Judeo Talk

Shabbat Shalom and welcome to Judeo Talk. The Torah portion for this week is Parsha Yitro, Exodus 18:1-20:23.

This parsha is short, but there are two good reasons for this. First, the episode in next week’s parsha must stand on its own (we’ll see why next week) and second, there are two very important things that happen in Yitro.

The more obvious of the two is the giving of the Ten Mitzvot. Remember, we won’t be referring to them as “Commandments” here, as we discussed in a previous post. But before we get to the Mitzvot, there is an interesting and arguably more important scene between Moses and his father-in-law Jethro, for whom the parsha is named.

As the Israelites travel farther from Egypt they end up in Midian, which is where Moses lived after being banished from Egypt for killing a task master. In Midian, Jethro still lives and takes care of Moses’s wife Zapporah and their two sons. Moses and Jethro have a happy reunion and basically catch up with one another. I’m a big fan of scenes like this. The Torah frequently features family reunions. The fact that the holy texts take time out to reinforce the importance of loved ones in our lives is wonderful and reassuring. Even as Moses is the prophet of God and the leader of an entire nation, he is still only human. He misses his family and shows them deference despite his social station. He even takes advice from his father-in-law, who is really the only parental figure Moses has left in the world. That in itself is an interesting commentary about family responsibility.

When Jethro sees that Moses spends all day, every day acting as the judge for every little problem the Israelites have, Jethro tells Moses that he needs to make some changes lest he burn himself out and fail as a leader. Jethro suggests that instead of just interpreting the law for them, Moses ought to teach the law to all of the people so they can be judges for themselves. He also tells Moses to delegate responsibility to the righteous for smaller groups. Specifically, that there ought to be community leaders for groups of thousands, then for groups of hundreds within those thousands, then groups of tens within those hundreds. Essentially, Jethro is suggesting a Federal, State, and Local governmental system, freeing Moses to address only those issues deemed too difficult for the many different delegated judges. Essentially, Moses is now the Supreme Court. This sets a precedent for keeping the big-wigs out of local affairs while still maintaining a single rule of law throughout the nation.

This is why I say that the delegation segment is more important than the Ten Mitzvot. These are really just a few more common sense laws to add to an already established list of Israelite codes of conduct. This parsha begins a process that never really stops throughout the Torah and beyond. Most of the Torah from this point forward is concerned with the creation of laws by which the people agree to live. The laws get more nuanced and complex as the nation gets closer to solidification, but for now they are just day-to-day modes of order. The only thing that sets the Mitzvot apart from other laws is that they are handed down directly from God to the people, so their authority is absolute. These are laws that cannot be debated. If Moses is the Supreme Court, God is the Constitution.

Shabbat Shalom and welcome to Judeo Talk. The Torah portion for this week is parsha Beshalach, Exodus 13:17-17:16.

Often times when modern people reach this part of the Torah they recoil at the sudden appearance of war in this tale of redemption. Without the context of life in the ancient Near and Middle East, this uneasiness with bloody conflict is understandable. Unfortunate though it may be, it has always been an essential aspect of nation building for a people to prove their ability to defend themselves from attackers. Still to this day, even those organizations ostensibly concerned with fostering peace make provisions about war. The United Nations has a list of criteria for those who want to claim themselves a sovereign nation. One criterion is that the nation demonstrate a capability to defend itself from foreign threats. As the Israelites leave Egypt, they are immediately faced with just such an issue.

When Moses leads his people from Egypt, the pharaoh attempts to recapture them one last time. This is the famous scene at the Red Sea. God instructs Moses to raise his staff over the sea as if to divide it and indeed the sea parts. As the Israelites cross the dry sea bed, the water itself is described as being a wall on either side of them. When the Egyptian army pursues them into the sea, the water crashes down on top of them.

But there is something here that should give us pause. The Torah is usually fairly exact with its language. While the traditional interpretation of this passage is that the Israelites safely crossed the sea, then the sea went back to normal when the Egyptians entered, the language itself doesn’t present us with that much linearity. It could just as easily be read as the two events happening simultaneously. Aside from being a miracle, how could this be possible?

