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

Masorti, Modern- and Ultra-Orthodox

A teenage member suggested the following way of thinking of the difference between ourselves, a Masorti congregation, and our fellows in Modern- and Ultra-orthodoxy. I thought it worth a response.

• Ultra-orthodoxy, they suggested, involved a commitment to Halachah coupled with sexism and homophobia.
• Modern-Orthodoxy, in turn, involved a commitment to Halachah without the sexism and homophobia.
• And Masorti involved none of the above.

Hmmm.

I don't quite see it that way.

Being Masorti – from the Hebrew word for passing down a tradition through generations – requires placing oneself in the unfolding history of Judaism as it engages with tradition and change. Masorti Judaism's greatest scholars have tended to be interested in questions such as this; how has Judaism changed as we have travelled through time and space?

Lee Levine – the great scholar of the 1^st Century Judaism – looks at how Judaism changed from being Temple-based and Cohen-led and became Synagogue-based and Rabbi-led. He claims it’s impossible to ignore the fact that, living around Jews as the Temple falls, are Christians who are meeting in prayer houses led by religious leaders who became religious leaders not simply because their fathers were religious leaders before them.

Saul Lieberman – who studied how the Talmud fused together 500 years of oral argument into elegant, written documents – suggested that it’s impossible to ignore the fact that as the Talmud comes into being, Jews are living in a world heavily influenced by Hellenist (Greek) thought (logic and rhetoric). He shows how understanding the influence of Hellenism on Rabbinic development is necessary to understand how Rabbinic Judaism came to be.

Louis Jacobs asks the questions - how and why did Maimonides come to articulate 13 principles of Jewish theology when such a list had never been a part of Judaism. Never before, in Judaism, had the Aristotelian idea that God was the First Cause, been considered. Never before had Judaism invested such great effort in the claim that Moses was God’s most important prophet. Never before had Judaism claimed that the entire Torah was absolutely perfect; even claiming that a verse like “Timnah was a partner of Eliphaz” was as important as “Hear O Israel, Adonai is our God, Adonai is One.” It’s impossible, says Jacobs, to imagine such a list coming into being were it not for the fact that Maimonides lived in the midst of an Arab society that understood and valued Aristotle, claimed that Mohamed (not Moses) was the ultimate prophet and claimed that every word of the Koran was equally Divine.

So, if you are a Masorti Jew, you understand that there is no such thing as a pure and perfect Judaism. You know that Judaism is continually unfolding and developing as it moves through space and time. And this unfolding rhythm not only explains how Synagogue-based Judaism began, and Rabbinic-based Judaism began and Jewish theology began, but can also how Jewish law - Halacha - unfolds and develops. 

One example; Torah reading. In the first two centuries of the Common Era you would read your own Aliyah yourself. The Talmud is quite clear; if you can’t read your Aliyah yourself, you can’t have an Aliyah. If you only have one person in the Shul who can read, ‘That person stands and reads and sits, and stands and reads and sits … even seven times.’[1]

Over 1,000 years later the Shulchan Arukh puts it a little differently. ‘One needs to protest against one who doesn’t know how to read so they do not go up to read from the Sefer Torah. And if you need one who doesn’t know how to read (if they are a Cohen or a Levi and there is no-one else save them), if when the reader reads for them word after word, they know how to repeat it and read it from the written text they can go up. And if not, they should not go up.’[2] Yosef Caro (who died in 1575) sounds as if he is fighting against the notion that Torah reading could be done by a 'Baal Koreh' - a master-reader, on behalf of other people who don't prepare to read their own Aliyot.

Perhaps you can feel the change coming, as you read the Shulchan Arukh, even as Caro argues against the change to how we read the Torah today. Other Halachic leaders, even from before the time of Yosef Caro, make clear that the other option - having a Baal Koreh - was already an established practice. The Rosh (who died in 1327), explains, ‘The thing we do now – where the messenger of the congregation reads – that is so as not to embarrass people who can’t read.’[3]

Halacha is changing, and the cause of the change simply doesn't seem to be a change in the will of God-in-the-heavens, or a change in our understanding of God's will, revealed at Sinai. Rather this seems to be a story of how human beings responded to different values differently in different social and cultural moments in time. Yosef Caro, the Rosh and every religious leader since, have to make a decision about to whom to offer an Aliyah. Either we can keep a tight hold and only allow people who are properly qualified, or we can take a more inclusive approach and find a way to not embarrass people who aren't perfectly good (after all, who is perfectly good). Caro and the Rosh differ on this issue - that's OK, argument is good. But the Rosh’s position wins out in Synagogues across the world, and across all denominations – including the Ultra-Orthodox.

I could share, literally, thousands of similar stories about the reality of Halacha as a developing, living, organic thing; just like every other element of Judaism. Halacha changes over time and space because of social and cultural influence.

So where does that leave Masorti in its relationship with Ultra-Orthodoxy and Modern-Orthodoxy? 

Well, on the one hand, we are friends. At least we should be friends. And all Jews are bound up with one another, so I don’t want to be too rude, but …

This is the story of Ultra-Orthodoxy. They, just like Reform, just like Masorti, are responding to social and cultural change. When Modernity arrives, and Jews are given the opportunity to study in Universities where they might even learn how the Bible itself has a history and a development, the leaders of Ultra-Orthodoxy say, “No thank you.” They don’t want any of the offerings of Modernity. They want to put up a big wall and refuse to allow modernity in. They will even say that “Anything new is forbidden as a Torah rule.”[4] But that approach is radically new – never before had Judaism claimed that anything new was forbidden just because it was new. No Rabbinic Jew is recorded as suggesting that we should live as if the Temple had never fallen! Saying, “No,” to modernity is just as much a response to modernity as saying, “Yes.” 

