Erev Rosh Hashanah 2015/5776 Libertina: Rabbi Rachel Goldenberg

Erev Rosh Hashanah 2015/5776
Libertina
Rabbi Rachel Goldenberg

I want to open my remarks tonight with a story, written by Ruth Calderon, an Israeli Talmud scholar and former member of Knesset, with whom I studied this summer. The piece is closely based on a surprising passage from the Talmud, and Calderon has embellished it and developed the characters much more extensively than the original passage[1]:

Rabbi Hiya bar Ashi lies on the stone floor, spread-eagled. He is praying.

It is market day, and his wife is out. He enjoys being alone in an empty house. Only this way does he find peace. It is strange, since the whole world lies open to him: the study house, the courtroom… She, his wife, is quiet and earnest, always in her corner between the stove and the oven, dressed in a kerchief and gown. Twice a week, on Mondays and Thursdays, she leaves home to go to the market.

“May the merciful one save me from the evil impulse!” he utters his usual prayer…. He seeks to ward off untoward thoughts. He prays with great fervor and concentration, until his heart pulses to the rhythm of his prayers.

One day his wife returned home early and unexpectedly. . . . When she left home [in the morning] he was standing in prayer, wrapped in his tefillin. Shortly thereafter, she realized she had forgotten the basket for fish and came back to retrieve it. . . . In any case, she returned at that very moment when he did not intend for anyone to see him. He thought he had the house all to himself when he cried: “Save me from the evil impulse! Saaaave meeee from the eevil impulse!”

She was shocked to discover her husband prostrated on the floor. . . “And to think,” she mused,” for several years he has not been intimate with me. What evil impulse could he possibly be so afraid of?” A sense of hurt and suspicion flared up inside her. Was there another woman?

She crept out of the room quietly and retreated to a side room. She stood in front of the mirror, passing her hand over the lines of her face. Her reflection was like the face of an elderly woman. Her kerchief was drawn tightly over her forehead, concealing her hair. Her eyes were sunken. Deep wrinkles lined both sides of her nose. . . . Each Friday evening she would hope for him to approach her bed, but each Friday evening she was once again disappointed.. . .

She fled outside, and walked distraught all the way to the market. The color fled from her pale cheeks, and her heart beat rapidly. She thought only of her pain and shame.

When she returned home, her face was restored to its natural color. She set a pot to boil on the stove, rinsed fruits and vegetables, preserved the leftover quinces, sliced cucumbers for pickling. All the while she concocted a plan.

On Thursday she set out for the market as usual, early in the morning. But instead of turning toward the western part of the market, where her fellow housewives made their way among the stalls, she continued on, as if in a daze. She headed in the direction of the caravans, toward the foreign vendors whose stalls lay beyond the bounds of a proper woman. These vendors came from afar and sold clothes, spices, and jewelry. . . Bangles jingled on their ankles.

She approached, and with clenched hands she counted out her coins. She handed over half the money reserved for fruit and all the money set aside for fish as well as the small sum she saved from week to week to buy a new cloth for the Sabbath table.

As if in a dream, she selected a dress, jewels, sandals, and a belt as well as a bundle of myrrh. She unfolded her sack and placed everything inside and then left without saying a word.

At an earlier hour than usual she set her steps toward home. Nothing felt normal. The world was awry. … . She hummed to herself until she came to the alley leading to their house. In a secluded corner she stepped into the revealing dress, fastened the belt, freed her long hair from its kerchief, tied a dangling jewel around her wrist and a bangle around her ankle. . .. She tied the bundle of myrrh around her neck. . .. After she finished dressing, she applied eye shadow to her eyelids with an unpracticed hand. When she approached the cistern in the yard, she saw the face of a different woman entirely reflected in the water: the face of Libertina [of Babylon,] she who instilled fear in all married women.

“I am Libertina, …” she whispered. “May the Merciful one save you.”

