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, 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)
   

From Text to Tradition: A History of Second Temple & Rabbinic Judaism (Lawrence Schiffman)

According to Jewish legend, the First Temple in Jerusalem was destroyed in 586 BCE and the Second Temple in 70 CE, on the same day of the Jewish calendar. 

We Jews mark that day, Tisha B'av, every year, in memory of the two destructions, as if nothing happened in between. 

That elision is certainly consistent with how I learned Jewish history. In my education, there was a big blank between the return from the Babylonian Exile and the conquest of Jerusalem by the Roman general Titus. 

Only the Maccabean revolt was stuck in the middle (the way Chanukah is stuck in the middle between the fall holidays and Pesach in the spring).

For someone like me, then, From Text to Tradition : A History of Second Temple and Rabbinic Judaism does a great service.

I picked up this book while I was taking part in a 929 daily discussion of the Tanach. We had reached the biblical books of Ezra and Nehemiah, and I was confused. Who were these people, and how did they relate to some of the figures I'd read about earlier in Zechariah (Zerubabel and Joshua ben Jehozadak)? Who were the Jews who never went into Babylonia? What were people from other countries doing in Judea now? And who were the Samaritans, and why was there (what seemed like) sibling rivalry between them and the Jewish leaders?

Schiffman clarifies many of these points and makes me want to learn even more about them. He goes on to talk about Jewish life during the age of Alexander the Great and his successors, especially the Ptolemies in Egypt and the Seleucids in Syria, not only in the holy land but all around the Middle East. In Judea itself, he briefly addresses the conflicts between high priests and Hasmonean monarchs (descendants of the Maccabees)--and among the members of the royal family themselves. 

An aside: Why, I wonder, have there not been as many novels about the Hasmoneans as about the Tudors, or the Medici? The rivalry in the court of Salome Alexandra is certainly as dramatic as the politics under Elizabeth I. There is fertile ground here for fiction writers!

Schiffman purports to be writing a history of Judaism, not Jews, during this period. Repeatedly, however, he makes the point that you cannot understand how Jewish thought and practice evolved without paying attention to the social and political pressures that shaped it. 

This seems especially true for the period just before the destruction of the Second Temple. Knowing what was going on between different "political parties" in Judea and their relations to Hellenism, to Roman rule, and to nations fighting against Rome (like the Parthians) is vital to understanding Jewish sects like the Sadducees, Pharisees, Essenes, the people at Qumran, and the Jesus-followers who eventually became a separate religion.

There are some texts that were written by Jews that have played a more important part in Christianity and in historiography than in Judaism. These include the Septuagint, the apocrypha, the pseudepigrapha, the philosophy of Philo Judaeus, and the history written by Josephus. Schiffman explains that the Greek-speaking Jews of the diaspora might at one time have been familiar with these, but they increasingly were absorbed either into the Greek-speaking Christian world or into the Hebrew-speaking, Palestine-centered Jewish sphere. 

Then he goes on to explain the texts that did become central to rabbinic Judaism (which with very few exceptions is Judaism as we know it today): the Mishnah, the baraita, the Palestinian and Babylonian Talmuds, the books of midrash.

Whew! I see I cannot discuss this book without doing a lot of name-dropping. If you are not at all familiar with this history, perhaps Schiffman is not the best one to introduce you to it. 

If you're in a similar place as I am however--very familiar with some of these people, places, and things and only vaguely familiar with others--then he may be a good teacher to put them together into a more complete picture.

I note, however, that this book was published thirty years ago, and the author was already hoping that recent discoveries and studies would fill out the picture more. If you know of a more up-to-date book that compares to this, would you please suggest it to me?

Arguing with God is Sacred (Parshat VaYakhel-Pekudei)

In this week's parshah, the first one I ever chanted from the Torah scroll, there are two very different ideas about our dialogue with God. The first: that there are things we cannot figure out for ourselves and can only learn through being divinely inspired. The second: that we have some things to teach God, too.

God Teaches Us 

"And Moses said to the Israelites: See, the Lord has singled out by name Bezalel, son of Uri son of Hur, of the tribe of Judah. He has endowed him with a divine spirit of skill, ability, and knowledge in every kind of designer's craft...." (Exodus 35: 30-31)

According to Avivah Zornberg, drawing on Rashi's commentary, the Hebrew words used here for "skill" (or "wisdom") and "ability" (or "understanding") are qualities a human being can possess innately or can learn. The word da'at, here translated as "knowledge," goes beyond that. It is an intimate kind of knowledge: in her words (p. 470), "the mystery of a gift that can be explained in no other way than as 'taught by God.'"

