Sometimes we take the Jewish holidays for granted. Almost every observant Jew at some point discovers that יום טוב and the office or university don’t mix well. If you’re a student, you may miss classes, assignments, or even exams. Just a few years ago, several of my friends in Barnard College found themselves in a terrible predicament. Their psychology professor, one of the most popular lecturers in the university, announced on the first day of class that she would not allow makeup dates for midterms. Students who do not participate in exams on the days listed on the course syllabus would fail, no exceptions.
Of course, as it turned out, one of the exams was scheduled for a day that coincided with סוכות. Making matters worse, her class was a requirement for psychology majors, so this was an acute problem for many Orthodox and Conservative students. Eventually, they appealed to the Hillel rabbi and chaplain, who brought the issue to the dean. The issue was resolved and the students were able to take their exams on a makeup day. But this experience was a rude awakening that life is not usually as comfortable as it was for them in yeshiva day school.
As we enter the workforce, many of us use most of our vacation days to observe יום טוב and spend time with our families. Contrast this with the recent experience of Abigail Pogrebin. Pogrebin, a Jewish journalist and author, recently published a new book entitled, My Jewish Year: 18 Holidays, One Wondering Jew. She explains that throughout most of her life, she did not feel a particularly strong desire to live or learn Judaism.
Just recently, however, as she watched her son and daughter achieve bar and bat mitzvah age, she realized that there was something powerful about passing her tradition to her children. The problem is, there was so much that she didn’t know about her own tradition; she was bothered that she didn’t understand the meaning behind each of the 18 holidays observed by Modern Orthodox Jews (including יום הזכרון, יום השואה, and יום העצמאות). Throughout the book, she details what it was like for her to observe, to the most halachic extent she was willing to do, every single Jewish holiday. It is fascinating to read about her struggle over whether to kasher her otherwise completely non-kosher kitchen and the meaning she finds in תשליך. But in the introduction, she mentions something that struck me as problematic, something that comes up throughout the book.
One of the reasons she wanted to try observing the Yomim Tovim was to find out what non-Orthodox Jews are missing. In her words:
Two questions guided me through my year-long undertaking: What do we hire a holiday to do for us? What is the yearning to which a holiday is a response?
To these questions, I have two responses. My first response is, why don’t I instinctively know the answers to her questions? As an Orthodox Jew since birth, I’ve had 27 or 28 opportunities to observe each of the Jewish holidays and with increasing education each time. How is it that I still don’t know what shaking a לולב and אתרוג is supposed to achieve? Sure, I’ve heard many דברי תורה but I still don’t have a clear, preferred answer. Why don’t I understand what yearning is fulfilled differently by each of the minor fasts or by ל״ג בעומר?
In fact, if you read through the descriptions of the holidays as we read this morning, you learn a lot about the what, how, and when of each חג but very little is mentioned about the why. The most you get out of the entire chapter about the holidays is a partial explanation of why we sit in Sukkot each year:
לְמַעַן יֵדְעוּ דֹרֹֽתֵיכֶם כִּי בַסֻּכּוֹת הוֹשַׁבְתִּי אֶת־בְּנֵי יִשְׂרָאֵל בְּהוֹצִיאִי אוֹתָם מֵאֶרֶץ מִצְרָיִם.
So that your descendants will know that I settled the Children of Israel in huts when I brought them out of the Land of Egypt.
But even that explanation of סוכה doesn’t explain why it matters that Hashem settled the people in סוכות while they were in the desert.
The second reaction, however, to her queries is to question the assumptions of her quest. Why should we assume that holidays do something for us? Perhaps they do something to us. Alternatively, instead of asking what the holidays do for us, maybe we should ask what values the holidays reflect – what do they teach us is important? Maybe the חגים are not in response to a yearning for something but rather reflect something else entirely.
Let me explain. You may be familiar with Rav Kook’s close student, Rabbi Dovid Cohen, commonly known as the Nazir. The Nazir took upon himself numerous voluntary restrictions similar to those of the biblical Nazirite. One of his children, Rav Sha’ar Yashuv Cohen, ended up becoming the Chief Rabbi of Tel Aviv. Rav Sha’ar Yashuv Cohen, who passed away just a few months ago, also happened to be my grandfather’s cousin. So when Rav Sha’ar Yashuv, as he was known, published a set of books containing his ideas on prayer and the holidays, based on the classic yeshiva-style Talmudic study, he turned to his American family for financial support. My parents and uncle and aunt sponsored the books, called שי כהן, in memory of my grandfather, Rabbi Yoash Savitt, a Talmud scholar in his own right.
