Shemini Atzeret
Rabbi Eric Rosin
Temple Beth-El, Richmond, Virginia
October 18, 2003

Okay, now that the holidays are over and we've all said our ashamnu's and our bagadnu's, I have one more public confession to make. By my count, and I have to go over my calendar for the last year to verify this, right now, as I stand before you on this bima, I owe three wedding gifts and one bat mitzvah gift. This is not something I'm proud of, but the first step to recovery is admitting that I have a problem, and I've got a real problem giving gifts, especially wedding gifts, on time.

Part of my problem is simply with time management. I never seem to set the time aside to visit the kinds of places where one buys wedding presents. When I take a few minutes in the afternoon to run to a store, it is much more likely to be to a place where I can buy a piece of salmon for dinner than to be a place where I can buy a crystal serving dish in the shape of sombrero. Even when I lived in Los Angeles, I strategized my occasionally unavoidable trips to the mall so that I could get in, visit the store I needed to patronize, and get out all within fifteen minutes. What can I say? I suffer from severe retail deficiency.

But another part of my problem is philosophical. My thinking has certainly evolved as I have watched most of my friends get married, but I still haven't completely resolved the age old question: Do I get something for my friends off of their registry, or do I get them something unique that will remind them of me and of our relationship? There is a lot to be said for each. I want to be considerate to the couple, but on the other hand, I also want them to think of me when they see the gift that I brought. It might be the most useful thing in the world, but I don't really want to build up a mental association in the minds of my friends between their relationship with me and the very useful but not terribly emotionally charged colander from Crate and Barrel that found its way on to the bottom of page three of the registry that I can now pick up at the new Short Pump mall.

When I graduated from college and gallivanted around the country responding to the first rash of wedding invitations, I really thought that every gift should be a heartfelt expression of my feelings towards the couple. Now, I'm not so sure. I've seen the mismatched Judaica in the homes of all of my colleagues, each piece of which represents the love of someone who attended their wedding, and which, taken as a collection, makes each of their homes look like a very nice synagogue gift shop. I've seen the break fronts and cabinets that other friends have needed to purchase simply to house the serving platters and candy dishes that they received from the people whom they love, and which they take out of those cabinets two or three times each year when they entertain the guests who merit more than the everyday china.

So now, I lean towards buying off of the registry unless I find what I think is the perfect gift. I now look at the registry as part of a larger question. Of course I want to purchase a generous and thoughtful wedding gift for each couple, but in order to do so I first have to decide for myself how to define the concept of generosity. Is generosity simply a matter of the amount of money that I spend? Is it about expressing myself and showing that I have put thought into the gift? Is it about imposing my presence on my friends with some token that is meant to remind my friends of their relationship with me? Or is generosity really about trying to provide my friends with what they really need?

It's nice when you can accomplish more than one of these goals at once, but if I have to pick one, I now elect to think about what my friends need. Luckily, most of them have thoughtfully provided me with lists of what they need by publishing their registries.

I still haven't overcome my aversion to marking the sanctity of marriage with the purchase of a colander, a drying rack or a kitchen wastebasket, even when they are on the registry, but I have come to realize that even the place settings and gravy boats that probably will not remind my friends of everything that we have shared in the past, will help them to establish a home and to fill that home with food and with guests and with the knowledge that they can concentrate on their marriages and not on acquiring all of the material things that will make their houses into their shared homes.

Believe it not, I think that the Torah portion that we read today, on Shemini Atzeret shows that God has gone through a variation of the same thought process. Not that I am projecting my own problem with punctually giving wedding gifts onto the Almighty, but it seems to me that the rabbis help us to understand this ambiguous holiday by inviting us to ruminate on the real nature of generosity and of God's generosity to us.

