What's in a (Jewish) Name?

A Jewish name can take a number of different forms, and each has its own shade of meaning. Let me explain. 

Hebrew names

Biblical 

In our cycle of weekly readings from the Torah, Jews are coming to the end of the second book of the Torah. That is the book known in the English-speaking world by the Greek name "Exodus." 

Many Jews, however, know it by its Hebrew title, Sh'mot, meaning "names," from the opening words of the book:  These are the names of the sons of Israel who came to Egypt....   

The names in Sh'mot 1:1-4 are all single names, or what we are used to calling in English "first names." That's because the people on the list are all members of the same family, and they were all introduced in B'reishit, or Genesis. There won't be any "Joseph who? Issachar who?" We know these people. Just mentioning their names is enough.

But the Israelites were fertile and prolific; they multiplied and increased very greatly, so that the land was filled with them. (1:7, Etz Hayim translation)

So, it became necessary to specify who you were talking about using patronymics. That is, so-and-so the son or daughter of so and so. I think (but I am open to correction!) the first person to be named this way in the Torah shows up in the story after the revelation at Sinai. It is the chief craftsman in charge of building the portable sanctuary.

The Lord spoke to Moses: See, I have singled out by name Bezalel son of Uri son of Hur, of the tribe of Judah. (31:1)

And something like that format has continued until today, with a few small changes:

• Now, in liberal Jewish circles at least, we tend to use the names of both father and mother. For instance, I am Dov ben (son of) Akiva Meir (my father) v'Tziporah (and my mother). My wife, Rona, is Rivkah Yehudit bat (daughter of) Mordechai v'Chayeh Feigeh.

• More recently, some congregations and some individuals have started calling people up to the Torah using the words mibeit ("from the house of") or l'veit (of the house of") the person's parents, instead of calling them "son" or "daughter." (For instance, if I used that format, my Hebrew name might be Dov mibeit Akiva Meir v'Tziporah.) That format shows respect to Jews who don't think of themselves within a gender binary, and respect has always been an issue considered in Jewish names. See the Rabbinical Assembly's in-depth discussion. 

• We don't identify people by tribe anymore, since most of the tribes were assimilated by the Assyrian conquest in 721 BCE. Instead, people who are descendants of Aaron the High Priest are called so-and-so ha-Kohen. People who are descendants of the Levites (the tribe that Aaron, Miriam, and Moses all came from) are called ha-Levi.
  

Rabbinic

One of the rabbinic writers that even non-Jews may have heard of is Maimonides. Just like the word "exodus," the name "Maimonides" is not really English, at least in origin. The -ides ending means "son of," so the name means son of Maimon. So, from what we have already discussed, you will not be surprised to learn that in Hebrew this noted scholar is called Rabbi Moshe ben Maimon.

But you will also hear the same man referred to as the Rambam. That is an acronym, from the first letters of each word in "Rabbi Moshe ben Maimon." Similarly, Rabbi Moshe ben Nachman is called both Nachmanides and the Ramban; Rabbi Levi Ben Gershon is both Gersonides and the Ralbag. (Are we confused yet?)

An additional layer is that some rabbinic authors are best known by the title of their most famous book! For example, Rabbi Shlomo Ephraim Luntschitz, Rabbi of Prague from 1604 to 1619, is often called "the Kli Yakar," after the title of his influential Torah commentary. Isaiah or Yeshayahu ben Avraham Ha-Levi Horowitz, his successor in Prague, is called "the Shelah" after the acronym Sh'nei Luchot ("two tablets") used in the title of his most famous work. In fact, until I listened to a podcast about those two thinkers and their predecessor Rabbi Judah Loew, the Maharal (Moreinu Ha-Rav Loew, or "Our Teacher, Rabbi Loew"). I ONLY recognized them by these titles!

Names that aren't in Hebrew

In my synagogue, my Hebrew name is used to call me up to say the blessings before and after a Torah reading. Most people there won't remember it offhand. Certainly, they won't refer to me that way in conversation: they'll call me "Dennis Fischman." Where does that name come from, and what does it mean?

 

Last names

The Fischman part literally comes from Hungary. That's where my father's side of the family came from. In the 18th and 19th centuries, all over Central and Eastern Europe, Jews were forced by the governments under which they lived to take a surname, a "last name," for official purposes. There were several ways of inventing surnames. Some took Cohen or Levi to indicate their ancestry. Some used place names: Warshawer from Warsaw, Berliner from Berlin, etc. Some took or were given names that ended with -berg ("mountain") or  Some took the names of their occupations: Schneider ("tailor"), or Diamant ("diamond," for a jeweler). Presumably, one of my ancestors caught or (more likely) sold fish.

 

Frequently, you hear someone say something is or isn't "a Jewish name." That's too general, and as time goes on, it's more likely to be mistaken. Because of interfaith marriages, I know a Levine who's not Jewish and an O'Malley, a DiNitto, and a Tambimutu who are! Also, people in the U.S. are more likely to recognize German and Eastern European Jewish names, because that's who came here in great numbers in the 1880's-1920's, and their descendants are still numerous. 

 

But Ascoli and Tedeschi are common Jewish names from Italy. Abravanel and Cordova are common Jewish names in Spain and Spanish-speaking countries. And there are Arabic names that are typically Jewish in the countries where those Jews came from.  Be careful about your assumptions!

 

First names

Many years ago, when I was a college student, I rented an apartment off campus. One of my neighbors was an Irish woman, with the accent to match. She always called me "Mr. Fischman." One day, a piece of mail addressed to me came to her apartment instead, and of course she brought it to me. She looked at the name on the label and remarked doubtfully, "Dennis. What kind of a name is that for a boy like you?"

What my neighbor didn't know was that from one generation to the next, the process of Americanization changed the way Jews named their children.

My grandparents were the immigrant generation. They had names like Dovid Hirsch, Lillian, Wolf (usually anglicized to William, or Bill), and Yetta. To their children, they gave names that sounded Protestant to them: Melvin, Irving, Florence, Phyllis. As a result, many non-Jews stopped using these names, in a linguistic equivalent of white flight. 

In my generation, the use of names to signify Americanness continued, only the Americans my parents and their peers came into contact with tended to be from other parts of the British Isles than England. That's why there are all the Jewish Scotts, Brians, and yes, the occasional Dennis. (To be fair, two of my cousins were named David, after my grandfather Dovid Hirsch Fischman, before I was born!)

 

What's in a name? Sometimes, survival

My friend Steven Varga recently died, at the age of 88, and I miss him. But no one would have known him as "Steven Varga" when he was a young boy in Hungary. His first name was Istvan (nickname "Pisti"), and that made a natural transition to its English equivalent, Steven. 

But his last name, Weiss, was recognizable as Jewish--and in the Nazi era, that could have meant death. So, this little boy had to remember his name was not Weiss, and never respond to "Weiss." He had to recognize Varga, and only Varga--to ensure his family's survival.

