Monthly Archives: December 2013

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“…a more assertive approach to intermarriage can be augmented through the creative thinking of Jewish leaders committed to making their own journey from timidity to self-assurance”

…a more assertive approach to intermarriage can be augmented through the creative thinking of Jewish leaders committed to making their own journey from timidity to self-assurance. As with so many battles, the first casualty in contending with intermarriage has been the truth. It is past time not only to rebut the falsehoods and expose the failed promises but to proclaim that, for the sake of the American Jewish future, it matters greatly who stands under the marriage canopy. The blurring of religious boundaries in order to achieve peace in the home may lower tensions in the short term, but demonstrably sows confusion in children and huge losses of adherents in the longer term. The Jewish community and its leaders are not the cause of the disaffection of the intermarried; but neither need they handcuff themselves in order to placate activists who use the power of the purse to intimidate, or defeatists who counsel capitulation.

Jack Wertheimer, “Intermarriage: Can Anything Be Done?” Mosaic (September 2013).

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It’s not really the fault of synagogues not connecting with Jews in their 20s & 30s…

They don’t connect to these synagogues because there is no framework for them; synagogues are really structured for families. … Until they marry and have a family, they are trying to build a career, working long hours and maybe in graduate school. There are thousands of single young professionals between 22 and 35 who are not connected too much Jewishly.
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I don’t blame the synagogues for not addressing this; synagogues look at them as transients and feel they often don’t pay membership. This is the Birthright generation that is used to getting everything for free. And in college, Hillel and Chabad give them free dinners.

Rabbi Perry Tirschwell quoted in Stewart Ain, “Vows to Serve The Young in Young Israel”, The Jewish Week (29 November 2013), 5.

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“Judaism, in its very essence, is a relational religion, born of a covenant between God and the people Israel…”

Judaism, in its very essence, is a relational religion, born of a covenant between God and the people Israel, sustained for millennia by a system of behaving, belonging, and believing that grows and evolves through time and space. But Judaism is even more than a religion. It is a people, a community of communities, a culture, a language, a history, a land, a civilization, a technology, a path to shape a life of meaning and purpose, belonging and blessing.

Dr. Ron Wolfson, Relational Judaism: Using the Power of Relationships to Transform the Jewish Community (Woodstock, VT: Jewish Lights Publishing, 2013), 3.

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“Can Jewish leaders work together with this silent majority to overthrow the regnant approaches to intermarriage?”

Can Jewish leaders work together with this silent majority to overthrow the regnant approaches to intermarriage? And if so, how?

First and foremost, a more assertive approach to intermarriage would require the dignified acknowledgement by Jewish institutions that endogamous families are the Jewish ideal—the best hope for transmitting a strong identity to the next generation. Once this crucial premise is openly espoused, the next logical step is to invest heavily in intensive forms of Jewish education through the college years and in helping Jewish singles, including the “alumni” of this education, to meet each other. Our advanced technologies and the ease of contemporary travel offer unprecedented opportunities to bring American Jews together with their peers and to nurture stronger connections with the Jewish people globally.

Practically speaking, it makes sense, as the previous paragraph suggests, to focus less energy on courting already intermarried families—once an intermarriage has occurred, it is far more difficult for communal institutions to intervene—than on encouraging as many single Jews as possible to marry within the community. Birthright Israel serves as one model for such programs; many more initiatives like it are needed in the United States. Their message should be transparent: instead of being infantilized with assurances that no strings will ever be attached, younger Jews need to hear without equivocation why it is important to build Jewish families. And they must be told the truth: the American Jewish community is in a fight for its life, and the younger generation is expected to shoulder its share of responsibility.

Jack Wertheimer, “Intermarriage: Can Anything Be Done?” Mosaic (September 2013).

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How then should…

How then should Israel look to the future? This is a difficult proposition for a country whose leaders are notorious for their short-term perspectives on policy. Nevertheless, it is a question that Israelis and their American supporters must face. Geography is relatively unchanging, and Israel will always find itself caught between rival great powers, whether those proximate to it, like Egypt or, more likely, those further afield, like Turkey or Iran, or those even more remote, but with expanding military reach, like China and India.

Dov S. Zakheim, “The Geopolitics of Scripture,” The American Interest (July/August 2012), 16.

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“Synagogues must serve a constituency broader than their current membership…”

Synagogues must serve a constituency broader than their current membership. I suggest that congregations set aside 5 percent of their budget to create an innovation fund offering mini grants to anyone, member or not, who wants to develop a new Jewish initiative.

