Instituting Lamentations for the Holocaust (Tzohar – 2001)

On Instituting Lamentations for the Holocaust – A Response

Rabbi Rosen, in his article in Tzohar 7, described the course of his efforts together with the late Rabbi M. M. Kasher regarding the institution of lamentations for the Holocaust, and expressed regret that they did not succeed. Such proposals arise from time to time, and the responses to them usually address the authority of sages today to institute enactments, both because of their greatness in Torah and because today there is no clear rabbinic authority accepted by the entire public. Beyond this, there are those who argue that the composers of such lamentations cannot be merely poets, however gifted, but must possess ‘divine inspiration’ in some sense.

Rabbi Rosen’s remarks reflect discomfort with these responses, even though his article contains no argument explaining that discomfort, just as it contains almost no direct engagement with the arguments for and against the proposal itself. Even so, because this discomfort is widespread, it is, in my view, important to clarify it.

Rabbi Rosen cited several well-known precedents for such enactments. It should be noted that at least those from the modern era, almost without exception, are not found in the collection of lamentations in our possession. Days of mourning and fasting as well, some of which were instituted by leading decisors (such as the Shakh and the Taz with regard to the twentieth of Sivan), have disappeared from practice, except in a few particular communities. We can learn from history that enactments of this sort did not spread throughout the Jewish people as a whole, and most of them were not originally intended for all Israel, but rather for a particular community or communities.

In addition, it would seem that nearly all the leading sages of our generation oppose the institution of lamentations for the Holocaust, and perhaps new enactments in general as well, a fact that itself calls for explanation. This is true even of great figures who themselves composed lamentations of this kind (such as the Klausenburger Rebbe, mentioned in the above article. Likewise, I know that Rabbi Wosner, author of Shevet HaLevi, also composed such lamentations, as did many other worthy scholars).

It seems to me that a central key to understanding the matter lies in distinguishing between two planes of reference. One must distinguish between private lamentations about the Holocaust, which certainly anyone may recite, and perhaps even ought to recite, and a general enactment establishing the recitation of lamentations in a fixed text that would bind the entire public. No one objects to reciting lamentations about the Holocaust in whatever form, and, as noted above, many great figures even composed such lamentations. Therefore anyone who wishes to recite such lamentations, whether as an individual or as a particular community, is under no impediment in doing so. The text they choose is left to them. As far as I can understand, the debate concerns only a general enactment that would be adopted by the Jewish people as a whole in a fixed form.

The distinction between these two planes exists with respect to prayer generally, and not only with respect to lamentations. Once the Men of the Great Assembly instituted the fixed text of prayer, prayer took on a new character. In addition to the opportunity prayer affords one to pour out one’s heart before God, it became a commandment, constituting an obligation like any other commandment. That is, prayer now has two layers: the first is the obligation to recite a fixed text at fixed times and thereby discharge one’s duty, like all the commandments of the Torah. The second is the possibility of pouring out speech, petition, or praise before God, and in fact the very experience of standing before Him. The first level is grounded in the fixed text that we are obligated to recite (see, for example, Be’ur Halakhah, sec. 101:4, s.v. ‘may’), whereas the second level can also be realized through subjective additions that each person may insert at various points in his prayer, as his heart desires.

Complete prayer ought to be composed of both levels, and perhaps this is what underlies Rabbi Chaim of Brisk’s well-known distinction between these two kinds of intention in prayer. Despite the desire for the experience of standing before God during prayer, even one who does not attain it still finds meaning in his prayer. He has certainly fulfilled the commandment of prayer. As Yeshayahu Leibowitz already remarked, in his characteristic controversial style, most faithful Jews go to the synagogue in order to pray on the ‘first level’ described above. That is the commandment of prayer.

