Tag Archives: God

Bereishit – For Reishit God Created: Challah, Bikkurim, Ma’as’rot

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“Rav Huna said in the name of Rav Matana: The world was created for the sake of three things: For the sake of challah, for the sake of tithes, and for the sake of first fruits. What is the source? “In the beginning, [bereishit] *Or, for the sake of reshit. God created,” and reshit is nothing other than challah, as it is stated: “The first of [reshit] your kneading basket” (Numbers 15:20). Reshit is nothing other than tithes, as it says: “The first [reshit] of your grain” (Deuteronomy 18:4). And reshit is nothing other than first fruits, as it is stated: “The choicest of [reshit] the first fruits of your land…” (Exodus 23:19)”  (Genesis Rabbah 1:4)

. רַב הוּנָא בְּשֵׁם רַב מַתְנָה אָמַר, בִּזְכוּת שְׁלשָׁה דְּבָרִים נִבְרָא הָעוֹלָם, בִּזְכוּת חַלָּה, וּבִזְכוּת מַעַשְׂרוֹת, וּבִזְכוּת בִּכּוּרִים, וּמַה טַּעַם, בְּרֵאשִׁית בָּרָא אֱלֹהִים, וְאֵין רֵאשִׁית אֶלָא חַלָּה, שֶׁנֶּאֱמַר (במדבר טו, כ): רֵאשִׁית עֲרִסֹתֵיכֶם, אֵין רֵאשִׁית אֶלָּא מַעַשְׂרוֹת, הֵיךְ דְּאַתְּ אָמַר (דברים יח, ד): רֵאשִׁית דְּגָנְךָ, וְאֵין רֵאשִׁית אֶלָּא בִּכּוּרִים, שֶׁנֶּאֱמַר (שמות כג, יט): רֵאשִׁית בִּכּוּרֵי אַדְמָתְךָ וגו’.

We have other rabbinic statements about the world and three things – for example in Mishnah Pirkei Avot we read  “Shimon the Righteous was from the remnants of the Great Assembly. He would say, “On three things the world stands: on the Torah, on prayer/worship and on acts of lovingkindness.” Pirkei Avot 1:2

And  Rabbi Shimon ben Gamliel says, “On three things the world stands: on judgment, on truth and on peace, as it is said (Zachariah 8:16), ‘Judge truth and the justice of peace in your gates.'”  (Pirkei Avot 1:18)

Much of Jewish philosophy is predicated on the relationship between God, Torah, Israel and/or Creation, Revelation, Redemption… but Rav Matana’s statement as reported by Rav Huna speaks of something even more foundational. 

Why did God create the world? This is a question that intrigues theologians of every stripe and in every era. And Rav Matana has an answer – for the sake of the three “reishit” found in the biblical text.  He ties this to the almost untranslatable “b’reishit”, reading it not as “at the first” (or for those who love the KJV version “in the beginning” but “for the first things”.

At first glance we can see that the reference is to three significant concepts in Jewish thought – Challah, Bikkurim (first fruits) and Ma’as’rot (tithes) are all things that the religious Jew living on the Land of Israel are expected to offer up rather than take for themselves, they are all offered to God both to acknowledge that God is the source of these products (and therefore the source of the blessing they bring), and to show gratitude that God has provided them.

All three are foods that we give away at least a part of – they remind us that we are not the owner of our provisions, that we have responsibility to feed and support others, that the world is created for us to share.

And in effect, all three are used in repeated iterations of ritual to remind us that ultimately we are dependent on God for our food and for our continued existence.

 As Moses warns the people in one of his final homilies, and as we take into our own Birkat Hamazon liturgy (Grace after Meals)

וְאָכַלְתָּ וְשָׂבָעְתָּ וּבֵרַכְתָּ אֶת־יְהֹוָה אֱלֹהֶיךָ עַל־הָאָרֶץ הַטֹּבָה אֲשֶׁר נָתַן־לָךְ׃ הִשָּׁמֶר לְךָ פֶּן־תִּשְׁכַּח אֶת־יְהֹוָה אֱלֹהֶיךָ לְבִלְתִּי שְׁמֹר מִצְוֺתָיו וּמִשְׁפָּטָיו וְחֻקֹּתָיו אֲשֶׁר אָנֹכִי מְצַוְּךָ הַיּוֹם׃

