister's daughter, for she shares a temperament with him, as we say, "Most children are like their mother's brother."
To make this even more awkward, these two rabbis were brothers. No word on whether they married each other's daughters.
We get that Game of Thrones portrays a fictionalized medieval feudal society. But how often we forget that the greatest Torah minds of the past millennium actually lived in the real versions of those societies.
So if you want to ship Jon & Dany (on a ship), I get it. But let's hold on to the sexual morality we've developed over the centuries, in which consent and respect are the most sacred values. Otherwise, our journey of ethical evolution will end with the realization that we know nothing.