Yom Ha'Shoah 2014 (Out of the Depths by Rabbi Lau and Responsa from the Holocaust By Rabbi Oshry)

Theodicy, known as the problem of evil or why bad things happen to good people, has long been a conversation. If there is an omnipotent, omniscient, good G-d, how can He let bad things happen? The notion of this question and its ubiquity in philosophical circles was upended by the Holocaust. The question was brought to the forefront by the atrocities committed, the scale of which is unfathomable. In a Revel Graduate School course dedicated to the problem of evil, a month was devoted specifically to the Holocaust. The painful question: how can we believe in a Being that let His people be destroyed in such a fashion?

(taken tonight- 6 candles for 6 million. Am Yisrael Chai) 

Leading up to Yom Ha’Shoah this year, I read two books related to the Holocaust: Out of the Depths and Responsa From the Holocaust. These two books and a visit to my Bubbe (grandmother) have framed this year’s experience for me.

1. Amazingly, Rabbi Lau in Out of the Depths completely sidesteps the question. Out of the Depths is the thrilling and chilling tale of how Rabbi Lau survived the Holocaust at the young age of 5 years old. Despite the horrors that Rabbi Lau faced at such a young age, he had a remarkable belief in divine providence. After each time he is saved in the book, he stops the narrative and thanks G-d for the miracle. He never entertains the possibility that G-d has forsaken him and he does not try to rationalize what went on around him in Buchenwald. For Rabbi Lau, G-d was a source of hope—a source of meaning that helped him and continued to help him throughout the rest of his life. He could never ultimately question G-d because he felt He was there helping him. Even though everything around him should intellectually have proven G-d was not there with him, his feeling to the contrary was so strong that it helped him through that awful time.

My sister and I had a very similar interaction with my Bubbe a couple weeks ago. As she is turning 100 in July we decided to start taping our conversations with her. On this occasion, I am very glad we did. Watch this clip: http://youtu.be/UC5C8u3l30k?t=4m29s.[1] When she said: “I lost my whole family. I’m the only one who survived. No brothers, no sisters. Nobody. Thank G-d I’m here, G-d gave me years.” I was blown away. Everyone else died, but G-d gave me years. This is a concept she repeats often. She doesn’t know why, but thank G-d, G-d gave her years. I find a very similar quality in my Bubbe. She lived through unknowable horrors, living through six different concentration camps, including Auschwitz, Majdanek, and Bergen Belsen. However, she had an undeniable feeling that G-d was with her. She does not know to this day why that is, but she speaks of it every time we visit her.

When thinking about what happened during the Holocaust, I personally find that I have no right to question G-d. My Bubbe didn’t and she lived through it[2]. Throughout it all she (and Rabbi Lau) did not lose their faith, for they felt G-d was with them.

We live in such an intellectual world that even faith has become subject to intellect. However, an emotional faith is lasting in a way that intellectual faith cannot be. I do not mean to demean faith arrived upon by intellectual pursuits. I see G-d in history, in nature and in humankind. However, at the end of the day, I have faith because I feel that G-d is with me. Many Jews were able to feel this way even when they were in a place and time that should have forced them not to. In times of affluence and freedom, we must try to do the same.

In no way do I blame those that felt the way Eli Wiesel describes at the end of Night when he and others lost their faith in G-d. Holding on to one’s faith is the anomaly, and an act of heroism. It is our responsibility to continue the chain of finding G-d in our lives, even if everything makes it seem as if He is not there.

This comes to an even greater forefront in Responsa from the Holocaust[3] by Rabbi Ephraim Oshry. In the book, he describes the types of questions Jews would ask him in the times of the Ghetto and the Holocaust. The questions he received were simply unbelievable. I will highlight two that caught my eye. After being forced to clean toilets with their hands from before dawn to after nightfall, two Jews asked the Rabbi how they could make up prayers they missed throughout the day. They knew they could make up Mincha, and not Shacharit, but how could they say Birchot HaTorah since they never had a moment away from the toilets. Ever while in such a despicable scenario, these holy people were worried about praying to G-d. They felt He had not forsaken them, despite everything that was going on.

