Forgiveness: Notes for Shabat Shuva

This is what happens when you don't write it all out of ahead of time.
My friends, who requested a copy of this dvar torah, here are my notes, but it's not, I'm afraid, exactly the dvar you got. I hope this will do for you:


Recently, I spent some time on a caravan driving around the country with Clergy Beyond Borders’ on our Reconciliation tour. I spent a ridiculous amount of time in a very small van, driving around from synagogue to mosque to church – by some oddity, the section of the trip I was on was the “mostly mosques” part of the tour- with a Franciscan brother, an evangelical minister, another rabbi, and a Muslim imam. The purpose of the tour was to talk abut how we, as Americans, can heal our country, bring it together in unity and love. We spent a lot of our driving time talking – well, at least when we weren’t all playing with our phones and netbooks, anyhow. But all that driving left us with hours and hours of discussion about our respective religions’ views on all kinds of things. The time I spent talking with my fellow clergy often circled around to the process of forgiving, and so I found myself thinking a great deal about it over the last week.

For all the time we spend this time of year talking about forgiveness, we spend a remarkably little amount of time talking about the process of forgiving, as opposed to the process of requesting it.

On the face of it, it would seem as though asking forgiveness would be a lot more difficult. After all, it is an act of humility to go before someone and ask their forgiveness. It can be difficult to bend oneself to ask for forgiveness. But offering it, can also be difficult.

Imam Yahya Hendi was one of my companions on the trip, and in hearing his personal story, I have to say that I was moved and made hopeful about the possibility of humans forgiving one another – I don’t want to discuss politics too much – that’s not really the point, but Imam Hendi was born in Nablus, and experienced things that would have made a lesser man hate. But Imam Hendi spends his life working to make Muslims, Christians and Jews tolerant and loving of one another – more than that – (this is the “Beyond Borders” part) not just recognizing that we have differences, but that we should celebrate them, because we have different perspectives and we can learn from one another. This is a message he brings to Muslims as well as Christians and Jews; I have heard it. He quotes the Koran, a passage that if God had wanted all people to be the same , God could have arranged it, but rather we were made to be different, so that we could learn to know one another.

Although we don’t hear as much about it, there are in fact directives from Jewish law about how we are to forgive others.

The Rambam (Hilchos Dei’os, ch. 6), who is good at this sort of thing, outlines the procedure for the mitzvah of forgiving others. He teaches that you should not hate a person in your heart, but you should privately ask him or her outright, “Why did you do such and such to me?”

Elsewhere he also notes, "It is forbidden to be obdurate and not allow yourself to be appeased. On the contrary, one should be easily pacified and find it difficult to become angry. When asked by an offender for forgiveness, one should forgive with a sincere mind and a willing spirit. . . forgiveness is natural to the seed of Israel." (Mishneh Torah, Teshuvah 2:10)

[One who sincerely apologizes three times for a wrong committed against another has fulfilled his or her obligation to seek forgiveness. Shulchan Aruch OC 606:1]. The corollary is, of course, that if one doesn't forgive a sincere person who asks forgiveness three times, the wrong now rests on the person who refuses to forgive.

But, notice something that’s quite different here than the process of asking forgiveness: unlike repenting, offering forgiveness requires governing one’s own heart. For repenting, much of the process – after one realizes one has done wrong- is action. Admit your wrong and confess to God, confess and apologize to the victim, make restitution, and then refrain from doing it again. But for forgiving… how does one make oneself sincere and open? What if the offense was a serious betrayal?

How can an abused child forgive the parent who abused them – even if they no longer are abusing them, and even if they have begged forgiveness? Must they? What about someone whose husband or wife has cheated on them? Or the child of a murder victim; can they forgive the murderer?

How can one genuinely turn one’s heart with sincerity towards such a person and say, “I forgive you for the wrongs you have committed against me?”

For me --and I am ashamed to admit it-- I think it’s far more difficult to forgive, than it is to ask forgiveness. I don’t mean trivial things: people cutting me off in traffic, or mild irritations or offenses. But there are offenses that I’ve felt in my life that I’ve had a terrible time letting go of. There is a certain level of pride that one has to let go of to forgive, as well as to be forgiven. I struggle with it, all the time.

There’s an international charity that is known for their work in British prisons, called The Forgiveness Project. There are several videos that their participants have made as part of their learning process. I was struck by this quote in a video made by one of the participants Declan Kavannagh – he doesn’t say, but from clues in the video, I would guess that he was an IRA member:


“Forgiveness means giving up all hope of a better past.”


Forgiveness of a serious wrong is difficult because it requires us to admit two things – first that we have no control over much of what happens in the world; it is the same humility that shabbat’s prohibitions are supposed to inculcate within us – that ultimately, we are creatures in the world, whose fortunes are not in our own hands. If we refuse to forgive, we can hold onto the myth that we are in control, that we can protect ourselves. Being angry can give us the illusion that we are in control, even if we aren't Letting go of that... is very difficult.

But in love, there is no protection. Love requires us to be open and to risk hurt. Intimacy can only happen when we are willing to stand unmasked and truthful before another.

Forgiveness requires us to admit the risk that comes with love. When we are betrayed – as eventually we all will be, one way or another, by the imperfections of other humans-- we have to risk being hurt again. The only other choice is to stop being in relationship – with anyone. There is no choice, other than this – to risk other people whom you love hurting you, or hurting you again, or not being in relationship with other people. Only God will never betray us – humans will – if only because in the end, we die and leave our loved ones alone.

Even when the person does tshuva, we cannot know if their tshuva is sincere, or if it will ever be complete – that if they are in the same position again, they won’t repeat their action.

Forgiving another person means we must recognize that the person we thought we knew, might become someone else, might, in fact, already be someone else. But forgiveness also frees the other person to walk down a fresh path if they choose it. If we don’t forgive them, they are held in one moment of their lives forever, unable to leave it. Only when we stop holding them in that one moment of wrong are the free to choose another path and walk down it.

Perhaps that is why the Talmud tells us that one who forgives, is himself forgiven.

Raba said: He who forgoes his right [to exact punishment] is forgiven all his iniquities, as it says, Forgiving iniquity and passing by transgression. Who is forgiven iniquity? One who passes by transgression [against himself]. (BT. Rosh Hashana 17a)

If we don’t free the one who wronged us, by forgiving them, it becomes our sin, as well – because we prevented them from becoming a new person, and held them back, in a sense making more sinners in the world. In psalm 121 (:5) it says, יי צלך על יד ימינך God is your shadow (tzel) at your right hand. The Baal Shem Tov understands this to mean that if we are compassionate, God will be compassionate, as well. The Maor eynaim (commentary on Brachot) says,



האדם הוא כמו שמראה בעצמו כך מתראה למעלה אם בגדלות הוא מעורר למעלה בגדלות, ואי אפשר להאיר לעולם גשמי כזה



“a person is a mirror, just as he reflects himself, so is that reflection made above: if he is full of greatness (gadlut) then so it will be above and it is impossible to bring light into the world this way.

The context of this is that when there is gadlut in heaven, and gadlut on earth in the tzaddik, there is no conduit to bring down that which allows the world to continue – the kabbalists called it “shefa,” English speakers might call it “divine grace.” To bring down shefa, we have to have someone who does katnut – makes themselves smaller, like God did tzimtzum to make room for the imperfection of creation to exist outside of God. To partake of humility is to allow God’s grace to flow through us.

But I also like the simple, out-of-context reading, which reminds me of something the Christian writer Anne Lamott wrote:

In writing about acceptance of grief – which is perhaps similar to acceptance of the possibility of hurt—she said this, “The thing about light is that it isn’t really yours; it’s what you gather and shine back. And it gets more power from reflectiveness; if you sit still and take it in, it fills your cup, and then you can give it off yourself.”


I think it is hard, hard to accept our lack of control over the world. Forgiving others means admitting that we can’t make ourselves safe in this world. And it’s true, we can’t. But we can help make others safe, by forgiving them, and letting them be free to make new choices, instead of holding them in their old ones.

In doing so, it doesn’t make us any safer, but it does connect us to God, both in modeling God’s compassion for the world, but also in being a conduit for that shefa, that flow of the divine that allows the world to continue to exist. When we forgive, we can channel a little of it into that person, even if only for a bit, and perhaps that will make all the difference.

This doesn’t much help us in figuring out the “how,” though, so I want to suggest two things. First, When you’re getting ready to follow Rambam’s directive and go ask the person, “Why did you do this?” or when you’re getting ready to meet with someone who has wronged you, and you know they want to make things right, have a plan in mind – figure out for yourself what kind of resolution or restitution would satisfy you. Be realistic, of course, But ask yourself, “what can I accept?” What would make this specific wrong, right?

Second, It is customary to say, each night before going to bed, a repetition of the shema. There is a prayer that many people join to it:

“Master of the universe I hereby forgive anyone who has angered or vexed me or sinned against me either physically or financially, against my honor or anything else that is mine, whether accidentally or intentionally, inadvertently or deliberately, by speech or by deed, in this incarnation or in any other; may no one be punished on my account. May it be your will, Lord my God and God of my ancestors that I shall sin no more, nor repeat my sins, neither shall I again anger you more do what is wrong in Your eyes, The sins that I have committed, erase in Your abounding mercies but not through suffering or severe illnesses. May the words of my mouth be acceptable before You, Lord my Strength and my Redeemer.”

Much of this comes straight from the Talmud – (BT Yoma 86ff). It is, I think, a way to practice being forgiving. Most of the time, there will be little or nothing to forgive. But when some time comes, perhaps being in the habit of saying the words, will help each of us feel a way through the hurt towards releasing our control over the harms of the world towards us, and releasing a little reflection of light, instead.

The Talmud comments on a verse that comes from this week’s haftarah, “Great is penitence, for it brings healing to the world, as is said, “I will heal their affliction, generously will I take them back in love.” (Hos. 14:5) (BT Yoma 86a)

We live in a broken world. The sparks of creation are still scattered, and it is up to us to find and restore them. In the act of forgiveness, perhaps we are able to lift up a little of the spark of holiness in both ourselves and the one who wronged us, as they join together for a moment, and shine.

The Akedah: Forgiving the deepest betrayal

The story of the Akedah –the binding of Isaac- that we read today, - is perhaps one of the most difficult of all the Torah portions we read over the course of the year. Unlike some portions, it’s not difficult because it’s hard to understand what’s going on, but because the ideas presented in it are so challenging to us.


I struggle with the portion every year, to make sense of it from a religious point of view, and I always have trouble accepting the ideas presented in it as ones which I can accept. So, today, instead of speaking about the Akedah, I want to talk about what happens after the Akedah, after Isaac is saved, and he and Abraham return to their lives, and descend the mountain.

