Get on the Torah Train!

When I first entered cantorial school at the Jewish Theological Seminary, ostensibly there to learn how to lead services properly and chant our traditional nusah and melodies, I was struck by something odd: the use of a very familiar Hebrew word that I had never heard used in that way before. Rabbinical students were using this word all the time, and at first I found it puzzling and disorienting.

The word was “Torah.” Not, “The Torah,” i.e. the Five Books of Moses, the scrolls that live in the aron ha-qodesh, the “closet of holiness.” Not the ancient book that I had read from on many Shabbat mornings at my home synagogue in Pittsfield, Massachusetts, but just “Torah.” Torah in its wider sense, which is difficult to translate into English. But it’s a meaning that we should all get to know.

The word “Torah” means “instruction,” and it is related to the Hebrew root meaning “to teach,” lehorot, from  which we also derive the words “moreh / morah,” meaning “teacher.” Torah used in this sense means, “learning from the full complement of Jewish textual sources.” Not just The Torah, but the entire Tanakh (the Hebrew Bible), the Talmud, midrashim, halakhic literature, medieval poetry and letters, tefillah / the words of the siddur, and in its broadest sense, even Jewish music and art. The entire historical and cultural discourse of Jewish life might very well be included in “Torah.”

And the rabbis of the Talmud, the ones whose discussions and arguments shaped the Judaism that we practice today, saw the study of Torah for its own sake, in Hebrew, Torah lishmah, as the highest ideal in Jewish life. You might also call this activity, “recreational Torah study”:

רַבִּי מֵאִיר אוֹמֵר כָּל הָעוֹסֵק בַּתּוֹרָה לִשְׁמָהּ, זוֹכֶה לִדְבָרִים הַרְבֵּה, וְלֹא עוֹד אֶלָּא שֶׁכָּל הָעוֹלָם כֻּלּוֹ כְּדַאי הוּא לוֹ

Rabbi Meir taught: Whoever studies Torah for its own sake merits many things; moreover, it was worth creating the world for his sake alone. (Mishnah Avot 6:1)

The rabbis saw the learning of Torah for its own sake, solely for the pleasure of learning, as the highest ideal. Elsewhere in the Mishnah, the mitzvah of learning Torah is described as outweighing all the other mitzvot combined (Pe’ah 1:1).

So why had I not encountered the idea of Torah lishmah? Prior to entering cantorial school, I was under the impression that knew I quite a bit about Judaism: I had a decent familiarity with many of the stories in The Torah; I could read Hebrew fairly well and lead parts of many services; I could chant several different trope systems (Torah, Haftarah, Eikhah, Esther); I had grown up in a kosher home (well, OK, so we became kosher when I was ten years old); I had a solid grounding in Shabbat and holiday observances, even if we did stop off at the video store on the way home from Shabbat services; and so forth. How did I miss the greatest mitzvah in the crown of Jewish life?

So here’s the truth about Judaism’s highest ideal: it seems that for much of our history, it was relegated to a few elite scholars: those who were extraordinarily adept at studying obscure texts in ancient languages, and recalling from memory extensive tracts of interpretation and argument.

But toward the end of the 11th century CE, there was a paradigm shift.  Rabbi Shelomo Yitzhaqi, whom we usually call Rashi wrote a commentary on The Torah and much of the Talmud that made it possible for many more people to learn Torah. Suddenly these students, still cloistered in the Jewish Ivory Tower, had an easy way to cross-reference midrashim and Talmudic passages. This revolutionized the learning of Torah.

And it was not until the end of the 15th century, when the first Jewish books were printed with the new printing press, that acquiring books to learn from was even possible, unless you had a wealthy supporter. Prior to that, most people could not afford to spend time learning; it was simply too expensive. That is one reason that learning has always been respected in Jewish life; historically, we have acknowledged that those who live a life of poverty in order to study Torah are making a particularly holy choice. It is an important statement about Judaism that a rabbi is not a priest; he or she is a scholar.

