Tag Archives: biblical criticisim

Dvar Torah for Shoftim

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This week was my last back at my shul Young People’s Synagogue, which last year, raised around $7,000 to send me to Pardes for a year. Yesterday, I delivered this speech to let them know how their investment turned out.

So, how have you all been? For those who don’t know, from September through the end of May, thanks largely to the generosity of YPS, I was living in Jerusalem studying Torah at the Pardes Institute of Jewish Studies, the world’s only non-denominational co-ed yeshiva and widely considered to be the world’s greatest yeshiva above a Mazda dealership. Then from June 8 through August 12, I worked as the mashgiach at Camp Ramah in Wisconsin.

I’ll sum up my experience at camp with the following anecdote: When I told my Rosh Yeshiva at Pardes, Rabbi Danny Landes, that I got the job, but I was nervous since I had never been a mashgiach before, he asked, “Are you a detail-oriented person?” “Yes,” I said “Are you paranoid?” “I’m Jewish,” I said. “I think you’ll do fine.” He was right, I loved my job.

But your investment was in Pardes, so that’s what I’m going to talk about. Continue reading →

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[Alumni Post] Yeshiva Attack

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This testimonial was written by 
Pardes alumnus Daniel Schwartz (Year '10-'11):

Jeff’s reaction to Orthodox Paradox? Noah Feldman had been too easy on the yeshivas of his youth.

I can’t help but look back on the bulk of my yeshiva education with bitterness. My teachers smoothed over all the tensions that animate contemporary Judaism, petrifying the faith they were trying to preserve. I’m not sure why they did this, why they hid away so much of Judaism’s complexity. Perhaps they weren’t attuned to this complexity themselves. Perhaps they thought we couldn’t handle the doubt complexity entails.

In college doubt set in any way. I ran away from Judaism then because, among other things, it seemed provincial compared to the highpoints of Western culture. There was nothing in yiddishkeit that could inspire me to the extent the classics did, nothing intellectually transcendent about the culture I had been told to worship. Nevertheless, I had been raised in this culture, so I figured I owed it another chance. When I attended The Pardes Institute I realized that it was my yeshiva education that had been provincial. The Pardes education was about exploring the nuances and contradictions my yeshivas had disavowed.

Examples of this abound. In the earlier grades Chumash was seen almost exclusively through the eyes of Continue reading →

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God in Judaism

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[Cross posted from my blog]

Last week at Pardes marked the end of a four-part lecture series given by professor James Kugel, one of the preeminent scholars of the Bible alive today.  He painted an extremely interesting picture in answering the question that titled the lectures: Has Modern Biblical Scholarship Killed the Bible?  The lectures will be available on YouTube, so I will not try to summarize, but rather will focus on a couple of points that were specifically highlighted in his last lecture.

Professor Kugel  made it clear that as long as the Torah has been considered a sacred text, people have been interpreting it in whatever ways were appropriate to the time.  In the earliest days, that seems to have included changing the text itself, adding and subtracting as was seen fit (his main example was that two extant versions of the Book of Jeremiah are thought to have existed for a long time side-by-side).  Later, interpretation would not alter the text itself, but rather the meaning of words in the text — classic rabbinic midrash highlights this approach.  After the rabbinic period, commentators engaged in all sorts of methods, and the ways in which classic Jewish texts are printed highlights how the conversation continues to this day.  As such, Kugel sees the Torah as simply being the first volume in a work of exegesis that has stretched from Biblical times till now, and will continue as long as people are interested in interpreting the central texts of our tradition.  What is this history-stretching work focused on?  Kugel implied that the ‘title’ of this work could be How to Serve Hashem.  Judaism, as a religion, is about serving Hashem, and Scripture — defined in this fashion, as one never-ending work — is meant to help us get there.  Put another way, when engaging with Scripture and the attendant commentaries, Jews have always seen sacred text as the first word, but not the last word.

While this is indeed a beautiful and novel take on the history of Judaism’s relationship to its most cherished texts, I was left wondering why God needs to figure into this picture.  Professor Kugel is a self-defined Orthodox Jew, and as such not surprisingly holds onto certain traditional tenets of Judaism as practiced by Orthodox Jews.  For instance, within the picture described above, Kugel believes that Scripture was divinely inspired, and, as already noted, Kugel frames the goal of all of these texts as a collective as being the service of Hashem.  I left struggling with why God needs to be part of such a history.

In order to understand the source of the tension I felt, I had two big questions to answer: (a) Is it wrong in some sense to be a theist, and if so, why? (b) Is it wrong for a scholar like Kugel to make God prominent in his thought for the express purpose of ‘widening the tent’ of those willing to listen to his arguments?

