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Do You Speak of God?
Here’s a conversation starter written by Peter Schogol. Please comment below.
I used to speak of God quite frequently. In Yiddish (and, as I’m learning, Ladino) it’s impossible to have even a rudimentary conversation without earthy references to God in the vernacular (Gott and Dio respectively) and the more pious HaShem. And there are so many set phrases in English which involve the word God that without it we’d be stuck with “gosh” and — south of the Ohio — “daggone.”
Erich Fromm, 20th-century humanistic psychologist, a nontheistic Jew raised Orthodox, spoke of God frequently. While not believing that “God” signified an independently existing reality, Fromm found that God is one way people speak of the epitome of their highest aspirations towards truth, justice and love. He wrote an entire book Ye Shall Be As Gods as a humanistic exegesis of the Tanakh.
Fromm did not find every word of the Bible holy, and he didn’t address the passages where Hebrews behave badly and God even worse. Fromm, like most humanists, was a picky reader. Fromm also did not refer to God as “Thou.” It’s safe to say that he spoke of but not to God (as opposed to Martin Buber).
I have no problem speaking of God but I do it less and less as it leads people to think that I’m a believer. My breakthrough — my moment of Zen, as Jon Stewart would put it — was realizing that while I was not an “observant” Jew, I was a “serious” Jew, and that is every bit as valid even without the God-talk.
So on any given day you will find me perusing siddurim (prayerbooks), pinching a passage here, a blessing there, for my own Handbook for Hebrew Heretics. I love good language, and in some prayer books like the Siddur Sha’ar Zahav from the GLBTQ synagogue of the same name in San Francisco the language is absolutely stunning. I love the poetry of blessing and prayer, but for me, when God and I pass we nod but don’t speak.
Book Review of The Sunflower by Simon Wiesenthal
A review of The Sunflower: On the Possibilities and Limits of Forgiveness
Review by Gavriel Elijah
After you read this, please login and comment to share your thoughts.
On a recent Saturday evening I found myself at a bookstore, after Shabbat of course. While perusing the bookshelves like a fat kid in a candy store (I can lose a few pounds myself so I can say that) I came across a book titled The Sunflower by Simon Wiesenthal. My first thought was why Simon Wiesenthal would write a book on a flower. I then decided I had to get it along with another book or two.
I should start with the premise of the book. The Sunflower is the true account of famed Nazi Hunter Simon Wiesenthal and a certain experience he has while a prisoner in a concentration camp. Mr. Wiesenthal tells us his account of a dying SS soldier asking for forgiveness for the horrible atrocities that he had committed, especially one act in particular.
After we learn of Mr. Wiesenthal’s actions towards the SS soldier, 53 men and women from around the world, all important in their own right, give their thoughts on Mr. Wiesenthal’s actions, how they feel, and how they hope they would have reacted in his place. These great men and women include Rabbi Abraham Joshua Heschel, Rabbi Joseph Telushkin (whose books on Ethics I am currently reading), and Tenzin Gyatso (The Dalai Lama). All three are men whom I love to read and whose books make up a good portion of my library. As a reader you find yourself not only asking if you could forgive someone for such horrible acts, but if you even have the right to forgive such acts. This book will make you think in ways I doubt most books ever will. I know the book left me spending hours pondering when we have the right to forgive and the reasons we should forgive.
In closing I cannot recommend this book enough. I even emailed my High School Honors Literature teacher to recommend it to her as well. I recently added a hard cover of this book on my list of must haves. This book is not only a must read for Jews, but for people anywhere. Only with books like this can we hope to achieve an understanding that humanity as a whole needs to reach.
A Mystic’s Humanistic Judaism
Editor’s Note: Peter is a participant in OurJewishCommunity.org and submitted this short essay. We hope it will generate great conversation here!
A Mystic’s Humanistic Judaism
by Peter Schogol
As I’m sure is the case with many Jews who’ve abandoned theistic religion in general, synagogue Judaism in particular, I’ve sojourned with a number of different religious communities in search for, well.. whatever it is nontheistic Jews search for that they haven’t found in shul. I’ve spent time with Baha’is, Quakers, Episcopalians, Vedantists, Pure Land Buddhists, Tibetan Buddhists, Humanistic Jews, Reform Jews, and Sect Shintoists. I came to appreciate `Abdu’l-Bahá, Lucretia Mott, Frederick Denison Maurice, Vivekananda, Taitetsu Unno, Pema Chödrön, Yaakov Malkin, Leo Baeck, and Konko Daijin, but with regrets in hand I kept on moving.
I’ve reached the point where moving for its own sake has become enervating and counterproductive. I wish to settle down. I wish to settle down in a community which is a part of the wider world which raised and nurtured me. I wish, for all the heartaches and heartburn, to be a contributing member of the Jewish people.
But I don’t want to bury myself in the part.
Each time I tried to find my place in Jewish life I’ve had to tuck some part of myself in. Either I’ve been too ethnic, too left-wing, too gay; insufficiently theistic, insufficiently Zionistic, insufficiently Holocaust-obsessed. I’ve been, in other words, what I am rather than what the neighbors should think I am.
I’ve been exceptionally fortunate in stumbling across an author, artist, liturgist, and hymnodist who was as curmudgeonly, as opinionated, as narcissistic and as brilliant as I in the person of the late Universalist minister Kenneth Leo Patton. In his many books (all but one out of print), Patton described a “religion of realities” suitable to his spiritual personality as a “mystical humanist.” In prose and poetry, lyrics and images, Patton chronicled a life immersed in the nitty-gritty of the human condition, singing as gloriously as Whitman, snorting as righteously as Clarence Darrow.
I believe in a mystical humanistic Judaism.
It’s not enough to be a rationalist. It’s not enough to be an atheist. It’s too late to be an objectivist. It’s disempowering to expect vicarious righteousness from one’s rabbi. It’s time to experience humanism as a project of the spirit charged with awe and mystery as well as justice and mercy. It’s time to once again cast our liturgies in the first person, owning our searches and our fallings away.
Is there room in communal Judaism for such an aesthetic? Should one have to turn to theistic religion for an appreciation of the mystical? Can Humanistic Judaism contain both rationalists and poets? I hope it can even as I realize that for the vocabulary of mystical humanism to be digestible to rationalists it will need careful unpacking. I for one would be happy to be part of such an undertaking. There is, truly, nothing otherworldly about a reverence for life.
Peter Schogol
Lexington, KY
“Foundations of a Judaism for Our Time” by Sanford Ragins
This paper is reprinted with permission of the author and was delivered at Temple Israel, New York on May 1, 2000.
Of late, every other year in July, I have been going to Berlin to teach in a program for Christian theology students. These young German men and women give up part of their summer vacation to study Judaism with Jewish teachers from the United States, Great Britain and Israel. On one of my recent visits I was lodged in Bonhoeffer Haus, a hostel run by the Evangelical Church, a pleasant but modest accommodation on a side-street near the university. This place is literally around the corner from the building which once housed the Lehranstalt für die Wissenschaft des Judentums, the Institute for the Scientific Study of Judaism, where Rabbi Leo Baeck taught until all Jewish education institutions were closed in July, 1942. At the end there were about a dozen students. Six months later Baeck was arrested by the Gestapo and taken to Theresienstadt.
It does not look like much today: an abandoned office building several stories high, most unprepossessing, drab and shabby like many pre-war buildings in East Berlin. The first woman rabbi in Jewish history once studied there and so did Franz Kafka. When I returned to my room late in the afternoon after my classes, my route took me past the doorway through which Leo Baeck walked on his way to teach Judaism to the last generation of rabbis in Germany. Every day, I paused to meditate for a moment on the strange turning of history which had brought me, a rabbi in an American synagogue dedicated to his memory, to teach in his city, indeed in his old neighborhood.
