Daily Archives: July 9, 2022

Any Jew who survived the Holocaust is a brand plucked from the fire (Zechariah 3:2). That is especially true of any European Jew, and even more so of any European Jew who survived the worst of the Holocaust: Auschwitz and then the Death March to Mauthausen in 1945. One such survivor was a sixteen-year-old youth named David Weiss from Sighet, Romania. Some of his fellow townspeople might have anticipated that this boy prodigy might become the world-renowned Jewish scholar that he did become. But in 1944 (the year he was brought to Auschwitz), they could not be sure that he would live at all, let alone live and remain even more devoted to the Torah and its attendant Jewish tradition than he had been in childhood. But he not only survivedhe prevailed. He became the great light of many lives.

He arrived in America in 1947 as a refugee and eventually found his way to the Jewish Theological Seminary in New York. Immediately upon receiving his second rabbinical ordination and his doctorate, he joined the Talmud faculty there. He eventually hebraized his surname Weiss to Halivni (both meaning white), though he retained Weiss as his middle name. After leaving the seminary in the 1980s due to its serious departure from normative Jewish tradition (Halakhah), he held a chair especially established for him at Columbia University. He also founded the Union for Traditional Judaism, and became the dean of its rabbinical school, the Institute of Traditional Judaism. Upon his retirement from Columbia, he emigrated to Israel, where many came to consult him and benefit from his profound wisdom and empathy. On June 29, he died in Jerusalem at age 94..

Two points stand out in his remarkable life and career. In his scholarly career, Professor Halivni revolutionized the study of the Talmud by uncovering its complicated editing, whereby original sources were reworked, sometimes radically, by later, anonymous editors. More and more students of the Talmud (and they are legion) have adopted and employed his method in their study of this often difficult, even enigmatic, text. Indeed, a Jesuit friend of mine once called the Talmud the most layered text he had ever studied.

In his life, though, Rabbi Halivni was much more than an extraordinary academic. As an instructor of the Torah, and personally committed to its teaching, he showed that not only did his body survive the Holocaust, his soul survived it, too. Indeed, he more than survivedhe flourished. His light ignited many other souls as well. His faith, to be sure, was complex and sometimes involved intense struggle. Of course, there is plenty of precedent for this in Jewish tradition (a l Genesis 32:28, Israel means one who struggles with God). Rabbi Halivni was constantly troubled by why God hadnt rescued so many Jews (including his entire family) during the Holocaust. Nevertheless, he was always convinced that his survival in particular was for the sake of the Torah. His raison dtre was always to plumb the depths of Gods Torah and share his insights with his fellow Jewsand with interested gentiles as well. He did all this with exceptional grace and warmth.

I treasure every one of my many encounters with this great man over the more than sixty years that I knew him. During this period of mourning, I am trying very hard to recall as many of them as possible. His mark on my life and work is indelible. And My servant David is a prince in their midst (Ezekiel 34:24). Who David Weiss Halivni was for us in this world, we hope he will also be for us in the world-yet-to-come. For now, we have to be somehow content with only the memory of him.

David Novakholds the J. Richard and Dorothy Shiff Chair of Jewish Studies at the University of Toronto.

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David Halivni's Great Light | David Novak - First Things

The Midrash states that the commandment of Parah Adumah is the ultimate religious mystery, and its reasons are unknowable. The commandment outlines a purification ritual for those who come in contact with a dead body. A red heifer, or Parah Adumah, is sacrificed on the Mount of Olives, and then burnt on a pyre. The ashes are mixed with water and sprinkled on those who were impure.

The Parah Adumah ritual is confusing for several reasons. It is a sacrifice that is performed outside of the Temple, something that elsewhere the Torah explicitly forbids. And while the ashes of the Parah Adumah purify those who were impure, paradoxically, those who handle the ashes are themselves rendered impure. The Midrash says that even the wisest of all men, King Solomon, said about this commandment, I thought I was wise enough, yet it was distant from my understanding. Even Solomon couldnt comprehend the purpose of the Parah Adumah. The term used by the Talmud for commandments without any reasons, a chok, is taken directly from our Torah reading.

