What Does it Mean to be Masorti?

I thought I would share some thoughts on what it means to be a Masorti Synagogue, for us (many of us) to be Masorti Jews. It’s a good Shabbat to be reflecting on and celebrating who we are -  Rosie, you and I – for me today is the nineteenth anniversary of my ordination as a Masorti Rabbi and, for you, it’s the first day of your life as a Masorti Jewish adult. And many parts of what you embody, and what you have achieved here today are intimately connected to our sense of ourselves as Masorti.

You’ve read from the Torah, you’ve taught us and you’ve led us in prayer – hugely central parts of our Jewish identity. Those words you read from the Torah are over 3,000 years old. The tune you used was fixed at least a thousand years ago.  You’ve committed yourself to our ancient traditions, and claimed you are a true Bat Mitzvah – daughter of being commanded. You’ve done things that have been done in Jewish communities for hundreds and even thousands of years.

But, as you alluded in your Devar Torah, there is something new in your being here, singing here, praying here and reading here as a young Jewish woman. I gave a sermon in November of last year on the occasion of the centenary anniversary of the first-ever Bat Mitzvah ceremony in America. And that young woman didn’t read from the Torah on that occasion. That took another few years.

For us in this country, I remember well the first meeting of what became the first egalitarian Masorti prayer community in Britain. It took place in my front room twenty-five years ago.

And it took another ten or so years for this community now, God help you all, under my rabbinic leadership, to welcome a woman onto the Bimah to read Torah. In Jewish terms, this has been a blink of an eye. And for many, still a radical and uncomfortable transformation in what Judaism looks like and sounds like; a radical transformation in, Rosie, you put it so well, who and how we count.

So what are we, as Masorti Jews? Are we conserving, preserving and maintaining. Or are we newly innovating and transforming.

On the one hand and on the other.

Well, and here’s a very Jewish answer – we’re both, but there’s a different dynamic I want to explore today, as opposed to the traditional verus the progressive.

I’ve mentioned this term Masorti – it’s a Hebrew word, made up of a three letter Hebrew root that has its most important mention in the story of the evolution of Judaism in Pirkei Avot. One of the greatest of our rabbinic texts.

Let me share the opening;

Moses received the Torah on Mount Sinai UM’SaRaH to Joshua. And Joshua to the elders, and the elders to the prophets, and Masruhah to the Men of the Great Assembly. 

You probably don’t need a rabbinic education to work out what masor means – it means to hand over, in this context to hand down through a generation. To be a Masorti Jew means to be involved in [how Judaism unfolds through generations, across time and space.

And to be a Masorti Rabbi means that, back when I was a Rabbinical student, I studied a lot of Jewish history – I studied how Judaism evolved and shifted and changed as it was passed down through the generations – Moses didn’t do it exactly like Joshua. The Jews of Temple times didn’t do it the same way as the Jews of post-destruction period. The Jews who ended up in Yemen didn’t do it the same way as the Jews who ended up in Germany, or Poland, or India, or … one of our members recently gave me a charming book about the Jews of Singapore.

None of us have ever done it quite the same as people who came before us, or will come after us, or are doing it in different parts of this glorious planet. 

To be in a Masorah is, David, Lara, I think a bit like being a parent – you want your child to find in the values you share with them values they hold dear, but you want them to do it their own way, in the context of a world that is changing fast, a world characterised by opportunities and challenges that have never been seen before.

The truth is that when you look for what Judaism really is, really has been for three thousand years, it’s less the fixed things that are the real markers, but instead the process, the unfolding, it’s a dance between a past that, for all it’s perfection then and there, needs to be re-embodied in every generation, always re-voiced, always re-newed. 

And in this generation – Rosie, the generation in which you are the newest adult member – it’s absolutely right and proper that Judaism sounds just like you, wanting to take you place, wanting to question, wanting to count, unapologetic in your leadership in public, liturgical circles.

I want to share two other insights, into this foundational text of Moses getting the torah and handing it on, the text with this foundational use of the word Masor, to transmit. It’s a learning I had really just this week, looking at some of the other, perhaps less famous appearances of the verb in the Rabbinic canon.

