National Scholar Updates

The Rabbi, the Professor and the Pope on Family Values in the Book of Genesis

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Rabbi Hayyim Angel is the National Scholar of the Institute for Jewish Ideas and Ideals and editor of its journal, Conversations. He teaches advanced undergraduate Bible courses at Yeshiva University. This article appears in issue 43 of Conversations and was reprinted in issue 44.

Introduction

 

The unique dignity of humanity lies at the root of all Western morality. Rabbi Jonathan Sacks considers this concept to be one of the greatest transformational ideas of the Torah.[1] 

Sadly, this foundational premise of Western culture is under assault. Some contemporary ideologies assail God, the Bible, family, morality, merit-based opportunity, and human equality. With these assaults comes the erosion of biblical family values. 

We need a common language to teach human uniqueness and morality as we explore what we have in common with all other organisms and what distinguishes us from them. The Book of Genesis is that common language. For observant Jews, we have the additional language of halakha. 

In this essay, we will focus on three different voices who have appealed to Genesis to teach human dignity and morality. 

Rabbi Joseph B. Soloveitchik gave a series of lectures in the 1950s, which have been published as a book, Family Redeemed.[2] In these lectures, Rabbi Soloveitchik distinguishes between Natural Man and Redeemed Man. Humans may redeem themselves through the building of a family, elevating themselves from being merely biological organisms that reproduce like all other creatures. More broadly, halakha elevates all physical-biological acts to the realm of the sacred when we follow God’s revealed laws.

Professor Leon Kass, a prominent bioethicist at the University of Chicago for many years, describes his journey. He was a secular Jew, uninterested in the Bible. He came to the Bible as an adult by asking why so many people have been interested in it. He fell in love with the Bible and published an important work on Genesis (among other books).[3] He believes that strong family values are an essential building block of a moral society.

Pope John Paul II gave a series of 129 sermons from 1979 to1984 on the religious significance of family (I don’t think too many rabbis could get away with giving so many consecutive sermons on the same theme). He was responding to the so-called sexual revolution that began in 1968.[4] 

            Before considering these three disparate thinkers, it must be stressed that although the strong nuclear traditional family is the ideal of the Torah, it does not always work out this way. People may remain single, get divorced, confront infertility, or have homosexual tendencies, to name a few. The Torah promotes family values as the ideal, but this value does not negate the value of full participation in the community when people do not have a traditional family for one reason or another.

 

 

Professor Leon Kass 

 

Given the centrality of family relationships in Genesis, Kass regularly explores the notions of patriarchy and matriarchy. Because of their unique role in producing a new life, women may become arrogant by viewing their children as their possessions. God therefore teaches humility to the matriarchs through their initial barrenness.[5] 

Males need to be acculturated to become interested in child rearing. Virility and potency are far less important to the Torah than decency, righteousness, and holiness. Male circumcision was widely practiced in ancient world as a puberty ritual. It generally was viewed as a sign of sexual potency and an initiation into the society of men, ending a boy’s primary attachment to his mother and household, the society of women and children. 

            The Torah transforms circumcision into a father’s religious duty toward his son. Circumcision celebrates not male potency but rather procreation and perpetuation. Immediately after the birth of a son, a father must begin the transmission of the covenant. The Torah’s ideal of manhood is defined by those who remember God and transmit the covenant rather than those who fight, rule, and make their name great (consider whom Western histories label “the Great” vs. whom the Torah idealizes as great). 

Circumcision also profoundly affects the mother of the child, as it reminds her that her son is not fully hers. God therefore renames Sarai to Sarah at the time of God’s command of circumcision to Abraham.[6]

 

 

Rabbi Joseph Soloveitchik

 

One underdeveloped area in Kass’ analysis is the role of motherhood. For Kass, women need less religious guidance than men in order to stand properly before God. Once they overcome the potential arrogance of considering their children as their own possessions, they are well on their way to living a life of holiness.

In contrast, Rabbi Soloveitchik offers a more nuanced view of motherhood through his typology of Natural and Redeemed Man. In the natural community, a father’s role is minimal whereas motherhood is central to a woman’s life. Similar to Kass, Rabbi Soloveitchik outlines ways that the Torah teaches men that they must educate their children in the covenant to be worthy of a redeemed fatherhood. 

Rabbi Soloveitchik also develops the central role of the mother in partnering with her husband in the religious upbringing of her children. Abraham—and not Adam—was called av hamon goyim, a father of many nations (Genesis 17:5), because redeemed fatherhood begins only with a father’s commitment to his children’s religious education.[7]

Unlike Adam, Eve received her new name because she was em kol hai, the mother of all living beings (Genesis 3:20). Natural motherhood involves true sacrifice. However, Sarai was renamed Sarah at the same time as Abraham’s name change in the context of circumcision (Genesis 17:15), since she did more than raise biological progeny—she became a full partner with Abraham in transmitting the covenant. Both Abraham and Sarah understood that serving God involves personal behavior but also comes with a commitment to teaching righteousness to one’s family and society:

 

In the natural community, the woman is involved in her motherhood-destiny; father is a distant figure who stands on the periphery. In the covenantal community, father moves to the center where mother has been all along, and both together take on a new commitment, universal in substance: to teach, to train the child to hear the faint echoes which keep on tapping at our gates and which disturb the complacent, comfortable, gracious society (Family Redeemed, p. 114).

 

Pope John Paul II

 

Before we consider Pope John Paul’s discourses, we must address two concerns: First, and not surprisingly, many elements in Pope John Paul II’s sermons connect to Trinitarian theology and the Incarnation. After all, the Pope was Catholic. Consequently, strikingly few elements of his discussions of Genesis can be translated into Jewish language. Second, it is irrelevant to this discussion that Catholics maintain an ideal of non-marriage for their priesthood. The Pope focused on the majority of society and believed in the sanctity of the family.