This post is dedicated to Istvan Weiss/Steven Varga and his whole family (including my former bat mitzvah student Juliette Rooney-Varga, her husband Michael Rooney, and her sons, my former bar mitzvah students, whose last name is Rooney). May his memory be for a blessing. 

 

Winning the Budget Battle in Congress

 Read the message from Heather Cox Richardson to understand why the budget battle in Congress is crucial to all of us, today and for years to come. Read this message to make sense of what the House of Representatives did and didn't do on February 25, and to be encouraged.

 

Generally, I don't like military metaphors for politics. In this situation, however, it's important to see how any one battle is part of a longer war against fascism in this country. Small victories add up. Even narrow defeats can make eventual victory more likely.

 

Where do we stand today? I would point out:

 

1. The bill passed in the House of Representatives is not a U.S. government budget, not even a draft budget, but a "framework," the general picture of what a budget should look like. (Call it the concept of a budget!)

 

2. Even on that general level, yesterday "The vote was 217-215, with a single Republican and all Democrats opposed, and the outcome was in jeopardy until the gavel." One member of each party was absent. (Source: AP article by Lisa Mascaro, Kevin Freking and Matt Brown).

 

3. That means the Republicans cannot afford to lose even a couple of votes in the House throughout the rest of the long, drawn-out budget process if they are going to pass an actual bill. And when it comes to cuts that affect their own districts, some Representatives are going to balk. Some of the more ideologically populist reps may vote against massive giveaways to the rich.

 

4. Bottom line: Democrats in Congress are in a good starting position to delay or halt destructive cuts and giveaways entirely AND to demand concessions that will serve the rest of us--if they stay united and strategic.

 

So, please call your Congressperson and urge them to do just that!

 

 

“Hard pressed on my right. My center is yielding. Impossible to maneuver. Situation excellent. I am attacking.” -Ferdinand Foch

A Reading List for the Resistance

As we take a deep breath before the would-be dictator Trump and his plutocratic appointees take office in January, one way we can prepare is by reading and thinking. Here are some books I am finding helpful right now.

For some inspirational examples from the past--

The Presidents and the People: Five Leaders Who Threatened Democracy and the Citizens Who Fought to Defend It, by Cory Brettschneider. Emphasis on the words "people" and "citizens." That's us!

Wake: The Hidden History of Women-Led Slave Revolts, by Rebecca Hall, Hugo Martínez (Illustrations). Listen to Black women.

Waging a Good War: A Military History of the Civil Rights Movement, 1954-1968, by Thomas E. Ricks. It wasn't just a dream: it was strategy, training, and discipline.

For how to apply those lessons to the present-- 

This Is an Uprising: How Nonviolent Revolt Is Shaping the Twenty-First Century, by Mark and Paul Engler. How to make our long-term community organizing support the protest movements of the moment, and vice versa. Read this to be prepared for highs and lows and periods when it feels like nothing's happening and we might have wasted our time--but if we use the quiet times wisely, we come back stronger.

For some tools we can use--

Made to Stick: Why Some Ideas Survive and Others Die, by Chip and Dan Heath. Because we've got to get better at getting our message across!

I'll be adding to this list as I go along. Your suggestions would be welcome!

I also have reading lists on prison and incarceration (which more of us may face in the years ahead), and on the way people have been deprived of decent housing, and on racism, antisemitism, sexism and homophobia, and on the history of capitalism (which may be giving way to fascism in the U.S. but has always been a fertile ground for repressive actions). If any of those are your particular interest, let me know.

Give yourself time and space to learn and to think...but please, do not think that learning and thinking will be enough by themselves. The ancient rabbis posed the question, "Which is more important, thought or action?" Their answer: "Thought is more important, when it leads to action." Be ready, please, to move between the two.

Such a time as this: November 2024/ Heshvan 5785

In light of the Torah portions and the elections in the past couple of weeks, it seems to me we have three biblical models we could follow.

Some of us, like Noah, will build an ark. We will try to save our family and the animals we love.

Some of us, like Abram and Sarai, will leave the country, our birthplace and the home of our ancestors, and go to a land we hope is more promising.

But some of us, like Abraham and Sarah  (the people that Abram and Sarai became when they found their mission in the world) will open our tent doors and welcome guests. We will feed them (and when necessary, house them). We will listen to what they have to say. And when we hear that our neighbors are being destroyed, we will not remain silent but protest, even to God. Even against God. We will save what we can and who we can.

And who knows, maybe (like Esther in the book we will read on Purim), maybe we have come to our positions in the U.S. for such a time as this?

What we do, who we are, and the High Holy Days

 

Both last year and this year, in the month of Elul leading up to the High Holy Days, I have read Rabbi Danya Ruttenberg's On Repentance and Repair. At the end of 5783, I read it on my own, and this year, as we approached the close of 5784, I re-read it with a group led by Rabbi Eliana Jacobowitz at Temple B'nai Brith in Somerville. (Yes, it's worth reading and re-reading!) 

The book builds on Maimonides' teachings about teshuvah (the repentance and returning to the right path that is the focus of the High Holy Day season). Rabbi Ruttenberg stresses certain aspects of those teachings that she thinks that we, in Christian-dominated American society, may be in danger of forgetting: 

• that acknowledgment, amends, and apology by the perpetrator are the central issue--not forgiveness by the victim--and 
• that true teshuvah involves self-transformation so that if we found ourselves in the same situation again, we would not repeat our mistakes. We would act differently.

On one point, Ruttenberg (and, I think, most of us) would disagree with Maimonides. He states that if the perpetrator does true teshuvah and asks the person he has hurt to forgive him, and the victim repeatedly refuses, then the victim takes the sin on themselves. All of us in the TBB reading group recoiled at this. We are too familiar (and Ruttenberg gives examples of) cases where the harm was so deep and permanent that the sin is unforgivable. We have seen too many cases of victim-blaming (especially by men, of women they have hurt) to want to fall into that trap again.

To be fair, Maimonides is aware of such examples. It's clear he's talking about an extreme and extraordinary occurrence. Still, given our respect for his scholarship and thoughtfulness, I asked Rabbi Eliana: why does he bring it up at all? What makes it important to him to say that being unforgiving can sometimes be a sin in itself? She taught me that he is imagining a case in which the victim is now in a position of power. Refusing to forgive when the offender has truly repented can ruin their lives and their reputation, even lead them to desperation and suicide. It's that abuse of power, she explained, that motivates Maimonides to address this rare case.

I was satisfied. In Jewish learning, we do not have to agree with a conclusion in order to ask how the person stating it arrived at that conclusion, and to learn something from the person with whom we disagree. (See the ongoing debates between the schools of Hillel and Shammai.) The abuse of power is an issue I have been paying attention to for at least fifty years, and I honor Maimonides for being sensitive to it, even if I cannot go where we goes with that train of thought.

