מסיני לאתיופיה, הקדמה, ערוץ לעבודת ה'From Sinai to Ethiopia, Introduction, Finding My Way to Worshipping God
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1Finding My Way to Worshipping God
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2On one of my first days at Har Etzion Yeshiva, a hesder yeshiva combining Talmud studies and army service, I approached the two yeshiva directors with a serious question. Why were the Ethiopian Jews required to immerse themselves in a mikveh?11Immersion in a ritual bath or mikveh is one element in the process of conversion to Judaism. Requiring Ethiopian Jews to immerse implies that something is amiss in their status as Jews. My teacher, Rabbi Yehuda Amital, did not try to win me over with intricate and convoluted halakhic justifications. Rabbi Amital was not surprised by my question, but I was startled by his answer. “If someone comes to me tomorrow and expresses an interest in you for a shidduch, I don’t want to have to hesitate when recommending you for a match. People here ask questions, and we want you to be an inseparable part of the student body in the beit midrash.” I thought this was an honest answer.
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3The obligation of immersion le-humrah, on the strict side of halakhah, for the Ethiopian community led to a deep rift in relations between the community and the state. In fact, to this day a holistic solution to this problem has yet to be found, and the community considers it the elephant in the room. My teachers, the two rabbinic directors of Har Etzion Yeshiva, required every immigrant of Ethiopian Jewish origin to immerse himself as a prerequisite for admission to the yeshiva. Personally, I did not have to perform this act when I entered the yeshiva, as I had immersed myself on arrival in Israel. Eventually, I did have the merit to feel an inseparable part of the student body in the beit midrash, as Rabbi Amital described.
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4Rabbi Lichtenstein gave a more technical and nuanced explanation based on halakhic foundations for why we should immerse, and his explanation was given with great respect and humility. To my estimation, many communication problems between people arise not because of what is said, but because of how it is said. Both yeshiva directors, each in his own way, were attentive to the “how,” giving me the feeling that they recognized that standing before them was a Jew who needed sympathy and tolerance. Indeed, their words fell on attentive ears.
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5As is said when entering a beit midrash to study, “I thank God for placing me among the students in the beit midrash, and for not placing me among the idlers.”12Babylonian Talmud, Berakhot 28b. I thank God for granting me the privilege to study and to practice the mitzvot, and to become a full-fledged student in the beit midrash. I was able to grow and acquire an education in the epicenter of religious Zionism. I studied halakhic decision making for many years in a yeshiva that was built on the basis of the Lithuanian yeshiva ideal, and I was ordained as a rabbi by the Chief Rabbinate of Israel. I thus assumed that I should follow in one of the normative paths, either Ashkenazic or Sephardic. However, I thought that opting for the Ashkenazic tradition would be “obeying the letter but not the spirit of the law,” because I was told upon making aliyah that I was considered to be Sephardic. But opting for the Sephardic approach was also problematic. Although in practice I did take upon myself Sephardic customs, this choice did not stem from self-awareness, but rather from a technical reason. In all the institutions in which I had studied at the outset of my educational path, and in my neighborhood, almost everyone came from a Sephardic background. Yet I felt that this was not my path to serving God, and that it did not fit my spiritual world or my soul.
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6At some point when I was in the hesder yeshiva, I began to feel a pull toward the Ashkenazic hassidic world. The Yiddishkeit appealed to me: sitting around the Shabbat table with friends at a tisch eating kugel and singing the melodies. But in truth, I felt that I could not fully adopt for myself even this spiritual world. For years I defined myself as having two sides – one side was Sephardic halakhah, the other was Ashkenazic soul. Then two things happened that transformed this worldview significantly.
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7The change took place during my studies at Beit Morasha of Jerusalem and in the Department of Talmud at Bar-Ilan University. A number of factors led me to reexamine how I served God. At one opportunity, I asked my teacher, Rabbi Dr. Yehuda Brandes, director of the beit midrash in Beit Morasha, whether I should follow Sephardic tradition, despite the fact that many of its halakhot did not fit the halakhic phenomenology of traditional Ethiopian Jewry. Rabbi Brandes’s reply surprised me. I expected him to give me a standard answer – “You should follow either Sephardic tradition or Ashkenazic tradition, but you must never grasp the rope from both ends,” as in the statement “Be either like the House of Shammai in their leniencies and stringencies, or like the House of Hillel in their leniencies and stringencies.”13Yalkut Shimoni, Ecclesiastes 2. I was astonished when he answered, “Who said you have to follow Sephardic or Ashkenazic tradition? You can be a Jew who follows the Shulhan Arukh standard code of law.” I said that I feared I would be following the letter but not the spirit of the law, and he replied, “I have faith that you truly want to serve God. You cannot be following only the letter but not the spirit of the law. Either your priority is the way of Torah, or you are immoral.”
