TJS S5 Interlude Historical Obligations Yom Ha'atzmaut 5782

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Gratitude bestows reverence, said John Milton, allowing us to encounter everyday epiphanies, those transcendent moments of awe that change forever how we experience life and the world. Well, I'm grateful for the epiphanies I've received living here in this land at this time in history. I'm Rav Mike Foyer, and this is The Jewish Story. Season 5, Live Interlude, Our Historical Obligations. So, when Rav Yonatan asked me to speak, I felt like this is a historic time. It's a historic time both sort of globally, I don't know if you read the news, but it feels like everything that we ever really knew anything about has been cast into doubt. Maybe you guys are used to that, I'm a little old. I have a settled sense in me that things ought to be one way or another.

But more specifically, it's a historic time in the Jewish calendar. It's something that Israeli parents call the Tkufat Chutzot HaLebanot. It's the period of white shirts. I have five kids. I cannot tell you how many times I've done laundry. Since Yom HaShoah, Yom HaShoah, you've got two Rosh Chodesh in there. You've got Yom HaZikron, Yom HaAtzm, it's going to be getting logged by Omer. Who knows Yom Yerushalayim? It's insane. It's a very intense time in the Jewish calendar under construction. And that's what I mean by historic. It's not so common that we find ourselves at a point in history where we find history under construction. You may feel like history is happening around you. You may feel like, wow, those were important events.

But how often do you find that a people is striving to create structures in which we don't just remember, but process, integrate, and give meaning to the events which happened, if not in our own lifetime, certainly in recent memory? And I want to speak a little bit, if you saw the title of a class, which, you know, I like to give a title and then figure out what I'm going to talk about. This time it didn't 100% line up because the title of a class is Can History Create an Obligation to Rejoice? I might change the word rejoice to be grateful, but, you know, being grateful is an abstract state. You have to do something with it. And so maybe we'll touch on the power of rejoicing at the end. But that's the question.

And in order to engage that question of whether history has the power to create an obligation to rejoice, the first thing we have to ask might be what's history, but I'm not going there right now. It's much bigger. Like Rav Yonatan said, if you want, you can hear exhaustive thoughts on it on the Jewish story. More locally, I'd say, what's an obligation? What is an obligation? What's the word in Hebrew for obligation? Achiu, right? It's a word that anybody who has even a passing familiarity with or been in thought has had it dumped on their head. Maybe somebody who sins a very young age and maybe people are recovering from it. I don't want to touch any sore spots. But you might be astounded. I went to look up, what's the first place that Achiu appears in the Torah?

And you know what I found? It does not. It does not. In fact, I searched the entire Tanakh with the help of technology, and I found that the shorish, the three-letter root of the word chov, only appears twice in the entire Hebrew Bible. Which was astounding to me. You guys have some source sheets there. And I just brought those two because, frankly, it amazed me that such a thing could be true. The first one is in the book of Hezkel. Always a fun one. Whoever gets to really learn it. And there, the idea of a chov appears as what you might be, a monetary obligation. And that's going to be one half of how I want to consider an obligation. It's something which I gave to you, that you need to give me back. Right?

There's an exchange element. And there's an expectation of fairness. If you have a chob, you have a debt to someone, then there's matters of justice bound up with it, right? You don't just go forfeiting on your debts, unless, of course, you need to. That's a different story. But you guys, are you with me? Understand? It's something that you owe back. The other piece is from the book of Daniel. The book of Daniel is rich and mysterious. And here in the first chapter, when Daniel is refusing to eat unkosher meat, it's a great story, by the way, if you haven't read the book of Daniel. Skip the middle part. The beginning is great. Basically, Daniel is refusing to eat non-kosher meat and drink non-kosher wine, and the officer who's in charge of raising him up says, listen, I'm happy to comply with your wishes, but the problem is, is the king told me to keep you healthy.