One is that, aside from this lovely tale of the unfolding of the traditional in Pirkei Avot, the use of the verb elsewhere in Talmudic literature always seems to refer to something being handed over and gone from the person who hands it over.

In Talmud Gittin A wicked person can be handed over to the Roman authorities – LeMasram. Handed over and gone.

And a person ready to accept martyrdom is prepared to hand over their soul to God. In Talmud Pesachim they Masru Atzman Al Kedushat haShem.

To be involved in the Masorah means to cede control of something, handing it over to a future that we, as the old folk in the room, know we cannot control, and cannot understand and aren’t going to be around to see. It’s an act of yielding. Again, this parenting analogy is, I think, right – it’s a bit like teaching a child how to ride a bike. You hold the unbalanced child up until they get going and at a certain point you have to let go otherwise they aren’t ever going to cycle themselves. That’s scary, but ultimately it has to be right, it's the only the values we have can survive in those who will come after us.

And the other piece is this. While this lovely text does indeed contain mentions of Masorah, the handing on of our tradition. It also uses the verb Kibel. It uses the verb Kibel lots, eight or nine times for every mention of the verb Masor

Kibel means to receive. Let me read on in that text,

Moses Kibel the Torah at Sinai and Masrah it to Joshua, Joshua to the elders, and the elders to the prophets, they Masruha it and the prophets to the Men of the Great Assembly. (2) Shimon was one the great assembly. Antigonus Kibel from Shimon. (4) Yose ben Yoezer and Yose ben Yohanan Kiblu from them (6) Joshua and Nittai Kiblu from them. (8) Judah and Shimon ben Shetach Kiblu from them. (10) Shemaiah and Abtalion Kiblu from them. (12) Hillel and Shammai Kiblu from them.

Masor-ing requires Kibel-ing. Handing something down through the generations requires a reception and a holding close.  I was thinking about antagonist pairs of muscles in the body – the bicep contracts, so the tricep extends.

That’s the tension in teaching a child to ride a bicycle, in trying to raise a child at all, in trying to be a Rabbi, in trying to be a Masorti Jew – we hand something on and it only works if there is a reception.

I think that’s why it’s so special to come to a BM, to feel, in Rosie, in any of this incredible cadre of upcoming New London adults, the warmth, the confidence and the strength with which you Kibel – receive and make your own this Masorah. 

May we never lose track of the remarkable thing it is to be part of this outstanding inheritance. And may those who came after us always make it their own, and receive it in order to pass it on in their own way, in their own time.

 

Shabbat Shalom

Reminds Me of a King

Mekorot in Honour of Tikkun Leyl Shavuot 5783

Mashal LeMelech

Louis Jacobs, Principles of the Jewish Faith

Maimonides is of the opinion that whatever attributes we use of God are to be understood in a negative sense. They do not tell us what God is but what He is not. Thus when we say that God is one we do not really mean to imply that we know anything about God's true nature but we merely affirm that He is not a plurality of beings. Or when we say that God is compassionate we refer to His acts, which if done by humans would be due to compassion, and that He is not cruel. Even when we say that God exists we mean that He is not non- existent.

Bereishit Rabba 2:2

The heaven and the earth… the earth was Tohu VaVohu R. Abbahu said: This may be compared to the case of a king who bought two slaves on the same bill of sale and at the same price. One he ordered to be supported at the public expense, while the other he ordered to toil for his bread. The latter sat bewildered and astonished [Tohe v’Vohe]: 'Both of us were bought at the same price exclaimed he, 'yet he is supported from the treasury whilst I have to gain my bread by my toil!'

Kach the earth sat bewildered and astonished, saying, ' The celestial beings [sc. the angels] and the terrestial ones [sc. man] were created at the same time: yet the celestial beings are fed by the radiance of the Shechinah, whereas the terrestial beings, if they do not toil, do not eat. Strange it is indeed!'

… Rabbi Tanchuma said Mashal LeVen Melech who was sleeping in his cradle, but his nurse was shocked and confused [Tohe v’Vohe]. Why? Because she knew that she was going to be punished under his hands.

Kach, the earth saw that she was going to be punished under the hands of humanity, as it is written "Cursed be the earth for your sake" (Genesis 3:17). Therefore the earth was Tohu VaVohu.

