30 minute read
Rabbi Reuven Taragin
Rabbi Reuven Taragin
Celebrating the Blessings of Life
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Zman simchateinu
Though there is a mitzvah to be joyous on all of our holidays, only Sukkot is described as zman simchateinu, “the time of our joy”.1 The Torah mentions the word simcha a total of only four times in reference to holidays, and three of these mentions concern Sukkot.2 The famous and oft-sung words v’samachta b’chagecha… v’hayita ach sameach, “and you shall rejoice on your festivals and be fully joyous” refer specifically to Sukkot.3
Lifnei Hashem
Why is Sukkot so joyous? On a simple level, Sukkot – also called Chag HaAsif, 4 the “Holiday of Harvesting” – celebrates the successful completion of the harvest season.5 Although our celebration of the harvest is similar to that of other cultures, Rambam explains that Sukkot differs because of its focus on the Beit HaMikdash: “And you shall rejoice before Hashem your G-d for seven days” (Vayikra 23:40).6 This is also why Sukkot is described as Chag Hashem, the “Festival of G-d”.7 We celebrate “before Hashem” because we realize that He is the cause of our success. Much like the mitzvah of bringing bikkurim, 8 on Sukkot we use products of the harvest to praise9 and thank10 Him for our success. We remember how Hashem cared for us in the desert and realize that he continues to do so today.
The focus of our simcha in the Beit HaMikdash was the simchat beit haShoeva, the “water libation celebration”.11 Throughout each night of Sukkot, the people celebrated the water just drawn from the Shiloach spring before pouring it out on the altar the next morning. This simcha was so unique that Chazal describe it as qualitatively greater than any other.12 Why was this ritual, which is not even explicitly mentioned in the Torah, the center of the Sukkot celebration? There seems to be little to celebrate. Sukkot is observed at the end of the summer when the springs are at their low point. The water libation ceremony is, appropriately, a national prayer beseeching Hashem to provide us with more water in the year ahead.13 Why is this ceremony the source of such extraordinary simcha?
A deeper level of simcha
Though the water libation ceremony seems to be little cause for joy, it is, in fact, the root of our most profound simcha. With this ceremony, we demonstrate that our joy is not merely the result of our success, but also because we recognize that Hashem cares and provides for us. Though most people naturally celebrate their successes, they have no reason to assume their success will continue in the future. We, however, know that our success signifies the strength of our relationship with Hashem, and so we are confident the success will continue.
When Eliyahu HaNavi stood at Har HaCarmel after years of drought, he poured out four large jugs of the nation’s last remaining water on the altar of Hashem as an expression of his confidence in G-d’s mercy.14 Each year at the water libation ceremony, we express this same confidence by not only pouring out the last of our water, but by also celebrating intensively when doing so. We reflect on our success of the past year, appreciate its source, thank and praise Hashem for it, and celebrate our confidence in the future. Like Eliyahu HaNavi, whose actions and prayers at Har HaCarmel were answered with rain,15 our celebration of faith makes us worthy of receiving rain and Hashem’s other blessings.16 Though it is always easy to focus on what we are missing in our lives, Sukkot is an opportunity to reflect upon and celebrate Hashem’s great blessings that we too often take for granted. May this celebration strengthen our confidence and merit us continued good health, happiness, and success in the upcoming year.
1. See Rambam, Sukkah 8:12 who speaks of the
“additional joy” of Sukkot in contrast to the standard joy of other holidays. 2. Vayikra 23:40, Devarim 16:14,15. 3. Devarim 16:14–15. 4. Shemot 23:16. 5. Vayikra 23:39. See also Sefer HaChinuch 324.
Chazal link the celebration to Hashem’s forgiveness of Am Yisrael during the first weeks of Tishrei (Midrash Tehillim 102, Sukkah 53a,
Vayikra Rabbah Emor 30). 6. Moreh Nevuchim 3:43. This verse is the basis for the Torah law that the four species are only taken for seven full days in the Beit
HaMikdash (Mishnah, Sukkah 41a). 7. Vayikra 23:39, Devarim 16:15. 8. Note the parallel between the verses describing the joy of the four species (Vayikra 23:40) and the verses describing bikkurim (Devarim 26:2,11). 9. This is why we take the four species before
Hallel and integrate them into the service. 10. Rashbam, Ramban on Vayikra 23:39 and
Ritva on Sukkah 53a. 11. “All of this joy is only for the water libation” – Rashi, Sukkah 50a. 12. “Whoever did not see the joy of the water libation has never seen joy in his life” –
Sukkah 51b. 13. Rosh Hashanah 16a. 14. Melachim I 18:34–35, Shmuel II 23:16. 15. Melachim I 18:45. 16. Sefer HaChinuch 325.
