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Category Archives: Talmud

Rabbi Adam Kligfeld: Marrying Tradition With Spiritual Innovation – Jewish Journal

Posted: July 21, 2022 at 1:10 pm

Its not every day that you meeta rabbi who has gone on not one, but multiple meditation and yoga retreats let alone ones in Guatemala, India and a tiny island off the coast of Scotland. But Rabbi Adam Kligfeld is not your typical spiritual leader.

While Kligfeld, the senior rabbi at Temple Beth Am (TBA) in Los Angeles, cherishes the Jewish tradition, he is open to new and innovative ways for people to connect to the sacred.

Its the difference between religion being a club, or religious practice being a profound spiritual experience.

Its the difference between religion being a club, or religious practice being a profound spiritual experience, he said. Most people in the Conservative community are involved in a Jewish life because they think God is demanding them to be. If youre not involved in religious life to appease a particular God, there has to be some other profound reason for your behavior. Its there to help you develop your spirit.

Kligfeld was raised in a traditional Conservative home in Connecticut. His family was involved in the community; they went to synagogue regularly, and his mother was a volunteer with Soviet Jewry movement and resettlement efforts.

Becoming a rabbi was not something Kligfeld planned. He always enjoyed learning Jewish texts, but he decided to pursue a degree in psychology and Jewish history from Columbia College. From there, he was considering going into a pre-med program.

I spent a lot of time in college trying to convince myself to do anything but become a rabbi, he said. I figured Jewish learning couldnt be a vocation, even though it was always in my life.

Still, Kligfeld wanted to continue his Jewish learning, so he enrolled in the Jewish Theological Seminary of America and focused on Talmudic studies. And then, while he was in school, he had a change of heart.

I met rabbis in the field and tried to get a sense of what their lives were like, he said. I saw myself potentially doing that, if I could stay in long enough to be ordained. I thought I wouldnt be a pulpit rabbi, and certainly not in a big city setting. But here I am.

Kligfeld has been the rabbi at TBA, where he serves 900 families, since 2009. During his time there, he set up a prayer room and incorporated meditation and chanting into his services.

We did this to increase the chances of people not just trying to get to the last page of their prayer book, but also having a spiritual experience, he said.

The design of TBA is also intentional. The sanctuary, which was recently renovated, is round. Instead of the rabbi standing at the front of the congregation, he stands in the center. The acoustics amplify peoples voices whether theyre speaking or singing.

I think space matters, Kligfeld said. We set up the chairs in a circle so that prayers are magical. Frontal presentations of prayer leave people lacking. We designed TBA to be intimate and warm.

Kligfeld was introduced to meditation five years ago, when he traveled to the Holy Isle of Scotland for a retreat. Since then, hes gone to other international retreats to reinvigorate his soul.

I recharge my batteries and then try to deliver that to my congregants, he said.

The rabbi acknowledged that its a challenge to serve so many families and thankfully, he has a staff of rabbis and rabbinical interns to meet the needs of his community. However, especially in the wake of the pandemic, he strives to make personal connections with everyone and let them know they are seen.

My ultimate goal is to live with purpose and wonder and help others do the same, Kligfeld said. Despite all the challenges in this generation, I hope we can come together. I also want people to know that when they encounter me, I care about them.

Jewish Journal: What is your favorite Jewish food?

Adam Kligfeld: My synagogues vegetarian cholent.

JJ: How about your favorite non-Jewish food?

AK: Almost anything on the menu at Nics on Beverly. Its vegan, and Im plant-based.

JJ: What job would you be doing if you werent a rabbi?

AK: Id be a play-by-play announcer for the New York Yankees.

JJ: Whats your perfect Shabbat look like?

AK: We have a nice crowd in shul and there is lots of singing and harmony. I eat meals with my family and friends, take a long nap and have the opportunity to teach.

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America’s Karaite Court | Alex Sinclair | The Blogs – The Times of Israel

Posted: at 1:10 pm

The Judaism we practice today is rabbinic Judaism, not biblical. The daily prayers, Shabbat observance, laws of kashrut, celebrations of festivals, and the dozens of other things that make Jews Jews, are not to be found in the Bible itself (at least, not in anything like their current form), but were legislated by the rabbis of the Mishnah and Talmud in the early first millennium. Were rabbinic Jews, not biblical Jews.

Well not all of us. There still exists a tiny community of Karaite Jews in pockets of Israel (Ramla, Ashdod and Beersheba). Karaite Judaism rejects the oral law and rabbinic Judaism, focusing only on the observance of biblical laws as they appear in the Bible.

They are, if you like, constitutional originalists.

Karaite Jewish practice is fascinating. They dont light candles on Friday night that quintessentially Jewish behavior because they interpret the Biblical verse you shall not burn a fire in any of your dwellings on the day of Shabbat to mean, quite literally, that you cant have fires burning during the sabbath. Rabbinic Judaism, of course, has no problem with fires burning on Shabbat, as long as they are lit beforehand. Karaites dont wear tefillin again, a quintessential Jewish ritual object because they read the Biblical verses about binding words on your hand in their original (presumably metaphorical) meaning, without the overlay of rabbinic law that saw this text as a divine command to wear small black boxes on our arms and heads.

Of course, as a pluralist, I say live and let live, but however fascinating Karaite theology may be, its not Judaism. To be a Jew is to be a rabbinic Jew. To go back to our constitutional document the Torah and create Halachah (Jewish law) from its original text, is just about the most un-Jewish thing you can possibly do. Why? Because we get that law changes. We get that context matters. We get that what was appropriate 3,000 years ago might not be appropriate now. And so while we revere our original constitutional text, we give ourselves considerable liberty to re-interpret it for different contexts. This notion is accepted, to varying degrees, by all the movements of contemporary Judaism, from Reform to Ultra-Orthodox.

There are countless examples where this has happened in the history of Jewish law. We dont literally follow the law about an eye for an eye anymore. We interpreted out of existence the strange case of the rebellious child who must be stoned to death. Most of us understand the biblical injunctions against homosexuality as socially-constructed legal positions of ancient times and jump through halachic hoops in order to create a contemporary legal approach to the issue that fits with todays moral values. Oh, and sorry, Karaites, but we light Shabbat candles too, as it is written, um, nowhere in the Torah.