Boyarin, Intertextuality and the Reading of Midrash

The very conventionality of the mashal-proper is thus its essential element and meaning. Seen in this light, it bears a semiotic function similar to "Once upon a time, there were three brothers" in folktales, by which we know: the third brother will do something which is good, from which we are to learn.

Thus the mashal assigns the roles, as it were, to the characters in the nimshal as the King's counsellors, sons, friends, pedagogues, guards, etc., providing us the semiotic code.

 

David Stern, "Rhetoric and Midrash: The Case of the Mashal," Prooftexts

The Mashal differs distinctly from [‘allegory’ and ‘parable’]: … to bring a certain message to bear upon an ad hoc situation before its audience by suggesting it to them through an allusive tale. The allegorical, or symbolic, or referential features of the mashal exist only for the sake of enabling its audience to grasp for themselves the ulterior message the mashal bears.

In literary forms like the mashal, midrashic exegesis - its microstructure - is used merely as a raw material, as it were, for compositions whose intended purpose moves far beyond exegesis into the macrostructures of midrashic literature, (p. 276)

 

Shir HaShhirim Rabba 1:8

The rabbis say: Do not let this mashal be light in your eyes, for by means of this mashal one comes to comprehend the words of Torah. A mashal: To a king who has lost a golden coin from his house or a precious pearl – does he not find it by means of a wick worth a penny? Similarly, let not this mashal be light in your eyes, for by means of this mashal one comes to comprehend the words of Torah.

 

1.    Mekhilta d’Rabbi Yishmael Lauterbach I,224

And the angel of God, going before the Camp of Israel, moved and went behind them. And the Pillar of Cloud moved from before them and went after them (Exod. 14:19).

R. Yehudah said: a mashal; to what is the matter similar? To a king who

was going on the way, and his son went before him. Brigands came to

kidnap him from in front. He took him from in front and placed him behind

him. A wolf came behind him. He took him from behind and placed him in

front. Brigands in front and the wolf in back he (He) took him and placed

him in his (His) arms, as is said, "I taught Ephraim to walk, taking them on

My arms" (Hos.ll:3). The son began to suffer, he (He) took him on his shoulders, as is said, "in the desert which you saw, where the Lord your God carried you" (Deut. 1:31). The son began to suffer from the sun; he (He) spread on him his cloak, as is said, "He has spread a cloud as a curtain" (Ps. 105:39). He became hungry; he (He) fed him, as is said, "Behold I send bread, like rain,

from the sky" (Exod. 16:4). He became thirsty, he (He) gave him drink, as is said, "He brought streams out of the rock" (Ps. 78:16).

2.    Sifrei Devarim 313

"He found him in a desert land" (Devarim 32:10)

This refers to our father Abraham. Mashal - A king and his soldiers go out to the wilderness, whereupon his soldiers bring him to a place of afflictions, invaders, and marauders, and they abandon him — whereupon there joins him a hero, who says to him: King, do not despair; fear nothing. I swear not to leave you until you return to your palace and sleep in your bed, as it is written (in respect to Abraham, Genesis 15:7) "I am the Lord, who brought you out of Ur Kasdim, etc."

3.    Bereishit Rabba 39:1

"God said to Abram, 'Go forth from your land…'" (Genesis 12:1)

Rabbi Yitzchak said: Mashal - a man who was traveling from place to place when he saw a castle aglow. He said, "Is it possible that this castle lacks a person to look after it?" The owner of the building looked at him and said to him, 'I am the master of the castle.'" What happened with Abraham our father was similar. He said, “Is it possible that this universe lacks a person to look after it?," the Holy Blessed One looked at him and said to him, 'I am the Master of the Universe.'"

And let the king be aroused by your beauty since he is your master (Psalms 45:12) And let the king be aroused for your beauty in the universe. Hence, God said to Abram, [go forth...]

 

4.   Leviticus 18:3

You shall not copy the practices of the land of Egypt where you dwelt, or of the land of Canaan to which I am taking you; nor shall you follow their laws.

