National Scholar Updates

Secular subjects are taught with various approaches in Jewish schools. Some take the approach that they are a necessary evil, and are taught only because they are required to do so by the civil authorities. They believe that only really worthwhile learning is that of limudei qodesh. Others take a more positive attitude toward limudei chol, considering them important at least for purposes of earning a living. Others go even further and consider all knowledge to have some intrinsic value. Scientific truth has sanctity in that it attests to the wisdom of the Creator.

Mathematics stands out somewhat from other subjects. Not only is the truth in mathematics not merely empirical but provable by reason, but there are also many areas in limudei qodesh for which an understanding of mathematics is essential. In some cases, the mathematics may even be considered part of limudei qodesh. An excellent example of this is the study of RMBM’s Hilchot Qiddush Hachodesh. There RMBM presents what is essentially a mathematical algorithm for determining the Jewish calendar.

Hilchot Qiddush Hachodesh of RMBM’s Mishneh Torah is divided into 3 distinct parts, which were almost certainly written at 3 distinct times in RMBM’s life. The first 5 chapters describe how the calendar was set during Talmudic times. It follows the rest of Misheneh Torah in relying on Talmudic sources. Chapters 6 through 10 comprise the second part and in chapters 6-8, contain the algorithm for determining the calendar in our times. It is this material that we are concerned with here. [1] The last part deals with astronomical calculations useful for determining when the new lunar crescent may be observable. This is only relevant for when the calendar is determined through observation, and has no direct bearing on the previous 5 chapters.

We will first sketch an outline of the ideas in Chapters 6-8 of RMBM. The summary we give will take advantage of our modern notation for numbers and some modern terminology. RMBM used the common gematria notation, which makes the explanation more cumbersome. We will then examine some of the mathematics that we can learn by studying RMBM.

A Summary of RMBM’s Calendar Algorithm

The modern Hebrew calendar is fixed, so that it is generated by a mathematical algorithm which is based on approximations to the lengths of orbits of celestial bodies. The Hebrew calendar is lunisolar, which means that it is based on approximations to the length of the month and the length of the year. [2] The day is divided into 25920 units, called helakim or parts. Thus there are 7 x 25920=181,440 parts in a week. A month is considered on average to have 29 days plus 13753 parts. Thus a month has on average 29 plus 13753/25920 days, or about 29.5305941 days. This is remarkably close to the modern astronomical value (29.5305888 days).

The length of the solar year is based on the assumption that nineteen years have 235 months. Multiplying the number of parts in a month by 235 gives 179,876,755 parts in 19 years, or 6939 days plus 17,875 parts. Dividing by 19, gives an estimate of 365 days plus 6397 and 12/19 parts in a year. In decimals, this is about 365.2468 days. The modern astronomical value of the mean tropical year is about 365.2422 days, so this is closer to the modern astronomical value than that of the Julian calendar estimate (365.25 days), but not as close as that of the Gregorian calendar (365.2425 days).[3]

The calendar is divided into 19-year cycles. The 235 months in each cycle are apportioned to the years so that 7 of the years have 13 months while the other 12 have 12 months. This is known as the Metonic cycle and was used in the ancient Babylonian calendar. The Jewish calendar version has the 3rd, 6th, 8th, 11th, 14th, 17th and 19th months in the cycle as the ones with 13 months.

What remains is to set the calendar for each particular year. This is done by first setting the day of week that Rosh Hashanna of each year falls on. Since we know the approximate length of the year, knowing the days of the week of 2 successive Rosh Hashannas determines the exact length of the intervening year.

The determination of the day of the week for Rosh Hashanna is done through the calculation of a number called the molad.[4] This is a number associated with every month of every year, and is defined by an inductive algorithm. An epochal molad is associated with the first month of the first year, and the molad for any subsequent month is calculated by adding the number of parts in a month to the molad of the previous month, modulo the number of parts in a week.[5] The day of week that Rosh Hashanna of a particular year falls is determined by the range of values in which the molad for Tishrei of that year falls, according to some precise rules. Generally, these rules say that the day of the week should correspond roughly to the number of days that the molad value represents. Adjustments are made so that Rosh Hashanna never falls on days 1, 4 or 6, and so that the length of year is always within certain parameters.

The actual calendar for a given year depends on the length of the year and the day of the week on which it starts. The algorithm is formulated so that there are only 3 possible lengths for a 12-month year and for a 13-month year respectively.[6] The lengths of months within the year are determined by the length of year. The final refinement of the calendar is a function of the days of week of Rosh Hashanna of 2 successive years, which determines Torah readings.

It is evident from the above description that the calendar algorithm is a purely mathematical one. The terms year, day etc, are purely notional ones, and should be thought of as numbers consisting of the number of parts which the algorithm assigns to them. To be sure, in implementing the algorithm, we use actual days. However, this involves a simple process of counting these days by observing sunrises and sunsets. Anyone who knows the current year, the position of the current day in that year and the current day of week can implement the algorithm.

Mathematics of the Calendar

Joseph Justus Scaliger was a 16th century French scholar. In his De Emendatione Temporum (1593) he writes: “Of all methods of intercalation that exist today, the Jewish calculation is the oldest, the most skillful, and the most elegant." There is indeed much interesting mathematics in the calendar that is well worth studying. Here we give an outline of some such topics.

1)Representations of numbers and their operations.

We learn about our number representation at an early age. As a consequence, we tend to identify a number with its representation. In truth, a number has an intrinsic meaning apart from its representation, and it is only comparatively recently in human history that our current way from representing it has become widely accepted.

The modern representation of numbers is a decimal (base ten) positional system. There are ten symbols:0,1,..,9 which are strung together, and their position in the string determines their value. The rightmost symbol has the value assigned to the symbol if it were standing alone. The one to the left of it has ten times this value, the next one a hundred times its value, and so on. These values are then added together to get the value of the string.

The operations of addition and multiplication on numbers are straightforward using this system. If an operation results in a number greater than ten, it is divided by 10, the symbol for the remainder , being between 1 and 9, is put in the rightmost column, and the quotient is carried over to the remaining columns. We continue this way, going column to column.

An alternative system of representing numbers is the gematria system used in many ancient societies. This is an ordinal system, where numbers are represented by the letters of the alphabet, the value of a letter being dependent on its position in the alphabet. Larger numbers are formed by stringing together smaller numbers. A disadvantage of this system is that very large numbers must be formed using very lengthy strings. The rules for operations on numbers using this system are also much more complicated.

The decimal positional system originated in India. It became known to Persian and Arab scholars in the 9th century, and it greatly facilitated their study of mathematics and astronomy. RMBM, erudite scholar that he was, surely was familiar with it and must have used it in his private computations. Nevertheless, in Mishneh Torah he uses the gematria system which his readers would be familiar with. [7]

A close examination of RMBM however reveals that he actually is using the essential ideas of positional notation, albeit in a different form. After all, he has to use numbers as large as 181,440 (the number of parts in a week). When he says that an hour consists of 1080 parts, he is really saying that he is using another unit to handle numbers greater than 1080. Similarly, the unit of a day is used to handle numbers greater than 24 hours, or 25920 parts. Thus, instead of using position to deal with large numbers, he simply gives special names to the numbers 1080 (an hour) and 25920 (a day). And instead of using a uniform base 10 system, he uses a system with mixed bases (1080, 24 and 7).

All this is explained by RMBM in 6.9. where he states:

When in doing the computations for the molad, whenever the parts add up to 1080, you discard them, and add 1 to the count of hours.

This is the analogue in our notation of carrying over values greater than ten to the next column. RMBM gives a similar algorithm for handling values greater than 24 hours.

These days, the use of the decimal position system is widely accepted. Even the purists among Jewish educators appreciate its simplicity, elegance and ease of use, despite its foreign origin. Most translations of RMBM's Hilchot Qiddush Hachodesh render his numbers using our decimal notation. It certainly makes the computations easier to follow, but is somewhat misleading, as his original readers would mostly have had to do these calculations solely within the gematria system. For someone whose goal is to study RMBM for its own sake, an interesting exercise is to try to reconstruct these calculations. It takes patience, but can be done.

At the other extreme, if one's goal is to understand the calendar as efficiently as possible, it makes sense to abandon RMBM's day-hour-part system completely and represent all values using decimal notation. Although this loses some of the significance of the role of the numbers in setting the calendar - the day of week of Rosh Hashanna is primarily determined by the day-value, but with notable modifications - it certainly makes the algorithm easier to analyze and program.[8]

2)The Euclidean Division Algorithm

The division algorithm is taught in grade school. So much attention is focused on the mechanics of carrying out the algorithm with modern number representation that the essential simplicity of the idea behind it and its justification is lost. Euclid did not use
positional representation , and the algorithm is independent of the particular representation of the numbers involved.

The algorithm says that if a and b are whole numbers, then either b divides a evenly, or b can be divided into a to produce a quotient q and remainder r, with the property that r is
smaller than b. The method for finding q and r is as follows: If b is already less than a, then q=0 and r=b. Otherwise, start subtracting multiples of b from a. The differences become smaller as the multiples increase, so eventually we must reach a point where it is less than b. This is the remainder r.

When determining the representation of a number greater than 10 in the decimal positional system, by moving multiples of ten a position to the right, one is implementing this algorithm by dividing by 10. Likewise in RMBM's algorithm, when converting
parts larger than 1080 to hours and parts, one is dividing by 1080 to get the quotient (hours) and the remainder (parts). Thus RMBM is giving a clear statement of the algorithm in the quote from 6.9 above.

3)Modular Arithmetic

At the end of 6.9, RMBM says:

When the days add up to more than 7, you discard 7 from the count and keep the rest. For we do not calculate to know the actual number of days, but to know on which day of the week, and in which hour and in which part the molad will be.

The concept that RMBM is introducing is that of congruence modulo an integer m.

If m is a positive integer, we say that 2 integers are congruent modulo m if their
difference is divisible by m, or, equivalently, if they have the same remainder when they are divided by m. For a given integer a, the set of integers congruent to it modulo a is called the congruence class of a. The set of all such congruence classes is a finite set, called the integers modulo m, and denoted Zm. Thus multiples of m are considered to be equivalent to 0 in this set. We deal with Zm when we are interested, not in the number itself, but in its remainder when divided by m.

So, RMBM says, the relevant set of values for the molad is not the integers (Z), but Z181440 .

Another instance where modular arithmetic arises in calendar calculations is in the 19-year Metonic cycle, where the relevant set is Z19 .

4) Functions

The notion of function is essential to modern mathematics. If to every value in a domain, a value is assigned in another domain, we say that we have a function from the first domain to the second. An example is the assignment of a Tishrei molad value to each year, which is a function from Z to Z181440. Another example is the assignment of day of week to a molad value. This assignment depends on the position of a year in the Metonic cycle, so is a function from Z181440 x Z19 to Z7. The composition of these two functions gives the assignment that we are really interested in, from Z to Z7. (The function from Z to Z19 is reduction modulo 19, the assignment of an integer to its congruence class modulo 19.)

5) Induction

The principle of mathematical induction says that if one has a function assigning a value to the integer 1, and a rule telling how to define a value for an integer provided that the value for the previous integer is known, that one has a function assigning a value to all positive integers.

In 6.8 RMBM states:

If you know the molad of the current year, and add to it the appropriate remainder [depending on whether it is a regular year or a leap year], you will obtain the molad of the following year. And so it is year after year until the end of time. The first molad is that of the first year of creation (2 days, 5 hours 204 parts).

Thus RMBM is giving a precise application of the principle of induction.

6)Other mathematical topics

A more detailed analysis of the calendar gives rise to several other interesting mathematical topics.

One can ask for the periodicity of the calendar, that is how often the calendar repeats itself. It turns out that the period is 19 x 181440 /d years, where d is the greatest common divisor of 181440 and 69715 (the number of parts mod 181440 in a 19-year period, which is 5. Thus the period is 689472 years. As a consequence we can consider the molad function as one from Z689472 to Z181440.

One can ask for the inverse of this function, that is, which years have a given molad. The answer uses a concept that is known as the extended Euclidean Greatest Common Divisor algorithm. It turns out that for a given molad there are either 3 or 4 values in Z689472 which take on that molad value, depending on its congruence modulo 5.

Details of these and other topics can be found in the reference in footnote 8.

Conclusion

The calendar plays a central part in Jewish ritual life, yet the principles behind it are generally not well understood.[9] From the point of view of Jewish studies, mathematics is essential for a thorough understanding of its calendar. RMBM’s superb understanding of the mathematics involved and his lucid exposition come through in the study. The contemporary student has the advantage of modern notation and terminology which makes the mathematics considerably more accessible than previously.

From the point of mathematics education, the calendar offers motivation for studying several important topics. The mathematics teacher often encounters skepticism from students as to the usefulness of the subject, and studying the calendar makes the mathematics come to life and gives it meaning. There is a natural symbiosis between the two subjects, and serious thought should be given to find a way to integrate them.

[1] A description of the Jewish calendar was by the Muslim scholar al-Birundi in the early 10th century. An earlier work by Saadia Gaon exists only in fragments. The mathematician R. Abraham b. Hiyya (also known as Savasorda), in his Sefer Ha’Ibbur, described the calendar about 50 years before RMBM. His work closely resembles that of RMBM, who may have used him as his source.

[2] The lengths are of necessity approximations, since they are not constant over time.

[3]The discrepancy between the approximate length of the calendar year and the length of the tropical year implies that the calendar dates in our days occur about a week later in the season than when the calendar was first instituted. If instead of using the metonic estimate for the number of months in a year, we used the astronomical value, the average year length would be about 365.242256 days. Thus about 99% of the discrepancy in year length is due to the error in the metonic estimate. However, the sages in instituting the calendar had to find a small integral number of months to fit into a small integral number of years. Given this constraint, the choice of Metonic cycle was probably optimal.

