I.
Once upon a time there was once a wealthy merchant who was obsessed with stories about Eliyahu HaNavi – Elijah the Prophet. One year before Pesach he spoke to his rabbi and complained that for all of his yearning to meet Eliyahu, he was always disappointed that Eliyahu did not appear at his Pesach seder. “I want to meet Eliyahu HaNavi this Pesach,” he yelled.
The rabbi responded by telling the merchant to load a cart full of food and wine and Pesach supplies and travel into the forest, down a certain path, to take a left turn, then a right turn and to spend Pesach at the house that he would find at the end of the path. Eliyahu HaNavi would be at that home this Pesach, the rabbi promised. The merchant did as he was told – he got a little bit lost along the way and so only arrived at the home in the forest minutes for the start of Pesach.
He knocked on the door and a man opened the door. The merchant asked if he could spend Pesach at the home, the man explained that he and his wife had no food for the holiday but the merchant showed him his wagon, filled with enough food for them all to eat and so the merchant spent Pesach in that home in the forest.
As you may imagine, the merchant spent the entire seder in eager anticipation for opening the door for Eliyahu. Finally, the moment came, he opened the door…just the sound of crickets in the quiet and empty night. The second night, the merchant was even more excited. The rabbi had promised him that Eliyahu would be in this home on Pesach and he raced through the seder to be able to fling open the door for Eliyahu. But again there was just the empty night outside of the door.
After Pesach the merchant rushed to the rabbi’s study, barged in, and yelled at the rabbi, “You promised me that Eliyahu Hanavi would be at that home this Pesach and he wasn’t!”
The rabbi told the merchant to go back to the forest early the next morning, to the same path, but to take a left turn instead of a right turn at the end of the journey. The merchant did this and came to a clearing in the forest. In this clearing a group of woodcutters who had been cutting wood since dawn were sitting together to eat breakfast. The merchant recognized his Pesach host among the woodcutters and he heard that man say to his friends, “You would not believe what happened to me. My wife and I had no food for Pesach and minutes before the holiday began, Eliyahu Hanavi came to our door with a wagon filled with food…”
Sometime Eliyahu comes to us. Sometimes we have to be Eliyahu Ha Navi for others.
II.
At the end of the 1990s, journalist Samuel Freedman wrote a book titled “Jew vs. Jew” in which he collected episodes of political and ideological fights within the Jewish community in America. The common bonds of faith and peoplehood no longer connected us to one another, Freedman argued, and stories like the ones he told in his book of fights between Jews- Reform Jews objecting to the construction of an eruv or Orthodox rabbis refusing to collaborate with non-Orthodox colleagues – would only increase in the years to come.
Nearly a generation later, Freedman’s predictions have not come true. Professor Adam Ferziger, one of the leading scholars of contemporary Orthodoxy has suggested that the proliferation of Orthodox outreach operations, from Chabad, to Lakewood Kollels has shifted the perception of Orthodoxy in the eyes of the non-Orthodox majority, and has given thousands of Orthodox Jews first-hand experience with the dignity and sincerity of other ways of being Jewish.
But within Orthodoxy, the story is different. Freud wrote about the “narcissism of small differences” the closer we are to another person or group, the more we heighten and exaggerate the differences between us as a means of defining ourselves and securing our identity. As new ideas percolate through our community and as a new generation of leadership emerges, the glorious depth and diversity of the Orthodox community appears to be fragmenting into schism. The prospect of schism terrifies me. My beliefs, values, and education plant me firmly in the “Modern wing of Modern Orthodoxy” but my spiritual life has been nourished, and continues to be nourished, by encounters with the religious and intellectual energy of the broader Orthodox world; talk of schism tears my soul in two.
Rabbinic tradition entertains several discussions about the most important idea contained in the Torah. Hillel summarized the Torah as being an extended commentary on the golden rule of not doing to others what is hateful to us. Rabbi Akiva taught that the “klal gadol – the great principle’ of the Torah was the mitzvah to love another as oneself. Ben Azzai, disagreed and contended that “Zeh Sefer Toldot Adam – This Book is the Book of Humanity on the day that God created them, male and female created in the Image of God” from Bereishit is an even greater principle.
But there is yet another position – not found in any of the classical collections of midrashim but quoted in the introduction to the Ein Yaakov by Rabbi Yaakov ben Haviv – that states in the name of Shimon ben Pasi that the most important klal – first principle of the Torah is:
אֶת־הַכֶ֥בֶש אֶחָ֖ד תַעֲשֶ֣ה בַבֹ֑קר וְאֵת֙ הַכֶ֣בֶש הַשֵנִ֔י תַעֲשֶ֖ה בֵ֥ין הָֽעַרבָֽיִם׃
“You shall offer the first sheep in the morning and the second sheep in the afternoon.”
This verse – from Parashat Pinhas, describing the korban ha-tamid, the daily offerings in the sanctuary can somehow be considered to be an overarching key to the Jewish outlook on life and religion. How so?
Rabbi Yehuda Amital, whose fifth yahrzeit will be observed this coming Tuesday was partial to this tradition of Shimon ben Pasi. Rav Amital taught his students that the special-events, the thunder and lightening, the sound and the fury, the holidays, and the peak-experiences of our lives cannot determine the character of religious life, but only the daily dedication that the korban ha-tamid exemplifies.
Indeed, as the Torah, in Parashat Pinhas lists the musafim, the special offerings of each of the yamim tovim, the holidays and special days of the Jewish calendar, the refrain:
מִלְבַד֙ עֹלַ֣ת הַבֹ֔קר אֲשֶ֖ר לְעֹלַ֣ת הַתָמִ֑יד תַעֲש֖ו אֶת־אֵֽלֶה׃
appears again and again (with variations). This phrase means that the the Mussaf korbanot, the special holiday offerings are only brought “in addition” to the tamid, the perpetual daily service in the sanctuary. In the words of Rav Amnon Bazak, “without preserving and maintaining a fixed foundation, there is no meaning to special and festive additions.”