Naturally, a proper treatment of the first question would be book-length, but let me briefly consider what such an answer would have to cover to be satisfying.  First, I want to make clear that the theist I have in mind is someone who truly believes in the God depicted in the Torah — and while I have done absolutely no research on the subject, I would be willing to bet that many, many Jews do not believe in this God in the sense I have in mind.  For those who do, I have two main areas of concern.  The first is Ockham’s Razor, and the problem on this line of argument is that positing the existence of a traditionally understood God adds to the believers ‘metaphysical baggage’ — in other words, such an understanding of our universe requires more entities to exist, and in this case a specifically ‘burdensome’ one, which contradicts the economy and simplicity that the theory favours.  While Ockham’s Razor is a basic tenet of much of Western thought, I realize that such an argument will hardly convince those who think God ought to be listened to before some 14th century Englishman.  The second reason why I think belief in a God like the one described in the Torah is problematic derives from the actions that such a belief might engender.  One only need glance very briefly at any newspaper in this country to see countless examples of how deep belief in the ultimate authority of a text can lead to consequences involving much human suffering.  This is ultimately my greatest concern about the continuation of a dogmatic theism (by which I mean a theism attaching to a centuries-old religion).

On the topic of ensuring that one’s message reach the widest possible audience, Kugel may well be able to reach a much broader swath of the traditionally observant Jewish population by placing Hashem front-and-center in his scholarship.  Upon reflection, I have no problem with this idea.  The caveat is that Kugel did not say — at least at Pardes, though I have not read his books — explicitly that that is why he gives pride of place to Hashem.

At the end of the day, belief in God is quite possibly the prototypical case of an argument where both sides see their own belief as so obviously the starting point of the argument as to be incredulous that anyone would suggest otherwise.  I learned that I have to work on that close-mindedness myself, and I hope that we can all appreciate the brilliance of scholarship such as Kugel’s while leaving the debate about the existence of God for another discussion.

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Week 21: Head of the Month

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(X-posted from my home blog, Yinzer in Yerushalayim)

Despite popular belief, the Creation narrative in the Bible does not depict creatio ex nihilo, a creation of something out of nothing, or יש מאין (yeish mayain), as we say in Hebrew. In fact, as even the most cursory glance at Genesis 1 will tell you, before Creation there was “tohu v’vohu”, תהו ובהו, usually translated as chaos, hovering over the deep. According to some opinions, this tohu v’vohu did not go away after Creation, but has remained in the world as the source of chaos, evil, and other unGodly disorder. I don’t mean to brag, but a substantial amount of this tohu v’vohu, this dark, unformed, primordial chaos, can actually be found growing out of my head when I wait too long before getting a haircut. When my hair gets long, it ceases to be hair as you know it, but instead becomes a black, amorphous, vertically-growing tangle of curls, waves, cowlicks and other follicle formations that have yet to be named, like a kudzu vine Chia Head having a bad hair day. It’s so annoying to walk around wearing, or perhaps more like hosting in the parasitic sense, I can’t even imagine what it must be like to have to constantly look at. I have strongly considered sending flowers to everyone who was still willing to chevrute with me over the past month to show my humble gratitude.

I had been meaning to get a haircut since Chanukah, but for various reasons, I just never did. The biggest reason, I’ll admit, was fear—I do not know nearly enough Hebrew to feel comfortable directing a stranger what to do with sharp instruments around my head. My other fear was price, not only of how much the haircut would cost, but of how much tip to leave. Talking to people who have gotten haircuts here has only confirmed my fears—more than one friend with Hebrew far better than mine has told me that the two qualifications for becoming a barber in Israel must be inability to take directions in any language and charging a ridiculous amount. I had heard you can get a cheap buzz-cut in the Shuk, but I would rather continue looking like Jermaine Jackson got electrocuted.

