Out Of My Jewish Mind

LESSONS IN RESPECT (A SERMON FOR ROSH HASHANAH)

Tonight I would like to tell you a story. The story is about me. I invoke this prerogative having reached the age of 70. Seventy, according to tradition, is the year you achieve wisdom, so everybody, I got me some wisdom. That means you have to pay attention. Some of you for the first time!

This rather instantaneous wisdom started in May and I will be looking forward to having this wisdom do something special for my life. The truth is I want to tell you several stories of my childhood. The stories are connected in that they are all about my grandparents. And, my great grandfather as well! And they all deal with what I choose to identify as “lessons in respect”. Respect is defined as: to treat with consideration; the recognition of a person’s worth and the esteem for all living beings; deference, veneration and reverence are synonyms.

One story concerns how you treat your own father. It teaches how you treat your own parents. And, the other concerns how you treat other living beings – all other life forms - with respect. I see these as lessons about respect that I learned very young that have stayed with me as personal memories and today is yom hazikaron, the day of memories. And much of the feelings of love are obviously embedded in the bosom of these stories. Love in many instances converges with respect. But whether you love them or not at any given time, our tradition teaches always show respect and honor your parents.

The first story is when I’m about eight and the second story I believe I’m about nine but I may have this reversed.

My great grandfather we knew as Zayde Blau. He was my mothers’ mother’s father.

Some of the salient facts about the man are relevant. During my childhood he lived around the block with his daughter, my grandmother, on 55th St. We lived on 54th Street in Borough Park, Brooklyn. He would get up i ..

A LOOK AT THE PAST

Are there Jewish antecedents or precedents for the rather extravagant notions/edicts we have designated Ascending Lineality, or for Paternal Descent, and the status of the Settled Sojourner?

There is ample evidence for the Settled Sojourner in the biblical narrative; so many husbands and wives of prominent figures like Ruth, and Moses’ wife Zipporah, are good examples. Indeed, the Exodus experience was shared by Hebrews as well as non-Hebrews called the erev rav – the mixed multitude - who joined the people Israel as Settled Sojourners (or, given that their journey entailed four decades of wilderness wandering, “Unsettled Sojourners”). Jews say, “they are our ancestors no less than the ‘original’ Hebrews. We are their descendents just as we derive from the Hebrew core community returning to their homeland in Canaan.”

There is also ample evidence for patriarchal descent in Scripture’s historical narratives related in the Pentateuch, the first five books of the Torah. Joseph, beloved son of Jacob, Rachel’s first-born, (the most unflawed of biblical heroes according to Allan Bloom) had two sons, Ephraim and Manassah, by his Egyptian wife, Asenath. Her grandmother was Potphera, a priest of On who worshipped the Egyptian sun–god Ra. Ephraim, founder of one of the most influential Jewish tribes in the northern Kingdom of Israel often referred to as the “House of Ephraim,” was the offspring of an unconverted non-Hebrew mother...

ASCENDING LINEALITY AND RETROJECTED IDENTITY

Before discussing the issues raised by introducing so audacious and counter-intuitive a proposition as Retrojected Identity, the status of Settled Sojourner brought about as a consequence of Ascending Lineality, it is essential to differentiate between believing Christians, Muslims (indeed, everyone adhering to the faith of an established religious community) and other Gentiles who do not consider themselves religiously committed. Most Jews entering interfaith marriages choose non-religious Gentiles as their mates. One reason is that their life values are more likely to be in agreement. And while the divorce rate in Jewish/non-religious-Gentile marriages is well over 50 percent, it is even higher in marriages between Jews and committed Christians.

How then shall non-Jewish parents dedicated to raising Jewish children be regarded by a Jewish community in the new millennium? How might Gentile parents of Jewish children achieve, or take upon themselves, the very special status of the Ger Toshav, the Settled Sojourner? ...

MATERNAL AND PATERNAL DESCENT

The point here bears repeating: while lineage, or identity as a Jew, was once transmitted only from father to child, then only from mother to child, in our time the Reform and Reconstructionist movements have ruled that, given other required conditions such as a Jewish upbringing, Jewish identity can be conferred by either parent. This ruling is without question a radical but logical innovation of great magnitude and consequence.

At first this change – recognizing (again, as in biblical times) paternal descent as establishing Jewish identity - was put in effect and practiced in Reform synagogues unofficially. Theological justifications were not thought necessary. For decades, Reform Rabbis and their congregations would simply ignore maternity or paternity issues altogether once a child was enrolled in a synagogue’s religious school and the family made clear its decision to raise exclusively Jewish children...

GOD AND GENDER

Since ancient times, god has been described in anthropomorphic, human, terms. Rabbi Donna Berman writes, “We all know that God is neither male nor female, King or Queen. God is defined as beyond human conception and understanding, and all words used to praise this Divine Mystery or to address It are merely a ‘pointing toward’ that which cannot be comprehended or named.