The possibility of understanding prayer in this way is rooted in the spiritual stature of those who instituted it, the Men of the Great Assembly. As Rabbi Chaim of Volozhin elaborated in Nefesh HaChaim, Gate 2, every word of the prayer was weighed in the balance of the divine inspiration of the Men of the Great Assembly, and its recitation has the power to bring about rectifications in the higher worlds; see there carefully.

Therefore, fixed prayer is not measured by the degree of experience it grants the worshipper, but by the deep significance of the words and their power to act in the higher worlds. Of course, an important goal is also to try to introduce an experiential dimension into prayer, but that belongs to the second level.

With respect to lamentations as well, several of our sages (see, for example, Responsa Teshuvah MeAhavah, sec. 1, and many others) refer to the special efficacy of the words, beyond the experiences they arouse in the worshipper, and these references too are based on the stature of the composers of the lamentations and the intentions embedded within them. If so, it appears that lamentations too are not measured by the artistic quality of the poem’s composition, but by their content and their ability to act in the higher worlds.

It is well known that the Ari would recite only the lamentations composed by Kalir, which were written according to the mystical tradition, and it is clear that he regarded lamentations as prayers in every respect. Our medieval authorities would infer various laws and spiritual insights from the words of the liturgical poems (see, for example, Tosafot on Hagigah 13a, and this is an old and well-known matter).

It is true that we possess lamentations composed even in the period of the medieval authorities, mainly at the time of the Crusades. Yet even regarding the early authorities we accept the saying that ‘if they were like human beings, we are like donkeys.’ In any event, from the period of the medieval authorities onward, although lamentations were indeed composed by great sages of Israel, no lamentation entered the canon of fixed lamentations recited by the Jewish public as a whole.

These are the facts. It seems to me that the simplest interpretation of them is that composing a lamentation about a particular event and instituting its recitation in some community is not the same as composing a lamentation about an event affecting all Israel and instituting an obligation to recite it in every Jewish community. Lamentations that are to enter the canon must be instituted with divine inspiration, and therefore apparently no one in our generation is prepared to take that task upon himself. I wish to emphasize שוב that the possibility remains fully intact for any individual or community to recite various lamentations, and, to the best of my knowledge, no one disputes this.

That ‘divine inspiration’ of which I have spoken, and of which all those who oppose instituting lamentations speak, does not mean a kind of prophecy. The matter is explained well by the Hatam Sofer in his sermons for Shabbat Shuvah (part I, fol. 26b), in his discussion of composing prayers: ‘…and I have no doubt that even the arrangers themselves, whom the Holy One, blessed be He, caused to arrange this liturgy, did not themselves descend to the full depth of its intent….’ What we have here is the formulation of a prayer whose composer is not necessarily conscious of the full depth of the intentions that emerge from his own hand. This is the power, and the divine assistance, granted to the institution of a prayer for the public as a whole: a canonical prayer. This explanation raises the theoretical possibility of instituting a lamentation even today, but only through one of the leading sages of the generation (and see Rabbi Rosen’s remarks below regarding the authors of lamentations). Private prayers, of course, may be composed by any individual for himself, as noted above.

Today there are those inclined to treat ‘mystical’ statements of the kind mentioned above as homiletics intended for the masses, not for sages like us, who know that prayers contain nothing beyond what is explicitly stated in them. Many of us, even if we formally believe in the existence of hidden layers beyond the Jewish law before us, do not actually conduct ourselves accordingly. From such a perspective, I do not understand at all how one can explain what several decisors wrote, namely, that there is value in preserving the exact wording of the prayer as it was instituted, even though, from the standpoint of formal Jewish law, there is no obligation to do so (see the Be’ur Halakhah cited above).

In the Talmud, Berakhot 28b, which describes the institution of the blessing against the heretics, it is stated that Rabban Gamliel asks whether there is anyone who knows how to formulate the blessing against the Sadducees. See Pnei Yehoshua ad loc., and the Chida in Responsa Chaim Sha’al (part II, sec. 11), and others, who explain the passage in light of what was said above.

