National Scholar Updates

A Study of Sephardic and Ashkenazic Liturgy[1

            The core of Jewish liturgy traces back to the early rabbinic period, and is universally followed in traditional communities worldwide. Over the centuries, Sephardim and Ashkenazim developed different nuances in their prayer liturgies. It is valuable to learn about the differences that emerged, to see how rabbinic interpretations and cultures shaped the religious experiences underlying prayer. This essay will briefly survey a few aspects of Sephardic and Ashkenazic liturgy.

Connection to Tanakh

            Although many rabbinic prayers draw inspiration from Tanakh, Sephardim often prefer an even closer connection to Tanakh than do Ashkenazim.

            For example, the Pesukei de-Zimra/Zemirot offer psalms of praise to draw us into the proper religious mindset for the mandatory prayers—the Shema, the Amidah, and their associated blessings. On Shabbat morning, Sephardim read the psalms in order of their appearance in the Book of Psalms. Ashkenazim read the psalms in a different order, presumably arranged for thematic reasons. Rabbi Shalom Carmy recently wrote an article offering a conceptual explanation for the Ashkenazic arrangement.[2] To understand the reasoning behind the order of the Sephardic liturgy, just open a Tanakh.

            In a similar vein, in Minhah of Shabbat, Sephardim and Ashkenazim usually recite three verses beginning with tzidkatekha after the Amidah. Once again, Sephardim recite these verses in their order of appearance in Psalms (36:7; 71:19; 119:142). Ashkenazim reverse the order, requiring explanation. Perishah (on Tur Orah Hayyim 292:6) suggests that God’s Name does not appear in 119:142; Elokim appears twice in 71:19; and God’s Name (Y-H-V-H) appears in 36:7. Therefore, Ashkenazim read the verses in an ascending order of holiness. Others suggest that Ashkenazim arranged the verses so that God’s Name is the last word preceding the Kaddish.[3]

            The Talmud (Berakhot 11b) debates the proper opening to the second blessing prior to the Shema in Shaharit, whether it should be ahavah rabbah or ahavat olam (Sephardim and Ashkenazim both say ahavat olam in the blessing of Arvit). Ashkenazim chose ahavah rabbah, and Sephardim chose ahavat olam. Mishnah Berurah (60:2) explains that Ashkenazim selected ahavah rabbah to parallel Lamentations (3:23): “They are renewed every morning—ample is Your grace! (rabbah emunatekha).” In contrast, Rif and Rambam explain that Sephardim preferred ahavat olam since that formula is biblical: “Eternal love (ahavat olam) I conceived for you then; therefore I continue My grace to you” (Jeremiah 31:2).[4]

            Piyyut (religious poetry used as prayer) is an area where the prayer services of Sephardim and Ashkenazim diverge significantly, since these poems were composed during the medieval period. Sephardim generally incorporated the piyyutim of Sephardic poets, and Ashkenazim generally incorporated the piyyutim of Ashkenazic poets. True to his Tanakh-centered approach, Ibn Ezra on Kohelet 5:1 levels criticisms against several Ashkenazic poets, including the venerated Rabbi Eliezer HaKalir, whose piyyutim are used widely in Ashkenazic liturgy: (1) Rabbi Eliezer HaKalir speaks in riddles and allusions, whereas prayers should be comprehensible to all. (2) He uses many talmudic Aramaisms, whereas we should pray in Hebrew, our Sacred Tongue. (3) There are many grammatical errors in Rabbi Eliezer HaKalir’s poetry. (4) He uses derashot that are far from peshat, and we need to pray in peshat. Ibn Ezra concludes that it is preferable not to use faulty piyyutim at all. In contrast, he idealizes Rabbi Saadiah Gaon as the model religious poet.

Kaddish and Kedushah[5]

Sometimes, minor text variations reflect deeper concepts. For example, Rabbi Marvin Luban notes a distinction between the Kaddish and the Kedushah.[6] In the Kedushah, we sanctify God’s Name in tandem with the angels. In the Kaddish, we lament the absence of God’s overt presence in the world.

Tosafot on Sanhedrin 37b refer to an early Geonic custom where Kedushah was recited only on Shabbat. Although we do not follow this practice (we recite both Kaddish and Kedushah on weekdays and Shabbat), it makes excellent conceptual sense. Kedushah conveys a sense of serenity, setting a perfect tone for Shabbat. In contrast, Kaddish reflects distress over the exile, which is better suited for weekdays.

A relic of this practice distinguishes the Kedushah read by Sephardim and Ashkenazim for Shaharit on Shabbat. Ashkenazim incorporate the language of Kaddish into the Kedushah by inserting the following paragraph:

Reveal Yourself from Your place, O our King, and reign over us, for we are waiting for You. When will You reign in Zion? May it be soon in our days, and may You dwell there for ever and all time. May You be exalted and sanctified  (titgaddal ve-titkaddash) in the midst of Jerusalem, Your city, from generation to generation for evermore. May our eyes see Your kingdom, as is said in the songs of Your splendor, written by David your righteous and anointed one.  (Koren translation)

In contrast, Sephardim keep the Kaddish and the Kedushah separate. They insist that there is a time and a place for each type of prayer, and do not recite this paragraph.

Haftarot[7]

Although the Sages of the Talmud codified the prophetic passages to be read as Haftarot for holidays, they left the choice of regular Shabbat Haftarot to the discretion of individual communities (Rabbi Joseph Karo, Kesef Mishneh on Rambam, Laws of Prayer, 12:12). Consequently, several Haftarah reading traditions have arisen.

Vayera

Generally, when Sephardim and Ashkenazim read from same passage, Sephardim are more likely to have a shorter Haftarah. In Beshallah, for example, Sephardim read Deborah’s song in Judges chapter 5, whereas Ashkenazim read the chapter of narrative beforehand as well.

A striking example of this phenomenon is the Haftarah of Vayera. II Kings, chapter 4 relates the story of the prophet Elisha and a woman who offered him hospitality. Elisha prophesied that this woman would give birth to a son, and indeed she did. These themes directly parallel elements of the Parashah: Angelic guests visit Abraham and Sarah; Abraham and Sarah offer their guests hospitality; the angels promise them the birth of Isaac; and Isaac is born.

After these initial parallels to the Parashah, the story in the Haftarah takes a tragic turn in verses 18–23. The son dies, and the woman goes to find Elisha. As she leaves home, the woman’s husband asks why she was going out if it was not a special occasion, and she replies, “Shalom.” This is where Sephardim end the Haftarah. Ashkenazim read the continuation of the narrative in verses 24–37, in which the woman finds Elisha who rushes back to her house and God miraculously revives the child. It appears jarring that Sephardim would conclude the Haftarah at a point where the child still is lifeless rather than proceeding to the happy and miraculous ending of the story.

Rabbi Elhanan Samet explains the surprising discrepancy by noting that the entire story is inordinately long for a congregational setting (37 verses). Sephardim therefore abridged the Haftarah to 23 verses at the expense of reading to its happy ending. They conclude with the word “Shalom” to strike at least some positive note.[8] In contrast, Ashkenazim favored completing the story even though that meant reading a lengthy Haftarah.

Shemot

            Parashat Shemot is an example where Sephardim, Ashkenazim, and Yemenites adopted passages from different prophetic books to highlight different themes from the Parashah.

Sephardim read the beginning of the Book of Jeremiah (1:1–2:3). In this passage, God selects Jeremiah as a prophet. Jeremiah expresses reluctance only to be rebuffed by God:

I replied: Ah, Lord God! I don’t know how to speak, for I am still a boy. And the Lord said to me: Do not say, I am still a boy, but go wherever I send you and speak whatever I command you. (Jeremiah 1:6–7)

This choice of Haftarah focuses on the parallels between Jeremiah’s initiation and ensuing reluctance, and Moses’ hesitations in accepting his prophetic mission in the Parashah.

Ashkenazim read from the Book of Isaiah, focusing primarily on the theme of national redemption:

[In days] to come Jacob shall strike root, Israel shall sprout and blossom, and the face of the world shall be covered with fruit. (Isaiah 27:6)

For when he—that is, his children—behold what My hands have wrought in his midst, they will hallow My name. Men will hallow the Holy One of Jacob and stand in awe of the God of Israel. (Isaiah 29:23)

Although there is rebuke in the middle of the Haftarah, the passage begins and ends with consolation and redemption.

Yemenites read one of Ezekiel’s harsh diatribes against Israel for their infidelity to God. The prophet compares them to an unfaithful woman who has cheated on God by turning to idolatry and the allures of pagan nations: “O mortal, proclaim Jerusalem’s abominations to her” (Ezekiel 16:2).

Ashkenazim highlight the link between the national exile and redemption. Yemenites selected Ezekiel’s caustic condemnation of the Israelites, implying that the Israelites deserved slavery as a punishment for having assimilated in Egypt. It likely was used as an exhortation to contemporary Jews to remain faithful to the Torah. Sephardim chose to highlight the development of the outstanding individual figure of the Parashah—Moses.

Music and Mood During the High Holy Days

One notable practice in many Sephardic communities is to sing several melodies during the High Holy Day season that are lively, exciting, and even joyous. One of the most dramatic examples is the refrain in the Selihot (penitential prayers), Hattanu lefanekha rahem alenu, we have sinned before You; have mercy on us! Amidst our confession of sinning, this tune is rousing and upbeat. If an Ashkenazic Jew heard some of these Sephardic tunes, he or she might intuitively feel that the happiness of the music was inappropriate for Yom Kippur. If a Sephardic Jew heard some of the solemn Ashkenazic tunes, he or she might wonder why the music lacks this happiness. Yet, both sets of tunes are consistent with different aspects of the day.

Rabbi Ovadiah Yosef discusses whether one should use joyous or awe-inspiring tunes on Rosh HaShanah and Yom Kippur (Yehavveh Da’at II:69). Among many authorities, he quotes Rabbi Hayyim Vital, who stated that his teacher, Rabbi Isaac Luria (Ari), used to cry while praying on Rosh HaShanah and Yom Kippur. Rabbi Yosef quotes Rabbi Elijah of Vilna (Gra), who ruled that people should not cry but rather should use festive holiday melodies. Rabbi Yosef concludes that if one is overcome with emotion, one certainly may cry. However, one otherwise should try to be in a festive, happy mood.[9]

            Not only do melodic differences elicit different emotions, but the words do, as well. To take one prominent example, a central prayer of the Ashkenazic High Holy Day liturgy is the “U-Netaneh Tokef,” during which the congregation contemplates the gravity of being judged. Yet, this prayer—composed during the medieval period—is not part of the liturgy in most Sephardic communities.

            Rabbi Simhah bar Yehoshua, an Ashkenazic rabbi, traveled on a ship with Sephardim to the Land of Israel. He wrote,

On the entire voyage we prayed with the Sephardim. The Sephardim awoke prior to daybreak to say Selihot with a quorum as is their custom in the month of Elul. During the day they eat and rejoice and are happy of heart. Some of them spend their entire days in study. (in J. D. Eisenstein, Otzar ha-Masa’ot, 1969, p. 241)

When Jews of different backgrounds live together, they have the opportunity to learn from the practices of one another, thereby appreciating other aspects of our rich tradition.

The Censored Verse in Alenu

The Alenu prayer is ancient, and initially was recited only during the High Holy Days. It appears to have entered the daily prayers around the year 1300 ce. In the original text, we contrast ourselves with pagans, “For they worship vanity and emptiness, and pray to a god who cannot save, she-hem mishtahavim la-hevel va-rik, u-mitpallelim el el lo yoshia.” This line derives from two verses in the Book of Isaiah:

For the help of Egypt shall be vain and empty (hevel va-rik). (Isaiah 30:7)

No foreknowledge had they who carry their wooden images and pray to a god who cannot give success (u-mitpallelim el el lo yoshia). (Isaiah 45:20)

Around 1400, an apostate claimed that this line in Alenu was intended to slur Christianity. He observed that the numerical value (gematria) of va-rik is 316, the same as Yeshu, the Hebrew name of the Christian savior. This accusation led to the Christian censor striking this line from the Alenu in France and Germany. In 1703, the Prussian government even placed guards in synagogues to ensure that Jews would not recite that line.

