Rabbi's Shabbat Morning Talmud Class
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Rabbi's Shabbat Morning Talmud Class - Archive
In an Election Year, What Should Temple Emanuel's Role be -- Forum For, or Sanctuary From, the Urgent Issues of the Day? - January 28, 2012
Monday night, Republican debate. Tuesday night, State of the Union. Thursday night, Republican debate. All week long I have been wrestling with this question: in an election year, what should Temple Emanuel's role be?
Perhaps we should be a forum for thoughtful political debate and reasoned, impassioned conversation. That would be a huge change from where we are and what we do now. What would it look like? Should we go there?
In last night's debate, for example, there was a lot of heat about an issue that frequently causes a lot of heat: immigration and immigration reform. What is the Jewish lens on this issue?
Consider:
When a stranger resides with you in your land, you shall not wrong him.
The stranger who resides with you shall be to you as one of your citizens; you shall love him as yourself, for you were strangers in the land of Egypt. I the Lord am your God. Leviticus 19: 33-34.
These words are easy to say. Hard to do. Especially hard when citizens don't have enough jobs themselves. Especially hard in a recession that is not going away. Especially hard when many of the strangers came to reside in our land illegally. But however they got here, they are here now. As are their children, who are innocent. Now what do we do?
What light does our tradition shed on this urgent issue of the day? Should we have a forum where we consider the issue of immigration though the lens of Jewish texts?
There are obvious arguments in favor. It makes the synagogue relevant. It helps our members think intelligently about issues that we wrestle with as citizens. It shows the relevance and resonance of Jewish tradition to contemporary concerns. It would bring people into the synagogue who haven't been here since Yom Kippur. Not only is there Jewish insight to be had on the substance of the issues. There is Jewish insight in how we consider and debate the issues. The linchpin of Jewish truth is respectful and thoughtful, and simultaneously impassioned, debate about issues that matter. Not echo chambers. Not talking to people you already agree with. But specifically listening to people who don't agree with you, and giving their words, hard to hear, real attention.
And yet, while there are many strong arguments in favor of the Temple as forum for the hard conversations of the day, there are compelling arguments in the other direction. Shouldn't the Temple be a Sanctuary from all the noise, all the controversy, all the dissonance? Shouldn't we be a place of peace, serenity and security where we set aside our political differences at the door and focus on what unites us? Do we really want to have protesters and placards lining Ward Street? Can't we just sing to God, catch up with one another at Kiddush, and go home feeling rejuvenated?
How to decide this issue? What text helpfully frames it? Enter Abraham Joshua Heschel.
In 1938, in Frankfurt-am-Main, Germany, Heschel gave a talk called "The Meaning of This Hour." He expanded and published it in 1943. And it became the climax of his
classic work, published in 1954, called Man's Quest for God. Heschel lost his mother Rivkah Reizel and his sisters Devorah Miriam, Esther Sima, and Gittel in the Shoah. These words pulsate. These words throb. These words grab you by throat and will not let you go.
What do they say to us today: forum for, or sanctuary from?
Signs and Wonders From God, or Just a Coincidence? - January 14, 2012
Do you ever wonder whether a certain event or pattern is a sign or omen that has a hidden divine message-or is perhaps just a coincidence with no deeper meaning? Consider Tim Tebow's passing numbers from last Sunday's wild card game against the Steelers.
He threw for a total of 316 yards.
His passing average was 31.6 yards.
The TV ratings peaked at 31.6.
His favorite biblical verse is John 3:16, which he used to write out on his eye patches.
Of course this could all be a coincidence. But according to a recent poll, 43 % of those polled look at this and say: no coincidence. God helps Tebow win. How else could you interpret his and his team's implausible success this year?
You do not have to be a football fan, or even a man or woman of faith, to wonder: when are apparent patterns just coincidences, and when are they portents with a message? Real people wonder about such things.
Judaism has a lot to say here. On Shabbat morning we will encounter texts from the Torah, Neil Gillman, Abraham Joshua Heschel, and William James that will help us come to our own interpretation on when, if ever, patterns we encounter are freighted with meaning.
How Well Do You Really Know Your Grandchildren? Enter Rembrandt - January 7, 2012
Of course you love your grandchildren. Of course they love you.
But do you really know your grandchildren? Do they really know you?
Jacob faces precisely this dilemma in tomorrow's reading.
Speaking to his son Joseph, Jacob is lush and over the top in how much he loves his
grandsons. "Ephraim and Manasseh shall be mine no less than Reuben and Simeon." (Gen. 48: 5)
But just three verses later, he does not even recognize these very grandsons:
"Noticing Joseph's sons, Israel asked: ‘Who are these?' And Joseph said to his father, ‘They are my sons, whom God has given me here.'" (Gen. 48: 8)
Is there a difference between the ideal of grandparents and grandchildren, and the real relationship? The ideal can be gauzy and warm, while the real can be surprisingly disconnected.
Where does this gap come from, and does it apply to our own generations?
Tomorrow we will compare the text in the Torah to Rembrandt's famous painting "Jacob Blessing the Sons of Joseph." Does Rembrandt capture the disconnection between the generations in the Torah-and in our own lives?
Is Character Born or Made? - December 17, 2011
Tomorrow morning, Joseph will find himself in a situation. A young man, his hormones brimming, a physical man well built and handsome, he will find himself alone with a beautiful married woman, Mrs. Potiphar, who wants to have relations with him.
Joseph declines. Where does that "no" come from? How does he know what not to do?
Does he struggle with his decision, or is it just obvious to him that of course he would never do this?
Is he sorely tempted, or not tempted at all?
Tomorrow morning we will see that the Torah is itself ambiguous on this question, and that the rabbis in the Talmud disagree. But the richer and more resonant opinion will link up exactly with the famous marshmallow study conducted by Walter Mischel in 1970, discussed by David Brooks in The Social Animal.
Four year olds are put in a room with a marshmallow on a table. If they eat the marshmallow now, they get their one marshmallow. But if they can hold off for a certain amount of time, they will get two marshmallows later.
What allows children to say no to the marshmallow? What does saying no to the marshmallow portend for their adult lives?
What allows Joseph to say no to Mrs. Potiphar?
Is integrity born or made?
Do Our Ideas Have to Be Better Than Their Ideas to Hold Onto Our Kids? - December 10, 2011
In America today, it is easy to opt out of being a part of the Jewish people. Go off to college, never set foot in Hillel, date and marry a non-Jew, and never go to temple unless you come back home for the high holidays.
There is a rationale and a coherence to opting out-part of living in post-ethnic, multi-cultural America, where we are all God's children and celebrate our common humanity. Jews couldn't do that in medieval Europe. We couldn't do it in Hitler's Germany. Thank God we can do it here now.
Why then should we and our children opt in? Why should we resist the tides of post-ethnic, multi-cultural America to express a strong, a priori commitment to the Jewish people?
Last Shabbat, we looked at four benefits to identifying ourselves with the Jewish people:
- We get a rich history that helps us look at contemporary life with compassionate eyes;
- We are part of an extended family that takes us in regardless of our conduct (people spoke warmly about being taken in both here and abroad in communities where they knew nobody);
- When we are in need, there is a community on whom we can call for emotional and financial resources, for presence, for connection. And we add our energy to that community.
- We can be more, do more, and aim higher, as a part of the Jewish people, as a holy people and a kingdom of priests, than we could as individuals. As part of a people our life is of greater consequence.
In response to these four points, many learners asked some version of the following question: Wait a minute, don't other religious traditions offer those same four benefits? Other faith traditions have a rich history, extended family, community of loyalty, aspiration to a life of consequence! There is nothing uniquely Jewish about this.
Several learners asked: If my 20-something brings home a non-Jewish boyfriend or girlfriend, and they decide to get married, and both traditions offer these benefits, why should they choose to be Jewish?
I said: Because Judaism is ours.
They said: But Judaism is not the religion of the non-Jewish boyfriend or girlfriend.
Thus the question arose: Do we need to make the case that our ideas are better than their ideas, that our stories, myths and rituals are more compelling? Or not?
Do our sources suggest that our truth is better than their truth, or that our truth is true to us because it is ours? Is God bigger than Judaism?
Why Should You Consider Yourself a Part of the Jewish People? - December 3, 2011
In our world today, it is easy to opt out of the Jewish people. In other times and places of Jewish history, it was not. In Hitler's Germany, it was impossible to opt out. But in America today, it is easy.
Easy and tempting. And there is an affirmative rationale to opting out. We live in a post-ethnic, multi-cultural age, as Shaul Magid wrote. Why not just see ourselves as human beings? As Americans? Why privilege a specifically Jewish identification?
For our children and grandchildren, and for ourselves, we need to make the case, we cannot just assume, that there are compelling reasons to see ourselves as part of the Jewish people. We need to make the case that our own lives are enriched, dramatically, powerfully, if we see ourselves as part of the Jewish people. And that our own lives are impoverished if we do not.
What are those compelling reasons?
Can The Genesis Covenant, by Itself, Survive Post-Ethnic America? - November 19, 2011
He came to see me at Kiddush, concern in his eyes: "Rabbi, how should I answer my college-age son who says, ‘dating only Jews is racist. After all, Judaism believes that all human beings are made in God's image, so why can't I date anyone I want?'"
Genesis Jews, meet the post-ethnic age.
Last week, we saw that the Torah has two covenants, the Genesis covenant given to Abraham and his descendants, which is unconditional and everlasting and is about the ethnic feeling of belonging to a people. The Genesis covenant is about feeling, not doing. Genesis Jews feel that their Judaism is important to them. They care about Israel and the Holocaust. They want their kids to marry Jews. But they do not express their Jewish identity by observing the Sabbath, the dietary laws,daily prayer or other rituals. You tend to see them in shul on day 1 of Rosh Hashanah and on Yom Kippur, or if they are an invited guest at a lifecycle event. And they love their shul and their Jewish identity. The Genesis covenant, authentic and ancient, is not about content and conduct.
The Exodus covenant, given to Moses and the Israelites, is about content and conduct, and it is conditional. We are "mamlekhet kohanim v'goy kadosh," a kingdom of priests and a holy nation (Ex. 19:6), not because we are born into the Jewish people, but only if behave a certain way, if we learn and observe the mitzvot of the Torah.
For Jews of a certain age, who remember the Holocaust, who remember the founding of the State of Israel, who lived through May of 1967, and then the Six Day War, the Genesis Covenant has juice. You can build a Jewish life around it.
But what about our children and grandchildren who are growing up in a world that does not focus on the Holocaust and Israel, but focuses on multiculturalism. Shaul Magid, a Rabbi and professor of Jewish thought, argues that we are living in a "post-ethnic America." He quotes Joey Kurtzman of the web site Jewcy.com who says: "The majority of Jewcy's staff is the product of intermarriage. To a one, we regard the traditional Jewish revulsion towards exogamy (intermarriage) as an anachronistic holdover from premodern life."
Can the Genesis covenant, based on a feeling of belonging to a family and a people, and not based on content and conduct, survive the multicultural, post-ethnic world in which we live?
How would you answer the father at Kiddush?
Are You a Genesis Jew, an Exodus Jew, or Both? - November 12, 2011
We have hundreds of people, if not thousands, in our congregation who, if you asked them how important is your Jewish identity, would say: "very." They feel very Jewish. But for the most part, they do not attend services. They do not pray daily. They do not observe the Sabbath. They do not keep kosher. But their Jewish identity legitimately is very important to them. They care a lot about Israel. They care a lot about the Holocaust. They care whether their children marry Jews.
How do we understand Jewishness that is felt very deeply, and genuinely, but is frequently not expressed in deed, in ritual, in mitzvah?
On Shabbat we will see that this mode of Jewish identity has ancient roots.
There is a Genesis covenant of primal identity. It is an ethnic thing but not expressed in conduct.
There is an Exodus covenant of content and conduct.
They are both authentic but very different from one another.
What kind of Jew are you?
Is Halakha an Answer to the Dark Recesses of Our Soul? - November 5, 2011
Our context here is the complicated human being with layers and layers, with hidden chambers that we ourselves do not understand. This insight is embedded in text new and old.
Commenting on Daniel Kahneman's new book Thinking, Fast and Slow, David Brooks summarizes the thesis: "We are players in a game we don't understand. Most of our own thinking is below awareness...Our biases frequently cause us to want the wrong things. Our perceptions and memories are slippery, especially about our own mental states....We have much less control over ourselves than we thought."
Or, as our high holiday liturgy makes the same point, thousands of years earlier:
You [God] know the mysteries of the universe,
the deepest secrets of everyone alive.
You probe our innermost depths,
You examine our thoughts and feelings.
Nothing escapes You,
nothing is secret from You.
In other words, God understands us better than we understand ourselves. We have "innermost depths" and "deepest secrets" that we don't understand, but God does.
Ancient and modern learning would then agree: we are our own greatest mystery.
Enter the Rav, Rabbi Joseph B. Soloveitchik, and his classic work Halakhic Man. The Rav will argue that Halakhic man (he wrote this piece, first in Hebrew, in 1944, when gendered language was the norm) need not worry about these depths, secrets, chambers and mysteries. If we learn and follow the law, we will live a life of dignity and worth.
Fear, sadness, worry, depression, even mortality itself have no hold on the Halakhic man. The Rav tells some gripping stories, which we will see tomorrow. For example, the rabbi whose beloved daughter was about to get married but then who fell ill. When the rabbi learned that she was soon to die, and he knew that halakhically he would not be required after her death to put on phylacteries (tefillin), as soon as he got the word that she would soon pass, he put on two different sets of tefillin (Rashi and Rabbeinu Tam), said his prayers, and then removed his tefillin. Commenting on this rabbi's reaction in the face of unimaginable loss, the Rav writes:
We have here great strength and presence of mind, the acceptance of the divine decree with love, the consciousness of the law and the judgment, the might and power of the Halakhah, and faith, strong like flint.
Would some version of this work for us?
The Opacity of the Human Being--Is Halakhah a Helpful Response? - October 29, 2011
Last week, 1000 words.
This week, 1 picture.
Last week, we engaged reasoned arguments about the deal that brought Gilad Shalit home in exchange for 1,027 prisoners. We read and debated words and arguments that the deal represented moral greatness (Donniel Hartman), dangerous madness (Jeff Jacoby), self-preservation (Danny Gordis). What did you think last week, and why? Hold onto that for a minute.
Now enter 1 picture. A picture of Schvuel Schijveschuurder. A picture of rage. Of outrage. Of veins literally bulging. His parents and all of his siblings were murdered in cold blood by a terrorist. That terrorist was in jail. That terrorist is released in the deal that brought Gilad Shalit home. Schvuel Schijveschuurder's face of rage says: releasing the murderer of my family is an injustice! Where is my justice?
Our issue now is not the underlying merits, rather the process of how we human beings make our decisions. After the thousand words, the reasoned arguments, the back and forth, the evolving thinking, what effect, if any, does 1 picture of 1 man have on your thinking? Does it confirm it? Challenge it? Have no effect?
Where does our decision-making come from? Our head? Our heart? What is the relation between head and heart? Is our head the servant of our heart? Does our heart decide the question, instinctively, blink-like, and then our head goes out and hires the lawyer to marshal the facts and arguments? If so, why does the heart decide what it decides? What happens when the heart faces logic that is really strong and cuts in a different direction? In short, how do we decide what we decide, and what is the lynchpin of our decision-making process?
We will read David Brooks' October 20 column on the work of Daniel Kahneman and Amos Tversky, the conclusion of which is we are our own greatest mystery. We do not understand ourselves. We are not in control of why we decide what we decide.