[4] Molad is usually traslated as lunar conjunction. RMBM distinguishes beteween molad amiti, the true molad, and molad emtzai, which is best thought of as a theoretical number. It doesn’t correspond to any real time, but is a value used to determine the calendar.

[5] This concept is presented in more detail below.

[6] Since the difference between the moladim of 2 subsequent months equals the number of parts in a month, the difference between the moladim of 2 months which are 19 years apart will differ by the number of parts in 19 years. This guarantees that, although there is much variation in the length of the year, the average length of the calendar year will be exactly 365 days plus 6397 and 12/19 parts.

[7] In contrast, al-Biruni used Indian decimals in his description of the Jewish calendar.
His readers had already been introduced to this representation of numbers by the mathematician
Al-Khwarizmi. RMBM's readers, on the other hand, were mostly not familiar with this notation.

[8] See “A Mathematical Analysis of the Hebrew Calendar”, http://www.math.uga.edu/~lenny/papers/PaperList.html, where this is done.

[9] The mischaracterization of the molad as a physical event in the Artscroll siddur and the Chabad web site attests to this. This is also seen in the way the molad is described in printed calendars and announced in synagogues. Instead of using the natural, Jewish way of referring to the week day by its number, it is translated into its secular equivalent. For example, Day 2, 5 hours becomes Sunday evening at 11 PM. The purpose of such a translation eludes us, since to use the molad for its intended purpose, one would have to translate it back into a number. What is even more bizarre, some calendars adjust the molad in summer for daylight savings time!

Lately, a strange feeling has gotten hold of me. I am not yet able to fully articulate it, but something tells me that God is relocating to a different residence. He has hired a moving company, and they are at this time loading all His furniture and possessions into a van and awaiting His instructions as to the destination. The truth is He’s been thinking about moving for a long time but has not yet done so because we, in our ignorance, are still busy visiting His old home, completely blind to the fact that the curtains have been taken down, most of His furniture has already been removed, and He is standing in the doorway, dressed in His jacket and ready to go. He nevertheless listens to us, smiling and feeling sorry for us that in our utter blindness we still believe we are sitting comfortably in His living room, chatting, and having coffee with Him, while in fact He is sitting on the edge of His chair, gazing longingly at the door, dreaming of His new home.

Synagogues—whether Orthodox, Conservative, or Reform—are no longer His primary residence. Surely some of the worshippers are pious people who try to communicate with their Creator, but overall, the majority of these places have become religiously sterile and spiritually empty. So God is moving to unconventional minyanim and places such as Israeli cafes, debating clubs, community centers, unaffiliated religious gatherings, and atypical batei midrash. The reason is obvious. In some of those places people are actually looking for Him. And that is what He loves; not those who have already found Him and take Him for granted. He is moving in with the young people who have a sense that He is there but cannot yet find Him. It gives Him a thrill. In some of these cafes He encounters young men sporting ponytails, without kippot, but with tzitziyot hanging out of their T-shirts, praying in their own words, attempting to find Him. In secular yeshivot, He meets women in trousers and mini-skirts who are earnestly arguing about what it means to be Jewish and who kiss mezuzot when they enter a fashion show. Then there are those who, to His delight, are keen on putting on tefillin once in a while and do this with great excitement; or who enthusiastically light Shabbat candles Friday night and can get into a serious discussion about Buddhism and how to combine some of its wisdom with Kabbalah and incorporate it into Jewish practice.

No, they don’t do so because it is tradition, or nostalgia, as their grandparents did, but because they sincerely want to connect, to grow and become better, deeper, and more authentic Jews—but at their own pace and without being told by others what they ought to do. They won’t go for the conventional outreach programs, which try to indoctrinate them and are often terribly simplistic. No, they strive to come closer because of an enormous urge and inner explosion of their neshamot. No better place for God to be, even if these attempts may not always achieve the correct goals and are sometimes misdirected.

At these unconventional sites, theological discourses take place over a glass of beer, and the participants talk deep into the night because they can’t get enough of this great stuff called Judaism. Many of these people want to study God and understand why He created the world and what the meaning of life is all about. What is the human condition? What is a religious experience? How do we confront death? What is the meaning of halakha? What are we Jews doing here in this strange universe? They realize that life becomes more and more perplexing, and these questions are therefore of radical importance. These are, after all, eternal issues. Who wants to live a life that passes by unnoticed? It is in this mysterious stratosphere that God loves to dwell. He can’t get enough of it.

Regrettably, His interest wavers when He enters conventional synagogues. He finds little excitement there. Many of His worshippers seem to go through the motions, activate their automatic pilot, do what they are told, say the words in the prayer book, and go home to make Kiddush. Few are asking questions on how to relate to God, why they are Jewish, or what their lives really are all about. Many do not want to be confronted with these nasty issues. They only disturb their peace of mind. A nice, conventional devar Torah is good enough. After all, everything has already been discussed and resolved. Regular synagogue visitors only speak to Him when they need Him, but almost nobody ever speaks about Him or hears Him when He calls for help in pursuing the purpose of His creation.

So God is moving to more interesting places. He laughs when He thinks of the old slogan, “God is dead.” It was a childhood disease. He knows we learned our lesson. It is too easy, too simplistic, and has not solved anything. He knows that He has not yet been replaced with something better. Oh yes, there are still run-of-the-mill scientists who believe that they have it all worked out. Some neurologists sincerely believe that “we are our brains” and that our thinking is nothing more than sensory activity. They seem to believe that one can find the essence of Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony by analyzing the ink with which the composer wrote this masterpiece. There are even Nobel Prize winners who believe that we will soon enter God’s mind and know it all, no longer needing Him. They are like the man who searches for his watch in the middle of the night. When asked why he is looking under the street lamp, if he lost his watch a block away, he answers: “This is the only place where I can see anything.” These scientists have still not realized that there are more things, on earth and in heaven, than their research will ever grasp. They have convinced themselves that they are merely objective spectators and have not yet understood that they themselves are actors in the mysterious drama of what is called life.

And God simply winks. During the duration of this long-term disease beginning in the nineteenth century, antibodies have been developing to fight against the denial of His very being. Although atheism is still alive and kicking, many have become immune to all these simplistic ideas. Over the years, more and more antitoxins have accumulated, and we are now stunned by the fact that He, after all, may indeed be in our midst. Suddenly, an outdated hypothesis has come to life again. God is a real possibility, and we had better become aware of that.

But here’s the catch: While the religious establishment is now shouting from the rooftops “We told you so,” it has not yet grasped that this is completely untrue. The discovery of God did not happen because of conventional religion but in spite of it.

The truth is that the great shift concerning God took place far away from the official religious establishment. It is in fact a miracle that some people continued believing in God while religion often did everything to make this impossible. For centuries the church blundered time after time. Since the days when Galileo proved the Church wrong, it was constantly forced to change its position. And even then it did so reluctantly. The enormous loss of prestige that religion suffered because of it is beyond description. God was pushed into the corner. Not because He was not there, but because He was constantly misrepresented by people who spoke in His name. Since the Renaissance, many other great minds have moved the world forward; and although several may have missed the boat, a large number of them introduced radical new perspectives of the greatest importance. Yet, the Church’s only response was to fight them tooth and nail until, out of utter necessity, when all its arguments had run out, it had to succumb and apologize once again for its mistakes. Time and again, religion lagged behind in sharing the victory of new scientific and philosophical insights. Ironically, long before the Church officially sanctioned these new discoveries, they were already part and parcel of the new world. As always, the imprimatur came too late.

Thus, religion paid a heavy price. Its territory became smaller and smaller. The constant need for capitulation made many people leave the world of religion and opt for the secular approach. And the story is not over yet. Scientists are now discussing the possibility of creating life forms in the laboratory that do not depend on DNA to survive and evolve. In all likelihood, several religious leaders will fight this again, with force and ferocity, and will probably have to succumb once more when they can no longer deny the hard facts of science.

But what was happening in the Jewish religious world? Although it cannot be denied that Judaism, too, got caught up in all these debates, and quite a few staunch traditionalists were not much better than some of the church fathers, the overall situation within Judaism was much more receptive to scientific developments. Whereas the Church declared in one authoritative voice— often the synod— that these new scientific discoveries were outright heresy, such pronouncements never took place in the synagogue. This is because Judaism is so different from other religions. Positions of unconditional belief were never its main concern. They were always debated, but never finalized, as was the case with the Church. What kept Judaism busy was the question of how to live one’s life while living in the presence of God and humanity, as expressed in the all-encompassing halakhic literature. Because of that, it did not see scientific discoveries as much of a challenge. There was also a strong feeling that scientific progress was a God-given blessing. The greatest Jewish religious thinker of the Middle Ages, Maimonides, was even prepared to give up on the concept of creation ex nihilo if it would be proven untrue. [1] Although he was attacked for some of these radical and enlightened ideas, the general attitude was: Let science do its thing, and if we were wrong in the past because we relied on the science of those days, we will now rectify our position. Even when the Talmud made scientific statements, many—although certainly not all—understood them to be the result of scientific knowledge of the day, and not sacrosanct. And even when these debates became more intensive, it was never argued that opposing views should be absolutely silenced. There was no final authority in matters of belief, no Jewish synod. At the same time, many sages warned against making science into an idol that is all-knowing and can solve life’s riddles.

Louis Kronenberger notes that

Nominally a great age of scientific inquiry, ours has actually become an age of superstition about the infallibility of science; of almost mystical faith in its non-mystical methods; above all…of external verities; of traffic-cop morality and rabbit-test truth.[2]

But today all this has changed. In many Orthodox circles, Judaism’s beliefs have become more holy than the pope. Suddenly, there is an attempt to outdo old-fashioned Catholicism; to insist that the world is actually nearly 5,800 years old; that the creation chapter must be taken literally; that the seven days of creation consisted of twenty-four hours each and not one minute more; that there is no foundation to the theory of evolution; and that the Talmud’s scientific observations came straight from Sinai. That this happened in the past, when there was limited scientific knowledge, is understandable; but that such claims are still made today is downright embarrassing. It makes us blush. We can laugh about it only because the hopelessness of some of these ideas has already passed the point of being disputable. They have faded into flickering embers soon to be extinguished.

Surely it could be argued that possibly science will change its mind. But if the core beliefs of Judaism are not undermined (and they are not!), and as long as there is no indication that science will change its mind in the near future, there is no need to reject these scientific positions. And let us never forget that it is not even completely clear what these core beliefs are! So why fight modern science? [3]

The incredible damage done by doing so is beyond description. It makes Judaism laughable and, in the eyes of many intelligent people, completely outmoded. It makes it impossible to inspire many searching souls who know what science teaches us. If not for this mistaken understanding of Judaism, many people would not have left the fold and could actually have enjoyed Judaism as a major force in their lives.

And it is here that many of us, including myself, are at fault. We blame the Synagogue for this failure, as we blamed the Church hundreds of years ago. Many of us have said, “Judaism has failed”; “It is outdated”; “I am getting out.” But such statements are as unfair as they are illogical. Judaism is not an institution external to us, which one can abandon as one quits a hockey club. We are the Synagogue, and we are Judaism. When Galileo revolutionized our view concerning the solar system, it was not only the Church that failed; we all failed. Those who from the perspective of Galileo claim that the Church was backward are reasoning post factum.

We must realize that although Judaism consists of core beliefs and values that are eternal and divine, it is also the product of the culture during which time it developed. That, too, is part of God’s plan and has a higher purpose. And when history moves on and God reveals new knowledge, the purpose is to incorporate that into our thinking and religious experience. Ignoring this is silencing God’s voice.

According to Alfred North Whitehead,

Religion will not regain its old power until it can face change in the same spirit as does science. Its principles may be eternal, but the expression of those principles requires continual development.[4]

That is why God is relocating. He doesn’t want to live in a place where His ongoing creation is unappreciated and even denied.

We have replaced God with prayers, no longer realizing to Whom we are praying. We even use halakha as an escape from experiencing Him. We are so busy with creating halakhic problems, and so completely absorbed by trying to solve them, that we are unaware of our hiding behind this practice so as not to deal with His existence. In many ways this is understandable. Since the days of the Holocaust, we have refused to confront the problem of His existence due to the enormity of the evil, which He allowed to happen. So we threw ourselves into halakha to escape the question. But although the problem of God’s involvement in the Holocaust will probably never be solved, we must realize that the purpose of halakha is to have an encounter with Him, not just with the halakha. Halakha is the channel through which we can reach Him, not just laws to live by.

Notwithstanding the incomprehensibility of the Holocaust, we must return to God. It’s high time we realize that His being is of a total different nature than we have ever imagined. God can only be understood in a way that is similar to the relationship between a computer hard disk and what you see on the screen. What you see on the screen is totally different from what is inscribed in the hard disk. You can examine the inside of the disk using the most powerful microscope, but you will see nothing even slightly resembling pictures, colors, or words. We are mistaken when we picture God based on the world screen. In no way does it reveal the actual contents of the hard disk, God Himself. All we know is that God’s ways—which we see only through the external sense of sight—is somehow related to the disk. The problem is that we believe we can have a good look at God by watching the screen. But we haven’t the slightest clue of what is actually going on in the disk. The Holocaust will almost certainly remain an enigma, but it can never deny the divine disk.[5]

It is in those who are still uncomfortable with God that new insights about Him are formed. And it will be in those uneasy environments that Judaism will be rediscovered and developed. The need for religious transcendence, and for the spiritual thread that keeps many young people on their toes, is enormous. Numerous secular people are joining a new category of spiritual theologians. Matters of weltanschauung are pivotal to many secular Jews now. The problem is that for them, and for the religious, the Torah is transmitted on a wavelength that is out of range of their spiritual transistors’ frequency.

