Appreciating Birchat haChamah

R' Moshe Taragin gave a talk last night on e-Tim, the terrific Toronto electronic shiur resource, giving some good things to think about during the Birchat haChamah, the Blessing of the Sun, that make it relevant to us, through its liturgy, not just an obscure blessing. Some highlights:

1) Rambam has his own mysticism, a naturalistic one: How does one come to love God? By contemplating the grandeur of Creation in all its details. By studying nature, in all its logic, order, system, symmetry, one encounters the Infinite Will that created all of it. The psalms about creation praising God allude to this idea (Ps 148:1-6).

2) Think about Adon Olam - which some use to close the prayers of the day. Master of the Universe who reigned before anything physical was created. His reign was absolute without man or fruit trees to defy His Will. So at the moment when God created the Sun and Moon, His Kingship was absolute. By celebrating the return to that physical moment, the position where the Sun was at the moment of Creation, we celebrate God's Kingship. Psalm 19 also alludes to this, in suggesting that the Sun has volition, deciding to jump out every morning. Before the Sun exercised volition, then, God's Will was the only Will.

3) Hallel Hagadol is also commonly said. The refrain: ki le'olam chasdo, that His chesed is eternal, tells us that the creation of the Great Luminaries was because of His Chesed. And indeed, the great luminaries supply Earth and all life with the energy they need to exist, just as God directly gives us existence-flow. Avraham saw the Sun and realized that it was an instrument of God's Chesed, which resonated with his own attribute of Chesed. So this verse brings us to a re-enactment of Avraham's journey of discovery of monotheism.

4) Why Nisan not Tishrei? Tishrei is the creation of the physical world, while Nisan is the root of Jewish history. Well, if you look at the flow of Jewish history, the Sun is often the instrument of Divine aid to the Jews. The sun rushed down (Gen 28:11) so that Jacob would stop davka where he would dream of the ladder, and then those two hours were given back during the fight with the angel. The sun stopped for Joshua. The sun stopped to make a point that Nevuchadnetzar would see as far as away as Bavel. The sun is harnessed to Jewish history - though we are a small people, we have a great Protector. Many verses in the liturgy remind us of this.

All of these points were reinforced with Talmudic and midrashic aggadita, taken metaphorically as intended - since we have trouble today accepting ideas such as the Harmony of the Spheres literally, we still see harmony and grace in physical law. He closed with some personal observations, for which you should listen to the tape (probably available soon on their web-store), and a wish that next cycle if not this cycle should be observed not only in the proper time, but in the proper place, the place of Creation, Jerusalem at the Temple.


Torah in Motion, the organization that put on this shiur, has two more great-sounding shiurim on Pesach and the Haggadah coming up this evening. Do sign up for them, and for their ongoing shiurim. I've bought tapes of their occasional special-interest conferences, which bring great speakers together to talk about fascinating topics: Tanach, Jewish community interests, historical personages, etc.

Liturgies for Blessing the Sun

The Liturgy of Birkat HaChamah

by Jonathan Baker

Today we can say tremendously long liturgies for what started as a one-line blessing. Yes, Jewish prayer is the result of millennia of accretion, but this liturgy grew faster than usual, growing from almost nothing to a dozen pages in less than 300 years.

The Laws:

The Braita in Berachot 59b tells us that when one sees the sun on the point of its place at the time of Creation, we are to bless Him who does the Work of Creation, just as we bless Him for seeing lightning or an earthquake. And for a thousand years, that was it. Every 28 years, as R’ Zev Sero put it, “when March 26^th Old Style falls on a Tuesday”, that is, the anniversary of the fourth day of Creation beginning from the Vernal Equinox, the sun is in the right place, on the Fourth Day of the week, at the right time of day, following the Julian calendar, and so we bless it, and bless God for His Creation of the world in and of itself.

The idea of saying this blessing drips down through the halachic literature (summary from article Chamah, in Judah David Eisenstein's "Otzar Dinim uMinhagim", 1917).

Maharil ordained that the night before, it is announced that when one sees the sun rise the next morning, they should bless.

Similarly R Menachem Azaria of Fano in Seder Alfasi Zuta, that when one sees the sun rise, he should bless.

Mas’at Binyamin notes that it is the custom to say the blessing with the congregation when they come out of shul after the Morning Service.

The Devar Moshe and R' Jacob Emden at the end of the commentary on the Seder Olam writes that this is the best way, because “in the multitude of the nation is the glory of the King,” as is done for the Blessing of the New Moon.

A liturgy assembled in Baghdad in 1925 notes that the Hazan repeats the bracha for the blind and women. Why women? Perhaps they weren’t literate in Hebrew?

The Rema advises one to wait until the sun shows its face, until 3 hours (about 9:40 this year), and R’ Yaakov Emden says, bedieved, until 12 noon. Others say that one should say the bracha at the earliest time, whether or not the sun itself is visible, as long as it’s partly visible.

Even among the early Acharonim however, there is some discomfort with saying the beracha, since it was well known even in the 12th century that the year is not 365.25 days long, but 365.2422 days, as is the basis of our Gregorian calendar. So the sun should return to its original place every 19 years, on the leap-year cycle, not every 28 years on a Julian-based cycle. The Mas'at Binyamin [late 1500s], therefore, recommends saying the beracha without the Divine names, because of this doubt. But most later poskim don't accept this idea.

The Liturgy: Early Creations:

We begin to get hints that people are tarting up the liturgy in the Machzor Vitry, which reports in the name of a Rav Shemaya that Rabbeinu Tam (1200s) wrote a short poem to be said along with the blessing. The next text of a liturgy to accompany the blessing shows up in a manuscript at the JTS, which may or may not be associated with the sun-cycle of 1719. It’s fairly involved, includes a blessing patterned on the Blessing of the New Moon, and some psalms one might say. It’s written in a Sephardic hand, but is undated, so we don’t really know where or when it was written.

For the cycle of 1757, R’ Yaakov Emden suggests, at the end of his commentary on Seder Olam, that we recite the Talmudic passage that itself commands us to say the blessing, to prepare ourselves for the blessing and put it in context.

