In the Beginning….

As an inveterate – my wife would say obsessive – participant in on-line discussions, list-servs, Facebook, and blogs, I was interested to learn in a recent thread on iWorship that not all Reform congregations follow the Torah reading protocol for Rosh Hashanah set forth in Gates of Repentance (Chapter 22 of Genesis, the binding of Isaac, in Service 1, and Chapter 1, the creation story, in Service 2).    Some congregations that observe only one day choose the creation story for that day, and some that observe two days go along with their Orthodox and Conservative neighbors, and read Genesis Chapter 21, dealing with the birth of Isaac and the expulsion of Ishmael, on the first day, reserving Chapter 22, the Akedah, , for the second day.

My frequent admonition on the URJ list-servs is that it’s not enough for contributors to tell us what their congregations do, we need to know why.  One diligent list member explained that his congregation reads Chapters 21 and 22 on the two days, because, were they to read Genesis Chapter 1 on the second day , they would soon suffer B’reishit fatigue, from  reading it so soon again on Simchat Torah, and then a week later on Shabbat B’reishit.

While a piece of me finds that reasoning credible, another piece rejects it.  This parasha is too rich and varied in its content for B’reishit fatigue ever to set in.  How can we tire of the story of creation, the institution of Shabbat, the orthopedic surgery that brings Woman into being, the saga of Eve and the serpent and the apple, the origin of the garment industry, the  expulsion from the Garden, the confrontation between Cain and Abel, and the exemption of Noah from God’s decision to start over?

With all those narrative riches, the challenge for the darshan, the explicator, is not to forestall boredom or fatigue, but to limit the discussion to a manageable number of issues.  My manageable number today will be three, each expressed in just two words.  While these six words encapsulate the Torah’s message, the depth in each pair raises more questions than I have answers, so I challenge my fellow bloggers to tax  the comments capacity of this blog.

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Reform Judaism, through its two-hundred year history, has been characterized by the tension between its universalism and its particularism.  The first two parshiyot in the Torah are universalistic, dealing with the origins of the world and of humankind; only after the Flood do we get into the particularistic family saga of the children of Israel.  So the first word-pair, universalism-particularism, while it does not appear in the text, nonetheless sets the stage for God’s relationship with humankind and with the children of Israel.

The next two pairs, b’tselem elohim and ezer k’negdo,  provide universalistic guidelines, the first for the relationship between humankind and God, and the second for the relationship beyn adam l’chavero,  between one human being and another.  Only after these universal principles have been articulated do we arrive at the particularism of God’s covenant with Abraham and his descendants.

So you don’t have to be Jewish to be made b’tselem elohim, in the image of God, just human.

And God said, “Let us make humanity in our image, after our likeness. …And God created humanity in the divine image, creating him in the image of God, creating them male and female.

Note that singular-plural confusions abound – creating him in the image of God, creating them male and female.   And when God says, “Let us make humanity in our image,” what are we to make of that “us?”  Is this the royal or editorial We, or was God talking to someone?   Rashi explains this as God consulting with the “heavenly council” because humanity was to be made in the likeness of the angels.  However, the angels do not appear in the parasha, although they will appear peripherally later in this drash.

Having been schooled in gender sensitivity, I have supplied the translation humanity for adam, or ha-adam. Some recent translations use humankind, while older renderings use man consistently.  The new URJ translation, as used in the revised Plaut and in the WRJ Women’s Commentary, tries to translate according to the context, and in this instance concedes that ha-adam means the man.

Contemporary commentators have been at pains to explain, especially in the face of the two slightly differing creation stories, that the human being created in the first story on the sixth day already contained both male and female elements,  which were then unbundled in the second story.

Rabbi Akiba taught in Pirkei Avot that humanity is blessed not only by being made in the image of God, but even more so by God’s having made it known to us that we were made in the divine  image.   And Ben Azzai, in the Jerusalem Talmud, takes our being made in the image of God as the very essence of the Torah.

This leaves us to determine what it means to be made in the image of God.  Assuming that God could have chosen to make us in any way, what is the significance of the choice to make us in the divine likeness?  What are God’s attributes, which Godly qualities are possible for humankind, and what human qualities are we likely to attribute to God?  How should knowing we are made in the image of God affect the way we live?  Might it be, given our difficulties in imagining an incorporeal, genderless, invisible deity, that we tend to create, or at least envision, God in our own image?

Whatever problems we may have with the concept tselem elohim, the p’shat, the simple meaning of the words, is clear.  The translation of ezer k’negdo, on the other hand, is problematical to say the least.  In checking out eight different translations, I found six different renderings:

The old JPS translation, which closely follows King James, uses help meet, the new JPS translation gives us a fitting helper, and the still newer URJ translation uses helpmate.  Although help meet and helpmate sound similar, their meanings are quite different.  Help meet is built on the now somewhat archaic meaning of meet as appropriate.  On the other hand, mate with its suggestion of joining seems just plain wrong, given that the story is one of unjoining.  Although I don’t always like the English wording in new JPS, its choice of a fitting helper seems appropriate – or should I say meet?  The Conservative Etz Hayim, which uses New JPS, explains a fitting helper as a helpmate equivalent to him, and Chabad translates ezer k’negdo as helpmate opposite him. This is not so far from the Art Scroll a helper corresponding to him, which is also the translation used by Everett Fox.  Taking a different tack, Robert Alter translates ezer k’negdo as sustainer.

Having looked at translations for the phrase, let’s backtrack and look at the individual words.  The commentators point out that ezer, helper, should not be read as signifying an auxiliary or subordinate helping function.  In most of its Biblical occurrences, it connotes active intervention and is most typically applied to God.  It’s the difference between a helper who makes it easier and a helper who makes it possible.

To the modernists,  ezer k’negdo is a status term signifying the equality of man and woman, especially if we read k’negdo not only as opposing (a perfectly valid translation) but also as facing or confronting.   In fact, Rashi comments:

“If the man is worthy, the woman will be a helper; if he is not worthy, she will be against him.”

