Hereticulous

Most Sabbath mornings, my choice of synagogue does not make much of a difference. Sure, there are minor differences in the liturgy, but aren't we all reading from the same Torah? Ashkenazim may wrap it in embroidered velvet and Sephardim may encase it in a hard shell, but it's still the same ink, parchment, sinew and wood, right?

The one on the right is showing a bit too much leg. I'd avoid certain neighborhoods.

51 out of 52 weeks, you'd be right in that assumption--but not for this weekend's portion, Parashat Noach. Genesis 9 concludes:

So all the days of Noah were nine hundred and fifty years, and he died.

That, at least, is the (an) English translation, but what is the original Hebrew text? In Yemenite scrolls, it's ויהיו; in others, it's ויהי. The former is plural, while the latter is singular; either one seems grammatically correct, based on the phrasing in Gen. 5. It's a minor difference, surely (one of twenty-one distinctive features of the Yemenite Torah), but still more than enough to invalidate a Torah scroll.

However, if one wrote the short form of a word that should be spelled using a long form, or the long form of one that should be spelled using a short form, it is invalid... It does not have the holiness of a Torah scroll and, instead, is considered as one of the bibles from which children are taught.

That's what Maimonides writes in Mishneh Torah (Laws of Torah Scrolls 7:11), and the text he endorses is the Yemenite one (ibid. 8:4). Still, the ramifications would seem to be even greater in his Eight Principle of Faith:

I believe with complete faith that the entire Torah in our hands currently is the same one that was given to Moses, our teacher, peace upon him.

You may recognize this principle from the campaign to delegitimize the critical analysis of Torah text. But considering that this would indicate that any variation from "the entire Torah in our hands currently" is not only fallacious but heretical, does Maimonides consider anyone not using a Yemenite Torah scroll to be an infidel?

Of course, it's not only a matter of divergent Jewish communities of the past millennium. In the 3rd century, R. Joseph b. Hiya noted that his generation did not have the expertise in the spelling of the text to be able to count the letters (Kiddushin 30a), while Mar Zutra maintained (Sanhedrin 21b):

Originally the Torah was given to Israel in Hebrew characters and in the Sacred Tongue; later, in the times of Ezra, the Torah was given in Assyrian script and the Aramaic language. They selected for Israel the Assyrian script and the Sacred Tongue, leaving the Hebrew characters and Aramaic language for the commoners.

Are these Talmudic authorities also denying the authenticity of the Torah according to Maimonides? The problem is that the Thirteen Principles of Faith, starring in your local prayer-book, were actually written not by Maimonides, but by Maaminides.

Who's Maaminides? That's an excellent question, one we don't have the answer to. All we know is that he (she?) wrote the "Ani Maamin" prayer which I quoted earlier, but It first surfaced in the very late 16th century, close to 400 years after Maimonides' death, in European liturgy. The actual thirteen principles are much longer, found in Maimonides' Mishnaic commentary (Sanhedrin 10:1), and written in 12th-century Judeo-Arabic. Translations vary, partly because this was Maimonides' first composition, and he continued to revise it throughout his lifetime. But how does he define al-qaeda al-thamina?

The eighth foundation is that "the Torah is from the heaven," namely that we believe that the whole Torah now in our possession, which is the Torah given by Moses, comes in its entirety from the mouth of the Almighty.

This is only the beginning of Maimonides' explanation, but he does eventually get around to defining heresy, which he finds so important that he codifies it (in Hebrew) in Mishneh Torah (Laws of Repentance 3:8), a slight paraphrase of Sanhedrin 99a:

One who says the Torah, even one verse or one word, is not from God, if he says: "Moses made these statements independently," he is denying the Torah.

In other words, Maimonides' goal here is not to ensure that Moses does not receive too little credit, but that he does not receive too much; he does not speak of "the whole Torah now in our possession" because, while he does believe that he has the proper text, he does not view the others as heretical. Maaminides, on the other hand, eliminates God from this principle and puts the stress on "the entire Torah in our hands currently," equating it to that which Moses received on Sinai, brooking no dissent.
This is worth keeping in mind as people continue to invoke the Eighth Principle in order to stifle discussions of the text of the Torah. Considering how few of those who do so have good Yemenite names like Qafih and Tawil, they might be wary that their Maaminidean incarnation of Maimonides would rank them as heretics as well!

