Mechon Hadar Guest

Keynote Address by Rabbi Shai Held
D'var Torah by Shira Billet
 

Keynote Address
Rabbi Shai Held

I
Three summers ago I stood before many of you and invoked the words of Rabbi Abraham Isaac Kook:  HaHalomot HaGedolim Yesod HaOlam Hem—the great dreams are the foundation of the world.  As Jews, we are not permitted to accept the world as it is, but must dream with God of the world as it could be—and must commit, as part of God’s covenant with the Jewish people, to try and move the world a little bit closer to that dream. 

There are many dreams involved in the building of Yeshivat Hadar, some large and some, frankly, larger.  We wanted to start by creating the first-ever full-time egalitarian yeshiva in the Western hemisphere, and I’m proud to say that we have now done it, although it is crucial to emphasize that in many ways we are only getting started.  Let me say a few words about the vision that brought this community of learning into being and that animates it each day.

First: we want to create an institution of learning that is truly intellectually open, that takes secular culture and Western philosophy and academic Jewish studies seriously, but never forgets that it is, first and last, a religious institution, a Mekom Torah.

Second: we want to build a community that is unapologetically egalitarian, that is committed to women and men expressing themselves fully in both Torah and Tefillah, but without thereby diluting religious passion.  I should add: egalitarian Judaism not as a halfway house towards presumably more serious and authentic versions of Judaism, nor, conversely, as a way-station on the road towards ultimate assimilation, but rather egalitarianism as an authentic and unapologetic understanding of what it means to take Tzelem Elohim seriously in the modern world.

Third: we seek to create a culture that embodies the simple fact, too often forgotten in Jewish life, that Judaism is not a spectator sport, and that it cannot ultimately be lived vicariously.  In a verse no doubt familiar to many of you, Sefer Devarim describes the Torah as “Morashah Kehilat Ya’akov”—a heritage for the whole house of Jacob.  And yet many Jews (most Jews, in fact)-- even many very serious, passionate, and committed Jews—do not have meaningful access to their birthright.  Amazingly, and unconscionably, young Jews who have sought a place to go and learn Torah, to become literate and knowledgeable Jews, and to do so without doing it professionally, have not had anywhere to go.  The primary mission of Yeshivat Hadar is to fill that enormous hole in Jewish life, to give the beauty and joy of Torah back to a generation of Jews.

II
I’d like to turn your attention to a strange and startling statement made by R. Hinnena Bar Pappa in Vayikra Rabbah: 

“Im Shimartem et HaTorah, Ma’aleh Ani Aleichem Ke’ilu She-Atem Osin Atzmechem”
“God said to the Jewish people:  If you keep the Torah, I will consider it as if you are creating yourselves.”

In other words, Rav Hinnena is saying, engaging with Torah is, at the deepest level, an act of self-creation, or, perhaps better, of self-cultivation.  But here is the question:  what kind of selves do we seek to create through Torah?  If we can answer this question, we will have gone a long way towards understanding the spiritual project of Torah, and hence the Halom HaGadol, the great dream, of Yeshivat Hadar. 

Let’s turn for a moment to a stunning line in Midrash Sifre, which asks:

Is it your desire to know the One who spoke the world into being?  Study Aggada-- Midrash, theology-- and you’ll come to know God.  The Hebrew word is lehakir, suggesting not philosophical knowledge but relational knowledge, knowing someone rather than something, intimacy and familiarity rather than cognition.

You might think that the text would end here—indeed, in many ways, it would be easier and safer for us if it did.  But it does not.

Let me read the text again, this time in full:

Is it your desire to know the One who spoke the world into being?  Study Aggada and you’ll come to know God. “Umidabek BiDerakhav”—and cleave to God’s ways.  What is “cleaving to God’s ways” in Rabbinic sources?  As the students in Yeshivat Hadar studied last week, the Rabbis are univocal—to walk in God’s ways is to live a life of Hesed, of love manifested as kindness, as the knowledge of God manifested in compassion for others.

Now, to be clear:  Chazal, Our Sages, are not saying that once I finish learning I should throw in some Hesed for good measure, as a kind of parperet, dessert, or extracurricular commitment.  Rather, they are saying something truly profound, and foundational to the work real and substantive Jewish education seeks to do:  they are saying that when Torah is studied properly—that is, with heart and not just mind, with vulnerability and presence rather than with cold formalism or excessive academic distance--- then it will lead ineluctably to a life of Hesed, of love manifested as kindness.

But why rely on the Rabbis alone?

Consider the prophet Jeremiah reflecting on the meaning of the good life, and you’ll find a remarkably parallel structure.

Let not the wise person glory in his wisdom;
Let not the strong man glory in his strength;
Let not the rich person glory in her wealth.
But only in this should one glory:
In his earnest to devotion to Me [that is, God]

As in Midrash Sifre, one can imagine the prophet stopping here.  But he doesn’t, because true learning, knowledge, and even devotion never stop here.

