Rabbi Susan Grossman: May 2006 Archives

According to tradition, God gave the people of Israel the Torah at Mount Sinai on Shavuot, the holiday we will celebrate Thursday night through Saturday.

There is no way to truly know what–if anything–happened at Mount Sinai. Ultimately, it is a matter of faith to believe God revealed the Torah to Moses and the Jewish people at Mount Sinai.

Faith and reason, however, need not be incompatible.

In the current debate over the factual accuracy of the Bible, scholars debate whether or not archaeology can prove, or disprove, the historicity of the text. As with many such debates, the truth probably lies somewhere in the middle. Clearly the Torah text we have today does include anachronisms that point to a later editorial hand. However, that does not necessarily deny the antiquity and authority of much of the text.

Take, for example, the story of the golden calf. I don’t think it is an accident that the panicked Jews choose to build a golden calf, symbol of the Canaanite storm god, while awaiting Moses’ return from a mountain filled with thunder and lightening. In such a little detail, faith and reason converge: the confluence of a Biblical story and an Ancient Near East fact confirms the contextualization of Torah within the time the story is supposed to have taken place. This is just one of many details we know from modern archaeology but which would have been unavailable to someone writing hundreds of years after the purported events (at the time many date the current Biblical text), unless that person was working from much older material. That’s why I’m not so ready to write off Sinai as mere myth.

That doesn’t mean we know what actually happened at Sinai, though whatever it was certainly changed the course of history.

It might be comforting to know that we are not the first generation to wonder what happened at Sinai. The Talmudic sages wondered whether God uttered only the first commandment, the first word, the first letter, the first aspiration of the soundless Hebrew letter aleph, before the people quailed and begged Moses to intercede, in effect to take notes for them.

They asked whether the Jewish people willingly accepted the covenant, crying out naaseh vnishmah, "we will do and then we will hear the details" (the ancient equivalent of signing a contract from someone you trust without reading the fine print), or whether their ambivalence was so great that God had to threaten them with annihilation before they accepted the covenant.

Sinai raises other questions as well: Rabbi Abraham Joshua Heschel asked how could any limited human being, even one as spiritually capable as Moses, contain the infinity of God’s revelation? Think about God trying to download the enormity of Torah, and Moses’ hard drive not being large enough to contain it!

In other words, even if the Torah was transmitted through Moses, Moses could only “get” what made sense to a 13th-century BCE man. For example, he would not have been able to conceive of a religion in which men and women were social and legal equals, as hinted at in the opening scenes where God created the first Adam as equally male and female.

Furthermore, God, being all-knowing, would have known just how much the Israelites of that time could have handled. Therefore, while rejecting human sacrifice, God included animal sacrifices, because God knew that the Israelites would not be able to cope without this mainstay of ancient religion. Lest this sound heretical, Maimonides said something similar when he wrote that, if the Temple were rebuilt, animal sacrifices would not be resumed. Such musings open the way for evolution of observance while still embracing the commanding voice of Torah in our lives.

That is why the most important question is not what actually happened at Sinai, which we cannot recover, but how does Sinai live on in us. According to Rabbi Heschel, the discrete historical moment of Matan Torah, the giving of the Torah at Mount Sinai, was only part of revelation. Revelation continues through Kabbalat Torah, the accepting of the Torah.

Each generation and every individual has the opportunity to continue to receive Torah, not only through Torah study but through applying what Torah teaches to the new conditions of our lives. Every time we ask ourselves WWTD, “What Would Torah (have us) Do?” we find ourselves back at Sinai.

Thirty years ago (way before the 2000 National Population Survey shocked everyone with its intermarriage figures rising above 50 percent), a group of forward-thinking Jewish educators charged the Jewish community with devoting significantly more resources to Jewish education and improving its quality. They founded the Coalition for Alternatives in Jewish Education (CAJE) hoping that creative reform would transform Jewish education and thereby save the Jewish people.

Thirty years are a mere blip on the Jewish timeline, yet much has changed in the field: CAJE’s acronym now stands for the Coalition for the Advancement of Jewish Education, since so many of CAJE’s original “alternatives” have become mainstream practice: non-frontal teaching, teacher training, creative language acquisition, etc. Boards of Jewish education around the country are staffed with CAJE program graduates. Foundations, from Avi Chai to Covenant, now fund day school and afternoon school initiatives. The number of non-Orthodox day schools and high schools continues to grow. These factors reflect great success. However, there are also a number of significant challenges that remain.

Day schools remain prohibitively expensive. In effect, access to Jewish education becomes an issue not only of priorities but also of economic capability. That may be one reason that, except for the small percentage of non-Orthodox families deeply committed to day-school education for its own sake, many parents choose day school where it is as an attractive substitute for an unsafe or academically inferior neighborhood public school.

While more communal funding is critical, it is not a panacea to all woes.

