And Reporting on Rabbis She Knew Was a Sin

 

I recently introduced my eldest to the dark comic songs of Tom Lehrer. He particularly likes the Irish Ballad which is about a girl who brutally murders her family. The song includes the lines: "And when, at last, the police came by, her little pranks she did not deny. To do so she would have had to lie and lying she knew was a sin." At one point, my son came over to me and in a very serious voice explained to me that he understood what was so funny about the song. "She knew that she should not lie but did not know that she should not kill her family." 

Humor is a very difficult art to master even for smart kids because to be funny requires that you have a baseline understanding of social expectations and how they may be illogical or subverted. For example, familicide is something so horrific that it should not be the subject of jokes. Part of what makes Lehrer funny, though, is precisely his transgressiveness in violating such a taboo. We find ourselves laughing because we know that we should not laugh. This is such an incredibly difficult balance to strike that no consistent rules can be given for doing so. Sometimes jokes are funny because they strike at a truth that we may not wish to admit to so we laugh and pretend that it is a joke. The power of the girl caring more about honesty than murder lies in the fact that it strikes at a real hypocrisy where the petty rules we use to instruct children can come to outweigh actual crimes. 

I bring this up because we are seeing this routine play itself out in the case of Chaim Walder (may his name and books be erased). For those unfamiliar with what has transpired, Walder was a popular children's author within the Haredi community until he was revealed to be a serial abuser. Rather than face judgment, Walder committed suicide on his son's grave. In this final act, Walder displayed a diabolical genius. He was a masterful writer and I confess that I liked his books and had been reading them with my son. As such, Walder understood the importance of an ending for giving readers an emotional body blow and affecting how they think of the entire story. By killing himself before the full extent of his crimes could be publicized, he got to end his story as the "victim" driven to kill himself by his accusers. Did his strategy work? One of his victims committed suicide herself and the Walder family was visited by many prominent rabbis during their period of mourning. By and large, the Haredi press chose to report on Walder's death as we might have expected them to before his downfall. 

One gets the sense that for many in the Haredi world, Walder's accusers, by going public, committed an even graver sin than Walder's abuse. There have been jokes circulating about how if only Walder had only touched girls to ordain them as rabbis then we could have had a real scandal. This joke stands on the shoulder of an older joke of how if activists wanted to get people's attention they should have lied and claimed that Haredi abusers were really handing kids candy without a good kosher certification. It needs to be understood that, underneath these jokes, lies the frightening truth that a large part of the Haredi leadership is not simply naive or lacking in empathy but honestly believes that speaking out about abuse really is worse than the abuse itself. 

This sounds absurd until you realize that there is a perfectly logical argument to be made here that speaking out about abuse, unlike actual abuse, undermines the entire community. The practical conclusion from this is, of course, utterly monstrous but if you are willing to accept the argument on its premises then you should be willing to bite the bullet and truly believe that it is worse to speak out about abuse than even to commit it.  

To start, we have to understand that Haredim, like most traditional societies, lack a category for a sexual abuser. Instead, what we have are the categories of rape and adultery. Walder clearly was not a rapist in the sense of jumping his victims in dark alleys. This means, that we are left accusing Walder of committing adultery with his victims, who were his "willing accomplices" and not victims at all. Obviously, what is being left out is a category to describe middle-aged men in positions of power who can intimidate and manipulate emotionally vulnerable teenagers, destroying their lives even to the point of causing them to commit suicide. 

One would still hope that adultery would be treated as a serious offense as it is in the Ten Commandments. The truth is that adultery, particularly when practiced by men, is treated as a minor sin. What needs to be understood is that adultery is a private sin and, as such, it can be left to the individual as they bang their chests on Yom Kippur. As long as the adultery takes place behind closed doors and does not reach the general public, the sin, in no way, threatens community authority and, by extension, the survival of the system. 

Not only do male adultery and even rape not threaten the system, but they can even actually help strengthen it. Rape sends girls the message that it is their responsibility not to be in certain places or behave in certain ways otherwise "bad things" will happen to them and it will be their "fault." Traditional societies have long tolerated prostitution on the logic that turning a blind eye to men sleeping with strangers made it more likely that they would consent to staying in loveless marriages and not divorce or have affairs with their neighbors and cause a scandal. Instead of prostitutes, what we have are vulnerable teenagers, who can be relied upon to stay silent knowing that they really "wanted it" and they will only destroy themselves and embarrass their families if they speak up.  

In contrast to the adulterer who has only committed a "minor" private sin, the abuse victim who speaks out has committed the ultimate "sin." Their action is public and directly threatens the survival of the system. Make no mistake, there are going to be teenagers who will read up on scandals like that of Walder and find the strength to tell their parents that they do not want to be religious and the parents will find themselves silenced because they are too ashamed to speak up for their faith. One thinks of the example of Ireland, where there has been a mass exodus from Catholicism among the youth because of abuse scandals within the Church. 

