Reflecting on Judaism

    I recently wrote an essay entitled ‘Torah versus Halachah’ in which I argued, reasonably successfully if measured by the positive responses I received, that Torah Law and Halachah Law are not the same but often contradictory. The essay is posted on my website too. www.reflectingonjudaism.com
    The relationship between Torah Law and Halachah Law is explained in a letter posted by Rabbi Francis Nataf on his website. He is the Educational Director, David Cardozo Academy, of which Rabbi Natan Cardozo is the Dean. Rabbi Nataf wrote:-

    “The pristine Divine Torah as given to Moshe, is actually sparse in its daily demands upon us. It only legislates a few blessings each day. It tells men to put on Tefilin and gives some general guidelines for our behaviour. It prohibits some situations, most of which we rarely encounter. In addition, it tells us to keep Shabbat and Yom Tov, which to transgress on a Torah level, is not uncomplicated. The vast majority of our religious behaviour, however, is rabbinic in origin. Most of our prayers and blessings were ordained by the rabbis. Kashrut and especially Shabbat are full of rabbinic emendation, which makes them quite demanding. What we do when we mourn and when we get married is almost entirely rabbinic. The picture that emerges is that the rabbis had a conscious plan in expanding the Torah into a system that makes constant demands on our daily and weekly schedules”

    To the average Jewish ‘Man-in-the-street’, our laws fall into one of these two categories, Torah Law or Rabbinic (Halachah) Law. There is a third category, not often mentioned, followed by religious and supposedly learned  people, which argues, ”I know that what I am about to do is against Torah Law, I also know that it is against Halachah Law but I am going to do it anyway”. Let me illustrate.

    Part of a course that I recently attended included visits to notable places in Israel.  Included in the list was ‘King David’s tomb’ in Jerusalem. It is widely accepted that King David is not buried there. He is believed to be buried in David’s City but the pretence continues. However, the rabbis have made the tomb area into a synagogue. They allow visitors to pray over the tomb, maybe they speak to the interred. They have separated men from women and have allowed schnorrers free rein. I asked the guide, ‘if the tomb does not contain the remains of King David it might well contain the remains of ‘who knows whom’. How comes that rabbis and others are praying to, or speaking to, an unknown deceased, who might, for all we know, have been a local non-Jewish Chief Priest? The reply was, ‘they are following tradition’.

    We then visited the cemetery at Zafat. It is quite enormous, reaching from its heights to ground level, by way of hundreds of steps. Here the atmosphere was peaceful, and again there were many people, including apparently some very religious people, praying at the graves of relatives, or speaking to past generations, but this cemetery has additional phenomena. There are trees which have all kinds of cloth material items tied around them; clothes, towels, carpets, et al. I asked the reason for this and was told that since the cemetery was a holy place, people came to pray at the side of their chosen grave, ask its occupant to intervene and provide a solution to whatever problem they have. If their mission eventually proves successful, they would cut a piece of their cloth which, they believe, had absorbed some of the holiness of the cemetery, make it into a charm and wear it around their neck.

    We followed with a visit to the tomb of Simeon Bar Yachai at Meron. This cemetery contains not only the tomb of Simeon but also the tombs of Hillel and Shamai. All three were great rabbis of the Talmudic period but Hillel and Shamai were the greater of the three. Originally, people went to pray, or make requests, mainly at the tombs only of Hilllel and Shamai. But following the expulsion of the Jews from Spain, those who came to Palestine transferred their allegiance to Simeon. This was because Simeon is reputed to have written the Zohar. This book had been accepted by the Jews of Spain to be his genuine mystical writings, so it is at his tomb that they worship. It is now widely accepted that in fact Simeon did not write the Zohar. It was written in the 13th Century by a Kabbalist, Moses de Leon. This was confirmed by de Leon’s widow and by further research on its contents, which showed that much of it refer to places outside Palestine, and to persons who lived, if they existed at all, after the time of Simeon.  .

    For a supposedly holy place the atmosphere at Meron was disgraceful with dozens of ‘schnorrers’ competing and shouting aloud for charity. Wherever one went one was accosted by them. The atmosphere was undignified and the cemetery resembled more a market than a cemetery.

    Much of the activities at these cemeteries are contrary to Torah Law. There is no doubt that the Torah strongly prohibits speaking to the dead. Consultation with the dead is repeatedly and strictly forbidden and its practitioners, it says, are to be executed by stoning.  For example:-

    Leviticus. 19 v 31. Turn you not unto the ghosts nor unto familiar spirits; seek them not out to be defiled by them. I am the Lord your God.

    Leviticus. 20 v 6. And the soul that turneth unto the ghosts and unto the familiar spirits, to go astray after them; I will even set My face against that soul, and I will cut him off from among his people.

    Deut.  18. V 10/11. There should not be found among you anyone that maketh his son or his daughter to consult a “……………………………..“ghost or a familiar spirit or a necromancer.