Yes, we turn on the radio, but we hear strange noises and unusual static. There is serious transmission failure. We are no longer sure where the pipelines are. God has relocated.

In the world of physics, matters are becoming increasingly hazy. Our brains are penetrating places where well-established notions, such as matter and substance, have evaporated. They have been transformed to puzzling phenomena. They have moved, and God has moved with them. Science is becoming intangible, and it’s happening at a speed that we can’t keep up with. It puts us in a difficult position and causes us anxiety. We are all living in exile, within a mystical landscape. Those who are aware of this are alive; those who are not have left this world unwittingly.

The question is whether we move our synagogues to where God is now dwelling. Will we, the religious, live up to the expectations of the young people in cafes and discussions groups who have preceded us? Will we apologize to them and join in their discussions, creating a real religious experience out of our synagogue service? Or will we, as usual, stay put, fight the truth, and then be put to shame?

When will we move Judaism to the front seat so that it once again becomes the leader instead of a follower?

Will we move to God’s new habitat, or are we still drinking coffee in His old home, where the curtains have been removed and He is long gone?

***
There is a serious breakdown that has taken place in the Orthodox community worldwide. Today, most of these communities view themselves as observant, not model, communities. An observant community is one that is concerned primarily with religious observance. As such, it views halakha and a proper Orthodox environment to execute its demands as its priority. It sees its main obligation as ensuring that Orthodox Judaism survives the ongoing encroachment of secularism and assimilation. To a certain degree, its interest in halakha comes at the expense of Judaism itself. It lacks the language and spirit necessary to become a model community conveying the great message of Judaism to all other Jews, and even Gentiles.

Basically, it is defensive.

The Orthodox community does not realize that it is not observance that should be its main concern. Its primary goal should be to create a spiritual environment in which Jews, whether religious or not, take part in the great mission called Judaism, driven by a visionary halakha. Because it fails to understand this, it views strangers with suspicion. They are only welcome after a security check. The language spoken in these communities is of right and wrong, good and bad, safe and dangerous. It is a language of survival.

Mainstream Orthodoxy has fallen victim to a false kind of modernity in which flaunting irreverence has become the norm. Debunking is commonly practiced, and at every turn we experience the need to expose the clay feet of even the greatest. Human dignity, a phrase often used, has become a farce in real life. Instead of deliberately looking for opportunities to love our fellow men and women, as required by our holy Torah, many have rewritten this golden rule to read—in the words of Abraham Joshua Heschel—“Distrust your fellow man as you distrust yourself.” People’s lack of belief in themselves has spilled over to their relationships with others. Mediocrity has led them to believe that we are a generation of spiritual orphans. Influenced by materialistic philosophies, many a religious person who once revered his fellows has become part of the problem without even being aware of it.

When observing even those who are fully committed to helping fellow Jews find their way back to Judaism, we see an attitude that is foreign to religious life and thought. We cannot escape the impression that some people, without denying their love for their brothers and sisters, tend to talk down to “secular” Jews. This has become the norm. Constant emphasis is placed on the need to cure the secular person of his or her mistaken lifestyle. But this is asking for infinite trouble. It is based on arrogance. While religious Jews see themselves as the ideal, they relegate secular Jews to second-class status and decide that it is they who needs to repent for their mistaken ways. Such an attitude is based on the notions of contrast and lack of affinity. The secular Jew will always feel inferior. Therefore, the point of departure from which one reaches out to bring fellow Jews closer to Judaism is, at the same time, its undoing. The suggestion that “One should throw oneself into a burning furnace rather than insult another person publicly” [6] may very well apply, since it is the community of secular Jews that is being shamed and treated as inferior.

For Jews to bring others back to Judaism they need to celebrate the mitzvoth that the secular Jew has been observing for all or part of his life, not condemn his failure to observe some others.

Heschel writes, “The foundation should be humility, not arrogance.” [7] There is little doubt that secular Jews, consciously or unconsciously, keep a large number of commandments. Many of them may not be in the realm of rituals, but there is massive evidence that secular Jews are firmly committed to keeping interpersonal mitzvoth. Beneath the divisiveness of ritualism lie the underpinnings of religion, such as compassion, humility, awe, and even faith. The pledges are different, but the devotions are equal. It may very well be that the meeting of minds is lacking between the religious and non-religious Jews, but their spirits touch. Who will deny that secular Jews have a sense of mystery, forgiveness, beauty, and gentleness? How many do we know who lack inner faith that God cares? And how many will not show great contempt for fraud or double standards? Each of these is the deepest of religious values. We must try and make the so-called non-religious Jews aware of the fact that they are much more religious than they may know; that God’s light shines on their faces just as much, if not more, than on the faces of those we call religious Jews.

This not only calls for celebration but may well become an inspiration for religious Jews—not just by honoring secular Jews for keeping these mitzvoth but by taking an example from their non-observant brothers, by renewing these mitzvoth and good deeds in their own lives.

Just as the non-religious person needs to prove his or her worthiness to be the friend of a religious Jew, so the religious Jew needs to be worthy of the friendship of a secular fellow Jew. It would be a most welcome undertaking if the religious would call on the non-religious for guidance in mitzvoth in which they, the religious Jews, have been lax, as well as in how to improve themselves.

There is a significant need for calling Jews back to their roots by showing them that they never left. Once religious Jews learn that secular Jews are their equals, not their inferiors, a return to Judaism on the right terms will come about.

Orthodoxy celebrates its massive growth and unprecedented birthrate, but by doing so, it masks the tragedy of the thousands who are never given an opportunity to get in touch with Judaism or are unaware of how Jewish they really are. The language of condemnation and devaluation that permeates Orthodox classrooms not only makes it impossible for many to enter—but also causes numerous young people who were raised in a religious environment to leave the fold and turn their backs on Judaism. Even worse is the fact that Orthodoxy continues to point to this trend as evidence in support of the need for its insularity and separatism, blaming secularity for this tragic state of affairs, while the truth is that to a great extent it is Orthodoxy itself that is to blame.

***
The primary concern of Judaism is the art of living. To accomplish this goal it is committed to a strong sense of tradition and a determination to realize certain optimal goals. It is this road which has made Judaism unique and makes it stand out among the community of religions. This unique directness from a historical past into a messianic future; from Mount Sinai to justice for the orphan, widow, and stranger; and the ultimate abolition of war has saved Judaism from death by ice and death by fire, from freezing in awe of a rigid tradition and from evaporating into utopian reverie. [8]

Still, what Jews always looked for in the Torah was not just a way of living, nor the discovery of a truth but—this is scarcely an exaggeration—everything. Their love for the Torah was not just molded by particular teachings but by their conviction that everything could be found within its pages. God is no doubt central to Judaism but because the Jews never lost their intimate awareness of the multifarious colors of the Torah and its tradition, no dogma could ever gain authority. Even after Maimonides attempted, under the influence of Islamic theology, to lay down definite formulations of Jewish belief, Judaism refused to accept them as sacrosanct and did not allow such attempts to come between itself and the inexhaustible Torah text. It is for this reason that the kind of tension between religion and the quest for truth is almost unknown in Judaism. No sacrifice of the intellect is demanded.

One look in the Talmud proves this point beyond doubt. The flow of thoughts, opposing ideas, and the making and rejection of opinions and insights are abundant. The interaction between legality, prose, narrative, illusion, and the hard reality is astonishing. It makes the Talmud into the richest of all literatures; not even Greek philosophy was able to produce such a symphony of ideas in which the waves of the human intellect and divinity move forward and backward. There is an absolute lack of systematization, and it is clear that any such attempt was nipped in the bud. From a modern point of view, one might argue that the search for truth in the Torah was not directed toward proportional truth because such a notion was lacking by definition. The most persistent intellectual energy and analytic efforts were devoted to the continual contrivance of beautiful and profound interpretation to discover the totality of life.

Since the Torah was considered God-given, it might have been logical that fundamentalism would ultimately triumph and lead to conflict with science and other disciplines. But this inference is founded on a major misconception. Precisely because the text is seen as the word of God the essential ambiguity of the text was granted implicitly and every verse by definition has many levels of interpretations, both poetic and legal. There is even the compatibility of playfulness with seriousness since the former is a most important component of human existence as created by God.

Today, the attempt to streamline and straightjacket the Jewish tradition and to create a final Jewish theology is a major mistake and a complete misreading of its very character. Although there is, for practical reasons, a need to put halakhic living into a pragmatic context that requires conformity in action, this should never be the goal when focusing on Judaism’s beliefs. It is the task of the rabbis to do everything in their power to rescue Judaism from dogmatism. Although it can’t be denied that Judaism incorporates certain primary beliefs, these beliefs were always kept to the minimum and were constantly a source of fierce debate. Most important, one must remember that such “dogmas” never turned into a reductio ad absurdum. Freedom in doctrine and conformity in action was the overall policy to which the talmudic rabbis were committed, even when convinced of certain fundamental truths. This is also evident when one studies the relationship between the biblical text and the Oral Torah, where we see a minimum amount of words and maximum amount of interpretation.

It is detrimental to Jewish tradition to transform words into fixed clusters of thought and the storing up of whole theories. The idea is not to become the owner of a mass of information, which is entrusted firmly in one’s memory and carefully transmitted into notes. Once one does so, one becomes scared and disturbed by new ideas, since the new puts into question the fixed sum of information that one has stored into one’s mind. As such, ideas that cannot easily be pinned down are frightening, like everything else that grows and is flexible. Instead of being passive receptacles of words and ideas, the ideal is to hear—and most important to receive and respond—in an active, productive way. It needs to stimulate a thinking process that ultimately leads to the transformation of the student.

The attempt today to halakhalize and legalize Jewish thought is missing the whole message of the talmudic way of thinking. It will undermine the halakha itself since it will kill its underlying spirit. There is little doubt that due to the pan-halakhic attitudes that we now experience in certain rabbinical circles, we see the symptoms through which the halakha becomes suffocated and often rejected by intelligent, broad-thinking people. A plant may continue to stay alive in apparent health after its roots have been cut, but its days are numbered.

If the kind of rabbinical censorship that we have lately encountered in relationship to certain books and ideas on Orthodox Judaism was to be applied to the talmudic text itself, it would mean that the best part of this great compendium on Jewish thought and law would be censored and burned.

Freedom of thought must be guaranteed if we want the Jewish tradition to have a future. This applies in particular to teaching. A man or a woman who holds a teaching post should not be forced to repress his opinions for the sake of upholding popular simplistic opinions or even more sophisticated ones. As long as his or her opinions are rooted in the authentic Jewish tradition, and expressed with the awe of Heaven, it must be encouraged—however much this is disliked by some rabbinic authorities.

Uniformity in the opinions expressed by teachers is not only not to be sought, but is, if possible, to be avoided since diversity of opinion among preceptors is essential to any sound education. No religious Jewish student can pass as educated if he or she has heard only one side of the debates that divided the earlier and later sages. One of the most important things to teach is the power of weighing arguments, and this is the foundation of all talmudic debate. To prevent the teacher from doing do so or to bring this to the attention of his or her students is misplaced rabbinic tyranny and has no place in the Jewish tradition. It is the Christianization of Judaism by rabbis.

As soon as censorship is imposed upon the opinions that teachers may avow, Jewish education ceases to serve its purpose and tends to produce instead a nation of men and women, a herd of fanatical bigots.

Today’s talmudists must realize that they can become imprisoned by their own talmudic knowledge. They may have tremendous talmudic expertise, but they may have forgotten that one needs to know more than only all the intricacies of text. One needs to hear the distinctiveness of its content, the spirit it breathes, the ideological foundations on which it stands. To know the Talmud is to know more than its sum total.

Techniques for dealing with individuals whose opinions are disliked have been well-perfected. Especially so when the condemners are people of power and the accused are young and inexperienced. It is an easy and well-known tactic to accuse the condemned of professional incompetence. Most of the time, the dissident is quietly dropped. In the case of more experienced individuals, public hostility is stirred by means of misrepresentation and character assassination. Since most teachers do not care to expose themselves to these risks, they will avoid giving public expressions to their less “Orthodox” opinions. This is a most dangerous state of affairs. It is a way to muzzle genuine and important knowledge and to deny people insight. But above all it allows obscurantism to triumph.

Certain religious leaders, including rabbis, may believe that such tactics of repression and character assassination work, but they should know that although books can be burned, the ideas expressed in them do not die. No person and no force can put a thought in a concentration camp. Trying to do so is similar to the act of somebody who is so afraid of being murdered and therefore decides to commit suicide so as to avoid assassination.

****

Torah study has become nearly impossible, and the problem lies not with the Torah but with people. To read the text requires courage. Not courage to open the Book and start reading, but courage to confront oneself. To learn Torah requires human authenticity; it means standing in front of the mirror and asking oneself the daunting question of who one really is, without masks and artificialities. Unfortunately, that is one of the qualities that modern people have lost. Modern people have convinced themselves to be intellectuals, removed from subjectivity and bowing only to scientific investigation. As such, these people have disconnected from their Self. Because people are a bundle of emotions, passions, and subjectivities, they cannot escape their inner world, much as they would like to. Still, modern people formulate ideas. They may proclaim the rights of the spirit and even pronounce laws. But these ideas enter only their books and discussions, not their lives.; they hover above their originators’ heads, rather than walking with them into the inner chambers of daily existence. These ideas don’t enter people’s trivial moments but stand as monuments—impressive, but far removed.

