Pre Yizkor – 5780
Rabbi Shaanan Gelman
No
Doubt
A number of years ago Dr.
Timothy Levine[1]
–developed a concept in psychology known as the Truth-default theory: The
theory suggests that we tend to operate on a default presumption that other
people are basically honest. The
presumption of honesty is what enables efficient communication, and it enables
us to function as humans are intended – although, it’s also that which makes us
vulnerable to deception. Levine adds
that there are “times and
situations when people abandon this presumption of honesty, and the theory
describes when people are expected to suspect a lie”. In other words, certain circumstances can
lead us to act in a way that belies our intrinsic tendencies.
There are moments, either
personal or societal in which we move away from natural default mode of trust
and conviction.
Long before Timothy Levine
developed his theory of “truth default”, Chazal established a number of
cultural and psychological assumptions about the way in which human beings
think. For instance – אדם קרוב אצל עצמו, or אין אשה מעיזה פניה בפני בעלה…assumptions
which presume a truth default, that husbands and wives are naturally honest
with one another, that there is a basic goodness and decency.
Rav Soloveitchik z”l, in a
lecture to a group of Rabbonim in the 1970’s addressed these assumptions, and
claimed with no uncertainty that these assumptions remain valid to this day.
And yet, if we look around
us, we sense that something is beginning to erode our presumption of truth and
trustworthiness – consider how we feel about strangers when we meet them – how
we never can be too trusting, or that no amount of research and background
checks will prove sufficient. When it comes to our safety, there can never be enough
by way of security measures, that no
politician is honest, no potential business partner can be trusted on a
handshake alone – what happened to the truth default? What happened to natural laws which govern
human nature?
Then we arrive at Yom Kippur.
The davening throughout the
day, with the exception of the end of Neila, features a component which can
seem onerous and tedious – the על חטא
section appended to the Shemoneh Esrei.
At the
end of a long list of sins and their multitude of variants, we encounter a
final section dealing with the sins committed which would have required that we
bring a korban:
ועל חטאים שאנו חייבים
עליהם עולה
ועל חטאים שאנו חייבים
עליהם חטאת
ועל חטאים שאנו חייבים
עליהם אשם
ועל חטאים שאנו חייבים
עליהם עולה ויורד
Each of
these deals with a specific category of aveirot – some willing violations, while others inadvertent. But there is one subset of korbanot
that is not connected to a specific sin or rebellious act:
ועל חטאים שאנו חייבים
עליהם אשם תלוי
When is
an אשם תלוי offered? One
who violates a precept in the Torah by accident, brings a חטאת, but one who is in doubt as to whether they have violated
one such עבירה, must offer an
אשם תלוי. תלוי means “hanging” or “conditional” – something which is unclear
and ambiguous – as if to say “If I sinned…I am sorry” For instance, one who had two pieces of meat,
one containing שומן (permissible
fats) and one containing חלב (the forbidden
fats along the stomach lining) and you don’t know which one you consumed. Or,
you know that you performed one of the 39 melachot (forbidden modes of
work), but you are uncertain whether it happened on Shabbat or on a Sunday.
In
short – an אשם תלוי is brought for
the crimes of inattention and carelessness.
Think
about those moments in which we were unaware of our surroundings, when we
lacked the presence of mind while performing everyday tasks. This happens to us all of the time – if
you’ve ever started the Amidah and suddenly find yourself at modim
without a sense of how you arrived or whether you said anything over the past 3
minutes, you have been guilty of mindlessness. We declare with this על חטא that the next time we pop food into our mouths, we will take
the time to ensure that its kosher, to know if it contains dairy and to recite
the appropriate bracha. And the next
time we speak in a social setting, we are going to be more thoughtful about
what comes out of our mouths – is it useful, is it lashon hara?
But the
אשם תלוי atones for
more than the moments in which we weren’t mindful. It suggests that there is a new sort of sin –
not one of commission or omission, but rather the sin of doubt; doubting others, doubting ourselves and above
all – doubting the Ribono Shel Olam.
The
Hebrew word for doubt is ספק. The Chassidic masters note that ספק
shares a numeric equivalent to עמלק
(240), the most pernicious and dangerous foe our people face throughout
history.
What do
we proclaim when we klap al chataim she’chayavim aleihem asham talui? We beg forgiveness for not trusting, for not
believing.
A few
weeks ago, we read the verse "פן יש בכם שרש פרה ראש ולענה".
Lest there be among you a root which is rotten, one which can poison
everything else surrounding it. The
Yid Hakodesh – Rav Yaakov Yitzchak Rabinowicz and the founder of Peshicha
Chassidut, a forerunner to Kotzk, has an incredible derash upon this possuk:
The verse states "פן יש בכם" – The “Maybe”,
which you have inside of you is the שרש פרה ראש ולענה! The פן is the doubt,
that is the root of all evil and corruption, of sadness and loneliness in this
world.
