Archive for category Holidays
From this month’s Jewish Observer
Posted by Yonason Goldson in Holidays on October 6, 2008
An in-depth discussion of Sukkos investigating the essence of physical and spiritual exile.
The Goat for Azazel
Posted by Yonason Goldson in Holidays on October 5, 2008
Aharon shall place lots upon the two goats: one lot “for G-d” and one lot “for Azazel.” Aharon shall bring close the goat designated by lot for G-d and make it a sin-offering. And the goat designated by lot for Azazel shall be stood alive before G-d, to provide atonement though it, to send it to Azazel into the wilderness.
Leviticus 16:8-10
One of the most puzzling and disturbing rituals in Jewish practice is the goat “for Azazel” of Yom Kippur. Two goats are brought before the Kohein Gadol, the High Priest. By lot, one is chosen to be placed upon the altar as a sin-offering, and the other is chosen to be taken out into the desert and thrown alive off the edge of a sheer cliff.
What possible purpose could reside in such a practice?
In truth, the symbolism of this ritual is astonishingly simple and frighteningly relevant. The two goats, identical in every way, symbolize the two possible futures of a single human being. Like the two goats that appear indistinguishable from one another, the path any one of us will choose cannot be determined when we are young. Every child demonstrates qualities of virtue, and every child demonstrates qualities of selfishness. Which character will win out in the end can never be predicted with certainty.
Only over the course of a lifetime will it become evident whether the individual has chosen the path of righteousness, dedicating his life “to G-d,” like the goat offered up on the altar, or has chosen the path of wickedness, wandering through life into the spiritual wasteland of moral confusion and making himself into an offering “to Azazel.”
Rav Hirsch explains that the name Azazel can be understood as a composite of two words: az azal— “wasted strength.” Rather than devoting his life to the ways of virtue defined by G-d’s law, a person may use his human potential for self-serving ends, for pleasure seeking, for ego-gratification. By doing so, he squanders the resources of physical health, intellegence, and imagination for temporal rewards that leave him with nothing of value to show for his efforts. He will have wasted his life, as surely as the life of the goat flung over the precipace in the wilderness comes to a wasted end.
And, like that goat, his life will have served no purpose except as a warning to others. On this Day of Atonement, we have the opportunity to reflect upon our past and our future, to contemplate the awesome indictments of the Day of Judgment that we have only just survived, and to consider how we might still soften the verdict of the Celestial Court in determining our fate for the coming year. Will we choose to offer ourselves on the altar of divine service by committing ourselves to take greater care in our speech, in our actions, and in our thoughts, to show more consideration for our fellow men and conduct ourselves with modesty and humility? Or will we continue on as we have, like the goat wandering blindly into the wilderness of oblivion, persisting in the habits of spiritual and moral insensitivity that will lead us to the brink of eternal devastation?
It should be an easy choice. In fact, it’s as easy or as difficult as we make it.
Who Shall Live
Posted by Yonason Goldson in Holidays on September 26, 2008
If you have six minutes, here’s a dramatic way of focussing on the significance of the approaching Days of Awe.
Historical Origins of the Shofar
Posted by Yonason Goldson in Holidays on September 26, 2008
Here are some final thoughts on the shofar before Rosh HaShonah. Expect fewer posts over the next few weeks because of the holiday season.
Here’s my complete list of Rosh HaShonah articles.
May we all be inscribed and sealed in the Book of Life for a good new year.
A Present for Heaven
Posted by Yonason Goldson in Holidays on September 21, 2008
What my daughter taught me about Rosh HaShonah.
Some other thoughts about the holiday can be read here.
The Yoke of Divine Monarchy
Posted by Yonason Goldson in Holidays on September 18, 2008
A number of years ago, when I was living in Atlanta, the Journal-Constitution reported a $4 million lottery winner — one of the biggest at the time. For years, the winner had been working a double-shift as a trash collector. When asked what he would do with his newfound wealth, the middle-aged gentlemen replied that he intended to quit one of his shifts.
“Only one of your shifts?” asked the incredulous reporter.
“A man needs to have work,” replied the humble public servant, revealing a degree of wisdom far greater than that of most white-collar, upper-middle class college graduates.
* * * * *
The term “yoke” is neither contemporary nor captivating. It evokes images of burden, labor, effort, and inconvenience. Consequently, the acceptance of the yoke of the Kingdom of Heaven as the central theme of Rosh HaShonah initially strikes us as a grudging concession: we’d rather not acknowledge the imposition of Jewish practice and observance — however, since G-d insists, we’ll make the best of it.
