National Scholar Updates

...Even if bandits were to carve you up savagely, limb by limb, with a two-handled saw, he among you who let his heart get angered even at that would not be doing my bidding. Even then you should train yourselves: “Our minds will be unaffected... we will keep pervading the all-encompassing world with an awareness imbued with good will—abundant, expansive, immeasurable, free from hostility, free from ill will.” That's how you should train yourselves.

                        —Midlength Discourses of the Buddha, Sutta 21[1]

When R. Aqiva was taken out for execution, it was the hour for the recital of the Shema, and while they combed his flesh with iron combs, he was accepting upon himself the kingship of heaven. His students said to him: Our teacher, even to this point? He said to them: All my days I have been troubled by this verse, “With all your soul,” [meaning] “Even if God takes your soul.” I said: When shall I have the opportunity of fulfilling this? Now that I have the opportunity, shall I not fulfill it?”

—BT Berakhot 61b

            As R. Aha ben Ada said in the name of R. Hamnuna in the name of Rav, one must study even the ordinary conversation of the sages. Tree-like, the sap of wisdom feeds and secures every leaf of their conversation; it is not in their nature to let drop wholly irrelevant remarks.[2] This teaching returned to me when I came across a rough draft by a teacher of mine. It was its epigraph that caught my eye, a creative re-writing of a passage from Kierkegaard’s Either/Or.[3] Where the original had the word “poet,” my teacher had substituted the word “sage,” so that it read like this:

What is a [sage]? An unhappy man who hides deep anguish in his heart, but whose lips are so formed that when the sigh and cry pass through them, it sounds like lovely music.... And people flock around the [sage] and say: “Sing again soon”—that is, “May new sufferings torment your soul but your lips be fashioned as before, for the cry would only frighten us, but the music, that is blissful.”

Here, in an unpublished, unelaborated prelude to a work that has since undergone substantial revision, now existing as far as I know only in a tattered folder wedged into my bookshelf, is a thought which cracks wide open an issue strangely neglected in the study of Talmud. I speak of the issue of pain.

            Pain is an overwhelming theme in the lives of Haza”l. Examining aggadic material, one finds that the majority of prominent sages suffered intensely. Explicitly, they undergo chattel slavery,[4] public beatings,[5] the deaths or abductions of their children,[6] their own arrest, torture, and execution,[7] and the witnessing of the same happening to their teachers and parents.[8] They go mad with grief;[9] they seek death by locking themselves in rooms[10] or climbing into lit ovens.[11] To expand this list properly and so include the major categories of grief, madness, and trauma would be to halfway-write a talmudic encyclopedia. Implicitly, the reaches of this theme may be even further, as some sages bear classic behavioral marks of trauma in response to events about which the text creates a tender silence.[12] Pain itself is experienced by the sages as a force of supernatural strength, emerging from within them to reduce others to ash[13] or piles of bone.[14] They worry that it is powerful enough to consume the world:

‎They banded together against [R. Eliezer] and banished him, and said, “Who will go to notify him?” R. Aqiva said, “I will go, lest an unsuitable person notify him, and in consequence the whole world will be laid waste.”[15]

The gentleness with which R. Aqiva breaks the news to R. Eliezer averts the end of the world, but nevertheless, at the moment that R. Eliezer begins to weep,

A third of the olives, a third of the wheat, and a third of the barley in the world were destroyed, and some say even the dough in women’s hands expanded. It is taught that a great tragedy happened on that day, as every place on which R. Eliezer rested his eyes was burnt up. Even Rabban Gamliel as he was traveling by ship was nearly drowned by a wave.[16]

This is not merely a stylistic way of speaking of intense feelings. In the Talmud, joy does not usually cause flowers to bloom or sickness to heal, although tellingly enough aggadatha records comparatively few instances of unbounded happiness anyway. Even an intimate encounter with the divine may only leave one as whole as one was prior to enlightenment.[17] We must ask ourselves what the Talmud means by presenting such overwhelming suffering. It does not suffice to say that lives back then were harder than they are today, since despite the fact that the sages had moments of great happiness, we are seldom invited to read of their weddings, births, and joyful reunions, but are redirected again and again to the site of their pain.

            Ultimately, we will see that pain in the Talmud, as in the human nervous system, operates as a warning, not as a blessing; Haza”l not only deny that pain brings insight, but show how it functions as a barrier to insight. But first, the filial obligation of long-time students bids me to take up the proposition of my teacher’s epigraph, using a seriousness and generosity that will read it best. What would it mean to say that the sage is not merely characterized by their learning, but by the depth, refinement, and expressiveness of their suffering? How would this characterization situate the sages in their communities as teachers and deciders of law? What would the decisions of a sage rooted in suffering look like? We might venture that to dwell primarily in the world of pain is to cultivate despair in response to the social environment. This in turn precludes the mindset that legislation can fix human behavior, rather than address human beings; in other words, it inoculates against dangerous, utopian-minded overreach. This agrees with what the poet said:

Let judges secretly despair of justice: their verdicts will

be more acute. Let generals secretly despair of triumph;

killing will be defamed. Let priests secretly despair of faith:

their compassion will be true.[18]

            Precisely such an approach can be seen in the way Haza”l deal with sexual violence. In one piece of agadatha, the rape of women and girls is described as inevitable,[19] and we see that the sages made no attempt to engineer a perfectly rape-free society. We may contrast this with many attempts to do just that, which are inevitably supposedly achieved by restricting women’s freedom and visibility in the name of their protection.[20] The very isolation of women that is said to protect them then prevents them from publicizing their actual experiences with sexual violence, lending the venture a public image of success. The sages resisted gender segregation as a solution, as we can see in BT Gitin 57a:

It happened that a certain person was planning to divorce his wife, but her ketubah [divorce-payment] was high. What did he do? He went and invited his good friends over, and gave them food and drink until they became intoxicated, and lay them down on one bed, and took an egg white and sprinkled it around them. He set witnesses on them and came [to prosecute his case] before the Bet Din. There was an old man there who had belonged to the inner circle of Shamai the Elder, [who informed the Bet Din that] “Egg white contracts in fire, whereas semen evaporates in fire.” They tested it and found that he was correct, and brought [the husband] before the Bet Din, and whipped him, and collected her ketubah from him.[21]

            The lack of rabbinic condemnation of a mixed-gender drinking party, even in the face of sexual disaster, is striking. When blame is assigned, the problem identified by the rabbis is not a lack of chastity, nor an overabundance of freedom, but rather the lack of remembrance of pain. Hearing of the incident an unspecified time later,

Abayye said to Rav Yosef, “But since these people were all righteous, what is the reason they were punished [i.e. divinely, by undergoing such an incident in the first place]?” He replied, “Because they were not mourning for Jerusalem.”

The true danger of revelry, as identified by Rav Yosef, is that it precludes an admixture of mourning into one’s emotional palette. Yet there is something too in this conversation that gives us pause in our investigation of the value of suffering, as we see that the text portrays its lack as a failure in virtue that impairs one’s relationship with God, rather than as an impairment to one’s ethical sensibilities or ability to deal wisely with others. It is for this reason that when the text seeks for a detail which illustrates the value of pain, it selects the wife and guests, doing so as an exercise in theodicy. It does not attribute the insight of the Bet Din to their relationship with suffering, nor does it critique the machinating husband for lacking pain; indeed, we may suspect that if anything, its surfeit is what impedes him.

            This brings us to a sticking point. Pain courses through the lives of the sages, and its overwhelming presence in the Talmud is clearly a communication, but I contend that the nature of that communication is not an equation between wisdom and suffering. One strain of thought denies that there is even an alliance between wisdom and suffering. An aggadic text in which suffering rises perhaps most rawly to the surface shows antipathy not only to suffering but to any benefits said to arise from it:

R. Eliezer fell ill, and R. Yohanan came in to visit him. He saw that he was in a dark house, so he bared his arm and light shone from it. He saw that R. Eliezer was crying. He said to him, “Why are you crying? Is it because you did not learn enough Torah? We have taught: The one who does much and the one who does little are equal, if both act for the sake of heaven! Is it because of [the lack of] food? Not everyone has the privilege to eat at two tables! Is it because of [the lack or death] of children? This is the bone of my tenth child!” He replied, “Because this beauty will be swallowed up by the earth.” He joined in weeping, and said to him, “This is indeed reason to cry,” and both of them cried together. After a time, he asked, “Are your sufferings dear to you?” He answered, “Neither them nor their reward.” He said to him, “Give me your hand.” He gave it to him, and he raised him up.[22]

            We see here that suffering imparts something, but it is not wisdom, and though R. Eliezer seems to concede that there is a “reward,” it is not welcome. Yet complexity blooms around this perspective. Above on the same daf, it is stated that learning will stick fast in the memory of one who suffers—but only if the suffering is accepted with love.[23] Perhaps this is to say that while we often seem to remember well those teachings which were close to us in times of distress, higher thinking is derailed by deep internal disorder. Pain sharpens memory, but the memory of Torah must not be made so sharp that consciousness shrinks to touch it. Without equanimity, pain threatens wisdom.

            Further, while we have seen that the sages set realistic rather than utopian expectations for human behavior, can it really be said in general that their approach is characterized by despair? On many points, their work with Torah is characterized by an attentive, cautious optimism, revealed in halakhic institutions that reflect an understanding that human nature is neither immutable nor, as a matter of course, demonic. Examples include their emphasis on restorative justice[24] and their push for mediation between parties in conflict,[25] both of which reflect a stance that communities can and should work to re-incorporate destructive individuals. One of the central halakhic projects of the sages is also perhaps their most aspirational: Shabbat, with its high expectations of ethical behavior, its weekly undercutting of both class[26] and gender[27] divisions, and its creation of space for all to participate in study and contemplation. With the institution of Shabbat, the sages express that human nature at its very root is responsive and changeable, that it can and must grow into accountability. This thought is most poetically formulated in the idea that people gain a second soul on Shabbat, and that it is the observance itself of rest that makes the second soul possible.[28] In this way, human efforts at self-transformation are understood to be desired and assisted by the divine, and so flow with the momentum of creation, rather than counter to a harsh and unyielding reality.

            We can see this at work not only in halakhic institutions, but in the process of crafting halakha:

Rav Yosef said, “Originally, I thought, whenever someone tells me the halakha is like R. Yehudah, who said that a blind person is exempt from commandments, I will throw a party for the rabbis, since I am exempt but still perform them. Now that I hear from R. Hanina that the one who is obligated in them and performs them is greater than the one who is not obligates them but still performs them, it’s the opposite – whenever someone tells me the halakha is not like R. Yehudah, I throw a party for the rabbis.”[29]

Is this text cynical about rabbinic motives for endorsing this or that ruling? On the contrary, it is presented in an approving manner which forces the reader to re-think what it means to be self-serving. To Rav Yosef, a ruling is intuitively suspect when it causes in its subject a feeling of dread and loss of place in the world—marks, perhaps, that one has not been truly understood by the ruling’s author. Conversely, a good interpretation of Torah can at least partly be recognized by a feeling of delight. The specific outcome of the ruling and its hermeneutic justifications are secondary to this first response, which encodes a lifetime of conscious and unconscious knowledge of oneself and one’s place.[30]

            It is time to step through these texts and examine the problem from its other side: What does wisdom itself mean to the sages? For such a complex concept, one finds a remarkable unity in descriptions of wisdom in the Talmud. In contrast to their vision of the world and their own troubled existence in it, the sages describe their relationship with Torah as warm, nurturing, and maternal. In fact, the transmission of Torah is classically imagined as breastfeeding:

 “Her breasts will satisfy you at all times” (Mishlei 5:19): Why are words of Torah compared to a breast? Just as a baby will find milk in a breast as long as he nurses, so is it with words of Torah: As long as a person recites them, they will find flavor in them.[31]

            The details of this metaphor are developed throughout Talmud. In Masekhet Pesahim, we see a refinement in the assignation of roles. Now the breasts are the sages themselves, or perhaps the location of Torah learning, while milk is the wisdom that comes through Torah:

 “I am a wall, and my breasts are towers” (Shir haShirim 8): R. Yohanan said: “I am a wall”—that refers to Torah; “And my breasts are towers”—that refers to the sages. Rava said, “I am a wall”—that refers to the congregation of Israel; “And my breasts are towers”—that refers to the synagogues and study halls.[32]

            Similarly, R. Aqiva compares himself to a cow, and his student to a nursing calf. At the moment he chooses such a language to describe the transmission of his Torah, he is awaiting torture and execution in a Roman prison. Although one might have thought such a context would make suffering-based models of wisdom more vivid for him, the only pain he alludes to is that of swollen mammary glands.[33]

            This use of nursing imagery is so well-entrenched in talmudic culture that it also works in reverse, that is, human breasts remind the sages of wisdom,[34] just as today the heart may remind one of love. And it is not a simple symbolism: metonymic bonds tie breastfeeding to wisdom almost as closely as a map is bound to its territory. The mechanism of nursing is itself a guide to how wisdom is best acquired, namely, through a closeness to the human source of one’s learning, and with loving appetite for the material itself:

 [R. Ahadvoi bar Ami] answered [Rav Shesheth] mockingly. R. Sheseth felt wounded. R. Ahadvoi bar Ami lost his power of speech, and his learning left him. [R. Shesheth’s] mother came and, crying, stood before him and commanded him [to forgive R. Ahadvoi]. He paid her no attention. She said, “Look at these breasts from which you suckled.” He then asked for mercy for [R. Ahadvoi], and he was healed.[35]

            Here we see clearly that the sages did not consider pain the path to wisdom; it is rather the paralyzing by-product of ineffective learning, depicted here as a combative style of debate. Here is an echo to the tragedy of R. Eliezer of the nearly world-destroying pain, at odds with all his colleagues, whose exile also deprives him of the power of speech. The breasts of R. Shesheth’s mother, and her recollection of him nursing when he was young, embody the paradigm of learning which Haza”l depict as leading to the return and reflowering of wisdom.

            That suffering can cripple moral intellect, aside from one’s emotional soundness, in fact can be found in my teacher’s Kierkegaard passage, once we examine it in its original context. In Either/Or, it is not presented as the thought of the philosopher himself, but of the persona A. A is an aesthete whose greatest conscious fear is the inexorable dulling of pleasure by boredom.[36] He is unable to form any relationship other than the most fleeting and predatory, nor can he put down roots in any moral framework, since he is unable to evaluate ethical perspectives except in the aesthetic sense. This is because he is not alive to the realities of others, which would feed an ethical perspective. The second persona of Either/Or, Judge Wilhelm, puts his finger on what is behind A’s ideological and emotional detachment:

...alone in one’s boat, alone with one’s care, alone with one’s despair, which one prefers cowardly to retain rather than to suffer the pain of being healed. Permit me now to bring to light the sickly aspect of your life—not as though I wanted to terrify you, for I am not posing as a bugaboo, and you are too knowing to be affected by that sort of thing. But I beg you to reflect how painful, how sad, how humiliating it is to be in this sense a stranger and a pilgrim in this world.[37]

In contrast:

            It is only responsibility that bestows a blessing and true joy.[38]

Responsibility here is understood as a non-disposable, in fact indispensable, relationship with one’s surroundings and the object of one’s activity. This quality exists in opposition with detachment, described as follows:

The intellectual agility you possess is very becoming to youth and diverts the eye for a time. We are astonished to see a clown whose joints are so loose that all the restraints of man’s gait and posture are annulled. You are like that in an intellectual sense; you can just as well stand on your head as on your feet. Everything is possible for you, and you can surprise yourself and others with this possibility, but it is unhealthy…. Any man who has a conviction cannot at his pleasure turn himself and everything topsy-turvy in this way. Therefore I do not warn you against the world but against yourself and the world against you.[39]

Perhaps, prior to his admonition by the Judge, A is already in some sense aware that his philosophy is propelled by his pain; at any rate, he appears to feel its effects. Let us look again at the epigram:

What is a [sage]? An unhappy man who hides deep anguish in his heart, but whose lips are so formed that when the sigh and cry pass through them, it sounds like lovely music....

Elided here is a revealing elaboration by A:

His fate is like that of the unfortunate victims whom the tyrant Phalaris imprisoned in a brazen bull, and slowly tortured over a steady fire; their cries could not reach the tyrant’s ears so as to strike terror into his heart; when they reached his ears they sounded like sweet music.

One imprisoned in a brazen bull is unable to see anything or anyone outside of the bull. Articulate response of any sort is impossible. The only possibility is an involuntary expression of pain, which contaminates the destiny of its audience with its savagery—the classical Greek understanding of consequence demands that those who delight in the bull must also burn in it. Not only is this a poor recipe for a sage, it is a poor recipe for a poet, or else we would prefer above all artists the exquisitely insensible pain of the guitar-fumbling high school bard. No, the task of poets is not to weep prettily about their own inner torment; their place is outside the bull, in radical attentiveness to everyone and everything around them. This quality is named by Keats as negative capability. He writes:

A Poet is the most unpoetical of anything in existence; because he has no identity—he is continually in for—and filling some other Body—The Sun, the Moon, the Sea and Men and Women who are creatures of impulse are poetical and have about them an unchangeable attribute—the poet has none; no identity... When I am in a room... the identity of everyone in the room begins to [for so] to press on me that I am in a very little time an[ni]hilated—not only among Men; it would be the same in a Nursery of children...[40]

            Negative capability involves more even than this; it demands a complexity of vision and articulation that can only be governed by intuition rather than attendance on formal paradigm, and it demands comfort in uncertainty. Keats saw both of these as benevolent characteristics,[41] famously describing them in a language of love: “I am certain of nothing but of the holiness of the Heart's affections and the truth of Imagination.”[42] Here is a description of an art which I believe the sages of the Talmud would happily recognize as their own.

