The phrase “from Zion shall go forth Torah” (Isaiah 2:3) is well known but for many Jews, both in Israel and around the world, rings hollow in an era in which many of the religious voices coming from Israel do not inspire us, but rather, leave us saddened by what Judaism in the wrong hands can become.
That is what makes Rabbi David Stav so exceptional—in all the meanings of that word. His vision for an inclusive Judaism, his commitment to an Israel characterized by openness to Jews of all sorts, his vision of Orthodoxy that embraces and enriches Jews no matter their background is precisely the kind of religious spirit that I imagine Isaiah might have had in mind when he said that Zion would be a spiritual wellspring.
As Rosh Hashanah draws near, we are honored and delighted to welcome Rabbi David Stav back to Israel from the Inside, as he helps us shape our thoughts, our prayers and our hopes in these momentous days.
Rabbi David Stav is a graduate of Yeshivat Mercaz HaRav and has qualification as a Rabbinical Judge from the Chief Rabbinate of Israel.
Rabbi Stav lectures in the women’s Judaic program at Bar Ilan University, authors a weekly column in the Israel Hayom newspaper and recently published several books on Halacha and the Bible.
The Chief Rabbi of Shoham — an Israeli city that is home to a large secular population — Rabbi Stav has long dedicated his life to bridging the social divides between religious and secular life in Israel. After assassination of Yitzchak Rabin, he and several colleagues founded Tzohar—an organization that “makes Jewish life accessible to secular Israelis—which received the 2009 Presidential Award for Volunteers.
Rabbi Stav was previously a candidate for Israel’s Chief Rabbinate and has long been central to efforts to revolutionize the relationship between religion and state.
To learn more, we invite you to visit Tzohar’s website and Facebook page.
The link at the top of this posting will take you to the full recording of our conversation; below you will find a transcript for those who prefer to read, prepared for our paid subscribers.
There's a verse in the Book of Isaiah, a part of which is known very well to most of our listeners, I assume, which it seems to me is the most appropriate way, perhaps, to begin an introduction of today's extraordinary guest, rabbi David Stav. The verse says, once again, Isaiah 2: 3, And the many people shall go and say, 'Come, let us go up to the mountain of God, to the house of the God of Jacob, that we may be instructed in God's ways, that we may walk in God's paths, for instruction shall come forth from Zion, the word of God from Jerusalem. For instruction, or Torah, shall come forth from Zion, the word of God from Jerusalem. And I think for many of our listeners, there are many things that come from Zion and Jerusalem that we're all very interested in. There is politics, there is tragically war, there is literature, there is music, there is history. But for too many of us, I think, when we ask ourselves to where am I going to turn to find genuine spiritual instruction, genuine meaning out of the religious side of Judaism, all too often, tragically, the state of Israel is the place that we don't think of turning to because so much of what religion has become in this country has become problematic in ways that we won't even bother going into at this moment. But one of the great exceptions to that is rabbi David Stav. We've had the privilege of having on the podcast several times before. He has served in a variety of important positions which we will put in the notes for today. Following the Rabin assassination in 1995, along with the Rabbi Yuval Cherlov, rabbi Stave established the Zohar organization, which is designed to bring Jewish tradition and Jewish values and Jewish life cycle programs to thousands and thousands and thousands of Israelis, many of whom are not religious traditional and therefore wouldn't have access to them without the work that he does. And he will explain to us a bit in his conversation with us today about some of the ways in which that challenge has manifested itself on Yom Kippur in recent years. We're delighted and honored to have Rabbi Stav with us once again to help us prepare and think about the high holiday season in a year which is going to be a challenging, difficult, painful, but critically important one as well. Rabbi Stave, thank you so much for joining us.