Where is Moses in the Torah?

Yesterday (today in the Diaspora), we read the final portion in the Torah, Vezot Haberakha; tomorrow, we read the first, Bereishit. This leaves us precious little time to study the opening chapters of Genesis, one of the many challenges of juxtaposing the beginning and the end.

Thanks a lot, Krona.

However, it also allows us to see what the first and last portions of the Torah have in common: a thesis about the perfection of the human lifespan. Consider the sixth-to-last verse of each portion:

And Moses was a hundred and twenty years old when he died; his eye was not dim, nor his natural force abated. (Deut. 34:7)

And LORD said: My spirit shall not remain in man forever, because he too is flesh, and his days shall be a hundred and twenty years. (Gen. 6:3)

This connection helps explain a particularly bizarre passage in the Talmud (Hullin 139b):

The Papunians asked Rav Mattena... Where is Moses in the Torah? "Because he too (be-shaggam) is flesh."

Of course, Moses is mentioned by name no less than 649 times in the Torah. What could the Papunians be asking? It is true, as Rashi notes, that gematria is at play here, which gives a numerical value to each word, so that be-shaggam and Moses' name are each equivalent to 345, but there seems to be something much deeper as well, linking the 120 years of this verse and the 120 years of Moses.

Now, Rashi himself does not use this interpretation in his biblical commentary; he interprets the 120 years not as a decree related to individual human beings, but to the human race as a whole: the great diluvian clock has now begun ticking, and mankind has only a century plus twenty percent before it will be swept away. Other commentators, from ibn Ezra to Da'at Miqra (Y. Kil), have followed this path, arguing that the 120 years of the Flood are akin to the 40 days of warning for Nineveh in the Book of Jonah, despite a) the absence of any public exhortation; b) the orders of magnitude between forty days and over fourteen thousand days; and c) the fact that God does not decide to bring a Flood until the next paragraph. However, the Malbim and others do follow the course suggested by Rav Mattena.
Indeed, this decree, which precedes that of the Flood, ultimately has more impact for the audience. It comes immediately after a long list of long lives; the youngest recorded death is that of Lamech, Noah's father, at 777 (Enoch does not die but is "taken by God"), while the oldest is Methuselah at 969.

This guy lied to Captain Kirk. Everyone knows Methuselah died in the Flood.

It would only be natural for the reader to balk at these inconceivable numbers. The Torah explains that in fact it is God's decree, as we emerge from the mists of prehistory, that man will not live "forever," but rather that the maximum for humans is to reach their thirteenth decade. Indeed, some scientists believe that this is biologically true as well.

It is striking that the end of the Torah and the beginning of the Torah pose complementary problems for the contemporary reader. The dilemma at the end of the Torah is that of authorship: who wrote the last eight verses, which take place (up to a month) after Moses' death? That dispute is already recorded in the Talmud (Bava Batra 15a), but some push it back to the beginning of Chapter 34, since Moses never comes down after he ascends Mt. Nebo; others push it back to Chapter 31, wherein Moses hands over the completed Torah scroll, or even further.

The quandary at the beginning of the Torah, on the other hand, is that of literalism. It is essentially impossible to take Chapter 1 literally (this may be reflected in the multiplicity of views as to what day of Creation Rosh Hashana corresponds to), as it includes elements such as three days and three nights before the heavenly bodies shine. What about Chapter 2, which is a different narrative of Creation? Or Chapter 3 and its talking serpent? Does history begin after the expulsion from Eden, after the Flood, after the fall of the Tower of Babel? In light of this issue, it is extremely significant that a decree from the Torah's first portion is only realized in its last.

Our engagement with the Torah changes and develops as we change and develop. That's why we always have to start anew with each new year. That is why Bereishit must always follow Vezot Haberakha.

Top 10 Ushpizin FAQs

It is now the midpoint of Sukkot, so on day four of the Feast of Tabernacles, let's deal with all those pesky queries about the ghostly guests, the Ushpizin!

1) Q: Ushpiz? What sort of word is that?
A: It's Aramaic, borrowed from the Latin hospes, meaning host or guest (we'll be using the latter term), which has given us the term "hospitality."

