On Derekh Eretz and Being Refreshed in Texas

I lived in Texas for five and a half years, earning an M.S. at Texas A&M University (Go Aggies!) and then working in steamy Houston for a huge, multinational engineering and construction firm. When I returned to Dallas last week for the annual convention of the Rabbinical Assembly, the international professional organization of Conservative / Masorti rabbis, I was flooded with memories of my time in Texas, and particularly that Texans LOVE air conditioning, and prefer it to be blowing on them on full blast at all times. So while the weather outside the Dallas Hilton was pleasant and not too hot, inside it felt like March in Iceland.
 

Nonetheless, the company was warm, and the material was hot. I had a few shiurim with one of my beloved Bible teachers from the Jewish Theological Seminary, Dr. Walter Hertzberg, who laid out a stunning array of traditional commentaries for us to sample and draw on. I heard sessions on crafting new, engaging tefillah experiences (a particularly timely talk with respect to our process here in Great Neck), reaching out to so-called Millennials and Gen-Xers, expanding adult learning options. 

I also participated in a stellar four-hour marathon examination of textual sources with Dr. Donniel Hartman of the Shalom Hartman Institute in Jerusalem (where Rabbi Stecker is sabbatical-ing in July) on the tension between fulfilling God’s word and moderating some of the extreme halakhic positions found in the Jewish canon. Maimonides, for example, notes in his halakhic compendium, the Mishneh Torah (Laws Pertaining to Acquisition 9:8), that while the Torah permits one to order your Canaanite slave perform excruciating labor, it is more important to treat slaves justly and mercifully. Not that slavery of any kind today is permitted or encouraged in any way, but the wider point that Maimonides makes is that even within the letter of the law there is an obligation to treat others with respect and dignity, even if it may contradict the fundamental understanding of the written and oral Torah. This wider message is essential for the work that we do in the Conservative movement: halakhah (Jewish law) is valuable and binding, but must also be moderated by derekh eretz (respect) as well as contemporary sensibilities.

The convention atmosphere was bullish on the future, and as we welcomed a new president of the RA, Rabbi William Gershon of Congregation Shearith Israel in Dallas, speeches were made about the vitality of the Conservative movement and the bright spots that lay ahead despite the well-known challenges that we face. While my own optimism has been occasionally challenged by the relentless stories of the movement’s decline that may be found in virtually any Jewish newspaper, I always find my spirits buoyed by fellowship with colleagues. To hear about the inspired work that my colleagues and Seminary buddies are bringing to their individual congregations is always encouraging, and so I return with not only new insights to offer as divrei Torah, but also a list of hot new ideas that have succeeded in other communities.

Put succinctly, we’re not dead yet. My rabbinic colleagues and I are still working to engage, inspire, and enlighten our kehillot (congregations), and to do it in a way that reflects our positions of moderation and derekh eretz. I look eagerly to the future with a renewed sense of purpose.

~

Rabbi Seth Adelson

(To be published in the Temple Israel Voice, 5/29/14.)

We Were All At Sinai. (Women, Too.) - Va'et-hannan 5773 (Summer Sermon Series #4)

Today’s topic is egalitarianism, the principle that men and women are equal under Jewish law. This is an especially hot item today, given some high-profile recent events in the Jewish world. 

The curious thing is, I thought that the argument over women’s roles in Judaism ended thirty years ago! I grew up in a Conservative congregation that counted women as long as I could remember. My mother served for years as a gabbayit and frequently read Torah. Temple Israel became egalitarian in 1976, when Rabbi Waxman’s wife Ruth was called to the Torah, and chanted the haftarah as well. I never thought that in 2013 we would still be talking about it.

And yet we are, perhaps largely due to the activities of Women of the Wall, the group of women, Orthodox, Conservative, Reform, and Reconstructionist, that meet regularly every Rosh Hodesh for a service at the Kotel, the Western Wall. I mentioned last week that in their first service since the Israeli Supreme Court officially sanctioned their service, including the wearing of tallit and tefillin and praying together out loud, a large group of Haredim (often but inaccurately called “ultra-Orthodox”) attempted to obstruct them by harassing the 350 worshippers and boxing them out of the Kotel plaza by busing in yeshivah girls at 6:30 AM. WoW has kept the issue of egalitarianism at the fore in the wider Jewish community, both in Israel and here.

