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Torah Portion

Chukat: The Chutzpah of Entering Fire

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This is the Torah (law): A man who dies in a tent…

–Numbers 19:14

The Torah is only acquired by those who kill themselves for it in the tents of study.

-The Zohar

It happened in the winter of 1798 or 1799, when Rabbi Menachem Mendel of Lubavitch was a child of eight or nine. Every Friday night Rabbi Schneur Zalman of Liadi would deliver a discourse of chassidic teaching to a select group of disciples. Little Mendel begged to be allowed in, but his grandfather refused.

The dwelling of Rabbi Schneur Zalman consisted of two two-room buildings, joined by a connecting passageway. In one of the wings, a large wood-burning stove, used for heating and occasionally to bake bread, was set in the wall between the two rooms. The stove opened into the outer room, and also protruded into the inner room which served as Rabbi Schneur Zalman’s study.

One Friday night, the Rebbe was delivering his weekly discourse in his study. It was an exceptionally cold night, so a gentile was summoned to heat the oven. For some reason, he found it difficult to push the logs all the way in to the oven, so he built the fire near the opening of the stove. As a result, the outer room soon began to fill with smoke. Once again, he tried to push the burning logs further in, but they wouldn’t budge. The poor man had to start all over again. He put out the fire, pulled out the logs, and peered into the stove to see what was preventing the logs from going in.

His shouts and shrieks summoned the entire household. The session in Rabbi Schneur Zalman’s room was disrupted; those in the second building also came running. Inside the stove lay a young boy.

-Rabbi Yanki Tauber
“The Path of Fire”
Commentary on Torah Portion Chukat
Once Upon a Chasid series
Chabad.org

Chassidic tales are very compelling but it’s impossible to know how much some of them represent actual events. I’ve come to look at these tales as stories that have been crafted to communicate important moral and religious thoughts to a specific audience. Since I’m obviously not part of that audience, it’s rather puzzling that I should be drawn to them at all. Certainly most of my fellow Christians are at best, indifferent to the stories of the Chassidim and prefer moral commentaries from the ancient or current Christian scholars and commentators.

So what’s wrong with me?

I don’t know.

According to Rabbi Eli Touger’s commentary on this Torah Portion:

The term Chukim refers to those mitzvos whose rationale cannot be grasped by human intellect.

I find my own “rationale” for pursuing the writing of a blog focused on not only Jewish, but specifically Chassidic teachings, to be just as difficult to grasp by my intellect. As I’ve said in the past, the content that I discover in Chabad sources talks to me with my metaphors, but it doesn’t make sense that it should. This is not only because I’m not Jewish (and certainly not Orthodox), but that I am not particularly learned either. I should be just as put off by what I’m reading as most people in the church. I have no explanation for why I return to this particular pool daily to drink and seek refreshment.

But then not all of my meditations are particularly refreshing.

I mentioned just the other day that we are all seeking out a greater imagination, particularly when our own well becomes dry. I’ve also said that there are times when I feel as if I’m in a wilderness waiting for God to do something, but in truth, it is God who waits in the desert for me. Like a dunce in the corner of the classroom, I may have asked God too many stupid questions but I just can’t figure out how else to talk to Him.

But it’s not just me and God. If it were, I suppose life wouldn’t seem so complicated. Being married to the girl with the Jewish soul has taught me that Judaism isn’t really accessible to me, but then Christianity isn’t exactly an open door, either. I call myself a Christian as a matter of intellectual honesty, but I’m the weirdest Christian I know. If I ever entered a church and actually said what I really think, feel, and believe in a completely unfiltered manner, I’d most likely get thrown out on my ear.

I’ve talked about “not fitting in” before and I suppose this missive is just the latest incarnation of that personal state. Judaism is, by definition, community and in theory, so is Christianity (though “salvation” is personal and not corporate) but I’ve gotten just too “strange” to fit into anybody’s community, at least for more than a tiny march of days. Not only that, but I have to consider how my joining any particular community would affect my family. My being married to a Jewish woman, and being dedicated to ensuring the safety of her being a Jew takes an obvious toll on my being a Christian. She can tolerate my meeting with a couple of guys once a week, but church would be pushing the envelope a little too hard…for the both of us.

So I have a mystery and no answers. While I share my perspectives with the Internet, it’s a wholly impersonal environment. People respond to me, but it’s “virtual” and only on rare and brief occasions does the virtual transcend into reality.

I know what I’m writing has virtually no connection to Chukat, but this is who I am and where I am right now. How about we finish the story as told by Rabbi Tauber and see what turns up.

A small lamp was the only source of light in the smoke-filled room, so it took some time until the child was identified as the Rebbe’s grandson, little Menachem Mendel.

For some weeks now, the child had discovered that he could hear his grandfather’s words through the thin wall of the stove. Every Friday night he would clamber deep into the large stove, and listen to the profound and lofty words of the Rebbe’s teachings. And now, because of the bitter cold, his listening post had been discovered.

Rabbi Schneur Zalman’s daughter-in-law, Rebbetzin Sheina, who was present at the time, related:

“When they pulled the child out of the stove, he was paralyzed with fright. My mother-in-law, Rebbetzin Sterna, cried to my father-in-law, the Rebbe: ‘See what could of happened! A tragedy! Strangers you allow to enter, but when your own child begged you, you wouldn’t let him in!’ Father-in-law replied: ‘Sha, sha. Moses reached Mount Sinai only by beholding fire – only then did he merit that the Torah be given through him. Torah is acquired only through self-sacrifice.’ “

One way to deal with not fitting in is to have the chutzpah to fit in anyway. In little Menachem Mendel’s case, he fit himself into a stove, but unfortunately, he didn’t anticipate that on a cold night, he could end up being part of the fuel used to warm the room. Rabbi Tauber relates a childish error in judgment to the willingness to die for the sake of Torah learning, but clearly in the real world, the little boy wasn’t willing to burn nor were his elders willing to incinerate him for the Torah’s sake. The real lesson (at least according to the Rebbetzin, since the Rebbe disagreed) is that if someone wants in badly enough and they show a willingness to make sacrifices, you should let them in.