Teshuvah, virtue, love

I was reminded of this discussion just today, when I listened to Rabbi Shai Held discuss Maimonides on teshuvah, but with a different emphasis. Rabbi Held wants us to hear Maimonides--and, I think, God!--speaking to us in two different voices at the same time. He calls them the prophetic voice and the pastoral voice. The prophetic voice wants us to pay attention to how far we are from acting righteously all the time. The pastoral voice wants us to be encouraged to believe that we can and will do better.

Not only do, but be. Rabbi Held thinks of Maimonides as the principal Jewish advocate of virtue ethics, the idea that we want not only to do the right things, but for the right reasons, in the right spirit. (A Jewish school of thought that sounds a lot like virtue ethics is mussar.)  

He puts repentance and repair in the context of our relationship with God, which as he says in his recent book that I am also perusing this month of Elul is about love. Following God's commandments is important, but so is recognizing God's love for us and trying to live up to it--in part, by how we treat other people.

Held reminds us that if teshuvah is about trying to correct our actions and also transform ourselves, the High Holy Days are only the beginning of the process. Having a new beginning every year is vital, but every single day, we should be engaged in self-examination, acknowledgment of where we have gone wrong, making things right with people and with God, and changing our lives. It's a tall order, but it's a Jewish way to live.

Shanah tovah to all my readers, and if I have injured you in the past year, or week, or day, I hope you will lovingly bring it to my attention so I can do better by you, starting now.

Law and Love

Can we obey commands we don't understand? And if we do, is it a loss of independence, or is it a sign of love? 

What is a chok?

The Torah portion we read on this past Shabbat, Parshat Bechukotai, begins like this:

אִם־בְּחֻקֹּתַ֖י תֵּלֵ֑כוּ וְאֶת־מִצְוֺתַ֣י תִּשְׁמְר֔וּ וַעֲשִׂיתֶ֖ם אֹתָֽם׃

If you follow My laws and faithfully observe My commandments, 

 

The word for "commandments" is mitzvot, and Jews are pretty familiar with the concept of a mitzvah. The word for "laws" is chukot, and that is not so familiar. What is a chok? And why is it such a challenge to follow the chukot (more often pluralized as chukim)?

We often see this word in Torah in combination, chukim u' mishpatim : "laws and judgments." Judgments are based on principles of justice, and they are logically justified when we understand the situation. As Rabbi Menachem Leibtag states, however, "a CHOK can be logical, but it doesn't have to be!" It is binding, and lasting, whether or not a reason is given, or can be deduced. We have to follow it whether or not there is a reason or not. Because God said so.

"Because God said so"? What kind of reason is that?

For some thinkers, notably Soren Kierkegaard, obeying God's commandments when they don't make any sense is the most meritorious thing we can do. It shows a higher level of faith than carrying out instructions that make rational sense. Faith is much more of a Christian or Muslim thing than a Jewish one, however, and even those Jewish thinkers who stress faith also value applying human reason to our texts. In fact, their faith requires that they do so!

And let's be real: we are living in the 21st century. We have inherited the modern understanding that using one's intelligence is a good thing, a necessary thing, part of being a dignified and independent human being. Irrationality can be seen as threatening: a gateway to fascism. Unquestioning obedience can be seen as a throwback to a premodern age. 

Even the main body of our parshah, the tochecha or warning about what happens when we don't obey, can sound dictatorial--or like a parent threatening a child with consequences. "Because I said so"? As the Jewish people, and as adults, haven't we outgrown messages like this? Why should we even study the chukim in Parshat Be'chukotai?

I suppose it depends on our understanding of what a parent is like.

My parents taught me to question

In 2024. the yahrzeit, or anniversary of death, for my father, Mel Fischman was the week before this parshah was read. My mother's birthday will be the following week, and Faye Fischman would have been 90 years old. 

My parents were the generation that demanded reasons for everything. They were a puzzle to their hard-working immigrant parents, who may not have been able to keep from working on Shabbat--they were poor, and they had to make a living--but they knew that's what they were supposed to do. They kept kosher. They hosted the Passover Seder. And their children said to them, "If you can't explain it, we're not going to do it."

Still, my parents had very strong Jewish identities, including the Jewish cultural emphasis on education. They sent us to Hebrew school beginning around age nine or ten. Just as, when we got home from secular school in the afternoon, they asked, "Okay, kids, what did you learn today?", so did they ask the same question about Hebrew school. We learned together that some questions about Judaism do have logical answers! We began adding practices that made sense to us: first home rituals like getting together without fail for Friday dinner, then synagogue...which ultimately led to my being at Temple B'nai Brith and giving this d'var torah!

A God of Love

My parents taught me to question everything, even if they sometimes chafed at being the ones we interrogated. I think God does that too.

You might laugh. You might think Dennis is projecting Mel and Faye onto God, in some kind of Freudian sense. I admit the possibility. But I think it's the reverse. Mel and Faye learned what it mean to be a good parent from Judaism. They learned that questioning is a central part of the Jewish tradition, and they passed that value onto us.

Because of that, when my parents said, "Do it because I said so," it was so exceptional that I heard it in the context of all the times they had encouraged me to question. When they said, "Do this right now," I trusted that they understood my situation, and that they had my good in mind. Sure, like any adolescent I rebelled in major ways, and I used their authorization to question everything as my license to decide and act independently. When I did obey them, however, it was an act of love. And remembering the times when I obeyed them helps keep their love alive, even when they are no longer an imminent presence in my life.

Remembering God's "Because I said so," the chukim, can do the same, if we allow it. It can remind us of times in our biography, or periods in our communal history, when God seemed like a member of the household, and when we could trust God to remember us for good. We need those reminders.

In some ways, Rabbi Rachel Barenblat, the Velveteen Rabbi, says it better than I can. As she paraphrases Parshat Bechukotai in her poem "Either/Or," in 70 Faces: Torah Poems:

If you will follow my laws

and observe my commandments

I will grant you rain in its season

you will eat your fill

I will live in your midst.

I will untie your tangles.

Where there is rye bread

there will always be pastrami.

You and your mother will remain

on good terms, no matter what.

But if you do not obey

if you break my laws and spurn my rules

if you break my covenant

I will set my face against you

I will shatter all your glory.

I will leave your boat becalmed.

You will never find 

a good parking space again.

You will poison the skies

and your fields will not feed you.

I can be infinitely more hostile

than you, but I won't be.

In the end you'll realize

I was here all along,

waiting for you.

 

Ordinary and Extraordinary Holiness (Parshat Tazria)

 

"And he shall call tamei, tamei..." (Leviticus 13:45, Parshat Tazria)

The Jewish people have a long history of celebrating the holiness of everyday life. Those celebrations are set out in the Torah, and they follow a definite cycle. It's three times a day every weekday and four times on Shabbat. Add in new moons and holidays (like Pesach, next week) and you have a life of paying attention to the divine in the mundane. 

In ancient times, my ancestors celebrated by offering sacrifices in the Temple. Now, prayer services replace those sacrifices, one to one, which shows how crucial the rabbis who created our form of Judaism thought it was to establish continuity with the Temple practices.  The rhythm of prayer echoes the rhythm of the offerings that used to form the center of Jewish life.

