(Crossposted to Jewschool.)
The 21st-century independent minyan phenomenon has inspired many newspaper articles. However, the published “serious” writing (with the appropriate academic or intellectual credentials) on this topic is still far more limited, leading to founder effects, with a few mutations being propagated over and over. For example, Riv-Ellen Prell’s article in Zeek, comparing two generations of independent Jewish communities, is often cited as an authority. While Prell literally wrote the book on an older generation of havurot with an ethnographic study, there is no evidence that she did any primary research on the newer minyanim, or has even been to one; her main source of information on these communities seems to be the roundtable of minyan leaders that appeared in the same issue of Zeek. Yet that article is what there is. In the quantitative realm, the 2007 National Spiritual Communities Study gathered lots of valuable data on independent minyanim, but the report (and/or initial media stories about it) also originated some misleading conclusions that won’t go away. Rabbi Elie Kaunfer’s book Empowered Judaism isn’t the entire story, but there is absolutely no question that Kaunfer knows his subject, and it’s now out there as a real live book.
Margot Lurie’s recent review of Empowered Judaism contains many of the lazy smears about independent minyanim that we’ve been hearing for years (citing such sources as “one parent of a minyan-goer” and “a friend of mine”). Under other conditions, the best thing to do might be to ignore it. But this review is published in the Jewish Review of Books, which gives it the intellectual cachet to place it into the small pond of “serious” writing on this subject. So this review needs to be fisked in the bud before it becomes the next authoritative voice on independent minyanim.
So here we go.
Wednesday, February 02, 2011
Friday, January 14, 2011
ANOTHER SONG WILL RISE: An evening of song in memory of Debbie Friedman
For those of you in the DC area: The community is joining together on Tuesday, January 18, 2011, at 7 pm, at the Religious Action Center, 2027 Massachusetts Avenue NW, Washington DC, to sing the songs of Debbie Friedman z”l and remember her far-reaching legacy. Please spread the word to your friends and communities. You can RSVP at the Facebook event page.
For those of you who aren’t in the DC area: What’s been going on in your area?
Thursday, January 13, 2011
Memories of Debbie Friedman
(Crossposted to Jewschool.)
Debbie Friedman’s memory is a blessing. Beyond the hundreds of songs she composed, she was a pioneer of an entire genre of Jewish religious music (sometimes known as “American nusach”) that has revolutionized American Jewish prayer. My memories of Debbie are too numerous to put in a comment, so I’m putting some of them in a new post.
Everything I know about songleading I learned from Debbie Friedman. She could lead a group in song (whether she was performing a concert or leading a service) with her little finger. I had the opportunity to study songleading with her at Hava Nashira for four years. At my first Hava Nashira in 1997, in Debbie’s songleading workshop, it was my turn to get up and teach a song to the group, and then be critiqued by the group. After I finished, the first thing Debbie said was “You need to take off your clothes. Get naked.” After I got over the shock, it became clear that she was speaking figuratively; she meant that when we lead a group in song or prayer, we need to shed our inhibitions. And she was right; I have taken her advice to heart ever since then (as well as laughed many times about the time Debbie Friedman told me to take off my clothes).
In some ways she was a larger-than-life figure. She composed hundreds of songs without knowing how to read music; if you asked her for the chords to a song, she would say that she didn’t know the names of the chords, but she would play it so you could watch and write them down (”…and then it’s this one with the two fingers over here…”). There was the time at NFTY Convention 1997 when she broke a string during “Miriam’s Song”, and the backup musicians kept on going while she removed the broken string, put on a new one, wound it, tuned it, and came back in for a triumphant final chorus. And then there was the time at Hava Nashira when the power was out on Shabbat morning. Before services began, Debbie taught her new melody for Yotzeir Or (”creator of light”). When we got to that point in the service, we sang Debbie’s Yotzeir Or… and all the lights went back on!
Yet despite her larger-than-life celebrity, Debbie Friedman never sought out the spotlight. Her goal was always (as she wrote in the liner notes to Sing Unto God back in 1972) “the importance of community involvement in worship”. Debbie was at Limmud NY in 2006, where I was leading the Shabbat team. We had asked Debbie to lead havdalah for the conference. Then, on Shabbat afternoon, she told me that she was having second thoughts, and didn’t think it would be appropriate for her to do it. She felt that she was already famous, and that Limmud should be an opportunity for a new generation to take the reins, and that it would be a step backwards for her to lead it. My thought as a program organizer was that this would have been a good conversation to have several weeks before, but now that it was a few hours before havdalah, it was too late to rethink the plan for an 800-person program. But Debbie persisted, and tried to encourage me, of all people, to do it. To be clear, she was Debbie Friedman, and I was (and still am) a nobody, but I was one of her students and she was encouraging me to take off my clothes. In the end, Debbie led havdalah after all, and it was amazing of course, but what made it amazing was the way she brought the whole room together in song.
May this be our blessing, amen.
Sunday, January 02, 2011
The Wedding... Part 5
This post is likely the final installment in the series, which began with Part 1, Part 2, Part 3, and Part 4. The topic of this last post is not a pleasant one, but is one that any discussion of the structure of marriage must address: divorce.
The issue of divorce has two aspects that need to be considered:
1) how divorce should function according to our understanding of egalitarian halachah
2) how to deal with the practical reality that not all of the Jewish world shares our understanding of egalitarian halachah.
Now #2 is an important issue that should not be minimized (at least for opposite-sex couples). If a divorce is not recognized by all parts of the Jewish world, and then the woman subsequently has children with another man, those children (and their descendants) can face serious future consequences. And unlike having a marriage or conversion that is not recognized by some, there is no remedy.
However, as important as #2 is, there is an unfortunate tendency to consider only #2, to the point that it overshadows #1. For example, as mentioned in previous posts in this series, the model of marriage that Rachel Adler proposes in Engendering Judaism goes to great lengths to emphasize that it is not kiddushin. For example, the order of the service begins with a cup of wine, but Adler writes: "In the kiddushin ceremony, this blessing would be followed by the erusin blessing, and only the couple would drink from the cup. ... To distinguish this cup from the erusin cup, it may be passed to all those around the huppah." Why is it so important to do various things with a shinui [change] to make clear that kiddushin is not happening, even egalitarian kiddushin? "[B]ecause any kiddushin requires a get, a halakhic divorce, for its termination, it is important to establish that b'rit ahuvim is not equivalent to kiddushin. For if b'rit ahuvim is not a halakhic marriage, then it can be dissolved without a get." And why is requiring a get a bad thing? "Greedy husbands blackmail and extort in exchange for granting divorces. Vindictive husbands withhold divorce for years, leaving their wives in limbo. ... In our own time, religious courts research and record marriages and divorces with unprecedented assiduousness in a central computer bank." In other words, because the process of gittin in other parts of the Jewish world is undeniably disgusting (both because of the potential for abuse and because, even when the system is "working", it creates a huge power imbalance), we should rule out anything in our part of the Jewish world that resembles gittin, and therefore anything that resembles kiddushin. (The possibility of egalitarian gittin isn't even considered.)
I find this approach problematic for two reasons: First of all, it results in a definition of marriage that is too negative ("not kiddushin") and cedes too much to other Jewish subcultures. In the name of avoiding the abuses of vindictive husbands and the Orthodox rabbinic establishment (a laudable goal), the unfortunate result is defining our own marriages as "not a halakhic marriage". When we make decisions about the wedding ceremony because of how it may appear to someone else outside our community, we lose the opportunity to decide what we would do if we were the only Jews on earth. That freedom might result in fixing kiddushin and gittin to eliminate these abuses and power imbalances. But yes, even under those circumstances, many would still oppose kiddushin, even egalitarian kiddushin, for other reasons. Adler herself rejects it as "equal opportunity commodification". But there's still a difference between the choice not to use the framework of kiddushin (a choice that could be made for many reasons) and the choice to essentially wave red flags saying "This is not kiddushin" (which seems motivated only as a reaction to external perception).
Second of all, despite all the efforts to say "this is not kiddushin" in order to avoid the need for a get, I'm not convinced it would actually work. That is, no matter how many ways you try to mark your wedding ceremony as "not kiddushin", there's always the possibility that some corrupt functionary in the Israeli rabbanut will deem that kiddushin has taken place anyway, and therefore that you need a get. And then you're back where you started, when it comes to practical concern for descendants. So since there's no way to avoid this possibility completely, it seems to me that it's not worth trying too hard.
And I don't mean to pick on Adler specifically. She does outline how the berit ahuvim is to be dissolved. Others, in contrast, don't consider the question of divorce at all, or if they do, they frame the issue as creating "rituals" rather than as determining the legal procedure by which the marriage is terminated; the legal procedures are either ceded to someone else or deemed unimportant.
Instead, I would advocate fighting the war as if there is no White Paper, and so forth: figure out how divorce works in the context of marriage as we understand it, then figure out whether any additional provisions need to be included to address the rest of the world. We did both of these, but kept them separate: the former was addressed in the structure of the sh'tar kiddushin, while the latter was addressed by a provision in the ketubah. The remainder of this post will look at each piece of this.
The first question is how egalitarian kiddushin should be terminated. As discussed in Part 3, the procedure for divorce (one partner writing and giving the other a document) appears explicitly in the Torah, while the procedure for marriage does not. Some of the laws of kiddushin (especially kiddushin bishtar) are derived from the laws of gittin. So it would appear that kiddushin and gittin are inverses of each other, and a get is required to terminate a kiddushin.
How does this apply to egalitarian kiddushin, in which there are two separate acts of kiddushin? The simplest answer might be that each kiddushin requires a separate get to terminate it. But this interpretation leads to problems in practice: Many liberal Jewish weddings include two acts of kiddushin, and very few divorces include two gittin. If we take egalitarian kiddushin seriously (which, fortunately in this case, the Israeli rabbanut doesn't), then this interpretation forces us to conclude that many individuals (usually men) who were married via egalitarian kiddushin and gave a get to their ex-spouses, but did not receive a get, are unknowingly agunim! (Perhaps one could address this bedi'avad through a less condescending (and more tautological) version of Moshe Feinstein's infamous ruling that marriages officiated by non-Orthodox rabbis don't really count and therefore don't require a get: one could say that if they were of the belief that their kiddushin didn't require a get, then ipso facto they didn't really have the intent to do kiddushin, and thus kiddushin never occurred. Still, lechatchilah we shouldn't be thinking that our kiddushin doesn't count.) It also leads to problems in theory: If both partners must give a get before the marriage is completely dissolved, this doubles the potential for abuse rather than eliminating it, since either partner can now hold the other hostage.
But maybe this interpretation (that a get is required for each kiddushin) is not the correct one. After all, a get does more than terminate kiddushin: it also terminates nisuin, a mutual relationship that has no other formal termination. So perhaps a get terminates not just a single kiddushin, but ALL marital relationships between the two parties, including the kiddushin in the reverse direction. If this is the case, then if one partner gives the other a get, then it would automatically terminate both kiddushins.
The second way certainly seems like how things should work: either party can initiate divorce, neither party can take hostages, and no new agunim are created. But how do we know how it does work? This would require much research to figure out, since the question wasn't directly asked in the classical sources.
In the meantime, to ensure that it would work this way, that one get from either party could terminate both kiddushins, we stipulated it explicitly. As discussed in Part 3, our sh'tarot kiddushin included a condition that they were dependent on each other, so that if one kiddushin is terminated, the other is too. It's possible that this condition was unnecessary (except in determining when the kiddushin first went into effect), if that's the way it would work anyway, and it's also possible that the condition was necessary; by including the condition, we covered all our bases. As discussed in Part 3, this condition could also be used by couples doing other modes of kiddushin; it would just have to be in a separate document or spoken.
So that should cover us in regard to our own understanding of egalitarian halachah (#1 above). That is, if (chas v'shalom) either of us gave the other a get, we would both consider ourselves divorced. But, as discussed above, that's not good enough. What about the practical realities in the rest of the Jewish world?
Ideally, the non-egalitarian portions of the Jewish world shouldn't accept our kiddushin in the first place, and therefore there should be no issue: one kiddushin is from a woman to a man (and therefore not recognized on those grounds), and the other kiddushin (from a man to a woman) is conditioned on the validity of the first kiddushin. However, it's dangerous to count on that working out in practice. There's always the possibility that someone at the rabbanut or wherever would consider the condition itself to be invalid, and therefore consider one of the kiddushins to be valid. So it's still important to be prepared for that possibility.
Also, the rabbanut or whoever would only accept a get from particular batei din, likely a proper subset of the set of batei din that we would consider valid. And we wanted to deal with the consequences of that reality, without suggesting that we consider only batei din in that subset to be valid.
To address this, we adapted a solution developed by our friends Debra Cash and David Fillingham (which has been included in newer editions of The New Jewish Wedding). They signed a document committing to a particular process in the case of divorce. We didn't use their whole process, but did take one piece of it: "[W]e pledge that neither will create an impediment to the other's Jewish remarriage. Specifically, we pledge that ... if one of us requires a formal get from the other, in accordance with any denomination of the Jewish world that the requester identifies, the other will not be recalcitrant and will participate in person or by a proxy acceptable under the norms of that denomination's practice." In other words, this requirement that a get be granted from any denomination requested is not the act that dissolves the marriage, but is part of the divorce settlement.
We adapted this provision and translated it into Aramaic: ודאי בעא חד מינייהו או תרוויהו למפרש דא מן דא ח"ו יהון פורשין בספר תירוכין באפי בי דינא דיתרעי כל חד מניהו ולא מעכבן דא לדא. ("And if a time comes that one or both of them desire to dissolve their marriage, they will separate with a get, granted by either to the other in a bet-din requested, without delay.") This clause appears in our ketubah, in the same paragraph quoted in Part 4 that talks about dividing possessions, etc. It was an intentional choice to put this in the ketubah and not in the sh'tar kiddushin, so that it is far away from the conditions dealing with what it takes to actually dissolve the marriage, and is instead categorized with the responsibilities that we have towards each other during and after the marriage. This is in the same spirit as Cash and Fillingham's making this provision part of the divorce settlement.