Claiming that they are doing nothing new (even if that is demonstrably nonsense), Ultra-Orthodoxy claims they are the only people keeping Halacha. But protecting an unchanging thing isn't Halacha. Halacha develops! [6]

Ultra-Orthodoxy declines to respond to new ways of thinking about gender and sexuality because they are stuck in a view of Halacha that is not the reality of Halacha. 

This leaves Modern Orthodox. My friends who are Modern Orthodox have a problem. They want people to think that they are doing things ‘properly’ – actually that’s what the word ‘orthodox’ means, literally – one right way of thinking about things. And it turns out that the people most Modern Orthodox Jews trust to judge whether they are doing things properly are Ultra-Orthodox. That means that even if Modern Orthodox Jews know that Halacha evolves, they have to be incredibly careful about doing anything about it. Because if they look like they are accepting that Judaism can change, they are in danger of crossing any one of thousands of red-lines the Ultra-Orthodox draw. And if they do that, they will find themselves excommunicated, or cursed or … there’s lots of really nasty language used. Again, the question of who should get an Aliyah will serve as a very good example of this issue. 

The Talmud[5] says that the reason women don’t have Aliyot is because it would be a disgrace to the honour of the community. 

Well, that makes some sense if you know that, in Talmudic times, the person having the Aliyah had to read it themselves (which I do), and if you assume that men are more important than women (which I don’t!). If you know this and accept that, then you would surely only want to offer Aliyot to men, and you would surely only give an Aliyah to a woman if there weren't enough men around who could read properly, and that would indeed be very embarrassing - for the men. But if you live in 2020, and you reject any claim that men are more important than women, then you have to believe that NOT giving Aliyot to women would be a disgrace to the honour of the community. That's why almost all Masorti congregations give Aliyot to women.

But giving Aliyot to women is a red-line drawn by the Ultra-Orthodox. That means that a person who identifies as Modern-Orthodox has a choice. They can quieten down and fall into line, or they can say they disagree with the Ultra-Orthodox conception of what Halacha truly is and risk excommunication. Most fall into line. Only a few, like Louis Jacobs, and the founders of New London Synagogue, have the courage to walk away from that whole system to pursue Judaism as they believe it truly is. Most Modern-Orthodox Jews believe the same things most Masorti Jews believe, but they don't want to say it too loudly, for fear that they will be told they aren't Orthodox at all. I can't help but wish all these Masorti-believing Orthodox-affiliating Jews would be bolder, and come and help make Masorti communities stronger. 

Most people identifying as Modern Orthodox wish to respond to new ways of thinking about gender and sexuality, but they are not willing to disagree with how the Ultra-Orthodox control who gets to say how Halacha should react to change. 

Here’s the big problem that faces Masorti. 
It takes too long to explain why we think we are right. There are simpler answers out there, and there are less courageous answers. But that doesn’t mean we don’t accept Halacha, even as we respond to new ways of thinking about gender and sexuality.

Here's the tricky thing. Not much of this much determines who is right in these divergent ways of relating to Halacha and modernity.  That's partly because it's not clear how to judge what 'being right' means. It might be that the Ultra-Orthodox view that concentrating efforts on keeping modernity away from Halacha is the best chance Judaism has of ensuring a Jewish future; with lots of kids and a willingness to exclude anyone who threatens conformity. It might be that Modern-Orthodoxy is right that walking a thin line between accepting change and not threatening the red-lines set by the Ultra-Orthodox will best guarantee a Judaism that can survive in a rapidly changing society. But I've never really been persuaded by arguments that the right kind of Judaism is the one that results in the most number of people committed to that view of religion. I know that numbers are important, but if the goal is to have the largest number of followers of one particular brand of religion, or another, maybe we should all become Muslim?

---

[1] Tosefta Megilah 3:12

[2] Shulchan Arukh OH 139:2

[3] Megillah, 21a 3:2

[4] A famous saying of the Chatam Sofer.

[5] Talmud Megillah 23a. I have a full treatment of this issue here. http://rabbionanarrowbridge.blogspot.com/2014/10/my-responsum-on-women-reading-from-torah.html

[6] The best article on this is Michael Silber’s The Emergence of Ultra-Orthodoxy: The Invention of a Tradition, available here https://www.academia.edu/1829696/The_emergence_of_ultra-orthodoxy_The_invention_of_a_tradition

Jewish Democracy

Within hours of the Kenneset passing a deeply divisive 'Jewish Nation State' Act something utterly baffling happened in Israel.

A Rabbi was arrested, in Israel, for the crime of celebrating a marriage between two Jews according to Jewish law. Yes, you did read that correctly.

Rab Dov Haiyun is a Masorti Rabbi, leader of the oldest Masorti congregation in Israel. He was arrested at 5:30am and taken for interrogation for the crime of celebrating a Jewish marriage in Israel - that's another law passed by the Kenesset. Not that it's the police-officers fault. As Rav Haiyun said, “Unfortunately, the nice young policemen serve as tools for the ayatollahs in Israel,” More on this absurdity here.

Now, I love Israel. I recognise Israel’s remarkable accomplishments, achieved under levels of stress I can barely fathom. I even recognise the power of these Israeli ayatollahs comes from the ballot box - in the country in which they live and I don’t. I know that whenever any of us, Jews living outside of Israel, and rabbis even more so, take up a verbal-cudgel to oppose the actions of the Israeli state a little of the love we all have for Israel gets chipped away. But this is unacceptable.

Worse than that, there is a connection between this offensive, frankly antisemitic, abuse of my colleague and the Jewish Nation State Law which formally enshrines the Jewish nature of Israel in language that the non-Jewish minority and its allies feel to be deeply exclusory. The connection cuts to the very heart of the nature of democracy. Etymologically, a democracy is a society where power is exercised by the populace - which is fine. But the true essence of democracy is the management of power; who gets to vote and crucially how the power of elected representatives is constrained. The treasured epithet, ‘being a democrat’ is not awarded simply to those who win elections. Hitler was elected. So was Hamas. So too - without wishing to overplay any similarity - are the current elected leadership of countries stretching from China to Russia, Hungary Turkey...

