Of Mirrors, Moos, The Mishkan, and Moons

Rosh Chodesh, the Jewish celebration of the New Moon, is considered a holiday for women. As a part of the celebration of this holiday, women are exempt from working.

Why is it that in Jewish tradition women have a specific holiday dedicated to them?

Because of the honorable actions of the ancient Israelite women.

You will remember the midrash of how Miriam was responsible for the birth of her younger brother Moses. Moses' father, upon hearing the edict that Pharoah ordered all male Jewish babies to be killed, he decided to divorce his wife, so that they would have no more children. It is said that Miriam accused her father of killing the Jewish people, because he had decided that there would no longer be any male OR female children, which was worse than Pharoah's decree. Upon hearing that, Miriam's father did not divorce his wife, and instead Moses was born.

A parallel midrash states that Miriam's family was not the only family to face this situation. The majority of the male population in Egypt had lost hope of ever seeing a better life, and wanted to divorce in order to prevent the next generation from being born into slavery. The women, however, had faith that there would be better days ahead, and beautified themselves in order to entice their husbands to return to them. Later on in Parsha Shemot, the Rabbis tell us that the women of Israel donated their copper mirrors towards the building of the Mishkan - these would be the same mirrors they used to beautify themselves while in slavery in Egypt.

You will also remember the midrash of the actions of the men and women during the incident with the golden calf. It is said that the women did not want to participate in the building of the golden calf, and refused to give up their jewelry to be used to mold the idol. The men tried to take the jewelry by force, but the women resisted. In the end, the men had to give up their own precious metals for the making of the calf. In contrast, when Moses asked the people to provide precious metals for use in the making of the Mishkan, the women gladly gave their jewelry, the same jewelry their husbands wanted to use in the calf, to the cause.

As a result of the Israelite women keeping their faith in God and hope in the establishment of a true Jewish community, at the dedication of the Mishkan, the women received the holiday of Rosh Chodesh Nissan. The Rabbis conclude that the custom of women celebrating all Rosh Chodesh days as work-free holidays derived from this original declaration.

Advertising Jewishness

I have four catalogs sitting in front of me on my table.  One is a crafts supply catalog, another a party supplies catalog, yet another is a teachers' supply catalog, and the final one is a promotional products catalog.  Each of these catalogs contains a section entitled "inspirational" or "faith-based" products that are ostensibly all Christian in nature.

Bracelets, sticky-backed foam cutouts, plushies, beads & charms on ribbon, inscribed rocks, flashlights, backpacks & tote bags, posters, bookmarks, stickers, pencils, erasers, yo-yos, temporary tattoos, pencil cases, make-your-own fleece blankets/pillows, squishy stress balls, necklaces, hats... you name it, these catalogs have it, and they have it imprinted with a wide variety of catchphrases:

PUSH - Pray Until Something Happens
FROG - Fully Rely On God (printed on frogs, or with an image of a frog)
Walking In His Path
Walking With Jesus
Wild For God (with an image of a panda bear)
Paws-itively In His Path (with an image of a tiger)
Fishing For Men or Fishers of Men (appearing with the obligatory fish symbol)
I'm On God's Team (on a baseball cap)
Colors Of Faith
Smile, Jesus Loves You
Jesus Loves Me
God's Love Is Eternal
God's Love Guides Me
God Is With Me
God Is Great
Friends In Christ
Jesus Is Peace
Jesus Is Love
Catch The Spirit

That's just a sampling, and not even counting the items with scripture references.

I can't help recognizing that Judaism doesn't have catchphrases.  We have good quotes, but they're not "sound bites".  Beyond "Shalom" and "Chai", we don't have much that is short enough to count as a catchphrase.  I think the shortest thing I can come up with off the top of my head is the Hillel quote: If I am not for myself, who will be for me?  If I am only for myself, who am I?  If not now, when?

Not exactly something that prints easily on a pencil, a squishy stress ball, or the tummy of a small teddy bear...

Looking in our synagogue gift shop, we don't have a lot of merchandise that proclaims the awesomeness of God.  Nor does any of it contain sayings about how we're all friends because of God, nor that God is super because he blesses us.  I don't see anything that says I should smile because Hashem loves me.  And I certainly don't see any yo-yos telling me to spin God's glory out to the world.

Judaism doesn't "do" that sort of thing.

As Rabbi Michael mentioned in our Hebrew School tefilah not too long ago, Judaism doesn't much care about what you believe.  Judaism cares about what you do and how you act.

Ours is a religion of action, and by comparison, Christianity focuses a lot on beliefs.