Today the facade of the building is undecorated, but I learned that one time it bore a Hebrew inscription: l’hochmah v’layirah, for wisdom and for awe, or possibly toward wisdom and awe. I find that a rather remarkable motto, most fitting for a place where modern men and women came to confront the teachings of our ancient tradition in a new way and out of that confrontation to accept the challenge, much like our own, of defining a new Judaism worthy of affirmation and practice. L’hochmah v=layirah, for/toward wisdom and awe, I submit, is also a suggestive paradigm for American Reform Judaism at the beginning of the new millennium. This phrase constitutes the text for my remarks today.
First, hochmah.
Hochmah is an ancient Hebrew word, usually translated as wisdom. I sense the leaders of the Lehranstalt chose it to embellish the doorway of their institute in order to articulate the nature of what was to occur in that building and also to say something about the people who came to study and teach there. It was a declaration of self-definition, a conscious expression OF who they were and who they were not. The Lehranstalt was not in any sense a yeshivah, but a modern academic institution devoted to Wissenschaft des Judentums, the scientific study of Judaism. It was a place where the texts and traditions of the Jewish past were seen through the lens of contemporary scholarly research. In its classrooms rational, critical inquiry was not only accepted but central. By using a old Biblical word, they affirmed their connection to Jewish tradition, and, at the same moment, their acceptance of modernity.
By the beginning of the twentieth century a rather considerable body of learning had been created. The academic study of tradition, the sifting and the scrutiny of texts using the latest tools of analysis, and the historical reconstructions which were attempted showed a new way of understanding the Jewish past. In retrospect we can see that these efforts were not as scientific as they pretended to be, if by scientific you mean objective and utterly free of bias. That scholarship, like ours, was shaped and limited by the blind spots that infect all human endeavors.
But the genie was now out of the bottle. The students and teachers in the Lehranstalt knew that it was not possible for Jews engaged with modernity to ignore what had now been learned about the Bible and the Talmud, the Midrash and the philosophical and mystical cultures of the Middle Ages. To be sure, out of academic study alone one could not create a new Judaism. But henceforth, for moderns to ignore the methods and understandings of Wissenschaft would be a sign of obscurantism. As Leon Wieseltier has noted: “The perdurability of the Jews has been owed to their absolute refusal ever to stop thinking, to the romance of brains.”1
There is a strong and invaluable connection between Wissenschaft des Judentums and Reform Judaism. From the academic study of the past, we have drawn five fundamental understandings which make it possible for our movement to be dynamic, creative, and thoughtfully responsive to the changing needs of our people. They are, briefly, the following:
1. The understanding that over time there have been not one but several distinct Judaisms, each unique, each created out of the special circumstances Jews faced at a particular time. Yes, there are important continuities, and, some would argue, certain constants, but ultimately when seen through history Judaism is pluralistic and multifarious, not monistic or unitary.
2. Related to the first, the understanding that Judaism is not immutable but always has been subject to change, development and transformation, indeed radical transformation. The Israeli scholar Efraim Shmueli has argued that the various cultures of Judaism each “tried to redefine [the tradition] in order to create a rationale for Jewish living that would respond to contemporary needs. This process was ever the result of a vociferous dissatisfaction with the attempts of previous cultures.”2 To be sure, “every one of Israel’s [historic] cultures luxuriates in its past: it gathers, preserves and remembers. But it also scatters, forgets. And buries.”3 “Jewish creativity [he noted] consists of a remarkable ability to embrace new elements.”4 He concluded that we owe our survival to this capacity “to both eradicate and revitalize [our] past”5 through the creation of “innovative terminology, new images, and reinvigorated symbols.”6
3. When Judaism, or more accurately, the various Judaisms of the past, is understood in this way, the result is a clear warrant for moderns to do what is necessary to reinvigorate a Judaism for our generation. If we add or subtract, innovate or conserve, prune dead wood so that new buds may grow or graft new branches into the trunk, we are doing exactly what our ancestors have done, again and again, although we may be more conscious of these transformations than they were.
4. When the traditions and texts of our heritage are understood in this way, we learn that the adjective “authentic” ought to be used with great care, if at all. Indeed, I would argue it should be dismissed from our discourse because it is likely to obfuscate rather than enlighten, and because it is sometimes invoked, I sense, when one party wishes to impose its own particular belief or practice on dissenters.
5. From the forgoing we learn not to be arrogant about the Judaism we create and affirm. If our ancestors were human and flawed, so are we; and if, in retrospect, we understand the limitations of what they taught as absolute or divine truth, we too must be restrained in making truth claims and modest in our assertions. The Judaism we create does not come from Sinai but from our hearts and our heads. It represents not the mind of God but what we think Jews of this time and culture can know and believe. And it is, just like every other Judaism ever created, fully authentic in the same way that these Judaisms were authentic: it represents the best of our thinking and our understanding, our aspirations and our dreams.
With these thoughts in mind, I now want to make several comments about Pittsburgh II: about the process that was followed; about the form that emerged; and about its content. I will add another comment, also about content, a bit later.
Process
A little over two years ago, the famous architect Philip Johnson, was interviewed by a reporter from the Los Angeles Times7 and asked to characterize the state of architecture at the end of the century. He answered: “I just don’t think we can categorize where architecture is at the end of the millennium. I think you just have to say it is a wonderful, total absolute chaos.” He was then asked what broke things apart and created a condition that is so open. He said: “I think the times change, and we change, from certainty to uncertainty.”
I think that insight applies not just to architecture but perhaps to the condition of our culture today. We live in a culture where the canons of virtually every field of human endeavor are unclear. Uncertainty and ambiguity are rampant, and technology subjects us to incessant, destabilizing, and disorienting transformations. To articulate a vision of Judaism that is consonant with this culture, without affirming every aspect of it, is no easy task. It requires careful thought and ought not be done precipitously.
Chaos is uncomfortable, and uncertainty breeds anxiety. But they also may indicate that something new is aborning. The tension and uneasiness we experience may be birth pangs. In that case, any hasty attempt quickly to bring order to the chaos may be unwise. Untimely closure — and I believe that is what happened in Pittsburgh — threatens to abort the painful process of bringing into existence something new and durable. To continue the metaphor, even if protracted and intense, the labor pains ought be endured, at least for a time.
Form
I found the form of Pittsburgh II, which is so manifestly a conscious rejection of the Platform of 1885, most revealing. Although Pittsburgh II eschews the term, it too is clearly a “platform.”
Consider that term for a moment. The word “platform” evokes memories of the railroad age. Indeed when Pittsburgh I was formulated, the most modern form of communication at the time connected with the rail network that was expanding dramatically across the continent was the telegraph which relied upon Morse code. As I learned long ago when I was a Boy Scout, Morse code is utterly linear in its operation. Through a system of dots and dashes, one letter at a time is transmitted in a fixed sequence over a line. Well, if the medium is the message, then we should not be surprised that when the rabbis traveled to Pittsburgh in 1885, presumably by railroad, their formulation of Judaism was a linear platform, which listed, one at a time, their affirmations and denials.
When Reform Judaism attempted a new statement of principles, in Columbus, Ohio in 1937, the radio age had begun, and linearity had been transcended. Although you could not access them simultaneously, numerous stations were broadcasting, all at the same time, not over wires but through the ether in every direction. And, interestingly, the Columbus Platform was longer than Pittsburgh I and more nuanced in what it had to say.
When it came time to adopt the next expression of our movement in 1973, the so-called Centenary Perspective (it is interesting to note that the term platform had now been abandoned), we were well into the era of television. Indeed the age of cable and satellites had begun. These make possible concurrent, instantaneous transmission of dozens, even hundreds, of different channels allowing the viewer enormous freedom of choice. No wonder that the Centenary Perspective, largely the work of one highly respected rabbi, Eugene Borowitz, was, in a sense, itself an exercise in narrow-casting. Borowitz argued that he was giving voice to a broad consensus (a debatable assertion). But he also conceded that his formulation “certainly allows for variety and development in Jewish faith in ways that go far beyond what our tradition knew.”8
In light of this pattern, one would have expected any articulation of Judaism at the end of the twentieth century to reflect in some subtle or overt way the existence of our increasingly dominant method of discourse, the Internet. In cyberspace communication is not only rapid, but intricate, convoluted, somewhat chaotic and internally complex. Hypertext and suggestive links lead the browsing net-surfer to unexpected connections, imaginative associations, puzzling paradoxes, and profound contradictions.
