I wanted to talk this week about whether unequal wealth distribution is an issue from a Jewish perspective. To be clear, neither Romney nor Obama has explicitly come out in favor of wealth redistribution. But they differ on whether taxes should be weighted toward the rich: Obama has proposed a highest tax bracket of 39.6%, while Romney has proposed 28%. Obama would tax investments to 30% for high earners, while Romney would tax investments at 15% for high earners, and leave them tax free for people earning under $200,000. Obama would tax inheritances of estates worth over $3.5 million, Romney would not.
Similarly, Obama has defined income inequality as the “defining issue of our time,” while Romney refers to this as the “bitter politics of envy.”
The 99% movement is really about college grads who played by the rules, and can’t find jobs, while Wall street, bankers, and big business are getting bailedout and getting rich. It is not explicitly calling for redistribution either. But the fact is, over the past 10 years, America has become less equal, and the point being made is that normal college grads can no longer get a decent job, and share in our nation’s wealth.
Raising taxes on the wealthy is often seen as a means of redistribution. Obama is very careful that when he speaks about taxes, he speaks about the wealthy paying their “fair share,” not that they should pay more than everyone else. But the fact is, if taxes are kept high for the wealthy, and that money is used for welfare and education, in effect the rich are subsidizing the poor, ensuring a basic standard of living as well as access to opportunity.
I have seen a few orthodox rabbis present the case that inequality is created by God, and that it therefore doesn’t present an issue in and of itself. The argument is that God is in charge of everyone’s income, which is determined on Rosh Hashanah. It doesn’t matter how much or little you work, that’s what hashem will send you. [Quote #2, Rebbe Rayatz]
One figure in the Talmud, Yehuda haNasi, was so rich that the manure from his horses alone made his stable-master rich. Deuteronomy says lo yehdal evyon mikerev ha’aretz—there will always be poor among you.
On this line of argument, the task of the wealthy person is to be careful with his money, not to overindulge, and to maximalize the tzedakah he is able to do with it. God made rich and poor so there could be tzedakah, and the presence of God is manifested through the action of tzedakah. According to the Zohar, God’s 4 letter name is formed in that relationship: the yod is the coin, the heh is the hand of the giver, the vav is the gift, and the second heh is the hand of the receiver. The rich person needs the poor person to complete the mitzvah, just as much as vice versa. Tanhuma, Mishpatim 9, similarly says that David argued with God, saying to make the world fair, and God says, “If I did that, who would preserve kindness and truth?”
One of the challenges most rich people don’t live up to is that halachically, one is supposed to give 10-20% of one’s income to tzedakah, but if one is wasting money by spending it on luxuries, that percentage should be more. In our society, the percentage in fact doesn’t go up as income goes up—it remains stable. So a rich person is supposedto give a higher percentage to tzedakah.
Yehuda HaNasi, the rich rabbi I mentioned, swore on his deathbed that he used all ten fingers to study Torah, and never indulged with even his little finger. Another rabbi, Eleazar ben Harsom, who inherited a thousand cities and a thousand ships, wandered like a poor person, subsisting on bread and water, so he wouldn’t be distracted from studying Torah.
On this line of argument, taxes are a formalized way to organize the obligation of tzedakah, and make sure everyone contributes a fair share. Rich people should pay more, because their obligation to tzedakah is higher. Taxes, at least to the extent they fund education and social services, are thus a way to ensure that everyone gives the fair level of tzedakah. And gross abuses like Putin’s $75,000 toilet are completely against halacha.
Even on this line of argument, the level of social services funding should be far higher than it currently is, Deuteronomy 15:8 says we should give a poor person all he lacks, which the Midrash says means in accordance with his honor. We are obligated to support him at his usual standard of living. The current welfare, SSI, and SSD benefits do not do that. $100/month is not enough to pay for food for an adult, but this is what food stamps pays. I met a woman last weekend who tries to live on just over $700/month in benefits. This is not a comfortable standard of living. So even if God intended inequality, he also intended an equal amount of tzedakah in response to that inequality.
The problem with this argument that I have is that, first of all, the Torah does come out against inequality. The Torah legislates that every 7 years, debts should be forgiven—imagine, credit card debts, student loans, home loans, all forgiven. People would not be caught up in a spiral of debt, and not pressured to take out the massive amount of loans one needs now to pay for a house or college education. In addition, every 50 years, there is a Jubilee year and everyone returns to his ancestral holding—his family farm. The farm was the means of production. This means that capitalism should be limited so we never get to the point of an embedded worker class and landowner class. People can earn more or less money, but should not be stuck in a downward economic spiral.
The other problem I have is that God did not create economic inequality, we have. We have done it with overpaid CEO’s and underpaid workers. We have done it by not regulating companies, and allowing massive monopolies to destroy family business, something halachah prohibits. We have done it by granting huge tax breaks to the rich. We have done it by funding schools locally, and allowing money to be siphoned off to charter schools, leaving public schools underfunded, and low income families sending children to bad schools.
Very commonly, people have become rich through less than honest or upright means. When CEO’s control their own wages, and pay themselves exhorbitant wages claiming that’s what good talent costs, they are being self-serving and dishonest—you could find plenty of people who can run companies for a lot less. Outsourcing jobs, paying low wages, avoiding taxes, are all less than lofty ways today’s companies maintain the upper class. People have free will and do bad things which hurt other people.
The Rambam says that God created a world in which the things most necessary for human survival, such as air, water, and land, are plentiful and available to all, and this is a sign of his benevolence and fairness. We are the ones who have created inequality, and we are the ones who need to address it using our God-given wisdom. God didn’t do these things, humans did. God created a deeply equal world. Don’t blame inequality on God.
Halachically, what is the answer? Inequality is a real halachic issue. Funding job creation certainly needs to happen—the highest form of tzedakah is giving someone a job. Raising taxes on the wealthy to pay both for social services and education is also certainly in line with the Torah’s vision for a just society
Tuesday, October 16, 2012
Thursday, October 11, 2012
Immigration Reform
Election Issues 2: Immigration
As Jews, we have experienced being the outsider. For centuries, we were not equals. We were not equals in the muslim world, where synagogues couldn’t be as high as mosques and we had to pay an extra dhimmi tax. We were not equals in Europe, where we were not full citizens, and in many locales could not own land. We were seen as the outsider, and treated terribly as a result. During the Nazi era, we were refused immigration to many European countries, severely limited in immigrating to America, and suffered dearly as a result.
Our situation here as comfortable citizens is the historic anomaly. We can vote, the government protects us from religious and physical persecution, we can own property without fear of sudden and arbitrary seizure. We can even hold office.
In Genesis, when Abraham and Sarah initially enter Israel, there is a famine, so they have to go to Egypt. As foreigners, with no relatives to protect them, they are afraid, so Abraham lies about who Sarah is, allowing her to be taken to pharoah’s house as a potential wife, and only god’s intervention helps them. They lie and humiliate themselves to protect themselves, in a country which is foreign and scary.
This is the story of the illegal immigrant, unprotected, a stranger in a strange land with no-one to protect them. They cannot rely on the police or family for protection. They merely do what they need to to survive. They have no recourse against those who take advantage of them, of their vulnerability, their isolation.
Even in Canaan, they are still immigrants. Abraham has no family, no social support in Canaan. When Sarah dies, Abraham has nowhere to bury her, and overpays for a cave.
We were the underpaid immigrants in Egypt, forced into backbreaking labor by a deeply suspicious leadership.
The Torah, especially Deuteronomy, speaks out passionately on this issue. Numbers 15:16 goes out of its way to say “there shall be one law for you and the stranger dwelling among you”—they are treated as an equal. Deuteronomy tells us to love the stranger, for you were strangers in Egypt. Do not oppress the stranger, who has no family or legal system to support them. The illegal immigrant is the ger the stranger of our time.
There is a halachic category of ger toshav is a person who either lives in Israel, or is just passing through, but agrees to follow the 7 noahide commandments while he is here. In other words, he will be law abiding, he will not introduce idolatry into Israel. The ger toshav is fully integrated into Israelite society. Surprisingly, the ger toshav can even participate in the Passover festival!
Leviticus 19:33-34 reads “If a stranger dwells with you in your land, you shall do him no wrong. The stranger that dwells with you shall be to you as the home-born among you, and you shall love him as yourself, for you were strangers in the land of Egypt; I am the Lord your God.” Ibn Ezra on this verse states that the reason this is stated after the instruction to honor elders is that just as elders have no strength of their own, so too with the stranger, your strength is greater than his, for he is in your land, under your control. And it concludes with “I am your God” to say I am the God who created both of you
We are all incredibly lucky to be the ones here legally, not the ones working at subminimum wage in the fields, who would love to become citizens. Instead of looking at them as illegals who shouldn’t be here, Judaism teaches us to look at foreigners as vulnerable, and equals in God’s eyes. We have no more right to be here, in God’s eyes, than they do. There but for the grace of God.
In Food Inc., there was an interesting segment on the use of illegal immigrants in food production. Part of the reason food can be produced so cheaply is the use of illegal labor, often at minimum or sub-minimum wage. In many instances, instead of cracking down on the employers, law enforcement arrest and deport the workers, who then come back again. I remember a scene where law enforcement enter a trailer in early morning, deporting a worker from the factory. This person had done nothing wrong but enter the country illegally, and was entirely vulnerable to the border agents coming and taking them away. The sad thing is that the employer, who had set up this whole situation, and was not desperate for a job as was the migrant worker, was not being held accountable whatsoever.
Safety
Judaism is certainly concerned about possibility of foreigners entering for a military takeover. The reports/claims of Mexican drug cartels setting up outposts in Arizona is terrifying, and the claims about crime are confusing but concerning. In Dt 33:25, the Torah says “Iron and brass are your locks,” which rashi says refers to the fortified border towns. We certainly have a legitimate right to build a wall and have border patrol agents and drones, to prevent a military takeover. The shulchan aruch rules that we can violate Shabbat to repeal foreigners even if they appear to have peaceful intentions, because they may be attempting a takeover. (229:6)
The Meiri writes that
“You know how strictly the Torah makes us distance idol worshippers from our land, our borders, and our surroundings… this applies only to a non-Jew whome we do not know. But if he is our neighbor or friend, it is permissible…there is no doubt that we may be permissive to all who are from the nations disciplined in their lifestyle by religion and who believe in God…not only is it permissible, but it is proper.”
In other words, the proper thing to do, for someone who is an ethical person, is to allow them to immigrate. It is a different story if they are bringing in a criminal element—idolatry in Torah terms, or violent crime in today’s terms. To the extent that this is about violent criminals, then, there is certainly grounds to take action. In the case of non-violent migrants, Jewish tradition supports an open door for people who want to enter.
Economic Issue
The economic issue is often raised that illegal immigrants are taking away jobs from Americans. Of the 11 million illegals, 7.7 million have jobs, and from 2008-2010, 1 million jobs were gained by them, while jobs were lost by residents. Half of college graduates aren’t finding work. These are underpaid, difficult jobs which most Americans don’t want, but perhaps if we didn’t have illegal immigrants, that would force the wages to go up in those fields, and be a boon for low income workers. So the argument goes that we should seal the borders to protect our own economic interests.
Halacha does not support such an approach. In Baba Batra, R. Huna says in the name of R Joshua that residents of one town can prevent non-residents from setting up a competing store in their town—like walmarts coming in and replacing local businesses. But if he pays taxes—that is, he establishes himself there and contributes to the local wellbeing-then he can set up a competing business. R Asher, similarly, said people can dwell wherever they want and the people of the new city cannot stop him. Economic protectionism is not a halachically valid argument for limiting immigration.
Yes, we need to be concerned about our own first. We need to ensure that our own people have jobs. But when someone comes and is willing to pay taxes (as most illegal workers actually do), we cannot halachically force them to go back to the poor conditions they came from. We prioritize the poor of our own town over those of other towns, but if a new person moves in, we don’t force him to move back to where we came from. That would be middat sdom—the ways of sodom and gemorrah, being unwelcome and hostile to outsiders.
The fact that these jobs are driving down wages is really indicative of another halachically serious issue, which is the lack of a livable and enforced minimum wage. Given that halachically one supports the poor at a comfortable level, and the Talmud states that one’s employees should be like members of one’s household, it is reasonable that employers should pay their workers at a level at least the same as if they were giving tzedakah. Seven dollars an hour does not do that. You can be working full time and still in poverty. This isn’t just because illegal immigrants are diluting the workforce, it’s because we don’t have a real minimum wage, so nobody wants these jobs.
Xenophobia
The suspicion of immigrants, and the identification of illegal immigrants with violent crime, deeply concerns me. Why is this only an issue now? For one, because the immigration process has become so slow and onerous, and also because it has become easy to get here illegally. But also, I suspect that the current economic stress makes this an easy target. There are no jobs because Illegal immigrants have taken them all. Crime is because of those murderous Mexicans. And they are easy to suspect, because by definition they are all already criminals. To what extent are we blaming our social ills on a vulnerable, inherently suspicious group?
We have been illegal. We were persona non grata in Egypt, where the government was afraid we would take over the society. We were illegal immigrants in the desert on our way out of Egypt, and refused food and water, not even allowed to walk through. The three angels were illegal immigrants in Sodom, where a crazed crowd wanted to attack them for daring to enter their territory. We were illegal immigrants in Europe for centuries, culminating in Nazi Germany, when the government decided we didn’t belong in Germany or even on the face of the Earth. We know that strangers are vulnerable, unwanted. But we also know that they are fellow children of God, and we are commanded to take them in as our own.
As Jews, we have experienced being the outsider. For centuries, we were not equals. We were not equals in the muslim world, where synagogues couldn’t be as high as mosques and we had to pay an extra dhimmi tax. We were not equals in Europe, where we were not full citizens, and in many locales could not own land. We were seen as the outsider, and treated terribly as a result. During the Nazi era, we were refused immigration to many European countries, severely limited in immigrating to America, and suffered dearly as a result.
Our situation here as comfortable citizens is the historic anomaly. We can vote, the government protects us from religious and physical persecution, we can own property without fear of sudden and arbitrary seizure. We can even hold office.
In Genesis, when Abraham and Sarah initially enter Israel, there is a famine, so they have to go to Egypt. As foreigners, with no relatives to protect them, they are afraid, so Abraham lies about who Sarah is, allowing her to be taken to pharoah’s house as a potential wife, and only god’s intervention helps them. They lie and humiliate themselves to protect themselves, in a country which is foreign and scary.
This is the story of the illegal immigrant, unprotected, a stranger in a strange land with no-one to protect them. They cannot rely on the police or family for protection. They merely do what they need to to survive. They have no recourse against those who take advantage of them, of their vulnerability, their isolation.
Even in Canaan, they are still immigrants. Abraham has no family, no social support in Canaan. When Sarah dies, Abraham has nowhere to bury her, and overpays for a cave.
We were the underpaid immigrants in Egypt, forced into backbreaking labor by a deeply suspicious leadership.
The Torah, especially Deuteronomy, speaks out passionately on this issue. Numbers 15:16 goes out of its way to say “there shall be one law for you and the stranger dwelling among you”—they are treated as an equal. Deuteronomy tells us to love the stranger, for you were strangers in Egypt. Do not oppress the stranger, who has no family or legal system to support them. The illegal immigrant is the ger the stranger of our time.
There is a halachic category of ger toshav is a person who either lives in Israel, or is just passing through, but agrees to follow the 7 noahide commandments while he is here. In other words, he will be law abiding, he will not introduce idolatry into Israel. The ger toshav is fully integrated into Israelite society. Surprisingly, the ger toshav can even participate in the Passover festival!
Leviticus 19:33-34 reads “If a stranger dwells with you in your land, you shall do him no wrong. The stranger that dwells with you shall be to you as the home-born among you, and you shall love him as yourself, for you were strangers in the land of Egypt; I am the Lord your God.” Ibn Ezra on this verse states that the reason this is stated after the instruction to honor elders is that just as elders have no strength of their own, so too with the stranger, your strength is greater than his, for he is in your land, under your control. And it concludes with “I am your God” to say I am the God who created both of you
We are all incredibly lucky to be the ones here legally, not the ones working at subminimum wage in the fields, who would love to become citizens. Instead of looking at them as illegals who shouldn’t be here, Judaism teaches us to look at foreigners as vulnerable, and equals in God’s eyes. We have no more right to be here, in God’s eyes, than they do. There but for the grace of God.
In Food Inc., there was an interesting segment on the use of illegal immigrants in food production. Part of the reason food can be produced so cheaply is the use of illegal labor, often at minimum or sub-minimum wage. In many instances, instead of cracking down on the employers, law enforcement arrest and deport the workers, who then come back again. I remember a scene where law enforcement enter a trailer in early morning, deporting a worker from the factory. This person had done nothing wrong but enter the country illegally, and was entirely vulnerable to the border agents coming and taking them away. The sad thing is that the employer, who had set up this whole situation, and was not desperate for a job as was the migrant worker, was not being held accountable whatsoever.
Safety
Judaism is certainly concerned about possibility of foreigners entering for a military takeover. The reports/claims of Mexican drug cartels setting up outposts in Arizona is terrifying, and the claims about crime are confusing but concerning. In Dt 33:25, the Torah says “Iron and brass are your locks,” which rashi says refers to the fortified border towns. We certainly have a legitimate right to build a wall and have border patrol agents and drones, to prevent a military takeover. The shulchan aruch rules that we can violate Shabbat to repeal foreigners even if they appear to have peaceful intentions, because they may be attempting a takeover. (229:6)
The Meiri writes that
“You know how strictly the Torah makes us distance idol worshippers from our land, our borders, and our surroundings… this applies only to a non-Jew whome we do not know. But if he is our neighbor or friend, it is permissible…there is no doubt that we may be permissive to all who are from the nations disciplined in their lifestyle by religion and who believe in God…not only is it permissible, but it is proper.”
