Mishpatim Creating a Just Society

Mishpatim   Creating a Just Society

            In the good old days of Rabbis, if there ever was one, the Rabbi was not as he is today, a Preacher and service leader, but the “ Final Decider”, the “Buck Stops Here” in the Jewish community on all decisions of Halakhah, of Jewish law.

So, the story goes, two men come to the Rabbi with a suit . Says the plaintiff,” So and so, the “gonif” owes me 200 rubles and this is the proof, here are the documents,” .He then makes his case.

            The Rabbi nods, You are right!

            The Rabbi calls on the defendant,” Respect Rov, That so and so, that “gonif” has no claim at all and I owe him nothing, and this is the proof, and here are the documents.

            The Rabbi nods again,” You are right!”

            All at once the Rabbi’s assistant, the Shammes, has been listening patiently till now, blurts out,” But Rabbi,” How could they both be right.?!”

            And the Rabbi nods, “ You, too, are right!”

            All joking aside, at the core of Judaism is the need to make critical decisions, decisions about who is right and wrong, what is permitted, what is forbidden, not just in the obvious things we think of, in kashrut or Shabbat, but in the moral and legal realm as well. That is all wrapped up in the  framework of what we call “ Halakhah”, which we can translate literally, as “Going”, or figuratively, we could say,” if you talk the talk, you gotta walk the walk.”

            No sooner do we finish with the revelation of God at Sinai in the previous portion, Yitro, with its grand vision in thunder and lightning, that we come to this portion , Mishpatim, which forces us to deal with very mundane issues, issues that don’t belong in heaven, but belong on earth, in every day dealings between people.

            We are presented with a broad mix of what are called “ Case laws”, so to say,” In case of a, then b”, what is termed “casuistic law”; this is in contrast to the absolute statements we have in the Ten Commandments, termed “apodictic law.” So we have examples from the treatment of male slaves as opposed to female slaves, issues of miscarriage as a result of a brawl, which leads the famous “lex talionis”-“Eye for Eye”--- what are grounds for self-defense, what are the conditions for making restitution in case of theft, and so on. Many shirt and succinct cases that lead to mountains of Rabbinic debates.    

            As you can see from this, although we would like to see Judaism summarized into a simple phrase,” al regal achat”, while standing on one foot,  like “Love your Neighbor”, we see that our Torah wasn’t written for people seeking simple answers.

            From a Jewish perspective, law and justice stand at the very center of the universe. They stand at the very center of our entire concept of religion. That  means that legal procedure is itself sacred, although we may sometimes be perturbed by what seems to be nit-picking.

            We Jews are a people of law, which is often difficult for people of other religions to comprehend. Very often, we are decried as a religion of law, as opposed to a religion of love, a very common historic Christian polemic against Judaism, but it is in the loyalty to the idea of law, whether it be the religious obligations, or the social obligations, that a Jew gave expression to love of God and love of neighbor.( Frankly, there is also a lot of Canon Law in Christianity).

            Even among modern Jews, who obviously do not observe Jewish law, even in such a setting, the concept of what is accepted and what is not is important still holds sway.Even if I wish to do whatever I will, I still want to know if it is kosher or treif, and even if the modern Jew enjoys the treif, he still wishes that the Rabbi would pasken, declare, it kosher.

            Rabbi Harold Schulweis described Jewish life as a tennis game, with halakhah as the net between the courts. You can raise the net, or lower the net, but the net must still be there. Once you get rid of the net, there’s no game, since then every move is over the net. Our concept of law, of halakhah, is the net in the game of life.

            In particular, the net of life must be the net of civil and criminal law. It goes back to Abraham. God expressly states that he must declares his plans about the wicked cities of Sodom and Gomorrah because he knows  that Abraham will instruct his descendants in justice.

            We Jews have a penchant for going to bat even for the villain who doesn’t deserve it. We think back to Abraham , our ancestor, who goes to war on behalf of the people of Sodom and Gomorrah, not only to free his nephew Lot but also to free them from  an aggressor nation. Yet these are the same villains of the infamous Sodom and Gomorrah.

            Next, he pleads for them with God, Hashofet Kol haaretz lo yaaseh mishpat? Will not the judge of all the earth not do justice?

            Even these, villains and miscreants deserve due process of the law , and if just some case could be made for them, just the presence of a minyan of decent people, then they should be spared. (Of course, when it comes to his own son, he keeps quiet—you see, we don’t always have the sense to speak up for ourselves!)

            We see this thread run throughout the Torah.

            Even before Moses can receive the Torah at Sinai, he needs to establish a system whereby he delegates judicial authority to respected leaders form among the people.

            In Deuteronomy, we are presented with the dictum Shoftim ve shotrim titen lecha—“You shall appoint magistrates and officials for your tribes.” Before anything else may be done, the very first act must be the establishment of a legal and judicial system--without it, the children of Israel cannot function. The Torah then declares: Tsedek Tsedek tirdof Lemaan  tihyeh veyarashta et haarets asher Adonay noteyn lecha-

“Justice, justice, shall you pursue, that you may thrive and occupy the land the Lord has given you.”

            Later, the prophets would say: Vayigal camayim mishpat. Let justice well up like the waters and righteousness like a mighty stream.( Amos 5:24) This phrase served as a declaration by Dr. Martin Luther King Jr in his great speech on civil rights.

            It is true that law and justice appear as values in other ancient societies—the ancient Babylonians, the Greeks, the Romans, all understood that justice needed to be established. But how did they look at it? As a mechanical necessity! Plato’s Republic  is an attempt to set up the grounds for a just society and he begins on the theme of what is justice and comes up with his own explanation. As you read it, though, you sense that while his discussion makes good sense, it is missing the passion and power. Justice comes from reasonability for him, but for Moses, the Prophets and the Jewish people, justice is powerful, overwhelming, “yigal kamayim” like a tidal surge of the ocean, driven by the force of God.

