For those of you who don’t read Hebrew, the headline reads: Shavuot Night Learning The captions are (right to left, top to bottom):
1. What my wife thinks I do
2. What my son thinks I do
3. What a traditional Jew thinks I do
4. What a secular Jew thinks I do
5. What I think I do
6. What I really do

Shavuot is a few hours away, and this year I am taking the holiday off, which means rather than teaching all night I am free to wander the city and enjoy what other people are teaching.  I last did this 2 years ago, which gave me the opportunity to attend a lecture by the late Professor David Hartman. I don’t remember the title, but I do remember him discussing ‘אלו ואלו’ (‘elu v’elu’) from tractate Eduyot – the bat kol  or divine voice declaring ‘These and these are the words of the living God’ – that is, the opinions of both the schools of Hillel & Shammai are right, even though they disagree with each other.

Ever since I began teaching, I’ve been entertained by the idea that two opposite opinions can not only co-exist, but that each is inherently true. I even ran across a commentary quoting Rav Ovadiah Yosef that Moshe received the commandments from Sinai with 49 reasons to do it one way and 49 reasons to do it the opposite way. It’s up to subsequent generations to choose which is right.   (49, of course, is the number of days between Passover & Shavuot, but that’s a discussion for another time)

This helps me understand the significance of what the bat kol meant.  It wasn’t only talking about Hillel and Shammai. It’s telling us that ‘elu v’elu’, themselves, are the actual words of the living God.  It’s not merely that all approaches lead to living Torah, but Torah can only be kept alive through confronting and ultimately embracing the opposite opinion.  This is the heart of Torah shebe’al peh, the process through which it lives, catalyzed at the very point of contention.

Tonight I will drop into a local pluralistic beit midrash to learn with them.  I then plan to attend a traditional shiur at the local Orthodox synagogue.   Around Jerusalem, and in other cities, people will be participating in tikunim in synagogues and yeshivot, on street corners and in museums, in private homes and open spaces.  Some will approach learning from a feminist perspective, some will see it from al male oriented point of view.   Some will be reading Amichai or looking for Jewish values in artwork and song.  It will be an all-night celebration of ‘elu v’elu’ where everyone participating will be keeping Torah alive through the dynamics of engagement and discussion, of exchanging ideas even if we don’t share the same opinions.

May we all be able to keep the ‘elu v’elu’ going long after the tikun is over.

Chag same’ach.

Dr. C. Everett Koop

I remember this story from my days as a rabbi in Philadelphia when Dr. Koop was chief of surgery at Children’s Hospital.  This story introduced me to the man who was to later become the Surgeon General. He impressed me so much with his sensitivity and professionalism.  All the eulogies I have read today reinforce that feeling, and there is much more information on Wikipedia ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/C._Everett_Koop). 

What follows, however, is what I will remember.    

(Click on the headline below to read the story which originally appeared in the Philadelphia Inquirer)

Siamese Twins
The Surgery: An Agonizing Choice – Parents, Doctors, Rabbis In Dilemma

It raises a question we raised since our first class in September:  what is the next stage in the evolution of Oral law?

You can find the article here at http://tinyurl.com/d27s9nh (If you want to receive the file in the mail, write me at sslivko@gmail.com)

It was text-based Judaism, a religion of ritual and practice, distinguished by its reliance on interpretation of text and dependence on precedent.  This doesn’t mean that there were no innovations, but greater care was taken to attribute them to a text or individual who was prominent in the ‘chain of tradition.”.

This was a Judaism of Torah, and the early stages of the ‘Canonization of Process” of Torah She’be’al Peh.

Without getting into too much of the minutia, this transition seems to have been engineered (perhaps not deliberately, but certainly in fact) by the council of 120 leaders created to oversee the return to Judea & rebuilding of the Jewish community worldwide – The Anshei Knesset Hagedolah – The men of the Great Assembly.

