05.04.08
Posted in Kashrut, Viewpoint at 6:15 am by alanyuter
In the Jewish ritual tradition, we do rituals as choreographed theology. What we do reflects how we feel, what we believe, and how we communicate our feelings and beliefs to those who share our commitments
Only a learned person observes rituals precisely. Most Jews do not live their Judaism from the holy books, but mimic what they see and copy the rites and wrongs of people whom they hold in esteem. Often we find guests honored with the saying of Kiddush or the blessing over bread, and the host says the after meal blessings.
According to Genesis 18:5, Abraham took bread and told his three angelic guests to eat to their heart’s contentment. bBerachot 46 teaches that the head of the house cuts and distributes the bread, and the after meal prayer, which includes a thank-you blessing of the host, is said by the guest.
Rituals choreographic values, good manners become habits and good habits make moral people. Sensitivity comes to some by contemplation, to others by repetition. When we make blessings, we become blessings.
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04.30.08
Posted in Ethics, Viewpoint at 9:58 pm by alanyuter
Islam presents itself as absolutely monotheist but proclaims its prophet to be perfect. In Islam, non-combatants are not to be attacked. Murder is a sin. But the Umayyid’s killed Ali and Hussain, whom the Shi’ites claim should by right succeeded the prophet. And just as Hillel predicted [mAbot 2:6] that the drowner will be drowned, and the drowner of the drowner will also be drowned. In 750 CE, the Umayyid’s of Baghdad were assassinated by the Abbasids. And now, Benazir Bhutto has been assassinated.
Her father was executed for “corruption.” He was executed by his enemies for [a] being an enemy and [b] being in the way. His daughter was killed because she would stop terrorism. What does it mean to stop terrorism?
Terrorists in Gaza and Pakistan and Afghanistan and Lebanon provide social services to earn loyalty. They will make human shields of those foolish enough to follow their folly.
After winning loyalty, terrorists take power and destroy competition. Terrorists intimidate and do not discuss. Wrong thinking has no rights. It is not enough to believe that there is no God but Allah; one must believe that only Muhammed is the messenger. The religion of Islam is advanced by the sword. We do not allow votes, the will of the people, and even the Quran can be spinned, with ijtihad, or manipulative pilpul to justify the people in power.
When Jews deny dialogue, try to destroy and demean rather than reason with dissent, we copy the vile violence of paganism. Jews have rarely assassinated leaders in dissent. From Gedalya ben Ahiqam to Isaac Rabin, we accepted dissent. We remember that the Orthodox Pharisees opposed but did not persecute Jesus; the Sadducees presented Jesus to the Romans.
Judaism believes in law, which protects the right of dissent and the freedom of speech. Societies that deny this right not only deny the God who gave that right, they make gods and idols of themselves by rejecting their obligation to be reviewed. As sons of Abraham, we continue break outlawed idols. May the broken shards of idols emanate and illuminate with the light of truth that dissent, review, and accountability.
Rabbi Sholom Eliashiv declares that if one believes in evolution, that person is a heretic. But the Bible does not come with a canonical reader’s manual. One has a right to a read—but to disqualify another requires a Jewish theological and halakhic test: 1) what norm has been violated, 2) by what rules/hermeneutical methods are those norms to be identified, and 3) what organ/synod is ordained or authorized to make these determinations. The Jewish tradition did not list dogmas; for Maimonides, even though the Torah uses human/natural language, taking the Torah literally implies that God has a body, and for Maimonides, that interpretation is heretical. Therefore, disqualifying the “other” without identifying the norm of the canon being violated, is an act of slander and disqualifies the disqualifier. We recall that Rabbi Kook explicitly does not require dogmatic literalism when understanding Scripture, which is a notion he likely inherited from his days in Volozhin, where the Ha’ameq Davar Torah commentary observes that Moses was to write the Torah as poetry. Whatever poetry means, it does not mean Indo-European historical prose, as that genre was not yet invented when the Torah was written.
Rabbi Joseph Albo rules that we are required to believe 1) that God is real, 2) God commands, and 3) God holds humankind accountable for its actions and choices. Pagans fear dialogue, tyrants tremble with free discussion. Dogmas are invented to control thought. The same sane Torah that did not dogmatize thought did disqualify intimidation. Since no Sanhedrin has ruled that the mystics or rationalists in Judaism are right, we allow freedom of thought where no canonically explicit dogma is violated.
Just as the golden calf was a Hebrew idolatry in ancient times, the raising of personal taste to universal obligation is an idolatry which we must be vigilant to identify and to avoid.
