"The Two Menorahs" by SY Agnon (translated by Daniel Bouskila)

In the synagogue there stood a Hanukkah Menorah made of tin, and engraved upon it was an impression of the Holy Temple in Jerusalem, and the candlelighting blessings for Hanukkah. It's candle holders were wide and deep. All year long the Menorah was hanging on the northern wall of the synagogue, in the exact same place where they would hang a Matzah that symbolized the permission to cook during the Passover holiday. Every eve of Hanukkah, the Shamash (caretaker) of the synagogue would take down the Menorah, clean, shine and polish it, place it on a table next to the doorway, place wicks and oil in its cups, and light it for Hanukkah.

It happened one year that a few days before Hanukkah, the Shamash wished to prepare the Menorah for the holiday, but he could not find it. The news of this spread all over the town, and the news ultimately arrived to all of the town's children. God inspired the children to come up with a plan -- they would take all of their dreidels made of lead and bring it to the town's craftsman, so that he would make a new Menorah from all of the dreidels. They brought all of the dreidels to the craftsman, and they promised that his pay would be all of the Hanukkah gelt (money) that they would receive from their parents. It wasn't two or three days, and some even say one day, and the craftsman had already completed the new Menorah. The children took the Menorah from the craftsman and brought it to the synagogue, and that night they lit the Hanukkah candles from this Menorah.

A few months later, before Pesach, when the Shamash was cleaning and preparing the synagogue for Pesach, he suddenly found the lost Menorah under a bench. He picked it up and placed it back in it's natural place. The following year on Hanukkah, the Shamash took the original Menorah and prepared it for Hanukkah. The elders of the synagogue saw this and said, "The children who gave up their dreidels and Hanukkah gelt so that we should all have the mitzvah of lighting the Menorah -- they should have the merit that their Menorah should be used." They established that they should light from the lead Menorah that the children had commissioned, even though the original Menorah looked prettier. And so it was, that the light of the children illuminated the synagogue -- and the entire town -- year after year on Hanukkah.

Hanukkah, 1967

Do we really understand what happened on Hanukkah? Can we actually relate to a story that took place over 2500 years ago? What is this "Festival of Light" all about? In thinking this through, I am drawn to the reincarnation of the Hanukkah story, the version that took place in June, 1967, only 42 years ago. When the modern-day State of Israel was established in 1948, Israel's hard fought War of Independence defended the newly found state, but unfortunately lost the battle for Jerusalem. For nineteen years, the Jewish State lived with the strange reality that it's most Jewish of sites --the Old City of Jerusalem -- was in Jordanian hands. Throughout those nineteen years, Jews were forbidden from visiting, praying or even walking near their holiest of places, the Kotel (The Western Wall from the ancient Temple). Israelis and Jews around the world had to resign themselves to a tragic irony, that the re-established Jewish State lacked the heart and soul of Jewish history, identity and spirituality -- Yerushalayim. Therefore, in 1967, during what came to be called the "Six Day War," when the heroic IDF Paratroopers entered the Old City of Jerusalem and liberated it from foreign rule, and Paratrooper Commander Motta Gur declared "Har Ha-Bayit B'Yadeinu" -- "The Temple Mount is in Our Hands" -- the entire world witnessed the modern-day version of the Hanukkah story. For the story of Hanukkah is, that the ancient Greeks occupied the Temple in Jerusalem and defiled it, and in a war of the "few against the mighty," the Maccabees prevailed over the Greeks and liberated the exact same Temple Mount that the IDF Paratroopers liberated in 1967. We are told that the Maccabees discovered a small jug of pure olive oil that miraculously produced light for eight days. If you think about it, this little jug's oil burnt for much longer than eight days. It was kindled by the Maccabees 2500 years ago, lasted for eight days, continued to burn throughout the long and often dark exile of the Jewish people, was still flickering for the first nineteen years of an Israel without ancient Jerusalem, and was re-kindled by the modern-day Maccabees of the IDF. It continues to burn brightly.

What Are You Learning?

