High Holiday Tune Selection FAIL

All of the davening was nice. All of the ba’alei tefilla for the main tefilot (Shacharit and Mussaf on RH; everything, except maybe mincha, on YK) knew nusach and had nice voices. Nobody was too quick or too shleppy. Which is good. So why did I get the feeling that it wasn’t anything special this year?

I think it has to do with the tune selection of pretty much every shali’ach tzibbur – and I’ll include myself in this. I’m aware that tune selection is a tricky business. The tune must capture the mood of the particular piyut in question (i.e., no U-netaneh Tokef to the tune of “Puff the Magic Dragon,” to use an actual example from my childhood). The tune must be familiar to the crowd, or at least be familiar to enough of the crowd that you’re not singing solo and simple enough for others to pick it up quickly. And I think that the ba’alei tefilla all nailed these down pretty well, even if some got a little cutesy or gimmicky (like Ve-khol Ma’aminim TTTO “Anachnu Ma’aminim Benei Ma’aminim”).

The problem was this: too many of the tunes used were tunes from throughout the year. There were a bunch of Shabbat zemirot tunes (the Gerrer Kol Mekadesh, the Carlebach Kah Ribon, the standard Friday night and Shabbat afternoon tunes for Yedid Nefesh, and others). It was Carlebach heavy, but with Carlebach tunes that are completely ubiquitous – “Ata Takum,” “Niggun Neshama,” and the like. And I think that every slow song ever written by Abie Rottenberg made an appearance at some point during the High Holidays.

I’ll grant that many of these tunes actually were set to parts of the liturgy – Ko Amar  and Ha-bein Yakir Li being the obvious examples. I was also happy that “Adam Ha-Rishon’s Niggun” made several appearances (I used it for “Atiti Le-chonenakh”) over the course of the High Holidays.

These are all wonderful tunes, but by and large too few of them were Yamim Nora’im tunes. I understand that YK fell out on Shabbat this year – so commemorate that by using one standard Shabbat tune. Or use a Shabbat tune that is not sung every. single. week. There are at least three well-known tunes for Yedid Nefesh that are not standard (the one from Aish is my favorite – and I used it for Mimkomecha at Shacharit on RH). Use one of them (I see that my neighbor, the Nusach Freak, has the same gripe).

There’s a reason that these days are called the Days of Awe. The liturgy – and that includes the tunes – should inspire intense feelings of love, awe, and majesty. Using special tunes, that the congregation associates specifically with the Yamim Nora’im – like we all do with Chamol, for example – is the only way to do that.

One other gripe – don’t hybridize tunes for kaddish titkabel, something I heard a few times this holiday season. I enjoy the standard tune, what the NF calls the “victory kaddish.” I also happen to love the Modzhitzer titkabel, which I use. But don’t start with Modzhitz and switch to the victory tune for yehei shelama rabbah. You’re simply not doing justice to either.

I enjoy a mix of popular tunes (of the Carlebach and D’veykus variety), Chassidishe melodies (few and far between in our milieu, unfortunately), and “standard” Yamim Nora’im tunes from America, Israel, and even from particular yeshivot. And I’m not rigid about it like some people are. But when the tunes used are rather pedestrian, then the entire davening feels pedestrian, uninspiring, blah. In short, the davening wasn’t anything special because it wasn’t anything special.

Steak n' Slichos

Last night/ this morning, I went with my father and my nephew to Jerusalem for our annual Erev Rosh Hashana 'Steak n' Slichos.' We have a late dinner of entrecote at Vaqueiro. We then head down to the Kotel for selichot at the astronomical midnight. I'll admit that the idea of steak and selichot is an expression of contemporary suburban religious sensibilities - conspicuous consumption followed by a devotional pilgrimage. But I like it.

The Kotel was jam packed, and there was a real diversity there. I happen to love the cacophony of different traditions that you get there. Some find it distracting, and if you're looking for a focused davening, I suggest the Hurva, a few steps away. I like the jumble of Jews trying to outshout each other. Since we got there about a half hour before astronomical midnight, I joined a kumzitz organized by Yeshivat Eretz Hatzvi. It was nice to see lots of people stop and join in. It was just. really. nice.

