We started by reviewing the famous story in the talmud (Bava Metzia 59b): Rabbi Eliezer and the rest of the sages are having an argument about the ritual status of a particular type of oven. After failing to win them over by logic, R' Eliezer resorted to other means: If I am right, he said, let this carob tree prove it -- and the carob tree got up and walked 100 cubits (some say 400). The sages responded: we do not learn halacha from carob trees. He then appealed to a stream, which ran backwards -- but we do not learn halacha from streams either. Nor from the walls of the study hall, his next appeal. Finally he appealed to heaven and a bat kol (heavenly voice) rang out: in all matters of halacha Rabbi Eliezer is right. But the sages responded: lo bashamayim hi, it (the torah) is not in heaven. That is, God gave us the torah and entrusted it to the sages, following a process of deduction given at Sinai, and that torah says that after the majority one must incline (in matters of torah). So, heavenly voices aren't part of the process. (It is then reported that God's reaction to this response is to laugh and say "my children have defeated me".)

That much of the story is fairly widely known, and I've also heard a joke version that ends with "so nu? Now it's 70 to 2!". The g'mara goes on from there, though, and it takes a darker turn. After this episode they brought everything that R' Eliezer had ever declared to be ritually pure and destroyed it, and, not satisfied with that, they excommunicated him. Rabbi Akiva agrees to be the one to tell him, and the g'mara describes a fairly roundabout conversation in which it's clear that R' Akiva is trying to let his colleague down gently. But even so, R' Eliezer is devastated and, the g'mara reports, on that day the world was smitten: a third of the olive crop, a third of the wheat crop, and a third of the barley crop were destroyed.

But wait; we're not done. Rabbi Eliezer's wife, Ima Shalom (literally "mother of peace"), was the sister of Rabban Gamliel, the head of the Sanhedrin that had ruled against R' Eliezer. Ima Shalom was careful to keep her husband from praying the petitionary prayers at the end of the Amidah, for fear that he would pour out his heart to God and God would punish her brother. But one day something went wrong, she found him praying these prayers, and she cried out "you have slain my brother!" (And yes, he had died.) How did she know this, he asked? Because tradition says that all (heavenly) gates are locked except the gates of wounded feelings.

And that's the second level of the story, which I also knew before this class. The real "aha" moment for me came when, instead of reading on, we backed up.

Why is the g'mara talking about this now? Sometimes we do get things that just seem to pop up out of nowhere, but usually there's context. In this case, that context is the previous mishna (the g'mara expounds the mishna). (Rabbi Schiff: "ok, everybody turn back four pages in the handout now".) That mishna says: Just as there is overreaching in buying and selling, so is there wrong done by words. One must not ask another "what is the price of this item?" if he has no intention of buying. If a man was a repentant sinner, one must not say to him "remember your former deeds". And if he was the son of proselytes one must not say to him "remember the deeds of your ancestors".

We talked about each of these cases. On the repentant sinner, he said, every married person knows this one: you do something wrong, you make amends and beg for forgiveness, your spouse forgives you... and then, five years later, in the midst of an argument, it comes out again. It feels terrible, right? The other cases can be just as bad. (You ask the price knowing you're not going to buy, then don't buy, and the seller tries to figure out what he did wrong. And for the proselyte, you're reminding him of things that somehow taint him that he didn't even do!)

Right after this mishna the g'mara begins discussing verbal wrongs, saying they're worse than monetary wrongs and that one who slanders another is as if he shed blood. The rabbis discuss all this for a while, and then we get to the oven of Achnai.

The episode with Rabbi Eliezer, Rabbi Schiff says, is not about rules of derivation, or proofs from miracles, or divine will versus human will. That's all just back-story. The main point is the hurt that the sages caused after the dispute. Disputes are fine; we get that all the time. But they over-reacted, hurtfully, and that is the point the g'mara is trying to make by putting this episode here.

Interesting class, and well-presented. (This writeup doesn't really do it justice, but it's the best I can offer.)