The Torah tells us that after Abraham offers Isaac to God on the mountain, and after Isaac is saved by God, Abraham returns to his young men, and they went together to Beer Sheva, and Abraham dwelt in Beer Sheva (ber. 22:19). The next thing we hear is of Sarah’s death, which is in Kiryat Arba in Hevron – and Abraham must travel there to mourn for her. The midrash tells us that her death was from hearing about what Abraham did to Isaac.

The next piece is Abraham’s sending his servant to find a wife for Isaac. When the servant succeeds in bringing Rebecca back, the Torah tells us that Isaac had just returned from Beer Lachai Ro’I (24:62) and finally, when Abraham dies ( 25:8) Isaac and Ishmael return together to bury him, and then Isaac returns to Beer Lachai Ro’i.

The text hints at something which is perhaps not terribly surprising: Abraham’s life after the Akedah is quite different. His family is essentially destroyed. Sarah according to midrash, dies of horror as Abraham returns, of what he has done to Isaac (or almost done); in the plain words of the text, she is living somewhere else than he at the time of her death.
Abraham does take a new wife after the death of Sarah and is given a whole new family, but the evidence seems to be that, either way, he never directly speaks again to Sarah or Isaac.

It is suggestive that the place Isaac returns to after his experience on the mountain is Beer Lachai Ro’I, which is the place named by Hagar when she has an experience of God. While we know that Ishmael lives elsewhere in the wilderness of Paran, it is possible that Hagar is still living there, and that Isaac goes to stay with her after the death of his mother. He leaves his father, and goes to another person who has been betrayed by his father.

We see from a close reading of the Torah itself that the family relationships of Abraham are destroyed: Abraham and Sarah are no longer together, Abraham and Isaac are also living apart, and as far as we know, during Abraham’s lifetime, his relationships with his family are never repaired, and Isaac never forgives him during his lifetime

Why do we tell the story of the Akedah on Rosh Hashanah? During these days of repentance, is the story of Abraham and Isaac one about repentance? I think that perhaps it is actually, a story of forgiveness.
Let’s talk about forgiveness for a moment:

It is odd, given the amount of time we spend talking about repentance, how little we really talk about forgiveness. We know that there is a process of teshuvah - we have to admit our sin to God and where relevant, our human victim, say we are sorry, make restitution, and then for complete teshuvah, repentance, not make the same mistake again when the opportunity presents itself.

In one of the classic sources that we use to talk about teshuva, repentance, Rambam’s hilchot teshuva (Laws of repentance), I found relatively little about human forgiveness of others: “It is forbidden for one to be harsh and non-appeasing. One should rather be forgiving and slow to anger, and whenever a sinner asks one for forgiveness one should grant it wholeheartedly. Even if the sinner had distressed one considerably and sinned against one a lot, one should/may not take revenge or bear a grudge, in the manner of a true Jew…" The main advice about forgiveness that we receive from tradition is that we shouldn’t withhold it from one who asks for forgiveness, and that if a person asks in good faith for forgiveness two or three times, and they are refused, in most cases, the person who did not forgive becomes the sinner.

In one of the passages in which Maimonides speaks about repentance, he talks about how repentance actually changes the person’s relationship with God, saying, “Teshuvah brings near those who were far removed. Previously, this person was hated by God, disgusting, far removed, and abominable. Now, he is beloved and desirable, close, and dear…Yesterday he was separated from the Lord God of Israel, …today he is attached to the Divine Presence.”

Rabbi Menachem Mendel Schneerson, (Likutei Sichot vol. 28) pointed out that Maimonides’ perspective involves the victim in the process of repentance. The victim must assist the offender in hir process of rejoining with the Creator by offering forgiveness and treating the offender as though the incident had not happened. That is why the late Rabbi Schneerson emphasizes that the victim must forgive the offender with “a generous spirit” –most importantly looking upon the offender as someone who is precious and beloved.

As I thought about the parshah, I came to wonder what Abraham thought, not during the Akedah, but afterwards. Did he think that, as God had asked him to sacrifice his son, that there was nothing that he needed to apologize for? Did he try to apologize and Isaac refuse to accept it? We don’t know. There’s not enough information in the Torah itself, and the midrash doesn’t seem to be interested in taking up this narrative challenge.

But I can imagine the feelings of betrayal that Isaac felt. It is easy enough to forgive those who have no connection to us – perhaps even for fairly significant wrongs. When we know that the person has no real power over us, then it may be easy enough to simply forgive someone and move on. But when we are wronged by someone whom we love, then forgiveness is much more difficult:
When it is someone we love who wronged us, if it is serious, how can we forgive? How can we act as if we do not fear that we will be betrayed again?

Not long ago, I had a conversation with another parent about the fact that my son knows that I’m the tooth fairy. I actually have this conversation on a pretty regular basis, since Maiyan is fond of telling people both about his lost teeth, and also about his Ima who pretends to be the tooth fairy.

In a study that came out abut a year ago and was released in the Journal of Moral Education, Professor Gail Heyman, of the University of California, it was shown that parents lie to their children regularly, abut all kinds of things. The study suggested that , in fact, socially approved lies, such as telling children that there is such a thing as the tooth fairy may be a necessity, not for the children, but for the parents, as it sets up a safe lie which teaches children – in a relatively harmless way- the necessary lesson that your parents lie to you.
It is an interesting point.
It is rare that we can be in a loving relationship that does not have moments of betrayal. And if nothing else, all of us eventually die, leaving behind our loved ones, grieving.

So it is part of the human condition to need to forgive, as well as to need to repent. But coming back to our story, Isaac doesn’t seem to have been able to do it. The picture we have from the plain reading of the Torah’s story is a son who cannot forgive his father.

But the Torah (and its midrash) does give us some insight. What happens to a person who cannot forgive? In Isaac’s case, the Torah tells us that as he aged, his eyes became dim: Several sources understand this in a very broad sense, that Isaac’s blindness was not only physical, but spiritual. It affected him in two ways:
The first is that he was unable to see the faults in others – that’s the midrash’s understanding. He looked at his sons and was not able to know which of them was the one who God wished to inherit him and become the father of the Israelite nation. But that blindness was a random blindness – the second way in which he was affected is precisely because of the fear he continued to hold inside him:
He preferred which son? Not the dweller in tents, the son who was more like him, but the son who was more like his brother Ishmael: outdoorsy, strong, self-willed. Esaiv would never have let himself be dragged up a mountain to be sacrificed in blood. Isaac’s blindness was that he couldn’t see *himself*. He was unable to see what his own good qualities were and why they were necessary to someone who would lead his descendants.

There are three ways we can react to the betrayal of a loved one:
1. We can, like Sarah, accept betrayal as normal, but be unable to live with the world as it is, and find a way to protect ourselves form the inevitable betrayal by shutting love out, no longer engaging with the world
2. We can, like Isaac, develop a spiritual blindness, instead blaming oneself, or one’s loved one, for the betrayal, and holding onto that fear throughout life.
3. Or we can take a third option: forgiveness. We can see the world as it really is, and learn to accept that part of the human condition. Neither making for oneself a shell that no one can break through, refusing to be open to love again, nor remaining a victim, but moving beyond the moment of betrayal and healing the harm - when there is true desire for repair in the heart of the one who did the harm
How do we forgive, with a whole heart, those we love?

Every morning, we say during the bircot hashachar a set of blessings, which include blessings such as "blessed are you who clothes the naked,…blessed are you who releases the bound…"

In the Talmud (Sotah 14a) we read, R. Hama son of R. Hanina further said: What means the text: Ye shall walk after the Lord your God? Is it, then, possible for a human being to walk after the Shechinah? …But [the meaning is] to walk after the attributes of the Holy One, blessed be He. As He clothes the naked, … so do thou also clothe the naked.

The Talmud explains that we say these blessings in the morning as a reminder that we have the power to act b’tzelem elohim in God’s image. In forgiveness, too, we ought to be reminded that we act in God’s image. If it is our part during these days of awe to repent, it is also our part to imitate God and to forgive. We speak constantly during these days of the power of God’s forgiveness, we, in fact, rely on it, for release from the bad habits of our past. If God is a forgiving God, so must we also be forgiving people, in God’s tzel, in God’s image. To forgive one another, but also, as in our story of the man who could not forgive his father, to forgive not only our father, those we love who are human, but also to forgive our Father, God.

I came to wonder as I thought about Isaac, if maybe, in the end, that’s really what the story of the Akedah is: Maybe the test was not to offer Isaac, but that Abraham knew, he knew that after he put his son on the altar – he trusted that God would not allow his son to die- but his son, his wife, Sarah, how could they forgive Abraham for putting Isaac on the altar and holding the knife to his throat? And he knew that after he walked down the mountain, he would never be forgiven. When God said, “you did not withhold your son, your only son,” maybe what he meant was that Abraham knew that he allowed his son to feel betrayed by his father, and the test, that was really the rest of his life, in which he did not speak again to him, which he lived without Sarah, and until his dying day, when Isaac and Ishmael, his two betrayed sons, came together to bury him, he did not speak to them again, and that was God’s test of Abraham.

But remember the study of the lies we tell our children: Like children who are betrayed by their parents by hearing lies from them, we also feel betrayed by our Father, by God sometimes. Sometimes when life gets difficult, it is nearly impossible to remember the love, because of the feeling that somehow, God has betrayed us in this moment of our difficulty. And in fact we have a powerful story about what this type of betrayal might teach us – namely to teach us, as humans, to forgive:

The story is told of Rabbi Levi Yitzchak of Berditchev:
A tailor once came to Rabbi Levi Yitzchak and told him about an argument he had had with God on Yom Kippur. The tailor said: “I declared to God, ‘You wish me to repent my sins, but I have committed only minor offenses.” I may have kept leftover cloth, or I may have eaten non-kosher food, or not blessed my meal. But You, O God, have committed great sins: You have taken babies from their mothers and mothers from their babies. Let’s call it even; may You forgive me, and I will forgive You.’”
After listening intently, Rabbi Levi Yitzchak rose in anger and said, “You fool! You ignoramus! Why did you let God off so easily? You might have forced God to redeem the whole world!”

God is up to the challenge. In God’s demand of us that we forgive with a whole heart, however difficult, we are being asked to also forgive God. And because it is difficult, for us to forgive those we love, and those whom we ought to trust, we are caught, but perhaps we need betrayal from God to teach us how to forgive? Within us, we have the power to forgive one another, and perhaps even God, as wholeheartedly as God forgives us, when we come with true repentance.

