Q&A: Counting the Omer – History and Freedom
Counting the Omer – History and Freedom.
Question
Hello Rabbi,
How can it be that we (at least most of those who accept the mourning practices of Counting the Omer—except for me) are obligated by laws and rulings that have no proper Talmudic source, and that rest on interpretive teachings conveying a message, not on history???
This is amazing, sad, and frustrating all at once: every year anew I see people who observe these laws with supreme devotion, even though there is no logical reason at all to treat seriously laws that hang by a thread.
If for every midrash of the Sages that conveys an ethical message from a very, very one-sided and specific point of view, I were to institute some enactment or custom, Judaism would be in terrible shape, and the library that Amos Oz talks about would be destroyed. (Not that it’s in good shape now.)
I just don’t understand, and it’s simply inconceivable to me, how people manage to claim that in the study hall in Yavneh Rabbi Akiva had 24,000 students! (Even if we say this was after the reform of Rabbi Elazar ben Azariah—it’s absurd…) And that they all suddenly died… suddenly Rabbi Akiva has his own study hall… and an astronomical number of students… and suddenly they die… all without relating to the historical period, without relating to the matter of Bar Kokhba, whom Rabbi Akiva strongly supported, and that “his students” means those who followed in his footsteps, and nothing else.
The Sages claim that the Second Temple was destroyed because of baseless hatred? Really? That doesn’t make sense. We know how it was destroyed, and who destroyed it, so what does baseless hatred have to do with it?
The Sages are trying to give us another perspective (a very specific one) on reality: that in hindsight, the conflicts between Yohanan of Gush Halav, Elazar ben Yair, and Shimon bar Giora, and the lack of unity against the Roman fist, caused the destruction. And what caused the lack of unity? Simply—baseless hatred. The Sages are not dealing with history; they are abstracting and generalizing from history and taking the model that caused the event in order to convey a message.
Here too, with Counting the Omer, the Sages were not trying to tell history. They abstracted, generalized, and modeled history, and took the message. To mourn for the dead of Betar is no different from wanting to mourn for the dead of Auschwitz.
Why, Rabbi, as a person who in many areas sees and expects change in Jewish law and the updating of entrenched things that have no justification (see, for example, legumes on Passover), and even in laws that do have some Talmudic standing and justification—and in laws that have no justification and no basis at all—you still give weight to the power of custom and inertia? And where are the wonders of freedom that your recent columns told us about—has Michi left the country?
Thank you very much.
Answer
Hello Neria.
First, I don’t see anything wrong with establishing mourning over a traumatic event in order to derive proper lessons from it. What is wrong with strengthening our observance of respect for others and remembering what happens to one who does not do so? In my opinion this is certainly a worthy custom.
Second, freedom does not mean rejecting every law and custom, but examining them critically. If they are worthy, there is no reason not to join them, even if the reason is considerations of authority. Those too are part of Jewish law.
If you think that the Temple was destroyed because of something else—good for you. Who told you to accept the view of the Sages on this? They have no metaphysical authority (to decipher the ways of the Creator), only halakhic authority.
And if the Holy One, blessed be He, has left the country, why shouldn’t Michi leave the country too?! 🙂
Discussion on Answer
Unfortunately, the Sages erred without any apparent reason even in simple matters, meaning against the plain meaning itself. For example, the Oral Torah explained “the boughs of thick trees” as myrtle, but it is written:
(Nehemiah 8:15): “And that they should proclaim and publish in all their cities and in Jerusalem, saying: ‘Go out to the mountain, and bring olive branches, and branches of oil trees, and myrtle branches, and palm branches, and branches of thick trees, to make booths, as it is written.’”
Bottom line, unequivocally: the Sages canceled the heavenly voice because the Torah had already been given, in their interpretation of “It is not in heaven.” But from the story below we see that God decides, and if the ones who mislead mislead the common folk, and the common folk believe the rabbis who mislead them for whatever reason (including even intentionally, even unintentionally), it will not help, and they will be punished for it. Because from the story brought below we learn that one must listen only to God.
How is it possible that the Sages explain, according to an ancient tradition, that “the boughs of thick trees” means myrtle, when in that very verse in Nehemiah “thick trees” is mentioned explicitly? That implies that “thick trees” is not myrtle.
1 Kings chapter 13
1 And behold, a man of God came from Judah by the word of the Lord to Bethel; and Jeroboam stood by the altar to burn incense.