Thank you so much
The first time that we met, you may not recall. We sat in this very office, and we didn't really know each other at that point. And you said to me, just so I can figure out who's sitting across from me, how are you doing? And it was during the time of the judicial upheaval. We'll use a a non-judgmental term, upheaval. It was, I think, in the middle somewhere. I told you the truth that I was broken-hearted and devastated by what was happening to this country and very worried about its future. Little did either of us suspect that we would look back at those months as the good old times because something much, much, much worse was about to happen. We've been involved in a terrible war for almost two years. It shows no signs of ending immediately. We are just as divided as we were during 2023. Let me tell you a brief word about the variety of our listeners today. Our listeners are Israelis, and they're foreigners. They all speak English, or they wouldn't be listening to us in English. They range from people who are in Shul three times a day, every day, no matter what, to people who don't go to Shul. Some people don't go to Shul because they object as a matter of principle, and some people don't go to Shul because it's just not interesting for them, and they find other ways to express. So we're talking to not religious and secular, I hate those terms, but we're talking to people whose souls are going to express something during this next period of high holidays in very different kinds of ways. And I wanted to ask you basically one question that has two parts. The question overall is, how should we be thinking about ourselves as individuals and ourselves as a Jewish people at this time? And the two parts are the very personal and the national. And of course, the liturgy for the Yamim Nora'im, the Makhzor, has both, who will live and who will die, who in the right time? Who in the too soon? I mean, yes, it's true of all of us. We're all saying it together, but we're really thinking about ourselves or those people immediately the closest to us, whose loss terrifies us. I mean, it's a very, very personal moment. And there's many, many, many of those moments. And then there are also moments in the Makhzor, which are very national, in a sense, the afternoon work service, we say in Musaf, of the high priest going in the Holy of Holies on Yom Kippur, which many people now know better than they used to, because of Yishay Rivo and the beautiful song that he wrote based on it, but changing some of the words. And there's the martyrology, the 10 people who were slaughtered by the authorities for their insistence that they continue the Jewish tradition. So we're in a period of time that is very personal, very national, very painful. If in Yom Kippur of 2023, I specifically remember some of the newspapers in 2023 saying, Okay, it's 50 years since the Yom Kippur War. The cloud over Yom Kippur has finally dissipated. It's spread. Now, Yom Kippur can be Yom Kippur again. It can be just Yom Kippur. The war was the war, but it's now no longer taking over the holiday. And there's no way that we can say that on this Simcha Torah, it's not going to be taken over. It's going to be very painful once again. So you was really, to my mind, one of the great introspective religious thinkers of our time in the State of Israel. I hope you can give us all, religious, secular, more traditional, less traditional, more certain, more uncertain thoughts about how we use this time, both on the personal level and on the national level. And I just thank you for whatever it is that you will teach us and the ways in which I know you're going to enrich us.
Actually, your questions are so important and referred to so many areas that I hope that I will remember all of them in order to refer. If not, you will remind me. Well, I would like to continue from the place we stopped three years ago. I would like to refer to Yom Kippur, which took place two weeks before the war broke out, to Yom Kippur a year ago and to the upcoming Yom Kippur. Yom Kippur, October 2023, was the first Yom Kippur in Israel's history that tens of gathering of religious and non-religious people for prayer in Tel Aviv, including Tzoh Haminyanim that we do every year, for the first time in Israel's history, were disrupted, were disturbed, violently, physically, orally violated by people that wanted to disturb the davening, the prayer, just because they thought they did not have a mechitza, a separation, or did have a separation. Just to think about it, that three years ago, actually, it's two years ago. Two years ago. Two years ago, the entire country was busy with this stupid question, How will the prayer take place in Tel Aviv? People disturb one another. Even in places where there was no mechitza, people cursed and pushed and hit others because they were practicing in the traditional way.
In the Jewish state.