Not a particularly inspiring message.
Whether or not we are wealthy, healthy, talented, or famous, we all have our burdens, and the responsibilities, problems, and challenges of life weigh upon each and every one of us. Without a sense of purpose in our lives, these burdens become intolerable.
This is the purpose of a yoke, to distribute the weight evenly and make our burdens bearable. A man does indeed need work, for work instills in him a sense of purpose and value.
As Rosh HaShonah approaches, we should reflect that there is no greater work than to serve the Master of the World, the King who reigns over kings, and there is no greater privilege than shouldering the yoke of divine monarchy. By doing so, we acquire a feeling of true worth and purpose that is unparalleled and incomparable.
This is the theme of Rosh HaShonah: to recognize our own value by willingly and enthusiastically accepting our place in the service of the King.
Thanks to Yosef Aschkenasi and Rabbi Dov Elefant for the inspiriation behind this post.
Required Reading for Elul
Posted by Yonason Goldson in Holidays on September 17, 2008
This essay by Yonoson Rosenblum should help all of us focus on how we ought to be preparing for Rosh HaShonah.
The Candles and the Stars
Posted by Yonason Goldson in Culture, Holidays, Philosophy on September 16, 2008
The Candles and the Stars
By Rabbi Yonason Goldson
And HaShem said, “Let there be light!” and there was light (Bereishis 1:3).
Even as the first words of Creation set the stage for everything that will follow, they also set themselves apart from everything that will come. After every other stage in the genesis process, the Torah reports that HaShem spoke, vayehi chein – “and it was so.” But after the creation of light, instead of saying vayehi chein, the Torah reports vayehi ohr – “and there was light.”
The Malbim explains that vayehi chein implies permanence: every act sealed with this expression would endure forever. The heavens and the earth, the water and the land, the vegetation and the birds, fish, and mammals – all these would last until the end of days. But not the light.
The kabbalists tell us that the light of Creation was not the light of photons that illuminate our physical world. The light of the First Day was, rather, the ohr haMakif, the divine light of HaShem’s radiance projected into the spiritual void that preceded the existence of the physical universe. This was the “light” that enabled Adam to “see” from one end of the universe to the other, to perceive the true essence of the world and everything in it.1 It was the light of absolute knowledge and absolute power.
But HaShem foresaw that, after Adam’s sin, this divine light would threaten the very existence of the world. Used irresponsibly, such power could wreak incalculable destruction. HaShem therefore concealed the light, storing it away for the tzaddkim of future generations.2 Before the process of Creation had ended, the light of Creation had been hidden away.
On the fourth day, however, HaShem created the sun, moon, and stars – the luminaries whose physical light would substitute for the spiritual light of the first day. But how can mere physical light take the place of the light of kedusha? How can the lights of the sky replace the spiritual illumination of the soul? And precisely where did HaShem hide the original light of Creation?
HaShem hid His light in the Torah, preserving it there for the sages and scholars who, through diligent study, would one day reveal the brilliance of divine wisdom before all the world once again.3
Until then, the physical luminaries would have to suffice, with optic vision providing a barely adequate replacement for the spiritual insight of Torah wisdom. Through their familiar and uninterrupted passage above us, these heavenly bodies serve to reassure us that the light of Creation, temporarily removed, can be permanently restored by the luminaries of Torah, the bright lights of scholarship and wisdom who light the Jewish people’s way through the generations.
Thus Moshe says to his people: “HaShem, your G-d, has multiplied you and behold, you are today as the stars in the heavens” (Devarim 1:10).
Was this so? Standing at the boundary of Eretz Yisroel on the east side of the Jordan, the Jewish nation was still relatively small, the numbers by no account comparable to “the stars in the heavens.” Comes Rashi to explain that Moshe meant something else entirely. The Jews were not as numerous as the luminaries of the heavens; rather, Moshe declared that they were as permanent and as enduring as the sun, the moon, and the stars.
Rashi’s allegory seems to echo the narrative of Creation, in which we understand the sun, moon, and stars as an allegory for the Torah scholars who would bring back the light of kedusha to a world of spiritual darkness.
If so, perhaps the connection goes even further.