But there is another aspect to the korban ha-tamid – another reason why it is important and another reason why it has so much valence for me this week.
The korban ha-tamid, more than any other other offering or operation in the sanctuary represented how every single Jew was an equal stakeholder in the mikdash The tamid was purchased using the half-shekel head tax that every Jewish adult paid each year. The rich could not increase their contribution, and the poor could not decrease their contributions. Everyone paid an equal share. Even though the poor could not match the donations of the wealthy, they knew that the bedrock of the service of God in the mikdash, the daily tamid offering was something that they enabled and owned. The rich knew that their own donations could not overcome the basic equal stake that every Jew maintained in the operation of the Temple.
It is so very appropriate therefore, in these weeks approaching Tisha b’Av to recall, not only the loss of the mikdash, the destruction of the Temple which we will commemorate on Tisha b’Av itself, but the loss of the tamid – the daily offering that was a symbol of regular religious devotion, and of a time when avodah, common service of God, united every Jew. The tamid sacrifice ceased three weeks before the final destruction of the Temple and the fast of the 17th of Tamuz, which we observed last Sunday, and which inaugurates our summer season of mourning, also commemorates the end of the tamid sacrifice.
But there was an earlier period in Jewish history when the korban ha-tamid was temporarily neglected and that story is perhaps the most relevant of all and the most frightening to me this summer.
The Hasmonean kingdom, established by the victorious Maccabee brothers very quickly descended into bloody struggles for power and civil war.
The Talmud (in Menachot) records that during the final days of the Civil War one of the Hasmonean claimants to the throne, Hyrcanus, had imposed a siege on Yerushalayim where his brother Aristobulus held onto power. Despite the war that raged between the two brothers, each day, the defenders of Yerushalayiim, fighters in the army of Aristobulus would lower a basket of money from the temple treasury over the walls of the city and soldiers from the army of Hyrcanus would raise two sheep into a basket that was brought into the city for the korban ha-tamid.
Despite the struggle over power, despite the competition, despite the civil war, the tamid sacrifice continued each day. There was an appreciation that the avodah, the core acts of daily devotion at the foundation of our existence as Jews could transcend the divisions that divided our people.
Until, eventually, a sly old man, whom the Talmud says was versed in Greek wisdom, which I believe here means instrumental reason – rational thought harnessed for short-term political gain- advised Hyrcanus to send a pig into Yerushalayim in place of the sheep for the korban ha-tamid. The Talmud records that it dug its nails into the walls of the city on its way up and all of Eretz Yisrael shook 400 parsangs.
And that was the end of the korban ha-tamid. The civil war continued in its pathetic course, until eventually, the Roman general Pompey, Gnaeus Pompeius Magnus, was able to sweep in and put an end to Jewish sovereignty for 2000 years.
This is the prospect facing Orthodox Judaism today. Do we maintain the korban ha-tamid? Is there a devotion to a common daily life of avodah, service of God, that is prior to the issues that divide us? Aristobulus and Hyrcanus were able to set aside their differences to maintain that korban ha-tamid. They understood that there was a sacred realm, they understood that there was a sanctuary, that had to continue to function and that would endure after they were gone. They each fought for their cause with ferocity, but for a time they were able to recognize that preserving that sacred avodah was more important than winning the battle. Until they no loner could…
III.
Eliyahu’s encounter with God on the mountain, the Haftarah in some years for Parashat Pinchas, can be understood as a commentary or reaction to the example of Pinchas. Pinchas is zealous for God and is rewarded for that zealotry, Eliyahu is also zealous for God but when he tells God that the Jewish people has abandoned the covenant and that only he, Eliyahu, has been faithful to God, two things happen to Eliyahu.
In Tanakh, Eliyahu is fired – he is told to appoint Elisha to be prophet in his place. A prophet cannot be a condemner of Israel, a prophet must be a defender of Israel.
But in Jewish folklore, Eliyahu comes to every bris milah and testifies that another Jewish child is being brought into the covenant and that we are maintaining our faith. And Eliyahu comes to every Passover Seder and testifies that we continue to tell the story of how we were slaves to Pharaoh in Egypt but God redeemed us with a strong hand and an outstretched arm and we are maintaining our faith.
IV.
Rav Amital, in his youth, was close to Rav Shach he eventually become the leader of Israeli Haredi Judaism, Lithuanian Ultra-Orthodoxy. Several decades after they had drifted apart the two encountered each other and Rav Shach said to Rav Amital: “Yehuda! What has happened to us? We’ve grown so far apart that we don’t even argue anymore!”
The Orthodox community is standing at the brink of a schism that could rend our community in two. What we need is the spirit of Eliyahu HaNavi. We don’t need the Eliyahu of Tanakh who condemns. We don’t need to condemn each other for being insufficiently learned or insufficiently ethical, for not having enough piety, or for not having enough sophistication. We need the Eliyahu of Jewish folklore who comes into our communities and comes into our homes and sees and testifies that we are indeed faithful to the covenant. And if Eliyahu won’t come himself into our communities, our shuls, and our homes, then we need to become Eliyahu for one another.
What unites us as ma’aminim b’nei ma’aminim – Jews who are loyal to our heritage, is far greater than what divides us. Our korban ha-tamid, the reservoir of mitzvot and Torah scholarship that connects us with a broader community of Jews exists and can survive the small or large arguments that threaten to tear our community apart.
Enough about the tamid…time for Mussaf.
Rabbi David Wolkenfeld 