Blogger’s Note: I apologise for the offence and, in one case, shock, I caused last week by casually mentioning that Bernice and I have decided to start looking to move to Zichron Ya’akov. The fact is that we have been kicking this idea around for a year or so, and when, a couple of weeks ago, I finally came round to agreeing with Bernice that it made perfect sense, it was something that we had been living with for so long that I completely forgot we hadn’t actually shared it with many people. Anyway, I hope everyone has now recovered from the shock, and, rest assured: it’s not going to happen any time soon, and, when it does, Zichron should still be only just under two hours’ drive from Maale Adumim and two hours on the train from Jerusalem.
Apologies in advance if the writing gets a bit disjointed this week. The fact is that I’m in the middle of a process of going cold turkey, and I’m starting to get the shakes. Let me explain. Our expectation is that our move to Zichron, when it happens, will involve downsizing. Having eventually made up our minds that we were committed to this project, I, for one, am very keen to demonstrate that commitment in tangible ways.
Our first couple of weeks of scrolling through the property pages online has made it clear that we are never going top find a kitchen with the cupboard and worktop space of our current kitchen. However, it is also clear that many properties come with a store-room attached. I therefore took a good look at everything we have in our kitchen drawers and cupboards, and came to the conclusion that we could keep about 45% of it (some 1.33 cubic metres) in a storeroom, and simply take it out when we need it. This includes such items as all of our Pesach dishes, the ice-cream maker, slow cooker and similar large occasional items, spare glasses that we use on very rare occasions. Once I was able to show Bernice the Excel spreadsheet with all of the calculations, her mind was put at ease, having been blown by the photos of the postage-stamp kitchens that some people seem to cope in,
Once I had tackled the kitchen, entirely on paper, I turned my attention to a genuine physical area of downsize. Twice a year, Maale Adumim holds a charity book sale. We have donated to it three times. The first time, many years ago, I sorted out 100 books, and, between sorting them out and taking them to the book sale, 93 of them had found their way back onto the bookshelf.
My problem is that I have always prided myself that, if anyone is staying with us and asks whether we have anything by Margaret Attwood, or any novels set in a dystopian world whose inhabitants speak a language invented by the author, or something in the South American magic realism line, or a Ruth Rendell crime novel, I can always put my hand on such a book. This pride has not been one whit diminished by the sad fact that, in the last 42 years, not a single person has stayed with us and asked to borrow a book.
Last year, growing tired of endlessly rearranging books on our shelves to accommodate new acquisitions, I took myself in hand and actually managed to give two or three boxes of books to the book sale. I achieved this by agreeing to have non-favourite authors represented by only one book.
This year, I have gone almost the whole hog. I have admitted to myself that nobody is ever going to ask for a book. I have further convinced myself that I will be happy to spend my remaining years trying to catch up with those books that I have been promising myself to read (in one case for 55 years) and reading newly published books. I will not be rereading even books that I loved reading.
So, I sat down last week and went through all of our bookshelves. Bernice retrieved the books we are still holding for Esther and Micha’el, and insisted they choose definitively whether they want us to give them to them or give them away. Meanwhile, I started with the low-hanging fruit. When we lived, just the two of us, in a rambling eight-room house in South Wales, before coming on aliya, we amassed a collection of cartoon books, which we kept mostly in the toilet. They, of course, came on Aliyah with us, and, in his youth, Micha’el enjoyed them very much. Since he left home, nobody has so much as opened a single one of them, and, dear as I claim they are to me, I have to take that as an indication that they do not warrant the shelf-space. That was two boxes there!
Next, the non-fiction. We have accumulated a number of coffee-table art-books, which have never resided on a coffee table in our home. Again, I cannot remember the last time I looked at any of them. Several of them are no longer in very good condition. In addition, if I want to look at Rembrandt’s masterpieces, I can study them in truer and richer colour, in close-up, online on a big screen, lifesize.
By this point, I was starting to break into my stride. Bernice then took charge of the Shoah literature – one of her specialist subjects – and proved scarcely less ruthless than myself. The rest of the non-fiction yielded plenty of candidates. ‘How to’ books for a variety of hobbies taken up at some point and put down at some other; coffee-table books celebrating a Britain that is no longer; a collection of maps and atlases that would be of interest only to a historian.
Eventually, I tackled the fiction. After an intense hour, I had reduced our collection to Dickens (see below) and another 22 titles. There are another 70 titles that either one of us or both of us have not read yet. For the moment, we are keeping those, but, once read, they will almost certainly be passed on.
So: what, and why, made the cut. I spent very little time weighing anything up. All of the decisions were instinctive, and I didn’t revisit anything.