Yet Pittsburgh II, which self-consciously attempts to turn back the clock, does so, perhaps unintentionally, most effectively. It reads not like a web-page, which might reaffirm the autonomy long at the heart of our movement, but like an old-fashioned platform. Rather than being post-modern, it is pre-modern. Its form is thus curiously archaic and out of touch with the world in which we live.
Content: Theology
I also find Pittsburgh II lacking in the theology which is invoked to sustain its assertions. Our generation has been fated to live “after Auschwitz.” The Holocaust is strongly part of our collective and individual consciousness. How could it not be so? The magnitude of the horror, what it reveals about the capacity of our species for violence, about the danger of modern technology divorced from ethical considerations, and about the vulnerability of our people, and all people, under certain circumstances — all these issues rightly demand somber attention and careful study as we try to learn what we can from this brutal episode.
For modern religious Jews one of the most important issues is theological. Reflection on the Holocaust inexorably raises anew with great power an ancient question: how could an all-knowing, powerful and beneficent God allow the deaths of so many innocents? This question of theodicy is vexatious. Virtually every important Jewish thinker of the last half-century has addressed it. The range of responses has been broad, from the boldly revisionist conclusions offered by Richard Rubenstein, Hans Jonas, and Emil Fackenheim to more conservative answers by neo-traditionalists like Michael Wyschograd and Eliezer Berkowitz. Some have suggested stunned silence or, like Job, a confession that human understanding is not adequate to this question. Martin Buber invoked the Biblical metaphor hester panim, the hiding of the divine face, what Buber called the “eclipse of God.”
But perhaps the most haunting comment was made by the modern Orthodox theologian Yitzchak Greenberg who argued that “after Auschwitz, one must beware of easy hope.”9 He proposed this working principle for post-Holocaust thinking about Judaism: “No statement, theological or otherwise, should be made that would not be credible in the presence of the burning children.”10
Yet in none of its many drafts did Pittsburgh II consider this matter or even betray the slightest awareness that there is a serious theological question that must be addressed. The first draft dealt expansively with mitzvot, kedushah, mikvah, tallit, tefillin, kashrut, and aliyah, but only alluded to the Holocaust parenthetically in a reference to Athe awful consequences of modernity.” The fourth draft had only this sunny sentence: “We are cheered that a half century after the Shoah, Jewish life has been reborn across Europe.” But in the next draft even this statement vanished. The version ultimately adopted touches on the Holocaust only in passing, almost as an after-thought, in these words: “We continue to have faith that, in spite of the unspeakable evils committed against our people and the sufferings endured by others, the partnership of God and humanity will ultimately prevail.” I find this pale statement suffused with “easy hope” and curiously reminiscent of Classical Reform Judaism.
The Classical Reformers are often criticized for their naïve progressivism. From our vantage point one can see their confidence in a beneficent Deity and in inexorable progress was unwarranted. They ignored what we have learned to our woe, namely, the tragic dimension of history. Now I am willing to be generous and non-judgmental toward the early Reformers for the simple reason that the generations before World War I and II did not have a crystal ball (and neither do we). An empathic observer ought to understand how they might have missed the darker side of human nature.
But what can be said in defense of Pittsburgh II in this matter? We live in the shadow of the slaughterhouse that was the twentieth century. Everyone knows that the dismal emblems of that century, Auschwitz and Hiroshima, were created out of modernity. We know now that the Messianic Era is not just around the corner. In the words of Amos Funkenstein, the Holocaust was “an eminently human event in that it demonstrated those extremes which only man and his society are capable of doing or suffering.”11 In short, we have learned something frightening about the demonic in human nature. A credible declaration of Jewish faith today must reflect and confront that dismal reality.
Yes, there is a surfeit of Holocaust consciousness in our community, and it is regrettable that what has come to be known as the Shoah has received far too much emphasis of late. The proliferation of memorials and museums, of books, memoirs, and university courses has fostered an unfortunate image of the Jew as victim, an image that is not worthy of us or our children. Yet, without succumbing to this excess, one can rightly demand that a statement of Jewish principles must be consonant with the historical and theological realities of the times in which we live. It also ought not be so glib, so relentlessly optimistic, so disconcertingly upbeat and buoyant, so lacking in theological courage, so oblivious to the warning: “beware of easy hope.” I find Pittsburgh II out of touch with the difficulties inherent in the quest for faith today.
The quest for faith. Faith as a task, rather than a given. That is what I witness as a synagogue rabbi in the souls of most of my congregants and in my own. Are the majority of the members of the CCAR clear and firm in their beliefs and free from religious doubt? I suspect that is not the case, despite the current pulpit fashion of speaking often and easily about God and what God wants us to do. I believe it is also not true of most of our people. In our community achieving religious faith is an arduous struggle, one we would face even if there had been no Holocaust.
Consider this. In the seventeenth century, at the dawn of our era, the French mathematician Pascal foresaw how modernity would ravage the spiritual life. “When I see the blind and wretched state of men, [he wrote] when I survey the whole universe in its deadness and man left to himself with no light, as though lost in this corner of the universe without knowing who put him there, what he has to do, what will become of him when he dies, incapable of knowing anything, I am moved to terror, like a man transported in his sleep to some terrifying desert island, who wakes up quite lost with no means of escape. Then I marvel that so wretched a state does not drive people to despair.”12
Yirah
And that brings me, to the second part of that inscription over the doorway of the Lehranstalt in Berlin. Hochmah, reason and especially Wissenschaft des Judentums were the foundation and method, but that methodology was linked to another powerful Biblical word: yirah. In the Bible yirah means “fear,” or “terror” and by extension, in some contexts, “reverence, piety, awe.” An interesting and complex term: yirah. Fear and terror there have been aplenty in modern times, not to mention Angst. But reverence and piety and especially awe have been harder to come by. Perhaps that is what the founders of the Lehranstalt sought to express by inscribing over their portal the watchword l’hochmah v’layira — which might be translated: for wisdom and toward reverence, as if to say “in these times we will use our minds and our knowledge to move toward religious faith.”
How do we do that today, in our times? Efraim Shmueli wrote that “the secret of [the Jewish people’s] endurance lies in its faith in redemption, and its belief that history is not haplessly abandoned to the powers of evil.” But he added: “History unfolds within a sphere plagued by all the afflictions entailed in man’s mortality, a host of evils, foremost of which is the Angel of Death. Man journeys toward his end, to a place of worms and decay: all the benefits history brings with it are outweighed by the great calamity of man=s subjection to contingency and extinction.”14
The reality of death. Our finitude and frailty. The human condition. Here every religion, including ours, meets its greatest challenge. When the malach ha-mavet, the Angel of Death, stands before us – and sooner or later, he will — we need a Judaism that will speak to us with coherence and power, that will assuage our suffering and give meaning to our vulnerability, which will bring consolation and comfort on the darkest of nights and hope in the hour of despair.
Content: The Human Condition
Herewith is my greatest uneasiness with Pittsburgh II. You may recall that the first version of the principles came to us in an issue of Reform Judaism,15 the publication of our movement, which also featured a rather striking photo of Rabbi Richard N. Levy. That magazine arrived just as I was preparing for one of the most difficult funerals I have ever had to conduct. A forty-nine year old woman, an attorney, happily married, the mother of two young children, had just died of a virulent lung cancer after a few agonizing months of suffering. As I struggled to find words that might bring some comfort to these mourners, I read the proposed principles for the first time and found they had nothing to say, not to me nor to this shattered family.