At that very moment Rabbi Hiyya bar Ashi was studying in the garden. A light breeze fluttered the branches of the pomegranate and olive trees. The Mishnah he was learning was difficult, and his mind was unfocused. Suddenly he looked up and saw the image of a woman – and what a woman she was! “What, who are you?” he asked, spellbound. “I am Libertina…,” she replied indulgently, enjoying the game. She was surprised to find that the rituals of courtship came naturally to her. She made her way toward him in the garden, at once close and distant, familiar and foreign.

(I’m going to skip a steamy scene here, but you can use your imagination!!)

When he caught his breath again, she ordered, …that he bring her a pomegranate from the top branch. He did not dare refuse her. His legs were covered in scratches from the tree branches, and when he climbed down, the branch beneath him broke, and he tumbled down after it. She took the fruit from his hand….

When he limped to the house, his wife was already lighting the oven. He was conscious of his torn clothing and the scratches on his arms. He worried that the scent of Libertina clung to his hair, which was still disheveled even after he combed through it with his fingers. His heart and soul felt undone too. There was no way to take back what he had done. He was consumed by guilt.

He looked over at the bench beside the oven, which seemed suddenly so inviting. …He cast a parting glance at . . . . the good woman who had borne him his children, who had once made his heart dance when he peered at her through the lattice from the man’s section of the synagogue. The fire in the oven burned high and red. . . He entered the oven and sat inside.

With her two strong arms, [she reached into the oven] pulled out his faint body, . . .. When he awoke, his legs were wrapped in rags, soaked in ointment.

She asked quietly “Why?”

For a moment he remained silent, and then he told her the whole story. . . . She listened calmly, and when he finished, she said, “It was I.”
He knew this was his opportunity for love, even redemption, but he averted his glance. “But in any case, my intention was to transgress,” he said.

She raised her arm as if to object, and her wrist jingled. She unfastened the jeweled bangle and placed it on the table before her.

Surprising – to find such a story in a 2000-year old rabbinic text.

And it’s so familiar.. . . Not a Hollywood story of boy meets girl, boy and girl overcome many obstacles to be together, boy marries girl. Here, the rabbis tell a mundane story of what happens many years after the wedding. After the excitement of courtship, after the birth of children. The husband and wife are now too familiar with each other. The passion has faded.
And yet, the story gives us hope. During the scene in the garden, we see that it is possible to breathe new life into what has grown old.

On Rosh Hashana, this is what we are prompted to consider. How have we grown old? Not necessarily in age, but in how we meet ourselves, each other and the world. Where are we stuck? What can we make new again?

In this story, Rav Hiyya is stuck doing what he thinks a pious man is expected to do. He devotes himself to repressing his passion, what he sees as an evil impulse, through obsessive prayer. And the Talmud critiques him for doing this – it shows how his piety has created distance between himself and his wife, whom he loves.

On the other hand, the wife, whose real name we will never know, takes a risk. She tests her own limits, and the limits that society places on her as a devoted, aging housewife. She heeds a wake-up call, when she witnesses her husband on the floor groveling in prayer. And for one afternoon, she takes leave of the expected. She doesn’t skimp her money to buy a Shabbat tablecloth or smelly fish. Instead she splurges on clothes for herself, and fragrant perfume. And by diving into the unknown, she pursues the possibility of bringing new energy to her worn-out life.

It is no coincidence that the couple’s passionate meeting takes place outside among fruit trees. In rabbinic literature, the orchard is a place of transformation – where boundaries can be tested, and where there is potential for new fruit.

I don’t think this story is advocating committing adultery. Instead, it provokes us to consider how we might transform ourselves by leaving the security and comfort of what is known, within the relationships and the life that we already inhabit. It wakes us up to consider where we are stuck. It also shows how the energy that we may perceive as an “evil impulse” can be channeled, breathing new life into deadness.
Libertina, in the Talmud, is the name of a famous prostitute from Babylon. But for the purpose of this story, “Libertina” is meant to be understood as, “the liberated one” – the one who is not stuck, and certainly not dead, neither in body or in spirit. Libertina comes to test others to liberate themselves.

