Hassagot השגות

When does the water get too hot?

    The proverbial frog is placed in tepid water and is comfortable.  The water is gently heated; the frog remains content.  As the temperature rises beyond the point its body can survive, the frog dies.
    Much of the Jewish world during the years immediately preceding the Holocaust was like that frog--more or less unaware of the import of the foul wind that swept through Germany and that burst upon much of the rest of Europe.  I wonder whether the position of the Jews in America is akin to that of the Jews of 1930s Europe, akin to the proverbial frog.
    Strong words, a strong reaction to recent trends and events.  Paranoid perhaps?  My view is that one must be vigilant (that is, awake, aware, on watch), serious, informed, and appropriately vocal.  I am not a brave person, but I certainly air my concerns in conversations with family and friends and in posts on this blog. 

No Yom Sylvester

The "Yom Silvester" that many Jews will celebrate is not for Jews.  With G-d's blessing, we have many "yamim" of our own.  And today, December 31, coincides with עשרה בטבת, the 10th of Tevet, a day of mourning and introspection that marks the beginning of the siege of Jerusalem leading up to the destruction of the Beit HaMikdash/Temple.    As the Bible relates: 'In the ninth year of his reign, in the tenth month, on the tenth (day) of the month, Nebuchadnezzar, King of Babylon came, he and all his hosts, upon Jerusalem, and he encamped upon it and built forts around it.  The city was besieged until the eleventh year of King Zedekiah/צדקיהו. On the ninth of the month famine was intense in the city, the people had no bread, and the city was breached.' (II Kings 25). See  http://www.ou.org/chagim/roshchodesh/tevet/fast.htm for more information.

"Silvester" is, by the bye, the name for the New Year's Eve celebration in two countries, according to Wikipedia: Germany and Israel.  See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/New_Years_Eve. 

-- H. A. Massig המשיג

Rosh Hashanah 5767 ראש השנה תשס"ז

The Torah portion of Nitzavim/נצבים (Deut. 29:9 - 30:20) is always read on the Shabbos before Rosh Hashanah.  Nitzavim contains 40 verses.  The number forty is represented in Hebrew by the letter mem/מ"ם, that is, mayim/מים/water. 

The first verses of the portion emphasize the letter מ"ם/mem and the aspect of water:

אתם נצבים היום כולכם לפני ה' א-ל-היכם ראשיכם שבטיכם זקניכם ושוטריכם כל איש ישראל.  טפכם נשיכם ... מחוטב עציך עד שואב מימיך

You stand this day, all of you,  before the L-rd your G-d--your tribal heads, your elders and your officials, all the men of Israel, your children, your wives...from [your] woodchopper to [your] water drawer.  (Deut. 29:9-10)

The mnemonic device for the verses of a Torah portion is a word whose letters have the same numerical value.  For Nitzavim, the device or סימן is לבבו/his heart, as in the verse:

פן יש בכם איש או אשה...אשר לבבו פונה היום מעם ה' א-לו-הינו...

Perchance there is among you some man or woman...whose heart is even now turning away from the L-rd our G-d... (Deut. 29:17)

The same word reappears in the verse:

והתברך בלבבו לאמור שלום יהיה-לי...למען ספות הרוה את-הצמאה

...he may fancy himself immune (he will bless himself in his heart) thinking, "I shall be safe" (peace shall be mine)...to compound the moist with the thirsty.  (Deut. 29:18).

The Aramaic Targum of Onkelos renders the final clause:

לאוספא ליה חטאי שלותא על זדנותא

to compound sins of non-intention with [those of] willfulness

When one is watered (Rashi: drunk), one acts without evil intention.  When one is "thirsty" he acts out of intention and desire (Rashi).

Just as the letter mem/מ"ם is made up of two letters mem, so there are two intentions/hearts/לבבו, two thirsts, two waters.  All of them revolve around and center upon the middle letter of mayim/מים, that is, the letter yud/יו"ד, that is, G-d.

There is the intention that turns away/פונה...מעם from G-d (Deut. 29:17) and there is the intention that stands in the presence/נצבים...לפני ה' אלקינו of G-d (Deut. 29:9). 

