Davar Akher

In 2003, Joseph Mosseri delivered a fascinating lecture at Merkaz Moreshet Yisrael, entitled Torah – Ancient Relic or Living Law: A Sephardic Rabbinical. The lecture, which runs for just under an hour, is available online from this link and is well worth a listen. The following is, in my estimation, one of the many highlights (from his introduction, approx. 8:54-11:55):

These chachamim feel that the only way for the Torah to last eternally is through change. The Torah has opened itself up for change, and has allowed change. And this was the path that they brought with them from pre-expulsion Spain, and this was the path that they carried with them into the Ottoman Empire and elsewhere.

Based upon this, I want to tell you: we as Sephardim, and those who follow the Sephardi talmidei chachamim, we are not Orthodox. We’re not. Orthodoxy is something that we never had, and you have to understand Orthodoxy in its true historical context. In the 18th and 19th centuries, European Jewry underwent processes of enlightenment and secularisation, accompanied by internal sociological and ideological tensions. How did this manifest itself among the people and rabbis of Europe? Reform Judaism. That was the immediate answer in Europe. The earliest religious response to modernity was anti-traditionalist, in the body of the Reform movement. It denied the eternal validity of the halakha, which had until now governed all aspects of Jewish life, and instituted major changes in liturgical practise.

The challenge of Reform, and of the more general Jewish enlightenment (the Haskalah), did eventually stimulate a response from the champions of the traditional faith. What was this response? The earliest traditional response was one of uncompromising reaction, summed up in the rallying cry of Rabbi Moshe Sofer – better known as the Chatam [sic] Sofer. He took a word… He took a line from the Mishna, in ‘Orlah, and he reused it to his benefit. He said, החדש אסור מן התורה בכל מקום. Whatever is new is forbidden by the Torah in every instance. This reactionary stance remained a central position for a large segment of traditionalists, and became known as Orthodoxy. Something that never existed anywhere in Judaism before early 19th century Europe.

Orthodox leaders, in essence, declared that they were simply preserving and continuing the ways of life and the beliefs of pre-modern Judaism. They forced themselves into a position of denying the legitimacy of all modern innovations. They bound up the Torah in a manner which was never known among our chachamim. In fact, according to Chacham Yisrael Moshe Chazzan, this approach resulted in totally arbitrary and useless chumrot that greatly contributed to the fragmentation of the Jewish community, thereby discrediting the office of the rabbinate.

Speaking as a fan of all things totally arbitrary and useless, I do think that Mosseri’s tone is a little bit critical of the great Ashkenazi rabbis of the last two centuries, but his eloquence in defending the historical integrity of non-Ashkenazi (what he regrettably labels “Sephardi”) Judaism is inspiring nonetheless. The entire lecture is well worth a listen, as are several other lectures found on their main page. Regrettably, the quality of the recording is rarely so good as it is with this one.

Today is the most ridiculous day in the entire Hebrew calendar. It is the fourth of Tishrei, which this year (because yesterday was a Shabbat) is the Fast of Gedaliah.

Named for the Babylonian-appointed governor of the province of Judah who was ruthlessly murdered (or so we are taught) at the hands of a prince named Ishmael ben Netaniah, the fast in question is a day on which we mourn the onset of the Babylonian exile. These events are recorded, somewhat laconically, in 2 Kings 25:25-26, and at more length in Jeremiah 41:1-18. The institution of a fast is recorded in Zechariah 8:19, in which it is referred to as “the fast of the seventh month”. Whatever other candidates might have existed for this title, the Talmud (Rosh haShana 18b) makes it clear that this is in reference to the murder of Gedaliah, and then derives from this the fact that the deaths of the righteous are as significant as the destruction of the Temple itself.

We have no shortage of days on which to mourn for these events:

• There’s the 10th of Tevet (acc. to one opinion in the Talmud, the date that Zechariah refers to as “the fast of the tenth month”), which is the day on which Nebuchadnezzar rallied his army and commenced his siege of Jerusalem (2 Kings 25:1-4);

• There’s the 17th of Tammuz, on which we recall the breaching of Jerusalem by the Romans, c.69 CE. Originally, this fast day is believed to have been held on the 9th of Tammuz, which Jeremiah 39:2 describes as the day on which Nebuchadnezzar broke through the city’s walls some six hundred years earlier. According to Rabbi Akiva, the 9th of Tammuz is therefore the day that Zechariah referred to as “the fast of the fourth month”, although it is interesting to note that the Palestinian Talmud (Ta’anit 4:5) suggests that the fast of the fourth month was always and only ever the 17th of Tammuz, and that Jeremiah got the date wrong;

• Most famously, there’s the 9th of Av (“the fast of the fifth month”). If you have ever found impressive the string of events that people relate to the 17th of Tammuz (the smashing of the tablets, the cessation of the perpetual offering, the breaching of the walls, etc), then the list of things related to the 9th of Av is staggering indeed. According to tradition, this is not only the anniversary of the destruction of the first temple but of the second temple as well. Yet, so far as the first temple is concerned, the author of 2 Kings 25:8 refers to this event as being on the 7th of Av, Jeremiah 52:12 refers to it as being on the 10th of Av, and Josephus (Antiquities 10.8.146) refers to it as being on the 1st of Av. Go figure.