In addition to the idea that HaShem hid the light of Creation in the Torah, the B’nei Yisoschar suggests that HaShem hid the primordial light in the candles of Chanukah. The thirty six flames of the menorah correspond to the thirty six tzaddikim hidden in every generation, for it is through them that the light of kedusha is most prominently revealed.
This interpretation dovetails with the Midrash that finds within the narrative of Creation an allusion to the four kingdoms that would rule over the Jewish people in exile. In the opening description of Creation, the Torah records that “there was void and nothingness, with darkness upon the surface of the deep” (Bereishis 1:2). Void alludes to Babylon, nothingness to Persia, and the deep to Rome.
Darkness alludes to Greece, whose secularist wisdom darkened the eyes of the Jewish people.4
It was the light of the menorah, restored by the Hasmoneans, that pierced through the darkness of Greece, just as the Torah of the sages returns the light of kedusha to the world.
As a commentary on the verse in question, however, Rashi’s allegory presents a problem. Since Moshe compared the Jewish people specifically to the stars, why did Rashi feel it necessary to include the sun and the moon? Indeed, HaShem Himself made reference only to the stars in His promise to Avrohom.5 Why did Rashi consider the allegory of both HaShem and Moshe insufficient?
In truth, we do find allegories similar to Rashi’s scattered through Chazal. Adam and Moshe are compared to the sun.6 Yehoshua and Dovid are compared to the moon.7 Although the Jewish nation as a whole is compared to the stars, individuals within it are compared to the sun and the moon.
Consequently, Rashi may have recognized something deeper within Moshe’s metaphor for eternity: an allusion to the unique influence of successive historical eras upon the fortunes of the Jewish people. If so, perhaps we can articulate a precise correlation between the celestial luminaries that dispel the darkness of night and the Torah luminaries that dispel the darkness of exile.
The quality shared by Adam and Moshe is their proximity to the Master of the World. Adam was the prototype for all mankind, the first and only human being created directly by divine decree. Moshe Rabbeinu was the only human being after the expulsion from Gan Eden to speak “face to face” with the Creator, the only individual entrusted to bring HaShem’s Torah to the world. These two alone occupied a spiritual level so exalted that they radiated their own intrinsic kedusha, like the sun.8
All other human beings aspire not to radiate, but to reflect. It was Yehoshua who replaced Moshe, leading the Jewish people not only into a new land but into a new kind of existence, one without open miracles, in which the glory of HaShem was recognized indirectly through the workings of nature and divine providence. In this new world, the kedusha of HaShem was no longer projected by leaders like the sun but reflected by leaders like the moon.
As with Yehoshua, Dovid HaMelech also is described as a disciple of Moshe.9 Not only does the moon reflect merely a fraction of the sun’s light, it also lacks the sun’s constancy, waxing and waning as it courses through its monthly cycle. HaShem placed Adam and Moshe at the pinnacle of human existence and charged them with preserving the perfection of Eden and Sinai respectively. In contrast, HaShem charged Yehoshua and Dovid with negotiating the peaks and valleys of human uncertainty. Rise and fall, victory and defeat, transgression and redemption – these describe the complex pattern of human life symbolized by the changing faces of the moon. As the radiance of kedusha dimmed, the universe became darker. But as the universe became darker, fainter lights could shine bright.
And indeed, the darkness intensified. Sancheriv drove the ten tribes into exile. Nebuchadnezzar destroyed the Beis HaMikdash. Prophecy disappeared from the world. And the spiritual darkness of Greece spread over the earth, disguising itself as a new aesthetic wisdom and seducing mankind with its self-serving, pleasure-seeking, and empty sophistry.
What had become of the luminaries? Without teachers like Moshe, without disciples like Yehoshua and Dovid, who would rally the Jewish people against their enemies? Without either sun or moon to guide them, how would the Jews ever find their way?
They found their way by the stars.
A single star offers little light. But a thousand, a million, a billion stars burning bright across the canopy of the heavens — here is light enough for all eternity. With each star shining like a single flame, adding its tiny pinprick of radiance to the light of a billion others, the darkness of night gives way before a soft, intangible glow of illumination. So too, a single Jewish neshoma, shining bright by resisting the seemingly irresistible descent of spiritual darkness, combines with other Jewish souls to prevent the light of kedusha from being extinguished. One neshoma added to another and another, like the individual flames of the Chanukah menorah, suddenly explodes into the silent darkness like a symphony of light.