Let’s return to the text:

“For I the Lord act with kindness,
Justice and equity in the world;
For in these I delight, says the Lord”

Once again:  the knowledge of God culminates in the performance of Hesed, in love and kindness.  This passage from Jeremiah, by the way, is one of the centerpieces of the Rambam’s theology—it leads him to insist that even the contemplative philosopher, when she contemplates God, must be drawn to a life of Hesed.  It’s not for naught that in the Talmud Rav Huna states (AZ 17b) that one who concerns himself only with Torah is as one who has no God (domeh ke-mi she-ein lo elo’ah).  What he means is, I would suggest, is that one who studies Torah without being led by it to a develop a more capacious heart, a deeper sense of compassion, a greater commitment to presence in the face of human pain and suffering, has in fact not yet studied Torah at all, and cannot be said to truly know God.

Now, I want to be very careful here, and prevent being misunderstood.  Judaism dreams of a world in which 1) human dignity is real, and 2) the presence of God is manifest.  It is tempting to many moderns, and some very important and visionary Jewish thinkers (Hermann Cohen primary among them) have not been able to resist the temptation, to collapse the second into the first; they have insisted, in other words, that what Judaism really cares about is ethics, or social justice, or whatever.  But no:  Torah values both dimensions of our lives, the vertical-theological and the horizontal-interpersonal.  The radical and potentially life-transforming message Torah offers us is that a relationship with God, if it is to be real, must always spill over into our relationships with human beings.  But perhaps I should say this a little differently: if engaged with both heart and mind, a relationship with God will spill over into our relationships with human beings—with our family and friends, our colleagues and acquaintances, our neighbor and the stranger who abides in our midst.  The Torah, Our Sages remind us, begins and ends with lovingkindess.

We want our students to know that as we understand Torah, every step we take towards God is a step towards—not away from—the world.  With every inch closer I come to God, I am also prodded to love my neighbor more deeply and more humbly.   But our dreams our not for our students alone; our dreams are for a transformed Jewish community, animated and invigorated by the old-new words of Torah (milin atikin hadetin).  Imagine, for one example, a Jewish community that heeded the prophet Jeremiah’s words and, for a time at least, stopped honoring the wealthy for their wealth and began to honor those who serve the community and the world in more humble, less visible ways.  A major Jewish convention where the dais honored a woman who has quietly run a nurturing nursery school for forty years, and a man who has without fanfare volunteered to serve dinner at a homeless shelter once a week for twenty-five years, and a pediatric oncologist who has spent her whole career sitting with human pain most of us can scarcely imagine.
 
I’d like to tie what I’ve been saying more explicitly to the broader themes of the evening.  The Tosafot to Masekhet Berakhot ask an interesting question:  we only make the blessings over studying Torah once a day, in the morning.  Why is that?  How is the Mitzvah of learning Torah different from the Mitzvah of sitting in a Sukkah, since in the latter case we make a separate blessing each and every time we eat in the Sukkah, while in the former case we make on blessing which carries us, as it were, through the whole day?  The Tosafot answer: “VeYesh lomar eShani Torah, she-eino meya’esh da’ato, de-khol sha’ah adam mehuyav lilmod… vehavei kemo yoshev kol hayom belo hefsek.” Learning Torah, they say, is different because our mind never strays from it, because a person is obligated to learn at every moment, and it is as if she were sitting all day without interruption.  Now, I want to say that there are two ways to understand this Tosafot.  First, we could say that no matter what a person is doing—whether visiting the sick or buying groceries, she should always be distracted, as it were, by Torah, since nothing else is all that important—or at any rate, is not as important as learning Torah.  Or, we could say—and I think this reading is far better and gets much more deeply at the heart of Torah—that this text teaches us that no matter what we are doing—again, whether visiting the sick or buying groceries—the lives we lead should reflect the Torah we have learned and will, in turn, provide countless opportunities to learn Torah from our daily encounters and experiences.  Rav Kook makes this point with stunning simplicity:  When you are praying, he says, focus on prayer and not on the pursuit of some other knowledge; when you’re studying, focus only on studying, and don’t be pulled elsewhere.  And when you’re engaged in gemilut hasadim, concentrate only on how you can help the person in front of you in a solid and enduring way.  And then he adds: “And similarly with whatever you are doing, since there is nothing in the world that cannot be done for God’s glory.  Thus everything you do will be a fulfillment of God’s will and commandments.  Seek God in those very actions, when you do them with the very summit of perfect wholeness in all its dimensions, and you will find that you know God in all your ways.”   Torah, in other words, brings us back to the world by reminding us that there is Torah everywhere, as there is divine presence everywhere, if only we open our eyes and hearts to transmit and receive it.