Those offerings were a really big deal to the entire Jewish people, and so if anyone was not in the ritual condition that allowed them to enter the Temple (tahor), that was a big deal, tool. When a person became ritually impure (tamei), that disrupted their calendar. It put them outside of the normal holy condition, or prevented them from participation in channeling holiness into the world, depending on how you look at it.

But at certain times in the life cycle, that rhythm of weekday, Shabbat, new moon, holidays, year in and year out, must be disrupted. There will be times when, instead of being in the midst of life, you are on the threshold between life and something else.

When you've given birth.

When you've come into contact with a corpse.

When you've become ill with a condition that makes you look like a corpse yourself (tzara'at, the subject of a large portion of Parshat Tazria and the one after it, Metzora, with which it is combined in most years' Torah readings).

All of those experiences cannot be anything but overwhelming, to those who observe them and especially for the people going through them at the time. You cannot pay attention to the regular requirements of life in those liminal moments. They take a person out of being tahor and into being tamei.

It is right and proper to acknowledge the power of those moments between life and death. It only makes sense to excuse, and perhaps to forbid, people from trying to channel everyday holiness when they are in a peak moment of a different kind of holiness. But being tamei, while it is necessary, alienates people from their normal lives, their normal selves, and their community. It cannot be allowed to become permanent.

Parshat Tazria is all about the need for people to be rejoined to their community and to the supremely important practice of holiness in everyday life. In the 21st century, the how-to's are very different from back in Torah and Temple days, but the need is exactly the same.

So, we can respond to this week's Torah portion by studying the medical handbook it provides to the cohanim (priests), or by reading the midrash in which later rabbis used tzara'at as the springboard for a discussion on the importance of not slandering other people. We can reread "And he shall call tamei, tamei..." as a Talmudic source suggests: 

One commentator reads, "The impure shall call out, 'Impure!'" That is, people tend to project their own failings onto others. A corrupt person sees corruption all around [BT Kid. 70a].  (Etz Hayim, p. 657)

But we can also respond more directly, in terms that make sense for today. When people we know are overwhelmed--with pregnancy, childbirth, medical conditions, or mourning, but also with social stigma that tells them they are not in a condition to be part of the community--when their whole beings are crying out, "I'm isolated, I'm hurting, I'm alone"...we can hear them. And we can respond.

Listening to Moses (and people with disability)

We read the beginning of the book of Exodus in shul yesterday, and I am grateful to Penina Weinberg, my fellow member of Temple B'nai Brith, for bringing forward Professor Julia Watts Belser's discussion of Moses in Loving Our Own Bones: Disability Wisdom and the Spiritual Subversiveness of Knowing Ourselves Whole. 

There's a longstanding tradition of commentary on Moses' saying he was "slow of speech and tongue" (4:10). Older midrash has Pharaoh trying to tell whether a prediction that Moses would take his throne away from him was true and placing before the baby Moses a gem and a burning coal. The theory was that if he were greedy and ambitious, Moses would reach for the gem. Instead, he grabbed the coal and, as babies do, put it in his mouth. Thus, the rabbis explained, he burned his speech organ, explaining his reluctance as a grown man to "speak to the Children of Israel." That is why his older brother Aaron has to interpret for him, to the Jews and to Pharaoh's court.

Whether for that reason or for something congenital, Moses was a stutterer. Belser (Penina says) uses him as a model of how disabled Jews can not only achieve leadership despite their characteristics, but even because of them. So, when rabbinic interpretation jumps ahead to Deuteronomy (where Moses orates for chapters and chapters) and concludes that God must have healed him in the meantime, Belser rejects that interpretation. She, and Penina, and I all like to imagine that forty years later, Moses still spoke with his usual stuttering voice--and the Israelites patiently listened.

Now, here's the further question this raises for me: What happened in the meantime to make it possible for him to be willing to speak, and them to listen?

Was it simply that Aaron (and Miriam) had died, and Moses had no other choice?

Or had he gained a lot of confidence by being a prophet and a leader for all those years?

On the audience side, was it simply that the generation who had met Moses in Egypt had all died out (except for Joshua and Caleb)?

Or had something changed for the Israelites over that time: the experience of living in the wilderness, or of being taken care of by God just as Moses said, or something else?

Most importantly: can we learn anything from the Torah about how to change our own society so that people's differing abilities and disabilities are valued, as part of what they brought with them to Sinai? What?

P.S. I also want to think about big brother Aaron and how he was able to put himself at his brother's disposal after not seeing him for decades!

Falsifying History is No Way to Support Your Cause

Recently, I had to restate some very basic facts about Jesus.

Jesus was a Jew. He lived and died in a land that the Roman Empire called Judea. He did not oppose the empire, but other Jews did.

Jesus of Nazareth was of course a Jew. He was the child of a Jewish mother, and that made him a member of the Jewish people. His doctrines were Jewish. He read the Torah in Hebrew and spoke Aramaic, just like all the Jews (and just like I read the Torah in Hebrew and speak English). Moreover, if he and all his original followers hadn’t been Jewish, they would never have heard the word “Messiah,” much less understood the concept. Jesus is the favorite Jewish man of millions of people in the world.

At the time Jesus of Nazareth lived (c. 4 BCE-33 CE), the land was called Judea, not Palestine. When Jews rose up against Roman tyranny, the Roman armies destroyed the Temple in Jerusalem, prohibited Jews from entering the city (which they renamed Aelia Capitolina), and started using the name “Syria Palestina ” to emphasize the destruction of the Jewish state. It wasn’t “Palestina Capta” that the Emperor Vespasian put on his coins minted to celebrate his military victory: it was “Judea capta.”

Jesus is quoted in the Gospels as saying, "Render unto Caesar the things that are Caesar's, and render unto God the things that are God's." He is also quoted as saying, "My kingdom is not of this world." He was no Simon bar Koziba, nicknamed Bar Kochba, who led a military rebellion against Roman rule. He was not even Rabbi Akiba, who hoped Bar Kochba would be the Messiah to free the Jews. Roman rule was not an issue to him: the end of the world as he knew it, was.

These things are not in dispute among any one who has ever studied the history of that time and place. There is ample archeological and documentary evidence about Roman rule, Judea, the Jewish wars, and the origins of the concept of a Messiah. Jesus' teachings vary somewhat from one gospel to the other, but the basic message is clear.

Why do I have to go into these simple facts yet again? Because in the context of late 2023, a wrongheaded meme is circulating that says "Shoutout to all the Christians who've remained completely silent about the Palestinian genocide while they get ready to celebrate the birth of their favorite Palestinian man."

This is nonsense. I can recognize that I am not the audience for message, and I can attribute the meme to good intentions--but Jesus was not a Palestinian, he was a Jew, and that shouldn't make a difference in any way to our response to the horrific situation in Israel and Gaza as of today, December 22, 2023.

