So I got in this fight with my Sister-in-Law.... over a Rabbi.
She's a great Jewish soul... but her way is not my way.
She recommended a number of books by "Conservative" writers because she felt I wasn't getting a "balanced view" of the Jewish world. She didn't [and doesn't] understand the road I have walked nor the vistas I have seen.
She got a little pushy one night a few weeks back and I told her I wasn't really interested in reading Rabbi Tulushkin which took her aback.
I later asked for forgiveness concerning my "rejection" of reading Tulushkin. Why ever would I "reject" the writings of such a good Rabbi?
My only contact with R. Telushkin is a book he co-wrote with Dennis Prager: "Nine Questions People Ask About Judaism". Their answers to Questions Number 7 and Number 8 are enough of a reason. These questions are:
7) Why are so many young Jews alienated from Judaism and from the Jewish people?
8) Why shouldn't I intermarry-- Doesn't Judaism Believe in Universal Brotherhood?
The answers they give to these questions, at least to me, are enough to make a good soul wretch and a bad soul laugh.
One of the "tenderest" spots in my "Jewishness" is the one that says I am "a stranger among you". Yet when I read what these kind, intelligent, and well educated gentlemen write, what do I find? I find that what I seek, what I feel, and what I know is wrong. I am in their eyes ignorant. A dunce. Not worth the effort. I am "less than" one who follows the way that is, in their eyes, "The Only Truly Holy Way".
This is like the hubris of Christianity:
It is not that Christianity claims that they had *the* messiah nor that they declared they got "a new and better contract with G-d". It is their claim that no good or striving soul may truly know G-d without doing-believing-saying-holding *only* their beliefs and *only* their way. I cannot identify with a spiritual path that excludes the stranger, tears down people or relationships rather than builds them, or that shuns rather than embraces.
I do not believe this what G-d wants from us as Jews... or from our spiritual leaders.
A second concern that has come to me as I have have studied Judaism and its history and philosphy these past few months is the modern Jewish obsession [especially over the last 100 years] with the life of the mind and "rationalizing" G-d to the point where the words of the Torah, Talmud, and even the Siddur are empty, historical documents that have no meaning. As they have emptied the meaning from the words so they have emptied the Synagogue.
As an example, Wendy [my Sister-in-Law] mentioned Maimonaides recently and that I should read and follow him. In reading the "Guide for the Perplexed" I can see the "brilliance" of his reasoning to prove that G-d has no physical body... Well reasoned!
Almost 800 years later R. Bernard J. Bamberger [A Reform Scholar] wrote a book entitled "Fallen Angels" which is a history and a debunking of the idea that there is such a thing as fallen angels and maybe even angels at all.
Along the way he takes "well reasoned" pot shots [some of them deserved, some not] at any belief that is "not rational" in terms of a "modern intelectual, philosophic" reading of the Torah. In the eyes of R. Telushkin, Dennis Prager, and R. Bamberger we are "ethical monotheists..." not Jewish monotheists or even more simply just Jews. They each have given us much in the way of information but sadly not much in the way of wisdom.
There are somethings I think some Rabbis need to understand:
1) You can't get a Jew into a Torah wrestling match if you've rigged the match. That means that if what you are saying is not intellectually engaging or emotionally up lifting, no one is going to listen to you. Many Jews find it easier not to bother argueing with the Rabbi. They'll find the door on their own, thanks.
2) You won't get Jews to wrestle Torah if you yourself are bored with Torah. To engage in Torah means getting into it. Even if you don't agree with it or you don't understand it.
3) Just because *You* find your opinion intellectually stimulating does not mean another Jew or G-d will. God has time and again reminded us that what is important to G-d may not be what we think is important.
"Only this was the sin of your sister Sodom: Arrogance! She and her daughters had plenty of bread and untroubled tranquility; yet she did not support the poor and needy. In their haughtiness, they commited abomination before me; so I removed them as you saw" Ezekial 16.49-50 [JPS Tanakh 1985]
Gee... I was always taught that what G-d got pissed about something else the Sodomites were supposedly famous for...
but Arrogance?
"...You have committed more abominations than they... you have made your sisters look righteous..." Ezekial 16.51 [JPS Tanakh 1985]
So I guess we're arrogant.
It is a nasty word but something we Jews have made a very fine tradition.