Since the dawn of civilization, perhaps even earlier, the task of religion has been to transmute terror into awe; to hold out the hope of transcendence and redemption; to help us deal with these agonizingly difficult questions which religious seekers have always asked: “Who am I? Where am I going? What is expected of me? Why do I suffer? Why is it so that in a universe of such astonishing loveliness and majestic grandeur we are subject to dreadful forces we cannot understand or control? Why am I and all those I love and need destined to die? How must I live in this small hour granted to me, this ‘brief crack of light between two eternities of darkness.’”16
But the principles, as I read them, have nothing to say about these questions. They are saturated with traditional terminology. They purport to elucidate the meaning of God, Torah and Israel for moderns. But when it comes to helping Jews of this time and place confront the deepest issues of personal, religious life in the real world, once again Pittsburgh II is mute.
____________________________________________________________________________________
Now I become even more sermonic. I conclude my remarks with a brief description of what I believe a Reform Judaism worthy of our times ought to be.
It will be a Judaism which recognizes the limitations of reason, but refuses to join in the chorus of mindless irrationality;
– a Judaism which knows it is possible to cultivate emotional richness without anesthetizing our critical faculties, which venerates the teachings of our heritage not because they are the word of God, but because they contain the deeply human wisdom of our ancestors whose amazing visions brought brilliant fire into a dark world;
– a Judaism which accepts our peoplehood as a given, but knows the dangers of untempered ethnic passion; which believes Israel must have security, the Palestinians must have a homeland and that Jerusalem is big enough to be the capital for both;
– a Judaism for Jews who never forget that we were slaves in Egypt, who have empathy for all who are deprived, whose affluence does not blind us to the iniquity and the misery and the danger which result when the chasm between haves and have-nots becomes as enormous as it is in every city in America right now;
– a Judaism which embraces the intermarried and welcomes them and their children, which recognizes gays and lesbians as fully part of our community and is color-blind and utterly egalitarian, post-patriarchal in every way;
– a Judaism which loves the tradition but is unafraid to say, when necessary, that our ancestors were fallible or limited by their times or just plain wrong;
– a Judaism rich in symbolism and metaphor and myth, which relishes the power of ritual to move our spirits, but continues the romance of brains and never forgets that the essence is the moral life;
– a Judaism which understands that for many today belief is difficult, which takes honest doubt seriously, and accepts the hard fact that we live at a time when the search for religious truth means to ask questions which cannot be answered easily or clearly or perhaps not at all;
– a Judaism which knows the role of religion is not to make people feel good or be happy, but to expand our vision and sharpen our ethical sensitivities, to bring hope when tragedy strikes, consolation and comfort in a time of despair;
– a Judaism which evokes in us awe and wonder before the mystery of existence, awe and wonder in the presence of the Infinite One, Unnamed and Unknowable, as we slowly make our make our way “between two eternities of darkness.”
_______________________________________
1 The New Republic, 5/25/98.
2 From the dust jacket of Seven Jewish Cultures, translated from the Hebrew by Gila Shmueli (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1990).
3 Ibid., p. 30.
4 Ibid., p. 7.
5 Ibid., p. 25.
6 Ibid,, p. 5.
7 January 4, 1999.
8 Reform Judaism Today, II, pp.6f. (New York; Behrman House, 1983)
9 “Cloud of Smoke, Pillar of Fire: Judaism, Christianity and Modernity after the Holocaust,” in Eva Fleischner (ed.), Auschwitz: Beginning of a New Era?, p. 55. (New York, Ktav Publishing Company, 1977)
10 Ibid., p. 23.
11 “Theological Interpretations of the Holocaust,” in Francois Furet (ed.), Nazi Germany and the Genocide of the Jews, p. 302. (New York, Schocken Books, 1989)
12 Cited by Karen Armstrong, The Battle for God, p. 72 (New York, Knopf, 2000)
13 op. cit., p. 21
14 ibid., p. 144
15 Winter, 1998
16 the phrase is from Vladimir Nabokov, Speak Memory, p. 19 (New York, Vintage, ?)
“Toward a Post-Ideological, Therefore a Post-Denominational Liberal Judaism?” by Robert M. Seltzer
Robert M. Seltzer’s response to Rabbi Bernard M. Zlotowitz’s questionnaire on the future of movements and denominations in the Jewish world.
1. Introduction
Being an academician affects my answers to Rabbi Zlotowitz’s questions in several regards, so that I’ll start by raising a terminological quibble.
I’m not sure if Reform, Conservative, Orthodox, and other contemporary forms of Judaism should be called denominations, a term borrowed from Protestantism, or even whether they are social movements in the sense that sociologists and historians use the term. They are tendencies or segments of the organized religious continuum of American Judaism. Specifically, they are conglomerates each comprised of a rabbinic school, a federation of legally autonomous congregations, a union of rabbis, and associations for youth, women (sisterhoods), and men (brotherhoods).
Moreover, how these denominations (it’s impossible to avoid the term completely) emerged in the past can be contrasted with their orientation at present. Jewish pluralism surfaced in periods when the overall situation of a branch of the diaspora was in great flux, yet being Jewish was a high priority. Older definitions of Judaism had become problematic or even unattractive, leading to the emergence of new ideologies. Once new tendencies establish a solid membership they can evolve in ways quite different from the original impetus. Recall the Karaites, Kabbalah, or Beshtian Hasidism, whose status in Jewish history was drastically transformed in the course of time.
2. Do I identify with a particular denomination or movement?
I identify with Reform Judaism. A bit of autobiography may be in order.
I was sent to “Sunday School” (that’s what it was called) at a rather stodgy Classical Reform synagogue in St. Louis. My grandfather arranged that I become bar mitzvah in a Conservative synagogue. I was pushed through the drill by rote. My main involvement as a teenager was in the Reform youth movement, initially as a member of a new Temple youth group created by a charismatic, recently ordained rabbi (Eugene B. Borowitz who later became an eminent Reform theologian). Participation in the Missouri Valley Federation of Temple Youth (whose parameters at that time stretched from Illinois to Colorado) led to involvement in the National Federation of Temple Youth. Rabbi Samuel Cook, the director of NiFTY, brought together young creative rabbis to be the staff of its summer “camp institutes.” This ambiance made a tremendous impression on my cohort of Reform Jewish teenagers, leading some of us to the rabbinate.
At that time the Hebrew Union College-Jewish Institute of Religion had an intellectually diverse faculty many of whom were at the height of their scholarly vigor. The students were thoroughly committed to Jewish survival and interested in liberal religion, but few of us were particularly observant or pious. At that point HUC did not require study in Israel, but some of us went there on our own to attend an ulpan and take courses at the Hebrew University. During my time at HUC years I was drawn to the study of Jewish history and a possible career in teaching. After ordination I entered Columbia University to study for a PhD in Russian and Jewish history, just as positions in Jewish studies began to open up in secular colleges and universities. Immediately after my dissertation was accepted, I became a member of the History Department of Hunter College of The City University of New York, where I have remained ever since. Besides all periods of Jewish history, I offer courses in world and modern intellectual history. Although I have been a member of several Reform synagogues, the board of the Central Conference of American Rabbis, and its Rabbinic Ethics Committee, my primary professional involvement has been through the Association for Jewish Studies.
The AJS is one of the most successful ecumenical Jewish organizations in North America, bringing together Judaic scholars of every orientation. Among other reasons, Jewish studies is thriving in North America and elsewhere because it transcends the denominations. In my professional capacity as professor of history and director of the Hunter Jewish Social Studies Program, I am committed to a presentation of Judaism that is outside any particular religious commitment. I have Christian, Muslim, Buddhist, Hindu, and totally secular students. Very few colleagues and students realize that I am also a Reform rabbi.
3. On the current transformation of Reform Judaism
“Classical Reform” was the cutting edge in Germany and America until the last quarter of the nineteenth century, seeking to win recognition for Judaism as a respectable and thoroughly modern religious option in an age of emancipation. It experimented with changes in Jewish beliefs and practices, some of which turned out to be viable and others not.