Before descending to (or after ascending from) the Kotel plaza, you can see - it's really quite amazing - the Jewish throngs saying selichot at the Kotel and the Ramadan break-fast celebrations taking place in Silwan, just a few hundred meters away. Looking out over the"Holy Basin" and watching Jews and Muslims observing their religions separately and peacefully, it's easy to forget how many wars have been fought over this very piece of real estate.

Living in Israel, it's impossible to avoid the holiday season. The whole rhythm of life builds up to Rosh Hashana - colleagues and friends send out cards, synagogues have their annual membership drives, schools send home songs and honey dishes, radio stations count down the year's best songs, and journalists review the highlights and lowlights of the past year. In this environment, it is inevitable that we take stock of our lives. My birthday - always a time to review life - falls out on the second day of RH this year, exacerbating my brooding and introspective mood.

I won't share everything I've been taking stock of, but I will share my resolution (kabbalah) for this RH - I will not talk sports in shul anymore. If it seems a bit prosaic, it's because it's manageable. I've begun to feel that the topics of conversation in shul - and not just the bein gavra le-gavra talking - is too shallow. Shul fills an important social role in my life and in the lives of many others, as it should. Talking in shul - not necessarily during davening - is inevitable and even encouraged. I've found that sports have become a sort of "default" - a way to make conversation without really trying to get to know the other person, of "talking without speaking." So if I cut out sports in shul, I expect good things to happen (I'm not in shul now, though, and the O's are beating the Yanks for the second night in a row [UPDATE - Buck-O's win again] - 4 in a row vs. the Yankees and Tampa Bay if they hold on).

Together with you, readers, I look forward to a happy, healthy, and productive 5771. Le-shana tova tikateivu ve-teichateimu.

Holiday Roundup

The holiday roundup thus far:

On the Yamim Noraim, I gave 2 shiurim and davened a Shacharit, a Maariv, and Neilah for the amud. Nevertheless, I emerged feeling pretty uninspired and that the Yamim Tovim were “Lo Nora”. It’s possible that I’ve been so absorbed in my new self-employment that I simply have not been able to focus on it.

Whenever I clapped at latznu, I was being “toveil ve-sheretz be-yado”.

I’ve been reading up a bit on the history of etrogim. Fascinating history. One amusing recollection that I have is of an Israeli discussing the responsum of the Chatam Sofer on the kashrut of the so-called “Yanover Esrogim”. These esrogim were actually from Southern Italy, but reached Central Europe via the port of Genoa (Yanova). The Israeli kept referring to the city of Geneva, which neither possesses the climate to grow citrons nor is a port city.

I also noticed yesterday, when visiting a religious yishuv, that they labeled an etrog tree with a short description that includes the purported fact that etrogim were introduced into Israel around the time of Ezra. I think that this is generally accepted by historians and botanists (or perhaps it is a bit early by their count), but I was under the impression that the general thinking in mainstream Orthodox circles is that the etrog goes back to the time of Moshe and the giving of the Torah. I’m not disturbed by the idea that there was some ambiguity regarding the identity of the pri etz hadar. There are some indicators in Tanach (Nechemiah 8:15) and in the Gemara (Kiddushin 70a) that the etrog was a foreign import and not initially understood to be the Biblical pri etz hadar. However, I was unaware that there were segments of the Orthodox world who took this as a foregone conclusion.

Black Eyed Peas

So the Rebbetzin was perusing her Moosewood Cookbook over Yom Tov, and came across a recipe for black-eyed peas which, according to the book, was customarily eaten in various locales in the United States – mostly Southern, but including Boston as well – on New Year’s eve. This piqued my interest, because I was well aware that black-eyed peas are one of the Rosh Hashana simanim, associated with rubia (link and link). I wondered if there is some connection between the two. After all, it seems incredible that two cultures would independently evolve a custom of eating black-eyed peas on their respective New Yers’ Eve.