In other words, the proper thing to do, for someone who is an ethical person, is to allow them to immigrate. It is a different story if they are bringing in a criminal element—idolatry in Torah terms, or violent crime in today’s terms. To the extent that this is about violent criminals, then, there is certainly grounds to take action. In the case of non-violent migrants, Jewish tradition supports an open door for people who want to enter.
Economic Issue
The economic issue is often raised that illegal immigrants are taking away jobs from Americans. Of the 11 million illegals, 7.7 million have jobs, and from 2008-2010, 1 million jobs were gained by them, while jobs were lost by residents. Half of college graduates aren’t finding work. These are underpaid, difficult jobs which most Americans don’t want, but perhaps if we didn’t have illegal immigrants, that would force the wages to go up in those fields, and be a boon for low income workers. So the argument goes that we should seal the borders to protect our own economic interests.
Halacha does not support such an approach. In Baba Batra, R. Huna says in the name of R Joshua that residents of one town can prevent non-residents from setting up a competing store in their town—like walmarts coming in and replacing local businesses. But if he pays taxes—that is, he establishes himself there and contributes to the local wellbeing-then he can set up a competing business. R Asher, similarly, said people can dwell wherever they want and the people of the new city cannot stop him. Economic protectionism is not a halachically valid argument for limiting immigration.
Yes, we need to be concerned about our own first. We need to ensure that our own people have jobs. But when someone comes and is willing to pay taxes (as most illegal workers actually do), we cannot halachically force them to go back to the poor conditions they came from. We prioritize the poor of our own town over those of other towns, but if a new person moves in, we don’t force him to move back to where we came from. That would be middat sdom—the ways of sodom and gemorrah, being unwelcome and hostile to outsiders.
The fact that these jobs are driving down wages is really indicative of another halachically serious issue, which is the lack of a livable and enforced minimum wage. Given that halachically one supports the poor at a comfortable level, and the Talmud states that one’s employees should be like members of one’s household, it is reasonable that employers should pay their workers at a level at least the same as if they were giving tzedakah. Seven dollars an hour does not do that. You can be working full time and still in poverty. This isn’t just because illegal immigrants are diluting the workforce, it’s because we don’t have a real minimum wage, so nobody wants these jobs.
Xenophobia
The suspicion of immigrants, and the identification of illegal immigrants with violent crime, deeply concerns me. Why is this only an issue now? For one, because the immigration process has become so slow and onerous, and also because it has become easy to get here illegally. But also, I suspect that the current economic stress makes this an easy target. There are no jobs because Illegal immigrants have taken them all. Crime is because of those murderous Mexicans. And they are easy to suspect, because by definition they are all already criminals. To what extent are we blaming our social ills on a vulnerable, inherently suspicious group?
We have been illegal. We were persona non grata in Egypt, where the government was afraid we would take over the society. We were illegal immigrants in the desert on our way out of Egypt, and refused food and water, not even allowed to walk through. The three angels were illegal immigrants in Sodom, where a crazed crowd wanted to attack them for daring to enter their territory. We were illegal immigrants in Europe for centuries, culminating in Nazi Germany, when the government decided we didn’t belong in Germany or even on the face of the Earth. We know that strangers are vulnerable, unwanted. But we also know that they are fellow children of God, and we are commanded to take them in as our own.
Thursday, September 27, 2012
Arguing With God, Yom Kippur 5773
Arguing With God
Yom Kippur 5763
When we were children, my brother and I adopted a pet guinea pig named Einstein. He had long hair, brown, white and tan splotches. He loved to crawl in our shirts and nibble at lettuce. He was a harmless, innocent animal. And then he died, after maybe, maybe 6 months.
Now they say guinea pigs are supposed to live at least a few years. Not out guinea pigs. Maybe six months.
When Einstein died, I was distraught. How could a compassionate God let such an innocent animal die so young, and animal which had never done any wrong, except maybe crawling too far up my shirt? How could he create an animal which would only live for six months? It seemed unfair, even crual.
I was deeply angry at God, shocked at his injustice, his cruelty. And eventually I got over it.
We sometimes think that religion demands that we passively submit to whatever decrees God sends our ways, that no matter when happens we are supposed to smile and say, this is for the best. And to be sure, there is a tradition of doing that even in Judaism, of finding the positive to everything, of trying to see every experience, every tragedy as somehow a gift from God.
But there is another approach, too, in our tradition. When three Angels visit Abraham and inform him of God’s plans to destroy the entire city of Sodom, Abraham is shocked and confronts God directly: “Will you sweep away the innocent with the guilty? What if there are 50 innocent people in the city? Will you then wipe out the place and not forgive it for the sake of the innocent fifty who are in it? Far be it from you to do such a thing, to bring death upon the innocent as well as the guilty, so that innocent and guilty fare alike? Shall not the judge of the earth deal justly?”
Does God take it as impetuousness, as do Job’s friends when Job questions God’s ways? Is this a sign of rebellion, questioning God’s ways? No, God answers, gives in to his demand: “If I find fifty innocent people there, I will forgive the entire city for their sake.”
And Abraham keeps bargaining: Now what if there are just five missing from the 50? Will you forgive for forty five? Sure, I won’t do it for the 45.
Will you forgive for forty? Sure.
Now don’t get angry, but what about thirty? Sure.
If I may ask, how about twenty? Sure.
Don’t get angry, but how about ten? Sure.
What hutzpah! I reach my limit after giving Hannah three extensions on her bedtime and 1 extra story. It seems that God has no limit—Abraham just keeps pushing and pushing! Sadly, of course, there aren’t even ten innocent people, but the angels do warn Lot and his family so they can leave.
So why did God tell Abraham? Why did he send the three angels? Genesis 18:17 says, “Shall I hide from Abraham what I am about to do, since Abraham is to become a great and populous nation and all the nations of the earth will be blessed through him? For I have singled him out that he may instruct his children and posterity to walk in the ways of the lord by doing what is just and right.”
Abraham is the human who embodies what is just and right, he is the conduit of blessings for the rest of the world. I know Abraham will argue with me, and that’s why I am going to tell him. I want him to argue with me, I want him to stand up to me.
Ramban, the great 14th century French Talmudist and kabbalist, explains: if I don’t tell him, and give him the chance to argue with me, people will say that Abraham was cruel for not speaking up for his neighbors, and they won’t realize what a truly righteous person he was.
The opposite of Abraham in this regard is Noah, who when he found out that God was going to destroy the earth. God tells him to build a boat, he does. Get the animals in, okay. Take your family in and close the earth, okay. Everyone else on earth is going to die, okay.
He sounds righteous—he did exactly what god said. But the Torah calls the flood the “waters of Noah,” it blames him for the flood. Because he didn’t question God’s command. He never stood up to God, spoke up in defense of all the people and animals. God wants us to argue with him.
The great inheritor of this tradition in the modern era was the Hassidic rebbe, Levi Yitchak of Berditchev, the Kedushat Levi. It is said that on one Yom Kippur, he took some hair from a local woman who had been assaulted by kossaks. He said to God, place all of Israel’s sins on one side of the scale, place this lock of hair on the other. Doesn’t this suffering, this injustice, outweigh all of our sins?
A healthy relationship is an honest one. We say after the shema, adonai eloheychem emet, The lord our god is truth. God is not present in a relationship with dishonesty, with disingenuousness. Some people say “Hi, how are you,” and you know the right response is “fine.” That does not create a holy relationship. When we sit down with each other and ask “so how are you doing,” and show we want to take the time to find out, that is a holy relationship.
A healthy relationship with God is an honest one. If all we ever do is say the words we are supposed to say, pretend to feel the things we are supposed to feel, we are just giving lip service. Bahya Ibn Pakuda, author of Duties of the Heart, said rahmana liba ba’ey, God wants our hearts.
The Piazetsner rebbe, Kalonymous Kalman of Shapira, outlines a practice called hitbodedut, which is spontaneous outpouring to God. You find a space where you will be uninterrupted, and you will have a good chunk of time to be spontaneous with God. Maybe you start with some psalms, or just the phrase “Master of the universe” repeated over and over, or a melody. But then you try to hear and express what your soul yearns to say.
He likens our souls to a body buried beneath a pile of trash, with only the pinky sticking out. The more we wiggle the pinky, the more we free it from the rubbish pile. The rubbish pile is all the unimportant things, the trivial things, we get caught up in throughout the day, which obscures what is truly important. We get so caught up in these things we cannot hear the call of our soul, the urge to act in ways that are deeply good and generous. So he says we should just pour out spontaneously what we have to say to God.
There are a lot of words to say from the prayerbook, and they are well written and can be inspiring. But they are a jumping off point, a starting point to a conversation with God about the deepest things in life. What are my hopes for myself for the upcoming year? What if I were to die next year, how did I live my life? Where have I fallen short, and how do I feel about it? What are my hopes and dreams for the world, and where have I fallen into frustration?
As we journey through this Yom Kippur together, I invite you to take the time for this reflection,
For honest, heartfelt conversation with God.
I hope you have a meaningful day or contemplation, of prayer, of cheshbon nefesh, soul searching and repentance.
Shanah Tovah.
I want to talk a little about what our plans are this year for the synagogue. If you looked at our program flyer, and I hope you have, you will see that we have a new emphasis on programs. We have a lot going on.
First of all, we are working hard on providing services and programs to those of you who have been coming for decades and supporting the shul. Our primary focus here is weekly Shabbat services, as well as the daily minyan. I have also been teaching at daily minyan. In the mornings, we are studying the laws of interpersonal ethics, and in the evening minyan we are studying Mishnah.
We also are running the monthly Torah breakfast club, a Sunday morning bagel breakfast and class, which I am focusing this year on contemporary social issues; our next session will be focused on the controversy over Golden Farms. We are offering weekly classes during the daytime, including Hebrew, Halacha, and Jewish Ethics. We are running a monthly lunch-n-learn, at which I plan on opening up some theological issues, such as creation and Torah from sinai. We have a monthly Sisterhood meeting as well as Koffee Klatch, which are nice ways to spend time with each other during the week. We are also branching out, creating social opportunities, opportunities to have fun. We are offering Israeli dancing, Zumba, and outings to Broadway. We’re going to have a lot of fun together.
We are introducing a monthly Movie night. This past week we watched “Food, Inc.,” and we have a great lineup for the year. These are not just social; they are educational, covering serious social topics and Israeli topics.
We are also offering a couple service formats which break out a little from the traditional format. We are offering a monthly Dinner Under the Stars, a singalong-style Friday service in the round followed by a brief childrens’ story and then dinner. Some people have the impression this is only for young families; it’s not, it really is intergenerational—we count on the sisterhood ladies for a full house-- so please, come! We are also offering a free Traditional Friday Dinner, with a kabbalat Shabbat service led by Hazzan Schwartz. And we are starting a Singable Mussaf, which we hope will have everybody singing along enthusiastically; the music is available on our website.
We are also offering a rich array of programs for families with children. We will run a Kids’ Club during the movie night and Torah Breakfast Cub, so parents can bring their children, and both parents and children will have enriching experiences. We will be having holiday celebrations, such as the sukkot hootenanny, a barbeque and singalong, as well as the simhat torah family celebration. And we will be offering Tot Shabbat every other week, as well as a monthly “family ruach service,” a participatory service targeting families with elementary school children.
Finally, we have an exciting opportunity to run our new Hebrew School program at the Windsor Terrace Y, which will be an entry way for the families involved in their after-school program to become involved with FJC. We are breaking from the traditional classroom format, and planning a dynamic program housed at the Y on Prospect Ave, using art, drama, and music to teach jewish values and holidays. The program is Thursdays at 4:30 for children age 5-8, and it’s free for FJC family members, so please tell anyone you know who might be interested. We already have a number of students who were previously uninvolved with the synagogue. It is a great opportunity for outreach and growth.
This is going to be an exciting year at FJC, and I hope that each of you will continue to be a part of it.
Gmar Hatima Tovah.
Yom Kippur 5763
When we were children, my brother and I adopted a pet guinea pig named Einstein. He had long hair, brown, white and tan splotches. He loved to crawl in our shirts and nibble at lettuce. He was a harmless, innocent animal. And then he died, after maybe, maybe 6 months.
Now they say guinea pigs are supposed to live at least a few years. Not out guinea pigs. Maybe six months.
When Einstein died, I was distraught. How could a compassionate God let such an innocent animal die so young, and animal which had never done any wrong, except maybe crawling too far up my shirt? How could he create an animal which would only live for six months? It seemed unfair, even crual.
I was deeply angry at God, shocked at his injustice, his cruelty. And eventually I got over it.
We sometimes think that religion demands that we passively submit to whatever decrees God sends our ways, that no matter when happens we are supposed to smile and say, this is for the best. And to be sure, there is a tradition of doing that even in Judaism, of finding the positive to everything, of trying to see every experience, every tragedy as somehow a gift from God.
But there is another approach, too, in our tradition. When three Angels visit Abraham and inform him of God’s plans to destroy the entire city of Sodom, Abraham is shocked and confronts God directly: “Will you sweep away the innocent with the guilty? What if there are 50 innocent people in the city? Will you then wipe out the place and not forgive it for the sake of the innocent fifty who are in it? Far be it from you to do such a thing, to bring death upon the innocent as well as the guilty, so that innocent and guilty fare alike? Shall not the judge of the earth deal justly?”
Does God take it as impetuousness, as do Job’s friends when Job questions God’s ways? Is this a sign of rebellion, questioning God’s ways? No, God answers, gives in to his demand: “If I find fifty innocent people there, I will forgive the entire city for their sake.”
And Abraham keeps bargaining: Now what if there are just five missing from the 50? Will you forgive for forty five? Sure, I won’t do it for the 45.
Will you forgive for forty? Sure.
Now don’t get angry, but what about thirty? Sure.
If I may ask, how about twenty? Sure.
Don’t get angry, but how about ten? Sure.
What hutzpah! I reach my limit after giving Hannah three extensions on her bedtime and 1 extra story. It seems that God has no limit—Abraham just keeps pushing and pushing! Sadly, of course, there aren’t even ten innocent people, but the angels do warn Lot and his family so they can leave.
So why did God tell Abraham? Why did he send the three angels? Genesis 18:17 says, “Shall I hide from Abraham what I am about to do, since Abraham is to become a great and populous nation and all the nations of the earth will be blessed through him? For I have singled him out that he may instruct his children and posterity to walk in the ways of the lord by doing what is just and right.”
Abraham is the human who embodies what is just and right, he is the conduit of blessings for the rest of the world. I know Abraham will argue with me, and that’s why I am going to tell him. I want him to argue with me, I want him to stand up to me.
Ramban, the great 14th century French Talmudist and kabbalist, explains: if I don’t tell him, and give him the chance to argue with me, people will say that Abraham was cruel for not speaking up for his neighbors, and they won’t realize what a truly righteous person he was.
The opposite of Abraham in this regard is Noah, who when he found out that God was going to destroy the earth. God tells him to build a boat, he does. Get the animals in, okay. Take your family in and close the earth, okay. Everyone else on earth is going to die, okay.
He sounds righteous—he did exactly what god said. But the Torah calls the flood the “waters of Noah,” it blames him for the flood. Because he didn’t question God’s command. He never stood up to God, spoke up in defense of all the people and animals. God wants us to argue with him.
The great inheritor of this tradition in the modern era was the Hassidic rebbe, Levi Yitchak of Berditchev, the Kedushat Levi. It is said that on one Yom Kippur, he took some hair from a local woman who had been assaulted by kossaks. He said to God, place all of Israel’s sins on one side of the scale, place this lock of hair on the other. Doesn’t this suffering, this injustice, outweigh all of our sins?
A healthy relationship is an honest one. We say after the shema, adonai eloheychem emet, The lord our god is truth. God is not present in a relationship with dishonesty, with disingenuousness. Some people say “Hi, how are you,” and you know the right response is “fine.” That does not create a holy relationship. When we sit down with each other and ask “so how are you doing,” and show we want to take the time to find out, that is a holy relationship.
A healthy relationship with God is an honest one. If all we ever do is say the words we are supposed to say, pretend to feel the things we are supposed to feel, we are just giving lip service. Bahya Ibn Pakuda, author of Duties of the Heart, said rahmana liba ba’ey, God wants our hearts.
The Piazetsner rebbe, Kalonymous Kalman of Shapira, outlines a practice called hitbodedut, which is spontaneous outpouring to God. You find a space where you will be uninterrupted, and you will have a good chunk of time to be spontaneous with God. Maybe you start with some psalms, or just the phrase “Master of the universe” repeated over and over, or a melody. But then you try to hear and express what your soul yearns to say.
He likens our souls to a body buried beneath a pile of trash, with only the pinky sticking out. The more we wiggle the pinky, the more we free it from the rubbish pile. The rubbish pile is all the unimportant things, the trivial things, we get caught up in throughout the day, which obscures what is truly important. We get so caught up in these things we cannot hear the call of our soul, the urge to act in ways that are deeply good and generous. So he says we should just pour out spontaneously what we have to say to God.
There are a lot of words to say from the prayerbook, and they are well written and can be inspiring. But they are a jumping off point, a starting point to a conversation with God about the deepest things in life. What are my hopes for myself for the upcoming year? What if I were to die next year, how did I live my life? Where have I fallen short, and how do I feel about it? What are my hopes and dreams for the world, and where have I fallen into frustration?
As we journey through this Yom Kippur together, I invite you to take the time for this reflection,
For honest, heartfelt conversation with God.
I hope you have a meaningful day or contemplation, of prayer, of cheshbon nefesh, soul searching and repentance.
Shanah Tovah.
I want to talk a little about what our plans are this year for the synagogue. If you looked at our program flyer, and I hope you have, you will see that we have a new emphasis on programs. We have a lot going on.
