National Scholar Updates

  Rabbi Marc D. Angel has been one of the most prolific rabbinic scholars for over 50 years. He has written or edited almost 40 books and hundreds of scholarly articles and shorter pieces in various media. He served a distinguished career as Rabbi of Congregation Shearith Israel in New York City, and since 2007 as the Founder and Director of the Institute for Jewish Ideas and Ideals. He has served in many communal and rabbinic leadership capacities, as well.

            The task of writing an article to encapsulate the extensive work of Rabbi Angel is reminiscent of the celebrated talmudic story of the prospective convert who demanded of Hillel to teach him the entire Torah while the prospective convert stood on one foot. Hillel responded: “What is hateful to you, do not to your neighbor: that is the whole Torah, while the rest is the commentary thereof; go and learn it” (Shabbat 31a). My goal in this essay is to present “on one foot” Rabbi Angel’s central ideas and ideals which he has promoted over the course of over 50 years.

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Rabbi Angel believes that one must first establish the proper intellectual foundations for an ideal vision of Judaism, and then attempt to build a great personal religious life and Torah community from the ground up. Judaism begins with a profound and abiding belief in God, that God revealed the Torah to the people of Israel through Moses as an eternal covenant, and that there is an accompanying Oral Law to the Written Torah. Judaism also maintains that the rabbinic sages throughout the generations have had the authority to interpret texts and traditions to apply the eternal principles of halakha to an ever-changing world.

            What today is known as Orthodoxy is the faithful reflection of Jewish tradition. Streams of Judaism that are not committed to divine revelation or to halakha cannot be authentic representations of classic Jewish thought.

            Living a proper halakhic life creates a deep, intimate relationship with God. Interiority, humility, love of humanity, and a desire to improve society are proper manifestations of a righteous life. Authentic religion is not about showiness, disdain for others, or authoritarianism.

            The aforementioned arguments are easy to establish from within traditional Jewish sources, and Rabbi Angel therefore devotes relatively little energy to defend them. The lion’s share of his work is dedicated to a different theme, namely, delineating and advocating for what he considers to be ideal Orthodoxy. Often, Rabbi Angel’s writings are scholarly efforts to analyze and present various ideas and ideals of Judaism. There also is a regular hallmark of his writings to battle passionately and courageously for the very soul of Orthodoxy. Rabbi’s Angel’s writings are suffused with calm, thoughtful, well-researched wisdom, coupled with an urgent sense that these ideas must prevail or else our community is impoverished as a result.

            Ideally, all Jews should be faithful to Torah and halakha. However, even in a less-than-ideal world, we must view all Jews, regardless of level of observance, as a family. The inclusive communal model, which never fractured into various ideological movements, provides the best paradigm for promoting Jewish unity for a fragmented contemporary Jewish community. The Sephardic world, and many Ashkenazic communities, championed the this inclusive modell. Even within the halakhically observant community, the ideal is unity without conformity. There are many legitimate avenues to a Torah lifestyle.

We must try to win the hearts of all Jews to the Torah through persuasion and through exemplifying excellent religious and moral behavior, and never through authoritarianism or coercion. We should learn from everyone: the full range of rabbinic thought throughout the ages, folk wisdom, and the wisdom of the world. Judaism is a truth-seeking religion.

Rabbi Angel regularly appeals to a passage in the Jerusalem Talmud: The way of the Torah is a narrow path. To the right is fire and to the left is ice. Overzealousness leads to fiery extremism and fanaticism, whereas too much secularization or watering down of Jewish belief and observance leads to icy skepticism. The Torah way of life is balanced, harmonious, and sensible. To be fulfilled properly, it must maintain its balance on the narrow path.

A confident faith is unafraid of questions and challenges. It is unafraid of diversity of opinion, and it is unafraid of ideas that force one to rethink one’s own assumptions. The rabbinic axiom, “know how to answer the heretic” (Mishnah, Avot 2:14), requires a deep knowledge of what that heretic thinks, and a thoughtful understanding of why the heretic rejects our traditions.

            Judaism balances a particularistic aspect in which God has a singular relationship with the Jewish people through the Torah and halakha; and a universalistic aspect that fosters genuine respect for all humanity. Jews should live in their divinely-given Torah path, while simultaneously embracing the Torah’s ideal that God is everyone’s God. The Torah’s teaching, that all of humanity is created in the Image of God, should foster a genuine love and respect of humanity, and a desire to engage with the world, both its people and its wisdom. As Jews, we are responsible for all other Jews. As human beings, we are responsible for yishuvo shel olam—participating in the advancement of humanity.

Judaism is broad, and contemporary society needs its broadness to address the complex religious and communal realities of today. We also need to represent the profound sophistication and wisdom of Jewish tradition at its best to appeal to well-educated Jews.

There are two fundamental approaches to applying halakha to real life. One approach begins with a study of the classical rabbinic texts, reaching a scholarly conclusion, and then applying that conclusion to the individual or community. The other approach begins with the human reality and then studies the classical rabbinic texts for principles to apply to that reality. Rabbi Angel strongly favors the latter approach. For example, when addressing the question of saying Psalms of Praise (Hallel) on Yom HaAtzmaut (Israel’s Independence Day), we must begin by acknowledging the religious reality of the miracle of the State of Israel. Only then do we turn to the halakhic books.

Ideal rabbis must be scholars and teachers of Torah, but also must be involved with the community. There needs to be a symbiotic relationship between local rabbis who know the particular needs of their communities, and rabbinic decisors who are experts in halakhic texts. Community rabbis must have the humility to consult halakhic experts, and they also must take responsibility to make decisions armed with that expert knowledge for their local communities. The Torah gives guidance for every aspect of life, and rabbinic leadership should offer that guidance to the community. Orthodoxy can exert its greatest influence when its representatives are involved in all communal matters.

The greatest role models behind Rabbi Angel’s religious worldview are Rambam in the medieval period; and Rabbis Benzion Uziel, Haim David Halevy, and Joseph Soloveitchik in the twentieth century. On the communal leadership level, Rabbi Angel also admires two of his predecessors who led Congregation Shearith Israel: Dr. Henry Pereira Mendes and Dr. David de Sola Pool. These exceptional rabbis embodied the ideas and ideals of Judaism at the intellectual, communal, and personal levels.