            Let’s go back to one of the cases presented in Mishpatim,  that of “ Makeh ish”- One who strikes his fellow and causes death,” Mot Yumat”- he shall be excecuted. How was this to be decided? What proof, what evidence, what procedure?

            Rabbinic jurisprudence was very exacting, especially in the case of murder. No violation of law was more horrendous than that of murder--not even the other two cardinal sins of idolatry and adultery came near--for as the sage Maimonides said, Murder destroys the very civilization of the world.(Yishuv Haolam)  In other societies of the time, not all people were legally equal and one could easily buy his way out of a murder charge by paying off the family, especially a nobleman who could buy off the death of a peasant.  It is even retained explicitly in the Quran, which paraphrases our “eye for eye” but unlike the Torah, allows for “ blood money”  to be offered,” If one is pardoned by the victim's kin, an appreciative response is in order, and an equitable compensation shall be paid.”

            This idea of buying off murder is unconscionable in Jewish thinking.

Nevertheless, and because execution was deemed the only proper punishment, the legal procedures for a murder case were so stringent, that it became nigh impossible for a court to convict one of full premeditated murder.

            It is no wonder then, that Rabbi Akiba declared that a court that  put someone to death once in seven, or even once in seventy years, was a bloody court. However, even as the Rabbis made the application of the death penalty almost impossible, they could not remove it from the books. This must remain, in principal, on the books of any civilized society, even if it is never carried out in fact, because the value of the human being must be made the one sacrosanct principal of all societies.

            There are many other examples that one can go on, from this and other issues raised in this portion and parts of the Torah. Some 3300 years of Jewish jurisprudence can be applied to modern issues like internet privacy ( addressed , in principal, by Rabbenu Gershom a thousand years ago) or intellectual property rights, covered in Rabbinic law under the concept of “ Gnevat Daat”. “ Theft of Mind”, which applies not only to deception in business practice but also to claiming to be the originator of an idea stolen from someone else .

            I have digressed somewhat, but you can see, from these cursory examples, why the Torah and Jewish teachings would want to define for us what are limits and boundaries of our actions but put less emphasis on our minds and beliefs. As the Rabbis defined it, “No two human beings can think alike.”   Hence, so much of an emphasis on “Mishpatim”, or laws,  civil and criminal, as well as ritual, because all actions have consequences and while no to humans think alike, all humans ache alike.         

            There is a Latin phrase--fiat iustitia et periat mundus--let justice be done, even if the world perish. Justice, it would seem from that, is incompatible with the real needs of the world. There is a seemingly comparable statement in Hebrew Yikov hadin et hahar -the law shall go through even a mountain. But justice is not an end in itself, as in the Latin phrase has it, but rather, it is the instrument on which the world survives, and does not perish, "The Rabbis declared:The world exists because of din, emet, veshalom--Judgement, truth, and peace. Judgement, carried out in truth, leads to peace, and to the salvation of human civilization and existence.

Shabbat Shirah Singing About Unsung Heroines of the Bible

       Shabbat Shirah   Singing About Unsung Heroines of the Bible

      

         I have a very dear friend , a psychologist, who is a women, very Jewishly knowledgeable and committed, who had a proposal to update the Hebrew word for God—Why not feminize what has always been a masculine concept and instead of Elohim, create a new word, add “kamatz-heh” the feminine ending, and make it—“Elohima”.

            Well, other than mangling Hebrew grammar, it may not be such a bad idea to recognize that in Judaism, while we have always had a very masculine look at everything, there is also a feminine look at everything.

         This Shabbat is called “ Shabbat Shirah”, the Sabbath of Song, because in this portion of Beshalach, we read the “Shirat Hayam”, the Song at the Sea, the Song of Deliverence that the children of Israel sang in as they saw the Egyptian forces swept away in front of their eyes. Certainly we have, in this song, a very masculine concept of God,” Ish Milchamah” , literally, “ A Man of War.”

         However, at the very end of the Song, we are introduced to Miriam, who leads the women in their own song and dance of triumph, “ Ki Gao-Gaah—he has excelled and thrown both horse and rider into the sea.” “Haneviah” the Prophetess,” The Sister of Aaron. Not the sister of Moses, but the sister of Aaron.

            Why not “ Sister of Moses”? Wait, Moses is not called “ Navi” prophet, until the very end of the Torah. Miriam, our commentators said, was already a “Prophetess” before Moses, when she was still only the Sister of Aaron, forseeing that a Deliverer would be born. So, Moses, the great, is upstaged by his sister!

         The Song of the Red Sea is paralleled by the Haftarah, the Song of Devorah. Here too, a song, a very masculine song, of military triumph, but sung by a woman, Devorah, who is very feminine-“ Em beyisrael”—“The mother of Israel” she describes herself, a judge of the people, and the very triumph comes, not at the hand of the male warrior, but at the hand of a woman, Yael. Here, too, the woman takes precedence over the man.

            There are some less famous women of the Bible, besides the usual matriarchs or Queen Esther, that have a lot to teach us. These are the Unsung Heroines of the Bible.           

            The theme of the Shabbat is the Song of the Sea, and it marks the culmination of the Exodus, yet where would the children of Israel have been if not for the women.

            First, there are Shifrah and Puah

.           Had it not been for Shifrah and Puah, there would have been no one left alive for Moses to save. Pharaoh appointed these two  women, who were midwives, to, deliver all the Israelite children, with the orders to kill all male children at birth, and allow only the females to live, females who could later on be sold off for the harems of various  government officials. All that we know about these two women from the Bible is that they were God-fearing which means that they had utter contempt for the Pharaohs orders,and, rather, saved all the children.   

