National Scholar Updates

The Institute for Jewish Ideas and Ideals
Invites you to
Two Wednesday Morning Classes

With Rabbi Hayyim Angel

"The Provocative Readings on the High Holy Days"

This two-part mini-series will delve into the most difficult readings
of Rosh HaShanah and Yom Kippur: the Binding of Isaac and the Book of Jonah. We will consider the text inside and explore ancient and contemporary interpreters in an effort to understand their central messages.

August 13: The Binding of Isaac
August 20: The Book of Jonah

When: 8:40 to 9:40 a.m. (doors open at 8:30 a.m.)

Where: Mezzanine of Apple Bank for Savings, Broadway between 73rd and 74th Streets, New York; Please enter the revolving doors, turn left to the stairwell leading up to the Mezzanine level.

Coffee and Danish will be available

REGISTRATION: The classes are free for members of the Institute for Jewish Ideas and Ideals. For non-members, the fee is $10 per class or $18 for the series. ADVANCE REGISTRATION IS REQUIRED: please email [email protected] and let us know which lecture/s you will be attending. Non-members should pay their fee by making the appropriate contribution at jewishideas.org

The Film Ida
A review by Roger Mesznik; July 14, 2014

Today, Lynn and I saw (with friends) the film IDA, a Polish film provided with English subtitles.

I was moved and puzzled, induced to think and grieve, and left a bit cold. I am very glad to have seen it, and I recommend it.

The film is set in Poland of the 1960s. A novice in a convent (Ida) is talked by the mother superior into meeting her aunt prior to taking her vows. Talking to her aunt for the first time, Ida discovers that she (Ida) was born to a Jewish family, and that her parents and her baby cousin were assassinated during WWII after being stashed for a while by a neighbor in a hideaway in the forest. She also discovers that she was spared as a Jewish baby by being deposited with the village priest. She was saved because she was too small to recall anything, her skin was not dark enough to betray her, and she would not show evidence of a circumcision. She eventually discovers that the then-assassin is a still-living neighbor whom she manages to see.

While watching the film, my first thoughts were directed to the many victims of the Shoah I knew and know who were damaged for life, often damaged irreparably, even though they were spared the gas chambers, the camps, and the killing fields. The story arc of Ida made me think of the people who ended with no descendants. The arc made me think of the people who were never able to overcome the futility of lives rendered sterile, people whose lives were deprived of meaning and purpose, people whose lives were eviscerated of hope, people whose decisive years were wasted hiding in a coal cellar, or in a forest, or under false identities, or in convents and monasteries, or with false families. These victims were not killed, but many of their lives amounted to little more than seeing their respective survival to its predictable end.

From my family history, from friends and acquaintances, from the literature, and from this film again, I was made to feel once more for the millions of victims whose lives were spared, but whose substance and vitality was drained from them with no recourse. Viewed with hindsight, reincarnation in Israel or in the US (to choose the two overriding such destinations) seems so self-evidently healing, and so often heroic and praiseworthy. But we do not have many auto-biographies of the many victims who never healed. Untold numbers of lives are right now draining into an amorphous insignificance of lost hopes and forgone opportunities. They are departing without a record; they are leaving this world without having left any imprint.

I also knew and know people who spent years fighting the Nazi occupation. Many of them spent those years also hoping to create a world in which such monstrosities will never happen again. These hopes were appropriated by false saviors and by idolatrous characters who promised Eden on earth. These liars eventually delivered nothing but disappointment, more pain, more deaths, and many more broken hearts and disillusioned minds.

Ida is in her early twenties. And yet, at the film’s end, she elects to surrender to her original destiny and live out her life as a nun. But the convent is a sad place. It is lost in a far corner of a small village, devoid of any effective purpose and doomed to eventual abandonment. Its decaying old house is too big, its economic basis is missing, and its superficial religious role is fulfilled by greeting people with “God be with you” and the off-handed dispensation of a blessing to a little baby.

Prior to deciding to return to the convent, Ida clearly foreswears the opportunity to seek justice, or revenge, or even a modicum of compensation for the crimes committed against her and her family.

She could have returned to the convent driven by an urge to escape this sordid past. She did not. She could have done it because she elects to devote her future to some grander vision of her religious calling. She did not. She could have done it because she simply wanted to live it up when finally liberated from her oppressive past and present. She did not.

She seems to return to the convent out of a deep sense of self-abnegation; and nothing more. The misery of being a Jew in this hostile world at this hostile time is transformed into an elective controlled misery of self-denial and empty sacrifice. Is it a possible, half-hearted “religious answer” to the well-known “survivor guilt”, or is it only a convenient regression into familiar contexts? This process saddened me.

It seems that her just-discovered past has so broken her that all she can do is to spend the remainder of her days in meaningless self-denial. To be sure that the denial is indeed as painful as it is supposed to be, she even engages in a discovery of what she will miss when taking her vows. She does it on the advice of her aunt who commits suicide shortly after suggesting this possibility to her. After celebrating the memory of her dead aunt by following her advice, she snuffs the remainder of her own life in quiet obedience to inconsequential, anonymous self-effacement. Is she committing a slow-motion suicide which is formally consistent with Catholic religious precepts, but a suicide nonetheless? And to make sure that the viewer understands the depth of this meaningless sacrifice, she is shown as a beautiful and attractive young woman at the prime of her life, and she is told so more than once in the film.

I felt betrayed by Jean-Marie Lustiger, the Jewish boy who had a successful religious “career”, becoming the Catholic Archbishop of Paris. I was moved by his request to have a Hebrew Kaddish prayer recited at his funeral at the portal of the Cathedral of Notre Dame to abide by the beliefs of his parents who were murdered on account of their Jewishness. I am of two minds about Edith Stein, (aka St. Teresa Benedicta of the Cross), a girl of deeply religious Jewish origin who studied medicine, converted to Catholicism, became a nun, and who was apparently either unable or unwilling to save herself when the Nazi came for her in her convent and exterminated her in Auschwitz.

However foreign to me these acts are, they are decided acts of conscious commissions; they are manifestations of a free will which decides to try and leave its imprint on the world to the best of its lights. Ida’s slow suicide is not a commission; it is an omission; it is a denial of responsibility. This is why I was saddened by this Jewish variant of the stereotype of the Catholic martyr.

It evoked in me the loss of so many others, whether or not they had converted. To gauge the impact of the film’s purposeful design, I tried to imagine the same film with an uncircumcised boy and a monastery. It would work mechanically, but not nearly so well. Male saints are usually not so passive. The sympathy for Ida is driven, in part, by the female gender role and the loss of a beautiful girl. This is why the film left me also cold.

Though I am saddened by Stein and Lustiger, their path is consistent with the trajectory of more than 90% of all people who were ever born Jewish. A nation (or a people) which were dominant in the Mediterranean of the Roman world could only be reduced to a rather small few million survivors by continuous shedding of co-religionists, whether forced or voluntary. Lustiger, Stein and untold others tried as best they could to follow their ideas. Ida and untold others like her just gave up. They gave up and they reverted, they yielded to convenience and familiarity.

I do not deplore weakness. I do not deplore accommodation (Think of Primo Levi working inside as a chemist and saving himself in Auschwitz). I do not even deplore instrumental treachery if needed for survival (think of “Sophie’s Choice”). But I am depressed and angered by Ida’s (non-) choice.

The aunt says at one point: “I went to the forest to fight; and for what?” She was clearly a “Court Jew” of the Communist party. She was not a Court Jew because she could lend money; she had none. She was a Court Jew because she could lend unflinching reliability. She and others like her made up the only population segment that the power-seizing communist regime could reliably count on to be steadfastly anti-fascist. As a judge, she became known as “Red Wanda”. She could have been relied on to mete heavy punishment to fascists and collaborators; but also later probably to “Bourgeois

Counterrevolutionaries”. We do not know whether she did also sit in judgment over “Zionist Trotskyists” or “Neo-rightist-deviationists” (speak Jews). She had clearly tried to shed her past. When forced to face it again through the eyes of her niece, she clears what she can, and then she commits suicide in a manner which is statistically decidedly non-female and atypical for women. With her suicide, she grants Ida full liberty to select her own future because the only and just established familial ties are terminally severed. Ida is cleared of all attachments. Ida is now free to choose.

The emptiness of the aunt’s position is also emphasized by a tinny rendition of the anthem “The Internationale” on a poor tape recorder at her funeral. All that is left of the grandiose attempt to “create a new man” and save humanity is this spooky rendition of the hymn of a promised salvation. The aunt’s name, Wanda, is the most common Polish name after Maria. Apparently unwilling, as a Jew, to take on the name Maria, she chose a generic appellation, a really common first name, a name of the people; and probably, in its time, also for the people.

The film put an odd emphasis on the insignificance of this drama in the grand sweep of history. However weighty the situation for Wanda and Ida, it means ultimately nothing for everyone else. When Ida mentions to a new acquaintance that she is of Jewish origin, he replies “I have some Gypsy background in me”. Is this the film maker’s invitation to rise above the biological destiny and the historic determinacy? Are we supposed to become self-defining individuals, unbounded by a common past and our common history?

The filmography is very intriguing. In many passages, the characters are set within the lower part of the picture frame. It makes the viewer feel as if tiptoeing up to an open window to peer through that window into another person’s life. For me, it created another distance to the characters. It provided me more detachment, and it made me feel more disengaged. Did the filmmaker do it to emphasize that the story is ultimately no more than the self-defining defiance of inconsequential individuals?

The setting was very well presented. The ruts and potholes in the road as they drive, the black and white tiles, the recurring spiral staircase, the peeling paint in the hospital, the communist-fashion heavy heels on women’s shoes, the gloomy air, and the all-pervasive suspicion.

Review by Israel Drazin

On the Relationship of Mitzvot between Man and his Neighbor and Man and his Maker
By Daniel Sperber
Urim Publications, 2014, 221 pages

The winner of Israel’s prestigious Israel Prize, Professor Daniel Sperber, a rabbi and Dean of the Faculty of Jewish Studies at Israel’s Bar-Ilan University, published an extremely significant book that should change the thinking of Jews and non-Jews about the purpose of religion. Sperber notes that Jewish law has two categories of commands, called mitzvot in Hebrew, those between people and God and those between one person and another. “The question we wish here to discuss,” he writes, “is which of these two categories is, as it were, more weighty. Or formulated differently: if there were to be a clash between two different mitzvot from these two categories, which one would prevail?” Sperber shows readers many, perhaps over a hundred statements from respected Jewish authorities showing that when a conflict arises, preference must be given to “mitzvot between man and his neighbor,” not “between man and his Maker.” The following is a sample of these statements. The quotes are from Sperber’s book.

There is the classic statement of Hillel emphasizing human relations: “That which is hateful to you, do not do to your friend. That is the whole Torah and, as for the rest, it is commentary.” The “Kabbalist R. Hayyim Vital (is quoted as saying) that when one rises in the morning, even before one goes to prayer, one should remind himself of the mitzvah ‘to love one’s neighbor as oneself’ (Leviticus 19:18).” The famed codifier Rabbenu Asher wrote: “the Holy One blessed be He is more desirous of mitzvot that are done to the satisfaction of human beings, than those which are between man and his Maker.”

The founder of the Musar (Ethics) movement Rabbi Yisrael Salanter said: “Better a failure between man and God, than between man and man.” Rabbi Yosef Engel, known as the Taz, wrote that “God, as it were, would have no complaint or find any fault in one who could not fulfill His commandment (when observing a mitzvah relating to one’s fellow human, such as paying a debt) and need not make it up.” The Ethics of the Fathers states: “He in whom the spirit of mankind find favor, in him the spirit of God finds favor; but he in whom the spirit of mankind finds no favor, in him the spirit of God finds no pleasure.” The Talmud teaches “theft from an individual is more serious than theft from that which has been dedicated to God.” The Netziv wrote that “charity given to the poor is of greater virtue than money given to the temple itself.” In fact, giving charity is even “seen as preferential to building a synagogue or even the Temple.”

This preference is found in Jewish law. The codifier Rema wrote that the biblical mandate to dwell in a Sukkah on the
holiday of Sukkot should be ignored “if a person is engaged in bringing sustenance to their families in straightened circumstances.” Maimonides taught that the biblical command “of bringing the omer (the new barley harvest) before the altar of God cannot push aside those mitzvot directed to helping the poor.” The Code Shulchan Aruch rules that people should not interrupt involvement in communal affairs to pray. Maimonides and Joseph Caro wrote in their codes that as important as study of Torah is, it should be interrupted to give charity. Although the law of the Shabbat is in the Decalogue (the Ten Commandments), the Jewish law is that “even the slightest suspicion of a life-endangering situation overrules the laws of Shabbat.”