            To use the words of Judge Vilhelm, the Talmudic sage must be able to “suffer the pain of being healed” before attending to the needs of others. As Elaine Scarry explains in her work The Body in Pain,

To witness the moment when pain causes a reversion to the pre-language of cries and groans is to witness the destruction of language; but conversely, to be present when a person moves up out of that pre-language and projects the facts of sentience into speech is almost to have been permitted to be present at the birth of language itself.[43]

Nowhere is this better illustrated than in the well-known tale of R. Shimon bar Yohai, who escapes arrest and execution by fleeing with his son to a cave, where they dwell in complete isolation for 13 years, learning Torah. When the danger passes and they are able at last to emerge, father and son are unable to respond even to the ordinary people of their own community except by the reflexive, indiscriminate unleashing of their pain:

They left [the cave]. They saw people ploughing and sowing. [R. Shimon] said, “They abandon eternal life to busy themselves with life in the moment!” Everything they placed their eyes upon was immediately burnt up.[44]

By divine command, they are re-imprisoned in their cave for another year. After this, while his son continues to wound others, R. Shimon is able to heal them. In a less magical but not less marvelous fashion, he is able to move past an initial judgment of others’ behavior as transgressive by asking the reason for their actions, and listening carefully to their responses.[45] But his process of healing has only just begun, and it is here, where popular interest in the story begins to decline, that it is worth paying close attention.

R. Pinhas ben Yair, his son-in-law, heard about it and went out to meet him. He took him to the bathhouse. When he was tending to his flesh, he saw cuts, and began to cry. Tears fell from his eyes into [the cuts], and [R. Shimon] screamed [from the pain of the salt].

I am curious about these fresh cuts, and wonder if they might indicate something about R. Shimon’s response to his imprisonment, or to the world he found outside the prison. Rash”i posits that they are the result of sand abrasion.[46] It is also significant that R. Shimon is accepting treatment in a bathhouse, an institution he condemned at the beginning of the story, saying that they were built by the Roman occupiers in order to indulge themselves.[47] A door has opened in R. Shimon’s thinking, first regarding his own community, and now, perhaps, those outside it as well.

 [R. Pinhas] said to him, “Woe is me, that I see you like this!” He responded, “Fortunate are you to see me like this, for if you did not see me like this, you would not have found me as I am.” [He meant] that before [his exile], R. Shimon ben Yohai would ask a question, and R. Pinhas ben Yair could give him 13 answers, whereas now, R. Pinhas ben Yair could ask a question, and R. Shimon ben Yohai could give him 24 answers.

            When his suffering was raw and unprocessed, his learning in the isolation of the cave was indistinguishable from illiterate violence. Equanimity to suffering—both his own and that of his community—is given space to grow in a place of safety, with the loving ministrations of a family member. A sense of wholeness, rather than a sense of injury, is what allows him finally to make use of the Torah he acquired:

He said, Since a miracle happened for me, I will go fix something, as it says (Bereishith 33:18) “And Yaaqov departed whole”: Rav said, whole in is body, whole in his possessions, whole in his Torah... He asked, Is there anything that needs fixing?

            R. Shimon hears that there is a nearby field containing unmarked graves. The inability of kohanim to cross this field without contracting potential tum’ah causes them difficulty. We must pay attention to the role of asking, as it is his means of identifying a worthy problem, as well as his means of identifying a solution; R. Shimon begins work by interviewing the elderly to see what information can be excavated. Finally, he enters the field himself, marking loose soil as potential grave sites, releasing hard soil from suspicion, and forming footpaths across the field. Having once been a prisoner of earth, R. Shimon is able to return to that element in full possession of himself, in the name of usefulness to others. This being aggadatha, nothing is wholly tidy, and shortly afterward, his gaze incinerates the man who originally informed on him to the government.[48] Apparently, one does not need to be a saint to be a sage, and equanimity is not the same virtue as obliviousness.

            If it is not to teach us that the truest sage is the most exquisite sufferer, what is the meaning of all the pain in the Talmud? It is not a simple question, and the richness of this portrait of the sages’ life is not reducible to a single function. The stories work at multiple levels of consciousness in the listener or reader, with different details emerging to attention at different points in one’s life. As is characteristic of oral literature, the mess of human lives depicted is itself a teaching tool: It communicates an expectation of similar complexity in the way the listener responds to life, as opposed to parable, which communicates an expectation of simplicity. But it is possible to suggest some reasons for the unusual prominence of pain. I think that Haza”l expected that their students, and their great-great-great-grandstudents, would have difficult lives. When life is at its most difficult, it is impossible for the student of Talmud to think to themselves that they are experiencing a pain that, by virtue of the brokenness it forces on the sufferer, expels them from the world of worthy people. Rather, worthy people bear the same wounds that we do, although they bear them best when they respond with discipline and a reorientation to the nurturing mindset that characterizes effective wisdom.

            In turn, such a gentle, continuous return to a maternal model of wisdom is not only a recommendation, but a warning. Any education is replete with those who urge their students to discard their ethical sensitivities in favor of what are termed the hard truths of human nature. More often than not, this approach conceals a fear of truly facing what trouble one’s hard truth is causing others, and goes hand-in-hand with limitations in one’s ability to help others wisely. According to the sages, information may well hurt, but Torah, that is, a wise response to such information, can be recognised by its nourishing quality. There is no good student of rabbinic literature who has not encountered a text which wounds, perhaps even a text that horrifies. There is blood in the milk. In a nursing model of Torah, an informed reaction of woundedness should act like one of R. Shimon’s markers of loose soil, which say, do not enter here: Find a path on the sturdier earth that is nonetheless connected to it. May all of us students of Torah find such paths; may we open the doors of the brazen bull and help one another to solid ground.

Is there anything wrong with playing violent video games?  Does the answer depend on whom the video game wishes you to fight or kill or how gory the violence is?

Experts debate whether or not playing violent video games induces people to commit acts of violence. But we must remember that violence existed in the world long before the invention of video games. Human history is drenched in the blood of wars, terrorism, and crime.

From an early age, children learn to “play out” acts of aggression. Games such as “cops and robbers” entail mock murdering of enemies. Even quiet games like checkers and chess involve destroying “men” on the other team. Do these activities induce violence…or are they merely pastimes that are substitutes for actual violence?

Tanakh is replete with incidents of violence and bloodshed. Nearly all humans drown to death in Noah’s time; Sodom and Amorah are devastated by fire and brimstone; Moshe murders an Egyptian taskmaster; the Israelites are brutalized by Egyptian taskmasters; Egyptians suffer ten plagues etc. As we go on in the books of Tanakh, we confront wars, cruelty, murder.  Do these narratives incite readers to acts of violence? Most of us would not think so.

It could be argued that playing violent video games is a harmless way to work out aggressive feelings. It could also be argued that playing such games is a waste of time, with possibly negative impact on one’s psychology. Let people decide what’s best for themselves and their children.

In a Jewish marriage, is cooking and cleaning primarily the woman's job?

Every good marriage, Jewish or otherwise, is characterized by love, mutual respect, and a sincere desire to live a happy, cooperative and meaningful life together. It often happens—based on pre-modern patterns—that women assume primary responsibility for household chores and men assume primary responsibility for earning a livelihood to support wife and family.

But it also happens that the pre-modern model does not work well in many marriages. Unlike earlier generations, many women today have full time employment and spend long hours at their jobs. In some cases, women are the main earners for their families.  In such circumstances, it would be extremely unfair to expect that women also assume primary responsibility for cooking and cleaning. Husband and wife must come to a reasonable accommodation of sharing responsibilities, based on their own specific situation.

Sharing responsibilities is not only sensible and decent, it also sets a proper model for children. Boys and girls grow up seeing parents who work cooperatively for the benefit of the family. They learn by personal experience that men and women are not pigeonholed into stereotyped roles, and that fathers and mothers are loving people who care deeply about each other’s wellbeing.

     Is it important for an introvert "get out of his shell"?

The great 20^th century thinker, Isaiah Berlin, wrote an essay (“Two Concepts of Liberty”) in which he made the following point.“Paternalism is despotic…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… purposes, and , above all, entitled to be recognized as such by others.”  Each person has the right—and responsibility—to live according to his/her best judgment, without being treated “paternalistically” by people who think they know what’s best for him/her.

Some people tend to be shy and introverted by nature. Others tend to be gregarious and extroverted. The important thing is for each person to live comfortably with who he/she is…and to be accepted as such. Some of the deepest thinking and kindest people are introverts “who don’t get out of their shell.” They don’t pretend to be what they aren’t.

If a person feels that his/her introversion and shyness are impediments to their proper functioning, they themselves should turn to trusted loved ones for advice and/or decide to seek psychological guidance.

Jewish tradition teaches of 36 “tzadikim nistarim,” hidden righteous people upon whom the world depends. I suspect that since these tzadikim are so hidden and unrecognized, they probably are introverts!

What nationality should a Jew in America consider himself? Jewish? American? Both?

     The question assumes that one actually must make an active choice as to how to consider his/her nationality. But this is generally not the case.

    According to the Oxford English dictionary, nationality is “the status of belonging to a particular nation.” Every American citizen, for example, is automatically of American nationality. A second dictionary definition is “an ethnic group forming a part of one or more political nations.” Thus, people of American nationality also may belong simultaneously to “sub-nationality” groups i.e. Irish-Americans, Italian-Americans, African-Americans…and Jewish-Americans.

   By these definitions, then, American Jews are both American and Jewish by nationality.

  Jewish nationality, though, differs from other nationalities that are based on lands of origin. The Torah describes us as benei Yisrael, children of Israel. Jewish nationhood, in principle, is the consciousness of being part of an extended family. We were still a nation for nearly 2000 years when we did not have sovereignty in our own land. Jewish nationality reflects the connection Jews have to their common origins, religion, culture, customs etc.

   Each person has multiple dimensions of self-identification. For example, I am American, Seattle-born, New York resident, Jewish, Sephardic of Turkish/Rhodes background etc. I am a composite of all these things, just as every person is a composite of all the components that form his/her identity. It is not fruitful to try to dissect ourselves and to consider ourselves to be only one of the multiple components that constitute who we are.

[1]

Who am I, this worshipper? A person with, I’d like to suppose, a certain integrated unity. I have some understanding of the world, and I have certain desires, both for long-term goals and short-term pleasures, some purely selfish and some other-directed (concern for family, community, nation, humanity), some conscious, some less so. My unity consists of the fact that my actions are reasoned—that I can believe each action is instrumental to some goal in an integrated hierarchy of purposes, and according to some integrated understanding of the world. These purposes and this understanding are jointly at the core of my personal identity. But then what happens when, resolutely committed as I am to mitzvot, I thrice daily recite a petition to God to reinstate the Davidic dynasty in Jerusalem (in the fourteenth blessing of Shemoneh Esreh)? This simply does not square with my real, reasoned, day-to-day understanding of what the world is like and what it should be like, the understanding that defines who I am. For all its wretched faults, I’m still in favor of sticking to Israeli electoral democracy; in any case, how would David’s offspring be identifiable as such; and does anyone imagine David’s leadership qualities transmit this far down through the DNA? Or when, on Sukkot, I wave a lulav and etrog in all directions, supposedly to signal my recognition of God’s control of the universe and to petition God to curb pernicious storms,[1] do I really believe this action could persuade God of my recognition and to tamper with the rain cycle—that because of their symbolic meaning, my flapping them somehow impresses God more persuasively than if I just verbalized my statement? Honestly, I don’t. Or when we cover the challot at the Shabbat table, putatively so that they won’t be embarrassed or envious when we first make Kiddush over wine,[2] although I frankly have trouble believing challot have emotions? Performing these actions, deeply unconvinced by these putative reasons, yet in some way entertaining the notion that they soundly explain what I’m doing—is this really me, the person identified with this everyday hierarchy of beliefs and purposes? Or do I, when I worship God, just enter some make-believe consciousness, momentarily imagine the challot are covered to save them from embarrassment, and for that moment pretend to be a person who believes it? If so, then it’s not me worshipping but the make-believe; I’d be presenting to God a fake self.

[2]

It might be said that my difficulty here is really a non-issue, as it’s founded on the specific and disputable view, associated with Maimonides, that each mitzvah serves a purpose. We might assume instead, with Leibowitz (supposedly the polar opposite), that the sole reason for fulfilling any given mitzvah is to worship God, by unquestioningly doing as God has commanded us. If this is correct, and if my putative reason for (e.g.) waving my lulav and etrog is to petition God for a clement winter, then this is inessential to the real purpose; so that there’s no problem if the putative reason is not at one with my real understanding of reality. I’ll still be acting rationally by fulfilling the mitzvah just out of my wish to worship God.

But this by no means resolves the difficulty. It may well be true that what really makes us wave a lulav and etrog—the desire that actually, psychologically motivates us—is simply the fact that this is halakha. We typically first find out what halakha requires of us and do it, and only afterwards learn it’s for this or that reason; hence this supposed reason could not really be our motivating reason. By deed, we’re Leibowitzians. At the same time, however, upon learning that the reason for waving the lulav and etrog is to petition God to curb the storms (or, with some accounts, to petition for human fertility), we tell ourselves that this is our reason for doing so, and present ourselves to God as if this is why we’re performing this action, though we may have no belief whatever that God is persuaded by our gesturing with these symbols.

I must note also that, contrary to what’s often assumed, the Leibowitzian and Maimonidean understandings of mitzvot are perfectly consistent with each other, for they’re speaking of different things. Leibowitz refers to our proper reason for fulfilling a mitzvah—what should properly motivate our action, or why it’s right that we do so—in his view, that we thereby worship God; the Rambam’s claim is about the reason it’s a mitzvah in the first place, why God has commanded this particular mitzvah. Thus it could be that God has directed me to wave a lulav and etrog so that I thereby petition God for a better winter; while my proper reason for doing so, why it’s right that I do, is just that God has (for His reason) directed me to do so and I wish to obey Him. The present problem, however, is that it’s of the nature of our inquiring human minds to wonder what purpose could be served by our action—what the role is of this action in the large, teleological scheme of things. Even if one’s actual motive for waving a lulav and etrog is one’s wish to worship God, one cannot help wondering why God has given us this particular mitzvah, why it’s cosmically right. One then learns that the putative reason is that we thereby petition God for a good winter, and one embraces this as one’s own rationale—one adopts it as the explanation of one’s own action—even if it doesn’t authentically engage with one’s real-world beliefs. One thus presents oneself to God in this false mental posture.[3]

[3]

The integrity of the psyche can be especially challenged by prayer. Reciting the liturgy, I must surely be committed to the notion that all this text states is true and right. I might not be aware of what these true and right thoughts and wishes stated by the text specifically are; but insofar as I do know this or that thought or wish it states, I must surely agree with it. For I’d otherwise be presenting myself to God as a person who has this thought and is acting to communicate it, though I at the same time know I have no such thought. What am I to do, then, when I recite the second blessing of Shemoneh Esreh, aware it praises God for some day resurrecting the dead, while I have difficult doubts about how true and right this could be?

This awkwardness is exacerbated where, in many siddurim, special kavanot are provided—interpretations of expressions, annotated into the text, which it’s recommended the user reflect upon while reciting them, sometimes literal interpretations but often going imaginatively beyond.[4] The popular Sephardic siddur, Kavanat haLev, for instance, is permeated not only with expression-related kavanot, but also includes many broader recommendations of propositions which one should, in some way, have in mind as one recites certain passages or sections. Just one example here: It recommends that, while reciting HalleluYa’h halleli (Psalm 146) in Pesukey deZimrah, one direct one’s thoughts to the truth that one who trusts in God, Who supports one in all situations, will be happy.[5] To be clear, I certainly have no wish to question whether this is truth; my concern here is just with the question, if I somehow don’t believe it’s truth, must I recite the psalm while directing my thoughts to the idea and pretending I believe it? The Artscroll siddur, too, offers recommendations of this sort. An example: Its annotation at the beginning of the second paragraph of Shema asks us to “concentrate on accepting all the commandments and the concept of reward and punishment.”[6] But I’ll of course be unable to concentrate on any such acceptance if I have doubts about the precept of reward and punishment. I could perhaps concentrate on my faking of my acceptance of this precept—but I’d not thereby enter the elevated mindset that surely must be a precondition for connecting by prayer to God.

We have techniques for dealing with these difficulties. One familiar recourse is to reinterpret the problematic idea: to assume, for instance, that what we really mean when we say that God will raise the dead is that God will reawaken us from our spiritual slumber; or that our reference to the Davidic dynasty is our plea to restore the status of Jerusalem as a beacon of justice to the nations of the world. But there is some dishonesty in this. For the text has a fairly clear, literal meaning; it’s that literal meaning we’re stating if we’re stating anything. (I can tell myself all I like that what I mean when I say “It’s a sunny day” is that it’s fortunate that it’s raining, but if the perceivable context and assumptions of my audience don’t make this clear, then that’s not what I’ll have communicated.) This is a meaning largely determined by its traditional understanding—the meaning rabbinically authorized and (more significantly) that this text has conveyed in its millennia of usage. We admittedly have some interpretative leeway, but our interpretative hypothesis will require justification. This may enable us to build on the received meaning, recognize some subtle distinctions hitherto tacitly assumed, but not to arbitrarily replace the meaning of this text with another, just because it better suits our temperament. To ignore the literal, traditional understanding of the resurrection of the dead is simply to sidestep the issue.