The membership of movements range from a leadership that takes the ideas and program seriously indeed to followers whose identification is basically social and casual. On the one hand, some of the most important exemplars of modern Judaism have been associated with Reform Judaism: Abraham Geiger, Hermann Cohen, Leo Baeck, Stephen Wise, Judah L. Magnes, Abba Hillel Silver, Emil Fackenheim, Henry Slonimsky, Samuel Atlas, Jacob Rader Marcus. Jacob Petuchowski, Gunther Plaut, Eugene Borowitz, Rachel Adler — to mention only a few. On the other hand, a high percent of the membership are Reform because it is, in one way or another, convenient. The ideology of Classical Reform articulated in the Pittsburgh Platform was based on Wissenschaftlich rationalism, anti-particularistic universalism, progressivist optimism. The Reform Judaism in which I was brought up was epitomized by the Columbus Platform, which was far more positive about Zionism and other elements of Judaism that the earlier leadership had though obsolete. In the post World War II era the membership of Reform Jewish synagogues shifted to include those whose family roots had been in East Europe. Some of the leaders had been brought here from Germany in the late 1930s. (Not long ago the presidents of HUC, the CCAR, and the UAHC were all born in Germany.) The Union of American Hebrew Congregations (now the Union of Reform Judaism) moved its headquarters to Manhattan, was positive to Jewish ethnicity, supports Israel enthusiastically, and as become increasingly appreciative of aspects of the tradition that had previously been jettisoned, from bar/bar mitzvahs to wearing of kippot during prayer to increasing use of Hebrew in worship. The dreary aesthetic ambiance of “God is in his holy temple, earthly thoughts be silent now” gave way to lively new, sometimes traditionalistic melodies. The role of the Reform rabbi shifted from focusing on being a civic leader and orator to a far greater involvement in pastoral advice, ritual concerns, and explicating Judaism.
This tendency toward “neo-traditionalism” represents a strengthened sense of belong to klal Yisrael and a positive connection to the Jewish past on the part of Reform, a trajectory leading to turnarounds such as Reform tashlikh ceremonies and talk about Reform kashrut and restoring tehiyat ha-metim in the new prayer book. At the same time, there has been an transformation of gender roles in Jewish leadership, masculine identifiers for God, and inclusion of gays and lesbians. The question arises then, what makes Reform Judaism still distinctive, other than its organizational structure?
In my opinion, the strength of Reform Judaism has been its intellectual honesty vis-à-vis the ideals of the Enlightenment, Wissenschaft des Judentums, and their later manifestations. It acknowledged that there were outdated aspects of the Jewish heritage that must be dropped if Judaism is to remain a living, progressive faith. When, however, does critical change becomes loss of continuity and coherence? In theory “nothing Jewish should be alien to a Reform Jew” (especially to a Reform rabbi), so there is always the possibility of filling old bottles with new wine. Are there parameters without which Reform loses its identity and becomes “Conservative Light” (this phrase is my only sound bite ever)? To be sure, Conservative, Reconstructionist, and even Orthodox Judaism face that issue in their own way.
For me, the lynchpin is not only to render it compatible with this or that scientific, historical, or psychological finding but to take modern historiography seriously, as I will explain below.
4. What do you thing are the positives of identification with a movement?
We are shaped by the cultures and subcultures in which we are raised, even while we view them critically (and liberal Jews are highly critical people). Isolated individuals have great difficulty in making an impact in the community by themselves. Just being “just Jewish” “doesn’t do it.” Jewish survival requires settings that provide a framework for socialization, philanthropy, and study. Our version of “noblesse oblige” should involve an obligation to support institutions that further the creative survival of Judaism according to its highest values, paying back by contributing to the flourishing and improvement of the matrix from which an abiding core of our identity derives.
5. How would you describe the future of the current movements?
The future of the denominations depends to a great extent on the overall religious climate in the United States. Will Americans become, like Europeans, increasingly indifferent to organized religion? This quite possible considering the social and educational level of the vast majority of American Jews and their increasing integration into the mainstream, including through intermarriage. Reform and Conservative Judaism may shrink but for somewhat different reasons, such as trends in demography, migration, and even the economy (belonging to most synagogues is expensive). Conservative Judaism was to a great extent locked on a commitment carried over from immigrant parents or grandparents. Some of their children have either become more frum or, especially if they have intermarried, joined Reform synagogues. Nevertheless, the surge of Reform Judaism in recent decades, which made possible the claim that it is the biggest denomination, may turn out to be temporary. My friend and colleague Lance Sussman, rabbi of Reform Congregation Knesset Israel in Philadelphia, wonders if after the growth in the previous decade Reform has already entered a period of numerical decline, like Conservative Judaism. The smaller movements, Reconstructionism, Humanistic Judaism, Jewish Renewal, and groups less well known — all of which have passionately committed memberships — may continue to grow, but they form a small percent of American Jews who are “belongers.”
Reform, Conservative, and Orthodox Judaism are now umbrellas, each covering a range of positions. As I suggested earlier, they sustain and are sustained by panoply of institutions that require considerable funds for salaries, the upkeep of buildings, and other expenses. If the abiding division turns out to be the line between Orthodox and all forms of non-Orthodox Judaism, perhaps the liberal sector will be consolidated in order to cut down the total overhead. But given the vested interests involved, it’s hard to see how that will happen soon.
6. What challenges or changes to you foresee?
One of the main problems is the alienation of those who want more than what one of my friends calls “happy clappy Judaism” that relies mainly on nostalgia, sentimentality, emotionality. Many American Jews probably feel something is missing our society and culture — a dimension which they call “spiritual,” and are therefore open to being shown that modern Judaism renders the treasures of the past compatible with a modern scientific view of nature and history, including the history of religion.
The methodology and some of the findings of contemporary historiography run up against the traditional presentation of what Emil Fackenheim called the “root experiences” of Judaism. Modern historians evaluate evidence about the past skeptically. For example, the biblical image of the formative personalities and events of biblical history before the age of kings Omri and Ahab may have been to a large extent invented much later: the patriarchs and matriarchs, the Exodus, the covenant at Mount Sinai, the conquest of Canaan, the united kingdom of David and Solomon. Most biblical scholars now date the final redaction of the Pentateuch to post-exilic times, centuries after Moses (if there was a Moses). There is the problem of sifting through the multiple forms of Judaism that flourished during the late Second Temple period and when to date the inception of the Oral Torah. Modern historiography has analyzed the tensions that characterized the most creative medieval periods of Jewish history and the periodic reconfiguration of what it meant to be Jewish in modern times. There is no final version of the new Jewish history because novel approaches and fashions repeatedly surface in scholarship – it is built into modern scholarship that that happens. All this is grist for the mill of historians, but can be confusing for ordinary Jews.
In sum, history poses theoretical issues that all but the fundamentalist forms of Judaism have to face in justifying that they are legitimate continuations of the tradition. (I avoid the problematic term “authentic”). The bottom line is whether modern Jewish historiography is merely the “faith of fallen Jews” as Yosef Hayim Yerushalmi famously observed in Zahor: Jewish History and Jewish Memory — or is it integral to a thoroughly modern Jewishness? Zionism provides one answer. Can liberal diaspora Judaism continue to articulate its own convincing vision of an evolving heritage?
The viable meaning(s) of Jewish history overlap the denominations, blurring the difference between them. The sharpest dividing line may be between those who insist on observance of the halakhah as understood according to scholars using traditional religious methods and those who accept that halakhah, whatever its value in confirming kelal Yisrael, is mutable, adjustable, and conditional, so that ultimate affirmation of Judaism rests of other grounds.
7. What are and what will be effects of pluralistic developments?
The more choices there are for expressing one’s Jewishness, the more people will find a comfortable and meaningful home within the Jewish heritage. We live in an age of rampant individualism, so that a variety of options may provide more Jews with a Jewish grounding. Complicating the picture is that people can be “very Jewish” at a certain point in their lives and less so at other times, and that the most meaningful Jewish occasions may be life-cycle events such as birth, turning thirteen, marriage, death — and crisis-moments when they feel they need pastoral counseling.