 

Leviticus Rabba 23

Rabbi Hunya said: Mashal - a king who had an only daughter and he caused her to dwell in a particular alley and they all turned out to be masters of licentiousness (ba’alei zenut). He went and caused her to dwell in another alley and they all turned out to be masters of licentiousness and masters of magic (ba’alei keshafim). Her father said to her, “My daughter, give it your attention so that you will not practice like the practice or these or like the practice of those.” Thus, when Israel was in Egypt, the Egyptians were masters of licentiousness – “. . . whose members were like those of asses . . .” (Ezek. 23:20). And when they entered the land of Canaan, the Canaanites were masters of licentiousness  and masters of magic – “Because of the countless harlotries of the harlot (zenunei zonah), the winsome mistress of sorcery (ba’alat keshafim)” (Nahum 3:4). The Holy Blessed One said to them, “My child, be cautious not to practice either like the practice of these or like the practice of those.” Thus it is written, “You shall not copy the practices ...”

5.    Talmud Yerushalmi Taanit 2:2

R. Levi said: What is the meaning of erekh ‘apayim? (lit. long in anger) Mashal – a king who had two tough legions. The king said, “If [the legions] dwell with me in the province, when the citizens of the province anger me, [the legions] will make a stand against [the citizens]. Instead, I will send the legions far away so that if the citizens of the province anger me, before I have a chance to send for [the legions], the citizens of the province will appease me and I will accept their appeasement.”

Kach the Holy Blessed One said, “Af and Hemah [synonyms for anger] are angels of devastation. I will send them far away so that if Israel angers me, before I have chance to send for them and bring them, Israel will do teshuvah and I will accept their teshuvah.” This is that which is written, They come from a distant land, from the edge of the sky [God and the weapons of his wrath–to ravage all the earth] (Isaiah 13:5).

6.   Rambam Guide to the Perplexed 3:51 (Last chapter)

I will begin the subject of this chapter with a simile. A king is in his palace, and all his subjects are partly in the country, and partly abroad. Of the former, some have their backs turned towards the king’s palace, and their faces in another direction; and some are desirous and zealous to go to the palace, seeking “to inquire in his temple,” and to minister before him, but have not yet seen even the face of the wall of the house. Of those that desire to go to the palace, some reach it, and go round about in search of the entrance gate; others have passed through the gate, and walk about in the ante-chamber; and others have succeeded in entering into the inner part of the palace, and being in the same room with the king in the royal palace. But even the latter do not immediately on entering the palace see the king, or speak to him; for, after having entered the inner part of the palace, another effort is required before they can stand before the king—at a distance, or close by—hear his words, or speak to him.

I will now explain the simile which I have made. The people who are abroad are all those that have no religion, … I consider these as irrational beings, and not as human beings… Those who are in the country, but have their backs turned towards the king’s palace, are those who possess religion, belief, and thought, but happen to hold false doctrines…But those who have succeeded in finding a proof for everything that can be proved, who have a true knowledge of God, so far as a true knowledge can be attained, and are near the truth, wherever an approach to the truth is possible, they have reached the goal, and are in the palace in which the king lives.

 

7.    The Tainted Grain -  A Parable of Rebbe Nachman of Breslav (1772-1810)

A King once told his Prime Minister who was also his good friend, 'I see in the stars that whoever eats any grain that grows this year will go mad. What is your advice?'

The Prime Minister replied, 'We must put aside enough grain so that we will not have to eat from this year's harvest.'

The King objected, 'But then we will be the only ones who will be sane. Everyone else will be mad. Therefore they will think that we are the mad ones. It is impossible for us to put aside enough grain for everyone. Therefore we too must eat this year's grain. But we will make a mark [Heb. ot] on our foreheads, so that we will know that we are mad. I will look at your forehead, and you will look at mine, and when we see this sign [Heb. ot], we will know that we are both mad.'

 

It Wasn't Just the Shaving Foam - On the 75th Anniversary of the Declaration of Israel's Independence

 

I didn’t, I’m sorry to say, enjoy the Yomei Ha’Atzmaut I spent in Jerusalem, part of a throng of thousands jostling along Ben Yehuda, being hit over the head with 6ft inflatable beeping hammers and being covered in shaving foam.

It wasn’t just the shaving foam.