So, when Moses says that God has given da'at to Bezalel, it goes beyond conferring legitimacy on Bezalel's direction of the project of building the Mishkan (and let us not forget his assistant, Oholiav, because the #2 is often the person who makes everything work!). Moses allays the people's remaining fear that a building project--like the Golden Calf--that is not supervised moment to moment by Moses himself can lead them away from God, toward plague and death. 

On this, first, reading, human initiatives can be dangerous, and only a "divine spirit" can lead us in the right direction. Our job is to listen.

We (or at least, Moses) Have Something to Teach Too

The link between the Golden Calf and the Mishkan has been implicit throughout the later chapters of Exodus. The midrashic commentary makes the link explicit. 

One commentator marvels that the Israelites can be so generous both for a misguided effort and for a well-guided one. For the building of the Golden Calf, they tore off their gold earrings, and for the Mishkan, they brought so much gold and other gifts that Moses had to call the capital campaign to an end! (Exodus 36:4-7) "The Holy One, Blessed be God then said: 'Let the gold of the Mishkan atone for the gold they brought toward the making of the Golden Calf." (Shemot Rabbah 51: 6)

But did God reach this conclusion by God's self, or did God have a little help? In the midrashic literature, Moses makes a sly argument to drive God toward a position of forgiveness. I quote:

"R. Nehemiah said: When the Israelites committed that sin, Moses began to appease God. He said: 'Master of the universe, they have provided you with help, and You are angry with them! this calf that they have made will help you: You will make the sun rise and it will take care of the moon; You will bring forth the stars and it the planets...'

God answered: 'Moses! Are you, too misled like them! For there is nothing in the idol!' And Moses replied: 'If so, why are you angry with Your children?'"

Moses is saying to God, in effect--what do you have to complain about? We all know the Calf has no power. Given that, what is there to be jealous of?

It is with arguments like these--teasing, cajoling, intimate--that Moses time and again wins God's forgiveness for the people. And Moses is standing in the footsteps of the first father of the Jewish people, Abraham, who tries to save even the people of Sodom and Gomorrah by arguing with God on their behalf. His ultimate failure doesn't take away from the greatness of his example.

On this alternative reading, it would be folly, wickedness, a dereliction of duty for Jews to accept God's instructions passively. As Rabbi Abraham Joshua Heschel wrote, God is "in search of Man." God seeks the active partnership of humanity in repairing and perfecting the world. If we make it worse through some of our actions, that is no excuse for not striving to make it better.

With our hands and our craft, or with our hearts and our words, we build the sacred in our lives.

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I've been reading through Avivah Gottlieb Zornberg's amazing commentary on the biblical Book of Exodus, The Particulars of Rapture. Each chapter expounds one of the portions we read in the synagogue weekly. It's slow going because it is so rich with insights, and I cannot begin to do it justice. To keep on track, I have been posting at least one insight weekly for the last ten weeks, and (thanks to God and my study partners) I have now finished the book.  If these reflections have been interesting to you, my blog reader, so much the better!

Loving Words

 

When the Israelites stand before Mount Sinai, in Parshat Yitro, they are attracted and repelled by God's word.

Attracted

"All the people answered as one, saying, 'All that the Lord has spoken we will do!' And Moses brought back the people's words to the Lord." (Exodus 19:8)

It is very strange that the people are so bold, so willing, so eager to be overcome by God's commandments that they send Moses back to accept God's proposal right away. Previously, they doubted Moses. Previously, even in the face of miraculous displays of power, they doubted God. And they will again. 

But in this moment, the Jewish people as a whole commit themselves: not to the commandments, which they have not heard yet, but to the relationship. "Now then, if you will obey me faithfully [literally: listen, listen to my voice!] and keep my covenant, you shall be My treasured possession among all the peoples." 

God speaks words of love to us, we listen, and we fall in love with God.

Repelled

But when the Israelites get to the foot of the mountain and they hear God's voice, they cannot stand it.

Literally "cannot stand," according to a couple of midrashic interpretations that Avivah Zornberg cites. 

One midrash says that the sound of God's voice actually kills the Jews, and it is only the words of Torah that revive them. (I wryly note how this is the opposite of Christian teaching: it is the Spirit that kills, and the Letter that brings life.)