I do regret the loss of my congregation's tikkun, which was a coordinated program led by my rabbi and usually going until about 2. But I'm glad to have the community-wide one, where rabbis from all over come and teach classes. It gives me a chance to study with people I would never encounter otherwise, and I strive to go to classes taught by people who are new to me. Sure, it's unpredictable, but it's an adventure. :-)

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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.

My rabbi's tikkun leil Shavu'ot (late-night torah study for the holiday) always begins with a study of Exodus 19-20. This year I noticed, or had pointed out, things I had not previously noticed.

The first is in 19:1, which begins to set the scene. The text refers to a specific day, but instead of saying "bayom hahu" (on that day) it says "bayom hazeh", on this day. (My rabbi pointed this out.) There is a midrashic tradition that all the Jewish people, including (mystically) those not yet born, stood at Sinai; I wonder if this is related. Or, I wonder if it's part of the proof-text for the idea that revelation is ongoing. Or, maybe it's just a typo. :-)

A few verses later there's a bit of poetic repetition that I understand to be stylistic for biblical Hebrew -- God says "thus shall you say to the house of Ya'akov and tell the people of Israel". The house of Ya'akov and the people of Israel are, of course, one and the same. Saying and telling are similar; I wonder if there is nuance there or it's just part of the poetry. But something else struck me: the noun phrases there are "beit Ya'akov" and "b'nei Yisrael" (so "people" of Israel is a mistranslation; it says "sons of"). Is repetition just repetition, or does it try to hint at something? When you talk about your "house" you're looking backwards, to your ancestry; when you talk about your "sons" (or children) you're looking to the future. Maybe the torah is tellins us that both are important; this new enterprise isn't a clean slate (don't ignore your past) but it is a new opportunity (you can change going forward).

(Aside: I am growing to intensely dislike the translation "children of Israel". Too many people read it as "young children" and write divrei torah about how they needed to be taught as if newborns, couldn't be expected to think for themselves, etc. While they did need to be taught, that line of reasoning lets them off the hook for the things they did wrong, like the various rebellions. When someone becomes "bar mitzvah" ("bar" = "ben"; it's Araamic versus Hebrew) we say he's an adult. B'nei Yisrael were, likewise, adults. If we need a gender-neutral word, how about "descendants of Israel"?)

Another small thing: God says (to the people, via Moshe) "you have seen...how I carried you on eagles' wings". In talking about the exodus we talk a lot about divine might (including in the part of that verse I elided), but might alone, while impressive, probably wouldn't evoke buy-in from the people. Thus far they've seen a divine slug-fest; they might reasonably think that they're just trading one uncaring master for another. I think this might be the first indication to the people that it's (at least partly) about them and not just our God fighting it out with Egypt's false gods. The people probably needed that in order to be able to accept torah willingly instead of under duress. (Did they accept it willingly? That's another issue.)

The first and last of the ten commandments given directly to the people ("I am your God" and "don't covet") aren't about actions so much as intentions or belief. You can refrain from stealing or adultery, but refraining from the coveting that would lead you to steal or adulter seems a little less under your control. Judaism focuses more on action than belief, but you need both and maybe this bracketing of the active commandments is meant to indicate this.

Originally posted here: http://www.greatestjournal.com/users/cellio/1158.html

There was a lively discussion. As regular readers of my journal know, this is something I often come back to. I don't see how I could just pick the easy/fun/appealing stuff, and I don't. Life would certainly be a lot easier if I didn't keep kosher, for instance; I could eat more easily in restaurants, and I could eat the foods I like but no longer eat. If I didn't keep Shabbat I could run errands on Saturdays, go to shows on Friday nights, and not have my work schedule constrained in the winter. But yet, I do these things anyway (and others).

Sure, there is intrinsic value in being mindful of what and how you eat (even if the rules seem goofy), and in taking a forced day off from the hustle and bustle of the rest of the week. But there are lots of ways to achieve those goals without wrapping them up in religion. And for me, they weren't goals but, rather, effects.