We will then see that in fact this is an ancient insight, not a new insight; it is in the prayers of the High Holiday liturgy and our daily and Shabbat liturgy. Our Siddur and Mahzor tell us point blank we often do things that hurt ourselves and others-and we have no clue why. Our Siddur and Mahzor were telling us this thousands of years before Brooks, Kahneman and Tversky.
The question is: what do we about it? We will read a chapter of Rabbi Joseph B. Soloveitchik's classic work Halakhic Man. The Rav acknowledges there are parts of ourselves we do not understand and then says: no problem, Halakhah is the answer. What is his rationale, and does it, or some version of it, work for us as we continually deal with the disquieting fact that we are our own greatest black box.
Moral Greatness, Dangerous Madness, or Self Preservation? Three Takes on Gilad Shalit - October 22, 2011
From today's papers, as reported by Ethan Bronner from Jerusalem:
"Just off the bus in Gaza after six years in an Israeli prison, one of hundreds traded to Hamas for an Israeli soldier, Wafa al-Bass declared her next goal: abduct more Israeli soldiers. Others who returned said they could not feel satisfaction until the thousands of remaining Palestinian prisoners were freed.
And Israelis, at first thrilled at the sight of their liberated soldier, were angered by how he looked-frail, wan, and underfed."
Boston Globe, Oct. 19, A6; New York Times, Oct. 19, A4.
Thank God Gilad Shalit is home. But what do we make of the lopsided prisoner exchange that brought him home, 1027 for 1? Should Israel have made this deal? Was it:
- moral greatness-that is how much Israel values every one of its soldiers;
- dangerous madness-Israelis are now endangered and Palestinians emboldened by this deal, as there will be more attempts at terrorism and abduction, and no one can promise they won't succeed;
- self-preservation-given the realpolitik in which Israel now finds itself, by saving Gilad Shalit, Israel saved itself.
On Shabbat we will read ancient and contemporary sources on these three reads on Gilad Shalit coming home-- an event that makes us happy for Gilad, his family, and the Jewish people, and at the exact same time anxious for what those 1,027 freed prisoners
will do now that may well put other innocent Israelis in harm's way.
Our Gay-Bashing, Choice-Denying, Israel-Loving Evangelical Christian Allies - What Are the Limits of Partnership? - October 15, 2011
If you happen to be in Arvada, Colorado this Sunday, October 16 at 6:00 pm, you might stop by at the Faith Bible Chapel, an evangelical Christian church, for its "33rd Annual Israel Awareness Day." There are very few Jews in Arvada, Colorado. Support for Israel comes from a deep place within the evangelical Christian community.
33 years of this faith community standing with Israel. Some of Israel's most stalwart supporters are evangelical Christian churches.
Oh, and one other thing. The guest speaker is Pastor John Hagee, the senior pastor of 12,000 member Cornerstone Church in San Antonio, Texas-and the President and Founder of Christians United for Israel.
Pastor Hagee has been to Israel 22 times and has met with every Prime Minister of Israel since Menachem Begin. John Hagee Ministries has given more than $8.5 million to bring Soviet Jews from the former Soviet Union to Israel. The San Antonio B'nai B'rith Council awarded Hagee its "Humanitiarian of the Year" award-the first time this award was given to a non-Jew. The Zionist Organization of America has given Pastor Hagee its Israel Award. See Wikipedia site on John Hagee.
Pastor Hagee has also had some other things to say. For example:
- "Gay marriage will open the door to incest, to polygamy, and every conceivable marriage arrangement demented minds can possibly conceive. If God does not punish America, He will have to apologize to Sodom and Gomorrah."
- "I believe that the Hurricane Katrina was, in fact, the judgment of God against the city of New Orleans...I believe that New Orleans had a level of sin that was offensive to God, and they are-were recipients of the judgment of God for that...There was to be a homosexual parade there on the Monday that Katrina came."
What is the right response of the Jewish community to evangelical Christian support for Israel, when there are many sharp differences between the communities on other issues?
Should rabbis be sharing the stage with Pastor Hagee at these Israel Awareness Day events? (A Denver rabbi is indeed doing so.)
Should Jews be attending these events?
Should we be courting and welcoming evangelical support, no matter what other differences there exist among us?
Is Pastor Hagee our friend? Our political ally? What?
Trying to Locate a Prophetic Voice - September 24, 2011
I am utterly confused. I don't know what to think about the move of the Palestinian delegation in the UN for a unilateral declaration. Contradictions abound. What is in Israel's best interest is therefore elusive. Consider two flat-out contradictions.
On the one hand, in his op ed piece in the New York Times this morning, former Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert praised the current Palestinian leadership. "Israel will not always find itself sitting across the table from Palestinian leaders like Mr. Abbas and the prime minister, Salam Fayyad, who object to terrorism and want peace."
But on the other hand, Mahmoud Abbas has stated: "Don't order us to recognize a Jewish state. We won't accept it." And Palestinian Authority foreign minister Nabil Shaath has said: "The story of 'two states for two peoples' means that there will be a Jewish people over there and a Palestinian people here. We will never accept this."
Which is right? Is the Palestinian leadership for peace (see Olmert on the Palestinian leadership) or not for peace (see their own words, at least those quoted above)?
Another example: What should we hope happens? Much of the mainstream American Jewish leadership has publicly taken the position that there should be a Palestinian state eventually, but not now. Yet Olmert says now is the time, the only time. And, according to the Jerusalem Post yesterday, a Hebrew University poll shows that 70% of Israelis believe that Israel should accept the decision if the UN recognizes a Palestinian state.
So what do we want? A state eventually, but not now (much of American Jewish leadership)? Or start negotiating now (Olmert, 70% of Israelis according to the poll).
Where to go for wisdom here? There is a lot of timely wisdom out there, on all sides: articles and analyses and quotes and facts and figures written by foreign policy analysts, scholars, and various other experts.
What is harder to come by, however, is a prophetic voice. On Shabbat morning we will encounter two prophetic voices: Isaiah, the Haftarah for this Shabbat, and Jeremiah, the Haftarah for the second day of Rosh Hashanah.
What would Isaiah and Jeremiah say about Israel today?
Is Jewish Humanism Legit? - September 17, 2011
What do we do with those passages in the Torah and its commentators that make us cringe? Passages, for example, that command us to engage in genocide, like the last passage of the Torah
that we read last Shabbat.
"Remember what Amalek did to you on your journey, after you left Egypt- how undeterred by fear of God, he surprised you on the march, when you were famished and weary, and cut down all the stragglers in your rear. Therefore, when the Lord your God grants you safety from all your enemies around you, in the land that the Lord your God is giving you as a hereditary portion, you shall blot out the memory of Amalek from under the heaven. Do not forget!" (Deut. 25:17-19)
What does blot out the memory of Amalek mean? Here is Rashi's interpretation: "Man and woman, child and infant, ox and sheep, so that the name ‘Amalek' will never be remembered."
In line with this commandment, Samuel famously commands Saul: "Now go, attack Amalek, and proscribe all that belongs to him. Spare no one, but kill alike men and women, infants and sucklings, oxen and sheep, camels and asses!" I Samuel 15:3.
What does the modern Jew do with this?
To commemorate 9/11, Rabbi Shai Held wrote an essay called "Religion's Most Urgent Problem" about the thought of an Orthodox Zionist leader named Moshe Unna, who called for "Jewish humanism."
What is Jewish humanism? Is it authentic? Is it helpful? How shall it affect how we read the problematic passages in the Torah? What does it say to us now, nestled between 9/11 and the upcoming move in the UN for the unilateral declaration of Palestinian statehood?
Ten Years Later, What is Our Prayer? - September 10, 2011
Ten years later, what should we be praying for? How shall we regard the terrorists then, and the terrorists still now, who aim to do us harm?
Perhaps we should pray for revenge. That has a basis in Jewish sources, a prayer that is included in the traditional Shabbat musaf service (which we do not say) called Av Harachamim, Father of compassion, which goes like this:
May God, before our eyes, exact retribution for the spilled blood of His servants, as is written in the Torah of Moses, the man of God: 'O nations, sing the praise of His people for He will avenge the blood of His servants and He will bring retribution upon His foes.'
Are we too hard if this is our prayer? Are we too soft if it is not?
Perhaps we should pray for the repentance of the terrorists, that they will renounce their violence and nihilism, and that terrorism will vanish from our land and time. That has a basis in Jewish sources. When Rebbi Meir was attacked by brigands, he prayed for their death. He was upbraided by his wife, Bruriah, who quoted him Scripture to the effect that we want the sin to end, not the sinner. Pray that they repent, she argued, not that they die. He agreed and prayed on their behalf.
Are we too soft, and hopelessly naïve, and dangerously out of touch with reality, if this is our prayer? Rebbi Meir was dealing with thieves, not terrorists and fundamentalists and nihilists.
But if we don't hold onto at least part of this prayer, what happens to us when we let it all go?
Is there any room left for soft idealism in our hard world? How do we protect ourselves, do our best to assure our safety in a world where real enemies exist, and now grow closed and cynical and hard?
Evil is real. Answers are elusive. Ten years later, it is still hard to know what to pray for.
What do you think?
A Spiritual Revolution - June 18, 2011
For our last Talmud class of the year, a treat. And it comes in the form of a new book that will take your breath away. (Don't worry, not David Brooks' The Social Animal, again.)
But first, some background.
Many people properly knock siddur liturgy and synagogue services as being formal, formalistic and dull, a word slurry about God-God is compassionate, God is loving, God is fabulous, we need to sing to God! These words leave many of us cold. They don't even begin to capture what we feel. They don't respond to our doubts. They don't elicit let alone engage our questions. They contain no salve for the sadness in our souls. Reciting them mechanically is the very opposite of meaningful, which is why synagogue liturgy has a reputation as dry, and why so many people vote with their feet not to come.
But what if there were a Jewishly authentic and vibrant alternative to the rote recitation of texts that we often find boring and irrelevant?
What if those ancient texts that did not speak to us were just the first layer?
What if, on top of that first layer--like a piece of Talmud, a vertical tradition, a living conversation--there were also questions, doubts, anger, passion, yearning that could begin to convey a little of what real people feel in a world both wondrous and troubled?
What if those questions, doubts and anger could also be a pathway to God, meaning, and purpose?
Bring your most incisive questions, your deepest disappointments, your most gnawing doubts. For if we cannot give voice to that too, if we cannot give voice to all of you, why bother coming to shul?
This book is the beginning of a spiritual revolution.
What Was He Thinking? - June 11, 2011
Does moral behavior come from moral reasoning? And does a lapse in moral behavior come from a lapse in moral reasoning? Or is there something else at play? Perhaps doing the right thing, or not doing the right thing, is not about moral reasoning at all.
Tomorrow we will encounter a modern and an ancient source that both address the question: where does our moral behavior, or lack thereof, come from?
In The Social Animal, David Brooks shares the most recent learning about mind, brain, and neuroscience on the ethical development of the human being.
In the tractate Kiddishin, the rabbis offer up one metaphor that should incent us to do the right thing.
Are Brooks, and the rabbis, saying the same thing, or not? And what do their teachings say to us as we strive to lead lives of integrity and character?
Daniel Gordis' Essay: "Are Young Rabbis Turning on Israel?" - June 4, 2011
Wow. No article in my recent memory has generated more heat and conversation than Danny Gordis' ongoing critique of how America's rabbinical seminaries, he contends, are turning out rabbis who do not get and do not support Israel.
He begins with a critique of Boston's Hebrew College's rabbinical seminary, which asked its students, on Yom Hazikaron, when Israel remembers its fallen soldiers, as follows:
For Yom ha-Zikaron, our kavanah (intention) is to open up our communal remembrance to include losses on all sides of the conflict in Israel/Palestine. In this spirit, our framing question for Yom Ha-Zikaron is this: On this day, what do you remember and for whom do you grieve?
He continues with the American rabbinical student who chose to celebrate his birthday in Ramallah.
Is Rabbi Gordis onto something? Let's read his critique (Commentary, June, 2011) and have a thoughtful conversation. Should we be concerned that young rabbis are turning on Israel?
Final Impressions- Making Sense of Our Own Mortality - May 21, 2011
A few weeks ago Micah Goodman taught us about the importance of first impressions. What first impression did the Torah create when it spoke of God as creator of heaven and earth? What first impression did the rabbis of the Mishnah create when they began with an argument over when to recite the evening Shema? What do we learn from the fact that these two texts, in very different ways, and with very different messages, were talking about the exact same thing?
Tomorrow, we move from first impressions to final impressions, as we ready ourselves for receiving the Torah at Sinai with the upcoming festival of Shavuot.
Deuteronomy ends with the death of Moses on the wrong side of the River Jordan.
The last mishnayot of the last tractate, Uktsin, deals at first with the most esoteric of the most esoteric: whether bee-hives and honeycombs are ritually clean or unclean.
The Torah's end deals with matters of ultimate importance-living and dying, and dreams unfulfilled, dying on the wrong side of the River Jordan, not being able to attend your grandchild's wedding in health. Everyone on the planet can relate.
By contrast, the Mishnah's end seems at first to deal with matters of ultimate un-importance, ritual that no one on the planet could care about. And yet, the Mishnah then does a surprising maneuver, at the very end, moving from the ritual purity status of bee-hives and honeycombs, to the meaning of our finite existence.
Both the Torah and the Mishnah end, appropriately enough, by treating the same question: how shall we understand our own end?
Did Isaiah Disserve the Jewish People?: Is Utopian Dreaming a Bad Idea? - May 14, 2011
"The wolf shall dwell with the lamb,
The leopard lie down with the kid,
The calf, the beast of prey, and the fatling together,
With a little boy to herd them." - Isaiah 11:6.
At first blush, this vision of peace and cosmic harmony is lovely. Wouldn't it be a great world if the wolf could lie down with the lamb? Jewish tradition likes this vision. We chanted the Haftarah this past week for Yom Haatzmaut.
Yet, this vision suffers from one core problem: Not happening. Never has happened. Never will happen.
If a wolf lies down with a lamb, you have a dead lamb. So why does Isaiah paint a Utopian vision that can never and will never be realized?
If our vision of the ideal is something that is unattainable, it makes everything we do in the real world pale. What society ever-Israel, America, you name it-could fulfill Isaiah's vision?
Why not pick as a vision, and as a Haftarah for Israel Independence Day, something more humble and more achievable?
Cheering the Death of Bin Laden: Is it Okay to Gloat When Your Enemy Dies? - May 7, 2011
All reasonable people can agree that it was a good thing the heroic Navy Seals killed Osama Bin Laden. He had the blood of thousands of innocent men, women and children on his hands. Whether his death is justice, or just revenge, the fact that he can kill no more, and that our authorities now have his intelligence, makes the world a safer place.
What is not so clear is how to understand the spontaneous eruptions of cheering and gloating, thousands of ordinary Americans pouring out into the streets of various venues, to celebrate his death in the way that we celebrate when our team wins a championship.
Is it okay to gloat?
Our biblical and rabbinic sources, and our daily and Sabbath siddur, have much to say on this question and, not surprisingly, the sources flatly contradict one another. The tension that many Americans felt about the cheering-many did it, many had reservations about it, many were appalled by it-are all found in our sources.
Tomorrow morning our sources will speak directly to our world, and we will see that our conversation about the aftermath of Bin Laden's death is thousands of years old.
The Best Learning Ever: Micah Goodman's Three Teachings This Shabbat - April 30, 2011
In Jerusalem, there is a wonderful museum that tells the story of Menachem Begin, known as the Begin Center. For several years, something remarkable happened every week at the Begin Center. About 500 people a week came to hear a lecture on parshat hashavuah, the weekly Torah portion. That in itself is remarkable. Who gets 500 people week in week out to hear a lecture on the Torah portion?
But what was also remarkable was the age of the people who attended. Most were in their 20s and 30s, the "young people" Jewish organizational life struggles to connect with.
