On authority and counting

I read about yet another case in which a recalcitrant (allegedly) o'dox Jewish husband is refusing to give his wife a get & is blackmailing her for alot of money. (See here & here; these are from The Jewish Journal of Greater Los Angles; the second article has a link to a New York Times piece about the same case.)

Ugh. The whole thing is stomach turning. The NYT story quotes Rabbi Jeremy Stern from the Organization for the Resolution of Agunot as saying:

“The rabbinical court system is such an ad hoc system where any man is able to call himself a rabbi and any three rabbis are able to call themselves a court, so that even if it’s not accepted by anyone, he is able to hide behind this,”
 

Rabbi Stern has alluded to something that bugs the hell out of me about Judaism in general and o'dox/u-o'dox Judaism in particular, namely that we have no unified authority or spiritual leadership and the result (in divorce cases, in conversion, in kashrut, etc., etc.) is chaos in which many good people get hurt and many SOB's get away, in this case, with bigamy. Ugh, ugh and double ugh.

I will say again that one of the many things I admire about the Israelite Samaritans is that they have one spiritual authority that everyone accepts and the result is order, the kind that the Torah calls for, administered by the people whom the Torah calls to administer it (cohanim, i.e. Aaronic priests). I have to admire this. This is but one more instance in which we o'dox Jews have lost our way, lost the Torah's way, and could learn a thing or two from our Israelite Samaritan brothers.

Another issue, related to the upcoming Passover holyday. I do not want to count the Omer, at least not the way we Jews do. The controversy is well-known. Leviticus 23:15 says:

And you shall count unto you from the morrow after the Sabbath [mimacharat haShabbat], from the day that you brought the sheaf of the waving; seven weeks shall there be complete;
 

We Jews claim that the underlined/Italicized section does not mean what it says and that Shabbat in this case means the first day of Passover, meaning that the second day of Passover is the first day of the Omer. The Israelite Samaritans claim (wonder of wonders) that the Torah here actually means what it says, meaning that the first day of the Omer is the day after the first Sabbath that falls during Passover. I have the read the Jewish arguments in favor of the Jewish (duh) view and quite honestly they seem like so much contrived sophistry designed to prove that the text means something other than what it says (i.e. God doesn't tell it to us straight but rather teases us). I accept the idea of oral traditions (the Israelite Samaritans have them) but I cannot accept the idea that oral traditions can either contradict or add to the concrete, written Torah, such as in the case of counting the Omer or the number of days that a menstruating woman is niddah. As I noted in a previous post, the Torah explicitly says it is seven days. Our sages added five more days; how is this not adding to the Torah?

Back to the Omer. The Israelite Samaritan view takes the text at face value. So...

I do not want to count the Omer. Putting on tefillin every morning doesn't bug me so much (doesn't bug me so much now/yet); it seems harmless enough. But counting the Omer the way we do it seems to contravene the plain meaning of a Torah verse. What do I do? My quandary raises another issue. Do I, as an o'dox Jew, simply fall back on the wiser-men-than-I-have-figured-this-out-and-I-should-act-accordingly thing? This, in turn, raises another issue. Do I put the brain and the heart that God gave me on auto-pilot and just do as I'm told? This seems like mindlessly falling in with the hivemind/herd mentality. Are we so many spiritual lemmings??!!

I do not want to count the Omer; whether I will remains to be seen. I don't know what to do (yet).

I pray that God gives me guidance!

 

A refuge for the timid

Well, the books (Samaritan Exegesis and The Israelite Samaritan Version of the Torah) have finally arrived! Thank God, at last!

I have read the forewords & introductions to the second book. I think I am going to read the Torah portions that match our weekly readings, to study how they compare and to note the differences.

I have read the first part of Samaritan Exegesis ("Mount Gerizim: The One True Sanctuary" by High Priest Amram Isaac and am about half-way through the second part ("The Book of Enlightenment: For the Instruction of the Inquirer" by High Priest Jacob son of Aaron).

