Rabbi's Letters

Dear Friends,

Chag Sameach – Happy Hannukah.

I hope that you have all felt the light and uplift of Hannukah.

There is an ancient disagreement between two of the first rabbis about Hannukah.

Should we light the menorah beginning with one candle and add one candle every day, as Hillel taught? Or should we begin with the full menorah blazing and then subtract a candle every night as Shammai believed?

The two rabbis fundamentally disagreed about the nature of life.

Shammai was a pessimist. He believed that the Jewish people and the world are in decline. Light is threading away from Creation with every passing day.

On the other hand, Hillel was an optimist. He taught that we are always rising. We are forever adding more light and holiness. We must not lose our faith, despite the circumstances.

It has been over eight months since the beginning of the pandemic, this choice is ever more prescient.

Are we to descend more and more into gloom and despair?

Or are we to keep finding positivity and resilience?

As the Maccabees of old, can we place even our small jar of oil into the menorah and have the faith and trust that it will grow and grow?


I invite you - this Hannukah – to share in the light, and participate in all of our community lightings at 6:30 pm every night. Please see the flyer below for all of our listings. Rachel and I invite you to join us Saturday night for Havdallah and our candle lighting.
Don't forget to watch this 'Happy Hannukah' video from the members of Temple Har Zion. Thank you to Amy Guralnick for putting it together!
https://fb.watch/2jqlnuzmf0/     

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Now for our weekly question. On Shabbat, Juli Gelnder, our president, asked me a question that was sent by Alan Peres, why do we pray for rain twice in the Amidah and why does one of them follow our Jewish calendar and the other our secular calendar?

It is true we do pray for rain twice. In the second blessing that we typically sing together in synagogue, we recite mashiv ha-ruach u-morid ha-geshem (You cause the wind to blow and the rain to fall) during the winter months and in the summer months we do not say anything.
In the 9th blessing of the weekday Amidah, we say tal u-matar li-vrakha (for dew and rain) for the winter months.

However in the second blessing, we switch at Shemini Atzeret and Passover.

And for the other blessing, to the great confusion of many, it says in our siddur Dec 4th/ 5th and Passover.

Why in the world would our ancient tradition change its liturgy on this random date?

It is easy to explain the first change on Shemini Atzeret (I always thought adding the beautiful ritual of geshem – marking the change in the liturgy to praying for rain on Shemni Atzeret brought a special quality to an otherwise difficult to connect to festival). It is when the rains begin to fall in Israel. I remember once renting an apartment in Jerusalem. It was October and it had not rained in 6 months. I left the windows to the apartment open as I left for a two day trip up North. When I returned I had 2 inches of water in my apartment. At the time, I was not feeling Israeli enough to celebrate all of the water. As we know, rain is truly scarce in our Jewish homeland and we greet its arrival with joy and prayers for yet more rain. Praying for rain in Israel during the summer would be setting ourselves up for disappointment. It is not going to happen.

The other date is different in the Diaspora and in Israel. In Israel it is in the beginning of Cheshvan (a few weeks after the previous date) and is also related to the beginning of the rainy season. In the Diaspora the Dec 4th/ 5th date corresponds to a complex calculation from the ancient Jewish communities in Babylon (modern day Iraq). December was when it made sense to pray for rain in Babylon. Other Diasporas after that attempted to change the date, since their rain seasons were different but the Babylonian date stuck.

There are two ways to look at it. One would be to say that just as we have an emotional attachment to the land of Israel and its agricultural cycle, this is one very small place in our liturgy that maintains a connection to Babylonia, our first Diaspora, and the land where the Talmud was edited after hundreds of years of development and the flourishing of rabbinic civilization.

The other is to understand it as the force of custom and tradition. Tradition! None of us want to be the one to change what happened before unless we have a very good reason.

I was once in Georgia in the summer where the rains are ample. Outside one church on the highway was a sign that read “Whoever is praying for rain – please stop.” I knew at least it was not us.

At the same time rain is the symbol of our relationship with God and the ancient belief that there is some correspondence between our material reality and our heartfelt prayer. We believe rain falls according to the prayers of human beings. We do not want too much, we do not want too little.

When we pray for rain, we are saying, we do not have control over much of the bounty that comes our way but we recognize that we need it for our survival and we are expressing our gratitude for what we have and pray to have the perfect balance for us, Israel, and the whole world.

I leave you with the latest Israeli pop song performed by a collection of leading Israeli artists in response to the Corona pandemic:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lHVAWnCXBkU&feature=youtu.be&fbclid=IwAR1n5AkXFhLuyM7SEU-LEZKtYhADL__0BxHTVXCo-qxW1eZmkhtgJmT1ZBc
 
“We've gotten through everything, we'll get through this too.
Before every obstacle and uncertainty
Our hope hasn't been lost
Whatever happens we'll say thank you
We won't falter,
We got this."
 
Chag Urim Sameach, a happy festival of light. May our prayers help bring light to the world.

Sincerely,

Rabbi Adir Glick