Our world is beset by baffling confusion. Unlike the Seder night, when ideas are clear and concepts are pure and values are uniform and practices are standard, when הלילה הזה כולו מרור or כולו מצה; our times and our society are a mixture of good and evil, of pure and impure, of hametz and matzah, characterized by strife and struggle, by ambivalence and dilemma. On all sides, we are assailed by competing ideologies and mutually exclusive value systems, shriekingly laying claim to our loyalties. Each asserts with dogmatic confidence its own rightness and, in this age of the collapse of standards, with the pretense of absolute virtue. Licentiousness pretends to be just another legitimate form of morality, in this case, the “New Morality.” How is a young person to know which to choose? Pornography parades as literature, obscenity is disguised as realism, nudity proclaims itself art; how are we to judge? Big power cynicism is presented as the impartial arbitration of objective justice; to whom are we to appeal? Children, impressed by television, sooner or later learn the phoniness in so many of the commercials, and they conclude that “everything is a fake.” This ubiquitous cynicism soon insinuates itself into every aspect of their lives, and the result is – an overwhelming confusion which reaches to every level of existence.
During the month of Elul, our custom is to sound the Shofar every morning in order לערבב את השטן, to “confuse Satan.” Now, at the other end of the year, it seems that Satan is doing quite well for himself in confusing us...
What is needed, therefore, is the exercise of one particular faculty of the human psyche: the power to discern and discriminate and distinguish between the real and the fictional, the genuine and the artificial, right and wrong, licit and illicit. In a word, we need: havdalah. When we recite this prayer, we bless God who distinguishes בין קודש לחול, בין אור לחושך בין ישראל לעמים, בין יום השביעי לששת ימי המעשה – between sacred and profane, light and dark, Israel and the nations, Sabbath and weekday. Jewish practice calls for us to recite this havdalah on Saturday nights and at the end of holidays, not only over a cup of wine, but also during the Amidah of the evening prayer which marks the transition from holy-day to week-day. And the Talmud requires that the havdalah be recited specifically in the blessing which begins אתה חונן לאדם דעת, in which we pray to the Almighty for the gift of wisdom and knowledge and understanding. What is the relevance of havdalah to this specific blessing? The Rabbis answer: אם אין דעת, הבדלה מנין, “if there is no knowledge, whence the ability to distinguish?” In other words, the ability to discern between different values, to discriminate and to distinguish between competing claims, and therefore, the ability to emerge whole from the confusions that reign in life, requires daat – special insights and intellectual gifts.
And yet, if we examine the passage of the havdalah carefully, we remain with the question: why so? Apparently, it should be rather easy to make these distinctions. Any child can tell the difference between light and dark; reference to identity of the parents will tell us if one is Jewish or non-Jewish; the difference between the Sabbath and weekdays is nothing more complicated than consulting a calendar; and even the distinction between sacred and profane is not overly taxing – who cannot tell apart, for instance, a Sefer Torah from a novel? Why, then, the special requirement for daat or knowledge, for intellectual graces, in order to perform havdalah?
The answer is that for those who are superficial or who dwell in only one realm, daat is indeed unnecessary. If we associate only with kodesh (holiness), Israel, ore (light), and Sabbath, or only with hol (the profane), the nations, hoshekh (darkness), and weekday, it is easy to discern distinctions, and life is much less confusing. The full agnostic has few problems. There is little to confuse him. He swallows all of contemporary life, and therefore, he has no difficulties in trying to tell apart its various strands. Similarly, at the other end of the spectrum, the Jew who does not step out of his self-imposed boundaries of the sacred, of Israel, of the light of Torah, rejects all that is new and secular and alien in the contemporary culture, and he too has little to confuse him.
However, daat is needed and havdalah is vital for those of us who choose to live in both realms and will reject neither – for those of us who opt both for light and darkness, for Israel and the nations, for Sabbath and weekdays, for the sacred and the profane.
This category describes most of us, who are known by the somewhat unfelicitous name “Modern Orthodox,” who will not succumb to the blandishments of the materialistic and hedonistic and agnostic society, and yet refuse the easy comforts of intellectual ghettoization; who believe that the function and the mission of the Jew in the world is to illuminate the choshekh (darkness); to sanctify the hol (profane); to bring the Jewish message to the nations; and to introduce the warmth and meaningfulness of the Sabbath to all the days of the week. For us, who are involved in this great mission, was the dictum of the Rabbis meant: im ein daat, havdalah minayin. It is we, who straddle both worlds, who are therefore subject to the danger of confusion, and who therefore need the special divine gift of daat or knowledge, insight, in order to be able to perform havdalah, always to distinguish between the light and the dark, even when we try to illuminate the shadows of life; to know what separates the holy and the profane, even when we try to consecrate the secular.