And what was also remarkable was the diverse composition of this group. These lectures brought together secular Jews, who had not studied Torah before but who suddenly found resonance in ancient words, and religious Jews, who found profound and new insights in these lectures that could match the best of the classic thinkers.
All these people, secular and religious, young and older, came to hear Micah Goodman.
Micah is the best teacher of Torah I have ever heard. He was here last year, and many of you heard him. He will be here this Shabbat, teaching three times.
- Talmud Class at 8:30. We will meet in Gann to hear his talk: "Chapter 1 of Genesis and Chapter 1 of Tractate Berachot: The Notion of Spiritual, Religious and Political Independence."
- Shabbat Morning Sermon: "Collective Holiness and the Challenge of Jewish Sovereignty"
- Text at Twilight at 6:20: "Who Are the Prophets, And What is Prophecy About?"
We just finished with Pesach, and we are on our way towards Shavuot, and receiving Torah at Sinai.
There is no better Torah than that of Micah Goodman.
How Did It Ever Get Into the Canon? - April 23, 2011
"Your stately form is like the palm,
Your breasts are like clusters.
I say: Let me climb the palm,
Let me take hold of its branches;
Let your breasts be like clusters of grapes,
Your breath like the fragrance of apples,
And your mouth like choicest wine.
Let it flow to my beloved as new wine
Gliding over the lips of sleepers.
I am my beloved's,
And his desire is for me."
(Song of Songs, 7: 8-11)
How did Song of Songs, which we read on the Shabbat of Chol Hamoed Pesach, ever make it into the Hebrew Bible?
We can understand the skeptics who thought it did not belong. It is a book about young, hot lovers. Nothing about God. Nothing about Torah. Nothing about mitzvah. Nothing about justice. It is about sexual desire, which is fine, but why put that in the canon?
What is harder to understand is the famous statement of Rabbi Akiva that "all other books in the Writings are holy, whereas the Song of Songs is holy of holies." What was Rabbi Akiva getting at?
It is one of the shortest books in the Bible, only 117 verses. And if you have never read it, you are missing something really interesting and profound.
A simple story about young hot love it is not. In fact, I will argue, it is the opposite of that.
In class, we will encounter it with these questions:
- The lovers desire one another. But do they ever consummate?
- Why is it that whenever the lovers are on the brink of passion, there are deflating references to family-- mother, a brother, a little sister whose breasts are not yet formed?
- Why are there repeated admonitions: "Do not wake or rouse love until it please!" A lot of admonition. Not a lot of action.
Is Song of Songs about passion? Or about passion unfulfilled?
About desire? Or desire thwarted?
Who are the lovers? Are they us and God? Are they just us?
Seder in Sodom, Exceptionalism in America - April 16, 2011
Question: When and where was the first seder?
Answer: According to Rashi, in one of his more generative and perplexing comments, the first seder was held at the table of Lot in Sodom. As you may remember, two angels came to Sodom to tell Lot to leave with his family right away as the place was going to get incinerated. Lot serves them "baked matzot." Genesis 19:3. Rashi's odd comment: "pesach hayah," it was Passover.
This comment is confounding because, of course, the Israelites were not even born yet, let alone enslaved, let alone freed, at the time that Lot was living. Lot lived several generations before the enslavement and the exodus. There was no Passover. Why then does Rashi say it was Passover?
In his commentary to the Haggadah, Rabbi Jonathan Sacks has an utterly brilliant, sparkling, original interpretation, that we will study tomorrow. He argues that Lot prefigures the prototypical Jewish experience in the Diaspora. Lot moves to Sodom as the Other to a foreign place without Jews. He becomes a macher. According to the rabbinic interpretation, he had just been appointed chief judge of Sodom. His daughters marry Sodomites; that is how integrated he and his family feel. And yet, the townspeople never accept him. These Jews are too big for their britches! They said: "The one came to sojourn and he acts as a judge!" Genesis 19:9. Yet, when push comes to shove, and it is time to go, Lot hesitates. The cantillation mark for the Hebrew word for hesistate (vayitmah'mah) is a rare, prolonged note, to indicate that it was hard for Lot to leave, he was torn, even knowing how toxic the place had become. Why the hesitation? Rashi says he didn't want to leave his money behind. Perhaps he couldn't believe it was happening to him, an accomplished man of the town.
Rabbi Sacks will argue that Lot in Sodom prefigures Joseph and the descendants of Jacob in Israel, which prefigures the Jewish experience in country after country, from the Spanish Inquisition after the Golden Age of Spain, to the Shoah after Jews had thought they were beloved citizens of Germany. Like Lot, too many Jews hesitated-and died.
What is the point of Rashi's anachronistic Pesach, before the descent into slavery and the exodus to freedom? The Sacks thesis: Lot stands for the proposition that Jews are never at home, even when they think they are.
All of which raises the obvious question: does Chief Rabbi Sacks's interpretation of Lot apply here, in America?
I will share one recent paragraph-consisting of about 50 words-which demonstrates conclusively, in my opinion, that it can never happen here. These 50 words will explain why, in the 4000 year history of the Jewish people, the American experience is truly exceptional.
It can't happen here-and this will show you why.
Does Hope Come From History, or Does History Come From Hope? - April 9, 2011
"History does not give rise to hope; hope gives rise to history." Rabbi Jonathan Sacks's Haggadah, p. 117
Consider two stories, one an ideal from the imagination of the Jewish people, the other a much more gritty reality from contemporary Israel.
The Ideal: In 2 Kings 5, the Haftarah for Tazria, Naaman is the commander of the army of Aram, an enemy of Israel. Indeed, Naaman takes a young Israelite girl as a captive, and she serves as an attendant to his wife. Naaman has leprosy. No cure can be found in Aram. The Israelite captive says there is a prophet in Israel who can heal you. Naaman goes to see this prophet, Elisha, who persuades him to immerse in the Jordan River seven times, which he does, and he emerges pure and healed. He also emerges a believer in the God of Israel. Peace and harmony ensue.
Lovely story. An enemy commander is won over by warmth and friendship. National difference is trumped by shared humanity and great medicine, the healing waters of the Jordan River. But is this story just an ideal, or is it, or can it be, real?
The Real: Thomas Friedman did a column on a documentary called "Precious Life," which tells the story of a 4 month old Palestinian baby named Mohammed Abu Mustafa who suffered from a rare immune deficiency. Could national difference be trumped by shared humanity and great medicine? The baby is treated in Israel's Tel Hashomer hospital. The $55,000 operation is paid for by an Israeli Jew whose son was killed during military service. After the surgery, the baby's mother offers that she hopes he'll grow up to be a suicide bomber to help recover Jerusalem.
When Naaman is healed, he says: "Now I know that there is no God in the whole world except in Israel! So please accept a gift from your servant."
When Mohammed is healed, his mother says: "From the smallest infant, even smaller than Mohammed, to the oldest person, we will all sacrifice ourselves for the sake of Jerusalem. We feel we have the right to it. You're free to be angry, so be angry."
How do we deal with the complexity of history? Can we will ourselves to find hope in this picture?
The answer is found in the Haggadah, including the beloved Chad Gadyah, One Only Kid. We will see the difference between the folk tale song that existed before Jews got hold of it and put it in the Haggadah, and how we changed it in order to have it be a suitable end for our seder.
In a beautiful piece on the Haggadah, Rabbi Sacks will argue that the Jewish people's contribution to the world is that we insist on looking at the mess and pain and evil that are in history, and finding in it hope.
In the face of the real, is it naïve, or helpful, to hold onto the hopeful ideal?
Is the Haggadah Optimistic? Should It Be? - April 2, 2011
How is this for depressing?
"There is something immensely self-satisfied and self-centered at the tribal mentality that is so prevalent among Jews... [They] as a whole are characterized by this mentality....It is no less legitimate to say such a thing about Jews in 2008-2009 than it was to make the same point about the Germans around 1938."
These words, written by Trond Adresen, a professor in Norway, were quoted in Alan Dershowitz' piece this past Wednesday in the Wall Street Journal entitled "Norway to Jews: You're Not Welcome Here." Dershowitz explains how any speaker who wishes to make the case for Israel is not welcome in Norway. Only one narrative will be heard: that Israel is an oppressor and an occupier. Dershowitz would have been allowed to come to Norway to talk about the O.J. case, but not about Israel, because pro-Israel views are not to be heard. He argues that this anti-Israel sentiment is Jew hatred.
"This line of talk-directed at Jews, not Israel-is apparently acceptable among many in Norway's elite. Consider former Prime Minister Kare Willock's reaction to President Obama's selection of Rahm Emanuel as his first chief of staff: 'It does not look too promising, he has chosen a chief of staff who is Jewish.'"
One might have expected these words, by a professor and former Prime Minister, to be spoken in 1941. But in 2011?
What light does the Haggadah shed on this? Does the Haggadah tell us that we should be optimistic about Jewish history?
On the one hand, no. Be pessimistic, because we are stuck in a doom loop where they always hate us, they always want to kill us, and God always has to save us. "For not just one enemy has stood against us to wipe us out. But in every generation there have been those who have stood against us to wipe us out, Yet the Holy One, Blessed be He, keeps on saving us from their hands.
On the other hand, yes. Be optimistic, because there is a trajectory to Jewish history, and it all works out in the end. It is all happy, happy-in the end. "God took us from slavery to freedom, from sorrow to joy, from mourning to festivity, from thick darkness to a great light, from enslavement to redemption! Let us sing before God a new song. Halleluyah!"
On the third hand, no. Because even after this happy trajectory, and even after the meal, after the third cup of wine, after welcoming in Elijah, we have more of the Norway thing in the gritty plea known as shefoch chamatikha: "Pour out your fury on the nations that do not know you, upon the kingdoms that do not invoke your name, for they have devoured Jacob and desolated his home." In other words-kill the gentiles, they still hate us.
On the fourth hand, yes. Right after that problematic plea, pour the fourth cup, sing Hallel, and dream of a new Jerusalem, a time and place of peace.
Does the Haggadah tell us we should be optimistic? Should we be? We want to be, but it is 2011, and see Norway.
Can Jewish Peoplehood Disintegrate? The Take of the Rav--Joseph B. Soloveitchik - March 26, 2011
Last week we encountered the sobering reflection of Steven M. Cohen and Jack Wertheimer in "Whatever Happened to the Jewish People" (Commentary Magazine, June 2006). They argue that in the last 20 years, there has been a precipitous decline in the sense of Jewish peoplehood, reflected in diminished Jewish philanthropy to Jewish causes and a diminished ability to summon a unified Jewish voice in support of Jewish causes. They argue that the roots of the disintegration of Jewish peoplehood are:
1. polarization caused by Israel. (See the Globe editorials from this past Sunday. Jeff Jacoby had written earlier in the week that the Palestinian terrorist(s) who murdered the Fogel family murdered young children and a three month old baby, and that this confirmed a practice of murdering children and babies. He cited concrete other examples. The responses of several Jewish writers on Sunday was to castigate the editorialist for "vilifying and objectifying the Palestinian people." Exhibit A to diminished sense of Jewish peoplehood.)
2. the high rates of intermarriage. In the authors' words: "[T]he intermarried tend to have fewer Jewish neighbors, fewer Jewish friends, lower levels of membership in Jewish institutions, less attachment to Israel, and less allegiance to the Jewish people"
3. culture of individualized seekers who are on their own journeys, which is about individual fulfillment not peoplehood. The Sabbath is explained to this generation as a time for individuals to recharge and renew, not as a sign of the covenant between God and the Jewish people.
4. globalism over "tribalism." Why give to Israel or Jewish day schools? Give to fight world hunger. Don't be narrow, myopic. Be broad and universalistic.
Most folks around the table felt that Cohen and Wertheimer had failed to make the case, and that there was plenty of evidence (various Birthright programs bringing unprecedented numbers of kids to Israel, thriving Jewish summer camps and day schools, plenty of Jewish philanthropy to Jewish causes in addition to federation, children and grandchildren who are more Jewishly identified than their parents and grandparents) that Jewish peoplehood is, in pockets at least, thriving.
Enter the Rav, Joseph B. Soloveitchik, who wrote a classic essay in 1956 called "Kol Dodi Dofek: It is the Voice of My Beloved That Knocketh," in which he discusses Jewish peoplehood through the form of two covenants, the covenant of fate and the covenant of destiny, which he associates with two historical moments, respectively, Egypt and Sinai. The covenant of fate is forced upon us, a covenant of compulsion. The covenant of destiny we freely choose.
Do the Rav's categories and vocabulary still work today, more than a half century later, for the non-Orthodox parts of the Jewish world?
Is the Idea of Jewish Peoplehood Dead--or in Significant Retreat? - March 19, 2011
Here is a definition of Jewish peoplehood: one people who share a history and a destiny, and a sense of belonging to and being responsible for one another. In the Talmudic phrase, kol yisrael aravim zeh ba'zeh, all Jews are responsible for one another.
But is the very idea of Jewish peoplehood dead or in significant retreat?
In an incredibly thought-provoking, and disturbing, piece which we will study tomorrow, called "Whatever Happened to the Jewish People," Steven M. Cohen and Jack Wertheimer argue that this core sense of Jewish peoplehood-we belong to one people, we are loyal to one another, we are responsible for one another-has not survived modernity. The eclipse of peoplehood, they argue trenchantly, is relatively recent, and is happening fast. Consider two of many pieces of evidence they cite:
- In December, 1987, a quarter million American Jews gathered when Mikhail Gorbachev came to Washington, D.C. to create a mass rally in support of the demand: "Let My People Go." Many of our members were there. Jews from Boston by the busload joined Jews from other communities by the busload and trainload and planeload, including Jews who came in from Hawaii, to come together as one people. By contrast, a demonstration was held in Washington in the early 2000s to support the murder of innocent Israelis by Palestinian terrorist homicide bombers, which drew in the authors' words "a relatively meager turnout."
- The slogan of the United Jewish Appeal used to be "We Are One." That got changed by the United Jewish Communities to "Live Generously: It Does a World of Good." Cohen and Wertheimer argue that this change reflects a sheepishness within even the organized Jewish community about Jews standing up for Jews. It is no longer fashionable to talk that way. It is seen as narrow, insular, tribal. They cite the economist Jeffrey Sachs (director of the UN Millennium Project) who chastised Jewish donors for being fixated on "local and parochial concerns" (read Jewish causes like Israel and day schools) instead of learning to "give globally."
I have been dwelling with this critique all week. I am wondering if I have unknowingly internalized the new sheepishness about Jews standing up for Jews myself. One congregant responded to my email about We are All Japanese with a penetrating question: why didn't I write an email that We are All Israelis, in light of the brutal murder in cold blood of an Israeli family in Itamar?
Cohen and Wertheimer point out not only is the eclipse of Jewish peoplehood recent and happening fast, but it also helps explain the disconnect so many Jews in the Diaspora feel for Israel. Traditionally, Jews would say we need a Jewish homeland for the Jewish people. But if there is no real Jewish people-just disparate Jewish communities in different places-the authors pointedly observe, what in truth is the real connection to eretz yisrael?
Why is the very idea of Jewish peoplehood-so core to our people for thousands of years-suddenly on life support? And what can we do to revive it?
The King Congressional Hearing about Radical American Muslims--McCarthyism Redux, or Necessary Vigilance? - March 12, 2011
I don't know what to make of the Congressional hearings that convene today, initiated by Representative Peter King, the chairman of the House Homeland Security Committee, about the radicalization of American Muslims. I read conflicting points of view, and to each I say, "you're right."
Representative King argues that these hearings have nothing to do with animus against Muslim Americans. He argues that the government's key job is to protect its citizens from harm, to keep us safe. And the fact is, he continues, any number of domestic terrorism incidents have been committed by Muslim Americans. The government is failing in its duty to protect its citizens if it does not investigate the root of this threat to our national security.