Then it may seem the difficulty is overcome insofar as one achieves the kavanah[7] one must aim for—the mental state ideally entered—when praying. It’s our common understanding that this kavanah consists, in part at least, of thinking about the meaning of the text as one recites it. It seems to us even a truism that my reciting the second blessing could not be worth much if my consciousness is not, during those moments, in some way directed (in part) at the idea of the resurrection of the dead. This indeed seems to be the instruction of Shulhan Arukh when it writes that in praying one must “direct one’s heart to the meaning of the words one issues from one’s mouth….”[8] Now, if this means just that I must try imagining such a reality—just picturing or, in some way, consciously representing the meaning of the text—then it won’t solve the problem of my seeming deceitfulness. For to picture in my consciousness the resurrection of the dead is not to believe it will happen. (I can conjure an image of pink elephants flying over the horizon without believing this will ever happen.) Something more is needed than just picturing the dead arising. Perhaps, then, I must try entering a mental state that is subjectively identical to my having this belief; something like imagining this event, but together with some sense of affirming that it will happen. It seems to me in fact that many practitioners of prayer suppose, albeit in some unclear way, that what they’re attempting is something much like this. Accordingly, while reciting the blessing, I’d try inducing a state of consciousness which, from the inside, seems just like that of inhabiting a reality in which God will someday raise the dead. I’d need for those moments (among other things), to become oblivious to my ongoing, lucid conviction that if this event ever occurred it would be geopolitically and ecologically catastrophic, but also that the prospect of it happening is (fortunately), unintelligible. In what bodies would the dead arise? Where on this earth would they all live? Would they remember who they were and their past biographies and, if not, then in what sense are they those same individuals? Ignoring the contrary thoughts I really have, I’d indulge in this blurred, as if conviction;[9] I’d become a momentary mimicry of a person who believes in the resurrection of the dead. For that half minute, I’d present to God not myself but, like a stage actor, this alien persona.

In that case, perhaps what I must do here is more than just adjust my consciousness so that it internally seems to me I have the belief. What’s required, possibly, is that, by some special mental exertion, I induce an actual state of believing in (e.g.) the precept of reward and punishment. But this is all the more impossible. To believe that good deeds are rewarded and sinfulness is punished is to be configured with a certain pervasive understanding. This view of the world, of life, and of our relation with God, would need to be integrated with many more of my beliefs. It would need to penetrate into my thoughts about the unhappiness of good people and happiness of the wicked, of life after death and the possibility of a posthumous balancing out, of the Holocaust and the terror of innocents, and plenty more. It would need to govern the way I’d talk about and actively relate to these and many other matters. But there’s just no way I could, in those moments of my reciting the second paragraph of Shema, transform my thoughts so radically that I could be said to actually, if only briefly, believe in this principle. It would, moreover, need to be the way I think about these things not just during those moments but fairly enduringly: it won’t really have been my belief in those moments if, a few minutes later, having undergone no process of reassessing those associated truths, and without encountering any opinion-changing evidence, I rediscover myself as a person with no such belief.[10] While to induce a seeming-belief appears pointless, to induce an actual belief is impossible.

One further possibility: that my standing before God in prayer does not prerequire my accepting as truth all that’s stated by the liturgy, but is my way of acquiring that acceptance. The purpose of prayer, accordingly, is self-development: my kavanah is my engaging in a continuing project—even a life-long endeavor—of nurturing my real and lasting acceptance of the vision and agenda espoused by the text.[11] Day by day, through prayer, I’d incrementally strengthen my commitment to the agenda listed in Shemoneh Esreh and to the vision of the liturgy as a whole, thus bringing my religious personality into shape. I’d do so specifically by, during each session, rehearsing my commitment—inducing a mental state resembling commitment—until I eventually become genuinely committed.

Surely, however, my best way of nurturing (with the Artscroll example) an acceptance of all the commandments is to meditate upon sound reasons for this acceptance; to so meditate in some protracted, penetrating manner that articulates with my broader understanding of the world and my life-goals—to thus sustain a process of integrating my whole personality into this acceptance of all the mitzvot and divesting myself of whatever obstructive attitudes I may have. This perhaps consisting of, in short, learning Torah—with particular focus on the propositions stated by the liturgy itself. Whereas it’s hard to see what that brief pretense of accepting the meaning of the text, which I may muster in the course of prayer itself, will contribute to this project. Even more problematic: If the purpose of my reciting (e.g.) Shemoneh Esreh is self-improvement—as opposed to addressing God—then it’s hard to see why this should count as prayer.

[4]

On the face of it, then, worship demands not make-believe but truthfulness. That the dead will arise must (we’d naturally assume), be the actual belief of this person I really am and continue to be, not merely something which, by fabricating a false state of consciousness, I can momentarily imagine I believe. Yet we seem to commonly proceed as if there’s also a merit—a certain religious piety—in sustaining some such mental fabrication; as though, while it’s ideal that we really believe in the resurrection of the dead and in reward and punishment and accept fully the yoke of mitzvot, there’s failing that also value in fleetingly entering a mental state which resembles that of being enveloped and animated by this vision. This seems so commonly and instinctively our method, that we should perhaps wonder if it could somehow really be inherent to the nature of worship.

Indeed, it’s only insofar as we allow ourselves to indulge in some make-believe that so much of the color and substance of Jewish life is at all possible. Consider Shabbat candles. One often-cited reason for lighting them is that they ensure domestic well-being.[12] In earlier epochs, of course, it was realistic that the Shabbat lamp was conducive to well-being in the home, in preventing members of the family from bumping into things or each other, or from tripping over and sustaining personal injury. It probably also thereby created a calmer and more secure atmosphere and reduced irritability and domestic strife. Shabbat lights were thus materially functional in achieving these ends. But this doesn’t apply when, in our day, the light added in the home by Shabbat candles is typically negligible. The meaning of candles has thus shifted, from being directly instrumental in enabling domestic well-being, to acting as a remembrance to a time when it did.

Then what goes on in our minds as we now light or observe Shabbat candles? Some of us, possibly associating them with their erstwhile functional meaning, doubtless perceive them as potently symbolic of peace and well-being. But the difference between symbolic and functional meaning is easily blurred. I suspect that many of us, learning of this connection to domestic peace, retain the notion that they somehow, in our day too, have a power to achieve it by operating through some instrumental mechanism—though clearly not by contributing physically to the illumination of the home, nor by any other mundane process. Hence we’re open to unearthly ideas; on one well-received view, the twin candles induce domestic peace by representing the souls of husband and wife.[13] Now, I stress that I don’t presume to have anything of interest to say about the plausibility of this or any of the many extant rationales for Shabbat candle-lighting.[14] I mean just to point to the ambivalence with which we’re able to embrace our favored reason. For sure, not all Shabbat candle-lighters and observers subscribe, in particular, to the idea that Shabbat candles are imbued with a peace-inducing force—but some of us do. And possibly many of us do believe this literally and unequivocally. But many of us at least, though not really giving this idea clearheaded credence, do nonetheless apportion it mental space of some kind. We don’t believe, really, that our presenting this symbol somehow persuades God more effectively to preserve peace in our home than our verbalized petition—nor that it achieves this peace by bringing together the two souls through some metaphysical harmonizing magnetism. Yet the idea that Shabbat candles induce domestic well-being could well be what we uncritically reply with if asked why we light them. Some such notion, it seems, can loom large for us and can act as an explanation to ourselves of why we’re acting. This account and others like it are discontinuous with our regular, rational, workaday relation to the world—yet they insinuate themselves centrally into our experience of Shabbat candles.

Shabbat candles also impart their character to the experience of Shabbat in a quite enveloping way. Anyone who’s experienced their Friday night glow knows the sense that it infuses the home with a nearly palpable and magical substance.[15] Shabbat candles are among those focal archetypes that spill their color over Shabbat and over Jewish life altogether, producing a kind of higher-order overlay. Possibly some symbolic meaning bleeds through this overlay and injects additional vigor, but there’s also something irreducible—I’m tempted to say primal—about it; the overlay subsists independently of any symbolism. Looking at the two candles burning, we see not only these two physical objects in this confined physical space. We sense they are surrounded by an aura of meaning, an almost visible dimension that comes into being just when two otherwise plain sticks of combusting wax are, with the reciting of a blessing, exalted to the role of Shabbat candles. This sense derives, perhaps, from our knowing this ritual is ancestrally bequeathed, charged with some meaning possibly apprehended only by God, sanctified and delivered to us by millennia of practice. But the explanation doesn’t lessen the fact that the secret, sacred dimension we thus glimpse can seem to us more real than the candlesticks and table they stand on.

But do I really believe in any such dimension? Unfortunately not—I’m too rational and too much a realist for that—at least not in the same yom hol way I believe in metallic candlesticks and wooden tables. Yet it is a real part of my world; I do not quite believe, in the fullest sense of believing, in its existence, but I do have a cognitive relation to it of some sort.

[5]

At least since Maimonides’ formulation of his Thirteen Core Principles of Faith, it’s been explicitly part of our religiosity that we—stating this broadly—have certain beliefs.[16] These are often beliefs which we don’t receive passively, which are not forced on us by the evidence of our senses or as the logical implication of our everyday understanding, and which we therefore need to actively contrive to acquire. Alongside the praxis of mitzvot, the effort we make in inducing these cognitions is part of our repertoire of worshipful acts. Success is not straightforward; Maimonides’ Guide was written on the premise that its reader was confounded by doubts that had to be seriously addressed, as well as that certain matters are necessarily beyond the comprehension of the human intellect.[17] Before Maimonides, Saadya Gaon had recognized that, as humans are created beings, human understanding is necessarily laden with doubts, for “the very fact of their being creatures necessitates their entertaining uncertainties and illusions.”[18] Saadya saw doubt as a productive force, the engine of a dialectical, reasoned process ideally culminating in conviction; that ideal state, if ever achieved, would be permanent. But it meanwhile inevitably remains, in Saadya’s view, our normal predicament to face God, en route to that ideal, with a faith that’s stricken with doubt—and with a constant worshipful obligation to overcome that doubt.[19]

It’s become immeasurably more difficult in our age to believe what we’re obliged to believe. We expect our ordinary understanding of the world or even science to corroborate a thought before we accept it, and doubt fills the vacuum where it does not. It may comfort us that, in a certain respect, the collapse of certainty is our blessing: insofar as we’re compelled into certainty by logical inference or clear evidence or simply an incapacity for doubt, our reaching to God is not a free act of worship; we’re thus all the more able to manifest the love drawing us to God by overpassing our doubt with this freedom—the more difficult the doubt, the greater our worship.[20] As R. J. Sacks has said, “Faith is not certainty, but the courage to live with uncertainty.”[21]

The question remains, however, whether we can deal with our doubt, not by dishonestly dismissing it with false argument or ignoring it, but by acknowledging it, incorporating it, and defying it. Nor by fabricating a state of consciousness in which we lose sight of our real selves and enter an alien identity, but rather—and this could be the key—by somehow incorporating this state of consciousness into our own person. Could we somehow rise toward God by adopting a strange mental posture which, though ungrounded in our understanding of the world, leaves us nonetheless able to recognize ourselves—even as we’re then hovering, vertiginously distanced from firm ground, unfamiliarly contorted?

[6]

How drably unholy our religious lives would be without this capacity to mentally inhabit a dislocated reality. Much as if literature and theater were not able to likewise draw us into blissfully abandoning ourselves to impossible worlds; or if, at the cinema, we could not be seduced uncritically by even the most outrageously impossible premise into the ridiculous universe it implies (where, e.g., a 12-year-old boy suddenly turns into his adult self;[22] a woman formed from clay is endowed with superhuman strength, durability, flight, and more;[23] a man is eternally doomed to waking up every morning in the day that just ended[24]). The possibility of journeying into an impossible world—one held together by a matrix of symbolism—gives meaning to the possible. Not that we become convinced that this is reality: we accommodate it or, we might say, compartmentalize it, alongside the world in which we parked the car, bought the tickets and squinted to our seats—and to which we’ll presently reemerge, edified, enlarged, uplifted by our journey. The alluring aura of Shabbat candles, our reverie of the dead arising, or any make-believe rationale for this or that mitzvah, are likewise our openings to an odyssey through a transcendent, sacred reality; we go there, looking to carry back sanctity to our everyday. Equivocation of this sort is part of the richness of our religious lives.

[7]

Peter Lipton, a leading figure in the Philosophy of Science, was until his sudden untimely death in 2007, intensely preoccupied by a concern to accommodate his own progressive Judaism in his broader world view, particularly with his scientific realism. There are clear inconsistencies, he acknowledged, between the claims of our religious texts and science. He argued,[25] however, that this does not force the scientist to reject outright (say) the biblical narrative. In fact, well-grounded scientific understanding can sometimes contradict even the most fundamental tenets of our common sense understanding of the world. The physicist Arthur Eddington pointed out that he simultaneously has two incompatible understandings of a table. It’s incontrovertibly the solid, substantial, colored, permanent object holding up (in the case of this table before me) my computer and elbows; but it’s at the same time the scientifically understood table, comprising sparsely scattered electric charges rushing about at great speed, holding things up by the impacts they jointly, probabilistically impart, totaling less than a billionth of the bulk of the table of our commonsense conception. Lipton invoked a theory about the nature of science and knowledge developed by Bas van Fraassen, known as constructive empiricism, the strength of which is its ability to sustain conflicting scientific theories (and hence dialogue between proponents of different theories before and after scientific revolutions). This account of science takes each theory’s claims as literal descriptions, though not all of these will be believed as true descriptions, even by their proponents. A scientific claim, on this view, can meet with a cognitive attitude different from belief, an acceptance, which “is not just partial belief; it is also a kind of commitment to use the resources of the theory.”[26] Thus a scientist may be committed to a subatomic understanding of the table, not fully believing in that understanding, but, in the suggestive term of this account, immersed in it. Lipton suggests a kind of equivalence between scientific and religious theories, in that where either contradicts our ineliminable everyday beliefs, it may elude belief, but is accessible to this different cognitive relation of immersion. “To immerse oneself in a theory is to enter into the world of that theory and to work from within it. This is not to believe that the theory is true, but it is to enter imaginatively into its ‘world’.”[27] A scientist might, for instance, take literally the Genesis account of Creation, possibly not believing it’s true, but immersing herself in that world. The religious text can thus work for her as “a tool for thought, as a way of thinking about our world.”[28] Tradition can in this way figure in our thinking, as a means for better understanding our lives and projects.

Lipton describes, in these terms of acceptance and immersion, what I’ve spoken of as our indulgence in as if belief. But what’s most important here is that he also validates our doing so. He does so by showing it’s of a kind with the attitude to scientific theory which a scientist is often forced to adopt. Despite evidence and firm theoretical grounds for believing in such-and-such a reality, that reality doesn’t have, for the scientist, quite the solidity of our common-sense world. The story of the subatomic electrical space of the table is well-grounded; the scientist is fully justified in believing it; yet the sense of its reality can never be as cogent as that of the solid table of common sense. Our imaginary depictions of events in which the dead arise, or in which twin candles literally pressure together the souls of husband and wife, may likewise cognitively animate us as if they’re real—though never with the same force as the realities of death and wax and flames. We sense even a rightness about these depictions, that a certain piety is conferred, by our inherited tradition, upon our upholding them; although we know, looking out again at our objective world, that they have no basis here.[29]

It’s the incorrigible nature of many of us to critically assess ideas put our way and so to relate skeptically even to certain foundational tenets. But we may have an equally incorrigible sense that it’s our religious duty to accept whole the vision delivered by tradition—that we have no business questioning it and that, by sustaining our doubts, we’re betraying our pact with God. This is the conflict inherent to homo religiosus, familiar from R. J. B. Soloveitchik’s elaboration, between autonomy and submissiveness: between our creative, scientific, political activism and, pitched against this, our craving to overcome existential loneliness by quietly and uncritically attaching ourselves to God—specifically by sacrificing ourselves unprotestingly to the demands of halakha.[30] But the conflict, it’s seen here, is not just practical—it extends also to our cognitive obligations. It’s between, on the one hand, our psychic integrity and, on the other hand, our submissive self-immersion in a make-believe. We’re aware, as we indulge in this make-believe, that it’s a hiatus in the fabric of the real world; but also that, by our ambivalence, we sanctify our whole world.

[8]

There is some danger in this. Make-believe can lead us, through the pathway of tradition, back to God. But this must never permit us to lose sight of the divide between what belongs properly in our here and now, and what is not of this present reality. There are mitzvot that were early on rendered inoperative fiction by rabbinical interpretation in a world that had already vastly changed (such as ben sorer u'moreh, a parent’s initiation of the public execution of his or her wayward, rebellious son[31]), but which continue to provide content to our religious imagination. The danger lies in the risk of upholding make-believe as a directive for some real-world action which, realistically, is inadmissible. The recent Israeli movie, Yamim Nora’im,[32] about the assassination in 1995 of Prime Minister Yitzchak Rabin, reminded those who experienced this dark, traumatic moment of Israeli history how a blurring of the difference between what is real and what is make-believe could authorize evil. The movie shows the assassin going from rabbi to rabbi in search of halakhic consent to murder. The justification he sought would come from the principle of din mosser, the debated meaning of which revolves around a right to murder a Jew in order to prevent him from life-threateningly informing on another Jew to non-Jewish authorities for what is not Jewishly an offense. In the movie at least, no rabbi explicitly granted him that right, but too many failed to unequivocally deny it. Arrogantly swaggering on the flimsy divide of ambivalence, they spoke of din mosser in a broad halakhic language, as so tightly constrained that it’s all but obsolete, but at the same time, with artful obscurity, insidiously invited their inquirer to move to its realization—with abominable consequence.

Our religious consciousness may essentially involve, not an ability to find internal consistency between contradictory understandings, but the mental versatility to accommodate inconsistencies. We have warrant to sanctify our world with make-believe, but must always remain conscious of our rational and realistic scheme of things, carefully measuring that make-believe against a humane, responsible code of conduct.[33]

Angel for Shabbat, Behar-Behukotai
by Rabbi Marc D. Angel

In this week's Torah portion, God reminds the Israelites that He brought them out of Egypt. "And I have broken the bars of your yoke, and made you go upright (komemiyut)" Vayikra 26:13. The commentary, Hizkuni, notes that just as an ox lifts its head when the yoke is removed, so the Israelites' heads rose when they were freed from servitude in Egypt. Rashi comments that "komemiyut" means the Israelites could now walk upright, rather than be stooped over like slaves. Saadia Gaon notes that "komemiyut" indicates that the Israelites were now free people.