But, are we missing out on something by not having more "quotable" statements of faith?

Judaism has a strong history of non-evangelism.  In other words, we don't go looking to convert people.  Judaism believes that every spiritual path has a role in the world to come, and while Jews believe it is the best path for themselves, there is nothing in our faith tradition that says we have any better a path than others, nor is our path the only "right" path.

So, the idea of marekting Judaism through tchotchkes with sayings like "It's good to be kosher", seems laughable.

On the other hand, perhaps there is something to this idea...

Not marketing Judaism for the purpose of gaining adherents, but marketing Judaism in order to increase awareness of Judaism.

In other words - in places that are not New York City - perhaps we need to let people know we exist?

I think back to one of my old offices, where some of the people I worked with honestly believed that all organized religions were just different flavors of Christianity.  That Adonai, Krishna, Allah, Confucius, Buddah, Shiva, etc. are how all these different languages say "Jesus".  These coworkers of mine did not understand why separation of church and state was so important.  To them, people are fighting over what name to call Jesus in public prayer, and they thought that was just silly.  Why can't they just call him Jesus in public because we're here in America and speak English, and they can call him whatever they want in their own homes and churches.

Certainly an ad campaign could only help improve that situation.

Pint-sized Philosophy: What came before God?

I teach Kitah Gimmel – third grade – at Congregation Beth Shalom’s Hebrew School. In our classroom we have a box, covered in shiny blue metallic paper, that says “Ask The Rabbi” on it. The students can write down questions on pieces of paper and place them in the box for Rabbi Michael to answer when he visits our classroom every week.

My kids? Born Philosophers. And born wiseacres too. They take “Ask The Rabbi” as a personal challenge to see if they can find a question that Rabbi Michael just cannot answer.

Their favorite stump-the-Rabbi question? What came before God? – or – Who created God?

Rabbi Michael’s answer is fair – Nothing. His answer is also meant to work within his 20 minute visit window, and for his young audience.

But, this is Judaism, the religion where two Jews equal three opinions. Of course there should be more to this answer. Even if the ultimate conclusion is still “Nothing”, I am sure that many have weighed in on the subject.

Many Rabbis agree with Rabbi Michael in their assessment. Nothing existed before God – God was the beginning of everything. Or, even better phrased “God has always been”, and therefore there is nothing that could have come before.

When Moses asked God’s name, God replied “ehyeh asher ehyeh”. This phrase can be translated as “I am what I am”, “I am what I will be”, or “I will be what I will be”. The ambiguity as to the time frame is interpreted as meaning God always has been and will continue to be eternal.

There is at least one Rabbi that has stated it is heresy of the highest caliber to even think upon this question. I politely disagree, considering that we should not be condemning a young student’s questioning. I seriously doubt that was the intent of this rabbinical edict, but anything that stops the genuine quest for knowledge seems antithetical to Judaism. We are, after all, the people who struggle with God.

The Zohar gives us a further mystery. It states that we are commonly mistranslating the first sentence in the Torah. “B’resheet Barah Elohim” is normally translated as “In the beginning, God created”. However, you can translate the “B” from “B’resheet” as meaning “with” as well as “in the”, and the subject of “barah” – “created” is unclear, we are not absolutely sure who is doing the creating. The Zohar speculates that there could be a hidden subject, a hidden source who is doing the creating, and therefore the meaning of this first sentence could be rendered “With beginning [the hidden subject] created God”.

And so we are left with a mystery – who is this hidden subject? The Zohar continues:

“The Concealed One, who is not known, created the palace; this palace is called Elohim.” In other words, the Ain Sof, co-eternal with the first Sefirah, Keter, used the agency of Beginning to create the second of the emanations, Khokhmah, which is as far as our human understanding will take us.
(Kenneth Hanson, Kabbalah: The Untold Story of the Mystic Tradition)

Which is a fancy way of stating that God created himself. Because God was intending to create a world of finite beings with a limited viewpoint, God needed an identity that could be perceived by creatures not equal to himself.

Which still leaves us with the conclusion that God always has been. But it seems like an incomplete answer. The inner scientist is not appeased. If all things have a cause, then certainly doesn’t God also need a cause?

Scientifically we know that things always come from other things. You cannot have something come from nothing. If you have nothing, then you will always continue to have nothing. 0+0=0 is simple math. But, since the universe exists, we know that we have something. So there always had to be something for the universe to be created out of.