פֶּן־תֹּאכַל וְשָׂבָעְתָּ וּבָתִּים טֹבִים תִּבְנֶה וְיָשָׁבְתָּ׃ וּבְקָרְךָ וְצֹאנְךָ יִרְבְּיֻן וְכֶסֶף וְזָהָב יִרְבֶּה־לָּךְ וְכֹל אֲשֶׁר־לְךָ יִרְבֶּה׃

וְרָם לְבָבֶךָ וְשָׁכַחְתָּ אֶת־יְהֹוָה אֱלֹהֶיךָ הַמּוֹצִיאֲךָ מֵאֶרֶץ מִצְרַיִם מִבֵּית עֲבָדִים׃ הַמּוֹלִיכְךָ בַּמִּדְבָּר  הַגָּדֹל וְהַנּוֹרָא נָחָשׁ  שָׂרָף וְעַקְרָב וְצִמָּאוֹן אֲשֶׁר אֵין־מָיִם הַמּוֹצִיא לְךָ מַיִם מִצּוּר הַחַלָּמִישׁ׃

הַמַּאֲכִלְךָ מָן בַּמִּדְבָּר אֲשֶׁר לֹא־יָדְעוּן אֲבֹתֶיךָ לְמַעַן עַנֹּתְךָ וּלְמַעַן נַסֹּתֶךָ לְהֵיטִבְךָ בְּאַחֲרִיתֶךָ׃

וְאָמַרְתָּ בִּלְבָבֶךָ כֹּחִי וְעֹצֶם יָדִי עָשָׂה לִי אֶת־הַחַיִל הַזֶּה׃ וְזָכַרְתָּ אֶת־יְהֹוָה אֱלֹהֶיךָ כִּי הוּא הַנֹּתֵן לְךָ כֹּחַ לַעֲשׂוֹת חָיִל לְמַעַן הָקִים אֶת־בְּרִיתוֹ אֲשֶׁר־נִשְׁבַּע לַאֲבֹתֶיךָ כַּיּוֹם הַזֶּה׃ {פ}

וְהָיָה אִם־שָׁכֹחַ תִּשְׁכַּח אֶת־יְהֹוָה אֱלֹהֶיךָ וְהָלַכְתָּ אַחֲרֵי אֱלֹהִים אֲחֵרִים וַעֲבַדְתָּם וְהִשְׁתַּחֲוִיתָ לָהֶם הַעִדֹתִי בָכֶם הַיּוֹם כִּי אָבֹד תֹּאבֵדוּן׃

When you have eaten your fill, give thanks to the ETERNAL your God for the good land given to you.  Take care lest you forget the ETERNAL your God and fail to keep the commandments, rules, and laws that I enjoin upon you today.  When you have eaten your fill, and have built fine houses to live in, and your herds and flocks have multiplied, and your silver and gold have increased, and everything you own has prospered, beware lest your heart grow haughty and you forget the ETERNAL your God—who freed you from the land of Egypt, the house of bondage; who led you through the great and terrible wilderness with its seraph serpents and scorpions, a parched land with no water in it, who brought forth water for you from the flinty rock; who fed you in the wilderness with manna, which your ancestors had never known, in order to test you by hardships only to benefit you in the end— and you say to yourselves, “My own power and the might of my own hand have won this wealth for me.” Remember that it is the ETERNAL your God who gives you the power to get wealth, in fulfilment of the covenant made on oath with your fathers, as is still the case. If you do forget the ETERNAL your God and follow other gods to serve them or bow down to them, I warn you this day that you shall certainly perish; like the nations that GOD will cause to perish before you, so shall you perish—because you did not heed the ETERNAL your God. (Deuteronomy 8:10-20)

As we dismantle our succot, used to remind us of the fragility of our existence and the importance of not only working with and caring for our environment to provide ourselves with enough food but also of recognising the ultimate Source of both environment and food, this midrash is a timely reminder that our physical world should never be taken for granted.

But Judah Loew ben Bezalel, known as the Maharal of Prague (1524-1609) had a different perspective on the items in this midrash.

His world view was ordered and structured – the natural realm of order (seder) and the exceptional or transcendent moments within it (nivdal).  A single unified reality can be layered into different dimensions, and those dimensions relate to each other either actively, or as acted upon. (P’al / Niphal)

And when the different levels or elements of reality interact, they can either stay the same and unique (yesodot) , become a mixture of two or more separate and recognisable units (ta’aravot), or else they become something entirely new (tark’ovot).