2) Q: Why do my Israeli friends call an ambulance when I say I want to be an ushpiz for a Sabbath meal?
A: Ah, well just as "hospital" evolved from this root in French and English, the modern Hebrew term for hospitalization, ishpuz, followed a similar route (although hospital is still beit holim, house of the sick).

3) Q: So what's so special about guests on Sukkot?
A: That brings us to the Zohar, the classic work of Jewish mysticism first published in the 13th century, which states (Lev. 103b):

Rabbi Abba said: Abraham and the five righteous and King David share their dwelling together with him. Of this it is written: “In sukkot you shall dwell seven days” (Lev. 23:42)... It is written, “In sukkot you shall dwell seven days” and then “they shall dwell in sukkot”—first, “you shall dwell,” and then “they shall dwell.” The former refers to the Guests; the latter to the people of the world.
Thus taught Rav Hamnuna the Elder. When he would go up to the sukka, he would rejoice and stand outside the doorway of his sukka and say: "Let us invite our guests; let us set out the bread. And he would stand on his feet and bless, saying: "'In sukkot you shall dwell seven days' -- be seated, supernal guests, be seated. Be seated, faithful guests, be seated."

4) Q: Wait, who are the "five other righteous"?
A: It never says, but Isaac and Jacob are mentioned later in the passage, pronouncing curses on those who invite them but not the poor.

Rabbi Abba said: All his days Abraham would stand at the crossroads to invite guests and to set bread before them. Now that he is invited, together with all the other righteous and with King David, and [the needy] are not given their portion, Abraham stands up from the table and calls out: “Go away from the tents of these wicked people” (Num. 16:26). And they all go away after him. Isaac says, “The belly of the wicked suffers want” (Prov. 13:25). Jacob says “The morsels you have eaten you shall vomit up” (Prov. 23:8). And all the other righteous say: “For all the tables are filled with vomit and excrement, with no space left” (Isa. 28:8).

5) Q: Yum. But wait, "the other righteous" could be anyone! Why then are the feminists criticized for coming up with usphizot?
A: Because it's USHPIZAN. Where did you people learn Aramaic grammar, anyway?

6) Q: Then how did we get Joseph, Moses and Aaron as the other three?
A: Oh, that's a different Zohar (Addenda III, 301b-302a):

In parallel to these seven supernal days, the Holy One, Blessed be He, created in the world seven worthies of truth to establish them and enlighten them, each and every one on his respective day, and He planted each one in the appropriate generation. These are the fathers of the world: Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, Joseph, Moses, Aaron and David.

7) Q: But isn't that about the days of Creation, i.e. the days of the week?
A: Yup.

8) Q: So, today is Sunday, the fourth day of Sukkot but the first day of the week. Is it Joseph's day or Abraham's?
A: Well, each of these has a unique Kabbalistic superpower, and Joseph's ranks him after Moses and Aaron, even though he lived earlier. So maybe it's Moses' day, as Sephardic and Hasidic Jews maintain. An Ushphizin Fighting Championship would settle this once and for all.

9) Q: But everyone agrees that it's seven total, right?
A: No. Before Rabbi Abba is quoted, the first opinion leaves out David, so it's only "Abraham and five other righteous." On the other hand, some (like R. Zadok of Lublin, Peri Tzadik, Deut., Sukkot 38) add an eighth for the extra day in the Diaspora: King Solomon. Surprisingly, the same Frankfurt Jews who do not say prayers that have their source in the Zohar nevertheless embrace the idea of eight Ushpizin.

10) Q: Still, it's just words, right?
A: Depends whom you ask. One version opens with, "I beseech thee, X," which is hardly the tone of R. Hamnuna's invitation. Indeed, some authorities (R. Hayim Palachi, Kaf Ha-hayim 639:8) demand action: lighting candles in the name of the respective night's Ushpiz and putting an embroidered chair out for them. (To share?) I'm sure the odd pauper out will appreciate knowing that a seat is being saved instead for those who won't eat.

Q: Huh.
A: That's why I leave it all out. Math is easy; Kabbala is hard.

Gay-mar tov

Thanks, gay mafia. Just when I thought I was out… you pull me back in.

I managed to get through a whole post about the Yom Kippur afternoon reading of the arayot (Lev. 18) without mentioning good ol’ verse 22, which starts off the final aliya of the Day of Atonement. You know the one, along with the parallel verse two chapters later (20:13):

You shall not bed a male (zakhar) the beddings of a woman (mishkevei isha): it is an abomination.