Rabbi Reuven Taragin is Educational Director of Mizrachi and Dean of the Yeshivat Hakotel Overseas Program.
BLAST
From the Past
Marking the 105th Anniversary of the Balfour Declaration – November 2, 2022
Rabbi Reuven Katz zt”l (1880–1963), one of the great Torah scholars of the first half of the 20th century, served as a community rabbi on three continents. After years of study in the Chofetz Chayim’s yeshivah in Radin, Slabodka and the kollel of Rabbi Chaim Ozer Grodzinski, he served for many years as a rabbi in Russia before moving to America in 1929 to become the rabbi of Bayonne, New Jersey. In 1932, the community of Petach Tikva brought Rabbi Katz to Israel to become its Ashkenazi Chief Rabbi, where he played a central role in building the broader Israeli rabbinate. In 1936, Rabbi Katz presented the following speech to Great Britain’s Palestine Royal Commission, known as the Peel Commission, appointed to investigate the causes of unrest in Palestine. It was later published in 1952 in Sha’ar Reuven, a collection of Rabbi Katz’s essays on contemporary issues.
Through the long period of our exile, the Land of Israel has always remained ours, by virtue of the eternal right of Divine Providence, the commandments and the larger purpose of our Torah. But with the Balfour Declaration granted to us by the British nation, our eternal right to the Land has now been confirmed by mankind as well. The Declaration revealed the Hand of Providence in the destiny of our nation, and its ultimate goal: to bring the children [of Israel] back to their borders. It serves as the nations’ de facto recognition of the de jure recognition of Providence. Well remembered are the words of King George V to Dr. Weizmann: “It is promised in the Bible that the nation of Israel will return in the future to the Land of Israel. I am happy that this lofty act will come to fruition through my government.” And so it is written in the Bible: “Then Hashem your G-d will restore your fortunes and take you back in love. He will bring you together again from all the peoples where Hashem your G-d has scattered you… And Hashem your G-d will bring you to the Land that your fathers possessed, and you shall possess it” (Devarim 30:3–5). Even if the nation of Israel is scattered all over the world, its ownership of the Land and its right to return and take hold of the Land is not altered one iota, just as a man has the right to return to his home, even if he has been absent from it for an extended period of time. The Balfour Declaration only strengthens and upholds the foundational right of the people of Israel to the land of its fathers… And if it is possible to impose restrictions on the meaning of the Declaration and to burden the Declaration with “commentaries” relating to its fulfillment [and to thereby restrict the meaning of the Declaration], it is in no way possible to blur or minimize its spirit and essence, which constitutes the Arm and Hand of Providence and its revelation.
The Declaration serves as a testimony and seal to the eternality of G-d’s promise, the original “declaration” made thousands of years ago, that He would return us to this Land. It is the beginning of the realization of this vision of hope. And as a result of this clear recognition, the British government’s right to deny our right to the Land of Israel, given to us at Mount Sinai, has expired.
JEWS VIEWS with
We asked five accomplished Jews from around the world: Which Simchat Torah song do you find most meaningful and why?
Rabbi Marcus Solomon
Every year, on the night of Simchat Torah, a good-natured and light-hearted scuffle breaks out in shul between the mainstream adherents of the Ashkenazi protocol and those sympathetic to the custom of Chabad Chassidim.
The Ashkenazi custom is to conduct a public kri’at haTorah from the beginning of V’zot HaBerachah, complete with aliyot. Chassidut, however, contrasts our connection with the Torah on Simchat Torah with Shavuot. On Shavuot, we read the narrative of the giving of the Torah on Mount
Sinai, and spend the night studying the full spectrum of the Torah’s wisdom. In stark contrast, our connection to the Torah on Simchat Torah reaches above and beyond our intellectual capacity. We celebrate our intrinsic and primordial connection with the Torah which every Jew shares, regardless of their intellectual capacity or scholarship. For that reason, we manifest our joy with physical dancing holding the Torah scrolls closed, without opening them up in a way that exposes the distinguishing abilities of different people. It is a distinctly unifying means of celebrating our integral connection with the Torah. For Chassidim, opening and reading the Torah on Simchat Torah night would run counter to that spirit.
