Virtual Talmud: February 2007 Archives

No one is who they appear to be in the Book of Esther, which we read on the upcoming holiday of Purim. Vashti seems an all-powerful queen, yet she overestimates her power and is removed from office, probably not pleasantly, though the text is silent on that point. Esther, on the other hand, seems to be the paradigm of women’s powerlessness, forcefully taken from her family to become the king’s sex kitten. Yet it is she who deftly welds her influence with the king to save her people and overthrow the top minister, inserting her own uncle in his place.

Vashti and Esther both have something to teach us about the historic use of women’s power and influence.

Vashti is treated badly in rabbinic commentary, which seeks to blame her downfall as comeuppance for the sins of her father, or for her own sins of selfishness and haughtiness. According to Midrash, she leverages her descent from the mighty King Nebuchadnezzer (who destroyed the First Temple in Jerusalem) to wield power in the court.

When Vashti is called to come to the king clad only in her crown (and, readers are to assume, nothing else), she refuses. The king is convinced by his advisors that all other women will learn to refuse their husbands as she did if he allows her to get away with it so he has her removed. Her time on stage is completed in less than a chapter.

Since the 1970s, feminists have taken Vashti to heart as the first proto-feminist: She is the first woman in the Bible who refuses to be objectified as a sex object, instead naming such behavior as inappropriate. As the feminist movement (and the continuing movement to protect women from domestic violence) taught us, the first step towards changing intolerable conditions is to become self aware enough to be able to name those intolerable conditions, aloud to oneself and others. (It is precisely the danger of such change that drives the king’s advisors to seek her downfall.)

What a contrast to Esther, who is quite meek in comparison. When brought to the palace, she passively goes along with whatever the head eunuch plans for her. When she finally approaches the king, she wines and dines him before beseeching him, using every traditional feminine wile in the book, and rather effectively at that.

In many ways, Vashti is the paradigmatic woman who won’t take any garbage from the men around her, even if it costs her, which it does. In comparison, I always thought of Esther as the ideal of the savvy female business exec who learns how to make it in the top tier of a man’s world and bring her people along with her. It is the Esthers who learned that it is not enough to make it to the top if one cannot stay there and work effectively within the system, even if the system itself is wrought with difficulties and limitations. These have been the two models for how women have negotiated their lack of real power throughout history.

In today’s political climate, we might see Sen. Hillary Clinton as Vashti and Speaker Nancy Pelosi as Esther, each presenting a very different image of female leadership. I worry the analogy between Senator Clinton and Vashti may be apt because it remains to be seen whether our nation is ready to see a strong and bold woman wield real power. On the other hand, I have great hope that, like a modern Esther, Speaker Pelosi can negotiate the authority and influence of her office to bring positive and much needed change to our nation.

Sen. Clinton seems to be trying to soften her image, however. Perhaps she will be able to do what few women throughout history have: achieve that rare balance between the historic paradigms of Vashti and Esther. If so, then the entire nation will deserve some of the credit, for supporting a culture climate in which such an historic change is possible.

-- Posted by Rabbi Susan Grossman

When thinking about the recent decision on the part of the Conservative Movement’s Committee on Jewish Law and Standards to allow gay ordination and marriage, I try to remind myself that I really don’t like criticizing people and institutions when I don’t have better answers than the ones they're proposing. It’s not like Orthodoxy or other forms of rabbinic Judaism have had anything more productive to offer in the ongoing discussion about the incredibly complex subject of homosexuality in religious life. Kudos should be given to the Conservative movement for attempting to take a moral stand on this issue. Still, I think the Conservative movement took a very bold step--one that I understand and I am sympathetic to, but one that I am not sure was necessary or ultimately productive.

No, I am not really bothered by Rabbi Waxman’s age-old sigh that the Conservative Movement is wishy-washy. They are trying to create a big tent, and sometimes that means being wishy-washy. We all are wishy-washy; it just depends on the issue.

