The Bible Is Fiction

Posted on May 31, 2012 | 31 comments

I once remarked that some of Freud’s work should be filed under F, for Fiction. “Oh,” replied my hearer, “One of my professors does that with the Bible.”

I was wrong and the Bible professor was right – but for an unobvious reason, a reason with deep consequences for the life of the spirit.

Properly speaking, fiction is a judgment we make about literature, not about truth.  “There are plenty of factually true statements in almost all works of fiction,” says Terry Eagleton (The Event of Literature), “but it is how they function strategically or rhetorically that counts.” If I start by saying “Once upon a time,” I invite you into an exercise in fictionalizing, even if what I say next is altogether fact. “Once upon a time, there was a president named Nixon, and he was almost impeached.” All true! But nonetheless, you wonder, “What’s your point? What moral are you pointing to by making it a ‘once upon a time’ statement?”

“Once upon a time” (like fiction in general) goes beyond concerns for the truth or falsity of what really happened. Fiction is like drama, where the historical accuracy behind, say, Shakespeare’s Richard III is not the issue. Richard wasn’t as bad as Shakespeare portrayed him, but so what? Shakespeare’s point is moral, not historical – moral in the sense of providing a lesson about the human condition. Both fiction and drama are presentational modes of communication. They are works of art. They have a presentational point to make.

By contrast, Freud’s Totem and Taboo is not presentational. It is written rather well, even artfully, in places, but its artistry is beside the point, whereas the artfulness of fiction is not. However well Freud wrote it, Totem and Taboo is an altogether specious account of the way ritual developed historically. Freud meant it as science, and its problem, therefore, is that it is bad science, not that it is fiction.

The Bible, however, is fiction, because, overall, its authors meant it as presentation, not as science, or even as history, which is a form of science with its own scientific rules of evidence. Sometimes they accepted the truth of the stories they used, but sometimes, they did not — Job and Esther describe personalities who never lived, and the authors knew it. Some of it reports historical fact, of course: there was a King David, as there was a Babylonian invasion. There was also a prophet named Isaiah, but his prophecies were included in the Bible to give us lessons of morality not of history. The same is true of Genesis through Deuteronomy, Kings, Judges and all the other books, some of whose characters really lived and some of whom didn’t. It doesn’t matter. Fiction can be chock-full of characters who really lived, with a story line of things they really did – and still be fiction.

“Fiction,”  says Eagleton, “is a question of how texts behave and of how we treat them.” The question is what we are invited to do with the biblical text.

Until relatively recently (the invention of printing) The Bible was read and studied, usually out loud, for the moral lessons within it. But then came printing, along with reading as a personal pastime and fiction as what people liked best to read. Fiction was falsely viewed as private entertainment about nothing substantive, hardly the moral equivalent of history, philosophy and science, which were public truths.

The Bible now seemed fictitious because it wasn’t “true” in the way that history, philosophy and science are. Supporters of the Bible bristled at this claim because fiction was considered paltry, hardly what you would stake your life on. The Bible is history, these defenders insisted, fact not fiction.

But that judgment misses the point. Even if every bit of the Bible were literally true, it would still be fiction because of the reason it was compiled, the reason we insist on reading it, and its presentational nature as a world unto itself with its own unique lessons to impart. If you want to know such things as the point of existence, the meaning of life, and the ways humankind has gone right and wrong, you cannot do a whole lot better than start with fiction: the fiction that is the Bible.

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Entropic Reasonableness

Posted on May 8, 2012 | 5 comments

From time to time, one cannot but wonder how war is possible. That question is usually put by liberals who misconstrue it as an exacerbated outcry against our side ever taking up arms, given the inevitable carnage that we leave behind. From such a point of view, pacifism is indeed the only sane response. The problem is the assumption of sanity on the other side. I grant the universality of reason, but not of sanity. Insane wielders of power are perfectly reasonable. They just twist reason toward insane ends.

The issue arises anew with Inferno, a spectacular history of World War II by Max Hastings, the eminent authority on war. He has read all the studies including a ton of first-person accounts of what it was like to be there. The book makes for gruesome reading. That is, in a way, its whole point.

I necessarily read such things through a Jewish lens. Hastings, however, focuses globally. His topic is not just the Jewish 6 million, but the 60 to 70 million who died overall. “Russia alone lost 27 million people, China at least 15 million.” It’s not just the numbers that stagger; it’s the blatant cruelty. Germany’s forced starvation of Russian prisoners, Japanese inhumanity against China in particular, and Stalin’s wholesale slaughter of almost everyone, his own people included.

