Creating Judaism

There is yet another dust up about Israeli archaeological and reconstruction work on or near the Temple Mount. The politics of this conflict are beyond the scope of this blog, but it does bring to my mind the importance of the Temple both in past and present Jewish thought. What is sometimes forgotten in discussions of the two Jewish temples and their sacrifices, though, is what they were really all about. As Martin Jaffee writes in Early Judaism: Religious Worlds of the First Judaic Millennium, (2nd edition; Bethesda: University Press of Maryland, 2006), p. 181:

Called avodah in Hebrew or “service,” the sacrificial process was an arduous act of killing normally performed by a priest, acting as a holy executioner. Struggling, bleating victims had to be bound, slaughtered, disemboweled, dismembered and their parts disposed of in carefully prescribed ways. As sacrificial blood spurted from the throats of slaughtered lambs, an attending priest collected it in bowls, stirring the hot blood to prevent coagulation until the officiating priest was free to sprinkle it on the horns of the altar and the carcass was placed upon the fire.

Sacrifice was not a metaphor; it was real, gory, and powerful. It also raises two particularly troubling questions: (1) Can the power of the sacrifice be preserved without an actual sacrifice; and (2) should the Temple be rebuilt and the sacrificial service reinstated (this latter point, of course, has political implications that spill out into the current political scene). I will try to explore these two issues in future posts. For now, though, it is worth noting that the Samaritans still sacrifice on Passover, on Mt. Gerazim. Some pictures can be found here, although I’d be delighted if I could find more pictures or a video of the ceremony.

There is an interview with Prof. Asa Kasher, the author of the Israeli Defense Force’s ethical code, published at ynetnews.com.  It begins:

Which biblical character would you like to meet, and what would you say to him?

I would like to meet the author of the Book of Ecclesiastes. I don’t know who he was, but I know what he was. He was amazingly wise and extremely sad. His wisdom was revealed to me in the courageous assessment that “this too, is vanity,” and even more in his balanced teaching that “there is a time for everything under the Sun.” I once taught the entire book, verse after verse, commentary after commentary. Ultimately it seemed to me that the sad spirit of Ecclesiastes is the spirit of a bereaved man. I would like to ask the author about his sadness.

Read the continuation of the interview here.

An Orthodox friend of mine recently commented to me that he does not understand liberal Judaism: one should be “all” (defined as devoted to halakhic observance) or nothing. I somewhat irately responded that I don’t understand Orthodox Jews who cheat on their taxes or commit business fraud (which he decidedly does NOT do). He said he disapproves, but understands.

This exchange has been edging in and out of my consciousness for the past couple of weeks. His basic point, which deserves thinking about, was more about “secular” Jews, and the phenomenon of ethnic identity and pride: What does this mean in the multicultural mosaic of America? At the same time, it blatantly ignores the mass of evidence that points to the vibrancy of liberal Judaism and the ways in which Jews today structure a meaningful, “authentic,” Jewish life (cf. The Jew Within).

My comment to him, though, went to a somewhat different issue, that which is known to many academics as the “nomos and narrative” issue. Halakhic observance with no regard to the “narrative” - or ethical ideals - to which it is connected can potentially degenerate into the kind of practice condemned by the biblical prophets. Halakha, most modern rabbis would agree, is not disconnected to ethics, but the nature of that connection is often blurry. To let “ethics” drive halakha completely opens the possibility of juridical anarchy; who is the final arbiter of ethics?

This is precisely the issue behind Rabbi Yona Metzger’s condemnation of furs skinned from live animals, as reported by Orthomom yesterday. To what extent should the suffering of animals drive halakhah? The same question is at the fore of the new initiative of the Conservative movement to create an “tsedek hekhsher,” that adds to the halakhic requirements for kosher slaughter guidelines for the treatment of laborers. A little further afield is one of the accepted responsa of the Committee on Jewish Law and Standards on homosexuality: ethics (and human dignity) is explicitly invoked as a halakhic category.

This is notoriously slippery stuff; Rabbi Metzger, I would assume, would deride these two Conservative initiatives precisely because they use “extra halakhic” criteria. Others would criticize Rabbi Metzger’s position for stopping short of condemning the wearing of all fur. To me, these three (among countless other) small examples begin to illustrate the subtle interplay of factors involved in halakhic decision making.

I just had a discussion in one of my classes of Genesis 17. This story of the covenant is powerful, puzzling, and disturbing. Today, I was most struck by the seeming discrepancy between verses 10 and 11. God promises Abraham an eternal covenant, and possession of the land of Canaan. Then God relates what Abraham must do:

10: This is my covenant (brit) that you shall observe between me and you, and between your children after you: Circumcise every male.

So circumcision appears to constitute Israel’s sole obligation to God. This understanding is borne out at the end of the story (verse 14) where every uncircumcised male will be “cut off” from his people. But then:

11: And you shall circumcise the flesh of your foreskins, and it will be as a sign of the covenant between me and you.

Now, which is circumcision, (1) a condition for the covenant or (2) a sign of it? This raises the disturbing part of the story: If the answer is (1), then women cannot participate in the covenant.

Later Jewish commentators don’t seem terribly troubled by this discrepancy. They largely assume (2); even an uncircumcised Jew is still a Jew. For the problem posed by (1), though, see Shaye J. D. Cohen, Why Aren’t Jewish Women Circumcised? Gender and Covenant in Judaism.

The controversy within Lubavitch (Habad) hasidism over the last rebbe, Menahem Mendel Schneerson, continues. Was he the messiah? Or more? Haaretz has the story:

The Lubavitcher Rebbe as a god
By Saul Sadka (Haaretz

“Joy to the world the Lord has come.”

