NICANOR’S GATE AND MYTHIC GEOGRAPHY

The sotah ritual determining the guilt or innocence of a suspected adulteress (see Numbers 5:11-31) took place at the Temple in Jerusalem before the great Sanhedrin of 71 judges. If, after questioning by the court, the accused woman maintained her innocence and said, “I am clean”, they brought her to Nicanor’s Gate to administer the bitter waters required by the ritual. The Mishnah (Sotah 1:5) notes that this is also the place where women would come to be purified after childbirth and where lepers would come to be purified.

Nicanor’s Gate was a central site in the Jerusalem Temple. There is a great deal written about this gate into the Temple. In part it has to do with how these doors came to be and, in part, with where they were located in the Temple itself. The location of this gate made it the prime site for many rituals.

In M. Yoma 4:10 we learn that “As to Nicanor, miracles were associated with his doors. And they remembered him with honor.” The mishnah only tells us that miracles were associated with these gates. That same mishnah tells of about various donations that were made to the Temple: by Ben Qatin, King Munbaz, Queen Helene, and Nicanor. The mishnah offers some details about the other gifts, but of the doors of Nicanor we learn only that miracles happened there and that he was honored.

The full story of these doors is found at B. Yoma 38a (a slightly different version is found at T. Yoma 2:4).
When Nicanor was bringing the doors from Alexandria, Egypt, a storm blew up and threatened to capsize the boat. They took one of the doors and threw it overboard, but the seas did not calm down. They wanted to throw the 2nd door over as well, but he grabbed hold of it and said, “Throw me overboard with it.” The seas clamed down. He remained distressed over the lost door. When they arrived at the port of Acco the other door bubbled up and came out from under the boat. And there are those who say that a sea monster swallowed it and then regurgitated it onto the shore.

Very special doors, indeed. And they were treated with extra respect. At some point the doors of the Temple were all changed to be covered with gold, with the exception of Nikanor’s gate, because of the miracle associated with them. Others say that it was because their bronze shone like gold. (B. Yoma 38a)

According to M. Middot 1:4 there were seven gates to the courtyard….on the west was Nicanor’s gate. The doors stood between the Court of the women and the court of the Israelites. It must have been a magnificent place. M. Middot 1:5 says fifteen steps led to the court of the Israelites, corresponding to the fifteen Psalms, the Songs of Ascent, and the Levites would sing on those steps. One source suggests the doors were so large it took 20 priests to open them each morning.
Tosefta Kelim 1:12 places this all into a mythical geography. Just as there were three camps in the wilderness: the camp of the Shekhina, the camp of the Levites and the camp of the Israelites, so to in Jerusalem. From the entrance to Jerusalem to the entrance to the Temple Mount paralleled the camp of the Israelites. From the entrance of the Temple Mount to Nicanor’s gate paralleled the camp of the Levites. From Nicanor’s Gate inward represented the camp of the Shekhina.

Nicanor’s gate marked liminal space. It stood between the outer and inner court. It was the dividing line between the area that was open to all and the area that required ritual purity. The opening at Nicanor’s gate offered a space that stood between the holy and the profane. The Mishnah notes that the sotah is brought to Nicanor’s gate for the ordeal and that the leper and the woman following childbirth bring their offerings to that same gate. In each case the reason is the same – they need a place that was neither holy nor profane from which to present their offering, see it offered, but not threaten the ritual status of the inner courtyard.

These rituals share one other common element. After a birth there is a period of purification. At the end of that period the woman brings an offering to the priest “at the entrance to the Tent of Meeting.” (Leviticus 12:6) When the leper completes his period of isolation he presents an offering “at the entrance to the Tent of Meeting.” (Leviticus 14:11) The sotah also brings an offering which “the priest shall present before the Lord” (Numbers 5:16). In the mythic geography of the Temple, Nicanor’s Gate parallels the door of the Tent of Meeting.

As I said in a previous post, the sotah ritual is most unusual; the only instance in which God is asked to come judge a person directly, as Nachmanides explains in his comment on Numbers 5:20-21, “There is no other matter among all the laws of Torah that hangs on a miracle except for this one.” No human court can decide her guilt or innocence, her fate is literally in God’s hands. Nicanor’s Gate places her at just the right spot, perhaps the only spot on earth, where God can judge her guilt of innocence.

© Rabbi Louis Rieser

Blowing in the wind and on shabbat (Rosh Hashanah 29b)

There is a common misconception that the Chinese character for “Crisis” is composed of two characters connoting “Danger” and “Opportunity.” Although this is a myth, it’s a wonderful notion because every crisis presents an opportunity for change.

