Idolatry and the Confederate Flag - Huqqat 5775

About a month ago, I was in Budapest with my family to celebrate my sister’s having given birth to a baby girl, her first child. We did not have a lot of time for sightseeing, but I did do something there that I had not done before: I went to the municipal flea market. It was a weekday and deep into the afternoon, so not many stalls were open. But of the handful that were, several had Nazi items on display for sale: SS pins, swastika rings, standard-issue helmets, a soldier’s jacket. Some of these items were, perhaps most jarringly, for sale alongside Soviet memorabilia and Judaica items as well.

Now I suppose that finding WWII-era military paraphernalia is nothing unusual, particularly at flea markets. But the fact that these things were casually, non-judgmentally on display, merely for sale next to Jewish odds-and-ends was particularly jolting, since it suggested that Hungarians do not quite appreciate how deplorable these symbols are, how they stand for hatred and killing and the worst that humanity has to offer.

I found it utterly fascinating this week that in the wake of the horrible killings at the Emmanuel Church in Charleston, South Carolina, a number of southern states are finally, 150 years after the end of the Civil War, moving to remove the Confederate flag from their public spaces. Yes, it is “only” a symbol, and removing symbols means nothing if it does not change the content of our hearts and minds. Taking down the flag at the South Carolina capitol building will not cure the problem of white supremacist activities in that state or anywhere else. But it is a step, and, at least with respect to Jewish tradition, a significant one. Allow me to explain:

We read today in Parashat Huqqat that might give us some insight into the scourge of hatred.

God was angry at the Israelites for complaining their way across the desert, speaking out against God and Moshe, and so, for inexplicable reasons, God sends serpents to bite them. What do the Israelites do? They apologize, but then ask for Moshe to intercede with God to get rid of the serpents. So God has Moshe build a seraph / winged serpent figure out of copper and mount it on a flagpole, and when anyone is bitten by a serpent, he or she is instantly cured.

But later there is a problem. This seraph-on-a-pole stays with the people for hundreds of years, and they forget its original purpose, but it continues to be revered. So later, as recounted in the book of II Kings (18:4), King Hezekiah destroys it as part of his anti-idolatry reforms.

Idolatry is one of the biggest no-nos of the Torah. The Talmud counts it among the three biggest sins, the three that Jews are forbidden to violate, even to save a life (the other two are murder and sexual impropriety). We are told in our halakhic codes that we must stay far away from anything that is in any way connected to idolatry. (The Hebrew term is avodah zarah, “foreign worship”).

So for example, we cannot eat foods produced by idolaters, or drink wine made by idolaters, lest these items may have been used in some idolatrous ritual. We cannot enter a temple containing idols. We cannot have business dealings with idolaters in the days immediately before one of their festivals because we may make them more happy and hence more likely to praise their idols. And so on. (It’s worth noting that true idolaters are hard to find today: Christians, Hindus, Buddhists, and many contemporary pagans do not fall into this category.)

Why is avodah zarah / idolatry so reviled by Jewish text and tradition? Why must we avoid it so zealously? Because it corrupts us, it leads us astray. When the Israelites are told that they will enter the land of Canaan to possess it, one of the first obligations they are given is to destroy the bamot, the unholy altars of the Canaanites, lest they be tempted to worship. Throughout the Prophetic books, the Israelites struggle with the influence of Canaanite gods. And our tradition teaches us that the First Temple was destroyed by the Babylonians due to the Big Three transgressions identified earlier. Idolatry is an infection that proves hard to remove, even though King Hezekiah tries valiantly.

So why am I telling you this? Because in the public discourse this week surrounding the church shooting and the removal of Confederate flags, all I could think about was avodah zarah. That flag is a symbol of a particular kind of idolatry: the idolatry of institutionalized racism.