The originalist approach that now appears to be the majority position of the US Supreme Court is the American equivalent of Karaite Judaism. The Second Amendments well regulated Militia is to contemporary American life what stoning the rebellious child is to contemporary Jewish life. Sure, its written in the Constitution, and we should treat that original text with reverence, with an understanding of its historical context, and with communal rituals that keep its symbolic power alive for us (we Jews, for example, read the Torah every week throughout the year even the bits that we no longer keep). But for Gods sake, lets not confuse reverence for the original text with reliance on the original text.

Equally, the fact that the constitution says nothing about abortion (see under: Dobbs v. Jackson) or same-sex marriage (coming attractions!) should be irrelevant. The Torah says nothing about Hanukkah (because it hadnt happened yet). It says nothing about Rosh Hashanah being the Jewish New Year (because in biblical times they counted Nissan as the first month). It says nothing about saying the Hallel prayer of praise on Yom Haatzmaut (because Israel didnt exist back then and neither did Hallel). Yet all of these practices, and dozens more, are constituent parts of what it means to be a practicing Jew today. Jewish law is able to derive new practices from the original spirit of our constitutional text, even when (actually: especially when) contemporary circumstances were unimaginable in the times of that constitutional text.

Samuel Alito may be right when he argues that the original Roe decision was based on a non-contextual extrapolation of the 14th Amendment. But thats exactly the point. We Jews learned long ago to dismiss originalist law and instead develop a living, breathing, adaptive halachic Judaism, inspired by, but not tied to, our foundational constitutional text. If only the Supreme Court could do the same.

Note: this piece is intended as a critique of the originalist bent of the Supreme Court, not Karaite Judaism. I certainly do not mean to offend or insult Karaite Jews, and if I have misrepresented aspects of Karaite Judaism or used it as too loose an analogy, I apologize unreservedly. However, the core argument of my article still holds: to revere an original foundational text (Constitution/Torah) should not require us to be bound to its original historical meaning or context. In current American political discourse around abortion, gun control, and other items, that core understanding is critically important.

I am grateful to Jonathan Kessler, founder and CEO of Heart of a Nation, for his comments on an earlier draft of this piece.

Dr Alex Sinclair is a thinker, writer, practitioner, coach, and program director. He has written and spoken widely on Jewish education, Israel-Diaspora relations, and Israeli politics in both academic and popular contexts. He was a professor of education at the Jewish Theological Seminary for almost two decades, and has worked or consulted for a wide variety of other educational and communal institutions.His first book, published in 2013, was titled Loving the Real Israel: An Educational Agenda for Liberal Zionism. He lives with his wife and three children in Modi'in, Israel.

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The Three Weeks And A Message Of Peace – The Jewish Press – JewishPress.com

Posted: at 1:10 pm

We are now in the middle of the period called bein hametzarim, known more commonly as the Three Weeks. As a nation, we mourn the destruction of our two Holy Temples during this time. This loss is more poignant now with all the different hardships swirling around our people of late; the numerous people who are seriously ill and dying both in Eretz Yisrael and throughout the globe.

We must realize that we are feeling the absence of the mizbeiach, the altar, which allowed us the opportunity to atone for our sins instead of being punished for them. The disturbing inflation, the collapse of many previously successful businesses due to the unprecedented COVID restrictions, coupled with the normal hardships experienced by the middle class in paying tuition and health care, are all reminders that we are missing the Shulchan from the Holy Temple, which helped the fiscal solvency of our people.

But the Three Weeks is not simply a time to ponder our loss. The Yerushalmi Tractate Peah (chapter 1) teaches us, Kol dor shelo nivneh Beis HaMikdash byamav, kilu charav byamav Any generation in which the Temple was not rebuilt in its day, it is considered as if it were destroyed again in that era. Thus, the Three Weeks is also a time to focus on why the Temple was destroyed and what specific sins are still lingering among us, such that their malignancy is blocking the restoration of the House of Hashem.

Here, thankfully, we step outside the realm of guesswork or suggestion. The Talmud clearly delineates why the Temples were destroyed. In Tractate Yoma (9b) the Gemara teaches us that the first Temple was destroyed because of the sins of idolatry, immorality and bloodshed. Then the Gemara poses the question, Mikdash sheini, shhayu oskin bTorah uvimitzvos uvgemilus chasadim. Mipnei mah charav The Second Temple, where the masses studied Torah, followed the laws and embraced acts of loving-kindness. Why did they lose the Temple? And the Gemara responds succinctly, Mipnei shhaysa bo sinas chinam Because they were guilty of senseless and meaningless hate.

The Gemara then adds the powerful message that this teaches us that the sin of such hatred is equivalent in severity to the sins of immorality, idolatry and bloodshed. We should also reflect upon the profound novelty that it is possible for a people to be involved in Torah and even do acts of kindness and yet be so riddled with the crimes of feuding with and hating their fellow man.

The Gemara then continues that both Reb Yochanan and Reb Eliezer observed, Rishonim, shnisgalu avonam, nisgalu kitzam. Achronim, shlo nisgalu avonam, lo nisgalu kitzam. Rashi explains this to mean that, since the sinners of the First Temple era didnt bother to sin in secret, the limit of the first diaspora was not kept in secret but rather was revealed to be a duration of seventy years. However, the sinners of the Second Temple, who camouflaged their sins, were not told when the long diaspora would end.

Rav Michel Birnbaum, in his wonderful sefer Sichos Mussar (volume two), offers another explanation of this Talmudic dictum. He explains that the generation of the First Temple was punished only for a short duration since it realized its sins. However, the generation of the Second Temple and the ensuing generations thereafter have not fully realized their crimes. Therefore, it was not revealed to them when the Temple would be restored.

This is a very important point. Many people fool themselves into thinking that they are not guilty of the crime of sinas chinam. A very important step for us to take during the Three Weeks is to pull out our little black book and look over those people who we are not talking to, those people we used to be friends with, and see how we can repair these relationships.

The Orchos Tzadikim (chapter 6) gives some reasons why people might hate one another. Sometimes, he says, sinah is generated by jealousy, whether of the other persons wealth, wisdom, prestige, spouse, or children. He counsels us that we need to combat these feelings by realizing that Hashem gives us what is best for us. Other times, he suggests, we might dislike someone because they abstain from doing us favors. The Orchos Tzadikim suggests that we should sidestep this by looking for favors from Hashem instead.

