How to Run a Traditional Jewish Household

by Blu Greenberg

  There is also a hint in the tradition that the Jews adopted this custom of greenery from their Christian neighbors in medieval Europe. Some rabbis even forbade it, since it looked too much like Church practices. Whatever the reason, this appealing custom has been with us for a long time.

  CELEBRATION

  In the Diaspora, Shavuot is celebrated two days: the sixth and seventh of Sivan. In Israel, only one day.

  On the first night of Shavuot, the regular Maariv for festivals is recited. After prayer, the evening meal is taken. Then Shavuot begins to take on a character all its own: tikkun leil Shavuot, the all-night study session.

  As traditions go, this is a fairly late one, begun by the Kabbalists in the Middle Ages. In the major mystical work, The Zohar, there is a passage that praises those who stay awake all night in anticipation of receiving the Torah. Since God, the Jews, and the Torah are bound together, as if in marriage, one should stay awake the night before preparing “ornaments” for the bride.

  What are these ornaments, these jewels? None other than the words of the Torah. Jews gather in synagogues after the meal (and, for some, after a little catnap) and spend the entire night together studying selections from the Torah, the Prophets, and the Talmud. At the conclusion of the tikkun, as the sun rises, the morning services are recited.

  The tikkun book can be purchased in a Jewish bookstore. Or one can put it together following a list; all the necessary books are easily available.

  The selections are taken from the written and oral law. It was organized that way to underscore the indivisibility of the two. The readings consist of three to seven verses from the beginning and end of every portion of the Torah. Certain sections, however, are read in full:

  Creation (GEN. 1:1-2:3)

  The Exodus and the song at the Red Sea (EXOD. 14, 15)

  The giving of the Ten Commandments (EXOD. 18-20; 24:1-18; 34:27-35; DEUT. 5:1-6:9)

  The grand review of the essence of the Torah (DEUT. 10:12–11:25), contains the Shema prayer.

  The same method is used for the Prophets: that is, the first and last few sentences from each book. The special full reading is Ezekiel, the entire chapter 1 (The Vision of the Chariot). The twenty-four minor Prophets are considered as one book, so three readings represent the entire work: (HOSEA 1:1-3; HABAKKUK 2:20-3:19; and MALACHI 3:22-24). The Book of Ruth is read in full; and of the Book of Psalms, chapters 1 and 19 are read. Next, the first and last few passages of each of the 63 treatises of the Mishnah are studied. This is followed by a reading of Maimonides’ 613 mitzvot. Chasidim read selections from Kabbalist literature. If it seems like a whole lot of material, remember that it represents eight to ten hours of continuous study—approximately one fourth of a full term’s work for a college course.

  If you don’t have a good long nap beforehand, instead of readiness to receive the Torah, the only thing you will feel the next morning is spaced out. Moreover, you will be out of sync for the rest of the holiday. The Jewish people are dreamers, with a practical bent. Since not everyone can nap, and some are less hardy than others, there are many modified forms of tikkun leil Shavuot. In some communities it is the custom to study three or four hours and then break at midnight so that everyone will be refreshed for the Torah reading the next day. Unlike grown-ups who appreciate a night’s sleep, youngsters find it a novelty (to try) to stay awake all night. But here, too, there must be modification—a program of study geared to their level and interests. Otherwise, they will surely be found napping the night through beneath the juice and cake table.

  In addition to the regular festival prayers on Shavuot morning, there are three special highlights: First, the Torah reading on the first day is the Revelation of the Ten Commandments (EXOD, 19:1-20:26). The description is so graphic that one can fairly see the crowds milling around. There must have been a good deal of preliminary confusion and disorder, despite Moses’ firm and orderly hand. After all, who knew what to expect?

  The Rabbis tell us that each Jew in each generation should consider him/herself as having received the Torah at Mount Sinai. As we reach the section of the Ten Commandments, the entire congregation stands for its reading. Even the little children are quiet in shul, as they sense an awe in this, their second home.

  The second feature is the reading of Akdamot. These are recited immediately before the Torah reading, or, in some congregations, right after the first verse of the Torah had been read. Akdamot are liturgical poems of loyalty of the Jews to the Torah; these were composed in the eleventh century. The language is Aramaic, thus, the haunting melody with which Akdamot are chanted is what many people find most moving.