            Pope John Paul II links the idea of people’s being created in God’s Image (Genesis 1:26) to marriage. The Image of God should be interpreted as human perfection, and the ultimate fulfillment of that human perfection is through marriage.[8] In his reading of Genesis, the first two chapters should be read as a single unit, since marriage appears only in chapter 2:

 

The Lord God said, “It is not good for man to be alone; I will make a fitting helper for him”… So the Lord God cast a deep sleep upon the man; and, while he slept, He took one of his ribs and closed up the flesh at that spot. And the Lord God fashioned the rib that He had taken from the man into a woman; and He brought her to the man. Then the man said, “This one at last is bone of my bones and flesh of my flesh. This one shall be called Woman, for from man was she taken.” Hence a man leaves his father and mother and clings to his wife, so that they become one flesh. (Genesis 2:18–24)

 

To support Pope John Paul II’s reading, humans are not explicitly called “good” in chapter 1. Rabbi Yosef Albo (Ikkarim III:2) maintains that unlike most of God’s creations, people are left incomplete so that we may use our free will to become good. Most creations simply are programmed to do what God wants, making them “complete” and good. Genesis 2:18 has God reflecting on man’s single state as being “not good,” and therefore creates Eve as a wife for him. 

            Several rabbinic sources likewise consider the commandment “love your neighbor as yourself” (Leviticus 19:18) fulfilled through marriage (Tosefta Sotah 5:6; Kiddushin 41a).

            In contrast to the Pope’s reading of Genesis chapters 1–2 as a single unit, Rabbi Joseph Soloveitchik[9] considers each chapter as reflecting different aspects of divine truth. The narrative in chapter 2 focuses exclusively on the relationship between man and woman and does not mention God’s Image or childbearing. In contrast, Genesis chapter 1, which mentions humankind’s being created in God’s Image, goes on to bless people to procreate:

 

And God said, “Let us make man in our image, after our likeness. They shall rule the fish of the sea, the birds of the sky, the cattle, the whole earth, and all the creeping things that creep on earth.” And God created man in His image, in the image of God He created him; male and female He created them. God blessed them and God said to them, “Be fertile and increase, fill the earth and master it; and rule the fish of the sea, the birds of the sky, and all the living things that creep on earth.” (Genesis 1:26–28)

 

            Long before Rabbi Soloveitchik and Pope John Paul II, two of the greatest medieval rabbinic commentators debated whether Genesis chapters 1–2 should be read as one or two units. This disagreement is manifest over the proper understanding of Genesis 2:24: “Hence a man leaves his father and mother and clings to his wife, so that they become one flesh.”

Ramban explains that “becoming one flesh” refers to the uniqueness of human sexual intimacy and marriage. There are sexual relations throughout the animal world. However, there is no emotional attachment or commitment except in the human realm.

            In contrast, Rashi interprets “becoming one flesh” to mean that when men and women have a child, they have created this one flesh together. Rashi thereby links the marriage in chapter 2 to the commandment to be fruitful and multiply in chapter 1.

            Rabbi Soloveitchik’s analysis of chapters 1 and 2 as separate units resembles Ramban’s approach to this verse. Pope John Paul II is methodologically closer to Rashi in reading chapters 1–2 as an integrated, harmonious sequence.

 

            All three perspectives address the same fundamental issue: We are created in the Image of God, humanity can elevate itself above animals through a life of Godliness. Marriage-parenthood-family are sacred. The Torah thus provides keys to understanding the facets of our complex nature and guides us to work toward achieving the ideal balance of our biology and religious commitments for ourselves and our families.

            We of course share biological components with many other organisms, but interpersonal love is sacred—loving our neighbor as oneself, husband and wife becoming one flesh, and through being covenantal partners in child rearing. We connect ourselves and families to eternity through God and covenant.

We need to develop a shared language with like-minded people of different backgrounds, since our belief in family as the cornerstone of a righteous community and society is relevant to everyone. The Book of Genesis lies at the heart of that language.

Notes


 

[1] Jonathan Sacks, The Great Partnership: Science, Religion, and the Search for Meaning (New York: Schocken Books, 2011), pp. 289–290.

[2] Rabbi Joseph B. Soloveitchik, Family Redeemed: Essays on Family Relationships, ed. David Shatz and Joel B. Wolowelsky (New York: Toras HoRav Foundation-Ktav, 2000).

[3] Leon R. Kass, The Beginning of Wisdom: Reading Genesis (New York: Free Press, 2003). See also my review of his book, “An Unorthodox Step Toward Revelation: Leon Kass on Genesis Revisited,” in Angel, Peshat Isn’t So Simple: Essays on Developing a Religious Methodology to Bible Study (New York: Kodesh Press, 2014), pp. 173–185.

[4] Pope John Paul II, Man and Woman He Created Them: A Theology of the Body, trans. Michael Waldstein (Boston: Pauline Books and Media, 2006).

[5] The Beginning of Wisdom, p. 270.

[6] The Beginning of Wisdom, pp. 313–315.

[7] Family Redeemed, p. 58.

[8] Man and Woman He Created Them, p. 20. Spousal love and intimacy are acts of the purest giving of oneself (p. 24). Cf. the comments of Rabbi Yaakov Zvi Mecklenburg (HaKetav VehaKabbalah, late eighteenth-century Germany): Man’s inner capacity for good never can be realized until he has someone on whom to shower affection. Mature love is expressed through giving, and through giving comes even greater love.

[9] Rabbi Joseph B. Soloveitchik, The Emergence of Ethical Man, ed. Michael S. Berger (Jersey City: KTAV, 2005), p. 92.