We do not need to reinvent Judaism or Orthodoxy. We must find its most compelling elements from within our classical sources and promote them. The best of Judaism has the power to attract and inspire many Jews, and they in turn can create the positive model society to inspire humanity.

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Within the contemporary Orthodox world, there are powerful threats to Rabbi Angel’s comprehensive vision. There are significant and growing strains within Orthodoxy that are overly fundamentalist. They teach Tanakh and the Talmud at a hyper-literal level, and ignore science, reason, and even the diversity of sacred Jewish texts that present other opinions. Some promote superstition. Some promote isolationism from less observant Jews, non-Jews, and any ideas that are foreign to the specific narrow ideas they espouse. Some overemphasize the particularistic elements of Judaism while ignoring the universalistic elements.

When Judaism is presented as isolationist and anti-reason, it distorts Jewish teaching and creates a cult-like religious group that cares only about its idea of God and the members of its small circle. This approach also alienates many intelligent, educated Jews who are made to feel that tradition and intellectual honesty are at odds with one another. In fact, they are completely intertwined.

            Rabbi Angel frequently criticizes the attempt in certain segments of the Orthodox community to stifle legitimate diversity of opinion. One dimension of this problem is the phenomenon of self-selected “gedolim” (great rabbinic sages), who maintain that they alone possess the truth of Torah, and therefore all other opinions are invalid and irrelevant. The vitality of Judaism relies on debate and conversations. A healthy Judaism allows ideas to be debated, accepted, or rejected, but never stifled or ignored.

            This problem also extends to the proper balance between local rabbis and halakhic scholars who spend their time in yeshivot. The insistence of many today that halakha must derive from sacred texts first and then applied to real-life situations undermines the ideal symbiotic relationship between local rabbis and halakhic decisors. Suddenly, halakhic experts are required not only to share their knowledge with the community rabbis, but also to decide policy for individual communities. As noted above, Rabbi Angel insists that proper halakha must begin with the human reality and then turn to the classical rabbinic texts. Community rabbis must consult halakhic experts for the range of halakhic opinion, and then take responsibility for making the proper decision for their communities.

            Another harmful restriction of opinion in many Orthodox circles is the frequent suppression of Sephardic voices of the past 500 years, generally through ignorance—whether willful or not. This bizarre reality is disrespectful to the sacred customs of Sephardic communities and causes pain to Sephardic yeshiva students who often feel excluded from “Jewish” experience. However, the harm on the communal level is far greater. The plethora of complex issues facing the contemporary Jewish community, including conversion to Judaism, the tragic agunah problem (a woman who is trapped in a dead marriage because her husband refuses to grant a religious writ of divorce, a get), issues pertaining to the modern State of Israel, the role of women, family values, contemporary modesty, and so many other issues, must be addressed with the full rabbinic toolbox. By stifling dissent and diversity, by ignoring the views of many Sephardic rabbis, and by adopting very restrictive positions, the Jewish community suffers irreparable damage.

Although advocates of more extremist, isolationist, restrictive, superstitious, and fundamentalist forms of Judaism cause harm on the intellectual and communal level, there is another culprit behind the flaws of the Orthodox community. Too many rabbis and laypeople remain silent or even tacitly support the more extreme views. Those who understand the ideas and ideals of the Torah must courageously stand up and promote the ideal vision of Judaism. The community must play a vital role by supporting institutions that promote these ideals.

Rabbi Angel quotes Rabbi Benzion Uziel, who in 1919 reminded his rabbinic colleagues that humility is praiseworthy, but it must never lead to shying away from the needs of the hour. Inertia cloaked in false humility is an abdication of one’s responsibility as a leader. By writing articles with titles such as “On Torah Education and Mis-Education,” “Reclaiming Orthodox Judaism,” and “Re-Imagining Orthodox Judaism,” Rabbi Angel draws his battle lines and appeals to the broader community to recognize the importance of standing up for these ideal values.

In his essay, “Reclaiming Orthodox Judaism,” Rabbi Angel offers a remarkable analysis of a celebrated talmudic passage, the story of Kamtza and Bar Kamtza (Gittin 55b–56a). After a misunderstanding over a party invitation, Bar Kamtza was furious with the rabbis present who had remained silent at his humiliation. To retaliate, Bar Kamtza accused the Jews of rebellion to the Roman Emperor, suggesting that they would reject his sacrificial offering. The Emperor sent an offering, but Bar Kamtza made a slight blemish on the animal that would technically render the sacrifice invalid. When the rabbis discovered the blemish, most maintained that they should sacrifice the animal anyway, so as not to offend the Emperor. One rabbi named Zechariah ben Avkulas objected, since the law prohibits such a sacrifice. The rabbis then suggested killing Bar Kamtza so he could not inform on them to the Roman authorities. Again, Rabbi Zechariah objected, since Bar Kamtza had not committed a capital crime. As a consequence, Bar Kamtza returned to the Emperor, who was enraged against the Jewish community and destroyed the Temple. The story ends with a condemnation of the hardline position of Rabbi Zechariah: “Rabbi Yohanan thereupon remarked: Through the scrupulousness of Rabbi Zechariah ben Avkulas our House has been destroyed, our Temple burnt and we ourselves exiled from our land.”

Rabbi Angel agrees with Rabbi Yohanan, that the hardline stand of Rabbi Zechariah was a disaster. Rabbi Zechariah placed book knowledge ahead of an obvious reality, namely, the Jewish community would be in dire peril if the rabbis rejected the sacrifice from the Emperor and allowed Bar Kamtza to inform against them. Clearly, the needs of the hour required the position of the majority, to make an emergency ruling to allow the sacrifice so that they could maintain the good favor of the Roman government.

However, continues Rabbi Angel, Rabbi Zechariah is not the true villain of this narrative. The ultimate failure should be ascribed to the majority of rabbis. Why did they not overrule the hardline position of this one rabbi? Evidently, they did not want to seem less religious, less committed to the sacred texts of the Torah. They had to take a risk by applying halakha to a dire reality. The cowardly majority allowed the forceful insistence of Rabbi Zechariah to win the day—and therefore are complicit in the destruction of the Second Temple.

