Shavuot

[cellio]

There is a tradition of staying up all night on Shavuot to study torah. There are various reasons for this -- it's an appropriate way to prepare for receiving torah, it's compensation for the Israelites falling asleep (midrash), mystical reasons having to do with "repair" of the world, and probably others. My congregation doesn't go all night, but what we get in several hours is quite fulfilling for me. I've learned the lesson about going elsewhere after we're done; the other places I've gone locally just haven't measured up for me. (Part of that is that the local, traditional options aren't so good for women, but that's not all of it.)

My congregation has a particular pattern that I've come to expect. This year we varied it some, and I think it worked really well. We had our associate rabbi there this year, so he led off. His topic was the "yeitzer". According to tradition we each have a yeitzer tov (a good inclination) and a yeitzer ra (a bad inclination), and we need both (and must work to control the latter). I said "inclination" here, but we actually spent a chunk of time on exploring the meaning of this word. Suggested translations included "inclination", "impulse", others I've forgotten, and (my favorite) "drive". We talked some about reward and punishment (as expressed in the second paragraph of the sh'ma), though I've forgotten exactly how we got there. We also talked about how "yeitzer" is the same root as "yotzeir", the verb that refers to God's creation of the stars (and other things). (Aside: the verb used at the very beginning of B'reishit is "barah", not "yatzar", but I think that is the unusual case. Didn't take the tangent Sunday night, but am curious.) So, there might be a creative angle to "yeitzer"; hold that thought.

Then we studied some talmud (Yoma 69b) in which the rabbis take on the yeitzer. The first temple was destroyed, the rabbis say, because of the inclination toward idolatry. (I had thought it was due to actual idolatry, not inclinations, but I could be wrong. Or the g'mara could say different things in different places; that's not unusual.) The g'mara in Yoma relates the following story: the men of the great assembly (the Sanhedrin, or the rabbinic high court) pled with God to remove from them the evil inclination; we would forego the reward for conquering it, they said, to remove the risk of losing the temple from it again. Their plea was eventually answered; the yeitzer was delivered to them in the form of a fiery lion cub, which they imprisoned while they discussed whether to kill it. (The yeitzer, naturally, objected to that plan, threatening them that the world would become desolate if they did.) So then a funny thing happened: procreation stopped, among people and animals; the g'mara casts this as: they searched the land far and wide and could not find a (newly-laid) egg. There is, according to this teaching, a connection between the yeitzer (inclination or drive) and creating life.

There were some other teachings that the rabbi brought; I'm not going to try to cover everything. When he was wrapping up the senior rabbi (my rabbi) took a turn. He always has us study the torah account of the revelation; this year, he said, he realized that he always does the version in Sh'mot (Exodus), so instead we were going to do the version in D'varim (Deuteronomy). He had us study in chevruta; our charge was to note differences in the two accounts but, especially, to focus on 5:19 and whether God stopped speaking.

I studied with a visiting couple, one of whom my rabbi called one of his teachers (but I'm fuzzy on the details). They were both interesting people (one much quieter than the other). We focused more on the differences than on the speaking angle; I didn't feel I had a good-enough idea of what my rabbi was asking. One thing pointed out by one of my study partners that I hadn't noticed before: in Sh'mot, the people say to Moshe (as an agent of God) "we will do and we will hear" -- that is, they sign up for the mitzvot even before learning exactly what they all are, or so the traditional interpretation goes. In Moshe's retelling in D'varim, they say "we will hear it and do it". Now to me that still looks like they're agreeing first and learning the details later, but rabbinic tradition draws a lot of meaning from word orderings, so this might be significant. I haven't gone looking for commentaries yet.

When we came back together as a group we talked about my rabbi's question. He brought a commentary from Nachmanides (the Ramban) that reverses the apparent plain meaning of the text. The torah text says "these words the Lord spoke ... with a great voice which was not heard again". (I think the translation we were working from said "...and no more", and some say "...and did not resume".) But the targum (a famous translation into Aramaic) renders it "and He did not pause". The Ramban explains that while humans need to pause during speech, this is certainly not true of God, so (I'm a little fuzzy on this) since He didn't have to, He didn't. There was more to it, but I haven't retained it, I'm afraid.

It has become traditional for my rabbi to read the Kafka story "Before the Law" at the tikkun. This year we had more discussion of it than usual, which was lively and engaging. I haven't read a lot of Kafka (pretty much just the standard high-school/college fare), but this story seems to have a high depth-to-length ratio, in a way that's hard to put into words.

