A Prayer and a Pitchfork

https://www.flickr.com/photos/valeriebb/2602286154/ used under creative commons license

I love studying Talmud, and one of the reasons is because it allows me to get into the hearts, lives and minds of our rabbinic sages, the people who struggled to make our sacred texts accessible, and who created the Judaism we know today. The destruction of Jerusalem and her Holy Temples ended the practice of sacrificial offerings and gave way to prayer as a way to likrov, “to draw close” to God.

At this point in daf yomi, the practice of reading a page a day of Talmud, we’re looking at the tractate having to do with the festival of Sukkot. For the past two weeks I’ve been reading about rabbis arguing about what material can be used for the skakh, the roof of the sukkah, and on page 14, a discussion about using straw to tie bundles of something to use for roofing ends with a comment that sparks a complete non-sequitur.

Apparently, the straw helps keep bundles together and is helpful when turning the bundles with a pitchfork, eter.Imagine Rabbi Yossi, Rabbi Yochanan and Reish Lakish sitting together when seemingly out of the blue, Rabbi Elazar asks, Why are the prayers of the righteous likened to a eter/pitchfork?

Sounds like the beginning of a riddle, but he continues. It is written: “And Isaac entreated–vayetar–the Lord on behalf of his wife, because she was barren” (Genesis 25:21), to say to you: “Just as this pitchfork overturns the grain on the threshing floor from place to place, so too, the prayers of the righteous overturn the mind of the Holy Blessed One from the attribute of strict justice to the attribute of mercy, and the Holy One accepts their prayers.” And the text moves on.

Does Rabbi Elazar make this play on the word eter to add some theology or spirituality into a technical discussion, or is the Talmud simply reminding us that our brains work in amazing ways? Or both? As someone whose brain makes these leaps all the time, I appreciate the fact that things like this are recorded in our rabbinic literature for posterity; the fact that it wasn’t edited out is significant.

The timing is interesting as well. Reading this just days after Tisha B’Av, at the beginning of the seven weeks leading up to Rosh Hashanah, sets the tone for the whole Yamim Noraim, the “Days of Awe,” where our goal is to show God that we’re continually working to be our best selves, and that the Holy One of Blessing should please judge us for life and blessing through the Divine attribute of rachamim, “mercy.”

May the coming weeks bring us the blessing of introspection and may God accept our prayers.

 

 

 

0 Comments

Submit a Comment

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

Latest Sermons

Hukkat: Our Flowing Wells
Hukkat: Our Flowing Wells

In this week’s Torah portion, Hukat, we begin by learning about the red heifer, whose ashes would be mixed with water and sprinkled on a person who had been made ritually impure by reason of a corpse, in order to purify them. It’s good information, because as soon as...

Moses & Yitro At The Mountain
Moses & Yitro At The Mountain

Yitro, this week’s Torah reading, is famous for containing the Aseret haDibrot, commonly translated as “The Ten Commandments.” There’s no question that a law code is necessary for a community to be cohesive, to have a set of principles to guide them, and to create a...

Chayeh Sarah-What We Learn From Abraham
Chayeh Sarah-What We Learn From Abraham

Va y’hihu chayay Sarah may-ah shanah v’esrim shanah v’sheva shanah shnay chayay Sarah And the years of Sarah’s life were 100 years and twenty years and 7 years, the years of Sarah’s life. This week’s Torah reading is Chaye Sarah, the life of Sarah. However, it begins...

Latest Midrash HaZak

Chukat: The Red Heifer and Our Stuff, Rabbi Andra Greenwald
Chukat: The Red Heifer and Our Stuff, Rabbi Andra Greenwald

Photo Credit: Rennett Stowe on Flickr Chukat: The Red Heifer and Our Stuff Rabbi Andra Greenwald Is it sacrilegious to feel that some pieces of the Torah just don’t make sense? In parshat Chukat, the Law of the Red Heifer presents us with one of the statutes for which...

Devarim: The Power of Retelling, Rabbi Jane Rachel Litman
Devarim: The Power of Retelling, Rabbi Jane Rachel Litman

Image from Medfield, MA public library, wallaceshealy-com-OPvCP3-clipart The Power of Retelling Rabbi Jane Rachel Litman A few weeks ago, I was invited to speak to a university class about being one of the first generation of women and queer rabbis. At these kinds of...

Mattot: What Words Can Create, Ilene Winn-Lederer
Mattot: What Words Can Create, Ilene Winn-Lederer

Illustration ©2009-Ilene Winn-Lederer Mattot: What Words Can Create Ilene Winn-Lederer Although I grew up with a strong Jewish identity, I did not experience a traditional Jewish education and came to Torah in my late teens through influential involvement with a...

Latest Personal Blogs

Blessing My Bended Knees-A Poem
Blessing My Bended Knees-A Poem

This past week, I participated in a Ritualwell class with Alden Solovy on "Writing From One Word of Torah." I distilled 3 stream-of-consciousness prompts on the word "Baruch/Berekh," the root of which can mean "blessing' and "knee, into this poem. Blessing my bended...

The Eshet Hayil In Our Lives
The Eshet Hayil In Our Lives

Photo: publicdomainpictures.net The Eshet Hayil In Our Lives An email from My Jewish Learning about “A Woman of Valor” prompted me to pivot the next evening’s planned adult learning session to looking at these 22 verses from Mishlei, the Book of Proverbs. These verses...

Live Long and Prosper?
Live Long and Prosper?

By Oklahoma Heritage Association, Gaylord-Pickens Museum - Author, CC BY-SA 3.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=25656727 Live Long and Prosper? January 5, 2022 began the third year of the seven and a half-year cycle of Daf Yomi, the practice of...

Pin It on Pinterest