The Orthodox Art Scroll commentary amplifies on this:

“Often it is the wife’s responsibility to oppose her husband and prevent him from acting rashly, or to help him achieve a common course by questioning, criticizing and discussing.  Thus the verse means literally that there are times a wife can best be a helper by being against him.”

The Women’s Commentary stresses the importance of the human having a companion who is equal and both other and alike, to provide the necessary dialogue.  In the original male-and-female creation, the two elements were combined in one being, and it was only later that God came to the realization that wasn’t going to work.  The belated insight that it was not good for the human being to be alone was corroborated when God gave ha-adam the task of naming the animals, and during the process, ha-adam did not find a creature with whom a relationship was possible.  If we accept that the creation of the woman was not about sex and procreation; but rather about companionship and cooperation, we can understand ezer k’negdo to signify humankind’s responsibility to help one another, to face one another, to confront one another, to be team-mates, and ultimately to build a world together.

As I have implied, how you interpret ezer k’negdo depends on how you translate it.  I for one see helpmate as subordinate, help meet as equivalent.   If Eve is an ezer k’negdo to Adam, what is he to her?  Is this a one-way or a two-way street? God having judged that it is not good for a person to be alone, what responsibilities do we take on through accepting helpers or sustainers who are equivalent to us?

Having placed ezer k’negdo in the realm of the universalistic, now let me float a particularistic reading:  Just as the human, ha-adam, was unable to find a fitting companion among the animals, God recognizes, twenty generations after creation, that neither the families of the earth nor the angels are providing fitting companions for God, leading to the forging of a special relationship with Abraham.  The covenant is introduced because God, too, needs an ezer k’negdo.

If all humans are made b’tselem Elohim and are given an ezer k’negdo, it follows that all are  subject to the responsibilities that pertain to those concepts, with no difference between their applicability to the families of the earth and to Jews.   But we must wonder how they impact those, Jewish or not, who do not believe in the God in whose image they are made.

B’reishit fatigue?  No, there is enough caffeine in just these few words of Beginning to keep us stimulated and talking until we encounter this text again, be it as soon as next Rosh Hashanah or as late as next Simchat Torah.  May the conversation begin.

The importance of b’tselem elohim was first articulated to me by my (now) rabbi, Peter S. Knobel, in 1995, and has more recently been reinforced by the Just Action web site of Panim, the Institute for Jewish Leadership & Values.  I also acknowledge the teachings of all the Torah commentaries cited in the drash.

Cross-posted to www.rj.org

V’Etchanan – Moses Speaks a Sonnet

Beseeching God, I asked him to relent.

I’ve come this far, now let me cross the river,

Unto the land to which we have been sent.

I’ve got a fractious people to deliver.

But God said no, I’m weary of your pleas.

You’ve had a lot, and now you’ll have no more.

Give Joshua the job, and he shall seize

The land I promised those who came before.

Remind the people of those words I spoke –

Ten utterances by which they shall live,

First rendered on the tablets that you broke,

Repeated as a sign that I forgive.

And as you fade off like a setting sun,

Remind the people that their God is One.

Acharey Mot

Shabbat shalom, and as the Sephardim say, Shabbat HaGadol M’vorach.  Not that I am Sephardic, but you learn all kinds of things when you go on line to prepare a d’var Torah, and one of the other things I learned has me absolutely reeling with pride.  I discovered that it is customary for the congregation to invite the wisest scholar in the community to preach on Shabbat HaGadol – and I thank you for granting me this special Koved, deserved or not. 

You do have one “out,” however, if you are rightfully skeptical about my being the wisest scholar in the community.  The reason for inviting the wisest scholar to preach on the Shabbat before Passover is that you’re thus likely to get the most thorough and accurate set of instructions on preparing your household for the holiday.  Accordingly, when Shabbat HaGadol falls takeh on the day before Pesach, the Pesach drash can be moved up a week to allow time to put into practice what you have learned.   Last week and again last night,  we did in fact learn from one of our wisest scholars, albeit Rabbi London’s lesson dealt more with emptying ourselves of spiritual chometz than with emptying our households of the more conventional kind.  In any event, I don’t have to worry about teaching Passover, and can freely move forward with my more plebian musings on Acharey Mot.

But before we look at what God told Moses after the death of his nephews, let’s take a look specifically at Shabbat HaGadol, commonly translated as the Great Sabbath.  Why davke do we call the Shabbat before Pesach the Great Sabbath?  I will shortly let you chime in on this subject, but first let me summarize the three major theories I found with the help of Reb Google, one Chasidic, one Prophetic, and one Cynical, and then put forward a theory of my own. 

The Chasidic masters relate the name The Great Sabbath to the great miracle that occurred the Shabbat before the Exodus, when God figured out how to program his first-born selection process to choose  first-born lambs among the Israelites for the Passover sacrifice, and first-born sons among the Egyptians.  The Prophetic school turns to the closing words of the special Haftarah for the Shabbat before Pesach, and the words of Malachi – Behold I send you Elijah the Prophet, before the great and awesome day of the Eternal. 

The Cynical interpreters go to the minhag, the custom, of that drash by the wisest scholar.  Note that this was one of two times in the year when congregants heard a sermon – Shabbat Shuvah, between Rosh HaShanah andYom Kippur was the other –and this sermon tended to go on and on with the details of clearing the house of Chometz, conducting the Seder, inspecting the Coke bottle to make sure it contained sugar and not corn syrup and had been prepared under CRC supervision, et cetera et cetera et cetera.  These Cynics thus translated HaGadol not as Great but as Long, because they knew they were going to sit in shul a long time.

My own theory is derived from the Midrash about God instructing Adam to name the animals.  Adam prepares the list and brings it to God for review and approval.  The Kaddish Boruch Hu, or the KBH as His intimates call Him, reviews the list and praises Adam for his insight and creativity, asking only one question – why did you call this one an elephant?  Well. K, Adam replies, it just looked like an elephant to me.   