Judaism’s segregation of women and men into separate and unequal roles is a long-standing tradition, but one that we should work even harder to reverse. After all, we live in a world in which women are a majority of college students. They may not yet earn as well as men, but nobody thinks twice today about female doctors, lawyers, CEOs, or politicians. Why should the situation be any different in the synagogue?  In a world in which women are presidents and prime ministers, how can we countenance denying them equal leadership roles in matters of faith?

And while the majority of our ancient books - the Tanakh (the Hebrew Bible), rabbinic texts - reflect the position of women in the eras in which these books emerged, we no longer live in those times. Halakhah / Jewish law has changed throughout the ages to reflect new social realities, and it should continue to do so today. There is a rabbinic principle in halakhic analysis called “shinui ha-ittim,” loosely translated as, “times have changed.” Sometimes, we have to account for the fact that the world continues to move forward, and what applied yesterday may not still be valid today. As a people, and indeed as a species, we mature, evolve, we learn; so too do our laws and customs.

So why was it so surprising, for example, when one of the new members of the Israeli Knesset, Dr. Ruth Calderon, a professor of Talmud at Hebrew University, gave a Talmudic lesson to the Knesset at her swearing in? The original Hebrew video of this on YouTube has had over 200,000 views, a very large number for a relatively small Hebrew-speaking population. (Here is a version with English subtitles.) It is a beautiful and heart-warming speech that I urge you to view. 

It is surprising because we are still in a transitional time, a time in which many quarters of the Jewish community still reject full female participation in Jewish life, still do not call their daughters to the Torah in acknowledgment of becoming bat mitzvah, still segregate women on the other side of a mehitzah, which can be as minimal as a curtain and as extensive as a complete wall, and justify all of this with the apologetic statement that “women are on a higher spiritual plane, and therefore do not need the mitzvot to which men are obligated.”

Of course, this has been the custom for hundreds and maybe thousands of years, and I do not wish to cast aspersions on the way that others worship, because then I would be just like the Haredim that are trying to obstruct WoW. However, times have changed. Women and men share much more than they used to, and not just the workplace. Statistics show that among younger couples, men are far more likely today to stay home with the kids while the wife works, and to share in running the affairs of the household. We are living in fundamentally different times. And we here in the Conservative movement more readily acknowledge the changes in gender roles in the wider society, and reflect them in our Jewish practice.

Those that say that we in the Conservative movement have gone off the traditional rails because we have enabled womento participate fully are right only with respect to history. But in terms of halakhah’s response to modernity, they are the ones who are wrong. And we have traditional sources on which to base our elevation of women in Judaism.

As a simple example, there is a clause found multiple times in the Talmud that is relevant here. It goes like this:

שאף הן היו באותו הנס

She’af hen hayu be’oto ha-nes.

Literally, it means “since they (feminine) were part of the same miracle.” It’s used in three places: once in reference to women’s obligation for reading Megillat Esther on Purim (Megillah 4a), once in reference to women’s obligation to light Hanukkah candles (Shabbat 23a), and once referring to women’s obligation to drink four cups of wine at the Pesah seder. This last one is most applicable today, as we read the Ten Commandments. Women must drink the four cups of wine because they were redeemed from Egypt along with the men. Well, the Torah also tells us (Exodus 20:15, e.g.) that kol ha’am, all the people, witnessed the giving of the Torah on Mt. Sinai, shortly after the Exodus from Egypt. The women were there, too, and as much a part of that seminal, covenantal moment as the men.

Many followers of traditional Judaism swear up and down that the only three positive, time-bound mitzvot / commandments to which women are obligated are making hallah, lighting Shabbat candles, and going to the miqveh, and they are exempt from all others. They are wrong. This is a mistaken understanding of rabbinic tradition, and the Talmud mentions many other mitzvot to which women are obligated in addition to the three I have identified above. Here are just a few examples: Berakhot 20a-b and Eruvin 96a suggest that women may put on tefillin; Megillah 23a states that a woman may read Torah before the congregation; Menahot 43a states clearly that women are required to fulfill the mitzvah of tzitzit, etc.