Nine years ago, while attending the United Jewish Communities’ General Assembly (GA) in Chicago, I had the privilege and pleasure of hearing Pulitzer Prize-winning author Herman Wouk — known for bestsellers like “The Caine Mutiny,” “Marjorie Morningstar,” and “The Winds of War” — address the opening plenary. What many do not know is that Wouk is a yeshiva-trained Orthodox Jew who studies Talmud daily.

In his address to the GA, Wouk described the way people who haven’t seen one another for a long time typically greet each other. “How’s your family, how’s your health, how’s your business?” — these are some of the typical greetings, Wouk told us.

“Let me tell you about the world that I come from,” Wouk said. “I come from the yeshiva world, where people bond through the study of Torah texts, and friendships are shaped based on learning together. Therefore, if one bumps into an old friend or rabbi from yeshiva, and they haven’t seen each other for many years, the greeting we typically exchange is ‘What are you learning?’”

So, what are you learning?

If you haven’t thought about this question, now is the perfect time to do so, as we celebrate another New Year this coming weekend. Simchat Torah is our intellectual New Year, as we conclude and then immediately kick off another annual cycle of weekly Torah readings.

What is Simchat Torah? It’s a lot more than a “So You Think You Can Dance With the Torah” celebration. It’s the opportunity to renew our commitment to the central expression of Jewish life, the one that brought us the title “People of the Book” — Torah study.

Maimonides teaches: “Moses established a system for the Jewish people, that they should read from the Torah in public on Shabbat, plus every Monday and Thursday morning, so that they should never go for three days without hearing words of Torah” (Mishneh Torah, Laws of Prayer, 12:1).

This system of public Torah readings gave birth to the weekly parasha, or Torah portion. The Torah was divided into units that were read in full on Shabbat, and partially on Mondays and Thursdays. In Israel, the units were smaller, resulting in the completion of the entire Torah scroll in three to three and a half years — the length of each separate unit varied depending on the communities.

In Babylonia, rabbinic authorities thought it would be nicer to complete the Torah in one year, so with obviously longer units (called parashiyot), the annual cycle of Torah reading became the established norm for communities around the Jewish world. This Babylonian system of the annual cycle gave birth to the holiday of Simchat Torah, celebrating the completion of the annual Torah reading cycle.

But whether the Torah was completed in three years or annually, what was the original purpose for weekly Torah readings in public? The public Torah reading was established to facilitate an opportunity for the entire community to study Torah. Weekly prayer gatherings in synagogue on Shabbat seemed like the ideal opportunity to study Torah together as a community. The Torah portion was both read and translated in public, and the rabbi would teach the meanings of select verses. All of this resulted in the synagogue experience on Shabbat being one of study in addition to one of prayer.

In turn, this gave birth to one more beautiful aspect of personal Torah study — the study of the weekly parasha all week long, with translations, commentaries and explanations in preparation for the Torah reading on Shabbat. Whether at home, in organized classes, on thousands of Web pages, via e-mail or with our children around the Shabbat table, the study of the weekly parasha has become the standard text that intellectually and spiritually binds Jews all over the world. The vast choices and genres of commentaries to the weekly parasha — from Rashi, Ramban, Ibn Ezra and Sforno, all the way to Hirsch, Hertz and the JPS Commentary — remind us, like French philosopher Rabbi Marc Alain Ouaknin said, “We are not simply the ‘People of the Book.’ We are the ‘People of the Interpretation of the Book.’”

In his closing remarks to the 5,000 GA delegates, Wouk said, “So let me put my aspirations for American Jewry in one visionary image. In some not-too-distant day, at gatherings such as this, Jews will be greeting each other with, ‘What are you learning?’”

What are you learning? If you are searching for an entry into Wouk’s question, how about starting in the most logical of places — “In the beginning….”

Man of Agnon

June 24, 2009


By David Suissa


Can sarcasm, irony, surrealism, irreverence and Joycean wordplay with Talmudic references help bring us closer to Torah and to God? Can you turn the rabbinic tradition upside down and still honor it?