It’s hard, but not surprising, to read how Stalin dispatched wave after wave of combatants into the direct line of enemy fire, until corpses piled up higher than people could climb over. It’s both hard and surprising to learn how Americans fire-bombed Japanese cities into submission even though the war was virtually won by then, and there was no need to mass-murder Japanese civilians. The first sortie alone (March 9, 1945), “killed 100,000 people and rendered a million homeless – 10,000 acres, ¼ of Tokyo was reduced to ashes.” Simultaneously, we initiated Operation Starvation (yes, that was its name), 12,000 sea mines to sink anything that tried to land food in Japanese harbors. It was part of our campaign to end war weariness here at home – bring an end to the carnage as soon as possible.

I understand all that. I really do. And I ask all over again how war is possible.

My question, however, is deeper than the liberal outcry for pacifism. I am a Jew who would not be here if Hitler had prevailed.

My point is the distinction between reason and sanity, a pair of virtues that get improperly confused as one and the same thing. Their negation, “unreasonable,” can mean either “contrary to logic”(on one hand) or “defying sanity” (on the other). The difference comes home in Hastings’ conclusion that “one third of all German losses in the east took place in the last months of the war, when their sacrifice could serve no purpose save that of fulfilling the Nazi leadership’s commitment to self –immolation.” That sounds both contrary to logic and insane. But was it?

By then, The Nazi leaders had already committed so many crimes against humanity that another million murders wouldn’t affect their own personal destiny one way or another. Then too, Nazi success earlier had emboldened fascists like Hungary’s Arrow Cross militia, which now had its own brief day in the sun, helping the Nazis eliminate every last Jew still walking.

“A Hungarian army officer rebuked an Arrow Cross teenager whom he saw beating an old woman in a column being herded toward their execution place. ‘Haven’t you got a mother, son? How can you do this?’

“The boy answered carelessly, ‘She’s only a Jew, uncle.’”

What do we make of this behavior? Is it unreasonable?

Not at all.  It is just insane. The sadistic teenager was quite reasonably acting out his own sadism. The Nazis who supported him were equally reasonably winning the only war they could: the war against the Jews. They would surely lose the war against the allies, but maybe they could still leave the world Judenrein.

We regularly conflate the notions of sanity and reason, as if they are the same. Philosophically, it is part of the doctrine left us from the Age of Reason, that gets called (among other things) “rational choice theory.” The basic idea is that left to their own devices, human beings naturally make rational choices. It’s Isaiah 1:18 updated. “Come let us reason together,” God tells Israel, as if reason will inevitably win out.

But reason’s victory can be devastating, if it begins with insanity. The eleventh-century Jewish commentator Rashi knows that for reason also to be sane, it must be predicated on moral assumptions. He notes the prior verse, “Learn to do good; devote yourself to justice,” and concludes, “After you repent and return to me, then come let us reason together.”

It is perfectly reasonable for deranged murderers to go on murdering, reasonable for Stalin to sacrifice his people, reasonable for the teenager to beat the old woman, and reasonable for Hitler to pursue the war against the Jews rather than to devote his army’s flagging energy to the “other war” which he was going to lose anyway. Yes, all of this was reasonable; just not sane.

The insanity of the human psyche will not easily go away. It is the part of us that colludes with the universal force of entropy. We exhaust our best efforts at building, creating, loving, and supporting – but lose it all in demonic outbursts of entropic reasonableness.

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Why We Need Synagogues, or, What Synagogues Need to Be

Posted on May 2, 2012 | 5 comments

The core problem with synagogues is that they have no raison d’etre, no obvious reason to continue. It is not that they do not work. Most of them work quite well – at what they do. It is just not clear to a lot of people why they should keep on doing it. There are obvious exceptions — synagogues that focus single-mindedly on purpose. But most synagogue boards, professionals and rabbis would be hard put to say in a sentence what their purpose is.  They know what they do, but they have no compelling rationale by with which to judge it and no correspondingly convincing rhetoric to enroll the loyalty of people whose needs run deeper than life-cycle celebrations and high holiday tickets.

To the extent that there is any rationale at all, it is likely to be captured in the word “community.” But what kind of community, and community to what end? The usual response, “sacred community,” does not get us very far because as little as we commonly know what synagogues are for, even less do we commonly know what the sacred is.

Until relatively recently, the absence of a transcendent reason for synagogues to exist could easily be overlooked. “Proper” Americans automatically affiliated with a “church of their choice” and synagogues were our “churches.” Besides, we needed our own places to pursue a Jewish agenda: fighting anti-Semitism, hearing about Israel, passing on our heritage, and the like. Those reasons are still valid, more or less, especially if you add the goal of playing out the prophetic commitment to correcting the world’s ills.

But that agenda rings true only for Jews already committed to Judaism’s mission and to pursuing it in the traditional synagogue setting. More and more Jews have discovered they can change the world faster and better outside the synagogue context: Habitat for Humanity, The American Jewish World Service, Mazon, Hazon, or any number of like-minded addresses that focus attention and funding on good causes. As for education and lobbying, few synagogues can compete with organizations like AJC, JNF, UJA, and Federations, which specialize in matters that synagogues only dabble at. JCCs provide preschools and have long aspired to running full scale religious schools as well – not to mention High Holiday services. Entrepreneurial rabbis now hang out shingles promising privately planned bar/bat mitzvahs, weddings, burial, and even catering during shivah.  So why synagogues, which are generalists in an age of specialization and which cost a fortune and require affiliation, to boot?