It should be recognized that the truly deadly scandal with clerical abuse scandals (whether Jewish or Catholic) has not been the fact that religious figures abused children. The real scandal has always been the wider coverups and the fact that the system cared more about its reputation than helping actual victims. The rabbis who gave Walder the funeral he desired, have likely done more damage to Judaism than Walder ever could. Even with this being the case, those rabbis clearly cannot shake the idea that if only Walder's victims had remained silent the "real" problem would have been solved and the Haredi world would be able to show itself to the world and its members in a desirable light

 .     

History 111: Candide and the Innate Goodness of Man (Part II)

(Part I)

If medieval and early modern Christianity had a pessimistic view of human nature in which man is innately sinful and can only be kept in check by Church and State, we moderns tend to have a rather optimistic view of human nature that stresses man's innate natural goodness. This too has consequences for both theology and politics. If man is good then it stands to reason that he can achieve salvation through his own means without the aid of the Church. Now it becomes possible to talk about human reason as the bar against which to judge all things. Only someone confident in the intrinsic goodness of human beings could allow them to judge the world around them and do it based on what is innate to them. As for politics, a belief in human goodness allows for human beings to craft their own laws. We can even begin to talk about government as a contract between equals instead of the dictates of a patriarch to his children, leading to liberal democracy.

The legacy of this notion of human goodness still presents itself in our debates over crime and punishment and foreign policy. Why do people commit crimes? A conservative would say it is because they are "bad" people, motivated by greed and malice. In order to protect itself, society must remove this person from its midsts, either through prison or even the death penalty. Punishment is something that the person deserves as his just deserts. In the liberal model crime results from either mental illness, being raised in a problematic society or simply bad education. One way or another it is not the person's fault and the purpose of any "punishment" is not to penalize the person, but "rehabilitate" them. (See "C. S. Lewis on the Implications of the Nazi Holocaust.") Why are there terrorists? The conservative will tell you that it is because they are "evil" and hate "freedom." Naturally, such people can only be stopped by invading other countries and killing those people who deserve it. The liberal will tell that terrorists are the products of economic inequality, the legacy of colonialism and a fundamentalist education that preaches hate. Agree to peace talks, address the massive economic inequalities across the globe and provide a proper education for all and terrorism will disappear.

Now even the liberal acknowledges that there is much that is wrong with the world. Rather then lay the blame on people, the blame is placed on society. It is society that creates inequalities and teaches prejudice. People, left to their own devices, would naturally wish to live in harmony with others, recognizing the common humanity of all, and would not be bothered by the existence of other races and creeds. People have to be taught to hate others because of the color of their skin and the deity they pray to. The good news is that people can be saved from their own prejudices. With a properly funded welfare program, civil rights legislation and tolerant education, the natural human goodness in people will reassert itself and stand against all the ills created by society in the first place.

This brings us to Candide, a novel that represents this Enlightenment shift in how one views humanity. Candide is naturally good. Contrary to a simplistic view of the character, Candide is not stupid (a mistake made by the modern day adaptation, Forrest Gump). Candide is simply naive due to the fact that he is raised with no experience with the world. This is crucial to the character because it is precisely this lack of worldliness that allows for Candide's goodness. Candide does not suffer from greed, does not hate anyone and only wishes to live in brotherhood with all. Candide is not even capable of understanding the possibility that other people are not like this. The reason for this is that Candide exists completely uncorrupted by society. (This idea would be taken even further by Rousseau.)

It is for this reason that Voltaire subverts the garden of Eden story. Instead of Adam and Eve committing Original Sin, willfully disobeying the divine commandment to not eat from the tree of knowledge, and being rightfully thrown out of paradise, Candide has no notion of sin. He only wishes to experiment with the laws of "cause and effect." The fact that he kisses Cunegonde is interpreted as sin by a corrupt society, leading to him being wrongfully exiled from his beloved home in Westphalia. Instead of degenerate humans needing to be saved by righteous laws, Candide is the pure one, it is the outside system that is degenerate.


       

History 111: Candide and the Innate Goodness of Man (Part I)

(Go to 2:55 for Candide's showdown with the villainous  Jew.)


My last discussion of the early modern debate about human salvation proved surprisingly fitting for the last book we are doing, Voltaire’s Candide. Candide has the advantage of being short enough that we can go through it in two classes. If it is part of the Enlightenment, it is a critique of the old world I have spent the quarter trying to describe. If Voltaire was prejudiced against Jews, it is still one of the funniest books ever written. Candide also serves as an example of the modern shift in the understanding of human nature from a pessimistic view, in which human beings are hopelessly depraved, to a more positive view, in which humans are assumed to be innately good.