It seems to me that if one wishes to propose a clear distinction between Reform and Conservative Judaism on the one hand and Orthodoxy on the other, it lies precisely at this point. One who comes to ‘improve’ matters, whether by adding or subtracting, thinks that these matters are ‘at eye level’—that is, that he understands them and their reasons. One who hesitates to alter them does so because he understands that they are far beyond him, and that not every human being may lay a hand on them. To insert something into the prayer book, or into the canon of prayers that binds all Israel, requires a measure of divine inspiration. It seems to me that this is also part of the background to the controversy surrounding the prayer for the welfare of the State composed by S. Y. Agnon, but this is not the place to elaborate.

Against the background of changes to Jewish law, a phenomenon that has emerged with great force in recent generations, the fear of additions of this sort to the canon is self-evident, even if there were someone in our own generation capable of composing lamentations with divine inspiration. Many wish to ‘update’ the prayer book, and some indeed do so. As I have explained, this is not merely a vague apprehension, but a basic misunderstanding of the nature of the prayer book, the Jewish canon. By the same token, one should oppose the insertion of ‘updated’ additions into the canonical portion of the Passover Haggadah. Of course, private additions may be introduced by anyone according to his best understanding.

Against this background, Rabbi Rosen’s attempt to find a ‘standardized’ text that would enter all communities and enable us to ‘connect’ to the lamentations seems puzzling to me. In light of what has been said above, it seems to me that this is self-contradictory: the possibility of ‘connecting’ is the concern of each individual or community, that is, it belongs to the second level. A ‘standardized’ text, however, belongs to the first, canonical level of prayers and lamentations. One who confuses these two planes thinks that the whole point of prayer is only the second level. From such a position one immediately comes to replacing prayers, or adding to them, were it not for formal problems of authority, which I have not addressed at all. Why not add beautiful passages by poets to the Amidah as well, at least at its conclusion? I must admit that I personally, as do many of my friends, have a serious problem ‘connecting’ even to it. Incidentally, there are precedents there too: Shmuel HaKatan added the blessing against the heretics, or the Sadducees, long after the period of the Men of the Great Assembly, in response to a problem that arose in his time.

One of the indications that Rabbi Rosen relates to lamentations only on the plane of the second level is found in his discussion of their possible authors. In his remarks one hears more than mere discomfort—perhaps even a kind of rebuke—when he notes that rabbis will not agree to include lamentations written by authors who are not great Torah scholars, not to mention authors who do not observe Torah and commandments. At this point I stand astonished by what I read there (and I wonder that the editor did not append one of his remarks beneath that passage). A Torah scholar and clear authority in Jewish law such as Rabbi Rosen contemplates incorporating into a fixed enactment, one that would bind all Israel, a poem penned by a heretic like Bialik—defiant and self-indulgent, a man who studied and then turned away, aside from a few bursts of nostalgic longing such as ‘The Talmud Student’ and the like. Before anyone has even succeeded in explaining to me why he deserves the status of a ‘captured child,’ if at all, so that I am permitted not to lower him into a pit, and perhaps even to raise him from it, people come and wish to insert his writings into the binding canon of prayers. Astonishing!

I do not see why Rabbi Rosen should not also recommend, for example, instituting an obligation to watch relevant Hollywood films every Ninth of Av. There is no doubt that they produce a stronger experience in the viewer, stronger even than Bialik’s poems! The same would apply to other works of art by various Gentiles that would undoubtedly succeed in stirring the strings of our souls, and there are many such works. It is a pity to limit the search to our own national library, as Rabbi Rosen did, and come away with such meager results. There are places with a much larger selection of moving and artistic works that could occupy a place of honor in the anthology of lamentations he proposes.