Dust to Dust: Thoughts for Parashat Bereishith

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Angel for Shabbat, Parashat Bereishith

by Rabbi Marc D. Angel

 

“Then the Lord God formed the human from the dust of the ground and breathed into its nostrils the breath of life and it became a living soul” (Bereishith 2:7).

God could have created Adam from precious metals, from stardust, or from pure spirit but chose rather to use dust of the ground. Not only do we originate in dust, but we will also end as dust. God informs Adam (Bereishith 3:19): "for dust you are, and to dust you shall return". And Kohelet (3:20) reminds us: "All go to one place; all are from the dust, and all return to dust.”

Being composed of dust is a humbling thought. No matter how wise or rich or powerful we may think we are, we ultimately are just dust.  In the span of eternity, our lives are a tiny instant. In the vastness of the universe, we are infinitesimally small. By creating us from dust, God was reminding us to remain humble, to view life as a precious but ephemeral gift. Those who display arrogance and egotism thereby demonstrate their vanity and foolishness.

But dust is also the foundation of all life! Mother earth produces the plants and vegetation that sustain us. While dust is a symbol of humility, it is also a symbol of productivity. Being created from dust is a reminder that we have tremendous potentialities within us.

The Hassidic sage, Rabbi Simcha Bunim, famously suggested that we keep a note in one pocket with the words: “I am dust and ashes.” In the other pocket we should keep a note with the words: “The world was created for me.” Both notes express truths, but they must be taken together.  We are to be aware of our dust-like insignificance…but also our dust-like powers of creativity.

The message is captured in Psalm 8: “When I behold Your heavens, the work of Your fingers,
the moon and stars that You set in place, what is man that You have been mindful of him,
mortal man that You have taken note of him? Yet You have made him little less than the angels,
and adorned him with glory and majesty; You have made him master over Your handiwork,
laying the world at his feet.”

We have recently been reciting the Avinu Malkeinu verses as part of the penitential prayers of Rosh Hashana through Yom Kippur.  We ask God for many blessings. In the midst of the requests we say: Avinu Malkeinu Zekhor ki Afar Anahnu, Our Father and King, remember that we are dust. This seems to be a plea based on humility. Please God, have mercy on us because we are so insignificant and powerless. But it may also contain another message: Please God, have mercy on us because we have the potential to generate and sustain life, to be creative forces that can make the world a better place.

Just as we remind God that we are dust, so we need to remind ourselves that we are dust. This teaches us humility…and self-respect. So much wisdom can be found in dust!

 

 

Upcoming Classes with Rabbi Hayyim Angel

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Rabbi Hayyim Angel

As the holiday season begins to draw to a close, we have a full roster of Adult Education classes with Rabbi Hayyim Angel available!

Beginning October 27, Rabbi Hayyim Angel begins his eighth year with the Beit Midrash of Teaneck. Classes meet Mondays and Wednesdays, from 12:15-1:00 pm ET. We currently are in the Book of Genesis, and will resume with chapter 21. Classes meet in person at the Jewish Center of Teaneck, New Jersey (70 Sterling Place). They also are available over Zoom. Classes are free and open to the public. For more information, please contact Leah Feldman at [email protected].

On four Mondays, October 20, 27, November 3, and 10, from 1:15-2:15 pm ET, Rabbi Hayyim Angel will teach a mini-series on the history of Biblical interpretation, focusing on the earliest layers of interpretation (there will be future mini-courses that move ahead as well). These classes are held over Zoom by Lamdeinu, Teaneck. Registration is required. Register here: https://www.lamdeinu.org/programs/

On Tuesday, October 21, from 8:00-9:00 pm ET, Rabbi Hayyim Angel will teach a class on the creation and flood narratives in the Torah and parallel stories from ancient Near Eastern literature. The class is over Zoom, and it free and open to the public. It is sponsored by the Ben Porat Yosef Yeshiva Day School in Paramus, New Jersey. Here is the Zoom link: https://us02web.zoom.us/j/5413950938?pwd=dSszMGFUNEgrQlY3blc2K1hzYzdCUT09#success 

This is only the beginning of a number of wonderful opportunities to learn Tanakh and its interpretation at a high level with Rabbi Hayyim Angel.

 

The Dayenu of Grief

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The Dayenu of Grief

by Janet R. Kirchheimer

(Janet R. Kirchheimer is the author of two poetry books, How to Spot One of Us (Clal, 2007) and co-author with Jaclyn Piudik of Seduction: Out of Eden (Kelsay Books, 2022). She is the producer of AFTER: Poetry Destroys Silence, in which contemporary poets confront the Shoah. It was named one of the best films of 2024 by RogerEbert.com. AFTER. Her poems and essays appear in print and in online publications. www.janetkworks.com.)

 

In every generation, one is obligated to see herself as if she left Egypt. (Exodus 13:8)

 

My mother died almost a year and a half ago. I was her full-time caregiver for the last four years of her life. As she was dying, I sat with her, spoke to her, watched her take her final two breaths. While waiting for the hospice nurse and the funeral home to come, I told her what was happening, assured her that I remembered the sheet. Ruth, my father’s older sister, gave him a set of white linen sheets to bring to America while she remained behind in Germany trying to get a visa. The sheets were for her trousseau. She was murdered in Auschwitz in 1942.  Seven years ago, my mother told me she wanted to be buried in one of Ruth’s sheets. 

 

There are days I want to stay in the narrow place that is Egypt, to remain in the darkness.

 

When the hospice nurse came, she asked if I wanted to send my mother to the funeral home as she was. I said no; we needed to wash and dress her in a nice housecoat. After, the nurse and my brother laid her on the floor. It was my tahara. My mother did her first tahara with her mother when she was 16 and her last when she was 90. Though my mother taught me, I knew I couldn’t do tahara at the funeral home. I waited outside the room and tried to say Tehillim; and when the tahara was completed, I went in to see my mother wrapped in Ruth’s sheet. I shoveled dirt onto her coffin. I sat shiva for seven days. I said kaddish three times each day for eleven months.