That doesn’t really work in my case since I’ll never be Jewish enough (or rather, I’ll never be a Jew at all) to learn as a Jew and I’ll never be Christian enough to fit into the church culture. I don’t know what I’d have to be to fit in with my wife religiously. I don’t think there is an answer to that one except, as I said before, to be a “low profile Christian at home.”

But what about God? I guess I can be a Christian at home in terms of behaviorally displaying my morals and ethics without being overtly “Christian” (openly praying or invoking Christ’s name, for example). In this case, chutzpah won’t get me anywhere except in hot water, so I’ve nowhere else to go except into the privacy of my own thoughts, which gets turned into very public blog posts…and to turn to God.

I’m seeking out a greater imagination, but I’m putting some pretty harsh limits on it.

Solomon couldn’t comprehend the mitzvah of the Red Heifer and I can’t comprehend my own existence. If God didn’t require that Solomon understand, I guess I don’t have to, either. I can only continue living and to see what happens next.

The irony is that I don’t know what to do, and yet I feel as if God is waiting for me to make the next move. I guess that’s what faith is…acknowledging God and proceeding forward, even when it doesn’t make sense, for what alternative do we have?

Today, if you hear his voice,
do not harden your hearts, as at Meribah,
as on the day at Massah in the wilderness,
when your fathers put me to the test
and put me to the proof, though they had seen my work.
For forty years I loathed that generation
and said, “They are a people who go astray in their heart,
and they have not known my ways.”
Therefore I swore in my wrath,
“They shall not enter my rest.” –Psalm 95:7-11 (ESV)

Good Shabbos.

 

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Seeking Out a Greater Imagination

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“Do not seek to follow in the footsteps of the wise. Seek what they sought.”

-Matsuo Basho

Rabbi Sholom Ber of Lubavitch used to say that if the hedonists would know the ecstasy of mystic union, they would instantly drop all their worldly pleasures and chase after it.

It is not just pleasure. It is the source of all pleasures.

-Rabbi Tzvi Freeman
“Paradise”
Based on letters and talks of the Rebbe
Rabbi M. M. Schneerson
Chabad.org

I recently had a discussion with an (apparent) atheist in the comments section of one of my blog posts. As with many other Christian/Atheist discussions on the web, he found Christianity wanting due to its lack of morality. That generally means “lack of morality” as progressive secular humanism defines the term (and the definition tends to shift over time). But is the sole reason for someone to become a person of faith or a person of faithlessness to gain a sense of morality and ethics?

Probably not. At its core, I think a person selects one system of philosophy or theology over another in an attempt to seek a reason for existence. Rabbi David Hartman in his book A Living Covenant: The Innovative Spirit in Traditional Judaism (chapter 9) says it this way:

As history has shown, the human being is not only a fact-seeking animal, but equally and possibly more so, a value-hungry individual seeking direction and significance in life. We hunger for a frame of reference that orders and orients everyday existence into some meaningful pattern. In spite of the extreme importance of facts, their range does not exhaust the sources from which one constructs a vision of life that gives meaning and direction to existence.

Beyond the quest to determine the moral relativity of right and wrong, and even beyond the desire to understand the nature of the universe, its origins and its development, is the overwhelming desire of human beings to seek out and discover themselves. This is perhaps the greatest mystery within our awareness, greater than the origin of life and greater than the scope of the cosmos.

Who are we? Why are we here? Is this all there is? Is there something more?

I was recently watching the first part of a two-part episode of Star Trek: Voyager called “Scorpion”. The starship Voyager was about to enter an area of space dominated by the Borg, which is a highly malevolent cybernetic race and mortal enemies of the Federation. It is the only path Voyager can take to make it back to the Alpha Quadrant and home.

The Borg are under attack by an equally malevolent race of beings from a realm outside our universe who are referred to only as “species 8472.” The destruction caused by the war between the Borg and species 8472 is vast and multiple star systems have been destroyed in its wake. If Captain Kathryn Janeway (played by Kate Mulgrew) orders Voyager to go forward, the ship and everyone on board will be annihilated. If she turns the ship around to ensure everyone’s safety, she must admit that she will never get her crew home. She’s trapped in an endless loop of guilt and remorse, because it was her decision to save an alien race that stranded the Voyager crew over 70,000 light years away from home nearly four years ago.

As a diversion, Janeway had previously programmed a holodeck simulation of Leonardo da Vinci (played by the acclaimed British actor John Rhys-Davies) and his workshop environment. Janeway takes on the role of Master da Vinci’s student in order to relax, work on various art projects, and be inspired by a holographic replica of one of history’s most innovative creators. In the throes of despair, as Voyager is poised to either move forward to destruction or turn back in defeat, Janeway makes a midnight visit to the Master’s studio seeking a solution she cannot find within the limits of her own resources.

She finds da Vinci sitting in his darkened studio, softly illuminated by dozens of candles, staring at light and shadow as they play upon a blank wall. Janeway sits with him and asks him what he sees. da Vinci (Rhys-Davies) responds:

A flock of starlings; the leaves of an oak; a horse’s tail; a thief, with a noose around his neck… Uh… And a wall, with the candlelight reflecting on it. There are times, Katarina, when I find myself transfixed by a shadow on the wall, or the splashing of water against a stone. I stare at it, the hours pass, the world around me drops away, replaced by worlds being created and destroyed by my imagination. A way to focus the mind.

