Al Reguel Ajat

In one part of the Berachot tractate of the Talmud, the sages discuss until what time one may say the evening Shema. After many commentaries are presented, they finally conclude that one may say the evening Shema at the latest until midnight and not until before dawn. And what is the argument that leads them to this decision? The purpose of setting this specific limit is to “keep a person away from sin” (Kdei leharchik et haadam min hahabeira) and thus ensure that people will observe it correctly. And the text continues: “There is a teaching that says that the sages will make a fence to safeguard their words” (Hachamim asu sayag ledibreihem, Berachot 4b). This means that the halachic precepts must be so thought out and worded that they do not allow a person to fall into sin in any way. Before dawn, a person might miscalculate the time left and end up saying the Shema for the night when it is already daylight. If the limit is set at midnight, this risk is not run. Midnight gives us a wide margin.

This teaching of “creating a fence around the words of the sages” had very important implications. The enormous accumulation of halachic rules to make it practically impossible for a person to sin by not fulfilling them correctly has been taken to the extreme. A “Chumra” is a prohibition or obligation in the practice of Judaism that exceeds the minimum requirements set forth by Jewish law. “Chumrot” (plural of “Chumra”) can be adopted by an individual or by a community. They are found in Orthodox Judaism as a way to avoid transgressing a precept or as a way to distinguish oneself from other Orthodox groups.

The term “chumra” is also used when there are two or more different interpretations of the same point in the Talmud, and it is applied simply by choosing the stricter interpretation over the more lenient one. For example, in the 12th century, Rabbeinu Tam said that one could eat dishes of milk immediately after eating meat, simply by reciting a blessing and changing the tablecloth. Now, the most widely accepted halachic practice requires waiting at least an hour. Today’s practice is considered a “chumra” compared to what Rabbeinu Tam said.

In a certain sense, the Talmud, the Oral Torah, is that fence that protects the Written Torah. J. Israelstam, an English scholar, explains to us that: “The Torah is conceived as a garden and its commandments as precious plants, and a fence is erected to protect them.” Robert Frost in his poem “Mending Wall” says: “Before I build a wall, I want to know what I’m leaving in and what I’m leaving out and who I’m offending by doing so.” High walls isolate us from the outside world, they enclose us and don’t let us see what’s going on outside. Maybe there’s a new plant that would look great in our garden. That’s the problem with fences.

By Marcos Gojman

Bibliography: The Art Scroll edition of the Talmud and other sources.

The Torah tells us that we must celebrate three festivals in the year: Pesach, Shavuot and Sukkot (Leviticus 23). They are known as “Shalosh Regalim”, the three pilgrimages. The commandment said that every Jew in the land of Israel had to make a pilgrimage to the Temple in Jerusalem to present a sacrifice.

On Pesach, each family or group of people brought a lamb or goat to sacrifice in the Temple the night before the festival. Then the pilgrims went out to the courtyards of Jerusalem to roast the animal on a bonfire. While they ate it with Matza and bitter herbs, they told the story of the Exodus from Egypt. On Shavuot, the harvest festival, farmers would bring their first fruits, baskets of grain and fruit, and hand them to the priests, while reciting a litany thanking God for having brought the people of Israel out of the land of Egypt.

Sukkot, for its part, had become the most observed festival in the Temple. During the eight days it lasted, the priests would sacrifice seventy animals accompanied by their respective portion of grain mixed with oil and wine. On Sukkot, the Jews would arrive in Jerusalem with palm branches intertwined with willow and myrtle branches and carrying an etrog. They would wave all of this while saying “Hoshiana,” God save us. After the ceremony, they would give the etrog to children to eat. Since Sukkot fell in the fall, at the beginning of the rainy season, the priests would draw a jar of water from the Siloam spring in Jerusalem and pass it from hand to hand until it reached the Temple to be made into a libation. The ceremony was followed by a joyous party that lasted well into the night. The idea was to ask God for abundant rains for good harvests.

However, over time, the background of being agricultural festivals changed to something more spiritual. Pesach became the day to remember the departure from Egypt. Shavuot was related to the day that God spoke to Israel on Mount Sinai. And Sukkot was associated by the sages with the 40-year journey in the desert.