So, here’s the million dollar question. Do we need another day of mourning? There have certainly been times and places throughout history when communal fasts were instituted in remembrance of a dire circumstance. The most famous example of this would probably be the 1st of Sivan, in remembrance of the 11th century butchering of the Jews of Worms. Today, while it is not a fast day, the institution of Yom haShoah serves as a contemporary example, and a good case study of rabbinic opposition to innovation. While some traditional communities embraced the idea of instituting a new date on the Hebrew calendar, the events of the Shoah being either too large or too recent to suggest merging their remembrance with an established date, it was to the established dates that various other traditional communities pointed when asked about mourning.

And yet, while I’ve great sympathy for both sides of this discussion, I found myself affronted by an ignoramus a little while back, whose article in Haaretz made the absurd claim that fast days are no longer of any relevance (they were only ever as relevant as people wanted them to be), now that we are no longer in exile. His opinion was perfectly valid, although his polemical tone was most unpleasant, and I was struck by his evident unfamiliarity with the book of Zechariah. In it, the prophet insists upon the continuation of the fast days, despite the fact that they had only been in effect for less than a century, and despite the fact that he was living during the period of the restoration.

The history of second temple and rabbinic Judaism has caused us to view the destruction of the temple as the most important feature of the exile, but exile is only ever determined by the loss of civic autonomy. Zechariah lived to see the reinstitution of the temple cult, but the absence of any form of government made the fast days relevant in his day as well. For us, they remain relevant for the opposite reason: we have seen a reintroduction of Jewish sovereignty over most of the land of Israel, but the absence of the temple has become the chief indicator of a persistent “exile”.

Nonetheless, while I do have sympathy for those who wish to preserve the integrity and the relevance of the 17th of Tammuz, the 10th of Tevet and the 9th of Av, I can’t help but find it odd that the 3rd (or, in this case, the 4th) of Tishrei should have persisted for so long. The Fast of Gedaliah? Really? Was his death so relevant, and his circumstances so unique, that it is worth fasting for him, from sun-up to sun-down, and mourning the consequences of his demise over two-and-a-half millennia since he ceased to exist? Does anybody know anything about him, save the scant and spurious information that is recorded in the books of Jeremiah and Kings?

Or is it merely that his passing was so ordinary, and our continued commemoration of it, long after he may as well have been a piece of fiction, so terribly absurd, that it actually becomes somewhat sublime? As Tertullian never said, “Credo, quia absurdum”. I don’t, although I appreciate the sentiment.

The following, from On The Main Line:

Someone once asked me if I had any information about what happened in Nazi Germany when it came to the traditional prayer for the government.

I saw an interesting statement in an article by Arno Herzberg in the 1991 Leo Baeck Institue Yearbook, called “The Jewish Press under the Nazi Regime Its Mission, Suppression and Defiance – A Memoir”

He writes that the Jewish press in those days, while it still existed, would print quotations from Tanach that could, in a veiled way, give expression to the emotions they were feeling. However, they could not be open. So, for example, they obviously could not quote Psalm 140.

But, writes Herzberg, they could make more subtle points. Then he writes:

“One prayer that caused problems was the prayer for the welfare of the government. It was an integral part of the prayerbook, but it had lost its meaning. It would have been more than hypocrisy to pray for the most vicious enemy the Jewish people had ever had. We could safely leave this to the churches. On the other hand, to omit it completely might be interpreted as disrespect and as an expression of displeasure with the government. It was impossible to discuss this in any forum, or in any newspaper column. But it attests to the common sense of Jewish leaders that this prayer was gradually abandoned²⁵ without comment. In the end, the Gestapo relieved hesitant souls of their objections. The prayer was prohibited.”

The footnote directs us to “an adaptation of the Jewish prayer for the beloved fatherland,” and refers to “Juedischer Widerstand in Deutschland” pg. 6, which luckily is available online (link).

There, the author writes that when the Nazis came to power many Jews began turning to the synagogue, who previously had not gone very often, or at all. He gives a prayer he remembers: “Herr der Welt, Vater aller Menschen. Wir bitten Dich um Deinen Schutz fuer alle die Laender, in denen Juden frei und ungestort ihrer Arbeit nachgehen koennen,” which means

“Lord of the World,
Father of all Men.
We pray you protect all lands in which Jews are free and undisturbed,
and able to pursue their work.”

If you are not a regular reader of On The Main Line, you really should be.