Free at Last

Well, the year is growing to an end. And I have come to be a firm believer that somehow the parsha always relates to what we’re going through and this week is definitely no exception. But before we begin, as you all know, Madlik is a podcast and we are published on all of the popular platforms are Apple and Spotify and all of the other podcasting platforms. And I always say if you like what you hear, share it, give us a star and give us a nice comment. And last week we got an amazing comment from Hava.  Hava wrote: “Dear Rabbi Mintz Dear Mr.  Stern. I have never liked cooking and found Friday somehow stressful until I discovered Madlik. I do listen to the late Rabbi Sacks his comments and we still discuss them with great joy at the Shabbos table. I follow JTS Torah commentary and often cringe. But Fridays are now my Madlik days. Thank you so much for this inspiring podcast. Shana Tova and Shabbat Shalom”, and boy did that warm my heart. There’s a woman at my synagogue Judy, who says that she also listens to the podcast religiously, every week when she cooks for the Shabbat. And I came to the my synagogue, The Community Synagogue of Westport, TCS. And I had switched the times that I was supposed to arrive, and I was about to apologize. And the lady who was in charge of the tickets as you don’t have to apologize, I listen to the Madlik podcast. So we might Rabbi, we might not be famous, but when it counts, there are faithful people who listened to it. And that puts the pressure on us. We gotta keep it up, I guess.

Adam Mintz  02:51

Fantastic. That’s really nice. That note was so beautiful. And it’s so nice that people listen to us, and that we share a little bit of the parsha each and every week.

Geoffrey Stern  03:01

Agreed. And those of you are listening, don’t be shy, give us a little support, you know. So, as I said, we are in parshat Vayeilech. I think last week, you said it was the shortest posture. And as I said, it’s really about the end of anera. And we’ll see it’s not only the end of Moses on the passing of the baton, but it also talks about exactly the moment that we are in right now, the end of the year, and to be very precise, the end of the Shmita year, the seventh year. So that’s the tease. Let’s begin Deuteronomy 31: 7 says, Then Moses called Joshua and said to him in the sight of all Israel, be strong and resolute, חֲזַ֣ק וֶאֱמָץ֒ for it is you who shall go with this people into the land that God swore to their fathers to give them and it is you who shall apportion it to them, and it is indeed God who will go before you, God will be with you and will not fail you or forsake you. Fear not, and be not dismayed. Moses wrote down this teaching and gave it to the priests, sons of Levy, who carry the ark of God’s covenant, and to all the elders of Israel. And Moses instructed them as follows every seventh year, the year set for remission (Shmita) at the feasts of booths, (Sukkot), when all Israel comes to appear before your God in the place that God will choose, you shall read this teaching aloud in the presence of all Israel. Gather the people, men, women, children and the strangers in your communities that they may hear and so learn to revere your God and to observe faithfully every word of his teaching. Their children who have not had the experience shall hear and learn to revere your God, as long as they live in the land that you are about to cross the Jordan to possess, and have a literary point that has that {פ} in asterisks, we know this is the end of a literary segment. So as I said, we start with God telling Moses, it’s going to be Joshua, and he says “you” just a few times, and Rashi, picks up on this. And he says, there can be but one leader for a generation, and not two leaders for a generation (Sanhedrin 8a) quoting Sanhedrin. And so really, you know, we talked a few weeks ago when the Queen died, that it was God bless the Queen, Long Live the King.  You have that moment kind of here and that recognition that there cannot be more than one leader.

Adam Mintz  06:09

Good. It’s so great, because so many things that we’ve talked about revolved around the Queen dying and King Charles and you know, that was so smooth. There was nobody who said someone else should be the king, because everybody knew, right? That was the deal, that Charles was going to become the king. But when it came to Moshe, that wasn’t so clear. Nobody knew who the next leader was going to be. If anything, you would probably have guessed that it would have been Moshe’s sons, because Aaron is sons inherited the position of being the Cohen. So, you probably would have thought that Moshe sons would have inherited. The moment that it’s not Moshe’s sons, it literally is up for grabs.