In their attempts to defend the original prayer, rabbis protested that the line is anti-pagan, and cannot be anti-Christian. Among other arguments, they noted that the verses are from Isaiah (eighth century bce), who long pre-dates Christianity. Nevertheless, the censor required Ashkenazic Jews to remove that line, whereas Sephardim retained the original text.[10] Today, several Ashkenazic communities have restored that line to their prayer books.[11]

Conclusion

            Most aspects of the Sephardic and Ashkenazic liturgy are strikingly similar. The biblical passages, ancient rabbinic prayers, and the structure of the service, are largely the same with minor variations.

In those areas where there were choices left to later generations, such as ordering of the psalms, choosing between rabbinic interpretations, medieval piyyutim, Shabbat Haftarot, and music, we can appreciate the choices different communities made to shape their prayer experience.

More broadly, Jewish schools, synagogues, and adult education programs must teach the full range of Jewish thought, interpretation, history, liturgy, and many other elements from the Sephardic and Ashkenazic experience. In this manner, we become stronger and become more united as a people, even as we retain our diverse customs and traditions.[12]

Judaism seeks to bring us closer to God through proper thought and deed. Superstition seeks to circumvent God's power through the use of magical formulae or rituals. While Judaism demands intellectual and moral excellence and a direct relationship with God, superstition provides purported means of bypassing or manipulating God in order to ward off evil or to achieve some other desired goal.

Since religion and superstition ultimately transcend the domain of human reason, it is possible to blur the lines between the two. The Torah is emphatic in commanding that we not turn to shamans or wonderworkers, but that we stay focused on our personal relationship with God. "There shall not be found among you anyone... who uses divination, a soothsayer, or an enchanter, or a sorcerer, or a charmer, or one who consults a ghost or a familiar spirit, or a necromancer. For whoever does these things is an abomination unto the Lord" (Devarim 18:10-12).

Rambam clarifies the boundaries between religion and superstition in his discussion about using incantations to heal a wound:

Anyone who whispers a charm over a wound and reads a verse from the Torah, or one who recites a biblical verse over a child lest he be terrified, or one who places a Torah scroll or tefillin over an infant to enable him to sleep, are not only included in the category of sorcerers and charmers, but are included among those who repudiate the Torah. They use the words of the Torah as a physical cure, whereas they are exclusively a cure for the soul, as it is written, ‘they will be life to your soul.' On the other hand, one who is enjoying good health is permitted to recite biblical verses, or a psalm, that he may be shielded and saved from affliction and damage by virtue of the reading. (Hilkhot Avoda Zara, 11:12)

What are the characteristics of those individuals who "repudiate the Torah"? 1) They treat biblical verses as though they are magic formulae that can effect a cure. 2) They use religious objects e.g. Torah scroll, tefillin, as though they are endowed with independent magical powers. 3) They resort to incantations and magical rituals, rather than turning directly to God. In short, they behave superstitiously, rather than religiously.

If we were to confront these individuals, though, they would be surprised to be placed in the category of those who "repudiate the Torah". They might well think of themselves as being pious, Torah-true Jews. After all, they have not gone to soothsayers or diviners for help; they have recited the holy words of the Bible and have used religious items of our own Jewish tradition. Wherein have they sinned? The Rambam would answer: even if a person employs Torah words and symbols, he/she may yet be guilty of sinful behavior. To use the Torah's words and symbols in a superstitious way is also superstition! Indeed, such behavior repudiates the Torah's express teaching that we turn directly to God and that we not engage in magical practices.

The Rambam notes that if a healthy person chants biblical verses in the hope that the merit of this mitzvah will invite God's protection, this is still on the correct side of the line separating religion from superstition. The person is not attributing intrinsic supernatural power to the biblical verses; rather, he is directing his thoughts to God Himself, and hopes that the merit of his biblical readings will engender God's protection. Although this may not be an example of religion at its best, it is permissible-and not in the category of repudiating the Torah.

In the laws of Mezuzah (5:4), Rambam cites another case in which he distinguishes between religious and superstitious behavior.

There is a widespread custom to write the word Shaddai on the outer side of the Mezuzah, opposite the blank space between the two sections. Since it is written on the outside, there is no harm done. On the other hand, those who write inside the Mezuzah names of angels or names of saintly men, some biblical verse or some charms, are included among those who have no share in the world to come. Those fools not only fail to fulfill the commandment but they treat an important precept, which conveys God's Oneness as well as the love and worship of Him, as if it were an amulet to benefit themselves, since they foolishly believe that the Mezuzah is something advantageous for the vain pleasures of this world.

Here, too, the Rambam chastises those who treat a religious object as though it were a magical charm. People are included among "those who have no share in the world to come" even if they themselves may think they are acting piously. Rambam makes it clear that superstitious behavior-even if cloaked in traditional religious symbols-is a serious transgression of the Torah's teachings.

What leads people to superstitious behavior? Why doesn't everyone realize the foolishness of employing magical incantations and rites? Why would people rely on superstitious behavior rather than turning directly to God with their prayers?

Here are a few reasons:

True religion demands a lot from us. Superstition demands very little. True religion requires that we confront God directly. Superstition offers short cuts, ways to bypass that awe-inspiring confrontation with God.
Superstitious practices have been sanctioned by generations of people who seem to have religious credibility. If these great ones believed in demons and made amulets, then these things must be permissible (in spite of the Rambam's rulings).
When people are afraid and desperate, they may suspend their reason in order to adopt superstitious practices-"just in case" these might be efficacious. Why take chances by not trying everything?
A great challenge for religious leadership is to wean people from superstitious tendencies and bring them closer to God. People need to be reminded to use their reason, rather than to surrender to a mindless supernaturalism. The Torah itself was well aware of the human weakness of turning to diviners and magicians-and the Torah strictly forbade such practices that obstruct a direct relationship with God. Religion teaches responsibility, careful thinking, and reliance on God. Superstition promotes avoidance of personal responsibility, suspension of rational thinking, and reliance on supernatural forces other than God.

There are pressures within contemporary Orthodox Jewish life that foster a superstitious, rather than a true religious, view of Judaism. On the surface, these negative factors appear in the garb of religious words and symbols; yet, just as in the misuse of Torah scrolls, tefillin and mezuzot cited in the passages from Rambam earlier, these tendencies reflect the unfortunate and misguided features of superstition. That these behaviors pass themselves off as being authentic Orthodox Judaism should be a source of concern and anguish to all thinking Orthodox Jews.

Examples:

1. I (along with many others) periodically receive a brochure from an organization that provides charity to needy individuals and families. The brochure includes abundant pictures of saintly-looking men with long white beards, engaged in Torah study and prayer, and signing their names on behalf of this charity. The brochure promises us that "the Gedolei Hador are the official members of the organization." One of the Gedolei Hador is quoted to say: "All who contribute to [this charity] merit to see open miracles." We are asked to contribute to this cause so that the Gedolei Hador will pray on our behalf. We even are given choices of what merit we would like to receive from these prayers: to have nahat from our children; to have children; to find a worthy mate; to earn an easy livelihood. "Urgent requests are immediately forwarded to the home of the Gedolei Hador." If we are willing to contribute so much per name, we are guaranteed that a minyan of outstanding talmidei hakhamim will pray for us at the Kotel. If we contribute a lesser amount, we only will have the prayer recited by one outstanding talmid hakham. We are also told that we can write our request as a kvitel and it will be placed in the Kotel for forty days; we can even transmit our prayer requests by telephone hotline, after we have made a contribution via credit card.

This charity purports not only to be Torah-true, but to have the involvement and backing of the Gedolei Hador. Anyone looking at the brochure would see this as an Orthodox Jewish charity operated by highly religious individuals.

Let us grant that this is indeed a worthy charity that provides assistance to needy Jews. Let us grant that the people who operate this charity see themselves as pious Jews of the highest caliber, literally linked to the Gedolei Hador. Yet, the brochure is not an example of true religion at all, but of something far more akin to superstition.

Is it appropriate for a Gadol Hador to assure contributors that they will be worthy of open miracles? Can anyone rightfully speak on behalf of the Almighty's decisions relating to doing open miracles? Doesn't this statement reflect a belief that prayers uttered by so-called sages (similar to incantations uttered by shamans?!) can control God's actions, even to the extent of making Him do miracles?

Moreover, why should people be made to feel that they are not qualified to pray to God directly? Why should "religious leaders" promote the notion that if people will pay money, some pious individual will recite a prayer at the Kotel-and that the prayer uttered by such an individual at the Kotel is more efficacious than one's own prayers? How tasteless and contrary to religious values is the notion that a minyan of outstanding talmidei hakhamim will pray if you pay enough; but only one will pray for you if you choose to contribute less than the recommended sum?

In this brochure, dressed as it is in the garb of Torah-true religion, we have a blatant example of superstition-tainted Judaism. The leaders of this organization assume: 1) Gedolei Hador (we are not told who decides who is a Gadol Hador, nor why any Gadol Hador would want to run to the Kotel to pray every time a donor called in an "urgent request") have greater powers to pray than anyone else. 2) A Gadol Hador can promise us open miracles if we send in a donation. 3) A prayer uttered at the holy site of the Kotel has more value than a prayer uttered elsewhere i.e. the Kotel is treated as a sacred, magical entity. 4) A kvitel placed in a crevice in the Kotel has religious value and efficacy. This brochure relies on the public's gullible belief in the supernatural powers of Gedolei Hador and the Kotel.

Lest one think this charity is the only Orthodox Jewish group that promotes a superstitious (rather than truly religious) viewpoint, one may do a google search and find others who do pretty much the same thing. The Wailing Wall Kvitel Service advertises that it will deliver your personal prayers or requests to the Lord "even if you cannot travel to the holy land to visit Jerusalem in person." We are assured that once this Service receives our kvitel and donation, the kvitel will be placed between the stones of the Kotel and "you will receive a postcard from the wailing wall."

Nor is this behavior restricted to the "hareidi" sector of Orthodoxy. One website informs us that Jews and non-Jews have long had the practice of writing their private thoughts and prayers and having them inserted into the cracks of the Kotel "in the firm belief that at this holiest of locales God is always present and listening." (Doesn't Judaism believe that God is always present and listening everywhere?) The sponsors of this website which promises to insert the kvitels "on a same day basis", have also arranged with a kollel in Jerusalem to have Tehillim recited for the ill or to have Torah studied in someone's memory. This program is staffed by volunteers of the Orthodox Union, a mainstream Orthodox organization!

The Jewish Press of March 19, 2008 reported on the trip to Israel by Senator John McCain who traveled with Senator Joe Lieberman. The article included a photograph of Senator McCain placing a kvitel in the Kotel! He obviously was told that this was the "religiously correct" thing to do, bringing this practice to another level of public acceptance. Senator Barack Obama, on his recent trip to Israel, also placed a kvitel in the Kotel, also having been advised that this was the proper thing to do.

The Jerusalem Post (April 15, 2008) ran a news item reporting that the Rabbi of the Kotel and his assistants clean out the kvitels from the Kotel twice a year, before Pessah and Rosh HaShanah. They do so in order to make room for the millions of kvitels that come in from all over the world, from Jews and non-Jews. The kvitels are put into plastic-lined bins and then brought to the Mount of Olives cemetery for burial. The custom of the kvitels is raised to a level of holiness.

Certainly, those who write kvitels do so with a sense of piety, with a sincere desire to get their prayers to God. Yet, shouldn't religious leaders be telling people that they ought to bring their prayers to God-by praying directly to Him. There is no need whatever to write out prayers for deposit in the Kotel. On the contrary, this practice smacks of superstition, relying on magical powers that are attributed to the Kotel rather than on direct prayer to God.