Once again, we must approach the Torah on the level of metaphor. The passage clearly states that the Israelites find the bodies of the Egyptian soldiers washed up on the opposite shore, indicating that the Egyptians drowned more or less at the same time as when the Israelites crossed. In one sense, this makes the scene less magical, but it also makes the lesson that much stronger. Pharaoh says of the Israelites at the bank of the Red Sea that they are “bound up in the wilderness”. As we saw last week, the “wilderness” is a common allegory for the confusion of life. In this passage, those who follow God in the sea, the wilderness, survive. Those who follow violence and lust aren’t so lucky.

When the Israelites are on the far shore and the conflict is over, Moses stands before the people and essentially composes a song of glory. That song lists God’s victories and therefore the victories of the Hebrew people by association. It sounds like any glory song of the era. Like much of ancient Greek poetry, it’s a way to rattle swords and impress other nations with the strength of a people. A portion of Moses’s song became a major prayer in modern liturgy. The Micha Mocha prayer is pulled from the middle of the glory song. Before it was a rabbinic prayer, Micha Mocha was a common battle cry used by a number of famous generals in Jewish history. It is essentially a cry that says, “My God is too powerful to be beaten. A lot of people have tried and we destroyed them”. While we today don’t have as much use for glory songs or battle cries, these things were of the utmost importance in establishing a respected presence in the ancient world.

Shabbat Shalom and welcome to Judeo Talk. The Torah portion for this week is parsha Bo, Exodus 10:1-13:16.

Parsha Bo is one of the most important, pervasive segments of the Torah. The origins of some very important liturgy come from Bo, as do the first instructions for the holiday of Passover. But first, there are the concluding three of the ten plagues. They are locusts, darkness and the death of the first born.

The plagues themselves seem almost arbitrary. They are a strange mix of natural disasters that don’t seem to be related. Upon deeper reading, their connection becomes apparent. As we saw last week, these plagues are not intended as a punishment for Egypt or even to coax the pharaoh to release his slaves. Rather, they occurred as a demonstration, to make a point. Each of the ten plagues is a direct assault on one of the gods in the Egyptian pantheon through some symbol of their presence. For example, the turning of water into blood was the first plague, and rightfully so. Most of the water in Egypt would have come from the Nile river. According to Egyptian mythology, the god of the Nile was Hapi the father of the gods, and later Osiris the god of rebirth.

The last two gods assaulted by the ten plagues are Ra, the supreme god and god of the sun, and the pharaoh, seen at the time as being a god given flesh to rule over the people. The death of the first born is a plague directed at the pharaoh’s ability to maintain his line’s hegemony in Egypt.

Before the tenth and final plague, God instructs Moses to tell the Israelites to mark their doors with the blood of a sacrificial lamb as a sign to spare their houses from the death of the first born. In addition, the lamb is supposed to be made into a feast for the house. The instructions also demand that this observance should be repeated every year at the same time. In addition to the eating of a sacrificial lamb, the Israelites are told to eat only unleavened bread for the entire week of the festival. The reason for this becomes apparent later in the parsha. When the Egyptians finally tell the Israelites to leave the land, they push them out in a hurry. It all happens so fast that the Israelites don’t even have time to let the dough of their bread rise.

This parsha has one of my favorite lines in the entire Torah. God instructs the Israelites to prepare themselves to leave Egypt by saying they should eat their lamb feast, “With your loins girded, your shoes on your feet and your staff in your hand.” What an excellent line. The feast of the pascal lamb isn’t some random ritual. These people needed to eat a good meal to get up their strength for the long journey ahead. This line has so much meaning beyond the literal. As we will see, the voyage from slavery, through the wilderness and into the promised land is a great metaphor in the Jewish faith. It is an allegory for the search for enlightenment. God’s instruction for all those who seek truth is to begin that process prepared for the long haul.

The Israelites begin their march out of Egypt at the end of this parsha. The victory here, as the proverb goes, is not the end, it is just the beginning. They go with the instruction to pass this story down through the generations and to maintain these traditions. It is a subtle sign that all people, Jewish or otherwise, will face their own Egypt, their own personal slavery. Parsha Bo is a reminder that the road out of each individual’s Egypt is one that requires the utmost preparation.