High Priest Amram Isaac writes about Mt. Gerizim:

In the account (to which reference has been made) Jacob (upon whom be peace) is commanded to erect another altar on it, in order that the timid may be well assured that such a place is his refuge, for it is the house of God, the protector, (may He be exalted) who saves the one taking refuge in Him and seeking Him by faith, in this place.
 

I read this and tears welled up in my eyes. I am timid and the words of High Priest Amram Isaac reassure me. However imperfectly at this time, I take refuge in God and seek Him by faith (however imperfect, may He forgive me) in His place which is Mt. Gerizim. I must go back there and take my books and read and meditate there.

Now, more than ever, I feel that when I go to synagogue I am bowing in the House of Rimmon.

I've got to run. I will write more later.

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Those professional holy men

As I noted in a previous post, the Israelite Samaritans do not have professional holy men, i.e. all of their cohanim work and the young men of the (Holon) community serve in the IDF.

Unfortunately, sadly, apropos yesterday's demonstration in Jerusalem, this is not the case with us. It must be a gross distortion of Torah that so many healthy Jews use their Torah study as crowns to aggrandize themselves & as spades to dig with (see 4:7). Our eldest son (11th grade) is now going through the preliminaries vis-a-vis his eventual induction into the IDF for what should be at least 3 years of compulsory service. I served in the IDF reserves for 11 years (during which time I was in Lebanon, on the Egyptian border & in the Jordan Valley). How is it that our son and thousands of his peers should be the hewers of wood & drawers of water (to use a Biblical metaphor) for thousands of other(wise healthy) Jews who use (desecrate!) their Torah study to claim privilege for themselves??!! How is it that, when our son is inducted, my wife & I will have to live with the existential dread that the next knock on the door could be two officers from the Adjutancy Corps when other parents can rest assured that their children are safe & sound, far from harm's way, in some u-o'dox yeshiva? (Ditto for my wife/u-o'dox wives back when I was still doing annual reserve duty.)

Defending the Land of Israel and the people who live therein is holy work! The difference between the young man or woman in the IDF and the comfortable u-o'dox yeshiva student is that while the former are living up to the courage of their convictions (and may, God forbid, pay the ultimate sacrifice), the latter's convictions require no courage (and very little, if any, sacrifice).

No, I turn my back on the mentality that sees Torah-learning as the foundation of an aristocracy that claims privilege for itself (they're doing it for us, you see, and we should be grateful!) and deems itself worthy of material support from others' pockets. Quoth Abraham Lincoln's second innaugural address:

It may seem strange that any men should dare to ask a just God's assistance in wringing their bread from the sweat of other men's faces
 

Torah is life, life in this world, not apart from it in some cloistered study hall or in a privileged corner of it, but everywhere, even (especially!) in IDF service.

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More on Temples and Tabernacles

In a previous post, I wrote:
 

So, we went to the Western Wall a few weeks ago for a friend's son's bar mitzvah and I felt like it was just another place. I contrasted the grandiosity of the Temples that stood there, huge monumental buildings, with the simplicity of a tent (i.e. the Mishkan, according to the Samaritans) stretched over the bare rock of Givat Olam. (Quoth Thoreau: "Our lives are frittered away by detail; simplify, simplify, simplify.") For me at least, the latter is a much bigger draw; I find the former off-putting. (Who needs the big, grandiose, colossal buildings? God or our us?)

 A few Shabbatot (Sabbaths) ago, we (Jews) read Exodus 25:1-27:19 in synagogue, including Exodus 25:8-9:

And let them make Me a sanctuary (mikdash), that I may dwell among them. According to all that I show you, the pattern of the tabernacle (mishkan), and the pattern of all the furniture thereof, even so shall you make it.
 

O'dox Judaism views these verses as the mitzvah to build the Tabernacle and its successor, the Temple[s]. Linguistically, mikdash is a general word here, while mishkan is the more specific term; I think this flows from the plain reading of the text. God's subsequent, very specific & detailed, instructions (Exodus 25:10-27:19) are about the Tabernacle (mishkan) only! Where does it say anything about building a (huge, grandiose & imposing) Temple? Ah, that's our O'dox interpretation based on our concept of the Oral Torah, Torah Sh'ba'al peh, which, I've come/am coming/ to the conclusion, can be made to say just about anything but which in this case (as in many others) assumes facts not in (the written) evidence.