In a footnote to his article, Rabbi Rosen notes with regard to Rabbi Weissmandl’s lamentations that in his opinion they are ‘unsuitable,’ ‘not moving,’ ‘not impressive,’ of ‘vague and unclear content,’ with ‘style and versification that are rather defective,’ and so forth. In the lamentations found in the prayer book before us there are many that meet all these criteria: vague, unimpressive, unmoving, and some without rhyme altogether. Does Rabbi Rosen think it would be worthwhile to remove them from the prayer book?! Uri Zvi Greenberg too, in Rabbi Rosen’s opinion, is worthy, since ‘there is a religiose dimension in his personality.’

With all due respect to Rabbi Rosen, here again there appears a surprising lack of sensitivity to the distinction between the two planes discussed above. The purpose of lamentations is not merely to move and arouse, although that too is important. Today lamentations also possess canonical status. I do not mean a formal problem of authority, but a substantive problem concerning the power and significance of the words—the ‘divine inspiration’ involved in their composition. Beyond that, what fear of Heaven will be added to us by reading Bialik’s poems? Is the point of lamentations merely to arouse sorrow and no more? Is there not something more here than a national ceremony, like any other nation mourning its dead? I feel that, on this approach, the concept of the religious-Zionist begins to take a dangerous turn (Rabbi Rosen mentions several times in his article the difference that ought to exist between religious Zionism and ultra-Orthodoxy in this discussion).

Thank God that the test of whether something can cross ‘the threshold of the Hasidic prayer room,’ to use Rabbi Rosen’s phrase, saves us from such enactments. It seems to me a great pity that we still need the assistance of the prayer room in something so elementary, but if that is the case, it is good that it is always there as a signpost to our right. It would seem that this sort of consideration is itself the best possible answer to Rabbi Rosen’s puzzlement or complaint as to why new lamentations for the Holocaust are not instituted.

If I am not mistaken, we learned from the school of Rabbi Kook that every historical phenomenon has an essential cause. If most of the leading sages of our generation oppose instituting lamentations as an obligation, that means there is something substantial behind it. The feeling of lacking authority points to a substantive problem in the background. Had they permitted this, we would by now have witnessed communities beginning to recite Bialik’s poems every Ninth of Av. Already today it is not entirely clear where the line lies between Conservative Jews and Modern Orthodox Jews, if such a line exists at all, but it seems to me that steps of this sort would blur it even further. Again, I wish to emphasize that I do not mean a technical fear that we might become Reform, as a precaution against problematic changes. I mean a substantive problem in its own right: the Reformers are mistaken in this approach because, in their view, everything is ‘at eye level.’

And now to the final point, which is more general. The desire ‘to connect,’ so prevalent in the public in every context, sometimes causes us to forget and neglect important foundations in the philosophy of Jewish law. Contrary to the Conservative conception, every law, every prayer, and every form of study that has become deeply embedded in Jewish custom has deep reasons beyond what appears to the eye. If we accustom ourselves to follow the desire ‘to connect,’ and the criteria of relevance, we will find ourselves bringing all the depths of Torah down to our own eye level, or heart level, instead of making the uncompromising demand that we raise our horizon to a higher, or deeper, Torah plane. The desire ‘to connect’ arises from a gap between Torah and Jewish law and the world we inhabit. It is an expression of real and painful distress, and it is good that it rises to the surface; it may even point to a certain greatness in our generation. Despite all this, there is no room for attempts to solve this by lowering the Torah to our own ‘eye level,’ and below, instead of trying to elevate our conceptual world to more exalted Torah heights. This discussion touches many other planes as well, but this is not the place for it.

As stated, it seems to me that on the private plane there is no impediment whatsoever to reciting private lamentations. In my view, however, there is no place for canonical additions in the form of a binding enactment, unless a great Torah authority is found who composes such a lamentation, sees fit to institute an obligation to recite it, and possesses accepted authority to do so. There is no doubt that Bialik’s lamentations, despite being properly rhymed, moving, and impressive, are not recommended even on the private plane, that is, on the second level.