Lord of the Flies; The Tin Drum; Catch-22; The Yawning Heights; Ridley Walker; Hamnet; A Beggar in Jerusalem; The Little Prince; The Catcher in the Rye; Lolita; the Chosen; The Magic Mountain; Tristam Shandy; Waterland; The Collected Jonathan Swift; Frankenstein; Middlemarch; Couples; One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich; The Poisonwood Bible; The Grapes of Wrath; A Prayer for Owen Meany.
Add to that the mock-leather complete set of Dickens, with my monogram on each of the 16 volumes, that I received as a Barmitzvah present.
What, I wonder, do I, do you, conclude from this list? Reviewing it now, for the first time since I made the selection, I am surprised that I did not retain one Jane Austen novel – almost certainly Emma. I may still dig that out from the box. It is also very surprising that I have not retained one John le Carre. That was a conscious decision, because I felt that none of his finest work stands alone. The novels centred on George Smiley – chief among them, perhaps, Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy – do not, I feel, stand as tall when they stand alone.
Other questions arise. Where is our copy of One Hundred Years of Solitude? Are we really not keeping An Artist of the Floating World No Anthony Burgess? No John Banville, the only author I have ever written a fan letter to! No Julian Barnes. No Graham Greene, whose works I devoured in my teenage years. What was I thinking of? Is it too late?
Yes, the die is cast. The books are sitting, boxed, in the middle of the room, and tomorrow morning we will take them down to the book sale. Any regrets we have after that will require turning up as the doors open and buying the books back, and how sad would that be?!
I had thought our library would be there for our grandchildren to enjoy, but, even if they mature into readers of literature in English, rather than Hebrew or Portuguese, most of what I would have offered them will doubtless, by then, be available free on Gothenburg. Not to mention that most of what I would have offered them was in paperback and many of the books, as they opened them, would have cracked their spines and shed their pages. Feel free to comment on what is missing from this list, and what is present on it. You might want to think about your own 20 indispensable novels, in case you ever plan to downsize,
Our topic today, dear reader, is humiliation. Before we go any further, I would ask you to take a moment to consider the following: Does humiliation require an audience? In other words, is humiliation something I feel because of my judgement of myself or is it rather something I experience because of others’ judgement of me…or at least something I feel because of my estimation of what others’ judgement of me would be? Think about that for a moment, and then read on.
If I were, for example, to find myself dining with President Herzog, and I belched, I would certainly feel humiliated. If I were dining alone, and I belched, I would think of trees falling in a forest when nobody is within earshot, and conclude that they do not make a noise.
Ed. Note: I realise that, in today’s climate, the preceding paragraph should have come with a trigger warning. In my defence, I would ask you to consider all of the other bodily functions I could have used in the example, other than belching. ‘Nuff said?
So, since for some reason I feel the need to wallow in self-humiliation today, let me share with you how I spent the early part of my morning.
I need, first, to take you back to last November, when the air-conditioning unit in our salon started making the kind of noises that these days accompany me while I am trying to unscrew the lid of a vacuum-sealed kilo jar of honey. (And, yes, I know all of the tricks, from tapping the jar on the edge of the countertop until, preferably, just before the countertop chips, to pouring very hot water over the area where the cap meets the neck of the jar, and hoping to avoid both third-degree burns and multiple lacerations from exploding glass. I am even enough of my late mother’s son to have one of those dimpled silicon cloths to help achieve a better grip.)
Where were we? Ah, yes, the air-con unit. We carried out the basic repairs that the average householder has in his armoury. Bernice switched it off and switched it on again. I switched it off and switched it on again. We opened it up, looked inside, and closed it again. We cleaned it. We waited 30 minutes and switched it on again.
At this point, we played our trump card: I called the air-conditioning technician who had installed the unit some 20 years previously. Once I had told him the model number of the unit, he explained that it was impossible to get a replacement part for that model (of course), and it wasn’t even worth his while coming to see it.
After several other calls, we found a technician who was prepared to come. He spent a good time disassembling the unit, and concluded that the motor had gone. He then spent a couple of days trying to locate a replacement, unsuccessfully. He then suggested ordering a replacement unit that was not a perfect match; he would than jiggle it (I can’t remember the term he used in Hebrew, but ‘jiggle’ is the gist of it) and we would see how it went. Naturally, he could not guarantee that the replacement would work for any length of time. He estimated that this would cost about 3000 shekels. Buying and installing a new unit, equivalent to the one we had, would cost about 20,000 shekels. We didn’t think very long or very hard, not least because we were already seriously considering moving from Maale Adumim to Zichron, to be much nearer to Esther, Maayan and Raphael.
The technician found a replacement, installed it, and it worked. As it happens, we use our air conditioning very little, in winter or summer, not least because the natural ventilation of the house is excellent in summer and winters in Maale Adumim are usually fairly mild. We hardly used it on heat during the winter and have just now started using it on cool. Two Shabbatot ago, it became rather noisier than it had been. Last Shabbat, it switched on, but then operated at incredibly low power, breathing out air that was more or less at room temperature.