Ok, now let's get real: this requirement that a get be granted, above and beyond the get (or other act) that actually terminates the marriage, is very unlikely to be invoked by "either party" in "any denomination". In practice, the likely scenario is very specific: a woman would ask a man to give her a get in an Orthodox beit din, and this clause would require him to grant it. However, by keeping the language general, we can deal with the situation without hard-coding either the gender inequality or the denominational politics into our ketubot.
Of course, this sort of clause would be unnecessary for same-sex couples. However, they might still choose to include it, in solidarity with straight allies for whom it is necessary (since some straight allies do many things in solidarity with same-sex couples).
We didn't give this clause teeth, e.g. state that if one party fails to abide by it, s/he will be subject to a financial penalty, or that the kiddushin will be retroactively annulled. While we know that we are honest people and would take our commitments seriously with or without teeth, I realize that's not the point: the point of teeth is to establish precedent for the whole Jewish world, so that even less honest people would be subject to that precedent. So why didn't we do it? I guess it's because we had already done our Kantian duty in establishing precedent by doing egalitarian kiddushin that can be terminated by either party: if everyone did what we did, there would be no agunah problem, and this additional clause is just a concession to the fact that not everyone does what we do.
The case that we haven't dealt with is the original agunah situation: what to do if one partner is missing and presumed (but not proven) dead, or analogously, the Terri Schiavo scenario. The solution to this (for which there is historical precedent) is probably to write conditional gittin, which will go into effect only if one of those horrific scenarios takes place. But this doesn't need to happen at the time of the marriage; it can be written any time.
So that's all for now. I obviously hope nothing in this post has to be implemented, whether in my marriage or in yours, but I hope kicking off this discussion is still helpful. This is the end of the series, but if you have questions about anything, please post away in the comments.
The issue of divorce has two aspects that need to be considered:
1) how divorce should function according to our understanding of egalitarian halachah
2) how to deal with the practical reality that not all of the Jewish world shares our understanding of egalitarian halachah.
Now #2 is an important issue that should not be minimized (at least for opposite-sex couples). If a divorce is not recognized by all parts of the Jewish world, and then the woman subsequently has children with another man, those children (and their descendants) can face serious future consequences. And unlike having a marriage or conversion that is not recognized by some, there is no remedy.
However, as important as #2 is, there is an unfortunate tendency to consider only #2, to the point that it overshadows #1. For example, as mentioned in previous posts in this series, the model of marriage that Rachel Adler proposes in Engendering Judaism goes to great lengths to emphasize that it is not kiddushin. For example, the order of the service begins with a cup of wine, but Adler writes: "In the kiddushin ceremony, this blessing would be followed by the erusin blessing, and only the couple would drink from the cup. ... To distinguish this cup from the erusin cup, it may be passed to all those around the huppah." Why is it so important to do various things with a shinui [change] to make clear that kiddushin is not happening, even egalitarian kiddushin? "[B]ecause any kiddushin requires a get, a halakhic divorce, for its termination, it is important to establish that b'rit ahuvim is not equivalent to kiddushin. For if b'rit ahuvim is not a halakhic marriage, then it can be dissolved without a get." And why is requiring a get a bad thing? "Greedy husbands blackmail and extort in exchange for granting divorces. Vindictive husbands withhold divorce for years, leaving their wives in limbo. ... In our own time, religious courts research and record marriages and divorces with unprecedented assiduousness in a central computer bank." In other words, because the process of gittin in other parts of the Jewish world is undeniably disgusting (both because of the potential for abuse and because, even when the system is "working", it creates a huge power imbalance), we should rule out anything in our part of the Jewish world that resembles gittin, and therefore anything that resembles kiddushin. (The possibility of egalitarian gittin isn't even considered.)
I find this approach problematic for two reasons: First of all, it results in a definition of marriage that is too negative ("not kiddushin") and cedes too much to other Jewish subcultures. In the name of avoiding the abuses of vindictive husbands and the Orthodox rabbinic establishment (a laudable goal), the unfortunate result is defining our own marriages as "not a halakhic marriage". When we make decisions about the wedding ceremony because of how it may appear to someone else outside our community, we lose the opportunity to decide what we would do if we were the only Jews on earth. That freedom might result in fixing kiddushin and gittin to eliminate these abuses and power imbalances. But yes, even under those circumstances, many would still oppose kiddushin, even egalitarian kiddushin, for other reasons. Adler herself rejects it as "equal opportunity commodification". But there's still a difference between the choice not to use the framework of kiddushin (a choice that could be made for many reasons) and the choice to essentially wave red flags saying "This is not kiddushin" (which seems motivated only as a reaction to external perception).
Second of all, despite all the efforts to say "this is not kiddushin" in order to avoid the need for a get, I'm not convinced it would actually work. That is, no matter how many ways you try to mark your wedding ceremony as "not kiddushin", there's always the possibility that some corrupt functionary in the Israeli rabbanut will deem that kiddushin has taken place anyway, and therefore that you need a get. And then you're back where you started, when it comes to practical concern for descendants. So since there's no way to avoid this possibility completely, it seems to me that it's not worth trying too hard.
And I don't mean to pick on Adler specifically. She does outline how the berit ahuvim is to be dissolved. Others, in contrast, don't consider the question of divorce at all, or if they do, they frame the issue as creating "rituals" rather than as determining the legal procedure by which the marriage is terminated; the legal procedures are either ceded to someone else or deemed unimportant.
Instead, I would advocate fighting the war as if there is no White Paper, and so forth: figure out how divorce works in the context of marriage as we understand it, then figure out whether any additional provisions need to be included to address the rest of the world. We did both of these, but kept them separate: the former was addressed in the structure of the sh'tar kiddushin, while the latter was addressed by a provision in the ketubah. The remainder of this post will look at each piece of this.
The first question is how egalitarian kiddushin should be terminated. As discussed in Part 3, the procedure for divorce (one partner writing and giving the other a document) appears explicitly in the Torah, while the procedure for marriage does not. Some of the laws of kiddushin (especially kiddushin bishtar) are derived from the laws of gittin. So it would appear that kiddushin and gittin are inverses of each other, and a get is required to terminate a kiddushin.
How does this apply to egalitarian kiddushin, in which there are two separate acts of kiddushin? The simplest answer might be that each kiddushin requires a separate get to terminate it. But this interpretation leads to problems in practice: Many liberal Jewish weddings include two acts of kiddushin, and very few divorces include two gittin. If we take egalitarian kiddushin seriously (which, fortunately in this case, the Israeli rabbanut doesn't), then this interpretation forces us to conclude that many individuals (usually men) who were married via egalitarian kiddushin and gave a get to their ex-spouses, but did not receive a get, are unknowingly agunim! (Perhaps one could address this bedi'avad through a less condescending (and more tautological) version of Moshe Feinstein's infamous ruling that marriages officiated by non-Orthodox rabbis don't really count and therefore don't require a get: one could say that if they were of the belief that their kiddushin didn't require a get, then ipso facto they didn't really have the intent to do kiddushin, and thus kiddushin never occurred. Still, lechatchilah we shouldn't be thinking that our kiddushin doesn't count.) It also leads to problems in theory: If both partners must give a get before the marriage is completely dissolved, this doubles the potential for abuse rather than eliminating it, since either partner can now hold the other hostage.
But maybe this interpretation (that a get is required for each kiddushin) is not the correct one. After all, a get does more than terminate kiddushin: it also terminates nisuin, a mutual relationship that has no other formal termination. So perhaps a get terminates not just a single kiddushin, but ALL marital relationships between the two parties, including the kiddushin in the reverse direction. If this is the case, then if one partner gives the other a get, then it would automatically terminate both kiddushins.
The second way certainly seems like how things should work: either party can initiate divorce, neither party can take hostages, and no new agunim are created. But how do we know how it does work? This would require much research to figure out, since the question wasn't directly asked in the classical sources.
In the meantime, to ensure that it would work this way, that one get from either party could terminate both kiddushins, we stipulated it explicitly. As discussed in Part 3, our sh'tarot kiddushin included a condition that they were dependent on each other, so that if one kiddushin is terminated, the other is too. It's possible that this condition was unnecessary (except in determining when the kiddushin first went into effect), if that's the way it would work anyway, and it's also possible that the condition was necessary; by including the condition, we covered all our bases. As discussed in Part 3, this condition could also be used by couples doing other modes of kiddushin; it would just have to be in a separate document or spoken.
So that should cover us in regard to our own understanding of egalitarian halachah (#1 above). That is, if (chas v'shalom) either of us gave the other a get, we would both consider ourselves divorced. But, as discussed above, that's not good enough. What about the practical realities in the rest of the Jewish world?
Ideally, the non-egalitarian portions of the Jewish world shouldn't accept our kiddushin in the first place, and therefore there should be no issue: one kiddushin is from a woman to a man (and therefore not recognized on those grounds), and the other kiddushin (from a man to a woman) is conditioned on the validity of the first kiddushin. However, it's dangerous to count on that working out in practice. There's always the possibility that someone at the rabbanut or wherever would consider the condition itself to be invalid, and therefore consider one of the kiddushins to be valid. So it's still important to be prepared for that possibility.
Also, the rabbanut or whoever would only accept a get from particular batei din, likely a proper subset of the set of batei din that we would consider valid. And we wanted to deal with the consequences of that reality, without suggesting that we consider only batei din in that subset to be valid.
To address this, we adapted a solution developed by our friends Debra Cash and David Fillingham (which has been included in newer editions of The New Jewish Wedding). They signed a document committing to a particular process in the case of divorce. We didn't use their whole process, but did take one piece of it: "[W]e pledge that neither will create an impediment to the other's Jewish remarriage. Specifically, we pledge that ... if one of us requires a formal get from the other, in accordance with any denomination of the Jewish world that the requester identifies, the other will not be recalcitrant and will participate in person or by a proxy acceptable under the norms of that denomination's practice." In other words, this requirement that a get be granted from any denomination requested is not the act that dissolves the marriage, but is part of the divorce settlement.
We adapted this provision and translated it into Aramaic: ודאי בעא חד מינייהו או תרוויהו למפרש דא מן דא ח"ו יהון פורשין בספר תירוכין באפי בי דינא דיתרעי כל חד מניהו ולא מעכבן דא לדא. ("And if a time comes that one or both of them desire to dissolve their marriage, they will separate with a get, granted by either to the other in a bet-din requested, without delay.") This clause appears in our ketubah, in the same paragraph quoted in Part 4 that talks about dividing possessions, etc. It was an intentional choice to put this in the ketubah and not in the sh'tar kiddushin, so that it is far away from the conditions dealing with what it takes to actually dissolve the marriage, and is instead categorized with the responsibilities that we have towards each other during and after the marriage. This is in the same spirit as Cash and Fillingham's making this provision part of the divorce settlement.
Ok, now let's get real: this requirement that a get be granted, above and beyond the get (or other act) that actually terminates the marriage, is very unlikely to be invoked by "either party" in "any denomination". In practice, the likely scenario is very specific: a woman would ask a man to give her a get in an Orthodox beit din, and this clause would require him to grant it. However, by keeping the language general, we can deal with the situation without hard-coding either the gender inequality or the denominational politics into our ketubot.
Of course, this sort of clause would be unnecessary for same-sex couples. However, they might still choose to include it, in solidarity with straight allies for whom it is necessary (since some straight allies do many things in solidarity with same-sex couples).
We didn't give this clause teeth, e.g. state that if one party fails to abide by it, s/he will be subject to a financial penalty, or that the kiddushin will be retroactively annulled. While we know that we are honest people and would take our commitments seriously with or without teeth, I realize that's not the point: the point of teeth is to establish precedent for the whole Jewish world, so that even less honest people would be subject to that precedent. So why didn't we do it? I guess it's because we had already done our Kantian duty in establishing precedent by doing egalitarian kiddushin that can be terminated by either party: if everyone did what we did, there would be no agunah problem, and this additional clause is just a concession to the fact that not everyone does what we do.
The case that we haven't dealt with is the original agunah situation: what to do if one partner is missing and presumed (but not proven) dead, or analogously, the Terri Schiavo scenario. The solution to this (for which there is historical precedent) is probably to write conditional gittin, which will go into effect only if one of those horrific scenarios takes place. But this doesn't need to happen at the time of the marriage; it can be written any time.
So that's all for now. I obviously hope nothing in this post has to be implemented, whether in my marriage or in yours, but I hope kicking off this discussion is still helpful. This is the end of the series, but if you have questions about anything, please post away in the comments.
The next frontiers for marriage equality
Following the 2010 elections, these 6 states have Democratic majorities in both houses of the state legislature, have Democratic (or independent) governors, don't already have civil marriage equality, have no constitutional restrictions on same-sex marriage, and aren't West Virginia:
Which will be next?
Which will be next?
Sunday, December 26, 2010
The Wedding... Part 4
To see what this is all about, read Part 1, Part 2, and Part 3 first, then come back here.
Ok, did you read them? Good. (For those who have been around from the beginning, note that I have added two paragraphs to Part 2, which I had erroneously deleted before posting the original post. They're at the end of the "kesef" section.)
Part 4 is about the ketubah. Before getting into what a ketubah is, we'll start with what it is not:
A ketubah is not the same as a sh'tar kiddushin. This distinction is discussed in Part 3. Some ketubot serve as (among other things) a written record of kiddushin, and include the text "X said to Y: 'You are hereby consecrated to me...'", but this kiddushin takes place whether or not it is reported in the ketubah.
A ketubah is not a document that enacts marriage. Two people who get married without a ketubah are still married by any definition. In order to make husbands give their wives ketubot, the rabbis ruled that a couple without a ketubah is not permitted to live together; however, they are still married.
A ketubah is not, classically, a document under which a woman is acquired for the price of 200 zuz. As discussed in Part 2, insofar as classical Jewish marriage resembles acquisition, the price is actually (for better or for worse) one perutah! And once again, if there is anything resembling acquisition, the ketubah has no part in this.
