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.

 

We will do what? And hear what?

One of the most famous quotations from the Torah comes up in this week's parshah, Mishpatim. Most of the parshah focuses on the follow-up to the Ten Commandments, the nitty-gritty of what God wants the Israelites to do in everyday life. Toward the end, though, we read in Exodus 24:7:

Then he [Moses] took the record of the covenant and read it aloud to the people. And they said, "All that the Lord has spoken we will faithfully do!"

The Hebrew here is na'aseh v'nishma: literally, "we will do and we will hear." You can see that the translation I quoted chose not to give us the word-for-word meaning, and I can't blame them. Because honestly, what does that mean, "We will do and we will hear"? And why in that order?

Bring it on!

One answer might be that the Israelites have heard the commandments and they're all fired up to do them. Hearing from God face to face at Mount Sinai just blew them away. If that was the end of the conversation...it might have been the end. 

 

But hearing from Moses, in detail, how they could act from day to day in a way that pleased God--that excited them. It made them feel it was humanly possible.

On this reading, "We will do" all of the commandments given us in parshat Mishpatim. But is that all? Does God want more from us? We're ready for more: "we will hear" whatever God still wants to require from us. Bring it on!

We've been doing what good people do. We want to do what good Jews do.

Rashi, the great medieval commentator, interprets Exodus 24 in a surprisingly different way. He says it's out of chronological order and that it actually happened before the revelation at Sinai. 

In that case, what covenant did Moses read to the people? His answer: the books of Genesis and Exodus, up to that present day. And what covenant? The Noachide Laws that (according to Jewish tradition) apply to all human beings, Jewish or not. (This is the Jewish idea of Natural Law, by the way: deduced not by logic but from the text!)

So, on Rashi's reading, na'aseh means that we will keep on doing those things that were a normal part of being a decent person before. V'nishma means that we, the Jewish people, will do those things that make us distinctive, too, which are just about to be revealed to us at Sinai, in last week's parshah and in this.

First we commit, then we understand.

There's yet one more reading, and this one appeals to me. Imagine that Rashi is right, and the conversation between Moses and the people takes place before they stand at Sinai, not after. Then "We will do" is a pledge for an uncertain future. Before we hear what God wants us to do, we commit to the relationship with God. Only then are we in the right state of mind to hear and appreciate it.

What's more, "we will hear" is not a one-time event. As history goes on, we will continue to hear the word--by studying Torah in light of current circumstances and hearing what it has to command us today.

Whenever Jews gather in synagogue on a Saturday morning and chant the weekly portion from the Torah scroll, one by one, seven of us come up to say a blessing. That blessing thanks God "who gave us God's Torah and also "who gives the Torah." Right here, right now. Because a committed people cannot let the words lie on the page. Over and over, we must find new ways to understand.

 

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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.

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.

Sh'mot: From Names to Anomie, to Hearing the Name of God

 

What's in a name? Possibly, redemption.

"Names" is the literal translation of Sh'mot, the Hebrew name of the second book of the Bible (which readers in English call Exodus). That's because the book begins with the list of the names of all the Jews who went down to Egypt at the invitation of their family member, Joseph.

And then, for a good long while, no names appear in the text. The Jewish people are treated as a swarming mass. Even the Pharaoh who is afraid of their fertility and their numbers and therefore enslaves them is not called by his name, only by his title. 

Namelessness and despair

Why have the Jews, who were individual members of the family of Jacob and his four wives when they entered Egypt at the end of the book of Genesis, become an anonymous horde?

Possibly, it's just because there are so many of them. We are told that it was in Egypt that the Jewish people became a nation.

Possibly, it's that they lost their identities. Instead of being proud of their ancestors and the God they worshiped, the enslaved Israelites may have tried to assimilate into the Egyptian culture. Some rabbinic commentaries claim they stopped circumcising their male children! (Others insist on the opposite reading.)

Possibly, the anonymity is related to anomie. After generations of being treated as nothing more than slave laborers, the Jewish people might have accepted that this is all they could be, that they had no power to resist, and that nothing would ever change.

Where does the change begin?

Change begins with the resistance mounted by the Hebrew midwives. The Pharaoh has commanded them to keep newborn Jewish girls alive (as slaves? as future brides?) but to kill all the newborn Jewish boys. 

But the midwives shrug their shoulders. "Those Hebrew women--they give birth before we can even arrive!" 

Picture Pharoah's frustration. Picture the midwives' sly smiles.

