Rabbi Jon's Website and Blog

How To Be Judgmental

This was my D'var Torah in services on Sept. 10, 2016, Parashat Shoftim.

On my first Rosh Hashanah here, I recounted a small vignette that happened to me, that happened in me, when we were living in an apartment in Queens more than ten years ago. I was walking out the basement exit, near the laundry room, and I bumped into a friend. Not a close friend, but part of a couple I really found interesting. The two of them were creative people, a playwright/director and a dancer. I officiated at their wedding, and we had had many many long and deep conversations about life.

Anyway, I bumped into the playwright outside the building, and he was smoking a cigarette. It was a good place to smoke for an apartment dweller. I didn't realize he ever smoked – and I was kind of flustered, and said hi quickly, and walked along fast. And as soon as I was out of sight, these thoughts went running through my head: I can't believe this; he has a new baby and doesn't he know it's not good for the baby and he should really take care of himself; I thought I knew him and he was a smart guy; and he's younger than me and maybe not as mature and wise as I thought he was....

And then I stopped myself and thought: Wow, am I judgmental!

Today we read from the Torah Parashat Shoftim – shoftim means judges. And these are the weeks leading us to Rosh Hashanah, the Jewish New Year that is also known as Yom Hadin, the Day of Judgment. So I want to help us get oriented to this theme of judgment.

There is a dominating image from the liturgy of the High Holy Days about the Day of Judgment. God is depicted sitting like a judge on a high seat, reading a book that contains all of our actions from the whole year – written in our own handwriting and witnessed by the Divine, God's-self. And on the basis of that record our fate for the coming year is decided – “who shall live and who shall die, who shall be tranquil and who shall be tormented.”

Now first of all, for the record I want to say that I don't believe that's how God works or how our destiny is worked out. I don't believe we are judged that way, and I don't believe in a God like that (which is a whole other topic).

But I do very much want to hold onto some of the imagery. The prayer itself is called Unetaneh Tokef, which means “we acknowledge the power” – the power of the day of judging. I love the idea that all our actions, good and bad, no matter how big or small, are significant. I believe that the decisions we make can affect life and death – whether it's how we drive or how we vote. And I believe our actions affect how we and others experience life – whether someone is more tranquil or more troubled because of me, because of us. I love the idea that we need to get focused on all this – that we need times of judgment.

Now, “judgmental” is a bad word. We often say that we're supposed to be nonjudgmental and accepting, so we don't drive people in our lives away. We shouldn't impose our own outlook on someone else. Look at the example of myself that I described: the torrent of negative judgments, just pouring out, almost out of my control. And there are a lot of places where judging goes wrong. It's really hard to do a good workplace performance assessment, or to get grades that really describe what kind of student you've been in a class. It's almost like we are programmed for negative judgments, and for inaccurate judgments. So we should just stop being so judgmental, no?

But we have this Yom Hadin, this Day of Judgment, and I don't want to let go of the possibility of judging – even judging each other and inviting judgment toward ourselves. The first line of the Torah reading today points us toward a couple of guidelines, when it says that we are to appoint judges lishvatecha – “for our tribes”, v'shaftu et ha-am mishpat tzedek -- “they should judge the people with just judgment.”

Judging is the most stinging when it's in our tribes – in our families, in our small social groups. That's the stuff that really eats at us. And it's also where it feels the best when we're judged to be good, from people who are close enough to see. We forget that we need that. When someone describes some way we are good, worth praising, it's easy to shrug it off, but it means something when it comes from inside our tribe. From the same people who are also critical and judgmental.

The second point is in the last words of the verse – “just judgment.” There is bad judging and good judging, and we want to get just the good judging.

The natural thing is that it's all mixed up together; careful judgment and being judgmental in a bad way. Thinking about myself outside the laundry room that day, there was this cascade of negative judgments about my friend the secret smoker. And, all of that was battling against my very good and positive judgments of this person, built up over a period of time. And there was a real issue in there and some concern for him and his family – I was thinking about a possibly unhealthy behavior in someone I cared about. So, bad judgmental and good judgmental, all in a bundle.