So, yesterday, I called the technician again, and explained the situation. He said there was no point in trying to salvage the existing unit, showing a mature grasp of the sunk cost fallacy. Since we have now decided that we definitely want to move to Zichron, I explained to him that we wanted a cheap, less powerful, simple unit that would allow us to be in reasonable comfort in our salon for the, we now hope, last year before we move.
He asked me to go up on the roof and film the external unit there, so that he would be able to give us an accurate estimate. Not wanting to sound pathetic, I agreed to go up.
At this point, I need to explain to you what ‘going up on the roof’ entails. There is no access to the roof from inside the house, and we do not have a long enough ladder to reach the roof from outside. So ‘going up on the roof’ (just five, short, simple, words, right? Think again) means the following.
One side wall of our backyard is the external wall of the communal shelter that the five cottages in our terrace share. Set into that wall is the emergency exit of the shelter, which is serviced by a ladder, which is attached to the wall and starts five feet above the ground. If I place our stepladder beneath this ladder, I can climb our ladder, transfer easily to the shelter ladder, climb up that, then reach for the ledge of the shelter roof and pull myself up. From there, I can similarly reach for the ledge of the main roof and pull myself up to the main roof.
At least, all of that was true about eight years ago, when I last tried to get on to the roof. Since then, I discovered today, someone has moved both the shelter roof and the main roof considerably higher, so that I am no longer able to pull myself up by my arms.
I managed, this morning, to reach the shelter roof from the top of the shelter ladder, using the solid iron handle of the closed shelter door, the window bars of our bedroom, on the wall perpendicular to the shelter, and the main struts of our wooden pergola. By the time I crawled over the ledge onto the safety of the horizontal shelter roof, I was wishing I had brought tea and sandwiches with me.
I then turned to face the wall up to the main roof. After a couple of minutes of huffing, musing, contemplating my mortality, and considering asking Bernice to call the fire brigade, I saw a cleft in the wall at a convenient height for me to insert one foot. Thus was I able to belly my way over onto the main roof.
I shot the video, sent it to the technician, and called him, asking him to look at it straight away, so that I could do any retakes before attempting to climb down. Having received his approval, I briefly contemplated taking some time to recover on the roof before descending. After all, the summer is coming, and the nights will be milder on the roof.
Eventually, I steeled myself for the descent. The cleft, so conveniently placed for ascent, was considerably more awkward for descent. I seem to remember vaulting from the main roof to the shelter roof last time I did this, a feat that seemed unimaginable today, even if I had been pursued by a tyrannosaurus rex.
The descent of the shelter wall was actually not too bad, but I arrived on terra firma knowing that this is a trip I shall not be taking again in this lifetime. Bernice, of course, thought that I was crazy to have done it, as, no doubt, do most of you. But, before you judge me too harshly, consider this. From the relative safety of my first-floor office, I take considerable comfort from the fact that, perversely wanting to feed my humiliation, I have produced from this experience 1400 words of prose in a week when I spent the whole of Sunday having no idea what to write about this week. Suddenly, my climb doesn’t seem quite so unnecessary or foolhardy! It was clearly meant to be.
I’m writing this at the end of Yom Ha’atzma’ut evening, regretting the fact that I had a very unproductive day yesterday, and couldn’t settle to anything. Fortunately, I have a pretty good idea of the direction I want to go in this evening, or rather the directions I want to wander off in, so I’m hoping this will be one of those posts that virtually writes itself. [Blogger’s hindsight note: It wasn’t!]
In these difficult and challenging times, I hope I can bring you two or three rays of sunshine this week. First of all, I know that several of you were very concerned when you watched Micha’el’s YouTube video discussing his not yet having succeeded with his water pump. So, I’m glad to offer you a link to his latest video, where he seems to be in a better place, even if the objective situation has not changed dramatically. I hope it puts your mind at ease.
Next, the first of two surprises that I had today. Gaza’s Hamas-run Ministry of Health has revised down figures for the number of women and children confirmed killed in the conflict: the children from 14,500 to 7,797 and the women from 9,500 to 4,959. The revised totals first appeared on the website of the UN’s office for the coordination of humanitarian affairs (Ocha), The website was quick to state that the revised figures had been produced by the Hamas ministry and had not been verified by the UN. (I somehow don’t seem to remember the UN questioning Hamas’ original figures, before they were revised downward, but there you are.)
Today’s second surprise was the official ceremony marking the transition from yesterday’s Yom Hazikaron (the Remembrance Day for the Martyrs of Israel’s Wars and the Victims of Terror Attacks) to today’s Yom Ha’atzma’ut (Independence Day). In a normal year, this is a dramatic transition from grief to celebration. However, in a normal year, the transition seems in a sense natural, with the fallen being, in the powerful metaphor of Nathan Alterman, the silver salver on which the state of the Jews was given “to you”.