But my haircut luck all changed this week. As it happens, Laura, one of our new students for this semester, is a licensed cosmetologist. I was hesitant at first to go up to someone I hardly know and ask her if she would be willing to cut my hair, but desperate times call for desperate measures, and she cheerfully accepted when I asked her. I know not warning her about what she was getting herself into first may have been cruel, but I really needed a haircut, and not only was she willing to do it, she was willing to do it for cheap. Desperate times…

When we got to her apartment, I told her I just wanted it short all-over, like maybe 4 or 5 clippers all-around. She said she could take it that short, but insisted on using scissors to start with since she worried my hair might break her brand-new clippers (seriously). It ended up being the most enjoyable haircut I’ve ever had—besides the usual barber small-talk I’ve come to expect (“You have the thickest hair I’ve ever seen!” “Do your parents have hair like this?” [they don't and neither does my sister] “I just can’t believe how thick your hair is!”) we and her roommate, whom I have been friends with since last semester, made great conversation together, something I’ve never done with a barber before. It also ended up being the longest haircut I’ve ever had—it took her almost two-hours to finish. After she finished and threw all my hair out the window, it looked like a large black cat had exploded outside her apartment (which, in Israel, wouldn’t be that unusual). Her fingers must still be aching from all that scissoring, but I never heard her complain. All her hard work paid-off because it’s one of the best haircuts I’ve ever had, see for yourself:

http://seedyroad.com/academics/Highview/alphaone/MR-H.gif http://www.onebaggirl.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/11/brad-pitt-smiling.jpg

Before                                                    After

But my awesome new ‘do isn’t even the best part of the story: Once she originally agreed to cut my hair, the question remaining was where. She understandably said her roommates didn’t want her constantly bringing people into their apartment for haircuts, and my apartment wouldn’t work for a large number of reasons. When I suggested asking permission to do it at Pardes, she loved the idea, then came up with an even better one: What if she got permission to cut people’s hair at Pardes after class, then used some of the profit to buy supplies for the women’s shelter where she volunteers? Since no one was around to ask when she first had the idea, we couldn’t do my haircut at Pardes, but she has since gotten permission and is already booked solid. I’m proud to say that I’m at least part of the reason why, since nearly every time someone compliments me on my new haircut (and nearly everybody has—I haven’t gotten this many compliments on my appearance since I took care of that other hairy abomination, my Movemberstache) I tell them about Laura’s idea, then they all immediately ask where to sign-up. This is how Pardes does haircuts.

 

With my new haircut, new Pardes sweatshirt, new Eilat Gap jeans, and the confidence they breed, plus the new Jewish month, I don’t just feel like I’m beginning a new semester, I feel like I’ve become a new man.

 

As with every beginning, however, this one too came with endings. Wednesday marked the last of four lectures at Pardes by Professor James Kugel on “Has Modern Critical Scholarship Killed the Bible?” When you’re as nerdy as I am, seeing an author you like live is like going to a rock concert—you get to see your heroes in real-life, hear them actually speak in person their words you’ve only perviously seen in writing, and, if you’re lucky, maybe even interact with them. While I’m not Prof. Kugel’s biggest groupie, he was a huge influence on my Israel in the Biblical Age professor at Pitt and I read a large chunk of How to Read the Bible last summer and really enjoyed it. Much as I enjoyed it, however, the large chunk I read of it did not include the last chapter, where he discusses how he reconciles his religious faith with what he knows about the origins of the Bible. While I was disappointed at the time about not getting to the punch-line, and while he never explicitly said during the talk that what he was saying came from that chapter, the words in it could not be more beautiful and inspiring than the ones he shared with us Wednesday about the same subject. I won’t risk repeating or even summing-up what he said because it was a complicated idea (it took him 4 hours to develop, after all) and I don’t want to misquote him, but will say that I and many others left empowered and inspired to live a thoroughly (post-)modern, thoroughly Jewish life in the truest nature of our Tradition. He is a man who just radiates brilliance, and that he so recently survived cancer and wrote a book (that I really want to read!) about it makes him all the more incredible. All four lectures will be available on YouTube soon, if you have time, they will all be well worth checking out, but if you only have time for one, watch the fourth one.

Quote of the Week (by request): “Halakha [Jewish law] is the interaction between real-life and Torah.” – Rahel Berkowitz in Women and Mitzvot

Hebrew Word of the Week: תספרת (“teesporet”) – haircut

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Week 18: True Piety

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After getting over Hevron, the subject on everyone’s minds and lips all last week was the craziness in Beit Shemesh. I was going to write this blog post with a lot of complaints about how more people aren’t speaking out against this behavior, but since I could have attended the protest and did not, perhaps I don’t have the right to get on others for not speaking out, maybe I’m just as bad. There are few things worse than being a hypocrite, after all.

But it turned out to be a blessing in disguise that I didn’t go, since I now realize I had it all wrong before. My epiphany came Sunday morning when I stood at Pardes and read about the protests the night before in the holy Jerusalem neighborhood of Mea Shearim where the residents dressed themselves and their children up as Holocaust victims to draw attention to and take a bold stand against the increasing senseless animosity displayed against them, their holy brothers in Beit Shemesh, and their Authentically Torah-True® way of life by the hands the evil Zionist majority of Israel Eretz Yisroel. One quote in particular, by American yeshiva student Salomon Hoberman, hit me like a lightening bolt through the brain, changing my life forever: ‘“It’s like how it started with the Nazis – very slowly,” [he said] defending the use of the yellow stars. “They’re separating us from the Jewish people because we’re following the way of the Torah. They hate us because we’re going the Jewish way.

