Rav Haim Lifshitz

Rosh Hashana

 

 

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  Minhag and Halacha: Custom Versus Required Torah Practice     

Godly Presence in Human Beings

 

 Translated from Hebrew by S. NAthan

l'ilui nishmat Esther bat mordechai

 

“Hai Parphisa: ‘This means a planter with holes, in which seeds have been sown. And in a responsum of the Geonim I found that they would make tubes (koishiklach) out of palm fronds and fill them with dust and animal manure and the like, and fifteen days before Rosh Hashana they would make each one represent one of the little boys or girls in the household, and in each one they would sow seeds of Egyptian “ful” or another bean, and call it ‘parfisa’, and it would sprout, and on the eve of Rosh Hashana, each one would take theirs, and turn it round their head seven times, and say: ‘This instead of this. Zeh halifati vezeh timurati. This is traded for me and this is exchanged for me,’ And throw it into the river.” Rashi in Gemara Shabat, 81. To understand the difference between custom and required Torah practice, a formal definition is not enough. We must go deeper, and define the root of the human tendency that leads people to embrace a certain custom. From the Rashi cited above, we see that the customs of Kaparot and Tashlich were originally one custom, intended mainly for young children. The Vilna Gaon, and the Lithuanian yeshivas that followed in his footsteps, were not strict about observing the custom of Tashlich, nor of Kaparot. Especially, they were not strict about the need to use a rooster or a hen, specifically. The Vilna Gaon’s reason for cancelling this custom was apparently that it had taken a turn in a negative direction. It seemed about to be transformed into a pagan practice, with independent power being attributed to the custom itself. The custom was being severed from its source, to become its own autonomous power. Similarly with the practice of using cows, and strictly requiring that they be pure white, along with all of the other strict requirements that had come to accompany the custom. Tashlich, in the meantime, had turned into a social event, an opportunity for encounters in which modesty was kept at a distance, and very distant indeed from the original meaning intended by the “Ari” and his disciples. The popular practice had grown as distant from the Ari’s sacred intention as heaven is distant from earth. It behooves us to attempt to understand how certain customs have taken such a turn, which distances them from the meaningful content for which they were originally established. Theo-centric versus anthropo-centric: These two opposite tendencies characterize religions invented by human beings. The sense of Godliness exists in every human being’s nature, merely by having been created in the image of God. This sensation is one of standing before a Supreme Presence, of standing before perfection, before the absolute: Absolute values. These cause man to feel his own failure, and sense his own helplessness: Self-effacement. The more intense grows the Godly Presence, the more man loses the sense of his own personal existence. The Catholic branch of Christianity views this self-effacement as the very essence of human worship. This explains the masochism that Christians percieve as being a sign of righteousness and holiness. A focus upon the negative, upon destruction, is Catholicism’s characteristic feature. This explains the cruelty and destructiveness that have characterized this “religion of love” throughout its long history, staned with the blood of its Jewish victims, specifically, for Christianity perceived the Jews as being a threat to it, because the Jewish perception focuses on all things positive and human. Values such as devotion and self-sacrifice are actually not foreign to Judaism at all. Yet a one-sided, theo-centric view must necessarily erase the human being who attempts to attach to it. Such a view lacks the reciprocity that characterizes Judaism. The opposing perception is the Protestant one: Anthropo-centric. This perception puts man and his selfish needs the center of things. This creates a fundamental problem: A religion that is intended from the outset to serve. A religion that is only an instrument and a means for surving the purpose of man’s existence at the center of things. While Catholicism denies man legitimacy, Protestantism turns the goal into the means. It is needless to say that anyone who does not like lie to himself would tend to reduce these two tendencies, for they seem mutually exclusive. It is difficult to realize that each tendency is meant to complete the other. Therefore one separates them, detachment is created, and the gap yawns. In the vaccuum created by this gap, superstitions are born. A mitsva, which does not serve only man and his anthropo-centric tendency, and which also does not devour man as does the theo-centric approach, is turned into an independent reality, accumulating momentum of its own, and becoming an idolotry that threatens the performer of the mitsva, because it is severed from the mitsva. This explains another half-legitimate approach. “The Merciful One has said: ‘Sound it.’” This statement by the Rambam, intended to mean that one must not seek for mystical symbols hidden behind the mitsvot, and must simply perform them with purity of intention, has been distorted to read as a mechanical approach to the mitsvot, which rejects private meaning and personal relating, which views personal involvement with the mitsva as being a subjectivity that dwarfs the mitsva and bends it in the direction of anthropo-centrism. According to this approach, the praying person must focus only upon the shape of the letters, and perhaps to concentrate minimally on the bare meaning