There were other parts to the session that I'm not recounting here. We finished with something totally new to me, a passage from the Zohar (a kabbalistic text). Shavuot is seen as (among other things) a wedding between God and Israel. Or between the Shechina (the immanent feminine aspect of God) and the transcendant aspect of God, with Israel as witnesses. Or other combinations, probably; I'm not really up on mysticism. But anyway, we read a passage that cast Israel as attendants who stayed up all night to adorn the bride. What were these adornments? The insights and innovations of torah study, according to the Zohar. I have a copy of the passage, so I can explore it (and its many footnotes) more on my own. It was a neat discussion.

I walked home with my rabbi and a couple younger students (we were all headed in roughly the same direction). Squirrel Hill is remarkably peaceful in the middle of the night and off of the main roads. Forbes Avenue (the most direct path from my house to the synagogue) is pretty much always busy, but go one block up to Aylesboro and it's downright serene.

We pretty much filled up the chapel for Monday morning's service. This is a good turnout. Our holiday services used to be more "old-school" than our Shabbat services -- older crowd, older siddur, performative music, etc. That's been changing over the last few years, and this one had much of the character of what our Shabbat services have become -- warm, participatory, accessible. The two rabbis and our cantorial soloist led the service; my rabbi read torah and the associate rabbi chanted haftarah (beautifully), and lay readers divided up the book of Ruth. This book has special resonance for me, as you might expect, but when my rabbi asked for volunteers I held back, mindful of the fact that I get more opportunities than most. Still, I was happy that my rabbi asked me to read a chapter. (Note to self: the combination of the particular book we use and the lighting in the chapel makes this a little challenging; I should print out my own copy in a good, crisp, large font and tuck it into the tallit bag that day just in case.)

As the last stragglers were leaving the building we saw (and heard) the power fail throughout the building. As I walked home I saw that lights were out for several blocks. (I also saw that too many drivers don't understand that "traffic light out" means "all-way stop". Grr.) I was dreading an afternoon without air conditioning after a walk home in 90-degree heat, but, fortunately, the outage zone ended two blocks before my house. I wonder what caused the outage -- too many ACs in the business district, maybe? (It wasn't a storm and I didn't see any emergency-response activity during my walk home.)

The people I had invited for lunch had to cancel, so I was alone for the afternoon. That's disappointing but, after the excellent study session the night before and the service in the morning, it wasn't terrible. Still, I'd like it if this aspect worked out better next year.

Comments

[zevabe.livejournal.com]

Rebecca (my fiance) came to YU for Shavuot and was not treated nicely (I should post about this, but not right now). So the lack of Torah study options for women is a topic of particular interest and annoyance right now.

In the traditional Tikkun Leil Shavuot, one reads among other things the first and last Mishna of every tractate. The last Mishna in Brachot explains the first line of ואהבת, including mention of the use of two yetzers. This may be the connection (as the second paragraph also speaks of loving G-d with all of your heart) to the second paragraph of Shma.

As for the story of rabbis destroying the yetzer hara for certain aveirot (sins), I have heard it as the yetzer hara for idolatry was destroyed. Deciding that this was a success the rabbis tried to rid the world of the yetzer hara for sexual immorality. However, they could then not find eggs. While there is a certain logic to suggest that all procreative acts originate with one's yetzer hara, the cessation of (unfertilized) egg laying seems unrelated.

I too am a big fan of Ruth, and would like to learn to chant it in a way that sounds more like trope than Bill's dramatic reading. There is no theoretical problem with me simply reading it in whatever sing-song or lack thereof that I like. However, it seems somehow less challenging or something, perhaps because I took university Hebrew and thus the major barrier for me to being a baal koreh is the trope rather than the grammar and such. (also possibly a topic for more thought by way of posting)

[cellio]

Rebecca (my fiance) came to YU for Shavuot and was not treated nicely

What a shame. I'm sorry.

The last Mishna in Brachot explains the first line of ואהבת, including mention of the use of two yetzers. This may be the connection (as the second paragraph also speaks of loving G-d with all of your heart) to the second paragraph of Shma.

Ah, thank you. I think you're right about that being the connection. (We do not follow the traditional tikkun curriculum, but this is not to say that we are not inspired by it.)

As for the story of rabbis destroying the yetzer hara for certain aveirot

A review of the passage from Yoma confirms that you are right. I was missing the distinction in my summary (and memory), but it's clearly there.

[chaos-wrangler.livejournal.com]

(Aside: the verb used at the very beginning of B'reishit is "barah", not "yatzar", but I think that is the unusual case. Didn't take the tangent Sunday night, but am curious.)

As I understand it, barah is creation of something from nothing while yatzar is forming of something from something. Thus, the first act of creation had to be barah because nothing existed before then, but after that acts of creation were yatzar.