Out of desperation, with all other options exhausted, Janeway turns to this computer generated simulation of one of the world’s finest minds and imaginations and opens her soul to him.

There’s a path before me – the only way home. And on either side, mortal enemies bent on destroying each other. If I attempt to pass through them, I’ll be destroyed as well. But if I turn around – that would end all hope of ever getting home. And no matter how much I try to focus my mind, I can’t see an alternative.

Then da Vinci replies in a way I found absolutely fascinating, especially since Janeway has always been played as a pragmatic atheist (and after all, she programmed da Vinci).

When one’s imagination cannot provide an answer, one must seek out a greater imagination. There are times when even I find myself kneeling in prayer.

I’m sorry to take you through a mini-tour of one of my favorite Voyager stories (especially if you’re not a Star Trek fan) but this is the point I was building up to. This is what we as human beings are seeking; a greater imagination. I don’t mean one that we can possess, but something beyond ourselves and our reality. Janeway and Voyager are exploring the galaxy, or a non-trivial part of it, as they attempt to travel 70,000 light years from the Delta Quadrant back to the Alpha Quadrant and Earth, but the real journey; the human journey is far more wondrous and vast.

The human journey is the attempt to travel beyond the limits of observation, science, and the very conceptualization of a physical and temporal reality and to find what lies beyond, which must surely be a greater creative imagination than ours and the One who is responsible for everything we now experience.

On a website called The God Debates, a discussion on a cause for the universe’s existence is going on (as I write this). I seriously doubt that the matter will be resolved to everyone’s satisfaction, but the need to have this discussion is completely human and shows us how much we need to seek out “a greater imagination.” An even more unusual example of this is a story at Jewish Ideas Daily called Disturbing the Universe. This is Kabbalah scholar Daniel Matt’s review of cosmologist Lawrence M. Krauss’s new book, A Universe from Nothing: why There Is Something Rather Than Nothing. In the same article, Matt reviews Alan Lightman’s new novel Mr g: A Novel About the Creation. An article where a Kabbalah scholar reviews both a very serious book on cosmology and a seemingly light-hearted but compelling work of fiction on God and Creation? Definitely worth a read.

However, why does one person seek the limits of the universe in a microscope, a telescope, in a chemistry class, in an archaeological dig, or using the cutting-edge tools of physicists? Why does another person seek to escape the limits of the universe entirely and encounter the infinite wonder that lies beyond the scope of the mechanisms mankind feebly constructs with flesh and blood hands?

Maybe sub-atomic particles and a vast, expanding universe are the only wonders that exist, but I certainly hope not. If it is true that this is all there is and there is nothing more, then everything mysterious, wonderful, and astounding about our existence is potentially within man’s grasp and one day, there will be no more mysteries. The universe will be “solved” and man will reach the end of his own adventure and become his own “god” (if he hasn’t already).

But in seeking God, man longs to go beyond the possible and to engage a mystery that can never be solved. But that’s the greatness of spiritual man: the need, the desire, and drive to seek out the impossible and to experience even the briefest glimpse of the unseeable, the untouchable, the unknowable.

In seeking God, man approaches the real purpose of his being. This is what pushes us past the barriers of despair, loneliness, hardship, and torture. This is why man endures. This is why man achieves. Without the search for God, man’s labors are no more significant than an ant pushing a bread crumb across a dirt lot, regardless of the illusion of “greatness” we bestow upon ourselves.

Some abandon the covenant after the death of a single loved one, but others retain belief in God’s love for and commitment to themselves despite having lost their whole family in the Holocaust. One human being leaves Auschwitz an atheist and another as a person whose belief has grown stronger.

-Hartman

I suppose there are many cynical explanations for why a person who has suffered incredible horrors would retain a faith in God and even increase that faith in the shadow of Auschwitz, or a dying child, or a body shattered in war. Some more “enlightened” individuals accuse us of needing a “crutch” as if atheism is far more courageous and noble. But I don’t think it’s a matter of courage and nobility, and I can’t really say what it is that causes one person to deny God and another to seek him out, even sometimes at the cost of his own life.

The best I can see is that, like John Rhys-Davies’s version of Leonardo da Vinci, even when it seems to defy the person we think we are, we absolutely need to seek out a greater imagination than our own. We find ourselves seeking it and Him by kneeling in prayer.

It is only God who makes it possible for a human being to search for that which exists in a place no man can reach or touch or see. But that’s where we will find Him…and us.

 

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Being Married to the Girl with the Jewish Soul

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“To get to the point, our daughter has informed us that she has fallen in love with a non-Jew, and that they intend to marry. We have tried everything to dissuade her, but our arguments, appeals, threats and tears have all been to no avail. She now refuses to discuss the matter with us at all, and has moved out of our home. Rabbi! You are our only hope! Perhaps you can reach her; perhaps you can impress upon her the gravity of the betrayal against her people, her parents and her own identity in what she intends to do!”

“Would she agree to meet with me?” I asked.

“If she knew that we had spoken to you, she’d refuse.”

“Then I’ll go speak to her on my own.”

I took her address from her parents, and rang her bell that very evening. She was visibly annoyed to learn of my mission, but too well-mannered not to invite me in. We ended up speaking for several hours. She listened politely, and promised to consider everything I said, but I came away with the feeling that I had had little effect on her decision.

For several days I pondered the matter, trying to think of what might possibly be done to prevent the loss of a Jewish soul.

-Aaron Dov Halprin
“A Jew in Brooklyn”
from “The Life and Teachings of Rabbi Menachem M. Schneerson”
Translated from the Hebrew by Yanki Tauber
Chabad.org

The loss of a Jewish soul.