After showing these and many more statements and laws that support the view that Judaism considers the behavior of people to one another more important than their behavior towards God, Professor Sperber tells moving tales in close to forty pages showing how famous rabbis exemplified this teaching, people like the Brisker Rav, Rabbi Yisrael Salanter, Rabbi Menahem Mendel of Kosov, Hafetz Hayyim, and others.

He follows this in part three by showing the many ways that Jewish congregations instituted the practice of giving charity prior to beginning one’s morning prayer. This “underscores the moral priority of relationship towards one’s fellow human even before one turns to one’s Creator.”

Thus, it is no surprise that Jewish tradition taught that prayers on Yom Kippur can annul “sins against God,” but “those against fellow humans are not expiated on Yom ha-Kippurim until the sinner appeases him that was sinned against.”

Throughout the centuries, historians, philosophers and anthropologists have struggled with the concept called Israel more than with nearly any other idea. While attempting to place Israel within the confines of conventional history, they experienced constant academic and philosophical frustration. Any definitions they suggested eventually broke down due to significant inconsistencies. Was Israel a nation, a religion or an altogether mysterious entity that would forever remain unexplainable? By some, it was seen less as a nation and more as a religion; others believed the reverse to be true. And then there were those who claimed that it does not fall into either of these categories.

In fact, it was clear to everyone that “Israel” did not fit into any specific framework or known scheme. It resisted all historical concepts and generalities. Its uniqueness thwarted people’s natural desire for a definition, which can be alarming and terribly disturbing. This fact became even more obvious once Titus the Roman forced the Jews out of their country, and specifically after the collapse of the Bar Kochba rebellion. It was then that the Jew was hurled into the abyss of the nations of the world and has since been confronted with a new condition: ongoing insecurity. While mankind has always faced moments of insecurity, it is the Jews who have been denied even the smallest share of the dubious security that others possess. Whether Jews were aware of it or not, they always lived on ground that could, at any moment, give way beneath their feet.

In 1948 Israel once again became a country. But many forgot that it was not only a country. All the other dimensions, such as nationhood, religion, mystery, insecurity and lack of definition continued to exist. The people of Israel today do not find themselves exclusively in the land of Israel, and instead of one Israel the world now has two. But the second, new Israel has until now been seen as responding to the demands of history, geography, politics and journalism. One knows where it is. At least one thinks one knows where it is. But it becomes clearer and clearer that this new and definable Israel has already become as much a puzzling and perplexing entity as the old Israel always was.

Throughout its short history, the State of Israel has experienced the most inexplicable events modern man has ever seen. After an exile of nearly 2,000 years, during which the old Israel was able to survive against all historical odds, it returned to its homeland. There it found itself surrounded by a massive Arab population that was and is incapable of making peace with the idea that this small and peculiar nation lives among them. After having suffered a Holocaust in which it lost six million of its members, it was not permitted to live a life of tranquility on its tiny piece of land. Once again, the Jew was denied the right to feel at home in his own country.

From the outset Israel was forced to battle its enemies on all fronts. It was attacked and then condemned for defending its population and fighting for its very existence. Over the years it had to endure the international community’s policy of double standards. Today, as in the past, when it calls for peace it is condemned for provoking war. When it tries, as no other nation does, to avoid hurting the citizens of the countries that declare war on it, it is accused of being more brutal than nations that committed and still commit atrocities against millions of people. Simultaneously, and against all logic, this nation builds its country as no other has done, while fighting war after war. What took other nations hundreds of years, Israel accomplished in only a few. While bombs and rockets attack its cities, while calls for its total destruction are heard in many parts of the world, it continues to increase its population, generate unprecedented technology and create a stronger and more stable economy. But the more it succeeds, the more its enemies become frustrated and irritated, and the more fragile Israel’s security becomes. The more some nations aspire to destroy it, the more the world is forced to deal with this small country and its miraculous survival. By now, Israeli politics and diplomacy occupy more space in major newspapers than any other political issue or general topic ¬¬– as if Israel is actually at the center of world events.

Jews must ask themselves what this non-classification really signifies. Is it due merely to lack of vision and insight on the part of the nations? Is it that Jews could really fit into a system but the nations have not yet allowed them entry? Is it a negative phenomenon? A temporary one, until it will rectify itself in the future?

We have only one way to comprehend the positive meaning of this otherwise apparently negative phenomenon: faith. From any other viewpoint, the failure of Jews to fit into any category would be intolerable, a meaningless absurdity. We need to understand that the Jews’ inability to conform to any classification is the very foundation and meaning of their living avowal of Israel’s uniqueness. Israel’s very existence is the manifestation of mysterious and heavenly intervention in history to which the Jews must attest. Only in Israel do history and revelation coincide. While other nations exist as nations, the people of Israel exist as a reminder of God’s involvement in world history. Only through Israel is humanity touched by the divine.

The realization of this fact has become modern Israel’s great challenge. Its repeated attempts to overcome its geographic and political insecurity by employing world politics will not work. Driven by its desire to overcome its vulnerability, it wavers between geography and nationhood, appealing to its history and religious culture while unable to find a place that it can call its existential habitat.

Reading about Israel’s prophets, we see how they warned against such false notions of security. They predicted that Israel would perish if it insisted on existing only as a political structure. Yet, it can survive – and this is the paradox of the reality of Israel – as long as it insists on its vocation of uniqueness.

Israel was summoned to remind the world of God’s existence, not only concerning religion but also as a historical reality and above all as a unique moral voice. We must understand that our enemies want to uproot our system of values and principles by drawing us into situations in which we are forced to make moral decisions that are so complex that they become nearly impossible to implement. In that way, they are able to accuse us of war crimes and the worst atrocities. The world has not yet forgiven the Jews for the Holocaust. As long as their direct or indirect participation in the massacre of the Jewish people proves their total moral bankruptcy, these nations cannot live at peace with themselves. They must therefore prove that Israel’s moral standards are worse than theirs. Only in that way can they cleanse themselves of their own moral failure.

We must convince our children that the reason why we are here and why we need to fight war after war is not for our phenomenal high-tech, our military power, or our capability to build a modern state out of barren desert. All those accomplishments are means, not ends. We are here to fulfill an extraordinary mission that is deeply rooted in Jewish religious and moral values.

We don’t fight wars just to survive; we don’t even fight to merely overcome evil. We fight wars because we believe that man must surpass himself so as to become righteous, and that is possible only if the great evil that surrounds us has been eliminated. Israel needs to be a powerhouse of moral audacity, defying the world’s mediocrity and hypocrisy.

We cannot endlessly continue to send our children into the battlefield unless they are convinced that they are fighting for a supreme mission. While they are, at this hour, highly motivated, we have no guarantee that this will continue tomorrow. Only when they know that they fight for the soul of all men and that a highly inspiring Judaism is our invincible weapon will they continue to fight for all of us. After all this is not a war like all other wars, this is a Jewish war with a four thousand long history of spiritual heroism. But this requires a revolution in Jewish education, a drastic reorientation of what Judaism is really all about, and extraordinary boldness on the part of our rabbis.

If the government wants our children to continue fighting, it will have to give primacy to this Jewish mission and ensure that it becomes deeply engraved in their souls. If not, it will one day lose our children and be left without a supreme army. We cannot fight just because we are Israelis. We must fight because we are, first and foremost, Jews. The decision will be between putting band-aids on our wounds or performing a long-overdue surgery and getting things right.

There is no security for Israel unless it is secure in its own destiny. It must assume the burden of its own uniqueness, which is nothing less than taking on its role as God’s witness. And it must draw strength from this position, especially in times such as ours when Israel’s very existence is again at stake. Paradoxically, once it recognizes its uniqueness, it will undoubtedly be victorious and enjoy security.

****

Some of My Best Friends
A Journey through Twenty-First Century Anti-Semitism
By Ben Cohen
Edition Critic, 2014, 215 pages

Ben Cohen is a specialist on Jewish and international affairs and has written articles for the Wall Street Journal, Commentary, Haaretz, Tablet, and many other publications. He collected seventy of these articles and published them in this volume. He distinguishes “bierkeller” from the new “bistro” anti-Semitism. The first, which is best-known, is the crude variety that was shouted by Nazis as they guzzled beer and by red-necks in our own country today while they mimic this egregious behavior. But “bistro” anti-Semitism is polite, quiet-mannered, seemingly reasonable, pseudo-sophisticated, expressed mostly, according to Cohen, by members of the far left. These anti-Semites hide their animus by critiquing Zionism, not Jews. Cohen gives multiple examples of this behavior that add up to an insidious indictment that reaches even the highest levels of friendly governments.

Cohen’s articles fall into six categories: The UK, Jews, and Israel; The Middle East and Israel in context; Anti-Zionism in action; Anti-Semitism and anti-Judaism; The US and Israel; and On Israel and Iran.

Among much else, Cohen highlights that “whereas once the Jewish question (or problem) was viewed through the prism of economics, now it belongs to the realm of politics.” Jews are seen as heading, aiding, and maintaining American world leadership for their own interest: “Jewish national consciousness is, a priori, reactionary, supremacist, and politically aligned with imperialism.”

Cohen sees that the far left is fixated with the Palestinians and it is in their statements about the Palestinians “that we find the brashest expressions of anti-Semitism…. Fringe neo-Nazi groups notwithstanding, significant anti-Semitism is now exclusively a left-wing rather than a right-wing phenomenon.” The term Zionism has become a “code word for the forces of reaction in general, Zionism has assumed a global importance for the contemporary Left that even Marx and Lenin could not have foreseen.” This new anti-Semitism is “generally dated back to September 2000, when the second Palestinian intifada began.” As a result, “the extreme left in western societies not only denigrates Israel and Zionism in a systematic manner, but its irrational hostility frequently spills over into contempt towards Jews and Judaism.”

The new anti-Semites claim that their “views are not offensive, not anti-Semitic.” They are only standing up for the rational and moral view, the view with which every reasonable person would agree. It “is the opinion of those who object to the views that should be considered beyond the pale.” When Jews call them anti-Semites, they are being unreasonable.

This subtle anti-Semites, for example, would not deny that the Nazis killed Jews, but they redistribute much of the blame for their deaths upon the victims. Boycotting Israeli goods is not being anti-Jewish it is only an attempt to make Israel realize its mistakes and to see reason.

Cohen discusses the alleged distinction between moderate and radical Muslims, which hopefully places Hassan Rouhani, the Iranian president, in the first grouping. Yet, Rouhani dismissed Israel as a “miserable regional country.”

Cohen explains how the new anti-Semitism plays out in various countries, including the US where Jewish-oriented programs are curtailed, England, Iran, and others. In Turkey, for example, the ruling Justice and Development Party is called moderate by many people, but “this seems to me less like logic, and more like prayer.” The leadership is promoting Islamic practices such as Islamic dress codes, it demands that married couples have at least three children, prohibits alcohol, abortion, and smooching in public, and clamps down on freedom of speech. Turkey’s leaders “fulminate against shadowy plots hatched by Marxists, Kurdish separatists, and – most of all – Jews.” These are not the acts of moderates.

Cohen’s book ends with a thought-provoking article on the view of the prior United Kingdom Chief Rabbi, Sir Jonathan Sacks, who argued that the British system of multiculturalism, where every “every ethnic group and religious group becomes a pressure group, putting our people’s interest instead of the national interest.” Individuals have rights, but they should seek to aid the goals of the nation in which they live, as Jews have always done. “The norm was for Muslims to live under a Muslim jurisdiction and the norm, since the destruction of the first Temple, was for Jews to live under a non-Jewish jurisdiction.” There is, Cohen concludes, “the historic unwillingness within Islam to accept that there are situations in which Muslims will be a minority,” and this refusal is corroding England.

In short, Cohen’s book contains many analyses of situations around the world which explain the subtleties behind what is happening and why, and which highlight problems that people and nations with rose-colored glasses prefer to ignore, but must be addressed.

Identification and Dislocation:
the Breakdown of Worshipful Expression

by Michael Haruni

One of the dilemmas we faced during the preparation of the Nehalel siddur was over the instructions, or “rubric”. For on the one hand there is, undoubtably, tremendous value in the detailed instructions appearing in the major contemporary English-language siddurim on how and where to bow in Amidah, where to kiss tzitziyot during and after Keriyat Shema, how to wave the lulav, and so forth. Baaley teshuvah especially have, since the advent of the ArtScroll siddur, found themselves able as never before to participate competently and confidently in shul procedures. The frum-from-birth users have benefited too, it must be said, filling in finer details previously eluding them.

On the other hand, however, we also sensed that detailed performance instructions induce not a heartfelt act of worship but a sort of robotics, leaving out the real mental and spiritual requisites of prayer. The motions we perform when we pray should ideally function, surely, as expressions of the stirrings of our hearts, as elements in our acts of telling God of our love and awe of Him, of our thanks for the good in our lives, and of our needs. Indeed, the performance of mitzvot generally should be driven to the outside from within; whereas I suspect that by synthesizing such motions from detailed choreographic instructions, we create an act that goes no deeper than its outward features. (I confess that, with Nehalel beShabbat, we too rather often fell in with the contemporary standard of providing mind-control instructions.)

