Judaism for the Thinking Person

"You Must Extend a Loan to Your Brother" - Racial Discrimination in Lending Today

The Rabbinic Commentators focus on the fact that Deuteronomy frequently and repeatedly uses the word ach, brother, to describe the needy person who isn't related to you.  Whereas earlier in Torah, we are told not to oppress the "poor" or "afflicted" person, Deuteronomy modifies this language by insisting that we must loan to these people because they must be seen as our "brothers and sisters."  I don't see any reading possible other than that the Torah is focusing on the problem of redlining, of consciously or unconsciously avoiding loaning money to people who look different from the family of the loan officer.  In 2020, the Trump Administration has proposed changing the anti "redlining" guideliness in ways that bypass the Torah's concern, as I explain here.

The Conquest of The Land and The Problematic of "Indigenousness"

Recently Rabbi Andy Kahn and Comedian Seth Rogen broadcast loud statements that Jews have been lied to and that Jews are not indigenous to the land of Israel.  On the heels of these statements, the Jewish people in 2020 are going through the lengthy portion of Deuteronomy conveying both a demand of conquest and a moral framework.  Can we learn from what the Torah is saying?  Is the term "indigenous" just another progressive bludgeon that can mean whatever the twitterer wants it to mean?  In this podcast, I explore a way forward.

The Book of Numbers: The Dissolution of Community in the Breakdown of Face to Face Communication

The Book of Numbers is about the failure of "community" in the wilderness.  After all the community building of the Exodus, of Mount Sinai, of familial and tribal ties, of building the Mishkan, of the inspiring blueprint for a new society in a land of milk and honey, of Moshe's leadership, of being in God's physical presence, of communal ritual feasting and celebration... none of it has worked, which, when you think about it, is absolutely amazing!  In this dvar Torah, I give my answer as to why by looking at the common issue of the Miriam/Cushite incident, the 12 Spies catastrophe, and the Korach rebellion.  The word "religion" is based on the word "religio" -- bonds.  What is the bond that holds people together in community?  It's not belief, it's a certain kind of emunah, a kind of faith that normally is translated as "trust."  Trust is built through face to face communication, not shared experiences or shared beliefs.  The lack of it is breaking apart society today, and we may not be able to turn back the clock.  It's what's missing in the kind of "friendship" a new generation is experiencing.  The Industrial Age is passing to the "No Face to Face Communication Age."  

Faith in God is Faith in One's Own Ability to Bring About God's Purposes: Psalm 23, The Spies, Langston Hughes, and the Positivity Bias

Psalm 23 is usually read as about a dead person getting to go through the valley of death and then live in God's house, but I read it, like the Mourner's Kaddish, as about a living person who goes through the experience of having a loved one die and transforms one's life from being in the depths to rising up to a life of living in this life in God's house, at the table in front of one's foes.  I demonstrate this with two poems by Langston Hughes on how he, and all of us, will be part of a movement to change America so he sits at the table in God's house in front of those who would not let him sit there before.  It's the positivity bias of Caleb and Joshua, of seeing a future that one makes happen.  The key to it all is that faith in God, and faith in oneself in bringing about God's purposes, are practically indistinguishable according to Torah.  You bring about living in God's house.  We all need to do that with America.

"Moses Married a Cushite Woman!" The Courage to Be Punished for Speaking Up for Black Lives Matter

The first verse of Numbers chapter 12 famously has Miriam "speaking against Moses on account of the Cushite woman he married."  Though I most often hear people say that this means that Miriam was a racist who is complaining that Moses married a foreign black woman (either Tsipporah or a second wife), that is NOT the traditional understanding of the Rabbis.  it's the opposite:  Miriam is standing up on behalf of her black sister-in-law.  Still, the commentaries are frustrating.  I rehearse Rashi, Ibn Ezra, Rashbam, and the Bekhor Shor medieval interpretations as they could be read as full of enlightenment for us now, or as cringe-worthy -- just as Miriam's statement in the first place.  And it's in that fact that we derive our lesson.

My Response to the White House That We Should Reopen: "We Count Souls. What Are You Counting?"

On Erev Shabbat, May 22, 2020, the press was filled with the White House's call for people to go to church and synagogue right away, this Shabbat, the Shabbat when we Jews begin the book of Numbers, the parashah of counting.  In this ten minute sermon, I reply to the president's call, using the wisdom of our Torah and our Sages as we consider what that would truly look like, and how we count in this time.