People are no longer able to struggle with their inner Self and therefore cannot deal with the biblical text. The text stares them in the face, and people are terrified by the confrontation. All they can do is deny the text, so that they may escape from themselves. Since they know that they must come to terms with themselves before coming to terms with the Book, they cannot negate it or disagree with it, as this requires them to deny something that they don’t even know exists.

Does that mean that these modern people are not religious? Not at all. Even the religious person is detached from the spirit. The religious person has elevated religion to such a level that its influence on his or her everyday life, in the here and now, has been lost. It is found on the top floor of his or her spiritual house, with its own very special atmosphere. It has become departmentalized. But the intention of Torah is exactly the reverse. Its words, events, and commandments are placed in the midst of the people, enveloped in history and worldly matters. What happens there does not take place in a vacuum but in the harshness of human reality. Most of the Torah deals with the natural course of a person’s life. Only sporadic miracles allow us to hear the murmurs from another world that exists beyond. These moments remind us that God is, after all, the only real Entity in all of existence. But the Torah is the story of how God exists in the midst of mortal human’s ordinary troubles and joys. It is not the story of God in heaven, but of God in human history and personal encounter.

The art of biblical interpretation is far more than just knowing how to give expression to the deeper meaning of the text. It is, after all, impossible to treat the biblical text as one would any other classical work. This is because the people of Israel, according to Jewish tradition, are not the authors of this text. Rather, the text is the author of the people. Comprising a covenant between God and humanity, the text is what brought the people into being. Moreover, despite the fact that the people often violated the commanding voice of this text, it created the specific and unique identity of the Jewish nation.

That is precisely why reading the text is not like reading a conventional literary work. It requires a reading-art, which allows the unfolding of the essence and nature of a living people struggling with life and God’s commandments.

This calls for a totally different kind of comprehension, one that must reflect a particular thought process and attitude on the part of the student.

George Steiner expressed this well when he wrote:

The script…is a contract with the inevitable. God has, in the dual sense of utterance and of binding affirmation, “given His word,” His Logos and His bond, to Israel. It cannot be broken or refuted.[9]

The text, then, must be approached in a way that reflects a human commitment to ensure that it indeed will not be broken or refuted. This has become a great challenge to modern biblical interpretation. Many scholars and thinkers have been asking whether the unparalleled calamity of the Holocaust did not create a serious existential crisis in which the text by definition has been invalidated. Can we still speak about a working covenant by which God promised to protect His people, now that six million Jews, including more than a million children, lost their lives within a span of five years under the cruelest of circumstances?

The reason for raising this question is not just because the covenant appears to have been broken, but also because history—and specifically Jewish history— was always seen as a living commentary on the biblical text. The text gave significance to history and simultaneously took on its religious meaning.

Can the text still be used in that sense, or has it lost its significance because history violated the criteria for its proper and covenantal elucidation?

Not for nothing have modern scholars suggested that there is a need, post-Holocaust, to liberate ourselves from this covenantal text in favor of shaping our destiny and history in totally secular terms. The Holocaust proved, they believe, that we have only ourselves to rely on, and even the return to Israel is to be understood as a secular liberation of the galut experience.

It is in this context that “commentary” needs to take on a new challenge: to show not only how the covenant, as articulated in the text, is not broken or refuted, but how in fact it is fully capable of dealing with the new post-Holocaust conditions of secularity. Without falling victim to apologetics, biblical interpretation will have to offer a novel approach to dealing with the Holocaust experience in a full religious setting, based on the text and taking it beyond its limits.

It will have to respond to the fact that God is the most tragic figure in all of history, making the life of humanity sometimes sublime while at other times disastrous. The biblical text is there to tell humans how to live with this God and try to see meaning behind the absurdity of the situation.

But above all, modern commentary must make sure that the Torah speaks to the atheist and the agnostic, for they need to realize that the text is replete with examples of sincere deniers and doubters who struggled all of their lives with great existential questions. The purpose is not to bring the atheists and agnostics back to the faith, but to show that one can be religious while being an atheist; to make people aware that it is impossible to live without embarking on a search for meaning, whether one finds it or not. It is the search that is important, the end result much less so. The art is to refrain from throwing such a pursuit on the dunghill of history throughout the ages. The struggle of homo religiosus is of greatest importance to the atheist.

That most secular people no longer read the Torah is an enormous tragedy. The Torah is too important to be left to the believer. The beauty of day-to-day life takes on a different and higher meaning through the Torah, and that will evoke in atheists a faintly mystical anticipation, which they will experience when they are alone or when they watch a sunset at the beach. A voice is born, and it speaks to them; they feels a melancholy that calls forth something far away and beyond. They happen upon a situation that suddenly throws them over the edge, and they get taken in by the experience of a loftier existence. They realize that the god they were told to believe in is not the God of the Torah. The latter is a God with Whom one argues; a God Who is criticized and Who wants people to search even if it results in the denial of Him.

This issue is related to other critical problems. Surveying Jewish history, we see drastic changes in the ways the biblical text was encountered. In the beginning the Torah was heard and not written. Moshe received the Torah through the spoken Word: “The Word is very near to you; it is in your mouth and in your heart, for you to carry out.” [10] God may be unimaginably far away, but His voice is heard nearby, and it is the only way to encounter Him.

At a later stage, the Word evolved into a written form. Once this happened, there was a process by which the spoken Word was slowly silenced and gradually replaced by the written form. With the eclipse of prophecy, God’s word was completely silenced and could then only be read. As such, the Word became frozen and ran the risk of becoming stagnant. At that stage it was necessary to unfreeze the Word, which became the great task of the Sages and commentaries throughout the following centuries.

Subsequently, a third element gained dominance. The text must be relevant to the generations that study it, while at the same time remaining eternal. Commentators throughout the ages have struggled with this problem. How does one preserve the eternity of the Word and simultaneously make it relevant to a specific moment in time? Many commentators were children of their time and clearly read the text through the prism of the period in which they lived. This being so, the perspective of eternity became critical. It was often pushed to the background so as to emphasize the great message for the present. Much of the aspect of eternity was thereby compromised, and that caused a few to wonder how eternal this text really is.

Others wrote as if nothing had happened in Jewish history. That reflected the remarkable situation of the Jewish people in galut: its ahistoricity. After the destruction of the Temple, Jewish history came to a standstill. Although much happened, with dire consequences for the Jews, they essentially lived their lives outside the historical framework of natural progress. It became a period of existential waiting, with the Jewish people anticipating the moment when they could once again enter history, which eventually came about with the establishment of the State of Israel in 1948.

Inevitably, then, some commentators wrote their exegeses in a historical vacuum. They hardly emphasized the relevance of biblical texts to a particular generation. Therefore, the student was often confronted with a dual sentiment. While dazzled by a commentator’s brilliant insight, the student was forced to ask: So what? What is the implication of the interpretation for me, at this moment in time? Here we encounter a situation in which relevance is sacrificed for the sake of eternity.

With the return of the Jewish people to their ancestral homeland, Jews are confronted with an unprecedented situation, which has serious consequences for biblical commentary. Due to a very strong trend toward secularism, caused by the Holocaust as well as other factors, the issue of relevance versus eternity has become greatly magnified.

Today, more than ever before, there exists a greater and more pressing need to show the relevance of the text. The radical changes in Jewish history call for a bold and novel way of understanding the text as a living covenant. At the same time, the drastic secularization of world Jewry and Israeli thinking requires a completely new approach on how to present to the reader the possibility of the Torah’s eternity. With minor exceptions, the religious world has not come forward with an adequate response.

Most worrisome is the fact that the majority of Jewish commentary books published today in Orthodox circles comprise compilations and anthologies of earlier authorities without opening any new vistas. It is as if new interpretations are no longer possible. The words of God are treated as if they have been exhausted. It clearly reflects a fear of anything new, or an inability to come up with fresh and far-reaching ideas. This phenomenon has overtaken a good part of the Orthodox scholarly world. Judaism is turning more and more into a religion in which one writes glosses upon glosses, instead of creating new insights into the living covenant with God.

No doubt, not every person is equipped with the knowledge and creativity needed to undertake the task. Years of learning are an absolute requirement before one can make a genuine contribution in this field. Still, one must be aware of the danger of “over-knowledge.” When the student is overwhelmed by the interpretations of others, he or she may quite well become imprisoned by them and so lose the art of thinking independently. Instead of becoming a vehicle to look for new ideas, the student’s knowledge becomes detrimental. This has happened to many talmidei hakhamim.

What is required is innovation in receptivity, where fresh ideas can grow in the minds of those willing to think creatively about the classical sources, without being hampered by preconceived notions. Only then will we see new approaches to our biblical tradition that will stand up to the challenges of our time.

****
We are currently living in a transitional phase of monumental proportions and far-reaching consequences. Our religious beliefs are being challenged as never before. We are forced to our knees due to extreme shifts and radical changes in scientific discoveries; our understanding of the origins of our holy texts; our belief in God; the meaning of our lives; and the historical developments of our tradition. We find ourselves on the precipice, and it is becoming more and more of a balancing act not to fall off the cliff.

We keep asking ourselves: Can we survive and overcome? What are the tools to make that possible? Or, shall we drop our earlier beliefs, give in, and admit our defeat?

In the old religious climate, everything was certain. We knew the truth. Traditional Judaism gave us the foundations, and everything was under control. The tradition was safeguarded behind shatterproof glass, well-protected and unshakable. But now, all certainty is affected by skepticism and the glass has been broken.

Today, faith dangles in the free flow of doubt, and we need to learn how to live in this new stratosphere.

The truth is that Jewish Orthodoxy (from the Greek orthos ("true" or "right") and doxa ("opinion" or 'belief") never existed. Originally, Judaism was highly unorthodox. Although it always believed in God and Torah, it never offered any specifics of what God meant or what Torah consisted of. That was left to speculation, never to be determined. The early Sages, as testified by the Talmud and philosophers, disagreed on some of the most fundamental issues of faith.

But over the years, we wanted more certainty. We wanted it handed to us on a silver platter, so that we could avoid debates and live a life of religious comfort, apathy, and mediocrity. Influenced by other religions, we adopted the need for cast-iron certainty and psychological security. So we began to rewrite Judaism in a way that would fit into the notions of established religions—well-structured, with a good dose of dogma. What we did not realize is that by doing so, we misrepresented Judaism by losing sight of the plot, thus doing it a great disservice.

We need to realize that our epoch of uncertainty is in fact much more conducive to authentic Judaism than all the conviction we've had in previous generations. It forces us to rediscover what Judaism is really about and gives us the opportunity to rebuild where rebuilding is required and leave untouched what should remain untouched.

Because we are compelled to reconsider, we will delve more deeply into the great resources of Judaism and stay away from all superficiality to which Judaism has lately succumbed. The greater the challenge, the more profound are the discoveries. Knowledge is important, but doubt is what gives you an education.

Moreover, we will actually be able to enter the minds of all those biblical figures who lived in constant ambiguity about God and the Torah. Avraham’s great doubts concerning the reliability of God in connection with His request to sacrifice his son Yitzchak was a most traumatic experience. It was the pinnacle of religious uncertainty.

Moshe’s bewilderment at not knowing who God was when he asked to see Him and God’s refusal to reveal Himself are the climax of intense religious struggle. In the desert, the Israelites asked whether God was among them. This came close to pantheism or even atheism. Nadav and Avihu’s unauthorized offering of a "strange fire" in the Tent of Meeting came from a feeling of ambiguity about whether the only way to serve God was by merely following the strict demands of halakha as given by God, or whether one could explore new avenues to divine service.

On one occasion, the Israelites were not sure whether the Torah was indeed the word of God. Korah challenged this very belief and declared that it was not from heaven and that Moshe and Aaron were not prophets.[11] This must have caused a major crisis among the Israelites.

The Torah gives evidence to a most difficult religious journey traveled by the Israelites, full of doubt, struggle, and trauma. Surely some of these doubts were more existential than intellectual, but the latter cannot be disregarded.

Once we realize that uncertainty was part of the biblical personality, we will have a much better grasp of the text and what Judaism is actually claiming. But this is only possible when we find ourselves challenged by those very existential doubts.

There is nearly nothing greater than the free flow of doubt in today’s society. It offers us unprecedented opportunities to rediscover real religiosity. In contrast, the quest for certitude paralyzes the search for meaning. Uncertainty is the very condition that impels humanity to develop its spiritual and intellectual capacity. Sure, this is a risky undertaking, but there is no authentic life choice that is risk free. Life means constantly moving and growing, whereas organic matter that fails to shift and grow decays and will eventually die. So it is with a person’s religious life. The role of religion is to accommodate the blossoming of the human soul and to prevent one from descending into a place of spiritual stagnation.

Whereas our not-so-distant ancestors in the days of the emancipation walked out and left Judaism behind, declaring it no longer relevant, we know better. We won't take that cheap and easy road. We know that Judaism is much too great to abandon, even if there are obstacles along the way. We are aware that Judaism stands head and shoulders above anything else, and that no philosophy or religious practice can replace it, but we have yet to discover what it is that gives Judaism its unique profundity. We still walk in our childhood shoes, knowing that we have not yet entered the world of adulthood. AusdemKindes—in das Mannesalter.[12] We realize that we must be careful not to obscure the real idea of growth, which is not to leave things behind us, but to leave things inside us.

What we all know deep down is that we have to renew Judaism from within. Not by letting it go, but by raising it up. Not through Reform and Conservative Judaism, or Orthodox dogma, but through a radical purifying process that will take years. Until now we have been busy digging and have found some very interesting elements, but we have not yet hit rock bottom and our findings have been too superficial and too few to make a breakthrough.