That’s a long way of saying that science states that the universe needs a creation force in order to exist. Whether you consider that source of creation to be God or the Big Bang (or both!) it doesn’t matter, but it must exist for everything else to flow from it.

The Big Bang theory states that it is the point at which everything came into existence; matter, time, dimension, energy – everything. Therefore, the question of what came before the Big Bang becomes nonsensical. How can you consider the existence of a time before time? The label of “before” cannot possibly apply.

As Stephen Hawking said “Asking what occurred before the Big Bang is like asking what is north of the North Pole.”

I will leave the conclusions to you.

3, 6, 8, 11, 14, 17, 19, Hike!

Happy Adar I.

Adar I you say?

Yes, we’re in a leap year, didn’t you know?

Leap year?

Ok, let’s start at the very beginning… It’s a very good place to start…

The Torah indicates that we can number our weeks by seven days, as in Genesis, God created the world in six days and rested on the seventh. The Torah also indicates that we can number our months by the moon, celebrating the new month with the beginning of the new moon, and our festivals often are celebrated starting on the full moon. And the Torah indicates that we should number our years in order to keep track of the age of people, trees, and when we should celebrate the jubilee year. In addition the Torah indicates proper seasons for our festivals, such as the spring for Pesach, and the fall harvest for Sukkot.

This presents an obvious problem of how to create a proper calendar. Jews need to be able to keep track of the lunar calendar, for when new months occur, as well as dates for festivals, but we also need to keep track of the solar calendar, because those festivals are agricultural in nature, and therefore based on seasons. So, how do we reconcile both ways of keeping track of time?

The solar cycle is 365.24 days in length, and can be easily divided in to 12 equal portions of 30.4 days. In order to remove the .4 of a day each month and the .24 of a day each year, the months were divided up slightly unevenly, with 7 months of 31 days, 4 months of 30 days, and one month of 28 days which receives an extra leap day every four years. By comparison, the lunar cycle is 29.5 days, and a month is generally considered as having either 29 or 30 days depending on which evening the new moon is sighted. Creating a year out of 12 lunar cycles creates a lunar calendar of 354 days, which is 11 days shorter than the solar calendar year. In order to keep our seasonal festivals from sliding around throughout the solar year, and therefore mismatching with the seasons, Jews needed to create a way to compensate for the difference between the lunar and solar cycles.

Necessity being the mother of invention, the concept of the Jewish leap year was born.

Way back in time, Jews were dependent on the Sanhedrin (the Jewish Supreme Court) to keep track of the calendar. Every month at the new moon, the Sanhedrin would hear testimony from witnesses who claimed they had observed the new moon in the night sky. When the court decided that they had two reliable witnesses who both confirmed the new moon on the same night, they would declare the new month, and messengers would be sent out to every community to convey the declaration.

Some years, the Sanhedrin would have concerns about pilgrims being able to arrive in Jerusalem in time for the celebration of Pesach (one of three pilgrimage festivals, and often a time that a census would be taken) due to the weather. We know now that this was that the Sanhedrin was noticing the subtle shift in seasons due to the mismatch of the solar and lunar cycles, and were concerned that pilgrims would have difficulty traveling during the rainy season. The Sanhedrin would then declare a leap year, and add an extra month (Adar II) to the calendar, prior to Nisan, thus delaying the arrival of Pesach by 30 days, giving the pilgrims more time to begin their travels.

Around 350 C.E. the Sanhedrin decided to codify the Jewish calendar, thus replacing the constant declarations of new moons and leap years, with a standardized and predictable calendar. Months were given standard lengths of 29 or 30 days based on the recorded observational history of hundreds of years of new moon declarations (and because it’s just not practical to have one day belonging to two months). With this change in calendar, the Rabbis switched their previous practice and codified that Adar I would be considered the inserted leap month, and Adar II would be considered the “real Adar” when it came to observing festivals, and dates of birth and death. Thus, in the modern day, we celebrate Purim, birthdays, and Yahrzeits that occur in Adar during a non-leap year, during Adar II in a leap year. (Conversely, any such dates that occur in either Adar I or Adar II during a leap year would be celebrated during Adar in a non-leap year.) Though, because of the tradition of increasing joy during the month of Adar, the Rabbis began the practice of celebrating Purim Katan (little Purim) during the month of Adar I.

Leap years were codified to occur across a cycle of 19 years, on the years 3, 6, 8, 11, 14, 17, and 19. This cycle allows each lunar month to more or less match up with its solar calendar equivalent each year, keeping the festivals in their respective seasons. Without this cycle of leap years, about every three years the festivals would slip backwards by an entire month.