Representative King has a point. Try this. Google "American Muslim extremists charged, convicted and sentenced on terrorism-related charges." You will see lists of criminals, year after year, that go on and on. It is actually frightening. There is a basis to what he is saying.
And yet, others argue that Representative King's hearing is misguided for any number of reasons.
First, while it is true that domestic terrorism crimes have been committed by Muslim Americans, the fact is, as Representative King has himself acknowledged, the vast majority of Muslim Americans are loyal and law-abiding citizens, who, especially since 9/11, have been marginalized, ostracized, victimized-and these hearings will only stoke fear and suspicion against innocent American citizens.
This critique also has a point. Just because Bernie Madoff is a Jew, in financial services, and a crook, does not mean that Congress should initiate hearings into the possible corruption of American Jews in financial services.
Second, while it is true that some domestic terrorism incidents have been committed by Muslim Americans, as John Tirman argues in today's Globe, the evidence on domestic terrorism "shows that most attacks in the last two decades have been on black churches, reproductive rights facilities, government offices and individual minorities. And those have been committed mainly by right-wing extremists...King should expand his investigation to the largest sources of extremist violence in America---the Ku Klux Klan, the neo-Nazis, and their new versions-and ask how hate speech and war fuel attacks. Those would be congressional hearings worth listening to." Boston Globe, March 10, A13. He has a point.
Still others, like Akbar Ahmed, a professor of Islamic studies at American University, argue that American Muslims should welcome these hearings as an opportunity to tell their story. "Muslims should embrace the chance to explain their beliefs fully and clearly. We have nothing to hide." NY Times, March 9, 2011, p. A25. He has a point.
What do we do when, if we consider a hard contemporary issue with an open mind, there is so much ambiguity and texture? Fortunately, we come from a religious tradition that has ancient texts that can be helpful. But this issue-Representative King's hearings-illustrate clearly what our texts can and cannot do for us.
Our ancient texts cannot provide the answer. To think that they can provide the answer is the flaw of the fundamentalist. How could words written by human beings, who lived and died a long time ago, and who do not know our world, how could their words possibly be the answer to our problem? To paraphrase the late Peter Gomes, applying the Bible (or any ancient religious tradition) literally, and without the context of an interpretative community, to contemporary problems, is dangerous.
But if our ancient texts don't provide answers, they do provide the framework for a thoughtful and intelligent conversation that can consider all points of view.
On Shabbat morning, we will see how the Talmud and Maimonides provide a wise framework for a hard conversation on an urgent national moral dilemma that is happening today.
Can Israel be both a Jewish and a Democratic State? - March 5, 2011
In his remarks to the Knesset that accompanied the passing of the Law of Return in 1950, Prime Minister David Ben Gurion anticipated the tension inherent in Israel being both a Jewish state and a democratic state.
On the one hand, Ben Gurion pointed out that: "The State of Israel is not a Jewish state merely because the majority of its inhabitants are Jews. It is a State for all the Jews wherever they may be and for every Jew who so desires...The Law of Return is one of the Basic Laws of the State of Israel. it comprises the central mission of our state, namely, ingathering of exiles." In other words, Israel does not belong only to Israelis. Israel belongs to the Jewish people. Israel is responsible for the Jewish people. Jews from anywhere and everywhere in the world, you are welcome here. Come home.
On the other hand: "In the State of Israel the Jews have no right of priority over the non-Jewish citizens. The State of Israel is grounded on the full equality of rights and obligations for all its citizens."
Balancing Jewish and democratic is easier said than done.
In the statement "Israel is Jewish state," to what extent does the word "Jewish" import a national definition? A religious definition? When Israel welcomed Soviet Jewry, when Israel welcomed Ethiopian Jewry, what was the standard by which the new olim were considered Jewish? Was it a halakhic definition of Jewish, or a broader national definition of Jewish? And now that they are citizens, what is the standard by which their Jewish identity is considered for the purpose of life and living, like getting married, for example?
To what extent are Jewish values allowed, or supposed, to suffuse the public square and the public debate? Since Jews famously do not agree on many important questions, whose definition of Jewish values should count in the public debate?
What about the rights of non-Jews?
We will encounter a rich array of Hartman texts, ancient and modern, that evoke the living tension between being Jewish and democratic, when there are so many non-Jewish citizens, and when Jews disagree so fundamentally about what being Jewish means in the modern world.
Enough with Never Again? - February 26, 2011
Tomorrow we begin a new curriculum of the Hartman Institute, focused on the current, troubled state of the relationship between the State of Israel and world Jewry.
Donniel Hartman begins with an observation. It used to be that Israel brought Jews together. Jews were united by a love of and pride in Israel. But that is not the case anymore. Now Israel is a source of bifurcation. Jews in the same city, even in the same shul, even in the same family, can disagree about Israel so passionately they cannot talk about the subject. Why is that?
Here is Hartman's observation. We are at a new moment in Jewish history for which old narratives, old language and old categories are no longer true, helpful or relevant.
Why does Israel exist? For a long time, the answer was what Hartman calls the narrative of death, the narrative of crisis. We need Israel because another Holocaust is always around the corner. Jews are in a perilous state. Our existence is precarious. In the 1940s, the Jewish people had no Israel. Never again!
In other words, Israel exists to save Jews from death and destruction.
But this narrative, argues Hartman, no longer works.
North American Jews do not see themselves as imperiled. To the contrary, we are welcomed, fully participatory members of our larger society. The category of exile-galut-which assumes we are not at home and not comfortable and not happy does not take in our reality.
So too, the category of geulah, of redemption, which assumes that Israel is a redeemed society where Jewish yearning has been fulfilled also does not take in Israeli reality. Thinking of Israel in terms of redemption, argues Hartman, leads to one of two dysfunctions, both of which, by the way, are abundantly evident in current conversations about Israel.
Either it leads to romanticizing Israel. Israel is perfect, a "perpetual nachus machine," in Hartman's phrase. It is always Entebbe. It is always start up nation. It is always inspiring. All of which is not true, and means that we have to wear rose colored glasses and never criticize.
Or it leads to rejecting Israel. Israel should be perfect. Israel should embody all the best Jewish ideals. It doesn't. Therefore, I'm done with Israel. We see this view constantly in letters to the editor written by American Jews that invariably start with: "I am Jewish, and yet I am appalled and ashamed by Israel..." If Israel is supposed to be perfect, there is no way to assimilate that it is a real society made up of real people.
If never again! does not speak to our reality (how many of our children have truly experienced Jew hatred in their own lives?).
If the category of galut, exile, does not work, because actually we love Boston and are perfectly at home here.
If the category of geulah, redemption, does not work, because there is of course a difference between Israel as it is, and Israel as it ought to be (as there is for every nation), then we need new language, new categories, new ways of understanding Israel and her relationship with world Jewry.
We are at a new moment in Jewish history. Join the conversation.
Is There One Jewish People? The Case of the Karaites - February 19, 2011
Are the differences among Jews so numerous and so profound that it is not meaningful to speak about "the Jewish people"?
In his lecture, Donniel Hartman mentions two things as binding Jews together, despite their differences. We all went out from Egypt together. Hitler would have killed us all. The Nazis didn't care whether we were patrilineal or matrilineal. This emphasis on the burden of history flows organically from the teaching in the Tractate Yevamot that when a prospective convert comes to us, we should say: "do you not know that Israel at the present time are persecuted and oppressed, despised, harassed, and overcome by afflictions?" (47A)
Is that it? Is that the glue that binds us, a tragic history? When we are not being oppressed, when we live in freedom, can we still be one people despite our differences, or is there no glue that binds in a happier time?
Tomorrow we will see how Maimonides treated the vexing case of the Karaites. These are people who saw themselves as Jews, yet rejected entirely the oral tradition. The mishna, the gemara, the rabbinic codes that were foundational to Maimonides, and are foundational to us as rabbinic Jews, were anathema to the Karaites, whose religion was based on the literal meaning of the five books of Moses. Yet they said they were Jews.
How did Maimonides respond, and what does his response teach us?
The Other Within - February 12, 2011
If Jews disagree about so many important things, in what sense do we belong to a collective called the Jewish people? If you were to poll the Jews in the various communities of greater Boston, you would see substantial disagreement about:
- Who is a Jew? Matrilineal or patrilineal?
- Are interfaith couples in or out?
- Are same sex marriages in or out?
- Do you have to believe in God?
- Is mitzvah a commandment or a good deed?
- Kashrut, Shabbat, daily prayer, and many other ritual mitzvot-do we do it, or do we more often ignore it?
Given these and countless other issues of contention within the Jewish people, in what sense is there "a Jewish people" at all?
Fortunately, this is an old question, and tomorrow we will encounter passages from the Talmud and Maimonides that provide guideposts for who, given disagreement, is in, and who is out. For example, Maimonides was dealing with the Karaites. They saw themselves as Jews. On an identity form, they would check off "Jewish." But they rejected the oral Torah. Rejecting the Mishnah and Gemara and rabbinic codes, could they still be Jewish? Did Maimonides consider them to be part of the same community as his own?
Who is a member of the Jewish people, and who is no longer a member?
What is the divining rod? When does disagreement become too serious, too substantial that a line has been crossed?
When do you go from member to other, the other within?
Once we see the classic principle in these sources, we can discuss whether our approach today is continuous or discontinuous with the classic wisdom, and whether our approach today is working or needs mending.
When a Heart of Many Rooms Bumps Into Revolution in Egypt - February 5, 2011
Last Shabbat we encountered the debate and pluralism texts that place a premium on humility, soft-spokenness, respect for the humanity, dignity and wisdom of the person who holds an opposing view, and the desirability of nurturing our own self-doubt and the capacity to change our mind. Maybe the other side has a point, after all. The metaphor that evoked these gentle and generous sentiments is the "heart of many rooms":
"So make yourself a heart of many rooms and bring into it the words of the School of Shammai and the School of Hillel, the words of those who declare impure and the words of those who declare pure." (Toseftah Sotah 7:12)
Last week we discussed whether these lovely sentiments are helpful in the real world when people really care passionately and disagree vehemently.
This week, Judaism's gracious texts about debate and pluralism are put to the test, for how shall we talk to one another now about Israel's future as the revolution in Egypt unfolds?
We don't have Hillel and Shammai today. We have, among others, Thomas Friedman and Prime Minister Netanyahu.
Thomas Friedman:
"To put it bluntly, if Israelis tell themselves that Egypt's unrest proves why Israel cannot make peace with the Palestinian Authority, then they will be talking themselves into becoming an apartheid state-they will be talking themselves into permanently absorbing the West Bank and thereby laying the seeds for an Arab majority ruled by a Jewish minority between the Mediterranean Sea and the Jordan River." (NY Times, 2/2/11)
Prime Minister Netanyahu:
The basis for our stability and our future, for preserving or extending the peace, especially during unsteady times, is by reinforcing the might of the State of Israel. That requires security and also for us to be honest with ourselves.
To be honest with ourselves and refrain from self-flagellation on account of the problems we are surrounded with and the changes that are taking place...(Speech before the Knesset, 2/2/11)
Do our gentle texts help in an ungentle world?
Do Jewish Sources on Pluralism Help Us when the Issue is Hard and We Care Deeply, Personally - January 29, 2011
Our tradition has many texts about the value of debate and pluralism, how we are supposed to respect the humanity and the views of the other with whom we disagree. But I wonder whether these are helpful when the going gets hard.
In other words, if we don't care passionately about the issue, fine: respect the humanity and the views of the other.
When the issue is a technical piece of ritual (can an aliyah be taken by a group of people, or only by one person), there are different views, but not much hangs in the balance. Pluralism for technical ritual, easy.
But pluralism for issues that really matter, hard. Very hard.
Healthcare. The role of government. Israel. Intermarriage. Lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgendered (LGBT) inclusiveness. (Note the cover story in the NY Times about the brutal murder in Uganda of LGBT activist David Kato.)
When you really care, when it hits your heart, and the other really cares, and feels very differently, do our sources on debate and pluralism help?
The teachings are nice and lovely, who can argue with them, but do they add value when disputants really care?
Why Egypt Gets Out of Egypt - January 15th
The Exodus story was not only about saving the Israelites. It was also about educating the Egyptians, teaching them the power of the one true God. A recurrent theme of the Exodus story is:
"And the Egyptians shall know that I am the Lord when I stretch out My hand over Egypt and bring out the Israelites from their midst." Exodus 7:5.
And yet, when the Exodus story ends in our reading this Shabbat, the Egyptians are not educated. They are dead, at the bottom of the sea. As Micah Goodman points out, the edification of the Egyptians-that they should know God-is an end of the story that is not fulfilled in the Book of Exodus or, as he puts it, an end that does not end.
That all changes with the prophet Isaiah in chapter 19. We will see in this story a radical move: the recasting of the Exodus story with familiar motifs and troupes-evil dictator, oppression and suffering, crying out to God, God sending a savior to effect redemption-but in this case, it is Egypt that gets out of Egypt. It is the Egyptians who are saved from a new Egyptian dictator. It is the Egyptians who are loved and embraced by God. Isaiah, a prophet with reasonably good credentials, will say this in the name of God:
"Barukh ami mitzrayim, blessed be my people Egypt." Isaiah 19: 25.
My people Egypt? Weren't the Jews supposed to be God's people?
In other words, the Exodus story of freedom from oppression, while the core Jewish narrative, does not belong only to the Jewish people. Isaiah shares it with humanity.
Isaiah is the first to do what Michael Walzer has shown us, in Exodus and Revolution, many others have done: use the Exodus story as timeless categories, as templates, whenever a people fights injustice and oppression and strives to build a more perfect world. From the Puritans, in the 17th century, to Dr. Martin Luther King and the civil rights movement in the 1960s, many oppressed peoples have seen themselves as biblical Israel experiencing the Exodus: out of Egypt, through the wilderness, to a promised land.
And so, as Micah Goodman points out, we have a paradox.
The Exodus is the core Jewish story. It defines our election when God passes over the Egyptians and saves us.
But the Exodus does not belong to the Jews. It belongs to the world.
What does this paradox teach us?
A Difficult Love Story from The New York Times - January 8th
Every Sunday, the first thing I read in The New York Times is the weddings/celebrations section. I love reading the love stories, especially the longer pieces highlighted in the Vows section. Every story is different. There are 1001 ways for two people to fall in love. But it had always inspired me to read of two people who promise to build a life together.
Until December 19th. On that day, I read a story that did not inspire me. To the contrary. It was an oxymoron. A love story that appalled me.
It told of two people, Carol Anne Riddell and John Partilla, each of whom was already married to somebody else. Each of whom had already brought children into the world with somebody else. In fact, they met in the pre-kindergarten classroom of the Upper West Side school which their children both attended. Though married to other people, their mutual attraction proved intense and irresistible.
In Carol Anne Riddell's words: "Were we brave enough to hold hands and jump?"
The New York Times love story goes on to add this coda: "They did jump. Both officially separated from their spouses by late 2008, though they waited until July 2009 before moving in together."
Why did the Times run this story? Is it inspiring that they were "brave enough" to break apart their families and "hold hands and jump" together? What does it say about American culture that this story is shared with the world as a good thing?
Reading this story, I could only think of that song by Bruce Sprinsteen, Hungry Heart.
Got a wife and kids in Baltimore, Jack
I went out for a ride and I never came back
Like a river that don't know where it's flowing
I took a wrong turn and I just kept going
Everybody's got a hungry heart
Everybody's got a hungry heart
Lay down your money and you play your part
Everybody's got a hungry heart
Now Judaism has been around for 4,000 years because it is real. It gets people. It is not smug or sanctimonious. It deals with real people and their hungry hearts.