Defenders of the kvitel practice will argue: this is an age-old custom, approved or tolerated by great sages; this is a harmless custom that doesn't hurt anyone; this is a way for people to feel that their words will have a better chance of reaching God. In response, we can say that there are various beliefs and practices that were approved or tolerated by great sages in the past-but that are more akin to superstition than religion e.g. belief in demons (sheidim and mazikim), writing and wearing magical amulets, conducting ceremonies to ward off evil spirits etc. The fact that great people believed or did these things does not make these things correct. The Rambam condemned those who used Torah scrolls, tefillin or mezuzot as magic charms-and I would assume that there were rabbis before (and after) his time who approved or tolerated these practices. The Rambam attempted to make people see the difference between religion and superstition; unfortunately, not everyone wanted to accept this distinction, but preferred to remain attached to superstitious beliefs and practices.

Superstitious practices do cause harm. According to Rambam, severe punishments (including loss of one's portion in the world to come!) are meted out to those who engage in superstitious rites. Moreover, a superstitious approach to Judaism undermines its intellectual and rational foundations, treating it more as a cult than a religion. This is a vast disservice to Judaism, and turns intelligent and reasonable people away from Torah.

People may feel that superstitious behavior is a way to gain supernatural results-but this feeling is repudiated by the Torah. Rabbis and teachers need to remind the community that one need not-and should not-seek superstitious means of controlling or appeasing God. Rather, people should be reminded of their right and responsibility to pray directly to God on their own, without needing to resort to the supposed powers of holy men, holy objects, holy places.

2. Another example of the fostering of superstition over religion relates to the recitation of the mourner's kaddish. The kaddish is a beautiful prayer, glorifying God's greatness and redemptive power. The text of the kaddish is ancient, and originally was recited as a prayer following a Torah study session (Sotah 49a). It seems to have been adopted as a mourner's prayer only in the 13th century, and became a widespread practice throughout the Jewish world with the passage of time.

Certainly, the kaddish has become imbued with deep emotion and religious feeling among mourners. It is meritorious for a mourner to chant this prayer, as a means of showing respect for the memory of a loved one and even as a way to add merit to the soul of the deceased.

Yet, it must be remembered that the kaddish is a prayer, not a magical incantation. A member of my Congregation, originally from Israel, recently returned to Israel for the burial of his father and for the Shiva period. A rabbi of the Hevra Kaddisha there informed him that he was obligated to say kaddish each day in order to get his father into heaven. If the mourner was not sure he could say kaddish each day, he should pay the Hevra Kaddisha a certain sum, and they would guarantee a daily recital of kaddish-thereby insuring the father's acceptance into heaven.

My congregant called me to ascertain whether the rabbi of the Hevra Kaddisha was giving him correct information. The answer: it is virtuous to recite the kaddish, and it is virtuous to give charity. When a mourner does virtuous deeds in memory of a deceased loved one, this is a tribute to the deceased. In some spiritual sense, the righteous deeds of the mourners may bring repose to the soul of the loved one. Moreover, the recitation of kaddish helps the mourner cope more meaningfully with the loss of a loved one.

However, it is not correct to treat the kaddish as a magic formula. Until the 13th century, kaddish was not recited for deceased loved ones-and yet surely God did not deprive them of their eternal reward. Also, God is the One who alone deals with the souls of the departed, and He surely judges people fairly. It would be ludicrous to think that God withholds justice depending on whether a mourner recites kaddish or not.

For many Jews, including pious Orthodox Jews, kaddish is treated as though it is a magic incantation rather than a prayer glorifying God's greatness. People go to extraordinary lengths to recite the kaddish in a minyan. In itself, this is a virtue. Yet, if they do so because they believe the kaddish is a magic formula to gain entry to heaven for the deceased, then the practice obviously passes into the domain of superstition.

3. Another indication of superstitious trends in Jewish life is the tendency to rely on "good luck" charms e.g. red string tied around the wrist; food or drink blessed by certain kabbalistic sages. I have known cases of otherwise rational people who have turned to "wonder workers" for help in saving a mortally ill loved one. Medical doctors have been unable to save the patient; out of desperation, relatives have asked for "spiritual" cures. In one case, a "saintly" rabbi was flown in from Israel to pray at the bedside of a dying child. (The child unfortunately died.) In another case, a "saintly" rabbi received a contribution after which he sent to a sick patient a bottle of Arak that he had blessed. (That patient also died.) It happens sometimes that people recover from their illnesses. When they do, they are ready to swear that the cure was the result of intervention by the saintly person who prayed for them or sent them holy things to eat or drink. This gives further fuel for desperately ill people to turn to magic workers for help; after all, it might do some good!

Although we can understand-and even sympathize-with this attitude, we must also state clearly that it represents a turn away from true religion and a turn toward superstition. As such, we should be teaching people to avoid falling into this way of thought and behavior. We should be urging people not to rely on red strings, or amulets, or foods/drinks blessed by "saintly" people: rather, they should turn their hearts and minds and souls entirely to God.

Rambam: Judaism and Reason

Rambam stressed the need for human beings to use their power of reason. Superstition is the antithesis of reason, and therefore a false path to truth. While philosophers surely understand this, what are we supposed to do with the masses who are more prone to fall into the ways of superstition? The answer is: we must teach the masses a philosophically sound and rational approach to religion. We must encourage people to use their powers of reason.

Rambam disdained those who were content to espouse truth on the basis of blind faith, without attempting to establish the intellectual foundations of truth. People who do not use their reason are deficient even in their faith; they are prone to superstition and are gullible to the pronouncements of charismatic (even if misguided) authority figures.

Rambam pointed out that there are things accepted as truth-which are not in fact true. Human reason is necessary as a constant and reliable agent to challenge, verify or reject long-held "truths". Just because a great authority taught something does not ensure that it is true. Indeed, truth stands on its own merit, not on the basis of the opinions of human beings.

For when something has been demonstrated, the correctness of the matter is not increased and certainty regarding it is not strengthened by the consensus of all men of knowledge with regard to it. Nor could its correctness be diminished and certainty regarding it be weakened even if all the people on earth disagreed with it.(Guide, II:13)

In his Mishneh Torah (Laws of Sanctification of the New Moon, 17:24), Rambam states that many books on astronomy and mathematics were composed by Greek sages. Similar works by ancient Jewish sages of the tribe of Issachar have not come down to us.

Since all these rules have been established by sound and clear proofs, free from any flaw and irrefutable, we need not be concerned about the identity of their authors, whether they be Hebrew Prophets or Gentile sages. For when we have to do with rules and propositions which have been demonstrated by good reasons and have been verified to be true by sound and flawless proofs, we rely upon the author who has discovered them or transmitted them only because of his demonstrated proofs and verified reasoning.

Intelligent people need to distinguish between what is true and what is spurious. Surely, we may rely on the wisdom of the prophets and rabbinic sages, just as we rely on the advice of skilled physicians or experts in other fields. Yet, even when receiving advice from these authorities, we should not suspend personal judgment altogether. In his Epistle to Yemen, Rambam warns:

Do not consider a statement true because you find it in a book, for the prevaricator is as little restrained with his pen as with his tongue. For the untutored and uninstructed are convinced of the veracity of a statement by the mere fact that it is written; nevertheless its accuracy must be demonstrated in another manner.[1]

Just because "authorities" and "scholars" have claimed something to be true does not make it true. Rambam, in his Letter on Astrology, remarks that "fools have composed thousands of books of nothingness and emptiness".[2] Men "great in years but not in wisdom" wasted much time studying these worthless books and came to think of themselves as experts. They taught nonsense to the public, imagining that they were conveying truth. Unsuspecting people believed these "experts" because they seemed to be erudite and convincing.

Rambam explains that we should only accept something as reliably true if it belongs to one of three categories. 1) It is proven clearly by human reasoning such as arithmetic, geometry and astronomy. 2) It is perceived with certainty through one of the five senses. 3) It is received from the prophets or the righteous. In considering whether or not something is true, we must determine through which category we have derived its truthfulness. If we cannot verify something through one of these three categories, we cannot accept it as being true.

A dilemma arises. Rambam categorically rejects the validity of astrology, considering it a foolish superstition rather than a bona fide science. Yet, the Talmud and Midrashim record the opinions of righteous sages who themselves seemed to ascribe veracity to astrology! Thus, by Rambam's own standards of determining truth, shouldn't we believe in astrology since we have received this belief from the righteous? Rambam resolves this seeming problem:

It is not proper to abandon matters of reason that have already been verified by proofs, shake loose of them, and depend on the words of a single one of the sages from whom possibly the matter was hidden. Or there may be an allusion in those words; or they may have been said with a view to the times and the business before him. You surely know how many of the verses of the holy Torah are not to be taken literally. Since it is known through proofs of reason that it is impossible for the thing to be literally so, the Targum [Aramaic translator of the Torah] rendered it in a form that reason will abide. A man should never cast his reason behind him, for the eyes are set in front, not in back.[3]

Once we have verified the truth of something on the basis of reason, we should not accept the literal meaning of texts that contradict this verified truth. If a sage has made a statement that violates a proven truth, then either 1) he was mistaken; 2) he was speaking in allegorical or poetic language, not to be taken literally; 3) he was speaking within the context of his time and place. If the Torah itself-which is Truth-records something that contradicts verified truth, then the Torah must be interpreted to conform to this established truth. For Rambam, it is axiomatic that the Torah of Truth cannot teach something that violates rational truth.

Rambam argued that reason was the best antidote to falling into a superstitious mindset. With all the risks of allowing people to use their reason, he thought it was essential to put religion on a philosophically sound basis. It was religiously and intellectually wrong to foster a fundamentalist, obscurantist, literalist view of religion that ascribed irrational teachings to the Bible and our Sages. If it is dangerous to rely on reason, it is even more dangerous to violate reason.

Conclusion:

There are strong tendencies in our day (evident in other religions, as well as Judaism) that foster authoritarianism, obscurantism, and fundamentalism. These tendencies promote uncritical thinking, surrender of autonomy, and reliance on holy "authorities". These are ingredients that make for a superstitious worldview rather than a truly religious worldview.

Rambam's insistence on our use of reason is of vital importance to all who would like to reclaim a philosophically-sound Judaism. Rambam teaches us to separate between true religion and superstition; between direct confrontation with God and spurious use of magical charms and incantations; between proper teachers of Torah and counterfeit "sages" who play on human weakness and ignorance.

It is a central challenge of modern Orthodoxy to foster an intellectually meaningful Judaism; to combat tendencies toward superstitious belief and action; to encourage individual responsibility and direct relationship with God. It is time to reclaim the lofty vision of Rambam of a Torah Judaism rooted in reason, that leads to a life of "lovingkindness, righteousness and judgment" (Guide 3:54).

[1] A Maimonides Reader, ed. Isidore Twersky (Springfield: Behrman House, 1972), p.454. For a fine discussion of Rambam's views on superstition, see Marc B. Shapiro, "Maimonidean Halakhah and Superstition", in his book Studies in Maimonides and his Interpreters, University of Scranton Press, Scranton and London, 2008, pp.95-150.

[2] Ibid., pp. 464-5.

[3] Ibid., p. 472.

            Judaism includes the basic tenets of belief in one God, divine revelation of the Torah including an Oral Law, divine providence, reward-punishment, and a messianic redemption. Although there have been debates over the precise definitions and boundaries of Jewish belief, these core beliefs have been universally accepted as part of our tradition.[1]

            The question for believing Jews today is, how should we relate to the overwhelming majority of contemporary Jews, who likely do not fully believe in classical Jewish beliefs? Two medieval models shed light on this question.