Another factor that encourages pluralism is the new tier of rabbinic academies that have come to the fore: the Reconstructionist Rabbinical College, the American Jewish University, Boston Hebrew College, the Academy for Jewish Religion, and others. These don’t seem to be creating movements in their wake, but by breaking down boundaries may facilitate the amalgamation of a supra-denominational liberal Judaism.
All this blurs the parameters between the denominations and between Judaism and the world, with negative but also with positive effects for the survival of the Jewish heritage as a living faith that applies to life as it is lived.
Reprinted, with permission of the author from: G’vanim, the Journal of the Academy of Jewish Religion, NY, Vol. 5, Num. 1 (May 2009). Pp. 85-89.
Book Review of Mountains Beyond Mountains: The Quest of Dr. Paul Farmer, A Man who would Cure the World
A review of Mountains Beyond Mountains: The Quest of Dr. Paul Farmer, A Man who would Cure the World by Tracy Kidder
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To sum this book up, it is the story of an extraordinary man: Dr. Paul Farmer. Farmer is caring, compassionate, smart, thoughtful, driven, and a champion of the rights of the poor. Farmer sees pathology, social medicine, politics, and anthropology as inseparable – and this drives the work he does.
Farmer helps save the world, but only by compromising other aspects of his life. He talks about the challenges of balancing meetings, raising money, politics, and direct care. And, certainly, his family and personal relationships suffer. But, Farmer doesn’t seem to mind. He criticizes “white liberals” who think that the world’s problems can be solved without sacrifice to them. He fights against the unfair distribution of wealth.
While the book does not explicitly talk much about religion, it does touch on the subject. Farmer says he does not act primarily out of religious or political motivations, but rather out of curiosity. In addition, Farmer sees anthropology as focusing on meaning. This entails exploring politics, economic systems, and histories. Farmer even tries to understand the causes of bad stuff, like suffering and illness from a holistic approach.
Among the many topics he studied, he learned a bit about liberation theology – a branch of Catholicism. Liberation theology was developed by Latin American theologians, and some of its tenets were endorsed in the 1960s by Latin America’s Catholic bishops. In this theology, it is the responsibility of the church to provide “a preferential option of the poor.” According to Farmer, this was quite different than the mainstream understanding of Catholicism which focuses its teaching on other areas, such as no premarital sex. Yet, he adds “if I had to choose between lib[eration] theo[logy], or any ology, I would go with science as long as service to the poor went along with it. But I don’t have to make that choice, do I?” (pg. 86).
Farmer even mentions how Haitian peasants understand how God allows suffering – they say “God gives but doesn’t share” (page 79). Farmer explains this: God gives people what they need, but people have to divide up what God has given. It’s fitting, because it is similar to liberation theology – which encourages people to face reality and to act quickly. It focuses on the horror of poverty and on fixing it immediately.
It is ironic how Farmer came to value faith; he says, “the fact that any sort of religious faith was so disdained at Harvard and so important to the poor…made me even more convinced that faith must be something good” (pg. 85). Yet, Farmer understands faith fairly broadly – he references faith in penicillin, faith in clinical trials, and faith in scientific progress.
I admire Farmer’s courage, dedication, and thoughtfulness. He does not view anything in isolation but rather chooses to delve into the interconnectedness of life. He fights for all people, saying that patients have priority, then prisoners, then students – which for Farmer, covers almost everyone. Dr. Farmer sees every person with illness as a potential patient and every healthy person as a potential student. Farmer almost seems a little too perfect, but he admits one of his flaws. Although all the major religions say “love they neighbor as thyself,” Farmer does not feel he can do that, though he strives to. His honesty is striking.
At heart, this book is uplifting, but I found at times that I felt like I was not doing enough. Dr. Paul Farmer is an extraordinary man, and I know my accomplishments, intelligence, and even aspirations fall short of his. What am I to do? Feel good that there are people like Farmer in the world, or feel badly that I am not up to his caliber? Does reading a book like this move me beyond my passivity – to a recognition that I can, indeed, make a significant difference in the lives of many?
Questions to consider:
- The book’s title, Mountains Beyond Mountains, comes from a Haitian proverb, “beyond mountains, there are mountains.” Why do you think Farmer chose this as the title for his book? Is it optimistic or pessimistic?
- The book quotes Margaret Mead who said: “Never underestimate the ability of a small group of committed individuals to change the world. Indeed, they are the only ones who ever have.” With the recent inauguration of President Obama and the associated emphasis on change and personal responsibility, does this book speak to us more than before? Are we empowered to bring about change, or is it daunting?
- How do we read books about such extraordinary individuals without feeling badly that we are not doing our part?
- Knowing that Farmer’s personal life and family suffered (he had a young child whom he rarely saw), how do we reconcile this with the work that he did? Do the ends justify the means? How do we find balance in our own lives?
Book Review of Three Cups of Tea: One Man’s Mission to Promote Peace . . . One School at a Time
A review of Three Cups of Tea: One Man’s Mission to Promote Peace…One School at a Time by Greg Mortensen and David Oliver Relin
Review by Rabbi Ana Bonnheim
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Greg Mortenson was just an average mountain climber looking for the next adventure. In 1993, he went out to scale K2, the world’s second tallest peak. After a failed attempt to reach the summit, he lost his group on the descent. He ended up high in the mountains of northern Pakistan, in a village called Korphe. Moved by the inhabitants’ kindness, Mortenson promised Haji Ali, a village elder, that he would return and build a school for the impoverished inhabitants of Korphe.
Ever since that first promise, Mortenson hasn’t stayed away from Pakistan for too long. In fourteen years, he built 58 schools and expanded to parts of Afghanistan. Mortenson’s schools take special care in educating girls, who would otherwise receive no education, and these schools counter the Taliban’s school networks. Mortenson believes that education is the key to freedom and to escaping poverty. Mortenson says that the kinds of people that he admires most, and indeed the religious leaders he admires most, are like Sayed Abbas, a Muslim cleric in rural Pakistan, who “is about compassion in action, not talk. He doesn’t just lock himself up with his books. Sayed believes in rolling up his sleeves and making the world a better place.”
Mortenson tells the story of his incredible journey in Three Cups of Tea: One Man’s Mission to Promote Peace… One School at a Time. In a humble and simple voice, Mortenson tells his own story, a story that moves from a despairing, lost man to one with purpose, one who is changing the world. Mortenson’s interactions and adventures in Pakistan and Afganistan certainly make for exciting reading, but it is the larger messages of the book that are more inspiring.
First, Mortenson demonstrates the capacity of one person to make a tangible difference in the world. For all of us cynics for whom it can be easier to deny the possibility of change rather than strive for it, Mortenson’s story is evidence that each individual matters. But Mortenson doesn’t promote traveling to rural villages in war-torn countries as the only way to make a difference. It is one way to change the world, but it is not the only one. What is relevant about Mortenson’s journey is that he saw the potential for helping others and chose to help. He didn’t go out seeking to help rural Afghani and Pakistani villages but when confronted with kind, impoverished individuals, he saw that he could substantially help the villages. We can follow Mortenson’s example: we needn’t feel compelled to search the world for problems to solve (though this is perfectly fine) but simply must keep our eyes open to the opportunities and possibilities for change that come our way.
Second, Mortenson did not set out to change the landscape of village schools in an isolated, mountainous region. He set out to build one school for one village. The powerful message here is that when Mortenson began this project, he did not see it as it exists today. He saw one part of a problem and saw concrete action that he could take. An action led to another action which led to another action, which led to a realization of bigger picture change. Mortenson demonstrates how it is small, individual change which leads to global change. As Saul Alinsky, the founder of community organizing in America taught, acting locally leads to thinking globally.
Third, Mortenson believed in his dreams and didn’t get discouraged by his own limitations. For years, Mortenson had so little money that sometimes he lived out of his car. He put every penny he had towards his dream of building schools and dismayed that it was not enough. He put his heart and soul into raising money, not knowing if he could succeed to raise enough. He knew that what he was doing was important and affected others’ lives. He also knew that he would do his best to make it happen, even if immediate change was not possible.