Ok, so if a ketubah isn't any of the things that it is commonly believed to be, then what is it?
The classical ketubah was essentially a "severance package". The husband would give the wife this document at the time of the marriage, and then if the marriage terminated, due either to divorce or the husband's death, the wife could cash in the ketubah and collect the designated amount from either the husband or his estate. (In those days, wives did not automatically inherit from their husbands; the inheritance would go to the offspring or closest blood relative.)
The ketubah was not in itself a misogynistic document. Rather, given the context of a society that would be considered misogynistic by today's standards, in which most women were not independent economic actors (and any income earned by married women went directly to their husbands), the ketubah provided a corrective by ensuring that divorced or widowed women would not be penniless when their marriages ended.
The minimum amount granted in the ketubah was, generally speaking, 200 zuz for women who had not been previously married, and 100 zuz for women who had. There was no maximum amount; any amount above the minimum could be specified in the ketubah. This 200 vs. 100 distinction makes some amount of sense: a woman who had been previously married (and therefore had previously collected at least one ketubah) might already have some financial assets of her own, and therefore be in less dire need than someone who had gone directly from her father's household to her husband's household and had nothing to her name. (But categories such as mukat eitz certainly problematize this rational basis for the distinction.)
How much was 200 zuz? Well, according to a popular song, two zuzim was the price of a kid (a goat, not a child), which means that this was enough to buy 100 kids. But more seriously, in a source more contemporary with the original ketubah, the Mishnah (Peah 8:8) defines 200 zuz as the poverty line: someone who has 200 zuz is not eligible to collect funds designated for the poor. So this is a significant amount, intended to put the divorced or widowed woman on her feet so that she's not living in poverty.
Furthermore, the rabbis ruled (Mishnah Ketubot 4:7) that a woman who never received a written ketubah was still entitled to collect the appropriate minimum amount (100 or 200 zuz) on the termination of her marriage; thus, this provision of the ketubah became automatic, with or without the actual ketubah. This chapter of the Mishnah goes on to name other ketubah provisions that go into effect and are enforceable whether or not they are actually written into the ketubah: the ketubah obligation is secured by the husband's property; if the wife is taken captive, the husband is responsible for ransoming her and bringing her back; if the wife dies first, her sons can collect the ketubah amount on top of what would otherwise be their share of the inheritance (this was more relevant in a time when men had multiple wives, so there were multiple sets of sons competing for the inheritance); the wife's unmarried daughters will be supported by the husband's estate after he dies; the wife herself will be supported by the estate until she is paid her ketubah. We can infer that these were all meant to be written into the ketubah. Most of these provisions, like the original core of the ketubah, deal with responsibilities that accrue after the termination of the marriage. The one exception is the part about redeeming the captive, which is a responsibility during the marriage, and is therefore perhaps the link from the ancient to the modern ketubah.
Over time, the ketubah grew to incorporate more responsibilities during the marriage, and the standard wording (see, e.g., Rambam, Hilchot Yibum v'Chalitzah 4:33) came to include אנא אפלח ואוקיר ואיזון ואפרנס יתיכי ("I will serve and respect and sustain and support you"). Thus the current "traditional" ketubah text contains both some of the responsibilities of the husband during the marriage and the financial guarantee after the termination of the marriage.
Modern egalitarian ketubot tend to focus on responsibilities during the marriage, though of course, the responsibilities apply to both partners. Our ketubah is in this model, containing both the responsibilities (in Aramaic) found in classical ketubot and some (in Hebrew) based on the text of Rachel Adler's berit ahuvim and other versions used by our friends. All provisions are mutual and incumbent equally on both partners; adapting the text for a same-sex marriage would require only grammatical changes. We intentionally used very little original text, and the two couples working on this used identical texts (except for names, dates, and locations), in accordance with the principle (discussed in Part 1) of doing things in a general way that other couples could use rather than specifically tailoring the ceremony to ourselves.
As for the original core of the ketubah, we included a paragraph stating that property would be under joint ownership, and a paragraph regarding the termination of the marriage (which will be discussed in Part 5). However, there is no reference to 200 zuz or any analogous amount, because we couldn't see any coherent way to incorporate this into an egalitarian ketubah between two partners who are both financially empowered. It wouldn't have made sense to apply this financial responsibility to both partners: in our society, it is assumed that spouses inherit each other anyway, so specifying a fixed amount payable to the surviving spouse would have been redundant. And in the case of divorce (in which both partners survive), the two payments would cancel each other out and would thus be meaningless. Instead, in the case of divorce, we included a requirement that כל רכוש דאית לון יהון פלגין באורח קשוט וכל טפלא דיתברכון בהון יהו באחריות תריהון ("they will divide all of their possessions with integrity and share responsibility for any children with which they are blessed"), which we think matches the original intent of the ketubah, to ensure that both spouses and any children are provided for after the termination of the marriage.
So that's the text of the document. The other issue is the means of accepting it.
Classically, ketubot were signed only by the witnesses. Nowadays, many ketubot are also signed by the couple (and/or the officiant(s)). We went with the former approach, but not for any ideological reason.
At many weddings, the couple (in the case of an egalitarian ketubah) or the groom (in the case of a non-egalitarian ketubah) formally acquire the responsibilities of the ketubah via the mechanism of kinyan sudar: They take hold of some object, such as a handkerchief (sudar) or pen, that belongs to someone else (e.g. one of the witnesses), and in taking possession of that object, they acquire the ketubah obligations. The witnesses watch this happen, and then sign the ketubah to affirm that they have seen it. Typically this takes place before the chuppah. (However, it occurs to me that couples that don't do a formal kinyan sudar are still covered if they sign their own ketubah, since in 21st-century America, signing a document is the standard method of accepting responsibility for the contents.)
You may recall from Part 3 that we didn't use rings for kiddushin. But we still wanted to exchange rings. So we used the rings as the "sudar" to acquire the obligations of the ketubah. (This is similar to R. Dov Linzer's model for a bilateral nonegalitarian "double-ring" ceremony, in which the groom gives the bride a ring to effect kiddushin, and the bride gives the groom a ring which he accepts to take on the obligations of the ketubah. However, instead of 1 ring for kiddushin and 1 ring for the ketubah, we used 0 for kiddushin and 2 for the ketubah.)
We gave the rings ahead of time to one of our witnesses, who was then the owner of the rings for a brief period of time. At the appropriate moment (after the ketubah was read aloud under the chuppah), she brought the rings forward to the chuppah in a bag. We then lifted the bag of rings together, to indicate our intent to establish a partnership. (This echoes the berit ahuvim, which is in turn based on the classic method of establishing a business partnership (shutafut). However, we were doing this only symbolically, since shutafut requires pooling resources that belong to each partner, whereas the rings still belonged to our witness at that point.)
We then removed the rings (which still belonged to our witness until then) from the bag, and each of us gave the other a ring. In taking possession of the ring, we each accepted responsibility for our respective obligations in the ketubah. The witnesses witnessed this, and signed the ketubah. (This method required signing the ketubah under the chuppah, rather than ahead of time, since the witnesses were testifying that they had seen us accept the responsibilities.)
This was followed by sheva berachot, etc., as at any Jewish wedding.
***
Coming in Part 5: provisions for divorce
Ok, did you read them? Good. (For those who have been around from the beginning, note that I have added two paragraphs to Part 2, which I had erroneously deleted before posting the original post. They're at the end of the "kesef" section.)
Part 4 is about the ketubah. Before getting into what a ketubah is, we'll start with what it is not:
A ketubah is not the same as a sh'tar kiddushin. This distinction is discussed in Part 3. Some ketubot serve as (among other things) a written record of kiddushin, and include the text "X said to Y: 'You are hereby consecrated to me...'", but this kiddushin takes place whether or not it is reported in the ketubah.
A ketubah is not a document that enacts marriage. Two people who get married without a ketubah are still married by any definition. In order to make husbands give their wives ketubot, the rabbis ruled that a couple without a ketubah is not permitted to live together; however, they are still married.
A ketubah is not, classically, a document under which a woman is acquired for the price of 200 zuz. As discussed in Part 2, insofar as classical Jewish marriage resembles acquisition, the price is actually (for better or for worse) one perutah! And once again, if there is anything resembling acquisition, the ketubah has no part in this.
Ok, so if a ketubah isn't any of the things that it is commonly believed to be, then what is it?
The classical ketubah was essentially a "severance package". The husband would give the wife this document at the time of the marriage, and then if the marriage terminated, due either to divorce or the husband's death, the wife could cash in the ketubah and collect the designated amount from either the husband or his estate. (In those days, wives did not automatically inherit from their husbands; the inheritance would go to the offspring or closest blood relative.)
The ketubah was not in itself a misogynistic document. Rather, given the context of a society that would be considered misogynistic by today's standards, in which most women were not independent economic actors (and any income earned by married women went directly to their husbands), the ketubah provided a corrective by ensuring that divorced or widowed women would not be penniless when their marriages ended.
The minimum amount granted in the ketubah was, generally speaking, 200 zuz for women who had not been previously married, and 100 zuz for women who had. There was no maximum amount; any amount above the minimum could be specified in the ketubah. This 200 vs. 100 distinction makes some amount of sense: a woman who had been previously married (and therefore had previously collected at least one ketubah) might already have some financial assets of her own, and therefore be in less dire need than someone who had gone directly from her father's household to her husband's household and had nothing to her name. (But categories such as mukat eitz certainly problematize this rational basis for the distinction.)
How much was 200 zuz? Well, according to a popular song, two zuzim was the price of a kid (a goat, not a child), which means that this was enough to buy 100 kids. But more seriously, in a source more contemporary with the original ketubah, the Mishnah (Peah 8:8) defines 200 zuz as the poverty line: someone who has 200 zuz is not eligible to collect funds designated for the poor. So this is a significant amount, intended to put the divorced or widowed woman on her feet so that she's not living in poverty.
Furthermore, the rabbis ruled (Mishnah Ketubot 4:7) that a woman who never received a written ketubah was still entitled to collect the appropriate minimum amount (100 or 200 zuz) on the termination of her marriage; thus, this provision of the ketubah became automatic, with or without the actual ketubah. This chapter of the Mishnah goes on to name other ketubah provisions that go into effect and are enforceable whether or not they are actually written into the ketubah: the ketubah obligation is secured by the husband's property; if the wife is taken captive, the husband is responsible for ransoming her and bringing her back; if the wife dies first, her sons can collect the ketubah amount on top of what would otherwise be their share of the inheritance (this was more relevant in a time when men had multiple wives, so there were multiple sets of sons competing for the inheritance); the wife's unmarried daughters will be supported by the husband's estate after he dies; the wife herself will be supported by the estate until she is paid her ketubah. We can infer that these were all meant to be written into the ketubah. Most of these provisions, like the original core of the ketubah, deal with responsibilities that accrue after the termination of the marriage. The one exception is the part about redeeming the captive, which is a responsibility during the marriage, and is therefore perhaps the link from the ancient to the modern ketubah.
Over time, the ketubah grew to incorporate more responsibilities during the marriage, and the standard wording (see, e.g., Rambam, Hilchot Yibum v'Chalitzah 4:33) came to include אנא אפלח ואוקיר ואיזון ואפרנס יתיכי ("I will serve and respect and sustain and support you"). Thus the current "traditional" ketubah text contains both some of the responsibilities of the husband during the marriage and the financial guarantee after the termination of the marriage.
Modern egalitarian ketubot tend to focus on responsibilities during the marriage, though of course, the responsibilities apply to both partners. Our ketubah is in this model, containing both the responsibilities (in Aramaic) found in classical ketubot and some (in Hebrew) based on the text of Rachel Adler's berit ahuvim and other versions used by our friends. All provisions are mutual and incumbent equally on both partners; adapting the text for a same-sex marriage would require only grammatical changes. We intentionally used very little original text, and the two couples working on this used identical texts (except for names, dates, and locations), in accordance with the principle (discussed in Part 1) of doing things in a general way that other couples could use rather than specifically tailoring the ceremony to ourselves.
As for the original core of the ketubah, we included a paragraph stating that property would be under joint ownership, and a paragraph regarding the termination of the marriage (which will be discussed in Part 5). However, there is no reference to 200 zuz or any analogous amount, because we couldn't see any coherent way to incorporate this into an egalitarian ketubah between two partners who are both financially empowered. It wouldn't have made sense to apply this financial responsibility to both partners: in our society, it is assumed that spouses inherit each other anyway, so specifying a fixed amount payable to the surviving spouse would have been redundant. And in the case of divorce (in which both partners survive), the two payments would cancel each other out and would thus be meaningless. Instead, in the case of divorce, we included a requirement that כל רכוש דאית לון יהון פלגין באורח קשוט וכל טפלא דיתברכון בהון יהו באחריות תריהון ("they will divide all of their possessions with integrity and share responsibility for any children with which they are blessed"), which we think matches the original intent of the ketubah, to ensure that both spouses and any children are provided for after the termination of the marriage.
So that's the text of the document. The other issue is the means of accepting it.
Classically, ketubot were signed only by the witnesses. Nowadays, many ketubot are also signed by the couple (and/or the officiant(s)). We went with the former approach, but not for any ideological reason.
At many weddings, the couple (in the case of an egalitarian ketubah) or the groom (in the case of a non-egalitarian ketubah) formally acquire the responsibilities of the ketubah via the mechanism of kinyan sudar: They take hold of some object, such as a handkerchief (sudar) or pen, that belongs to someone else (e.g. one of the witnesses), and in taking possession of that object, they acquire the ketubah obligations. The witnesses watch this happen, and then sign the ketubah to affirm that they have seen it. Typically this takes place before the chuppah. (However, it occurs to me that couples that don't do a formal kinyan sudar are still covered if they sign their own ketubah, since in 21st-century America, signing a document is the standard method of accepting responsibility for the contents.)