Can we get ourselves to extract from this kind of mixture the good judgmental, the mishpat tzedek?

We need a practice for this, to start working on for this time of year. The Baal Shem Tov suggests one: that every time we are judging another person, we should stop and imagine that we are judging ourselves. We should look to find the same flaw or the same habit in ourselves. If we can understand it, we will have more compassion for the other person. If we deny it, or we can't understand it – well, then we'll also have more compassion for the other person, who maybe can't understand it or is in denial. If it's something we can fix it in ourselves, we can figure out if it's something we can help the other person fix. Or maybe it was so hard for me to fix that I realize I can't really help the other person, and it's time to stop being so judgmental and upset.

Well, I have never been a smoker. But I can tell you that during the time when I discovered my friend outside smoking, I with my own small children was having an extra ice cream soda late at night while I was washing the dishes. It took me a long time to work on that.

And the Baal Shem Tov says that God never declares a judgment against us until we have made the judgment first. There is really no harsher judge than ourselves. We shouldn't be worrying about God's judgment, and we don't have to worry even about the judging eyes of others. They only matter when we realize we are judging ourselves.

The Baal Shem Tov is really reminding us that judging is dynamic. It's looking at good things and bad, it's looking at other people and ourselves. It's overshooting and then noticing that. It's thinking about our standards and what in our makeup and habits contribute to our better and our worse. For some small number of people in our lives, we can be really good judges. We should want those kinds of judges to judge us.

And when I'm the synagogue on Rosh Hashanah, this is how I plan to use the image of God judging us on Yom Hadin. For each thing written down in the book of a person's life that's not great, I will think of God asking – why did he do this, is this within her power to learn, what can I as God do to teach her or teach him. How might this one help another one be more alive next year, more tranquil and less troubled. And what should I, God, be less judgmental about in human beings... because even God hasn't figured out how to get everything right in the world.

 

The Art of Apology: Lena Dunham

Over the weekend in the world of celebrity, actor and writer Lena Dunham generated a stir over an interview in which she commented on being seated at an event next to athlete Odell Beckham Jr.  Ms. Dunham noticed Mr. Beckham on his cellphone, and she said that she imagined he was avoiding her because of her looks and body type. (See the full interview here.)

After much reaction, Ms. Dunham quickly issued the following apology through social media:

I owe Odell Beckham Jr an apology. Despite my moments of bravado, I struggle at industry events (and in life) with the sense that I don't rep a certain standard of beauty and so when I show up to the Met Ball surrounded by models and swan-like actresses it's hard not to feel like a sack of flaming garbage. This felt especially intense with a handsome athlete as my dinner companion and a bunch of women I was sure he'd rather be seated with. But I went ahead and projected these insecurities and made totally narcissistic assumptions about what he was thinking, then presented those assumptions as facts. I feel terrible about it. Because after listening to lots of valid criticism, I see how unfair it is to ascribe misogynistic thoughts to someone I don't know AT ALL. Like, we have never met, I have no idea the kind of day he's having or what his truth is. But most importantly, I would never intentionally contribute to a long and often violent history of the over-sexualization of black male bodies- as well as false accusations by white women towards black men. I'm so sorry, particularly to OBJ, who has every right to be on his cell phone. The fact is I don't know about his state of mind (I don't know a lot of things) and I shouldn't have acted like I did. Much love and thanks, Lena

What do you like about this as an apology? Feel free to post a comment.

 

 

Israel's War -- Rockets and Gaza

As a way to help people understand and make sense of Israel's war, I've started to pick out articles to recommend.  I've been tracking things that are generally not simply opinion.  More probing analysis, thoughtful moral reflection too.  I'm gathering them via a Twitter feed, @tbarav, which you can follow via Twitter.  Or you can find it on any of these pages on rabbijon.net all the time, the feed is in the lower right if you scroll down.  For other background, I have things I've written or gathered previously here too.