Although all customs are legitimate and have their own beauty, there is something very profound about celebrating the unifying connection of everyone to the Torah without regard to their background, knowledge or capacity. For that reason, my favorite song on
Simchat Torah is a song without words. It is any uplifting niggun, any wordless song, in which everyone can join from the depths of their soul – even if they do not know an aleph or a beit.
Emma Katz
It was the fourth set of hakafot in a small upstairs classroom in the Gruss Kollel in Jerusalem. There, holding my four-month-old baby boy, I connected to Eitan Katz’s Baruch Hu in a new way. וּנָליִדְּבִהְו ,וֹדוֹבְכִל וּנָאָרְבֶּשׁ וּניֵקלֹ-ֱא אוּה ךְוּרָבּ םָלוֹע יֵיַּחְו ,תֶמֱא תַרוֹתּ וּנָל ןַתָנְו ,םיִעוֹתַּה ןִמ .וּנֵכוֹתְבּ עַטָנ
“Blessed is He, our G-d, Who created us for His glory, and set us apart from those who go astray and gave us the Torah of truth and implanted eternal life within us.”
Today’s world is so jam-packed with technology, information, and material items, but so many still find themselves feeling so empty. People wonder, “who am I, and where do I belong? What purpose and role do I play in this complex world?” The song is an expression of our gratitude to Hashem for choosing us as
His nation, thanking Him for giving us direction, meaning, and purpose in life.
As Jews, we are fortunate that Hashem gave us the answer to these deep existential questions. He chose us and gave us the Torah, with the holy mission l’hagdil Torah u’l’ha’adira, to spread Torah and sanctify His name in the world. We receive this charge as a blessing, in a world in which so many are lost.
Listening to this song while holding my baby was deeply moving. I was filled with gratitude to
Hashem, for my son, born into this complicated, confusing world, is already a part of our elevated mission.
Rabbi Justice Marcus Solomon is the founding Rabbi of the Dianella Shule Mizrachi Perth. He was recently appointed a justice on the Supreme Court of Western Australia. Mrs. Emma Katz is the Director of NILI – The Women’s Initiative of the Yeshiva University Torah MiTzion Kollel of Chicago and the Rebbetzin at Congregation Anshe Chesed in Linden, NJ.
Rabbi Elliot Schrier
My grandmother was only eight years old when the Nazis invaded Belgium and her family fled their home in Antwerp. Her pre-war memories are a blur, overwhelmed by images of running, hiding, and ultimately sailing to safety across the
English Channel.
She does remember, however, a particularly leibedik Simchat Torah at her grandparents’ summer home. She remembers the men practically shaking the floor with spirited singing and dancing, and the wide-eyed children watching their every move. Most of all, she remembers how
Simchat Torah brought her diverse extended family together. Some of her uncles were devout religious
Jews while others were freethinkers who had left the path of Torah. Seeing them dance together on
Simchat Torah left a lasting impression. Torat Hashem temimah, meshivat nafesh, “the
Torah of Hashem is wholesome and complete, it restores the soul” (Tehillim 19). Personally, I’ve always been drawn to Rav Moshe Alshech’s interpretation of this verse: that “Torah returns our soul to its original, pristine state, when it was one with Hashem.”
Life has a way of corrupting the pristine state of the soul. We are beset by distractions and doubts and often lose our direction. Torah, and particularly dancing with the Torah, restores the soul’s simplicity. But Torah also restores us by bringing Jewish souls back to each other. When we celebrate our collective heritage, we draw closer to each other, regardless of our differences. Each of our souls begins in the same pristine state, and when we return to that holy state, we are capable of seeing holiness in others as well. When we circle the bimah, dance, and sing together, we experience that unique soul-restorative power of
Torah as meshivat nafesh.
Tehila Gimpel
Imay be the least qualified person to comment on Simchat Torah’s musical playlist, as my shul attendance has been particularly sparse in recent years. Since moving our family to the far-off hills of eastern Gush Etzion to establish the Arugot Farm in 2018, our new life has not made it easy to attend hakafot. Crossing three hilltops with six children in pitch darkness to the nearest Jewish town wasn’t my idea of a good time!