Reading in the larger sense, the fact that women have traditionally been excluded from the performance of many mitzvot is more about sociology than what is found in traditional Jewish sources. The rabbis defined a woman as something less than a man, in the same boat with children and slaves, because that is how women were understood in Israel and Babylonia 1500 years ago, and in so doing they exiled women to the other side of the mehitzah.

The Conservative movement has, since the mid-1980s, encouraged women’s equal participation; we have ordained female rabbis since 1985. The vast majority Conservative synagogues are egalitarian.

Given how times have changed, it is therefore upon us to continue the struggle to bring women to the same status in Jewish life as men, to offer women the same opportunities for participation as men have traditionally been given. How can we do this? By continuing to call our girls to the Torah as benot mitzvah, to teach female members of our community to be shelihot tzibbur, prayer leaders, and Torah readers, to encourage women to take on other mitzvot traditionally thought of as masculine, such as tallit and tefillin, and generally to provide more opportunities for women as well as men to participate fully in Jewish life, on equal terms.

And by the way, it is not only the Conservative movement that acknowledges this. No less an Orthodox authority than Rabbi Moshe Feinstein, the pre-eminent halakhic decisor of Orthodoxy, gnashed his teeth and invoked the inflexibility of halakhah in the face of modernity when he conceded in a 1976 teshuvah (rabbinic answer to a halakhic question; Iggerot Moshe OH 4:49) that women may indeed put on a tallit, blow the shofar, and shake the lulav, and recite the appropriate berakhot. Not that many women in Orthodoxy do these things, but in theory, they can under Rabbi Feinstein’s authority. (To be sure, this was not a concession to the Conservative movement. Rabbi Feinstein elsewhere insisted that Conservative synagogues are not synagogues, and that Conservative rabbis are not rabbis.)

This is Shabbat Nahamu, the Shabbat of comfort, when we begin the arduous process of healing and rebuilding in the wake of Tish’ah Be’Av, the saddest day of the Jewish year and the commemoration of the destruction of both the First and Second Temples. Today we read the first of seven special haftarot that speak of redemption, as we look toward Rosh Hashanah and the holiday cycle of Tishrei. And there was a hint of reconciliation from Orthodoxy this week: the Orthodox Union (OU) and the Rabbinical Council of America, the largest body of Modern Orthodox rabbis, issued a statement this week against the protests that have taken place at the Kotel. While not exactly endorsing Women of the Wall and their struggle, the carefully-worded document includes the following:

Recently we have witnessed a frightening exacerbation of internal discord and an ominous intensification of inflammatory rhetoric. We have heard vile insults, offensive name-calling — including the inciteful invocation of the name 'Amalek' — and vicious personal attacks emanating from all sides on the various troublesome issues that we now confront. We have even witnessed physical violence. Indeed, in recent months we have seen precincts of Jerusalem’s Old City, in the shadow of the destroyed Temple for which we mourn today, become a venue for provocation and insult, rather than a place of unity for the global Jewish community.

 

We urge all Jews to celebrate the diversity of our community, whatever our ideology or choice of head covering. Each of us — men, women and children — is a cherished member of our people and we must educate all members of our community to honor and respect each other. We pray that all will one day soon glory in the rebuilding of our nation and our Temple.

OK, so it does not exactly say, “let’s build an egalitarian section at the Kotel.” But it is a statement against sin’at hinnam, the causeless hatred for which the Second Temple was laid waste on Ninth of Av in the year 70 CE. And that should be what Shabbat Nahamu is all about. We are all in this together, and we cannot let our internecine theological disagreements drive us apart.

We were all at Sinai. Women and men. So says the Torah. And we are all equally permitted to partake of the full extent of what Jewish life offers. We can live and worship comfortably alongside those who do not accept egalitarianism, but we must continue to stand up for equality in Jewish life. Let us hope that the rest of the Jewish world will soon be willing to daven alongside us as well.

Next week, we’ll talk about Israel.

Shabbat shalom!


~
Rabbi Seth Adelson
(Originally delivered at Temple Israel of Great Neck, Shabbat morning, July 20, 2013.)