When the Romans destroyed the Temple, the festivities changed. Pesach was now observed with a ritual meal at home, without sacrificing the lamb. The important thing now was to tell the story of the Exodus. On Shavuot, the reception of the Torah was celebrated, and on Sukkot, the huts were built, which were normally used in the fields to gather the harvest, but were now used to remember the years in the desert, and palm branches were waved with the willow, myrtle, and etrog. Hoshiana prayers were now performed in synagogues. Sacrifices in the Temple had obviously been cancelled. The festivals without the Temple were no longer like the festivals with the Temple.

By Marcos Gojman

Bibliography: The Jews in the Time of Jesus by Rabbi Stephen M. Wylen.

The prophets Hagay, Zechariah, and Malachi lived in the time of Ezra and Nehemiah. After them, there were no more prophets among the people of Israel. People wondered, “Why does God no longer speak to us through prophets as in biblical times?” Throughout the Second Temple era, people longed for the return of prophecy. They asked, “Why has God distanced himself from us? Where are the prophets?” Jewish literature of the Second Temple era consistently displayed a longing for prophecy.

From our historical perspective, it is easy to answer the question of why there are no more prophets. The acceptance of the Torah as Holy Scripture under Ezra the scribe brought prophecy to a sudden and irreversible end. A people and a religion cannot have both prophecy and scripture. One looks to a prophet to receive a new message from God. The Scriptures, for their part, claim to be the complete and only message of God. What would we do if a prophet contradicted the word of the Scriptures?

From the moment the Jews accepted the Torah as Scripture, the sage replaced the prophet. The sage was a scholar who knew the Torah and how to interpret it. God now spoke through the sage, instead of the prophet.

Malachi was the last of the prophets. He emerged after the time of Ezra the scribe. The third and final chapter of the book of Malachi represents the final farewell to biblical prophecy. Malachi announces a future that will be dominated by interpreters of the scriptures rather than by messengers of God. Malachi announces the Day of God as the one in which those who obey the commandments of the Creator will be vindicated. God’s message will come to us by interpreting the commandments of the Torah and not through the words of a prophet.

Zechariah and Malachi wrote in the question and answer format. Was this just a literary device? Or were the last prophets imitating the style of the sages, who receive a question and answer it with a studied response? We do not know. But we do know that this was the end of the prophets.

By Marcos Gojman

Bibliography: The Jews in the Time of Jesus by Rabbi Stephen M. Wylen.

After King Solomon’s death, the kingdom was divided into two: To the south, the kingdom of Judah continued under the dynasty of the House of David and to the north the kingdom of Israel which had several dynasties until the Assyrians destroyed it in 722 BCE. The kingdom of Judah lasted 136 more years until the Babylonians conquered it in 586 BCE, forcing most of its inhabitants to go into exile in Babylon itself.

By then, in Eretz Israel, the entire sacrificial ritual had already been centralized in the Temple of Jerusalem. The small altars were destroyed and the Jews became accustomed to the fact that they could only worship God in the Temple. This condition forced the Jews in Babylon to find new ways to serve God, as they could not make sacrifices in exile, although they did not lose hope of returning to Jerusalem and rebuilding the Temple.

The leaders of the Jewish people – the priests, royalty and nobility, wise men and elders – had been exiled to Babylon. It was their task to preserve identity and religion with new rituals and rules of observance. Reading the Torah was one of those new ways.

The prophet Jeremiah said that the exile would only last 70 years. Around 539 BCE, Cyrus the Persian emperor conquered Babylon and encouraged the Jews to return to Judah and reestablish the worship of God. Still, many stayed in Babylon where they felt at home. Some returned to Judah, including the priests who hoped to rebuild the Temple and with it their livelihood. In 515 BCE the Temple was rebuilt in a modest manner, though over the years it was improved til it surpassed the first in beauty.

Ezra and Nehemiah were the two great leaders who led the rebuilding of Judah. ​​Nehemiah was an officer in the Persian government, who asked permission to return to Judah and rebuild the country. His request was granted and he rebuilt the walls, established an honest government and defeated his enemies, especially the Samaritans. Ezra was a priest, a religious leader. He returned from Babylon with the mandate of reestablishing religious worship. He imposed very strict rules for observing the Sabbath, just as the Jews already did in Babylon, where observing the Sabbath was central to the religious ritual. He was the one who introduced the reading of the Torah on the holidays. On his first Rosh Hashanah he read from the Torah, as it is written in chapter 8 of the book of Nehemiah: “Ezra blessed God and everyone answered amen, and he read from God in the Torah scroll, translating it and giving it meaning so that the people could understand what was being read.”

