Reflecting on Judaism

A short while ago I circularised a letter received from Rabbi Dr. Jeremy Rosen together with my response to him. It produced a great many replies from both professionals and laymen alike. Below is Rabbi Rosen's letter, my reply to him and some of the comments I received. Three are from orthodox rabbis, all university graduates, with semichah from prestigious yeshivot; the fourth from an orthodox Jewish academic, a PhD, whose field of research includes the subject under discussion; the fifth from a leading lay-member of our community here in Natanya.. I hope that you find their replies as interesting as I did.  I also found it interesting to notice what was omitted as well as what was said. I received no negative replies.
 
From: Jeremy Rosen
To: avery@haggai.u-net.com
Sent: Friday, October 10, 2008 8:04 PM
Subject: Jewish Guilt

What is it about Rosh Hashana and Yom Kippur that gets hundreds of thousands of Jews who seem to care nothing about their religion all year long, suddenly to feel little twinges of obligation? Is this the Jewish angst or guilt Philip Roth writes about?

There is a joke that a Christian expects that if he is found guilty before the Heavenly Tribunal on Judgment Day, he will be sentenced to eternal damnation and suffering. The Jew, on the other hand, expects to be let off with costs! Now let us ignore the anti-Semitic implication of 'costs'. The fact is that Judaism is an optimistic religion and one in which we do have a sort of special relationship with the Almighty. We do indeed expect special treatment, even if throughout history we seem to have blown it time and time again. It is very hard to explain Jewish survival against the heavy odds, and for so long, unless one assumes some sort of Heavenly intervention. Is guilt the price of this?

Consider the Mishna at the end of Taanit: 'The happiest days of the year for Israel were Yom Kippur (and Tu B'Av) when the daughters of Jerusalem used to dress in white and dance in vineyards.' These were the great 'singles events' of Jewish life in ancient Israel. Judaism seems to have been a much more relaxed, fun religion! It all seems a world away from the serious, heavy atmosphere we have come to associate with the High Holy Days!

Why now are the Holy Days such heavy experiences, such penance to be suffered? Can it be said that Jewish guilt has won? But what is Jewish guilt? The Biblical attitude is pretty simple. Done something wrong? Admit it. Not to a priest, but to God. Then determine not to do it again; and finally, bring a sacrifice. That is it. Start all over again; the past is forgotten. All the Biblical words for 'sin' imply no more than an error of judgment, to miss the mark, to step off the path, to fall short. There is no 'state of sin', just mistakes that need to be avoided next time. Just get back on the path. The Biblical word for 'guilt', 'asham', is only once used of individuals. It is simply a category of sacrifice.

Some lay the blame at the door of Christianity and its preoccupation with original sin, the Greek dichotomy between body and mind, so that body is bad, sex a concession, celibacy the ideal. This explains their traditions of self-flagellation and monastic asceticism. Perhaps it was a Medieval Jewish response to Christian Crusader piety? But that is too easy. You can find similar ideas in Jewish sources of two thousand years ago.

All religions throughout the world have a very strong element of guilt and the need to purge it in various ways. And in every religion you will find those who treat its obligations as a celebration of life and others as a discipline. Perhaps in our case it is a post-destruction response to exile and suffering, and the feeling that the more we suffer the sooner we will be forgiven and escape the constant and unrelenting anti-Semitism.

The Holocaust exacerbated things of course. Guilt is even stronger amongst the children of Holocaust survivors than survivors themselves. In Israel so many have lost a relative, a friend or suffered in some way. Perhaps it is the guilt of survival that weighs heavily. Or perhaps it's the realization that the wonderful dreams and ideals of Zionism, of an ethical, just society, have been lost, and we are all to blame for our current greed and corruption.

We have lots of good reasons for guilt. But the response needs to be to change, to do something, not to wallow in it. Guilt is not necessarily a religious one. The trouble with guilt is that it can become a masochistic end in itself. Suffering makes us feel better. It gives us an excuse to go on doing all the wrong things.