Let me be clear. When I say Shemini Atzeret is an ambiguous holiday, what I mean to say is that I have no idea what we're supposed to be celebrating today, and that's after doing a quite a bit of reading. The word "Shemini" means "eighth" and the word "Atzeret" means "assembly," but it is somehow related to the word "atzar" which means "stop," or "refrain," or, as one source said, "to tarry". Nevertheless, even though the "eighth" in the name of the holiday refers to the days of Sukkot, (this is the eighth day after the beginning of Sukkot,) there is some debate about whether Shemini Atzeret is part of Sukkot or whether it is a separate holiday. There are some sources describe it as part of the holiday, and others describe it as separate. The rabbis in the Talmud resolve this debate, concluding that today is, in fact, a separate holiday. This conclusion is supported by the fact that all of the additions to our prayer book for Shemini Atzeret are separate and distinct from the inclusions for Sukkot.

Now that we have that established that today is a holiday in its own right, we still don't know what it is that we're celebrating. But this morning's Torah portion does help us to get closer to the answer. The Torah portion this morning examines the spiritual value of giving away property and property rights. It lists mitzvot that include offering sacrifices to the Temple, supporting the Levites with gifts and sacrifices, giving charity to the poor, forgiving debts and freeing slaves. It's a fascinating parsha and much of Jewish social ethics can be learned from a careful reading and a close study, but I want to focus on parts of two verses: Lo ta'ametz et l'vavcha v'lo tikpotz et yedecha mei'achicha ha'evyon, ki potach tiftach et yedcha lo v'ha'ahveit ta'ahvitehnu di machsoro asher lehchsar lo. . . . do not harden your heart and shut your hand against your needy kinsman. Rather, you must open your hand and lend him sufficient [funds] for whatever he needs. (Dev 15: 7-8)

These two verses are fascinating. First of all, they direct us to lend and not to simply give to our brothers. Of course, there is a practical difference between lending and giving, and that is that the recipient of a loan is obligated to pay the loan back. But there is also a qualitative difference in the relationship between the two parties to a loan and the two parties to a gift; after a gift, the relationship between the parties may be strengthened or it may end. The two parties don't really have anything tangible keeping them in contact with each other. After a loan, on the other hand, the relationship between the two parties is fixed and defined. A loan binds the parties together in a much stronger way than a gift does. It ties the two parties together and grants them both an interest in the future well being of the party who is less well off. It is therefore very significant that this passage command us to lend money to those who need it, and not simply to give it.

Another, more significant phrase in this passage is the one that follows. The verse tell us "you must open your hand and lend your fellow person sufficient funds for whatever he (or she) needs." The rabbis interpret and re-interpret the words "open your hand." They see it as a metaphor for opening your very being to one who is less off. A rabbi known as Siftei Kohen says that when you give tzadaka, you are not only opening a gate for others, but that you are also opening a gate for yourself. As Isabel taught us a couple of weeks ago, none of us are really in control of everything that we own and all of it can be taken from us at any moment. Giving to those who have less helps us to clarify our own relationship with our belongings at the same time that helps us to establish relationships with others who are less well off and it gives us an opportunity to help perfect the world. Opening our hands is therefore more than just a metaphor for being willing to give.

We look to God as our role model in this respect each day when we daven through psalm 145 which is included in the prayer that we colloquially call the "Ashrei," This prayer is so central that it is included in our liturgy three times each day. The rabbis tell us that if we recite this prayer each of these three times per day that we will be assured a place in Olam HaBah, the world to come, and they isolate one single line as the essence of the entire prayer. This one line is our plea to God to "Poteach et Yedo," that God should open God's hand and be generous to us. According to what we learn from this verse we can understand this to mean that we are praying to God to be gracious to us, to establish a closer relationship with each of us, and to provide everything that we really need.

And we know that this refers to providing us with what we need because the words in our Torah portion that I really want to focus on and the words which I think are most relevant to this holiday are in the middle of the passage. The passage does not say that you should loan a fellow Jew as much as you can. It doesn't say that you should loan as much as you feel is appropriate. It says that you should loan as much as your fellow Jew needs.

In other words, the standard of generosity to which we should aspire is not defined by our judgment, it is defined by what the recipient needs. This is an important point and one that may not be intuitive, but certainly one that suggests that I should purchase my friends a place setting of their good milchic china instead of a replica of the one of chairs from our college dining hall. The kind of generosity that we see in today's Torah portion is generosity that will allow people to address the needs that they themselves identify. And that is also the kind of generosity we see on this holiday.

