OzTorah

Sukkot and Pesach are the fragrant festivals.

The scent of the sukkah is only paralleled by that of the Seder. On both occasions you can smell that it’s yom-tov.

Sukkot is even superior to Pesach, because day and night for seven days it is possible to enjoy the aroma of the sukkah whilst the Seder, for all its magnificence, is only two nights a year.

Both, however, help to make Judaism a religion that not only inspires the heart and stretches the mind but gladdens the body.

As sources of fragrance they are joined by additional aspects of Judaism.

The Temple in ancient Jerusalem had its incense and other means of producing a sweet smell.

Every Shabbat and festival the Jewish home is redolent of culinary delights. At the end of Shabbat the Havdalah provides a last opportunity until next week to savour the sweetness of the day of rest.

(On a more mundane level, it is said that a yeshiva class in London was once studying the laws of the b’rachot when one student asked the teacher, “What blessing do I say if I smell a rat?” and the class was summarily dismissed.)

Mount Moriah is so called, according to one view, because it was the mountain of mor – the spice myrrh (see Rashi on Gen. 22:2).

The Psalmist prays that his prayer may be set before God as sweet-smelling incense (Psalm 141:2).

The Midrash says that at each word that God spoke on Sinai, spices filled the world.

The question was asked, “Why is Shabbat food so delicious?” and the answer was given, “Because of a spice called Shabbat”. Every good deed creates extra fragrance in the world.

All this displays the Jewish value system.

What really matters are prayer, Torah learning, Shabbat and good deeds ­ not only because they are commanded, because they are good in themselves, because they are marks of Jewish identity, but because they make the world a more pleasant place.

It’s good that the four plants used on Sukkot are not human.

If they were, they would argue about their precedence and pecking order. They wouldn’t want to sit together or be photographed in each other’s company.

All told they would have a hard job even pretending to be part of the one community.

But since they’re not human we have to presume no lulav has even objected to being bound together with its hadassim and aravot and being held with the etrog.

Human beings find this much more difficult.

It is probably no worse among Jews than among other groups. But Jews have a great ethical tradition and should heed what the Chafetz Chayyim said: “I am grieved that there is dissension and division among Jews. It is a terrible sin -­ a profanation of the name of God.

“The Talmud states that Rabbi Akiva lost 24,000 students during a plague because, as our rabbis stated, ‘The students did not behave with respect towards each other’. Therefore please have compassion upon yourselves and every Jew in the community, and try to establish peace.

“In this way we will extinguish a fire that could engulf us all.”

This does not mean that anyone is forced to agree with anyone else when issues of conscience divide them. But just as there are four plants on Sukkot, so there should be four principles of harmony:
1. Disagreement should be with civility and derech eretz.

2. What to disagree about should be issues, not personal prestige and precedence.

3. Areas of agreement should be acknowledged and celebrated.

4. Jewish disagreements should not be carried into the general community.

Using an idea from a story by Edmond Fleg, the French Jewish writer, let’s talk about the man who says he only fasts on Yom Kippur out of respect for his father’s memory.

Does he keep kosher out of respect for his father? Or observe Shabbat? The answer is no. But he still fasts on Yom Kippur. Not because he himself believes in God, but because his father did.

We might ask, Why does he respect his father? Because that’s what Jews do.

Why do Jews respect their parents? In the end it’s because that’s what the Ten Commandments say.

Why bother with the Ten Commandments? It can’t be because the man who fasts believes in God. He is adamant that he doesn’t.

But the bottom line is that since he still – despite not observing kashrut or Shabbat – lives by quite a lot of what God says in the commandments, we have to say ever so gently, “Sorry, my friend, but it seems that you do believe in God after all!”

Rav Kook, that great guide to Jewish spirituality, said that there really aren’t any Jewish atheists at all. No-one is completely without spiritual moments. No-one is devoid of religious feelings.

Maybe they don’t use the word God, but whatever they call it, they have a sense of the ultimate.

Rav Kook would say, “Sorry, my friend, but it seems you do believe in God after all!”

Rav Kook said something else that is very interesting. He said that the person who claims to deny God is to be commended for intellectual honesty. Such a person is clearly in search of truth, and they reject versions of purported truth that they find unsupportable. In the final analysis, theirs is a religious quest.

There is no-one who has rejected God, according to the Rav Kook line. They would like to believe in God; give them time, and the day will come when they will find truth and be able to call it God.

Despite Moses’ complaint that he was not a man of words (Ex. 4:10), we are a people who are good with words.

Joseph Breuer (“A Time to Build”, II, 1981) says, “The Jewish people has taught the world the sanctity of the spoken word. Its very existence is built on the sanctity of the word” (page 59).

Yet there we are on Kol Nidrei night, apparently cancelling out the words we have spoken and declaring that our vows are no vows and our oaths no oaths.

Many rabbinic authorities challenged Kol Nidrei and, for different and less honourable reasons, the antisemites attacked the passage on the grounds that it showed one could not trust the word of a Jew. Yet the Jewish people have stubbornly held on to Kol Nidre and would feel lost without it.

Cynics suggest that it is not the content but the melody which people love (one sceptic said that if a cantor sang the melody of Kol Nidrei to the words of “Three Blind Mice”, his congregation would not know the difference and would still cry on cue).

Taking a more charitable view of one’s fellow Jews, one still has to ask what the attraction of Kol Nidrei really is.

Halachic authorities always said it was better not to make vows than to find a vow embarrassing and seek to cancel it. They quoted Kohelet, “If you vow a vow, defer not to fulfill it” (Eccl. 5:4), and even earlier the words of the Torah, “The utterance of your mouth you shall observe and do” (Deut. 23:24).

Nonetheless there are times when, under the influence of emotion, we make grandiloquent promises to God or ourselves and then realise we have undertaken too much. For us Kol Nidrei says, “God, the overwhelming emotion of Yom Kippur may take hold of my tongue. Please forgive me if I promise something I cannot fulfil. Protect me even from words of love for You if there is a possibility that when it comes to it I may be unable to love You as much as I yearn to”.

The Mishnah of course makes it clear that Kol Nidrei does not affect promises made to other human beings but only to God or oneself. Promises to other people must be fulfilled scrupulously, and if this becomes impossible the other person must be asked to release the promise.

Q. Why do we kneel on Yom Kippur?

A. Kneeling was common in Biblical times and it played a dramatic role in the Temple on Yom Kippur when the kohanim and the people heard the name of God.

We colourfully re-enact the account of the Temple ritual, accompanied by our kneeling and prostrating ourselves.

In many congregations we also kneel during Musaf on Rosh HaShanah and Yom Kippur when Alenu is recited; by kneeling we are defiantly proclaiming, “No-one will prevent us from acclaiming the true God”.

In many places paper is placed on the floor before worshippers kneel in order to avert any suspicion that we are bowing down to stone (Lev. 26:1).