Geoffrey Stern  07:02

What I’m kind of struck by reading it anew, as I do every year, is this tight weaving between on the one hand, Moses, dying and passing the leadership on to Joshua. And as I said, in the same breath, it says at the end of every seven years, the Shmitah, you should go ahead and renew you should go ahead and read publicly the Torah. And the rabbi’s and Rabbinic Judaism in general, really focus on three words here מִקֵּ֣ץ ׀ שֶׁ֣בַע שָׁנִ֗ים, the end of the seven years. So we just went through a Rosh Hashanah. And you would think that the end of the year would be on the first of Tishrei, the first day of Rosh Hashanah. And yesterday, which was the beginning of the new year would be the beginning of the new year. But in fact, it’s not quite as squeaky clean. Rashi says this means in the first year of the new Shmita year, in other words, the eighth year. So here we shall see that Yom Kippur, which comes 10 days after Rosh Hashanah, which we’re going to celebrate next week. And even beyond that. The Sukkot holiday is part of this dance between the end of the year and the beginning of a new year. It’s not quite so easy to make that transition. Am I putting too much into here or is there a question? I mean, the Ibn Ezra says  תחלת השנה, he’s saying it’s not the end of the year…. You know, how they have at the end of these wedding videos, where it says it’s not the end, it’s the beginning, we have kind of that moment here.

Adam Mintz  09:11

So the point you made is an interesting point. And that is that we actually have a ritual at the end of Shmita. That’s kind of odd, because we don’t usually have rituals at the end of holidays. Usually the rituals at the beginning, take Pesach for a minute, the ritual the Seder is at the beginning, right? It’s not the ritual is not wait till the end. But when it comes to Shmita, the ritual is at the end, which is Ha’kel. Why is that exactly? Why don’t we make the ritual at the beginning of Shmita?

Geoffrey Stern  09:46

That’s a great question. The other part of it is that you know, we do have Havdalah we make Havdalah at the end of Shabbat. So I think that might be the exception to the rule. Next week when we do Yom Kippur, we’re going to make a big deal out of Kol Nidrei. But we’re also going to make a big deal of Ne’ela. But what strikes me is that the end really encroaches on to the beginning, it almost, you know, reminds me of the custom to not make Havdalah not end the Shabbat immediately at sunset. But to have that third meal, let that melave malka spill over into the new week and stretch it out, stretch out that taste, you have a little bit of that here. Because somehow there’s this connection between not only the definitive end of Shmita, which happens on the first of the year. But then there’s ….. we’ll see in a second, Yom Kippur, which has a blast of a shofar, which becomes important for indentured servants. And then we have Sukkot which becomes important because of this Ha’kel, this gathering of all the people to hear the Toa once again, and you know, then we even call the last day of Sukkot Atzeret, which means “stop”. It’s finally an end to the end of the beginning, so to speak, but there is no question that it’s unique here, in the sense that it’s a drawn-out ending, but not simply an ending that kind of peters out or fades out in a very slow and regulated fashion. You have these peaks, you have the shofar blowing on Yom Kippur, you have this Ha’kel, this gathering reading the Torah, I think it makes it kind of interesting. And getting back to how we started about the end of Moses in the beginning of Joshua, I can’t help but make the parallel to to the end of an era in the beginning of a new one.

Adam Mintz  12:06

That got really good. I mean, and of course, this is the third to last parsha in the Torah, which is also actually the third to last chapter in the Torah. These last portions are very short. I’ll just explain that for a second. It’s a tangent, but it’s an interesting tangent, you know, last week’s portion, this week’s portion, next week’s portion, and they’re all very, very short. The reason for that is because we kind of ran out of parshas, right … there aren’t quite enough parshas for the cycle of the year. And we need to take it right Simchat Torah. So we kind of shorten the portions in the last few weeks to make sure that we lead into Simchat Torah, this is just one week. But that idea that this is the end, and it’s also the beginning and how you define the end and the beginning. And it’s the end of the Shmita. But it’s the beginning of Ha’kel and it’s the end of Moshe, but it’s the beginning of Joshua. Is it the beginning or is it the end?