And what does it say there? That if anything goes wrong, right, and you don't look healthy like everybody else who's eaten all that trieff meat, right? He says, You will have made my life, or literally my head, in debt to the king. Meaning what? Not only is there a monetary side to an obligation. I've given you something, you need to give it back, or you've given me an idea to do. There's a relationship element. Because what does that mean? He hasn't taken anything from the king other than disobedience. Right? And so I want to have these two pieces kind of in our pocket as we go forward to try to understand. By the way, some of you may have explored this question more locally in the question of whether, if, how one says, Hallel, the songs of rejoicing on Yom HaTzmuth.

We're going to end with that question. But right here, I want to think more generally about what is an obligation. So we have two pieces from the Bible. One is, I give it to you, you better give it back. Justice, in its most simple sense. The other one is our relationship could be violated if somehow you do something I ask you not to do, or you fail to do something which I ask you to do. Good? We good? Now, one step further, because, of course, there's a lot more to obligation than that, right? If you look into American jurisprudence, you'll find a concept called autonomic and heteronomic obligation, right? I know it may sound a little scary, although they are real words. You can use them in Scrabble if you like, right?

And what you'll see is that autonomic is an internally generated obligation. Heteronomic is an externally one. Let's start with the easy one first. Law doesn't care whether you like it or not. If you cross the street against red, anybody here ever get a jaywalking ticket in Jerusalem? Yes. If you live here long enough, you'll get one. Trust me, they will do it. It's not a joke. I'm going to hold back on all the things I can say about that. But what's my point? Nobody cares whether you believe it's right or wrong to cross the street on red. There's a law that says you may not. it's heteronomous. It comes from outside of you. In general, we would say that law functions that way. Nobody asks you to frame the American Constitution.

Nobody asks you to write all those law books, be they rabbinic or secular. Yes? So there's an obligation that exists outside. What's autonomous? What's auto mean? Self, right? So there are certain things which a person says, I must do this. Or, conversely, I must not. And there's a big question on where those pieces of our personality come from. Because on one hand, we all identify more deeply with that which comes from within us. On the other hand, if we try to scrape away the layers of biological necessity, I must eat, I must sleep, I must drink coffee, in that order, or maybe, you know. And we ask ourselves where our notions of intrinsic justice, where our notions of fairness and right and wrong come from, what we'll often find is a societal compact.

So while there seems to be a split between the external and the internal, we'll see that that not as simple as we might like it to be Now coming back to my original point why is the notion of ch of an obligation not in the Torah As much as it was mystifying as soon as I paused and thought about it for a second I think it actually was quite clear And it going to relate to this question of history, which is the Torah is happening in real time. The Torah is not interested in an obligation, which is an abstraction. The Torah is interested in commandment. That we can find plenty of, right? In various languages, meaning what? It's happening in real time based on an existent relationship. By the way, your theology is your own.

It doesn't matter to me at all whether you believe God gave the Torah to Moshe at Sinai or was written by a committee of Canaanites. It's not really important for this purpose. The purpose is that from the narrative standpoint, the Torah is happening in real time, and therefore a command based on a live relationship is how one fulfills what is an obvious obligation. It's only later when God begins to hide God's face, as it were, and that live relationship becomes far less tangible, that the importance of an abstract obligation moves into the center, which is why, of course, rabbinic thought is filled with it. And there are other issues of authority, which we'll get to by and by. So there's a tension between this commandedness and obligation, which somewhat can map, by the way, onto the heteronomous autonom.

God says do. I didn't ask you what happens in the Bible if you don't do what God says. smitten. I think, schmeisted? You get schmeisted. That's a technical term. You get schmeisted. And that's one of the reasons that there's so much drama around commandedness in the Bible. Think of something like tzarat, which is one of those great topics that everybody was happy to get past now that Vayikra is finally moving through. What's tzarat? It's so-called biblical leprosy. But what is it really? It's a sign that you've transgressed. Whatever it is, Ennegemar and Erchen says many things. We all know what's the reason we get tzarat? Right, that's the great victory of Rashi, by the way, if you want to know. Rashi taught you that, but if you look at the Gemara Nehemi, there's something like nine different reasons you might get it.

