Tag Archives: Jews

, ,

Of course we perform our rituals “properly.” Otherwise they would not be rituals.

Sometimes religious ritual does approximate obsessive-compulsive disorder. An example is the way some medieval Jews interpreted the phrase, “in accordance with all its rules and rites.” The 11th-century rabbi, Joseph Tov Elem (or Bonfils, his French surname), incorporated the line into a pre-Passover synagogue poem that highlighted the importance of attending to every detail of Passover preparation. One verse of that larger composition still concludes our Haggadah: “The Passover celebration has concluded appropriately,” we say, “in accordance with all its rules and rites.”
Bonfils had internalized an attitude that pervaded Christian circles in his day: the idea that religious rites (like baptism and eucharist) achieve their intended impact as an automatic consequence of punctilious attention to detail. By contrast, skipping a single step or doing anything out of order renders the ritual null and void, so at roughly the same time that Bonfils was writing his poem, other rabbis were developing mnemonics to guide leaders of the seder in doing everything “just right.” We still have one such mnemonic today: Kadesh Urchatz, by Samuel ben-Solomon of Falaise. We chant it as the seder begins, just to anticipate what follows, but originally it was used to guarantee that the seder not be rendered worthless on account of an error in order.
In its time, this was indeed an obsessive-compulsive attitude, but it is not typical of the mainstream Jewish approach to ritual over the years. Even “in accordance with all its rules and rites” was interpreted to mean more than an obsessive concern for sacrificial detail. Both Rashi and Ramban, for example, think it also entails linking the ritual acts of the Passover sacrifice to the non-ritual aspects of the Passover message; eating unleavened bread, for instance, as a recollection of the haste with which Jews departed Egypt so long ago. Elsewhere, too, the impact of halachic action is not normally believed to follow magically as a consequence of doing it flawlessly.
Of course we perform our rituals “properly.” Otherwise they would not be rituals. But everything that matters deeply to us gets done that way: arranging an anniversary evening, perfecting a golf swing, posing for an important photograph, creating a beautiful dinner; these are all examples of making sure that details do not get overlooked. Far from being obsessive-compulsive behavior, these are instances of artistic enterprise.
The lesson of it all — from the biblical Passover sacrifice to the seder of today, and every other ritual we have, as well — is that human beings have an artistic impulse at our very core. We describe God’s original act of Creation as artistry, and we have been partners with God ever after. We love harmonized melodies, complementary color schemes, matching clothes, flowing language, and even coincidences that suggest patterns behind pure randomness.
We should conclude (contra Freud) that while people can use ritual to further their own obsessive-compulsive needs, most of us appreciate it for its artistry — the means to express ourselves through what is graceful, elegant, beautiful, and profound.

Rabbi Lawrence A. Hoffman, “Do the Rite Thing”, The Jewish Week (24 May 2013), 35.

, , ,

Considering Nakedness in light of the “Pink Elephant Problem”

I call it the “Pink Elephant Problem”: if someone says “Don’t think of a pink elephant”; what’s the first thing you think of? A pink elephant. Same thing applies to tzeni’ut: the more that I say “This is prohibited because of tzeni’ut and this is prohibited because of tzeni’ut”, the more you take innocuous interactions and sexualize them.
“Men and women can’t socialize at a kiddush because of tzeni’ut” – implication: men and women having kiddush together is somehow sexual.
“Men and women need separate entrances to get into synagogue” – implication: same entrance, there’s something sexual there.
All of that is problematic. … You’re sort of putting it in people’s heads that it’s always sexual. … You’re implying that men – and women, too – we just can’t control ourselves, we have no self-control…. We can’t but help get sexually aroused by listening to women. That’s what you’re implying.
When you take the expansive view of erva onto everything, effectively, you’re putting more ideas into their head they may not have even had before, just by pure implication.

Rabbi Josh Yuter, “Current Jewish Questions 26: Music in Judaism“, YUTopia Podcast #106 (23 May 2013) {http://joshyuter.com/podcasts/current-jewish-questions/current-jewish-questions-26-music-in-judaism.mp3}

,

The motivations of young people in affiliating with Jewish youth organizations

This survey confirms what has been known for several decades as to the motivations of young people in affiliating with Jewish youth organizations. At the top of the list is the desire to participate in activities with their friends, to meet other Jewish youth, to enjoy social and other recreational activities, and to have fun. Motivations considered least important in joining are opportunities to serve Jews in their own communities, elsewhere in North America, in Israel and other places abroad, religious, and education activities.

Dr. Fred Massarik and Dr. Max F. Baer, BBYO Leadership Study, Phase 1 (Washington, DC: B’nai B’rith Youth Organization, 1971), 25.