Whether or not the commandments have reasons has been debated by Jewish thinkers for over 2,000 years. Christine Hayes, in her book Whats Divine About Divine Law, explains that these debates arose when Jews first confronted Hellenistic culture. In the Greek world, the idea of natural law, a universal, rational understanding of what is right and what is wrong, was accepted; what would be considered divine morality could be understood by ones intellect. This perspective challenged Jews to think about how to understand the Torah, most of whose commandments were offered as divine fiats without any stated reasons. Some, like Philo, sought to integrate the Greek understanding of divine law into the Torah, and find logical reasons for all the commandments; this project of searching for taamei hamitzvot, the reasons for the commandments, has continued to this day. The rabbis of the Talmud and Midrash held multiple points of view on this question. Some rabbis take the same approach as Philo, but many passages in Talmud and Midrash reject the idea that commandments have reasons. Even ostensibly ethical commandments are seen as purely a reflection of Gods will; one passage in the Talmud says it is improper to consider the commandment to send the mother bird away before taking her eggs, as a reflection of divine mercy, because all of Gods commandments are exclusively divine decrees. Another passage in the Talmud that was particularly influential in medieval philosophy creates a division between two types of commandments: There are mishpatim, ethical laws that one would arrive at rationally on ones own, much like natural law. And there are chukim, divine decrees without any explanation; the Talmud says that regarding chukim, God declares, I decreed these statutes, and you have no right to question them.

In medieval philosophy, Saadia Gaon accepts this distinction between chukim and mishpatim, which he calls revealed and rational laws. The Rambam strongly disagrees and insists that every commandment is rational. God would only act in accordance with wisdom; he explains that our Sages generally do not think that such precepts have no cause whatever and serve no purpose, for this would lead us to assume that Gods actions are purposeless. The Rambam devotes nearly a quarter of his Guide for the Perplexed to taamei hamitzvot, and he enumerates reasons for every commandment, even ones that seem strange and obscure.

But in the modern era, the Rambams understanding of taamei hamitzvot was rejected by many Jewish thinkers. By offering philosophical, historical, and even medical reasons for the commandments, the Rambam opened a religious Pandoras box: If the reason was no longer relevant, perhaps the commandment could be ignored? For this reason, Rabbi Samson Raphael Hirsch harshly criticizes the Rambams taamei hamitzvot, because they paved the way for the Reform movement. He writes:

If, for instance, the sole purpose of the prohibition of labor on the Sabbath was to enable men to rest and recover from the toils of the week, if the Sabbath means only the cessation of corporeal activity in order that the mind may be active; and who could doubt it, since both Moses (i.e, Moses Maimonides and Moses Mendelssohn) interpret it thus, and the Christian Sunday agrees with their conception, who must not consider it mere pettiness and pedantic absurdity to fill an entire folio with the investigation of the question, what particular actions are forbidden, and what permitted on the Sabbath day? How singular, to declare the writing of two letters, perhaps an intellectual occupation, a deadly sin, while judging leniently many acts involving great physical exertion, and freeing from penalty all purposeless destruction!

Hirsch bemoans the fact that the Rambams philosophical interpretations of the mitzvot undermine the practice of halakhah; in actuality, the Shabbat is much more than a mere day of rest. By explaining the commandments, the Rambam ended up undermining them.

Rabbi Joseph B. Soloveitchik takes this critique a step further. He too uses the Rambams reason for Shabbat as an example. He writes that if the purpose of Shabbat is merely hedonic, to rest, then the Sabbath idea is dispossessed of its breadth and warmth. And if the Sabbath is to be seen only against the background of mundane social justice and similar ideals, the intrinsic quality of the Sabbath is transformed into something alien. It serves merely as a means to the realization of a higher end. Soloveitchik explains that reasons for the commandments offered by the Rambam often explain a religious norm by an ethical precept, turning religion into the maidservant of ethics. Rabbi Soloveitchiks fundamental criticism is that the Rambams taamei hamitzvot subordinate the Torah to other disciplines, putting Torah second.