In 1785, R’ Jacob b. David Meldola, of Leghorn, Italy, a member of the distinguished Meldola family, writes a liturgy that begins to resemble what contemporary Jews have said in recent cycles. He begins with some verses that refer to the Sun: Ps. 84:12, an acrostic of verses beginning with the letters of the Tetragrammaton, (Pm 72:5, Ps75:2, Mal. 3:20, Ps 97:6) and the first six verses of Ps. 148. We’ll call this Meldola’s leket. Then the congregation says the central beracha, followed by Ps. 19 and 121, the Baraita commanding us to say the beracha, the passage “Rabbi Hanania ben Akashia says”, which leads into the Rabbi’s Kaddish. The text concludes with a special Yehi Ratzon prayer thanking God for our reaching this cycle, and hoping we reach the next cycle in health.

Another, briefer liturgy is also known from 1785, from Scandiano in Italy, consisting of the bracha, the baraita of “Rabbi Elazar said Rabbi Chanina said” (from the Shabbat davening), and a kaddish derabbanan. The note describing this, a ms. from the Ginzburg-Moscow archive, attests it was also said in 1757, 1729, and 1701.

By the next cycle, 1813, the Meldola text had become somewhat known. In Reggio, an anonymous printer gives Meldola’s liturgy, with an additional preface: the passage from Genesis on the creation of the Sun. However, Meldola’s ritual appears not to have been known outside of Italy.

In fact, this seems to be the fate of a lot of versions of the sun ritual. Given the 28-year break, and the fact that rituals may be written out on a single sheet of paper, or printed on a 4 or 8-page pamphlet or even a broadside, it’s not surprising that people forgot what was done between one cycle and another. Even in the age of printing, a one-sheet flyer is regarded as ephemera, things that evaporate quickly, disappear easily, because “why do I need to keep this, it’s worth nothing, I’ll get another one in 28 years.” They might print a few hundred copies for local use, but not circulate among the wider Jewish world.

That Rabbenu Tam composed a verse for the occasion, and later people started putting together printed rituals in the 18^th century, suggests that there may have been dozens or hundreds of rabbis who created liturgies to enhance the occasion. What about the 18th century might have spurred a wave of liturgical creativity that had not existed before? Could it be the rise of kabbalah and the liturgies that it spawned, such as Kabbalat Shabbat? Not that most of these liturgies are particularly Kabbalistic, until the Chasidim started adding elements, but the enterprise of creative ritual may well have been driven by the existence of new Kabbalistic liturgical elements.

In 1813, the Chatam Sofer wrote a brief pamphlet on the astronomy behind the Blessing of the Sun. In a teshuvah, he outlined a liturgy to be recited, but that teshuva was not printed until after the next cycle. R’ Sofer (Schreiber) did not know of Meldola’s ritual, so he composed his own on first principles, based on the structure of the Kiddush Levanah, the monthly prayer on seeing the New Moon: Psalm 148, the blessing, Psalm 19, the beraita mandating the blessing, Aleinu and Mourner’s Kaddish. Vilna seems to have adopted this liturgy in later cycles as a standard. The choice of Ps. 19 is a natural, with its references to the Sun, as is Ps. 148. But, he took Mourner’s Kaddish, as that is what is said in the Kiddush Levanah, rather than a Rabbis’ Kaddish.

While Vilna stuck with the Chatam Sofer’s nusach, other parts of Europe mixed it with elements from Meldola’s, or with elements of their own devising. R’ Akiva Joseph Schlesinger, for instance, explicitly mixed the two; later cycles in the Chatam Sofer’s own Pressburg added and subtracted elements (R’ Daniel Prostitz added a psalm, took away another and left out Aleinu in 1841, and in 1869, the nusach already contained all the elements of both the Chatam Sofer and Meldola). R' Joseph Margareten in Erlau (Eger) Hungary in 1897, however, stuck with the strict Chatam Sofer liturgy. Yes, he and his wife Julia Horowitz were the ancestors of today's well-known kosher-products company.

Meanwhile, not everybody had heard of the Chatam Sofer’s nusach beyond Pressburg and Vilna, and Meldola’s text didn’t reach everyhere either. R’ Chaim Rapoport of Ostrow, author of the responsa Mayim Chaim, created his own original nusach for the 1841 cycle. Figuring that a prayer for the Sun had to be, a fortiori, at least as impressive as the prayer for the Moon, he said Psalm 148 from the daily davening, because of the obvious sun connection, then the beracha, the kabbalistic Ana Bekoach (which the Siddur of the Shelah adds to Kiddush Levanah), Psalm 67 from the Kiddush Levana, Aleinu and Mourner’s Kaddish.

Contemporary Mixed Liturgy

The contemporary all-in-one nusach really starts to come together in the 1897 cycle, in the sefer Petach haDevir, by R’ Haim Binyamin Fontrimolli, of Smyrna (Izmir). He mixes Meldola and Chatam Sofer with more kabbalistic prayers, composing a long Leshem Yichud (Kabbalistic declaration of intent) and a Modim prayer to be said at the end. He also adds the Creation narrative on the Sun, and a passage from Jeremiah on the Sun, so that Torah, Neviim and Ketuvim are all represented..

The verses may have been drawn from a haggadah printed in Zitomir just before the 1869 cycle, which included all the verses, a brief Leshem Yichud, and Ps. 84:12 and 148:1-6 as a prelude to the Beracha, but without anything said afterwards. This leads me to wonder if the author of this Haggadah, one R’ Moshe Schub, might have also been operating in a vacuum – creating a purely Scriptural liturgy, without the Beraita, without Yehi Ratzon or El Adon.

By the 1925 cycle, we have Chassidic broadsides with the whole mixed nusach, going down to 1981 when people started publish whole books on the subject, its history, etc. In school we used the booklet put together by R’ Nechemia Polen. I said it twice, first with my parents’ synagogue who went out to Central Park to daven kevatikin, at sunrise, and again at 8:00 at school, on the roof. Today you can get pre-printed laminated cards with the mixed liturgy for Sephardim and Chassidim, and with the Chatam Sofer liturgy for the Litvish Ashkenazim, in Jewish bookstores in Brooklyn.

Contemporary liturgies take the Psalm 19/121 pair, the Meldola leket, part or all of Ps 148, the Jeremiah and Genesis passages, the beraita, short or long Leshem Yichud, Yehi Ratzon or Modim, El Adon, Aleinu, and mix and match to create a liturgy that fits the gefeel of the editor.