It is obvious that students in a day school will learn more than those in an afternoon school, if for no other reason than the increased hours spent in Judaic and Hebrew classes. However, while day-school children may have a stronger background in Bible or Jewish history, they still may not be fluent in Hebrew, competent in Jewish ritual observance outside of the daily prayer service recited each morning in school, or imbued with a stronger commitment to Jewish affiliation than their afternoon-school peers, particularly if their Jewish education ends in eighth grade.

One reason is that even Conservative day schools are hesitant to advocate personal observance or a commanding sense of a personal relationship with God. Where the day school is a community school, the value of mutual respect for difference can clash with the educational opportunity to inspire the next generation in Jewish practice where there is an inability to agree on “whose practice” will be taught.

All these challenges are amplified in afternoon schools, where the commitment level of families may be lower, teaching hours less, and the ability of students to pay full attention after a full day of school more limited.

Studies have shown that Jewish peer engagement, not class room hours per sae, is the single most significant variable in determining 21st century Jewish affiliation. Perhaps that is because, though Jewish identity and living skills historically were transmitted in the family, most American Jewish families no longer have the will nor the skill to do so. Therefore, while peer bonding – through programs like Birthright and significant Jewish camping remain critical, the bottom line is that even the best Jewish school education is no substitute for what a child learns and does at home. In other words, until family education becomes mainstreamed and integrated within regular curricular objectives and goals, rather than seen as enrichment or additional optional programming, we will continue to see a gap between the hope and the reality of Jewish education, whether on the day school or afternoon school level.

This past summer in Israel, on a long walk to a friend’s house for Shabbat dinner, I passed groups of young people hanging around street corners. Looking through the lit windows of Germantown’s cafes, I saw numerous individuals sitting alone at tables. This was Jerusalem, not secular Tel Aviv.

What had happened to the family Friday night dinner ubiquitous just a generation ago? What had happened to alienate almost an entire generation from the core of its Jewish roots?

The early Zionist thinker Ahad Ha'Am once quipped, more than the Jewish people kept the Shabbat, Shabbat kept the Jewish people. He, of all the founding fathers of the Jewish State, understood that without living Jewish culture, the Jewish soul of the Jewish State would be in jeopardy.

That is why A.B. Yehoshua's comments last week at the American Jewish Committee conference, and his subsequent apology, somewhat miss the point. He reiterated the classic Zionist position that Jewish life outside Israel is untenable: that Jews ultimately cannot maintain their Jewish identity in the Diaspora. If he were simply talking about assimilation through intermarriage, he might be right. After all, it is much more likely that one Jew will marry another in Israel rather than in any of our United States. However, merely living in Israel not longer guarantees that the home a young couple builds will be Jewish in more than name. Even Israeli Jews have become choosing Jews, and they are choosing in greater and greater numbers not to observe even the traditions their secular grandparents had kept, such as gathering for family dinner on Friday nights.

This is not to say that Israel is devoid of Jewish life. Thank God, Israel has not yet become, as Ben Gurion wished it, simply a nation like all others. Until one experiences Hanukkah in Israel, with its menorahs in every window and town square, one cannot really grasp the significance of living a Jewish life in a Jewish State.

Government offices are closed Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur, instead of Christmas and Easter, and the country goes wild over Purim. But is that all there is to proving that Jewish life can only be fully lived in Israel?

The early Zionists believed that Israel would be the fountainhead of a renaissance of Jewish culture–art, literature, philosophy, music, a new secularlized spirituality. While the Bezalel Academy of Art and Design and authors like Yehoshua and S.Y. Agnon are testaments to the accomplishments of that vision, a vibrant Jewish culture has also thrived in the Disapora, particularly here in America.

Who’s to say who is more Jewish? We certainly are all one family, caring and concerned for each other. Perhaps the simple answer remains the truest: that we continue to need each other. Each of us–Israeli and Diaspora Jews–carries but a little piece of the story, the vision, the revelation of what it means to be Jewish and it is only by sharing what we each carry that we can be whole.

When our son Yoni was 12, he begged us for a Bar Mitzvah disco party like all his classmates were planning. He was not initially pleased when we replied with plans for a Saturday night largely home-cooked dinner and talent show for out-of-town guests and a Sunday “Olympiad” in the backyard with relay races and a water gun fight for his friends.

Yet, by the time his July date arrived and he had attended dozens of themed disco parties, he was looking forward to our homegrown plans focused on family and friends rather than lights and sound systems. Instead of being caught up in conspicuous consumption, he worked on the mitzvah part of his Bar Mitzvah. That included preparing to lead services and read Torah and Haftorah, of course, but also organizing a significant Bar Mitzvah project, which focused on what he could give rather than what he would receive.

There is tremendous pressure on children and parents to keep up with the Jewish Joneses, as is so hilariously and poignantly depicted in the new film "Keeping Up With the Steins" being released this weekend. The issue is not just about impressing people, which is problematic enough. I have seen parents worn down with worry over offending family who expect an elaborate dinner to justify their plane tickets or about adequately reciprocating with business associates who had invited them to their affairs.