One day, several men in a concentration camp were able to get together a minyan and pray, saying the words from memory. When the chazzan got up to the blessing Shelo Asani Aved (Who has not made me a slave) he cried out. How can we say this? We truly are slaves. However the Rabbi replied that we are not thanking G-d for being free men in the classic sense; we are thanking him for being spiritually free. That type of freedom could never be taken away, even under Nazi force.

Our forefathers and grandparents were able to find and hold on to their faith, even during the hardest of times. In times of blessing and fortune, it is no less than our responsibility to follow in their hallowed footsteps.

[1] Feel free to listen earlier to hear what type of guys my Bubbe thinks Margot should marry (guys listen up) and when Hannah and I should have kids. Also, the last ten seconds are hilarious. 

[2] Eliezer Berkovitz argues this point in Faith and the Holocaust. He argues that a person only has a right to lose faith over suffering that happens directly to him.

[3] It is an English summary of Sheilot UTeshuvot Mimamakim making it appropriate to go with Out of the Depths.

The Haggadah by the Baal Haggadah Pesach 2014

The following is my Sermon from Shabbat Hagadol April 12 2014

Growing up in the late 90s near NYC was hard for young Mets fans like myself. The rival Yankees were in the middle of a stretch of 4 championships in 5 years while the Mets asked us to believe. So we did. The unbridled optimism that youth brought shined through, as year after year we believed that this year the magic was back. I still have that optimism as this year seemed brighter, when to start this year we swiftly lost 3 in a row to your Nationals.

At my family seder when I was 10, my father told me that we wait for Moshiach just as the Jews waited for a savior from Egypt. Soon it would be us that would be saved. I didn’t understand. What did it mean to wait every year for something to happen when it hasn’t in so long? You hope the Mets will win this year right? He responded. Well didn’t you wish that happened last year. Suddenly I understood.  That year when I blew out my birthday candles I wished that Moshiach would come that year, but that the Mets would win the World Series first.

John Dewey (20^th century American philosopher) believed in this type of education.

“People are active centers of impulse rather than passive vessels, learning best when they are actively engaged in experiencing an idea or an event rather than passive observers to it.”  And thus experiential education flourished.

Similarly Benjamin Franklin once said: “Tell me and I forget, teach me and I may remember, involve me and I learn.”

I currently work Part time at the Center for the Jewish future at YU where I make programing for such type of experiential education programs. However, nothing is more experientialy oriented than the Pesach seder. We try all we can to feel as if we were there. The dictum Chayav Adam leerot et atzmo keilo hu yatza mimitzrayim. It is obligatory to feel as if you are leaving Egypt.

We do this in many ways. Ha Lachma anya, deachalu avotania –this is the bread of affliction that they ate. How bitter their lives were therefore we eat maror (and because of the high humidity in Egypt which generally causes congestion). We put on plays to reenact the exodus and to recreate the Jew’s excruciating work in Egypt we work hard in cleaning for Pesach. The Rambam therefore codifies it as Sippur yetziat mitzrayim telling the story of the exodus, because we have to do more than read it but we have to imagine it, we have to relive it. He codifies reclining while drinking and eating as vital because we are doing more than eating, we must feel like we were there and feeling as if we were freed.

The passage that speaks of this obligation continues. Elah af otanu gaal imahem (we were freed with them). And when we say blessings later on we begin Ashar gaalanu vegaal et avoteinu Blessed He who freed us and freed our forefathers. What does this mean? We are supposed to feel as if we were there, but what does it mean that we are slaves and G-d is setting us free?

Rabbi Aaron Soleveitchik (brother of the Rav) writes in his book “Logic of the Heart, Logic of the Mind”:

The Jewish concept of freedom is quite different from the secular view of liberty…The common understanding of freedom translates to the Hebrew term cherut haguf,  freedom of the body. The torah, however, teaches and demands a higher level of liberty, namely cherut hanefesh, freedom of the soul. One who has attained cherut haguf, although no longer subject to the will of others, is still enslaved by passions whims and desires.”

