L'Shannah Tovah! I love this season. The smell of fall in the air brings a release from the unrelenting heat of late summer. It carries the promise that change, like a cool fall breeze, is both possible, and good. I love the message of the New Year, that the world is born again, renewed, and so potentially, are we. Refreshed, we turn our attention back to life's priorities, to work, and if we are students, or the parents of students, to a new term a school.
A couple of weeks ago, I had the joy of moving my fourth child, Jonah, into his freshman dormitory. Like his brother Noah before him, he is beginning his studies at List College and Columbia University. List College is the undergraduate program of the Jewish Theological Seminary of America, the flagship institution of our Conservative Movement. My son Micah also studies at JTS. He is in his second year of Rabbinical School. And of course, I was ordained as a Rabbi from the same institution, twenty four years ago.
As a graduate who sent three children there, that would make me something of an Alumni association poster boy. My years there shaped me as a Rabbi and as a Jew, and I still have a warm relationship with several professors all of these years later.
However, I will share a story with you this morning which tells a different narrative. When I first came to JTS, fresh out of Haverford College, a small Liberal Arts College with a strong Quaker tradition, I felt more than a fish out of water. I felt like I had been dropped onto another planet. I was living in the Rabbinical School dormitory, (all male of course; there were no female Rabbinical students then), where the more acculturated students spoke in a Rabbinic vocabulary that was totally foreign to me. Was removing the flower vase from the Shabbat table "mutar" or "Asur" - permitted or forbidden? Was a person who had so transgressed out of ignorance "patur" or "hayyav," exempt from punishment, or liable?
knew why I had come to Rabbinical School. The sacred history of the Jewish people, who were redeemed from slavery and who entered into a covenant with God at Sinai in order to serve God and repair the world, spoke to the essence of my being. The sense of meaning and of place in the world that being part of the Jewish people gave me propelled me towards a life of service to the Jewish community. However, the often obsessive focus on observance at the school seemed foreign and disconnected from the Judaism of my home, family and community; the Judaism that had nurtured me.
My head swam as I applied myself to my studies and tried to integrate Rabbinic thinking into life as I had previously known it. I had thought that I was raised as a good Conservative Jew, but the world of Rabbinical School seemed something altogether different. And as I studied and experienced life there, I remained frustrated with the notion that everyone in this environment spoke in these categories of "permitted" and "forbidden," but no one ever seemed to raise the question of why. In a famous Commentary Magazine symposium on Jewish belief, years ago, the leader of Yeshiva University, Rabbi Norman Lamm, upheld the fundamentalist principal that God revealed the Torah to Moses at Sinai literally, in "discreet words and letters." If that were so, then how could one not obey every last commandment, both Mosaic and Rabbinic? But JTS stood for a different intellectual approach to Torah. Its Chancellors and ideological spokesmen were historians, who were unafraid to apply modern critical methodologies to all of our sacred texts, including the Torah. Most of us, as well, are not fundamentalists. We embrace a historical approach to Judaism that accepts, in Abraham Heschel's felicitous phrase, that "as a report on revelation, the Torah itself is Midrash." Or as Heschel also put it, the Torah presents us with a record of the Divine-human encounter with "a minimum of revelation and a maximum of interpretation." Although we discussed such ideas in the philosophy department, and the Bible Department taught the Documentary Hypothesis, which posits a variety of historical and cultural sources for the Torah itself, the conclusions of these disciplines were never brought to bear of the question of ritual observance. If God's relationship to humanity is both more subtle and more complex than as literally described in the Torah, then Who actually is the commander, the metzaveh, behind the mitzvah, and how binding is its authority? As rabbinical students, we were expected to observe every mitzvah to the letter even as we struggled on our own with such questions.
The dissonance that I felt between the rigidity of Rabbinical School life, and my identity as a modern American Jew expressed itself most clearly when in came to prayer. As a new student, I felt utterly self conscious. I experienced the services at the Seminary Synagogue as authoritarian and coercive; I never felt at home. (I suspect that many of you have felt the same way in services at one time or another; perhaps even today. And if that is so, then we need to talk).