But, you know, educators get the last word on these things. But bottom line, what it is, is it's a responsiveness. Because if you're going to have a live relationship, think of the guy in Daniel. Chiyab di Lamelech. How is he going to know he did wrong by the king? Off of his head. There's going to be an immediate responsiveness. And as much as that might be frightening, it's also a tremendous blessing. The problem comes when there's an obligation which exists distant from us. You understand? Where theoretically it's external. God said, the rabbi said, my parents said. But what if I don't care about the consequences? If I'm willing to do the time, does it make it okay to do the crime? Or is there something else in an obligation which is internal?

You guys feel the tension yet? In order to explore that, my, how time flies. I want to look at a classic Gemara, perhaps from a slightly different angle than we are used to, which is, there on your sheet, I think I have it too, yes, conveniently, thank you, Rabbi Yonatan, Shabbat 88a, it's a great discussion, the context of which is a verse in the Book of Exodus, a shemot that says, literally, they stand at the bottom of the heart. A takhtit can also be the bottom of a vessel, which is what's driving linguistically this discussion. Right? It's like they're standing, and so that's why Rav Avdimi Bar Hamas says, well, that's because God held Mount Sinai over them like an overturned tub. You guys heard this one before?

What's God say? Either accept the Torah or not, this will be your grave. Drama. Now, what comes next is that Aqabar Yaakov pops up and says, wait a minute, God threatened us when we accept the Torah? He says in the Hebrew, it says, Mikan, Moda'a Rabbah Le'oreita. Now, Moda'a is a very important concept. Imagine for a moment, if you will, that we were in the lunchroom, and you said to me, Mike, listen, there's these mafia guys, they're coming, and they're going to force me to sell my house. But I want you to know, and you grabbed together a couple of witnesses, I want you to know right now, I don't want to sell my house. I'm under duress. Right? And we all sign a piece of paper saying, you know, you're under duress and then mafia guys come, you sell the house, is the contract good?

It's complicated. It's complicated. We're Jews, right? It's always complicated. It's always your answer, by the way. It's not so good. Right? But bottom line, there was a lot of an instinctive answer there. Why is it not good? Because you weren't actually fulfilling your own will. You were fulfilling something which was forced upon you. Wait a minute. that's what happened at Sinai the Torah was forced upon it and that undermines our obligation to uphold it isn't that how it works God commands and we have an obligation you all agreed with me when I said that what's this Gemara doing it's pointing out that as much as we can talk about an externally generated obligation there is a deep seated human belief that your will is the most precious thing that you have And when it's put in service of its own vision, or a vision which it has adopted from elsewhere, we don't have to create the wheel, then it's true.

Anytime anybody forces you to do something, whether it was your mom making you clean your room, how many of you guys still clean your room now? It's all right. Nobody can see you. You understand? There's a point at which there's a process of internalization of coming to identify with the wheel. And that's the second half of the Kamara. Because none of the rabbis are freaking out. It's like, I'm going to go home and eat some pork. I mean, if I don't have, if there was a, if it was an undermining of all the commands at Sinai, then how can the Jews ever be punished, and why am I personally obligated? What's their answer? I'm guessing many of you are familiar with this, Kamara. Ah, no, it's okay, because at Purim, ki muvi ki blu.

Right? We sort of stood up and ordained upon, we took upon ourselves, and what is it, the word play that they make is that we took upon ourselves that which we had already been commanded. And everything lives happily ever after. Don't worry, you're still obligated not to eat pork. And wearing wool and linen is out. here's the question. Why Purim? How is the Megillah, the story of Purim, unique from all the other books of the Tanakh, of the Hebrew Bible? Meaning, it's all there, it's all in real time, the face of God appears apparent, but the name of God is absent. Meaning, the people could have just said, whew, thank God for politicians. Right? Good luck on our part that Esther became queen. Let's move on with that.

What this Gemara is saying is somehow the people chose, or were forced to see in history that there are obligations which exist outside of ourselves, but somehow might not be tied to a power which is heteronomic, which is forcing them upon us. This is a historical transition which we don't have time to delve into right now, but it's quite relevant for the question at hand, which is Yom Ha'atzmaut, Israel Independence Day. But before we get to Israel Independence Day, there's one more element I want to put into this mix. So really briefly, where are we? We have this idea that an obligation is maybe an exchange. I give you something, you have to give it back. It might be based in our relationship beyond a technical exchange, that there are things I expect of you or there are ways in which God forbid we could all violate relationships and I wouldn want to do that We understand that obligations can come from outside but at least in the rabbinic mind and I think most of you agreed instinctively that real senses of obligation come from within But there's a problem, by the way, of knowing where do my obligations come from within.

