Rabbi Mark Fasman

All 304,805 letters in a sefer Torah, must be written according to detailed rules established centuries ago. Not only do the letters have a particular shape, some have corners that have a little point coming out or they have a crown or just a single small vertical line on top. These seemingly insignificant details can make the difference between a sefer Torah that is kosher or one that isn’t.

The smallest of all the Hebrew letters is yud. And the yud must be written with a point coming down from the top left of the letter. In Yiddish the yud is called yid and a little point is a pintele. So the original meaning of the phrase dos pintele yid is “the point of the yud.” Originally, dos pintele yid was used to describe the significance of even the smallest detail.

On November 11, we formally began the process of writing our new sefer Torah. Rabbi Moshe Druin was here to teach and to guide the hands of individuals and families as individual letters of Torah were completed. Our sofer has left out a part of each of the first fifty letters of Bereishit (Genesis). With Rabbi Druin we completed the finishing details on each of these letters. Each detail is important. If one of those 304,805 letters is missing or added, or if any of those letters is not formed correctly – including all of the required details down to dos pintele yid – then the entire sefer Torah is pasul (invalid for ritual use). A baal koreh (Torah reader) who finds a possible error stops during the reading, the letter is checked immediately, and if it is found to be incorrect in any way, the scroll is rolled back up and the belt is wrapped around the outside of the mantle (indicating that this scroll is pasul). Just one missing point on a yud can invalidate the entire text (until it is corrected).

Since any letter that is incomplete invalidates the entire scroll, the completion of just one letter is a sine qua non for the totality. Each person who participates in the completion of any one letter of the Torah thus completes an entire Torah. With this simple act, each individual connects himself or herself with the entire text of Torah.

But there is another connection: because many (hopefully, all) members of Shaare Zedek will complete a letter this simple act also connects us with each other. Each of us depends on each of the others to complete this scroll. We are necessary for them; they are necessary for us.

There is another, more well-known meaning of the phrase pintele yid. Pintele can also mean “spark;” yid means “Jew.” So dos pintele yid is “the Jewish spark,” a kind of pilot light that exists in each Jew. If conditions are right this spark can blossom into a flame.

As we create this new sefer Torah together, we will pay special attention to each pintele yid, each point on each of the 304,805 letters. And when we take each pintele yid of Torah seriously, our own pintele yid, that spark at the core of our Jewish identity can blossom into a brilliant flame.

During the coming months nourish your own pintele yid. And don’t neglect the pintele yid of each of our children. Make sure to get your children and grandchildren to participate in this special mitzvah. Connect them to Torah. Connect them to Jewish tradition. Connect them to family.

This may be the only opportunity you or your children will have to “write” a Torah.

So … if not now, when?

Some of you know that I have developed an interest in collecting artifacts connected with Jewish history. In addition to oil lamps and other pottery as much as 4,000 years old, I have begun a collection of ancient coins of the Land of Israel.

On my most recent stay in Jerusalem, last July, I added several coins to my collection, including the two shown above. On the left is a silver Alexander the Great tetradrachm, approximately 2300 years old, found in the vicinity of Jerusalem. The obverse (front) depicts a young (beardless) Herakles (the Romans called him Hercules) wearing a lion skin headdress, with the lion’s paws tied at his neck. The reverse depicts a bearded Zeus, naked from the waist up, sitting on a backless throne, holding an eagle in his right hand and a scepter in his left hand. The Greek inscription translates into “Of Alexander.”

We know that Alexander the Great conquered the Land of Israel in 332 BCE, as part of his campaign to conquer all of the known world of his time. Although the Second Temple had been built by this time, the Judeans were part of the Persian Empire, paying their taxes regularly, but otherwise allowed to practice their rituals and live in relative freedom in their established communities. To all of the lands that he conquered (Egypt to India), Alexander brought Greek culture, including the pantheon of Greek gods. Note that the coin contains an image of the most powerful of the Greek gods, Zeus, along with one of Zeus’ many half divine/half human children, the demi-god Herakles. In addition to bringing Greek gods to the Land of Israel (supplanting or augmenting the existing Persian pantheon), the new Greek rulers also brought philosophy, public athletic contests, theater, music, public bath houses, and other entertainments.