When the Chickens Went on Strike

Although most modern Jews have abandoned the practice of Kapores, in some parts of the community, it is still common. I'm not sure what the Masorti movement thinks it will accomplish by joining with the SPCA -Tel Aviv, ince the parts of the community that are practicing kapores aren't the parts likely to care what the masorti movement does, but all in all, it can't hurt.

In the story from which I took this post's name (an adapted tale based on the original story by Sholom Aleichem) the author in fact points out that the practice of taking a chicken (male for men, female for women) swinging it over one's head to "catch" one's sins, and then slaughtering it, is not exactly halacha ( Jewish law). And while in general one ought not to depend on fiction for accurate portrayals of Jewish law, in this case, it happens to be correct. Not only is "Where is it written?" a good response, but where it is written, the rabbis aren't too happy with it, considering it (Like many folk customs which have become embedded in Jewish practice) akin to idolatry, or at lest very improper.

And reasonably so, while it might be a midat chesed (act of mercy) to buy a chicken which one will then donate to the poor to eat (although that does raise some questions about how that came about... really? We're giving our sins to the poor to eat? Hmmm. I hear a sin eater story in here somewhere for those of us familiar with that southern custom), the problems with the ritual as a whole are numerous. For now, let's set aside the problem of tzaar ba'alei chaim - the requirement not to be cruel to animals (in this case, by packing them in itty bitty crates sitting around in the sun all day until it's time for them to be grabbed and swung around by the feet) and concentrate on the symbolism of the custom itself.

While there seems to be some kind of yearning for authenticity as played by certain elements of the Jewish community which favor dress styles not native to Israel, but rather early modern Europe, I've never been able to fathom why people attach their sentiments to these kinds of customs (including within the community, but without it as well). There's somehow a sense that it looks or feels more authentic - but how could it be? If Judaism and our peoplehood is based upon our connection to God through God's commandments, as the Torah tells us, then one couldn't possibly repent by swinging a chicken around.
I far prefer the formulation of the Talmud (Brachot 17a) (See the bottom of the post) which likens the fat that one loses during a fast to the fat offered as a sacrifice in the times when the Temple stood. That makes far more sense to me.

Most importantly, if w are repenting, we cannot hope to shed our sins elsewhere without the ful act of teshuvah that goes with it. Whether we are speaking of ourselves as individuals, our individual communities, or Israel as a whole, our own sins cannot be displaced by any symbolic act, whether we're talking about swinging a chicken or saying that the other party involved has done bad things and so they have to repent first. NO, we are responsible for the sins of ourselves, and the sins of our people. If we wish for peace, we have to act first to recognize and admit our sins; to make reparation to those whom we've harmed; to confess to God - because in doing so, we humble ourselves and take into our hearts that our acts, whether accidental or intentional, whether preemptive or retaliatory, were wrong; and then to not do it again when the opportunity presents itself.
Stop building settlements, stop demolishing homes, stop blaming others for acts over which we have agency. Goldstone isn't our enemy, and taking on against him, as the Rabbinical Assembly has just, entirely ridiculously, done, will not bring peace.
As long as we treat acts for which we need to repent as thought they were public relations bloopers which can be addressed if we only change our spin, there will not be kaparah, atonement, no matter how long we fast on Yom Kippur, no matter how many chickens we swing. We have to do the work ourselves.

(From the Yom Kippur Haftarah Isaiah 58:2-7)
They ask Me for the right way,
They are eager for the nearness of God:
3 "Why, when we fasted, did You not see?
When we starved our bodies, did You pay no heed?"
Because on your fast day
You see to your business
And oppress all your laborers!
4 Because you fast in strife and contention,
And you strike with a wicked fist!
your fasting today is not such
As to make your voice heard on high.
5 Is such the fast I desire,
A day for men to starve their bodies?
Is it bowing the head like a bulrush
And lying in sackcloth and ashes?
Do you call that a fast,
A day when the Lord is favorable?
6 No, this is the fast I desire:
To unlock the fetters of wickedness,
And untie the cords of the yoke
To let the oppressed go free;
To break off every yoke.
7 It is to share your bread with the hungry,
And to take the wretched poor into your home;
When you see the naked, to clothe him,
And not to ignore your own kin.

When R. Shesheth kept a fast, on concluding his prayer he added the following: Sovereign of the Universe, Thou knowest full well that in the time when the Temple was standing, if a man sinned he used to bring a sacrifice, and though all that was offered of it was its fat and blood, atonement was made for him therewith. Now I have kept a fast and my fat and blood have diminished. May it be Thy will to account my fat and blood which have been diminished as if I had offered them before Thee on the altar, and do Thou favour me.. (Brachot 17a)

XP

A few thoughts on Ki Tisa

In reading over Ki Tisa, I feel drawn to a piece of commentary that, it seems to me, every year, I come back to again.
In the episode of the golden calf, in Shmot 32:1 it says:

“Arise and make for us elohim that they will go before us, since this man Moshe who brought us out of Egypt, we don’t know what has happened to him.”

The Chasidic commentator R. Meir Simcha says that Israel didn’t really want to make an idol. Rather, Israel thought that Moshe was so far above them that when he disappeared, they thought God would no longer come to dwell among them. As Hirsch also comments, the people didn’t believe that God came to them, but that Moshe brought God to them.

The Torah tells us that Israel said that Moshe was “the man who brought us out of Egypt.” That means that Israel did know that it was God who brought them out. Israel didn’t confuse Moshe and God – they knew that Moshe was doing God’s work, and they heard and saw all the miracles that God did for them.
– So, after Israel made the calf, they said (32:5)

“Tomorrow shall be a festival for God!” and in 32:4, just the verse before, they announced, “This is your God, Israel, that brought you out of Egypt.”

They didn’t think that the calf was a god, they were trying to make a place for God to dwell, or perhaps a footstool, a statue of precious metals that would be sort of like the cherubim that were on the ark, which was “God’s footstool,” so that God would dwell there. Israel had the idea that Moshe was the path to God. You see, with Moshe gone, they just knew that no mortal person was good enough for the shechinah to hover over. God was not with them, God was brought by Moshe.

This should give us pause. It is so very close to the idea of God requiring a mediator in Christianity (or even multiple mediators, first, their Xristos, and secondly in some sects, the priests) – or closer to home, the idea that Rabbi Schneerson is the messiah, who will be revived from the dead. Perhaps it is a natural human feeling to want a person who is better than us to serve as a channel to the divine, perhaps it is natural to feel that we are not good enough to bring God amongst ourselves. But this is contrary to what Judaism tells us. We do not know the place of Moshe’s burial because God was concerned about this sort of idolatry.

And make no mistake: it was not the calf which was the idolatry. We don’t have to worship something as God or as a god for it to become idolatrous. It is the act of removing responsibility from ourselves to connect with God that is the essential act of idolatry. Believing that only Moshe can bring God to us, that’s idolatry, because God is not at the beck and call of a person. Any person. Our connection to God is part of an ongoing relationship that we have to build both as individuals and also as a people.

Shmot Rabbah 44:1 says:
Another explanation of ’Thou didst pluck up a vine out of Egypt’. …Thou wilt also verify the explanation: ‘Just as the living vine is supported by dead stalks, so Israel, alive and eternal, lean upon their patriarchs who are dead.’ You will thus find that Elijah offered up many supplications on Mount Carmel for the fire to descend, as it says, Hear me, O Lord, hear me (I Kings 18:37), but the Lord did not hearken unto him. As soon, however, as he mentioned the dead, and said: O Lord, the God of Abraham, of Isaac, and of Israel (ib. 36), he was immediately answered; ... Moses, likewise, after Israel had committed that act [the Calf], stood for forty days and nights pleading n their behalf, but he was not answered; but as soon as he made mention of the dead he was immediately answered, as it says, REMEMBER ABRAHAM, ISAAC, AND ISRAEL, THY SERVANTS. What follows?--AND THE LORD REPENTED OF THE EVIL WHICH HE SAID HE WOULD DO UNTO HIS PEOPLE. A proof that just as the vine that lives receives its support from dead stalks, so do living Israel find support in their patriarchs long dead;- hence REMEMBER ABRAHAM, ISAAC, AND ISRAEL.

Israel does honor those who came before, and we depend upon the merit of our ancestors. But this is a world away from considering them the saints through whom God comes to us. The reason that the image is of a vine is that the vine appears dead, but it lives, and that is why the vine can continue to be fruitful. But that doesn’t mean that our ancestors are literally alive, nor chas v’shalom, that we should expect their resurrection to bring moshiach. To the contrary, it is because the vine that is green is part of the vine, just as the part that appears dead is part of the vine. It is only that the core of the vine is alive throughout the vine. Without that green sap and core, none of the vine will exist or bear: and what is that vine? It is God and Torah within all of us. When we depend upon the merit of our ancestors, it means that we recognize the Torah within them, and let it flow through us as well. But what happens if you think that the older part of the vine will be revived, and the green, new parts doesn’t have to bear new fruit? Well, nothing. That part of the vine is no longer the part that bears.

The problem is when we become emotionally attached to the fallacies of the idolatry. When there is comfort in an imagined past in which everyone knew their place and were rewarded for it, in which we view with sentimentality the way people lived, and disregard that which is before our eyes as sin and wrong, we are already setting ourselves up for failure. There is no one who should come between us and God. God does not require a footstool, Moshe is a leader, not a channeler, and certainly not a magician making the spirits do his will. To excuse oneself from the duty of bringing moshiach because someone else is there to do it, or be it, that's idolatry.

Tze u'lmad

When I was in rabbinical school, the morning of erev Rosh Hashanah of my second year, my car had a mechanical failure and it rolled off a cliff. Those of you who read my blog probably know this story already, and so I won’t repeat it – and in any case, it’s a Rosh Hashanah story, not a shabbat haGadol story. But what happened afterward, that is a shabbat haGadol story.
I walked away from that accident, and right after the chagim, returned to class to the wonder of my classmates, who had all seen my car, which was, off course, totaled. My classmates and professors were all a little ginger with me. Yet, obviously, I was physically unhurt, and so, after a few tedious rounds of “did you feel like God did a miracle for you?” (The answer, for the record is, “no,” which is probably yet another dvar for another day) most of us went back to normal. But after a few months, when everyone but me had forgotten about it, I felt compelled to go see one of my teachers.