Ultimately, this story is about fear. The fear of taking leave of where we are and of stepping into what could be – who we could be.

Rabbi Alan Lew z”l, writes about two different kinds of fear: pachad and yir’ah. Pachad is the fear of taking leave of what is holding us back. Yir’ah is the combination of fear and awe which we encounter in the act of leave-taking. Pachad is the fear of leaving the familiar – Egypt. Yir’ah is the fear of the unknown expanse that lies before us – the wilderness.

Pachad is what led the Israelites, as they were fleeing Egypt – Pharaoh’s army coming after them – to cry out and complain, “Weren’t there enough graves in Egypt that you had to take us out here to the desert to die? Isn’t this exactly what we were talking about in Egypt when we said ‘Let us be and we’ll serve the Egyptians, because it is better to serve the Egyptians than to die in the desert’?”

Lew writes:
This is the critical moment, and extremely familiar to each of us. We are stuck. We are being pressed. Pharaoh’s army is coming after us and there’s nowhere to go but into the sea. One of our children is failing in school or in life or in both and we have no idea how to help them. The bills must be paid but we don’t have enough money in the bank to pay them. We love our spouse desperately but our marriage continues to deteriorate no matter what we do, or how hard we try to make things better. Our job is driving us into a deep depression and we just don’t feel that we can go on, but we don’t know how we would make ends meet— how we would support our family— without it. We have to do something and we have no idea what to do, so we panic.[2]
Rav Hiyya is driven by his pachad to walk into the oven, and flee from the opportunity to renew his connection with his wife. Whereas, as she stands at the stove, pickling the cucumbers and preserving the quinces, the wife is somehow able to work through her pachad, and then see clearly what she must do to revive the marriage.

Liberation, (or Libertina), emerges, after we stay still for a while with the pachad, until it subsides. Then we can see clearly, that the next step must be forward, into the sea. We take that step, trembling with yir’ah, with a new kind of fear that is really awe – awe at what is actually possible.

Lew teaches:
. . . I think there is an even deeper fear operating here . . . and that is the fear of our own power. We get used to living without power and without love. We come to believe that this is how our lives should be. We become comfortable within the confines of these limitations. They surround us like the walls of a womb. When our real strength begins to declare itself, when the intensity of love presents itself to us, we are torn out of this comfortable cocoon. This is a frightening experience, and if our courage fails us, we will choose to live without our full power, without passionate intensity. We will settle for something that feels safer and more comfortable. Better to settle for a life that seems easier to hold[3].

As we see in the story – when we adhere too closely to what we’ve grown to expect of ourselves – rather than choosing to become who we could be –we actually risk a kind of death. Not a literal death, but the death of our most precious relationships – and the death of our own spirit.

For the wife, the sight of her husband groveling on the floor is a wake-up call.
For R. Hiyya, the wake-up call is the impulse to take his own life.

On this Rosh Hashanah – and at any moment – each of us is invited to hear our own wake-up call.

Perhaps we hear it in the voice of a spouse – or the voice of a child or parent.
Perhaps we hear it in our own hearts – or in the sound of the shofar.

In this New Year we are called to take leave of those places where we have become stuck, or stale, or dead.
In this New Year, we are called to take leave of the fear that keeps us from changing.

In this New Year, Libertina calls us to step forward, from the fear of what is known, into the awe and the power of the unknown.
[1] Ruth Calderon, A Bride for One Night: Talmud Tales, The Jewish Publication Society: Philadelphia, 2014, pp. 39-43.
[2] Lew, Alan (2007-07-31). Be Still and Get Going: A Jewish Meditation Practice for Real Life (Kindle Locations 1507-1513). Little, Brown and Company. Kindle Edition.
[3] Ibid. Location 1775