The fact that the services were non-egalitarian, although most Conservative congregations by then were, and that women who attended sat on the other side of a mehitza, in the very period when we were fighting for the ordination of women, added to my sense of alienation. And so for nearly six years (and now I'm telling you my big secret), I simply avoided davening with the community. I davened quietly in my room, or found other minyanim on the upper West Side to attend, but I rarely set foot in the Seminary Synagogue.
Now fast forward nearly a quarter of a century to two weeks ago. As Jonah toured the campus with the other members of the incoming class, Fran and I attended a parents' orientation, which was held where? That's right: in the Seminary Synagogue. It is a beautiful room that in my day was the reading room of the old library. It has since been transformed by the Womens League into a lovely place to daven with flexible seating, usually arranged with seating on three sides. Anyway, I had asked about a minyan to say Kaddish, and it was decided to simply ask the people in the room to stay for a few minutes for mincha, after the orientation. A colleague of mine, who was also dropping her son off as a freshman that day, suggested, "so, Dan, you're saying Kaddish for your father, why don't you lead the davening?" And so, I stepped to the front of the room and did something I could never have done twenty some odd years before: I led the davening at the Seminary Synagogue. It was nothing anyone else there could notice, but for me, I felt that a circle had finally been closed. The next morning, I was there again for Shacharit. Young men and women, mostly products of our movement, graduates of our Ramah Camps, our Religious Schools, and our Schechter Schools, davened together in a community imbued with spiritual depth, warmth, and openness. I thought to myself, "this is how I want our morning minyan in Natick to be." (And on some mornings, it is). The student gabbai, who did not know that I was a Rabbi, warmly offered me an aliyah, which I accepted. Another milestone.
Looking back now, I can see that my alienation from part of the JTS community all those years ago, expressed in my inability to daven with them, was not really the fault of the school. I had chosen to be judgmental and perhaps a bit too self righteous, and perhaps just unwilling to confront my own insecurities. We all have walked down that path of insecurity and blame, haven't we? But it is possible to change, to admit that even our strongly held positions are not simply black and white. And in time, I had changed. A "teshuvah" of sorts. That's why I shared this story with you this morning, to remind you that old slights can be forgiven, insecurities can be overcome, and circles long left incomplete can be closed.
But I also share the story today because the Seminary also has changed, in ways that are very good, I think, for the future of the Jewish people. Emblematic of that change was the installation just last week of a new Chancellor at JTS, Dr. Arnold Eisen. Dr. Eisen, a respected professor of Sociology, who has made a distinguished career of studying the American Jewish community, was installed as the seventh Chancellor in JTS's 120 year history. When his election was first announced last year, many saw the choice as a major departure from the past, not only because Eisen is not a Rabbi, but because the norm for decades had been to elect a Rabbi who was also a Professor of History. Historians look back into our texts and help us understand from where we have come. Sociologists look at the present moment as well as the past, to try to assess where we are heading.In the short time since his appointment, Chancellor Eisen has shepherded the process through which the Seminary Faculty voted to admit Gays and Lesbians into Rabbinical School, he has traveled the country talking to Rabbis and synagogue leaders, as well as regular "Jews in the pews", and he has challenged each of us, you and me, to take on a particular task today. Chancellor Eisen has asked Conservative Rabbis to begin a discussion in their congregations this Rosh Hashannah on Mitzvah - commandment. What mitzvoth do we feel obligated to perform? What are the mitzvoth that bind us together as a community?