For the Maharal, the three things for which the world was created – challah, bikkurim and ma’aserot –reflect these three realities –

The bikkurim – the individual first fruits – are the yesodot.   The bikkurim are taken from the first ripening fruits of the seven species of Israel –  Deuteronomy 8:8 speaks of the Land of Israel as “A land of wheat, and barley, and vines, and fig trees and pomegranates; a land of olive oil and (date) honey. Any farmer was commanded to notice the first ripened fig or bunch of grapes or pomegranate etc and to mark it, declaring that these are the bikkurim. They would then bring them to the Temple in Jerusalem and offer them to the priests.  The mitzvah is focused on individual fruits, and the actions of the individual farmer, and so exemplify the individual nature of this reality.

The ma’as’rot is different – it refers to the grains of wheat or barley, harvested at different times according to the summer and winter rains. One cannot separate a grain, so the farmer was to aggregate the harvested grains, separate out a tenth, which can then be offered. The scale of the tithe is very different to that of bikkurim – tithing grain is a much larger operation, yet the individuality of each grain remains distinct. It is as if the individual retains their individuality, but is also part of a bigger group – a community, a people. This is ta’aravot

And finally Challah – Challah dough is a mixture of ground grain (flour) and water, with maybe the addition of salt or of oil. But once mixed, none of these components can be unmixed, nor can they be recognised as their individual parts.  A new thing has been brought into being, a fully unified creation (tark’ovot). And this too is offered to God in gratitude and understanding.

The Maharal understands the three – bikkurim, ma’as’rot and challah – as being points on a journey of creation. We begin as self interested individuals, gradually we mix and join with others, forming relationships, propinquity,  community; and finally we create a new thing entirely, where each of us has an important role but where separation becomes unnecessary – we have completed the task we were created for.

And the Maharal  understood too that God created each stage, that each point on the journey is iterated and reiterated until we come to our final days.

So why was the world created for the sake of challah, bikkurim and ma’as’rot? One might say it was created to teach us humility, to teach us the importance of developing mutual relationships, to teach us community and the recognition of the value of each other, and to teach us gratitude.

Not a bad lesson to take with us into the coming year.

בָּרוּךְ אַתָּה יְהֹוָה אֱלֹהֵינוּ מֶלֶךְ הָעוֹלָם שֶׁהֶחֱיָנוּ וְקִיְּמָנוּ וְהִגִּיעָנוּ לַזְמַן הַזֶּה:

Blessed are You Eternal our God, Sovereign of the Universe, who has kept us alive and established us and brought us to this season.

Sukkot – Trust in God is important, but we also have to take ourselves in hand

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The two mitzvot associated with the festival of Sukkot can be found in the book of Leviticus, chapter 23. In verse 40 we are told “On the first day [of the festival] you shall take the fruit of goodly trees, branches of palm trees, boughs of leafy trees and willows of the brook…..”. These are the four species that we today know as the etrog, lulav, myrtle and willow. The rabbis taught that we hold the four species together and wave them in all of the directions of the compass, as well as upwards and downwards. In this way, we mobilize the winds that blow from all directions to bring rain for the new season of sowing and harvest.

Then in Leviticus 23: 42-43 we read, “You shall live in booths [Sukkot] seven days; all citizens in Israel shall live in booths, in order that future generations may know that I made the Israelite people live in booths when I brought them out of the land of Egypt…..”.

So what is Sukkot about? Is it a harvest festival of thanks towards the end of the agricultural year, or is it a theological festival of reminder of our history and unrootedness? Is it a about richness and plenty in the land in which we live, or about fragility and vulnerability and a sense of mobility? How do we allow it to be about both – plenty and fragility, rootedness and journeying?

To begin to understand it, we can look to Rabbi Yitz Greenberg who contrasts Sukkot with Pesach. He points out, “Pesach celebrates a single, intense moment of freedom in the life of the Jewish people. At the exodus from Egypt, the divine erupted into human experience. Pesach is therefore a season of miracles. At the exodus the people were required only to take the first step, and God did the rest.

