Emor

The Parasha today outlines the details the Jewish Calendar. It describes Shabbat, Pesach, Rosh Hashana, Shavuot, Sukkot and the counting of the Omer. These are all recognizable occasions that add shape to the Jewish year. It’s amazing to me that there it is written in the Torah and it is also in my brain and my body. The Torah portion today describes the foundations of how my days, my weeks and my year takes shape. I eat matzah on Pesach or I fast on Yom Kippur or I light candles on Friday night. We are the people who do these things. We’ve been doing these things for thousands of years. They call us Jews. But things move on and there are now festivals that aren’t mentioned in the bible. Like Lag Ba Omer which is only mentioned in the 12th century. The earliest reference to Lag Ba Omer is by Isaac ben Dorbolo (12th century, northern France), so it’s quite a modern innovation. As a child, I have vague memories of lag ba omer, spent climbing on the mountain where we lived. We melted marshmallows over a fire, and we made bows and arrows. But that was in South Africa in the 60’s, and lag ba omer is not part of my calendar anymore. In Israel, for many Charedi Jews, Lag B'Omer has become a day of pilgrimage to the tomb of Rabbi Shimon Bar Yochei in the Galilee town of Meiron. Apparently, they visit Meiron in their thousands where they dance, pray and celebrate Rabbi Shimon Bar Yochei who revealed the secrets of the Zohar, the book of the kabbalah. Yesterday, there was a stampede in Meiron, and 45 men and boys died there while trying to emerge from the Marquee where they were celebrating. Although I am not like the people who were there, I am in mourning for the part of my family that was. Being a woman, it wasn’t my party, and being a Litvak from South Africa, I’m not a follower of kabbalah, but I do love the story of Shimon Bar Yochei from the Talmud. This is it: Rabbi Shimon and his son were hiding from the Romans. They went and they hid in a cave. A miracle occurred and a carob tree was created for them as well as a spring of water. They would remove their clothes and sit covered in sand up to their necks. They would study Torah all day in that manner. At the time of prayer, they would dress, cover themselves, and pray, and they would again remove their clothes afterward so that they would not become tattered. They sat in the cave for twelve years. Then they emerged from the cave and saw ordinary people who were plowing and sowing. Rabbi Shimon bar Yoḥai said: These people abandon eternal life of Torah study and engage in temporal life for their own sustenance. The Gemara says that every person to whom Rabbi Shimon and his son directed their eyes was immediately burned. A Divine Voice said to them: Did you emerge from the cave in order to destroy My world? Return to your cave. They again went and sat there in the cave for another twelve months. This time the father had learned his lesson. Although the son had not. Everywhere that the son would burn with his judgy fiery laser beam stare, the father would heal. I love this story because says we can’t live in a cave forever. We need to leave it at some stage and start engaging in the real world with all its imperfections. But it also describes a situation where not everyone is up to that generosity of spirit. The father can, but the son cannot, but that’s the real world too. And for those of us that can, our job for ever and ever will be to heal the damage done by those who cannot show that generosity of spirit.

Sukkot 2020

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We read today in Leviticus 23 ‘you shall live in booths, seven days; all citizens in Israel shall live in booths, in order than future generations may know that I made the Israelite people live in booths when I brought them out of the land of Egypt. I am the Lord your God’

And so, it was that thousands and thousands of years later, far away in Cape Town, my parents enacted this ritual for us where we built and decorated our Sukkah and ate some of our meals there.

It was a radical exercise in imagination so that my brother, sister and I would know what God did for us when we left Egypt. 

Our Sukkah had a view of the Atlantic ocean in front of it, and by day we could see the blue sky through the Schach.  My parents attached bedsheets to a wooden gazebo, and we decorated it with drawings and cards, and we hung fruit from the beams above. It was fun.  My grandparents came for supper and we invited our friends to eat with us too. In old photos, I can see we are wearing jumpers and coats, so it clearly wasn’t peak summer, but October in Cape Town is generally dry and not too cold.