Another reading (Rashi on Exodus 20:15), says they cannot stand in place, and "they recoiled twelve miles to the rear--the whole length of their camp--and the ministering angels came and helped to restore them to their place." (Zornberg, p. 263)

Longing and running away

And what is it that overpowers them? Another famous midrash answers: they could not stand to hear the entire Decalogue, because God's voice was too much for them. Hearing God say "I" threw them into an abnormal state. Some say they could not hear the whole word anokhi, "I"--only its first letter, aleph. But the aleph is silent!

God's attention to us is overwhelming. We long for it, and we cannot stand it. We say. "All that the Lord has spoken we will do," but God parts God's lips and we begin to quake.

On this midrashic reading, God speaks to us and we must run away, like in the Song of Songs: "I opened to my beloved; but my beloved had turned away, and was gone. My soul failed me when he spoke."

Loving God's Words

What can we do? From Sinai to the present day, the Jewish people are madly, passionately in love with God, but (except for Moses) we cannot listen directly to God's voice. We cannot live without it. We cannot live with it. What can we do?

We listen to God's words, instead.

The very next week after we read the story of standing at Sinai, in Parshat Yitro, we read the many detailed instructions on how to live, in Parshat Mishpatim. 

 

We turn from what Zornberg would call "rapture" to what she would call "particulars."

We listen to Moses listening to God and telling us the story of what God said.

This is how Judaism as we know it came to be: through a sacred obsession with the meaning of God's words, as written in the rest of the book of Exodus and in Leviticus, Numbers, and Deuteronomy, too, until Moses dies. Yes, Judaism has always included mystical experiences as well, but they are not necessary and not desirable for most people, most of the time.

Language is the Jewish love language.

 

 

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I'm reading through Avivah Gottlieb Zornberg's amazing commentary on the biblical Book of Exodus, The Particulars of Rapture. Each chapter expounds one of the portions we read in the synagogue weekly. It's slow going because it is so rich with insights. To keep on track, I will post at least one insight weekly between now and mid-March, when (God willing) I finish the book.

Inheriting Abraham, by Jon D. Levenson

Someone once said that the U.S. and the U.K. are two nations divided by a common language. We both speak English, but oh, the different ways we speak it!

This brilliant little book by Levenson, the Albert A. List Professor of Jewish Studies at Harvard, makes the same claim about Jewish, Christian, and Muslim conceptions of Abraham. Abraham is central to all of us, but in very different ways.

Abraham in Judaism

For Jews, broadly speaking, Abraham is the the first father of our people. In the Torah, God singled him out and commanded his allegiance, and Abraham proved worthy of God's trust through his actions. He circumcised himself and his sons Ishmael and Isaac, as God instructed. He didn't withhold his son Isaac when God told him to sacrifice Isaac (in the Akedah story). Abraham also argued with God about what justice required, so well that if only a few more righteous people lived in Sodom and Gomorrah, both cities would have been saved.

Some commentators go so far as to imagine that Abraham lived by the 613 commandments of the Torah even before they were given to Moses. The continuity between Abraham and the Jewish people is complete.

Jews are descendants of Abraham in a lineal way, but there are other biological descendants: the children of Ishmael. In the Torah, they are blessed with the promise of becoming great nations. Jews are blessed in the same way too, but we claim an additional legacy from Abraham. As a community, we inherit his commitment to God, and God to him. That is why converts to Judaism typically call themselves "son or daughter of Abraham" (and Sarah, in more liberal circles).

Converting to Judaism

Within the Jewish tradition, there are ways of recognizing Abraham's importance for people who are not descended from him in any way. This begins in the Torah: "All the families of the earth shall bless themselves by you" (Genesis 12:3) and continues in midrash that states that throughout their travels, Abraham and Sarah brought many people to an understanding of God. Judaism is not an either/or religion, however. Abraham can be a light unto the nations (as we are commanded to be, as a people) and still be specifically Avraham Avinu, Abraham our father.

Abraham in Christianity

Christianity, of course, originally sprang from Judaism. Beginning with Paul, however, Christians interpreted the figure of Abraham both as a foreshadowing of Jesus and as a proof that they--and not the Jews--were the proper descendants of Abraham.

This interpretation rested on two readings of Genesis that the Jewish tradition would not accept.

1. Reading Genesis 12:3 not as "All the families of the earth shall bless themselves by you" but through you, instead. The Jewish reading had people saying, "May you be like Abraham!" The Christian reading had them saying "We are like Abraham, and the message that he brought flows through us."
2. Making much of the fact that God chooses Abraham first and only later commands him to circumcise himself and his male children. In Paul's hands, this becomes proof that circumcision (and by extension, all the mitzvot, or commandments, of the Torah) are unnecessary. The nations of the world can become Christians without becoming Jews first.

