Israel's Day of Dependence
The speed of the world's heart-warming response to the fire that exterminated nearly 6 million trees in the Carmel and that Israel alone could not contain, contrasted shockingly with the same world's apathy 70 years ago for the extermination of nearly 6 million Jews and its apathy now for the threat to Israel's nearly 6 million Jews that Iran poses. This freakish tragedy of almost biblical proportions taught us that with all Israel's economic, intellectual and military might, it still needs the rest of the world. Israel is not yet truly independent.
The message of Israel's dependence on the rest of the world was reinforced by its devastating drought that only broke late on the night of December the 5th. The drought broke virtually at the moment that the westernmost community in the diaspora began to say vetain tal umattar, the daily prayer for rain. Israel itself began its daily prayer for rain more than 7 weeks earlier on the 7th day of Cheshvan. But Israel's prayers were not answered until the rest of the world joined in on December 4th. We are all one community.
Vetein tal umattar - the prayer for rain
If we are one community, why does the diaspora start its daily prayer for rain 7 weeks after Israel starts? When we say vetain tal umattar inchutz la'aretz, the diaspora, are we praying for rain in Israel or are we in fact praying for rain in our own countries?
Rashi (Ta'anis 10a) suggests the reason that the diaspora starts praying for rain later than Israel is because it follows the practice of Babylon, a lower lying landscape with rivers and dams that has less need for rain than Israel has. This would suggest that communities in each country pray for rain in vetain tal umattar for their own territories not for Israel. This, as my mechuttan Rabbi David Martin shelita,pointed out, challenges my thesis that it was the addition of the diaspora's prayers to those of Israel that brought rain to the holy land last week!
The Rosh (Ta'anis 1:4 and Teshuvos) expresses his amazement that all countries outside of Israel, irrespective of their rainfall seasons, start praying for rain on December 4th, a date selected in the Braaysa (Ta'annis 10a) for Babylon and followed by the rest of the world (Rashi ibid. D"H: Tatta'i). He endorses the custom in Provence to start praying for rain at the same time as Israel does on the 7th of Cheshvan because that is the start of the rainy season in most countries in the northern hemisphere. No other authority agrees with the Rosh. Other authorities all accept that the start of the daily prayer for rain in countries outside of Israel need not correlate with their own rainy seasons or with their own need for rain, nor does the start of these prayers even correlate with the start of the rainy season in Israel. The only place we know of whose need for rain correlates with the 4th of December, the day chutz la'aretz begins to pray for rain, is Babylon (Iraq today). Why then do other countries start praying for rain on a date fixed for Babylon but irrelevant to their own seasons or to the rainy season in Israel? The reason is that we do not always use objective empirical data to determine Halacha. Halacha is its own system of determination.
The use of empirical evidence to determine halacha
Sometimes we use empirical data, including current scientific knowledge, in halachik determination, and sometimes we don't (seehttp://iawaken.org/shiurim/view.asp?id=6687, Chanukah 5771 - "Orthodoxy and Modernity"). For example there are times we may use DNA testing to determine that an unknown body belongs to a particular person and that that person may be assumed to have died. This is because in this case, the scientific data are used to provide information not to determine halachah. We never use empirical data to determine halachik principle. So for example, even though health-related reasons are given for Mayim Acharonim (washing hands after meals) and for not eating meat and fish at the same time, we do not change those laws simply because scientific data is available to prove that there are no longer any negative implications to either of those laws. We still do mayim acharonim, and we still do not eat meat and fish together.
The reason why we do not use empirical data to determine halachikprinciple is that our halachot are not just a set of rules. Halacha is also a set of spiritual practices, that when we perform them the way our forbearers did for millennia, we draw from our forbearers' spiritual resources and connect through them and through the practice, with our Father in heaven. For halachik practices to bring to us the full force of their spiritual energy, we need to practice them in the form they were originally given and always practiced, irrespective of contemporary and ever-changing empirical data. Of course the context in which we practice them is modern and relevant.
At first glance of the Gemorra in Ta'annis it appears that the start of the ve'tain tal umattar prayer on December 4th is determined by scientific criteria relating to the beginning of the rainy season. Hence the Rosh's perplexity at why the date is inflexibly set even for countries the rainy seasons of which start much earlier. A different understanding of the Gemorra however, leads to a very different insight. This alternative insight is the understanding of the school of thought that has no difficulty with the universally standardized date for starting the prayer outside of Israel. Key to this understanding is that there are two different forms of rain. Empirical data may apply to one, but not to the other.
Two different forms of rain
Sometimes two objects share the same physical properties but are made from very different spiritual energies. Rain is one such example. Chemically rain is constituted of H20 and some other important minerals. But Kabalistically, there are two very different types of rain.
