Maimonides

Teshuvah: a guide to repentance

Twelfth-century Jewish thinker Moses Maimonides described the sound of the shofar at Rosh Hashanah as a wake-up call for the soul. (photo from flickr.com/photos/gsankary)

The sound of the shofar at Rosh Hashanah, the great 12th-century Jewish thinker Moses Maimonides wrote, is a wake-up call for the soul. Its message: “Arise from your slumber! Search your ways and return in teshuvah and remember your Creator!”

Teshuvah is the central theme of the time between Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur, known collectively as the Ten Days of Teshuvah. Typically, teshuvah is translated from the Hebrew as repentance, but it literally means return, as if turning back to something you’ve strayed or looked away from. But that begs the question: return to what? Depending on the time and place, there have been different answers – God, a state of moral purity, the Jewish people and Israel.

The Jewish Experience at Brandeis University asked Near Eastern and Judaic studies professor Yehudah Mirsky about the history of teshuvah. Mirsky, who is also a faculty member of the Schusterman Centre for Israel Studies, is the author of Rav Kook: Mystic in a Time of Revolution (Yale University Press).

Ancient Teshuvah

The Hebrew Bible sees teshuvah as principally a return to God. “Come, let us return to the Lord,” the prophet Hoshea (14:2) tells the people of Israel.

In Psalm 51, King David seeks teshuvah for committing adultery with Bathsheba. Importantly, David’s confession is addressed to God because, as he says, “Against You alone have I sinned.”

Traditional rabbinical commentators have interpreted this to mean that teshuvah requires confessing your sins to God. Part of achieving intimacy with Him involves His knowing your sins. And only in that way can you return to Him.

Talmudic teshuvah

For centuries after the destruction by Rome in 70 CE of Jerusalem’s ancient temple, where Jews would say confession and offer sacrifices for atonement, the rabbis reworked biblical ideas and practices of teshuvah into a roadmap for spiritual and moral growth.

In the Mishnah and the Talmud, the vast collections of law, theology, interpretation, folklore and more compiled roughly between 200 and 500 CE, they called for introspection, changing one’s ways, and asking others for forgiveness.

This line of thinking reached its apotheosis in Maimonides’ Hilkhot Teshuvah (The Laws of Return). He placed confession and regret at the centre of repentance so that teshuvah, according to Mirsky, became a process of “moral and spiritual self-cultivation and self-education.”

Teshuvah was no mechanical act. It had to involve genuine contrition and the individual becoming a better person. In addition to being a scholar, philosopher, jurist and communal leader, Maimonides was also a physician.

“One senses his medical sensibility was at work here, too,” said Mirsky. “Transgression sickened the soul and teshuvah is the cure, a return to full spiritual and moral health.”

Cosmic teshuvah

Already during the talmudic period, rabbis had begun talking about teshuvah as a spiritual energy flowing through the universe that was created by God when He made the earth.

The medieval mystics who wrote the great texts of the kabbalah took this even further. They said teshuvah comes not only from inside the individual but is also a dynamic force all around us. To repent, you tap into it. As Mirsky put it, “You catch the wave.”

In the 13th-century Zohar, the foundational work of Jewish mysticism, teshuvah became a way of repairing a rupture or tear in the spiritual fabric of the universe. When the varying energies at work in the world – justice and mercy, male and female, tradition and change – go out of whack, teshuvah helps to rebalance them. In other mystical texts, return is seen as a kind of rebirth and the achievement of the soul’s deepest freedom.

Some 300 years later, Rabbi Isaac Luria, the great mystic of Safed in northern Israel, famously connected teshuvah with tikkun olam (healing the world). Through teshuvah, Jews perfect God’s work, helping usher in the Messianic Age.

For Luria, this largely meant a kind of spiritual healing. But, over time, and especially in the last century, Jews have begun to connect this to ideas of social justice, adding another layer of interpretation to Jewish messianic ideals.

