Rabbi Joshua Waxman: January 2006 Archives

Let me start by saying that I think that evolutionary science provides the best description we have of how life came to exist in its present form, that intelligent design is junk science (at best), and that Judge Jones made exactly the right decision in the Dover School Board case. I.D., which is just creationism by another name, has no place in a public school curriculum. That said, the concept of intelligent design is central to my understanding of what it means to be Jewish.

Before we eat, we say a berachah (a blessing). When we wake up in the morning, we say a berachah. When we see the first buds blossoming in the spring–we say a berachah. A berachah is a way of acknowledging how astonishing the world truly is, of looking at everything around us with radical amazement and gratitude. More specifically, the berachah acknowledges God as the source of all of these wonders, honors the divine flow of life that animates the universe.

Intelligent design is rooted in a similar sense of awe and wonder. Science can describe the cellular structure of an apple, tell us how it grows and propagates in great detail, explain the organic compounds that make it sweet. But science cannot tell us that the apple is a miracle; intelligent design can.

Intelligent design at some level means acknowledging that the world around us is beyond our comprehension, cannot be fully described in terms of equations and chemical reactions–and I agree. Perhaps this is because as a rabbi, I am more interested in meaning than in mechanics.

Evolution, with its doctrine of survival of the fittest, would be a dismal model on which to base a system of ultimate moral meaning. The Jewish religious approach to how to understand the world–with radical amazement, with a sense in the world’s abiding goodness and purpose–is far more in keeping with intelligent design than with evolution.

When I say "intelligent design" here, I should be clear I’m not talking about a pseudo-scientific political movement for which I have no sympathies, but rather the core values that underlie the desire to see the world as more than the sum of concrete, describable parts. These values are mine as well, and I hope to pass them along to my children, pray never to take the world and its precious resources for granted.

But this is my choice and my role–the lens I use to see the world as a rabbi is just one of the many possible lenses that we can use and that people do use in this country. There are other religious traditions, and there are those who stand outside of any religious tradition at all.

The job of the public schools is to nurture the mind, and then families can decide how to nurture the soul. This is not the Dover School Board’s job, and I don’t want them teaching my children what to believe.

Let’s teach our children evolution in school so they will be educated, and the wonder of God in synagogue so they will be wise.

Why is it so tempting to blame others for their own misfortunes?

The Jews, at least, had the good grace to acknowledge their own shortcomings when they said, “M’pnei chata’einu galinu m’artzeinu” – “Because of our sins we were banished from our country.” These days, there seems a lot less interest in using the question of divine reward and punishment as a spur to introspection and change, and a lot more in using it as stick to lash out against those who have suffered, as with Pat Robertson’s outrageous (and, thankfully, retracted) comments on Ariel Sharon.

Since Rabbi Mordecai Kaplan developed the theology on which Reconstructionist Judaism was founded, Reconstructionist Jews have abandoned the notion of a God who sits in judgment over the world, making individual decisions about who will live and who will die. Reconstructionism teaches that God acts through us rather than on us. Or, more properly, God can work through when we choose to act in ways that honor the divine image in which we are created, lend our hands and hearts to Godly work.

To say that God visits suffering on the innocent is an outrage to compassion and logic, especially as so many wicked people prosper. At best, we do offense to logic when we try to figure out just what, say, all the victims of the tsunami did to ‘deserve’ their divinely-ordained fate; at worst, we do offense to those around us by explaining away their suffering and, so, our obligation to help alleviate it.

God does act in the world, but not in the ways that Pat Robertson claims. God acts as a force for goodness through us, inspiring us to be generous, understanding, compassionate, and self-sacrificing. When this happens, we help create holy communities where God’s blessings can thrive. Or we can choose to ignore what God wants from us, turn our back on our neighbors and our responsibilities, creating societies where we only look out for ourselves and we all suffer the consequences of selfishness and indifference.

We reap the fruits of our own actions for good or for ill. God does reward and punish, but not in the ways that Pat Robertson claims.