Rabbi Angel’s analysis thereby sets out two of his central messages. First, when hardline halakhic analysis follows book knowledge prior to evaluating a living reality, halakha can be distorted and it may cause harm to the community. Second, and in many ways more importantly, those whose judgment is sound must courageously stand up against the hardline position. When the majority of reasonable voices remain silent, voices of extremism prevail and the entire Jewish community loses.

            In his essay, “Re-Imagining Orthodox Judaism,” Rabbi Angel writes that “If enough of us share these ideals; if enough of us are willing to work to promote these ideals; if we can impact on synagogues, schools, and yeshivot—then perhaps these ideals will actually be realized in our community.” Rabbi Angel is right. The rest is up to us to support and build on this foundation.

Rabbi Dr. David de Sola Pool was the pre-eminent Sephardic rabbi in America during the mid-twentieth century. Born in England in 1885, he died on December 1, 1970, the first week of Kislev 5731, after having served Congregation Shearith Israel in New York for a period spanning 63 years.

Dr. Pool was the quintessential Sephardic rabbi of the Western Sephardic tradition. He was eloquent and dignified, and yet friendly and approachable. He was a fine scholar and author, and was also an admirable and respected communal leader. During his impressive career, he was an ardent spokesman for Zionism; a devoted spiritual guide to American Sephardim; a foremost voice in interfaith dialogue; a historian of American Jewry; editor and translator of the Sephardic and Ashkenazic prayer books.

When I began my service to Shearith Israel in September 1969, I was still a 24 year old rabbinical student. That first Rosh Hashana, I sat next to Dr. Pool on the synagogue’s Tebah, reader’s desk, where the congregation’s clergy are seated. Dr. Pool was 83 years old, frail, and in declining health. After services on the first night of Rosh Hashana, Dr. Pool placed his hand on my head and gave me his blessing, wishing me a happy and meaningful ministry.

That was a special and sacred moment for me. When I shook Dr. Pool’s hand, I was shaking the hand of a great spiritual leader who had begun his service to Shearith Israel in 1907; he had taken over from Dr. Mendes who had begun service to Shearith Israel in 1877. I was one handshake away from 1877! And just a few more handshakes separated me from Rev. Gershom Mendes Seixas who had begun serving Shearith Israel in 1768. I felt the weight of centuries, the incredible continuity of a magnificent tradition.

I remember Dr. Pool’s aura of dignity and serenity, even in his elderly years when he was increasingly frail. He was a genuinely pious and humble man who served his community with selfless devotion.

Dr. Pool had maintained Shearith Israel’s traditions during his many years of service to the congregation. He not only followed in the footsteps of his venerable predecessors, but set the standard for his successors. Dr. Pool taught by example. He instructed his immediate successor, Dr. Louis C. Gerstein, who passed on the traditions to me. I learned that the Rabbis of Shearith Israel, as well as the Hazanim, conducted the synagogue prayer services and read the Torah with precision. The synagogue’s pulpit was reserved only for the synagogue’s rabbis. (On rare occasions, guest Orthodox rabbis were invited to preach from the pulpit.) Sermons were to be instructive and inspirational; frivolity was never allowed from the pulpit, nor was the pulpit to be used to advance a political candidate or to criticize anyone by name. The rabbi was to set an example to the congregation of proper devotion in prayer—no engaging in idle chatter or silly gestures, no reading books other than the prayer book during worship. The rabbi was to be at services punctually, not missing unless prevented by illness or a serious scheduling conflict, or unless away from town. The rabbi was to set the tone for orderliness and decorum, for neatness and respectfulness.

The rabbi was to set an example for social justice, communal activism, righteous behavior. The rabbi was to be a scholar, teacher, and pastor. The rabbi was to speak with his congregants, not at them. Dr. Pool insisted that each Jew take responsibility for his and her religious lives. In September 1922, Dr. Pool wrote to his congregation: “We do not, we cannot, all think alike, and there is no one of us that dares dogmatize for others in the realm of religion. If you expect your Rabbi vicariously to think through the problem of living for you, you will weaken and paralyze your own spiritual nature, just as surely as you will destroy your Judaism if you leave it to your Rabbi to live a Jewish life for you.”

In a sermon delivered at his grandson’s Bar Mitzvah in May 1962, Dr. Pool spoke of the need for the generations of Jews to live their Judaism actively. “We must not allow ourselves to become decrepit veterans dreaming of past victories in the struggle for holiness. We have to be something more than feeble survivors of once glorious days…Our life as Jews must be the result of something more than inertia based on the physical fact that we were born into the Jewish people….Within every one of us who is worthy of bearing the Jewish name there must be a conscious sense of a divine call to serve our fellow men for today and tomorrow…. Weaklings among us may fall away as they have done in every generation. But the true spiritual descendants of Abraham, of Moses, and of all our heroic sages and saints keep the Jewish light kindled, and hand it down from generation to generation.”

In 1966, he and his wife Tamar published a book, “Is There an Answer?” They made the following observation: “It is we ourselves who can and who must make life worth living. In the face of the harshest realities, we must cling to life and exalt it by giving to its positive values a commanding place in our consciousness. …To look constantly on the seamy side of life is false to the totality of existence. We must gratefully remember life’s goodness and blessings. We must discern what is transient in experience and what is abiding in our consciousness” (p. 23).

Dr. Pool died in December 1970, a bit over a year after I began my service to Shearith Israel. Yet, I seemed to feel his guiding hand throughout my rabbinic career. I read all his publications; I went through his sermons; I edited a collection of his sermons, addresses and writings. Throughout my many years of rabbinic service, Dr. Pool has surely been an important influence. Even now, as rabbi emeritus of Shearith Israel, I still seem to feel Dr. Pool’s hand on my head and I still seem to hear his words of blessing and encouragement. They mean as much to me now as when I first heard them at age twenty four. Perhaps even more.

Leah Bieler has an MA in Talmud and Rabbinics. She teaches Talmud to students of all ages and backgrounds. Leah spends the school year in Connecticut and summers in Jerusalem with her husband and four children. This article is reprinted from the Times of Israel, October 2, 2013.

