National Scholar Updates

The Worldview of Prophets and Utopians: A Study in Contrasts

By Miriam Krupka Berger

(Miriam Krupka Berger is Chair of the Tanakh Department of the Upper School of Ramaz. This article appears in issue 26 of Conversations, the journal of the Instsitute for Jewish Ideas and Ideals.)

No, do the best you can to make the present production a success— don't spoil the entire play just because you happen to think of another one that you'd enjoy rather more.
                               —Thomas More, Utopia

In 1516, the British social philosopher Thomas More published his narrative Utopia, a work that would become central to the way in which humanity understood its ability to progress, to march toward perfectibility. The book compares social and economic conditions in Europe with those of an ideal society on an imaginary island located off the coast of the Americas. The title, Utopia, combines the Greek words ou ("no, not") and topos ("place”) to imply that the perfect conditions of this land were purely fictional and could never exist in reality. The current use of the word utopia as referring to “an ideal place or society” references More’s original meaning and includes the connotation of non-existence; a modern “utopia” is a place that reflects imaginable, but unattainable perfection—whether in political, social, cultural or economic terms.

Michael Weingrad, in a Spring 2010 essay in the Jewish Review of Books, explores why it is that, both historically and in contemporary times, Jewish authors do not engage in the writing of fantasy literature. He specifically questions why Jews do not utilize the genre to discuss questions of theology or to paint fantastical pictures that probe deeper social and religious questions:

Indeed, one wonders why, amidst all the initiatives to solve the crisis in Jewish    continuity, no one has yet proposed commissioning a Jewish fantasy series that might plumb the theological depths like Lewis or at least thrill Jewish preteens with tales of Potterish derring-do.[i]

The question is intriguing; there is no work of Jewish theology packaged in fictional fantasies like the tales of Lewis or Tolkien. However, the biblical canon does contain a wealth of “other-worldly” literature. Although they are not writers of fantasy literature, the prophets do describe the strangely utopian world of the Messianic Era.

Herein lie our questions: First, in what way is messianic prophecy similar to classic utopian writing, and in what way does it differ in its context and goals? Second, can biblical messianic literature be classified as an inspiration for, or early genre of, utopian literature? Finally, can our theological understanding of this specific messianic genre of nevuot, be enhanced through such an analysis?

To fully develop this comparison, we must begin with the following basic question: In addition to functioning as entertaining fairy tales, what did the envisioning and writing of utopias accomplish? Lyman Tower Sargent, renowned professor of utopian studies, notes that although utopias are multi-dimensional in form, all utopias represent some form of “social dreaming” that may or may not involve any active component.[ii] Sargent then acknowledges, however, that many “dreams” are accompanied minimally by thoughtful reasoning, and often, by the acting of the dreamer upon the dream.[iii] It was often the hope of certain “utopian socialists” that their fictional worlds would send a message to their society of what “perfection” looked like in the hope that their audience would progress toward that world by thinking about policies and ideas to improve the current reality. Regardless of whether the authors expected their readership to act upon these visions, utopias were commonly written as critiques of social or political ills in the writer’s environment. Edward Bellamy’s well-known Looking Backward is of a genre of utopias that speak of a world without money and with an idealized equal distribution of goods. It was Bellamy’s way of criticizing the growth of capitalism in the early nineteenth century.

In terms of this specific function, the prophet Isaiah really was the earliest utopian writer. As were many utopian works, many of Isaiah’s prophecies were written in war-torn and economically difficult periods.[iv] When he speaks of a world in which “nation shall not lift up sword against nation,”[v] or that all people will follow a unified path of religious and societal truth,[vi] he shapes the vision of this utopian world as a critique of the environment in which he finds himself. In Isaiah 2, the verses subsequent to the messianic elements quite clearly state this assumed critique; the people have abandoned God and worship power, wealth, and pride.[vii] The chapter then ends with a description of a world in which all humankind is humbled; idolatry is abandoned; and silver and gold become irrelevant in light of the truth (2:20).[viii] The straightforward social criticism in the subsequent verses clearly reveals Isaiah’s vision of the perfect world that he describes as a tool for the creation of a “beneficial reality.”[ix] Therefore, the biblical reader of messianic prophecy must remember that his work is less descriptive than it is prescriptive. And, in fact, was not one of the primary purposes of the biblical prophet to function as a critic of society? Why should the messianic prophecies be any different? By forecasting the future, the prophet hopes to create a more perfect tomorrow.

Interestingly, utopian literature itself came into being when humanity began to believe in the idea of progress and perfectibility. As societies moved from an “eat to live” mentality in which getting to the next day was all the future they could see, they began to think of bigger ideas like equality, economic equitability, and nationalism.[x] James Bury, in his well-known treatise The Idea of Progress points out that in most systems of ancient thought, time was regarded as “the enemy of humanity,” and change meant “corruption and disaster.” This was due to a “tendency characteristic of Greek philosophical thinkers to idealise the immutable as possessing a higher value than that which varies.” Because of this, any form of change, especially when it came to social speculation, was often viewed negatively.[xi] As society shifted to a more hopeful view of social change and revolution, utopian thinkers reflected social thought, and mimicked the prophets in describing how spans of time could possibly harbor positive future change.

This is something the prophets understood for a long time; that human relations could be improved over time, and that personal and national status or character were not predetermined or unchangeable constructs. Indeed, by describing the messianic world as “Aharit haYamim” or the “End of the Days,” Isaiah proposes and champions the idea that change can and must happen, even if it requires an extended period of time. Messianic prophecy functions with an eye toward the far future, a concept that first gained traction in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries and that focused on the idea of existence and progress as more than just daily survival.[xii]

But if the reader of prophetic messianism allows the comparison to end there, we will have ignored what it is that makes these nevuot truly unique. Let’s start by focusing on three of the messianic constructs that Isaiah discusses: 1) theological clarity, 2) political unity, and 3) fulfillment of a national mission or destiny. Isaiah envisions a world in which all nations recognize a single religious truth (2:2–3); judgment of the poor is pure and uncorrupted (11:2–5); the world is at peace (2:4); and the Jewish nation is settled in Zion. To the prophet, these are all one construct—a result of the first factor on the list; once the world recognizes a single religious truth, the natural result of that truth will be social and political peace. This is the first key to understanding prophetic messianism in contrast to utopianism. While both views imagine that the world will one day be a peaceful and socially just place, messianism is based on a belief in a God who wants those things, and that belief is how those ideals will be achieved. In other words, the only way to stage a successful long-term social revolution is if we all serve a Higher Power external to humanity. If we don’t, like Orwell’s critique of socialist utopias in Animal Farm, one person or group of people in the construct, will inevitably succumb to the fatal flaw of power or pride. Prophetic messianism requires a belief in a Being outside of humanity who controls the world, without which cohesion of humankind is unattainable. Theological clarity is a necessary precursor to other ideals.

Secondly, regarding political unity, prophetic messianism revolves around the human figure of a political leader who is a descendant of the Davidic dynasty.[xiii] In fact, the very term messiah, meaning “savior” or “anointed one,” comes from the term used to describe the anointing of the kings of Israel. This is an important distinction from classic utopian writing. As one utopian literary analyst understood, “[Messianism] requires pulling everybody into the scheme of a leader. Whereas utopianism basically consists in co-opting people to build things together.”[xiv] For many utopian writers (especially those of socialist utopias), government was the evil that needed to be eradicated, and humanity could never be happy until all political authority and institutions disappeared. This is a fascinating contrast similar to the first point about a God-centered society. Isaiah insists that humanity must follow a central political leader in order to achieve order out of chaos. Of course, in order for this to actually function, the leader must be pure of heart and mind, and of great moral and spiritual strength, but prophetic messianism suggests that a social order without a central mortal power (in addition to the central Godly power) is doomed to fail.

Why is this so? It seems antithetical to the idea of the idealism of the messianic era as a period in which pride and the power hungry nature of humanity have been defeated. Isn’t the requirement of a king an invitation to corruption—especially considering the fact that the pitfalls of human pride, ego, and the corruption of power are major themes of prophetic literature?[xv] Perhaps, like the need for a belief in a divine power external to humanity, it is also necessary to have a human representation of that control. In the view of the prophets, it is probable that in any democratic community of human beings, a desire for individual power will destroy any group dynamic (again, think of Orwell’s critique). To be sure, the dangers of an authority figure are clearly espoused by the prophets as well,[xvi] yet they maintain belief that human beings require a firm model of corporeal leadership in order to attain social, political, and religious good. It is not the theocentric prophet who will rule during the messianic era, but the anthropocentric king, meant to implement political rule in an earthly domain.

In halakhic reality and history, we find this specifically in the ideology of the rabbinical figure. The model of top-down halakhic decision making is still quite central to the realization of religious perfectibility. Interestingly, both utopian works (in their quest to rid the world of government) and messianic works (in requiring central government to perfect the world) are positing a world in which human nature itself does not change, but simply finds greater success in its struggle to be good. For utopians, humankind has the ability to strive toward perfectibility and is essentially good; humankind has just been held back by corrupt authority figures. In the messianic world, humans will always struggle between good and evil but the “good option” will be clearer (at least according to Maimonides). Therefore, a central political system is always necessary to maintain order. In neither world does the actual essence of humanity change in a significant way.

This brings us to our third point—that prophetic messianism is unique in its focus on a national history and fulfillment of a destiny. Prophetic messianism can never be understood as merely a social revolution in the way that some utopian works can be read. One important reason for this is its emphasis on the return to a national homeland; messianism is bound to an important historical and religious geographic location. Indeed, the messianic vision is dependent on the return to the land. While utopias, by their very definition (“no place”) are aterritorial, preferring to remain social commentaries on human characteristics, motivations, and realities, prophetic messianism ties itself to a specific historical location. In addition, many aspects of prophetic messianism rely on a vision of the past in the construction of the future.[xvii] Most utopian works are set in the future because they are about where we are going rather than how we got to where we are. Prophetic messianism prefers to tie our future “utopia” to remembrances and constructs of the past; a historically significant land, a dynastic king, a rebuilt Temple, a promise fulfilled and a national mission finally come to fruition. Why is that? Perhaps messianic vision is connected to a historical reality and memory because the prophets understood that a mission must rely on a greater narrative and history in order for the dream to feel tangible, powerful, and achievable. The biblical idea of “zikharon” or shared, collective memory, is the guidepost that will drive how a community works together to achieve the desired future. In contrast, utopias are sometimes criticized for being anti-nationalist in that they “laugh at the collapse of the Western world” and its heritage.[xviii] Thomas More himself probes at this theme in Utopia when he mocks those who fall back on the argument of tradition in order to justify weak character:

Failing all else, their last resort will be: “This was good enough for our ancestors, and     who are we to question their wisdom?” Then they'll settle back in their chairs, with an air of having said the last word on the subject—as if it would be a major disaster for anyone to be caught being wiser than his ancestors!

Unlike the historical dependency of prophetic messianism, More focuses on a break from the past as an element of building Utopia by placing it on an island that the founder of Utopia has cut off from the rest of humankind. His world can only work if it is removed from the rest of humanity.

Sargent suggests that “all utopias are fictions of a particular type.”[xix] However, by focusing on a historical reality and on an actual land, we are reminded that prophetic utopia is an actual place that exists and therefore is one that we can visit, settle, and develop. And like the concrete, material nature of a geographical reality, the social reality should feel tangible and achievable as well.[xx] Because of these elements, messianic literature does not have the same “fictive” texture that is characteristic of utopian literature.

This concretizing of the messianic universe can also be characterized as the difference between “horizontal concerns” and “vertical concerns.”[xxi] Horizontal concerns are those concerns that relate to the world around us, that occur within history and time, whereas vertical concerns relate to a world with a focus outside of our tangible reach, like the Jewish tradition of the World to Come[xxii] or Christianity’s Kingdom of Heaven. Prophetic messianism as it is presented in the text of Isaiah is a horizontal concern. It does not involve heavenly beings or non-corporeal entities; rather, it includes a king, a land, and a political vision. The context of Isaiah’s work also argues that messianism should be an attitude of doing, rather than an attitude of waiting.[xxiii] He shaped these visions during a period in which the Southern community of Judea watched as their Northern brothers disappeared into Assyrian exile. True, his messianism may have functioned as a form of comfort to the Judean survivors, but Isaiah is also warning his audience that if they don’t seek the messianic world through productive change, they will follow the same path to destruction.[xxiv] Utopian authors, on the other hand, though they criticize a society’s ills, describe an imaginary state and are often criticized for “simply describing the society without indicating how that society was or could be achieved.”[xxv]

What about the idea of catastrophic or apocalyptic messianism, then? If the messianic ideal is a horizontal concern, obtained through a tangible human focus on progress and perfectibility, then what of the tradition that the Messiah will arrive only after, or via, a great apocalyptic event such as a violent war or globally destructive incident? Does our tradition not also contain the belief that redemption will come via a powerful external agent and apocalyptic event representing the mighty hand of God? This tradition is harder to find in the prophecies of Isaiah but seems to be more clearly present in those of Daniel and Ezekiel.[xxvi] Perhaps this is why medieval thinkers made the case that apocalyptic messianism is but one choice, and that of a last resort; that God will intervene to pull humanity into utopia, but only if humanity can find absolutely no path by which to get there themselves. Indeed, it is not an ideal redemption. We see this in the understanding of the messianic prophecy: “The least of you will become a thousand, the smallest a mighty nation. I am the LORD; in its time I will do this swiftly” (Isaiah 60:22). How does one understand the timing of the messianic arrival? Will it occur “in its time,” in the right moment when it is appropriately achieved, or will it transpire “swiftly”? Perhaps the two can be reconciled, but Rashi points out that “in its time” refers to a situation in which the Jewish nation is not worthy of redemption. At that point, if we are unsuccessful in shaping a world that reflects the messianic ideals, then we will see it come about apocalyptically. However, if we are worthy of it, if we take the first steps down the road ourselves, then God promises to “accelerate” the end so that we’ll float over the finish line by His hand. He will ensure that any elements that stand in our way disappear, but the work will have been done by humanity. The outcome based on exertion and worthiness is the preferred mode of messianic redemption. In addition, it is important to keep in mind while reading the more apocalyptic sounding prophecies of Daniel, that all of them are couched in the language of political conflict and dominion, and interpreting them demands a broad knowledge of history and the rise and fall of nations. Likewise, the millenarian calculations that Daniel discusses utilize prophetic imagery and numerology but are clothed in the language of political narratives. For example, Nebuchadnezzar’s dreams in Daniel Chapters 2, 7, and 11 can all be understood as prophetic language channeled through the prism of the rise and fall of nations.