When God told the Rabbis to name the Shabbatot, I theorize they took the easy way and named most of them for the Parashah they would be reading, came up with a few specials like Shabbat Shuvah and Shabbat Parah to show they weren’t slacking, and then began deliberating about this one.  We can’t name it for the parasha, Acharey Mot – after the death.  That’s such a downer, Reb Tevye said.  You’re right, Reb Yudl said, but, hey, it’s right before Pesach, this is a biggie, it’s Gadol,we have to come up with something.  If it’s such a biggie, so Gadol, Reb Tevye responded – let’s call it that!  And so it was, and is to this very day. 

As we move towards discussion of the parasha itself, let me stay for a moment on the subject of names, and specifically the name of this sedrah.  As we have noted, Plaut calls it Acharey Mot, after the death.  So too JPS, Hertz, Etz Hayim, and most of my on-line references.  But the ArtScroll Stone Commentary calls it just Acharey.  I found no discussion, in the book or on the Web, as to where the other word went – it just seems to have fallen into a moat.  Are the Modern Orthodox squeamish about death?  Were they saving money on ink?  Were they paying Rabbi Nosson Scherman by the word?  Your guess is better than mine, because I am unable to imagine.

But anyway, here we are at Erev Pesach, and our parashah starts out with a discussion of Yom Kippur, giving Aaron a full protocol for entry into the Holy of Holies.  It then segues to a riff on the scapegoat, and proceeds in the verses we read today to providing rules for sexual conduct, or more accurately, for the choice of sexual partners.

Had I been presenting this drash at Beth Emet fifty years ago, the two categories on the list of forbidden sexual partners that I will call attention to would probably have gone unnoted.  The Reform Jews of that era were too far removed from Torah study, and especially study of Leviticus, for anyone to have been likely to pick up on the taboo against sleeping with sisters, and too respectful of their clergy for anyone to have said, Hey, Rabbi Polish, how about Jacob with Leah and Rachel?  And fifty years ago, when all the world was still a closet, the injunction against lying with a man as with a woman would have seemed as obvious as the taboo against bestiality. 

Whatever might have been the case at Beth Emet bayamim hahem, the rabbinic commentators certainly picked up on the dissonance between the sisters commandment and the behavior of Father Jacob.  Nor could they cop out by saying the commandment hadn’t yet been proclaimed – basic rabbinics teaches that there is no earlier or later in the Torah.  So they came up with a double cop-out – the parasha is very clear that the Israelites are not to emulate the patterns of the Egyptians or the Canaanites when they go into the Land – nor, by implication, that of the Arameans.  It was OK for Jacob to marry Leah and later Rachel when he was living chutz l’aretz – outside the Land – but when he went home, he couldn’t have both his sister-wives living with him on the holy soil.  Hence Rachel’s early death. 

For the past thirty years, the Reform movement, to its credit, has been distancing itself from the prohibition against homosexuality.   Fortunately, we start from a position that accepts Torah as a human document, and authority as vested in the individual – so we can easily dismiss whatever no longer seems to make sense.   Our more halachically committed friends in the Conservative movement have to grapple differently with texts like this – with arguments along the line of What they must have meant is….  And of course the right wing, among both Jews and Christians, looks at the text, sees it as geschribben and thus non-negotiable, non-debatable.  Why, we might ask, as the first of our questions for discussion, can they totally set aside the commandment to stone to death the disobedient child, yet consider this one sacrosanct?

According to the instructions given to those of us who lead the Torah discussions here in Kahal,  after we have commented on the text,  we are to pose three questions for discussion. But clearly on Erev Pesach, it’s incumbent on me to pose four, so let me restate the one I just asked, but in Passover mode, and then proceed with three more issues that troubled me as I prepared this dtash.. 

1.     Mah nishtanah the situations where we take the p’shat, the straightforward meaning of the words, as binding on all of us across time and space, vs. those that we but not others dismiss and vs. those everybody dismisses? 

2.     What do you see as the kesher, the connection, between the beginning and ending sections of this sedrah – starting with Yom Kippur and concluding with sexual conduct?

3.     What do you make of the ArtScroll shortening of the name of the parasha to Acherey?

4.     Why do you think today is called Shabbat HaGadol, the Great Sabbath?

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Commentary on Mishpatim

Far be it from me to describe myself as a Man of Distinction, but I do cast myself as a man of distinctions.  Don’t look to me for discussions of theology or philosophy.  I look for midrashic nuances, the implications of this translation vs. that one, the study of characters rather than the study of character, or the why’s (w-h-y-s) of a given sedrah rather than the wise (w-i-s-e) message that others may extract from it.  Why is this stuff here, why was it included in the Torah, is the translation accurate —  these hit my buttons  more  than any spiritual message that other darshanim may help us glean from it.

Knowing this about myself, it was impetuous for me to volunteer to discuss Mishpatim without looking at it first, and without making the distinction between parshiot that continue the narrative flow of Torah,, and parshiot that are legalistic, in this case the interpolation of law codes into Exodus that provide us with a preview of the joys of Leviticus to come.  But, having committed myself to discuss Mishpatim, I began after the fact looking for distinctions and two totally coincidental events put me on the course I’ll start with – first, the arrival in my mailbox (snail mail, not email) of my copy of the new Women’s Torah Commentary and the arrival of the reminder from Beth Emet that this weekend marks my father’s fifty-first yahrtzeit. 

My father was a lawyer, so it seems appropriate to mark this occasion by discussing a chapter named Laws.  The commentators tell us the legal codes set forth in this portion have their parallels in the Code of Hammurabi and other Near Eastern documents, but the unique contribution of the Hebrews was to add dimensions of cultic instruction and moral exhortation to their core legal document.  We are also reminded that, in the prior two parshiot, we were given the core of the core, the Ten Commandments, and this section provides  the fleshing out of the basic principles to show how they will apply in practice. Property rights, treatment of slaves, restitution for damage – covenants between people and their neighbors as well as between Israelites and their God.  In fact, this chapter is referred to, perhaps anachronistically, as Sefer HaBrit.  ArtScroll and old JPS translate this as you or I would, as the Book of the Covenant; new JPS avoids the anachronism by referring to the record of the Covenant.   The interpolation also prepares us for the coming of Mishnah, Gemorah, and the Responsa literature – the unique Jewish skill set that lets us  create an entire kashrut industry on Thou shalt not seethe a kid in its mother’s milk.