I believe I have mentioned previously that there has been a long-running public debate about how, and even whether, Yom Ha’atzma’ut should be marked this year. In the end, the traditional official ceremony was held, with several adjustments in light of the situation. One of the organisations representing the families of the hostages held an alternative ceremony near Binyamina at the same time. Where the central part of the official ceremony is the lighting of twelve beacons by figures each chosen to represent some aspect of the particular year’s theme, the alternative ceremony featured the extinguishing of eleven beacons and the lighting of one only, in honour of the abductees.
Bernice and I watched the official ceremony, as we always do, and I was, I confess, very impressed. The decision had been taken to record the ceremony in advance, with no audience, rather than, as is usually done, to stage it live in front of an invited and enthusiastic audience. The official reason given for this change was the security situation. My suspicion is that the actual reason was to avoid the potential embarrassment to the government of any disruption to the ceremony by protestors. Whatever the reason, the result was a more sombre atmosphere, which seemed very appropriate.
There were several other changes to the usual program. Normally, the first part of the ceremony, closing Yom Hazikaron, is fairly short. This year, it lasted over half an hour, and included the lighting of twelve beacons, each at a different one of the sites where the horrendous events of October 7 took place, and each commemorating one or more of those who were killed on that day. The lighters of the beacons were accompanied, in each site, by survivors and relatives of those killed, who stood in silence. This was a powerful set of images, which gave a sense of the scale of the pogrom on October 7. Bernice remarked that “we will never get over this”; I felt compelled to add: “but we will get through it.”
This section of the ceremony ended at Reim, the site of the Nova dance party. Then the cameras returned to Mt Herzl, where the main ceremony was being held, and the transition to Yom Ha’atma’ut began. This featured an excellent speech from the Speaker of the Knesset, stressing the need for national unity, and a recorded speech from the Prime Minister. This was followed by the beacon-lighting ceremony. Whereas normally only one person lights each beacon (or occasionally two people), each of the beacons this year was lit by three, four or five people. The theme this year was a collective representation of Israeli heroism, and, again, the beacon lighters were, unusually, each accompanied by a group of tens of colleagues from whatever branch they represented, be it first responders, police, hospital staff, defence-system developers, or whatever.
I must mention one of the many beacon-lighters. He is an IDF reservist who first enlisted as a 15-year-old and fought in the War of Independence. At the age of 96, he still serves in the reserves, speaking about the history and tradition of Tzahal. The clarity of his memory (he was one of the few beacon-lighters this evening to say his piece without referring to a written script) the strength of his voice and the straightness of his back were certainly an advert for the health benefits of military service!
The twelfth beacon was lit anonymously, off-camera, to represent the abductees.
In a normal year, this would have been followed by celebratory songs from popular soloists, and dancing, with the audience enthusiastically singing along and waving flags.. This section of this year’s ceremony was handled particularly well. The selection and arrangements of the songs was carefully designed to be more reflective and more minor key than usual. At the same time, a sense of transition from grief to thankfulness for the state we have was achieved by having hundreds of children from the displaced communities in the north and the south singing with the soloists, and offering musical accompaniment.
The formation marching by the army flag squads was much as usual, although, again, absent the wild enthusiasm and delight of a large crowd at the precision of their marching and their representation on the stage of such symbols as the flag, Magen David and menorah, there was an added dignity to the display that was more in keeping with this year’s events.
A decision had been taken to forgo the traditional firework display closing the ceremony, both because of the excessive celebration it would suggest and because of a fear of disturbing anyone suffering PTSD. (On a similar note, a meme doing the rounds offers the following exchange, to appreciate which you need to know that a siren sounds to mark a one-minute silence as Yom Hazikaron begins, and a two-minute silence at 11 AM the next day. Anyway, the exchange goes: “Where did the siren catch you?” “In the throat!” This is no less funny for being very true.)
In all, I felt that the entire ceremony struck the right balance for this very different year. We pray that, next Yom Ha’atzma’ut, we will be able to celebrate more traditionally, but, for this year, it seems to me that the day was marked very appropriately.
Yom Hashoah (Holocaust Day) in Israel this year falls on the 213th day of October 7. I don’t wish to suggest any kind of equivalence between the Shoah and the period from October 7 to now. However, I must confess that, for myself at least, the visceral reality of October 7 is giving the Shoah, and Yom Hashoah, more immediacy this year.
A part of this shiur is taken from a shiur given at Yeshiva University 20 years ago by Rabbi Hershel Shachter. The other half has presented itself to me, as seems so often to be the case, by both the liturgy and the Torah readings of the last couple of weeks. We often remark on how, every year, each weekly Torah has a topical resonance. I find that the liturgy, also, seems to offer a response to whatever is occupying me at the time.