In kabbalistic thought, it is taught that when people receive something that they did not earn they are guilty of eating "the bread of shame". Thus, in order for the Israelites to walk upright and not be ashamed of their newly given gift of liberty, they had to "earn" their freedom by serving God through fulfilling His commandments. This was their side of the covenant with the Almighty. By living according to the Torah's precepts, they would "earn" the right to be a free and upright people.

This lesson applies to many aspects of life. We should not simply be "takers" who receive goods and services from others. We also should be "givers" who do our share to repay the many benefits we enjoy. If we take out of proportion to what we give, we are guilty of eating "the bread of shame". We don't live with the quality of being upright and free.

This is true on a personal level. We should not exploit the kindness of friends and acquaintances, but should return their kindnesses gladly and generously. This is true on a communal level. We should not expect synagogues and schools and other institutions to be there for us when we need them, but we should be members and supporters so as to carry our own weight to the best of our ability. This is true on the national and international level. We should not expect others to provide for us, without our willingness to provide for their needs as well.

Sometimes people think they come out ahead if they take something without having given anything commensurate in return. They think they have "beaten the system". Actually, such people humiliate themselves because they are eating "the bread of shame". They do not realize that taking something without giving back to the best of their ability--is degrading and debasing. It is the behavior of people who lack pride and self-respect.

God wanted the Israelites to walk upright--komemiyut. He did not want them to have a slave mentality any longer. To give dignity to them, He gave them the Torah's laws and traditions--He gave them a way of "repaying" God, of earning their bread. They could create a righteous community; they could become a light unto the nations. By working for these lofty goals, they would avoid eating "the bread of shame".

Our lives should not be viewed as a contest to take as much as we can and to give as little as we can get away with. Rather, life is an adventure of human interrelationships where we all win when we all do our share. To walk in freedom and dignity, we need to avoid eating "the bread of shame".

Learning from and Living our History:

Lessons from the Exodus in Tanakh[1]

Introduction

The Haggadah is a remarkable compilation of texts that helps us relive the exodus from Egypt.[2] While there are several biblical verses and passages cited in the Haggadah, they are subsumed under a larger midrashic framework.

            Not surprisingly, many of the central themes in the Haggadah are rooted in biblical thought. Among other teachings, the exodus forms the basis for the singular covenantal relationship between God and Israel; it highlights God’s greatness in history; it is central to the religious education of children; it teaches that we must be eternally grateful to God; and it serves as the model for the future redemption. In this essay, we will survey examples from various sections of Tanakh to see how these and related themes are developed. Interested readers are encouraged to learn the full biblical passages in depth to gain a greater appreciation of their respective contexts.

The Early Prophets

A. Crossing the Jordan

The Book of Joshua is replete with parallels to the Torah, as well as parallels between Moses and Joshua. One striking example is the crossing of the Jordan. This miraculous event, where the waters formed a great pile to enable Israel to cross on dry land, established Joshua’s credibility as God’s agent: “The Lord said to Joshua, ‘This day, for the first time, I will exalt you in the sight of all Israel, so that they shall know that I will be with you as I was with Moses’” (Josh. 3:7). Moses gained similar credibility during the splitting of the Red Sea (Exod. 14:30-31).

            The crossing of the Jordan also parallels the exodus by using similar formulations for educating future generations regarding God’s greatness and involvement in history:

…This shall serve as a symbol among you: in time to come, when your children ask [ki yishalun benekhem mahar], “What is the meaning of these stones for you [mah ha-avanim ha-elleh lakhem]?” you shall tell them, “The waters of the Jordan were cut off because of the Ark of the Lord’s Covenant; when it passed through the Jordan, the waters of the Jordan were cut off.” And so these stones shall serve the people of Israel as a memorial for all time (Josh. 4:6-7).

In time to come, when your children ask their fathers [asher yishalun benekhem mahar], “What is the meaning of those stones [mah ha-avanim ha-elleh]?” tell your children: “Here the Israelites crossed the Jordan on dry land.” For the Lord your God dried up the waters of the Jordan before you until you crossed, just as the Lord your God did to the Sea of Reeds, which He dried up before us until we crossed. Thus all the peoples of the earth shall know how mighty is the hand of the Lord, and you shall fear the Lord your God always (Josh. 4:21-24).

These passages parallel the verses in the Torah cited in the Haggadah for the education of the four children (Exod. 12:26-27; 13:8-9, 14-16; Deut. 6:20-21).

            More generally, the splitting of the Red Sea and crossing of the Jordan illustrate God’s power over nature coupled with God’s special relationship with Israel. The Hallel reflects this dimension as well:

When Israel went forth from Egypt, the house of Jacob from a people of strange speech, Judah became His holy one, Israel, His dominion. The sea saw them and fled, Jordan ran backward (Ps. 114:1-3).

B. Deborah and Gideon

As with the crossing of the Jordan, the Deborah story in Judges chapters 4-5 also is modeled after the exodus. Exodus chapter 14 contains the narrative of the splitting of the Red Sea and is followed by Moses’ song in chapter 15. Similarly, Judges chapter 4 contains the narrative of Deborah’s victory and is followed by her song in chapter 5. There also are literary parallels between the two accounts, most strikingly God’s instilling the Egyptians with panic during the splitting of the Red Sea (va-yahom et mahaneh Mitzrayim, Exod. 14:24) parallel to God’s doing the same to Sisera’s camp (Jud. 4:15); and the complete wipeout of the enemy (lo nishar bahem ad ehad, not one of them remained, Exod. 14:28; cf. Jud. 4:16). Explicitly modeled after the exodus, the Deborah narrative highlights God’s power and intervention in history, and the people’s expression of gratitude to God through song.

During the exodus from Egypt, God acted alone, and the Song at the Sea likewise reflects God’s exclusive role. In contrast, Deborah, Barak, Yael, and some 10,000 soldiers helped defeat Sisera and the Canaanites. Therefore, Deborah’s song praises God as well as the human heroes of the story. The Haggadah makes this contrast even more dramatic by its near total elimination of Moses’ role during the exodus so that God’s role becomes even more absolute.[3]

            In the generation following Deborah, there was confusion regarding the lessons one should derive from the exodus. The people reverted to their sinfulness, bringing about Midianite oppression. An anonymous prophet came to rebuke the people:

Thus said the Lord, the God of Israel: I brought you up out of Egypt and freed you from the house of bondage. I rescued you from the Egyptians and from all your oppressors; I drove them out before you, and gave you their land. And I said to you, “I the Lord am your God. You must not worship the gods of the Amorites in whose land you dwell.” But you did not obey Me (Jud. 6:8-10).

            Although nobody responded directly to the prophet’s rebuke in the text, Gideon’s response to the angel who subsequently appeared to him seems to address the concerns of the prophet, as well. Gideon defended his nation by shifting the blame to God for not performing any more miracles as He did during the exodus:[4]

Please, my lord, if the Lord is with us, why has all this befallen us? Where are all His wondrous deeds about which our fathers told us, saying, “Truly the Lord brought us up from Egypt”? Now the Lord has abandoned us and delivered us into the hands of Midian! (Jud. 6:13).

Gideon’s complaint is particularly ironic, given that Deborah’s victory in the previous generation is modeled after the exodus, as discussed above. Israel’s memory of God’s beneficence was short-lived indeed.

More fundamentally, Gideon appears to wonder why his generation should be obligated to be faithful to God given that only the generation of the exodus received such overt divine intervention. Yisrael Rozenson explains that Gideon’s assumption is theologically incorrect. The exodus forms the basis for Israel’s relationship with God for all later generations, and this is how the anonymous prophet refers to the exodus as well. The exodus never was intended as a promise of constant overt divine intervention as Gideon and others evidently expected.[5]

Gideon’s question was not lost on the compilers of the Haggadah, who offer an alternative response when they state (in avadim hayyinu) that if God did not redeem our ancestors from Egypt, we would still be enslaved to Pharaoh in Egypt. According to the Haggadah, we benefit directly from the original exodus and therefore owe God our allegiance. Elsewhere (hi she-amedah), the Haggadah praises God for the many times God has saved us from our enemies throughout the ages.

C. The Ark Narrative

Eli’s sons Hophni and Phinehas were wicked and helped bring about Israel’s downfall (1 Sam. 2:27-36; 3:11-14). Instead of repenting, the Israelites mistakenly believed that simply bringing the Ark into battle would provide victory since God’s Presence would be with them (Radak, Malbim). Their error cost the nation thousands of lives, and the Ark was captured as well (1 Samuel chapter 4).

            As an ironic contrast to Israel’s wickedness and confusion, the pagan Philistines did learn lessons from Israel’s history. They stood in awe of God when the Ark approached:

Woe to us! Who will save us from the power of this mighty God? He is the same God who struck the Egyptians with every kind of plague [makkah] in the wilderness! (1 Sam. 4:8).

They also avoided Pharaoh’s mistake of hardening his heart after God had plagued them:

Don’t harden your hearts as the Egyptians and Pharaoh hardened their hearts. As you know, when He made a mockery of them, they had to let Israel go, and they departed (1 Sam. 6:6).

After this ironic contrast, the prophet Samuel taught Israel that they needed to improve their behavior and then God would help them. In chapter 7, Samuel led the nation in repentance and prayer, and then God helped Israel defeat the Philistines.

      To summarize: The crossing of the Jordan in the Book of Joshua is a direct parallel to the exodus. It glorified God to Israel and to the nations, created another model for the religious education of children, and established Joshua as God’s agent. The Deborah narrative in the Book of Judges also is modeled after the splitting of the Red Sea, illustrating God’s intervention in history and the people’s religious gratitude. Gideon misunderstood the purpose of the exodus and thought God should miraculously intervene in each generation. In the Ark narrative in the Book of Samuel, the Israelites believed in God’s power but misunderstood their covenantal relationship with God until Samuel corrected them. As an ironic contrast, the Philistines learned proper lessons from the exodus.

The Latter Prophets

The prophets frequently modeled prophecies after the exodus. Sometimes God promises that the redemption will be like the exodus (Mic. 7:15). On other occasions the redemption will even eclipse the exodus (Jer. 16:14-15; 23:7-8).

            There are times when prophets model their prophecies after the exodus from Egypt with greater detail and literary allusions. We will briefly consider three such examples: Isaiah chapters 11-12, Jeremiah chapter 2, and Ezekiel chapter 20.

A. Isaiah Chapters 11-12

The Lord will dry up the tongue of the Egyptian sea. He will raise His hand over the Euphrates with the might of His wind and break it into seven wadis, so that it can be trodden dry-shod. Thus there shall be a highway for the other part of His people out of Assyria, such as there was for Israel when it left the land of Egypt. In that day, you shall say: “I give thanks to You, O Lord! Although You were wroth with me, Your wrath has turned back and You comfort me. Behold the God who gives me triumph! I am confident, unafraid; for Y-ah the Lord is my strength and might, and He has been my deliverance [ozzi ve-zimrat Y-ah Hashem vayhi li li-yeshuah]” (Isa. 11:15-16, 12:1-2).

In his celebrated prophecy of redemption, Isaiah predicts a return of the exiles. Like the original exodus, the future redemption will involve the splitting of bodies of water so that the exiles can return. The people also will sing out of religious gratitude, paralleling the Song at the Sea. The expression ozzi ve-zimrat Y-ah Hashem vayhi li li-yeshuah (Isa. 12:2) is drawn from the Song at the Sea, ozzi ve-zimrat Y-ah vayhi li li-yeshuah (Exod. 15:2)—but Isaiah adds God’s full name, Hashem.

Rashi interprets this discrepancy in light of the battle against Amalek that followed the exodus (Exod. 17:8-16). There, God declared ongoing war against Amalek: “ki yad al kes Y-ah milhamah la-Hashem ba-Amalek mi-dor dor, hand upon the throne of Y-ah….” Rashi there explains that God’s name and throne will be incomplete as long as Amalek exists, hence the abridged words kes instead of kissei and Y-ah representing the first half of God’s full name. Applying this concept to Isaiah’s prophecy, Rashi (on Isa. 12:2) explains that in the messianic future, human evil finally will be eradicated. Therefore, those singing the religious song of gratitude will be able to use God’s full name, which at long last will be complete. Similarly, Amos Hakham (Da’at Mikra) suggests that God’s Presence will be manifest even more overtly than it was during the original exodus.

In the Haggadah, this theme is manifest most directly following the Grace after Meals. By reading the verses “pour out Your wrath” (Ps. 79:6–7), we express the truism that we cannot fully praise God with Hallel until we sigh from enemy oppression and recognize contemporary suffering. Many communities customarily open the door at this point for Elijah the Prophet, also expressing hope for redemption.

B. Jeremiah Chapter 2

Go proclaim to Jerusalem: Thus said the Lord: I accounted to your favor the devotion of your youth, your love as a bride—how you followed Me in the wilderness, in a land not sown. Israel was holy to the Lord, the first fruits of His harvest. All who ate of it were held guilty; disaster befell them—declares the Lord (Jer. 2:2-3).

What wrong did your fathers find in Me that they abandoned Me and went after delusion and were deluded? They never asked themselves, “Where is the Lord, Who brought us up from the land of Egypt, Who led us through the wilderness…” (2:5-6).

            In his first recorded prophecy to the people, Jeremiah offers a prophecy reminiscing about God’s beautiful relationship with Israel at the time of the exodus. Israel lovingly trusted God and entered the wilderness, but then sullied the relationship when they began to sin.

To correct this problem, they needed to circumcise their hearts, that is, to remove their outer layer of sin to recover their underlying pure and loving heart and restore the original relationship: “Circumcise your hearts to the Lord, remove the thickening about your hearts…” (4:4). Jeremiah draws this terminology from the Torah’s description of repentance (Deut. 10:16; 30:6). In Jeremiah’s prophecy, Israel’s trust in God during the exodus represented a pristine moment in the relationship.

C. Ezekiel Chapter 20

In his scathing rebuke in chapter 20, Ezekiel addresses a generation that wanted to assimilate into Babylonian culture. He surveys history to demonstrate that Israel had been sinful throughout its history but God saved them to avoid the desecration of His name. There never was a romantic layer of purity as described by Jeremiah. Rather, God redeemed the Israelites from Egypt despite their idolatry in order to avoid the desecration of God’s name (Ezek. 20:7-9).

            Ezekiel then presents a frightening prediction of redemption from the Babylonian exile. Even if the Jews wish to assimilate into the dominant Babylonian culture, God will forcibly redeem them. Strikingly, this prophecy casts Israel’s redemption as a punishment:

As I live—declares the Lord God—I will reign over you with a strong hand, and with an outstretched arm, and with overflowing fury [be-yad hazakah u-be-zeroa netuyah u-be-hemah shefukhah]. With a strong hand and an outstretched arm and overflowing fury [be-yad hazakah u-be-zeroa netuyah u-be-hemah shefukhah] I will bring you out from the peoples and gather you from the lands where you are scattered, and I will bring you into the wilderness of the peoples; and there I will enter into judgment with you face to face.… I will remove from you those who rebel and transgress against Me; I will take them out of the countries where they sojourn, but they shall not enter the land of Israel. Then you shall know that I am the Lord (Ezek. 20:33-38).

            In addition to the shockingly negative description of the redemption, Ezekiel also does not refer to a Babylonian downfall in this prophecy. In his introduction to the book, Abarbanel submits that since Ezekiel lived in Babylonia, it would be dangerous to prophesy the demise of his host nation. Therefore God did not reveal to Ezekiel prophecies about Babylonia’s downfall.

Beyond this utilitarian reason, there also appears to be a more fundamental purpose for Ezekiel’s omission of Babylonia. Babylonia is not the new Pharaoh in this exile-redemption model. Israel has replaced Pharaoh, and God therefore must rescue Israel from itself and its own hardened heart of stone (Ezek. 11:19; 36:26). Consequently, Israel will be plagued and some even killed in the “wilderness of the peoples.” Some then will be redeemed “with a strong hand and an outstretched arm and overflowing fury”—similar language as that used to describe the exodus from Egypt (Deut. 5:14; 26:8; Ps. 136:12). Just as the Torah repeats the expression “and the Egyptians shall know that I am the Lord” (e.g., Exod. 7:5; 10:2; 14:4, 18), a refrain of the Book of Ezekiel is “and they shall know that I am the Lord” (approx. sixty times).

Additionally, Jeremiah and Ezekiel employ different heart imagery to illustrate their respective lessons derived from the exodus. Jeremiah depicts Israel’s relationship with God at the time of the exodus as pure, and then Israel’s sins created a barrier with God. If they would repent and circumcise their hearts, they could restore the underlying pristine state of the relationship. For Ezekiel, however, Israel always was sinful, so her heart was stone with no underlying healthy layer. Therefore, Ezekiel describes God’s giving Israel a heart transplant in the future and providing them with a healthy heart of flesh so that they finally may serve God properly.

To summarize: Isaiah models his prophecy of redemption after the exodus. He refers to bodies of water splitting, Israel will sing a song of gratitude, and God’s complete name will be fully manifest in the messianic era. In contrast, Ezekiel shockingly employs exodus terminology to describe a forcible process whereby Israel must be redeemed from itself rather than from an external enemy. Jeremiah appeals to Israel’s pristine faith at the time of the exodus that began a beautiful relationship with God that later was corrupted by Israel’s sins. He laments Israel’s forgetfulness of the covenant, but appeals to God’s enduring love of Israel and desire that they circumcise their hearts in repentance to restore the original relationship. In contrast, Ezekiel describes Israel as sinful from Egypt until his time. Their deadened hearts were of stone, and therefore they needed a divine heart transplant to serve God properly.