            It is surely with these two women that we have the invention of Hutzpah as a Jewish trait for it is with Hutzpah that

they answer the Pharaoh, who is boiling mad at them. Their answer surely ranks highest in the annals of pure nerve:

"These Hebrew women aren't like the Egyptians. They are wild beasts; they give birth by themselves, without the aid of

 midwives."

            The Passover Hagadah credits the women of Israel as a whole with saving the nation- the men are despondent at Pharaohs order to slay the male sons and separate from their wives in protest. There will be no more children. Our commentaries credit the women, not the mean, with the determination to create a new generation despite the threat hanging over them.

            Years later, when the children of Israel wander in the desert, who remain loyal to Moses and to God? Not the men, but the  women. The Rabbis were quick to notice this in the incident of the Golden Calf,  Aaron tells the men "take your wives’ earrings and nose rings, and I will use it", but, instead, we are told, the men brought only their own  gold. Why?  It was obvious—the women wanted nothing to do with a Golden Calf.

            What of women of physical courage. We all know about  Devorah, the judge, who organized the army of the

tribes to defeat the oppressive Canaanites, yet the final victory was in the hands of another women, who has never gotten sufficient credit, Yael . Yael is not  even an Israelite . It is Yael who takes the villain Sisera into her home and she alone kills the general. Of her, Devorah sings, "Blessed above women is Yael, the wife of Hever the Kenite, blessed above the women of the tents."

            Devorah contrasts Yael, the activist, with the women in General Sisera’s court. These women imagine their brave soldiers dividing up the women they have captured, and they use a very degrading term” Rechem-rechmatayim”—These women are not more than a uterus—that is their vision of a woman and they fantasize about the colored cloths their brave warriors will bring back with them from the captured women. Right their Devorah ends their vision with a denunciation” Kach Yovdu”- “Thus shall all your enemies perish, O Lord”.

                        How about women as actual warriors?

                        One woman single handedly saved the people of Israel from a dictator in the time of the Judges.

            We know of Gideon, a great hero, but we don’t know of Gideon’s son, Avimelech,a  great tyrant. Whle his father refused the crown of Kingship. Avimelekh tried to take it by force, murdering all his brothers and then crushing any rebellion against him. One woman single-handedly stopped him dead in his tracks.

   Avimelekh led the charge against the rebel town of  Tevetz .An unknown woman, who could have easily sat in her room, away from the battle raging outside, took action. She took her only weapon, the millstone she used to grind her flour. Nobody paid attention to an odd woman carrying her millstone. She climbed to the parapet of the tower where the fight was raging, spotted the enemy leader directly below her, and let the stone fall. Directly on Avimelech. His skull  is crushed, he looks up to see the woman above, and is ready to die, not of his wound, but of his shame. He begs his  sword bearer to run him through, lest people say that he had been killed by a woman. Yes, justice done by a woman.

       The women of the Bible are also political negotiators, who, by their wise words, can save a city from destruction. The town of Abel Bet Maacah   gave refuge to an enemy of King David. David's general, Yoav, is about to storm the city, about to destroy it and all the inhabitants, when, in the midst of battle, a woman appears on the wall and demands to speak to the general. Imagine the scene as the fighting suddenly ceases  so that this unnamed heroine  can speak; "Our city is like a watchful mother of Israel and you seek to kill her! Would you destroy the Lord's own possession?" With that, she succeeds in arranging for the delivery of the rebel into the general's hands and saves the city.

            What about worship?

            The most central concept of modern Judaism today is worship. Surely whatever else Jews may do or not do, at least they come to the synagogue to pray, even if only once a year. Yet, we find nowhere, in the Torah, an explicit command to pray, nor do we find, in the worship of the Temple, any concept prayers of that expressed the feelings of the participants until later, when the Psalms are written.

            Again, the is credit due to not a man, but a woman.

       Hannah,a barren women, comes to the sanctuary at Shechem to silently pour her heart out in prayer at the altar. Who enters but the High Priest ,Eli, who is dumbfounded at this? A .women at the altar, mumbling, moving her lips, incoherent? Altars are for sacrifices, not for what he presumes to be a drunken stupor. The great priest cannot tell the difference between an honest outpouring of longing and faith from a hang-over. It takes a simple country woman from the hills of Ephraim to teach him. It is just this woman's prayer that forms the Haftarah read on the first day of Rosh Hashanah.

  The great bulk of the Bible is the work of a special class of people known as prophets, and this, too, is not an exclusively male domain as I mentioned with Miriam.  Several centuries after Solomon, the Temple had fallen in a state of disrepair .Finally, it was cleansed and renovated .The High Priest found, in one of the chambers, a book of the Torah that had been long forgotten. In excitement, he showed it to the King and they concluded that something of a discovery of such a degree must be looked into in greater depth. After all, according to the words of this book, dire consequences were in store for the kingdom of Judea. It was natural then to rush to the foremost prophet of the day and determine what that meant. To whom then did they turn? Not to Jeremiah, whom we all know about from his writings ,but to a prophetess, Huldah. It was she who validated for them the book, which we presume to have been the fifth of the Five Books of Moses The woman, Huldah, was the prophet they trusted for wisdom.

            Think then, to what  we owe these women of the Bible, of whom we hear little about yet who did so much in the course of the beginnings of the Jewish people: saving the children form slaughter, delivering from outside invaders, serving as wise counselors and prophets.

In truth there is no lack of great women.leaders, in later ages as well. There was Bruriah-,wife of Rabbi Meir, who herself was author of certain Rabbinic ordlnances.

There was Rufina, the first Jewish woman president of a synagogue, in ancient Greece, some 1800years ago. There was a women who headed import-export operations in medieval Egypt.

There was a Hannah Ruchel-The Maid of Ludomir-the Hassidic- woman Rebbe, who wore Tallit and Tefillin and preached to her Hasidic followers over a century ago.