This teacher is a bit eccentric, even by fairly generous standards of eccentricity. Yet, something about him let me know that there was something deeper to him than he wanted to let on generally. So I went to him one day after class, and told him that I had been having what were sort of wide awake dreams, or maybe something akin to a sense of déjà vu – I didn’t know what to call it, exactly: I would have moments when I was sitting in class, or was about to fall asleep at night, or I was shopping at the grocery, when I was convinced that I had not actually walked away from the car accident. That in fact, perhaps I was still falling at that very moment, and in precursor to my death, I was living out a whole life in my mind. Or that I had already died, and didn’t yet know it –I was a sort of ghost, still walking.
I didn’t really know how to explain it – perhaps I still don’t. After all, nothing really bad had happened to me in that accident. I had walked away from it – had I not? My rav asked me about the experience – he was surprised to hear that in fact, I hadn’t passed out while falling, but was conscious the whole way down, through all the rolling.

As you may guess, his answer did nothing to stop these moments of unreality. They continued for months afterward – in fact, I occasionally still have them, although not nearly as often as I used to.
You may by now be wondering what all this has to do with the portion. This week, we read the portion of tzav, which is about korbanot – sacrifices.

Most of us look at anything that has to do with sacrifices, and our eyes just glaze right over. A whole portion of nothing but this -well, it doesn’t bode well for those of us not inflicted with insomnia.
But, what are the sacrifices, really? The word korban, itself, comes from karev- to draw close to. And indeed, the purpose of korbanot are to help us draw close to God.

Why aren’t we close to God? What is it that poisons the soul? What is it that makes us too tired to live Jewishly, to pray with joy, to make our connections to one another and to Our Great Beloved Friend? What could possibly make us feel that it isn’t worth the bother?
The rabbis tell us that it is nothing but hirhurim – the murmurings of the heart. What are the murmurings of the heart? Turning aside from God? Idolatry? Some rabbis looked at them as an outside force – something that enters us to distance us from God.
I want to suggest that hirhurim aren’t really those things at all. Hirhurim, murmurings, are those things which fill up our minds with noise and static, and so distance us from ourselves, God and the world. This is why the rabbis viewed that as an embodiment of the evil inclination. They are those things that make us say, “what’s the difference?” or, “I’m busy right now – maybe later,” about talking to our children, God or our friends and neighbors; about doing mitzvot, making an attempt to ameliorate a large problem – like poverty, or Darfur. They can be caused by all kinds of things – big incidents, like an accident or trauma, or small details building up upon us so that we finally are buried under them, like housework, or our jobs and errands. They prevent us from seeing one another, ourselves, and God for all the dust they stir up, and the cobwebs they lay down over our vision.

The Chasidic rabbi Rabbi Shalom Noach, the Slonimer Rebbe, commented in Netivot Shalom that
The olah came to atone for the murmurs of the heart. And behold, it says … there’s a story that one person was in a great forest and wanted to cut down all the trees in order to build there a city, and he began to cut one tree down, until he saw that his days would end and still he would not have finished, since the numbers were beyond counting. What did he do? He lit a great flame of fire that burned and cut down all the trees at one time. So with a Jew whose bad thoughts wage war [upon him] behold, when this thought is removed, another thought will come to be beneath it and his days will end and the thoughts will not end, and his etzato (a pun on advice and trees) is to light a great flame, a flaming, blazing fire of God, and the holy fire burns and consumes all the ideas of bad thoughts. And this is the inyan (point) of fire of the altar, the fire of holiness, that this is the torah of the olah to atone for murmurings of the heart, by means of holy fire, fire of torah and fire of serving God, that only with the power of the holy fire of the altar that burns and consumes all thoughts is it possible to purify [oneself of] the murmurings of the heart.

In other words, the fire on the altar, is a fire that should light not sacrifices, but us – it is we who should be on fire.
Perhaps I heard a muted gasp about the comment that advocates burning a huge forest to the ground – but really it’s an apt metaphor- let’s say it isn’t a city that we want to build in its place, but a healthy forest: pine bush is a kind of environmental niche which requires fire very regularly in order to survive. Without fire, underbrush and dead wood buils up and prevents young plants from getting enough sun, and new life and growth cannot begin. The entire ecosystem begins to founder; it needs the fire to clean out the trash so that the young fresh life can have room to take seed and root and to grow.


The second verse of our portion reads,
זֹאת תּוֹרַת הָֽעֹלָה

This is the Torah of the ha-olah, the burnt offering. But the midrash reads it
( Vayikra 6:2) This is the Torah of the one who goes up - ha- oleh. Whenever someone raises himself up, his end is to go into the fire (Midrash tehillim 11:5). R. Moshe of Kobrin explains:
“This is the Torah of the burnt offering (Olah) – the way to ascend in Torah study is by remaining ‘on the altar’ – by studying with fervor – with a holy flame.”

This comment on the olah reminded me of a phrase which is used many times in the Talmud – the way that a rabbinical scholar is referred to in the Talmud is as a “tzurba merabbanan” – literally “one who is on fire from the rabbis.” In tractate -Ta'anit (4a), it says, “If a young scholar - tzurba mrabbanan- gets into a rage it is because the Torah inflames him, as it is said [in the Torah in Jeremiah], Is not my word like fire? said the Lord.(Jer. 23:29)”

What is the way to go up? It is to become tzurba merabbanan. To light oneself on fire, every day and not let the fire go out. To clean out our minds by means of passion, by studying – as a kind of meditation that focuses us on the dialogue between Jew and God.

We are used to thinking of scholars as rather dry people, alone in their hidey-holes, poring away at some arcane bit which can’t possibly have any relevance to one’s life. And it’s true that some are – but that’s not the Jewish tradition. The Jewish tradition of scholarship is, for one, not for the elite. It’s for everyone. That’s why the Talmud requires a scholar to live only in a place where there is a teacher for the young. That’s why Jews were one of the first cultures with public education.

To study is shmirat hanefesh – guarding one’s soul. For the soul is not something which need no tending. It is a gift, but a gift of a very special kind, like the pitch pines of Louisiana, which require fire to reseed itself. It must be burnt to the ground, and yet doing so, it never “goes out.” In order to grow, to see the sunshine, one must light a fresh fire, to release new seeds and begin new growth.

The sensation I had of being still stuck in that moment when my car went over a cliff – the feeling that perhaps I remain there, abandoned in the moment for ever - “being dead already and not knowing it” – could have become real hirhurim – murmurings so loud, so distracting that I became a sort of zombie, constantly distracted from the world by that feeling of distance – that false feeling of distance. But I was lucky to have been in the right place to cure that – a place in which study was a regular occurrence, a place in which those murmurings could be turned into yearnings that can be spoken and acted upon – making the chasm into which I was falling, an opportunity to experience flying.
The opening of the Torah portion, in describing the ritual of the olah, tells us that every morning, the priest must dress in special linen clothing and remove the ashes from the fire (Vayikra 6:3), and then reminds us that the fire on the altar must be kept continually burning, and not allowed to go out; thus every morning, the priest also has to put fresh wood on the fire to keep it going (6:5, 6)
The chasidic commentator Sfat Emet says that this fire which is renewed each day is like God’s grace which, says the prayerbook, “God renews each day in God’s goodness (from the first blessing before the shema shacharit : uv’tuvo m’chadesh bchol yom tamid maaseh bereshit). He adds, “The commandment here to remove the ashes hints that as we burn up the waste in our lives we are uplifted each day and then we are given new light. The redemptive process is with us every single day.”
The world offers us all kinds of mysterious things to chant and sing and burn and wave around to cure our hirhurim, but it turns out that there is a way which is simpler by far, and perfectly accessible to our understanding: it is opening a book and studying –just a little bit- every day.
In doing so we burn down the forest of tangled thoughts, and fill up the stuckness with the richness of here I am now, with God and my chevruta. We don’t just light a fire, we become the fire.
When we become the fire that stuckness becomes not clinging to emptiness, but being filled with something that purifies. There is a Sufi saying, “He is burnt who fears the fire, but the one who is fire, how shall he be burnt?”

xposted to Radical Torah

Slacking

I know it's been something like a month since I've last posted - apologies to all. I'm not dead yet - just resting. It's been a rather full month, and I have a list of topics that I'm thinking abot taking on... just as soon as I get a little more sleep.
See you soon - I promise.

In the meantime, a litle taste from er, last week's portion. (I told you I'm tired. But I'm just a little behind...)

I wonder if it is possible to think view Ki Tissa in terms of a unifying theme. There is, after all, an awful lot going on this week – and that is before we even get to adding on the special reading of the maftir for Shabbat Parah.

If I were to attempt to discuss all the various events and commandments… well, this post would be a liot longer, and certainly would not qualify as "a taste."

But when all the different pieces are put together: the census, the anointing of priests, the commandments of shabbat, the people’s worrying that Moshe had not reappeared after 40 days and nights and creating the golden calf, Moshe’s ongoing talks with God panim el panim – face to face, as the Torah says, “as a person speaks to his friend” (ex.33:11), Moshe’s request to see even more than that – to see God’s Kavod, and God’s offer of a partial assent to this request, and then Moshe’s return to the mountain, from which he returned with his face alight – it seems to me that there is indeed a theme that runs through the portion: God’s presence and absence, and how we go about engaging with God.

After Moshe had come down from the mountain, he asked Aaron what the heck happened. And he gives a very peculiar response: Aharon says that he said to the Israelites,

לְמִי זָהָב הִתְפָּרָקוּ וַיִּתְּנוּ-לִי וָאַשְׁלִכֵהוּ בָאֵשׁ וַיֵּצֵא הָעֵגֶל הַזֶּה

“Whoever has any gold, let them break it off. So they gave it me; then I cast it into the fire, and there came out this calf.”

One’ s immediate thought is “Sheesh, Aaron is lying through his teeth so as not to look bad.”

But on further reflection, maybe Aharon wasn’t lying. There is an interesting commentary (32:14) by Rabbi Menachem Mendel of Kotsk. The Torah tells us, “And the Lord repented of the evil which He had thought to do to His people.” The Kotsker rebbe asks, “Why is it that God forgave the sin of the golden calf even though they did not repent, while He did not forgive the sin of the spies, even though the people had repented? The reason is that the sin of the golden calf at least had a spark of holiness, a thirst for a supreme force –‘make us a God,’ whereas in the sin of the spies all that they sought was a better material life.”

When Aharon says that the calf came out of the fire, perhaps rather than attempting to imply that he was blameless, perhaps he really was saying was that the sin of the calf came out of the people’s desire to be close to God. They were burning with the desire to be close to God – that was the fire- and in the meantime, Moshe was off having a private conversation with God.

Moshe speaks to God face to face – but every time the Israelites get a taste of this intimacy, it’s too much. We end up asking for a mediator. But still, in our hearts, that desire to be close to God is there, and it never leaves us. We can see that someone else has been able to make that connection, and we’re burning for it.

In Shir ha shirim (3) we read:

1. By night on my bed I sought him whom my soul loves; I sought him, but I found him not.

2. I will rise now, and go around in the city; in the markets and in the broad streets will I seek him whom my soul loves; I sought him, but I found him not.