What does Judaism have to say about all this?
Racist/Realistic Rabbis and a Modern Prophet? - December 18th
Last week, an odd thing happened in Talmud class. We were discussing the fact that 50 rabbis in Israel had signed a position statement forbidding Jews, within Israel or outside Israel, from selling or renting property to Arabs. The conversation last week centered on the question: racist rabbis or realistic rabbis?
I entered the class thinking the former, of course. If it walks like a duck and quacks like a duck, it's a duck. If you prohibit Arabs from buying or renting real estate, that sounds racist, because it is racist. Even Yad Vashem, which seldom ventures into Israeli politics, took the exceptional step of condemning the rabbis' resolution as not consistent with Jewish values and not the right response to Jewish history. One would have expected the class, therefore, to pounce on the rabbis. And indeed, everyone, or almost everyone, was critical of the rabbis on moral grounds.
And yet, I asked the class whether anyone could make an argument on behalf of the rabbis that could put their action in a better light. And the following argument was made:
Israel is not America. We bristle at the notion that America is a Christian nation, for diversity and pluralism are built into our DNA as Americans. And yet, while America is not a Christian nation, we all have signed up for the proposition that Israel is a Jewish nation. The Jews deserve a homeland, for lots of reasons, ancient and modern. If the Jews deserve a homeland, that means that their homeland is and must be Jewish.
If we accept the proposition that Israel is and should be a Jewish state, the question arises: what should Israel do with the rapidly growing non-Jewish minority in its midst? If there were 10 Arabs in Israel, or 100 Arabs, sure, let them live anywhere. Let them work anywhere. Not a threat to the Jewish character of the Jewish state.
But if there are a million and a half Arabs, or 2 million Arabs, or 4 million Arabs, and the differential birth rate between Arabs and Jews means that in time there will more and more Arabs as part of Israel, how does Israel remain a Jewish state?
How does Israel remain a Jewish state and a Democratic state when these two core values are in tension?
The Israeli rabbis were trying to deal with a real problem, and berating them, the argument goes, does not solve the demographic conundrum which threatens the Jewish quality of the Jewish state.
People had lots of moral responses to this argument. Some even called the Israeli action Apartheid. But there were no convincing practical responses to this argument. That is where the class left off last week.
This week we will read a modern prophetic voice, Donniel Hartman, who robustly condemns the rabbis on moral grounds. But does the prophetic voice have an answer to the demographic dilemma?
Racist Rabbis or Realistic Rabbis? - December 11th
This has been a very controversial week in Israel, where ancient clashing truth principles result in contemporary clashes.
This week 50 Israeli rabbis issued a ruling forbidding Israeli Jews from selling or renting homes to Arabs. This is the language of their ruling as reported in Haaretz:
"Their (Arabs) way of life is different from that of Jews. Among (the Arabs) are those who are bitter and hateful toward us and who meddle into our lives to the point where they are a danger.
The neighbors and acquaintances (of a Jew who sells or rents to an Arab) must distance themselves from the Jew, refrain from doing business with him, deny him the right to read from the Torah, and similarly (ostracize) him until he goes back on this harmful deed."
Wait a minute! How could any rabbi say this?
Oh, it's in the Torah, they claim. They cite to Deuteronomy 7:2 which commands the Israelites "Do not make a treaty with (the Canaanites) and do not favor them." Rashi specifically interprets this to mean "Do not give them an encampment or settlement in the land." Commenting on these teachings, Rabbi Yosef Scheinen, who heads the Ashdod Yeshiva, put it this way:
"Racism originated in the Torah. The land of Israel is designated for the people of Israel. This is what the Holy One Blessed Be He intended and that is what the sage Rashi interpreted."
Yuck! That's just racism. And it doesn't change this fact with a citation to a dark and ugly chapter of Scripture, which has moral sensibilities from which we should have evolved-say the many detractors of these rabbis, including many other rabbis, like our own teacher Donniel Hartman. How can Jews, who have been the victims of racist discrimination, perpetrate racist discrimination on others?
Get off your high horse and stop preaching at us, answer these rabbis. Look what is going on in Israel. If Jews don't do this, there are too many Arabs, and Israel won't be Jewish anymore.
We will see Donniel Hartman's essay in which he decries what he sees are racist Rabbis, and in which he urges Israel and its rabbis to learn pluralism and respect for the other from the Diaspora in his piece "What No Rabbi in the World Outside Israel Would Ever Say." How did it happen in Israel, of all places, asks Rabbi Hartman, that there are rabbis who would stoop to racism?
Racist rabbis? Or realistic rabbis?
How Can a Whole People Buy Into Genocide? Lessons from Ancient Egypt - December 4th
Recently the New York Times had a cover story about a new museum in Germany which houses Nazi artifacts. The chilling picture showed a large number of little bobbing heads of Adolf Hitler. In other words, lots of ordinary families had on their mantle piece a bobbing idol of Adolf Hitler-all of which supports the thesis that it was ordinary Germans, ordinary citizens, that participated in the Shoah, a thesis highlighted in Hitler's Willing Executioners: Ordinary Germans and the Holocaust by Daniel Jonah Goldhagen.
How can a whole people be prepared to participate in genocide?
Micah Goodman, of the Hartman Institute, will argue that the Bible provides the template. We know that in Exodus the Pharaoh commanded the whole Egyptian people (chol amo, 1: 22) to participate in drowning Hebrew newborn males in the Nile. Why did they go along with it, unlike Shifra and Puah, the Hebrew midwives, who resisted?
The answer, argues Micah Goodman, is found in Genesis, in the Joseph story that we are reading right now. We will see throughout the Joseph story hidden shards that reveal the Egyptian model for how to treat the foreigner, a model that makes genocide possible. We will also see the Torah's furious and repeated insistence that we never do to anyone else what Egypt did to us.
Getting God Language Right - the Case of Aveinu Malkeinu - November 27th
Imagine you are a Conservative lay person on the committee that is working on a new Conservative Mahzor for the high holidays. (This new Mahzor, called Mahzor Lev Shalem, in fact came out last year and was used to universal rave reviews by many Conservative shuls.) Your task is to figure out how to present an old classic-Aveinu Malkeinu-to today and tomorrow's Jewish world. And you are conflicted.
On the one hand, you are all for egalitarianism. You believe that women should have equal rights. And in your synagogue, Temple Emanuel, they do.
On the other hand, you also are fond of tradition. You remember singing Aveinu Malkeinu with your family to the traditional haunting tune all the high holidays of your life.
On the third hand, you know that Aveinu Malkeinu means "Our Father, Our King," and you have read a thoughtful and evocative critique by Judith Plaskow suggesting that male God language (e.g. Our Father, Our King) has been and remains the source of othering women, limiting women, diminishing women, out of equal rights in the public religious square.
Do you keep the traditional language even though it arguably reinforces a second class status of women that you find anathema?
Or, do you change up the traditional male God language, which would be faithful to your views about the equal place of women in Jewish life, but would be a grating change to a prayer and a tune that you know and love?
On Shabbat, we will see how the classic Conservative and Reform mahzorim dealt with this issue in the 1970s, and how a new reconstructionist and our new Conservative Mahzor deal with the issue today.
Our Father, Our King?
Our Mother, Our Queen?
Our Parent, Our Ruler?
Shechina?
What?
Happy Thanksgiving!
Women as Other - November 20th
Thus far in our Hartman class the "other" has been non-Jews. On Shabbat morning our focus shifts inward: Jewish women as other.
The textual context: The Torah has two fundamentally different creation narratives concerning women.
In Genesis 1, God creates men and women at the same time. They are equal. There is no hierarchy.
In Genesis 2, God creates man first, and alone. God then creates women after man, out of man, as a fitting helper for him. There is not equality. The woman is second and secondary.
These two narratives are obviously in tension with one another. Are women equal, or are women secondary? We will see how the classic rabbinic move is to "other" women out of the public prayer sphere, making this important sphere in Jewish life the preserve of men. (The Hartman professor, Rachel Sabath Beit-Halachmi, uses other as verb.) Women are "othered" by halakhah, grouped with slaves and minors, so that they are not equal participants in public Jewish life. In the tension between Genesis 1 (equality) and Genesis 2 (inequality), the rabbis of the Mishnah and Talmud come down on the side of Genesis 2.
What is the response of moderns like us to our tradition's othering and limiting and delimiting of women? We will see four possible responses to these traditional texts:
- reject the text
- reread the text by focusing on its context, which is different from our context
- renegotiate and reform the ideas inherent in the text
- reclaim the text. We will focus on the concept of Daniel Boyarin called the "generous critique" which allows us to find a "useable past" which can be the basis of an evolving future.
David Hartman points out that his mother and grandmother occupied an entirely different world, and therefore had entirely different roles as women, than his daughter and granddaughter.
So too for all of us. What do we do when ancient, foundational texts are out of step with deeply held convictions of our modern world?
Is the Jewish Community Open or Closed? From Ezra and Nechemiah to Marc and Chelsea - November 13th
Last week we saw that law sets up borders, boundaries and fences (e.g., no Moabite can ever be admitted to the congregation of the Lord), and that narrative outgrows and ignores those fences (e.g., the Book of Ruth, where a descendant of a Moabite, David, is not only admitted to the congregation, but becomes King).
Tomorrow we will see a different kind of tension. Three points of view:
- Ezra and Nechemia: Being Jewish is a matter of holy seed. Expel the foreign women for they are diluting holy Jewish seed.
- Maimonides: Being Jewish is exactly the opposite of holy seed. It is about using our intelligence to understand God and walk in God's ways. Any human being can do this; any human being can become Jewish if they choose.
- Rabbi Irwin Kula in the wake of Marc and Chelsea's wedding: Traditional Jewish borders and boundaries are pathetically out of touch with the real world. Wake up, traditionalists! Wake up, rabbis! Don't you see that your rules are irrelevant to the lives of the overwhelming majority of the Jewish people? He ends his piece: "Mazal Tov, Marc and Chelsea!"
Hard questions; multiple truths.
Are the Jewish People Open or Closed? - November 6th
Did anyone in your family - a parent, or grandparent, or great grandparent - ever say something like this: "You must come home with a Jew! If you come home with a Christian who converts, that does not count. Only a Jew born of Jewish parents!"
This sentiment, which is not where we are at as a movement, or as a shul, and not where the halakhah is at, nonetheless evinces a deep tension within the tradition: are the Jewish people open or closed? Not surprisingly, our sources on this question are multi-vocal.
On the one hand, there are the books of Ezra and Nechemiah, where "foreign women" who married Israelites are expelled, as their presence would dilute the "holy seed" (zerah hakodesh). On the other hand, there is the book of Ruth, where a Moabite woman is lovingly embraced in Israel.
And there is a tension between law and narrative. Laws which erect borders and boundaries which say who is in, and who is not in. And narratives which exuberantly outgrow and overtake the borders and boundaries. We will see that the book of Ruth is not only in tension with the books of Ezra and Nechemiah, but it also directly subverts several laws about who can be a Jew.
Law: If a father has relations with his daughter, the child born of that union is a mamzer, foreign, unable to be admitted to the congregation of the Lord.
Law: If a father in law has relations with his daughter in law, the child born of that union is a mamzer, foreign, unable to be admitted to the congregation of the Lord.
On both sides of his lineage, David should be a mamzer, unable to be admitted to the congregation of the Lord. His yichus includes forbidden relations on both sides. A father having relations with his daughter. A father in law having relations with his daughter in law. And yet, far from being cut off and ostracized from the community, this mamzer becomes King and the progenitor of the Messiah.
Open or closed?
Hard laws or permeable narratives?
If Jews Have a Covenant with God, What Does that Mean for Everyone Else? - October 30th
We believe that God elected the Jews for a special covenant. That is the covenant of God and Abraham and his Jewish descendants. This covenant is reflected in the special solicitude shown by taking us out of Egypt, giving us the Torah at Sinai, and leading us into the promised land. We are chosen.
What do our sources tell us that means for everyone else? Not surprisingly, our sources are multi-vocal on this question.
For the most part, the Torah says: we get the real God, the non-Jews get idols. Deut. 4:19-20.
For the most part, the Prophets and the Writings say that God is the God of the whole world, the non-Israelite as much as the Israelite. God cares passionately for the Assyrians and encourages their teshuvah (Jonah). God thinks the most righteous and God-fearing person in the whole world is not Jewish (Job). God took us out of Egypt, yes, but God has redeemed many peoples from bad places. God is bigger than Jews and Judaism (Amos).
What do the rabbis of the Talmud have to say? The answer may surprise you.
Do We Have an Exclusive with God? - October 16th
You will be my people, and I will be your God.
Does that mean we have an exclusive with God?
We have our covenant. Fine. But can God have more than one covenantal partner?
The root of the problem is found when God elects Abraham in tomorrow's reading, which, as Donniel Hartman has observed, is exquisitely ambiguous on the effect of the election of Abraham and the Jews on God's prior covenants with human beings qua human beings in the garden of Eden and Noah stories.
On the one hand:
"I will make of you a great nation,
And I will bless you;
I will make your name great,
And you shall be a blessing."
(Gen. 12: 2)
Here God's covenant with Abraham supplements God's previous covenants with human beings in the garden of Eden and Noah stories. God still has independent covenants with human beings.
But then the next verse goes on to say:
"I will bless those who bless you
And curse him that curses you;
And all the families of the earth
Shall bless themselves by you."
(Gen. 12: 3)
Here God's covenant with Abraham supersedes God's previous covenants. Now God's relationship with the Jews is all that matters. We are God's only significant other. Other human beings rise or fall with God depending on how they are with us.
This foundational ambiguity is developed in the Tanakh and rabbinic sources. There are sources that say: we have an exclusive relationship with God. The nations of the world can have idols; we'll take the real God. And sources that say God has relationships with all human beings. God is bigger than Jews. God is the God of the whole world.
Can we have a relationship with God that is special and unique without being exclusive?
Tomorrow we will encounter the sources on this issue compiled by the Hartman Institute.
How to Treat the Other: Membership Rights and Human Rights - October 9th
On Sunday night, January 31, 1999, at about 9:00, I got a telephone call that left me in a quandary.
It was Super Bowl 33. The Denver Broncos were playing and beating the Atlanta Falcons. And I, who grew up in Denver, and had watched Denver get trounced in previous Super Bowls, was loving every minute of it. I had imbibed plenty of Super Bowl beer and wine, and was enjoying the game with family and friends at our home when the phone rang.
It was a nurse from the intensive care unit of the Brigham and Women's Hospital. She was calling to tell me that a man, a Jewish man, lay dying. His entire extended family was in his emergency room cubicle. No one was affiliated with a synagogue. But now that their loved one was dying, they wanted a rabbi. This nurse explained that the hospital chaplain was not available Sunday night of Super Bowl weekend at 9. Would I come?
To come to the bedside of a dying man is not an hour. It is a week. For there is also meeting with the family before the funeral, at the funeral, after the funeral. And the shivah.
He was not a member of the Temple. Were he a member, there would be no issue.
Was he entitled to my being there for him because he is a human being?
In the language of Moshe Halbertal, there are membership rights and there are human rights.
What do we owe people just because they are people?
The Other in Jewish Texts - October 2nd
This Shabbat, October 2, the first day after the holidays are over, Talmud class resumes, and our subject, based on the curriculum put together by the Hartman Institute in Jerusalem, is treatment of the other. The heart of the matter is reflected in a famous dispute between Rabbi Akiva and Ben Azzai about what is the most important verse in the Torah.
Rabbi Akiva argues that the most important verse is Lev. 19:18, vahavta lereakha kamocha, love your fellow as yourself. This is a loyalty-based sense of ethics. Our sense of responsibility to the other is limited to re'ah, our fellow-namely, a fellow Jew. If you are Jewish, our sense of love and loyalty flow. If you are not, if you are other, you are outside the community, and our obligation to love does not extend there.