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8Rabbi Brandes’s reply expanded my horizon and opened up new space for my service of God: serving God not through awe alone, and not through fear, as if I were walking a tightrope. All at once, I felt an easing. I felt that serving God was not a burden or an encumbrance. There was a way to pave a unique path to serving God that reflected my complex inner world.
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9A second encounter cemented my new spiritual framework. While writing my master’s degree thesis, under the professional and compassionate advisorship of Rabbi Dr. Daniel Sperber of the Department of Talmud at Bar-Ilan, I was exposed to a new interpretation. Up to that point, I had thought that the “red line” for an Orthodox Jew was the Shulhan Arukh. In other words, following the decisions of the Shulhan Arukh was a clear sign of what I call a “Talmudic Jew,” one who observes the mitzvot, while one who questioned its authority removed himself from the ranks of Talmudic Jewry. Professor Sperber answered me, “Why do you think that? The Yemenite community has always followed the Rambam in its halakhic decisions, and not the Shulhan Arukh. Yet the Yemenite Jews have been accepted without a shadow of a doubt into the realm of Talmudic Judaism. Although at the outset, major rabbis did not agree with their method, over the years their customs and traditions have earned approval and have even become assets. Today, no one would question that this group belongs to Talmudic Judaism.”
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10“If so,” I asked Rabbi Dr. Sperber, “what should I learn from this?”
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11“Who says that the red line is the Shulhan Arukh?” he responded.
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12“So what do you think is Judaism’s ‘red line’?”
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13“The Talmud,” he answered, “because the Talmud is accepted by the entire Jewish people. We have reason to think that the Talmud should become the red line.”
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14This surprised me even more. Then I understood the breadth of the space that had opened before me. Paradoxically, the replies of Rabbi Brandes and Rabbi Sperber were not foreign to me at all. On the contrary, I felt that they offered me an answer to an inner vacuum, and quenched my thirst. “My soul thirsts for God, for the living God; when shall I come and appear before God?”14Psalms 42:3. Now! Suddenly I felt that I had the tools, the way, and the personal pace with which to meet my God.
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15When I first thought about writing this book, naturally I consulted with Rabbi Dr. Sperber. He gave me his support and encouragement to pursue the process of recording and preserving the traditions of the Ethiopian community. He even directed me on how to proceed. After writing the first draft, I showed it to him. Professor Sperber emphasized the particular customs of the community, and based on this, he supported the radical halakhic decisions in my project. On the other hand, he did not hesitate to warn me of points that he felt might be damaging to the community.
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16When I began to write this book, I contacted Rabbi Shabtai Rappaport, head of the Beit Midrash of the Jesselson Institute for Advanced Torah Studies at Bar-Ilan University. I received his blessings, and throughout the writing process, he guided me in a pleasant and professional manner, offering cheerful encouragement and broad knowledge on a variety of topics. My conversations with him contributed greatly to this composition.
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17When I finished writing, I sent the draft to Rabbi Yehuda Brandes. I asked him to read the work, and I anxiously awaited his comments. His comments were edifying and very practical. Rabbi Yehuda represents those talmidei chachamim who are expert in halakhah but maintain a deep connection to the present reality. Finally, Rabbi Yehuda advised, “This is a very important work. Its importance cannot be underestimated. It must be published and publicized.”
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18Personal need along with the support of my rabbis for this step provided the impetus for this work, From Sinai to Ethiopia: The Halakhic and Conceptual World of the Ethiopian Jews. I have no doubt that many members of the Ethiopian community will find it meaningful. I am certain that every Jew will find it valuable; some may even find it a path toward serving God.
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19May we be privileged to learn and to teach, to observe, perform, and fulfill the will of the Holy One, blessed be He, as we say, “Cleanse our hearts, that we may serve you in truth.”15From the Amidah prayer for Shabbat and festivals.
