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ה' יתברך תמיד אוהב אותי ותמיד יהיה לי רק טוב 

ויהיה לי עוד יותר טוב 

ועוד יותר טוב 

ותמיד יהיה לי רק טוב 

God, Who is blessed, always loves me, and I will always have only good. 

And more good, and more good… I will always have only good.  

Over the past many months, there has been no song more ubiquitous, both in Israel and in Jewish spaces beyond. The  post-Oct. 7th soundtrack that began with songs expressing loss and grief, and offering only the most tentative  hopes for days of healing and peace, gave way late last year to this irresistible anthem of defiant optimism, confidence, and faith.  

In a fascinating development, the song drew a good amount of serious critique within Israel. Some labeled the lyrics as potentially hurtful to the many whose lives over the past many months have not been “only more good.” Others wrote that the brimming with confidence in God’s unfailing love effectively exempts one from any need for introspection or self-scrutiny. And the sharpest critique of all: that in the effort to offer optimism in difficult times, the song peddles in outright religious falsehoods, asserting that when God loves me – which is apparently always – I will never suffer, and will only know more good, exclusively good.  

I don’t mean to critique excessively but suffice it to say that “Od Yoter Tov” would never make it into our Rosh HaShana and Yom Kippur liturgy. It has clearly never made the acquaintance of U'Netaneh Tokef, knows nothing of Rabbi Akiva and his murdered colleagues, and has never peered inside the trembling and anxious heart of a Jew reciting Avinu Malkeynu on these days.  

But the fantasy world that the song posits is useful to us in the sense that it casts the world in which we’re actually living into very sharp relief, and brings to the surface what so many of us are feeling this Rosh HaShana: that we are stuck in a time of lo tov, we Am Yisrael, we our brethren who are in captivity, together with the so many human beings who are suffering.  And that every indication is that realistically speaking, we’re stuck here for the foreseeable future, to the point that we’re wondering what we’re even doing here today asking God שיחדש עלינו שנה טובה to grant us a good year, זכרינו בו לטובה, that God remember us for the good.   What “good” is realistically in the cards? Maybe this is just not the year talking about “tova”, and we should be moving on to something  else.  We ask, even as there’s a voice within us saying, “wait, that can’t be right either.”  

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The Talmud presents two traditions about the origin of the fourth blessing of Birkat Hamazon, the one which takes its name from its central motif, הטוב ומטיב, that God is good and provides good. 

It is taught in a brayta that this fourth bracha, along with the first three, is Biblically ordained, and ancient in origin. An original component of Birkat haMazon.    

תנו רבנן: מנין לברכת המזון מן התורה? שנאמר: "ואכלת ושבעת וברכת" – זו ברכת הזן. "על הארץ" – זו ברכת הארץ. "הטובה" – זו בונה ירושלים … "אשר נתן לך" – זו הטוב והמטיב . 

But Rebbi (Rabbi Yehudah HaNasai) has a different tradition about the fourth bracha’s origin:  

רבי אומר: … הטוב והמטיב – ביבנה תקנוה. 

In Rebbi’s tradition, the final bracha is a later addition, composed and inserted by the Sages of Yavneh, the group of Sages who came of age in the long shadow of the destruction of Jerusalem. Rebbi’s alternative tradition is about much more than the academic question as to composition and date of origin. It contains within it the most important rabbinic teaching concerning the good and the sacred responsibility to discern it. As his student Rav Matna elaborates: 

דאמר רב מתנא: אותו היום שניתנו הרוגי ביתר לקבורה תקנו ביבנה הטוב והמטיב, "הטוב" – שלא הסריחו, "והמטיב" – שניתנו לקבורה 

On the day that the slain of Beitar were brought to burial, they instituted the blessing: Who is good and does good, at Yavne. Who is good, thanking God that the corpses did not decompose while awaiting burial, and does good, thanking God that they were ultimately brought to burial. 

Betar was the huge  Judean city that had been Bar Chochba’s final stronghold, whose fall in 135 resulted in tens of thousands of deaths, men, women, and children, leading the Midrash to depict a river of blood that flowed to the Mediterranean with such force that it carried boulders along with it. Its conqueror, Hadrian, ordered that the corpses remain exposed as a lesson against future rebellion. And so they remained for years, until Hadrian’s successor, Antoninus Pius, allowed for the dead of Betar to be buried, which prompted the scholars of Yavneh to compose and add a new bracha. Blessed is God who is good and Who provides good.   

One is tempted to think that the rabbis of Yavneh may have meant this sardonically. But, (a) they were not sardonic people, and (b) when these same Sages listed the events that make Tu B’av a joyous days on our calendar, they included on the list the fact that it was the anniversary of the day on which Antoninus Pius granted the permission for burial.   

The battle-scarred and generationally traumatized Sages of Yavneh would have stared with utter incomprehension at anyone singing, “God loves me and I therefore will have only good and more good.”  And I think they’d be doing the same were they to be hearing us express discouragement about the presence of good, about the futility of praying for the good. The first thing they’d say to us is, “You cannot think about good in binary terms.” You have to make the effort to define and discern “good” contextually, in the way that it manifests within your prevailing circumstances.” “And you need to do this because” they would explain to us in their full “damn the Romans, Judaism will survive!” glory, “because the day you stop seeing the good, is the day you stop praying for the good. And the day you stop praying for the good is the day you stop working for the good. And the day you stop working for the good… that is the day when we are finished.” Baruch ata… hatov…. umetiv   

I sketched out the initial ideas for this morning’s drasha on Tuesday September 2nd, when I was visiting with our son Adin and his family in Rehovot, just after Adin left the apartment in the early morning to start his most recent miluim deployment, at a tiny army base near Shechem where he is stationed as we speak. I had been unsuccessful in averting my gaze earlier in the morning as he and our daughter-in-law Amanda embraced and whispered things to each other, as the kids still slept. “Od yoter tov”… this wasn’t. But contextual tov, tov within the prevailing circumstance, Sages of Yavneh tov, this there was in abundance. A beautiful and loving marriage, adorable children, an honorable sense of duty to nation and to people. More than enough over which to bless, and oh so much for which to pray. God, we thirst this Rosh HaShana for the amount of yoter tov that is out there in this moment.   

The sights and sounds and words of Rosh HaShana are invariably the same. But of course every Rosh HaShana is very different, defined by each year’s context and within each year’s circumstances. And if we have to work a little harder some years to discern and embrace the good, in order so that our souls can open and pray for the good, in order so that we don’t lose our determination to actively seek the good, then this is what we will do.  

We are the disciples of the Sages of Yavneh.