In light of the new Pew study on Jewish affiliation, there will be a lot of hand-wringing about what the Jewish community can do to get people more engaged. My revolutionary
suggestion? Get to synagogue.

People are always telling me that they’d love to come to shul more often, but they’re just not as religious as I am. Its one of the hazards of being married to a rabbi. Strangers think they know my exact level of religiosity, whatever that means. So here’s what I’ll say. You have no idea what goes on inside my head. And I have no idea what you’re thinking, either. Even more blasphemous, I don’t care.

Prayer is a funny thing. Many of us, if pressed, would say that we’ve had our most transformative moments, our most intimate experiences with the divine, when we were alone. When I’m on top of a mountain and see a breathtaking vista, I marvel at the brilliance of the creator. In the moments my children were born, and the pain magically stopped, I looked into their eyes and saw God working, literally through me.
Now let’s get real. I’ve had four children, and I don’t plan on having another one every time I long for a connection with the divine. And who has time to climb mountains on a regular basis!

Any onewho expects those kind of moments continuously, spontaneously erupting out of daily or weekly prayer, is, to put it bluntly, deluded.

Here’s what coming to shul on a regular basis has the power to deliver:

Entertainment

For those of us with children at home, shabbat services provide friends and activities, a free playdate without screens which you need only minimally supervise.
We grownups also get an opportunity to socialize without 12 emails back and forth planning a dinner date/ securing a sitter/ making reservations. Just show up Saturday morning.

Real live community

During the week we focus on friends who tend to fall within a few years of our own age. We get lost in the priorities of those micro communities and forget about the real needs of everyone else. On shabbat at services we are part of a community of all ages/ backgrounds/ experiences. Children chat with elderly couples, empty nesters give new moms a break and bounce cranky babies. You notice someone newly saying Kaddish, and ask about her loss.

Cultural Fluency

Rather than sitting through dry classes on liturgy in school or adult ed, people who regularly attend services attain fluency with the service simply by being there. Children and adults who have achieved mastery over the service feel at home in shul rather than feeling alienated. Circular logic, to be sure, but true nonetheless. These people are more likely to become leaders in all aspects of the Jewish world.

A Wider Focus

There will be many who suggest that the answer to engagement is individualized programming –Torah yoga, shabbat biking clubs, kabbalah for teens. These focused programs may bring people in the building, but they do little for the goal of creating long term connection and community. On the contrary, they send a message that in order for Judaism to be meaningful it must constantly be tailored to your specific needs. Real community is a place where we learn to care about people with decidedly different experiences and perspectives. The more we fracture our programming to
reflect the perceived needs of the few, the more we send the message that Judaism is only interesting to me inasmuch as it confirms the beliefs I already have.

Holiness

Judaism is not a religion based solely on belief. We do not police the thoughts of the souls who walk through our doors. But the ancient requirement that certain prayers need a minyan means that there is holiness embedded in the connection between Jews. It doesn’t come from the unwavering belief in God held by the people in the room. It comes from our connections with one another.

Holiness is in the interactions between the generations. Its in the 15 year old helping the 9 year old find the page. In the inherently selfish middle schooler giving an arm to an elderly man not quite ready to give in to a walker. In the whispers in the pews between a newly unemployed single mother and the business owner who might be able to help her land on her feet. In the collective groan from the room when the Rabbi uses an embarrassingly bad pun. In the unmitigated joy we feel the first time the couple long struggling with infertility brings their new baby to services. In the very act of choosing to be a part of something bigger than ourselves.

One of the questions in the Pew survey was whether anyone in your household is a member of a synagogue. Of the people the survey identified, 60% responded “no.” While a few of the children in these households will undoubtedly become future leaders, most of our leaders will come from the 40%. It is a countercultural choice to be part of a group less concerned with rugged individualism and more with the (gasp!) collective. And those who come to leadership in the next generation will be the beneficiaries of today’s old fashioned joiners, keeping the seats warm and the lights on and the spark alive.

Mountaintops can be transformative. But Jewish community is built by delivering shiva meals and learning a last minute torah reading and even the kvetchers in the back of the room. By looking someone else in the eye. Is there something of the divine there? I literally do not know. Faith is ever changing and intensely personal. Your belief has no effect on me. Your choice to throw your lot in with the rest of the Jewish people? That makes my life holy, every day.

Learn to do good,

Seek justice,

Aid the oppressed.

Uphold the rights of the orphan,

Defend the cause of the widow.

(Isaiah 1:17)

Since this book is about religious ethics, we ought to confront at the outset the most compelling argument that religion is not a force for good. In one of the more famous passages of modern times, Karl Marx in 1844 delivered his verdict. Religion is, he said: ‘the sigh of the oppressed creature, the feeling of a heartless world, the soul of soulless conditions. It is the opium of the people.’ Religious faith, Marx believed, was what reconciled people to their condition their poverty, their disease and death, their ‘station in life’, their subjection to tyrannical rulers, the sheer bleakness of existence for most people most of the time.

Faith anaesthetized. It made the otherwise unbearable bearable. Things are as they are because that is the will of God. God made some people rich and others poor; some people rulers and the others ruled. Religion was the most powerful means ever devised for keeping people in their place and preserving the status quo. It robed their lives with ritual. It dignified their tears into prayer. It gave the social order metaphysical inevitability. So, if the world is to be changed, Marx concluded, religion must go:

The abolition of religion as the illusory happiness of the people is at the same time the demand for their real happiness. The demand to give up the illusions about their condition is a demand to give up a condition that requires illusions. Criticism has plucked the imaginary flowers from the chains so that man may throw off the chains and pluck real flowers. Religion is only the illusory sun around which man revolves so long as he does not revolve around himself.

A century and a half later, we know what Marx himself could not, that the earthly paradise he envisaged turned, under Stalin, into one of the most brutal, repressive regimes in the history of humankind. The dream of utopia ended in a nightmare of hell.