This is the fourth installment in the seven-part Summer Sermon Series, in which we are discussing the essential Jewish values that we at Temple Israel highlight in our approach to Judaism. This is our vision of Jewish life; the first three installments are:

1. Telling our story

2. Being a welcoming congregation

3. Engaging with Torah

Shofetim 5772: Justice, Democracy, and The Observant Life

The Republican National Convention meets this week in Tampa, to be followed a week later by the Democratic convention in Charlotte.  The scent of politics is in the air, and the well-oiled wheels of democracy are turning.

These conventions, I must admit, seem like something of a dinosaur in today’s media climate, with the instant sharing of information and the curve of the 24-hour news cycle.  The presidential candidates have been established for months, and while the recent addition of Rep. Paul Ryan of Wisconsin to the Romney ticket added a boost of excitement to an otherwise foregone conclusion, I can’t say that I really have any great interest in watching either of these conventions on television.  If somebody gives a truly wonderful speech, I am certain that it will be available on YouTube before the speaker steps off the podium.

This election season, and in particular the acrimony that has been festering between right and left and lately manifested itself in the barbs that are already being traded by the presidential campaigns, have me thinking quite a bit right now about democracy.  And, as it turns out, Parashat Shofetim gives us some good fodder for discussion on this very topic.

As such, I was quite pleased when an essay on Judaism and democracy was brought to my attention this week.  It appears in the new guide to the Conservative movement’s approach to Jewish law and thought entitled The Observant Life.  The publication of this book represents a sort of watershed moment for the Conservative movement.  It was written and edited by a gaggle of Conservative rabbis, led by Rabbi Martin Cohen of the nearby Shelter Rock Jewish Center.  I would like to point out that I don’t get any commission for pushing it, but nonetheless I think it’s something that we all should own and read.  

Why is this a watershed?  Because a consistent historical weakness in the Conservative movement’s approach to Judaism has been its general unwillingness to commit to one particular position on many issues.  Throughout the golden years of the middle of the 20th century, Conservative Judaism was a big tent, offering space for those who grew up in Orthodoxy and those who were moving towards secularism.  What is striking about this new volume is that it is a kind of unified coalition, a halakhic and meta-halakhic statement on where we stand.

Although meant in some ways to replace the classic Conservative guide to halakhah / Jewish law by Rabbi Isaac Klein, A Guide to Jewish Religious Practice, The Observant Life is much more than Rabbi Klein’s book.  I might make the case that while Conservative Judaism is still a big tent in some respects, there are some basic things upon which we all agree.  This book reads something like a current dictionary for the movement, and I think it is a reference that no home dedicated to this movement should be without.

So the essay on Judaism and democracy from The Observant Life that caught my eye is called, “Citizenship,” and it was written by Rabbi Jane Kanarek, with whom I worked for a couple of summers at Camp Ramah in New England.  It opens with the observation that there are voices in the Jewish world that suggest that Judaism and democracy are incompatible (a statement that is, I think, most often made when discussing Israeli politics).  Rabbi Kanarek asserts that there is in fact a Jewish democratic current that runs through our history and literature, although it may differ somewhat from Western democracy.  Not surprisingly, the Jewish take on democracy begins with the line that we read this morning right at the beginning of Parashat Shofetim (Deut. 16:20, p. 1088 in Etz Hayim)

צֶדֶק צֶדֶק, תִּרְדֹּף

Tzedeq, tzedeq tirdof.
Justice, justice shall you pursue.

The Torah requires us to live in a just society.  And not just to live there; many commentators have addressed the curious repetition of the word tzedeq; after all, would it not have been enough to say, “Tzedeq tirdof” / “You shall pursue justice”?  The Torah must mean something much stronger: to actively, physically pursue justice, or to pursue justice justly, or perhaps that we should pursue justice and only justice.

Rabbi Kanarek suggests that this verse suggests not only justice in “interpersonal behavior among individuals, but also with the ethical construction of the larger society in which those individuals live.”  The two tzedeqs, therefore, imply two types of justice: the more immediate, daily justice between you and me, between individuals, and the larger picture of justice, that is, between us and them, between governments and peoples or rich and poor and so forth.

