National Scholar Updates

It is with great gratitude that I announce the publication of my new book, Psalms: A Companion Volume (New York: Kodesh Press, 2022). Copies may be ordered at https://www.amazon.com/Psalms-Companion-Hayyim-Angel/dp/1947857843/ref=sr_1_1?crid=P4H1YGIXAHJR&keywords=hayyim+angel&qid=1654697463&sprefix=ha….

I thank the Institute for Jewish Ideas and Ideals and sponsors for making the publication of this volume possible. The book presents in-depth studies of several psalms and also identifies several central themes of Psalms. It serves as an entry point for people of diverse backgrounds.

Here is an excerpt from the Foreword to the book:

About fifteen years ago, I was chatting with my then seven-year-old nephew. At that time, my nephew was a second grader in a local Yeshiva Day School. Although we had been discussing baseball, he suddenly interjected that “it matters what the words of the Torah mean, but it does not matter what the words of the prayers mean.”

          I was thunderstruck by this innocent yet profound observation. My nephew was reflecting what his religious education silently conveyed: His school devoted significant class time to learning the meaning of the Torah’s words, yet prayer remained little more than a rote recital. (Update: my nephew, now 22, has developed a singular prayerful soul and elevates his community regularly by leading prayer services.)

          That conversation triggered a deep memory. My journey with the Book of Psalms began when I was an eighteen-year-old yeshiva student in Israel after High School. Early in my first year, I noticed that many of the rabbis as well as students seemed genuinely connected to their prayers and were in no hurry to race through the prayers and move on with their day. Whatever they were experiencing was completely foreign to me. I suddenly felt a profound void in my understanding of prayer after a lifetime of Jewish education. So I took a Book of Psalms off the shelf and began reading it with an English translation and rabbinic commentary. Given that the prayer book is replete with psalms, this seemed like the best place to begin.

          That turned out to be a life-transforming experience. I was mesmerized by the God-intoxication, the authenticity, the staggering courage and honesty, and the fiery religious passion in the psalms. Although prayer in school had been a mechanical exercise, I now was experiencing a world of genuine prayer.

          When I began teaching advanced undergraduate Bible courses at Yeshiva University in 1996, I chose to teach Psalms as my second course. Engagement with the biblical text, classical commentaries, and contemporary scholarship was a markedly different experience from my initial encounter with Psalms at age 18. In this new setting as a teacher, learning preceded prayer.

          Learning Psalms is quite unlike learning every other biblical book. Our goal remains one of Torah learning, but in Psalms that agenda must be a means to an ends, resulting in more authentic prayer. It is my hope and prayer that this companion volume will serve as a tool to enable readers of all backgrounds to understand the psalms, and through that learning to connect more to God through the experience of prayer.

The premise of economic growth has come under question, in many parts of the world today, from a variety of directions. We are aware, of course, that moral thinking in practically every known culture enjoins us not to place undue emphasis on our material concerns. But today there is more to it than that. With heightened sensitivity to the strains that industrialization often brings, including the possibility of permanent climate change, many people in the higher-income countries now question whether further economic expansion is worth the costs. In the developing world, where the advantages of rising incomes are more evident, some people question whether economic growth, and the policies that promote it, are just vehicles for exploitation by foreigners. And now that the current financial crisis has sharply depressed production and incomes in many countries, both industrialized and not, an unusually large number of citizens sense that their economies aren’t growing anyway.

A turn away from economic growth is not what anyone should want, however—and not just on narrowly economic grounds. The experience of many countries suggests that when a society experiences rising standards of living, broadly distributed across the population at large,

it is also likely to make progress along a variety of dimensions that are the very essence of what a free, open, democratic society is all about: openness of opportunity for economic and social advancement; tolerance toward recognizably distinct racial, or religious, or ethnic groups within the society, including new immigrants if the country regularly receives in-migration; a sense of fairness in the provision made for those in the society who, whether on account of limited opportunities, or lesser human endowments, or even just poor luck in the labor market, fall too far below the prevailing public standard of material well-being; genuinely contested elections that determine who controls the levers of political power; and democratic political rights and civil liberties more generally. Conversely, experience also suggests that when a society is stagnating economically—worse yet, if it is suffering a pervasive decline in living standards—it is not only likely to make little if any progress in these social, political, and (in the eighteenth-century sense) moral dimensions; all too often, it will undergo a period of rigidification and retrenchment, sometimes with catastrophic consequences.

The chief reason so many societies behave in this way stems from the familiar tendency of most people to evaluate how well off they are not by considering their incomes or living standards in absolute terms but relative to some benchmark. More specifically, there is substantial evidence for two separate benchmarks by which people judge such matters. Most people are pleased when they are able to live better than they, or their families, have lived in the past. And they are pleased when they are able to live better than their friends, neighbors, coworkers, and any others with whom they regularly compare themselves.

The pervasive tendency for people to evaluate their economic situation on these relative benchmarks, rather than absolutely, explains a variety of familiar features of economic and psychological behavior that otherwise would be puzzling—for example, the fact that within any one country, at any given time, people with higher incomes are systematically happier than those with lower incomes, but there is no corresponding increase over time in how happy people are on average even though average incomes may be steadily increasing. As Adam Smith observed long ago, “all men, sooner or later, accommodate themselves to whatever becomes their permanent situation,” so that “between one permanent situation and another there [is], with regard to real happiness, no essential difference.” Hence the critics of growth who maintain that higher incomes per se will not make people happier are mostly right.

But this tendency toward a relative rather than an absolute perspective in such matters also explains why market economies, as long as they deliver rising living standards to most of a society’s population, lead more often than not to tolerance, generosity, democracy, and many of the other recognizable features of an open society. The economically self-protective instinct that underlies racial and religious discrimination, antipathy toward immigration, and lack of generosity toward the poor naturally takes a back seat to other priorities when people have the sense that they are getting ahead.

An important consequence is that many countries throughout the developing world probably will not have to wait until they reach Western levels of per capita income before they begin to liberalize socially and democratize politically. If they can manage to grow economically (alas, many parts of what we call “the developing world” are not actually developing), and if the fruits of that growth are shared among their populations, in time liberalization and even some forms of democratization are likely to follow.

The experience of the Western democracies also makes clear that the connection between rising living standards and either social attitudes or political institutions is not limited to low-income countries. In the United States, for example, eras in which economic expansion has delivered ongoing material benefits to the majority of the country’s citizens—the decade and a half following the Civil War, the decade and a half just prior to World War I, the quarter-century immediately following World War II—have mostly corresponded to eras when opportunities and freedoms have broadened, political institutions have become more democratic, and the treatment of society’s unfortunates has become more generous.

By contrast, when incomes have stagnated or declined, reaction and retreat have been the order of the day. The rise of Jim Crow laws and the widespread anti-immigrant (and anti- Catholic and anti-Semitic) agitation of the 1880s and 1890s; the extraordinary appeal of the reborn Ku Klux Klan, and the adoption of the most discriminatory immigration laws in our nation’s history (the Emergency Quota Act and then the National Origins Act) during the 1920s; and the rise of the right-wing “militia” movement, together with a new groundswell of  anti-immigrant sentiment, in the 1980s and early 1990s (before the strong economic growth of the mid and latter 1990s effectively arrested both), are all familiar examples. A major exception in U.S. experience was the depression of the 1930s, which instead led to a significant opening of American society and strengthening of American democracy—perhaps because the economic distress of that time was sufficiently widely shared that the sense of being in the same sinking ship together overwhelmed the more competitive instincts that usually prevail when people realize they are not getting ahead.

Jews have often been targets of the rise in intolerance that follows when incomes stagnate. Many of the most prominent leaders of America’s Populist movement in the 1880s and 1890s were openly anti-Semitic. Both Ignatius Donnelly, who wrote the Populist Party’s platform, and William Harvey, who wrote the leading free silver economic tract of the time, also wrote novels replete with Jewish villains. (Even Harvey’s best-selling financial tract included a cartoon with an English octopus, labeled “Rothschilds,” strangling the world.) Mary Ellen Lease, the fiery Populist orator who brought the free silver campaign to popular attention, called President Grover Cleveland an agent of Jewish bankers and British gold. In the 1920s the revived Ku Klux Klan was proudly anti-Semitic. Few Congressmen spoke openly of the religious bias inherent in the new immigration policies enacted in 1921 and 1924, but the reflection of the religious map of Europe was plainly evident in the legislation; under the new laws U.S. immigration from areas from which Jews primarily originated shrank from 700,000 per year to 20,000. Although the 1930s ultimately proved a time of broadening of American democracy, an increasingly strident anti-Semitism was clearly on the rise. Father Charles Coughlin drew 40 million listeners to his bigoted weekly rants on the radio, and Charles Lindbergh’s America First movement likewise enjoyed widespread popular support. Although the U.S. Senate confirmed Felix Frankfurter to replace Louis Brandeis on the Supreme Court in 1939, the hearing (far more so than Brandeis’s in 1916, in a different economic climate) exhibited open anti-Semitism. Even in the immediate aftermath of Kristallnacht in November 1938, both the public and Congress opposed the idea of admitting 20,000 German Jewish refugee children.