            At the beginning, I mentioned my friends suggestion, to give God a feminine side-but this too was done—in the Midrashic lore, as “ Shekhinah” , God’s presence, and in Kabbalah, as “ Matrona”, the Lady, or “ Malkah” the Queen, so that God has a masculine and a feminine aspect that balance each other.

     Now , in our day, we look to our women to shoulder the burden of Judaism -side by side-or even ahead of the men. We have women on the bimah, women as Rabbis and Cantors, women as Leaders of synagogues and Jewish communal organizations, a  woman. as Head  of the State of Israel.  We hope that this new openness will lead to a greater creativity and a flourishing of the spirit of Torah in the 21 st century. Amen.

Parshat Bo The Alien and the Unaffiliated

Parshat Bo ( Exodus Ch. 10 -13 )   The Alien  and the Unaffiliated    

           

            A Jewish peddler walks into a Shtetl in the Old World and is dismayed to see that nobody talks to him, nobody pays any attention to him, and nobody is ready to offer him any assistance.

            He then goes to the middle of the town square and blasts out in Yiddish:  Gevalt, Men harget yiden!” “Help! They are killing Jews!”

            Suddenly the whole town comes running to find out what the horrible news and they demand of him,” Where is the danger?!”

            Oh, he replies, don’t you know the only way to get a Jew’s attention is by screaming “Gevalt.”

            That is true for so many issues that we have to deal with in American Jewish life—we often deal with it when we feel threatened.

            A short time ago, a study was released by Pew Research, which, quite reasonably led many of us to cry “ Gevalt!”. I will get to that concern after a digression into our Torah portion.

            Today, in the portion of Bo, we have the last plagues and the Children of Israel set out from slavery  to redemption.

            This is the great event in our consciousness--the event of the liberation from Egypt. It is the Birth of a Nation.

            At the end of this reading, we are given a set of distinct instructions for both the first Exodus and for all future commemorations of this earthshaking event.

            There are two  terms similar in sound  used in here that apply to our issue. Look at Ex:.12: 44 Ben nechar lo yochal bo--No alien shall eat  of the Pesach offering until he undergoes circumcision to show that he has entered into the covenant of Abraham. The word for alien here is ” nechar”, from which we have the common Hebrew term for non-Jew- Nochri, the alien.

            Another word is closely associated with it in this portion, the word karet-cut off.    Turn back to Ch 12:19

Ki kol ochel mahmetzet, ve nikhreta hanefesh hahi me-adat yisrael-“ whoever eats that which is leaven, that person shall be cut off from the people of Israel.” Nikhretah-he will be cut off. To refuse to participate in this great national commemoration is to be cut off from the nation and from God.

            The alien, nochri, must enter the covenant of circumcision, to partake in the Passover, while the Hebrew who refuses to partake in the Passover has cut himself off, nichrat, made alien. One goes in, the other goes out; one joins, one leaves. The two words share two letters of the 3 letter root word.            That’s the beauty of Hebrew grammar.

            [An aside refresher for those who forgot their Hebrew grammar. Basic Hebrew words, as in all Semitic languages, have a 3-consonant root. To this one adds prefix, suffix, and vowel sounds to make create an immense vocabulary of verbs and nouns. Sometimes, words may drop one of the consonants or double a consonant to add to the variety and confusion of determining what the root is.]

            These  same two concepts, nekhar, the alien, and nichrat, cut off, alienated, also appear in the command for circumcision given to Abraham--look back to Bereshit 17:10-14. Abraham is commanded to have all the males in his entourage circumcised--including those ben nekhar asher lo mizarakha hu  "the son of the alien who is not of your descent," and further down--whoever , male, in your entourage, who does not have himself circumcised, vnikhreta hanefesh hahi meameha--et briti hefar--that soul is cut off from your people, he has annulled my covenant.”

            Why do I want to bring your attention to the interplay between these two words. Why do all this switching back and forth?

            These are peculiar words.

            Someone once tried to explain the Arabic language--a relative of Hebrew. Every word has three meanings  . It means what it means, it means just the opposite, and it means something about camels. The Hebrew version is the same without the camel ( and some may say that we just substitute a chicken for the camel).

            These words that I am throwing out --nekher-alien and nikhrat-cut off-both mean what they mean and mean just the opposite. One is rooted in the consonants nun-chaf-resh—the root for knowing someone, the other chaf-resh-taf, the root for cutting. The  words  mean what they mean and mean the opposite and they are used in this portion in tandem.

            The word-nikhrat, is the passive of karat,cut off. In the sense of cutting off, it is used for divorce, for example,sefer kritut, a book of cutting off, eliminating, sending away, or for example , karet,   the ultimate punishment in the Bible,  being removed from the community and from the presence of God, a fate worse than death.

            It also means its opposite! It means to bring close, to bind permanently--it is used to make a binding covenant.  likhrot brit, to cut a treaty, as- when nations enter permanent alliance, or when Abraham makes his covenant with God,  or when  the children of Israel stand at Sinai. The word used is--koret brit--to cut, to make, a covenant.

            The other word is-nekhar--the root of alien, to foreign, as in ben nekhar. In the sense of lehitnaker ,a reflexive verb, it is to make oneself a stranger. It means to hide from recognition, or to ignore.

            It also means its very opposite, in the form hiker,  recognize,  be familiar with,  know someone.

            Joseph  sees his brothers vayakirem vayitnaker, he recognizes them, Yakir, and he pretends not to know them, yitnaker. Known and unknown in the same root word in the same sentence and the same breath!.

            In our Torah reading. we read of the alien who may not partake of the Passover offering, but the one who is the most alien is not one who is born a stranger, but one who is known to us, one who has been brought up as a Jew, and has chosen to hide from his people and his God. Not a just an alien, but an absolute, committed alien, a Jew who has gone rogue.