The answer must lie in synagogues becoming what they alone can be: deeply rooted Jewish responses to the human condition in our time.

One approach comes from philosopher Charles Taylor’s recognition that human nature demands judgments of “admiration and contempt,” two polar extremes by which we measure moral worth. We assume the existence of something we call “the good,” and pursue it for no other reason than that we should. For starters, then, synagogues can be the singular place where community forms to direct attention to the good. A vision of the good is central to religion in general, certainly to Judaism. Think of the synagogue as a moral center for the 21st century.

This polar judgment of “admiration or contempt” transcends the moral, however. It encompasses also the sense that life should matter; that we live not just from moment to moment but to create an identity whose whole is greater than the sum of the parts. We are authors of our own life’s project, the part of us that gets reported as our eulogy someday — the praise we earn because of the dignity of a life well led. Call this spirituality, the soaring of the human spirit to encompass a mission beyond the gritty needs of daily existence. We see it even in the hell of war-time destruction, when some combatants rise above the fray to display a higher self than we have reason to expect. All the more do we expect it of ourselves, given the privileged conditions in which we live.

More than just being moral, then, we have the sense that we should better ourselves, develop life projects, build a business, make a home, stand for something. We believe in the right – indeed, the obligation — to be true to the best that is in us, not to squander our potential in self-centered gluttony, laziness, or hedonism.

Humanity at its best seeks out the good and leads fulfilling lives that matter. The synagogue is the community that engages Jews in that twin endeavor. All else follows from this, the synagogue’s mission: to be a moral and spiritual center for the 21st century.

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Israel and the Diaspora: Jewish Peoplehood in Space and Time

Posted on April 22, 2012 | 1 comment

Do you remember when Yom Ha’atsma’ut evoked sheer amazement – an Independence Day for a sovereign Jewish State! Who would have believed it? Well, the it is almost upon us again, but the quality of the day has changed. It has grown so familiar with age that most Jews here will not even notice it come and go, and those who do will wonder what to do with it.

I suggest we treat it as the opportunity to make spiritual sense of having a Jewish homeland while living outside of it. Gone are the days when founding Prime Minister David Ben Gurion could argue that the only proper Jewish response was aliyah. Gone too are the days when Jews had scruples about having a Jewish state altogether. And gone as well are the days when Jews in the Diaspora could relate to Israel meaningfully with no other rationale than proprietary amazement.

That is a formidable truth, especially about the next generation of Jews, those under 40 (let us say), who can just as easily leave Judaism as stay in it, and who want to know that the Jewish project matters enough to command their allegiance. I call that search for commitment “spiritual.” Hence my claim that it is time to make “spiritual  sense” of being a Jewish People divided by geography. What does it mean to live either in or outside the Land (ba’aretz  or chutz la’aretz), but, in either case, to share the mission that gives being Jewish its raison d’etre?

That there is such a mission, I take for granted (although I know it deserves argument on another occasion). My concern here is the phenomenon of the Israel-Diaspora divide which goes back as far as the collective Jewish memory reaches. We need a useful way to think about it.

A productive starting point is the consciousness of space and time as complementary ways of being in the world. We inhabit both, but have different perceptions of each. Points in space are arrayed in a way that allows us to commute back and forth among them. Not so time, which seems more like a video passing before our eyes — just the point that we call “now” actually exists; the others (past and future) belong to memory or anticipation.

A singular phenomenon of Judaism is its intentional seriousness about both. Like other religions and cultures, we too have a holiday cycle that celebrates sacred time; no surprise there. But, somewhat uniquely, we also insist that we have a land, a plot of sacred space without which we would not fully be Jews.

Religions tend to be phenomena of time – they measure their birth by a single historical moment when a prophet, savior, or sage, called them into being. Judaism too goes back to a primordial call in time, but it depends as well on a primordial space that was singled out simultaneously. The founding message to Abraham was precisely to go to the land that God would show him. Judaism, then, had a sacred place the moment it came into being.

So the plenitude of human aspiration is lived out in time and in space; and Judaism, from the outset, highlighted both.

Modern times have seen what amounts to a division of sacred labor: Israelis inhabit spiritual space; Diasporans mine spiritual time. Israelis, who know only space, are chagrined by Diasporans who never even contemplate moving to Israel. Diasporans, who know only time, are piqued by Israelis who go to the beach, not the synagogue, on Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur. Both charges are true, but neither is a sign of spiritual ill will. They are simply outgrowths of our two diverse orientations to the sacred: sacred space for Israelis; sacred time for Diasporans.