Let me say it one more time:  I am not proposing that we replace Talmud Torah with social action.  Far from it.  I am talking about far more Jewish learning, not less.  But I am talking about a kind of Jewish learning that opens our hearts to God, to each-other, and to ourselves.  I am talking, in short, about Torat Hesed.  My dream, because I believe it is Judaism’s dream, is that Torat Hadar is ultimately Torat Hesed.

III
We are incredibly proud of our students.  But this yeshiva does not belong exclusively to them, or to us.  It belongs, also, to each and every one of you.  So, please join us—come study with us once a week, or if you can’t manage that, once a month, and if you can’t manage that, once a year.  Spread the word about what we’re doing, and about the Torah we’re teaching; tell potential students about the opportunities for learning and growth we provide.  Learn the Torat Hesed for yourself, and make it possible for more students to learn it, and practice it.  Help us financially, so that more students can participate in the conversation of Torah in our Beit-Midrash—and, ultimately, beyond it.

IV
Three years ago, as we began our first summer session, I concluded with a prayer, and I’d like to turn to it again now.  We say, at the end of the Amidah:  Petah Libi BeToratecha, which is usually translated as, “Open my heart to your Torah.”  But tonight, I suggest we interpret it a little bit differently:  Petah Libi BeToratecha—O God, please use your Torah to open our hearts.  To you, to each-other, and to the world of Hesed, lovingkindness, we long to inhabit.

D'var Torah
Shira Billet, Yeshivat Hadar '08

Good Evening, my name is Shira Billet, and I was a 2008 fellow at Yeshivat Hadar.

This past summer I returned to the beit midrash to study Talmud with Rabbi Ethan Tucker. In the beit midrash I connected with Yeshivat Hadar ’09 fellow Stephanie Pell, and we began a weekly havruta in hasidut – a subject I had never learned before. This is only one of the many special ways Yeshivat Hadar has become a wonderful part of my life. Learning relationships begin here, but they continue well beyond the walls of the yeshiva – and they become not only relationships of learning but genuine friendships. I would like to share with you something that Stephanie and I recently learned together, from the words of the nineteenth century Hasidic rabbi and commentator Rabbi Yehudah Aryeh Leib Alter, better known as the Sfat Emet, on the holiday of Sukkot which we recently celebrated.

The sukkah, writes the Sfat Emet, is like a huppah – a marriage canopy – under which the “marriage” between God and the Jewish people takes place. But – asks the Sfat Emet – God is complete. Why would God choose something incomplete – a fractured and fragmented thing – humanity – as a partner? To answer this, the Sfat Emet refers to the Zohar’s dictum that wholeness and completeness actually exist only where the broken heart of the human being is present. Kudsha brikh hu la sharei elah be-atar t’veira. God does not reside anywhere but in a place of brokenness.  The Sfat Emet takes the Zohar’s point a step further to say that God’s presence – which can only reside in a being, place, or object that is broken – actually transforms that broken thing into something complete.

Yeshivat Hadar aspires to be – and I think is – like the sukkah. It is a canopy where special relationships are created and maintained. Relationships between students, between teachers, between students and teachers, between human beings and the divine. But the yeshiva is also a place that understands the idea that all of these relationships – like the relationship between God and human beings – can only be genuine and complete be-atar t’veira – in a place where people can fully bring their true selves – their struggling and striving and incomplete selves – into the full experience of the yeshiva. To me, this is what Yeshivat Hadar’s slogan “community, empowerment, meaning” is all about. We create a genuine community by making space for people to enter it fully; we empower students by showing them that they can succeed and grow from the place where they genuinely are; we create and sustain meaningfulness in a place where people feel like they can be fully present. This has certainly been true to my experience of the yeshiva.

The sukkah is known in rabbinic literature as a dirat arai – a temporary dwelling place – that becomes a dirat keva – a permanent dwelling place – for one week. Tonight we mark the moment when our sukkah – Yeshivat Hadar – transitions from being a temporary dwelling (in the summers) to a permanent dwelling place. This is an exciting moment for all of us here tonight! Although the sukkah is a permanent dwelling for only a week, Yeshivat Hadar is beginning a long life of permanence. Our task from this point on is to continue to imbue the yeshiva with the freshness of our desires to learn and grow so that its newfound permanence will always retain the excitement that it sustained in the days of temporariness. I hope we can all join together in this task for many years to come.

I am honored to introduce one of my teachers, Rabbi Shai Held, a true rosh yeshiva, who simultaneously embraces the fact that the world – and the people within it – are fragmented and broken – but can also articulate a most powerful aspirational vision of the wholeness the world can achieve if we open ourselves up to genuine encounters with other people and with God. Shai’s sensitive and nuanced vision – really the vision of the entire staff of the yeshiva – will help ensure that the kviut – the permanence – of this new dwelling space will continue to feel fresh and new each day.

Please welcome Rabbi Shai Held.