Teshuvah and Israel

In Mirsky’s view, the Zionist movement secularized and redefined teshuvah.

Political passivity, which the rabbis thought was anathema to the survival of the Jewish people, was now considered a sin. Repenting involved identifying with the nationalist yearnings of the Jewish people for a homeland. In this way, teshuvah returned Jews in the diaspora to Israel, and the Jews as a whole to a more vital sense of group identity.

Kook’s teshuvah

Past and present interpretations of teshuvah came together in the work of Abraham Isaac Kook, the first Ashkenazi chief rabbi of modern Palestine and the leading thinker of religious Zionism. To him, all existence is rooted in God and seeks to return to God. That return takes the form of religious practice, social and ethical commitment, art and culture – everything we consciously do to make the world better for the Jewish people and ultimately all of humanity. And, all of these elements – the ritual and ethical, material and intellectual, the Jewish and universal – all need one another to do God’s work in the world. (For more on Kook, see Mirsky’s book.)

American teshuvah

Teshuvah in the United States reflects the inescapable individualism of American life. The great American Jewish thinker Abraham Joshua Heschel linked teshuvah to the nation’s ethos of spiritual growth and renewal. He wrote:

“The sense of inadequacy ought to be at the very centre of the day [Yom Kippur].… To put contrition another way, develop a sense of embarrassment.… We have no answer to ultimate problems. We really don’t know. In this not knowing, in this sense of embarrassment, lies the key to opening the wells of creativity.

One belief all Jewish thinkers share about teshuvah – the process only begins during the High Holidays. It’s afterward when the real work begins.

For more on teshuvah during the Middle Ages, see Mirsky’s article, “How a lover of wisdom returns” in Sources Journal (sourcesjournal.org/articles/how-a-lover-of-wisdom-returns).

– from the Jewish Experience / Brandeis University

Bittons bring home honours from New York

Silver trophy winner Levi Bitton, 11, and medal winner Mendel Bitton, 14, with their father, Rabbi Binyomin Bitton, director of Chabad of Downtown Vancouver, at the International Chidon Sefer Hamitzvos. (photo from Chabad of Downtown)

Seven months of diligent study came full circle April 7 for Mendel and Levi Bitton of Vancouver and more than 1,200 of their peers at the final round of the annual International Chidon Sefer Hamitzvos in Brooklyn, N.Y. Of close to 10,000 children from more than 150 schools worldwide who participated in this year’s competition, Mendel and Levi earned two of the highest scores on three rigorous exams, qualifying them for a trip to Brooklyn to participate in the final tournament. Also earlier this month, more than 1,400 girls participated in their own similar showdown.

The Lubavitcher Rebbe, Rabbi Menachem M. Schneerson, OBM, encouraged children to thoroughly study all of the Torah’s 613 commandments as enumerated and elucidated by Maimonides in his Sefer Hamitzvot. His followers have taken to his words, hosting an annual chidon (contest) that challenges children to study large volumes of detailed texts delving into the intricacies of each mitzvah, and compete for trophies, medals and prizes.

Organized by Merkos L’Inyonei Chinuch, the educational arm of the Chabad-Lubavitch movement, together with Tzivos Hashem, its children’s division, the Chidon Sefer Hamitzvos sees thousands of children ages 9-13 staying late at their respective schools to study the mitzvot with their classmates and friends. As finalists, Mendel and Levi flew to New York, where they enjoyed four days of trips and competitive games that tested their knowledge, and concluded with a grand on-stage tournament and award ceremony.

In the final moments, the tension rose and the crowd went silent as the emcee opened the long-awaited envelopes and announced the trophy winners and champions of the final exam.

We are proud to report that Levi earned a silver trophy. We are also proud to report that Mendel was among 15 boys, from grades 4 to 8, who completed the entire Chidon curriculum. Mendel earned a medal celebrating his commitment and all those months of hard work.

Mazal tov to Levi, Mendel and all of the competitors!

For more information on the contest, visit chidon613.com.