In the Jewish state. That's one thing. I remember myself a day before Simchat Torah. People don't remember that today. We were all busy with applied to the Supreme Court about the dancing in Simchat Torah. How will they look like? Will it be separated? Will it not be separated? Will there be a mechitza? Will there not be a mechitza? I remember myself urging to the mayor of Tel Aviv, please keep the status quo. Let people do what they they were doing for years. Don't touch it. That year, we did not dance on Simcha Tora. We all know what happened in Simcha Tora. Everybody knows about the source of Yom Kippur. And let me begin with a short idea, a dvah Torah, to add something to the knowledge of people. Everybody knows that the source of Yom Kippur comes from the tradition that God was forgiving the Jewish people for the sin that they have sinned with a golden calf. It was forgiving to Moshe Rabenu on Yom Kippur. And since then, it became the day of attainment, a day of repentance. But there is a previous source in ancient sources that says that that's not the first occasion that occurred on Yom Kippur. And the first occasion that occurred in Yom Kippur was the selling of Yosef by his brothers to the others, to the merchants, the Arabs, the Ishmaelites, Midianites, whoever they were, the selling of Yosef was on Yom Kippur. We all wonder when we arrive to the third prayer, Musaf, you mentioned the poet about the 10 people that were slaughter by the Romans and the Babylon and the Eretz Israel Talmud, raised a question, why do we mention it? Why did it occur? And what is it? How is it connected to Yom Kippur? It engaged to Tish'a B'av. That's the day where we commemorate all the suffering. But what connection does these 10 people, these 10 holy sages, how are they connected to Yom Kippur. And the answer is because the reason for these 10 people to be slaughter was the punishment for the 10 brothers that sold the brother and this sin still exists among us, that we sell one another. We don't trust one another. We don't care enough one about the other. So Yom Kippur, on its very, very beginning, begins with the relationship relationship between ourselves. Before we start dealing with the relationships with God, whether we sing with the golden calf or with other sins that we sing towards God, it begins with the fact that We didn't know how to get along one with another. And that's the Yom Kippur that took place here two years ago. Last year, which Yom Kippur was a year, almost a year after the Israeli society showed such tremendous solidarity. Percentage of draft, over 140 people came from all over. We're ready to sacrifice their lives, soldiers, civilians who we are talking about, were so focused in just helping one another. And we saw how the entire society was drafted, the civil society, the army, the reservists, others. Everybody was drafted to that mission to help, to show solidarity, to try to repaint a bit of the scene that we have seen the year earlier with a big device that was here. You know, last Yom Kippur, maybe the beginning of the process of tikun, of fixing, of renovating this society, took place in Tel Aviv. The Supreme Court allowed to make prayers gatherings with separation. But the group that raised all this, you decided, because of peaceful issues, let's not raise this issue. And they decided to pray in a closed hole, not raising this issue again. We in Zohar, we started, we arranged many Minyanims, but one of the biggest Minyanims was in the Hostages Square, where there were more than two and a half thousand people. The seperation was not physical. It was by the Bima and by the Ark that was put in the middle. And the prayers were dedicated for the hostages. Actually, in the Avinu-Malcanu, the prayer that we used to say towards the end of the repetition. Our Lord, our King, our Father, please release this and this man, this and this boy, this and this girl. And yesterday, I got a phone call from the Cantor that was leading the prayer last year, telling me the following amazing story, fascinating story. Next to him was one of the mothers of the hostages, Merav Leshem Gonen.
Romy is her daughter.
Romy. Romy was in captivity. He was kidnapped in Gaza. When he said, L'Havino Malkenu, he mentioned when he said, Ravinu Malkenu, he mention each name, Please release Romy, bat Merav, et cetera, et cetera. She calls him two weeks after she was released. She calls him and she tells him the unbelievable story. She tells him, I don't know if you know, but my daughter told me that these murderers, these massacres from Hamas, took her from one of the tunnels on Yom Kippur. They took her to one of the houses, and she watched television, and she saw how you and me are mentioning her name. And she said, That's a sign from God that everything will be okay with me, and I will be released, sooner or later. I got a WhatsApp a day afterwards from a woman that is absolutely secular, telling me, That's the first time I came to Davenin on Yom Kippur, me and my daughter. We came for Kol Nidrey. We couldn't allow ourselves not to come again. Actually, I want to