In the debate over salvation, both our Catholics and Protestants operated from the assumption of human depravity. In the Catholic model humans are just mostly depraved. We are tainted by Original Sin; while we are capable of doing good and resisting sin in specific situations, it is inevitable, barring divine intervention through grace, that we will come to sin. For example, even if I resist temptation and do not sin with a woman, the mere fact that I lusted after the woman is itself a sin; if I truly understood who God was, I never would even contemplate breaking his commandments. The fact that I would contemplate such a thing demonstrates that I am under the taint of Original Sin and of Satan. From this perspective it may be less damaging for my soul in the long run if I had given in to temptation. Now that I have not, I am in danger of believing myself to be righteous so I will never repent and I will add the sin of pride. The Catholic solution is that one needs to enter the body of the Church and come under the forgiveness earned on the cross. Being baptized and receiving the sacraments will not necessarily make me a better person; human depravity remains and I will have to answer for my sins in purgatory. By being part of the Catholic Church, though, one has access to Jesus’ atonement and can hope to eventually get out of purgatory and enter heaven.

Protestants are even more pessimistic about human nature than Catholics. Lutherans believe that man is almost completely depraved, incapable of doing any good or avoiding any sin on his own. The only redemptive feature in human nature is the ability to have faith. Calvinists are the most extreme, believing in utter human depravity and that humans can have no role in their own salvation. While, in a sense, Protestants value good works less than Catholics do, Protestants tend to agonize over the implications of their day to day works. Catholics can feel confident that, having entered the body of the Church, they are part of the saved despite their sins. With Protestantism there is no longer a set recognizable body of believers that one can belong to and be confident of salvation. Furthermore there is an assumption that one’s salvation should be manifested in good works. Thus if I am still sinning, even after being baptized as a Protestant, it is a sign that perhaps I never genuinely believed and received graced and am therefore not really one of the saved.

This view of human nature has political as well as religious implications. If I cannot hope to get right with God on my own because I am so depraved, neither can I fashion laws and a government for myself to live with others. Just as I need God to reveal his laws through the Church as I could never learn them on my own, he also needs to establish a government for me, such as a king, with rulers to keep me in line, because I could never do so on my own. Now it might happen that this king will prove corrupt as he is also a depraved human sinner. If that happens then I should take it as a punishment from God for my sins and should pray for forgiveness and ask God to change the heart of the king. Under no circumstance should I even contemplate rebellion. What basis do I have to believe that I, a depraved sinner, can possibly fashion anything better? How dare I reject the government that God saw fit, in his infinite mercy, to grant me that I may become less of a sinner.

Admittedly, already with Protestantism this model becomes more complicated. While Protestants may believe in human depravity they also believe in grace which can rectify human nature. This allows for there to be a “community of saints,” that small group of people blessed with grace. Such people would be capable of establishing their own “godly” government. It may even be their duty to seize the reins of government from an unsaved king. In the case of the English Civil War, this led to the execution of Charles I and the establishment of an English Republic under Oliver Cromwell. It also led to the Fifth Monarchy movement, which thought that Cromwell was not godly enough and tried to remove him as a limb of Satan.

At the Calvin College Symposium on Religion and Politics

I am writing to all my readers from Grand Rapids MI (my first overnight stay in the "State up North") where I am attending a symposium on religion and politics hosted by Calvin College's Paul B. Henry Institute. So to get some random thoughts in before Shabbos:

I got a ride up to the conference with another Ohio State student. I can't think of many other times where I talked to someone for nearly five hours straight, the entire car trip. He played Carl Reiner to my libertarian historian Mel Brooks. This was the perfect sort of conversation for me. I got to talk about the things that interest me such as the historical method and libertarianism and challenged by an intelligent person who disagrees with me and asks good questions leading to a conversation that I had not previously worked through every move for both sides in my head. Not that I mind questioning other people. The only problem is that I tend to turn more inquisitorial than most people would like. Not that it is personal; on the contrary, I do not care about people's lives, but only their views of life and whether they are coherent and consistent. Though failure to do so is something I take personally.

I gave a presentation this morning of a draft of my dissertation chapter on Joachim of Fiore and Isaac Abarbanel. Where else but a Protestant institution should a Jew go to talk about Catholics (as well as Jews)? I was the odd man out in my discussion panel in that I was not talking about Thomas Hobbes. (Who could resist at an institution named Calvin?) In general, this has been a very political science conference so it was probably the perfect place to announce to political science people that the study of political history is a political act in that it makes politics relevant and so historians like me are needed to make their academic lives meaningful. Then again perhaps my work will convince some of these political science people to not despair that even though the apocalypse might come, ushering in the end of earthly politics, their studies might still yet not have been in vain. 

At one of the sessions, there were two presentations that were open Christian apologetics. The first argued against non-theistic understandings of the moral imperative to obey authority figures. The second was a defense of Jonathan Edwards' understanding of Original Sin. Edwards argued that if every being was born independently and untainted by Original Sin then every person would be the equivalent of the prelapsarian Adam. Adam as an innocent being in total communion with God was incapable of having any knowledge of sin and evil. Because of this he could not identify evil and resist it. This leads to a cosmology of consistent decay where every person falls from grace when confronted with sin just like Adam. In the Edwardian cosmology, everyone is corrupt from the beginning, but we can then take a more upwards view of things as people at least try to improve themselves. 