Rabbinic tradition also upholds the principle of dina demalkhuta dina, or “the law of the land is the law.”  As such, our obligation to pursue justice is tied to the wider community in which we live.  We cannot merely follow Jewish law and the law of the land, but we must also strive to make sure that the law of the land is just.  Maimonides tells us (Mishneh Torah Hilkhot De’ot 6:1) that if you live in a place where the norms of behavior are evil, you should pick up and move somewhere else.  

Perhaps you have heard about the legal battle over circumcision in Germany.  In June, a regional court in Cologne ruled that circumcision should be prohibited in that city, and just this past week, a German doctor filed charges against a Bavarian rabbi for performing circumcisions; the court has not yet decided to hear the case.  The June ruling, however, has provoked a fresh round of xenophobic anti-circumcision rhetoric in Western Europe, and coupled with recent attempts to ban kosher slaughter reveals a quite troubling trend regarding the free exercise of religion on the continent.  Modern European states are not the kinds of places from which Maimonides would argue that the Jews should flee; they are mostly just societies.  Jews and Muslims in Germany are fighting this decision, of course; from our perspective this situation has put the principles of Tzedeq tzedeq tirdof and dina demalkhuta dina in direct conflict, and we of course should all be arguing for tzedeq in the dina demalkhuta, the law of the land.

Back on this side of the Atlantic, a representative to Congress from Missouri, Todd Akin, made a remark about rape for which he was roundly criticized (there is no need for me to repeat it here).  Thank God, our free press quickly set the record straight that there was no scientific basis upon which to base his remark.  But what I think that this incident brought to the fore, and particularly in the context of some of the other statements that are being made on each side of the presidential campaign, is that political speech has limits.  Nobody is entitled to his or her own facts.  When we consider the current debate over Medicare that the presidential candidates have raised, it is clear to me that each side is spinning the numbers to their own advantage, making it quite difficult for the average citizen to puzzle out who is telling the truth, or if there even can be an objective truth here.

I noticed this week, by the way, that there are multiple ostensibly non-partisan websites dedicated to “fact-checking” politicians.  Some of the best-known are politifact.com and factcheck.org.  This is an age in which trust of big institutions, particularly government, is frightfully low, and I suppose that it is a credit to the strength of our democracy that such sites are there to help us sort out fact from fiction in political speech.  

However, doesn’t the very existence of these sites suggest a problem?  Call me naive if you will, but shouldn’t truth be the same regardless of which side of the aisle you are seated, and not molded to some politically-expedient variant on reality? Once again, thank God for our free press.  

Returning to Rabbi Kanarek and democracy, she points to an argument in the Mishnah for free speech.  We also read this morning that the Torah mandates the death sentence for one who does not follow the ruling of kohanic judges (Deut. 17:12-13, p. 1092).  The Mishnah (Sanhedrin 11:2-4) follows this by stating that a zaken mamre, a rebellious elder, should be executed ONLY if he teaches people to act contrary to the court’s rulings.  However, if the zaken mamre makes it clear that he is only stating personal opinion in opposition to the court, and does not encourage others to violate the law, then he is not punished.

Hence we can understand the Mishnah as implying that free speech is permitted as long as it does not lead to illegal action, and so while I shudder to think that politicians such as Mr. Akin can say grossly incorrect statements in public, we must defend his right to do so, and take him to task as necessary, and this is precisely what took place this week.

I have brought these items to your attention not only because we need to know about them, but because we need to be vigilant; as Jews, our tradition mandates that we uphold the principles of democracy.  Rabbi Kanarek’s chapter also addresses issues surrounding separation of church and state, freedom of the press, freedom of assembly, and equal protection under law, all of which can be construed from the Jewish bookshelf.  Democracy, which may be seen as flowing from the principles of justice, requires continual pursuit on multiple levels, and as such we must work hard to protect these principles with zeal.