This time/space perspective sheds light on the attractiveness of Jewish Peoplehood. Ever since the destruction of the first Temple, we have known communities in Israel and in the Diaspora, each one strengthening the other. I do not mean just the exercise of money and power: Diasporan donations that fuel Israeli economic and military genius, which in turn bring pride to the Diaspora. I mean something deeper – a worldwide and eternal People harnessing spiritual energy from the entire space-time continuum.

To live just in space or just in time is impoverishing. I relish the reminder that I have both, and Yom Ha’atsma’ut is such a reminder: a moment in sacred time to affirm my commitment to sacred space. When accompanied by thoughtfulness about the purpose of Jewish Peoplehood, the universal mission for which the Jewish People exists, it can be Jewish spirituality at its finest.

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To Thine Own Self Be True

Posted on April 18, 2012 | Leave a comment

One of Shakespeare’s greatest lines is the advice Polonius gives his nephew, in Hamlet. “To thine own self be true.” We like that: it resonates with our passion for personal authenticity, part and parcel, by now, of the way baby boomers (and now, their children) embrace the world. But it meant something different to Polonius than it does to us.

It was only in Shakespeare’s time, says Lionel Trilling, that society as we know it came into being. When Shakespeare had Polonius urge truth to oneself, he had in mind this new society of impersonal crowds, in which people largely went from role to role: innkeeper, consumer, employer, neighbor, and so forth. Authenticity for Polonius meant alignment with the self that lies below these social roles – a warning against pretending to be what we are not.

It was the age of Machiavelli, after all, who positively advised people to dissemble. The word “villain” came to mean precisely someone who never tells the truth – like Hamlet’s mother, of whom Hamlet says,

O most pernicious woman!
O villain, villain, smiling, damnèd villain!
…..
That one may smile, and smile, and be a villain.

Shakespeare specialized in such villains, not just Hamlet’s mother, but Iago who frames Othello and Cassius who manipulates Brutus to assassinate Julius Caesar. “To thine own self be true” meant avoiding pretense.

Because the sincerely authentic soul neither lies nor dissembles, the second half of Polonius’s advice ensues. Not just, “To thine own self be true” but also, “It must follow, as the night the day, Thou canst not then be false to any man.” It is this second half that we miss today. For us, the self exists for its own sake. As long as we develop our inner passions, it matters little if we then are false to others.

This was also a tenet enshrined in the popular understanding of Jean Paul Sartre’s existentialist novel Nausea that became practically a cult classic when the early boomers were going to College. Its protagonist is beset by an inexplicable fit of nausea until he admits that he is on his own in life — without history, tradition or God to justify or guide him. “Things are entirely what they appear to be and behind them there is nothing.”

How different this is from the religious mentality, where things are not just what they appear to be, and behind them there is something else: a set of ideals, values, and a commanding presence whom we call God.

The new authenticity of self has no moral force. It is purely expressive, a kind of romantic individualism allowing just about anything. Its compelling appeal is evident in the recruiting commercial of the US army from 1980 to 2001: not a call to defend the homeland, not a moral reminder to do one’s duty, but, “Be all that you can be: join the army.”

To be sure, other people too are said to have the right of self-expression, so we are not completely free to do whatever we want. But the best we get is the ultimate laissez faire: Express yourself however you like, as long as you don’t get in the way of others doing the same. John Stuart Mill is famous for his utilitarian ethic that advocated “the greatest happiness for the greatest number.” We have an expressive version of utilitarianism: “the greatest self-expression for the greatest number.”

Judaism, by contrast, measures expression of self by an external standard of human life at its best: something supremely good, worthy, purposeful – even noble, which calls us to service.

Gotthold Solomon was a founding rabbi of the New Israelite Temple of Hamburg. In 1824, he published a sermon entitled, “What is our Calling?” — a manifesto for a new kind of Judaism: a Judaism that celebrated the nobility of human potential. Almost 200 years later (despite the understandable nineteenth-century sexist reference to God), it sounds newly fresh with promise – exactly what self-expression for its own sake lacks.

“In spirit and soul, we belong to a higher order than what presents itself  as          ephemeral. We feel that we are human in the most noble sense of the                 word….         that we are closely connected to the Father of all existence, and that we could have no higher purpose than to show ourselves worthy of this relationship.”

The current culture of expressive individualism is dismally unaware of nobility as our highest human goal. Authenticity of self is valid, but only because the self’s deepest truth is its call to be noble.

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Seder Wisdom For Our Time

Posted on March 28, 2012 | 6 comments

The Sabbath prior to Passover is called Shabbat Hagadol (“The Great Sabbath”). Its origins are clouded in mystery, even for us, who have access to historical records and a sophisticated historical understanding of how to read them. All the more so, was it a mystery to our medieval ancestors who had neither.