It’s that I get a little uneasy with mob displays of uniformity. There’s still a place in my soul that feels uneasy at the sight of too many people all singing the same song in the same way in the same political direction. No matter what that direction.

I was listening to Alison Kaplan Sommers speaking on The Promised Podcast this week, the week of Israel’s 75^th Yom Haatzmaut. She spoke about the time when, as a young reporter in her first year as the Jerusalem Post’s Tel Aviv correspondent she reported on a pro-peace demonstration in what is now called Rabin Square. She caught the main speeches and headed home to type up her notes only to receive frantic calls to get back and cover the assassination of Yitzhak Rabin. The thing she shared, counter-intuitively, is that it was in that experience of loss and pain that she felt closer than ever to feeling a part of the narrative of the Israeli State whose independence we celebrated this week.

A closeness born in pain.

I think we have the whole thing backwards.

There used to be a cartoon in the papers called ‘love is’ and it featured a couple of lovebirds illustrated in the middle of a heart, with the words ‘love is’ at the top, and some cute aphorism underneath. I remember the illustration ‘Love is never having to say you’re sorry,’ years ago now. And I distrusted that supposed wisdom then and feel it’s worse than useless now. Love is always having to say you are sorry.

Love is always having to say you are sorry. Love is being so aware of the prospect of hurting the one you love that you tread with absolute trepidation over the aspirations and hopes of that which you love, unsure if you are somehow, supplanting their best interests with your own selfishness.

Reish Lakish in Bereishit Rabba articulates a mirroring idea even more astoundingly when he taught, ‘All love that is not accompanied with critique is not love.’ Of course he has to be right, there is a Mitzvah, a Biblical verse obliging the criticism of one’s fellow and another Mitzvah, another Biblical verse obliging the loving of one’s fellow. These two apparent opposites have to come together in a call towards living well. Surely just as love without criticism isn’t love, so too love without criticism isn’t love.

The political philosopher Mijael Bitton recently wrote about Ne’emanut – it’s a Hebrew word that has no good translation. The root, Amen, we recognise. It has something to do with the Hebrew word for a pillar or to lean.

There’s something of Newton in all this – every action needs an opposite and equal action.

Or something of the creation of the first partner in human love – the Ezer Kenegdo – the help against Adam.

As I wrote earlier in the week, there is something heart-breaking in the notion that Israel, the one absolute certain base tenant of Jewish post holocaust identity has now seems to have entered the same realm of Brexit here, or Trump there, a touchstone for determining whether one person or other is ‘my kind of person’ – by which I mean the kind of person I should open up to, or the kind of person I must oppose and discount.

It’s not that those tensions didn’t precede these most recent elections, of course, maybe it was always due to happen, like a young child growing up and turning into a spiky teenager. Maybe part of what gets us here are the experiences of so many groups who, rightly or wrongly, felt that their grievances were ignored, or their aspirations discounted by some notional uniformed block identity that existed precisely in order to ignore grievance or discount aspiration of various groups. Maybe we all need to go through a stage where we get the chance to air our anger and indignation at the way we’ve been ignored before we can come out the other side. Here’s to coming out the other side.

The problem might be a misunderstanding of the true meaning of sovereignty. The seventeenth-century French philosopher, Blaise Pascal suggested that there is a problem with claiming that something is ‘mine.’ “That is my place in the sun,” he wrote, “is the beginning and the image of the usurpation – the wrongful exercise of authority in the world.”

For the great Jewish philosopher Emmanuel Levinas, to have a place in the sun was to be concerned that it was taken from the other, or would drive out the other.

I’m not anti-nationalism. It’s that I see nationalism as a responsibility and a caution, not a right.

In the very opening comment on the entire Torah, Rashi explains why the Torah begins with the tale of the creation of the world and nothing more specific to our Jewish interests and Jewish concerns. It’s to remind us that this whole planet is God’s dominion. And God can take it from one group of people and give it to another, and from the second to a third. We are not to confuse our current experience of dominion – whether we have it or we don’t – with durable certainty. It all, Rashi suggests, depends on how well we behave.