“And there’s only one Jewish way.”’

Reading this line as I did while standing in the halls of Pardes, made its truth, its emes, even more obvious. I realized right then and there that the only reason I—with my Western miseducation and the false anti-Torah values it emphasizes—used to think that tact, respect, and decency were part of Judaism is because what I was learning was not Judaism, but something else. In that moment it further became clear how I was wasting my time at the Pardes Institute of Jewish Shondes learning different opinions and calling all of them Judaism even when they so obviously contradict each other when I could instead just cut through all the touchy-feely nonsense and study Authentic Torah at a real yeshiva from real Jews like the type Reb Hoberman learns from and get the correct Torah-True® answer on every issue every time. I’m ashamed of myself now for having spent so much time practicing and learning a false religion, but what else besides touchy-feely nonsense should I have expected from a yeshiva that allows and even (G-d have mercy on us) hires w—-n (you know what I mean. As a “healthy” man like the one in the video linked to above, I don’t even want to write that word! An arrow in your eye, Satan!) No wonder the real Jews make sure they are kept far out of sight—by force if necessary—while studying holy true words of Torah, which of course we, as the last remaining guardians of the true Torah, do all day every day. Thinking Torah has anything to do with personality and feelings, G-d forgive me, what was I thinking?!

I’m embarrassed to report, however, that I didn’t at that moment pack all my bags and run from a place of idolatry to a place of Torah as the Sages command to us do. No, in my weakness, I stayed the rest of the week, but, as Jews say, gam zu l’tova, though something seems “bad” on the outside, this too, is ultimately for the good, since it made me see just how heretical and how anti-Torah Pardes really is. Take the so-called siyum I attended in the “Social Justice” class Tuesday afternoon. It was an outrage! Even worse than their false assumption that Torah and social justice even have anything to do with each other, was their chutzpadik assumption that social justice gives you license to hate the Torah—they went around and spoke about how they think they know better than the Torah and the Sages when it comes to such issues as minority rights, workers’ rights, w—-n’s roles in Judaism, Jewish obligations to the poor, homosexuals the toeva community, and environmental issues. They did this by reviewing texts showing the multiplicity of views in the Jewish Tradition about these issues and spoke of the importance of maintaining an honest dialogue with all the texts, those you are proud of and those you are not, to carry the Jewish tradition of wrestling with these issues into the future. They then blessed each other that they may continue to be Jewishly empowered to treat all people as being made in the Divine Image to continue to live as agents of G-dly change in the world.

I know, I wanted to barf (on them) too. I don’t mean to say there aren’t any pressing social issues facing the Yidden, of course there are lots of them—the un-male gender getting too much education, the un-male gender dressing immodestly, public busses not being gender-segregated, and anti-Semitic persecution by the Zionist regime, and of course these fakers utterly ignored them to waste their time instead on gays and goys! I wanted to scream “Judaism isn’t complicated, stop wasting your time on sinners and gentiles and just do things the one correct Authentic Torah-True® way! If a text seems to contradict that, it’s obviously just because you don’t understand the Tradition properly and you need to find a rebbe who will be willing to reeducate you.” I pity them.

But wait, it gets worse. Wednesday night, Dr. James Kugel came to Pardes to give the first of four lectures in a series called “Has Modern Biblical Scholarship Killed the Bible?” The answer is that maybe for him it has, since as far as I could tell, killing Judaism was his main goal. May your ears be spared the blasphemous lies he spun for the feeble-faithed wannabe Jews about supposed “Biblical authors” that aren’t God, and how, he claims, Jewish texts has always been shaped by the time, place and popular beliefs of the people who created him. Worse, he said it all while wearing a black kippa, apparently in an attempt to make the audience think he was an Authentically Torah-True® Jew like us and so represented real Judaism. The audience must have bought into it—after all, how can you judge someone if not by their appearance?— since while he was spewing his Torah-hating nonsense, they all just sat there and listened, then, afterwards, they respectfully asked questions. No one spat on him, beat him up, burned his house down, or took some other bold action for the sake of our holy Torah like a real G-d fearing Yid would have done. But I comfort myself with the knowledge that they are not real Jews and none of them will have any share in the World to Come. Yes, Rabbi Tarfon says in the Torah, “I doubt if there is anyone in this generation who is fit to rebuke others,” but he couldn’t have imagined Jews so holy as Reb Hoberman and his rebbes.

