Monday, January 28, 2013

February 2, 2013


Yitro, Exodus 18:1–20:23 

The Word Made Animate

Seeking the living soul of our sacred texts. 

By Rabbi Ismar Schorsch

Christianity turns on the doctrine of incarnation as formulated famously by the Gospel of John: "So the Word became flesh; he came to dwell among us, and we saw his glory, such glory as befits the Father's only Son, full of grace and truth" (1:14). It is a doctrine that Jews tend to identify as uniquely Christian. Whereas both Judaism and Christianity equally acknowledged that at creation "the Word dwelt with God" (1:1) as both wisdom and instrument, Judaism refrained from ever endowing it with human form. Though valid, the distinction does not preclude the appearance in Judaism of the doctrine. For Judaism, the Word became incarnate as book.

The comparison occurs to me because of a Talmudic comment on the first word of the Ten Commandments. Like many such comments, its brevity conceals a world of profundity. The emphatic form of the pronoun "I," anokhi, did not fail to arrest the midrashic imagination. R. Yochanan, the dominant Galilean rabbi of the third century, treated it as an acronym, that is, each letter stood for a word. Thus deconstructed, he read the word to amplify the divine authorship of the Decalogue: "I Myself, wrote and gave [this]" (Babylonian Talmud, Shabbat 105a). Implicitly, the statement affirms that the entire Torah embodies God's word.

Jewish Incarnation
But Abraham Joshua Heschel in his final book Kotzk: A Struggle for Truth (Yiddish, 1973) goes beyond the doctrine that the Torah was literally revealed. In quoting this passage from the Talmud, he translates the words of R. Yochanan to mean "I give Myself in writing" (p. 58). That formulation is a Jewish version of incarnation. The words of the Torah are more than the medium of God's will; they are the very form which God's presence takes in our world of time and space. Concentration on the text leads to union with the Almighty.

In the spirit of the Baal Shem Tov, the founder of modern Hasidism, Heschel reminds us that when we study the words of a particular sage in the Talmud, we ought to conjure up his presence, to see him standing before us. Beyond understanding his words, we must actually live with him and feel the power of his spirit. Similarly, the words of the Torah enable us to lose ourselves in God's presence.

The doctrine of incarnation is not absent from the synagogue either.

Monday, January 21, 2013

January 26, 2013


B'shalah, Exodus 13:17-17:16
Shabbat Shirah

Torah Like Water

A creative interpretation yields a valuable lesson about the vital importance of Torah to the Jewish people.

By Rabbi Ismar Schorsch

A Canon Without Closure


We tend to think of revelation as a highly restrictive term.The fate of a revealed text is to be immutable. We humans have no right to alter what God has given. But inJudaism, precisely because the Torah is revered as divine, it becomes susceptible to unending interpretation. It would be a denigration of God's word to saddle it with just a single meaning.

drinking waterIn contrast to human speech, which carries a finite range of meanings, the language of God was deemed to be endowed with an infinity of meanings. This theology freed the Rabbis to do midrash, creating the anomaly of a canon without closure. The vessels kept changing their contents. New challenges elicited new insights into a text inviolable only on the surface.
A Metaphoric Reading

In this week's parashah we have an instance of a metaphoric reading that takes us in a single move from the physical world to the realm of the spiritual. I focus on this piece of midrash not only because it reflects brilliantly how the Rabbis transcended the literal confines of the Torah, but also because it sheds light on the mystery of Jewish survival.

After crossing the Sea of Reeds with God's unforgettable help, the Israelites continued on into the wilderness of Shur. Three days into their journey without water, their mood turned ugly. The water at Marah was toobitter to drink. They groused and God instructed Moses to sweeten the water with a piece of wood, which he did successfully (15:22-25). The incident is note worthy only as a harbinger of uprisings to come. Miracles failed to change the Israelites into long-term believers.
Thirsty For Torah

It is the midrash that lifts the episode out of the ordinary. On the verse, "They traveled three days in the wilderness and found no water" (22), some mystically inclined Rabbis opined: "Water actually stands for Torah, as it is said (by Isaiah, 55:1), 'Ho, all who are thirsty, come for water.' Having gone for three days without Torah, the prophets among them stepped forth and legislated that the Torah should be read on the second and fifth days of the week as well as on Shabbat so that they would not let three days pass without Torah" (Babylonian Talmud, BavaKama 82a).

Continue reading.

Tuesday, January 15, 2013

January 19, 2013


 Bo, Exodus 10:1–13:16

The Darkness

The power of the final plagues.

By Rabbi Ismar Schorsch

Darkness unsettles us. As children we went to sleep with a small light on; as adults we prefer to come home to a dwelling not totally dark. We fear what we cannot see. It is for this reason that we start the evening service with the recitation of a verse from Psalm 78: "But he, the compassionate one, would expiate sin, and not destroy; he would again and again turn back his anger, and would not arouse his full wrath" (v. 38, trans.by Edward J. Greenstein). As the darkness of night envelops us, we affirm God's nearness. God does not withdraw with the setting of the sun.

We intone ma'ariv [evening prayer service] only after the appearance of three stars. It begins with barkhu, the call to praise God in a minyan [prayer quorum of 10]. Yet before that summons to prayer, we softly recite for ourselves vehu rahum . . . The verse is there to offset our anxiety with the onset of night. It avers the opposite of what we fear.

