DRASH: "Shabbat Services during Pandemic"
Shabbat Shalom. There is a Yiddish expression that translates in English to “people plan; God laughs.” I think the last few weeks have shown us that maybe sometimes it’s “people don’t plan, God cries.” These have been extremely difficult weeks for the entire world. While there are certainly good things that have come from this, and that will be my Drash topic for next week, we have all had our lives, rhythms, routines and sense of safety and our own health disrupted. While many of us enjoy spending time being cozy at home, I don’t think anyone enjoys being ordered to shelter in place and only leave our homes for shopping or visiting a doctor. For us, as a Jewish community, the pandemic and our attempt to slow it down so hospitals are not fully overwhelmed, has caused us to cancel our most beloved and sacred gathering: Shabbat morning Torah Services and study. For the past few years, every week about 30 - 50 members and others have gathered to celebrate and enjoy Shabbat. When we read the weekly Torah reading, we know that every other synagogue everywhere in the world is chanting and studying and debating the same exact portion on the same date. It’s an amazing feature of Judaism that one could visit 55 different Jewish communities and still hear the entire Torah read and discussed, in order, from Genesis to Deuteronomy, one weekly parashah at a time. But without a minyan, 10 Jewish adults gathering with a Torah scroll on Shabbat morning, this ancient joyful ritual of deep meaning falls silent. While we are each able to pray and study on our own, in our homes, it’s not the same, and for many people without a strong foundation in personal observance, and the skills to do so on their own, Shabbat morning rituals have simply stopped.
Shabbat is such a significant feature of Judaism. As Achad HaAm famously said, “even more than the Jews have kept Shabbat, Shabbat has kept the Jews.” It, and its Torah Service and sacred teachings, are the glue that holds the community together, and has for 3,500 years. Abraham Joshua Heschel referred to Shabbat as a “cathedral, a castle” in time and suggested that the main uniqueness of Judaism is its hallowing of time, not space. The week, he explained, was about conquering space; Shabbat was about being in time. The week is human doing; the Sabbath is human being. In last week’s Torah portion, the conclusion of the book of Exodus, we read that the most important and sacred task of our ancestors camped at the foot of Mount Sinai was to build the Mishkan, the portable sanctuary which would be where the presence of God and the connection with the divine dwelled. It was the way that the 12 tribes become one community, a project that literally brought holiness into the physical realm. And yet, there was one higher ideal, one mitzvah that trumped even this most supernal activity, and that was and is Shabbat. The not doing, was more important than building a shrine to the relationship between God and the people. And the Torah is clear, don’t kindle a fire during Shabbat; do your work and your cooking and setting the lights and heat before the sun sets.
While today we have modern appliances, including timers and thermostats, that allow us to keep our buildings and homes lit and warm on the 7th day of the week, we are to set all of these devices before sunset. We are commanded to lift Shabbat restrictions if it is to save a life; but can we lift Shabbat restrictions to find creative and modern ways to gather if we are saving a life by staying at home? Is it a black or white situation, or is there any grey in the world of Shabbat mornings during a pandemic?
Last week, in the Daf Yomi, the daily Talmud study which is currently slowly moving through the lengthy details of Tracate Shabbat, we came across an interesting passage. Here is how it was explained by MyJewish Learning. The essence of this idea is that Shabbat is a time of great joy, where public mourning is not allowed, but there are times when we intrude upon this joy for a moment of non-joy that may be for the greater good:
“Beit Hillel… permits people to visit the sick and comfort mourners, teaching us something crucial about what it means to be a Jew: we put people first even at the cost of our own joy on Shabbat. While it would be nice to live in a world in which sadness never intersected with Shabbat, and while we try to experience Shabbat as a taste of such a world, a dose of reality is also needed. This is not the world we live in. Pain and sorrow, sickness and death do not stop for Shabbat. What it means to be a Jew is to recognize that sometimes we have to set aside Shabbat in order to be present for those who suffer.” (Rabbi Avi Strausberg)
The Rambam Maimonides Medical Journal asks the question: Should Sabbath prohibitions be overridden to provide emotional support to a sick relative? Specifically, their paper addresses the permissibiility of traveling in a motorized vehicle, generally prohibited on the Sabbath especially in the observant community, to be with one’s relative in a hospital for the provision of emotional support. They discuss the large body of research that has confirmed the potentially negative impact of stress. Their conclusions, based on medical science and halachic authorities, is that the positive emotional gains that one experiences when they are with loved ones, should be factored in to Shabbat restrictions because “mental anguish may be life-threatening”. (https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5001795/ by Dr. Chaya Greenberger and Dr. Pnina Mor)
Just one week ago it was announced that “People should leave their phones on during Shabbat” according to Chief Sephardic Rabbi Yitzhak Yosef who sent the halachic ruling to Health Minister Ya’acov Litzman on Wednesday.” The Jerusalem Report quoted him as saying: “There is no doubt that all those tested for coronavirus have to have a phone on during Shabbat so [the Health Ministry] will be able to update him on his results and tell him where to evacuate,” he said.