It seems like a very different experience sitting in the Sukkah in the Northern hemisphere. For one thing, it’s often raining this time of the year.

It’s amazing to me that the main mood of Sukkot is halachically mandated as joy.  We’ve just come out of Yom Kippur where we deprive ourselves, do a lot of chest thumping about how much we need to improve our ways; and this is what I usually associate with Jewish moods. Joy, not so much.

But in fact, joy is what is required on Sukkot.

Rambam, or Maimonides, born in 1135 in Córdoba in Southern Spain writes in his great halachic code, the Mishnah Torah: ‘During Sukkot one is obligated to be joyful and of good heart, he, his children, his wife, the members of his household and all who accompany him…

Rambam goes on to say that all of those people should have joy in their own way.

Kol echad keraooy lo.

He gives some examples of what this means. He says the children should get yummy snacks. The woman should be given pretty dresses and jewellery. Men should eat meat and wine. So far, so good.  

But then even Rambam gets all heavy on us again.

He says: “When one eats and drinks, one must also feed the stranger, the orphan, the widow and other unfortunate paupers. But one who locks the doors of his courtyard and eat and drinks with his children and wife but does not feed the poor and the embittered soul—this is not the joy of a mitzvah, but the joy of his belly.”

Although we can have fun and we need not deprive ourselves, joy for us must mean the joy of helping the vulnerable.

So, a generosity of spirit, of hospitality and inclusion is baked into the festival of Sukkot at this stage.

The Zohar takes it to another level. It introduces the concept of inviting seven special ushpizin, the Aramaic word for lodger or guest to your Sukkah. It is another exercise of radical imagination, as these guests are not the demanding and hungry real-life needy people that Rambam mandates.  They are not living gerim, orphans and widows. They are our deceased male ancestors, Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, Moses, Aaron, Joseph and David.

Each of these special guests brings an aspect of divine as the spiritual focus of the seven days of Sukkot. Each day, one of the seven takes a turn to lead the others. For example, on day one, Abraham leads with chesed or lovingkindess, then Isaac leads with Gevurah or power, then we have one for Tifferet for splendour, one for nezach or eternity, one for hod or glory, one for yesod or foundation and the last one, David for malchut or kingship.

We say a long and special prayer for the Ushpizin: ‘Enter exalted Holy guests, enter Holy Patriarchs, to be seated in the shade of exalted faithfulness in the shade of the Holy one Blessed be he’

There’s a footnote under that prayer in my Arts Scroll machzor that says: ‘portions of food that would go to these guests should be distributed among the poor, preferably as guests in one’s own sukkah.’

I knew nothing about this when I grew up in South Africa, but I love the proliferation of Ushpizin.  Many of these collections of dignitaries become posters that you can use to decorate your Sukkah. I’ve seen great Chabad rabbis, Jewish Matriarchs versions and portrayals of International artists co-operatives. They are all fabulous. But none of them would be my choice.

Of course, in real life I can only invite another five people who must be the ger, the orphan, the widow, the needy and one more with an imbittered soul. But in the sukkah of my imagination I can invite whoever I like.  So, this is who I’d like to share a meal with…

My first choice is Maimonides for his Lovingkindness.

My choice for Gevurah is my grandmother who taught me strength through bending.

I choose Mendelsohn for his splendorous piano concertos

For nezach or eternity, I want to invite my entire family many of whom are here today

Representing hod or glory, I would like to invite all of you here, my holy Zoom community.

For yesod or foundation, I’d like to invite my friends from wherever they live now in the world

and the last one, for malchut or kingship I want to invite my rabbis and teachers, past and present.  

In my imaginary sukkah, the sun is shining, and we are eating food that Yotam Ottolenghi cooked

In my imagination, we are all in our own ways, joyful and of good heart.

In my imagination, we are all together.