You may recall from Part 3 that we didn't use rings for kiddushin. But we still wanted to exchange rings. So we used the rings as the "sudar" to acquire the obligations of the ketubah. (This is similar to R. Dov Linzer's model for a bilateral nonegalitarian "double-ring" ceremony, in which the groom gives the bride a ring to effect kiddushin, and the bride gives the groom a ring which he accepts to take on the obligations of the ketubah. However, instead of 1 ring for kiddushin and 1 ring for the ketubah, we used 0 for kiddushin and 2 for the ketubah.)
We gave the rings ahead of time to one of our witnesses, who was then the owner of the rings for a brief period of time. At the appropriate moment (after the ketubah was read aloud under the chuppah), she brought the rings forward to the chuppah in a bag. We then lifted the bag of rings together, to indicate our intent to establish a partnership. (This echoes the berit ahuvim, which is in turn based on the classic method of establishing a business partnership (shutafut). However, we were doing this only symbolically, since shutafut requires pooling resources that belong to each partner, whereas the rings still belonged to our witness at that point.)
We then removed the rings (which still belonged to our witness until then) from the bag, and each of us gave the other a ring. In taking possession of the ring, we each accepted responsibility for our respective obligations in the ketubah. The witnesses witnessed this, and signed the ketubah. (This method required signing the ketubah under the chuppah, rather than ahead of time, since the witnesses were testifying that they had seen us accept the responsibilities.)
This was followed by sheva berachot, etc., as at any Jewish wedding.
***
Coming in Part 5: provisions for divorce
Tuesday, December 21, 2010
Google hit of the day
Someone found their way to Mah Rabu yesterday by Googling (without the quotes) "is watching a lunar eclipse halachically permissible?".
(By the way, while last night's eclipse was on the same date as the solstice, it didn't coincide with the solstice itself, which was over 12 hours after the eclipse ended.)
(By the way, while last night's eclipse was on the same date as the solstice, it didn't coincide with the solstice itself, which was over 12 hours after the eclipse ended.)
Tuesday, December 14, 2010
The December Dilemma: 10 Tevet on Friday (guest post)
In the tradition of Mah Rabu's calendar geeking, this is a guest post by Dunash.
This year, for the first time since 5762 (2001), the Fast of Tevet will be observed on a Friday. This creates an awkward situation, where one is preparing for Shabbat while also fasting. In perhaps the greatest contrast, at erev Shabbat mincha, one reads Torah and Haftarah as normal on a fast day, before going into Kabbalat Shabbat and Maariv and then breaking the fast at Shabbat Kiddush.i
This may not be an enormous undertaking in the Northern Hemisphere, when Shabbat in late December or early January starts mid afternoon, but in Buenos Aires or Cape Town or Melbourne this could be a significant hardship. Still, the fast is observed on a Friday worldwide.
The situation raises three questions:
1) What are the calendar mechanics that cause the 10th of Tevet to fall on a Friday?
2) What would happen if another fast day fell on a Friday?
3) Why is the Tenth of Tevet so special?
First, a brief primer on how the Jewish calendar is calculated. It consists of lunar months, which are between 29 and 30 days, over a fixed 19-year cycle of non-leap (12-month) and leap (13-month) years. This is necessary because a non-leap lunar year is approximately 11 days short when compared to a solar year and so must be augmented to keep the holidays seasonal. (This is in contrast to the Muslim calendar, which is purely lunar with no leap years and so the holidays shift throughout the year.)
There are also constraints such as on when the first day of Rosh Hashana can be (with the mnemonic לא אד"ו ראש – meaning not on Sunday, Wednesday, or Friday). This is so that Yom Kippur does not fall on Friday or Sunday and so that Hoshana Rabbah does not fall on Saturday.
These constraints result in at times needing to add one or two days to each year (both leap and non-leap) to make the next RH come out right. Days are added to Cheshvan (and potentially Kislev), which always makes them fall between Simchat Torah and the end of Chanukah. As a result, the period from Purim to ST always has the same number of days and so there is a 1-1 relationship between the days of the week of RH and most other holidays.ii
Based on this calendar algorithm, for the next 100 years (2010-2109), the 10th of Tevet will fall on a Friday 21% of the time.
10th of Tevet
While this hasn't happened since 2001, 1996, 1993, and 1983, it will happen again in 2013, then 2020, 2023, and 2024 (which actually occurs in Jan 2025).
The only other fast that could occur on a Friday would be Ta'anit Bechorot (because of a Saturday Pesach and therefore a Monday Rosh Hashana). If this happens, though, it is pulled up to the previous Thursday instead of observed on a Friday.iv
So why is the 10th of Tevet so special that we observe it on a Friday? And why do we ensure in the calendar that it cannot fall on Shabbat? It seems that there is a biblical relationship between the 10th of Tevet and the other fast day that we structure the calendar around instead of shifting its observance: Yom Kippur. In Leviticus 23:28, Yom Kippur is described as בעצם היום הזה ("on the very day"). Similarly, in Ezekiel 24:2, 10th of Tevet is described using very similar language, as עצם היום הזה ("the very day").
This suggests that were the 10th of Tevet to fall on Shabbat (which is currently impossible) we'd actually fast, which would create a strange situation since it is not a fast day with anywhere near the theological significance of Yom Kippur. However, this is not an issue with a Friday that has no particular significance, and so the 10th of Tevet can fall on a Friday, with only minor inconveniences to Shabbat cooking and erev Shabbat mincha.
May we all have a צוֹם קַל – an easy and meaningful fast.
***
i Despite reading Torah and Haftarah, because it is erev Shabbat, one omits Tachanun as usual, and also Avinu Malkeinu. One still does bathe as usual in anticipation of Shabbat. See Shulchan Aruch, Orach Chaim 566.
ii There is a spectacular את בש mnemonic (formed by starting at either end of the alphabet and then pairing letters going inward from each end) for the days of the week that each holiday falls on, corresponding to the days of Pesach. It does not take into account holiday observance that is pushed off because of Shabbat. Say the first day of Pesach was a Tuesday. Then את means Tisha Bav is on a Tuesday, בש means Shavuot is a Wednesday, גר means that Rosh Hashanah is on a Thursday, דק means Kriat Torah – reading of the Torah - Simchat Torah is on a Friday, הצ means Tzom – fast – Yom Kippur is on a Saturday, ופ for Purim on a Sunday, זע for Atzmaut – Israeli Independence Day on a Monday. However, (northern hemisphere) fall holidays are more flexible – Chanukah, 10th of Tevet, Tu Bishvat, due to the extra days in Cheshvan or Kislev.
The את בש goes back at least to the days of the Tur (1269-1340), though obviously there was no Yom Ha’Atzmaut back then. That its missing seventh day is now accounted for is an amazing/divine coincidence.
iii The fact that the 10th of Tevet can't fall on Monday either is interesting, though not crazy - since there are only three numbers of days it can be after RH, which can only be on four days of the week, but not every combination is possible - 353 only occurs with Monday and Saturday, 354 with Tuesday and Thursday, 355 and 383 and 385 with Monday, Thursday, and Saturday, 384 only with Tuesday. You'd need a 354 or 384 to occur with a Monday or Saturday RH, or 353 to occur with a Tuesday to get it on Monday or Saturday, none of which ever happens, since they would result in a Sunday or Friday RH the following year.
iv Several other fasts, if they fall on Shabbat, are observed a day late or two days early. In these cases (even for Tisha B’Av) certain special individuals can eat at very festive occasions that cannot be moved, such as those intimately involved with a bris, since the fast does not actually “fall” on that day but is merely “observed”.
If Tzom Gedaliah were to fall on Saturday (because of a Thursday RH) it is pushed off to Sunday (it cannot fall on a Friday because that would mean a Wednesday RH)
If Ta'anit Esther were to fall on a Saturday (because of a Sunday Purim and therefore a Thursday RH) it is pulled up to the previous Thursday (it cannot fall on a Friday because that would mean Purim on Shabbat which would mean a Wednesday RH)
If Ta'anit Bechorot were to fall on a Saturday (because of a Sunday Pesach and there a Tuesday RH) it is pulled up to the previous Thursday.
If 17th of Tammuz / Tisha B’Av were to fall on a Saturday (because of a Monday RH) it is pushed off to Sunday (it cannot fall on a Friday because that would mean a Sunday RH).
Technically, the beginning of Tisha B’Av can overlap with the end of Shabbat, either because it actually falls on Sunday or is pushed off from Saturday. But one does not experience fasting during this hour, since one has just finished the pre-fast meal.
This year, for the first time since 5762 (2001), the Fast of Tevet will be observed on a Friday. This creates an awkward situation, where one is preparing for Shabbat while also fasting. In perhaps the greatest contrast, at erev Shabbat mincha, one reads Torah and Haftarah as normal on a fast day, before going into Kabbalat Shabbat and Maariv and then breaking the fast at Shabbat Kiddush.i
This may not be an enormous undertaking in the Northern Hemisphere, when Shabbat in late December or early January starts mid afternoon, but in Buenos Aires or Cape Town or Melbourne this could be a significant hardship. Still, the fast is observed on a Friday worldwide.
The situation raises three questions:
1) What are the calendar mechanics that cause the 10th of Tevet to fall on a Friday?
2) What would happen if another fast day fell on a Friday?
3) Why is the Tenth of Tevet so special?
First, a brief primer on how the Jewish calendar is calculated. It consists of lunar months, which are between 29 and 30 days, over a fixed 19-year cycle of non-leap (12-month) and leap (13-month) years. This is necessary because a non-leap lunar year is approximately 11 days short when compared to a solar year and so must be augmented to keep the holidays seasonal. (This is in contrast to the Muslim calendar, which is purely lunar with no leap years and so the holidays shift throughout the year.)
There are also constraints such as on when the first day of Rosh Hashana can be (with the mnemonic לא אד"ו ראש – meaning not on Sunday, Wednesday, or Friday). This is so that Yom Kippur does not fall on Friday or Sunday and so that Hoshana Rabbah does not fall on Saturday.
These constraints result in at times needing to add one or two days to each year (both leap and non-leap) to make the next RH come out right. Days are added to Cheshvan (and potentially Kislev), which always makes them fall between Simchat Torah and the end of Chanukah. As a result, the period from Purim to ST always has the same number of days and so there is a 1-1 relationship between the days of the week of RH and most other holidays.ii
Based on this calendar algorithm, for the next 100 years (2010-2109), the 10th of Tevet will fall on a Friday 21% of the time.
10th of Tevet
| Day of the week | Shareiii |
| 1 | 30% |
| 2 | 0% |
| 3 | 26% |
| 4 | 3% |
| 5 | 20% |
| 6 | 21% |
| 7 | 0% |
While this hasn't happened since 2001, 1996, 1993, and 1983, it will happen again in 2013, then 2020, 2023, and 2024 (which actually occurs in Jan 2025).
The only other fast that could occur on a Friday would be Ta'anit Bechorot (because of a Saturday Pesach and therefore a Monday Rosh Hashana). If this happens, though, it is pulled up to the previous Thursday instead of observed on a Friday.iv
So why is the 10th of Tevet so special that we observe it on a Friday? And why do we ensure in the calendar that it cannot fall on Shabbat? It seems that there is a biblical relationship between the 10th of Tevet and the other fast day that we structure the calendar around instead of shifting its observance: Yom Kippur. In Leviticus 23:28, Yom Kippur is described as בעצם היום הזה ("on the very day"). Similarly, in Ezekiel 24:2, 10th of Tevet is described using very similar language, as עצם היום הזה ("the very day").
This suggests that were the 10th of Tevet to fall on Shabbat (which is currently impossible) we'd actually fast, which would create a strange situation since it is not a fast day with anywhere near the theological significance of Yom Kippur. However, this is not an issue with a Friday that has no particular significance, and so the 10th of Tevet can fall on a Friday, with only minor inconveniences to Shabbat cooking and erev Shabbat mincha.
May we all have a צוֹם קַל – an easy and meaningful fast.
***
i Despite reading Torah and Haftarah, because it is erev Shabbat, one omits Tachanun as usual, and also Avinu Malkeinu. One still does bathe as usual in anticipation of Shabbat. See Shulchan Aruch, Orach Chaim 566.
ii There is a spectacular את בש mnemonic (formed by starting at either end of the alphabet and then pairing letters going inward from each end) for the days of the week that each holiday falls on, corresponding to the days of Pesach. It does not take into account holiday observance that is pushed off because of Shabbat. Say the first day of Pesach was a Tuesday. Then את means Tisha Bav is on a Tuesday, בש means Shavuot is a Wednesday, גר means that Rosh Hashanah is on a Thursday, דק means Kriat Torah – reading of the Torah - Simchat Torah is on a Friday, הצ means Tzom – fast – Yom Kippur is on a Saturday, ופ for Purim on a Sunday, זע for Atzmaut – Israeli Independence Day on a Monday. However, (northern hemisphere) fall holidays are more flexible – Chanukah, 10th of Tevet, Tu Bishvat, due to the extra days in Cheshvan or Kislev.
The את בש goes back at least to the days of the Tur (1269-1340), though obviously there was no Yom Ha’Atzmaut back then. That its missing seventh day is now accounted for is an amazing/divine coincidence.
iii The fact that the 10th of Tevet can't fall on Monday either is interesting, though not crazy - since there are only three numbers of days it can be after RH, which can only be on four days of the week, but not every combination is possible - 353 only occurs with Monday and Saturday, 354 with Tuesday and Thursday, 355 and 383 and 385 with Monday, Thursday, and Saturday, 384 only with Tuesday. You'd need a 354 or 384 to occur with a Monday or Saturday RH, or 353 to occur with a Tuesday to get it on Monday or Saturday, none of which ever happens, since they would result in a Sunday or Friday RH the following year.
iv Several other fasts, if they fall on Shabbat, are observed a day late or two days early. In these cases (even for Tisha B’Av) certain special individuals can eat at very festive occasions that cannot be moved, such as those intimately involved with a bris, since the fast does not actually “fall” on that day but is merely “observed”.