But this past Simchat Torah, all of that changed. We decided that if we can’t get from our mountain to hakafot, we would bring hakafot to the mountain! A large group of yeshivah guys and couples agreed to pitch tents at the Arugot
Farm and experience an unusual Simchat Torah on the Judean frontier.
With the Sefer Torah of my beloved grandfather zt”l, a makeshift mechitzah and food for dozens of young men that seemed to materialize out of thin air, I could hardly believe what I saw before my eyes – the fulfillment of our dream to bring renewed life, Torah, joy and prayer to these barren hills and caves of Biblical
Zif, where King David himself hid and composed
Psalms.
As elated singing and dancing reverberated throughout the farm, we sang David Melech
Yisrael, chai v’kayam. I rubbed my eyes in disbelief. Could it be that we have merited to be the answer to the prayers of our ancestors – to raise up a Sefer Torah in the mountains of Judea, dancing with all of our might, as David himself did before the holy ark? Every time I hear that song, it will bring me back to that moment of gratitude for the miracle that is our return to our ancient heartland.
Rabbi Ari Boiangiu
My favorite Simchat Torah song is definitely the slow version of Toras Hashem Temimah, a song that centers around children, who are tamim, pure, just like the Torah. Every year for the last twenty years I have thrown my children into the air as we sing this song. With all the fun and laughter, I try to grab a moment during the song to give thanks to Hashem as they get bigger and bigger – and harder to lift! – each year. At the right time, I look forward to doing the same with our grandchildren.
I find the niggun to be particularly powerful, expressing the joy of the Yom Tov more than any other. It begins slowly in an almost rubato (free time) feel. Then the middle section starts to ramp up speed, and then finally, BOOM! We break into full scale simchah, chanting “Moshe emes!” over and over again as we hold our kids up for Hashem.
Immediately following the Holocaust, thousands of survivors gathered in DP camps in Europe. In many cases, there were no Torah scrolls to dance with on Simchat Torah, and so the survivors lifted up the children and danced with them instead! This holy custom is a testament to
Klal Yisrael’s strength and will, and it reflects the secret of our survival through all the generations of exile: teaching Torah to the next generation!
Rabbi Elliot Schrier is the Rabbi of Congregation Bnai Yeshurun in Teaneck, New Jersey. Tehila Gimpel lives with her husband Jeremy and their six children on the Arugot Farm in eastern Gush Etzion. Tehila is an attorney and currently pursuing her PhD in Jewish Law. Rabbi Ari Boiangiu has been a Rebbe for 17 years, and currently serves as a 9th and 12th grade Rebbe at Rambam Mesivta. At night, he switches gears and is the owner/operator of Blue Melody Group, the premier Jewish Music band servicing the tristate area.
An Interview with Rabbanit Chana Henkin about Rabbi Eitam and Naama Henkin hy”d
On Chol HaMoed Sukkot, 2015, the Jewish world was horror-struck when Rabbi Eitam and Naama Henkin were murdered at point-blank range by Arab terrorists. As they were driving to their home in Neria, Palestinian gunmen opened fire, killing Rav Eitam and Naama in front of their four children. By the time of his death at age 31, Rav Eitam had authored over fifty articles and four books. Those who grasped his gifts forecast for him a future as a rabbinic luminary. This past March, Maggid Books released Studies in Halakhah and Rabbinic History, a sampling of Rav Eitam’s halachic and historical works, reflecting his wide range of interests within both of these genres. Rabbi Aron White sat down with Rav Eitam’s mother, Rabbanit Chana Henkin, who edited the volume, to learn more about the book and the legacy of Rav Eitam and Naama hy”d as we observe their seventh yahrzeit.
In the introduction to the new book of Rav Eitam’s writings, you write that “although Rav Eitam would protest the comparison with his father and with his saintly great-grandfather, Rabbi Yosef Eliyahu Henkin zt”l, one cannot fail to note the similarity of incisive mind, integrity, and self-effacing nature.” As a mother, when did you begin to see that Eitam was going to become an outstanding Torah scholar?
Looking back, I realize that there are things you see in your children that you only understand decades later when they are adults. In our family, the spoken language is halachah. Years later, I realized that the way he would read halachic works as an adult was very similar to what he did as a two year old. I remember being at a Chanukah party in the gan – I wanted him to dance with the other two-year-olds, but he stayed on my lap. I thought the party was passing over him, but by the next day he had processed and analyzed the event, and spoke to me about it, exactly as he would later do as an adult.