This focus on the formal synthesis of practice is symptomatic of the larger malaise compellingly observed by Rabbi Nathan Lopes Cardozo: that in mainstream Orthodoxy, shul-going, tefilah, and Halachah generally have, for many of us, ceased to act as instruments of genuine worship—as the language by which we express our love of God in response to His overarching, quite straightforward demand, le’ahava et Adoshem Elokecha.

We have replaced God with prayers, no longer realizing to Whom we are praying. We even use Halachah as an escape from experiencing Him. We are so busy with creating halachic problems, and so completely absorbed by trying to solve them, that we are unaware of our hiding behind this practice so as not to deal with His existence… We must realize that the purpose of Halachah is to have an encounter with Him, not just with the Halachah. Halachah is the channel through which we can reach Him, not just laws to live by. (Present volume, p…..)

The remarks that follow are my attempt to understand this communicative role of Halachah—as well as the apparent breakdown of this role. What really can we expect of Halachah in this respect? Is there really substance to this idea of communicating with God through Halachah? In particular, when we say that Halachah can work as a means of communication, or of expression, are we merely invoking a metaphor—albeit a highly potent one—or can we attribute to this idea some philosophical and even psychological reality?

I’ll begin by mentioning the observations made by Rabbi Haym Soloveitchik concerning the role of mimicry in the acquisition of halachic practice. For I want to suggest that Halachah does have a real expressive force, which is strongly connected to this role of mimicry—much in the way that the expressive force of language is connected to the role of mimicry in the acquisition of language. (Indeed I suspect that the idea of the transmission of meaning from each generation to the next, loaded tacitly in R. Soloveitchik’s concept of a mimetic tradition of Halachah but not made explicit in his discussion, is part of what makes that concept so alluring.) Our lesser regard now for Halachah as an instrument of communication is tied, I shall then suggest, to the shift away from mimicry as the source of halachic practice.

* * * * * * * * * * * *

In his seminal article, “Rupture and reconstruction: the transformation of contemporary Orthodoxy” (Tradition, Vol. 28, no. 4, 1994; my page references are from its reprint in R. Rosenberg & C. I. Waxman, eds., Jews in America: A Contemporary Reader, 1999), R. H. Soloveitchik describes the move that began in the 1950s in Orthodox circles, especially in the US, UK and Israel, towards a religious practice constructed from halachic texts, and away from what had previously functioned to transmit halachic practice through generations, namely, the mimicry of observed practice. Halachic practice had always gained its currency in each generation of orthodox Jews by their seeing and hearing the practice of their parents, teachers and rabbis as well of others in their communities, and emulating this.

Halakhah is a sweepingly comprehensive regula of daily life...it constitutes a way of life. And a way of life is not learned but rather absorbed. Its transmission is mimetic, imbibed from parents and friends, and patterned on conduct regularly observed in home and street, synagogue and school. (p. 321)

But various factors, R. H. Soloveitchik explains, particularly the ruptures created by mass emigration from the Old World and most especially by the Holocaust, led us to seek out the bases for our practices, less in the visible conduct of our model figures, more in halachic texts. The compulsion to faithfully reproduce that halachic life no longer visible to us—the form of life we attribute in our imagination to those vanished worlds—has pressed us to explore incessantly deeper into the texts for minutiae of Halachah lost, we fear, from erstwhile practice. “A tireless quest for absolute accuracy, for ‘perfect fit’—faultless congruence between conception and performance—is the hallmark of contemporary religiosity.” (p. 328) Powered by this clamor for ever greater accuracy, an explosion of Halachic literature and readership has mushroomed, and obscure practices that may never have actually had any significant role in religious life, now newly sourced in texts, have become germane to the new Orthodoxy.

R. H. Soloveitchik is clearly not suggesting that the mass of halachic text now dominating Orthodox life is in any way extraneous to Torah miSinai (and nor, for what it’s worth, am I). Only that (in my fallible understanding), the reality of religious practice—the reality which must act, surely, as the defining paradigm of what religious Judaism eternally is—has never in actuality embodied the multitude of minute requirements that are now being deciphered out of the textual tradition and introduced into mainstream practice. Whereas if we want to get a closer idea of what real Orthodox Judaism is, what really identifies it, we must look back at what our ancestors of a few generations ago and before were actually doing. And to use one of R. H. Soloveitchik’s examples, they did indeed sort bones from the fish they ate on Shabbat, despite the applicability, theoretically, of the issur livror, which has only more recently been brought into focus.

Now what might this imply about the possibility of genuine worship? I fear that the text-based construction of worshipful conduct, characteristic of our time, leaves something vital out of our performance of mitzvot. For as long as what fed our religious practical proficiency was the connective of mimicry, this, as I shall now try to clarify, must have brought a certain crucial kind of response into play. Watching and emulating a person with whom we identify, as they lay tefilin, or wave a lulav, we not only reproduce the practice enriched with those subtleties which a written description—inevitably an abstraction to some degree—leaves out. This identification with our model, I shall argue, also imparts a certain inner element that turns the practice into a means for genuine human worshipful expression—and missing from it when our worshipful conduct is synthesized out of text.

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Think of what happens when we observe and imitate a human being. What was at work when, as a child, I watched my father wearing tefilin and praying—saw a human heart throbbing in powerful devotion to God—and then, identifying with him, began to pray and later lay tefilin in imitation of him?

The most striking accomplishment of the human facility to imitate—and the principal phenomenon with which I shall compare halachic practice—is language. But I’ll first dwell momentarily on mime artists and their artful impersonations of human beings. This illustrative model will, I hope, help us understand certain elements when we look, first at language, and then at the halachic case.

Mime artists do not merely reproduce the external, visible features of their subject. They show us these by way of showing us the attitude of the subject—the joy, despondence, meekness, haughtiness and so on which they see in their subjects. The mimic looks empathically into the mind of the subject, sees this person’s mental state and reproduces it through the mannerisms and gestures which express that mental state. Indeed it is by focusing on that state of mind of the subject and then finding it in themselves—“becoming” the subject internally—that mime artists replicate those external expressions. And though we see directly only those external features shown us by the mime artist, we also see through them to the joy or the haughtiness and so forth—we are looking, that is, at a person in that mental state.

Something like this goes on in the acquisition of language. Infants hear the sounds of words and in due course replicate these. But these sound-productions become speech only insofar as infants match them with the meanings these sounds express. Hearing their parents say “apple” and discovering that their parents use this word when they want to say something about an apple, the infants too become able to use the word to mean apple. They must have, in other words, like the mime artist, seen into the minds of their parents and detected this desire to refer to an apple. Astonishing though this human facility is, it is not something magical: it will have been preceded by a natural process in which their parents, or other models, have some number of times done things like said “apple” as they hold or point to an apple. (According to some contemporary views, this is enabled by an innately endowed conceptual scheme which this process merely fills with content; but for our purposes this makes no difference, as the relevant end result of the process is the same.) The infant becomes able in this way to recognize the meaning the model intends when using the term—aware, that is, of the mental act which a use of the term expresses. And it is this match which the infant then reproduces: finding in her or himself the desire to say something about an apple (such as that she or he is hungry for an apple), the infant is able to express this desire by using the word “apple”.

It is thus by imitation of our parents as well as our siblings, extended family, teachers, community and so on, as they use the terms of the language in appropriate contexts, that we learn to use these terms, paired systematically with the world of meanings, ultimately making up the complex whole of our language.

The infant does not of course pursue this imitative achievement consciously or deliberately (unlike the mime artist). Yet nearly all of us are, quite evidently, innately endowed with the ability involved here (not with the language itself, but with the ability to acquire the language by imitation). It is, moreover, our innate impulse to press ahead with this process: we are innately urged to empathically see what people have in mind and thus learn how, upon discovering those states of mind in ourselves, to give them expression with our own corresponding linguistic behavior.

In just this way we also acquire a panoply of more elementary, non-linguistic gestures and mannerisms, such as head-shaking, shrugging, frowning and ululating. We detect in others a meaning, see that it is matched with a certain kind of physical expression, and so become able to express this meaning, when we find it in ourselves, by reproducing the same physical expressions (though some matchings might also have come to us innately, such as a smile with happiness). Indeed the universal human facility and urge to imitate is, in this way, central to the transmission of gestures and characteristics that are, like language, largely nationally and culturally specific (indeed it is often striking how much of the mimetically acquired characteristics of a child’s facial expressions and mannerisms are family-specific).

Once our language and other terms of expression are acquired, there is nothing artificial or constructed about our use of them. They become, rather, the natural, instinctive instruments for expressing our thoughts about the world and our yearnings. It is with these we give unmediated expression to our most intimate and overwhelming emotions. They are what reveal, in the most powerful and essential way, our very humanity.

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So it is, I suggest, when by emulating our parents, siblings, teachers and rabbis, we learn to pray, to lay tefilin, to create the world of Shabbat, and so on. We acquire in just this way a language for speaking to God. For as we watch them, we are aware not just of the physical aspects of their actions: we also have an urge—I am extrapolating here from what is hugely evident in the case of language and gesture acquisition—to empathically identify the mental states of which these physical aspects are expression; to discover, that is, the mental states motivating their worshipful behavior; and thus we become able, when we find this worshipful mental state within ourselves, to give it expression by exhibiting the same worshipful behavior. What we emulate is, in other words, not just the outward behavior, but the pairing of these inner and outer components of the act of worship. Through these pairings, thus acquired, our halachic practice becomes the means for expressing our own worshipful mental states. In this way, Halachah as a whole becomes our natural idiom for expressing to God our own inner stirrings.

Here, again, I am not imputing to the halachic novice any magical, mind-reading powers. How then do our halachic novices determine what the inner states of their models are? How do they know whether this is their model’s love of God, or awe of God, or perhaps the model’s lasting passion to blindly obey a teacher from childhood, or possibly even—for all the novice can tell—eagerness for money offered to the model in exchange for performing the mitzvah?

It is possible, for all I know, that in some instances at least, the novice is able to distinguish, just from the subtleties of the model’s performance, that it is an expression of love of God, or perhaps that it is an expression of blind obedience to a teacher. That said, I don’t assume every Jew on the way to independent halachic observance has sufficient perceptive powers, even if some do. Different novices will vary in this respect; so will their models vary as to how much their performances show their inner states. But I’d surmise that, more usually, other contextual indications play a role here, too. One novice may know her father as a man gushing with love who, as she knows also from conversation with him, directs much of this love to God; and this will probably tilt her interpretation of her father’s behavior. Likewise if she knows that a Kaddish-sayer in shul is providing someone a service in exchange for payment. Moreover, a novice’s interpretation could be erroneous—nothing assures he sees the model’s soul accurately. Or possibly the novice identifies the mental state less specifically—perhaps as some indeterminate attitude somewhere between love and awe. But whatever attitude or emotion the novice ascribes to her model—truthfully or falsely—this, I suggest, will be part of the mental state-with-expression match which she emulates in her own performance of the mitzvah.

The context influencing the novice’s interpretation could include, for sure, the learning and discussion he or she brings to bare. His having learned about ahavat haShem, for instance, may prejudice—correctly or otherwise—how he now understands the performance he observes. But I doubt this learning can stand on its own in the cultivation of the worshipping self. For it is the process of observing, interpreting and emulating human beings that furnishes the novice with this warm instrument of human expression. The language-like, expressive force of halachic practice—its capacity to reveal our inner stirrings in this immediate, instinctive way—derives from this imitative process, and not, in most of us at least, from theoretical study.

There is also another feature of this imitative process that significantly empowers halachic practice as a means for showing God our souls. Our identification with our parents, family, teachers and community not only invests halachic practice with the capacity to express our worshipful feelings: in addition, much in the way that my first language is itself inseparable from my sense of who I am, the language of religious practice itself becomes part of my identity. It comes with this sense of being intimately mine. When I pray, I am speaking a message to God which draws, in the fullest possible way, from my very being—free of posturing or alien fabrication, essential in both content and form to the person I am.

I must at this point offer a reality check. What is this relation actually like between performance of a mitzvah and the mental state it expresses? Is this something we could really recognize in our lives? I think the answer is yes, but to prevent us looking for the wrong thing, I must mention a few features which an expressive halachic act need not have. Firstly, as I shall clarify, a halachic act can be expressive of love, or of awe, without this being any kind of overwhelming, trance-like state of consciousness; indeed it need not be any kind of conscious episode. Secondly, the idea that love of God impels us to perform a mitzvah does not mean we should expect this love to sometimes impel us to act in any involuntary or unconsidered way (it will not, for instance, sometimes shake us helplessly out of bed at 2 am to lay tefilin). More positively, our love will show through action that is clear-headedly attentive to time and circumstances.