It is imperative to be well-informed -- bookmark Israeli papers such as Haaretz, Jerusalem Post, or Yediot Acharonot.  Reach out by phone or any form of note to Israelis you know and let them know that you and our whole community is thinking about them.  Come and be together here for an evening minyan or on Shabbat as we pray for Israel and for the lives of everyone involved in the conflict.

Shabbat Shalom -- May peace be more than a symbol or a hope,
Rabbi Jon

E-Maggid: How to Argue

Any dispute for the sake of Heaven has enduring value, and any dispute that is not for the Sake of Heaven has no enduring value.  What is an example of a dispute for the sake of Heaven?  The ongoing dispute between the School of Hillel and the School of Shammai.  What is an example of a dispute that is not for the sake of Heaven?  The dispute of Korach and his associates.  (Pirkei Avot 5:20)

Parashat Korach begins with an argument.  It's presented by Korach, a Levite, along with other prominent Israelites, who question why there has been one leader for forty years.  All of the people, every one of them is holy, and God is among them -- why are you elevated over the community of Adonai? (Numbers 16:3)

 

The rabbis compare this to another dispute.  The School of Shammai and the School of Hillel were groups among the early rabbis.  They used to argue about the details of ritual -- At the end of Shabbat, what's the proper sequence for the wine, candle, and spices?  They used to argue about ethics -- Is it ever permissible to lie?  They used to argue about social policy -- Should rabbis take time to train students who are not yet spiritual and morally developed?  They used to argue about philosophy -- Would the universe have been better off if human beings had not been created?

 

What makes the arguments of the School of Shammai and the School of Hillel "for the sake of Heaven"?  According to the Talmud, it's not the substance.  It's not because they are rabbis, arguing about all the kinds of things other rabbis value.  Instead, the Talmud tells us two things.  First, the School of Shammai continued to let their children marry children of rabbis from the School of Hillel, despite their reservations about the others' practices and philosophies.

 

Second, there was one particular dispute that went on for three years, and it took a voice from Heaven to resolve it.  God's representative declared that both sides had "the words of the Living God."  But the School of Hillel should be followed -- because they pressed their arguments more calmly, they studied the other side's opinions, and they used to present the other's sides arguments before their own.

 

Isn't there something valuable about Korach's dispute?  He too has some substance, in standing up for the idea that all the Jews are equally holy.  But we can easily detect jealousy mixed in.  Some of it is family jealousy too, since Korach and Moshe are cousins.  Korach couldn't separate his personal stake from the bigger picture.  His emotions racheted up the conflict.  As a result, his dispute couldn't have enduring value.

 

Arguing and conflict are everywhere in Torah, and they are facts of life.  The substance of arguments can have enduring value, worth studying.  Sometimes, it's how we act during an argument that has the most lasting effect, and can teach us the most.

At the Capital Today

Today I testified at two hearings of committees of the New Hampshire State Senate.  As I approached the State House today, I stopped and said a b'racha:  Baruch... She'asani Ben Chorin.  Praised are You, Who has made me a free person.

The second hearing was about a bill to cap the annual interest for car-title loans in the state at 300%.  This is a kind of often-predatory lending, which until recently was limited to much lower interest.  I have some knowledge of better forms of small finance, particularly for low-income people, and of course the Jewish ideal of free loans as the highest form of tzedakah.  Special kudos to Rev. John Gregory-Davis from the Upper Valley, who spoke eloquently.  And to the Granite State Organizing Project and its executive director, Sarah Jane Knoy, for getting us there.  When Rev. Gregory-Davis spoke, she invited all of us clergy present to stand next to him in solidarity.