Democracies are not characterised by the wielding of power by the majority, but by the constraining of the power of the majority. True democracies constrain the powerful because treating difference and disagreement as sacred is the only way to ensure all members of a democracy thrive - not just the ones who agree with the views of today's elected leader. It’s a vital thing to care about not just because times change and wheels spin round, but because no-one is ever, truly, fully in agreement with anyone. We are each unique. We all have our differences and peculiarities. Our uniqueness and peculiarities are the sources of our humanity. No human should ever cheer for any political or communal body that seeks to suppress difference. We might find that our difference is the next to be suppressed. Moreover, it is only through the encounter with difference that growth and development are ever possible. The deepest task of a democracy is to protect difference, not suppress it.

I’m proud to be a Masorti Jew - one who privileges complexity, nuance and disagreement - above uniformity. I’m proud to be Rabbi of this community - which models exactly this behaviour - even if we sometimes take longer to move than a more autocratic community might. I’m honoured by the support of our membership for this approach to communal life. We need to stand ever more firmly, waving a flag for the values of a space created for this truly democratic approach to the common life.

And somewhere in all of this, I’m frustrated that I feel I have to say this, today. It’s the eve of the 9th Av - the marking of our previous destruction caused by ‘Sinat Chinam’ - pointless acts of hatred. I want to respond to our history with a call to acts of ‘Ahavat Chinam’ - but this is, already, too long a missive. If you are still reading. Thank you. Please consider assenting by coming this Saturday evening for our 9th Av commemoration, jointly with Belsize Square Synagogue (at NLS, learning from 9:15pm, service at 10pm). Come to fold these pains, frustrations and the battered hope of our people ever more deeply into our souls.

Inside the Knesset

I am just back from an exceptional trip to Israel as part of the European Masorti Rabbinic Assembly. Aside from the chance to reconnect with colleagues from across Europe (France, Germany, Poland, Ukraine, Sweden, Czech Republic ...), our trip was timed to coincide with the 40^th Anniversary Celebrations of the Masorti Movement in Israel. And so we, and a bunch of other international Masorti types, found ourselves at the Knesset.

Over the course of several hours we met with Yesh Atid Chairman, and poll-leading candidate to be the next Prime Minister, Yair Lapid MK, head of the opposition Boojy Herzog MK, Chair of HaTnuah Tzipi Livni MK and Speaker of the Knesset, and senior Likkud politician, Yuli Edelstein MK. It was a tremendous privilege to be able to put matters of Masorti concern to such high ranking Israeli politicians.

Whether the presenting question was conversion recognition, government funding of ultra-orthodoxy to the exclusion of other branches of our faith or access to the Kottel, the real issue underlying so many of our questions was the relationship between Israel and her Diaspora. Leaders of the American Masorti Foundation - also represented - shared that it was becoming increasingly difficult to maintain traditionally hugely supportive Jews for Israel - indeed the same issue arose in the context of a question on the deportation of ‘infiltrators’ or ‘refugees’ from war-torn African States.

Yair Lapid talked about the importance of fighting religious coercion without fighting religion. He talked of the importance of not handing religion over to the ultraorthodox (“defrosting it for the holidays”). Boojy Herzog talked about the absence of values in a political world driven by the need for power to achieve anything and insisted that there is no conflict between being worldly and religious. Tzipi Livni talked about the importance of a Jewish State that allowed “each of us to express our Judaism in different ways.” Yuli Edelstein rejected any notion of a split between the Diaspora and Israel - citing data drawn from Birthright returnees - and the atmosphere in the room grew heated.

But the highlight was a meeting with newly elected MK Yael Cohen-Paran, a woman who came into politics through environmental activism and was invited onto Tzipi Livni’s HaTnuah list. Cohen-Paran is a proud Masorti Jew, a founder member of the Masorti Kehillah of Pardes Hannah. She came into our meeting room directly from a testy meeting of parliament on the deportation of refugees furious at the proposal tabled, ‘this isn’t the Israel I want to be part of, this isn’t the Israel I want for my children. What about “And you shall love the stranger”? It’s not moral, it’s not Jewish to forget our past.’

It was an extraordinary insight into the Israeli democratic process. There is so much more I could share, and will on another occasion. Anyone interested in these issues is warmly encouraged to sign up to a monthly bulletin from the Masorti Movement’s Pluralism Rights Watch - mail jpw@masorti.org.il to go on their mailing list.

What I would like to share, on Shabbat, after the service is a look at some of the signs I saw around Jerusalem on my short trip. There are stories and insights I hope will prove interesting. I take a Rabbi’s version of holiday snaps, you are welcome to view them, during Kiddush.

Good to be back, Shabbat Shalom

Masorti - Or Not - Second Day Rosh Hashanah 5778

It’s not the same today, as it was yesterday.

Yesterday there were a bunch of people here who haven’t been here since Yom Kippur last year. They were most welcome. I hope they had a serious and positive encounter with what we do and I look forward to seeing them on Yom Kippur. But I want to address this sermon to Mishpochah - the family. This is for those of you who love this community enough to come, if not every week, then frequently enough to be insiders.

And, as you do with the Mishpochah, I want to share the sort of story you don’t easily share with outsiders. I want to take you inside a meeting of the Masorti Rabbinic team. We were discussing who should be able to serve as a Dayan on our Bet Din - a judge on our religious court. We have, as a Movement, traditionally only had male Rabbis sit on the Bet Din. And the question was being put should we, and in what circumstances, have women Rabbis also judge?

Of course we’ve had female Masorti Rabbinic colleagues for some time.

We all agree that women judges, as a matter of Jewish law, could serve as judges on the Rabbinic court, but they, up to now, they haven’t. The issue is that our Orthodox colleagues don’t accept women judges. They rely on a classically tenuous Talmudic semi-proofs[1] and a two thousand year tradition that didn’t imagine women could have anything of value to say from, as it were, the bench.