Rambam: Dogmatic Approach

            Rambam insists that proper belief is essential. Whether one intentionally rejects Jewish beliefs, or is simply mistaken or uninformed, non-belief leads to one’s exclusion from the Jewish community and from the World to Come:

When a person affirms all these Principles, and clarifies his faith in them, he becomes part of the Jewish People. It is a mitzvah to love him, have mercy on him, and show him all the love and brotherhood that God has instructed us to show our fellow Jews. Even if he has transgressed out of desire and the overpowering influence of his base nature, he will be punished accordingly but he will have a share in the World to Come. But one who denies any of these Principles has excluded himself from the Jewish People and denied the essence [of Judaism]. He is called a heretic, an epikoros, and “one who has cut off the seedlings.” It is a mitzvah to hate and destroy such a person, as it says (Psalms 139:21), “Those who hate You, God, I shall hate.” (Rambam, Introduction to Perek Helek)

Scholars of Rambam generally explain that Rambam did not think of afterlife as a reward. Rather, it is a natural consequence of one’s religious-intellectual development. Only one prepared for afterlife may gain acceptance. Although Rambam did not invent Jewish beliefs, he did innovate this position of Judaism being primarily a community of believers in a set of dogmas.[2]

Professor Menachem Kellner explains that prior to Rambam, Jewish faith was defined by an experiential relationship with God and the Torah. There were of course underlying beliefs in God, the revelation of the Torah, the Oral Law, God’s personal involvement and providence, and the Messiah; but these beliefs were not commanded, nor were they too precisely defined. Kellner suggests that Rambam’s innovative view arose from the surrounding Muslim culture. During that period, Muslims asked, (a) who is a Muslim and who is an unbeliever? (b) Who will achieve salvation and who is damned? To be a Muslim in good standing and achieve salvation requires one to have proper beliefs, regardless of one’s actions. Therefore, the need to define proper belief was a central concern in Rambam’s world.[3] Judaism also needed to be distinguished from Islam since both are monotheistic faiths, and Jews faced intense pressure to convert to Islam in order to attain better social status.[4]

Rambam’s attempt to define the tenets of Jewish faith follows in the footsteps of the Mishnah in Sanhedrin 90a, which is the only place in the Talmud where beliefs are presented in dogmatic form:

All Israel have a portion in the World to Come, for it is written, “Your people are all righteous; they shall inherit the land forever, the branch of My planting, the work of My hands, that I be glorified.” But the following have no portion therein: He who maintains that resurrection is not a biblical doctrine, the Torah was not divinely revealed, and an epikoros…

Clearly, this Mishnah is not a roster of all Jewish belief, but rather focuses on the issues that fractured the Jewish community during that period. The Sages stressed these particular tenets of faith in order to distinguish the faithful rabbinic community from Sadducees and other sectarian groups.[5]

Although these efforts by the Mishnah are significant in terms of expressing proper Jewish belief, Rambam goes much further than the Mishnah by defining Jews as a communion of true believers. This innovative position opened the door to heretical exclusions even when one was not trying to exclude himself or herself from the Jewish community.[6]

Ra’avad-Duran-Albo: Mistaken, Not Heretics

            Rambam (Laws of Repentance 3:7) rules that there are several categories of heretics. One of those is the person who believes that God has a body. Yet, Ra’avad (Rabbi Abraham b. David, 1125–1198) disagrees, since even some great rabbis mistakenly concluded that God does have a body:[7]

Why did [Rambam] call such a person a heretic? Several greater and better rabbis than he thought [that God does have a body and likeness] based on what they see in biblical verses and even more so from rabbinic teachings that can confuse the thoughts.

Ra’avad agrees with Rambam that God does not have physical attributes. However, he insists that it is incorrect to label as heretics those who mistakenly believe otherwise. They are believing Jews who made an honest error based on an overly literal reading of Tanakh and Midrash.

            Following Ra’avad’s approach, Rabbi Shimon b. Tzemah Duran and Rabbi Yosef Albo maintained that one should be considered a heretic only if one willfully denies a principle of faith or willfully affirms a principle denied by the Torah.[8] Duran even cites statements by Rambam that Duran considers to be beyond the pale of Jewish belief. He concludes that Rambam is not a heretic for holding these views, but reached mistaken views out of purity of motive. It should be stressed that Duran agrees that there are correct beliefs, and rabbis should correct the errors of those Jews who have mistaken beliefs. However, this does not mean excluding them from the community as heretics, but rather embracing and teaching them.

In his extensive survey of medieval thinkers, Professor Menachem Kellner concludes that the decisive majority support this latter view, rather than the exclusionary dogmatic position of Rambam.[9]

Halakhah defines Jewishness by birth and nationhood, and not by belief. We ideally want all Jews to learn, observe, and believe in the Torah and tradition. However, we should not exclude as heretics those who fall short unless they intentionally wish to exclude themselves from the community.[10] Jews who make honest mistakes or who are ignorant of proper Jewish belief are not to be labeled as heretics. Rather, we should do what we can to educate them.

It is important to note that Rambam himself differentiated between the original Karaites, who were true heretics who broke from the Jewish community, and their followers and descendants who did not know better because they grew up as Karaites (Laws of Rebellious Ones 3:3). After stating that one who denies the Oral Law is a heretic (Laws of Rebellious Ones 3:1–2), Rambam exonerates the Karaites of his day for having been raised with erroneous beliefs. Menachem Kellner explains that in Rambam’s system of thought, there was no latitude for someone who makes an innocent error regarding Rambam’s first five principles of faith that pertain to the essence of God. In that arena, if a Jew believes that God has a body, that person is a heretic. However, the Karaite error is within Rambam’s eighth principle, as they deny the revelation of an Oral Law revealed to Moses along with the Written Torah. In this respect, those Karaites who actively denied this principle of faith are heretics, but later generations who grew up with miseducation should be deemed as ignorant against their will, rather than as heretics.[11]

Conclusion

            Moving this discussion to a contemporary communal level, Menachem Kellner contends that Orthodox society must properly frame the question in terms of its relationship with non-Orthodox society. If we ask how much we should tolerate heresy, we already have lost the battle. Pluralism, in the sense of saying that non-Orthodox and non-halakhic positions are legitimate within Torah and halakhah, is an impossible position. Declaring that most non-Orthodox Jews are in the category of “tinok she-nishbah”—one who was kidnapped and raised among heathens and therefore no longer accountable for one’s religious behavior—may promote greater tolerance, but is insulting.

            Kellner concludes that one should ask instead: What can we do to enhance the future of the Jewish people? A healthy family can survive disputes. We should not ignore the disputes; but areas of agreement, our shared past, and a shared concern for our future as a people, should bring us together despite fundamental differences in belief and observance.[12]

            We may define the question differently. If we view ourselves as a community of believers inside a box, and everyone else as outside that box, then Rambam gives us an objective standard of who is in our group and who is excluded. If, however, we define ourselves more positively as believing Jews who embrace God, Torah, and all Jews, then we would espouse the view of Ra’avad-Duran-Albo, who maintain proper belief while considering those who reject or do not know these beliefs as wrong or ignorant rather than as heretics.

The halakhic definition of a Jew is one who has Jewish mother or who is a halakhic convert. Not every Jew lives a full Jewish life, but there is a continuum with more and less committed Jews, rather than insiders and outsiders. The approach espoused by Ra’avad-Duran-Albo, which appears closer to the original concept of Jewish belief, also represents a more productive means of addressing today’s fragmented society from within tradition. We stand for an eternal set of beliefs and practices, and we embrace and teach all Jews as we build our community together.[13]

No less significantly, it is critical for believing Jews to understand that there are many legitimate paths within Jewish tradition. Many rifts are created when rabbis and others insist that their path is the only true path, while others are considered wrong or not even acknowledged. One of the great nineteenth-century rabbis, Rabbi Naftali Tzvi Yehudah Berlin (Netziv), expressed his fear based on the realities of his time that faithful Jews may brand other faithful Jews as heretics for following other legitimate paths within tradition:

It is not difficult to imagine reaching this situation in our time, Heaven forbid, that if one of the faithful thinks that a certain person does not follow his way in the service of God, then he will judge him as a heretic…the people of God will be destroyed, Heaven forfend. (Meshiv Davar, I:44)

The Sephardic-Inclusive Communal Model

One of the beacons of light emanating from the Sephardic world in the modern age is its inclusive communal model. Rather than creating separate synagogues for the devoutly Orthodox, or splintering into movements or denominations that fracture the Jewish community, this model calls for synagogues to be faithful to Jewish tradition and to welcome Jews from the entire spectrum of religious observance.

In the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, Jews of Germany, America, and several other major communities splintered into denominations and movements. They led us to today’s painful fragmentation with no easy resolutions presenting themselves going forward. The Sephardic inclusive communal model provides a desperately needed alternative to the realities of today.[14]

So why did so much of the Jewish world miss this point? In addition to the historical circumstances, there is a good conceptual answer to that question, explored by Rabbi Jonathan Sacks in his book, Community of Faith.[15] Rabbi Sacks observes that there is a great challenge in the inclusive model: It is the least consistent, and we greatly value consistency. Some people asked: Why belong to a traditional synagogue that preaches ideals so different from my lifestyle? Why not build synagogue communities that espouse messages more consistent with my values?

Others criticized the institutions and their rabbis. How can an Orthodox synagogue be a welcoming home to people who do not live by Orthodox standards? We should build separate synagogues and schools exclusively for those who are entirely faithful to tradition. This desire for greater consistency contributed to the fracturing of the Jewish community.

These are genuine challenges to the inclusive communal model. Our response to these challenges is the positive agenda of a unified faith community. Those who join it do not necessarily adhere to all of the mitzvot or Jewish beliefs in the traditional sense. However, they want to belong to a congregation that in its public and collective expressions remains loyal to the principles by which Jews have always lived. As a result of this model, Jews who personally do not observe many mitzvot can develop a profound respect for their synagogue and community, because they correctly understand that it faithfully represents Jewish tradition.

Aside from the commitment their own members, rabbis and communal leadership also need to be open to all Jews, and work to create a welcoming environment where that attitude is fostered throughout the community. Our challenge is to the build an ideal communal setting, faithful to tradition, and welcoming to all Jews. We need to set the standard by which all participants are encouraged to bridge the gaps between their lives and the ideals of the Torah.

This vision may be easier said than done in today’s climate, but it is critical to advance it as a productive alternative to the unfortunate reality we currently experience.

Judaism is both a peoplehood and a religious covenant. Ideally, all Jews should be committed to both dimensions of the Torah. In an age when many Jews have lost or diminished their religious connection, however, our commitment to peoplehood must prevail to include Jews who are not fully committed to the Torah or Jewish belief. The winners will be the Torah and the Jewish people.

How the Torah Broke with Ancient Political Thought[1]

by Joshua Berman

For some, the proposition that the Torah needs to be understood in its ancient context seems to diminish from the sacredness and divinity of the text. However, it is precisely through appreciating the Torah in its ancient context that we can arrive at a set of illuminating insights into how the Torah stands out from that context and reveals its divinity, particularly in its approach to political thought.

In ways that were astonishingly new and counterintuitive, and in ways that served the purposes of no known interest group, the political philosophy of the Torah rose like a phoenix out of the intellectual landscape of the ancient Near East. Throughout the ancient world the truth was self-evident: All men were not created equal. It is in the five books of the Torah that we find the birthplace of egalitarian thought. When seen against the backdrop of ancient norms, the social blueprint espoused by the Torah represents a series of quantum leaps in a sophisticated and interconnected matrix of theology, politics, and economics.

Equality: A Brief History

To appreciate the claim that the Torah represents the dawn of egalitarian thought, let us set the idea in historical perspective. It is only in the European revolutions of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries that we find the rejection of the privileges of rank and nobility that resulted in the delegitimation of entrenched caste, feudal, and slave systems. Greece and Rome had known their respective reformers, yet nowhere in the classical world do we find a struggle to do away with class distinctions. Nor do we find this articulated as a desideratum by any of the ancient authors in their ideal systems. “From the hour of their birth,” wrote Aristotle, “some are marked out for subjection, others for rule.”[2] It was assumed that some would be rich and that many, many more would be poor—not simply because that was the way things were, but because that was the way things were actually supposed to be. Justice, for Aristotle, meant that equals would be treated as equals and unequals as unequals. The Greeks and Romans possessed an overwhelming belief in the harmony of various classes.