Educationally, the highest expression of this point of view is Yeshiva University. For Yeshiva is more than a university; it is truly a universe, a microcosm of the American Orthodox world – its vices and its virtues, its faults and its merits, its promises and its potentials, its currents and sub-currents. No other place in the world offers such a combination: a Yeshiva and a graduate school of science, an Erna Michael College for Men and a Stern College for Women; a Talmudic Kollel and a medical school…
The ideal of Yeshiva is: kiddush ha-kol, the sanctification of the profane and the illumination of the dark and the Judaization of the general. It is Yeshiva, therefore, which strives most mightily for that daat to keep havdalah, to be able at all times to discern and distinguish, to avoid confusion in a terribly confusing world.
This vast educational complex, this “Yeshiva Universe,” is something new in Jewish history: new institutionally, and even new ideologically, although we have respectable precedent.
In introducing the havdalah on Saturday night, we quote a verse which comes from this morning's Haftorah, the 12th chapter of Isaiah: ושאבתם מים בששון ממעיני הישועה, “With joy shall you draw waters out of the wells of salvation.” The Targum, or Aramaic translator, rendered that verse as: ותקבלון אולפון, חדת בחדוא מבחירו צדקיא, “And you shall receive a new teaching in joy from the chosen of the righteous.” Yeshiva University represents that אולפן חדת, that new teaching: the joining of sacred to secular and the sublimation of the Dark as it is bathed in the glory of the Light. This “new teaching” is the vision of some of the greatest Jewish scholars, the בחירי צדיקיא, of our and of past generations – and it is one which, because of the implied risks, constantly requires daat and increasing havdalah in order to save our generation from confusion.
But if Yeshiva’s task is to “draw the teachings out of the wellsprings of the Sages,” it must turn to us, to the lay community, and draw support from the wellsprings of our generosity.
We at The Jewish Center have always been the greatest supporters of the Yeshiva University. Our involvement with the Yeshiva is legendary.
Now is not the time to slacken in our efforts, but, on the contrary, to quicken our support. If the whole experiment of Yeshiva means something to us, we must help.
If we want our youth to find the guide for the way out of their confusion, we must assist.
If we want our children, wherever they are, to be inspired by the examples of Yeshiva’s student body, which almost alone amongst American universities, has remained an island of sanity in the midst of the waves of vandalism and paroxysms of madness – composed of equal parts of idealism and wildness – that have inundated American academia – we must not stand aside.
We cannot give the same as before. With prices rising all about us, as we know from our own personal experience, we must keep in mind that the same holds true for the cost of quality education. Therefore, our contributions must rise accordingly.
There is a beautiful and charming Jewish custom, that when we make havdalah, we spill some of the wine as we cause the cup to overflow. The reason for this is given in the Talmud: כל בית שנשפך יין כמים הרי זה סימן ברכה, “Every home where the wine flows like water, it is a sign of blessing.”
Does this mean that only in a wealthy home, or one predisposed to alcoholic excesses, one may find blessing – not in sober homes that are poor?
One of the most distinguished commentators on the Shulhan Arukh, the author of Turei Zahav, gives us the explanation: it has nothing to do with opulence, but rather with character and with fundamental generosity. At the beginning of the week – which Saturday night is – we must demonstrate by a symbolic act, to all members of our family, that this week we shall make every effort to be relaxed and generous and tranquil. Usually, the “master of the household” becomes upset and angry if money, even small amounts, is wasted in one way or another during the week. All too often, it is these financial trivia, that cause so much aggravation of the normal tensions of living. At havdalah time, therefore, we purposely spill a little wine, as if it were just water, in order to show that this week we shall make every effort to exercise our generosity, not to be angry, not to withhold, not to be stingy. We shall try to open our hearts – and that is the greatest siman berakhah, sign of blessing.
I ask you now, at our annual Passover appeal for Yeshiva University: show your joy in giving, and in giving more than usual.
Let your generosity flow like water.
As we appeal for an institution that teaches daat for havdalah, that which can give directions to us out of the pervasive confusion that surrounds, I appeal to you as well: do it in the right spirit – with joy, with gladness, without begrudging. ושאבתם מים בששון, draw from your possessions and your substance “with joy.”
And may it be, for you and us and all Israel, a siman berakhah, a sign of unending blessing.