Derek Leman recently posted a link to a discussion “between Messianic Jew David Brickner and John Piper” concerning “supersessionism.” From a supersessionist Christian point of view, the only way for a Jewish person to become reconciled to God and the Jewish Messiah is to forfeit his or her Jewish soul.

The loss of a Jewish soul.

Is that really what the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob would want?

I know Christians who would answer “yes” so fast that it would make my head spin. But then you see, I have a Jewish wife. She is a Jewish soul.

I’m not going to go into the whole “is she saved or not” argument, which is probably way over my head (though I frequently wade into waters that are way over my head). Of course, it would gladden my heart if she would come to know, or at least be re-acquainted with (as she was in years past) the Jewish Messiah, but in her view of Judaism, which is not unlike that of the Chabad, a Jew does not believe the “Messiah of the goyim” is the Jewish Moshiach.

The local Rabbi consults the Rebbe and he presents a solution. The solution to the problem of the Jewish girl who intended to marry a non-Jew was to tell her that there was a Jew in Brooklyn who was deeply troubled and could not sleep at night because of her intentions. The Jew (whether this story is true or not, I have no idea) was named “Rabbi Menachem Mendel Schneerson, known as the Lubavitcher Rebbe.” Although the girl lived in Brazil and had never met the Rebbe or even seen a picture of him, when the local Rabbi showed her a photo of the Rebbe, she exclaimed, “this man has been appearing in my dreams and imploring me not to abandon my people.”

The story ends without telling us what the girl does, but presumably, she breaks off her engagement to the non-Jewish fellow and returns to her family. Not very much like the story between me and my wife, but then we were married for many years before she became determined to enter into the Jewish community and decided that a Jew would never believe that Jesus was the Messiah.

I’ve been pondering this story for several days but only read the following tale just a few minutes ago (as I write this):

Rabbi Zalman Serebryanski, a senior chassid from Russia and dean of the Lubavitch Rabbinical College in Melbourne, Australia, once brought a girl to Rabbi Chaim Gutnick. “Please, help this girl convert,” he asked.

Rabbi Gutnick listened to the girl’s story. She lived in Balaclava, and from her youth had felt a strong attraction to Judaism. Whenever she heard stories of the Holocaust, she was deeply touched. She had been reading and studying about Judaism for a long time, and now wanted to convert.

Rabbi Gutnick was moved by her sincerity. Nevertheless, he did not want to perform the conversion. The girl was still living at home with her non-Jewish parents. Would she be able to practice Judaism in her parents’ home? Would her interest continue as she matured into adulthood? Since he could not answer these questions, he decided to let time take its course. If the girl was still interested when she was older, she could convert then.

Rabbi Gutnick’s refusal plunged the girl into deep depression, to the extent that she had to be confined to a hospital. The elder Reb Zalman, stirred by the depth of her feelings, continued to visit her from time to time.

After several weeks, he called Rabbi Gutnick, telling him of the girl’s condition and asking him whether perhaps he would change his mind because of the strength of her feelings.

-Eli and Malka Touger
“The Girl Who Had To Be Jewish”
from “The Life and Teachings of Rabbi Menachem M. Schneerson”
Chabad.org

This appears to be the opposite of the previous story. Here, a non-Jewish girl is pursuing Judaism to the point that she becomes severely depressed when the option is denied her. On the surface, it seemed conversion was impossible because her family was Anglican, but appearances can be deceiving. In this case, the Rebbe is once again consulted and the results are surprising.

Rabbi Gutnick did not receive an immediate reply to his letter. But at a later date, at the end of a reply to another issue, the Rebbe added: “What’s happening with the Jewish girl from Balaclava?”

Rabbi Gutnick was surprised. The girl and Reb Zalman had both made it clear that her family was Anglican!

He and Reb Zalman went to confront the girl’s mother. At first, she continued to insist that she was Anglican, but as the sincerity of the two rabbis impressed her, she broke down and told her story. She had been raised in an Orthodox Jewish home in England. As a young girl, she had rebelled against her parents and abandoned Jewish life entirely, marrying a gentile and moving to Australia. She had not given Judaism a thought since. She loved her daughter, however, and would not oppose her if she wished to live a Jewish life.

Once the girl’s Jewishness was established, Rabbis Serebryanski and Gutnick helped her feel at home in Melbourne’s Lubavitch community. She continued to make progress in her Jewish commitment, and today is a teacher in a Lubavitch school.

But Rabbi Gutnick still had a question: How did the Rebbe know she was Jewish? At his next yechidut (audience with the Rebbe) he mustered the chutzpah to ask.

The Rebbe replied that, at Reb Zalman’s urging, the girl had also written him a letter. “Such a letter,” the Rebbe declared, “could only have been written by a Jewish girl.”

Again, I have no idea if this story is true, but it is compelling, especially to me.

My wife’s mother was Jewish and her father was a non-Jew (both of my in-laws passed away many years ago). My wife’s mother, as a young woman, rejected her family in Boston and her Judaism and walked away from both, about seventy years ago. My mother-in-law met my father-in-law on a blind date and they subsequently married and had five children. At no time did the fact that my mother-in-law was Jewish ever come up in the family.

True, my wife as a child, knew that her maternal aunt and cousin, who lived in Southern California where she grew up, were Jewish, but she never made the connection that her mother was Jewish (and thus, her children) until my wife was a young woman herself.

Of her two sisters and two brothers, only my wife was driven to self-identify as a Jew and decades later, to pursue a life as a Jewish woman.

The girl who had to be Jewish.

These two stories collide because the girl who had to be Jewish married the guy who ended up being Christian.

The thirty years of our marriage haven’t always been easy for one reason or another. I think any couple who has been married for decades will say that there have been trials in their relationship from time to time. It’s not all romance and flowers. But typically, at a foundational level, the couple is united in terms of their basic worldview. If the husband is a Christian, usually so is the wife. If the wife is an atheist, usually so is the husband. You get the idea.