    Some bible commentators give reasons for these commands. Their understanding is that because many of the tribes living at the time of the Exodus, believed in, and practiced, such rites, the Torah did not want the Israelite to emulate them. These commands are quite explicit and their meaning quite clear. Let us consider how the prohibition is being enforced.

    The origins of the customs and beliefs associated with the dead take a bit of unravelling. From my readings it would appear that the priests, the forerunners of the Sadducees, totally rejected the concept of an afterlife. Since they were the group appointed by the Torah to be the teachers of Judaism, and in fact they were our teacher until circa 150 BCE, much reliance must be put on their interpretation.  When the Pharisees, the forerunners of the rabbis, took over the spiritual leadership they introduced the new concept, taken from the Babylonians, the concept of an afterlife. Much later, sometime during the Middle Ages, the custom of reciting the Mourners Kaddish and the lighting of personal yartzeit candles was introduced.  In our early history kaddish was said only by the reader at the end of prayers whilst yartzeit was reserved for special outstanding personalities.  

    Many of these customs are harmless. Kaddish, yartzeit candles and visits to cemeteries help us remember, honour and respect our ancestors, and as far as I was able to ascertain, they are not forbidden by the Torah. In fact they may have a useful bye-product in so far as they help keep within the fold many who would otherwise have lost touch with it.  But speaking to the dead, asking for the dead’s intervention is, as I have shown, in violation of Torah commands. Many consider such practice idolatrous  

    I shared my experience with a rabbi friend. He replied:-You are correct. People use these burial sites for raising funds and they and we know that this is not King David's tomb but it is, at worst, a symbolic area which gives people an opportunity to pray. Finally, the halachah will agree with you that one does not speak to the dead. Instead we pray at the grave because it is holy. Again, here I am not consistent since there are those who do pray to the dead but this should not be done.

    There is one aspect where I would respectfully disagree with my rabbi friend.  Cemeteries in our early texts were not considered to be holy. The Talmud enumerates those things that should be considered holy but cemeteries and shrines were not included in the list. It is suggested that the custom was introduced at a later stage, copying the non-Jews.

    By way of explaining why people speak to the dead my rabbi friend continued, I can give other cases where there is no Torah basis. But that is also our strength. Changes took place and they are accepted otherwise we would long have disappeared.’ This explanation may be true. But does it not depend on whether the changes are to the actual Torah Law or whether the changes are just the adding of customs to it?

    During the hundreds of rabbis’ sermons and addresses I have listened to over the years, the theme has been that we have survived as a people only because we kept Torah Laws, not because we changed them, except of course in times of emergency, when in any event any change should be reversed when the emergency passes.

    This rabbi’s reprimand is mild compared to that of the late Chief Rabbi Jakobovits. According to him one should not petition even God, let alone petition the dead.  

    The Emeritus Chief Rabbi, Lord Jakobovits, in the foreword to the then new Singers Prayer Book, contemplates “The Jewish idea of prayer” and disapproves of petitional prayers.  He wrote “What purpose can be served by formulating our pleas to God?  Does the all-knowing God, who knows our needs better than we do, require their articulation of what we feel in our hearts?  Still more difficult theologically, how can we hope by prayer to change His will?  Our very belief in the efficacy of our petitions would seem to challenge God’s immutability, and (they) even question His justice, since we should assume that whatever fate He decrees for man is essentially just; why, therefore, do we seek to reverse it?” “But such questions are based on a false, indeed pagan, understanding of prayer as a means of pacifying and propitiating the deity and thus of earning its favours.  It was against these perverse notions that the Hebrew Prophets directed their denunciations so fiercely when they fulminated against the heathen form of sacrifices, the original form of worship later replaced by prayer.” “Like sacrifices, prayer is intended to change man not God.  Its purpose is to cultivate a contrite heart, to promote feelings of humility and inadequacy in man, whilst encouraging reliance on Divine assistance.  Through prayer, the worshipper becomes chastened, gains moral strength and intensifies the quest of spirituality, thereby turning into a person worthy of response to his pleas.”

    Is it not surprising that whilst rabbis announce prohibitions on all sorts of matters from the pulpit, sometimes on trivial matters, I have never yet heard a sermon in which people are advised not to speak to the dead even though it is known to be common practise. If lay persons are not taught that it is wrong how are they supposed to know? More surprisingly, there are some groups of Jews, notably among the haredim, who positively encourage their followers to undertake long journeys in order to speak at the grave of their dead rebbe, asking him to intervene with God on their behalf.

    But why travel thousands of miles to speak over the rebbe’s grave? Why not send him a fax? The following is an article which I found on Google and which I have abbreviated.  

Friday, June 23, 1995

Rebbe’s gravesite draws 1,000 prayers each day—by fax

by DEBRA NUSSBAUM COHEN, Jewish Telegraphic Agency

NEW YORK -- It does not take long to realize that this is not just any cemetery. A billboard greets approaching visitors who are coming to pray where the Lubavitcher rebbe is buried.

    Visitors write down their requests for heavenly intercession (kivitlach) on the unlined paper provided, pick up a candle to light at the grave and walk through the kitchen, out the back door and through the postage stamp-sized backyard.  

