Judaism

Halakha, theology, practice, and the inner life of Jewish observance.

The Shabbat Linecook

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A Jewish person is employed as a linecook in a restaurant and cooks an omelette on Shabbath for a customer.

Can any leftovers from the omelette (let’s say they made a double portion accidentally) be eaten by other people after Shabbath? Is any food that cook makes afterwards categorically prohibited?

Even when the cook is engaged in direct melakha, it’s unlikely they’re doing so with full and flagrant intent to transgress the law. Here in Israel, unless you know for sure the cook (or essential participant in cooking) is דתל”ש, the probable assumption is that they are אנוס or תנוק שנשבה in some way (like most “Hiloni” Israelis), partially educated here and there (and trustworthy in factual matters to which they can attest, like whether the meat they serve has a hekhsher or whether it was cooked with any dairy ingredients or in a recently used dairy pot) but ultimately denying them full legal culpability for their transgression. They don’t have sufficient knowledge to transgress במזיד and certainly not בפרהסיה.

These are important factors imho.

There is an implicit assumption behind denying restaurants certification for opening and serving customers on Shabbath: it’s that any Jewish person who transgresses the Shabbath must be doing so with full knowledge and awareness of their transgression and with full intent to transgress, and so therefore must be “prosecuted” (or at least judged unfavorably) to the full extent of the law.

Does this assumption match reality? No, I don’t think so.

Does this assumption reflect a healthy attitude towards one’s fellow Jewish people? No, I don’t think it does.

I’m not here to tell anyone what they should or shouldn’t eat. But I think this din requires public clarification.

Who Sets the Boundaries of Jewish Law?

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Morning Musing:

Rambam in his introduction to his comprehensive compendium of Jewish law declares that Jewish law is based on the rulings found in the classical sources up until the closing of the Talmud.

After that, all opinions are equal and we go with the most reasonable opinion; all new enactments are local and we don’t coerce any community to adopt the practices of another community.

As is well known, Rambam specifically calls out the Geonim of Babylonia as lacking binding authority over the Jewish people, rejecting their equally well-known claim to a continued institutional monopoly over Jewish law.

Yet, throughout his legal masterpiece Rambam references Geonic interpretations and enactments, sometimes citing them anonymously as a class, more often including their rulings without distinction alongside rulings found explicitly in the Talmud. The source of these rulings is the discourse of “al-Talmud Lana,” the oral tradition and textual culture accompanying the transmission of the Talmud through the Geonim to the communities and schools of the Judeo-Arabic diaspora, including Rambam’s native al-Andalus.

This adds an obvious layer of difficulty to the project of halakhic observance that Rambam sets out in his introduction – what are the parameters of that observance? Who sets the boundaries of Jewish law – the rabbis of the Talmud or the rabbis after the Talmud?

According to Rambam, what options, what readings of the sources, are truly available to Jewish individuals and communities today, and which are truly off-limits?

There are answers. But I’m about to step into the office. 😉

This Is the Way

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Can you hold a broken creation in your embrace and love it until it heals?

By my life, this is the Way

A Religious Reform Bill for Israel

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Since the politicians in the governing coalition are so concerned with reform, I think the rest of the Kenesset should propose a Religious Reform Bill (including common-sense updates to the Draft Law!) :

1) Cease bureaucratically empowering the Rabbanut in the areas of Jewish identity, family life, and diet; legally recognize Israeli citizens’ freedom of association in these areas
2) Withhold the Rabbanut’s funding until it reorganizes as a free, open institution of higher rabbinic education, that does not discriminate against any Israeli citizen (under penalty of losing its government funding, including for the chief rabbi offices)
3) Form committees (in partnership with the rabbinic departments of state universities Hebrew U and Bar Ilan) to create a) an independent professional standard and regulating body for municipal rabbinic appointments and b) a series of standardized tests to evaluate yeshiba students receiving government benefits
4) Make eligibility for municipal (and higher) rabbinic appointments conditional on completing national service
5) Make yeshiba students’ exemption from military service conditional on achieving passing scores on standardized tests
6) Make government stipends to yeshiba students conditional on achieving distinguished scores on standardized tests

Animal and Angel

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The animalistic side of us – the homo sapiens, greatest of the primates, apex predator beyond match – gives us packs, herds, tribes.