Symbols are used precisely because they have the power to inspire for good or bad.  But hatred corrupts, just like idolatry. It leads people astray, to do things that are violent and disgusting, acts which damage people and society. And although defenders of the Confederate flag might claim that it is merely a symbol of Southern pride and/or culture or the principles of “states’ rights,” we know better. The flag is a symbol of slavery, of racism, of hatred.

And furthermore, it is clear that even if all the Confederate flags in America were to magically disappear, it would not cure the pernicious problem of racism. It might drive it further underground. (Think of the worldwide collective guilt inspired by the Shoah; it drove anti-Semitism into the shadows for decades, but we see it now begin to re-emerge in all its insidious forms.)

But our tradition teaches us something very important here: that the way to eliminate a problem is to distance yourself physically from all of its trappings. We the Jews are still around, thousands of years after the idol-worshipping Canaanites, Babylonians, Hellenists and Romans are all gone. The strategy worked; you don’t find too many Jews today seduced by the appeal of Ba’al or Zeus.

And that brings us to an essential principle in Jewish tradition: that symbolic acts ultimately lead to a change in one’s behavior and/or beliefs. That idea is encapsulated in the following passage from the Talmud, Sanhedrin 105b:

אמר רב יהודה אמר רב: לעולם יעסוק אדם בתורה ובמצווה, אפילו שלא לשמה, שמתוך שלא לשמה - בא לשמה. שבשכר ארבעים ושתים קורבנות שהקריב בלק, זכה ויצאה ממנו רות.

Rav Yehudah said in Rav's name: One should always occupy oneself with Torah and good deeds, though it may not be for their own sake; because when one does something not for its own sake, eventually it comes to be for its own sake. For as a reward for the forty-two sacrifices offered up by Balaq, he was privileged that Ruth should be his descendant.

To explain, a midrash suggests that Balaq, the Moabite ruler who appears in next week’s parashah, and, by the way, is also mentioned in today’s haftarah. Balaq hires Bil’am ben Be’or to curse the Israelites, but Bil’am blesses them instead. So Balaq makes restitution by offering sacrifices to the Israelite God.  After doing so symbolically 42 times, his heart had truly changed, and thus he ultimately became the grandfather of the Moabitess Ruth, who is largely considered the first convert to Judaism, and is the subject of her own book of the Tanakh.

Judaism has always highlighted deeds over beliefs, because the performance of a deed, even without the proper kavvanah / intention, will ultimately change one’s motivation behind it. Do we all necessarily understand why we pray daily, wear curious ritual items during prayer, eat only kosher foods, abstain from certain creative or destructive acts on Shabbat? No. But we encourage fellow Jews who do not do those things regularly to do so. Why? Because after doing something 42 times, you will come to understand how the act improves your life, how it makes you a better person.

Our tradition teaches us that symbolic behavior, even if there is nothing behind it, leads one to change.

That is why we teach our children tefillah / prayer, or how to sing Shabbat songs, or how to participate in the Passover seder, etc. Because although we know that they will someday make their own choices about whether or not to be involved with Jewish life, the basis of having done something at least a few times will make the chance that they will embrace these rituals as adults much greater. Furthermore, the more often our children have participated in these rituals, the greater their chance of embracing their heritage for the rest of their lives.

If Rav Yehudah were here to counsel us on how to end the scourge of hatred, he would probably suggest that the way to cure racism is to compel everybody to seek out somebody of a different racial group, or even a different ethnic group, each day, and talk to that person, to spend some time getting to know him/her, to hear his/her story, to try to understand. You all know that each of us carries with us a certain amount of prejudice, a modicum of opinions that we form about people that are different from ourselves. But when we meet and get to know people from another group, those prejudices break down. The individual relationship outweighs any other opinions. And at first, while these inter-group conversations would be entirely symbolic, soon the symbolism would be replaced by genuine trust and admiration.

Now Rav Yehuda’s (theoretical) plan of action might be a little impractical. But we have to start somewhere, and the disappearance of the symbols of slavery might be a good start. Although, as many commentators have observed, taking down the Confederate flag flying over the South Carolina capitol building will not change what is in people’s minds, it will certainly change the perception of what is tangibly acceptable, and what is not. And that will go a long way toward changing people’s thinking and behavior.