This was my first conference hosted by a religious institution so maybe it should have been expected. As a historian, though, I take for granted the fact that my job is to describe "who," "what," "when," "where" and "why," but not "should." I write about messianism, but there is nothing in what I do that can suggest one way or another whether a messiah might be coming or when. My Carl Reiner friend pointed out that coming from a political science perspective there may not be such a simple bifurcation. That is an interesting point; does political science force one out of the neutrality of mere description and into actual advocacy?   

Have a good Shabbos everyone.   

The Ethical Case Against Sex Outside of Marriage (Part I)

Ever since the sixties, those of us who profess an opposition to sexual activity outside of marriage have been on the defensive. Sex outside of marriage has always been common, but now those of us who actually live up to this standard seem to now be in a heavy minority. Those of us pushing abstinence education are in a difficult position. We cannot directly use religious arguments to make our case so we resorted to making it a health issue. The problem with this is that, by the normal standards of safety, sex done in the manner prescribed by social progressives, with condoms and birth-control pills, is not physically particularly dangerous; certainly no more so than skiing or teenage driving. There is a heavy stench of dishonesty hanging over this whole issue. The reason why conservatives want to spend millions of dollars promoting abstinence programs in schools is not because they are in a panic about STDs. It is because religious Christians believe that pre-marital sex is a sin and they do not want teenagers engaging in it. Conservatives have fumbled the ball and left the moral case wide open for the liberal side. Within the context of the sixties narrative, liberals have been able to make the moral argument that conservatives, by focusing on sex and ignoring the racism of the culture around them, were the immoral ones. From this perspective, any act of "sexual liberation" becomes not only morally acceptable but a moral positive. This argument has been updated in recent years to include homosexuality. With all this under consideration, I do believe it is possible to formulate an argument against extra-marital sex meaningful to the most ardent secularist, one that could justify moderate government interference to discourage students from engaging in such behavior. The argument I offer is no less than sex outside of marriage is fundamentally unethical.  

When most people hear about the immorality of sex they conjure images of repressed hypocritical Victorians. Therefore it is all the more important to define what we mean by sex outside of marriage being unethical. Sexual activity is problematic in that the action itself, by definition, involves physically using another person's very body as a means for gaining pleasure for one's self. This is a very basic violation of Kant's categorical imperative that all humans must be treated as ends and not as means. (Kant even took this to the extreme position of saying that masturbation was unethical because it involved using yourself as a means.)

To put this into concrete terms, you go off to a bar, pick up a girl, take her home, sleep with her and then send on her way. You have taken another human being and used them as a means to procure your own pleasure. Now you have to ask why she agreed to do this. Is it not possible that she did this because she believed that she could get you to agree to a long-term relationship and there was even falsehood and manipulation involved? This would still be an issue even when both sides have made it clear that this is supposed to only be a one night stand. Two wrongs do not make a right; two unethical people objectifying each other and using each other as a means to give themselves pleasure is simply double the unethical behavior. Furthermore, maybe one of the parties merely said this because they believed that with their talent and personality they would be able to convince the other to stay on. (You see a similar line of logic in regards to gambling. There are many rabbinic authorities who argue that gambling is a form of theft because the losing party only made the bet on the assumption that he would win. So to take the money from him involves taking something of his against his will.)

This is not just some ethereal issue, only relevant to students of Kantian thought; it is the foundation of all intellectually honest liberalism, explaining why all forms of tyranny are inherently unethical. Any system that views individual people as simply means to serve the larger good or the good of the elites is unethical. Ask a liberal why slavery and segregation are by definition wrong and even evil. If that liberal is a Kantian he can explain that these institutions violate a categorical imperative; it places blacks in situations where they cease to have inherent value as beings in an ongoing process of becoming more rational and only serve to benefit whites. Without this Kantian imperative, we are left with vague mutterings of taste and personal feelings. If my arguments against white supremacists carry the same universal validity as my arguments against their stylistic choices in neckties then I have lost the debate.

(To be continued …)

Rabbi Yissocher Frand on Shabbos and Repentance

This past evening Rabbi Yissocher Frand spoke in Silver Spring at one of the local congregations, Shomrei Emunah. I went, not expecting much, simply to fill in as a neighborly blogger, reporting on the important events of in the community. To my surprise, Rabbi Frand managed to exceed expectations (granted that is quite easy when you have expectations as low as mine). There was nothing seriously offensive and nothing particularly heretical in his speech. Rabbi Frand even brought down a story by Rabbi Yosef Ber Soloveitchik. Here are my notes. As usual, any mistakes are mine. Since this blog is read by a wide variety of people, I have taken the liberty of translating many of the Hebrew terms Rabbi Frand’s uses.