Compare an act of love for another person, such as when, pressed by love, I buy a present for my wife. This is a highly complex action, lasting over a period, comprising an indefinite sequence of sub-actions, each waiting for the right moment. I may first conceive the idea on Sunday, then check when I can shop for it, and only on Tuesday get in the car, turn the ignition, drive down to Emek Refa’im, search for parking, look in at a few stores, wait my turn at one of them and discuss options with the salesperson, finally choose something, take out a credit card, and so on. The deliberate and time-phased nature of the scheme takes nothing away from its being motivated the whole way by love, from it being manifestation of this ongoing condition of my person. I am not transported through it by any trance-like state of consciousness. Conscious episodes of love may occur in me from time to time, though I doubt these are essential to love being the motive. (This is not the space for a theory of love, but I’ll just retell the familiar wisdom that what does testify to its being love is a much larger narrative—years of marriage, shared understanding and lots more.) Nor has this love taken hold of me and forced me to act in any involuntary way: it is, rather, integrated rationally into the matrix of my intentions and understanding regarding the world generally. It is true that some acts of love are less time-bound, more spontaneous, such as a kiss given just on a whim. But these, too, are typically executed not in an involuntary transport but with at least some attention to circumstances, and with ensuing restraint (e.g., not in front of certain witnesses).

It is to this same extent plausible that my performing of a mitzvah is an expression of love, even if it is not produced involuntarily by a spontaneous burst of passion. For so it is with love: it can be my ongoing love of God that presses me to lay tefilin, say Birkat Hamazon, make Kiddush at the Shabbat table, though I do each just when it is appropriately occasioned, at which moment I enact a complex and deliberate scheme (carry my tefilin to shul, go to my seat and so forth). Nor does the possible absence of any conscious episode of loving Him, as I perform the mitzvah, cast doubt on the existence of this love, or on its being at play as my motive. The love may at some moments enter consciousness, but its doing so is not essential to its being my motive. It will be, rather, this ongoing condition of my person which, just in appropriate circumstances—such as it being time for Shacharit, or when I finish a meal, or when we come to the Friday night table—manifests in my considered performance of the mitzvah. (If mitzvot shehazman lo geraman differ at all relevantly in this respect from the more time-bound mitzvot I’ve used as examples, it is in their being potentially more spontaneous; so that, kal vechomer, there can be even less suspicion that they fail to demonstrate love.)

I must stress also that none of what I’ve said comes to deny that halachic texts play a role in the cultivation of expression through halachic practice—of course they do. A practice we have acquired through imitation and then refine further by consulting texts retains its identity as an instrument of personal expression. In contrast, however, a practice constructed in the first place from text alone, and deployed in an attempt to express through it (say) love of God, will lack this immediate and instinctive communicative force. Nor will it truly come from me.

Where, it must be asked, does this place ba’aley teshuvah or for that matter converts? Bereft of a parental model, are they unable to secure the intimate expressiveness of Halachah which I argue is yielded by mimetic transmission? Are they not bound to relying on instructional text? Not at all. Newcomers to Orthodoxy will acquire this identification with practice by attaching themselves to, and identifying with, a community, empathically watching what their fellow shul-goers and perhaps teachers do, and emulating them. In the course of time they, like anyone else there, will have made the language of worship their own. As much as the rest of us, they will acquire the patterns of prayer, tefilin, kashrut, the dos and don’ts making for the glow of Shabbat, and so on, until these shape, for them too, the form of life that is, potentially, our unmediated expression of love of God. They too become participants in this vital, human, forward-moving project of intimately worshipping God, a flux that began at Sinai, has been carried forward from generation to generation, and is now propelled onwards by us.

Family and community have been the artery within which Torat Moshe has coursed through our history. In just the way each generation of a nation inherits its language, we’ve inherited halachic practice, loaded at each moment with its signifying force—and always with the sense that this is the language our ancestors have used, since Matan Torah, to express their love of God. To be sure, each generation imparts its admixture to this organically developing tradition—partly in the form of evolving minhag, partly through scholarly refinement; just as each generation of a nation imparts colloquialisms and sometimes scholarly correctives to its national language that are soon incorporated into its mainstream. Yet it is with this entire continuous emerging tradition that we identify; it is with the inner dimension of worship running through it that we empathize. In this ongoing human project we’ve found our place, and in so doing have become genuinely able to participate in worship.

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But a breach now in the sequence, with the new shift to the authority of text, places it in danger. For the project of synthesizing halachic practice from text gives us no more than this behavioral facility; it contains no mechanism providing us with a means for expressing our inner stirrings to God, such as is furnished by imitation. The shift from mimicry to the authority of text thus brings with it, I suspect, not just the change of quantity and emphasis in halachic practice accounted for by R. H. Soloveitchik—the move to a Judaism of chumrot—but also a qualitative change: it is failing to cast Halachah in the spiritual and psychological role it has traditionally fulfilled.

I must, however, step back a moment and ask, is this harsh conclusion born out by reality? Is it really true that a halachic practice incorporated into our lives after we discover it in a text, instead of by emulation, is less likely to function as expressive of our love of God? Let me flesh out the situation with an example. Suppose in a shiur on Mishnah Berurah, I learn that Chanukah lights must be in a window less than 10 tephachot (slightly less than one yard) above ground level, if one has such a window (if one doesn’t have one, then higher is okay; cf. 671:27); and suppose that, in ignorance of this, it has been our family practice to place them in a window above 10 tephachot, even though we do have a window below this height. I can imagine ourselves engaging in some family debate, then switching to the lower window, and yes, with the feeling that we are only now fulfilling the mitzvah properly. But I doubt anything about doing this switch, motivated just by our concern to conform with the written ordinance, will make it in any sense an act expressing our love of God. It will feel, rather, like an alien imposition, even a disruption of the particular form of life by which we’ve celebrated the relation God has had with Am Yisrael and through which we’ve shown Him our reciprocal love.

I must also very forcefully stress here that I do not for a moment mean to suggest, God forbid, that a failure of the communicative role of a mitzvah could be reason not to perform it. I am, to start with, most certainly not qualified to suggest to anyone what they are halachically bound to do or not do. And more importantly: even if I am correct in saying that a mitzvah we’ve discovered in a text lacks the expressive force that would have been given it by imitation, some other solid reason may nevertheless exist to perform this mitzvah. What our reasons are for performing mitzvot is a huge question of hashkafah, far beyond the scope of the present discussion; but expressiveness is certainly not an exclusive answer. Suffice it to mention here the plausible view that we must perform the mitzvah simply lishmah—as a self-sufficient, intrinsically valuable act; or the view that we must perform it just because God has told us to; or that it is for the sake of some human utility, known or unknown to us, which God wishes us to introduce into the world; or because by doing it repeatedly we eventually do come to express by it our love of God. Deeply disconcerted though some of us may be if the expressive potential of a mitzvah has fallen into some dereliction, it would be outrageous to suppose this could be reason to stop performing it. My conclusion does not extend beyond pointing to this breakdown of expressiveness.

But even this limited statement may seem overly alarming. For in reality we still mostly identify with parents and a community whose practices of Shabbat, tefilin, kashrut and Chanukah lights, for instance, are our primary encounter with and source of mitzvot. Insofar as we are prompted into our own performing of a given mitzvah by identification and emulation, so too does this action retain its expressive power. There admittedly are contemporary practices of which I doubt this can be said—in some circles, for instance, the gebrokts apron, preventing matzo crumbs from landing on moisture, has become de rigueur accoutrement at the seder table—but these remain the minority of our practices. Surely, then, the tradition is still principally transmitted by imitation.

That may be true, yet I fear the evaluative shift towards a religiosity based on the authority of text nevertheless brings with it a more pervasive erosion. For it devalues in a general way the possibility of communicating through Halachah with God. One way of putting this is that a different motivation for performing mitzvot has begun to captivate us, namely, to cultivate a practice whose formal features match the requirements of texts; so that, correspondingly, we have become less driven by the motive to show God our love. The whole enterprise of performing mitzvot in order to express our inner devotion—always its vital human core—is moving towards obsoleteness.

Actually, though, I think the situation is more complex. It is not that we have ceased to inherit halachic practice through mimicry. Mimetic transmission largely continues: we still observe parents, teachers and others performing mitzvot, and we are still driven to interpret their motives and to emulate the halachic practice that becomes, in ourselves too, expressive of those motives. But we are now gripped by an ideology that focuses just on the formal match between behavior and text. Our new premise, that achieving this match is the true reason for performing mitzvot, now guides our interpretation of halachic practice—is now what guides the novice’s interpretation of her model—so that the novice is much likelier than before to interpret halachic practice as motivated just by the concern to achieve this formal match. She may even be misinterpreting that practice—a real, active love of God might be concealed from her by the new premise—nonetheless, a formal match will in turn become her own motive for performing mitzvot. The motivational turn widely infecting us in this way is what is prompting the novel preoccupation, described by R. H. Soloveitchik, with elevating ever more details from the halachic literature into common practice. Moreover, given the authority of text, even the imitative identification with our forbears could, with time, become superfluous altogether.

Halachah is potentially the language in which we tell God we love Him. We learn it by observing others speaking it, empathizing with their motives and emulating them. But we are losing sight of this communicative purpose of Halachah. It is as if we are becoming obsessed with learning some natural language, not in order to communicate in it with others, but just for the purpose of producing syntactically perfect sentences, without the ability to use these sentences for conveying our thoughts: at first we go about this by observing its native speakers—listening only for the formal properties of their speech, indifferently to the meanings they express through it; then in due course we turn for our authoritative source to an instruction manual of syntax, renowned for its accuracy, which teaches us to produce excellent sentences but leaves out their meanings. We are moving, it may be said, towards a condition of halachic aphasia.

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All is not lost. We can counter the trend with education—as parents by telling our children, as teachers by telling our students and, I humbly submit, as rabbis our congregants, that our reason for performing mitzvot is ahavat haShem. This principle, disseminated widely enough, stands a chance of prejudicing accordingly the next generation’s interpretation of halachic practice. But as their models, we shall need to be sincere: our own examples need to convincingly demonstrate this love. If we are visibly phony, no one will inherit it from us.

On this coming Rosh HaShana the Shmita (Sabbatical) year (5775 – 2014-15) will begin. According to its laws, routine agricultural activities are prohibited and its produce is ownerless, free to be taken by all. At the end of the year, Shmitat Kesafim (the remission of debts) also takes effect. If we look at this also in the context of the (currently inapplicable) Yovel (Jubilee) year, which in addition to the Shmita laws also frees the slaves and includes massive agrarian reform as all land that had been bought and sold in the previous fifty years reverts to its original owners, we witness a massive societal change with utopian overtones. Before returning to this topic I would like to present two inverse parallel stories of utopian redemption, Rebbe Nachman of Breslov’s “The Master of Prayer” and Ayn Rand’s “Atlas Shrugged” . Their tales are surprisingly similar in structure and yet opposites in the values that they promote and in their respective visions of society, redemption and utopia.

Rebbe Nachman (1772-1810) witnessed the beginnings of modernization, the industrial revolution, capitalism and the enlightenment. He saw these trends as posing a grave threat to people of religion and struggled to empower his followers and readers with tools to maintain their faith and values. He told the story "The Master of Prayer" to his followers on Saturday night, January 6, 1810, less than a year before his untimely death from tuberculosis. This story which is based upon Kabbalistic motifs regarding the process of the future redemption, focuses primarily on the charismatic and revolutionary Master of Prayer (perhaps alluding to Rebbe Nachman himself), who leads a secret counter culture group that lives on the edge of a general society that is increasingly alienated from spiritual values. This group was dedicated to the worship of God and was based upon a clear set of values and goals: “He would explain that the only true goal was to serve God all the days of one’s life, spending one’s time praying to God and singing His praise” (280). This spiritual goal stands in stark contrast to the materialistic values of the rest of society, which are clearly seen as mistaken: “Wealth is not the goal of life at all…the only goal is the Creator, may His name be blessed” (297). In Rebbe Nachman’s tale, the society at large is that of extreme capitalism, whereas the revolutionary counter culture group is spiritual. It is not clear whether the group was run as a collectivist commune or not, but we shall shortly be exposed to their position regarding the accumulation of wealth.