By the way, just as a quick aside, as a council, I work a lot with people on the question of authenticity. Everybody's trying to be themselves. The problem is how on earth do you figure that out? Right? And there's a whole approach you could take to the Torah, which is that, listen, God wants the best for you. Take it or leave it. I really believe that. And I can tell you what, I can't say that with certainty about anyone else I know. Any other structure, any other system. Now here's the challenge, is that God expresses that desire by telling you a lot of things that you may not want to do. Right? And that there's a tension between the authority which exists outside and your own autonomy. Right? familiar with the fact that the rabbi said, who gets the greater reward?

A person who's commanded to do something and does it? Or a person who's not commanded and does it of their own free will? All in favor of commanded and does it, raise your hands. All in favor of not commanded and does it of their own free will, raise their hands. I think this is a setup. You guys have heard this question before. Right? But you know what the reason the rabbis actually come down on the side of commanded, what's called the mitzuvah v'oseh, a person who is commanded and does? There are many reasons, but one of the primary is that nobody likes to be told what to do. We all have to overcome this sense that we know already what's best for us in order to come to be aware of what's actually in our own interest.

This is a life task, and the commands of the Torah, however you relate to them, that's absolutely binding God from Sinai, as the committee of Canaanites, anything in between, can be viewed as an opportunity to engage authority with your autonomy. You know what happens when you bounce back and forth between what you think is right and what the world tells you what's right? You can come to authenticity if you work hard at it. And that's what I'm really interested in, in something like Yom HaSmoot. So how does that work in history? I'm throwing a lot at you here because we have a brief time, but I hope that it's going to settle in the mind. You've got some days ahead to think about it. My email, by the way, is on the paper there.

Feedback is always welcome. If you want to call me names, you can do it amongst yourselves. But if you have a real thought, let me know. So, how does history fit into this? First of all, I'm going to explain all history on one foot from the Jewish perspective. I'm actually standing on one foot now, for those of you who can't see me or aren't bothering to look. No, I'm kidding. So there's three types of mo'adim that Torah, in its broad sense, teaches us. What's a mo'ed? Mo'ed is an appointed time. The time that we meet, who are the Jews attempting to meet? God. That's what we're always after. Don't lose sight of that. Whatever else they tell you, what we're after is meeting God. So, Shabbos. Right? Shabbat is not just top-down.

Shabbat, we say, is Kedush HaKaimah. It's intrinsic. It's built into creation. Even if, God forbid, there were no Jews, Shabbat would still be there. Right? God tipped us off more than commanded us about Shabbat. Right? Then there are what's known classically as the Moadim. Right? Pesach, Shavuot. and Sukkot, right? These are times which are, I would call them, metahistorical. Right? They're events in our history, but God said, listen, history aside, keep these every year. Commanded by God, but who fixes their times in the calendar, at least ideally? Am Yisrael. So you see, there's a partnership. And then we get what's really important for us, which is Purim and Hanukkah. Right? Hanukkah, the written record of it, was excluded from the canon.

Right? How many people here have read the books of Maccabees, at least the first two. The other ones are, you know, they're like a fanfic. It's not worth it. The first two books of Maccabees are highly worthwhile if you want to understand a culture of a very important time in our history. That aside, and then of course there's the Megillah, as you said, is there in the Hebrew Bible, but God is missing. Right? These are events which were specifically historical. And yet, the sages created an obligation. We're going to leave aside this question of how sages create an obligation. Except to add, actually, it's worth mentioning this in this context. There's another level. If obligation can become external, top-down, God, government, etc.