Sadly, that is usually what happens. We go through the process of atonement, only to carry on afterwards in just the same way as before, as if nothing happened. And if that's all these Holy Days are, salves to our consciences but of no tangible benefit to us or our society, then frankly a dance in the park or will be of much more benefit!

Shabbat Shalom & Chag Sameach,

Jeremy
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Dear Jeremy,
 
Regarding your essay, I have often wondered how much introspection really goes on during Yom Kippur. The villain that knowingly does wrong and continues to do wrong after the 'Day' has achieved nothing. The kosher butchers' wholesaler who behaved atrociously, the subject of one of your recent essays, is a case in point.
 
For the most of us, and I speak without any special qualification, only from observing, we try to behave decently throughout the year, so how do we know what to atone for? Most of us don't behave badly, knowingly. 
 
The rabbi of my local synagogue, in his sermon, asked us to use the 'Day' for introspection. Fat chance. A continual cycle of stand up, sit down, respond to prayers; stand up, sit down, respond to prayers. If rabbis want introspection then give us the time to introspect. There are some seventy medieval prayers introduced into our Yom Kippur machzor since the invention of the printing press, written by mystics and poets years earlier, many of which most people don't understand. They were not part of our prayers for the first 2500+ years of our history so let them be ignored and use the time for introspection if you wish.  Many of these prayers were introduced against strong opposition at the time in any event.
 
But the biggest mystery is the change from the happy 'Day' you describe compared to, what you called, the serious, heavy 'Day' of today. You wrote, 'The happiest days of the year for Israel were Yom Kippur (and Tu B'Av) when the daughters of Jerusalem used to dress in white and dance in vineyards.' These were the great 'singles events' of Jewish life in ancient Israel. Judaism seems to have been a much more relaxed, fun religion!'
 
I would suggest that it was a 'boy meets girl' day, with mixed dancing (WOW), so that the young people could find, and were encouraged to find, a shidduch. The religious leaders in those days seem to have been much more sensible than our religious leaders today.
 
But why did we allow this dramatic change to come about? Both approaches to the 'Day' can't be correct. Surely the original must be the more correct. So if you want to know where much of our feeling of guilt comes from just look at our current machzor and you will find the answer. You say, 'We have lots of good reasons for guilt. But the response needs to be to change, to do something, not to wallow in it'.
 
Is it not possible to feel guilty or made to feel guilty, even if you have done nothing wrong?
 
Have a good year,
 
Woolf.
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From 1st Rabbi
 
Dear Woolf 
 
I could not agree more both with Rabbi Rosen and your response.  The fun, happy, non Judgmental Judaism in which I grew up, the Orthodoxy that was has been run over with a heaviness, brooding and cynicism.  We take ourselves too seriously and are afraid to be too happy.  There is too much black in our clothing, and we dress the way we feel about ourselves. 
 
The change came rather suddenly after the giants of our age passed away - the Soleveichiks, Feinsteins etc and we were left with mediocre leadership that finds comfort in falling back of blackness.  They lack the light that shines to make our way of life into a joyful experience.  Young people are asked to sacrifice the joy of youth - yes, there must always be a GVUL - a limit and a discipline - but, at the same time to have a sense of normalcy; with color and excitement.  Yes, it should be alright to break some rules and not to be condemned to eternal damnation.  They will have the time to grow into tzadikim who will live pure and good lives and who will never be afraid to be imperfect. 
 
Let's remember to put the feather back into our hats even when they happen to be black.
 
A Gmar Tov and an authentic Chag Samayach -   
 
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From 2nd rabbi
 
Completely agree, the synagogue services need a total overhaul. Rabbis of all denominations are too lilly livered!
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From 3rd rabbi
 
The word in the Mishnah is 'cholot' - feminine plural - implying ladies and only ladies were dancing. The men assumedly were watching.

You can say that this is still very different from today's charedi society, where men may not look at ladies dancing.

However, you could not - based on the words of the Mishnah - suggest there was mixed dancing.

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From the Academic
 
Woolf,
 
Thank you for that correspondence.
 