The Master is not content to merely minister to his flock. He and his followers actively engage in recruiting members of the general society to run away and join their secret band. “It was the custom of [the Master of Prayer] to visit inhabited areas, convincing people to emulate him, serving God and constantly praying. Whenever people wanted to join him, he would take them to his place away from civilization, where their only activities would be praying, singing praise to God, confession, self-mortification, repentance, and similar occupations…Eventually his teachings began to make an impression, and his activities became well known. People would suddenly vanish without a trace; no one know where they were…people began to realize that all of this was due to the Master of Prayer, who was attracting people to serve God” (281-282). He is well-known and highly feared by the society at large, who could not succeed in capturing him due to his ability to cleverly disguise himself: “It was impossible to recognize or capture him, since he would always appear in a different disguise. He would appear to one person as a merchant, and to another as a pauper” (292).

What exactly was the nature of the society that the Master of Prayer was trying to overthrow? While there were actually several different lands that he was undermining, it is clear in the story that the most misguided and most difficult of all to fight against was “the Land of Wealth”. In this super capitalistic society men are judged solely upon the amount of wealth that they own and are assigned hierarchical status based upon their financial worth alone, with the richest individuals proclaimed as “gods” and the poorest as “animals”. The result is a never ending spiral of fierce competition for one’s life literally depended upon moving up the societal ladder. According to their religion there were even “animal” (human) sacrifices to the “gods” and not surprisingly theft and murder abounded. Not only that, but “Charity was a very great sin. They believed that if a person gave charity, it would diminish the influx of wealth that God had given him…It was therefore forbidden in the strongest terms to give charity” (289-290). This society, which strongly reminds us of Sodom, the biblical town of horrors, is the greatest challenge for the Master of Prayer. Not only is the society rampant with violence and idolatry (including human sacrifice), but the belief in wealth also constituted the most difficult theological error to combat, for: “it was possible to get a person out of any desire except for the desire for wealth” (337). This topic of the desire for wealth and its inherent spiritual dangers was addressed by Rebbe Nachman in numerous places in his writings and he must have seen its rampant negative effects all around him. The rectification for this disorder was only possible if the person were to be brought to a special place (“the path of the sword”) where he would be miraculously cured from his desire for wealth: “In that place money is the greatest shame. If someone wants to insult another, he says that the other has money. Money is so great a shame, that the more money a person has, the greater his shame…Now it was revealed that wealth is the main thing of which to be ashamed” (349-350). In the end the Land of Wealth falls as its inhabitants repent their evil ways and spirituality replaces material values as the essential definition of human activity. The entire world is redeemed and the eschatological utopia is ushered in.

A century and a half after Rebbe Nachman told the tale of the Master of Prayer, a remarkably similar tale with the opposite message was published, “Atlas Shrugged”, the magnum opus of the American novelist and philosopher Ayn Rand (1905-1982). Born Alisa Zinov'yevna Rosenbaum to a fairly assimilated bourgeois Jewish family in St. Petersburg, Rand and her family suffered greatly during the Communist revolution and in its aftermath. Arriving in the United States in 1926 she developed an extreme capitalist and libertine philosophy that she called “objectivism” and used the heroes in her books as her ideology’s mouthpieces. She also promoted an atheistic and rationalistic world view portraying her socialist anti-heroes as “mystics”. She considered herself a writer of the “Romantic Realist” school.

Her self-identification with her positive characters was nearly total, as she wrote in “About the Author” at the end of "Atlas Shrugged": “I have always lived by the philosophy I present in my books – and it has worked for me, as it works for my characters”. Atlas Shrugged represented the pinnacle of her literary career. Simply stated, in a mere 1168 pages she had managed to state her philosophy in its most highly developed form and it would seem that from then on it was all downhill in both her literary career and her personal life.

Like the Master of Prayer in Rebbe Nachman’s tale, "Atlas Shrugged" is also about a mysterious revolutionary figure living on the edge of society. John Galt is a brilliant individualistic inventor who has disappeared from the oppressive socialistic society that America has become and he strikes fear into the hearts of that society, whose slang refrain to almost anything is “who is John Galt?”. He too lures people from the general society to his secret utopian hideaway. However, the scenes are completely reversed, as the general society is an oppressive America ruled by socialist dictators who trample individual and economic rights. Galt steals away the leading minds of the country. Rugged individualists like himself, these elite "industrialists" join him in “going on strike” against a society that takes advantage of their brains and productivity in order to serve one of mediocrity and passivity. Galt and his friends know that eventually America will implode (and they also help it along the way here and there) and then they will take over, and their capitalist utopia will again rule America and the world, and people will once again have the ultimate freedom – to produce and to make money.

As stated above Rand’s heroes are all great orators who expound her beliefs to her readers. We are thus treated to such gems as: “When I die I hope to go to heaven…I want to be able to afford the price of admission… to claim the greatest virtue of all – that I was a man who made money” (96). “To the glory of mankind, there was, for the first and only time in history, a country of money – and I have no higher, more reverent tribute to pay to America…If you ask me to name the proudest distinction of Americans, I would choose…the fact that they were the people to create the phrase ‘to make money.’…The words ‘to make money’ hold the essence of human morality” (414). “I am rich and I am proud of every penny that I own…I refuse to apologize for my money” (480). (emphasis in original).

Moving on to Galt’s secret utopian society we find that even the most rugged individualists must live by some rules. So when railroad magnate Miss Dagny Taggart accidently arrives on her first visit Galt explains: “We have no laws in this valley, no rules, no formal organization of any kind…But we have certain customs, which we all observe…So I’ll warn you now that there is one word which is forbidden in this valley: the word ‘give’” (714). Inscribed above the building that houses the revolutionary motor that Galt has invented to power the village is the following motto: “I swear by my life and my love for it that I will never live for the sake of another man, nor ask another man to live for mine” (731). While it is true that the group members work hard and live relatively modestly, their long-term vision obviously extends way beyond their temporary mountain hideout.

What would be an appropriate symbol for such a society? Dagny receives the answer upon her arrival: “But close before her, rising on a slender granite column from a ledge below to the level of her eyes, blinding her by its glare, dimming the rest, stood a dollar sign three feet tall, made of solid gold. It hung in space above the town, as its coat-of-arms, its trademark, its beacon – and it caught the sunrays, like some transmitter of energy that sent them in shining blessing to stretch horizontally through the air above the roofs” (706). The dollar sign also appears upon their locally produced cigarettes and was used by Dagny when she finally leaves her railroad terminal for the last time: “she glanced at the statue of [her grandfather] Nathaniel Taggert…she took the lipstick from her bag and, smiling…drew a large sign of the dollar on the pedestal under his feet” (1138).

If in the "Master of Prayer" the redemption was signaled when the inhabitants of the Land of Wealth became disgusted by money, Atlas Shrugged ends with the following messianic vision: “’The road is cleared,’ said Galt. ‘We are going back to the world.’ He raised his hand and over the desolate earth he traced in space the sign of the dollar” (1168). We should not be surprised that at Rand’s funeral her friends placed a six foot high floral bouquet on her grave – in the shape of a dollar sign.

In summation, if we compare the utopian visions of our two authors, it is clear that for Rand state socialism (and spirituality that she rather strangely connects it with) undermine all that is good and noble in humanity, destroying human motivation, individuality and freedom, and ultimately, society itself. The solution is in absolute Laissez-faire capitalism and the freedom to invent, produce, trade and most importantly - to make money.

In Rebbe Nachman’s view it is faithless capitalism that leads to idolatry and violence. The solution is faith, and it would seem that ultimately the nature of the particular economic system is secondary as the emphasis is upon Divine service combined with a great deal of compassion. It suffices us to note again in Rand’s utopia even the use of the word “give” is prohibited, whereas one of the greatest signs of corruption in Rebbe Nachman’s despicable Sodom-like Land of Wealth is the prohibition on charity.

Did Ayn Rand model her hero John Galt (gelt?) upon the Master of Prayer? It is possible that she had read Martin Buber's 1906 German translation of the story, but it seems unlikely and at the end of the day, it isn't really so significant. The question that interests me is what does Judaism, via the mitzva of Shmita, have to teach us about utopian beliefs?

Historically it can be argued that the modern state of Israel began with a heavy-handed socialist economic model which led to bureaucracy, inefficiency and corruption. We later moved to a capitalist free market model, based on individualism which led to both economic growth and a massive gap between the wealthiest and poorest members of our society. Some say it is the largest in the Western world. We also suffer from a situation in which a significant percentage of our population lives below the poverty line. It seems clear that there is a need for balance. Alexander Dub?ek said in the Prague Spring of 1968 that Czechoslovakia was in need of "socialism with a human face" and perhaps Israel in 2014 is in need of "capitalism with a human face". The social-economic model of Shmita, seen in its broader context including Shmitat Kesafim and Yovel can provide us with the proper model. Let us briefly examine some of the explanations given by the classic commentators to this mitzva and their relevance to our question. While it is clear from their words that Shmita contains multiple elements including personal and national spiritual growth and renewal (such as providing the opportunity for a year of Torah study) as well as addressing ecological and agricultural concerns, I will focus primarily on those perspectives which pertain to social and economic issues.

Maimonides, in the Guide for the Perplexed (3:39), writes as follows: "This [mitzva] expresses mercy and compassion for human beings as it says “and the poor of your people will eat”…and it also strengthens the land and increases the harvest by allowing the land to rest". We see here an emphasis on social justice as the poor now have equal access to food supplies. It may be that the agricultural aspect is not to be seen only in light of increasing future profits for the landowner, but as part of a plan to maximize food production in the Land of Israel for the ultimate benefit of all of the inhabitants.

In addition to additional “religious” messages the Sefer HaChinuch (Mishpatim, mitzva 84) teaches: "There is an advantage to this, for us to acquire the trait of forgoing. One should also remember that the land which gives him fruit…doesn’t produce through its own power, but there is a Master over it and over its masters”. Here it is apparent that one cannot clearly distinguish between the ritual and the interpersonal aspects of Shmita. For if it comes to instill within us the character trait of forgoing one’s property and financial rights for the good of society, this must be coupled with an increase in ones faith that ultimately it is God Himself who rules over the land and provides for our needs. One who internalizes this spiritual message will find it easier to share his wealth with others while learning to take his own losses in stride.

Rabbi Zvi Hirsch Kalisher (Sefer HaBrit, Behar s.v. Derech HaSheni, U’Sefarta Lecha) explains that "the wealthy man will learn not to look down upon the poor man, for the Torah said that in the seventh year everyone is equal, both rich and poor have permission to enter gardens and fields and eat”. An additional reason is “so that he will not always be burdened with physical pursuits…and when he throws off the yoke of labor he will engage in [the study of] Torah and wisdom. And those who don't know how to study will build houses and buildings so that the Land of Israel will not be lacking them either…for the need and perfection of the world". Rabbi Kalisher, the great 19th century proto-Zionist, openly stresses the equality of rich and poor during the Sabbatical year, both in terms of economic opportunity and in terms of consciousness. While he stresses that the rich will cease to look down on the poor there will no doubt be an additional benefit – that for a change the poor will be endowed with dignity and self-respect. This new consciousness, especially when combined with the reforms of the remittance of debts and the freeing of the slaves and returning of property in the Jubilee year will serve to level the socio-economic playing field as we shall discuss shortly. Even his caveat that those farmers not suited to a year of Torah study will engage in construction work for the good of society is part of a harmonious and utopian vision of a righteous society predicated upon spiritual values, physical labor and equality. It is of little wonder that elsewhere in his commentary he quotes an opinion to the effect that the Shmita year is meant to recreate the reality of the Garden of Eden before Adam and Eve sinned. This is of course, a well-known vision in Jewish eschatology.

Rabbi Avraham Yitzchak HaKohen Kook, writing in the introduction to his classic exposition on the laws of Shmita (Shabbat HaAretz), explains that "The individual shakes off his profane existence often, on every Shabbat…the same effect that Shabbat has on the individual, Shmita has on the entire nation…whose inner Divine light is occasionally revealed in its entire splendor, which cannot be annulled by ongoing social life…by rage and competition". What is of interest to us here is not Rabbi Kook’s beautiful description of the well-known comparison between Shmita and Shabbat, but rather his characterization of the atmosphere that characterizes the workweek and non-Shmita reality as one of “rage and competition”. The endless fight to get ahead financially at the expense of one’s “competitors” must occasionally give way to the atmosphere of compassion and equality that we have seen above.

Rabbi Yaacov Ariel, the chief rabbi of the Israeli city of Ramat-Gan explains as follows (Zeh Dvar HaShmita): "The mitzva of Shmita is built upon two foundations: the public and the private…the mitzva’s central idea is to remove one from his egocentric perspective and develop his feelings for his fellow man, public responsibility and a “majestic” perspective". While the end of Rabbi Ariel’s words here hint at certain aspects of Halachic debate and public policy regarding the proper observance of Shmita’s legal aspects, his first comment is crucial. We are dealing with a law which is to have a very specific moral and psychological impact on us. If Rabbi Kalisher spoke of the cessation of the superiority complex of the wealthy, Rabbi Ariel broadens it to include a general cleansing from our usual egocentricity in favor of a much broader perspective that centers upon our concern for the individual other and for society as a whole. I recall that during the previous Shmita year of 2007-8 I heard him quip that whereas in general the Torah leans towards capitalism, during the Shmita year it is decidedly communistic!