Over the coming weeks, much time, energy, and breathless news coverage will be devoted to divining how Samuel Alito would rule on abortion as a Supreme Court justice–a subject on which he will offer no clues if he can help it during his confirmation hearings.

That's sad, because it has made the confirmation process for one of the most solemn and powerful positions in the land into an exercise in posturing (the senators) and obfuscation (the nominee)–the opposite of the substantive dialogue one might hope for. But at some level, this say-as-little-as-possible game is inevitable in the current climate, where abortion is such a high-profile, hot-button issue that any comment, however innocuous, is going to send seismic disturbances through the thoroughly entrenched battle lines on both sides of the issue.

Pro-life, Pro-choice. The terms are code words for so much that is read into them, two diametrically opposed positions that reduce the debate over the complex issue of abortion into simple black and white. Which it is not: While I fully support the right of a woman to control her reproductive freedom, including obtaining a safe and legal abortion, I also recognize the real pain and tragedy that usually are at the heart of the decision to terminate a fetus.

It's tension recognized by the American people, as evidenced in a recent poll of the highly regarded non-partisan Pew Forum on Religion & Public Life, showing that only 29% of respondents support overturning Roe v. Wade and that 70% express concerns about the morality of abortion. A tension that makes perfect sense according to the lived experience of real people on both sides of the issue, who recognize the personal circumstances and complexities that lie at the heart of any decision about whether to carry a fetus to term. A tension implicit in the Jewish approach to jurisprudence, which recognizes that law is not some pristine, hermetic system that never takes into account personal circumstances but is instead rooted in the real lived experience of those whom it governs.

And a tension completely obscured by this circus of a nomination process.

My personal hope is that, if elevated, Judge Alito will approach abortion-related cases with an open mind, as he has promised. And I hope he will approach all cases with this same sense of openness and weigh each case not based on ideology but rather on its merits. As it says in Leviticus 19:15: "You shall not commit corruption in justice… [rather] you shall judge your fellow in righteousness."

The news of Jack Abramoff’s guilty plea is, sadly, just the latest chapter in the sordid story of the intersection of money and power.

Going back to the story of Purim, we see how the wicked Haman–the first lobbyist?–paid King Achashverosh 10,000 silver talents to get a decree passed to annihilate the Jews.

Since the beginning of government, those in power have taken advantage of the system to enrich themselves and further their own ends, generally at the expense of everyone else. The irony here is that Abramoff claims to be an observant Jew, even as he was bilking Native American tribes out of millions of dollars and flying politicians to Scotland to help clients circumvent labor welfare laws.

Here too, there is nothing new–a claim to be ‘religious’ while ignoring the ethical injunctions that are a crucial part of living a godly life. This is why it says in Pirkei Avot (The Ethics of our Fathers): “If a man profanes things which are sacred, and offends the holidays and puts his fellow to shame publicly… even though he has a knowledge of the Torah and good works, he has no share in the world to come.” (3.19)

If this seems unduly harsh, I should point out that Abramoff stole not only money, but also the public trust. By perpetuating a system of pay-to-play, he helped contribute to and validate the widely held cynicism about government and public service, precisely when this country needs some idealism and hope that government can be a force for good. And by acting this way while claiming to be "religious," he drags the ideals of all those of good faith into the gutter as well, turning his offense against other people into a chillul ha-shem (an offense against God) as well.

I should be very clear that there’s nothing particularly Jewish about this story–corruption has no religion. A while back, it was Charles Keating and the savings and loan scandal (Keating was a conservative Catholic who spearheaded a prominent anti-pornography campaign under the heading of moral values while paying off senators to avoid regulation and oversight for his banks–hypocrisy, it seems, has no religion either.)

Jack Abramoff was simply a part–albeit an important part–of the culture of corruption that currently reigns in Washington. And until the cushy system that makes it easy for lobbyists and politicians to cozy up to each other out of the public eye is reformed, we will continue to have corruption and hypocrisy, even a those who commit proclaim their ‘religious’ values.