Marx’s family background was Jewish: his grandfather had been a rabbi. His relationship tojudaism was, however, hostile, and his descrip tion of religion fails as a description of the Hebrew Bible. Judaism is not a religion that reconciles us to the world. It was born as an act of defiance against the great empires of the ancient world, Mesopotamia and Egypt, which did what he accused all religions of doing— sanctifying hierarchy, justifying the rule of the strong over the weak, glorifying kings and pharaohs and keeping the masses in place. In the Bible God removes the chains of slavery from his people; he does not impose them. The religion of Israel emerged out of the most paradigm-shifting experience of the ancient world: that the supreme power intervened in history to liberate the powerless. It was in and as the voice of social protest that the biblical imagination took shape.

There is a scene that, in 4,000 years, has not lost its capacity to take us by surprise. God has just sent messengers, in the guise of three strangers passing by, to Abraham and Sarah to give them the news that Sarah will have a child. Sarah, by then ageing and post-menopausal, laughs in dis belief, but God assures her that it is true. The strangers take their leave, and at that point the scene should end. But it does not. What happens next is the birth of a new drama in the relationship between heaven and earth, quite literally a world-changing event:

 The Lord said, ‘Shall I hide from Abraham what I am about to do, seeing that Abraham shall become a great and mighty nation, and all the nations of the earth shall be blessed in him? For I have chosen him so that he may instruct his children and his household after him to keep the way of the Lord by doing righteousness and justice, so that the Lord may bring about for Abraham, what He has promised him’.

Then the Lord said, ‘How great is the outcry against Sodom and Gomorrah and how very grave their sin! I must go down and see whether they have done altogether according to the outcry that has come to Me; and if not, I will know’. (Gen. 18:17—21)

It is a strange passage. Is God speaking to Abraham or not? If so, why? does he expect Abraham to have anything to say about the cities of the plain? Could there be anything Abraham might know that God himself does not know? There cannot be. God knows and sees all, including things we can never know: the private thoughts of others, their intentions and motives, the impact of their actions on the moral ecology of the world. Yet Abraham overhears these words and responds with an astonishing address:

Then Abraham came near and said: ‘Will You indeed sweep away the righteous with the wicked? Suppose there are fifty righteous within the city: will You then sweep away the place and not forgive it for the fifty righteous who are in it? Far be it from You to do such a thing, to slay the righteous with the wicked, so that the righteous fare as the wicked! Far be it from You! Shall not the Judge of all the earth dojustice?’ (Gen. 18:23—5)

God accedes. If there are 50 righteous people in the city, he will not destroy it. Abraham does not let the matter rest. Calling himself ‘dust and ashes’ he none the less continues the argument relentlessly. What if there are 45, 40, 30, 20? Is there a precise calculus ofjustice? Eventually God and Abraham agree. If there are even ten righteous individuals (ten form a quorum; their virtue is public, not private), God will save the city. The dialogue ends.

The conversation has a sequel. Two of Abraham’s visitors, by now iden tified as angels, arrive at Sodom where they are greeted and given hospitality by Abraham’s nephew Lot: ‘But before they lay down, the men of the city, the men of Sodom, both young and old, all the people to the last man, surrounded the house, and they called to Lot, “Where are the men who came to you tonight? Bring them out to us so that we may know them”’ (Gen. 19:4—5). The text leaves us in no doubt that what they have in mind is a crime. They are intenton homosexual rape. Many evils are implicit in their threat: physical assault, sexual impropriety, an abuse of hospitality and a belief that strangers have no rights and may be mis treated at will. The narrative is pointedly telling us something else as well. The curiously reiterated phrases, ‘young and old’, ‘all the people’, ‘to the last man’, are intended to show us that as a matter of fact Abraham’s con jecture was false. There were not ten righteous people in the city. There was not one. So the city and its surrounding towns are destroyed. Lot and his family alone are rescued, evidently by virtue of Abraham’s merit. Abraham’s prayer failed. Why then did he make it?

The answer is given at the beginning of the story, when God as it were thinks aloud in Abraham’s hearing. There can be only one reason. God wants Abraham to respond. His very act of communication is an invitation to Abraham to pray. Nor is this all: he gives Abraham guidance as to the terms in which he is to pray. He says, ‘For I have chosen him so that he may instruct his children and his household after him to keep the way of the Lord by doing righteousness and justice [mishpat]’. God wants Abraham to live by these values, and it is these two words that form the heart of Abraham’s prayer The word tzaddik, ‘righteous’, appears seven times in the course of Abraham’s appeal (a sevenfold repetition is the bible’s way of signaling a key theme). The word mishpat forms the beginning and end of the most important sentence: ‘Shall not the judge [of all the earth do justice [ Abraham has precisely followed God’s cues.

But this only deepens the mystery. Why does God invite Abraham to pray? Why does he in effect teach him how to pray? It cannot be that Abraham knows anything that God does not know. Nor can it be that God expects him to raise any moral consideration he has neglected. For God is just and righteous. If he were not, he would not have told Abraham to live by justice and righteousness. Whichever way we look at it, the episode seems unintelligible — not just within our categories but within the narrative logic of the text itself.

With monotheism a question was born. Why do the righteous suffer? Why do bad things happen to good people? Or, as the prophetJeremiah later asked, ‘Why does the way of the wicked prosper?’ (Jer. 12:1). In polythe istic or secular cultures, the question does not arise. There is no single force governing the universe, Instead there are many conflicting powers. In ancient times, they were the sun, the sea, the storm, the wind, the god of rain and the goddess of the earth, the pantheon of greater and lesser deities. Today we would speak of the global economy, terror, technologi cal progress, the international arena, the media and the biosphere. They control our lives but cannot be controlled. They are not the work of a single mind but the unpredictable outcome of billions of decisions. They clash, sometimes producing order, at others chaos, leaving human beings as victims or spectators of forces at best indifferent, at worst hostile to humankind. In such a world — or rather, in such a way of seeing the world — there is no justice because there is no supreme Judge.

The single greatest protest against such a universe is monotheism. It was born in the faith that the world that gave birth to us is not indifferent to our existence. Nor is it accidental that we alone of all life-forms ask questions There is something at the heart of being — something that is the heart of being — that responds to us as persons and teaches us to ask questions. We are here because someone wanted us to be. Nor are we condemned to ignorance as to who or what that someone is. For in its most radically humanizing gesture, the Hebrew Bible tells us that God speaks. The universe is not silent. And with those words from the One-who-speaks, a question takes shape in the mind of the one-who-listens.