And if a man beds a male the beddings of a woman, both of them have committed an abomination: they shall surely be put to death; their blood shall be upon them.

I thought that I had dealt with this topic thoroughly in my first post for Times of Israel. But on Thursday, Rabbi Dr. Benny Lau (cousin of the new chief rabbi) made news by invoking Rabbi Dr. Norman Lamm’s decades-old halakhic argument about the sexual orientation of gays being defined as oness, compulsion, employing the Talmudic principle “the Merciful does not hold liable those who are compelled” (Nedarim 27a, Bava Kamma 28a, Avoda Zara 54a). I won’t get into the analysis, since Rabbi Dr. Zev Farber already did a fantastically thorough job of that a year ago.

Instead, I would like to get back to the biblical analysis. Although, ironically, it is used in Mishnaic Hebrew to refer to sex between males, the term “mishkav zakhar” is not the biblical term for intercourse between men; it is the term for classic male-to-female genitalia sex, specifically the kind that puts an end to virginity. Consider Judges 21:12:

And they found among the inhabitants of Jabesh Gilead four hundred virgin maidens, who had not known a man by bedding a male (mishkav zakhar), and they brought them to the camp in Shiloh, which is in the land of Canaan.

The term appears repeatedly in Numbers 31 as well. But what exactly is it supposed to mean here in Leviticus? The term here is mishkav zakhar mishkevei isha, a perplexing nomenclature. An ish (man) is bedding not another ish, but a zakhar–and not just bedding him, but bedding him “the beddings of isha.” Of course, isha means both woman and wife.

Some have suggested that it prohibits two men from having sex in a woman’s bed, which is profoundly bizarre, seeming to trade homophobia for misogyny. Others argue that it refers to a ménage à trois, which is intriguing but a bit hard to swallow: the verse mentions “both of them.” Still others argue that it refers to a social construct in which such relationships would involve pedophilia or rape, but if so, the fact that the Torah condemns both parties is horrific (and contradictory).

But what if, like standard-issue mishkav zakhar, mishkav zakhar mishkevei isha refers to a situation of permanent physical change? What if the ish is whole, but the zakhar only has his zakhrut (manhood) left, because he has been altered in the mishkevei isha manner? In the Ancient Near East, males were often castrated for the purpose of being sex slaves. Perhaps this is what the verse refers to. The Torah takes a dim view of castration, so it would be consistent with other verses. Were that the case, the great biblical proof-text used to bludgeon gays would fall. I’ve certainly heard no better explanation of mishkevei isha.

Now, this approach is certainly unconventional, but it is not wholly unprecedented to view mishkevei isha as defining not the what of this sexual union, but the who. The Talmud (Yevamot 83b) cites Bar Hamduri's exegesis:

"You shall not bed a male the beddings of a woman" -- what male is it that is capable of two manners of bedding? Obviously the hermaphrodite.

Undoubtedly, a hermaphrodite and a eunuch are different cases, but they share something of an intersex status, creating a hybrid of mishkav zakhar and mishkevei isha. This certainly opens the door to further analysis of this much-debated line.
 Would reinterpreting the verse change the halakhic equation? Maybe not, but it’s a lot easier to embrace paths such as that of Rabbis Doctors Lamm, Farber and Lau if the verse lends itself to other readings.

Too sexy for Yom Kippur

Sixteen forbidden sexual relationships (arayot) are hardly what one would expect at the climax of Judaism's holiest day, but that's what we read from the Torah on the afternoon of Yom Kippur: Leviticus 18, the final chapter of the portion of Acharei Mot.
Now, the first chapter of Acharei Mot, Leviticus 16, describes the special service of Yom Kippur, including the scapegoat, so we can understand why the Talmud (Megilla 31a) tells us to read that on the morning of the Day of Atonement, but why conclude with a laundry list of forbidden sex (with a dollop of Moloch)?

No, not that one.

