A guest post by Y. Bloch
Two days from now we will mark the septennial mitzva of
Hakhel -- the assembly, the gathering.
- No, not that one.
- Not that one either.
On
the feast of Booths, at the prescribed time in the year for remission
which comes at the end of every seven-year period, when all Israel goes
to appear before the LORD, your God, in the place which he will choose, you shall read this law aloud in the presence of all Israel. Assemble (Hakhel)
the people -- men, women and children, as well as the resident aliens
who live in your communities -- that they may hear and so learn to fear
the LORD, your God, and to observe carefully all the words of this law. (Deut. 31:10-12)
The Aramaic rendering of
Hakhel is
Kenosh, the same root as
bei kenishta. You may be more familiar with the Hebrew cognate,
beit kenesset, or
the Greek-derived equivalent, synagogue. In any case, they all mean the
same thing: gathering-place, house of assembly, locus of coming
together. This is the essence of Jewish prayer and of a Jewish house of
prayer.
In the Talmud
(Hagiga 3a), Rabbi Eleazar b.
Azariah famously expounds, "If the men came to learn,the women came to
hear, but wherefore have the little ones to come? In order to grant
reward to
those that bring them." But are the children dragged along merely to
give extra credit to their parents, since watermelons rarely throw
tantrums? The biblical commentator Keli Yakar demurs:
I find it untenable, as if he would command them to bear logs and stones to the House of God "in order to grant reward to those that bring them."
Rather, the whole purpose of Hakhel is for renewal (teshuva), as the Sages say (Lev. R. 30:7) that the first day of Sukkot marks the commencement of a new spiritual reckoning...
Now,
when Israel repents, we beg God to forgive our sins, asking for mercy
in the name of our blameless children, if we are undeserving. Thus, we
ask in the prayer Our Father, Our King, "Pity us, our sucklings and our infants," and similarly we ask, "Act for the sake of the little children," etc.
This is what we mean by "in order to grant reward to
those that bring them." They say to God: Act on behalf of these little
ones who have been brought to the House of God! This is similar to what
Joel speaks of (2:16): "Gather the people, sanctify the assembly;
collect the elderly; gather the children, even infants nursing at the
breast; [let the bridegroom leave his room, and the bride her bridal
tent]."
The message is clear: in a time of crisis, in a time of climax, we belong together. That is why it is so troubling when the
beit kenesset
is used to divide rather than unite, to exclude rather than include.
Some flip this argument on its head: children don't belong in synagogue
because they're disruptive, and since men "have to go to
shul" and women don't have to, those little ones are the "problem" of the latter.
The
true "problem" here, however, is that this view, while held as
axiomatic by far too many observant Jews, has no basis in the classical
sources:
Communal prayer is always heard. Even when
there are transgressors among them, the Holy One, blessed be He, does
not reject the prayers of the many. Therefore, a person should join
community and should not pray alone whenever it is possible to pray with
the community. (Maimonides, Laws of Prayer 8:1)
One
should endeavor to pray in the synagogue with the community, but if
circumstances prevent one from doing so, one should should specifically
pray at the time the community prays. (Shulhan Arukh, OH 90:9)
Praying
with the community is undoubtedly preferable, but no one calls it a
binding commandment; on the contrary, the likely eventuality that one
may not be able to attend is immediately apparent (considering what
Maimonides says about his own busy schedule, this may be from personal
experience).
Well, OK, maybe it's not a
mitzva mitzva,
but still it's a guy thing, right? Actually, Maimonides starts off the
Laws of Prayer (1:1-2) by explicitly stating that women are just as
obligated as men in the biblical command to pray to God daily. Is there a
reason that women should not also avail themselves of the great merit
of communal prayer? A stunning legend told in the midrashic compendium
Yalkut Shimoni
(871) talks about a very elderly woman who was kept alive solely by the
merit of attending synagogue at sunrise every morning; without it, she
died within three days. And it's not just haggadic; Rabbi Moses Isserles
writes quite poignantly in a halakhic context (
Shulhan Arukh, OH
88:1) about the pain that women feel at being literally shut out from
the High Holiday services in the name of excessive "purity."
Put
simply, is there something different about the female soul? Not
according to our tradition. After all, it's Hannah, mother of Samuel,
whose prayer in the House of God is the template for what we do every
day.
There is no doubt that prayer has evolved over the centuries,
especially in the absence of a Temple. Prayer has been formalized and
regulated by the rabbis. But that cannot touch the essence of God's
command that all seek him in prayer, male and female. In the context of
the month of Tishrei, prayer is in the category of mitzvot equally
binding on man and woman, like repentance, like fasting, like
Hakhel itself. Woe to him who makes a daughter of God feel unwelcome in our place of assembly, for it is her house too.