Finally, it is worthwhile to note that the messianic era is not a “happily ever after.” Maimonides notes that human beings will still function with free will and may choose to use it in a harmful way. However, this will be tempered by additional elements of clarity in seeking and understanding truth so that it will be easier to use that free will in a productive way. Maimonides adds that the messianic world will make it easier for humanity to attain the World to Come, but does not ensure it. The utopian genre, for many critics, is also one that is not an all-encompassing panacea. Sargent argues that perfection is actually not a characteristic of the utopian fiction; even in More’s Utopia, life is not perfect. Utopias are more about how they represent humanity’s evolution in community relations than they are about ultimate bliss. They need not necessarily be perfect, just “more perfect” than the current world.

One final note: Prophetic messianism, and the historical messianic movements it inspired, has seen its fair share of suspicion and criticism. Messianism has justifiably been accused of spinning fantasies in the imaginations of desperate audiences and of offering a passive mode of optimism, idealism, and empty hope in place of constructive advice and guidance. In a strong critique of Isaac Abravanel’s messianic commentary on the book of Daniel, Benzion Netanyahu epitomizes this criticism when he claims that messianism involves being

…rich in speculative fantasy. When [the men of the Middle Ages] considered the Bible, they gave their imagination the freest possible rein, and they used the ancient references, not to reconstruct the historical past, but to build their theoretical castles in the air. . . . messianic doctrine reflects the tragedy of the Jewish messianic movements…the tragedy of a people who built castles in the air, who breathed the atmosphere of dreams, rather than reality.[xxvii]                          

It is has been observed of the utopian construct as well that it is at best a fictional enterprise, and at worst, “a subversive avoidance of humanity’s current conditions and needs.”[xxviii] Literary analysts point out that while utopias might be tools for social change, they also tend to gloss over current realities; “ideology” can be both constructive and a “wholly negative concept.”[xxix]

While there is justifiable basis to both of these claims, I would venture to suggest that when it comes to prophetic messianism, the fantastical surface of the messianic words were always accompanied by realistic social criticism. The prophets never lost themselves in wistful dreaming, but accompanied it with hard advice that structured their offer of utopian future. In their words, we should see not just a “reconstruction of the historical past” in the thrill of a projected future, and not even just the theology of faith in human progress, but a form of national calling and expectation. It is a philosophy that should force us to acknowledge that perhaps, at the end of the day (pun intended), utopianism can be seen as an interesting example of a secular, modern expression of prophetic messianism, meant to challenge our assumptions, shape our philosophies and interactions and gently push us toward social and religious honesty and perfectibility. The navi proclaims the divine summons, and it is up to each of us, both individually and as a community, to seek out where and how we will answer his call.

The Fall of Kings in Tanakh and Shakespeare

by

Ronald S. Tauber

(Ronald Tauber is a graduate of Brooklyn College and Harvard Law School and has been a partner of a New York law firm and an investment bank. He lives in Manhattan with his wife, Adele. He is the author of The Little Book of Jewish Celebrations. This article appears in issue 26 of Conversations, the journal of the Institute for Jewish Ideas and Ideals.)

"For God's sake let us sit upon the ground

And tell sad stories of the death of kings!

How some have been deposed, some slain in war,

Some haunted by the ghosts they have deposed."

—Richard II, III: ii

            It is a story of the anointed King who showed early bravery and leadership, who created enemies out of friends and relatives, who died a violent death, and whose dynasty was supplanted. It is a story of the well-loved successor forced into exile who returned to become King and who then faced battle with traditional enemies and civil war. It is a story of the son of the successor who achieved glory greater than his father but whose own son saw the dynasty ruptured. It is a story of a curse that foretold generations of civil war and rebellion. This cinematic, exciting story of violence begetting violence is the history of both the early Israelite Kingdom and the late Plantagenet Kings in Medieval England.

             In fourteenth-century England, Richard II becomes King at a very young age and displays courage from the outset. Richard creates an enemy out of his cousin, Henry Bolingbroke and banishes him. Bolingbroke returns, takes the crown, and Richard dies a violent death. Bolingbroke becomes Henry IV and faces endless rebellion. His son Henry V achieves glory in a famous battle, but upon his death, the kingdom descends into the bloody civil war known as the War of Roses.

            In the biblical books of Samuel and Kings, Saul is anointed King of Israel, fights bravely, turns against his protégé and son-in-law, David, forcing him into exile. The prophet Samuel announces God’s repudiation of Saul’s kingship, and Saul dies in battle, succeeded by David. David becomes King, unifies the nation, but battles with enemies and in civil war against his own son. David dies and is succeed by his son, Solomon who achieves peace and great glory by building the Temple in Jerusalem. Following Solomon's death, the Kingdom is riven into the Kingdoms of Judah and Israel, never to be reunited under a Davidic monarchy.

            The story of these two monarchies is rooted in the conflict between the king’s public obligations and his personal wishes and relationships. While war and peace are interwoven throughout both narratives, familial conflicts are more devastating than those with traditional enemies. In both monarchies, personal actions, far from scenes of battle, shatter peace and usher in generations of dynastic struggle.

            The Bible is sparing in historical detail but presents Saul, David, Solomon, and other biblical figures as flesh-and-blood personalities with virtues and vices. There are ample historical records relating to Kings Richard II, Henry IV, and Henry V, but their reigns were dramatically re-imagined by Shakespeare in the eponymous plays which have become the principal, if not always precisely accurate, record of their reigns. [Except as noted with respect to events occurring prior to the action in the play, this article compares the characters discussed based on the written record in the Bible and Shakespeare.]

            Shakespeare made no overt reference to the Kingdom of Israel in his History Tetralogy (Richard II, Henry IV, parts 1 and 2, and Henry V) but there are too many parallels to ignore. The similarities have been noted and cataloged, usually within the context of Shakespeare and the Bible in general. At least one scholar has focused specifically on Shakespeare and the David story (Evett, David: Types of King David in Shakespeare’s Lancastrian Tetralogy in Shakespeare Studies; 1981 Vol. 14, p. 139), but he was interested in finding strands of David’s personality in a host of Shakespearean characters rather than in comparing the two histories.

            As has sometimes happened in English history, Richard II was not meant to be King, at least not when he acceded to the throne. His grandfather, Edward III famously had too many sons, causing much grief in succeeding generations as rival claims to the throne fought it out. Edward’s oldest son (also Edward), known as the Black Prince, died before the old King. On Edward III’s death, his grandson, the Black Prince’s son, succeeded to the crown as Richard II. He was 10 years old.

            Twenty-five centuries earlier, Saul, apparently a common herdsman, was searching for lost donkeys when he encountered the prophet Samuel, who anointed him King of Israel. Saul’s qualifications seem to be his good looks and great height. Prior to Saul, ancient Israel had no King and was ruled by a succession of Judges, who were usually military leaders and guided by prophets. Samuel was distrustful of monarchy and only reluctantly complied with the people’s wishes for a King, but not before warning them of the burden the King would place upon the people.

            Saul and Richard each demonstrated exceptional skill and bravery in their early careers. Richard’s early act of bravery is not found in Shakespeare; it took place when Richard was only 14, well before the action in Shakespeare’s play unfolds. In 1381, years of tension between peasants and landowners brewed into the “Peasants’ Revolt.” Within a month, the rebels, having murdered several of the King’s chief ministers, were just outside the city of London demanding the abolition of serfdom. In two separate confrontations, the 14-year-old King, whose forces were greatly outnumbered, stood his ground and disbanded the rebels (Saul, Nigel, Richard II, p. 62 ff, Yale University Press. London and New Haven 1997). As another historian put it, “There was little doubt among the King’s men that they owed their lives to his courage and presence of mind” (Norwich, John J. Shakespeare's Kings p. 65 Scribner,  New York, 1999).

            Chapter 11 of I Samuel recounts the fear of the Israelites under the domination of the Ammonites. The tribes of Israel were not yet fully united, and Saul’s kingship was not universally accepted. Saul, newly anointed, musters a great army through a symbolic act of brutality (cutting up a pair of oxen and sending pieces to the 12 tribes) and soundly defeats the enemy. Saul demonstrated great political wisdom as well as military skill by forbidding reprisals against those Israelites who challenged his kingship. This early victory unified the tribes and firmly established Saul’s rule.

            While these early triumphs brought praise to both Kings, instability and self-inflicted turmoil soon followed. As Richard II reached manhood he became increasingly arrogant and antagonistic to the nobility. He engendered conflict with his own family and particularly, his uncles the Dukes of Gloucester and Lancaster. He appropriated estates from some nobles and gave them to his court favorites. Richard’s enemies brought him to heel with trials at the so-called “Merciless Parliament,” resulting in the condemnation of certain of Richard’s favorites. Richard subsequently proceeded to exact a measure of revenge, which sets the stage for Shakespeare’s play focusing on the intra-family feud.

            John of Gaunt, Duke of Lancaster, Richard’s uncle and father of Henry Bolingbroke (soon to be Henry IV) was the richest and most powerful man (after the King) in England. He established Richard’s kingship by accepting Richard as King while still a boy rather than challenging him for the crown. With his rule seemingly secure, Richard instigated a feud with Lancaster’s son, Henry Bolingbroke. Henry and another noble, the Duke of Norfolk asserted mutual accusations of treason against one another and agreed to single combat before King Richard to settle the matter. Rather than allow the combat to go forward, Richard exiled Norfolk for life and Henry Bolingbroke for a term of years. King Richard was afraid of what might result from the success of one knight or the other because the incident giving rise to the mutual charges related to the death of the Duke of Gloucester, Richard’s uncle, a death undoubtedly desired (and probably ordered) by King Richard. Henry accepted his exile but when his father, John of Gaunt, Duke of Lancaster died, Richard confiscated his properties and divided them among his own sycophantic followers. Richard thus sent the devastating message to the nobility that in this King’s realm, the laws of inheritance do not apply, only the King’s will. Rather than solidify his reign with allies, Richard created a powerful enemy (with allies) who was shortly destined to replace him. John J. Norwich states, “There could no longer be any doubt that the King’s mental balance was seriously disturbed” (p. 116).

            Just as Richard succumbed to jealousy and perhaps madness, Saul also created an enemy of a would-be ally and initiated the sequence of events which inexorably led to his downfall, death and replacement. David is introduced to the Saul narrative as the successor-King when Saul disobeys God’s command (conveyed by the prophet Samuel) on the conduct of the war against Israel’s enemies. There are, in fact, three introductions of David: the warrior-lad who slays Goliath; the musician who soothes King Saul; and the youngest son of Jesse improbably anointed by Samuel as the next King of Israel. David had defeated the Philistine giant, Goliath, and inspired the Israelite warriors to further victories. He became an important part of Saul’s Court and was given Saul's daughter in marriage. Yet Saul could not abide the song of the Israelite women after battle: “Saul has killed his thousands, but David his tens of thousands” (I Samuel 18:7).

            Whether it was mental illness or legitimate distress that his dynasty was ending before it truly began, Saul determined to eliminate his young rival. Saul made several attempts to kill David, and Saul’s enmity split his family. In describing one such attempt, the Bible asserts that Saul suffered from a form of madness: “An evil spirit from God descended on Saul and he raved within the house” (I Samuel 18:10). Saul’s son, Jonathan, and his daughter, Michal, both loved David, and in separate incidents saved him from their father’s wrath. Finally, David fled from Saul and sought refuge with Israel’s mortal enemy, the Philistines. Without the support of David, Saul was unable to defeat the Philistines; he and the crown prince, Jonathan, perished in battle, paving the path for David to assume the kingship.

            When Richard and Saul ultimately die, their successors have similar reactions to the news—not of relief, but of guilt and sorrow. Richard died in isolation at the hand of an assassin who thought he was following Henry’s wishes. In Shakespeare, Richard’s murderer, Exton, brings the news to King Henry who disowns the intent to have Richard killed, banishes Exton and vows a penitential pilgrimage to Jerusalem. Saul died in battle with the Philistines, which the Israelites lost in the absence of their hero, David. An Amalekite brings news to David of Saul’s death. The Amalekite says he found Saul gravely wounded and, in response to Saul’s explicit request, administered a merciful death blow. David immediately orders the death of the Amalekite for “destroying the anointed of the Lord.” David delivers a poetic elegy over Saul and Jonathan, "O how the mighty have fallen." He laments them as "lovely and pleasant...swifter than eagles, mightier than lions." This dirge is testament of remorse for a beloved enemy that repeatedly tried to kill the poet (II Samuel 1).

            Although Henry IV and David disrupted the dynastic order, each was intent to create his own dynasty and determined to pass the kingship on by inheritance. Arguably, the most important achievement of each King was to provide an heir who solidified the dynastic rule and who had achievements that rivaled or outshone those of the father. Henry IV’s successor, Henry V, after a wild and reckless youth (chronicled in Shakespeare’s two Henry IV plays) achieved a near miraculous victory over the French at Agincourt, married the daughter of the French King, and brought the promise that his heirs would rule France as well as England. Although his infant son did succeed him (as Henry VI), the victories of Henry V proved short-lived and were followed by the civil war known as the War of Roses. David’s son, Solomon, built the Temple in Jerusalem and expanded the Israelite Kingdom. On Solomon’s death, however, that kingdom split into the Kingdoms of Israel and Judah, never again to be united.

            The Plantagenet and Israelite Kingdoms thus share an unusual historical path: a legitimate King is deposed; a new King not in the natural line of succession is enthroned and establishes a new inherited dynastic order; the new King is followed by his son who achieves glory in his own right; the second-generation King, however, is unable to pass on a stable kingdom to his son and the realm is plagued by civil war and turmoil that lasts many generations

            Part of the enduring fascination with the histories of Henry and David is the manner in which they were made to live their lives before and during their rule. They were each forced into exile before assuming the crown and were removed from the luxury of court to the bitterness of life with a national enemy. Once in power, they faced endless rebellion and war within their families. What Shakespeare wrote about Henry is equally true for David: “Uneasy lies the head that wears a crown” (Henry IV, Part 2, III:i).

             Both Henry and David took refuge with the traditional enemies of their people, France in the case of Henry and Philistia in the case of David. Henry was sentenced to six years banishment when Richard interrupted the single combat between Henry and the Duke of Norfolk. Henry went off to France to begin his exile but broke the terms of his punishment and returned early upon the death of John of Gaunt, his father. Henry did not return alone; he had a substantial following in England and he came from France with armed followers. His return precipitated the fall of Richard and led to Henry’s coronation. David escaped several attempts on his life by King Saul and ultimately fled to Gath a Philistine city and became part of the royal guard of Achish, King of Gath. In exile, David amassed a large band of relatives and followers who formed the core of his support.

