On Yom Kippur of
1981, Rabbi Morton Yolkut z”l, Rabbi of Congregation Bnai David in Detroit,
wistfully related his wish or fantasy- that shul should be as full on a regular
Shabbos morning as it was that day. A woman named Tilly Brandwine was listening, and decided to
act. Reaching out to the entire membership, and unbeknownst to the Rabbi, she
picked a Shabbos when no simcha was happening and encouraged everyone to
attend. “This must be kept a secret from
only one person - Rabbi Yolkut,” she
declared. The article in the Jewish Post
and Opinion acknowledged this small yet significant event, reporting that on
Saturday, December 19th, 800 people packed the sanctuary. Those 800 people understood something that is
alluded to in this week’s Torah reading.
The Talmud tells
us that our forefather Yaakov established the prayer of Maariv. As darkness
fell over the road on which Yaakov was traveling, he felt an overpowering sense
of holiness, and a deep need to pray. ויפגע
במקום
ההוא-
our sages tell us that that verb, ויפגע,
does not just mean “to encounter” or “to arrive,” but also to pray. But this
prayer, that Yaakov instituted, is different from the other two daily prayers.
Based on a passage in the Talmud (Berachot 27b), the Rambam (Tefillah 1:6)
writes:
וְאֵין תְּפִלַּת
עַרְבִית
חוֹבָה
כִּתְפִלַּת
שַׁחֲרִית
וּמִנְחָה.
וְאַף
עַל
פִּי
כֵן
נָהֲגוּ כָּל
יִשְׂרָאֵל
בְּכָל
מְקוֹמוֹת
מוֹשְׁבוֹתֵיהֶם
לְהִתְפַּלֵּל
עַרְבִית
וְקִבְּלוּהָ
עֲלֵיהֶם כִּתְפִלַּת
חוֹבָה:
The
Evening Service is not obligatory like the Morning and Afternoon Services.
Nevertheless all Israelites, wherever they have settled, have adopted the
practice of reciting the Evening Service and have accepted it as obligatory.
There are a
number of practical ramifications for Maariv’s status as an “optional” prayer,
including the fact that there is no repetition of the Shemoneh Esrei at
Maariv. The notion that certain mitzvot fall under the category of a reshut is peculiar and worthy of our
attention. Have we already fulfilled
every obligatory mitzvah such that we can take on another one, and daily at
that? In the time of the Beit Hamikdash,
voluntary prayers and sacrifices were offered occasionally, and the context was
understandable. If a person was feeling
particularly grateful, joyous or in debt to Hashem, a “voluntary” offering is
perfectly relatable. But Maariv is
everyday, and therefore hardly feels
like an “optional” prayer. In fact, the Geonim suggested that once we began
praying Maariv regularly it became more than just a reshut and ought to be viewed as a formal obligation. Having, in effect, eliminated Maariv from the
category of an optional prayer, it calls us to question what our attitude is
towards “optional” mitzvot in general.
Why, with so many unfulfilled obligatory mitzvot or chovot, would
our Sages mandate the performance of unnecessary acts?
Perhaps the time
in which we find ourselves represents an ideal opportunity to internalize the
ethos of the “optional” mitzvah. If we think about it, we understand the notion
of non-obligatory tasks being treated as an obligation. Consider the 50 million
Americans that are flying this weekend to visit family, despite the livid
warnings of the CDC, head-smacking of physicians and the chorus of condemnation
on social media for anyone who does not stay home. For so many of these people,
getting together with family is not optional; Thanksgiving wouldn’t be
Thanksgiving without it. Or consider the
reverence people attach to their Thanksgiving menus, regardless of COVID.
Candied yams, stuffing, cranberry sauce- these are sacrosanct and evoke extreme
passion, and cannot be eliminated. Or your daily exercise routine- you don’t have to workout daily (though maybe we should)- but many of us
treat it as an inviolable event. The
concept of an optional engagement becoming obligatory is one with which we are
intimately familiar. And so, when our Sages, of blessed memory, “mandated” a
prayer once considered to be volitional, they wanted us to feel that sense of
urgency and attachment we experience in connection with our rituals, our
passions and our inviolable yet optional commitments.
Today, though,
something terrible has come and upended our commitment to ritual, because many
of the routine and discretionary commitments and expectations have fallen by
the wayside. The pandemic has exempted so many individuals, institutions and
businesses from the expectations normally in place. So much so that the
expression “Due to Corona” has become a catchphrase, employed liberally and
even deceitfully. For example, when you call a hotline of some kind, you are
now informed that “due to Corona, our wait time is longer than usual.” This is,
of course, utter nonsense. But now Corona is the convenient excuse, one which nobody
can object to. Or consider that now, even yeshivot have to send notes to
students that they should wear pants during class. Indeed, there is a default
assumption that when you are meeting with someone via Zoom, they are probably
not doing so, even though wearing pants used to be a requirement of polite
society. Everything we actually do now
exceeds expectations, because they are so low. Those who would never dream of
missing shul on a regular Shabbos haven’t been inside the building in months,
so any engagement with tefillah is almost like a bonus.
In times like
ours, where so many have lowered their expectations, we are challenged to
uphold religious and communal responsibilities, whether they are obligatory or
not. It is not a halachic obligation to purchase food from local restaurants
and caterers, as much as some might try and convince us otherwise, it is
certainly a “reshut”. Halacha supports a
free market to the benefit of consumers. But we should view it as an obligation
to support local kosher establishments as much as possible within our means.
Local caterers are in danger of closing due to reduced volume of events, and
restaurants are barely hanging on. Eventually, this pandemic will pass, and if
we want to have a robust kosher infrastructure that will attract people to our
community, we need to rally around the purveyors of kosher food that we do
have.
The mitzvah of tzedaka is another area in which we
ought to treat reshut as an
obligation. Yes, many are hurting now, and no one should be expected or
pressured to give what they cannot afford. But we should also be mindful of the
institutions that are on the brink of ruin because of the loss of discretionary
tzedaka, their good work being lost forever. You can safely put away your
credit card, because of the Covid card- which is reluctantly accepted
everywhere…
Finally, it turns
out that for many shuls, the amount of people they are permitted to have
greatly exceeds the amount of people they do
have. Yes, minyanim are not drawing the numbers because people are justifiably
afraid, or have conditions that make it dangerous to be around others. And yes,
no
one should be pressured into making decisions about their health that are
uncomfortable for them. But if we perform a risk assessment about Shabbos
afternoon social gatherings and decide that those must be treated as a chovah while shul is not, then perhaps
what is needed is a little honest self-reflection. Are we afraid, or are we
hiding behind COVID? No one else can or should answer this question for us. The
people who showed up for Rabbi Yolkut that Shabbos morning didn’t have to be
there, but they declared that on that day, it was a priority for them.
If there is one
biblical character who takes this lesson seriously, it is Yaakov, who gently
rebukes the shepherds of Lavan for their indolence, in encouraging them to get
back to work, for the day was not over yet. Yaakov had no dog in this fight;
his finances would remain unaltered whether these shepherds were working or
not. For him, this was a completely altruistic action, protecting Lavan’s
interests and defending honest business practices in general. It is that same
person who sees the reshus as an
obligation, who establishes the prayer of Maariv. We should be like Yaakov. When it comes to
doing the right thing, we should feel compelled to do it, whether or not anyone
holds us accountable.
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