There is a tendency to relapse back to undesirable behavior. Even if we actually repent we slip back and our efforts go for not. This is one of the main impediments to repentance. Repentance is like dieting. We might lose a few pounds but we know that we will get it back. I speak from personal experience. In past years I have suggested numerous things. This year I would like to suggest a new approach. This does not involve taking on something new. My suggestion is to keep Shabbos. Most of you have kept Shabbos all of your lives without the intended result. What does Shabbos have to do with repentance? There is a story about a person who was involved in five accidents. It was shown that four were not his fault. The insurance company still wanted to drop him because of “bad karma.” Rabbi Weinberg advised this man that these accidents were a form of stoning because of violating Shabbos. This was a Shabbos observing family so what does it mean that they violated Shabbos. Rabbi Weinberg asked what the household looked like before Shabbos. It was chaotic and the man’s wife often lit candles less than eighteen minutes before Shabbos. This was changed and the policy was reinstated now that the “religious problem” was taken care of. (I have a problem with anything that implies that God is likely to directly interfere in the lives of lay individuals to punish them. It smacks too much of an arbitrary father in the sky, landlord deity. Insurance companies deal with odds. They of all people should understand that, statistically, you will get people who have five accidents and most of them not their fault. If the people who are supposed to understand statistics are failing in the defense of reason then we are in serious trouble.)

What does Shabbos have to do with repentance? We know the story of Cain and Abel. God curses Cain and Cain exclaims that he could not bear the punishment. God puts a mark so that no one would harm Cain. Cain goes out from God. According to the Midrash, Adam asked Cain what happened and Cain said that he repented and that God forgave him. Adam exclaimed how great repentance was and sang the song of Shabbos (Psalms 92). Adam did not know about repentance? Why is his reaction to sing about Shabbos? According to the Nesivos Shalom (Rabbi Sholom Noach Berezovsky, the previous Slonimer Rebbe), Cain was not just worried about his physical being, Cain was worried about his soul. Cain was being banished to a world of temptation and he knew that he could not survive that. God made a sign. That sign was Shabbos, which is called a sign. God was offering a solution to Cain, that he could keep Shabbos and save himself. This was what excited Adam. He knew about repentance but never connected Shabbos to repentance. (My father is a big fan of Nesivos Shalom as is my thesis advisor.) Sin does something to someone’s soul, just like a stroke affects a person’s mind, cutting off the connection between the brain and the rest of the body. Shabbos is the spiritual therapy that restores the damaged connection to God. We are constantly assaulted in this world. But as the Zohar says, Shabbos is the day the soul is restored.

Rabbi Yosef Ber Soloveitchik, in one of his sermons on repentance, told over how, as a child, he used to go to a Modzitz shtiebel (small synagogue). The Hasidism would sing into the evening because they did not want Shabbos to end. There was a porter there whom he knew from his weekday work. Rabbi Soloveitchik could not recognize the man’s regal bearing on Shabbos. Rabbi Soloveitchik, as the Litvak (Lithuanian), asked when the evening services were. The man responded: “are you so impatient for Shabbos to end?”

Back in the old times, when it was still okay to go to movies, they would show newsreels. In 1933 the Munkatcher rebbe’s daughter got married and this got onto the newsreels. You can check this on Youtube. (There is a group of little boys and girls singing Hatikvah and a large group of older children engaged in mixed dancing.) It was a major event. The Rebbe got the chance to speak to Jews in America and he told them to keep Shabbos. The Rebbe, who did not like pictures, agreed to be in a movie so he could speak to American Jews and tell them about Shabbos.

I am not a Hasid; my parents were German Jews. I eat gabruchts (wet matza) on Passover and put tefillin on during Chol HaMoed with a bracha (blessing). There is one thing that I envy about Hasidim, Shabbos. Go to New Square for Shabbos, go to Belz. The better the Shabbos you have the better your soul will be and this will help repentance last. It will allow us to stave of what the world throws against us. If Shabbos is merely a day to crash it will not have the desired effect. There is a program called “Turn Friday Night Into Shabbos.” We need a program to turn Shabbos into Shabbos.

The problem with Shabbos is that it happens every week. We take it for granted. There was a rabbi who had a conversation with a Roman Catholic from Topeka Kansas on a plane. The Catholic asked the rabbi if he kept Shabbos like when the woman of the house, in her finest, lights candles and the family sits down to a meal with silverware and crystal. The Catholic had the advantage of only seeing one or two Shabbosim.

If you want to appreciate something invest in it; buy and read books on Shabbos. We need to stop doing certain things in regards to Shabbos. Try praying at a slower pace; try coming early and say Psalms. Limit your reading to things that are not secular, no newspaper, no sports, no business. The words “never mind Shabbos” should never cross our lips. You have to want Shabbos. Women have the advantage in that they already actively prepare for Shabbos. All they have to do is think about it. I have a letter from a woman who decided to accept Shabbos by midday on Friday. Is this woman crazy? She heard her daughter complain about it being Shabbos because Friday was such a tense time. Now her children come from school to a calm home. Now her children are used to her planning for Shabbos all week long because she cannot start planning Thursday at midnight. (I can easily see this only exacerbating the problem.)

Rabbi Mattisyahu Salomon writes that there is no better way to install faith in children than Shabbos. We all know the temptations that our children are up against. I tell my wife that I am glad that we are out of the child raising business. Let our children deal with it.