And notice that the midwives, Shifra and Puah (may their memories be for a blessing!), are the first living people in the Book of Exodus who are identified by name. And they found the courage to resist.

Who else gets named in this Torah portion?

The next personal name we hear in Parshat Sh'mot is that of Moshe (to English readers, Moses). And all of a sudden, like he's wielding a Midas touch, everyone Moshe comes in contact with has a name. 

His wife, Tziporah. His first son, Gershom. His father-in-law, Yitro (Jethro). His brother, Aharon (Aaron). Eventually, but not in this parshah, his sister Miriam, his parents Amram and Yocheved, many other Jewish tribal leaders and followers. 

 

But most dramatically: in this parshah, God has a name. And it's a name that speaks of possibility.

14. And God said to Moses, "Ehyeh-Asher-Ehyeh." God continued, "Thus shall you say to the Israelites, 'Ehyeh sent me to you.'"

This new name means, "I will be what I will be." (Or even, "I will become what I will become.") 

There are no limits to how God can appear in the lives of the enslaved Jewish people. So, there are no limits to their ability to be redeemed out of slavery, to become free, to resume becoming who they were supposed to become all along.

15. And God said further to Moses, "Thus shall you speak to the Israelites: The Lord, the God of your fathers, the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob has sent me to you.

This shall be My name forever,

This my appellation for all eternity.

The new name by which God will be known links back to the names by which God knew their ancestors. The past becomes present, the present becomes possibility, and the future becomes imaginable again.

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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.

Joseph: Brat, Brother, Authoritarian, All Too Human

My teacher, Julius Lester, was appalled. "Joseph was not a brat," he stated.

It was the 1980's, and I had met Julius at the University of Massachusetts at Amherst, where (as a graduate student) I'd taken his course Blacks and Jews: A Study in Comparative Oppressions. 

But we were not in the classroom: we were at the synagogue where I taught, and he sometimes led services, and we were in the middle of the Torah discussion--sometime about this time of year. The Torah portion was part of the Joseph saga.

I never found out why Julius was so outraged at my statement about Joseph. Was it pure piety? Joseph was a man who could resist seduction by Potiphar's wife, who could interpret dreams and give all the credit for the interpretation to God. He could rise from prison to the palace, save the land of Egypt from starvation, rescue his family, and forgive them for having sold him into slavery. How could a man like that be less than a saint (or as we would say, a tzaddik)?

I don't know if that's why Julius was shocked at me. But here's why I thought Joseph was a brat.

The obnoxious little brother

Joseph was his father Jacob's favorite son--and he knew it.

 

Joseph's mother, Rachel, was the woman his father fell in love with and worked seven years to marry. The other women his father married were an afterthought. His father gave him the coat of many colors, a sign that Joseph was his designated heir.  

 

Then Joseph had two dreams that both signified he would someday rule over his whole family. Did he keep his dreams to himself? No. Did he tell his father privately? No. He told his whole family. How did he imagine his brothers were going to react?

 

The brat in power

Joseph seems to have had a blind spot for other people's emotions. Only if they had power over his life did he seem to care about them.  

 

* He refused to sleep with Potiphar's wife because of the loyalty he owed his master, not for any other stated reason. 

 

* He sucked up to Pharaoh's cupbearer in the prison to try to get himself out of jail, but once he was appointed to high office by Pharaoh, the cupbearer is never mentioned again. 

 

* True, he kept the people of Egypt from starvation, but the price they paid was turning over all their land and becoming serfs to Pharaoh. Can you say "authoritarian personality"?

 

A different way of understanding Joseph

Just this week, however, I learned a different way of looking at Joseph, one that makes me feel more sympathetic to him. (I give all the credit to participants in Rabbi Ruti Regan's #ParshaChat on Twitter.)

What if, instead of feeling superior as a child, Joseph just felt singled out?

It could not have been easy, being the youngest brother (because his mother had not yet given birth to Benjamin), and the half-brother of all these grown men, and being put on a pedestal by his father. Even if he sensed he had some kind of destiny awaiting him, he could not ignore the way it made his brothers hate him, right there, right then.

What if telling his dreams was not oblivious, not a power play, but a plea for understanding? 

It's not just Dad who thinks I'm special, he might be saying. It's not just me putting on airs. Look, there's a sign from God that I have a role to play. Can you please stop blaming me now?

But they can't. They throw him into a pit. Then, they sell him as a slave.

