VA'ETCHANAN SBBST NACHAMU 5776
MORE THAN TORAH
August 18, 2016
15 Av 5776
Moses devotes his last days to exhort the Children of Israel who are about to enter the Promised Land to be faithful to God. He warns them against embracing idolatry; and lays out the moral values in which their social order must be grounded.
In a familiar passage he commands, vshi'nan'tem l'vancha, teach these lessons to your children. (Deuteronomy 6: 7)The Talmud interprets this verse as a command to parents to teach their children Torah. Every generation has the responsibility to assure that the one that follows will be schooled in Torah that will shape their lives as Jews.
These Talmudic exhortations create the context for the curriculum in the Israeli haredi (ultra-Orthodox) boys' schools. The students are diligently schooled in Torah and other than some basic math, no secular subjects are taught. These schools reject the mandate to teach the Israeli core curriculum that includes among other subjects much math and the study of English. The obvious consequence is that the haredi educated students lack the specific knowledge that will enable them to function in the modern world. Sadly many of these students as adults will depend on welfare allocations, and more and more on the earnings of their wives, to provide for their expanding families.
This last Knesset (when the religious parties were not in the government), passed a bill mandating the haredi schools to teach the standard core curriculum. The haredi leadership, as to be expected, opposed this interference in its educational system, and the current Knesset, (in which the religious parties are part of the government coalition, has overridden that bill. To be sure there are parents who desire that their sons be exposed to the core curriculum, but the current generation of haredi Rabbis and educators are adamant in holding their line.
Torah is an essential component in raising a Jewish child, but is there more that he should be taught? The Talmud mulls this question and in a famous passage concludes:
Just as a father is bound to teach him (his son) Torah so is he bound to teach him a craft. (BT Kiddushin 30b) Obviously in our day this Talmudic dictum applies as well to mothers and daughters.
The Talmud's "core curriculum" is designed to prepare children for adult life even as it clearly affirms that Torah knowledge is essential for meaningful Jewish life
Responsible parents are required and society is mandated to assure that a child be taught a trade or a profession or skill to enable him / her to be both financially independent and able to contribute to the greater good.
The challenge before America Jewry is that the emphasis up on being properly prepared to be financially independent is all too often not accompanied with. a commitment to transmit Torah and our tradition. Young Jews are well educated and thankfully successful in their n their chosen fields. Sadly lacking, however, is serious exposure to a core curriculum of Jewish studies that can help them shape their lives as Jews.
It's a formidable challenge to have the haredi schools accept the value of secular subjects. It is a no less daunting challenge for American Jewry to expand the teaching of Torah and hopefully motivate even larger numbers to experience the beauty of a more intensive Jesuit life style.
From the holy city of Jerusalem Rae joins me in wishing you a Shabbat Shalom u'Mevorach– a Shabbat of peace and blessing.
Rabbi Arnold M. Goodman
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Each of the Haftarot of the seven Shabbatot immediately following Tisha B'Av is a selection from the last chapters of the Book of Isaiah in which the prophet reassures the community that has suffered defeat at the hands of the Babylonians and was now in exile there. These selections are thus called the "hafatorot of consolation." The first begins with the words, "Nachamu nachamu ami," "Comfort ye, comfort ye My People, sayeth your God" (Isaiah 40:1).
D'VARIM SHABBAT HAZON 5776
UNYIELDING SCRUPULOUSNESS
August 11, 2016
7 Av 5776
On Tisha b'Av or the Fast of Av we mourn the destruction of both the First and Second Temples, the loss of Jewish sovereignty over Erwtz Yisrael and the exile of our People from the land, promised to our Patriarchs and to their descendants in perpetuity. With the refrain of "woe what has happened to us," we bemoan that Jerusalem has lost its splendor. On this day we pray for the end of our exile, restored hegemony over our land and that Jerusalem will be restored to its former glory.
I know committed Jews who for various reasons do not fast on Tisha b'Av. For some, the Jewish return to the homeland and the creation of the State of Israel makes the day an anachronism. Others spurn the Temple's sacrificial cult, and refuse to pray for the establishment of the Third Temple and the restoration of yesteryear's rituals.
Yet there is another cogent argument for setting aside this traditional day of mourning. In a well known passage in the Talmud, the Roman war that led to the destruction of the Second Temple and the exile were the result of the silence of Jerusalem's rabbinic leaders when Bar Kamtza was being publicly embarrassed.
He then traveled to Rome and appeared before the Emperor with the claim that the Jews were planning to revolt against the Empire's control of Judea. When asked for proof of this allegation, he suggested that the Emperor send a lamb to Jerusalem to be sacrificed in the Temple in his honor. A rejection of this gift would be evidence of the intent to cast off Roman rule
Bar Kamtza was dispatched with the "royal" lamb and cut its lip. While the Romans did not deem this as a blemish, the Jews did and would not offer it as a sacrifice in the Temple. The Talmud then records:
The Rabbis were inclined to offer the lamb in order not to offend the Government. Said R. Zechariah b. Abkulas, "People will say that blemished animals are offered on the altar." They then proposed to kill Bar Kamtza so that he should not go and inform against them, but R. Zechariah b. Abkulas said , "Is one who makes a blemish on consecrated animals to be put to death?" R. Johanna thereupon remarked, "Through the scrupulousness of R. Zechariah b. Abkulas our House has been destroyed, our Temple burnt and we ourselves exiled from our land." (BT Girtin 56b)
Rabbi Zechariah's unyielding scrupulousness is still evident at the kotel, the Western Wall that encircled the holy mountain that was the site of the Temples and on the Mount above it.
Women who gather at the Kotel wearing a talit, perhaps also in tefillin and who are competent to read from the Torah are prevented to do so by Israel's rabbinic establishment. These authorities continue to resist setting aside an area adjacent to the kotel for use by the "progressive" religious streams. These scrupulous "defenders" of the faith in their grasp for total control of a site that belongs to all our people, keeps us mired down in an ongoing and very bitter controversy.. On Tisha b'Av we can mourn the sad continuation of R. Zechariah's bemoaned scrupulousness. e.
High above the kotel, the Muslim authorities are no less scrupulous and unyielding in denying Jews the right to pray on what is also for us a holy site. This is consistent with their contention that there is no Jewish connection to the Mount and to Jerusalem. Sadly, the Muslim battle cry that the Al Aksa Mosque must be saved has repeatedly spawned violent protests against our presence on the mount and even at the kotel below.
Tisha b'Av is thus a context to mourn the painful reality of the obdurate scrupulousness that dismisses our Tradition's demand that we are to strive to find common ground that can bring us together.
Try as we will to put space between us and yesterday's Temples, our contemporary reality challenges us to focus on and to mourn the scrupulousness of those who brazenly claim for themselves the authority to deny all the right to pray, to meditate and to celebrate in the place where our ancestors felt closest to God.
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From the holy city of Jerusalem Rae joins me in wishing you a Shabbat Shalom u'Mevorach– a Shabbat of peace and blessing.
Rabbi Arnold M. Goodman
The haftara or prophetic selection on the Shabbat before Tisha b'Av is the first chapter of Isaiah that begins with the words Chazon Yeshayahu, the vision of Isaiah (hence the designated name of Shabbat Chazon). In this chapter, the prophet mourns that the faithful city (Jerusalem) that once was "filled with justice and where righteousness dwelt ….they (now) do not judge he case of the orphan and the widow's cause never reaches them." This powerful chapter is a fitting segue into the annual Black Fast that this year begins at the conclusion of Shabbat.