According to the midrash, the first time Adam experienced nightfall, he was overcome with dread. That first Shabbat of God's newly created world had lasted 36 hours. As it ended, Adam feared that under cover of darkness his mortal enemy, the snake, would do him harm. To assuage his angst,God provided Adam with two flints from which he produced fire. During the havdalah ceremony ending Shabbat we still recall that initial act of human creativity by saying a special blessing over fire praising God for enabling Adam to dissipate the darkness (Bereshit Rabba 11:2). Similarly, the ritual of starting ma'ariv with vehu rahum was inspired by the tinge of Adam's primordial dread that assaults us nightly.

Thursday, January 10, 2013

January 12, 2013


Not Rhetoric, But Reality

Va-era 5773, Exodus 6:2–9:35

By Rabbi Marc Wolf | Vice Chancellor and Director of Community Engagement

One of the more disheartening reports about Israeli society these days is that our brothers and sisters in Israel are simply not as concerned with the struggle for religious pluralism to the degree that we are in North America. Reporting this past week from the JTA, Ben Sales added his voice to the chorus of journalists writing about what many in the Diaspora consider to be of preeminent importance, but what many in the Israeli population are, at best, disinterested in. The last few months have seen a number of media-covered incidents during which activists for religious equality at the Kotel have been publicly detained for violating the religious strictures defined by the ultra-Orthodox controlling interests of the Western Wall Plaza. A Facebook comment posted after the most recent arrest at the Western Wall stated the issue clearly: “If a Jew were arrested for expressing their Jewish identity in any other country, the world Jewish community would declare it anti-Semitic.” The North American Jewish community has been fighting this Orthodox control in the public and private spheres, but, as Sales writes, “Among the Israeli secular majority, such restrictions rank near the bottom of a long list of church-state issues they would like to address.”

Related to the broader issue of the strangle hold ultra-Orthodoxy has on religion in Israel, writer Yair Rosenberg, in a piece in Tablet magazine, wrote about the recent surge of the popularity of Tzohar, a more moderate Orthodox group maneuvering to gain control of the Chief Rabbinate. Its outreach to the ever-growing secular majority of Israelis has made it a popular alternative to the Haredim currently in control. Nonetheless, even though it is more moderate, Tzohar is still Orthodox, thus, Masorti and Reform marriages and conversions would not be recognized if the group was to assume control. Quoted in the Tablet piece, Yizhar Hess, executive director of the Masorti Movement in Israel, argued against what many in the secular camp are regarding as progress: “I don’t want to have a moderate Orthodox service. Each [movement] has its own identity. That’s how it should be.”

Rosenberg contends that there is a fundamental disconnect between Israelis and American Jews with regard to this question. Citing an article written by Professor Yehuda Mirsky of Brandeis University, Rosenberg states that “Israelis and Americans are speaking two very different languages when it comes to Jewish life and practice, which stem from two distinct historical experiences.” Our denominational structure with its roots in Western Europe that we embrace and rebel against in North America is foreign to the Eastern European ancestry of much of Israeli ideology. As such, Rosenberg continues, “Secular Israeli Jews might not believe in Orthodox doctrine, but many respect it as the authentic representative of the tradition.” The result is the rampant disinterest that Israelis have for the flag of religious pluralism that we so fervently wave in the Diaspora. Is religious pluralism doomed in Israel? Do we have a hope of stirring the hearts of Israelis?

Wednesday, January 2, 2013

January 5, 2013


Good for the Midwives

Shemot, Exodus 1:1–6:1

by Dr. Walter Herzberg , Assistant Professor of Bible and Professional and Pastoral Skills

Pharaoh instructs the midwives to kill the male children of the Hebrew women they deliver. Amazingly, the midwives do not obey Pharaoh’s orders. As a result, we read the following in Exodus 1:20–21:

God did good to the midwives
And the people increased and became very vast
And it was since the midwives feared God
That He/he made them houses/households

Question: What exactly was the good that God did for the midwives? This question has engaged the commentators throughout the generations.

By simply examining a few interpretations of various commentators, we shall attempt to consider the implied or sometimes explicit theology that ensues from their comments—all based on their consideration of the same textual/literary question(s).

Two other textual questions related to verses 20 and 21 above must be kept in mind before we proceed. Who is the antecedent of the pronoun he in the phrase “he made them houses”? (Most commentators suggest God, though more than a few suggest Pharaoh). And finally, are the houses he made literal houses, or are they meant to be understood metaphorically?

Rashi (1040–1140, France), asks our question: “What was the good” and answers that the reward is stated in the following verse (Exod. 1:21): that God made them [metaphorical] houses of the priesthood, levites and royalty. In other words, God established households or families for them. The implied theology of Rashi’s comment is articulated by U. Cassuto (1883–1951, Italy, Israel): that God rewarded the midwives measure for measure (“middah keneged middah”), as is his custom. The midwives save the Hebrew children and families, so God provides them with their own distinguished families as a reward.

Many commentators find fault with Rashi’s skipping to verse 21 in order to find the good, insisting instead that the good must be found in verse 20 itself: “the people increased and became very vast.” Yitzhaq Caro (Toledot Yitzhaq, 1458–1535, Spain) states that the fact that the people increased so greatly was the midwives’ reward. It was good for business! In other words, the more children being born, the busier the midwives would be. The implied theology of his comment may be that God will reward us with a decent livelihood if we are deserving (Jews have been praying for parnasah, a respectable livelihood, for centuries).