Follow the middle path

One of the stories that my father, z”l, used to tell me about his father, my grandfather, Rabbi Eyad Acoca, z”l, was that back in Morocco, at a young age, my grandfather traveled to the city of Sale to learn under the revered hacham, Ribbi Rafael Enkaua, z”l. In order to get there, he had to cross the Bou Regreg river. Once, while my grandfather was on a raft with other travelers, the raft tipped and all the people drowned except my grandfather, who held tightly onto his Talmud volume and got to the other side of the river safe and sound!

My father often recounted that my grandfather’s last wish was that at least one of his descendants continue his legacy and become a rabbi. His wish was fulfilled when I became a rabbi; in doing so, I merited to inherit a few volumes of my grandfather’s set of Talmud.

Through the years, I have come to understand that I have a big responsibility to continue in my grandfather’s footsteps and teach about Sephardi Judaism, which is unique and special. In recent years, numerous articles and lectures have been given regarding the future of Sephardi Judaism. As a Sephardi rabbi, I am delighted. However, to my dismay, I have found that most of the lectures have been framed in the extreme right or left. In my opinion, Sephardi Judaism has to come back to its origin, which was always the middle path.

Our great sage Maimonides, teaches us in his book Mishneh Torah (De’ot, the laws of personal development):

“Each and every man possesses many character traits. Each trait is very different and distant from the others.

“One type of man is wrathful; he is constantly angry. [In contrast,] there is the calm individual who is never moved to anger, or, if at all, he will be slightly angry, [perhaps once] during a period of several years.

“There is the prideful man and the one who is exceptionally humble. There is the man ruled by his appetites – he will never be satisfied from pursuing his desires, and [conversely,] the very pure of heart, who does not desire even the little that the body needs.

“There is the greedy man, who cannot be satisfied with all the money in the world, as [Ecclesiastes 5:9] states: ‘A lover of money never has his fill of money.’ [In contrast,] there is the man who puts a check on himself; he is satisfied with even a little, which is not enough for his needs, and he does not bother to pursue and attain what he lacks.

“There is [the miser,] who torments himself with hunger, gathering [his possessions] close to himself. Whenever he spends a penny of his own, he does so with great pain. [Conversely,] there is [the spendthrift,] who consciously wastes his entire fortune.

“All other traits follow the same pattern [of contrast]. For example: the overly elated and the depressed; the stingy and the freehanded; the cruel and the softhearted; the coward and the rash, and the like.” (chabad.org)

Maimonides writes, “The two extremes of each quality are not the proper and worthy path for one to follow or train himself in. And, if a person finds his nature inclining towards one of them or if he has already accustomed himself in one of them, he must bring himself back to the good and upright path.”

He continues, “The upright path is the middle path of all the qualities known to man. This is the path which is equally distant from the two extremes, not being too close to either side. Therefore, the sages instructed that a person measure … his character traits, directing them in the middle path so he will be whole.” (torah.org)

How I wish that the great minds of Sephardi Jewry would sit, united, and craft the future of Sephardi Jewry through Maimonides’ model. I hope that this will happen soon but, for now, let us all implement the lesson of Maimonides and implement the middle path in all our endeavours.

Rabbi Ilan Acoca is a veteran rabbi and educator. He is the rabbi emeritus of Vancouver’s Congregation Beth Hamidrash and currently serves as the rabbi of the Sephardic Congregation of Fort Lee-Bet Yosef, in Fort Lee, N.J., and rav beit hasefer of Yeshivat Ben Porat Yosef, in Paramus, N.J. He is the writer of the book The Sephardic Book of Why and has written hundreds of articles on various topics for different publications.

Eight rungs of tzedakah

Little Free Libraries are open 24/7 in cities across Canada. (photo by Josie Tonio McCarthy)

Have you heard of the Little Free Library movement? It’s a way for neighbours to exchange books. Throughout Winnipeg, Vancouver and other cities, there are little freestanding houses, a little bigger than a birdhouse. If you have a book you no longer want, you can leave it. If you’re looking for a book to read? You can take a book whenever you want. These Little Free Libraries are open 24/7.