We can oppose the brutal attack on Israel on October 7th which killed 1200 people (Muslims, Christians, Druzes, Buddhists, and Jews) AND the total war that Israel has been waging in Gaza almost without interruption since (which has killed 15 times as many lives), AND work for a ceasefire and a lasting peace—all without falsifying history. And we must.

How to use and not use the concept of "generations"

Last night, Rona and I happened to be recalling three songs from our youth, all of which in some way touched on the topic of long hair. That probably wouldn't have happened if we had married someone from a different generation instead of someone born the same month and year. If I die and Rona gets involved with someone ten years younger, they probably won't know the same songs, movies, and television shows, and they won't remember some of the same events in the news. For them, that might matter. But what difference does it make to history?

I've long been of the opinion that "talking 'bout my generation" is a useless way to describe social trends. Yes, long hair was an issue for The Cowsills, the Charlie Daniels Band, and the musical Hair, and it wasn't for Frank Sinatra, Tony Bennett, or the Ink Spots. But hair is just one element of how we present ourselves, and self-presentation is an issue in every era, for a wide variety of people. Jeans were working-class clothes until they became trendy, and then there were designer jeans. Underwear used to be considered obscene. Then, not wearing underwear was obscene. Not wearing a hat made JFK different from Presidents before him, but covering your head indoors or not marked whether you were Jewish or Christian for the longest period of time. Even with hair, the Roundheads during the English Civil War used their hairstyle to distinguish themselves against the flowing locks worn by the aristocratic Cavaliers.

Maybe self-presentation is a constant issue across generations, you say, but isn't it trivial? (No.) Aren't the events that a generation experiences formative of their outlook? Yes and no. In my lifetime, you could trace changes in (white people's) attitudes toward government to integration, the Vietnam War, and Watergate. But in previous generations, going back a hundred years, you could find similar attitudes among some more or less well-organized groups, from socialists to America Firsters. Speaking of socialism, there's a resurgent interest in it among people born in the last thirty years, but so was there in the 1960's, the 1930's, the 1890's.

It's a truism that every generation thinks they're the first to discover sex. The same applies to many "generational" phenomena: in specifics they are new, but if you back up only slightly and take a broader view, you can see how they continue from the past.

I am thinking about what the right questions are to ask about generational change. I am pretty sure "How is this generation different from that one?" is a useless question. Instead, I think we should ask:

• How is this generation framing the ongoing questions about how we should live?
• Out of the perennial issues, what are the issues that are coming to the fore, and how?
• Which questions seem less important to this cohort than that, at the present moment? (And will that change as they age?)
• What are the different terms in which old questions are being posed anew?
• When in history did we actually experience seismic shifts in what mattered and how we discussed it?
  

For instance, you could argue that the invention of the atomic bomb launched a whole new discussion about our ability to destroy the earth. Or you could trace it back to the Industrial Revolution and the "dark satanic mills" that Blake wrote about. Or you could say the big change happened when climate change began to occur at a rapid rate.

I would ultimately say that which of these arguments is "right" depends on what we are actually trying to find out, and to do. But they would all be more useful arguments than "OK, Boomer" or "Get off my lawn!"

Thinking about God: Jewish Views, by Rabbi Kari H Tuling: a review

 

This is an invaluable book, and what you get out of it will depend on two things: who are you, and what are you seeking?

If you're a reader (Jewish or not) who's unfamiliar with this tradition, you may become bemused by the sheer variety of Jewish views about God, and how different they are, and how all of them are valid parts of the Jewish tradition. It may change your sense of what thinking about God can be like. Along the way, you will also quietly learn a lot about Jewish texts and traditional ways to read them and about ways that our understanding of God can shape our daily lives. In fact, Rabbi Tuling insists, "Theology defines what is possible in our lives." Read it, and see if you agree!

If you're a Jewish reader who's well-versed in bible and midrash, like me, you will recognize some of the passages with which Rabbi Tuling begins each chapter and nod along with her line-by-line explication. Some of the medieval thinkers were unfamiliar to me, and some of the modern ones too. But as a person who usually approaches God as a partner in the project of tikkun olam, the repair and gradual perfection of creation, and not as a "God of the philosophers," I found it useful to read over the contrasting views and see how much I agreed with some, and less with others. It made me put into words some of what I believe about God rather than just relate to God as someone who's always already been there.

And if you're a person who's inclined toward theology but not familiar with Jewish approaches, you may be taken up short by how much Jewish views of God can contrast with the assumptions soaked into Christianity (to say nothing of Islam, Buddhism, or other traditions!) You may also learn the connection between daring exegesis and theology in Judaism--much more common than a purely deductive approach--and you will have to decide whether you agree with the author when she says, "Any theology that can confidently explain why children get cancer is a monstrosity."

All of us readers, I think, will get suggestions on what to read next!

There Shall Be No Needy, Conclusion: Justice and the Justice System

I'm going to skip over the chapter of There Shall Be No Needy that deals with the environment, because although Jacobs explicitly recognizes that it may be the issue of the 21st century for many Jews, she can only speak about it in general terms. Plus, there have been many books specifically on the topic since hers came out.

The part about the justice system struck me in a personal way.

When my brother, Cantor Ron Fischman, was killed during the Days of Awe in 2014, one of the things I learned was how many people have had a death by violence in the family. Not as many among white, Jewish, and middle-class people,  but in some communities (especially impoverished and racialized communities), it can be impossible not to know someone whose father, mother, brother, or cousin, was killed. For many families, having a perpetrator in the family (and often, in prison) is also a fact of life. I was amazed how sheltered I had been from this reality.

Rabbi Jill Jacobs points out that the U.S. imprisons more people per capita than perhaps any other country in the world, and not only do we do it whether the crime rate is rising or falling, it has no effect on that rise and fall. From a Jewish perspective, that we continue to incarcerate people is inexplicable.

In Jewish history and halakhah, imprisonment is hardly heard of it. Some crimes, like murder and rape, officially require a death sentence, even if it has hardly ever been carried out. Most crimes against persons and property call for monetary fines only. And she points out that when a person truly carries out teshuvah (repentance), it's considered a good idea to waive the fines, to prevent people from avoiding the process of self-scrutiny, confession, and making amends because it could cost them!)

Imprisonment is barely a part of the Jewish tradition, and mainly in the last few hundred years: a blink of the eye in our 4,000-year history. The emphasis is on a) making cities safe places to live; b) treating perpetrators as human and even "our brother," too; and c) promoting rehabilitation.

So what? Except for Israel (which is a secular state and does not operate according to Jewish law), there is not one place in the world where Jews have a majority voice on making policy. What difference does it make whether or not you and I know what the Jewish tradition has to say on all these issues of social justice?

If nothing else, it is important to let our fellow citizens know that conservative and even reactionary positions are not equivalent to being religious or moral. We are currently seeing that in the sphere of reproductive justice. I am proud of the Jewish organizations that have not only spoken up in public but in court, saying that denying pregnant people access to abortions is preventing some Jews from doing what they are morally supposed to do in certain situations under Jewish law. As the car magnet that the National Council of Jewish Women sent me says to everyone who looks at the back of my car: "Abortion bans are against my religion!"

