To remind ourselves to make a

better world

Esti Melamed

The shabbat proceeding Yom Kippur ( even though this year it

was the shabbat immediately following Rosh Hashana) is one in which a significant step is taken in

preparing for the sacred day. On this day we read the haftara

from the Book of Hosea that begins "Return Israel to the Lord your God,"

a verse that gives the shabbat

its name. Hosea's message to the people is a summary of a process that has been

defined throughout the book, a process in which the prophet attempts – through

symbolic acts, and prophecies of punishment and comfort – to awaken in Israel

the need to repent for their sins – sins committed between humankind and God

and those between themselves. From the harsh description it would appear that

these two tracks are interwoven, as is stated in the very beginning of the

chapter and whose realism is painful:

Hear the word of the LORD, children of Israel: for the LORD has a

controversy with the inhabitants of the land, because there is no truth, nor

mercy, nor knowledge of God in the land. An outbreak of swearing, and lying,

and killing, and stealing, and committing adultery, ends in the shedding of

blood.(chapter 4: 1-2)

The sages relate

Hosea to the tribe of Reuben and point out the connection between the founding

father of the tribe and his descendants. In the Midrahs

Pesikta of Rabbi Kahane the

following is observed:

Said the Holy one Blessed be He to Reuben: '

You tried to return Joseph to his father – I shall see to it that your

descendant will return Israel

to their Father in Heaven – Who is this? This is Hosea." ( Mandelbaum edition page 357)

There is a very

specific source given here for the prophet's authority and power: he who wishes

to come to the people to upbraid them for their behaviour and to draw them

close again to their father in Heaven, is continuing in the path of his

ancestor Reuben, the eldest son who felt responsible for the welfare of his

young brother – the eldest son who felt the pain and anguish of his father and

sought to return his beloved son to him – even if it threatened his own status.

This honest concern for the other that transcends personal interest,

characterises Reuben and through his merit, his descendant is chosen to show

his lost children the way back

There is another

point here. Reuben's attempt bears no fruit: Joseph is sold to Egypt

and Jacob passes through a prolonged period of suffering and pain. With all

this the Holy One Blessed be He remembers Reuben for

his righteous intentions, the tearing of his clothes and his heart felt crying:

"The youth is gone, now where shall

I go?" (Gen. 37:30), and reckons it to

his credit. This teaches us that it is not always the result that determines

the value of the act, but rather the effort that goes into it. A person has to

do what he can even when he is uncertain about his success.

These two items

define the process of teshuva (repentance) : the

personal dimension – there is a great value in intention and honest striving,

the penitent should never give up because of the difficulties that block his

path and prevent his 'objective' progress. On the inter-personal dimension, teshuva is incomplete without the authentic concern – free

of ulterior motives – for the other. Indeed the sages already emphasise this in

observing that "Yom Kippur does not forgive sins between a person and his

neighbour until that person has appeased him."

To

return to Hosea. His prophecies draw two different images of the

relations between God and His people. One the one hand those of parent and child , on the other hand of man and wife. The relationship

as of parent and child is well known and wide spread, and it seems to me that

this is the way we generally perceived our relationship with the Holy One

Blessed be He, both as individuals and as a people. A

relationship where one side – God – is strong and dominant – the all-powerful

and sole responsible source of decisions, and the other side – us – who are

dependant on Him hoping, anticipating and wishing for His mercy and pardon.

Relations like these are in a way simple and straightforward compared to those

between a married couple, which are entirely

different. There the responsibility for preserving and nurturing the relationship

devolves on both partners. Where one side becomes distant it is up to the other

to make the first step to draw near to the partner reminding them of the love

and mutual obligations (between them) and to try to repair the damage. This

obviously demands greater maturity and discipline, but the subsequent

satisfaction is greater and the connection between the parties is more

complete.