A number of scholars have tried to pinpoint who these 120 people were and when they operated.  They could have been in power for  one session or a generation, or several.  From the Mishnah we learn  they existed between the era pf the prophets and the sages.  This, however, does not really explains what they did.  The sages of the Mishnah attributed a number of innovations to the group:  prayer structure, canonization of the Torah She’bikhtav (including fixing the definitive number of letters, verses, etc)  plus laws designed to establish a second commonwealth and create ties between Judea & the Diaspora.What’s most strange to me is not only the sages’ acceptance of the Anshei Knesset Hagedolah as undisputed fact (despite there being no objective evidence) but their silence on its fate — how it went from 120 to 1 – Shimon Hatzadik – in the age of Alexander the Great.Connected to this mystery is a question asked by a colleague of mine here.  What about the Kohanim (priests)?  Aren’t they supposed to be the heirs to Moshe’s Torah according to the passage in Devarim (Deuteronomy)?

ח “כי יפלא ממך דבר למשפט בין דם לדם בין דין לדין ובין נגע לנגע דברי ריבת בשעריך וקמת ועלית אל המקום אשר יבחר יהוה אלהיך בו טובאת אל הכהנים הלוים ואל השפט אשר יהיה בימים ההם ודרשת והגידו לך את דבר המשפט י ועשית על פי הדבר אשר יגידו לך מן המקום ההוא אשר יבחר ה’ ושמרת לעשות ככל אשר יורוך”

8” If there arise a matter too hard for thee in judgment, between blood and blood, between plea and plea, and between stroke and stroke, even matters of controversy within thy gates; then shalt thou arise, and get thee up unto the place which the LORD thy God shall choose.  9 And thou shall come unto the priests the Levites, and unto the judge that shall be in those days; and thou shalt inquire; and they shall declare unto thee the sentence of judgment. 10 And thou shalt do according to the tenor of the sentence, which they shall declare unto thee from that place which the LORD shall choose; and thou shalt observe to do according to all that they shall teach thee.”

There could be a number of possibilities as to the fate of that council:

• The Anshei Knesset Hagedolah was a one-time assembly convened in the time of Ezra and saying Shimon Hatzadik was a member of the last generation is only legend
• The Anshei Knesset Hagedolah never existed
• The Anshei Knesset Hagedolah did exist for the duration from Ezra to the time of Alexander the Great but their work was outside of the public eye since their focus was on religious law and takkanot
• The Anshei Knesset Hagedolah did exist at some time between the age of  Ezra & the time of Alexander the Great
• There were takkanot which the sages  attributed to the  Anshei Knesset Hagedolah  even though they did not exist
• The Anshei Knesset Hagedolah was a council based on the temple mount
• The Anshei Knesset Hagedolah actually were Kohanim, or included Kohanim.     Shimon Hatzadik may be the last scholar/kohen who personified the ideal of the council.

Most importantly, we have to remember that the Talmud is not a history book.  Generations are shortened or skipped altogether; names are not always listed or sometimes combined or confused.  Without concrete evidence, we can only rely on Talmudic-era anecdotes, what amounts to The Talmudic equivalent of an urban legend.   One thing we can accept as real – from about the time of the end of the Anshei Knesset Hagedolah, a part of Judaism moved away from the prophetic and took a rabbinic/ Pharisaic turn, which became the main stream.

The sages of the Talmud latch onto the reputation of this Anshei Knesset Hagedolah and successive generations of rabbis to reinforce their connection to the early generations of prophets.  In the process, they elevated the importance of Torah scholarship as the foundation for their leadership and downplayed the value of their prophetic connection to God, which they claimed connected them to their spiritual ancestors.   Eventually, this minor ability was ‘replaced” by the ‘bat kol’ – a special pronouncement from God which certain sages could hear as a soft, dove-like voice thanks to their super-sensory perception.  Over time, reverence for prophecy & bat-kol would be considered irrelevant, even disregarded, replaced by regard for the Torah of man.

