Like the anchor in the sailor's hand;

If it pleases him, he holds it,

If it pleases him, he casts it away.

So too are we in Your hand,

Good and forgiving God.

Look to the covenant and take no notice of the evil

inclination.

(From the service for Yom Kippur eve)

As this potter [treats his clay] can I not do to you,

(Jeremiah 18:6)

R. Hama said in the

name of R. Hanina: But for these three texts, the feet of Israel's

enemies [an obscure reference to Israel itself] would have slipped.

One is Whom I have wronged; a second, Behold as the clay in the

potter's hand, so are you in My hand, O house of Israel (Jeremiah 18); the third, And I will take away the stony heart

out of your flesh, and I will give you a heart of flesh (Ezekiel 36). R. Papa said: We learn it from here: And I will

put My spirit within you and cause you to walk in My statutes (Ezekiel 36)

(Berakhot 32a, Soncino translation)

I will yet gather others

to him, together with his gathered ones

Shmuel Har

Beginning

from the Sabbath following Tisha B'Av and up to Rosh Hashanah we read seven haftarot

of consolation, all of which are taken from the second half of the Book of

Isaiah.¹ After Shabbat Shuva we read another passage from this part

of Isaiah on the morning of Yom Kippur; that haftara, however, is not concerned

with consolation. In the second part of the haftara the prophet wants to call

out with a full throat and not spare his people harsh rebuke for their

crimes and sins.

Why

did our forefathers see fit to have this rebuke read on a day that is

completely devoted to love and peace between Israel and their Father in Heaven? The

question becomes yet more puzzling once we see what kind of sin the prophet is

talking about. The sin is linked directly with fasting. Seemingly, he demands

that we go home, break our fasts and begin performing works of justice and

kindness.

The

people think it is enough to fast and they do not understand that their

important business lies elsewhere – with doing justice and kindness.

The

reading of such a haftara on Yom Kippur morning is a kind of anti-ceremonial

ceremony, or a ceremony that critiques itself. With this reading the

worshippers in the synagogue announce that they appreciate the gap between form

and content.

Such

ceremonies are typical of the world of the Sages. In Mishnah Ta'anit we read:

The

elder among them addresses them with words of admonition [to repentance] thus:

"Our bretheren, Scripture does not say of the people of Nineveh and God saw their sackcloth and

their fasting, but, and God saw their works, that they turned from their

evil way (Jonah 3). And in the

Prophets it is said, And rend your heart and not your garments (Joel 2)."

But

the entire tractate Ta'anit is devoted to a detailed description of the

fast-day ritual! I think that the elder mentioned in the Mishnah is not only

addressing those who fast; he is addressing, first and foremost, those who are

studying the Mishnah. He confronts them with a reflexive text that illuminates

the Mishnah itself in a critical light.

This

scholarly culture in which questions are asked and doubts raised is reflected

in many additional examples.²

There

is even more going on here. The prophet is not merely complaining about

hypocrisy and a failure to grasp what is genuinely important; this is not just

about the gap between form and content. The prophet is addressing people who

honestly seek out God on a daily basis. Such people really do not understand

the problem. They ask the shocking question, "Why have we fasted, and

You did not see; we have afflicted our soul and You do not know?" and

the prophet throws back his answer to them: Behold,

for quarrel and strife you fast, and to strike with a fist of wickedness.

There is a kind of fasting, a kind of seeking intimacy with God, that does not

open the heart to others, rather it shuts up the heart in the synagogue, full

of self-righteousness and blindness. Such seeking after God leads Jonah away

from the big city and its populace and towards the gourd. Instead, one should

open one's heart. As the Sages said regarding the verse, And you draw out

your soul to the hungry: "Say to him, 'My soul goes out for

you.'" Such opening of the heart would open Jonah's eyes to see that God's

world does not belong solely to zealots who shelter in the shade of a gourd.

God's

loving-kindness cannot be fenced in; it affects all of creation.

The

full significance of the prophet's words can only be appreciated when they are

read in their broader context. Just before concluding the service, the

prayer-leader reads a verse from a different prophecy by Isaiah: I will

altar, for My house shall be called a house of prayer for all peoples. This

verse appears in close proximity to our own. God promises that He will bring

gentiles to His holy mountain.