Shabbat shalom and wishing you a very chag sameach.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

  

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Va-ethannan

I said this aloud yesterday, 02/08/20 on Shabbat Nachamu in real life shul - Assif minyan:

I had a professor at UCL who would do a Talmud shiur once a week. We were studying a section about idol worship. He was not one for musing but one day he mused that he would love to go back in time and see what idol worshippers looked like then.  I thought to myself, well, Professor, you can just look at me now if you want to see an occasional idol worshipper. And I can’t speak for everyone in the class, but I bet you they are occasionally idol worshippers too. We’re not all going round kissing crucifixes and throwing stones at a statue of Merculis, because there are many less visible forms of idol worship available to us.

Speaking personally, it’s very difficult to remember that there is nothing else besides God. Nearly 100% of the time, I walk around feeling separate from the whole, and in my own little head, thinking about my own little experience. I separate myself from the unity of everything that is God by caring more about Israel than I do about most countries in the world. I separate myself by loving my children more than I do all the children in the world. I worry about my own personal future and although I know I shouldn’t, I fret about my past.

I’m willing to bet you do too.

Today we learn the commandment that forbids idol worship.

    It says: ‘You shall not bow down to them and serve them, for I the lord your god is a jealous god visiting the guilt of the parents upon the children upon the third and fourth generation of those who reject me, but showing kindness to the thousandth generation of those who love me and keep my commandments.’

Idolatry is one of the Ten Commandments that we read today, and it’s quite high up on the list.  

For Maimonides, idolatry is particularly problematic.  That’s because he’s all about the transcendent (God above matter) and immanent (god in matter) unity of God. The God he prays to is the Ein Od god. His God is all inclusive of what we experience as the good, the bad and the ugly. I imagine he truly understands the radical statement that we read in today’s parashah in verse 39

 

 

Know this day, and consider it in your heart, that the Lord, He is God in heaven above, and upon the earth beneath: there is nothing else.

The JPS translation for Hasheyvota el levavecha is  Keep in mind.

Or you could say settle it or put it in your heart.

That’s why idol worship is such an issue for Rambam. Because to say there is a separate form of god in any form is to misunderstand the infinite vastness of the project. It’s an either-or proposition. Either God is everything. Or there are  bits of things in our world with god and bits without. If we pray to the idol as god, we are understanding that the non-idol things in the world are not god, which is abhorrent to Maimonides.

Granted Rambam is a genius that knows the Truth with a capital T, so what do the rest of us do? Us that weren’t at Sinai ourselves and aren’t so enlightened as Rambam? 

The Torah today tells us what to do. We must brainwash ourselves and our children of this truth and these instructions, when we stay home and when go out into the world, when we lie down and when we get up, we must bind them a sign on our hand and let them serve as a symbol on our heads etc So that even when we’re not feeling it, we can refer to it.

So that we can do goodness and fairness, even when we’re not feeling the love   

That’s why it says in verse 39: ‘Know this day, and settle it in your heart, that the Lord, He is God in heaven above, and upon the earth beneath: there is nothing else.

It’s the difference between knowing better and doing better. Knowing something is true happens once. Keeping in mind takes a lot of ongoing work.

And if you need some help with the knowing God part, I came across this useful teaching from the sixth Lubavitcher Rebbe Rabbi Yosef Yitchak.  He is wondering about the commandment to love God and he says this:

The commandment to love God lies in the previous verse, “Hear O Israel . . .” The Hebrew word shema (“hear”) also means “comprehend.” The Torah is commanding a person to study, comprehend and reflect upon the oneness of God. Because it is the nature of the mind to rule the heart, such contemplation will inevitably lead to a love of G‑d.

If one contemplates deeply and yet is still not excited with a love of G‑d, this is only because he has not sufficiently refined and purified himself of the things which stifle his capacity to sense and relate to the divine.

Aside from this, such contemplation by the mind will always result in a feeling of love.

I would like to add though that besides purifying myself of the things that stifle my capacity to sense and relate to god, I also need to give myself a break, to slow down and to accept that I am just human and doing the best I can.  