In the well known piyyut ( hymn) of Yom Kippur there

different aspects of this connection appear: though "we are Your children

and You are our father (and, even more powerfully, "We are Your servants

and You are our Master " "…we are Your flock and You are our

Shepherd" – images that minimize the mutual responsibility in the

connection and form a picture of our total dependency on the Holy One Blessed

be He. Simultaneously, "We are your friend and You

are our beloved," juxtaposed to "we are at Your bidding, and You are

our decree" phrases that send us to the verses in the Book of Deuteronomy,

emphasizing the importance of the roles of both sides in the covenant:

And God has caused you to promise to-day to become His people, a

peculiar treasure, as He has spoken to you, and to keep all His commands; so as

to make you uppermost above all the nations." (Deut. 26 16-17)

These

two possibilities – that of dependency and of mutuality – reflect different

periods in the people's history, as well as different dimensions of the connection

between each individual and his God. There are times when God

reveals Himself to the people and to the individual and influences them with

His mercy, times when it is simple and pleasant to lean on Him, as the Book of

Psalms expresses it: "like a child who is weaned from his mother." (Psalms 136 :2). But there are

times when – and in our generations they have been frequent and painful – in

which God hides His presence from us and apparently from the covenant between

us. Situations like these are a challenge for us: they invite us to take

responsibility for the continuation of the covenant. It devolves upon us to

take the step towards the Holy One Blessed Be He and to remind him of "the

covenant and the love and the oath" and to demand that He shines His face

on us and on the world anew. Judaism, as Emanuel Levinas

taught us, is "a religion for mature people." A substantial part of

what maturity means is the ability to understand what is demanded of us. Instead

of relying on: "there is no one else to lean on except our father in

Heaven," we are obliged to measure ourselves by a different rule – far

more demanding and difficult.We must take upon

ourselves to be active partners in building a world whose foundation is a

covenant, participation and love.

In Yehuda Amichai's last book, "Open, Close, Open," I came

across a line that expresses this feeling:

Perhaps I need to remind God/ to make a better world.

I came across a

similar expression in the writings of the sages – wondrous and feisty as only

they could be – for humankind to "remind God to make a better world."

In the Babylonian

Talmud there is a discussion – part of which at least is familiar to many of us

(in no small part due to the wonderful melody to which it was set) and which

still succeeds in exciting me afresh each time I read it. In Tractate Brachot (7:a) it is written:

Rabbi Yohanan said in the name of Rabbi Yossi:

"From where do we know that the Holy One Blessed be

He prays? From the verse; 'I will bring them to My

holy mountain and give them reason to rejoice in the House of My Prayer.' It

does not say 'Their prayer' but 'My prayer.' From here

we learn that God prays.

What is His prayer?

Rabbi Zutra the son of Bar Tuvia

says, in the name of Rav: "Let it be that My love overcomes My anger, and that My mercy manifests

itself in my disposition, and that I act towards my children with love, and

that I judge them favourably, beyond the strict tenets of the law.

"The sages

quote a teaching of Rabbi Ishmael the son of Elisha: 'I once went to offer up

incense in the innermost sanctuary and I noticed Acatriel

(a name for the Divine Presence) the Lord of Hosts sitting on a high and

elevated throne, and He said to me: 'Ishmael my son – bless me." 'I said

to him "Let it be that Your love overcomes Your

anger, and that Your mercy manifests itself in Your disposition, and that You

act towards Your children with love, and that You judge them favourably, beyond

the strict tenets of the law.

 And He nodded to me in the affirmative.

This quote is

wonderful since it shows the sages' willingness to express without fear far

-reaching theological concepts. The prayer seems to us an on-going necessity

for humankind that flows from our limitations and from what we lack. The sages

come and tell us that the Holy One Blessed be He also prays – and not only this

but also that his prayer is apparently a reminder to Himself to make a better

world, to over come anger, the dimension of strict justice and to show mercy to

His children.