The whole thing just makes me sick. Thank God, I finally merited to go to the holy neighborhood of Mea Shearim for the first time Thursday.

***

I probably made history Thursday as the first person ever to wear a Point Park University hoodie in Mea Shearim. I went to volunteer with Ezrat Avot, a wonderful Israeli meals-on-wheels organization located in the neighborhood after my usual volunteer project was canceled and none of the normal volunteers were able to make it. My first image of the neighborhood was of a group of Chasidic men walking through Kikar Shabbat where the Holocaust protest was five days earlier wearing brown burlap sacks over their kaputas for reasons I hope I never find out. Once we got to Ezrat Avot, my fellow pinch-volunteer and I were greeted by an extremely nice and cheerful woman and a small group of friendly American yeshiva students who were just finishing making a sugar-free carrot kugel. After the yeshiva boys left, the woman and another man helped us and another volunteer fill around 60 bags of food for Israel’s elderly. It was a great experience and I would go back in a heartbeat. While I don’t know about the man, neither the yeshiva students nor the woman actually lived in Mea Shearim.

Quote of the Week: “If we walk out on [Judaism] now, it means those values win.” – Mira

Hebrew Word of the Week: אפיקורוס (“apikorus”) – Heretic (lit. a Hebraization of “Epicurius,” or one who sees the world only on the external level.)

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Rabbi Julie’s Theology Presentation

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This is PEP student Rabbi Julie Gordon‘s presentation on her theological views presented today in Zvi’s Critical Issues in Modern Jewish Thought class, responding to the following questions:

  1. Where does the Torah come from?  What is God’s role, if any?  And how do you deal with the challenges of biblical criticism?
  2. What authority does the biblical text have, if any, and for whom?
  3. How does your experience of studying the Torah affect your view(s)?

I believe in the validity of Biblical criticism and thus I affirm that the Torah is a human document. It was written by our people as they searched to create a holy community guided by their views of God and society. It reflects the authors’ attempts to explain the history of our people who were influenced by the nations among whom they lived and the values of their time.

There is great power in this primary metaphor of our people: that God “spoke” to Moses and the children of Israel at Sinai- it is our master story. The TaNaKh contains the record of the authoritative version that our community holds dear. We are blessed to have this text to communicate our master story to our descendants.

I understand God to be the power within the natural order. “It is that God, functioning with us and throughout all of nature that constitutes our religious impulse.  When we as humans discover how to live religiously, it constitutes God’s “revelation” to us.”

[Ira] Eisenstein: “Torah is “sacred literature” in the sense that Jews have always seen in it the source and the authority for our way of life and that view of history which gave meaning and direction to their lives.” The Torah’s authority is derived from the Jewish people’s recognition of these partial and tentative glimpses into the true nature of human life. “ The Torah contains ideas our people have sanctified as being of enduring worth. The Torah contains truth-meaningful insights. However, some of the laws which governed our people in Biblical times reflect values that are not consistent with our ever growing understanding of human nature. The rabbis interpreted the Torah to find answers to the challenges of their day. They wanted to help our people grow in a variety of environments in which we lived. We are the heirs to the Rabbinic tradition and have the responsibility as a community to continue adapting Torah for our day.

Whether one sees the Torah as literally given by God to our people at Sinai, or as the accumulated wisdom of thousands of years of our people’s attempt to live righteous, meaningful, and spiritual lives, we can’t discount the importance of Torah as a guide to living.

I recognize that understanding Torah as sacred literature is a very intellectual view of the Torah and it impacts the commanding nature of a person’s observance.  Some people believe God commanded the Torah and thus one must observe it. But for me, the Torah inspires me to seek to live a life filled with meaning guided by our tradition.

I enjoy studying classical texts in a traditional manner and developing skills so I can learn Torah on my own or with a hevruta. I also value it when we study texts and compare the minimalist and maximalist approaches to questions in the text.

When I study Torah, I seek to accomplish two primary purposes:

  1. To find personal meaning as I seek to become a righteous human being and knowledgeable leader within the Jewish community.
  2. To develop an approach to assist others to find personal meaning in our tradition. I want to invite the students I teach and their families into the age-old conversations between our people seeking God. I want to guide them as they address this question, “How do we live meaningful lives in the Jewish world today?” When they have personal experiences studying Torah, my hope is that they will come to believe that they can access Torah to find answers to their existential questions.
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