Sources

One such book, which gave me a lot of the material for this post, is the recent Sefer Kiddush haChamah, by R’ Jonah Buxbaum, from the Skvirer Kollel. He presents first the full mixed-together liturgy, with all the elements from Meldola, Sofer, and Schub, then a long halachic section with basic laws and extensive footnotes reviewing the Ashkenazic, Sephardic and Chassidic teshuvah literature. Next comes a section of testimonies, culled from responsa, diaries, letters and books, of how the service was done in communities all over the world, from 1085 in the Beis Medrash of Rashi down to 1981. Then comes an extensive discussion of the history of the nusach, which served as the major source for this post. Other recent books on the Blessing of the Sun are reviewed at the Seforim Blog.

Before finding this book, though, the nusach question had been bugging me, particularly as we had been trying to work out what we’re going to do at our shul, the Yavneh Minyan of Flatbush, on that morning. I assembled a chart of 18 different versions of the nusach, both current and historical. The three modern Sephardic ones were reconstructed by Ken Bloom; most of the historical ones came from the JNUL site, the Chabad one came from the Chabad site, Polen came from their book which I kept from the last cycle, and others I found online.

I hope this can help others decide which texts to use in this cycle and (if the Intarwebs persist so long) future cycles..

Who Was the Mahari"l?

MUSICAL NOTE
by Cantor Sherwood Goffin
THE MAHARIL

It is an immutable requirement for the Chazzan of every shul and minyan that our traditional musical nusach hatefillah cannot be changed. This comes from the Psak Halacha of the Maharil, as quoted by the Shulchan Aruch (619:1) and the glosses there of the Rama: “One may not change the custom of a community, even as to its customary prayer-melodies.” The Rama adds: “(Maharil)”. Who was the Maharil, and how did his psak become the rule for all Ashkenazic synagogues in the world?

The Maharil, Rabbi Yaakov HaLevi Möllin, (b. Mainz, 1356, d.Worms, 1427), the first to bear the title of “Moreinu,” was the Chief Rabbi of the Rhineland. Rabbi Adin Steinzaltz writes that, “also being one of the great prayer leaders of his time, he traveled from one community to another, reestablishing the traditional prayer melodies. By virtue of his great authority, the Maharil succeeded in laying the foundations for the prayer rite (ed: and customs) accepted by all Ashkenazic communities.” He then sanctified those melodies with the title “MiSinai,” to emphasize their ancient and immutable quality. He also standardized the musical modes required for each tefillah around the year. Our Baalei Tefilla must be well-versed in the MiSinai melodies that nurtured the souls of our fathers’ generation, our grandfathers’ generation, and the generations before them. No one has the right to discard even one of these sacred melodies of our tefilla. This requirement to keep the traditional nusach is especially true for the holiest days of the year – the Yamim Noroim, but applies throughout the year, for every prayer, at every service. It also applies to the choice of sing-a-long melodies, which must fit into the given musical mode of the Tefilla. You can rest assured that your Chazzan is exceptionally fastidious in respecting and preserving these guidelines of the Maharil that have governed our Tefilla for the last 600 years!

DAVEN WELL, DON’T TALK, BUT SING ALONG!

© 2009 Lincoln Square Synagogue and Sherwood Goffin

The Power of the Niggun: Part 3

MUSICAL NOTE
by Cantor Sherwood Goffin
HISTORIC CHASSIDIC WRITINGS – THE POWER OF THE NIGGUN Part 3

“A person should not have an ear just to hear songs of others, but also to hear the songs which sing from within his heart.”

Rabbi Yisroel of Modzitz

“Song opens a window to the secret places of the soul”.

Sayings of Chabad

“Rejoice that you have an opportunity to sing unto God”.

Rabbi Mendel of Vitebsk

“In all niggunim can be found love and fear of the Lord”.

Rabbi Nachman of Bratslav

“Song reveals the beauty within the soul”.

Rabbi Sholem Dov Ber of Lubavitch

Source: “Songs of the Chassidim,” by Vel Pasternak

DAVEN WELL, DON’T TALK, BUT SING ALONG!

Small-Format Gemaras

On a mailing list, someone wrote:

If amudei gemara were also divided into smaller chunks and larger fonts per printed page, I'm sure that it would induce greater concentration and ultimately better results amongst those who are in need of proficiency.

Such gemaras used to exist, but the only one in modern times has been the Steinsaltz English edition.

A bit of publishing history:

The pagination of the Gemara has remained consistent since Daniel Bomberg published the first full shas in 1520-1523 in Venice. Since then, any reference to, e.g., Eruvin 23a, has always referred to the same page. The arrangement of the columns, between Rashi, text and Tosfos, may differ based on differing relative font sizes, but the same content is on the same page in every printed Gemara.

Shaar-blatt (cover page, usually framed with a gateway, although not in this case, hence the term shaar-blatt) of Frankfurt-an-der-Oder/Berlin 1735 edition:


and a sample page:


Click on the images for larger-size views. Note that I have a foot-rule in most of the images, for comparative size. Sorry it's so shiny, so you can't actually see most of the inch-markers, it's what I could find in the house. Note that this full-size (folio) edition has the same pagination as today.

Starting in the early 1700s, though, people realized that folio-sized Gemaras are inconvenient when traveling. Also, small individual tractates were no threat to the full folio gemara publishers. So there arose a split-page gemara style. Each two-page spread covered one amud of the standard Talmud. So two pages covered Eruvin 23a, then the next two pages covered Eruvin 23b, then two pages for 24a etc.

Shaar-blatt for Amsterdam 1743 Beitzah. This was one of a very few, mostly short, masechtot printed by Proops in this format in the late 1730s and early 1740s. Others include Ta'anit and Rosh Hashanah:



Sample page. Note that this format, unlike most, has two special features:

1) Maharsha on the same page, instead of in the back;

2) Rubricated Rashis - the "dibur hamatchil", cited phrase, at the beginning of each comment in Rashi is in square letters, to bring it to the reader's attention, instead of the semi-cursive (rashi) letters of the rest of the commentary. I have not seen this feature in any other gemara down to the modern era, say, the past 20 years.


Note the pagination in the above example. Both pages are headed

29 Hameivi Tractate Beitza Side 2

but the left page also has a page number 57 in the corner, which is the real physical page (leaf) number.