Jewish/non-Jewish interfaith marriages are at an all-time high as far as I understand the statistics, and this is a crisis in the world of Judaism. Particularly Orthodox Jews see the marriage of a Jew to a non-Jew (and especially a Christian) as the loss of a Jewish soul.

There are plenty of books, guides, and advice blogs that address interfaith marriages, but usually the couples being targeted arrive at their wedding day as fully realized Jews and Christians. As far as I know, all interfaith couples at my local Reform/Conservative and Chabad synagogues are Jew/Goy (non-Christian). Some of the non-Jews who have married Jews convert to Judaism. The issues are complex and troublesome but not insurmountable.

A few weeks ago, I was talking to my wife about some of the things that had happened at the First Fruits of Zion (FFOZ) Shavuot conference in Hudson, Wisconsin. One of the issues was having Christians who are already in a church or who would be willing to return to a church, be sort of “messengers” and advocates for a positive relationship with Jewish people within the Christian community.

My wife’s response was something like, “Are you thinking of going back to church?” I wish I could remember her exact words. They could have been, You aren’t thinking of going back to a church, are you?” But I’m not sure. I’m also not sure if the tone of her voice registered any distress or not. It’s hard to tell with her sometimes. She plays her cards “close to the vest,” so to speak.

If we had entered our marriage with her as a fully realized Jew and me as a fully realized Christians (we were agnostics/atheists on our wedding day and for many years afterwards) and if we agreed to still get married, we probably wouldn’t be experiencing what we are today with each other. I’ve asked her about this aspect of our relationship point-blank, but she remains elusive.

As nearly as I can understand my options, the best thing for me to do is to let her be “the girl who has to be Jewish” and for me to be a low profile Christian at home. I don’t think we have a “typical” interfaith marriage, if there is such a thing. I don’t know if she sees my faith as somehow threatening to her, but it isn’t something that she’s comfortable discussing.

PrayingBut I don’t want the world to lose another Jewish soul. Supersessionist Christianity wouldn’t care, and would walk all over her Jewish soul without feeling the slightest pang of guilt or remorse. However, that Jewish soul is my wife. She gave birth to three other Jewish souls who are my children. Like any husband and father, when confronted with a threat to the family, I become defensive and protective. I cannot let their Judaism be extinguished for the sake of someone else’s theology…not even my own.

For I could wish that I myself were accursed and cut off from Christ for the sake of my brothers, my kinsmen according to the flesh. They are Israelites, and to them belong the adoption, the glory, the covenants, the giving of the law, the worship, and the promises. –Romans 9:3-4 (ESV)

Paul was in anguish over his Jewish brothers and sisters who did not understand the blessings of Jesus the Messiah and who would be temporarily “cut off.” He was sincerely willing to become accursed and cut off from his own salvation for the sake of other Jews. It meant that much to him; his Jewish brothers and sisters meant that much to him.

Although I am not a Jew, how much more should my Jewish wife and children mean to me?

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Struggling with the World, Part 2

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From the anthropological perspective on the problem of evil, therefore, the prime concern is not so much to defend the notions of divine justice and power. It is rather, as in other personal relationships, to determine what measure of continuity, stability, and predictability can enable the relationship with God to survive all shocks. It is to identify the cluster of beliefs that supports a person’s will to persist in the face of tragedy and suffering. If the world I live in requires that I become overly vigilant because of the threat of danger striking at any moment, then how can I sustain commitment to a way fo life predicated on God’s covenantal love and justice?

How do we respond to events that can call into question our whole identity as God’s relational partners?

-Rabbi David Hartman
Chapter 8: “Rabbinic Responses to Suffering”
A Living Covenant: The Innovative Spirit in Traditional Judaism

Note: If you haven’t read Part 1 of this “meditation” already, please do so before proceeding here.

An atheist can dismiss such questions by dismissing God. The presence of tragedy, suffering, and evil can be accepted as conditions of a natural world filled with imperfect human beings. It can also be a world that, while imperfect, is struggling to develop toward a higher moral and ethical reality as indeed, progressivism strongly believes. Human beings then, establish and revise the foundations of our own morality, sometimes radically, as time advances and the concepts of rightness, mercy, and justice continue to evolve in societal consciousness.

The covenantal Jew on the other hand, perpetually wrestles with God as did Jacob (Genesis 32:22-32) before his confrontation with the (supposedly) murderous Esau. But it’s in that battle that a Jew struggles not only with God but with himself.

A covenantal religious consciousness is always vulnerable to self-doubt and to feelings of rejection and guilt. When suffering and tragedy have struck without any explanation once, twice, and repeatedly, individuals in the community no longer know what kind of world they are living in. Like Job, they may ask: “Why do You hide Your face and treat me like an enemy?” (Job 13:24)

-Hartman

But in Rabbi Hartman’s viewpoint, a Jew is not simply a conduit for the cosmic forces of an Almighty Being to use to manipulate the course of history or even personal events.

The acceptance of that responsibility therefore need not entail that paralyzing sense of guilt alleged in Paul’s criticism of the law. Nor does mitzvah demand unconditional obedience without rational discernment, since the halakhah expects from Jews not just a dedicated will to serve God but also a reflective, sensitive, and critical moral disposition.

This takes away the motivation for a covenantal Jew to say that “God told me to do it” when facing a moral decision or in responding to personal disaster. The Torah is not a static set of rules carved in stone but rather a moral imperative written on the living and beating heart of every Jew. Each situation must be examined and evaluated not only against the yardstick of tradition and the mitzvah, but as potentially a wholly new phenomenon that may require a completely unique and unanticipated response, framed within the organic, evolving Jewish moral and historical tapestry.