In this shiur, I am not seeking to answer the question: ‘Where was God?’, but rather to explore the following three questions
What does the question ‘Where was God?’ mean?
Have we the ability to answer the question: ‘Where was God?’?
Have we the right to ask the question: ‘Where was God’?’
In the course of asking these questions, we might come across some possible answers to the question: ‘Where was God?’, but that is not my main purpose today.
Bernice and I often discuss the fact that we have been blessed to be born at the time and in the place that we were, to have lived through the period in history we have lived through, and to have moved to Israel when we did. I was born almost five years after the liberation of the camps, and almost two years after the foundation of the state and I was raised in a liberal, creative, confident, and therefore largely accepting, England. I spent a very formative gap year in Israel on a course that began in reunited Jerusalem a year after the Six-Day War, then we came on aliya to an Israel on its way to being an economic and artistic powerhouse. We witnessed the release of Soviet Jewry and the fall of the Communist empire.
And then came the 21st Century, leading, it now seems inexorably, to October 7, and the last eight months.
On 7th day Pesach, a fellow congregant and I turned to each other after reciting Psalm 121 antiphonally, and agreed that it is getting harder and harder to recite this perek, and many other prakim, of tehilim.
Psalm 121 A Song of Ascents. I will lift my eyes up to the hills; from where will my help come? My help comes from the Lord, Maker of heaven and earth. He will not let your foot stumble; He that guards you does not slumber. See: the Guardian of Israel neither slumbers nor sleeps. The Lord is your Guardian; the Lord is your shade at your right hand. The sun will not strike you by day, nor the moon by night. The Lord will guard you from all harm; He will guard your life. The Lord will guard your going and coming, now and for evermore.
In the perek, we declare our faith that Hashem guards and will continue to protect us from all harm.
After the Shoah, after October 7, how are we to understand this? The perek begs the question: ‘Where was Hashem?’ If ה׳ יִשְׁמָר צֵאתְךָ וּבוֹאֶךָ, מֵעַתָּה וְעַד עוֹלָם (Hashem will guard your going and coming now and for evermore), then where was he in the Shoah and on October 7?
This question can, I suggest, be understood two ways. It may be a rhetorical question, with the obvious and unavoidable answer: “God was nowhere in the Shoah.” In the Shoah, there died six million Jews and God. This has clearly been the reaction of many Jews, survivors and others, and it is not easy to criticise them for their rejection of the existence of God. What kind of deity, whose first mentioned attribute is mercy, and who is also omniscient and omnipotent, can allow the slaughter of one and a half million children of his Chosen people?
The second way to understand the question: ‘Where was God in the Shoah?’ is as a genuine enquiry, a desire to understand how it is that a deity, whose first mentioned attribute is mercy, and who is also omniscient and omnipotent, can allow the slaughter of six million people, of one and a half million children, of his Chosen People. Not to say: ‘It cannot be!’, but to ask: ‘How can it be?’
To attempt to understand how this can be, let us start with the question of the nature and actions of God. I want to consider several aspects of God.
Not only is God the prime mover, the creator of Yesh from Ayin – of substance from nothingness – but He also continues to rule the universe.
God is constantly aware of everything that happens in His universe. He did not create and move on. He created and stayed.
God rewards the good and punishes the evil. He is constantly engaged with His universe.
All three of these points are fundamental to a Jewish understanding of God.
We find them listed by Rambam among his fundamental principles. I want to highlight the second and third of the aspects I mentioned
Rambam’s Commentary on the Mishnah: Tractate Sanhedrin Ch 10 The 10th fundamental principle is that the Exalted One knows the actions of all men and does not neglect them, (Proof text: Genesis 6:5:) Hashem saw how great was human wickedness on earth.) The 11th fundamental principle is that the Exalted One rewards the one who observes the commandments of the Torah, and punishes the one who transgresses its admonitions. The greatest reward is the world to come and the greatest punishment is extinction (karet). (Proof text: Exodus 32:33:) “The one who sins against Me, I will erase from My book”
רמב”ם משנה סנהדרין י’ היסוד העשירי כי הוא הש”י יודע מעשיהם של בני אדם ואינו מעלים עינו מהם. (בראשית ו׳:ה׳) וירא ה’ כי רבה רעת האדם בארץ וגו’ היסוד אחד עשר כי הוא הש”י נותן שכר למי שעושה מצות התורה ויעניש למי שעובר על אזהרותיה וכי השכר הגדול העולם הבא והעונש החזק הכרת. (שמות ל״ב:ל״ג) מי אשר חטא לי אמחנו מספרי.