These small-format Talmuds were fairly popular for over 150 years, until in the 20th century photolithography allowed one to reduce the size of an existing page for reprinting. Since then, almost all small-format Talmuds have been just reductions of the Vilna page. Given the 16" size of a Vilna Talmud page, the normal desk-size sets that one gives for bar-mitzvah presents, a page reduced to 8" becomes so small as to be barely readable. Half-daf portable Talmuds, as described above, were quite readable at 7-9" height, because that was the size at which they were initially typeset.

Thus, since the Vilna edition,


most reduced-size Talmuds have just been reductions of the Vilna pages.

Note the above Vilna page, a full 16" high. It's a real Vilna volume, albeit a late (1920s) printing. A co-worker found it on a garbage pile in Boro Park, and passed it along to me, knowing I like old seforim.

There were some reduced-size real reprintings, such as in Warsaw by the Orgelbrand press and others, which put out a small-sized Talmud set (I have a few volumes):


c. 1864, where the main text and the Rashi/Tosfos were printed in the same size, just with different typefaces, as you can see in the detail below:



This allowed them to crush an entire Bomberg folio page into one small-format page, at a mostly-readable size.

The Lemberg edition of the 1860s was the last of the two-for-one-page editions of the regular Talmud.

shaar-blatt of Lemberg Yoma. This was part of a complete Shas set, as was its copy in the Bennet shas:



sample page:



Note, in the Lemberg edition, the Tosfos Yesheinim, which is on the main page in the Vilna edition in the margins, is relegated to the back of the book, to save space. It's really only the Vilna edition and its imitators that have real prose commentaries in the outer margins, such as Rabbeinu Chananel, Rabbeinu Gershom, and Tosfos Yesheinim on Yoma.

The Steinsaltz English edition also uses a two-for-one-page layout, but their commentaries are all in English. The Rebecca Bennet edition of 1959, small red hardcovers you might have seen in batei midrash or older people's homes, used a reduced copy of the Lemberg edition for the Hebrew side, and Soncino for the English.


Bennet's edition, using the Soncino English translation without authorization, is noted in Habermann's bibliography of the talmud with two words:

Washington Heights, 1959: Without authorization.

This was perhaps the first, but not the last, of a long string of unauthorized reprintings of the Soncino English Talmud: MP Press, which came out when I was in high school in the 1980s, was the first to have folio-size pages for both the English and Hebrew. Soncino later came out with their own folio-sized parallel edition. Then there's an antisemitic website that has about half of the Soncino Talmud. Several people have written to Soncino about it, but they have not done anything to enforce their copyright. Oh well.

I've also seen tiny pocket-sized reductions of the Lemberg text; since you're starting with a smaller page, you can get really tiny yet still readable. This one, from the Moriah press in Israel, is less than 5" tall. Yet it's still readable, starting from the initally smaller-format Lemberg page.


Marvin Heller has written a whole book, a second volume of his "Printing the Talmud," on the subject. It is primarily a bibliography of these reduced-size editions from 1700-1750.

Sizes of Talmuds described in the text:

Full-page Talmuds
Place published			Year			Height (inches)
FFdO/Berlin			1736			13.5
Vilna			1926			16
Warsaw (quarto)			1864			8.5
Half-page Talmuds
Amsterdam			1743			7
Lemberg			1868			9
Bennet (after Lemberg)			1959			7
Moriah (after Lemberg)			1969			4.75

Since it is quite popular to learn on the subway, and as Daf Yomi has gotten more and more popular, it seems to me that one of the talmud publishers, who already has the entire text in computer form, such as the Friedman Edition or the New Vilna Shas, should put out two-for-one-page travel editions of Shas. They already produce reduced-size editions with new Hebrew commentaries for the daf-yomi traveling learner. As the Daf Yomi learners age, larger print would be better, so perhaps it's time to bring back the 2-for-1 page travel editions.

The Real Old Amidah

So I’m looking at the Esslingen Machzor, a German manuscript from 1290, on the JTS Library Treasures site. A few pages in we come to the first Amidah, and I’m looking at the page. The site is protected with “do not download or copy “ notices, so I can’t show it to you.

Here’s an approximation (the real lettering is like 16^th-century Prague fonts)

And it continues as usual in the High Holidays nusach. But in that smudged area, there is written in small letters, the rest of what we think of as the continuation of that paragraph: gomeil chasadim tovim, etc. The aleph-apostrophe is really the one-character E-l ligature.

But the smudged area intrigues me. I do see erased letters under there, and what looks like it could be a tzadi-sofit at the end of the smudge. Could the hidden words be “qoneh shamayim va’aretz”? That phrase, which survives in the abbreviated amidah at the end of our Friday night services in Ashkenazi prayerbooks, is supposedly the old conclusion of the paragraph in nusach Ashkenaz, before the prayers were updated to match the Eastern prayerbooks, particularly after the AriZal.

The interpolation is clearly in a different hand, with more shaky lines, without the ligatures of the original text on the page. The small lettering in the first line, however, is in the same hand as the rest of the page, and does use the A-l ligatures.

We appear to have physical evidence of the shift in text from the old Ashkenazi nusach imported from Eretz Yisrael via Italy, to the current text, literally, in this palimpsest.

The Power of a Niggun - II

MUSICAL NOTE
by Cantor Sherwood Goffin

HISTORIC CHASSIDIC WRITINGS –
THE POWER OF THE NIGGUN Part 2

“One niggun can express more than a thousand words.”

The Tsadik of Kuzmir

“Every locksmith has a master key with which he can open many doors. The niggun is such a key, for it can unlock all doors.”

Sayings of Chabad

“It is said that the Mansion of Song and the Mansion of Penitence are close to each other, and I say that the Mansion of Song IS the Mansion of Penitence.”

Rabbi Yisrael of Modzitz

“The bad traits in man come from the animal instinct within him. Through the power of the niggun it is possible to remove this instinct.”

The Baal Shem Tov

“Speech reveals the thought of the mind, but melody reveals the emotions of longing and delight. These stem from the inner self, from the very soul, and are much higher than reason and intellect.”

Rabbi Yosef Yitzchok of Lubavitch
(whom I met on a class visit in 1948 or ’49 to Crown Heights as a child.)