Alas, it seems to be just that: a complete coincidence. The Jewish custom of eating black-eyed peas appears to have originated amongst Egyptian Jews, who associated this legume with the Talmudic rubia. The American custom originated in the South, though the source is debated. Some say it symbolizes coins, and is consumed with leafy green vegetables, which symbolize paper money, as a ‘siman’ for a prosperous year. Others eat it together with ham-hocks or hog-jowls, which all of a sudden makes the head of a sheep sound delicious. Another theory says that General William Tecumseh Sherman’s troops thought black-eyed peas were animal food or weeds when they scorched the rest of the earth, so the Southerners were thankful for the black-eyed peas that New Year’s. Others say there wasn’t much else to eat. Another idea is that peas were good at replenishing the soil, so having peas one year was a good sign for the coming year’s prosperity. You can see all sorts of theories here.

The only idea that might connect the two is that the idea of black-eyed peas as good luck originated with African slaves, which would put the origin of the two customs on the same continent. And no explanation for these customs can make it taste good.

Eli’s Misreading of Chana

After three posts about the story of Eli and Chana (here, here, and here), which is the haftarah of the first day of Rosh Hashana, I finally got a chance to look at the actual words of the Gr”a regarding Eli’s use of the Urim Ve-tumim. It’s from his work Kol Dodi, and is excerpted in a book called Divrei Eliyahu, which anthologizes various comments of the Gr”a from his different works according to the order of Tanach and Shas. The edition that I own was printed by the Lebovits-Kest Memorial B’nei Torah Library about 15 years ago.

I discovered two major details of the Gr”a’s explanation which are missed in most presentations of his opinion. Firstly, the Gr”a does not say that Eli used THE Urim Ve-tumim, but AN Urim ve-Tumim. Based on the Ramban in Tetzaveh, he says that there were Divinely inspired people who used private oracles similar to the Urim ve-Tumim. He says that to avoid the question that I raised about the impropriety of using the actual Urim ve-Tumim to find an answer to a private question.

The second, and most jarring, discovery I made when looking at the Gr”a ‘inside’ is that, ironically, almost everyone who quotes this idea misreads Eli’s misreading! I had always heard that Eli read ‘shikorah’ instead of ‘kesheirah’ – ‘drunk’ instead of ‘worthy’ (here’s an example from Rabbi Frand, here’s one from Ohr Somayach, here’s one from Chabad, and here’s another). The Gr”a actually says that Eli should have read it as ‘Ke-Sarah’ – ‘she is like Sarah’. It’s clear that this is the correct reading. I will translate the contexts in which he uses the word, leaving the word in question untranslated and unvocalized (KSRH): “I am a depressed and barren woman praying for children KSRH”, “You did not give me the benefit of the doubt that it meant ‘KSRH’ who was barren”, “In the Midrash this was explained further – KSRH, Rivka, Rachel”. Is there any doubt?

Talmudic Accounts of the Creation of Man: Part I

[This will be cross-posted to Reshimu, where I will now be a contributor]

The fourth chapter of Masechet Sanhedrin is a treasure-trove of Rabbinic contemplations regarding the creation and station of mankind. The discussion is launched as a result of Mishnaic account of the way in which witnesses in capital cases were impressed with the importance of human life. These Mishnayot themselves are the source of well-known Rabbinic statements such as “One who saves a single [Jewish/human, depending on MSS] life is as if he saved an entire world”, “The world was created for me”, and “Man was created unique”. The Talmud introduces a number of discussions and narratives which expand on this theme of mankind’s creation. I felt it appropriate to look into some of these passages in the days before Rosh Hashana, traditionally celebrated as man’s collective birthday.

We’ll start with a short one, but a good one:

תלמוד בבלי מסכת סנהדרין פרק ד - אחד דיני ממונות דף לח עמוד א-ב
תניא, היה רבי מאיר אומר: אדם הראשון מכל העולם כולו הוצבר עפרו, שנאמר +תהלים קל"ט+ גלמי ראו עיניך, (וכתיב +דברי הימים ב' ט"ז+ כי ה' עיניו משטטות בכל הארץ). אמר רב אושעיא משמיה דרב: אדם הראשון [דף לח עמוד ב] גופו מבבל וראשו מארץ ישראל, ואבריו משאר ארצות. עגבותיו - אמר רב אחא: מאקרא דאגמא.