  Third, on the second day of Shavuot, the entire Book of Ruth is read before the Torah reading from Deuteronomy. Ruth was a Moabite woman who refused to abandon her husband’s family after he, his father, and his brother die. She leaves Moab to accompany Naomi, her mother-in-law, back to Judea. There, Ruth meets and marries a relative of her deceased husband. Through Ruth the convert, new life is given to the family. Ruth is the ancestor of King David, who died on Shavuot, and from whose line the Messiah shall come. Appropriately, the story of Ruth takes place at harvesttime.

  On the second day of the holiday, as on the final day of all festivals, the Yizkor memorial prayer is recited. In many an Orthodox shul there is an appeal during Yizkor for the Hebrew school or a local yeshiva. The speech for this Yizkor appeal is the easiest of all, since it fits so well with the overall theme of love for the Torah.

  Throughout the book, I have hardly described customs that used to exist but that no longer exist. But I shall make an exception for one now, for two reasons: one, to tell what it was, for it conveyed the sweetness and love of the Torah, and a parent can easily duplicate these customs today, and two, to tell what we have substituted, given the different ways our lives are programmed these days.

  In European Jewish communities of pre-modern times, it was the custom to begin teaching children Torah on Shavuot. At dawn, the children were taken to the synagogue. They were taught to recognize the letters of a Hebrew verse written on a special slate, a verse they had memorized almost from infancy. One such verse was: “Torah tzivah lanu Moshe,” “Moses commanded us the Torah.” The teacher would recite each letter and the child would repeat the letter after him. As the child mastered each letter, it was checked with a dab of honey, which the child then licked off. Another custom was to bake a special milk and honey cake and ice it with verses from the Torah. It seems we also had our equivalent of the Easter egg. An egg was boiled for each child, and Torah verses were written on it. After reading the verses, the child was given the cake and the egg to eat. Although it seems strange to gobble down verses of the Torah, nevertheless it was legitimated. That was the Jewish version of motivation theory.

  These customs are no longer practiced because we now have an orderly, externally imposed educational system and we follow a standard academic calendar. Nevertheless, in many a Jewish day school, we have plucked out of the educational system an event which is linked in theory and practice to Shavuot and to the older customs. Today, the custom is to distribute to the young child his/her very first own book of the Bible, their first Chumash. Sometime around Shavuot, the parents of the first graders are invited to school for an hour; the principal makes a brief speech to the children about the preciousness of the Torah; the Hebrew-studies teacher adds a few words on a related theme; and then each child is called to come up, one by one, to receive his/her own small Chumash, usually the Book of Genesis, in Hebrew script as in the Torah scroll itself. In our children’s day school, the S.A.R. Academy, one or two handy parents in the class are asked to sew colorful felt book covers complete with the child’s name stitched onto the front cover. If our Goody grows up to be a Torah scholar, it will be in part thanks to the principal, to her first-grade teacher, to her grandmother who also came to share that event, and to that mother who lovingly sewed up the first Chumash book cover for Goody.

  It is a ceremony for which
it is unequivocally worth giving up a day’s work. While no words such as generations, continuity, inheritance, and chain of tradition, and so forth are used—for six-year-olds don’t quite grasp those concepts and it’s their day—nevertheless, these are the sentiments that fill to overflowing the minds and hearts of every adult present.

  That event is really what Shavuot is all about. It is about the Torah, and about the covenant. A covenant has many dimensions to it. A Jew knows that if he/she breaks it, he/she breaks it for all generations to come; all that effort to keep it going for a hundred generations might possibly go down the drain. Conversely, bringing our children into the covenant, watching them as they move closer toward it, step by step, validates and strengthens our own commitment, our own love for Torah and tradition.

  The covenant between God and the Jews suggests many things. A covenant is like a good marriage: open-ended, you never know what the next day will bring, yet deep down you know that you’ll remain faithful. There’s a steadiness about it, a commitment that is somehow more than just the sense of working at it to make it go. An open-ended relationship means that in times of pain and suffering the partners grow closer together, just as does a strong family. In three thousand years of ups and downs, neither partner has said, “Enough already.” That’s what a covenant is.