For Christians, according to Levenson, Abraham's distinguishing feature was his faith in God. Since to many Christians, Jesus is God, their belief in Jesus makes them descendants of Abraham. 

From this perspective, people who do not put faith first, and people who do not believe in Jesus, are missing the point of Abraham and (in the case of Jews) spurning their inheritance. They are putting their salvation in peril. That is an unimaginable thing for a Christian to do, but not an issue that takes up much space in Judaism. Christians generally don't realize that Jews by and large leave questions of what happens after death up to God, and that Jews believe "The righteous of all nations have a place in the world to come" (Pirkei Avot 1:1). So, what is the point to Christians is beside the point to Jews.

For Christians, the meaning of Abraham is that Jews should give up rabbinic teachings and "go back to Abraham"--meaning to the Abraham imagined by Christians, who cares only for God and his own soul, not the one in Genesis who is clearly exercised over which of his biological sons will inherit from him. So, for Jews and Christians, being "Abrahamic religions" is a stumbling block to interfaith understanding as much as it is a spur to achieve it.

Abraham in Islam

No god but God, and Abraham was his prophet

 In Islam, Abraham is not the ancestor of the Jews nor the prototype of Christian faith. Abraham is a "muslim" in the literal sense: a person who submits to God.

For followers of Islam, what is most important about Abraham is his strict monotheism. The Qur'an stresses that Abraham was not a pagan or a polytheist, at a time when the vast majority of people were. In this way, Abraham the prophet was just like Muhammad the prophet, and the latter came to restore and amplify on the teachings of the former. Being a descendant of Abraham in any sense doesn't matter. What matters is sharing his belief.

The Torah shows Abraham meeting with and worshiping with priests who called God by other names than he did, and it does not show Abraham saying that only one God exists--simply that he, Abraham, will follow only one. Unlike Christians and Jews, however, Muslims are not bound by the stories in the Torah. If those stories conflict with Qur'an or with belief, they are free to regard them as garbled in transmission. So once again, Jews and Muslims being "Abrahamic" is a source of tension between them as much as it is an opportunity for mutual understanding.

One Abraham or Three?

Jew and Christians both claim to be Abraham's descendants and heirs. Muslims don't.

Jews and Muslims both think Abraham's monotheism means God has no body and no separate "persons." Christians think God has both.

Christians and Muslims both think everyone must eventually accept the truth of their religion to be saved from hell. Jews don't.

Levenson is drawing all these distinctions partly because he is a careful scholar, but partly because he is convinced that relations between Jews, Muslims, and Christians must be based on mutual respect. Sweeping these differences under the rug only keeps us from doing the more important work of understanding one another. I fully agree.

Joseph, Jonah, Miriam, and Nelson

Some weeks in shul, I don't hear any cogent words about the Torah portion.  But today at Temple B'nai Brith, reading Parshat Vayigash, I heard at least three wonderful thoughts.

The Torah Portion

Parshat Vayigash brings the story of Joseph to its climax.  When he was young, his brothers sold him into slavery, but he rose to become the leader of Egypt, second in command to the Pharaoh.  At this point in the story, his brothers have come to Egypt three times, twice seeking food in a famine, the third time accused of stealing from the Egyptian leader whom they do not recognize as their brother. 

Joseph has threatened to keep the youngest brother (Benjamin, the son of Rachel, who was Joseph's mother too) in prison forever.  An older brother, Judah, offers to take Benjamin's place, to keep their father Jacob from dying of grief for his favorite remaining son.  Moved to tears, Joseph reveals himself.  He tells them that not they but God sent him to Egypt so that he could do good, and he gets Pharaoh's permission to invite them to bring the entire clan to Egypt to settle.

Today at shul, the twins Jonah and Miriam Freed Boardman celebrated their b'nai mitzvah.  Each said something penetrating about the story.

Three Interpretations

Jonah pointed out that even though the Egyptians regarded the children of Israel/Jacob as barbaric, in the midst of a famine, the Egyptian government invited the Israelites in and made them welcome.  Contrast this to our government, he said, which has been doing so much to turn immigrants and refugees away at the door!