Hatred is idolatry. Racism is idolatry. We have to distance ourselves from the trappings of racism and hatred. Only that will cure us as a society.

Perhaps only with the coming of the mashiah / messiah will we eliminate hatred, racism,  anti-Semitism, and any other form of “my-people-are-better-than-your-people-ism.” But we CAN purify our hearts by working harder to lead more haters away from their idolatry. Let’s take down those Canaanite bamot. Remove the idols.

Shabbat shalom.

~

Rabbi Seth Adelson

(Originally delivered at Temple Israel of Great Neck, Shabbat morning, 6/27/2015.)

Responding With All Your Might: A (Post-) Lag Ba'Omer Thought

Lag Ba'Omer*, the 33rd day of the counting of the omer (the 49-day period from Pesah to Shavuot), marks a joyous occasion in the midst of an anguished period of Jewish history. The Talmud (Bavli Yevamot 62b) tells us that this period was marked by a plague in the 2nd century CE which took the lives of 24,000 students of the great sage Rabbi Akiva. Only a handful survived, among them Rabbi Shim'on bar Yohai, considered by some to be the father of Jewish mysticism. As such, Lag Ba'Omer has become in recent years a celebration of Shim'on bar Yohai: tens of thousands of Haredim march from Tzefat, in northern Israel, to Mount Meron, where bar Yohai is traditionally thought to be buried, and light bonfires to honor his legacy.

I was once at the grave of Rabbi Shim'on bar Yohai, not on Lag Ba'Omer, and experienced there the most peculiar behavior that I have ever witnessed in the context of tefillah / Jewish prayer. It was an otherwise ordinary afternoon, and there was a standard pick-up minhah (brief afternoon service) going on nearby, attended by a handful of guys who seemed to be from the same Haredi sect.

They arrived at the end, and one of them began saying the Mourner's Kaddish, the prayer recited by those who have recently suffered a loss or are recalling the annual observance of a relative's passing. They came to the congregational response, usually similarly intoned in a spoken-word form - no music, marking the mourner's sadness. And then something truly wacky happened: all of the assembled began to SHOUT WITH ALL THEIR MIGHT, "Amen! Yehei shemei rabba mevarakh le'alam ul'alemei alemaya!" "May God's great name be praised throughout all time!"

I think I jumped. I had never heard anything like that.

A few years later, as I was studying liturgy seriously at the Jewish Theological Seminary, I encountered a real gem of Talmudic wisdom, and experienced a brief moment of revelation (Bavli Shabbat 119b):

אמר רבי יהושע בן לוי: כל העונה אמן יהא שמיה רבא מברך בכל כחו ־ קורעין לו גזר דינו

Rabbi Yehoshua ben Levi taught: One who says, "Amen! Yehei shemei rabba mevarakh..." with all his strength, any [negative Divine] decree against him is torn up.

In other words, if you scream this line when responding to a mourner, you get a whole lot of Heavenly credit, and a guaranteed place in the world to come. I realized, in retrospect, that this is exactly what was going on during that otherwise ordinary minhah: they were taking this piece of wisdom literally.

I do not necessarily recommend shouting in synagogue. Depending on the congregation, the reactions by others might vary from discomfort to shock to bodily removing you from the building. But we might want to think, not only as we respond to those in mourning but throughout our tefillah, about Rabbi Shim'on bar Yohai, about the bonfires of the soul, and about pouring all our might into forming those words of prayer.

~
Rabbi Seth Adelson

* "Lag", ל''ג, is not a word but a number: the Hebrew letter lamed has a numerical value of 30 and the gimmel a value of 3.