The conversation was dividing us - that’s OK, we’ve learnt to disagree and still get on. On the one hand some of us felt that only having men sitting on the Bet Din would give our conversion candidates the best chance of being recognised as Jews by the widest number of people - and that that is a core goal. On the other hand some of us felt that a Movement who believes woman could sit as judges, shouldn’t be precluding women from this role because of Orthodox sensitivities.

I have a lot of sympathy with conversion candidates. It’s not easy to go through life fearing someone could at any time turn up their nose at your faith and rejecting your Jewish identity - and those of your children. It would be great to make that problem go away. But let me put aside the question of whether only having male Dayanim on the Bet Din does make our conversions any more acceptable to anyone - I’m not sure that it’s the case. Let me even put aside questions of whether being Masorti definitely means you have to be a supporter of egalitarian roles in Jewish religious leadership for men and women.

I want to focus on, instead, these questions - what should our role be, as members of a broader Jewish community. Should we be looking to accentuate the specific ways in which we are Masorti, or should we fold into the prevailing majorities of Jewish practice, should we be ... in the language of that tick box ...  ‘just Jewish.’ To put it another way; it might be as much as we can handle, this Masorti Jewish thing, but should we be more explicit that there is a gold-standard out there - that would be Orthodoxy - and that our inability to rise to its intense demands is our failure, failure of will and failure of effort?

These are my ‘does it matter’ questions of the day.

It’s a question that’s been rehearsed for some time, here, at New London. When I arrived here as Rabbi - and this is my tenth Rosh Hashanah here as your Rabbi - there was a welcome note on the foyer which read, ‘New London Synagogue is an independent Orthodox synagogue affiliated to the Assembly of Masorti Synagogues’ - good luck to anyone trying to work that one out. I think it means that we wished to self-define as Orthodox, but the United Synagogue wouldn’t stand for it. So we found some similar thinking people to spend some time with while still believing in an Orthodox gold-standard. Actually, I know that’s exactly what the note meant. I knew the man who wrote the note well enough. And I also know what Rabbi Louis Jacobs, of blessed memory meant when he wrote it. He meant that orthodoxy represents Jewish authenticity, and that label - authentic - was one we, as a community, wanted for ourselves.

The first problem is that orthodoxy doesn’t mean the thing we believe in. It doesn’t mean an open-hearted, open-minded engagement with a pursuit for truth and a way to live well as a human, as a member of the Jewish community and ultimately, before God. Orthodoxy is intimately bound up in a theological claim that no-one in this community believes, and it uses that theological claim to justify a range of behaviours that are out of keeping with an open-hearted, open-minded engagement with a pursuit for truth.

As some of you know, my son started in a school under Modern Orthodox auspices this Year. He’s having a great time - thanks for asking. But I was nervous about how these Orthodox auspices would impact on his education. I took up the opportunity to speak with the School’s head of Jewish Studies. What happened, I wanted to ask, if a student’s understanding of Jewish history, indeed world history, led them to believe in a relationship with Judaism other than Orthodoxy? “Well,” said the charming and genuinely engaged Head of Studies, “We would try and explain the Orthodox understanding of these issues.” Fair enough, but what if those explanations failed to persuade a student of Orthodoxy’s validity? “Well,” said the still charming Head of Studies, “then we would have to explain that the school was being run the way the school was being run and the student would just have to accept that.” In other words, there are places a serious quest into the meaning of being Jewish wouldn’t be welcomed. At least I knew where I stood. But I don’t like it. I don’t value dogma above intellectual and spiritual enquiry. And I don’t say that because I don’t care about Judaism, or what God wants of us. I say that precisely because I care so much about Judaism and what God wants of us. I say that because placing dogma above enquiry is, I believe, profoundly un-Jewish and categorically not what God wants of us.

Here’s one of my all time favourite Talmudic passages, from Yoma[2]. In the Amidah we praise God - HaEl Hagadol Hagibur veHanorah. - God the great, mighty and awesome. That’s a phrase taken from the book of Deuteronomy - it appears in Moses’ name. A similar phrase appears in Jeremiah, but here it’s shorter - HaEl Hagadol veHagibur - God the great and mighty. And then there is a yet another abbreviation of the phrase, this time in the Book of Daniel, where Daniel calls God - HaEl HaGadol. How, Rav Mattena asks, could Jeremiah and then Daniel edit down the authentic full version used by Moses? He must be, Rav Mattena reports, that ‘Jeremiah - [prophet of the time of the destruction of the First Temple] said: “Invaders have destroyed God’s Temple. Where are God’s awesome deeds? So he omitted [the word he could not say] - HaNorah - awesome.’ And he continues, ‘[It must be that] Daniel [prophet of the exile of the Jews in the time of Nebucanezzer] came and said, ‘Invaders have enslaved God’s children. Where are God’s mighty deeds? So he omitted [the word he could not, in honesty, say] HaGibbur ‘mighty.’ How, Rav Mattena asks, could Jeremiah and Daniel change a form of words vouchsafed by no less than Moses? It must be that since they knew that the Holy Blessed One insists on truth, they could not pray to God deceitfully.

The point is that you shouldn’t try to ape Moses just because what Moses did what Moses did. The point is that you have to be true to what you believe. You can’t pray to God in deceit. You can’t do Judaism in deceit. If your mind, your soul and your heart tell you something isn’t true, you shouldn’t give it validation and you shouldn’t kowtow to any powerbase held by a movement you don’t believe in, either for yourself, or even for anyone else.