The freedom that we speak about in the Seder is exemplified in the cherut haguf of the Jewosh people to be sure. But it is really about the cherut hanefesh of us as a people. With this in mind we can understand. We connect to the past to understand the present. We say we are still enslaved because we are still enslaved. True, we do not take orders from the Egyptians, but are we not all enslaved to our desires? We do more than try to experience what G-d did so many years ago. We translate that into what G-d is doing to us now in helping us become the people we ought to be. We are still slaves in Egypt and are still getting freed. Our salvation is a never ending process.

This assertion has ample founding in the customs of the Haggadah.

In the Talmud in Pesach 60b there is an argument btw the house of Shamai and the house of Hillel, or as I like to think of it Gryffindor and Slytherin about saying Hallel on the first night. Shammai believes this to be problematic because the Jews had not left Egypt until the next day, how can you say betziet yisrael mimitzrayim (when the Jews left Egypt), they hadn’t left yet?  Beit Hillel disagrees, and in fact that is what we do, when we say the rest of Hallel. In our construction, this makes sense. We are not worried that the Jewish people had not left yet, because we are not only praising G-d for taking us out of Egypt. We are also thanking him for the times He has taken us out of our personal Egypts in the here and now, and he will continue to take us out of Egypt in the  future.

This is furthered by Rav Hai Gaon (more formally known as Rav Hello Gaon) who in his explanation of the Haggadah explains that this Hallel is not a regular Hallel but a Shira Chadasha, a new song that we are singing in praise of G-d. We are praising for the cherut hanefesh that he continues to give us in the here and now.

The Dayenu song seems peculiar. Why do we continue through the exodus story through the building of the temple? It is because the Exodus did not stop at the yam suf. It continues until today. He saved us as a nation from the Crusades, the Spanish Inquisition, the pogroms, and created the state of Israel. Dayenu continues to today and into the future.

The inclusion of Vehigadta lebincha, the obligation to teach your children on this day seems odd. However, the stretching of the mesorah from parent to child connects us to the past and to the future through the present (and not just the presents for the afikomen). The inclusion of questioning becomes vital to the Seder experience precisely because it makes the Pesach story one that includes us within it.

 As Martin Buber the Jewish Existentialist writes in “Teaching and the Deed,”

“People learn and grow through active social interaction, which stimulates ideas, causes us to think and rethink views, and helps us to re-conceptualize our beliefs and ideologies. The active dialogue back and forth with others is not simply pedagogically useful; it is, in a more basic sense, a pivotal factor in shaping our ideas, beliefs, and behaviors.”

The questioning that happens at the Seder turns the extrapolating of details from eons ago to a night of conceptualization and shaping of our identity as Jews. It brings us back to the past so we can appreciate the present and anticipate the future.

I leave you with a challenge. This year at the Seder, use the past to understand the now. What is your personal Egypt and how can you break free and have a true cherut hanefesh? What Egypts do you hope and pray that we will leave from in the future?

Surprisingly, the 10 year old me had it right all along. I took a feeling and embodied it in my own baseball experience. For me winning the world series was my cherut. May we each find our own Egypts to escape from and may we as a people leave our Egypt and build the third world series, I mean Beit Hamikdash Amen.

Majesty and Humility by Rabbi Revuen Ziegler - Musings on the Problems of Today

In many ways, the American Modern Orthodox community lives in the shadow of Rav Soleveitchik, the Rav. Most frequently, with his direct students, he is often cited to buttress their arguments. Often, two Rabbaim will cite him to prove conflicting viewpoints. This has come to the forefront in the debates over the past couple of months.  A common argument, used by Rav Shachter regarding women wearing Tefillin and Rabbi Avi Weiss regarding partnership minyanim has been: “The Rav would have agreed with me if he were alive today.(1)” As I discuss my thoughts on these matters, I will be speaking through what I have read from the Rav. However, I am not looking for what the Rav would have said. Rather, I am looking for framing, a way to look at the world that resonates with my Orthodox lifestyle and modern milieu.

In Majesty and Humility, the Rav discusses the dialectic that exists in man. On one level, he is meant to be majestic, creative in his endeavors. He is meant to be king and revel in his victory.  At the same time man must be humble. He must know how to accept defeat and withdraw. The Rav believed this dichotomy permeates all of human endeavor. He begins the article:

“Man is a dialectical being; an inner schism runs through his personality at every level. Man is a great and creative being because he is torn by conflict and is always in a state of ontological tenseness and perplexity” (Majesty and Humility, p.25).

