Yom Kippur Study Session: Dialogue, Compassion and Community

Points:

1. The introduction to the story has rabbis commenting on a verse of Ashrei - the two first rabbis - deeds as external, midot as internal changes in the humans - that human transformation switches the scale; reverberations from below causing reverberations above. Rabbi Levi - the fact that we can be compassionate is because we share God's compassion, God's goodness is expressed in this sharing of compassion.

2. For droughts in the Land of Israel the Rabbis of the Mishna established a fixed sequence of public fasts, of progressively increasing severity. If the rainy season began and rain did not fall, a series of fasts was held (as many as 13) on Mondays and Thursdays of each week. Initially only leaders of the community fast and later the whole community. During Temple times, there was also a special order of shofar blowing, an additional six blessings were inserted into the Amidah [central standing prayer], and there was even a Ne'ilah service [a closing service like the one at the end of Yom Kippur]. See Mishnah Taanit 1:5-7

3. The man is supposedly paying his ex-wife for sexual favors ie, prostitution.

Commentary:

1. The repetition of the "proclaim a fast" implies RT delayed proclaiming. Fast does not work - why? - Send back to reading of Isaiah 58 - "why we fast and You don't see?" What is the fast that the Holy One wants, according to Isaiah?

- There is an implication that RT does not believe that just the institution of the fast will do anything. There has to be a dialogue between the community and God, the community and itself and even the community and RT. External aridity (lack of rain) is a symptom of the internal one (lack of compassion). The fast has no value in itself, but only as a vehicle to arouse compassion for one another.

- Compare the community talking to RT to RT talking to the community.

2. Community is not into tzedakah - they are checking still for who is talking to whom, worry about externality vs. internality. Their compassion extends only to the externally poor.One who gives tzedakah to the poor as an external act while his heart is still closed to the other's distress uses the poor as an object in order to achieve his own personal goal - I-It. RT's call to be filled with compassion is a call for internal transformation. Joe Schmoe is filled with compassion and disregards the mores of the community - thus being brought to the rabbi. Note that no one from the community confronts him, they go back to the rabbi to complain that they should have been more forceful in their judgment of each other's behaviors: "Why are we doing tzedakah while this is done here?!" is their question - God as the angry father bent over His ledger of human actions and calculating precisely the relative weights of the mitzvot and transgressions of this community. According to the bookkeeper theology, He distributes or withholds rain on the earth - an angry God cannot be appeased by mere coins - why are we doing this?! We should punish them!

RT's brings them into the community - act of acceptance of their deed and exposure to the real meaning of the fast/prayers/tzedakah.

Similarity of Joe Schmoe to Hosea, to the idea that Israel is unfaithful and receives a divorce from God and yet God takes Israel back.

3. According to the community’s religious concept, a fast should be decreed in response to the plague of drought, because that act is understood by them as a ritual capable of bringing rain. The community believes in the existence of a Superior Power that decrees drought, but it thinks that if Rabbi Tanhuma decrees a fast, decree versus decree, he will thereby satisfy the will of God, who requires such a fast, and as a result, the rain will fall - JLaw as magic.

Buber and prayer: “The man who prays pours himself out in unrestrained dependence and knows that he has – in an incomprehensible way – an effect upon God, even though he obtains nothing from God. For when he no longer desires anything for himself, he sees the flame of his effect burning at its highest.”

4. Why wasn’t the individual’s opening of his heart enough to merit Divine rainfall?
The prayer of Rabbi Tanhuma represents the component that joins the public and the divorced individual, who represent separate and opposed forces in the narrative, into a unity. His prayer mediates not only between God and Israel but between the individual in his act of hesed that aroused suspicion and false accusation and the judgmental community. (Admiel Kosman)

Points:

1. The position of Rav Ada bar Ahavah - he is the son of love. What love? Love for Torah. And how much can this be? So much one can loose oneself in it, and forget others. 2 or 3 years!

2. Rava is the teacher of Rechumei, and Rava is the one saying do not be like him. He reexamined the tragic byproducts of his students’ quest for Torah.

3. Name: Rechumei (Jastrow dict. who actually dedicates his dictionary to his wife) = love. Rabbi Akiva in Brachot 67b talking to students - רחמתיה בכל לבי - so story is about love / what are things we are loving that take us away from people whom we love?

Notice that bayt and beyt'hu are both home and wife. The wife, however, has no name. Is the place she inhabits really his home, or is his home Torah, which he takes leave towards every year the entire year? What is his purpose of returning? To get a LOA for yet another year? Lack of dialogue, lack of compassion, lack of sharing.

4. Willingness of rabbis to engage in criticism of their own system - dark side of being consumed by it all. Eroticism in the story is directed to Torah -

5. The end offers justice without offering comfort. We get the impression that she will be even sadder now - she has no idea that she caused his death. Now she is a real widow, instead of a "straw wife".

6. Is Rechumei really only "there"? Do we have those that, due to their devotion to other more "important" pursuits forget their lives at home? Is it really unusual for us to see partners in marriages that do not share their lives with their partner, and close themselves and their fulfillment from their partners?

7. Kabbalists have bridged the gap between spiritual pursuits and mundane marital life by infusing human eros with the eros of the Shekhina. Jewish mysticism has gone a long way to infuse marital intercourse, especially on Shabbat, with something much more than the physical pleasures of oneg Shabbat. Intercourse and sexual play become a cosmic act of reconciliation and tikkun enacted in the microcosm of the home. Private life with one's spouse and public service or worship of God becomes one. Love then by definition is freed from self-preoccupation for it is the act of uniting with one's complementary other. (Noam Zion)