In the fall of 2001, just as the Shmita year was ending and the remission of debts was about to take effect, I was privileged to study the topic of Shmita Kesafim with my late teacher Rav Shagar (Rabbi Shimon Gershon Rosenberg zt”l). He too stressed that with the overall package of Shmita, Shmitat Kesafim and Yovel the Torah was presenting us with clear socio-economic imperatives. In his view what we see here is a periodic attempt to reset economic reality and level the playing field. Debts are cancelled, land is returned and slaves are emancipated. He pointed out that in ancient time one of the main reasons why a person would become a “Hebrew slave” (what we would call an “indentured servant”), was his inability to pay off his debts. Thus the combination of the economic measures listed above together with the availability of free produce during an entire year would be sufficient to return society, at least temporarily, to a harmonious balance. This, when combined with a heightened consciousness of faith in God’s providence as the true provider, the cessation of the usual competitiveness and the arrogance built into the economic system, would provide us with a taste of the revolutionary changes in store for the world when the true messianic utopia comes to pass. I can only hope that our proper observance of the Shmita year in all of its aspects will hasten that great day.

Rabbi Zvi Leshem was ordained by the Chief Rabbinate of Israel and holds a PhD in Jewish Philosophy from Bar-Ilan University. He served for several decades in senior educational and rabbinic positions before assuming his current role directing the Gershom Scholem Collection for Kabbalah Research at the National Library of Israel. He is the author of "Redemptions: Contemporary Chassidic Essays on the Parsha and the Festivals".

The prophet Amos warns the Jewish people, "Behold, days are coming, says the Lord, and I will send a famine in the land, not a hunger for bread nor a thirst for water, but to hear the word of God... and they will run about to seek the word of the Lord and shall not find it" (Amos, 8:11,12). Rav Shimon Bar Yohai commented: "Heaven forbid that Torah will ever be forgotten from Israel." If so, then what is the meaning of the above verse? It means that a time will come when Halakha will not be monolithic. There will be no definitive Halakha. There will be diversity (Shabbat 38b-39a).

The Maharal of Prague makes the following incisive comment: "Israel and Torah are one. Each impacts the other. The status of Israel - the Jewish people - is reflected in the status of Torah. Just as Jews are not physically united but scattered throughout the world, so too is Torah not monolithic. It too is not unified. (Tiferet Yisrael, Chapter 56, see also Pahad Yitzhak Purim, No. 31). As such, Galut - the exile - has a spiritual component. As long as Jews are not physically united in Israel, diversity is a normal feature of the halakhic process. As long as the Galut exists, so too does diversity.

The Talmud records that Honi HaMe'agel was a Jewish Rip Van Winkle. After his legendary sleep, he visited the Beit Hamidrash and heard the scholars bemoan his death, contending that Honi had the ability to clearly resolve halakhic problems: "Ah, if only Honi were alive!", they sighed. Honi approached them and identified himself, but the rabbis disbelieved him and he departed dispirited (Taanit 23a). Rav Hayyim Schmuelevitch, Dean of the Mir Yeshiva in Jerusalem, made the following poignant remarks: What is a Toran sage? Is he not one who has mastered Torah knowledge? Accordingly, Honi should have requested the rabbis to pose halakhic questions to him. Honi's ability to resolve difficult Torah problems would have verified his status. Perhaps, suggests R. Hayyim, certain problems cannot be resolved by sages of previous generations. Each scholar, in each era, must rule on the problems of the day. There must be a charismatic relationship between master and disciple. For this reason Pirkei Avot delineates the chain of tradition. Moshe, having received the Torah at Sinai, transferred it to Yehoshua, Yehoshua to the Elders, they to the Prophets, and they to the men of the Great Assembly. No era relied totally on the leadership of the previous generation. Each had its own leadership (Sihot Musar, 5731, p 19). Accordingly, differences may emerge due to different personalities and concerns of each era.

It should be noted that halakhic diversity is not synonymous with deviance. The latter is aberrant behavior outside the perimeter of halakhic guidelines. Of interest is the halakhic reaction to institutionalized deviant worship. The Talmud notes that in Alexandria, Egypt, contrary to halakhic rules prohibiting animal sacrifice outside the Temple in Jerusalem, the kohanim practiced the ritual. The Mishnah cites Scriptures to prohibit those kohanim who ministered in the House of Onias from ministering in the Holy Temple. (Menahot 109a) The implication is that such kohanim, though deviant, were devout Jews otherwise qualified to minister in Jerusalem. They were outlawed from serving in the Holy Temple The congregants, or worshippers in the House of Onias, were not ostracized. The position seems to be the model for traditional rabbinic reactions to non-halakhic Jewish clergy; their rabbis are not deemed rabbinic leaders, their services are ruled deviant, but the ordinary people (the worshippers) are not excluded nor condemned. The door is constantly open to all Jews to pray together and observe mitzvot.

Of major concern, therefore, is a question that goes to the root of religious power and influence, -- namely, who has the authority to establish halakha? This question has two major components.

Who has the right to go through the intellectual process of creatively providing the research, precedent and logic to formulate halakha on specific issues?
Who has the authority to establish policy?

To set policy requires a concern not only for the legal religious issues, but also for the ramifications of the decision upon the community. Indeed, should a particular ruling be viewed as generating a negative impact upon the sphere of Torah, the observance of mitzvoth or the future status of the people - many rabbinic authorities would refrain from establishing a halakhic practice. This suggests that an issue or practice that may be even legally (halakhically) permissible - may be prohibited as a policy. Thus it is evident that the formulators of halakhic policy influence the contours of religious life. Who are these people? We know that they are rabbis. But, what type of rabbis? This suggests a brief analysis of the Galut rabbinate and, in particular, the pulpit rabbinate; namely, those Rabbis who serve as leaders of congregations.

The Galut pulpit Rabbi is not controlled by any formal hierarchical structure. There is no regional or national Rabbinic supervisor to impact his freedom of action. Theoretically his authority to formulate halakha is inherent in his position as a Jewish leader. He is equal to anyone. Yet, from a pragmatic viewpoint, the pulpit Rabbi (especially in the U.S.A.) until recently has been perceived as the lowest figure of authority for the establishment of halakhic policy. He may implement or execute halakha, but was not deemed the proper vehicle to set policy itself. It was generally assumed that halakhic policy was simply beyond the scope of such rabbis.

A popular maxim from Pirke Avot (1:2) will help clarify the issue. It is reported that Shimon Hatzadik frequently said: "The world stands (or is based) upon three principles: Torah, Avodah, U'gemilut Hasadim. Torah is self understood; Avodah is religious, pious service or prayer and Gemilut Hasadim - is loving kindness. It should be noted that Jewish life has developed institutions to carry out (and, in a way, serve as the specialists of) each of the three endeavors.

1. The Yeshiva serves as the bastion of Torah learning. It is in the Yeshiva where one finds the greatest concentration of Torah scholarship and creative Torah excitement. As such, the Rosh HaYeshiva - the head of the Yeshiva, logically should serve as the final decisor for Torah questions. He simply is the greatest reservoir of Torah knowledge. The head teacher of Torah and Rabbis is assumed to know more than others.
Accordingly, halakhic policy has legitimacy when it emanates from such a source.

2. The Hassidic Shtibel generally serves as an example for the manifestation of fervent pious prayer. The Hassidic Rebbe need not necessarily be the greatest Torah scholar, but certainly he excels in praying. He is considered a holy Jew. He is, perhaps, a specialist in Avodah - religious service. Service to God has legitimacy, therefore, where it emanates from such specialists in piety.

3. Hesed and Tzedakah - Charity. In the Diaspora, synagogues are a major religious source for the collection and disbursement of charity. The rabbis serve as leaders of congregations of which a number among their midst may be philanthropists. Thus, pulpit rabbis are courted by Roshei Yeshivot and Hassidic Rebbes not because of the fact that such rabbis are great Torahs scholars, but - because of the potential influence such pulpit rabbis may have over directing lay leaders to support specific Torah or Hassidic institutions.

To the extent that the normal functions of synagogue life do not, by their very nature, require their rabbis to be great Torah scholars, the pulpit rabbis were by general understanding deemed not the proper legitimate source for formulating halakha. As such, a new dimension was added to halakhic policy.

The quality of research or the scintillating creativity of logic was of no paramount issue. The major question was the source of a halakhic ruling. Who said it? The name of the Rabbi who proclaimed policy was essential to engender acceptance.

Concomitant to this was the emergence of a "yardstick" to measure the validity or legitimacy of halakhic decisions. Is is called "Daat Torah". This principle projects the concept that a group of rabbinic sages imbued with the sanctity of Torah are the sole, authentic interpreters of our religion and spokesmen for daily decisions. Accordingly, all decisions require the imprimatur of great scholars. No one else has the Torah authority for halakhic policy. Thus, a decision which several great rabbis in unison promulgate has validity even if sources are not delineated. As long as a group is recognized as "Daat Torah", all decisions must be abided regardless of rationale or scholarship.

The underlying energizing legitimate aspect of this concept is the perception that "Daat Torah" is not solely the viewpoint of one or but a few of our great rabbis, but rather, the consensus position of a goodly number of rabbinic sages. If a practice appears to project the position of the world of scholarship and piety it becomes the "in and approved" rabbinic concern.

Though, in theory, such a position appears to have great merit, pragmatically, it generated a number of dysfunctional manifestations.

1. Torah Judaism is based on scholarship. Pronouncements and policies are traditionally rooted inTalmudic and halakhic expertise. Yet, in the era of "Daat Torah", the source or quality of scholarly research became secondary to the name of the person and position of the Rav who formulated it. This permeated within the rabbinic community a tendency to dismiss the findings of scholarship. It was necessary to acquire a "Gadol" - a sage who would back a specific policy. Such a position, moreover, would have respect regardless of the quality of the scholarship serving as the pinions for such a ruling. Torah discourse became exercises in futility, for nothing would become policy until a proper "Gadol" sanctioned it. This crystallized the approach of scurrying around for a "Gadol" to approve halakhic policies.

2. The concept "Daat Torah" gives the impression that it is a consensus position of numerous sages. Its dysfunction is that the process of seeking consensus generally tends to promote "humrot" or extreme orientations. It is generally easier for those who seek lenient rulings to agree to stringent positions than for extremists to accept lenient rulings. Accordingly, lenient positions do not emanate from a "Daat Torah" philosophy. It simply does not take place. There appears to be, moreover, a built-in negative response to any creative moderation or "loophole", even if such is halakhically correct. This generates public denunciation and scathing criticism of innovative halakhic rulings. Thus independent, objective halakhic inquiry is stifled by political pressure. Most scholars are simply not at all interested in incurring criticism or controversy and generally favor discretion over valor.

This projects the image that Torah policy is basically a movement to cater to right wing ideology. As "Daat Torah" became more popular, it became evident that no one was serving as the halakhic leaders for the vast numbers of Orthodox laymen in modern Orthodox synagogues. No one was the spokesman for the moderates. Indeed, it became necessary for Rabbis of congregations who deal daily with major problems to once again assume responsibility for establishing halakhic policy. Chaucer once wrote, "Truth will out." So too with halakha. It is not and cannot be the esoteric domain of a few select leaders. All Jews must be aware of its methodology and principles. Its logical system must be tested in the open sphere of dialogue and debate. Halakhic policy is the result of positions finely honed through Torah scholarship. That is the way it used to be. That is the way it should be again. Rabbis should have the ability to openly develop halakhic policy whether or not it is innovative or stringent or lenient or not part of a consensus - the issue is and should be - is it halakhically sound? And if it is sound, will the rabbinate implement the position?

There are changes in the pulpit rabbinate, changes that alter the role of pulpit rabbis and their ability to formulate halakha.

As a result of the phenomenal growth of Torah and Yeshiva education in America, most major congregations have large numbers of former Yeshiva students as part of their membership. These individuals are demanding that pulpit rabbis manifest Torah scholarship and erudition. As such, a new breed of scholars is occupying the leadership of pulpits. No longer may they be dismissed for lack of Torah standing.

In addition, many Rabbis of pulpits and Rashei Yeshiva are more or less around the same age level. This generates a new, mutual respect. When the Rabbis were aged in their twenties and thirties and the Rashei Yeshiva were venerable sages in their seventies, eighties or above - the pulpit rabbis would subordinate themselves to others. But, when the rabbis in the major congregations are more or less the same age or older than the Rashei Yeshiva - a different relationship applies. Indeed, many pulpit Rabbis even recall learning together as equals or peers with a number of Rashei Yeshiva while both were students.