The United States is hardly the only long-established Western democracy where a connection between rising living standards and the strengthening of democratic freedoms is evident. Other countries’ experience displays similar patterns. Conversely, many of the horrifying anti-democratic phenomena that so marred Europe’s twentieth-century history ensued in a setting of pervasive economic stagnation or decline. Hitler’s rise to power in the wake of the economic and political chaos of the Weimar Republic is a familiar story, but it is worth recalling that as late as 1928 the Nazi party drew only 2.8 percent of the vote in German national elections.

What made the difference, soon thereafter, was the onset of the Great Depression, which affected Germany more than any other European country. (Earlier on, what many historians consider the first major push of modern German anti-Semitism appeared during Germany’s economic stagnation in the 1870s and 1880s.) Similarly, France’s Vichy regime, which willingly collaborated with the Germans—during the war France was one of only two European countries to turn over to the Nazis Jews from territories that the Germans did not occupy—emerged out of a protracted period of French economic stagnation during which right-wing nationalist and anti- Semitic groups such as the Action Francaise, Jeunesse Patriots, and the Croix de Feu (“Cross of Fire”) worked, both behind the scenes and through street violence, to undermine French democracy. As my late colleague, the economic historian Alexander Gerschenkron, observed during the war, “even a long democratic history does not necessarily immunize a country from becoming a ‘democracy without democrats.’”

The connections between economic growth and the democratic character of society need not be one-directional. The idea that rising living standards foster tolerance and democracy does not preclude the parallel notion that these features of society enhance the ability of any economy, but especially one based primarily on private initiative and decentralized markets, to achieve superior performance over time. Different political institutions and different legal frameworks, as well as different public attitudes and private behavior, help account for why some countries enjoy more economic success than others. The evidence is especially strong that effective “rule of law,” including the protection of property rights, matters for economic growth. It does not require an advanced degree in economics to know that barring half of the population from certain jobs because they are of the “wrong” sex, or still others because they are of the “wrong” race or “wrong” religion, does not result in the most efficient allocation of an economy’s human resources.

As a result, a society may find itself in a virtuous circle in which economic growth and democratic freedoms mutually reinforce one another or, less fortunately, stuck in a vicious circle in which the stagnation of living standards blunts any movement toward democratic reform while adverse political institutions and the absence of basic freedoms retard economic improvement for most citizens. Leaving aside the periodic ups and downs of market-driven economic growth in most Western societies, the long-term experience of countries like the United States is a rough example of the former. The current plight of many countries in sub-Saharan Africa presents even sharper examples of the latter.

Especially in the wake of the financial crisis that began in 2007, many citizens of countries around the world have sensed that they are not getting ahead. But importantly, in many higher-income countries the problem dates to well before the crisis began. In the United States, for example, even before the onset of the latest downturn, most people had seen little economic improvement throughout the 2000s. In 2007, the median family income (the income of families exactly in the middle of the U.S. income distribution) was $63,700 in today’s dollars. Back in

2000 the median family income, again in today’s dollars, was $63,400. The gain—not per annum, but over the entire seven years—was less than one-half of one percent. The U.S. economy as a whole expanded solidly during these years, but the gains from that expanding production accrued very narrowly, mostly to people already at the top of the scale. The rest of the nation’s families saw little improvement. Although the precise timing differs, the populations of Italy, France, the U.K., and many other countries as well have experienced roughly similar income stagnation.

Then came the crisis. The current financial crisis and the recession that followed have constituted one of the most significant sequences of economic dislocations since World War II.

In many countries (the United States included), the real economic costs—costs in terms of reduced production, lost jobs, shrunken investment, and foregone incomes and profits—exceeded those of any prior post-war downturn. Most American families were not immune. In 2008, the U.S. median family income fell to $61,500, a lower level than in any year since 1998. We do not yet have the figure for 2009, but it seems clear that last year family incomes dropped again. Here too, the pattern is similar in many other countries that have likewise suffered in the financial crisis and then the economic downturn.

Nor do we have any solid basis for expecting a rapid recovery of incomes, either in the United States or abroad, now that the worst of the crisis has passed and many of these countries’ economies have started to turn around. Just now the greatest challenges appear to be in Europe, where the combination of current monetary institutions and the legacy of past fiscal practices present what seems to be an insurmountable bar to vigorous recovery. But near-term growth prospects in the United States are modest as well, and they, too, are vulnerable to a host of contingencies.

The majority of American families, therefore, have now gone through an entire decade—or perhaps longer—with no increase in their incomes or improvement in their living standards.

And unless the economy recovers rapidly, the situation may persist a good while longer. Past experience suggests that the consequences of this kind of prolonged stagnation—here as well as in other countries—will spill over well beyond the realm of economics and business. The collateral damage will include our race relations, our religious tolerance, our generosity toward the disadvantaged (as Adam Smith also wisely observed, “before we can feel much for others, we must in some measure be at ease ourselves; if our own misery pinches us very severely, we have no leisure to attend to that of our neighbor”), and the civility of our political discourse. No informed citizen can be unaware that the damage, in each of these areas, has already begun to occur. Given the country’s historical demographic make-up, the most frequently observed reaction in such circumstances has been a hardening of attitudes toward new and recent immigrants, and this has already begun. Other countries, presumably with differing specifics, will probably face similar experiences. The symptoms often differ from one country to the next, but the disease of economic stagnation is not a pleasant one anywhere.

The urgent need, therefore, is not merely to get the economy’s production increasing again, although that is a necessary first step, but to enable the majority of families once again to earn rising incomes and enjoy improving living standards. Most citizens, in the United States no less than elsewhere, have exhibited impressive patience. It is best not to try that patience too far.

If a key part of what matters for tolerance and fairness and opportunity, not to mention the strength of a society’s democratic political institutions, is that the broad cross-section of the population have a confident sense of getting ahead economically, then no society—no matter how rich it becomes or how well-formed its institutions may be—is immune from seeing its basic democratic values at risk whenever the majority of its citizens lose their sense of economic progress.

The current disillusionment with economic growth—in some quarters, even a fashionable hostility—reflects a failure to recognize these broader relationships. But that failure, and the rejection and hostility to which it gives rise, are, in turn, impediments to restoring both our economy and our society to a more beneficial (and benevolent) trajectory. Changing economic course normally requires policy action. In a democracy, making policy choices requires public support.

The familiar balancing of material positives against moral negatives when we discuss economic growth is a therefore false choice. The parallel assumption that the way we value material versus moral concerns neatly maps into whether we should eagerly embrace economic growth or temper our enthusiasm is wrong as well. Economic growth bears benefits that are both material and moral. As we take up the hard decisions that will inevitably surround any effort to restore our economy’s vitality in the aftermath of the worst financial crisis and the deepest and most protracted economic downturn in two generations, it is important that we bear these moral positives in mind.

The children now love luxury; they have bad manners, contempt for authority; they show disrespect for elders and love chatter in place of exercise. Children are now tyrants, not the servants of their households. They no longer rise when elders enter the room. They contradict their parents, chatter before company, gobble up dainties at the table, cross their legs, and tyrannize their teachers. —Socrates, over 2,000 years ago

There is nothing new under the sun. —Kohelet

And yet, in the twenty-first century, we still worry about children and about the adults they grow up to be. How is it that Orthodox Jews, people who literally live by the Torah and the Talmud, are guilty of immoral and sometimes criminal acts that should be anathema to them? Rabbi Marc Angel asks, “How can we do better? How can we go from teaching texts or sponsoring random hessed projects, to getting students to actually internalize the message and become morally strong?”

Though I am not the ultimate authority, the challenge remains an intriguing, often daunting one. Let me begin by asserting that I believe that it is possible to create an environment where middot, derekh eretz, and moral uprightness is the norm rather than the anomaly. It is my strong belief that if we accept the premise that we are created in the image of God, then we are intrinsically good. The dilemma is how do we harness this intrinsic internal goodness in the young so that they keep it with them as they grow up? Truthfully, neither random hessed projects nor lectures about being virtuous seem to work. We have seen repeatedly that working from the outside is not effective; it hasn’t worked in the past, and it won’t work in the future. Recognizing that internal goodness is like a muscle, it follows that internal goodness must be exercised in order to be strengthened.

What form does that exercise take? How do we strengthen that muscle so that it becomes internally strong and will manifest itself in external goodness?

We must start at the earliest time possible. “Teach a child good manners during babyhood,” advised Reb Nachman of Breslav. Most children, before culture is superimposed upon them, are basically goodhearted. Nurturing that goodness and reinforcing it constantly should be our goal. It means creating and sustaining a clear, robust, and intentional environment that, in every decision, communication, conversation, or discussion, expresses a level of concern for others. If we are truly to emulate God and do His will, we must emphasize the importance of middot and character, and model that by being kind, compassionate, and just. If even God is held to ethical standards—“Shall not the Judge of all the earth do justly?” (Bereishith 18:25)—should we not hold ourselves similarly accountable?

Everything that we learn reinforces this message. God visits Abraham after his berit milah, but Abraham leaves Him to minister to the “malakhim” who arrive on the horizon. Abraham’s desire to be gracious to them is greater even than his wish to commune with God.