War and Peace in Jewish Tradition - Shabbat Hazon, 5774

My older son flew back to Israel on Thursday evening. After I dropped him at the airport, I received news of the 72-hour cease-fire, and you can imagine how relieved I was. That is, until yesterday morning, when we heard that the cease-fire lasted all of 2 hours before being broken by mortar fire from Gaza into Israel, and then there was the news of the captured IDF soldier, Hadar Goldin.

This is also Shabbat Hazon, the Shabbat right before Tish’ah Be’av, the saddest day of the Jewish year, when we commemorate all of the greatest losses that we have suffered as a people. As Israelis and Gazans mourn their dead, I think we can safely say that everybody in the world would agree that 72 hours of quiet would have been a good start, but that we need something longer, and ideally something permanent. And, of course, as we look backward over the arc of Jewish history, we may agree that there have been far more military losses and destructions and dispersions than any nation should be subjected to.

But the point on which the world disagrees is the why, the what, the when, and basically everything else. I must confess that it is very hard for me to be objective about this entire situation, with Hamas in control of Gaza and pouring all of its resources, its Israeli-made cement, its Israeli-supplied electricity and water, into building tunnels and terrorist infrastructure to destroy Israel. They could have been building greenhouses, or a nice waterfront park, or new residential buildings, or schools, or hospitals, or really anything positive. But no, they put their money on their primary objective, which is to wipe the Jewish state off the map.

So I must admit that I have a hard time seeing the other side, the side that only points to Israel’s destruction in Gaza and says, Israel is the aggressor, Israel is the sole guilty party, Israel is the murderous Zionist entity, Israel is the occupier (even though Israel has not occupied Gaza since they pulled out in 2005). And it really hurts to see that there are many people around the world who not only believe this, but chant it into microphones along with anti-Semitic epithets. That hurts. We, the Jews, deserve a land of our own, a nation that came from 2,000 years of hope and yearning, and that land deserves quiet, deserves freedom from rocket fire, freedom from enemies bent on its destruction.

While we all agree that peace should come soon, we may all not agree on Israel’s approach, even among Jews, even among Israelis. So I thought that it would be a good idea to take a look at some Jewish sources on warfare and peace, so that we can view this current conflict through the long-range scope of our ancient wisdom.

As a postulate, it must be acknowledged that Jewish tradition, as is always the case, never speaks with a single voice. So there is disagreement to be found even within these sources.

Rabbinic tradition separates wars into a couple of different kinds: mandatory and discretionary (source 2). Among the mandatory wars in the Torah are those against the seven Canaanite nations and against the Amalekites. These are called “hovah,” meaning obligatory. Maimonides tells us that these particular obligations no longer apply, because none of these people exist any more. (Even though every year Purim comes around, rabbis magically locate the spirit of Amaleq, for homiletical purposes.)

But also among the mandatory wars are those that are defensive, that is, responding to attack (source 1, below). These are in the category of milhemot mitzvah, commanded wars. The current Operation Protective Edge of course falls into this category. (There are disagreements between commentators on the Talmud about the pre-emptive strike; Rashi sides with the majority of commentators who agree that a pre-emptive strike is discretionary.)

The Sanhedrin (i.e. the representatives of the people) have the right to declare war, but they must consider the ramifications, including loss of soldiers’ lives. In the Talmud, Shemuel (source 3) condones the loss of up to one-sixth of the fighting force before charging a government with misconduct.

Philo of Alexandria (source 4), noted Jewish philosopher who lived in Egypt late into the Second Temple period, and Maimonides (source 5) as well as others were concerned for the welfare non-combatants, with the latter insisting that a siege must not prevent innocents from leaving the city.

Destruction is always a part of war, but it must be limited. See Deuteronomy 20:19-20, and Maimonides’ elaboration (sources 6 & 7). Why is this a concern? Because war has the tendency to allow for military excess (sources 8-10). See Ramban, comment to Deuteronomy 23:10 below, and also that the Torah “wants the soldier to learn to act compassionately with our enemies even during wartime.” (Ramban’s addendum to Sefer HaMitzvot).