Though there are few historical documents from the Second Temple period (ca. 500 BCE – 70 CE), it seems as though the Judean leadership of the time had already become used to living under the political control of others. First there was the Babylonian exile – actually, three separate exiles beginning in 597, 586, and 581 BCE and ending in 537, when the Persian emperor Cyrus allowed the Judeans to return to their land and to rebuild their Temple. Thus, the Judeans lived first under Babylonian rule, and then under Persian rule (either in the Land of Israel or in Babylonia) even after the “exile” ended.

As long as the ruling authorities left the Judean community alone (other than collecting taxes and imposing forced labor), and as long as the Temple ritual remained untouched, it seems that the majority of Jews (as they were now beginning to be called) accepted this new status quo. They were content to continue to believe in and to worship their one God as well as to behave according to established Jewish norms. I suspect that their attitude was similar to that depicted in Fiddler on the Roof: “May God bless and keep the czar … far away from us.”

However, over time there developed an increasing problem with Jews assimilating into Greek culture. To get a sense of this tension between Torah and Greek philosophy, I recommend the book, As a Driven Leaf, by Milton Steinberg.

There are four extant books of Maccabees, not included in the Hebrew bible, but certainly known to the rabbis who shaped our tradition. After the death of Alexander the Great (in 323 BCE, at the age of 32), his empire was divided up among his three generals. Seleucus got the Land of Israel (along with Anatolia/Turkey, Syria, Mesopotamia, and Persia). Between 323 and 60 BCE, there were no fewer than thirty Seleucid kings over this empire. By the time that Antiochus IV Epiphanes had risen to power (175 BCE), the process of assimilation between Jews and Greek culture had progressed so far that it would only take a small push to start a civil war between those Hellenized Jews and the “traditionalists.”

The “push” came in 168 BCE. Two years earlier, Antiochus had begun a campaign against Egypt, conquering all but Alexandria. Two years later, after the king of Alexandria allied himself with his brother, the “puppet” king of Egypt, Antiochus invaded again, with similar results. However, this time, he was met by an envoy from Rome, who told him that he must immediately withdraw from Egypt and Cyprus. Antiochus responded that he would have to talk it over with his council, so the envoy drew a line around him in the sand and told him to “think about it here.”

That famous line in the sand led to the withdrawal of Antiochus from Egypt and Cyprus, and in his frustration and anger, he organized an expedition against Jerusalem (on his way home). He brutally murdered many Jews and destroyed the city of Jerusalem. Meanwhile, the Jewish community was experiencing plenty of internal turmoil already. The attack on Jerusalem emboldened a priestly family (that of Matitiyahu, Kohen ha-Gadol – known as the Maccabees) who began their revolt initially against Hellenized Jews who were willing to accede to the Seleucid demand for religious loyalty, a demand that meant relinquishing their exclusive loyalty to the One God of Israel.

For Matitiyahu and his sons, this was their line in the sand. Jews could not be permitted to assimilate to the extent that they gave up their Jewish religious particularity – their unique beliefs and behaviors. It took three years, but the Maccabees ultimately defeated the Seleucid army and established a dynasty – the Hasmoneans – who ruled over Judea for 102 years, from 165 to 63 BCE (when the Romans took control). The Hasmoneans were, in many ways, as brutal as Antiochus had been; but this time, their brutality was directed against the Hellenized Jews. They combined the role of King and High Priest (forbidden by Torah as well as politically foolish). They engaged in forced conversions to Judaism – the only time in our history that this occurred.

On the other hand, the Hasmonean dynasty reestablished Temple worship and traditional Jewish practices within the land that they controlled. They also minted their own money. At the beginning of this article you see a Hasmonean bronze perutah, essentially like a penny. It was with this coin that Rabbi Akiba later said that a man could acquire a wife. Note the writing on the obverse (front) of the coin. It is in ancient Hebrew script, not the Aramaic script (with which we are familiar) that had already come into common use.

I now own ten ancient coins from the Land of Israel, the oldest being the Alexander the Great tetradrachm pictured above, and the newest being 136 CE (a year after the end of the Bar Kokhba revolt). The only coins from this 468-year period of time that contain Hebrew (in either ancient or Aramaic script) are from this Hasmonean period and from the two periods of revolt against Rome. Only the former were “legal tender” – the latter two types carry with them the death penalty, since they were created by over-stamping a Roman coin, literally de-facing the Emperor.