Earlier, I spoke at the Senate Judiciary Committee at a hearing on a bill to repeal the death penalty.  Here are my remarks:

Senator Carson and Members of the Committee:  Thank you for listening to us as citizens today, and for your service especially around the most difficult moral issues concerning justice and public safety.  My name is Jonathan Spira-Savett, and I am a rabbi from Nashua, serving Temple Beth Abraham.  I speak to you today as a religious Jew, and a member of the Jewish Clergy Association of New Hampshire.  We serve congregations from the Lakes Region to the Masschusetts border, from the Seacoast to the Monadnock Region and the Upper Valley.  Beyond the walls of our congregations we bring spiritual presence and care to Jewish people and their families throughout the state.  Our members are proud to serve as members and leaders of interfaith coalitions all around New Hampshire.

I want to share with you some insights about capital punishment from the Jewish religious tradition, which is also itself a tradition of law.  These insights have led the Jewish Clergy Association and our movements’ national rabbinic leadership to seek repeal of capital punishment.  I offer these perspectives to inform your decision, since the law of the state can never be the law of one faith, even a faith as deeply held as mine or that of my Christian sisters and brothers.  Jewish citizens involved in criminal justice are responsible to the laws of the state, whether we serve as jurors, police officers, prosecutors or counsel for the accused.

Some of you in this hall may be surprised to hear a Jewish religious leader speaking out against capital punishment.  After all, our Torah, the first five books of the Hebrew Bible, is where you find the law of “an eye for an eye” and “a life for a life.”  By one count the Torah lists thirty-six offenses punishable by death.  Not only the murderer, but the adulterer, the one who violates the Sabbath, and the son who rebels against his parents.

But Judaism in all its forms today is rooted in the authoritative interpretations of the rabbis from the second century and onward.  As they explored biblical law, they trembled in the face of the power God had given them to constitute human courts that might put a person to death.  So our Sages taught that a person could not be  executed unless two people report absolutely identical eye-witness testimony of the moment of the murder.  They would have to testify that the criminal was warned that the act would be punishable by death, and that they heard the person express that he or she understood the consequences of the crime.

Only a special court of twenty-three could hear a capital case, judges of perfect character, training, and even pedigree.  Then the witnesses would themselves undergo a withering warning in court:  In capital cases, the accused’s blood and the blood of all his descendents to the end of time hang on your testimony... One who destroys a single life, it is as though he had destroyed the whole world, and one who sustains a single life, it is as though he had sustained the whole world.

Jewish tradition chooses the moment when a witness faces a murderer, a person who destroyed a life and an ongoing world, exactly the person whose life we have the least regard for -- that difficult moment is when Judaism teaches its most famous teaching about the value of a single life. 

The value of life, the possibility of error or just approximation in court, the possibility that no group of humans may have the absolute integrity, training, and requisite awe at the power of life and death -- these led the early Jewish sages to keep capital punishment on the books, but impossible to carry out.  As one rabbi says in the Talmud, a court that executes one person in seventy years is a bloodthirsty court.

The example of the State of Israel is instructive.  Religious law is one source of Israeli criminal law.  This is a country whose population at one time included half a million survivors of the Nazi death machine.  Yet the only time a civilian court in Israel has executed someone was the case of a single Nazi war criminal, a member of the innermost circle and mastermind of the Holocaust.  Terrorists who have committed murder in the most grisly ways, and killed children and families, serve life in prison in Israel.

The position that we should execute certain murderers is more than just a feeling.  It too is rooted in reflectiom, a sense of justice, and compassion for the families of victims, and these too are religious motives.  But as we have long ago come to understand that no God would want us to have the power to execute Sabbath violators, or rebellious sons, or those who betray a wife or husband, so it is time to give up in this state the power to execute murderers.

As a Jew and a rabbi in this state, I am honored to stand on this challenging matter of life and death with the bishops and leaders of the other faith communities.  We do not approach every public policy issue of life in the same way, but here we do.  I urge you and the full Senate to bring an end to capital punishment in our state and pass HB 1170.  Thank you.