Still, for subsequent centuries, only a handful of these Jewish scholars were studying Torah, because you still had to learn to read and speak Hebrew and Aramaic, a ridiculously high bar for virtually all of our ancestors.

These are the historical reasons why most Jews, outside of that small circle of elite scholars, have not dedicated themselves to Torah lishmah. But things are vastly different today. We are living in an age of the great democratization of Torah. Within the last few decades, most of those ancient, obscure texts have been reprinted with new, modern translations and accessible commentaries. There are electronic resources that make everything available on your smartphone or tablet. There is a new user-edited website out there called Sefaria.org which is busy building a collection of Hebrew and English texts, and will produce for you an study sheet of textual sources that you can select and personalize. Before all of these innovations, if you wanted to learn Torah, you had to plow through multiple heavy tomes in order even to find what you were looking for, and translations were hard to come by. Now it’s all a few clicks away.

Danny Mishkin, the Director of the Youth House and Teen Engagement, and I attended a conference two weeks ago hosted by the Jewish Education Project called, “Whose Torah is it Anyway?” One of the speakers at this conference, Rabbi Irwin Kula, pointed out that there are more people learning Torah than in any time in our history. And that’s not just because Haredim tend to have big families. More regular, modern Jews are studying Torah than ever before.

So while historically, the way that most Jews could connect to Judaism was by participating in the physical mitzvot - lighting candles, synagogue services, holiday meals, and so forth - today we can all easily participate in Mitzvah Number One: Talmud Torah, studying our holy texts.

But that is only part of the story. We are also seeing, particularly in Israel, a resurgence in interest in the texts that have given Jews inspiration for centuries, not only among very fervent Jews, but among the ranks of the secular! Somewhere near half of Israel’s population is not traditionally observant - they do not keep kashrut; they never go to a synagogue; if they celebrate a bar or bat mitzvah, it is likely just a party.

And yet, there are now springing up all over Israel, get this, secular yeshivot. Non-religious Israeli Jews are engaging in Torah lishmah for the values that it teaches, for the intellectual exercise of breaking your teeth on a tough Talmudic sugya (passage), and for the sheer nationalistic joy in learning something that our people have studied for centuries, even if it was only the sages secluded in the beit midrash, the classic Jewish study hall. In the current issue of The Jewish Week, there is an opinion piece about one initiative in Israel that is attempting to bridge the gap between religious and secular Israelis. It is for men and women who have recently finished their army service, and what do they do? They come together to study Torah. (This is, by the way, something that I would like to do in Great Neck.)

Ladies and gentlemen, we are seeing a paradigm shift, a Rashi-sized change in what it means to be Jewish. The Information Age has reached the Jewish sphere, and Torah is becoming universally accessible. As you can imagine, I am very excited about this; access to Torah is good for the Jews.

And yet, this comes in the context of decreasing involvement in Jewish life in America. Among non-Orthodox Jews, synagogue affiliation is down. Ritual practice is down. A bar mitzvah may be celebrated with a rabbi-for-hire without the need for congregational involvement or any educational requirements for the child. Commitment of any kind is down.

But it seems that learning Torah is ascendant; consider the Limmud programs hosted now in several cities that draw thousands of participants for Torah lishmah. What with all of the new tools, the bar is lower than ever for entry. And so I would like to propose the following: we need to embrace Torah lishmah. We need to make a positive statement about who we are as Jews - for the sake of our children, for the Jewish future, and for the sake of Torah - by reaching for that low-hanging, ancient fruit.

We learn in the Talmud (Qiddushin 40b) that study is greater than action, because while action is important, study leads to action. Ladies and gentlemen, we need to study more.

And here are three reasons why:

1. Learning Torah for its own sake teaches us about ourselves and the world. Not only do we draw valuable lessons about life, relationships, parenting, personal priorities and so forth from our ancient texts, but also the implicit lessons - about interacting with your study partner or your teacher, about the value of knowledge and the message it sends to our family and friends.