The Chancellor isn't asking us to talk philosophy today. He is asking us to answer some basic questions that describe our personal experience:
What actions do you feel obligated to perform as a Jewish human being? For example, do you feel obligated to be sitting here today in Rosh Hashanna services, or to fast next week on Yom Kippur? Do you feel obligated to give tzedakah to Jewish or non-Jewish causes? Do you feel an obligation to take action on international issues such as genocide in Darfur, or to be involved in local issues in the town in which you live? Do you feel an obligation to support Israel financially, or write letters to politicians on behalf of Israel, or to visit Israel?
Are these obligations, if you consider them such- of the same sort or of a different sort than the following?
Each of these things falls under a specific category of mitzvah- bein adam l'makom, mitzvoth between Man and God or Mitzvot bein adam l'chaveiro, mitzvoth between Man and his fellow human beings. But when we perform them, do we identify them as mitzvoth? And if we do, do think of mitzvah as 'a good deed", or more pointedly, as an obligation, or "commandment?"
And what then, is the source of authority for the mitzvoth that you perform? Let me offer you a variety of answers to consider:
I believe that Chancellor Eisen is asking us to consider these questions because he understands that the Jewish community as a whole, and the Conservative Movement in particular, are at a crossroads. Conservative congregations are aging. Once the largest movement among American Jews, its numbers are beginning to drop off. In Dr. Eisen's work as a sociologist, he describes the phenomenon of the "postmodern" Jew. This term connotes several things.
Post modern Jews feel proud of their Jewishness, but feel under no obligation to be told what to do by it. Personal Autonomy is chief among the values that they uphold. Thus, the post modern Jew freely picks and chooses her practices, from within Judaism and from without.
Post modern Jews are less motivated by the meta- story of the Jewish people- the Exodus, Sinai, inheriting the Land of Israel- than they are by the meaning they find in their individual personal journeys. Whereas earlier generations of Jews were swayed by the call of tradition, and by the concepts of Covenant, and Divine Kingship, so central to our liturgy on this day, these Jews are not. Their Jewish identity is constructed out of uniquely personal experiences and memories, rather than by the collective Jewish memory.
Eisen writes:Indeed, if those we interviewed are and seek to be autonomous, sovereign selves, who carefully weigh every commitment they make and no less carefully guard their options for transferring commitments as they please, they are only exhibiting in the Jewish realm attitudes and behaviors which are demanded of them in every other realm of contemporary American life. Jewish families inculcate independence, initiative, agility, and personal drive no less than any other middle-class families, and savor the rewards these attributes bring no less than any others. Our subjects, at times, seem to recognize that the kind of selves they have been raised to become does not always jibe with the models of self put forward by the Jewish tradition.
I suspect that being truly "post modern" falls along generational lines. Yet all of us are influenced by the ideal of the "autonomous self," because of the culture in which we live. I'll prove it to you. See how you react to the following scenario:
Suppose two people who have the exact same earnings and expenses are approached by a poor man in need of food and money for his family. The first person, after listening to the man's horrible experiences, cries and then out of the goodness of his heart gives him five dollars. The second person, although concerned, does not cry, but in fact has to rush away. But because his religion commands him to give ten percent of his income to charity, he gives the poor person a hundred dollars. Who did the better thing- the person who gave five dollars from his heart, or the one who gave a hundred dollars because his religion commanded it? (Dennis Prager)Think about it. Are you drawn more to the person whose heart was so touched by another's plight, that he was moved to help, regardless of the amount that he gave? Or do you give more credit to the individual who was less moved, but who gave deeply from his pocket because it was required, because, as we would say, because it is a mitzvah?
Rabbi Joseph Telushkin reports that 70 to 90% of high school students who were presented with this scenario asserted that the person who gave the five dollars from his heart did the better deed. Our society gives you a lot more credit for acting spontaneously, from the heart, on your own free and unencumbered will, then out of a sense of obligation, even if the end result is less meaningful. However, when the same students were asked to reevaluate their response if they were the individual in need, they were caught up short!
You probably know what the Rabbis' answer is to this scenario: Amar Rabbi Hanina: Gadol metzuveh v'oseh mimi she lo metsuveh v'oseh: Rabbi Hanina teaches: He who is commanded and fulfills, is greater than he who is not commanded and fulfills."