Miriam called our attention to the name of Serach bat Asher, Joseph's niece, one of the only women to be mentioned in the list of Jews who came down to Egypt.  What was so special about Serach?  The text gives no clue, but as usual, that was no bar to the rabbinic imagination.  The rabbis came up with three midrashim about Serach:

1. She was the one who broke the astonishing news that Joseph was alive to her grandfather Jacob.  He had been mourning Joseph for years, perhaps decades, and even good news might have shocked him and even killed him if not for her gentle manner.  As a reward for caring for her aged grandfather, she was granted a miraculous old age...and lived all the way until the time of Moses.
2. Serach was the only one who knew the code word that God had given the Israelites to recognize a true prophet.  She vouched for Moses to her people.
3. Before he died, Joseph arranged to have himself embalmed and made his people promise to take him back to the land of his ancestors.  Four hundred years later, during the Exodus, they had the chance to keep that promise--because Serach knew where Joseph was buried.

Miriam (the namesake of a prophet) reminded us that even a generation ago, she might not have been allowed to celebrate becoming bat mitzvah along with her brother.  With her words of wisdom, she brought women's voices back into the story...including her own.

In response, our congregation's senior leader, Phil Weiss, compared Joseph to another prisoner who rose to leadership: Nelson Mandela.  Like Joseph, Mandela refused to seek revenge on his oppressors.  He and Archbishop Tutu set up commissions for truth and reconciliation instead.  As a result, South Africa still faces many problems, but solving them will not take divine intervention, nor the death of the firstborn.  In this way, Mandela was greater than Joseph.  Joseph left Egypt in a feudal state.  Mandela left South Africa a democracy.

Longing for Leadership: a lesson from a bat mitzvah

In my blog entry "Wrestling with Rebels," I showed some of the different ways that interpreters have treated Korach's rebellion against Moses and Aaron.  Here is the way my student Abby K made sense of it at her bat mitzvah: through an interpretive story, or midrash.

Abby said: As I studied this story, I wondered if we were really seeing an overly biased account. When you think about it, history is written by the victors, and the story of Korah seems to be told as pro-Moses, showing Korah as a villain.  

There are two sides to every story, and I wondered about Korah’s side. Suppose things had turned out differently, or that it was one of Korah’s followers rather than one of Moses’ followers who would have written the account.

The rabbis often filled in gaps in the text of the Torah by writing their commentary or stories known as midrash. And so, I decided to write this midrash, trying to explain why Korah revolted against Moses:

Once, in the land of Egypt, there was a young boy named Korah.  He had the difficult life of an Israelite slave.  One hot, sunny day, he saw the taskmaster beating a slave, which was not uncommon.  Suddenly, a peculiar thing happened.  While Korah watched from the shadows, a young man ran up to the slave and the taskmaster, and killed the taskmaster. The young man happened to be Moses.

Korah was in awe.  “If only I had that power, that control,” Korah thought.  Having no authority as a slave made him fume.  After the Israelites escaped Egypt, his hunger for power only grew stronger. He was seen as noble in the community, but that wasn’t enough. He decided to gather followers, and rebel against Moses and Aaron.  He blamed them for acting too holy.  Very soon after, he and the other rebels died.

Some said that slavery made him bitter.  After the difficult life of labor, he wanted some respect, some power.  Others said he was envious of Moses and Aaron’s authority.  But in one thing the community was certain:  he wanted leadership.

Abby concluded: In the Biblical story, Moses was right and Korah was wrong.  But by writing this midrash, I can see Korah's point of view. Even sometimes when there is a definitive right or wrong answer, always try to see the story in a fair way. Also, it is important to understand why a person does what he does. That's why I wrote this midrash, to understand why.

Wrestling with Rebels

Tomorrow, my student Abby K becomes bat mitzvah at Temple Beth Shalom in Melrose.  She will read from Parshat Korach and comment on it, and I can't wait to hear what she says.  It's a most puzzling portion!

This is the Torah portion where Korach leads a large group of Israelites in challenging the authority of Moses and Aaron to lead them.  "Are not all God's people holy?", they ask.

My students and I have wrestled with this parshah over the years.  It raises so many questions.  Here are several of my previous posts about Korach's rebellion:

1. David Matthews (the son of a friend, who became bar mitzvah at Temple B'nai Brith in Somerville) painted Aaron as the model of nonviolence, an ancestor of Gandhi and Occupy.
2. That made me wonder: didn't Korach have a point? 
3. When is questioning authority legitimate and when not?
4. How should authority respond?
5. How do we build institutions that force us to do the right thing: to respond to dissenters and not silence them?

Do you have your own answers to any of these questions? Please share them.  Shabbat shalom! 

The Spies at the Bar and Bat Mitzvahs

This past Saturday, Jews around the world read Parshat Sh'lach, the section of the Torah in which Moses sends out spies to scout out the land of Canaan. 