I go back to the simplicity of a tent (i.e. the Tabernacle/Mishkan) stetched over the bare rock of Givat Olam. Worship God on this mountain!

Back to the House of Rimmon.

Sigh

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Mascara from Hell

I saw this (Satmar Rebbe Blames Cancer on Make-Up) in the Forward the other day. I don't know what's worse, that someone with enough Torah-learning to have acquired the title 'Rabbi" can actually spout such primitive rubbish or that the sheep who follow him actually believe it. Are they the same religion as me? In Deuteronomy 4:6, God bids us adhere to the Torah & its precepts, "for this is your wisdom and your understanding in the sight of the peoples, that, when they hear all these statutes, shall say: 'Surely this great nation is a wise and understanding people.'" Only when people see that the Satmar Rebbe blames cancer on cosmetics, they'll say 'Surely this nation is a bunch of fu--ing idiots." I love it (not) when the Torah is made into a thing to be mocked and jeered at. What a terrible desecration of God's Name! Like the Talmud says (Berachot 19b, to be precise), "Wherever the Name [God's] is desecrated, one does not honor the rabbi."

Aside #1: Having proudly served for 11 years in the IDF reserves and being the proud father of a 17-year-old who is in the process of registering for his eventual conscription into the IDF, I have zero sympathy for the Satmars' virulent anti-Zionism and xenophobia toward just about anyone who is not like them or pretty close to being like them. Too many centuries in exile, in the Diaspora, away from the Land of Israel our mother, physically and conceptually, has warped their view of Torah, as it has nearly all o'dox Jews, them worst of all.

Aside #2: The little (110 gram) container of local cottage cheese I had with my fresh fruit & veggy lunch has three kashrut certifications on it!

And o'dox Jews thing the Israelite Samaritans are weird??!!

The books that I ordered are still at my parents' house in the US. Mom is not doing so well & Dad hasn't gotten around to mailing them off. At least I know where they are & that they're not lost in the mail in transit somewhere.

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Good for Gital and what our rabbis do (or do not)

I see in today's New York Post that Gital Dodelson's now ex-husband finally gave her a get. That's another area in which I think we (o'dox) Jews have lost our way. That a recalcitrant husband can condemn his [ex-]wife to vitual slavery by witholding a get is male bovine excrement. A friend of mine, who is much more learned than I am, tells me that back in early Mishnaic times a beit din could, if the husband or wife was being recalcitrant, declare the marriage dissolved. As my Israelite Samaritan friends would say, where in the Torah is it written that a husband can extort a divorce from his wife? With them, while any cohen can officiate a wedding, only the Cohen Gadol can issue a divorce.

On another note, all of their cohanim (remember, the Israelite Samaritans never developed a lay rabbinate, their cohanim are their spiritual leaders and their spiritual leaders are their cohanim) work, even the Cohen Gadol. The previous Cohen Gadol, who passed away a few days before the Passover offering last year, was a nurse. I believe the present CG is a businessman. The CHship with them always passes to the eldest cohein who is capable of performing the office, so politicking (I should say, nauseating politicking of the kind that surrounded the recent elections of our 2 current chief rabbis) is basically nil.

I am waiting for the books I ordered to arrive. I hope that they haven't been lost somewhere between my parents' house in the US and here.