We need to remember the rule taught to us by Rav Chanina ben Dosa in Pirkei Avos (3:13). Vchol shein ruach habriyos nocha heimenu, ein ruach haMakom nocha heimenu Whomever people are not pleased with, you can be sure that Hashem is not pleased with him either. Thus, it is imperative for us to brush up on our skills of peacemaking and tolerance, so that we should be assured of finding favor in the Almightys eyes.

This is a subject matter we need to discuss with our children at this critical time of the year. Say to them, If you would like to work toward the rebuilding of the Beis HaMikdash and the coming of Moshiach, you need to learn how to get along with all kinds of people, even those who are surly and sour, even those who are stubborn and rigid, and even those who are opinionated and self-righteous.

In this merit, may we indeed be zoche to the coming of Moshiach, speedily in our time.

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The Cancel Culture (Three Weeks) – aish.com The Color of Heaven – Aish.com

Posted: at 1:10 pm

In 1972, Rabbi Yaakov Asher Sinclair opened SARM Studios the first 24-track recording studio in Europe where Queen mixed Bohemian Rhapsody. His music publishing company, Druidcrest Music published the music for The Rocky Horror Picture Show (1973) and as a record producer, he co-produced the quadruple-platinum debut album by American band Foreigner (1976). American Top ten singles from this album included, Feels Like The First Time, Cold as Ice and Long, Long Way from Home. Other production work included The Enid In the Region of the Summer Stars, The Curves, and Nutz as well as singles based on The Hitchhikers Guide To The Galaxy with Douglas Adams and Richard OBrien. Other artists who used SARM included: ABC, Alison Moyet, Art of Noise, Brian May, The Buggles, The Clash, Dina Carroll, Dollar, Flintlock, Frankie Goes To Hollywood, Grace Jones, It Bites, Malcolm McLaren, Nik Kershaw, Propaganda, Rush, Rik Mayall, Stephen Duffy, and Yes.In 1987, he settled in Jerusalem to immerse himself in the study of Torah. His two Torah books The Color of Heaven, on the weekly Torah portion, and Seasons of the Moon met with great critical acclaim. Seasons of the Moon, a unique fine-art black-and-white photography book combining poetry and Torah essays, has now sold out and is much sought as a collectors item fetching up to $250 for a mint copy.He is much in demand as an inspirational speaker both in Israel, Great Britain and the United States. He was Plenary Keynote Speaker at the Agudas Yisrael Convention, and Keynote Speaker at Project Inspire in 2018. Rabbi Sinclair lectures in Talmud and Jewish Philosophy at Ohr Somayach/Tannenbaum College of Judaic studies in Jerusalem and is a senior staff writer of the Torah internet publications Ohrnet and Torah Weekly. His articles have been published in The Jewish Observer, American Jewish Spirit, AJOP Newsletter, Zurichs Die Jdische Zeitung, South African Jewish Report and many others.Rabbi Sinclair was born in London, and lives with his family in Jerusalem.He was educated at St. Anthonys Preparatory School in Hampstead, Clifton College, and Bristol University.

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The Cancel Culture (Three Weeks) - aish.com The Color of Heaven - Aish.com

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Praying for your team to win? The problem isn’t the Supreme Court – The Times of Israel

Posted: at 1:10 pm

Never mind the Supreme Court ruling that Coach Joseph A. Kennedy from Bremerton, Washington is now permitted to pray after his high school football games, I ask: Should we be praying before or after or about sports at all?

When I first became head of a Jewish day school that offered competitive athletics, I was a reluctant fan. Yes, I wanted to be present in all aspects of school. Yet, I prided myself on rarely if ever attending my own childrens sports events. I was that mother who refused to carpool to ball games. Do something academic, I will be there to cheer you on!

However, I soon caught on that these games offered students wonderful opportunities for leadership, discipline, and a place for working hard on honing skills. It was exhilarating to see a student who might stumble while answering a question in class dominate the court, and show tremendous confidence while doing so.

Then it reached my ears that a coach was reciting prayers with the students before the games as part of their revving up ritual before game time. Not just any prayer but one of our holiest of prayers, The Shema Hear O Israel. For me, the disequilibrium was not a church-state separation issue; we are a religious school. And I am all for meaningful prayer experiences for our students. Yet I felt grave discomfort.

I wondered about the appropriateness of teaching students to turn to the Almighty for help with something as trivial as winning a game. Though the outcomes of these games absolutely mattered considerably to our students, I was not sure that victory on the court was prayer-worthy. On one hand, God is the address for all our concerns, both major and minor. And I must be truthful: on more than one occasion in weak moments of desperation I too have elicited the Almightys assistance in an unguarded desperate plea for help facing an everyday petty discomfort in-the-moment parking spot crises, for example.

This planned, coordinated, scheduled student pre-game prayer feels entirely different to me.

Yet, who am I to triage Gods prayer queue? Prayer is complicated. An All-knowing God can discern the secrets of our hearts better than we. Thus, the articulation of prayer in the form of liturgy is to be understood more as an exercise in remindingourselvesof what is prayer-worthy.

Rabbi Joseph B. Soloveitchik teaches this idea, quoted by Dr. David Schatz, in his article, Redemption, Prayer, and Talmud Torah: Man is surely aware of many needs, but the needs he is aware of are not always his own. Quite often man loses himself by identifying himself with the wrong image. Because of this misidentification, man adopts the wrong table of needs which he feels he must gratify. Prayer tells the individual, as well as the community, what his, or its, genuine needs are, what he should or should not petition God about. In a word, man finds his need-awareness, himself, in prayer becomes a redeemed being (in Tradition, 1978, 62).

Our prayers should be weighty, yet relatable. A perusal of the traditional Jewish morning service reveals blessings expressing gratitude for day-to-day mundane humane needs: eyesight, hearing, shoes, clothing, and even successful elimination. So why does the thought of praying with students before or after a ball game irk me to such a strong degree?

Pre-game or post-game prayer sends the wrong message to our students. Games should not be the stuff of the Divine. We are what we pray, what we long for, what we aspire to, our most noble desires held dear. I wish for our prayers that they be the stuff of peace, of ending pain and an expression of a passion for a good life for all humanity not for a mere victory on the playing field.

I take students lives seriously, their hopes, their dreams, their struggles their pains, their losses. If we encourage them to recite our holiest prayer Hear O Israel the Lord Your God the Lord is One before a basketball game, what are we teaching them?