If you believe that the Torah really did come down in one perfect rendition on Sinai, all those years ago, and that the will of God is perfectly expressed in an understanding of Judaism that turned its back on the truths of the modern world at some point in the late 1800s, then you should be Orthodox. Really, with every blessing. Similarly if you believe that the Torah and the Rabbinic tradition is worth studying, but can be, if I decide it should be, reformed based on my own sense of what is right and wrong, then you really should be Reform. Really, with every blessing. But if you believe that the Torah, though imperfect, is the best path we have of understanding how we should stand before God, and as a member of the Jewish people - and if you believe that this spiritual inheritance is a chain, unfolding through the centuries, from our ancestors, through us and towards our descendents then, this is the Shul for you. And please don’t go giving strength and credence to a form of Judaism you don’t believe in.

Because this is what happens if you do.

There’s a tour company in Israel who will take you on a Ultra-Orthodox Neighbourhoods and Bakery Tour. You pay your money and “watch men in black hats and women in long skirts buying challah bread from a kosher bakery while a guide narrates the scene.”[3] Apparently the tours do well. Yosef Spiezer, the manager of company comments, “People [and I guess by ‘people’ he means Jewish people] want to experience [this kind of Jewish life] because it’s authentic.”

In an article published in The Atlantic, the writer, Sara Toth Stub, suggests that the problem with tours like this is that they lead to a commodification of Judaism. These tours are not about a Judaism that is about us; what we do and how we live our lives. They are about a Judaism we can peer into from time to time - from the outside. We’ve turned Judaism away from being what it wants to be, in the words of the Parasha we read last week, “so close to you that it’s in your heart and in your mouth.”

Instead these kinds of tours turn a Jewish person’s Judaism into the same thing as a Jewish person’s trip to Rome’s St Peters Basilica or Istanbul’s Blue Mosque - tourism cum anthropology. We are in danger of becoming consumers of the very thing that shouldn’t be treated as an object of consumption - the journey of our souls.

Despite what the ultra-Orthodox would have us believe, tt’s not true that Moses wore a streimel. It’s not true that men and women never stood together at the Kottel. It’s not true that conversions have always taken three years of being at the mercy of a Bet Din who never tell you whether or not you are actually making progress. The truth emerges when you read history seriously.

If you want a glimpse into authentic Judaism, don’t look in the ersatz world of 21^st century Ultra-Orthodox enclaves. Instead peer into the rubble of the Cairo Genizah. A hundred years ago 300,000 documents, every kind of document, emerged after lying in the dust for a thousand years of the attic of Cairo’s Ben Ezra Synagogue. It’s the single the greatest source of information we have about any single Jewish society throughout time. From the Genizah emerges a picture of Jews struggling to make ends meet, some more observant, some less. There are bankers and shopkeepers and poets and accountants and school-kids who doodle in the corners of their work books. There’s the relationship with the surrounding society who sometimes like Jews more, and sometimes less. There are Charitable organisations with too many calls on their funds, and not enough money. And even a Rabbi, trying to work out how to respond to a community who, perish the thought, talk through the repetition of the Amidah on Rosh Hashanah.

And if that sounds familiar, it is because it is. It’s because authentic Judaism is not in heaven, that you should say, ‘Who will go up to heave for us and fetch it for us. It is not beyond the sea that you should say, ‘Who will cross to the other side of the sea and fetch it for us.’ Rather is it very close by, in your mouth and in your heart.’

Authenticity comes from aligning one’s actions with one’s beliefs. It can’t be commoditised or franchised out, or performed vicariously by others. The more we pretend it can, the further we get from experiencing Judaism ourselves, as we understand it. The more we locate our personal gold-standard as the right approach to Judaism for ourselves the more authenticity and integrity we have. That’s not to say that our approach is the only approach for everyone. But that we can’t and shouldn’t give up on any element of our own claim to what is right for us.

There is no form of Judaism ‘out there,’ that is right for me ‘in here.’ There is nowhere to go to find a truth that lives in our hearts. We have no other option other than to do this ourselves.

Shannah Tovah

---

[1] Shevuot 30a

[2] BT Yoma 69b

[3] Much of this section is inspired by https://www.theatlantic.com/international/archive/2017/07/commodification-orthodox-judaism/532668/

Stubborn and Rebellious Son - Ki Tetze

How To Be a Jewish Judge - Part Two

Devarim 21:18-23

If a man has a ben sorar u’moreh (stubborn and rebellious son) who does not listen to the voice of his father and the voice of his mother and when they discipline him he does not listen to them, then his father and his mother shall seize him and bring him out to the elders of the city and to the gate of his place.  And they shall say to the elders of the city, this son of ours is stubborn and rebellious, he does not listen to our voice, a glutton and a drunkard.   Then, all the people of the city shall pelt him with stones until he dies, and you shall burn out the evil in your midst, and all Israel will hear and fear.

Rashi, based on Sanhedrin 72b

The stubborn and rebellious son is executed on account of [what he will become in] the end. The Torah penetrates to his ultimate intentions. Eventually, he will squander his father’s money, seek what he has become accustomed to, not find it, and stand at the crossroads and rob people [killing them, thereby incurring the death penalty. Says the Torah, “Let him die innocent, rather than have him die guilty.”

Mishnah Sanhedrin 8:1-4

From when does a ben sorar u’moreh become a ben sorar u’moreh?  From when he brings forth two hairs, and until his beard grows around.  As it is said “ben” and not “bat”.  “Ben” and not “ish”.  Little ones are exempt.

From when is he liable?  From when he has eaten a certain measure of meat and drunk a certain measure of Italian wine.  If he ate in a ‘mitzvah gathering’ or ate the second tithe in Jerusalem, or ate non-kosher meat... if he ate anything that is a mitzvah or anything that is a violation of religious law, if he ate any food other than meat, or drank any drink other than wine, he does not become a ben sorar u’moreh, as it is said (Deut 21) “a glutton and a drunkard.”  And even though there is no proof of this there is a hint of it, as it is said (Proverbs 23): “Don’t be among the drunkards of  wine or the gluttons of meat.” 