Is it possible to understand a religious message better when you play with it, challenge it and even mock it?

These are not questions that have often crossed my mind. Until, that is, I started hanging out with Rabbi Daniel Bouskila, spiritual leader of Sephardic Temple Tifereth Israel in Westwood.

Bouskila believes there’s one Jew who can revolutionize the way Torah and Judaism are taught, and, in the process, bring a generation of Jews closer to their Judaism.

That one Jew is the late Israeli novelist and Nobel Prize-winner Shmuel Yosef Agnon.

Agnon (1888-1970) was a religious Jew and talmudic scholar who was raised in a shtetl in Ukraine and who, after moving to Israel in 1907, became a world-famous novelist and storyteller. He used traditional religious sources and folklore, played with sacred and secular texts, blended classic and rabbinic Hebrew and fused irony with religious storytelling to create a body of work unlike any other.

The problem, however, is that because Agnon was seen mostly as a literary figure, he was never embraced and given his due by the Torah and religious world. Bouskila, who fell in love with Agnon years ago while studying in Israel, would love to change that.

Over lunch at Shilo’s the other day, the rabbi spent several hours giving me examples of Agnon’s potential to revolutionize Torah study.

His argument came down to this: For people who get bored easily (most of us?), the best way to teach is to surprise, challenge and provoke.

For example, let’s say you want to teach the importance of not speaking lashon harah. You can go through the laws of the Talmud and Shulchan Aruch, analyze and debate the commentaries of the Chofetz Chaim and other great thinkers, study the relevant biblical stories, meditate on the mystical dimension of the mitzvah or give a passionate sermon on the ethics of avoiding hurtful language.

Bouskila has no particular problem with these traditional approaches. It’s just that for him, if you want the message to “really stick, ” there’s nothing like the magic of an Agnon story.

To help make his point, he read me an Agnon story of a woman who sits at home knitting on Shabbat instead of gossiping with her neighbors. One day, the great Moses happens to walk by her house and notices that God’s spirit hovers above the house. Moses is shocked that the woman is desecrating the Shabbat by violating one of the 39 prohibited Shabbat labors.

He instructs her to sit with her neighbors so that she should not violate the Shabbat, yet the following week, when he once again passes by her house, he notices that God’s spirit no longer hovers above the house. Moses understands that her original practice was better, so he instructs her to return to it.

Agnon, a Torah-observant Jew his whole life, had the chutzpah to challenge the notion of “violating the Shabbat,” and through the character of Moses — God’s lawgiver, no less — he suggests that idle gossip is more of a legal violation than the other 39 prohibitions. He concludes his story by mocking rabbinic authorities who concocted a cover-up to protect Moses’ reputation.

Amazingly, Bouskila says, even though the story challenges halachah, a reader can walk away with a deeper appreciation for both the holiness of Shabbat and the importance of avoiding lashon harah.

Because Agnon’s stories are so fertile and real and often surreal, they can touch you in a way that a typical Torah class cannot. And because the stories are textured with hard-core talmudic elements, they have enough Torah credibility to be taken seriously. The resulting brew is like midrash on steroids: it plays with your mind, sneaks up on you, tantalizes you, enchants you, provokes you, and, finally, invites you to challenge away.

After all that, Bouskila says, the reader begins to own the message.

At a Torah salon at my house recently, Bouskila took us through Agnon’s “Fable of the Goat,” a short story that touched on the themes of intergenerational conflict and the yearning to return to Zion. The story was only three pages long, but we debated its meaning for hours. After a while, the story became ours.

Bouskila, who’s written about Agnon in The Jewish Journal in the past, has hundreds of these rich Agnon stories in his repertoire. The stories are his ammunition to spark a greater interest in Judaism — both with his flock and the community at large. He’d love to publish an anthology one day that will connect specific Agnon stories to each week’s Torah portion and make Agnon “an engaging and thought-provoking guest at every Shabbat table.”

He’s banking on the notion that a lot of Jews are not turned on by the traditional ways of the religious trade — the preachy classes and sermons, the easy stories, the mitzvah pitch, the talmudic micro-debates, etc. — and that it’s time to try a new, provocative and literary approach to Torah studies that can open up and energize Jewish minds.