Rivy Poupko Kletenik, a 2002 Exceptional Jewish Educator Covenant Award Winner, just completed sixteen years as Head of School at the Seattle Hebrew Academy. Rivy is an enthusiastic writer and devotee of poetry and literature. Her column Whats Your JQ appeared for years in the JT News and then Jewish in Seattle Magazine and she is thrilled and proud to be awarded the Simon Rockower American Jewish Press Association Excellence in Commentary.

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Letter to the editor: Anti-abortion stance goes against secular republic – Huntington Herald Dispatch

Posted: at 1:10 pm

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IrelandUruguay, Eastern Republic ofUzbekistanVanuatuVenezuela, Bolivarian Republic ofViet Nam, Socialist Republic ofWallis and Futuna IslandsWestern SaharaYemenZambia, Republic ofZimbabwe

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Trapped in Translation – Tablet Magazine

Posted: at 1:10 pm

We cant translate everything. At least not precisely. Concepts exist in certain cultures that are absent, or markedly different, in others. We all know the adage that Eskimos have 47 different words for snow. Whether or not thats true, it is clear that Inuit and Yupik cultures have a closer connection to snow than do the residents of Tahiti. It makes sense that these cultures would differentiate the many kinds of snowfall according to the many ways that those distinctions affect their daily lives. We even might be able to translate some of these snow words into English: Aqilokoq is softly falling snow, piegnartoq is snow thats perfect for sled-driving. We can know what these snow words mean. But unless and until we understand the Eskimo mindset, we cannot truly glean what they signify.

English has words deemed essential for religion: faith, liturgy, Bible, even religion itself. None of these words really exist in Hebrew. Certainly, not a single one of these Christian concepts correlates directly to anything that can be considered Jewish. Of course, Modern Hebrew has the vocabulary to translate these English phrases. And, obviously, Judaism does possess ideas and structures that share a similarity with Christian concepts like worship and Scripture. But that similarity all too often masks a vast difference. That difference prevents us from understanding what Judaism is at its essence. But before we examine those differences, lets go back and examine the origins of the English language.

The furthest back we can trace a distinct English language is to the sixth century, the earliest date for the emergence of Old English. Now, Old English has far more in common with German than any English we know today; most scholars believe it is an utterly distinct language from Modern English. Its only in the ninth century that Middle English emerges. Coming into its heyday after the Norman conquest of 1066, Middle English, as anyone whos every struggled to read Chaucer knows, resembles our English, but is still a ways away. Most people have never heard of the Great Vowel Shift that marked the transition to Modern English, but with the arrival of Shakespeares works and the King James Bible, the language we know today was coming into its own.

Because of the time it took for English to evolve into anything we recognize today, the tongue that shapes most American Jews thinking is at most 1,000 years old. Jewish traditions, in even the most cautious of counting, extend back 3,000 years. Until the Greco-Roman period, Jewish thought was expressed in Hebrew; then, Aramaic, a sister language to Hebrew that was the international parlance of its day, became a secondary vessel for transmitting Jewish tradition. By the time Old English emerged around 550 CE, the Torah and the Talmud, the two core texts of Jewish thought and practice, were effectively complete. The great frames and structures of Judaism existed before any Jew ever spoke English.

English, in contrast, was brought into existence, effectively and exclusively, by Christians. With rare exception or incursion, the island of Britain was Christian before and since the emergence of English. As polyglot language, English has its roots in many places. In terms of religious phrases, Greek and Latin, and therefore, Christian, etymologies dominate. Faith is derived from fidere, for trust, religion from religio, for cult, or mode of worship.Bible is from the Greek, ta Biblia: the Book. Leitourgia, etymon of liturgy, is likewise Attic Greek for public performance. Each of these words, and every English word connected to religion, is born of and steeped in Christian thought.

Judaism is a square peg that refuses to fit in the proverbial round hole of Christianity. Hebrew not only precedes both Christianity and English, but it is markedly different in its vocabulary and concepts. As English evolved, it of necessity coined terms to describe Christian phenomenon. Hebrew, the foundational language of Judaism, had no such need. Students of religion, a discipline that seeks to find parallels in order to appreciate distinctions, might be horrified to find that there is no Jewish word for liturgy, that there is no Jewish word for faith, that there is no Jewish word for Bible, let alone one that can barely be made to fit Scripture. There is even no real Jewish word for religion.

Even the most honest attempts to understand Judaism authentically are unconsciously undermined simply because these attempts are in English, are limited by English.

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In a moment, we will explore each of these important distinctions. But first, we should pause and reflect on the significance of this unfathomable gap between Jewish vocabulary and Christian concepts. Most modern Jews outside Israel (and certainly the audience of this work) are native English speakers. Their worldviews and expectations are formed by the contours of the English language. Sunday morning cartoons depict Bible stories, not Torah tales. Our conversations are filled with faith: Keep the faith, act in good faith, have faith in yourself. Intermediate schools teach comparative religion, subsuming Judaism into a category it doesnt neatly fit. So when most modern Jews approach Judaism, they come with questions and preconceptions that are Christian. They believe Judaism is a religion; they imagine faith in God is a prerequisite. They want to know about liturgy and worship, and learn all about the Bible (which, in the most obvious acquiescence to Christian English, they usually call the Old Testament). Even the most honest attempts to understand Judaism authentically are unconsciously undermined simply because these attempts are in English, are limited by English.

Most English speakers operate under the false linguistic assumption that Judaism and Christianity run on the same operating system. Nothing could be further from the case. Anyone who remembers back to the days of floppy discs recalls that what worked on a Mac would need to be entirely reformatted for a PC. The analogy holds here: Judaism just has a different source code from Christianity. Its program language is Am and Avodah, Torah and Talmud. And it hardly suffices to translate these terms as people, worship, Bible, and (fascinatingly) Talmud. Thats not really what these essential Jewish concepts are about. To delimit these millennia-old, remarkably robust ideas with one-word terms born of alien Christianity is simply unfair. To truly appreciate Judaism, its core concepts need to be liberated from their simplistic English definitions. Judaisms concepts, and Judaism itself, need to be appreciated for what they are, andespecially for English speakersneed to be distinguished from common Christian concepts.