    Inside the house, two industrial-strength Ricoh fax machines churn out a constant stream of requests for blessings from people who are ill, down on their luck or considering marriage. And every hour or so, Rabbi Abba Refson pulls a thick sheaf of them off the machines to take them to the rebbe's grave, where he reads them and places them on top of the pile of notes. The pile is a foot thick, evenly blanketing the 8-foot-square area of the grave site.

    All told, about 1,000 faxes come in each day, each from someone hoping that the rebbe's spirit will intercede on his or her behalf in heaven, says Refson kept busy greeting visitors and answering the incoming calls on the constantly ringing phone. He writes down the requests for blessings that callers from around the world dictate, and brings them to the grave. There, the requests sent from afar as well as those brought by visitors pile up. Three times a week, the notes are collected from the grave site and burned in a corner of the cemetery.

    As of March, messages also were being accepted from the worldwide Internet computer network (E-mail address: ohel@lubavitch.chabad.org). Faxes are being sent to the gravesite by dialing (718) 423-4444. According to Zalman Shmotkin, an aide at Lubavitcher headquarters, Chabadniks believe their deceased rebbe's spirit hovers over the gravesite and that his spiritual interaction with his followers increases after his death.
 But not all Lubavitchers are focused on just the rebbe's reported powers to give blessings. Many believe the rebbe is the Messiah who will return to redeem Israel. "Like Moshe Rabainu [Moses] went up the mountain, the rebbe arose to heaven in a body while he was alive," says Rabbi Zimroni Tzik, a Lubavitcher activist in Bat Yam, Israel.

Engler Anderson of the Philadelphia Jewish Exponent contributed to this story.

    If such religious leaders, who often consider themselves and are sometimes considered by others to be very pious, believe that they have the privilege of disregarding an explicit Torah Law, why cannot we, who are sometimes deemed less pious, not claim the same privilege when it suits us? But of course we shouldn’t.

    It is very sad when one looks around and observes the multifarious practices and sects within Judaism, which often results in dividing us as a people. If my analysis as set out in my various essays is correct, I suggest we see a religion where only a few concepts, such as Shabbat and Kashrut are accepted by most, leaving many areas where there are many serious theological problems. These problems are often caused within a sect that considers its leader to be divinely inspired or within normative Judaism because many rabbis are reluctant to speak their mind and are influenced by peer pressure.

    All of this prompts a question. Although the Torah forbids speaking to the dead, it is an activity obviously needed by many; observant Jews, non-observant Jews, knowledgeable Jews, simple Jews, not to mention Non-Jews. We live in a rough, tough world with hundreds of personal tragedies occurring each week; The loss of a child, a mud slide that wipes out a village, a passenger plane crash, flooding or whatever. The families of those victims often have no one who can really, adequately comfort them. They have a problem, serious for them, and feel that that the only comfort they might get is by speaking to a famous departed rabbi or to the spirit of their departed relative. What harm does this do?  Why does the Torah prohibit it so strongly?

April 2010

Afterthoughts

    I must admit that I, personally, am not much bothered whether or not people speak to the dead. What upset me very much was to see persons, equally misguided, wanting to ‘help’ them or perhaps charlatans, preying on their weaknesses. It also made me reflect on the disparity between rabbis’ treatment of this Torah prohibition and their treatment of questionable rabbinic prohibitions. For example:-

    Some years ago I wrote to a rabbi friend and reminded him that when electricity was first invented, some hundred years ago, its use was permitted on Shabbat. At that time it could have been for domestic purposes only. I asked him why it was subsequently forbidden, following what discussion and between whom? He replied, and you will see that the reasons he quoted would not have applied 100 years ago, they are post-facto rationalisations:-
    “It is true that when electricity first appeared there was a debate and some Western
European rabbis were inclined to permit it. The Eastern Europeans were unanimous in their
opposition. The only debate was whether the ban derived from 'fire' or from 'building' a circuit. However over the past 100 hundred years not one major halachic authority has allowed it.

    The unspoken agenda is that electricity in one form or another is behind radios, television, cinemas, telephones and all the trappings of modern society that Shabbat should be giving one a break from, and creating a different kind of atmosphere.”
    This reply confirms that in the early days of electricity some rabbis ruled that an electric light could be turned on during Shabbat whilst others disagreed. Other rabbis ruled against the turning on a light on Shabbat, giving the reason ‘that it was like lighting a fire’ whilst still others also ruled against it, but giving a different reason, ‘that it was like building a circuit’. To my mind it suggests that the prohibition is a rabbinic interpretation of Torah Law, what my rabbi friend called ‘The unspoken agenda’. There was no agreement as to the reason for the prohibition.
    The rabbis turn a blind eye to, and sometimes participate in, the breaking of a Torah prohibition, i.e. talking to the dead and there is rarely, if ever, any adverse reaction. But if a synagogue warden was known to turn on electric lights on Shabbat, a breach only of a questionable rabbinic interpretation, in many synagogues he would be immediately dismissed.  Where’s the logic?
   

April 2010.