That is the message educators at every level must drive home, creating environments where we model behavior that is kinder and gentler. We say “good morning” to a custodian, “please” to a secretary, “thank you” to a cafeteria worker. When we see a person struggling with a task, we ask if we can help. At our school, each class has a greeter who welcomes guests, and children rise in respect of that guest, no matter who the guest. We take children’s internal goodness and animate it, concretize it. By encouraging the inner goodness to express itself in tangible action, we reinforce the goodness that is within. The goal? To create a school environment that makes it almost impossible for a child not to externalize what is internal and internalize what is external.

We live in an age of self-absorption and self-centeredness. As educators, our job is to help children focus on others, moving away from the self-interest that characterizes a young child.  But making the process intentional and focused is certainly not easy.

We try so hard to satisfy our children’s desires, mollify their anxieties, and ameliorate their pain. “Helicopter parents” have given way to “snowplow parents,” who try to smooth the way for their children, plowing over their mistakes and challenges and focusing on their immediate gratification. And this is where I believe we begin to go wrong. In our schools today—and in our lives in general—emphasis has shifted to that which is cerebral, performance-oriented, and ritual-bound, but devoid of character development. In too many of our schools, there is such a strong emphasis on academics, on intellectual rigor, that we sometimes forget that the goal of our learning of the mitzvoth is, as the Rambam says to refine us so that we can have a positive impact on others. We end up without a sense of authenticity in terms of what a Jew is supposed to be. When we celebrate the “mitzuyanim” or those who are “better” or “stronger” or can learn more Gemara, we are not modeling moral behavior; we are rewarding acquisition of knowledge.

Rav Ezra Bisk points out that

[T]here are no mitzvoth that reflect merely the will of God, without any logic or reason or goal. The goal of all mitzvoth is always, according to the Ramban … human-oriented. The goal of God in commanding the mitzvah is not to increase His own glory, which is irrelevant to Him, not to somehow do something for the majesty of God, but is to improve and to correct, to develop the person who is observing the mitzvoth.

Educators cannot lose sight of this. The true outcome of knowing that Torah is truth—is to live by it.

In “Is there a Disconnect between Torah Learning and Torah Living?,” Aharon Hersch Fried tells the sad story of a very good student in a yeshiva high school who chose two strong fellow students to learn with for two “sedarim,” and a weaker one to learn with during the third “seder.” His magid shiur berated him for choosing to learn with and help the weaker student, saying, “You can learn a lot more with a stronger havruta.” When it comes to choosing partners for Torah learning, the Rebbe explained, the operative principle is—your life takes precedence over any considerations of helping and learning with another possibly weaker student. He concluded by saying, “There is no hessed when it comes to Torah!” Fried responds to the story by remarking,

I don’t know what the source for this attitude would be. In fact, I’ve heard that gedolim of the previous generation … taught the precise opposite. Reb Chaim told his talmidim that doing hessed in Torah will grant one the Heavenly assistance needed for success in Torah. But even if there was a basis for the other approach, should we not be worried that teaching such an “every man for himself” approach to Torah will result in an “every man for himself” approach to life, and will contribute to our developing a selfish “dog-eat-

 dog” society?!

Dr. Hayim Soloveitchik raises similar concerns in “Rupture and Reconstruction: The Transformation of Contemporary Orthodoxy”:

Zealous to continue traditional Judaism unimpaired, religious Jews seek to ground their new emerging spirituality less on a now unattainable intimacy with Him, than on an intimacy with His Will, avidly eliciting Its intricate demands and saturating their daily lives with Its exactions. Having lost the touch of His presence, they seek now solace in the pressure of His yoke.

Avidly following laws and rules without understanding the underlying rationale for them is fruitless. Should we not be teaching, “Derekh eretz kadma laTorah,” Derekh Eretz comes before the acquisition of Torah knowledge?

Derekh eretz is an element of religiosity that we often do not emphasize. If you ask the question, “How do you define a religious Jew?” chances are the response will reference Shabbat, kashruth, and dress. But if our children do not describe a religious person as a kind, compassionate, and caring person, we haven’t done our job as educators, because we need to see character and kindness as religiosity:

Wherewith shall I come before the Lord, and bow myself before God on high? Shall I come before Him with burnt-offerings, with calves of a year old? Will the Lord be pleased with thousands of rams, with ten thousands of rivers of oil? Shall I give my first-born for my transgression, the fruit of my body for the sin of my soul? It hath been told thee, O man, what is good, and what the Lord doth require of thee: only to do justly, and to love mercy, and to walk humbly with thy God. (Micah 6:8)

If you’ve completed a segment of Mishnah or Talmud but in the process mistreated a fellow human being, I would submit that God is not so happy to take that learning as an offering. If we are truly believers, we will realize that interpersonal mitzvoth must be at least as important as ritual mitzvoth between us and God. What God wants from His chosen people is not just study, but actualization of that study, gemilut hassadim, deeds of lovingkindness. “Bring no more vain oblations; it is an offering of abomination unto Me; New moon and Sabbath, the holding of convocations—I cannot endure iniquity along with the solemn assembly” (Isaiah[RA1] ). You are not devout if you don’t have character. Offerings are in vain if they are empty of virtue, compassion, and kindness.

Under this scenario, all of our schools should be designed to create an environment in which students of every age engage in acts of kindness. They should be taught to help one another. The pictures on the walls should not be only of “gedolim” but of children helping other children, people actually doing something for someone else. Schools should be places where everyone assists the child or adult who falls, in reality and metaphorically. Goodness should be an expectation, not an aberration.

In an ideal school system, good character would be the norm. If someone does something hurtful or cruel, the response would be consistently: “Something is wrong. That’s not how we act.” We would create spaces where everyone was expected to be kind, where peer pressure would not encourage others to be cruel or supercilious but rather to be thoughtful and caring. It sounds simplistic but there’s nothing superficial about helping children and young adults understand what the truly important values of Judaism are.

My ideal school system would be founded on a belief in the sanctity of each member of the school community, created in the image of God and therefore deserving of compassion and respect. Everyone—teachers, fellow students, staff, administrators—would be valued for the unique contributions they bring to the schools. From an early age, students would be taught the importance of honorable and respectful behavior toward others. From preschool to high school, students would embrace the value of being a person of integrity and honor, who treats others well. "One must behave before others as one must behave before God," we are told in Shekalim. This would be our school system’s motto.

Children emulate the behaviors they see around them. If we look askance at a child who does not treat others well, conformity and peer pressure become forces for good rather than evil. In my school (and in my hypothetical school system), students thank teachers for their lessons. We begin every program by saying “toda raba” loudly and collectively, thereby teaching children that it’s not just about them.  The famous story is told of the Baal HaTanya, who came knocking at the door of the Mezritcher Maggid. “Who is it?” asked the Maggid. “Ich. It is I,” said the Baal HaTanya. “Who?” the Maggid asked once again. And once again the answer was “Ich.” “’Ich,’ you said?” said the Maggid with a tormented sigh. “’Ich’? I have worked for 20 years to eradicate the ‘Ich’ from you, and you come brazenly to my door and say ‘Ich’?” The goal of our moral pedagogy is to remove our “Ich,” and embrace the centrality and importance of others, not ourselves.

But it’s not just about giving children opportunities to exercise the goodness muscle. You create goodness by doing good and believing in the premise. Moral education must be systemic and systematic. Educators must set the goals and the stage at the very outset, and keep coming back to them and reinforcing them. Children often do not listen to what we say because our words are drowned out by what we do. Right from the beginning, children see the difference between what they experience at school and what they experience in the world around them. So moral education cannot stop at the boundaries of the schoolyard. It must also reach into the home, helping parents understand our common language, giving them a lexicon that can be used to reinforce these principles. Derekh eretz must be extended into all aspects of students’ lives. All of the adults in a child’s life must model it and look askance at behavior that is antithetical to it. The home as well as the school and the synagogue must model, reinforce, and help children do good—with their bodies not just their words (help at a soup kitchen, visit a person in the hospital, make a shiva call) so that they understand that kindness and compassion are not theoretical—they are real, actionable, concrete.

“Torah is meant to be a living Torah, a guide for life,” writes Dr. Fried, emphasizing that we must connect learning to living. He stresses that true moral education recognizes that cognition, the understanding of morality, is not sufficient; that teaching sensitivity is important and that “understanding the role of emotion is crucial and requires teaching empathic distress, fostering intuitive judgment and seeing derekh eretz as frumkeit.” He sums up, “We must teach our children sensitivity to the feelings of others, and make them aware of the feelings of others, and immerse them in a web of communal and familial experiences that foster growth in this area.” These are the principles that would guide my ideal educational system.

True educators respect the humanity of their students, just as they expect their students to respect the humanity of others. We are reminded of this in so many places. In Mishlei Yehoshua we read, “It is better to know well than to know much.” In Pirke Avot (3:13) we read, “The crown of a good name is greater than the crown of learning.” In the Talmud (Menahot 110a) we read, “Study is worth as much as ritual sacrifice.” As moral educators, who joyously affirm the beauty, timelessness, and sanctity of Jewish life, we must follow the example of Aaron haKohen: loving others and bringing them closer to Torah.  Only through showing unconditional love for our students, respecting their tzelem Elokim and intrinsic goodness, and sharing with them our love of Torah and our commitment to derekh eretz, can the principles, guidelines, and mitzvoth of Torah become actualized throughout their lifetimes.