It

is not coincidental that this prophecy begins with the words, Fortunate is

the man who will do this and the person who will hold fast to it. The

prophet is opposing separatist and isolationist tendencies and presents God's

Torah as being addressed to all humanity and bearing meaning for everyone. Opposing

isolationism, the prophet promises in the name of the One Who gathers in the dispersed of Israel that He will will yet

gather others to him, together with his gathered ones. That is to

say that many additional peoples will join together with the Israelites and

gentiles He has gathered together in Zion.

It

is impossible for today's reader not feel that these words are also addressed

to our own generation. How diligently the sages of the past two centuries have

toiled to display the Torah's humane and beautiful aspects. It seems that our

generation has dismissed this project as pointless apologetics which may have

been appropriate for Diaspora Jews who had to placate the gentiles. Instead,

today's scholars seek to finally reveal the Torah's "real" face – and

it appears quite ugly. It is the face of an isolationist tribal law, interested

solely in promoting the interests of its adherents.

Is

it really true that the State of Israel's real problem is that gentiles throng

at our gates, threatening to engulf us? Is the solution to surround ourselves

with more and more fences?

Or

might it be that those many fences will leave us – God forbid – locked in an

accursed and arid bit of land, and every decent human being seeking a beam of

light within it will take a different path?

More

than a hundred years ago the Russian Orthodox philosopher Solovyov wrote an

enthusiastic defense of the Talmud. He was well acquainted with all the isolationist

and gentile-hating dicta found in the Talmud. He claimed – correctly – that if

you poke around in any culture you can find similar statements, but that they

were no longer relevant for Jewish culture or for his own Christian culture. As

a counter-move, he cited tens of Talmudic dicta expressing love for mankind. He

couldn't have imagined that a century later some rabbis would choose to

champion precisely the rulings and quotations which the Rishonim and Aharonim

had worked so hard to reinterpret or to relegate to oblivion.

We

have no alternative but to decide whether we will have great joy over the gourd

or we will turn ourselves towards humanity.

1. On the question of the unity of the

scond half of Isaiah, see S. M. Paul, Yeshayahu Perakim 40-66, from the Mikra

LeYisrael series, Tel Aviv, 2008, pp. 6-11.

2. Most perspicuously: the Mishnah in the

end of the fourth chapter of Sanhedrin opposes capital punishment – when

capital punishment is itself the central topic of that very tractate.

Shmuel Har teaches in Jerusalem's Shalom Hartman Institute.

God Takes Mercy on all His Creatures, and Especially on Man, who is

His Glory

Then the Lord said: "You pitied the gourd" And

even though he pitied the gourd only because of his own distress, this was like

God who took pity on Nineveh

for the sake of His glory, for the creatures are His glory, and humanity

all the more so, for it is written, I created him for My glory. And even

though we interpreted that verse as relating to Israel, in any case it speaks of

the human race, just as He said, I formed him, even made him. However,

since Israel recognizes

God's glory more than the rest of humanity does – excepting the sages among

them [among the rest of humanity], the verse was spoken in reference to Israel.

which you did not work for and which you did not grow People

are sadder at the loss of things they have worked to produce. Even though the

blessed God did not really work to create the creatures, the Torah speaks in

the language of man so that its audience will understand it.

(ReDaK Jonah 4)

Our Father, our King, be gracious to us and answer us, though we have

no worthy deeds; act with us in charity and loving-kindness and save us.

(From the Koren Siddur

translation)

Then the Lord said: "You cared about the plant, which you did

well."

(Jonah 4:10-11)

God has mercy on man and beast, that is to say, on man as on the

beast, and this reminds us of the parallel verse, You save man and

beast, Lord (Psalms 36:7). That is to

say, God's mercy and kindness are completely independent of man and his

deeds, as the prophet said, for my plans are not your plans nor are My ways

above your ways (Isaiah 55:8-9).

God's relationship to man and to the world are none other than what is termed

"the Divine matter" which is above all human actions and behavior,

even above man's acts of repentance.

