The Longed-For Sunset of the Rabbinic Establishment

My Passover plans ran into a few hitches this year. As everybody who knows anything about me knows, I have been preparing for Korban Pesah for some time. In previous years, I hoped and prayed that we would be allowed to have our Passover service, and early in the afternoon of the fourteenth of Nisan I would check the news often and wait for that phone call telling me that the sacrifice was on, at which point I would take my pre-packed suitcases and hightail it with the family for Jerusalem. However, because the fourteenth of Nisan was the Sabbath this year, and intercity travel is prohibited by Torah law thereon, I had to make sure to be in Jerusalem before the Sabbath. Then again, as I was telling anyone who would listen for the last year, YOU also had to make sure to be in Jerusalem before the Sabbath, or else YOU would not have been able to eat of the Korban Pesah. I am astounded by the sheer multitudes of people who did not make suitable arrangements.

Whatever the case, we were in Jerusalem early the afternoon of Friday, and then, on the morning of the Sabbath, because one who is ritually impure is not allowed to consume sacrificial meat, I dutifully immersed myself in a local miqweh shortly after the morning prayers, before I consumed my second-Sabbath and final-leaven meal. Then, after some relaxing/stressful quality time with the kids, I put on my finest clothes and began my 45 minute trek to (what now, due to our neglect, only remains of) the Temple. I told my wife that our sacrificial animal would remain on the Temple Mount that afternoon with whomever was in charge of our group, while I would return sometime later that afternoon. Because it is strictly forbidden to prepare in any way for the night of Yom Tov on the Sabbath, we would then sit tight at our place of lodging until the Sabbath ended, at which point we would gather the kids and begin the march, as a family, back to the Old City to have our seder. The initial walk was pleasant enough, but as I began my final decent from the Jewish Quarter’s parking lot to the area of the Kotel Plaza, I met another Jewish man and his family, and in response to my query, he said that the sacrifice had not been offered. Because it was still fairly early in the afternoon, I proceeded, and presented myself to the lone guard stationed at the entrance of the Temple Mount, and requested to be admitted so that I could view the slaughter of the Pesah. The guard, with out flinching, asked to see my goat, to which I answered that I was but one member of a larger group, and that the Rabbi was in charge of bringing our animal, and I was still unaware if it was to be a goat or a lamb. Struck by the readiness of that answer, he countered that the Mount was to remain closed, but as the aforementioned Jewish man I had encountered had also told me, the Mount would be open the next morning at 7am. That was all well and good, but the time for Korban Pesah is only the afternoon of the fourteenth.

Dejected, I prepared for the afternoon prayers (at least they don’t stop us from doing that) at the Kotel (not because it is any better than any other Old-City synagogue but because that’s where I could find a convenient minyan), and went home to disappoint the family by announcing that we would be staying put and having a b’diavad seder once again this year, and Haggadat Hapesah would have to wait for the next year.

But that was not the first hitch.

Two days earlier, I had a friendly dispute with our local Rabbi. He is officially in charge of religious institutions in town, including the miqwa’oth, and I had a highly unusual request. As I wrote earlier, immersion is required before consuming the sacrifice, and for the last decade, I have directed my wife to the best of her ability to make sure to get herself to the miqweh the night before Passover. Now, although it is true that women who wish to partake of the sacrifices do not have to immerse at night as those who immerse after their menses have to, the fact is that the women’s miqwa’oth are only open at nights, including our local ones. I already have two daughters who have come of age, and they are just as obligated as any other adult Jews to purify themselves in order to eat the Korban Pesah. Considering that there is general ban against non-married women from entering the miqwa’oth for reasons of chastity, could my daughters attend the miqweh with my wife? He refused, citing Rabbi Ovadia Yosef’s precedent that such women not be allowed to immerse. I countered that although I certainly agree with Rabbi Yosef’s ruling as a matter of public policy, he was dealing with a reality that did not have Korban Pesah. At that point I could have started a fight, perhaps appealing to the courts that the local religious authorities be forced to provide the religious services that were necessary. After all, immersion before eating of sacrificial foods is a biblical mandate, and as Maimonides writes, we had to expect that either on Thursday or Friday, the Messiah would arrive, the Temple and its service would be renewed, and we would once again observe all of the commandments. And and anyone who did not believe that was a heretic. I am glad the Rabbi did not answer that we really only pay lip service to these beliefs, but he did write to me that “the better way to prepare for the building of the Temple is to increase unconditional love, feel the pain of the Divine Presence, and, of course, love the land of Israel.” While I also agree with all of that, they are far from sufficient. Just like prayers in the morning: one must completely prepare himself mentally and physically, but then he actually has to get over to the synagogue and pray. So too, we must actually got ourselves over to the Temple and serve God.