If his father wants to and his mother does not want, or his father does not want to and mother wants to, he does not become a ben sorar u’moreh unless both of them want to. If one of them was maimed or lame or dumb or blind, he does not become a ben sorar u’moreh, as it is said (Deut. 21): “then his father and his mother shall seize him” – so they are not maimed.   “Bring him out” – so they are not lame.  “They shall say” – so they are not dumb.  “This son of ours” – so they are not blind.

From In The Land of Milk & Honey

They didn’t argue that God knew best, or that human morality was inherently unreliable.
They didn’t answer that we don’t have a choice – that “that’s was the Torah says and who are we to argue?” They realised that leaving our morals at the entrance of the Bet Midrash is not what learning Torah is about, that – to paraphrase the Kotzker – serving the Shulchan Arukh is not always the same as serving God.

David Weiss HaLivni

Even when the Rabbis altered a law, they never abrogated it. They retained the integrity of the law. They did not totally eliminate it. That was necessary in order not to impugn the Lawgiver with a lack of moral sensitivity which may undermine not only this law, but laws in general. Once one has formulated, as in the case of bastardy, mamzerut, the need for changing the law because of moral exigency, any subsequent change will be interpreted as an admission that initially there was no moral sensitivity, imputing to the Lawgiver a defective moral awareness.

Daniel Spitz, CJLS Responsum on Mamzerut

It is true that the rabbis in the past did not explicitly use morality as the basis for change or interpretation of a law. In explaining the Torah's statement "an eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth," for example, the Rabbis of the Talmud offer ten separate hermeneutic proofs that the verse calls for compensation and not mutilation. Each is indirect and tenuous, which explains why so many are offered. Underlying the ingenious arguments is an implicit matter of conscience regarding the taking of body parts.

There is a price paid, however, for only looking inwardly for the justification of change. The hermeneutic rules may fail to provide a comprehensive solution, as in the case of mamzerut. Preserving the system may begin to look more important than acting justly and halakhah may begin to look more like a chess game than a system of religious striving. In the words of Rabbi Gordon Tucker: “Halakhah is a theological legal system. Separating law from moral principle in such a system, as positivists would be wont to do, is to separate moral principles from God, and that is theologically untenable.”

Why Do We need Denominations

A response to the JTS Chancellor, Arnie Eisen’s very good question – Why do we need denominations.

His essay is at http://www.jtsa.edu/prebuilt/blog/denominations.html

 

I wonder if there is an analogy around questions of state versus private funding.

 

I want there to be safe roads to be everywhere for when I travel anywhere.

But I don't want have to pay per mile every time I get in the car and I want roads in areas where no private road builder would want to invest in building roads.

I want there to be a hospital with well trained medical staff for when I get ill.

But I don't want to have to get my wallet out as I lie on a hospital stretcher.

I want properly trained teachers with recognised qualifications in the schools where I send my kids.

But I don't want to have to school inspections myself. I don't have the expertise or the time.

 

I depute these tasks to the State and pay my taxes, despite the sense that there might be creeping inefficiencies and despite the fact that I might wish, at point of need, a different road plan or hospital design or educational oversight.

I commit to the larger, more ponderous, less perfectly attuned to my own desires, organisation – in these cases the State – because I want there to be a structure there and waiting for me and my needs when I am ready. It’s not a plea for communism, but an argument for the State to work out what we as a nation need that private organisations can’t or won’t provide well. And I feel the same things about Movements and denominations.

 

It's easy to find a freelancing post-denominational Rabbi to do a one-off pre-planned special; a marriage, a Yom Kippur service etc. – easy in, easy out. But I am prepared to commit to Synagogue community so there is something there for ‘the other 51 weeks,' if I need it – or if another member of the community I join might need it. I also commit to a denomination – a Movement – to do the things no single Synagogue community can provide; a Bet Din, training for the future and a Youth Movement where kids from my community can join with others. I expect denominational leadership to keep an eye on the horizon, pointing out challenges and opportunities down-stream, beyond my ability to see past my own immediate needs.

 

It’s always going to be cheaper and more immediately gratifying to serve my own interests with a non-denominational, non-community based Jewish identity. Committing to a denomination and a Movement is always going to take more commitment and more of a willingness to engage beyond self-gratification. But commitment and a willingness to suspend selfish desires are the mark of maturity, Hesed and courage. That’s why I’m a proudly denominational Jew. I’m neither Orthodox nor Reform, but I’m delighted for Orthodox Jews to commit to Orthodoxy and Reform Jews to commit to Reform, I don’t even begrudge the emergence of affiliated networks of ‘unaffiliated’ minyanim, I just think we should all be committed to a bigger communal vision than our own.

 

Reasons to be Masorti; 1, 2, 3

 

I hugely proud to be a Masorti Rabbi, leading a Masorti community, this weekend in particular.

 

Firstly this is a Judaism I believe in. I believe in a relationship between the Jews and the Divine which requires no dislocation between my faith and my experience, between what I know from academic scholarship and what I read in the texts of my tradition. I also feel embedded in my tradition when I experience it through Masorti lenses; still speaking the same language, lighting the same flames, reading the same texts. I can make myself at home here.

 

Secondly I believe the Masorti path, in matters both Jewish and general, is a path which can bring healing to our battered planet and our people. The siren calls of fundamentalism and godless secularism beguile some, but they fill me with fear. Around the pole of fundamentalism lurks danger; a dangerous attitude towards religious authority and a dangerous attitude to anyone who believes something other than the fundamentalists’ charter. Around the pole of secularism lurks a hole where values should be; how do we, as a society, limit the siren power of materialism, fashion and the corporeal. Of course we need money in our bank account, clothes on our back and a fit and strong body, but our soul too needs nurturing to the point where it can lift our actions and aspirations beyond the merely material. We need to develop the skills to delay our desires for gratification, to live with contradiction and to chart a course between polarities, whether we are considering matters of religious ritual, social responsibility or global concern. The Masorti path is that path.