give you a virtual hug for what amazing tikun, for what amazing correction was this for the Israeli society. Unfortunately, as it happens quite often to us as Jews, we are often, we are stubborn. And quite quickly, we came back to our ancient wars, to our ancient, as the Talmud says, and still this sin is existing. Sitting among us, and we come back to the same fights, to the same struggles, inner struggles, internal struggles. And now we can choose two ways. We can focus on the bad things that occurred to us in the last year, and the list is very long, and I'm not going to go into the details. I would rather focus on the other option. I want to call it with one word, Tikva, hope. We can end this year, and concluding this year with despair, with sorrow, with frustration. And there are a lot of reasons for all these, but we can look at this year and to see the tens of thousands of reservists and the families that even if many of them do not agree with the decision of the government to enter to Gaza, but they still come, and they are ready to do whatever is needed to do in order to finish that story. And these holidays, they will not be home. We can look at those, the civilians that are dedicating their time to help those who were evacuated from the places, to help those who suffer from post-trauma, to help those that lost their civilians on the dearest members of the family, to see how they help the injuries. We see such people that volunteer in order to help these people. So we can look on one, a half of the cup, which is empty, but there is a lot of good things that are done in Israel, in the Israeli society, and we should have hope. And hope, as Rabbi Sacks explains, in many places, is not optimism. Optimism means that, Well, I'm optimist. I think it will be okay, but I'm doing nothing in order to promote it. To have hope means that you believe that it could be good, but you believe that it's given to your hands, and you believe that you ought to do something. I think That's the mission for the next year. I started to refer to your question to give a perspective to Yom Kippur from that Yom Kippur two years ago, the Yom Kippur of last year, and the challenging Yom Kippur of the upcoming year. That's about the national aspect of the high holidays. Of course, there is an individual aspect to the holidays, but maybe we'll talk about this in a minute.
Well, yeah, I do want to talk about it right now because I think it's so hard for people. Look, even aside from Israel, I mean, much of the world feels broken. After the tragic assassination in the United States, not that long ago, a lot of the newspapers spoke to young people who said, basically, something's very sick. They were talking about America, not Israel then. They were just saying, something's very sick. A person can't even go to a campus and talk. You can agree, you can disagree. Something's very wrong. And a lot of people who were than the college students said, What a world have we left our children here? I mean, the planet, the condition of the planet, wars everywhere, the gradual erosion of all of the rights and responsibilities that made up. We thought it was just part of the state of nature of the West, freedom to gather, freedom to speak, the rights of the individual, a certain amount of respect and honor in plain discourse. Of course, people get hot under the collar and people argue. But there's a sense that people have that we're leaving to the younger generation a much less perfect world than the one that we inherited. I think that's, of course, it's a public issue, and it's a national issue or it's an international issue. But there's also something very, very personal there. I'll allow myself to say that we're having the privilege of having this conversation with your grandson sitting in the room with us. Shortly after we finish this interview, you're going to go get him his for his bar mitzvah, which is really a day he'll remember for the rest of his life. You won't remember this, but he'll remember the rest of the day with you for the rest of his life. And many of us will have our grandchildren underneath our talit or they'll be sitting next to us. They'll be running in, they'll be running out. And it's very hard for me, at least to look at these little, minor, little, 10, 5, whatever. It's going to be hard to look at them and not ask myself, what are we leaving them? What are we saddling them with? And so leaving aside the national and the obligation to fix society, it just feels that the world's very broken. And I think many people are asking, What can I do around Yom Kippur, around Rosh Hashana, maybe even Sukkot relates to this a bit, I think, in its own way, moving from the walls of the Beit Knesset to something much more exposed outside. But what thoughts can we take on the more personal, intimate individual level, given everything that feels so broken and so sad at this time.
Well, I know that one of the very famous books of rabbi Sacks is called To Cure a Broken World. At least that's the name in Hebrew.
I think it's to heal the broken world. I don't remember for sure.