Psalms 78, 105-107

He established a decree in Jacob, ordained a teaching in Israel, charging our fathers to make them known to their children, that a future generation might know—children yet to be born—and in turn tell their children that they might put their confidence in God, and not forget God’s great deeds, but observe His commandments, and not be like their fathers, a wayward and defiant generation, a generation whose heart was inconstant, whose spirit was not true to God (Ps. 78:5-8).

Our forefathers in Egypt did not perceive Your wonders; they did not remember Your abundant love, but rebelled at the sea, at the Sea of Reeds (Ps. 106:7).

Psalm 78 focuses on Israel’s past lack of gratitude to God for all the goodness bestowed upon Israel and the desire to learn from and correct that error. Psalm 105 surveys history to teach that God always has protected Israel while in exile, and Israel in turn should serve God. Psalm 106 again focuses on Israel’s sins and ingratitude to God despite God’s goodness, and shows how God saved Israel whenever they prayed. These psalms draw heavily from the exodus account as a paradigm of God’s goodness to Israel and demonstrate Israel’s obligation to be grateful and faithful to God in return.

            Rabbi Elhanan Samet explains that Psalm 107 is a universal prayer that teaches gratitude to God for all kindnesses and forms the basis for the ha-gomel blessing. However, in the context of following Psalm 106, it also corrects the errors of the past. In the future redemption, when there is ingathering of the exiles, Israel will finally thank God:

“Praise the Lord, for He is good; His steadfast love is eternal!” Thus let the redeemed of the Lord say, those He redeemed from adversity, whom He gathered in from the lands, from east and west, from the north and from the sea (Ps. 107:1-3).

This prediction follows the account in Psalm 106 of the failure of previous generations to express gratitude to God. These psalms teach that unfaithfulness and ingratitude are fundamentally linked, and with proper gratitude to God comes faithfulness.[6]

            In a similar vein, the Haggadah draws from Midrash Psalms on Psalm 78, citing opinions that God brought 50, 200, or 250 plagues onto the Egyptians at the Red Sea. When one understands the context of the psalm as referring to Israel’s ingratitude despite God’s acts on their behalf, this section in the Haggadah rectifies that ingratitude. The Haggadah follows this midrashic selection with the Dayyenu, expressing gratitude to God for every step of the redemption.

Loving the Stranger

As we have seen, many biblical references to the exodus highlight God’s greatness and intervention in history; the foundation for Israel’s eternal covenant with God which includes faithfulness, gratitude, and education of children; the template for the future redemption; and the opportunity to learn from and correct mistakes of previous generations. These themes all are central to the Haggadah. Their common denominator is Israel’s unique covenantal relationship with God.

One element we have not considered, and that also is not featured as prominently in the Haggadah, is the universalistic lesson of the exodus. Many Torah laws require us to be particularly sensitive to downtrodden members of society and to love the stranger:

When a stranger resides with you in your land, you shall not wrong him. The stranger who resides with you shall be to you as one of your citizens; you shall love him as yourself, for you were strangers in the land of Egypt: I the Lord am your God (Lev. 19:33-34).

You shall not subvert the rights of the stranger or the fatherless; you shall not take a widow’s garment in pawn. Remember that you were a slave in Egypt and that the Lord your God redeemed you from there; therefore do I enjoin you to observe this commandment (Deut. 24:17-18).[7]

Israel’s experience of slavery should teach them humility and the sensitivity to be ethical to all humanity. While the Haggadah focuses on our special relationship with God, a broader consideration of the biblical picture reminds us of our universal obligations to the underprivileged as well.

            To some extent, the invitation of the hungry to our Seder in the ha lahma anya echoes this theme. For the most part, however, the Haggadah focuses on Israel’s particularistic story and halakhah, creating an inward vision for the Seder night. When contemplating the exodus, however, it also is critical to remember the many halakhot in the Torah that shape our religious-moral vision directly from our experience as slaves in Egypt.

            All of these themes have profoundly impacted on rabbinic teachings, which stress that we are a living part of this ongoing story of the relationship between God and Israel, and that we must view ourselves as having left Egypt. Our moral responsibility, religious experience, transmission of our tradition to the next generation, and longing for the messianic era similarly manifest themselves as extensions of the foundational event of the exodus.

NOTES

“What are our capabilities if our critical patients develop renal failure and all the hospitals in town have no capacity to absorb them?”

As the chief of the nephrology department in a small hospital in a small city, this question has occupied me all week.  If a person’s kidneys fail, there is a fallback procedure, a miracle of modern science, with which physicians are capable of cleaning that person’s blood when the kidneys are no longer capable of doing so.  A technology available for little more than the past half-century, dialysis has saved the lives of countless individuals.  However, for critically ill individuals whose bodies are incapable of generating a strong blood pressure, the added stress caused by normal dialysis can be more than the person can tolerate.  For these critically ill patients, removing the amount of blood necessary to filter through the machine can be deadly if done in the standard way. 

Fortunately, we are still able to perform dialysis on the medically labile among these critically ill patients, but continuously instead of in a discrete session.  Running the procedure at a slower, gentler pace produces less of an adverse effect on blood pressures.  However, continuous dialysis requires 24/7 monitoring by physicians, nurses, and technicians comfortable administering this different modality.  Small hospitals normally transfer patients who require continuous dialysis (commonly referred to as CRRT – continuous renal replacement therapy) to larger hospitals nearby that perform this procedure routinely.

Now the world finds itself in the midst of a pandemic the likes of which has not been seen for more than a century.  Severe acute respiratory syndrome Coronavirus 2, the virus causing Coronavirus disease 19 (COVID 19), has been associated with hundreds of thousands of infections and thousands of deaths worldwide.  As of earlier this week, we now have confirmed cases in our city.

For weeks now the media has been haranguing us non-stop with COVID 19 news.  Wuhan, China, a city with a population of more than 11 million, is basically becoming a ghost town.  Deaths are occurring in Italy because the healthcare system lacks the capacity to treat as many critically ill patients as the country currently has.  Meanwhile, selfish individuals hoard medical supplies, hand sanitizers, and toilet paper.  The media, foreign governments, and even our own government have disseminated so much misinformation that it is difficult to separate truth from error.  Facebook, a bastion of spreading pseudoscience and medical bunk, has been an infuriating mess of confusing nonsense, with dozens of useless pieces of advice for every good one.

During this crisis, I have already been barred from traveling to take our planned vacation for Pesach.  My wife and I were already resigned to being unable to visit with our families for the holiday, but now it is likely that I will be working in the hospital during arguably the most family-oriented holiday in the Jewish calendar.  On occasions when I find myself in the hospital, in front of a computer working (activities that would normally be forbidden) on Shabbat, I sometimes think of Vayikra chapter 18, verse 5, which states, “And you shall keep My statutes and My ordinances, which Man shall do and live by them – I am Hashem.”  The Talmud famously states that “live by them” means that you, and others, shall not die by them.  Thus, a potential loss of life and health supersedes nearly every commandment, even one as important as Shabbat.  Although driving in to work to treat ill patients seemed extremely odd years ago when I was still a junior physician starting training, those feelings have vanished. 

Any rabbi worth his salt (which is an important measurement when one is a nephrologist) will be immeasurably better versed than I in the Halachot pertaining to a health crisis.  Nevertheless, I called the rabbi of my shul last evening to discuss plans for this Shabbos’s Davening and classes, mainly to give my opinion that the shul should close.  After a short discussion, the rabbi agreed with my opinion and decided to suspend all classes and services.  This decision has precedent, as other synagogues across the world have been making similar decisions over the past several weeks.  Additionally, there are countless stories of rabbis suspending services, closing synagogues, and mandating restrictions on fasting, even on Yom Kippur, the holiest and most important fast day of the year, because of previous medical emergencies. 

There will be no minyan in my shul this week, partly from my advice.  Living in a small Jewish community, I have said many times in shul, “Heaven forbid that we have no minyan here because of me.”  I try my utmost to be present whenever possible, but this situation is different.  Despite knowing that closing was the correct course of action, I spent many hours last evening contemplating my advice, and my part in the shul closing still haunted me when I awakened in the morning.

Every day I arrive at my hospital prior to sunrise, so I have generally work for several hours before I am able to don my Tallit and Tefillin and say the morning Tefilot.  With the current pandemic and the needed flexibility to change protocols instantly to keep up with an ever-evolving understanding of SARS-COV-2, my days this week have been very long and never standard.  I have had days in the past when I have had to miss Z’man Tefilah, but not even having time to eat or sit for more than a few minutes to answer a critical email has been the standard so far this week.  Today I made an additional mistake – I checked Facebook before coming to work.  In one group where physicians and mid-level practitioners come together to share COVID 19 information and updates, multiple individuals talked about hoarding supplies of one medicine with potential benefits for personal use.  I rushed all morning from meeting to meeting, calling patients, and drafting policies, all while being absolutely infuriated by the behavior described in those posts.

Thankfully, around noon today, more than seven hours after I arrived at work, I was able to grab a few minutes to daven.  When one can relax and stand before the One Who “makes peace and creates all,” the high stress of the day melts away.  How can it be that an individual would feel less anxiety when speaking to his Creator?  I remind myself that although our illusion of control now appears shattered, Hashem is here for us and always will be.

Si’man 336 of the Shulchan Arukh Yoreh De’ah opens with the statement, “The Torah has granted the physician permission to heal, and it is a religious duty which comes under the rule of saving an endangered life.”  Saving the life of a fellow human being is such a great imperative that it supersedes everything else in Jewish law.  If so, why by healing does “Hashem grant permission” to perform the commandment (especially one deemed so very important), but not by any other commandment do we require this permission? 

As we sit in judgement during the high holidays, we say in Unetanneh Tokef that it is Hashem who determines our fate: “How many will pass from the earth and how many will be created; who will live and who will die.”  If Hashem makes this determination, we might therefore say that health and disease are fully under the will of Heaven, and thus we are forbidden to interfere.  Therefore, the Shulchan Arukh teaches us that Hashem wants us to do everything in our power to save a life, even if it would mean having to break nearly any and every other commandment to do so.  Because we are given permission to heal, we must do everything in our power to do so, exerting ourselves in this pursuit to our utmost.  In fact, we healthcare workers are partners with Hashem in bringing patients back to health.  Just as Hashem originally created in the world a single human life, the Mishna in Sanhedrin teaches us that one who saves a life is like one who has saved the whole world.

So, what do we do if the hospitals in town are at capacity and our patients need CRRT?  When the community standard of care is not available, how do we step up and do our part to save those who need us?

We do every darn thing possible. 

Unsurprisingly, doing everything possible is the unified thought and feeling of everyone in my hospital.  I have been an exceedingly small part of bringing this goal to fruition, and seeing everyone step up to be prepared to handle anything that comes our way has been a truly humbling and inspiring experience.  Every nurse, technician, physician, and other healthcare worker on the ground is running at full force to do his or her part, while our administrators and support staff work seemingly non-stop to address the needs for patient care that their clinicians bring to them.

With Hashem’s help, this crisis too shall pass.  Until it does, your health care workers are all braving this pandemic to treat the ill.  So too everyone must do his and her part to protect the most vulnerable among us.  In this pursuit, we are all healers and partners with Hashem in saving the world.  We do not want, Heaven forbid, the blood of our loved ones to be on our hands by inadvertently spreading a highly infectious and potentially life-threatening disease to those who cannot fight it.  Please, follow the recommendations from the CDC.  Practice social distancing as much as humanly possible.  Even with Pesach coming in the near future, minimize the number of people at your Seder and do your best to avoid hoarding household goods, cleaning supplies, or food. 

Contact your doctor if you have medical questions, and everyone, stay safe.  B'hatzlacha.

Introduction 

    Openness to travel seems basic to the Jewish soul. Just as Jews are said to be “The people

of the Book,” they may be aptly described historically as “The people of the journey or voyage.”

As recent works such as Pilgrimage and the Jews by David Gitlitz and Linda Kay

Davidson and Reorienting the East by Martin Jacobs reveal, voluntary travel has long

held a vital part in Jewish communal history. Lesser known to Judaic scholars, however,

is the role of travel in early Hasidism to promote individual well-being. Especially in light of

growing psychological interest in how travel strengthens such desirable traits as gratitude,

kindness, and contentment, I’d like to highlight the intriguing technique of early Hasidic

counseling which I call directed travel. This paper will explore its basic features, the

possible underlying dynamics that contributed to its success, and implications for adaption today. 

The historical backdrop  

    Life was hard for Jews in 19th-century Eastern Europe. Especially for the majority who

resided in impoverished shtetls, economic and political hardship, combined with social

immobility, caused widespread despair. Stagnation was not only a communal phenomenon

but also experienced psychologically by many individuals who saw no possibility of opportunity

or change. In this milieu, early Hasidic leaders were highly concerned about identifying

symptoms of melancholy (depression in today’s terminology) and its resulting dangers. Even a

casual perusal of their sermons and tracts indicates this outlook.

    For example, Rabbi Nachman of Breslov stated that “One who is sad brings upon oneself

many afflictions” and “Sadness leads to quarrels; joy to peace.” Similarly, Rabbi Yechiel

Danziger asserted that “Sadness is the worst quality in a person…To the one obsessed by

sadness, one’s very body feels heavy to carry around. One cannot abide oneself or others.”

More pointedly, the Chabad-Lubavitch founder Rabbi Schneur Zalman of Liady observed

in his major work Tanya that “Melancholy renders a person unresponsive and unable to

act. It deprives him of his capabilities and strips him of his energy.”       

    To help congregants overcome such distress, Hasidic rebbes forged a variety of

interventions. Some were relatively traditional in scope and format, such as relying on prayer

combined with ritual objects to bolster religious faith and hope in general. However, one of the

most innovative techniques, with particular relevance today for positive psychology and

counseling, used travel as a way to break emotional stagnation and spur decision-making. This is

how it worked.

      At least twice per year, hasidim would typically meet individually with their rebbe in an

encounter known as yechidus. The term refers to a private meeting between rebbe and Hasid, and

is linked to the Hebrew word for “unity”).  In the yechidus, which was imbued with deep

meaning for its participants, hasidim sought a blessing and sometimes specific guidance

concerning troubling circumstances, such as involving livelihood or family matters. A

dialogue would take place, often comprising question-and-answer between rebbe and hasid. The

“advice” phase of the yechidus was known as the etzah (a cognate of the Hebrew root-word etz

or tree), in which the rebbe would prescribe a remedy for action. Hasidic imagery depicted the

etzah as a method by which the rebbe directs a hasid, just as an expert gardener turns or bends a

tree for more fruitful growth; for this reason, Rabbi Nachman of Breslov poetically described the

rebbe as the “master of the orchard.”

    Within the etzah or action-remedy phase of yechidus that followed heartfelt dialogue, the

rebbe’s advice to supplicants was sometimes to travel alone to a particular, unfamiliar location

and “there you will find the answer to your problem.” That was all. Nothing more specific was

provided in the rebbe’s directive and no time-frame for attaining the redemptive solution was

given. In conveying this etzah, the rebbe’s tone was wholly supportive and confident. No matter

if the stipulated location seemed irrelevant in relation to the hasid’s perceived adversity, the

rebbe’s wisdom was viewed as transcending common-sense criteria, and rebuttal was therefore

rare.     

    Regarding the rebbe as virtually infallible due to his holiness, the hasid would depart in

an emotional state of high expectation, and often, with renewed hope and long suppressed

optimism about the future. The assigned destination was not only unfamiliar, but also one in

which he or she was a stranger. Trusting implicitly in the rebbe’s visionary ability, the

hasid would be far more conscious than usual of surroundings: that is, in contemporary

English usage, behaving with much greater mindfulness.

    Upon arrival at the assigned locale, the hasid was guided by the teaching that the divine is

hidden within the ordinary aspects of everyday life. A related notion was that divine messages

are often communicated by symbols, rather than direct and obvious statements, and lastly, that

all people are potential messengers in a higher plan; whether they’re consciously aware of their

role isn’t necessary or important. With ardent belief in these theological concepts, the hasid was

sure that seemingly random events might harbor deep mysteries, revelations, and, ultimately, the

“answer to your problem.” And so, the hasid confidently opened his or her sensibility to observe

and ponder the deeper meaning of commonplace, even trivial happenings.  

   How might the epiphany be catalyzed? Through an overheard conversation between

strangers, an unexpected encounter in the marketplace with a past acquaintance, a beautiful

natural vista, or a vivid dream that night in the inn? Possibly any or none of those. Instead, it

might come as the hasid gazed at unfamiliar faces and scenes--and suddenly longed for home. Or

it might come after experiencing hours of slow-moving time dissociated from all of one’s

familiar, daily routines. Whatever the specific spark, it would ultimately bring the “answer to

your problem.” When the grateful, newly-empowered hasid (or other individual) would return to

the rebbe and extol his uncanny guidance, the rebbe’s gentle reply was frequently reported as:    

“You already had the answer inside you. I simply helped you to find it.”         

Why was directed travel effective?   

    Of course, it’s unlikely that every case of directed travel in early Hasidism was successful.   Undoubtedly, some supplicants including the most ardent hasidim failed to gain an epiphany with transformative power; as to what the next step might have been for such persons is historically unclear. However, from the commonality of this technique in early Hasidic counseling, we can safely assume its general effectiveness, and more importantly for us today, unravel the underlying reasons why. This latter task is necessary because Hasidic rebbes did not produce any texts that explicated the theory and practice of directed travel as a means to empower individuals feeling emotionally blocked or stymied, or to paraphrase Rabbi Schneur Zalman of Liady, those “unable to act and stripped of energy.” Based on concepts from positive psychology, however, it’s possible to construct a viable explanatory model, one with relevance for contemporary application. Four overlapping considerations seem most relevant. 

