Judaism

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

Zion in the Sources

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Zion is mentioned 196 times in Isaiah. 64 times in Jeremiah. 130 times in the Twelve Prophets. 152 times in Tehillim.

441 times in the Talmuds (374 in the Zohar!)

98 times in the Ashkenazi liturgy. 228 times in the Mizrahi liturgy.

Over 1400 times in the most popular collections of responsa literature.

But yes, the specific term Zionism was coined in 1890 at a time when industrialization and the organization of European nation-states made it possible to realize the age-old dream on a mass scale.

On Calling Out the Wicked

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A valued friend privately messaged me to take issue with my personal insult to Yosef Mizrachi in a previous post.

He felt it was in conflict with the overarching principle of politeness in the Religious way.

I agree with the importance of politeness (although Lord knows my tongue sometimes gets ahead of my filter, mea culpa) but.

But.

There is a certain fire reserved for those who mislead, harass, and abuse others in the name of the Torah, worshipping their ego and claiming divine blessing.

That fire awaits not every man, not every rabbi, but those rabbis whose words and actions profane the Torah.

The profaning of the Name is too great to bear, the wicked must be cut back down to size not for their punishment but to correct in the minds of all witnesses the distortion of truth, love, and reality that the wicked caused in the normalization of their wickedness.

For years and years, Yosef Mizrachi has spread hate and ignorance, making himself into a substitute for God. The public must awaken: he and people like him are not gods but men, and lowly men at that.

I use insulting terms in regards to Mizrachi not to gratify my own ego or to “punish” him, even – but to send a message to anyone and everyone I can that the his teachings and behavior, and those of everyone like him, do not represent Torah in any way but are in fact reprehensible and debased and deserving of calumny.

May God grant us the wisdom to discern between day and night.

Falling Upon One’s Face

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“Falling upon one’s face” in supplication and confession after the standing prayer/guided meditation is an essential part of the ancient Jewish way of prayer

Bring the body into the moment and the heart out of its shell

It may not be advisable in your synagogue, depending on how educated the crowd is, but it’s definitely a viable option at home or in the forest field

Is Prayer Broken

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Is prayer broken?

Do you find the act of praying meaningful, or even coherent?

Do you connect to the text of prayer?

Does the melody of prayer resonate with you?

Do you have a praying community?

Do you have a relationship with the one to whom you pray?

Do you find yourself in prayer?

They may not look like it but these are some of the most pressing questions of our times.

Worldwide injustice and social division, the abandonment of the poor and the monopolization of the environment, and so many more ills and madness of our times, all have their roots in an existential and practical state wherein the average human being does not pray.

Worse, for many who pray, the act of praying becomes a barrier between them and the divine.

There are many pathways out of this predicament.

The Jewish path of prayer is not the only path of prayer.

But it is a path with heart – if you can unlock its gates.

“Unscrew the locks from the doors! Unscrew the doors themselves from their jambs!”

The siddur is not a book.

The language is not important.

The body is not to be left out.

The ancient way of Jewish prayer can meet the psycho-spiritual-eco-political needs of the meta-modern transhuman being – if we take it seriously and free it from the confines of dusty room and printed page and esoteric incantation.

If we transform it from a formulaic recitation into a self-constructive act of divine revelation.

We can fix prayer, if we restore it to what it was always meant to be.

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Fine, you say. High and lofty ideas that are all well and good. But you’re ignoring the elephant in the room.

Where is the God to whom you’re praying?

Where was God during Auschwitz?

You’re right.

This is the most pressing question of prayer out of them all.

And I’ll share with you my simple answer, the fruit of decades of study and reflection:

In Auschwitz, God was in the slave barracks, in the gas chambers, in the crematoria.

With every body and soul made in the divine image that faced the utter inhumanity of human beings.

And I’ll ask you in return,

Where was Man during Auschwitz?

Where was the divine image in those who allowed themselves to be seduced by hate into murdering millions?

The God to whom we pray does not act on the stage of human life with force and might, robbing us of both our freedom and our responsibility – but resorts to fervent whispers in human hearts urging us to see things in a new light and to make better choices.

It is up to us to heed the whispers.

It is up to us to act.

And so it is up to us to pray.

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May we merit to learn to pray in the way of our ancestors, and may the House of Prayer for all nations be rebuilt speedily in our days.

Political Zionism Is Autonomy

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Morning meditation on political Zionism:

The political component to Zionism is not Jewish sovereignty over the land.

According to Jewish tradition, the Creator was, is, and forever will be the sovereign over this land and all lands. We are just migrants, tenants granted the right to reside here and the responsibility to live with the land’s sanctity and natural sensitivity to injustice.