 

Thirdly I’ll stand to be judged by the quality of the company I keep. Across America Masorti Rabbis are at the forefront of the Hechsher Tzedek initiative which campaigns to ensure that Jewish kashrut providers employ workers on a living wage, with appropriate benefits and seeks to bring an end to the embarrassment of Kosher establishment being shut down by various government employment agencies for breech of basic employee protections. In Portugal Masorti Rabbis are working with locals who trace their Jewish ancestry back to 1496 and are looking for a way to reconnect with a tradition they know only by its shadow. In Germany Masorti Rabbis are working to give many of the 150,000 Russian Jews who have moved to Germany opportunities to integrate into German society while developing a Jewish spark Communism almost snuffed out. In Israel Masorti Rabbis are attempting to give the vast majority of traditional Israelis a meaningful engagement with their Jewish heritage, freed of the taint of a Haredi community who seem often to understand only self-interest and desire only power.

 

New London is part of a movement which with integrity, a unique perspective on matters both religious and secular and the ability to form the future of our Jewish world.

 

Three things to do about it.

Firstly, use the ‘M’ word. We should be proud of who we are and where we stand.

Secondly, come to Shul this Shabbat, where our guest scholar in residence will be Rabbi Julie Schonfeld, head of the Masorti Rabbinic Assembly.

Thirdly, it’s still not too late to register for the Yom Masorti conference where 200 Jews from nine countries across Europe will be coming to New North London Synagogue to learn, share, dream – and eat. This Sunday from 9:45-4:45, but you can sneak in late or leave early. I hope to see you there.

 

Shabbat shalom

On the Necessity of Parashat Sotah

This is the first sermon I have ever given on parashat Sotah.

It's a scary text for a modern and a feminist

It should be scary for us all.

To refresh our memories.

If a husband is overcome with a fit of jealousy regarding his wife's fidelity she is made to stand before God and, in the language of the Mishnah.

וכהן אוחז בבגדיה אם נקרעו נקרעו אם נפרמו נפרמו עד שהוא מגלה את לבה וסותר את שערה

And the Priest seizes her by her garments and if they are torn or ripped, they are torn or ripped and he exposes her heart and uncovers her hair.

And the woman is forced to drink mei hamarim – the bitter waters under the threat of her belly distending and her thigh sagging.

Let me be more specific about my problem with Parashat – Sotah.

Or rather what my problem is not.

My problem is not anthropological.

I know this is how they did things in 'the good ol' days.'

I know that there is a ordeal very similar to that of the Bible in the Ancient Babylonian Code of Hammurabi.

In Hammurabi it states

If a finger has been pointed at a man's wife because of another man, but she has not been caught, she shall leap into the River.^[1]

And if guilty she floated.

I don't have problem looking at this old ritual in the context of the societies surrounding the Ancient Israelites.

I'll admit I find Sotah confusing in the same way the great medievalist, Nachmanides, found Sotah confusing.

Sotah is, said Nachmandies, magical it feels pagan, it's the most magical and pagan moment in the Bible. And, as a way of finding out guilt or innocence it feels too dependent on a miracle and, by and large, we Rabbinic types prefer to reason our way to justice, rather than rely on pointed finger descending from the heavens – it was you..

I'm confused but I'll look past my mild theological confusion.

My great problem with Parashat Sotah is this.

How, dear God, can I consider these texts holy?

We just sung this.

Etz hayim hi lmachazikim ba vkol netivoteha meusar.

It is a tree a life to all to grasp and all its paths are upright.

This week, that song is a struggle because instead of being to bathe in the beauty of our extraordinary tradition there is this niggle.

This poor woman, dragged up before a gawping crowd of men and stripped and poisoned to satisfy a very male niggle.

How can I read these verses as Torah, with love, vshinantam levanaecha – and you shall repeat these words to your children and hold them before you always – what even these words?

A huge part of my heart, my soul pulls me away from repeating these words, this week, every year it's this week.

And it is a very Jewish tug.

Many of you will know this story from Bereshit Rabba well.^[2]

The Rabbis imagine Abraham as a young boy, his father, Terah, has left him in charge of the idol store and Abraham has smashed up the idols.

Dad comes home, surveys the destruction and demands to know what has happened.

How could I lie to you, the hot-headed Abraham replies meekly, there was this woman with a flour offering she wanted me to put before them.

But first this one said, 'I'll eat first'

Then that one, then the other until largest idol took up this hammer and smashed them up.

Do you think I am a fool – snaps back Terah – they are idols, how can they have any sense or knowledge.

At which point Abraham responds 'let your ears hear what your mouth says.'

How can you put yourself forward as a seller of idols when you know these idols are not holy.

How can go through the motions of religiosity when you know it's untrue?

How, in the name of God, can you deem something holy when you know, you know, it is not.

This is the problem with parashat Sotah.

Let me do another Gemarah.

Hael hagadol hagibur vhanora – 'God the great, the mighty and the awesome.'

We might know these words from the liturgy, but their origin is Biblical.

Moses spoke them, on the plains of Moav^[3].

But the Rabbis^[4] notice something else.

They notice that Jeremiah says something similar to Moses, but he calls God

Hael hagadol vehagibor – Jeremiah leaves out the hanorah he doesn't call God awesome.

It must be, say the Rabbis, that Jeremiah was so upset to see the destruction of the Temple that he couldn't bring himself to acknowledge God as awesome.

And the Rabbis notice something else. They notice that Daniel, when Daniel prays to God, prays to

Hael Hagdol vhanorah – Daniel leaves out hagibor – he doesn't call God heroic.

It must be, say the Rabbis that Jeremiah was so upset to see the enslavement of his people that he cannot bring himself to acknowledge God as heroic.

How is it possible, the Rabbis demand to know, for Jeremiah and Daniel to skip out a liturgy fixed by Moses himself just because they didn't feel like it?