In contemplating the Women’s Torah Commentary, my first thought was to make distinctions between this brand-new, Reform, feminist volume and the Orthodox ArtScroll commentary and the presumably more middle-of-the-road thinking of the Conservative Etz Hayim.  Frankly, this direction didn’t prove very fruitful – even on such feminist issues as the treatment of female slaves, the accidentally induced miscarriage, or the value of virginity, the bottom line tended to be the same, although the Women’s commentary raises issues that are just not on the radar screen in ArtScroll, Etz Hayim, Hertz or Plaut. 

For example, at the end of the parasha, when Moses and an entourage go back to the mountain, so Moses can bring down the Commandments in hard copy, we are told whom Moses took along, and exactly how high up the mountain they were permitted to climb.  Only the Women’s Commentary bothers to point out that this was an all-male group, hinting that the women were all back in camp, presumably cooking dinner for the hikers, and refraining from seething any kids in their mothers’ milk.  And only the Women’s Commentary reminds us of the worry that occupied the gender-sensitivity-conscious translators of new JPS:  making distinctions to clarify when the Hebrew masculine plural pronoun You refers only to men and when it must indicate that the mishpat is inclusive of women as well. 

 Even though this parasha does not wow us with its narrative virtues, it does contain two Mishpatim that are as familiar to us as the stories of Cain and Abel or Joseph and his brothers: the law mentioned previously about not seething a kid in its mothers’ milk and the even more familiar law of retribution, an eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth.   Somewhere in the course of preparing this drash, I came upon a distinction between two Hebrew words that both mean laws – Mishpatim and Chukot.  When I went back to my bookcase so I could credit the source, I wasn’t able to find the reference, but I couldn’t have imagined it or made it up.  Mishpatim, it appears, is the word reserved for laws that make sense, which society could have figured out on its own.  Chukot, on the other hand, are laws that are arbitrary, in the vein of that wonderful bumper sticker, “Because I’m the Mommy, that’s why!”    I will posit, and later on you can argue with me, that an eye for an eye is a mishpat, and not seething a kid is a chuka.  Please note that much of the presentation of case law in this parasha is conditional – if a man does such and such, then this is what you do.

However, the prohibition of seething a kid in its mother’s milk is not presented conditionally.  It is a flat out statement in the text, placed in the context of observing the festivals and bringing the first fruits.  Its importance is emphasized by its appearing twice more in Chumash, again in Exodus in an almost identical setting, and then in Deuteronomy in a context of other dietary laws.  Although the commentators cited in Etz Hayim and in ArtScroll seek to ascribe it humanitarian and spiritual values, they are all inferential.  The Women’s Commentary does note that the statement is not gender-specific, but goes on to comment that few Biblical laws have had so much impact on women, because they over the centuries are the ones who have had to cope with all the embellishments of separation of milk and meat that got added to the original simple command.  

Conditionality pervades the discussion of an eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth, and so, I discovered to my surprise, do gender issues.  Chapter 21, verse 20 starts If a man strikes his manservant or his maid-servant.  My other commentaries don’t pick up at all on the inclusion of the maid-servant; the Women’s Commentary of course does, citing it as one of several places where Torah raises the status of women beyond what was standard in the society of its time.  The text examines the consequences of a pregnant woman miscarrying or dying because she got in the way of a fight between two men.  All the commentaries provide the general disclaimer that an eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth was never about mutilation but about reasonable compensation – neither over-reaction nor under-punishment.  ArtScroll worries about the nationality of the injured servant – treatment would be different for a Hebrew than for a foreigner – and only the Women’s Commentary among the three takes the time to point out that this is the only place in Torah that discusses the status of the fetus.    As I said earlier, the Women’s Commentary, prepared under Reform auspices, does not take materially different positions on issues that all the traditional commentators cover – but it does pick up on issues that the others ignore.  

As the parasha draws to its close, we have Moses on the mountain sharing with the people all the words that God has spoken to him, and we hear them respond, amazingly, in one voice, saying that they will do what God has told them to.  This is emphasized a verse or two later, when they repeat their acceptance of God’s words with the familiar but problematic response, Naaseh v’nishmah.  We will do, and we will hearken.  Why are the people promising to perform before they have heard what might be asked of them? 

When I began my adult study of Chumash, naaseh v’nishmah was presented as an important statement of faith – OK, God, we’re your boys, now tell us what you want from us.  Certainly it would have been more natural to say, Nishmah v’naaseh – let’s hear what you have to say before we tell you we’ll do it. 

The contemporary take accepts the paradox, and appears to derive its response from Rashi’s solution.  Remember that the idea that every translation is a commentary was as true ten centuries ago as it is today.  Rashi takes the translation of lishmoah, to hear, out of the physiological, and puts into the behavioral, to listen interpreted as to heed, to obey.  Old JPS says We’ll do it and we’ll obey; new JPS collapses the two verbs into a verb adverb combo, and gives us everything you’ve said, we’ll faithfully do.   The most satisfactory drash I found on this problem is supplied by Richard Friedman, who takes naaseh v’nishmah to mean, We’ll do what you’re saying now, and we’re going to continue listening to you in the future.  What we learn from this is what Barbara Levie taught us a few months back when I posed the question about the meaning of tam – even if you accept it as simple, Webster gives us 17 alternate definitions  for simple.  Many words, in English as in Hebrew, have depths of meaning.

I remain an exponent of concentrating on the p’shat, the literal or simplest translation of the words, so I tend to stay with nishmah in its sense of hearing.  I do not read Shma Yisrael, for example, as Obey, Oh Israel.  But I leave you now to discuss how you feel about both the word order and the translation of Naaseh v’nishmah. 

As a second question (or a third, depending on how you count), I invite you to discuss whether An eye for an eye is logical, something society could figure out for itself, and therefore a mishpat, while not seething the kid is arbitrary, Do it because I say so,  and thus a chukah.  

Finally, let’s hear it, especially from the women about the Women’s Torah Commentary.  As a woman, how do you feel about not going up the mountain?  Does this parasha, which  provides rights to women beyond what was the presumable norm in the neighboring societies, atone for the general role of women in historical Judaism, and even today in Orthodoxy?  And in the same vein, what does it say about us, in the unabashedly egalitarian Reform movement, that even we had to be given a Women’s Commentary?   