(Y. Leibowitz, Sihot al

Hagei Yisrael Ve'Moadav, pg. 193)

Freeing Ourselves from Bonds in Kol Nidrei

Just before dark on Yom Kippur eve, we recite the Kol Nidrei. What

do we say in Kol Nidrei? "All personal vows, all personal oaths and

pledges…" All the binds, pledges, belongings, labels, and definitions

that I have placed upon myself and that I may place upon myself in the future –

"Let them all be relinquished and abandoned, null and void, neither firm

nor established" (Birnbaum translation). They will be undone, and

nullified. From this moment I free myself from all of these, from both past and

present, from this Yom Kippur until next Yom Kippur, may it come to us for

good. A person can lend himself many names: he is an intellectual, he is pious,

or not pious, he is unemotional. A person can limit himself: he deems himself

incapable of certain tasks, there are topics which are not to be discussed or

contemplated, there various matters which are none of his business. When he

closes himself up tightly in such a shell, nothing can affect him.

A person does not have to be old, respectable, wrinkled, or a bit

overweight to dwell in such a shell; even a fourteen year old boy can cover

himself with an impenetrable shell.

(R. Adin Steinsaltz: Or

Penei Melekh, quoted in the introduction to Yonadav Kaplun's (ed.) Mahzor, Mimkha

Eilekha)

The Thirteen Attributes are Always Effective

The Lord passed before him and proclaimed (Shemot 34) – Rabbi Yohanan said: Were this not actually

written, it could not have been said. It teaches us that the Holy One, Blessed

Be He, wrapped Himself like a shaliah tzibbur – a cantor – and showed

Moses the order of prayer. He said to him: Whenever Israel sins, – let them

recite this list before Me, and I will forgive them. The Lord, the Lord

– I am He before man sinned, and I am He after man sins and repents. A

compassionate and gracious God – Rabbi Yehuda said: A covenant was made

promising that the Thirteen Attributes will never go unanswered, as is written;

I hereby make a covenant (Shemot 34).

(Rosh Hashana 17b)

It is written in Sefer

Yere'im:

How often do we see that we are wrapped in our prayer shawls and recite

the Thirteen Attributes, yet we are not answered. But the meaning is that

whenever Israel does according to this order of attributes which the

Lord does, having mercy and being gracious to the poor, being slow to anger and

doing kindness one to the other, waiving demands for rightful satisfaction, as

in the words of the Sages: If one waives his demands for rightful satisfaction,

his sins will be forgiven, then they [Israel] are assured that they will not

remain empty-handed; but if they are cruel, and act immorally, certainly they

will be condemned by their recitation of the Thirteen Attributes.

In other words, not only are the Thirteen Attributes not a magic means

for atonement of sins; the mention of The Holy One's attributes by one who

makes no effort to observe them actually calls attention to his sins. Not only

do they not provide a remedy for man, they become a pitfall.

The rituals and ceremonies of reciting Selihot and mumbling

confessions and the like are the outer trappings of repentance. RaMBaM states

in connection with Yom Kippur: "All of these practices, and the fasts, are

symbols that activate the soul to do repentance." RaMBaM includes among

these the sacrifices brought in the Temple

for accidental sins. None of these constitute repentance in itself, rather they

are just symbols meant to arouse man to repent.

(Y. Leibowitz Sihot al

Haggei Yisrael UMo'adin, pg. 185)

When is the Time for Ne'ila?

The rabbis of Caesarea say: Rav and R. Yohanan

disagree about it.

Rav said: At the closing of the gates of Heaven.

R. Yohanan: At the closing of the gates of the Temple.

(Yerushalmi Berakhot 4:1)

And so they established a service following the minha service,

performed only on the fast day, just as the sun sets, in order to increase

pleas and requests because of the fast. This is the service known as Teffilat

Ne'ila {literally: the locking prayer], in reference to the gates of

Heaven, which then close behind the disappearing sun, since it is only

performed at sunset.

(RaMBaM, Hilkhot Tefillah 1:7)

The matter of Yom Kippur and Ne'ila is like a parable: one makes

a chest and closet; when they are completed a lock is made for them to guard

their contents.

(R. Naftali Tzvi Horowitz's Zera Kodesh, quoted by S.Y. Agnon in his Yamim Nora'im,

pg. 362)

So very open that it will never close again, so

very closed that it shall never reopen…

Forget, remember, forget

Open, close, open

(From Y. Amichai's Patuah, Sagur, Patuah)

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