The codified Jewish calendar also contains three types of years: chaser (deficient) containing 353 days in a non-leap year, and 383 days in a leap year; kesidrah (regular) containing 354 days in a non-leap year, and 384 days in a leap year; and shalem (complete) containing 355 days in a non-leap year and 385 days in a leap year. During a kesidrah year, all of the Hebrew months contain their normal number of days. During a chaser year the month of Kislev loses a day. During a shalem year the month of Cheshvan gets an extra day. These adjustments allow the Jewish calendar to adjust slightly in order to keep the observance of Yom Kippur from occurring adjacent to Shabbat (due to the inherent difficulty in coordinating fasting with subsequent Shabbat observance).

* * * * * * * * * * * *

Fun with Math! You can figure out if a Hebrew year is a leap year by dividing the year by 19. If the remainder is 3, 6, 8, 11, 14, 17, or zero, then the year is a leap year!

Being born in a leap year has its curiosities:
A child born on the 20th of Adar I in a leap year, will have her Bat Mitzvah after her younger friend who was born the same year on the 5th of Adar II if their B’nai Mitzvot fall during a non-leap year.

Muslims follow solely the lunar calendar for their festivals. Because of this their holidays shift around the secular calendar every year. A holiday that was in the winter this year will be celebrated in the fall in 9 years and the summer in 18 years.

Besides being concerned about travelers becoming delayed during the rainy season, the Sanhedrin were also concerned that Pesach was celebrated in its proper season, since it is also known as Chag HeAviv (the festival of spring). The leap month would be added if the crops and livestock were not sufficiently advanced enough for it to be considered spring.

A leap year is referred to in Hebrew as Shanah Me'uberet, literally: a pregnant year

If you are musically inclined, you may find it helpful to remember the pattern of leap years by reference to the major scale: for each whole step there are two regular years and a leap year; for each half-step there is one regular year and a leap year. This is easier to understand by looking at a piano or keyboard.

The two Chabads

I attended a Sushi-making event put on by my friend Rochel at Chabad, during which we discussed the role of the Jewish woman.  It discussed the topics you would expect, but what I was really struck by was the stark contrast in how that same message was delivered tonight, as compared to when I was a young girl in elementary school.

As presented during the event, "the ideal role of the Jewish woman is to be elevated in her roles as wife and mother, and to find deep meaning in shaping a Jewish life for her family through building a Jewish Home".  In this post I will not debate the validity, pros/cons, right/wrong, or any other opinions on this point of view (though I will certainly be posting on some of this later).  My point in this post is simply to illustrate the different lenses through which you can view this role.

I grew up learning that the greatest accomplishment a Jewish girl could hope for was to marry and become a mother.  But this didn't sound like such a great deal, because it came along with so many things that we were not allowed to do.  The boys got all the cool and impressive sounding mitzvot that you worked and studied hard to earn the right and privilidge to perform.  Girls didn't get to earn anything, and in fact, were flat-out told that for most of the things the boys got to do, we were expressely forbidden to even think about doing them.

One year prior to Pesach, we were taken on a field trip to some so-called Lubuvitcher house in NJ.  (I am considering it "so-called" because my current experience with Chabad is so drastically different, that I wonder if it really was truly a Chabad house.)  It was a dark forboding row-house that from the inside reminded you of a historic NYC "shtetl" boarding house.  It felt like I was visiting a Jewish-Amish home... I don't think I saw any furnishings there that were younger than 20 years of age.  Everything seemed like an antique, as if they made the house up like a movie set, or more accurately a museum replica.  The men wore your standard Chabad "uniform", but the women looked as if they hadn't updated their wardrobe since appearing on Little House on the Prairie.  A young man met us at the door and led us down a thin hallway to a large back room.  It was dimly lit inside (I would wish for sunglasses when we walked out of the house into the afternoon sun).  The Rabbi met us in the center of the room along with a few other young men.  I noticed there were women in the room, but they silently waited standing against the walls.  They literally stood in the shadows, and you couldn't see their features at all - I could only tell they were women because I could see their lighter colored skirts against the dark wood paneling.  It was creepy.

Looking around the room, there were several round tables set up in the back of the room, and the front of the room was set up as a synagogue, with an Aron HaKodesh in the front, a shulchan, a bookcase of siddurim, several rows of chairs, a mechitza and 3 more rows of chairs.  The rabbi split up the group, taking the boys up to the front of the synagogue area, and having them sit in the front two rows of seats.  He instructed the girls to sit in the rear, behind the mechitza.