I would like to close with an atypical Holocaust story. Judith Novack wrote a book called The Lilac Bush about her experiences. In her town they would speak Hungarian during the week but only Yiddish on Shabbos. In 1944 when the Jews were deported, she was the only one to survive. After liberation she and other survivors got on a train to go back home. They hatched a plot to throw rocks at the synagogue to show how angry they were at God. When she picked up the rock she remembered her Shabbos table. She thought how she could not bear to live her life without Shabbos.

A Gift for Rosh Hashana (Part I)

We are now approaching Rosh Hashana, the Jewish New Year. Like the secular New Year, Rosh Hashana is about taking stock of one’s actions and making resolutions for the upcoming year. Unlike the secular New Year, though, Rosh Hashana is also the first half of the Day of Judgment. In Jewish tradition, on Rosh Hashana God’s decrees are written and on Yom Kippur they are sealed. The resolutions that one makes take place within the context of this Day of Judgment. While it may be out of fashion today, Judaism does believe in a judging God. We are the religion of the Old Testament. The God we believe in has very specific ideas about right and wrong and about sin. Each individual is responsible for his actions and there are penalties for failing to live up to one’s responsibilities. The classic Christian trope is to create this bifurcation between the judging God of the Old Testament and the loving forgiving God of the New Testament. For me, the notion of a loving and forgiving God only makes sense within the context of a God of judgment. If sin means nothing then what is there to judge and if there is nothing to judge what is there to forgive and what need is there for love? It is only once we acknowledge the reality of sin and that we are being rightfully judged for it that we can even begin to talk about forgiveness and love.

Of course just because sin and judgment are real it does not mean that love and forgiveness are also real. Sin and judgment allow there to be love and forgiveness but it leaves them as faint echoes, incredible rumors that come from far away. Is it really possible that this whisper from a faraway land can stand against the concrete reality of sin and judgment? This is something that so defies the mind that Christianity needed to come up with the claim that God himself came down in human form and allowed himself to be crucified so that they could justify believing in it.

The Jewish belief is far more radical. We believe that the same wrathful judging God is willing to forgive us. We believe that this wrathful judging God is sitting there and waiting for us to come and ask him to forgive us. This is something that is completely absurd and that requires absolute gall. What right do we have to be forgiven? How dare we ask for forgiveness? Judaism asks us to take a leap into the absurd far more radical than any Christian claim of incarnation or vicarious atonement. We are asking our rational God to do something that transcends the bounds of reason.

This brings us to the second aspect of this Day of Judgment, your fellow man. On Rosh Hashana, we also ask those we have wronged to forgive us. In fact, our sins against people are the more serious concern on this Day of Judgment. God can only forgive those sins that we commit against him. That which we do against our fellow man can only be forgiven by those whom we have sinned against.

So we ask both God and man to forgive us at the same time. These two actions are connected to each other and, in a sense, it is a blessing that these are being done simultaneously for the later can help us believe in the former. The act of people seeking forgiveness from other people helps us to believe in the reality of forgiveness. There are two parts to forgiveness, asking for forgiveness and granting it. Yes, there is a miracle in finding forgiveness in the eyes of others, but the true experience of the miracle comes in forgiving. How does it happen that one knows that they are in the right and yet somehow decides to let go of that right? For me, this is particularly difficult to fathom. As my father used to tell me: “You would rather be right than be happy.” Forgiveness is not one of my natural virtues and I often struggle to find it in me to forgive others even when I want to yet I have experienced moments where, for some unfathomable reason, I find myself able to just take my pain, hurt, anger and sense of my being right and just let it float away. This is nothing less than the miracle of Grace. This miracle allows me to believe in other miracles. Because I have experienced this miracle of my being able to forgive I can also believe in the miracle of others forgiving me and I can even believe in that ultimate miracle, that God can forgive me.

(To be continued …)

Homosexual Orthodox Rabbis: A Medieval Perspective on a Modern Problem

Recently I had a conversation with an old friend of mine, Yekutiel Ish-Tob, whom I had not spoken to in a while. Ish-Tob is a poster child for Modern Orthodox Judaism; he is a deeply religious person, who is studying full time to become a rabbi, but who is also worldly and open-minded. I always thought of Ish-Tob as a fairly liberal person, so maybe this should not have come as a surprise, but I was still caught off guard when he told me that he supported the ordination of openly homosexual rabbis, even, in theory, those who were not celibate. I like to think of myself as a liberal as well when it comes to gay rights. I oppose anti-sodomy laws and all forms of legalized discrimination against homosexuals. I even support government sanctioned gay marriage, albeit not as a constitutional right. Nevertheless, I still view homosexual sex as a serious sin. Therefore I do not support the toleration of homosexual activity within the confines of the Orthodox community and would not condone allowing those who openly engage in such behavior to assume positions of leadership. I believe that those openly engaged in homosexual activity should be treated like those who openly engage in other sins, such as eating non-kosher food and violating the Sabbath. I admit, though, that there is an important difference when dealing with homosexuality, and in this sense Ish-Tob has a valid point, that, in this day and age, sexuality, unlike eating pork or driving on Saturday, is viewed as a basic right; therefore to deny people any form of sexual expression is to take away an essential part of their humanity.