I can be confident that on the days that I’m not feeling the love, I can still play by the rules.

Emor Dvar Torah

I said this on Zoom Shabbat on 09/05/2020

A month ago, when I noticed that Michael Isaacs was organising a rota to do the leyning (singing from the Torah), I wrote him an email, where I said that I had only leyned once before seven years ago at my daughter’s bat mitzvah. I wrote, ‘Could you give me something to leyn that is short and about a month in the future so that I can have a daily practise of a thing’

But honestly when I volunteered, I never imagined that I wouldn’t be leyning in shul in a familiar place with familiar faces, with all of you, my holy congregation.

And so it was that I sat on my bed for a month, listening to a recording of Claire’s voice on my phone trying to follow along to learn to leyn the words of this week’s Parasha. Parashat Emor.  I was given chamishi to do because it is short and because it has many familiar words. It describes the laws of Yom Kippur.  I practised and I practised:

 אַ֡ךְ בֶּעָשׂ֣וֹר לַחֹדֶשׁ֩ הַשְּׁבִיעִ֨י הַזֶּ֜ה י֧וֹם הַכִּפֻּרִ֣ים ה֗וּא מִֽקְרָא־קֹ֙דֶשׁ֙ יִהְיֶ֣ה לָכֶ֔ם וְעִנִּיתֶ֖ם אֶת־נַפְשֹׁתֵיכֶ֑ם וְהִקְרַבְתֶּ֥ם אִשֶּׁ֖ה לַיהוָֽה׃

 

“Mark, the tenth day of this seventh month is the Day of Atonement. It shall be a sacred occasion for you (plural) you shall practice self-denial, and you shall bring an offering by fire to the LORD” Leviticus 23:27

 

It goes on to say that we must do no work on this day and that this an everlasting law for your descendants in all your dwelling places.

I get goose bumps when I read that now as I sit in my dwelling place. Yom Kippur has been a law from then until now, until me. Now we pray in place of fire-offerings, but we keep all the rest of the laws of Yom Kippur and we've been keeping them for over two thousand years. There’s something miraculous in that. Generations of people have experienced Yom Kippur from then until now.  How many orbits has the earth made with our people experiencing Yom Kippur every time? We are the people who keep Yom Kippur, come what may. 

Now I wouldn't consider not starting my fast with soup, chicken and potatoes, jelly and tinned fruit, as my mother has always done.  
I can’t imagine not going to shul for Kol Nidrei with all the people in my beloved community wearing white clothes and canvas shoes.
I can’t imagine not signing up for stewarding inside so I can still see my friends, and not miss any of the davening.
I can’t imagine a Yom Kippur without having a chat with Bruce and Oren and Pam and Jeanie during the break.
I can’t imagine not sitting alone during Neila and then my kids coming to find me and then they sit next to me, as we go through the last hour together.
I can’t imagine not kneeling and standing up again with everyone during the service.
I can’t imagine not crying along with everyone else on the last Avinu Malceinu.
I can’t imagine not ending my fast with a slice of sister's sponge cake, surrounded by my whole family, all of us hungry, exhausted and clamouring for food.

But I might have to.

We are now in the time of corona, a place that none of us living today have experienced before. So far, we know what Zoom Pesach looks like, and Zoom Havdalah and for us today, Zoom Shabbat.

But what will we be doing on the evening of September 27 until the evening of September 28 in 2020? How will Yom Kippur be different this year? How will we keep the laws of Yom Kippur specified in this week’s parasha? So much has changed in the last two months. My heart sinks when I think that this will have to change too.

As we learn in Emor, the rules of Yom Kippur are simple. We have to practise self- denial and we must not work. We have to make a fire offering to God, and we have to make this day of Atonement, a sacred occasion.

The laws of Yom Kippur are introduced with a tiny word. The word is Ach. It’s a small word but it punches above its weight. I wouldn't have ordinarily noticed that word except I had was having to sing it aloud over and over again. There is a note called a pazer over it. My brother in law David, who is an experienced leyner, told me that the pazer is used to prolong a word significantly. It places strong emphasis on the meaning of the word. Pazer means distribute or disseminate or spread out. This relates to the high number of notes in its melody.  