Not knowing how it began, some of these medieval Jews thought the original term had been Shabbat Hagadah “The Sabbath of the Haggadah,” because they spent the day reviewing the Seder service for use later in the week. So in preparation for my seder, I too am reviewing, and have gotten as far as  Dayyenu. We sing it, I think, because if we just read it, we might concentrate on its words, which are enough to stop us in our tracks.

Dayyenu means, “It would have been enough.” We say, for instance, “If God had only brought us to Mt. Sinai, but not given us the Torah: Dayyenu.” But do we honestly believe we would have been satisfied if God had said, “Look folks, I have a Torah up there, but you can’t have it; enjoy the view.”

Another example: “If God had split the sea for us but not led us through it on dry land: Dayyenu.” Really? What good would the split sea have been if we had been restrained on shore for the Egyptians to kill us? We should be saying lo dayyenu. Any single step toward freedom would not have been enough. Only the entire thing is dayyenu. Less would have been a teaser.

The usual explanation for calling each step “enough,” is that we were unworthy of anything more. The Italian commentator, Shibbolei Haleket is typical. God took us from Egypt, he says, the way a premature baby is rescued from its mother’s womb — unready for life outside, but taken out anyway and nurtured until it appreciates what it already has. So too, we were saved prematurely, experiencing God’s gracious deliverance stage by stage, and expected to demonstrate appreciation at each one before receiving more. Dayyenu.

But think of it. When is it normal to plead, “Enough”? Not when we don’t deserve something, but when we don’t really want it. It is as if, at each step, we pleaded, “Enough already! Please, God, no more.”

Dayyenu should be read alongside the well-known midrashim that emphasize how little Israel wanted the responsibility of being a chosen people. God, we are told, first offered Torah to other nations, who refused it altogether. We agreed to shoulder its burden only after God lifted Mt. Sinai over our heads and threatened us with extinction otherwise.

Looking back, we might find good reason to have been wary. Given the task of Torah and the history of being Jewish, we can well imagine our ancestors pleading, “Enough already. Who needs being chosen?” Every single redemptive step implies further obligation. Wouldn’t just a little obligation have been enough?

We know how it ends. We did not short-circuit salvation. God did it all, and so must we.

Because we were taken from Egypt, we must deliver others from servitude.

Because God brought judgment upon their idols, we must speak out against today’s forms of idolatry.

Because God fed us in the wilderness, we must feed others in the deserts of their lives.

Because God gave us Torah, we must study it, know it, live by it.

Because God brought us to our land, we must never be without it.

Because God built a Temple for atonement, we must admit our sins.

It goes on and on. Do we really need all this?

The answer, of course, is that we do; and more besides. The traditional Dayyenu ends with establishing the Temple, but Jewish history didn’t stop there.

Early Reform Jews added these lines to their Haggadah.

“If God had only sent us prophets of truth, dayyenu.

If God had only made us a holy people, dayyenu.”

Because God sent us prophets we must live a prophetic life: ethically (not gouging the poor, for instance) and spiritually (keeping faith with the promise of a better time to come). Because we are a holy people, we must emulate God: visiting the sick, showing compassion, insisting on justice.

We should add our own lines. After centuries of yearning, we have been returned to Eretz Yisra’el. At my seder, we sing, Ilu hechezireinu el artseinu, dayyenu. “If God had only returned us to our land, dayyenu.” Because we have reclaimed our Land, we must settle it, visit it, support it, and make it the sacred home that it was meant to be.

Passover lets us say dayyenu, as long as we don’t really mean it. We are in history for the long run. The Seder commits us to see it through, come what may.

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Time Out!

Posted on February 14, 2012 | Leave a comment

With the Super Bowl behind us, I can at last put aside the numerical complexities of football: three-point field goal; six-point touchdown; one-point conversion; two-point safety;  two-minute rule, four downs; ten yards: the list goes on and on.

I am, however, taken by the time-out regulations. Each team gets three of them per half, during which it takes a break from the game, and strategizes for reentry.

It would be awfully nice, it seems to me, to have time-outs in life: when the circumstances of living wear us down, we get to signal to whoever is running us around at the time that we are retiring briefly, and will be back. Life would stop temporarily, maybe with a commercial in some unknown planet where extraterrestrial beings are watching us. Who knows?

Whatever the case, when the time-out ends, we would bound back into our work and families like recharged football players being whistled back onto the field. We would launch new strategies in place of old ones, ready to face whatever challenges life throws our way.

Call it crazy, but that’s the sort of thing I muse about, these last grey days of winter, with the dismal month of February endlessly under way, and still a lot to handle before Spring brings the welcome floral march through crocuses, daffodils, tulips and the rest.

While still within these doldrums, the Jewish calendar gives us Mishpatim, a reading that promises “time out.”