One year on Shemini Atzeret, the dean of my rabbinic school, Rabbi Brad Artson, delivered a sermon to the student body. As he looked out at the tired faces in the congregation he admonished us never to say how the holidays had tired us out and never to tell our congregants that we would be happy when the holidays were over. The holidays, he explained, are divine gifts. Each one is precious and each one is given by God. He extolled us to rise to the occasion of this Shemini Atzeret and Simchat Torah with joy and enthusiasm and not even to think about the fact that most of us had had holiday pulpits and most of us had fallen behind in our school work and that none of us had had a day off or a weekend to relax in weeks. Rabbi Artson is a powerful speaker, but I was tired and I couldn't wait for the holidays to end.

Rabbi Artson must have seen that in my face, but he urged me to fight against it. My response is that each year God sees our holiday fatigue and Go accepts our human limits and God generously gives us what we need. Maybe it would nurture God more to give us another intense holiday full of introspection and devotion like Kol Nidre. Maybe God would like to see more pomp and circumstance and choreography like in the musaf service on Yom Kippur day or the Shofar service on Rosh HaShannah. Maybe it would encourage God if we were willing to afflict ourselves again and more intensely than at any time in the holidays. But God doesn't focus on what God needs, today. God thinks about what we need, and God gives us a rest before we conclude the holiday season tonight and tomorrow during Simchat Torah.

Think about it, Rosh HaShannah and Yom Kippur are overwhelming: hours and hours of services, shofarot, preparing meals for Rosh HaShanah and fasting for Yom Kippur. Sukkot, if anything, is even more physically demanding. Between the Sukkah, the lulav and etrog and the extended daily liturgy, Sukkot has more mitzvot, more laws, than any other holiday on the calendar except for maybe Pesach. Each has an intense experiential element. Well, the High Holidays are over. Sukkot is over. Now, not only can we stop and think, but we have to. There are really no rituals associated with Shemini Atzeret. There is just a pause, the Atzeret. Rosh HaShannah, Yom Kippur, Sukkot, each has layers of layers of meaning. Each has a variety of names. There is barely one level of meaning to Shimini Atzeret and the holiday only has one name. It is simply a day to rest and appreciate God's generosity in recognizing our needs and addressing them.

There is a midrash that reads: God said to Israel, "On all seven days of the festival of Sukkot, you were busy with sacrifices for the seventy nations of the world; whereas now, [just] you and I shall rejoice together, and I shall not burden you overmuch. . . . When Israel heard this, they broke into praise of God and said, "This is the day that the Lord has made [special], let us exult and rejoice on it!" (Pesikta de Rav Kahana, Shemini Atzeret 9 as cited in The JPS volume on Haftorot.)

There are three reasons to celebrate during this pause. One is because it is an opportunity to pause and to look back over the holidays of the past several weeks in order to make sure that we have time to digest everything that we have thought and experienced during the holiday season. It is a way to affirm a little of what Rabbi Artson tried to impress upon us and to show that these holidays have been precious and that we're not quite ready to give them up yet.

Another reason to celebrate is that we can use this pause as an opportunity to look forward. We can look forward and prepare for Simchat Torah tonight and tomorrow. We can look forward to the year that is just starting as these holidays wind to a close. Whichever we choose, we should celebrate this moment because it is a last quiet moment of sanctity before we indulge in the celebrations of Simchat Torah and before we have to go back to six day work weeks and normal, earthly time.

There are only two liturgical additions that mark this day, and both fit into the theme of stopping for a day in order to recognize God's generosity to us. One is the Yizkor service that we will begin in a moment and the other is the beautiful prayer for rain that we will recite after the musaf Amidah. The Yizkor service will allow us the time to reflect on the wonderful people whom God has brought into our lives, and now that they are no longer with us, to summon up our memories of all they added. Tefillat Geshem, the prayer for rain will remind us that even today, as we pause, God still provides everything that we need.

Enjoy this day. Accept God's gracious gift of a pause to think and to pray, and may everyone one among us have a happy and a healthy and joyful year. And if you need me next week, I'll be out buying wedding gifts.