    Firstly, the rebbe’s warm, empathic encouragement during the yechidus encounter can be seen as strengthening hope--a quality that scientific research has linked to such beneficial outcomes as increased happiness, greater personal achievement, and even lowered risk of death. Empirical studies have shown that hopeful people have a greater sense that life is meaningful, and that emotional hope in particular is connected to happiness. Indeed, an entire body of positive psychology, known as hope theory, emphasizes the vital role of hope in bolstering daily well-being.    

     Secondly, the rebbe’s directive to travel alone for several days allowed the hasid to escape, at least temporarily, from the tight, often constricting, network of social relations that characterized Jewish life during that era.

Indeed, this getaway for some may have marked their   first time to be unfettered from constant interaction with social intimates, however well-meaning,

who imposed their own perceptions and values on the hasid’s life. Such a sense of freedom,

whether consciously or unconsciously felt, must surely have been uplifting and helped generate 

an epiphany.

    Thirdly, the process of journeying alone for several days can be identified as creating a

precious “space” for mental de-cluttering and self-reflection.  Certainly, this phase would have

complemented that of physical disengagement just described. It may be no coincidence that

Jewish mystical theology, such as conveyed in the 13th-century Zohar and embraced by Hasidic

leaders, taught that the physical universe was created by a “vacated space” in which the divine

essence was withdrawn. In the esoteric branch of Judaism known as Kabbalah, this classic

theological concept is called the tzimzum. Thus, deeply embedded within early Hasidism was the

notion that even at the highest levels of existence, creation requires “space” or “room” for

growth. Guided by this notion, rebbes may therefore have deliberately sought to foster mental

detachment (and subsequent creative problem-solving) by mandating several days of solo travel.

    Fourthly, in considering the hasid’s heightened sense of awareness in arriving at the

assigned destination, where everything seen and heard is potentially meaningful, the 

concept of mindfulness advanced by Dr. Ellen Langer of Harvard University seems highly

relevant. That is, based on the socio-cognitive notion that people often go through daily life in a

mental state akin to “autopilot,” she has defined mindfulness “as the process of paying attention

on purpose to the present moment, of being aware of novelty in experiences and contexts and

events.” Dr. Langer emphasizes its importance in constructive thinking and learning,

and additional researchers have linked such mindfulness to fewer symptoms of emotional

distress including anxiety, depression, and obsessive-compulsive tendencies.

    Thus, it seems likely that by experiencing a wholly unfamiliar locale in a state of heightened

awareness, the hasid could transcend his or her usual condition of “autopilot” functioning

and achieve a state of intense mindfulness, in which insight and epiphany could emerge. 

This third phase of the hasid’s journey might be called that of discovery. Involving a heightened

interest in one’s surroundings, it also appears relevant to mounting research in positive

psychology on curiosity as a motivating force contributing to personal meaning and well-being.

 Implications for Application 

      Can the technique of directed travel be transferred successfully from such a different cultural

milieu to our own time? After all, mental health professionals are hardly regarded as holy

figures, and for most of us, travel is less arduous and adventurous than it was in 19th-century

Eastern Europe. Nevertheless, I’m convinced that meaningful adaptations are indeed possible to

spur personal growth and decision-making; these particularly relate to Langer’s concept of

mindfulness versus auto-pilot functioning. Indeed, people today may have an even greater need

to transcend their daily routine than those during the early Industrial Age. Of course, nowadays

it’s constant dependency on the Internet and smart phone usage that negate self-reflection and

encourage passivity, rather than the social pressures of small-town life.

     Firstly, as a method of personal growth, individuals can self-initiate directed travel: that is,

without the necessity for obtaining a mandate from a rebbe-like, external guiding figure.

Self-initiated directed travel can be undertaken whenever decision-making is needed on a

pressing matter, or when feels chronically bored, stagnant, or emotionally adrift. Rather than

responding to an external directive, one chooses an unfamiliar location at least several hours

away by transportation, preferably where extended strolling or hiking is possible, and goes there

alone. Certainly, before embarking, it’s useful to plant the “seed thought” through deep

relaxation that within the self-assigned locale, “the answer to my problem will be found.” To

avoid the possibility of egoistic influence in selecting the destination, one can invite a friend to

suggest it, or with eyes closed, make a random choice on a regional map.  

    To enhance receptivity to events large and small, it’s preferable to use public transportation,

since automobile driving tends to narrow rather than expand our attentiveness to surroundings.

No advance itinerary should be scheduled, and it’s important to bring a journal for writing

observations, insights, or epiphanies. As much as possible, it’s best to adopt the early

Hasidic outlook that witnessed events and overhead conversations of all types can be interpreted

symbolically; sometimes “the answer” will lie precisely in such symbolism. What make

self-initiated directed travel experientially different from ordinary tourism is the necessity for

choosing an unfamiliar place, dispensing with an itinerary, and deliberately “seeding” an attitude

of utmost mindfulness. 

    Secondly, directed travel can be used as an adjunct in counseling. In this situation, the

counselor suggests a specific destination based on content from previous counseling sessions

including the client’s dreams. The crucial consideration is that the prospective destination is

unfamiliar to the client from past experience, and one in which ample strolling or hiking is

possible. For both self-initiated and counseling forms of directed travel, the ease of airplane

usage allows for much more distant journeys than were common in the early Hasidic era.   

     Not all counseling cases may lend themselves well to the early Hasidic technique of

directed travel. Of course, clinical judgment is necessary. But growing research from positive

psychology and allied fields suggests a solid scientific basis for its efficacy in spurring personal

growth and epiphanic experience. 

                                                              References

Chen, C. C., Lai, Y.H. & Lin, Y.C. (2017). How does taking a vacation relieve your work stress?

    Bali: 15th APacCHRIE Conference. 

Frauman, E. (2004). Mindfulness as a tool for managing visitors to tourism destinations.

    Journal of Travel Research, 43, 381-389.

Filep, S., Macnaughton, J. & Glover, T. (2017). Tourism and gratitude: Valuing acts of kindness.

    Annals of Tourism Research, 66, 26-36.

Gitliz, D. M. & Davidson, L.K. (2006). Pilgrimage and the Jews. Westport, CT: Praeger.

Glover, T.D. & Filep, S. (2015). On kindness of strangers in tourism. Annals of Tourism

    Research, 50, 159-172.

Jacobs, M. Reorienting the East: Jewish Travelers to the Medieval Muslim World. (2014).

     Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press. 

Kashdan, T.B. & Steger, M.F. (2007). Curiosity and pathways to well-being and meaning

     in life: Traits, states, and everyday behaviors. Motivation & Emotion, 31, 159-173.

Kirillova, K., Lehto, X. & Cai, L. (2017). Tourism and existential transformation: An empirical

    investigation. Journal of Travel Research, 56, 638-650.

McDonald, M.G. (2008). The nature of epiphanic experience. Journal of Humanistic

     Psychology, 48, 89-115.

Moscado, G. (2017). Exploring mindfulness and stories in tourist experiences.

   International Journal of Culture, Tourism and Hospitality Research, 11, 111-124.

Newman, L.I. Hasidic Anthology. NY: Schocken, 1975.

Noy, C. (2003). This trip really changed me: Backpackers’ narratives of self-change. Annals of

    Tourism Research, 31, 78-102.   

Pagini, F., Bercovitz, K.E. & Phillips, D. (2018). Langerian mindfulness, quality of life

   and psychological symptoms in a sample of Italian students. Health and Quality of Life

  Outcomes, 16, 29. 

Pearce, P.L. & Packer, J. (2013). Minds on the move: New links from psychology to

    Tourism. Annals of Tourism Research, 40, 386-411.

Pleeging, E., Burger, M. & van Exel, J. (2019). The relations between hope and subjective

    well-being: A literature overview and empirical analysis. Applied Research in Quality

    of Life. https://doi.org/10.1007/s11482-019-09802-4.

Rickly-Boyd, J.M. (2012). Lifestyle climbing: Toward existential authenticity. Journal of Sports

   & Tourism, 17, 85-104. 

Robledo, M.A. & Batle, J. (2017). Transformational tourism as a hero’s journey.

    Current Issues in Tourism, 20, 1736-1748.

Sakai, M., Yagi, A.& Murayama, K. (2018). Curiosity in old age: A possible key to achieving

    adaptive aging. Neuroscience & Biobehavioral Reviews, 88, 106-116.

Schachter, Z. & Hoffman, E. (1983). Sparks of light: counseling in the Hasidic tradition.

  Boulder: Shambhala. 

Schacter-Shalomi, Z. & Miles-Yepez, N. (2011). A hidden light: Stories and teachings of

    Early HaBaD and Bratzlav Hasidim. Sante Fe, NM: Gaon.

Scholem, G. (1996).  On the Kabbalah and its Symbolism. NY: Schocken.  

Steinsalz, A. (2007). Understanding the Tanya, volume three in the definitive commentary 

    on a classic work of Kabbalah by the world’s foremost authority. San Francisco: Jossey-Bass.

Snyder, C.R., Rand, K.L. & Sigmon, D.R. (2002). Hope theory: A member of the positive

    psychology family. In C.R. Snyder & Lopez, S. J. (Eds.). Handbook of Positive Psychology

    (pp. 257-276). London, England: Oxford University Press. 

Taylor, L.L. & Norman, W.C. (2019). The influence of mindfulness during the travel

    anticipation phase. Tourism Recreation Research, 44, 76-90.

Tse, T.S.M. (2014). Does tourism change our lives? Asia Pacific Journal of Tourism Research,

    19, 989-1008. 

Weir, K. (2013). Mission impossible—Being hopeful is good for you and psychologists’

     research is pinpointing ways to foster the feeling. Monitor on Psychology, 44, 42. 

Wineman, A. (2001). The Hasidic parable: An anthology with commentary. Philadelphia:

     Jewish Publication Society.

Several years ago, for Pessah, I visited the "lost tribe of Ephraim" in Southern India.
For more info about them check out this helpful wikipedia article https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bene_Ephraim

This clan of about 150 people claim to be descendants of the lost tribes of Israel. They practice Jewish traditions, celebrate most of the holidays, and have started to practice many Mitzvot, often in their unique style!

For example, in their tradition, on Erev Pessah they slaughter a goat and put the blood on their doorposts! They were shocked to discover that most of the Jewish world doesn't do that! In general they were thrilled to learn more about how "mainstream Judaism" is being practiced in the rest of the world. Many even dream of a day when they could move to the holy land of Israel.

While I came to help lead Seder, I ended up learning much from our Indian experience! Here are a few lessons and highlights!

Lesson #1 The Power of Music

About 10 minutes after our arrival at the South Indian village in Chebrolu, I realized we had a problem. They don’t speak English!! OK, so we had a translator, and a few spoke English, but in general, how were we supposed to share the depth of our Torah traditions…when they can’t understand us?

The answer of course…was through the magic of music.

Music is the language which can break down all barriers, and so, during the seder, during kabbalat Shabbat, before during and after shiurim…we made sure to sing and dance…a lot.
Reb Shlomo Carlebach teaches that in the end of days, music will be the vehicle to bring the world back to the knowledge of God!

One night, after a long class with the villagers, 4 youthful Indian friends escorted us back to the hotel. (After 5 nights of bucket showers in 120 degree weather, and “natural” bathrooms, we had decided to splurge on an Indian hotel for the last nights of our stay.)

Our late night voyages was sweet, the weather was cooler, and the roads were slightly less chaotic. But as our translator wasn’t there, we sat silently together in the car.
Until one Indian boy, with a big smile on his face asked “Rav Keith... you know “Shabcheey”? And of course I did. And suddenly the Indian roads, with temples, churches and mosques on all sides, were filled with 6 souls singing every Jewish song we could think! We sang, Am Yisrael Chai, Kol Haolam Koolo and even Hatikvah at the top of our lungs. My wife and I were in shock, but they knew every word. It truly was a night we will not forget!

Lesson #2: The Power of Sincerity

After each night of Q and A, we would stand up to fulfill the Mitzvah of counting the Omer.
I had explained to them the details of how this Halakha was carried out, and sprinkled in some of its spiritual significance. After counting the Omer, I still felt, that we were missing something. I wasn’t ready to end the class.

And so I added on a new tradition: a Chassidic-Telugu blend. After the counting, we would add on 3 minutes of silent prayer. As most of the Telugi could not read Hebrew, formal texts were hard for them to grasp, but personal prayer…that was something that these people truly excelled at!

After two minutes of prayer, I sneakily opened my eyes, to see how everyone was doing. Soon my eyes were in tears. Perhaps they were praying for a job, or for their sister to find a suitable marriage match, or maybe they were praying to one day come to Jerusalem, but whatever it was, they were all completely immersed in sincere Tefillah.

And I kept thinking to myself…imagine if we had this type of sincerity in our communities' prayer services!

OK, so we may have some of the rituals down…but if we could only incorporate these peoples' sincerity into our Mitzvot, what a different Judaism we would have!

Lesson # 3 The Power of Thanks

In Hebrew, India is called “Hodu”. Hodu means to thank. At first, I was convinced, that the meaning of this was: “India has truly made me thankful and appreciative that… I don’t live in India!!!”

For example:
Thank God, I have a normal shower that doesn’t consist of a bucket of lukewarm water!
Thank God, I can walk across the street in Jerusalem without almost being run over by a motorbike, a beggar and a cow!
Thank God, I have enough money to afford basic medical needs, like asthma containers.
Thank God, I don’t have to live in a place so hot that one is forced to hibernate from 10am to 5 pm, and thank God I’m not stuck working in those conditions just to eke out 5 dollars a day, to support my family.

I truly felt blessed and thankful that I have been born into such a life of relative luxury.

And yet, as our Indian journey continued, my wife and I realized that there may be a totally different way of understanding why India is called Hodu. Ironically these people actually walked around and gave thanks far more than their richer Westernized counterparts. Virtually everyone in India has a religion. And virtually everyone makes a time for prayer, and thankfulness in their lives. Ironically, the ones who seem to have the most to be thankful for, are the ones who are most negligent of this basic obligation.

And so, India has come to symbolize the land of thankfulness, as it reminds me of my obligation, of the privilege to say thanks…even when life is tough.

So thank you Hashem, for giving me the amazing privilege of learning from these "Telugu Jews", and I hope that readers of this essay have learned something too!

QUESTION:

According to Orthodox Judaism in all of its iterations, the Torah is the word of God that was given to and was accepted by the people Israel. The only vote to which the Torah contract was subject was taken when Israel agreed to accept that Torah as its Constitution as a whole package. Once in force, the Torah’s parts are equally sacred and uniformly binding.

     This Torah Constitution’s narrative also proclaims that humans are created in God’s “image,” with each individual carrying an equal and infinite moral worth.

     Democracy is the rule, the kratos, of the people, the demos. How can the rule of “the people,” who are mortal and finite, be compatible with the rule of God, Who is infinite and eternal? How might Judaism, with its immutable Torah, embrace democracy, the ever-changing will of the people?

ANSWER:

     The Jewish State of Israel is self-defined as both democratic and Jewish. “Judaism” and “democracy” are abstract nouns with distinct semantic fields of meaning. Israel, the nation-state of the Jewish people, stands for some values and excludes others. Democracies also have limits, which distinguish between citizens who are full members of the polity, and resident non-citizens, minors, and incarcerated prisoners, who are not full members of the polity.

The argument that Orthodox Judaism and democracy are incompatible value systems is grounded in some very compelling claims:

• God’s ways and laws are not human inventions. God’s law is absolute and eternal, while human law is finite, fallible, and ephemeral.
• God’s laws cannot and may not ever be changed; in contrast, democracy often reflects the ever changing mood of the public. Hence, the two systems cannot be merged.
• “Democracy” is not mentioned, much less endorsed, in the Torah Constitution. Before we perform an act, we require a heter, a release, permission, and dispensation of a Rav, a duly recognized Orthodox rabbi, because we dare not defy the Divine will, even inadvertently.
• Democracy falsely deludes people with the fantasy called “rights,” which nurtures an egotistical, autonomous individualism that undermines the modest submissiveness that necessarily accompanies the dutiful compliance that Torah law demands. Accordingly, Torah Judaism imposes obligations; there is no place for “rights” in a Law issued by the most absolute of monarchs.
• Last, democracy advances the freedom of the autonomous individual, while Torah law requires that Jews remain the submissive “servants of the Holy One,” deferring to God’s will as it is understood and interpreted by the Great Rabbis, who are singularly authorized to read and apply Torah. 
   

These arguments reflect a popular—but flawed—view of the Orthodox Judaism embedded in the Oral Torah, Orthodox Judaism’s “official religion,” as will be explained below.

• God’s ways are indeed not human inventions or conventions, and God’s will is absolutely and eternally binding. But God does not act as a tyrant. God’s law is no longer in Heaven )Deut. 30:12); Torah’s wisdom is evident even to non-Israelite observers (Deut. 4:6); and there are no normative, secret Torah doctrines (Deut. 29:28). God’s Divine Torah law contains positive, i.e., “to do” rules, and negative, i.e., “not to do” rules. In addition, the Jewish Supreme Court, the Bet Din haGadol, is authorized and empowered to legislate Torah law (Deut. 17:8–11). This post-Mosaic law is called (a) “Torah” and (b) is also “the word of the Lord’” (Isaiah 2:3). The wisdom of this law is manifest in its transparency. Deuteronomy 1:1 reports that “these are the words that Moses spoke.” The word “these” is a demonstrative pronoun, implying that the Torah refers to “these words” that are recorded in Scripture, to which one may neither add nor subtract. Prophets and visionaries who claim that God commanded anything else to Israel commit a capital offense (Deut. 13:1–6). This Divine law has a human component; after all, it is written in understandable human language (Midrash Sekhel Tov, Bereshith, VaYetsei 30:13), whose plain sense meaning is accessible to the Israelite public (bShabbat 63a), which is authorized to hold its leaders to account (Ruth Rabba 1:1), thus outlawing tyranny. These Torah facts empower Jewry to hold its elites to account based upon the Torah’s readable benchmarks. These doctrines are not taught in Orthodox schools, synagogues, camps, and youth groups because Orthodoxy’s institutional leadership does not wish to be held to account. Those who believe that Judaism and democracy are incompatible suppress Judaism’s democratic qualities; those who take the religion prescribed in Judaism’s sacred library seriously will celebrate democracy and the independent, conscience-driven heroes that Torah narrative commends.