Over the years we have covered Judaism with too many clinging vines, to the point where we can no longer see or even recognize das Ding an sich, "the thing in itself." A thick scab has grown on Judaism, and it needs to be scraped off. We have to expose the founding pillars and build a superstructure. We must recognize that the barer Judaism gets and the more uncertain we become, the closer we get to where we need to be, until we hit the core. It will manifest itself in many opposing colors, creating an enormous, beautiful canvas. In this new setting it will be clear that religious uncertainty is one of the most powerful ideas, which keeps us on our toes. And it will give us great insight into Judaism’s core beliefs.

Beneath the clinging vines are divine words. For too long we have mistakenly believed that Judaism is the clinging vine itself. Yes, it had its purpose, but that is not where we will find divinity. It is deeper down, beneath the layers. The time has come to remove it. But it has to be done slowly and in such a way that we do not harm the core. We must remove outdated ideas, often borrowed from other religions; remove the galut from halakha, which became overly defensive; and have the courage to see a new religious world emerging, which will offer us the authentic meaning of the divine Torah and mitzvoth.

It will be painful for those who are looking for absolute certainty. We understand the anguish it will cause. But there is no turning back, and after a time the joy of uncertainty and of discovering the deeper meaning behind Judaism will be immensely greater than that which certainty could ever offer us.

The goal is not at all to be sure that the Torah was given at Sinai, or that all its stories are true. There are very good reasons to believe it is, but we don't know for sure and we should not know for sure. Is it not marvelous to take a leap of faith and live according to something that one cannot be sure of? Of what value are convictions that are unaccompanied by struggle?

Faith means striving for faith. It is never an arrival. It can only burst forth at singular moments. It does not arise out of logical deduction, but out of uncertainty, which is its natural breeding ground.

To have faith is to live with unresolved doubts, prepared to rise above ourselves and our wisdom. Looking into the Jewish tradition with its many debates, one clearly understands that those who deny themselves the comfort of certainty are much more authentic than those who are sure.

Faith means that we worship and praise God before we affirm His existence; we respond before we question. Man can die for something even as he is unsure of its true existence, because his inner faith tells him it is right to do so. This honest admission of doubt is not only the very reason why it is possible to be religious in modern times; it is the actual stimulus to do so.

We need to understand that faith is "the art of drawing sufficient conclusions from insufficient premises," [13] and "we can be absolutely certain only about things we do not understand." [14]

To believe is not to prove, not to explain, but to yield to a vision.

Of course belief cannot be credo quia absurdum est. It has to make sense and have a lot to say for itself in terms of knowledge and wisdom. Still, just as no building stands on rock-bottom, but on unsure pillars deeply driven into the ground so as to resist an earthquake, so must belief have enough strength to prove its worth without ever reaching absolute certainty.

Faith is like music. It is true because of its beauty not because of its intellectual certainty. Is it not created from impossible paradoxes, as well as a great deal of imagination that surpasses rationality and scientific or historical facts?

David Weiss Halivni writes,

The truly great need no synthesis. They absorb whatever experience offers them. Their intensely creative personalities act like a fiery furnace, melting away contradictions. What emerges is either a harmonious whole or a creative parallelism with parts that mutually fructify and supplement each other. The truly great do not need to trim edges, as it were, to make genuine experiences fit with each other. They preserve them intact. And if their experiences appear contradictory, they build an emotional bridge spanning them allowing both the landscape and the water to be seen. Lesser mortals resort to logical means of harmonization. [15]

The aim of halakha is to teach us the art of living with uncertainty. Halakha was not meant for those who are sure, because nobody can act out of certainty.

The most challenging question in all of life is what do you do and what do you believe when you are not sure. It is that notion that moves the scientist, the philosopher, and most of all the religious personality. We must destroy the security of all conventional knowledge and undo the normalcy of all that is ordinary. To be religious is to realize that no final conclusions have ever been reached or can ever be reached.

Halakha is the upshot of un-finalized beliefs, a practical way of living while remaining in theological suspense. In that way, Judaism doesn't turn into a religion that either becomes paralyzed in awe of a rigid tradition, or evaporates into a utopian reverie. This dynamic can only come about when Jewish beliefs consist of fluid matter, which halakha then turns into a solid substance. The purpose of halakha is to chill the heated steel of exalted beliefs and turn them into pragmatic deeds without allowing the inner heat to be cooled off entirely. Jewish beliefs are like arrows, which dart hither and thither, wavering as though shot into the air from a slackened bowstring, while halakha must be straight and unswerving but still adaptable.

Indeed, we should be careful not to make faith into an intellectual issue. It is much more than that. The moment we look down on those who continue to have unshakable faith, considering them primitive in face of the many challenges, we have overlooked an important dimension of real faith. Besides the fact that such an attitude reflects arrogance, it also misses an important point: Faith is always more than just thinking about faith. Yes, those people who have lost their faith yet still hold on to it, honestly attempting by way of discussion and study to give their lost faith a new shape, should be deeply respected. At the same time, we should not forget that they are searching for something that the "simple" believer already has.

When we place the reflection on faith higher than the direct experience of faith, we are involved in a purely intellectual endeavor. The search for faith can only be genuine when it is personal, deep, and emotional, and the intellect only plays a small part. The accompanying qualities must be humility, the notion of inadequacy, and a strong urge to find authentic faith. Genuine belief is a way of living, not an academic undertaking. It is an experience in which the whole of the human being is engaged.

Doubt only appeals to the intellect. The intellectual approach to faith is always a barer form of existence than faith itself. The reason is obvious. Besides our critical assessment, the other human faculties remain idle. Trust, hope, love and the notion that one is part of something bigger no longer play a role. Instead, life becomes nothing more than only itself. When doubt and skepticism are no longer the most important faculties through which one seeks religious faith, only then is it possible to actually find it. Skepticism, though it has its place, should not be at the center of one’s search. In today’s climate there is a certain gratification in going to the extremes of genius and brilliance until one nearly loses that which one would like to discover. Intellectual thought and scientific discovery can never cover the sum total of the inner life of man. When one prays, one is involved in something that the intellect can never reach. When one studies Torah and hears its divine voice, it becomes something different than what academic study can ever achieve. It is in a separate category, which is closed to the solely scientific mind.

It is vital that we see these facts for what they are. Only when we realize that intellectual certainty is not the primary path toward finding religious truth, will we be able to deal with our new awareness that the transitional phase we now experience has great purpose and has to be part of our religious struggle and identity. It won’t be easy. Novelty, as always, carries with it a sense of violation, a kind of sacrilege. Most people are more at home with that which is common than with that which is different. But go it must.

God has relocated.

[1] Moreh Nevukhim, Part 2, chapter 25.
[2] Louis Kronenberger, Company Manners: A Cultural Inquiry into American Life (Indianapolis, IN: Bobbs-Merill Co., 1954), 94.
[3] Regarding the claim that the full text of the Torah is divine, or that miracles are possible, it is a matter of debate whether these are completely denied by scientific knowledge or not. Many of these claims are not solely within the sphere of pure science. They touch on matters related to the philosophy of science or in the case of Bible criticism, to literary interpretation and the reliability of archeological findings.
[4] Alfred North Whitehead, Science and the Modern World (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1925), 234.
[5] I borrow this comparison from my dear friend Professor Yehudah Gellman of Ben Gurion University. See his God’s Kindness Has Overwhelmed Us: A Contemporary Doctrine of the Jews as the Chosen People (Emunot: Jewish Philosophy and Kabbalah Series, Brighton, MA: Academic Studies Press, 2012).
[6] Berakhot 43b.
[7] See Avraham Joshua Heschel’s many essays in his The Insecurity of Freedom, Essays on Human Existence, New York: Schocken Books, 1972.
[8] Walter Kaufmann, Critique of Religion and Philosophy (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1958), 268.
[9] George Steiner, “Our Homeland, the Text.” Salmagundi No. 66 (Winter–Spring 1985), 12.
[10] Devarim 30:14.
[11] See the Jerusalem Talmud, Tractate Sanhedrin, chapter 10.
[12] German for "from childhood to adulthood." Professor G. Heymans, Inleiding in de Metaphysica (Dutch), [Einfuhrung in die Metaphysik in German] (Groningen, the Netherlands: Wereldbiblioteek, 1933), Introduction by Professor Leo Polak.
[13] Samuel Butler and Francis Hackett, The Note-Books of Samuel Butler (Nabu Press, 2010), 27.
[14] Eric Hoffer, The True Believer (Harper Perennial Modern Classics: 2010), 81.
[15] David Weiss Halivni, "Professor Saul Lieberman z.l." Conservative Judaism, vol. 38 (Spring, 1986), 6–7.

Petitional prayer, the parts of prayer when we ask for things, plays a central role in Judaism. Of the 19 blessings in the Amidah, the centerpiece of the Jewish prayer, 13 of them are requests.

The question on the minds of many people who pray is: Does it work? It is, after all, hard to see direct results from the requests made in prayer. This reality results in people not praying or not taking prayer seriously.

Some understand the ability for prayer to change our fate as miraculous. Simply put by Ramban, Nachmanides, “All of our tefillot are miracles and wonders—but they lack overt changes in the nature of the world.” According to Nachmanides, each and every time prayer works, a miracle has occurred—nature has changed. We are not always able to recognize it. This is a very important approach; it is the approach of hope. We should never give up on the possibility that God will step in.

Others have accepted the power of petitionary prayer, but look at it a bit differently.
Have you ever gone whitewater rafting? If you have, you know that you will never be able to turn your raft around and paddle upstream—the current is simply too strong. The challenge of whitewater rafting is to avoid capsizing, to avoid the rocks (see Zalman Schacter-Shalomi, Geologist of the Soul, 91–92).

The same goes for prayer. Some will argue, like Nachmanides, that we can turn the raft around and change the course of nature. Others disagree; they say that although prayer cannot turn the raft around, it can help avoid the rocks. It can make someone’s illness more bearable and may even be able to extend life. Ultimately, though, one cannot fully control the course of the raft.

Both of these approaches accept the notion that prayer can actually change an expected outcome—either entirely or partially. For many, these opinions pose a theological problem. Rabbi Jonathan Sacks comments on one aspect of the challenge of prayer:

Let us suppose I pray for something. Either it is good that this happens, or it is not. If it is, then God does not need my prayer to make it happen. He will make it happen anyway because it is good and God is good. If it isn’t good, then God will not bring it about, however hard I pray. The proof is none other than Moses. When Moses prayed for God to forgive the Israelites, God forgave them because God forgives. But when he prayed that he, Moses, be allowed to cross the Jordan and enter the Promised Land, God did not grant him his request. He told him to stop praying. It was not going to happen however hard or long Moses prayed. So prayer does not change God’s mind in any simple sense. (http://www.rabbisacks.org/wp-content/uploads/2011/09/Letters-to-the-Next-Generation-2-Reflections-on-Jewish-Life.pdf)

Rabbi Yosef Albo notes that our understanding of prayer is a very high-stakes matter:

The reason which leads men to doubt the efficacy of prayer is the same as that which leads them to deny God’s knowledge. Their argument is as follows: Either God has determined that a given person shall receive a given benefit or he has not so determined. If he has determined, there is no need of prayer; and if he is not determined, how can prayer avail to change God’s will that he should now determined to benefit the person when he had not so determined before? For this reason...they say that prayer does not avail to enable one to receive a benefit or to be saved from evil which has been decreed against him. (Sefer HaIkkarim, Part IV:18)

I’d like to suggest another way of looking at prayer—a reinterpretation of the petitions we say, in the hope of helping people find meaning in Jewish prayer.
Supplicatory prayer can be an engine to motivate. By paying attention to all of the requests we make in the Amidah, we quickly realize that the world as we know it is less than ideal. The result is that we say to ourselves, this is not the world as I wish it to be.
The initial reaction to seeing the world this way is to turn to God and say: “I don’t want a world of war; rather, I want world peace. I don’t want a world of sickness; rather, I want to world of health. I do not want unredeemed world....”

This is where our tradition puts us in the driver’s seat. If the requests we make are for the benefit of the world and we see the world as less than good, we have a responsibility to make those things happen. Prayer is turned from a moment of vulnerability into a call for action.

When the rabbis composed petitionary prayer, they were giving us just the first step, the ability to articulate what the world should be like. The next step, the fulfillment of prayer, is our responsibility. The multitude of requests is meant, to serve as a shock to our system as the person praying realizes that while so much time has been spent pointing out particular needs ...might there be anything more that we can do?
Rabbi Joseph B. Soloveitchik notes this in “Redemption, Prayer and Talmud Torah,” where he writes:

Prayer enlightens man about his needs. ...It teaches him how to behold the vision and how to strive in order to realize this vision, when to be satisfied with what one possesses, when to reach out for more. In a word, man finds his need -awareness, himself in prayer. Of course, the very instant he finds himself, he becomes a redeemed being.

I think, however, that Rabbi Soloveitchik stops short of full redemption as he claims that a person is redeemed when he is able to form words and cry out to God. Rabbi Soloveitchik’s model is the Israelite’s period of slavery in Egypt. At first there was silence (absence of need awareness), then a voice, and then a word—the birth of prayer (Exodus 2:23–24).

The problem with using this as the model of prayer is that it comes from a time when the full expression of human dignity—individual self determination—was not possible. All the Israelites could hope for was divine intervention. On the other hand, in times when freedom does exist, then the ultimate act of redemption is taking action. Full redemption is symbolized by a person’s freedom to take responsibility for his or herself.
A biblical model that fits this paradigm is the story of Esther and Mordechai. The entire Purim story is one of human responsibility. The moment Esther pays an unannounced visit to Ahashveirosh is the exact moment she steps up to take the fate of the Jewish people into her hands.

