When Was Avraham’s Brit?

Rabbi Aryeh Kaplan’s Torah commentary records a disagreement regarding when Avraham circumcised himself. It was either on Yom Kippur (Pirkei d’Rabbi Eliezer) or Pesach (Rashi). I did not understand what this disagreement was about, but I think I do now.

Yom Kippur is a day when we are cleansed of our sins and become new people. It is almost a re-birth. According to this point of view, Avraham’s brit milah (circumcision) was a purifying event that took him to a higher spiritual level. It was therefore appropriate for it to take place on Yom Kippur.

The second opinion argues that the event had even wider ramifications. Avraham’s brit marked the sealing of his covenant with God (brit milah in the literal sense, the covenant of circumcision) and the beginning of the foundation of the as-yet unborn Jewish people. It is therefore appropriate for it to take place on Pesach, the time of the creation of the Jewish people.

Halakhic Man

Lurking behind Halakhic Man is a mystery. Rabbi Joseph B. Soloveitchik describes two types of personality. On the one hand there is cognitive man, the familiar atheist-scientist type, who understands the world through its natural laws and is blind to anything that can not be perceived through those laws. On the other hand there is the equally familiar homo religiosus, the religious-mystical type, who sees the world as a prison for the soul which he longs to transcend. And yet neither of these describes the traditional Jewish scholar of the Talmud, so Rabbi Soloveitchik proposes a third type, halakhic man, who combines certain aspects of each of the other types (without being a synthesis of the two) as well as certain key features of his own.

Halakic man is like a mathematician, approaching the world with a pre-existing model, the halakha, and hoping to find correspondence between the two. Indeed, halakhic man seeks to remodel the world on the lines of the halakha, to make the natural closer to the ideal. In this way, he reaches God, contrasting with homo religiosus, who tries to reach God by leaving this world entirely for the world of the spirit. Rabbi Soloveitchik asserts that halakhic man is interested in every real phenomenon, because everything is included in the all-encompassing halakha, but I can not avoid the impression that it makes him rather narrow-minded, although that might just be a reflection of my prejudices.

One thing that puzzled me about the book is Rabbi Soloveitchik's assertion that halakhic man does not battle with the world, so strong is his desire to actualize the halakha in it. The implication seems to be that he has no worldly temptations, being governed wholly by the halakha (in the notes I wrote while reading, it says that halakhic man does not battle with temptation, but I did not include the page number and can not find the relevant passage to see if that is a direct quotation). This seems odd in itself, doubly so when Rabbi Soloveitchik later describes the process by which halakhic man performs teshuva (repentance).

Another question I had concerns Rabbi Soloveitchik's assertion that halakhic man is neither excessively happy nor excessively sad and although he experiences religious rapture, this is only after a cognitive experience. This seems to be a sign of a well-balanced psyche, but the stories he tells to support this claim, of rabbis who were able to withhold their feelings of grief at the loss of a loved one until after Shabbat or Yom Tov or the performance of a mitzvah might indicate a form of repression.

I also have to question the statement that hymns and songs to God "waste... time". Granted they are different to Torah study, but I am not at all convinced that they are an inferior method of serving God. Furthermore, I feel that they can be an important part of the religious/psyshological experience and that halakhic man does himself a great disservice by avoiding them.

Another question comes from halakhic man's opposition to halakhic innovation for the sake of policy. This would seem to be primarily a criticism of Progressive Judaism, but it raises the question as to whether halakhic man could approve such controversial innovations as the prozbul and the heter mechira. Rabbi Soloveitchik approved of the latter, but it seems to me slightly out of keeping with the dogmatic halakhic stance of halakhic man (although I believe Rabbi Soloveitchik also denied being a halakhic man).

Finally, as the Talmud contains two main parts, the legal, halakhic, sections and the non-legal, aggadic sections, calling the book Halakhic Man automatically (to my mind at least) raises the question of the existence of aggadic man. Aggadic man would probably complement halakhic man rather than oppose him. Aggadic man would have a historically-aware view of halakha as an evolving discourse, not an ahistorical view of halakha as a Platonic ideal world (although in the actuality is probably a mixture of the two - some parts are unchanging, others are not). Aggadic man would be driven to find the unifying ethical principles underpinning the Torah, the rationale behind the mitzvot, rather than seeing them as simply a product of the Divine will. Moreover, while halakhic man is, of necessity, Jewish (Judaism not considering non-Jews as bound to keep Jewish law), aggadic man, being a student of human nature and ethics, can be Jewish or non-Jewish. Yitro, Moshe’s non-Jewish father-in-law, who created the Israelite legal system not from prophetic revelation or rabbinic exegesis, but out of a concern for justice and equity and an understanding of human nature, might be considered a paradigm of aggadic man.