The cost for such pressure is tremendously high: Hundreds of thousands of dollars in the Jewish community are spent each year on parties that could be put to better use in supporting Jewish educational, religious, and social-service institutions here and in Israel. Just think about the impact just one-fourth of the money Conservative Jews annually spend on Bnai Mitzvah parties could have if it were sent to the Masorti (Conservative) movement in Israel, reaching out to disaffected young Israelis to save the Jewish soul of the Jewish State. Talk about setting a bar for a mitzvah!

The cost is not only in misspending resources on a communal level. There is an even greater cost to the child and the family. Families undergo tremendous strains, financial and emotional, to meet the expectations they assume, rightly or wrongly, others have of them. And what about the mitzvah that is supposed to be the essence of the Bnai Mitzvah? All too often, as a character in the movie says, “It doesn’t matter what happens in the Temple, it’s the party that counts!”

We are not an ascetic religion: there is a value to enjoying good food, singing, and dancing, especially when it is to celebrate a mitzvah. However, a Bar or Bat Mitzvah is not a wedding. Even some families who keep a kosher home abandon the idea of a kosher affair once they see the price tag. And too few set aside even the 3 percent of the party cost that Mazon suggests to feed the poor. What lesson does the child learn when the very mitzvot he or she just committed to observing (including the kosher laws and charity, tzedakah) are broken or pushed aside for the party? That Judaism is to be treasured only when it is cheap or convenient?

It takes a tremendous act of self-assurance and will power to resist Bnai Mitzvah party pressure. Maybe Keeping Up With the Steins will help. After this movie, maybe more families will realize that they don’t need to impress anyone, and maybe more kids, like my son Yoni, will realize that home-made parties really are not only more meaningful but just as much, if not more, fun.

When Vince, aide to President MacKenzie Allen on ABC’s "Commander in Chief," chooses to secretly tie the knot with his partner to protect the President during an election year (Episode 15, “Ties that Bind”), the writers are suggesting that our country is more likely to accept a woman president than the legitimacy of same-sex marriage. That may be true. But I think God is a lot more accepting than the American electorate.

The question of same-sex marriage is controversial, of course. It would be easy to argue, as many do, that same-sex marriage, and by extension all homosexuality, is biblically prohibited. Leviticus 18:22 clearly states, “Do not lie with a male as one lies with a woman, it is an abhorrence.”

If we were to read the Bible as a fundamentalist would, those words might be enough for us. But as Jews, we don’t act simply on the literal words of the Bible. We seek to understand God’s will for us through the lenses of (rabbinic) interpretation, predicated on and understood within its socio-historic context. That the biblical prohibition on homosexual relations is found among a list of illicit, largely incestuous, relationships leads us to ask whether this prohibition includes the monogamous relationships that many homosexuals seek today.

Psychologists have found that there are individuals for whom sexual orientation is not a matter of choice. Regarding such a person, our Talmudic sages taught that where there is really no choice, one is freed from obligation. Nevertheless, other commandments can still be fulfilled: the obligation to have (or raise) children (“be fertile and multiply,” Genesis 1:28), which is now available outside of heterosexual marriage thanks to in-vitro fertilization and adoption, and the obligation to share companionship rather than be alone (Genesis 2:18), which could be fulfilled through some formal, ritualized, legally recognized family commitment.

One of our names for God is HaRahaman, the All-Merciful. It is hard for me to imagine that an all-Merciful God, having created an individual who can only find sexual satisfaction with a member of the same sex, would not also accept his or her need to find companionship and satisfaction within a same-sex relationship.

That doesn’t mean that any or everything is OK. I can understand and empathize with those in the gay/bisexual/transgendered community who want full acceptance. However, the purpose of religious devotion is to outline appropriate personal discipline even in our most intimate of relationships.

Judaism tells us what and how we can eat and with whom and when we can have sexual (traditionally heterosexual) relations. It is one thing to find a religious accommodation for someone who has no choice, and another to accommodate those who want to deny the place of Jewish law and tradition in limiting their choices.

The Conservative movement is currently debating the place of homosexuality in Judaism. That debate seeks to balance tradition and change: the tradition of our commitment to mitzvot, commandments, in general, as binding upon personal decisions and, in particular, regarding the legislative history of specific laws balanced by our changing understanding of human nature, sociological conditions, and sense of justice and compassion.

There are many young same-sex couples who yearn to build Jewish homes and families as accepted and active members of the Jewish community. Whether the specific answer rests in commitment ceremonies or some other equivalent of same-sex marriage is probably not as important as the effort the organized Jewish community makes to respect God’s image in every individual, by trying to find ways to take into account each person’s need to fulfill God’s command to find companionship and family within the embrace of our religious community.