Jeremiah and the False Prophets

          Jeremiah began his prophetic career in 627 BCE, and gained national notoriety when he first prophesied the destruction of the Temple during the wicked King Jehoiakim’s reign in 609 BCE. He warned that if the Judeans would not improve their religious behavior, the destruction of the Temple and exile would follow. Unwilling to listen, the wicked king, the nobility, and the priesthood persecuted Jeremiah and attempted to have him executed.

          After the traumatic exile of Jehoiachin (Jehoiakim’s son) and 10,000 other leading Judeans twelve years later, there was widespread concern. Suddenly, Jeremiah’s bleak prophecies appeared to be materializing. Nebuchadnezzar of Babylonia was rapidly conquering the world, and the tiny nation of Judah was extremely vulnerable. However, a group of false prophets arose in Judah who predicted a miraculous downfall of Babylonia followed by the return of Jehoiachin and the other exiles.

          On the political front, Egypt fanned the flames of revolt against Babylonia. This led King Zedekiah to host an international summit in 593 BCE to discuss the formation of an anti-Babylonian coalition. The religious and political establishments opposed Jeremiah’s message of submission.

Jeremiah appeared at Zedekiah’s summit wearing a yoke, symbolizing that all the nations should submit to the yoke of Babylonia:

Thus said the Lord to me: Make for yourself thongs and bars of a yoke, and put them on your neck. And send them to the king of Edom, the king of Moab, the king of the Ammonites, the king of Tyre, and the king of Sidon, by envoys who have come to King Zedekiah of Judah in Jerusalem…The nation or kingdom that does not serve him—King Nebuchadnezzar of Babylon—and does not put its neck under the yoke of the king of Babylon, that nation I will visit—declares the Lord —with sword, famine, and pestilence, until I have destroyed it by his hands. As for you, give no heed to your prophets, augurs, dreamers, diviners, and sorcerers, who say to you, “Do not serve the king of Babylon.” For they prophesy falsely to you—with the result that you shall be banished from your land; I will drive you out and you shall perish. But the nation that puts its neck under the yoke of the king of Babylon, and serves him, will be left by Me on its own soil—declares the Lord—to till it and dwell on it (Jeremiah 27:2-11).

          After Jeremiah’s dramatic presentation, the false prophet Hananiah son of Azzur publicly confronted Jeremiah, breaking his yoke and announcing that Babylonia would fall in two years (Jeremiah chapter 28). Of course, we are privy to the course of history. Jeremiah was indeed the true prophet, and Hananiah was false.

However, in the real time of the story, one must ask: How were the people—even the most sincerely religious ones—to distinguish between true and false prophets? This question was not merely a matter of academic interest. Jeremiah’s forecast of seventy years of Babylonian rule (Jeremiah 25:10-11; 29:10) came with political ramifications: remain faithful to Babylonia or they will destroy the country. By predicting the miraculous demise of Babylonia, the false prophets supported revolt against Babylonia. These debates were a matter of national policy and survival.

Some false prophets were easier to detect than others. Their flagrant disregard for the Torah discredited them as true prophets—at least for God-fearing individuals who were confused as to whom they should follow. However, Hananiah son of Azzur and Shemaiah the Nehelamite (Jeremiah 29:24-32) both sounded righteous. Neither preached idolatry or laxity in Torah observance, and both spoke in the name of God. After each prophet made his case, Jeremiah “went on his way” (Jeremiah 28:11). There was no way for the people to know who was right, and therefore the nation would have to wait to see whose prediction would be fulfilled. Waiting, however, was not a helpful option. The false prophets were calling for revolt now, and Jeremiah was calling for loyalty to Babylonia now.

Elsewhere, Jeremiah bemoaned the mockery he endured for the non-fulfillment of his own predictions: “See, they say to me: ‘Where is the prediction of the Lord? Let it come to pass!’” (Jeremiah 17:15). Although Jeremiah ultimately was vindicated by the destruction, the prediction test of prophetic veracity was difficult to apply.

To address these difficulties, Jeremiah presented alternative criteria by which to ascertain false prophets. He staked his argument in the Torah’s assertion that a wonder worker who preaches idolatry is a false prophet regardless of successful predictions or signs:

As for that prophet or dream-diviner, he shall be put to death; for he urged disloyalty to the Lord your God (ki dibber sarah al A-donai Elohekhem)—who freed you from the land of Egypt and who redeemed you from the house of bondage—to make you stray from the path that the Lord your God commanded you to follow. Thus you will sweep out evil from your midst (Deuteronomy 13:6).

Strikingly, Jeremiah extended the Torah’s example of idolatry to include anyone who did not actively promote repentance. Since the false prophets predicted the unconditional downfall of Babylonia irrespective of any repentance on Israel’s part, they must be fraudulent:

In the prophets of Samaria I saw a repulsive thing (tiflah): They prophesied by Baal and led My people Israel astray. But what I see in the prophets of Jerusalem is something horrifying (sha’arurah): adultery and false dealing. They encourage evildoers, so that no one turns back from his wickedness. To Me they are all like Sodom, and [all] its inhabitants like Gomorrah (Jeremiah 23:13-14).

More subtly, the Torah uses the expression, “for he urged disloyalty to the Lord your God” (ki dibber sarah al A-donai Elohekhem). This phraseology is used to refer to specific prophets only twice in Tanakh—when Jeremiah censured Hananiah and Shemaiah, the two false prophets who appeared the most righteous:

Assuredly, thus said the Lord: I am going to banish you from off the earth. This year you shall die, for you have urged disloyalty to the Lord (ki sarah dibbarta el A-donai) (Jeremiah 28:16).

Assuredly, thus said the Lord: I am going to punish Shemaiah the Nehelamite and his offspring. There shall be no man of his line dwelling among this people or seeing the good things I am going to do for My people—declares the Lord—for he has urged disloyalty toward the Lord (ki sarah dibber al A-donai) (Jeremiah 29:32).

Thus Jeremiah singled out the most undetectable false prophets so that those who genuinely wanted to follow God’s word would understand that they were as good as idolaters as they led the nation away from God by predicting unconditional salvation for undeserving people.

           Hananiah and Shemaiah may have been sincere dreamers who loved Israel. However, they were not driven to improve their society, and therefore necessarily were false prophets. In the end, their feel-good predictions contributed directly to the nation’s doom. King Zedekiah eventually capitulated to his nobles’ demands and revolted against the Babylonians, bringing about the destruction of the Temple and exile of the nation. During the final siege of Jerusalem, Jeremiah scolded Zedekiah for having ignored his counsel:

And Jeremiah said to King Zedekiah, “What wrong have I done to you, to your courtiers, and to this people, that you have put me in jail? And where are those prophets of yours who prophesied to you that the king of Babylon would never move against you and against this land?” (Jeremiah 37:18-19).

          Though some false prophets may have been sincere, there possibly also was some deficiency in that sincerity. While condemning false prophets, Jeremiah urged the Jews not to listen to them:

For thus said the Lord of Hosts, the God of Israel: Let not the prophets and diviners in your midst deceive you, and pay no heed to the dreams they [Heb. “you”] dream (ve-al tishme’u el halomotekhem asher attem mahlemim) (Jeremiah 29:8).

The expression at the end of the verse is difficult to interpret, as is evidenced in the NJPS translation above. Radak submits the following:

Mahlemim: this means that they cause them to dream … i.e., you [the people] cause [the false prophets] to dream, for if you did not listen to their dreams, they would not dream these things (Radak on Jeremiah 29:8).

Following Radak’s interpretation, Jeremiah’s critique of the false prophets includes an accusation of their being at least partially driven by a desire to please the people. A vicious cycle was created between the false prophets, the political leadership, and the masses. In contrast, Jeremiah was committed to God’s word no matter how unpopular that made him.

          Tragically, the Judeans failed to listen to Jeremiah, did not improve their religious behavior, and rebelled against Babylonia. Although he failed during his lifetime, Jeremiah’s staggering prophetic integrity, pitted against every echelon of society, remains immortalized in Tanakh as a shining model of standing against immorality and tyranny.

Ahab and His Yes Men

          In the 9^th century BCE, the wicked King Ahab and Queen Jezebel began a reign of terror in the Northern Kingdom of Israel. They made the worship of Baal into the official religion of Israel. Although people worshipped God also, they constantly wavered between God and Baal. Jezebel massacred the prophets of God and others who spoke up for the truth.

          King Ahab struck an alliance with the righteous King Jehoshaphat of the Southern Kingdom of Judah. Ahab’s daughter Athaliah married Jehoshaphat’s son Jehoram. Although the alliance united the two kingdoms on the political level, it caused terrible religious and physical harm to the Southern Kingdom.

          The fiery Elijah served as the primary prophet who courageously opposed the wicked regime of Ahab and Jezebel. In one of the Ahab narratives (I Kings chapter 22), a lesser-known prophet named Micaiah shines by maintaining his integrity against a powerful and corrupt establishment.

