Tuesday, May 27, 2014

Naso

Numbers 4:21−7:89

By Rabbi Bradley Artson. Provided by the Ziegler School of Rabbinic Studies, which ordains Conservative rabbis at the American Jewish University.

Situational Ethics And God

The importance of preserving the relationship between a husband and wife provides an example of the Torah's use of relative morality.


Often, we define the moral position as the one that adheres to objective standards of right and wrong. Consequently, someone who evaluates an action in the light of eternal, immutable values demonstrates a higher level of moral development than a person who uses other, more situational standards. The roots of this perspective lie in ancient Greek thought, which associated the true with the eternal--what was perfect never changed. Similarly, the highest level of morality would be immutable.

The Greek mind sought out "laws of nature" which functioned in the realm of human morality no less than in the realm of astronomy. Modern psychologists of moral development--primarily students of the late Lawrence Kohlberg--looked to those Greek suppositions and found confirmation in the moral development of boys and men. Apparently, the highest level of moral development among males involves recourse to external rules of ethical standards that are always true and always definitive.

A Feminist View

A challenge to this notion of moral objectivity emerges in the work of Carol Gilligan, who argues that girls and women base moral decisions on how the decision will affect human relationships. Rather than rules, Gilligan argues that women govern their moral lives by weighing the cost among different human beings. Consequently, their view of morality is situational and relative.

The Torah anticipates this feminist view of morality, also holding that ethics ought to be dynamic and inter-subjective: whether between one person and another, or between a person and God.

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Monday, May 19, 2014

Bemidbar

Numbers 1:1−4:20

What Is Parenting?

Transmitting Jewish culture by embodying Jewish practice is part of the responsibilities of Jewish parenting.

By Rabbi Bradley Artson. The following article is reprinted with permission from American Jewish University.

One of the greatest mitzvot (commandments) in the Torah, the very first command given to humanity, is that of bearing children.

"Be fruitful and multiply" is the necessary underpinning of any Jewish community, since without renewed Jewish people, there can be no Torah, nor any Judaism either.

But parenting is more than simple biology. Any animal can spawn, and most animals have the necessary instincts to guide their young through a relatively brief infancy before the new generation takes off on its own, guided by its own internal barometer. Humans are distinctive in the extraordinary length of our infancy and youth, the extreme degree of dependence of our young, and by a lack of instincts on which to fall back to guide us in raising our children.

Instead of biological drives, we rely on social norms and religious values to guide our parenting and to mold our children. Our friends, our parents, books, rabbis, magazines and popular psychologists all instruct us about how to raise our children and what standards and expectations we can rightly apply to them. Human parenting, then, is executed within a network of other adults, and is guided by the cumulative experience of our own communities.

In this sense, anthropologists also speak of the transmission of a traditional culture in similar terms. A culture is normally passed from one generation to another, from knowledgeable adult to learning child. Since the adult has imbibed the norms and practices of the culture from older acculturated adults, this transmission is often simply through exposure and through example--the stuff that memories are made of, i.e., watching Bubbe lighting Shabbos candles, sitting next to Zeyde at a Seder.

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Monday, May 12, 2014

B'chukotai

Leviticus 26:3-27:34

Rebuke and Reward in this World

The fate of the individual is often determined by the behavior of the community as a whole.

By Rabbi Ismar Schorsch. Reprinted with permission of the Jewish Theological Seminary.
The penultimate chapter of Leviticus consists of a divine plea to heed God's commandments. It takes the form of inducements and intimidations, promises of agricultural bounty and national tranquility and threats of defeat, chaos and exile. The future of ancient Israel in its homeland will depend entirely on its adherence to the revelation at Sinai. Aside from the poetry of the passage, its rhetoric pulsates with a tone of urgency. Free will has its risks; people may choose to put themselves in harm's way. Rebellion against the strictures of God is the persistent evil that endangers society.

Neither this collection of admonitions nor those at the end of Deuteronomy are cast in terms of life after death or the world-to-come. They are utterly different from the hell-fire sermons of Puritan New England in which compliance is coerced through damnation. The religious vocabulary of the Torah, and indeed the Tanakh, is pervasively this-worldly. Life predominates as the supreme value and relegates an inchoate notion of the afterlife--Sheol--to the margins of collective consciousness. Accordingly, retribution or reward are natural phenomena, occurring in the here and now. The language betrays no notion of a soul that transcends death.

Equally noteworthy, the audience for our concluding address is the people as a whole, and not the individual Israelite. What will be weighed in the balance is the piety and morality of the nation, which if found to be wanting will impact adversely on the fate of the minority of God-fearing citizens. To abide personally by God's will can secure one's well-being only if a sufficient number of others do the same. Hence, the paradigmatic nature of Abraham's discourse with God on the fate of Sodom and Gomorrah. How many righteous members will it take to avert the destruction of a community? Throughout much of the Tanakh the group takes precedence over the individual. The marquee actor in the drama is the nation. The Torah's legislative agenda is to forge a mass of slaves into "a kingdom of priests and a holy nation," a beacon of justice and righteousness for an ever wayward humanity.

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Monday, May 5, 2014

B'har

Leviticus 25:1-26:2

Our Love For The Land Of Israel

The commandment to bring the redemption of the Land of Israel reminds us of the inextricable link between Judaism and Israel.

By Rabbi Bradley Artson. The following article is reprinted with permission from American Jewish University.

One of the central paradoxes of Jewish history is that the Jewish people were landless through most of our history.

Yet, we were always profoundly aware of our link to the Land of Israel, perhaps because we did not live in a place we could call our own. The intense love between the Jews and their homeland permeated our prayers, our Torah and our hearts. Today's Torah portion speaks directly to the centrality of the Land of Israel in Jewish thought and deed. God instructs the Jewish People, "You must provide for the ge'ulah (redemption) of the land."

What does it mean, to bring redemption to a land? It might make sense to use tangible terms--"irrigate" the land, "fertilize" the land, even "cultivate" the land. Those are terms upon which a farmer would act and recognize. But how does one "redeem" a land?

According to most biblical commentators, this verse is understood as mandating a loving Jewish presence in the Land of Israel. Thus, Hizkuni (France, 13th century) interprets our verse to mean that "there can be no [permanent] selling, only [temporary] dwelling."


Jews do not have the right to sever their connection to the Land of Israel. That claim--our inextricable link to the Land of Israel--is at the very core of biblical and rabbinic religion. The Land is referred to as an "ahuzzah," a holding--given to the Jewish People as God's part of our brit, our covenantal relationship. Our ancestors agreed to serve only God, and God agreed to maintain a unique relationship with the Jewish People.

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