Returning to Rabbi Freeman’s commentary on Judaism and its response encountering the demands of a progressive culture, the Rebbe felt that modernity didn’t present a set of obstacles but only “challenges. Challenges chiding you to show your stuff. Show that stuff and do what a Jew has to do, and those challenges themselves lift you on their shoulders, carrying you high.”

To continue:

Every talk, every letter, every teaching of the Rebbe must be understood in that context: We are not prisoners within an ominous world; we are the agents of its Master. We are not here to placate the world, but to repair it; not to reform ourselves to its tastes, but to reform it to the tastes of its Creator; not to conserve Judaism, but to be an organic part of its flourishing growth; not to reconstruct it, but to use it to reconstruct our world. Because ours is not a Torah of the past, but one that beckons to us from a magnificent future.

The Rebbe’s response to the challenges of a world and its developing, progressive morality is to move one giant step backward and to take a “metaview” of that world. Human advancement and even human history is transitory. Modern liberal progressive thought acknowledges that morality is not a fixed entity and adapts across time and the needs of the human spirit. While the Rebbe no doubt had a more established sense of moral and ethical standards, he also understood that the world is not ownerless or that, human beings are not the only “landlords” of reality. The world has a Master and we are His agents.

The world of human events wasn’t something to be avoided, but to be encountered and wrestled with. Rabbi Freeman characterises the Rebbe’s response by saying that “he grabbed it by its horns and harnessed it to plow his field.” For the Rebbe, each Jew stands in this place:

When you stand in a place of enlightenment, the Rebbe so often taught, you may have boundless, infinite light—but you do not have G‑d Himself. In the void of light where this world was made; in the darkness of Jewish exile, where we must choose life from the depths and create our own light to find it; in a society that forces us to wake up, take the reins of our own lives and challenge everything—there we touch G‑d at the very core.

A Jew may be surrounded by darkness but he stands in a place of light and it is from that light, regardless of how hopeless the circumstance, he must proceed, carrying with him not only the strength of the traditions of the past, but the infinite hope of a future from which the Moshiach will emerge and where God will rescue His people. Atheism, progressivism, secular humanism are conditions to be wrestled with, to be “grabbed by its horns and harnessed,” but they are not defining, either of a Jew nor the world that is ultimately owned by God.

My understanding of all of this is that Judaism may wrestle with itself, with the demands of society, and ultimately with God, but it is the Jewish identity that remains the one constant that enables them as a people, to move forward, to survive not only challenges, but horrors, and that will see them finally standing at the foot of the throne of God, receiving His promises of life and peace.

As I’ve been writing this, I’ve been seeing a few elements that can be adapted to Christianity and those promises we expect to be fulfilled by our Master at the end of this age. But we must also learn to establish an identity that can engage our environment without fear or despair. Our “liability” as such, is that we Christians are commanded to not only encounter our neighbor and love him, but to attempt to convince him to adopt our faith and our worldview (which is something no Jew must face). In that, we present ourselves as agents of the world’s greatest benefactor while being perceived by many in the secular world as humanity’s greatest enemy.

We are ridiculed and reviled by atheists and humanists and in response, we struggle with our own doubts, retreat into concrete bunkers of inflexible dogma, or attack the inhabitants of an unbelieving world, thereby abandoning our evangelical imperative. But we can neither ignore the world nor hate it. We are commanded to live in it and to live with faith in God. Like the covenantal Jew, we must be anchored to our legacy who, for us, are the Apostles and disciples of ancient times, and also look to the hope of the future when Jesus returns.

In the meantime, like the Rebbe, we need to seize the world around us and live in it, though we are not of it. We must treat each person we encounter with love, respect, and dignity. Our values do not require that they respond in kind, only that we are consistent in imitating the example of our teacher and Master by being involved and by being a light.

We are not trapped between a hostile and violent army and a vast and unconquerable sea. We can move forward. The sea will part. But first, we have to get our feet wet.

Don’t be afraid.

Addendum: Just found an article at Commentary Magazine on liberal intolerance of religious folks (in this case, Jews) called Liberal Prejudice Against the Orthodox Crosses a Line. I can see we have a long way to go.

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Repairing Life

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R’Simlai notes that the posuk (Yeshayahu 45:23) teaches that everyone in the world takes an oath before God. What is this oath, and when is it administered? The oath is the one referred to in Tehillim (24:3-4), “Who shall ascend into the mountain of God, and who shall be able to stand in His holy place? He who is of clean hands and pure of heart, who has not lifted up his soul to falsehood and has not sworn deceitfully.” The oath itself is that at the time of birth the soul is commanded, “Be righteous, and do not be evil!” It is given when the soul is sent to the world. We recite Tehillin 24 – the paragraph of “L’David Mizmor” – at Maariv immediately after the silent Amidah on Rosh HaShana and Yom Kippur.

Rabbi Chaim Hager, the Rebbe from Viznitz, was also known as the Imrei Chaim. When he would read this posuk on Rosh HaShana and Yom Kippur he would cry. A visitor to his community was taken aback to hear the Rebbe whimpering at the particular point where false oaths are mentioned. The visitor could not fathom how the Rebbe could be so moved about the possibility of having taken a false oath.

As the chassidim passed by the Rebbe after davening, this visitor followed along in the line. When he asked the Rebbe for an explanation, the Rebbe answered: The Gemara (Niddah 30b) tells us that before a soul is sent into this world it is administered an oath which states “You are to be a tzaddik! Do not be a rasha!”

The oath continues with the person being adjured that even if everyone in the world tells him that he is a tzaddik, he must never become complacent by believing their compliments. Rather, the person must always strive for perfection and consider himself to be a rasha.