If there is one word that sums up the core of Jewish philosophy, it is Mitzvah. This is one of those very complex Hebrew words that just doesn’t have an easy, direct translation into English, or any other language for that matter. In fact, the word Mitzvah is at the center of one of the most hotly contested mistranslations in all of monotheism: Commandment.

The first use of the word Mitzvah comes in the biblical book of Exodus. After the Israelites leave Egypt, God leads them to Mt. Sinai (or Mt. Horeb, depending on who you talk to) and gives them the Ten…

Commandments? Not exactly. The word in the Torah is Mitzvot, the plural of Mitzvah. That word doesn’t even share a common root with the two different words in Hebrew that can mean “Command”. One of those words is the verb L’shalot which basically just means, “To tell someone to do something” and the other is a verb from a different “family” of verbs, Pikodah. Neither of these could possibly be construed to relate to Mitzvah.

So, why translate Mitzvah as “Commandment”? Well, that’s an issue of philosophy. The list of Mitzvot handed down at Sinai have commonly been interpreted as laws that come directly from God. Philosophically, it sets more nicely for a lot of believers and theologians to think of them as hard rules given by the ultimate authority. It’s certainly easier to explain them that way.

The truth is that the Ten Mitzvot aren’t commandments in any form, not even grammatically. Take for instance the Mitzvah commonly translated as, “Thou shalt not kill”. In the original Hebrew, the phrase is Loh Tirtzakh. This literally means “No murder.” Were this a command, it would be phrased Tzakh Loh. Is this just nit-picking? Absolutely not. There is a very different connotation here.

Philosophically and linguistically speaking, that big list of ten things just doesn’t make sense as an authoritative command. The Torah explicitly states that human beings have free will. It seems a lot more likely, given context, that the big list actually means to say, “In a society of righteous people, the following things are true.” The Ten Mitzvot are not followed by The Ten Consequences for Breaking The Ten Mitzvot. These aren’t rules or commands, they’re statements of righteousness.

So, what exactly does Mitzvah mean? These days, Jews use the term to mean any act of goodness or kindness. While that’s closer to the spirit of the word, it’s still not exactly right. It’s true that all good and kind acts are Mitzvot, but not all Mitzvot are good or kind. More accurately, Mitzvah is a lifestyle. It means remaining mindful of what would be best in any situation. To live a life of Mitzvah is to strive to make the world better through actions and to appreciate what good there is in the world already. There are as many Mitzvot as there are experiences in life. Every experience is an opportunity for Mitzvah, even times of difficulty and sadness. It is sad to lose a loved one, but it is a Mitzvah to fondly remember the dead. It is frustrating to meet with cruelty and ignorance, but it is a Mitzvah to refrain from anger and choose to educate the ignorant.

This lesson is just the beginning of understanding Mitzvah. It is a very rich, complex philosophy and it is the central preoccupation of Jewish theology. In a sense, it is a word that has no translation because its meaning changes with each year and each life that lives it.

Shabbat Shalom and welcome back to Judeo Talk. The Torah portion for this week is Va’eira, Exodus 6:2-9:35.

In last week’s parsha, the Israelites first became slaves in Egypt and God enlisted the prophet Moses to demand their freedom from the pharaoh. This week, Moses, his brother Aaron and both their families travel to the heart of Egypt to do just that. As God previously told Moses, the pharaoh rejects the demand. The result of his “hardened heart” is a series of miraculous plagues brought down upon Egypt. In Va’eira, we get to see seven of the infamous Ten Plagues. But before we get to that, there are two things that bear discussing.