Learning from the Tragedy of Marlise Munoz z"l

Last weekend the tragedy of the Munoz family in Texas came to an end. Marlise was a woman, a wife and mother, who was pregnant when she collapsed at home last November 28 and was taken to the hospital. She was declared dead at the hospital on the basis of a standard known as “brain death.”

The situation was complicated by the fact that in Texas, there is a law that “life-sustaining treatment” may not be withheld from a pregnant woman, out of concern for the unborn fetus. And in fact, Marlise Munoz's situation is the most dramatic illustration of a fact of modern medicine: that once a person is declared dead, it may be possible through a mechanical respirator to keep the body in a state that allows organs to continue functioning so that they may be harvested for transplant.

What do we call a body in that situation, with blood and oxygen moving through a body – alive or dead? How far does the imperative of preserving life, such as through the donation of organs, extend?

This a gray area in the law – both American law and Jewish law – as well as in the experience of medical professionals. It is a gray area too for people whose loved one has died, and it is a philosophical question about whether death is in fact a moment in time.

Here are few thoughts, from the perspective particularly of halacha (Jewish law). These are musings, not edited or polished. I write them too with the awareness that first and foremost this is a family tragedy, for Marlise Munoz's husband and small child.

Is brain death the same as death? Rabbi Daniel Nevins wrote a comprehensive paper for the Committee on Jewish Law and Standards of the Conservative movement. He reviewed both traditional Jewish legal definitions of death, and contemporary medical understandings of death. His conclusion is that death is defined in Judaism not as cardiac arrest, but as the irreversible cessation of spontaneous breathing. Part of the clinical determination of brain death includes this test, and thus a person who is declared brain dead is considered to have died under halacha.

How should we treat the dead body when its organs can be “harvested” for donation? The word “harvested” is a terrible word, obviously. It seems to be the term of art.

Most of the Jewish world has come around to the idea that organ donation is an example of pikuach nefesh, the preservation of life. It is not only permitted, but encouraged, for people whose organs could save another person's life to donate them. (Why is it not, therefore, required?) In much of the Orthodox world, and in Israel, organ donation is understood to be the saving of life.

In hospitals, there are or should be policies to prevent staff from hastening the death of a person who is about to die, for the sake of the condition of the organs or if the recipient is deteriorating, or for that matter if the staff would just like to go home sooner. There should ideally be protocols that separate the staff who care for the dying person from the staff that come to prepare the organs for transplantation.

There is an emotional dimension for the survivors, who know that a loved one has died, and yet who know or even see that the person is being treated in the same way he or she would if still alive but in a coma.  How do you begin to mourn someone who has died, but look as though being kept alive?

To my knowledge, no one has tried to codify how long a body can be kept in a state that perfuses the organs without violating the halacha of k'vod ha-met, respecting the body of the dead. Jews view the dead body as still sacred, and deserving of a prompt and respectful burial, before the body deteriorates. In the typical case of organ donation, burial is not delayed for weeks, or even for days. Where is the soul in relation to this body?

Is preserving the fetus equivalent to preserving organs for donation? This is the unique question of the Munoz case, which I imagine will become a classic case for us to reflect on and study for this reason. If the fetus is an actual person, on the border between life and death, then its life would surely weigh heavily.

In Jewish law, the fetus does not have the same status as a living person. We know this from the Mishnah's case of a woman in labor whose life is in danger because of the delivery. Before the head emerges and the baby can breathe, the fetus can be dismembered to save the mother; once the baby's head is out, the baby must be protected.

At the same time, halacha does not say that abortion is permitted right up to birth without restriction, and Jewish law has no clear statement about how to regard a fetus, given that it has a body and a heartbeat and is on its way to being born as a person.

Someone might argue that since Marlise Munoz was, so to speak, not in danger by being kept on the respirator, the Mishnah does not speak to this case. Unless the birth is causing danger right now, the fetus should be sustained.