The conflict between being majestic and being humble is not limited to any one discipline. Constantly we are put in a struggle between wanting to accomplish, but also knowing when to stop and withdraw.

While vastly different in character, a broadly similar dialectic is made in Lonely Man of Faith. The Rav discusses the two Adam stories at the Beginning of Bereshit showing how they are the two parts of man. Rabbi Zeigler summarizes these two Adams:

Adam I's creation "in the image of God" refers to his capacity and desire to imitate God by becoming a creator, particularly in response to God's mandate to him to "subdue the earth." This is expressed by man's practical intellect, i.e. his scientific ability to comprehend the forces of nature and his technological ability to bend them to his will. Adam II, on the other hand, does not have such a grandiose self-image; he is humble, realizing that he was created from the dust of the earth. He allows himself to be overpowered and defeated by God. While Adam I maintains some distance from God, relating merely to the divine endowment of creativity, Adam II has a "genuine living experience" of God and is preoccupied with Him, as evidenced by the metaphor of God breathing life into his nostrils. (2) 

In similar fashion to Majesty and Humility, man is a dialectic between the creative and the subduer of worlds, and a humble religious person deemed the homo-religiosus.

         I would like to discuss how this can apply to Halakha. One would have thought that the practice of Halakha is one for Adam II and humble man. It is for those that make themselves subservient to G-d. However at the beginning of the second part of Halakhik Man, the Rav paints a very different picture.

"Halakhik man is a man who longs to create, to bring into being something new, something original. The study of Torah, by definition, means gleaning new, creative insights from the Torah (hiddushim). The notion ofhiddush, of creative interpretation, is not limited solely to the theoretical domain but extends as well to the practical domain, into the real world. The most fervent desire of Halakhik man is to behold the replenishment of the deficiency in creation, when the real world will conform to the ideal world and the most exalted and glorious of creations, the ideal Halakha, will be actualized in its midst. The dream of creation is the central idea in the Halakhik consciousness – the idea of the importance of man as a partner of the Almighty in the act of creation, man as a creator of worlds” (Halakhik Man, page 99).

Halakha is for Adam I, just as it is for Adam II. It is for the majestic part of man, just as it is for the humble part of man.

It is with all this in mind that I have been thinking about the problems of our day, specifically regarding the conversations about the role of women and the role of the community Rabbi.

Those that are trying to make changes in Halakha, in my mind, have good intentions. They are trying to be majestic, and replenish a “deficiency in creation”. There is a lack of meaning in some women’s relationship to their Judaism and the attempt is to be majestic and find a creative interpretation that allows for a newfound meaning. Those that seek change fear that the Rabbis of today are too focused on humility. This focus can stunt creativity and the ability to tackle problems head on. Instead those that seek change are told to be humble, to only let gedolim solve their problems, which in turn magnifies the fears.

On the other side, those that have been against changes have maintained this mindset of humbleness. The notion of being a homo-religiosus is a strong one, as we live in a long train of tradition that has lasted centuries. They fear the full on creative and majestic nature of what they are seeing, and want those that are proponents of change to be humble. Don’t think any Rabbi can decide for themselves whatever they want. Creativity needs to be tampered by humbleness.

          It is the great nature of the Rav that enabled him to be both of these two opposing ideas at the same time. Now, it is up to us to try. We need to be humble, be the homo-religiosus that learns how the system works and how we can use it. At the same time it is up to us to push for more creative understanding of what women’s roles truly are and how they can work with the needs of a modern woman. We need a positive view of what women’s roles are, without trying to create a new one that fulfills us without compromising our tradition (3). The time is dire. Majesty and humility should not be divided. They need to come together to form the dialectical nature of man.

(1) For some fun, see this clip and replace the Rav with Martin Luther King Jr. h/t Boris Tuman
(2) http://www.vbm-torah.org/archive/rav/rav16.htm
(3) I am trying to come up with one for myself to understand. I think I am close, but need to discuss it with those that have far greater insight than I. I would be happy to discuss it, however.