The crisis in the minds of the Talmud is, of course, the destruction of the Temple in 70 C.E. It looms like a huge, dark cloud hanging over virtually every conversation, though it is not usually mentioned explicitly, as if it were too big and too awful to articulate. It is of interest, therefore, that in the mishnah at the beginning of chapter 4 of masechet Rosh Hashanah (29b), the destruction is mentioned explicitly. Mishnah, in general, does far more than capture and preserve late Second Temple traditions and procedures: it begins the process of reformulating Judaism to survive the destruction and flourish in a world sans Temple, and that is certainly the case with this particular mishnah:

When Rosh Hashanah coincides with shabbat, they blow [the shofar] in the Temple, but not in the provinces. After the Temple was destroyed, Rabban Yochanan b. Zakkai instituted that they would blow the shofar wherever there was a bet din [rabbinic court]. R. Elazar said: Rabban Yochanan b. Zakkai instituted [this practice] only in Yavneh. They said to him: Both in Yavneh and anywhere there is a bet din. And in this additional [respect] Jerusalem was superior to Yavneh: any town that could see and hear and was near enough to come [to Jerusalem] would blow [the shofar on shabbat]; but in Yavneh they would blow [the shofar] only in the bet din itself.

The question is whether and where shofar may be blown on Rosh Hashanah when the holy day falls on shabbat. The gemara will discuss whether blowing shofar is considered m’lachah (work) or not and conclude that while it is not m’lachah, carrying a shofar more than four cubits in the public domain (a risk of permitting it to be blown on shabbat) is a violation of shabbat. The Mishnah, however, is focused on where shofar may be blown on shabbat following the destruction of the Temple.

In the transition from a world centered on the Temple, to a world without a Temple, one opinion holds that Rabban Yochanan ben Zakkai designated on his own authority that the existence of a duly constituted rabbinic court renders a place acceptable for blowing shofar on shabbat – it has the status, to some degree, of the Temple. R. Elazar offers an alternative memory of Rabban Yochanan b. Zakkai’s view: only Yavneh was given this status. (Yavneh, located outside Jerusalem in central Israel, was the city to which Yochanan b. Zakkai moved the Sanhedrin following the destruction and accordingly from where rabbinic Judaism emerged.) Finally, the anonymous narrator of the mishnah tells us that both Yavneh and any location with a sitting bet din were eligible.

Is Yavneh a sacred precinct in some regard? Does the convergence of scholars engaged in study and transmission of Oral Torah lend a place a measure of the sanctity of the Temple? Is it to function as a “new” or “temporary” Jerusalem in the aftermath of the destruction?

Alternatively: Does a sitting bet din lend a town a status like the Temple? Is the role of the bet din – in line with the new formulation of Judaism based on emerging Oral Torah – the sign of holiness?

Is it place that makes something holy, or the people who inhabit the place, or the activities that transpire there? These are the three categories under discussion.

Mishnah then adds a most interesting comment:

And in this additional [respect] Jerusalem was superior to Yavneh: any town that could see and hear and was near enough to come [to Jerusalem] would blow [the shofar on shabbat]; but in Yavneh they would blow [the shofar] only in the bet din itself.

Jerusalem, the eternal central holy location, although in ruins, retained its full sanctity and drawing power: if you were near enough to experience Jerusalem by sight or sound, where you stood – although outside Jerusalem – took on a measure of Jerusalem’s sanctity, enough to permit the blowing of the shofar on Rosh Hashanah when it fell on shabbat. In contrast, although the Sanhedrin was moved to Yavneh, and Rabbanan Yochanan b. Zakkai taught his circle of disciples there, shofar was blown only in the bet din itself.

With the perspective of more than 20 centuries since the destruction of the Temple, it is easy to see how these questions of time, space, function, and activity have been resolved. The Temple Mount is eternally sacred. Cemeteries are sacred space because of those buried there. Synagogues have a sacred quality because they contain arks with Torah scrolls. But synagogues are not eternally sacred: it is not uncommon for a congregation to move and sell its building. Rather, Judaism has invested with greatest sanctity moments in time.

Rabbi Abraham Joshua Heschel famously wrote in The Sabbath: Its Meaning for Modern Man:

Judaism is a religion of time aiming at the sanctification of time. Unlike the space-minded man to whom time is unvaried, iterative, homogeneous, to whom all hours are alike, quality-less, empty shells, the Bible senses the diversified character of time. There are no two hours alike. Every hour is unique and the only one given at the moment, exclusive and endlessly precious.

Judaism teaches us to be attached to holiness in time, to be attached to sacred events, to learn how to consecrate sanctuaries that emerge from the magnificent stream of a year. The Sabbaths are our great cathedrals; and our Holy of Holies is a shrine that neither the Romans nor the Germans were able to burn; a shrine that even apostasy cannot easily obliterate: the Day of Atonement. According to the ancient rabbis, it is not the observance of the Day of Atonement, but the Day itself, the "essence of the Day," which, with man's repentance, atones for the sins of man.