First of all, we are working hard on providing services and programs to those of you who have been coming for decades and supporting the shul. Our primary focus here is weekly Shabbat services, as well as the daily minyan. I have also been teaching at daily minyan. In the mornings, we are studying the laws of interpersonal ethics, and in the evening minyan we are studying Mishnah.
We also are running the monthly Torah breakfast club, a Sunday morning bagel breakfast and class, which I am focusing this year on contemporary social issues; our next session will be focused on the controversy over Golden Farms. We are offering weekly classes during the daytime, including Hebrew, Halacha, and Jewish Ethics. We are running a monthly lunch-n-learn, at which I plan on opening up some theological issues, such as creation and Torah from sinai. We have a monthly Sisterhood meeting as well as Koffee Klatch, which are nice ways to spend time with each other during the week. We are also branching out, creating social opportunities, opportunities to have fun. We are offering Israeli dancing, Zumba, and outings to Broadway. We’re going to have a lot of fun together.
We are introducing a monthly Movie night. This past week we watched “Food, Inc.,” and we have a great lineup for the year. These are not just social; they are educational, covering serious social topics and Israeli topics.
We are also offering a couple service formats which break out a little from the traditional format. We are offering a monthly Dinner Under the Stars, a singalong-style Friday service in the round followed by a brief childrens’ story and then dinner. Some people have the impression this is only for young families; it’s not, it really is intergenerational—we count on the sisterhood ladies for a full house-- so please, come! We are also offering a free Traditional Friday Dinner, with a kabbalat Shabbat service led by Hazzan Schwartz. And we are starting a Singable Mussaf, which we hope will have everybody singing along enthusiastically; the music is available on our website.
We are also offering a rich array of programs for families with children. We will run a Kids’ Club during the movie night and Torah Breakfast Cub, so parents can bring their children, and both parents and children will have enriching experiences. We will be having holiday celebrations, such as the sukkot hootenanny, a barbeque and singalong, as well as the simhat torah family celebration. And we will be offering Tot Shabbat every other week, as well as a monthly “family ruach service,” a participatory service targeting families with elementary school children.
Finally, we have an exciting opportunity to run our new Hebrew School program at the Windsor Terrace Y, which will be an entry way for the families involved in their after-school program to become involved with FJC. We are breaking from the traditional classroom format, and planning a dynamic program housed at the Y on Prospect Ave, using art, drama, and music to teach jewish values and holidays. The program is Thursdays at 4:30 for children age 5-8, and it’s free for FJC family members, so please tell anyone you know who might be interested. We already have a number of students who were previously uninvolved with the synagogue. It is a great opportunity for outreach and growth.
This is going to be an exciting year at FJC, and I hope that each of you will continue to be a part of it.
Gmar Hatima Tovah.
Friday, September 21, 2012
Bringing the torah everywhere
After college, I studied Hebrew on kibbutz at Sde Eliyahu, a dati leumi kibbutz. We worked on the farm as needed, and one days we were asked to sort potatoes. So we were sitting by the conveyor belt, sorting potatoes, and a girl, Pessie, opposite me on the belt, out of nowhere starts talking about Rashi’s comment to the first verse of the bible.
Beautiful, it’s an interesting verse, an interesting conversation, but pardon me asking, why did she bring it up? In the veahafta, it says to discuss torah when you’re walking on the way, when you lie down, when you get up, all the time. So we should study torah even when we’re sorting potatoes.
Parshat Vayavo details the events on last day of Moses’ life. Moses transfers leadership to Joshua, teaches a song to everyone which we will read last week, and also writes a Torah
Contemporary scholars say that the term “torah” here refers to legal parts of Deuteronomy, not what we call the Torah, i.e. the 5 books of Moses.
Tradition says that it refers to a complete torah scroll, the one dictated by God. This scroll included the final passage detailing about Moses’ death. Imagine writing about your own death? The midrash says, Moses wrote the final verse with his tears. This torah was placed on the side of the ark, and travels with the Jews wherever the ark travels.
The idea is that wherever we go, whatever we do, we take the Torah with us, both as a people and as individuals. We have carried the Torah throughout the world, all hand copied from the original scroll.
One way to understand this idea is that torah should apply to every situation, has to inform every decision we make. I need to take Torah in with me to my house, to my kitchen, my bedroom, to my workplace, to the watercooler at work. I need to apply torah everywhere.
A more literal way to understand this is like Pessie’s potato conversation: we should always be immersing ourselves in torah, wherever we go.
A humorous story is told about R Hayyim Shmuelevitz, the head of the Mir yeshivah, who was given permission to enter the US from Shanghai. The boat trip took a month. And while all the other passengers spent their days pacing around, impatient to see some sign of progress, he spent every day studying the work Shev Shemaitsa. And while everyone else was anxious, he was at ease, totally concentrated on his studies. One of his students gazed out at the sea, and asked him, “where are we?” R. Chaim immediately answered, “In shemaise gimel, in the third chapter.”
The story is almost extreme. It is extreme in the sense that he didn’t notice what was going on. And this is certainly the danger, which we see happening in the untraorthodox world at times, being so immersed in traditional studies that we ignore the real world around us. In this case, though, there was nothing to notice. Once he needed to look up and see where he was, I hope that he would.
For sure, we shouldn’t immerse in torah study so much we don’t notice what’s happening in the world—we should be worldly. We should read the newspaper. We should keep up with contemporary medicine and science.
But we also shouldn’t be so immersed in daily life that it takes us away from torah study.
How many people here read/ watch/ hear the newspaper every day?
How many people here read the Talmud or another sefer every day?
Sadly, so many of us in the liberal world aren’t really immersed in Jewish study; we are completely immersed in the contemporary world.
The truth is, you need to immerse yourself in jewish study to get somewhere with it. For me, studying full time in yeshiva in Israel brought me lightning years ahead in my studies. Just going to shul weekly is not enough. You need to work your way through a sacred book systematically. Even if we immerse ourselves one hour a day in Jewish study, it will make an amazing difference in our spiritual life, and in our ability to think jewishly about the contemporary world.
Many people have asked me to talk about current events, which I am going to try to do, and I am working on a number of sermon series on specific topics.
But it’s also important to go systematically through torah, through Talmud, through other seforim, to build a thorough Jewish knowledge, to build the kind of thought process that will approach current events from a jewish perspective. I want to challenge you: spend as much time studying a sefer every day as you do on the news (at least as a start).
This is what Pirke Avot calls tov Talmud torah im derech eretz—it’s good to combine torah and worldly pursuits.
Beautiful, it’s an interesting verse, an interesting conversation, but pardon me asking, why did she bring it up? In the veahafta, it says to discuss torah when you’re walking on the way, when you lie down, when you get up, all the time. So we should study torah even when we’re sorting potatoes.
Parshat Vayavo details the events on last day of Moses’ life. Moses transfers leadership to Joshua, teaches a song to everyone which we will read last week, and also writes a Torah
Contemporary scholars say that the term “torah” here refers to legal parts of Deuteronomy, not what we call the Torah, i.e. the 5 books of Moses.
Tradition says that it refers to a complete torah scroll, the one dictated by God. This scroll included the final passage detailing about Moses’ death. Imagine writing about your own death? The midrash says, Moses wrote the final verse with his tears. This torah was placed on the side of the ark, and travels with the Jews wherever the ark travels.
The idea is that wherever we go, whatever we do, we take the Torah with us, both as a people and as individuals. We have carried the Torah throughout the world, all hand copied from the original scroll.
One way to understand this idea is that torah should apply to every situation, has to inform every decision we make. I need to take Torah in with me to my house, to my kitchen, my bedroom, to my workplace, to the watercooler at work. I need to apply torah everywhere.
A more literal way to understand this is like Pessie’s potato conversation: we should always be immersing ourselves in torah, wherever we go.
A humorous story is told about R Hayyim Shmuelevitz, the head of the Mir yeshivah, who was given permission to enter the US from Shanghai. The boat trip took a month. And while all the other passengers spent their days pacing around, impatient to see some sign of progress, he spent every day studying the work Shev Shemaitsa. And while everyone else was anxious, he was at ease, totally concentrated on his studies. One of his students gazed out at the sea, and asked him, “where are we?” R. Chaim immediately answered, “In shemaise gimel, in the third chapter.”
The story is almost extreme. It is extreme in the sense that he didn’t notice what was going on. And this is certainly the danger, which we see happening in the untraorthodox world at times, being so immersed in traditional studies that we ignore the real world around us. In this case, though, there was nothing to notice. Once he needed to look up and see where he was, I hope that he would.
For sure, we shouldn’t immerse in torah study so much we don’t notice what’s happening in the world—we should be worldly. We should read the newspaper. We should keep up with contemporary medicine and science.
But we also shouldn’t be so immersed in daily life that it takes us away from torah study.
How many people here read/ watch/ hear the newspaper every day?
How many people here read the Talmud or another sefer every day?
Sadly, so many of us in the liberal world aren’t really immersed in Jewish study; we are completely immersed in the contemporary world.
The truth is, you need to immerse yourself in jewish study to get somewhere with it. For me, studying full time in yeshiva in Israel brought me lightning years ahead in my studies. Just going to shul weekly is not enough. You need to work your way through a sacred book systematically. Even if we immerse ourselves one hour a day in Jewish study, it will make an amazing difference in our spiritual life, and in our ability to think jewishly about the contemporary world.
Many people have asked me to talk about current events, which I am going to try to do, and I am working on a number of sermon series on specific topics.
But it’s also important to go systematically through torah, through Talmud, through other seforim, to build a thorough Jewish knowledge, to build the kind of thought process that will approach current events from a jewish perspective. I want to challenge you: spend as much time studying a sefer every day as you do on the news (at least as a start).
This is what Pirke Avot calls tov Talmud torah im derech eretz—it’s good to combine torah and worldly pursuits.
Forgiving repeat offenders
One of the challenges with forgiving people is that there is a tendency to forgive but not forget. I forgive you, but I’m not gonna do you any favors; I’ll forgive you, but I won’t invite you for shabbes; I’ll forgive you, but I’m not gonna smile at you, not gonna shake your hand, not gonna go out of my way to do you any favors.
The Talmud defines grudges very strictly.
Torah: prohibitions on revenge & grudge
Revenge: You don’t lend me your shovel; I wont lend you mine
Grudge: You don’t lend; I do because I’m not like you
What is the grudge?
Is it that I say “I’m not like you?” That’s actually revenge: saying anything negative is a way we take revenge
So the grudge is holding a negative attitude in the first place, even though I don’t act on it—I do lend my shovel, and I’m not nasty about it. It’s the fact that I held on to what you did in my mind.
So how do you do this with someone who has hurt you repeatedly? How can you possibly love such a person?
The Torah’s prescription is that we rebuke people-we tell them what they did that hurt us. Hopefully, they apologize, and we forgive them.
But what if they’ve done it before, and apologized before?
The commentators say, on the 13 attributes, that God forgives us repeatedly. Every Yom Kippur, we stand before God, and apologize for the same weakness we apologized for last Yom Kippur. Levi Yitzchak once said to himself, but Levi, you said last year you’d be better, and he answered, but this year I really mean it. And every year God forgives us. So to imitate God means to forgive people repeatedly, even for the same offense.
I’m not saying you shouldn’t protect yourself. Abusers will abuse and apologize in an endless cycle, and the only way to protect yourself sometimes is to remove yourself from an abusive situation.
But even when people mean it, even when they really try, it might take time, even years, for them to change. And our trasdition calls us to have the same patience with them as God has with us.
What if we say it’s no use rebuking them, they’ll never change, they’ll never listen? The Talmud says that in that situation, it’s a mitzvah to be quiet. But it’s still a mitzvah to love them, unless they are a truly evil person. And in that case, we need to forgive them even without an apology, just as God is patient with us, keeping us alive even when we don’t apologize to him.
I invite all of us, over the next few days, to clean up all baggage with people, to forgive people even who don’t deserve it, so we can all enter Yom Kippur with a truly clean slate.
Sunday, September 16, 2012
Rosh Hashanah Day 2: Making God King
Rosh Hashanah Day 2: Making God King
Rebbe Nahman of Breslav told of a certain king who had a wise man. The king said to the wise man:
"There is one king who signs himself as being 'mighty, great and a man of truth and humility'. As for his being mighty, I know he is mighty because his kingdom is surrounded by the sea and in the sea stands a fleet of warships with cannons, which will not allow anyone to draw near. Inland from the sea is a deep moat that goes around the whole kingdom. To get in, there is only one tiny pathway wide enough for only one man, and there too stand cannons. If someone comes to make war, they fire with the cannons. It is impossible to get near.
"However, as for his signing himself 'a man of truth and humility', I don't know. I therefore want you to bring me a portrait of that king."
This was because this king had portraits of all the kings, but there was no portrait of that king in any king's collection. The reason was that he was hidden from everybody. He sat behind a veil, remote from the people of his country.
The wise man went to the country. He realized that he needed to find out the nature of the country. How do you find out the nature of a country? You find it out through the people's humor. When you want to know something, you should find out how people laugh and joke about it.
There are different kinds of jokes. Sometimes a person may really want to hurt another with words, but when the other takes exception to his words, he says, "I only meant it as a joke". "Like one who exerts himself to cast firebrands and arrows. and then says, I am only joking" (Proverbs 26:18-19) . There are other times when a person may say something that is truly intended as a lighthearted joke, yet his friend is hurt by his words. Thus there are various different kinds of jokes and humor.
And among all the different kingdoms there is one kingdom that includes all kingdoms. In that kingdom is one city that includes all the cities of the entire kingdom that includes all kingdoms. In that city is one house which includes all the houses of the whole city that includes all the cities of the kingdom that includes all kingdoms. And there is one man who includes everything in that entire house. And there is also someone who produces all the mockery and joking of the kingdom.
The wise man took with him a large sum of money and went there and saw how they were mocking and joking in various ways. From the humor, he understood that the entire kingdom was full of lies from beginning to end. He saw the way they would joke about how people defrauded and deceived others in business, and how the injured party would sue in the lower courts where everything was lies and bribery. He would then go to a higher court, where everything was also lies. They used to put on comedies about all these kinds of things.
Through their humor the sage understood that the entire kingdom was filled with lies and deceptions and that there was no truth anywhere. He did some business in the kingdom, allowing himself to be defrauded in the transaction. He took the case to court, but the court was all lies and bribes. One day he would give them a bribe but the next day they would not recognize him. He went to a higher court, and there too it was all lies. Eventually he came before the Supreme Court, but they too were full of lies and bribery. Finally he came to the king himself.
When he came to the king, he said, "Who are you king over? The whole kingdom is full of lies from beginning to end and there's no truth in it."
He began enumerating all the lies in the kingdom. When the king heard his words, he turned his ear to the veil to hear what he was saying. The king was surprised that there was anyone who knew about all the lies in the kingdom.
The ministers of state who heard what he was saying were very angry with him. Yet he went on telling about all the lies in the kingdom.
"It would be proper to say," declared the wise man, "that the king too is like them - that he loves falsehood just as his kingdom does . But from this I see that you are a man of truth: you are far from them because you cannot stand the falsehood of the country."
The wise man began to praise the king greatly. But the king was very humble, and "in the place of His greatness, there is His humility" ( Megilah 31a) . Such is the way of the humble person. The more he is praised and magnified , the smaller and humbler he becomes. Because of the sage's great praise, extolling and magnifying him, the king reached the utmost humility and smallness until he became literally nothing. He could not contain himself, and he threw aside the veil to see who this wise man was that knew and understood all this.
His face was revealed, and the sage saw it and brought his portrait back to the king. [Trans. Avraham greenbaum]
The story is a metaphor. The mighty king is God, hidden behind a veil such that none of us can see him, divorced from reality.
And the kingdom of lies is this world, a world run by greed and injustice, people trying to make as much money off each other in whatever way they can, and where courts and government officials are corrupt.
Where is God in such a world, in a world where 15 million children die of hunger each year, in a world where millionaires control 39% of the world’s wealth but over 3 billion people live on less than $2.50 a day, where Russian and Asian women and children are trafficked as slaves, where dictators in Syria, Libya, Iran, and North Korea are willing to murder thousands of civilians to retain their grip on power, and where people walk into crowded theatres and spray people with bullets?
And the answer, from this story, is: he’s nowhere to be found. He’s hiding. Because this is a world run on the basis of lies and injustice, not on truth and mercy. The world as we know it is a realm of lies, of corruption. God is an absent king, and we are holding the steering wheel.
In the aleynu, which we say every day but we say with a special ceremony today on the high holidays, we declare vehaya adonai lemelech, we look forward to the day when God will be king. Because, in a sense, he is not. God does not rule the world. People rule the world. People destroy the environment. People create inequality. People create violence and slavery.
The aleynu says that on that day God will be one and his name will be one. So what is he now? Fractured. Deeply fractured. Rashi says that as long as the forces of evil are in the world, God’s name is not complete. Not only is God not in charge, but even God himself is broken and incomplete. Because a God who is not in charge of the universe is not fully himself. He’s not yet king.
Rosh Hashanah is not just a day we celebrate God as king, it is a day on which we make God king. The midrash says that if we don’t make god king—im ein mamlichim oti—he is not king.
So how do we make God king?
First of all, we envision a world which is truly a kingdom of God. Not in the sense of a theocracy ruled by some religious elite who force everyone else to follow strict religious rules, like the Taliban, but in the sense of a domain where every transaction is governed by the divine attributes of truth, justice, and mercy. Where business dealings are fair and not deceptive, and people help each other to be able to pursue their own livelihood, where there is no corruption among people in power, where there is no war or oppression, where every human being is able to lead a life of safety and dignity, where animals and the environment are respected, cared for, cherished.
On Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur, this visualization is the centerpiece of the liturgy. On page 135, paragraph 4, there is a large addition to the third prayer of the amidah, visualizing a state of being where God has become king.