My problems with the Conservative movement's decision to permit the ordination of gay rabbis and to allow rabbis to officiate at gay weddings are threefold: (1) Contra Arnold Eisen’s elite sociological surveys, Conservative laity itself does not really care much about the issue (perhaps I am mistaken, but there is less than a handful of women rabbis working at major (over 500 families) Conservative congregations... if it's been that hard for women to get positions, I can’t imagine it will be any easier for homosexuals); (2) yet again, the Conservative movement--a movement that prides itself on stressing the social and communal dimensions of halakhah (Jewish law)--created a law that no one can follow; and (3) perhaps ironically, the Conservative movement is caught, to use Heschel’s term, in a “pan-halakhic” game, continuing to think that every issue is one to be decided by halakha.

In some ways, to allow homosexuals to participate in homosexual relationships but not engage in anal sex is like the Conservative movement’s 1950 decision to allow Jews to drive to and from synagogue on Shabbat but not allow them to take a detour to the mall on their way home. To be put it bluntly, ain’t nobody gonna follow that. While the law makes sense in theory, it is totally socially disingenuous. It is astounding how a movement built around a concept of “Catholic Israel” could so miserably fail to take into account the way people behave.

Why did the Conservative movement feel the need to halakhically justify itself? Why, for example, did it have to make the ordination issue into a halakhic one? Could they not have said that this is a matter of public policy? No one at JTS gets the halakhically orientated “smicha” degree when they become a rabbi. Rather, the actual degree is just a professional degree of “ordination,” which does not necessarily have to have any halakhic implications. So why make the gay ordination issue a halakhic matter? Likewise, on the issue of marriage, why couldn’t the movement have created a different Jewish marriage ceremony, one that recognizes the uniqueness of the commitment being made?

Not everything has to have a halakhic answer--why the Conservative movement thinks it has to, I have no idea.

-- Posted by Rabbi Eliyahu Stern

Rabbi Waxman is correct that the recent decision by the Conservative movement to pass two diametrically opposite positions, one permitting and one prohibiting same sex relations, does in fact leave the decision to local rabbis and their congregations. This is a good thing.

I understand and sympathize with Rabbi Waxman and all those who may feel this was a failure of will or moral rectitude. On the other hand, Orthodox critics charge that the Conservative movement has abandoned our commitment to Jewish law (halakhah) in supporting any position permitting gay ordination and commitment ceremonies. Neither charge is true.

What is true is that, as with the law of the land today, there is a great divide about how to apply and interpret law: Rabbi Joel Roth and his supporters are strict constuctionalists: they do not go beyond the predominant position or the plain meaning of the Biblical text or rabbinic record. Rabbi Waxman and I would probably agree that morality is not relative: that each individual is equally precious and deserving of equal treatment. Having been privileged to participate in these discussions on the Committee on Jewish Law and Standards, and as a matter of record, I personally did not vote for or support Rabbi Roth’s position. However, even the decision by Rabbi Roth, which prohibits same sex relations and the ordination of rabbis who engage in such, distinguishes between accepting an individual whose orientation is gay and banning a prohibited behavior, namely same sex relations.

Rabbis Elliott Dorff, Avram Reisner, and Daniel Nevins, whose position permits gay ordination and commitment ceremonies, are loose constructionalists. They use traditional rabbinic methods to interpret and apply Torah in a very narrow sense (that the only thing the Torah prohibits is anal same sex relations, based on the exact words of the verse that prohibits a man lying "with a man as with a woman"), thereby allowing them to apply meta-halakhic Torah values, the dignity of each individual, also ensconced in rabbinic legal precedent.

What is also true of both positions is that they deal with the same basic question: Are there behaviors Jews should not do? Both answer yes. As Conservative Jews we hold that there is a body of law we are bound to that begins in Torah and continues through the record of Jewish precedent law in the Talmud and Codes. There are things we can eat and cannot eat, individuals with whom we can have sexual relations and those with whom we cannot, ways to conduct business and ways not to. Every act in our lives is an opportunity to connect to our tradition and serve God. As Jews we do that through the observance of law as understood and applied in our community.

The historic challenge facing our movement has been that too few lay people have been caught up in this process of seeking to discern God’s will as understood throughout our precedent law and apply it to their personal observance. The homosexual ity issue though has provided an opportunity to begin to change that.