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04.28.08
Posted in Holidays, Passover at 6:53 am by alanyuter
Pharaoh’s Egypt was religious and violent. Noting the explosion of Egyptian divinities, the Greeks found the Egyptians to be the most “religious” of peoples. The myriad of gods, the enchanted world created by those gods, and the mystery of death all served to create a culture that was hyper conservative, fanatically hierarchical, and perfectly pagan. Social and political hierarchy became the social order based on and enforced by power. Those who do not have power are slaves to the Pharaoh who the god Horus in the flesh and the deserving head of state. The Torah calls his realm, “the house of slaves” and Maimonides’ description of avoda zara, idolatry, fits this model. The Nile’s entire West Bank was the land of the dead; with exquisite irony the Israelites ask, “is it for lack of grave sites you [ = Moses] have taken us to die in the wilderness?”
This “religious” land Egypt is also a land of violence, from the first to last Pharaoh. The first Pharaoh, Narmer, appears on his palate killing his foes as he unites Upper and Lower Egypt under his rule. The last Pharaoh and only Ptolemy to speak Egyptian, Cleopatra, killed herself with her divine snake lest she be killed by her enemies.
Egypt was the neon society of antiquity. Big, powerful, immense statues all served as state propaganda to present the king in his glory and to condition the masses obey the king blindly. Even if Pharaoh tells you that you must work for him until you drop, that your midwives must kill your babies, and that the erstwhile democrat summons his nation to participate in the bloodbath of Israelite babies, one must obey the god in the flesh. However, while the midwives resisted severe decree, the amoral Egyptian masses did not. God builds houses for the midwives, the Egyptian masses suffer ten plagues as penalty for their cowardly compliance to brutish evil.
Moses offers a radical, alternative religion. He always opposes oppression, and will take social risks to right wrong. Moses has the audacity to challenge convention and he is driven by the commitment to defy a sinful consensus. He defends the oppressed from the oppressor, regardless of station, personal cost or physical risk. One can be an Egyptian official, an Israelite bully, or a Midianite maid; Moses does good, just like the evil-resisting midwives. While Pharaoh was a human god and a “your highness” type whose ego is matched by his misplaced pretensions, Moses was the most modest of men. Moses was chosen by God because moral right must master the might of the human beast who rules over the house of slaves. Like Abraham before him, Moses recognized that the Pharaoh was not a great god but only an exceedingly miserable man.
Modern Jews speak about the Bible and about authenticity. In which religion do we believe and by what code do we live? Do we dress and stress the appearance, image, power, control, and enchantments that are invoked to mystify and misdefine, to control and cajole, to intimidate and manipulate? Are we the god in whom we believe? We may be ritual virtuosos and at the same time, secular and empty; authentic commandments sanctify because 1] God the commander commanded that they be done and 2] the commands are invariably ethical exercises that condition our mortal body to behave angelically.
When we do what we do because we seek the acceptance of society, the approval of our peers, and to sanctify our place in our community, and not because “we are sanctified by the commandments,” we forfeit our essential religious integrity. When we are concerned how we are perceived more than by who we are and what ought to be, we do not emulate Moses, the true leader who was the most modest, magnificently moral, and fiercely courageous model of Torah propriety. Torah is “the word of the Lord,” [Isaiah 2:3] not the consensus created by conventions unattested in Israel’s sacred canon. In Moses’ Torah, even the priest, all the nation, and Sanhedrin can err. [Leviticus 4]
Commandments of God sanctify; commandments of pharaoh enslave. We live the Torah book; we do not stray after the conventional look. By placing the blood on the door in ancient Egypt, our ancestors chose life by rejecting the land of the dead, and affirmed a life of sanctity over a death of slavery.
Pharaoh presents himself as virtually infallible, and his immense image and look proclaims this false doctrine. Moses teaches us not to be misled by the lies of our eyes. The biggest sin in Pharaoh’s world of conditioned convention is thinking freely, which is dismissed as free-thinking. Since for Pharaoh consensus is covenantal, being controversial, or challenging convention, is necessarily viewed as criminal. Moses had the courage to be Orthodox and modern, to judge convention by covenant, consensus conclusions by creedal commitments, and to respect the worthiness that resides in every person but to defer only to God.
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04.23.08
Posted in D'var Torah, Ethics, Holidays, Passover, Viewpoint at 6:07 am by alanyuter
Rabbi Joseph B. Soloveitchik suggested that the two creation narratives in Scripture should not be understood as historical narrative but rather as two descriptions, simultaneously true, representing the human condition. In Genesis 1, Adam is placed and the pinnacle of creation, with God appearing as the Creator of the natural order. Genesis 2 presents God as a persona and less as a force. In the presence of God the persona, the human is of zero consequence. R. Soloveitchik’s message is that humanity’s majesty or smallness depends on humanity’s choices and actions.
Following R. Soloveitchik’s template, Exodus starts similarly. Exodus 1 describes the villain, Pharaoh, as the perpetrator of three evil deeds. After referring to Israel as “other,” or not his people, he issues three decrees: to enslave Israel, to have midwives, [given their names, Shifra [Aramaic] and Pu’ah [Ugartic] fellow Semites if not Hebrews, but certainly not Egyptians] kill the males, and when the midwives refuse to be complaint, musters the population of Egypt to kill the baby boys.