Philo (sources 11), sees the Jewish military as being held to a higher standard, that we seek peace first, and do not slaughter indiscriminately during war.

We might conclude by noting that our inclinations to war and peace should be guided by the general principle, expressed so beautifully in Qohelet Rabbah (the standard midrash on Ecclesiastes, source 12), that this is the only world we have been given, and therefore we should do our best to minimize the damage that we cause. It is a reminder that in war, there are no winners.

***

And as we draw near to Tish’ah Be’av, we should remember that while the First Temple was destroyed by the Babylonians due to our having committed the greatest sins (idolatry, sexual impropriety, and murder), the Second Temple was lost to the Romans due to sin’at hinnam, baseless hatred.

There are many lenses here through which to view the current conflict; I leave that to you.

Shabbat shalom. Let us hope and pray that next Shabbat will truly be a Shabbat of peace.

***

Sources

1. Babylonian Talmud, Tractate Berakhot 58a

והתורה אמרה: אם בא להרגך ־ השכם להרגו, מחייה בקולפא וקטליה.

If a man comes to kill you, rise early and kill him first.

2. Babylonian Talmud, Tractate Sotah 44b

א״ר יוחנן: רשות דרבנן זו היא מצוה דרבי יהודה, מצוה דרבנן זו היא חובה דרבי יהודה. אמר רבא: מלחמות יהושע לכבש ־ דברי הכל חובה, מלחמות בית דוד לרווחה ־ דברי הכל רשות, כי פליגי ־ למעוטי עובדי כוכבים דלא ליתי עלייהו

R. Johanan said: A war which is discretionary according to the Rabbis is mandatory according to R. Judah, and a war which is mandatory according to the Rabbis is obligatory according to R. Judah.

Raba said: The wars waged by Joshua to conquer Canaan were obligatory in the opinion of all; the wars waged by the House of David for territorial expansion were voluntary in the opinion of all; where they differ is with regard to wars against heathens so that these should not march against them.

3. Babylonian Talmud, Tractate Shevuot 35b

דאמר שמואל: מלכותא דקטלא חד משיתא בעלמא לא מיענשא, שנאמר: כרמי שלי לפני האלף לך שלמה למלכותא דרקיעא, ומאתים לנוטרים את פריו למלכותא דארעא,

Shemuel said: A government which kills only one out of six is not punished; for it is said: “I have my very own vineyard: You may have the thousand, O Solomon” - for the Kingdom of Heaven; “And the guards of the fruit two hundred”— - for the kingdom on earth. (quoted verse is Song of Songs 8:12)

4. Philo of Alexandria (c. 20 BCE - 50 CE), The Special Laws, IV, 224-5

The Jewish nation, when it takes up arms, distinguishes between those whose life is one of hostility, and the reverse. For to breathe slaughter against all, even those who have done very little or nothing amiss, shows what I should call a savage and brutal soul.

5. Maimonides, Mishneh Torah, Hilkhot Melakhim Umilhemoteihem, 6:7

כשצרין על עיר לתפשה, אין מקיפין אותה מארבע רוחותיה אלא משלש רוחותיה, ומניחין מקום לבורח ולכל מי שירצה להמלט על נפשו, שנאמר ויצבאו על מדין כאשר צוה ה׳ את משה מפי השמועה למדו שבכך צוהו.

When siege is laid to a city for the purpose of capture, it may not be surrounded on all four sides, but only on three, to give an opportunity for those who would avoid capture to escape.

6. Deuteronomy 20:19-20

יט כִּי-תָצוּר אֶל-עִיר יָמִים רַבִּים לְהִלָּחֵם עָלֶיהָ לְתָפְשָׂהּ, לֹא-תַשְׁחִית אֶת-עֵצָהּ לִנְדֹּחַ עָלָיו גַּרְזֶן--כִּי מִמֶּנּוּ תֹאכֵל, וְאֹתוֹ לֹא תִכְרֹת:  כִּי הָאָדָם עֵץ הַשָּׂדֶה, לָבֹא מִפָּנֶיךָ בַּמָּצוֹר.  כ רַק עֵץ אֲשֶׁר-תֵּדַע, כִּי-לֹא-עֵץ מַאֲכָל הוּא--אֹתוֹ תַשְׁחִית, וְכָרָתָּ; וּבָנִיתָ מָצוֹר...