Walking to our closest Little Free Library has become an important destination for me and my twins. It’s free, good exercise, and encourages our love of reading and learning. My twins often argue over which book to donate. Our house is overflowing with books. In order to take home a new storybook, we have an “even-exchange” policy.

Recently, I read on the National Public Radio (NPR) website about a similar U.S. movement, but, instead of books, the little house is a food pantry for the hungry. One family calls theirs a “blessing box.” Others call it a “little free pantry.” Sometimes, only one family stocks it with food, diapers or toothpaste. Sometimes, a whole neighbourhood takes part. The article mentioned that, in one neighbourhood, most of the food is taken between midnight and 7 a.m.; in another, the food comes and goes continuously. It’s a way of helping others anonymously. You don’t have to face someone at a food bank to admit your family is hungry and cannot afford food.

When I read this, I wanted to build one of these little food pantries right away, but then realized that, in a cold Canadian climate at this time of year, canned food or other stuff won’t do well outdoors. Even if that freestanding unheated food pantry doesn’t work out right away, the concept still made me want to do better than I’d been doing.

photo - Amadeo Ruiz Olmos’ statue of Maimonides stands in the Jewish Quarter of Córdoba, Spain. Maimonides compared tzedakah to a ladder with eight rungs, each of which you climb bringing you closer to heaven — Amadeo Ruiz Olmos’ statue of Maimonides stands in the Jewish Quarter of Córdoba, Spain. Maimonides compared tzedakah to a ladder with eight rungs, each of which you climb bringing you closer to heaven. *(photo by Howard Lifshitz via commons.wikimedia.org)*

I thought about a worksheet I’d used to teach religious school, maybe 20 years ago. I can’t find that piece of paper anymore but I remembered the point. It was about Maimonides’ ladder of tzedakah (justice, or charity). Maimonides (Rambam), a great Jewish scholar and teacher in the 12th century, lived in Spain and Egypt. I borrowed the following summary from the Jewish Teen Funders Network website, to remember the details.

Maimonides believed that tzedakah is like a ladder. It has eight rungs, from bottom to top. Each step you climb brings you closer to heaven.

1. The person who gives reluctantly and with regret.
2. The person who gives graciously, but less than one should.
3. The person who gives what one should, but only after being asked.
4. The person who gives before being asked.
5. The person who gives without knowing to whom he or she gives, although the recipient knows the identity of the donor.
6. The person who gives without making his or her identity known.
7. The person who gives without knowing to whom he or she gives. The recipient does not know from whom he or she receives.
8. The person who helps another to become self-supporting by a gift or a loan or by finding employment for the recipient.

To put this tzedakah approach into practice requires work. Many of us are stuck on the first five rungs of the ladder. I’m going to skip the first two rungs, because, while many of us may have only achieved this level, I’m going to act like we’re better than that. Right?

For instance, our membership dues to a synagogue or other Jewish organizations are acts of tzedakah, but usually of the third-rung kind. (If we could afford to donate more, we sink below No. 3.) We occasionally may get up to No. 7, when donating to a food bank. If you decide to “sponsor” something in the community and your name is pasted all over the event, that’s No. 5. It means, for instance, that while you do not know who ate the kiddush lunch you sponsored, everyone who is there knows your name. So, while some do this to celebrate a special event with their community, others do this named sponsorship because they like the attention. It’s tzedakah, sure, but it’s also about ego.

We could change the way we do our “tzedakah” business. We could push our Jewish community higher up Maimonides’ ladder. Here are some ideas.

Instead of “name in lights” sponsorship, we could donate anonymously to support a community meal, event or service. This could perhaps allow an organization to sponsor a free event. Maybe a congregation could have a nicer kiddush lunch on a Saturday or have an oneg on a more regular basis. It could boost the financial situation of an essential community function, like operational costs (heat, lights, water?), educational events, building renovation or maintenance. It could raise the salary of someone who works for the Jewish community. It could create new employment for someone in our community. It could offer a loan or gift to someone who needs a step-up to begin supporting himself or herself.