It's notoriously difficult to turn human intelligence into policy.  There's always room for interpretation.  We find that in this Torah portion, where ten spies have one report and two another. Moses and Aaron react calmly to the reports, whereas the mass of the people of the Israel want to stone them to death for leading them into a trap!

What's bad for policy--diverse interpretations--is good for reading.  Since my dear niece Fay Stoloff's bat mitzvah five years ago, I have heard three entirely different readings of Parshat Sh'lach. 

1. Rav Jeremy, the rabbi at Fay's temple in Willimantic, says that a can-do attitude can be more discouraging than an honest assessment of the problems we confront.
2. Aaron O'Malley, a bar mitzvah at Temple B'nai Brith, admires his namesake Aaron the priest for speaking truth in the face of opposition.
3. Anna Carton Smith, a bat mitzvah at Temple B'nai Brith, reminds us that our doubts about ourselves may not be how others actually see us.

All good lessons.  All useful to different people at different times.  I thank these three readers for "spying out" some of the meanings of the story, and I invite you to click on the links and spend a minute with each.

Without Charity

Maimonides taught that out of seven levels of charity, the highest level is teaching a person a profession, so that he or she will never have to depend on charity again.  My teacher, Arnold Jacob Wolf, used to say that there was an eighth, higher level: creating a society where no one has to depend on charity.  (As Rabbenu Karl Marx wrote, "From each according to his [sic] abilities, to each according to his needs."

I want to follow Rabbi Wolf's example by taking another inspiring thought and expanding it from the individual to the social.  Here it is:

Last week's Torah portion, Mishpatim, includes rules and instructions on how to act with integrity in business.  This week's portion, T'rumah, is all about building the portable sanctuary that the Israelites carried around for forty years in the desert.  The editor of Etz Hayim comments, "...it teaches that only after we make our living honestly can we give any proceeds to charity."

This is an inspiring thought, but let's take it social. 

• Let's provide full employment, then give to charity.
• Let's guarantee a living wage, then give to charity.
• Let's make sure that the gap between women's incomes and men's disappears, then give to charity.
• Let's make sure there's affordable child care, health care, housing, college education, continuing education, food, and heat, plus paid sick days and parental leave, plus a guaranteed comfortable retirement for anyone who works, plus support for anyone whose disability prevents them from working for pay...and then, and only then, give to charity.

If we do all this, then (as Rabbi Wolf suggested) we may have a society where no individual has to depend on charity. Let's start today!

Brotherly Love

Throughout the book of Genesis, brothers are fighting brothers.  At the same time, there are barely concealed lessons on how the fratricide is going to cease.  By the time Exodus begins, the Israelites have learned those lessons.  Have we?

Sibling conflict is as old as the world.  Cain kills Abel.  The birth of Isaac leads to the expulsion of Ishmael.  Esau loses his birthright to his younger brother, Jacob, and Jacob has to flee Esau for his life.  He goes to the home of his mother's brother, Laban, who treats him like a brother: that is, cheats and exploits him.  Ten of Jacob's sons sell their brother Joseph into slavery in Egypt.  It seems as if this cycle of family violence will never end.

Yet along the way, we see brothers coming together when they share a concern for someone other than themselves.  At first, it is their father.  Isaac and Ishmael come together to bury their father Abraham.

And Rabbi Jonathan Kligler comes up with a beautiful midrash to say that burying their father let Isaac and Ishmael reconcile.  (May this be a model for their descendants in Israel and Palestine!)

Similarly, the two sons of Joseph, Ephraim and Menasheh, could have been at war with each other over their grandfather Jacob's blessing.  Jacob, a younger son himself, gives his best blessing to the younger son Ephraim.  He does bless both of them, however, without hesitation or reservation.  They, too, come together for the funeral of their father, Joseph.  And they stay together.  Even though (or because?) the two half-tribes are allotted separate territory in Canaan, they remain the tribe of Joseph.  

Look now at the book of Exodus, which we are reading from January through mid-March 2013.  Moses is a younger son, raised in luxury in the Egyptian court, while Aaron, his older brother, is an Israelite slave oppressed by the Pharaoh.  Moses returns to his family and his people with a message from God--which he stutters too much to deliver by himself.  He needs Aaron.

And Aaron steps in.  Until his death, Aaron speaks for Moses and acts in concert with him.  Certainly, Aaron and their sister Miriam (a leader and prophet in her own right) sometimes argue with Moses, but only about whether he is leading well, not about whether or not he should lead.  The project of making the Jews ready to receive the Torah and to live by it was bigger than any sibling rivalry.  It still is, today.  Jews need to remember that, and all people can take a lesson about how to turn brotherly hate into brotherly love.