Most of the time the language on the coins is Greek and Latin, since these were the languages of the dominant empires ofthe period; only sovereign rulers were permitted to mint money. Thus, from 597 BCE until 1948 CE, the only “legal” coins produced by Jews were produced during the century that Jews ruled themselves: 165 to 63 BCE.

We are a nation without a nation, a people without a land. Israelite religion transformed itself to meet the needs of living in exile beginning 2,600 years ago. During the intervening years, it became Judaism and continued its transformation designed to meet the exquisitely difficult balancing act between beliefs and practices of the Jewish tradition and the beliefs and practices ofthe ruling culture in which we live.

We live in constant tension, faced with constant conflict (both internally and externally). But the miracle of Chanukah is that this one tiny Jewish spark, kindled nearly 4,000 years ago and handed from generation to generation in every part of the world,shining more or less brightly in dozens of languages and dozens of cultures, has continued to glow, casting light for ourselvesand for our world. As beneficiaries of this miracle, we have but one task: don’t let the light go out.

Chag Ha-Urim Sameach – Have a Joyous Feast of Lights.

Alexander Jannaeus (also known as Alexander Jannai/Yannai), king of Judea from (103 BCE to 76 BCE), son of John Hyrcanus, inherited the throne from his brother Aristobulus, and appears to have married his brother’s widow, Shlamtzion or Shlomtzion or “Shelomit”, also known as Salome Alexandra, according to the Biblical law of Yibum (“levirate marriage”), although Josephus is inexplicit on that point.

His likely full Hebrew name was Jonathan; he may have been the High Priest Jonathan, rather than his great-uncle of the same name, who established the Masada fortress. Under the name King Yannai, he appears as a wicked tyrant in the Talmud, reflecting his conflict with the Pharisee party. He is among the morecolorful historical figures little known, however, outside specialized history, although the impact of him and his widow on the subsequent development of Judaism and Christianity is substantial.  

See the December Bulletin for pictures.

Moses Sofer (1762 - 1839), known as the Hatam Sofer, lived in a particular society at a particular time. He lived most of his life in Pressburg, Hungary. As the local undisputed authority, he was responsible for his community, and so he instituted policies that had never existed before – primarily a policy of no change (He-chadash asur min ha-Torah) – based upon a clever reinterpretation of the phrase חדש אסור – “New is forbidden” found in a discussion in the Talmud concerning the use of various agricultural products (Kiddushin 37b): We learnt elsewhere: Hadash is forbidden by Scriptural law everywhere; [the prohibition of] ‘orlah [without Palestine] is a halachah, and [that of] kil’ayim is from the words of the Scribes. What is meant by halachah? — Rab Judah said in Samuel’s name: It is a law of the country. ‘Ulla said in R. Johanan’s name: It is a halachah of Moses from Sinai.The Hatam Sofer’s move was a polemic against the rising Reform community in Germany and other parts of Europe. According to the Encyclopedia Judaica, “he declared total war with no concessions in the battle against modernity…. He disassociated himself from the battle for emancipation, not merely because he feared the heavy price that would be exacted for it at the cost of tradition, but because he viewed the very aspiration for equality as a sign of dissatisfaction with the traditional way of life of the community and a desire for partial assimilation with gentile culture.”

Perhaps he was right – his fears of what would happen when Jews were permitted (and chose) to participate equally in civil society seem, after all, to have come true.

The rise of the Conservative Movement in Germany (and more so in America) was an attempt to bridge the increasing gulf between an intransigent and isolationist traditional world and an increasingly assimilated Jewish population open to any and all changes that would make their lives in a non-Jewish society easier.

The essential challenge of Conservative Judaism is that it tries to have it both ways. We are not Reform – anyone who looks closely at our services and our practices and our beliefs would not fail to miss the fundamental differences between the two approaches to Judaism in our time. Similarly, we are not “Orthodox” – if by Orthodox one means an unwillingness to consider fundamental changes in Jewish attitudes and behaviors. We are Conservative. That means that we have a commitment to serve our community in our time in such a way as to enable us to participate fully in the secular society while maintaining our particular Jewish identity through an acknowledgement of our commitment to the Written Torah and the Oral Torah as interpreted in each generation by the leaders of our time.