3. The watchmen that go around in the city found me; Have you seen him whom my soul loves?

4. I had just passed them when I found him whom my soul loves; I held him, and would not let him go...

Israel had shown that they were burning for God; One who seeks God must be prepared to get up and look for God. But in searching, we surely will find the one whom our soul loves.

Mishpatim

A few years ago I heard this story attributed to the Chasidic master, Rabbi Levi Yitzchak of Berditchev. A notorious thief, after quite an active career, finally died, and was sentenced to gehenna. While sitting in the court room awaiting arraignment before the heavenly judge, he notices a large sack. Being a thief, his fingers are itchy, and he can’t help himself. He has to know what is in the sack. He inches over and peeks inside.

He sees as he pulls the top loose, that the sack is stuffed, packed tight, with the souls of the sinners of Israel. Realizing that it was for this moment that he was created, the thief deftly purloins the bag, sweeps it aside, and sneaks it to the gates of heaven, flinging them inside, freeing the poor souls from the clutches of Satan.

Seeeing what he has done, Satan is reaching for the thief, about to crush his soul, when all of a sudden, a messenger arrives for him in the court room, carrying the thief into the joy of God’s presence.

Close your eyes for a second and picture a hasid. Now, tell me, what do you think a Chasid looks like?

Okay – but - who sees themselves? Who sees the person next to you? Do they look like a hasid to you?

What is a hasid really? … in the Torah portion we read over the course of this week, culminating on Saturday morning, we are supplied with a series of laws. The laws set out in the portion of mishpatim are all, ultimately, discussions of value: the value of money and the value of what can be bought for money, and the value of human life. We begin with one who begins as a servant of another human, and who chooses to stay with his master; then the laws of one who kills another person; one who injures another; an animal that injures a person or kills them; then theft, and so on.

In the middle of these laws is a small section of just a few, on theft. Verses 22:37-23:1 read, “If a man shall steal an ox, or a sheep, and kill it, or sell it; he shall restore five oxen for an ox, and four sheep for a sheep. 23:1. If a thief is found breaking in, and he is struck so that he dies, there shall no blood be shed for him.” [It may be worth noting that the mishpatim are all laws that make sense to us. In other words, we can, usually, figure the rationale for them on our own

The Torah clearly takes crimes of property seriously, but what are these verses doing here, embedded in what is very clearly a section on laws that explain how to value human life?

When the hasidim commented on these verses, they did not concentrate on the legality of theft. I imagine they thought to themselves (a typical approach for a Hasidic commentary), “everyone knows that’s its unlawful to steal, so instead, what else could be meant by these laws? What is the purpose behind the obvious in including these laws here, in this section?”

On the first of these verses is a commentary by the famed Rabbi Simcha Bunim of Pshischa, known for his sweetness. He said, “There are three things a person should learn from a thief in how to serve God: a. a thief is not lazy, and even at night, in the cold and rain, he goes out to attend to his work; b. if he fails on the first attempt, he will try again, and will not rest until he has succeeded; c. he does not scorn small things, and will not refrain from stealing something just because it is small.”

1. Even the smallest of things has value. This is certainly a lesson worth learning. It is fitting that these laws are read on this shabbat. In fact, this upcoming shabbat, there are three events that all coincide. The first is the reading of this week’s portion, mishpatim; the second is the reading of the special maftir, for shabbat shekalim, and the third is the blessing of the upcoming month of Adar, whose celebration begins Saturday night, motzei shabbat.

Shabbat Shekalim is named for the maftir reading. The maftir describes a census requiring every Israelite to contribute a half shekel to support communal sacrifices in the ohel moed, the tent of Meeting, and later at the Temple. All pay equally: the Torah says explicitly, “the rich shall not pay more, and the poor shall not pay less than half a shekel to make an atonement for your souls."

Why do we all owe a half-shekel, and why for atonement? If the shekel is as the Torah says, “A ransom for one’s soul” (30:12) then one soul is of equal value to any other, rich or poor. This is a reminder -and we are never poorer for the reminder, given as we humans are to evaluating people based on their income, but there is another lesson as well. The Talmud Yerushalmi also explains the Torah’s language of atonement: specifically, the half-shekel was an atonement for the sin of the golden calf.

But is our soul so small a thing? How can a half shekel redeem your soul?

We forget that in the scheme of the world, even the tiniest of creatures can have a big impact. Consider the mosquito.

Most commercials and ads stress that “bigger” is better. We sometimes forget that the little things are the important things Our Tradition is filled with little things doing big jobs: David vs. Goliath, the story of the “shamir” the little worm that chewed through the stone used to build the Temple because metal tools were forbidden. Here, it is not that our souls are worth only a half-shekel: it’s the fact that we bring the half-shekel, that we do something, even if it seems to be small. In Pirkei Avot (4:2) we are told not to do greater mitzvot at the cost of lesser ones because we don’t know how God weighs them.

2. A thief is not lazy. We think the world is full of walls, locked doors, that everything good is hard to acquire, but God tells us that this is not so. The thief doesn’t worry about that. If we are willing to put our minds and bodies to the task, we can scale any wall, break through any door.

Rebbe Nachman of Breslov teaches that not only should be willing to work hard to obtain our desires, but that those obstacles themselves are part of our goal. God puts up obstacles when we try to draw close, but hides within the obstacles. Those who know God is everywhere, know that God is also in the obstacles and will search in them for God. SO, like a thief, we shouldn’t be deterred by obstacles, but treat them as part of the excitement – the challenge. Thieves, according to the magid of mezritch, Love what they do. We need to be like thieves—not deterred by obstacles, but curious as to what may be in them. Perhaps we ought to be like the cat burglars portrayed in thriller movies – slipping into our little black catsuits, determined to break into the building using only our wits and talents, to find our treasure.

The maggid of Mezritch said:
"Every lock has its key which is fitted to it and opens it. But there are strong thieves who know how to open without keys. They break the lock. So every mystery in the world can be solved by the particular kind of meditation fitted to it. But God loves the thief who breaks the lock open. I mean the man who breaks his heart for God. "

The thief breaks through the door. Or, I might add, goes around it, climbs the wall. God didn’t build those walls, we did. They aren’t real. Anyone can get over them. We perceive the walls as being in the way, an obstacle. However, the thief sees the wall as something good, the challenge that must be overcome to get her desire. Even when God makes the obstacle, we are not alone: God is always with us. Perhaps God is trying to get us to be more thief-like so when we break through a wall, God can jump up and yell “Surprise!”

Judaism gives us all the lock-breaking tools. It seems as if God is so distant that we can never reach the palace. All around us are distractions, and difficulties. The racket of television and advertising, of the temptations of thinking ourselves either too great, or too small, are overwhelming. We are worried about earning money to make sure we have food and homes and medical coverage – all legitimate worries, but they close us off to so many things when our worries about them expand into all our available time- and time which should be available for other things. We spend so much time worrying that we don’t have what it takes, that we waste what little time we do have. Some of us spend our lives trying to find the right key to open that door. Some of us try the same key over and over again; others just keep looking for a new key, any key, not thinking that different keys go to different doors. But maybe the secret is – we don’t need a key, or there is more than one door. Or maybe, we just need to try a window.

Those are the walls. But we have the Torah, and the Talmud, the laws of Judaism and the wisdom of the sages to teach us to see that everything we do can have holiness in it. . The thief has many tools – and so, too, do we: Judaism offers us dozens of ways to climb the walls and break down the doors: tefila, prayer; Torah study – and many different kinds of texts to learn from; art – like the artisan of the Torah, Bezalel, who is described as wisehearted in his work to create the mishkan; music, like King David’s harp; poetry, David’s psalms. Our tools are blessing before and after eating, community, and meditation; Kashrut and Shabbat, outreach and introspection.

When we live as Jews, we are using the tools, open to hearing God’s voice, to being infused with light.

3. The thief will not rest until he has succeeded. We have faith that our scientists can eventually solve any problem, answer any question. Let’s hope all the scientists working on the global warming problem don’t decide that it’s too much trouble, the problem is too big! But it seems like such a struggle to keep looking and coming to shul all the time, what’s the pay off? If you want an Olympic gold in gymnastics, it’s not enough to practice once in a while: Olympic medalists devote their lives to practice, and when they aren’t practicing their sport, they crosstrain.

And it’s important to realize that one’s coach can’t do it for them. Many of the Chassidic dynasties follow a leader who was there to tell them what to do and how to do it; to be their Moshe – but it’s dangerous to assume that Moshe is so much better at this than the rest of us that we can never measure up. That’s when those golden calves start being poured.

Unlike many other Chassidic communities, the Chassidim of Pshischa, and those communities who sprang from it, were different. They said the following of their rabbi:

כי הרים ועזר לכל הבאים לחסות בצילו, אבל הוא רוצה שכל אחר ירים את עצמו לבדו

“He lifted up and helped all that came to take refuge in his shade, but he wanted that everyone should be lifted up by himself alone.”

Many of us need a coach to help us get where we’re going, but each of us has a special gift to offer. If the coach is the only one with ideas, no one else will ever know what that gift is that they could contribute. The best leader is one who makes room to hear other voices, who can help everyone around them become themselves, and find their soul to offer to God in its unique glory. As Rabbi Menachem Mendel of Kotsk said: When I get to Heaven, they will not ask me, "Why were you not like Moshe?" But they will ask, "Why were you not like Menachem Mendel?"

And so, the Holy Thief saves the souls of Israel, those who are waiting in the sack to be judged by helping them find out who they are, not who he is. But I want to point out one final thing about our thief: the thief is no one special. Or perhaps, the thief is only as special as everyone else created in the image of God. The image of the chasid that we have is [pantomime] the rabbi holding court, the wise giver of vorts around the shabbes table, full-bearded, stroking his grey beard with a wise expression on his gentle face. But like the 36 hidden righteous ones mentioned in the Talmud on whom the world depends, in reality, anyone could be your chasid.

Turn and look at the person next to you: in their heart, you will find a holy thief who can teach you at least one new way to break down the locked door.

And so we return to our verse in mishpatim: Ex. 22:1… “If a thief is found breaking in…” the words literally are in the Hebrew: “if breaking in, there is found a thief.” Once , some of the great Hasidic leaders sat with the Kotzker rebbe. The rabbi asked each of those to say something on the parshah... One commented, “If breaking in…” –if a person delves deeply, breaking into his heart, as it were, to examine his actions, “there is found a thief” – he will find a thief there.

Within all of our hearts is a thief.

A thief knows every opening, she knows the difference between one kind of lock and another, she knows where the gems are kept. She knows all the secrets of her object of desire, and nothing will dissuade her from it, once her plans are laid.