 

I left the life I had, moved home, cooked three meals a day for my mother, and gave her the care she needed. I became her mother when I needed to, advocated for her, signed the paperwork for hospice care at home, signed the DNR. The last words she spoke to me were, “You get some rest.” That was her gift to me: she got to be my mother again, and I got to be her daughter.

 

There are days I want to stay in the narrow place that is Egypt, to remain in the darkness.

 

I was supposed to continue with my life; but I wasn’t sure how to do that. Somewhere deep down I knew that my parents had taught me how to go on. They survived the Shoah. My father was arrested on Kristallnacht and sent to Dachau. He was 16. My mother was six years old when the kids in her first-grade class backed her up against a wall at school, threw rocks at her, beat her up, screaming Jude, Jude, Jew, Jew. Her parents got her out of Germany almost a year later to the Israelitisch Meisjes Weeshuis, the Jewish Girls Orphanage in Amsterdam. There were 104 girls. Four survived. The way my parents lived their lives would show me how to live a new life. I just wasn’t ready.

 

Some days I tried to knit my mother back to life as a sweater I could climb inside of, wrap around and hold me. She learned from her mother and taught me. I don’t have the experience that my mother did. Her tension, the tightness or looseness of stitches, the interaction between needles and yarn, the control and feel in her hands, was perfect. I tried the seed stitch, basket weave, broken rib, twisted moss, but nothing helped. I could not hold a pattern; the stitches remained, stuck on the needle. I could not knit them off; all I could do was move the stitches from one needle to the other. My knitting was loose, loose as my grief. Yarn unraveled into my lap; then fell and covered the floor. My mother knitted with a control learned over many years. Green, her favorite color: I cut a piece of Kelly-green yarn and placed it in her hands as she was dying. I keep that strand with me. 

 

Some commentators on Exodus 13:8 explain, “In every generation, a person is obligated to show herself, to see her essence, as if she had left Egypt. A person must strengthen their inner spark no matter how low a state one reaches.”  The one thing I knew for certain was that I could never go back to being the same person I was before my mother died. There were days when I could not find any spark. Intense grief is a weighty task, it’s a practice, and I needed to keep in mind Oscar Wilde: “Where there is sorrow, there is holy ground.” I needed to hold my grief, to keep trying to knit the stitches off and, perhaps most importantly, to be patient. It was an interior time when I had to be responsible to my emotions and begin the work of remaking myself. 

 

And now as the intense grief has subsided, my inner spark, which is everything my parents taught and showed me, is beginning to assert itself most days. Those are the days when I walk to the water’s edge. I dip my toes into the Sea of Reeds, begin to make my way through, and can almost see the waters divide to let me pass. Those days give me strength, soothe me. I don’t expect every day to be like that; and I’m okay with not being okay. That’s part of being in the reeds, of learning to live with grief, not despite it. I know I will grieve for the rest of my life yet get better at making it part of who I will become. 

 

The word resolve, from the Latin resolvere, means to dissolve, unloose, release. I know my grief will never be fully resolved, but it will loosen. There will be some release; it will happen when it does. In the meantime, I’m enveloped with loving memories of my parents. Often, I feel their presence pushing me forward to carry the past with me and release it at the same time, to begin a new life. 

 

I have been leaving Egypt gently, gingerly. I will not rush away the grief. Yet, I find myself more and more willing to come out of the darkness and make my way to that edge, walk into the water up to my neck, keep walking as I feel my feet on the ground in the reeds that try to hold me back. I will wait for the Sea to split. Maybe that’s release; maybe that’s redemption from the narrow spaces of Egypt. And maybe that’s enough.

 

Theology of Friendship

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Theology of Friendship

Rabbi Dr. Alon Goshen-Gottstein is the founder and director of the Elijah Interfaith Institute. He is acknowledged as one of the world’s leading figures in interreligious dialogue, specializing in bridging the theological and academic dimension with a variety of practical initiatives, especially involving world religious leadership. While so much of the news focuses on dissension among groups, it is important to be aware of significant efforts to bring people together in friendship and mutual understanding.  Here is a link to a presentation on the work of Rabbi Dr. Alon Goshen-Gottstein.   https://youtu.be/zYw_UBya7YQ

 

Prophetic Holiness and Ethics

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Dr. Steven Kepnes holds the Finard Chair in Jewish Studies, at Colgate University, Hamilton, NY. His most recent book is The Future of Jewish Theology. This is excerpted from his article that appears in issue 17 of Conversations, the journal of the Institute for Jewish Ideas and Ideals.


 

It is well known that the classic yeshiva curriculum is dominated by the Talmud, not by the Torah and its rabbinic and philosophical exegetes. When Torah is studied, it is largely limited by a focus on Humash, or Pentateuch, and does not go beyond this to the Ketuvim (Writings) and Neviim, (Prophets). Given the theological and ethical treasures in these books, it is certainly a shame and a loss to the observant world. It is also somewhat odd that these texts are not systematically studied, given that we read from these books in the Haftarot every Shabbat and Festival. Of the many Haftarot that we read, the book that we read most often is Yeshayahu or Isaiah. If Orthodox Judaism ignores Isaiah, Devarim Rabba places Isaiah alongside Moses as the greatest of the prophets (2:4). Isaiah has a central standing among the prophets of Israel and it is noteworthy, given our concerns with kedusha that the most common epithet for God that Isaiah uses is K’dosh Yisrael “The Holy One of Israel” (Is 1:4).