  And that’s what the Book of Ruth is really all about—that you can love after evil, that you can have passion and compassion after tragedy, and more than that, that to go on being human you must feel those very feelings. Ruth is a simple yet profound tale—a commitment of love that is stronger than logic, of little acts of goodness that are, in the long run, of cosmic significance. And perhaps Jews in this generation can understand this better than all the Jews who went before us.

  Sometimes a little ritual can say more than a thousand philosophical treatises. The Sephardim, possibly because they were our best philosophers, developed the perfect ritual for Shavuot. Perhaps in the next thousand years, the Ashkenazim will take it up as well. Immediately after the ark is opened up on Shavuot morning, Sephardic Jews read a ketubah, a marriage contract between God, the groom, and Israel, the bride. In the ketubah, God invites the bride to His palace, and promises to bind Himself to her forever. The bride says, “Na’aseh Ve Nishmah,” “We will do and we will listen.” We accept. These are the very words that were used by the ancient Jews at Sinai. The groom then gives His gift to the bride—the Torah and the oral law.

  This is an incredible season to be a Jew, if you have the emotional stamina for it. Springtime in a Jew’s life is like being a manic-depressive. One goes from tears to laughter, joy to despair, and back again in dizzying proportions: Purim, Passover, Holocaust Remembrance Day, the anniversary of the Warsaw Ghetto uprising, Israel Independence Day, Jerusalem Liberation Day … Sometimes, it seems almost more than the heart can bear. Yet Shavuot caps it all, with its emphasis on the covenant, its steadiness, its security, its reminder of who we are. Shavuot gives meaning and makes sense out of everything else.

  CHAPTER · 25

  TISHA B’AV AND OTHER FASTS

  It would seem only natural, would it not, that whereas we rejoice and celebrate with feasting, we mourn and memorialize without. Food gladdens the soul, fasting chastens it. Thus, on days we recall tragedies, such as the destruction of the Holy Temple in Jerusalem, the Rabbis ordained a fast.

  Tisha B’Av is linked to two of the most incredible eras of Jewish history. Therefore, let us take a moment to place the immediate events within the larger Jewish historical framework:

  In approximately the year 1750 B.C.E., Abraham embraced monotheism. He left his father’s home and, along with a cadre of believers, set out for Canaan. Canaan was the land God promised to him as a sign of the covenant between them.

  Years later, this Promised Land was temporarily blighted by famine, so Abraham’s grandson Jacob, plus eleven sons, one daughter, and their families, left Canaan and settled in Egypt. Since Joseph, the long-ago-betrayed-but-now-forgiving brother, was regent of Egypt, their fortunes were pleasant indeed.

  Four centuries later, however, the descendants of Jacob and Joseph found themselves in altogether different circumstances. They were now reduced to slavery, and they needed a savior.

  Enter Moses. Approximately 1250 B.C.E., Moses led the tribe of Hebrew slaves out of Egypt to freedom, and to the promise of return to the land of their ancestors. En route, however, Moses died. Joshua took over the leadership of this band of slaves turned freemen. Through conquest and resettlement they reestablished themselves in the land of the patriarchs and proceeded to divide up the land according to tribal origins, this portion for the children of Simeon, that for Levi, Judah, and so on. Within the next hundred years, a kingdom was established to unify the twelve separate tribes. Under the third king, Solomon, son of David, a great Temple was built. This took place during the tenth century B.C.E.

  This Temple was the center, the heart of the nation; it was the physical symbol of a thriving, wholly independent theocracy. Kings might come and go, the Northern Kingdom might split off from the Southern Kingdom, but the sacrifice, worship, and gathering that took place on the plaza of the Holy Temple—that was what created a sense of Jewish sovereignty, stability, and nationhood. In fact, the Jewish Commonwealth was numbered according to the years the Temple stood.

  In the year 722 B.C.E., the Northern Kingdom was invaded and conquered by its neighbors farther north, the Assyrians. The land was resettled by the conquerors and the Ten Northern Tribes were all but gobbled up by foreign invaders, or “lost” as historians came to describe these ten tribes. The Temple, however, was not touched. Fortunately, it had been built in Jerusalem, which was part of the Southern Kingdom of Judea, as the territory of Judah and Benjamin was known.

