Rabbi Yosef Shlomo Kahaneman, the esteemed Ponovitcher rov, was asked why Jewish law states that one must leave a cemetery by a different route than the way one came. He responded, “Can any thinking person leave a cemetery the same as when he came?”
Who approaches Rosh Hashanah without profound concern for health or livelihood or relationships or peace, or without profound sadness over events in the past year? Rosh Hashanah is both a hopeful day and a heavy day. Depending on how things have gone this past year, the balance shifts for each person. Still, since no one can predict or control the future, the heaviness of the day weighs on every thinking Jew. The Creator is in charge.
Are we to conclude, then, that hope on Rosh Hashanah is a mirage, that the soul of the Jew is imprisoned?
I received an answer to that question back in the 1970s when I sat at the table of the late chief rabbi of Jerusalem, Bezalel Zolti. He offered a penetrating insight into the second “Admonition,” the frightening passage in this week’s Torah portion, “Ki Tavo.”
By far, the most frightening segments in the entire Hebrew Bible are the two “Admonitions,” one in Leviticus and one (as this week) in Deuteronomy.
Each Admonition is a very long list of dreadful punishments and sufferings that will befall the nation of Israel if it diverges from the ways of G-d.
One cannot listen to the sufferings laid out in either Admonition and not think of the sufferings of the Holocaust.
One has to listen hard even to hear the Admonition, since the verses are traditionally read in a low voice, hardly audible. Yes, the Admonition is in the Torah, and it must be read out loud on Shabbos morning, but it need not be emphasized. When we lived in Boston and the Admonition was read on Shabbos morning, the Bostoner Rebbe, upon the conclusion of the reading, recited a special blessing for the Torah reader (ba’al koreh), lest he bear an additional risk for having been the one to enable the community to discharge its obligation to hear that week’s Torah portion.
There is a fundamental difference between the two Admonitions.
The first, long list of the nation’s failing and punishments — the first Admonition — concludes on an upbeat note. The second Admonition does not.
The verse immediately preceding the conclusion of the first Admonition refers to the Israelite nation’s “treachery,” “betrayal” and “unfeeling heart.” Then, without transition, the next verse reads:
“I will remember My covenant with Jacob and also My covenant with Isaac; and also My covenant with Abraham will I remember, and the Land [of Israel] will I remember” [the promised land that is now desolate, the nation having gone into exile]. . . . despite all this . . . I will not annul My covenant . . . for I am the L-rd their G-d” (Lev. 26:42-45).
More words of reassurance follow.
A nation is punished.
But not obliterated.
A nation is chastised.
But not all is lost.
If a nation fails drastically and dramatically, the Divine covenant stands. There is a future. There is hope.
No such reassurance concludes the second Admonition, the one we read this Shabbos in the Torah portion of “Ki Tavo.”
The words immediately preceding the conclusion of the second Admonition have the nation of Israel, in its exile, going back to Egypt. Things are so bad that the exiles beg the Egyptians to re-enslave them — to buy them — because the alternative is death. The estate of the exiles has fallen so low that even slavery looms as salvation. Then, the passage concludes, “there is no buyer.” No one wants the Jewish exiles even as slaves. There is no buyer. No hope. Only death awaits them.
As I say, one cannot read these passages and not think of the Holocaust. Or of the Chmielnicki massacres in Poland. Or of the massive violence against the Jews of Spain prior to their expulsion. Or of the Roman conquest of Israel 1,956 years ago, when, it is estimated, one million Jews were killed.
Rabbi Zolti offered an alternative reading of the conclusion of the second Admonition. The concluding two-word Hebrew phrase — “there is no buyer” (ein koneh) can just as well connote, Rabbi Zolti said, “there is no acquisition” (ein kinyan). The Jew can fall so low that his body can be enslaved, or killed, or punished, or made to suffer, but there is no acquisition of the soul of the Jew. A Jew’s body can be abused in the extreme — nobody wants it — but his soul remains his own.
Is this merely a nice thought, a hermeneutical twist, or is it rooted in Jewish tradition? Rabbi Zolti commented: Say that a Jew is imprisoned. He still has an obligation to pray. The daily prayers include this blessing, “Bless are You, L-rd our G-d, Who releases the imprisoned.” Rabbi Zolti asked: Should a Jew behind bars recite this blessing? Would it be a lie? Would it be taking the L-rd’s name in vain? After all, this Jew is imprisoned.
Said Rabbi Zolti: Jewish law rules that an imprisoned Jew does recite this blessing, daily. It is only the Jew’s body that is imprisoned, not his soul. The Jewish soul can never be imprisoned. The philosophic idea — no one else can fully acquire a Jew — finds its substantiation in the traditional, halachic, legal realm.
When I heard Rabbi Zolti say this, I thought of Yosef Mendelevitch, the Russian Jewish refusenik whose “crime” was wanting to emigrate from the USSR to Israel. For that he was sentenced to 11 years in Soviet forced labor camps and prisons. His autobiography (published decades later) details how he prayed in prison and defied the Soviet authorities, demanding for himself and for fellow Jewish prisoners the right to live Jewishly in many other ways, such as the right to own a Hebrew dictionary and to study Hebrew.
Long before Mendelevitch was released, news of his dedication to Judaism reached the outside world. Blessed are You . . . Who releases the imprisoned: Rabbi Zolti made it clear, Yosef Mendelevitch made it real. His soul was not imprisoned.
Any thinking Jew approaches Rosh Hashanah with his or her own package of worries, sufferings or uncertainties, but these do not imprison the Jew. The Jew’s soul is free. Free to stand before the L-rd, to listen to the shofar, to recite the prayers — yes, with trepidation. Also with hope. The Jewish soul is free, never imprisoned, not before man, not before G-d.
© IJN 2026