The initiative should then be made available to both members and non-members in that congregation. The monthly Shabbat program mix is the ideal venue for the congregation to benefit from this investment. Equally important is that young people, who want to reinvent their Judaism, will feel supported by and increasingly appreciative of the sponsoring congregation. Right now, they are nowhere to be found on the synagogue landscape.

Rabbi Sid Schwarz, “Jump-starting a Synagogue Stimulus Plan”, The Jewish Week (22 November 2013), 29, 31.

“The decisions underlying halakhic teachings and case stories…point to a scholarly context with regard to their formulation and circulation”

The decisions underlying halakhic teachings and case stories may have once been applied to specific legal situations. But the abbreviated and stylized versions which we find in rabbinic documents will have been devised for the specific purpose of transmission within rabbinic circles. In this form, they would not have been recited before the general public. In their concise form, they are often only understandable within a specific halakhic context and require a large amount of biblical and halakhic knowledge in order to be intelligible. They clearly point to a scholarly context with regard to their formulation and circulation.

Catherine Hezser, “Form-Criticism of Rabbinic Literature”, in The New Testament and Rabbinic Literature, eds. Reimund Bieringer, Florentino García Martinez, Dider Pollefeyt and Peter J. Tomson (Leiden & Boston: Brill, 2010), 108.

“People do a lot of evil thinking they’re doing the right thing; and it’s a huge problem when dealing with subjective morality”

When talking about the halakhic process – for people who want to talk about individuation or about finding your own way – there is room, but it’s not a matter of איש הישר בעיניו יעשה. That doesn’t end well for the Jewish people. People did what is right in their own eyes – that’s how the book of Judges ends, after the whole narrative of the פלגש בגבעה – the concubine who was raped to death and her dismembered corpse is mailed across the country en route to a civil war. That’s not a matter of just people doing what they want, it’s איש הישר בעיניו יעשה – you have people who thought they were doing what was the right thing. People do a lot of evil thinking they’re doing the right thing. And it’s a huge problem when dealing with subjective morality.

Rabbi Josh Yuter, “Halakhic Process 26 – R. David Hartman and Religious Individualism”, Yutopia Podcast #121 (3 November 2013).

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Considering “I am Who I am” (Ex. 3:14)

It seems that the translation “I am that I am” (ehyeh asher ehyeh; Exodus 3:14) does not do justice to the Hebrew original. The imperfect “ehyeh,” used here, means continuous being. … The Hebrew phrase says: “I am continually what I am continually.” It expresses the “jutting out” of the divine being into time or – to use some German terminology – the phrase does not speak of sein (Being) but of dasein (Presence). The correct meaning of the text, therefore, is: I am forever present (for man). The rabbis in the Talmud give it the right interpretation when they remark: “What is the meaning of ehyeh asher ehyeh? The Holy One said to Moses: Go and tell Israel that as I have been with them in this subjugation, so shall I be with them in their future subjugations by other kingdoms…” Brachot 9b. “I am that I am” is metaphysics, and so it was understood, for instance, by Thomas Aquinas…. The “I am continually present” or “I am forever with them” of the rabbis is religion.

Eliezer Berkovits, God, Man and History, 4th ed., ed. David Hazony (Jerusalem: Shalem Press, 2004), 171, n. 2.

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“The edition of these rabbinic texts is a truly titanic task for scholars who intend to establish the pure, original text”

A first conclusion is that the principle of the oral Torah let the rabbis have full control over the transmission and actualization of texts considered important for the community. If the rabbis were not afraid to change the text of the written Torah, if possible, that did not deter them either from expurgating every other text not in agreement with their teaching. Yet, rabbinic Judaism lacked a central authority and an orthodoxy capable of suppressing other opinions. We are facing a most diverse approach by the rabbis to the written and oral Torah, which also explains the ocean of variant readings in the manuscripts and of tractates being interlaced with the most divergent literary forms of transmission down to the period of authored literature in the Middle Ages. The edition of these texts is therefore a truly titanic task for scholars who intend to establish the pure, original text. For the word “origin” is not identical with the idea of a tradition born in the world of authority, and authority can also be a plural attribute of a tradition over the course of the time. And that is, likewise, the premise to understand the contemporary discussion on text redaction.

Giuseppe Veltri, “From The Best Text To The Pragmatic Edition: On Editing Rabbinic Texts”, in The New Testament and Rabbinic Literature, eds. Reimund Bieringer, Florentino García Martínez, Didier Pollefeyt, Peter Tomson (Leiden & Boston: Brill, 2010), 71.