Ach! I hear you saying. I’m no moneybags. I can’t pay for someone’s salary. Fine.

If these sound too hard, lower your goals. Could you consistently offer a small amount of money or time when asked to help? Could you pay membership dues early? Could you donate food to the food bank every time you grocery shop? Maybe empty the change from your pockets every Friday afternoon to put in a pushke (collection box)?

Making a difference and working your way up that ladder can start small. It can be as simple as being gracious about donating. What about volunteering time or thanking others who donate? Many of us have the capacity to climb this metaphorical ladder. Shall we ascend those rungs together?

Joanne Seiff, a regular columnist for Winnipeg’s Jewish Post and News, is the author of a new book, From the Outside In: Jewish Post Columns 2015-2016. This collection of essays is now available for digital download, or as a paperback from Amazon. See more about her on joanneseiff.blogspot.com.

Upcoming geniza exhibit

A letter of introduction, written and signed by the Rambam (Maimonides) in the 12th century, which is part of the Discarded History exhibition that will be opening in April 2017 at Cambridge University. Visitors will be able to see a small fraction of the more than 300,000 manuscripts and fragments that were originally found in the geniza, or storeroom, of Ben Ezra Synagogue in Fustat, or Old Cairo, in Egypt. Some of the items are more than 1,000 years old and, among them, are accounting records and parts of responsa and observations by some of the greatest Jewish theological minds, such as the Rambam, Isaac Luria and Joseph Caro. (photo by Edgar Asher with permission of the Syndics of Cambridge University Library)

Mystery photo … July 31/15

Three men eating at the Jewish Community Centre of Greater Vancouver, circa 1965. Rabbi Marvin Hier is sitting on right but the men on the left are unidentified. (photo from JWB fonds; JMABC L.11568)

If you know someone in these photos, please help the JI fill the gaps of its predecessor’s (the Jewish Western Bulletin’s) collection at the Jewish Museum and Archives of B.C. by contacting [email protected].

photo - Vancouver Talmud Torah Grade 9 class picture, 1971-1972 school year — Vancouver Talmud Torah Grade 9 class picture, 1971-1972 school year. (photo from JWB fonds; JMABC L.14845)

photo - Men at a B’nai B’rith event in someone’s home, circa 1980. The four men (including Sam Lemer on the left) are preparing to sign a document — Men at a B’nai B’rith event in someone’s home, circa 1980. The four men (including Sam Lemer on the left) are preparing to sign a document. (photo from JWB fonds; JMABC L.09565)

photo - Presentation of a cheque, B’nai B’rith, 1985. The four men include Sheldon Cole (second from left)B — Presentation of a cheque, B’nai B’rith, 1985. The four men include Sheldon Cole (second from left). (photo from JWB fonds; JMABC L.10228)

photo - Canadian Jewish Congress receives a grant, 1983. Unidentified people are with Senator Jack Austin (second from the right) and Sidney Zack (far right) — Canadian Jewish Congress receives a grant, 1983. Unidentified people are with Senator Jack Austin (second from the right) and Sidney Zack (far right). *(photo from JWB fonds; JMABC L.10048)*

photo - First annual Temple Sholom Trivia night, “small trophies,” 1990 — First annual Temple Sholom Trivia night, “small trophies,” 1990. *(photo from JWB fonds; JMABC L.15060)*

photo - New Royal Canadian Legion Shalom Branch executive, 1989 — New Royal Canadian Legion Shalom Branch executive, 1989. (photo from JWB fonds; JMABC L.14258)

photo - Maimonides high school’s first Grade 8 students, 1986 — Maimonides high school’s first Grade 8 students, 1986. *(photo from JWB fonds; JMABC L.14998)*

Highest level of tzedakah

Ever hear of Heifer International? No? Until recently, I’d never heard of it either. I was talking to my grandsons, ages 7 and 3, via the webcam perched atop my computer screen. The boys were telling me about their Shabbat observances. They wear kippahs, they have a special dinner with challah and wine, Mommy lights candles and Daddy says brachas. And their job is to put money into the tzedakah boxes, the pushkes, they made at Hebrew school. They held the boxes up to the screen so I could see them.