I find myself in a funny situation, mainly because I spend so much time immersed in the world of medieval Christianity. My encounter with medieval Christianity makes me both less sympathetic and more sympathetic to Ish-Tob’s perspective. This medieval Christian world, that I live in, is full celibate priests and monks. (Yes I know that in practice many of them were not celibate.) This may sound funny coming from an Orthodox Jew, but I must admit that there is something attractive about monasticism and that the stereotypical Jewish polemical attacks are ineffective. Since I am willing to grant that celibacy is a legitimate lifestyle option, and possibly even one to be praised, I have a hard time understanding why one cannot simply tell people with homosexual orientations to either be celibate or leave the community. On the other hand, I find myself very open to medieval Christian notions of sin. Particularly the notion that we are all hapless sinners and that there are certain sins that someone might be incapable of avoiding simply through an act of will. Since it is not the person’s fault, we can do nothing but offer God’s absolution. The logical conclusion from this is that, if a person acknowledges that, as a practicing homosexual, he is a sinner, we should still embrace him as part of our faith community and not expel him. We should even allow such a person to take on leadership roles, such as the rabbinate. Since we are a community of sinners we should not think it beneath ourselves to be lead by a sinner.

Whether or not the Orthodox community ordains homosexuals as rabbis, one must admit that we ignore homosexuals at our own peril. Approximately five to ten percent of any given population, including ours, is going to be oriented toward homosexuality. We cannot afford to simply write off such a percentage of our population. In this, I fully agree with Ish-Tob.

Sin, Safed and Lurianic Kabbalah.

Lawrence Fine’s Physician of the Soul Healer of the Cosmos: Isaac Luria and His Kabbalistic Fellowship is a sociological analysis of Isaac Luria (1534-72), the central figure of sixteenth century Kabbalah, and the circle that surrounded him. Fine is not particularly interested in the theology of Luria per se, that ground having already been thoroughly covered by Gershom Scholem. Instead Fine approaches Luria from the perspective of Luria’s distinct practices. Fine is less interested in Luria theology of exile and redemption than the sort of rituals that Luria and his followers engaged in order to bring about redemption. This sort of prax based approach is important when dealing with the Jewish History. Judaism is a highly prax based religion; everything has to make itself relevant in terms of ritual practice, halacha. Any discussion of Judaism that remains solely in the theoretical realm of theology is missing something. Fine is following Moshe Idel’s criticism of Scholem’ treatment of Kabbalah, as primarily a theology and as something separate from rabbinic Judaism. Fine’s treatment of Luria keeps him within the framework of rabbinic Judaism and of halacha.

What I found most interesting about this book was Fine’s discussion of the penances that Luria proscribed for various sins. Figuring prominently within the list of sins, we have from his student, Hayyim Vital, are drinking gentile wine, committing sins which require one of the four types of capital punishment, sexual relations with a menstruant, relations with an animal, sleeping with gentile women, adultery, sodomy and masturbation. According to Vital, he learned of Luria’s proscribed penance for homosexuality from three people who actually carried it out. Luria’s remedy was that a person should fast for 233 days, which is the numerical equivalent of the Hebrew word regel, foot. This denotes the part of the Ze’ir that the sin displaced the saphira of Yesod into

The fact that such emphasis was placed on how to repent from sexual transgressions raises some questions as to nature of the people living in Safed in the sixteenth century. If you read Haredi “history” books, all you will hear about sixteenth century Safed is that it was a holy city, full of holy people. In truth Safed was a much more interesting and dynamic place. Clearly the city contained people who had a lot more weighing on their consciousness then missing morning prayers every once in awhile. For one thing many of the people, who migrated to Safed, were ex-conversos, who had lived as Christians for significant parts of their lives. Many of them had left behind non Jewish wives and children. To say nothing of the sins that people committed while living in Safed. Safed was not Lakewood or the Mir; it was an openly dysfunctional place and that was the point of it.

This sinful side of Safed is important for understanding the community and Luria. More than any other movement within traditional Judaism, Lurianic Kabbalah confronted the reality of sin in this world. The goal of Lurianic Kabbalah was to bring about the redemption of the world by redeeming the divine sparks that trapped by the forces of darkness, which in the terminology of Lurianic Kabbalah is referred to as the qelippot, the shells. It is not enough to simply remove oneself from the world and be holy; one has to confront the forces of sin. In effect one tries to redeem even sin. This is not the theology of people convinced of their utter righteousness; this is the theology of people confronting their own sinfulness.

More on My Favorite Friendly Neighborhood Vampires: Alice Cullen and a Bit on Sin and Damnation.