The Seven Beggars & Other Kabbalistic Tales of Rebbe Nachman of Breslov

I have just finished re-reading The Seven Beggars & Other Kabbalistic Tales of Rebbe Nachman of Breslov. I have very mixed feelings about it.

Structurally, the stories are like folk tales: they are very simple, with little plot or character development (the extensive tale of The Seven Beggars is really a framing device for a series of unrelated stories). In some cases the moral is clear and the symbolism detailed; in other stories the meaning is less obvious. However, many of the stories are interesting in themselves as stories, even regardless of their allegorical content, often having the haunting quality of the best folk tales and fairy tales. This is seen, for example, in the story of the Heart of the World that longs for the spring (the story of The Third Day in The Seven Beggars) and the tale of the wounded princess in the Water Castle (the story of The Sixth Day in The Seven Beggars).

It is when I look at the meaning of the stories and their symbolism, helped by Rabbi Aryeh Kaplan's commentary (detailed at first, but tailing of as the collection proceeds) that I begin to feel uneasy. I have in the past expressed my mixed feelings about the Chassidic theology of being happy all the time, expressed in several stories here such as The Melancholy Saint and Faith. It seems at times a very simplistic approach to life and to God and moreover not an entirely Jewish one - where does it leave Iyov (Job), for example?

The kabbalistic symbolism were the hardest part of the book for me. Part of the problem is that I have little knowledge of kabbalah, but many of the concepts being expressed seemed on the fringes of acceptable monotheistic thought, if not beyond it. I know that many non-kabbalists see the idea of the sefirot as quasi-polytheistic. Likewise talking of reuniting God with the Shechina seemed dualistic to me. I had similar problems with the idea that our sins actually harm the Shechina - to my understanding, God is transcendant and even when God interacts with the world, it can not harm him.

Overall this was a trip outside my comfort zone, which is worth doing from time to time, my reservations notwithstanding.

Missionaries

It was some years since I had last encountered a missionary. When I was at Oxford, I used to encounter them frequently - you can not go down Cornmarket Street without meeting one shouting at you to embrace God (I think they work in shifts). But I had not met one in London for some time. Loud missionaries of the Oxford type are easy to deal with: just avoid eye-contact, refuse to take any leaflets, duck around them and walk on.

Today someone stopped me in the street, always a bad sign for someone as shy and introverted as I am (and bear in mind that this is England, where talking to strangers is considered mildly deviant behaviour). She started to talk about God, at first in a very vague way, but I guessed within seconds that this was going to turn into a conversation about Jesus and started looking for a way out. Being polite, I did not just walk off, which perhaps I should have done in retrospect (at the very least, it would have stopped me missing my bus). I swiftly realized that this conversation was not going anywhere. She was not going to give up without converting me and I had no intention of being converted. In the end, after talking about Isaiah's 'suffering servant' and whether a dead man can be the Messiah I said I needed to catch my bus (which was true) and left.

My big regret was that, as a result of my shyness, I did not sound as enthusiastic about Judaism as I feel about it. I think I even sounded a little apologetic, which upsets me a little. I should be prouder of my identity and less afraid of people who challenge it.

Anyway, I wondered what people reading this do when confronted with missionaries?

Is Ephraim a Precious Son?

Rosh Hashanah was quite emotionally draining for me, but only the liturgy reduced me to tears, specifically the quotation from Yirmiyahu (Jeremiah) in the mussaf amidah: “Is Ephraim a precious son to me, is he a delightful boy, that whenever I speak of him, I remember him more and more? Therefore my innards [i.e. my inner self] yearn for him and I shall have compassion on him – the word of Hashem.”

Reading this, I recalled Rabbi Adin Steinsaltz’s comments on this passage, to the extent that Yirmiyahu, speaking for God, knows perfectly well that Ephraim is not a tzaddik. He knows he breaks Shabbat. He knows he sleeps with people he shouldn’t. He even knows where he goes to eat shrimp. Nevertheless he is a precious son to God and God will have compassion on him. Suddenly I was overwhelmed by the extent of the love of God in a way that I have not felt for a very long time and I found myself crying.

שנה טובה ומתוקה

Happy new year to all my readers!

On Being Happy

"It is a great mitzvah to be happy always." Rabbi Nachman of Breslov

When I was younger, the Chassidic emphasis on serving God through joy, of being happy all the time, struck me as naïve and simplistic.

Now I am older, as I think about those Chassidim who went singing and dancing to the gas chambers in the Holocaust, in full knowledge of what was going to happen to them, it seems to me a much more complex phenomenon, a kind of existential protest, a refusal to accept the miserable condition of so much of human existence and an attempt to create a happier life by sheer force of will.