Source: “Songs of the Chassidim,” by Velvel Pasternak

DAVEN WELL, DON’T TALK, BUT SING ALONG!

The Three Torahs

Towards the end of Parshat Mishpatim, we have a slightly redundant verse (Ex. 24:12):

וַיֹּ֨אמֶר יְהוָ֜ה אֶל־מֹשֶׁ֗ה עֲלֵ֥ה אֵלַ֛י הָהָ֖רָה וֶהְיֵה־שָׁ֑ם וְאֶתְּנָ֨ה לְךָ֜ אֶת־לֻחֹ֣ת הָאֶ֗בֶן וְהַתֹּורָה֙ וְהַמִּצְוָ֔ה אֲשֶׁ֥ר כָּתַ֖בְתִּי לְהֹורֹתָֽם׃

"And God said to Moshe, 'Ascend to me to the mountain and be there, and I will give to you the tablets of stone and the Teaching and the Command which I have written to teach you.'"

Why does it say "which I have written"? God is giving us the Torah and the Mitzvot, the Ten Statements in which are encoded the 613 mitzvot, which he has composed, why does He add "written"? Further, He doesn't write the Torah, Moshe does, He only supplies the text to Moshe.

The usual reading is that the Torah and the Mitzvah are the Written and Oral Torahs - this implies that there is a Third Torah being given by God. What could that be?

The Meshech Chochmah suggests two possibilities. One, from a Gemara in Brachot ch. 5 (and explained further in Nedarim), is that God is giving the Neviim and Ketuvim, and all the chiddushim yet to be written by all future students of Torah. That is, the Torah and the Mitzvah are the bones, the structure, the form of Torah. But what do the Neviim and Ketuvim add? The substance, the theology, the philosphical underpinnings, the meaning of the Torah and Mitzvot. The chiddushim of all future students continue to refine and shape our relationship to Torah, our relationship to God. As the Chasidim like to say, God Torah and Israel are One. We help out in the creation of that relationship, but all our inspiration ultimately comes from God, Who continues to write His Torah. [Yes, that's continuous revelation, but of course such revelation only comes to the prepared mind, as the Ramchal might have said.]

The other possibility, from the Rashbam, is that the third Torah is the Book of Nature. God created the Torah and gave it to us as an information transfer, but God also created the natural world and gave it to humankind to study and dominate and use, within the limits set by halacha. But we can also learn from biology, the middos, the ethical attributes that we are supposed to follow. As the gemara says, we learn modesty from the cat, we learn about theft from the ant. If animals can follow God's Will, surely we who are a higher order of creation can follow God's will as well? So we are to learn biology, specifically animal behavior, as an integral part of the Torah life. Perhaps this also extends to other fields of scientific endeavour, as we are to also have awe for God? And as we learn more about the universe and its workings, we are more awed by He who spoke and the world was.

The Power of a Niggun - I

MUSICAL NOTE

by Cantor Sherwood Goffin

HISTORIC CHASSIDIC WRITINGS – THE POWER OF THE NIGGUN Part 1

“How do you pray to God? Is it possible to pray with words alone? Come, I will show you a new way to God – not with words or sayings- but with song. We will sing and the Lord on High will understand us”.

(R’ Nachman of Breslov)

“The tongue is the pen of the heart, but melody is the quill of the soul”.

R’ Shneur Zalman Of Liadi
(1st Chabad Rebbe)

“Through the power of Neginah (music), one may conquer the heart.”

The Maggid of Koznitz

“Through song, the Gates of Heaven can be opened. Sadness closes them. The origin of all songs is Holy, for impurity has no song, and is the root of all sadness”.

R’ Naftali of Ropshitz

Source: “Songs of the Chassidim,” by Velvel Pasternak

DAVEN WELL, DON’T TALK, BUT SING ALONG!

Kol Nidre and the Valmadonna Exhibit

The Valmadonna Trust – for a Hebraeo-bibliophile, there are no words. Such a collection, such a variety of early printed Jewish books, manuscripts, and books printed in out-of-the-way places for Jewish printing, such as India and Palestine. All in such beautiful condition, many bound in gorgeously tooled and gilded leather (cloth bindings didn’t really come in until the 19^th century). And all in private hands. There are greater institutional collections (Didan Notzach changed the Chabad library from a private to an institutional collection), but this was assembled largely by one man who truly loves the Jewish book, Jack Lunzer, and who has the resources to collect and preserve them. And it was all on display Feb 9-19, 2009, at Sotheby's in New York.

The stories have been told, of how Lunzer acquired one of only two known complete sets of the Bomberg Talmud, the first complete Babylonian Talmud ever printed, whose pagination forms the model for all other Talmud printings since.

But individual books tell their own stories, be they the choices of composition, editing and production, or the historic personages who have owned them, or the uses to which they have been put. Who has not seen wine stains on antique haggadot, just as we have on our own? Salt-water stains? Even burn marks on cookbooks, or books rescued from the flames?

My favorite book exhibited, was the 1711 Machzor Sha’ar Bat Rabbim, printed by Giovanni de Pauli for the Bragadin press, in the Ashkenazi rite. It’s a big, beautiful chazzan’s machzor, with a commentary explaining the prayers. The type is clear and large. A copy was offered (but did not sell) at Virtual Judaica last year, estimated value $6-10,000.

What made it special to me was the displayed page, Kol Nidrei. This page is marked up by an early chazzan (faded ink from a feather pen), with some marks to remind him of the proper phrasing.

Each short phrase gets a hook like a telisha,

and each concluding phrase on each line (as the tune has lines) gets a horizontal stroke over the phrase.

A different hand, perhaps later, has added little T-marks over emphasized syllables, to further refine correct performance. The hook-marks and horizontal marks seem to come from one hand, with a somewhat sloppy pen that leaves a penumbra of ink, but the T-marks are made by a cleaner pen, perhaps a feather or a metal nib instead of a reed or softer nib. Does anyone have experience of different pen types who can shed some light on this? Feather, reed, metal.

Or perhaps the penumbra is an earlier hand marking the hooks, and the black part is a later hand redrawing them. That would indicate the faint marks are pretty early, but the black marks are also not too late, because who would mark up a real antique?

The way the phrases are marked, it seems clear to me, is identical to the phrasing used by our current Kol Nidre Tune.

