In honor of Jesse Sipple’s Bar Mitzvah, being that his family has Yekke minhagim, customs that are unique to Jews from German descent, I’d like to spend our time this morning discussing some of those customs with a brand-new gameshow. I am going to describe a custom and the ‘contestants,’ that’s all of you, are going to have decide if it is a genuine Yekke custom, or not. The game is called Yekke or… Shwekey.
Yes, Shwekey, as in the Jewish Orthodox singer, Yaakov Shwekey. Let me explain. You see, Yaakov Shwekey’s mother is Ashkenazi, just regular plain old Ashkenazi. His father is Sefardi, Syrian Jew, who grew up in Egypt. Yaakov Shwekey lived in Israel, went to a Chafetz Chaim school in Rochester, New York, then studied in the Lakewood Yeshiva and now lives in Deal. When he sings, he vacillates between sounding like an Israeli with a TAF and a yeshiva guy with a SAF. In other words, he represents all Jews that are not Yekkes. So yes, Yekke or Shwekey.
I know, it’s not great. But the alternative words that rhyme with Yekke that I could come up with were Becky, Techie, and Keki, which apparently is a Japanese cake. So I’m kind of stuck and we’re just going to go with it. Also, it’s cold outside, my family is in New York for Shabbos, and I’m trying to find any way to avoid talking about ICE on a Bar Mitzvah Shabbos, so cut me slack.
Let’s do a practice round –
Coming on time to a Jewish wedding. Yekke or Shwekey?
That was a trick question. Yekke’s actually come early.
But you get the point. Right? Here we go –
Wrapping the Torah with an oversized scrunchy and an impossible-to-link repurposed belt loop from the 19th century. Yekke or Shwekey?
You may have noticed, if you were actually inside during Hagbah and Glilah, that today, our Torah was wrapped with a very long linen cloth that was designed beautifully by Jesse’s cousins. This Yekke wrap is called a Wimpel.
The custom of the Wimpel is traced back to the Maharil, a 14th century German rabbi who the story goes, was once at a Bris when the Mohel realized he forgot to bring a cloth to wrap the baby’s wound. Whoops. Brace yourself – The Maharil, realizing the baby was in danger, instructed the Mohel to take the wrap from the torah scroll and use it as a bandage for the baby. This somewhat bizarre incident evolved into German Jews placing a linen cloth under the baby who is getting a Bris Milah. I kid you not.
Actually, this baby grew up and wrote a memoir about his experiences. He called it, Diary of a Wimpel Kid… Sorry.
After the bris, they beautify the cloth with all sorts of designs, and on the child’s 3rd birthday, the child is brought to shul wrapped in the wimple and together with his father, they use it for Gelilah. The wimple is then used for the child’s Bar Mitzvah, like we did today, and again, at his Aufruf, which we look forward to celebrating. Weird backstory. Beautiful minhag.
I find it kind of poetic that the most famous Jewish German custom revolves around tying something up really tight. Sort of like the Jewish German personalities…
Fun fact: The name Motzen comes from a German village where my family probably originated from. Don’t kill me. I’m one of you.
Okay, here’s another one: Waiting 3 hours between a meat meal and a dairy meal. Yekke or Shwekey?
My daughters have already informed me that they will be marrying German Jews so they don’t have to wait so long between meat and milk. Where does this custom come from?
The Talmud tells us that after eating a meal of meat, you can only eat dairy at the next meal. Now for most people in the ancient world, they had two meals and there were approximately six hours between those meals. Hence, the six hour wait time that most of us Shwekey’s wait between meat and milk.
In Germany, they had different meal habits. In Germany, there were five meals a day. It would start with fruhstuck, breakfast. Continue with, please bear with me, zwischenmahlzeit, some form of an in-between meal. Then they’d have mittagessen, lunch. Then they’d have kaffe and kuchen, which is… coffee and cake. And then they’d have abendbrodt, dinner. Do the math. There were five meals with approximately three hours between each meal. This is why Yekkes only wait 3 hours.
While my ancestors were living in poverty, eating potatoes and meat for brunch and potatoes and milk for dinner, our German friends were eating like kings five times a day! And they’re the ones who get the 3-hour wait time. Talk about white privilege.
Next question – Not wearing Tefilin on Chol Hamoed. Yekke or Shwekey?
This one is fascinating and rather controversial.
There is a Biblical obligation for men to wear Tefillin every day with the exception of Shabbos and holidays. There is no Talmudic source that says Chol Hamoed, the days between holidays, is included in the no-tefillin days. On the contrary, it is quite clear that one should be wearing Tefilin on Chol Hamoed. But there is a book, one of the most influential books in Jewish literature known as the Zohar, and in the Zohar we are instructed not to wear Tefillin on Chol Hamoed.