In the depths of exile, we have no single leader to shine like the sun, nor even to reflect the sunlight like the moon. But the hidden tzaddikim, each revealing the primordial light of Creation concealed by HaShem in the Torah, each according to his own capacity and his own efforts, collectively shine forth with enough brilliance to drive away the darkness of corruption and impurity and superficiality.
We allude to this every day of Chanukah in al haNissim, when we declare that HaShem delivered
the impure into the hands of the pure,
the wicked into the hands of the righteous,
and the wanton into the hands of those who diligently study Your Torah.
Rav Nachman Bulman zt”l suggested that the parallelism in this arrangement appears to be flawed. On the side of our enemies, the levels of evil are ascending: the merely impure are less evil than the wicked, and the wicked are less evil than the wanton – those motivated not by simple desire but by a philosophical commitment to do evil. On the other side, however, the levels of righteous seem to be descending, with the tahor – the servant of HaShem who has attained purity and perfection in his divine service – having more merit than the mere tzaddik, who nevertheless has greater merit than the simple Jew who struggles in his study and observance. Superficially, we would expect to find the pure paired off against the wanton and those who study Torah paired off against the impure.
But this, explained Rav Bulman, is precisely the point. Although darkness descends when we have neither sun nor moon to push back the night, in the absence of great luminaries the myriad tiny lights begin to shine, showering their radiance as one until, collectively, they have conquered the darkness.
The Torah testifies that Moshe Rabbeinu was “extremely humble, more than any man upon the earth” (BaMidbar 12:3). What made Moshe so humble? The Zohar tells us that he saw the last generation of galus before the coming of Moshiach.10 For Moshe Rabbeinu, who spoke to HaShem “face to face,” who lived amidst open miracles and the revelation of the Sh’chinah, who witnessed the redemption of his people from slavery after 210 years of crushing servitude, belief and trust in HaShem posed little challenge. For Moshe, even so exalted a quality as yiras Shomayim was easily acquired.11
But to live in the depths of galus, in an era of such spiritual blackness that HaShem’s presence seems not merely a distant memory but a flight of pure fancy, and to retain under such circumstances the slightest sensitivity to kedusha, much less the devotion to Torah and mitzvah observance – before this, even Moshe Rabbeinu found himself in awe. The knowledge that a generation would succeed in doing so left him profoundly humbled.
At once humble and exalted are, like the stars of the sky, the lights of Chanukah and the neshomos of the Jews prior to the end of days. Flame upon flame and light upon light, they ignite one by one in a common purpose, joined together by a common foundation, illuminating the darkness of galus with the sparks of HaShem’s mitzvos, and spreading the light of His wisdom by revealing the light of His Torah.
1. Chagigah 12a; Bereishis Rabbah 12:6
2. Rashi on Bereishis 1:4 from Chagigah 12a and Bereishis Rabbah 3:6
3. Tanchuma, Noach 3
4. Bereishis Rabbah 2:4
5. Bereishis 15:5
6. Zohar 1:142b and Baba Basra 75a
7. Baba Basra 75a and Rosh HaShonah (with Rashi ad loc)
8. Although Shimshon was also compared to the sun, we might suggest that this was not for what he accomplished but for the messianic potential he possessed to permanently restore HaShem’s light to the world. See Sotah 10a and Bereishis Rabbah 98:14.
9. Shocher Tov 14:6
10. Ki seitzei 3:282b
11. Berachos 33b
Originally published in the Jewish Observer
Half-way Home
Posted by Yonason Goldson in Education and Parenting, Holidays, Philosophy on September 15, 2008
I don’t pay much attention to my birthdays, but last week’s was particularly significant. I could pontificate on my years now equaling the number of prophets in mentioned in scripture, but I’ve long been anticipating this milestone for a different reason.
With this birthday, I have now been Torah observant for half my life.
Approaching Rosh HaShonah, we can’t (and shouldn’t try to) escape Rambam’s famous allegory of the scales of merit upon that will determine our fortunes for the coming year. Every one of us should consider himself 50/ 50 — half meritorious and half guilty, with the next action tilting the scales one way or the other. Every action could mean the difference between a good decree and a bad decree, between health and illness, between wealth and poverty, between continued exile and redemption, for ourselves as individuals and, possibly, for a world that is also evenly balanced.