This loyalty-based ethics is also reflected, for example, in Deuteronomy's concern for the Israelite poor, and lack of concern for the foreign poor.
Every seventh year you shall practice remission of debts. This shall be the nature of the remission: every creditor shall remit the due that he claims from his fellow; he shall not dun his fellow or kinsman, for the remission proclaimed is of the Lord. You may dun the foreigner; but you must remit whatever is due you from your kinsmen. (Deut. 15:1-3)
Note that the concern for the poor is limited to fellow or kinsman, re'ah or ach.
As Donniel Hartman observes, a loyalty-based ethical system creates a Dickensian world of the best of times and the worst of times. On the one hand, we are motivated by that sense of loyalty to our fellow or kinsman, to our reah or akh, to incredible generosity and compassion and love. On the other hand, what about the other? What about the person who is not a fellow or kinsman or Jew? Is there any love left? And if so, what is the basis for it if the primary basis for ethics is loyalty to fellow members of a community?
Enter Ben Azzai, who teaches that the core teaching is: "This is the book of the descendants of Adam" (Gen. 5:1) Adam is not a Jew. Adam is a human being. We don't get to Jews until Genesis 12. The Torah begins, says Ben Azzai, by creating the human community and the world within which our particular Jewish community exists.
How can we have a loyalty-based ethics that recognizes and responds to the special bond we feel towards members of our community (fellow Jews) without exhausting our love and compassion for the rest of the human community (the other)?
Finite time. Finite energy. Finite resources.
The Jew and the other. The particular and the universal.
Can we say yes to both?
The Wisdom of Crowds, or a Horse as a Camel Made by a Committee? - June 5th
Imagine that your school, your shul, your business, or any other organization that is important to you has a crucial strategic decision to make. This decision is going decisively to affect its future course. Which process would you prefer the organization go through to arrive at the best possible outcome?
Choice A: An inclusive, transparent process. The process is inclusive because there is some representative of every part of the community. The process is transparent because the mandate of the committee is publicly declared; everybody knows what they are doing and why. You have names and emails for all the fact-finders, board members, decision-makers. Feel free to reach out to them with your questions, comments and concerns.
Choice B: A secretive process where the few people who run things run things. There is no inclusiveness. Important parts of the community are unrepresented. There is no transparency. We don't even know who the fact-finders and decision-makers are. We have no voice. We have nobody to contact to express our questions, comments and concerns.
To state the obvious, the temper of our times, the current ethos, would vote decisively for Choice A. We love inclusive. We love transparent. We don't like secretive. We don't like the few people who run things running things. Our member Gary Orren has brought to my attention a book for my summer reading list by James Surowiecki, The Wisdom of Crowds: Why the Many are Smarter than the Few. More inclusive means better decision-making and getting people invested in the process so that they support the outcome.
Isn't it striking, then, that our sacred cannon's readings this Shabbat teach precisely the opposite. The answer, from the Torah and Haftarah selections tomorrow, is Choice B.
In the Torah portion, Moses opts for inclusive. He gets a representative from each of the 12 tribes. Not only a representative, but the premier leader of each tribe. The group of spies is a blue -ribbon, gold-star commission of experts and makhers and movers and shakers. Everybody knows them. Everybody knows their name and addresses and emails and can contact them 24-7. And Moses opts for transparent. Their mandate is publicly declared.
The result? Disaster.
In the Haftarah, Joshua opts for secretive. He sends two spies. We don't even know their names. The result? Good. Progress.
Our tradition's core narrative on process teaches the exact antithesis of what most of us believe and do most of the time.
We will see how the rabbinic tradition gives us a dialectic. There is a time for the wisdom of crowds, and there is a time for the leader just to make a decision.
This is our last Talmud class of the year before we resume again in the fall. I thank all of you who have participated for the gift of learning Torah together this year.
How a Non-Israelite Priest Saved Moses - May 29th
A friend of mine in college immigrated to America from Leningrad as a teen-ager. He once told me something I never forgot. In the former Soviet Union, he was a Jew. In America, he was a Russian. Somehow, he felt like he never quite fit in.
In her brilliant work Subversive Sequels, Judy Klitsner shows the same phenomenon at play with Moses. To the Egyptians, he was an adopted Israelite. To the Israelites, he was an Egyptian prince. He never quite fit it. He was a community of one.
This would give rise to Moses' biggest challenge: his propensity to go it alone. To be unable to work with others.
This is not a minor problem for somebody who is supposed to lead a people out of Egypt, across the wilderness, and into the promised land. Solo actors who can't work with committees have a hard time leading a people.
Klitsner will show how Yitro, the priest of Midian, and Moses' father in law, will work with him throughout Moses' tenure as a leader to help him overcome his propensity to act alone.
As Abraham was uplifted by the non-Israelite priest Melchitzedek, so is Moses by the priest of Midian, Yitro. We can better understand Moses by understanding how Melchitzedek helped Abraham. We can better understand Abraham by understanding how Yitro helped Moses.
Our greatest struggles are never solved, only, if we are fortunate to be helped by a wise mentor, managed.
The Impact of Non-Jews on Jewish Leaders - May 22nd
When the greatest leaders of the Jewish people were depleted, in a low place, questioning their mission and their destiny, who helped them? Who recharged and renewed them?
Answer: Non-Jews.
Curiously, the Torah conspicuously credits non-Israelite priests with playing a crucial restorative role for both Abraham and Moses.
After Abraham goes to war on the side of the evil king of Sodom in order to rescue his nephew Lot, and just at the point where he is morally compromised and endangered, ready to cut a deal with the king of Sodom, he is rescued from moral murkiness by a non-Israelite king named Mechitzedek.
So too Moses, burnt out by his proclivity to be a loner, is rescued by Yitro, the priest of Midian, who is his father in law.
In her work Subversive Sequels, Judy Klitsner brings out the profound and transformative impact non-Jews have on the greatest leaders of our people. She makes the case that the Torah goes out of its way to credit non-Israelites with edifying, fortifying, and teaching our greatest leaders. The question is: why?
Why Debating With Atheists is Silly - May 15th
Atheists are hot. Making the case that God does not exist is big business. Richard Dawkins' The God Delusion and Christopher Hitchens' God is Not Great have both been big sellers.
And debating atheists is hot. Rabbi David Wolpe, a rabbi and the author, among other things, of Why Faith Matters, has flown around the country debating Christopher Hitchens. Recently the rabbi and the atheist debated in Boston, attracting an overflow crowd of hundreds upon hundreds.
But is debating the existence and nature of God a worthy project?
The text from the Talmud that we will study tomorrow-one of the Donniel Hartman texts that he did not have time to teach us-will make the case that debating atheists is silly. To debate faith is fundamentally to misunderstand it. And more, to understand why faith cannot and should not be debated is to give birth to appreciating its true character and its (ever-changing) place in our lives.
Coming Back Full Circle, But to a Different Place - May 8th
How do Israelis live in place of constant war, where their sons and daughters, their brothers and sisters, their partners, their family and friends, put their lives on the line?
We have lots of emotion around sending our 18 year olds off to college.
What kind of emotion must Israeli parents have in sending their 18 year olds off to military training, to check points, to doing border patrol near Lebanon, with Hezbollah on the other side, or near Gaza, with Hamas on the other side?
Almost all Israelis know someone they love, a loved one, a family or dear friend, who has died in a war or act of terrorism.
This is our last class of encountering the poets of Israel who deal with this reality. We have seen, in Israeli poetry expert Rachel Korazim's scheme, phases.
Phase 1: huge sacrifice, but worth it. A state is not given to the Jews on a sliver platter. Our soldiers are our silver platter.
Phase 2: the loss of life, anger and numbness. There is no overriding sense of purpose.
Phase 3: deepened anger, with an admixture of cynicism. Not only is there no overriding sense of purpose, but it is meaningless. Israeli soldiers and Arab soldiers are all just pawns on a chess board. It is an empty game.
Phase 4: A renewed sense of purpose. Our last poets are reinvested in the Jewish state, but with different words and feelings and reasons than their classic Zionist forbears who wrote when the state was first created.
The state is worth fighting for. Why?
When Cynicism Collides With Anger - May 1st
Stage one of Israeli poetry in dealing with the pain and loss of war was: huge loss, heavy burden, but worth it. Soldiers die, parents are bereaved, but their sacrifice is laden with purpose: they make the Jewish state possible.
In stage two, as we saw last week, this sense of purpose is gone, and the poets are left with loss, anger and numbness.
Tomorrow we will see Israel's darkest poetry on what it is like to live in a land of constant existential threat. In the poetry of Hanoch Levin, the poet imagines the voice of a departed soldier talking to his bereaved father as he stands by the grave. The poet imagines what it is like for the expectant father, in the labor and delivery room with his wife, knowing that he has to leave his life to fight the war to come. The poet imagines the wars of Israel as endless rounds in a meaningless game of chess. We will have to confront these hard poems on their own terms, and compare them to the others poems we have seen that deal with anger and loss.
Next week, in our final session on Israeli poetry, after the nadir that we will encounter tomorrow, we will end with healing and with acceptance with what is, for as Ehud Manor will put it, "I have no other country."
Is It Worth It? - April 24th
Classic Zionist poetry says it's worth it. Soldiers die. Parents are bereaved. But it's worth it because their fight enables the Jewish state to exist. Since a state is not given to a people on a silver platter, as Weizman put it, the soldiers are that silver platter. Their silent stoical sacrifice is full of purpose. Israel exists because of it.
A quintessential expression of the notion that it is worth it is that moment in Rivka Elitzur's "My Brother Jonathan," which we read last week, when the mother and her younger son Michael are mourning older son/brother Jonathan, whose picture is on the mantle, until they force themselves to go outside and celebrate Yom Haatzmaut. Jonathan died so that Israel could live. Classic Zionist thought.
But tomorrow's poems, by Yehuda Amichai and Ago Mishol, are a darker brew. Maybe it is not worth it. Maybe lots of people are dying for no good reason. No purpose. Just loss.
Tomorrow we will see the idealism of 1948 transmuted into anger and numbness-not a happy picture, but an honest response to living with constant existential threat.
Israeli Poetry on What it is Like to Live in a Land of War? - April 17th
Yesterday was Rosh Hodesh Iyar, which means Israel, always front and center, is especially front and center now.
Monday is Yom Hazikaron. We will recall the soldiers of the Israel Defense Forces who died so that Israel might live.
Monday night, Yom Hazikaron turns straight into Yom Ha'atzma'ut, the celebration of the rebirth of the Jewish state after 2,000 years of exile.
The way that Yom Hazikaron flows into Yom Ha'atzama'ut, the way that death flows into life, mourning into celebration, speaks to the existential condition of a land always at war. In its 62 years, Israel has known war in 1948, 1956, 1967, 1973, 1981, the First Palestinian Terror War, the Second Palestinian Terror War, the war with Hezbollah, the war in Gaza, continuing tensions with Iran, etc., etc.
What is it like to live in a land that goes from war to war?
Israeli poetry treats this subject in a powerful and human way. We will see four stages in the evolution of Israeli poetry on dealing with the pain and loss of war: from stoicism and sacrifice, to anger, to a deep cynicism and bitterness, to resignation, acceptance, and strength.
As we observe Yom Hazikaron and Yom Ha'atzma'ut this week, Israeli poetry will give us a window into what it is like to live in the Jewish homeland which has never known a true and lasting peace.
How Does Our Own Personal Story Shape Our Views on the Hard Issues? - April 10th
Three characters take center stage on Shabbat morning.
The first is Elisha Ben Abuyah, a rabbi who renounced Jewish living, a Torah scholar who came to disdain an observant life. He consorted with prostitutes. He publicly violated the Sabbath. He proclaimed "There is no God, there is no justice."
The second are the rabbis who, in response to his disdain, disdain him right back. They label him. They shun him. He has crossed too many lines and is not welcome in the community. They call him Acher, the Other One. He does not even deserve the dignity of being referred to by his own name.
The third is Rebbi Meir, a traditional rabbi and pious Jew with perfect street cred in the rabbinic world. But unlike all the other rabbis, Rebbi Meir continues to be in ongoing dialogue and relationship with Elisha. They are very different men with different worldviews. But they do not give up on one another. Indeed, even after Elisha Ben Abuyah was ostracized as the Other, Rebbi Meir continued to want to learn Torah from him.
Why did Rebbi Meir, alone among the rabbis, not give up on Elisha Ben Abuyah?
One of the core principles of our sustained dialogue group is that our worldview is shaped by our own personal experience in ways that we, and those with whom we are in dialogue, should be aware.
It turns out that for all of their profound differences, Elisha Ben Abuyah and Rebbi Meir shared a powerful personal experience that made dialogue in the face of difference possible.
Do We Care About the Suffering of the Palestinians?- April 3rd
Do we care about the suffering of the Palestinians? That is a Rorschach test that says much about how we view the world. Two resonant answers emerge.
On the one hand, of course we do, or we should. They are human beings made in the image of God. They have also suffered. Plus, as a practical matter, if we do not see and respond to their suffering, and make hard choices which will alleviate it, the conflict will never end. Our own self-interest dictates that we will ourselves to care.
On the other hand, as Abba Eban famously put it, they never miss an opportunity to miss an opportunity. From saying no to the partition plan in 1947, to exploding buses after Oslo, to the Second Intifadah, to responding to the withdrawal from Gaza by raining down tens of thousands of missiles on Israeli civilians, much of their suffering has been self-inflicted.
We encounter just this tension during the seder when we spill the droplets of wine during the recitation of the ten plagues. The droplets of wine symbolize tears. But are they tears of sorrow, or tears of joy? How much do we care about the humanity of the other, when the other is our enemy?
Our classic texts address this conundrum in richly textured ways.
Talking About the Hard Stuff - March 27th
Have you noticed that it is getting harder to talk about divisive issues with people with whom you disagree? The harder the issue, the harder to talk about.
Take Israel. Is Israel right or wrong for building new housing units in East Jerusalem? Is the Obama administration right or wrong for pressing Israel not to build new units? Feelings on this are passionate and deeply felt.
On the one hand, you (Obama administration) are trying to make East Jerusalem judenrein-empty of Jews. Never! Jerusalem is not a settlement! It is the eternal, indivisible capital of Israel and the Jewish people!
On the other hand, you (Netanyahu government) are in denial that Israel cannot be (1) Jewish, (2) Democratic, and (3) large. Given demographic realities of Arab and Israeli birthrates, it can only be two out of the three. If Israel is to remain Jewish and Democratic, and not exercise dominance over a burgeoning Palestinian population, it must get to the negotiating table. These new settlements are irresponsible! They are an exercise in reality avoidance!
Or take health care in our own country. Was passing the health care legislation compassionate and moral, providing more coverage to millions of Americans, preventing them from financial ruin because they got sick? Or was it financially irresponsible, another set of entitlements that we cannot afford, that will further explode the already-exploding deficit, and that will bankrupt the nation?
How do we talk about these hard issues?
Often we don't because it is just not safe or productive to go there. Put a J-Street, AIPAC, and Camera person around the same coffee table. What good will come of that? Put a health care reform advocate and a Teapartier around the same coffee table. What good will come of that? Simultaneous monologues. Not a dialogue. Anger. Not understanding. Why bother?
Therefore so many of us avoid talking about these hard issues, or we only talk about them with people who agree with us-the cocoon strategy. AIPAC people talk to AIPAC people. J-Street talks to J-Street. Teapartiers are having a weekend together in Nevada. Health care reformers talk to health care reformers.