Geoffrey Stern  13:08

Yup. And you know, this word, the Rabeinu Bechaya, one of the commentaries that I brings, he talks about this word Miketz. And he gives instances where it literally does mean at the end. And there were other instances where it means after the end, but he quotes the first time that the verse is used in Genesis, and it says, God said to Noah, I have decided to put an end to all flesh, קֵ֤ץ כׇּל־בָּשָׂר֙ it’s really Key’tz is the ultimate end its mortality. And you really do even in the choice of language and the references that the commentaries are making, somehow and of course, we cannot help but feel it. You know, the beautiful thing about the Jewish holidays is they are so linked to the change in season. The secular New Year is in the middle of the winter. You’d never have a Jewish holiday in the middle of something. On a daily basis, you have Shabbat come at dusk, it ends when when the sun sets, you have Passover in the spring, you have the Rosh Hashanah, at the end of the year, meaning the fall where you get that sense of mortality, you get that sense of the end of the cycle of life. Many times there were people that say that the three pilgrimage holidays the Shalosh Reaglim..  it’s almost one cycle and then you have this Rosh Hashanah which begins very not characteristically of do Which holidays on the first day of the month, as opposed to the middle of the month when the moon is bright. I think that somehow the Torah is actually mixing the two together in a very nuanced and a beautiful way. And you kind of make the transition from the first of Tishrei to Sukkot, which is one of those pilgrimage festivals. I just feel it for the first time reading these verses.

Adam Mintz  15:31

That’s good. What do you make about the fact that Joshua pops up here again, even though we haven’t heard from him in a long time?

Geoffrey Stern  15:40

Well, I mean, I do think, again, the emphasis is not on Joshua. But I think he almost becomes a foil. Joshua is the next one. And if anything, the Bible is emphasizing more the “you” in Joshua, we all have commented before that Deuteronomy is written in a different voice. But as Rashi picks up on it says, twice, you shall apportion it to them, You shall go with them. It’s you, I think, to exclude Moses, it really is the fall, the winter of Moses’, his life. And it’s all about transition here, which I find so, so fascinating.

Adam Mintz  16:32

And how kale is true, is transition, because that’s how you transition back to the six normal years.

Geoffrey Stern  16:39

I think so. And you know, the last verse, In this literary piece that we read, is the ultimate transition. Not only do you gather the people, the men and the children, but their children too, who have not had the experience shall hear and learn to deliver your God, as long as they live in the land. This is talking into the future as well. It’s a kind of a gift of this transition. But it definitely seems to me to be a very profound sense of transitioning from generation to generation, from time, from life to death to life again, all at the same time in the midst of seven odd verses.

Adam Mintz  17:27

I think that’s right. I think that’s great. I mean, in this little chapter you have you have all about transition. And let’s just talk for a minute. What do you think it was like for Moshe, this transition? I mean, this is an unfulfilled dream promotion, for us to say transition. What about if you’re the one who doesn’t go into the the promised land?

Geoffrey Stern  17:50

Yeah. And of course, we’ve, we’ve discussed this before, you know, we quote Perkei Avot that says, It’s not yours to finish לֹא עָלֶיךָ הַמְּלָאכָה לִגְמֹר, and all of that good stuff, no question. It is something that is a bittersweet moment for him. And I say bittersweet, because a successful leader creates a new generation of leadership. And that has to be satisfying to him, it has to be satisfying to him, that the God that, worked with him was going to work with the generation ahead. So I do think if anything, comes through in these verses, its ambiguity. There’s, gotta be this sense of continuity, and there’s got to be this sense of disruption of happiness and sadness, sweetness, and in bitterness.