Both Rabbis Hirsch and Soloveitchik emphasize the need for the Torah to be treated as an independent, transcendent discipline. This call is particularly significant, considering that it comes from two thinkers who were associated with movements of Torah Umadda and Torah im Derech Eretz, who saw engagement with general knowledge as a religious obligation; yet they remain steadfast in refusing to reduce Torah to a vehicle for external disciplines.

And this is precisely the importance of chok: to remind us not to use divine revelation in the service of other ends. We must approach the commandments with humility, and not assume they are there to serve our own personal needs.

We must approach the commandments with humility, and not assume they are there to serve our own personal needs.

Sadly, in contemporary times, many treat the Torah as a textbook of non-Torah subjects; readers scour religious texts to find lessons of psychology, leadership, finance, and even medicine. My objection is not to specific insights. For example, one must consider the psychological aspects within the narratives of Bereishit; not to do so would overlook important insights. But when the psychological perspective becomes the primary mode of engaging a text, the spiritual power of the Torah is lost. A grand gesture of faith can be reduced to an unusual father-son dynamic, and the Torah then becomes a collection of interesting case studies. The Torah should not become a spade with which to dig, a way to obtain useful information that the reader finds gratifying.

The Torah is most often conscripted in the service of politics. Every hot button issue inspires articles about how the Torah supports one viewpoint or another. Written in the style of a lawyers brief, these articles of political-Torah lack nuance and scholarly insight. Undoubtedly, the advocates of politicizing Torah have laudable goals: They want to ensure that the Torah is relevant, and that we bring Torah values into the public square. But in reality, the opposite occurs; the Torah ends up being the footnote to political passions, and all that matters is whether the Torah supports ones favorite causes.

Bringing religion into politics will ultimately diminish faith. Perhaps Abraham Lincoln said it best. When told by an aide that God was on the side of the Union, Lincoln supposedly responded: Sir, my concern is not whether God is on our side; my greatest concern is to be on Gods side. One must never confuse subjective interests with divine imperatives, but this inversion of values is what happens when religion becomes subordinate to politics. The lesson of the chukim is to avoid pulling God over to our side, and instead approach the Torah with humility and openness.

Rabbi Chaim Steinmetz is the Senior Rabbi of Congregation Kehilath Jeshurun in New York.

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Politics and the Parah Adumah - Jewish Journal

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IT SEEMS TO ME: In support of the right to decide - Leader-Telegram

Destroying lives through false accusations, innuendo and distortions has never been easier.

In his book Other Peoples Money and How Bankers Use It, Supreme Court Justice Louis Brandeis famously wrote, Publicity is justly commended as a remedy for social and industrial diseases. Sunlight is said to be the best of disinfectants. Shining a spotlight on an issue can expose and reveal corruption, dishonesty, fraud or abuse that otherwise might go unnoticed, ignored, or even excused. Brandeis wrote these words well before the Internet was a thought in anyones mind and he likely could not have even dreamt of the sunlight it would shine and the accountability it would generate.

The capacity for instant access to information also makes us better informed, allows us to think more critically, and empowers us to ask crucial questions that make us safer, healthier, and stronger. If you want to know more about your doctors education, read reviews of your landscaper, or see what your childs teacher posts on Facebook, the endless information is now just a click away.

Unfiltered sunlight can also be harmful, toxic, and cause cancer.

Brandeis was absolutely correct. Sunlight is indeed a great disinfectant. The internet has sanitized our world by holding people accountable for their behavior, choices, actions, positions, and writings. But what Brandeis didnt mention is that unfiltered sunlight can also be harmful, toxic, and cause cancer.

There has never been a greater vehicle to disseminate gossip and slander than the internet. Lives have been literally destroyed because of false accusations, innuendo, distortions, and untruths. Once upon a time thoughts, ideas, and opinions were only printed if they had merit and were deemed worthy and carefully screened by a publisher. Journalists had to vet their stories and fact checkers confirmed all assertions before an article went to print. While the system wasnt perfect, the result was authors gained credibility and readership based on their education, expertise, experience, and peer review.

Today, anyone can publish his or her ideas and opinions and even his or her version of facts with no expertise or credentials and with no consequence or accountability. Readership and popularity are often a function of salaciousness and sensationalism, not truth and accuracy.

