Al Reguel Ajat

For Ilana.

Rabbi Harold Kushner tells us: Unetaneh Tokef is one of the prayers we say on Rosh Hashana and Yom Kippur that simultaneously moves me the most and makes me question myself the most. In the first part, this prayer tells us that all of our actions, the good and the not so good, are written by us, and that part of what will happen to us in the next year will be the result of how we have lived and how we have behaved, including how even what we eat will affect us, and all of this will determine only part of our future. And this part, it is clear to me, is our responsibility.

But in the second part, Unetaneh Tokef tells us that on Rosh Hashana our destiny will be written and on Yom Kippur our destiny will be signed, who will live and who will die and there is not much we can do about it. And this makes us uneasy. Because we don’t want to accept that life is unfair. And we don’t like to hear this phrase. We’d like to think that someone is at the steering wheel and that everything has a reason for being. We’d rather blame ourselves and say that we deserve it and not have to admit that things happen in the world at random.

Kushner continues: Rabbis teach us that we can comfort the hurting by saying that in the long run what happened will be for the best or that we shouldn’t question God’s ways. And this doesn’t mitigate the pain or take away the anger that many feel when they have suffered, for example, the loss of a loved one. How can it occur to us that God wants deformed children to be born? How can it occur to us that God wanted a young mother to get multiple sclerosis? That God wants a father and husband to die at an early age from a heart attack? Who told them that we glorify God by holding Him responsible for every earthquake, every tsunami, every hurricane, every fire, every mudslide, every car accident, every terrible disaster, including the Holocaust?

Rabbi Kushner concludes by saying: When we understand that God is not the cause of a baby’s terminal illness, we understand that God is actually on our side and not on the side of illness and calamity. We understand that God is all-powerful, but that His power is not to control everything but to allow the laws that govern order in the universe to act according to the original plan that He defined. For those who suffer, God is responsible for giving us the strength to endure it, for taking us by the hand and helping us cross the valley of shadows and darkness, until we see the light again. Because not everything that happens in the world is God’s will.

By Marcos Gojman

Bibliography: Rabbi Harold Kushner’s participation in the book Jews and Judaism in the 21st Century, edited by Rabbi Edward Feinstein.

Any outside observer would have thought that with the destruction of the Second Temple in 70 AD, the history of the Jewish People would have come to an end. Other peoples who suffered a similar fate soon disappeared. But this was not the case for the Jews. Their leaders were able to transform Judaism into a powerful and sustainable way of life that did not need a central sanctuary or a territory of its own for national continuity.

The ensuing Jewish vitality and creativity was rooted in the actions of those who oversaw the formation of the new Jewish way of life after the tragedy of the destruction of the Temple and the dispersion of the Jewish people throughout the world. I refer to the rabbis. They realized that if Jewish religious life depended exclusively on access to Jerusalem and its Temple, Judaism would not survive. At that time, the Torah took center stage, and the mobility that the written word allowed (you can carry the Torah physically or in your memory anywhere) was the key to Judaism’s survival.

Lacking a physical, geographic, and national center, the rabbis sought other ways to unite a people who were far from the borders of Eretz Israel and who were scattered throughout the Roman and, before that, the Babylonian empire. They developed regular religious services and a standardized liturgy. These services did not require a priest or an altar. They could be conducted anywhere in the world by any Jew.

The synagogue became an important Jewish institution. Jews could gather there to pray, study, and socialize. The home also became a center of Jewish practices, with celebrations such as the Passover Seder or Shabbat dinners.

Judaism could thrive anywhere where the Torah and its interpretations could be studied and Jewish law put into practice. Yet the loss of national sovereignty and the destruction of the Temple were never forgotten by the Jews. They were always mentioned in religious services.

Jews love their books and the written word because they are something that cannot be taken away from them. Even when books were confiscated or burned, their words remained in our memory and we could reconstruct them.

Thanks to the written word, we can take Judaism with us everywhere. That is our great secret. We have made the written word our great passion to the point that we put it in our entryways with the Mezuzah, in our minds and in our hearts with the tefillin, and in our daily lives with the Torah and its precepts. That is what makes Judaism portable.