“The feminine aspect of the Oneness of God, according to tradition, is known as the Schechinah or the Divine Presence. This is one of the ten phrases for god used in both traditional and contemporary prayerbooks. Many of these designations like Hashem (the Divine Name) and Mekor Chayenu (the Source of our life) are understood to incorporate masculine as well as feminine dimensions of the divine, who is not less than both god and goddess. Any words and images we use, therefore, are limited as well as limiting. Utilizing only masculine pronouns and images in the English translations of our liturgy is especially limiting since it excludes and marginalizes women...

IGNOSTIC GOD-SEEKERS

My advice is, taking your position at square one, first declare yourself to be an “Ignostic god-seeker” a term “built upon ignorance” – an erudite, educated ignorance unscrambled and unpacked more fully further along in this page. An ignostic is here defined as one who not so much admits as avows and professes up front to being ignorant or uninformed and unknowledgeable of what is meant by god and what is being referred to in god talk. Ignosticism, a solid if provisional conviction entails an active pursuit of understanding – like venturing to read this site thus far in the first place. Ignosticism also serves as a philosophical way-station meant to provide a stepping-stone on the route to growth whether leading to convictions or toward denials. An ignostic requires clarification of how the term “god” is to be defined. An ignostic is not an “agnostic” who takes a leap of faith, rather than a leap of uncertainty (that’s the leap taken by the ignostic! ), and asserts that god (however defined) can never be known...

EGALITARIANISM

One of the most fundamental principles uniting virtually all Reform, Reconstructionist, and most Conservative congregations (that is, most American Jews) is that of egalitarianism. Hence at a Reform synagogue it is taken for granted that its members would not join a Jewish congregation which was not gender neutral, one which falls short of being fully egalitarian.

Reform, Reconstructionist and many Conservative congregations mean by this that no privileges, duties, ritual honors and positions of importance in the synagogue will be determined, affected, or influenced in any way, by gender. Men and women are equal in all respects. As it has been stressed previously, by now the commitment and devotion to gender equality has become a 21st century axiom.

Prayer books for Jewish worship are gender neutral. Contemporary women have written new prayers for important milestones, events, and rites of passage that they alone experience: for the onset of menses and menopause, for giving birth as well as for infertility, miscarriages, abortions and still births, for surviving the trauma of rape, for becoming a mother in law and grandmother, and even for separation and divorce. Today Jews refer to God in feminine (for example, “Shechina,” translated as Presence, Providence) as well as in masculine terms. Women can become - and have become...

SHABBAT SHALOM!

ON SIN, ACTS, SALVATION, THIS WORLD AND THE NEXT

A Jew maintains that no one can atone for a sin except for the sinner. The relevant Jewish viewpoint has been that you don't send another party to jail for someone else’s crime. Nor may another person stand in for or take upon him or herself the misdeeds and transgressions committed by someone else. That would not reflect the concept of justice, at the heart of a covenant. It is a purely Christian idea that we cannot realize our own atonement because we were conceived in original sin and, in a fallen world, are incapable of overcoming our sinful nature without a surrogate who is a Savior.

The Jewish tradition teaches that a sin is a wrongful act not an inherited or intrinsic condition and that everyone is conceived morally neutral - born with a good urge and an evil urge – a yetzer tov and a yetzer ra. Consequently, a parent's job is to cultivate and train the good drive in a child to predominate. It is up to the children themselves, however, (as it is up to all of us) to conduct their lives according to their understanding of God’s will and to do so increasingly on their own as they grow. Most important, in Judaism sin is not original and you don’t come by it automatically ‑ you have to earn it! You start out with a blank slate, and what you write on it is your own composition for good or otherwise...

A DIFFERENT WAY OF THINKING ABOUT THINKING ABOUT GOD

The way in which we think about god has also become rather self-conscious. We (can) now say to ourselves, “Very well, how can I think about god?” rather than, “I have faith in god, I believe in god, or I do not believe in god.” That is a totally different way of thinking, an entirely new manner of introspective reasoning. It sets aside certainty for clarity. As a consequence, we find ourselves constantly considering and reconsidering, stating and restating, defining and redefining the meaning of god – how we might conceive/connect to god - and accepting or rejecting each and every contemporary interpretation, every current understanding, every new revelation, as well as their various alternatives. The conclusions derived from the process may at times prove to be permanent and fixed; at other times provisional and fluid.

Following the wisdom of simplification, we may benefit from the teaching of Rabbi Arthur Green that the singular, if not the single, question to be asked now of Jews and others is, “In what sense do you use the word ‘God’?”

The way in which we think about god has also become rather self-conscious. We (can) now say to ourselves, “Very well, how can I think about god?” rather than...