When he was in yeshivah high school he would come home and go to the computer to write for online forums at Kipa, where young people would discuss various religious topics. Occasionally, he would walk out his room and ask “where does the Rambam say x, y and z?” with the assumption that his mother should know these things. Somewhere along the way the tables turned, and I was the one asking him the questions, rather than the other way around. Eitam read everything my husband, Rabbi Yehuda Henkin, wrote, and everything his great-grandfather wrote; and my husband read everything that Eitam wrote. However, to some extent we only discovered the staggering reach of his intellect after he was no longer here. After shiva, my children were able to unlock his computer thanks to a teenage prank. He and a friend had scaled the water tower in our neighborhood, and hung a sheet from it with the gematria of their names. Thanks to that mischief, our daughter and our son thought that would be the obvious password to his computer, and they were right. What we found was an astonishing vault of Torah creativity. There were files of Torah writing in various stages of completion, including chiddushim (innovative insights) on the four parts of the Shulchan Aruch. Until then we never knew the full breadth of his learning. No one understood how he managed to accomplish so much each day. He spent time every day with his children, and at 4pm most days members of his yishuv would watch Rav Eitam and Naama walk together to pick up the children from gan. He taught, learned in a kollel, was a fellow at Forum Kohelet, wrote and published, completed academic degrees, and answered emails from dozens of scholars, My husband set the bar high in our home, assuming that is the way people were supposed to be, and Eitam rose to the challenge. I think we realized early on that Eitam was gifted, but it was only towards the end that my husband was able to say “he’s going to be a gadol, a first rank posek”.
Rav Eitam’s writings demonstrate his complete comfort in both the world of the beit midrash and that of academia. Many people find those two worlds to be contradictory. How was Eitam able to harmonize them in his scholarship?
There is a section from chapter 16 that I chose to put on the inside jacket of the book, in which he writes that his personal opinions on the topic being discussed are irrelevant to the presentation. He had no patience for dishonesty, and he did not bend facts to fit his own agenda or opinions. He was famous for this, and this is why people of all religious stripes respected him. This integrity was not only a feature of his personality, but also a feature of his scholarship. The book includes a number of riveting articles about historical revisionism, showing how writers systematically rewrote history to change the views of great Torah authorities to conform to their own outlook.
He pursued truth, which is why he was accepted in both worlds. People understood that he was reliable, that he demanded of himself absolute honesty and integrity. My husband was this way too. It wasn’t that they were worried someone might catch them writing something false; integrity was simply a part of who they were. But it goes even further than that. During shiva, someone sent us a poignant post in Yiddish. We had no idea Eitam understood Yiddish, let alone had written in it. Apparently, he participated in a Yiddish forum called ivelt. The Yiddish speakers in the forum, reacting with horror to the murder, called him one of their chavura.
After the murder, there was a fierce debate on the internet that saddened us. People were arguing about who was the real Eitam. Was he a Torah scholar in the daled amot shel halachah (the four cubits of Torah law), or was he a gifted historian on his way to an academic career in rabbinic history? The truth is, he didn’t separate these two spheres. As a halachist, he needed to fully understand the historical background; you can’t decide halachah in the abstract, you need to
Rabbi Eitam and Naama Henkin, hy"d
see the issue in real life. The same is true of rabbinic history; if you don’t grasp the halachic nuance, you don’t understand the history. And so the two fields were not separate for him. Many people, including professors and a whole range of others, corresponded with him to get information. We met some of them, but we don’t know about many others. But no matter whom he spoke to, he never hid who he was or put on a false posture. He was just himself. He also brought his character traits to bear in his academic work. He once spent a number of months collecting material to write about Maharil Diskin. A famous professor reached out to him to ask for some source material, and Eitam sent him the full file of sources he had painstakingly gathered. For someone who is focused on glory and titles, that would have been unthinkable – they would have wanted to keep the materials for themselves to be able to write the big article. But Eitam was humble and generous, and was prepared to share his research with others.
