The 20th of Sivan is a Jewish day of remembrance twice, designated as a fast day for massacres against European Jewry. I attended a lesson about this remembrance this week at a Jewish Kollel or study center. It was both a prayer session to commemorate this date and for the three missing Israeli youth who disappeared near Hebron.
This date is associated with two major catastrophes that befell European Jewry, one during the crusades in France, the second five hundred years later by the Cossacks against Ukrainian Jewry. In both cases Jews were slaughtered by the thousands for the crime of practicing our faith.
In Judaism, the purpose of a fast is to lower the volume on our physical pursuits in order to focus more acutely on our spiritual selves. This facilitates the process of:
1. Teshuva – literally means "return." We return to G-d, and to our essential state of purity.
2. Selicha – 'selicha' means not holding a grudge, not feeling affronted or aggrieved. If someone is angry with you, you would ask him to forgive you, to be "soleach."
3. Kappara – 'Kappara' is fundamentally different from the previous two terms. Kappara means "atonement." The object of atonement, that which is changed as a result, is not God (His attitude, as in selicha) or God's demands of us (His demands, as in 'mechila'), but Man and the sin itself. Objects which have been defiled by sin need kappara to return to a state of purity.
Our Rabbi spent much of the evening discussing the concepts of kindness and self-responsibility in Judaism. Many people think of Judaism as the religion of cold, harsh laws. This is an unfair characterization of both Judaism and Jewish law. Love and kindness have been a part of Judaism from the very beginning. When Jesus said, "love thy neighbor as thyself," he was merely quoting the Torah, and he was quoting the book that is most commonly dismissed as a source of harsh laws: Leviticus 19:18. The point is repeated in Leviticus 19:34: love [the stranger] as thyself.
The Talmud tells a story of Rabbi Hillel, who lived around the time of Jesus. A pagan came to him saying that he would convert to Judaism if Hillel could teach him the whole of the Torah in the time he could stand on one foot. Rabbi Hillel replied, "What is hateful to yourself, do not do to your fellow man. That is the whole Torah; the rest is just commentary. Go and study it." (Talmud, Shabbat 31a).
Our Rabbi discussed the need to forgive our enemies and to look deeply within ourselves before we judge others. How do you do this when you look at the history of the Jewish people and the world in general? How can followers of Judaism forgive the horrors of the Holocaust or the injustices of the Crusades? Do we dare ask the parent of the three children to understand and not hate? I personally cannot say that I have an answer.
I can, however, look at my own life and see that my enemy’s treatment of me has often brought more long term good than suffering. Often I have discovered that those who inflicted hurt upon me were despondent about their own lives than attacking mine. The component of my soul that most needs improvement in the ability to protect myself but not feel rage at those who try to harm me and mine. This is the intended meaning of the 20th of Sivan.