Next: The Canonization of Process

Moshe Received the Torah from Sinai and passed it on to Yehoshua (Avot 1:1)

In the books of Nevi’im (Prophets) , we see how the navi (prophet) acted at times as a domestic adviser gifted with the power of divine knowledge (Shmuel helping Shaul – Saul – find his father’s donkeys) and at times as a religious leader (Shmuel, again, quoting the book of Devarim  – Deuteronomy –   on the rules governing a king) .  To the sages, these dual roles were suited to the navi as a personality spiritually attuned to God and a scholar, conversant with Torah – the laws – and capable of adapting it to his (or her) time through Takkanot – adjustments.

“Moshe received the Law from Sinai” is much more to the point than the elaboration in Avot d’Rabbi Natan.  Simply stated:  Moshe was there to get the law.  He received it (from God) and proceeded to teach it to his students, beginning the chain of transmission from God to the generation of the Mishnah.

Once we accept this ‘evolution’ this as historic fact, we can then begin to understand what the Mishnah is and the tradition it reflects.  The tradition is the conclusion of generations of accumulated takkanot which appear in the Mishnah as binding laws from early on (Torah she’be’eal peh) but which had no mention in the Torah she’bikhtav.    Some were given to Moshe which he transmitted to Yehoshua.  Some were innovations Yehoshua himself added.  Others came from later prophets and leaders.  All were part of the oral tradition ‘halakhah le’Moshe mi’Sinai ‘– laws given to Moshe from Sinai – that is, inferred from the written law by rules passed down from Moshe to his disciples.   This is what the Rambam – Maimonides refers to when he writes the history of transmission of Torah from generation to generation.  (See attachment)

It’s the ‘hardware’ (the text) & the ‘programs’ (mitzvoth) and the ‘software’ (how to program the Torah to adapt it to successive generations)  that goes from Sinai in a direct line to the time of the Mishnah, and ultimately our time.

The sages said the first generation of takkanot came when the Jews invaded and settled Canaan.  Some takkanot they attribute to Yehoshua deal with civil and social law, adapting the Torah written in outline form for a Bedouin society to a  new ‘urban’ reality.   These are logical inferences.  Other “Yehoshu-ic” traditions of a religious nature, or religious traditions attributed to other figures in Nevi’im, are harder to prove, though some are explict, like Ezra’s takkanah to read Torah during the week.    Additional post-biblical adaptations are attributed to the Anshei Knesset Hagedolah, whose role was to create a post-prophetic Judaism which would unify Judaism for the Judean and Diaspora communities.

Legends and stories from the midrash and other sources back the sages’ interpretation of history.  They  also show that the sages had an almost scientific understanding of Torah she’be’eal peh’s evolution.   The Torah she’bikhtav is the starting point for us as a nation and it is also the starting point of other traditions and beliefs.    It was (and is!)  Torah she’be’eal peh which distinguished us from the others  because it preserves the spiritual essence of what was written and goes  beyond it, creating a common culture and way of life that brings us  together no matter how far apart we are.

It’s  something I’ve been meaning to do for years.

Some students asked me ‘how long will this course be?’ and my answer is ‘I don’t know.’ I may bow to the academic calendar or continue this until it’s played out.  I may write a book, I may just leave the material and have someone else write it.  (Not that there haven’t been some wonderful books written already, like Hirsch-Weiss’ Dor Dor ve’dorshov or Orbach’s Hahalakhah — Mekorotehah ve’Hitpathutah’).   I am recording our classes (and believe me, there is nothing so painful as seeing yourself lecturing  in front of a group) but at least this way I have a record of what we say so that I can prepare pod casts for the future (which I am doing now and will tell you more about later).

I believe that we have gone through two major shifts since Sinai: the first being the canonization of the Torah and closing the book on Torah shebikhtav (written law); the second being the canonization of process, when generations of scholars decided what kinds derivations would be acceptable ways to determine Torah Shebe’al peh.  

I believe a third shift is imminent.

The day is short and the work is long. But I hope at then end of day (or work),  we will have added something to the understanding of where it all began and, possibly, have a better idea of where it could eventually lead.