Rain generated by the forces of nature
The world operates by two different systems: (i) the laws of nature, and (ii) the Divine laws of Torah. Each individual, and sometimes a group or nation chooses, by their level of spiritual practice andbitachon (trust in Hashem), which system they want to govern them. They can choose the Divine system in which morality, prayer and Torah stature drive causality. Alternatively they can choose the natural system in which the laws of science, economics and human instinct govern the outcomes of their efforts and the effects on them of other people's actions. The Ramban (Vayikra 26:11) explains how when a Jew lives on a high level of individual and national spiritual stature the laws of nature do not govern him or her. Even in areas of health and medicine, people can choose to live a life in which they are governed by spiritual causality of health and illness, rather than physical causality. (Interestingly, new age medicine increasingly acknowledges how lifestyle choices and emotional wellbeing impact physical health.)
Reb Eliyah Lopian ztz"l (Leiv Eliyahu Mikeiz P. 156) says: "We learn from this Ramban that one who has attained high levels of yir'as Hashem emerges from the natural system of causality created for the masses who do not sufficiently understand the ways of G-d."
Rain, the physical driver of economic prosperity and individual and national wellbeing, is also governed by these two systems. Normal, and often predictable, forces of nature can generate rainfall or in the other system, human prayer can cause rainfall.
Rain generated by the force of Tefillah
The first reference to rain in the Torah (Bereishis 2:5) states that before the creation of man there could not be rain. After man is created, starts working the land and recognizes the need for rain, he prays for rain causing it to fall and irrigate the land (Rashi ibid.). In this verse the Torah refers to the operating system governed by Divine, not natural, laws. In the system of Divine law, rain is a G-dly gift to man, a Divine response to heartfelt prayers triggered by man's recognition of his desperate need for rain and dependence on it, not by a simple ritualistic obligation to pray at predetermined times and places. The system of Divine law does not respond to ritual, it responds to man's authentic connection to G-d, the system of Divine law responds to the passion of the human soul, and to the purity of the human spirit.
It is because rainfall is a response to passionate prayer that our prayers cannot start before the rainy season; they can only start when we experience the need for rain in a passionate and heartfelt way. Prayer from a place of passion and need is qualitatively different from ritualistic prayers carried out as a routine from a sense of duty rather than from a sense of spontaneous need and turning to Hashem. We understand then why vetein tal umattar cannot start before the winter. But why (in countries other than Israel and Babylon) do we wait until December 4th, a long while after the start of the rainy season, before we begin to say vetein tal umattar? To understand this we need to clarify that even within the category of rain generated by Tefillah, there are two sub-categories of rain: rain that falls in Israel, and rain that falls outside of Israel.
Rain in Israel and rain in Chutz la'aretz
The Gemorra (Ta'annis 10a) explains allegorically how rain in the diaspora is the water left in the clouds after Israel has "drunk" what she needs. The difference between the rain of the diaspora and that of Israel is like the difference between the substance of cheese and the wateriness of whey. Clearly then rain in the diaspora cannot fall until Israel has been drenched in its first rains (Rashi ibid. D"H Bitechillah). If rain does fall in the diaspora before it falls in Israel, as has been the case this year, then that rainfall cannot be rain generated by the force of Tefillah it must be rain generated by the natural laws of science. Rain generated by the laws of science is not a Divine response to human prayer but a natural phenomenon like any other. Rain that is a Divine response to our prayers cannot fall in the diaspora before the beginning of Israel's rainfall. This is why we cannot start vetein tal umattar in chutz la'aretz until after the start of the rainy season in Israel. Israel starts vetein tal umattar on the 7th of Cheshvan, and the diaspora must start later because its rain is the leftovers of Israel's. But why wait until December 4th?
Prayer for rain is only effective when it springs from the passion of people in need, people who deeply recognize their dependence on rain and on G-d's caring kindness. Israel becomes aware of its needs 15 days after Sucot when the people visiting Jerusalem have all returned home; that is on Cheshvan 7th. The rest of the northern hemisphere experiences its need for rain at various different times depending on geography and climate. Because of Babylon's abundant system of rivers and streams, it is the last country to experience the need for rain and only does so around December 4th (Ta'annis ibid.) Once even Babylon needs rain, the whole world begins to pray and to say vetein tal umattar.
So when in Chutz la'aretz we say vetein tal umattar are we praying for Israel or for our own countries? The answer is that we are praying for both: we cannot get rain of the Divine-gift sort in chutz la'aretz, until Israel has received her first rains. In normal years Israel has had rain by the time we begin to say vetein tal umattar in the diaspora, so that our prayers then refer to our own countries. Not so this year. We waited until December 4th but Israel had still not had rain. Many other countries had had rain, but that was rain of the natural sort, not the rain that is G-d's Divine response to man's prayer. And so this year when we said vetein tal umattar throughout the world we were praying not just for the world, but for Israel too so that once Israel had rain, the diaspora could get its left-overs and also experience the Divine response to prayer.
We in chutz la'aretz cannot receive G-d's response to our prayers for rain until Israel has; we are dependent on Israel for our rain. But this year Israel learned that it too is not independent of the rest of the world. Israel cannot always rely on its own resources. It needed international aid to quell the Carmel fires of destruction, and it needed the prayers of its fellow Jews in the Golah (diaspora) on December 4th to break its desperate drought on the night of December 5th. We are one community bound in a common Destiny.
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