At the very least, he’ll have a ball trying.

(David Suissa, an advertising executive, is founder of OLAM magazine, Meals4Israel.com and Ads4Israel.com. He can be reached at dsuissa@olam.org.)

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Give Shalom A Chance

Someone would probably be labeled a hippie if he or she were to use the English word “peace” as a greeting or an expression when parting. Yet in Hebrew, the standard “hello” or “goodbye” is shalom (peace), and the word carries no modern cultural or political connotation.

What is it about the word “shalom” that has enabled it to become the standard Hebrew salutation? A small sampling of its place in Jewish tradition will reveal that “shalom” is far more than a greeting.

In the Hebrew Bible, the word “shalom” appears 237 times, including in this week’s Torah portion, Naso. In the Birkat HaKohanim (Priestly Blessing), which is part of our daily Jewish liturgy, the concluding line reads, “Yisa HaShem Panav Elekha, V’Yasem Lekha Shalom” (May God direct his favor upon you, and grant you peace) (Numbers 6:26).

Commenting on the word “shalom,” the Netziv, the 19th-century rosh yeshiva of Volozhin, says, “Now that the previous blessings have been pronounced, we recite a blessing that is the vessel which contains the other ones, for without peace one cannot derive gratification from any blessing.”

The “previous blessings” referred to by the Netziv are the first two parts of the Priestly Blessing — “May God bless you and protect you,” and “May God deal kindly and graciously with you” (Numbers 6:24-25). In a beautiful metaphor, the Netziv refers to “shalom” as a vessel that contains “blessing, protection, kindness and grace” from God, and further remarks that without peace, one cannot truly enjoy these or any other blessings.

The great Torah commentator Rashi, in his typically brief yet packed comments, says, “Without peace there is nothing.”

Is peace only a blessing from heaven, or can human beings participate in creating peace?

The Book of Psalms teaches: “Seek peace and pursue it” (Psalms 34:15). Based on this injunction to actively seek peace, the rabbinic tradition brings to light an aspect of Aaron’s life that complements his ritual duties as high priest. Pirkei Avot teaches: “Hillel says: ‘Be a student of Aaron, lover of peace [ohev shalom] and pursuer of peace [rodef shalom]’” (Pirkei Avot 1:12).

For Aaron, who was commanded to recite the Priestly Blessing, its simple recitation was not enough. Aaron was the ultimate creator of peace within the community, reconciling differences between married couples and disputes between friends. From Aaron we learn that prayers are not mere words we recite, but, especially with peace, a lifestyle we must create for ourselves.

How far must one take the pursuit of peace? In an interesting numerological calculation (known as gematria), the Baal HaTurim commentary remarks that the numerical value of the letters that spell “shalom” (376 — shin=300, lamed=30, vav=six, and mem=40) is equivalent to the letters of the name “Esau” (376 — ayin=70, shin/sin=300, vav=six).

Esau was Jacob’s twin brother, and there was hardly “shalom” between the two. Furthermore, in later rabbinic tradition, Esau, the father of the Edomite nation, came to be equated with the Roman Empire, Christian Rome and all of the persecution of Jews that came with it. Despite all of this, the Baal HaTurim says that the numerical equivalence of “shalom” and “Esau” teach us that “one should always be first in inquiring after the peace of all men, even the peace of a non-Jew.” Where this may seem like “no big deal” for the Jew in the modern world, it was quite bold of the Baal HaTurim to make such a statement, especially in light of the atmosphere toward Jews in medieval Europe. Perhaps we can draw from his teaching today by remembering that “Esau” was symbolic for “enemy of the Jews,” and therefore, “being first to inquire after the peace of all men” — including Esau — serves as food for thought in the debate of whether it is wise for the Jews to make the first overture for peace toward our enemies.

It is no wonder that we greet one another with the blessing “shalom.” It is, as the minor Talmudic tractate’s Perek HaShalom (Chapter of Peace) puts it, “The greatest of all blessings, for all blessings and prayers conclude with peace.”