In the first paragraph, “and now,” uvchen in the Hebrew, we envision all of humanity uniting to fulfill the divine will, no longer serving the idols of power, greed, corruption, and violence. Not that everyone has to be the same religion, but that all religions actually take seriously the divine imperative at their core, to love their fellow human being, to care for the earth.
In the second paragraph, we visualize what this will mean for our people, who have continually been pushed around the world and threatened by massive, violent regimes. Iran is, sadly, not new; we have been threatened before and we have survived, and we will outlive Ahmedenijad. But we imagine a day when we can live in peace as a nation, we imagine what Israel would look like, the joyful partying of Jerusalem at peace. Can you imagine the party when we finally make peace with the Palestinians? We need to be able to imagine this, to believe it can become a reality. Maybe when we are davenning this we can add our own details, paint a picture in our minds of what it will look like.
In the third paragraph, we imagine evil vanishing from history and from the human soul. The roots of evil are buried in the human soul from birth, in what Freud called the death instinct and Judaism called the yetzer hara, the drive to destroy, to hate, to harm. We imagine a day when this is eradicated from our souls, from our neighbor’s souls, from all of humanity. This really can happen. We need to make this happen.
Why all the imagination, all the visualization? Is it just a fantasy? Yes, but fantasy is a powerful tool. It gives us a sense where we are going, and helps us believe we can get there. It helps free us from the tyranny of reality, of thinking this is just how things are.
We also envision what it would mean for God to be king in our own lives. The next paragraph says “you alone will rule over all your works.” What would it look like if I made all my decisions by what God really wants? What would I eat? How would I spend my time? How much time would I spend exercising, studying, helping others? Who would I spend my time with? How much time and attention would I give to my spouse, my children, my friends? How would I treat them? Where would I shop, what products would I buy?
The shofar blasts are part of the coronation, too. Every festival has a mitzvah unique to it, and the mitzvah of Rosh Hashanah is hearing the shofar. The shofar is used both to signify military victory, and coronation. It is a profound expression of the divine victory over the forces of evil:
In Psalm 47, for example, God is depicted as ascending up the temple mount to be enthroned as king of all the earth. " God has gone up with a shout, the Lord with the sound of a trumpet [shofar]" (Ps 47:5).
The sound of the shofar also is symbolic of the messianic era: "And in that day a great trumpet [shofar] will be blown, and those who were lost in the land of Assyria and those who were driven out of the land of Egypt will come and worship the Lord on the holy mountain at Jerusalem" (Is 27:13).
Zechariah also writes that "Then the Lord will appear over them, and his arrow go forth like lightening; the Lord God will sound the shofar, and march forth in the whirlwinds of the south" (Zech 9:14).
To make God king, in Hebrew mamlichim, means
to declare god king, as in saying the kedusha on p. 134,
but more importantly:
to envision a world transformed into the kingdom of God,
and to make God king at least over the few square feet of the world I control, over my life, over my interactions.
Judaism does not claim that everything every human being does is ordained by God. God gives humans free choice, and some people make bad or even evil decisions which hurt other people. Perhaps God mourns with us, suffers with us, grieves with us at the state of the world. And perhaps God also dreams with us, fantasizes with us, shares in our hoping and yearning for the kind of world this could be, for the kind of lives each of us could live.
May we all dream with God, and do a little bit to make that dream come true.
Shanah Tovah,
Have a wonderful new year
Rebbe Nahman of Breslav told of a certain king who had a wise man. The king said to the wise man:
"There is one king who signs himself as being 'mighty, great and a man of truth and humility'. As for his being mighty, I know he is mighty because his kingdom is surrounded by the sea and in the sea stands a fleet of warships with cannons, which will not allow anyone to draw near. Inland from the sea is a deep moat that goes around the whole kingdom. To get in, there is only one tiny pathway wide enough for only one man, and there too stand cannons. If someone comes to make war, they fire with the cannons. It is impossible to get near.
"However, as for his signing himself 'a man of truth and humility', I don't know. I therefore want you to bring me a portrait of that king."
This was because this king had portraits of all the kings, but there was no portrait of that king in any king's collection. The reason was that he was hidden from everybody. He sat behind a veil, remote from the people of his country.
The wise man went to the country. He realized that he needed to find out the nature of the country. How do you find out the nature of a country? You find it out through the people's humor. When you want to know something, you should find out how people laugh and joke about it.
There are different kinds of jokes. Sometimes a person may really want to hurt another with words, but when the other takes exception to his words, he says, "I only meant it as a joke". "Like one who exerts himself to cast firebrands and arrows. and then says, I am only joking" (Proverbs 26:18-19) . There are other times when a person may say something that is truly intended as a lighthearted joke, yet his friend is hurt by his words. Thus there are various different kinds of jokes and humor.
And among all the different kingdoms there is one kingdom that includes all kingdoms. In that kingdom is one city that includes all the cities of the entire kingdom that includes all kingdoms. In that city is one house which includes all the houses of the whole city that includes all the cities of the kingdom that includes all kingdoms. And there is one man who includes everything in that entire house. And there is also someone who produces all the mockery and joking of the kingdom.
The wise man took with him a large sum of money and went there and saw how they were mocking and joking in various ways. From the humor, he understood that the entire kingdom was full of lies from beginning to end. He saw the way they would joke about how people defrauded and deceived others in business, and how the injured party would sue in the lower courts where everything was lies and bribery. He would then go to a higher court, where everything was also lies. They used to put on comedies about all these kinds of things.
Through their humor the sage understood that the entire kingdom was filled with lies and deceptions and that there was no truth anywhere. He did some business in the kingdom, allowing himself to be defrauded in the transaction. He took the case to court, but the court was all lies and bribes. One day he would give them a bribe but the next day they would not recognize him. He went to a higher court, and there too it was all lies. Eventually he came before the Supreme Court, but they too were full of lies and bribery. Finally he came to the king himself.
When he came to the king, he said, "Who are you king over? The whole kingdom is full of lies from beginning to end and there's no truth in it."
He began enumerating all the lies in the kingdom. When the king heard his words, he turned his ear to the veil to hear what he was saying. The king was surprised that there was anyone who knew about all the lies in the kingdom.
The ministers of state who heard what he was saying were very angry with him. Yet he went on telling about all the lies in the kingdom.
"It would be proper to say," declared the wise man, "that the king too is like them - that he loves falsehood just as his kingdom does . But from this I see that you are a man of truth: you are far from them because you cannot stand the falsehood of the country."
The wise man began to praise the king greatly. But the king was very humble, and "in the place of His greatness, there is His humility" ( Megilah 31a) . Such is the way of the humble person. The more he is praised and magnified , the smaller and humbler he becomes. Because of the sage's great praise, extolling and magnifying him, the king reached the utmost humility and smallness until he became literally nothing. He could not contain himself, and he threw aside the veil to see who this wise man was that knew and understood all this.
His face was revealed, and the sage saw it and brought his portrait back to the king. [Trans. Avraham greenbaum]
The story is a metaphor. The mighty king is God, hidden behind a veil such that none of us can see him, divorced from reality.
And the kingdom of lies is this world, a world run by greed and injustice, people trying to make as much money off each other in whatever way they can, and where courts and government officials are corrupt.
Where is God in such a world, in a world where 15 million children die of hunger each year, in a world where millionaires control 39% of the world’s wealth but over 3 billion people live on less than $2.50 a day, where Russian and Asian women and children are trafficked as slaves, where dictators in Syria, Libya, Iran, and North Korea are willing to murder thousands of civilians to retain their grip on power, and where people walk into crowded theatres and spray people with bullets?
And the answer, from this story, is: he’s nowhere to be found. He’s hiding. Because this is a world run on the basis of lies and injustice, not on truth and mercy. The world as we know it is a realm of lies, of corruption. God is an absent king, and we are holding the steering wheel.
In the aleynu, which we say every day but we say with a special ceremony today on the high holidays, we declare vehaya adonai lemelech, we look forward to the day when God will be king. Because, in a sense, he is not. God does not rule the world. People rule the world. People destroy the environment. People create inequality. People create violence and slavery.
The aleynu says that on that day God will be one and his name will be one. So what is he now? Fractured. Deeply fractured. Rashi says that as long as the forces of evil are in the world, God’s name is not complete. Not only is God not in charge, but even God himself is broken and incomplete. Because a God who is not in charge of the universe is not fully himself. He’s not yet king.
Rosh Hashanah is not just a day we celebrate God as king, it is a day on which we make God king. The midrash says that if we don’t make god king—im ein mamlichim oti—he is not king.
So how do we make God king?
First of all, we envision a world which is truly a kingdom of God. Not in the sense of a theocracy ruled by some religious elite who force everyone else to follow strict religious rules, like the Taliban, but in the sense of a domain where every transaction is governed by the divine attributes of truth, justice, and mercy. Where business dealings are fair and not deceptive, and people help each other to be able to pursue their own livelihood, where there is no corruption among people in power, where there is no war or oppression, where every human being is able to lead a life of safety and dignity, where animals and the environment are respected, cared for, cherished.
On Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur, this visualization is the centerpiece of the liturgy. On page 135, paragraph 4, there is a large addition to the third prayer of the amidah, visualizing a state of being where God has become king.
In the first paragraph, “and now,” uvchen in the Hebrew, we envision all of humanity uniting to fulfill the divine will, no longer serving the idols of power, greed, corruption, and violence. Not that everyone has to be the same religion, but that all religions actually take seriously the divine imperative at their core, to love their fellow human being, to care for the earth.
In the second paragraph, we visualize what this will mean for our people, who have continually been pushed around the world and threatened by massive, violent regimes. Iran is, sadly, not new; we have been threatened before and we have survived, and we will outlive Ahmedenijad. But we imagine a day when we can live in peace as a nation, we imagine what Israel would look like, the joyful partying of Jerusalem at peace. Can you imagine the party when we finally make peace with the Palestinians? We need to be able to imagine this, to believe it can become a reality. Maybe when we are davenning this we can add our own details, paint a picture in our minds of what it will look like.
In the third paragraph, we imagine evil vanishing from history and from the human soul. The roots of evil are buried in the human soul from birth, in what Freud called the death instinct and Judaism called the yetzer hara, the drive to destroy, to hate, to harm. We imagine a day when this is eradicated from our souls, from our neighbor’s souls, from all of humanity. This really can happen. We need to make this happen.
Why all the imagination, all the visualization? Is it just a fantasy? Yes, but fantasy is a powerful tool. It gives us a sense where we are going, and helps us believe we can get there. It helps free us from the tyranny of reality, of thinking this is just how things are.
We also envision what it would mean for God to be king in our own lives. The next paragraph says “you alone will rule over all your works.” What would it look like if I made all my decisions by what God really wants? What would I eat? How would I spend my time? How much time would I spend exercising, studying, helping others? Who would I spend my time with? How much time and attention would I give to my spouse, my children, my friends? How would I treat them? Where would I shop, what products would I buy?
The shofar blasts are part of the coronation, too. Every festival has a mitzvah unique to it, and the mitzvah of Rosh Hashanah is hearing the shofar. The shofar is used both to signify military victory, and coronation. It is a profound expression of the divine victory over the forces of evil:
In Psalm 47, for example, God is depicted as ascending up the temple mount to be enthroned as king of all the earth. " God has gone up with a shout, the Lord with the sound of a trumpet [shofar]" (Ps 47:5).
The sound of the shofar also is symbolic of the messianic era: "And in that day a great trumpet [shofar] will be blown, and those who were lost in the land of Assyria and those who were driven out of the land of Egypt will come and worship the Lord on the holy mountain at Jerusalem" (Is 27:13).
Zechariah also writes that "Then the Lord will appear over them, and his arrow go forth like lightening; the Lord God will sound the shofar, and march forth in the whirlwinds of the south" (Zech 9:14).
To make God king, in Hebrew mamlichim, means
to declare god king, as in saying the kedusha on p. 134,
but more importantly:
to envision a world transformed into the kingdom of God,
and to make God king at least over the few square feet of the world I control, over my life, over my interactions.
Judaism does not claim that everything every human being does is ordained by God. God gives humans free choice, and some people make bad or even evil decisions which hurt other people. Perhaps God mourns with us, suffers with us, grieves with us at the state of the world. And perhaps God also dreams with us, fantasizes with us, shares in our hoping and yearning for the kind of world this could be, for the kind of lives each of us could live.
May we all dream with God, and do a little bit to make that dream come true.
Shanah Tovah,
Have a wonderful new year
RH1: Be the change you want to see
It has been an intense transition to Brooklyn, and a good one. One of the assets I appreciate most about this neighborhood is prospect park, where I love to go biking, running, and walking. When I first started to run in the park, I noticed that although there were scores of people around, they generally kept to themselves. I am used to a neighborhood in Philadelphia where everyone says hi, but here they didn’t.
I was reminded of the saying in pirkey Avot, which mr Keisler repeats often, that we should always be the first to say hello to everyone we run across, havey makdim shalom lechol adam. So I started to say Hi. It was frustrating. People don’t even glance, make eye contact, to be able to say hi, and it feels really weird to say hi to someone who’s not looking at you.
It is very hard in a place with people who don’t even give you a glance, who walk around with a wall of separation, to be the first to break down the wall. Some of you may know about Mr. Keisler’s father that he was so friendly with everyone, that there were even nuns crying at his funeral. It takes a truly dedicated person to do this. As I have tried, I have wavered, and can only get myself to say hello when people actually look my way.
How can you be the only one to say hello? How can you be friendly, around people who are keeping to themselves?
Pirkey Avot says bemakom she-ein ish, sham teheh ish. In a place where there is no human, nobody acting in a menshlich manner, there you should act menschlich. When you are surrounded by inhumanity, act humane. When you are surrounded by coldness, act warm. Even if you would be the only person acting honestly, act honestly. In a world that does not reflect the values you believe in, at least your life can testify to those values.
being the change you believe in
There can be a great cost to going against the trends, for doing the right thing when nobody else is.
This summer, Lance Armstrong announced that he is not fighting the charges of doping. In effect, he is admitting taking steroids during his years as a champion biker. Lance had a stupendous, superhuman career, winning the Tour deFrance 7 times. His resting heart rate is 30 beats per minute, about half of a normal human. His accomplishments not only seemed superhuman, in fact they were superhuman, dependent on the performance enhancing steroids that his coach gave him.
The problem is, that in competitive sports, if everyone is doing it, you can’t win if you don’t cheat. If you are competing against other bikers who are using steroids, you can’t win without using them yourself. In a game where everyone is cheating, you need to cheat to survive.
In a recent article in Scientific American, the bioethicist Michael Shermer gave this argument a scientific shape, pointing out that moral choices such as using steroids are perceived as economic decisions, and the stakes are too high for any rational person not to cheat. Players are stuck in what game theory calls a Nash Equilibrium, where everyone’s better off if everyone changes, but nobody wants to be the first to change, because whoever changes first loses out. The lone biker to go clean loses the Tour deFrance; people only stop cheating when it no longer pays to cheat.
This same type of dilemma applies on the global scale. Think about the impasse over global warming, and America dragging its feet on the Kyoto protocol. Everyone knows that emissions needs to be capped, and that the world will suffer if we don’t cap emissions. Nobody wants to be the first country to cap their emissions, which will hinder their own economic growth without significantly affecting the climate. And America doesn’t want to cap their emissions without China also capping emissions. Under the Kyoto protocol, China gets a free pass, benefitting by being able to produce goods cheaper. America doesn’t want to be a sucker, capping her own emissions and paying the cost for being the only one to be responsible. So we stalemate, nobody caps emissions, and everybody loses.
Pirkey Avot says Bemakom She ein Ish, sham tihyeh Ish. In a place where there are no humans, there be a human. In a place where nobody is doing the right thing, go against the crowd and do the right thing. Similarly, Exodus 23:2 says don't follow the multitude to do evil.
In other words, I have to make correct moral choices, regardless of whether those around me are doing the right thing, and whether I become the sucker because of it. If I find myself in a context where I will lose out by standing out, I need to follow my values, and do the right thing regardless of the cost.
When I worked as a chaplain at a psychiatric hospital, I often encountered patients who described their path to alcohol or drugs. Invariably, they got caught up with the wrong crowd, hung out with the wrong element that brought them to abusing drugs, and then to worse things. They were never the bad crowd that brought others to irresponsible living. Nobody was. Everybody was a good individual who got caught up with a bad element.
Every crowd is made of individuals. So the principle is, never blame the crowd. The bad crowd is never an excuse—all of them are trying to use the same excuse themselves! Make moral choices independently of the crowd. If everybody did this, there would be no bad crowd. Eduyot 5:6 says better to be called a fool all your life than to be wicked for a moment. Better to be the uncool, to lose out, to be a dupe, than to follow the crowd to do wrong.
Mahatma Ghandi’s grandson quoted him as saying “be the change you want to see in the world.” The first part of the world I can think about changing, and ultimately the only part I can directly impact, is my own life. Addressing problems in the rest of the world seems overwhelming, and most of us never have a chance to significantly impact the major issues we care about, and hear about every day. Not that we should stop there. We should think about how to transform the world. But transforming our own life is the first place to start.
This approach makes it much easier to address some of the huge issues we see in the news, which concern all of us on a daily basis. I mentioned global warming, and the stalemate over the Kyoto protocol. It is one of the great tragedies of the modern era that we are destroying the ice caps and are pushing polar bears to extinction, that the legendary Northwest passage is no longer a legend. The destruction is so massive it can be overwhelming to think about.
I can’t save the polar bears. But I can walk, bike, and take the subway. I can purchase a fuel efficient car. I can be careful about my electricity usage. I can purchase my energy from renewable sources. It’s small, it may not significantly impact the environment, and at times it might be inconvenient, but at least it’s doing something. Recycling, and using products with less packaging, bringing my own bags to the supermarket. Whether or not it helps even a little bit, it’s better to do the right thing.
May God give us the courage to go out on limbs,
to be trailblazers in pursuing what is right,
to bring humanity to places and situations where it is absent.