The first elephant I wanted to catch was actually a pretty easy target: What did other mitzvot did people feel should be added to the list?  Teaching my son(s) Frisbee was my personal favorite (it is a healthy sport!), but I was sure other people had different, possibly better ideas.   So I included the question on the survey and received a wide variety of answers.    Of course, as with all open ended questions, it was too hard to just put on an excel sheet, so I decided I would capture this particular pachyderm with a tag cloud.

For those of you who do not know what a tag cloud, here’s a brief explanation.  A tag cloud is a graphic display of of text which uses relative size to rank the importance of words, much the same way Egyptian art pictured the Pharoah as much bigger than his  subjects.  I took all the answers and categorized them, fed them into a tag cloud maker and got the following graphic:

 Midot, that is, moral behavior, was the clear winner.   It included suggestions that ranged from “respect other people” to “be a mentsch” and few other choice examples.  Of course, I feel that this was inherent in teaching Torah — like Hillel told the impatient man “That which you hate, do not do to your friend – this is the entire Torah, the rest is commentary.  Now go and learn.”

If a father isn’t  teaching that to his son, he’s just not teaching Torah.  I won’t get into analysis, here, but let’s just say I am very happy people put midot at the top of the list as an integral part of our legacy to our kids.

With the next set of questions though, my elephant hunt really went underway.  Where were the mothers and daughters?  How did we manage to leave them out of the list all these years? And how would we reframe the list now?

The first question in the set was: What should fathers teach their daughters?  The answers were as follows:
The most common answer (given by both men and women) was that fathers have the same obligations to their daughters as to their sons.  Some people took one or more of the items from the list and made them the key responsibility  (teaching Torah, teaching a trade).  Others added new responsibilities reflecting contemporary life skills.

The second question was: What should mothers teach their daughters?  The answers here were:
Here Torah was the most common answer, with “Same as sons” in second place (just the opposite of set of answers to the previous question.)  But also showing up on the list — though not as frequently — were ‘Parenting,’ ‘Self-Respect.’   and less often, ‘Self-Defense’ and ‘Understanding Men.’

Finally, I asked the big question.  If the list were expanded to include mothers (much more common in today’s world):  What are the mothers’ obligations to their sons?  Here are the answers:

On the one hand, the popular response was the same obligations as the father.  But neck-in-neck to that was housework, followed by  ‘Torah,’ ‘Derekh-Eretz’ and ‘Respecting-your-Wife.’

One interesting point is that the idea of respect for husband/wife showed up more prominently in the list of  the mother’s obligations, not fathers.  In teh father’s new list, the closest was teaching daughters to understand men.

I leave the interpretations up to you.

The End of the Hunt

I began with the idea that the list in Kiddushin was not complete, and from the survey responses I received, so did everyone else.  I was also curious as to how including women in the list would change it.  But could the responses be acceptable to an observant Jew like me?  Was I setting myself – and anyone else – up?  We saw the list change over time but could it change so much that we could add women to it?

I believe the answer is yes.

In Kiddushin, the list is meant to show the difference between those who are commanded to observe a mitzvah and those who are not.   The guiding principle is: one who observes because he is following God’s commandment is greater than on who observes because he feels like it.  A commonly held interpretation is that one who is commanded gets a reward, and one who isn’t commanded doesn’t    illustrated by the sages’ story of Dama ben Netinah, a non-Jew who is handsomely rewarded for honoring his father.  If one who  is not specifically obligated  to observe  is rewarded, the sages go on to say, how much more so would one be rewarded when he is  obligated!

But like the list he principle itself  has evolved.

In its earliest incarnation, it became a reason for excluding those who do the mitzvah without being oblgated.  Unfortunately, elements of that interpretation still remain to this day.  Later, it developed into an attitude of tolerance:”No, it’s not a mitzvah for you, but if you do it, well, we won’t necessarily stop you.”