By Marcos Gojman:

Bibliography: Embracing Judaism, by Rabbi Simcha Kling revised by Carl M. Perkins and God Was Not in the Fire by Daniel Gordis.

The best “stock shares” that we can undertake in the Jewish stock market are framed in our sacred texts. Their quotes are always on the rise and together they represent the index of Jewish ethics. Let us see what they are and their keys on the board:

-The sanctity of life. JAIM

According to Jewish tradition, life is something precious. Therefore, everything possible must be done to preserve and improve it. Both the individual and the community have the obligation to care for the sick, the elderly and the weak. They must never be abandoned. Even the life of animals is precious as well. Jewish law prohibits sport hunting. An animal can be killed only to feed us and this must be done according to our laws that minimize its suffering.

-The search for peace. SHALOM

Our sages translate the sixth commandment as “You shall not murder.” Judaism allows people to defend themselves, even by killing an aggressor when there is no other alternative. Killing is not the same as murder. Jewish tradition has never glorified military victories. At the Passover seder we pour a few drops of wine to symbolize our sadness at the loss of Egyptian lives. Even in our time, Israel has never celebrated its military triumphs with parades. We all know the prophecies of Isaiah that describe the Jewish vision of peace.

-Justice. TZEDEK

Peace cannot exist in a society that is not just. “Justice, justice you shall pursue” (Deuteronomy 16:20) is a biblical commandment. The Jewish legal system protects the rights of the individual and condemns a society that allows exploitation, poverty and ignorance.

-Mercy. HESED

A just society can also be cruel unless it is administered with mercy and compassion. God is presented to us in the sacred texts as someone who is just but also merciful.

– Perfecting the world. TIKUN OLAM

One of the best-known prayers is the Aleinu, which is said at the end of all prayers. In it we express our desire and our obligation to act to improve the world. Our vision of perfection refers to “this world” and not to the world to come.

It is worth investing in these “stocks”. It has been proven that their return has always been the highest in the history of humanity.

By Marcos Gojman

Bibliography: Embracing Judaism, by Rabbi Simcha Kling and revised by Carl M. Perkins.

In such a short space as this, it is almost impossible to present the main features of the Talmud, even in a summarized form. The Talmud is difficult to describe because there is no work to which it can be compared. Rooted in the Bible, it is filled with biblical verses and repeatedly cites the Bible as the basic source for making its decisions.

But it is neither a biblical commentary nor a legal code. It is encyclopedic in nature but it is not an encyclopedia. It is the product of many individuals and editors, but it is not the work of a single individual or a single group. The Talmud contains many legal cases, but it is more than a legal treatise. It contains the give and take of discussions with their arguments and also the marginal comments that have nothing to do with the specific cases that initiated the discussion. It includes ethical issues and religious and liturgical practices, laws regulating personal, commercial and agricultural life, community organization and social assistance.

Talmudic discussions are not concise. They may include many things that the rabbis and their disciples mentioned as a result of quoting a mishnah: their reactions, explanations, discussions, deliberations, stories that came to their minds, references to other opinions or other sources. For this reason, the Talmud is not a work that can simply be read. It must be studied.

Studying the Talmud is not easy, but it is an extraordinarily stimulating and challenging experience from an intellectual and emotional point of view. The Talmud is a work that challenges us and must be explored and investigated with energy, tenacity and commitment. Rabbi Adin Steinzaltz says: “The Talmud is framed in questions and answers. Expressing our doubts is not only legitimate but essential to its study. The Talmud is perhaps the only sacred work in the world that not only allows but encourages the student to question it. True knowledge can only be achieved through spiritual communion, where the student must participate intellectually and emotionally in the Talmudic debate.” It is, without a doubt, the best exercise for the brain and the mind.

By Marcos Gojman

Bibliography: Embracing Judaism, by Rabbi Simcha Kling and revised by Carl M. Perkins.

There are stories in the Torah that make us think that God alone cannot perfect the world. The concept of a Garden of Eden, the incident between Cain and Abel, the Flood, or the story of the Tower of Babel, are all examples of something being missing. And that which was missing was the Covenant that God made with Abraham. God asks Abraham to be a source of blessing for all peoples. God told him: “May all the nations of the world be blessed through you” (Breishit 12:3).