Pharaoh uses the power of the throne and the rule of law to enhance his position as he, in his fears, understand that position. In order to intimidate, historical Pharaohs would tack dead chieftains to their boats to proclaim their power, prowess, and lethal potency. Pharaoh’s went to war and built buildings to enrich their coffers and ensure their legacy.
Their justice, ma’at, meant that people should know their place and stay in their place. Moses refused this bargain. Pharaoh applies the power of the state to soothe his fears and his hate. His behavior is destructive. First he enslaves, then he tries to kill discreetly, and finally, he orders his people, the Egyptians, to fling the Israelite newborns into water.
Moses’s three acts of redemption provide the divine foil to Pharaoh’s evil design. Moses rejects the aristocracy of Egypt by choosing his brothers, the Israelites, who are the slave underclass of Egypt. Not only does he save an Israelite from an Egyptian, he stops one Israelite who threatens to strike and Israelite. Moses’s choice is not grounded in family feeling and ties, but out of a passion to do right that is greater than Pharaoh’s passion to act with evil intention. When Moses saves the Midianite women from Midianite men, he reveals that he is moved by a sense of justice very different than that implied by Pharaoh’s ma’at. In Egypt, Pharaoh is god; for Moses, all humanity has dignity. Recognizing the behavior and underlying attitude that Moses exhibits, God chooses Moses too redeem the chosen people. This people is a people because of its values, not its ethnicity.
A Judaism grounded in ethnicity alone cannot endure. There are always cultures that are more powerful. But a Judaism defined by moral excellence attracts the best, the moral aristocracy and ethical nobility that define the
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04.14.08
Posted in D'var Torah, Holidays, Passover at 6:39 am by alanyuter
Moses was born to the Israelites, but he was raised in Pharaoh’s house. Ibn Ezra observes that because the house of Pharaoh was not foreign to him, Moses’ was not awed by the Pharaonic fears that were projected on all Egypt.
When Pharaoh speaks, he does so as the god Horus in the flesh. One Pharaoh dreamt that he walks on water. In the Old Kingdom, only royalty merits resurrection and life, and no one inhabits eternity without their approval. These conquer other nations for booty and exploitation. Religion is state propaganda, and rituals are loyalty oaths of the people who are lowly to the nobility that is high. Heresy is a code word for treason.
Having seen the glory of Egypt, the society whose culture is based on neon and narcissism and for which religion is state propaganda, Moses made the heretical, treasonous choice, the Jewish choice, and the moral choice. He rejected his own station as a member of the elite in Egyptian royalty in order to cast his lot amongst the Hebrews, the outsider, the “other,” the bottom of the social order. In Akkadian, the word nakarum means “other” as well as “hated.” Like the Mesopotamian Gilgamesh and later medieval European nobility, the noble person is a warrior, conqueror and man of passion. Lust he must whether or not it is just. The real sin is being weak. For Pharaoh, all the residents of the House of Slaves are instruments for Pharaoh’s life, afterlife, and ego.
In pagan hierarchical Egyptian society, rising in status is treason. The Egyptian doctrine of justice, called ma’at, means everyone should know and remain in their place. Moses chose to affiliate with the slaves and not the nobility. For Moses, nobility reflects the quality of one’s ethic, not the power implicit and present in one’s fist. For Moses, the moral hero anticipates King Solomon and the Sages, conquers oneself and not others.
The successful Jewish education does not excel by imparting information. It succeeds in building an authentically Jewish character. Our society delights in honoring Pharaonic-like heroes, persons who must be seated at the head of the head table, who need to be honored, who wave their wealth to impress the paid leadership whose salaries and tied to their loyalty. Jealous of their position, these elites, both Orthodox and Liberal, use brute power to control others, and will press down all those who speak up. The authentic Jewish education finds the Mosaic quality to be the ideal worthy of emulation. The authentically Jewish Jew does ritual because God commands the ritual as an ethical exercise and not as a validating gesture of submission. The authentic Jew’s nobility is reflected in self-worth and self-control, and not in the lust to control others. The Mosaic Jew will act as an agent of conscience and not as a lemming following an unreflective crowd. Pharonic religion is about fitting into the mold created by others to make the individual an instrument of the fulfillment . This is the religion that requires the faithful nullify themselves. For this society, law is an instrument of rule; for Moses, law is a condition of rule. For Moses, religion is about being all that one can be as a human being. For Pharaoh, all Egypt are slaves to Pharaoh. According to Pharaoh’s view, he is a god on earth, and humans are and ought to remain mortal. According to Moses, all Israel contains the image of God, and waiting for each Israelite is a place in the palace of eternity.
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