I therefore conclude with a prayer that “shalom” become more than just a greeting. In other words, "Oseh shalom bimromav, Hu ya’aseh shalom aleinu, V’al kol Yisrael, v’imru amen."

(originally published in the Jewish Journal, June 4 Issue, 2009)

Journey Through the Land of Oz

Review of The Amos Oz Reader (Harcourt, 2009)

(review originally appeared in the Jewish Journal 4/29)





“We must keep in touch,” Amos Oz said during my first meeting with him three years ago.

“With great pleasure,” I answered, proceeding to ask him today’s natural follow-up question: “What is your e-mail address?”

He looked at me with his charming smile and responded: “I don’t have an e-mail.”

Amos Oz, Israel’s best-known and most translated author, has penned 33 books — including novels, novellas and short stories — along with more than 400 articles on literature and Israeli politics. I use the word “penned,” because this gifted writer and outspoken political commentator accomplished this impressive literary output the old-fashioned way — with pen and paper. Actually, with two different pens — one blue, the other black.

“They each have a special purpose,” he once told me. “One is to rage against the government and tell them to go to hell, and the other is to tell stories.”

On May 4, Oz will turn 70. As part of the celebrations, a new English-language anthology, “The Amos Oz Reader”(Harcourt), was just released, offering a retrospective of some of the author’s finest writing from both his pens.

It is a refreshing departure from the stereotypical out-of-context compilation, and credit for this goes to editor Nitza Ben-Dov, a professor of Hebrew and comparative literature at Haifa University. Ben-Dov has creatively grouped Oz’s writings into four different themes: The Kibbutz, Jerusalem, the “Promised Land,” and some of Oz’s personal reflections, “In an Autobiographical Vein.” In so doing she gives us a bird’s-eye view of his life through the lenses of his writing.

Born May 4, 1939, in the Kerem Avraham neighborhood of Jerusalem, Amos Klausner grew up an only child in war-torn British Mandate Jerusalem during the years immediately leading up to the establishment of the State of Israel. His father, Yehuda Aryeh Klausner, was an intellectual whose politics were right-wing Revisionist Zionism. His mother, Fania Mussman, also an intellectual, suffered from severe depression. Their tiny Jerusalem apartment was filled with thousands of books, and Amos grew up in a milieu that included weekly Shabbat afternoon visits with his great uncle, professor Joseph Klausner, and often with Klausner’s neighbor and arch rival, the great writer S.Y. Agnon.

In 1952, Amos’s mother committed suicide at the age of 38. Two years later, just 14 1/2 years old, Amos Klausner left Jerusalem for Kibbutz Hulda, leaving behind his father and his family name, renaming himself “Oz” (which means “strength”), and rejecting his father’s Revisionist Zionism in favor of left-wing, Socialist Zionism. This biography continues to shape and inform much of Oz’s writings.

The “Kibbutz” section of the anthology features an excerpt from his first novel, “Elsewhere, Perhaps” (1966), where he explores the complex fine line between personal and communal life on the kibbutz, as well as the often-blurred line between kibbutz idealism and petty human behavior typical of any society.

Oz’s most famous novel, “My Michael” (1968), is the first exposure we have to his dark view of the city of his childhood, Jerusalem. The “Jerusalem” section includes a substantial excerpt from “My Michael,” titled “It’s Cold in This Jerusalem of Yours,” where the narrator, the depressed Hannah Gonen, describes the city as “a landscape pregnant with suppressed violence.”

One of Israel’s most vocal political journalists and peace activists, Oz’s other pen is well represented in the “Promised Land” section of the anthology, in which we encounter Oz’s liberal Zionism, his understandings of the terms “Jewish” and “Zionist,” his disdain for right-wing extremism and his vision of what Israel potentially can be. The section “In An Autobiographical Vein” features a chapter from “A Tale of Love and Darkness,” titled “My Mother Was Thirty-eight When She Died.” In 2003, Oz openly confronted the most traumatic event of his childhood, the suicide of his mother. With the publication of the quasi-memoir, quasi-autobiographical “A Tale of Love and Darkness,” readers were finally able to journey with Oz through the trauma and pain of his loss.