Lets start with religion. It is only the fifth definition of the phrase in the Oxford English Dictionary that doesnt use the word religion as part of the definition:

Now, some might say this definition of religion describes Judaism perfectly: There is a belief, or at least covenant with, Yahweh, which is manifest in a series of commandments that both define a code of life and set a prescribed course for worship. Even though I will argue later that little of that is true, this OED understanding of religion fails to capture an essential element of Judaism: the self-conception as an Am, a people. From Torahs time through our own, there are plenty of individuals who are born Jewish yet neither believe in nor acknowledge any sort of superhuman power who defines their code of living. Regardless, many of these individuals fully consider themselves Jewish. Judaism might overlap with certain aspects of religion, but it far exceeds the boundaries of such a limiting term.

Proof positive of the failure of religion to define Judaism is a phrase I have heard countless times in my career: Im Jewish, but not religious. Early in my rabbinate, I took this assertion as a challenge. I would ask people what they found meaningful about their Jewish life, and answers would include everything from cooking for holidays to doing the work of social justice all the way throughshockinglycoming to Shabbat services. I sometimes sensed that what people meant when they said, Im Jewish, but not religious, was that they loved Judaismthey were willingly engaging with a rabbi, after allbut that they didnt believe in God. Sometimes, I even tried to convince people that they were fully Jewish, and shouldnt let anything stand in the way of their own self-perception. Over time, however, I realized that these people didnt have a problem. The problem was the word religion itself. Its a Christian concept that simply doesnt fit Judaism.

Opening any Hebrew-English dictionary will tell you that the Hebrew word for religion is dat. In this, there is a double irony. First of all, dat is a hardly Hebrew; its an Old Iranian loan-word that first appears in the biblical book of Esther, one of the later entrants in the Jewish canon. Secondly, dat means law, edict, or practice. In the book of Esther, dat indicates in one instance the edict of the king, and in another the custom of drinking to excess. By the time of the Talmud, dat maintained this same semantic range from custom through law. It wasnt until the revival of Modern Hebrew started by Eliezer Ben-Yehuda in the 19th century that dat came to mean religion. And why did this happen? Modern Hebrew needed to compete in the international marketplace of ideas: Modern Hebrew required its own words for phrases that were widespread in other languages, most prominent among which was English. And so this loan-word of antiquity was equated with religion, translated as such in a dictionary. Hebrew needed a place holder, and dat seemed to fit the bill. But dat doesnt fit the definition of religion in any meaningful way. Hebrew really has no concept of religion whatsoever.

The chasm between English and Hebrew is equally deep when it comes to the Bible. For Christians, the Bible has always been a written document. Theres a reason its called ta Biblia: the book. By the time Christianity arrived on the scene, there were already texts of what they call the Old Testament. The Christian movement was propelled forward by the written word: Gospels authored by individuals sharing the stories of Jesus, and Epistlesliterally lettersearly authorities supposedly scripted and sent to Galicia, Thessalonia, Rome, and more. Christianity began with the written word as it foundation. The first chapter of the first Gospel cites the text of the Jewish prophet Isaiah; the last of the Gospels opens with the line, In the beginning was the word. From the beginning, Christianity had a book, the book, ta Biblia: the Bible.

Judaism has no Bibleat least not in the Christian sense of the word. The earliest name for a collection of Jewish traditions and teachings that come down to us is Torah. Over the millennia, Torah has become a most elastic word, meaning either something very specific or something incredibly broad. For our purposes here, Torah simply means teaching. This is why Torah can be something as narrow as a set of regulations regarding lepers, can indicate a five-volume literary collection falsely attributed to Moses, and also is able to signify the remarkably broad category of all legitimate Jewish learning. Torah is teaching. In the time that the collection we call Torah was created, the primary vehicle for this teaching was oral transmission. Yes, the words capturing these teachings were collected and put to parchment. But that inscription and collection happened long after the tales and laws were common cultural currency. To the Jewish mind, it matters not that these matters are written. What is important is that the words of Torah are taught, transmitted, from one generation to the next.

Religion. Bible. Scripture. Worship. The phrases fit Judaism like a hand-me-down outfit from a sibling whos a different size.

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The same is true of Scripture. Obviously, Judaism has (at least one) sacred text. The Tanakh, a term often translated as Hebrew for Bible, is in fact an acronym of three collections: Torah (here, specifically the five books of Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers, and Deuteronomy), Neviim/Prophets (histories from their time and reports of their words), and Ketuvim/Writings (perhaps the worlds most perfectly named miscellany of texts). Tanakh as a term originated during the time of the Rabbis whose argument and reasoning are captured in the Talmud. Even though Tanakh was coined by the Rabbis, they hardly used it as the word for what we today might call the Hebrew Bible. Instead, they employed an entirely different word: Mikra. Mikra means that which is proclaimed, or read out loud. Even though, by the Rabbinic Period, Judaisms earliest sacred text were written down, what was important to that Jewish community wasnt the fact of their inscription, but the importance of their being pronounced aloud. The Rabbis made mainstream the practice of ensuring that Jewish teaching (Torah) was publicly proclaimed (Mikra) three times every week. Was this Torah written in a scroll? Were the collections of Tanakh bound in a book? Definitely, and probably. But the existence of Torah in written form was not the important issue; that it was a book or a scroll was of secondary importance (if any at all). Mikra mattered to the Jews of antiquity because it was read aloud, performed publicly. Tanakh might look like a book, and be roughly parallel to what Christians call the Bible, but in essence an orally proclaimed Mikra is something far different from a book.

Scripture and Bible belong to the Christian realm of religion. They do not nest neatly into the Jewish worldview imagined in Hebrew. And neither does worship, one of the great expectations of religion, fit snugly within Jewish thought. Worship of the Christian God is quite distinct from the Jewish conception of Divine Service. Worship originates from the idea of attributing esteem, which we see through the usage of worshipful as honorable. From its early English usage, this honor was quickly connected to divinity: As a verb, worship became expressing reverence for God. Most contemporary English speakers roughly equate worship with praise: We see evangelicals engaging in Praise the Lord! sessions, or see Protestant prayer services replete with hymns honoring Gods good works. Now, as those Protestant hymnals robustly attestwith their ample implementation of HalleluyahHebrew does have words for both praise and worship. Halleluyah means praise God: hallelu is the Hebrew vocative, let us pray, and Yah is a short form of Gods proper name. Likewise, as many who attend Jewish services know, worship has its rough parallel in Hebrew. Toward the end of daily services, we read the prayer Aleinu lshabeach, it is upon us to attest to the goodness, of God. Prayer and worship do exist in Hebrew.