What Joseph learns, and what he never grasps

If this interpretation is right, it would explain why, in Egypt, Joseph takes care to attribute his dream-interpretations to God and not to himself. Raising yourself in other people's eyes is a dangerous business!

If this interpretation is correct, it would explain why Joseph takes an Egyptian name and an Egyptian wife and tries to forget the painful scenes with his family. He did everything he knew how to do to keep his father's love without incurring his brothers' hatred, and nothing worked. Now, as second to Pharaoh, he is competent and powerful.

If this interpretation holds water, it also contains new insights into why Joseph apparently torments his brothers when they come looking for food during a famine. Joseph may be testing them, to see if they've changed, but at the same time he is learning that he has changed, too. He has learned that other people have feelings too (especially Judah, who reveals his love for their father and his guilt for the way they treated Joseph in an eloquent speech). 

And he has learned there is an alternative to dominating or being dominated--and that is forgiveness.

Sadly, Joseph seems to have learned about forgiveness and love only in relation to his own family. He still wields power over the enslaved Egyptians in a way that foreshadows how the Egyptians will eventually exploit the enslaved Israelites. 

So, he is not entirely a brat, entirely a tzaddik, or entirely a reformed character who has learned from experience. Joseph is a complicated human being. That may be why, thousands of years later, we still read and reinterpret his story.

 

Jews Aren't Perfect, and We Don't Have to Be

Lots of Christians are puzzled by Jews. I hear it from them in many ways. 

"What's your solution to sin?" a young woman asked my wife at a social gathering.

"Don't you want to go to heaven?" a child asked me when we were both in elementary school.

 

More recently, and at more length, I see Christians online propounding the proposition that Jews are trying to do something impossible: to live a perfect life. As they understand it, Jews are "under the Law" (their term for Torah, which actually means "Teaching" instead). 

To be "saved," they theorize, Jews have to live up to all 613 commandments in the Torah, all the time. Since no one can do that, they argue, we are playing a mug's game. We should accept Jesus and be saved by faith alone. This approach is summarized in the popular slogan, "Christians aren't perfect--just forgiven."

Aside from the fact that Judaism isn't about salvation from sin, or heaven and hell, all these formulations miss something very basic:

It is not at all impossible to live the way God wants us to live, according to Judaism. In fact, it's easy, if you try.

Learning from Psalm 15

I was reminded of this basic Jewish belief just this morning, when, as part of a worldwide program of Hebrew Bible study, I read Psalm 15. At first glance, the psalm seems to set an extremely high standard.   

1. A psalm of David. LORD, who may sojourn in Your tent, who may dwell on Your holy mountain? 

2. He who lives without blame, who does what is right, and in his heart acknowledges the truth; 

3. whose tongue is not given to evil; who has never done harm to his fellow, or borne reproach for [his acts toward] his neighbor; 

4. for whom a contemptible man is abhorrent, but who honors those who fear the LORD; who stands by his oath even to his hurt; 

5.who has never lent money at interest, or accepted a bribe against the innocent. The man who acts thus shall never be shaken.

In fact, as Rabbi Yaakov Bieler points out, at least one rabbi around the time of Jesus looked upon these works, so mighty, and despaired. But another one cheered him up.

When R. Gamliel would read this text, he would be reduced to tears. He said: Who is capable of doing all these things? However, when R. Akiva read these verses, he would laugh. 
Gamliel asked him: Why are you laughing?

He said to him: See what the Torah says concerning “swarming things:” (Leviticus 11:43) “You shall not draw abomination upon yourselves through everything that swarms, you shall not make yourselves ritually impure therewith....” One might think that one doesn’t become ritually impure until he is contaminated by all of the various types of swarming things. Yet if an individual comes into contact with a single bean-size swarming thing, he is deemed ritually impure.

 

God’s desire to do good is 500 times greater than his inclination to punish. If touching a single bean-size swarming thing is considered equivalent to having had contact with all of them, doesn’t it logically follow that if a person does a single aspect of one of the commandments listed in Psalm 15, he will be considered as if he has carried them all out? (Yalkut Shimoni, #665)

Gamliel said to R. Akiva: You have comforted me. You have comforted me. 

 

So I say to all my Christian friends who are worried about the state of my soul, because I am "under the Law" which is supposedly so hard to fulfill: cheer up! Even if I believed in the kind of vengeful God who would send me to hell forever for doing the wrong things--the New Testament God--it is very easy to do enough of the right things to win God's forgiveness.