Accordingly, both groups feel a sense of kinship and do not simply defer to the opinions of others.
Some time ago a noted Israeli Rosh Yeshiva and Member of Knesset visited with me. In an attempt to asses his character and religious hierarchical orientations, I asked him, "Who is your Rebbe? Who's your Rabbi for serious ideological problems?" His response was simple, matter of fact, yet quite astute. "You know, Reb Simcha, that those of us over forty years of age have no living Rebbe. We, sadly, are our own Rebbe." He's right. As a result of all of the above noted dynamic factors: namely, the concern for Halakhic policy to represent the needs of congregations - the desire to re-assert the stature and role of the pulpit rabbi - the concern that stringency is not necessarily the raison d'etre of halakha- the distaste for vilification of alternate policies - the simple lack of any commanding imposing giant to coalesce action - the concern for a moderate view - all these issues generated a support system for pulpit Rabbis to reassert their role in formulating halakhic policy.

A professor of mine, Albert Salamon, a noted scholar at the Graduate faculty of the NewSchool for Social Research, once said, "The image of the King topples before his throne." So too with halakhic policy. The dysfunctions in the current system supported a need for change. Congregations wished that Torah leadership should reflect the consensus views of Torah layman. This view may not be heeded by the Yeshiva or Hassidic worlds of influence. Such spheres of thought may seek out their own decisors of Jewish law. That is their right. The modern Orthodox have the right to seek out rabbinic scholars to espouse their viewpoint. Hopefully, halakhic policy will be the result of creative scholarship finely honed through the corridors of halakhic discourse - where ideas and Talmudic and halakhic guidelines are the issues - not personalities or political machinations. In fact, that's what Torah is all about.
 

In Pirkei Avot, it is written (chapter 1:2)
"Shimon Hatzadik was one of the last survivors of the Men of the Great Assembly." He lived with greatness and grandeur. He was a member of the Great Assembly. Thus he personally knew the top leaders of a previous generation, among whom were numbered several prophets who spoke in the name of God. He was a Kohen Gadol. Legend has it that he influenced Alexander the Great, and the Abarbanel writes that he communicated with Aristotle. What a pedigree! Yet, after his death, the leadership of Torah passed to Antigonos Ish Soho. He was not a High Priest; not a man of Jerusalem. He was a new leader who came out of the woodwork to become the singular spokesman for religion and the emissary to pass on the tradition to yet another generation. This teaches us again the old maxim that "Torah Tsiva Lanu Moshe, Morasha Kehilat Yaakov. The Torah that Moses commanded us is an inheritance to the children of Jacob." (Deut. 33:4)
Torah is not the sole repository of any one group. It belongs to all. All Jews are to learn Torah. Every Jew is a potential Hillel or Beruria. Pirke Avot delineates the transmission of Torah from one generation to another. Moshe and Yehoshua each served as the ultimate leader for their generations. Yet, afterward, no one person emerged to be so acclaimed by the Jewish people. There was a group called the "Elders" (wise men). Torah leadership was transformed from a single Master to a group of scholars; each lacking the ability to represent the totality of Kelal Yisrael - Maybe that is what will now take place again.

What is the most significant thing that ever happened to you, and what did it teach you?

It doesn't work that way, because there are moments when one thing is significant and moments when something else is significant. For a man to be present at the birth of a child is an overwhelming thing. I've been present at the birth of my children, and it's really amazing. I think that's the greatest, deepest miracle because all other things have their space . . . Yet when I look back, every once in a while I make a list of high moments and start saying, "There were moments of love; there were moments of insight; there were moments of prayer." There were even moments of terror, almost like facing death, which made me say, "Aha! Now I understand what it's all about." But I'm still learning about spiritual and holy eldering. Most people don't know how to live the holy life after retirement. You see, popes have remained in the saddle and rabbis have remained in the saddle until they die. I would like to learn how to withdraw gradually from the active life and to spend the last years furthering my solitude with God. That's what I feel life has to teach me. I'm learning to let go of things that are not in my hands to change, learning to live with what, otherwise, would be increasing frustration when I get older.

Life is my teacher. Artificial intelligence is trying to do what natural intelligence is doing. Natural intelligence means that a naturally intelligent organism continues to learn throughout life. Each situation provides a deeper learning, greater learning, a more profound learning. We're all going through a learning, so if I had to pick out one learning as the most significant, I'd say, "I can't; it's constant. The learning that is happening in life is constant because life is a teaching machine." From whom did I learn about life? I learned from life about life, by living life.

Socialized Meditation

Meditation is usually a solitary task. At times one feels that it may only be a solipsistic preoccupation. Much growth happens when meditation is socialized.

We learn from teachers. Here is an example from the Hassidic master, Reb Moshe Kobriner in a little town in Lithuania. People would come to him from all sides asking all sorts of questions. One day he was having his breakfast and all he has is some kasha (buckwheat cereal), and another man comes in and says, "Master, I have so many troubles."

“Blessed art Thou, O Lord, King of the Universe Who has made everything by Thy Word," said Reb Moshe Kobriner (and this was the proper blessing to make before one eats kasha.)

And the man said, "Master, didn't you hear me? I have so many troubles."
And Reb Moshe said, "You know, your father once came to me with the same situation, and he heard me give this blessing that everything comes by His Word and he stopped complaining. Don't you hear?”

Not only with teachers can one enter into such shared meditation. When Buber taught us of the I- -Thou relationship, he spoke of healing through meeting. From my experiences in “socialized meditation” I am convinced that we need to move beyond transpersonal psychology to transpersonal sociology.

All of our conflict resolution efforts not yet managed to turn a recalcitrant person into a collaborating member of global society. The research in this area is vital to our survival. Look at the extremely sophisticated teamwork in technology that can produce a stealth bomber—and compare this to the primitive state of correcting societal dysfunction.

Cycles and Cycles

Prior to this cycle of world creation, there were other cycles of world creation. Holy sparks from those other cycles of world creation, when they were broken, lodged here. Our task is to find those sparks, gather them and bring them together, and restore the balance in the cosmos—to enthrone God again. The Divine Crown, as it were, has gems missing, and in each physical act, we pick up a spark here, a spark there, and bring them together. When all sparks have been gathered, our tradition speaks about the coming of the Messiah. To me, this means something like global oneness, peace, and harmony.

When we become more conscious of the physical and at the same time aware of the highest spirituality, we'll have what I would call the Resurrection of the Dead. This resurrection happens together on a physical and spiritual level. The physical plane is our plane of observation, though everything that happens on a physical plane is not open to our observing. We don’t see with our eyes what is happening between atoms, but if we were on the atomic level we would say, "Ah, this oxygen atom got married to two hydrogen atoms, and they made a water molecule!" We don't operate on that level of awareness. When I put a pot of water on the stove to cook, a lot of weddings take place between the oxygen from the air and the hydrogen that's in the gas, so water gets created. That's a level of observation, the sub-molecular level,that we don't see.

Now in our personal drama, on another level of observation, higher things are happening. Ultimately it takes a meditative leap into other dimensions to be able to see. There is a Latin phrase sub specie aeternitatis, under the aspect of eternity. It means to look down, to see what is happening in the temporal realm. Then we begin to see what Earth is about, what the planet is about, and what history is about from a much higher level. I believe we are just learning the beginnings of the holy psychotechnology, a spiritual psychotechnology that will allow us to get to such places as observing fine moments-or larger ones. Some people have had the larger experiences. Geniuses have had profound mountaintop experiences. I would say, "If they can see the Infinite, they can see the infinitesimal also, because awareness is up and down the scale." By and large, people haven't bothered to look at the infinitesimal. Now, with nanotechnologies becoming important, people are beginning to concentrate on those things.

Care Packages to Eternity

If you see yourself bound by your skin, then you would ask, "How would something I do help the deceased?" When you recognize that half of your chromosomes are your father's, half are your mother's, and a quarter of them are your grandfather's, you realize that your grandfather is still alive in you, in a quarter of your chromosomes. So if you say a prayer, it is almost as if a portion of him is still available to help that other part of him that is beyond. That's why the disciples of a Master get together at the anniversary of his death to celebrate. There is a feeling that there is so much more of the Master available at that moment.

How does one attain the ideal relationship of body and soul?

First of all, just simply be "you." Feel the earth beneath you; feel the chair; feel how gravity upholds you. Gravity is the way earth loves us and attracts us. We should allow ourselves to be supported by that. Second, do one thing at a time; be totally in that thing you're doing. That's a way to be grounded! The next way to be grounded is to realize that there is stuff above that the groundedness has to support. The point isn't just to be flat on the ground. The point is to be firm enough on the ground so that the rest of you can go up.

What is the greatest obstacle to obtaining new levels?

"The sin that is the hardest to atone for is habit." That is the biggest obstacle to reaching new levels, as one rabbi put it. The more we're in a habitual state, the more unlikely it is that we'll go beyond. We won't be in the moment; we won't be in the here and now. We will hear the routine rather than the challenge that comes at this moment.

Will people eventually reach this ideal?

I believe that all people will reach what they have to reach. I'm a universalist, in that sense. That they will reach the same state is not likely. It is enough for a toe to be the toe of a realized person. If I could be the toe, as it were, of realized humanity, that's fine. Not everybody is going to be the brain cell that fires off a great realization. Still, we'll all be organically connected with that, and the organic connection is what fires, just as an organism has a connection with the toe. So the final enlightenment will have a connection with that concept. It's not likely that there is going to be a final enlightenment. I don't like the word “final”, either, because enlightenment continues to the next level and the next level, and it's infinite in God. We no longer have the Temple in Jerusalem, but when it existed, the holiest person on the holiest day at the holiest time in the holiest place would pronounce the holiest word. There would be a kind of implosion of all the Onenesses. That name is a connection, and each year on Yom Kippur, the old connection goes away and the new connection starts coming in. Sins interfere, spoil, and ruin the old connection.

You can’t attune to what you merely read.

When we learn how to pray, we learn not just how to recite words, but how to open the heart. It's like biofeedback: When we are with a person who is opening the heart, we can feel attuned to it. "Ah, now it feels right in my heart!" But if somebody says, "Open your heart," and you've never had that "thing," how do you know you've done it correctly? If you're in a larger group where all the people are doing this, and there is a liturgy being celebrated, you get to feel at one with the people who are in this elated place. That's how you attune to it.

Total realization can happen anywhere. It can happen spontaneously, and it can happen under direction. Very often, even that which is under direction requires the moment of grace, of spontaneity. But there are people who can achieve attunement in synagogue but not in the marketplace, for instance.

What are the greatest problems in life?

The main problems in life are making a living, making a loving, and making a dying. Making a living is a big problem for many, many people. When that's together, then there's the question of making a loving—how to have good relationships and to receive and to give love. People who don't have that can have all the money in the world, but it's no good! For people who've had a good life and a good loving and a good living, when the time comes to leave that life, the problem is how to do that gently and gratefully.

Why is there suffering in the world?

That's a question that gets us into trouble! One could say that the greatest education we get is through suffering. Consciousness is being raised through deprivation. I will never know what it means to give people food when they're hungry unless I have experienced hunger myself. I will not know how to help somebody who is in pain unless I have experienced pain myself. One could say suffering is the school for empathy. It creates that, but that's only one element of suffering.

Sometimes suffering exists in order to bring us to our senses. Sometimes suffering exists in order to show us that there are tragedies we can't overcome with our childish omnipotence in the world. We begin to see that every choice we make has its consequences. Suffering is the way in which we learn, after the fact, the consequences of our moves.

Then there are some people who suffer and can't identify this reason or that reason. It's just one of those things. "Why do bad things happen to good people?" is the question behind all that, and I haven't yet found a convincing answer. Sometimes no matter what we do, we get clobbered! On a lower level of preparation and understanding we would say, "If we do only the good and the true all the time, we're going to be okay." On a higher level being good doesn't help. The biggest ethical questions are based on just that point.

From Religion to Spirituality

Despite the pessimistic outlook on the whole, there are here and there signs of positive breakthroughs. Meditation is embraced by many people who have no other religious commitment. It has now gone beyond the mere “relaxation response” that meditation can provide. It has led people to greater spiritual growth and awareness. While it seems that religion is “out” for many, spirituality is “in.” People want to learn how to experience the sacred not just talk about it. There is real interest in how adepts do what they do. This interest is not mere curiosity. It is an inquiry into the how that allows for emulation. We have entered into what I have called the dialogue of devoutness. There is a great comparing of notes, of insight and understanding to be shared by those who reverence the name of God and love Him. God listens, hears, and records these things (Mal. 3:16). Such dialogue concerns souls, their journey to God, the difficulties they encounter on the path.