Mortenson’s story is inspiring and thought-provoking for all ages. It is a great book for a family discussion or a teen book group. The lessons to be learned are many, but it would also be a shame to focus too much on lessons and ignore the beauty and wonder of Mortenson’s journey itself.
Questions to consider:
- What do you think drives Mortenson to do this work?
- What are the implications of his projects?
- Where do you see problems around you that are begging for action? What could you contribute?
- What do you think you learn most from Mortenson? What are his powerful messages to you?
Book Review: Hot, Flat, and Crowded by Thomas Friedman
A review of Hot, Flat, and Crowded: Why We Need a Green Revolution – And How it Can Renew America
By Rabbi Ana Bonnheim
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Thomas L. Friedman, the foreign affairs columnist for the New York Times, recently published his fifth book, Hot, Flat, and Crowded: Why We Need a Green Revolution – and How It Can Renew America. Friedman’s thesis has multiple parts but is still simple: our world is becoming ever more crowded with a population explosion (our global population will soon be an estimated 8 billion people), more flat (meaning more globalized, based on Friedman’s last book, The World Is Flat, published in 2005), and hotter (due to climate change and the exponentially rising levels of human-caused pollution). These factors are all connected, and taken together require our immediate and sustained action in order to save humanity and our home.
The world’s population is quickly growing, particularly in countries that are not in the Western world. China’s population is skyrocketing. One used to be able to say that the statement, “You’re one in a million!” didn’t apply in China, because there, a person is literally “one in a billion.” But now the population is significantly higher than a billion (some estimate 1.3 billion) and growing, despite the laws surrounding family planning. More people equal more people to feed. It means a larger number of people consuming resources. Yet growth and increased consumption are inevitable results of more people living with higher standards like individualized transit (the number of individuals purchasing cars is skyrocketing in India) and communications (like cell phones and computers, which require electricity to power them), and a global food chain.
In short, we are living in an increasingly globalized world. Globalization is enabling countries to develop extremely quickly. Countries like China and India are not only growing with regard to their populations, but their infrastructures are expanding too. As smaller villages are becoming more connected, they need the infrastructure-starting with roads and electricity. China is finishing about one coal plant per week to power this extraordinary growth. The growth is good: it means that more and more people are living with better standards and have a higher quality of life. Yet, it also means that they are consuming more resources. Some of these countries are frustrated by the growing global emphasis on emissions standards: they say that countries like the United States and Japan were able to grow without focusing on developing renewable resources and that they deserve the same. But the problem is that it’s not the right attitude. Now, we know that we need to be more responsible about how we consume resources and how we treat our planet. If we continue living how we’re living, we are destroying our planet, and we may be destroying humanity along with it. So we need to change. It may not be fair, because some individuals are more responsible for our predicament than others, but nonetheless, this is the problem we collectively have.
Unfortunately, Friedman argues, here in the United States, we are not living like responsible global citizens. We are living like we own the world and aren’t thinking about the consequences of our actions. There is a growing green movement in our country, but without sustained, significant commitment from our government, we are not allowing this movement to have a strong enough future.
This is not a book imploring us to recycle-though we certainly should. This is not a book telling us to remember to turn the lights off or to drive more thoughtfully-though those are good things to do, too. This is a book arguing for a sea change in how we think about the world around us and humanity’s future on Earth. Friedman effectively shows how broken the American electricity system is and how intuitive solutions could be, if only we could create the policy structures and financial incentives to encourage enough change. Friedman is not naïve: he realizes that without a global crisis or enough incentives to change, our systems (and our pollutions) will remain the same.
Friedman is skilled at taking many small events and conversations and weaving them together in such a way that it is possible to see trends and a bigger picture. His gift to us is that he enables us to understand our dire need for a revolution in how we live. His gift, though, does not come without strings attached. Once we read this book, we need to act-to advocate for energy independence, renewable resources, and a shift in how our country controls its resources and taxes its citizens. That is our responsibility.
Questions to consider:
- How is energy independence related to a hot, flat, and crowded world?
- What would your life be like with Friedman’s vision of a new electrical grid? Can you imagine it?
- How can you be part of the greening of our world?
- Why are you (or aren’t you) compelled by Friedman’s arguments about the state of our world and its future?
- How do your convictions relate to your Jewish identity and understanding of Judaism?
A Teachable God? by Rabbi Rami Shapiro
In the Winter 2008 issue of Reform Judaism magazine Rabbi Jack H. Bloom, a Reform Rabbi and practicing psychotherapist, is interviewed regarding his personal theology.
The interview opens well with Rabbi Bloom challenging the unwillingness of Torah commentators to admit rather than gloss over the dark-side of God. His examples come from Numbers 15:32 where God has the Jews murder one of their own for the crime of gathering sticks on Shabbat, and Leviticus 23:29-30 where God threatens to “cut off” from the Chosen anyone who works on Yom Kippur.
Rabbi Bloom goes on to blame our failure to admit God’s dark-side on our “pediatric view of divinity” that looks at God the way young children look at their parents. Little kids see mom and dad as Perfect Parents rather than as complex and flawed human beings. Similarly we excuse God’s dark-side in order to maintain our illusion of the perfect divine Parent, and hence “stay mired in a less mature, dysfunctional, and ultimately disappointing relationship with the Divine.”
As we seek a more mature relationship with God, Rabbi Bloom argues, we will also help God mature as well. Just as parents can learn from their children, so God can learn from us. In fact, Rabbi Bloom says, helping God mature is “an essential part of our [the Jewish people’s] covenantal relationship” with God.
Drawing upon his psychological training, Rabbi Bloom explains that God’s immaturity and violent nature are rooted in God’s low self-esteem. God wants to be loved, but rather than inviting our love by acting lovingly toward us, God demands it: “You must love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your soul, with all your might” (Deuteronomy 6:5). God doesn’t understand the difference between love and obedience, and hence cannot mature into a Being capable of engaging in authentic relationship with humanity.
We humans, Rabbi Bloom says, must teach God what true relationship is by modeling it among ourselves. As God watches us live lovingly, God will learn how to do so Himself.
I assume Rabbi Bloom means for us to take him literally, and that Reform Judaism means for us to take his theology seriously. So here is a serious, albeit brief, response to Rabbi Bloom: AAAAAARRRRRRGGGGGG!
And here is a no less serious albeit longer response:
Rabbi Bloom assumes that what we read about God in the Torah is true; that Torah actually reveals the nature of God. This is nonsense. Torah is a human document, and whatever its authors say about God tells us much about them and nothing about God, or even if there is a God. Being a psychologist as well as a Reform Rabbi I would have expected Rabbi Bloom to analyze the humans behind the Torah and not the God they imagine at the heart of it.
Here are a few questions worthy of serious psycho-spiritual exploration: Why did the ancient authors of Torah imagine such a violent God? Why did they place themselves in the role of both partner and victim with regard to this God? What does this say about our ancestors? What do we make of a people who imagine and worship a God suffering from low self-esteem? How does Torah’s image of a violent and self-loathing God shape the psyche of the Jewish people as we continue to raise our children with these stories and continue to read them uncritically ourselves?
According to Rabbi Bloom (and others) God creates the world because God wants to be loved. Prior to creation God is alone and lonely, and He seeks to remedy His situation by creating humans who will love and obey Him. And when we don’t do exactly what He wants us to do, He kicks us around until it is time for a nap. Yes, God is a four-year-old. But that was thousands of years ago. Hasn’t God grown up a bit by now? Hasn’t He learned anything from dealing with Jews lo these many years? Rabbi Bloom, by arguing that we humans must teach God how to “play nice” with his human friends, implies God has learned nothing. So what hope is there for us to teach God? If Abraham, Moses, Hillel, and Freud have failed, how are we going to succeed?