Shanah Tova Umetukah,
May each of you have a sweet and wonderful new year,
I wanted to take this moment to point your attention to the program flyer. I mentioned a number of social issues today, and I believe deeply that we have an obligation as Jews to be concerned with these issues. In order to think about these issues as a community, we will be having a monthly movie series on Wednesday nights, primarily focused on contemporary social topics, and I want to invite and encourage everyone to attend.
The first movie, “Food, Inc,” will be this Wednesday, and we will have a brief discussion afterwards. We will also be using the Torah Breakfast Club, our Sunday morning adult education series, as an opportunity to study the Jewish sources on these topics. The first Torah breakfast club this month will be about kashrut and ecological and animal rights issues, and will take place this weekend.
Another way that we as Jews maintain social conscience is by making tzedakah a regular practice, especially on the holidays. Although it’s never been done here, it is traditional to bring in tzedakah on the way in to kol nidre, and leave it in the pushke on the way in (because of course you can’t carry money on yontiff). In that vein, we will be collecting checks on the way in to kol nidre for masbia, a local soup kitchen that regularly serves hunderds of hungry new Yorkers. Please being your checks for whatever amount feels comfortable to you.
Wednesday, September 12, 2012
Is metzitzah bapeh prohibited by Jewish law?
There has been a lot of controversy recently about the procedure of metzitzah bepeh, sucking away the blood orally after a circumcision, which some mohelim do instead of the alternative, using a pipette. The Department of Health has come out against the procedure, and in New York there has been a push to require informed consent for the procedure.
This has been heated by reports of the death of a baby in Brooklyn from herpes, who may have received it from a mohel. According to report in the orthodox newspaper Yated, which interviewed mother, the mother believes that her baby got herpes from another child through a pacifier which he had licked before giving it to the baby
The ultraorthodox community here has been up in arms against the proposal, seeing it as one step toward banning circumcision.
In fact, there have been health concerns for hundreds of years, and massive amounts of discussion on the issue. For centuries, there have been Rabbinic authorities who see metzitzah as optional or even forbidden.
Ramban (14th c) notes in the Yad Halevy, his commentary to Rambam’s book of Mitzvot, that in his time, doctors were against it. Already by his time as he puts it massive quantities of ink had been spilled over this issue. He says that it is not part of the mitzvah and certainly can be done with an instrument. Moshe Schreiber / Hatam Sofer (19c Europe) says it is not even a custom.
Avraham Borenstein/ Avnei Nezer (19c Europe): says it was only done because of safety concerns, not because it is part of the mitzvah. Milah consists of making the cut and uncovering, which together fulfill the double commandment of “hamol yimol,” you shall surely circumsize. The midrash says that the two words in that verse refer to cutting and uncovering, but no midrash says that metzitzah is implied by that verse, or by any other verse from the Torah.
On the other side of the controversy, Haim Hizkiyahu Medini /Sde hemed (19c Israel) argued that it is halacha lemoshe misinai—a law handed down to Moses at Sinai that needs no written source. That’s a pretty hard argument to disprove! Moshe Sternbuch, the current chief haredi rabbi in Israel, also came out strongly in favor of metzitzah as a required part of circumcision.
The roots of the controversy are in a passage in the Talmud, which I want to share with you.
BT Shabbat 133a-b
MISHNAH: WE PERFORM ALL THE NECESSITIES OF CIRCUMCISION ON THE SABBATH. WE CIRCUMCISE, UNCOVER, SUCK [Motzetz], AND PLACE A COMPRESS AND CUMMIN UPON IT. IF ONE DID NOT CRUSH [THE CUMMIN] ON THE EVE OF THE SABBATH, HE MUST CHEW [IT] WITH HIS TEETH AND APPLY [IT TO THE WOUND]; IF HE DID NOT BEAT UP WINE AND OIL ON THE EVE OF THE SABBATH, EACH MUST BE APPLIED SEPARATELY. WE MAY NOT MAKE A BANDAGE FOR IT IN THE FIRST PLACE, BUT MUST WRAP A RAG ABOUT IT. IF THIS WAS NOT PREPARED FROM THE EVE OF THE SABBATH, ONE WINDS IT ABOUT HIS FINGER AND BRINGS IT, AND EVEN THROUGH ANOTHER COURTYARD…
WE SUCK OUT, etc. R. Papa said: If a surgeon does not suck, it is dangerous and he is dismissed.
Isn’t it obvious: since we desecrate the Sabbath for it, it is dangerous?
You might say that this blood is stored up. Therefore he informs us that the blood makes a wound, and it is like a bandage and cumin: just as when one does not apply a bandage and cumin there is danger, so here too if one does not do it there is danger.
Rashi:
“suck” the blood, even though it makes a wound because the blood does not separate from the wound except through metzitzah
“you might say” our mishnah doesn’t teach us that it rises to [the level of] violating Shabbat, because the blood is stored and stands there as if in a vessel, and with metzitzah there is no wound or Torah prohibition, and there is no Torah prohibition [i.e. against metzitzah on Shabbat in general], and [you would think that] that is why it is permitted and not because of danger, [so] a surgeon does who not suck on the weekday, it is not dangerous and we do not dismiss him.
“therefore he informs us that the blood makes a wound”-when it comes out via metzitzah. Nevertheless it is permitted because of danger, since it teaches in the mishnah about a bandage and cumin.
The context of this discussion is a longer discussion of situations in which one breaks the normal rules of Shabbat. An earlier mishnah discussed taking care of a woman during childbirth, which overrides Shabbat because of danger. The Mishnah then discusses circumcision, which overrides Shabbat because of the Torah commandment to circumcise on the 8th day. This passage from the Mishnah is a bit of a hybrid: cutting and uncovering are permitted because circumcision overrides Shabbat, while the other are permitted apparently out of health concerns.
Now for the discussion in the Gemara. A little Talmud 101: the logical game here is a hava amina—what you might have thought, and then what someone came to tell us. According to Rashi, you might have thought that the blood that is sucked away was as if it was stored. Taking a liquid from storage is permissible on Shabbat, so sucking blood, circumcision or not, is permissible. This is why it’s permitted to do it—not because it’s a mitzvah that pushes Shabbat aside, as is the case with circumcision, but because drawing the blood is permissible in the first place.
The next passage is talmud lomar, what we learn. We learn from Rav Papa that drawing blood is considered making a wound, and it is permitted at a circumcision on Shabbat because of safety, just as we are permitted to tend to a woman giving birth. The reason given is safety, not that it is part of the mitzvah and it takes precedence over Shabbat. If the Gemara thought it was a mandatory part of the mitzvah, the discussion would have been very different—it would have needed to justify breaking Shabbat, and found a prooftext for metzitzah.
The reason given in all sources is that it is an issue of safety, not that it is part of the mitzvah. What is the danger? According to an interesting article by Shlomo Sprecher, it is because the rabbis believed that blood causes decay. It is based on a Greek medical model which knew only of bodily fluids but not about pathogens, and which was thankfully overturned by modern medicine.
So in such a case, do we rely on the Talmudic assessment of what is safe or not, or on today’s doctors? I would argue, as do most posekim outside of the haredi world, that we should utilize the most up to date medical advice available, just like the rabbis of the Talmud did. Safety is a halachically relevant consideration, and we need to utilize the best information possible. If doctors say that it is unsafe, then metzitzah is actually prohbited by halachah.
And I’m not making that up—this is what Ramban said, 800 years ago. Here are his words: “If all the doctors of our day agreed that there is a safety concern in metzitzah in these days, then without doubt we would be obliged not only to cancel it, but also to forbid it [even on a weekday] out of concern for saving a life, and all the more on Shabbat…and the one who sucks is violating the Torah…
But the truth is that not all the doctors agree that with metzitzah in these days there is a concern for safety. Today there are also many doctors who say that metzitzah is helpful…It is known that with saving a life we don’t require a majority of opinions. If two say something is dangerous, and even a hundred or a thousand say it is safe, we listen to the two people because of saving a life (pikuah nefashot). And in the matter before us we don’t know how to rule, because whichever way we turn there are safety concerns. Many say that metzitzah is dangerous, but it is not a few who say that if we don’t do metzitzah the infant is endangered.
We only apply the principle of “not requiring a majority of opinions on a matter of saving a life” when the danger lies on one path. For example, on Yom Kippur, if two say that if he fasts he puts himself in danger, and a hundred say there is no danger to fasting, but everyone agrees thatif he eats there is no danger, then we say that on matters of saving a life we do not require a majority of opinions, and we feed him.”
So Ramban had a dilemma. You listen to safety concerns even voiced by a minority of doctors. In fact, safety concerns have the force of halacha: it is forbidden to put your life, or anybody else’s, in danger. But if some doctors say it’s unsafe to do it, and some say it’s unsafe not to do it, what do you do? So in the end he basically throws his hands up in the air and says: let them be, and God help them.
Today, however, no doctors say it is dangerous not to do it. So if only to doctors said that metzitzah is a health risk, and a thousand said it is fine, we are halachically obligated to listen to the two and play it safe. According to this logic, metzitzah with a pipette is merely unnecessary, and any mohel who does metzitzah by mouth is violating the Torah.
Moshe Sternbuch, the current chief haredi rabbi in Israel, wrote something very disturbing on the issue. He was asked: Can a Mohel refuse to do Metzitza BePeh –orally, as opposed to using a pipette- if he is scared that the child is sick with AIDS? He answered, in Teshuvos Vehanhagos, that as there have not been many cases of Mohelim getting sick from babies, one must rely on Shomer Mitzva lo Yodeya Davar Ra—one who is observing a mitzvah will know no ill. He argued that if one must suspect such risks as life threatening, then one would not be allowed to do a bris, ever. However, he says that if a mohel refuses to do metzitza bepeh due to fear of AIDS, the mohel is not called a sinner, but one should try to find a different mohel who will.
Rabbi Sternbuch’s approach of relying on divine protection is shocking. We do not rely on divine protection, even when doing a mitzvah. The Talmud discusses a boy who died when obeying his father’s order to send away a mother bird. He should have lived—he was fulfilling two mitzvot both of which promise long life! The Talmud says, he used a rickety ladder. We don’t rely on divine protection—we need to rely on common sense.
The deeper point here is also that Halacha needs to integrate medical knowledge, not compete with it. If doctors tell us we shouldn’t do metzitzah, then we shouldn’t. If medical information contradicts the Talmud, we should realize that the Rabbis were fallable, and doing their best to apply Torah values in their age, just as we need to do today. The Rabbis tried to learn from the best doctors and astronomers, integrating the most up to date scientific knowledge available. But they got some things wrong, because people didn’t really understand biology back then. Science has advanced tremendously over the last two millennia, and those advances need to be integrated into halacha and into our understanding of Torah, in order to create a vibrant and living Judaism.
Shabbat Shalom.
This has been heated by reports of the death of a baby in Brooklyn from herpes, who may have received it from a mohel. According to report in the orthodox newspaper Yated, which interviewed mother, the mother believes that her baby got herpes from another child through a pacifier which he had licked before giving it to the baby
The ultraorthodox community here has been up in arms against the proposal, seeing it as one step toward banning circumcision.
In fact, there have been health concerns for hundreds of years, and massive amounts of discussion on the issue. For centuries, there have been Rabbinic authorities who see metzitzah as optional or even forbidden.
Ramban (14th c) notes in the Yad Halevy, his commentary to Rambam’s book of Mitzvot, that in his time, doctors were against it. Already by his time as he puts it massive quantities of ink had been spilled over this issue. He says that it is not part of the mitzvah and certainly can be done with an instrument. Moshe Schreiber / Hatam Sofer (19c Europe) says it is not even a custom.
Avraham Borenstein/ Avnei Nezer (19c Europe): says it was only done because of safety concerns, not because it is part of the mitzvah. Milah consists of making the cut and uncovering, which together fulfill the double commandment of “hamol yimol,” you shall surely circumsize. The midrash says that the two words in that verse refer to cutting and uncovering, but no midrash says that metzitzah is implied by that verse, or by any other verse from the Torah.
On the other side of the controversy, Haim Hizkiyahu Medini /Sde hemed (19c Israel) argued that it is halacha lemoshe misinai—a law handed down to Moses at Sinai that needs no written source. That’s a pretty hard argument to disprove! Moshe Sternbuch, the current chief haredi rabbi in Israel, also came out strongly in favor of metzitzah as a required part of circumcision.
The roots of the controversy are in a passage in the Talmud, which I want to share with you.
BT Shabbat 133a-b
MISHNAH: WE PERFORM ALL THE NECESSITIES OF CIRCUMCISION ON THE SABBATH. WE CIRCUMCISE, UNCOVER, SUCK [Motzetz], AND PLACE A COMPRESS AND CUMMIN UPON IT. IF ONE DID NOT CRUSH [THE CUMMIN] ON THE EVE OF THE SABBATH, HE MUST CHEW [IT] WITH HIS TEETH AND APPLY [IT TO THE WOUND]; IF HE DID NOT BEAT UP WINE AND OIL ON THE EVE OF THE SABBATH, EACH MUST BE APPLIED SEPARATELY. WE MAY NOT MAKE A BANDAGE FOR IT IN THE FIRST PLACE, BUT MUST WRAP A RAG ABOUT IT. IF THIS WAS NOT PREPARED FROM THE EVE OF THE SABBATH, ONE WINDS IT ABOUT HIS FINGER AND BRINGS IT, AND EVEN THROUGH ANOTHER COURTYARD…
WE SUCK OUT, etc. R. Papa said: If a surgeon does not suck, it is dangerous and he is dismissed.
Isn’t it obvious: since we desecrate the Sabbath for it, it is dangerous?
You might say that this blood is stored up. Therefore he informs us that the blood makes a wound, and it is like a bandage and cumin: just as when one does not apply a bandage and cumin there is danger, so here too if one does not do it there is danger.
Rashi:
“suck” the blood, even though it makes a wound because the blood does not separate from the wound except through metzitzah
“you might say” our mishnah doesn’t teach us that it rises to [the level of] violating Shabbat, because the blood is stored and stands there as if in a vessel, and with metzitzah there is no wound or Torah prohibition, and there is no Torah prohibition [i.e. against metzitzah on Shabbat in general], and [you would think that] that is why it is permitted and not because of danger, [so] a surgeon does who not suck on the weekday, it is not dangerous and we do not dismiss him.
“therefore he informs us that the blood makes a wound”-when it comes out via metzitzah. Nevertheless it is permitted because of danger, since it teaches in the mishnah about a bandage and cumin.
The context of this discussion is a longer discussion of situations in which one breaks the normal rules of Shabbat. An earlier mishnah discussed taking care of a woman during childbirth, which overrides Shabbat because of danger. The Mishnah then discusses circumcision, which overrides Shabbat because of the Torah commandment to circumcise on the 8th day. This passage from the Mishnah is a bit of a hybrid: cutting and uncovering are permitted because circumcision overrides Shabbat, while the other are permitted apparently out of health concerns.
Now for the discussion in the Gemara. A little Talmud 101: the logical game here is a hava amina—what you might have thought, and then what someone came to tell us. According to Rashi, you might have thought that the blood that is sucked away was as if it was stored. Taking a liquid from storage is permissible on Shabbat, so sucking blood, circumcision or not, is permissible. This is why it’s permitted to do it—not because it’s a mitzvah that pushes Shabbat aside, as is the case with circumcision, but because drawing the blood is permissible in the first place.
The next passage is talmud lomar, what we learn. We learn from Rav Papa that drawing blood is considered making a wound, and it is permitted at a circumcision on Shabbat because of safety, just as we are permitted to tend to a woman giving birth. The reason given is safety, not that it is part of the mitzvah and it takes precedence over Shabbat. If the Gemara thought it was a mandatory part of the mitzvah, the discussion would have been very different—it would have needed to justify breaking Shabbat, and found a prooftext for metzitzah.
The reason given in all sources is that it is an issue of safety, not that it is part of the mitzvah. What is the danger? According to an interesting article by Shlomo Sprecher, it is because the rabbis believed that blood causes decay. It is based on a Greek medical model which knew only of bodily fluids but not about pathogens, and which was thankfully overturned by modern medicine.
So in such a case, do we rely on the Talmudic assessment of what is safe or not, or on today’s doctors? I would argue, as do most posekim outside of the haredi world, that we should utilize the most up to date medical advice available, just like the rabbis of the Talmud did. Safety is a halachically relevant consideration, and we need to utilize the best information possible. If doctors say that it is unsafe, then metzitzah is actually prohbited by halachah.
And I’m not making that up—this is what Ramban said, 800 years ago. Here are his words: “If all the doctors of our day agreed that there is a safety concern in metzitzah in these days, then without doubt we would be obliged not only to cancel it, but also to forbid it [even on a weekday] out of concern for saving a life, and all the more on Shabbat…and the one who sucks is violating the Torah…
But the truth is that not all the doctors agree that with metzitzah in these days there is a concern for safety. Today there are also many doctors who say that metzitzah is helpful…It is known that with saving a life we don’t require a majority of opinions. If two say something is dangerous, and even a hundred or a thousand say it is safe, we listen to the two people because of saving a life (pikuah nefashot). And in the matter before us we don’t know how to rule, because whichever way we turn there are safety concerns. Many say that metzitzah is dangerous, but it is not a few who say that if we don’t do metzitzah the infant is endangered.
We only apply the principle of “not requiring a majority of opinions on a matter of saving a life” when the danger lies on one path. For example, on Yom Kippur, if two say that if he fasts he puts himself in danger, and a hundred say there is no danger to fasting, but everyone agrees thatif he eats there is no danger, then we say that on matters of saving a life we do not require a majority of opinions, and we feed him.”