  But, as history reminds us over and over, nothing lasts forever. In 586 B.C.E., almost four hundred years after it was built, the first great Holy Temple was destroyed. The Babylonians to the east and the Assyrians to the north fought over this crossroads territory. The Babylonians won. They crushed the Judeans in their revolt for independence, utterly demolished the Temple, and, as was most common in those days, “resettled” all but the lowest strata of society. They left behind the poor, the marginals, the uneducated, the misfits, so that there would remain no significant human resources to muster in an attempt at rebuilding the vital, sacred, nerve center—the Temple.

  A shattering loss. The absolute end of the First Jewish Commonwealth. In response, the religious leaders of the community established four fast days to commemorate the destruction of the first Temple:

  The tenth of Tevet, when the siege of Jerusalem began.

  The ninth of Tammuz when the walls were breached.

  The ninth of Av when the Temple was sacked.

  The third of Tishrei when Gedalia, the provisional governor of the remaining Jews in Jerusalem, was slain and the last Jews fled Judea.

  Yet history also teaches us that as long as an idea lives, nothing is irreversible. Shortly after the exile, Judea changed hands again; the exiles were not only allowed to return, but were granted permission to rebuild the Holy Temple. Who would have believed that only seventy years after the Churban, the ultimate destruction and degradation, the second Holy Temple would be magnificently erected, the Second Jewish Commonwealth back in business?

  And yet. Though History may be fickle, the Memory remains faithful. Even though the Second Commonwealth now flourished, and the Temple occupied as central a place as ever, no one saw fit to rescind the mourning for the Churban, and for those who had fallen.

  The Second Commonwealth was even more stable than the first. It was a period rich in religious creativity: canonization of the Bible, the flowering of the oral tradition, the nourishment of sectarian ideas, and, as the end approached, the growth of messianic movements. Moreover, the Second Commonwealth lasted for almost six hundred years.

  In 70 C.E., Jewish nationhood came to an end. This time, it was Rome and not Babylon. But the sequence was
the same: an unsuccessful revolt by the Judeans, the siege of Jerusalem, the breach in the walls around the city, and finally the destruction of the Holy Temple. By strange coincidence, the dates were almost identical: the breach of the walls—the seventeenth of Tammuz; the sacking of the Temple—the ninth and tenth of Av. To these dates, then, was attached mourning for two destructions. The reason the seventeenth of Tammuz was chosen as a fast to mourn the breached walls, and not the ninth of Tammuz, when the first walls of Jerusalem were breached in 586 B.C.E., is that Churban II was considered a harsher, more permanent, more profound tragedy by generations that followed: more lives were lost, the Temple was never rebuilt, and the exile was to last nineteen hundred years.

  How does one mourn for something that happened so long ago, much of whose bitterness has been muted by the return of modern Jews to Zion and Jerusalem? How does a community summon up distant pain? By reliving the event that was, by telling of it with clarity of detail as if it happened last year, by taking on other symbols of grief and mourning.

  COMMEMORATION

  To begin reliving the events, we start with the siege, on Asarah (tenth) B’Tevet. This day, which usually comes in January, is set aside as a minor fast, a daylight fast. That means that the fast begins as the sun rises and ends as it goes down. Some people rise very early in the dark hours of the morning to eat a good breakfast so as to make the fast easier. Moreover, since January daylight hours are short, Asarah B’Tevet is the shortest of all fasts. Many pre-Bar and -Bat Mitzvah children try their first full-day fast on Asarah B’Tevet.

  Besides fasting, the only other deprivation on minor fast days is washing or bathing.

  Special prayers are added to the regular liturgy. A special Torah reading known as Va’ye’chal (EXOD. 32:11-14; 34:1-10) is recited on all fast days at both Shacharit and Minchah.

  To all intents and purposes, the siege is put out of mind for the next few months. Then, as we near the date of destruction itself, the mourning begins again, slowly, steadily increasing in intensity until we reach the peak of anguish on the day of actual destruction.