Adam Mintz  18:50

I mean, I think that’s right. And I think that that’s really a nice way to look at it from your perspective, to say that this is a transition and at least if I’m not going to do it, but the guy who’s doing it is a good guy, right? Is someone who like trust.

Geoffrey Stern  19:10

Yep. So what I’d like to do is to get a little more tactile and really get a sense of what we’re talking about what happened. So, the Mishnah in a Sotah describes that what happened was on the first day of Tabernacles, of the eighth year, after the seven-year sabbatical, immediately after the closing of the seventh, a wooden stand would be erected in his sanctuary, where upon the king would sit, and the officer of the congregation would take a holy scroll, we’re talking about a scroll. Now we’re not talking about tablets. You know, we talked when we started Deuteronomy, that it was this scroll of Deuteronomy that was taken and discovered in one of the times that the Temple was not destroyed, but in Ill repair and found, and it gives this amazing, amazing talk about bit of sweet story about a certain King Agrippa, who was, I believe King Herod’s grandson. And even King Herod wasn’t totally Jewish. So it says, King Agrippa was accustomed to accept it while standing, and he would also read it while standing. And the rabbi’s praised him for this act. And when he would reach the passage and Deuteronomy 17: 15, thou mayest not set over thee a stranger, who is not thy brother, tears would roll down from his eyes. The Rabbi’s then said Do not be afraid king Agrippa, thou art our brother, thou art our brother, then he would read from the beginning of Deuteronomy up until chapter six. So you even have this bittersweet moment of the king of that moment, who was a good king, you can look him up on Wikipedia, fascinating story, a good friend of Caligula, but he did good by the Jews. And you have this moment of looking in the mirror when you read the ancient texts, and you get to evaluate how you stand up to it. But this literally would be happening in the next few weeks. We are literally at the end of the seven-year cycle. There were fields that are in Israel that have not been plowed or tended to for this past year. And now in this eighth year, we would be having this amazing ceremony. So it really brings the moment of the Jewish calendar that we’re in right now to a whole new light, I think

Adam Mintz  21:56

it’s great. I mean, you know, it’s by chance that we read this portion now, because of course, the idea that we have some has to really finish the Torah on, you know, this time of year is only …. there were two traditions there was an annual cycle. We finished it every year, and there was a triennial cycle. We finished it once every three years. In Israel, they had a triennial cycle. So they were they didn’t get to this until once every three years. But the fact that now that we have that this week and this transition, because it doesn’t talk about Yom Kippur, but let’s just let’s just segue to Yom Kippur for a minute. If you want to know what the theme of Yom Kippur is, in a lot of ways it is transition, you know, just to share a little thought, and that is on Yom Kippur, we say Yizkor. That’s a funny thing to say on Yom Kippur, you know, Yom Kippur is all about us, right? We ask for forgiveness. And us and us and us and we say we’re sorry, and all that kind of stuff. Now, all of a sudden, we then we have Yizkur right in the middle. And the rabbis say that, you know, in the Torah, the day is not called, Yom Kippur, in the Torah, the day is called Yom Hakipurim in the plural, it says it’s a day of forgiveness for the living. And for those who have died already, in a way, Yom Kippur is a transition. We’re supposed to take everything we learned from our parents, and we’re supposed to transmit it to our generation, and to the next generation. And of course, like you said, transition is complicated, and transition is hard. And we don’t know what you know, we don’t know what we’re supposed to transmit and what we transmit, we don’t know if we’re doing such a good job. So, transmission is hard, but transmission is the real thing. So I think that also is very relevant to what we’re doing now.

