Judaism for the Thinking Person

It‘s Time to End the Fertility Bias: Our Shame in Shutting Out Those Without Children

How often do people say to me, "Rabbi, Rosh Hashanah is not about prayers, theology and sermons -- it's about getting together with family!" or "My grandfather was a model Jew because he was committed to his grandchildren" or "One does not know true awe until one has had children."  And how often have I as a rabbi said similar things at a bat mitzvah or baby naming from the bimah, or when explaining a prayer like the one that says "You shall love God...through diligently teaching your children..."   How does this feel to the unmarried, the willingly child-free, and those whose lives are not geared around children or grandchilden?  How do we treat them in our community:  as souls committed to covenant (perhaps more than those with children), or as incomplete human beings watching from the outside?  Why aren't we talking more about Miriam, who has no husband or children in the Torah?  Or about the Mother of Israel, the historical creator of the Israelite nation, the prophetess and leader Deborah?  It's time we stop and realize that L'Dor Vador, from generation to generation, does not refer just to one's own children, but to the future of the Jewish people, something the childless and child-free often understand in a way that we can learn from them as our teachers. 

Saving One Life is Saving the World: Jewish Law and the Death Penalty

In the parashah of "Shoftim" in Deuteronomy, we have the norms for  shoftim v'shotrim, the judges and professional criminal justice system officials.  We are commanded that tsedek tsedek tirdof, known as "justice, justice you shall pursue" though tsedek means "justice" in the sense of "righteousness," not in the sense of revenge.  The parashah goes on to discuss capital crimes, an eye for an eye, and the death penalty.  For many, they read it assuming that Judaism endorses the death penalty, with "eye for an eye" the "justice" principle underlying the norms.  In this teaching, I show how "eye for an eye" and the death penalty have been understood in Judaism, how restorative justice is the underlying paradigm of Jewish law with the one exception being intentional murder.  But in this special case of capital justice, the entire legal system is set on eliminating the death penalty so as not to risk killing even one innocent suspect.  The famous Rabbinic dictum that "to save a life is to save an entire world" is used by the Rabbis in Mishnah Sanhedrin to argue for saving the life of the suspect in a capital case, for when we use the death penalty, and should we be wrong (common in America), we have done irretrievable harm to the fabric of the universe.

The Depth of Loving Torah and Being Loved Through It: Being Taught is to Be Loved

After Moshe recounts the 10 Commandments --the 10 "word-statements"-- in Deuteronomy chapter 5, we get the Shema and the Ve-Ahavta, we must Hearken to "these words," incribe them in our hearts, and return God's love by loving through teaching these words.  What are the words?  Given the context of chapter 5, it would make sense these are the 10 Commandments, perhaps to be the text of the mezuzah and teaching the VeAhavta is exhorting.  Of course, the Rabbis argue vociferously that this cannot be, and just gives unwarranted support to Karaites and others who deny the Torah by reducing it to the 10 Commandments.  (The Rabbis have some justification for their argument.)  So "these words which I command you this day" become the entire set of teachings of the written Torah and our own interpretations that all happen through the act of God's love and our Love for God, and therefore the Mezuzah includes this selection about Love.  What does it mean to love Torah?   Delivered on the day of Tu B'Av, the annual Jewish "Valentine's Day" that celebrates falling in love and romance, I share my experience of love and loving a Torah that goes beyond sentences.  

Leading our Children to Transcendence

The oldest, continually used blessing in the world is the Torah's "Priestly Blessing."  May God bless you [with bounty] and guard you.  May God's face radiate grace (of getting your needs met) upon you.  May God turn God's face to you [when you don't get what you need] so [you do not feel alone but meet God there and] God places peace within you.