This blog entry is dedicated to my brothers Gary Fischman, Joel Fischman, and Ron Fischman, my sister Yael Fischman, and my brother-in-law Jonathan Charry. 

Exodus through the Looking Glass: Parshat Sh'mot

I wrote last week about an interpretation of Exodus that compares slavery in Egypt to living under a totalitarian regime:

...Zornberg shows me a) that it is well grounded in traditional rabbinic texts,  b) that it lets us honor Jewish women as agents of redemption and c) that we can appreciate sensuality as a realm of freedom even--perhaps especially--in times that try our souls.

How is it grounded in rabbinic texts?  Intricately, and with too much care, attention, and detail for me to summarize here.  The idea that Zornberg returns to again and again is that there is a real question whether the Jews are worthy to be redeemed, and whether they can see themselves as worthy--a play on the double meaning of the Hebrew word ra'uy.  

How are women agents of redemption in Exodus?  By making men see themselves as worthy: that is, desirable!  She cites a midrash to the effect that after Pharoah decreed that the Israelite men should work in the fields, and not sleep at home with their wives:

Said Rabbi Shimeon bar Chalafta, What did the daughters of Israel do?  They would [buy wine] and go to the fields and feed their husbands....And when they had eaten and drunk, the women would take the mirrors and look into them with their husbands, and she would say "I am more comely than you," and he would say "I am more comely than you."  And as a result, they would accustom themselves to desire, and they were fruitful and multiplied.... (p. 57)

Mirrors are not mere vanity: they make us look at ourselves and find each other delightful.  Sensuality is not a sin: it is an affirmation of me and you, life, and the possibility of a future.  How can we imagine that God desires us if we do not desire each other?  And if we can see what is "comely" in ourselves despite toil, separation, subjugation, and contempt, we can hold out hope that the oppressors have it wrong, and that we will yet be free.

Reading Exodus in a New Way

The Exodus is about to begin again.  On January 5, to be precise.

Jews read the five books of Moses, or Torah, every week, in a yearly cycle.  It so happens that on the first Saturday of 2013, we read the very first portion of the book of Exodus.

It takes a mental leap to put ourselves in a place no one is yet calling Egypt, with an enslaved group of people, no one is yet calling Jews, over three thousand years ago.  Often, people in the U.S. try to imagine it by using as a guide the experience of the enslaved people closest to us, whose history we know the best: Africans captured and brought to the United States.  We know the songs,"Go Down Moses" and all the songs that say "Look Over Jordan," that explicitly connect the Negro slaves with the Israelites.  We know the speeches of the Rev. Martin Luther King, Jr. in which he refers to the Exodus and the Promised Land (too many to count).

But Avivah Zornberg, in The Particulars of Rapture, takes us to a different time and place: Eastern Europe under Communist Party rule.  Instead of King and gospel, she invokes Vaclav Havel, and Milan Kundera's The Unbearable Lightness of Being.  Putting ourselves in the place of the enslaved Africans let us feel the pain of the lash and the load on our shoulders.  Putting ourselves in the place of the citizens of a totalitarian state, we focus instead on what it takes to maintain inner freedom: to know that we are not just slaves, not simply parts of a whole.

For me, this is a new approach.   I welcome it all the more because Zornberg shows me a) that it is well grounded in traditional rabbinic texts,  b) that it lets us honor Jewish women as agents of redemption and c) that we can appreciate sensuality as a realm of freedom even--perhaps especially--in times that try our souls.  More on this to come: stay tuned.

The Particulars of Rapture

I'm only fifty pages in, but already I can tell that The Particulars of Rapture: Reflections on Exodus is going to be one of those books that stays with me for life.  Let's just start with the title.

Two things of opposite natures seem to depend

On one another, as a man depends

On a woman, day on night, the imagined

On the real.  This is the origin of change.

Winter and spring, cold copulars, embrace

And forth the particulars of rapture come. 

(Wallace Stevens)

So Avivah Zornberg calls our attention to the ways the Exodus text works deeply in our minds. It has hidden elements on which the meaning of the whole depends: for instance, the deeply important role of women in a narrative that on its surface is about Moses, Aaron, Pharaoh, and a masculine God.  Our job as readers (and as Jews) is to pay attention to both, the revealed and the hidden, to make meaning come forth like new life in the growing season.

I could quibble about the metaphysics of this.  Instead, let me appreciate the poetics.  "Embrace" is just what I have done with Torah over the year, and "rapture" (which is always particular) is just what I have felt when I have felt that, for the moment, I understood.  The passion of these words is true to life.  As Arthur Waskow has written, reading Torah is wrestling with the text, and with God's own self, and "wrestling feels a lot like making love."