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Esau, the Second Son & Vashti

Esau gets a bum rap. Boy-oh-boy, do Chazal just love to pick on him! I heard an interesting dvar Torah once in which the speaker said that the Tanakh's two posterchildren for ADD/ADHD are Esau and David (who happen to be the only two personalities explicitly referred to as having ruddy complexions/being redheads). Esau, the man of the field (as opposed to his twin brother Jacob, the quiet man who dwelt in tents), is all restless action. The story of him, the lentil pottage & selling his birthright is very telling, ADD/ADHD-wise. Esau says, "'Behold, I am at the point to die; and what profit shall the birthright do to me?'" He was not about to die. Exaggeration & the use of superlatives in speech is characteristic of ADD/ADHD. Esau shows no regard for the future & is focused solely on gratifying his (exaggerated) need of the moment. Genesis 25:34 ("and he did eat and drink, and rose up, and went his way. So Esau despised his birthright") loses something in the translation. In Hebrew, the five verbs here immediately follow eachother ("...vayachal, vayesht, vayakom, vayalech vayabez..."). Esau ate and drank until he was satiated, then rose and left. He was all verbs. It hit me a while back that his threat to kill Jacob (two chapters later) may have been/probably was his ADD/ADHD-typical florid speech, which he did not mean literally, but which Rebecca took literally, with all the fateful consequences. Our Sages, in the midrashic literature, love to come down on and demonize Esau. I wonder if the obvious rabbinical animus toward Esau is no more than the inability of our Sages, who were themselves quiet men who dwelled in tents, to understand this "man of the field." And what one cannot understand, one dumps on, of course. Which leads me to...

Chazal also love to beat up on the Second Son at the Seder, the so-called "Wicked Son". I'm more convinced than ever that he also gets a bad (and undeserved) rap, that the author of the Hagadah mapil alav tik (is framing him) as the Hebrew slang goes. I do not think that based on his question one can conclude with any degree of certainty that he is excluding himself from the whole. To do so, I think, is to assume facts not in evidence, and reflects more onn the baggage of the one doing the accusing. He asks a personal, intimate and out-of-the-box question that riles some people, the author of the Hagadah for one, who utterly misunderstand him and, of course, what one does not understand...(see above)

So, with any further ado...
_____

This is what you hurl at me?
I am not satisfied.
You neither understand nor see
and presume to be my guide?

Perchance I do not fit your mold
But that does not wicked make.
Nor does it cast me from the fold
My faith Hashem will take.

Set my teeth on edge you would?
Your stock phrases have no bite.
Complacent and untried you've stood
too long; will it end tonight?

I know what's on the pages
Please don't read it back
And neither quote the Sages
Take a different tack.

"What mean you by this service?"
My intention do not skew!
(Or do I make you nervous?)
The one excluded might be you.

Hamster-like, do you run the wheel
because it's all you know to do?
Tell me what you love and feel;
what does the service mean to you?

Which leads me to...
 
To complete the dumped-on trilogy, we've got Vashti, the malicious, evil bitch according to Artscroll, Aish Hatorah (at least their website), etc. I should add: Vashti, the monochrome, made-out-of-cardboard, malicious, evil bitch. (It always gets me about how certain folk, usually of the more orthodox/haredi bent, see the Tanakh as an adult version of a first grade reader, i.e. with everything and everyone simple & simplistic, and with shallow, uncomplex characters, who are more caricature than character. The Tanakh is the Book of Life & real life just isn't like that.) So...

Dance naked before a rabble of drunks

I said "Get lost!" the lousy skunks!

My "tail" was fine, that's what they wanted to see

I wouldn't be his toy, I wanted to be me.

 

What you see with me is what you get

I am an equal, not a pet

Daughter of kings, I won't be shut

Within the palace, that gilded hut.

But for some that's not cool

So they made me a freak, they made me a ghoul

With tzara'at, green skin, warts and a tail.

I want to scream, I want to wail!

Esther's their queen: Passive, demure

Manipulative, that's for sure.

She led Achash' with bit and bridle,

herself the perfect matinee idol.

They called me brazen, but that's absurd,

just because I won't follow the herd;

The scorned sister of the misunderstood son,

Why deal with a challenge you'd rather shun?

 

Do not consign me to the fringe

In your nice pat world, let me impinge

My heart is open to the One who sees,

I am Vashti; hear me please.

I think it's also characteristic of midrash that Chazal have to knock the "bad guys" (Esau, the Second Son, Vashti) in order to note the contrast with the "good guys" (Jacob, the Wise Son & Esther). This, of course, aside from being grossly unfair to the "bad guys" does no justice to the "good guys."

 

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