          Following a three-year lull in an ongoing conflict between Israel and Aram, Ahab decides to attempt to regain control of Ramoth-gilead, which Aram had captured in earlier battles. Ahab invites his ally, King Jehoshaphat, to join him: “And [Ahab] said to Jehoshaphat, ‘Will you come with me to battle at Ramoth-gilead?’ Jehoshaphat answered the king of Israel, ‘I will do what you do; my troops shall be your troops, my horses shall be your horses’” (22:4).

          However, the righteous Jehoshaphat insists that they first consult the prophets to obtain the word of God: “But Jehoshaphat said further to the king of Israel, ‘Please, first inquire of the Lord’” (22:5). Ahab had some 400 prophets at the ready, and they offered a unified positive response to go to war: “So the king of Israel gathered the prophets, about four hundred men, and asked them, ‘Shall I march upon Ramoth-gilead for battle, or shall I not?’ ‘March,’ they said, ‘and the Lord will deliver [it] into Your Majesty’s hands’” (22:6).

          With such a unanimous prophetic response, one might have expected Jehoshaphat to enter the war without further hesitation. However, the prophetic response somehow convinced Jehoshaphat that something was wrong: “Then Jehoshaphat asked, ‘Isn’t there another prophet of the Lord here through whom we can inquire?’” (22:7).

          What signaled the need for a second opinion? The 400 prophets spoke in God’s Name! Radak and Abarbanel consider this narrative in light of the overall Ahab narrative. Ahab and Jezebel supported Baal worship, and therefore these prophets must have been prophets of Baal. These idolaters tried to deceive Jehoshaphat by using God’s Name, but the righteous king saw through their evil ruse. Although reasonable, this interpretation goes beyond the local text and requires interpretation from the global narrative.

          It appears that the most likely approach requires a different way of thinking. Like the prophets of many ancient Near Eastern pagan nations, these 400 men were court prophets, on the king’s payroll. Receiving large salary packages and great royal honor, they understood that they must always support the king’s wishes. In this instance, Ahab clearly desired to go to war. Therefore, the 400 prophets repackaged the king’s intent into prophetic words. Any other message would have resulted in their getting fired, or worse.

          Jehoshaphat understood that these 400 “prophets” were like pagan prophets, under their king’s thumb. True prophets of Israel served God alone. They regularly confronted kings and other powerful figures when they strayed from God’s ways. Therefore, Jehoshaphat demanded a true prophet, one who would honestly reflect God’s will.

          There was indeed another prophet, Micaiah son of Imlah, available for consultation. The wicked Ahab despised him, and did all he could to cancel Micaiah and silence him.

          First, Ahab expressed displeasure at the mere need to invite him: “And the king of Israel answered Jehoshaphat, ‘There is one more man through whom we can inquire of the Lord; but I hate him, because he never prophesies anything good for me, but only misfortune—Micaiah son of Imlah.’ But King Jehoshaphat said, ‘Don’t say that, Your Majesty’” (22:8).

          When that strategy failed, Ahab let his henchmen intimidate the true prophet: “The messenger who had gone to summon Micaiah said to him: ‘Look, the words of the prophets are with one accord favorable to the king. Let your word be like that of the rest of them; speak a favorable word’” (22:13). Of course, the true prophet refused to kowtow to this pressure: “‘As the Lord lives,’ Micaiah answered, ‘I will speak only what the Lord tells me’” (22:14).

          When he arrives at the palace, Micaiah sarcastically mimics the false prophets. Irritated by the sarcasm, Ahab demands that Micaiah state God’s true prophetic message: “When he came before the king, the king said to him, ‘Micaiah, shall we march upon Ramoth-gilead for battle, or shall we not?’ He answered him, ‘March and triumph! The Lord will deliver [it] into Your Majesty’s hands.’ The king said to him, ‘How many times must I adjure you to tell me nothing but the truth in the name of the Lord?’” (22:15-16).

          Micaiah then replies with the true prophecy, suggesting that Ahab will perish if he goes to war against Aram: “Then he said, ‘I saw all Israel scattered over the hills like sheep without a shepherd; and the Lord said, “These have no master; let everyone return to his home in safety”’” (22:17).

After dismissing the 400 prophets as false prophets who mislead Ahab, the prophets attempt to intimidate Micaiah: “Thereupon Zedekiah son of Chenaanah stepped up and struck Micaiah on the cheek, and demanded, ‘Which way did the spirit of the Lord pass from me to speak with you?’” (22:24). Micaiah stood his ground despite the insult and the overwhelming numerical superiority of the opposition.

Ahab had hoped his yes-men would convince Jehoshaphat. He attempted to discourage Jehoshaphat from inviting Micaiah. His emissary pressured Micaiah to join the 400 court prophets. Zedekiah struck Micaiah, attempting to intimidate the prophet. All of these strategies failed.

Unable to escape the truth of Micaiah’s prophecy, Ahab therefore ordered that the prophet be imprisoned: “Then the king of Israel said… ‘Put this fellow in prison, and let his fare be scant bread and scant water until I come home safe’” (22:26-27).

The process of cancelling Micaiah was complete. Ahab followed his initial decision and went to war, and met his fate on the battlefront as prophesied by Micaiah. What happened to the imprisoned prophet? We never find out. Perhaps he was released after Ahab’s death, perhaps he was forgotten and died in prison.

In addition to the tragic conclusions to the story, it is worth focusing on King Jehoshaphat’s role. He initially demanded a true, God-fearing prophet to convey God’s word. He knew Ahab’s 400 court prophets were fraudulent. He witnessed Ahab’s shameless intimidation of Micaiah. He heard Micaiah’s prophetic words. And despite all that, Jehoshaphat joined Ahab in war, almost losing his own life (see the rest of the chapter). He was a king and a powerful ally, and certainly could have opposed Ahab with greater force. However, Jehoshaphat demonstrates that he no longer has the strength to stand by God’s prophet against Ahab and his powerful establishment.

Ahab thus developed a self-serving and well-financed system of court prophets; he intimidated, silenced, and cancelled true prophets; and he kept righteous voices like those of Jehoshaphat adequately silent so that he could achieve whatever he wanted. If Jehoshaphat had shown more resolve, perhaps the story could have turned out differently.

This past Shabbat (July 9, 2022), I had the privilege to lead the newly-created Foundations Minyan at Congregation Beth Aaron in Teaneck, New Jersey. It is an intermediate service--one that adds learning and discussion to a full Shabbat morning prayer service. Approximately 100 people were in attendance, demonstrating the deep thirst so many people have for an enhancement of their prayer and synagogue experience. The service was created by Michelle Diamond and her friends and family in memory of her late husband, Andy Diamond.

Here is a written-up version of the sermon on prayer I gave.

Rabbi Hayyim Angel, National Scholar

THE PARADOX OF PRAYER

The Talmud reports an unusual and somewhat troubling anecdote about petitionary prayer that contains important insight into the nature of asking things of God:

         

Rabbi Mani often used to attend [the discourses] of Rabbi Yitzhak ben Eliashab, and he complained: The rich members of the family of my father-in-law are annoying me. The latter exclaimed: May they become poor! They became poor. Later on [Rabbi Mani] complained: Now they press me [for support], and Rabbi Isaac exclaimed: Let them become rich! They became rich.

[On another occasion] he complained: My wife is no longer attractive to me. Rabbi Isaac asked: What is her name? He replied: Hannah. Whereupon Rabbi Isaac exclaimed: May Hannah become beautiful! And she became beautiful. He then complained: She now has become too arrogant [from her beauty], whereupon Rabbi Isaac exclaimed: If that is so, let Hannah revert to her [former] ugliness! And she became once again ugly.

Two disciples used to attend [the discourses of] Rabbi Isaac ben Eliashab, and they said to him, Master, pray that we may become very wise. He replied: Once I had the power to do this, but now I no longer possess this power. (Ta’anit 23b)

          Rabbi Yitzchak Blau addresses different levels of this story. At its surface, the Talmud teaches that we often want things that contain mixed blessings. What initially seems best for us in one area often comes at high price in another.

          At another level, the final component of the narrative—the disciples who requested a prayer for wisdom and were rebuffed—teaches that even matters that are truly important cannot be corrected with the use of prayer as a magic wand. To attain wisdom, one must devote oneself to study, rather than praying for instant knowledge and judgment. The talmudic anecdote, then, teaches that first, we must be careful what we pray for, and second, that we must look inward and work to achieve genuine change, rather than depending exclusively on prayer (Fresh Fruit & Vintage Wine: The Ethics and Wisdom of the Aggada [Jersey City, NJ: Ktav, 2009], pp. 219–221).

*****

This story triggers a far more powerful question regarding prayer. Do we really hope to influence God? God knows what we lack without our needing to inform Him. Moreover, God will not necessarily respond to our petitions, and certainly does not need our words of praise.

A rationalist would say that we cannot influence God at all; prayer is primarily intended to remind us of our complete reliance on God, to transform us, and to hold ourselves up to the ideals contained in the prayers. A kabbalist would say that God allows human prayer to change the course of events. Many biblical narratives give this impression as well, as God often responds to prayers.