There is a Jewish sense of guilt, and a justified one, but not for any reason of which the orthodox element (us) is aware.

This is the guilt we should feel (and do feel but without understanding the underlying reason) for being bad Jews, not real Torah Jews, in that we follow the Shulchan Arukh, which is based on the traditional sources for the best of motives but the worst of reasons, and has led us into living a lie. By that I mean the sources are not true about our origins and keep masking them, and have created a religion based on false assumptions.
 
The orthodox belief has accepted the Mishna, and then the Gemara, and the Midrashim and the Rishonim, like Rashi and Rambam and so on, as legitimate exponents of the Torah. But they are not. They have sanitised the Torah and some of the Tenakh and skewed it for their own purposes, to make it palatable to the people.
 
The Pharisees started the process, and took the Torah to a position where it was acceptable to the people but, by taking out the stings and cruelties and making it lovey-dovey, they distorted it. It is not all sweetness and light. They started the falsehood that the Torah, both Sheh biktav (written) and Ba'al peh (oral), came from Sinai.
 
They would (I submit) be horrified to see how far the Yeshivot have taken this and obscured the true meaning of the Torah, overlaying it with layer upon
layer of learning and erudition that has completely lost the original meanings,
like turning the thrice-repeated command not to cook the kid in its mother's
milk, into setting up a hundred kashruth authorities, keeping women in the
kitchen, and fitting plastic dividers between milk and meat sinks, and so on.
 
This is a most unfortunate situation when people talk about getting others to
lead a Torah life, and do not understand that what they are really advocating is a cult of the Mishna Berura. It is a perversion and in my humble opinion it
is this that is urging the Creator to make us suffer with a guilt complex that
the so-called orthodox (us) do not even understand.
 
It would be wonderful if the vast resources and personnel expended on Yeshiva study of self-justifying texts would be used to uncover, in an objectively traditional way, the true meaning of the Torah, and reveal its original texts and sources.
 
But it is difficult for Rabbis, though many have their doubts, to deny their hard-earned learning (and perhaps lose their jobs) and they cannot be expected to be impartial on these issues and look again at the Torah and its history without their Talmudic blinkers.So it will have to be ancient historians and other scholars (even philosophers and psychiatrists) who will lead us back to the true Torah source of life which, I submit, will then become relevant to most of our race, rather than just ten percent of it.
 
Sorry to be so long-winded but you have touched a nerve!
 
Yours,

From the lay-member

Dear Woolfie,

I enjoyed reading your article.  As usual, it is timely, provocative, and very informative.  You usually write with a message which makes one aware that there are different opinions in life and, certainly, we have an obligation to remove our blinders and see the world as it is and not as we wish it to be.  I believe that the religious world has insulated itself and limited its scope to either "you believe it or you don't". 

There is no room for deviation or individuality in opinions related to dogma.  Your reference to repentance, and all that goes with it, is a bright light which has a difficult time flickering in our world.  We seem to forget that the sages of old were really not anxious for people to conform to molds, but rather, wanted, in my opinion, for individuals to think and not be part of the herd.  Unfortunately, we have lost that wonderful trait that has made Judaism so special and could add a great deal to our troubled lives.  I'm not anti-religious, as you know, but anti-conformist.  You represent the element that I admire, as you convey information, which should have an impact on anyone who reads what you have written.  I see the limited scope of the supposedly black hat mentality, which, on one hand, conforms, and, on the other hand, rejects any type of change.  I see this in one of my son's world and, in general, our right wing philosophies, which do not add to unity.  You reference in your essay that Tisha B'Av and Yom Kippur were the happiest days in the Jewish calendar, had the blessings of our rabbis in that era. It is very clear to me that rabbinic authorities of those years were flexible and encouraged individual opinions.  In our time we have regressed, and that has hurt the Jewish people.  I believe that the gulf between the right, left, and middle will never be bridged, because the leadership has a myopic viewpoint and only sees their vision.  There is none whom I can think of who will shake the foundation to make improvements.  Your article has made me sad but more aware of what could be.

Thanks Woolfie.