                David and Henry each had to fight off rebellions from those who were close to them after becoming King. Henry IV was made King with the support of the Percy family, especially the Earl of Northumberland. Years later, incensed over King Henry’s treatment of the family in the matter of some Scottish prisoners, the Percys and their Welsh and Scottish allies engage in open rebellion against Henry. King Henry and his sons battle the rebels and defeat them at Shrewsbury where the Prince of Wales (the future Henry V) first demonstrated his military prowess by killing Harry Hotspur, a far more experienced warrior. In Shakespeare’s account the rebellion is finally put down by the trick of a false promise of truce. King David seems to have had few moments of peace overcoming supporters of Saul and others and then having a fierce struggle with his son, Absalom. Absalom had proclaimed himself King while David was very much alive and mustered a huge force to seize the crown by force. Like Henry’s battle, this rebellion was also put down by a trick. Absalom appeared to have the upper hand but followed deliberately bad advice given by a double-agent loyal to David. Absalom’s end is well-known in art and literature: He swings between heaven and earth caught in a tree and is cut down by David’s general, Joab.

            [This parallel may appear somewhat strained since it compares David with Henry V, not Henry IV but the reigns of the two Henrys were contiguous and Shakespeare’s dramas present one continuous story.]

            Henry and David are each taken to task by a revered figure, and notwithstanding their absolute power, each accepts the criticism and grows in maturity. Henry had led a riotous life and consorted with vulgarians, including Falstaff and his company. In his early years, he was roundly criticized and brought to heel by the distinguished Chief Justice. Upon his father’s death, Henry V meets the Lord Chief Justice, who acknowledges that he fears that the new King does not like him. The jurist tells the new King that he was bound to respect the law in order to strengthen the old King’s legitimate rule. The new King tells the Chief Justice that he is right and that is he happy to “have a man so bold that dares do justice on my proper son.”

             David's fault was far greater. He lusts after Bathsheba, sleeps with her, and when she announces her pregnancy, David causes the death of her husband. The prophet Nathan makes the sin clear to David by presenting him a parable of the rich man who covets the poor man’s lone sheep. Nathan foretells the grievous punishments that will befall David. Rather than rage against Nathan, David acknowledges the sin and shortly thereafter suffers the first of many punishments involving the death of loved ones and the rebellion of sons (II Samuel 11).

            King David and Henry IV had forceful personalities that propelled them to kingship but they were also beloved by the common people, in contrast to their predecessors. Richard bitterly receives the report of Henry’s departure to banishment where a witness "observed his courtship of the common people, how he did seem to dive into their hearts with humble and familiar courtesy." Richard sarcastically notes, “what reverence [Henry] did throw away on slaves” (Richard II, I:iv).

            When King David brought the Ark of the Lord (carrying the Tablets of the Law) to Jerusalem he danced and leapt to the delight of the crowd. He was harshly and bitterly criticized by his wife, Michal, King Saul’s daughter for vulgar behavior “uncovering himself in front of his retainers’ servant girls.” David retorted at once: “I danced before the Lord who chose me over your father and all his family and appointed me to rule over the Lord’s people.” David added that he may continue to dance in that vulgar fashion and would receive still more honor from the servant girls (I Samuel 6).

            King David and Henry V were both beloved figures and great leaders but each had a dark side and engaged in ghastly massacres. Henry V was a great military leader who directed his vastly outnumbered forces to a celebrated victory over the French at Agincourt. When Henry heard that some French soldiers had killed the English youth guarding the luggage, he ordered retaliation by having all the French prisoners killed rather than being taken to captivity. David had escaped Saul’s persecution by gaining refuge with the Philistine King Achish. David and his followers acted as a Philistine auxiliary army and Achish thought David was raiding Israelite towns for booty. In fact, David stayed away from his native country and confined his raids to non-Philistine and also non-Israelite towns. In order to eliminate the possibility of witnesses, after the raids, David’s band killed every one in the raided villages, including women and children (I Samuel 27).
            Richard and King Saul are tragic figures and not just because of their violent and untimely deaths. They each had fatal flaws that inexorably led from great success and universal acceptance to failure, deposition, and death. They each had internal demons that drove them to ruinous jealousy and self-destructive acts. Richard enraged the nobility by confiscating property and promoting court lackeys. When Henry Bolingbroke returned from exile to claim his father’s entitlements and ultimately the throne, Richard was bereft of friends and was no match for Henry. David did not seek to replace Saul but when the prophet Samuel announced that God had repudiated Saul’s kingship, Saul’s paranoid hostility towards David made David’s succession virtually inevitable.

            David and Henry (both IV and V) were far from perfect. They were effective but sometimes brutal leaders. They did not always lead exemplary moral lives. Henry IV was racked with guilt over Richard’s displacement and the young Henry V lived a riotous youth leaving a trail of mischief and causing grief to his father. King David lusted after Bathsheba and caused the death of her husband. Nevertheless, Henry (particularly Henry V) and David are not seen as tragic figures but as beloved heroes with some flaws. This contrast between the King and his successor is not simply the result of the victor being the hero in history. It results, rather, from something sad, tragic and inevitable in the fall of Richard and Saul and from the strength of will and magnetic personalities of Henry and King David.

            At the end of their lives, Henry IV and David each had a death-bed scene with his successor replete with Machiavellian advice. Solomon was enthroned as King with David’s blessing while David was still alive. David’s parting advice to Solomon was to put to death certain of David’s enemies whom David had seemingly forgiven in his lifetime. David’s final act, perhaps protective of his son’s throne, is one of bloody vengeance. In a final scene of reconciliation between Henry IV and his son who is about to become King Henry V, the old King advises his son to consolidate his rule by instigating a foreign war.

            David and Henry IV were great leaders but their lives were complicated by power and abuse of power. Each heard that his actions would bring retribution in later life and in future generations.

            The Bishop of Carlisle rebukes Henry IV at the time of his coronation for his usurpation and prophesizes:

The blood of English shall manure the ground,

And future ages groan for this foul act;

Peace shall go to sleep with Turks and infidels,

And in this seat of peace, tumultuous wars

Shall kin with kin and kind with kind confound. (Richard II, IV:i)

            In similar terms, the Prophet Nathan rebukes King David with God’s judgment after the sin with Bathsheba: “Now therefore, the sword shall never depart from thy house…I will raise up evil against thee out of thine own house” (II Samuel 12:10–11).

            Both these prophecies came to pass. The War of Roses saw the destruction of a generation of Plantagenet Kings and Princes and peace was restored only with the new Tudor Dynasty. David’s children rose up against him and were killed and his son Solomon’s kingdom was racked with division and war for hundreds of years.

            Conflicts within families or with allies are often more devastating than those with traditional or natural enemies. Richard’s kingship was made secure by his family’s acceptance of his rule as a young boy. There were family members who also had valid claims to the Crown but Richard was selected and protected by powerful uncles. Logically, Richard should have made an ally of his first cousin, Henry Bolingbroke, and used him to solidify his reign. Instead, Richard sent Henry into exile setting into motion the almost clockwork-like events that led to his ruin.

            Logically, Saul should have loved David, who was his key military asset as well as his son-in-law. Instead, Saul repeatedly tried to kill David, who fled and was absent from the ruinous battle that destroyed Saul and ended his dynasty. Logically, Absalom should have loved and honored his father, David. Instead, he fomented rebellion and forfeited not only his future rule but his life. While the Tanakh lays the blame for Saul’s deposition to his disobedience and implies that Absalom’s rebellion was partial punishment for David’s sin with Bathsheba, family and personal dynamics surely played their roles in these destructive acts.

            In each case, illogical jealousy by the King (Saul and Richard), who was more powerful and stronger, towards the subject (David and Henry), who was an underling and weaker brought about personal downfall. Ultimately, as the prophet Nathan and the Bishop of Carlisle each foresaw, these episodes of personal enmity were to shatter peace for generations.

            We are accustomed to think that nations go to war for great national causes. Tanakh and Shakespeare teach us that peace is sometimes disrupted by individual actions and less than noble causes. Personal jealousy, prejudice, and unwarranted hatred have all led to war, and not just in ancient times. Students of World War I can identify the political and economic background of the conflict but none doubt the impact of the family relationships between the cousins, the Kaiser, the Czar, and the King of England. The blessing of peace must not be taken for granted and rulers (even democratic ones) must take care to promote policies and establish personal relationships that promote and nurture peace. Otherwise, “peace may go to sleep” and “the sword may never depart from the house.”

Although he actively denied the label of existentialism, the great existentialist writer and thinker Albert Camus had a great deal to teach us about the human condition. At just 44, two years before his untimely and tragic death, Camus was cited by the Nobel committee for his work to:

“illuminate the problem of the human conscience in our time... a champion of imaginative literature as a vehicle of philosophical insight and moral truth.”

He remains the second-youngest Nobel Laureate for Literature. The French-Algerian author of unique classics like “The Plague” and “The Stranger” was obsessed with the question of why we are here, and the absurd predicament of humanity in a world of suffering and apparent meaninglessness.

Camus was not content to relegate himself to just writing. He was a dedicated lifelong activist, throwing his energies to movements he felt were doing their best to achieve equality and justice, first as a revolutionary against French Colonialism in Algeria, then as a Marxist, then as an Anarchist. Camus was a man of principle, resigning from his human rights work at some opaque group called UNESCO (perhaps you have heard of them of late), when the United Nations accepted the Dictator General Franco with open arms. There is even scholarly speculation that Camus covertly participated in the rescue and hiding of Jewish children in Chambon, France organized by the righteous Pastor, André Trocmé, in 1942.

Even when world opinion, especially in so-called polite European society began to turn against Israel in the wake of the ‘57 Suez crisis, Camus wrote publicly to affirm his support for the Jewish state, earning him the ire of his intellectual peers.

So then, at the height of his career, with many of his works beginning to gain wide interest and acceptance, Camus won the Nobel, and fell into a deep depression. Parenthetically, and most timely, Camus’ erstwhile friend Jean-Paul Sartre famously rejected the great prize, and scorned Camus for not doing the same.

Shortly after learning of the honor, Camus wrote to his mother - “Maman, I miss you now more than ever.” For him, the great recognition that the award signaled also triggered a sense that his career was somehow over, and the resulting feeling of the triviality of it all left a void which he tried to fill with activities like yoga.

In what may be the most famous words of his great literary career, Camus posed the following in the opening lines of his “Myth of Sisyphus:”

To decide whether life is worth living is to answer the fundamental question of philosophy. Everything else … is child’s play; we must first of all answer the question.

I think about Camus and this question during Sukkot, especially on Shabbat Hol Hamoed - when I recall another famous writer, one who I think also would have rejected the designation “existentialist.” Traditionally, Ashkenazim reserve today for the reading of Megillat Kohelet, the last of King Solomon’s three books of wisdom.

Our Sages relate in Midrash Shir ha-Shirim Rabbah that the evolution of each of these books can be traced to different times in the life of “the wisest of all men”. Shir ha-Shirim, Song of Songs, with its odes to love, passion, and desire represents the enthusiasm and potential of King Solomon’s younger years. Mishlei, Proverbs, is a product of middle age, an attempt to gather the wisdom of his experiences as King of the unified Jewish people, adorned with the glory of the Temple in Jerusalem. Finally, Kohelet,  Ecclesiastes, with its anguished cries of “Hevel Havalim haKol Havel” - “all is vanity” - is the work of the quill of a King reflecting upon his life with the realization that he is firmly in the twilight of it, in the valley of the shadow of death.

This King, blessed with transcendent wisdom, declares:  I have tried to make sense of it all, and yet it remains beyond me; as Camus might say: Absurdity of Absurdities, what’s the point of it all.

I feel comfortable comparing Camus, an avowed atheist, with the great King Solomon in this regard because of just how problematic Kohelet was for Hazal. Several sources, notably the Mishna in Yadayim (4:2), record debate amongst our Sages if this Megillah should even be considered part of the holy canon.

The martyr Rabbi Aryeh Zvi Frommer, known as the Kozhaglover Rav, crystallizes the rabbinic ambivalence toward King Solomon’s final work with the following question:

“All of Sefer Kohelet is mavhil, denigrating, of this world and every human activity in it, and yet our Torah wrote at the very outset that God looked at this world after creation and declared: - behold, it is good. How can this be?”

In fact, due to a comment made by the Rashbam and some other commentators, there is a sense that the last verses of Kohelet represent an “addition” by Hazal to make the previous twelve chapters ‘Kosher.’ After all is said and done, “Fear” - more accurately, be in awe of God, and keep his commandments because that’s all we’ve got.

We can sharpen the question further. The Torah singles out Sukkot, of all holidays, three times for a special exhortation to be joyful. This holiday even merits the formulation that we should be especially happy (Akh Sameah) and rejoice. So why must we read this existential, dark, and somewhat depressing Megillah at this time, harshing all of the joy of this holiday in a way even the most persistent rain cannot?

To attempt an answer, I want to turn back to Camus, and a reading of him by a special rabbi whom I quote often, Rav Shimon Gershon Rosenberg. Reading the classic “The Plague,” Rav Shagar (as Rav Rosenberg is known) sees a parable of our many devices against the inevitable which waits for us all, and the ways in which some people might react - some violently, some heretically, railing against and trying desperately to break all rules and systems, denying authority as meaningless and impotent.

Rav Shagar says this is the Shadow, the Tzel, that hangs over all life. He affirms, with respect and sympathy, those who choose to live in that Tzel, denying life, happiness, and joy because after all they are walking in the valley of the shadow of death. What good is it all - Hevel Havalim? So let us eat, drink, and be merry. Let us amuse ourselves to death and consume the time we have left, as the sand drains from the top of the hourglass.

Even King Solomon gives credence to this notion in one of Kohelet’s most egregious passages in the eyes of Chazal: There’s nothing better for a person than to eat, drink, and take pride in their material achievements. How could such a seemingly hedonistic statement be included in Tanakh?

While we could discuss these themes at great length, I want to finish with the profound and moving response of Rav Shagar, a man who himself lived life in a personal shadow of death. He was the only survivor of a blasted Israeli tank during the Yom Kippur war, dragged out of the burning wreck with only the most tenuous grip on life, as his friends perished behind him in that terrible battle.

An artist's’ portrait of the Rabbi that graces the cover of one of his posthumous derashot depicts a man deep in study, almost entombed in dark shadows. It is from this well of suffering and pain that Rav Shagar’s response arises.

He writes that there is another, parallel shadow in life, in the words of the Zohar called the shadow of Emunah. With Emunah, faith, we can sanctify and elevate the shadow of death by realizing that “Lo Ira Ra Ki Atah Imadi” - we do not fear, because Hashem is with us. True, it is still a shadow, but in this instance it inspires not dread, but awe and radical amazement.

To be sure, we eat, drink, and make merry on this festival of joy, but it is in the shadow of the Sukkah, a structure flimsy and transient, but built to Halakhic specifications unchanged by thousands of years of the worst that humanity has offered to our eternal people. We remember in the Sukkah the protection of God’s divine glory and the actual Sukkot the nascent Israelite people built in the desert as a wandering slave nation, yet to see the fruits of their Sisyphean labors and sufferings in Egypt.

We dwell in the shade of the sukkah - Halakha requires there be shade and shadows within it, but we look up and recognize that is not the shadow of doubt, meaninglessness, and vanity, but rather the comforting embrace of God’s Sukkah of Peace, signifying the tranquility and inner peace of  the faithful believer.