The mechitza was a half wall with poles holding lace curtains up to about 3/4 of the way to the ceiling.  When we sat down, most of us could not see over the wall, and ended up having to stand, or kneel on the chairs to see through the lace curtain.  If we sat normally, we would have been staring at the wall.  I know the Rabbi said he was going to talk about the holiday of Pesach with us, but while I could hear him talking, I couldn't understand a word of what he was saying.  He was not talking loudly, and there were about 10 empty rows of chairs between us and the Rabbi talking to the boys.  I did not understand why we could not sit closer and be able to hear.  While I did know about how some synagogues separated the men and women, I did not understand why we could not simply sit boys on one side and girls on the other - why were we sitting all the way in the back, behind a wall, where we could not hear? 

One of my female classmates suggested that maybe what the Rabbi was talking about was only for the boys?  Like the health videos we watched the week before.  We thought this sounded reasonable, and so we sat down and talked with each other while waiting for the boys to end their "Jewish health discussion".  One of the women came over and scolded us, telling us to be quiet and pay attention.  We told her we couldn't hear.  She told us that we needed to be extra quiet and pay very close attention and then we would be able to hear.  We stood again to see over the wall, and the woman told us we had to sit down and act like ladies.  Some of the girls protested, saying that we had to stand to be able to see over the wall.  She told us that we were a distraction to the boys, and that standing in the windows meant the boys could see us, and they were not allowed to see us, so we needed to stay seated.  One girl mentioned that it was easier to hear when we were standing up, but the woman repeated that we needed to simply pay closer attention to be able to hear.  So, we were left sitting staring quietly at the wall, concentrating on trying to discern muffled talking from behind a wall and across a room.  I think I may have fallen asleep.

Of course all of that recollection is filtered through the lens of age.  My memories do not seem so creepy to me now, but I remember vividly thinking to myself at the time that we must be in a Jewish haunted house attraction.  The point of the recollection though is not to talk about what went wrong in that interchange as much as to establish that it was typical of what I was exposed to in my childhood regarding Judaism and what it teaches about the role of a female.  The point of view was that the boys got to do the cool things, and the girls did not.  They were expected to find joy and fulfillment in helping their future husbands to do all the cool things that men got to do.  Male and female were not presented as equal, and the role of the female was considered lesser than the male, and often times was specifically presented as females were intended by God to be second-class and ruled over by their husbands due to the sin of Eve and the apple.

It was a significant part of the reason I rejected Judaism in my early teens.  As a female, I did not have an equal share in religious participation.  I also was... alright, I still am, a defiant sort.  Tell me I can't do something, and watch me excel at it.  Someone in my family called me "a Yentl" - which I would not understand until years later when I watched the movie - but they were right, I would not stand for being denied something simply because I was a girl.

So what a welcome breath of fresh air to be presented with, essentially, the same information, but in a female-friendly context.

We discussed how women and men were equal creations, and that it is a distortion of Judaism to consider a woman or her role as being lesser or second-class.  That while a man's domain is the synagogue, and the woman's domain the home, that the main reason this "domain of the home" is seen as lesser is that society at large does not value this role.  That if you really stop and consider the impact of the role of the female - leading the family, keeping kosher, seeing to the education of the children, keeping the home observances of Judaism - that the role of wife and mother is the role of ensuring the continuity of the Jewish people.   Not a role to take lightly.

Again - this is not the post for me to offer opinions on the role as presented.  (Later, later, I promise, we'll talk about it.) But it vividly illustrated that it's all about how information is presented - what is the lens through which we are viewing something.  As a child, I was told the same exact thing about my role as a Jewess.  But it was framed through the lens of a male.  The male's domain was cool and exciting - look at all the mitzvot you got to learn and master, and perform as an adult.  The female domain was primarily ignored, and so we were left to draw our own conclusions about why it was important to be a wife and mother.  And considering the societal views we grew up with, that women belonged not in the home, but in the workplace, equal to the role of men, of course we would think of the role of wife and mother as being equivalent to being a "housewife" - someone who wasn't living up to her full potential and being trapped as a slave in the home.  I was never presented with the concept that being a wife and mother could be an exalted position.

Being presented with a positive view of how Jewish women can find fulfillment in a distinctly feminine role within our tradition has not necessarily changed my questions and concerns about the topic.  But it has allowed me to be open to learning more, as compared to rejecting the entire subject as old historic baggage. 

This has also been a striking object lesson about the importance of framing and viewpoint in any discussion, and I hope that I have done justice in pointing that out.