So Ramban had a dilemma. You listen to safety concerns even voiced by a minority of doctors. In fact, safety concerns have the force of halacha: it is forbidden to put your life, or anybody else’s, in danger. But if some doctors say it’s unsafe to do it, and some say it’s unsafe not to do it, what do you do? So in the end he basically throws his hands up in the air and says: let them be, and God help them.
Today, however, no doctors say it is dangerous not to do it. So if only to doctors said that metzitzah is a health risk, and a thousand said it is fine, we are halachically obligated to listen to the two and play it safe. According to this logic, metzitzah with a pipette is merely unnecessary, and any mohel who does metzitzah by mouth is violating the Torah.
Moshe Sternbuch, the current chief haredi rabbi in Israel, wrote something very disturbing on the issue. He was asked: Can a Mohel refuse to do Metzitza BePeh –orally, as opposed to using a pipette- if he is scared that the child is sick with AIDS? He answered, in Teshuvos Vehanhagos, that as there have not been many cases of Mohelim getting sick from babies, one must rely on Shomer Mitzva lo Yodeya Davar Ra—one who is observing a mitzvah will know no ill. He argued that if one must suspect such risks as life threatening, then one would not be allowed to do a bris, ever. However, he says that if a mohel refuses to do metzitza bepeh due to fear of AIDS, the mohel is not called a sinner, but one should try to find a different mohel who will.
Rabbi Sternbuch’s approach of relying on divine protection is shocking. We do not rely on divine protection, even when doing a mitzvah. The Talmud discusses a boy who died when obeying his father’s order to send away a mother bird. He should have lived—he was fulfilling two mitzvot both of which promise long life! The Talmud says, he used a rickety ladder. We don’t rely on divine protection—we need to rely on common sense.
The deeper point here is also that Halacha needs to integrate medical knowledge, not compete with it. If doctors tell us we shouldn’t do metzitzah, then we shouldn’t. If medical information contradicts the Talmud, we should realize that the Rabbis were fallable, and doing their best to apply Torah values in their age, just as we need to do today. The Rabbis tried to learn from the best doctors and astronomers, integrating the most up to date scientific knowledge available. But they got some things wrong, because people didn’t really understand biology back then. Science has advanced tremendously over the last two millennia, and those advances need to be integrated into halacha and into our understanding of Torah, in order to create a vibrant and living Judaism.
Shabbat Shalom.
Thursday, September 6, 2012
Israel: Security through violence?
We are reading Parsha Vayavo this shabbes, “when you arrive”, describing what happens when we reach the promised land. This culminates a long narrative in Vayeitzei of the wars we will fight to arrive there, a very violent narrative which is hard to read as a Jew.
In the blessings and curses, there is a promise that the power balance between Jews and non-Jews will be shifted, but it seems troubling that there still is a power dynamic, that it seems to envision a messianic era in which Jews are powerful and others are not, when there is still an underdog and a victor. Verse 28:10 promises that other nations will be scared of us, instead of us being terrified of them.
Do we really dream of a world where other nations live in fear of us, just as we have been in fear of our enemies?
Today’s haftorah gives a more pacifist approach: violence will no longer be heard of in the land. Similarly, in the prophets we read that a day will come when swords will be beaten into ploughshares. We dream of a day not when we will be stronger than our enemies, but when violence will not be necessary at all. We dream of a day not when Israel will have a bomb and its neighbors will be scared to develop one, but when the Arab nations will respect Israel and let her live in peace.
Notice, however, that in verse 28:10, it does not say other nations will fear us because we will have weapons, but rather because the name of God will be on us. Similarly, in verse 27:6, the Torah states that iron was not to be sounded in the Temple. The rocks were not cut with metal blades because weapons are so antithetical to Jewish spirituality. The power dynamic will be reversed not with force, but by following God’s ways, by doing that which is right and just.
What does it mean that the other nations will fear us? Fear in Hebrew can also be awe, or respect. The Zohar says that if we fear God’s punishment, we are actually focusing our spiritual energies on the agent of his punishment, Satan, and thus actually engaging in Satanic worship. It really says this, right in the introduction. Yir’ah means awe, awareness of God’s wonderfulness.
We are trying to create a day when other nations respect us because they respect the holiness apparent in our actions. A day when everyone knows how well the Jews behave, how generous and honest and upright they are, that nobody would never dream of mistreating us. This is what it means to have the name of God on us: to have the image of God, which is lovingkindness, apparent in our actions.
The story is told that Reb Shlomo once was surrounded by a group of homeless men in Harlem that were intent on robbing him. One of the men, though, recognized him: he always had given him tzedakah, wished him well, treated him like a brother. This is yir’ah: seeing the divine reflected in somebody’s actions, and respecting them.
We dream not of a day when the other nations will fear us, but when they will respect us because of what we do. It is not Israel’s army that will bring security, but organizations like the Magen David Adom, which is consistently the first organization to respond to catastrophes such as the tsunami in Indonesia or the earthquake in Haiti.
In the blessings and curses, there is a promise that the power balance between Jews and non-Jews will be shifted, but it seems troubling that there still is a power dynamic, that it seems to envision a messianic era in which Jews are powerful and others are not, when there is still an underdog and a victor. Verse 28:10 promises that other nations will be scared of us, instead of us being terrified of them.
Do we really dream of a world where other nations live in fear of us, just as we have been in fear of our enemies?
Today’s haftorah gives a more pacifist approach: violence will no longer be heard of in the land. Similarly, in the prophets we read that a day will come when swords will be beaten into ploughshares. We dream of a day not when we will be stronger than our enemies, but when violence will not be necessary at all. We dream of a day not when Israel will have a bomb and its neighbors will be scared to develop one, but when the Arab nations will respect Israel and let her live in peace.
Notice, however, that in verse 28:10, it does not say other nations will fear us because we will have weapons, but rather because the name of God will be on us. Similarly, in verse 27:6, the Torah states that iron was not to be sounded in the Temple. The rocks were not cut with metal blades because weapons are so antithetical to Jewish spirituality. The power dynamic will be reversed not with force, but by following God’s ways, by doing that which is right and just.
What does it mean that the other nations will fear us? Fear in Hebrew can also be awe, or respect. The Zohar says that if we fear God’s punishment, we are actually focusing our spiritual energies on the agent of his punishment, Satan, and thus actually engaging in Satanic worship. It really says this, right in the introduction. Yir’ah means awe, awareness of God’s wonderfulness.
We are trying to create a day when other nations respect us because they respect the holiness apparent in our actions. A day when everyone knows how well the Jews behave, how generous and honest and upright they are, that nobody would never dream of mistreating us. This is what it means to have the name of God on us: to have the image of God, which is lovingkindness, apparent in our actions.
The story is told that Reb Shlomo once was surrounded by a group of homeless men in Harlem that were intent on robbing him. One of the men, though, recognized him: he always had given him tzedakah, wished him well, treated him like a brother. This is yir’ah: seeing the divine reflected in somebody’s actions, and respecting them.
We dream not of a day when the other nations will fear us, but when they will respect us because of what we do. It is not Israel’s army that will bring security, but organizations like the Magen David Adom, which is consistently the first organization to respond to catastrophes such as the tsunami in Indonesia or the earthquake in Haiti.
Friday, August 31, 2012
Israel: Love it or leave it?
In the 60’s, objectors to the Vietnam war were told “America: love it or leave it.” It was sad to see Jeff Dunetz utilizing the same line of logic in his opinion piece from last week (Jewish Star, “Why does president Obama have anti-Israel activists).
The Jewish tradition has long understood that criticism is not in conflict with loving my neighbor, it’s an expression of it. If I love my neighbor, I want the best for them, including for them to be the best person they can be.
Jewish Voices for Peace is an understandable response to AIPAC’s long standing attitude that our obligation as international Jews is to support Israel’s existence, not to criticize her policies. AIPAC’s neutral approach left many feeling that their voice was not expressed, and wanting an organization that would support Israel’s safety and existence while also supporting the right of Palestinians to live in safety and dignity.
You might disagree with JVP’s stances (frankly, I disagree with them too), but that does not make them anti-Israel. I know Lynn Gottlieb, I know Lynda Holtzman, I know Arthur Waskow, and I can tell you, they are not anti-Israel. They love Israel, and they want her to live up to the values preached by our Jewish tradition.
I was troubled by Mr. Dunetz’s ignorant critique of Rabbis for Human Rights. Take a look at their annual human rights report. RHR conducts balanced inquiries into events and assigns blame with a level hand to Israelis and Palestinians alike. They do not shy away from criticizing Hamas for firing rockets at Israeli civilian areas, or from using their own citizens as human shields. In terms of “investigating” a barrage of 5,000 rockets, there’s not much to investigate, but it was condemned by RHR along with all human rights violations from both sides.
Mr. Dunetz quotes a passage in which Rabbi Brant Rosen questions Israel’s massive reaction to the barrage of rockets from Gaza. Mr. Dunetz doesn’t even bother commenting on the passage, as if it questioning Israel’s motives is obviously anti-Israeli. Is someone anti-American who questions George Bush’s motives for invading Iraq, or for opposing the war in the first place? Is someone anti-American who disagrees with Obama’s health-care legislation (as I would guess Mr. Dunetz does)? Is it really a matter of “Israel: love it or leave it?”
I was also troubled by Mr. Dunetz’s off-topic, ad hominum attack on Rabbi Waskow. The fact that Mr. Dunetz does not know the name of the Hasidic rabbi who ordained Rabbi Waskow does not make him an ‘unnamed’ rabbi, or inherently put Rabbi Waskow’s credentials into doubt such that his is merely a “Rabbi” with quotes. If you want to know who the “unnamed Hassidic rabbi” is, just ask him! (FYI, It is Zalman Schachter Shalomi, who has Chabad smicha) Many rabbis, especially Orthodox ones, have smicha conferred on them privately. Does Mr. Dunetz also question the legitimacy of all those “rabbis”?
Mr. Dunetz in the next breath disparages Rabbi Waskow’s work as “unusual.” Were Martin Luther King and Mohatma Ghandi illegitimate because their work was unusual? Should all rabbis just say the same thing, do the same thing, wave flags nicely at Israel rallies and strive to be ‘usual’? How about David Saperstein at the RAC, or Ari Weiss at Uri L’Tzedek, or David Rosenn, the founder of Avodah—should they try to just fit in instead, pursue a more normal rabbinate? The Jewish world would be much poorer without trail-blazers like Rabbi Waskow.
The truth is, if you asked the right questions, you would find that most American Jews support the same things as Rabbis for Human Rights. Do you think Palestinians should fire rockets at Jewish civilians? No. Do you think innocent Palestinians should be tortured or unjustly detained, or prevented from accessing their fields to pick tomatoes? No. Is it worth investigating alleged human rights violations to protect the human rights of all citizens of Israel and make sure she lives up to our tradition’s values? Yes. Oh, sorry, was I being anti-Israel?
The Jewish tradition has long understood that criticism is not in conflict with loving my neighbor, it’s an expression of it. If I love my neighbor, I want the best for them, including for them to be the best person they can be.
Jewish Voices for Peace is an understandable response to AIPAC’s long standing attitude that our obligation as international Jews is to support Israel’s existence, not to criticize her policies. AIPAC’s neutral approach left many feeling that their voice was not expressed, and wanting an organization that would support Israel’s safety and existence while also supporting the right of Palestinians to live in safety and dignity.
You might disagree with JVP’s stances (frankly, I disagree with them too), but that does not make them anti-Israel. I know Lynn Gottlieb, I know Lynda Holtzman, I know Arthur Waskow, and I can tell you, they are not anti-Israel. They love Israel, and they want her to live up to the values preached by our Jewish tradition.
I was troubled by Mr. Dunetz’s ignorant critique of Rabbis for Human Rights. Take a look at their annual human rights report. RHR conducts balanced inquiries into events and assigns blame with a level hand to Israelis and Palestinians alike. They do not shy away from criticizing Hamas for firing rockets at Israeli civilian areas, or from using their own citizens as human shields. In terms of “investigating” a barrage of 5,000 rockets, there’s not much to investigate, but it was condemned by RHR along with all human rights violations from both sides.
Mr. Dunetz quotes a passage in which Rabbi Brant Rosen questions Israel’s massive reaction to the barrage of rockets from Gaza. Mr. Dunetz doesn’t even bother commenting on the passage, as if it questioning Israel’s motives is obviously anti-Israeli. Is someone anti-American who questions George Bush’s motives for invading Iraq, or for opposing the war in the first place? Is someone anti-American who disagrees with Obama’s health-care legislation (as I would guess Mr. Dunetz does)? Is it really a matter of “Israel: love it or leave it?”
I was also troubled by Mr. Dunetz’s off-topic, ad hominum attack on Rabbi Waskow. The fact that Mr. Dunetz does not know the name of the Hasidic rabbi who ordained Rabbi Waskow does not make him an ‘unnamed’ rabbi, or inherently put Rabbi Waskow’s credentials into doubt such that his is merely a “Rabbi” with quotes. If you want to know who the “unnamed Hassidic rabbi” is, just ask him! (FYI, It is Zalman Schachter Shalomi, who has Chabad smicha) Many rabbis, especially Orthodox ones, have smicha conferred on them privately. Does Mr. Dunetz also question the legitimacy of all those “rabbis”?
Mr. Dunetz in the next breath disparages Rabbi Waskow’s work as “unusual.” Were Martin Luther King and Mohatma Ghandi illegitimate because their work was unusual? Should all rabbis just say the same thing, do the same thing, wave flags nicely at Israel rallies and strive to be ‘usual’? How about David Saperstein at the RAC, or Ari Weiss at Uri L’Tzedek, or David Rosenn, the founder of Avodah—should they try to just fit in instead, pursue a more normal rabbinate? The Jewish world would be much poorer without trail-blazers like Rabbi Waskow.
The truth is, if you asked the right questions, you would find that most American Jews support the same things as Rabbis for Human Rights. Do you think Palestinians should fire rockets at Jewish civilians? No. Do you think innocent Palestinians should be tortured or unjustly detained, or prevented from accessing their fields to pick tomatoes? No. Is it worth investigating alleged human rights violations to protect the human rights of all citizens of Israel and make sure she lives up to our tradition’s values? Yes. Oh, sorry, was I being anti-Israel?
Thursday, August 30, 2012
Kashrut, Prayer, and Ethics
Today’s parsha contains 74 mitzvot, one of the heftiest parshiyot.
One of them is the mitzvah of shiluach haken, sending the mother bird away so she doesn’t see you take the egg.
This verse engendered significant debate about the reasons for commandments. This mitzvah goes to the very core of halachic observance, since the clear reason is that we not have a cold heart—it is training us in the ways of compassion. Maimonides says that it teaches us to be concerned about the mother bird, because even though she cannot speak, she can still feel pain. Nahmanides, on the other hand, discounts the bird herself, but says it refines our character, training us to be merciful at every moment.
Nahmanides goes on to use this mitzvah as the model for every other mitzvah. Every mitzvah comes to refine or train us in a particular way. Mitzvot are not intended for God’s benefit, and they are not just irrational decrees. We may not always know the reason for a commandment, just as I may not know why a doctor prescribes a particular medicine, but in principle there is always a reason having to do with its impact on us.
Seen this way, Jewish observance is a prescription for coping with being a flawed human in an imperfect world. The midrash calls torah a drug—it is a remedy for how to fix our soul and how to fix the world, for how to make us rahmanim, compassionate, despite the challenges of encountering reality.
This is a surprising principle if you extend it to mitzvot which do not seem inherently humanistic. People typically think of prayer as making God happy by praising him or something like that. Nahmanides would say that we have a mitzvah to pray because of how it orients us, not because of its impact on God. Jewish prayer trains us to be grateful, orients us to what is truly important in life, helps us focus on self improvement. I pray for the sick because God wants people to care about each other, not because God needs me to remind him to heal somebody. All of the mitzvot, Ramban says, come to make us rahamim, compassionate.
If this is true, then theology becomes irrelevant, even to prayer. Yes, we are required to believe in God as Jews. But what kind of God to believe in, what God is, is up in the air. You certainly don’t need to believe in a supernatural, personal God who listens to our prayers, to appreciate the value of prayer.
This understanding of mitzvot challenges some of the ways we typically observe halacha in today’s world. If much of the purpose of kashrut is to make me compassionate toward animals I consume, then it seems logically I should care even more for the workers I impact through my spending patterns. How, then, can chocolate produced using slave labor (and most of the chocolate in the world is produced using slave labor) be kosher? How can it be kosher to consume a chicken which has never seen light of day, and never had enough room to walk around, which is how chickens are raised unless they are cage free? Is that compassionate to the chicken?
Ramban has an explanation of “be holy,” in which he says that being holy means extending the Torah’s principles beyond all of the listed mitzvot, to the infinite situations of life that it couldn’t possibly deal with. In the time of the Torah, there was no factory farming, there were no chickens bred to be too fat to walk, who were kept in tiny cages in the dark. The torah is timeless in the sense that we need to extend its teachings to our present reality; its examples are from three thousand years ago, but are applicable to today. We need to take seriously the possibility that chickens raised under inhumane conditions are simply never kosher, no matter who gives the hechsher, and that we can only eat poultry and eggs from cage free chickens.
A little cross-marketing: We are starting a movie series this month, focusing on contemporary social issues as well as contemporary Israeli cinema. The first movie of our series, Food Inc, explores the food production system in America. It is an eye opening movie, which reveals shocking things I never knew about our food production system, especially the beef and poultry industries. The Sunday Torah Breakfast Club will examine some of the Jewish sources relevant to the topic raised by the movies.
Another question this raises for our contemporary consumption habits: How can products outsourced to an overseas factory, causing lost jobs, unemployment, and increased dependence on welfare, how can such a product be kosher? Tzedakah teaches me to take care first of all of my local fellows, and the highest degree of tzedakah is giving someone a job. Over the past few decades, so many jobs have been moved overseas that it is hard to find anything produced here in the US. Do I have a Jewish obligation to try to buy local, to support local jobs?