It can come from internal, I know what's right or wrong in my life. There's also a horizontal level of obligation, social obligation, right? Many of you guys, since I'm speaking in English, I would imagine come from America or other Anglo-Saxon cultures, right? I give it to you that it is our duty to create a social contract within this country. There is no constitution which has real roots, in my humble opinion, in Israel. It's your homework. Constitution, I'll give you 20 years. You're young. All right. That aside, you understand what I'm saying. It's going to be a social obligation. As simple as social norms. We all just hold each other in check. And something as grand as a vision that we buy into because it's important enough, whether God said to or not, that we as a people, I use that phrase deliberately, get something done.

So we have all these layers of obligation. And they all function within history. Like I said, Shabbat is outside of history. The Moadim, Pesach, Shavuot, Sukkot, have one foot in history and one foot outside. But Hanukkah and Purim are squarely in history and therefore can serve as our model in the last nine minutes to wrap up this idea of how does history create an obligation and does it apply to Yom Ha'at. Now, Purim, I don't know your name, Sarah already said, is about the hidden and the revealed. Hanukkah is about what? Light out of darkness. Right? What did the sages do? They took historical events and they extracted from them an eternal essence. Every culture, on some level or another, engages the hidden and revealed.

And certainly every culture in the northern hemisphere engages the question of light and darkness in certain months of the sea. You may have noticed a strange coincidence between Hanukkah and that other day. I forget what its name. In America they celebrate it? Anyway. Right? So these are historical specifics. we would call them parochial events, which might have meant nothing to us. You may or may not know that Hanukkah and Purim are one of many holidays that exist in what was known as the Megillat Tanit, the Tanit scroll. And these are the two that we remember. All the others, how many of you guys celebrate Nicanor Day? Come on, folks, you've got to get with the program. Right? Why not? Because there was an effort to extract the eternal.

It is always relevant to understand the hidden and revealed. It's always relevant to understand how light can come from darkness. And so they tied that eternal into the specific historical story and to celebration. And I don't want to miss that piece because if you can't celebrate it, then what's the point? So the question becomes, what is the essential in Yom HaTzbahut? And how do we extract it and make it eternal? And do we have an obligation to do so? Which brings me to the last piece of this puzzle, and that's about gratitude. On a personal level, I think we can all understand that there are certain obligations or necessary responses created by our experiences. As Ravionathan mentioned I work as a counselor A lot of people are familiar unfortunately with the automatic responses to trauma We could call them victim villain survivor hero Right But our experience on that level, traumatic experience is experience which brands us.

And I use that harsh word quite deliberately. Creates a necessary response, right? Sometimes it's easier, however, unfortunately, to avoid the response, necessary response of gratitude or joy. Right? What has happened in my life if I have been saved God forbid from a car crash or I don't know dramatic things happen all the time and I don't rejoice at being saved if I'm not joyful I might have ceased to value life and if you remember nothing else that I say to you today I want you to understand that the Torah's primary directive is Uvechart V'chaim choose life now it's not as easy as one might think but don't forget that because we're surrounded in a world of cultures which knowingly or not are pursuing the opposite So if I can't rejoice at being personally saved, then maybe I actually haven't chosen life.

But what about gratitude? Gratitude is a little more complicated. And the gratitude question is very deep. If you look, it's true that we're all familiar with the story where God commands Adam not to eat from the fruit. I'm guessing you're all familiar with it. Actually, by the way, God commands Adam first to eat from all the fruit and then later not to. But do you know how the sages framed the original human experience? Hakarat hatov. Right? that the human being was brought into being for creation to actualize its potential through recognizing its goodness. I could prove that to you at another time. You can look it up. It's the Rashi on Brashi 2.5 if you're interested. But I say it to you now to point out that there's something essentially human about the ability to be grateful, and there's something which humanity adds essential to creation in the ability to recognize a good which has been done, and perhaps that one which has not yet come to be.

And this is at the heart of the question of Yom HaTzmood, because we're facing a pretty problematic period in our history. You may have noticed a lot of talk of privilege out there. A lot of talk of privilege. Privilege based around race, privilege based around socioeconomic status, privilege based around who knows what. It's an important discussion. The challenge, though, is that you don't get to choose what you inherit from history. you only get to choose what you do with it. Right? And what I can tell you is this, is that if you're not grateful for the things which history has given you, then you risk one of two things, destroying yourself by guilt or destroying yourself through willful ignorance.