First, there is the episode with the rods turning into snakes. When Moses and Aaron approach the pharaoh, they demonstrate the power of God by casting Aaron’s staff on the ground where it transforms into a snake, as God said it would. The pharaoh, unimpressed, calls in his own magicians who perform the same trick. However, the snake from Aaron’s staff devours the others. This is an interesting moment. The obvious connotation is that God cannot be outdone or overwhelmed. But there’s something else here. Recall several weeks ago when a previous pharaoh called Joseph to him to interpret his dreams. In those dreams, the weak and sickly grain, then cattle literally devour the strong grain and cattle. At the time, the interpretation is that a period of feast will be followed by a period of famine. Still, it’s hard not to see some connection between those dreams and the moment with the snakes. Our minds are drawn to the original pharaoh’s dreams because it seems they not only foretold the famine, but also the rise of the Israelites.

The other thing people often ask is why God told Moses to demand the Israelites’ freedom when God knew from the beginning that the pharaoh would deny it. The simplest and most likely reason is that this isn’t a story about enlightening the pharaoh, it’s the ultimate demonstration of God’s power. An example is being made of Egypt for the express purpose of passing the story of the Exodus through the generations. Still to this day, “Egypt” is a metaphor in the Jewish faith for times of difficulty, confusion and disconnection. In this story, the Ten Plagues are not a consequence for wrongdoing, they’re the whole point.

This week’s parsha begins what is possibly the greatest, most far-reaching allegory in Judaism. This truly epic story tosses around a lot of loaded terms and is rife with symbolism. There is a lot to contemplate of slavery, both literal and metaphorical, as there is much to consider in the questions of the trials of life. These terms- Slavery, Freedom, Holiness, and even what exactly makes a true Nation; these are the concerns of a large part of Jewish philosophy. As we enter into the most fantastical part of the Torah, it’s very important to not get lost in the powerful imagery and to keep ourselves from disconnecting from their underlying purposes. We are 21st century people. We don’t build pyramids by hand, we don’t witness grand visual miracles and many of us take our freedom for granted. There is knowledge here in the story of the Exodus, but in the coming weeks it is of the utmost importance that we approach the text with the intent to dig into the metaphors.

The Torah portion for this week is Shemot, Exodus 1:1-6:1.

There are many very well-known stories in this parsha. It is the beginning of the book of Exodus, the story of how the Hebrew people left Egypt and received the Ten Mitzvot and the Torah. It is essentially the story of how a people not unlike most other peoples at the time came to be the first Jews.

But before that happens, they have to endure a lot of hardship. Just like Joseph, the Israelites first go through a period of slavery and pain, then through great and difficult acts they become the people they were meant to be. In Shemot, we learn how the Israelites came to be slaves in Egypt in the first place. If you recall from last week’s parsha, Joseph called his entire clan to come live in Goshen, a territory of Egypt. Because of Joseph’s service, his people were welcome. Unfortunately, the king of Egypt from Joseph’s time dies and the next king is far less kind. Because the Israelites become a numerous and prosperous people, the pharaoh worries that they would be a liability in times of war. In fact, there are so many Hebrews that the pharaoh believes they would overtake Egypt should they side with Egypt’s enemies.

The pharaoh’s solution to this problem is to enslave the Israelites in order to weaken them. When that doesn’t work, he orders the nurses of Goshen to kill every newborn Israelite male. This is the parsha’s first instance of women playing an integral role in the survival of the Hebrew people. Against the pharaoh’s wishes, the nurses secretly save the boys of Goshen and lie to cover up the rescue effort. For this, God protects them.

It’s an all-too-frequent exercise to point out the misogyny of the bible. Certainly, there are many instances of females being treated worse than males simply for being female. However obvious these moments are, for its time the Torah is actually startling in its progressive outlook on gender. In fact, Exodus is a book that is particularly focused on the raising up of women. The nurses not only defy a man, they defy the most powerful man in Egypt, all because they have their own notions of what is right. That God protects them is a sign that free-thinking women are exalted in the Torah. The story could just as easily feature men saving the Israelite boys. The fact that women are the saviors is deliberate.

There is another, very similar episode later in the parsha. After God charges Moses with the task of going to the pharaoh and demanding the release of the Israelites, Moses is in something of a hurry. He packs up his family and starts on the road to central Egypt. His pursuit is so single-minded that he neglects to circumcise his newborn son. Just because Moses is God’s emissary to the pharaoh doesn’t mean he gets special privileges. God begins to kill Moses for his transgression. The only reason he survives is because his wife, Zapporah, realizes what’s happening and quickly performs the circumcision. In a particularly dramatic moment, Zapporah casts the recently amputated foreskin at Moses’s feet.