However, neither prayer nor worship are essential Jewish categories. The worship of Aleinu lshabeach is liturgical language reserved for certain small segments of the service. And while scores of Halleluyah-shouting poems of praise were created by Psalmists, and notwithstanding some of the Psalms placement in standard Jewish prayer books, these paeans are not the standard of what many call Jewish worship. The Jewish act of regular engagement with our duty to the Divine has a proper Hebrew name: Avodah. Hebrew for service, even servitude, Avodah was the descriptor of Jewish obligations during the time when the temple stood and such service was effectuated through sacrifices on the altar. As Judaism shifted from its cultic center in Jerusalem to a way of life played out in synagogues strewn across the world, Avodah remained the word for ones service, ones regular obligations to God. The proper name of our prayerbook is Seder Avodat Israel, the Order of the Service of Israel. The thrice-daily series of readings contained in these liturgies are the service Jews are meant to perform for God on a most regular basis.

Service to God is what worship is in Judaism. Our service to God is rooted in our Exodus experience: We were slaves (avadim) to Pharaoh, and were redeemed, or restored to God, that we might be servants (avadim) of the Divine. Jewish worship is one of our forms of servitude to the Divine. And while this service certainly contains some praise and some worship, its fundamental building block is entirely other: Most of our sacred service is composed of rabbinic blessings or scriptural citations. Worship and praise are about expressing honor to God; that is part, but hardly all of what passes for worship in Jewish setting. Study, history, and theology are much more a part of a Jewish service than are praise and worship.

Religion. Bible. Scripture. Worship. The phrases fit Judaism like a hand-me-down outfit from a sibling whos a different size. I could go on at greater length, explaining how faith isnt a Jewish concept, how charity didnt exist in Judaism until we encountered Christians, and howdespite what many of us were taught at templeangels are a huge part of Hebrew heritage. Actually, this last example is the perfect summary of contemporary Jewish existence. Christian culture (and the English language that expresses it) has some powerful portrayals of angels: Archangel Rafael comes to heal, cute little cherubs surround Jesus in Heaven, and fallen angel Satan is evil incarnate. Now, even though Torah and Talmud are filled with angels, melachim, or divine messengers in Hebrew, our angels infrequently function in such fashions. Furthermore, while angelology is central to Christianity, it lives on the fringe and mystical territories of Jewish life. Rather than labor at length to explain these vast differences between what we take angels to indicate in English and what melachim means in Hebrew, generations of Jewish teachersdespite knowing betterhave thrown their hands in the air and simply said, Judaism doesnt believe in angels. It is sometimes easier for English-speaking Jews to deny the truths of our tradition than to bother with the limits of translation.

This is the trap of translation: Jews tend to deny essential, or important, aspects of who we really are because of the difficulty of expressing ourselves within and against Christian language. It can be exhausting to be an English-speaking Jew. This hardly means Jewish life can only honestly be lived in Hebrew. A vibrant Jewish life is entirely possible in English, even only in English. But, in order to create such a life of meaning, we must be honest about where Judaism fits in English, and where it doesnt. Even in English, we must explain and understand crucial differences between linguistic expectations regarding what are called religions, but which we Jews understand as traditions that encompass particular practices, hierarchies of value, understandings of the Divine, folkways and foodstuffs, and, of course, our own language. It will only be when we remove ourselves from this trap of translation that we will be free to understand, to live, and to grow Jewish life in our modern world.

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The Living Kiddush Hashem – The Jewish Press – JewishPress.com

Posted: at 1:10 pm

Pinchas turned back My wrath from upon Bnei Yisrael (Bamidbar 25:11)

The Kli Yakar observes that this is a tribute to Pinchass mesiras nefesh (self-sacrifice) for the honor of Hashem.

Dovid HaMelech writes (Tehillim 44:23), Because for Your sake we are killed all the time we are considered as sheep for slaughter.

The connotation is that there is an even more praiseworthy means of sanctifying the Name of Hashem, other than being killed for that ideal. The Machatzis HaShekel in elaborating on one of the Rosh Hashana prayers established by the Men of the Great Assembly (Anshei Knesses HaGedolah) notes that we invoke the merit of Avraham Avinus willingness to sacrifice Yitzchak in order to fulfill the will of Hashem, yet our Sages tell us that Yitzchak cautioned his father to make sure that he bound him tightly so that he could not unintentionally move and invalidate the sacrifice. Wouldnt Yitzchaks consent even readiness to be the sacrifice be even more commendable?

As we know, the Akeidah, which was the tenth in a series of tests from Hashem, was the most difficult one for Avraham Avinu. Although he had already willingly allowed himself to be cast into the fiery furnace of Nimrod, and had it not been for the great mercy of Hashem, Avraham would have been consumed by fire, the Akeidah was even more challenging. The Nezer HaKodesh explains that the pain of being burned is short-lived, existing only until the soul departs the body, but sacrificing his dearly beloved son would bring about a pain that lasted a lifetime. Thus, Yitzchaks merit as the sacrifice itself is less worthy than Avrahams merit, for his pain would be very transitory, unlike the suffering of Avraham.

When Pinchas zealously acted to protected the Name of Hashem, it was actually a challenging time and it was untenable to do so in the face of the depravity, immorality, heresy, and sinfulness that was so prevalent then.

That is the essence of Dovid HaMelechs message. Because for Your sake we are killed all the time the Name of Hashem is indeed sanctified when one is moser nefesh and gives up his life for the honor of Hashem. But it is a momentary act, says the Admur of Vien. There is mesiras nefesh for the honor of Hashem that is continual, transpiring throughout the day, as we destroy the Evil Inclination and defy his machinations. When we gather in the batei medrash to daven and study Torah, and we perform acts of chesed to exalt the Name of Hashem, then we are considered as sheep for slaughter. We are righteous and praiseworthy like those who actually gave up their lives al kiddush Hashem sanctifying the Name of Hashem.

The Ari HaKadosh writes that before a person begins his prayers, he should accept upon himself the mitzvah of loving his fellow man, because in that way he includes himself with all of Klal Yisrael who withstand the daily spiritual challenges and are moser nefesh for the honor of Hashem. In that merit his prayers will be answered.