For several years, I have taught this text to adults, who find it totally counterintuitive. How can it be better to act under obligation than to perform an act of one's own free will?
But we fall into a trap if we think that autonomy and obligation are mutually exclusive categories. Judaism stands or falls on our ability to freely choose. There would be no meaning to these Days of Awe otherwise. And yet, isn't there a certain nobility in freely choosing to enter into a covenant, in freely choosing to take on obligations? We do this all the time. It makes us responsible human beings.
The tension between autonomy and obligation is hardly new in Jewish thought. Let me remind you of two mutually contradictory midrashim regarding the revelation at Sinai that illustrate this. In the first Midrash, the Rabbis picture God shopping the Ten Commandments among the nations, trying to find a taker. The first nation says, "well, they look good, bur I don't know, we like adultery, I don' think we can give that up." The next nation says, "idolatry? Oh we're crazy about our idols- power, money, sex- we can't give them up. This goes on until finally God gets to the Jewish people who distinguish themselves from among all the nations by declaring willingly and enthusiastically, "Na'Aseh v'Nishma! We will do and we will obey."
That's the first midrash. Now in the second midrash, the Rabbis remark on the Biblical verse that reports that we, the Jewish people, stood "B'tachit HaHar- at the foot of the mountain". The phrase can mean, literally, underneath the mountain. And so the Rabbis picture God literally uprooting Mount Sinai and holding it over Israel's head, coercing Israel until they are forced to say, " Na'aseh v'Nishma! We will do and we will obey"!
We teach our children independence and decision making. Yet, if your child confronts a schoolyard injustice, do you really want her to weigh too much whether or not, as an independent agent, she should act responsibly, or wouldn't you want her to act immediately and directly, under a sense of moral obligation? Which would make you more proud? A religious tradition that commands can awaken within us the moral sensibility to act courageously as if we are compelled to do so.
One question is can traditional Judaism speak to the Jew on the edge of postmodernism? Can we speak the language of personal journey and fulfillment, and still craft a message of mitzvah, of obligation, that can be understood and embraced? I believe that it is the unique task of Conservative Judaism to take on this challenge, because we are the movement that holds the broad center. We are the movement that both embraces a non-fundamentalist, historical approach to the tradition, and maintains that Judaism must embrace law and obligation in order to be authentic and true to its past.
For me, Conservative Judaism has always been the path that offers us an unlimited array of opportunities to serve God, to fulfill our potential, through Mitzvot. And if we have not fulfilled our obligations to tikkun olam this year, to building a better world through social action, that's alright. That's why we have Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur, so that we can take a good hard look at ourselves and do better in the year to come. And if we have not fulfilled our obligation to praise and to celebrate, to gather around our Shabbat tables each week with family and friends, that's ok to, because we have an opportunity to take a look at our lives today, and do better in the coming year. And if we have not fulfilled our obligation to support Israel with our voices, and our letters, and our physical presence, why that's alright too, because hopefully we will grow into our responsibility this year regarding those mitzvoth as well. The important thing is that we are on a journey, a process, of growing into the responsibilities, the mitzvoth, with which Judaism challenges us.
So please begin this broad community discussion today, at your holiday table. What actions do you feel obligated to perform as a Jewish human being? What do you recognize as the source of authority of those mitzvoth:
Is it God? Is it the still small voice of conscience? Is it gratitude? Is it obligation? Love of this tradition? These are not mutually exclusive answers. Consider the possibility that God speaks to you, even compels you, through all of these ways. In this first step, this lunchtime heshbon hanefesh, you may find that you have taken a step in becoming a more committed Jew, a more responsible human being, a partner with the Almighty in repairing and renewing this world.
L'Shannah Tovah Tikateivu; May you be written in the book of life for a year of health, of happiness, of fulfillment, and of meaning.