Dialogue of this sort is between the soul and her God. A person who is too busy to live in a state of vulnerability vis-à-vis God has no way to enter into this dialogue. Such a person can say “I believe this” or “I believe that”—and still be spiritually inactive. Religion to such persons is only the things they give verbal assent to, not the things they experience, not the way they face God. They are registered as a Jew or a Protestant or a Catholic like they register as a Republican or Democrat. The function of a creed is to give people a program for life, not just a list of things to be asserted.

What about death and what happens after death?

I do believe that death is only part of the connection between the physical and the inner. It's like pulling the plug. Most people know enough to get their inner out of the way. Let's say you drive in your car and it's rattling; it's in bad shape. Finally, it's all over. You drive it to the junkyard. You get out of the car, and then a crusher comes and crushes it down. You'd be a fool to sit in it after the car is dead. I have the same attitude toward the body. Bodies wear out, and it's a wonderful thing that they wear out. They get recycled, which gives the passenger a chance to get out and pick another car, another vehicle…or to decide not to walk the earth for awhile.

Our tradition teaches that a whole series of things happens after death. A soul has to go through purification because of the contamination of being on this level and the habits that are acquired on this level. After purification come other things that are delightful, ecstatic, and marvelous. Some of them have to do with the realm of feeling. That is one Heaven. Others have to do with the realm of knowing. That's another Heaven. Then there is the Heaven in which we know intuitively and are known by God.

What is most important to you?

I can't say. It varies and changes. If I can't take a breath of air, then the most important thing is to take another breath of air. Imagine: I'm diving underwater and can't get to the surface. How important a breath of air is then! When I have the breath of air, then what's important is how I reach the shore. I don't believe these things are static. There is a dynamic element that's always before us. Right now what I want is to finish the week. Then, to come to a Sabbath rest is the most important thing. It will keep changing all the time.

I do what I do out of concern. My sense is that the more life, the better education, and the more tools that are made available for people to manage their physical and spiritual life, the better off the planet is going to be. And that's what I'm most concerned about.

What is the highest ideal a person can reach?

There is no general statement one can make, because if I say "X or Y is the highest ideal," then we think everybody has to achieve that. But if you achieve what I have to achieve and I achieve what you have to achieve, then I haven't gotten my realization and you haven't gotten your realization. There are individual differences. The Universe is made up of so many individual bits. Each one has to achieve what it is meant to achieve. For someone who is a dancer, the ideal may be the ideal leap. For another person, it may be the ideal meditation. For another, the ideal act of love, kindness, or charity. You have to specialize in your own thing. One Hassidic Master said it very beautifully: "I'm not afraid that God will ask me, 'Zusha, why have you not become an Abraham, Isaac, or Jacob?' But I am afraid that God will ask me, 'Zusha, why have you not become what Zusha was intended to be?'"

What makes you happy? sad? angry?

I'm happy when I have contentment and moments of no conflict. I'm happy when I feel love coming and going from my heart to those who are around me, when I feel integrated with the Universe and at peace with God. The opposite makes me sad. To see people suffering and not to be able to help makes me sad. The child has an earache, and there's nothing at this point that can be done. I can hold a child, but it's not going to make the earache go away. To be powerless over pain that others experience is sad. What makes me angry is willful malicious obstruction of the common good.

If you could meet anyone throughout history, whom would you want to meet and what would you ask that person?

I would like to meet myself at the moment after enlightenment . Then I would like to ask, "How did you do it?" All the other people would just satisfy a kind of curiosity, but it wouldn't help me in my stuff, so I wouldn't want to go into the past so much as into the future. But you want me to name somebody in the past I would want to connect with. There are many Hassidic Masters, but I would like to go to the founder of the Hassidic movement, Ba'al Shem Tov, and just be with him and not ask him any questions. I would want to look at him, to have him look at me, and then to pray in such a way that I could learn something from him. I would want to attune to his spirituality. That's all. It's not words I would want .

Book tours are common—authors travel from one place to another to do readings and talks to promote their new books. But story tours? I realize that’s what I’ve been doing, giving readings of a story which I wrote in Ladino and translated into English, “Pasha: Ruminations of David Aroughetti.” The story, published in Midstream in English in 2005, and in Sephardic Horizons in Ladino in 2011, is about a Turkish Jew in the early 1900s in the fast-deteriorating Ottoman Empire and then in New York. When we meet him, this character has virtually nothing. Yet ironically he’s adopted the mindset of a harsh arrogant pasha—the Turkish word means a high-ranking public official, or someone who acts like one. In the spring of 2014, I did eight readings of the story in six weeks on a variety of CUNY campuses; before that, over the years, I’d done ten similar events in California, Massachusetts, and New York.

My CUNY readings were part of my project, “Spanish, Mizrahi, and Black Jews: Diversity and the Jews,” supported by a Diversity Fund grant that allowed me time away from an intensive teaching schedule. I went to Brooklyn, Manhattan, the Bronx and Queens, and it was exhilarating being welcomed on campuses in New York all nicely reachable by subway or bus. At Brooklyn College, for instance, I read at a symposium co-sponsored by fourteen departments including Judaic Studies, Puerto Rican and Latino Studies, Modern Languages and Literatures, Women and Gender Studies, and the office of the President.

At City College I performed for a theatre history course; at Baruch for a course on the Ottoman Empire; at Queensborough for the Liberal Arts Academy and Creative Writing Club; at Bronx Community at the CUNY Language Immersion Program; at City Tech (my campus) for two writing courses; and at the Americas Society for the Latin American Jewish Studies Association /CUNY Academy of the Humanities conference, where I read in Ladino.

The goal of my project was to counter the assumption that ethnic or racial groups are monolithic. People forget that a group with a particular label is actually highly diverse. Asians, for instance, may be Vietnamese, Chinese, Korean, or Japanese; or Hispanics, Puerto Rican, Ecuadorian, Dominican or Filipino. Similarly, Jews are not always white, nor do they all have names like Bloomberg or Goldstein; individuals named Rodquigue, Aghassi, Aroughetti, Sulieman, Gourgey, Papo and Abravaya may also be Jews.

One might ask, however, why encourage a multi-ethnic awareness through the lens of Judaism? For one thing, Jewish diversity is a metaphor for diversity at large. But also, CUNY students today don’t know much about Jews, yet are curious about them. Although, for instance, Jewish students were once a large majority at City College, today Jews are a small minority of the nearly half million students at CUNY, and reading a short story about a Spanish-Turkish-American Jew opens students to fresh experience they haven’t encountered before. The Sephardic experience happens to be one with a wide demographic reference. In this case, it’s Turkish, Middle Eastern, Hispanic, Jewish, immigrant and thoroughly American, a mix of the old country and the modern world with juxtapositions of the cosmopolitan and the provincial, the underdog and the power-monger. And in that mix, as everywhere, a good story is about being desperate for dignity.

CUNY students themselves represent so many ethnicities and are from so many countries all over the world that they are eager for new ways of viewing their own histories. In general, I find, people are eager for breaking down the doors of cultural boundaries. I should add that as a teacher of writing and literature, I’m interested in the way awareness of ethnicity crossing unexpected cultural boundaries encourages readers to think in new ways about family dynamics, identity, gender patterns, and even music. Hearing my story, students of diverse backgrounds see their own families in a larger context and model the power of such discovery for their own thinking and writing.

The Hispanic elements of my fiction, especially the fact of my writing this story originally in Judeo-Spanish, has made my project particularly attractive to a category of colleges such as City Tech and Bronx Community College that are known as Hispanic-Serving Institutions because of their high percentage of Latino/a students. For Hispanic students in general, the story of the Spanish Jews, who kept speaking Spanish in Turkey and elsewhere for five hundred years after their expulsion from Spain, opens new doors for listeners to understand their own Spanish backgrounds. Most of my readings have been in English, but I generally read excerpts in Ladino for the shock of recognition students have when they understand it.

“Pasha” essentially is a story about manhood in the face of harsh prohibitions. How does a young man in Turkey survive—with basically nothing, no money or education—when he’s a second son prohibited from even touching the violin his older brother will inherit along with the prospect of becoming a musician? David Aroughetti’s prospects in Turkey are especially bad because his own father can barely scrape together a living, and his whole community is struggling with poverty. Then too, after he emigrates, as he asserts himself and assimilates to early twentieth-century New York City, selling cigarettes on the streets, for instance, what are the personal and emotional costs and losses? People from all countries face similar pressures, continually calculating the costs of moving ahead, and the strains in relationships between men and women, and parents and children, that accompany a reordering of the past and a dash to the future. Perhaps nowhere are these questions muddled through, avoided, or confronted more than on the campuses of City University, where students from over two hundred different countries study together to promote their future. The questions remain for all immigrants and migrants trying to make their peace with traditional backgrounds and the open question of the future; they need to find not only an identity, but the relationships and community that allow them the dignity that every human being craves.

My CUNY readings were exhilarating because of the array of differences in the way the audiences of students and faculty responded, and the pleasure of the unexpected. A common reaction was, “I’ve never heard of Jews that speak Spanish.” An unusual one was when a young woman, having listened, wanted to talk about her family’s life in Sarayevo. A Latino student in a white button down shirt thoughtfully asked, “Did you notice that despite who this character is, and what we expect from him, he finds a way to rebel in America”? A handsome tall dark-skinned student said “I have to tell you that the Pasha story describes exactly how things are today in Ivory Coast.”

A stylish young Jamaican woman, who grew up in a poor Kingston neighborhood in a zinc hut right where a gully flooded regularly during storms, wrote, “I think you hit it dead on. All we are searching for is ‘identity’ to find who we are in the world and what we are meant to do. It really is a journey. There’s a huge misconception that you are born knowing who you are and what you want to do and that is completely false. Life is about discovering who you are in this chaos of a world.” A student named Remy said about the tense and aggressive main character, “I wished he could smile, enjoy life a little.” Another student said her father is Russian, her mother Chinese, and the story reminded her of how she likes to listen to Chinese music with her mother. In the course on Ottoman history a student asked if the main character’s arrogant pasha personality was an emblem of the whole problem of the Ottoman Empire at that time. A student in a writing class brought up Venezuela to say, “Some political leaders adopt pasha approaches to governing.”

Kimberly La Force, a former student of mine from St. Lucia, currently in a philosophy course for her graduate program at Columbia University, brought up an illuminating point after the reading she attended. She wrote me that the main character’s aggressive assumption that he is superior to others should be considered with an eye to the error of “dichotomous thinking.” Quoting the contemporary feminist philosopher Elizabeth Grosz, Kimberly said the problem with thinking in dichotomies like male/female, or mind/body, is that it “hierarchizes polarized terms” making one “the privileged term and the other its suppressed, subordinated, negative counterpart.” Indeed, by the end, the story restores the subordinated essence to its proper value, in a way our pasha does not expect.

I’m reminded of how students in Professor Carole Harris’s literature course last year talked about the dynamics of power in the way individuals treat each other. After reading the story, students considered “Pasha” characters in the short stories of the Southern American writer Flannery O’Connor, the Dominican writer Junot Díaz, and the Irish writer James Joyce, and noted the way literature written “inside a community” encourages discussion of difficulties in the very cultural groups that set up harsh dichotomies as social codes.

I’m a writer, a person who likes to stand to tell a story. We live in a world where the sight of text has often prompted the rejoinder “tl;dr”— too long, didn’t read. Perhaps the oral telling of a story can slow us down in the right way, and as we agree to be there for that thirty minutes or hour, we re-orient our sense of time. In the classroom at the top of the stairs in the Bronx, when I handed a copy of my story to a student who wanted to read along, I heard a groan because it looked long. When I said it will take me just thirty minutes to read it aloud, we were suddenly okay. Oh, half an hour. Literature builds bridges, takes down walls.

Listening to stories is worth something. The very sound of a story being told takes hold in the body. Peter Elbow, a well-known inspiring writing teacher whom I met at a recent Modern Language Association national convention, has said that language resides in the mouth and the ear, and meaning resides in the body. We need stories, music—that violin that the second son was not allowed to touch. I think the Diversity Fund should sponsor fiction-readings all over CUNY for writers of all backgrounds.

In May I began the second part of my Diversity project; I’m doing oral history interviews of Jews from different countries and neighborhoods of the world, for instance, Tunisia, Morocco, African-American Harlem, Bulgaria, Iraq, Israel, Turkey, India, China, Yemen. After that, to be continued.

Notes:

Jane Mushabac’s short story appeared in her English translation, “Pasha: Ruminations of David Aroughetti,” under the pen name S. Manot in Midstream LI.4 Yiddish/Ladino issue (July/Aug. 2005): 41-44; and in her original Ladino, “Pasha: Pensamientos de David Aroughetti,” under the pen name Shalach Manot in Sephardic Horizons online journal 1.4 [http://www.sephardichorizons.org/Volume1/Issue4/Pasha.html] (Fall, 2011).

City Tech is New York City College of Technology, a college of the City University of New York located in Downtown Brooklyn.