Essential Essays on Judaism

Rabbi Eliezer Berkovits remains a somewhat marginal figure in Jewish thought. While his Zionism was unexceptional for a Modern Orthodox figure, his emphasis on the flexibility of halakha, the ability of halakhic authorities to respond dynamically to moral dilemmas caused by the conflict of the letter of the law with its spirit remains controversial. The Shalem Press have republished several of Rabbi Berkovits' works. I reviewed God, Man and History here. I am now going to look at Essential Essays on Judaism, ignoring chapters one and ten, which are simply reprinted extracts from God, Man and History.

The introduction by editor David Hazony helpfully lays out Rabbi Berkovits' philosophy of halakha and shows how it differs from the inflexible and strict view prevailing in the Orthodox world since the Holocaust. It also discusses what separates Rabbi Berkovits' views from those of the Conservative movement. To put it bluntly, Conservative theology adjusts halakha in accordance with external considerations such as current mores, while Rabbi Berkovits only allows halakha to be changed when a law conflicts with an existing halakhic value, such as "And you shall do what is right and good in the eyes of the Eternal". However, the introduction is a little vague on this point and fails to mention the key difference, namely that Rabbi Berkovits believed in the divine authorship of the Torah and its presentation to Moshe in essentially the same form as we have it today (Torah min hashamayim), while Conservative thinkers accept the documentary hypothesis, the idea that the Torah is composed of numerous texts compiled over a long period of time. These different premises naturally have halakhic implications.

Rabbi Berkovits' philosophy of halakha is further expounded in the essay The Nature and Function of Jewish Law. Here he argues that the halakha is guided by several different factors, including common sense ('logic' might be a better term here), by what is actually possible and by the ethical principles of the Torah such as the ways of peace and respect for the individual. He goes on to demonstrate that ethical principles can even override a biblical law.

A forceful demonstration of his views of halakha comes in the essay Conversion and the Decline of the Oral Law. This is perhaps the most radical essay in the collection. As Progressive Jews do not convert according to the standards of Orthodox halakha, the halakha comes into conflict with the extra-halakhic value of Jewish unity, because over time, Orthodox Jews would have to see Progressive Jews as essentially non-Jews. An invalid conversion is valid after the fact, but not from the outset. However, in cases of severe need or urgency, all cases can be treated as if after the fact. It is possible that the Orthodox can forgo strict application of the halakha as a starting point for discussion with Progressive Jews about conversion standards. This is a bold essay (and perhaps even more pressing now that Charedi rabbis are casting doubts on Modern Orthodox conversions), but it is difficult to imagine that anyone, Orthodox or Progressive, would pay it much attention.

A Jewish Sexual Ethics is based on the idea that man is not an animal; his physical needs must take into account his human personality and his free will. While animals can have sex without an emotional connection, humans must "personalize the impersonal." This is done by relating to one's spouse as an individual (an I-Thou encounter, using Martin Buber's terminology) and by accepting the divine purpose and importance of procreation (bringing God into the relationship). There are a couple of omissions. Rabbi Berkovits touches on birth control but does not really clarify why it is permitted given the stress he has laid on procreation. Moreover, he does not explain the prohibition against homosexuality, presumably forbidden because it does not involve procreation. However, this is not completely clear.

The Biblical Idea of Justice argues that משפט (justice), is not just about right and wrong, but about the balance and harmony needed for God to create and maintain the world. There is order in the world of the spirit as well as in nature and humans need to follow this order.
On the Return to Jewish National Life argues for a return to the more flexible halakha that existed before the compilation of the Talmud. This was necessary to create a single authority to enable Judaism to continue when the Jews were dispersed in exile, but stripped the halakhic process of its flexibility. The Torah is informed by life and life is informed by the Torah, but only if Jewish existence is controlled by people prepared to realize the Torah in everyday life. An autonomous Jewish society is needed to solve this problem. In retrospect, however, the modern state of Israel has not led to the realization of Rabbi Berkovits' dream as the Charedi world does not want to adapt while the secular world does not want a Jewish society.

This theme is continued in On Jewish Sovereignty, which states that Judaism is a religion of deed, not faith, so its full implementation requires a state where a Jewish lifestyle can be followed. Throughout Jewish history, destruction has been followed by the building of a new and different institution. Perhaps the Holocaust can be followed by the creation of Judaism in the fullest sense in Israel (this was written twenty-five years after the state was founded; looking back from sixty-one years after its foundation, this seems too optimistic).