But we have to choose our battles. And the fight was not worth it because I could perhaps find some other place for the ladies to purify themselves.

That Sabbath morning, I had to immerse myself at an unfamiliar Jerusalem miqweh. It was quite ghetto, but I picked a fortunate hour to go, as the place was basically empty. The experience made me appreciate the local private miqweh I usually use, one built by an enterprising Rav who has tried to quite passively teach me that if you want something done right, you have to do it yourself, and that is especially true regarding religious services, which, as most have yet to realize, suffer when the government gets involved with them. At least in America, for instance, the synagogues and miqwa’oth are completely run by the communities themselves and can not be corrupted by governmental politics, but here in Israel, the synagogues and miqwa’oth are corrupted through the funds, and therefore the input, they receive via the government. If you want a miqweh that allows women to immerse themselves whenever actually necessary, you have to build one yourself, as the Rav did. If you want a synagogue where the membership has a meaningful say in decisions regarding, for example, what parts of the Torah may be taught in the synagogue, then you have to build one yourself. As the Rav did.

But more than that, the current religious establishment with its governmental backing is incapable of bringing about the revolutionary change in our national religious mindset that is necessary for a Redemptive reality. I was reminded of this – you guessed it – that same Sabbath morning, when I discovered outside of the synagogue the usual alonei shabbat, the glossy weekly publications that litter our synagogues with advertisements for vacations and real estate lightly seasoned with soft divrei torah that provide the glossies with the cover they need to infiltrate our houses of worship so that they can be read during the prayers and Torah readings, and among them I found some copies of HaMizrachi, “a Torah-based magazine in English distributed to Jewish communities around the world, featuring leading educators and scholars from Israel and abroad, high-level Torah content and articles about Israel and Zionism.” (Full disclosure: I worked for TorahBox, one of the major publishers of a French-language weekly, and I have had some associations with a number of HaMizrachi’s writers and speakers.) Once upon a time, The Mizrachi was anti-establishment, fighting for a form of Zionism that was seen to be at odds with both the dominant streams of secular Zionism and Orthodox Judaism. The Mizrachi was looking to upset the status quo and pushed for a movement that was utterly necessary a century ago. The Jewish people had to get ready to resurrect parts of the Torah that had not been in practice for centuries. Immigrating to Palestine one hundred years ago was fraught with risks, and it was only those with pioneering spirits and historical fortitude who could take an active part in trying to create a new Jewish commonwealth. The ideals of the Mizrachi were best expressed by none other than Rabbi Soloveitchik, who broke with his illustrious family’s usual political affiliations, and became one of Religious Zionism’s leaders and spokesmen, because, by his own account, the cataclysms of World War II and the Holocaust had convinced him that the Jewish people needed to work toward different modes of living and Jewish consciousness. That same Rabbi Soloveitchik, who rebelled against the rabbinic establishment of his fathers and mentors and who entertained accepting an offer to head Tel Aviv’s pre-state Rabbinate, declined the Israeli Chief Rabbinate position offered to him by the nascent state because, as his been reported, by the 1950’s, the chief rabbinate had its hands tied by the government. As early as then, the Chief Rabbis of Israel were prevented from truly speaking their minds and taking positions that were at odds with the government. Best example: the Chief Rabbinate can not and will not call for Jewish pilgrimage to and prayer on the Temple Mount, and until there is a major change in this country’s politics, it will not. Rabbi Soloveitchik paid the price for breaking with the establishment. As others have pointed out, just like secular Zionism no longer truly exists, as it has not had any actual goals for some decades, Religious Zionism is at a loss for a crusade. The Mizrachi no longer exists as an advocate for messianic change in Jewish society; it is part and parcel of the establishment, and while yes, it can remind us that Israeli Independence Day is worth celebrating despite large swaths of religious Jewry burying its collective head in the sand to avoid acknowledging the historical miracles of the 20th century, as a matter of principle, it can not openly advocate for the next necessary Jewish religious movement: restoring the Temple as the center of our religion, or even for steps that will hopefully lead to that.

…

The Talmud (Sanhedrin 37) discusses the severity of the sin of murder, and then the concept of atonement, how exile, for instance, atones, and then cites the example of Jeconiah/Jehoiachin, second-to-last Davidic king of the First-Temple era:

Rabbi Yohanan said: Exile atones for everything, as it is written, “Thus said the Lord, mark this man childless, a man that shall never succeed, for no man of his seed shall prosper, to sit on David’s throne and ever rule in Judah.”  But after he was exiled, it is written, “The sons of Jeconiah, who is Assir, Shealtiel his son…” [He was called] Assir (internee), because his mother conceived him in prison. Shealtiel,  because he was not conceived in a natural manner… or, Shealtiel, because God obtained absolution, so to speak from His oath [to leave him childless].  Zerubbabel, because he was conceived in Babylon. But [his real name was] Nehemiah the son of Hachaliah.