4) Torah seen and felt with the heart trumps intellectual analysis. Ehyeh Asher Ehyeh can't be reduced to a simple rationalist explanation. When push came to shove, Maimonaides could not explain G-d either.
In fact, if Moses had been followed a rational analysis of the "Mitzrayimi-Yisraeli Question" alone, we'd all still be in Mitzrayim.
Look at all of the excuses he gave G-d!
"...Please, O Lord, I have never been a man of words, either in times past or now that You've spoken to Your servant; I am slow of speech and slow of tongue." Exodus 4.10 [JPS Tanakh 1985]
This is a great rational mind at work? G-d won't take this answer from his chosen.
"... Who gives man speech? Who makes him dumb or deaf, seeing or blind? Is it not I, the Lord? Now go, and I will be with you as you speak and will instruct you what to say." Exodus 4.11-12 [JPS Tanakh 1985]
"Torah Wrestling" means "Doing Torah." "Doing Torah" means not just sitting and studying it then saying "Yeah, that was then this is now-- I don't have to do anything else because I've read the words." It does not mean setting your life in concrete and doing what some body else says because they told you so. It does not mean being so filled with your own arrogance that a new meaning cannot be found.
R. Telushkin, R. Bamberg, and Mr. Prager seemed to seemed to exceeded traditional expectations for arrogance. They have made a fine appeal to the mind even as they have said "here's what it all means, now do it our way, believe it our way... or else you're not really a Jew."
Then they wonder aloud why so many Jews are assimilating or are "unafiliated". Isn't that just a bit arrogant?
These fine gentlemen haved failed to see how their focus on the "intellectual life" of Jewishness when joined to modernity has made a vast empty desert of Jewish Life. They address the mind but fail to address the Heart. They do not look at the emotional or even mythic side of humanity. In fact they imply there is no "mythic" side to humanity... after all isn't that myth stuff something about worshiping Idols?
I am tempted to follow a tangent here about the real nature of G-d but I'll save it for another time after all we haven't gotten as far as Torah Hugging 201.
Now I am not a towering intellect.
I am sure that statement leaves you either laughing at me or shaking your head and laughing at me.
No, really, it is true!
Even if you don't believe me, my store bought Occam's Razor® is quite dull but it seems to my dull intellect that many of the modernist intellectuals have failed to read the Aggadah [the "stories"] in the Mishnah and the Talmud.
Some of the best "mythical" stories I've ever read are about Honi the Circle Maker and his decendents. [See Pg 202-204, Sefer Ha-Aggadah (The Book of Legends) by Hayim Nahman Bialik and Yehoshua Hana Ravenitzky, Translated by Willaim G, Braude, Shocken Books 1992]
Everybody loves a good story. The stories and histories that "speak to us" are ones which not only grab our attention intellectually but also tug at our hearts.
As I said to Wendy:
I am sure you can think of many Jewish stories you love to share not just because they tell something about Jewishness but because they are emotionally satisfying.
You can find holiness here and now. You can find what is true right where you are. Even reading a story. It was said:
"This mandate that I am prescribing to you today is not too mysterious or remote from you. It is not in heaven, so [that you should] say, 'Who shall go up to heaven and bring it to us so that we can hear it and keep it?' It is not over the sea so [that you should] say, 'Who will cross the sea and get if for us, so that we will be able to hear it and keep it? It is something that is very close to you. It is in your mouth and in your heart, so that you can keep it." Deut 30.11-14
G-d calls us to serve not with the mind for He speaks not *to* the mind.
G-d speaks to the heart.
G-d gives us our breath... for our soul is G-d's breath within us.
With each breath we take, G-d's Soul within us "goes and returns" to G-d and gives life to our heart.
I realize that what I am seeking and what I am finding in my Jewish roots is probably not the same as you or even my Sister-in-Law have found. While I greatly prize and honor the Jewish minds of all generations... I am humbled and inspired by the Hearts of our Fathers and Mothers. Their creativity and their vision has been the spark that has kept us alive.
I ask your forgiveness [you too Wendy!] and pray that you will understand I am still learning and seeking my place within the Jewish world. I also hope you will understand that being the "Voodoo Flower Torah Hugger" that I am, I seek a "mystical Jewish path" which is not for everyone.
Now Wendy [that's My Sister-in-Law] replied to me when I wrote these things to her:
If you are not careful your going to end up a Hassidic Jew. Other than the fact that the Hassidic also are "Torah observant" (orthodox) they find their Judaism in a more Kabbalistic and Spiritual place.