Most of it is purely legal: laws of murder, mayhem, and the like. But it ends with Moses ascending Mt. Sinai to meet with God for forty days and forty nights. The odd thing is that the story now stops for two whole weeks; it will take two sedras until we rejoin Moses on the mountain. For the interim two weeks, we get to wonder what he did those forty days and forty nights.

Our commentators wonder also. “How long does it take for God to write the Torah?” asks Abravanel. “Creating the entire world took only seven days!”

Sforno answers by referring to another forty-day period. For the first forty days of their lives, new-born babies are considered by halakhah to have had only tentative status as “alive.” Infants who die before that are not considered to have been fully born.   We enter this world, as it were, through birth and then rebirth: the nine months of gestation, when the fetus marshals the capacity to emerge safely from the womb; and its first forty days, when it masters the tasks of staying alive. It takes forty days, says Sforno, to be reborn, and that is why Moses remained so long atop Mt. Sinai – not for God’s sake, but for his own. It was a forty-day “time out,” an opportunity to reenergize his flagging spirit when the trip from Egypt began to wear him down and his task was far from over.

But here’s the thing: tradition credits Moses with climbing the mountain not just once, but three times – for the first tablets, then the second ones, and in between, to plead for Israel after the Golden Calf. Moses too had three time-outs. Each one lasted longer than it had to, as far as God was concerned. They each got stretched to forty days to give Moses time to rest, re-strategize, and reemerge reborn.

The English calendar gives us February hope with Groundhog Day: the illusion of an early Spring. But Groundhog Day is child’s play: it merely gets us through the winter. The Jewish calendar gives us MIshpatim, and the promise of renewed life, three times, just what we need if you think about it: first, as young adults about to take our independent place within the world; second, in our middle years, our “mid-life crisis,” when we fear that what we’ve been doing will not sustain us through the years ahead; third, when we retire or otherwise become what is euphemistically called “a senior” — then, too, a lot of life is left, enough to warrant a third “time out” to consider what to do with it.

Moses did it – why shouldn’t we – take time out, I mean, three times: when we graduate college, hit middle age, and start thinking about our twilight years?

Ad me’ah v’esrim – “May you live for 120 years!” That’s the traditional Jewish birthday greeting. The idea is simple. Moses lived for 120 years. Maybe we will too. But it could equally wish us three chances to be reborn. Ad me’ah v’esrim: “May you take time out for 120 days, forty days three times, and may you make the most of each and every one of them.”

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“Despoiling the Egyptians”: An Exercise In Moral Logic

Posted on January 24, 2012 | 4 comments

The  sedra for this week (Bo) features one of the most troubling episodes in all of Torah: the so-called despoiling of the Egyptians. Back in Exodus 3, the Israelites are promised that they will leave Egypt not just with their freedom but with great wealth. “You shall strip the Egyptians bare,” goes the promise, in colloquial English of today.

Sure enough, this week the Israelites prepare to leave by “borrowing” objects of silver and gold from their neighbors. Borrowing? Not exactly. Everybody knows, that they are leaving Egypt for good with no intention of returning. The Egyptians comply because “God disposed them favorably” toward their erstwhile Jewish slaves (verse 11:3). How so? They repented of the evil they had done as slave masters, says Ramban. But let’s face it: it didn’t hurt any that the Egyptians were frightened to death by the plagues.

This is a significant moral dilemma. When the Egyptians had the upper hand, they impoverished the Jews. Now that the tables are turned, should the Jews then impoverish the Egyptians? Ibn Ezra dismisses the whole issue by insisting that God who owns the entire world can rightfully allot it to whomever He wishes. End of story. But most commentators cannot buy that. Surely God is subject to the same moral law as that which binds human beings.

So commentators try to get the Israelites off the moral hook by observing that the Israelites “borrowed” the Egyptians’ goods only at Moses’ insistence. They were not looters, that is, not a mob intent on extortion. The Israelites requested their neighbors possessions against their own will, actually – purely because Moses commanded them to do so.

Still, what moral rationale could Moses have had? Following the Talmud (Sanhedrin 91a), most commentators decide that Moses was only claiming the wages owed from years of unpaid slavery. This was not vengeance; it was justice. Ethical law prohibits an underclass from using its sudden turn of fortune to rob former masters. But Moses (a prophet, after all) imposed a higher order of moral logic than what ethical law permits.

Ever the philosopher and legalist, Maimonides thinks through the consequences of this position. In his code (Hilkhot Y’sodei Torah, Chapter 9) he comes to the astonishing conclusion that “someone who is known to be a prophet” may temporarily override the laws of Torah. But think about it: are we really ready to permit our leaders, even temporarily, to override morality? They would have to be recognized prophets of course but how can we know for sure that someone is a prophet?