Jewish ritual may be characterized as the art of significant forms in time, as architecture of time. Most of its observances--the Sabbath, the New Moon, the festivals, the Sabbatical and the Jubilee year--depend on a certain hour of the day or season of the year. It is, for example, the evening, morning, or afternoon that brings with it the call to prayer. The main themes of faith lie in the realm of time. We remember the day of the exodus from Egypt, the day when Israel stood at Sinai; and our Messianic hope is the expectation of a day, of the end of days.

The sages of the mishnah are in the process of working this out. They are juggling possibilities and considering what will create community and meaning, and preserve and extend the tradition of Torah in a world without its functioning geographic center, the Temple in Jerusalem. They must find a new center on which to balance the needs of the Jewish people, a center that is not a fixed location. That new center is time and for that reason, in most of the Jewish world when Rosh Hashanah falls on Shabbat, as it will this year, shofar will not be blown because the sanctity of shabbat supersedes that of Rosh Hashanah. For Jews, sacred moment have more power than sacred places.

© Rabbi Amy R. Scheinerman 2009

Blow Away! (Rosh Hashanah 27a - 28a)

The preeminent mitzvah of Rosh Hashanah is to hear the shofar sounded. But what does that mean? If the ba’al tekiyah (shofar blower) employs a home-brew amplifier, by blasting into a barrel or other resonant chamber to enhance the sound, and I hear the echo, does that count? When I first had a PDA years ago, a friend and colleague loaded a recording of the shofar blasts onto it. Does listening to this recording count? If I’m not keeping Rosh Hashanah but I happen to walk past a synagogue at the time the shofar is sounded, does that count?

In the mishnayot recorded on daf 27b we read:

One who sounds the shofar into a pit, a cistern, or a barrel: if he heard the sound of the shofar, he has fulfilled his obligation. But if he heard the sound of the echo, he has not fulfilled his obligation.

And similarly, one who was passing behind a synagogue or whose house was adjacent to the synagogue, and he heard the sound of the shofar (or on Purim he heard the sound of the Megillah) if he directed his mind, he has fulfilled [the obligation to hear the shofar], but if not, he has not fulfilled [the obligation]. Even though this one heard and that one heard, this one directed his mind and that one did not direct his mind.

Yet even before introducing this mishnah, back on daf 27a, Gemara commented:

Why? [To the contrary] let him [be deemed] to have fulfilled his obligation [by having heard] the beginning of the blast, before it became mixed up with the sound [of the echo]! Rather two voices coming from a single person cannot be distinguished. [But two voices] coming from two people can be distinguished. Indeed, coming from two people can [separate sounds] be distinguished? But [suggesting the contrary] thus it is taught [in Megillah 3:20]: In [the public reading of] the Torah [in synagogue] one person reads and one translates [into Aramaic]. But [one should not read while two translate, nor should two read while one translates], nor should two read while two translate…

The Rabbis are concerned that we hear the sound of the shofar directly and intentionally, that in order to fulfill the mitzvah of hearing the shofar we must be actually listening for it, and desirous of hearing it. Given the religious agenda of Rosh Hashanah – to engage in cheshbon nefesh (an accounting of our souls) and teshuvah (repentance) – this makes perfect sense. Direct engagement and intention are essential to cheshbon nefesh and teshuvah.

Yet only a few dapim later (on 28a), we find Rabbah loosening the requirements:

If one heard part of a shofar blast inside a pit, and part of the blast at the edge of the pit, he has fulfilled [the obligation].

A comment a few lines later reveals that Rabbah is speaking about the shofar blower: if s/he begins the blast while standing in a pit, and walks to the edge of the pit and climbs out while still blowing the shofar, then a person standing on the edge of the pit, who initially heard the echo of the blast, and only comes to hear the blast directly when the shofar blower reaches the edge of the pit, nonetheless fulfills his/her obligation to hear the shofar. Surprising! This contradicts what we learned in 27a above, that one must hear the beginning of the blast directly. Could this possibly be more evidence of what Rabbi Rieser identified in his last post about the Rabbis reflection of the destruction of the Temple? Once we heard the word of Sinai directly, once we participated in the sacrifices directly, once we had access to the words of the prophets directly. Today we hear but an echo. Yet those who intend to fulfill the mitzvah and seek to experience the sound of shofar are credited with doing so, and we encourage people to participate to their fullest in the hopes they will find religious meaning and comfort in Jewish practices.

And perhaps Rabbah is also painting a picture for us of how Judaism is adopted and absorbed by so many of us: initially we stand at the edge of the pit, far from the center, listening and considering what meaning this has for our lives. Then the tradition moves closer to us and envelopes us and we feel its power far more directly.

May the power and potential of Elul -- which we welcomed this morning with the first blast of the shofar this season -- draw us all closer to God and closer to one another. May Elul bring repentance, reconciliation, and renewal.

© 2009 Rabbi Amy Scheinerman