This misquote from Isaac Watts, along with a link to a Chabad Web site, appears on a billboard. Not a real billboard, but a Photoshopped one that appears on the Web site of a Chabad activist in the U.S.

Rabbi Ariel Sokolovsky is a Moldova-born Chabad rabbi in Portland, Oregon, and a more amiable soul would be hard to find.

Yet Sokolovsky maintains a blog he entitled “Rebbegod” and refers to Schneerson as “Rebbe-Almighty” among other adulatory sobriquets.

Drawing on rabbinical sources, he attempts to show that this is not as revolutionary as it sounds. He concedes that there are few people like him who will openly call the Rebbe God. He claims, however, that many people believe it, but do not say so openly for fear of scaring people away from Chabad altogether.

“The Rebbe and God are not the same thing exactly, but I do not object to people thinking that they are the same thing.”

He recounts an incident in which he confronted his teacher - a senior Chabad rabbi from the former USSR - as to why he would not openly declare the Rebbe to be God. According to Sokolowsky, the senior rabbi jokingly warned him: “there can be many gods but only one Moshiach.”

[…]

[The following are questions asked of students in Safed.]

How do they view the connection between Schneerson and God? “The Rebbe is not something different from God - the Rebbe is a part of God,” says a British teenaged student.

Does this not ‘idolize’ Schneerson, in the literal sense? “We cannot connect to God directly - we need the Rebbe to take our prayers from here to there and to help us in this world. We are told by our rabbis that a great man is like God and the Rebbe was the greatest man ever. That is how we know he is the messiah, because how could life continue without him? No existence is possible without the Rebbe.”

Would they go so far as to describe the Rebbe and God as one and the same, as some extreme Messianists have done? “No, some people have gone too far and described the Rebbe as the creator.

“They say that God was born in 1902 and is now 105 years old. You can pray to the Rebbe and he will answer, and he was around since the beginning of time. But you must be careful to pray only to the Rebbe as a spiritual entity and not the body that was born in 1902.”

Does the Rebbe have a will of his own? What if the Rebbe and God disagree? “That is a ridiculous question! They are not separate in any way.”

So the Rebbe is a part of God. “Yes, but it is more complex than that. There is no clear place where the Rebbe ends and God begins.”

Does that mean the Rebbe is infinite omnipotent and omniscient? “Yes of course,” an Argentine student says in Hebrew. “God chose to imbue this world with life through a body. So that’s how we know the Rebbe can’t have died, and that his actual physical body must be alive. The Rebbe is the conjunction of God and human. The Rebbe is God, but he is also physical.”

This story was brought to my attention via Paleojudaica.

NPR has a story about the writer Naomi Regev riding public transportation in Jerusalem:

Writer Naomi Ragen says she did not want to start a revolution from her bus seat or become the Jewish Rosa Parks. She just wanted to get home. An observant, Orthodox Jew, Ragen was on the No. 40 bus line, headed to her house near Jerusalem, when an ultra-Orthodox — or Haredi — man told her to move to the back.

“I was astonished,” Ragen recalled. “And I said ‘I’m not bothering anyone. You don’t have to look at me, sit next to me — but as long as this is a public bus, I will sit where I please, thank you very much.’”

Ragen says the harassment grew worse at every stop. Soon an even more aggressive, bearded ultra-Orthodox man got on and commanded her to move. He weighed about 300 pounds and hovered over her like a sumo wrestler, she says, his long, black frock and wide hat in her face.

“And he started screaming and yelling,” she said, telling her to “move to the back of the bus — or else.”

“My reaction to that was I looked him in the eye and said ‘Look, you show me in the code of Jewish law where it’s written that I’m not allowed to sit in this seat and I’ll move,’” Ragen said. “‘Until then, get out of my face!’”

Ragen may have been the Haredi’s worst target: The feisty 57-year-old New York-born novelist and feminist has signed on to a new legal challenge to the de facto gender-segregation on more than 30 public bus lines in Israel, and the restrictions randomly enforced by men and self-styled “modesty patrols.”

“I call this the Taliban lines,” Ragen said. “They can call it whatever they want. But that, to me, is what they are. They’re the Taliban lines and there’s no reason we should have them in Israel. I think it’s important that women have taken a stand and gone to the Supreme Court with this and said, ‘We’re angry and we’re not going to take it anymore.’”

Ten years ago, as part of a pilot project, two bus lines dedicated to the ultra-Orthodox community were launched.

Today — unofficially — there are more than 30 gender-segregated Haredi bus routes. In many cases these buses are half the price and the only lines running between some cities and neighborhoods. They look like every other public bus: There are no signs telegraphing that they’re aimed at the ultra Orthodox.

The full story is at NPR.  The story illustrates the tensions, apparently increasing, between Haredi (ultra-orthodox) Jews and non-Haredi, even modern Orthodox, Jews within the State of Israel.

Jewish music provides a perspective that text can’t: The music that appeals to different Jewish communities is often deeply indicative of larger social and religious values. When the “high tradition” of choral synagogue music developed in nineteenth century Europe, for example, it reflected certain notions of both decorum and God’s transcendence. Now a website has collected a large number of Hebrew songs, many if not most liturgical. See “An Invitation to Piyut.”

I recently read an essay by Shalom Auslander, “Playoffs: Things that are prohibited,” in The New Yorker, January 15, 2007, pp. 38-43. Auslander offers a funny, poignant, and idiosyncratic view of what it is like to struggle to engage the modern world (and especially the Rangers) as a conflicted Orthodox Jew.

I think about Judaism a lot, both professionally and personally. This is my stab at entering the world of blogging in relation to my book, Creating Judaism. I will be posting miscellaneous thoughts, ideas, and resources that seem (to me, at least) to relate to the book. I welcome your thoughts too.