When he was about 23 years old, and he and Naama were at our Shabbat table, he casually mentioned that he was planning to do his doctorate under Professor David Assaf. At that point, we hadn’t known he planned to go to college! At the shiva, Professor Assaf told us of his astonishment to discover a wonderkind sitting in a kollel with no academic training, but who was writing as a seasoned academic scholar. A few months before the murder, Eitam told us that he had been awarded a Rotenstreich Fellowship. We had no idea he had applied for it because he didn’t talk about these things. He was thrilled, because it meant he would have parnassah for three years to do his doctorate on the Chafetz Chaim. As the reader of Studies in Halakhah and Rabbinic History sees in chapter after chapter, Rav Eitam did not write hagiographies, but did write as a Torah scholar who was fully aware of the greatness of the gedolim. The doctorate would have brought all of his analytic abilities to the table. He would have given the world a work of first-class scholarship, on his own way to becoming one of our great poskim.
Though the book includes topics ranging from the kashrut of strawberries to the Bruriah episode to the history of the Mussar movement, he seems to have been drawn to rabbinic history, and in particular to great figures from the end of the 19th and beginning of the 20th century like the Aruch HaShulchan, Rav Kook and Rav Henkin. What drew him to that period and to those personalities in particular?
He had a different connection with each of those figures. The last two great codes of Ashkenazi halachah were the Aruch HaShulchan and Mishnah Berurah, both written in the same 25-year span. In our family, the tradition we have from the gaon Rav Yosef Eliyahu Henkin zt”l is that when there is a machloket (disagreement) between the Mishnah Berurah and the Aruch HaShulchan, we pasken like the Aruch HaShulchan, as he was a rabbi of a city, not a rosh yeshivah. It was natural that Eitam, as the scion of an illustrious rabbinic dynasty, felt a deep connection to the Aruch HaShulchan. Rav Eitam grew up in institutions that were closely identified with Rav Kook’s philosophy. Eitam’s scholarship was focused on Rav Kook’s halachic works. He was terribly upset by the Charedi defamation of Rav Kook. In the chapter titled “The Haredi/National-Religious Dichotomy”, he discusses how family members excised Rav Kook from the biographies of their rabbinic forbears – some of whom were part of Rav Kook’s closest circle. It outraged our son that Rav Kook was
Rabbanit Henkin speaking with Rabbi Dr. Josh Joseph at the World Mizrachi Siyum HaShas celebration, January 2020.
being cavalierly written out of the lives of some of his closest disciples by their descendants.
His connection to Rav Henkin, his illustrious great-grandfather, was something he imbibed from day one. Many years ago, my husband left Columbia University graduate school to learn with his zeide, Rav Yosef Eliyahu Henkin, every morning and afternoon for five years. If you open my husband’s teshuvot, he refers to his grandfather on almost every page. What he received from his grandfather he passed on to Eitam, so Eitam’s whole world from his earliest days was shaped by his great-grandfather’s legacy.
Can you talk a little about the remarkable relationship Eitam had with Naama?
They met in their teens, on a religious Hebrew internet forum, where they were both prolific contributors. They wrote under nicknames; Naama’s name was mitkarevet, while he used the acronym of toch kedei dibbur (ד“כת). I don’t know whether Naama initially knew she was talking to a male! They ultimately met in person, and eventually decided they would marry after Eitam finished the army.
The two were not just brilliant and multi-talented, but also had very similar middot. Naama carried much of the financial burden of the household with her design business, while supporting Eitam’s learning. Modesty, humility, and integrity were central to both. Naama told us that young women graphic artists starting out were asking her how to set up a business. She said, “I know they’re going to be my competitors, but I still help them.” They shared all the burdens of the home. They did everything together – they brought the kids to school together and took walks together. They were inseparable.
Rav Eitam’s life was tragically cut short, but by age 31 he had already achieved so much. What words of encouragement and inspiration do you think he would share with young men and women who are aspiring to grow in their Torah learning and make their own contribution to Klal Yisrael?
I can’t speak for him, but there is a line we found in his diary which captures so much. He wrote, “I hope that I can make the ikar ikar and the tafel tafel,” meaning “I hope that I can make the important things important and the unimportant things unimportant.” I think that answers the question of how they both accomplished so much. They had innate gifts, but that’s not enough. The ability to distinguish between what’s really important and what is not enables you to set priorities and reach goals, and also to ignore what’s trivial or petty. They lived in a yishuv called Neria, and their tiny front yard was an artificial grass lawn. Remembering the fragrance of a recently-mowed lawn from my childhood, I said to Eitam, “Don’t you want real grass?” He said, “I don’t have time to mow the lawn.” Now I am so thankful that he didn’t mow the lawn, that he sat and learned and wrote. Being organized, setting your priorities, and living with humility, integrity and devotion to Torah, is what I think Eitam can teach us all. n Thank you to Rabbanit Chana Henkin for providing the photos for this article.