Yet I do not keep the torah in the way that Orthodox Judaism teaches. There are theological reasons for this (which I'll go into if asked). But I don't set the torah aside as irrelevant; it plays a central role in how I live my life and relate to God.

What, then, is my "essential torah", the principle that guides how I understand the whole of torah and the traditions that follow? Talmud torah k'neged kulam, the study of torah is equal to all the mitzvot because it leads to them. My core obligation to the torah is to study it, try to understand it (recognizing that this is a lifelong task), and be willing to make changes in my life based on that understanding. As Rabbi Hillel said, all the rest is commentary.

It is said that when the Ba'al Shem Tov (founder of Chasidism) faced a difficult problem and sought divine help, he went to a particular place in the forest, built a fire in a special way, and said a special prayer, and his prayer was answered. Later his student, the Magid, faced a similar problem, but when he went to the place he said "God, I do not know how to build the fire, but I have come to the place and I know the prayer", and his prayer was answered. His student went to the woods and said "God, I do not know how to build the fire, and I do not know the prayer, but I have come to the place", and his prayer was answered. Finally, his student sat at his desk and said "God, I do not know how to build the fire, and I do not know the prayer, and I do not know the place, but I know the story" -- and his prayer, too, was answered.

It's a quaint story, but I hesitate to take a lesson from it. If I don't know, isn't it my obligation to learn? Was there no one alive who could tell the Magid how to build the fire, or tell the Magid's student the prayer, or tell the student's student the place? We make the best of things when knowledge has been lost, but that doesn't absolve us from trying to recover it if we can.

But on the other hand, we should also not presume that there is one correct way to do things, least of all one correct way to approach God. Maybe a heartfelt prayer is more important than the precise words used by your master. Maybe the student should not try to be the Ba'al Shem Tov but should, instead, be the best Magid he can be. Maybe that is what God wants from us.

Another story: when Reb Zusia grew old, he told his students that he feared his impending death. They asked why he should fear when he had achieved so much. But, Reb Zusia said, God will not ask me "why weren't you as great as Moshe?", or "why weren't you as great as Avraham?"; rather, he will ask "why weren't you as great as Zusia?", and I will not know what to say.

We have conflicting tasks. We must work to keep knowledge alive, but we must not just cling to that and say we're done. We have to study not only the past but ourselves; we have to both preserve and innovate, and we have to figure out how to balance the two, to know when to use the Ba'al Shem Tov's prayer and when to use our own.

We have two programmable thermostats in our house, one for the furnace and one for the AC. (Yeah, so it's up to us to make sure only one is engaged. This is not hard.) The one for the AC is on daylight savings time (sic), and the one for the furnace is not. As I was thinking about this and determining that there's no need to reset the latter, it struck me that "standard" time will soon be only 4.5 months of the year. That doesn't sound like much of a standard to me. A "standard" transmission in a car isn't standard any more either. What other things are still called "standard" even when that's no longer true?

On the edge of an aphorism by metahacker rings true to me.

Iron Chef Programmer by merle_ made me laugh even though I've never seen the TV show.

A service that could be useful to some of my readers: DynDNS gives you a domain name that you can then point anywhere else, for free. It's not as good as a full vanity domain, but the price is right and sometimes you just want a path that's better than "obscure.isp.com/users/my_arcane_account_number/public" or the like.

Shavuot is tomorrow night and Friday. This is one of the three festivals, equal in importance to Pesach and Sukkot, though it seems to be less prominent in many people's eyes. (It's one day instead of a week, which is part of it.) A holiday celebrating the giving of the torah is special for me, though, and I'm looking forward to late-night torah study with my rabbi tomorrow night.

I have paid the deposit to go on my rabbi's trip to Israel in December. There's a meeting next week for people interested in the trip; ironically, it conflicts with one session of the ulpan (intensive Hebrew class). Oops. :-) (It sounds like missing the meeting will not be problematic.)