My favorite character in the Twilight series is, without a doubt, Alice Cullen. She is small, dark-haired and is constantly described in the books as having pixie-like features. She is a high energy almost manic individual. Think of her as the very sweet but pushy rich girl, who is devoted to remaking other people’s lives, particularly Bella’s, and is convinced that she knows what is best for everyone else. In Alice’s case though she sort of really does know what is best for everyone else as she has the knack for seeing glimpses of the future. Amongst other things, this gives her quite a talent for picking stocks. Meyer does an effective job in handling Alice’s talent, focusing mostly on the holes in Alice’s sight and how things go wrong. Werewolves are completely outside of her line of vision. As the Cullens are living next door to a whole pack of werewolves this is a pretty serious limitation. Alice’s other limitation is that her sight is dependent upon choices that have already been made. Because of this, she cannot predict anyone making spur of the moment decisions. Anyone can avoid her sight as long as they do not make any actual plans, but simply shoot from the hip.

Alice’s background story is a sitting question mark which suggests that it is going to be an important plot point for later books. What we know about her is that she woke up in an insane asylum sometime during the 1920s as a vampire. She has no memories of having ever been human nor does she know how she ended up in the asylum or how she ended up as a vampire. The chief villain in the first book, James, indicates that he knows something about Alice’s background. Since Alice foresaw that she would one day meet the Cullens and join them, she was able from the very beginning to live in accordance with their lifestyle and never went after humans. While in search of the Cullens she found Jasper, whom she later married, and brought him along.

Of all the Cullens Jasper has the most blood-soaked history. He served as a sort of vampire “recruiting sergeant” during the nineteenth century, helping to create armies of newbie vampires which could then be used to go after rival groups. Jasper, on his own, came to reject the life that he was leading. He abandoned his comrades and tried to live cleanly. Despite the guilt that he felt over his actions he was never able to succeed at this until he met Alice and became one of the Cullens.

To analyze Meyer’s characters from the perspective of sin and salvation one could say that the vampires represent fallen mankind struggling within the grasp of sin. In this case, sin takes the form of attacking humans and drinking their blood. While the main characters in the story are all very flawed individuals, their flaws are also the flipsides of their strengths. Jasper is a man who recognizes that he is a sinner, hates sin, but is still unable to overcome his own desire for sin until he discovers law. Of all the Cullens he is the one at the greatest risk of falling away. There is an ambiguity to his personality. Do we see him as the redeemed penitent who more than any of the Cullens has overcome his nature or do we see him as a ticking bomb waiting to go off? Alice is the prophetess who, even though she did not possess the law, was still able to foresee its coming and live according to it. Carlisle is the lawgiver, who offers the others law as a way to salvation. He is the one Cullen who was able to overcome his thirst for human blood, by himself and through his own will power. Carlisle believes that vampires have souls and that they can therefore still be saved. (Because of Carlisle’s role as the teacher, lawgiver and because he is the father figure here, particularly for Edward, I strongly suspect that he is going to be killed off in the later books, leaving the others to live according to his example even though he is no longer with them.) In contrast to Carlisle, Edward does not believe that vampires have souls and assumes that they are all damned no matter how good they try to be. It is for this reason that Edward is so set on not making Bella a vampire; he wants to save her soul. From his perspective, allowing Bella to be turned into a vampire would be the most selfish thing that he could possibly do. The irony here is that in a sense, because of Edward’s “rejection” of salvation, his motives are purer than even Carlisle’s. Since Edward does not believe that there is any heaven waiting for him if he were to die at some point he has no motive for living as he does and for making the sort of sacrifices that are asked of him except sheer unselfish goodness. This is particularly poignant as he is faced with sacrificing Bella, who means everything in the world to him. Like Edward, the werewolf, Jacob Black is also out to save Bella’s soul. Ironically enough while Black is the character who is unfallen and outside of the threat of sin, of all the major characters he is the most flawed. His attempts at saving Bella’s soul come across as him trying to steal Bella from Edward for himself. Jacob is, on one hand, someone who selflessly gives of himself to others, but his very selflessness comes out as a form of selfishness. Despite all the effort being put into saving her soul, Bella is about to willingly become a vampire herself? She is Eve, willingly placing herself under the power of sin? The interesting thing is that she is doing it for all the right motives. She is acting out of her love for Edward and her desire to protect the Cullens. Whether she will fall or not still, of course, remains to be seen.

What is going to become of Carlisle’s law? This is very speculative on my part but I suspect it is meant to be a form of Old Testament law. It is built around thou shall not. It is able to stop people from sinning but is it truly able to bring salvation, as Carlisle believes? Despite all the Cullens considerable efforts they are still trapped by their vampire selves. Carlisle’s law offers no escape for that. What is needed is a new law that is built, not on though shall or shall not, but on love. Is Edward’s love for Bella meant to be this new redemptive law? To go out on a really big limb, what is behind Bella being impervious to almost all the various vampire knacks? Why are the Volturi so interested in having her made a vampire? By having her willingly join they believe they can corrupt her and use her power for their own benefit. Could it be that Bella is the pure soul who can transcend this fallen world and possibly even save it?