From the Bima Blog

Yom Kippur Morning 5785 - October 12, 2024

On a rainy day this past August, I spent most of my afternoon arguing. It was my favorite kind of argument, a Jewish one, a makholket l’shem shamayim, an argument for the sake of heaven. It was about a text, a rather famous one, and how to best translate it.

The text tells a story about Hillel and Shammai, two early rabbinic sages who are best known for disagreeing – about everything. 

   אָמַר רַבִּי אַבָּא אָמַר שְׁמוּאֵל: שָׁלֹשׁ שָׁנִים נֶחְלְקוּ בֵּית שַׁמַּאי וּבֵית הִלֵּל.      

Rabbi Abba said that Shmuel said: For three years Beit Shammai and Beit Hillel disagreed. 

הַלָּלוּ אוֹמְרִים: הֲלָכָה כְּמוֹתֵנוּ, וְהַלָּלוּ אוֹמְרִים הֲלָכָה כְּמוֹתֵנוּ.              

These said: The halakha is in accordance with our opinion, and these said: The halakha is in accordance with our opinion. 

 יָצְאָה בַּת קוֹל וְאָמְרָה:                         

Ultimately, a Divine Voice emerged and proclaimed:

אֵלּוּ וָאֵלּוּ דִּבְרֵי אֱלֹהִים חַיִּים הֵן,        

Both these and those are the words of the living God. 

                    וַהֲלָכָה כְּבֵית הִלֵּל

However, the halakha is in accordance with the opinion of Beit Hillel. 

On the surface, the teaching is straightforward: Hillel and Shammai are both right. But, for now Hillel is more right so he wins. To this day, traditional Judaism usually follows Hillel’s rulings on Jewish law.

But my August argument was not about winning. Instead, my study partner and I spent hours unpacking a phrase I thought I understood.  

יָצְאָה בַּת קוֹל וְאָמְרָה -- a Divine Voice emerged and proclaimed

Bat Kol, as translated by most scholars, means “Divine Voice, or a “voice from heaven.” While it is unclear if the voice is God’s voice or a voice speaking on behalf of God, it is still a voice emanating from another place that effectively ends the argument. Which, in my humble opinion, is reason enough that this text is extremely awesome.

The word Bat is straightforward. It generally means ‘daughter’, as in Bat Mitzvah, daughter of the commandments. 

The word Kol needs a bit more time, as there are several ways to understand this word. It is most often translated as ‘voice’ or ‘sound’. Okay, that could work. So, is Bat Kol = Daughter of a Voice? Interesting. It’s not clear whose voice is speaking. Is it God’s voice? Or God’s daughter? Or a feminine version of God? 

Note to self. Feminists and expansionists might be able to use this interpretation to support a vision that God and God’s voice could be – and probably is – more than one version of gender.

But I wondered out loud about another meaning of the word kol, with a different root structure. This version of kol is translated as light, as in not heavy, like a light matter. It appears in the Talmud referring to leniency in matters of law. For some reason, that appealed to me on a rainy Sunday afternoon. This would render the meaning of Bat Kol as Daughter of Lenience, at least in the halacha according to Laura.

With this translation, a Divine Voice becomes more than just a voice emanating from heaven. This Bat Kol is now a voice of reason, a voice telling us to take a moment, maybe a breath or two. Not only is the voice loudly proclaiming above our earthly cacophony that there is room for more than one way to see the world, but she is also reminding us that we sometimes take ourselves way too seriously with all of these binary arguments that often end up with someone saying, it’s my way or the highway. 

No. She proclaims. There is so much space in this beautiful world. You are both wrong. And you are both right. And all the right, the wrong and everything in between represents divrei Elohim chayim – words of a living God. 

Today, I stand before you on the holiest day of the Jewish year thinking about this beautiful world. And it’s less than beautiful challenges. Especially all the voices swirling around us that are so loud, so righteous, so sanctimonious. 

Where did our Bat Kol, our thoughtful voice of reason and light go? Where is she? Where is her voice emanating from heaven, whispering Elu v’Elu – These and these – all these voices are the voices of my people? 

Where is our voice of nuance? A voice that rises above the space to say there’s room for all of us in this conversation. I worry she is crying out loudly above the fray. Frantically shouting, hoping to be heard above the constant roar of a world that believes there is only right or only wrong.

Friends, it has been an extremely difficult year. I’m exhausted. We’re all exhausted. We’re angry and sad and afraid. We are fighting with one another, the news media, and our collective conscience. We stopped being reasonable months ago – blinded by our own certitude. Unable to navigate the messy middle where most of life actually exists; a place where right and right and wrong and wrong live in respectful tension.

It is hard to be a human in this sort of binary world. Most mornings, I spend a good 30 minutes fighting off the urge to go back to bed. Cuddle up with a good book like War and Peace and a giant cup of coffee. Turn off the radio and television. Stay off social media. Ignore the texts from my second cousin who cannot understand why I don’t want to change my mind about whatever it is he is currently trying to change my mind about.

And what he really wants to change my mind about is Israel. And boy do I not want to talk about that.

But I’m going to talk about it. And I hope you will open your hearts as I share what’s in mine.