Sukkot, on the other hand, does not celebrate a moment of miracle, a moment when ordinary time ceased. On the contrary, Sukkot calls to mind a protracted period of wandering, of marking time. At Sukkot God is, as it were, hidden in the everyday. Sukkot reminds us of 40 years during which the people Israel had to deal with the basic requirements of everyday existence: water, food, the clothes on their backs, the roof over their heads. “

Greenberg’s insight is that these two festivals, Pesach and Sukkot, are two sides of the same coin. As human beings, we seek moments of “divine rapture”, moments that take us out of time, beyond the everyday. Such moments deepen our spiritual appreciation of life; they give us a sense of God’s grandeur. But our reality is that we spend most of our lives journeying through uncharted territory, facing the everyday demands that life places upon us, and a long distance from any moments of certain and wonderful encounter with God. Our daily life is routine, it is a constant struggle to keep up with what needs to be done, and our prayers are also to some extent routine and regular rather than heightened by awareness of God.

Just as Pesach and Sukkot represent two sides of the same coin of connection with God, so they fall at opposite ends of the Jewish year: Pesach on the 15th day of the first Hebrew month (Nisan), and Sukkot on the 15th day of the seventh month (Tishrei). Our lives revolve around these two poles of the Jewish year, which represent our longing for the miraculous, on the one hand, and our everyday experience of reality, on the other.

The two mitzvot of Sukkot focus on the basic needs of everyday life: water (represented by the waving of the four species) and shelter (represented by the sukkah). At Pesach, when we recall how the natural world was overturned and slaves became free, it is easy to acknowledge the impact of the divine on the life of our people but Sukkot reminds us that even in the absence of such dramatic moments of miracle, God is still at work in our lives and can be encountered in the everyday, the natural world, the regularity of fulfilling basic needs and living each day successfully.

Pesach and Sukkot remind us of the presence of God in our lives in very different ways. In the dramatic and in the ordinary – we can find God both at times of crisis and in the mundane routine of our lives, should we choose to really look.

A connection with the Divine Being is both nourishing of and challenging to our spiritual lives. Each festival has its way of directing our attention to that connection, and to the way the trajectories of our lives are developed. But there is another way to look at the symbols of Sukkot – specifically at the four species.

Rabbi Moni taught about the lulav and etrog using the verse from Psalms “all my limbs shall say, ‘God, who is like You?’ (Ps. 35:10). He said “This verse was only said in reference to the lulav. The spine of the lulav resembles the spine of a person; the hadass (myrtle) resembles the eye; the aravah (willow) resembles the mouth; the etrog resembles the heart. [King] David said: these are the most significant organs of the body, for they encapsulate the entire person. (Vayikra Rabbah 30:14)

It is a Midrash we know well, that in using the bundle of lulav and etrog together in worshipping God and in calling for the rains, we are taking our whole selves into the activity. But extend this idea a little further and you see that when we take hold of the lulav and etrog, we are in effect holding ourselves in our own hands, enjoying a rare chance to look at ourself from the outside. Just five days after Yom Kippur, when we have spent over a month in introspection and thought about ourselves and our lives, we are privileged to take one last external and objective look at ourselves. But more than that, we can see ourselves clearly but we also have ourselves literally in our own hands. We can decide in which direction to point ourselves in the year ahead and actually ‘take our own life in our own hands’ and start the process with a clarity of our own making, with our own decision making and with ownership of our own choices.

Sukkot, that most universal of festivals, rich with symbolism of our own vulnerability and dependence on God – yet at the same time with the powerful symbolism of our trust in our continued existence, is a time when we begin our journey anew, when we take ourselves in hand and make something of the year to come. Trust in God is all very well, the symbolism reminds us, but we have to rely also on our selves and not wait for some divine intervention to bring about the purpose of our lives, or to save us.