The Rabbis stress that the person blessing is merely a "window" to letting God in, but in this Dvar Torah I question whether this isn't exactly what we wish to avoid -- letting God in.  We want to let us in!  We spend our time building a world of domestic familiarity and home, and build our children up with their accomplishments.  Transcendence runs absolutely against that:  it puts you in the context of the Eternal drama, not your own:  achievement, knowledge, and the cathedral of the self [we telling our hero stories] take a far second place in transcendence, where our ego is seen in its puniness, and we feel the calm of taking our place in the eternal dramas of humanity, nature, and experience.  Transcendence teaches gratitude for participation in the human journey, calm, perspective, and the movement toward shalom (contentment) in one's lot, rather than protection.  In this sermon, I ask how we lead our children to be prepared to encounter God, not us.

Reopening the Synagogue When People Are Coming up the Down Staircase

How do we reopen the synagogue after over a year of being virtual?  For some it's procedural:  distance appropriately, follow guidelines, limit numbers, maybe wait on the food.  But the Temple is not a gathering of bodies, it's a gathering of souls.  How do we reopen appropriately to be a holy community, one that recognizes each other as souls?  One of my favorite mishnayot speaks to this, and I was happy to be scooped by Professor Naomi Kalish in applying it to us today:  https://www.jtsa.edu/struggling-to-celebrate   There are four categories of people who went up the downstaircase at the Temple, and down the up staircase:  the one in mourning, the one caring for a relative, the one who has been isolated, and the one who has lost a precious object.   In this Dvar Torah on Emor, I apply these to our norms for a holy reopening.

Helpful picture: https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/d/d8/Huldah_Gates3344.JPG

God the Mother

Leviticus ends with a long list of horrifying predictions (or curses) of the vicious suffering of the Israelites when they eventually enter the Land and break the covenant.  Western Civilization has been shaped by European Christian intellectuals who created the unchallenged image (and therefore a Western bias) that the God of the Old Testament is a God who is disposed toward anger and punishment, who seems to enjoy punisment and retribution (and thus God had to be made flesh in the Son to introduce Love).  In this podcast, I ask us to hear these verses as the words of the Mother, who, as in Wendell Berry's poem (which I read at the end) sees the Mother foreseeing one's sins, suffering in that foreknowledge with you, before you, with love and forgiveness already there symbolized by the made bed, the "you can always come home" that transcends the future into the past.  Is the angry God we project, really the No-God of Jeremiah, the idol of our own making, which externalizes our own anger at climate change, social and racial inequality, rather than God the Mother who suffers along with us within the thorn bush of the Burning Bush but is not consumed?

Ross Douthat, Biblical Impurity, and Antipathy toward the Temple

Is Leviticus's insistence that those with skin afflictions (as well as having buried the dead) not go to Temple an exclusionary punishment for being sick?  Or is that our modern reading which presumes that religion is exclusionary and judgmental?  In this presentation, I use Ross Douthat's essay "Can the Meritocracy Find God?
The secularization of America probably won’t reverse unless the intelligentsia gets religion" as a way to talk about America's prejudices against religion, and my particular concern that even Jewish leaders like me are too silent in the face of the current hype that all the cool innovation (and funding) is happening outside of our legacy institutions [which actually is an unchallenged claim mainly by people who don't go to synagogue] and that our success as communities should be judged as to how easy we make it for unaffiliated Jews to get their needs met without having to attend the Temple as it exists in our day.  Is that respectful of the Temple?

Jewish Law on Cremation and Burial, and What We're Facing as the Numbers Rise

As the percentage of Jews opting for cremation has risen from around 2% to over 20% in twenty years, how do we balance the mitzvah of burial of Jewish remains with the prohibition on cremation?

The Tabernacle -- and our Lives-- as a Purposeful Composition

Inspired by the teachings of the great American ceramicist, Richard DeVore, I examine what the mishkan tells us about the nature of artistic composition, drawing a stark contrast between Golden Calves and Purposeful Composition, in Exodus, and especially in how we live our lives. 

Keruvim, Cherubim, Griffins, Sphinxes, and the angel Rafael

What were the Keruvim, the two hybrid beast angels 10 cubits high protecting the Ark of the Covenant, and from between whom God speaks?  I rehearse all the theories, and end with a Maimonidean vision of what the angel as an extension of God's presence really is.