Maimonides’ prime example — Elijah who offers a sacrifice on Mount Carmel despite the Torah’s mandate to do so only in Jerusalem — is talmudic (Yeb 90b). But Elijah’s case is different. Whatever he did, he did himself. Convinced of an emergency situation, he acted on his own — he did not induce others to sacrifice outside the Temple. And the rule of Torah that he dismissed was not a moral one. It impacted God, perhaps, but not other human beings.

The case of Moses is more difficult because Moses instructed others to disobey a precept and because the precept in question was moral. Can just anyone, then, be a modern-day Moses?

That frightening possibility may underlie Maimonides’ insistence that Moses was utterly unique. The Torah concludes by observing that no prophet has ever arisen like Moses, and Maimonides raises that observation to the status of being one of his 13 principles of faith. In principle, then, a prophet may instruct others to countermand basic moral logic. In practice, however, we are wary of anyone who tries to do so. No one, after all, is like Moses.

The logic attributed to Moses is not wrong: considerations of justice should (and do) guide our thinking about compensation for slaves – – that has been our position regarding the Sho’ah. But we arrive at that conclusion by going through the institution of law, not by going around it.

In the end, the Torah is not in heaven, Maimonides reminds us. It remains the responsibility of human beings to interpret it. But interpretation is the very stuff of law not its dismissal. In the era before Sinai, Moses was the singular embodiment of legal interpretation. He had the right, therefore, to instruct the Israelites to take what was properly theirs. But no one has arisen like Moses, and we are beyond him now.

The sure sign of civilization, Judaism insists, is the rule of law. Societies stand or fall on the balance of justice and mercy with which their understanding of law operates. We insist as well on morality but entrust it to the complexity of such properly functioning legal systems.

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Denominations: The Final, Moral, Test

Posted on January 15, 2012 | 5 comments

In response to my blog decrying the premature obituary of religious denominations, I have received several emails that deserve response. Some readers charge me with unfairly championing Reform Judaism as the only successful merger of modernity and tradition. Others think I unfairly dismiss Orthodoxy as a monolithic premodern whole. Still others persist in thinking that denominations necessarily limit creativity. At the very least, others say, why not argue for a single denomination outside of Orthodoxy, giving us Orthodox on one hand and non-Orthodox on the other? These are very important critiques that require clarification. Let me take each in its turn.

1.      “I unfairly champion Reform Judaism as the only successful merger of modernity and tradition.”

I never said it and don’t believe it. All denominations today arose as responses to the challenge of remaining Jews in a modern world. So too, did Zionism and Jewish socialism, the strategies that were favored in eastern Europe where religious reform did not dominate Jewish consciousness as much as it did in the west. All Jews have had to wrestle with modernity and either affirm it or (at some psychic cost) deny it. I cited today’s Reform Judaism an exemplary instance of merging modernity and tradition, but there can be others.

2.      “I unfairly dismiss Orthodoxy as a monolithic whole that is inherently premodern.”

Not so. Modern Orthodoxy is exactly what its name implies: modern and Orthodox. Its preeminent German founder, Samson Raphael Hirsch shared a great deal with the reformers, including the conviction that he was at home in Germany, the desire for modern aesthetics in worship, and the conviction that chosen peoplehood implies a Jewish mission. To be sure, Hirsch faulted his likeminded Reform colleagues on other counts, but is he modern? Of course. Modern Orthodoxy has moved on significantly from its Hirschian origins, just as modern Reform has from its parallel German starting point, but by no means do I dismiss modern Orthodoxy as inferior, even though I, myself, have chosen to identify as Reform.

3.      “We would be better off with untrammeled creativity on the congregational level, but without denominations which limit it.”

It is not true that institutions necessarily protect the status quo. Renaissance art and Baroque music (for example) were supported by the establishment. Great inventiveness has arisen out of corporation-sponsored think tanks. Denominations can catalyze greatness by encouraging brilliance, supporting genius, and rewarding excellence.

4.      “Why not opt for a single denomination outside of Orthodoxy, so that we have Orthodox on one hand and non-Orthodox on the other?”

We live in a time of enormous personal choice and if denominations offer real options, people are more likely to identify with a particular type of Judaism than with Judaism in general. Jews insistent on traditionalist worship and a halakhic life-style will be drawn to Orthodoxy. Jews who care deeply about egalitarian worship, a tradition of prophetic ethics, and spirituality will be happiest in Reform. Other denominations can and should make their own claims to specificity. Because we cannot predict the kind of Judaism that any given person will seek, we need strong denominational addresses all along the Jewish spectrum.

I am, you see, very much a pluralist. I think we need pluralism to keep us sharp and competitive. Respectful denominational competition can be healthy. But as much as we should champion everyone else’s right to practice Judaism as they wish, we also have an obligation to identify deeply as our own kind of Jew. We should allow for many options but be passionate in supporting our own favored option.