In our parshah, we read,

הִנֵּה אָֽנֹכִי שֹׁלֵחַ מַלְאָךְ לְפָנֶיךָ לִשְׁמָרְךָ בַּדָּרֶךְ

Behold, I send an angel before you to guard you on the way (23:20)

A master thief, chevrei, is the one who uses every tool, and maybe even invents some new ones, to open all the locks, and let himself into the universe, where God waits, to receive our bag of souls, for liberating those souls is what we were put here to do. Perhaps the chasid is, after all only a master thief, the one who teaches you how to wield the tools, where to pick the locks, and what the treasures worth having are.

Vayechi

This week’s portion is titled as is usual, after one of the first few words of the Torah portion, vayechi Yaakov, “and Jacob lived.” This is an interesting juxtaposition to the portion which contains both the death of Jacob, and of his beloved son Josef, and is, as well, the closing portion of the book of Beresheit.
The overwhelming focus of this portion is the blessings with which Jacob bestows his sons. The connection here is perhaps a bit obvious:
As the Talmud explains, (Taanit 5b) Rav Nachman said to Rav Yitzchak: "So said Rabbi Jochanan: Our father Jacob did not die."Asked Rav Yitzchak: "Was it for no reason that the eulogizers eulogized, the embalmers embalmed and the buriers buried?"Responded Rav Nachman: "I am only citing a verse. It is written, 'And you, my servant Jacob, fear not, says the Lord, and do not tremble, O Israel. For behold, I shall save you from afar, and your descendants from the land of their captivity' (Jeremiah 30:10). The verse equates Jacob with his descendants: just as his descendants are alive, he, too, is alive."
In other words, all that you are lives on through our children. It is thus no great surprise that Jacob spends what time he has left blessing his children.
But when we read the actual things that Jacob says, except for his words to Yosef, and Yosef’s offspring, his words seem far from what we might consider a blessing. Consider his words to his eldest son, Reuven, “Unstable as water, you shall not excel.”
The Talmud reminds us of an earlier event, (Shabbat 55b): After Rachel, Yaakov’s beloved wife, died, Reuven, the oldest son of Yaakov's first wife, Leah, took his bed and moved it to Leah's tent. Because Reuven interfered with his father’s relationship with his wife, the Torah considers him as if he had committed adultery. The midrash goes on to explain that Reuven is the first person who acted “l’shem shamayim” for the sake of heaven, thinking he was doing God’s will, and then doing tshuvah when he discovered it was not , in fact God’s will. The sages understood Yaakov’s words to his son to be a rebuke against his impulsivity. He didn’t stop to think through his impulsivity and so he acted rashly.
Rav Elya Lopian, in Lev Eliyahu, says, “Truth to tell, Reuven's act itself was not so utterly immoral. What established it as eternally infamous was the fact that he acted out of anger. He was impetuous. …”
The midrash Tanchuma, (Tanchuma, Korach, 12), teaches
אמרו רבותינו זכרונם לברכה, בשלשה דברים אדם ניכר, בכיסו, ובכוסו, ובכעסו
“The sages teach, “through three things a man is known, by his pocket ( how he spends his money, whether he gives to charity, whether he is generous), by his cup(how much does he indulge in alcohol) and by his anger.”
What kind of blessing is that? What Yaakov offers to his sons is not just a simple outpouring of affection at the end of his life. Rather it is something more complicated: Yaakov offers his sons an assessment of their characters. This isn’t simply to get a last word in at the end of his life – Yaakov introduces his blessings to them by saying, “Gather yourselves together that I may tell you that which will befall you in the last days (Ber. 49:1).
Yaakov’s words to his sons are not either something so simple as a blessing, nor are the a literal forecast of the future. Rather he is giving them the tools with which to measure themselves and so affect their destinies. An example of this is Yaakov’s words to Shimon and Levi.
The impulsive anger that drove Reuven to move his father’s bed was a sort of impulsive anger, but Reuven was not an angry person. In Shechem, Shimon and Levi enraged, simply acted on their own, and indeed against their father’s desires. Shimon and Levi are not men who occasionally have an impulse in anger; rather, they plotted out an entire strategy. Their anger was anything but impulsive.
To Shimon and Levi, Yaakov has harsh words. "Instruments of cruelty are their swords. For in their rage they murdered people... Accursed is their rage for it is intense, and their wrath for it is cruel.... (Bereishit 49:6-7)."
Shimon and Levi went after the people of Shechem and slaughtered them after their sister Dina was raped by the son of the prince there. Later, in the parasha Zot ha-Berakha, at the end of the Torah, Levi is blessed by Moses, but not Shimon . This seems to reflect a trait in the personalities of these two individuals which are later reflected by their descendants – the tribes. Yaakov’s blessing is a warning to them about their flaws, and they can use that warning to choose how they will go. And the midrash tells us that in fact, they do diverge in their actions. Shimon never repents of his action, but Levi is understood to take that anger within him and turned it into passion, which he uses for God’s ends, instead of his own. In Sifri Devarim (349), there is a maasei, a story:
It is like the story of two people who borrowed from the king. One paid back his debt to the king, and even lent him money. The other not only failed to pay back his debt - he borrowed even more from the king. So it was with Shimon and Levi who borrowed at Shechem, as it says, two of Jacob's sons, Shimon and Levi, took each his sword and went stealthily to the city and killed all the males (Bereishit 34:25). In the desert [during the sin of the golden calf), Levi paid back his debt, for it is said, and Moses stood at the gate of the camp and said, "Thus says the Lord: Let each man place his sword on his thigh,' and the Levites did what God had said (Shemot 32:27-8), and he [Levi] went on and lent it to God at Shittim, for it is said, Pinhas son of Elazar son of Aaron the Priest took back my anger against the Israelites, by being zealous for my jealousy among them, and so I did not destroy the Israelites in my jealousy. (Bamidbar 25:11).
The midrash understands that the actions of the tribe of Levi, responding to Moshe’s call after the golden calf, and the violent act of Pinchas –he kills a tribal chieftan of Shimon, in fact- to end the plague that was killing the Israelites at Shittim, were both expressions of a basic personality trait that Levi turned towards the good.
In Judaism, we have a long tradition of ethical wills, statements of values from one generation to another – the most famous is possibly Gluckl of Hameln, whose words make a book, and who is well worth reading to see what a Jewish woman’s life in the middle ages was like. We tend to think today of these ethical wills as an opportunity to say some nice things to our children so that they will feel our love, but Yakov’s example shows that the potential is much greater if we offer not simply love without stint, but words of criticism as well.
The Talmud (Tamid 28a): notes, “Which is the right way that a person should choose? Let him love rebuke, since as long as there is reproof in the world, ease of mind comes to the world, good and blessing come to the world, and evil departs from the world.”
No one really likes rebuke, but it is a gift to be able to tell our children who they are, warts and all. Not only does that honesty, offer them the reassurance that we love them, warts and all, but it is also a gift, in that it allows them to understand our values clearly, and finally, also to recognize within themselves the capacity to use whatever traits they have for their own purposes. Like many other traits, anger can be either righteous or destructive. When we tell our children what they are made of, we also offer them the chance to use themselves fully for the glory of God.
Vayechi, brings us perhaps the first instance we know of an ethical will. The best way to pass our values on, of course, is to live them. But Yaakov, like many of us, was a flawed man. He often didn’t succeed in living out the best of his own traits, and he passed on many of his worst ones to his children. But if he was not perfect, he was Yisra’el, the man who struggled with El, God, and won from him a blessing. And in his final words to his children, in his last gift, he passed that struggle on to them as well, with the tolls for them, too, to win a blessing from God.

לְךָ דֻמִיָּה תְהִלָּה

Over the not yet too distant Yamim Noraim, I was taken by something I hadn't noticed previously. I don't quite know why not, it's pretty obvious when you start looking forit: Everywhere you look in the readings for not just Yom Kippur, but over the yamim noraim, the silence is palpable.
God is silent, prophets are silent, we are silent. What kindof silence is this, and why? Why is everyone so quiet?


The first two lines of the Yom Kippur reading come from Leviticus 16:1-2;

1 The Lord spoke to Moses after the death of the two sons of Aaron who died when they drew too close to the presence of the Lord. 2 The Lord said to Moses:
Tell your brother Aaron that he is not to come at will into the Shrine behind the curtain, in front of the cover that is upon the ark, lest he die; for I appear in the cloud over the cover
פרשת אחרי מות[ א וַיְדַבֵּר יְהוָֹה אֶל־מֹשֶׁה אַֽחֲרֵי מוֹת שְׁנֵי בְּנֵי אַֽהֲרֹן בְּקָרְבָתָם לִפְנֵֽי־יְהוָֹה וַיָּמֻֽתוּ: ב וַיֹּאמֶר יְהֹוָה אֶל־מֹשֶׁה דַּבֵּר אֶל־אַֽהֲרֹן אָחִיךָ וְאַל־יָבֹא בְכָל־עֵת אֶל־הַקֹּדֶשׁ מִבֵּית לַפָּרֹכֶת אֶל־פְּנֵי הַכַּפֹּרֶת אֲשֶׁר עַל־הָֽאָרֹן וְלֹא יָמוּת כִּי בֶּֽעָנָן אֵֽרָאֶה עַל־הַכַּפֹּֽרֶת:

These lines refer to a story that actually occurred three parshiot earlier (in the regular yearly cycle) the story of the death of Aaron’s sons in parshat shemini, which appers here:
Leviticus Chapter 10
1. And Nadav and Abihu, the sons of Aaron, took each of them his censer, and put fire in it, and put incense on it, and offered strange fire before the Lord, which he commanded them not. 2. And there went out fire from the Lord, and devoured them, and they died before the Lord. 3. Then Moses said to Aaron, This is what the Lord spoke, saying, I will be sanctified in them that come near to me, and before all the people I will be glorified. And Aaron held his peace.
וַיִּקְחוּ בְנֵֽי־אַֽהֲרֹן נָדָב וַֽאֲבִיהוּא אִישׁ מַחְתָּתוֹ וַיִּתְּנוּ בָהֵן אֵשׁ וַיָּשִֹימוּ עָלֶיהָ קְטֹרֶת וַיַּקְרִיבוּ לִפְנֵי יְהוָֹה אֵשׁ זָרָה אֲשֶׁר לֹא צִוָּה אֹתָֽם: ב וַתֵּצֵא אֵשׁ מִלִּפְנֵי יְהוָֹה וַתֹּאכַל אוֹתָם וַיָּמֻתוּ לִפְנֵי יְהוָֹֽה: ג וַיֹּאמֶר מֹשֶׁה אֶֽל־אַֽהֲרֹן הוּא אֲשֶׁר־דִּבֶּר יְהוָֹה | לֵאמֹר בִּקְרֹבַי אֶקָּדֵשׁ וְעַל־פְּנֵי כָל־הָעָם אֶכָּבֵד וַיִּדֹּם אַֽהֲרֹֽן:



What is the relationship between these two parts of the same story? And what have they to do with Yom Kippur?
Aaron held his peace. Really what is says is "vayidom Aharon."
The first part of the story of Aaron’s sons ends with Aaron’s silence. וַיִּדֹּם אַֽהֲרֹֽן
The word "yidom" is from duma, or dumiya, both words referring to silence, or stillness.There are many words for silence in the Torah and Talmud. The Talmud for example offers the famous axiom in Baba metzia 37b
שתיקה כהודאה
Sometimes rendered Shtika k’hodaya damya – silence is like consent. Shtika – meaning quiet.
The medieval commentator Sforno teaches “When a person has the ability to protest and remains silent, his silence is similar to verbal consent. When you do not say something to disagree, it is as if you agree with what was said or done.”
And in fact some commentators accept this as Aaron’s response – his silence is assent to God’s awesomeness and power – he is accepting the fate of his sons as an act of submission.

