Reflections on Ritual

Shalom aleichem and b’ruchim haba’im. Welcome to TBH-BA’s renewed website – and welcome to the space where we’ll be discussing Jewish ritual.

Let’s begin our discussion of ritual with observations of two giants in Jewish thought, Abraham Joshua Heschel and Ahad Ha’am.

Heschel wrote: “The world presents itself in two ways to me. The world as a thing I own, the world as a mystery I face. What I own is a trifle, what I face is sublime. I am careful not to waste what I own; I must learn not to miss what I face. (Ch. 5, Who is Man?)

Heschel’s words eloquently dare us to discover the beauty and mystery right in front of us that we often miss, among which are rituals. Heschel challenges us to open ourselves to joy and meaning, not just to what is shrouded in mystery, but also to seemingly commonplace things, such as ritual.

Ahad Ha’am famously said “More than the Jews have kept Shabbat, Shabbat has kept the Jews,” expressing how our culture, both religious and secular, have held our people together. Implicit in this statement is the essential role ritual has played in our survival as a people.

So what do we mean when we talk about “ritual?” There’s actually no exact Hebrew equivalent for the word “ritual.” There are t’kosim, “ceremonies,” and minhagim “customs,” many of which are the ways in which we observe mitzvot and carry forward tradition, but at the most basic level, rituals are the things we do as Jews. It has been said that ritual is the choreography of how we live, the poetry through which we express our identity. Rituals and being a Jew are inseparable.

Ask any Jew – from the most religious to the most secular – to name Jewish rituals. The answers form a picture of the Jewish life cycle, cradle to grave: Weddings, bris, how we name our children, candle-lighting, covering one’s head, kiddush over wine, mourner’s kaddish, reciting Shema, Mi-shebayrach, dietary laws, Seders, eating matzo, fasting, tzitzit, tefillin, tzedakah, prayers on waking up and lying down, Torah reading. aliyot, sukkahs, lulav and esrog, shiva and rituals honoring those who have died. The list goes on and on. Of course, there are differences in how Jews do or don’t observe them, but each ritual is a behavior that expresses much about who we are as Jews, both as individuals and as a community.

Our beloved Rabbi Bleefeld, of blessed memory, often reminded us that being a Jew doesn’t have so much to do with a particular required set of beliefs, other than a belief in one God, but does have almost everything to do with how we live our lives. He was referring to more than just rituals, but it is ritual that centers us and expresses our Yiddishe neshome, our essential Jewishness.

In these posts, I’ll discuss the spiritual and emotional aspects of various rituals, their history, and how observance differs among Jews. From time to time, I’ll venture into lesser known rituals, a few teasers being the Yemenite minhag of translating each line of the Torah reading into Aramaic, the practice of reciting techines (prayers specifically for women) and feldmestn, the Ashkenazic ritual where women measure a cemetery.

Community is central to Judaism, so the ritual I’ve chosen for this inaugural post is the minyan, one of the best-known of all rituals: the requirement for a quorum of 10 adult Jews to recite certain prayers. Where did it come from? You might be surprised that the minyan itself is not in the Torah, but comes from a Talmudic interpretation. The sages in the Babylonian Talmud (Megillah, 23b) based it on the story of 10 spies (Numbers, chapter 13) who, after scouting out the Promised Land, showed such a profound lack of belief in God’s promise to help the Israelites conquer the land, came back with a report that fatally exposed their bias and fears. They said: “We are unable to go up against the people, for they are stronger than we. In our eyes we seemed like grasshoppers, and so were we in their eyes.” As we know from parshat Shelah Lecha, the 10 spies perished, and the Israelites were condemned to wander in the desert for 40 years.

But wait, you might ask. Why would the rabbis in the Talmud go out of their way to have us remember the 10 faithless spies with the ritual of a minyan? Why couldn’t they have just talked about the importance of praying as a community, and left it at that? Were the sages having a bad day? Actually, the Talmudic interpretation isn’t as counter-intuitive as it might seem. The sages wisely understood that the requirement of 10 Jews for prayer would serve two purposes: first, it’s a lesson about what happens when our fears and biases negate our faith in a greater power. Second, there’s a not so subtle message: that any 10 Jews count, no matter if they seem to be those who dismiss God’s promise, or appear not to embrace their special destiny, or even if we profoundly disagree with their beliefs. And so, the ritual of a 10 person minyan has been in place for 2000 years, and continues strong to this day.

An even greater message is that our rituals do not exist only for the most pious among us, or for just one kind of person. They are relevant to the righteous, but equally to the skeptics, and the alienated. And if we’re honest with ourselves, each of is capable of being any of these things – skeptic, righteous, alienated – from moment to moment. Rituals belong to everyone, and allow us to express ourselves in a uniquely Jewish way. To channel Ahad Ha’am once more, they have kept us together as a people. Just as all are welcome in a minyan, no one is excluded from our community, and our tradition invites and encourages each person to participate, explore, question, challenge, marvel, learn and find meaning and beauty in ritual that is right in front of us. To me, the minyan is an example of Rabbinic Judaism at its finest.

I invite questions and suggestions for future topics, and, of course, comments on these posts. Until next time. L’hitraot. Zeit gezunt. Stay healthy.

Stephen Freed, TBH-BA Ritual Committee, stephen409@yahoo.com