In the Sukkah and on Sukkot - even as our Hadasim and Aravot dry out, our etrogim lose their luster and pitoms, even as our s’khakh is knocked down by wind and rain, and the colors in our children’s beautiful decorations begin to run, we may reflect on how we seek refuge in the wings of faith as they envelop us with certainty, purpose, and mission.

Praiseworthy are those who dwell in God’s presence, in the Shadows of Faith, fulfilling Mitzvot, doing acts of kindness, coming together in solidarity. Much of our High Holy Day liturgy begins with the affirmative answer uv’khen - “YES”, we answer to Camus’ question. Yes, in spite of it all, it is absolutely worth it to be here, to be alive and infused with the sense of purpose that the gift of Emunah grants us.

For many of us this all requires a leap, which ultimately is what Camus himself advocated in the face of the absurd, the only thing that allowed him to forge ahead into a life of action. We forge ahead into a life of Mitzvot and closeness with God.

Uv’khen –Yes-- this response allows us to say it is indeed good, and we can rejoice. Yes, despite all the difficult and vexing existential questions of faith and life raised by Kohelet, the absolutely integral answer and the final word for all of us here today was and always remains: “The end of the matter, all having been heard: fear God and keep His commandments; for this is the essence of human life.”

The Psalm associated with Shemini Hag Atsereth/Simhath Torah seems to be a strange choice. It is Psalm 12, a Psalm that Martin Buber has described as a prophecy “against the generation of the lie.” The Psalmist cries out: “Help, O Lord, for the pious cease to be…They speak falsehood each with his neighbor, with flattering lip, with a double heart they speak.” The generation is led by oppressors who say “our tongue will make us mighty,” who arrogantly crush the downtrodden.

Buber comments: “They speak with a double heart, literally ‘with heart and heart’…The duplicity is not just between heart and mouth, but actually between heart and heart. In order that the lie may bear the stamp of truth, the liars as it were manufacture a special heart, an apparatus which functions with the greatest appearance of naturalness, from which lies well up to the ‘smooth lips’ like spontaneous utterances of experience and insight.” (“Good and Evil,” New York, 1953, p. 10)

The Psalmist is not merely condemning his “generation of the lie,” but other future generations that also will be characterized by lying, bullying, oppressing; that will be led by smooth talking and corrupt demagogues. But the Psalmist turns prophet in proclaiming that God will arise and protect the victims of the liars. Truth will prevail. “It is You, O Lord, who will guard the poor, You will protect us forever from this generation.” And yet, the Psalm ends on a realistic note: “But the wicked will strut around when vileness is exalted among humankind.”

Although God will ultimately redeem the world from the “generation of the lie,” this will not happen right away. As long as people submit to the rule of the wicked, the wicked will stay in power. In the long run, God will make truth prevail over lies. In the short run, though, it is the responsibility of human beings to stand up against tyranny, lies, and arrogant smooth talking liars. If the wicked are not resisted, they will continue to strut around and feel invincible.

What does this Psalm have to do with Shemini Hag Atsereth/Simhath Torah, known in our tradition as Zeman Simhateinu, the time of our rejoicing? On a simplistic level, the Psalm might have been chosen because it opens with “Lamnatseah al ha-Sheminith,” to the Chief Musician on the Eighth (the “eighth” being a musical instruction). Since it mentions eight, it is thus connected with Shemini Hag Atsereth, the eighth day closing festival.

It would seem, though, that our sages must have had something deeper in mind in choosing Psalm 12 to be associated with this festival. In the Amidah of Rosh Hashana and Yom Kippur, we include prayers asking the Almighty to inspire awe in all His creations and to have humanity acknowledge Him as Ruler of the universe. We pray for a time when “iniquity shall close its mouth and all wickedness vanish as smoke when You will remove the rule of tyranny from the earth.” On Succoth, our ancestors offered 70 offerings in the Temple, symbolically praying for the well-being and harmony of all humanity (understood by the rabbis to be composed of 70 nations). Psalm 12 is an appropriate continuation of these themes, and is a fitting reminder at the end of the holiday season that we depend on God to bring truth and peace to humanity.

But Psalm 12 adds an important dimension. Although we certainly must pray to the Almighty for redemption, we also bear responsibility for the sad state of human affairs. Prayer alone isn’t enough to solve our problems. We need to muster the courage to stand up against lies and tyranny, to uproot “the generation of the lie.”

Throughout the world, we see examples of simple people rising up against harsh and powerful tyrants. They risk their lives, their livelihoods, their families—but they have reached the breaking point where they can no longer tolerate the unjust tyrannies under which they live. Many suffer and die in the process—but ultimately, it is hoped that the masses of good people will prevail over the dictators and demagogues. People in power rarely cede their power peacefully and gracefully. The entrenched powers will do whatever they need to do to maintain their control.

Fortunately, we live in free societies. Although we certainly have our share of imperfect rulers and leaders, we also have a system that allows for change and peaceful transition. The people can take control by voting, by peaceful protests, by peaceful strikes. Many people are not willing to stand up and be counted. They are happy to pray for God to bring peace and truth to the world. They are comfortable letting others take the risks of fighting the establishment’s power base. Psalm 12 comes at the end of the holiday season to remind us: yes, God will make truth and justice prevail; but in the meanwhile, evil will persist as long as we let it persist.

Unless we are willing to stand up against the tyrants and demagogues, they will continue to crush us. They will continue their lies and p.r. spins and political manipulations. The concluding lesson we should take from this holiday season is: building a true, just and moral community and society depends on us.

From Our Selves to God: How a Siddur With Photographs May Help Us Pray

by Michael Haruni

(Michael Haruni devised and translated the full Shabbat siddur, Nehalel beShabbat and Nehalel beChol (Nevarech Press, www.nehalel.com), in which photographs juxtaposed with prayers direct the user’s thoughts to their meanings. He has done doctoral research in Philosophy on the subject of pain, and his stage plays have explored the relation between faith and identity. Born in London, he lives in Jerusalem with his wife and children. This article appears in issue 26 of Conversations, the journal of the Institute for Jewish Ideas and Ideals.)        

            It was a guiding idea in the creation of Siddur Nehalel that its distinctive format could assist the user in entering the mental state, or kavanah, halakhically required for praying. The principal innovation in the siddur is its juxtaposing, with the texts, photographs that purport to depict their respective meanings—so that, as one recites a given passage, the image directs one's thoughts to its meaning. But whether or not anything of this sort could succeed in enhancing the kavanah of the user depends on what we assume the kavanah of praying should be. I want therefore to say something here about how we are to understand this kavanah,[i] as well as about how the conception of Siddur Nehalel ties in with that understanding.

            I'll want especially to dwell on what I suspect has become a quite widespread misconception about how to achieve kavanah—a misconception that could be confusing many of us in our approach to prayer—and to say something about how some contemporary siddurim, Siddur Nehalel among them, variously relate to this misconception. In a nutshell, my concern is that many of us have fallen into the habit, as we pray, of acting out a kind of make-believe persona. This need not happen, though—we are capable instead of drawing the attitudes we express in prayer from our real selves, and of presenting to God the persons we really are.

*          *          *         

            Surely, it sometimes happens that we are overwhelmed by the sense of connecting with God through the medium of prayer in a powerful, self-consuming way. I stand before God, deeply agitated by my personal or national concerns; or I'm overcome with awe or love of God as I behold His creation of this wondrous world and of people close and far; or I'm filled with trepidation as I ponder God's engineering of the ongoing history that thrillingly and terrifyingly holds us in its grip. I then sense, as I address God, a genuine outpouring from my mental and spiritual state. I sense, too, that this registers in some measure upon the attention of God—and even that an intimacy of sorts has been created between myself and God.

            But we all also know what it's like to recite from a siddur in an absentminded manner, to feel we are, at best, minimally fulfilling an obligation. We wonder then what possible value there can be in this practice, yet continue adhering dutifully to our daily prayer routine.

            The two volumes of Siddur Nehalel that have now appeared are the product of a conviction that its format has a potential to bring our praying closer to that former kind. The meaning-relatedness of the photographs is crucial here. The images purport to be not merely decorative, but to depict in each case the meaning of some key phrase in the given passage. So, for instance, the aerial photograph of the Temple Mount is not there just because it's a pretty picture, but in order to prod the user into attending to the meaning of what he or she is saying, ...veHishtahavu leHar kodsho… ("...and bow in worship at His sacred mountain…").

            The feedback I get indicates that the format largely works. Not with everyone; some who've tried using Siddur Nehalel say the photographs distract them, instead of directing their thoughts to the meanings of the texts. The format is not any kind of panacea instantly curing our every kavanah issue. Nor do I suggest that this format absolves the user from mental exertion. It won't help to hold Nehalel passively in our hands; what the photographs give us, I hope, is an instrument we might actively use to assist us in praying with kavanah. Like any instrument we pick up, we must learn how to use it. So for one thing, Siddur Nehalel won't work if one treats it as a picture book, like a coffee table art catalogue showcasing the images. The photographs are not intended as the focus, but merely as the background to the texts; ideally they would work as unconscious prompts, directing our attention to certain meanings—much as the image sequence of a movie mostly acts as a visual backdrop, steering our attention through the narrative and cognitive content of the movie.

            Many people are now davening regularly from Siddur Nehalel. Something, it seems, is happening with their praying—and there are abundant testimonies that it's something good. But a subjective evaluation that one's praying is improved is not really evidence (to us as outside observers) that this really is a move in the right direction. Assuming some difference is made, does this bring the user closer in some way to what praying, philosophically and halakhically, should be? Or could it be misdirected, founded on some confused notion of what kavanah properly involves?

            So let's look now at what kavanah should consist of. What kind of state of mind is this? There are, as far as I can tell, two principal themes running through the traditional literature on this question. The explication of kavanah offered by the Talmud is expressed by the maxim, K'she'atem mitpalelim de'u lifney Mi atem om'dim ("When you pray, be aware of before Whom you stand").[ii] This idea recurs in the Rambam's Mishneh Torah where he writes, "What does kavanah consist of? One must empty one's heart of all [regular] thoughts and see oneself as if standing before the Presence of God."[iii] Rabbi J. B. Soloveitchik restates the matter as follows: "Prayer is basically an awareness of man finding himself in the presence of and addressing himself to his Maker, and to pray has one connotation only: to stand before God."[iv]The theme here is the requirement that we have an awareness, when we pray, of the presence of God.

            Interestingly, this alone does not tell us that we must have an awareness of the meaning-content of our words. As long as I'm aware of the presence of God before me, I'm fulfilling the talmudic requirement of kavanah. The words might themselves refer to, say, God's creation of the sources of light, yet as far as this requirement goes, I can be fully oblivious to this meaning; just as long as I'm aware, as I pray, of the presence of God, I am no more required to think of His creation of the sources of light, than about the colorful sweater someone over there is wearing or about what I'll eat for dinner.

            However, an additional stipulation emerges in Shulhan Arukh, where it states, haMitpalel tzarikh sheYekhaveyn beLibo perush haMilot sheMotzee biSfatav.[v]  While praying, Shulhan Arukh tells us, one must direct one's heart to the meanings of the words that one's mouth produces. This additional requirement saves us from the seemingly absurd possibility from which the talmudic admonition alone does not protect us. An awareness of the meanings of the words is crucially important after all.

            It seems to me that as we aim when we pray, to meet these two challenges, photographs juxtaposed with our prayer texts can help us in two corresponding ways. I mentioned above how they might help us meet the second challenge. Photographs have the power to halt us as we recite the text, and to draw our attention to the meaning of some highlighted expression that is more or less central to the meaning of the passage—such as God's control of the elements (with an image of a storm cloud), or the reciprocal love relation with God we're party to as we learn Torah (images of Jews learning Torah), or to the eternity of the universe God created (star clouds receding into billions of light years), and so forth. In this way the photographs can make these thoughts vivid in our minds, thus bringing our prayer to life.

            Admittedly, not every thought carried by any given passage is covered in the siddur by a photograph. I aimed generally to place images representing, in each case, some fairly central thought, around which the rest of the passage is built. The hope was that by bringing a central idea to life, this same effect could then also, so to speak, percolate out to the more peripheral ideas of the passage, through the thematic relations between these different ideas. But I cannot say in honesty that I always succeeded in this; sometimes the image relates only to a more peripheral thought. Many passages, by their nature, fail to lend themselves to being so pivotally represented by an image of something concrete—or if they did, then it went beyond my imaginative powers to see how. Nor is every passage juxtaposed in Siddur Nehalel with a photograph. Most obviously, direct descriptions of God—such as Ata kadosh, "You are sacred"—are in principle not matchable with any photograph.

            But I believe that even this partial representation can have a more pervasive effect on our prayer. Intermittently halted in this way by meaning-related images, we potentially become alert to the fact that this is not merely a text. Familiarly, it's a characteristic of the over-habituated, thoughtless praying we all-too-often fall into, that the text becomes one-dimensional. We come to see it as no more than a text, as just a sequence of characters, or possibly also, when our mumbling at least corresponds faithfully to the text, as a sequence of phonemes. The world of meaning, to which the text should be our portal, largely vanishes. But our occasional awakening to that meaning-dimension, forced on us by the images, can also make us more continuously alert to it. The world beyond the text, of which the pictures every so often remind us, cannot so easily sink away again into oblivion.

            I also suggest that the juxtaposing of meaning-related photographs to prayer texts helps us meet that first, talmudic challenge of kavanah. We visualize, as we pray, the wondrous world God created, from the magnificent intricacy of any tiny creature, through a mountain glistening as if luminous within, to countless galaxies tending to a dynamic eternity; or the historical movement engineered by God from catastrophe to redemption; and thus we become more able to glimpse, if only by exerting ourselves, the presence of God behind all this. We are visualizing the very reality in which the workings of God are manifest—the veil covering God's almost palpable presence. I don't suggest there is any automatic evocation here of God's being right here, but the stimuli are prodding at us. We need only look a little harder, and God is within our reach.

*          *          *         

            It has concerned me that there could be a fundamental error in the idea of using photographs to prompt awareness of meaning. The error I have in mind is connected with what I believe has become a widespread misconception about the nature of kavanah. Indeed, this misconception seems to me to have nurtured a very common, but somewhat misguided, approach to praying. It has also affected many contemporary siddurim, showing, for one thing, in the style of the rubrics, or instructions—so if Siddur Nehalel is in error, it's not alone, although this is no comfort. The problem, very briefly, is that during prayer, however powerfully you may feel as if you've worked yourself up to, say, desiring that God establish peace on earth—if you don’t already have an ongoing desire that God establish peace on earth, then it's even conceptually impossible for you to deliberately conjure this desire. Let me now explain this more fully.