Eilu Summary

Mi-kol melamdei hiskalti – I’m enlightened by all I study with.  My thanks to Ben Dreyfus, and to those who have added to this discussion, offline as well as on.  As we enter into a new year, let’s ponder these take-away points:

 1. Ben has reminded us to be careful how we use words like “traditional.”  (My parallel favorite is “religious,” not to be construed as a synonym for “Orthodox.”)  Per that great midrashist, Reb Humpty ben Dumpty, “When I use a word, it means just what I choose it to mean, neither more nor less.”   Whatever I mean when I use a word, I have no guarantee that you will understand it as I meant it. 

2. Reform has reclaimed ritual, particularism, Hebrew, but above all, the right to be defined by what we do, not by what we don’t do. 

 3.  I agree with Ben that our influences today don’t come from Christianity (although we and Christians may be influenced in parallel by the same societal trends), but we can’t pretend that our Reform forebears were not heavily influenced by it.  It’s healthy that today we want to take more from the Chasidim than from the Lutherans.   

4. The Reform movement makes a big deal out of informed choice, based on a study of our texts.  But not every “religious” choice we make is mitzvah-based.  I chose to resume wearing a tallit not to fulfill the Torah commandment to wear fringes, not to show God or the community or myself that I was fulfilling a mitzvah, but to express solidarity with the Jewish people across both time and space.  Today’s reclamation of ritual practices discarded by Reform in the nineteenth century has many roots – esthetic, atavistic, spiritual, sentimental, and others.  Practically speaking, one reason is as good as another; and I am perfectly comfortable with assigning a new meaning to an old practice. 

5. Neither Judaism nor Jewish tradition is monolithic, whether we look at the First Century or the Twenty-First.  Nor is either static.  The very word Halacha, which has taken on the meaning of Jewish Law, might be better translated from its Hebrew root as The Way to Go.  Movement is inherent in it. 

5. In the spirit of Eilu v’eilu, we recognize and welcome diversity, not only from congregation to congregation, but within any given congregation.  Where once in Reform congregations, nobody wore a kipa, today some do, some don’t.  My very eclectic congregation offers two concurrent Shabbat morning services, three if there is a bar or bat mitzvah.  None of them would satisfy an Orthodox Jew, nor a Classic Reform Jew.  But we satisfy a hundred Reform Jews every week!

6. Where we want to go Jewishly as individuals is strongly influenced by where we came from, what we grew up with, what we’re used to.  We act, perhaps more than we want to admit, out of respect for our grandparents’ memory, and what we think they would want us to do. 

7. Among “reclaimed” practices, I see many I’m not personally comfortable with – tashlich, rising on tiptoe for Kadosh Kadosh Kadosh, touching/kissing the Torah scroll with a siddur during hakafah – but I can abstain and appreciate that these practices are “working” for others.  I don’t expect the ritual to reflect only my sensibilities.

8. Tolerance and pluralism are positive values in Reform Judaism.  We have to be on guard against an attitude that says, “We each worship God in our own way – you in your way, and I in His.” 

9. This Eilu commentary will hit mailboxes right before Sukkot.  I remember Sukkot children’s services over sixty years ago, with Rabbi Abba Hillel Silver preaching to several hundred kids who had been kept out of school for the festival.  How many of our congregations will have a hundred worshippers of any age group on Thursday morning?  How many of our youngsters won’t go to school because it’s a Jewish holiday?  As we have reclaimed, so too we have rejected.  Maybe that’s why we continue to pray, Chadesh yameinu ka-kedem…Renew our days as of old.  We are not through evolving, and hopefully, never will be.

         

Eilu – Reader comments and my responses

Larry Kaufman’s Letters from Eilu V’Eilu Subscribers Question #1

Is there any room any longer within the Reform Movement for us “Ethical Monotheists”? It seem more and more that so called Classic practice is marginalized, while I and I know many others still find the majestic language of the Union Prayer Book and the hymns of the Union Hymnal (if you can ever find them) and the emphasis on prophetic Judaism far more uplifting and rewarding. I know there are a few large holdout temples like Sinai in Chicago and I read the commentary from them quite closely. Please advise how we can at least retain much of what was very good about the classic period?

 

Bert Devorsetz

Temple Beth Shalom

Winter Haven, Florida

 

The question is not whether there’s room for Ethical Monotheists – hopefully, that’s all of us – but whether Ethical Monotheism is enough.  Judaism remains the operative word in the phrase Reform Judaism, and Movement hopefully implies forward movement.  “Classicists” might not see it the same way, but I believe today’s mainstream is totally committed to prophetic Judaism, but without ossifying the style of 1885, or even 1955, into a new Orthodoxy.   

 

As expressed in the opening statements, today’s Reform worship style reflects the wants and needs of today’s worshippers – less formal, more participatory, more visual.  To retain that which you miss from the Classic period, you have only to assemble a community of those who share your preferences.  My observation of congregations that identify with the Classic tradition is that many of them (including Chicago Sinai) are quite different from what they were even 25 years ago in terms of their ritual practice and worship style – and that is very much as it should be in a movement committed to modernity.  . 

 

  Question #2

Like Mr. Kaufman, I was raised in a different tradition. Even in the eleven years I’ve been involved in the Reform Movement, I’ve seen drastic changes toward traditionalism which have, quite frankly, made me a lot more comfortable in the Movement. From what I understand about the Conservative Movement, they seem to be moving toward us while we are moving toward them, embracing egalitarianism, allowing musical instruments at Shabbat services, and with a majority of the membership (in one survey) favoring the recognition of patrilineal descent because they have some of the same issues with intermarriage that we do. Do you think that we’re headed for an eventual merger? I could at this point ask the same questions about Reconstructionism.

 

Steven Taub

Greensboro, North Carolina

 

Prior to commenting on Mr. Taub’s premise (or premises), let me zero in specifically on his question:  Do I think we’re headed for an eventual merger?  No. 