I cannot see that we would maintain a dead body artificially for weeks as an incubator for a fetus, even if Erick Munoz had consented. It would be a terrible burden on him, on the medical staff, on the hospital even to have to make this decision.

Maybe I am influenced more by science fiction movies than by reasoned arguments, because I am placing a value of k'vod ha-met above pikuach nefesh, the dignity of the dead body over the preservation of life. Rabbi Michael Broyde, an Orthodox rabbi on the faculty at Emory University Law School, argues that Judaism encourages us to “play God”, in his words. But even so, I think keeping Marlise Munoz on a respirator for weeks after she was declared brain dead was far beyond playing God for good reason. 

Had she been not declared dead but was likely to die, I could see her pregnancy being a factor in deciding whether or not to let her go sooner. But in fact, she was dead. We have no prerogative to override death in this way. Dead bodies are not available for us to use (but...what about cadavers for medical training?).  Had I been on the ethics committee at John Peter Smith Hospital, what would I have said to keeping her body on the respirator for just one extra day, just as might be done in order to donate her organs? As I wrote above, how long is a gray area, but there would have been no point in just another day. What if the fetus had been closer to viability?

So these are difficult questions. They test the meanings of k'vod ha-met and pikuach nefesh, and they test our kishkes, our gut reactions. My prayers are with the Munoz family. Perhaps they will derive some comfort, eventually, from knowing that Marlise's life and her death will help teach us to think about these difficult and important ethical and spiritual questions.

Please feel free to submit your thoughts and questions in the comments area.

Patience: Your Turn

This past week has been the first try of focusing as a community on middot, specific ethical qualities or dispositions.  Last week I put out some thoughts and questions about patience, talked about it as my D'var Torah on Saturday morning, and groups have studied and discussed further.

Right here is a try at another modality.  Feel free to post as a comment any thought or question you have, about how you have learned about or been challenged by the theme of patience in your life.  You can read the following Talmudic story and use that to prompt some thinking -- what does it teach about the challenges or meaning of patience?

When you write a comment, indicate whether you would like it to be in your name or anonymous.  I see everything before it is published, so anything inappropriate or uncivil will not be published, and if you choose to write anonymously I will post your comment for you and your identity will not be seen.

A Story from the Talmud:  Eruvin 54b

Rav P’rayda had a student whom he would always teach his lesson four hundred times before the latter could master it.

On a certain day, he [the rabbi] was called away for a particular mitzvah.  He continued to teach him as usual, but the student could not master the subject.

The Master asked, “What’s different about today?”

He replied, “From the moment the Master was told that there was a matter of a particular mitzvah, I could not concentrate.  For at every moment I imagined, ‘Now the Master will get up’ or ‘Now the Master will get up.’”

“Give me your attention,” the Master said, "and I will teach you again.”  And so he taught him another four hundred times.

A voice from heaven issued forth asking him, “Do you prefer that four hundred years shall be added to your life or that you and your generation shall be privileged to have a share in the World to Come?"  [*For our purpose, World to Come=Heaven/Eternal Life]

He replied, “That I and my generation shall be privileged to have a share in the world to come.”

“Give him both,” said the Blessed Holy One. 

Rabbi David Hartman z"l

On Sunday, Am Yisrael lost a true a gadol, a great man and teacher:  Rabbi David Hartman.  Rabbi Hartman, originally from Canada, made his home in Jerusalem, and created the Shalom Hartman Institute.  SHI is a modern Orthodox, progressive think tank that generates unbelievable work on moral and political thought, the meaning of Zionism, and theology.  SHI convenes Jewish scholars from all streams of Judaism and beyond Judaism, thinkers in all fields of humanities and social science, from around the world.  They bring Talmud and Midrash alive, as probing texts for the existential dilemmas of modern life and modern Israel.