According to Isaiah and most of the other classical prophets, holiness is articulated in terms of social justice and political ethics. In focusing on social morality, the prophets, at times, appear to be opposing the centrality of the cult and issues of ritual purity. Despite this however, Jewish critics like Yehezkel Kaufmannn, Moshe Weinfeld and Shalom Paul, argue that the prophets did not seek the end of sacrifices and traditions or ritual purity any more than they wanted the monarchy to end. Rather, they were critics of these institutions who sought to rid them of corruption and place them in their rightful place in service to God. That Isaiah’s vision of the angels proclaiming God’s holiness: Kadosh, Kadosh, Kadosh, occurred in the Temple (Is 6:3) and that the prophet Ezekiel was himself a priest, certainly suggests that the prophets did not intend to do away with the priesthood. However, with Isaiah, we do have one of the most forceful critics of excessive concern for the intricacies of ritual purity and holiness alone. That Isaiah refers to God as “the Holy One of Israel” and uses this appellation consistently throughout his text, suggests that ethics is not only required by the Holy One of Israel, but that the Holy One Himself is morally righteous and that human righteousness is grounded in God. In verse 5:16 Isaiah says: “And God the Holy One is sanctified through righteousness” (Holy Scriptures, JPS translation,1950); or an alternative translation could be “The holy God shall make Himself holy (n’qadesh b’tzedeq ) through righteousness.” So Isaiah’s view, following the Torah’s view, is that the moral law is underpinned and founded in God. Let us hear the words of Isaiah, which as he says, are the word of God.

Hear the word of the Lord…

“What need have I of all your sacrifices?”
Says the Lord.
“I am sated with the burnt offerings of rams,
And suet of fatlings,
And blood of bulls…
Who asked that of you?
Trample my courts no more;
Bringing oblations is futile,
Incense is offensive to me,
New moon and Sabbath
Proclaiming solemnities
Assemblies with iniquity
I cannot abide. …
Though you pray at length,
I will not listen
Your hands are full of blood—
Wash yourselves clean
Put your evil doings
Away from My sight,
Cease to do evil,
Learn to do good
Devote yourselves to justice;
Aid the wronged,
Uphold the rights of the orphan;
Defend the cause of the widow.”
IS 1:10-17

The words of Isaiah here, uttered with so few Hebrew words are a wonder to behold. Isaiah rips through the fabric of sacrificial life, the very nexus of the relationship with God established by the Levitical priests, “Your hands are full of blood.” Here, the expiatory power of the blood of sacrifice is mocked and the line seems to suggest instead that there is an excess of bloodshed. The extent of the verbal charge against the sacrificial cult is comprehensive, from daily sacrifice, to Shabbat, to the festivals, and even unto verbal prayer. “What need have I of all this? Who asked this of you?” The answer could be easy: “What do you mean?” the people might say. “Certainly, it was You, God, who asked this of us. It was You, God, who established the sacrificial cult, who determined the rules of Shabbat and the festivals as the very vehicle to make us holy. Now you are telling us you have no use for it all!” Without answering these questions, God uses the language of purity, “wash yourselves clean,” and directs it in a thoroughly moral and non-ritual direction. Here, Isaiah makes a move that we often see in the prophets, to use ritual purity, as a metaphor for moral purity.

Then, through Isaiah, God presents the people with what simply could be called an ethical manifesto, which, following the short form of the Hebrew, could be put this way.

Cease evil,
Learn good
Seek justice;
Correct oppression,
Defend orphans,
Plead for widows.

Here, in short, is an ethical doctrine which begins in stopping evil in oneself, moves to education in the ways of goodness, and then extends human efforts outward to seek justice. Justice, here, is seen in countering oppression against those that are powerless, the orphan and the widow, thereby representing all who are marginal and have no obvious figures of power to protect them.

Isaiah is not alone in speaking the words of social ethics. His contemporary Amos, who prophesied in the Northern Kingdom, also put forth a doctrine of social justice:

Hear this, you who trample on the needy
And bring the poor of the land to an end,
Saying when will the new moon be over
That we may sell grain?
And the Sabbath that we may offer wheat for sale
That we may make the ephah small and the shekel great,
And deal deceitfully with false balances,
That we may buy the poor for silver,
And the needy for a pair of sandals,

I will make the sun set at noon,
I will darken the earth on a sunny day
I will turn your festivals into mourning
(Amos 8:4-10).

Is this a new instruction, a new Torah replacing the old? Is this a new way to holiness dispensing with all the laws of sacrifice, of Shabbat, of the festivals, and of dietary laws and ritual purity? Certainly, this is the position of Protestant Christianity.

Yet here I would suggest that the prophets are speaking to their contemporary moment in the strongest way possible. They mean to correct abuses in Israelite religious life and the cult, and were not attempting to abolish its institutions and structures. Certainly, from the position of rabbinic tradition, the Torah and its rituals laws of holiness and purity will never be abrogated. The Torah is given as an eternal covenant, berit olam, between God and Israel, and all of rabbinic Judaism is built on the divinely sanctioned status of the laws and rituals that are given in the Torah.

The great Jewish biblical critic, Yehezkel Kaufmannn, while recognizing real innovation in the texts of Isaiah and the classical prophets, argues that Isaiah works upon already existing moral themes in the Torah. Kaufmannn states that “the prophetic demands for social justice echo, for the most part, the ancient covenant laws” (1960, 365). He reminds us that, in the flood story, God dooms a whole society for moral corruption.” Sodom and Gomorrah were also destroyed for lacking ten righteous men, and the Canaanites lost their land because of their corrupt sexual ways” (1960, 366).