A shortcoming of the rationalist view is the dissonance that ensues, since our prayers are in fact largely comprised of praise and petition. In the kabbalistic approach, it is all too easy for prayer to take on a pagan character where we think we are manipulating God, treating Him like an unusually well-stocked vending machine. Additionally, many prayers are not answered as one would have liked. The false expectation that prayer achieves direct positive results may cause one to lose faith.

The Talmud (Berakhot 32a) presents a healthier approach: “Rabbi Simlai expounded: One should always first recount the praise of the Holy One, blessed be He, and then pray. From where do we know this? From Moses’ plea to enter the Land” (Deuteronomy 3:23–24). Ironically, the Talmud cites the classic example of a prayer that was not accepted! And of all people, Moses was praying! As heartbreaking as that episode is, it presents a vital lesson showing that even Moses did not always get what he wanted when he prayed.

Following this lead, Rabbi Joseph Soloveitchik explains that “The foundation of prayer is not the conviction of its effectiveness but the belief that through it we approach God intimately and the miraculous community embracing finite man and his Creator is born. The basic function of prayer is not its practical consequences but the metaphysical formation of a fellowship consisting of God and man” (Worship of the Heart, p. 35).

          Our Spring 2023 issue of Conversations will be dedicated to standing up for our core principles. This value is paramount for us at the Institute.

          Over the summer, I will be writing a series of reflections on biblical stories that speak to this topic.

Lot: Compromising Principle for Comfort

          Lot is one of the most fascinating figures in the Torah. As the nephew of Abraham and Sarah (known as Abram and Sarai during the first stages of the narrative), he joins them on their long journey to the Land of Canaan.

          From the very beginning, God repeatedly promises the Land to Abraham’s descendants. As Abraham sees no possibility of biological descendants as he and Sarah are barren, Lot seems like the obvious heir.

          Then, famine strikes, and Abraham, Sarah, and Lot descend to Egypt to obtain food. It is a traumatic experience, as Pharaoh takes Sarah as a wife. The episode ends well thanks to God’s direct intervention. Abraham and Lot emerge from Egypt much wealthier, as a result of Pharaoh’s gifts (Genesis 12).

          While Abraham and Sarah rebuilt their lives in Canaan afterwards, Lot never forgot the fact that the Nile provided material stability for Egypt. Canaan precariously depended on rainfall, leaving its inhabitants prone for future famines.

          When the shepherds of Abraham and Lot quarreled over room for pasture, Lot chose to move to Sodom. The Torah describes Sodom’s appeal: “Lot looked about him and saw how well watered was the whole plain of the Jordan, all of it—this was before the Lord had destroyed Sodom and Gomorrah—all the way to Zoar, like the garden of the Lord, like the land of Egypt” (Genesis 13:10). The steady rise of the Jordan River resembled that of the Garden of Eden and Egypt. Lot wanted that stability and comfort.

          The Torah immediately reports the price of that comfort: “Now the inhabitants of Sodom were very wicked sinners against the Lord” (Genesis 13:13). By moving to the depraved city of Sodom, Lot abandoned the lifestyle Abraham and Sarah exemplified.

          Over the next several years, Lot married a woman of Sodom, and two of his daughters later married men of Sodom. Deeply entrenched as he was, he still maintained a sense of Abraham and Sarah’s hospitality. He invited the angels to his home when the other inhabitants of Sodom ignored the visitors (Genesis 19).

          Lot remained head and shoulders above the people of Sodom. Nevertheless, he compromised the dearest principles of the household of Abraham and Sarah by moving to the wicked city, all in the name of comfort. In the final analysis, he never won the respect of his neighbors, he lost his home, his two married daughters, and his wife. On a different plane, Lot also forfeited his position as the potential heir of Abraham and Sarah.

          Lot’s descendants, the nations of Ammon and Moab, were characterized by Sodom’s anti-hospitality culture: “No Ammonite or Moabite shall be admitted into the congregation of the Lord; none of their descendants, even in the tenth generation, shall ever be admitted into the congregation of the Lord, because they did not meet you with food and water on your journey after you left Egypt, and because they hired Balaam son of Beor, from Pethor of Aramnaharaim, to curse you.—But the Lord your God refused to heed Balaam; instead, the Lord your God turned the curse into a blessing for you, for the Lord your God loves you.—You shall never concern yourself with their welfare or benefit as long as you live” (Deuteronomy 23:4-7).

          Yet, some trace of good remained in Lot, and that streak of hospitality was manifest in Lot’s stellar descendant, Ruth the Moabite. Ruth married Boaz, and became the great-grandmother of King David.

          The Lot saga reminds us of how easy it is for generally good people or institutions to be overly tempted by financial gain and comfort to the point where they compromise their integrity and core principles. Today’s Lots may rationalize this behavior on the grounds that everyone needs financial security. Nonetheless, the price they pay in compromising their values far outweighs whatever temporary gains they obtain.

The Torah enjoins us to emulate Abraham and Sarah—righteous, hospitable, principled individuals who stood firm in their faith and ideals. With all of their struggles, they worked hard to build a righteous family with authentic values, and they prospered among their neighbors.

America, Jews, and a Dream in Progress

excerpts of a sermon delivered by Rabbi Marc D. Angel, September 12, 2004

“We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights,that among these are Life, Liberty, and the pursuit of Happiness.” These words from the American Declaration of Independence reflect the deepest ideals and aspirations of the American people. America is not merely a country, vast and powerful; America is an idea, a vision of life as it could be.

When these words were first proclaimed on July 4, 1776, Congregation Shearith Israel was almost 122 years old. It was a venerable community, with an impressive history--a bastion of Jewish faith and tradition,and an integral part of the American experience.

When the British invaded New York in 1776, a large group of congregants, including our Hazan Rev. Gershom Mendes Seixas,left the city rather than live under British rule. Many joined the Revolutionary army and fought for American independence.

Some remained in New York, and conducted services in our synagogue building on Mill Street. Early in the war, British soldiers broke into the synagogue and desecrated two Torah scrolls. This was not just an attack on scrolls, but was a symbolic assault on the spiritual foundations of Judaism, the self-same foundations upon which the American republic has been built.

In our service today, we read from one of these Torah scrolls as a symbolic response to those soldiers, and to all those who would seek to undermine the eternal teachings of Torah and the principles of American democracy: we are not intimidated, we are not afraid. Generation by generation, we will continue to live by our ideals and by our faith. Generation by generation, we will lend our strength to the great American enterprise that promises hope and freedom, one nation under God, with liberty and justice for all.

Our story in America is not built on historical abstractions, but on generations of Jews who have played their roles in the unfolding of this nation. It is a very personal history, ingrained in our collective memory.

We have just read from the Revolutionary Period Torah scroll, from the section known as “Kedoshim”, only a few columns from where the British soldiers damaged the scroll. Kedoshim opens with a challenge to the people of Israel to be a holy nation, to live according to the commandments of God, to have the courage and inner strength to maintain Torah ideals in a world that is not always receptive to such lofty teachings. The portion goes on to specify how we are to manifest holiness: through charity; honesty; commitment to truth and justice; through the avoidance of gossip and hatred. It culminates with the words: ve-ahavta le-re-aha kamokha, and you shall love your neighbor as yourself. The very principles enjoined by this passage are the spiritual foundations of the United States of America. These teachings are constant reminders of how to live a good life and build a righteous society; they also are prods to make us realize how far short we fall from these ideals, how much more work remains to be done.

On this 350th anniversary of the American Jewish community, we reflect on the courage and heroic efforts of our forebears who have maintained Judaism as a vibrant and living force in our lives. We express gratitude to America for having given us—and all citizens—the freedom to practice our faith. This very freedom has energized and strengthened America.

Within Congregation Shearith Israel, we have been blessed with men and women who have helped articulate Jewish ideals and American ideals. Their voices have blended in with the voices of fellow Americans of various religions and races, to help shape the dream and reality of America.

The American Declaration of Independence pronounced that all men are created equal. In his famous letter to the Jewish community of Newport, in August 1790, President George Washington hailed the United States for allowing its citizens freedom—not as a favor bestowed by one group on another—but in recognition of the inherent natural rights of all human beings. This country, wrote President Washington, “gives to bigotry no sanction, to persecution no assistance.”

And yet, if equality and human dignity are at the core of American ideals, the fulfillment of these ideals have required—and still require—sacrifice and devotion. Reality has not always kept up with the ideals. In 1855, Shearith Israel member Uriah Phillips Levy—who rose to the rank of Commodore in the U.S. Navy—was dropped from the Navy’s active duty list. He was convinced that anti-Semitism was at the root of this demotion. He appealed the ruling and demanded justice. He asked: are people “now to learn to their sorrow and dismay that we too have sunk into the mire of religious intolerance and bigotry?... What is my case today, if you yield to this injustice, may tomorrow be that of the Roman Catholic or the Unitarian, the Presbyterian or the Methodist, the Episcopalian or the Baptist. There is but one safeguard: that is to be found in an honest, whole-hearted, inflexible support of the wise, the just, the impartial guarantee of the Constitution.” Levy won his case. He helped the United States remain true to its principles.