Repetition, as I’ve previously mentioned (no pun intended), is a common Toritic method of creating emphasis. That we get two separate episodes of women saving the children of Israel despite the men around them is important. We are meant to see these women as strong, active and mindful individuals. It’s rather plain that, at least in this parsha, the women have a much more solid moral core than the men. They are not passive nurturers, but people willing to fight for what they believe is right and true. This not only lifts them up, it plants a responsibility in them that will follow for the rest of Jewish history.

Shabbat Shalom, everyone, and an extra prayer for peace in Gaza. It is my hope and the hope of many in this world that this time next shabbat the conflict will have ended.

The Torah portion for today is Vayechi, Genesis 47:28-50:26. In this parsha, we see the deaths of both Jacob and his son Joseph. In the sense of raw plot, not a lot happens in this parsha, but there is a great depth of symbolism in the little bit that does happen.

The parsha opens with the aging and eventual ill health of Jacob, the last of the three patriarchs. As we saw last week, Joseph revealed himself to his family and gave them a home in Goshen, a territory within Egypt where he was a powerful political figure. As Jacob lay dying, he requests that his body be taken back to Canaan so he can be laid to rest in the same cave as his parents Isaac and Rebecca, his grandparents Abraham and Sarah, as well as his wives Leah and Rachel. But before that happens, there is a very interesting episode involving Joseph’s sons, Manassah and Ephraim.

At this point, Jacob is blind and infirm. He calls Joseph to him to explain his burial wishes and also to bless Joseph and his sons. Jacob gives a blessing to the boys, his left hand on the head of Manassah and his right on the head of Ephraim. In that culture at that time, the right hand represented the stronger and the better side of things. In this case, when Jacob passes the blessing of God’s promise to make his descendants a great and prosperous people, he gives the better part of the blessing to Ephraim. At first, Joseph believes his father is mistaken because he is blind. Ephraim is the younger of the two brothers and therefore not traditionally entitled to a greater portion of an inheritance. But when Joseph attempts to correct Jacob, Jacob insists that he knows exactly what he’s doing and that the blessing of the second born is intentional.

Later, as Jacob essentially reads his last will to his sons, he once again breaks with the tradition of allotting inheritance by the order of birth. Rather, Jacob gives his portions and blessings to his sons based on their righteousness. Those who were violent get nothing, those who were irresponsible get next to nothing, those who were lazy get very little, and those who were good and holy inherit wealth and power. Interestingly, this part of the parsha reads like a poem pasted into the regular story. It is full of metaphors and powerful imagery. This isn’t in a poetic format just to be fancy. Jacob’s sons are each the progenitors of the famous twelve tribes of Israel. The listing of their crimes and virtues is epic because it represents an entire nation, not just a family.

This is not the first, nor the last time the Torah uses small groups of people to represent whole societies. This episode belongs to a recurring theme in the Torah about responsibility throughout the generations. By allotting the wealth and blessings of his people based on merit, Jacob sets the precedent that the soon-to-be-Jewish people are not just another dynasty ruled by notions of power. Not only does this create a focus on justice, it also serves as a strong allegory for how we affect future generations with our present acts. Like this story’s previous threads about preparedness, the reading of the will of Jacob warns us that the lives we lead echo throughout time. A life of violence leads to a fallow future, a life of complacency leads to empty servitude. We are most certainly meant to read this portion and ask ourselves what legacy we will leave to future generations. Do we deserve to receive the blessings of our fathers, or have we yet to earn it?