Thanks to Rabbi Jacobs and the organization she currently leads, T'ruah, for making the point that religious traditions can inspire us to work for liberty and justice for all.

There Shall Be No Needy, Part 7: Society, Heal Thyself!

The importance of providing health care is such an assumption in the Jewish culture I grew up in that I was surprised to learn it was ever debated--but that just goes to show you how in Judaism, everything is open to debate! In chapter 7 of There Shall Be No Needy,  Rabbi Jill Jacobs gives respect to the minority view that it is up to God to heal sickness (not wounds), or that once upon a time in the age of prophecy that was the case. She rightly states that the overwhelming sentiment is that medicine is a mitzvah, for at least two reasons:

1. We were made in the image of God. Whoever heals a human being is doing a good thing on a cosmic scale!
2. Our bodies are our most valuable possessions. If it's a mitzvah to return my book, my coat, or my donkey that I have lost, what a greater good deed it is to return my health!

Ordinarily we don't pay someone for doing a mitzvah. As she has established in earlier chapters, however, rabbinic opinion is that Jewish communities can organize and regulate themselves for the sake of tikkun olam, which in this case means "to establish a health care system in which doctors and other potential lifesavers feel motivated to operate at their highest capacity, and in which patients can be expected to afford their treatments." But as she remarks:

These texts are especially troubling to read in contemporary American, where an inefficient and profit-driven health care system simultaneously makes it difficult for doctors to treat uninsured patients without risking their own livelihoods and prevents many patients from being able to afford needed medical care and medicine. (170-171)

As usual, Jacobs holds the U.S. to the standards she can find in the Jewish tradition and finds it wanting. Just to be clear, the Affordable Care Act passed the year after this book was published, yet I suspect it would not fundamentally alter her assessment: she is arguing that as Jews, we must demand much more from our society. In fact, she implies that any system that involves paying health insurance companies and having them make profit-driven decisions about health care is not acceptable by Jewish standards.

There Shall Be No Needy, Part 6: What makes a home?

As a former tenant and a longtime landlord, as someone who worked at an agency that prevented eviction and as a member of a city commission against housing discrimination, I have been acutely aware of issues around housing and homelessness. In There Shall Be No Needy, Rabbi Jill Jacobs shows that you don't have to have had my life experience to see those issues as Jewish issues. They are deeply rooted in Jewish experience and Jewish text.

I don't altogether buy her argument that "the lack of a secure home" because of exile has created a Jewish sensitivity to homelessness. The two situations are not comparable. At most, when we reflect on how distraught our ancestors were on being expelled from the land and how much it disrupted their whole society, we can understand that losing one's apartment or house, today, is not just a personal tragedy. That is important to realize, I agree.

Here are some other, stronger points that Jacobs makes about the search for housing justice being rooted in Jewish values:

• Rabbinic texts assume that even poor people who have no food have homes. (Again, how deeply this is a criticism of contemporary American life, where that assumption is invalid!)
• Poor people cannot be required to give up their homes to receive assistance (tzedakah). Instead, the rest of us are under an obligation to make sure they can live in those homes in dignity.
  
• There is a model of what permanent housing is NOT: the sukkah. Houses that let the rain in, that have no heat, that are unsafe to live in for extended periods of time, are not homes, and providing such housing is not justice.
• There is a model of what a permanent home IS: the kind of place where we must affix a mezuzah. She summarizes Maimonides' definition; it must be of adequate size, and:
  

A permanent home, in Rambam's description, must have doors and a roof so that the residents be protected from the elements and from other potential dangers, such as robbers. Finally, just as a sukkah should be constructed with the intention that it be temporary, a home must be constructed with the intention that it be a permanent dwelling place. According to these requirements, it may be that transitional housing, FEMA trailers, shelters, and other nonpermanent or unsafe residences would not qualify as homes... (144)

•  The commandment to build a guardrail around a flat roof shows "a house should protect people, to the greatest degree possible, from all potential danger. Concern for human life must, literally, be built into the fabric of the house." (145)
• Landlords have a deep and broad responsibility to ensure the place they rent out is safe and secure. We also have an obligation to prevent homelessness. This is not like renting out an animal (or a car). We have a commanded role to play in creating housing stability.
• The federal government has had a long, evil history of creating racial segregation in housing and evicting poor communities en masse from their neighborhoods. (For a much more detailed discussion of this history, I recommend The Color of Law, by Richard Rothstein.) Therefore, we as a country must do teshuvah, repentance, for the sin of creating a racially biased housing crisis, creating homelessness and not preventing it.
  

There Shall Be No Needy: How does she get that from the sources?

If you've been following my summaries of There Shall Be No Needy by Rabbi Jill Jacobs here, here, here, here, and even here, you might be wondering: how does Rabbi Jacobs arrive at her conclusions? Are they predetermined, so that she goes looking for a prooftext to support them, or what is her method of reading Torah, Talmud, and other sources?

I admire the author's intellectual honesty. She is quite open about the fact that it's possible to derive different conclusions from the same texts. In chapter 5, for example, she points out that conservative commentators can look at rabbinic sayings about the need to follow minhag hamakom, the custom of the land, and argue that it means "let the market decide."  (She offers a quite different reading of minhag hamakom--in her view, it authorizes local living wage laws, for example--but she gives the sources for the opposing view. See page 109 and footnotes thereon.)

Over and above the close reading of texts, however, Rabbi Jacobs offers us this overall approach: repeatedly, she points out how the current situation in the U.S. denies the basic assumptions on which halakhah is based. Therefore:

Given the discrepancy between halakhic obligations on workers and the contemporary reality, we are confronted with two possibilities. We can either reconsider the halakhic [requirements], or we can accept the current reality as a challenge to traditional halakhah and in turn, use halakhah to critique the present-day situation. [my emphasis]

If applying halakhah in the U.S. capitalist society of the 21st century produces unjust results, then it is the society that has to change.

From this standpoint, she can make an argument using traditional Jewish sources that Jews should not only allow but actively encourage union membership,  require employers to hire union workers, and use the power of government to set wages, hours, and benefits in favor of the more vulnerable party, the workers. 

She can also use the text "Remember that you were slaves in Egypt" and say, remember that you were in the Triangle Shirtwaist Fire--and in every major strike--and let that memory steer your moral intuition about how to act today.

If the book reaches conclusions that are conducive to liberal politics in the U.S., it is because liberality is deeply rooted in the Jewish tradition.

There Shall Be No Needy, part 5: The dignity of labor

 One thing to remember about Torah and work: Don't be like Pharaoh. Be like Boaz.

According to chapter 5 of Rabbi Jill Jacobs' There Shall Be No Needy, if we want a model of what NOT to do as an employer, Pharaoh is the perfect negative example. Why?

 

Anyone who has ever read the Passover Haggadah knows that in the biblical story of slavery in Egypt, Pharaoh made the Israelites work "with rigor" (b'farech). Jacobs cites a midrash that reads that word with different vowel points, as b' peh rach, "with a gentle mouth." In the midrash, Pharaoh goes out and inspires them to work hard as a team--then requires them to work that hard every single day! 