What is the source

of this prayer? In the continuation of this quote we learn that this very same

text is used by Rabbi Ishmael the son Elisha to bless the Holy One Blessed be

He when he enters the innermost sanctuary to offer up incense, which is to say

in the Holy of Holies, on Yom Kippur. It emerges that The Holy One Blessed be He needs the blessing of flesh and blood. Is

there a more wonderful way to manifest the nature of the connection between

ourselves and Him? God who fills the universe with His

glory, desires a blessing, that only humankind can bestow on Him.

Rabbi Ishmael the

High Priest, who stands in the most sanctified place on earth, on the holiest

day of the year, and achieves the highest level of intimacy with his creator,

does not forget for one moment the public he merits to represent. He

understands that the blessing that God desires is the need 'to remind' the Holy

One Blessed be He of the love and the obligations to this selfsame public who

are both His children and His lover, and it is appropriate to behave towards

them with mercy, beyond the strict tenets of the law. This is the fit prayer

and the Holy One Blessed be He nods His head, as it

were, in agreement. But far more than this – He transforms the blessing into

His formalized prayer, as we observed at the beginning of the quote!

It is perhaps

appropriate at this juncture to recall Levinas again,

for he states in his Talmudic reading "Beyond the Other":

When

I find in the sources something that can be shown to be theosophical

–concerning the nature of God – 'that which is beyond' – I try to find its

meaning in the life of humankind and for the sake of humankind. Since the Rambam (12^th century) we know that everything that is said in Judaism regarding

encounters between people.

How is it possible

to understand this story on the human plain, to translate it into the language

of humankind? Perhaps it comes to tell us that, at the highest level of

holiness, in the service of the High Priest at the most holiest time and place,

this most elevated and fitting blessing that relates to the Holy One Blessed be

He – and to humankind's yearning to follow His way. This is the complete

opposite of Transcendentalism – human behaviour at its best: the manifestation

of the characteristic of mercy and the insertion of going beyond the strict

law. The relation to the human other – is a template for the relation to God – the

"Supreme Other."

On Rosh Hashana, the New Year and the day on which the world was

created, we look outward towards the world at large: "And on the states He

will say – which (will be fated ) to be put to the

sword, and which will have peace, who will experience hunger and who satiety

…and all humankind will pass before Him, like a flock of sheep."

Yom Kippur by

contrast is a time of introspection, looking at the individual's holy of

holies, each person and his creator. It is a day on which we separate ourselves

from the world and wrap ourselves in a tallit (prayer

shawl) – actual or metaphorical. But it is important to remember not to close

the tallit completely; on this day, too – in

particular on this day – it is essential to leave an opening to see and hear

the other – to feel his pain, to pray for him, and not to hide ourselves from

him. Particularly in the era we are living in it is important to remember that

in our prayers we are praying not only for ourselves and the members of our

household, but also for everyone else – for the public that needs so much

empathy and hope. In a period like ours it is demanded of us of our ability to

remind the Holy One blessed be He and to ask of Him to remember His love and to

overcome His anger. But we should also remember that in order to ask for this

we ourselves have to be worthy morally, to listen to others and their needs,

and to know how to transcend our own anger and to touch our own otherness

beyond the strict tenets of the law. We are obliged first and foremost to

remind ourselves to make a better world.

We should merit

coming before Him as children before their father and hope for His forgiveness.

Also as a lover – mature, bold and responsible – who appeases her husband and

reminds him of their covenant and mutual obligations. Who will give and realize

a prophecy of wondrous appeasement such as that of Hosea:

And it shall be on

that day, says the Lord, that you shall call me Ishi

(my husband) and shall no longer call me Ba'ali ( my

master)… And in that day will I make a covenant for them with

the beasts of the

field, and with the birds of heaven, and with the creeping things of the

ground: and I will break the bow and the sword and the battle out of the earth,

and will make them lie down safely. And I will betroth you for ever; I will

betroth you in righteousness, and in judgment, and in loving kindness, and in

mercies. I will betroth you in faithfulness: and you shall know the Lord. (Hosea 2: 16-22)

Esti Melamed

is a mother and editor.

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