2. Learning Torah is an intellectual challenge that sharpens your mind. All the research shows that the best way to avoid diseases like Alzheimer’s is to keep your brain active and supple. Studying Jewish text for recreation is a great way to do that.

3. Learning Torah is fun! OK, so it’s not exactly like a day at the beach. But there is a certain satisfaction to be gained from puzzling through our holy books, and connecting it to our own lives. And, if you are studying with a friend or a group, there is a social benefit as well.

Another speaker of note that Danny and I heard at this conference was the media theorist Douglas Rushkoff, whose latest book, Present Shock, is about how digital media have created a world of the eternal present. No past, no future, just, “What’s happening right now?” as Facebook eternally asks. Rushkoff suggested that Torah can be a part of what’s happening now, and would be all the more value because it comes with history and authenticity. 

In a previous book, however, the boldly-titled Nothing Sacred: The Truth About Judaism, Rushkoff suggests that Judaism might be featured more prominently in the lives of ordinary Jews if we rise to the challenge of widely-available, open Torah study for all. He laments the fact that over the centuries, Jews “lost direct access to the Torah and grew increasingly disconnected from the spirit of inquiry,” and that Torah learning was relegated to a few bits of Jewish education in the sermons of well-meaning rabbis. Rushkoff goes on to suggest that, “In order to fuel a renaissance in participatory Judaism, we will need to reverse this trend and reinvent a beit midrash for our age.”

The Beit Midrash at the Conservative Yeshivah, Jerusalem

Ladies and gentlemen, we can create that beit midrash, here at Temple Israel, online, in your own home. I hope that this will be the next wave of Jewish engagement, that of learning, thinking, discussing, sharing. It’s what’s already happening now. Let’s embrace it. Find some Torah and jump in.

Shabbat shalom!


~
Rabbi Seth Adelson
(Originally delivered at Temple Israel of Great Neck, Shabbat morning, June 15, 2013.)

Jewish Reality Check

 היום קצר, והמלאכה מרובה, ... ובעל הבית דוחק

“The day is short; the task is great... and the Master of the house urges on.” (Avot 2:15)

Last week, Cantor Rafi Frieder and I attended the annual Cantors Assembly convention, this year at the fabulous Sheraton Meadowlands. Once a year, cantors from across the Conservative movement gather to share knowledge, companionship, and of course new tunes; I always come away from both the rabbinical and cantorial conventions with inspirational material that adds seasoning to my work in Great Neck.

On the opening day of the convention, I attended a session featuring Rabbi Kerry Olitzky of the Jewish Outreach Institute. Some in our community might know Rabbi Olitzky as the author of the How-To Handbook for Jewish Living, a resource that the Religious School has distributed to the Nitzanim Family Connection for two years now. He is perhaps best known of late for his work with JOI, whose primary goal is to help interfaith families raise Jewish children. His lecture was about lifecycle events for interfaith families, but he said two things that suggested a far wider concern for the Jewish world of the future.

First, he pointed out that Jewish involvement for many families outside of Orthodoxy is, as Rabbi Olitzky put it, episodic. That is, they might be involved Jewishly at key transitional points: birth, bar/bat mitzvah, marriage, and death. The continuous form of identification that has marked Jewish life for much of our history no longer applies for many of us.

The second item that caught my attention is that Jewish institutions will have to make the case for, “Why be Jewish?” You may recall that this was the topic of one of my High Holiday sermons last year; I think that it is the essential Jewish question of our time. Our grandparents needed synagogues to help them be Jewish; they never asked this question. Many younger Jews today will need to have that question answered for them, or they will never enter the synagogue in the first place.

As you might expect, these statements are unnerving for Jewish clergy. How will we continue to teach, to inspire, to counsel those who may not be convinced of Judaism’s value to begin with, and even if they are, where will we find those Jews between episodes? What will this mean for synagogues like Temple Israel of Great Neck? What will it mean for the future of Judaism?