We find an equivalence between this word shtika and that verb we find in Aaron’s response. In the Talmud Megilah 18a, we find the following:
דרש רבי יהודה איש כפר גבוריא, ואמרי לה איש כפר גבור חיל: מאי דכתיב )תהלים ס"ה( לך דמיה תהלה ־ סמא דכולה משתוקא. כי אתא רב דימי אמר: אמרי במערבא: מלה ־ בסלע, משתוקא ־ בתרין.
R. Judah a man of Kefar Gibboraya, or, as some say, of Kefar Gibbor Hayil, gave the following homily: What is meant by the verse, For you silence is praise?
The best medicine of all is silence.
When R. Dimi came, he said: In the West they say: A word is worth a sela', silence two sela's.

But how could this be applied to our situation? The verse quotes above from psalms is usually translated in context something like “Praise awaits You (O Lord, In Zion)” but here the word dumiya is translated as silence, rendering our verse: "To You, silence is praise" (Psalms 65:2)
לְךָ דֻמִיָּה תְהִלָּה

Onkelus renders the term Vayidom in our story as "silence:" Aharon was silent. However there is another tradition as referenced in the Torah shlemah with an alternative reading of the Targum; instead of ushatik - silence, "Ushavach Aharon" - Aharon praised God.
The Rambam (commentary to the Mishna, Avot 3:3, Kapach Edition) cites this reading of the Targum.
The Rambam compares this verse to Melachim I, 19:12 "And after the earthquake a fire; but the Lord was not in the fire; and after the fire a still (D'mamah) small voice" - clearly not silence, but perhaps implying stillness or a sense of serenity and a revelation. Rambam understands the term as denoting a quiet or secretive communication; if this is silence then it is a silence with sound. Likewise the Rambam teaches that this is the understanding of the use of the word "vayidom" in connection with Aharon: "Ushavach Aharon" - Aharon softly praised God.
This approach is supported by a passage in the Sifri (Piska 58) that compares the verse in Melachim ("...and after the fire a still (D'mamah) small voice") and the phrase "Vayidom Aharon": According to the Sifri, both indicate a type of revelation. To paraphrase the Sifri, "when God speaks, man is silent". Aharon's silence seems to be a response to some Divine statement; what emerged was an inaudible word of praise.

But I find this at best far fetched. To me, Aaron's silence is the silence of the cowed. We love to sy, "Speak truth to power" but what about whenthe power is God - or at least, inthis case, Moses representing what he thiks God's opinion is.
I remember as a child, occasionally I would do something that my father did not like, and his response to was to yell questions like "What do you think you were doing?!" at me. Of course, there is no possible rational answer to such a question, but that's in part because the asker isn't really seeking information, but simply trying to impress upon you what they think you ought to have done.

Rashi links the silence of Aharon with a revelation, explaining that Aharon remained silent - something which was extremely difficult to do - and was consequently rewarded for his silence:
"And Aharon was silent" - He received a reward for his silence; and what was the reward he received? That the subsequent Divine address was made to him alone and not to Moshe also for to him alone was spoken the section (10:8-11) dealing with those who are intoxicated by wine.(4) (See Zevachim: 115b) [Rashi 10:3]
IN my opinion, this at least recognizes that Aaron was not silencing himself internally, not open to some great revelation, achieving great heights, but instead was permorming a kind of submission to God's will, understood or not.

The Ba'al haTurim points out that the only other time in Tanach that the word "Vayidom" is used with the same spelling is to be found in the book of Yehoshua:
"And the sun stood still, and the moon stayed" (Yehoshua 10:13)
The Talmud teaches that Moshe is compared to the sun:
"The countenance of Moshe was like that of the sun; the countenance of Yehoshua was like that of the moon." (Bava Batra 75a)

It's an interesting image, the two men unnaturally still, as if the sun and moon had ceased to move. Some have interpreted this connection as offering the idea that onthis one occasino Aaron rose to the heights of Moses, similar to Rambam's idea, but I think that this is unlikely. Rather, let's say the sun and moon actually stood still - what would that mean - that the earth had stopped rotating, and the moon's orbit becme fixed; this is not a scenario in which life on earth can remain very long. A stopped earth woudl quickly become uninhabitable, and it is this image that I take away: Aaron stunned into immobility, and Moses staring at him, also struck - until he stammers out some sort of foolishnes about God's will, and everyone is freed to go on, however damaged, the earth again begins to turn, the moon, to orbit.

I think that in fact, the dumiya of Aaron is more related to two other Biblical silences. The first is from the first Book of Kings.
Kings I
19:11. And he said, Go out, and stand upon the mount before the Lord. And, behold, the Lord passed by, and a great and strong wind tore the mountains, and broke in pieces the rocks before the Lord; but the Lord was not in the wind; and after the wind an earthquake; but the Lord was not in the earthquake; 12. And after the earthquake a fire; but the Lord was not in the fire; and after the fire a still small voice.

יא וַיֹּאמֶר צֵא וְעָֽמַדְתָּ בָהָר לִפְנֵי יְהֹוָה וְהִנֵּה יְהֹוָה עֹבֵר וְרוּחַ גְּדוֹלָה וְחָזָק מְפָרֵק הָרִים וּמְשַׁבֵּר סְלָעִים לִפְנֵי יְהֹוָה לֹא בָרוּחַ יְהֹוָה וְאַחַר הָרוּחַ רַעַשׁ לֹא בָרַעַשׁ יְהֹוָֽה: יב וְאַחַר הָרַעַשׁ אֵשׁ לֹא בָאֵשׁ יְהֹוָה וְאַחַר הָאֵשׁ קוֹל דְּמָמָה דַקָּֽה:


The second is from the close of the book of Jonah, the haftarah for mincha on Yom Kippur.

Here are the last two chapters of Jonah – the whole book is only four, and there are only 21 lines, so although I won't include the whole story, thisis short enough to keep, so you don't have to go running off to look it up.:

Yona Chapter 3

1. And the word of the Lord came to Jonah the second time, saying: Arise!
2. Go to Nineveh, that great city, and proclaim to it the message that I bid you.
3. And Jonah arose, and went to Nineveh, according to the word of the Lord. And Nineveh was an exceedingly great city, three days’ journey in extent.
4. And Jonah began to go into the city, going a day’s journey, and he cried, and said, Another forty days, and Nineveh shall be overthrown.
5. And the people of Nineveh believed God, and proclaimed a fast, and put on sackcloth, from the greatest of them to the least of them.
6. And word came to the king of Nineveh, and he arose from his throne, and he took off his robe, and covered himself with sackcloth, and sat in ashes.
7. And he caused it to be proclaimed and published through Nineveh by the decree of the king and his nobles, saying: Neither man, beast, herd or flock should taste anything! They should not feed nor drink water!
8. And let man and beast be covered with sackcloth, and cry mightily to God; let them turn everyone from his evil way, and from the violence that is in their hands.
9. Who can tell if God may yet turn and repent, and turn away from his fierce anger, so that we perish not?
10. And God saw their doings, that they turned from their evil way; and God repented of the evil, which he had said that he would do to them; and he did not do it.

Yona Chapter 4

1. And this displeased Jonah exceedingly, and he was very angry.
2. And he prayed to the Lord, and said, I pray you, O Lord, is this not what I said when I was still in my country? Therefore I hastened to flee to Tarshish; for I knew that you are a gracious God, and merciful, slow to anger, and of great kindness, and that you repent of the evil.
3. Therefore now, O Lord, take, I pray you, my life from me; for it is better for me to die than to live.
4. Then says the Lord, Do you do well to be so angry?
5. And Jonah went out of the city, and sat on the east side of the city, and there he made himself a booth, and sat under it in the shadow, till he should see what would become of the city.
6. And the Lord God appointed a castor oil plant, and made it grow over Jonah, that it might be a shadow over his head, to save him from his distress. And Jonah was exceedingly glad of the plant.
7. And, when dawn came up the next day, God appointed a worm, and it attacked the plant so that it withered.
8. And it came to pass, when the sun rose, that God appointed a hot east wind; and the sun beat down upon the head of Jonah, so that he fainted, and wished to die, and said, It is better for me to die than to live.
9. And God said to Jonah: Do you do well to be so angry for the plant? And he said: I do well to be so angry, even to death.
10. Then the Lord said, You had concern for the plant, for which you did not labor, nor did you make it grow; which came up in a night, and perished in a night;
11. And should I not spare Nineveh, that great city, where there are more than one hundred and twenty thousand persons who cannot discern between their right hand and their left hand; and also much cattle?

In the JPS Bible Commentary on the book of Jonah, Uriel Simon writes: "The designation of Jonah as the haftarah for the Afternoon Service of the Day of Atonement (B. Megillah 31a) reflects the view that this book depicts the concept of repentance so starkly and completely that it can stir hearers to repent their ways and even modify their conduct."1Uriel Simon, The JPS Bible Commentary: Jonah (Phila-delphia: The Jewish Publication Society of America, 1999), vii.

The book of Jonah in Nevi'im (Prophets) is shorter than most other books in the Hebrew Scriptures. A mere four chapters in length, the book ends with Jonah's silence -- and the reader is waiting for him to respond.
And the story ends. Jonah is silent. What does his silence mean? Is שתיקה כהודאה ?