This past week, a number of Israeli Orthodox rabbis declared their approval for the use of Zoom technology to allow people to participate in a Seder for Passover on the holiday. While they said that the devices must be turned on before the holiday begins, they issued this ruling in response to the overwhelming nature of the coronavirus and their concerns that people, particular the elderly, would be depressed and might be tempted to not observe the holiday rather than do so all alone. We see that in in this time of great need, this sha’at hadehak, there are leniencies that can be utilized within the Halacha to allow people to stay connected and maintain our spiritual communities. (https://www.jpost.com/Israel-News/Raabis-approve-the-use-of-ZOOM-to-celebrate-passover-due-to-coronavirus-622221)
In the Talmudic Tractate of Pesachim, regarding Passover and its observances, we find an equally radical teaching on page 66b. Rabbi Yochanon describes how if an individual is Tamei, (in a state of ritual disconnectedness brought on by contact with a dead body), they bring their Passover offering one month later, on what we call Pesach Sheini - the second Passover. But if the majority of the community, or the entire community is in this state, the offering is brought as originally planned on Passover. In other words, if the individual is spiritually impure and disconnected, they have the mulligan do-over holiday; but if the collective, the whole people (or the whole world) is impacted, if we are all are in the place where our lives have touched death, the rules are shifted and we bring the offering in the state of ritual impurity. The rules are bent when the need is great. Rabbi Isaac Klein said the Code of Jewish law states that “Whenever a mitzvah or a public need is involved, the prohibitions of shevut [activities that are not strictly work but are avoided because they are not in the spirit of Shabbat] are waived”. (A Guide to Jewish Religious Practice, page 85).
Yes, this may be a slippery slope, and the consensus in Halacha is that using the internet is not permitted on Shabbat. But there are exceptions for health and security needs (https://www.zomet.org.il/eng/?CategoryID=253&ArticleID=318) and we are in extraordinarily challenging times. We need to stay socially and spiritually connected to each other even as we must be physically distanced. There are many who will not be able to study and observe the Torah if we do not make allowances. Many of our members drive long distances to be with us on Shabbat morning. Certainly using a Zoom meeting on Shabbat morning to pray and study together, to hear the words of Torah chanted, to see a Torah scroll, might be permissible in such a challenging hour?
Perhaps. Starting Shabbat morning in a week, we will experiment with having a Zoom meeting open and you’ll be invited to join me there to pray and study Torah together. I ask that your computers are left on before Shabbat begins and also ask that they be used for no other purposes such as on-line shopping. I will be working on some of the halachic and technical challenges this coming week. These are unprecedented challenges and our response must respect tradition and Halacha and the needs of our community.
Shabbat Shalom.
Rabbi Shalom Bochner
March 31, 2020
Shabbat is such a significant feature of Judaism. As Achad HaAm famously said, “even more than the Jews have kept Shabbat, Shabbat has kept the Jews.” It, and its Torah Service and sacred teachings, are the glue that holds the community together, and has for 3,500 years. Abraham Joshua Heschel referred to Shabbat as a “cathedral, a castle” in time and suggested that the main uniqueness of Judaism is its hallowing of time, not space. The week, he explained, was about conquering space; Shabbat was about being in time. The week is human doing; the Sabbath is human being. In last week’s Torah portion, the conclusion of the book of Exodus, we read that the most important and sacred task of our ancestors camped at the foot of Mount Sinai was to build the Mishkan, the portable sanctuary which would be where the presence of God and the connection with the divine dwelled. It was the way that the 12 tribes become one community, a project that literally brought holiness into the physical realm. And yet, there was one higher ideal, one mitzvah that trumped even this most supernal activity, and that was and is Shabbat. The not doing, was more important than building a shrine to the relationship between God and the people. And the Torah is clear, don’t kindle a fire during Shabbat; do your work and your cooking and setting the lights and heat before the sun sets.
While today we have modern appliances, including timers and thermostats, that allow us to keep our buildings and homes lit and warm on the 7th day of the week, we are to set all of these devices before sunset. We are commanded to lift Shabbat restrictions if it is to save a life; but can we lift Shabbat restrictions to find creative and modern ways to gather if we are saving a life by staying at home? Is it a black or white situation, or is there any grey in the world of Shabbat mornings during a pandemic?