The answer is clear –

מתוך שיודעין בהקדוש ברוך הוא שאמתי הוא

Since they know that the Holy Blessed One is truth, they could not ascribe falsity to God.

As a Jew you have to say what you mean, particularly if you want to speak from a religious perspective.

No comfortable white lies allowed.

No gentle dishonesties permitted

Rabbi Jacobs certainly knew that – no comfortable white lies.

So, here we are, with this problem with parashat Sotah

It's a problem made worse by a tradition that refuses to lie and countenances even a measure as extreme as reworking a teaching of Moses himself.

In search of a way to save Sotah it is worth working out why on earth the passage exists in the Bible at all.

After all we all know what happens to the adulterer – it's written [in the Ten Commandments/up there]

ואיש אשר ינאף את אשת איש

מות יומת הנאף והנאפת:

One who had adulterous relations with a married woman, the adulterer and the adulteress shall be put to death.

This is the first step – parashat Sotah might be horrid, it might be cruel, it might be misogynist – but it saves the woman's life.

Jacob Milgrom, the acknowledged master of sefer Bemidbar sums up this irony perfectly

By appropriating a semi-pagan, semi-magical ritual, the whole Sotah mechanism 'provides the priestly legislator with an accepted practice by which he could remove the jurisdiction over and punishment of the un-apprehended adulteress from human hands and thereby guarantee that she would not be put to death.'^[5]

It's actually a step in the right direction.

Which brings me to the Rabbis.

The most remarkable thing about the Rabbinic treatment of the Sotah ritual is the key Mishnah which describes what happens during the ordeal.

It opens as follows^[6]

אם אמרה טמאה אני שוברת כתובתה ויוצאת

If she says, I am impure, they tear up her ketubah and the marriage is over.

It is only if she claims to be pure that she is taken to the East Gate of the City.

This opportunity for a confession never appears in the Bible.

As far as the Bible is concerned, either you are clearly guilty, in which case death, or the husband has a suspicion, in which case the Sotah ritual applies.

Now we have a third option – if the woman confesses, the marriage is dissolved.

As one makes their way through the major Rabbinic treatment of Sotah we come across whisper after whisper of a re-framing of this admittedly discomforting text.

What of the man who feels it is appropriate to accuse his wife of adultery in such a public and shameful way.

הוה פתח ריש לקיש בסוטה, אמר הכי: אין מזווגין לו לאדם אשה אלא לפי מעשיו

When Reish Lakish would begin teaching Sotah he would say this 'a man is only paired up with a woman according to his own actions.^[7]

And then of course the Rabbis do away with the whole apparatus of Sotah.

Rabbi Yohanan Ben Zakkai abolished the ritual of the bitter waters [citing a verse from the book of Hosea] I will not punish your daughters-in-law when they commit adultery (Hos 4:14)^[8]

And it is gone as a matter of practical Rabbinics.

It remains only as a text.

Drosh lkabel schar – we should study it to receive merit.

When we engage in the journey of this text through our tradition I would encourage us to see not a misogynist pagan ritual but an attempt in the Bible to rescue a suspected adulterer from death, an attempt by the Rabbis to find ways out of the whole ritual, a way to gently prod at the jealous husband – are you sure you are so clear of blame yourself and then finally, a triumph of hermeneutic magic – poof, it's gone.

The story of Parashat Sotah is a lesson in travelling. How far can you go, while staying in the system.

How far can you change while staying the same.

And now, all of a sudden, this whole business of Sotah starts to feel very Masorti.

Rabbi Brad Artson of the American Jewish University wrote that the Tree of Life, the Torah, needs a prune every now and again.^[9]

He is of course right and to see that happening with an issue like Sotah is to understand how our tradition functions.

And as long as we continue to read.

As long as we continue to be affronted by verses like parashat Sotah but, instead of deleting them, or feeling embarrassed by their power,

As long as we use our own confusion and puzzlement that a tradition as holy as ours can contain verses like this.

As long as we dig deeper, look further, hold onto our masorah – our tradition – ever more tightly

We get to understand something far more important than the mechanics of a particular ritual at a particular point in history.

We get to understand the very nature of what it means to be, to be a Rabbinic Jew.

The danger with deleting that which discomforts us is that we turn off our sensors.

We make the edit and we forget what it means to be part of this journey.

Anything that seems a little awkward, a little uncomfortable, the temptation is always to back away, pretend it doesn't exist.

And we are then in grave danger of losing both bathwater and baby.

The Reform liturgy, for many years, felt uncomfortable with the second paragraph of the Shema, so that went.

And the end of the Ain Keloheynu, so that went,

And resurrection of the dead, so that went.

Many of these things have recently come back in the wonderful new Forms of Prayer Siddur, and that is great – and the siddur is a tremendous piece of work,

but for me, I miss some elements in the tradition.

The challenge in life is not to work out how you feel on day or the next.

The challenge in life is not be blown back and forth on the winds of fashion.

The challenge in life is to understand our edginess and to learn from it.

The challenge is to understand what goes on beneath our surface awkwardness.

And when we are dealing with our glorious 3000 year old tradition there is a great deal going on under the surface.

And that is the journey.

To hold the ancient past

To understand the way in which the past has rolled into the present

And to pledge ourselves to be part of this journey into the future.

And if we can do that we deserve the great blessings of our faith.

We deserve God's blessing and protection

We deserve the God illumination and favour

We deserve that God should lift up God's face to us and grant us peace.

Shabbat shalom

---

^[1] Para 132, ANET p. 171

^[2] Genesis Rabba 38:13

^[3] Deuteronomy 10.17, see also Jer 32:18 & Daniel 9:4

^[4] Yoma 69b

^[5] JPS Commentary Bemidbar p.350

^[6] M Sotah 1:5

^[7] Sotah 2a

^[8] M. Sotah 9:9

^[9] In the context of Ellie Spitz's Responsa on Mamzerut