            Imagine a boy telling a girl he loves her. She hears him say, “I love you with all my heart,” and he sounds thoroughly truthful. Indeed something was going on in his heart and mind at the time that caused him to sound just perfect: He had, at those moments, some intense thoughts and feelings, convincingly like those of really loving her. But then it turns out that he was, for the limited duration of the encounter, contriving this mental state. He has a knack, this young man, of working up his state of consciousness to what feels convincingly like the real thing—much like a Stanislavskian method actor. He simply had deliberately put himself into that mental state during their meeting, and when the meeting ended, so did this conscious interlude of passion end.

            Does he really love her? Possibly yes; but not on the evidence of this incident alone. For to love her is for his person to be enduringly encompassed by a certain state, by a whole range of wishes and longings that have probably been with him for a while (the possible, though questionable, exception being if this is the onset of love at first site), and that, more certainly, stick with him the next day and the next week, possibly for years to come, and perhaps even for the rest of his life; such as a wish for this relatedness to her to continue mutually forever; perhaps a wish to build their lives together, to create a family with her, and so on.

            Yet it's consistent with the situation described above that the young man could go through most of the week feeling quite indifferently or even negatively toward her. So that even if he manages, say, once a week on Shabbat morning when he meets her by the shul, or even every morning for 10 minutes, and even another couple of times each evening for three minutes at a time, to deliberately conjure those same inner sensations that seem to him, at the time of being overwhelmed by them, to mean “I love you,” this is not enough. It is at best an acting out.

            And imagine how she would feel if she found out this show was merely his on-the-spot, method-acting performance—probably defrauded, and quite justifiably outraged!

            This is not to say that true love would entail his thinking of her consciously around the clock. But this is the thing: to love someone is not to be in a temporary state of consciousness; although some such state of consciousness will often tend to come about, and will be readily prompted by all kinds of triggers. (In the term favored in contemporary philosophy, love, like other emotions, desires, and beliefs, is a dispositional state.) It might mostly remain below the threshold of his awareness; although surely, love, especially when newly discovered (or, Rahmana litzlan, when unrequited), can also be an un-abating, consuming condition of our consciousness. But what is important—what is essential to its being love—is that the overall state is enduringly with him, always triggerably manifest, throughout his waking life.

Just as to love God truly is not a matter of periodically conjuring some or other glorious and sacred-seeming episodes of consciousness. It is, rather, to be enclosed by this all-encompassing condition that relates me to God at all times—though not necessarily constantly in consciousness. It must be the state of my person I take with me to work, bring home to my family, sit with as I eat and retire with at night, at every moment ready to evoke commensurate thoughts and feelings into consciousness following any of a variety of triggers.

            Nor, similarly, is having a belief about God—for instance, the belief that He is the Establisher of peace on Earth—just a matter of conjuring some episode of consciousness. It is not, for instance, some momentary thought about peace between nations. Think of what’s involved in my believing that Roosevelt was a great president. Would it be enough for me to force myself, at a certain moment in time, say, Tuesday at noon, into thinking positive thoughts about Roosevelt’s presidency? Surely not. If I have no such belief about Roosevelt at 11:00 am Tuesday, nor at 1:00 pm, then—unless I’ve meanwhile received new information, or thought through a reevaluation—I surely could not be said to hold any such belief at noon. My having this belief is an enduring state of my person, which comes and goes with new information and cogitation, but otherwise stays largely as it is. Equally, my believing something about God is not a conjured episodic event of consciousness, but an enduring state of my person.

            So, too, my truly wanting God to cure an acquaintance's disease is a feature of my psyche over a lasting period. To suppose this is really my wish, when all I experience is a feeling I turn on at just those moments when I choose to articulate what sounds like some such wish, would be founded on misconception. Let me even work myself into a two-minute, frenzied, trance-like passion, a thought that is a world unto itself: Amazing it may be, but my wish for God’s speedy cure it is not.

            Yet we tend to approach prayer with just this kind of misconception. It's my impression that the more or less standard and normative way of attempting to achieve kavanah, at least among Orthodox Jews and probably beyond, goes something like this: One comes upon the given passage, and induces within oneself a certain state of consciousness, which endures through the period of one's reciting this passage; and which seems to oneself (subjectively, or internally), for the period of its duration, like one's identification with the attitude expressed by the passage. Coming, for instance, upon the blessing, Hashiveynu Avinu… (asking God to draw us back into a fuller spiritual relation with Him), and wanting earnestly to pray hard with kavanah, we focus on the meanings of these words, and in this way evoke as strong a feeling as we can, lasting for the duration of our reciting this blessing, and seeming to us, from the inside, as if we are asking God to draw us back in so. We bring to the task whatever techniques work for us in achieving these inner feelings, such as initially pausing for thought, and perhaps rocking back and forth.[vi]  Indeed it seems so natural to resort to this; for isn't this how we make the expressed attitude come to life? And yet, if this episodic state of consciousness is not part of a genuine, enduring wish for God to draw us back into that spiritual relation, then it is no such wish at all.

            Symptomatic of this malaise are the prompts we find in the rubrics of many contemporary siddurim. We find, for instance, in one popular siddur, before Keriyat Shema: “Concentrate intensely upon accepting God’s absolute sovereignty.” And before the first paragraph: “Concentrate on accepting the commandment to love God.” Before the second: “Concentrate on accepting all the commandments and the concept of reward and punishment.” Then before the last pasuk: “Concentrate on fulfilling the commandment of remembering the Exodus from Egypt.”[vii]  (None of what I suggest here is to deny that these and other meanings are embedded in the text of Shema Yisrael. I am merely questioning whether the recommendation to momentarily concentrate on these meanings does them justice.) The assumption here is that what is required of us as we recite Shema Yisrael is just some such set of conscious episodes. It is to ignore the need all day and every day to believe in God’s absolute sovereignty, to love God, to accept the commandments and even to believe in reward and punishment—the need for these to be enduring conditions of our whole selves (which is not, I stress again, to be continuously and actively conscious of these truths and emotions). I could enter some heightened state in which I seem to myself to be thinking that divine reward is always justly meted out; but if this was preceded, and is then succeeded, by my manifesting a belief to the contrary, or by doubts generally dominating my thinking on the matter, or by my having no opinion on this issue, then clearly I do not really hold this belief, however much it may feel to me as if I do when I'm praying.

            The situation, I suggest, can be characterized as follows. We are forgetting that the beliefs, wishes and emotions we aim to express through our prayers, to be really ours, need to be ongoing states of our whole selves. They cannot be fabricated, short-lived episodes of consciousness, discontinuous with the psyche as a whole; as such they simply would not be attitudes we genuinely hold and express. Presenting ourselves to God as if we hold those attitudes, just on the basis of some such episodes, would be, frankly, fraudulent. For to be real, they must be consistent with the workaday beliefs, desires, and emotions that make up our mental lives; they must, in other words, be integrated with and emerge out of the psychic whole that constitutes the self. Yet failing to locate within ourselves those attitudes we articulate in prayer, we instead make do with just such detached, short-lived effigies of these attitudes.

            Have we been more able in the past to discover, ongoing within ourselves, the attitudes we ostensibly express when we pray? I cannot say. But I do suspect that certain features of contemporary life tilt us into this problematic approach.

            One is that our lives are clogged with a multiplicity of purposes, all making claims on our time and attention. Entering the fray, we resort to compartmentalizing—to rigidly sectioning our time into discrete channels, each with its distinct program of goals and means, corresponding wishes, and relevant information. We experience our lives more as a time-sharing bundle of roles—professional, parental, adult-filial, and so on—less as a unity. Each role has its own state of mind, partitioned against flowing into and interfering with the states of mind of the neighboring tracks; and the role of praying person, with its concomitant state of mind, is among these. We may therefore conjure some pertinent thoughts and sensations episodically into consciousness within the appropriate time slots, to speak not from our whole psyche but from within some discrete mental segments. Such, I surmise, is the manner in which we approach prayer.

            Another feature of contemporary life affecting us similarly is the role of science and technology. It has become difficult in this atmosphere to believe in the efficacy of praying. For in an age in which empirical testability and measurable effectiveness are the dominant requirements justifying everything we believe and do, we have precious little returns to show for our prayers. What sign do we have encouraging us to believe that by uttering Sim shalom, tovah u’vrakhah… we increase the chances that God will establish peace on earth? Or that by pleading, Refa’enu Hashem Elokenu, we induce Him to heal our sick?

            And this, when we are still reeling in bewilderment at how the Holocaust could have happened, or in particular at how, for an incomprehensibly long time—so it at least strongly appears to us—prayer did no good at all.

            There are gigantic questions raised here—the problem of evil, and the question of how willing God is to intervene at any given time—which cannot be treated here and on which, in any case, I am far from qualified to offer any new wisdom. The relevant point here is just that, in an age in which the ideology of science has come almost totally to premise our every thought, and in which we cannot but feel despondence over the impotence of our prayer, it has become particularly difficult to comprehend divine responsiveness to prayer in terms of any simplistic cause-effect relationship. We now need to look further in order to find reasons to pray. For the belief that, if I pray for peace, or for health, or for basic livelihood, then God grants me that good, is not a belief that we can, in our age, easily integrate into the general matrix of our everyday beliefs about life and the world. This becomes, at best, our quasi, holy hour belief, dislocated from the rest, and vestigially acted out during the performance of prayer.

            It may be charged, against the critique I'm suggesting here, that I'm flatly ignoring the admonition in the Shulhan Arukh cited above. We're clearly told there to direct our hearts to the meanings of our utterances. Does this not plainly mean that we must assume the attitudes expressed by the liturgy? I think not. For to read a text and attend to its meanings is not the same as to adopt the attitudes it expresses. If I read that human history is devoid of purposeful direction, then I can attend to the meaning of the text, think it through and evaluate it, without at any point holding that it's true.

            This is not to say that the veracity of the contents of the liturgy may legitimately be matters of indifference to us, or that we may remain aloof in the face of the yearnings it expresses. It is a central, inherent problem with our praying from a fixed liturgical text, that we come to articulate certain attitudes that we do not actually have. Indeed the method actor-like conjurings I've referred to here have become almost definitive of Orthodox prayer practice, probably in response to precisely this difficulty. But it won't solve the problem to pretend these conjurings turn us into people who really share the beliefs and yearnings we articulate; they simply don't help.

            So what do we do? I cannot pretend to offer a solution. But it is pertinent here that numerous thinkers have accounted for our praying from a fixed text as serving primarily to shape our personalities. In particular, the petitional agenda listed by the middle 13 blessings of the Shemoneh Esreh might express some yearnings we don't actually have; and certainly the purpose of our reciting them is not their fulfilment by God, which it would be frivolous of us to expect. According to this view, however, we personally evolve, throughout our lives, toward the fuller adopting of these yearnings. Through prayer, our attitudes and emotions, and thus our very selves, become increasingly identified with the larger, truer agenda expressed by the liturgy.[viii]  In this respect, the question of the truth of what we recite is paramount; not as what we must a priori believe, but as what we may dialectically evolve toward.

            Now, it is an empirical question how, as a matter of psychological fact, our attitudes are most likely to converge upon those expressed by the liturgy. Do we best indulge in the method actor approach, conjuring interludes of feeling internally as if we have those attitudes? Or would we succeed better if we attend clear-headedly to the meanings, evaluate them critically, bring relevant information to bear, and so forth? It seems to me that if the first approach does bring us closer to some enduring state of mind, this will not be one in which that inventory of attitudes has become really our own. Can we genuinely integrate those attitudes, in this way, into our existing mesh of thoughts and feelings? I can't help supposing that they would continue for us as make-believe, discontinuous, and alien add-ons. It seems to me that if anything gets us to the true goal—a real integration of thought—this will be some open, rational, lucid thinking about the issues involved. This is, I believe, a project in which we should be engaged anyway. But it is beyond the scope of this essay to come to any conclusion about this.

            I must now ask, though: Is the format of Siddur Nehalel not founded on the same confusion that, I've charged, inheres in the rubric style of some other contemporary siddurim? Nehalel does not explicitly, verbally demand that we concentrate on this or that truth (unless I slipped somewhere, unawares). But aren't the photographs expressing that same demand, no less than those rubrics, though through the language of imagery? Isn't the photograph of , for example, the Temple Mount simply there to tell us, "Concentrate on how God is returning to Zion"?

            I think not, for there is a fundamental difference here, between attending to some subject matter and adopting some belief or desire. Demanding of someone to come up with what they think about Roosevelt (Roosevelt as subject matter), is not the same as demanding that they believe that Roosevelt was a great president (to adopt a certain propositional attitude). The problem with those rubrics is that they instruct us to adopt certain attitudes. It is true that the examples I referred to are not explicitly phrased as demands that we come to believe that p, or that we make ourselves want that q, and so forth. But a demand for some such propositional attitude is implicit in each of them. I can't see how I might understand, for instance, “Concentrate intensely upon accepting God’s absolute sovereignty,” without taking this as requiring, firstly, that I accept (that is, come to believe) that God has absolute sovereignty, and only then that I concentrate on my acceptance of this proposition.

            In contrast, a photograph represents at the most a topic, such as the Temple Mount, or storm clouds, or illegal immigration of survivors from Europe to Mandate Palestine. Certainly no belief or desire is forced on us by the image. It cannot force us to believe that we are eternally attached to Jerusalem, or that God is preeminently powerful, or that God operates in history in a certain way. An image is, at most, a prompt, triggering our thoughts about some topic we find in it. The photograph, it can be said, poses a question, soliciting our thoughts on the meaning of these historical events. One is asked to freely submit the thoughts authentically emerging on this topic out of the multitude of attitudes and emotions meshing together in one's psyche. One may then bring to bear a cluster of relevant thoughts genuinely emerging from the totality of one's existing beliefs; and one may resultantly come to have the thought that (for example) God acts to redeem us from catastrophe; or possibly some quite different thought will emerge. What's important is that the thought elicited is something consistent with, and emerging spontaneously from, one's real self. It is not some fabricated, pretend-belief episode, procured to meet a demand for this specific attitude.[ix]

            In this respect, the photographs act much like the topic of a conversation. One's discussing with someone the merits of Roosevelt's presidency acts as a prompt, posing the question, what do you think of Roosevelt's presidency? One's answer to the question can thus genuinely emerge from the full body of intermeshed thoughts constituting one's psyche—truly representing the person one really is.

            In truth, the photographs in Siddur Nehalel are not the only topic-triggers we find in siddurim. Most contemporary siddurim have, especially in the Amidah, subject headers (for instance in Koren, "Patriarchs, Divine Might, Holiness, Knowledge..."), which one can use in this way. For that matter, occasional phrases in the body of the text itself might be used, in occasional reflective pauses, to the same effect. But one advantage of using photographs is the greater force of imagery. Photographs don't tell you what to think—nor do we want them to—but they tend to make you more vividly aware of their subject matter than verbal triggers.