Shalom, everyone. I wish I could write this post in a less tragic time, but I also won’t avoid the topic of the recent conflict in Gaza. It’s difficult to watch and read the reports coming out of the region, not just as a Jew but as a human being. Regardless of one’s affiliations, violence on such a scale is heartbreaking. Moreover, it is impossible for any truly spiritual person to justify. As it has been, seemingly since the beginning of human civilzation, the agenda of a radical few has resulted in the pain and loss of many peaceful people. While I strive to be a supporter of Israel, I cannot condone the scale of the Israeli military’s response to the rocket attacks from Gaza. Of course, we also shouldn’t ignore the intent of those rocket attacks. It is short-sighted and inhumane to approach this conflict or the many like it in the past with a binary attitude. How anyone can call one side of this war the “right” side and still call themselves a good Jew, or a good Muslim, is beyond me.

Because of this conflict, today’s Hebrew lesson will center around a prayer called Oseh Shalom, which literally means, “Make Peace”. The prayer actually appears at the end of the Kaddish, the prayer for remembering lost loved ones. The text, with transliteration, is as follows:

The usual translation of Oseh Shalom is, “He who makes peace in Heaven will make peace for us throughout Israel, and we say Amen”.

But this translation is neither direct nor in the full spirit of Jewish philosophy. According to Jewish law and practice, it is the task of living people to make peace on Earth, not by a magical blessing from God. This philosophy is known as Tikun Olam, literally “The repair of everything”. Tikun Olam is the task of every living person, Jew and gentile.

Moreover, the standard translation of Oseh Shalom takes some liberties with the phrasing. I would like to suggest an alternative translation with a different, more direct connotation.

Oseh shalom b’imromav “Make peace your greatest example (lit. in the highest place)

Hu ya’aseh shalom aleinu “He who will make peace for us all”

V’al kol Yisrael “And in all of Israel”

V’imru amen “We agree”

My suggested translation places the focus of the prayer on the actions of individuals, rather than on a entreating God for help. The line “He who will make peace for us all” can certainly refer to God, but it doesn’t have to. It can simply mean, “You individual person who strives to make peace for everyone”. The term b’imromav doesn’t actually refer to Heaven, the Hebrew for which is Shamayim. Rather, the term simply means “in a high place” or possibly “in the highest place”. This can very easily mean that peace should be made the greatest public example. As the prayer in my translation says, the Jewish people, Israel, can only support the actions of individuals pursuing peace. If you support violence and conflict, you stray from the core of the Jewish faith.

Shabbat Shalom and Happy New Year. The parsha for this week is Vayigash, the story of how the House of Israel actually came to live in Egypt. This is a particularly interesting episode in the Torah because it is one of the most overtly literary moments in the Five Books. It is full of drama, symbolism and most of all foreshadowing.

This parsha starts in the middle of a chapter. Judah entreats Joseph to reconsider his decision to take Benjamin, Joseph’s youngest brother, as a bondsman after framing him for theft. Joseph chooses to finally end his ruse and reveal his true identity to his brothers. When they come before him to beg for the release of Benjamin, Joseph tells them who he is. He also tells them that he harbors them no ill will, saying that it was God who sent him to Egypt, not his brothers.

Here we have an interesting opportunity for a philosophical discussion. This entire parsha sits at the fulcrum of many events, past and future, that indistinguishably mix the good with the bad. There is an inexplicable sense of cause and effect. Joseph is betrayed by his brothers and languishes in slavery, but had he not he would never have risen to his position of authority in Egypt. By the same turn, had Joseph not come to Egypt the pharaoh wouldn’t have been prepared for the seven years of famine and the entire empire would have starved, including Joseph’s family in Canaan. Like dominoes, events keep triggering new events.

After Joseph reveals himself to his brothers, he invites his entire family to come to Egypt from Canaan. This includes dozens of people, essentially an entire clan and the seeds of a nation. Of course, had Joseph not invited his family to live in Egypt, the Israelites would never have become slaves to Ramses, and therefore never would have been freed by God and led to the Torah.

The story of Joseph is the story of the Jewish people in microcosm- To go from comfort to slavery, then from slavery to humble exaltation. The parallel events in both stories are convoluted. The bad directly results in the good, with the good paving the way to the bad. The question we must ask ourselves is, how do we approach life when this dynamic is ever-present?