“Now,” continued the Rebbe, “who can confirm that he has fulfilled this oath which his soul has taken and that he is a tzaddik? Who can insist that he has not taken a false
oath?”

Daf Yomi Digest
Gemera Gem
“Be a tzaddik! Do not be a rasha!”
Niddah 30

This is midrash and not (as far as I know) literal fact, so I don’t suppose that before we are physically born, our souls take an oath before God to be righteous and not to be evil. Still, what if you happen to feel obligated to do good but find yourself doing the opposite? Who are you accountable to and what are the consequences?

I commented in yesterday’s morning meditation about the ongoing debate between Atheists and Christians (and other religious people). I mentioned that atheism as a belief system, does not have a built-in moral or ethical structure. The only requirement to be an atheist is to not believe in God or that any supernatural being had anything to do with the creation of the universe, or is involved in the course of human events.

But if you choose to be a person of faith, you are agreeing to a certain set of moral and ethical standards. If you fail to meet those standards, even occasionally, you have not only reneged on your agreement with your religion and with God, but you have dragged the Name of God through the mud for all to see, especially those who disdain religion and religious people.

If you believe that you have taken an oath before God to be a “tzaddik” and not be a “rasha,” you’ve failed that, too.

The problem is, being human, sooner or later, you will fail. If a non-religious person fails, who is hurt? It depends on the failure. They may hurt themselves, people where they work, their friends, their family, and so forth. Of course none of that is good, but when we who claim faith in God fail, particularly in a moral or ethical area, we fail all those people and we fail God as well. We become a “rasha” and not a “tzaddik.”

I’m exaggerating here. Not all people in religion can be considered tzaddikim, since these are the most righteous, noble, and holy in the world of faith. Christianity would call them “saints.” How many Christians can truly be called “saints” (although some Christian denominations consider all Christians to be worthy of being saints because of the sacrifice of Jesus Christ)?

Most of us are “mere mortals” who are doing our best to try to make it through one day at a time. Some days are better than others. Some days we’re better at honoring God and His desires than others. Some days seem pretty crummy, but we try to keep going because of our faith and our belief that God is with us, regardless of our circumstances and, in most cases, regardless of how badly we fail.

That’s why anti-Christian and anti-religious rhetoric on the Internet or in real life is so disturbing. Not because secular people don’t agree with my choosing to have faith, but because it means that I or someone like me has failed. We have failed to show that we are doing our best to follow a moral standard that was set for us by the Creator of the Universe and the lover of our souls. We have given the world the opportunity to believe that our faith is not only a lie, but an excuse to actually indulge in selfish, moral attacks on those we deem weaker or more vulnerable in the world.

I wish I could find the image I saw the other day on the web (thought it was on the atheism sub-reddit but I can’t find it). It was a “rant” on how a young atheist found himself in church (not sure how this happened) and listened to the Pastor preach on how young people don’t have values today. The person listening to the sermon reasoned that the Pastor meant that young people don’t have the church’s values, which the commenter described as repression, inequality, exclusivism and so forth. He defined atheist values as inclusiveness (except if you’re a person of faith, but that’s beside the point), equality, compassion and so forth (I really wish I could find the image because it was just brilliant).

The conclusion is that the church wasn’t particularly moral at all and that atheism, by comparison, was a much better belief system. Of course, the commenter wasn’t really describing atheism but rather western political and social progressivism which includes atheism as a core element. Nevertheless, there are times when Christians do not take the moral high road and liberal progressives do (and I should mention that there are more than a few Jewish people who have doubts about God, too).

But the argument against religion has to discount the times when Christian programs really do feed the hungry, send visitors to the sick, comforts the mourning, defends the widow, the orphan, and the disadvantaged, but those people and programs don’t make it on the news or, for the most part, in the popular social networking sites. It also isn’t generally advertised that the civil rights movement was started and supported by Christian and Jewish activists rather than atheists and scientists.

Whether you as a Christian like it or not, the world is watching and waiting for us to fail (they never expect us to succeed). Some of those watching are really anxious for us to fall face down in the sewer. When we do fail, we fall far, and we hit hard, and we take the reputation of God with us when we go over the edge.

Debating atheists on their own terms will not sanctify the Name of God. You will never elevate God’s reputation by trying to “prove” He exists and created the universe. Living a life of faith and devotion to your ideals by helping others and repairing our damaged world will. You may never convince even one atheist to consider a life of faith, but at your finest, you will be fulfilling your oath, doing your best to live as a “tzaddik,” and helping vulnerable and needy people in the process. But you should always question your own motives before criticizing someone else’s.

If you have not yet succeeded in fulfilling the criteria to be a critic, yet still feel a necessity to provide criticism, there is an alternative:

Sit and criticize yourself, very hard, from the bottom of your heart, until the other person hears.

If it comes from your heart, it will enter his as well.

-Rabbi Tzvi Freeman
“The Last Word on Criticizing”
Based on letters and talks of the Rebbe
Rabbi M. M. Schneerson
Chabad.org

Repair the world one day at a time. And for Heaven’s sake, be a tzaddik! Do not be a rasha!

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Spilled Out

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The rabbinic approach to prayer, rather than pointing to the collectivization of Jewish religious consciousness, encourages individuals within the community to discover the personal dimension of Judaic spirituality within the communal life of the halakhah. In prayer and the Shema, the rabbis sought to allow the personal to be present in the framework of halakhic practice by joining individual initiative to structure, discipline, and order. They insisted that habit not triumph in the life of prayer, and they constantly admonished the community that prayer must not be a gesture that one repeats unthinkingly. They insist that one must not pray today just because one prayed yesterday. Personal supplication must be brought within the fixed framework of the petitional benedictions of the Amidah. One must even strive to bring novel elements into daily petitional prayer.