Given his reference to pediatric theology, I suspect Rabbi Bloom intends his theology for adults, but I don’t see how it can be so. On the surface it seems demeaning to adult thinking. It takes the Bible, or at least the Bible’s image of God, literally. I doubt most Reform Jews do. It assumes that God is an emotionally stunted Creator Who needs better role models. I don’t believe this, and don’t imagine many adults would buy it either.
So what can we do with Rabbi Bloom’s theology? We can turn it inside out, and argue that the authors of the Torah invented a God that reflected their own childhood experiences with dysfunctional and emotionally stunted fathers. We can argue that reading the Torah as the dreams a client might present in therapy tells us a lot about our ancestors. We can argue that, since their fantasies about their dysfunctional parents, now projected outward as a cosmically dysfunctional God, have shaped the Jewish psyche, we Jews still suffer from their childhood experiences. We can argue that the very fact that Jews continue to read the exploits of this dysfunctional Deity suggests that Judaism fosters a childlike mentality even in its adult members. We can argue that since we cannot admit to the madness of God and continue to blame ourselves for His anger and homicidal tendencies, insisting like the victim of abuse insists, that the Abuser is good and we are bad, that we suffer from a deep trauma at the heart of Judaism. It isn’t God that needs healing; it is we who believe in this God that need healing.
If this is true, we can then seek to heal ourselves. We can begin to analyze Jewish culture, family life, and religion as an example of abused children seeking to appease an unappeasable fantasy parent. And in so doing we might learn something about ourselves and take steps toward spiritual and cultural maturation.
Turning Rabbi Bloom’s theology inside out, might also be of value to our Christian cousins who, perhaps in rebellion against Our Father Who Art Quite Mad, imagined an all-loving God whose Son came to earth to free us from our failed efforts to earn God’s love.
The problem with Christianity, however, is that its early authors were themselves Jews who could not escape the trauma of biblical theology. And because of their Jewishness they abandoned the hope taught by the Son and retreated into the horror of the Father, and imagining an even more dysfunctional God than the Torah’s original.
Where the Torah’s God, after destroying almost all life with a flood, promises not to do so again, the God of the New Testament reneges on that promise and intends to destroy humanity once more. But the New Testament God can be bribed, and humanity can be ransomed. The cost? The death of God’s own Son. Whereas YHVH spared Abraham’s son on one hill, the New Testament God lets His own Son die horribly on another.
The Christian God is too Jewish to be the loving parent Christians want Him to be. And that is why, in the end, the Christian God of love condemns most of humanity to burn for all eternity in Hell, and sends the Prince of Peace to wage war against all those who, once again, refuse to obey the Lord with Low Self-Esteem.
If Rabbi Dr. Bloom had put the Jews on the couch rather than our divine fantasy, we might have learned something. If he had tried to heal us rather than our imagined Heavenly Father, we might turn to him for more insight. If he had argued that mainstream Jewish thinking about God that ignores the dark-side of God is analogous to an abused daughter blaming herself for the abusive actions of her father, then we could talk and maybe heal. But in fact all Rabbi Bloom did was to perpetuate the excuse and the abuse by blaming the victim: If only we would relate rightly with one another, Daddy would see what right relationship is and learn how to be the really really good Daddy we know He is. Please Daddy, we’re sorry. Please, give us another chance.
AAAAAARRRRRRGGGGGG!
Choose Freedom! By R.D. Gold
This essay was adapted from R.D. Gold’s important new book, Bondage of the Mind: How Old Testament Fundamentalism Shackles the Mind and Enslaves the Spirit – Toward a Better Understanding of the Religious Experience (Aldus Books). Rabbi Jacob Neusner, a leading scholar on Judaism, calls Bondage of the Mind “the most important book of its kind in the last hundred years.” For more information, please go to www.aldusbooks.com.
CHOOSE FREEDOM!
By R.D. Gold
Nov. 28, 2008
Most progressive Jews in the United States are aware of the Great Debate that is unfolding across the country, pitting reason against revelation. We need look no further than the last two presidential elections to see how religious fundamentalists have elbowed their way into a prominent position on the American political landscape.
I consider religious fundamentalism to be one of the most noxious forces in the history of mankind. Hardly a day passes that we don’t witness Islamic fundamentalists wreaking havoc somewhere in the world (as I write these lines the horrible drama in Mumbai continues to unfold). Evangelical Christianity, albeit essentially non-violent today, has doubtless become a powerful political force in America, with potentially far-reaching, deleterious consequences.
The forces of Jewish fundamentalism are no longer benign, either. Possibly as a reaction to their fears that assimilation and intermarriage pose a serious threat to Jewish survival, the Orthodox Jews have stepped up their “outreach” efforts to convert non-Orthodox Jews, to recruit them to become “returnees.” Following the dictum that the end justifies the means, they totally disregard the trauma such a conversion often brings to the liberal Jewish families involved. But there is little public discussion of this more aggressive Orthodox behavior, perhaps for fear of being labeled an anti-Semite. I am a Jewish American myself, but I don’t like the forces of Orthodoxy attempting to turn Israel into a Jewish Iran any more than I like the evangelicals trying to turn the United States into a Christian Iran.
Like fundamentalists everywhere, Orthodox Jews maintain the unshakable conviction that it is they, and they alone, who are in sole and certain possession of The Truth, and, therefore, the exemplars of a divinely ordained moral behavior. They claim that progressive Jews, whom they disdainfully call “secular,” are abandoning the Torah and, by so doing, they are betraying the true Judaism.
But are they really? Are the doctrines of Orthodox Judaism really true?
I spent the better part of two years researching the latest archeological, historical and textual evidence to be able to answer this question. And all – and I repeat, all – the credible evidence points to the unmistakable conclusion that the dogma of Orthodoxy is not true. It is false. The exodus described in the Torah never happened. There was no “nation of Israel” wandering in the Sinai desert for forty years. There was no revelation at Mount Sinai witnessed by two million people. Perhaps most revealing of all is that there was no conquest of Canaan. It turns out that the Israelites were living peacefully in Canaan all along and, indeed, were Canaanites themselves.
A key tenet of the Orthodox belief system is that Jewish law is God-given and reflects his will. As such, it is timeless and binding on all Jews, present and future. But since the doctrines of Orthodoxy are demonstrably false, it makes no sense at all for liberal Jews to exchange much of their personal freedom for the straightjacket of enforced obedience to strict religious law. Far from being the immutable law for time immemorial that the Orthodox claim, the doctrines of Orthodoxy – like fundamentalist dogma everywhere – are an anachronistic absurdity in this day and age. They spawn a pious ignorance that subverts independent thought.
Does this mean that one must reject Judaism? Not at all. Orthodox Judaism is not authentic Judaism, as the Orthodox claim, any more than Christian fundamentalism is authentic Christianity, as the evangelicals claim. One does not face a choice that is limited to fundamentalism (I believe all of it) or atheism (I believe none of it). Piety is not a license to run other people’s lives, but if one so chooses, religion can play a positive role in one’s life – sociologically, philosophically, and psychologically. Athens and Jerusalem need not be at loggerheads.
While I am not a Reconstuctionist, I find a great deal of truth in the humanistic Judaism of Mordecai Kaplan, whose forward-thinking ideas led the Orthodox authorities to excommunicate him (just as they did 400 years earlier to another forward-thinking Jewish thinker, the brilliant Dutch philosopher Baruch Spinoza). In much the same way that Abraham Lincoln envisioned America as a nation of the people, by the people, and for the people, Kaplan argued that the Jewish religion came from and should serve the Jewish people, not the other way around as the Orthodox would have us believe. Kaplan also held that Judaism is a civilization that values the well-being and moral excellence of its people, rather than what some self-styled sages interpret to be the word and the will of God.
In the final analysis, isn’t this what being a good Jew is really all about? Not what you believe about God, the cosmos, and the like, but the moral standards by which you choose to live your life. For me, the choice between the personal freedom embedded in Western democratic values and embraced by humanistic Judaism, and the bondage of a fundamentalist religious law based on fallacious Orthodox dogma is a no-brainer. I choose freedom. I hope you do, too.
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