We have learned that Rabbi Meir used to say: Original Man’s dirt was collected from over the entire world, as it says “Your eyes perceived my form” (Tehillim 139) and it says “The eyes of God scan the entire earth” (Divrei Hayamim II 16). Rav Oshaya says in the name of Rav: Original Man’s body was from Babylon, head was from the Land of Israel, and limbs were from the other lands. What about his buttocks? Rav Acha said: from Akra de-Agma.

There are three distinct statements in this little passage. They are clearly related by their subject matter, as each discusses the origin of Original Man’s dirt. I think it would be a mistake to assume, however, that these statements were said as part of a single discussion (which they clearly weren’t, since they are attributed to Sages who lived centuries and countries apart), or that they even have the same agenda. Thus, each should be evaluated independently.
Rabbi Meir’s statement is very different from the subsequent Amoraic statements. He does not mention particular lands and brings Biblical prooftexts for his assertion. He is saying that man was made from the entire world. What does that mean?

In his Talmudic readings, Levinas asserts, based on the teachings of his mentor, the enigmatic Mr. Shoshani, that whenever the Gemara cites a verse, that verse must be understood in context in order to fully understand the Talmudic passage. I generally like to avoid blanket ‘rules’ about how to learn Gemara – different methods are better for different scenarios – and I’ve come across particular cases where this Levinasian assertion quite clearly seems to fall short. However, in this instance, I believe it to be ‘spot on’. I submit that Chapter 139 of Tehillim would be a fantastic candidate to be the ‘Shir Shel Yom’ of Rosh Hashana. It describes God’s creation of Man and God’s intimate knowledge of Man’s innermost workings. The Psalmist describes his own transparency before God and how he comes to grips with it and even welcomes it, as his allegiance is to God alone. The whole Psalm is permeated with what Rudolf Otto might call “creature feeling”, the feeling of a created entity before its Master and Creator, that sense of absolute dependence, loss of identity, and lack of control.

Thus, on one level, Rabbi Meir is saying that Man is as much a part of Creation as the rest of the world – indeed, on the same page of Gemara, it is suggested that Man was created just before Shabbat so that he would not claim that he participated in Creation. Man is a creature, just like everything else. On the other hand, Rabbi Meir’s statement also suggests something very different. Man’s relationship with the world is not a marriage of distinct entities. Man is of the world. In a sense, the study of the world – physics, chemistry, geology, biology, and so forth – is part of Man’s effort to write his own autobiography. Additionally, this passage expresses a certain universality of Man. No land is preferred over another. All men belong to the whole Earth. This idea can lend itself to an environmentalist reading of this passage as well.

Rav Oshaya, speaking in Rav’s name, does not seem to be the logical conclusion of Rabbi Meir’s statement. Perhaps he works off of Rabbi Meir’s statement, and perhaps not; either way, he is saying something very different. He notices, as the Maharal points out, that different places have different ‘personalities’ just as different parts of the body serve different functions. He is making a statement about the correspondence between human characteristics and the characteristics of various places in the known world. Thus, man’s head, the seat of the spirit and intellect, originates in the Land of Israel, whose very air makes one wise according to Our Sages, who never met an Israeli politician. The supremacy of the Land of Israel in matters of spirit has always been acknowledged as the land of prophecy, as the place on Earth closest to God.
Babylonia, on the other hand, is distinguished by other features. As Maharal notes, the Torah knows Babylon as the cradle of civilization, where Man first built cities, and from where he began to extend his reach across the land. This metaphor of Bavel as the torso from which the appendages begin to reach out parallels the development of mankind as a whole. This passage sees the unfolding of human history as something that was built-in to man’s very creation.

Additionally, if Israel represents man’s spiritual side, then Babylon can lay a strong claim to his physical side. It is, after all, Mesopotamia, the most fertile region of the ancient world. In the Talmudic worldview, these two lands are the important places, and other lands are considered trivial. Perhaps they fulfill functional roles. The notion that the limbs are from the ‘rest of the world’ reflects this bias. Perhaps it can be compared to Israel and the United States in today’s Jewish world. There are other places, but the majority of World Jewry, living in those two places, finds it easy and convenient to ignore everything else.