Geoffrey Stern  23:36

Well, I love that you you bought in Yom Kippur, because that’s exactly my next source. There’s the seven year cycle. And then there’s the seven times seven-year cycle, which is the Jubilee the Yoval. And it says on the Jubilee years, on the 10th of Tishrei, it says, Thou shalt you cause the shofar to sound on the 10th day of the seventh month on Yom Kippur shall you sound the shofar, and the Gomorrah asks in accordance with whose opinion is this. It is the opinion of the Mishna teaches: The first of Tishrei is also the New Year for Jubilee Years. The Gemara answers: In accordance with whose opinion is this Mishna? It is the opinion of Rabbi Yishmael, son of Rabbi Yoḥanan ben Beroka, as it is taught in a Baraita: What is the meaning when the verse states: “And you shall hallow the fiftieth year”? Since it is stated that the shofar is blown “on Yom Kippur,” one might have thought that the year is sanctified only from Yom Kippur and onward. Therefore, the verse states: “And you shall hallow the fiftieth year,” which teaches that the year is sanctified from its beginning onward, from the first of Tishrei, when the year begins.  Again from the first of Tishrei we have this ambiguity ambivalence between the first or the last but here’s what’s fascinating. From here, Rabbi Yishmael, son of Rabbi Yoḥanan ben Beroka, said: From Rosh Hashanah until Yom Kippur of the Jubilee Year, Hebrew slaves were not released to their homes because the shofar had not yet been sounded. And they were also not enslaved to their masters, as the Jubilee Year had already begun.  Rather, they would eat, drink, and rejoice, and they would wear their crowns on their heads like free people. Once Yom Kippur arrived, the court would sound the shofar, slaves would be released to their houses, and fields that were sold would be returned to their original owners. So we have one verse that’s says that the indentured servants go free on the first of Tishrei. But on the other hand, it says that you shall blow the shofar and shout freedom, the words that we have on the Liberty Bell. So it says and they were also not enslaved to their masters. So, you have these indentured slaves who neither here nor there. They are no longer slaves, yet they are not yet free. Rather, they would eat, drink and rejoice, and they would wear their crowns on their heads like free people for the whole 10 days. We call it the Aseret y’may teshuvah (The Ten Days of Repentance) the indentured servants were feasting, and drinking and rejoicing. Once Yom Kippur arrived, the court would sound the shofar, slaves would be released to their houses and fields that they were sold would be returned to their original owner. So really, you know, you talk about what Yom Kippur what the 10 days of repentance mean to us, this image of slaves going through the transition, the process of becoming free. My take away is that as we get rid of our sins, what we’re really doing is possibly getting rid of our dependencies, getting rid of those things that do enslave us, and that shofar that blows we’re all in a sense, kind of indentured servants who are being freed. But it really fits into the narrative of those people that rejoice us at the end of Yom Kippur that this is the most happiest day of the year. It really resonates to me.

Adam Mintz  26:44

You know, it’s such a striking Gemora because it really gives you the sense that you’re in prison between Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur. מֵרֹאשׁ הַשָּׁנָה עַד יוֹם הַכִּפּוּרִים לֹא הָיוּ עֲבָדִים נִפְטָרִין לְבָתֵּיהֶן וְלֹא מִשְׁתַּעְבְּדִין לַאֲדוֹנֵיהֶם אֶלָּא אוֹכְלִין וְשׁוֹתִין וּשְׂמֵחִין וְעַטְרוֹתֵיהֶן בְּרָאשֵׁיהֶן כֵּיוָן שֶׁהִגִּיעַ יוֹם הַכִּפּוּרִים תָּקְעוּ בֵּית דִּין בְּשׁוֹפָר נִפְטְרוּ עֲבָדִים לְבָתֵּיהֶן וְשָׂדוֹת חוֹזְרוֹת לְבַעְלֵיהֶן means they prepared for Yom Kippur. But they weren’t free yet? Isn’t that a weird thing? They celebrated the fact that they knew that they were going to be free.