The covenant with Abraham symbolizes how God needs man as much as man needs God. When God is about to destroy Sodom, He says: “Can I hide from Abraham what I am about to do now?” (Breishit 18:17). Why does He ask? Does God have to consult man? God does not ask, God gives orders. God ordered Noah to build the Ark and did not ask him if he agreed with His decision to destroy the world. But now it seems that God is saying, “I cannot act unilaterally, I must at least tell Abraham.” Rashi explains this by saying that before Abraham, God was the God of heaven, but after Abraham, God is the God of the Earth.

The passage in Breishit 18, where Abraham discusses with God the fate of Sodom, is one of the most beautiful and educational passages in the Torah: “What if there are 50 righteous people in Sodom?” Abraham asks. “Is the Supreme Judge of the Earth going to act unjustly?” And Abraham was not citing an outside source to support his argument. Abraham’s words came from his own moral intuition that told him it would be unjust to destroy a city if righteous people lived in it. He even asked God to spare the entire city if some righteous people lived among them.

God could have answered, “Your ways are not My Ways and your thoughts are not My Thoughts,” told Abraham that man’s ethics cannot be used to judge God, and ended the discussion there. But He did not. God fully accepts man in his moral context. Being a partner in the Covenant meant bringing our full humanity to that relationship with the Creator.

But the haggling continued: forty, thirty, twenty, until reaching ten righteous ones. Why did God let Abraham continue the discussion? It seems that God was not only not bothered by Abraham’s arguments, but quite the opposite. God seems to be telling us that He loves having a partner in the Covenant who feels worthy enough to dare to criticize His own actions. God was no longer seeking to simply impose His will. That is why He discussed it with Abraham.

By Marcos Gojman

Bibliography: A Covenant for Love by Rabbi David Hartman, part of the book Jews and Judaism in the 21st. Century, edited by Rabbi Edward Feinstein.

Judaism is ultimately based on the belief that the world can and must be perfected (Tikun Olam). At some point, life will triumph over its enemies: war, oppression, hunger, poverty, disease, and even death. When this is achieved, humanity will reach the full potential to which human dignity can aspire. In that messianic era, the world will become a paradise and all human beings will be recognized and treated as someone created in the image of God. In a world of justice and peace, with all material needs met, men will be able to freely establish a harmonious relationship with nature, with each other, and with God.

The Jewish tradition has dreams but no illusions. It knows well that at this moment the world is far from being a Garden of Eden. Tikun Olam, the perfecting of the world, is a declaration of faith and hope. The Torah sets this goal for us as worthy of human effort, to be achieved throughout the course of history. This ideal state will not come to us through a miraculous act of divine origin. Our sages maintain that God chose a partner for this work. That partner is man. This final goal will be achieved only with his participation. The entire process of transformation will take place on a human scale and not through supernatural beings. And it will be achieved step by step. The perfection of the world will depend on this endless chain of human efforts. The Encyclopaedia Judaica defines the Messiah as Hamelej Hamashiaj, the Anointed King (melej = king and anointing is pouring oil on a person, to denote the character of his dignity) who would be a charismatic descendant of the house of King David, and who the Jews of the time of Roman rule believed would be created by God to free them from their yoke, and then restore the Kingdom of Israel, to which all Jews from exile would return.

Progressive movements within Judaism interpret the concept of Messiah as an ideal to be achieved. Orthodoxy maintains that he will be a man. The difference between the messianic dream and waiting for the Messiah of flesh and blood is enormous. The first is conceived as an effort of man over time. The second implies sitting and waiting for divinity to send us a redeemer. We have had men who have claimed to be the Messiah, such as Shabetai Zvi (17th century), who turned out to be a fiasco. Those who await the Messiah of flesh and blood consider the creation of the State of Israel as an aberration. These groups are the ones who claim to be the true “defenders” of Judaism and do not realize the positive impact that the State of Israel has had on the Jewish people.

We must all bring the “Messiah” with our own works and not wait for someone to send him to us. That is the bottom line in Judaism

By Marcos Gojman

Bibliography: The Jewish Way by Rabbi Irving Greenberg and the Encyclopaedia Judaica.