Its classic expression takes the form of an apparent contradiction God is all powerful and all good. But there is injustice in the world. One or other of these statements must, it seems, be false. Either God cannot prevent injustice or he can but chooses not to. If he cannot, he is not all powerful. If he chooses not to, he is not all good. The alternative is that there is no injustice and what seems to be wrong from our limited perspective is in fact right if looked at from a wider or more long-term point of view. These or so it seems — are the only alternatives: to deny the power or goodness of God or to deny the existence of unjustified evil.

The first view, that of Karl Marx, says simply that there is no God. There is therefore no reason to expect that history will be anything other than the tyranny of the strong over the weak, of might over right, of the ‘will to power’ over the will to good. Justice is (as Plato’s Thrasymachus argued in The Republic) whatever serves the interests of the most powerful. This is a world of Darwinian natural selection. The strong survive. The weak perish. Homino homini lupus est, ‘Man is wolf to man’. Nietzsche was its greatest exponent. For him, words like kindness, compassion and sympathy were either disingenuous or naive. There is nothing in nature nor in the untutored human heart to lead us to confer on others a moral dignity equal to our own. We do what is in our interest and what we can get away with. All else is an illusion, wishful thinking. There is no justice because there is no Judge.

Against this, the second voice says No. God exists. There is a judge, therefore there is justice and what seems to us injustice is not ultimately so. Those who suffer do so because they are being punished for their sins. In one version, they may be suffering for Adam’s sin, which still stains humankind. It may be that suffering is not punishment for past vice but preparation for future virtue. It cures us of our pride. It teaches us strength and courage. It gives us sympathy with those who suffer, a sympathy we could not have, had we not suffered ourselves. The world, said Keats, is a ‘vale of soul-making’ (‘Do you not see’, he added, ‘how necessary a world of pains and troubles is to school an intelligence and make it a soul?’). God exists, therefore injustice does not exist.

God exists, therefore there isjustice. But it is divinejustice —justice from the perspective of one who knows all, sees all, and considers all: the uni verse as a whole, and time as a whole, which is to say, eternity. But we who live in space and time cannot see from this perspective, and if we did, it would not make us better human beings but worse.

To be a parent is to be moved by the cry of a child. But if the child is ill and needs medicine, we administer it, making ourselves temporarily deaf to its cry. A surgeon, to do his job competently and well, must to a certain extent desensitize himself to the patient’s fears and pains and regard him, however briefly, as a body rather than as a person. A statesman, to do his best for the country, must weigh long-term consequences and make tough, even brutal decisions: for soldiers to die in war if war is necessary; for people to be thrown out of jobs if economic stringency is needed. Parents, surgeons and politicians have human feelings, but the very roles they occupy mean that at times they must override them if they are to do the best for those for whom they are responsible. To do the best for others needs a measure of detachment, a silencing of sympathy, an anaesthetizing of compassion, for the road to happiness or health or peace sometimes runs through the landscape of pain and suffering and death.

If we were able to see how evil today leads to good tomorrow — if we were able to see from the point of view of God, creator of all — we would understand justice but at the cost of ceasing to be human. We would accept all, vindicate all, and become deaf to the cries of those in pain. God does not want us to cease to be human, for if he did, he would not have created us. We are not God. We will never see things from his perspective. The attempt to do so is an abdication of the human situation. My teacher, Rabbi Nahum Rabinovitch, taught me that this is how to understand the moment when Moses first encountered God at the burning bush. ‘Moses hid his face because he was afraid to look at God’ (Ex. 3:6). Why was he afraid? Because if he were fully to understand God he would have no choice but to be reconciled to the slavery and oppression of the world. From the vantage point of eternity, he would see that the bad is a necessary stage on the journey to the good. He would understand God but he would cease to be Moses, the fighter against injustice who intervened whenever he saw wrong being done. ‘He was afraid’ that seeing heaven would desensitize him to earth, that coming close to infinity would mean losing his humanity. That is why God chose Moses, and why he taught Abraham to pray.

A Holocaust historian was once interviewing a survivor of the extermination camps. He was a hassidic rebbe (the name given by hassidim Jewish mystics, to their leader). Astonishingly, he seemed to have passed through the valley of the shadow of death, his faith intact. He could still smile. ‘Seeing what you saw, did you have no questions about God?’ she asked.

‘Yes’, he said, ‘Of course I had questions. So powerful were those questions, I had no doubt that were I to ask them, God would personally invite me to heaven to tell me the answers. And I prefer to be down here on earth with the questions than up in heaven with the answers’. He too belonged to this ancient Jewish tradition.

There is an aspect of Genesis 18, the text with which I began, which has not been adequately understood, yet it is fundamental not only to the encounter between Abraham and God, but to the whole message of the Hebrew Bible and its distinctive tone of voice.

The conversation about the cities of the plain does not take place in a vacuum. It is preceded by another episode. We recall that the purpose of the three visitors was to tell Abraham and Sarah that they were about to have a child. The two events seem to have nothing to do with one another. What does the prospect of a child have to do with the fate of Sodom or an argument about justice?

Yet this will not do. These are not two episodes but one. The text is explicit on this point. Between the first half and the second we read this verse: ‘The men turned away and went towards Sodom, but Abraham remained standing before God’ (Gen. 18:22). ‘Remained standing’ tells us that this is not a new scene but a continuation of what has gone before. The Hebrew Bible always announces a break in the narrative. ‘And it came to pass that. . .‘ which means, in effect, the end of one scene and the beginning of the next. There is no such direction here. To the contrary the text goes out of its way to signal a seamless transition, an unbroken conversation

To make doubly certain we do not miss the point, the narrative explicitly links the two subjects. In the course of disclosing his plans for Sodom, God makes reference to the fact that Abraham is about to have a child: ‘For I have chosen him so that he may instruct his children and his household after him to keep the way of the Lord by doing righteousness and justice’. Abraham’s role, the task for which he has been chosen, is to be a father. That is what his name means: ‘You shall be called Abraham for I will make you the father of many nations’. The second half of the chapter is thus intimately related to the first half. In inviting him to enter into a dialogue about the fate of Sodom, God is about to teach Abraham what it is to be a father.