Reading the Torah in public is the last event narrated in the Bible. The Jews of biblical times did not have a Bible, as they themselves were the actors in the biblical narratives. Their stories would eventually become the Bible. When the Bible was canonized, the Jews ceased to live in biblical times. The Bible went from being an era to a book.

By Marcos Gojman

Bibliography: The Jews in the Time of Jesus by Rabbi Stephen M. Wylen.

Many contemporary readers of the Torah are frustrated because they have been exposed to a method of interpreting the Bible that takes the texts literally. So if Breishit says that God created woman from the rib of man, or if it says that the serpent spoke, or that this old man lived a few hundred years, those who take it literally interpret the story to be exactly what the words of the text say. And that literal understanding, they apply it to all the words and phrases in the Bible.

Aside from the fact that the Bible text that is commonly used may be one of several versions available and that many who read it use translations, since they do not know the original Hebrew, contemporary readers must understand that reading the Torah literally, can lead to misconceptions.

Even the ancient rabbis, who believed that the Torah was given to us by God, did not take the text literally. They took it seriously, but they always looked for something more than its literal meaning. They realized that the Bible was full of subtle metaphors and allusions, that there were wordplay and other literary devices, that sometimes they spoke satirically, and that their poetry could not be subject to a single interpretation. They also agreed, without fear of being wrong, that scholars could disagree among themselves when dealing with the meaning of some part of the Torah.

When reading the Torah we must keep in mind that what the author said in his time to his contemporaries, within his own intellectual frame of reference, is one thing and what later generations did with the text, those who contributed their commentaries and sermons, is another. This long tradition of understanding the Book as a prism, discovering through its facets a great spectrum of ideas, makes the Torah a unique work.

The Torah, in addition to its original meaning and the interpretations that have arisen over the centuries, also has relevance in our days. For example, the story of the Tower of Babel, which for many years was interpreted as an example of human arrogance, today warns us of the dehumanizing effects of urban life.

What is important about the Torah is, more than in the stories it tells us, in the questions it leaves unanswered. This way of not telling us the ending, of leaving it open, of not giving us a single answer, is the door that remains open for future generations who will hear those same words in a different way and will also answer in a different way. But you can be sure that it will not be in a literal way.

By Marcos Gojman

Bibliography: The Torah, a Modern Commentary, from a text by W. Gunther Plaut.

The Encyclopaedia Judaica tells us that the Agadah, which is translated as “the narrative,” is usually defined in a negative way, as that part of the teachings of the rabbis that are neither laws nor religious regulations. For this reason, and although it is part of the Talmud, the Oral Torah, the Agadah does not have the normative quality that the Halacha has, whose precepts are obligatory.

However, we have to understand that the Agadot are moral and ethical teachings that deal with matters of faith and the art of living. It is therefore didactic. The truth of its teachings surpasses historical reality. The value of an Agadah is, on one hand, its ethical principles that teach us the art of living and, on the other, its poetic way of transmitting it.

The Agadot are mainly the creation of the Jews of Eretz Israel who wrote them down in the Talmud Jerusalmi, unlike the Talmud Babli which, although it has them, mostly are not from Babylon but from Jerusalem. The form it takes are narratives, legends, doctrines, warnings about good conduct, words of encouragement or consolation, expressions of hope for a better future.

Abraham Joshua Heschel, in his book Between God and Man, tells us: Halachah deals with laws, Agadah with the meaning of laws. Halachah gives us norms for acting, Agadah gives us the vision of the purpose of our lives. Halachah prescribes, Agadah suggests. Halachah decrees, Agadah inspires.

Heschell continues: Agadah deals with man’s relationship with God, with other men and with the world. It deals with life and religion as a great whole. The Agadah is what reminds us that the purpose of mitzvoth is to transform the one who observes them in order to achieve a spiritual goal.

For example, the Agadah is what tells us that he who saves a single life is as if he had saved the entire world. The Halachah would say that saving two is more than saving one, because mathematically two is more than one.

There is no Halachah without Agadah and there is no Agadah without Halachah. We must neither despise the body nor sacrifice the spirit. The body is discipline, order, law. The spirit is inner devotion, spontaneity, freedom. Therefore, performing a mitzvah implies discipline and inspiration, obedience and happiness, it is both a yoke and a prerogative. To maintain that the essence of Judaism is only the Halacha is as wrong as saying the same about the Agadah. The interrelation of both is the true spirit of Judaism. Our task is to maintain the balance. Neither of them should win.

By Marcos Gojman

Bibliography: Works cited.