We find these two principles everywhere in our daily liturgy. I’ve picked out two prime examples
Siddur Ashkenaz, Ashrei The Lord supports all who fall, and raises all who are bowed down. All raise their eyes to you in hope, and you give them their food in due season. You open your hand and satisfy what is wished for every living thing. The Lord is righteous in all His ways, and kind in all he does. The Lord is close to all who call on Him, to all who call on Him in truth. He will fulfil the will of those who revere Him; He will hear their cry and save them. The Lord guards all who love Him, but all the wicked He will destroy.
Siddur Ashkenaz, Amidah, Modim Anachnu Lach We give thanks to You, for You are the Lord our God and God of our ancestors for ever and all time. You are the Rock of our lives, Shield of our salvation from generation to generation. We will thank You and declare Your praise for our lives, which are entrusted into Your hand, for our souls, which are placed in Your charge, for Your miracles, which are with us every day; and for Your wonders and favours at all times, evening, morning and midday. You are good – for Your compassion never fails. You are compassionate – for Your loving-kindnesses never cease. We have always placed our hope in You.
“Your compassion never fails…. Your loving-kindness never ceases.” How are we to understand this in the light of what has befallen us?
To attempt to answer that question, let us look at the relationship between Hashem and the Jewish People. Earlier this week, we read in the Mussaf Amida for Shlosh Regalim:
Siddur Ashkenaz, Shalosh Regalim, Mussaf, Kedushat Hayom You chose us from among all peoples. You loved us and favoured us. You raised us above all tongues. You made us holy through your commandments. You brought us near, our King, to Your service, and called us by Your great and holy name. … But because of our sins we were exiled from our land and driven far from our country. We cannot go up to appear and bow before You, and to perform our duties in Your chosen House, the great and holy Temple that was called by Your name, because of the hand that was stretched out before Your sanctuary. …May it be Your will, Lord our God and God of our ancestors, merciful King, that You in Your abounding compassion may once more have mercy on us and on your sanctuary, rebuilding it swiftly and adding to its glory
This passage delineates three stages in the history of the People’s relationship with God: the Temple period, exile and redemption from exile.
We know that the Temple is, among other things, a place for the Shchina to dwell among us. The destruction of the Temple symbolises, among other things, the withdrawing of God from our presence. For Isaiah, the failures and shortcomings of the People will turn the Temple from the place where God is most accessible to an arena of conflict within the People. This conflict will lead to the withdrawing of the Shchina, the destruction of the Temple, exile from the Land, and the hiding of God’s face.
Isaiah writes about the destruction of the Temple and the exile:
Isaiah 8: 17 (13) None but the Lord of Hosts shall you account holy; give reverence to [God] alone, hold [God] alone in awe. (14) [God] shall become a sanctuary, a stone people strike against: a rock people stumble over for the two Houses of Israel, and a trap and a snare for those, who dwell in Jerusalem. (15) The masses shall trip over these and shall fall and be injured, shall be snared and be caught. (16) Bind up the message, seal the instruction with My disciples.” (17) So I will wait for the Lord, whose face is hidden from the House of Jacob, and I will trust in him.
Perhaps הסתר פנים, (Hester Panim), the hiding of God’s face, is the answer to the question: ‘Where was God?’ However, as happens with many profound questions, this answer may simply suggest other, hopefully more specific, questions: ‘What is the nature of הסתר פנים? If הסתר פנים appears to me to represent Hashem’s desertion of his people, clearly I am not understanding הסתר פנים correctly. How does it actually demonstrate Hashem’s eternal loving-kindness?’
Let’s turn now to the second of my questions posed at the beginning: ‘Is it given to us to understand God’s action in allowing the Shoah (and October 7) to happen?
I believe that the Torah reading for Shabbat Hol Hamoed of Pesach can help us towards an answer to that question.
Exodus 33:13-30 (13) Now, if I have truly gained Your favor, pray let me know Your ways, that I may know You and continue in Your favor. Consider, too, that this nation is Your people.” (14) And [God] said, “I will go in the lead and will lighten your burden.” (15) And he replied, “Unless You go in the lead, do not make us leave this place. (16) For how shall it be known that Your people have gained Your favor unless You go with us, so that we may be distinguished, Your people and I, from every people on the face of the earth?” (17) And Hashem said to Moses, “I will also do this thing that you have asked; for you have truly gained My favor and I have singled you out by name.” (18) He said, “Oh, let me behold Your Presence!” (19) And [God] answered, “I will make all My goodness pass before you, and I will proclaim before you the name of Hashem, and I will grant the grace that I will grant and show the compassion that I will show. (20) “But you cannot see My face, for a human being may not see Me and live.” (21) And Hashem said, “See, there is a place near Me. Station yourself on the rock (22) and, as My Presence passes by, I will put you in a cleft of the rock and shield you with My hand until I have passed by. (23) Then I will take My hand away and you will see My back; but My face will not be seen.”