 

I remembered when, immediately following the establishment of the state of Israel, there were suggestions that, their mission accomplished, the various Zionist organizations could close up shop.  One knowledgeable observer responded that no organization in Jewish life ever closes up shop while someone still wants to be president and someone still wants to be executive director.

 

Institutional self-interest aside, would an eventual merger make sense?  Let’s look again at the three-part formula for differentiation – how we live, how we worship, how we think. I don’t see a lot of lifestyle differentiation between Reform Jews and Conservative Jews (and haven’t for years, except possibly in terms of at-home Kashrut observance); and I agree that the cosmetics of worship are less different than they once were, and that Conservative Judaism has followed us, not only in the  areas mentioned by Mr. Taub, but also in ordination of women and acceptance of gays and lesbians, to name two that I consider very significant. 

 

But, even with the new, more liberal leadership at its Seminary, I don’t see the Conservative movement abandoning its commitment to finding its new answers within Halacha, binding Jewish law; and I don’t see the Reform movement accepting Halacha for governance.  Ideologically, I think there’s room under the big tent of Reform for the Reconstructionists, but the same institutional constraints to a merger would apply, so no, I don’t think in any near term definition of “eventual”, that it’s likely to happen either. 

 

.    

Eilu – Week 2

Although Ben Dreyfus and I are separated by the miles and the generations, we clearly read the same Torah, and derive pretty much the same message from it.   

 

If we have a difference, it’s his emphasis on the evolution of Reform against a background of American influences, contrasted to mine on the operative influences coming from other paths of Judaism, albeit facilitated by the American change from melting pot to salad bowl.  Yes, it’s okay to be the tomato among the lettuce leaves, and to have plucked the tomato from an Orthodox or Conservative garden. 

 

Might our perspectives differ because Ben was born into Reform, whereas I adopted it in mid-life?  Or because he is a teacher and I a marketer?  Or maybe we’re not so different after all?

 

In reading that different communities and different individuals will arrive at different legitimate conclusions (italics mine), I infer an affirmation of a pluralistic contemporary Judaism, suggestive that the pluralism is a recent development.  Even in the late nineteenth-century, not all the American rabbis were in Pittsburgh nor in accord with the Platform.  Hillel and Shammai may be the exemplars of Jewish pluralism, but were neither its beginning nor its end. 

 

The question we were both asked to discuss refers only by indirection to the Pittsburgh Platform, but clearly it is the touchstone document against which the return to tradition is benchmarked.  A question I might ask – indeed, have asked – is where is today’s spokesman for the Classical Reform Judaism it espoused?  Both of the current commentators have referenced their, and the movement’s, ongoing commitment to the ethical and social justice message of the Classic Reformers.  Where’s the voice of commitment to the anti-ritual, anti-nationalist tenets of the Platform?

 

I hope that my own Reform Judaism is “informed by an educated understanding of traditional and modern Jewish sources, and … (is) true to the highest ethical principles of the progressive Jewish tradition.“  But I maintain that the Reform Judaism of the synagogues I attend is informed by vox populi vox dei, the voice of the people is the voice of God, and that the voice of the people stems from their sentimentality towards their grandparents’ shtetl Yiddishkeit more than from their own study of the sources.   

 

Fortunately, we have in our movement rabbis and teachers who build the fences around the Torah and make sure that when we reclaim and return, we are in fact moving forward in accord with the progressive Jewish tradition.   

  

Reform Judaism Reclaiming Once-Rejected Traditions

This post is a pick-up of material I prepared for the URJ’s on-line Eilu discussion in September 2007.  I’ll also post the follow-ups.  You can see the other side of the discussion, as supplied by Ben Dreyfus, by going to the Eilu archives.

 Reform Jews are reclaiming Jewish traditions rejected by prior generations. How do you understand and relate to this perception?

That Reform Judaism is becoming more “traditional” is not only a perception, it’s a manifest reality.  What we need to examine is why it’s happening, what traditions are being reclaimed, and is it good for the Jews.    

Yes, it’s good for the Jews.  Rabbi Alan Bregman z”l used to remind us that Judaism has always changed to meet the needs of the Jews of a given time and place.  My teacher Rabbi Frederick Schwartz (who brought Chicago’s Temple Sholom from its Classic roots into the mainstream) contrasts the mission of nineteenth-century Reform — teaching Jews how to be Americans – with today’s mission, teaching Americans how to be Jews. 

Reclaiming traditions, like all the programs, practices and principles of Reform Judaism, is market-driven.  Our congregations are populated by .Jews (like me) who grew up in other traditions, joined a Reform congregation for convenience, expecting some, though  not all, of the stuff we were accustomed to in our prior religious incarnations. 

This willingness to be seen “doing Jewish” is facilitated by the successful integration and acceptance of Jews into the general society, and by a zeitgeist that not only accepts the non-rational, but actively encourages the mystical, the symbolic, the spiritual.  We are comfortable today with metaphor and poetry and no longer worry that outsiders will take it/us literally.

No, this does not mean, as the ignorant aver, that “we’re becoming Orthodox.”  It means that we’re still reforming our Judaism, in terms of ideology (what we think), worship (what and how we pray), and lifestyle (what we do outside the synagogue).    

Few members of Reform congregations give a moment’s thought to the ideological position of their rabbis or of the movement, much less their own; but the changes in ideology underlie those in worship and practice.  The coming of the Messianic Age is not an expectation, particularism and Zionism are taken for granted, but our historic universalism and commitment to social action remain central.    

The most visible reclamation of tradition is in the synagogue.  More bnai mitzvah, more Hebrew, more two day Rosh Hashanahs, more marching with the Torah scroll, more body language punctuating our praying – bowing, bending the knee, rising on our tiptoes for Kadosh, Kadosh, Kadosh. 

 I save the most obvious (and most personal) for last – the kipa and tallit.  Some twenty years ago, at the Atlanta Biennial, so many men and women, scores if not hundreds, were wearing tallitot at Shabbat services, including His and Hers matched sets, that my wife asked, “Is this a religious statement or a fashion statement?”  When I first affiliated Reform, not wearing a kipa and tallit was a big adjustment – but not nearly as momentous as deciding earlier this year to put them back on.  My impetus came during Shabbat services in Jerusalem at the World Union for Progressive Judaism assembly, where I felt not so much underdressed as out of step, and decided that I needed a tallit not to connect to God, but to connect to world Jewry.    