Indeed, this notion of avoiding the hardest issues has become enshrined in our own shul's policy when talking about Israel. We have followed CJP's wisdom on the "true friend message" that resonates. Don't talk about the political situation. Too hard. Too painful. Too divisive. Talk about the stuff everyone can love: Start up nation, first in to Haiti for humanitarian relief, all the Nobel Prize winning scientists.
I have been wrestling with this issue, and wondering whether avoiding the divisive issues because it is so hard and painful is the most authentically Jewish strategy. This question is timely because on Monday and Tuesday nights we sit down with our loved ones to the Pesach s'darim. Rare is the family where everyone agrees. How should family members who disagree passionately about the issues of the day talk about these issues, or should they?
This week, while dwelling with the Talmud, a light turned on for me. The cocoon strategy is not the only way. The true friend message is not the only way. Our foundational text tells us how to talk to each other about the hard stuff.
When Passion, Integrity and Being Correct Are Not Enough - March 20th
Last class we examined Jeremiah's prophecies before the churban-the destruction of the First Temple, the sacking and burning of Jerusalem, and the exiling of the Judaeans in 586 BCE.
He told them it could happen. And he was right. But no one listened.
Tomorrow we will see his preaching after the churban. Now, in the face of the radical pessimism of the exiled and defeated Judaeans, Jeremiah, formerly the merchant of doom, now becomes the merchant of hope. This exile is not forever. God will take us back.
Our community in Jerusalem will be reborn.
They could not hear his warnings of pessimism before the churban.
They could not hear his message of optimism after the churban.
He was right. Both times. Why could no one hear him?
We will examine his ancient words and deeds in light of the modern study of persuasion pioneered by our own Gary Orren. Being passionate and right, even living with integrity, are not enough. What was the secret sauce that eluded Jeremiah but with some learning can hopefully not elude us?
Being Right, and Being Passionate, Are Not Enough: The Prophet Jeremiah as a Case Study in Ineffective Persuasion - March 6th
The prophet Jeremiah was absolutely right. He told the people in Judaea that the Temple would be destroyed, the land conquered, and the people exiled. His was a lone voice. The prevailing wisdom was that the Temple would never be destroyed, because God would not let God's house be destroyed; God would not let God's city, Jerusalem, be sacked; God would not let God's people be exiled. Jeremiah tried to shatter this complacency. We could lose this thing, he said. It is urgent. Time to start acting.
He also had a beautiful message: that the key to forestalling defeat, and to changing history, was for the people to change their ways. They had to do a better job of rite and right. Rite-observing Shabbat. Right-being kind to the stranger and widow and orphan. His prophetic message was: you can secure your future not through arms, but by being a more moral society.
He was passionate about this message. He had a fire in his bones to get this message out.
He also persevered: he preached this message for 23 years.
But he was also spectacularly unsuccessful. In 23 years, by his own account, he convinced exactly no one.
Despite the truth and moral uplift of his message, he was jeered and despised.
Why?
We are going to examine the message and method of the ancient prophet Jeremiah in the light of the modern study of persuasion of our own Gary Orren.
Can the sad story of Jeremiah, and modern wisdom on persuasion, help us be successful as well as passionate? Resonant as well as accurate?
A Satmar Chasid in the Lion's Den - February 27th
Question: What Biblical story does this fact pattern evoke?
A Jewish young man finds himself in a foreign kingdom, far from home.
The king of that kingdom has a dream, a disconcerting dream, that neither the king nor his counselors can interpret.
The young Jewish lad is brought to the king's attention. The Jewish lad interprets the dream.
The king is wowed and decides to make the Jewish lad a trusted advisor, second in power only to the king.
Of course the first story that comes to mind is Joseph and the amazing Technicolor dream coat.
But there is a second story in the Bible as well, one that no one ever reads: the Book of Daniel.
The Daniel story seems to track the Joseph story. Daniel is exiled to Babylon. The ruler of Babylon, Nebuchadnezer, has a disturbing dream that none can interpret. Daniel interprets it. Nebuchadnezer is wowed. Daniel is exalted, made the number 2 guy in all of Babylon. It is all very Joseph.
But as Micah Goodman pointed out in teaching this story at Hartman, the Bible would not bother to give just a second version of the same story. While there are all these similarities, it is the contrast that matters. Namely, Daniel is a new type of figure in the Tanakh, the archetype of a new religious personality, the archetype of a new kind of Jew.
He is second in command to Nebuchadnezer, while Nebuchadnezer destroys Jerusalem, sacks the Temple, and exiles the Judeans. It would be as if an observant Jew were the second highest officer in the Third Reich.
And what does he do while all this destruction of Jerusalem, the Temple and the Jews is going on?
He prays three times a day.He keeps kosher.
He observes the conventional pieties.
He mourns.
He fasts.
What does he not do?
He does not act.
He does not intercede with Nebuchadnezer.
As Micah Goodman pointed out, he is the biblical archetype of the Satmar chasid, scrupulously observant, full of empathy for the God of Israel and the laws and halachot of Israel--but not for the people of Israel. (At every Israel Independence Day celebration in greater Boston, you will see the PLO and the Satmar Chasidim standing shoulder to shoulder to protest the State of Israel.)
Tomorrow morning we will see that pious Daniel, who prays his way through the churban (destruction of Jerusalem and Temple), is the polar opposite of Mordecai and Esther, who act.
Another Gem from Micah Goodman - Ezekiel and Isaiah's Radically Different Take on the End of Days - February 20th
Having concluded our study of the Book of Job last week, we turn next to parts of the Bible that no one ever reads, which happen to contain truly astounding things. Our class this Shabbat will be based on an insight of Micah Goodman about the apocalyptic traditions in the Tanakh reflected in the prophecies of Ezekiel and Isaiah.
As Micah Goodman pointed out, the core insight of apocalyptic thinking is that the world now is not working; that history needs mending; that the current trajectory of where history is going is not taking us where we need to go; that a radically new sense of the end of history is called for. Both Ezekiel and Isaiah preach about an apocalypse. They share a common vocabulary and a sense of when it will happen, where it will happen, and to whom it will happen.
When it will happen: aharit hayamim, at the end of days.
Where it will happen: in Israel.
To whom it will happen: amim rabim, the gentile nations of the world.
But they could not disagree more about what will happen.
For Ezekiel, what will happen is ultimate war. A blood bath. God's raging fury will consume Gog of Magog, an enemy of Israel, and there will be so many dead gentiles, so many slain enemies, piled high in heaps and heaps of the vanquished, that it will take a full seven months to bury them. Ezekiel gives us a revenge fantasy where the Jews, through God, get to kill, kill, kill the enemy. (Curiously enough, this unlovely revenge fantasy is our Haftarah for Shabbat Hol Hamoed Sukkot, the time of our joy). Ezekiel, chapters 38-39.
For Isaiah, what will happen is ultimate peace. This is where we get those famous verses "they shall beat their swords into plowshares, and their spears into pruning hooks: Nation shall not lift up sword against nation; They shall never again know war." Isaiah 2:4. Isaiah gives us a vision of ultimate kumbayah, a world without war. (Curiously enough, this lovely vision of peace is not chanted as a Haftarah.)
On Shabbat we will see that these two prophets, using the same vocabulary and conception of time (apocalyptic end to history), paint diametrically opposite visions of what that end will look like.
Are there Ezekiel Jews and Isaiah Jews today? What is the core belief of an Ezekiel Jew? What is the core belief of an Isaiah Jew?
Are these radically different ways of looking at history and praying for redemption still alive today?
Can we hold onto them both, or are they magnetic opposites, and you just can't?
The past is never past.
Final Class on Job: Abraham Moments and Job Moments - February 13th
Last week we dwelled with Abraham Joshua Heschel, chapter 16 of Man is Not Alone, written in 1951, six years after the Shoah, which claimed virtually all of his family. We saw how, in that same chapter, he seamlessly moved from defending and justifying God (don't ask where is God, ask where is man, as man is responsible for Auschwitz), to praying out an angry psalm, psalm 44, which confronts God for the divine absence.
It is not God's fault. It is God's fault. Same person. Same chapter.
Where is the address in the canon for believing/doubting God?
Where does this tradition of angrily confronting God, from within the tradition, come from?
In our final class on Job, we will examine Judy Klitsner's work, in Subversive Sequels in the Bible, in which she argues that the modern voice of doubt/belief and anger/prayer is as old as the Bible, and can best be seen by contrasting the Book of Job with the Binding of Isaac.
Is there space in the same life for Abraham moments and for Job moments?
The Book of Job and the Binding of Isaac - February 6th
The similarities between the Book of Job and the Binding of Isaac are many and pronounced.
In both stories:
- God tests-indeed toys with-a protagonist to see what he is made of. How faithful will he be, how God-fearing will he be, if tested?
- A completely innocent child or children suffers as a result of the test. Job's children die; Isaac buffers the trauma of being bound and almost beheaded by his father.
- The protagonists "pass" the test, at least according to the meaning of the story in its own context. Both show their faithfulness. Job doesn't curse God. Abraham wakes up early in the morning, ready to do the deed God had commanded, without issuing a peep of protest.
- The protagonist is amply rewarded. Job gets a new wife, new children, and double the cattle. Abraham's covenant with God is reaffirmed.
As Bible scholar Judy Klitsner has pointed out in her masterpiece Subversive Sequels in the Bible: How Biblical Stories Mine and Undermine Each Other (Philadelphia, The Jewish Publication Society, 2009), these similarities are no accident. She shows that both texts deliberately play off one another by using similar language.
Abraham and Job are both referred to as God-fearing, yere Elohim.
Abraham and Job both use the highly rare phrase dust and ashes, afar va-efer.
Abraham and Job both died old and contented.
See Klitsner, xviii to xxv.
What is the point of all this? Why do we care? Klitsner's insight is scholarship for the sake of healing insight in how to deal with the problems of life.
While the two stories share these similarities, they also feature important differences. And it is the differences in the two stories-the differences between Abraham and Job, and the differences between God in the Genesis story and God in the Job story-that are most telling and provide wisdom, comfort and guidance to the person who is struggling for faith in our imperfect world.
The Job of Micah Goodman Vs. The Job of Harold Kushner - January 30th
Where are we after Micah Goodman's lecture?
His interpretation of Job has intellectual rigor and abundant textual support. But it could leave some of us cold, without consolation.
To reground: Micah Goodman argues that the book is a parody. It undermines traditional piety which is often served up as a consolation in the face of life's suffering.
The traditional piety: God is God, and we are not. God has the big picture. God knows why God does what God does. We small humans should be humble before the divine mystery. Our consolation is that God is, and God has God's reasons.
The subversion of Job, the parody: Ha, ha! There is no big picture. And we know it! God tormented Job on a bet with Satan which is laid out explicitly in chapter 1. In Micah's memorable phrase, it's not cosmic, it's comic.
This interpretation is accurate in an academic kind of way. He can cite chapter and verse. But where does that leave us? When we are struggling from life's inequities-whether Haiti or something tragic in our own lives-does the parody of Job make us feel any better? Where is the consolation?
The striking contrast to Micah Goodman's interpretation of Job is that of Harold Kushner in his landmark classic When Bad Things Happen to Good People. In many ways Rabbi Kushner's interpretation is the polar opposite of Micah Goodman. One could argue that it does not have abundant textual support-indeed that it actually ignores the text-but that it does so to give us a God whom we can love, a God whom we can believe in, a God to whom we can pray for strength when we need strength.
Micah Goodman's Job: accurate read of the book, but it does not console.
Harold Kushner's Job: a farfetched read of the book, but it does console.
On Shabbat morning we will be able to unpack and respond to Micah Goodman's Torah and confront the very different Torah of Harold Kushner in a never-ending dialogue about the role of an imperfect God in our imperfect world.
"I Just Want My Wife's Corpse" Survivor Pleads. Does Job Help? Do We? - January 16th
Port-Au-Prince Haiti
"I just want my wife's corpse," said Lionnel Dervil, pleading in vain to bury his wife in his home province.
But no one at the Doctors Without Borders compound paid much heed to the stricken Mr. Dervil, 38, a money-changer and father of four children. Instead, doctors were frantically tending to those still living who had streamed in...
One woman writhed on the pavement of the compound's gate, her foot impaled by a piece of wood. A grandmother silently endured the pain of her right leg, twisted like a pretzel. Anesthesia remained a distant dream. Then there were the bodies- dozens, if not hundreds of them-starting to decompose under white sheets." New York Times, Thursday, January 14, p. 1.
Does Job help? This coming Shabbat we will study three modern takes on this troubling classic that takes on our troubling world, all in anticipation of Micah Goodman's lecture here on Monday night, January 18 at 8:00 pm.
The more important question: What will we do to help? On behalf of our Temple, Rabbi Robinson and I are sending from our tzedakah fund a gift of $1,800 for emergency humanitarian relief. In addition, we would encourage all members of our congregation to give what they can give to be helpful. What follows is a list of some web sites where we can channel our relief efforts.
American Jewish World Service: AJWS Haiti Earthquake Relief Fund
American Jewish Committee: AJC Haiti Earthquake Relief Fund
United Synagogue of Conservative Judaism: www.uscj.org/donate/relief
CJP is partnering with the American Jewish Joint Distribution Committee (JDC) to provide urgently needed aid on a nonsectarian basis to earthquake victims.
https://www.jdc.org/donation/donate.aspx
Why Do Bad Things Happen to Good People?--Wrestling with the Book of Job - January 9th
I was recently teaching my 7th grade students in Makor the issue of theodicy: how do we understand, defend or justify God's role, or lack thereof, in the world, in light of the fact that bad things happen to good people. I had a text prepared, but then at the last minute changed it up.
The text I ended up using was an obituary from the Boston Globe which spoke of a young doctor, a cardiologist from the Brigham, who was a loving husband, father, and son, and a compassionate and caring doctor, who exercised and ate right, who was killed at 6:00 a.m. while running before attending a cardiology convention in Florida.
If this good man could die like that, where is God in our world?
That question, which can be asked and accompanied by a poignant and unanswerable story every day since the universe was created, is most squarely responded to by the Book of Job.
In anticipation of Micah Goodman's lecture on the Book of Job on Monday night, January 18, at 8:00, we will spend the next two weeks in Talmud class examining this difficult classic.
This coming Shabbat we will read selected excerpts from the Book of Job and the Talmudic passages from Bava Batra 15A that ask the questions: 1. Was Job a real person, and if so, when did he live, or is this a parable? 2. Was Job Jewish? Is his dilemma a Jewish thing or a human thing?
We will consider the work of two modern writers, Neil Gillman and Harold Kushner, on the Book of Job.
All of which will be upturned by Micah Goodman's striking and strikingly original interpretation.
See you in room 24-25 on Shabbat at 8:30.
When You Can't Believe in Miracles - December 19th
What do we do about the whole miracle thing? Tomorrow, the 8th day of Hanukkah, asks us to confront the question of miracles. After all, at the heart of the story, as the Talmud understands it, is the miracle that oil that should have only lasted for one day lasted for eight. The dreidels that we and our children spin have the initials nun-gimel-heh-shin, for neis gadol hayah sham, a great miracle happened there.
If you believe that God selectively swoops down and intervenes in history, and suspends the normal rules of how the universe operates, in unrepeatable and in unpredictable ways, the concept of miracle is not a problem.
But if you don't believe that, how do you understand miracles in general, and how do you understand the miracle story of Hanukkah, in particular?
I personally don't believe that God ever suspends the normal rules of how the universe operates. If a sea wouldn't be split today, I don't believe the sea was split at the time of Moses. If rods don't turn into snakes today, I don't believe that rods turned into snakes at the time of Moses. And if one day's oil would last for one day today, not eight, I don't believe that one day's oil lasted for eight at the time of the Hanukkah story.
Is such cynicism and such skepticism modern?