            Thus, the ancient translations and commentaries reinterpret this verse to mean: The alien here is the son of an Israelite who has left us, who has undergone shmat, abandonment of Judaism . It is interpreted as such  in the Targum Onkelos, the Mekhilta, and in the father of all commentaries—Rashi. This is the ben nekhar asher betokh yisrael--the alien who is among the children of Israel--arel lev-uncircumcised of heart--for he has been alienated from the Torah and from his father in heaven as much as the uncircumcised in the flesh, the non-Jew.

            We have, then two types which define the Jewish situation today:

            We have the non-Jew, ben nekhar, the alien, who choses to become a Jew--instead of nekhar-alien, he becomes a nikar-known to us, known to our tradition. The Jewish people in ancient times was composed of vast numbers of foreigners, strangers, who chose to become Jews. Entire communities  and even peoples were known to have converted to Judaism at one time or other:-the Berbers of North Africa, the nation of Palmyra in what is today Iraq, the kingdom of the Khazars in the Crimea. Even today, there is a significant number of people who become Jews by choice.

            I have officiated at many conversions I can testify to many non-Jews who have made Judaism their religion by Choice.

            But I am very disturbed by, as I mentioned at the start, the  Gevalt,   the statistics.

            A few months ago, there was the release of a major survey of American Jews attitudes and affiliations, down by the Pew Research Center. The results were very shocking. In short, it portrayed a movement down the ladder of Jewish dedication and commitment, which went, in order—children of Orthodox moved to Conservative, children of Conservative moved to Reform, children of reform moved to non-religious and non-affiliated, and children of the latter—dropped off the radar.

            Here is a summary:

“ One in five American Jews now describe themselves religiously as atheist, agnostic or “nothing in particular.” In this survey, this group of Jews is called “Jews of no religion” because they have no particular religion although they have direct Jewish ancestry ( at least one Jewish parent) and consider themselves Jewish or partly Jewish.”

            These same Jews tend to have smaller families and they tend to marry out of the religion by almost 80%. Two thirds of these Jews say they are not raising their children in any Jewish way!

            Do some simple arithmetic: 66% of this 20% is 13% of all Jews whose children disappear form the community.Now, start compounding.Outof 100 Jews today, 87 Jews tomorrow. One generation further, and we are at 75, then 65, then 57. We add to this, however, a potentially increased amount of marriage out, as the pool of Jews to choose from shrinks, especially among generally highly educated Jews, while the number holds its own or grows somewhat among those Jews who we might say, man the barricades against all modernity at all costs.

            This is a very hairy future for us, in which the Orthdoox alone, while small, are holding their own, primarily by high birth rate and successful Jewish education, but what of the rest of us?

            My glimmer of hope in all this doom and gloom is that there is what my father used to call, ”Dos pintele Yid”.” Yid”, Yiddish for Jew, starts with the Hebrew letter , “pintele”, Yud.”Pintele” is the smallest unit in Yiddish, a tiny spot, a fleck, a micron. In Chasidic lore, there is, in every Jew, every Yid, no matter how lost, a pintele Yid, a tiny fleck of a Jew, that remains, never disappears, and like a tiny spark, with the right fuel, can burn bright.

            We are, as one wit has put it, not the Eternal People, but the Eternally Dying people. We have been written off in the textbooks of history many times, 586 BCE, 70 CE, at the beginning of the European Enlightenment, at the heyday of Marxism, and in  1964, on the cover of  Look Magazine,  The Vanishing American Jew. “Look” who vanished?!       

            I have come across many whose parents had hidden the fact of their being Jews for a variety of reasons, most commonly, to spare their child of the torments and persecution of anti-Semites or because of disdain for all religion. At some point, the Pintele Yid, the hidden Jew still burns, and that person makes his return—the alienated is no longer nochri, alien, and is back in the fold of the brit, the covenant, nikhrat, cut and sealed, of Abraham with God.

            Herein , is my faith, despite the Pew report, that there is a pintele Yid, the tiny Yid, hidden, that never vanishes. It is up to us to provide the fuel to make the tiny spark turn into a flame.

            Those who are ben nekhar--children of the alien--who wish to come into our midst-to become part and parcel of the Jewish people--we welcome gladly. At the same time, let us do all that is in our abilities, to take the one who has been alienated, nikhrat, from our people, and reach out, bring in , bring in to a community and a fellowship of compassion and harmony. Amen.

Shemot Where Moses and Jesus Split Ways

Shemot--  Where Moses and Jesus Split Ways     

            This Shabbat, we are introduced to Moses, the slave child who is raised into the Pharaohs household only to return to his slave-roots now as a liberator. What figure is greater than Moses, as the Torah itself says,” There never again rose a prophet like Moses.” Nevertheless, the Torah is clear at its conclusion: Moses must die and be buried in an unknown grave no matter what his greatness. Every year, when we commemorate the Exodus from Egypt at the Passover Seder, poor Moses is left out in the cold. The Hagadah as we have it tells us that we were delivered” Not by a messenger, not by an angel” but by G-d himself. Salvation comes only from G-d, not from any mortal elevated to divinity. Poor Moses gets only two mentions, in an off the hand manner, in some quotations.

            What happens to the concept of Moses ,“ The man Moses” as the Torah points out, is very important to our understanding of how Jews and Christians differ.

I once asked  some congregants what was the happiest day in the year for them. One young couple told me “ Dec. 25”. Yes. December 25, Christmas, was the happiest day of the year for this very Jewish family. They had a small toy store. They were both so busy in the months preceding Dec. 25 that they couldn't see their children, except to feed them, get them to school, and to bed. Finally, on the 25th, the store was closed, and mom and pop were home to play with the kids, and if it was a good selling season, they had good reason to call it a yon tof. It is true for many Jews who are in the retail business,  that Christmas is truly a yom tov, a festival, because the earnings from sales are critical for survival.