This approach helps explain the connection between prayer and sacrifice. The animal offering of Temple days represented the owner of the sacrifice who sacrificed himself up to God. So it is with prayer, today’s stand-in for the sacrifices. Just as the animal sacrifices in the times of the Temple were brought with the realization that owner was giving of himself, prayer must also be offered with the commitment on the part of the “owner” of the prayer, to give of himself—not as an act of self surrender but by taking responsibility for the contents of the requests.

Although Rabbi Soloveitchik believes that the greatest act of fidelity to God is the realization of helplessness, this new focus sees taking responsibility and committing to act as the ultimate measure of sacrifice—of giving to God. In this way, independence and self-sacrifice go hand in hand.

Rabbi Daniel Landes explains,

Each of the middle petitionary blessings has ethical consequences for us who pray it. Since we ask God to do these things, it must be in God’s nature to do them; and since we are made in God’s image, it must be in our nature also to do them, when we act in a Godly way. The middle blessings are, therefore, more than requests we make of God. They are equally a catalogue of our own responsibilities. Knowledge for instance, refers to Talmud Torah, Torah study, one of the greatest mitzvot because it brings all others in its wake. (My People's Prayer Book, Vol. 2: Traditional Prayers, Modern Commentaries—The Amidah, Rabbi Lawrence A. Hoffman (Editor), 101)

Here is one example regarding the blessing of Barekh alenu et haShana haZot—Bless us this year:

Understood traditionally in the broader sense of a prayer for parnasah, an adequate livelihood, this blessing obliges us to provide others with the ability to provide for themselves. We are to help them find employment, arrange funding to help them establish businesses, provide them with loans or gifts, and welcome them in to partnerships in our own enterprises….” (My People's Prayer Book, Vol. 2: Traditional Prayers, Modern Commentaries—The Amidah, by Rabbi Lawrence A. Hoffman (Editor), 120)

If we are more sympathetic, more committed to study, and more devoted to peace and repentance after we pray, then prayer does work.

Now, we can also understand one of the most enigmatic prayer of the Ashkenazic High Holiday liturgy. U’teshuvah u’tefillah u’tsedakah ma’avirin et ro’ah haGezerah—repentance, prayer, and charity remove the evil decree. Many are uncomfortable with this prayer, and many reinterpretations are offered to resolve any discomfort. But with our interpretation of prayer, we can take it literally. These actions do remove the evil decrees, because they ignite us to act. We have the ability and obligation to remove misery from the world. It is our prayer (and repentance and recognition of the need for charity) that energizes us, not just to complain, but to act in such a way that changes the world for the better.

Rabbi Abraham Joshua Heschel highlights the revolution that prayer is supposed to bring:

Prayer is meaningless unless it is subversive, unless it seeks to overthrow and to ruin the pyramids of callousness, hatred, opportunism, falsehoods. The liturgical movement must become a revolutionary movement, seeking to overthrow the forces that continue to destroy the promise, the hope, the vision.” (Susannah Heschel (ed.), "On Prayer," Moral Grandeur and Spiritual Audacity: Essays by Abraham Joshua Heschel (New York: Farrar, Straus & Giroux, 1997), 262.)

We thank all those who shared their ideas on how to make Orthodox synagogues more meaningful. We've chosen SEVEN winners. Their suggestions can help our synagogues and communities be stronger, more creative, more engaging. The winning essays are from Pam Ehrenkranz (Stamford, Connecticut); Yael Kassorla (Atlanta, Georgia); Dr. Alan Krinsky (Providence, Rhode Island); Rabbi Arnold Samlan (West Hempstead, New York); Barbara Mendes (Los Angeles, California); Leonard Stein (Beer Sheva, Israel); and Hinda Bramnick (Boca Raton, Florida).

We hope that you discuss these suggestions among friends and congregants.

Let us work together for an intellectually vibrant, compassionate and inclusive Orthodox Judaism.

Enhancing the Role of Women

By

Pam Ehrenkranz (Stamford, Connecticut)

I keep asking Orthodox rabbis, “How would Shabbat morning services be any different if every woman in the community stayed home?” Interestingly, the responses are uniform: “We would feel bad, but in practice, nothing would change.”

Being told that your presence is irrelevant will ultimately have an effect. It did on me. I began to wonder: If I am not necessary, and I can pray alone, and many rabbis believe that I have no obligation to be at communal prayer, why go? Why get dressed, walk in the freezing cold or the unbearable heat, to a place, where, for all intents and purposes, my presence is superfluous?

To be clear, I am observant and respectful of traditional approaches to halacha. I am also respectful of innovative, as well as simple, ways to be more inclusive, to make women relevant, without crossing the boundaries of halacha. Some of those ways are already being implemented in minyanim around the world and the Modern Orthodox world needs to broaden the discussion about women and the synagogue.

Granted, many women are quite happy to be shul spectators;& o are many men. Yet everything an organization does speaks about its values, right down to how the phone is answered. As of now, we are not only signaling that women do not count in a minyan, but that they don’t count at all. So here are some thoughts about what we might institute as a way of saying that women are very much counted in the community; that their scholarship is admired; that their presence is critical. None of these concepts are new in the marketplace of ideas; they have been talked and written about in so many places that I cannot credit them to anyone in particular, only to a growing climate of opinion:

1. Don’t start davening until 10 men and at least 2 women are present. At partnership minyanim, it is often the case that the group waits for both ten men and ten women. For our purposes, it is not the critical mass that is at issue—it is the message that without women, we do not constitute a Kehillah.

2. Invite women scholars to deliver divreitorah from the bimah and to be scholars in residence. Thanks to places like Drisha, Nishmat, Matan, Pardes, and Yeshiva University’s graduate programs for women, we have a dynamic group of women who are inspirational, knowledgeable and worthy of our attention.

3. Have a woman read the prayer for the Agunah. The agunah issue needs to be on the minds of the congregation and this is an appropriate way to accomplish that.

4. Offer equal education for boys and girls. In places where the boys are learning separately, the girls’ curriculum should be the same. There is no danger in teaching girls to leyn. Hopefully, they will be able to join women’s tefillah groups if they want to, or help their children in the future, when they learn for their own bar and bat mitzvahs. To borrow a slogan, educated Jews are our best customers. They come back, they engage, they lead and they are the future.

5. Eliminate the language of "women's" and "men's" learning. It's adult learning and like wine and a good meal, it is better when it's shared.

6. Encourage women to fill leadership roles in the synagogue. As women are no longer illiterate, they can no longer be lumped into the category of slave or minor when it comes to education, status and ability. It is no longer reasonable to bar them from the boardroom. It would seem to reason that if a woman can make decisions as president of an Ivy League university, a judge, or a surgeon, she can handle the synagogue board meetings.

7. Invite new moms to recite BirkatHagomel in their own voices.

8. Welcome and promote women’s tefillah groups. Many have been meeting for over thirty years, some inside and some outside of synagogues. It not only promotes Jewish literacy, it helps find a way to include young girls and women actively in the service.

So to the rabbis who have the power to make changes in their shuls, I say, it is not enough to just feel bad about women staying home from shul. Take a step and welcome women in.

Using New Technologies for Teaching and Learning Torah

By

Yael Kassorla (Atlanta, Georgia)

There are two conflicting pressures for the religious Jew in today’s society: the need to deeply connect with Hashem, and the lack of time to do so.

Although most of the emphasis has been on getting people through the door for Minyanim and other synagogue-centric events, I think it is also important to connect with members through electronic means as well.

I know how important a religious Jewish discussion group was to me when I needed to more deeply understand the parasha or some issue of halacha; but unfortunately, those discussion groups are not usually synagogue affiliated. Instead, they are loose affiliations of every type of observance level and minhag, which can become both frustrating and confusing. We need to contain this enthusiasm for learning within our own Kehillah.

Our rabbis and lay-people need to stop using the internet as a podium, and start using it as a point of discussion, bringing the probing questions of the study-hall to everyone with access to a computer or smart phone.

Through the use of a moderated Facebook page, for example, or a Diigo<http://www.diigo.com>&nbsp; group (which affords the ability to not only bookmark websites, but highlight and comment upon them) synagogue-affiliated rabbis can conduct asynchronous discussion weekly with groups of synagogue members who find themselves unable to attend the usual lunch-and-learn or study sessions with the rabbi, but who hunger for intellectual stimulation and deeper understanding of Torah and Talmud.

Then, instead of technology working to alienate our membership, technology can, instead, cement them. Those who feel disconnected can reconnect and, when they do get back through those synagogue doors, they can feel like they haven’t really been away.

It’s time to stop ignoring the internet and start embracing it. Our rabbis must be educated in this new medium in order to reach, especially, our youth and young adults.

Synagogue Citizenship

by

Alan Krinsky (Providence, Rhode Island)

A common lament heard during the last decade or two draws attention to the commoditization of virtually all aspects of our lives. This process has infiltrated education and healthcare, despite the fact that knowledge and health are, in some regards, priceless values. And such consumerism has even reached religion.

Following the example of “Cafeteria Catholicism,” many people now view their religious lives from a consumer perspective: I purchase what meets my needs and discard the rest. This trend has even impacted Modern Orthodox synagogues, where commitment to minyan and behavior in synagogue can be lax.

We require a different model—not consumerism, but rather something akin to citizenship. We ought to reconceptualize our very notion of synagogue membership. Members should not be seen as consumers, whose needs and desires must be satisfied. Instead, as with citizenship, membership should be experienced as a privilege with important responsibilities, with the synagogue community as a sort of polity in which members have a stake.

In many Hareidi synagogues, meaningfulness is evident. Yet it is the meaningfulness neither of consumers nor citizens, but rather of subjects. And although the Modern Orthodox too recognize that, ultimately, we are servants of the Holy One, this need not be reflected in an apparent conformity and obeisance to an unchallengeable Daat Torah reminiscent of the doctrine of Papal Infallibility.

By contrast, we ought to build places of meaning with a more engaged, activist bent, where new people are given citizenship — not membership — applications and welcomed as citizens, not merely members. If we cater to and treat our members as consumers because we fear them leaving, then we will get consumers; but if we raise our expectations and ask our members to be committed citizens, we will find such citizens and together build attractive and meaningful institutions.

Rethinking the Modern Orthodox Synagogue Model

by

Rabbi Arnold Samlan (West Hempstead, New York)

·Rabbinic Leadership – Rabbis must move from being sole authorities to being facilitators, connecting pods of knowledge and knowledge holders.

·Women’s Contributions - Orthodox synagogues that do not allow women to lead or speak publicly lose out on their knowledge, leadership and insights. Orthodox synagogues must fully benefit from the potential contributions of women. The commitment, through concrete actions, must permeate Orthodox Jewish communities everywhere.

·Relevance - Orthodox synagogues’ values must integrate into the real lives of their members. The synagogue must communicate the values that add to the broader society in which its members live, and empower its members to bring those values to bear on a multi-cultural, democratic society.

·Increasing meaningful access - It's time for every Orthodox synagogues to be fully handicapped accessible (including the bima). Synagogues need new siddurim that have modern translations, do away with inexplicable Kabbalistic ramblings, and challenge pray-ers to explore prayers’ meanings rather than spoon feeding pre-digested answers. Rabbis and those who teach Torah have to be honest and open to the fluidity of traditional practice and beliefs that has been true throughout Jewish history, and allow openness to acceptable alternatives in so many areas of halacha and practice.

·Language - Orthodox synagogues must stop, and encourage members to stop, using the word "religious" to equal "traditionally observant" or "Orthodox." I have friends in each Jewish movement (as well as those outside of movements) who are deeply religious. Spiritual superiority complexes do not have a place today

·Expand chesed –Orthodox synagogues should lead in bringing chesed to the world. Synagogues should work in food kitchens, volunteer in homeless shelters, run blood drives.

·Move towards spirituality - Synagogues need to help Jews to recognize the connection between the practice, services, and broader spiritual goals.

Orthodox Synagogues Need Leaders of Women

by

Barbara Mendes (Los Angeles, California)

Women are half the Jewish people. In today's congregations, the women in attendance may be wage-earners in need of blessings for success . Today's full-time Moms are educated and sophisticated members of society. Women function on the highest levels of the global society in which we live. Can't we harness more of their power by making the synagogue a place that stimulates and inspires them without insulting their sense of worth?

Women who are intellectually and spiritually engaged in prayer services enrich a congregation with power and spirit.

I suggest creating a post called Rosh ha Nashim, or Eim ha Nashim, or some Hebrew title designating the Leader of Women. It should be a post of honor. The Leader of Women would be available to guide newcomers who need help, and would inspire and strengthen all the women.  The Leader of Women would know which women need special blessings. She would know which members of the congregation need special help. How would she know? Women communicate with one another, and become aware of issues in a natural way.

Modern women can fall in love with our beautiful prayer services. Devotion and attention to prayer is one of the great powers of Judaism; I believe the women of today's world have as much need for these magical prayers as do men. Having a leader of their own will inspire and guide women to be more engaged in communal prayer, putting mystic rewards in their reach. I am the first to see that women don't need the communal prayers the way men do, but this call was for ways to strengthen the Orthodox Synagogue, so I am addressing the prayer services held in that setting.

Ha KadoshBarukh Hu looks and sits on both sides of the mehitzah. The Holy One sees the power and passion on the women's side. Only Ha KadoshBarukh Hu could have created the human trajectory which led to the powerful women of today's world.

I believe Orthodox women would be empowered, strengthened, educated, and inspired by having a leader of their own. I believe that inspired women strengthen and inspire the congregation, even if they are not counted in the minyan. The very fact that it's not an endless obligation for them can add zest and excitement to women's participation in formal prayer services.