Readers have an enormous burden to be vigilant and judicious before blindly accepting everything.

In his book, The Death of Expertise: The Campaign Against Established Knowledge and Why it Matters, Thomas M. Nichols elucidates this concept: People are now exposed to more information than ever before, provided both by technology and by increasing access to every level of education. These societal gains, however, have also helped fuel a surge in narcissistic and misguided intellectual egalitarianism that has crippled informed debates on any number of issues. Today, everyone knows everything: with only a quick trip through WebMD or Wikipedia, average citizens believe themselves to be on an equal intellectual footing with doctors and diplomats. All voices, even the most ridiculous, demand to be taken with equal seriousness, and any claim to the contrary is dismissed as undemocratic elitism.

All of this places an enormous burden on us, the readers and consumers of information, to be vigilant and judicious before blindly accepting everything we come across in print, online, or in person. Especially in the information age, we must ask ourselves, who is the author or speaker of these words? What authority or credibility do they have? How does what they are saying match up with what I know about the person, place, or issue being discussed? Is there another side to this story? Do I have all the facts and information to draw a conclusion?

The Torah instructs us to distance ourselves from falsehood. The Talmud says that Gods insignia is truth. To be Godly one must have ferocious loyalty and fidelity to the truth. Exaggerating, distorting and bending the truth distance us and alienate us from the Almighty.

When it comes to lying, it isnt enough to be committed to the truth and devoted to never lying, but one must distance themselves completely from lies and from liars.

The burden of making sure that the internet functions as a disinfectant and not as a toxin is on the readers and consumers of its content. We must be judicious, careful, and extremely vigilant, not only in what we write, but in how we process and accept what we read.

There is another danger of non-judicious consumption of what is available on the internet. Even when what is being reported is true, is it our business, do we need to know, will the knowledge help us or hurt others? The craving for salacious details and the appetite to know the story emanates from a unhealthy sense of inquisitiveness and our insatiable need to be in the know.

This phenomenon expresses itself in many scenarios. When some hear about a couple getting divorced, their first response is what happened? as if they are entitled to a report about the most personal and private details of a couple and often children going through a difficult time.

Many pay a shiva call and feel a need to ask, How did he or she die? Certainly the mourner is free to volunteer the cause of death if they like, but is it really our business and do we truly need to know?

When we ask, Why did he lose his job? or why did they break their engagement? or why is she still single? are we asking because we care about them, or is finding out somehow satisfying something in ourselves?

Judaism places great value on peoples right to privacy.

For some, the need to know stems from a sense of information is power. Information is social currency and the more we know, the richer and more powerful we are. For others, the need to know stems from an inability to live with tension or mystery. And yet, for others, the need to know is similar to whatever draws us to slow down and look at the accident on the highway even though it has nothing to do with us at all and only creates traffic for others.

Judaism places great value on peoples right to privacy. Jewish law demands that we conduct ourselves with the presumption that all that we are told even in pedestrian conversation is to be held in confidence unless it is explicitly articulated that we are free to repeat what we heard. We are forbidden to look into a neighbors property in a way that violates their privacy. We are instructed not to spread gossip, even if the information is absolutely true and entirely accurate. The Talmud (Bava Metzia 23b) goes so far as to tell us that we are permitted to distort the truth in circumstances that someone is prying for information that is none of their business and that they are not entitled to have.

The internet can be a great resource and blessing in our lives but the burden is on us to remain vigilant not to assume everything we read is true, or to read even things that are true, just because they are available to us.

Link:

What Happened to the Truth? - aish.com Personal Growth, Featured, Spirituality - Aish.com

This week, I printed out a copy of the declaration of intent to become a United States citizen made by my great-grandfather, Wolf Landsman, in the city court of Utica, New York. My sister Ellen found this document a few years ago, which is dated July 8, 1893.