This is the new reality. For Jewish communities to function, they need Jews who are involved. The import of these two observations about contemporary life is that we need to reconsider our model. The rabbi, the cantor, and the Jewish educator of the future, if they are to reach anybody, will need to function in a non-traditional synagogue, one that uses many different means to reach people. Regular synagogue prayer services as well as Hebrew schools may play a lesser role in the Jewish community of the future. The key to maintaining our people’s connection to God, Torah, and Israel will be building personal bonds through new media and direct contact. A synagogue’s success in doing so will be a function of that congregation’s willingness to think outside the box of the past century and devise a plan for reaching those beyond the synagogue walls. This creative re-thinking will not be easy, but it will be necessary.


~
Rabbi Seth Adelson
(Originally published in the Temple Israel Voice, May 23, 2013.)

Reaching Higher in West Egg: The Great Gatsby Meets the Nazirite

When I was offered the job of Assistant Rabbi at Temple Israel six short years ago, I figured I should do a little research about Great Neck. So I re-read The Great Gatsby. As you may know, F. Scott Fitzgerald lived in Great Neck in the 1920s, and the place that he identifies as “West Egg” is our peninsula, somewhat less fashionable than “East Egg,” or Port Washington.

OK, so you might say that Fitzgerald’s tragic tale of love and loss among wealthy, young gentiles in the Jazz Age might not be a good indicator of what I might experience in the Great Neck of the 21st century. And you would be right. Except that what Jay Gatsby ultimately teaches us about that particular place and time is both placeless and timeless, and still applies to all of us.

You would have had to have been living in a cave to have missed the promotional messages for the new 3-D film version of The Great Gatsby, the fourth time it has been turned into a major motion picture. It cost over $100 million dollars to make, with a sizeable advertising budget to match. I have not yet seen it, but I have read a few reviews. In particular, I read Maureen Dowd’s piece in the Times Sunday Review two weekends ago, in which she reminded us that the book’s title is, in fact, ironic: Gatsby is not “Great.” Rich, yes. Mysterious, yes. Throws fabulous parties, indeed. But not great.  Dowd cites a conversation with Leon Wieseltier, long-time literary editor of The New Republic, in which he takes to task all of the Gatsby films for succumbing to excessive focus on the gloss of Gatsby:

 “... people have lost the irony of Fitzgerald’s title. So the movies become complicit in the excessively materialistic culture that the novel set out to criticize.”

I’m not going to spoil the story for those who have not read it, but the essential message conveyed by this great American novel is that money cannot buy you friends, love, or happiness. This new version of the film, according to Dowd, misses the point by emphasizing the big parties, with dramatic choreography and over-the-top, splashy scenes that convey more skin-deep theatrics than emotional depth. (One has to wonder why a tale of socialites in the Roaring Twenties needs to be in 3-D.)

And that seems to be exactly the problem that we face right now as a society: where is the emotional depth? Today, West Egg is decked out in flash: fancy cars, gorgeous homes, the most wonderful devices to emerge from Silicon Valley, superb schools and parks and synagogues. And many, many beautiful people and fantastic parties. But is it possible that something is missing in our lives?

Last weekend, I went with a group of Temple Israel families to Camp Ramah in the Berkshires for the Vav Class Family Retreat. This was a pilot program, the first try at what we are planning to make an annual feature of our Religious School program.

The accommodations are spartan. It rained most of the day on Saturday. The food was, as you might imagine coming from a camp kitchen, tasty but simple. And wherever we were outside, we were surrounded by swarms of gnats. (They did not bite, but they were REALLY annoying.)

But in less than two days’ time, we built relationships. Between tefillot / family-friendly services and meals and free time, between the discussions and games and the minhah service that included a nature walk, the bonding that we shared as we fulfilled the Shabbat potential for menuhah / rest and oneg / enjoyment, we fashioned community from the grass roots. This is what Judaism should do. This is what synagogues are for.

Youth House Director Danny Mishkin, Director of Education Rabbi Amy Roth and I led a series of discussions and activities. On Shabbat afternoon, I was sitting with the parents discussing ways to cultivate gratitude in our children. We read some material from Dr. Wendy Mogel’s book, The Blessing of a Skinned Knee, and some sources from Pirqei Avot, including the following:

איזה הוא עשיר? השמח בחלקו.