            It is always confusing, when we realize that Chanukah and Christmas usually come close to each other, except for this year, when Hanukkah fell just on  Thanskgiving. But confusion there is a plenty, not just about the holidays, but also about what is Judaism, what is Christianity, what is the same, and what is different.

             The confusion is great because we are near, yet so far apart. I  recall two  questions posed to me by our members who attended a lecture given by a Catholic monk, who spoke on the Jewishness of Jesus. How Jewish could Jesus have been?

            The other question posed was whether the obligation to love one's neighbor as one self had any basis in Judaism. After all, the Christians claim that Jesus taught it.

            This is especially a perplexing issue, because, we are constantly told that there is, in the United States, a Judeo-Christian tradition. We Jews used it, when we wanted to emphasize that Christians should treat us better, and the Christian right-wing uses it, when they want to make sure that right-wing Jews don't feel left out when they attack the secular left.       

            This term "Judeo-Christian tradition" implies that Judaism and Christianity are two variations of same religion. But we are not the same tradition. If there is a common tradition, it is a Judeo-Christian-Moslem tradition.

            The truth is that we are alike, yet we are very different. To add to the confusion, American civilization, while built on European Christianity, is very much shaped by the Jewish roots of Christianity.

            There is no question, and indeed, no Christian will dispute it today--Jesus was born a Jew and died a Jew. If you follow the debates among Christian academic scholars today, you realize that there is great doubt as to the authenticity of about most of what is written in the Christian scriptures about the life of Jesus.

            There is, however, a general consensus that emerges out of scholarship that Christian ministers study in their seminaries.

            It is, in short, that Jesus was born, son of Joseph, by natural conception, to Mary, probably in Nazereth, not Bethlehem, probably in spring-time, certainly not on Dec. 25. He probably studied a little bit but not much because he is in the Galilee which had no academies, and he probably spent some time in the wilderness with a group like the Essenes of the Dead Sea scrolls. He probably was influenced by this group because some of his teachings reflect their language.

            He probably was a popular spiritual figure, the type of a  Hasid ,a man of piety, to whom people attributed miracles, a type that is found in Jewish traditions of the period. He probably preached a very nationalistic anti-gentile morality; much of his rhetoric reflects the conflict between the Jews of the Galilee and the Jews of Judea ( Later on, this would be miss-understood as a conflict between Jesus and Jews.)

            He probably saw himself as a predecessor of the Messiah, perhaps a type like Elijah, perhaps he may have thought of himself as the Messiah, but if he used the word, Son of God, it was never in the sense of literally born to God, as distinct from a human father, but in the sense of a direct personal relationship, a concept common in Jewish writings of the period. More commonly, he used the phrase “ Son of Man’, which was sued in some circles to indicate a quasi- Messianic figure.

            He never preached against observing the commandments, and he was against the Sadducees, the religious movement represented by the Kohanim, the priests. He was in competition with the Pharisees, the religious teachers who founded Judaism as we know it. While Pharisee, in modern English, has come to mean a hypocrite, in all likelihood, he was close to them, since he agreed on almost every point. He insisted that his followers had to be more devout, not less devout, more observant, not less, than the Pharisees.

            None of the preaching of Jesus that can be identified as his original statements in the first three gospels  were directed against the Torah or against observance of the commandments. He argued against the Sadducees--so did the Rabbis of his day. He argued against the Temple priests--so did the Rabbis of his day. He argued against the Pharisees-- so did the Rabbis, who were themselves Pharisees, who preached against those who exaggerated or made  a show of their

religiosity. The argument against hypocritical Pharisees, attributed to Jesus, is a Rabbinic argument,” Osim Maasey Zimri—They act like Zimri, a renegade, and demand the reward of Pinhas, the religious hero.

            He probably got in trouble with the Temple authorities because he seemed like a rabble rouser, and was probably put to death, by Pontius Pilate, who used the quislings whom the Roman authorities had put in charge of the Temple as a way to cover his liability.  Probably, the same Temple authorities tried to coach him to speak in a way that would get him off the hook and not be exceuted.

            He probably died, was temporarily buried in a Jewish tomb, and the body removed by the owner when he needed it for a death in the family. Hence, the empty tomb.

            That is Jesus the Jew. I say “ probably”, because, as one of my professors used to say about historical speculation” Wuz U der , Chali?”

            For a Christian, it is a matter of faith. For a Jew, it is a matter of historic interest and speculation.    

            What about the question which was posed to me that " Love thy Neighbor as Thyself" is distinctly Christian? Christians often assume when they want to press their case against Judaism that it is Jesus who made this the core principal of religious ethics. But goes against Christian scriptures.

            In the very Christian scriptures, Jesus has a discussion with Pharisaic scholars and they agree on it completely: The two central pillars of the Torah are--Shma Yisrael and Vehavat lereekha—Love the one G-d and Love your neighbor as yourself. Jesus the Jew, like any Jew of his day, recognized that G-d is One and only One to whom we owe our religious love and allegiance and in it follows as a corollary that we have to love our neighbors. Jesus simply  quotes from the Torah, ”Love your neighbor”. This is used frequently in Jewish sources of the period.

What about the Golden Rule?  Jesus says “:Do onto others what you would have done unto you”. It is but a variation of the popular slogan stated by Hillel decades before. Frankly, it is found around the world in one or another variation. The classic Jewish difference, as stated by Hillel, is that we can’t stand moral abstracts. They are useless. So Hillel continues,” The rest is commentary—go and study”. Without “ Go and Study”, the Golden Rule is just an advertising slogan.