In his book: Studying the Jewish Future, Calvin Goldscheider tells the story of Shmuel Braw, a Holocaust survivor who returned to his hometown of Tarnow in Poland to find that “Dos Yiddishkeit, Judaism,” no longer existed. What was Shmuel Braw referring to? He was not referring to the religious or cultural aspect. The Jewish religion and culture were still alive despite everything that had happened. So what was he referring to? He was referring to his community and its institutions. Being part of it was what being Jewish meant to him. The rest was incidental.

It is hard to understand. How is it that the essence of Judaism is its people and its institutions, in other words “One Kehila”? Isn’t Judaism the Torah, the Bible, the Talmud, the Halacha, Jewish philosophy, history, literature, art, language, gastronomy and everything else that makes us identify ourselves as Jews? We can imagine arguing with Shmuel and he would surely let us speak and say again: “You may be right, but here in my town, Judaism, “dos yiddishkait” disappeared.”

The lesson that Goldscheider wants to convey to us is that what is important in the end is the social. We can disguise it with the religious, or with the cultural, or with customs, but in essence, all our actions have a social background. And it doesn’t matter if we are orthodox or completely liberal, atheists or believers and unless we are hermits, if we live integrated into a social group, our behavior ultimately tells us: “I follow the rules or the customs of my group, because I want to be part of it.” And religious Jews act according to the rules of their group and traditionalists theirs. And Zionists and liberals follow their own.

The events that mark the cycles of Jewish life are at heart a social event perhaps more than a religious one. When we celebrate a Brit Mila, a Bar Mitzvah, a wedding and even when we unfortunately sit at Shive, the message we give is that we want to share with our group the fact that something good (or bad) has happened to us. And this sharing is done in the way accepted by the group. It seems that we do it to say to them: “Here I am, my family and I are part of you.”

All this is not new. Belonging and participating in community life is immersed in the Jewish spirit. Judaism is made to be practiced in a group. All our holidays are celebrated in community and the need for a minyan to pray is the best example. As Baruch Spinoza, the great philosopher of the 17th century, said, man (and especially the Jew) is definitely a social animal.

By Marcos Gojman

Bibliography: Understanding The Jewish Future by Prof. Calvin Goldscheider

In addition to the Torah, the Tanakh and the Talmud, there is another genre of rabbinic literature, which is the Midrash. There are many types and collections of “midrashim.” Essentially, it is the interpretation of sacred texts, usually from the Bible, although sometimes also from the Mishnah.

The language of the Bible is often brief and uncommunicative. Therefore, many questions remain unanswered. The Talmud answers some. The Midrashim try to answer most of them. They were written between the 4th and 6th centuries of our era. Some refer exclusively to halachic matters, laws, and others are hagadoth, theological narratives. There are many collections of Midrashim, such as Rabbi Ishmael’s “Mechilta” on the book of Shmot, “Sifra” on the book of Vaykra and “Sifre” on the books of Bamidbar and Devarim, all of them part of the Torah. The first is one of the oldest and is written in a simple and direct style.

It is clear that the Bible does not explain everything we would like to understand about its stories. And as times change, the relationship of readers to the stories of the Tanach also changes. This evolutionary process, along with the biblical way of telling a story, results in gaps and lack of order that affects our understanding and our relationship with the sacred texts. For the rabbis, the Midrashim were the way to fill those gaps and to order those texts, in some cases creating fables or legends that gave a background to the scarce narrative of the Torah.

There are three types of Midrashim: those that explain a text, especially commandments, those that contain parables or moral lessons and those that expand narratives of the Torah. They are rich in metaphors and allegories, wordplay and symbolism. For example, the Torah tells us that Adam told Eve, referring to the tree of knowledge of good and evil: “Do not eat from it, nor touch it, for you will die.” The Midrash Breishit Raba adds and tells us that the serpent “grabbed her and threw her against the tree” and explains that with this, the serpent made Eve see that she did not die by touching the tree and that she could then eat its fruit. This story is not in the Torah. Our sages created it in order to better understand what happened in that very famous biblical passage.

The Midrashim must be seen in their own context, because in them we can see the Jewish soul and mind perhaps in one of its most creative stages. The time in which they were written was a time of serious crisis for the Jewish people, especially in the Roman Empire. It seems that in difficult times, the talent of our sages grows more. The Midrash is part of that “Great Book” that never ends, that continues to grow and brings us new contexts and ways of understanding and relating to the sacred texts.