Eizeh hu ashir? Hasameah behelqo.

Who is rich? The one who is happy with his portion. (Avot 4:1)

and

אל תסתכל בקנקן, אלא במה שיש בו.

Al tistaqel baqanqan, ela bemah sheyesh bo.

Do not look at the flask, but rather what is inside it. (Avot 4:26)

These passages are among several in Pirqei Avot that help to refocus our attention away from externalities to what is really important, and to separate needs from wants. The discussion was valuable, but not as powerful for the participants as I had hoped. As we were concluding, the skies opened up and it started to rain, so we continued to sit in the camp library and chat. The conversation innocently morphed into a discussion of how to get children to focus less on their smartphones, and to set limits on their use. We shared advice, swapped stories, and it was clear to me that this was a concern that was high on everyone’s mind, and all were invested in the conversation. It occurred to me that this was not the kind of discussion that  happens easily today; we were nearly 20 adults talking about parenting, uninterrupted by our own electronic devices because we had all opted to preserve the sanctity of Shabbat by leaving them off. It was beautiful, and powerful, and profoundly helpful.

On Sunday morning, as we were preparing to leave, we shared a final moment together on the waterfront. Standing on the edge of a lovely lake fenced in by rolling hills, we sang a song or two, and processed the weekend experience together. One of the participants observed that ultimately, the material features of the retreat - the rooms, the food, the bugs, the rain - did not matter at all. What mattered was the time spent together, bonding, schmoozing, drinking instant coffee and playing basketball. And so the simplicity of the experience added to its success in building connections between us all.

Unlike some varieties of Christianity or Buddhism, Judaism does not highlight asceticism. On the contrary, the Torah and the Talmud teach us that God gave us this world so that we might enjoy its fruits. We read, for example, in the Talmud Yerushalmi (Sotah 3:4):

Who is a pious fool? He who sees a ripe fig and says, “[Instead of enjoying it myself], I will give it to the first person I meet.”

The apex of Jewish spirituality is not to deny oneself, but to take pleasure in God’s Creation, albeit with a berakhah, an acknowledgment of God’s role in bringing us that ripe fig. The same is true for all other physical pleasures.

And most of us here in contemporary West Egg are fortunate to live well and appreciate God’s gifts to us. As long as our monetary gains are not ill-begotten, wealth is a blessing.

But we should not forget that comfort should be enjoyed with proper perspective. Material wealth has limits. Yes, having enough money makes certain things easier. It guarantees good access to education and health care, and of course allows for eating well and travel and leisure and so forth.

But what can creature comforts not do? They cannot fill the voids in our souls. They cannot bring joy in the context of loss and suffering. They cannot help us be better people. And they cannot bring people together in a way that connects them to each other meaningfully.

God has created a world in which everyone can be wealthy if he or she learns to appreciate the most essential gifts, those that can only be accessed through relationships with those whom we love, and with the Divine.

All of this brings me to the subject from Parashat Naso that our bar mitzvah boy raised earlier, that of the nazir. As the Torah describes, a man or a woman may become a nazir by taking a vow not to drink any alcoholic beverage, or to cut one’s hair, or to be exposed to tum’ah, impurity, by contact with a dead body.

The nazir lived a slightly more austere life than his/her fellow Israelites. It is worth pointing out that two of the most important heroes of the prophetic books, Samuel and Samson, are nazirim, and it seems that the source of their power - in the case of the former, his ability to communicate with God, and for the latter, his great physical strength - is their nazirite vow.

The suggestion is that living without certain indulgences (i.e. personal grooming and cocktails) might yield a higher form of existence.

In general, Judaism does not embrace austerity. But sometimes denying ourselves certain pleasures helps raise us up.