When in your war against a city you have to besiege it a long time in order to capture it, you must not destroy its trees, wielding the ax against them. You may eat of them, but you must not cut them down. Are trees of the field human to withdraw before you into the besieged city? Only trees that you know do not yield food may be destroyed; you may cut them down for constructing siegeworks...

7. Maimonides, Mishneh Torah, Hilkhot Melakhim Umilhemoteihem, 6:10

ולא האילנות בלבד, אלא כל המשבר כלים, וקורע בגדים, והורס בנין, וסותם מעין, ומאבד מאכלות דרך השחתה, עובר בלא תשחית

And not only the trees, but also one who smashes household goods, tears clothes, demolishes a building, stops up a spring, or destroys articles of food with destructive intent, transgresses the commandment of bal tashhit (i.e. “Do not destroy”).

8. Deuteronomy 23:10

כִּי-תֵצֵא מַחֲנֶה, עַל-אֹיְבֶיךָ,  וְנִשְׁמַרְתָּ מִכֹּל דָּבָר רָע.

When you go out as a troop against your enemies, be on your guard against anything untoward.

9. Nahmanides, comment to Deut. 23:10

The most refined of people become possessed with ferocity and cruelty when advancing upon the enemy.

10. Rabbi Reuven Kimelman, “War,” chapter in Frontiers of Jewish Thought, Steven Katz, ed., B’nai B’rith Books, 1992, p. 319

These concerns for the moral quotient of the soldier and the life of the enemy inform the “purity of arms” [tohorat nesheq] doctrine of the modern Israel Defense Forces. The doctrine of purity of arms, an expression apparently coined by the Labor-Zionist idealogue Berl Katznelson, limits killing to necessary and unavoidable situations.

11. Philo, The Special Laws, IV, 224

All this shows clearly that the Jewish nation is ready for agreement and friendship with all like-minded nations whose intentions are peaceful, yet is not of the contemptible kind which surrenders through cowardice to wrongful aggression.

12. Qohelet Rabbah, Parashah 7, Siman 19

בשעה שברא הקב״ה את אדם הראשון נטלו והחזירו על כל אילני גן עדן ואמר לו ראה מעשי כמה נאים ומשובחין הן וכל מה שבראתי בשבילך בראתי, תן דעתך שלא תקלקל ותחריב את עולמי, שאם קלקלת אין מי שיתקן אחריך…

At the moment that the Holy One, Blessed be God created the first human, he took him and made him pass before all of the trees in the Garden of Eden. God said to him, “See how fine and praiseworthy My creations are! And everything that I have created, I have created for you. Consider this, so that you will not spoil and destroy my world, for if you do so, there will be nobody who will repair it after you.”


 ~
Rabbi Seth Adelson
(Originally presented and discussed at Temple Israel of Great Neck, Shabbat morning, 8/2/2014.)

The Torah of Moderation - First Day Shavuot, 5774

Today we celebrate Matan Torah, the giving of the Torah on Mt. Sinai.

Usually, when we mention the “giving of the Torah” or the “receiving,” we are talking about God to Moses, or God to the Jews. But really we should understand this as the gift from the Jews to the world.

Because if there is one thing that we can proudly point to as Jews and say, this is ours, it’s the Torah. Not, of course, the Torah alone, but “Torah” in the wider sense of that word: incorporating the millennia of commentary and interpretation based on and illuminating the Five Books of Moses and the rest of the Tanakh, the Hebrew Bible. We have shared that wider gift of Torah with the world.  