Rabbi Hartman's books are academic but pulsing.  He was an outspoken, sometimes solitary voice for Klal Yisrael, the whole of the Jewish people within Orthodox Judaism and Religious Zionism.  I myself saw him as an Orthodox rabbi take an aliya in an egalitarian Shabbat service on a college campus.  He embraced and taught rabbis of all denominations; he was a conscience for the State of Israel.  He believed in the role of women in modern Jewish religious life.  He was a dynamic speaker and teacher, erudite and funny, and he believed in the transformative power of Talmud Torah, the study of Torah.

You may not have ever heard of him, or perhaps you did hear his voice through the Israel-related columns of Tom Friedman in the New York Times.  Here are some words of remembrance from my friend and colleague, and Hartman Institute faculty member, Rabbi Rachel Sabath-Halachmi in The Times of Israel:

David Hartman was a powerful, brilliant, restless, demanding, inspiring, impatient and loving giant. There was nothing not fierce about David Hartman, one of the most – if not the most – influential thought-leaders of our time. His embrace of Jewish tradition, the State of Israel, the Jewish people, Christians, Muslims, and every human being was both fiercely loving and incessantly demanding. Impatiently he engaged every text and every person with an urgent question which must be answered now – as though all of Judaism and the future of the Jewish people and humanity itself depended on the unknowable answers. But no one could possibly embrace other human beings and wisdom itself as fiercely and as passionately as he did.

Every year, for more than 30 years, hundreds – and now tens of thousands – of academics, rabbis, lay leaders, Christian and Muslim scholars, Israeli educators, high school students and IDF officers came to sit at his feet at the Shalom Hartman Institute. Through them, millions of people have been influenced and challenged by his mind and his redemptive vision for religious pluralism, the State of Israel, and the Jewish People.

It was nearly 25 years ago when I first studied Talmud with David Hartman at Hebrew University in Jerusalem. He picked up a piece of Talmud, held it to his nose, and screamed at us: “Can’t you smell it?? Can’t you smell the inconsistencies and ambivalences of the sages about women??” And then he would slam the big book of Talmud down on the table and read and reread the same lines over and over again. Exhausted, he would then call on a student to read it another ten times, until he thought we began to hear the cacophony of the voices of the sages arguing over the centuries, understand the logic and illogic of their arguments, and the interpretive task at hand.

It took another 10 years of study, rabbinic ordination, and numerous courses with other Hartman scholars of Talmud and philosophy before I moved to Israel and dared to enter into his Beit Midrash – study hall – at the Hartman Institute. The rules of engagement demanded a total willingness to learn, struggle, critique, love, and think seriously about every text and every aspect of human existence. He hated it when we agreed with him. If we couldn’t challenge him he couldn’t respect us. His Beit Midrash was a culture of constant debate, mutual respect, searing critique and big embraces. Yeshayahu Leibowitz, the brilliant scholar and iconoclast, and Krister Stendahl, the radical Christian Harvard Divinity School dean, were there too, not only in text but in person. David taught and argued with all of them in the same impatient, demanding, loving way. Being in his Beit Midrash was all-consuming, terrifying, and wildly inspiring all at the same time.

He was a indefatigable warrior for the State of Israel and its significance for the Jewish people and the world and demanded that it live up to the ethical standards set out for it both by the revelation of Sinai and the crematoria of Auschwitz. He was a warrior for the status of women in traditional Judaism, he was a warrior demanding higher standards of knowledge and Zionist and spiritual commitment from liberal rabbis, he built an institution with the highest standards of intellectual excellence. He invested in and believed in people and their capacity to rise to their potential. He wasn’t afraid of anything or anyone, except how he would be judged by God and by history.