The medieval mindset, too, believed that an ordered society was one in which each socioeconomic class performed its tasks for the common good. Social stratification was likewise endemic to the empires and lands of the ancient Near East. Nowhere in the region is there articulated the ideal of a society without class divisions founded on the control of economic, military, and political power. It is not merely that the notion of social mobility was unknown to the ancient world; it would have been unthinkable. These cultures believed that the only way that a society could function was if everyone knew his or her station in life. The modern ideas of free choice and equal opportunity would have struck them as surefire recipes for anarchy and chaos. It is in the books of the Torah that we find the world’s first blueprint for a social and religious order that seeks to lessen stratification and hierarchy and to place an unprecedented emphasis on the well-being and status of the common person.

Religion and Class in the Ancient World

The Torah’s revolution of political thought begins with its theology. The attempt to treat things political as distinct from things religious is a thoroughly modern notion; in not a single culture in the ancient Near East is there a word for “religion” as distinct from “state.” To appreciate the ancient mindset and the conceptual default settings that it supplied, imagine that we are archaeologists digging up an ancient culture called “America.” Deciphering its religious texts, we discover that the paramount god of the pantheon bore the title “Commander in Chief,” resided in a heavenly palace called “White House,” and would traverse the heavens in his vehicle, “Chariot One.” We further discover that Commander in Chief had a consort known as “First Lady”—herself a goddess of apparently meager powers, yet assumed by some to be a barometer of desirable values and fashionable dress. In the heavens was another palace, this one domed and populated by 535 lesser, regional deities, who routinely schemed and coalesced into partisan groupings, and who were known, on occasion, to have been able to depose the Commander in Chief.

Put differently, what we would discover is that the institutional order “down below” manifests the divine order of the cosmos “up above.” This phenomenon, wherein the political structure of the heavens mirrored that of the earthly realm, was widespread in the ancient world, and it is easy to see why. Political regimes are, by definition, artificial, constructed, and therefore tenuous. Always implicit is the question: Why should he reign? The imposed institutional order can receive immeasurable legitimation, however, if the masses underfoot believe that it is rooted in ultimate reality and unchanging truth, that the significance of the political order is located in a cosmic and sacred frame of reference. Ancient religion is the self-interested distortion that masks the human construction and exercise of power.

For example, we find that Enlil, the chief god of the Mesopotamian pantheon, utterly resembles his earthly counterpart, the king. Enlil, like his earthly counterpart, rules by delegating responsibilities to lesser dignitaries and functionaries. Like his earthly counterpart, he presides over a large assembly. He resides in a palace with his wives, children, and extended “house.” Generally speaking, the gods struggled to achieve a carefree existence and enjoyed large banquets in their honor. Like kings, gods needed a palace, or what we would call a temple, where they, too, could reside in splendor in separation from the masses, with subjects caring for them in a host of earthly matters.

If a god wanted something—say a temple repaired, or the borders expanded—he communicated through various agents with the king, and the king was his focus. The gods never spoke to the masses, nor imparted instruction to them. Within ancient cosmologies, the masses served a single purpose: to toil and offer tribute. They were servants, at the lowest rung of the metaphysical hierarchy. The gods were interested in the masses to the extent that a baron or feudal lord would have interest in ensuring the well-being of the serfs that run the estate and supply its needs. Servants, no doubt, play a vital role in any monarchical order, but it is an instrumental role. From an existential perspective, it is a decidedly diminished and undignified role.

Religion and Class in the Torah

By contrast, the Torah’s central accounts—the Exodus and the Revelation at Sinai—preempt claims of election and immanent hierarchy within the Israelite nation. The Exodus story effectively meant that no member of the children of Israel could lay claim to elevated status. All emanate from the Exodus—a common, seminal, liberating, but most importantly equalizing event. Although we normally think of the Revelation at Sinai in religious terms, its political implications are no less dramatic, and constitute the bedrock of the Torah’s egalitarian theology. Elsewhere, the gods communicated only to the kings, and had no interest in the masses. But at Sinai, God spoke only to the masses, without delineating any role whatever for kings and their attendant hierarchies. The ancients had no problem believing that the gods could split the seas, or descend on a mountaintop in a storm of fire. Nevertheless, the stories of the Exodus and Sinai necessitated an enormous stretch of the imagination, because they required listeners to believe in political events that were without precedent and utterly improbable, even in mythological terms. Slaves had never been known to overthrow their masters. Gods had never been known to speak to an entire people.

The pact or covenant between God and Israel displays many common elements with what are known in biblical studies as ancient Near Eastern vassal treaties, which were formed between a great king and a weaker one. In these treaties, we typically find that the more powerful king acts on behalf of a weaker, neighboring king; sensing an opportunity to foster a loyal ally, he may send food during a famine, or soldiers to break a siege. In return, the lesser king demonstrates his appreciation to the powerful one by agreeing to a series of steps that express his gratitude and fealty. In these treaties the vassal king retains his autonomy and is treated like royalty when he visits the palace of the powerful king. Having been saved from Egypt by God, the children of Israel sign on at Sinai to a vassal treaty as sign of fealty, becoming junior partners to the sovereign king, God. The theological breakthrough of the Torah was the transformation of the metaphysical status of the masses, of the common person, to a new height, and the vitiation of nobles, royalty, and the like. The common man, in short, received an upgrade from king’s servant to servant king.

Yet no less significant is the Torah’s call that these stories should be promulgated among the people as their history. The point requires a note of context for us as moderns. Although there are over one million inscriptions in our possession from the ancient Near East, there is nowhere evidence of a national narrative that a people tells itself about its collective, national life, of moments of achievement or of despair, recorded for posterity. Stories abound in the ancient Near East—but they revolve around the exploits of individual gods, kings, and nobles. The most important audience of these materials was the gods themselves—as witnessed by the fact that these texts were often discovered in temple libraries, buried, or in other inaccessible locations. Myths were recited to remind the gods of their responsibilities. Details of a king’s achievements on the battlefield were to constitute a report to a deity about the king’s activities on his or her behalf; they were not composed for the masses. The Kadesh Inscriptions of Rameses II were the exception that proves the rule: Those inscriptions were not only textual, but pictorial; and they were not only carved on stone, but copied and disseminated via papyri. However, most inscriptions of royal activity in ancient times were limited to monumental structures in writing that was inaccessible to the common person.

We may take a page from the history of technology of communication to understand the implication of the Torah’s call to promulgate the accounts of Israel’s early history. The distribution of printed texts in the early modern period is said to have occasioned the birth of modern citizenship within the nation-state. The vernacular languages that were now fashioned and standardized led to the creation of newspapers and novels designed for a mass readership comprised of people who were in disparate locales but could now envision themselves as a public sharing a common heritage, destiny, and range of interests—religious, social, and political. People could now imagine themselves as a political collective, and thus was born the political “we.”

It is in the Torah that we see for the first time the realization that the identity of a people may be formed around an awareness of its past. Indeed, the Hebrew Bible is the first work of literature before the Hellenistic period that may be termed a national history. Moreover, the Torah displays an attitude toward the dissemination of texts among the populace that is in sharp contrast to the relationship between texts and society that we find elsewhere in the ancient Near East. It is a contrast, further, that is a reflection of the egalitarian agenda that the Torah seeks to pursue, over against the entrenchment of class distinctions. In an age and place such as our own, where literacy is nearly ubiquitous, access to texts of many kinds and the knowledge they bear is unfettered and, in theory, available to all. But in the ancient world physical access to written texts and the skills necessary to read them were everywhere highly restricted. Indeed, in the cultures of the ancient Near East as well as of ancient Greece, the production and use of texts was inextricably bound up with the formation of class distinctions: Those who possessed the capacity to read and write were members of a trained scribal class who worked in the service of the ruling order.

Writing in the ancient Near East was originally a component of bureaucratic activity. Systems of writing were essential for the administration of large states. Indeed, the elite in these cultures had a vested interest in the status quo, which prevented others from gaining control of an important means of communication. Far from being interested in its simplification, scribes often chose to proliferate signs and values. The texts produced in Mesopotamia were composed exclusively by scribes and exclusively for scribal use—administrative or cultic—or for the training of yet other scribes.

The Cambridge anthropologist Jack Goody notes that a culture’s willingness to disseminate its religious literature inevitably reflects an emphasis on the individual within that culture.[3] The comment sheds light on the Torah’s agenda to establish an ennobled egalitarian citizenry, as we are witness to an impetus within the biblical vision to share the divine word with the people of Israel. Moses reads the divine word to the people at Sinai (Ex. 24:1–8). Periodically, the people are to gather at the Temple and hear public readings of the Torah (Deut. 31:10–13). It is telling that the Tanakh never depicts kohanim or scribes as jealous or protective of their writing skills, as is found in neighboring cultures.

In sum, we have seen something remarkable about the most basic, familiar aspects of the Torah. The idea of covenant; the story of the Exodus; the fact that the Torah is a written, publicized text—these are as significant politically as they are religiously. They each point to the equal and high standing of the common person in Israel.

The Torah’s Radical Conception of Political Office

Turning from theology, we see that the Torah radically revamped regnant notions of political office and the exercise of power. What is most striking about the Torah’s statements on political office are two radical ideas about how these offices are to be governed. First, we are witness here to the transition from the law of rule to the rule of law. Elsewhere in the ancient world, the kings composed and promulgated law, but were above it, not subject to it. Before the thinkers of Athens came along, the Torah arrived at the notion of equality before the law. All public institutions in the Torah—the judiciary, the priesthood, the monarchy, the institution of prophecy—are subordinated to the law. Moreover, the law is a public text whose dictates are meant to be widely known, thus making abuse of power more obvious and safeguarding the common citizenry.

Second, we may see that the most important body of authority in the polity envisioned by the Torah is none other than the people themselves. The Torah addresses the fraternal and egalitarian citizenry in the second person, “you,” and charges them with appointing a king—if they desire one—and appointing judges. Put differently, the Torah specifies no nominating body for appointing leaders or representatives. Rather, the collective “you”—the common citizenry—bears ultimate responsibility to choose a king and to appoint judges. From American history we know how unthinkable it was only a few generations ago for many to contemplate the notion that persons of color or women should play a role in choosing who rules. For the royal monarchies of the ancient Near East, the notion that the masses—who elsewhere were serfs and servants—would hold any sway over those that ruled them was equally unfathomable.

If the people did elect to have a king, the Torah was determined that he should be but a shadow of what a king was elsewhere. Elsewhere kings played central roles in the cult. In the Torah he plays none. Elsewhere, the king aims to build a strong army. The Torah calls for him to have a limited treasury and to forgo a cavalry (Deut. 17:16–17), limitations that would leave him commanding only a small army. Moreover, were a royal chariot force to serve as the backbone of the nation’s defense, it would inevitably emerge as an elite military class. The great jurist of Athens, Solon, extended preferred status to the members of the cavalry over other citizens. But what confers status in the Torah is citizenship in the covenantal community, and this is shared by all. Elsewhere, the king would consolidate his power through a network of political marriages. The Torah forbids the king from taking a large number of wives (Deut. 17:17).

Finally, we see in the Torah a page in the history of constitutional thought, one that would not be written again until the American founding. It pertains to a highly advanced notion of the separation of powers. Classical Greek political thought had already understood that in the absence of a strong center in the figure of a monarch or a tyrant, factionalism threatened the stability of the polity. It was inevitable that the population would contain rich and poor, nobles and commoners. The absence of homogeneity led classical theorists to balance power by ensuring that each faction within society would receive a share of the rule. Yet, the balance of power was not a balance of institutions of government, as we are accustomed to today. Rather, the balance was achieved by allowing each of the socioeconomic factions a functioning role within each seat of government. Thus, in Roman jurist Polybius’ conception, the legislative branch of government in the republic was to consist of two bodies—the senate for the nobles and the assembly for the commoners—with each institution permanently enshrined in law.

