A Rosh Hashanah showdown in the Holy Land

Anyone witnessing the wide-eyed panic of Israeli shoppers in the Machane Yehuda market last week would have been quickly reminded of the fact that a two-day celebration in the Holy Land is a relatively rare occurrence. While Jews living in the Diaspora are accustomed to repeating festive days on account of an ancient calendrical doubt whose results remain enshrined in Jewish law, this phenomenon was never instituted for Jews in the Land of Israel – except that is for Rosh Hashanah.

Or was it?

In the course of my recent research into the formation and authority of the Babylonian Talmud, I came across a fascinating passage contained in the Me’or Hakattan commentary of Rabbi Zerachyah Halevy. Reviewing the Rif’s codification of the Talmudic ruling that Rosh Hashanah must be observed for two days – even in the land of Israel – Rabbi Zerachyah notes that this law was not observed in Israel throughout the Geonic era.

The calendar had always been within the jurisdiction of the original Sanhedrin that sat in the land of Israel, an institution which ceased to exist only with the migration of Jews to Bavel in the fourth century. Perhaps for this reason, the attempt by Babylonian sages to impose a second day of Rosh Hashanah upon the community in Palestine was resisted so strongly, even though this ruling was apparently formalised within the Babylonian Talmud. Rabbi Zerachyah recounts how Rav Hai Gaon attempted unsuccessfully to convince Palestinian communities to observe a second day of the festival in accordance with his understanding of the Babylonian Talmud, but that they had only finally acquiesced to the two-day observance rule in “recent” times at the persuasion of rabbis from Provence. [Rabbi Zerachyah lived circa 1115 to 1186. Rav Hai Gaon lived from 939-1038 CE.]

Ran in his commentary to this ruling of the Rif points out that both sides of this dispute could be seen as legitimate interpretations of the Babylonian Talmud which only rules concerning an era in which the Sanhedrin fixed the calendar according to witnessed sightings of the new moon. Nevertheless, the matter evidently evolved into a question of authority between the Babylonian Geonim and their understanding of the Talmud and the Palestinian community who wished to maintain their tradition of celebrating for one day only.

A further ancient practice of the Palestinian-influenced communities which ceased at around this point was the triennial cycle of Torah reading. The triennial cycle was the practice in Israel, whereas in Babylonia the entire Torah was read in the synagogue in the course of a single year. As late as 1170, Benjamin of Tudela recounted how Egyptian congregations took three years to read the Torah.

It would seem that Babylonian authority over communities in Palestine was a sore and contentious point. During the early generations of Amoraim, scholarship and academies in the land of Israel had rivalled and perhaps even eclipsed those of Bavel, with its sitting Sanhedrin and Yerushalmi Talmud which was produced by Rabbi Yochanan in the 4th century. Subsequent religious persecution led to a significant wave of migration to Bavel and with it the inclusion of numerous Palestinian voices and rulings in the Babylonian Talmud. Nevertheless, Jews in the land of Israel for centuries to come did not fully accept the notion that they were bound by the conclusions of the Babylonian Talmud rather than its Palestinian counterpart. They seem to have maintained that the two Talmuds bore equal legal force, since each represented a legitimate representation of the same underlying oral tradition. This was the situation until the establishment of the caliphate in Baghdad in the eighth century, when Abassid Babylonia became the centre not only of Arabic but also of Jewish culture. From then on, the influence of the Babylonian Talmud gradually began to overwhelm that of the Palestinian Talmud.

Ultimately, the Crusades thoroughly weakened the Jewish community in the land of Israel. This, coupled with a sustained campaign on the part of students of the Rif, appears to have ended whatever resistance had remained to the universal acceptance of the Babylonian Talmud as an exclusive binding source of Jewish law. However, the existence of a precise historical point at which it could be deemed “universally accepted by all of Israel”, as Rambam maintains in his introduction to Mishneh Torah, is a matter which might be subject to some debate.

First posted to Facebook 28 September 2022, here.

Rosh Hashanah, Rambam and the concept of a "Day of Judgement"

One of the recurring theological questions that Jewish thinkers have long been forced to grapple with is the need to reconcile a deity whose existence transcends all notions of space and time with the God of the Torah whose relationship with us is firmly focused around holy spaces and times.

As Judaism Reclaimed explores, the earliest traditional source to tackle this conundrum head on is King Solomon in his dedication speech for the First Temple.

"Can God really dwell on earth? ... the Heaven and the Heaven of Heavens cannot contain You, and surely not this Temple that I have built!" (I Kings 8:27)

The answer is found both in the continuation of Shlomo's speech (“But may you turn to the prayer … that Your servant shall pray towards this place”) and by God's subsequent response. God's 'residing' in a particular location represents, metaphorically, the notion that people’s prayers will be answered there, thereby making His existence more tangible to them.