It is possible to interpret Jonah's silence as repentance?
On Yom Kippur, we read the entire book including Jonah's silence. Even though the rabbis include Jonah's silence as part of the Yom Kippur reading, the rabbis appended Micah 7:18-20 to the end of Jonah: "Who is like you, forgiving iniquity and pardoning the transgression of the remnant of Your people? You do not maintain anger forever, but You delight in lovingkind-ness. You will again have compassion upon us, subduing our sins, casting all of our sins into the depths of the sea. You will show faithfulness to Jacob and enduring love to Abraham as You promised our fathers from days of old." By appending this Micah text, the rabbis made it appear as if Jonah is no longer silent.
But our original text doesn't tell us what Jonah thinks. Although God isn't silent, Jonah certainly is. And unlike the silence of Aaron we don't have the silence spelt out - it is simply an absence. Itis curioustht these two passages are linked by the Tanchuma to the Akedah directly. It essentially says thatJonah is a sulky little brat, expecting happiness - whyy shold he behappy, when even God's great friend, Abraham, was not?

Let’s go back to that section from the book of Kings for a minute.

This time, I want to bring a little more of the passage:


ט וַיָּֽבֹא־שָׁם אֶל־הַמְּעָרָה וַיָּלֶן שָׁם וְהִנֵּה דְבַר־יְהֹוָה אֵלָיו וַיֹּאמֶר לוֹ מַה־לְּךָ פֹה אֵֽלִיָּֽהוּ: י וַיֹּאמֶר קַנֹּא קִנֵּאתִי לַֽיהֹוָה | אֱלֹהֵי צְבָאוֹת כִּֽי־עָֽזְבוּ בְרִֽיתְךָ בְּנֵי יִשְֹרָאֵל אֶת־מִזְבְּחֹתֶיךָ הָרָסוּ וְאֶת־נְבִיאֶיךָ הָֽרְגוּ בֶחָרֶב וָֽאִוָּתֵר אֲנִי לְבַדִּי וַיְבַקְשׁוּ אֶת־נַפְשִׁי לְקַחְתָּֽהּ: יא וַיֹּאמֶר צֵא וְעָֽמַדְתָּ בָהָר לִפְנֵי יְהֹוָה וְהִנֵּה יְהֹוָה עֹבֵר וְרוּחַ גְּדוֹלָה וְחָזָק מְפָרֵק הָרִים וּמְשַׁבֵּר סְלָעִים לִפְנֵי יְהֹוָה לֹא בָרוּחַ יְהֹוָה וְאַחַר הָרוּחַ רַעַשׁ לֹא בָרַעַשׁ יְהֹוָֽה: יב וְאַחַר הָרַעַשׁ אֵשׁ לֹא בָאֵשׁ יְהֹוָה וְאַחַר הָאֵשׁ קוֹל דְּמָמָה דַקָּֽה: יג וַיְהִי | כִּשְׁמֹעַ אֵֽלִיָּהוּ וַיָּלֶט פָּנָיו בְּאַדַּרְתּוֹ וַיֵּצֵא וַֽיַּֽעֲמֹד פֶּתַח הַמְּעָרָה וְהִנֵּה אֵלָיו קוֹל וַיֹּאמֶר מַה־לְּךָ פֹה אֵֽלִיָּֽהוּ: יד וַיֹּאמֶר קַנֹּא קִנֵּאתִי לַֽיהֹוָה | אֱלֹהֵי צְבָאוֹת כִּֽי־עָֽזְבוּ בְרִֽיתְךָ בְּנֵי יִשְֹרָאֵל אֶת־מִזְבְּחֹתֶיךָ הָרָסוּ וְאֶת־נְבִיאֶיךָ הָֽרְגוּ בֶחָרֶב וָֽאִוָּתֵר אֲנִי לְבַדִּי וַיְבַקְשׁוּ אֶת־נַפְשִׁי לְקַחְתָּֽהּ: טו וַיֹּאמֶר יְהֹוָה אֵלָיו לֵךְ שׁוּב לְדַרְכְּךָ מִדְבַּרָה דַמָּשֶֹק וּבָאתָ וּמָֽשַׁחְתָּ אֶת־חֲזָאֵל לְמֶלֶךְ עַל־אֲרָֽם
9. And he came there to a cave, and lodged there; and, behold, the word of the Lord came to him, and he said to him, What are you doing here, Elijah? 10. And he said, I have been very zealous for the Lord God of hosts; for the people of Israel have forsaken your covenant, thrown down your altars, and killed your prophets with the sword; and I am the only one left; and they seek my life, to take it away. 11. And he said, Go out, and stand upon the mount before the Lord. And, behold, the Lord passed by, and a great and strong wind tore the mountains, and broke in pieces the rocks before the Lord; but the Lord was not in the wind; and after the wind an earthquake; but the Lord was not in the earthquake; 12. And after the earthquake a fire; but the Lord was not in the fire; and after the fire a still small voice. 13. And it was so, when Elijah heard it that he wrapped his face in his mantle, and went out, and stood in the entrance of the cave. And, behold, there came a voice to him, and said, What are you doing here, Elijah? 14. And he said, I have been very zealous for the Lord God of hosts; because the people of Israel have forsaken your covenant, thrown down your altars, and killed your prophets with the sword; and I am the only one left; and they seek my life, to take it away. 15. And the Lord said to him, Go, return on your way to the wilderness of Damascus; and when you come, anoint Hazael to be king over Aram; 16. And Jehu the son of Nimshi shall you anoint to be king over Israel; and Elisha the son of Shaphat of Abelmeholah shall you anoint to be prophet in your place.

What do you notice that’s odd about the passage?
The curious thing is that God doesn’t really respond, quite, to Elijah’s complaint. He wants God to make it better and stop people from persecuting him, but does God promise this? Later in the verse, God promises Elijah the idolators will be killed but he doesn’t really offer any safety to Elijah, at least not obviously

Rabbi Noton Sternhartz talks a bit about silence in his
Likutei Halachos, Hilchos Shabbos, Halachos 6 and 7
http://www.nachalnovea.com/breslovcenter/articles/article_shabboswithin.html
This is good advice for all the difficulties we may encounter: we should simply nullify ourselves for a time, and remind ourselves of the Ultimate Reality. Anyone in the world, without exception, can accomplish this, and thus merge into the Infinite Divine Light. It is impossible to explain this further; for "everyone must understand according to what remains in his heart" (Zohar I, 103b). Nevertheless, all Israel believes that this is the ultimate spiritual goal, and our hope for all eternity. Every person, whatever he may be, whatever may happen to him, can nullify himself to God, even in the midst of his confusions and problems. This is the paradigm of Shabbos, the paradigm of rest (sh'visah) and cessation. Through this, we can destroy all disturbing thoughts, all intellectual entanglements and false wisdoms, and direct all of our doings toward the Ultimate Reality that is beyond time and change. This is the aspect of Shabbos and the principle that "the mind is nourished first." That is, our eating and mundane activities, even the necessity of attending to our physical needs, should be directed to the Shabbos alone: to true wisdom and the Essence of the mind.
For the Shabbos transcends speech  yet all speech comes forth from the Shabbos. It is the supernal silence above speech, the paradigm of "the fence for wisdom (chochmah) is silence" (Avos 3:13). Kabbalistically, this corresponds to the Sefirah of Kesser ("Divine Crown"). In terms of our Divine service, it corresponds to the quality of waiting. For speech is bound up with the Sefirah of Chochmah (wisdom), as the verse states, "God will give wisdom, from His mouth..." (Proverbs 2:6). However, [wisdom and speech] spring forth from the Sefirah of Kesser, the transcendent silence, the "fence for wisdom." This is why we must be silent before we speak, when we need to collect our thoughts. Similarly, we must pause between words, however slightly. As our sages state, "If a word is worth one coin, silence is worth two" (Megilla 18a); for silence is both the source of speech and its tikkun (spiritual rectification). This concept also is suggested by the verse that refers to "a wise man (chacham) among the silent, understanding whispered mysteries" (Isaiah 3:3). Thus, speech is elicited from the paradigm of the Shabbos that corresponds to the Sefirah of Kesser, the aspect of the "covering of coverings," which is the mystery of silence.

I don't really know how to finish here. We have recently become interested as Jews inmeditatin and eastern -especially Buddhist- spirituality. IN these religions, silence, quiet mind, meditation, are positive goods, the eradication of the self and the conquering of desire. But I'm not sure that -despite Rabbi Noton's words- thatsilence is much more complex than we wantto credit. Silence is not always quiet mind, and even if one might find it good, in my opinion, byu labelling silence as an unmitigated positive, we lose track of theother kinds of silence that we encounter in our lives: the silence of oppression, the silence of fear, thesilence of shock - and all of these are silences that we live with in this imperfect world.

On the other hand, we often talk about God’s silence when we have to struggle with difficult things, but I think it’s worth also thinking about our own. We are silent all the time, to God, and though we often try to cast it as neutral, or even positive, I think more often, when we say silence is worth two selas, we are covering up shtika k’hodaya- we are covering up our acquiescence in the way things are. I wonder what Aaron might have said to God, what protest he might have made in his heart?
I also wonder, if that lack of protest is in fact, why in our reading on Yom Kippur morning, the memoy of Aaron’s silence is revisited, if not mentioned. And how does God respond to Aaron’s silence on Yom Kippur morning?
The Lord said to Moses:
Tell your brother Aaron that he is not to come at will into the Shrine behind the curtain, in front of the cover that is upon the ark, lest he die; for I appear in the cloud over the cover
Then he gives him explicit directions as to how he can come into the holy of holies…with the sacrifices not only for the people, but first for himself. SO perhaps our last question should be, what is God’s response to Aaron’s silence?


It’s worth noting that the connection between Yom Kippur and silence falls in another way as well.

VII. Psalm 115 (17) (is one place among others) which we read daily, makes explicit the connection between silence and death
. יז לֹֽא־הַמֵּתִים יְהַֽלְלוּ־יָהּ וְלֹא כָּל־יֹרְדֵי דוּמָֽה
17. The dead cannot praise the Lord, nor can any who go down into silence.

Yom Kippur makes that tension evident

But perhaps the most profound connection between death and Yom Kippur is the mysterious claim The Talmud makes for both of them. Yom Hakippurim atzmo m'caper, u'mitah mcaperet. Both Yom Kippur and death themselves, atone. We say the vidui, the final confession, on two occasions in our lives -- on Yom Kippur and on the day of our death. The word for atonement -- caparah -- means a covering over. Death is a covering over. And Jonah, Abraham and Aaron, all in their silence are covered over, in their pain, in their protest, and maybe we in ours, on Yom Kippur, when we are shocked into silence, are also staring death in the face, struck mute, our hearts struck mute, made silent so that we can face death, and in silence and pain, find forgiveness.