Shearith Israel member Moses Judah (1735-1822) believed that all men were created equal—including black men. In 1799, he was elected to the New York Society for Promoting the Manumission of Slaves. During his tenure on the standing committee between 1806 and 1809, about fifty slaves were freed. Through his efforts, many other slaves achieved freedom. He exerted himself to fight injustice, to expand the American ideals of freedom and equality regardless of race or religion.

Another of our members, Maud Nathan, believed that all men were created equal—but so were all women created equal. She was a fiery, internationally renowned suffragette, who worked tirelessly to advance a vision of America that indeed recognized the equality of all its citizens—men and women. As President of the Consumers’ League of New York from 1897-1917, Maud Nathan was a pioneer in social activism, working for the improvement of working conditions of employees in New York’s department stores. Equality and human dignity were the rights of all Americans, rich and poor, men and women.

The Declaration of Independence proclaimed that human beings have unalienable rights, among them are life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. These words express the hope and optimism of America. They are a repudiation of the tyranny and oppression that prevailed—and still prevail—in so many lands. America is a land of opportunity, where people can live in freedom. The pursuit of happiness really signifies the pursuit of self-fulfillment, of a meaningful way of life. America’s challenge was—and still is—to create a harmonious society that allows us to fulfill our potentials.

President George Washington declared a day of national Thanksgiving for November 26, 1789. Shearith Israel held a service, at which Hazan Gershom Mendes Seixas called on this congregation “to unite, with cheerfulness and uprightness…to promote that which has a tendency to the public good.” Hazzan Seixas believed that Jews, in being faithful to Jewish tradition, would be constructive and active participants in American society.

Life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness were not reserved only for those born in America; they are the rights of all human beings everywhere. This notion underlies the idealism of the American dream, calling for a sense of responsibility for all suffering people, whether at home or abroad. American Jews have been particularly sensitive and responsive to this ideal.

On March 8,1847, Hazan Jacques Judah Lyons addressed a gathering at Shearith Israel for the purpose of raising funds for Irish famine relief. The potato crop in Ireland had failed in 1846, resulting in widespread famine. Hazan Lyons well realized that the Jewish community needed charitable dollars for its own internal needs; and yet he insisted that Jews reach out and help the people of Ireland. He said that there was one indestructible and all-powerful link between us and the Irish sufferers: “That link, my brethren, is HUMANITY! Its appeal to the heart surmounts every obstacle. Clime, color, sect are barriers which impede not its progress thither.” In assisting with Irish famine relief, the Jewish community reflected its commitment to the well-being of all suffering human beings. American Jewry grew into—and has continued to be—a great philanthropic community perhaps unmatched in history. Never have so few given so much to so many. In this, we have been true to our Jewish tradition, and true to the spirit of America.

Who articulated the hope and promise of America more eloquently than Emma Lazarus? “Give me your tired, your poor, your huddled masses yearning to breathe free, the wretched refuse of your teeming shore. Send these, the homeless, tempest-tost to me. I lift my lamp beside the golden door.” How appropriate it is that her poem is affixed to the great symbol of American freedom, the Statue of Liberty.

Alice Menken, (for many years President of our Sisterhood) did remarkable work to help immigrants, to assist young women who ran into trouble with the law, to promote reform of the American prison system. She wrote: “We must seek a balanced philosophy of life. We must live to make the world worth living in, with new ideals, less suffering, and more joy.”

Americans see ourselves as one nation, indivisible, under God, with liberty and justice for all. Yet, liberty and justice are not automatically attained. They have required—and still require—wisdom, vigilance, and active participation. America prides itself on being a nation of laws, with no one above the law. The American legal tradition has been enriched by the insights and the work of many American Jews.

In one of his essays, Justice Benjamin Nathan Cardozo—a devoted member of Shearith Israel--referred to a Talmudic passage which has been incorporated into our prayer book. It asks that the Almighty let His mercy prevail over strict justice. Justice Cardozo reminded us that the American system relies not only on justice—but on mercy. Mercy entails not merely an understanding of laws, but an understanding of the human predicament, of human nature, of the circumstances prevailing inhuman society. Another of our members, Federal Judge William Herlands, echoed this sentiment when he stated that Justice without Mercy—is just ice!

Our late rabbis Henry Pereira Mendes, David de Sola Pool and Louis C. Gerstein, were singularly devoted to social welfare, to religious education, to the land of Israel. They distinguished themselves for their devotion to Zionism, and played their parts in the remarkable unfolding of the State of Israel. They, along with so many American Jews, have keenly understood how much unites Israel and the United States—two beacons of democracy and idealism in a very troubled world.

These individuals—along with so many other American Jews—were exponents of the American ideals and the American dream. During the past 350 years, the American Jewish community has accomplished much and contributed valiantly to all aspects of American life. We have cherished our participation in American life. We have been free to practice our faith and teach our Torah. We have worked with Americans of other faiths and traditions to mold a better, stronger, more idealistic nation.

America today is not just a powerful and vast country. It is also an idea, a compelling idea that has a message for all people in all lands. As American Jews, we are committed to the ideals of freedom and equality, human dignity and security, to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness, the pursuit of harmony among ourselves and throughout the world. We have come far as a nation, but very much remains to be done. May God give us the strength and resolve to carry on, to work proudly as Jews to bring the American dream to many more generations of humanity.

I close with a prayer spoken by Mordecai Manuel Noah at the consecration of our second Mill Street Synagogue on April 17, 1818: “May we prove ever worthy of His blessing; may He look down from His heavenly abode, and send us peace and comfort; may He instill in our minds a love of country, of friends, and of all mankind. Be just, therefore, and fear not. That God who brought us out of the land of Egypt, who walked before us like ‘a cloud by day and a pillar of fire by night,’ will never desert his people Israel.”

Is it proper to frequently post photos of your life on Facebook or Instagram for anyone to see? What about just for your friends and acquaintances to see?

I begin with a disclaimer: I don’t personally do Facebook or Instagram. I very much enjoy photos from our children and grandchildren, which we receive via WhatsApp and Nixplay, but I have no interest at all in sharing photographs beyond our immediate family.

Although Facebook and Instagram are not part of my own life, I know relatives and friends who find these social media to be very worthwhile, especially when it comes to keeping up with family and friends who live in other towns. If people find these things to be of real value, they have a right to opt in to these social media.

I’m not sure what positive value there is in posting photos beyond one’s immediate circle of family and friends. To me, it smacks of inappropriate exhibitionism. I find it strange that people want total strangers to follow their lives; I find it even stranger that people actually find satisfaction in following the lives of total strangers.

Time is precious and non-recoverable. Before deciding whether or not—or how much—to engage in social media, one needs to be sure that the investment of time is well worth it. Think carefully, and decide on your own what’s best for you.

Is it proper to go to a casino and play the slot machines or card games?

 The very first verse in Tehilim provides the answer to this question. The Psalmist declares that happy is the person who does not sit in the company of idlers…moshav leitsim. I think moshav leitsim is an apt term to apply to casinos.

Halakhic tradition views gambling in very negative terms. At worst, gambling involves financial dealings of dubious propriety deeming an inveterate gambler as someone with tarnished reputation. At best, gambling entails becoming part of a moshav leitsim, a group of people engaged in frivolous activity.

People go to casinos (or gamble online) not merely to pass a few hours of entertainment…but to win money. Although everyone knows that the odds are stacked in favor of the house, people think they will be lucky to win at card games or slot machines. The casinos offer many incentives to get people to gamble…and the casinos rake in many millions of dollars from gullible players.

Many patrons of casinos lose substantial amounts of money. Some have become “addicted” and keep betting their assets away in the hope that this time they’ll hit it big. But very few come out ahead and very many suffer serious losses.

It is best not to get started with gambling. If one already is a frequenter of casinos (or plays online gambling games) it would be best to stop.

Happy is the person who does not sit in the company of idlers, time wasters, gamblers.

 Is it proper not to wear sunscreen given the UVA/UVB exposure risks? Should a parent educate young children about the need for sunscreen and require them to wear it?

One of the basic responsibilities of parents is to keep their children as safe and healthy as possible. Would we think it proper for parents to feed children tainted food that can harm them? Would we think it proper for parents to let children play in traffic? Of course not. We would view this as highly irresponsible behavior.

Likewise, would we think it proper for parents to expose their children to bright sun without having protected them with sunscreen? Sunburn—especially severe sunburn—is not only painful but can have long term detrimental impact on health. Responsible parents will see to it that their children are properly covered with sunscreen. They will teach their children the importance of maintaining healthful practices.

Conveying the importance of good hygiene goes beyond the issue of sunscreen. It entails maintaining and teaching a healthy lifestyle. The goal is to inculcate our children and grandchildren with proper behaviors so that they will adopt these behaviors on their own…even when we aren’t there to nag them!

  Isaiah Berlin was one of the intellectual wonders of 20th century England. Born in Riga in 1909, his family emigrated to England in 1921. Isaiah quickly adapted to life in his new land, attending St. Paul’s School and Corpus Christi College, Oxford. He studied classical languages, ancient history, philosophy, politics and economics; he was a top student and a voracious reader.  In 1932 he was appointed to a lectureship at New College, and he became the first Jew to be elected to a Prize Fellowship at All Souls, considered to be among the highest honors in British academic life.