The angelic side of us – the rational mind, free to assent, a fractal image of the infinite mind of the Creator – gives us the species.

In wedding angel to animal, the human being is born. An animal with not just intelligence but wisdom, ready to meet any selective pressure with not just awareness but reason, capable of thinking of the long-term benefit not just to the self, not just to the tribe, but to the species – and beyond the species, the community of all rational life forms.

The human being is the one into whose hands their own evolution has been given.

“Choose life…”

I Resolved to Learn More Torah

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As I stood this morning, looking at the posters of hostages taped to the bus stop over a year into this miserable war with no rescue or exit in sight, I got so fed up with this criminally incompetent government of self-serving career politicians playing October 6th political games as usual while the country staggers from the economic, social, psychological, moral cost of the war, that I resolved to learn more Torah and do more מצוות.

I may have no direct control over the socio-political forces in my life but I can always choose to build a radically better alternative to this mess of a world we’re caught up in.

(And to vote for moderately better alternatives to the incompetent criminals in office.)

(And to keep reminding you my friends that now is the best time for elections.)

The Art of Talmud

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To me, the art of Talmud is a dual art: the art of investigation and the art of harmonization, woven together into an art of reading and creating culture.

Rooted in the past history of Israel in exile, it is an art of the future, a social tool and human modality in which it’s possible to bring together opposites, and unite all the shades in between.

The best compendium of law may make one dimension of the Talmud more accessible – the system of actual practice – but it will never replace Talmud as a whole, as an art.

Nor was it intended to. 😉

We Need 120 Competent Judges

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The standard by which we should evaluate all rabbis is “Are they qualified to sit on the national court of Israel?”

99% will fall short of this standard.

100% should never stop striving for this standard.

The point is to keep your eye on the ball.

In order to bring the halakhic system back to life, we need 120 competent judges.

Not small-minded and semi-literate purveyors of charisma, dogma, snake oil, nostalgia, fantasy, spiritual materialism, or any other mind-constricting social opiates.

Actually competent judges.

Wise masters of our laws, our traditions, our texts, and our spirit, along with all the sciences necessary to unpack and develop the halakhic project.

Who will they be?

When Is Your Judaism?

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Let’s Describe Post-Exilic…

Minhag: Practicing Beyond Ashkenaz and Sepharad

Din: From Textual Interpretation to Institutional Decision

Sod: The Return to Prophecy, Gnosis, and Sacred Spacetime

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When is your Judaism? The future is waiting.

Five Denominations, Five Truths

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Some controversial thoughts on a topic that came up over Shabbath lunch…

The major denominations of Ashkenazi Judaism each capture a truth of the Torah. To put it roughly but reductively:

– The Orthodox preserved the commitment to our legal system
– The Conservative preserved the thorough academic analysis of our legal sources
– The Reform preserved the essential need for Judaism to always meet the terms and conditions of modernity
– The Renewalists preserved the basic creative spirit and psychological attunement of our practice
– The Reconstructionists preserved the mutually constructive bond between people and practice, nation and tradition

All these truths are true, and while I disagree with each denomination’s approach, model, conclusions, and ideological framework, each one develops their truth to a new level of discourse.

All of these truths are also found in Sepharadi Judaism, but as a holistic integrated cultural system, with its own diversity of themes and discourse but without the splintering of these truths into competing alternative movements.

One might suggest that while the Ashkenazi denominationalism has limited the influence (and the healthy integration) of each truth in generally isolating it from the rest, it pushed each of these truths to be explored and articulated conceptually, and implemented in social praxis, to a level that is uncommon in Sepharadi Judaism.

Ideally, I think, our personal and communal engagement with Judaism should not be limited by denominational politics, familial heritage, or ethnic identity, but rather enhanced by the intellectual and cultural products of all Jewish communities.

דכולא חד