A house of study must have windows

I wake up early, as is my habit, and hear the muezzin calling the faithful to prayer before dawn. A little later, the sound of the shofar from Sephardi shacharit (morning) services wafts through the open windows, along with the cool morning air.

The sounds and stillness of the morning are interrupted at 6.30am by my phone abruptly and loudly notifying me of a red alert for Gush Dan – the central Tel Aviv area. Its entire population is advised to go to bomb shelters immediately. At this turbulent time when no one knows what a day may hold, the volatility has begun early. I brace myself for sirens in Jerusalem, but we are spared for now.

My walk to Pardes, where I’m learning during the month of Elul, takes me through streets named for the twelve tribes: Ephraim, Dan (there he is again), Reuven, Menashe, Yehudah, Naftali, Zevulun, Benyamin. It’s not a long distance, but still I seem to walk alongside many sons of Jacob (a street for his daughter Dina is nearby). Pardes is an acronym for reading approaches to sacred text: pshat, remez, drash and sod (literal, hinted, interpretive and mysterious). It also means ‘orchard’ and provides the origin of ‘paradise’. The building may be plain externally, but it’s true to its name internally.

As she has done on many a morning over the last few weeks, my Talmud teacher begins our class by inviting us to do our best to keep what’s happening outside, outside, and focus our mental energies on the daf (page) before us. She says this as much, if not more, for herself as for us.

There’s a weariness to her this morning yet before long, her passion for the text and knowledge of its intricacies take over and we are all drawn into the world of tractate Yoma. What exactly is meant, in practical terms, when we are told we should afflict ourselves on Yom Kippur? What should be offered to a ‘ubarah’ (a pregnant woman) whose craving for food on Yom Kippur overwhelms her? What about a patient whose desire to fast is in conflict with the doctor’s advice? Rabbi Yannai says we listen to the patient because ‘only the heart knows the bitterness of the soul’ (Mishlei/Proverbs).

Amid this detailed discussion, the sages alert us that the important principle of ‘pikuah nefesh’ (saving a life) is at stake here. Who is to say that one person’s blood is redder than another? With this, the outside world springs back into focus, with its dilemmas, painful choices and heartbreak.

The format of running commentary is open-ended and dialogical (as opposed to an essay or book that is presented as a whole, with a clear beginning, middle and end). I find the genre suited to this moment in time when complexity is high, coherence challenging and resolution remote. The text beckons us to keep exploring possibilities and different angles. At the end of the morning session, we simply say we will pick up tomorrow where we left off today.

Once a week we come together for an hour or two to learn as a whole, break bread, share announcements. Today we have a brief update about the security situation and are reminded to download the relevant apps, know the locations of our nearby shelters and have torches, food and water supplies at the ready.

This week’s shiur (lesson) explores the sounding of the shofar. As an introduction we listen to various sounds and record our emotional reaction to them. This is the first time in many years the teacher is leaving the siren off the list. Too triggering. The central sounds of the shofar, the teruah and shevarim, are broken and are reminiscent of crying. We sound it one hundred times on Rosh Hashanah in memory of Sisera’s mother who cried when hearing of her son’s death.

Who was Sisera? He was one of Israel’s bitter enemies from the time of the judges and his mother, only shortly before hearing of his death, was happily picturing him returning home from battle with Israelite women as bounty and other spoils of war. I transpose this on to today’s context and figure the equivalent would be asking us to think of the crying of Haniyeh's or Nasrallah’s mother as we listen to the shofar.

Following the shiur, we sound the shofar and recite Psalm 27. ‘Be strong and of good courage’ it concludes, yet when our prayer leader recites the prayer for the soldiers and the captives, her voice breaks. These are the beloved sons and daughters, friends and family, of people in this room. A house of study and a place of prayer must have windows to remind oneself not to lose sight of the everyday amid the spiritual and intellectual. There are plenty of windows in this room, but there’s no chance of losing touch.

In the afternoon, my studies involve reading of the conquest of the land of Israel as told in the book of Joshua. True to Moshe’s instruction, Joshua makes a copy of the Torah upon crossing the Jordan river. This detail sits alongside narration of battles brutal. We look at their description alongside the Torah’s teachings about what should happen when a city is conquered and halachot (laws) of just war. Pagers are being detonated, missiles intercepted, enemies targetted, civilians killed, hostages languish and peace negotiations go round and round interminably. Is there such a thing as a just war? Was there ever?

For the third time today, Dan is crossing my path. Now it is in the context of how the land is to be distributed among the various tribes. Dan is allocated the coastal region, the very area that this morning was the target of the missile from Lebanon.

Before the sun sets (there are various Hebrew words to describe westward, as discussed in a class on Yonah), I go for a walk along the disused railway track that has been converted into a popular walking path. On one street corner, there are demonstrators demanding the government bring back the hostages now. A number of cars honk their horns in time with their chants. I pass posters with the faces of the captives. Some of their ages have been crossed out and new ones written to reflect that they’re a year older, accentuating the passing of time, while others have a ‘zl’ (zichrono livrocha/may their memory be a blessing) written next to their name, indicating they have been confirmed dead. Music wafts in from a shul, one of many Elul concerts happening around town.

Just ahead of me is a small group of Arab women with a child walking alongside them, maybe aged around 4 or 5 at a guess. He is wearing runners that flash with each of his steps. He must be so happy with them, as were my children at the same age. We are more the same than we are different.

Please, I say to myself, I say to the universe, when everything is so fragile and so laden with consequence, at this time of ‘harat ha’olam’ (often translated as ‘birthday of the world’ but really pregnancy or conception of the world), this evening that is pregnant with possibility if only we look for it, please let the flashing runners on a child’s feet be what matters most.