However, if Kaufmannn believes that the prophets did not want to abolish sacrifices and the cult, he is also clear that what we have in the classic Israelite prophets is not just a repetition of the morality of the Torah but an innovation beyond it. Here, Kaufmann argues that the prophets offer a heightened sense of morality. Where the Torah equated destruction of Israel with the heinous sins of idolatry and incest committed by a large group of people, we see that God “threatens national doom and exile for everyday social sins” (1960, 366). Kaufmannn states that it is remarkable how few times Isaiah refers to the sin of idolatry and how sensitive he is to moral slights to the poor and the powerless. Indeed, it is these “small sins” of social justice that bother the prophets and not the “venal sins” of murder, idolatry, incest, and inhuman cruelty that the Pentateuch is concerned with.

Rabbi Abraham Joshua Heschel also points us to the heightened moral sensitivity of the prophets. “Indeed, the sort of crimes and even the amount of delinquency that fill the prophets of Israel with dismay do not go beyond that which we regard as normal, as typical ingredients of social dynamics. To us a single act of injustice—cheating in business, exploitation of the poor—is slight; to the prophets, a disaster. To us injustice is injurious to the welfare of the people; to the prophets it s a deathblow to existence: to us an episode; to them, a catastrophe, a threat to the world” (1962, 4).

As to why the prophet is so sensitive to what appears to be trivial moral concerns, Heschel sees this as a reflection of the acute moral sensitivity and highest moral standards of God. The God of the prophets is concerned with the details of little human lives, his compassion is so great that he is fundamentally concerned with the seemingly insignificant poor. “Prophecy is the voice that God has lent to the silent agony, a voice to the plundered poor, to the profaned riches of the world” (1962, 5).

It is a shame that the curriculum of our Orthodox yeshivot do not include intensive, sophisticated study of the Neviim and have left these texts of the written Torah to the Liberal Jewish Seminaries and the Christians. For the words of the Prophets are no less words of Torah and divrei Elokim than are the words of the Humash and Psalms and the Mishna and Gemara.

In the pre-modern world where Jews were excluded by Christians and Muslims alike from working and participating in their host cultures, there were good reasons why Jews kept to themselves. In those times when Jews were often persecuted and Judaism derided as a dead or false religion, one can also understand that there was Jewish fear and antipathy toward non-Jews. Today, however, where Jews have civil and political rights especially in the West, the continued self-ghettoization of the Jews and negative remarks one sometimes hears uttered by some Jews and even their rabbis toward non-Jews are morally and spiritually reprehensible. When one hears of a group of Orthodox Rabbis in Israel who issue public prohibitions against renting apartments to Arabs, or “religious” Jews in the old city who spit on Catholic Priests, one wonders why these Jews, who so devoutly study Talmud, manage to miss these words of the great Tosafist, Rabbenu Tam. “One should be envious of the pious and more than these of the penitents, and more than these of those who…from their youth have been diligent in the service of the Lord, blessed be He…And one should be envious of the nations of the world who serve God in awe, fear, and submission.” [5] And our devout co-religionists might also learn from the words of Bahya ibn Pakuda, who said in his introduction to Hovot haLevavot, The Duties of the Heart.

I quote from the dicta of the philosophers and the ethical teachings of the ascetics and their praiseworthy customs. In this connection our Rabbis of blessed memory already remarked (Sanhedrin 39b): In one verse it is said “after the ordinances of the nations round about you, you have done (Ezek 11:12); while in another, it is said “After the ordinances of those around you , you have not done (Ezek. 5:7). How is this contradiction to be reconciled? As follows: Their good ordinances you have not copied; their evil ones you have followed.” The Rabbis further said (Megillah 16a). “Whoever utters a wise word, even if he belongs to the gentiles, is called a sage.”[6]

The Orthodox community is where many Jews look for “authentic” Judaism. The Orthodox community is where Jews seek and expect to find our Tzaddkim and our Kedoshim, our righteous and holy ones. And one can say, too, that what the religious world needs most today are precisely these kind of exemplars of the righteous and holy life. Yet precisely at his moment of great need, Torah Sages are retreating from the world and advising their students and followers to do the same. This is tantamount to taking Torah and God out of the world at the time when the world most needs Torah and God. So my plea in my book and in this article is that Orthodox Jews live up to the challenge of the great figures of modern Orthodoxy and the command of God in the Torah. Kedoshim Tiheyu: Be holy in mind, in deed, in ritual and behavior, in the synagogue, in court and field. We must be exemplars of the Torah way of life, committed to performance of the ritual mitzvoth as well as the mitzvoth of justice, righteousness, compassion and derekh erets.

 

Please Stand With Us: End of Year Campaign

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Please Stand With Us: End of Year Campaign

Dear Members and Friends,

Thank you for your support of the Institute for Jewish Ideas and Ideals. Your partnership has enabled the Institute to reach thousands of people worldwide through our website, publications, youtube channel, classes, Sephardic Initiative, University Network...and more.

The Institute fosters an intellectually vibrant, compassionate and inclusive Orthodox Judaism. Founded in 2007, the Institute continues to be a voice of reason, idealism and commitment to Jewish tradition.

The Institute depends on your support. Please stand with us at this critical time.

You may contribute by clicking on this link: https://www.jewishideas.org/donate-now. Or you may send your check to Institute for Jewish Ideas and Ideals, 2 West 70th Street, New York, NY  10023. If you wish to contribute securities, please contact us at [email protected] for details.

Thanks very much for your prompt and generous support.

                    Rabbi Marc D. Angel, Director

                    Rabbi Hayyim Angel, National Scholar

 

Upcoming Classes with Rabbi Hayyim Angel

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Rabbi Hayyim Angel

With the Fall season underway, Rabbi Hayyim Angel returns to a robust schedule of Adult Education classes.