Each generation is obligated to address the fundamental concerns and values of its time and to struggle with the parameters of necessary and permissible change. Deuteronomy itself insists upon this: we must rely on the judges/priests/leaders of our time “even if they say that right is left and left is right” (Sifre on Parashat Shoftim). And as we read in Parashat Nitzavim, “[Torah] is not in the heavens.”

Based upon this verse, the Sages of the First Century CE kicked God out of the Beit Midrash ( ! ). Our Sages were engaged with the Great Rabbi Eliezer in an argument concerning the kashrut of an oven to be used for preparing matzah for Pesach. Rabbi Eliezer calls on heaven to perform miracles and then finally to send a Bat Kol – a heavenly voice – that says, “The halakhah is with Rabbi Eliezer.” The Sages respond, essentially, “Stay out of this, God! You have taught us that Torah is not in the heavens.” Right or wrong, the Rabbis understood that interpretation of God’s will could not depend upon prophecy – they insisted that prophecy had ended with Malakhi during the Second Temple period. But unless someone had the authority to articulate divine standards for human behavior, we would be living in anarchy. For our ancient Sages, speaking on behalf of God was an act of chutzpah (their word, not mine! ). But silence on behalf of God was an act of cowardice, a failure to lead, and, most important, a suggestion that since we cannot know God’s will, then there can be no standards for behavior, no expectation that each Jew is answerable to God for his or her choices.

To our Rabbis, Judaism is a covenantal relationship with God. Our part of the relationship is based on Torah, a Torah that comes from heaven, but is not in heaven. It is rather the property of the finite, fallible human community chosen by God to live according to that Torah. We are called on to be a holy people – defined more by our by our behaviors than by our beliefs and opinions.

As a Conservative rabbi, I am fully aware that I am a descendant (and an inheritor) of a sacred tradition. That tradition has a claim on me, as do my parents, grandparents, and other ancestors. However, I am also an ancestor. It is my sacred obligation to transmit this priceless treasure that I have inherited to those of my generation and, ultimately, to bequeath it to future generations.

What is our tradition? Jewish tradition is not simply a rigid, monolithic body of rules and customs. It is the living expression of our covenantal relationship with God, with the community, with our ancestors, and with our descendants. Because it is alive, it changes. It has to change, or it will die. But it cannot change so radically or so quickly that it will cut itself off from its roots.

As Conservative Jews, we absolutely reject the position that “new is forbidden from the Torah.” It is an un-Jewish statement, since our sacred Tradition has changed and grown in every generation. Had Rabbi Yochanan ben Zakkai been resistant to change at the time the Temple was destroyed, it is highly likely that there would be no Judaism in our time. The same is true of every generation, faced with changed realities and new questions. The Hatam Sofer’s very rallying cry, Chadash asur min ha-Torah, was itself an innovation that served the needs of his generation. We Conservative Jews understand the necessity of change, but we tend to be careful about those changes. We are conserve-ative, not preserve-ative.

And there’s a the rub: what to conserve and what to form. I take it as a fundamental premise of my work as a rabbi that people have different needs and different commitments and differing ideas as to what changes are proper and necessary. As a Conservative rabbi, I also believe that change is necessary for institutions and that change is part of human life – when we stop changing, we stop growing and we begin to die.

When we celebrate the completion and re-starting of our reading of Torah on Saturday night, October 14, and the following morning, perhaps this is the year that we need to really rejoice in Torah (not just the scroll, but the entire corpus of sacred literature and its two millennia of commentary, laws, customs, and beliefs). As we dance with the scrolls, let us contemplate the words we sing each time the scroll is returned to the ark: Etz chayim hi la-machazikim bah, v’tom’kheha me-ushar – “It is a tree of life to all who grasp it, and all who uphold it are blessed.”

I wrote my article last month on July 12, just two days after visiting the settlements of Eli and Ariel in Samaria. About three hours after I emailed the article to Shaare Zedek, there was a kidnapping on the Lebanese border leading to rockets that fell all over northern Israel. By the next day – the seventeenth of Tammuz (a fast day recalling the beginning of the final siege of Jerusalem in 586 BCE) – rockets had fallen on Tzefat and Haifa. When the fast ended that evening, I was already in the Tel Aviv airport. They don’t have television screens in every departure lounge…nor do they announce Israeli news during the flight. So I did not know until I arrived in Newark the next morning how the initial skirmish was turning into a major war.