If Tzom Gedaliah were to fall on Saturday (because of a Thursday RH) it is pushed off to Sunday (it cannot fall on a Friday because that would mean a Wednesday RH)
If Ta'anit Esther were to fall on a Saturday (because of a Sunday Purim and therefore a Thursday RH) it is pulled up to the previous Thursday (it cannot fall on a Friday because that would mean Purim on Shabbat which would mean a Wednesday RH)
If Ta'anit Bechorot were to fall on a Saturday (because of a Sunday Pesach and there a Tuesday RH) it is pulled up to the previous Thursday.
If 17th of Tammuz / Tisha B’Av were to fall on a Saturday (because of a Monday RH) it is pushed off to Sunday (it cannot fall on a Friday because that would mean a Sunday RH).
Technically, the beginning of Tisha B’Av can overlap with the end of Shabbat, either because it actually falls on Sunday or is pushed off from Saturday. But one does not experience fasting during this hour, since one has just finished the pre-fast meal.
Thursday, October 21, 2010
Snow Shabbat's ripple effects
(Crossposted to Jewschool.)
Back in February, we blogged about how Segulah’s and other Mid-Atlantic Jewish communities’ Shabbat plans were affected by what some called “Snowmageddon”. It turns out that that snowy Shabbat has had more profound impacts on one family. Go and read Washington lawyer Viva Hammer’s inspiring story about it, published in the Jerusalem Post.
Two lessons of this story (beyond the explicitly stated ones) include:
1) When we build communities, they can have powerful effects on individuals beyond what anyone expects.
2) It’s always a good idea not to be intimidated by the snow, and to let life (and Shabbat) go on.
Tuesday, October 19, 2010
Vote early and often
Election Day is a mere fortnight away, and early voting is already open in 25 states, and opens here in Maryland on Friday. So it's time for Mah Rabu's endorsements: in all partisan races, as usual, I endorse Democrats for everything. (Except in the Florida Senate race, where I endorse instant-runoff voting, which I also retroactively endorse for Florida 2000.) I can't say I'm thrilled with how the congressional Democrats have used (or, more precisely, not used) their once-in-a-generation supermajorities. Still, the Democrats are better than the Republicans on every single issue (we recently saw a unique exception when the Obama administration voluntarily appealed the decision in Log Cabin Republicans v. United States, but that's irrelevant to this election, since neither Obama nor the Log Cabin Republicans are on the ballot), and a Democratic Congress that does nothing at all (which is a close first-order approximation to the current Democratic Senate) would be vastly superior than a Republican Congress that does anything at all. Withholding your vote to "send a message" to the Democrats will accomplish nothing; a resounding defeat will be merely interpreted as proof that the Democrats have "overreached" and need to "move to the center". (Funny how everything seems to be interpreted that way.) And at the state level (in the 43 states with multiple congressional districts), this year's legislative and gubernatorial elections will have an impact on redistricting following the 2010 Census, and therefore on the makeup of state legislatures and the U.S. House for the next 10 years. So go vote!
So that's the partisan elections, but I also need to figure out how to vote in the nonpartisan elections and ballot questions here in Maryland and Montgomery County, so I'm posting the information I've gathered so far, and inviting input from readers.
Circuit Court (Circuit 6):
The Circuit Court is the higher of the two trial courts in Maryland, with jurisdiction over felonies and major civil cases. (The District Court handles misdemeanors and minor civil cases. As far as I can tell, they seem to be roughly parallel to the two levels of trial courts in my former state of residence, with the Circuit Court parallel to the New York "Supreme Court" (which, confusingly to everyone, is not the highest court in the state), and the District Court parallel to the NYC Civil Court and the NYC Criminal Court.) Judges are elected for a term of 15 years or until they reach age 70. However, when a vacancy occurs, the governor appoints a replacement who serves until the next biennial election. (Since 15 is an odd number, it seems to me that this means that this would happen almost all the time.) This year, 6 judicial positions are up for election in the 6th Circuit (which includes Montgomery and Frederick Counties). Six candidates are running for these six positions, and all 6 (Sharon Burrell, Cynthia Callahan, Richard Jordan, Cheryl McCally, Joseph Quirk, and Steven Salant) are incumbent judges. If I understand the system correctly, this means that 6 positions opened up in the 2 years since the last election, and all 6 judges appointed to fill those positions have chosen to run for full terms. Does anyone know anything about any of these judges? Given that this isn't a competitive election, in the absence of further information I think I'm going to sit this one out, as a protest against judicial elections. (I can't vote for myself, since Maryland judges have to have been Maryland residents for 5 years.)
Court of Appeals (Appellate Circuit 7):
As in New York, Maryland's highest state court is called the Court of Appeals (though Maryland doesn't have a lower court called the Supreme Court to confuse everyone). The Court of Appeals consists of 7 judges, one from each Appellate Circuit, and the 7th Appellate Circuit is just Montgomery County. Judges are appointed by the governor to a term of 10 years (or until age 70) and confirmed by the Senate, then are put before the voters at the first election thereafter for a retention vote. Judge Mary Ellen Barbera took office in September 2008, apparently too close to the 2008 election to get on the ballot that year. What do we know about her?
Court of Special Appeals (At Large):
The Court of Special Appeals is the intermediate state appellate court, and its judges are appointed by the same system as the Court of Appeals. There are 13 judges, one from each Appellate Circuit, and 6 at-large. Judges Peter Krauser (the Chief Judge, appointed in 2000 and up for a second term), Albert Matricciani, Jr. (appointed in 2008), and Alexander Wright, Jr. (appointed in 2008), all at-large, are up for retention this year. Thoughts?
Montgomery County Board of Education:
The Board of Education has at-large members as well as members representing districts, but all of them are elected at-large (except the student member, who is elected by students in the county's middle and high schools). They are elected to staggered 4-year terms, so half are elected every 2 years. The candidates already ran in a nonpartisan primary in September, and the top two candidates for each seat went on to the general election. The at-large candidates are Shirley Brandman* and Lisa Lloyd; in District 1, Judy Docca* and Mike Ibanez; in District 3, Patricia O'Neill* and Karen Smith; and in District 5, Mike Durso* and Martha Schaerr. (The incumbents have asterisks. Did they all win because they were first in the alphabet?) The teachers' union endorses all 4 incumbents, as does SEIU Local 500.
State Question 1:
The Maryland Constitution says that every 20 years (non-presidential election years ending in zero, so this is the year), there has to be a ballot question asking whether there should be a state constitutional convention, which can then propose constitutional amendments (or a new constitution) to be submitted to the voters for approval. There seem to be several websites advocating for such a convention, though not openly advocating for any particular constitutional amendments. In the absence of any specific proposed amendments that I'd like to see, I'm inclined to vote no. I'd be too worried that a convention would be dominated by crackpots and/or corporate money, and that we'd see California-style amendments that would abridge civil rights and/or make the state ungovernable. (I don't think Prop 8 would pass in Maryland, but I'd rather not find out; I didn't think it would pass in California either.)
State Question 2:
Most people know that the 7th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution guarantees the right to trial by jury for any civil suit in which the amount in controversy exceeds $20. Since the $20 has not been adjusted for inflation, that's not so much in today's dollars, so a jury option is available for basically any civil trial. However, this only applies to federal cases. The corresponding amount in the Maryland Declaration of Rights is $10,000 instead of $20. The proposed constitutional amendment on the ballot would raise this amount to $15,000.
I'm not sure I have enough information to know how to vote on this. How common are civil trials where the amount in controversy is between $10k and $15k, and how often do the litigants exercise their right to a trial by jury? Is there a systematic difference in the outcomes of civil trials tried by judges and by juries? Is the reason for this proposed amendment to save money (because jury trials cost the state more), or to help corporations (because juries are more likely to rule in favor of the plaintiff), or something else?
State Question 3:
This proposed constitutional amendment would require that judges of the Orphans' Court in Baltimore City be members in good standing of the Maryland Bar. I think I'm going to abstain on principle; this seems to be a matter entirely internal to Baltimore City (with no impact on the state budget), so I don't see why it should be up to me.
UPDATE: An anonymous commenter raises a good point: in order to become law, the amendment must be passed by a majority of statewide voters AND a majority of Baltimore voters. Therefore, a yes vote is a vote to let Baltimore decide. So now I think I'm voting yes.
County Question A:
This law, charging an ambulance fee of around $400, was passed by the Montgomery County Council in May, then referred to the voters by petition. The ballot question asks "Shall the Act to require the collection of an emergency medical services transport (ambulance) fee from: (1) County residents to the extent of the resident's insurance coverage; and (2) non-County residents subject to a hardship waiver become law?" Again, I'm not sure I have enough information. The county claims that the fee is only charged to insurance companies and not directly to patients (and is waived for uninsured County residents), but how does this interact with copays, deductibles, etc.? Is it true that people don't have to pay anything? If it really is charged only to insurance companies, it seems harmless enough, but if not, it seems like a highly regressive tax, and there are better ways to make up the budget shortfall. It also seems to screw over non-residents (and there are many DC and PG County residents who work in MoCo and could have emergencies there). Thoughts?
UPDATE: Here's the actual law that is up for a vote. No amount is specified for the ambulance fee; it is to be set by the County Executive. It looks like the county indeed covers everything for county residents that isn't covered by insurance (including copays, deductibles, etc.), so residents indeed don't have to pay anything out of pocket. (And lifetime coverage limits are now illegal under the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act.) Non-residents are on the hook for whatever their insurance doesn't cover, but can request a waiver if their household income is less than 3 times the poverty line. (It's not clear how simple or complicated this process would be.) The ambulances are required to transport people regardless of their ability to pay. County Executive Leggett has proposed significant cuts to county programs in anticipation of the ambulance fee being voted down. I can't say I agree with his quick dismissal of the possibility of raising taxes, but whether I agree with it or not, that doesn't seem to be on the table right now, while the ambulance fee does. So to avoid all these cuts, from firefighters to road maintenance to mental health services, I'm now inclined to vote YES.
So that's the partisan elections, but I also need to figure out how to vote in the nonpartisan elections and ballot questions here in Maryland and Montgomery County, so I'm posting the information I've gathered so far, and inviting input from readers.
Circuit Court (Circuit 6):
The Circuit Court is the higher of the two trial courts in Maryland, with jurisdiction over felonies and major civil cases. (The District Court handles misdemeanors and minor civil cases. As far as I can tell, they seem to be roughly parallel to the two levels of trial courts in my former state of residence, with the Circuit Court parallel to the New York "Supreme Court" (which, confusingly to everyone, is not the highest court in the state), and the District Court parallel to the NYC Civil Court and the NYC Criminal Court.) Judges are elected for a term of 15 years or until they reach age 70. However, when a vacancy occurs, the governor appoints a replacement who serves until the next biennial election. (Since 15 is an odd number, it seems to me that this means that this would happen almost all the time.) This year, 6 judicial positions are up for election in the 6th Circuit (which includes Montgomery and Frederick Counties). Six candidates are running for these six positions, and all 6 (Sharon Burrell, Cynthia Callahan, Richard Jordan, Cheryl McCally, Joseph Quirk, and Steven Salant) are incumbent judges. If I understand the system correctly, this means that 6 positions opened up in the 2 years since the last election, and all 6 judges appointed to fill those positions have chosen to run for full terms. Does anyone know anything about any of these judges? Given that this isn't a competitive election, in the absence of further information I think I'm going to sit this one out, as a protest against judicial elections. (I can't vote for myself, since Maryland judges have to have been Maryland residents for 5 years.)
Court of Appeals (Appellate Circuit 7):
As in New York, Maryland's highest state court is called the Court of Appeals (though Maryland doesn't have a lower court called the Supreme Court to confuse everyone). The Court of Appeals consists of 7 judges, one from each Appellate Circuit, and the 7th Appellate Circuit is just Montgomery County. Judges are appointed by the governor to a term of 10 years (or until age 70) and confirmed by the Senate, then are put before the voters at the first election thereafter for a retention vote. Judge Mary Ellen Barbera took office in September 2008, apparently too close to the 2008 election to get on the ballot that year. What do we know about her?
Court of Special Appeals (At Large):
The Court of Special Appeals is the intermediate state appellate court, and its judges are appointed by the same system as the Court of Appeals. There are 13 judges, one from each Appellate Circuit, and 6 at-large. Judges Peter Krauser (the Chief Judge, appointed in 2000 and up for a second term), Albert Matricciani, Jr. (appointed in 2008), and Alexander Wright, Jr. (appointed in 2008), all at-large, are up for retention this year. Thoughts?
Montgomery County Board of Education:
The Board of Education has at-large members as well as members representing districts, but all of them are elected at-large (except the student member, who is elected by students in the county's middle and high schools). They are elected to staggered 4-year terms, so half are elected every 2 years. The candidates already ran in a nonpartisan primary in September, and the top two candidates for each seat went on to the general election. The at-large candidates are Shirley Brandman* and Lisa Lloyd; in District 1, Judy Docca* and Mike Ibanez; in District 3, Patricia O'Neill* and Karen Smith; and in District 5, Mike Durso* and Martha Schaerr. (The incumbents have asterisks. Did they all win because they were first in the alphabet?) The teachers' union endorses all 4 incumbents, as does SEIU Local 500.
State Question 1:
The Maryland Constitution says that every 20 years (non-presidential election years ending in zero, so this is the year), there has to be a ballot question asking whether there should be a state constitutional convention, which can then propose constitutional amendments (or a new constitution) to be submitted to the voters for approval. There seem to be several websites advocating for such a convention, though not openly advocating for any particular constitutional amendments. In the absence of any specific proposed amendments that I'd like to see, I'm inclined to vote no. I'd be too worried that a convention would be dominated by crackpots and/or corporate money, and that we'd see California-style amendments that would abridge civil rights and/or make the state ungovernable. (I don't think Prop 8 would pass in Maryland, but I'd rather not find out; I didn't think it would pass in California either.)
State Question 2:
Most people know that the 7th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution guarantees the right to trial by jury for any civil suit in which the amount in controversy exceeds $20. Since the $20 has not been adjusted for inflation, that's not so much in today's dollars, so a jury option is available for basically any civil trial. However, this only applies to federal cases. The corresponding amount in the Maryland Declaration of Rights is $10,000 instead of $20. The proposed constitutional amendment on the ballot would raise this amount to $15,000.