About a week after October 7th last year, I was driving around listening to a story on the radio about one of the survivors of the Nova music festival. I have since been to that site in southern Israel, and wondered about where this young woman might have been on that horrible day. Her voice was eerily calm as she recounted running towards the trees to try and hide from the unspeakable violence. I had to pull over because of the tears streaming down my face. I could no longer drive safely. What on earth possesses someone to hate a group of people so much that they want to wipe them off the face of the earth? My heart was instantly in the East, crying alongside so many of my Israeli family and friends.

Israel featured prominently in my early Jewish identity. I was young, so fabulously young. And head over heels with a land and a people and an idea that made me feel whole and seen. Growing up Jewish in Texas was about trying not to be too different. ‘Different’ attracted trouble you did not want. Israel was a place that made me feel proud to be Jewish. Where being Jewish no longer felt like a burden, it felt like a privilege. I felt like I belonged!  

I look back with such love on that time. My sweet innocence.  I’ve been back to Israel countless times, and the minute I touch down, the pull of belonging comes rushing back. It’s strange – and hard to explain– but I feel more comfortable there. It could be because my culture and my religion blend over there. Or maybe it’s a perpetual reaction to the overt anti-Semitism I experienced being a Jew in Texas. But when I’m honest with myself, I think Israel’s complicated story of resilience and strength and courage simply resonates with me.

Today, I also look back at that time with a knot in my stomach. Today, I wrestle with pain and anger, with challenge and concern for the place and the people I love, for what I did not yet know about Zionism and politics and survival and history. I am older now, maybe wiser. Definitely better read, and more willing to look at the story of Israel – and the Jewish people – with nuance, from a place where the only thing I know for certain is that I do not have all of the answers. And that sometimes the best choice in a complicated conversation is to simply listen to others, not run forward with my version of the story. Because the story of Israel, the master narrative, is changing before our eyes. 

I saw it last summer as I experienced my Israel story, the one I had been taught and then held onto for so many years, begin to unravel. Challenged by colleagues who did not share my version. Those loving arguments, indeed for the sake of heaven, made me realize I needed to open my heart and my head to a different version of this story. Call it a gift, of sorts.

Rabbi Benay Lappe, founder and master teacher of an amazing radical Jewish learning organization called Svara, teaches that all of us humans possess “master stories.” These stories help us understand our lives. But they inevitably change, and they often crash. 

Lappe suggests we have choices when the stories we hold as truth fall apart. She teaches three options for a human response when this happens to us. In her own words, “...there are three, and only three, possible responses to a [story] crash, ever. 

Option One, … denying that a crash has occurred and reverting to your master story and hanging on for dear life. Option Two: [realizing] that your master story has crashed, completely rejecting your master story, and jumping off into a completely new story. Or Option Three: accept[ing] that the story has crashed, but instead of abandoning the story, you stay in it, reinterpreting it through the lens of the crash, and building a new story from the amalgamation of the original story, the crash material and the reinterpretation.”

Israel, her people, and the Biblical land we crossed a desert to inherit, is at an inflection point. There are those in the Jewish world who have chosen option one. They are holding onto their Israel story against all odds. They cannot see the crash and its horrible toll on humanity. 

There are those who have chosen option two. For them Israel’s story is over, and we must move on without it. 

And there are those of us in the Jewish world who are crying out that a binary solution is not the answer. We struggle to find our Bat Kol, our voice of reason and nuance and light. To dare suggest that the only way out of the ongoing unreasonable situation is to try and find a middle ground. We cry out that option three is the only way forward if Israel wants a tomorrow. 

We must build a new story for all the humans who live in this precious land. We must stop killing one another. We must call for an immediate ceasefire and a release of hostages. We must accept that the Palestinian people, that all people, deserve to live in peace. And we must listen closely to our young people – and some of our not so young people, who are stuck at option two. They are horrified that so much destruction is coming from a Jewish place. They may be right. And those who are stuck at option one are not helping things because they refuse to listen to the ones who see the world differently from them. 

A few weeks ago, I sat in the library with a Temple Shalom member. She was about to head off to her freshman year at university. She wanted to talk to me about Israel. She had questions. 

It was not an easy conversation for either one of us. She is smart and thoughtful. And well-informed. But so am I. We definitely engaged in a makhloket l’shem shamayim, an argument for the sake of heaven, sort of discourse. No opinions were changed during our hour together. But we both lovingly listened. The hug she gave me on her way out was worth every moment.

Here is my prayer for all of us today. I hope this is the year we each find our inner Bat Kol, the heavenly voice that demands nuance. A voice that reminds us to seek out each other’s humanity. I pray we can let go of the story that no longer exists, but that we do not abandon the story altogether. The Israel we love, and the Israel that challenges us, is evolving before our very eyes. She can be the Israel of hope and dreams that Jewish tradition and our ancestors promised us. And a place we are working to reimagine, a shared society where all of her inhabitants live in peace and safety and tranquility.

The Bat Kol is calling out, calling us to make a new story. I pray we listen to her heavenly voice.

G’mar Chatimah Tovah! May we all be inscribed and sealed in the Book of Life!

And Shana Yoter Tovah! May this year be better – one of hope and love and God willing, peace.

Sources: 
BT Eruvin 13b
 https://svara.org
 If you want to see Rabbi Benay Lappe brilliantly teach her “crash” theory, check her out on TedTalks or EliTalks. Search for either 1, 2, 3 Crash: How to Navigate Inevitable Change or An Unrecognizable Jewish Future: A Queer Talmudic Tale. 
Text as written can be found in High Holiday texts and resources organized by Truah.org.