Everyone experiences their share of good times and tragedies. Our relationships with one another are complex and the longer we know one another the more likely we are to retain some kind of emotional “baggage” that further complicates how we feel and how we act. The stories of Joseph and then of the Israelites are stories of the human condition. Not only are we bound to experience ups and downs, we are also generally incapable of seeing what good or bad things will result from the conditions of the present. It is exceedingly easy to simply remind people to have faith that good will grow from the bad. As the parsha says, God went with the Israelites when they went to Egypt. But as we discussed last week, “going with God” does not guarantee happiness.

The best insight we can gather from this parsha is that, in all of this complicated business with the mixing of good and bad, there are still moments of volition. Joseph chooses to re-embrace his family. God does not command it of him, neither does etiquette. In the midst of all this confusion, Joseph listens to his emotions and makes a decision in his life to welcome some goodness into the present. We small humans will spend most of our lives getting tossed around by past, present and future bouts of good and bad. What makes our lives meaningful are those rare opportunities for choice.

Last night, the festival of Chanukah came to a close. In its way, Chanukah is unique among Jewish holidays. While many of the faith’s observances last for several nights, none but Chanukah have an active ritual repeated on each of the nights. For those who diligently keep the customs of Chanukah this means lighting the Menorah eight times, a powerful sensory ritual. The sight of the flames, the smell of the smoke, even the motion of guiding the Shamas to each branch can evoke memories of childhood and of other Chanukahs past. We do these rituals not just because they are customs but because physical acts require enough concentration to focus us on the prayers and the feelings associated with the holiday.

So, when we repeat the same prayers for eight successive nights, lent focus by the act of lighting the Menorah, it is natural for us to question what those prayers actually mean. We are a people who often pray in an ancient language that most of us can’t speak. We frequently don’t even know the literal translations, let alone the layers of meaning underneath.

On Chanukah we say two prayers every time we light the Menorah and a third prayer on the first night only. On the first night, in addition to the two others, we say the Shehechianu, a prayer said at all occasions of firsts or of new things. The other two prayers are:

Blessed are you, Adonai our God, King of the Universe

Who makes us holy with the Mitzvah we do

When we light the lights of Chanukah (amen)

And

Blessed are you, Adonai our God, King of the Universe

Who did miracles for our fathers on this day at this time (amen)

So, why are our prayers structured like this? Why do almost all Jewish prayers begin with the same line? Is there a purpose to the repetition of placing all the honor on God?

There are several layers of answers to these questions. First, the structure of Hebrew prayers is essentially standardized. It is a result of the Rabbinic Age in which we live. When Jerusalem was sacked by the Roman Empire the Temple was destroyed and the Jews were forced to scatter across the world. In order for the Jewish faith to survive and Jews to stay connected to one another regardless of where they lived, the prayers of our ancient heritage were standardized.

As for why the majority of Hebrew prayers open with the same line, it is part of one of the faith’s central tenets. In the Torah and in all liturgy afterward, Judaism has attempted to avoid placing too much honor or power on individual people. The responsibility and the glory almost always goes either to God or to the entire community as a whole. When we light the Chanukah candles, we do not honor Judah Maccabee or any other individual because the holiday isn’t supposed to be a time of ancestor worship. By placing the honor on God we allow hope and power to exist in the present day and out of the hands of anyone who could possibly be corrupted by such power.

We also place so much focus on community not just to keep others from becoming arrogant, but also to keep us focused on what really matters. These holidays are nothing if we don’t share them with others because these holidays don’t exist in a vacuum, cut off from the rest of our lives. However ornate or archaic the wording, these two prayers above say simple things. They can be easily translated into more concise language. “It is a good and happy thing to light Chanukah candles” and “A wonderful thing happened a long time ago. We’re so happy we can celebrate it together today.”

In order to make an ancient religion relevant to our modern lives, we must come to a colloquial understanding of what our prayers mean. By keeping the text of those prayers the same across the ages, we allow each generation to come to its own understanding of their meaning. It is a Mitzvah, a good and holy thing, to contemplate prayers and what they mean. If it sounds old, stuffy or irrelevant, chances are you just aren’t modernizing your interpretation.