5.      The moral argument

I say “everyone else’s right to practice Judaism as they wish.” But there are limits. Some interpretations of Judaism are beyond the pale, offensive to the point where we must say so. When, for example, a rabbi in Israel refuses to rent to a Muslim on prejudicial, even racial, grounds, we must all denounce his message as a kind of Judaism we will not tolerate. We should stand together in respecting the licit interpretations of Torah while denouncing the illicit ones.

That is another reason for denominations. In the normal course of things, be it politics, religion or life in general, the crazies always shout the loudest. How much impact can the reasoned opposition of several scattered synagogues have? Denominations, however, speak with the accumulated voice of many; they command attention in the press and media. We need their voice of sanity when Judaism is wrongly represented as other than it is.

Indeed, the moral test of denominations is precisely this. Are they willing to make their voice heard? Given the disturbing news from Israel of torched mosques, abused women, and trampled human rights, we are at the point where we are about to find out.

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Rule Makers or Rule Breakers? An Iron Cage of Our Own Making

Posted on January 1, 2012 | Leave a comment

After a hiatus of about four years, I’ve returned to my course on Ritual Studies. I love this course, which has grown to become a synoptic understanding of the major currents in western thought since the nineteenth century. Every time I teach it, I become enamored anew of the geniuses who dissected the realities of modern life so brilliantly. This time round, I have rediscovered Max Weber, who so trenchantly predicted the institutional malaise that threatens the quality of Jewish life today.

This malaise substitutes managers for leaders. Weber predicted it as part of modernity’s transition from traditional and charismatic authority to authority that is rooted in the calculus of institutional rationality.

Traditional authority is best illustrated by royalty, where rule passes automatically from father to first-born son. You get what you get: monarchs whose competence varies with chance. Charismatic authority depends on the gift of personal magnetism: Ghandi or Churchill (on one hand), Hitler or Stalin (on the other). Again, you get what you get, a “great man” cult, but no guarantee of what the “great man” will represent.

By contrast, said Weber, the modern world seeks rational predictability. Financial markets thrive on “no surprises.” Corporate efficiency requires process and protection from tyrannical whim.  People move up systematically to inhabit roles that are hedged with rules. To be role-defined and rule-driven, institutions expand bureaucracies and bureaucracies spawn managers.

Bureaucracies abhor novelty; they like rule makers, not rule breakers; they squeeze out individualism and chase out eccentrics. The managers risk imprisonment in what Weber called an “iron cage” of their own bureaucratic making. They mistake rules for reality, and then, seeing the intricate interplay of one rule with another, they live in mortal fear of precedents that might plague them later. They play it safe by multiplying meetings and erecting committees to make choices which they then merely implement.

While market-based organizations have a bottom line — sleepy bureaucracies get put out of business — not-for-profits survive as long as they retain monopolies on basic services that people require. But how long will monopolies last? How long will people still want what their parents and grandparents did? How long will they settle for services that are not spectacularly delivered?

All our institutions face these questions. As I said in my last blog, for example, synagogues that collect dues through the primary promise of life-cycle moments and pastoral care are discovering that they cannot maintain the monopoly. Granted, they usually promise community too — but in practice, that sense of community reaches only a tiny proportion of the members who are insiders: the people who like study and prayer but who generally have no exceptionally high standards for what study and prayer should become.

I may seem unduly harsh because I overlook synagogues that do much more (and do it much better), but the synagogues that I describe do exist, and they exist in large numbers — run by managerial rabbis who care deeply for people and for Jewish tradition, but who substitute management for leadership. Overworked and undersupported by institutions that barely make their threadbare budgets, these rabbis have little time to grow, to study, or to think.

Their synagogues remain stable, orderly, and predictable. The small coterie of regulars come and go to services, classes and meetings, complaining on occasion about their inability to interest more people, develop new leaders and raise more money. They are congregations in stasis – managed well and smoothly run, but limited, because managers rarely shake up well oiled systems. Congregational greatness requires rabbis with enough dissatisfaction to risk change. They need rabbis who are more than managers.

Appreciating bureaucracies for what they can do but knowing their limitations, Weber himself wondered how leaders might push management into being less risk averse. He put his faith in holdovers from charismatic authority. Charismatics dislike stasis. They thrive outside the system. They champion visions of alternatives.

These visions arise from what Weber called “ends derived from values” rather than assessments dictated by purely managerial reasoning. Only leaders who are value-driven will risk challenging bureaucratic steadiness despite the uncertainty attendant upon unsettling the status quo. Boards need to be challenged to go beyond custodial and fiduciary responsibility and develop what has been called “generative thinking” about the mission that makes what they do worth doing.

What goes for congregations goes elsewhere as well. The days of monopoly rule are over. Our institutions need to know more than how to do business with fiscal probity and managerial efficiency. They need to make sure the business they are in is responsive to a new era; and then do it creatively, nimbly, and with excellence that questions the rules as much as it honors them.

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