And this distinction, between the written Torah and all of its interpretation is essential. ‘Cause let’s face it: the Torah is a complicated book. Yes, there are many wonderful Jewish values that originate in the Torah: welcoming guests (Genesis 18:1-8), taking care of the poor among us (many places, including Leviticus 19:9-10), treating the strangers among us fairly (many places, including Lev. 19:33-34), business ethics (e.g. Lev. 19:13, 35-36ת Deut. 25:13-16), and so forth. But there are many items in the Torah that challenge us as modern, thinking people. Consider for a moment some of the more extreme positions that the Torah takes:

    A disobedient son should be put to death. (Deut. 21:18-21)

    One who violates the Shabbat in public (e.g. by gathering wood) should be put to death. (Num. 15:32-36)

    The Sotah ritual (Numbers 5)

And so forth. But it is essential to note that the Torah alone is not Judaism! Our tradition is not about the literal application of the words of the Torah. We do not put anybody to death or practice humiliating rituals. The rabbinic tradition, through a process that began in the 2nd century CE and continues to this very day, has studied the words of Torah, interpreted them and codified them according to contemporary norms in every generation.  What we know, understand and practice as Judaism is not the written Torah, but rather, as it is filtered through the rabbinic lens. We are not ancient Israelites; we are rabbinic Jews.

For example, we do not stone disobedient children to death, even though that is clearly commanded in the Torah. The rabbis of the Talmud (BT Sanhedrin 68bff) re-interpreted the very concept of what it means to be disobedient to set the bar so high that it would actually be impossible for a child to meet this qualification, thereby mitigating the severity of the Torah’s imperative.

When I was at the Rabbinical Assembly convention two weeks ago, I participated in an extended learning session with Rabbi Donniel Hartman of the Shalom Hartman Institute in Jerusalem, on the subject of the precedence of certain mitzvot over others. For example, the Talmud tells us (Berakhot 19b) that if you discover that you or somebody else is wearing an item of clothing containing a forbidden mixture of fibers (e.g. wool and linen; aka shaatnez), you must tear it off immediately. One page later, the Talmud tells a story about a certain R. Ada bar Ahavah who, upon seeing a woman in the market wearing a headress which he thinks to contain shaatnez, and knocks it off her head, causing the woman much shame and stirring up a major hubbub. As it turns out, she’s not even Jewish! So R. Ada bar Ahavah is in the wrong, and has doubly transgressed.

In some places, our tradition upholds a certain kind of zealotry. But elsewhere, we find that the intricacies and sensibilities of human relationships require more attention than the letter of the law. Elsewhere in the Talmud (Megillah 3b) we find that the rabbis ask about the priority of certain mitzvot. If one is faced with taking care of an unclaimed corpse (known as a met mitzvah) versus reading Megillat Esther on Purim, the met mitzvah takes precedence, due to the principle of kevod haberiyot, the respect for all God’s creatures. Furthermore, the Talmud emphasizes that this latter mitzvah, respect, is of such great importance that it outweighs all negative commandments of the Torah.

Rabbi Moshe ben Nahman, aka Nahmanides or Ramban, who lived in 13th-century Spain, cites a verse in the Torah to extend this logic even further (Deut. 6:18):

וְעָשִׂיתָ הַיָּשָׁר וְהַטּוֹב, בְּעֵינֵי ה' --לְמַעַן יִיטַב לָךְ, וּבָאתָ וְיָרַשְׁתָּ אֶת-הָאָרֶץ הַטֹּבָה, אֲשֶׁר-נִשְׁבַּע ה' לַאֲבֹתֶיךָ.

Do what is right and good in the sight of the Lord, that it may go well with you and that you may be able to possess the good land that the Lord your God promised on oath to your fathers.

Ramban tells us that this verse is a kind of legal catch-all that covers every detail of human behavior that is not otherwise addressed in the Torah - that is, that we should go beyond the letter of the law. This is a principle known as “lifnim mishurat hadin.” We are not only obligated to fulfill the mitzvot that are explicitly identified, but also to extend the logic of what is right and good to everything else. Ramban tells us that we must refine our behavior so that our reputations are spotless, and that our conversations with others are always pleasant, so that we may be worthy of being known by others as “right and good.”