            Another advantage, I believe, is that the photographs situate prayer in our own reality. It is for me literally startling to read, in Psalm 137 (Al naharot Bavel, preceding Grace After Meals on regular weekdays), "We hung our harps on sunken willows, for our captors there demanded song, our tormentors teased us in joy, saying, Sing to us from the music of Tziyon. But how could we sing the song of Hashem on that soil of estrangement?!" The accompanying photograph of the inmates' coerced orchestra at Auschwitz makes us aware, I hope, of how devastatingly contemporary these lines are, of how they could have been written during living memory. The same goes for those many images from the Holocaust, and then the establishment and thriving of the State of Israel, juxtaposed with the repeated descriptions, in the liturgy, of the recurring historical pattern they realize of catastrophe and redemption.

            A liturgical text can be experienced very differently when read alongside the photographic documentation of a contemporary situation it describes. For we have a tendency to think of our liturgy—bequeathed to us from an earlier epoch—as other-worldly, as describing that earlier epoch, and recited now merely as a commemoration of that epoch, not about our world, not about our lives. The photograph counters this tendency, enables us instead to read the text as being about the here and now, about contemporary life, and about ourselves. We are thus encouraged to bring to bear the real attitudes and feelings we have toward the world we know. When, for instance, we see a breathtaking mountainous valley as we recite, Lekha Hashem haGedulah… ("This immensity and this power and this splendor and this permanence and this majesty are Yours, Hashem…"), this text, which we mindlessly drum out every time we take the Sefer Torah from of the ark, is suddenly seen to say something spectacular about God's creation of the world we inhabit.

            If Siddur Nehalel can wake a few of us up to the fact that our liturgy speaks to God from our own lives, then dayenu.

Most of our religious observances are indoors--in our homes, in our synagogues.We generally do not like to create a public spectacle of our religious experiences, but we behave modestly and try not to call attention to ourselves as we perform mitzvoth.

There are some exceptions to this. On Hanukkah, it is a particular mitzvah to publicize the miracle by placing our hanukkiyot where they can be seen by the passers-by. Succoth also has some aspects of taking our religious observances into the public square. The Talmud records the custom in ancient Jerusalem where people carried their lulavim into the street when they went to synagogue, when they visited the sick, and when they went to comfort mourners. Even today, many Jews carry their lulavim in public. When it comes to the succah itself, this structure is generally in view of the public: it's built on a patio, or yard, or courtyard etc. i.e. where Jews and non-Jews can see it

Although so much of our religious life is indoors--in the private domain of family and friends--we are sometimes obligated to make a public demonstration of our religious commitments. On Hanukkah, we want to remind the entire world that the Jews heroically defended themselves against the Syrian Hellenists and won independence for the Jewish people. We want everyone to know that, with God's help, we were victorious against powerful and far more numerous enemies.

On Succoth, we also want to convey a message to the general public. The lulav and etrog are symbolic of weapons; they indicate that we are proud of our faith and we are prepared to fight for the honor of our Torah and for our people. The succah is a symbolic statement that although we wandered in the wilderness for 40 years, God's providence protected us, and we ultimately entered the Promised Land. The public demonstration of these mitzvoth indicates our pride and commitment in who we are and what we represent. If we have respect for ourselves and our traditions, we can expect that the nations of the world will also come to respect Judaism.

Sometimes it is necessary for us to stand up in public on behalf of our faith and our people. When Jews betray their faith and their people in public, this undermines the entire Jewish enterprise. If Jewish storekeepers open their shops on Shabbat and holidays, why should non-Jews respect our Sabbath and holy days? If Jews ignore the laws of kashruth, why should non-Jews respect our dietary laws? If Jews don't live up to the high standards of Torah ethics, why should non-Jews admire the Jewish way of life? If Jewish political figures hold press conferences and public meetings on Jewish holy days, why should non-Jews show any deference to our holy days?

Succoth is an important reminder that being Jewish also entails a public stance, the courage to be who we are and stand for our traditions without embarrassment or apology. We need to remind ourselves and others that our holy days and traditions cannot be trampled upon and cast aside in a rubbish bin. If we do not stand up for ourselves, who will stand up for us? And if we do stand up for ourselves, we will be worthy heirs of a great people who have given so much--and have so much more to give--to our world.

            I'm going up the staircase when the exchange floats back between four spandex-swathed legs I am trailing to collect my nursery-aged son.

            "So, there I am, I'm in the middle of my shower and the water goes out. Just like that, it stops. So I jump out and call down to the doorman who tells me that they're working on the water line. I should've received a memo. I have shampoo in my hair, and I just got back from the gym but what choice do I have? I run down and grab a taxi BACK to the gym where I finally get a nice, hot shower."

            Doorman. Taxi. Gym. These words are the foreign currency I handle in forays into the strange territory I enter in intervals, if I pick my children up at the Jewish Day School they attend in our city.

            According to the statistics the school sends out annually, approximately 30 percent of families at the school receive some form of financial aid toward tuition. So, if there are 50 children in a grade, that means about 15 of them are receiving assistance toward paying the approximately $25,000 tuition. There may be some kids out there with mine who are living without doormen, taxis, and gyms on demand. But the culture does not speak to it.

            It's in the small things. They catch me in subtle spaces, when I'm not expecting them.

            The school's annual dinner is approaching, and a parent asks me if I'm planning to attend. "I'm not sure," she says to me, then adds conspiratorially, "Do you really think they use the money for scholarships?"

            My four-year-old receives a belated birthday present from a classmate. She eagerly tears open the wrapping paper and the enclosed piece of purple, stuffed fabric falls to the floor. She turns it over and studies the embroidered pillow from a brand-name boutique in our area. "What is it?" she finally asks. I stifle my own bemusement, try to talk it up by telling her it's a beautiful pillow from a boutique home furnishings store and she accepts it gingerly, trying it out on her bed. I later take her to the store and find the only thing she can exchange it for would be an oversized mug or some silverware. The pillow cost $45.

            I have attended toddler birthday parties that cost thousands of dollars (my husband once grabbed a brochure on the way out, out of morbid curiosity). For one, the birthday girl's parents rented out a bowling alley. At another, the ballroom of a synagogue was transformed into a carnival, complete with booths, bouncy houses, and smorgasbord of a dessert table, bearing the birthday girl's name in chocolate and then again in cookie. The only thing missing was a carnival barker at the door and a Ferris wheel...but there was a miniature wheel on the dessert table, laden with gumdrops.

            Make no mistake: I am not bitter. It was never a goal of mine to be rich, not even as a child when my sister told me she would grow up to have houses wherever she wanted and vacations to match. I only wanted to do interesting work and have "enough" money to pay for my life. The problem is twofold: First, more and more, I don't seem to have enough money for my life, which includes three wonderful children for whom I wish to provide a Jewish education. And second, while I don't put a premium on extravagance and a luxe lifestyle, the families my children are going to school with do, and that is simply not where I wish my children's value compass to be oriented.

            Ever able to see both sides of a story, I play devil's advocate with myself in so many ways. That child with the bowling alley party? An only child. Perhaps her parents are overjoyed at her very being, so much so that they'll go to lengths to celebrate the day of her birth. She'll only be five once! And the carnival girl—I don't know the family; it may be that she has survived a threatening illness, leaving her parents to cleave to her and shower her with gifts each day they can.

            Perhaps before spending $3,000 on their child's birthday party, these parents have just given $30,000 to a worthy charity.

            But my inner critic is unsatisfied.

            I have endlessly told myself that just because I feel little kinship with most of the parents I meet does not mean I should rule out this choice for my children. "It's not about me," I think, in that well-worn mantra of parenthood. A parent tells me he had a visceral negative reaction to my kids' school after taking a tour, and I feel proud at my adult ability to not be reactive and walk away in disdain, but to "sit with the discomfort," and allow the good to mingle with—hopefully overpower—what I perceive to be bad.

            But I know that visceral reaction. I had stomach pains sitting through the carnival birthday party.

            And then I have a conversation with a very sensible-minded male nanny. He hears me talk about my likes and dislikes of the school, my "it's not about me" reasoning. He nods, but then points out simply, "Parents’ values become children's values. If you don't mesh with the parents, chances are your kids eventually will not mesh with the kids."

            This is what brings on the stomach pains—the presentation of such a different set of values and the lack of representation of my own values of a simpler, grassroots way of experiencing the world.

            You may ask: Why, then, send your children to this school—or any other Jewish Day School for that matter? Private school is as private school does: It's private; it costs as much as a salary for many workers in this country; it's not the "real world." And I want my children to live in the real world. They do: Their family background is diverse, and they live in a socio-economically, racially, and ethnically diverse neighborhood where they play with neighborhood kids and see the range of human experience around them and in their home. But my husband and I are spiritual people who believe in the value of a religious education and the deep wisdom of the Torah. It is a worldview ahead of its time, a worldview that exhorts each person to actively pursue justice, to subjugate the material in favor of elevating what cannot be seen, to actively remember that we were slaves in a foreign land, and above all, to "walk humbly with God." To be sure, humble need not mean poor—there is no taking of vows of poverty in Judaism. But humble to me is, very simply put, down to earth. Can you be down to earth living in a luxury high rise, where my son's best friend lives in a penthouse? Maybe. But if you choose to live in an enclave where everyone lives and acts as you do, will you de facto see the rest of the world as Other?

            Money is one thing. A close friend married a millionaire and has had homes in Europe, Israel, and New York. Humble? Open to the world? Check and check. This woman is so very not ostentatious, so conscious that others don't live like her. She brings the spirituality of the Judaism she lives to bear on the world she lives in rather than using it as an excuse to associate only with those like her.

            Money alone does not necessarily corrupt. But money mixed with a sheltered, clannish way is like Teflon, sealing off those on the inside from those without. I have found that many at my children's school are not there because they seek a lifestyle guided by spiritual values and ideals but almost for the opposite reason that my children are there. These families seek to protect their children from the world. They want an environment that is Jew-"ish" and more rarified than their local public school. They want their children mingling with the right kind and marrying "in." And along the way, their kid should learn "the drill" of Jewish prayers and customs, love of Israel, and Hebrew language.

            To varying degrees, we may wish elements of these things for our children. The question is at what price and how.

            Anecdote: A stay-at-home mother who picks her children up in three-inch heels every day joins me where I am waiting with two mothers for dismissal. Someone has asked about my kids' last names. "They have two—my husband's, then mine. That's how it's done in Latin America," where my husband's family is from, I explain. She looks confused. My explanation has hit Teflon and there is no flutter of recognition for this custom, nor even a nod of assimilation of something done differently in a different place. Just a furrowed brow and "So...what do people call your family?"

            When families operate from synagogue to Day School to Jewish camp to wealthy home enclaves within the Jewish community, and no other, it breeds ignorance of the world and how to behave in it. When my dark-skinned husband first began dropping my kids off at the school, he called me in a bad mood. "The parents are snobby," he said. "They're staring at me or deliberately not talking to me." I resisted the facility of crying racism and pointing a finger, mulled this over for a minute, and then responded. "They're not all snobby. Most of them are just ignorant." It is true: Many of these parents are friendly, and they mean well. They just don't know much about people other than Jews. Middle- or upper-middle class Jews. Or non-Jews who are white and wealthy, i.e., their neighbors and business associates. They simply don't have another reference point. Perhaps they think my husband doesn't speak English.

            And though there are varied countries, neighborhoods, even races or religions of origin among the student body, it all seems to subsume to some white-washed, wealthy core. When once I tried to engage a light-skinned parent of Latin-American extraction in conversation about her heritage she smiled politely as if to say, "Don't blow my cover."

            Why must I choose one closely-held set of values over another equally closely held? Part of me wants to run with that parent who "viscerally reacted" to my children's school, and then turn back and look at it from the outside and lob insults. "Spoiled. Insular. Ignorant. Pretentious," it would be easy to say. "Here is me and my kin...and over there is that school and those people." Ah. So easy to divide and label. Particularly for me, who grew up in this same city, contending with these same issues at a different Jewish Day School. When I got to public university, I breathed freely and imbibed the range of people around me from all walks of life—the simple regularity of everyday people and the diversity of students from countless countries and cultures. I promised myself and my unborn children that I would not subject them to that bubble of an environment that is Jewish Day School. And yet, life is so imperfect. So gray.

            If my Jewish values conflict in nearly every way with the Jewish community in the main, as it is lived and expressed in my city (and many others) and my children's school, if the humble is hidden from view, I am unable to turn away and reject it. My children come home talking of the weekly Torah portion; my older children can parse Hebrew words and Jewish text themselves and are beginning to cite Midrash. Hovering beyond the content my children garner, I find Torah values are there, in the background. They are represented by certain people I can single out, certain teachers or families whose commitment to a Judaism of spirit and a somewhat more low-key existence match my family's to a greater extent than the norm. They are unfortunately not the norm, though I would wish them to be, in a school that purports to represent a spiritual lifestyle in the Jewish tradition.

            I would venture to say that this is part and parcel of the turning from the practice of Judaism: not for the Torah or the values it represents but for the way it is lived.

            For now, we persist. Every day I watch and listen. I gather the subtleties. We may stay, and continue to live with the discomfort. But I may decide that I can't hold my breath anymore, that I just need to exhale in a space that speaks more to my family's values. That may be in a non-Torah setting that does a better job of bearing out traditional Jewish values than a yeshiva or Day School can offer.

PART ONE: Shock and Horror

            This article is the product of another article, "How Two Guys Lost God and Found $40 Million," written by Zeke Faux and published online by Bloomberg, at www.bloomberg.com/news/features/2015-10-06/how-two-guys-lost-god-and-found-40-million.

The first and best reason you should read that article is because it is an excellent example of journalistic reporting, which is a distinct rarity nowadays. The more direct reason is that the discussion that follows here rests on the twin stories therein. For the benefit of those who can’t, or can't be bothered, finding and plowing through the original, here is a précis of it.

            Two young men, Abe and Meir, products of different ultra-Orthodox groups and their respective educational systems in Brooklyn, each separately dropped out of that scene, abandoned their religious observance and went to college. There they met each other and became firm friends—“bros” in the current jargon. They joined a company that sold credit-card machines to small businesses and retailers, which quickly developed into a financing operation that made small loans to small businesses, at extremely high interest rates.

            The nature of this financing operation is the critical element of the story of Abe and Meir and is the key issue in this article, so it's essential to understand it. Author Zeke Faux summarizes it thus (all emphases added, PL):

Abe and Meir made their money in a field that's now called “merchant cash advance.” It's a legal way to lend money to small businesses at interest rates higher than Mafia loan sharks once charged. Completely unregulated, last year (2014, PL) it surpassed the U.S. Small Business Administration as a source of loans for less than $150,000, according to the industry newsletter DeBanked, one of the few places with reliable information. The business was developed a decade ago in a boiler room full of ex-Lubavitcher Jewish teenagers in downtown Manhattan. They figured out how to hook people such as florists and pizzeria owners with promises of fast cash and discovered just how ridiculous the profits could be—even if it meant driving their borrowers into bankruptcy.