of the words, and to keep his distance from any ideas that might be expressed in the text. This explains the tendency to fasten onto the written text, to the extent that one risks becoming a lomaid mitoch mishnato. This approach limits and reduces God’s servant’s ability to worship Him. Instead he develops compulsive neurosis, for this approach strangles emotion and thought, and limits practical action. “Mitsvas of the heart” lose their meaning and power and validity and become mere monkey tricks. The Torah requires involvement, supported upon a basis of reciprocity. With this approach, man relates to the Godly Presence as to a goal. He involves his own personal needs and emotions in this relating, through self rather than through ego. Thus the self expresses man’s qualitative, value-based emotions, and through these also his tangible needs, which were designed to turn his existence and his presence into something tangibly real, for the goal of his worship is to make spiritual-Godly meanings penetrate into his tangible needs. Here we may understand why it is legitimate for a man to pray for all of his own existence’s needs, without exception. Here we may understand also yisurim shel ahava, the sufferings of love that come in order to intensify involvement, to intensify relating to the point of making it genuinely personal, in relation to the Creator, yitbarach. The ability to feel guilt, to request forgiveness, and to do teshuva, derive fom personal involvement. Such a personally involved teshuva born of intensively relating to one’s Creator, leads to the prayer: “Do for the sake of Your Own Name.” This expression grows out of an encounter of dvaikut that is complementary, with no gap and no vaccuum. The tendency to be erased in the bosom of “Doing”, as well as the tendency to the opposite extreme, the tendency to remain egocentric – both of these exist and are to be found within every form of behavior. “Being”. Politeness for example: A person who is truly human belittles the formalities of politeness, and relies on his sense and feeling of tact, with which he is blessed. Italians, for example, versus Germans who lack humanness and cling to the rules of formal politeness that is the cause of the darkest cruelty, in the gap that is created by the lack of absolute application of the rules of politeness (in the event that something or someone does not fit their pre-determined definitions) whereas the humanist can tend toward a violent and volcanic eruptions of destructive emotions in the event of unforseen, difficult, pressurized situations, and these are difficult to restrain. Judaism raises the banner of – and takes into consideration and encourages – a formula that brings harmony between the Godly component, the human component, and the formal component of the rules of the game. All these are woven together in a delicate texture, that is held in balance by the mitsvot between man and God, which receive their expression specifically through the interpersonal mitsvot, between one human being and another, and never at another human being’s expense. Complementarity between Giver and Receiver: The Empitome of Hesed. Complementarity between giver and receiver blurs the distinction between giver and receiver. The receiver feels he is giving and the giver feels he is receiving. The encounter, and the relationship between a man and a woman provides an illustration of this delicate and harmonious relationship that prevails on the human plane. The man views the woman simultaneously as herself and as the completing expression of his own self. Within the framework of “pairedness” all of the needs of the self are expressed to the fullest, through the other side: Through the goal of fulfilling the other side’s needs to the fullest, the needs of Side A are met, with no contradiction whatsoever between the needs of Side A and the needs of Side B. The human dimension is the test of whether one has attained a complementary encounter between theo-centric and anthropo-centric. Anyone who is extremely strict and exacting in the mitsvot between man and God, at the expense of the mitsvot between one human being and another, is a theo-centric who is distorting the delicate balance that characterizes the Torah. “Whatever road one wishes to walk, one is lead to walk.” “Permission is given.” On the other hand, “everything is foreseen” and one is lead according to one’s destiny, which has been determined in advance. “The Torah speaks in human terms” and fits itself to the service of God, and to the ability of every single individual. To the point that “and you shall live by them,” in its plainest meaning, provides legitimacy to every individual’s needs and emotions. One must feel comfortable and find happiness in the Torah: “Yonah found rest therein.” On the other hand, “when a man shall die in the tent.” A man must cause himself to die in the tent of Torah, to cancel himself and his own will before the will of the One on high. One must pray for one’s own needs, and for the needs of the One on high, as one prayer. “And [Hana] prayed over God.” Let one draft one’s own personal goal to the Godly goal, and the Godly goal to one’s own personal, private goal. For after all, everyone has a Godly goal that is private and personal to him. To the extent that one succeeds in introducing God into one’s own personal space, into one’s own private domain, one will succeed in bringing together those two tendencies that seem opposed and even contradictory – one brings them into mutual encounter. “That I might sit in God’s house all my days” as though it were my own private house. The guiding principle is that the connection is one of identifying: In which created identifies with Creator.

 

 

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