All talk of God in the Bible is by way of metaphor. God, the prophets tell us, is a king, a judge, a shepherd, a husband, and many other images, each of which captures a fragment of the relationship between heaven and earth while none expresses all. Undoubtedly, though, the most powerful and consistent metaphor in the Bible is of God as a father. ‘My child, my firstborn, Israel’ (Ex. 4:22), says God when he is about to rescue his people from slavery. Sometimes the prophets, Isaiah especially, speak of God as a mother: ‘Like one whom his mother comforts, so shall I comfort you’(Is. 66:13). Either way, however, though it is highly anthropomorphic, the entire biblical tradition tells us that if we seek to understand God — something we can never fully do by any act of the imagination — the best way to do so is to reflect on what it is to be a parent, bringing new life into being through an act of love, caring for it, protecting it while it is young, and then gradually withdrawing so that it can learn to walk, speak and exercise responsibility.

The use of a metaphor, however, may at times change the meaning of the metaphor itself, and that is the case here. Alongside a revolutionary concept of God, Judaism gave rise to an equally revisionary understanding of what it is to be a parent. In the ancient world, children were the property of their parents without an independent dignity of their own. That gave rise to the form of idolatry most repugnant to the Bible, child sacrifice (against which the story of the binding of Isaac is directed: God wants Abraham not to sacrifice his child). It also set in motion the tragic conflict between sons and fathers dramatized in the myth of Oedipus, which Freud, wrongly I believe, saw as endemic to human culture.

The Hebrew Bible tells the long and often tense story of the childhood of humanity under the parenthood of God. But God does not want humankind to remain in childhood. He wants them to become adults, exe responsibility in freedom. In Jewish law, the obligations of children to parents begin only when they cease to be children (at the age of 12 for girls, 13 for boys). Before then they have no obligations at all. Paradoxically, it is only when we become parents that we understand our parents — which is why the first recorded command in the Bible is that of parenthood (Be fruitful and multiply’). A weak parent seeks to control his children. A true parent seeks to relinquish control, which is why God never intervenes to protect us from ourselves. That means that we will stumble and fall, but only by so doing does a child learn to walk. God does not ask his children not to make mistakes. To the contrary, he accepts that, in the Bible’s own words, ‘There is none on earth so righteous as to do only good and never to sin’ (Eccl. 7:20). God asks us only to acknowledge our mistakes and learn from them. Forgiveness is written into the structure of the universe.

The connection between the two halves of the chapter lies in an utterly new understanding of what it is to be a parent. Abraham, about to become father to the first child of the covenant, is being taught by God what it means to raise a child. To be a father— implies the Bible — is to teach a child to question, challenge, confront, dispute. God invites Abraham to do these things because he wants him to be the parent of a nation that will do these things. He does not want the people of the covenant to be one

•that accepts the evils and injustices of the world as the will of God. He wants the people of the covenant to be human, neither more nor less. He wants them to hear the cry of the oppressed, the paln of the afflicted and the plaint of the lonely. He wants them not to accept the world that is, because it is not the world that ought to be. He is giving Abraham a tutorial in what it is to teach a child to grow by challenging the existing scheme of things. Only through such challenges does a child learn to accept responsibility; only by accepting responsibility does a child grow to become an adult; and only an adult can understand the parenthood of God.

To be a Jewish child is to learn how to question. Four times the Mosaic books refer to children asking questions (the ‘four sons’ of the Haggadah) 8 The most significant family ritual, the seder service of Passover, begins with the questions asked by a child. Against cultures that see unquestioning obedience as the ideal behaviour of a child, Jewish tradition, in the Haggadah, regards the ‘child who has not learned to ask’ as the lowest, not the highest, stage of development (Solomon ibn Gabirol said, ‘A wise question already contains half the answer’). A famous verse in Judaism’s holiest prayer, the Shema, is usually translated as ‘You shall teach these things diligently to your children’ (Deut. 6:7). The great eleventh-century commentator Rashi (Rabbi Shlomo Yitzhaki), however, translates the verb not as ‘you shall teach diligently’ but as ‘you shall sharpen’. Education, in Judaism, is active, not passive. It is about honing the mind, sharpening the intellect, through question and answer, challenge and response.

Judaism is God’s perennial question-mark against the condition of the world. That things are as they are is a fact, not a value. Should it be so? Why should it be so? Only one who asks whether the world should be as it is, is capable of changing what it is. That is why Marx was wrong. Biblical faith is not a conservative force. It does not conceal the scars of the human condition under the robes of sanctity and inevitability. There may be — there is — divine justice in or beyond history, but God does not ask us to live by the standards of divine justice for if we could understand divine justice we would no longer be human. We are God’s children, not God. By teaching Abraham how to be a child, challenging, questioning, defending even the wicked in the name of human solidarity, God was instructing him in what it is to be human, keeping ‘the way of the Lord by doing righteousness and justice’.

God exists, therefore the universe is just. But we are merely human, and God has empowered us to seek the justice that is human — not justice from the point of view of the universe and eternity but from the point of view of the fallible, frail, ephemeral, vulnerable beings that we are. We who live in space and time cannot but see injustice. We cannot know the rewards of a life beyond the grave. We cannot judge the remote consequences of an event all too vividly present in the here and now. Our pain is not made less by the belief that it is necessary for the good of the whole. Still less is it made bearable by the belief that it is justified as punishment for sin. That — as Job’s comforters belatedly discovered — is not a form of comfort but a double affliction. In the book ofJob, the comforters who defend the justice of God are condemned by God himself, because He asks of us not to take his part but to be human, the essence of which is acknowledging that we are not God.

God in making humanity conferred on us the right and duty to see things from a human point of view. If evil exists within our horizons, then it is real no matter how limited those horizons are. Making us human, not divine, God calls on us to judge and act within the terms of our humanity. ‘The Torah was not given to ministering angels’, said the sages. It was given to human beings, and the justice it asks us to fight for is human justice. That is why God empowered Abraham to challenge him on the fate of Sodom and the cities of the plain.