The notion that the effective division of power was predicated upon its distribution across preexisting societal seats of power was one that would hold sway throughout most of the history of republican thought, from Roman theorists through early modern thinkers. It is central even to the thinking of Montesquieu, the father of modern constitutional theory, who is credited with proposing the separation of powers into three branches—executive, legislative, and judiciary—in his 1748 work, The Spirit of the Laws. Looking at the English model of his day, Montesquieu held that the legislative power should consist of a body of hereditary nobles and of a body of commoners. He saw hereditary nobility not as a necessary evil, nor even as an immutable fact of life, but rather as a boon to effective government. The nobility, with its inherent wealth and power, would serve as a moderating force within government against the abuses of the monarch. Moreover, the fact that the nobility’s strength was derived from its own resources would endow its members with a sense of independence. This, together with developed education and time for reflection, would enable the nobles to contribute to effective government in a way that members of the lower classes could not. Montesquieu could not conceive of a classless society and a regime in which the division of powers was purely institutional and instrumental, where the eligibility to hold office was independent of class.

Here the Torah stands distinct. For the first time in history we see the articulation of a division of at least some powers along lines of institution and instrument rather than of class and kinship, where office legitimizes preexisting societal seats of power. Anyone who is “among your brethren” (Deut. 17:15) is eligible to be appointed king. Moreover, the king is appointed by the collective “you” that we mentioned before. How that selection occurs, apparently, is an issue that the Torah deliberately left open so as to imply that there is no body that a priori has a greater divine imprimatur than any other. In this sense, the Torah’s notion of offices that are entirely institutional and instrumental is an idea that would again appear only with the American Founding Fathers.

The same is true with regard to the judiciary, as outlined in the book of Deuteronomy. Anyone may be appointed judge, and no less importantly, anyone, in theory, is eligible to participate in the process of appointing judges (Deut. 16:17). One could have thought of any number of bodies that could have been charged with appointing judges: the king, the prophets, the kohanim, or other judges. But the Torah insists: “Judges and officers you shall appoint for yourself” (16:18). The appointment of judges is mandated with the sole purpose of achieving the execution of justice, rather than the assignment of office to perpetuate the standing of a noble class. As Montesquieu noted in the eighteenth century, it is critical that the people appoint judges, so that they have faith in the justice that is meted out. The only source prior to Montesquieu to arrive at this insight was the Torah.

God the Economist

The Torah understood that in order to create an egalitarian order, it would also need to re-envision the economic structure of society, for without equity, there is no equality. What the Torah proposes is the Western tradition’s first prescription for an economic order that seeks to minimize the distinctions of class based on wealth, and instead to ensure the economic benefit of the common citizen.

A ubiquitous feature of the socioeconomic landscape of the ancient Near East was the threat faced by the common person of falling into irreversible insolvency. Social stratification would emerge as the common people would have to sell off their farm animals, their land, and even their own freedom to repay debts. Famine, drought, or war could lead to precisely the kind of economic landscape we witness in the account of Egypt under Joseph, in Genesis 47. The Torah sought to remedy this through radical legislation on several fronts. Elsewhere, the norm was that land was owned by the palace and by the temple. The Torah, in contrast, knows of no land holding for either king or cult. Instead, nearly the entire land is given to the people themselves, in an association of free farmers and herdsmen, subsumed within a single social class. The idea that wide tracts of available land should be divided among the commoners was unprecedented. Perhaps the most famous example of such an initiative from modern times is the American Homestead Act of 1862. With the Great Plains open to mass settlement, nearly any person 21 years of age or older could acquire, at virtually no cost, a tract of 160 acres that would become his after five years of residence and farming. For millions of new arrivals and other landless Americans, the Homestead Act was an opportunity to acquire assets and to bring equality of economic standing in line with equality before the law.

The Torah also took specific aim at the institution of taxation. Elsewhere, taxes to the state and to the cult were deeply integrated. In the Torah, no taxes are specified for the state. Of course, no regime would be able to function without taxing its populace—but the Torah apparently envisioned that taxes would be levied without sacral sanction, as was so prevalent elsewhere. God would not be invoked as the tax collector. Moreover, far less surplus is demanded from the people of Israel for the Temple than was customary in the imperial cults of the ancient Near East.

Whereas elsewhere cultic personnel controlled vast tracts of land, the Torah balances the status that these groups maintain in the cult by denying them arable lands of their own. They are dependent upon the people they represent for their subsistence, and in some passages are even grouped together with other categories of the underprivileged. The Torah further legislates that one type of tax—the ma’aser ani—should not be paid to the Temple at all, but rather distributed to the needy—the first known program of taxation legislated for a social purpose (Deut. 14:28–29).

What is most remarkable about the Torah’s economic reforms is the manner in which the new economy is incorporated into a new measure of time. Elsewhere in the ancient Near East, the calendar was based upon readily perceptible astronomical rhythms: The counting of days stems from observing the rising and setting of the sun; of months, from observations of the waxing and waning of the moon; of years, from observing the seasons and position of the sun. The ancient Near East, however, knows no calendar that incorporates the notion of a week. The week is the invention of the Torah, and is rooted, of course, in the Torah’s account of Creation, in which God worked for six days and rested on the seventh. The result is that throughout the Torah the Shabbat principle determines the schedule of the laws of social welfare, and serves as a great equalizing force between haves and have-nots. Shabbat day is a day of rest for all. In the seventh year—the Sabbatical year—the field lies fallow and is available for all to enjoy, and debt release is enacted. Time itself is marshaled in the establishment of the egalitarian agenda.

A Revolutionary Document

What power interest could have been served by this program? We have already seen that it was a program that favored neither the king, nor the rich, nor the priesthood. Prophets are hardly mentioned in the Torah, and the criteria set out for validating an individual as a prophet are exacting in the extreme. Sages or philosophers are nowhere mentioned at all. No immediate candidate jumps out of the pages of the Torah as the interested party in the formulation of this new egalitarian order.

Throughout the ancient world, the truth was self-evident: All men were not created equal. They saw the world they had created and, behold, it was good. It was good, they deemed, because it was ordered around a rigid hierarchy, where everyone knew his station in life, each according to his class. For the first time in history, the Torah presented a vision to the masses in which the gods were something other than their own selves writ large, a vision with a radically different understanding of God and humanity. It introduced new understandings of the law, of political office, of military power, of taxation, of social welfare. It conceived in radically new ways the importance of national narrative, of technologies of communication, and of a culture’s calibration of time. What we find in the Torah is a platform for social order marked with the imprint of divinity. Within the annals of political thought it is difficult to think of another document that revolutionized so much in such anonymity, and with so little precedent to inspire it.

Of course, these notions of equality are but early precursors of our more developed notions of equality today. Yet, the Torah instructs us with the implicit understanding that society changes, and with it, the form in which we fulfill God’s will. We can marvel at how utterly removed the Torah’s political thought was from the prevailing spirit about such things in ancient times. And, at the same time, we can appreciate that without believing that we are limited to the notion of equality as it had been expressed in those ancient times. Rather, the Torah serves as an inspiration for the further elaboration of those ideas as times change and events warrant so doing.

A commercial house has collapsed; a savings fund has sunk; a me­chanics' bank has burst, a life insurance company has become in­solvent.... Men noted for their self possession appear bewildered. You asked for the reason of so painful a change, and the invariable answer was: "The stringency of the money market, brought about by unforeseen failures among us and abroad. That is enough to upset people's minds."

But for the Victorian language, this might have been written in 2008. In fact, it was declaimed in the Fall of 1893, and is the beginning of a sermon by Sabato Morais, minister of the Por­tuguese Jewish congregation Mikveh Israel in the city of Philadelphia. Morais is mainly remembered today as the Founder and first President of the Jewish Theological Seminary of America, but his place in American life has been somewhat neglected. The reason for this may be the fact that he cannot quite fit the role of hero of any of the major branches of American Jewish life today, Orthodox, Conservative, or Reform. Orthodox as he was in practice, he does not fulfill the role model of the talmudic sage, and has about him a somewhat assimilated air at which the strictly Orthodox might well look askance. For the Conservative, he is insufficiently innovative, too unwilling to take religious risks. And of Reform he was a lifelong opponent. Max Nussenbaum justly called him a “champion of Orthodox Judaism” in his 1964 doctoral dissertation at Yeshiva University.

Morais was born in Leghorn, Italy in 1823 to a family of Sephardic Port­uguese-Jewish descent, the third of nine children and the oldest son. His native language was Italian, and he acquired also a good knowledge of Spanish and French early in life; a great many of the two thousand extant letters addressed to him are in Italian. He was a favorite pupil of Abraham Baruch Piperno, one of the Jewish sages of Leghorn, and at the age of twenty-two was an applicant for the post of Hazzan, or cantor to the Sephardic congregation of London. The Hazzan among the Portuguese Jews was not required to have the quasi-operatic voice favored by the Ashkenazic German and Polish Jews. A sweet voice sufficed, but he was expected to have an intimate knowledge of the complex Jewish liturgy of which every word was individually chanted, and in particular to learn the tradition of his congregation so that he did not deviate from it in the slightest degree. He also had to have a high degree of expertise in the reading of the sacred scrolls. Such memorization normally took years of devoted effort, and few individuals had the skill and patience demanded. The young Morais was unsuccessful, since his lack of English told against him, but he made a great impression even so. The following is an excerpt from a letter sent by the authorities of the English congregation under date of November 18, 1845 to his Italian mentors, couched in the typical Victorian epistolary style:

The departure of Mr. S. Morais demands from us our best acknowl­edgment to you for having recommended to our notice so worthy, deserving an individual, for although he has not been the suc­cessful candidate for the office to which he aspired Justice claims of us that we should bear testimony to the very great satisfaction he af­forded the congregation on the occasion of his public trial, and that he has from his general conduct and unassuming manners whilst here entitled himself not only to the regard of those who were interested in his favor but of all without exception.... he would do credit to any appointment which could be conferred upon him.

The London community did not forget him. A year later, a position opened for a teacher in their orphan school and they invited the young Italian to fill the post. He did so. In London he got to know and admire the Italian patriot Giuseppe Mazzini, and when the latter wished to travel to Europe in 1847, Morais lent him his passport so that Mazzini might avoid detection by the continental police. Of course, there were no photographs in those days. He soon developed a full command of the English language, and was prepared when a call came from the Philadelphia congregation in 1850. The following year, Morais went to Philadelphia, where he served congregation Mikveh Israel for forty-seven years until his death in 1898. He became a much loved figure, and was in the habit of instructing young people without charge in Hebrew language and literature, as he had been instructed himself. Three of his pupils, Solomon Solis-Cohen, Cyrus Sulzberger and Cyrus Adler became prominent community leaders. All wrote to him and of him with warm affection.

Adler, who was a founder of the Jewish Publication Society, the American Jewish Historical Society, and the American Jewish Committee, and who served simultaneously as President of the Jewish Theological Seminary in New York and Dropsie College in Philadelphia, wrote to him in 1887:

The more the boys [of JTS] know you, the better for them ... I will receive a Ph.D. degree next Tuesday, an end impossible but for the help which you have given me from boyhood and which I never think of but with gratitude.

Solis-Cohen addressed him: "Dear friend and teacher" and signs: "affection­ately your pupil." A San Francisco admirer sent his "respect and affection" to "my earliest friend in this country."

In everything he writes and does, Morais comes across as a warm, loving, emi­nently humane individual with self respect, yet remarkably free of egotism for a man in public life who was the recipient of much honor, including an honorary degree from the University of Pennsylvania. At no time does he bask in his Sephardic ancestry, as some of his brethren were wont to do, nor does he lay stress on Sephardic tradition in his addresses. Morais looked upon him­self as a Jew without qualifiers, one who revered and loved the Jewish tradition and desired greatly to perpetuate it.

Clearly he came from a close, loving family, and its impress stayed with him all his life. Among a vast family correspondence, an extant letter from his father in Italian, written shortly before his death reads: "If I do not write to you it is not of my volition, but I suffer from irregularity of the pulse ... I send you all my paternal benediction."

Morais’ considerateness is attested to by his finding time to send some stamps for the collection of a little great-niece, who responds with a charming letter in French. All sorts of unfortunates direct their appeals to him: a tu­bercular youth in the state penitentiary, a Corfiot woman seeking the vanished son of a friend, an Italian transient in the Pennsylvania hospital suffering from "a small mental aberration." Morais threw nothing away. Referring to this epistolary flood he writes in 1894:

To acknowledge numerous letters is also a task not infrequently irksome. Still, in order not to appear rude, I have imposed upon myself the obligation of invariably answering them all, either verbally or in writing.