On Tuesday, September 16, from 8:00-9:00 pm Eastern Time, Rabbi Hayyim Angel will teach a Zoom class on Jeremiah chapter 31, the Haftarah for the Second Day of Rosh HaShanah. This class is sponsored by Ben Porat Yosef Yeshiva Day School of Paramus, New Jersey. It is free and open to the public.

Zoom link: https://us02web.zoom.us/j/5413950938?pwd=dSszMGFUNEgrQlY3blc2K1hzYzdCUT09#success

 

On Shabbat, September 20, from 10:00-11:30 am Eastern Time, Rabbi Hayyim Angel will lead the next Foundations Minyan at Congregation Beth Aaron in Teaneck, New Jersey. The full service provides explanations of the weekly Torah reading. It is free and open to the public, and is located at 950 Queen Anne Road in Teaneck. The service is in memory of Andy Dimond, of blessed memory.

 

On Monday, September 29, from 1:00-2:00 pm Eastern Time, Rabbi Hayyim Angel will teach a Zoom class on Joshua's Leadership Success. This class is sponsored by Lamdeinu Teaneck and registration is required. To register, go to https://www.lamdeinu.org/programs/.

 

Looking forward to learning with you!

You Shall Love Truth and Peace

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Rabbi Daniel Bouskila is the International Director of the Sephardic Educational Center (SEC), and the rabbi of the Westwood Village Synagogue in Los Angeles. This article appears in issue 36 of Conversations, the journal of the Institute for Jewish Ideas and Ideals.

You Shall Love Truth and Peace

 

By Rabbi Benzion Meir Hai Uziel

translated from the original Hebrew by Rabbi Daniel Bouskila

 

 

 

Translator’s introduction: Rabbi Benzion Meir Hai Uziel (1880–1953) was a visionary rabbinic leader and the twentieth century’s most authentic embodiment of the classic Sephardic rabbinic tradition. He was the Haham Bashi (Ottoman-appointed Chief Rabbi) of Jaffa-Tel Aviv (1911–1939), and the Rishon L’Zion (Sephardic Chief Rabbi of Israel) of the pre-state Yishuv under the British Mandate (1939–1947) and then of the State of Israel (1948–1953). He authored multiple volumes of groundbreaking Halakhic Responsa (Jewish legal rulings on practical matters), as well as original books of Jewish philosophy, theology, and ethics. From his earliest moments as a young rabbinic leader, all the way to his famous “Spiritual Will to the Jewish People,” written a few weeks before his death, Rabbi Uziel was a strong advocate for Jewish unity. This essay, “You Shall Love Truth and Peace,” originally appeared in his classic work of Jewish thought Hegyonei Uziel (volume 2, pages 33–34). It is one of his most eloquent statements on unity, and beautifully encapsulates his creative blend of classic rabbinic scholarship with responsible leadership.

 

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In his grand vision describing the redemption of Israel, the prophet Zechariah declares:

 

Thus said the Lord of Hosts: The fast of the fourth month, the fast of the fifth month, the fast of the seventh month, and the fast of the tenth month shall become occasions of joy and gladness, happy festivals for the House of Judah, but you shall love truth and peace. (Zechariah 8:19)

 

From here we learn that the redemption of Israel is contingent upon their loving truth and peace, for much like the two bronze pillars Yachin and Boaz upheld King Solomon’s Temple in Jerusalem, so, too, do truth and peace uphold the entire universe of Israel.

The God of Israel is a God of truth and peace. God’s Torah is a book of truth, and one of God’s names is “peace,” as taught by the rabbis: “Great is peace, for the name of the Holy One Blessed be He is Shalom (peace), as it is written, “and He was called Hashem-Shalom” (Judges 6:24). 

In addition to being a book of truth, the Torah is also a book of peace, as it is written, “Her ways are pleasant ways, and all her paths are peaceful” (Proverbs 3:17).

Our rabbis declared that peace is one of Judaism’s most beloved principles, for “The entire purpose of the Torah is to bring about peace in the world” (Gittin 59b).

Jerusalem is comforted in the language of peace (“My people shall dwell in peaceful homes,” Isaiah 32:18), God blesses Israel with daily blessings of peace, and “Shalom” is the national greeting of one Jew to the other.

One of the most powerful expressions on the importance of peace is learned from the teachings and deeds of our rabbis:

 

Come and hear: Although Bet Shammai and Bet Hillel disagreed on several legal issues related to family matters—such as rival wives and sisters, an outdated bill of divorce, a doubtfully married woman, the case of one who divorces his wife and later she lodged together with him at an inn, money and its equivalent in valuables, a peruta or the equivalent value of a peruta (for the purposes of establishing a betrothal). Nonetheless, Bet Shammai did not refrain from marrying women from Bet Hillel, nor did Bet Hillel refrain from marrying women from Bet Shammai. This serves to teach us that despite their differences, they practiced love and friendship between them, to fulfill that which is stated: “You shall love truth and peace.” (BT Yebamot 14b)

 

The parallel teaching in the Jerusalem Talmud says:

 

Although Bet Shammai and Bet Hillel disagreed on several legal issues related to family matters…nonetheless…they practiced truth and peace between them, as it is written, “You shall love truth and peace.” (JT Yebamot Chapter 1).

 

With Shammai and Hillel having practiced both “love and friendship” and “truth and peace,” we learn that love and truth are one and the same, and any love that is not grounded in truth is false. It goes without saying that falsehood and lying are abominable in the eyes of God, as it is written “Keep away from anything false” (Exodus 23:7) and “Do not lie to one another” (Leviticus 19:11).

The Nation of Israel is commanded to live by the two great pillars of truth and peace, for doing so will eternally distinguish them for blessings and praise, no matter what the circumstances. These pillars are especially needed in the State of Israel, for truth and peace will help create an atmosphere of pleasantness and tranquility throughout the land. Each individual in Israel must internalize truth and peace, thus fostering a true love for the State of Israel and for its internal peace. This internal peace within Israel will ultimately lead to our making peace with all nations and kingdoms.