“What do you do with the money when the boxes are filled?” I asked.

“We give it to people who don’t have as much food or money as we have,” the older boy said.

“How do you do that?” I asked.

“We send it to this place called Heifer International.”

Intrigued, I looked it up. To my surprise, it’s actually a well-known charity started by a Midwestern farmer named Dan West who was ladling out rations of milk to hungry kids during the Spanish Civil War. He realized that simply doling out food does not solve the problem of hunger.

“These children don’t need a cup; they need a cow,” he said.

He formed Heifers for Relief, dedicated to ending hunger by providing livestock and training, as well. The first shipment of 17 heifers left Pennsylvania for Puerto Rico in 1944. Why heifers? Because they are cows who have not yet given birth. These young cows would supply milk and would also be a continuous source of more cows. Families receiving a heifer agreed to donate female offspring to another family, thus continuing the process.

Today, donors to this organization get to choose which animal they would like to donate: a cow, a goat, chickens, rabbits or geese. In concept, this way of using what my grandmother called “pushke money” is far beyond the pushke concept of her time. The website’s online visual association makes the process more real and less abstract for the kids.

The globalization of the 21st century influences our thinking in many ways, including the choices we can make for charitable contributions. We can think not only of local charities or Israel, but also of the victims of earthquakes, floods, tsunamis, hurricanes and wars around the world. We are aware of the needs of children, refugees, the hungry and the sick in every country. This is as it should be.

However, charity is more than just giving a donation to a faceless organization. It really involves the feelings of the recipients, too.

Many years ago, I wrote a children’s story that was published in Young Judean magazine. Two boys, Jason and Marty, liked to go together for ice cream every Sunday until Jason stopped going for lack of money. For a while, Marty treats him, but Jason feels uncomfortable with this on a permanent basis. When Jason stops going for ice cream, Marty’s grandfather refers Marty to Maimonides’ Ladder of Charity in an effort to get Marty to figure out a solution. Marty does. He gets Jason a job walking a dog so that Jason can buy ice cream with his own money, thus allowing him to maintain his dignity.

Here is the Ladder of Charity conceived by Maimonides. The levels are ranked in order of preference, from the lowest to the highest.

1. Giving sadly and begrudgingly.

2. Giving less than is fitting but with good cheer.

3. Giving only after having been asked.

4. Giving before being asked.

5. Giving to a recipient whose identity the giver does not know.

6. Giving so that the recipient of the tzedakah does not know the identity of the giver.

7. Giving so that neither the giver nor the recipient knows the identity of the other.

8. In place of giving money, taking the sort of action that will help people to no longer be poor.

An example of level eight would be helping a poor person find a job, or lending money to finance an education for someone in poverty. For example, friends of mine wanted to help a married child who was in financial trouble. They gave the couple a car instead of cash, thus enabling them to have access to jobs in their rural area that did not have public transportation.

There’s a Chinese proverb that says, “Give a man a fish and you feed him for a day. Teach a man to fish and you feed him for a lifetime.” It is interesting to note how close in concept this proverb is to level eight of Maimonides’ ladder. You can see that the highest level of charity helps a person become independent and self-reliant, and human dignity is also taken into full account.

We might all do well to assess what we do with our pushke money and other donations. My little grandsons are already learning that there are those less fortunate than themselves. I am proud of my son and daughter-in-law for teaching this to their children at so young an age. I have faith that these boys will grow up to be caring citizens of the world.

Toby Rosenstrauch is an award-winning columnist and a resident of Florida. Her first novel, Knifepoint, was recently published.