There is the thirst of willful wrongdoing/לספות הרוה את הצמאה (Deut. 29:18) and there is the thirst for G-d:

כאיל תערוג על אפיקי מים, כן נפשי תערוג אליך א-ל-הים. צמאה נפשי ל-א-להים לא-ל חי

Like a hind crying for watercourses, so my soul cries for You, O G-d.  My soul thirsts for G-d, the living G-d... (Psalms 42:2-3)

There are two waters.  There is the seething water of willfulness:

אזי עבר על נפשנו המים הזידונים

Over us would have swept the seething (zeidonim) waters (Psalms 124:5.  As the Malbim explains, seething/zeidonim waters refer to willfulness and apostasy.)

And there is the water of purification of repentance, reconciliation, atonement:

וזרקתי עליכם מים טהורים וטהרתם

I will sprinkle purifying water upon you and you shall be purified... (Ezekiel 36:25)

On Rosh Hashanah, we beseech the Master of the World that He save us from the waters of wilfullness and sprinkle us with the waters of purity:

טומאה העבר והתם הזידונים, טהרה תזרוק מים הנאמנים

Take away our impurity and make innocent the seething [water/misdeeds], sprinkle purification, the faithful water (from the Selichah/penitential poem "My L-rd, G-d of Hosts" of Shlomoh bar Yitzchak [Selichah #32 in the Lithuanian Rite, recited on the Eve of Rosh Hashanah])

In order to receive the external purification, the sprinkled water, we must apply the internal purification.  To do this, we redirect our intention: We overcome the deceit of our false thirst for physical and even intellectual gratification.  We thirst for G-d:

צמאה נפשי ל-א-להים לא-ל חי

My soul thirsts for G-d, the living G-d... (Psalms 42:3)

We stand before G-d, bringing all of our letters mem, bringing all aspects of ourselves:

your tribal heads, your elders and your officials, all the men of Israel, your children, your wives...from [your] woodchopper to [your] water drawer

that is, all of our physical and intellectual powers, all of our sensitivities and experience, and all of our good deeds, Torah, and mitzvos. 

Let us draw our water and may G-d sprinkle us with His.

-- H. A. Massig המשיג

Is Our Core Healthy?

As one who became observant as a young adult, I have wandered in places where the core is not healthy.

There is a hollowness there.  It may be filled with a substitute for wholeness:

• a worship of the individual and his dreams and passions and petty schemings
• a worship of the nation and its excessive self-love
• even a worship of the Torah--for the love letter cannot ever be confused with the Lover, and the letter of admonition cannot ever be confused with Admonisher

The wholeness comes from love of and fear of G-d.

-- המשיג H. A. Massig

Munich, Israel, Diaspora

Steven Spielberg's Munich is an argument against the existence of the state of Israel and for a diasporan Jewry. 

The movie establishes clear dichotomies.  Israel is a response to the Holocaust, to the blood of one's slain ancestors that cries out of the ground for revenge.   The Diaspora (represented by Brooklyn) is a place to raise one's daughter.  Israel is seeped in blood, its existence is bloody, its perpetuation requires the shedding of blood.  The Diaspora is a place where one eats, where one is nourished, where one raises his daughter.    To defend the continued existence of Israel, one must appeal to a thirst for blood, for revenge.   Jewish values, Jewish legitimacy, recoil against the very need to defend the state.   The very members of Avner's team of avengers express a Jewish revulsion against the violence they perpetuate.  In the end, only two of the original five live.  One, Avner, has opted out of Israeliness to live as a Jew (that is, to cook and feed, not to govern and kill) in the Diaspora.   Only one of the five remains unscathed.  That is Steve, a South African Jew who asserts "The only blood that matters to me is Jewish blood."  Noone in the movie articulates a rationale for the difficult task of protecting Israel in Jewish terms.

Tony Kushner and Steven Spielberg have given us a choice:  A Jew may live as a Jew in the Diaspora or as an Israeli in Israel.  The state of being a Jew cannot be maintained, in Munich, in the Jewish State. 

-- H. A. Massig המשיג

A Crisis in Religious Zionism

See Religious Zionism's Identity Crisis in the Sept. 5 issue of the Jerusalem Report (www.jrep.com). 

The disengagement from Gaza and the northern West Bank has undermined the relationship of many in the religious Zionist camp with the state they have viewed as the vehicle for the Jewish people's redemption. As their shock and sense of betrayal deepen, the community faces gripping questions of where to turn and what to believe.

Is the nationalist religious public in Israel moving away from political engagement (the realm of doing) to the kind of political disengagement often associated with the chareidim/ultra-Orthodox? 