Let us join forces to call out to God. Let a Leader of Women be appointed to focus and harness the spiritual strength of women, which in turn will strengthen the entire congregation.

Making Synagogue Real

By

Leonard Stein (Beer Sheva, Israel)

If the creative voice of the Jewish people flourishes, Orthodox synagogues will become more meaningful and attractive.

Here's a simple method to avoid prayer as a heavy burden: slow down. A prayer leader whoraces through an Amidah does not allow the community to reach out to their Creator. Fast praying is a developed habit. If the synagogue changes the rate of words spoken to even a normal speaking pace, the community will strengthen. Creativity in prayer occurs not only when finding ourselves praying the Amidah honestly, but when we are given the room to provide our own supplications. It doesn't have to take an hour in the fashion of the early sages; even 10 minutes of prayer with a personal supplication will affect the meaning of the synagogue.

Furthermore, a synagogue should hear their members' voices. Allow anyone, including women, the opportunity to give a devarTorah on Friday night. People who give divrei Torah know how enriching it feels to study the parashah, struggle through contradictions, and search the soul for a personal ?idush. Why not give this opportunity to the folk? Signing up for this week's 5 minute devar Torah, which necessitates learning and public speaking, will awaken everyone. A synagogue should sign people up to read a portion of the week's parashah. What was once common practice has been relegated to the hazan. Those who haven't learned or forgot the ta’amim (trop) can learn from volunteers, and Torah will literally flow from the mouths of the people each week.

Offer creative learning opportunities that break stereotypes. How about learning piyutim on Tuesdays or learning agricultural halakhot through planting the synagogue's organic garden? Tying the passions of this generation with tradition has always strengthened a community.

When such creative outlets open, more people will love going to synagogue.

Making Orthodox Synagogues More Meaningful

By

Hinda Bramnick (Boca Raton, Florida)

Many people perceive that Orthodoxy is turning to the right. Those on the right feel that staying right of center is only way that traditional Judaism will survive.  Jews in the center or left of center are becoming demoralized.

The question of how to make Orthodox shuls more meaningful can be answered by examining how things are done in Boca Raton, Florida. The Boca Raton Synagogue has employed very ordinary tactics to get to where it currently is.

There are three basic components that make a synagogue the kind of place that congregants want to attend. They are diversity, expansion, and pride.

Boca Raton Synagogue (BRS) has been consistently growing its membership for over 20 years. Our rabbi proposed that Orthodox ideologies and practices could be expanded to meet the needs of the community.  His motto was “today’s drivers are tomorrow’s walkers”.  That forethought not only opened the doors to prospective congregants, but it succeeded in changing the mentality of the frum community.

Diversity became apparent when smaller groups within the congregation asked for their own minyan, and it was granted to them. Women asked for inclusiveness in education and religious rites.  Some were permitted immediately, such as Hakafot. Educational opportunities for women to learn and teach were also embraced.  We have not yet arrived at full access for women in religious life, but it is a work in progress.

Expansion of our membership became the bi-product of our diversity. We became a multi-cultural shul.  We were encouraged from the pulpit to welcome our fellow Jews who had not experienced a spiritual way of life. It had the effect of making us more tolerant of each other.

We became a proud congregation.  When a new rabbi was appointed, we knew that his big tent philosophy would continue to benefit us.

We are an evolving congregation, ever in a state of change. If we dialogue with our rabbis and express our wishes for a more vibrant Jewish experience we can affect the shifts we would like to see in our synagogues.  

The Crown of Solomon and Other Stories
By Marc D. Angel
Albion Andalus Books, 2014, 150 pages

This is prolific writer Rabbi Dr. Marc D. Angel’s second fictional book, following his much acclaimed and enjoyed novel “The Search Committee.” Several of the nineteen tales are based on true events. Many of the stories are set within Sephardic communities in Turkey, Rhodes and the United States.

“Betrayal and Redemption,” for example, looks at the relationship between a frail thirteen-year-old girl on the Island of Marmara, Turkey, and a Greek non-Jewish girl of similar age. The two have an excellent relationship. The story explores what happens during an Easter week pogrom and afterwards.

“The Train” has an O’Henry thrill to it. It is about a non-Jewish woman in the American southwest who is married very happily to a non-Jewish man. Suddenly, she begins to dream that she is on the wrong train. The dream keeps repeating itself.

Readers may want to enjoy the tales and think of some of the details in them that are in other tales. For example, his first story “The Crown of Solomon” is delightful. It is about a highly respected rabbi, scholar, and community leader who spends his life seeking to write all he knows. It is only when he dies that the town people, impatiently waiting to discover his wisdom, are able to read what he wrote. The message of the story is reminiscent of “The Aleph” by the great Argentine writer Jorge Borges as well as a midrashic tale, but Rabbi Angel tells the story differently with zest.

“And Though He Tarry” is a variation of the theme about strangers. A man comes to the synagogue frequently, acts very piously, covers his head with a tallit while praying, but is obnoxious and noisy. The congregants approach the rabbi begging him to expel the visitor.

Angel’s final tale “The Inner Chamber of the King” may remind readers of Maimonides’ parable about the palace at the end of his Guide of the Perplexed. But again, Angel gives it a twist; he adds an event that is a good lesson for all readers.

“The Crown of Solomon and Other Stories” may be ordered through the online store at jewishideas.org; or directly from the publisher, albionandalus.com; or through barnesandnoble.com or amazon.com.

The University Network of the Institute for Jewish Ideas and Ideals reaches many hundreds of students on campuses throughout North America. We provide students with our publications, and serve as a resource to them on issues relating to Judaism, ethics, Orthodoxy etc.

We sponsor Campus Fellows who arrange programs for students on many campuses. We also sponsor regional conferences on topics that promote a grand and inclusive vision of Orthodox Judaism.

We are pleased to announce that the Institute has received a very major financial commitment in order to dramatically expand our work with university students. This multi-year commitment has enabled us to engage a new director for our Campus Fellows program: Rabbi Daniel Braune Friedman. Rabbi Friedman will begin his work for the Institute as of May 1, 2014. Raif Melhado will continue to work under the aegis of our University Network and Campus Fellows program.
Raif is a full time student at Yeshivat Chovevei Torah, and has done great work with our Campus Fellows program during the past several years.

Daniel Friedman was born in Montrose, NY and graduated from UMass Amherst,where he met his wife, Hannah. Following graduation, Daniel studied at Yeshivat Darchei Noam, worked for the National Jewish Outreach Program and then began his rabbinical studies at YCT. A highlight of his
career as a rabbinical student included facilitating and participating in various social action programs all over the world. Daniel also makes it a priority to engage with other movements and faiths. He was honored with the Irving Weinstein Memorial Award for the Advancement
of Interdenominational Cooperation. Daniel has held rabbinic
internships at the Hebrew Institute of Riverdale, Congregation Bais Abraham in St. Louis, Beth Israel Medical Center and New York University. Currently, he is a Pastoral Resident at Hartford Hospital. Previously, Daniel and Hannah served as Jewish Chaplains at Oxford University.

The University Network is a free service provided to students by the Institute for Jewish Ideas and Ideals. Information about the University Network, and applications to serve as Campus Fellow, can be found on the bottom right of our homepage at jewishideas.org

We express profound gratitude to our patrons of the University Network. They are the Institute's partners in bringing an intellectually vibrant, compassionate and inclusive Torah Judaism to an ever-growing number of students.

Rabbi Marc D. Angel has just come out with a book of short stories, "The Crown of Solomon and Other Stories." Published by Albion-Andalus Books, the 150 page soft cover book is available through the online store at jewishideas.org

Here are some comments on the book:

These wry parables of Jewish wisdom and ignorance touch a nerve. We find ourselves thinking about these characters long after we've put the book down—this one timid and self-demeaning until she suddenly is not, that one stubborn and aggressive, another, hesitant beyond reason. The stories quietly ambush assumptions of many kinds. —Jane Mushabac, CUNY Professor of English, author of "Pasha: Ruminations of David Aroughetti."

While reading Rabbi Marc Angel’s The Crown of Solomon and Other Stories, I could not stop wondering whether David Barukh, the unrecognized Sephardic Mozart, was a metaphor for the last two centuries of the Ottoman Sephardic culture, a metaphor for all the wasted opportunities and unrealized potentials! Rabbi Angel’s stories demonstrate that Sepharadim can still teach modern American readers a thing or two, a lesson in honesty, or modesty – or, maybe, how to turn a defect into effect. Rabbi Angel does not idealize his Sephardic characters, not even the rabbinic ones. Some of his rabbis, like Hakham Shelomo, are wise in an a la turca way; others are quite average, like Hakham Ezra; some are humble, honorable and even saintly like Rabbi Bejerano - and yet others are frivolous and self-centered, like Rabbi Tedeschi. All are convincingly human and quite imaginable in real life. The lay characters of the stories are simply conquering in their charming simplicity, in their human rootedness and in their folk wisdom. While reading Rabbi Marc Angel’s new book, I felt everything was in its place. It takes a person deeply rooted in both cultures, traditional Sephardic and modern American, to tell so Sephardic a story in a language such as English, and who makes everything feel totally right. Dr. Eliezer Papo--Head of the Ladino Program at the Department of Hebrew Literature;Head of the Sephardic Studies Research Institute,Ben-Gurion University of the Negev

Ever since his novel, The Search Committee, I have been waiting anxiously for Rabbi Marc D. Angel's next work of fiction. The short story collection The Crown of Solomon and Other Stories was worth the wait! A unique and moving collection that allows the reader insight into Sephardic Jewry's rich heritage." Naomi Ragen--Author of The Sister's Weiss and the Ghost of Hannah Mendes

Whenever I think of the huge demonstration of Hareidi yeshiva students at the beginning of this month, I think of Gateshead Yeshiva in England where I spent many years studying Talmud. It is Europe’s most famous yeshiva and a bastion of Torah study in the Hareidi world. Paradoxically, I also think of Spinoza’s incomparable masterpiece, the Ethics, written in a small room in Voorburg, the Netherlands.

I come from a completely secular background with no Jewish education, but good schooling in secular philosophy where Kant, Hume and Wittgenstein reigned supreme. When I ventured to have a look at Gateshead Yeshiva with the intention of learning Talmud, I did not know what was awaiting me. I expected a Jewish university for talmudic studies where enlightened teachers and students would discuss the latest problems in theology and talmudic historiography. But nothing was further from the truth. This was not even Yeshiva University. It’s not just that there were no secular studies and no talk about Plato’s theory of immortality or Leibniz’s famous theodicy; this was an altogether different planet. There was nothing but one supreme endeavor: learning Talmud, combined with Rabbi Aryeh Leib Heller’s (1) classic Ketzos HaChoshen and Rabbi Yaakov ben Yaakov Moshe Lorberbaum’s (2) Nesivos HaMishpat, two brilliant talmudic works.

There were 300 of us, and we slept in our overcoats in what some people called a bedroom, where the temperature was far below zero. Our neigel vasser (3) was frozen in the morning. There was no lobby in the yeshiva where we could relax, nor was there a cafeteria. We knew that the food we ate was practically taken from the mouths of our roshei yeshiva. Our menahel ruhani (spiritual mentor), Rabbi Hizkiyahu Eliezer Kahan z”l, was as poor as a church mouse but looked like a king in his spotless frock coat and with his long, carefully combed white beard. He was a “Nevardoker” – a student of the famous Nevardok Yeshiva (called after a city in Lithuania) of pre-Holocaust Europe, which was dedicated to strict discipline and unfailing religious devotion. The non-Jews in Gateshead knew that when Rabbi Kahan, who walked as upright as a soldier, passed by in the afternoon, it was exactly 4:00 p.m. – not a minute later and not a minute earlier. They could not help but take their hats off to this remarkable human being who was a great tzaddik.

When you entered the yeshiva, you were no longer sure in which century you were living – the 5th, 12th, 17th or 20th. This was a world unto itself, made up of singularly focused people. There was no walking out to the street for a few minutes to get some fresh air; no option of going to a kosher restaurant to get a cup of coffee or have a falafel; no chance of meeting a religious girl studying at the famous Gateshead Seminary. Although 150 of them were right around the corner, they were light-years away from our yeshiva. Not only was it dangerous to walk in the streets, since so many drunken people wandered around, but no one even had any interest in doing so. It was considered bitul zman (a waste of time). There was one supreme goal: shtaigen in lernen (excelling in learning).

The roshei yeshiva showed incredible integrity, deep religiosity and a total absence of any personal agenda. There was no competition between them, no scandals and no quarrels. Just Torah in all of its splendor. What counted was the service of God through learning the Talmud, a holy text of infinite sublimity. This monumental text took them back to Mount Sinai, and through its pages they relived the greatest moments in all of Jewish history. There was much naiveté, a withdrawal from the world, which made the rabbis seem like human angels while studying the laws of damages and injuries. There were also mussar shmoozen. These were not intellectual discourses like Kant’s sophisticated insights about ethics; they were emotional, often spontaneous, outbursts of love for God and man. Through the singsong chants, they would lift us up to heaven and ask of us to be supreme human beings and Jews. Nothing in this world comes close to those religious experiences.

I spent 12 years in yeshivot, and then completed my Ph.D. Today, when I speak with many people who reject the yeshiva world and criticize it harshly for its faults, I realize that although I agree with many of their critical assessments, they fail to understand the inner music of these institutions.