How we lead our daily lives is probably where the return to tradition has had the least impact.  I doubt that kashrut observance, whether in our homes or when we eat out, has changed appreciably, except among our clergy – although more temples probably observe some degree of kashrut.  As a community, we are probably no more Sabbath observant than in the past, nor no less.  Leaving aside intermarried families, we probably have fewer Christmas trees and “Chanukah bushes” than was once the case in Reform circles.  But essentially, the reclaiming of tradition is something that happens at the temple, not in the daily lives of members. 

We were once at a dinner party where the other six couples all belonged to Conservative congregations, and someone made a disparaging remark about our Reform “minimalism.”   I retorted that we might be the only Reform Jews in the group, but we were also the only ones who went to shul every shabbos.  We understand our Reform privilege to reclaim that to which we relate, and to relate to a community that is similarly tradition-minded.  Ken yirbu – may this only increase.

Talking Toldot

Today marks my first time on the bimah at Beth Emet. I purposely asked for the privilege on this particular Shabbat because this is the anniversary of my first trip to any bimah, as a Bar Mitzvah on Shabbat Machar Chodesh, more years ago than I care to reveal.  However, I can still chant the opening verses of the special haftarah, vayomer lo yehonatan, machar chodesh….   In those ancient days, the core of the bar mitzvah in my Conservative synagogue was the haftarah, and you only chanted the maftir verses if you had learned to chant the entire haftarah early enough.  Although I did chant the maftir portion, I had no recollection of it whatsoever, and had to go on line to find a luach for the year I was 13 to find out that Toldot was the Torah portion my haftarah had accompanied.  In addition to the relative unimportance of the parashah at my bar mitzvah, my congregation had eliminated the famous Today I am a fountain pen bar mitzvah speech, so my drash today gives me the opportunity to fill two gaps in my CV, getting to know my bar mitzvah Torah portion and giving the speech I was denied bayamim hahem bazman hazeh, in those days at this season.  In fact, one reason I didn’t remember what I had read was that all I was responsible for was sounding out the letters with the right trope – no attention was given to decoding the words.As a side note, at that time in the Reform temple, Confirmation was the big event, and bnai mitzvah were rare if they happened at all.   Today, of course, you’ll find bnai mitzvah all over the Reform movement, and you’ll find them very Torah-centered rather than haftarah-centered.  A topic for another day might be why, given the stress the other streams place on the Prophetic reading, the Reform movement, that once proudly proclaimed its practice of Prophetic Judaism, chose to stress Torah rather than Neviim when it broadly reclaimed the bar mitzvah.  Toldot is not the only parashah that can juxtapose with this haftarah for the day before rosh Chodesh. The clear connection is not with the parasha, but with the calendar; it lies in Jonathan’s words to David, tomorrow is rosh chodesh.  I have not found in the commentaries any suggestion that the juxtaposition of the enmity between Isaac’s twin sons and the love between David and Jonathan is anything other than an ironic coincidenceComing back after all these years to learn that my parashah was Toldot, I bring with me my current fascination with translation.  So first I ask, how would you translate Toldot, as in Aleh Toldot Yitzchak?  The classic JPS translation, as found in the almost as classic Hertz commentary, follows King James and says, These are the generations of Isaac.  New JPS, as found in Old Plaut and Etz Chayim, reads, This is the story of Isaac, although just a few verses earlier,  it has translated Aleh Toldot Yishmael as This is the line of Ishmael.  Chaim Stern, in New Plaut, gives us This is the line, and Everett Fox uses These are the begettings.  Robert Alter chooses This is the lineage, and in fact rips New JPS both for the mistranslation and for ignoring the intended parallelism in presenting the genealogies of Abraham’s sons.  ArtScroll, by the way, is similarly inconsistent, rendering These are the descendants of Ishmael and These are the offspring of Isaac.  In defense of New JPS, there are ancient authorities who translated Toldot as chronicles, and the NeXt Bible, a Christian online text, uses This is the account but from Rashi until New JPS, clearly the tie to birth and begetting is the prevalent reading.If every translation is a commentary, what comment do these variations make?  The inconsistencies might point us to a discussion of context dictating targum, translation; the deviation from the literal manifested in This is the story might engage us in a discussion of philosophies of translation – but how we translate the word Toldot is probably not critical to our reading or understanding of the parasha.So let’s take a look at another passage that has been translated in a variety of ways, and that may be more instructive in developing attitudes about the dysfunctional family at the center of the parashah, from whom we claim descent.  Esav ish yodeyah tziyad ish sadeh, v’yaakov ish tam yoshev ohalim, which I would translate as Esau was a man who knew hunting, a man of the field, and Jacob was a simple man who dwelled in tents. Yet this relatively simple Hebrew finds eight different translations in the texts I looked at, with many of them further explicating the word choice in the commentary.  Alter comes closest to rendering the Hebrew the way I do, Esau was a man skilled in hunting, a man of the field, and Jacob was a simple man, a dweller in tents. (In his note, Alter proposes that tam, simple, suggests integrity or even innocence.)  Everett Fox translates tam as plain.  ArtScroll provides Esau became one who knows trapping, a man of the field, but Jacob was a wholesome man, abiding in tents.  Chabad gives us Esau was a man who understood hunting, a man of the field, whereas Jacob was an innocent man, dwelling in tents. In Old JPS, Esau was a cunning hunter, a man of the field; and Jacob was a quiet man, dwelling in tents. (Hertz explains cunning as being used in its old sense at  skillful; and quietly disses the rendering of “tam” as quiet, explaining it as perfect, with an overtone of harmless.   New JPS reads Esau became a skillful hunter, a man of the outdoors; but Jacob was a mild man who stayed in camp. This is akin to the NeXt text, which gives us tam as even-tempered, and then explains this as blameless. Chaim Stern provides Esau became a skilled hunter, a man of the outdoors; but Jacob was a homespun man, keeping to the tents. 
