In his new book, Judaism: A Love Story, Rabbi Shlomo Riskin quotes the speaker at his elementary school graduation, who in turn quoted the famous parable of the great Chofetz Chaim, Rabbi Yisrael Meir Kagan.
“Life is like a postcard. You begin to write, but don’t have much to say, so you write large. When you get to the middle, you realize you have more to say than you thought, so you start writing smaller, words running into words, lines writing into lines. All too often, you conclude the postcard without having written your most important message. Sometimes, there isn’t enough room for your name.”
Remarkably, Rabbi Riskin and two other veteran contemporary English-speaking Modern Orthodox rabbis have avoided the postcard syndrome and have shared some of their most important thoughts in late-in-life books published nearly simultaneously. The three books are Judaism: A Love Story by Rabbi Shlomo Riskin; Departing Egypt by Rabbi Aryeh A. Frimer; and The Triumph of Life by Rabbi Irving Greenberg.
This isn’t a book review. I wouldn’t presume to review the writing of these scholars. We are, however, in the seven-week period between Passover and Shavuot, a time of education and contemplation leading up to the Torah study marathon that takes place on Shavuot. Despite the plethora of high-level Torah-lectures on the holiday, I am inclined these days to study on Shavuot with my husband or friends.
Having acquired all three books by the rabbis mentioned above, I want to share a few relevant ideas.
Reading rabbis
First, some background.
All three rabbis grew up in Brooklyn, New York. In addition to Orthodox rabbinical ordination, they all have doctoral degrees. Frimer is a professor of chemistry; Greenberg has a PhD in history and wrote his dissertation on Theodore Roosevelt; and Riskin’s PhD is in Near Eastern Languages and Literature. Both Frimer and Greenberg are sons of prominent Orthodox rabbis.
All three of the rabbis live in Israel: Riskin in Efrat, Frimer in Rehovot, and Greenberg in Jerusalem. They all have children and grandchildren in Israel, are long married to devout and scholarly women, and are community leaders. They can all travel on Israeli public transportation for free: Frimer is 78, Riskin is 83, and Greenberg is 91.
A book that's actually a Passover Haggadah
RABBI FRIMER’S Departing Egypt is actually a Passover Haggadah. For decades, he has been delivering an annual Passover lecture, first in the early 1970s at the Harvard-Radcliffe Hillel in Cambridge, Massachusetts, and later at the Rabbi Jacob Berman Community Center-Tiferet Moshe Synagogue in Rehovot. He has condensed highlights of his imparted Passover wisdom to fit into a single 400-page volume.
Once upon a time, a friend celebrating a turning-point birthday made the unusual request that I debate with Rabbi Frimer at the party. The subject was the role of women in Orthodox synagogues.
The debate went pretty well, as I sidestepped the halachic fine points to describe the enriched prayer experience on the women’s side of the mehitza (partition) in my synagogue, Shira Hadasha, in Jerusalem. I didn’t hold our differences of opinion against him, and right before Passover I purchased his hardcover Haggadah.
I admit to having been on the lookout for restrictions of women’s roles at the Seder. I couldn’t find any. Men and women are equally obligated to see ourselves departing Egypt. I was happy that the Hebrew arba banim was translated in the English text as “four children,” and not “the four sons.”
The selected commentaries in his Haggadah come from classical and modern sources, as well as from wise friends and family. We use a variety of Haggadot at our family Seder, and because I used Departing Egypt, we started the evening by discussing the question raised by Rabbi Frimer: Why did we need to undergo slavery at all?
Although I usually pack away the Haggadot after Passover, I kept this one handy because there was still a lot I wanted to review. It’s excellent study material for Shavuot, but make sure to keep it far away from your cheesecake.
WHY, YOU’RE wondering, might I want to go back to a Passover text when it’s already Shavuot? For this, I turn to Rabbi Riskin, who, quoting Nachmanides, frames the period from Passover to Shavuot as a single holiday.
He describes this seven-week period as “the march from ‘homeland promised’ to ‘homeland achieved.’” The period of our daily counting of the Omer, based on the wheat harvest, has no meaning unless we have a land in which to grow wheat and fields in which we can keep the ethical laws, such as leaving a corner of the field for the needy.
Rabbi Riskin writes, “It is important to note that the opening festival of Passover, despite all of its pageantry and luster, is incomplete… With the conclusion of Passover, we are left with freedom from slavery but only with a promise of a homeland.”
The addition of Holocaust Remembrance Day, Remembrance Day , Independence Day, and Lag Ba’omer fits right into this holiday period, which ends with the giving of the Torah and Shavuot. Riskin’s text is peppered with delightful anecdotes from his experience as the rabbi of Lincoln Square Synagogue in Manhattan and as the chief rabbi and a founder of the now-thriving Efrat.
Rabbi “Yitz” Greenberg’s earlier book, The Jewish Way: Living the Holidays, was published 30 years ago and has been a longtime companion of mine. So far, I’ve just dipped into Triumph of Life, his late-in-life narrative theology of Judaism. It’s reputedly controversial and radical, perfect to keep me up late on Shavuot night.
How fortunate are we that these American rabbis have moved to Israel and are continuing to share the fruits of their decades of rabbinical scholarship and practice.
They also share a belief in a luminous future in Israel.
Rabbi Greenberg writes, “The creation of Israel ensured that the next era of the covenant would unfold importantly in the Land of Israel, as it had not done in two thousand years.”
Says Rabbi Riskin, “The miraculous return to Israel, our state, is not the final movement of our symphony.”
And in Rabbi Frimer’s Hagaddah, he quotes 18th-century German Talmudist Rabbi Ya’acov Emden: “When I consider the existence of our people in the exile, one sheep surrounded by seventy wolves, it is greater in my eyes than all the miracles that were done for our ancestors in Egypt, on the Red Sea, and in the Land of Israel.”
What would he say if he were alive today and saw our magnificent ‘homeland achieved’ as we have?
Chag sameach!
The writer is the Israel director of public relations at Hadassah, the Women’s Zionist Organization of America. Her latest book is A Daughter of Many Mothers.