 

Don't be like Pharaoh. Don't ask your workers to be Stakhanovites, and don't tell them "We are all one family here," because you are not going to treat them as family. You know that.

Another midrash says that Pharaoh put a heavy burden on a child and a light burden on an adult. What is cruel about this is not only that the child (or in other examples, the elderly person, or the woman) is being overworked. It is also that the stronger worker is forced to witness the degradation of the weaker and do nothing about it. It dehumanizes both, and it also dehumanizes the boss who "by extension, questioned the value of all humans, including themselves" (102). I see a striking parallel to Marx's theory of alienation here, as I've explained it in chapter 5 of Political Discourse in Exile: Karl Marx and the Jewish Question.

 

Don't be like Pharaoh. Hardening your heart against your workers makes you less human yourself.

[There are other lessons I could draw from the biblical text of Exodus itself: 

• Don't work your employees so hard for so many hours that they cannot have satisfying sexual relationships with their spouses (a theme explored at length in Aviva Zornberg's The Particulars of Rapture, which I have blogged about here.)
• Don't retaliate against workers for making demands, as Pharaoh does when he hears Moses and Aaron say "Let My people go." Pharaoah responds with a worker speedup, forcing the Israelites to go out and gather the straw they need for their brickmaking while requiring the same number of bricks from them as before.
•  At the simplest level: don't enslave people. Or do anything that even resembles slavery, like debt peonage, indentures, or trafficking.]

Boaz--not a Ruthless employer!

Much later in the Tanakh, in the Book of Ruth, we get a story of a man that Rabbi Jacobs thinks can set us a positive example. Boaz (whose name means "in him there is strength") is Ruth's kinsman, and a wealthy landowner. He notices the widowed Ruth working in his fields, protects her, and eventually marries her.

It is not just the one employee that Boaz treats with dignity. As Jacobs points out:

First, it is clear that Boaz visits the fields often. He is familiar with the workers, and he even notices the appearance of a new gleaner [Ruth]. Second, Boaz invokes God's name in greeting his workers...[in the workplace, in] a situation where we might not expect to sense God's presence....Third, Boaz's insistence on enforcing the biblical permission for the poor to glean shows his awareness that his wealth is not his own, but is a loan from God, meant to be shared with those who do not enjoy such wealth. (107)

Don't be like Pharaoh. Be like Boaz.

There Shall Be No Needy, part 4: What Are Needs? How Do We Meet Them?

Two things become clear as I go through Rabbi Jill Jacobs' book There Shall Be No Needy: how much society has changed since the classic Jewish texts were written...and how much we can still learn from them.

How much about poverty has changed

On the first point, it's clear that in Torah and rabbinic commentaries, there's a presumption that poverty is temporary. Everyone will normally have the means to make a living (most often, land that they can farm). Everyone will normally be able to survive, thrive, and participate in the community as a dignified member of a household.  Yes, at any given time someone is likely to need help, because their land's fertility is exhausted, or their own bodies are. But for a Jewish society to allow families to live in need from one generation to another would be unthinkable. 

Today, most Jews live as a tiny minority within a non-Jewish, non-agricultural society and the State of Israel runs on civil law, not Jewish law. So, we do not have systems that make poverty temporary. Realizing this, we can ask: what would it take to set up systems like those? And we can advocate for them as policy.

There is also a presumption that tzedakah is a communal activity: neither just private, not just governmental. Primarily, one is responsible to give to the Jewish community tzedakah fund (and there are lots of rules to prevent favoritism in distributing money from that fund), and only then does one consider private charity. This made sense when Jews primarily lived in ghettos, or under the authority of a Jewish communal leader, and when the national government was foreign to us. As Jacobs writes:

If considered at all, the larger government is seen as an impediment or as an active threat. At best, the government leaves the Jewish community alone. At worst, the government demands excessive taxes or even sponsors persecution.  (94)
 

Today, thank God, in most countries we do not have to regard the government with such trepidation. In the U.S., there are liberal Jews active in high elected and appointed positions. There is also a limited, wavering, but still clear commitment to social welfare through government action. Realizing this, we can ask: what can we learn from Jewish tradition that can inform our advocacy on issues of poverty and inequality? 

What we can still learn from Jewish sources

Once again, Jacobs' discussion is erudite and subtle, and I recommend reading it in full. A major point that I take away, however, is that there is no simple rule for whose needs to meet, which needs, and how. We are called on to exercise judgment and balance our concerns.

Whose needs?

• Jews vs. non-Jews
• The poorest vs. all the poor
• Where I live vs. other places

There are sources that stake out a clear preference for the first choice in each of these binaries. Other, perhaps wiser heads point out that that there are both moral and practical reasons not to give exclusively to Jews, the poorest, or the people nearby. 

• Giving only to Jews makes us odious to our neighbors, and we no longer live in a place where the broader society will ignore Jews' needs. 
• Giving to the poorest might mean funding food pantries to the exclusion of everything else, since a person who has nothing to eat cannot benefit from other help for long! 
• And given the level of housing segregation by race and class, the poorest people where I live might not be very poor on a global scale, and they might be mainly white people. 

 

All of these would be problematic, so we must exercise good judgment and not automatically follow an algorithm.

Which needs? 

Again, there's more here than I can summarize, but Jacobs makes it clear that bringing people up to their customary level (if they are in straits temporarily) or at least up to the community level is mandatory. Taking care of subsistence needs is laudable but not nearly enough. This has strong policy implications!

Also, not all needs are material. It is appropriate to spend some communal tzedakah money, and some personal, on books that can be lent to the poor. This is spiritual sustenance, and it is just as important as physical nourishment. The Friends of the Somerville Public Library will be happy to hear about this!

Not every contribution is tzedakah, however. It may be a great idea to send your local high school kids on a field trip, and you might donate toward that, but unless you live in an impoverished area you should consider it a different kind of communal activity (and not take it out of your tzedakah budget).

How should we meet those needs?

Jacobs makes it clear that the Jewish tradition endorses helping people currently in need, collecting funds for people who may need help in the future--think the next pandemic!--AND changing society so that "There shall be no needy." All three. One does not absolve me, my community, or the United States from energetically pursuing the other.

I note that the same Torah portion that says "there shall be no needy," only a few verses later commands tzedakah because "the poor will always be with you." Deuteronomy 15:11 This is not a contradiction: it is a moral imperative.

As Jacobs puts it:

In designing social systems, we should strive to prevent extreme poverty, to allow each member of society the opportunity to support himself or herself in a dignified and productive way, and to care for those who still fall through the cracks. Some of our tzedakah money should go toward creating this society. But even in this ideal society, some people will still need emergency assistance, especially in the face of health challenges, job loss, or other crises. A combination of governmental assistance and individual tzedakah would address these issues. And even if, against all expectations, we create a world in which there is no poverty at all, we should still maintain our practice of giving tzedakah both to reap the spiritual benefits of cultivating generosity and to ensure that a system of tzedakah will be available to respond to needs that might arise in the future.