• There are some rules, specifically the 613 Torah commandments and those ancient Laws that were given from the moment (not just the place) of Sinai, that are not subject to change or dispute. Other rules may undergo, and indeed have undergone, change. We are informed that there is a “tradition” that women may not slaughter animals. But (a) the Oral Law explicitly permits women to slaughter animals, and (b) the reason given for the post-talmudic restriction, that the holy community has not seen women slaughtering, is not a valid rule or reason to forbid an act according to m’Eduyyot. 2:2. (See the conversation at Bet Yosef Yoreh Deah 1:1.) Here, a culture “tradition” changed a law by disallowing women’s slaughter and this change, we are told, is now no longer subject to change. Although bBetsa 30a forbids dancing and clapping on Jewish Holy Days, Tosafot (ad. loc.) contends that the reason for the law’s enactment, that people may come to repair musical instruments on Holy Days, no longer applies in Tosafist times. At Iggrot Moshe Orah Hayyim 2:100, R. Moshe Feinstein concurs with this change that overrides a formal, legislated rabbinic law. Changes that do not violate valid rabbinic norms are halakhically valid. Yet sometimes anomalies and inconsistencies do occur. The merits of these changes in Jewish Law are beyond the scope of this study. These citations show that in practice, Orthodox Judaism does tolerate change by taking popular practice, taste, and habit into account. While Jewry is required to obey Torah rules, Israel is not commanded to preserve culture traditions that are not formal norms.  Accordingly, what affiliating Jews do is part, but not the entirety, of the Divine equation. The Talmud (bBetsa 30a) reminds zealous rabbis that “it is preferred that people sin in ignorant error than to be tempted to sin in wanton disregard for God’s command.”  The Law’s pedagogic agenda reminds rabbis to reprove wisely and appropriately but not obsessively.

• God’s perfect Torah is complete. Any act that is neither commanded nor forbidden is authorized and permitted. Although some religions allow its clergy to forgive sin, sell indulgences, or issue heterim, or dispensations, the contemporary Orthodox Rav is a judge and teacher, not an oracle, magician, or legislator. Therefore, if the Talmud does not forbid an act, like going to college in order to obtain a professional education, then Orthodox rabbis may not declare, with apodictic certainty, that acquiring a secular education or developing critical thinking skills are forbidden activities. Those aspects of collegiate culture that are halakhically problematic, like some professors’ “militant secularism” and the collegiate culture of sexual license, require address; but acquiring earning power or gaining a broader education is not forbidden by God’s perfect law. In the gaps in the Law, where there is no formal, recorded statutory restriction, personal religious autonomy trumps rabbinic policy preferences. When filling these gaps in Torah legislation, democratic deliberations are the preferred Torah response.

• Unless a norm is legislated and memorialized in the Oral Law library, it is not a binding halakhic norm. Democracy is not forbidden by Jewish law. It is therefore a permitted form of government (a) simply because democracy is not forbidden by statute and (b) if democratic decisions do not abolish or contradict Torah law, those decisions have met the benchmark of a Jewishly valid ruling. In American law, rights are what Ronald Dworkin calls “trumps” possessed by individuals or by a minority in order to protect them against the tyranny of the majority. These rights empower the individual to be a citizen who is capable of being an active moral agent. Individual rights restrict the blind will of the majority. For Orthodox Judaism, rights derive from the legal fact that an act is permitted if it is not forbidden. So if an act is neither commanded nor forbidden, it is fair game for democratic legislation. The biblical Edah may also be described as a primitive democracy because it does not vote on the validity of Torah, but does vote on policy, budget, social services, and defense. In point of fact, democracy is also memorialized in Torah law as majority rule (Exodus 23:2 and bBaba Mezi’a 59b). By permitting what is not forbidden, the Torah Constitution carves out areas of personal and communal discretion, autonomy, and freedom. Like the American Bill of Rights, which limits majority rule in order to create a citizen who is a proactive moral agent endowed with personal dignity and conscience, the Torah allows its adherents to make their own, informed moral judgments. Since democracy and Torah both nurture their subjects to be politically and socially equal, democracy is actually the preferred form of Jewish self-government. God trusted Israel with the Torah to apply it appropriately.

• There are people who are unable to endure what R. Abraham Joshua Heschel called “the insecurity of freedom.” These voices maintain that it is better to obey the human leadership blindly, and not make mistakes due to limited human understanding, perspectives, and knowledge. After all, the charismatic rabbinic leadership is blessed, we are told, with the Holy Spirit, and faith in God demands faith in these charismatic rabbis’ virtual infallibility. In his Collected Letters 3:92, R. Abraham Karelitz claims that the Great Hareidi Rabbis must be obeyed in matters of Law and policy, because their opinion is presented to be Torah incarnate.

According to this view, democracy violates the sovereign authority—and immunity—of the Great Rabbis. While it is true that the Torah’s norms are not subject to vote, Torah opinion must be argued and defended by appealing to a rational reading of a shared Torah canon (Deut. 33:4) and by demonstrating how and why suggested changes do or do not violate legislated Oral Torah norms. Halakhic authority does not reside in charisma, intuition, or non-appointed office holders who lay claim to special inspiration, and authority. This power is not given to any elite other than the Bet Din haGadol sitting in plenary session at the yet to be rebuilt Jerusalem Temple (bSota 45a), not in any rabbinic committee, organization, or association. If Torah law were truly inviolate for anti-democratic Orthodoxy, R. Karelitz would require rather than forbid military service of men and women, as reported at and required by bSota 44b. R. Karelitz passionately opposed Orthodox military service at his Collected Letters 1:111. An informed Jewish citizen will rightly ask, “If the Oral Law is not subject to change, then by what authority does R. Karelitz forbid what the Torah canon requires?” Democracy empowers its citizens with rights, allowing Jewry to ask its leaders, “Why did you decide the Law as you did?” R. Karelitz is able to forbid a universal draft because for him the Law is the means of control that only the Great Rabbi is authorized to apply. But for R. Karelitz and his cohorts, “tradition” is the received—or remembered—culture of the Hareidi street, which is ruled by the Great Rabbis whose charisma invests them with religious infallibility and political immunity. Orthodox rabbis who disapprove of democracy shift the locus of Torah authority from the plain sense reading of the canonical text to the inspired charisma of their own canonical persons. After all, since their teachings are “the way of Torah,” no one may comment on what the Torah requires but them. Alternatively, Orthodox rabbis who approve of democracy believe that the Torah library is readable, and that rabbinic leaders may be held to account for their decisions. The Jew praises God every morning “for not making me a slave.” The Torah law that was given to all Israel liberates Jewry from being mental slaves by teaching Jews to judge their judges if and when they deserve to be judged. The fact that the Torah was engraved (harut) on stone generates political freedom (herut) because the Torah laws do not tolerate manipulation or misrepresentation so that the Jew knows when, where, and how to legitimately assert one’s autonomy. The Torah’s moral agenda aims to produce a population committed to a Law that is both a prescriptive code and a liberating descriptive map. The committed Jew is bound by the Torah’s legal norms, not the policies of any oligarchic elite.

• Last, Torah law requires that Jewry remain the “servants of God” by complying with the norms recorded in the Torah documentary trove. Those who believe that Orthodox Judaism and democracy are not compatible maintain that (a) since God’s word is unreadable, (b) His will is inscrutable, and (c) Jewry must take direction from its Great Rabbis, who are singularly qualified to issue Da’as Torah, or apodictic Torah opinions. The ideal Jew is a submissive, obedient, compliant individual who faithfully and unquestionably defers to the Great Rabbis, who are guided by God’s inspiration. And those who believe that democracy and Orthodox Judaism are compatible take God at His word, that the Torah is readable, God’s will is revealed in the plain sense of the sacred canon, the post-talmudic rabbi explains what the sacred canon says, but is neither a canonical person nor legislator for anyone who does not reside within his geographic jurisdiction.

For democratic Orthodoxy, the ideal Jew is a moral agent who knows how to determine “what is right and good” (Deut.  6:18), who is prepared to hold her or his Jewish leaders to account, and for whom God’s will is no more and no less than fidelity to Torah’s norms and to one’s own Torah informed moral compass. The democratic Orthodox Jew has the courage to challenge human authority if and when that authority conflicts with Torah’s norms. Non-democratic Orthodoxy is reflected by the Torah’s portrait of Joshua as a young man. When Eldad and Medad were prophesying in the camp without an official commission, Joshua begs Moses to arrest them. Moses asks his squire rhetorically, “Are you really jealous for me” (Numbers 11:26–29)?” Moses here teaches Joshua that Torah truth is not a franchise owned by an oligarchy; it is a gift that God in principle gives to all Israel. Learning this lesson very well, Joshua is willing—and able—to publicly contradict the ten spies who lacked the faith and courage to take God at His word, that Israel is capable of conquering Canaan. Joshua is able to defy the Israelite elite simply because this elite defied and denied God’s commission to scout the Promised Land )Numbers 14:6–9) in preparation for a Divinely assured conquest. The spies were not commissioned or authorized to pass judgment on the content of God’s promise. The Torah democracy’s “hidden curriculum” nurtures religiously independent moral consciences, not robots who defer to their fears or to the social franchise of institutional Orthodoxy. Put in contemporary terms, when scandals like sexual abuse arise in the Orthodox community, some have an instinct to protect Orthodox institutions, franchises, and leadership, so as not to embarrass its supposedly infallible elite. But we should have a reflexive response to protect the innocent, to uproot evil, and to call the authorities in order “to remove the evil from our midst.” When a person is pursuing or endangering the Jewish public, the civil authorities are called immediately. When there is danger of profaning God’s Name, respect for rabbinic elites must be suspended (bBerakhot 19b and elsewhere). Democratic Orthodoxy challenges its adherents to become moral agents; anti-democratic Orthodoxy infantilizes its affiliates by demanding social compliance and conformity to whatever folkways its rabbinic elite believes will generate a shared communal sense of sectarian otherness. The modern political “right” is called “zekhut” in contemporary Hebrew, and in rabbinic Hebrew the concept is called reshut, literally “permission.” By denying that there are Jewish rights, Orthodoxy’s democracy-deniers blur the halakhic boundary between prohibition (issur) and permission (heter). Since democratic Orthodoxy empowers its Jewry with God -given rights, it is the right course for contemporary Orthodoxy to take, because the rights that God gives no one may take away.

There are practices and some beliefs in Judaism that most people today would define as superstitions. My aim here is to investigate some of these in order to see to what extent these practices or beliefs are coeval with what was considered science at the time of our Sages.

            A source that suggests that the Sages were interested in what may be described as the science of their time appears in bPesahim 94b. The source also indicates that there was interest in the science of the non-Jewish world, though the Sages were not always in agreement with its findings:

Our Rabbis taught: The sages of Israel say, “The orbit (of the constellations) is fixed, but the constellations shift.” But the sages of the nations say, “The orbit (of the constellations) moves, but the constellations are fixed.” Rabbi said, “There is a response to their words: We have never seen Ursa Major in the South and Scorpio in the North….” The sages of Israel say, “During the day the sun travels beneath the firmament (and therefore is visible), and at night it travels above the firmament (and therefore cannot be seen).” But the sages of the nations say, “During the day the sun travels below the firmament, and at night it travels beneath the earth. Rabbi said, “Their words appear more logical than ours. For during the day springs (deep in the earth) are cold, and at night they are hot (relative to the external temperature).”

As it turns out, modern science would invalidate all of these theories since our perception of the movement of the sun through the zodiacal constellations is just that: perception, but not reality. What is moving is the earth. But the ancients, just like us, did not feel the earth turning and therefore assumed it was stationary. What they could see was what appeared to be the movement of the sun, sometimes through the constellations, sometimes during its daily “risings” and “settings.”

More important than the accuracy of what we might call ancient science, this talmudic source points to interest in the nature of the universe in the ancient world as a matter of human curiosity. Jews and non-Jews engaged in what they considered scientific observation, and there was a Jewish willingness to accept a logical explanation of a phenomenon from whatever source it came.

This willingness to accept what was believed to be scientific truth in antiquity led, as so many scientific findings do, to actions based on these beliefs. Just as the record of astronomy preserved in Pesahim is now known to be incorrect, so, too, are other “scientific” ideas in the Talmud that are derived from Greco-Roman and Persian sources. Nevertheless, these ideas affected Jewish law, behaviors, and belief in their time and sometimes beyond. Some of these practices and beliefs still are observed in the observant Jewish community, while others have fallen by the wayside, often with the aid of significant halakhic authorities and Jewish thinkers. We will inspect some instances of what the Sages in antiquity would have considered scientific truth but today would be dismissed as superstition.

A Fatal Application of Numerology

            A host of societies believed in the power of specific numbers. In those societies, numerology was considered a science. In our case, the Greeks, like so many other peoples including our own, assumed seven to be a particularly powerful number. In a Hippocratic work called Peri Sarkon, in English “Of Flesh,” the writer states:

The seventh month child is born according to logic and lives. It has reason and invariable counting in regard to numbers divisible by seven; but the eighth month’s child never lives. The child of nine months and ten days also lives; it has invariable counting in regard to numbers divisible by seven” (Hippocrates, Peri Eptamenou (On the Seventh Month Embryo) and Peri Oktamenou (On the Eight-Month Embryo) 

            It seems this notion entered into rabbinic thinking as well and is expressed in a halakha that the overwhelming majority of present-day Jews and others would consider not only the result of ignorant superstition, but a cruel and heartless ruling.

            The halakha begins with a Mishnaic rule: “One does not violate Shabbat for a child whose birth date is in doubt nor for an androgyne… (mShabbat 19:3).

            This rule is stated in the context of activities one may do on Shabbat related to healing a circumcision wound. In some cases, these activities are permitted because the circumcision itself would be permitted on Shabbat, and these activities prevent dangerous side effects generated by that act.

            According to the Mishnah, circumcision on Shabbat is prohibited in two cases: When a child’s birth date is in doubt, and when a child is an androgyne, that is, a child exhibits both male and female characteristics.

            There are several possible ways of understanding what the Mishnah meant when it spoke of the case of the child whose birth date is in doubt. One way, perhaps the simplest one, is to say we are not sure whether the child was born on Shabbat. If so, the next Shabbat would be his circumcision day. If, however, the child was born on Sunday, his circumcision would not override Shabbat. In such a case, rather than potentially violating Shabbat by circumcising the child earlier than the eighth day of his birth, we defer the circumcision by one day.

            This, however, is not the Talmud’s understanding of the Mishnah. Rather, it states:

“Nor does (the circumcision) a child of a doubtful birth date allow for the overriding of Shabbat”—What does this include? It includes that which our Rabbis taught, “A child born in the seventh month of gestation, we violate Shabbat on his behalf. A child born in the eight month of gestation, we do not violate Shabbat on his behalf. We do not violate Shabbat for a child about whom we are in doubt as to whether he was born in the seventh month of gestation or in the eighth month. (This is because) a child born in the eighth month of gestation is like a stone. It is prohibited to move it on Sabbath. Its mother, however, may bend over and suckle it because of the danger (to her)” (bShabbat 135a).

            It is interesting that the Talmud chooses to understand the notion of “a child whose birth date is in doubt” as related to months of gestation rather than to a doubt about the day on which the child was born. It seems the Talmud takes this tack because a doubt about a day of birth is clearly easier to determine than the month of gestation, and the word “doubt” could cover both cases.

            More to the point in this presentation is the idea that a child born in the seventh month of gestation is considered viable and all activities that would require overriding Shabbat may be done for him. A child born in the eighth month of gestation, however, is regarded as dead (“it is like a stone”), and like any corpse, may not be moved on Shabbat due to the rules of muktzeh. These rules prohibit the movement of items that have no use on Shabbat or holy days. The child’s mother may not move him. The most she can do is suckle the baby so that she does not become endangered due to an excess of breast milk.

            It is obvious that this halakha at least shares the Greeks’ ideas about numerology and most likely drew its conclusions on the basis of Hippocratic medicine. In the classical world and late antiquity, Hippocratic medicine and numerology would have been viewed as science, and there would be no reason for the rabbis to ignore these “facts” in deciding the law. Indeed, the medical profession was still accepting the idea that seventh-month babies live and eighth-month ones die from the classical period through late antiquity, the middle ages, and into early modernity (Dr. Rosemary E. Reiss, MD and Avner D. Ash, PhD, “The Eight-Month Fetus: Sources for a Modern Superstition,” Obstetrics and Gynecology, 71:2, 1988, Ohio University, pp. 270–273).

            Our experience with gestation based on observation rather than reliance on numerology has made us aware that babies who gestate for eight months have as much a chance of survival, if not a better one, than babies with less gestation time. It is no wonder that today we consider the science of the rabbis in this halakhic case, and the numerological science of their predecessors, the Greeks, superstition. But as my title suggests, one person’s science is another’s superstition. This transition takes place as more and more sophisticated scientific methodologies supplant older ones.

