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Avi Baumol

Embrace the Contradiction!

I heard two speeches over Yom Kippur which contradicted each other: One offered a path to even get closer to God despite the trauma and the incomprehensibility of the tragedy, while the other demanded that God ask us for forgiveness.

Two opposite presentations by two friends, revolving around this current calamity in which we all find ourselves. One friend demands fealty to God, recognizing that though we suffer we are still but a speck in the divine galactic story: who are we to raise our voice to the heavens and demand a response, nay an apology?

The other exclaims that this year we have suffered so much that any extra atonement request is extraneous. Sitting in the Shul without sons who sacrificed their life for God and the nation, we have no more need for groveling. Multiply those boys by a thousand and we begin to understand the enormity of our collective pain this past year. God must know it, He therefore cannot expect any more supplications on our part. We are done.

The first approach might view the Jewish people today as an almost failed entity, an extension of the galus Jew who has wandered to and fro, sinning and secularizing, dividing and desecrating. And despite managing to gain a homeland and populate it, how have we fared? Were we not acutely aware of our social chasm in Israel last year and between diaspora Jewry and Israel as well? Is it too farfetched to accept that there would be Divine comeuppance at how we have treated each other in this generation, or how we have treated God?

After all, the numbers do not tell a good story: from 1880-1930 the Jewish population doubled in size (7 million-15); after the Holocaust when there were just 11 million, we might have expected the next 50 years to double and then double again, we should have close to 50 million Jews in the world today. Where are they? We vanished, even after Auschwitz! To look at these numbers and then claim that we deserve divine grace is difficult.

But my other friend posits an entirely opposite picture—we are “the GREATEST GENERATION OF JEWS EVER!” And his numbers don’t lie either! More Jews than ever in our homeland; more Jews studying Torah than ever before; a true light to the nations (more Nobels than any other ethnicity); indeed superstars! Did we deserve to suffer so much? Does this represent the reward for God’s nation? Does any of this make sense?

Opposite expressions, contradicting emotions, and the same can be said for the Israeli citizen in the past year. On the one hand more secular soldiers have asked for tzitzit and tefillin than ever before in history; on the other hand, some religious Jews have felt their prayers to wane, losing meaning, subsumed by the war and funeral fatigue.

Sukkot is a festival of contradictions. It celebrates a distinctly agricultural milestone (festival of ingathering), but at the same time chooses to focus on an historical event (booths in the desert). It centralizes the Temple service with 70 sacrifices offered, parties and libations on the altar, but at the same time recalls a time when Israel wandered outside of the land. It commands us to rejoice before God in the Temple, but then enjoins our happiness with each other, together with our families, our neighbors, strangers, even our servants. Finally, it is considered one of the most universalistic of our holidays, connecting the sacrifices with all nations of the world, while at the same time, asks us to leave our homes and celebrate with our families in a temporary dwelling.

How do all of these contradictory feelings coexist? Are we meant to choose one type of holiday experience over another? Will the real Sukkot rise up and claim its true position in our consciousness?

Rav Soloveitchik never shied away from contradictions, even internal ones; he embraced them. His famous speech heralding Abraham as both a stranger and a resident taught us all that one may exist on two planes, even contrasting ones. We are at once strangers to the outside world, and at the same time residents, we belong here, this is home!

The Rav was a scion of the great rabbinic dynasty and much of his thought relates to the past, the scholars of early generations, and the wellspring of Torah he drew from thousands of years; at the same time he was a modernist!, advocating secular studies and philosophy, believing in religious Zionism, supporting wholeheartedly Jewish studies for women. And so he was both an aged European rabbi steeped in tradition as well as a young modern thinking, philosopher and Modern orthodox leader. Embrace the contradictions!

We, too, this year must embrace the contradiction of emotion. I am crushed, overwhelmed with sadness, drained physically from running to safe rooms, and emotionally from going from funeral to funeral—my eyes have dimmed from grief—I believe that we are suffering, and we must have done something wrong to deserve this, yet I can’t for the life of me figure it out. We are tired because we see no light at the end of this very dark tunnel. And we brace ourselves every morning before we read the news. We are bewildered. בהלה

At the same time, I really identify with my friend’s assessment of this generation: we are building our nation, proudly, with passion, and intensity. Yes, we are struggling to find common ground but we are 7,689,000 Israel Jews who are not giving up on each other, and though we fight with words we ultimately rally together to fight side by side against evil. We truly are princes and princesses of Davidic dynasties and priests and prophetesses, with different feelings about how to express our Jewishness but ultimately what unites us is much greater than what divides.

And we are spectacularly better than our great great grandparents who suffered at the hands of the Cossacks in Poland or Russia, or anywhere. My son and daughters proudly serve this country and I am forever in their debt. We are majestic heirs to the biblical inheritance and we embrace it with joy and reverence!

This Sukkot I will cry and dance; sit in silence and shout with exhilaration. Contradiction? Yes. And I embrace it.

About the Author
Rabbi Avi Baumol has served Jewish communities around the world as rabbi, educator, author, and leader. After 11 years as the rabbi in Krakow, Poland, Rabbi Baumol has returned home and is teaching Torah in Midreshet Torah Ve'Avoda in Jerusalem. He graduated Yeshiva University and Bernard Revel Graduate School with an MA in Medieval JH. He is a musmach of RIETS and studied at Yeshivat Har Etzion in Alon Shevut. He served as a rabbi in Vancouver British Columbia for five years. Rabbi Baumol is the author of "The Poetry of Prayer" Gefen Publishing, 2010, .He also co-authored a book on Torah with his daughter, Techelet called 'Torat Bitecha'. As well, he is the Editor of the book of Psalms for The Israel Bible--https://theisraelbible.com/bible/psalms. In summer 2019 Rabbi Baumol published "In My Grandfather's Footsteps: A Rabbi's Notes from the Frontlines of Poland's Jewish Revival". In 2023 he published Parshology: Encountering the World through the Weekly Parsha and in 2024 his most recent book, 'God, Man and Time: An Introduction to the Jewish calendar and its Holidays