-- H. A. Massig המשיג

Aliyot for Women

After studying the Talmudic discussion regarding calling women to the Torah, and prior to reading R. Daniel Sperber's piece on the subject in דעות/De'ot, the following seems to be the case:

• The discussion of the appropriateness of calling women to the Torah in a traditional (Orthodox) service is not at root a matter of technical permission/prohibition.
• Nor is it, at heart, a matter of the status of women in Judaism.
• It is, rather, a question of the status of the individual in Judaism.

Traditionalist opposition to aliyot for women may be framed in terms of technical prohibition. 

• However, at root such opposition tends to reflect a desire to preserve the focus on the communal or familial vis-a-vis the individual or personal.

The very title of Rabbi Sperber's piece, כבוד הציבור וכבוד הבריות, "The Dignity of the Congregation and the Dignity of People," informs my current reading of the issue at hand. 

[January 2006: I subsequently read Rabbi Sperber's piece; my comments above stand.]

-- H. A. Massig המשיג

Will We Say No to Science?

Traditional Jews are in love with science and, in particular, medicine.  If respected researchers do it, it must be good.  Therapeutic ends justify the means.

One would do well to pause in placing his trust in the hands of researchers.  Eric Cohen puts it well in his Unorthodox Endorsement:

And I think it is fair to say that most stem-cell biologists — those in the laboratories destroying embryos — don’t revere God and Torah the way most Orthodox Jews do. This, too, the wise Jewish citizen must remember.

Let us remember:

1. Medicine is not necessarily in accord with Torah
2. Wonderful ends are not sufficient to justify all means.
3. The mandate to heal is not the only criterion in decision making.
4. There is no intrinsic problem for traditional Jews to appear old fashioned, if our teachings require it.

-- H. A. Massig המשיג

What if we cannot conceive?

If we cannot conceive, let us adopt.  G-d Himself is described as אבי יתומים/the father of orphans.  To adopt is a profound act of חסד/lovingkindness and imitatio dei.   Adoption is noble.   One may come to adopt only account of infertility; that does not lessen the goodness of the act.  Indeed, adoption is a powerful and positive response to the message of our infertility.

-- H. A. Massig המשיג

IVF and the views of some contemporary rabbinic decisors

I share the following, from The Preembryo in Halacha by Rabbi Yitzchok Breitowitz (see http://www.jlaw.com/Articles/preemb.html).  Note especially the position of Rabbi Eliezer Waldenberg.  I have removed the footnotes, available at www.jlaw.com.  Otherwise, the text below is as it appears there.

By and large, most poskim have assimilated IVF to AIH and have permitted its utilization subject to the same limitations. A notable exception is Rabbi Eliezer Waldenberg who maintains that IVF is an impermissible procedure and even ex post facto one does not fulfill the mitzva of p'ru u'revu. He argues that IVF is more problematical than AIH in a number of distinct respects: (1) Unlike AIH where all sperm is deposited into the vagina or uterus, IVF only transfers the fertilized ova with the rest of the sperm discarded, thus violating the edict against hashchatat zera; (2) One does not fulfill the mitzva of procreation where fertilization occurs outside of the womb. This independently creates a violation of hashchatat zera; (3) There is neither a paternal or maternal relationship with an IVF-offspring. Rabbi Moshe Sternbuch also denies paternal identity in cases of IVF and consequently, prohibits the practice as violative of hashchatat zera. R. Yehuda Gershuni agrees with Rabbis Sternbuch and Waldenberg that there is no paternal bond between a sperm donor and an externalized embryo even if later brought to term but he nonetheless permits the procedure; since IVF does in fact result in the creation of a physical human being albeit one that is not halachically related to the genetic parents, it is a fulfillment of the prophetic statement, "He did not create the world to be void but he formed it so that it would be settled" [lashevet yatzara] (Isaiah 45:18). R. Gershuni argues that even the mere fulfillment of lashevet is enough to prevent the emission of the seed from being levatala.

As noted, Rabbis Waldenberg, Sternbach, and Gershuni are decidedly in the minority. Virtually all contemporary poskim have concluded, first, that the egg and sperm providers do have a parental relationship with an IVF - generated offspring; second, that the procedure if undertaken for procreation by an otherwise infertile couple does not violate the prohibitions against hashchatat zera; third, that one may fulfill from any resulting offspring either the mitzva of p'ru u'revo or at the very least, the "lesser" mitzva of lashevet. These will be the assumptions on which this paper is predicated.

-- H. A. Massig המשיג