The last line is by far the most jarring part of this passage. Is Rav Acha serious? Perhaps not. I wonder if he meant it as a joke. I remember my first time at Port Authority in Manhattan; I believe it was on the way to the Siyum Shas at Madison Square Garden almost 20 years ago. I remember that it was like nothing I had ever seen before in terms of the griminess and promiscuity of the place (before the city decided to clean it up). I remember my father quoting my uncle as saying that if God had to give the world an enema, He’d stick the nozzle in Port Authority. Is Rav Acha expressing a similar sentiment? The Sefer Ha-Aggadah understands that Akra de-Agma was indeed a promiscuous place.

Alternatively, maybe it’s not a joke. Every part of the human anatomy serves a function, however unpleasant. Perhaps the same can be said of the Earth. We need coal mines and peat bogs, too. Cities need dumps, sewage treatment plants, and all sorts of other industries which are essential but which I’d prefer not to live near. Perhaps Rav Acha is reminding us to appreciate these places, even if from a distance.

Avoiding Nuts on Rosh Hashana – a New Theory (which is Humorous, but Not Funny)

This is one truly out-of-the-box idea that can only come from the gnarled mind of a Rabbi with ADD. It grew out of an ongoing conversation that I’ve been having with Josh about these customs. There are certain obvious clues that something strange is afoot here, beginning with the fact that egoz is NOT be-gematria cheyt, and ending with the fact that there aren’t really many customs out there in which we avoid certain objects or practices because of their numerical value.

First, a brief word about magic. A ‘magical’ worldview (nothing to do with witches or Harry Potter) is one in which causality is not scientific (see here for a fuller definition). There are any number of specific magical laws or doctrines, but the basic thinking, that there’s some type of causal nexus between objects that are similar in some sense but physically independent, pervaded all human rational discourse up until the Enlightenment.

The famous doctrine of Ma’aseh Avot Siman Le-banim, as introduced by the Ramban in Bereishit 12:6, is a classic example of ‘sympathetic’ magical thinking. As support, Ramban invokes effigies and other practices that we would call ‘voodoo’ in support of this doctrine of ‘Ma’aseh Avot’. It’s important to realize that this was commonly accepted rational discourse in the Ramban’s day, and even much later on.

The practice of Simana Milta is a product of the same thinking. In it, the similarity between objects lies in the similarity of their names. As opposed to other systems, in which similarity was determined by, for example, shape (as propounded in the Doctrine of Signatures). Thus, nominal similarities become causal relationships, and by eating things whose names are auspicious, one can cause good things to happen during the year. Thus, the Gemara states that ‘simana milta’ – i.e., ‘these omens are real’, they work.

This brings us to the egoz. An egoz is not just any old nut, but a particular type of nut, in all likelihood a walnut (indeed, R’ Moshe Ha-Darshan, Josh tells me, reports that an egoz has 4 chambers). As has been mentioned here and elsewhere, there are 2 reasons given for avoiding egozim on Rosh Hashana:

1. It has the numerical value of cheyt


2. It increases phlegm

Nevertheless, it certainly seems that the avoidance of egozim belongs in the same category of practices as the simanim – certain foods are considered auspicious, and others are specifically considered inauspicious (the only other food that I know people avoid on RH is horseradish, because it’s called marror). The numerology would be a bit of a stretch from foods that actually sound like particular objects or occurrences, but still cut from the same cloth. I hope to explain how that happened.

The Roman physician Galen, based on the Doctrine of Signatures (see above), writes that the walnut is good ‘brain food’ – the shell is shaped like the human skull, and the nut is shaped like the brain. It’s good for the brain. We will return to this, but suffice it to say that the brain might not be the organ that we’re trying to bolster on Rosh Hashana, which is the anniversary of Adam’s Primordial Sin, which was a sin of da’at.

In pre-modern medicine, there were deemed to be four basic personality types, based on the balance of the four humors – blood, phlegm, black bile, and yellow bile. Each type had certain characteristics, was enjoined to refrain from certain foods and gravitate toward others, and was assumed to have a particular organ that was dominant.

An excess of phlegm rendered one phlegmatic. A phlegmatic personality was characterized by rationality, coldness, logical reasoning, curiosity, and skepticism. The dominant organ is the brain. I suggest that the ‘excess of phlegm’ that was caused by the brain-like egoz had nothing to do with making singing or blowing the shofar difficult, but with an imbalance toward hyper-rationalism.