Morais was conscious of walking a tightrope vis-a-vis the public.

If he [the minister] is modest and reserved, he is styled unsociable; if he is accessible and easy, he is charged with too great a familiarity. If he is sincere and open, he is taxed with imprudence. If he denounces public transgressions he is too austere; if he deems it expedient to barely hint at them he is pusillanimous ... however elevated may be the character of the minister of religion, it is shapen in a human mould.

On a number of his addresses he writes self-deprecatory notes, for example, "Like all my early lectures it is faulty in diction and ideas." On another address he writes in Hebrew "I regret having composed it." Not infrequently he recycles old material; thus one is marked "altered, abridged, and corrected from an old lec­ture delivered twenty years before." Morais was also aware that his lectures, eloquent though they were, did not give universal satisfaction.

During nine months of the year, I give weekly instruction from this pulpit ... When the summer season begins, I generally cease speak­ing in the vernacular, and confine myself to the reading of the estab­lished ritual. That some would prefer my following the last named course at all times, I have reason to believe.

Despite Morais' polish and discretion, not too many years passed before he got into hot water in Philadelphia. In 1858 the Jewish world was shocked by the news that an Italian Jewish child, surreptitiously baptized by his nurse, had been kidnapped and taken off to be raised as a Christian. Appeals to the Pope met with the response: Non possumus, We can do nothing. The baptismal waters could not be wiped away, and Edoardo Mortara must be raised as a Christian despite his parents' pleas. Appeals were then made to the President of the United States to intervene and use his influence. The President refused, on the ground that this was an internal matter of a foreign power, involving foreign nationals. On the next Sabbath, when the point in the service was reached when the traditional prayer was recited for the President and the U.S. government, Morais pointedly omitted it. Apparently he felt that a President who would not stand up for civil rights was not worth praying for. The congregation was scandalized. The adjunta, as the governing body of the synagogue is still called, met the very next day and demanded that he restore the prayer for the government, whether he agreed with their actions or not. On December 2, 1858, A. Finzi wrote him a letter marked "strictly private" alluding to "your refusal to recite the prayer for the members of the Government as you have hitherto done." He demonstrates rather tediously that the U.S. government is not dependent for its welfare on Morais' prayers and having exhausted that argument, turns nasty:

You are aware that the Adjunta can suspend you from office, which would only be a step to discharge ... You know that the Board can command a majority to any measure their wisdom may induce them to think correct ... are you prepared to be hurled from a position of pecuniary independence ... to one of unrequited labor in which you might find it difficult to earn a pittance?

After this affair blew over, and the President again got his prayerful due, Morais' penchant for expressing himself on civil rights again got him into trou­ble. On Thanksgiving, 1864, he gave an address in which he referred critically to the institution of slavery. I was unable to find his precise wording, but it seems that he expressed satisfaction at the absence of threats of sedition and secession in the North. Morais was clearly amazed at the violence of the reaction. The synagogue adjunta would brook no reference to this issue which had the country bitterly divided, and decreed that "henceforth all English lectures or discourses be dispensed with, except by particular agreement of the Parnas [President] made in writing." Despite Morais' protests, the gag rule held for about two months. Then some members petitioned the board, and on February 5, 1865, the board voted that the Revd. S. Morais deliver a religious discourse (the word religious is underlined!) on one Sabbath of each month, and any holiday. Immedi­ately before the Passover that year Morais wrote: "I would now respectfully ask that you allow me to address the Congregation whenever I deem it fit." Morais never again indulged in grand gestures as in the Mortara case, but he did estab­lish his freedom to speak on social justice in the pulpit, and he did so frequently. Morais was addressing the most influential Jews in a major American city, and he extended that forum through reports of his addresses which were frequently published, and, as we shall see, he involved himself directly in other ways too. Morais' stand on slavery was rewarded by an honorary membership in the Union League of Philadelphia.

Two major areas of social justice concerned him deeply. One was the issue of religious and racial prejudice and its natural follower, oppression. This included both crass discrimination, and the subtler pressures involved in the movement to make America a Christian country not only notionally, but as a matter of law. Paradoxically, Morais sometimes took a stronger stand on discrimination against non-Jewish groups than Jewish. Why this was may be seen in the notorious Hilton-Seligman affair of 1877. On May 31, 1877, the wealthy Jewish banker, Joseph Seligman went to the Grand Union Hotel at Saratoga for the tenth consecutive year. On requesting his room he was told: "Mr. Seligman, I am required to inform you that Mr. Hilton has given instructions that no Israelites shall be permitted to stop at this hotel." Seligman wrote a stinging letter to Hilton advising him to get out of the hotel business, since he was losing money, not because Jews were staying in his hotels, but because he did not know how to run them. A loud clamor broke out in the press. Morais was asked to speak up, but in this instance he was ambivalent. Yes, discrimination was bad. But the eastern watering places were full of ostentation and display, not to mention the infraction of the Jewish Sabbath and dietary laws that accompanied these unbecoming qualities. Moreover, Seligman had had associations with the Ethical Culture movement which made his Jewish affiliation questionable. Morais was not alone in his feelings. I. M. Wise's mouthpiece in Cincinnati, the American Israelite declared:

If he wants no Jews, let him have none ... keep away from Saratoga, keep away from Long Beach ... they cannot imagine in Europe that the watering places here are the elysium of empty heads and shattered brains, and hearing of the intolerance and stupidity they must be led to think we are a nation of fools and madmen. Stay away from those places, save with your honor also the honor of the American republic.

For once, the arch-reformer Wise and the traditionalist Morais saw eye-to-eye. Quite different and unequivocal was Morais' reaction to the Chinese ques­tion. Morais, gentle soul, observed that the Mosaic law prohibited muzzling an ox while it worked to avoid causing it pain. How then, he wondered, can human beings inflict deliberate suffering on one another? The address that Morais gave on this subject is extant among his papers, but it has some pages missing and it is best to quote it as it was reported in the press. The report conveys well the passion of this remarkable statement:

He animadverted upon the conduct of the lawless towards the un­fortunate aliens of the Mongolian race on the Pacific coast. He termed that demeanor atrocious and the conniving of local offi­cials infamous. He saw in every drop of blood of the Chinese spilt by ruffians a blot of the escutcheon of Liberty. In his mind a racial persecution in this country was a deep humiliation and an insult to the great of old who labored and fought to establish a government broad enough to cover every human being that seeks its protection. Mr. Morais alluded to the Restrictive act limiting the admission of Chinese. He considered it an outrage against a nation of three hun­dred millions with whom we are at peace, and the bill now said to be in course of preparation to forbid the Unites States to Chinese altogether he stigmatized as an indignity revolting to every right thinking man. He held that if even all the inhabitants of Central Asia who come to our shores ... were as depraved as their enemies describe them, no justification could be found for the barbarities to which they are subjected ... he knew that the writings of [China's] philosophers and moralists do not suffer in comparison with those of nations which claim to be the sole representatives of civilization.

In the original sermon Morais censures by name President Chester Arthur for sanc­tioning prejudice in yielding to pressure from unscrupulous politicians. The newspaper report doubtless deemed it discreet to omit this. There is no doubt that Morais had established his right to speak out. It is clear moreover that Reform Judaism did not have a corner on the issue of social justice, despite the grandiloquence of the "Pittsburgh Platform," which laid great stress on this matter and was promulgated at this time. Morais spoke too on the sufferings of the Armenians. After pointing out that there were conflicting reports as to what had happened, he continues:

We cannot too strongly condemn a barbarity that pushes a people into the Mosque at the point of the bayonet. I have read protests from Christendom. I have noticed likewise that in Chicago Rabbis have made their voices swell the sound of these protests against the ruthlessness of the Turks. Nothing new. Jews will always side with the persecuted, and not only side with them, but try speedily to come to their deliverance.

He goes on to cite Moses Montefiore's help for the Maronites in 1860, and Baron de Hirsch's help for both sides in the Russo-Turkish war of 1878. He then protests reports that President Cleveland's intervention was because America is a Christian country. America should support all the oppressed. He continues:

Much as I wish to wipe off from memory words that pierced like a pointed steel, I cannot forget that on a day when by invitation, I pleaded before the members of the Episcopal brotherhood the cause of my oppressed brethren in Russia, I received a most cutting rebuff. I was relating how a Jewish lad had his face and hands burnt with hot irons for having stolen an apple, when the Reverend Dr. McConnel ... most uncharitably remarked that in a Christian country, a minority that keeps aloof from the majority must expect perse­cution. What a companionable guest at the table of Ximenes and Torquemada that Episcopal clergyman would make! How palatable the repast seasoned with invectives against those stiffnecked Jews who need the thumb screw and the hot iron to bring them to the foot of the cross!

Ah, my brethren, I say it again. Take care of your own. For prejudice is stalking abroad and would tread on us ... Still be on the alert by reason of ineradicable prejudice. Take care of your own, my brethren!

The attitude of the Reverend Dr. McConnel was not at all uncommon. As the author of Black Like Me declared: "The first rule of racism is to blame the victim."

Morais concerned himself actively with the weal of Jews in foreign lands. A letter to Charles Emory Smith, minister to Russia from 1890 to 1892, elicited a courteous reply assuring him that the imperial government intended no new repressive measures against the Jews. He declared that Morais' representations were on "a subject in which no representative of the United States could fail to feel a deep interest." He concludes: "I recall our personal meetings with great pleasure and well remember your high standing among your people."

Morais was also in touch with Benjamin Franklin Peixotto, a New York Sephardic Jew, who was appointed U.S. consul in Bucharest in 1870 and at­tempted to further the emancipation which had been promised to Rumanian Jews by the 1856 Treaty of Paris. On January 27, 1874, he wrote to Morais:

I am happy to tell you that my heavy task appears to be in a more promising prospect than ever, and that I cherish the firm belief before very long of accomplishing the emancipation of our long suffering brethren.

Peixotto left Bucharest two years later, his firm belief still unfulfilled.

Another aspect of religious problems was the desire on the part of many believing Christians to emphasize the Christian character of the United States, despite the efforts of the founding fathers to separate Church and State. Jacob Ezekiel, a friend of Morais who later moved to Cincinnati and served as secretary of the Hebrew Union College, took President John Tyler to task in 1841 for using the phrase "Christian people" in a proclamation on the death of President Harrison. Tyler sent him a courteous reply in which he disavowed any intention to offend, and told Ezekiel that "your voice and the voices of all your brethren will ascend to our common father."

Morais was seriously disturbed by efforts to have Sunday recognized in the Constitution as a day of rest, as well he might be, since the provisions of the proposed amendment, which he quotes, were very severe. This decreed that "no person or corporation shall perform any secular labor, nor ... engage in any play, game, amusement or recreation on that day." All assemblies, except for religious worship, were to be forbidden. Penalties were to range up to one thousand dollars, and if one allows for a century of inflation, it appears that the penalty was stiff indeed. Morais condemned the attempt to "chain the State to the clogging wheels of the Church." He declared that the Constitution "will cover beneath her ample folds all that seek protection from the abuse of power, but never will she dictate tyrannical terms to those whom she has promised shelter ... Eternal vigilance is the price of liberty."

The republican sentiments that were his in his youth came flooding back when he heard statements such as: "official positions and public trusts should be restricted by constitutional enactment to persons in sympathy with the high moral aims of the government." Such thinking, in his view could make "America a scourge in the hands of the crafty to tear the lives of the powerless, whether they be Jews or Christians."