I'm not sure I have enough information to know how to vote on this. How common are civil trials where the amount in controversy is between $10k and $15k, and how often do the litigants exercise their right to a trial by jury? Is there a systematic difference in the outcomes of civil trials tried by judges and by juries? Is the reason for this proposed amendment to save money (because jury trials cost the state more), or to help corporations (because juries are more likely to rule in favor of the plaintiff), or something else?
State Question 3:
This proposed constitutional amendment would require that judges of the Orphans' Court in Baltimore City be members in good standing of the Maryland Bar. I think I'm going to abstain on principle; this seems to be a matter entirely internal to Baltimore City (with no impact on the state budget), so I don't see why it should be up to me.
UPDATE: An anonymous commenter raises a good point: in order to become law, the amendment must be passed by a majority of statewide voters AND a majority of Baltimore voters. Therefore, a yes vote is a vote to let Baltimore decide. So now I think I'm voting yes.
County Question A:
This law, charging an ambulance fee of around $400, was passed by the Montgomery County Council in May, then referred to the voters by petition. The ballot question asks "Shall the Act to require the collection of an emergency medical services transport (ambulance) fee from: (1) County residents to the extent of the resident's insurance coverage; and (2) non-County residents subject to a hardship waiver become law?" Again, I'm not sure I have enough information. The county claims that the fee is only charged to insurance companies and not directly to patients (and is waived for uninsured County residents), but how does this interact with copays, deductibles, etc.? Is it true that people don't have to pay anything? If it really is charged only to insurance companies, it seems harmless enough, but if not, it seems like a highly regressive tax, and there are better ways to make up the budget shortfall. It also seems to screw over non-residents (and there are many DC and PG County residents who work in MoCo and could have emergencies there). Thoughts?
UPDATE: Here's the actual law that is up for a vote. No amount is specified for the ambulance fee; it is to be set by the County Executive. It looks like the county indeed covers everything for county residents that isn't covered by insurance (including copays, deductibles, etc.), so residents indeed don't have to pay anything out of pocket. (And lifetime coverage limits are now illegal under the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act.) Non-residents are on the hook for whatever their insurance doesn't cover, but can request a waiver if their household income is less than 3 times the poverty line. (It's not clear how simple or complicated this process would be.) The ambulances are required to transport people regardless of their ability to pay. County Executive Leggett has proposed significant cuts to county programs in anticipation of the ambulance fee being voted down. I can't say I agree with his quick dismissal of the possibility of raising taxes, but whether I agree with it or not, that doesn't seem to be on the table right now, while the ambulance fee does. So to avoid all these cuts, from firefighters to road maintenance to mental health services, I'm now inclined to vote YES.
Thursday, October 14, 2010
The Overton window for 1-day and 2-day yom tov
This is another followup to Hilchot Pluralism Part VIII, which used Tikkun Leil Shabbat's Simchat Torah celebration as a case study to explore the possibility of pluralism regarding 1-day vs. 2-day yom tov.
The previous post talked about 1-day and 2-day individuals vs. 1-day and 2-day communities. This post is just here to clarify that there are far more than two possible stances that a community can take on this issue.
For example, Tikkun Leil Shabbat (featured in HP8) has explicitly not taken a communal stance on the issue. (Explicitly not taken a stance, as distinct from simply not taking a stance by default, like any community in the state of nature, or like TLS as of a few month ago.) You might think this is unusual, even unique. And perhaps it is, among prayer communities that meet for prayer on 16 Nisan, 22 Nisan, 7 Sivan, 16 Tishrei, or 23 Tishrei. But there are other types of Jewish communities out there, such as Hillels (which contain multiple prayer communities under one roof), or non-denominational Jewish organizations that are not ritual-focused. Such groups can and do take neutral stances on 1-day vs. 2-day yom tov (though the implementation is not always given enough thought).
And among those communities that have either 1 day or 2 days as the norm, there are different ways of approaching this. There are communities for which "1 day" or "2 days" is the answer to the question "How many days of yom tov should we do?", and there are communities in which the question is never asked in the first place. For example, (and people who know otherwise can correct me if I'm wrong) when the first Hadar Shavuot Retreat was being planned, I suspect there was not an initial gabbai meeting at which they discussed (or even rubber-stamped) whether it would be 1 or 2 days.
A useful way to think about the range of possible stances on this issue is the concept of the Overton window, which incorporates not only the actual position of a given community, but the range of other positions that are considered acceptable within that community's discourse (which is generally smaller than the range of all possible positions).
The Overton window is named after the late libertarian activist Joe Overton. The classic example is on the issue of education, in which he ranked different public policies from "least government intervention / most freedom" to "most government intervention / least freedom". (As a public education advocate, I obviously disagree strongly with Overton on the framing of the various policies. I'm citing him here for the structure, not the substance.)
His ranking was:
The point is that in addition to the status-quo policy, there may be a "window" on either side of it containing other policies that are considered within the realm of possibility.
So if we arrange the possible communal stances on 1-day vs. 2-day yom tov on a spectrum, it might look something like this:
The previous post talked about 1-day and 2-day individuals vs. 1-day and 2-day communities. This post is just here to clarify that there are far more than two possible stances that a community can take on this issue.
For example, Tikkun Leil Shabbat (featured in HP8) has explicitly not taken a communal stance on the issue. (Explicitly not taken a stance, as distinct from simply not taking a stance by default, like any community in the state of nature, or like TLS as of a few month ago.) You might think this is unusual, even unique. And perhaps it is, among prayer communities that meet for prayer on 16 Nisan, 22 Nisan, 7 Sivan, 16 Tishrei, or 23 Tishrei. But there are other types of Jewish communities out there, such as Hillels (which contain multiple prayer communities under one roof), or non-denominational Jewish organizations that are not ritual-focused. Such groups can and do take neutral stances on 1-day vs. 2-day yom tov (though the implementation is not always given enough thought).
And among those communities that have either 1 day or 2 days as the norm, there are different ways of approaching this. There are communities for which "1 day" or "2 days" is the answer to the question "How many days of yom tov should we do?", and there are communities in which the question is never asked in the first place. For example, (and people who know otherwise can correct me if I'm wrong) when the first Hadar Shavuot Retreat was being planned, I suspect there was not an initial gabbai meeting at which they discussed (or even rubber-stamped) whether it would be 1 or 2 days.
A useful way to think about the range of possible stances on this issue is the concept of the Overton window, which incorporates not only the actual position of a given community, but the range of other positions that are considered acceptable within that community's discourse (which is generally smaller than the range of all possible positions).
The Overton window is named after the late libertarian activist Joe Overton. The classic example is on the issue of education, in which he ranked different public policies from "least government intervention / most freedom" to "most government intervention / least freedom". (As a public education advocate, I obviously disagree strongly with Overton on the framing of the various policies. I'm citing him here for the structure, not the substance.)
His ranking was:
No government schools
Parents pay for only the education they choose
Private and home schools monitored, not regulated
Tuition tax credits
Tuition vouchers
Private and home schooling moderately regulated
Charter schools
Public‐school choice
State‐mandated curricula
Private and home schooling highly regulated; parents pay twice
Home schooling illegal
Private schools illegal
Compulsory indoctrination in government schools
The point is that in addition to the status-quo policy, there may be a "window" on either side of it containing other policies that are considered within the realm of possibility.
So if we arrange the possible communal stances on 1-day vs. 2-day yom tov on a spectrum, it might look something like this:
- 2 days as the unquestioned communal standard
- 2 days as the unquestioned communal standard, but individuals who observe 1 day can be open about their practice
- the number of days of yom tov is a question, and the answer is 2 days
- the number of days of yom tov is a question, and the answer is no official communal stance
- the number of days of yom tov is a question, and the answer is 1 day
- 1 day as the unquestioned communal standard, but individuals who observe 2 days can be open about their practice
- 1 day as the unquestioned communal standard
Tuesday, October 12, 2010
Ontology of yom tov
This is a followup to Hilchot Pluralism Part VIII, which used Tikkun Leil Shabbat's Simchat Torah celebration as a case study to explore the possibility of pluralism regarding 1-day vs. 2- day yom tov.
To address this issue more deeply, we have to look at the ontology of yom tov, and where it is situated: with the community, or with the individual? SPOILER ALERT: I'm going to claim that it's some of each. (These thoughts are relatively raw, and refinements are welcome.)
In that post, I wrote "This is an issue that will become more and more relevant in the future, due to various trends resulting in more intermingling between 1-day and 2-day people," and one of the trends mentioned (hat tip to JGN for this one) was:
The extreme manifestation of this individualization of Jewish practice can be found in the discourse of Stage-1 pluralism. (Just to be clear, when I say "individualization", I'm not talking about Sheilaism. What I mean is that if you find yourself in the desert for Shabbat with no other people around, you still keep Shabbat, without a community.) In Stage 1, the discourse is about what is forbidden, permitted, or required for the individual, and various properties of communities become projected onto the individual. For example, rather than talking about egalitarian and non-egalitarian communities, we can now talk about egalitarian and non-egalitarian individuals, even though this concept is mostly meaningless outside the context of a community, and even though the specific communal practices in question have their roots in concepts such as "kevod tzibbur" (the dignity of the community). Stage 2 is fundamentally similar in this regard, but more toned down.
The opposite extreme is in some non-pluralistic communities, where the community is seen as the source of all Jewish practice. This is manifested most not in the Orthodox world (where the concept of individual minhagim is alive and well), but in the allegedly individualistic Reform movement. Perhaps the most extreme example is in those Reform communities that do havdalah before dark on Saturday. The underlying assumption enabling this is that Shabbat exists only in the context of the community, and therefore the community has the power to determine when Shabbat starts and ends. There is no consideration that an individual might have a Shabbat practice that transcends the community (and therefore is not subject to the communal decision to end Shabbat at this time); that simply isn't the conception of Shabbat as understood by that community.
I think a happy medium can be found in Stage 3, in which the identity-based discourse includes individual identities, communal identity, and the interaction between these.
So with that in mind, let's look at the ontology of yom tov. Yom tov is an aggregation of multiple elements, some of which are situated with the individual, some with the community, and some are ambiguous. Here are some examples (looking only at the 3 pilgrimage festivals), but this is not a complete list; other examples are welcome.
Elements of Yom Tov Incumbent on the Individual
Elements of Yom Tov Incumbent on the Community
I think this dichotomy among elements of yom tov is useful in thinking about 1-day and 2-day communities, on the one hand, and 1-day and 2-day individuals, on the other. An individual who observes n days of yom tov should hold on to the elements in the first category (as applied to n days of yom tov) wherever s/he happens to be, whether in a Jewish community that observes n days, in a Jewish community that observes (3-n) days, or not in a Jewish community. See, for example, the one-day-yom-tov person's guide to the second seder.
On the other hand, the elements in the second category don't follow individuals around in the same way. For example, it doesn't make any sense for a 1-day individual located in a 2-day community to say on 22 Tishrei, "Today is Simchat Torah for me." If there's no community doing the ritual of Simchat Torah, then there's no meaningful sense in which it "is" Simchat Torah. (If a Torah falls in the woods...) To take a more obscure and convoluted example, many communities read Kohelet on Shabbat Chol Hamo'ed Sukkot. In years in which there is no Shabbat Chol Hamo'ed Sukkot (because yom tov falls on Shabbat), 2-day communities read Kohelet on the Shabbat that is (the 1st day of) Shemini Atzeret. In order not to make the long Simchat Torah service even longer, 1-day communities read Kohelet on the Shabbat that is the 1st day of Sukkot instead. But if a 1-day individual is spending the 1st day of Sukkot (in a year when it falls on Shabbat) in a 2-day community, it doesn't make sense for him/her to say "My minhag is to read Kohelet today", or conversely, if a 2-day individual is spending that day in a 1-day community, it doesn't make sense for him/her to say "My minhag is not to read Kohelet today". This is because there is no individual minhag to read Kohelet (in a ritual context); this is only something that communities do.
Ambiguous Elements of Yom Tov
To address this issue more deeply, we have to look at the ontology of yom tov, and where it is situated: with the community, or with the individual? SPOILER ALERT: I'm going to claim that it's some of each. (These thoughts are relatively raw, and refinements are welcome.)
In that post, I wrote "This is an issue that will become more and more relevant in the future, due to various trends resulting in more intermingling between 1-day and 2-day people," and one of the trends mentioned (hat tip to JGN for this one) was:
the increased incidence of "shulhopping" (individuals participating regularly in multiple Jewish communities, and thereby having a greater need to define their own practice and identity rather than adopting a single community's practice)If people are part of just one Jewish community (particularly if it is the only Jewish community they have ever been part of), they are less likely to have to give any thought to their personal minhagim, on 1-day vs. 2-day yom tov or any other issue, since they are more likely to just go along with the community's practice, whatever it is. Now that people participate in more communities, whether simultaneously or serially, it leads many of them to be more thoughtful about their own practice. I think this is mostly a positive development, since it contributes to a world in which people are more deeply engaged with and invested in their Judaism. But when taken to certain extremes (in either direction), it can become incoherent, as I'll discuss in this post.
The extreme manifestation of this individualization of Jewish practice can be found in the discourse of Stage-1 pluralism. (Just to be clear, when I say "individualization", I'm not talking about Sheilaism. What I mean is that if you find yourself in the desert for Shabbat with no other people around, you still keep Shabbat, without a community.) In Stage 1, the discourse is about what is forbidden, permitted, or required for the individual, and various properties of communities become projected onto the individual. For example, rather than talking about egalitarian and non-egalitarian communities, we can now talk about egalitarian and non-egalitarian individuals, even though this concept is mostly meaningless outside the context of a community, and even though the specific communal practices in question have their roots in concepts such as "kevod tzibbur" (the dignity of the community). Stage 2 is fundamentally similar in this regard, but more toned down.