, ,

No phenomenon more accurately reflects the life and character of the Jewish people than the Halakhah

Nothing has made its influence more profoundly felt on the course of the history of the Jewish people, shaping its way of life and giving it form and substance, than the Halakhah. There is, therefore, no phenomenon that more accurately reflects the life and character of the people than the Halakhah.

Ephraim E. Urbach, The Halakhah: Its Sources and Development, trans. Raphael Posner (Ramat Gan: Massada; Jerusalem: Yad la-Talmud, 1986), 1.

In pre-Israeli Days, Zionism was a dynamic, world-wide movement whose goal was the creation of a Jewish national homeland in Palestine

In pre-Israeli Days, Zionism was a dynamic, world-wide movement whose goal was the creation of a Jewish national homeland in Palestine. In 1948, to the surprise of many leading Zionists and others, the goal was achieved. From then on, nobody could ever figure out what a Zionist was. Some say a Zionist is a Jew who tries to persuade a second Jew to give money to settle a third Jew in Israel. Zionism has become an ideal whose time has gone. Is a Zionist now someone who is friendly to Israel? Well, so are the non-Zionists – indeed, all Jews, not to mention WASP candidates for public office in America. Is a Zionist someone who contributes to Israel? Well, as Ben-Gurion puckishly used to remind the Zionists, the non-Zionists give more. So what is a Zionist? The Israelis (understandably worried that Israel is becoming an oriental or Levantine state) have a simple answer: if you claim to be a Zionist, you must come and live in Israel. The result is a thunderous silence. Aw, come on, say the Israelis, stop playing games, we need you. The silence now becomes eloquently ominous.

Albert Vorspan, My Rabbi Doesn’t Make House Calls: A Guide to Games Jews Play (Garden City, NY: Doubleday & Company, 1969), 102.

This interpenet…

This interpenetration of Jewish books and those of other cultures is emblematic of the modern Jewish integration into modern cultural and political mainstreams. With this integration has come increased regulation of published materials, in the form of state censorship and legislation governing copyright, plagiarism, obscenity, libel, and the like. These laws both restrict and protect the possibilities of Jewish books while situating them within national systems of authorship and publication. Conversely, Jewish books sometimes figure as potent symbols of Jewish ideas or of Jews themselves in modern political actions, notably in book bans and, during the Nazi era, book burnings that deliberately echoed medieval practice.

Jeffrey Shandler, “The Jewish Book and Beyond in Modern Times,” AJS Review 34, No. 2 (November 2010), 379.

“we Jews almost defy definition. We are a unique demographic group; none of the customary sociological categories is a perfect fit for us”

We must begin by trying to define Judaism and the Jewish people, no easy task even for one who has spent a lifetime studying Jewish history. Worlds like religious and secular and nationalistic, which have clear-cut meanings in other contexts, become fuzzy and confused when applied to us. The plain fact is that we Jews almost defy definition. We are a unique demographic group; none of the customary sociological categories is a perfect fit for us.

 

We are a religious group, true, but simultaneously more than that. We share some facets of national existence, but not all of us partake of them fully. We are an ethnic entity, yet at the same time an admixture of many races. If we are to be defined with any measure of accuracy, a new term must be devised, peculiarly and uniquely for us.

Roland B. Gittelsohn, Partners in Destiny: Reform Judaism and Zionism (New York: Union of American Hebrew Congregations, 1984), 1.

” The ancient Jew regarded himself quite naturally as the equal of the member of any other race or nation in his contemporary world”

The more the archaeologists dig around Palestine and its environs, the more evidence they discover of the variety and versatility of the activities of the Jewish people. Singularly interested in moral and religious questions they certainly were – else we could not explain Moses, the prophets, … – but not to the exclusion of everything else. All the evidence spells a normal, healthy people and the reason for it is self-evident. The reason was national independence and the integrity that came with the possession of soil, language, liberty and the strength of ethnic cohesion. The ancient Jew regarded himself quite naturally as the equal of the member of any other race or nation in his contemporary world.

Leon I. Feuer, On Being a Jew (New York: Bloch Publishing Company, 1947), 97.

“Far too many Jews are too lazy mentally to take the trouble to inform themselves about the trends and currents of contemporary life”

Far too many Jews are too lazy mentally to take the trouble to inform themselves about the trends and currents of contemporary life, and of how they and their lives fit into the pattern of what is happening…. They make a virtue out of their ignorance of the Jewish past, thus dispossessing themselves of vital links to the present and the future. As far as religion is concerned, when they do affiliate with synagogues and, when they do occasionally attend services of worship, they look upon it as a form of entertainment headlined by a rabbinical performer in the pulpit. The phrase, “I enjoyed the sermon,” is one of the chief criteria of the religiosity of the modern Jew.

Leon I. Feuer, On Being a Jew (New York: Bloch Publishing Company, 1947), 6.