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YIDDISH CONCERT
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2:00 p.m. Sunday, August 5, 1990
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48

FRIDAY, JULY 27, 1990

prophets' alert hearts could
see through.
The destruction of the Tem-
ple, and the consequent exile,
are probably the most trau-
matic events in the long his-
tory of the Jewish people.
Therefore, the message of
Isaiah's searing words, al-
though addressing the moral
gaps of his own age, is an eter-
nal message for the Jewish
people in their attempts to
understand why the Temple,
the seat of ritual and holy
commandments given by God
Himself, could ever be
destroyed.
One reason ritual gets the
brunt of the prophet's anger
can be traced to Tractate
Yoma, 85b, where we read
how the Day of Forgiveness,
suffering and ultimately
death serve as penance for
ritual sins between man and
God. But ethical sins — those
between man and man — can
only be forgiven by the in-
jured party himself.
This explains why the pro-
phet concentrates his rage on
that part of human experi-
ence which God allows the
human to hammer out on his
own. Lapses in ritual violate
Torah law . . . but atonement
always arrives because no-
body gets out of this world
alive. Lapses in the ethical
realm are therefore the most
difficult for which to find
atonement.
Thus the inevitable ques-
tion: which is more important
to Judaism — ethics or ritu-
als? And if we look at the
destruction of the Temple
recalled on this Tuesday's
fast, we are forced to conclude
that ritual observance not ac-
companied by ethical con-
cerns is termed by God the
ultimate "abomination."
This is not hyperbole. The
Temple was not destroyed
because people were cheap
with their sacrifices, but
because they were cheap with
their charities. With so much
emphasis on the ritualistic
aspect of religion, it would
seem that God was saying to
the Jewish people, "Since
you're so caught up in ritual,
I will destroy your blood fac-
tory, the temple in
Jerusalem." And history has
proven that without a Temple,
the Jewish people could sur-
vive, but without ethics, the
Temple was destroyed.
Of course, we need ritual in
every aspect of our lives. The
nuances of ritual are the
grammatical rules of the lan-
guage with which man com-
municates with God. Rituals
give a people its identity in
the world, its colors and
sounds and haunting mel-
odies. Rituals give a people an
ethnic identity apart, em-

phasizing unique eating
habits as well as unique
celebrations and holy days.
Indeed, without ritual, the
Jews would blend into the
landscape and disappear.

But an examination of ri-
tual under our lens of moral
potential cannot deny the
first layer of ritual's existen-
tial nature, and all too often
that's where the ritual lies
and dies. Sometimes, in the
hands of ethically absent peo-
ple, the ritual may even be
perceived as a means of "brib-
ing" God.
In a perfect world every
ritual would also breathe and
live in an ethical dimension;
and in the rituals of the Holy
Temple, where blood poured
in vast amounts, the ethical
awareness should have

Davarim
Shabbat Chazon:
Deuteronomy
1:1-3:22,
Isaiah 1:1-27.

reached its zenith. But as the
haftara this week attests, the
schism between the ritual
and the ethical became too
vast, impossible to bridge,
and therefore it all had to be
destroyed.
When the question was
raised of keeping the fast days
that were instituted after the
destruction of the Temple or
abandoning them because of
the obvious fact that the Se-
cond Temple had been rebuilt,
we hear God's answer in the
words of the prophet: ".
When you fasted and mourn-
ed, in the fifth month and the
seventh, for these seventy
years, was it for me you
fasted?"
God doesn't need our fast
days, nor does He need our
sacrifices. It's we who need
them. And that's why the
danger or turning a fast day
as important as Tisha B'Av
into an empty ritual is
precisely the worst thing to do
on this day, since empty
rituals were the very cause of
the Temple's destruction.
True penance for the sins of
the Temple begins when we
start approaching ritual with
an awareness of going beyond
the primitive stage of manip-
ulating God as if He were
some dictator in the sky who
has to be bribed with fasts
and feasts. Our job is to take
ritual into the next dimen-
sion.
What will bring us back the
Holy Temple? Isaiah is clear:
"Zion shall be redeemed with
justice, and those that return
to her with righteousness." ❑