What about turning the cheek? It is a quotation from Lamentations,” Eicha” , which we read on Tisha B’Av. What about the Sermon on the Mount? Quotations from the book of Psalms. What about the “Lord’s Prayer”?  A Combination of popular religious phrases: “ Our father” is avinu shebashamayim:,” Hallowed be thy Name” is yitgadal veyitkadash and so forth.

            If Jesus lived and died as a Jew, what then is Christianity? That is a different religion. It is a religion that arose in the groups of followers, many who had come from various mystic and zealous cults within the Jews of Israel, who gathered after his death, followers desperately looking for the Messiah, who had not come. This group drew into it Jews who had come from outside the land of Israel, Jews who brought with them a mix of ideas from Greek mysticism philosophy, many of these ideas that had become popular among Jews in general. Just as today, the most militant of Israelis are those from America, so, in the land of Israel, at that time, the most passionate, looking for something new, were those from the Hellenistic world. Many of the themes that were prevalent in these groups for the century or more preceding Jesus would be reflected in the religion about to be born.

            The foremost among these was a Jew from Tarsus, in what is now Turkey, Saul, also known by his Greek name of Paul. He started as a Pharisee, an enemy of the followers of Jesus, so he claimed, but he had a dramatic vision and then turned the tables on the early followers of Jesus. He and other Jews from the Greek diaspora created a new religion whether they realized it or not.

            No longer was the law of the Torah binding--only general ethics.

            No longer did one's actions count for getting into Heaven--only a blind faith in the salvation effected by the death of Jesus.

            No longer would life in this world be redeemed, but all would be done aright in a life of the spirit, not the flesh, after death.

            No longer was God's hand to be seen in deliverance of the nation from oppression, but in the life of the soul after death.

            No longer was the Messiah a political figure, but the literal son of God.

            No longer was God one indivisible, of no physical attributes, but God was in the flesh, like a human being, three entities in one.    

            From this moment on, the new religion, Christianity, was a new religion. When the Jews rebelled against Rome in the year 70, the early Christian did all that they could to put as miles and miles between themselves and the rebellious Jews.

            Within a century after the death of Jesus, Christian thinkers discussed the possibility of cutting off any connection by disavowing the quote “old testament” of the Jews.

            Now, you can see why the editors of the Haggadah, who put the core text together for us in the centuries following the split with Christianity, turned a cold-shoulder on poor Moses—not to demean him, but to clarify the key difference between the Jewish concept of G-d as the direct source of Salvation as opposed to the Salvation by faith in the death and resurrection of Jesus.

            As for the idea of Messiah, which was translated in the its Greek equivalent,” Christos”, one anointed to high position. For the Jew, the Messiah is a political-historical figure of the future, indicating a world brought to universal justice and peace. For the Christian, the Messiah is G-d made manifest in the past and indicating salvation of the human soul and forgiveness of sin in the next life. That is a faith issue which does not matter to us as Jews but is the critical difference for Christians.

            So we are left with what we share and where we differ.

            The new Pope Francis is doing remarkable work and he is himself friendly towards Jews . However,  we don't need the Pope's stamp of approval, nihil obstat, and the Pope doesn’t need  our kosher stamp, a hechsher . The same goes for our relations with any other religious leader, Christian, Moslem, Jain, Shinto, Hindu and so on.

            We don’t need agreement on core faith issues.

            What we do need is willingness to respect where we differ, and to work hand in hand, where we agree, to forge a redeemed world. We look to the day, in the words of the prophet Micah, when all nations shall go up to the mountain of the lord—each  shall go up in the name of their Lord, said the prophet, each nation with its own unique understanding and faith, be it in the name of Jesus or Mohammed  or  Buddha, but we shall call upon the name of the Lord, our God. We’ll do it our way. Amen.

Vayechi Joseph in the Tabloids

Vayechi   2013

Joseph in the Tabloids

                  

                   We have made it through the last of the chapters of the first Book of the Torah, Bereshit, Genesis. We have gone from creation to the first Hebrew to the quarrel between the brothers that leads to the elevation of Joseph as second only to Pharaoh in Egypt. We know, of course, that the stage is now set for the drama that follows, from Slavery to Freedom.

                   The book ends with the death of Joseph and his prediction to brothers that they will once again eventually be returned to the land of Israel. So much of the final chapters of Bereshit deal with Joseph, more so than even Abraham. What are we to make of the measure of this man?

                   The story of Joseph has enthralled the human imagination since antiquity. Mohamed is said to have called it the most beautiful of stories and Voltaire, who generally hated all things religious, called it the most valuable piece of literature to be preserved from antiquity.

                    The story makes for high literature as well, A great author such as Thomas Mann could create a trilogy on the account

                   Pop Culture has given us its own version of Joseph—You all know the Andrew Lloyd Weber Musical, “ Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat” with an Elvis Presley double as Pharaoh.of Joseph and his brothers.

                   There is one key element to Joseph that secures his reputation—his sense of loyalty and because of that, his ability to resist temptation by the boss’s wife.

                   The theme of resistance to seduction that is  the turning point in Josephs fortune pops up in an ancient Egyptian tale of Two Brothers written probably about the time of our Joseph.   There, it is the wife of the older brother who makes her pass at the younger brother, which tells us that even in ancient pagan Egypt there were rules against adultery . It also appears in the movie that made Dustin Hoffman famous, “ The Graduate”. In the modern version, of course, the hero succumbs quite easily to seduction by the neighbor’s wife.

                    That is how far we have gone beyond the Egyptian pagans!

                   Long before Rock Operas and great novels, however, the Sages of ancient Israel knew the character of Joseph very well and what they did to his character and to his personality beats out anything the Creative Artist could imagine.

                   What we often call Jewish legends are details taken from the Midrash, which are bits and pieces of teachings and sermons given by the Sages many centuries ago as they sought to highlight or downplay elements in the Torah in order to make a point.