As Amos Oz celebrates his 70th birthday, the State of Israel celebrates its 61st year of independence. Oz recently said, “being an Israeli at 70 is like being an American who is 250 years old. I saw the Boston Tea Party and met both George Washington and Abraham Lincoln.”

While Oz’s analogy about his age is sharp and witty, it risks painting an inaccurate image of the Israel and the Israeli that he portrays in his books. The “George Washingtons and Abraham Lincolns” of Israel are not characters in Oz’s novels, and the “Boston Tea Parties” of Israel are at best the background to his plots. Amos Oz’s Israel is not the epic Israel and larger than life Israeli one finds in Leon Uris’s “Exodus” or Herman Wouk’s “The Hope.” Instead, he presents his readers with portraits of small, everyday people in provincial places within Israel. In fact, almost half of Oz’s books are set in the one square mile of Kerem Avraham, the small Jerusalem neighborhood where he was born. And when we do meet Israel’s political leaders or confront the complex issues surrounding the establishment of Israel, Israel’s military campaigns, or the Israeli-Palestinian conflict — as expressed in Oz’s political essays — one finds an Israel void of apologetic government rhetoric or simplistic one-sided arguments.

A week after our first meeting, I opened my mailbox and found an “old school” air-mail envelope adorned with a red, white and blue border. Inside was a personal letter on plain white paper, written in black pen.

Even without e-mail, Amos and I have kept in touch ever since.

A Yom Ha-Shoah Reflection

Today is Yom Ha-Shoah, Holocaust Memorial Day. In memory of our 6 Million brothers and sisters who were brutally murdered in the Shoah, I present this poem composed by Uri Zvi Greenberg, one of Israel's great Hebrew poets.

Born in 1896 in Austria-Hungary, Greenberg moved to Palestine (Israel) in 1924. He was awarded Israel's Bialik Prize three times, and was the recipient of the Israel Prize -- Israel's most prestigious honor -- in 1957. He died in Israel in 1981.

Greenberg's poems are often called "prophecies," as he was one of the few Hebrew literary figures of the 1930's and 40's whose works envisioned and warned of the detruction of European Jewry (S.Y. Agnon was one of the others). Greenberg understood the Holocaust as a great tragedy on multiple levels, amongst them the Jewish indifference to their own destiny. Greenberg's words are powerful, poetic and direct, and he minces no words in "telling it like it is."
Below is one of Greenberg's most powerful reflections on the cruelty and inhumanity of Nazi Europe towards the Jewish people.

WE WERE NOT LIKENED TO DOGS AMONG THE GENTILES
by Uri Zvi Greenberg

We were not likened to dogs
among the Gentiles.
They pity a dog, caress, even kiss him with the Gentile mouth.
For like a puppy, fondled at home, they pamper it, delight in it always.
And when this dog dies - how very much the Gentiles mourn him!

We were not led like sheep to the slaughter in the boxcars,
For like leprous sheep they led us to extinction over all the beautiful landscapes of Europe.

The Gentiles did not handle their sheep as they handled our bodies.
Before slaughter they did not pull out the teeth of their sheep.
They did not strip the wool from their bodies as they did to us.
They did not push the sheep into the fire to make ash of the living
And to scatter the ashes over streams and sewers.

Are there other analogies to this, our disaster that came to us at their hands?
There are no other analogies-
Therein lies the horrifying phrase:
No other analogies!

For every cruel torture that any other man may yet do to man in a Gentile country -
He who comes to compare it will state:
He was tortured like a Jew.

Every fright, every terror, every loneliness, every chagrin,
Every murmuring, weeping in the world,
He who compares it will say:
This analogy is of the Jewish kind.

There is no recompense for our disaster, for its circumference is the world.

The whole culture of the Gentile Kingdoms to its peak -
through our blood.

And all its conscience -
through our weeping.