Geoffrey Stern  27:20

Yeah, yeah… You know, you talk about different models, different metaphors, different ways of looking at what we’re doing now. And I think to look at it from the perspective of these engendered slaves servants, both from their eyes from their masters eyes is this becomes fascinating, and I could not but help notice that the word for them becoming free is נִפְטְרוּ…. It’s the same word that we talk about when somebody passes away, that he’s niftar. And I talked about this in an earlier segment when we talked about this concept of צְרוּרָ֣ה ׀ בִּצְר֣וֹר הַחַיִּ֗ים and I have to say that tonight’s learning is dedicated to a cousin of mine, a pillar of the Jewish community Sandy Gottesman, who passed away last night. And I think and this is so his Neshama can have an aliyah, but it’s also very similar in you can help us with this rabbi, that the time period between when somebody dies, to when they are buried to the Shiva, it’s all these transitions. And this the word for niftar, which can be will released if you’re a if you’re an indentured servant, but also released from the shackles the boundaries of the physical is is fascinating to me.

Adam Mintz  28:54

It’s fascinating. First of all, let me just say that, you know that we’re sorry about Sandy. Sometimes you say someone lived an amazing life. And you know, he, he valued every second of that life, and he made a difference every second of that life. And that’s a nice thing to say about somebody something that you know, you don’t say that about everybody. So we remember him as someone who made an unbelievable difference right? In the Jewish world in the New York World in the Israel world. He just made a tremendous difference. And you know, niftar, he is released to the world to come. Everything’s about transition. We go from being Onanim, where we don’t daven, we don’t put on tefillin, to being mourners where we put on tefillin. But we sit on the floor, then at the end of Shiva, the best transition ever. We walk around the block, and why do we walk around the block because it’s hard to go out after Shiva. Shiva is very comforting and when people come to visit you, you don’t have to go anywhere. It’s hard to go out. So they force you to go outside because that’s part of the transition. And I think that’s right. It’s all about transition. This is a week of transition. And the Torah Portion really says in the Torah portion, I think the Torah Portion better than any of these things highlight the fact that transitions are complicated. And I think that’s really what you’re supposed to remember around Yom Kippur is the transitions are really complicated.

Geoffrey Stern  30:21

Yeah, absolutely. And you know, I can’t think of these released slaves without also thinking. And we’ve talked about this verse before, about the slave who decides he wants to stay with his master. And the custom is that he gets taken to the doorpost, and his ear is pierced with an awl. And the Talmud in Kedushin says, The Holy One, bless it be he said, this ear heard my voice on Mount Sinai when I said, For to me the children of Israel are slaves, which indicates that they should not be slaves to slaves, כי לי בני ישראל עבדים ולא עבדים לעבדים. And yet this man went and willingly acquired a master for himself, therefore let his ear be pierced. So as we watch these slaves, and maybe as we put ourselves into the shoes of these slaves, even though we’re not talking about Passover, but this radical sense of freedom when you through the process of Rosh Hashanah, Yom Kippur, Hakel, Sukkot, the end of Shmita, realize that you are not a slave to any other slave when you get rid of all those dependencies. That is true, true freedom. It’s so amazing to me that I’m the Liberty Bell is exactly this word that you shall ring freedom throughout the land. You know, as Americans, we can really get this too. But of course, we have to remember that it wasn’t a bell. It was a shofar, and that’s what I’ll be thinking of on on Yom Kippur

Adam Mintz  32:05

And of course that’s why we blow shofar at the end of Yom Kippur not because of the shofar of Rosh HaShana, but because of the shofar of Yovel; of that transition from one thing to the next. So that really is the perfect conclusion to this whole discussion. And we wish everybody Shabbat Shalom, you should have a meaningful and an easy fast. And next week we look forward Thursday night, we will talk about Ha’Azinu, the last poem in the Torah. Shabbat Shalom, Gamar Hatima Tova,  an easy fast everybody. Be well.

Geoffrey Stern  32:36

Same to you Rabbi same to all you listeners. Gamar hatima Tovah…. a sweet, healthy, prosperous year. Let us all make all the transitions that we have to and we’ll see you all again next week. Shabbat shalom.