I know of a very successful entrepreneur who makes his money by taking ideas, producing them in factories in China, and selling them to Target and Walmart. He is very wealthy, and sits on the boards of a few Jewish organizations. Is that really kosher? Has he profited by causing unemployment in America?
All of these are questions that, sadly, the OU has not addressed. If the OU admitted that these are real halachic concerns, it would throw into question all of the certifications they have granted up until now, it would question their legitimacy as the most trusted hechsher.
This failure by the OU has opened the door for the Conservative movement’s Hechsher Tzedek program, and Uri Ltzedek’s Tav HaYosher program, both of which I follow and support, and invite you to support too.
The Hechsher Tzedek is a certification from the Consrvative movement which attempts to create a slate of environmental and social standards for kosher producers, including workers being paid adequately and working in safe, clean conditions. After Agriprocessors, the producer of Rubashkin’s meat, came under scrutiny for sloppy shechting practices, people who toured their facility also raised issues around worker safety. Illegal workers were being used so they could pay them sub-minimum wage. The reason shechting was sloppy, in part, was that the shochtim were tired and overworked.
The Tav HaYosher is a register of kosher restaurants which have agreed to certain standards of worker treatment. This register was created by Uri Ltzedek, and orthodox social justice organization. Only a few restaurants have joined, and those who have have received backlash from elements in the orthodox community.
These are important questions, which raise real problems with the ethics of our economic system: how are the workers treated, how are the animals treated, what impact does this company have on the environment? These are questions that all of us as Jews need to be asking.
Kashrut is meant to be more than just checking for the right symbols on a box; it is meant to be a spiritual practice of infusing compassion into every act of consumption. This is the lesson of Shiluach Haken, sending away the mother bird, having compassion for a small bird at the moment I’m just thinking about my next meal, considering how my consumption is going to affect others, even an animal.
What can we do? We can purchase cage free eggs and poultry, fair trade products, and locally produced products. We can frequent restaurants who have joined the Tav HaYosher, and let them know that we are supporting them. Please join us, too, on Sept 12 for the showing of Food Inc, and for our discussion on Sept 23 at the Torah Breakfast Club.
One of them is the mitzvah of shiluach haken, sending the mother bird away so she doesn’t see you take the egg.
This verse engendered significant debate about the reasons for commandments. This mitzvah goes to the very core of halachic observance, since the clear reason is that we not have a cold heart—it is training us in the ways of compassion. Maimonides says that it teaches us to be concerned about the mother bird, because even though she cannot speak, she can still feel pain. Nahmanides, on the other hand, discounts the bird herself, but says it refines our character, training us to be merciful at every moment.
Nahmanides goes on to use this mitzvah as the model for every other mitzvah. Every mitzvah comes to refine or train us in a particular way. Mitzvot are not intended for God’s benefit, and they are not just irrational decrees. We may not always know the reason for a commandment, just as I may not know why a doctor prescribes a particular medicine, but in principle there is always a reason having to do with its impact on us.
Seen this way, Jewish observance is a prescription for coping with being a flawed human in an imperfect world. The midrash calls torah a drug—it is a remedy for how to fix our soul and how to fix the world, for how to make us rahmanim, compassionate, despite the challenges of encountering reality.
This is a surprising principle if you extend it to mitzvot which do not seem inherently humanistic. People typically think of prayer as making God happy by praising him or something like that. Nahmanides would say that we have a mitzvah to pray because of how it orients us, not because of its impact on God. Jewish prayer trains us to be grateful, orients us to what is truly important in life, helps us focus on self improvement. I pray for the sick because God wants people to care about each other, not because God needs me to remind him to heal somebody. All of the mitzvot, Ramban says, come to make us rahamim, compassionate.
If this is true, then theology becomes irrelevant, even to prayer. Yes, we are required to believe in God as Jews. But what kind of God to believe in, what God is, is up in the air. You certainly don’t need to believe in a supernatural, personal God who listens to our prayers, to appreciate the value of prayer.
This understanding of mitzvot challenges some of the ways we typically observe halacha in today’s world. If much of the purpose of kashrut is to make me compassionate toward animals I consume, then it seems logically I should care even more for the workers I impact through my spending patterns. How, then, can chocolate produced using slave labor (and most of the chocolate in the world is produced using slave labor) be kosher? How can it be kosher to consume a chicken which has never seen light of day, and never had enough room to walk around, which is how chickens are raised unless they are cage free? Is that compassionate to the chicken?
Ramban has an explanation of “be holy,” in which he says that being holy means extending the Torah’s principles beyond all of the listed mitzvot, to the infinite situations of life that it couldn’t possibly deal with. In the time of the Torah, there was no factory farming, there were no chickens bred to be too fat to walk, who were kept in tiny cages in the dark. The torah is timeless in the sense that we need to extend its teachings to our present reality; its examples are from three thousand years ago, but are applicable to today. We need to take seriously the possibility that chickens raised under inhumane conditions are simply never kosher, no matter who gives the hechsher, and that we can only eat poultry and eggs from cage free chickens.
A little cross-marketing: We are starting a movie series this month, focusing on contemporary social issues as well as contemporary Israeli cinema. The first movie of our series, Food Inc, explores the food production system in America. It is an eye opening movie, which reveals shocking things I never knew about our food production system, especially the beef and poultry industries. The Sunday Torah Breakfast Club will examine some of the Jewish sources relevant to the topic raised by the movies.
Another question this raises for our contemporary consumption habits: How can products outsourced to an overseas factory, causing lost jobs, unemployment, and increased dependence on welfare, how can such a product be kosher? Tzedakah teaches me to take care first of all of my local fellows, and the highest degree of tzedakah is giving someone a job. Over the past few decades, so many jobs have been moved overseas that it is hard to find anything produced here in the US. Do I have a Jewish obligation to try to buy local, to support local jobs?
I know of a very successful entrepreneur who makes his money by taking ideas, producing them in factories in China, and selling them to Target and Walmart. He is very wealthy, and sits on the boards of a few Jewish organizations. Is that really kosher? Has he profited by causing unemployment in America?
All of these are questions that, sadly, the OU has not addressed. If the OU admitted that these are real halachic concerns, it would throw into question all of the certifications they have granted up until now, it would question their legitimacy as the most trusted hechsher.
This failure by the OU has opened the door for the Conservative movement’s Hechsher Tzedek program, and Uri Ltzedek’s Tav HaYosher program, both of which I follow and support, and invite you to support too.
The Hechsher Tzedek is a certification from the Consrvative movement which attempts to create a slate of environmental and social standards for kosher producers, including workers being paid adequately and working in safe, clean conditions. After Agriprocessors, the producer of Rubashkin’s meat, came under scrutiny for sloppy shechting practices, people who toured their facility also raised issues around worker safety. Illegal workers were being used so they could pay them sub-minimum wage. The reason shechting was sloppy, in part, was that the shochtim were tired and overworked.
The Tav HaYosher is a register of kosher restaurants which have agreed to certain standards of worker treatment. This register was created by Uri Ltzedek, and orthodox social justice organization. Only a few restaurants have joined, and those who have have received backlash from elements in the orthodox community.
These are important questions, which raise real problems with the ethics of our economic system: how are the workers treated, how are the animals treated, what impact does this company have on the environment? These are questions that all of us as Jews need to be asking.
Kashrut is meant to be more than just checking for the right symbols on a box; it is meant to be a spiritual practice of infusing compassion into every act of consumption. This is the lesson of Shiluach Haken, sending away the mother bird, having compassion for a small bird at the moment I’m just thinking about my next meal, considering how my consumption is going to affect others, even an animal.
What can we do? We can purchase cage free eggs and poultry, fair trade products, and locally produced products. We can frequent restaurants who have joined the Tav HaYosher, and let them know that we are supporting them. Please join us, too, on Sept 12 for the showing of Food Inc, and for our discussion on Sept 23 at the Torah Breakfast Club.
Friday, August 24, 2012
Paid Sick Leave Talk
Check out my speech at the rally on Paid Sick Leave:
http://youtu.be/biN7KZ_G3Gs
http://youtu.be/biN7KZ_G3Gs
pursuing just ends through just means
In Deuteronomy 16:20, the Torah states tzedek tzedek tirdof—Justiuce, justice shall you pursue. This phrase can also be translated as justice shall pursue justice. So Rabbi Yaakov Yosef of Pshyska and others explain this to mean that even the pursuit of justice must be only along just lines, not through invalid means such as lying and the like. Unjust ends can never justify the means.
One of the passages in the Talmud that discusses this concept is in Sukkot 30-31, where it discusses a Mishnah that says a stolen lulav is invalid. It says there that the reason is that it is a mitzvah haba’ah beaveirah—a mitzvah that only came about through a sin, the implication being that the sin invalidates the mitzvah. You can’t launder the lulav—once it’s been tainted by the sin of stealing, it can’t be used for a mitzvah. According to Rashi and Rambam, the sin adheres to the lulav, and the rule only applies when there’s a specific item that the sin is attached to. According to the Ritva and Tosafot, though, this applies any time you do an aveirah as an integral part of performing a mitzvah—it taints the mitzvah, such that it’s no longer a mitzvah. A mitzvah cannot be accomplished if you have to break halacha to do it. You will notice, last night we had new benchers. We were going to photocopy benchers, and realized it would have been a copyright violation—this sugiya is telling us you can’t bench with an illegally photocopied bencher!
Another very similar halachic principle is that an aseh does not push aside a lo ta’aseh. A mitzvah never overrides a prohibition—the prohibition always takes precedence. You can never use a mitzvah as a reason for violating halacha.
I have seen this issue come up in a couple of interesting ways in this and other shuls. I was at a shul where there was a potluck Kiddush, and people would often run to the store to pick up something for Kiddush, so they wouldn’t be embarrassed. They figured that it was okay, since it was for the sake of Shabbes. The principle is, it’s better not to accomplish the mitzvah of oneg Shabbat, than to break Shabbat.
Another similar situation was posed to me by somebody whose husband can’t walk well, whether he can drive to shul on Shabbes. Her argument was that it’s for a good cause. In that case, I encouraged her to rely on the Conservative movement’s driving teshuvah, even though I don’t generally hold by or advocate that teshuvah. There can be situations that justify relying on a minority or weak opinion, but you can never outright break halacha even for a good cause.
The Hofetz Hayyim, Israel Meir Kagan, brings up the issue of a gossip filled workplace. What if you work in a place where everyone is always gossiping, and you will look uncool or even dumb if you don’t join in? What if you might risk missing out on promotion, or even lose your job by not fitting in? And he says that it’s better to appear like an idiot, and even lose your job, than to violate a Torah prohibition, in this case lashon hara.
I actually worked at a Jewish High School where the Jewish study faculty shared an office with the Hebrew Teachers. There were a few teachers in that office that always were gossiping, constantly. Rabbi Michael Yorndoff sat next to me, and when one of the teachers would start up with gossip, trying to tell him something, he would give a blank stare, so as not to agree, not to urge her on, not to react at all. He looked like a fool. The sages tell us, better to look like a fool than to engage in this.
In synagogue life, we often preach one thing, but actually conduct the business in an entirely different fashion.
I know of someone who had her child in a synagogue nursery school, and ran into financial difficulties and couldn’t pay the tuition. This was a well known synagogue with a reputation for having a strong focus on tikkun olam. She withdrew her daughter mid-year, and told the treasurer she would pay the past due balance when she could, which the treasurer agreed to.
A few months later, a lawyer from the synagogue sent a threatening letter to her demanding immediate payment not only of the past due amount, but also the tuition from the rest of the year,. When she called the lawyer, he said, “You have to understand, this isn’t just a synagogue, it’s also a business.” The synagogue pressured her into credit card debt which took her almost a year to repay.
So the synagogue preached social responsibility, raises money for barefoot children in Asia and Africa, but doesn’t conduct its own business with any regard for Jewish ideals.
I asked a bookstore owner at what age I need to start teaching my daughter Torah, and she said, when you met your wife. In other words, the example we set by how we lead our lives is the most powerful way we teach. The deepest torah we can teach as a synagogue is through how we conduct business. How do we conduct meetings—do people walk away being hurt, or feeling good? How do we treat our volunteers and employees—are they degraded or honored? Do we shop at stores and buy products that are socially and environmentally responsible? Do we conserve energy and recycle? Do we practice the values we preach?
May God give us the courage to live lives of integrity,
truth and justice
in all we do and say.
I was shocked and saddened to learn of the lynch mob assault ten days ago of 4 arabs in Zion square, a central square in downtown Jerusalem. After midnight on a Thursday, 4 young arab boys were walking through Zion square, and were approached by a mob of about 50 Jewish teenagers shouting “Arabs, Arabs” and apparently hunting for Arab victims. One of the jewish teens approached an Arab, Jamal Julani, shouting “where are you going you son of a b___,” and pushed him in the chest. He fell, and the attackers continued to kick and beat him. When the paramedics arrived, they assumed he was dead; he was resuscitated and on a respirator for a number of days.
On Yom Kippur the high priest apologizes not only for his own sins, but for those of his family, the priests, and the entire community. Every sin done by another Jew implicates us, leaves a taint on our soul.
We can never let our national struggles and challenges cause us to act in hateful or unjust ways, or else we become the terrorists. We cannot respond to hate with hate. And we all need to speak out against hate.
One of the passages in the Talmud that discusses this concept is in Sukkot 30-31, where it discusses a Mishnah that says a stolen lulav is invalid. It says there that the reason is that it is a mitzvah haba’ah beaveirah—a mitzvah that only came about through a sin, the implication being that the sin invalidates the mitzvah. You can’t launder the lulav—once it’s been tainted by the sin of stealing, it can’t be used for a mitzvah. According to Rashi and Rambam, the sin adheres to the lulav, and the rule only applies when there’s a specific item that the sin is attached to. According to the Ritva and Tosafot, though, this applies any time you do an aveirah as an integral part of performing a mitzvah—it taints the mitzvah, such that it’s no longer a mitzvah. A mitzvah cannot be accomplished if you have to break halacha to do it. You will notice, last night we had new benchers. We were going to photocopy benchers, and realized it would have been a copyright violation—this sugiya is telling us you can’t bench with an illegally photocopied bencher!
Another very similar halachic principle is that an aseh does not push aside a lo ta’aseh. A mitzvah never overrides a prohibition—the prohibition always takes precedence. You can never use a mitzvah as a reason for violating halacha.
I have seen this issue come up in a couple of interesting ways in this and other shuls. I was at a shul where there was a potluck Kiddush, and people would often run to the store to pick up something for Kiddush, so they wouldn’t be embarrassed. They figured that it was okay, since it was for the sake of Shabbes. The principle is, it’s better not to accomplish the mitzvah of oneg Shabbat, than to break Shabbat.
Another similar situation was posed to me by somebody whose husband can’t walk well, whether he can drive to shul on Shabbes. Her argument was that it’s for a good cause. In that case, I encouraged her to rely on the Conservative movement’s driving teshuvah, even though I don’t generally hold by or advocate that teshuvah. There can be situations that justify relying on a minority or weak opinion, but you can never outright break halacha even for a good cause.
The Hofetz Hayyim, Israel Meir Kagan, brings up the issue of a gossip filled workplace. What if you work in a place where everyone is always gossiping, and you will look uncool or even dumb if you don’t join in? What if you might risk missing out on promotion, or even lose your job by not fitting in? And he says that it’s better to appear like an idiot, and even lose your job, than to violate a Torah prohibition, in this case lashon hara.
I actually worked at a Jewish High School where the Jewish study faculty shared an office with the Hebrew Teachers. There were a few teachers in that office that always were gossiping, constantly. Rabbi Michael Yorndoff sat next to me, and when one of the teachers would start up with gossip, trying to tell him something, he would give a blank stare, so as not to agree, not to urge her on, not to react at all. He looked like a fool. The sages tell us, better to look like a fool than to engage in this.
In synagogue life, we often preach one thing, but actually conduct the business in an entirely different fashion.
I know of someone who had her child in a synagogue nursery school, and ran into financial difficulties and couldn’t pay the tuition. This was a well known synagogue with a reputation for having a strong focus on tikkun olam. She withdrew her daughter mid-year, and told the treasurer she would pay the past due balance when she could, which the treasurer agreed to.
A few months later, a lawyer from the synagogue sent a threatening letter to her demanding immediate payment not only of the past due amount, but also the tuition from the rest of the year,. When she called the lawyer, he said, “You have to understand, this isn’t just a synagogue, it’s also a business.” The synagogue pressured her into credit card debt which took her almost a year to repay.
So the synagogue preached social responsibility, raises money for barefoot children in Asia and Africa, but doesn’t conduct its own business with any regard for Jewish ideals.
I asked a bookstore owner at what age I need to start teaching my daughter Torah, and she said, when you met your wife. In other words, the example we set by how we lead our lives is the most powerful way we teach. The deepest torah we can teach as a synagogue is through how we conduct business. How do we conduct meetings—do people walk away being hurt, or feeling good? How do we treat our volunteers and employees—are they degraded or honored? Do we shop at stores and buy products that are socially and environmentally responsible? Do we conserve energy and recycle? Do we practice the values we preach?
May God give us the courage to live lives of integrity,
truth and justice
in all we do and say.
I was shocked and saddened to learn of the lynch mob assault ten days ago of 4 arabs in Zion square, a central square in downtown Jerusalem. After midnight on a Thursday, 4 young arab boys were walking through Zion square, and were approached by a mob of about 50 Jewish teenagers shouting “Arabs, Arabs” and apparently hunting for Arab victims. One of the jewish teens approached an Arab, Jamal Julani, shouting “where are you going you son of a b___,” and pushed him in the chest. He fell, and the attackers continued to kick and beat him. When the paramedics arrived, they assumed he was dead; he was resuscitated and on a respirator for a number of days.