The medieval commentators offer a number of explanations. Maimonides (Laws of Prayer 13:11) explains that "anyone who has violated one of these sins will remember, become embarrassed, and repent;" similarly, Rashi (ad loc.) writes that "the arayot are a common sin, because a person lusts after them and his passion compels him." The idea seems to be that it takes all of Yom Kippur to work up the courage and determination to repent for these sins.
However, Tosafot ha-Rosh point to a different source, an intriguing passage in the Talmudic tractate which deals with Yom Kippur, Yoma (19b):

Some of the worthiest of Jerusalem did not go to sleep all the night in order that the high priest might hear the reverberating noise, so that sleep should not overcome him suddenly. It has been taught: Abba Saul said: Also in the country they used to do so in memory of the Temple, but they used to commit sin. Abaye, or, as some say, R. Nahman b. Isaac, interpreted that to refer to Nehardea. For Elijah said to Rab Judah, the brother of R. Sila the Pious: Did you ask me why the Messiah has not come? Now today is the Day of Atonement, and yet how many virgins have been deflowered in Nehardea!

Day of Atonement, Sabbath of Sabbaths, Fast of the Tenth and... Deflowering Day? Now, we mentioned the special service of Yom Kippur, which had to be performed by the Kohen Gadol (usually translated "high priest," although "great minister" is a better rendering). Not only did he spend the whole day of Yom Kippur running around (of course, while fasting), he was not allowed to sleep the night before (Yoma 1:6-7). Jerusalem's nightlife assisted in this endeavor, and this was a custom which spread far and wide after the Second Temple's destruction. However, as Abba Saul testifies (one generation later), the holy origins of this custom were soon forgotten, especially by the young people who had never seen the Temple. Yom Kippur in Nehardea, then the capital of Diaspora Jewry in Babylonia, started looking like a Vegas bachelor party.
Perhaps this explains the custom described in the end of Taanit by Rabban Simeon ben Gamaliel, two generations after the Destruction, that on Tu beAv and Yom Kippur "the maidens of Jerusalem used to go out dressed in white garments... and danced in the vineyards, saying: Young men, look and observe well whom you are about to choose…" We discussed the origins of Tu beAv earlier this summer, but why would Yom Kippur be an appropriate time to do this? Considering the Nehardean alternative, we can understand why this might be a more positive way to channel the sexual energies of the youth. For our issue, we can understand why it is at this time that we read the passage of the arayot.
Regardless of which explanation we choose, what is clear is that this reading represents Judaism's mandate to confront the realities of human existence. We don't endorse celibacy; we don't condemn divorce; we don't refer to those born out of wedlock as bastards. Sex is a part of human life, a powerful force for good and evil, and even on the day when we most try to emulate the angels (Pirkei de-R. Eliezer 45), we recognize that we are inescapably human.
That is why it so disturbed me today to learn that state religious (dati) schools in Israel are planning to essentially eliminate human reproduction from the curriculum. (You can see the full story here.)
Let's look at one of the shockingly prurient illustrations which the religious authorities are trying to eliminate (please send any children out of the room):

Gracious me, I feel the vapors coming on. It's almost as bad as that clip with the Emergency Coaching Hologram.
Is this really the path we want to head down? Remember, these are the supposedly moderate and modern religious schools. Will eliminating these subjects make male-female contact more unlikely? In America, the states which employ abstinence-only educational methods tend to have the highest rates of teen pregnancies. True, Halakha has strict standards for contact between the sexes, but that did not help the virgins of Nehardea.
More importantly, what of the "good" kids? Do we want them heading into marriage with an understanding of sex gleaned from the Internet and pop culture, rather than hard science? Even from a Torah-education point of view, a basic understanding of reproductive biology is necessary for understanding huge swaths of Talmudic literature.
If we can read about the arayot on Yom Kippur in our synagogues, surely we need not fear reading about the beauty, majesty and holiness of human reproduction in our schools. Is this truly the subject we want to leave to independent study?

Happy 5940!