2 And he cried against the altar by the word of the Lord, and said: “O altar, altar, thus says the Lord: Behold, a son shall be born to the house of David, Josiah by name, and upon you he shall sacrifice the priests of the high places who burn incense upon you, and men’s bones shall be burned upon you.”
3 And he gave a sign the same day, saying: “This is the sign which the Lord has spoken: Behold, the altar shall be torn apart, and the ashes that are upon it shall be poured out.”
4 And when the king heard the saying of the man of God, which he cried against the altar in Bethel, Jeroboam stretched out his hand from the altar, saying, “Seize him!” And his hand, which he stretched out against him, dried up, so that he could not draw it back to himself.
5 The altar also was torn apart, and the ashes poured out from the altar, according to the sign which the man of God had given by the word of the Lord.
6 And the king answered and said to the man of God, “Please entreat the favor of the Lord your God, and pray for me, that my hand may be restored to me.” And the man of God entreated the Lord, and the king’s hand was restored to him and became as it was before.
7 And the king said to the man of God, “Come home with me and refresh yourself, and I will give you a gift.”
8 And the man of God said to the king, “If you were to give me half your house, I would not go in with you, nor would I eat bread or drink water in this place.”
9 “For so was it commanded me by the word of the Lord, saying: You shall eat no bread, nor drink water, nor return by the way that you came.”
10 So he went another way, and did not return by the way that he came to Bethel.
11 Now an old prophet dwelt in Bethel; and his sons came and told him all the works that the man of God had done that day in Bethel, and the words which he had spoken to the king—they told them to their father.
12 And their father said to them, “Which way did he go?” Now his sons had seen which way the man of God went, who came from Judah.
13 And he said to his sons, “Saddle the donkey for me.” So they saddled the donkey for him, and he rode on it.
14 And he went after the man of God, and found him sitting under an oak, and said to him, “Are you the man of God who came from Judah?” And he said, “I am.”
15 Then he said to him, “Come home with me and eat bread.”
16 And he said, “I may not return with you, nor go in with you; neither will I eat bread nor drink water with you in this place.”
17 “For it was said to me by the word of the Lord: You shall eat no bread and drink no water there, nor return by going the way you came.”
18 He said to him, “I too am a prophet as you are, and an angel spoke to me by the word of the Lord, saying: Bring him back with you into your house, that he may eat bread and drink water.” But he lied to him.
19 So he went back with him, and ate bread in his house and drank water.
20 And it came to pass, as they sat at the table, that the word of the Lord came to the prophet who brought him back.
21 And he cried to the man of God who came from Judah, saying, “Thus says the Lord: Because you have rebelled against the word of the Lord, and have not kept the commandment which the Lord your God commanded you,”
22 “but came back and ate bread and drank water in the place of which the Lord said to you, Eat no bread and drink no water—your corpse shall not come to the tomb of your fathers.”
23 And it came to pass, after he had eaten bread and after he had drunk, that he saddled for him the donkey—for the prophet whom he had brought back.
24 And when he had gone, a lion met him on the way and killed him; and his corpse was cast in the road, and the donkey stood by it; the lion also stood by the corpse.
25 And behold, men passed by and saw the corpse cast in the road, and the lion standing by the corpse; and they came and told it in the city where the old prophet dwelt.
26 And when the prophet that brought him back from the way heard of it, he said, “It is the man of God, who was rebellious against the word of the Lord; therefore the Lord has given him to the lion, which has torn him and slain him, according to the word of the Lord which He spoke to him.”
27 And he spoke to his sons, saying, “Saddle the donkey for me.” And they saddled it.
28 And he went and found his corpse cast in the road, and the donkey and the lion standing by the corpse; the lion had not eaten the corpse, nor torn the donkey.
29 And the prophet took up the corpse of the man of God, and laid it on the donkey, and brought it back; and he came to the city of the old prophet, to mourn and to bury him.
30 And he laid his corpse in his own grave; and they mourned over him, saying, “Alas, my brother!”
31 And it came to pass, after he had buried him, that he spoke to his sons, saying, “When I die, then bury me in the grave in which the man of God is buried; lay my bones beside his bones.”
32 “For the saying which he cried by the word of the Lord against the altar in Bethel, and against all the houses of the high places in the cities of Samaria, shall surely come to pass.”