I think that's the name of the book. I would like to put things in proportion. First of all, I know that it's quite popular to describe the society in the world as a broken world. And I don't want to ignore the phenomena that you refer to. But in America, in North America, it's a big loss for the state of Israel, for the Jews, for the Americans, for the Americans to lose somebody that was a great speaker and a great man just because he expressed views that certain people did not like, just to murder him in the middle of the day because of no reason. But to be honest, in the United States of America, there are almost 40,000 people that are murdered every year, politicians and officers and just regular students, that crazy guy that was mad at his teacher comes and takes a gun and kills and murders eight innocent boys or girls that went to school for no reason, and they're in no connection to nothing. It's a challenge, and I'm not undermining the question, but I just want to put it in a proportion. I mean, it's not something new that, wow, until now, there were no murders in America, and this year, something dramatic has occurred in America. Well, that's not the case, as we know. I suppose, I hope that will not arrive to that. But even in the Jewish society, we all remember the murder of Gedaliah Ben-Achikam. We remember the selling of Yosef. Actually, before they sold him, the brothers wanted to kill him. Just was an initiative of Reuben. They said, Why? What will we gain, Reuben and Yehuda? What will we gain from killing him? Okay, let's sell him. We don't like him. Let's sell him to be a slave. We remember that the first brotherhood was ended in the beginning of the first Book in Bible, how Cain is killing, is murdering. I'm not undermining, but I want to put in the right place and not to exaggerate that phenomenon. Having said that, I think that, and that has a deep connection to our high holidays. One of the ceremonies, I don't know if every family is doing that. But I want to urge everybody, it doesn't matter if he goes to Shul, if he'll go to synagogue, he will not go to synagogue. I want to recommend. There is an ancient ritual that we do in our family. Actually, it's brought in the books, in the traditional books, that the parents should give a bless to the children on the Eve of Yom Kippur. What are they doing there? Well, I bless my children every Friday night. So what is special about the interaction between parents and kids in the Eve of Yom Kippur? Because we had one more thing. I'm forgiving you for the sins that you have seen to me, and I'm urging you to forgive me for the sins that I have sinned to you. Every parent knows that he has sinned to his children. It could be for not paying them attention enough, for not being enough with them, for dedicating too much time for the work and less time for them. It begins with that. Sometimes I yelled at them without being right. Sometimes maybe I hit them without being right. And vice versa. I think the most important part of the holidays before we come to our relationship with God is to deal with our relationship with ourselves. When I say with ourselves, I'm not referring to society. I left the national issues, and I'm focusing now on myself, myself and my spouse, with my wife, with my children, those who are privileged to have parents. I'm not privileged already because my mother passed away five, six years ago. But those who are privileged, the relationship with the parents, with the brothers, sisters, et cetera. Why do we refer to that? Because what is the covenant between us and God? What is the connection? What is it based on? It's based on the idea that we understand that life has meaning, that life could be just regular secular life, and life could be sanctified. When I say sanctified, I want to give a meaning to what I'm doing. I'm not just here was born accidentally and going to end my life in a year or in 50 years, and they will be meaningless. No, I want my life to be full with content, with meaning. How do I do that? It's based on covenants that I create in my life. My covenant with my wife, my covenant with my family, the fact that I understand that there is a meaning to the family I established. There is a meaning for the way I educate my children, There is a meaning for what I'm doing, for what I'm not doing. There is an amazing book written by an Italian-American guy. I don't remember his exact name. I think it's Luigi or Loegia. The Hebrew name of his book is To Live and to Love. He describes his biography, and describes how when he was 10, 12 years old, he was a very tough student. The principal would kick him out every day from school. In the days that, coincidentally, the principal was not there and he did not kick him out, he escaped from school. The father calls his son one day, this Luigi, and he calls him and says to him, Look, I pay a lot of money. The tuition is very expensive. I see no reason for you to continue in school. You know what? I have no problem. Please leave the school. You don't want to go to school. The principal doesn't like you. So don't go to school. You don't have to But I have two conditions. We have a family dinner at 6, 7 o'clock every night. I want you to come to dinner with two things. A, tell me something new that you learned about the world. B, tell me somebody in this community that you caused him to smile, that you have done something good for him today. That's what I asked for you. I want you to learn something new about the world, and I want you to do something good for somebody else. If a day and you cannot respond, you cannot mark a V saying that I have done these two things, that means that that day was wasted, was not used properly. And I think that Rosh Hashana, the beginning of the year, that's exactly the meaning of that day. We want to look to our past to see, to check ourselves, to see whether we can mark every day and tell ourselves, Well, we were leaving living a meaningful life. But suppose the answer will not be, will not satisfy as we want. We have a chance to start it again. We can renew our life. And the belief, the Jewish belief of Rosh Hashana, is that a human being could renew its life. It's not a determined life that, well, you were born into this family, to this society, to this country. And therefore, the way will behave is already decided by God or by the circumstances, and you cannot change them. No, we have a freedom of choice, and we can change, and we can decide that if we haven't spent enough time with our children last year, we can do this this year. And if we were not paying attention to the needs of our spouses this year, last year, we can change it this year. For me, the belief, the faith that I could renew myself and start something from the beginning, that's the biggest hope for next year.