Jews aren't perfect, and we don't have to be. 

(Psst: we don't think you need to be, either. With or without Jesus. We can disagree about this, but realize that if we actually believed the same things as you about God, we would be Christians. The differences are real.)

 

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.

"What's My Child Doing Up There?" ( an introduction to bar/bat mitzvah)

There’s a lot of mystery around becoming bar or bat mitzvah, and there shouldn’t be.  In essence, it’s very simple.  When a Jewish boy or girl reaches age thirteen, he or she is eligible to lead parts of the service at his or her family’s synagogue.  So, he or she celebrates the occasion by…actually leading some parts of the service. 

Sounds pretty straightforward, right?  Yet, I have been tutoring Jewish children for bar and bat mitzvah off and on since 1982.  I have seen the parents of my students approach the bar or bat mitzvah feeling confused, and sometimes even overwhelmed.  These parents are no dummies.  They are not being neurotic for no reason whatever.  In the U.S., the way we live now, there are good reasons why you might not immediately understand what your child is doing for his bar mitzvah, or her bat mitzvah.

 Why the mystery?

Let’s start with language.  Very few Americans are fluent in Hebrew.  Depending on your synagogue or temple, what your child does for bar or bat mitzvah might be partly, mostly, or nearly all in Hebrew.  So, let alone understanding what your child is saying: how do you track your child’s progress as he or she studies for bar or bat mitzvah?  You want to be a good parent.  You want to be supportive.  But how?

 Even the terms the rabbi or tutor uses for the tasks your child will take on are usually in Hebrew.  “What’s an aliyah?  Is a parshah the same thing as a haftarah, or is it something different my child has to learn?  How come one set of relatives calls the skullcap worn in synagogue a yarmulke while the other set calls it a kipah?”  Whether you grew up Jewish, became Jewish later in life, or raised a Jewish child without any Jewish background of your own, chances are you need a guide to understand the vocabulary that surrounds bar or bat mitzvah studies.

Then, there’s the fact that preparing for bar or bat mitzvah is usually a multi-step process.  Again, depending on your Jewish community and its local customs, your child may be reading or singing some things from the prayer book, and chanting other things from the printed Bible or the Torah scroll.  Most likely, he or she will also be giving a short talk about the passage of the Bible read that day.   

To prepare for these tasks, you may be driving your child to meet with one tutor throughout the process--or a tutor and a rabbi--or a tutor, a cantor, a Hebrew school principal, and a rabbi.  You’ll need to find ways to talk with each of them, and make sure that they are all talking to one another.

 

The Saturday morning service itself, the usual time for celebrating bar or bat mitzvah, can be a challenge.  It’s going to be at least an hour long, maybe as much as three hours: again, partly, mostly, or nearly all in Hebrew, depending on local custom.  It will involve a set of rituals and protocols that are certainly not obvious.  “Should I invite my non-Jewish friends or relatives to the service?  How are they going to feel at home there?  How will I?”

Finally, there’s one huge distraction that makes it difficult for parents to look forward to the bar or bat mitzvah ceremony: planning the party.  Everybody likes a good party.  For some children, it’s the reason they started studying for bar or bat mitzvah in the first place!  But for unwary parents—especially parents going through it for the first time, with their eldest child—planning the party can take up all the time and attention you have. 

You might not be planning something as lavish as the party Peter Finch attends in the movie Sunday Bloody Sunday, or as obscenely ostentatious as the one Jeremy Piven plans in Keeping Up with the Steins.  In fact, I hope not!  Still, in the midst of scheduling a space, a caterer, and entertainment, designing and sending out invitations, and helping your child keep track of gifts, it might be hard for you, yourself, to keep tabs on the bar or bat mitzvah studies—and all too easy to arrive at shul that Saturday morning without a clue about what’s going on.  

“What’s my child doing up there?”  Wonder no more.  I am writing a book to give you the answers you need as you begin to think about your child’s bar or bat mitzvah.  There are other, excellent books that will help you think about the deeper meaning of this rite of passage.  I will mention some of them in the Appendices.  

 Writing this book, I have a different mission. You will soon hold in your hands a practical guide to bar and bat mitzvah for the perplexed parent.  With this book as your road map, you will be able to navigate the process from the first day of lessons to the last blessing of the Saturday morning service, with confidence.  It shouldn’t be a mystery—just a mitzvah!