Sefaria translates Ach as 'mark', as in 'mark my words'. But that's not how Rashi translates it. He sees it as a word of exclusion, like 'only'.  Rashi says the word Ach or Only teaches us that Yom Kippur ONLY works for those who repent.

Or opposite to this meaning, a baraita in Massechet Shavuot is quoted, which says the verse goes on to say Yom Kippurim hu as in It is. This additional emphasis on it is serves to teach us that the day atones in any case.  This means the day itself atones, whether we repent or not.  The day itself does the work on us. Just by being alive on the tenth day of the seventh month, they day itself has the power to change us.

That’s what we can learn from Corona.

We can let ourselves be changed by the day. Not to be scared of change, but rather to understand it and be present to the opportunities it offers us in every moment. Things change all the time. Generations come and go. The Temple is built and destroyed, built and destroyed. The printing press is invented. Genocide happens. The Internet is invented. Global warming changes everything.

The pazer on the word Ach or only, reminds us that while it looks like only one thing is possible, in fact, a multitude of possibilities are spread out for us.

So, while I notice I am resisting change to how we do Yom Kippur, I remind myself anything is possible. The day itself has the power to change us. Even if we do nothing at all on the tenth day of the seventh month this year, the day itself will make atonement for us. 

Next year, when Yom Kippur comes around, the world will have changed, and we will have changed too. But not too much. Please God, we will all be with one another again to experience it together.   

Korach

I said this out loud on 6 July 2019, on Shabbat morning at Ha Kol Olin, London: 

We read today that Korach and other aggrieved members of the community feel left out.  So they combine against Moses and Aaron and say to them You have gone too far.  All of the community are holy, all of them.  So why do you raise yourself above the Lord’s congregation? And then the Korach rebels are all sucked into the earth together with their entire households. The torah says. ‘They went down alive into Sheol, with all that belonged to them and they vanished from the midst of the congregation.’

These are my issues.

I have a problem that the children of Korach were included in the punishment of their fathers.  Secondly I believe like Korach that all people in the community are holy.  In fact I believe that all people are holy.  So when the high priest wears his sign on his forehead that says Holy to God, I always think, yes, mate, you’re holy because you’ve got a sign on your head but really in reality all people are equally holy to god. In my theology God doesn’t bunch more in some people than in others.  

But that’s on the plain of the ideal.

In real life, society works more peacefully when there is authority and clear leadership.  That’s what makes the second part of Korach’s statement more problematic. He says why do you raise yourself above the Lord’s congregation.  Why indeed? There’s the problem right there for Moses.  It’s true that Moses and Aaron have raised themselves, but did it because they had too.  They had a huge task which was to free the slaves from Pharoah, keep them alive in the desert for 40 years and receive the Torah at Sinai and establish a new kind of society that is based on the rule of law for everyone, loving-kindness and justice.  Moses and Aaron had to steer a very large ship.  Try doing that without proper leadership.  The problem with Korach and his fellows was that they were complaining about the ascendancy of Moshe and Aaron, and complaining about the privileges of others instead of doing something constructive about it.  It was all ego driven and not service driven.

When we face existential issues, climate crisis for example, should we trade individual liberties for clear, ego-less leadership that first consults and then offers decisive action offering stability and ultimately survival?  

Next, why the terrible punishment for the children of Korach?

The Talmud in Sanhedrin 110 is particularly wonderful on this Parasha.  There are many interpretations given including Reish Lakish who says it teaches that one must not be obdurate in a quarrel and Rav who says it teaches that we should not be unyielding in disputes.

But the sweetest of the midrashim in the Talmud is this. It says the children of Korach didn’t die.  A Tanna taught: It has been said on the authority of our teacher: A place was set apart for them in the Gehenna, or a place was fortified for them in Gehenna where they sat and recited songs. Ve-amru  shira.