He screamed and laughed and cried – sometimes simultaneously in the middle of a lecture, or a meeting, or even just in a daily encounter about the news or a new book. He would walk into my office nearly every day to argue about something. When missiles were falling on Israel and suicide terrorists were blowing up buses and cafes in the neighborhood, more than once he walked in and screamed at me, “Why do they hate us so much?” Or in quieter times he would walk in and pick up some recent work of theology lying on my desk and say, “Why can’t they do theology more seriously?!” But he also listened carefully as I offered a tentative response. And then, disgusted or quieted by whatever answers I gave, he would shoot off another litany of questions – this time asking after my husband and children by name, how our little Reform shul was doing, and why wasn’t I writing more academic stuff and how was I feeling. Being with, studying with and working for David Hartman was a unique experience of being simultaneously constantly challenged, rebuked, and loved. Nothing could have been more inspiring.

While most of us – his hundreds of thousands of students – may have failed to fulfill his demands, we may yet fulfill the dreams that he inspired in us. And in this way, his Torah and the loving power of his embrace will continue to pour forth from Jerusalem.

 

Judaism and Michael Sandel's "Justice'

Yesterday I had the privilege of teaching a session at Limmud Boston, an extravaganza of Jewish learning that drew probably several hundred people from around the region.  My session was a "Jewish Dialogue with Michael Sandel's Justice."  Justice is a Harvard undergraduate course, a PBS series, a book, and a website as well where you can watch the lectures and get many of the course readings and discussion guides.

I'll shortly post the audio of my session.  Of related interest, especially if you've found me here because you were at the session yesterday, is a video of a talk that one of the participants mentioned yesterday between Professor Sandel of Harvard and Jonathan Sacks, the chief rabbi of Great Britain.

Judaism and Justice - A Conversation Between Chief Rabbi Lord Jonathan Sacks and Professor Michael Sandel from Harvard Hillel on Vimeo.

Acharei Mot-Kedoshim: Do Ritual and Ethics Need Each Other?

This week we reach the very middle of the Torah.  In the parashiyot of Acharei Mot and Kedoshim, we read the central chapters of the middle book of the Torah (Leviticus, Vayikra).  Needless to say, position matters -- nothing in the Torah is where it is without a reason.

Some scholars look at Leviticus Ch. 16 as the center of the Torah.  This chapter details the biblical ritual of Yom Kippur, when the Kohen Gadol would enter the Holy of Holies to purify it from a year of Israel's sins.  Others regard Ch. 19 as the true center.  This is the "Holiness Code", in which the Israelites are commanded, "Be holy, for I Adonai your God am holy."

We could regard the two views as one.  Both address the relationship between the day-to-day actions of the community, and certain key rituals.  The Yom Kippur ritual is a response to the whole ethical (and spiritual) life that the community has lived.  It was a necessary periodic purification, on a large scale -- at the very center of the Israelite camp, where God's presence was most felt.

Chapter 19 elaborates the interconnection of ritual and ethics.  The laws in this chapter completely interweave -- revering parents, observing Shabbat, leaving food in the field for the poor, the proper manner of eating sacrifices, loving your neighbor, not eating blood, honest conduct of business.  It's not ritual, then ethics, or the other way around.  The Torah is not presenting us with a difference.

Do we need both?  One part of the answer is easy.  One of the participants in Noreen's class quoted Shakespeare:  "The devil can cite Scripture for his purpose."  Nachmanides said:  It is possible to be a scoundrel within the boundaries of Torah.  So yes, ritual on its own does not guarantee goodness or holiness.

Can you be good or holy without ritual?  Obviously, yes.  But here's how I look at it:  If you're trying to be more ethical, rituals can help.  It's easier to be thankful if every day or every Shabbat you have a prayerbook with the Modim section in the Amidah:  "We are thankful to You..." with a list of the many blessings.  It is easier to watch our speech if you regularly say:  "Adonai, guard my tongue from evil."  It is easier to pursue justice if you recall regularly a God of justice, who rescued us from slavery.  It is easier to do teshuvah, to make ourselves change, when we have set times in the year that remind us to do it.

Does that mean rituals are a crutch?  I'd say they are more of a tool.  What's wrong with that?