Towards a Renewed Rabbinic Leadership argues that Jewish leaders should not just be leaders of ceremonies, but, like their congregants, should have suffered from the conflict between the Jewish and modern/Western worlds. They would not need such a detailed knowledge of Jewish texts as in the past (this is probably even more true now that the whole of the Talmud is available on a searchable CD-ROM) and they should be able to gain new insights by comparing Jewish ideas with those from non-Jewish thought, as well as using modern methods of research on traditional methods of Judaism. This is another bold essay and again I can only state that this regeneration has not occured. There have been a few leaders like Rabbi Berkovits' ideal, at home in Jewish and non-Jewish worlds, but on the whole Orthodox leadership is increasingly centred on the Rosh Yeshiva in the old style, distant from the non-Charedi laity.

The Spiritual Crisis in Israel continues these themes, arguing that Israelis need a sense of history and identity and that Orthodox religious leaders need to learn how to transmit the relevance and meaning of Judaism to secular Israelis, as well as to fully realize the Torah in the Jewish state, with the halakha concerning itself with medical ethics, labour relations, the gap between rich and poor and the like.

In Knowledge of the World and Knowledge of God, Rabbi Berkovits argues that only in exile could the prevailing Orthodox view that Jews should only study Torah have come into existence. In their own land, mastery of the sciences, agriculture and so forth are essential. Furthermore, we must understand the subjects that challenge religion to deal with them properly. A comprehensive view of life is necessary to engage with the human situation. However, while I agree with this argument, I can not see it convincing a Charedi rabbi. Also, while it justifies studying the sciences, I am not sure it permits studying the arts.

The Concept of Holiness argues that קדש (holy), does not mean 'separate' as is usually stated. It means 'designated,' 'set apart,' 'placed in position with regard to God' i.e. 'assigned to God.' The holiness of God is not a tautology, but a reference to God separating from God's own infinite nature (which would lead God to ignore the finite universe, which is petty in comparison) to care for the universe. Man sanctifies himself by moving towards God, by performing God's will. I am not expert enough in biblical texts or philology to say whether this is a convincing argument, but it is interesting, even if there is too much detail for a lay reader.

Faith After the Holocaust was, I felt, a disappointing conclusion to the book. While trying to argue that the universe has meaning, Rabbi Berkovits argues that there must be transcendent values or else Nazism is as true as other philosophies, but a cynic or an existentialist might just call this wishful thinking. More convincing is the argument that there is a 'problem of good' parallelling the problem of evil. Just as evil calls into question the existence of God, so too the morality of the victims of Nazism, of self-sacrificing humanity and kiddush Hashem, is problematic for those arguing that life is meaningless. However, I found this essay vague and inconclusive, a disappointing conclusion to an otherwise fascinating collection.

Overall, this is an excellant introduction to the thought of a controversial and ignored Jewish thinker. Even if you do not agree with everything he suggests, it provides many important suggestions that are worth considering in detail.

On Life

"Judaism is in love with life, for it knows that life is God's great question to mankind; and the way a man lives, what he does with his life, the meaning he is able to implant in it - is man's reply. Actual life is the partner to the spirit; without the one the other is meaningless." - Rabbi Eliezer Berkovits, On the Return to Jewish National Life

Baseless Hatred Today

Famously, the Talmud (Yoma 9b) states that the second Temple was destroyed because of the sin of "baseless hatred". It seems to me - and I admit I have no hard evidence for this - that in addition to the everyday hatred that can fester in a community and do it great harm, the Talmud is referring to something deeper and even more dangerous.

Judea in the period before the destruction of the Temple had become a deeply divided society. As well as the gap between the rich and the poor (which fed into other conflicts, such as that between Pharisees and Sadducees) that can blight any society, there were huge ideological rifts. Religiously, there was the divide between the Sadducees (biblical literalists whose religion was centred on the Temple ritual), the Pharisees (the ancestors of rabbinic Judaism, who accepted the oral Torah as well as the written Torah) and the Essenes (who seem to have lived in ascetic, celibate, monastic communities). Politically, it was divided between the Zealots, who opposed Roman rule over Judea and eventually took up arms against them, and the moderates, who were in favour of peaceful coexistence with Rome. And that is just concentrating on the major splits and ignoring groups like the Samaritans and the early Christians (most of whom may well have been mitzva-observant and did not see Jesus as God at this stage).

If I am right that "baseless hatred" applies to these divisions, then there is an important lesson for us today. The issues that divide contemporary Jews are very similar to those that divided ancient Jews. Orthodox and Reform Jews are divided over the legitimacy of Jewish law, just as the Pharisees and the Sadducees were divided over the legitimacy of the oral Torah. Likewise the political divisions between moderates and zealots are mirrored in the divisions between the two-state solution-favouring left and the settlement supporting right.

The message of the Talmud would seem to be that we must not allow the things that divide us to lead to a total breakdown of relations between us. If we must be divided, at least let us not hate each other.