For me it was always psychology.  One who observes out of personal desire or ‘me-too’ism may stop observing when the attraction fades.  One who observes because s/he  is commanded, however,  will do it because s/he has to.  Based on that that I came up with a new interpretation (which I gratefully discovered later was actually a teshuvah)

This interpretation says that when you take upon yourself a mitzvah as a mitzvah, then you are as obligated as if you, yourself, were commanded.  And today, we live in a time when men and women equally take upon themselves the commitment of participating in the community and society then for everyone the mitzvah of raising a child is an obligation – a mitzvah.  Therefore, there are no real exclusions from who is responsible for these basic parenting requirements.  Today, men and women are equally obligated to teach their sons and daughters those skills that are on the evolving list.

It’s a Man’s World.  Not!

The conclusion –we are all obligated to teach all our children what they need to know to stay safe, to succeed and to live Jewish lives. Fathers and mothers share this responsibility equally,  whichever way they can.   And even if it does take a village to raise a child, the mitzvah is for the parent(s)  – man and/or woman.

Although our sages wrote this list in their time, they wrote it for all time, but like Talmud itself, it was not meant to be left alone.  It was a starting point.  In every generation we need to examine it anew and reframe it to accomplish the same ends they intended in ways relevant to us for our time.

That’s the Talmudic way.

Madonna arrived in Israel just before Shavuot while I was busy putting together my presentation for Kehillat Yediyah’s  Tikun leil Shavuot (all-night learning session) – naturally I drew the 2:30 AM slot.  Of course, I didn’t expect her to show, what with rehearsals and all.  Besides, as far as I know she may have become shomeret Shabbat since she changed her name to Esther and wouldn’t drive to Jerusalem anyway.   Of course, if I really had wanted Madonna/Esther to attend, I would have added the word “kabbalah ‘ to the title.

Instead, I called it “Obligations of a Father to His Son (after Tractate Kiddushin 29a) – Reframing the List for Today,” and was looking forward to having my friends attend.   That was until so many of them came up to me to say  ”If only you were teaching earlier…”  OK, at least I knew who wasn’t coming.  But as for who would be coming, let’s just say that when my wife, Michele, told me to give everyone there her regards I answered “OK, I’ll be sure to tell him.”

As it turned out, 25 people did join me – and we had a great time.

So for  Esther – and a number of my friends – who didn’t show up, here’s what she missed.

Tractate Kiddushin discusses mitzvot required of men only (the time-related positive ones).  In that discussion is a list of mitzvot  required of fathers– not mothers —  to do for their sons –not daughters.   The list that is mentioned is:

1. Circumcision
2. Redeeming him (if he’s a first-born)
3. Teaching him Torah
4. Teaching him a trade
5. Marrying him off to a wife
6. Another opinion adds teaching him to swim to the list.

For years I’ve stared at this list wondering if that’s all there is.  Sure, these are basic practical requirements mandated by the Torah, but could the list be tweaked? (Quick answer: yes) Then what could be added?  Martial arts?  Throwing a Frisbee? I also wondered how might others tweak the list?   So I decided to survey my friends and congregation members to see what they actually did think.  It was nothing formal, just for fun.   I received about 50 responses (out of 150 sent) and shared them at the session

Here’s what I learned:

Which of the obligation is the most important?

53% of the respondents felt that circumcision was the most important mitzvah.  No difficulty there.  Circumcision is what seals our collective identity.  No matter how observan twe may or may not be, it is a tangible symbol of our peoplehood– the very first Jewish mitzvah.  Moreover, it resonates the basic Jewish belief that the world was intentionally created to give us an opportunity for tikun — repairing –ourselves and our environment.

Which of the obligations is the least important?

For the second question, 47% felt that teaching a son to swim was the least mportant mitzvah on the list. Of course, on the list itself it appears as an afterthought.  The RaMBaM makes this manadatory , which is understandble given his family history.  It does show, however, that the list is not canon and can change over time.

Which obligation would you remove from the list?

Finally, when I asked which mitzvah would you drop from the list altogether I was surprised that almost 80% of the respondents said to marry him off.  Having been brought up on the story of how much effort Avraham made to find a wife for Yitzhak  I always considered this one of the more important parental responsibilities.   (What do you think?)