the twenty eighth day of Elul

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What do we do when we remember?
The Hebrew root זָכַר appears about 240 times in Tanakh – meaning to call to mind, mentioning, or bringing to active awareness. The verb extends beyond cognitive recall; and includes the expectation of acting on what is remembered.
It is not surprising that the command to remember is so powerful in Judaism and Jewish texts – with no remembering there is no story to be passed down the generations, there is no long term identity, there is no more past, present and future.
And remembering is one of the first stages of teshuvah – of our journey back towards God, our journey to become our best selves, to return to who we would ideally be.
But remembering can also be problematic. Sometimes it is a mitzvah to forget, to let go of emotions that hold us back from the journey of teshuvah.
And sometimes the problem is that remembering is an active behaviour, and as we remember we already change what was. Years ago as an undergraduate I was taught that memory had been thought to be fixed, that one could take it out and examine it and return it without change, but that that understanding of memory was painfully wrong. Each time we examine a memory, consider it, relive it, or simply recall it – we change it and we return it changed.
As Marcel Proust famously wrote ““Remembrance of things past is not necessarily the remembrance of things as they were.”
Sometimes memory plays us false by providing us with the bittersweet feelings of nostalgia, as we yearn for something we may never truly have had, but certainly can not recreate exactly in our present. Sometimes memory damages us by the different lenses time has evolved, so that what happened in the past may be seen quite differently then than we see it in the present. As LP Hartley wrote in The Go-Between: “The past is a foreign country, they do things differently there”
Memory can be a false friend, but we cannot disentangle ourselves from the need to remember. It is important to remember and review, to repent and to mitigate, to let go and to move forward towards living the life of our best selves. But as you think back, remember that memory is created by us, changed by our interaction with it, not always what it seems
Rabbi Shmuel bar Nachmani (Berachot 55b) wrote “A person is shown in a dream only what is suggested by their own thoughts…”
We remember through the lens of history, of experiences, of emotion.
Judaism commands us to remember – the sabbath day, the covenant at Sinai, the exodus from Egypt – to remember and to tell the story so others remember too.
Going forward, what do you want to remember? And what do you need to forget?
What do you want others to remember? And what do you hope they will forget?
Memories can be created in every moment we live – and they can be overlaid and enriched by how we continue to explore them. Life is for building on memories and for making memories. Until our last breath, making memories is the gift we have been given.

The twenty sixth day of Elul

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MISHNAH: Rebbi Neḥoniah ben Haqqanah used to recite a short prayer when he entered and when he left the house of study. They asked him, what kind of prayer is this? He told them: When I enter, I pray that no mishap should come through me and when I leave I give thanks for my lot….
Gemara:…. In the house of Rebbi Yannai they say: He who awakes from his sleep must say “Praised are You, o Eternal, Who resurrects the dead. My Lord, I sinned before You. May it please You, o Eternal, my God, that You might give me a good heart, good part, good inclinations, good hope, good repute, benevolent eye, good soul, meek soul and meek spirit. Your Name should not be desecrated by us; do not make us a byword in the mouths of all creatures; our future should not end in destruction, nor our hope in sorrow… (Jerusalem Talmud Berachot 4:2)
There are many personal prayers in tractate Berachot in both of the Talmuds, and many of them resonate powerfully to this day. But coming across this one – a prayer both about personal responsibility and about the responsibility we have for others, feels particularly relevant to this season and this year. Rebbi Nehonia was a contemporary of R. Yochanan ben Zakkai, a 2nd generation tanna. He directed his own academy and authored several prayers and laws. Highly respected by his peers, he attributed his unusually advanced age to his harmonious relations with others. His prayer that he would not mislead or misinform others in the study house, and his gratitude for his lot show both humility and deep appreciation for his life. But it is the prayer of R. Yannai, to be said every morning on wakening and to add to the blessing for the return of the soul to the body, asking God for a good heart, good reputation, good actions… and then the petition that our actions align with God’s expectations of us, that we do not act to create a Hillul haShem, desecrating the name of God in the world, and finally that we should continue into the future, that we should continue to hope. The prayer goes from the very personal and individual into the equally personal but communal space – we belong to a community, how we behave in that community and how that community behaves in our name is part of the same “whole”.

The twenty fifth day of Elul

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Ani Ve’Ata (Me and You)
by Arik Einshtein

Ani v’Ata by Arik Einstein

Me and You
Me and you, we’ll change the world
Me and you, then all the others will come
It was already said before
It doesn’t matter
Me and you, we’ll change the world.
Me and you, we’ll try from the beginning
It will be bad for us,
Never mind, it’s not terrible
It was already said before
It doesn’t matter
Me and you, we’ll change the world.
Me and you, we’ll change the world
Me and you, then all the others will come
It was already said before
It doesn’t matter
Me and you, we’ll change the world.

אֲנִי וְאַתָּה

אֲנִי וְאַתָּה נְשָׁנֶה אֶת הַעוֹלָם,
אֲנִי וְאַתָּה אַז יַבוֹאוּ כְּבָר כּוּלָּם,
אַמְרוּ אֶת זֶה קוֹדֶם לְפַנָי,
לֹא מְשָׁנֶה – אֲנִי וְאַתָּה נְשָׁנֶה אֶת הַעוֹלָם.