In response to media coverage on this issue, my congregants requested a full year of study in our Adult Education program on how Jewish law informs our decisions on a number of ethical issues. For the first time they wanted to study various teshuvot (positions) our movement has passed. The classes were well attended. I know similar programs are happening in congregations around the country, and not just on the issue of homosexuality in Jewish law.

The passing of two positions is important for another reason as well. Far from making the decision irrelevant to the average Conservative Jew, as Rabbi Waxman argues, the very dualism of positions makes the halakhic process extremely relevant by empowering each rabbi and congregational community to study and determine where they stand on the continuum of Jewish interpretation and practice. At the heart of this entire dialogue is a commitment to make a thoughtful and knowledgeable decision based on Jewish law on the congregational level in response to the particular needs and conditions of that community. Jewish law has always been local. As such, these decisions return us to the purpose and mission of the Conservative movement, to walk in God’s ways through our historic and communal living of Jewish law.

-- By Rabbi Susan Grossman

There are serious flaws in the argument Rabbi Stern is making on whether liberal Jews are anti-Semites if they argue that Israel should cease to be a Jewish State and become a binational state. Buber and Einstein were mostly writing before there was a Jewish State. Einstein himself later was invited to become Israel’s first president, and indeed supported the Jewish State. Today we live in a world in which not a peep of protest is made about the fact that Saudi Arabia bars Jews from living in that country and Syria and even Jordan refuse citizenship to Jews. We live in a world in which little is done to protest Muslim-on-Muslim genocide in Darfur, yet Arab boycotts of companies doing business with Israel is on the rise, as is the number of European countries boycotting Israeli products.

I am in favor of open debate. Israel itself, as the only democracy in the Middle East, has very open debate. Its newspapers include criticism of government policies and practices.

There is an unfortunate tendency of some in the organized Jewish community to equate well-meaning criticism with anti-Zionism. Columnist Thomas Friedman for many years was castigated as too critical of Israel, though he is a staunch supporter of Israel’s right to exist as a Jewish State. It is easy to want to circle the wagons when Israel is constantly under siege. However, there have always been other, more liberal arms of the Jewish community, like New Israel Fund and Rabbis for Human Rights, which have found a way to balance criticism with loyalty to the Jewish State.

There is also a growing and unfortunate tendency among many on the left to blame Israeli policies for the recurring cycle of violence, rather than focusing on the intransigence of Arab world, in general, and the Palestinian leadership in particular. The truth is more nuanced: that Israel’s leadership through the years made mistakes in the face of Arab intransigence and terrorism designed to destroy Israel.

Is someone who intentionally or unintentionally supports the agenda of anti-Semites an anti-Semite? Should we hold people responsible for the positions they take and the intended or unintended consequences of such positions?

When Jewish intellectuals confuse their right to criticize specific policies of current or past Israeli governments with questioning the legitimacy of having a Jewish State, that is when they cross the line of legitimate debate and cross over into anti-Semitism, and thereby serve the purposes of the enemies of the Jewish people.

Israel today serves as the political personification of the Jew on the current world stage. If anyone doubts that anti-Zionism is only the most recent mutation of anti-Semitism, just review the rise in Arab-immigrant violence against Jews throughout Europe and the appropriation of the Nazis' anti-Semitic language and images in Arab anti-Israel propaganda. Arguments for a bi-national state today--an Israel in which Palestinians and Jews share power, rather than having separate states--are just another weapon in the arsenal of those who want to destroy the Jewish State, and ultimately Jewish corporate identity. Jews who support such a position are aiding those who are the self-defined enemies of the Jewish People, and thus, even when active members of the Jewish community themselves, sadly serve the cause of anti-Semitism.

-- Posted by Rabbi Susan Grossman

Recently, the New York Times published a piece on the uproar created over an article written by Alvin Rosenfeld put up on the American Jewish Committee website entitled “Progressive Jewish Thought and Anti-Semitism.” The article lumps a broad range of academics, poets, and writers together, suggesting that their criticisms of Israel amounts to a certain, at-least latent, anti-Semitism on their part.