33 After this thing Jeroboam did not turn from his evil way, but again made from among all the people priests of the high places; whoever wished, he consecrated him, and he became one of the priests of the high places.
34 And this thing became sin to the house of Jeroboam, even to cut it off and destroy it from the face of the earth.
And I’d be glad to receive an appropriate and decisive response… from the honored Rabbi…
What does this story prove? The next time God tells me something and then someone else says that God also spoke to him, I need to believe God and not that person. What does that have to do with the Sages?
(By the way, the verse in Nehemiah itself is difficult. What is the difference between olive and oil tree? And maybe the verse repeats itself intentionally, both with olive and with myrtle. According to the Sages, though, in Babylonian Talmud Sukkah 12a, the “myrtle” is for roofing the sukkah, and it is myrtle that is not tripled, while “thick tree” is tripled myrtle for the four species.)
I didn’t understand the point of the passages you brought.
As for “thick tree,” I admittedly haven’t checked the meaning of the expression (I have a few possible ideas), but the verses in Nehemiah are talking about more than four species, so in any case it doesn’t fit what is written in the Torah.
Thank you very much, Rabbi.
As for the destruction—I brought the words of the Sages not in order to disagree with them, but to show that in this statement the Sages abstracted from history, and did not come to write history.
The authority considerations seem puzzling to me—have the Sages run out of interpretive teachings on ethical matters drawn from traumatic events??
Since when does post-Talmudic Jewish law have the weight to obligate, prohibit, and innovate things like these?? And why shouldn’t we establish more such days?
We already said that the Sages did not come to describe history, but rather an ethical and moral message from history. If so, then we have a dilemma either way: if we say that the Sages came to give us an ethical message, then what good will mourning customs do? The prophet Zechariah already says that ceremonies and fasts and eulogies and mourning are neither important nor helpful, only changing one’s deeds is. (Maybe we can judge the framers of the enactment favorably and say that Zechariah’s prophecy escaped them.) And if we say that the Sages described history over which we grieve and mourn, then: a) this has no religious value; b) why shouldn’t we establish something for all the dead of the House of Israel until today? Why not establish a fast on Holocaust Remembrance Day?
Thus cries out the prophet Zechariah — chapter 7:
“And the word of the Lord of Hosts came to me, saying: Speak to all the people of the land, and to the priests, saying: When you fasted and mourned in the fifth and in the seventh month, even those seventy years, did you at all fast to Me, to Me? And when you eat, and when you drink, is it not you who eat, and you who drink? Are these not the words which the Lord proclaimed by the former prophets, when Jerusalem was inhabited and at peace, and her cities around her, and the south and the lowland were inhabited?
And the word of the Lord came to Zechariah, saying: Thus says the Lord of Hosts, saying: Judge true judgment, and show kindness and mercy every man to his brother. And do not oppress the widow, nor the orphan, the stranger, nor the poor; and let none of you devise evil against his brother in your heart.”
To Moshe, it’s really not as you present it.
I strongly recommend listening to and watching this enjoyable lecture – https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zLfF07RQE9E
http://www.daat.ac.il/daat/tanach/trayasar/zehari10.htm — adding this to clarify Zechariah’s prophecy
Post-Talmudic Jewish law has the weight of custom, and if it has spread throughout the whole world there is even perhaps a binding enactment here (an error in judgment is determined according to accepted practice).
But I mentioned the authority considerations only for the sake of completing the picture, not to say that there is authority here.
By all means, establish one for the victims of the Holocaust too.
How can I establish one for Holocaust Remembrance Day, when not too long ago I read on the site an article that disturbs my sleep, and every time I raise before the heavenly entourage the sacred and exalted desire to increase God’s honor on Holocaust Remembrance Day and to establish mourning and eulogy on it, the article rises before me and smashes my head against the wall in vengeance for the wild things I said.
https://mikyab.net/Should a fast day be established in Jewish law to commemorate the Holocaust? 9/
I already wrote that a lot of water has passed through the Yarkon since then. My opinion has changed.
So in your opinion, should a fast day be instituted for the Holocaust?
I don’t think it should be, but it could be. The question is who is authorized to institute it. In my opinion there is no such person or body (not because of divine inspiration, but because of formal authority). It might perhaps take hold as a custom. As far as I’m concerned, there are enough fasts as it is.
Precisely here the view of the Sages is very well grounded historically (despite all of Josephus’s attempts to present it as a struggle for liberty).