Professional cantors speak of certain tunes as “Missinai”. Now, this is not meant literally, but what it means is that these are tunes which are universally used throughout the Ashkenazic communities, which trace back to at least the 14^th or 15^th century, when the Maharil noted the modes to be used for the different prayers.

I noticed, while singing through our Missinai tune for Kol Nidrei, that the annotations on the words in the Machzor matched the phrasing of our tune. There are other ways the prayer could be broken up, but it seems to me that this is evidence that 200-300 years ago (whenever it was marked), the cantor who used this machzor (it was bought generally by communities, who paid subscriptions to acquire it as a series of pamphlets, and then the whole rebound) was probably using the same tune we do. Yes, it’s a post hoc ergo propter hoc argument, so it’s no proof (pace DFB), but it is at least circumstantial evidence.

It’s one thing to take on faith that “everyone uses the same tune.” We do have 18^th- and 19^th-century cantorial music which uses the same tune. Abraham Baer in c. 1765 has a somewhat different variant, while Lewandowski in 1871 has our tune pretty much. But to find physical evidence that they were using the same tune in the early 18^th century? Fascinating, Captain. It gives real emphasis to the idea that these really are important and ancient tunes.

Hava Nagilah

MUSICAL NOTE by Cantor Sherwood Goffin
The Metamorphosis of Hava Nagila

This popular Israeli melody, known throughout the world, began as a mid-18th century niggun of the Sadigora Chassidim of Bukovina, East Europe. When the great Jewish ethnomusicologist Dr. A.Z. Idelsohn, formerly of Leipsig, who had opened the first Jewish Institute of Music in Jerusalem in 1910, was looking for words to put to this niggun, he asked his class for assistance. It was already 1918, and 12 year-old Moshe Nathanson volunteered the words "Hava Nagila Hava," which Idelsohn put together with the melody to create a new choral piece.

It eventually spread like wildfire throughout the Yishuv, and when it became popular among the Zionists, the chassidim of Sadigora disowned it! To this day it is popular in Jewish and non-Jewish circles, but because it has taken on a very secular nature it is unfortunately no longer appropriate for use in shul. Little Moshe grew up to become the first Chazzan of the SAJ on 86th St. and a West Side neighbor when LSS first began in 1964!

DAVEN WELL, DON’T TALK, BUT SING ALONG!

Tzedakah and Katrina - R' Bleich

a Guest Post by Mar Gavriel

Rabbi Bleich's sermon after Hurricane Katrina:

Qayin:

R. Bleich spoke about the contradiction between the verses אפס כי לא יהיה בך אביון and גי לא יחדל האביון מקרב הארץ. He cited the RAMBA"N's solution to the contradiction, which is that there will always be poor people among the gentiles outside of Eretz Yisrael, but among the Israelites, in Eretz Yisrael, there will not be poor people.

Then, R. Bleich said: When the gentiles encounter their poor people, they will be moved by the sense that they need to do good, and therefore, they will give tzedhŏqŏ. You Jews, when you see the gentiles give tzedhŏqŏ, must emulate them. Every reason that they have to do tzedhŏqŏ-- because it's the morally right thing to do-- you have, as well; plus, you also have another reason, namely that the Torah has commanded you to give tzedhŏqŏ.

When we see how much wonderful good many righteous people among the אומות העולם have done in helping the New Orleanians, we must learn from them, and copy their example. The gentiles are obligated to help the New Orleanians because it's the morally right thing to do; you must do it because it's the right thing to do, and because the Torah commanded it.

Chesed towards Whom?

R' Daniel Z. Feldman's new book, "Divine Footsteps: Chesed and the Jewish Soul", on the various mitzvot that constitute the general requirement of "gemilut chasadim", distribution of lovingkindness, which is one of the "three things on which the world stands" (Avot 1:2; the others being Torah learning and Divine Service).

He includes chapters on:

• Visiting the sick
• Comforting the bereaved
• Escorting the decease
• Hosting guests
• Helping a bride to marry
• Lending
• Collecting tzedakah
• Giving tzedakah

R' Feldman interweaves halachic sources with the ethical and philosophical imperatives and goals that give meaning to the bare requirements of "doing good for others." For example,

The Talmud records that Friday night kiddush was recited in the synagogue when guests were eating there. In modern times, it is no longer common for guests to be hosted at the synagogue, and yet many contemporary synagogues have a custom to recite kiddush in the context of the Friday night prayers anyway. Many questioned or objected to this practice,[145] and a number of theories are suggested to explain why the practice should continue.[146] It may be suggested that the modern synagogue kiddush is a testament to the history of the original kiddush, which was a service to the needy being hosted. As such, it is a reminder that the communal center, the synagogue, is required to be concerned for both the spiritual and physical needs of the community at large. (p, 155)

145. See Rosh, Pesachim 10:5, and Shulchan Aruch, Orach Chaim 269.
146. See Responsa Rashba I, 37 and 323; Magen Avraham 269:3; Responsa Teshuvot Ve-Hanhagot 1, 255; R Yechiel Ya'akov Weinberg, Responsa Seridei Eish I, 28.

That last is a sentiment that I'm sure my great-grandfather Louis Cohen and his brother Joseph H. Cohen, founders of the first two Jewish Centers, would have supported.

The one place where it falls short, in my opinion, is in relations with non-Jews. My mother runs a series of clothing and food drives, and organizes a fleet of volunteers through Lincoln Square Synagogue to staff them, give local yeshiva kids chesed-work credit, and twice a week redistribute 25-50 lbs of day-old bread from a local bakery to the poor, mostly non-Jews. In short, she's "the chesed lady".

But she gets a lot of flack from donors over the fact that she mostly sends the donations to non-Jewish charities. For the most part, this is out of necessity. There are very few Jewish soup kitchens and food pantries, especially in Manhattan; Jewish clothing-redistribution outlets can get factory-seconds from the still-present-in-NY garment business, and don't want used clothing; her volunteers aren't about to make multiple two-hour round trips to charities in Brooklyn. But she still gets flack for it, and I was hoping to find something to support the idea of giving to non-Jews.

American Jewish charities often give to non-Jews as well, following natural disasters or terror attacks. American Jewish World Service, various Jewish Federations, even the students and congregation of KJ/Ramaz, sent goods and supplies to New Orleans after Katrina, or to the Indian Ocean after the Boxing Day Tsunami.