On Yom Kippur the high priest apologizes not only for his own sins, but for those of his family, the priests, and the entire community. Every sin done by another Jew implicates us, leaves a taint on our soul.
We can never let our national struggles and challenges cause us to act in hateful or unjust ways, or else we become the terrorists. We cannot respond to hate with hate. And we all need to speak out against hate.
Friday, August 17, 2012
Where is the divine blessing found in our lives?
I want to share 2 stories this morning, similar and yet very different.
I have a friend I’ll call eric, who lost 3 family members over the course of 3 summers, first his grandmother, grandfather, and father. After this experience, he has no more religious feeling. He has not been part of organized religion. He doesn’t feel that God will take care of things. He feels that believing in God is a great emotional support for those who believe it, but he doesn’t.
I have another acquaintance, Moshe Schwartz, part of a well-respected family in the conservative movement. Moshe’s father, Gershon, is the author of Swimming the Sea of Talmud, a collection of Talmudic texts for discussion; his mother, Shuley, is dean of List College, the joint undergraduate program JTS runs with Columbia. Almost ten years ago, Moshe’s brother died in a freak accident while at college. The funeral at Anshe Chesed in Manhattan was enormous—hundreds of people attended. It was extremely emotional—I remember Moshe and Gershon both wore beautiful ties which they had done kriyah on, ripping them in the middle to display their grief. They were devastated. Then, within the year, Gershon died. It was totally unexpected, he was a young man. Again, the funeral was enormous, shiva was well attended every night, and the family was devastated. Shuley is still Dean of List college, and Moshe now is ther hyeadmaster at a Jewish School in New Jersey.
People often assume that faith is meant to get us through hard times; that we should believe that God will make everything turn out for the best, or that everything is already for the best. Many of these same people don’t necessarily believe that. They see the reality that bad things really do happen to good people, that things don’t always turn out for the best. Our parsha, Re’eh, promises life and blessing for those who follow the Torah, and curses for those who don’t, but all too often we see that those in life who are greedy and inconsiderate really end up with the prizes.
I want to share one text this morning that sheds an interesting light on this age old question. This text is from the Talmud, Berachot 4b.
Raba (some say, R. Hisda) says: If a man sees that painful sufferings visit him, let him examine his conduct. For it is said: Let us search and try our ways, and return unto the Lord.(Lam 3:40) If he examines and finds nothing [objectionable], let him attribute it to the neglect of the study of the Torah. For it is said: Happy is the man whom Thou chastens, O Lord, and teaches out of Thy law.(Ps 94:12) If he did attribute it [thus], and still did not find [this to be the cause], let him be sure that these are chastenings of love. For it is said: For whom the Lord loves He chastises. (Prov 3:12)
Raba, in the name of R. Sahorah, in the name of R. Huna, says: If the Holy One, blessed be He, is pleased with a man, he crushes him with painful sufferings. For it is said: And the Lord was pleased with [him, hence] he crushed him by disease.24 Now, you might think that this is so even if he did not accept them with love. Therefore it is said: To see if his soul would offer itself in restitution.25 Even as the trespass-offering must be brought by consent, so also the sufferings must be endured with consent. And if he did accept them, what is his reward? He will see his seed, prolong his days.26 And more than that, his knowledge [of the Torah] will endure with him. For it is said: The purpose of the Lord will prosper in his hand.27
…R. Simeon b. Lakish said: The word 'covenant' is mentioned in connection with salt, and the word 'covenant' is mentioned in connection with sufferings: the word 'covenant' is mentioned in connection with salt, as it is written: Neither shalt thou allow the salt of the covenant of thy God to be lacking. (Lev 2:13) And the word 'covenant' is mentioned in connection with sufferings, as it is written: These are the words of the covenant. (Dt 28:69) Even as in the covenant mentioned in connection with salt, the salt lends a sweet taste to the meat, so also in the covenant mentioned in connection with sufferings, the sufferings wash away all the sins of a man.
In other words, some suffering is a punishment for a specific sin, and it is a useful spiritual exercise to do self-seeking when bad things happen. We need to take responsibility for our role in the bad things that happen in our life. But there are also inexplicable sufferings, that are not punishments. People who never did anything wrong that suffer tremendously. And the Talmud is suggesting here that this is how God operates, that God actually causes good people to suffer, and just expects them to endure the suffering happily with the expectation of a reward.
A Tanna recited before R. Johanan the following: If a man busies himself in the study of the Torah and in acts of charity and [nonetheless] buries his children,1 all his sins are forgiven him. R. Johanan said to him: I grant you Torah and acts of charity, for it is written: By mercy and truth iniquity is expiated. (Prov 16:6) 'Mercy' is acts of charity, for it is said: He that followeth after righteousness and mercy findeth life, prosperity and honour.(Prov 21:21) 'Truth' is Torah, for it is said: Buy the truth and sell it not. (prov 23:23) But how do you know [what you say about] the one who buries his children? — A certain Elder [thereupon] recited to him in the name of R. Simeon b. Yohai: It is concluded from the analogy in the use of the word 'iniquity'. Here it is written: By mercy and truth iniquity is expiated. And elsewhere it is written: And who recompenseth the iniquity of the fathers into the bosom of their children. (Jer 32:18)
Here, the theological explanation is still being offered, and to a man who specifically himself suffered this kind of unjust suffering. R. Yohanan buried 10 children, so in this passage the Tanna himself is comforting R Yohanan with these words. Interestingly, in the next passage, R Yohanan disagrees with him, and says that if it has to do with children, it’s not sufferings of love. There’s no way God could be so cruel as to murder children out of his love for the parents. So R Yohanan, who himself experienced this horrendous thing, is saying there’s no way God could be that cruel—don’t tell me this is just an expression of God’s love!
A little further on, the rabbis go even farther in rejecting this suffering. A series of rabbis fall ill, and the only redemption comes not through any explanation, any teaching, but purely through human contact, through one compassionate human being reaching out to a human being who is suffering:
R. Hiyya b. Abba fell ill and R. Johanan went in to visit him. He said to him: Are your sufferings welcome to you? He replied: Neither they nor their reward.9 He said to him: Give me your hand. He gave him his hand and he raised him.
R. Johanan once fell ill and R. Hanina went in to visit him. He said to him: Are your sufferings welcome to you? He replied: Neither they nor their reward. He said to him: Give me your hand. He gave him his hand and he raised him. Why could not R. Johanan raise himself?— They replied: The prisoner cannot free himself from jail.12
R. Eleazar fell ill and R. Johanan went in to visit him. He noticed that he was lying in a dark room, and he bared his arm and light radiated from it. Thereupon he noticed that R. Eleazar was weeping, and he said to him: Why do you weep? Is it because you did not study enough Torah? Surely we learnt: The one who sacrifices much and the one who sacrifices little have the same merit, provided that the heart is directed to heaven. Is it perhaps lack of sustenance? Not everybody has the privilege to enjoy two tables. Is it perhaps because of [the lack of] children? This is the bone of my tenth son! — He replied to him: I am weeping on account of this beauty [i.e. my body] that is going to rot in the earth. He said to him: On that account you surely have a reason to weep; and they both wept. In the meanwhile he said to him: Are your sufferings welcome to you? — He replied: Neither they nor their reward. He said to him: Give me your hand, and he gave him his hand and he raised him.
I think in this passage the rabbis are rejecting these sufferings—it’s true that the righteous suffer, and we don’t want it. The text is a protest against suffering, against God’s way of doing things. Jews through the ages have suffered so much, and maybe it is a sign of closeness to god, but we don’t want it.
The solution to suffering isn’t theological—the rabbis find no comfort in accepting the sufferings. Solution is through faith, not community. We can lift each other up, hold each other through the difficult times. They know what their faith tells them, but that is not enough. Faith is not enough to comfort. When we visit someone in mourning, we don’t give them any explanation of their suffering—we let them speak, we listen.
What are these sufferings? They may be physical, but they have the symptoms of depression. Maybe this is the depression of someone who mourns alone, who suffers and is not comforted by anybody present. The suffering here is not simply the suffering of something bad happening, it is the experience of getting uspet and mourning alone, unseen. The solution is community. It doesn’t take away the bad things, but it holds people through them.
The Torah promises blessing, life, and good to those who follow a life of mitzvot. So what is the good in this sugiya? Maybe you could say it is the suffering itself which is a sign of God’s love, but I don’t think so—that is not enough to relieve the experience of suffering. Maybe it is the kind of relationships, home life & community we create by living a life of mitzvot.
In the two stories I started with, both people suffered. Eric suffered, and the tragedy is not that he had no fancy theological belief that could comfort him. The tragedy is that he had no community to comfort him, he lived separate from community, like the rabbis who fall ill and lie in a dark room, alone. This is what it is like being depressed or grieving alone. I have met many people who say they are not sitting shiva because they’re not religious. So really, they are going to sit in a dark room alone. Shiva is not about being religious, it is about opening myself to a community of supportive, compassionate people.
In the case of the Schwartzes, a religious family that lost husband and son over the span of a single year, there was no explanation, there was nothing anyone could say. But by living in the richness of sacred community, they were held until they could re-experience blessing, life, and goodness.
May we all hold each other through the difficult times, and be a source of support for those among us in pain, and together share in the rich joy of creating sacred community.
I have a friend I’ll call eric, who lost 3 family members over the course of 3 summers, first his grandmother, grandfather, and father. After this experience, he has no more religious feeling. He has not been part of organized religion. He doesn’t feel that God will take care of things. He feels that believing in God is a great emotional support for those who believe it, but he doesn’t.
I have another acquaintance, Moshe Schwartz, part of a well-respected family in the conservative movement. Moshe’s father, Gershon, is the author of Swimming the Sea of Talmud, a collection of Talmudic texts for discussion; his mother, Shuley, is dean of List College, the joint undergraduate program JTS runs with Columbia. Almost ten years ago, Moshe’s brother died in a freak accident while at college. The funeral at Anshe Chesed in Manhattan was enormous—hundreds of people attended. It was extremely emotional—I remember Moshe and Gershon both wore beautiful ties which they had done kriyah on, ripping them in the middle to display their grief. They were devastated. Then, within the year, Gershon died. It was totally unexpected, he was a young man. Again, the funeral was enormous, shiva was well attended every night, and the family was devastated. Shuley is still Dean of List college, and Moshe now is ther hyeadmaster at a Jewish School in New Jersey.
People often assume that faith is meant to get us through hard times; that we should believe that God will make everything turn out for the best, or that everything is already for the best. Many of these same people don’t necessarily believe that. They see the reality that bad things really do happen to good people, that things don’t always turn out for the best. Our parsha, Re’eh, promises life and blessing for those who follow the Torah, and curses for those who don’t, but all too often we see that those in life who are greedy and inconsiderate really end up with the prizes.
I want to share one text this morning that sheds an interesting light on this age old question. This text is from the Talmud, Berachot 4b.
Raba (some say, R. Hisda) says: If a man sees that painful sufferings visit him, let him examine his conduct. For it is said: Let us search and try our ways, and return unto the Lord.(Lam 3:40) If he examines and finds nothing [objectionable], let him attribute it to the neglect of the study of the Torah. For it is said: Happy is the man whom Thou chastens, O Lord, and teaches out of Thy law.(Ps 94:12) If he did attribute it [thus], and still did not find [this to be the cause], let him be sure that these are chastenings of love. For it is said: For whom the Lord loves He chastises. (Prov 3:12)
Raba, in the name of R. Sahorah, in the name of R. Huna, says: If the Holy One, blessed be He, is pleased with a man, he crushes him with painful sufferings. For it is said: And the Lord was pleased with [him, hence] he crushed him by disease.24 Now, you might think that this is so even if he did not accept them with love. Therefore it is said: To see if his soul would offer itself in restitution.25 Even as the trespass-offering must be brought by consent, so also the sufferings must be endured with consent. And if he did accept them, what is his reward? He will see his seed, prolong his days.26 And more than that, his knowledge [of the Torah] will endure with him. For it is said: The purpose of the Lord will prosper in his hand.27
…R. Simeon b. Lakish said: The word 'covenant' is mentioned in connection with salt, and the word 'covenant' is mentioned in connection with sufferings: the word 'covenant' is mentioned in connection with salt, as it is written: Neither shalt thou allow the salt of the covenant of thy God to be lacking. (Lev 2:13) And the word 'covenant' is mentioned in connection with sufferings, as it is written: These are the words of the covenant. (Dt 28:69) Even as in the covenant mentioned in connection with salt, the salt lends a sweet taste to the meat, so also in the covenant mentioned in connection with sufferings, the sufferings wash away all the sins of a man.
In other words, some suffering is a punishment for a specific sin, and it is a useful spiritual exercise to do self-seeking when bad things happen. We need to take responsibility for our role in the bad things that happen in our life. But there are also inexplicable sufferings, that are not punishments. People who never did anything wrong that suffer tremendously. And the Talmud is suggesting here that this is how God operates, that God actually causes good people to suffer, and just expects them to endure the suffering happily with the expectation of a reward.
A Tanna recited before R. Johanan the following: If a man busies himself in the study of the Torah and in acts of charity and [nonetheless] buries his children,1 all his sins are forgiven him. R. Johanan said to him: I grant you Torah and acts of charity, for it is written: By mercy and truth iniquity is expiated. (Prov 16:6) 'Mercy' is acts of charity, for it is said: He that followeth after righteousness and mercy findeth life, prosperity and honour.(Prov 21:21) 'Truth' is Torah, for it is said: Buy the truth and sell it not. (prov 23:23) But how do you know [what you say about] the one who buries his children? — A certain Elder [thereupon] recited to him in the name of R. Simeon b. Yohai: It is concluded from the analogy in the use of the word 'iniquity'. Here it is written: By mercy and truth iniquity is expiated. And elsewhere it is written: And who recompenseth the iniquity of the fathers into the bosom of their children. (Jer 32:18)
Here, the theological explanation is still being offered, and to a man who specifically himself suffered this kind of unjust suffering. R. Yohanan buried 10 children, so in this passage the Tanna himself is comforting R Yohanan with these words. Interestingly, in the next passage, R Yohanan disagrees with him, and says that if it has to do with children, it’s not sufferings of love. There’s no way God could be so cruel as to murder children out of his love for the parents. So R Yohanan, who himself experienced this horrendous thing, is saying there’s no way God could be that cruel—don’t tell me this is just an expression of God’s love!
A little further on, the rabbis go even farther in rejecting this suffering. A series of rabbis fall ill, and the only redemption comes not through any explanation, any teaching, but purely through human contact, through one compassionate human being reaching out to a human being who is suffering:
R. Hiyya b. Abba fell ill and R. Johanan went in to visit him. He said to him: Are your sufferings welcome to you? He replied: Neither they nor their reward.9 He said to him: Give me your hand. He gave him his hand and he raised him.
R. Johanan once fell ill and R. Hanina went in to visit him. He said to him: Are your sufferings welcome to you? He replied: Neither they nor their reward. He said to him: Give me your hand. He gave him his hand and he raised him. Why could not R. Johanan raise himself?— They replied: The prisoner cannot free himself from jail.12
R. Eleazar fell ill and R. Johanan went in to visit him. He noticed that he was lying in a dark room, and he bared his arm and light radiated from it. Thereupon he noticed that R. Eleazar was weeping, and he said to him: Why do you weep? Is it because you did not study enough Torah? Surely we learnt: The one who sacrifices much and the one who sacrifices little have the same merit, provided that the heart is directed to heaven. Is it perhaps lack of sustenance? Not everybody has the privilege to enjoy two tables. Is it perhaps because of [the lack of] children? This is the bone of my tenth son! — He replied to him: I am weeping on account of this beauty [i.e. my body] that is going to rot in the earth. He said to him: On that account you surely have a reason to weep; and they both wept. In the meanwhile he said to him: Are your sufferings welcome to you? — He replied: Neither they nor their reward. He said to him: Give me your hand, and he gave him his hand and he raised him.
I think in this passage the rabbis are rejecting these sufferings—it’s true that the righteous suffer, and we don’t want it. The text is a protest against suffering, against God’s way of doing things. Jews through the ages have suffered so much, and maybe it is a sign of closeness to god, but we don’t want it.
The solution to suffering isn’t theological—the rabbis find no comfort in accepting the sufferings. Solution is through faith, not community. We can lift each other up, hold each other through the difficult times. They know what their faith tells them, but that is not enough. Faith is not enough to comfort. When we visit someone in mourning, we don’t give them any explanation of their suffering—we let them speak, we listen.
What are these sufferings? They may be physical, but they have the symptoms of depression. Maybe this is the depression of someone who mourns alone, who suffers and is not comforted by anybody present. The suffering here is not simply the suffering of something bad happening, it is the experience of getting uspet and mourning alone, unseen. The solution is community. It doesn’t take away the bad things, but it holds people through them.
The Torah promises blessing, life, and good to those who follow a life of mitzvot. So what is the good in this sugiya? Maybe you could say it is the suffering itself which is a sign of God’s love, but I don’t think so—that is not enough to relieve the experience of suffering. Maybe it is the kind of relationships, home life & community we create by living a life of mitzvot.
In the two stories I started with, both people suffered. Eric suffered, and the tragedy is not that he had no fancy theological belief that could comfort him. The tragedy is that he had no community to comfort him, he lived separate from community, like the rabbis who fall ill and lie in a dark room, alone. This is what it is like being depressed or grieving alone. I have met many people who say they are not sitting shiva because they’re not religious. So really, they are going to sit in a dark room alone. Shiva is not about being religious, it is about opening myself to a community of supportive, compassionate people.
In the case of the Schwartzes, a religious family that lost husband and son over the span of a single year, there was no explanation, there was nothing anyone could say. But by living in the richness of sacred community, they were held until they could re-experience blessing, life, and goodness.
May we all hold each other through the difficult times, and be a source of support for those among us in pain, and together share in the rich joy of creating sacred community.
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