            This analysis is less a defense of the sages than it is a study of cultural interplay and the use of what were deemed reliable facts when one culture learns from another. As our opening source about the scientific discourse between the rabbis and the sages of the nations indicated, the rabbis were interested in how the world works and Rabbi Judah Hanasi, the preeminent rabbinic figure of the late second century, defended Jewish scientific perceptions when he felt those observations were correct. He was, however, willing to concede that sometimes the perceptions of non-Jewish wise men, most likely Greco-Roman philosopher-scientists, appeared to be more reasonable than the Jewish ones. To the extent that that was generally true in the world of formative rabbinic Judaism, it is not surprising that what was considered scientific fact in the world at large impacted the thinking of the rabbis in the world of the Bet Midrash. Nevertheless, as scientific knowledge of gestation has progressed, it is clear that maintenance of the life of an eighth month fetus is a given (Rebecca Garber, “The Eighth Month Conundrum,” YU Torah, www.yutorah.org › lectures › lecture.cfm › the-eighth-month-conundrum, pp. 1–2.)

The Efficacy of Incantations

            Virtually every society in antiquity and well beyond believed in the efficacy of incantations. Egypt, Sumer, Akkad, Greece, and Rome all used and believed in the power of incantations. This belief was considered to be based on “facts” like the incontrovertible existence of gods, the connection between humans and the natural world they inhabited and over which they had some control, and similar factors. In that respect, incantation was “scientific” and the formulation of incantations was certainly a science, often delegated to expert practitioners.

            One of the bases for the belief in the power of incantations finds its roots in the belief in the power of words. According to the Torah, God’s words caused every created thing to emerge. Hence, Judaism and its interpreters would very naturally consider the power of the word effective in incantations. Beyond the overall belief in incantations held by many rabbis, the different societies that surrounded the rabbis contributed measurably to the formulae they thought worked.

            First, we will consider some of the earliest rabbinic sources dealing with incantations in general. We will then turn our attention to specific incantations and their origins.

            Some rabbis represented in rabbinic literature considered incantations for the purpose of healing effective. One early source, the Mishnah in mSanhedrin 10:1, discusses those who do not enter the World to Come and mentions “one who incants over a wound.” The larger context of this Mishnah is a rabbinic discourse on what qualifies as a prohibited belief or a failure of appropriate belief.

             Is the one who incants involved in one of these problematic beliefs? It seems not, since he uses a verse of the Torah as the powerful element in his incantation. The denial of a portion in the World to Come to one who uses an incantation over a wound lies elsewhere.

            It is Rabbi Akiba who opines that “one who incants over a wound” is excluded from the World to Come. It is not clear, however, that Rabbi Akiba did not believe in the power of incantations and therefore opposed them as superstitious beliefs. Rather, opposition to incantation, at least as the Mishnah records it, appears restricted to the use of the Torah verse, “All the diseases I brought upon Egypt I will not bring upon you, for I am the Eternal, your healer” (Exodus 15:26). Both Talmuds (bSanhedrin 101a, bShevu`ot 15b and pSanhedrin 10:1, 28a–b) understand Rabbi Akiba’s prohibition as resulting from a lack of honor to the Torah, either because incantation includes spitting along with the use of a verse including God’s name, or because the Torah’s sanctity is devalued by secular use.

            It seems that with the Mishnah’s notable exception, rabbinic sources viewed incantations in general as effective. Indeed, a Baraita which the Talmud cites permits “an incantation against snakes and scorpions on Shabbat” (bSanhedrin 101a). The commentators understand this incantation as an effective prophylactic against the damage these poisonous animals can cause.

            The special permission to use this incantation on Shabbat is related to the Shabbat prohibition of hunting or trapping animals. Since the authors of this permissive halakha viewed the incantation against snakes and scorpions as effective, snakes and scorpions would be dsequestered somewhere away from the one using the incantation. One might think this was a form of trapping these animals, which is forbidden on Shabbat. The Baraita negates that idea. Though the incantation may be effective, it does not constitute the physical act of sequestering the snakes and scorpions which would indeed entail violating Shabbat.

A Zoroastrian Influenced Incantation and Cure for Rabies in the Talmud?

            As an example of incantations, this extended talmudic passage on attempted cures for contact with rabid dogs or for their bite is instructive. Incantations and attempted cures for rabies are well attested for Sumer and Akkad, two Ancient Near Eastern societies (Wu Yuhong, “Rabies and Rabid Dogs in Sumerian and Akkadian Literature,” Journal of the American Orientalist Society, 121:1, January–March, 2001, pp. 32–43). Obviously, given the likelihood of recovery from this disease, invocation of the gods or other supernatural powers or adjuring them was a last-ditch effort to save the patient. Incantation, often along with medication of some sort, was, as we have seen, believed to be a potent force for healing by the world community in general and by the Jews in particular.

            In mYoma 8:6 there is a discussion about someone whom a rabid dog bit. The Mishnah addresses the question of whether one may feed this individual a lobe of the dog’s liver, which was considered a possible cure. The anonymous Mishnah forbids feeding this to someone on Yom Kippur on the grounds that it is an uncertain cure. Rabbi Mattiyah ben Heresh allowed it because he considered it a true cure (bYoma 84a). A talmudic passage discusses the rabid dog and how to deal with its touch or bite:

One who touches a rabid dog endangers himself, and one who is bitten dies. If one touches a rabid dog and is endangered, what is his cure? He should throw of his clothes and run. A rabid dog touched Rabbi Huna the son of Rabbi Joshua in the marketplace. He threw off his clothes and ran. He said, “I fulfilled in regard to myself, ‘Wisdom preserves its master’ (Ecclesiastes 7:12).”

The one who is bitten dies: What is his cure? Abbaye said, “He should bring the skin of a male hyena and he should write on it, “I, so-and-so the son of my mother, so-and-so, have written on a male hyena’s skin ‘To you, Kanti, Kanti, Qaliros,’ and there are those who say: ‘Qandi, Qandi, Kalurus,’ Yah, Yah, the Lord of Hosts is His name.’” He should then remove his clothes and bury them in a cemetery for a year. He should then retrieve them, burn them in an oven, and spread the ashes on a crossroad.

What should he do for the year’s time? When he drinks water, he should drink only through a brass straw lest he see a demon and endanger himself….(bYoma 84a)

            One wonders how many people survived rabies by using the cures and incantations the Talmud suggests, but one can begin to understand why at least some of the talmudic suggestions were at least reasonable to a degree. For example, the sages acknowledged danger caused by touching a rabid dog. This may have been due to the sages’ belief that the disease infecting the animal could infect humans by contact, which in the case of many diseases is true. The sages’ remedy consisting of casting away the garments which came in contact with the dog would almost suggest a rudimentary germ theory: What the diseased animal touches becomes a source of infection from which one needs to be distance oneself. This might also explain why the one who touches or is touched by a rabid dog must run from his garment. If the garment is a source of infection, the best idea would be to distance oneself from it, just as we would distance ourselves from someone whose disease could be spread aerially.

            We know today that simple contact with a rabid dog will not cause rabies. Only the entry of its saliva or matter from its brain or nervous system into the human body by bite, through a scratch, or through a mucus membrane can cause the disease. So, the “science” of the ancients would be considered superstitious today.

            Turning to the case of a bite by a rabid dog, which even the Talmud initially declares fatal, if there is a remedy at all for the bite, it is by incantation and a variety of rites supposed to provide healing. Here, too, we see what will be a cross-cultural sharing of healing or protective techniques.

            Most immediately noticeable is the incantation formula “Kanti, Kanti, Qaliros” or “Qandi, Qandi, Kalurus” alongside the abbreviated form of the Tetragrammaton and the phrase “the Lord of Hosts is His name” which the bitten individual writes on hyena skin. According to Alexander Kohut in his `Arukh Completum, these foreign words are actually in Middle Persian and refer to Kunda, or in some talmudic manuscripts as Kundis. In the case of Kunda/Kundi, this is a reference to the Zoroastrian demon of madness and destruction, Kundag. If the reference is to Kundis, this is Kundizha, the feminine form of Kundag. The last word of the incantation, Qaliros or Kalurus, may be a combination of the last letter of Kundag’s full name plus liros or lurus, which according to Kohut has the double meaning of madness and female dog in Middle Persian. Thus, this incantation is very much a mixture of a Zoroastrian belief in demons of destruction and madness and the power of the God of Israel to overcome them.

            In regard to the hyena skin, the hyena was considered in antiquity and until this day an animal with magical powers. This was true around the world: in Europe and Western and Southern Asia (J. W. Frembgen, “The Magicality of the Hyena: Beliefs and Practices in West and South Asia,” Asian Folklore, 57: 2, 1998, pp. 331–344). Its skin was believed to possess the power to heal, but mostly people used its body parts as love and fertility charms. Therefore, its use as part of the cure for rabies is not at all surprising. Rather, it is another instance of Jews sharing the cultural norms and “scientific” beliefs of the society in which they lived.

            No doubt the other rites and recommendations that this talmudic passage contains are part of the general society’s best practices for attempting to cure rabies. The Talmud’s remedy is more hopeful in terms of results than the reality is likely to have been. Most people died if a rabid dog bit them, and a year’s survival and full cure as described in the Talmud would have been miraculous.

Spontaneous Generation

            Spontaneous generation is best defined as the production of a living organism from non-living matter. Starting with the Greek philosophers who studied living things, especially Aristotle who summarized the theory, and into the nineteenth century, spontaneous generation was considered a scientific fact that explained such things as the generation of maggots. In that case, it was believed they sprung from rotting meat. The Talmud also accepted the theory of spontaneous generation and even based a Shabbat halakha on it.

            A Mishnaic passage leads into the talmudic discussion that includes the reference to spontaneous generation:

The eight creeping things that are mentioned in the Torah: one who hunts them or wounds them [on Shabbat] is liable; But [as for] other abominations and creeping things, one who wounds them is exempt. One who hunts them for use is liable; Not for use, is exempt…. (mShabbat 14:1)

            The Torah lists eight “creeping things” in Leviticus 11:29–30, and it is to these things the Mishnah refers. According to the Mishnah if one hunts them or wounds them one is in violation of one or the other of two Shabbat prohibitions. Somewhat surprisingly though, someone who wounds other “abominations and creeping things” is exempt, and depending on the reason for which one hunts them is either liable for a Shabbat violation or exempt.

            The Talmud discussion takes its cue from the Mishnaic exemption from Shabbat violation for wounding “abominations and creeping things” other than the eight listed in the Torah:

“…Other abominations and creeping things, one who wounds them is exempt”: However, if one kills them, one violates Shabbat.

Who is the one who teaches this? Rabbi Jeremiah said, “It is Rabbi Eliezer’s teaching,” as it is taught in a Baraita: “One who kills a louse on Shabbat is as one who killed a camel.”

Rav Yosef raised an objection: “Up until this point the Sages did not argue with Rabbi Eliezer (about the violation of Shabbat for killing a creeping thing) except for a louse, which does not reproduce sexually. But the Sages did not dispute his ruling regarding other creeping things that do procreate sexually….”

Abbaye responded (to Rav Yosef), “Is it so that lice do not reproduce sexually? Has it not been said, ‘The holy Blessed One sits and sustains everything from the horns of the wild ox to the eggs of lice’ (b`Avodah Zarah 3b)”

(Anonymous response to Abbaye): “There is a specific species called ‘lice eggs’ (but lice themselves do not procreate sexually)….”

            In antiquity, the general view about the generation of lice was that they were produced by sweat or dust. For Jews, the Torah’s description of the plague of lice brought on Egypt would substantiate this view since “all the dust became lice” (Exodus 8:13).

            By the nineteenth century, Pasteur had proved conclusively that spontaneous generation has no scientific basis. Yet, in an age when no microscopes were available and mere observation was all one could rely on, the appearance of creatures apparently emerging from rotting meat or sweaty parts of the body became the scientific explanation for the source of their existence.

            Anyone believing in spontaneous generation today would be viewed as mistaken at best or foolish at worst. But in antiquity, such a person would have been considered reasonable. Again, one man’s science becomes a later man’s superstition.

Ruach Ra`ah, Evil Spirits, Possession, and Mental Illness

            The Tanakh records one case of ruach ra`ah, which I will translate as “evil spirit,” that affected the emotional state of an individual. That individual was Saul. After Samuel secretly anoints David as king, God’s spirit departs from Saul, “…and an evil spirit (ruach ra`ah) from the LORD began to terrify him” (I Samuel 16:14). The last days of Saul were filled with anxiety, paranoia, and often unreasonable anger directed at David and even his own son. In sum, God caused Saul’s possession by an “evil spirit.”

            The idea of a form of possession by a deity as the cause of mental illness was held by the Mesopotamians. They called various mental illnesses the “Hand of Ishtar” or the “Hand of Shamash” in which the hand of the god seized the victim of the disease (Wikepedia, The History of Mental Disordershttps://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_mental_disorders).

            Other ancient societies, however, did not view mental illness as possession by a god or demon. Egypt sought the source of disease in the heart or brain. The Greek physicians were divided as to whether mental illness was an imbalance in the so-called “humors,” black bile, yellow bile, phlegm, and blood. Asclepiades rejected the humoral theory as a source for mental illness, while Galen, whose medical opinion eventually won, held that an imbalance of the humors in the brain caused mental illness.

            We are quite aware today that possession by a god or demon is not the cause of such ailments as depression, bipolar disorder, or schizophrenia. Rather, these diseases are due to a multiple possible causes: imbalances in the chemicals of the brain, problems in intra-brain communication, malformations of the brain, and a range of external conditions such as genetics, drug use during pregnancy, abuse, and the like.

            Yet, in late antiquity, rabbinic Jewish sources assigned the cause for these conditions to what we may call “Saul’s original ruach ra`ah.” Here are a few examples of Mishnaic uses of “ruach ra`ah” and halakha based on it:

            In a Mishnaic section we read on Erev Shabbat we find:

One who extinguishes a Shabbat lamp because he fears non-Jews, highwaymen, a “ruach ra`ah,” or for a sick person is exempt (from full Shabbat violation)…. (mShabbat 2:5)

            Similarly, in m`Eruvin 4:1 we find:

Someone who was forcibly taken outside the Shabbat limit (of 2,000 cubits from the city limits) by non-Jews or by a “ruach ra`ah” has only four cubits (in which he may move about on Shabbat). If they returned him (into the Shabbat limit), it is as if they had never taken him outside (the limit)….

            In both sources the term “ruach ra`ah” appears, but what does it mean? Since the sources themselves do not say, we turn to the commentators for clarification.

            In relation to the first Mishnah, Shabbat 2:5, Maimonides and Bertenuro both define “ruach ra`ah” as mental illness. Maimonides seems to equate it with depression in which the depressive finds light uncomfortable and seeks a dark, preferably, lonely place to get rest. Maimonides’ diagnosis seems to fit the symptoms of what he describes in Arabic as “melancholia.” Therefore, to mitigate the torment of a depressive, one could extinguish a Shabbat lamp without violating the Shabbat.

            The second Mishnah, `Eruvin 4:1, indicates a similar meaning for “ruach ra`ah.” If the first mishnaic case seems to indicate some sort of mental illness, here, too, it seems that a one-time, short psychotic episode is implied. Indeed, there exists a phenomenon called somewhat inaccurately “single episode schizophrenia” (Kate Rosen, M. Phil., Phillipa Garrety, PhD, Schizophrenia Bulletin, 31:3, 2005, pp. 735–750) since it appears to turn into full-blown schizophrenia within a few years. But any sort of temporary mental disorientation could easily push someone out of the Shabbat limit, and the same disorientation could bring one back into it. Whether that was due to a single episode of schizophrenia or something else, the law allows full use of the Shabbat limit as long as one was forced out of and back into the Shabbat limit against his will. Obviously, “ruach ra`ah” was seen as a psychological force majeure that could not be resisted any more than non-Jewish attackers.

            While mental illness has been part of the human experience from the earliest times, the notion that the various psychiatric ailments are the product of demons and evil spirits has seen its day. Yet, for the ancients, how could they explain the frequently sudden changes in behavior mental illness caused? Everything from humoral imbalance, not that far from the theory of chemical imbalance as the cause for mental illness, to possession explained the phenomenon. So, once again, one person’s science is another’s superstition.

Conclusion

            This article has pointed to a number of phenomena that the ancient world held to be scientific, though today we know they have no scientific basis at all and are, at least in our opinion, superstitions. Many of these phenomenon are not at all worthless since they show that rabbinic Jews took part along with all of humanity in the attempt to explain their world. Indeed, if they had not, where halakha required knowledge of nature, they would have been not been prepared for the work that was quintessentially theirs.

            Further, the examples assembled here show the sages intersecting with their surroundings. Whether it was the Greco-Roman or Sassanid Babylonian world, Jews, rabbinic or otherwise, participated in the scientific “best practices” of their time. Cross-cultural knowledge was not foreign to them nor eschewed by them.

            Last, but not least, we should be aware that what we consider normal Jewish practice is, in fact, often superstition. On the parchment of your mezuzah you will find what is more or less an incantation—kuzu b’mukhsaz kuzu based on a letter transference of “the Eternal our God is the Eternal” (Hashem Elo-henu Hashem). Even Sha-dai on the mezuzah may be a protective name to ward off a shed, a demon, who shares two letters of God’s Holy name. And when did an observant caterer ever serve fish with meat or not provide different silverware for each? Why? Because the mixture of the two could cause halitosis, or worse, davar aher, usually understood as leprosy (bPesahim 76b).

            Of course, science has a stronger hold on the human consciousness today than ever before. Nevertheless, as much as human beings seek to be rational beings, there is a side of us that assumes or hopes that there are forces, especially the power of God, that we can call on when all else fails. When what is palpably superstition harms us, rather than having out hopes dashed by trust in that which won’t help, perhaps we should put our trust in the best science can do and the God who guides the hand of the practitioner. Yet, human nature being what it is, a red string tied around one’s wrist may give enough spiritual solace to give some people longer life than expected.

            For all that rationality is significant, the irrational also has shown to be powerful. What many of us would deem one person’s superstition may indeed turn out to be not totally lacking in what we will discover to be based in psychological science.