In one of the books, Rav Sha’ar Yashuv asks a series of questions that perplexed him about the seder and the commandment of סיפור יציאת מצרים, telling the story of the Egyptian Exodus on Passover. First of all, there is a commandment to remember the story of Passover all year – how is the mitzvah of the seder night any different? Second, why does רבן גמליאל think that there is some obligation to connect the other mitzvoth the seder, the מצה, קרבן פסח, and מרור, to the story of the Exodus?
Third, the רמב״ם, Maimonides, strangely compares the obligation to tell the story of the Exodus to שבת, since both commandments use the word זכור, commemorate, in the Torah – what is the connection between commemorating שבת and the סדר? Fourth, when the רבמ״ם lists the telling of the Exodus story as one of the 613 commandments, he uses the famous verse והגדת לבנך, “you shall tell your child.” But when he introduces the same mitzvah in his Law Code, the משנה תורה, he uses the verse:
זָכ֞וֹר אֶת־הַיּ֤וֹם הַזֶּה֙ אֲשֶׁ֨ר יְצָאתֶ֤ם מִמִּצְרַ֙יִם֙ מִבֵּ֣ית עֲבָדִ֔ים
Commemorate this day that you went out of Egypt, of the house of slaves
The problem is, most commentators use that as the source for remembering the Exodus every day! Why the inconsistency? And fifth, every other מצוה of the evening is at least associated with a ברכה of some sort. Why is there no blessing before telling the story of the Exodus, before Maggid begins?
Rav Sha’ar Yashuv, in a classic Brisker style not unlike that of Rav Soloveitchik, answers all of these questions by making an analytical distinction between מצוות פרטיות, detailed commandments, and מצוות כלליות, general commandments
There are some commandments that are fundamental to the perspective of the Torah towards life, that comprise more of a normative worldview than specific requirements. For example, there is a commandment to do תשובה, to repent after sinning. But תשובה is not something that is done in a specific way or at a specific time; it is a Weltanschauung, something that we do constantly, a lens through which we look at our own behavior, at the world around us, and how we should respond to them. However, there is also a specific action called וידוי, confession, that the Torah commands us to perform and make this worldview more practical.
Similarly, the Torah exhorts Israel, again and again, to remember the Exodus, to keep it in our minds constantly. This is not a מצוה פרטי, an action that we fulfill by doing one specific action; it is a worldview through which we consider all of our actions, even our most mundane daily activities, such as paying our employees or interacting with strangers. Parallel to תשובה and confession, the commandment to tell the story of the Exodus, to say it out loud rather than just to keep it in mind, is a מצוה פרטי, a specific implementation, of remembering the Exodus at all times.
Of course, רבן גמליאל thinks we need to connect the מצה, קרבן פסח, and מרור to the story of the Exodus – these are not random requirements that happen to be on פסח, they represent opportunities to deepen our understanding of סיפור יציאת מצרים .יציאת מצרים is parallel to שבת because just as G-d’s creation of the world and his resting on the seventh day is always on our minds but is implemented specifically through קידוש, so too סיפור יציאת מצרים is the specific implementation of the obligation to remember Hashem taking us out of Egyptian slavery.
For the same reason, Maimonides says that the source of the מצוה פרטי, the specific action of telling the story is והגדת לבנך, but in his code, he explains that the real source of the commandment is the Weltanschauung of זכור, of constantly keeping the Exodus in mind as a basis of our behavior. And of course, just like a confession, there is no blessing on a commandment that just reflects this general worldview, that just makes explicit our commemoration of the Exodus.
Rav Sha’ar Yashuv Cohen’s idea that תשובה, the creation of the world, and the Exodus are worldviews, not just details for us to memorize, also seem to conflict with Abigail Pogrebin’s quest regarding the Jewish holidays. She was seeking a benefit from keeping the holidays, some feeling she would get from simply keeping the details of the חגים, from observing the מצוות פרטיות. For that reason, when she observed some of the most intense holidays in full, such as יום כיפור, she reported coming out uninspired. The problem is, that’s not what the holidays are; they are specific implementations of worldviews, such as the perspective of a member of a nation that Hashem freed from slavery in Egypt.
It is not a coincidence that immediately preceding the Torah’s enumeration of the holidays in this morning’s Torah reading, the Torah writes:
You shall faithfully observe My commandments: I am Hashem. You shall not profane My holy name, that I may be sanctified in the midst of the Israelite people—I Hashem who sanctify you, I who brought you out of the land of Egypt to be your G-d, I Hashem.
Nor is it for naught that the Torah ends the chapter of the holidays with connecting סוכות back to the Exodus. So to appreciate why we miss so much work or class to observe these holidays, let’s not just try to think about what we get out of them. Let’s try to consider what kind of person the Torah wants me to be, what worldview I need to have, to understand why פסח and the other holidays are truly profound experiences.
דורש לנפשי 