The Rambam has a few choice words on the subject, in Hil. Matanot L'Aniyyim 7:7, "We support and clothe the non-Jewish poor along with the Jewish poor, because of the paths of peace," quoting the Gemara in the end of the fifth chapter of Gittin), which Ridvaz explains as "we support both Jewish and non-Jewish poor for the same reason." Other poskim discuss the parameters of darchei shalom. R' Dovid Zvi Hoffman explains that it's a different reason than "out of fear [of retribution if we don't]", rather, it's meant to promote real good-feeling between Jews and non-Jews. It's brought down in the Shulchan Aruch by the Rema at Yoreh Deah 251:1 - why not by the Mechaber? Various commentators and poskim discuss the duty towards non-Jews.

But I had to read through R' Feldman's section on Priorities between Causes twice to find the one brief passage that mentions non-Jews. He writes,

The needs of the larger world population, outside of the Jewish community, also merit a place on the list of causes supported by Jews. While the Talmud mandates assisting the poor of the world "together with the poor of Israel,"[99] authorities have ruled, following the Ran, that this language is not meant to exclude situations in which no Jews are involved.[100] (pp. 233-4)

99. Gittin 61a.
100. Shakh, Yoreh De'ah 251:2, and Biur Ha-Gra. See also Responsa Avnei Yoshefeh I, 193, and Emet Le-Ya'akov, Yoreh De'ah 251, fn. 137.

That's it. At least it does faithfully represent the halacha, if barely. But where is the larger discussion of goals? of underlying ethical imperatives? of fear vs. love? Where are they placed on the priority list? Where is the discussion of the Rema vs. the Mechaber? R' Feldman devotes pages and pages to the back-and-forth over prioritizing the poor of one's city vs. one's poor relatives vs. the greater community of Jewish poor, the more needy vs. the less, etc. Here was an opportunity to broaden our horizons beyond the narrow confines of the Jewish community, but tzedakah to non-Jews is only given a backhanded approval.

Note that I use tzedakah not charity - charity is the Christian word, which derives from karitas, or love - the giving of charity is subjective, depending on one's love for the other. One is supposed to have such love, of course, but it's not quantified. Our tzedakah, on the other hand, works the other way - we are mandated to give to the poor, in specific ways, and doing so sensitizes us to the needs of others.

Overall, the book is very well done, and covers a lot of material that one doesn't often see presented, in a clear, sensitive and well-organized fashion. It should have a place on the bookshelf of every Jew who considers gemilut chasadim part of his or her duty to the world.

Beethoven's Jewish Side

MUSICAL NOTE by Cantor Sherwood Goffin
THE JEWISH SIDE OF BEETHOVEN

When the first Reform temple in Vienna, the Seitstettengasse Synagogue, was about to be dedicated, the trustees in 1824 asked Beethoven to write a cantata for the dedication. Ludwig eventually declined to do so, but it seems that he did spend some time studying Jewish traditional music. Added to the fact that he was dating a Jewish woman at that time (which was eventually stopped by her parents), Beethoven must have absorbed a goodly amount of Jewish music. So much so, that shortly afterwards, his String Quartet in C-Sharp Minor. no.XIV, op. 131, was written and performed in Berlin. In its Adagio Movement there are the unmistakable strains of Kol Nidre! I have listened to it many times and I am convinced - as was the great music expert, Emil Breslaur- that this was a direct result (in part) of his dual association with the young lady, and primarily because of the original invitation proffered to him by the Jewish Community of Berlin.

DAVEN WELL, DON’T TALK, BUT SING ALONG!

© 2008 Sherwood Goffin and LSS

Updated: city and year. 20F08

Talking in Davening (this means YOU)

MUSICAL NOTE by Cantor Sherwood Goffin
DURING REPETITION OF THE AMIDA, Part 4
(Excerpted from “Praying With Fire,” Rabbi H. Kleinman)

There is a concept that those who do not demonstrate the proper esteem for items from which they derive benefit will at some point lose access to that benefit (Brachot 62b). The same concept applies to one who talks during Chazarat HaShatz – one loses the benefit of that which he fails to honor. His act displays a great disrespect for prayer and disregard for its efficacy, and thus, loses his ability to reach Hashem through prayer. It is for this reason that “the sin is too great to bear.” (Shulchan Aruch, 124:7).

In truth, once one understands the implications of conversation during Chazarat HaShatz, there can be no choice other than maintaining a respectful silence. By choosing our prayer, above whatever distractions present themselves around us, we preserve the most valuable asset we have – our personal connection with our Creator.

DAVEN WELL, DON’T TALK, BUT SING ALONG!

My Elter Zeide and Lubavitch

As told by R’ Aaron Rakeffet, 4 Jan 2009.

An example of transplanting the Alter Heim to the USA, rather than the translation of European Jewry for America which was the method of YU

The Rebbe was running away, the State Dept pulled him out of Poland, in 1940. Ads went out in the four Jewish dailies at the time, religious, secular, socialist, communist - “those of you that remember Lubavitch, the Rebbe is coming to America on this boat on this day, please greet him.” R’ Rakeffet’s cousin was there. A crowd came out about this. There’s video of this from Lubavitch. Maybe 5000 people came out, mostly not religious, they still knew what Lubavitch was, they had been raised Lubavitch, they remembered the cholent from Lubavitch.

The Rebbe came down, he couldn’t speak, he had had a stroke, his wife spoke for him in Yiddish, her translator was Rose Lieberman, Sharon Mintz’s (Mrs. R’ Adam) grandmother. As they wheeled the Rebbe in, someone strikes up a niggun from the Alter Heim. The Rebbe joins in. People started to cry, even distant from Yiddishkeit. And people swore they wouldn’t be mechallel shabbos then. The women would go to the beauty parlor on Saturday to do their hair for the movie palace Saturday night, the women became shomer shabbos when their kids went to yeshiva. Big thing, suddenly the husbands are going to be home on Saturday!