They do not realize that this introverted but remarkable world somehow lifted the Jews out of their misery throughout history and gave them the strength to survive all their enemies under the most intolerable conditions brought on by anti-Semitism. It was this denial of time that made the Jews eternal. The yeshiva world was no doubt very small compared to what it is now, but until the emancipation it was the pride of the entire Jewish world. The Talmud afforded the Jews wings, enabling them to fly to other worlds; to return to the past that no longer existed; and to look toward worlds that were still to come. It became the Jews’ portable homeland, and their complete immersion in its texts made them indestructible even as they were tortured and killed. The Talmud became their survival kit, which ultimately empowered their offspring to establish the State of Israel, nearly 2000 years after they were exiled from their land. This is unprecedented in all of the history of mankind.

For nearly 2000 years the yeshiva world made Jews view life sub specie aeternitatis, as Spinoza called it – from the perspective of eternity. Indeed, it allowed them to leave behind ordinary history and become a-historical. Jews stepped out of history because it was the only way to survive in history. And so the yeshiva world gave the Jewish people a tool for survival, which no one could match for the last 2000 years. Had the yeshiva world not done so, the Jewish people would never have endured, the State of Israel would not have been created, and no Jews – neither religious nor secular – would have lived in this wonderful country. All Israelis owe their lives to the wondrous yeshiva world, whether they like it or not.

In some way, Spinoza was a yeshiva student. He lived in his small room in Voorburg, and that was his beit midrash. Like the yeshiva students, he nearly never left it. There he built his universe and wrote his magnum opus. Consistent with his own philosophy, he too lived outside of history. His deep thoughts, insights and noble feelings are not of this world.

They too are the product of sub specie aeternitatis and therefore suspect. In the long run they will break down, because one might be able to escape this world, even for a long time, but ultimately one needs to return. Thoughts that are eternal and untouchable are too beautiful and, for most people, unreachable. And so it is with the yeshiva world. Learning Talmud without being able to put much of its teachings into practice is too abstract and too unworldly.
With the establishment of the State of Israel, Jews were forced to re-enter history. But after 2000 years of living as yeshiva students and followers of Spinoza’s saintly teachings, it is a painful transformation. Most of our leaders, our government, and the roshei yeshiva have not yet realized that we are still hanging in suspense. We live with one foot in the world of the yeshiva and Spinoza, and the other foot on the ground with all its challenges and harsh realities. Our political leaders want us to come down and stand with both feet on the ground, while the yeshiva world wants to stay in the beit midrash of Spinoza, in heaven. Both will have to realize that their goals are unrealistic. It is much too early to decide whether we should come down with both feet on the ground, or continue to stay in heaven with at least one foot. We still find ourselves at a crossroads. One is reminded of the story told about a former premier of China who was asked what the impact of the French Revolution was on modern European history. His reply was, “It’s too early to say.”

What our political leaders have to ask themselves is whether it is already possible to fully return to history. Our enemies surrounding us are getting stronger and stronger. Their hate increases daily. Israel now finds itself in an unprecedented and precarious situation, more and more isolated. We are close to becoming, once again, a nation that “dwells alone,” as our biblical arch-enemy Bil’am stated thousands of years ago. (4) Can we really afford to fully enter into history bound by its normative rules, and be defeated by these very rules because we are not yet strong enough? Wouldn’t it be better to stay with one foot in the world of sub specie aeternitatis, outside of history? In fact, isn’t the very existence of the State of Israel a bit too miraculous to fit the norms of history? Perhaps we should make sure that some of our people, our yeshiva students, continue to live outside of history so that they can rescue our nation if history does not accept us as real players and we would otherwise disappear. Isn’t it true that we are treated as a people with no history, as the United Nations, many European countries, and even the American administration use double standards when judging us, not allowing us to be part of conventional history? We are still living through the birth-pangs, as yet unable to say what the baby will look like.

On the other hand, it is our Hareidi roshei yeshiva and those recognized as the gedolei hador who are guilty of not realizing that we Jews must return to history at some point, and if they don’t want to join us they may lose us altogether and they themselves may not survive. They seem to be completely oblivious to the radical change that has taken place in the Jewish world – including their own yeshiva world – after the Holocaust and the establishment of the State of Israel. We have been taught that in the long run it is impossible for all of us to stay outside of history. The Holocaust has taught us that we cannot survive ad infinitum without entering history. We have too much eternity and too little geography. To argue that our yeshiva students are the ones who really defend us against our enemies, and that we do not need soldiers, is an escape from reality and as anti-halakhic as can be. It is a rewriting of Judaism that the Hareidi leadership cannot even accuse the Reform of doing.

Both the secular and the Hareidi utterly lack historical perspective. The secular have to learn that we may need to keep some people outside of history, and the Hareidi leadership will have to realize that now that we have a state of our own, all of us, without exception, must serve in Tzahal because we are trying to get back into history. In fact, every young Jewish male outside of Israel should feel it his absolute moral obligation to serve for a few months in the Israeli army, because by now world Jewry is depending on the State of Israel, if only so that when it really goes wrong in Europe or the United States there will be a haven for them.

It cannot be denied that the Israeli government made a major blunder in the way it handled the need to draft yeshiva students for army service. Some Knesset members believe that they won, but in reality it was a monumental loss and they became the laughing stock of Israeli society by arguing for equal service by all. Everyone knows that there’s no such thing as equality in the army. Some people risk their lives, others do not. If all were equal, the army wouldn’t function. We also know that a Jewish State will never be able to put people in jail because they learn Torah.

Both parties should have learned from the great British Jewish philosopher Isaiah Berlin who states that there are no ideal solutions in this world. There are only tradeoffs. “You cannot combine full liberty with full equality… Justice and mercy, knowledge and happiness can collide,” says Berlin. It is not that such perfect harmony cannot be created because of practical difficulties. It is that “utopian solutions are in principle incoherent and unimaginable… so there have to be choices.” One can only choose how much equality and how much liberty, how much mercy and how much justice. Belief in a perfect world “cannot but lead to suffering, misery, blood, terrible oppression.” (5)

The only thing the government can do is suggest that Hareidi yeshiva students go for basic training and build yeshivot in the army. The students would have to walk around in uniform and learn full time, learn with other soldiers, do community service, or something similar. Fair? Certainly not. But fairness is not a value that can always work in the military.

Only a tradeoff can work; there is no other option. And by allowing these students to study while in the army, we at least remind ourselves that we may still have to be an a-historical people and that we cannot yet afford to live solely within history. It is still too dangerous. If some of us are full-time cooks in the army, others can be full time learners in the army. Much too expensive? Sure! But you cannot have your cake and eat it too.

Still, the greatest mistake was not made by the government but by the Hareidi leadership. When it organized a demonstration in which nearly 600,000 black-hatted yeshiva students participated to show their love for Torah, one could hear a pin drop just before the crowd burst out in an unprecedented cry of Shema Yisrael. That was the perfect opportunity to prove their love for our brave soldiers and all of Israeli society by having all 600,000 men and women recite prayers for the welfare of the soldiers and all Jews in Israel. That would not only have been a great kiddush Hashem; it also would have turned Israeli society around and healed much of the animosity between the Hareidi and non-Hareidi communities. Yeshiva students would have been seen in a different light. Instead of having upset hundreds of thousands of Israelis, among whom many have lost their sons and daughters in combat, it would have created an entirely different atmosphere in the country. There is little doubt that most yeshiva students would have done it with great love. The failure to ask them to do so is not just a missed opportunity. It is completely irresponsible and a terrible tragedy. When the world-renowned, Hareidi halakhic authority Rabbi Shlomo Zalman Aurbach z”l was asked to which graves of tzaddikim one should go to pray, he said to go to the military cemeteries. The fact that the Hareidi leadership did not tell 600,000 of their followers to pray for our soldiers proves beyond doubt how small-minded are those who are recognized as gedolei hador.

To paraphrase Spinoza: All noble men are as great as they are rare.
*************************
1. Rabbi, talmudist and halachist in Galicia, 1745-1812.
2. Rabbi and respected posek in Lissa (today known as Leszno), Poland, 1760-1832.
3. Water put near one’s bed at night for washing hands upon arising.
4. Bamidbar 23:9.
5. Ramin Jahanbegloo, Conversations with Isaiah Berlin (London: Halban Publishers, 2007) pp. 142-3.

The Institute for Jewish Ideas and Ideals has been co-sponsoring a ten-part series of weekly classes with Lincoln Square Synagogue in the First Book of Samuel (68th Street and Amsterdam Avenue in Manhattan). Wednesdays from 7:15-8:15 pm from January 29-April 2. With this series winding down, we are discussing the possibility of future classes. Stay tuned for further announcements.

As a bonus to all participants in the series at Lincoln Square Synagogue, we distributed copies of my new book published through the Institute, A Synagogue Companion. By now, all Institute members should have received copies of A Synagogue Companion. If you are interested in ordering multiple copies to distribute at your school or synagogue at a significantly reduced rate, please contact Rabbi Marc Angel, at [email protected].

The regular Conversations schedule is on track, with the next issue scheduled for publication in May. You may acquire copies (paperback or kindle) of my recently republished collection of essays on Tanakh, Through an Opaque Lens, at amazon.com. My next publication project through the Institute is a Holiday Companion that will contain insights and explanations of the readings, prayers, and rituals of the holidays. It should be available some time next fall. I'm also working on a new collection of essays on Tanakh, with a focus on learning methodology. We will be publishing that through Kodesh Press.

Some other teaching highlights from February-March include: Shabbat Feb 7-8: I was the scholar-in-residence at Yeshiva University. We explored the interrelationship between traditional and academic methods of Tanakh study.

Shabbat Feb 15: I taught the Shabbat morning class at Congregation Ohav Shalom in New York: Hur and Pharaoh's daughter.

Sunday Feb 23: I gave a class on Megillat Esther at the Kingsway Jewish Center in Brooklyn.

Shabbat Feb 28-March 1: I was the scholar-in-residence at Cornell University.

Monday March 3: I taught a class on the nature of Midrash to 12th graders at the Heschel High School in New York.

In March, I gave a four-part series to rabbinical students at Yeshivat Chovevei Torah in Riverdale, NY on the Book of Jeremiah and underlying learning methodology.

Thursday March 6: I conducted a teacher training session on the Book of Jeremiah for the Tanakh faculty at the Ramaz Upper School in New York.

Shabbat March 7-8: I was the scholar-in-residence at Congregation Shaarei Orah in Teaneck, New Jersey. This Shabbat featured several talks on Sephardic and Ashkenazic liturgy and philosophy and how a study of both deepens our appreciation of tradition.

Thursday March 20: The Institute for Jewish Ideas sponsored a book reception for my two most recent books: Vision from the Prophet and Counsel from the Elders (OU Press, 2013), and A Synagogue Companion (Institute for Jewish Ideas and Ideals, 2014). It was at the Drisha Institute in Manhattan. Speakers included Rabbi Marc Angel, Rabbi Saul Berman (Yeshiva University), Rachel Friedman (Drisha Institute), and Rabbi Shaul Robinson (Lincoln Square Synagogue).

I welcome your ideas and suggestions. Please feel free to contact me at [email protected].

(A Devar Torah relating to Parashat Shemini - Leviticus 9:1 - 11:47)

There are times when the Torah tells us a story that serves as a metaphor for issues that we face today. This week's Torah Portion - Parashat Shemini - relates the strange story of Aaron's sons Nadav and Avihu. As sons of the first Kohen Gadol (High Priest), Nadav and Avihu were also Kohanim who received instructions from their father on how to conduct the sacrificial services inside the newly inaugurated Mishkan. When they entered the sacred space designated for the Kohanim to offer sacrifices, the Torah relates a peculiar incident:

Aaron's sons, Nadav and Avihu, each took his fire pan, placed fire on it, and then incense on it. They offered it before God, but it was unauthorized fire which God had not instructed them to offer. Fire came forth from before God and it consumed them, so that they died before God.

The Hebrew word for "unauthorized fire" is "esh zara," which, in addition to "unauthorized," is also translated as "foreign." Both of these translations point to the fact that Nadav and Avihu entered the House of God and introduced foreign elements that were strange to Judaism and Jewish tradition. By introducing these foreign practices, they tampered with the traditional flow of the services, and doing so was considered such a grievous offense that they were consumed by fire.

I read Jewish newspapers as much for the advertisements as for the articles. A quick scan of the advertisements by synagogues and Jewish organizations tells you what's really going on in the Jewish community. Synagogues that are desperate to "draw in the big crowd" will resort to anything these days. In recent months, I have seen advertisements for "Buddhist Shabbat Meditation Services" and "Gospel Shabbat Concerts," and a colleague recently told me how shocked he was that a synagogue held a "St. Patrick's Day Purim" event.

What can we say about this growing - and in my opinion disturbing -- phenomenon in the Jewish world? Perhaps we have, in fact, failed to make a compelling case for "old school" Jewish tradition, but are these wild, quick fix alternatives really the answer to our problems? Is the introduction of Buddhism, Gospel choirs, St. Patrick's Day revelries, or any other "esh zara" into our services the only way to infuse new meaning into tradition? Do those who lead or attend such spins on Jewish spirituality actually feel that they are participating in something with Jewish meaning?

Our transmission of a meaningful, compassionate and relevant expression of Jewish tradition certainly leaves a lot to be desired. But there are limits to where we can and should search for answers to our pressing questions. Judaism is a rich, vibrant and fascinating tradition. It is intellectual, spiritual, cultural, communal and personal all at once. We have a vast treasure of Jewish literature, along with 3000-plus years of history. Shall we give all of that away in the name of filling seats one Friday night at a gospel performance in synagogue? True creativity lies in the ability to infuse ancient traditions with modern meaning. Conducting a Shabbat service with a Buddhist twist is hardly creative. It's a cheap imitation.

Nadav and Avihu brought an "unauthorized offering" whose spirit was alien to Jewish tradition. The foreign flames that they introduced in the services came back to burn them. Indeed, a powerful metaphor for many rabbis and congregants today.