So why is hyper-rationalism to be avoided on Rosh Hashana? Because it was associated with the Fall of Man. Since the minhag is an early Ashkenazic one, it could have originated a particularly anti-rationalist circle (like the Chasidei Ashkenaz) or culture (like 14-17th Century Ashkenaz). It could have also been seen as an impediment to prayerfulness, as the phlegmatic is less agitated than any of the personality types. This would have been the original reason for the minhag – to prevent the negative effects of excess phlegm (which have nothing to do with breathing passages) on the day that we are most sensitive to Man’s Original Sin of having eaten from the Tree of Knowledge, at the instigation of the snake, the wiliest of creatures.

Thus, to make the connection between walnuts and sin stronger, someone came up with a mnemonic gematria – which, if you have a good shoehorn, works – to connect the two.

There’s one other piece that’s missing to this puzzle: a source that states that the fruit that Adam ate was an egoz.

Losing Sight of the Forest for the Nuts

Josh has a good post on the no-nut minhag on RH. As my father is fond of saying, I believe in the name of the Klausenberger, we would do well to remember that chet also has the same gematria as chet. This flies in the face of the old 'you are what you eat' theory. REfraining from nuts seems a bit, well, nuts, and eating them seems perfectly sane.

In a similar vein, I try, when possible, to daven 'ke-vatikin' on RH, so that the Rebbetzin can go to shul for tekiot and mussaf. Inevitably, it means that I would nap at some point in the afternoon. Aha! But that will mean that my mazal will sleep this year, or that I'll have a sleepy year, or whatever.

Since when did this old wives tale become more important than the old wives themselves?

Happy Birthday Humanity

With Rosh Hashanah upon us, I wanted to explain some of the motifs of the day, but without the heavy ‘machshava’ that we’re accustomed to. Jewish holidays, like pretty much everything else, are designed to be intuitive. We tend to twist things in our search for ‘deeper’ meaning. More than any Sefer Machshavah, the best source for the meaning of Rosh Hashanah is the day’s liturgy, which represents how we’ve related to the day and its themes from time immemorial [note that relating to Rosh Hashana in this way brackets the question of the Biblical ‘Yom Teru’ah’].

Rosh Hashana is a Yom Teru’ah – a day of Shofar blasts. The Shofar was an instrument that served manifold functions – a herald, an alarm, a call to arms. One may ask which of these elements are represented by our Shofar, but that question misses the point; there’s no need to answer that question. The shofar is the shofar with all of its connotations and associations. The teruah is a teruah, with everything that carries. This makes Rosh Hashana very complicated and difficult to conceptualize into a single pattern.

Nevertheless, Chaza”l did attempt variously to see Rosh Hashana in a narrative framework, most notably as pertains to the creation of the world. As has often been noted, Rosh Hashana is seen not as the world’s birthday, but as man’s birthday, or, reading Adam as the archetypical human, Rosh Hashana is humanity’s birthday. Birthdays are ambiguous – they celebrate birth and remind us that we’re closer to death. They allow us to reflect upon past accomplishments but force us to confront what coulda, shoulda, woulda been. They can be happy, or depressing, or a bit of both.

Rosh Hashana is a birthday party writ large. Humanity as a whole takes stock of itself and is scrutinized. To what degree are we carrying out our mission on Earth, our charge from that very first day? To what degree are we close to completing that mission, restoring God’s Earthly Presence? These are hard questions to ask. They force us to relate to our distant past and distant future, both of which are characterized by the fullness of God’s Presence.

The liturgical themes of Rosh Hashana embraces all of history – the distant past, the future, and a present characterized by periodic hierophanies in which God’s Presence recenters our mission. This triad (which corresponds to Takia-Teruah-Tekiah, Malkhiyot-Zichronot-Shofarot, Creation-Revelation-Redemption) recurs on Rosh Hashana. It is a day in which we try to reconnect with our humanity before God, reliving the creation of this strange animal called man, reaccepting Adam’s charge, reevaluating our success and failure of this past year with reference to God’s yardstick, not our own.

Everyone, have a blessed year and a happy birthday to the human in all of us.