     During the 1930s, he was one of a group that developed “the Oxford philosophy,” a movement that also included premier Oxford scholars J. L. Austin, A. J. Ayer and Stuart Hampshire. During the Second World War, Berlin was stationed in New York serving in the British Information Services (1940-42), and then at the British Embassy in Washington DC (1942-46).  In 1945-46, he spent four months in the Soviet Union, meeting with persecuted members of the Russian intelligentsia, including Anna Akhmatova and Boris Pasternak. His stay in the Soviet Union deepened his staunch opposition to communism.

After the war, Berlin returned to Oxford where his interests turned to the area of intellectual history. In 1950, he received a research fellowship at All Souls, allowing him to pursue his academic interests which were outside the mainstream of philosophy as it was then taught at Oxford. He made regular visits to American universities, where his lectures impacted on the development of intellectual history as an area for academic research.

       In 1957 Berlin was elected Chichele Professor of Social and Political Theory at Oxford.  Also in 1957, he was knighted. In 1967, he resigned his chair upon becoming the founding President of Wolfson College at Oxford, a position he held until retiring in 1975. He continued to teach, write and lecture, and passed away in 1997.

       That a Jewish immigrant boy from Riga became one of the foremost intellectuals of England is a tribute to Isaiah Berlin’s brilliance, as well as to the receptivity of Oxford and the English academic community. He rose to great intellectual heights, and did so as a British Jew.

       In his biography of Isaiah Berlin, Michael Ignatieff reports that Berlin’s mother taught him in his Riga childhood: “We were Jews….We were not Russian. We were not Letts. We were something else. We had to have a home. There was no point living in a perpetual qui vive. Above all, there was no point denying it, concealing it. To do so was undignified and unsuccessful” (Isaiah Berlin: A Life, p. 30). This early lesson stayed with Berlin throughout his life. Even as he adapted and “belonged” within English academic life, he was always aware of his being, in some sense, an “outsider.” He understood the need to belong and therefore sympathized with Zionism, the movement that promoted the right of Jews to live their own lives and to be fully accepted as Jews. Berlin explained that to be a Jew “was to know how deeply men and women needed to be at home somewhere in the world. Belonging was more than possession of land and statehood; it was the condition of being understood itself” (Ibid. p. 292).

       When he served in New York in the early 1940s, he was drawn to public Jews such as Rabbi Stephen Wise and Justice Louis Brandeis. He could not bear “apologetic American Jews” such as Walter Lippmann and Arthur Hays Sulzberger and saw them, in the words of Lewis Namier, as “trembling amateur gentiles” (Ibid., p. 105).  Berlin and a colleague coined the acronym OTAG, Order of the Trembling Amateur Gentiles.

       Berlin was not religiously observant in the Orthodox sense, but he never took his Judaism in the direction of Reform. “Berlin was adamant that if there was to be observance, it had to be as authentic, as traditional, as close to the ancient faith as possible….For all his skepticism, his respect for the religious content of the ritual was unfeigned” (Ibid. p. 294).

       Berlin’s Jewishness may have played a role in a central aspect of his thinking. Jewish tradition teaches that all human beings are created in the image of God; all have access to God; the righteous of all nations have a place in the world-to-come. Whereas other religions and ideologies have claimed exclusive possession of truth (and eternal salvation), Judaism makes room for others. This recognition of “truths” among all people is uniquely important.

       In his essay, “The Pursuit of the Ideal,” Berlin developed his understanding of pluralism. He rejected the view that “all genuine questions must have one true answer and one only, all the rest being necessarily errors.” He dismissed the notion that there was one dependable route to attaining  this “one true answer.” He argued against the idea that “the true answers, when found, must necessarily be compatible with one another and form a single whole, for one truth cannot be incompatible with another—that we knew a priori” (The Proper Study of Mankind, p. 5).

       Indeed, those who have posited one correct truth to the exclusion of any others—such people have fostered totalitarian societies, inquisitions, religious persecutions etc.  They have been so certain that they alone have truth, that they disdain—and often punish—those who do not share their truth. And they commit their atrocities with self-righteousness! “To force people into the neat uniforms demanded by dogmatically believed-in schemes is almost always the road to inhumanity” (Ibid., p. 16).

       Berlin’s idea of pluralism is elegant. It differs from relativism that calls on us to accept all views as being equally valid. Rather, pluralism is “the conception that there are many different ends that men may seek and still be fully rational, fully men, capable of understanding each other and sympathizing and deriving light from each other…..Intercommunication between cultures in time and space is possible only because what makes men human is common to them, and acts as a bridge between them. But our values are ours, and there are theirs” (Ibid., p. 8).

       In his essay, “Two Concepts of Liberty,” Berlin directed his attention to the predicament of oppressed classes or nationalities. “What they want, as often as not, is simply recognition (of their class or nation or color or race) as an independent source of human activity, as an entity with a will of its own, intending to act in accordance with it (whether it is good or legitimate, or not), and not to be ruled, educated, guided, with however light a hand, as being not quite fully human, and therefore not quite free.”  Berlin repudiated paternalism “not because it is more oppressive than naked, brutal, unenlightened tyranny, nor merely because it ignores the transcendental reason embodied in me, but because it is an insult to my conception of myself as a human being, determined to make my own life in accordance with my own (not necessarily rational or benevolent) purposes, and, above all, entitled to be recognized as such by others. For if I am not so recognized, then I may fail to recognize, I may doubt, my own claim to be a fully independent human being” (Ibid., p. 228).

       Berlin underscored these thoughts in his essay, “Nationalism.” He pointed out the obvious: the thought of 19th and early 20th centuries was “astonishingly Europocentric.” When even the most imaginative and radical political thinkers spoke of Africans or Asians, there was “as a rule, something curiously remote and abstract about their ideas….The peoples of Africa and Asia were discussed either as wards or as victims of Europeans, but seldom, if ever, in their own right as peoples with histories and cultures of their own; with a past and present and future which must be understood in terms of their own actual character and circumstances” (Ibid., p. 603).

       Isaiah Berlin, steeped in academic studies, was not an “ivory tower” scholar. He thought deeply and cared deeply about politics and society. He thought deeply and cared deeply about the Jewish predicament as an oppressed and misunderstood minority group; he thought deeply and cared deeply about how humanity might be more respectful, thoughtful, and fairer.

       His teachings are as relevant today as they were when he first expounded them.

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            I was born and raised in Seattle, Washington, as were both of my parents. My grandparents had come to Seattle early in the 20th century from towns in Turkey and the Island of Rhodes. My ancestors had lived in the old Ottoman Empire since the expulsion of Jews from Spain in 1492. Spanish religious intolerance at that time was counter-balanced by Ottoman religious tolerance.

In Seattle, Jews were a tiny minority of the general population. Sephardic Jews were a small minority within the city’s Jewish population. My grandparents, like the other Sephardic immigrants, spoke Judeo-Spanish as their mother tongue. I thought it was perfectly natural and normal to grow up in Seattle with Turkish-born grandparents who spoke a medieval form of Spanish!

       I strive to live according to the truth of my faith. Yet, I also am struck by a massive reality: I am part of a Sephardic Orthodox Jewish community that represents an infinitesimal percentage of humanity. There are at least seven billion other human beings who live according to their faiths, and who know little or nothing about mine. If I have the true way of life — one for which I am willing to live and die — how am I to relate to the overwhelming majority of human beings who do not share my faith?

       Growing up as an Orthodox Sephardic Jew in Seattle, I learned very early in life that I had to be very strong in my faith and traditions in order to avoid being swallowed up by the overwhelming majority cultures. I also learned the importance of theological humility. It simply would make no sense to claim that I had God’s entire Truth and that seven billion human beings were living in spiritual darkness. I surely believed — and do believe — that I have a profound religious truth that guides my life. But I also believed — and do believe — that all human beings have equal access to God, since God has created each one of us in God’s image.

       One of the great challenges facing religions is to see the full picture of humanity, not just our particular segment of it. While being fully committed to our faiths, we also need to make room for others. We need, in a sense, to see humanity from the perspective of God, to see the entire canvas not just individual segments of it.

       Religious vision is faulty when it sees one, and only one, way to God. Religious vision is faulty when it promotes forced conversions, discrimination against “infidels,” violence and murder of those holding different views. How very tragic it is that much of the anti-religious persecution that takes place in our world is perpetrated by people who claim to be religious, who claim to be serving the glory of God.

       While religion today should be the strongest force for a united, compassionate and tolerant humanity, it often appears in quite different garb. Religion is too often identified with terrorism, extremism, superstition, exploitation…and hypocrisy. People commit the most heinous crimes…and do so while claiming to be acting in the name of God.

       Isaiah Berlin’s concept of pluralism provides a framework to be faithful to our own truths, while being genuinely respectful of the truths of others. Religion should unite humanity in a universal striving for Godliness and righteousness.

References

Isaiah Berlin: The Proper Study of Mankind, Eds. Henry Hardy and Roger Hausheer, Farrar, Straus and Giroux, New York, 1998.

Ignatieff, Michael, Isaiah Berlin: A Life, Henry Holt and Company, New York, 1998.