In it, my great-grandfather declares that he renounces all allegiance to the czar of Russia, which I cant imagine was very difficult for him. What was difficult for him was English. The document is filled out in beautiful handwriting, but not his; it belongs to Clarence Stetson, a court clerk who, a couple of decades later, became president of the Common Council, Uticas city council. Mr. Stetsons impeccable penmanship records Wolf Landsmans city of birth in Russia, though it looks to me like the clerk just made up some approximation of what he heard my great-grandfather say. All my great-grandfather could do was mark an X.

Wolf Landsman was 18 years old when he landed in New York City, and he was 21 years old when he came to the court in Utica for this declaration, and thanks to him and my other seven great-grandparents, 130 years ago, give or take, I am a citizen of the United States of America.

When I was 21 years old, I decided to leave the United States, and while I was still 21, I decided once and for all not to. I turned 21 in Israel, living for a year in fulfillment of an intention I declared when I was just about to turn 18. On July 8, 1988, 95 years after Wolf Landsmans declaration of intent to become an American citizen, I was in between, just back to the States and with a plan to spend the next seven years studying before I would make aliyah. But sometime in the last two months of my age, I realized I still wanted to be American.

Two things happened that fall when I returned to college from my year away. One was I met a girl, who is now my wife.

The other is a bit harder to describe, because it has to do with ideas. I realized that the ideas I found most compelling, even after a year in Israel, were American ideas, and the questions that I couldnt stop talking about were American questions.

The life of my mind was American. What I found engrossing was: freedom and individuality, and how freedom and individuality are the biggest challenges to community and the soil in which community grows or does not grow. And how freedom and individuality are the biggest challenges to figuring out how much we are responsible for one another, which is the fundamental question of politics and government.

I was utterly surprised to discover that I was still American deep down, after a year in Israel immersed in Talmud, which I had never studied before, and after working so hard to become a fluent speaker of Hebrew, and finally being comfortable in the yeshivish banter that makes religious Jewish college students feel like one of the crowd. My ratio of non-Jewish to Jewish friends had dropped rapidly. That was the 21-year-old who decided he was permanently American. That guy was studying Talmud in his free time, with Thoreau and Emerson and Tocqueville and Carol Gilligan sitting on his shoulder and stuck in his head.

Obviously the girlfriend was a factor, since she had no interest in aliyah but we had just started dating, so how big a factor could that have been? What I think actually happened is that I noticed how little sleep I was losing about this difference between us. That was surprising too, since I was a brooder by nature. But I didnt feel any inner tension, like this was an argument we were going to have to have one day about the future of our relationship. Thats what I noticed, thats what clinched it for me: This isnt hard for me. I really am going to stay here in America.

My candidate for president got destroyed that year; my political philosophy was repudiated nationally, which is to say my own interpretation of these ideas about freedom and individuality and community that were all I could think about and talk about. But I didnt say to myself: See, you dont belong here. Just the opposite.

I was coming to realize that I was addressing the American ideas at the core of my life in a Jewish way, on all kinds of levels.

In my mind, this is how I think about freedom and individuality: Henry David Thoreau, who would not compromise one bit with conventional society and went off to live in the woods all on his own, who went to jail rather than pay taxes that would help fund what he thought was an unjust war he is talking to Rabbi Eliezer ben Hyrcanus, who in the Talmud was banished after he couldnt persuade the rest of the rabbis to set the law his way, even when God sent miracles and a voice down from Heaven to back him up. Ralph Waldo Emersons essay on individualism talks to Rav Yosef Soloveitchiks essay on shlichut, on finding ones unique individual mission in the world.

I think about how freedom is the basic, precious truth we learn from the Exodus, and how much more precious that freedom is than what John Locke or Thomas Jefferson ever wrote about. How that freedom compels us to stop at Mt. Sinai and enter into covenant, and what that teaches about the kinds of covenants free people in America have to make or ought to make.

I think about how freedom is what allows us to think new thoughts and be wrong without being thrown in jail, and what forces synagogues to be compelling or wither away, instead of just being the thing your parents did so you do too.