I still think all of the over rationalizing that is done is very valuable though. It is through much of this non-spiritual only analytical thinking that many of our traditions stay with us. It is through our dry analysis that we come to the conclusion that Jesus was not the Messiah, it doesn't add up.
We as Jews just need to learn not to throw out the baby with the bath water, and worse than that, as Reform Jews we have to learn all sides of the debate not just what the Rabbi says and make "Informed Choices". In some ways Conservative and Orthodox can be an easier path. They tell you what to do we give you info and say here now go think.
You will make a very interesting and valuable addition to our Jewish community.
It is true I see myself as a mystic, but I'm not likely to end up as a Hasid... I'm not *their* kind of holy...
As Groucho Marx once said: "I wouldn't join any club that would have me as a member."
The truth is I can't say I am truly a student of Kabbalah though there are hints of what I seek within its aggadah, stories, and philosophy.
But
I do not seek to know the thoughts in the mind of G-d. I do not seek the Chariot. Who am I to attempt such a thing? I seek something simpler: the melody that is within G-d's Heart that I may sing that melody and share its Glory [Shechinah] with others.
I seek for the "entrances to Holiness" that are in every moment of every day.
I see the "intellectualization" of Judaism as a response to Modernity but I also see it as an emotional defense to the cruelties which Modernity brings.
Approaching Judaism with the "sword of intellect" prevents one from falling into the trap of "living in the past" or espousing "mumbo-jumbo" as the basis for modern life. Yet this very same "intellectualization" is also a defense in that it keeps one's "heart" distant from the kind of emotional bruising we have experienced over the course of our history-- especially in this last century. It prevents us from "lifting up our hopes" then having those hopes dashed.
One final thing: "intellectualization" of G-d closes the door to the Heart.
If you live in your head, your "ears" will never hear G-d speak. You will never "see" the Glory of G-d's creation. Your heart will never feel G-d's life within you. If you live life this way, call the undertaker-- you are dead.
Been there.
Done that.
"Intellectual analysis" does not address the very real emotional "ebb and flow" of daily life. It does not engage most of our people's emotions to the point of commitment to the ideals and truths that we claim to hold dear-- One does not choose to get up early every Sunday morning to teach Sunday school because of a logical analysis of the needs of 2nd grade Jewish children. A Teacher teaches because at some level they find an emotional satisfaction in the job-- if they don't then its time to hang up that teachers hat and move on to something that is satisfying [If the kids sense you hate the job what do you think will happen?].
So there's this Jewish movement and that Jewish movement and the other Jewish movement within Judaism trying to give everyone what they need. None of them seem to be succeeding..
Haredi, Conservative, Reform, Renewal, Reconstructionist to name the few I know of. One could even make a case that "The Matrix" movie trilogy was actually a movie about "Jewish" reality [You will only understand that if you've seen the movies or read the plot synopsis] and should therefore be considered the midrash-aggadah of a new movement... The Matrixites?
They either talk about G-d as the cold intelligence that controls the Machine-like universe or G-d is a lie but the ethical moralism that's in the Book is pretty good or "Yum! Halakah is good for you" or G-d is some kind of personal psycho-pathic Deity or who knows what else... [I am exagerating but you get the idea]...
They each have their own "right way" of doing things and poking holes and fun at the others. What wonderful arrogance! As if this is all that matters and its the only thing G-d cares about!
Somewhere between these "poles" is the balance which none of the "movements" in Judaism seems to be aiming for.
Wendy accused me of throwing out the good with the bad.
The point I have been trying to make we Jews have and do continue to throw out the good with the bad... and fail to see we have done so. It is rare that a "recognized Jewish authority" tries to speak both to the intellect and the emotions... and do so in a satisfying way. The best I've found so far is Rabbi Lawrence Kushner but who knows? Any suggestions?
The movements either split hairs to explain something away or launch into a diatribe "why are you not living a Kosher life already?" or the umteenth reminder "you're living in a sexist patriachal fantasy".
Yes. Ain't that so? What are we going to do about it?
Where is the ethical behavior that embraces the heart as well as the mind?? The acts of loving kindness? The caring for the stranger? Where is a Halakhah that embraces the modern world? A siddur that includes rather than excudes? Where is Tikkun Olam?
That is the "brand" of Judaism I seek.