As I said, this was what first interested me about the list.  But as I looked at it again, I realized something was missing.   What about mothers?  What about daughters?    Where are they on the list?  How would they change it?  Was there elephant in the room that Talmud ignored?  So I decided that this Shavuot we were going to take it to the next level.

This Shavuot, we were going on an elephant hunt.

Next Post: Part 2 – Hunting Elephants with Tag Clouds 

I wasn’t impressed.

It was many years later when I heard this story from my father, z”l, that I understood dit a bit more.

My parents were married just before the Nazi invasion of Poland in 1939.  They moved to my father’s town of Trochenbrod/Lozhist.  The ketubah remained with my mother, as was the custom then and now.  Unlike ketubot today, it was not meant to be displayed. My mother kept hers with her at all times and guarded it carefully, as some women still do.

Good thing, too, that she did.  Not long after the invasion and division of Poland, Hitler broke his pact with Stalin.  My mother happened to be in Kiev at the time on a field trip with a group of local teachers (she was working for the local board of education — or whatever the office was called) and had taken her ketubah with her, not risking to leave it out of her sight.  Meanwhile her husband, my father, who was a sharpshooter in the Russian army was ordered to prepare to move to the front – in the opposite direction.

God had other plans and my father was sent back home.  So he boarded a Kiev-bound train – still in uniform —  to find his wife.  For weeks he tried to follow a trail that was growing colder and colder, believing  his wife would probably have gone east to get away from the approaching battlefront.  His search took him to Baku, Azerbaijan, where, as a rabbi, he found shelter in the Jewish community in this city on the Caspian coast.   He elected to go onward, still searching, until he found a place of refuge in Fergana, Uzbekistan.

After two years of searching, stopping Polish refugees who escaped from the war to sk about news from home, wondering if he would ever see his wife again, he finally received word that a small group of refugees from Volhyn, his home district, had just arrived in Fergana in search of family and “lanzleit.” With the address of the home in which they were staying in his hand, my father ran to meet them and find out whatever news he could.

He walked up the front steps.   He knocked on the door.  The door opened and standing in front of him was the wife he hadn’t seen for two years.

The ketubah she had taken to Kiev was still with her.

They set up home in Fergana and stayed there until they received news that the war was over.  My older sister, Shulamit, was born there.  A few years later my other sister, Ida, was born, this time in a DP camp in Austria.  I was born 5 years later, in November, 1952, just about 11months after my parents finally settled in America.

All through those years, that ketubah never left my mother’s possession.  However, I can’t remember the last time I saw it.  Sometime around my father’s death, I think.

Today is my mother’s first yahrzeit is May 3^rd, the 11^th day of Iyar.  Yahrzeit a time when we think about the legacies, memories and images of those we loved.  Each of us in the family has his or her own, a mental or physical keepsake we carry with us.

From my mother I have memories of her singing, her amazing cooking, her manic fussing over us and her generous hospitality.  I have recordings of her, a few videos, and photos of her surrounded by her family. Unfortunately, I do not have the ketubah.  I hope I find it again someday. But I do remember what it looked like and what it meant.

Much like I remember my mom.

That was it. I asked my question and got my answer.  I was destined to keep the kitniyot minhag forever.
And so I do. It’s now beome my way of respecting my father’s wishes and keeping the tradition he carried with him as a true survivor of the Holocaust. It’s my connection to the life that was his before the war. And now it’s mine as well.
But it won’t be my children’s. With them, I will create another legacy.
That’s why when Yom Hashoah siren sounds, we will stand and remember my father and mother, my chidren’s saba and savta, and all the aunts, uncles, cousins they will never know. We will light a candle in their memory, just as I will be lighting a candle in two weeks on my mother’s first yahrzeit. When we do this, I will also be thinking about the legacy my father left me and wondering what kind of legacy will I be leaving my children here and in the US. I hope they will come to know this part of their father’s life, and I hope they will create a legacy of their own that they can share with their children in the proper time.