What political Zionism seeks to promote is Jewish autonomy.

The freedom to rule ourselves according to our laws and values, without external oppression, persecution, or pressure to participate in a supremacist social hierarchy.

Jewish people believe that the Creator brought us to this land in order for us to exercise that freedom, in safety, security, and holiness. Over the millenia our ancestors lived, prayed, and died in this land, our traditional culture was born and flourished in its mountains and its plains, its coasts and its wilderness.

But land – protected space – is just a precondition for full autonomy.

Full autonomy, according to Jewish tradition, finds expression in lawful self-governance. The בן חורין autonomous individual is the one paradoxically bound by the laws of the Torah. As a nation, full autonomy is found in our laws.

“The tablets were inscribed with autonomy”

Physically returning to the land is inarguably necessary.

Mentally healing from the exile is essential.

But the political goal of the re-establishment of Israelite civilization in the land of Israel is the reassertion of Israelite autonomy – and that comes through the establishment of a fully-functioning lawful society.

“There is no sanctity except in the Laws”

In the merit of our rejoicing in both the Torah and the return of our captive brothers to the embrace of our national family, may we merit to achieve full autonomy in this land in the establishment of a lawful, just, and holy society dedicated to the liberation and elevation of all sentient beings through the civilizational program of our sacred Torah. You know, political Zionism. 😉

Religion as Foundation

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People (especially those from a certain North American country) are obsessed with politics, especially partisan politics.

Everything must be explainable by reference to your political ideology or better yet, your party affiliation.

My concern for the welfare of the poor, of immigrants, of queer people, of Palestinians, of strangers within my community and outside its borders, does not derive from a political ideology or party line.

I am concerned with the welfare of these people because I am a Religious person.

Note that I don’t say, “because I am a Jewish person,” although my Judaism, from the days of Abraham abinu until our own, has had a lot to say about such concern.

Note that I don’t say, “because I believe in God,” although my belief in the divine image of humanity, the human ikon of God, is entirely aligned with such concern.

But because I am a Religious person – I am a vulnerable, imperfect man trying to grow past my failures and limitations in the process of actualizing my full human potential, under the same cosmic conditions shared by every other human being who seeks to live between birth and death, and in existential harmony with whom I seek to create a better world – I am concerned with justice and welfare and inclusion and equity and diversity.

Even my political beliefs – Zionism, Libertarian Socialism – ultimately flow from and around my core religious experience and conviction.

Don’t get it twisted.

Politics and parties may have their place, but the foundation of civilization is Religion.

Benevolent Sensitivity

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Jewish Religion: A Rough Sketch

At the heart of our practices, theories, and forms lies חסידות, a word translated variously as piety, loving-kindness, and mysticism.

For reasons that I hope will become clear, I prefer the somewhat clunky translation “benevolent sensitivity.”

The first usage of חסיד in the Torah is in Moshe rabbenu’s blessing of the tribe of Lewi: “Your tummim and urim [priestly oracle] to your Hassid” – a reference to the tribe’s general role, and the specific responsibility of the descendants of Aharon haKohen, in the guidance of Jewish religion, both in the central nexus of the Qodesh (al Quds) and scattered throughout the cities and communities of the nation.

Moshe was the rabban of all nebiim but we see that traditions, praxis, and concepts were transmitted, developed, and shared in the context of the Levitic activity, especially at the Qodesh. Ruwwah haQodesh – the psycho-spiritual experiential mode associated with this activity – was established as the preliminary to full nebua. From these circles emerged many of the nebiim that contributed to our textual and spiritual heritage.

But why Hassid?

I believe that the path of Israelite religion, as actively taught and developed by the nebiim especially of the tribe of Lewi, is one of cultivation of benevolent sensitivity, to one’s self – one’s nature and needs, to one’s fellows – their natures and needs, and to one’s God – and the nature and needs of the divine pathos, as R Heschel z”l described it, within the creation.

This path of cultivation brings the human being from raw animalistic potential to actualized psycho-spiritual resonance with the divine. It is the revelation and the attunement of the divine image in which all human beings were created, and it is the generative process that lies at the heart of all religions, including Islam, in the context of which it is called التصوف‎ the tasawwuf, Sufism.

Rambam, the last and greatest of the Geonim, drew upon the Sufi discourse and works of his Mediterranean milieu in formulating his exploration of nebua in his famous Guide. It may be justly said that the entire project of the Guide is the cultivation of a cognitive and intellectual sensitivity to the divine as an active alternative to the barren and often irrational quagmire of theology.