The opposite extreme is in some non-pluralistic communities, where the community is seen as the source of all Jewish practice. This is manifested most not in the Orthodox world (where the concept of individual minhagim is alive and well), but in the allegedly individualistic Reform movement. Perhaps the most extreme example is in those Reform communities that do havdalah before dark on Saturday. The underlying assumption enabling this is that Shabbat exists only in the context of the community, and therefore the community has the power to determine when Shabbat starts and ends. There is no consideration that an individual might have a Shabbat practice that transcends the community (and therefore is not subject to the communal decision to end Shabbat at this time); that simply isn't the conception of Shabbat as understood by that community.
I think a happy medium can be found in Stage 3, in which the identity-based discourse includes individual identities, communal identity, and the interaction between these.
So with that in mind, let's look at the ontology of yom tov. Yom tov is an aggregation of multiple elements, some of which are situated with the individual, some with the community, and some are ambiguous. Here are some examples (looking only at the 3 pilgrimage festivals), but this is not a complete list; other examples are welcome.
Elements of Yom Tov Incumbent on the Individual
- the prohibition on work
- kiddush and havdalah
- the yom tov prayers
- dwelling in a sukkah (on Sukkot)
- eating matzah and maror (on Pesach)
- not eating or owning chameitz (on Pesach)
- not wearing tefillin
Elements of Yom Tov Incumbent on the Community
- "Simchat Torah"
- Torah/haftarah reading
- reading of megillot
I think this dichotomy among elements of yom tov is useful in thinking about 1-day and 2-day communities, on the one hand, and 1-day and 2-day individuals, on the other. An individual who observes n days of yom tov should hold on to the elements in the first category (as applied to n days of yom tov) wherever s/he happens to be, whether in a Jewish community that observes n days, in a Jewish community that observes (3-n) days, or not in a Jewish community. See, for example, the one-day-yom-tov person's guide to the second seder.
On the other hand, the elements in the second category don't follow individuals around in the same way. For example, it doesn't make any sense for a 1-day individual located in a 2-day community to say on 22 Tishrei, "Today is Simchat Torah for me." If there's no community doing the ritual of Simchat Torah, then there's no meaningful sense in which it "is" Simchat Torah. (If a Torah falls in the woods...) To take a more obscure and convoluted example, many communities read Kohelet on Shabbat Chol Hamo'ed Sukkot. In years in which there is no Shabbat Chol Hamo'ed Sukkot (because yom tov falls on Shabbat), 2-day communities read Kohelet on the Shabbat that is (the 1st day of) Shemini Atzeret. In order not to make the long Simchat Torah service even longer, 1-day communities read Kohelet on the Shabbat that is the 1st day of Sukkot instead. But if a 1-day individual is spending the 1st day of Sukkot (in a year when it falls on Shabbat) in a 2-day community, it doesn't make sense for him/her to say "My minhag is to read Kohelet today", or conversely, if a 2-day individual is spending that day in a 1-day community, it doesn't make sense for him/her to say "My minhag is not to read Kohelet today". This is because there is no individual minhag to read Kohelet (in a ritual context); this is only something that communities do.
Ambiguous Elements of Yom Tov
- yizkor
Thursday, October 07, 2010
Learn by teaching, teach by learning
Do you have something to teach?
The National Havurah Committee is now accepting course proposals for the 2011 NHC Summer Institute! The Institute will be August 1-7, 2011, at Franklin Pierce University in Rindge, New Hampshire. It is a week of Jewish learning and living in a pluralistic and multigenerational community comprised of people from grassroots Jewish communities across the continent.
We’re looking for proposals for four-session courses, whether connected to this year’s Institute theme “Y’hi shalom b’cheileich - May there be peace within your walls”, or on any other topic of interest. Teachers whose courses are accepted receive free registration, room, and board for the week, and get to participate fully in the Institute when they’re not teaching.
At the Institute, every teacher is a student and every student is a teacher. As someone who is a teacher in real life and has taught Institute courses, I have found teaching at Institute to be one of my most rewarding teaching experiences, thanks to the productive contributions of everyone in the class. Teachers at Institute include people who work professionally in the field they’re teaching about, as well as people pursuing an “extracurricular” interest who are excited to study something in depth and share it with others.
The deadline for course proposals is November 17. Learn more, and download a course proposal form. See you in August!
Tuesday, October 05, 2010
Hilchot Pluralism, Part VIII: Simchat Torah
The Hilchot Pluralism series documents and analyzes the pluralistic practices that independent Jewish communities are developing.
Read this first:
***
Abstract
We look at Tikkun Leil Shabbat's first ever Simchat Torah celebration (last week), which successfully avoided taking a communal stance on whether or not it was yom tov.
The Broader Issue
This represents an attempt to achieve Stage-3 pluralism on the question of 1-day versus 2-day yom tov. (As we'll see, this solution is of limited generalizability, but still valuable.) This is an issue that will become more and more relevant in the future, due to various trends resulting in more intermingling between 1-day and 2-day people:
Background on Simchat Torah
Contrary to popular belief, there is (technically speaking) no holiday called "Simchat Torah". Simchat Torah is the celebration of the completion of the Torah that typically takes place during the holiday of Shemini Atzeret. (Similarly, there is no holiday called "Seder"; seder is a ritual that takes place on the holiday of Pesach.) Shemini Atzeret is observed on 22 Tishrei (by those who do 1 day of yom tov), or 22 and 23 Tishrei (by those who do 2 days of yom tov). In most cases, communities that observe 1 day have their Simchat Torah celebrations on that one day (22 Tishrei), and communities that observe 2 days have their Simchat Torah celebrations on the second day of Shemini Atzeret (23 Tishrei). Of course, the day on which the Simchat Torah celebration takes place (whichever day that is) is often colloquially referred to as "Simchat Torah", but in more formal contexts (e.g. the kiddush, the Amidah), it is still called "Shemini Atzeret".
While the timing of Simchat Torah celebrations is highly correlated with a community's stance on 1-day vs. 2-day yom tov, there are some exceptions: Some Chasidic communities (and the Carlebach Shul in New York), which do 2 days of yom tov, do hakafot (dancing with the Torah) on both nights of Shemini Atzeret. And for various reasons, some communities that do 1 day of yom tov have their Simchat Torah celebrations on the night that would be the "2nd night", even though it is no longer yom tov for them. In some cities in Israel, you can find "hakafot shniot" (second hakafot) on the night of 23 Tishrei, originally for the benefit of visiting Diaspora Jews who were keeping two days, with musical instruments played by Israelis (who wouldn't play instruments on yom tov, but for whom it is no longer yom tov).
Background on Tikkun Leil Shabbat
Tikkun Leil Shabbat (TLS) is an independent minyan/havurah in the District of Columbia, founded in 2005. As its name suggests, it meets primarily on Friday nights. TLS has also had non-Shabbat services on several special occasions: Purim, selichot, and the second night of Rosh Hashanah. However, before this year, TLS never met on any of the three pilgrimage festivals, and therefore never had to take a stance on 1-day versus 2-day yom tov. (Yes, TLS has had Rosh Hashanah services on the 2nd night, but for reasons beyond the scope of this post, Rosh Hashanah is a separate question from the other holidays.)
TLS is an extraordinarily diverse community, with participants originating in all of the Jewish denominations and non-denominations, and TLS embraces pluralism. One of the constituent communities that merged into the current incarnation of Tikkun Leil Shabbat was the DC Reform Chavurah, which identified as Reform. Though the post-merger TLS has retained no denominational identification, TLS continues to have more participants from Reform backgrounds than most independent minyanim of its vintage. Combined with participants from Reconstructionist and other backgrounds, this means that the TLS community includes a number of 1-day-yom-tov people. They dwell alongside 2-day-yom-tov people, as well as people who don't have a firm position on 1 day vs. 2 days (but would go to a Simchat Torah celebration wherever and whenever the party is happening).
So all this means that the question of 1 day vs. 2 days was an actual question for TLS, unlike for many communities in which the answer is self-evident. It was a question that TLS never had to ask for its first 5 years, but it finally came up this year when TLS decided to do Simchat Torah. And the decision was made to avoid taking a communal stance on the issue.
The easiest way to do this might have been to hold the Simchat Torah event on the night of 22 Tishrei, which everyone agrees is yom tov. This would have been out of the ordinary for the 2-day people, but not objectionable in principle (cf. the Chasidic communities mentioned above that do hakafot on both nights). But among the people who had preferences on this question, more preferred to do it on 23 Tishrei. (And of course, 1-day people are already well-accustomed to compromising on this if they want to go to the happening Simchat Torah events.) And so the decision was made to do "Simchat Torah" on 23 Tishrei, but not take a position on whether or not this night was yom tov.
Here's how it played out in practice:
Ma'ariv
The event began with the evening service: a yom tov service for some, and a weekday service for others. Everyone davened together, and a packet was made up that had all the prayers for yom tov and for weeknights. The logistics were made immeasurably easier by the fact that the vast majority of liturgical differences between yom tov and weekday ma'ariv are in the Amidah, which is said silently at TLS. There are also a few minor differences in the parts said out loud:
What of nusach? The musical modes associated with the time of the day, time of the week, and time of the year situate the entire service in Jewish time. Since the sheliach tzibbur was representing the entire community, neither yom tov nor weekday nusach would have been appropriate, since this would have framed the communal prayer as a yom tov or weekday service. Instead, the sha"tz (when not leading non-nusach melodies) used High Holiday ma'ariv nusach, which some communities use for "Simchat Torah". This is associated with "Simchat Torah" as an event, not with a particular date on the calendar, and so it did not break the calendrical neutrality. (No one in attendance actually believed it was a High Holiday.) The weekday and yom tov helpers used weekday and yom tov nusach for their pieces, as appropriate.
Alternate proposals that were not implemented:
Everything Else
After ma'ariv, there weren't really any other times when the yom tov / weekday issue had to be finessed; the rest of the event was fully compatible with both. The Simchat Torah celebration took place in one of TLS's regular Shabbat locations, so it was in walking distance for whomever TLS is usually in walking distance for.
Some of the hakafot were accompanied by musical instruments, and some were not. However, this wasn't explicitly a compromise between the 1-day and 2-day yom tov positions. After all, TLS's Friday night services alternate between instruments and a cappella, and everyone agrees that it is Shabbat. There are some people who attend only one type of service, but most attend both (though they may prefer one over the other). Thus, the yom tov vs. weekday question didn't really come up in the deliberations over instruments, except in that some people thought it was yom tov, and some of those people wouldn't go if there were instruments on yom tov (or would prefer no instruments on yom tov), and this was a reason for having some of the event without instruments. (I'm not aware of anyone who wouldn't go if there were instruments on yom tov, but didn't think it was yom tov that night. But maybe there were such people.) But, given that instruments are already not expressly forbidden at TLS on Shabbat, there were many other arguments both for and against instruments that had nothing to do with whether or not it was yom tov, and in the end this resulted in splitting the difference.
Torah was read. Yes, it's weird for 1-day yom tov people to read Torah on a day that isn't yom tov (or Shabbat, or Monday, Thursday, Rosh Chodesh, etc.). On the other hand, Simchat Torah is weird in general. There's a sense in general that this celebration of Torah is so exuberant that many of the usual rules and conventions of Torah reading are suspended. The most prominent example is that many communities never read Torah at night, except as part of their Simchat Torah celebration. (TLS is one such community. In fact, since TLS has only had evening services, this was TLS's first time reading Torah!) In this spirit, reading Torah on that night was entirely appropriate (or festively inappropriate) for everyone.
The evening didn't include any official kiddush or havdalah, but could have included both if desired, whether simultaneously, sequentially, or interwoven (and there were drinks available, and people could have done either for themselves).
Scope and Generalizability
A number of factors conspired to make this solution feasible, and at the same time limit its generalizability to other communal events on days with disputed status:
***
Now taking requests for Part IX.
Read this first:
- Taxonomy of Jewish pluralism
- Hilchot Pluralism, Part I
- Hilchot Pluralism, Part II
- Hilchot Pluralism, Part III
- Hilchot Pluralism, Part IV
- Hilchot Pluralism, Part V
- Hilchot Pluralism, Part VI
- Hilchot Pluralism, Part VII
Coming in Part VIII: I don't know. Maybe something with an actual concrete solution?And it's taken almost 3 years to find something, but now here we are!
***
Abstract
We look at Tikkun Leil Shabbat's first ever Simchat Torah celebration (last week), which successfully avoided taking a communal stance on whether or not it was yom tov.
The Broader Issue
This represents an attempt to achieve Stage-3 pluralism on the question of 1-day versus 2-day yom tov. (As we'll see, this solution is of limited generalizability, but still valuable.) This is an issue that will become more and more relevant in the future, due to various trends resulting in more intermingling between 1-day and 2-day people:
- cross-fertilization between Israel and the Diaspora (including Israelis living in the Diaspora and retaining their 1-day practice, and 2-day Diaspora Jews going to Israel and picking up the 1-day custom there)
- greater empowerment and education among people coming from 1-day backgrounds who may be more likely to retain their practice when making contact with 2-day Jews
- potential shifts in practice catalyzed by the upcoming calendar patterns
- the increased incidence of "shulhopping" (individuals participating regularly in multiple Jewish communities, and thereby having a greater need to define their own practice and identity rather than adopting a single community's practice)
- the more general trend of pluralistic communities defining themselves along lines other than the established denominational boundaries
Background on Simchat Torah
Contrary to popular belief, there is (technically speaking) no holiday called "Simchat Torah". Simchat Torah is the celebration of the completion of the Torah that typically takes place during the holiday of Shemini Atzeret. (Similarly, there is no holiday called "Seder"; seder is a ritual that takes place on the holiday of Pesach.) Shemini Atzeret is observed on 22 Tishrei (by those who do 1 day of yom tov), or 22 and 23 Tishrei (by those who do 2 days of yom tov). In most cases, communities that observe 1 day have their Simchat Torah celebrations on that one day (22 Tishrei), and communities that observe 2 days have their Simchat Torah celebrations on the second day of Shemini Atzeret (23 Tishrei). Of course, the day on which the Simchat Torah celebration takes place (whichever day that is) is often colloquially referred to as "Simchat Torah", but in more formal contexts (e.g. the kiddush, the Amidah), it is still called "Shemini Atzeret".