Last week, in the Daf Yomi, the daily Talmud study which is currently slowly moving through the lengthy details of Tracate Shabbat, we came across an interesting passage. Here is how it was explained by MyJewish Learning. The essence of this idea is that Shabbat is a time of great joy, where public mourning is not allowed, but there are times when we intrude upon this joy for a moment of non-joy that may be for the greater good:
“Beit Hillel… permits people to visit the sick and comfort mourners, teaching us something crucial about what it means to be a Jew: we put people first even at the cost of our own joy on Shabbat. While it would be nice to live in a world in which sadness never intersected with Shabbat, and while we try to experience Shabbat as a taste of such a world, a dose of reality is also needed. This is not the world we live in. Pain and sorrow, sickness and death do not stop for Shabbat. What it means to be a Jew is to recognize that sometimes we have to set aside Shabbat in order to be present for those who suffer.” (Rabbi Avi Strausberg)
The Rambam Maimonides Medical Journal asks the question: Should Sabbath prohibitions be overridden to provide emotional support to a sick relative? Specifically, their paper addresses the permissibiility of traveling in a motorized vehicle, generally prohibited on the Sabbath especially in the observant community, to be with one’s relative in a hospital for the provision of emotional support. They discuss the large body of research that has confirmed the potentially negative impact of stress. Their conclusions, based on medical science and halachic authorities, is that the positive emotional gains that one experiences when they are with loved ones, should be factored in to Shabbat restrictions because “mental anguish may be life-threatening”. (https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5001795/ by Dr. Chaya Greenberger and Dr. Pnina Mor)
Just one week ago it was announced that “People should leave their phones on during Shabbat” according to Chief Sephardic Rabbi Yitzhak Yosef who sent the halachic ruling to Health Minister Ya’acov Litzman on Wednesday.” The Jerusalem Report quoted him as saying: “There is no doubt that all those tested for coronavirus have to have a phone on during Shabbat so [the Health Ministry] will be able to update him on his results and tell him where to evacuate,” he said.
This past week, a number of Israeli Orthodox rabbis declared their approval for the use of Zoom technology to allow people to participate in a Seder for Passover on the holiday. While they said that the devices must be turned on before the holiday begins, they issued this ruling in response to the overwhelming nature of the coronavirus and their concerns that people, particular the elderly, would be depressed and might be tempted to not observe the holiday rather than do so all alone. We see that in in this time of great need, this sha’at hadehak, there are leniencies that can be utilized within the Halacha to allow people to stay connected and maintain our spiritual communities. (https://www.jpost.com/Israel-News/Raabis-approve-the-use-of-ZOOM-to-celebrate-passover-due-to-coronavirus-622221)
In the Talmudic Tractate of Pesachim, regarding Passover and its observances, we find an equally radical teaching on page 66b. Rabbi Yochanon describes how if an individual is Tamei, (in a state of ritual disconnectedness brought on by contact with a dead body), they bring their Passover offering one month later, on what we call Pesach Sheini - the second Passover. But if the majority of the community, or the entire community is in this state, the offering is brought as originally planned on Passover. In other words, if the individual is spiritually impure and disconnected, they have the mulligan do-over holiday; but if the collective, the whole people (or the whole world) is impacted, if we are all are in the place where our lives have touched death, the rules are shifted and we bring the offering in the state of ritual impurity. The rules are bent when the need is great. Rabbi Isaac Klein said the Code of Jewish law states that “Whenever a mitzvah or a public need is involved, the prohibitions of shevut [activities that are not strictly work but are avoided because they are not in the spirit of Shabbat] are waived”. (A Guide to Jewish Religious Practice, page 85).
Yes, this may be a slippery slope, and the consensus in Halacha is that using the internet is not permitted on Shabbat. But there are exceptions for health and security needs (https://www.zomet.org.il/eng/?CategoryID=253&ArticleID=318) and we are in extraordinarily challenging times. We need to stay socially and spiritually connected to each other even as we must be physically distanced. There are many who will not be able to study and observe the Torah if we do not make allowances. Many of our members drive long distances to be with us on Shabbat morning. Certainly using a Zoom meeting on Shabbat morning to pray and study together, to hear the words of Torah chanted, to see a Torah scroll, might be permissible in such a challenging hour?
Perhaps. Starting Shabbat morning in a week, we will experiment with having a Zoom meeting open and you’ll be invited to join me there to pray and study Torah together. I ask that your computers are left on before Shabbat begins and also ask that they be used for no other purposes such as on-line shopping. I will be working on some of the halachic and technical challenges this coming week. These are unprecedented challenges and our response must respect tradition and Halacha and the needs of our community.
Shabbat Shalom.
Rabbi Shalom Bochner
March 31, 2020
Photo taken by Alex Photo email: photo.modesto@gmail.com