Judaism for the Thinking Person

3 Dimensions of Time Intersecting in Shemini Atzeret & the Poetry of Louise Gluck

Shemini Atzeret has the special distinction of being all of the following:  1) The only holiday that has no official traditional explanation.  (Atzeret means some form of gathering, but we are left to speculate whether it's a special harvest ingathering, or a human gathering at the end of Sukkot, or a kind of makeup "extra day" of Sukkot for those who arrived late, but all these are speculative:  no reason is given.)  2)  It's still one of the four High Holidays (the others being Rosh Hashanah, Yom Kippur, and Sukkot) and is a real holiday unto itself, and 3) It concluded the High Holiday period.  One dwells in the sukkah but does not say a blessing for doing so.  Shemini Atzeret is very special and odd.

In this short podcast, I try to explain it as the confluence of different ways of experiencing time.  Biblical scholars for decades have reflected on how the book of Kohelet (Ecclesiastes) views time as circular while the Torah and Prophets view time as linear (leading to a Messianic horizon).  In this podcast, I show how Sukkot is the ultimate "linear" experience of time, like traveling forward, and that Shemini Atzeret, with its signature chanting of Kohelet/Ecclesiastes, is the ultimate experience of circular time, and eternal time.  We go from living in the present moment to a very special eternal moment as the "finishing strong" of the entire High Holiday period.  I use Louise Gluck's (whose name I mispronounce -- it should be pronounces as "glik") poem "The Denial of Death" to make my point.

Filtering Out the Noise by Practicing Essentialism Under Pandemic

The pandemic has forced most of us into a "Shabbat," a ceasing, a forced limitation on our time and resources, and yet we are faced with demanding decisions that have no clear right and wrong, and lots of risk in all directions.  How do we allow this year to give us the gift of getting 'comfortable with discomfort' (rather than the "discomfort with our comfort" that we usually have)?  In my own life, I use Greg Mckeown book on practicing "Essentialism."  I share how I do that, and how you can, too.

"The Clothes On Your Back Did Not Wear Out" - The Cost of Our Clothes

Deuteronomy repeats that God tried to demonstrate how to walk with God when our clothes "did not wear out, nor your shoes" during the journey in the wilderness, as we learned that we "do not live on bread alone."  During the pandemic, I've noticed that I wear three sets of clothes:  Zoom clothes, non-Zoom clothes, and Shabbat clothes, and as we've slowed down our pace and we're not running around during this endurance stretch until a vaccine, we are --as Ibn Ezra interprets the "true" miracle-- realizing we walk with God in our slowing down, in our living the simple life, and we realize the craziness of an industry that has brainwashed us into a fashion industry of disposable clothes and environmental devastation.  Can we go back to having just a few sets of clothes that you wear all the time?

Does Pursuing Justice Begin with Carrying Around the Emoluments Clause?

In the section of Deuteronomy customarily called "Shoftim" (which means both "Judges" and "Leaders"), we find the famous command that "Justice, Justice You Shall Pursue" but strangely without reference to the pursuit of social justice, community organizing, or even the personal awareness of victims.  Instead it might mean that people in that position begin the process by focusing on the emoluments clause and their oath of office.  What if our personal Torah, our personal scroll we carry around with us and occupy our minds with every day, was not the entire Torah but just our oath of office?  What would this tell us about the Torah's message to healing ourselves and our society?

"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.