How do we achieve repentance on Yom Kippur? Why does our calendar identify six additional fast days throughout the year, with other optional personal fasts available to us at any time? Why do we take upon ourselves the hardship of avoiding the five species of hametz (and for some of us, many other things) during Pesah? Why does our tradition teach us to move out of our comfortable homes into the sukkah, where there are no marble countertops or fancy bathroom fixtures (or even bathrooms) during the festival of Sukkot?

The very act of self-denial, of setting limits for ourselves, is thought to stir God’s compassion. We can be cleansed through simplicity, and even occasionally through outright hardship. Going without helps to put us in a more open, spiritual state, that gives clarity and context to our lives. These traditions suggest that introspection may be achieved through humility. Simplicity helps to serve as a magnifying glass into our souls, and puts us back in touch with God’s Creation.

Jay Gatsby made the mistake of thinking that in order to win back Daisy Buchanan, all he needed was lots of money. But he was wrong. And the lesson that we should all take away from Gatsby, and from the nazir, is that over-the-top parties and lush material possessions are to be enjoyed, but the real substance of life is not to be found there.

The Torah’s description of the nazir is followed immediately by Birkat Kohanim, the blessing that the kohanim / priests would make over the rest of the Israelites in the Temple in Jerusalem:

יְבָרֶכְךָ יְהוָה, וְיִשְׁמְרֶךָ.

יָאֵר יְהוָה פָּנָיו אֵלֶיךָ, וִיחֻנֶּךָּ.

יִשָּׂא יְהוָה פָּנָיו אֵלֶיךָ, וְיָשֵׂם לְךָ שָׁלוֹם.

Yevarekhekha Adonai veyishmerekha
Ya’er Adonai panav eilekha viyhuneka
Yisa Adonai panav eilekha veyasem lekha shalom

May God bless you and keep you;
May God cause God’s face to shine upon you and be gracious to you;
May God lift up God’s face to you and grant you peace.

The midrashic collection Sifre tells us that the light of God’s face, identified in the second line, represents wisdom and Torah, which, unlike material goods, can never be taken from you. I would add love and companionship to the contents of this light.  Taking a cue both from Fitzgerald and from the nazir, the things that we really need can be realized only in the context of family and community; they are the truly valuable fruits of Creation. 

Shabbat shalom.

~

Rabbi Seth Adelson

(Originally delivered at Temple Israel of Great Neck, Shabbat morning, May 18, 2013.) 

The Shavuot Takeaway

One might make the case that Shavuot is really the end of Pesah, just like Simhat Torah is really the end of the High Holidays, on the opposite side of the Jewish calendar. And, curiously enough, they are both about the Torah: Shavuot is when we commemorate the Israelites' receiving of the Torah at Sinai, and Simhat Torah is when we celebrate the completion of a full cycle of Torah reading, and go back to the beginning again.

It's not a coincidence. In reinterpreting the Jewish Festivals, which are essentially agricultural in their unadorned Torah-based origin, the rabbis sought to overlay their new Jewish model: that of learning as the fundamental basis for Judaism. Without a Temple, without a centralized sacrificial cult, they reasoned that prayer and ritual would go only so far to keep Jews connected, and particularly when they were no longer living agrarian lives. Studying and interpreting ancient texts, however, made them instantly relevant.

As such, each of these two major holiday clusters concludes with a celebration of Torah. The message is clear: What will sustain us from spring to fall and from fall to spring, without a major holiday in between? Taking the words of Torah to heart, and dwelling on them constantly. Citing the words of Joshua (1:8):

לֹא-יָמוּשׁ סֵפֶר הַתּוֹרָה הַזֶּה מִפִּיךָ, וְהָגִיתָ בּוֹ יוֹמָם וָלַיְלָה

Lo yamush sefer haTorah hazeh mipikha, vehagita bo yomam valaila
Let not this Book of the Teaching cease from your lips, but recite it day and night...

This verse became a battle-cry for the rabbis, embracing the study of Torah as the life-force of the Jewish people. The Torah and its millennia of interpretive work are not an afterthought, but rather the focal point for day-to-day Jewish existence.


~
Rabbi Seth Adelson