It comforts me to know that the children of Korach are still in Gehenna singing songs, and if we listen carefully we can still hear them.   

But it’s bittersweet, because they are underground and we are above, where on a day like this, we can still see our beautiful world.

Shabbat shalom

The Golden Age of Babylon

I said this in Assif yesterday 29 June 2019, as part of our learning series on Golden Ages in Jewish History. 

"The beginning and ends of Golden Ages are invisible to the people that live in them.  It’s only from far away can we see a moment when one age ends and another begins somewhere else. 

In fact, a Golden Age only looks golden from a distance. On the ground, people are dealing with in-fighting, jealousies, famines, droughts, persecutions and fall-out from battling empires.  On the ground, people are putting mezuzahs on their doors, going to shul, saying prayers, doing business, lighting Friday night candles, having Pesach Seders, paying taxes and raising their children. 

Then as now.

The only reason I am calling this period between the 4th century and the 10th century, in a place that is today called Iraq, a Golden Age, is because of what came out of it.  Cities with names like Sura, Nehardea, Pumbedita and Mehoza are dust today, but they once housed Jewish scholars who together created a glittering edifice that still stands.  It is a magnificent laboratory of thought that has no match in history.

Those named and unnamed scholars produced an exquisite and self-confident system called the Babylonian Talmud. And that is the tradition we live within today.

This Golden Age started as the best things must, with an end.  Once upon a time, in the 4rd century ACE, the Roman governors ended the powers of the Sanhedrin. (The Sanhedrin was the Jewish court and ruling body in Israel until that time).   So, because of Roman persecution, Israel which had until then controlled the Jewish calendar for the whole Jewish world, and had produced the mighty Mishnah and the Jerusalem Talmud declined, and Jewish centre of the world moved to Babylon.  

Babylonian Jews still faced Jerusalem when they prayed, but they considered their tradition superior to the traditions of their fellows living in Israel.   Top of the pile in Babylon was the Reish Galuta or Exilarch who was responsible for community-specific organizational tasks such as running courts, collecting taxes, providing financing for the Talmudic Yeshivot, and financial assistance to poor.  They were headed by the Rosh Metivta. The Yeshivot ran kallahs or study sessions for hundreds of people during two months of the year.  (I imagine they were like Limmud because they were very crowded)  These were led by the Rosh Kalla.  There were also judges who were called dayane di baba (Judges of the gate) because traditionally justice was meted out before the gates of the city.

There is a lovely piece of evidence for their way of life that lies unused today in our siddurs.   The yakum Purkan prayer was written in Babylon during this period.   I’m fond of it for what it says about the people who prayed for these things; what it says about who they are and what matters to them…

May salvation from heaven, with grace, loving-kindness, mercy, long life, ample sustenance, heavenly aid, health of body,  enlightenment from above, and a living and abiding children, that will not break with, nor neglect any of the words of the Torah, be granted unto the teachers and rabbis of the holy community, who are in the land of Israel and in the land of Babylon; unto the heads of the Kallahs, the Roshei Galuta, the heads of the Yeshivot, and the judges in the gates, and all their students, and all the students of their students…”

How can you not love people who pray for enlightenment from above? In the prayer, you can see the civic leaders that formed the centre of the Jewish world at the time.

But as we know, things fall apart and the centre does not hold. Around the 10th centuries the Golden Age of Babylon started to draw to a close.  The Babylonian community rich in scholarship and culture, no longer globally dominated Jewish life.  The centre of the Jewish world was splintering and rerouting from the Babylon to North Africa and Europe.   But the jewel produced in this period continued to shape what was to come.

The Babylonian Talmud and the means to study it and be changed by studying it, came to define what it meant to be Jewish by every generation, everywhere afterwards, whether they knew it or not. 

There is a story told by Abraham Ibn Daud in his Sefer ha-Kabbalah, written in 1161. It may not be literal but it is true.