As the first Sabbath of the new Jewish year has just concluded, I'd like to take this opportunity to wish everyone a happy, good and sweet 5940!
Oh, wait, your calendar probably says 5774. Let me explain.
Ancient Hebrews counted years the way their Near Eastern neighbors did, by the year of the ruling monarch, the kings of Judea, Israel, Babylonia or Persia, as the case might be. However, as the age of kingdoms gave way to the age of empires, Jews worldwide, especially in the far-flung Diaspora, needed a universal system. They turned to minyan shtarot; this does not refer to the minimum number of documents you must have in a synagogue, but rather a dating system, Anno Graecorum, year 1 of which was 311 BCE.
However, as the age of empires gave way to the age of faiths, worldwide Jewry was increasingly split between the realms of two younger monotheistic religions, Christianity and Islam, each of which used its own faith-based dating system. Minyan shtarot was largely irrelevant (though in some lands, including Yemen, it persisted until recently), so a new chronology was needed. What better, then, than counting from the beginning, i.e., "In the beginning," Genesis 1:1?
Now, it was easy to tally the years since the Greek era, as that count had been maintained uninterrupted for a millennium and a half. However, the period before that was somewhat murky, so they turned to Seder Olam Rabba by R. Jose b. Halafta. This 2nd-century Mishnaic sage used biblical text and oral traditions to create a consistent historical record.
The problem, of course, is that neither the Bible nor the Talmud are history books, especially when they converge, as in the Persia Era. R. Jose takes literally the rabbinic statement cited in the Talmud (Rosh Hashana 3a): "Cyrus is Darius is Artaxerxes," conflating numerous kings of Persia and cutting the multiple centuries of Persian rule down to a handful of decades. (But don't take the historians' word for it: Rabbi Zerahiah of Lunel, the 12th-century sage known as the Baal HaMaor, also concludes that this rabbinic statement is not to be taken literally.) That's why Seder Olam gives the equivalent of 420 BCE  as the date of the destruction of the First Temple, rather than the historical date of 586 BCE. That's a difference of 166 years, and if we add them back in, this year would be 5940.
But Rosh Hashana is still the anniversary of Creation, right? Well, bear in mind that:

1. The only time the term rosh ha-shana is used in Scripture is to refer, apparently, to Yom Kippur (Ezekiel 40:1).
2. The question of whether the world was created in the spring or autumn is a matter of dispute between Rabbi Joshua and Rabbi Eliezer, and the Talmud endorses the view of the former as a matter of fact (Rosh Hashana 12a).
3. Even following Rabbi Eliezer's opinion, there are different views as to which day of Creation Rosh Hashana was: the first (ibid. 11a), the sixth (Lev. Rabba 29a) or the seventh (Pesikta Rabbati 46).

So where does that leave us? After all, our liturgy talks about Rosh Hashana (to be more precise, Yom HaZikaron) as the day of creation, and we date halakhic documents--those of marriage, divorce, etc.--by the Seder Olam count. Are we wrong to do so?
Well, let us be precise. Our documents read: "On day X of month Y of year Z to the creation of the world, according to the count which we reckon here..." How significant is this? Consider the ruling of the Shulhan Arukh (HM 43:2, EH 127:10):

If the scribe omitted "to the creation of the world," it is kosher.

The Levush, R. Mordecai Yoffe (EH 127:11), explains:

Even if he left out the thousands and hundreds and wrote only the small numbers, e.g. "Year 59 according to the count which we reckon here," and even if he did not write "to the creation of the world" either, it is kosher.

In other words, 5774 is not sacrosanct because of how much time has elapsed since "the creation of the world;" it is holy because it is our reckoning, the universal count which ties all of Jewry together. Indeed, this is true of Rosh Hashana itself: it is not holy because of what was created on that date, but because we sanctify it and celebrate it as the commemoration of divine sovereignty, recognizing God as sole Creator and King.
Indeed, this is how the Jerusalem Talmud (Rosh Hashana 1:3) describes the role of the human court (bet din) in the calendar:

If the bet din says, "Today is Rosh Hashana," the Holy One, Blessed be He, says to the angels: "Set up the stand, summon the prosecutors, summon the defenders -- for my children have declared that today is Rosh Hashana." If the court decides to declare a leap month and make Rosh Hashana the next day,  the Holy One, Blessed be He says to the angels: "Remove the stand, remove the prosecutors, remove  the  defenders, for my children have decided to put it off till tomorrow." What is the reason? "For it is a rule for Israel, a judgment of the God of Jacob" (Psalms 81:5) -- If Israel does not rule, the God of Jacob does not judge.

Anat retentive: A Selihot special

I wish to speak to you today about a disorder which has been prevalent in Israel and the worldwide Jewish community for some time, but has really hit epidemic proportions in the last six months.
It's called Anat retentiveness. It's serious, but there is a cure.