Gratitude, deep gratitude, is actually redemptive. In that respect, I want to wrap up these last couple of minutes. Oh, how the time flies. With this last Gemara, which is also a classic, If you're not familiar with it, it's worth it to look in depth. But for now, I'll just kind of tell you the story outside. Once upon a time, there was a king in Judah named Hezekiah. Hezekiah. Hands again. Who's heard of Hezekiah? Right? Oh, that makes me so happy. So Hezekiah had a tremendously difficult life in many ways. And there were many things that he had been gratitude. Gratitude, but grateful for, I should say. One of them was the fact that Jerusalem was the only city which withstood the Assyrian siege at the end of the 8th century before the Common Era.

And how did it stand? Well, the Tanakh tells a story that they woke up in the morning after the prophet Isaiah had promised in the voice of God that nobody's going to come in. They woke up in the morning and the Assyrians were all dead from plague. Furthermore, Hezkiah himself was condemned to die and he turned to God in pleading prayer and was given 15 more years of life. And so the Gemara says that God wanted to actually make Hezkiah the Mashiach. Wanted to make it sound the Messiah. Oh, let it be soon, let it be now. If it wasn't then, let it be in our time. Right? And he blew it. How did he blew it? Because he didn't sing songs of praise. Now, like I said, we don't have time to go into the Gemara in depth right now, but it's worth it to take a look.

What's the connection? His failure to be grateful, to recognize the good that had been done, cut off salvation. And the Gemara goes elsewhere, and it speaks about some very interesting things. But in the last two minutes that we have together, I think it's worth connecting what I see to be a very important parallel. Is that here we are today in the modern state of Israel, in a world which is increasingly interconnected, right? Remember, one of the unique things about whatever you think of what happened in 1948, what you see as a miracle, a tragedy, a commonplace event of history, that one I can't believe anybody sees it as. But one thing that's important to remember is it happened in the eyes of the whole world.

most of Jewish history is self-referential. Most of human history is self-referential. But 1948 happened in the eyes of the whole world, and I don't know if you've noticed it, the whole world is on you, their eyes are on you now. The president of France will express his opinion if I build an addition onto my porch. Right? That's interesting. Right? And the thing that I believe, the obligation that it creates, is an obligation to be grateful. Now remember, gratitude is not simply self-satisfaction. Gratitude is what saves us, on one hand, from crippling guilt and, I would say, morally obtuse, willful ignorance. Gratitude is an empowering act that allows us to be grateful for what we have and recognize, perhaps, that there's more to be done.

And in that sense, what the Gemara here is pointing out is that Hezekiah was saved. Historically speaking, though, he failed in his obligation. Why? Because just like in my own life, when someone does something good for me and I fail to be grateful, I may have an obligation to them. Remember from the beginning, something they gave me I didn't give them back? I may have also violated a relationship, just like in Daniel. But more profoundly, what I've done is I've failed myself. I haven't become the person I need to be. And what's a greater definition than self-redemption, right, of self-direction than becoming the person I need to be? And one of the touchstones in our life where we can know whether we're on the path of becoming the person we need to be is when we respond rightly to the good which is done to us.

Or, God forbid, the opposite. If we fail to respond rightly to the good which is done to us, I promise you you'll have trouble looking in the mirror the next day. Either guilt or what? You'll just pretend it wasn't done. And you'll just profit from something which didn't really belong to you. Gratitude is a path to personal salvation. And I would argue, by the way, on the national level, that whatever it is we think of Yom HaTzim and trust me, you can listen to the Jewish story if you want to know my opinion it's not a simple story but one thing I can tell you for sure is that if we fail in an obligation to accept the burden of history part of which is to be grateful for that which we have received then the redemption which could flow from it will never come so it's my blessing to us all that we both in our personal lives in our interpersonal lives and ultimately in the historical and theological scale learn to see the good which has been done for us and to express our gratitude at every opportunity possible.

Thank you for your time and patience and your attention. I'm happy to take any questions or comments, but I know that this time period has come to an end, so everyone have a good day.