-Rabbi David Hartman
A Living Covenant: The Innovative Spirit in Traditional Judaism
Chapter 7: “Individual and Community Prayer”

Actually, there are days when I’d do almost anything if I could just flip my brain, heart, and soul into automatic pilot and be able to belong to the “collectivization of…religious consciousness” and turn what some religious Jews refer to as tefillat nedavah (voluntary prayer) into “structure, discipline, and order.” Sometimes my relationship with God, or at least the thoughts and feelings associated with that relationship, is too chaotic and scrambled to be of much use to either me or Him.

But as Rabbi Hartman describes it, there is a greater responsibility and intention (kavvanah) in Jewish prayer than most Christians tend to understand. There are exceptions, such as Pastor Jacob Fronczak’s love of liturgy, but I think you have to be wired a certain way as a non-Jew in order to love liturgical prayer. For me though, on those days (or weeks) when it is just too much for me to summon up the necessary energy and passion to take aim at God through my “prayer antenna” so what I want to say to God will reach Him, a structured set of benedictions would do quite nicely.

I don’t know where we learn to pray. I guess it’s different for everyone. For Rabbi Hartman, it came from listening to his mother pray during the synagogue service when he was a child.

I could hear her asking God to ensure that her adult sons would find good brides and that her husband would be able to support his family with dignity. Her prayers gave expression to her personal yearnings as a wife and mother. Her language was in no way inhibited or stunted. As I listened to her prayers, I did not sense that she felt unworthy to approach God with “petty” personal needs. She would have been astonished if someone had told her that the significance of prayer is to manifest an Akedah consciousness and asked how she dared feel so relaxed and easy before God. My mother, a deeply traditional Jew, prayed in the manner of generations of Jewish mothers. She continued a tradition that she received from her own family.

I’m compelled to think of the prayer of Hannah when reading about how Rabbi Hartman heard his mother’s prayers:

As she continued praying before the Lord, Eli observed her mouth. Hannah was speaking in her heart; only her lips moved, and her voice was not heard. Therefore Eli took her to be a drunken woman. And Eli said to her, “How long will you go on being drunk? Put your wine away from you.” But Hannah answered, “No, my lord, I am a woman troubled in spirit. I have drunk neither wine nor strong drink, but I have been pouring out my soul before the Lord. Do not regard your servant as a worthless woman, for all along I have been speaking out of my great anxiety and vexation.” Then Eli answered, “Go in peace, and the God of Israel grant your petition that you have made to him.” And she said, “Let your servant find favor in your eyes.” Then the woman went her way and ate, and her face was no longer sad. –1 Samuel 1:12-18 (ESV)

It’s funny. In the moments when I was typing the previous quote from Rabbi Hartman’s book, I also couldn’t help but think of my wife. As a child, she would never have heard her mother pray as a Jew because her mother had long since abandoned any vestige of cultural, let alone religious Judaism. I can only feel compassion for my wife as I picture her first entering into the Jewish community in middle age, determined to reclaim what God intended for her from the first breath she took after birth, but could never live out until decades later.

The only prayer I can remember from my childhood is the one that begins, Now I lay me down to sleep, I pray the Lord my soul to keep…” While I don’t doubt that it’s comfortable for most Christians to keep formalized and liturgical prayer down to a bare minimum, I think they rob themselves and their children of something special when they dismiss it altogether. There’s a fabric of tradition, history, community, and belonging in those prayers. I’ve never been part of a purely Christian congregation that has employed a traditional prayer structure (although it could be argued that the small, “One Law” group with whom I once “fellowshipped” and continue to remember with affection, were more Christian than anything else), but in relation to Jewish prayer, the attraction for me to be part of that dynamic is substantial.

But more often than not, I find that serious time in prayer eludes me. I don’t know if it’s because I previously declared I would forego worship practices that even appear to be Jewish (with some rare and recent exceptions) or it it’s something more endemic to my soul, but lately, God seems to be rather “standoffish,” or perhaps it’s me. I used to think that a “crisis of faith” would be singular and rather brief since, by definition, a crisis is a dramatic event or set of events that occur very quickly and result in non-trivial change, but now I’m not so sure. I’m beginning to believe, maybe just in my case, that this “crisis of faith” is an evolutionary process that is leading me to some newer (and hopefully higher) realization of who I am in God.

In commenting on Maimonides, Hartman states:

I believe, however, that Maimonides’ understanding of prayer as avodah she-be-lev is an invitation to individuals to discover their own personal and individual mode of worship within a system in which common practice and community are so heavily emphasized.

She-be-lev or service of the heart is the individual operating of personal worship and devotion to God within the larger community of Judaism. It’s the unique part of space and time where a man davening during morning prayers with a minyan can still be an individual Jew with an individual heart and soul given up like an incense offering to God.

Traditional Jewish prayer is like a container holding a liquid. The container defines the shape of the liquid but not its characteristics, substance, and behavior. The liquid can freeze, boil, or steam within the container and still be held and kept “safe.” Without the container though, all it can do is spill into a puddle on the counter top and dribble onto the floor, becoming fodder for the mop and destined for the drain and sewer.

When I try to pray or even think about how to get back to, let alone closer to God, I’m poured all over the ground. It would be nice if I could consider myself Paul’s proverbial “drink offering” (Philippians 2:17; 2 Timothy 4:6), but I know in fact, that I’m just making a mess.

But we have this treasure in jars of clay, to show that the surpassing power belongs to God and not to us. We are afflicted in every way, but not crushed; perplexed, but not driven to despair; persecuted, but not forsaken; struck down, but not destroyed; always carrying in the body the death of Jesus, so that the life of Jesus may also be manifested in our bodies. –2 Corinthians 4:7-10 (ESV)

Does anyone out there have a sponge to soak me up with and a handy jar to squeeze me into?