אֲנִי וְאַתָּה נְנָסֶה מֵהַתְחָלָה,
יְהֶיֶה לָנוּ רַע, אֵין דָּבָר זֶה לֹא נוֹרָא,
אַמְרוּ אֶת זֶה קוֹדֶם לְפַנָי,
זֶה לֹא מְשָׁנֶה – אֲנִי וְאַתָּה נְשָׁנֶה אֶת הַעוֹלָם.

אֲנִי וְאַתָּה נְשָׁנֶה אֶת הַעוֹלָם,
אֲנִי וְאַתָּה אַז יַבוֹאוּ כְּבָר כּוּלָּם,
אַמְרוּ אֶת זֶה קוֹדֶם לְפַנָי,
לֹא מְשָׁנֶה – אֲנִי וְאַתָּה נְשָׁנֶה אֶת הַעוֹלָם.

Arik Einstein wrote this song in 1971, and it quickly became the song for a generation, who needed the optimism it expressed and who desperately wanted to believe that the world could be changed for the better by them.
The narrative seems fairly simple – together we can change the world, others will come and join us, some will scoff and mock, we aren’t the first generation to try to do this and others have failed. But none of this matters because you and I can change the world.
But look a little deeper than youthful optimism expressed in song. Ani v’Ata – You and I – it echoes Martin Buber’s I-Thou philosophy – the relationship between human beings is predicated on the relationship between human beings and God and God (the Eternal ‘Thou’). Sometimes our relationships with others are superficial or contractual or otherwise “others” the other – we treat people as objects rather than find ourselves seeing them and their humanity, rather than creating deeper relationship. But as Buber writes, it is possible for us to create good and satisfying and mutually beneficial relationships with others if we take from what we have learned from our I-Thou relationship and use it in the human realm.
There is of course more to this song – You and I – we need each other, we need the partnership and the relationship of others for us to be our best selves. Just as God creates an “ezer k’negdo” a partner who is equal and different from the first human being in Genesis, so all human being need others to help them to grow and to change.
And then the other “hooks” in the song – “it will be bad for us” “it was already said before” – referencing the hardships of people who strive to be different, to bring change, to lead others and convince them of the importance of what is needed to be done. Referencing the endless iterations of people trying and failing to make change, who often then come to believe that change is not possible.
But this song says – change is possible. It will be hard for us and we may find others mocking or tearing down our visions of the future, but change is possible. We can do it together. It is up to the reader who is the partner – it can be other people it can be a relationship with the divine, it can be both possibilities – But it is always possible to change, and it is up to us to make the first steps towards change.

The twenty fourth day of Elul

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אַחַת  שָׁאַלְתִּי מֵאֵת־יְהֹוָה אוֹתָהּ אֲבַקֵּשׁ שִׁבְתִּי בְּבֵית־יְהֹוָה כׇּל־יְמֵי חַיַּי לַחֲזוֹת בְּנֹעַם־יְהֹוָה וּלְבַקֵּר בְּהֵיכָלוֹ׃
One thing I ask of God, only that do I seek:
to live in God’s house all the days of my life,
to gaze upon God’s beauty, to frequent the temple.

There is a widespread practice in the Jewish world to recite psalm 27 from the beginning of Elul until the end of Sukkot, a practice that is said to have stemmed from the kabbalistic belief that the name of God is found in it thirteen times, and these correspond to thirteen pathways of mercy, so the psalm enables us to reach the mercy of God and annul the expected heavenly decrees of judgement we might face at this time. (Benjamin Beinish in Shem Tov Katan 9b)


It is a beautiful psalm, and unusual too in that the trajectory of the psalm moves from a rather definite certainty in God’s protection, through anxiety and fear of enemies who can do great harm, leading to a recognition of the need for God’s protection – one would normally expect that trajectory to be the other way around.


And the mood changes from the initial absolute certainty in the protection of God with this verse – “Achat Sha’alti -One thing I ask of God”


For the psalmist the request is for the ability to be part of the Temple life and rhythm, – to live in God’s house, protected and safe from the wars and enemies who are all around.
While we can sadly recognise the scenario of being surrounded by enemies wanting Israel’s end, we neither have a Temple nor do we expect God to protect us from enemies or to intervene in modern warfare.


The psalmist writes of external enemies, but the use of this psalm in our penitential period points to a different interpretation – of our confidence in God being questioned not by outside events but by our own internal processes, our doubts or our feelings of dislocation because of our own behaviours.