Latecomers to Yiddishkeit haven’t necessarily lived wicked lives. Some of us even sought truth before we found it, and we may have tried to live lives of virtue even before we had the Torah to guide us. But hit-or-miss righteousness is hardly reliable, and even the best of us probably found that the temptation and impulse defeated our most sincere intentions before we developed a solid defense against them.
So the image of 50/ 50 carries a special poignancy for me this year, as I reflect on half a lifetime of playing catch-up, learning aleph-beis two decades too late, struggling with ritual and halacha, and trying to help my children and my students benefit from the double-vision glasses through which I see the world of Torah and the world of no-Torah. It’s painful to witness how casually many who are born into Torah society take Torah for granted, see it more as an inconvenience than an inheritance, and treat it with careless indifference.
It would be easy for me to claim that I’ve more than tipped the scales toward the side of merit. But with the scales evenly balanced in years, what better moment than now to reflect on the catastrophic consequence of one false move, or the incalculable heroism of a single step at the right moment in the right direction?
Balancing the Scales of Freedom
Posted by Yonason Goldson in Holidays, Jewish Unity, Politics on September 10, 2008
Originally published in the St. Louis Post-Dispatch the week after 9/11, between Rosh HaShonah and Yom Kippur.
It was Judgment Day — exactly one week after the World Trade Center buildings collapsed and so many illusions along with them.
“Judgment Day” is the expression found in the traditional liturgy for Rosh HaShonah, the first day of the Jewish new year. And as I stood in the midst of the congregation intoning the High Holiday prayers, the vision of exploding passenger planes and twin towers crumbling to dust hovered before my eyes.
On Rosh HaShonah we will be inscribed … who will live and who will die … who by water and who by fire … who by storm and who by plague … Who will have peace and who will suffer … who will be cast down and who will be exalted.
The judgment upon Jews became kinder after the United States opened her doors to us a century ago. Where no one else would have us, America took us in, allowing us to live both as Americans and as Jews without persecution.
Yet for all that, American Jews often feel torn by opposing cultural forces, especially approaching our Day of Judgment in a society where there is no greater sin than “judgmentalism.”
Without judgment, however, society cannot endure. As good citizens we must judge others – not based on race or religion but upon actions and behavior. And we must judge ourselves as well, by constantly reexamining our motives and our prejudices and our values and our goals. To condemn even this kind of judgment as a threat to freedom is to retreat from our responsibility to discern right from wrong; it is to embrace the illusion of absolute theoretical freedom – moral anarchy – which is in reality no freedom at all.
September 11 brought us face to face with moral anarchy in the form of incomprehensible evil. Perhaps the first step toward confronting it is to remind ourselves that freedom is not a right – it is a privilege, and privileges carry with them obligations that are often inconvenient and occasionally painful. When Thomas Jefferson wrote that the tree of liberty must sometimes be refreshed with the blood of patriots, he warned that the threat against freedom can only be met by not taking freedom for granted.
Freedom is not democratic, as less than a score of suicidal zealots understood when they commandeered four transcontinental airliners. The duties of freedom are non-negotiable, as New York firefighters and policemen understood when they rushed into crumbling skyscrapers. And the rules of freedom cannot always be legislated: sometimes we have to choose between necessary evils, as the passengers aboard United Airlines flight 93 understood when they drove their plane into a Pennsylvania field.
These are the kinds of judgments we must make, every day and every year, to preserve our society, all the more so in a nation built out of so many cultures and beliefs as ours. Every freedom of the individual cannot be permitted if it threatens the collective, nor can every interest of the collective be observed if it oppresses the individual. But when we share the collective will to make our society stable and secure, then the individual will set aside his personal freedoms for the national good and the nation will bend over backward to protect individual freedom.
This is the mark of a great civilization, and it rests upon an informed and devoted citizenry prepared to debate, sometimes passionately but always civilly, the moral direction of our collective journey.
This Rosh HaShonah I stood shoulder to shoulder with friends and neighbors singing ancient liturgical poems in praise of our Creator, just as so many Americans stood together the week before singing “G-d Bless America.” There were no agendas, no politics, no grudges, no rivalries. All of a sudden we were one nation, indivisible, a people with one noble history and many noble ideals whose differences vanished in the shadow of our many common values and common goals.
As the Jews have had ample opportunity to learn, now America has learned that nothing brings us together like a common enemy. What we have yet to learn is how to continue to stand together even in times of peace.
Torah Ideals 
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