From the Rabbi

Jewish practice is often identified by two overlapping cycles – the life cycle and the year cycle. Along with core values and text basics, these rubrics form the topics of our Exploring Judaism program. And it’s likely that most Introduction to Judaism courses make use of these rubrics as well.

Many adult students of Jewish life already come in with some knowledge of the “high” holidays; certainly Passover and Hanukkah rank high on the “I’ve done that” list. This month’s observance of Tu Bishvat, literally, the 15th day of the month of Shvat, is generally less known. Technically, it marks the new year, or birthday, of trees, one of our four different new years.

(We'll integrate a Tu Bishvat seder -- NB: about as much fun but much shorter than a Passover seder! --  with our forthcoming Shabbat Limmud and you can sign up here.)

But there is an even more obscure date in the Jewish year cycle, and it arrives this year on Sunday, March 9  – the 9th of Adar. 

The 14th of Adar is our more well-known date of note for that Jewish month, as described in the book of Esther. By mid-March, some of us will be happily occupied with concocting our Purim costumes for the coming Thursday March 13 evening Megillah reading (sharing the evening with this year’s EJ class) or planning booths for the Sunday March 16 Purim Carnival.

The hardly noted 9th of Adar marks the date of the first recorded Torah dispute, going all the way back to the first century CE, between the house of Hillel and the house of Shammai. The Talmud describes an actual physical battle between those who adhered to Rabbi Hillel’s teachings and those who followed Rabbi Shammai’s. Whatever the scenario was, their discourse deteriorated to such a violent level that it endangered the stability of the Jewish people. The Shulchan Aruch, the 16th century compendium of Jewish law, regards Adar 9 as a “Special Date” perhaps requiring a fast. In the 21st century, its concerns remain relevant.

For Decades, I only associated these two schools of thought, Hillel and Shammai, with the arguments “for the sake of Heaven,” as it says in Pirkey Avot 5:17. These are types of disputes, it is written, that “shall endure.” I’m going to derive some cold comfort from knowing that even these ancestral leaders, who provide us with a model of enduring sacred communal discourse, may have engaged in searing conflict. 

Back in 2013 the Pardes Institute, a pluralistic Jerusalem yeshiva, designated the week around the 9th of Adar as a time for “Constructive Disagreement.” Today they run a fellowship called “Makhloket Matters,” using the term for argument found in the passage from Pirkey Avot. Like many Jewish institutions, organizations and congregations, they are cognizant of the deep divide reflected in the not-so-sacred conversations taking place as terrible events continue to unfold in Israel, Gaza, and the Occupied Palestinian Territories. The divides have spilled over into civil society institutions, from school boards and campuses to workplaces, and even those very family tables at celebratory holidays meals around the year cycle. Social media spaces are jaw-droppingly vitriolic and hate-filled.

We can - and perhaps should – strive to conscientiously and wisely engage in such constructive conversations, recalling two things about the ancient Hillel/Shammai model: 1)while it can go wrong, 2) the alternative – conversations not for the sake of heaven – is unacceptable. 

To that end, a small group of ORH members will be led in a series of conversations, under my guidance, to study, reflect, and listen to each other. We’ll consider our core values, the ones we already hold up, and perhaps some we might wish to highlight more fully. It’s a project – tentatively called “Setting the Bigger Table” - that can be expanded out into the wider community at a later date.

It may not start exactly on the 9th of Adar, but we will surely be engaging in discourse intended to honourably respect and recognize all of who we are. May it endure for the sake of heaven.

Rabbi Liz