The Torah tells us (Devarim 13:4), for Hashem, your G-d, is testing you to know whether you love Hashem with all your heart and with all your soul. Our Sages tell us that a person is challenged with nisyonos in order to illuminate the true significance of life. Ones understanding of his existence when his life is routine and unremarkable does not compare to the revelation that is manifest under extraordinary circumstances. When the individual faces nisyonos during his lifetime, he is granted the opportunity to perceive the relevance of the nisyonos and to grasp the true meaning of life.

R Shalom Sharabis Test

R Shalom Sharabi was born in the city of Sharab, Yemen. His father, R Yitzchak, passed away when R Shalom was still a young boy, leaving behind a wife and family. As the oldest child, R Shalom became the provider for the family and, like his father, he traveled from city to city selling assorted merchandise. On the road, R Shalom was totally oblivious to the elements be it rain, snow, cold or heat as he was preoccupied with this learning, reviewing the pages of the Talmud from memory. His mother was deeply pained that R Shalom, who showed great promise in his Torah studies, had been forced to abandon his yeshiva learning in order to support the family. She would pray every day for his well being, fervently importuning Hashem that her son should be able to stop working and resume his studies.

As he crisscrossed the country, journeying through cities and towns, R Shalom one day passed a magnificent palace occupied by one of the Yemenite royal families. As he walked by, a voice called out to him, Jew, stay where you are. As he looked about to see who was calling, a maid appeared and informed him that the lady of the house wanted to buy some of his items.

As R Shalom followed the maid up a long staircase, he began to feel distinctly uncomfortable. He could sense the powers of impurity enveloping his being, and he shuddered at the thoughts of an impending threat that awaited him. When the woman opened the door, it was evident that her intentions were less than honorable and would sabotage the heart of his Yiddishkeit.

R Shalom did not want to remain one more moment in this situation, and was prepared to be moser nefesh at all costs. He ran to the window, which was three stories above the ground, ready to jump. He recited the Vidui and then vowed that if he would be saved he would immediately leave Yemen and travel to Eretz Yisroel.

When R Shalom jumped he was prepared for the worst, but miraculously he landed in a soft pasture and sustained no injuries. Having withstood the difficult test, R Shalom Sharabi proceeded to fulfill his vow. He made his way to Eretz Yisrael, where he became renowned at the Yeshivas HaMekubalim in Bais Keil as he ascended the rungs of spirituality.

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David Halivni’s Great Light | David Novak – First Things

Posted: July 9, 2022 at 8:11 am

Any Jew who survived the Holocaust is a brand plucked from the fire (Zechariah 3:2). That is especially true of any European Jew, and even more so of any European Jew who survived the worst of the Holocaust: Auschwitz and then the Death March to Mauthausen in 1945. One such survivor was a sixteen-year-old youth named David Weiss from Sighet, Romania. Some of his fellow townspeople might have anticipated that this boy prodigy might become the world-renowned Jewish scholar that he did become. But in 1944 (the year he was brought to Auschwitz), they could not be sure that he would live at all, let alone live and remain even more devoted to the Torah and its attendant Jewish tradition than he had been in childhood. But he not only survivedhe prevailed. He became the great light of many lives.

He arrived in America in 1947 as a refugee and eventually found his way to the Jewish Theological Seminary in New York. Immediately upon receiving his second rabbinical ordination and his doctorate, he joined the Talmud faculty there. He eventually hebraized his surname Weiss to Halivni (both meaning white), though he retained Weiss as his middle name. After leaving the seminary in the 1980s due to its serious departure from normative Jewish tradition (Halakhah), he held a chair especially established for him at Columbia University. He also founded the Union for Traditional Judaism, and became the dean of its rabbinical school, the Institute of Traditional Judaism. Upon his retirement from Columbia, he emigrated to Israel, where many came to consult him and benefit from his profound wisdom and empathy. On June 29, he died in Jerusalem at age 94..

Two points stand out in his remarkable life and career. In his scholarly career, Professor Halivni revolutionized the study of the Talmud by uncovering its complicated editing, whereby original sources were reworked, sometimes radically, by later, anonymous editors. More and more students of the Talmud (and they are legion) have adopted and employed his method in their study of this often difficult, even enigmatic, text. Indeed, a Jesuit friend of mine once called the Talmud the most layered text he had ever studied.

In his life, though, Rabbi Halivni was much more than an extraordinary academic. As an instructor of the Torah, and personally committed to its teaching, he showed that not only did his body survive the Holocaust, his soul survived it, too. Indeed, he more than survivedhe flourished. His light ignited many other souls as well. His faith, to be sure, was complex and sometimes involved intense struggle. Of course, there is plenty of precedent for this in Jewish tradition (a l Genesis 32:28, Israel means one who struggles with God). Rabbi Halivni was constantly troubled by why God hadnt rescued so many Jews (including his entire family) during the Holocaust. Nevertheless, he was always convinced that his survival in particular was for the sake of the Torah. His raison dtre was always to plumb the depths of Gods Torah and share his insights with his fellow Jewsand with interested gentiles as well. He did all this with exceptional grace and warmth.

I treasure every one of my many encounters with this great man over the more than sixty years that I knew him. During this period of mourning, I am trying very hard to recall as many of them as possible. His mark on my life and work is indelible. And My servant David is a prince in their midst (Ezekiel 34:24). Who David Weiss Halivni was for us in this world, we hope he will also be for us in the world-yet-to-come. For now, we have to be somehow content with only the memory of him.

David Novakholds the J. Richard and Dorothy Shiff Chair of Jewish Studies at the University of Toronto.

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Politics and the Parah Adumah – Jewish Journal

Posted: at 8:11 am

The Midrash states that the commandment of Parah Adumah is the ultimate religious mystery, and its reasons are unknowable. The commandment outlines a purification ritual for those who come in contact with a dead body. A red heifer, or Parah Adumah, is sacrificed on the Mount of Olives, and then burnt on a pyre. The ashes are mixed with water and sprinkled on those who were impure.

The Parah Adumah ritual is confusing for several reasons. It is a sacrifice that is performed outside of the Temple, something that elsewhere the Torah explicitly forbids. And while the ashes of the Parah Adumah purify those who were impure, paradoxically, those who handle the ashes are themselves rendered impure. The Midrash says that even the wisest of all men, King Solomon, said about this commandment, I thought I was wise enough, yet it was distant from my understanding. Even Solomon couldnt comprehend the purpose of the Parah Adumah. The term used by the Talmud for commandments without any reasons, a chok, is taken directly from our Torah reading.