I think about how freedom is also the fundamental challenge to our humanity, even the basic idol. It was free people who chose the make a golden calf and worship a thing made of gold. It was free people who imagined themselves trading the challenge of rising spiritually for the fleshpots back in Egypt and the thought of a life free of difficult decisions and moral agency. That Torah about freedom talks to the challenges today, of freedom that opens up to mere materialism, to unrestrained competition and social competitiveness. A freedom that can make everything a commodity, including ourselves allowing our interests, our time, even our unique talents to be valued in our own eyes by what they are worth in the short-term to others. Freedom can overwhelm us with the present moment, with all the choices right now of what to do or buy or think or be outraged about. All of which can disconnect us from the larger and longer stories we are part of, which we author and co-author.

I think about how the tradition that views tzedakah more as taxation than charity wants us to understand the blessing we say first thing in the morning, praising the Divine sheasanu bnai chorin, who has made us free people. How does the person who wakes up into freedom also wake up into responsibility? I want to know how in talmudic detail and philosophical detail and political detail how do we deal with the question of freedom and mutual responsibility.

Some look at the phrase Jewish American, or American Jew, and see a space between the words, a gap between two aspects of consciousness. Or they see a dash like a minus sign, where one word or maybe both take something away from the other. I see rather a chemical bond, not ionic, but covalent. A sign of the energy that flows uniquely when two entities are bound together, and something new emerges that is different from either atom on its own.

The hyphen in Jewish-American is one of the most exciting things I know. What made me decide to be American, to file my own declaration at the age of 21, just as my great-grandfather had, is that hyphen. Being Jewish is how we understand being American; being American is how we find the greatness in Judaism.

Ive been talking about ideas in my head, but those ideas are tied up with stories, about my past and the teachers and role models related to those ideas, and the projects and mitzvahs and failures around those ideas, and the communities made possible around those ideas. I teach regularly that we each need to reconnect to our own ideas about freedom and individuality and community and responsibility, and to the stories of our lives and our legacies. It has soothed me this past week to do this; it has soothed me whenever America has been hard to celebrate.

But its about more than soothing. Our environment of free press and free expression, which are great freedoms that environment can also take our breath away quite literally. The only way we reclaim the capacity to act freely is to reconnect ourselves to our ideas and to the stories around those ideas. We become bigger than the difficulty of the moment we get more breath and breathing room when we think about freedom, and when we tell the kinds of stories I am telling, and bring all the characters in those stories to our side again.

There is nothing more practical in this moment. We need our ideas, and we need all those stories. We need them in our minds and we need to share them in conversations, our partners in action and the people who matter to us the most. The people who get things done, who make a difference in our country, are people who know in depth what they think about freedom and responsibility, and why.

You may think this doesnt matter, that someone has decided what the official answer is to all these questions, and what difference does it make what you think. But freedom isnt just about what the Supreme Court says. Its about our culture. Its about what we teach and model for our young people. Its about how freedom and community are expressed in our cities and towns, which are very much under our control. Its about how we build community in conditions of great freedom and individuality among Jews. And its about how we understand ourselves, in every way we have agency.

I pulled out my great-grandfathers citizenship declaration this week because I was invited to say some words at an event this week about immigration issues. At the last minute, I found out that our talks would be translated on the fly for those whose English is comparable to my young great-grandfathers. And when the evening was over, I thought about how remarkable that Wolf Landsmans American declaration could be read out 129 years later almost to the week by his great-grandson, the rabbi, in a New England church, his Russian-speaking X and the court clerks beautiful English becoming a story retold extemporaneously in Spanish. Then, in the hour that followed, I listened to familiar themes and to new stories, from people and groups I dont know well enough, who are new to this country in our generation. Now their ideas about individual freedom and the potential for community join the mix in my head, and remind me that I have to keep engaged in thinking and working on the same ideas and the same questions. And so too must we all.

Thats hard work, but good work. It has been a difficult couple of weeks and more, but still we deserve a celebration. To help us look back, and look around, and look in our minds to locate ourselves again on this weekend of celebrating American freedom. We will find ourselves and become larger again. This is where we are supposed to be. Right here, in the United States of America. Choose America, again. Find yourself here, and you wont find yourself alone.

Read this article:

Inheriting America, then choosing America | Jon Spira-Savett | The Blogs - The Times of Israel