It tells of a boat carrying four great Babylonian rabbis.  (In my mind they are each holding the whole Babylonian Talmud)  The boat is captured by a pirate.  They are each sold by the pirate to Jewish communities around the world– one in Kairouan in North Africa, one rabbi and his son, are ransomed in Cordova, Southern Spain and one in Alexandria, Egypt. The identity of the fourth captive and the place where he was redeemed is not stated. They all take with them the means to teach others what they have inherited from their Babylonian tradition.

They do their jobs well because today while there are only eight Jews left in Iraq, there are 15 million Babylonian Jews alive today, including all of us here.


Shabbat Shalom.

Yitro - what we leave out

One of the first things I ever learned in the Talmud was that 2000 years ago, when the Temple was still standing, the priests would recite daily prayers very similar to the prayers we still say today. In an unbroken line, our daily prayers still include the Shema and the Amidah. However, the priests had another part of their daily prayer, and that part was the Ten Commandments.  They would say the Shema, the Amidah and the Ten Commandments.  This makes a lot of sense as the Ten Commandments are the high point in our history at Sinai and they are an excellent executive summary. They are short, pithy and sensible.

However it was decided to take them out of the daily prayers because of Tar Omet Haminim. This translates as the grievances of the heretics. 

Their grievance was that only the Ten Commandments came directly from God and the rest came through Moses. So as not to show any favouritism to one section of the Torah over the other, they were left out of the daily prayers.

Unsurprisingly, the people didn’t like this decision. The Talmud (b.Berakhot 12a) reports many generations of people asking their rabbis (at this stage, not priests any more) to put back the Ten Commandments into the daily prayers. In Israel and later in Babylon, this request was turned down because of Tar Omet Haminim.

But the story doesn’t end there. One thousand years later, people have accepted that it isn’t in their daily prayers anymore, but they still feel there’s something special about the Ten Commandments.

So when they are read as part of the Torah reading, like yesterday in Parasha Yitro, people would stand up. (They did yesterday as well in HaKol Olin where I gave this dvar torah) People would read responsively and often the Ten Commandments would be included in the shul decoration.

We know that people would stand 1000 years ago because rabbis’ told them not to.  Maimonides writes that people should not give any status to the reading of the Ten Commandments such as standing when that portion is read in shul on Shabbat, He states that the custom found in some communities to stand during this part of the Torah reading should be discontinued (Teshuvot Ha Rambam 46)

To this day there is no clear and agreed halakha on the subject.  In Rabbinic Judaism, we can’t even agree on which part of the oral/written law was directly given by God to the people.  Was it the entire Oral/Written Torah? Was it just the Ten Commandments? Was it just the first sound of the Ten Commandments that the people heard?

In b.Makkot 23b and quoted by Maimonides in the Guide to the Perplexed, the part that was directly experienced was only the first two mitzvot of the Ten Commandments. These are: I am the Lord your God, and You shall have no other God’s before me. These commandments are not mediated by Moses because for the Rambam, these are the only mitzvot that can be fathomed by any intelligent monotheist, and need not be transmitted by Moses.

It comforts me to know that we are not the first generation to be bothered by the prayers. I like belonging to a long line and a rich tradition of people wanting things put back and left out. We’ve all got our personal grievances. We don’t like everything we get to hear and say. There are loads of sections in prayers that have bothered me at different times. (Parts of Aleinu, birkat hamazon, some of the Yom Kippur service) but I’m glad they are there to struggle with because what bothers me changes all the time. Nothing is perfect and neither should it be. It would be a pity in our desire for  perfect bubbles of pleasing thoughts that offend nobody ever, we end up only praying the lyrics of John Lennon’s Imagine. 

I like the feeling of power of the people despite the declarations of the rabbis. 

I like that we stand when we should sit, and weirdly we leave out the parts that are most precious to us.

The grievances of the heretics over 2000 years ago mean that the Ten Commandments are no longer said daily, but unlike those heretics who are long dead, we are still standing.