The life most "born Jews" have led is far different than the life I have led as a ger [stranger]... which leads to my having different needs than theirs. Many "born Jews" cannot seem to grasp how one called to be Jewish struggles not only with their past but finding and living with a sense of Holiness in the present.
[An aside: I cannot say one can "choose to be Jewish". Either you are born one, or you are one and you don't don't know it, or you are not. Rabbi Lawrence Kushner in his wonderful "Book of Words" when talking about destiny and fate says : "Go ahead, try to do something you were not intended to do."]
As I have said to Cynthia: "You breathe your Jewishness like a fish breathes water. You don't see the water as it is natural to you. Can't you see how difficult it is for a stranger to breathe in a Jewish life that they have never known yet something within calls them to live?"
My encounter with the messenger is the kind of mysticism that I seek: To experience Holiness in the simple every day things which happen. To know in a very personal sense as "Day to Day make utterance, night to night speaks out." [Ps 19.3 JPS Tanbakh 1985] the Holiness of G-d and my life as one of his people.
As I said to Wendy:
Eventually I will scan through Telushkin and his books will join my library as general reference. ... but he is for "undergraduate" Jews... those who need information -- like Sunday School Teachers :-) The kind of information he offers is not the kind I need-- he offers history. I seek the Wisdom of the Heart which comes without words.
[The way I see it now is that G-d will judge me for what I am not for what I know. G-d will judge me for what I have given to others not what others have expected of me. Were G-d not merciful, I would not be here writing this and you would not be here reading it.]
That is not to say I do not need "Jewish Book Lernin'". You may sometimes forget these days but I did not grow up in a "Jewish world".
You, on the other hand, grew up in a Jewish culture and its traditions. You breathe that culture like a fish breathes water.
You have been blessed with the gift of being born a Jew and are even more a blessing to us as one who tries to keep our tradition alive by teaching the next generation. In this context [though you may not like it]:You are a Hasid or [maybe more to your taste] a Tzaddik.
I do not understand the culture and the context from which Jewish tradition springs. I do not even know the smallest thing. These are things that Judaisim 101 can never even teach. Over time I will come to understand some what to you is second nature. In this I will never know the heart of these things but I appreciate the fact that you do.
For example, you know the melodies and prayers of Shabbat and Pesach.
You strive to guide and teach and share these things. Here am I, the stranger standing at the doorway hearing the words and hearing melodies which speak to my heart. They bring tears to my eyes!
I wept in reading the Kaddish at Pesach not only for my mother but for the words that spoke to my heart. I have this happen regularly during services and during the Seder reading.
[Why do you think I hide behind my guitar and play during the Seder rather than read? My voice would choke and my eyes would fill with tears... and no one would understand why that story speaks to me and grips me the way it does.]
As for whether or not I "will make a very interesting and valuable addition to our Jewish community." remains to be seen but I might give you all a few chuckles [or fits] at my fumbling [and rabble rousing] ways.
I love you too. ;-)
Jewish families can be a real pain. But I do love mine. All of them. Even the Shirley-Monster
One final thing before I go:
If you can do what you can to Help Israel in it time of need. It may not be the Kingdom of the Haredi [its certainly not the Kingdom that the Haredi want] but it is the only one we Jews have got right now.
Pray. Donate. Did I mention Pray?
Shtibl Minyan Prayer for Israel
Please God, Bless the state of Israel/Please God, Mercifully receive our prayer for the state of Israel and its government.
Guard it in the abundance of your love. Spread over it the shelter of your peace. Send forth your light and truth to those who lead and judge it, to those who hold elective office and those who defend it. Strengthen them and establish in them, through your presence, wise counsel, that they might walk in the way of justice, freedom, and integrity.
Give peace to the land, and perpetual joy to its inhabitants.
Appoint for a blessing all our kindred of the house of Israel in all the lands of our dispersion. Plant in our hearts a love of Zion.
"And for all our people everywhere, may God be with them and may they have the opportunity to go up to the land."
Cause your spirit's influence to emanate upon all dwellers of our holy land. Remove from their midst hatred and enmity, jealousy and wickedness. Plant in their hearts love and kinship, peace and friendship.
And soon fulfill the vision of your prophet: "Nation shall not lift up sword against nation. Let them learn no longer ways of war."
And let us say: Amen.
How did I get to be HaGedi? Next time we'll talk about "peoplehood".HaGedi
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