President George Washington, in his thank-you letter to the Jewish community in Newport, Rhode Island following his visit there in 1790, spoke not only of the freedom and tolerance engendered by American democracy, but perhaps gave a knowing wink at the Jewish role in helping to shape democracy.  He wrote:

“The Citizens of the United States of America have a right to applaud themselves for having given to mankind examples of an enlarged and liberal policy: a policy worthy of imitation. All possess alike liberty of conscience and immunities of citizenship. It is now no more that toleration is spoken of, as if it was by the indulgence of one class of people, that another enjoyed the exercise of their inherent natural rights. For happily the Government of the United States, which gives to bigotry no sanction, to persecution no assistance requires only that they who live under its protection should demean themselves as good citizens, in giving it on all occasions their effectual support.”

Let us hope that such tolerance, as supported by the other principles of democracy and justice indicated by Rabbi Kanarek in her chapter in The Observant Life, continues to flourish here and abroad.  Meanwhile, enjoy the political spectacle of the coming weeks, and buy the book.

Shabbat shalom.

~

Rabbi Seth Adelson

(Originally delivered at Temple Israel of Great Neck, Shabbat morning, August 25, 2012.)

Stem Cells, Abortion, and Jewish Law

On Wednesday I facilitated a discussion at the Solomon Schechter High School of Long Island on Jewish perspectives on the use of human stem cells for research and medical treatments, as one offering in a series of sessions discussing medical ethics.  Until now, the discourse surrounding stem cells has always included abortion, because the primary sources for these cells have been aborted fetuses and human embryos created in vitro.

Parashat Mishpatim, which features an eclectic litany of laws, includes the Torah's only statement that relates to the Jewish position on abortion:

וְכִי-יִנָּצוּ אֲנָשִׁים, וְנָגְפוּ אִשָּׁה הָרָה וְיָצְאוּ יְלָדֶיהָ, וְלֹא יִהְיֶה, אָסוֹן--עָנוֹשׁ יֵעָנֵשׁ, כַּאֲשֶׁר יָשִׁית עָלָיו בַּעַל הָאִשָּׁה, וְנָתַן בִּפְלִלִים

When men fight, and one of them pushes a pregnant woman and a miscarriage results, but no other damage ensures, the one responsible shall be fined according as the woman's husband may exact from him, the payment to be based on reckoning. (Exodus 21:22)

The Torah tells us that the death of a fetus is not to be understood as murder or manslaughter, but rather subject to monetary damages.  Rabbinic literature sees the fetus as a limb of the mother, not an independent person, and as such her life outweighs that of the unborn child:

האישה שהיא מקשה לילד, והוציאוה מבית לבית--הראשון טמא בספק, והשני בוודאי.  אמר רבי יהודה, אימתיי, בזמן שהיא ניטלת בגפיים; אבל אם הייתה מהלכת, הראשון טהור--שמשנפתח הקבר, אין פנאי להלך.  אין לנפלים פתיחת קבר, עד שיעגילו ראש כפיקה

If a woman suffers hard labor, the child must be cut up in her womb and brought out one limb at a time, for her life takes precendence over [the fetus’] life.  If the greater part has already come out, it must not be touched, because one life does not supersede another. (Mishnah Ohalot 7:6)

As such, Judaism has always accepted that life begins at birth, not conception, and that abortion is permissible, or even mandatory, when the mother's life is in danger.  When the Conservative movement's Committee on Jewish Law and Standards (CJLS) addressed abortion in 1983, its conclusion was as follows:

“An abortion is justifiable if a continuation of pregnancy might cause the mother severe physical or psychological harm, or when the fetus is judged by competent medical opinion as severely defective." (A Statement on the Permissibility of Abortion, by Rabbis Ben Zion Bokser and Kassel Abelson)

Given the tremendous sensitivity about these issues, and that we also see God as (as we say in every Amidah, three times daily) "Melekh meimit umhayye" / the Master of life and death, we should always bear in mind the sanctity of life and the great care with which such decisions should be made.

Returning to the Torah, as I pointed out last night to members of the Adult Bat/Bar Mitzvah class, not only do the laws of Parashat Mishpatim give us a glimpse of what issues were important to our ancestors and how they have played out throughout our history, they also apply to today's world.  Shabbat shalom!

~

Rabbi Seth Adelson

P.S.  If you'd like to read the CJLS teshuvah regarding the use of stem cells, you may find it here.