Rabbi Shalom Hammer
Sukkot and Hakhel: The Election Antidote
A member of the Mizrachi Speakers Bureau mizrachi.org/ speakers When we sit together with friends and family in our sukkah, it is worth reflecting on its fascinating uniqueness. It is a merging of opposites, a physical structure that is suffused with spirituality. On the one hand, we leave the comforts of our permanent home and dwell in a temporary, less comfortable dwelling for seven days – a reminder that our physical existence is temporary and that only our spiritual values and accomplishments are eternal. Yet it is the physical structure of the sukkah which unifies us as we huddle together within the small confines of its walls, recalling the way our forefathers were surrounded and protected by the Clouds of Glory for forty years in the wilderness.
A kosher sukkah requires two components: the schach (thatched roof) and walls. Rav Yaakov Ariel explains that the schach above us represents the spiritual realm of the heavens, protecting us from natural elements such as rain and sun, whereas the walls of the sukkah represent the physical realm of mankind, protecting us from threats here on earth, as a fortress surrounds and protects its soldiers or inhabitants. Together, the walls and schach bind the physical realm of man with the spiritual realm of Hashem. Interestingly, the majority of the laws of the sukkah concern the walls, implying that our focus must be on sanctifying our world below in order to build a partnership with Hashem above.
The merging of opposites represented by the sukkah is also expressed through one of the holiday’s most important themes: achdut, solidarity. Whereas the schach and walls represent the merging of heaven and earth, achdut is the unity and merging of people. Every seven years, upon the conclusion of the Shemitta year, the Jewish people perform the mitzvah of hakhel during the holiday of Sukkot. Hakhel is derived from the word kahal, congregation, for at this event all of Am Yisrael would gather together as one in Jerusalem to hear words of the Torah. “Assemble the people, the men and the women and the little ones… that they may hear, and that they may learn, and fear the L-rd your G-d, and observe to do all the words of this law” (Devarim 31:12). The Gemara explains that the reason small children were brought to participate in this mitzvah, even though they are not obligated in the mitzvot, is “to give reward to those who bring them”. But I believe there is another important reason for bringing the children. While children might not be obligated in mitzvot, they are highly impressionable. By witnessing the massive gathering of hakhel, they learn to appreciate not only the event itself, but also what it means to be part of a great nation. In a similar vein, every year we stand during the reading of the Ten Commandments, reenacting Am Yisrael’s acceptance of the Torah at Sinai as one unified people. Although the event at Sinai took place long ago, the unity of our nation is eternally fundamental to our mission and our identity. This message, perhaps more than any other, is the essential teaching of Sukkot. Just a few days after Sukkot, the people of Israel will once again vote for a new government. Elections typically invite divisiveness and often antagonism. This Sukkot, as we celebrate the mitzvah of hakhel, let us impress upon ourselves and those around us the significance of achdut and coalition, of working together to strengthen our holy nation, physically and spiritually, in the years ahead.
Rabbi Shalom Hammer is a lecturer for the IDF as well as the founder and director of Makom Meshutaf which offers non-coercive Jewish educational programming for Pre-Military Academies, under the auspices of World Mizrachi. Rabbi Hammer champions suicide prevention and has authored ten books. Learn more at www.rabbihammer.com.
(PHOTO: ISRAELI GPO PHOTOGRAPHER, PUBLIC DOMAIN, VIA WIKIMEDIA COMMONS)
Dr. Yosef Burg z”l
The elder statesman of Religious Zionism, Dr. Yosef Burg was president of the World Mizrachi Movement and head of the National Religious Party for over three decades. Born in Germany in 1909, Burg played a key role in the German Mizrachi movement during the Nazi era, arranging secret minyanim in private homes and working underground to help Jews escape to Britain and the Netherlands. Escaping to Palestine in 1939, he later led Mizrachi efforts in post-war France to rescue Jewish children who were adopted or hidden during the war. Returning to Israel in 1949, Burg led the National Religious Party and served as a minister in every Knesset until his retirement in 1987. In commemoration of his 23rd yahrzeit on the 5th of Marcheshvan, we share words of eulogy given by Rabbi Dr. Norman Lamm on the occasion of Dr. Burg’s shloshim on November 14, 1999. May his memory be a blessing for all of Am Yisrael.