In every discussion of the vision of a Jewish nation-state in the Torah comes the warning to ensure the widow, the orphan, unlanded, the Ger – the un-stated – is protected and loved and not made subject to oppression. We’re looking in the wrong direction when we think about the existence of our own nation-State from the perspective of our own desires and wishes. We need to learn how to look at our own nation-States from the perspective of the excluded, the unlanded, the unvoiced and the vulnerable. 

Masua Sagiv,[1] writing in the journal Sources, told a story of two members of Israel’s previous government: Matan Kahana, Minister of Religious Affairs, and Mansour Abbas, chair of the Special Committee on Arab Society Affairs. Kahana is a conservative, right-wing, religious Zionist, and Abbas is the leader of the United Arab List and defines himself as a religious Muslim Palestinian Arab.

While speaking with students in a school in Efrat about his choice to cooperate within the government with the United Arab List, Minister Kahana remarked:

If there were a button you could press that would make all the Arabs disappear, that would send them on an express train to Switzerland—may they live amazing lives there, I wish them all the best in the world—I would press that button. There is no such button. Apparently, we were destined to exist here [together] on this land in some form.

Abbas responded

That’s not genuine tolerance; that’s out of constraint. We need to change our way of thinking and live together in the Holy Land out of choice. I want everyone to reach the conclusion that we need to live together even if we had a button [to send other groups away]. Even if we have a button, we’re choosing not to push it out of choice and acceptance of the other side. In my hand there is a button I have been pressing since I joined the coalition: one of partnership and tolerance, for all parts of society to arrive at a better place of acceptance to promote the common good.

Can we find the space in our hearts to wish away the wish for a button?

It’s a religious challenge and a challenge that despite the selfish and obnoxious behaviour of so many self-describing religious people, I think religious people are best placed to meet.

The story is told of Rav Aryeh Levin, the saintly Tzaddik of Jerusalem.  He lived in the quaint area of Nachlaot, right behind the shuk in Machaneh Yehudah. There was a young man who grew up in the neighbourhood whom R’ Aryeh knew well but he felt the boy was avoiding him. One day, they bumped into each other in the narrow alleys of Nachlaot and Rav Aryeh confronted him and said, “I can’t help but feel you are avoiding me, tell me how are you?” The young man sheepishly replied that it was true, he was avoiding the great rabbi as he had grown up observant but had chosen to walk away from observant life altogether.

 

He said, “Rebbe, I was so embarrassed to meet you since I have taken off my kippa and am no longer observant.” Rav Aryeh took the young man’s hand into his own and said the following. “My dear Moshe. Don’t worry. I am a very short man. I can only see what is in your heart, I cannot see what is on your head.”

 

We read today VeAhavta LeReicha Camocha – Akiva called it the greatest principle of the Torah. By this he has to mean, we are called to love people who are not like us, as if they were like us. What, after all, could be the big deal about loving people who are already the same as us? That’s the love of what we create - idolatry, not what is created by otherness.

It is in our treatment of difference that we demonstrate love. It is in our leaving of people who are different to us in their difference to us, that we can build peace.

The solution to the challenges facing Israel does not lie in the parties with the most electoral power imposing power their will on those who voted for other parties, or didn’t vote all.

There is a place in this world for difference and debate and hard-fought argument. There is even a place in this world for national pride and nationalist delight, but only if we learn to debate and fight with love and learn to take national pride with care do we in this country, and our brothers in sisters in Israel ever have the chance to build a society of true peace and blessing for all.

That was the vision of the signatories of the Declaration of Independence signed by left and right-wingers, religious and secular, 75 years ago. Back then the founders of Isarel wrote of their commitment to develop

the country for the benefit of all its inhabitants; ... based on freedom, justice and peace as envisaged by the prophets of Israel; [ensuring] complete equality of social and political rights to all its inhabitants irrespective of religion, race or sex; it will guarantee freedom of religion, conscience, language, education and culture;

Kein Yehi Ratzon, may it come to pass over there, and over here too.

Shabbat Shalom

---

[1] https://www.sourcesjournal.org/articles/reclaiming-mamlakhtiyut-the-road-to-an-inclusive-israeli-identity#_edn8. I’m partic grateful to Professor Sagiv’s article for helping me think through many of the ideas in this sermon.