They brought him to the Greystone Hotel on the Upper West Side. Some of the older Chasidim came in to the Rebbe, told him “we have good news for you, in Lakewood there’s a nice community, warmer than NY, some wealthy Chasidim there, you can retire there, they’ll set you up nicely, and we’ll come farbreng with you once a month. At least you’re away from the Nazis, but New York is a waste of time.” I heard the Seventh Rebbe tell this story with my own ears (says R’ARR). This was shocking! Chasidim daring to tell the Rebbe to retire?

The next morning, they all come in to have breakfast with him, everyone is up & happy. The Rebbe tells them, “Chasidim don’t tell a rebbe what to do, the Rebbe tells the Chasidim what to do. “This is what I’m going to do. I’ll go to Lakewood, rest up for a month, and then we’re starting all over, and we’re going to prove that America can be exactly like the Alter Heim!” They thought he was nuts, but a Rebbe redt, speaks, you don’t say a word.

At the end of the month, he calls in the Chasidim, including Rose Lieberman, and her father R’ Cunin, the grandfather of the head shaliach in California today, and says to them, I want to open a shtibl in the finest neighborhood in New York City. So the Chasidim ask each other – how do we know what the finest neighborhood is? Where the biggest Conservative temple is! So that’s how Lubavitch came to Eastern Parkway, because the Brooklyn Jewish Center was right across the street, the biggest Conservative synagogue in the world.

* * *

And this is where I come in, because my great-grandfather, Louis Cohen a”h, Yitchak Eliezer b. Yaakov haKohen, in the pre-WWI era a wealthy coat manufacturer, moved to Crown Heights, built the biggest house on President St. (today an empty brick shell r”l, but 20 years ago still a beautiful home. And for wealthy Jews in this beautiful neighborhood of fine homes and boulevards, there should be a beautiful upper-class Orthodox Synagogue, huge Tiffany skylight, limited to 500 families (although by 1923 it had 1000), no families accepted from beyond Utica Avenue in the middle-class neighborhood of Brownsville (where my father’s parents lived in the 1920s). And that synagogue, the Brooklyn Jewish Center, would follow in the idea formulated by Louis Cohen’s older brother Joseph H. Cohen, founder of The Jewish Center on 86^th St. in New York.

Unfortunately, 18 months later, another person on the Board decided to affiliate with the fledgling Conservative movement, but as there was little practical difference between Orthodox and Conservative in those days, my great-grandfather remained part of the synagogue.

My grandmother taught dance classes there, directed plays, etc. as a young woman. She was married in the synagogue on Lag Ba’omer in 1926. As the second Jewish Center in the world, it was a “shul with a pool” and a gym, adult ed, Hebrew school, social groups, etc. Today, the building belongs to Lubavitch, and is used as a yeshiva. They hacked out the beautiful main shul, and replaced the space with a huge beis medrash and a library. The things they learn in that beis midrash, well, the school has a loyalty oath that children of non-Meschichst families are not allowed to make fun of children of Meshichist families. But at least it’s a Jewish institution still, not a church or a tile store or a used furniture store.

So why is Lubavitch in Crown Heights? Why is there still a Jewish presence in Crown Heights? Because in 1918, my great-grandfather decided to set up a big, beautiful Modern Orthodox synagogue.

* * *

R’ Rakeffet’s story was part of a larger point, that while YU was about translating Judaism for America, R’ Aharon Kotler and the Chasidim wanted to transplant Europe to America. It’s rather ironic how the various groups have shifted: the Yeshivish have adopted the trappings of Chassidus – the focus on externals in dress and behavior, the elevation of the Rosh Yeshiva to a Rebbe, a channel to God; meanwhile the Lubavitchers who received this order from their Rebbe that “America is no different!” – they have become the biggest translators of Chassidus for the American scene, accommodating all kinds of laxity, theological, behavioral, etc., in their drive to bring Judaism to American Jews. The influence flows both ways – the Chasidim have become modernized, almost Agudist (yes, in theory, Lubavitch is as anti-Zionist as Satmar, but in practice, they use political influence in Israel as in America or Russia, basically the same position taken by Agudah).

Innumeracy

This isn't a particularly Jewish topic, but it bugs me. And I'm seeing it more and more, in connection with the economic downturn and the political blaming surrounding it. Which is, the sloppy use of numbers to make politico-economic points. It only hurts one's own argument, to be presented with innumeracy (numerical illiteracy):

First example: a conservative Facebook friend wrote:

The so-called budget surplus under Clinton... well, the national debt rose from $4 trillion to $5.6 trillion during Clinton's time in the White House. How exactly that equates to a budget surplus is the kind of sleight of hand that economists are famous for

To which I responded:

Budget deficit/surplus is figured ANNUALLY, while the National Debt is CUMULATIVE.

So the small surpluses deducted small amounts from the national debt. Nowhere near enough to wipe it out, but at least Clinton's budgets didn't add to it, the last two years.

* * *

Second example, in a published Yahoo News story:

Headline:

Q4 GDP down 3.8 percent, biggest drop since 1982

From the first paragraph:

The Commerce Department on Friday said gross domestic product, which measures total goods and services output within U.S. borders, plummeted at a 3.8 percent annual rate, the lowest pace since the first quarter of 1982, when output contracted 6.4 percent. GDP fell 0.5 percent in the third quarter.

There's a difference between CHANGE and RATE OF CHANGE. But that has eluded this writer. A 3.8% rate of change means that the GDP fell 0.95% (which is 1/4 of 3.8) during the fourth quarter. And it's not just a question of "the headlines are written by someone else," but later in the article we get this gem:

Analysts polled by Reuters had forecast GDP contracting 5.4 percent in the fourth quarter.

By 5.4%? Or at an annualized RATE of 5.4%, which would be a CHANGE of (5.4/4) or 1.35%?

If analysts were predicting a change of 5.4%, and we got a change of 0.95%, we're doing way way better than the analysts thought. If they predicted 1.35% and we dropped 0.95%, then we're still doing better, but not as dramatically.

If a car is moving 30 mph now, which is about 43 ft/sec, and 60 mph 1 minute later, it has CHANGED its speed by 30 mph, but has ACCELERATED (the word for rate of change of speed) by (43/60) ft/sec², or 0.717 ft/sec². Which is a very gentle acceleration.

Economics is largely a numbers game. When discussing it, it behooves one to make sure that one's assumptions are consistent, and that one's reportage of numbers is numerically consistent.

John Allen Paulos has made a name for himself writing about innumeracy. Read, and learn.