Whether or not the commandments have reasons has been debated by Jewish thinkers for over 2,000 years. Christine Hayes, in her book Whats Divine About Divine Law, explains that these debates arose when Jews first confronted Hellenistic culture. In the Greek world, the idea of natural law, a universal, rational understanding of what is right and what is wrong, was accepted; what would be considered divine morality could be understood by ones intellect. This perspective challenged Jews to think about how to understand the Torah, most of whose commandments were offered as divine fiats without any stated reasons. Some, like Philo, sought to integrate the Greek understanding of divine law into the Torah, and find logical reasons for all the commandments; this project of searching for taamei hamitzvot, the reasons for the commandments, has continued to this day. The rabbis of the Talmud and Midrash held multiple points of view on this question. Some rabbis take the same approach as Philo, but many passages in Talmud and Midrash reject the idea that commandments have reasons. Even ostensibly ethical commandments are seen as purely a reflection of Gods will; one passage in the Talmud says it is improper to consider the commandment to send the mother bird away before taking her eggs, as a reflection of divine mercy, because all of Gods commandments are exclusively divine decrees. Another passage in the Talmud that was particularly influential in medieval philosophy creates a division between two types of commandments: There are mishpatim, ethical laws that one would arrive at rationally on ones own, much like natural law. And there are chukim, divine decrees without any explanation; the Talmud says that regarding chukim, God declares, I decreed these statutes, and you have no right to question them.

In medieval philosophy, Saadia Gaon accepts this distinction between chukim and mishpatim, which he calls revealed and rational laws. The Rambam strongly disagrees and insists that every commandment is rational. God would only act in accordance with wisdom; he explains that our Sages generally do not think that such precepts have no cause whatever and serve no purpose, for this would lead us to assume that Gods actions are purposeless. The Rambam devotes nearly a quarter of his Guide for the Perplexed to taamei hamitzvot, and he enumerates reasons for every commandment, even ones that seem strange and obscure.

But in the modern era, the Rambams understanding of taamei hamitzvot was rejected by many Jewish thinkers. By offering philosophical, historical, and even medical reasons for the commandments, the Rambam opened a religious Pandoras box: If the reason was no longer relevant, perhaps the commandment could be ignored? For this reason, Rabbi Samson Raphael Hirsch harshly criticizes the Rambams taamei hamitzvot, because they paved the way for the Reform movement. He writes:

If, for instance, the sole purpose of the prohibition of labor on the Sabbath was to enable men to rest and recover from the toils of the week, if the Sabbath means only the cessation of corporeal activity in order that the mind may be active; and who could doubt it, since both Moses (i.e, Moses Maimonides and Moses Mendelssohn) interpret it thus, and the Christian Sunday agrees with their conception, who must not consider it mere pettiness and pedantic absurdity to fill an entire folio with the investigation of the question, what particular actions are forbidden, and what permitted on the Sabbath day? How singular, to declare the writing of two letters, perhaps an intellectual occupation, a deadly sin, while judging leniently many acts involving great physical exertion, and freeing from penalty all purposeless destruction!

Hirsch bemoans the fact that the Rambams philosophical interpretations of the mitzvot undermine the practice of halakhah; in actuality, the Shabbat is much more than a mere day of rest. By explaining the commandments, the Rambam ended up undermining them.

Rabbi Joseph B. Soloveitchik takes this critique a step further. He too uses the Rambams reason for Shabbat as an example. He writes that if the purpose of Shabbat is merely hedonic, to rest, then the Sabbath idea is dispossessed of its breadth and warmth. And if the Sabbath is to be seen only against the background of mundane social justice and similar ideals, the intrinsic quality of the Sabbath is transformed into something alien. It serves merely as a means to the realization of a higher end. Soloveitchik explains that reasons for the commandments offered by the Rambam often explain a religious norm by an ethical precept, turning religion into the maidservant of ethics. Rabbi Soloveitchiks fundamental criticism is that the Rambams taamei hamitzvot subordinate the Torah to other disciplines, putting Torah second.

Both Rabbis Hirsch and Soloveitchik emphasize the need for the Torah to be treated as an independent, transcendent discipline. This call is particularly significant, considering that it comes from two thinkers who were associated with movements of Torah Umadda and Torah im Derech Eretz, who saw engagement with general knowledge as a religious obligation; yet they remain steadfast in refusing to reduce Torah to a vehicle for external disciplines.

And this is precisely the importance of chok: to remind us not to use divine revelation in the service of other ends. We must approach the commandments with humility, and not assume they are there to serve our own personal needs.

We must approach the commandments with humility, and not assume they are there to serve our own personal needs.

Sadly, in contemporary times, many treat the Torah as a textbook of non-Torah subjects; readers scour religious texts to find lessons of psychology, leadership, finance, and even medicine. My objection is not to specific insights. For example, one must consider the psychological aspects within the narratives of Bereishit; not to do so would overlook important insights. But when the psychological perspective becomes the primary mode of engaging a text, the spiritual power of the Torah is lost. A grand gesture of faith can be reduced to an unusual father-son dynamic, and the Torah then becomes a collection of interesting case studies. The Torah should not become a spade with which to dig, a way to obtain useful information that the reader finds gratifying.

The Torah is most often conscripted in the service of politics. Every hot button issue inspires articles about how the Torah supports one viewpoint or another. Written in the style of a lawyers brief, these articles of political-Torah lack nuance and scholarly insight. Undoubtedly, the advocates of politicizing Torah have laudable goals: They want to ensure that the Torah is relevant, and that we bring Torah values into the public square. But in reality, the opposite occurs; the Torah ends up being the footnote to political passions, and all that matters is whether the Torah supports ones favorite causes.

Bringing religion into politics will ultimately diminish faith. Perhaps Abraham Lincoln said it best. When told by an aide that God was on the side of the Union, Lincoln supposedly responded: Sir, my concern is not whether God is on our side; my greatest concern is to be on Gods side. One must never confuse subjective interests with divine imperatives, but this inversion of values is what happens when religion becomes subordinate to politics. The lesson of the chukim is to avoid pulling God over to our side, and instead approach the Torah with humility and openness.

Rabbi Chaim Steinmetz is the Senior Rabbi of Congregation Kehilath Jeshurun in New York.

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