                   Thus, we must first sympathize with Mrs. Potiphar. Look what she had to deal with. Our Sages said that Joseph was as beautiful as a violet, just like his mother Rachel. They imagined a scene in which Mrs. Potiphar invites her friends over. She serves them oranges and while they are peeling their oranges with their knives, in walks Joseph. As they look, they are all so stunned that they begin to peel themselves instead. She tells her guests: Do you realize that I have to withstand this every moment of the day!

                   Now, what of Joseph’s character? On the one hand, there were Sages who said that he was of exemplary character and kept all the laws of the Torah in Egypt, even though they had not yet been given. If he made the mistake of being at home on the fatal day of his downfall, it was out of virtue—it was vacation day, when everyone else went to the Theater for bawdy and raunchy humor. Joseph was above all that nonsense. As for temptation, they said, he was constantly being tested by the beautiful maidens of Egypt who tried to bribe him for his attentions. Potiphar’s wife, they said, tried every trick in the book, not only bribery, but threats to jail him, cripple him, and even send agents back to his homeland to murder his father. None of that budged him. He was truly  Yosef HaZadik,  Joseph the Righteous, Pillar of the World.

                   On the other hand – you we always have another hand.   Our Sages taught that the greater the person, the greater yet is the power of the yetzer hara, the passions, the desires, the drives.

       For example, they pointed out that , Joseph, is 17 is described as “ Naar”, still a boy. In other words, they said, he acted like a dandy, a playboy- put on eyeliner, curled his hair, walked gingerly on his toes. The text told us that he brought  “ reports of wrong doings “ about his brothers to his father. A snitch! The Sages elaborated—He out and out lied- He snitched- He told his father-“Your sons eat meat while the animal is still alive, chase after the local girls, and the senior brothers abuse their half-brothers.”  You can sense how the interpreters are starting to turn the screws on Joseph.

                   What happened when he found his job with boss Potiphar. Now, all his youthful; pride has returned. He is now  Yafeh Toar Vyafeh Mareh –Beautiful of form and fair to look upon. He returned to his old self, dandied himself again, started eating and merry-making. In short, they accused him of forgetting his father left behind in a distant land. Never once did he attempt to send a message back home to reassure his father that he was safe! He was instead imbued with his own sense of success and self-righteousness.

                   That is why, these Sages said, G-d sent him what they called, “a female bear” to attack him.

                   They then ask if Joseph was truly as innocent as it seemed on that fateful day.

                   Why, on this day, of all days, when no one else was around , why did he decide he needed to work?  Did he not realize that “ none of the men were at home.” Well then, if he went to do malachto ,  “his work”, it was “ his” work, not his bosses that he was going to do. What could “his” work have meant if not to be available for the seduction. Then, when he finally refuses her demands, he “leaves his clothes in her hands”. She didn’t have to tear it off—it came off only too easily.

                   What was it then, that finally made Joseph step back from the brink. What finally made Joseph different from famous Senators or Generals and other great men in the news of late who could not hold themselves back?

                   The Sages went on—he had “outside intervention”. One tale suggested that he saw his father’s image, yet another that he saw his mother’s image, and finally that alone served to remind him who he was and what was expected of him.  Yet another midrash has it that finally G-d himself had to intervene , appear to Joseph and threaten that if he caved in, G-d would destroy the whole world! Only that nuclear threat held Joseph back from the brink.

                   Now, we must ask, as we step back from what clearly seems to be smear campaign:  Why did the Sages engage in this

campaign to seemingly demean one of the most popular figures in the Bible, one who seems so admirable and noble? Why the muckraking, why the character smear?                                       

                   Interestingly, we find such criticisms of all of the great figures of the Bible. Who is as great as Moses, for example? Yet there were Rabbis who said that he deserved his death at the end because, at the start of his career, he killed the Egyptian taskmaster without a fair trial.

                   Of King David, the Sages said Saul was the better man.                   

                   Abraham was noble, yes, but he delivered captives prisoners to his allies, instead of freeing them.

                   Elijah was cold-hearted, because he denounced his people and had no faith in them.

                   None of the greats escaped unscathed from the sharp critical minds of the Jewish commentators. Why would they have done so ? To what benefit from destroying heroes?

                   It all makes sense if we remember that we are of an iconoclastic faith- we shatter idols, even our own. We believe that no one is perfect. We are iconoclasts—we must shatter idols. Idols are not just stone monuments. Any entity or any person can become an idol to others. Even the finest person runs the risk of becoming an idol to others.

                    For this reason, our tradition treats our heroes ^-more roughly and with less respect that any other religion.

                   Classical Judaism has no room for cults of personality—we can’t let our heroes become small gods. Therefore, Moses is buried in an unknown grave so that he can never be worshipped . Yosef Hazadik, Joseph the Righteous, is knocked down a peg. No human being can be considered immaculate, born immaculate, and certainly never be the incarnation of G-d. Even the word  Zadik which we used to distinguish righteous people, does not infer a papal infallibility.

                   On principal, we don’t believe in human perfection but we can speak of perfectibility. We can use the term  zadik, Righteous, to indicate one who has strived to lead a righteous life and overcame great personal stumbling blocks to achieve it. In so doing, we are saying that all of us are capable of choosing either the right path or the wrong path. The great ones were not born greater than us. We can not take the excuse that we have obstacles in our lives. No. Look what obstacles Joseph had to overcome—his ego, his vanity, the wiles of a temptress. He had  “affluenza”!

                   He was not blind to it all. He overcame it all. That is the lesson for us.

                   We may not have Joseph’s good looks, nor his clever wit and managerial skills. We may not have to deal with a Mrs. Potiphar.

                   But we do have our own strengths and our own gifts and we are given free will to use them for good and to deal with our weaknesses. If Joseph could do it, and become a Zadik, then we can do it too, in our own way.