            Later in the article, Faux explains how the lending operation evolved out of the business of selling credit-card machines:

…once a neighborhood was saturated (with credit-card machines, it was hard to sell more. To make extra money, some of the card-processing companies [made] small, expensive loans to their customers on the side. Banks often reject small businesses as too risky to lend to. The card processors' loans almost always got repaid, though, because they took a cut of transactions before a borrower even touched the money. C (the Lubavitcher entrepreneur who started the company which hired Abe and Meir, PL) realized there were lots of businesses that needed money so badly, they'd buy a credit-card machine just to get a loan.

            …[The lending company] could charge whatever it wanted. The standard deal it offered small businesses was to borrow $9,000 and pay back $120 a day for six months, or a total of $14,500, equivalent to an interest rate of 250% a year. That's ten times the legal limit in New York….[T]o get around that, merchant cash-advance companies argue they aren't actually charging interest—they're buying the money businesses will make in the future, at a discount. As long as nobody uses the word “loan,” it usually holds up in court…. [T]he best customers were the most desperate. Often they were immigrants with poor English….

            That was the business Abe and Meir got into and in which they quickly advanced. They started making big money and—as often happens in these situations—rapidly became debauched, getting into booze, drugs, and women. Business-wise, the company that employed them was gutted by the crash of 2008, but that proved a blessing in disguise, because they wound up going out on their own. Running their own operation enabled them to make far more money—millions, instead of tens or hundreds of thousands. Eventually, their success attracted offers from major-league financial institutions, including the most major of all, Goldman Sachs.

            Meanwhile, Abe and Meir had moved their operation to Puerto Rico for tax reasons, where they bought a mansion and lived in style. The talks with Goldman petered out, but in February 2015, they sold their company to a private equity fund for an estimated $40 million in cash and a further $20 million payment conditional on achieving operational targets. The article leaves them in their Puerto Rican haven, enjoying the local women and food, vaguely looking for a new business project to which to apply their talents.

            This is a short and deliberately dry and boring summary of a long, brilliantly-written, colorful and riveting article. My own reaction on reading the article—beyond recognizing its journalistic quality—was one of shock and revulsion. Before trying to analyze both the reaction and its source, I sent the article to some friends and confirmed that they had reacted similarly. Only then did I decide to write this piece.

            The issue under consideration here is—why did people react that way? What in this story was so shocking and, even more importantly, what generated such revulsion? In other words, what concerns me is the substance, not the style, or even the story-line. This article is not about journalism or even—other than tangentially—business and finance. It is about mores and morality.

PART TWO: Nice Jewish Boys

            To get to grips with the questions just posed, it is essential to distinguish between two separate issues that are intertwined in the narrative. One is specifically Jewish; the other is general or universal. One—the one that dominates the story—is a micro-level tale relating to a couple of individuals; the other, almost buried but nevertheless underpinning the story, is a macro-level issue relating to society as a whole.

            The Jewish issue emerges from the story of Abe and Meir, but assumes that while their personal saga may be extraordinary, they are not unique or exceptional in what they did in religious and moral terms. Rather, in that respect, they represent a widespread phenomenon, well-known in both ultra-Orthodox and “regular” Orthodox communities in the United States, Israel, and elsewhere.

            This phenomenon is that all too often, when religious and/or Hareidi youngsters (boys and girls) abandon their religious commitments and beliefs, and hence their ritual observances, they also lose their moral underpinnings. In standard Jewish terms, one could say that when they jettison mitzvot bein adam laMakom, they also throw out basic concepts of bein adam leHavero.

            This is by no means always the case, even nowadays—but it is far more prevalent than was the case in the era of secularization, in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. The mass abandonment of traditional observance in that era was not accompanied by a parallel casting off of Jewish mores and moral behavior. On the contrary—pace the Meyer Lanskys, Bugsy Siegels, Lepkes, and other Jewish gangsters—most Jews took their morality with them to socialism and all the other -isms then rampant, or just plain acculturation into Western society; lived by that morality; and endeavored to pass it on to their children. One obvious and outstanding example is the record of philanthropy created by Jews in the countries to which they (or their parents) emigrated and made new lives. Those lives were non-halakhic, increasingly non-observant, but were lived by intensely Jewish values.

            In short, the question that the story of Abe and Meir thrusts into the face of Orthodox Jewry of every stripe is plain and painful: Why do products of Orthodox education systems who "lose God" not retain at least some degree of behavioral constraint or, better, moral compass?

            Distinct, if almost obscured, but—I shall argue—more important still, is the general or macro issue reflected in the story of Abe and Meir. They were engaged in a very profitable, technically legal, but socially destructive and morally repulsive business. This business was sought by, bought by (in one case), and replicated by (in others) very respectable, mainstream financial firms. What this means—and this is not in the article, which is straight reportage, but I am extracting it as a clear-cut implication—is that the current reality of the American financial system is one in which even the central institutions of the system are engaged in nefarious financial practices, notably loan-sharking. What does this say about this sector—and about society as a whole?

            Let's start with the “heroes” of the story and our reaction to their tragedy—for such it is.

            What they are doing is revolting, period. Not because they are Jewish, or were ultra-Orthodox, but because their business operation is an affront to universal morality that disgusts normal people, regardless of who is involved. That the perpetrators of these moral crimes are Jewish, and products of an Orthodox education, raises additional issues—maybe parochial ones, but to us as Orthodox Jews, they are critical.

            Within the framework of universal morality, in virtually every human society there are modes of behavior that are considered not merely wrong, but beyond the pale. For example, robbery is generally considered wrong and anti-social, but robbing from “your own”—your own family, friends, or neighbors is viewed as much worse, even if the victims happen to be wealthy. Robbing an old widow is disgraceful—but if that person is also your grandmother, then it is disgusting, which is an entirely different reaction, much more emotional, and less cerebral.

            In other words, there are several layers of moral turpitude, even within the context of the same technical crime—for example, stealing money. Who you are and who the victim is are major factors from a moral standpoint, even if not from a legal one.

            The reason why the story of Abe and Meir evokes strong emotional reactions is because it is so morally disgusting. That disgust stems from the identities of both the perpetrators and, albeit secondarily, their victims—who were, at least in the critical initial stages of the operation, neighbors, even family and friends, certainly co-religionists. None of this served to constrain the perpetrators; on the contrary, their “inside knowledge” of their customers'/ victims' vulnerabilities may even have spurred them on.

            Nevertheless, over and above the affront to universal human values, the particularist aspect remains. The perpetrators (Abe and Meir and their anonymous colleagues) were products of religious, ultra-Orthodox, homes and schools. If so, how did they so lose their moral bearings as to be able to rob their customers blind, even to convince themselves that it was all legal—and have no apparent qualms, before, during, or after the proceedings?

            What does this say about religious education? More usefully—how can religious education be improved/ honed, to prevent such behavior, or at least make it less likely?

            The reforms necessary depend to a great degree on the diagnosis. Is it the case that the implied morality imparted in religious/ultra-Orthodox education is such that once the relationship with God is ruptured, so that ritual “religious” behavior is discontinued, all other aspects of “religious” behavior—including substance abuse, sexual libertarianism, and, critically, other people's money (OPM)—are also rendered irrelevant?

            Such an implication assumes that a conscious process is taking place, driven by abstract thought. Such cases do occur—but they are surely quite rare and hence untypical. The story of Abe and Meir, as told in "Two Guys," and the way the world usually works, is simpler, far cruder, much less cerebral. It actually reflects the classic themes of the religious/pietist literature throughout the ages: It is very difficult to stand up to temptation and, once a person starts succumbing, he or she can slide down a steep and slippery slope that takes them to activities and states of being they would once have considered unimaginable and revolting—but now they just must have them.

            If this is the story of the decline and fall of two nice Jewish boys—that they became exposed to big money and sucked into making it by doing reprehensible things, which subsequently drew them into many other negative areas—then it makes a lot of sense, but it also becomes quite banal and even loses much of its illicit charm. The moral of the story is now quite clear—kids should avoid being led astray. That's a fine sentiment, but quite useless as a practical prescription. How are kids to be prevented, to be inoculated, from heading down the slippery slope that leads from the status of nice Jewish boys to revolting, anti-social, moral monsters? That is not at all clear.

PART THREE: The Mores that Are No More

            Let's now leave Abe and Meir and return to New York City. Here, in Manhattan, several investment institutions, including the most powerful financial institution in the world, Goldman Sachs, had sought to buy their business—and one of them actually did. More importantly, many of these institutions, including Goldman, have already entered, or are in the process of entering the business of “merchant cash advances.”

            Although it is the secondary story of the Bloomberg piece, I view this as much the more important of the two stories. Perhaps that's because I consider macro more important than micro, or simply because if Goldman is involved then it becomes a big deal. But I think the real reason why the “Manhattan story”—of legal loan-sharking—is more important than the “Brooklyn story”—of corrupt yeshiva kids—is because understanding what has happened in Manhattan is the key to understanding what happened to Abe and Meir in Brooklyn and, by extension, to understanding many other things happening in neighborhoods and homes near you, near me, everywhere in the Western world.

            "Going back to biblical times," Abe told Zeke Faux when asked about his conscience, "there was something dirty about charging for money. But," Abe held up his beer glass to make the point, "a business owner can buy this beer for a dollar, mark it up eight times and sell it to idiots like us, and no-one cares."

            This supposed insight is offset by quotations from Abe's brother—about whether "he'd ever seen his brother (Abe) reflect on what he'd done to his borrowers, or on the industry he'd played a small part in creating." Without actually saying it outright, Faux succeeded in implying that Abe's attempt at rationalizing his business activity is phony and distorted. That's as far as the article went in delving into what lies behind and beneath the narrative—which is one of the reasons it's such a good piece.

            But I want to go much further. Abe's attempt at justification is not as facile as it might appear at first glance. On the contrary, the argument that money is the same as any other product or commodity—beer, a glass, whatever—is very current today. It is also highly controversial, because if money is just another commodity, then it should indeed be treated the same way. If idiots are prepared to pay many times the “true value” or “fair price” of a glass of beer or a mug of coffee (think Starbucks), then they can pay many times the “fair value” of money, and there's nothing to make a fuss about.

            But that is not the case. Not in theory, nor in reality. Not in halakha, nor in any legal system. In halakhic literature, pricing of regular products is subject to constraints covered by a concept called "ona'ah," which might be translated as cheating, or simply over-pricing. But whatever it means, "ona'ah" does not apply to money, which is treated entirely separately, under the laws of "ribit"—a word connected to multiplying and foreshadowing the concept we call "compound interest"—or "neshekh." The latter means biting, plain and simple, because that is what interest does to the borrower.

            Nevertheless, Abe is correct that things have changed since biblical times—and that change is hardly recent. By the period of the Second Temple, it was apparent that a new approach was needed, and it was introduced by Hillel the Elder and amplified by subsequent generations of rabbis. Indeed, it is no exaggeration to say that for the last 2,000 and more years, Jewish jurisprudence has been developing the reluctant recognition that commercial life requires financial instruments based on—at the least—finessing the blanket biblical prohibition on interest (between Jews).

            Yet we do not need to have recourse to the vast corpus of intricate halakhic discourse on this topic to identify a widely-recognized distinction between, on the one hand, rates of interest that facilitate the legitimate conduct of normal business and, on the other, rates of interest that undermine and ultimately render impossible the conduct of normal business. This distinction was, until very recently, clear to and accepted by every civilized person, country, and society. Lending at very high rates of interest came to be known as “loan-sharking,” a term that takes the imagery of “neshekh” to its logical conclusion.

            Furthermore, until very recently—between 25 and 50 years ago—“finance” was a set of distinct businesses or professions conducted by specialized institutions such as banks, insurance companies, etc. To say these financial institutions were all paragons of propriety, or even that they scrupulously observed every word or phrase of every law, would be ludicrously naïve. However, it is fair to say that banks and other institutions operated within a framework of both law and convention that was clear-cut and well-understood.

            When there was a breach of the law, legal action could be and was taken, with the result that wrong-doers were punished. That is not an empty phrase: Even very senior executives lost their jobs and were jailed. But, critical as the role of legal sanction was, the role of convention was no less important. Many activities were not proscribed by law, but nonetheless avoided. These were things that were not done—because they were “not done;” they were considered morally unacceptable.

            A simple example was a verbal commitment, usually “ratified” by shaking hands, but sometimes not even. Of course, it was by no means unheard-of for someone to renege on a verbal commitment. But what is critical is that it was not supposed to happen, so that when it did, the “perpetrator” was expected to—at the least—present a convincing excuse, preferably to make amends in some substantive way.

            The sanction against this kind of unwritten breach of conduct could not, by definition, be the resort to civil or criminal proceedings, but was itself exercised in the area of unwritten conduct. The perpetrator had stained his reputation, to a degree commensurate with the perceived severity of his action—and he would suffer the unspoken consequences in terms of the willingness of others to continue to do business with him. In severe cases, or cumulative breaches of convention, the perpetrator's name was sufficiently blackened that he became a pariah, his activity terminated in his home town, state, or country.

            To people who entered the field of finance (itself a catch-all phrase for the many formerly disparate areas of financial activity) in the last 30-plus years, the mores encapsulated in the phrase "it isn’t done" sound quaint, in the best case. More typically, they are regarded as relating to behavior that is obsolete, naïve, and pathetically innocent. It is worth asking why.

            A common answer is that business, especially finance, has been democratized—meaning that it is no longer the preserve of closed guilds, populated by people of a specific racial, religious, or ethnic background, who developed modes of behavior that suited them, their attitudes, and their era. Today, by contrast, business and finance have opened up, globalized, democratized—they are no longer the preserve of white males of Anglo-Saxon ethnicity, graduates of a select group of schools and colleges. The mores of the WASP elite are no more.

            The argument of “democratization,” with the subtext that Western (sub-sub-text Judeo-Christian) values cannot be “imposed” on others, doesn’t stand up to scrutiny. Chinese businessmen and Arab bankers actually have the same need not to be cheated and lied to as do American businessmen and Swiss bankers. That's why every advanced culture in human history produced a legal framework, alongside which was an unwritten tradition of behavioral conventions that collectively defined the societal norms—because without a basis of mutual trust, commerce cannot take place. True, trust won't suffice unless it is buttressed by an effective legal system, so that those claiming injury could have recourse to reasonably competent courts. But litigation needs to be a last resort, used where trust has broken down—not an a priori substitute for trust as the basis of day-to-day commercial activity.

            Another frequently made claim, in some respects a variation on the same theme, is that no mores can be universal. Therefore only clearly-framed laws and regulations, which can be understood by and made to apply to everyone, can determine what is or is not allowed—and what are the sanctions for transgression of any specific law or regulation. By the same token, whatever is not proscribed is allowed—and whatever is allowed is acceptable.