There Shall Be No Needy, part 3: Taking time, place, and person into account

What constitutes poverty? Is there such a thing as "the" poverty line? And is it always based on the amount a person owns, or do social conditions tell us what a person or household really needs?

Rabbi Jill Jacobs discusses these questions in detail in chapter 3 of There Shall Be No Needy, and I cannot capture the richness of her discussion of traditional Jewish sources. She shows how there is debate on each of these points. Still, just as in the classic rabbinic debates between Hillel and Shammai we study both positions but follow those of Hillel, I think we can safely say these are normative positions in Jewish thinking:

1. Ideally, we should live in a society where poverty is a temporary condition, due to a bad harvest or some other transient turn of events. That we do not live in a society like that today is partly a reflection of industrialization, but it is also a reflection on our tolerating a system that produces chronic poverty.
2. Poor people are not worse than rich people. Poverty is not a punishment. Nor, for the most part, is it an uplifting experience. We don't distinguish between the "deserving" and the "undeserving" poor: there shall be no needy!
   
3. Poverty is about not being able to live the dignified life that one is accustomed to (or that is customary in one's time). It is immoral to say to someone that they are not really poor because they have a car, a house, or even their grandmother's silver dishes.
4. What it takes to live varies from place to place, too. The standard of living that includes you in the community in one country, or even one region, would make you an outsider in another, and programs to address poverty must take that into account.
5. What I owe, I don't own. Even what I have invested in making my business a going concern is not mine. So, it should not count toward the determination of need.
6. On the other hand, communal resources are limited, too. So, people should voluntarily and ethically take only what and when they need. It is also legitimate to ask about the recipient's own resources when they are not in danger of going hungry or homeless, with great caution and limitations to the questions asked.
7. Err on the side of generosity.

I want to add a teaching that is not mentioned in this chapter, which is that a poor person, too, has the obligation to give to the communal tzedakah fund, because there may be someone poorer and in more need than she is!

There Shall Be No Needy, part 2: Righteous Rulers and Prophetic Voices

 Along with tikkun olam, another oft-repeated motto of Jewish progressives is "Tzedek, Tzedek Tirdof." I remember it on a banner that fellow New Jewish Agenda members marched with in the 1980's. The slogan has often been translated as "Justice, Justice You Shall Pursue." But what does tzedek really mean?

According to Rabbi Jill Jacobs, tzedek is not an abstract notion of justice: it is a relational one. She cites Moshe Weinfeld of Hebrew University:

...the concept refers primarily to the improvement of the conditions of the poor, which is undoubtedly accomplished through regulations issued by the king and his officials, and not by offering legal assistance to the poor man in his [sic] litigation with the oppressor.

 Jacobs herself concludes, "The task of the just sovereign, whether human or divine, is to establish a system of government that protects the vulnerable." (42)

Now, we may remember that in biblical times, many Jewish sovereigns did not establish that kind of government. Prophetic voices called them to task. "The prophetic quality consists of an ability to imagine the world as God might see it and to measure the existing world against the divine ideal of a world without oppression or inequality." (47) 

Sometimes, prophets call on God to do justice; more often, they call on human rulers to be righteous. Sometimes, they inveigh against empty rituals, but nearly always, they point to the potential of ritual to sharpen our sense of what it means to do tikkun olam.

How do these concepts help us shape modern-day institutions and make policy? That is what the rest of the book is all about.

There Shall Be No Needy, part 1: What Tikkun Olam means in depth

I came to read Rabbi Jill Jacobs' book There Shall Be No Needy: Pursuing Social Justice through Jewish Law & Tradition because Rabbi Danya Ruttenberg referred to it in her book on teshuvah and because I respect Jacobs' work at Truah. 

I expected an inspiring but somewhat dated book I somehow hadn't read when it came out, so I could fill a gap in my education with just a little attention. It is so much more than that! 

Jacobs' book is written for the general public, but it is definitely a work of scholarship. Despite my Jewish social justice background over decades, I am learning so much by reading it--slowly--that I thought I would share some lessons with you, and help my memory by taking notes at the same time! 

Four meanings of Tikkun Olam

Ever since I was in college, when I get to the passage at the end of the Aleinu prayer, I say the part l'taken olam b'malchut shaddai, "to perfect the world under the kingship of the Almighty," out loud. (I do this in memory of my teacher Rabbi Arnold Jacob Wolf.) Tikkun olam has become a byword of Jewish progressives. In some circles, as Jacobs laments, it has become divorced from anything specifically Jewish. But what does it mean?

Establishing the Divine Kingdom

In the prayer I just mentioned, tikkun olam is about everyone recognizing the sovereignty of God and putting away idol worship. That might sound like it means everyone becomes Jewish, but nothing could be farther from the truth! Modern-day idol worship, as so many of us recognize, is the idolatry of money, power, and social superiority, As Jacobs interprets it, tikkun olam in this sense could mean "an end to all the 'impurities' such as poverty and discrimination that hamper the manifestation of the divine presence." (27)

 

The Preservation of the World

In some of the midrashic literature (for instance, B'reishit Rabbah 4:7), tikkun olam means the physical fixing and stabilization of the planet, and perhaps the larger universe, "such as global warming, deforestation, or the extinction of animal species," as Jacobs interprets it. (40)

The Preservation of the Halakhic System and the Social Order

In the Mishnah, the base text of the Talmud, tikkun ha'olam often refers to problems in divorce law. Specifically, it applies in cases where a man divorces his wife and attempts to change his mind, or where the get (divorce decree) might be technically invalid. If these cases were left unchecked, soon no one would know who was legally married and who was not, and the whole community would be disrupted. So, rabbis in the Talmud stated they could close the loopholes even where they didn't have explicit authority to do so. Why? For tikkun ha'olam, the greater good of having a legal system that worked for the community, and especially for the most vulnerable members of the community.

 

Restoring Divine Perfection

In the Lurianic Kabbalah, there is a notion that the process of creating the world went dramatically wrong, and that everything we see around us as reality is merely the shattered vessels that were supposed to make up one whole, unified Creation. In this conception, it is up to human beings, especially Jews, to lift up the shards and reunite them--and in some sense, reunite God, who is in exile with us in this imperfect world--through prayer and observing the commandments (including the ones to help the poor and to do justice, but also the ritual commandments about Shabbat, holidays, etc.)

A Synthesis

I suggest a reimagining of tikkun olam that combines the four understandings of the term we have seen in tradtional text:

1. the Aleinu's concept of tikkun as the destruction of any impurities that impede the full manifestation of the divine presence; 2. the literalist midrashic understanding of tikkun as the establishment of a sustainable social order; 3.  the rabbinic willingness to invoke tikkun ha'olam as a justification for changing laws likely to create chaos, and 4. the Lurianic belief that individual actions can affect the fate of the world as a whole. (38)