By Marcos Gojman

Bibliography: Essential Judaism by George Robinson.

The culture of Western societies is structured in what is commonly called “The rule of law.” In each society there is a unified system of laws that the authority applies blindly (remember how “Justice” is symbolically represented as a woman with a sword, a scale and a blindfold) and without considering the person that the law will affect, for better or worse. Legal matters are assessed in black and white, one is innocent or guilty, one complies with the law or not. There are no half measures. Since the Greeks and Romans, as a reaction to the absolute monarchies, there has always been a desire to be governed by laws and not by men.

The concept of “The rule of law” in the sense that the laws are black and white is not what our sages proposed, especially in the time of the Talmud. The rabbis adopted a pluralistic idea of ​​law and their approach was the other way around: law is a matter of being governed by men and not by rules. The difference between a Western legal process where a person demands his “legal” rights and a legal process within the conception of the Talmudic sages, where the person asks for an ethical solution to his problem (his ethical rights) is evident, it is putting ethical principles before legal principles. For example, the laws of many countries allow the deportation of a person who is illegally in that country and the authorities do not care if because of that action his son, who was born in that country and is therefore considered a legal resident, will be left alone without his mother. A Talmudic court would consider the ethical aspect of separating a mother from her child before coldly applying immigration laws.

In the Gemara there are multiple examples of discussions between rabbis where both parties have solid arguments to defend their position and where in the end the sages agree that both positions are valid. The Talmud Babli even accepts that it can deviate from the accepted laws, if the case has the merit from an ethical point of view.

Unfortunately, in modern Judaism, the “rule of law” has notoriously infiltrated many contemporary halachic conceptions. Halacha is being applied in “black and white”: if you comply with the accepted rule you are a “good Jew,” or if you do not comply exactly with the precept then you are not a “good Jew.” The Shulchan Aruch, originally conceived by its author Joseph Caro as an introduction to the study of the Talmud, has become a kind of rigid regulation of what is or is not permitted within Judaism and has led us to “westernize” our ancient culture. Judaism is becoming “black and white.” And not only because of its clothing.

By Marcos Gojman Bibliography: “The Judicial Process and the Nature of Jewish Law” by Hanina Ben-Menahem (Chap. 16 of the book: An Introduction to the History and Sources of Jewish Law, edited by N.S. Hecht and others)

Beam. A long and thick timber for roofing and supporting buildings. Dictionary of the Royal Academy.

In an ancient Talmudic source we find the account of a controversy between the House of Shammai and the House of Hillel, about a man who had stolen the main beam of a building and built his own house with it. The House of Shammai said that the entire house of the thief had to be demolished and the beam returned to its rightful owner. The House of Hillel said that the thief only had to pay the rightful owner in money the value of the beam, without having to demolish the house. Beit Hillel said that the thief only had to make the payment in money, supported by the “Takanat Hashavim”, the “provision for the one who repents” (BT Gittin 55a). The House of Shammai interpreted the Biblical commandment, “And he who stole it shall return the stolen object” (Vaykra 5:23), in a literal way, that is, the thief must return the original object to its owner. He is obligated to return the stolen object even if this means demolishing his own house.

The House of Hillel understood that if a repentant thief is faced with the choice of destroying his house or not returning the stolen object, he could choose the latter. Therefore, their school was inclined to allow him to repent in exchange for correcting his mistake without causing excessive harm to himself. Rashi explains that Hillel’s position contains the true meaning of Takanat Hashavim, because if you force him to destroy his home, he will avoid the act of repentance. Maimonides in his Mishne Torah tells us that the sages decided that the thief can pay the value of the stolen object and not have to destroy his home. Halacha prefers the rehabilitation of the scoundrel, rather than the imposition of a strict judgment of the Torah commandment.

It is this humanistic interpretation that prevailed and must prevail in rabbinical interpretations. Unfortunately in our time, extremist sectors lean towards literal interpretations, without realizing that applying the full weight of the law does not help a person to change. The weight of the law should not be greater than the weight of a beam.

By Marcos Gojman

Bibliography: Evolving Halakha by Rabbi Dr. Moshe Zemer.