Hardly. The Talmud itself, in a piece we will study tomorrow, argues persuasively that God does not selectively intervene to change the normal rules of how the universe operates.
We will also study passages from Harold Schulweis and Neil Gillman that rehabilitate the concept of miracle for the modern rationalist skeptic.
See you tomorrow morning in room 24-25 at 8:30.
Shabbat Shalom and Happy Hanukkah!
P.S. After class tomorrow, we will be off for two Shabbatot, and class will resume on January 9.
Is the Conservative Movement Dead? Jacob Neusner's Return to Reform after Decades in the Conservative Movement - December 5th
This past week, Rabbi Jacob Neusner, a Conservative rabbi ordained at the Jewish Theological Seminary, who lived as a Conservative Jew, and raised his children as Conservative Jews, gave a speech announcing he was leaving the Conservative movement and returning to the Reform movement, in which he was raised as a child.
The Conservative movement has no future, he argued.
The American Jewish future is with the Reform movement, in his view.
What is his rationale?
Do you find it compelling?
Do we care?
Does his renunciation of the Conservative movement say something about the Conservative movement, or something about him?
Should Israel Give Up Convicted Murderers In Order to Secure the Return of Gilad Shalit? - November 28th
Yesterday's New York Times, November 24, 2009, p. 1, above the fold, reports as follows:
Israel and the Islamist group Hamas appeared Monday to be nearing a deal to exchange a captured Israeli soldier for hundreds of Palestinian prisoners...
The emerging agreement, should it be approved, would trade Staff Sgt. Gilad Shalit...for hundreds of Palestinians in Israeli prisons, including many convicted of organizing suicide bombings and other acts of terror.
Hamas and Israeli officials said the deal could include Marwan Barghouti, one of the most popular leaders in the West Bank...An Israeli court gave Mr. Barghouti five life sentences in 2004 for involvement in the killing of Israelis.
But today, as I write this email, the most recent news on-line suggests that the deal is stalled.
Hamas officials accused Israel of responsibility for torpedoing the deal. They said that Israel refuses to release bomb maker Abdulla Barghouti and the former head of Hamas in Judea and Samaria, Ibrahim Hamid. Both are responsible for the murder of dozens of Israelis.
Question: What light do our sources and precedents shed on what Israel should do? Should it release prisoners in order to get back Gilad Shalit? If so, is there any limit on what it should pay in the form of released prisoners in order to get back one person? What is the mitzvah of pidyon shevuyim, redeeming captives?
What are the limits and exceptions to this mitzvah? How does it all apply to Israel and Gilad Shalit right now?
We will examine sources from the Talmud, Maimonides, and modern Israeli thinkers as the modern Jewish state grapples with an ancient Jewish problem.
Should Mother Teresa's Letters and Vladimir Nabokov's Last Unfinished Work Been Published, as They Were, or Destroyed, as The Authors Wished? - November 21th
We have been learning the ABCs of Jewish ethics for the last two and a months. This Shabbat we will apply them to two different but related scenarios involving Mother Teresa and the author Vladimir Nabokov.
Mother Teresa wrote letters to her spiritual confidants confessing her inability to believe in God. For example, she wrote to the Rev. Michael Van Der Peet in September 1979:
Jesus has a very special love for you. As for me, the silence and the emptiness is so great that I look and do not see, listen and do not hear. The tongue moves [in prayer] but does not speak...I want you to pray for me.
Elsewhere she wrote:
Where is my faith? Even deep down...there is nothing but emptiness and darkness... If there be God-please forgive me.
One of Mother Teresa's dying wishes was that her letters be destroyed. Instead, they were published in a book called Come Be My Light.
Before his death in 1977, Vladimir Nabokov instructed his wife Vera to burn the unfinished draft of a new novel called The Original of Laura. She did not do so. Their son Dmitri has just published the unfinished work to doubly unfavorable reviews.
First, the work shows an aging and sick author who has lost his game. The Wall Street Journal review from 11/13/09 said this work:
shows us the writer's version of a great athlete in decline: not, so to speak, the glorious Lou Gehrig of 1927, but the feeble shadow of the same man, retiring at midseason in 1939.
Second, it was unkind and unethical for the wife and son of this great writer to disregard his wish and to publish a book he had asked to be burned:
English professors may assign "The Original of Laura" to their students someday, but it is really better suited to a college ethics class.
Question: Would the Jewish wisdom we have encountered look kindly upon the publication of Mother Teresa's anguished letters contrary to her wishes? To the publication of Vladimir Nabokov's unfinished work contrary to his wishes? Is here a difference between the two cases?
What do these two cases suggest about applying the Jewish ethical teachings we have learned to the real world?
See you in Room 24-25 at 8:30.
Have a Little Faith - November 14th
Since our class began in September, we have been discussing the ABCs of Jewish ethics.
Here is the final installment of this conversation before we move on to a different conversation next week: have a little faith.
Have a little faith is new. It is the title of Mitch Albom's new book that is number one on the New York Times bestsellers list. It tells the story of two spiritual leaders, a rabbi and a minister, who struggle through hardship to have a little faith. In one particularly compelling vignette, the rabbi, who had buried his own daughter, contrasts his ability to be angry with a God that he believes in, with the despair of an atheist friend who is also angry, but has no One to be angry at.
But have a little faith is old. As old as the Talmud. In one of the core teachings about an ethical life, the Talmud argues that things we would all agree are crucial ethical conduct--honesty in business, good family life, doing our part to redeem the world-are not complete, and will not hold together, unless we have a little faith.
Is faith the final piece, and an essential prerequisite, of the ethical life?
See you tomorrow morning, 8:30, in room 24-25.
When, if Ever, are We Required to Go Beyond the Letter of the Law? - November 7th
Justice Potter Stewart once famously observed about pornography that it was hard to define, but "I know it when I see it."
Our tradition struggles in a comparable way with the concept of menshlikeit. What exactly is a mensch? Hard to define, but we know it when we see it.
In Deuteronomy Moses tries this approach: "Do what is right and good in the sight of the Lord." (6:18)
As the rabbis struggled to translate this into concrete action, they came up with a concept that is equally important and hard to define: lifnim mishurat hadin, going beyond the letter of the law.
Here is the classic story:
A wealthy rabbi named Rabbah bar bar Chanan hires some workers to move some heavy and expensive barrels of wine. In the course of doing it, they break the barrels, the wine spills out, a total loss. Rabbah bar bar Chanan says that as a matter of the letter of the law: (1) the workers should reimburse him for the loss of his barrels and his wine; and (2) he certainly should not have to pay them for their work, when they did not do the job but broke the barrels.
As a matter of the letter of the law, he was right on both counts.
But what would a mensch do? What should we do in that situation? He had the luxury of being rich. What if he weren't rich? How context-dependent is menschlikeit?
What are comparable dilemmas in our own lives?
A foundation of Jewish ethics is that there are moments which summon us to do more than the law requires. But translating that into a reliable course of conduct will turn out to be hard to define.
When is it Okay Not to Care What People Will Say? – October 31th
What will people say?
Does that matter? Should that affect how I act?
The clear majority rule in our sources is yes. Absolutely. That is why Moses’ first argument to God when God threatens to destroy the Israelites after the sin of the golden calf is: what will the Egyptians say? God cares about God’s reputation in the world—even to the extent of caring about what the vanquished slave-owning newborn-killing Egyptians had to say. And our sources build on that to say that as God cares about God’s reputation, so too we should care about our own. What people say about us is a reflection on us—and a reflection on God and the Jewish tradition—and therefore we should care about what people will say.
And yet, the principle that we should care about what people will say is not absolute. There is at least one big exception.
Come and learn what it is.
See you this Shabbat, 8:30, room 24-25.
Do We Care About "What Will 'People' Say"? – October 24th
Should we live our lives in light of our own integrity and our own authenticity—regardless of what people will say?
Or, should we care about what people will say? Does appearance matter? Do “people’s” perceptions of what we do and how we live matter?
There is a difficult category of halakhah called marit eyin—what people see, and what people will say.
Various sources speak to this, but the best known is Exodus 32:12 in the aftermath of the sin of the golden calf. God is furious with the Israelites and
wants to destroy them and start over with Moses as the progenitor of a new people. Among the successful arguments Moses makes: “Let not the Egyptians say, ‘It was with evil intent that God delivered them, only to kill them off in the mountains and annihilate them from the face of the earth.’”
The Egyptians were slave-owners and task-masters! What kind of morality did they have that we should care what they think?
But God does care. So too, in their own time, as we will see, the rabbis of the Talmud do care about what Rome thinks. And Rome also was not an exemplar of our value system.
It turns out that living in the light of our own integrity and our own principle is not enough. What people will say matters. But how much? What are the limits? What if the whole world thinks one thing? Isn’t it possible for the whole world to be wrong?
See you on Shabbat, 8:30, in room 24-25.
When We Hate Our Neighbor – October 17th
What is the Jewish formulation of the Golden Rule?
Is it the positive spin: do unto others as you would have them do unto you?
Or is it the negative spin: what is hateful to you, do not do unto others?
Conventional wisdom is that the Christian articulation of the principle, through Jesus, is positive, and the Jewish version, through Hillel, is negative.
And yet, we saw last week that several Jewish sources—notably, the Torah itself in Lev. 19:18, Rabbi Akiva, and Maimonides in the Mishne Torah—articulate the principle positively. Maimonides states: “What you would have others do unto you, do unto him who is your brother in the Law and in the performance of the commandments.” The Book of Judges, 14:1.
This week we pick up with why Hillel’s negative articulation was so sticky among the Jewish people, and why Maimonides’ positive expression did not stick.
Our way into this conversation is a question: what gets in the way of our fulfilling the Golden Rule, however we might express it? What is the most helpful moral response when, for any number of good reasons, we really do not like our neighbor?
See you on Shabbat at 8:30, room 24-25.
Which Answer Do Your Prefer--Jesus or Hillel? – October 10th
Parallel stories. Different outcomes.
When the proselyte asks Hillel to teach him the whole Torah on one foot, he says: “What is hateful to you, do not do to your neighbor. That is the whole Torah. The rest is commentary. Go and study.”
There are two comparable Jesus stories as reflected in Matthew, and in both cases, he answers, among other things: “Love your neighbor as yourself.” (Matthew 16:19 and 22:39)
Jesus has very good authority for his answer. Indeed, he is actually quoting the Torah, Leviticus 19: 18, which says: “Love your neighbor as yourself.”
Further, some notable Jewish authorities have focused on the centrality of this verse from Leviticus. No less an authority than Rabbi Akiva, one of the most important Talmudic rabbis, calls this verse “kelal gadol ba-torah,” a central principle in the Torah. And Maimonides likewise interprets this verse as not only beautiful but also eminently doable, fulfilled in acts of lovingkindness like visiting the sick, burying the dead, comforting the bereaved—deeds that many of us do regularly.
If you had to pick one core teaching, as Hillel was asked to do, the verse “Love your neighbor as yourself” is obvious. It is good enough for Jesus. For Rabbi Akiva. For Maimonides. It is on the tapestry above the stairs on the Ashford Road exit. It has a positive energy that “What is hateful to you, do not do to your neighbor” does not have.
So why did Hillel skirt the obvious and the positive and go for the less obvious and the negative?
What is at stake in the difference between Hillel and Jesus?
Which answer do you prefer?
See you this Shabbat, at 8:30, in Room 24-25.
What is Morally Superior -- to Crave Forbidden Fruit but to Overcome it, or
Not to Crave it At All? - October 3rd
Pick your demon from the confessional we just recited over and over again on Yom Kippur: your wandering eye, your confused heart, your green envy, your explosive temper, your inability to control your appetite, your occasional selfish streak, your capacity for holding a grudge, etc.
Pick your demon. Let’s call it X.
Question: Are you a better person if you have X, but work mindfully and successfully to control X so that it does not control you?
Or, are you a better person if you don’t struggle with X at all? X is just not your issue.
In his Shmona Perakim (Eight Chapters), Maimonides famously wrestles with just this issue. It turns out that, at first blush, the Bible and the philosophical tradition on the one hand, and the rabbis on the other, contradict each other on this one. And yet Maimonides, in a tour de force, finds a way to harmonize these views. He leaves us with a definite position. It depends on what your X is.
All of which will feed straight into our ongoing conversation about the primacy, but not exclusivity of ethics.
Ritual matters, just not as much as ethics. And the primacy, but not exclusivity, of knowing the good from our own moral intuition. Books, sources and precedents matter, just not as much as our heart.
Maimonides will give us a clear challenge, and clear direction, as we try to be moral human beings.
See you in Room 24-25, Shabbat at 8:30.
Shabbat Shalom and chag sameakh!
Where Does Our Sense of Right and Wrong Come From? From Books or From Our Own Heart? – September 26th
How do we know the good?
Where does our moral intuition come from?
Do we know it because it is in the Torah, and we have read it and internalized it? Is a book religion the source of our sense of right and wrong
Or, is it already in us, we know it because moral intuition is innate, and we are influenced by other people who are moral exemplars? In which case the Torah is not the source of our sense of right and wrong; it merely confirms what we already know.
At the Hartman Institute, Donniel Hartman argues that the Torah and book religion can confirm the moral intuitions that we already have, but they cannot and should not be the source of those moral intuitions, for when religious texts are the source of moral intuitions, we get into problems of fundamentalism and literalism.
We will consider Abraham’s argument to God when God was about to destroy Sodom and Gomorrah. When Abraham says, “Far be it from You! Shall not the Judge of all the earth deal justly,” how does Abraham know what justice is? How does he know there is a moral problem here if God wipes out Sodom and Gomorrah. Abraham didn’t have a Torah to study. Abraham didn’t go to college and study moral philosophy. How did he know? If he knew, why can’t we know?
Add to that, the vidui, the confessional, that we say on Yom Kippur. How many of those offenses do we just know are offenses based on our own moral intuition, without need for citation and precedent? Answer: all of them.
But are we totally comfortable making our own moral intuition the standard? What is missing? If there are dangers to deriving our sense of the good from religious texts (e.g., fundamentalism and literalism), what are the dangers of deriving our sense of the good from our own selves?
We will consider a counter-narrative that insists that the good must be known from texts and precedents, and not from our own heart.
This counter-narrative is ancient (the Talmud) and modern, an excerpt from Democracy and Distrust by John Hart Ely.
See you on Shabbat at 8:30, Room 24/25.
Reclaiming Jewish Ethics in the Age of Madoff - September 12th
My father, may he rest in peace, used to read the morning newspaper with a distinctive lens. If a Jew had done something improper that generated embarrassing headlines, he would say: “What a shonda.”
Too many headlines this past year would have generated that sad response.
Bernie Madoff, the Jewish Ponzi scheme artist, steals from charities and leaves so many investors penniless. What a shonda.
Sheryl Weinstein, the long-time chief financial officer of Hadassah—the Women’s Zionist Organization of America—claims to have carried on a 20-year affair with Madoff, while she was CFO, and while he was supposedly investing Hadassah’s money. The whole titillating tale is in a new book called Madoff’s Other Secret: Love, Money, Bernie and Me, which received extensive coverage in the New York Times and other newspapers. What a shonda.
Then there were the five rabbis in Deal, New Jersey, indicted on charges of corruption, bribery and bank fraud, arrested and handcuffed, whose picture with thick black velvet kippot on their heads, was the cover story, page one above the fold, of newspapers throughout the country. What a shonda.
In 5769, too many Jews brought us shame.
We need to respond in 5770 by reclaiming Jewish ethics.
In our first class of the year, we will look at the very foundation of Jewish ethics. It is a text that is short and, on its surface, simple. Beneath the surface, however, is great texture. It is easy to get the message of this foundational text wrong.
But if we get it right, if we take it to heart, if we live in mindful awareness of its truths, we will lead ethical lives.
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