Which leads us to the question – what is the one thing we would ask of God today, for ourselves, if we could? And having thought of what we might ask of God, what is one thing God might ask of us?

The twenty third day of Elul

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Rabbi Elimelech of Lizhensk (1717–1787) is said to have written a meditation to be used before prayer, in order to be able to pray without the distraction of our emotions. A prayer before formal prayer in the morning service, a kind of preparation of the soul, a letting go of feelings that hold us back, a reminder that how we behave with others has an impact on how we find our way to God.

This forms part of the prayer:

“Place within our hearts the gift of seeing the goodness in one another,
the strengths of each person and not their shortcomings.
May our words to one another be honest, kind,
and pleasing in Your sight.
Let no trace of hatred take root in our hearts,
one person against another.
Strengthen us in our love for You,
As it is revealed and known to you
that all we seek, all we do,
is to bring You joy.”


The twenty second day of Elul

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Twenty second day of Elul
There are said to be 613 mitzvot (commandments) in the bible, though there is some debate as to exactly what they are. The Sefer haChinuch (“Book of Education”) is an anonymous work written in thirteenth-century Spain that details 613 commandments and explains the reasons behind them using biblical texts. There are other formulations too, but whatever one chooses, only one mitzvah can be done without any conscious forethought – that of “Shikhechah” – the mitzvah of forgetting. Based on the verse in Deuteronomy “When you reap the harvest in your field and overlook a sheaf in the field, do not turn back to get it; it shall go to the stranger, the orphan, and the widow—in order that the ETERNAL your God may bless you in all your undertakings.” (Deut 24:19), this is a mitzvah designed to ensure that having left the grain in the field, those people who are following the harvesters to glean what they can from what is left over, are not inconvenienced by the landowner returning. Once he has left the field with his harvest, the remaining “leket” and “peah” belong to the poor.
“To leave what is forgotten to the poor: That we were commanded when we forget a sheaf in the field to leave it there, and that we not return to take it when the thing becomes known to us. And about this is it stated (Deuteronomy 24:19), “and you forget a sheaf in the field […]; it shall go to the stranger, the orphan, and the widow” — meaning to say, leave it there for them.
It is from the roots of the commandment [that it is] since the poor and destitute — in their sin and in their poverty — suspend their eyes upon the produce, in their seeing the owners of the field sheaving their sheaves “according to the blessing of the Eternal that God gave to them”; and they think in their heart, saying, “If only it will be like this for me, to gather sheaves into my house — and if only I could bring one, I would rejoice in it”; and hence it was from God’s kindnesses towards all creatures, may God be blessed, to fulfil this desire of theirs when it occurs that the owner of the field forgets it. There is also a benefit for the owner of the field, that he acquires through this a goodly soul; for truly through the trait of generosity and a blessed soul that does not place its heart upon the forgotten sheaf and leaves it to the destitute — on those with such a soul — does the blessing of God descend forever. (Sefer haChinuch 592:1-2)

I have to say I like the idea of it being a mitzvah to forget. While this is based on a blessing to those who even inadvertently support the poor and needy in society, the idea of it being not only a good thing for others but also for ourselves that we can forget something we have held on to closely, is one I can get behind.
How many times have we found ourselves remembering with shame and embarrassment something that happened a long time ago, or that was minor in the minds of everyone else, but stays with us in full technicolour horror down the years? How many times have we hung on to our anger at the actions of someone else?
This is a strange mitzvah in so many ways, because it cannot be done with forethought. But also, it is a mitzvah that can only be done when we have made a mistake, not completed the full task we expected to do or done something not according to plan. We have made a mistake, and we can turn it into a blessing.
So as you examine your lives, look to see what you are holding on to that is holding you back, damaging you in some way or damaging a relationship or a reconciliation. And, recognising that that holding on has been a mistake, practise the idea of turning it into a blessing, let go and forget, it can be over and we can move forward without holding on to emotions that can only damage us.