 A scholarly friend explained to me the reason there is so much variety in translating tam, adding a rich if not terribly useful term to my vocabulary.  Tam, she said, is a hapax legomenon – the Greek term for a word that is found only once in the Chumash.  Thus translators tackle it in part by context, in part by what it seems to mean in its other biblical  usages, in Job, Psalms and Proverbs, and in other texts of the same period.   If the word sounds familiar to us, it is because we encounter it in that favorite line from the Passover Haggadah, tam, ma hu omer, applied to the third of the four sons, and translated in each of the three haggadot I reached for as simple.  So in the word tam, simple, we see that translation from the Hebrew is not as simple as it may seem at first.  Neither is evaluating the characters in our ancestral soap opera.   Prompted by New JPS, This is the story, let’s take a quick look first at the key story points in this parasha, and then one by one at the Isaac family.   ·        Rebecca has difficulty in conceiving.  ·        Although Isaac is relatively passive, especially compared to his father and to his sons, we do watch him get rich, and we watch him, as did his father before him, pass off his wife as a sister. ·        Esau sells his birthright to his brother, for the proverbial mess of pottage; he marries out, to the dismay of his parents.·        Isaac sends his preferred son out to catch him some dinner in preparation for receiving the paternal blessing.·        Rebecca sets up the masquerade so her preferred son gets the blessing instead.  Isaac either falls for the masquerade, or allows himself to appear duped, but stands firm when Esau shows up with dinner and with expectations.  ·        Esau threatens to kill the twin he’s been struggling with since they were in the womb; and Mama protects her baby by sending him to Uncle Laban’s to give Esau time to cool off, meanwhile manipulating Isaac into believing Jacob is leaving to go find himself a nice Aramean girl from Rebecca’s mishpochah.  Now let’s take a closer look at Isaac, Rebecca, Esau and Jacob — what the text tells us about them, what the midrashic tradition tells us about them, and how we, as 21^st century cynics, react to them.  If you grew up, as I did, on cowboy movies, you could always tell the good guys from the bad guys by the color of their hats.  So do Isaac, Esau and Jacob wear black or white yarmulkes, and what color is Rebecca’s sheitel?Since new JPS tells us this is Isaac’s story, let’s start with him.  Neither the Torah text nor the midrash spends a lot of time on Isaac.  His main function in the narrative is to serve as the link between the activist generations.   He is shown as sensual in his obsession with food and with sex, aggressive in business, but otherwise passive — when he is sexually abused by his half brother, when he is led up to the mountain to be sacrificed by his father, when he is put into an arranged marriage, when he is told by God, in their single direct encounter, not to go to Egypt, and perhaps above all, as he endures his lengthy and monogamous marriage by allowing his wife constantly to manipulate him.Following his father’s example, he passes off his wife as his sister, is exposed – double entendre intended – by the reigning prince, but forgiven; gets rich despite some problems with quarrelsome neighbors, and at age 100, sees his son get married to a couple of local girls that Isaac and Rebecca don’t like.  He shows favoritism to his older son, but then allows himself to be duped into blessing the younger, standing firm in the aftermath.  That’s Isaac – good guy or bad guy?What about Rebecca?  The text emphasizes that she is the daughter of Bethuel and the sister of Laban, and the midrash tells us the emphasis on her connections is to demonstrate that she has turned out wonderful, despite her shady family background.  Her barrenness parallels her mother-in-law’s, but she doesn’t make up for this by offering her husband her hand-maid.  God likes her – he not only lets her conceive, but gives her and not Isaac the advance glimpse at how the twins she’s carrying are going to end up.  We are also supposed to like her; to admire her wisdom in recognizing that her younger son is the one who is more capable of carrying on the family business; and even though she assumes the blame for deceiving Isaac, we are not supposed to blame her.  Despite the basically sympathetic treatment of Esau in the text, the Tradition hates him.    The text tells us he’s an outdoorsman, knowledgeable about hunting.  It shows only mild disapproval of his spurning the birthright and of his first marriages; it shows him as eager to do his father’s bidding and prepare the last supper – side note, Isaac lives another sixty years after the poignant deathbed scenes – and he is sincerely upset and distraught at being cheated out of the blessing, and presumably the responsibilities that come with it.  His readiness to take revenge on his brother seems reasonable, especially in light of his second thoughts over the birthright encounter.  He gains enough insight to recognize that he blew it with his parents with his first marriages, and brings home as his third wife one of his Uncle Ishmael’s daughters.  Frankly, to me, none of it sounds so geferlach.  But the rabbis turn his love of hunting into a symptom of profligacy, and consider him a conniver, a wastrel, and clearly not up to the task of carrying on and carrying out the covenant.  Finally, the text gives us Jacob, the tent dweller, who plays hardball over the birthright and outright swindles the blessing, and whose concern is only with getting caught out, not with whether he’s doing the right thing.  But the rabbis have to justify Jacob, to make him worthy of becoming Israel.  So they tell us what Jacob was doing when he was dwelling in those tents – he was studying Torah at the yeshiva!  In all candor, the text doesn’t give him a pass.  In return for deceiving Isaac and swindling Esau, he will later be swindled by Laban and deceived over the disappearance of Joseph.  Ish tam yoshev ohalim.  Is Jacob simple, plain, innocent, wholesome, quiet, homespun, mild, perfect, or your favorite translation for tam?  Or is he a submissive mama’s boy? A clever opportunist with an eye always out for the main chance? What do you think he was really doing in those tents?  And what color is his yarmulke?  Aleh Toldot.  This is the chronicle of your family!  Who are the relatives you’re proud of?  Which are the good guys and which are the bad guys?  Do you want to believe the text, or the Tradition, or do you want to read between the lines in your own way?  And finally, to what extent does answering these questions depend on the language or the translation through which you encounter your ancestors, the Isaacs?

Hello world!

My other blogs primarily contain stuff I have written specifically for them.  Here I’ll primarily be posting stuff written for other purposes, especially divrei torah and other messages prepared in the synagogue or Jewish environment.  I invite comments online or by email.