There are so many problems with Rosenfeld’s essay that I really don’t know where to begin (Dan Sieradski from Jewschool has already written a lengthy response, some points of which I agree with). I would start, however, by saying that I first and foremost am a Zionist according to any definition of the term. I love the State of Israel, I stand in total and full opposition to any notion of a bi-national Israel-Palestine, I admire the heretical chutzpah on the part of secular Zionists to create a Jewish state, and I dream of a time when Israelis will not have to own guns and wear military uniforms to protect themselves--but until then I take great pride every time I see an Israeli military officer.

That said, here are my two cents on what’s wrong with Rosenfeld’s paper. One would have expected that a piece entitled “Progressive Jewish Thought and Anti-Semitism” would have begun with a general outline of the history and relationship of Jews in the academy and philosophic circles to Israel and Statehood. At the very least, one would have expected a description of the history and origins of progressive Jewish thought. Instead, what we get is some fear-mongering monologue about Muslims, anti-Semitism, and the burning of synagogues. Huh? These are important things, but don’t we already know this?

Why did Rosenfeld not begin his paper by giving his audience historical background as to where these Jewish critics of Israel are coming from? Is this a new phenomenon, or is this something that has a past? Rosenfeld makes a very calculated decision when he places these academics within the context of a Muslim anti-Semitism, leaving out the fact that, traditionally, most academics, Jewish and non-Jewish alike, have always held a skeptical eye towards military power, nation-state building, and tribalistic political impulses.

As my friend Daniel Septimus pointed out to me the other night, had Rosenfeld dealt with the issue of the history of Israel and the academy or progressive Jewish thought, he would have had to contend with the fact that respected and celebrated Jews in the academy, ranging from Martin Buber to Albert Einstein--yes Einstein--proposed at one time or another the possibility of a bi-national state. Simply put, Judaism was more important to them than Jewish nationalism. While I totally disagree with Buber and Einstein, I would never in my right mind label them anti-Semites. These are not crazy people, nor can one even dare to refer to them as anti-Semites. Though, according to Rosenfeld’s criteria, they could be termed anti-Semites, he never once mentions their names.

The reason Rosenflield does not address those such as Einstein and Buber is because it would have forced him to be far more nuanced in his use of the word "anti-Semitism" and perhaps gotten rid of it in the title and lose the sensationalism of the piece. Suffice it to say, there are people in the article whose ideas seem to be, if not anti-Semitic then sick and dishonest. While I have not read Jacqueline Rose’s and Michael Nuemann’s articles, what I have seen I don’t like one bit--Rosenfeld is correct in calling them to task. The Jewish community would be wise to do everything in its power to speak out against them. However, Rosenfeld does not stop there; he goes on to call out the work of those such as Tony Judt and Daniel Boyarin as falling under the same anti-Semitic rubric.

It’s here where Rosenflield’s argument collapses and becomes not only absurd and
disingenuous but calls into question his own motivations.

Judt and Boyarin are both highly respected tenured professors--the former at NYU, the latter at UC Berkeley. Both lived in Israel. Judt lived on a kibbutz; Boyarin was a tenured professor at Bar-Ilan University. Boyarin raised his family in Israel, his children served in the Israeli Army, he himself served in reserved duties. Boyarin (who as matter of full disclosure is not only my dissertation advisor but someone whose friendship/mentorship I deeply cherish and whose ideas I take very seriously) regularly goes to synagogue, is shomer shabbat, keeps a Jewish home, wears a kippah, davens (prays), is a direct decedent of the Vilna Gaon, has rabbinic ordination and has spent his whole life learning Talmud. I feel embarrassed even having to say such things about someone who has given his life to Judaism--but Rosenfeld’s lack of nuance and insinuations makes such responses necessary.

Yes, Judt and Boyarin have made statements about Israel that I disagree with--but to label them under a rubric of anti-Semitism is sheer madness and socially irresponsible. Imagine someone calling Einstein and Buber anti-Semites!!

There is some truth in Rosenfeld’s article, but when you are going for the jugular, some truth is simply not good enough. Likewise, I like the AJC; it's one of the finest Jewish organizations out there. But next time, could you do us all a favor be more careful before you put something like that up on your website.