The twenty first day of Elul

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Rabbi Eliezer was known to be very severe and rather domineering with his pupils and his colleagues. He was inflexible and deeply conservative. But he was also recognised to be a great scholar and a worthy leader within the community.
During one particularly bad drought, Rabbi Eliezer led the community in prayer for rain. 13 different fast days were instituted in order to show penance to God, to beg for forgiveness and life giving rain. But still the sky stayed clear. As the people were preparing to leave the synagogue on the last day, Rabbi Eliezer called out to them “have you prepared graves for yourselves?” a question so shocking and terrible that they began to cry, and only then the rain began. (Ta’anit 25a-b)

The Talmud tells a second story, where again Rabbi Eliezer led the community in a long and extended amidah prayer while they all fasted, but his prayers were still not answered. Then Rabbi Akiva, a student and friend of Rabbi Eliezer, added his prayers – five sentences each beginning with the phrase “Avinu Malkeinu”. At that moment, the rains began and the famine was averted. The rabbis began to ask why the young Akiva was successful in his prayers whereas the great Rabbi Eliezer was not. And a bat Kol, a heavenly voice was heard to say that the issue was not one of greatness, but because Rabbi Eliezer was exact and demanding whereas Rabbi Akiva was relaxed and forgiving, and God had responded to each according to his personality.
How do we both create and receive the forgiveness we seek? Our liturgy quotes God as saying (as God said to Moses in Numbers 14:19-20 after Moses begs God to forgive the people who rebel after the report from the spies) “Pardon, I pray, the iniquity of this people according to Your great kindness, as You have forgiven this people ever since Egypt.” And GOD said, “I pardon, as you have asked – Salachti kidvarecha. “Salachti kidvarecha” – the answer is in the word kidvarecha – the thoughts and feelings we have and we express as we search for this elusive yet much wished for state. Maybe we have been a little too much like Rabbi Eliezer ben Hyrcanus, a little too inflexible, rigid in our attitudes and stubborn in our analyses. Maybe we have been more concerned with our status and how things look to others than we should have been. There is no question in the Talmud that Rabbi Eliezer didn’t pray – simply that his prayer was not conducive to being answered. In the first story the people finally comprehend that they have come to the end of the road – if their prayer is not answered this time they will die – and it is that realisation that gives their prayer the added dimension – urgency, depth, honesty – that means it will be answered. But it is from the second story that we learn something new, that God treats us as we treat others. If we refuse to forgive others, we too will have a hard time attaining forgiveness from God for ourselves. The same message is found elsewhere in the Talmud in tractate Rosh Hashanah 17a, where we find the statement “Whose sin does God forgive? The one who forgives sins (against themself)” – the person who is forgiving to others is more easily forgiven by God, who responds middah k’neged middah – measure for measure – towards each person according to their own behaviour and personality.

The nineteenth day of Elul

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The first use of the verb “k.p.r” is in the story of Noah, when God instructs Noah
עֲשֵׂה לְךָ תֵּבַת עֲצֵי־גֹפֶר קִנִּים תַּעֲשֶׂה אֶת־הַתֵּבָה וְכָפַרְתָּ אֹתָהּ מִבַּיִת וּמִחוּץ בַּכֹּפֶר׃
“Make yourself an ark of gopher wood; make it an ark with compartments, and cover it inside and out with pitch.” (Genesis 6:14)
Here the root of the word appears to mean both“ to cover”, and, since the word for pitch uses the same root – “pitch – some kind of waterproof and protective covering- so we can extend this meaning to “to protect”
We find an echo of Noah’s “ark” in the ark made for the tent of meeting, the place where the presence of God will hover: For this “aron” too is to have a protective covering – the kapporet (exodus 25:17-21) – the mercy seat that covers and protects the ark and the stones within it, decorated with cherubim to the sacrifices of atonement to be made by the high priest.
When we come to the more usual formations of the verbal root, it is generally found in Temple artefacts and ritual – almost always in the plural and in the piel or hitpael binyan , and almost always to do with the sacrifices to be made there to atone for the sins of the people, either as individuals or as a collective.
Altogether the root appears over a hundred times in Tanakh, and from its earliest and most “material” form in the “kal” binyan that we find in Noah, it grows to have meanings or undertones of “covering” or “protecting”, “appeasing”, “ransoming”, or a “reconciliation”.
What does it mean for us today, that we name our holiest day of the year after this verbal root with meanings of to cover over and protect, to appease and to ransom, to reconcile?
I think it means that we recognise that we cannot undo the past – but we can come to terms with it, and we refuse to allow it to define us and our future. We can create a kapporet – a protective “lid” or closure between us and what has happened– to enable us to let go of the damage or pain we have been carrying, and to accommodate out reality as we move into the future.