Returning for a moment to the case of the R. Ada bar Ahavah, who knocks off the woman’s headress in the market, since he has violated kevod haberiyot / respect for all God’s creatures and damaged his reputation, he has therefore transgressed. Sometimes respect trumps the letter of the law.

Ladies and gentlemen, this is the moderation for which we stand, for which the greater Torah stands. And this is the gift that we Jews bring to the world, the very gift that we celebrate today. We are not zealots; we are not fanatics. The ancient rabbis, and even some of us today want us to be sensitive to how we behave while fulfilling the law, and make sure that it reflects well upon us. We must not just perform mitzvot, but must do it in a respectful way that maintains our reputations.

The Talmud (Yoma 86a) also identifies for us the label applied to those who claim to act in the name of God but are in fact profaning God’s name. The term for this is hillul haShem:

But if someone studies Scripture and Mishnah, serves Torah scholars, but is dishonest in business, and discourteous in his relations with people, what do people say about him? Woe unto him who studied the Torah; woe unto his father who taught him Torah; woe unto his teacher who taught him Torah! This man studied the Torah; look how corrupt are his deeds, how ugly his ways.

It is certainly possible to follow the letter of the law and still commit hillul haShem. We need not look too deeply into the Jewish world to see plenty of examples.

Last week, when the rabbinic head of the Agudath Israel, an umbrella organization of Haredi Jews, Rabbi Yaakov Perlow, was giving a brief devar Torah at a celebratory dinner attended by Mayor Bill DeBlasio. He used his opportunity to slander non-Orthodox Jews (and some Modern Orthodox Jews as well). From the New York Times:

Rabbi Perlow offered a shower of condemnation for Reform and Conservative Jews, who he said were among those who “subvert and destroy the eternal values of our people.” These movements, he said, “have disintegrated themselves, become oblivious, fallen into an abyss of intermarriage and assimilation.”

“They will be relegated,” he added, “to the dustbins of Jewish history.”

It was surely a deliberate choice to deliver these words when the mayor was present, because he knew that there would be media coverage, and the bulk of New York Jewry, who he knows are not Orthodox, would read his words. He also knew that Mayor DeBlasio would likely let the remarks go by without comment, which he did.

Just two days later, the same Rabbi Perlow delivered a speech to 10,000 women in his community about the dangers of the Internet. And what’s more, he spoke to them separated from his audience by a one-way mirror, so he could not see the women. That’s right - he actually spoke while looking at himself in the mirror. The possibilities for commentary here are endless.

The moderate conception of Judaism which we emphasize values women and men equally and does not see women merely as sources of temptation that must be obscured from view. This is not how women are perceived outside the synagogue, and it should not be that way on the inside.

Ladies and gentlemen, the Torah is not black and white, to be fulfilled to its letter at the expense of others. Doing what is right and good in the eyes of God means that we acknowledge not only the ethical norms of the society in which we live and the innovations that human ingenuity has brought, but is also respectful of all. What sort of people would the Jews be if we stuck our heads in the sand? How would we fulfill our mission on Earth of bringing this Torah of moderation to the world if we cannot even look at people?

Our task as Conservative Jews is to live our ideals proudly and boldly, continuing to emphasize the voice of moderation, of kevod haberiyot / respect for God’s creatures, that is evident in the wider Torah, for the Jews and for the world. We must remind the Rabbi Perlows of this world that the Second Temple was destroyed due to sin’at hinam, causeless hatred, and that the only path that we have together into the Jewish future is one of mutual encouragement and honor, one based on maintaining the good reputation and the pleasant conversation that Ramban suggests.

Hag Sameah!

~

Rabbi Seth Adelson

(Originally delivered at Temple Israel of Great Neck, first day of Shavuot, June 4, 2014.)