The Maharal (Gur Aryeh Bereishit 6:6) expands upon this theme, explaining that God indeed “fills the Earth” and cannot be confined to a specific place. One who claims, however, that all places are therefore equal to worship Him is attacking a core tenet of the Torah: the principle that God designates as 'holy' certain “hashgacha hotspots” in which He enables people to relate to Him more easily.

But it is not only the dimension of physical space which presents a theological challenge to the philosophical notion of an infinite and transcendent God. How are we to comprehend the idea of God choosing one day a year on which to judge all of humanity? Is there a parallel to “hashgacha hotspots” in the dimension of time through which our ability to relate to God is altered or heightened at certain specific points in our calendar? What would this even mean in terms of our being judged – how would it differ from the axiomatic religious teaching that our actions always have providential consequences and are thus “being judged”.

One important traditional commentator who pursues this line of thinking is the Meiri, who writes that divine judgment is constant and unaffected by time. The function of Rosh Hashanah, he continues, is Judaism’s way of concentrating our minds on the concept of judgment and the consequences of our actions – something that we should truly be aware of the entire year but will typically allow to slip from our consciousness. While Rambam does not address this matter explicitly, certain teachings in Hilchot Teshuva could be seen as supporting Meiri’s approach:

“Just as a person's merits and sins are weighed at the time of his death, so, too, the sins of every inhabitant of the world together with his merits are weighed on the festival of Rosh HaShanah… Therefore, throughout the entire year, a person should always look at himself as equally balanced between merit and sin and the world as equally balanced between merit and sin. If he performs one sin, he tips his balance and that of the entire world to the side of guilt and brings destruction upon himself.” [Hilchot Teshuva 3:3-4]

If this is true, then it would fit an existing pattern within the Jewish calendar. We are commanded to recall the Exodus the entire year – yet one festival is dedicated to burning this idea into our religious consciousness. Our thoughts are supposed to always bear an element of mourning for the destruction of the Mikdash – yet one specific day in the calendar is set aside to concentrate on this tragedy. The same might be said for the command to remember Amalek’s evil. Might the same be true regarding the core religious requirement that we be aware of God’s judgement and therefore the consequences of our actions?

Yet such an approach surely fails to do justice to Jewish tradition, with its strong emphasis on both the importance and efficacy of repentance, prayer and charity on these specific days. As Rambam himself cites from the Talmud:

Even though repentance and calling out [to God] are desirable at all times, during the ten days between Rosh HaShanah and Yom Kippur, they are even more desirable and will be accepted immediately as Isaiah states: "Seek God when He is to be found." [Hilchot Teshuva 2:6]

It seems inescapable therefore that there is something inherently advantageous about repentance at this time of year. But are we able to explain this in a way that Meiri and the Rambam would find acceptable?

One possible path is that this heightened state of awareness of God’s judgement and the consequences of our actions in itself engineers a stronger providential interface and calendrical hotspot over Rosh Hashanah. This annual providential peak would be particularly strong when the heightened awareness of God is being practiced on a communal and even national scale. Rambam teaches towards the end of his Guide (3:51) that the intensity of our providential relationship with God is directly influenced by the quality and quantity of our mind’s awareness of Him. In the following chapter he states that it is through the very same “light” that we comprehend Him that He is constantly with us, examining and judging our deeds.

It follows from here that Rosh Hashanah can legitimately be viewed as a special day of judgment – not because God is inherently affected or changed by the dimensions of time and space to judge us more on one day than any other. But nor is Rosh Hashanah some artificial religious construct – a day on which it is useful for us to pretend is special as a superficial reading of the Meiri may imply. Rather when we as individuals, communities and a nation join together in concentrating our awareness on God’s rulership of the world, our collective and individual responsibilities and the consequences of our actions – this creates a very real heightened providential dynamic in which we are therefore judged more intensely than occurs on other days in the calendar. In this sense, God really is “to be found” among us during these ten days.

Rosh Hashanah therefore provides us with a focal point to self-examine, to improve, to dream and to aspire for substantial religious growth. In that spirit we present ourselves before God with greater clarity than we enjoy during the rest of the year. Our providential relationship of God – and thus our “judgment” is thus built upon this best version of ourselves. Rosh Hashanah thereby becomes the baseline and default of our relationship with God for the year ahead.

I would like to take this opportunity to wish all readers a Shana Tova, a wonderfully happy, healthy and inspiring year ahead!

First posted to Facebook 10 September 2023, here.

Grappling with suffering: will evil "evaporate like smoke?"

As I stood meditating over the Yom Kippur Amidah this week I was struck by the phrase “and all wickedness will evaporate like smoke when you remove the dominion of evil from upon the world”. These words were cited in A Guide for the Jewish Undecided a recent fascinating and thought-provoking analysis of the parameters of Orthodox theology by Rabbi Professor Sam Lebens.