We are taught how to achieve this desired internal peace through the Torah and its commandments, “whose ways are ways of pleasantness, and all her paths are peace.”

The achievement of internal peace through the Torah is promised by the Torah itself: “If you follow My laws and faithfully observe My commandments…I will grant peace in the land so that you will sleep without fear” (Leviticus 26: 3–6).

Let us place this message upon our hearts, removing from our midst any hint of evil inclination, divisiveness, or hatred of the Torah and its commandments. Let us clothe ourselves with an elevated devotion and sense of love for one another, as commanded by the Torah, “You shall love your neighbor as yourself, I am the Lord” (Leviticus 19:18).

By the same measure, let us also love the stranger in our midst, as it is written, “The stranger who resides with you shall be to you as one of your citizens, you shall love him as yourself, for you were strangers in the land of Egypt, I am the Lord your God” (Leviticus 19:34).

This is not the place to explain in depth the details of this important Jewish law (of loving the stranger), but let us all recognize that all of us were strangers in the four corners of the earth. Therefore, in addition to the commandment to “love your neighbor as yourself,” we have another commandment of love that obligates us to accept and welcome all immigrants to our land, regardless of their ethnic community or country of origin. We must accept them from a place of genuine love, both the love of “you shall love your neighbor as yourself” and “you shall love him (the stranger) as yourself.”

From this same place of genuine love, let us conduct ourselves in the paths of true peace, respecting each other’s opinions and feelings, as well as respecting the differences amongst the factions in our country. Let us remove all language of hatred, animosity, and provocation from our midst, so that we may fulfill amongst ourselves that which our enlightened rabbi Maimonides commanded us: “Accept the truth from whatever source it comes.” Let us also live by the enlightened deeds of our rabbis, Bet Shammai and Bet Hillel, who behaved with love and respect toward one another and respected each other’s opinions, fulfilling the verse, “You shall love truth and peace.”

From a sincere place of love and devotion, let us come closer to our Holy Torah and all of its laws and commandments. For the Torah is our life and the length of our days, here in this land that God has given to our ancestors and to us as an inheritance. This is all for our own good and for the good of our children, forever and ever.

May God, the King of Peace, bless us with peace, and may we merit to see the fulfillment of the great prophetic vision for the End of Days for world peace, as it is written: “And they shall beat their swords into plowshares, and their spears into pruning hooks; nation shall not take up sword against nation, they shall never again know war” (Isaiah 2:4).

I conclude my words by quoting the beautiful words of Maimonides from the end of his “Laws of Kings” (at the very end of his Mishneh Torah):

 

The Sages and the prophets did not yearn for the Messianic era in order to have dominion over the entire world, to rule over the gentiles, to be exalted by the nations, or to eat, drink, and celebrate. Rather, they desired to be free to involve themselves in Torah and wisdom without any pressures or disturbances, so that they would merit the world to come, as explained in Hilkhot Teshuvah.

In that era, there will be neither famine nor war, envy, or competition, for good will flow in abundance and all the delights will be freely available as dust. The occupation of the entire world will be solely to know God.

Therefore, the Jews will be great sages and know the hidden matters, grasping the knowledge of their Creator according to the full extent of human potential, as Isaiah 11:9 states: “The world will be filled with the knowledge of God as the waters cover the ocean bed."

 

 

Thoughts for Yom Kippur

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Thoughts for Yom Kippur

By Rabbi Marc D. Angel

In his essay, “The Condition We Call Exile,” Joseph Brodsky—who won the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1987—makes a stark observation. “A free man, when he fails, blames nobody.” An essential feature of being a free human being is taking responsibility for one’s actions. Blaming others is a sign of moral and intellectual weakness; it is a sign of a slave mentality.

The Torah provides a candid roadmap guiding us to become responsible, free human beings. It starts with examples of failure!

Adam and Eve eat the forbidden fruit and God confronts them. Eve blames it on the snake. Adam blames it on Eve. Neither takes responsibility. Neither has the moral strength to say: I have failed, I made a mistake, I sinned. 

Cain murders Abel and God confronts him. Cain asks “am I my brother’s keeper?” He laments the punishment that God metes out, but he never says: I’m sorry, I did wrong.

The first example in the Torah of someone taking blame for improper behavior is Judah, when he admits that his daughter in law Tamar was righteous and he was in the wrong. (Bereishith 38:26) This sign of personal strength becomes a hallmark of Judah’s personality. It is not by accident that Jacob assigns the role of leadership to him. Judah is the lion of the family.

As the Torah unfolds, we find many examples of sins by individuals and by the people as a whole. In very few instances does anyone take responsibility. But the Torah provides a steady and clear roadmap to personal freedom: repentance.

The Torah calls on us to admit to our sins and faults. It provides a lengthy and detailed list of instructions about sin offerings that were to be brought in the sanctuary. It provides for a Day of Atonement, when we are called upon to confess sins, purify ourselves, admit faults…and resolve to do better in the future. It is precisely through repentance that we assert our freedom. We stand before God as responsible human beings, not blaming anyone else for our mistakes and misdeeds.

The Torah wants us to be free. It teaches us to shake off the tendency to blame others for our own shortcomings. Slaves and weaklings lack the personal courage to stand up on their own. They succumb to cults and ideologies that foster lies and conspiracy theories against others, whom they blame for all their problems.  In so doing, they demonstrate their own lack of good character, their lack of genuine freedom.

Yom Kippur is a gift that God has given to those who follow the Torah. But its message is a gift for all humanity. “A free man, when he fails, blames nobody.” Nobody, that is, except oneself. When one can be honest before God, one is on the road to personal freedom.