Judaism for the Thinking Person

What any Non-Jew (and especially teachers) Should Know About Judaism

My lecture recorded at Palomar College to future teachers and social workers.  What should a non-Jew understand about Judaism, its history and sensitivities, its overall character, and how Jews see themselves? 

THERE IS A COMPANION TEXT FOR THIS LECTURE which has the main points written out.   It is listed as a "page" you can view in the margin.

Satan, The Voice of Failure, and Sinning Against Yourself

According to the Talmud, during the Rosh Hashanah service, the Heavenly Court is meeting, Satan is the prosecuting attorney, God the merciful judge is presiding, and the shofar blast interrupts Satan.  Is this happening in the sky somewhere, or as the Sages intended, IS IT HAPPENING INSIDE OF YOU?

Why do we sing a mystical prayer about God's light when we take out the Torah? And why does God need a Menorah?

Ki Tissa: The Sin of Building Synagogues for Others to Use; and the Irony of "Holy for YOU!"

In this parashah, we have the basis for metaphor of marriage to understand our covenant.  The covenant of marriage is about participating in a marriage, not saying you bought a house and provided material things and then your job is done.  In the parashah, God interrupts the instructions for building the sanctuary and emphasizes the use of the sanctuary for Shabbat and holidays and the activities within: the building is nothing but a means toward manifesting God in the activities.  God doesn't "live" there when we are not there, appreciative of the house we built for God!  The latter thinking, that God is in space, is actually the sin of the Golden Calf:  when God is in space, the building is important.  When God exists in time, then the activities are important. When we build synagogues for others to use and not ourselves, we are committing the sin of the golden calf which is believing holiness is in the house and not in our fidelity through participating within it.  There is no mythical Jewish Wayfarer on the street in need of a shul, or some Holocaust refugee needing a shul because theirs was burnt down, so that we must build it for them and leave.  We must participate in the life the synagogue ourselves or we commit the sin of the golden calf.  In an interesting twist on the whole idea of holiness, "holy" is also a word to describe things that are off limits to us, like the holy incense (in the parashah preceding the Golden Calf incident) and the holy First Fruits and tithes (listed right after the Golden Calf incident).  I provide a twist on Rav Hisda's Talmudic teaching that when you don't actively keep the Sabbath, everything you touch becomes "holy," meaning you shouldn't have anything to do with them ever again.  When you build a synagogue but won't keep Shabbat, you've made it so "holy" that you never have anything to do with it again.  I use Yesheyahu Leibovitz to make the point.

Holiness in Time not Space: Holidays and Daily Blessings Explained

There are a handful of foundational Jewish principles that are still in the process of changing the world and the very way we think.  Some are more familiar, such as universal human rights (tselem elohim extends beyond gender, citizenship, caste, financial status, race, even species).   One of the less familiar is the highly abstract, revolutionary concept that --despite the Bible's often misleading language-- God inhabits the dimension of time, not space.  History is God's abode, not the Temple:  and we enter holiness through the doorway of time, not the doorway of a structure.  While our brains are almost too primitive still to properly grasp this, this lesson starts us in the right direction, and then teaches a quick introduction to each holiday.

Is belief in God necessary to be good Jew?

Torah Study Feb 7: The Invisible not the Supernatural

In order to finish the story of Judah and Tamar, we examine the big issue of the role of karma (or "measure for measure" or "poetic justice") in our lives, and whether this means God is sending us a message since we are God's conern, or rather we're learning how to live in God's story.  How do we walk the line between Godless naturalism and narcissistic supernaturalism?

Dreaming, Your Two Souls (nefesh & neshamah), and Do You Know Who You Are?