In one of the later chapters of this book, Lebens looks to break new ground in theodicy – the old question of how to reconcile the religious notion of a good and loving God with the widespread evil and suffering that is very evident in this world. Having discussed why, in his view, traditional solutions to the question of theodicy fall short, Lebens proposes a radical new theory (developed along with Tyron Goldschmidt), built upon the premise that God’s omnipotence grants Him power to change the past: 

“Imagine that God gives us free will, and then, so to speak, He says, like a film director, “Take 1”. Then we live our lives. We do some good and we do some bad. All of it is of our own creation. At the end of time, God says, “Cut”. Imagine that scenes 1 and 3 are fantastic, but that scene 2 is horrific. Well then, wouldn’t God simply edit the film and cut out scene 2, because, even after the scene has happened, God can change the past? Admittedly, this would leave a gap in the history of the world. But then God can say “Scene 2, Take 2”. We’d then get another shot at linking scenes 1 and 3 together.”

While I totally identify with and embrace the motives which underpin this theory – an absolute refusal to countenance any trace of evil or suffering to be ultimately caused by a benevolent God – the practicalities of what is proposed are mindboggling. I recall a favourite film from my youth, A Matter of Life and Death, in which a celestial mishap causes a jettisoning World War II airman to be missed by the grim reaper. By the time this mistake is registered, the airman has fallen in love with a local lady and the notion of extracting him from history without upsetting other divine calculations becomes incalculably complex. With this in mind, the proposition that God could edit scenes without irreparably ruining the whole script of human history is hard to imagine. Placed on top of this, Jewish tradition often acknowledges crucial benefits which are gained from certain instances of suffering; as Judaism Reclaimed explores, the “iron crucible” of Egyptian servitude and other such episodes of Anti Semitism may be credited with the continuation of the Jewish people itself.

While Lebens certainly recognises and proposes fixes for some of these objections, my personal feeling is that he is too quick to dismiss the “free-will” model, in which God is understood to have created a world in which the primary purpose is the free-functioning of human free will. Success, righteousness and heroism is only meaningful – and perhaps even possible – in a setting which allows for the genuine possibility of failure and evil.

Objecting to this model, Lebens quotes an atheist philosopher, Stephen Maitzen, who argues that:

“To put it mildly, there is something less than perfect about letting a child suffer terrible for the primary benefit of someone else – whether for the benefit of a bystander who gets a hero’s chance to intervene, or for the benefit of a child-abuser who gets to exercise unchecked free will.”

Yet isolating this single incident presents us with a severely skewed set of scales. It is not only the bystander or abuser who can potentially gain from the existence of free will. It is every single human being alive; every person who has ever lived and will ever live – including the victim of the offense under consideration. All of their lives, according to Jewish theodicy as I understand it only stand to hold any meaning if humans are free-choosing creatures – who can reliably trust that the fruits of their pursuits will not be interfered . Once we add into the mix the notion of a World to Come with the prospects of unfathomable reward and punishment, we cannot possibly even know how to set the scales to weigh up humanity’s free will with the very real suffering of such victims. (How this may fit with the notion of Divine Providence has been addressed in a previous post).

Revisiting the evaporating cloud metaphor, perhaps a more apt interpretation would be to compare it to how the same phrase is used at the end of the Netaneh Tokef where humanity’s fragile and mortal existence is said, among other things, to be like “dissipating smoke”. This to my mind does not mean that our existence will one day be retroactively erased, rather it implies that our lives are brief and insignificant when compared to God’s everlasting existence.

The same notion can be applied to what I understand to be Jewish theodicy’s approach to evil. It is real, it is truly awful – and therefore it is something to be fought with all our might and all of our resources. But were we in a position to fathom and appreciate the rewards and pleasures of the World to Come which our tradition states are even beyond the comprehension of our prophets – such evil would be “like an evaporating cloud”.

On a related note, while we rightly protest and pray to God for His assistance in overcoming the forces of wickedness who take cruel pleasure in oppressing and tormenting others, Rambam emphasises in Moreh Nevuchim that the predominant cause of evil is humanity’s own doing. Collectively we must work unceasingly to educate and inspire; to use God’s great gift to humanity of free will to bring about the Messianic era in which:

Through awareness of the truth, enmity and hatred are removed and the inflicting of harm by people on one another is abolished. It [Tanach] holds out this promise, saying “And the wolf shall dwell with the lamb…”. Then it gives the reason for this, saying that the cause of the abolition of these enmities, these discords and these tyrannies, will be humanity’s knowledge of God… [Moreh, 3:31]

The primary and perhaps exclusive causes of warfare and misery are obsession with and competition over material possessions, power and pride. Once humanity becomes aware of this folly, its energies and capabilities will be channelled towards achieving universal happiness, thus “they will beat their swords into ploughshares…” and “your sons and daughters will prophesy”. When God’s teachings will reign supreme and “the dominion of evil will be removed from the world”.

First posted to Facebook 26 September 2023, here.