God knew that there were no righteous in the city. But Abraham did not and could not know. Had he said nothing — had he accepted the divine decree —justice would have been done, but not seen to be done, not at any rate in a way intelligible to us on earth. There had to be a fair trial, an advocate for the defence, a plea in mitigation. That was

Abraham’s role and his courage — the courage God invited him to show. For the faith Abraham was being asked to initiate would be one that in every generation strove for justice in human terms. It is not a faith that accepts the status quo as God’s will. On the contrary, it is a faith in which God invites human beings to become his partners in the work of redemption; to build a society on the basis of a justice that people understand as such; a human world, without hubris (the attempt to be more than human) or nemesis (a descent into the less-than-human).

‘The Torah speaks in the language of human beings’, said Rabbi Ishmael, meaning, it is addressed to us within the parameters of our understanding. ‘It is not in heaven’, said Moses at the end of his life, ‘nor is it beyond the sea’ (Deut. 30:12—13). There is plenary truth in heaven; on earth, we live among its reflections and refractions. We could not understand God’s justice without being gods ourselves. God does not ask

Opium of the people? Nothing was ever less an opiate than this religion of sacred discontent, of dissatisfaction with the status quo. It was Abraham, then Moses, Amos, and Isaiah, who fought on behalf of justice and human dignity — confronting priests and kings, even arguing with God Himself. That note, first sounded by Abraham, never died. It was given its most powerful expression in the book of Job, surely the most dissident book ever to be included in a canon of sacred scriptures. It echoes again and again in rabbinic midrash, in the kinot (laments) of the Middle Ages, in hassidic tales and the literature of the Holocaust. In Judaism, faith is not acceptance but protest, against the world that is, in the name of the world that is not yet but ought to be. Faith lies not in the answer but the question — and the greater the human being, the more intense the question. The Bible is not metaphysical opium but its opposite. Its aim is not to transport the believer to a private heaven. Instead, its impassioned, sustained desire is to bring heaven down to earth. Until we have done this, there is work still to do.

There are cultures that relieve humankind of responsibility, lifting us beyond the world of pain to bliss, ecstasy, meditative rapture. They teach us to accept the world as it is and ourselves as we are. They bring peace of mind, and that is no small thing. Judaism is not peace of mind. ‘The righteous have no rest, neither in this world nor the next’, says the Talmud.’ I remain in awe at the challenge God has set us: to be different, iconoclasts of the politically correct, to be God’s question-mark against the conventional wisdom of the age, to build, to change, to ‘mend’ the world until it becomes a place worthy of the divine presence because we have learned to honour the image of God that is humankind.

Biblical faith demands courage. It is not for the faint-hearted. Its vision of the universe is anything but comfortable. However free or affluent we are, on Passover we eat the bread of the affliction and taste the bitter herbs of slavery. On Sukkot (Tabernacles) we sit in shacks and know what it is to be homeless. On the Sabbath we make our living protest against a society driven by ceaseless production and consumption. Every day in our prayers (Psalm 146) we speak of God who ‘brings justice to the oppressed and food to the hungry, who sets captives free and opens the eyes of the blind, who straightens the backs of those who are bent down . . . who watches over the stranger and gives heart to the orphan and the widow’. To imitate God is to be alert to the poverty suffering and loneliness of others. Opium desensitizes us to pain. The Bible sensitizes us to it.

It is impossible to be moved by the prophets and not have a social con science. Their message, delivered in the name of God, is: accept responsibility. The world will not get better of its own accord. Nor will we make it a more human place by leaving it to others — politicians, columnists, protestors, campaigners — making them our agents to bring redemption on our behalf. The Hebrew Bible begins not with man’s cry to God, but with God’s cry to us, each of us, here where we are. ‘If you are silent at this time’, says Mordekhai to Esther, ‘relief and deliverance will come from elsewhere . . . but who knows whether it was not for such a time as this that you have attained royalty?’ (Esth. 4:14). That is the question God poses to us. Yes, if we do not do it, someone else may. But we will then have failed to understand why we are here and what we are summoned to do. The Bible is God’s call to human responsibility.

NOTES

1. Karl Marx, ‘Towards a critique of Hegel’s philosophy of right: introduction’. Quoted in Don Cupitt, The Sea of Faith (London: BBC, 1984), p.

2. Ibid.

3. George Steiner, in his In Bluebeard’s Castle: some notes towards the redefinition of culture (London: Faber and Faber, 1971), pp. 29—48, argues that the socialism of Marx, Trotsky and Ernst Bloch has its roots in biblical messianism. There is, however, a difference in kind between religious and secular On the latter, see J. L. Talmon, The Origins of Totalitarian Democracy (London: Penguin, 1986).

4. See Sander L. Gilman, Jewish Self-Hatred: anti-Semitism and the hidden language of the Jews (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1986), pp.

188

5. The Republi6 338c; C. R. E Ferrari (ed.), trans. Tom Griffith (Cambridge:

Cambridge University Press, 2000), p. 15.

6. John Keats, ‘Letter to George and Georgiana Keats, 14 February—3 May,

1819’, in The Letters of John Keats, 1814—1821, ed. Hyder Edward Rollins

(Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1999).

7. Nahum Rabinovitch, Darkah shel Torah [ (Jerusalem: Maaliyot,1999), pp. 185—91.

8. Ex. 12:26; 13:8, 14; Deut. 6:20.

9. Rashi, Commentary to Deut. 6:7. to. Babylonian Talmud, Berakhot 25b.

11. Ibid., 31b.

12. Babylonian Talmud, Moed Katan 29a.

A Study of Sephardic and Ashkenazic Liturgy[1

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

Connection to Tanakh

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

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

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

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

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

Kaddish and Kedushah[5]

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

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

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

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

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

Haftarot[7]

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

Vayera

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

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

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

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

Shemot

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Music and Mood During the High Holy Days

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

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

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

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

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

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

The Censored Verse in Alenu

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

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

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

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

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

Conclusion

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

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

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