Hashem seems to be saying to Moshe that he (Moshe) can gain a comprehension of Hashem’s goodness, but he is incapable of understanding all of Hashem’s ways. ‘You cannot see My face, for a human being cannot see Me and live’
Let me suggest one way for us to understand the metaphor of Hashem’s back and His face.
We can understand Hashem’s role in history. Looking back (in the direction of God’s back), we can see Hashem’s influence, and comprehend His goodness. However, we are unable to look into the future (looking forward, in the direction of God’s face), and, without that ability, we can never see the whole picture. This is hinted at in the story of the days of the creation.
On each day, we are told that Hashem saw what he had created on that day, and saw that it was good.
Genesis 1:25 (25) God made wild beasts of every kind and cattle of every kind, and all kinds of creeping things of the earth. And God saw that this was good.
God only saw just how good it was when he saw the whole picture.
Let me offer an analogy. A mother takes her one-year-old child to Tipat Halav for a vaccination against measles, mumps and rubella. The waiting-room is full of other mothers with their one-year-old children waiting for the vaccination. As the nurse slips the needle into the child’s arm, the child, terrified, starts crying and screaming. All of the other children, hearing the terror in her cries, start screaming and crying. All of the mothers attempt to calm their children, and fail. It is not given to a one-year-old to understand its mother’s purpose in allowing it to suffer this vaccination. There is no way for the mothers to explain to the children the benefit of what is happening.
If we need to be omniscient in order to understand God’s role in the Shoah, then that brings us to my last question. Have we the right to ask the question: ‘Where was God?’ Isn’t it a presumptuous question?
Perhaps our only role is to accept, unquestioningly, the infinite mercy of God. Perhaps this is the level of religious devotion that we aspire to when we sing that (on the surface) most ridiculous, but perhaps most sublime of Seder night songs – Dayenu.
Pesach Haggadah, Magid, Dayenu Had He given us their wealth without splitting the sea for us, that would have been enough for us.
Seriously??!!! If God had defeated the Egyptian deities, taken us out of Egypt, led us to Yam Suf, and then the Egyptian army had caught up with us trapped in front of the sea and slaughtered every last one of us, that would have been enough for us??!! In what universe does that make sense?
Perhaps the answer to that question is: If that is what God had chosen to allow to happen, then He would have had His reasons, which it is far beyond our ability to comprehend. All we can do is express the depth of our faith by stating that if that is what had happened then it would be what God had decided was in harmony with his Divine plan, and it would have been sufficient for us. If my mother, whose love for me is limitless, allows this nurse to stick this needle in me, then it must be for my own good. If six million Jews were slaughtered, and millions others lost their family members, their livelihoods, their homes, their possessions, then that must, in some way that we will never be able to fathom, serve God’s benign purpose.
In that case, I repeat: Have we the right to ask the question: ‘Where was God?’? I would suggest that the Gemara in Chullin, in one of those strange stories that the Talmud presents, offers an answer to that question.
Chullin 60b § Rabbi Shimon ben Pazi raises a contradiction between two verses. It is written: “And God made the two great lights” (Genesis 1:16), and it is also written in the same verse: “The greater light to rule the day, and the lesser light to rule the night,” indicating that only one was great. Rabbi Shimon ben Pazi explains: When God first created the sun and the moon, they were equally bright. Then, the moon said before the Holy One, Blessed be He: Master of the Universe, is it possible for two kings to serve with one crown? One of us must be subservient to the other. God therefore said to her, i.e., the moon: If so, go and diminish yourself. She said before Him: Master of the Universe, since I said a correct observation before You, must I diminish myself? God said to her: As compensation, go and rule both during the day along with the sun and during the night. She said to Him: What is the greatness of shining alongside the sun? What use is a candle in the middle of the day? God said to her: Go; let the Jewish people count the days and years with you, and this will be your greatness. She said to Him: But the Jewish people will count with the sun as well, as it is impossible that they will not count seasons with it, as it is written: “And let them be for signs, and for seasons, and for days and years” (Genesis 1:14). God said to her: Go; let righteous men be named after you. Just as you are called the lesser [hakatan] light, there will be Ya’akov HaKatan, i.e., Jacob our forefather (see Amos 7:2), Shmuel HaKatan the tanna, and David HaKatan, i.e., King David (see I Samuel 17:14). God saw that the moon was not comforted. The Holy One, Blessed be He, said: Bring atonement for me, since I diminished the moon.