            This approach sounds good, because it uses terminology that we have been conditioned to regard as positive: democracy, globalization, universality. Nevertheless, this rationalization for the demise of a previously-accepted set of behavioral mores, as well as for their non-replacement by any alternative set, has proved to be a recipe for disaster—moral, but also financial and economic, as we discovered in 2007–2008 and seem to be rediscovering in 2015–2016.

            Let's now return to interest rates. As noted, it proved impossible to live with a total proscription of charging and paying interest. That makes life much more complicated, because it becomes necessary to decide and define when to allow interest and, above all, how much. Once again, the exigencies of reality are much better guides than quantitative laws set in stone. It turns out that all human societies figure out which rates of interest are suitable for their circumstances and which are abnormal and unlivable. The former are mainstreamed, the latter are pushed to the margins of society, or beyond.

            In this way, the entities and institutions sanctioned to conduct financial business—whether money-changers in first-century Jerusalem, or people sitting on bancos (benches) in medieval Milan, or the guys in corner-offices in twentieth-century Manhattan—were constrained, usually formally but also informally, from adopting the standards and mores of unsanctioned entities. The constraint could be in the form of usury laws or of informal conventions, but the bottom line was that finance remained the preserve of respectable (or, at least, respectability-seeking) licensed firms, while loan-sharking remained the haunt of unlicensed, unrespectable and illegal operators—the Mafia and their ilk—because, for them, it was too lucrative to pass up.

            That very stigma—that loan-sharking is a Mafia business that respectable financial institutions wouldn’t touch—sent a vital message to the general public: Borrowing from loan-shark operations, however persuasive their sales pitch and however great your need, is something to be avoided by decent, law-abiding people. It stinks, and if you participate, then even if you successfully navigate the financial and physical dangers, you emerge morally stained.

PART FOUR: Rabbi Strangelove, or How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love Debt

            What changed?

            How did an activity viewed a few decades ago as illegal, repugnant, and dangerous become sufficiently mainstream that, on the one hand, leading legitimate financial institutions have adopted it as a desirable line of business and, on the other, many small businesses now use a source of financing offering terms they would previously have shunned?

             The answer, in one sentence, is “the financialization of the economy.” Unfortunately, that is not a phrase or concept that most people recognize or understand—but that does not stop them living their lives by it. Rather than present a detailed analysis of the genesis, development, and mechanics of this concept, let me provide a few simple, concrete examples of its impact. Each example should be prefaced with the introduction “Fifty years ago…”:

• People took a mortgage to buy their home, repaid it over two or three decades, and then lived in their OWN home—they owned all of it.
• Much the same was true for cars, and even for major domestic appliances: Insofar as these were financed by borrowing, the loan was typically for five years (for a car), or a year or two (for an appliance). The loan ended, the car drove on, and the appliance kept right on working.
• Companies that produced goods—industrial firms—had balance sheets in which their own equity typically comprised more than 50 percent, with outside equity, i.e., loans, representing a small component.
• Virtually all middle-class households, as well as most working-class ones, knew how much their income was and tailored their expenses accordingly. No one provided them funding to systematically overspend—nor would they have wanted to do so, had it been offered.
• Regular household expenses were paid in cash. In some communities, the store-keeper kept a record and the slate was wiped clean on a weekly or monthly basis, in cash—or else further purchases were refused.
• More financially sophisticated households had checkbooks, which they kept balanced on an ongoing basis.

            It is important to stress—for the benefit of younger readers who knew not that society, and even for older ones who may have forgotten it—that this is not a description of how George Washington's contemporaries lived, nor Lincoln's, nor those of Teddy Roosevelt or even FDR. This pattern of financial behavior was the accepted norm in the third quarter of the twentieth century.

            Ordinary people did not have much access to credit, other than mortgage loans for their homes—predicated on having a steady job—and maybe to buy major "consumer durables.” People—including upper-middle-class folks who lived in fancy homes and sent their kids to swanky schools, as well as regular Joes who were paid in cash every Friday—were expected to live within their means, whatever those means were. There were no “'payday loans” shops on the main streets of suburbs, nor ads in newspapers or on the subway offering instant cash loans at extremely high interest rates. You had to be in bad shape, socially as well as financially, to have recourse to the very expensive and illegal loans offered by criminals on the fringes of society.

            As for small businesses, the mainstream financial system offered them no funding, so that entrepreneurs and proprietors had to use their own resources, or tap family and friends, to get a new business off the ground.

            It is easy to see the flaws in this system and even easier to understand why both consumers and businesspeople were relieved to be offered improved access to more credit at better terms. That explains why the number and range of entities seeking to provide credit grew exponentially: Both demand for and supply of credit were potentially huge, seemingly limitless.

            But what made it all possible was that the commercial banking system (thanks to “fractional-reserve banking,” q.v.) could effectively create money out of nowhere, with the financial regulatory system and the laws upon which it rested encouraging them. Furthermore—and this is the key to the “financialization” process—over time, the regulatory framework and the legal framework, were gradually relaxed so that more entities were allowed to engage in more kinds of financial activity, using less of their own capital and more “leverage.”

            The buzzwords in this process were “deregulation,” “disintermediation,” and, later, “securitization,” the importance and benefit of which were explained and “proven” by a large body of academic research. Over time, most of these “objective academics” were hired and acquired by the financial sector, or appointed to posts in regulatory institutions—joining the revolving door through which people moved to and fro between the private sector, academe, and the public sector.

            In tandem with the expansion of the supply of credit came a parallel revolution on the demand side. Attitudes changed, so that the increasing use of credit in more and more areas of consumer and business activity became first tolerated, then accepted, and eventually encouraged. Households and firms that in the past would have been rejected as borrowers by financial institutions were now showered with money and urged to spend it in ways that used to be considered reckless and wrong.

            In tandem with the neutralization of government—indeed, its enlistment as a proactive force supporting financialization—has occurred the dilution and ultimate elimination of moral constraints. The general public has been persuaded by its intellectual and political leadership that financialization is a good thing. This brain-washing process has been spurred by tagging to financialization all the desirable labels of our era, such as “democratization,” “equal access,” “efficient,” “growth-generating,” while portraying a negative attitude toward debt as unjustified and obsolete.

            But the most powerful factor at work on the demand side has been emotional rather than cerebral. The offer of credit (a much more positive word than “debt”…) to enable the realization of your wants and needs NOW— instant gratification—has been critical at every level. Whether you are a single mother struggling to pay the bills from a meager salary, or the CEO of a giant corporation seeking to gain control of another firm for tens of billions of dollars, the ready availability of credit to achieve your aim and answer your need is irresistible.

            Many people, especially those who worked within the system, believe that this process did not merely “happen.” In their view, the rise to prominence of banking and finance—from their traditional ancillary status vis-a-vis the productive sectors of the economy, to a new status as a key sector which is an autonomous source of economic growth—could not have happened without a parallel rise in their political clout. In fact, the deregulation of the financial sectors and the dilution or complete removal of the legal constraints placed on them in the aftermath of the crash of 1929 and the Great Depression, were actually the outcome of a prolonged and sustained lobbying effort by the biggest financial institutions.

            The validity of this radical, even subversive, thesis was proven—say its proponents—by the aftermath of the crash, collapse, and crisis of 2007–2009. Although this disaster, or at least its scope and scale, were caused by the abandonment of accepted prudent standards of lending, few of the persons primarily responsible for gutting major institutions and inflicting huge damage to the economy were arraigned, let alone found guilty and punished.

            Thus the overall lesson emerging from the series of financial crises and market crashes that have occurred over the last 30 years is that “the system”—the government (of either major party), the Federal Reserve, and other regulatory bodies and the general public—has become a steadily larger part of the problem and is now almost unable to take the lead, or even make a major contribution, in finding solutions.

            The problem may be most simply defined as an economy addicted to credit. This is true of all the three main sectors that comprise the economy—government, business, and households. Eight years after the previous crash, the worst of the recent series and the worst since that of 1929–1932, credit is more entrenched in all areas of economic life, from the Federal government down to small retail businesses on the high street, and the ordinary households who buy from them.

            The epicenter of this financial, economic, social, and moral tsunami is Manhattan. From there, the gospel of greed has spread across the United States, filtering into virtually every part of the American socio-religious mosaic, even the most conservative, traditional, sheltered groups. Even, that is, into the Hareidi ghettoes across the East River in Brooklyn.

            The nature of ultra-Orthodox society ensured that the credit revolution, like other social upheavals, would reach it with a considerable delay. But its arrival over the last decade or two is a confirmed fact, attested to by the attention the issue is now receiving in the Hareidi media. A prominent recent example was the cover story of the Hareidi magazine Mishpacha, self-styled as a "Jewish Family Weekly," for its 18 Teves/December 30 issue: "Why Frum Families Fall into Debt," subtitled, "5 Pitfalls and How to Climb Out."

            How advanced the process is was glaringly brought home to this writer via a large ad on a public bulletin board in the heart of Hareidi Jerusalem, urging "enough of trying to juggle thousands of gemach (free loan funds) loans—get one large bank loan, for a large sum, at reasonable terms, and straighten out your finances." The implications of that ad are so far-reaching that it deserves its own extensive analysis, but in our current context it confirms that the plague has spread throughout the Hareidi world, far beyond relatively sophisticated Brooklyn.

            Which brings us back to Abe and Meir, to their original mentor Mr. C., and the other Brooklyn boys who—so Zeke Faux believes—effectively invented “merchant cash advances.” These were not latter-day Jewish gangsters, forging a “Yiddishe Mafia” in the loan-sharking business. Rather, they were smart operators who figured out how to mainstream loan-sharking and make it kosher, to the point where the elite of Wall Street, led by Goldman Sachs, sought to buy them out with a view to scaling up their operation.

            Abe, Meir, and their colleagues were being blown by the zeitgeist of the credit era, providing money to those prepared to pay absurd prices for it—thereby declaring themselves foolishly innocent or simply desperate and potentially destitute. The business requires the lenders to fleece the borrowers, knowingly and mercilessly stripping their financial flesh like a pack of piranhas—and then moving on to the next victim.

            It demands, therefore, the negation of conscience and of pity. It helps, of course, that the victims offer themselves willingly, but the key to success is to override, subsume, and ultimately drown all positive emotions or considerations beneath the overwhelming drive of greed.

            As for conscience, that apparently needs a two-stage elimination process. First, get God out of the way. There are many ways of doing this, especially if you identify Him as the patron of the multiply-challenged Hareidi society in which you were nurtured. Reject that society, for whatever reason, and you are out of God's clutches—and ready for the next stage. Once there is no Higher Authority, only human authority remains. But the sources of authority in your society—in the United States and the world in general—are dominated by entities and persons whose actions, and often their words too, declare that greed is good and that the weak and defenseless are there to be taken advantage of.

            Ironically, Centrist and Modern Orthodoxy may be even more vulnerable to this process of moral erosion and collapse than Hareidi or Hassidic ultra-Orthodoxy—because the former espouse idealized views of the inherently positive nature of American government and societal structure, whereas the latter never bought into those views. Conversely, Hareidim tend to give no practical weight to moral values other than those they label “Torah,” whereas Modern Orthodox Jews exposed to non-Jewish thought are aware of and embrace universal moral values.

            In any event, the challenge facing all streams of Orthodoxy is how to defend itself against this form of moral collapse. The answer is undoubtedly complex and multi-faceted and requires a long-term program. But the first part of the answer is simple, focused, and immediate: Identify the problem and admit its existence. Put it prominently on the agenda.

            It is most encouraging to find—as per the above-mentioned Mishpacha cover story—that this is beginning to happen. It is also most instructive that the process is a grass-roots one, led by the free (i.e., commercial and non-institutional) Hareidi media, which is largely run by educated Hareidi women.

            Mainstream Hareidi media, institutions, and society, which are dominated by a self-appointed, self-perpetuating leadership cadre comprising rabbis (men, obviously) and rich men, does not yet seem to have reached that stage. Maybe they think the problem doesn’t exist, but more likely they think that it doesn’t exist among "frummer Yidden." But exist it does, at the household level of "frum families falling into debt" and at the corporate level of how "frum" people should finance their businesses, including the businesses of yeshivas, seminaries, kollels and other Hareidi institutional businesses. The business context also includes whether "frum" people should participate in the finance business, and if so, how.

            Finally, the issue of excessive use of and reliance on debt also exists at the “government” level of Haredi society. There are, of course, no data on the cost of the "Hassidic courts,” each with its mini-business empires and not-so-mini bureaucracies that have grown up across the Hareidi world during the past two generations. Needless to say, there are no data as to sources of finance and extent of debt.

            However, the laws of finance and their moral underpinnings apply in Brooklyn just as in Manhattan and, ultimately, cannot be escaped in either place. Warren Buffett, one of the gurus of the financialization era whose end is now in sight, has never pretended to dispense moral guidance—rather, plain common sense. His insight, that "only when the tide goes out do you see who was swimming naked," may not be Solomonic, but if it was part of the culture and educational curriculum in Brooklyn and Bnei Brak, maybe Abe and Meir—and their many colleagues—would not be washed up, with their millions, in their sleazy life in Puerto Rico.

The Institute for Jewish Ideas and Ideals welcomes you to attend classes in New York City, taught by Rabbis Marc and Hayyim Angel. For those living outside the New York area, Rabbi Hayyim Angel's will be available on the online learning link of our website jewishideas.org

Ancient Ethics, Modern Dilemmas

a class by Rabbi Marc D. Angel

Tuesday mornings, 8:40-9:30 am, beginning November 1

At the Apple Bank, 2100 Broadway, NYC

Coffee, tea and Danish are available.

   The basic text of this class will be Pele Yoetz, the classic ethical work by Rabbi Eliezer Papo. This book draws on the traditional rabbinic teachings of Judaism on a wide range of topics. Along with the Pele Yoetz, the class will study various modern Jewish thinkers, writers and scholars to consider how ancient Jewish ethical guidance relates (or doesn’t relate!) to our contemporary lives.

     The class is free and open to the public, but advance registration is required. To register, please email [email protected]

Navigating Through Nach: A Survey of the Prophets

A class by Rabbi Hayyim Angel

Wednesday evenings, 7:00-8:00 pm, beginning November 2

At Congregation Kehilath Jeshurun, 125 East 85^th Street, NYC

Although Tanakh lies at the heart of the vision of Judaism and has influenced billions of people worldwide, many often lack access to these eternal works. The best of traditional and contemporary scholarship will be employed as we study the central themes of each book. This year we will study the Twelve Prophets and the books of the Writings (Ketuvim). The course is taught at a high scholarly level but is accessible to people of all levels of Jewish learning. Newcomers always welcome. Free and open to the public.

Fall session (Twelve Prophets, Psalms) November 2, 9, 16, 30; December 7, 14, 21
Winter session (Psalms, Proverbs, Job, Five Megillot) Feb 1, 8, 15, 22; March 1, 8, 15, 22
Spring session (Daniel, Ezra-Nehemiah, Chronicles) April 26; May 3, 10, 17

The class is free and open to the public, but advance registration is required. To register, please email [email protected]