Are Our Front Line "Heroes" Actually the New Servant Class? Leviticus Demands Redemption not Servitude

In his essay in The Atlantic, Adam Serwer proposes that our self-understanding of the social contract is revealed by the decision-making process about the pandemic, as he writes that “the pandemic has exposed the bitter terms of our racial contract, which deems certain lives of greater value than others.”  I compare his views to that of the end of Leviticus and of The Book of Ruth, which both demand that shared resources are understood to come from God, and that we overcome our picture of earned inequality and instead the privileged share their blessings freely, not with strings attached that preserve serfdom and servitude.  Honestly, hasn't the pandemic revealed that those in power view the economically deprived as needing to serve those able to telecommute?  Aren't the terms of our social contract that their "liberty to work" and "be heroes" really is a self-serving rhetoric because we want them to serve us by putting their lives at risk?  Leviticus would have us pay the nanny not to work, because she is an extension of family, rather than pay her a "bonus" to put herself at risk due to her "right" to work (which is really her need to feed her family).  It's time to end the self-serving rhetoric that the poor should have the "freedom to work" and "they are our heroes" when what we should be doing is redeeming them by sharing our blessings with them and treating them as kinsmen.

Don't Be So Darn Metaphysical: Misunderstanding and Mistranslating Biblical "Impurity"

In this lecture from my series on "The 8 Most Misunderstood Things in the Bible," I tackle Leviticus's preoccupation with "uncleanness" and "impurity" that seems to stigmatize and isolate women, the sick, and others.  It's one of those things that make people pick up a Hebrew Bible and say, "This stuff is barbaric and misogynistic."  I argue that this is likely the parade example of misunderstanding Torah, based on misleading translation and the human being's inherent penchant for presuming metaphysics (invisible mechanisms that operate like they're physical but we just can't see, hear, or touch them?).  Using the philosophical therapy of philosophical Pragmatism (found in the work of Charles Sanders Peirce, William James, John Dewey, and Richard Rorty), I present "tamei" not as "uncleanness" but rather as "time-out," a state in which one is required to take grief leave, maternity leave, medical leave, and, for one week a month, sexual leave.  We can learn a lot from the Torah's insistence that these can only be norms that do not stigmatize individuals if they are required and not optional, and I apply that to our modern issues with people being presumed to return to work during grief, sickness, and maternity, and are stigmatized when they do not.  At the end, I address two questions, one being that I am not dealing sufficiently with the bad-patriarchal bent of the Torah.  You'll hear my answer at the end.

From Sinai to Nietzsche: Revelation Reimagined Correctly

In this lecture, I present one of my "Most Misunderstood Concepts in the Torah"... Revelation.  What does it mean that God speaks to Moses?  What is the revelation of Torah?  I present the philosophical frame for this debate, beginning with Descartes and Kant and then the devastating critique of them by Nietzsche, and later Wittgenstein and Rabbi Abraham Joshua Heschel.   How do we avoid the betwitchment of our language in such crucial areas as "I think means that I cause my thoughts" or "If I experience God, then God is an object of my experience?"  How can we become closer to Torah through breaking out of our silly thinking and coming to a more subtle, meaningful, and common sensical identification with revelation?  

The quotes used may be viewed by clicking here.

Aaron Coming Close To God by Suppressing His Grief? Our Hope During Pandemic Lies in Those Who Are Working So Hard At the Cost of Postponing their Emotions

When Aaron's sons Nadav and Avihu suddenly die by fire while offering the first sacrifices, we have an odd series of verses that seem to suggest --on the surface-- that God has glorified Godself by killing them and now God demands that Aaron show no grief for his own sons also for the greater glory of God.  What?  Do the verses really say this?  A closer look (helped by the commentator Sforno), shows us what's really going on:  there are times when we glorify God by choosing to do our jobs (when lives are at stake) over allowing ourselves to feel our feelings of grief, of anxiety, or fear.  What seems so unfeeling of God, so self-glorifying and cruel, comes alive to us now:  we are only told to postpone our fears, our emotions, our worry, our wailing, our mourning, when we find ourselves (even unbidden) in the chain of operations meant to save lives.  God even bestows a personal word of loving care to Aaron:  don't turn to the bottle, another message so important at this time.