What is Anat retentiveness? Well, Sigmund Freud coined the term "anal retentiveness" for those who, to their detriment, are so obsessed with picayune details that it annoys others. Freud thought it was ultimately about baby poop, but that's been largely discarded, except of course for making diaper bombs to toss at women who come, with ritual objects usually monopolized by men, to pray at the Kotel, the Western Wall.

This brings us to the similarly-named Anat retentiveness. In this condition, one is overly obsessed, to one's own detriment and the annoyance of others, with the picayune details of one person, namely Anat Hoffman, whose day job is executive director of the Israel Religious Action Center, "the public and legal advocacy arm of the Israel Movement for Progressive Judaism." Progressive, here in Israel, equals Reform. Don't get me started on how confusing the term "Masorati" is.

However, for our purposes, what is more important is her role as chairwoman of Women of the Wall, which will shortly celebrate its 25th anniversary. It is WOW, who are a) a group of women who seek to b) pray at the Western Wall (who'da thunk it?), who have grabbed headlines over the summer since a Jerusalem District Court ruling allowed them to pray as they want at their monthly prayers, namely with Torah scrolls, phylacteries (tefillin) and tallitot (that's an English word now, look it up). Thousands have mobilized to block them from doing exactly that in person, and WOW's detractors on the Internet are legion. And far too many of them are Anat retentive.

How do you know if your loved one suffers from this condition? Here are some telltale signs:

1. Does your loved one clutch a yellowed clipping from the South Florida Sun Sentinel (Broward County's news follower!) to his or her bosom, murmuring about Anat Hoffman's "plan" to limit men's-only access to the Kotel?
2. Does your loved one obsessively watch 8 seconds of videotape from an Israeli news show in which Anat Hoffman speaks of a future vision of the Wall without a mehitza (partition) between the sexes?
3. Does your loved one give the title "Anat Hoffman is No X" to the response to a post about WOW which never mentions Anat?
4. Does your loved one speak patronizingly about "relat[ing] to the struggles of the individuals who participate and support Women of the Wall’s (WoW‘s) prayer protests"? Or caption a photo of WOW saying Shema as "protest at the Western Wall"?
5. Does your loved one express puzzlement that the Conservative accept a mixed-prayer area at the Kotel-proximate Robinson's Arch, but Anat Hoffman, as WOW's chairwoman, has rejected it?
6. Does your loved one stay up all night watching a BBC interview in which Anat Hoffman admits that she is REFORM?

Now, of course Anat is Reform, and she works for a Reform organization, IRAC. But as chairwoman of WOW, she represents a nondenominational volunteer group which has Reform, Conservative and Orthodox members, some of whom arrive at the Kotel in tallit and/ or tefillin, some of whom do not. Anat retentive sufferers have referred to her as the elected president of WOW, which is both wrong and ludicrous, but assume that she were: are Americans now 50% black because their elected president is?
The idea that nondenominational groups must be represented by nondenominational Jews hits close to home for me because my father is an Orthodox rabbi, with his own synagogue, whose day job is at the nondenominational Board of Jewish Education (now called the Jewish Education Project). When he gives a sermon or lecture or interview, is he expressing the views of the BJE or its parent, UJA-Federation? No; nor is Anat Hoffman doing so for WOW when she speaks as a Reform Jew, nor is Religious Services Minister Naftali Bennett (who happens to be Orthodox) expressing a "plan" to toss Muslims from the Temple Mount when he prays for the Temple to be rebuilt. One who thinks so is sadly suffering from Anat retentiveness.

Do not lose hope. There is a remedy, manufactured by God Himself. (Biggest Pharma?) The Talmud records (Kiddushin 30b), "I have created the Torah as an antidote." Study what Halakha has to say about women reading from a Torah scroll, laying tefillin, putting on a tallit. You'll be surprised.
Most importantly, let's turn to the dean of Jewish physicians, Dr. Moses Maimonides. He believes that such a malady can only truly be cured when one finds oneself in the exact same situation and refuses to repeat the error (Laws of Repentance 2:1).

So now is the time for Anat retentiveness sufferers! You can break the cycle. Women of the Wall will be holding a Selihot service tonight (Sunday). You can take this opportunity to get over it. Let those who come to pray at the gathering-place for all Jewry do so in peace.

As for me, I have to get to Selihot. Not at the Kotel, unfortunately, but I am heartened by the thought that those who will be there, including Women of the Wall, will be praying for all of us. Shavua tov!