חולין ס׳ ב רבי שמעון בן פזי רמי כתיב (בראשית א, טז) ויעש אלהים את שני המאורות הגדולים וכתיב את המאור הגדול ואת המאור הקטן אמרה ירח לפני הקב”ה רבש”ע אפשר לשני מלכים שישתמשו בכתר אחד אמר לה לכי ומעטי את עצמך אמרה לפניו רבש”ע הואיל ואמרתי לפניך דבר הגון אמעיט את עצמי אמר לה לכי ומשול ביום ובלילה אמרה ליה מאי רבותיה דשרגא בטיהרא מאי אהני אמר לה זיל לימנו בך ישראל ימים ושנים אמרה ליה יומא נמי אי אפשר דלא מנו ביה תקופותא דכתיב (בראשית א, יד) והיו לאותות ולמועדים ולימים ושנים זיל ליקרו צדיקי בשמיך (עמוס ז, ב) יעקב הקטן שמואל הקטן (שמואל א יז, יד) דוד הקטן חזייה דלא קא מיתבא דעתה אמר הקב”ה הביאו כפרה עלי שמיעטתי את הירח
Two things immediately strike me as bizarre about this account. The first is the apparent obstreperousness of the moon. When I taught, I occasionally had pupils like this, and I know that I couldn’t stand this kind of barrack-room lawyer. The moon (which I have always thought of more as an agent of God’s will than as a creation with free will) points out the ‘injustice’ of God’s ruling. She then points out the ‘illogic’ of each of God’s two suggested ‘compensations’ for the ‘injustice’.
Perhaps even more bizarre is that, when God sees that the moon is not comforted, He says: ‘Bring atonement for me, since I diminished the moon’. How are we to understand the meaning and the working of atonement for God? Is God ‘admitting’ that He ‘made a mistake’, that He ‘sinned’? Who is going to ‘bring’ the atonement? How? To whom will it be given? The Gemara in Chullin continues:
And this is what Rabbi Shimon ben Lakish says: What is different about the goat offering of the New Moon, that it is stated with regard to it: “For the Lord” (Numbers 28:15)? The Holy One, Blessed be He, said: This goat shall be an atonement for Me for having diminished the size of the moon.
והיינו דאמר ר”ש בן לקיש מה נשתנה שעיר של ראש חדש שנאמר בו (במדבר כח, טו) לה’ אמר הקב”ה שעיר זה יהא כפרה על שמיעטתי את הירח
The only offering for which the specific wording ‘Lashem’ (to/for the Lord) is used in connection with sacrifices is the goat brought as a sin offering on Rosh Chodesh.
Numbers 28:14-15 (14) Their libations shall be: half a hin of wine for a bull, a third of a hin for a ram, and a quarter of a hin for a lamb. That shall be the monthly burnt offering for each new moon of the year. (15) And there shall be one goat as a sin offering to/for Hashem, to be offered in addition to the regular burnt offering and its libation.
I think that the Gemara is suggesting that Hashem understands the moon’s reaction to be an earnest and pious attempt to understand the justice of Hashem’s plan to diminish her power. The conclusion that the moon comes to is that God’s plan is unjust. This is, of course, not because the plan is unjust, but rather because the justice of God’s plan is beyond the moon’s comprehension. Nevertheless, God hears the moon’s argument and acknowledges the argument’s legitimacy by instructing the children of Israel to offer, on God’s behalf, a sin offering at every rebirth of the moon.
Let me emphasise that what I mean by ‘legitimacy’ here is not ‘correctness’ but rather ‘appropriateness’. It is fitting for the moon to use what God-given intelligence she has to attempt to understand God’s ways. It is an appropriate use of that God-given intelligence for the moon to decide that God’s plan is unjust. God will even assume the role of one who has ‘wronged’ the moon in order to ‘atone’ for suggesting His plan.
By extension, we have the right to use our God-given intelligence to examine and judge God’s actions. We have the right to ask: ‘Where was God during the Shoah?’, whatever answer our human intelligence leads us to.
For many years, a story circulated about an event in Auschwitz that was regarded as apocryphal, until Eli Wiesel revealed that he had been present as a witness of the incident. One day, three rabbis got together to put God on trial for the Shoah. At the end of the trial, they found God guilty. I believe that as God watched them from Heaven, he ‘rejoiced’ at the intelligent exercise of free will his subjects were demonstrating.
But the story does not end there. As the trial concluded, one of the rabbis looked up to the sky and announced that it was time for aravit, and so they davened aravit.
In this, they were following the example of Job, in the middle of his suffering.
Job 13:15 Though He slay me, yet will I trust in Him. Yet I will argue my case before Him.
We have the right – we have the duty – to ask the question: ‘Where was God in the Shoah?’. In asking the question, we demonstrate and celebrate the free will and the intelligence that God, in His infinite wisdom and kindness, has given us.
However, we have the ability to answer the question only within the limitations of our human understanding. At the same time as we ask the question, we must guard against our asking of the question undermining our fundamental certainty that God is all-merciful. We must trust in Him and argue our case before Him. In both of these actions equally, in trusting Him and in questioning His actions, we glorify His name.