While the timing of Simchat Torah celebrations is highly correlated with a community's stance on 1-day vs. 2-day yom tov, there are some exceptions: Some Chasidic communities (and the Carlebach Shul in New York), which do 2 days of yom tov, do hakafot (dancing with the Torah) on both nights of Shemini Atzeret. And for various reasons, some communities that do 1 day of yom tov have their Simchat Torah celebrations on the night that would be the "2nd night", even though it is no longer yom tov for them. In some cities in Israel, you can find "hakafot shniot" (second hakafot) on the night of 23 Tishrei, originally for the benefit of visiting Diaspora Jews who were keeping two days, with musical instruments played by Israelis (who wouldn't play instruments on yom tov, but for whom it is no longer yom tov).
Background on Tikkun Leil Shabbat
Tikkun Leil Shabbat (TLS) is an independent minyan/havurah in the District of Columbia, founded in 2005. As its name suggests, it meets primarily on Friday nights. TLS has also had non-Shabbat services on several special occasions: Purim, selichot, and the second night of Rosh Hashanah. However, before this year, TLS never met on any of the three pilgrimage festivals, and therefore never had to take a stance on 1-day versus 2-day yom tov. (Yes, TLS has had Rosh Hashanah services on the 2nd night, but for reasons beyond the scope of this post, Rosh Hashanah is a separate question from the other holidays.)
TLS is an extraordinarily diverse community, with participants originating in all of the Jewish denominations and non-denominations, and TLS embraces pluralism. One of the constituent communities that merged into the current incarnation of Tikkun Leil Shabbat was the DC Reform Chavurah, which identified as Reform. Though the post-merger TLS has retained no denominational identification, TLS continues to have more participants from Reform backgrounds than most independent minyanim of its vintage. Combined with participants from Reconstructionist and other backgrounds, this means that the TLS community includes a number of 1-day-yom-tov people. They dwell alongside 2-day-yom-tov people, as well as people who don't have a firm position on 1 day vs. 2 days (but would go to a Simchat Torah celebration wherever and whenever the party is happening).
So all this means that the question of 1 day vs. 2 days was an actual question for TLS, unlike for many communities in which the answer is self-evident. It was a question that TLS never had to ask for its first 5 years, but it finally came up this year when TLS decided to do Simchat Torah. And the decision was made to avoid taking a communal stance on the issue.
The easiest way to do this might have been to hold the Simchat Torah event on the night of 22 Tishrei, which everyone agrees is yom tov. This would have been out of the ordinary for the 2-day people, but not objectionable in principle (cf. the Chasidic communities mentioned above that do hakafot on both nights). But among the people who had preferences on this question, more preferred to do it on 23 Tishrei. (And of course, 1-day people are already well-accustomed to compromising on this if they want to go to the happening Simchat Torah events.) And so the decision was made to do "Simchat Torah" on 23 Tishrei, but not take a position on whether or not this night was yom tov.
Here's how it played out in practice:
Ma'ariv
The event began with the evening service: a yom tov service for some, and a weekday service for others. Everyone davened together, and a packet was made up that had all the prayers for yom tov and for weeknights. The logistics were made immeasurably easier by the fact that the vast majority of liturgical differences between yom tov and weekday ma'ariv are in the Amidah, which is said silently at TLS. There are also a few minor differences in the parts said out loud:
- "Vehu rachum", at the beginning of the service, is said only on weekdays.
- Hashkiveinu has different endings for weekdays ("shomeir amo Yisraeil la'ad") and yom tov ("haporeis sukkat shalom...").
- "Vaydabeir Mosheh", before the Amidah, is said only on yom tov.
- [Some communities add an extra berachah before the Amidah on weeknights. However, TLS had already established a precedent, through several years of Purim services, of not being such a community.]
What of nusach? The musical modes associated with the time of the day, time of the week, and time of the year situate the entire service in Jewish time. Since the sheliach tzibbur was representing the entire community, neither yom tov nor weekday nusach would have been appropriate, since this would have framed the communal prayer as a yom tov or weekday service. Instead, the sha"tz (when not leading non-nusach melodies) used High Holiday ma'ariv nusach, which some communities use for "Simchat Torah". This is associated with "Simchat Torah" as an event, not with a particular date on the calendar, and so it did not break the calendrical neutrality. (No one in attendance actually believed it was a High Holiday.) The weekday and yom tov helpers used weekday and yom tov nusach for their pieces, as appropriate.
Alternate proposals that were not implemented:
- Have two simultaneous leaders for the entire service, one for yom tov and one for weekday, diverging when the liturgy diverged and converging the rest of the time. This would have had the advantage of each leader leading a coherent service from start to finish. However, having co-leaders tends to be clunkier, since the leaders can't make adjustments in the moment without conferring with each other, and the differences between yom tov and weekday ma'ariv (listed above) were not significant enough to warrant this layer of complexity.
- Have one leader lead the whole service according to his/her own custom (weekday or yom tov), and one helper fill in the pieces for the other custom. After all, one might say, isn't this consistent with the principle in Part IV that the sheliach tzibbur need not represent the entire community, but simply one facet of the community's diversity? No, I think this case is different, because the framing of the service as a weekday service or a yom tov service (even if the differences in the words are small, outside the Amidah) is an act of much greater magnitude than differences here and there in the words of a service that has a communally agreed shared framing (e.g. as a Shabbat service). Furthermore, since almost no one there had any prior experience participating in a service where it was explicitly unstated whether or not it was yom tov, it would be much harder to convey this message through mere explanations than through actions. If the sha"tz led a [weekday | yom tov] service, people would walk away with the impression (correct or not) that the community was acknowledging [1 | 2] days of yom tov. It's not like going to a service where you hear the imahot included in shacharit and excluded in musaf, and you come to the conclusion that the community doesn't have a stance on the issue; in this case, the next opportunity to correct this impression wouldn't have been until next year.
Everything Else
After ma'ariv, there weren't really any other times when the yom tov / weekday issue had to be finessed; the rest of the event was fully compatible with both. The Simchat Torah celebration took place in one of TLS's regular Shabbat locations, so it was in walking distance for whomever TLS is usually in walking distance for.
Some of the hakafot were accompanied by musical instruments, and some were not. However, this wasn't explicitly a compromise between the 1-day and 2-day yom tov positions. After all, TLS's Friday night services alternate between instruments and a cappella, and everyone agrees that it is Shabbat. There are some people who attend only one type of service, but most attend both (though they may prefer one over the other). Thus, the yom tov vs. weekday question didn't really come up in the deliberations over instruments, except in that some people thought it was yom tov, and some of those people wouldn't go if there were instruments on yom tov (or would prefer no instruments on yom tov), and this was a reason for having some of the event without instruments. (I'm not aware of anyone who wouldn't go if there were instruments on yom tov, but didn't think it was yom tov that night. But maybe there were such people.) But, given that instruments are already not expressly forbidden at TLS on Shabbat, there were many other arguments both for and against instruments that had nothing to do with whether or not it was yom tov, and in the end this resulted in splitting the difference.
Torah was read. Yes, it's weird for 1-day yom tov people to read Torah on a day that isn't yom tov (or Shabbat, or Monday, Thursday, Rosh Chodesh, etc.). On the other hand, Simchat Torah is weird in general. There's a sense in general that this celebration of Torah is so exuberant that many of the usual rules and conventions of Torah reading are suspended. The most prominent example is that many communities never read Torah at night, except as part of their Simchat Torah celebration. (TLS is one such community. In fact, since TLS has only had evening services, this was TLS's first time reading Torah!) In this spirit, reading Torah on that night was entirely appropriate (or festively inappropriate) for everyone.
The evening didn't include any official kiddush or havdalah, but could have included both if desired, whether simultaneously, sequentially, or interwoven (and there were drinks available, and people could have done either for themselves).
Scope and Generalizability
A number of factors conspired to make this solution feasible, and at the same time limit its generalizability to other communal events on days with disputed status:
- Davening wasn't the focus of the event; it was just a warmup for the main event (hakafot and Torah reading).
- It was an evening service, so the Amidah is silent, and the overall structure of the service is almost identical for weekdays and yom tov.
- "Simchat Torah" allowed for a creative resolution to the nusach question.
- TLS does not meet every Shabbat, and does not meet on most holidays; this was a special event.
***
Now taking requests for Part IX.
Monday, October 04, 2010
History repeats itself
Yesterday's post attracted the notice of Alan Brill, who asks:
I totally never thought to look into this before, but it appears that the answer is yes. Yom tov sheini was repealed by the Breslau Conference of 1846. The days of the week for Rosh Hashanah in years leading up to that were:
1830 Sat
1831 Thu
1832 Tue
1833 Sat
1834 Sat
1835 Thu
1836 Mon
1837 Sat
1838 Thu
1839 Mon
1840 Mon
1841 Thu
1842 Mon
1843 Mon
1844 Sat
1845 Thu
1846 Mon
So, I have a historical question. When modernizing Jews gave up the second day of yom tov in the 19th century was the push from certain professions or certain districts?Jacob Katz, following his method of relying on Mannheim’s concept of ideology, presents the issue as an ideological battle between Reform and Orthodoxy (See, “Orthodox defense of Second Day of Yom Tov in Divine Law in Human Hands). But has anyone checked- did the push to get rid of yom tov sheni occur after a series of 3 day yom tovs pushed people to feel a need for the change? Was it more in certain professions? Maybe it was not ideological but a social push from ordinary businessmen? Was there a need to do manual labor or more likely to check the European stock market? Someone want to check the 19th century dates and determine if there was a decade like the next decade with many 3 day yom tov’s in a row? Does it coordinate with the push for the change?
I totally never thought to look into this before, but it appears that the answer is yes. Yom tov sheini was repealed by the Breslau Conference of 1846. The days of the week for Rosh Hashanah in years leading up to that were:
1830 Sat
1831 Thu
1832 Tue
1833 Sat
1834 Sat
1835 Thu
1836 Mon
1837 Sat
1838 Thu
1839 Mon
1840 Mon
1841 Thu
1842 Mon
1843 Mon
1844 Sat
1845 Thu
1846 Mon
(See this post for a key to what each configuration contains.)
So their time was much like ours: they had recently gone from a weekend-holiday-rich era to a weekend-holiday-poor era.
Sunday, October 03, 2010
Hasty generalization
(Crossposted to Jewschool.)
A wise person I know says “Whenever I read articles where I know something about the content, I always find mistakes or misunderstandings, which makes me wonder how many mistakes there are in articles where I’m not familiar with the topic.” We get to see this principle in action as the Israeli newspaper Ha’aretz tackles American independent minyanim.
Over the last 10 years, the massive surge in independent minyanim has attracted media attention from both the American Jewish press and the American secular press. (After a while, this has converged so that they seem to write the same article over and over.) But this Ha’aretz piece might be the first time this phenomenon has reached the Israeli media.
The author of the piece, a self-identified secular Israeli, visited DC Minyan, and apparently did little or no research or fact-checking beyond what she saw and heard there. Thus she arrived at the unsupported conclusion that all or most independent minyanim (which in reality display a great deal of diversity) are similar to DC Minyan.
(However, on the plus side, this may be the first news article on 21st-century independent minyanim that doesn’t include a quote from Jonathan Sarna!)
To set the record straight, I’ll give the article a mild fisking:
At present, some 20,000 people are paying members of independent minyanim
The actual number is probably far less than this (especially since the article seems to adopt the “founded in the last 10 years” definition of “independent minyanim”, which is problematic in itself, of course). The vast majority of this wave of independent minyanim have NO members at all, let alone paying members. DC Minyan (profiled in the article) is on the extreme fringe of post-2000 independent minyanim in this regard, in that they have wholeheartedly embraced a synagogue-style membership structure, with membership dues, activities that are restricted to members or have different prices for members and non-members, etc.
(The havurot of the late 1960s and the ’70s may have been an early precursor of the independent minyanim, but they tended to be more counter-culture in style, and their latter-day heirs are more likely to be found in the Renewal movement.)
In reality, many havurot of the late ’60s and ’70s still exist, and many of their participants are still found in those havurot. “Latter-day heirs” may not be well-defined (and therefore not falsifiable), but the havurot of the ’60s and ’70s rejected rabbinic authority, as do many of the newer independent havurot/minyanim, while the Renewal movement embraces it.
Like many of the independent minyanim, DC Minyan defines itself as a “traditional egalitarian” community; the men and women sit opposite each other, without a partition - but still separately.
Both statements here are true, but the semicolon (suggesting that this is the usual definition of “traditional egalitarian”, and that this practice is “like many of the independent minyanim”) is highly misleading. DC Minyan is one of only two minyanim I know of with this precise set of practices (equal ritual participation by men and women, separate seating); most communities that define themselves as “traditional egalitarian” have mixed seating.
This makes it possible - unlike at typical Conservative and Reform congregations - for Jews of all denominations to take part.
Yeah, try again. The number of self-identified Orthodox Jews who would attend a service led by men and women that has separate seating but no mechitza (but wouldn’t attend such a service with mixed seating) is tiny, and probably much smaller than the number of non-Orthodox Jews who would be put off by the separate seating.
However, DC Minyan’s website does stipulate that people who identify with a different sex from that written on their birth certificates are invited to sit in the section designated for it. “No one will ask what gender you are,” Zuckerman adds.
They’re mixing up sex and gender here, though I wonder if this article was first written in Hebrew and then translated.
UPDATE: The Hebrew version has a number of differences from the English, which seems not to be a direct translation. Did the same writer submit articles in both Hebrew and English, or did a translator exhibit significant editorial license? “Paying members” and the disclaimer about early havurot appear only in the English. The line quoted above about “traditional egalitarian” is even worse in the Hebrew: “DC Minyan defines itself as an egalitarian community, and therefore the men and the women sit side-by-side and without a mechitzah, but separately.”
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