What do you do when there is a contradiction between the Talmud and the Zohar?
It depends. It depends on how you perceive the Zohar. The Zohar is a book of Jewish mysticism. Its main thesis is trying to balance our belief in a G-d that is completely beyond our comprehension with a belief in a G-d who has a personal relationship with each and every one of us. It’s a beautiful, deep, and inspiring work.
The Zohar purports to be written by Rav Shimon bar Yochai, a student of the famous Rabbi Akiva, and who lived in the second century. And yet, it was only first published in the 13th century. The reason for this gap is that the Zohar was meant to be a secret collection of teachings that were passed on orally from teacher to student. It was deemed unfit for the masses as there are complicated ideas in the Zohar; ideas which flirt with heresy, and ideas that if misused can lead the masses astray. The most well-known example of this is the false Messiah, Shabtai Tzvi, who corrupted many ideas found in the Zohar to lend himself legitimacy, and caused an incredible amount of harm to the Jewish People.
The thing is that not everyone believed that the Zohar was written by Rav Shimon bar Yochai. Some argued that not only was it a forgery but many ideas found in the Zohar were incorrect and incompatible with Judaism. One such person wrote a book that analyzed the Zohar chapter by chapter, demonstrating how certain ideas could not possibly have been written in the 2nd century, could not have been written in Israel where Rav Shimon bar Yochai lived, and that many of the ideas found in the Zohar are just plain wrong. The author was a man by the name of Rav Yaakov Emden, probably the leading Torah scholars of the 18th century, and as you may have guessed by now, a German Jew.
And so, German Jews, do not adopt customs that are found in the Zohar, certainly not ones that contradict something found in the Talmud. German Jews will therefore wear Tefilin on Chol Hamoed. Most of the rest of us Shwekeys will not wear Tefilin on Chol Hamoed.
Last question – Overly serious, never smile, judgmental, and never exhibiting any emotions. Yekke or Shwekey?
They say Yekkes don’t bottle up emotions, they file them away in labeled folders.
And this is where Jesse Sipple and his family come along.
Jesse Sipple, who has a Wimple and waits three hours between meat and milk and will wear Tefillin on Chol Hamoed, he creates games. Fun games. Yes, they have a lot of rules. But there is a good chance sometime in the next decade you will be playing a game made by Jesse Sipple; you’ll be sitting around with family and friends and laughing and having a good time. And that’s exactly what goes on in the Sipple home all the time. If you ever see the Sipple children they always have a genuine joyful smile on their face because they live in a home with rules, yes, but also a beautiful sense of joy.
There’s more – Although the Sipple family, in good old Germanic fashion, had this Bar Mitzvah planned for quite some time, the entire plan was almost disrupted. Last week I received a frantic call from a family who often davens here, who were planning on having their Bar Mitzvah in Israel. Only that between the fear of an Iranian attack and an insane storm disrupting flights, it did not look like this would happen. They called me asking if they could have the Bar Mitzvah at Ner Tamid. I explained to them that we already have a Bar Mitzvah planned, but I offered to ask the Sipple family what they thought. I sent a message to Naomi and Ian and a little while later I got the reply: Jesse said that he would be very happy to split his Shabbos with this other boy to allow him to have a Bar Mitzvah.
It was beautiful but I wasn’t surprised. I wasn’t surprised because anyone who knows Jesse knows that he is one of the most thoughtful, kind boys you will meet. But also because his parents are the most thoughtful and kind people you will meet. As one small example – whenever there is anyone looking for a meal for Shabbos or Yom Tov, I know I could always count on the Sipple’s to host them.
So thank you, Jesse and the whole Sipple family, for destroying those German stereotypes with your joy and warmth.
***
The Medrash teaches us that when the sea split, it actually divided into twelve separate lanes. Each tribe was given their own lane to travel. This wasn’t just done to enable better traffic patterns, it was done to symbolize that there is more than one legitimate path in Judaism. The Mei’am Loez adds a fascinating detail – the walls between the different tribes were translucent. What this teaches us is that each Jew recognized they had their own path in Avodas Hashem, and at the very same time, they saw and appreciated that other Jews had their own different path in serving G-d that was appropriate for them.
So whether you are a Yekke, a Shwekey, a Beckie, or a techie, there is a path for you, a path for each and every one of us.
Jesse, we hope and pray that you find yours, and that we all find ours, and that all of us to learn to appreciate the path of others.
Good Shabbos. Shabbat Shalom. And as they say in Germany, a guter Shabbis.