Shabbat Hazon is one of only three Shabbatot known primarily for its haftarah—the others being Nahamu next week and Shuvah during the ten days. Our haftarah from Isaiah 1 culminates the three weeks of admonition (תלתא דפורענותא) and sets the stage for tonight’s reading of Eikhah. To understand this transition and its contemporary significance we will begin with Hebrew grammar, proceed to biblical theology and end with American politics. Together, it’s about changing perspective, accepting the reality of painful and permanent changes, and building new identity on the still smoldering ruins of a vanished world.

We begin with grammar. The Hebrew root נחמ has much to do with comfort. As a noun, it forms נחמה, comfort, a loving response to loss. A person who offers comfort is called a מנחם, a comforter, and names like Menahem, Nahman and Nehama offer the hope that after a painful loss, a child can fill the void, bringing new life to a family. Jewish Aramaic has the same word—נחמתא—and the seven weeks following Tisha B’Av are known as the seven weeks of comfort, שבעתא דנחמתא, whose haftaroth are all taken from the second half of Isaiah, which the Talmud claims is a book entirely dedicated to comfort.[1]

As a verb, נחמ appears in several forms, or binyanim, as the 7 Hebrew verb forms are known. According to the Brown, Driver, Briggs lexicon (636-7) there are four forms, but for simplicity’s sake we will focus on only two, the piel and nifal. You know the piel—it is basically a simple verb, like לדבר, to speak, and מדבר, speaking. לנחם is to comfort, and מנחם is comforting. It is a transitive verb, something one does for another. It’s what a decent character does to console another over a loss. Failure to offer comfort to a person in despair is indecent—the height of cruelty and betrayal. Continue reading →

This ceremony of investiture and ordination, Tekes Hasmakhah, represents the transmission of knowledge and authority down through the generations of Jewish leaders to the wise minds, sensitive souls and capable hands of our new cantors and rabbis. It is a moment of great celebration radiating from this room across the world, and up to the very heavens. Mazal tov to all of us!

Hasmakhah literally means “laying on of hands,” and it hearkens back to the moment when Moses recognized Joshua as his successor, placing both hands on his head and sharing the divine spirit with him, וַיִּסְמֹךְ אֶת יָדָיו עָלָיו וַיְצַוֵּהוּ.[1] Private ordination of disciple by mentor is one model for this transmission, and today each of our graduates has chosen a mentor to bless them and to lay on hands. However, the Torah gives us an additional model when all the people lay their hands on the Levites, designating them as leaders, וְסָמְכוּ בְנֵי יִשְׂרָאֵל אֶת יְדֵיהֶם עַל הַלְוִיִּם and we at JTS view the transmission of authority as a collective responsibility involving many teachers.[2] Continue reading →

Last week in Parashat Kedoshim we read one of the most enlightened passages in the Torah. In verse 14 the Torah commands us not to curse the deaf, nor to trip the blind, but to fear the Lord your God. This verse is embedded within a glorious section about social solidarity, including concern for the elderly, the poor, the vulnerable worker. It climaxes with the centerpiece of the Torah, but love your neighbor as yourself, I am God. These verses are all important, but the command not to take advantage of people with physical disabilities is perhaps most notable and noble:

ויקרא פרק יט, יד

(יד) לֹא תְקַלֵּל חֵרֵשׁ וְלִפְנֵי עִוֵּר לֹא תִתֵּן מִכְשֹׁל וְיָרֵאתָ מֵּאֱלֹהֶיךָ אֲנִי ה’:

Savor that verse, because unfortunately, it is not all that Leviticus has to say about disability, as we heard today when we read the portion. Parashat Emor opens with regulations about the priesthood, their marriage partners and mandate to maintain ritual purity. Fair enough, but then in chapter 21 there is an extensive passage about physical blemishes that disqualify the priests from serving at the Temple altar. Let’s read this painful passage together:

ויקרא פרק כא, טז-כג

(טז) וַיְדַבֵּר ה’ אֶל מֹשֶׁה לֵּאמֹר: (יז) דַּבֵּר אֶל אַהֲרֹן לֵאמֹר אִישׁ מִזַּרְעֲךָ לְדֹרֹתָם אֲשֶׁר יִהְיֶה בוֹ מוּם לֹא יִקְרַב לְהַקְרִיב לֶחֶם אֱלֹהָיו: (יח) כִּי כָל אִישׁ אֲשֶׁר בּוֹ מוּם לֹא יִקְרָב אִישׁ עִוֵּר אוֹ פִסֵּחַ אוֹ חָרֻם אוֹ שָׂרוּעַ: (יט) אוֹ אִישׁ אֲשֶׁר יִהְיֶה בוֹ שֶׁבֶר רָגֶל אוֹ שֶׁבֶר יָד: (כ) אוֹ גִבֵּן אוֹ דַק אוֹ תְּבַלֻּל בְּעֵינוֹ אוֹ גָרָב אוֹ יַלֶּפֶת אוֹ מְרוֹחַ אָשֶׁךְ: (כא) כָּל אִישׁ אֲשֶׁר בּוֹ מוּם מִזֶּרַע אַהֲרֹן הַכֹּהֵן לֹא יִגַּשׁ לְהַקְרִיב אֶת  אִשֵּׁי ה’ מוּם בּוֹ אֵת לֶחֶם אֱלֹהָיו לֹא יִגַּשׁ לְהַקְרִיב: (כב) לֶחֶם אֱלֹהָיו מִקָּדְשֵׁי הַקֳּדָשִׁים וּמִן הַקֳּדָשִׁים יֹאכֵל: (כג) אַךְ אֶל הַפָּרֹכֶת לֹא יָבֹא וְאֶל הַמִּזְבֵּחַ לֹא יִגַּשׁ כִּי מוּם בּוֹ וְלֹא יְחַלֵּל אֶת מִקְדָּשַׁי כִּי אֲנִי ה’ מְקַדְּשָׁם:

If you look closely at the passage, you’ll notice some interesting features. First, there are 12 blemishes listed. This is hardly an exhaustive list of things that can go wrong with our bodies, so either there is something very special about these conditions, or the list could be paradigmatic—just examples of the endless litany of injury and disease. Indeed, the rabbis counted 142 disqualifying blemishes in Mishnah Bekhorot, Chapter 7 (מומים אלו), including the deaf and the mute. So much for our progressive attitude. Continue reading →

 Ze’ev Wilhelm Falk was a professor of law at Hebrew University who also served as rector and faculty at the Schechter institute in Jerusalem. Born in Breslau in 1923, he fled Germany alone at 16, arriving in Israel in 1939, and went on to study in the Hevron yeshivah and then at Hebrew University. He is best known as a scholar of religious law and ethics (I lived near his home on HaRav Berlin in 1991 and bought a copy of his book of this title from him), but he also wrote poetry and prayers. If you look at the Yom HaShoah section of the daily Siddur Sim Shalom (p.202), you will find a powerful prayer that he wrote called “Silence” (דומיה):

אבינו מלכינו שמא תפלתנו שלא לרצון? יאתה לשכולים ולך דומיה—מול דמי עוללים.

עמדת על דם בנך עבדך, התש כחך? תשה תפלתנו, הותשה תורתנו, שמע קול הדממה.

Avinu Malkenu—Is it possible that our prayer is not acceptable to You? Attend those who are bereft—You are silent in the presence of the blood of sucklings! You stood by as the blood of Your children was shed—has Your strength failed. Our prayer is diminished, our Torah has been compromised. Listen to the sound of our silence.

In this poem Falk juxtaposes the words דם (blood) and דום (silent) to great effect. Human prayer is voiced but unheard—it might as well be silence. Babies bleed and cry—but elicit no divine response. What became of the listening and responsive God who spoke to Cain, saying, “What have you done? Listen! Your brother’s blood cries out to me from the soil” (Gen. 4:10, trans. Alter). What of Ezekiel’s image of Israel as a bloody baby taken up by God and told to live (Ez. 16:6)? What of the “still small voice” that greeted Elijah (1 Kg 19:12)? Rabbinic literature often states, “when X happened, the strength of Y failed (תשש כחו).”  But here it is God whose strength has failed (תש כחך), and as a result, so too have the prayers and Torah of Israel failed. Suffering, screams, and supplications—none of it matters, so it seems, to the silent God. In a bitter closing, the poet instructs God to listen to the sound of our silence. After the Shoah, we literally give God the silent treatment. Continue reading →

I recently noticed a curious feature of the Passover prophetic cycle. On Shabbat HaGadol, the final Shabbat before Pesah, we read the final verses of the final prophet—Malakhi 3:4-24. The next haftarah, on the first day of Passover is from the first book of the prophets, Joshua, albeit not the first chapter (which is read on Simhat Torah). In the fall we emphasize the cycle of Torah, ending Deuteronomy and resuming Bereshit, but in the spring our emphasis is on the prophets, whose messages shift our gaze from past to present and on to the future. This is certainly the case with our haftarah for Shabbat HaGadol, which speaks of the dual failures of Israel following the building of the second Temple. On the one hand, they have perverted justice, taking advantage of the vulnerable in society; on the other hand, they have ruined rituals, making a mockery of the gifts of their restored national existence. Continue reading →

Our third Torah reading this Shabbat (Ex. 12:1-20) is the fourth and final special maftir related to Purim and Pesah. As with the entire complex of Passover rituals there is an intentional blending of individual and group identity. When each individual Israelite and then Jew participates in these rituals, they gently detach themselves from their particular personal context and attach themselves to the fate of a nation. Family by family, country by country, century by century, we weave together a polity that transcends time and space. In v. 6 we read of the Paschal lamb, You shall keep watch over it until the fourteenth day of this month; and all the assembled congregation of the Israelites shall slaughter it at twilight.

This is a powerful and poetic image, but the rabbis raise an obvious objection. It couldn’t be that every Israelite slaughtered a lamb—that would be far too much meat! Yet the verse says that “all” of the Israelites “shall slaughter it.” In Bavli Pesahim 78b, the sages take this to mean that even one paschal lamb would suffice for the entire nation of Israel, even if there wasn’t an olive’s bulk of meat for each person. In other words, everyone needs to participate in Pesah, but even in ancient times the main point was never to chew on the actual meat. Continue reading →

Anger is often an understandable reaction, and yet it can be one of the most destructive and debilitating of emotions. It is hard to imagine how Moses feels when his two nephews Nadav and Avihu are struck dead in the middle of the inaugural service for the tabernacle. Guilty? Terrified? Shocked? All of these, I think. Mostly Moses seems eager to stanch the suffering, to make sure that every detail of the ritual is followed so that God will not strike again. This is why he examines the rituals of sacrifice so closely and is so quick to anger when something seems amiss.

The Torah (Lev. 10:16) says that Moses “studiously studied,” (דָּרֹשׁ דָּרַשׁ) or something like that—the sense is that he went looking to see what became of the purification offering (for the new moon, according to the Sages)—was the goat sacrificed? If not, then why not? If so, then why wasn’t its priestly portion eaten? This double verb has long attracted rabbinic attention, in part because it is the midpoint of the Torah in words, with inquiry (דָּרַשׁ) on both sides. Sweet. But although Moses is our greatest student and teacher of Torah, at this point his abilities to study and comprehend simply fail. He should have known that the priests were not allowed to eat sacrifices immediately after becoming bereaved, yet he criticized them all the same. Continue reading →