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Back to Question of the Week (OK, I admit it. This question is a plant for Jewish Web Week. We'll return to real readers' questions next week.) |
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A: First, let's clarify what a minyan is and why. Most of the story is laid out in the Talmud, tractate Megillah, page 23b. Here's how it goes: Certain things (kaddish, kedushah, reading Torah from the scroll, and others) are only done with a group of ten adult (Orthodox and some Conservative: add the word "male" here) Jews. Those required ten are called a "minyan," which just means a "count." Where does ten come from? Well, in Leviticus 23:32, God says, "I will be sanctified in the midst of the children of Israel." And "in the midst" must mean that there are more than one of those children there. In fact, as the Talmud explains, we should read one "midst" in the light of another: In Numbers 16:21, God warns the people to get away from the rebels under the leadership of Korah, and says, "separate yourselves from the midst of this community ("edah" in Hebrew). Now that word "edah," community, is not used in the Torah to refer to fewer than ten individuals. In particular in Numbers 14:27, it is used to refer to the ten bad spies who discouraged the people from going into the land of Israel. A little confusing? Here's the quick summary: God is sanctified "in the midst," which means in the midst of community, which means in the midst of at least ten people. So a minyan is a community of at least ten Jews which has a "midst" in which God can reside and be sanctified. Minyan takes on great significance in Jewish tradition. Praying with a minyan is highly encouraged. It is considered a mitsvah and a blessing to be one of the first ten to arrive at synagogue, especially to be the tenth arrival-the one to complete the minyan. In the mystic tradition, the first ten worshippers are even associated with the ten Divine Emanations (sefirot) that are the connective tissue between infinite God and finite earth. If one could say such a thing, it is almost as if those ten worshippers give God a body on earth. So what about our chat-room? When confronted with a new situation, Jewish tradition often tries to find an old situation that was in some way analogous and then sees if the analogy is both valid and instructive. What would have been a situation in the past in which ten individuals could communicate in real time, without being in the same room? Suppose that each of the ten were in rooms that all shared a central corridor or courtyard. They could then communicate at least as well as the members of our potential cyber-minyan, and also have some of the distance of our case. It is clear that those ten individuals would not traditionally have been considered a minyan. (See Maimonides, Mishneh Torah, Laws of Prayer, Chapter 8, law 7, for example.) Why not? My suggestion for the deep-level answer is that the members of a minyan have to be full-dimensional to each other. A person is more than her or his words. It can be a gift to receive another's words, but the full image of God that is within that person is more multifaceted than the written word. If the minyan is a reflection of the divine eminations, then it must be composed of whole individuals. I must admit that I had started out hoping that a chat room could be the site of a minyan, this being Jewish Web Week and all, but I'm afraid I've come to the opposite conclusion. The necessity of having the participants of a minyan be fully human in each other's perception was stated in a different way by one of my Orthodox colleagues. An Ohr Somayach "Ask the Rabbi" dated Feb. 26, 1994, likens the participants in the chat-room to golems-technologically created pseudo-humans. That is, the people on each other's screens are soul-less replicas of the real people sending messages. And golems, the halachah says, are not counted in a minyan. written by Rabbi Jeremy Schwartz |
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