(This would be another one of those cases where the sages applied personage-parsimony, i.e. identifying someone, usually un-named, with another convenient Biblical figure, despite the inherent difficulties. I wish I knew why they did this so often.)

Although Jeconiah was originally despised by God, his repentance nullified the decree, and his descendant Zerubbabel became a worthy scion of the Davidic line:

The word of the Lord was for a second time to Haggai on the twenty fourth day of the month, saying, “Speak to Zerubbabel, governor of Judah, saying: I will shake the heavens and the earth, I will overthrow the throne of kingdoms, and I will destroy the strength of the kingdoms of the nations; I will overthrow the chariots, and those that ride in them, and the horses and their riders shall fall down, each by the sword of his brother. In that day, says the Lord of Hosts, will I take you, Zerubbabel son of Shealtiel My servant, says the Lord, and I will place you as the signet, for I have chosen you, says the Lord of Hosts.”

Haggai 2:20-23

Zerubbabel’s descendants persisted in the office of Babylonian Exilarch for the next two millennia, while their quasi- Davidic cousins of Hillel’s line held the office of Patriarch in the Land of Judah for almost six concurrent centuries. The Talmud, after describing the unique, perhaps miraculous origins of these two ruling houses, then adds:

Judah and Hezekiah, the sons of Rabbi Hiyya, once sat at the table with Rebbi and did not speak at all. He said, “give the young men plenty of strong wine, so that they will say something.” When the wine took effect, they said, “The son of David cannot appear before the two ruling houses in Israel shall be no more,” [referring to] the Exilarch in Babylon and the Patriarch in Judah, as it is written, “And he shall be for a Sanctuary, for a stone obstacle and for a rock of offense to both houses of Israel.” Thereupon [Rebbi] exclaimed, “You cast thorns in my eyes, my sons.”  Rabbi Hiyya responded: “Master, do not be angry, for the numerical value of the word yayin, wine, is seventy, as is [the numerical value of] sod, secret, and when wine goes in, secrets come out.”

The fact that the Talmud includes this narrative is indicative that the young men’s declaration was not just meaningless, intoxicated ramblings but rather significant teachings: the Davidic line, in its third-century incarnations, had, like the waxing and the waning of the moon that symbolizes it, reached a point at which it was in need of reformation. Originally, David was the ultimate counter-cultural figure, rejected by his brothers and father, and eventually made a fugitive of God’s obviously chosen king, and when he finally assumed the throne, his innovations in worship were not mainstream, but eventually they became mainstream. His son Solomon is described as heading the Sanhedrin, and even initiated a number of rabbinic enactments (such as the ritual hand-washing) that are ubiquitous today, but before the First Temple was destroyed, the prophets saw how the establishment, the priesthood and the monarchy, had become liabilities for the people, and in order to ensure our survival, both would have to be abolished, at least temporarily. After the seventy years of the Babylonian Exile, the prophets Zechariah and Haggai prophesied about how the houses of David and Zadok were rehabilitated and given new chances to lead the people. But the Second Temple’s sun also eventually set, and that brings us to the incident above. The rabbinic establishments in both Judah and Babylon had become impediments to the redemption.

So too, while I must applaud the Mizrachi, for instance, for fostering a profound longing for aliyah among diaspora Jews, and I would support and vote for a man like Rabbi Yehoshua Fass, the founder and moving force behind Nefesh B’Nefesh, if he wished to run for Knesset or even higher office, I can not help but feel that in order for us to progress to a greater messianic ideal, the Chief Rabbinate and other establishment rabbinic bodies as they are must step aside. Remember, in Zerubbabel’s time the impetus for aliyah and the establishment of the commonwealth came from non-Jews (the emperors Cyrus and Darius), while it was Zerubbabel and Jeshua ben Jehozadak’s responsibility to rebuild and maintain the Temple and its institutions. Today, The state of Israel is firmly established and not going anywhere, and it is the responsibility of a new Jewish leadership to rebuild the Temple. When I first came to Israel twenty years ago, Jewish prayer on the Temple Mount was inconceivable. Today, there is a daily minyan for shaharith, and that is because enough people demand it every day. If 20,000 people would have shown up for Korban Pesah, it would have happened, just like the Exodus happened when about 600,000 men walked out of Egypt with their families when the opportunity presented itself. These are examples of organic revolutions. They started at the bottom, with the people, and nurtured new leadership that replaced the old. If the Rabbinate is not even ready to allow people to ritually purify themselves or to let them visit and pray at the site of the Temple, then it is certainly not prepared for building and running a temple. We have to do it ourselves.