This is the birthday of the world. It's not only the birthday of the world, but it's the birthday of me and you and everybody else all over again.
Actually, you touch an amazing, you're actually forcing me to share with you another idea for Rosh Hashana. Rosh Hashana is the beginning of the year. But in the Jewish calendar, it's not the beginning of the year. It's the seventh month. So how did it become the beginning of the year. And the rabbis say that this is the day, and this day is not the creation of the world. It's the creation of the Adam. The first human being to be born was on this Rosh Hashanah. Actually, it's not a Jewish holiday. The ancient rabbis said that our Rosh Hashanah is a universal holiday. Actually, it's related to all human beings because all human beings were created in the shape of God on that day. That means one thing, that for us, this is our birthday as humanity. This is the birthday of dignity for human being. This is the day where we have to ask ourselves, did we dignify people? It's true that we also accept upon ourselves the Kingdom of God on that day. But how do we accept this Kingdom? By understanding that he was creating us and he left in us a part of his image. We were created with the shape of God. Each one of us has a part of the soul that God has left with us. And this part is an integral part of God. So our accepting upon ourselves, the Kingdom of God is actually our understanding that we have a responsibility, that we are created with the image of God. So it You were so right. That's a holiday. And in a holiday, usually we get gifts. But in a holiday, we also look at ourselves and we want to bless ourselves with improving and changing things that we understand that we ought to change in the next years.
Rabbi Stav, you know, the phrase that Torah will go forth from Zion, from Zion, all over. For many For our listeners, that's not what they turn to Israel for. They're following what's happening politically. They're following what's happening militarily. They sometimes follow what's happening culturally or artistically or even musically, all of which is wonderful. But for spiritual nourishment, they don't typically turn to Israel because, frankly, what they hear too much from Israel is not spiritually nourishing in any way. I think the opportunity and the privilege of listening to you and learning from you as we our approach to Yimim Nora'im is to actually give new life to that promise of that Torah really can come forth from Zion. When people listen to you and they listen to the religious values that you espouse and that your organization, Zohar, brings to so many people around the country. As you talked about the difference between optimism and hope in rabbi Sacks' model, it gives us not only optimism, but it gives us hope. It's a reminder that Judaism in this country also be reshaped. And people like you are the very, very essence of the a Judaism that would bring dignity, profundity, and I think love to conversations about Jewish life in which they too often are not filled.
So you've not only taught us, and I think, equipped each of us to go into the coming days of the Yamim Nora'im, the high holidays, as they're called in English, in our own way, communally, individually, in a better way, but you've also reminded us of the grander of what Torah and Zion can be. And for that, and for all that you do with your life on that score on a day-to-day basis, we are all deeply embedded and enriched by you and your work. I thank you very much for taking the time to have this conversation with us.
So let me just take the opportunity to wish all of our, your listeners, a Shana Tovah, Shana Tovah and Metukah, a sweet and a good year. We hope, we know that, please God, it will be a good year. But we urge God that this good year will be also a sweet year because we suffered enough and we can only wish ourselves here in the diaspora a good, gabanched, and sweet year.
I'll just add, if I can, there are many different kinds of blessings that we all want and that we all pray for. But I think that it goes without saying that I pray, and you pray, that the next time you and I sit at this table and have a conversation, that every single one of the hostages, those who are still living and those who just need to be returned for a traditional sacred Jewish burial, will be home. And this part of this Jewish nightmare will be behind us, and we can go forward and begin to rebuild all that needs to be rebuilt. Rabbi David Stav, thank you very much for your time and for your soul.
Thank you.