Morais was greatly incensed also by attempts to convert Jewish children to Christianity by deception. This became a particular problem when large numbers of Russian and Polish Jews arrived in Philadelphia in the 1880s and subsequently, in the wake of deteriorating conditions in Eastern Europe, settling in the southern part of the city. Missionaries saw the possibility of evangelizing among these poor, Yiddish-speaking Jews, sometimes using means that were less than totally honest. In one instance, a school was set up which purported to be a Jewish school in which Hebrew was taught, and the children were offered rewards for attendance. While there, unknown to their parents who did not speak English, the children were indoctrinated in the tenets of Christianity. Morais decided to investigate. Accompanied by a friend who knew his way around, Morais slipped into the school and observed what was occurring. The principal of the school became aware of his presence and was furious. She termed it an intolerable intrusion, and threatened to call the police. Morais withdrew. "I did not put her to the test," he comments. "In that instance I considered discretion the better part of valor." Morais then took to waiting outside the school, asking the children their names, and alerting the parents to the fact that the school was not what they thought it was. This avoidance of confrontation was typical of Morais, and stood in the mainstream of a long tradition of Jewish quietism. He was ready to persuade and to cajole, but always wanted to avoid violence, or what he termed "scandal."

The Russian immigrants brought other problems in their train. Although Philadelphia prided itself on being the "city of homes" and did not have the tenements typical of New York City, sweated labor became commonplace in Philadelphia too. Morais declared:

Iniquity alone could have conceived the sweating system, so prolific of evils—a system stunting the growth of children employed under it, bending with premature old age men and women in the prime of life, tainting the atmosphere with foul vapors ... Families vegetating in holes, poisoned with pestilential air, stitching and stitching and stitching, twelve or fourteen hours a day to receive what does not suffice to procure a scanty meal.

Morais' solution for these severe social problems was, it must be confessed, simplistic. The worker should give a fair day's labor and the employer should pay a reasonable wage. Morais was convinced of the ennobling character of labor, and horrified at the thought of the socialist and anarchist tendencies, all too patently linked to atheism, which were unseen riders on the immigrant ships. "Communism!" he cries out at one point. "Horror of horrors! Communism!" Morais' attitude to work was demonstrated by his strong support of the Alliance Israelite Universelle, founded by French Jews in 1860, one of the main aims of which was to give useful work training to young Jews in backward countries. In an unusual outburst, Morais condemns bitterly the action of the Rebbe of the Belz sect of the Hasidim ("miscalled" according to Morais) for making a special trip to Vienna to ask the authorities to keep out these secular schools:

Such is the profanation of the name of God brought about by a pretentious sect that assumes the appellation of "pious" and gives their chief the title of "righteous." A piety which hugs the chains of ignorance, a righteousness which invites persecution.

From our standpoint we can see that the Rebbe of Belz knew very well what he was about. Schools of this type brought with them the French language and secular culture. In North Africa they brought about a rapid destruction of the traditional religious orientation of the community, and this was precisely what the Rebbe wanted to avoid. It is interesting to observe too, that in his fervor Morais slipped into a kind of thinking not unlike the Episcopalian reverend gentleman he condemned. "A righteousness which invites persecution" comes perilously close to condemning the victim who wanted above all to preserve his culture intact.

Arguments over the merits of secular and trade schools were purely academic for the immigrant workers of South Philadelphia. Ankle deep in half-sewn pan­taloons they wanted only to improve their miserable lot. In 1886 there was a strike widespread in the United States in an attempt to secure an eight-hour workday. Two years later a Jewish Tailors' and Operators' Association was organized in Philadelphia and painful events followed. Their first strike was a fiasco, col­lapsing in two days. Before the strikers were permitted to return to work, they were required to take an oath on the Bible that they would never again strike. Morais became deeply involved in efforts to act as an honest broker in subse­quent strike action. Morais' son, Henry S. Morais, asserts that his father settled the 1890 strike with the help of George Randorf, a young man who had useful language skills. Henry Morais hints darkly at the doctrinaire background of the strike:

The cause of the unfortunate workers has, invariably, been injured by the domination of labor agitators, some of whom are rabid An­archists, and would instil poisonous views into the minds of the un­tutored.

Max Whiteman, the historian of Philadelphia Jewry, gives a very positive assessment of Morais' beneficent influence on the strike. Able to bridge the gap between manufacturer and worker, he

disarmed the anarchists with compassion and thereby gained so much support among the Jewish workers that the anarchists were re­luctant to outrage Jewish sensibilities further by irreligious activities such as a projected pork feast at a Yom Kippur Ball.

Morais saw little help for the oppression of Jews in the incipient Zionist movement. He does indeed defend Theodor Herzl, the father of Political Zion­ism, who, he says, is neither a Utopian nor a fanatic. One can see the struggles he had with Herzl's plan to obtain land in Palestine by the changes he made in his text. First he wrote as follows:

to go in search of means to facilitate the acquisition of a spot where the systematically degraded of Abraham's progeny may breathe free­ly is a philanthropic design.

Apparently he was unhappy with the choice of the word "acquisition" because, I suggest, it might militate against his idea, firmly rooted in tradition, that Israel was to wait for the Messiah, and not hasten the end. So he toned down "acquisition" to "securing." But this was still too strong, implying perhaps (God forbid!) some kind of violent action, and so he substituted "recognized purchase." But then, he must have asked himself, can Jews be safe with a recog­nized purchase? And so he settled on "guaranteed purchase," which apparently fulfilled his criteria of security and non-violence. Morais normally did not make fair copies of his addresses, and when he gets into sensitive areas, it is possible to see him painfully arriving at a position in his erasures and alterations. Whether one regards this as an honest striving for a consistent viewpoint, or a difficulty in making up his mind, is a question. It seems that Morais' ultimate conclusion was that Zionism was a pipe dream. In response to a Zionist lecture delivered by Dr. Friedenwald of Baltimore to the Mikveh Israel Association in Philadelphia he declares: "We still believe that the renationalization of our people is still in the remote future."

In contrast to his modern viewpoint on racial discrimination, Morais is very traditional in his attitude to women. He explains the Orthodox separation of men and women in the synagogue as "solely and simply an endeavor to allow the mind to be centered on the worship, and prevent, as far as possible, its being directed to human objects mutually attractive." It is interesting that Morais stresses the mutual nature of the attraction, since it raises the question why women should not officiate and men be the onlookers, but perhaps it is too much to expect him even to entertain such a radical idea. In another address he comments that

Woman occupies a station, which, unless she forfeits it by urging it to extremes, will ever, as at present, enable her to carry into practice the distinguishing traits of her character, scattering around the path she treads the seeds of knowledge and charity.

He here utters a clear warning that woman should not exceed the bounds that nature has laid down.

Morais tried throughout his life to follow his principles of adherence to hu­manity, justice, and true religion as he saw it. Yet, as he felt death draw near, he was not happy. Just ten months before he died, he declares in a letter, "Life has never been to me a delightful gift from my parents, and that for reasons which it were idle and foolish to relate." On the face of it Morais' unhappiness may appear strange. One might say his life had been rather successful. He was widely respected, honored, and loved. He had children who looked up to him, the fruit of a seemingly happy marriage. He retained his mental faculties unimpaired until he had a stroke which took him with merciful speed. I should like to offer some tentative reasons for his depression, recognizing that there can be no guarantee of their accuracy.

I must preface my suggestions by outlining what seems to me to have been the Jewish recipe for survival during the long night of the Diaspora. Jewish militarism died in Masada, destroyed by the superior might of Rome. It was replaced, it seems to me, by a threefold strategy. The first was a devotion to a literary legacy including especially, but not exclusively, the Talmud, which buoyed the spirits of the Jew under next to impossible circumstances, and which assured him of his special relationship with God, interrupted, but not ended, and ensured him a glorious restoration at some imminent date. This was the theoretical underpinning of Jewish survival. The Jew might be spat upon in the street, but he had a secret which kept his ego intact and his will unbent, and which he daily mulled over in his books. Despite all appearances to the contrary he could declare with the Bible of Israel:

Who is like unto thee?

A people saved of the Lord

Who is thy helpful shield

And glorious sword.

Though thine enemies are deceitful to thee,

Thou shalt tread on their high places. (Deuteronomy 33:29)

Second, the Jew maintained a low profile. The stooping gait which is charac­teristic of the Jewish stereotype was not because of a burden of care or worn out observances, but rather to avoid any missiles that might be whizzing over­head. Third, the Jew learned to make himself useful, if not indispensable, by honing skills in language, communications and commerce which permitted his oppressor to hate him as much as he pleased, but tolerate him because he had to. As we well know, this threefold strategy did not always work—the long list of massacres of Jews is testimony to that—but it was the best that could be done under the circumstances.

Now Morais was no innovator; he hewed faithfully to these principles. He evinced and tried to inculcate in others a deep love of Jewish sacred literature and espoused the life style which it displayed as a model. He avoided scandal and confrontation and tried, like Moses Montefiore, whom he greatly admired, to improve the lot of his fellows by persuasion and cajoling. He believed firmly that the Jew should be a useful, productive citizen and supported efforts to train young Jews in appropriate skills.

During his life in Philadelphia, Morais witnessed the total breakdown of this millennial strategy for Jewish survival. He saw the loved Talmud burned, not literally by non-Jews as had so often happened in the past ineffectually, but metaphorically by Jews. The Reform movement in Judaism which he had always opposed, without scandal of course, was riding high, destroying the first pillar of the survival strategy I have delineated. He cries out:

Forty-one years I have labored to raise a generation of consistent Israelites, but now that I have seen the departure from earth of nearly all whom I first met in March of 1851, I hear their succes­sors call Moses antiquated, and the rabbis besotted ... Alas for the ears doomed to listen to profanity ... Oh for a reaction, oh for a reawakening of the Jewish spirit.

It pained him deeply that a Jewish convention held in Milwaukee flouted di­etary laws, and he expressed satisfaction that such things did not happen in Philadelphia.

Moreover the pillars of low profile and usefulness were not functioning any more either. With the sharp decline in religious clout under the onslaught of Darwinism and new scientific discoveries, which seemed to attack the very foundations of religion, the charter of anti-Jewish feelings was rewritten. The writings of such racist theoreticians as Wilhelm Marr and Houston Stewart Chamberlain diverted these feelings from their religious context, and took away from the Jew the escape route through conversion that he had previously had. Judaism could no longer be shaken off. It was as undeniable as the color of one's skin. It was a racial characteristic. The Dreyfus trial, which was an active issue in the last years of Morais' life, symbolized the crumbling of these two pillars of Jewish survival. Here was a Jew of modest attainments and even more modest ambitions, who wanted nothing more than to be a useful, docile servant of the French Republic. Despite that, he was broken simply because he was a Jew, and all who rose in his defense, including Emile Zola, were mercilessly disposed of. One must, I think, read some of the anti-Semitic French writing of that period to comprehend the degree to which human beings are capable of detesting other human beings whom they do not even know. Only in this context can we understand the logical outcomes of these events, the Nazi Holocaust of the 1940s on the one hand, and the new kind of Jewish activism and intransigence which have so shocked a world still used to the type of Jewish quietism that Morais symbolizes.

I would speculate, then, that Morais' bitterness of soul was due to his re­alization that the traditional paths to which he had devoted his life could be trodden no longer. The social justice for which he longed was not to be achieved by passionate but always gentlemanly admonitions, and waiting patiently for the Messiah. It was to be done through strikes and boycotts and flaming headlines screaming "J'accuse!" and through the "renationalization of our people," as he called it. These measures were to be coupled with grim confrontations with others who had their own claims to the Jewish patrimony.

Whether the patient, moderate voice of a Morais has any place in our own time is perhaps one of the major questions we face. Let me conclude with his comment on the biblical injunction to "let thy brother live with thee." He declares:

The common adage "Live and let live" ... may seem liberal enough to some, perhaps too liberal in this age of unscrupulous competi­tion, but it falls far below the mark when measured by the Jewish standard of righteousness ... When I am asked to "let my brother live with me" I understand that I may not push him aside, so that I may walk more at large, but that I must make room for him ... "

Morais understood that the bedrock of social justice is the brotherhood of mankind, and that this recognition carries with it the positive duty to make room actively for our fellow human beings. It is a message that has lost none of its freshness, and it speaks as much to our generation as to his.