פן יש בכם: אם יש בכם התחכמות שמביאה לידי ספיקות
פן) הרי הוא שרש פרה ראש ולענה)
We have
tragically begun to look at everyone askance, everything and everybody is "פן" – maybe they are genuine, but maybe…one never can be too
sure. We think “they can’t be for real,
are they really that happy!” or, “look at her smile…what a phony!” – “that
person can’t be trusted in business”… “what a faker…look at the way he shukels
in his shemoneh esrei or how long he takes to finish his Shema”, “Look at the
way they parent, I bet they yell and scream when they are at home and no one is
watching!”
Or we
doubt our own abilities:
Maybe – I can do it, but maybe
I can’t! That “maybe” will eat you
up on the inside until there is nothing left of you. And we doubt God:
“Maybe” God cares about
me..but maybe He forgot, “maybe” ח"ו
it’s all a mistake when it comes to me!
Perhaps He isn’t משגיח על הכל< watching
over all…ח"ו
So, here is the real
question: How do we get back to the truth default? How do we cut that horrible and lethal word, "פן", out of our lexicon?
The Gemara
in Kerisos tells us that R’ Eliezer suggested that if a person desires, one may
offer an אשם תלוי every single
day, whenever one saw fit. And that such
a sacrifice, offered “just in case” there was an inadvertent sin…is called an אשם חסידים, the sin offering of the righteous:
רבי אליעזר אומר: מתנדב אדם אשם
תלוי בכל יום ובכל עת שירצה. הוא היה נקרא אשם חסידים.
One who offers such a korban
each day is God fearing and mindful.
Because mindlessness and doubt are perennial threats.
Then the Talmud tells us about
an individual named בבא בן בוטא who, indeed, went so
far as to offer such a korban every day – every day, that is, except for
one day:
אמרו עליו על בבא בן בוטא, שהיה
מתנדב אשם תלוי בכל יום חוץ מאחר יום כיפורים.
Why would he not bring an אשם
תלוי on the day after Yom Kippur?
Once you are spending thousands of dollars, what difference does it make
– just bring it on Motzaei Yom Kippur as well!
But בבא בן בוטא felt that it would be
inappropriate – because the one day of year in which you don’t need to atone
for ספק, for doubt, is the day after Yom
Kippur. Because on the preceding day,
Yom Kippur, nobody was guilty of doubt!
Today, is Yom Kippur – it is the only day that does
not necessitate an אשם תלוי in its wake since it is the only day in
which we live without doubt!
Yom Kippur arrives at our doorstep, reminds us re-calibrate, to reset to
the default mode back to factory settings; a return to honesty,
trustworthiness, integrity – נאמנות האדם,
אמונת עצמי, and אמונה בה'!
It was Yom Kippur, 1973,
somewhere in the Golan Heights. Israelis had been caught unprepared as
the Syrian forces attacked suddenly threatened the very future of the Jewish
State. Defense Minister Moshe Dayan and Chief of Staff Dado Elazar and Prime
Minister Golda Meir decided that she should visit the theater of battle so she
could see firsthand what was at stake. As Yehuda Avner recalled in an
interview, “The stench of death was in the air.” After receiving a briefing,
Golda approached a few soldiers gathered in a makeshift Sukkah that had been
erected in honor of the holiday, and one of the soldiers asked her a simple yet
blunt question. “Tell me, Golda, is it worth it?”
Golda’s story is not
just about sacrifice; it’s about conquering doubt on a personal and national
level. Sitting in a cavernously empty shul on the first day of Rosh Hashanah,
drained of its worshippers by generations of persecution and atheism, Golda
felt fearful for the future of the Jewish people. And yet, her response was to
come back on the second day. For all the Jews who appeared in the thousands,
publicly proclaiming support for the Israeli prime minister was potentially
dangerous; remember that Stalin was still alive, and they were exposing
themselves to the possibility of torture or execution. Maybe she- and they-
were empowered by the indomitable Jewish spirit, the one that didn’t know the
word “maybe”.
This was the message she
shared with the soldiers during the Yom Kippur War, and it’s the message we
must remind ourselves of every year as we wage our own מלחמת יום הכפורים.
We don’t have to be a
heroic refusenik, a soldier or a prime minister to eliminate doubt.
A number of years later, one of the first shluchim
went to Ukraine and scoped out the scenery – they observed the empty shuls, the
widespread ignorance and religious indifference that communism had generated –
and he asked his Rebbe whether they should bring the sifrei Torah to the United
states and salvage what was left – for they were surely go unused otherwise,
falling into disrepair and disgrace. The
Rebbe told him – keep the sifrei Torah there, they will need them. And he was correct, they need more sifrei
Torah than ever, Judaism has been reborn there, and around the world.
As we prepare for Yizkor we are reminded of a humbling
thought – we are living with one big safeik – none of us knows how long
we are given on this Earth, none of us knows whether our efforts will
immediately pay off, none of us can be certain of tomorrow.
But
there is also something which we don’t need to leave to uncertainty – there are
no doubts as to what we need to do, there is no uncertainty when it comes to
our resolve to live the lives we’ve been given. Today is Yom Kippur, today we remember that
we can rely upon others, today we can remind ourselves how trust in ourselves
and we act with full confidence in Hashem – ישראל בטח בה' עזרם
ומגינם הוא
[1] In his work entitled
“Duped: Truth-Default Theory and the Social Science of Lying and Deception”
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