Sermon Archives

Objects of Sanctity and Implements of a Mitzvah

Two years ago, I prepared a whimsical and informative Dvar Torah for Shimini Atzeret which I printed before yom tov, brought to shul, and have never delivered. Last year I spoke about the impossible task of commemorating a tragedy that was still ongoing. Today, as we mark the second yahrzeit of those killed on October 7th, we have the privilege and the responsibility of thinking about how to memorialize those who were massacred on Shimini Atzeret 5784 and those who died in the two years of fierce fighting that followed. Maybe, one year, I’ll share a whimsical and informative Dvar torah for Shimini Atzeret.

Of course we are not the first generation of Jews faced with the responsibility of incorporating some new event in Jewish history into our calendar and in so doing, turn Jewish history into enduring Jewish memory.  

Rabbi J.J. Schachter has researched this topic, perhaps more thoroughly than any other person. I have heard him lecture on this topic and he has published on this topic and he conducts ongoing research into this topic. And, I think I can accurately summarize his research with the phrase: it depends. 

Sometimes, Jewish communities commemorated the anniversaries of calamities and disasters that occurred in their community. And sometimes, the tragic elements of Jewish history are folded into our mourning of Tisha b’Av.  (And there have also been Jewish communities who celebrated the anniversaries of miraculous salvations that rescued their community from destruction).

Each option is fraught and has advantages and disadvantages. Tisha b’Av has a very specific meaning. It is a day of grief and a day of guilt. We mourn Jews massacred by crusaders on Tisha b’Av because we accept that, fundamentally, every tragic element of Jewish history is just another iteration of the same tragic destruction of the Beit HaMikdash, the Temple in Jerusalem, and the ensuing exile. On the other hand, the Holocaust, for example, cannot be easily accommodated by a theology of Jewish guilt and Divine punishment and mourning the destruction of the Temple. 

But incorporating Jewish history into the Jewish calendar is the only way to guarantee that it becomes part of enduring Jewish memory. Yizkor, a liturgical innovation of Medieval Ashkenaz, has become one of the most reliable drawers of Jews to their shuls despite the possibility of reciting Yizkor alone (something we learned during Covid and then suppressed). In the mid twentieth century Rabbi Yosef Eliyahu Henkin had a similar observation about mourner’s Kaddish: the practice might be a relatively recent liturgical innovation, but it connects Jews to their heritage in a potent way and therefore should be encouraged beyond what an objective evaluation of its provenance would suggest. 

I do not know how the massacres of Shimini Atzeret 5784 and the losses of the two-years of war that followed will be memorialized and mourned and remembered by the Jewish people. Klal Yisrael, the collective Jewish people will need to work that out  through an organic process over the coming years.

But for all of us who lived through these past two years, the yahrzeit of those murdered on Shimini Atzeret will be forefront in our minds forever when we recite Yizkor on Shimini Atzeret. And, at least for this year, here is a suggestion for how we might move forward (a colleague compared this moment to the first times we went shopping without masks as the Covid pandemic receded). There is an inherent awkwardness and tentativeness to emerging from a crisis and discovering what the new normal on the other side will look like. 

In Halakhah there is a distinction between tashmishei mitzvah and tashmishei kedushah. Tashmishei mitzvah are “implements of a mitzvah” items that we need for a mitzvah purpose but can then discard when the mitzvah is over. A topical example of an implement of a mitzvah is a lulav and etrog. When Sukkot ends and we no longer need them for their mitzvah, then can be discarded. There are customs about repurposing items used for a mitzvah for a different mitzvah such as using a dried out lulav to burn hametz before Pesach or fashioning a table used for hospitality into a coffin. But, there is no need to do so. The mitzvah is special, the tool used for the mitzvah is not.

Tashmishei Kedushah are “objects of sanctity.” Certain items, Torah scrolls, mezuzah scrolls, have an inherent sanctity and that holiness inheres in objects that serve them and protect them like the boxes into which tefilin scrolls are placed or the mantle, the fabric dressing, that encloses a Torah scroll. These items are interred in a geniza along with the sacred scrolls they served. 

I have thought about this distinction as we have accelerated the removal of the posters marking the “reserved seats” in the shul on behalf of hostages, living and dead, who have not yet been returned to their families or brought to a Jewish burial in Israel. What should we do with the posters? They helped us perform a mitzvah of remembering our brothers and sisters in their distress and praying and organizing on their behalf. But tashmishei mitzvah can be discarded after the moment for the mitzvah has passed. But, in fact, the posters that have been taken down over the course of the war have not been discarded. Many were donated to the Capital Jewish Museum (which has boxes of Ohev Sholom archives in long-term storage). Other poasters are in my office. Sometimes we treat tashmishei mitzvah as though they were tashmishei kedushah.

Rabbi Professor David Weiss Halivni was a child prodigy, Holocaust survivor, who came to America and rose to prominence as an academic scholar of Talmud. For a few years in his old age he found himself serving as the rabbi of a small independent liberal Orthodox congregation in Manhattan. I think many of you would have felt at home there. In fact I think many of you did, in fact, daven there. That is the context in which I met Rabbi Halivini when I was still a high school student and came to appreciate him. I vividly remember him speaking about tashmishei mitzvah and tashmishei kedusha. He summarized these two categories of Jewish law. And then he said, “the goal in life is to transform ourselves from being tashmishei mitzvah into being tashmishei kedushah.” As we grow and mature and refine our personalities we want to transition from being only momentarily impacted by the mitzvot that we perform, into being permanently and irreducibly transformed by our connection to all that is sacred. 

Please think about who you became during these two years of war. Think of your generosity on behalf of Israel - this congregation collected and disbursed tens of thousands of dollars for humanitarian causes in Israel over the past two years. Think of the Ahavat Yisrael and Ahavat HaBriot, love of Israel and love of God’s creation,  that was aroused in your heart by seeing images of unimaginable human suffering. Remember the fervor of your prayers on behalf of our brothers and sisters held in captivity and remember your grief at learning of yet another loss of the war. 

Don’t allow yourself to go back to normal. Allow yourself to be transformed by your encounter with these holy experiences and emotions and priorities. Instead of being tashmishei mitzvah, let’s become tashmishei kedushah.

In a few moments we will recite Yizkor memorial prayers. Yizkor too ought to be a vehicle for transformation.  As anyone who has recited Yizkor, or read the words in a siddur, Yizkor is little more than a pledge to tzedakah in memory of a deceased relative. But it can have much more profound significance. When we reflect on deceased loved ones, and how they shaped us, and what they wanted us to become, and what we may have hoped for them to become, and we then make a pledge to tzedakah, inspired by our encounter with their memory, we allow them to impact the world once again through our generosity and through our actions. 

When we make a tzedakah pledge in the context of a Yizkor prayer, we show that our encounter with our deceased relatives, was not a transient and passing encounter - in the mode of tashmishei mitzvah, but was an encounter that changed us forever, in the mode of tashmishei kedushah. 

At our shul we do not only recite memorial prayers for deceased relatives, but also for those whose deaths had enduring significance for all of us, such as fallen soldiers and those killed during the Holocaust. Today we will also recite a memorial prayer, composed by Rav Benny Holtzman, the rabbi of Kibbutz Ma’aleh Gilboa,  for all those killed on October 7th as we mark their second yahrzeit.