For my friends who ask why I would spend so much time with an ancient text, here's an answer.  It's erotic.  It's the life force of the universe breaking out in words.  Why wouldn't I embrace it?

And When It Is Too Hard, Cry Out!

Suffering in silence is not a Jewish virtue.

When our ancestors were slaves in Egypt, according to the book of Exodus:

The Israelites were groaning under the bondage and cried: their shriek for help from the bondage rose up to God.  God heard their moaning, and God remembered His covenant with Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob.  God looked upon the Israelites, and God knew. (2:23-25)

Avivah Zornberg, in The Particulars of Rapture, points out that there are four synonyms for crying out here, in the short space of two sentences.  And God responds in four ways.  God hears, remembers, sees, and knows.    Our silence is what had allowed God to "hide God's face"--a terrifying expression the Rabbis use for "the human experience of being abandoned by God"--up to that moment.  Our crying out is what evokes God's response: a response of empathy and compassion. 

"And God knew."  What did God know that God, in God's omniscience, had supposedly not known before? At the Burning Bush, God tells Moses this: "For I knew their pain" (Exodus 3:7).  In Christian  thought, it takes divinity being incarnated in human form for God to know human pain.  For Jews, all it takes is an anguished cry by us, frail human beings.

All it takes?  What am I saying?  How easy is it to speak of our deepest pain, to recognize how far we are from freedom?  Far easier to dull one's pain, but far more dangerous as well.  Zornberg writes (paraphrasing the commentary Sefath Emeth):

The basic requirement of freedom ("redemption") is the awareness of "exile," the groan of conscious alienation.  To be in exile and not feel it--this needs a "great salvation."

Some biblical commentators trust that God will give us the capacity to feel our oppression and to cry out against it.  I grew up with the saying that God helps those who help themselves.  Suffering in silence is not a Jewish virtue.  Crying out against injustice is, and always has been, since the days of Pharaoh.  There is plenty of injustice today.  Let us not be silent!

Building Rebellion In

I really enjoyed David Matthews’ reading of Korach that I told you about on Saturday.  David pointed out that when Korach and company challenged the authority of Moses and Aaron, and a jealous God struck out at the rebels, Aaron’s reaction was to bring healing and peace.  

It would be way too simple to stop there, however.  Aaron’s response still leaves Moses and Aaron’s authority intact, not dispersed or devolved to any of their followers.  And Korach’s folk have a good point when they say (in the Etz Hayim translation):

You have gone too far!  For all the community are holy, all of them, and the Lord is in their midst.  Why then do you raise yourselves above the Lord’s congregation?  (Numbers 16:3)

This is a point that Moses should recognize.  Only a few chapters earlier, when Moses appoints seventy elders, two of them refuse to be called, but then they are touched by the divine spirit despite themselves and start prophesying from their own tents, Moses’ aide, Joshua, says, “My lord Moses, restrain them!” But Moses wisely answers, “Are you wrought up on my account?  Would that all the Lord’s people were prophets!” (Numbers 11:28-29).  Furthermore, back at Sinai, Moses, Aaron, and all Israel heard God say, “And you will be to Me a kingdom of priests and a holy nation.”  (Exodus 19:6)  

It seems on the face of it that Korach and company are reminding Moses and Aaron of a basic principle.  Their contribution should be accepted, not dismissed and punished.  Rabbi Abraham Isaac Hacohen Kook, the 19^th-century teacher who was the first Chief Rabbi of Palestine, goes even further: their contribution should be celebrated.  As the notes to Numbers 17:2-3 in Etz Hayim point out:

The firepans used by the rebels to offer incense have become sacred and are to be used as plating for the altar…Kook taught that the holiness of the firepans symbolizes the necessary roled played by skeptics and agnostics in keeping religion honest and healthy.  Challenges to tradition, he taught, are necessary because they stand as perpetual reminders of the danger that religion can sink into corruption and complacency…. 

David’s interpretation celebrated nonviolent resistance but quickly brushed by the fact that the rebels were really rebelling.  Rav Kook looks rebellion squarely in the eye and welcomes it.  His interpretation is part of the Judaism I love, which sees challenges to authority as part of our tradition, and a sacred duty.

And yet, and still: the firepans that the rebels used survive.  The rebels themselves do not.  Is this as far as we can go in questioning authority (not to mention sharing it?)  I think not.  There’s more to think about here.