Rambam’s son, R Abraham Maimuni, overtly recognized the Islamic Sufis as contemporary adherents to the same Way of the ancient nebiim and publicly taught a form of practice that harmonized with theirs. Subsequent generations of the Maimuni family developed the Sufi themes of
Maimonideanism, both in writing and in practice, all with the aim of cultivating the self along the way of the nabi, as described above.

While the Maimuni Sufism did not directly survive the vicissitudes of history in a region ravaged by competing empires, it later contributed (along with the broader Sufi influence) to the development of the kabbalistic circles around the Mediterranean, which in turn resulted in the emergence of European Hassidism. And of course Rambam’s legacy, in the widespread impact of both his Guide and his legal rulings, definitively shaped the חסידות that came after him, both in illumination and in shadow.

It is only natural that Religionists – Sufis of whatever community – should work together to heal a world in desperate need of Religion, of “benevolent sensitivity.”

It is my hope that on this festival of Sukkoth, in which we continue the theme of unity with creation in worship of our Creator with an expansive hope for all the world’s families to join us in celebration of our Creator’s goodness, we will merit to traverse the bridges our ancestors and prophets built before us and between us, and bring the world to a more perfected state both in justice and in awareness of the divine.

We Are Guilty

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All year long we avoid our shadow, we avert our gaze from the many ways in which it falls upon others and robs them of the light…

All year long we hide in the very tree we were warned against, we pretend to ourselves that our maker will not see us, does not want to see us, if we don’t want to be seen…

All year long we tell ourselves a story, a grand myth of our virtuous heroism and their vicious villainy, proclaimed on an empty stage to a crowd of none…

But there is freedom in admitting the truth.

“We are neither so brazen nor so stubborn as to say before you that we have not failed; but both we and our fathers –

We are guilty.
We betrayed.
We robbed.
We slandered.
We caused error –
And we caused injustice.
We acted maliciously.
We acted violently.
We dealt falsely.
We gave bad advice.
We misled.
We raged.
We mocked.
We rebelled.
We resented.
We lusted.
We over-indulged.
We erred.
We acted negligently.
We tormented.
We doubled-down.
We acted unjustly.
We corrupted.
We disgusted.
We strayed.
We oppressed.

We turned away from your instructions and your good laws, and it was not worth it – while you have been just in all that has happened to us; you have acted in truth and we caused injustice.

What can we say before you?

What story can we tell you?

You know everything – hidden and revealed.

. . .

And so may it be willed before you:

That you let go of all our failures.

That you overlook all of our mistakes.

That you forgive all of our negligence.

. . .

And may the words of my mouth be desired,

And the meditation of my heart be before you,

My lord –

My rock –

My liberator.”

How Many New Years

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Whew. Said the prayers. Blew the shophar. Ate the honey. Let my wife rest through the night.

I showed up, I did my part, I stood with every single being in creation and crowned my King.

Despite everything, Rosh Hashana was, thank God, a success in my little corner of the cosmos.

Barukh Hashem.

Mammash.

But.

As we started the month of Tishri, I opened up Isaiah for the next review. And I returned to the following verses:

“Your new moons and fixed seasons fill Me with loathing; they are become a burden to Me, I cannot endure them.

And when you lift up your hands, I will turn My eyes away from you; though you pray at length, I will not listen. Your hands are stained with crime—

Wash yourselves clean; put your evil doings away from My sight. Cease to do evil;

Learn to do good. Devote yourselves to justice; aid the wronged. Uphold the rights of the orphan; defend the cause of the widow.”

These verses made me think.

I thought of the attacks on farmers and shepherds in Yehuda and Shomeron.

I thought of the devastation in Gaza, excessive beyond the needs of self-defense and exploited for corrupt profit.

I thought of the hostages abandoned to Hamas, their families libeled as traitors for demanding accountability.

I thought of the widows and orphans of fallen soldiers and murdered civilians, sacrificed by career politicians clinging to power.

I thought of our society, built on holy ideals and ancient dreams, but that has become tolerant of too much violence against the vulnerable and too much injustice against the innocent.

How many new years will we celebrate while glibly justifying the ultimately unjustifiable?

How can we crown our King when we can not recognize his image and likeness?

What good are my prayers when both the Temple and Gaza lie in ruins?

Beloved, let us return to the covenant of our ancestors and the ways of our King.

We may have gone astray but all is far from lost.

There is still time for us to reconsider our path going forward.

This is the time.

“Come, let us reach an understanding, —says GOD. Be your sins like crimson, they can turn snow-white; be they red as dyed wool, they can become like fleece.”