Torah At a Time of Coronovirus

This ISN'T medical guidance. But sharing, partic for anyone who can't get to shul at this time.

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

New London Synagogue - Who Are We?

We are traditional, egalitarian, open-minded and open-hearted.

Traditional in that we are inheritors of an extraordinary spiritual inheritance that we love, and we accept. That means the prayer services a almost exclusively in Hebrew, we read a full yearly cycle from the Torah. When there are questions about how we, as a community, should respond, we look to our tradition for direction.

Egalitarian is about more than whether women as well as men are allowed on the Bimah. It’s an approach to Judaism that insists that everyone needs to have equal opportunities to play a part in Jewish life. It’s about taking care of children with special needs, and ensuring the building is fully accessible. That said we should be proud of our recent decision on the role of women.

Being open-minded is part of our DNA. It’s not a heresy, in this community, to understand biblical criticism, philology and archaeology and to know that the Torah was not handed down in a single moment, but instead is a document that has unfolded through human hands for millennia. But more than being open-minded is an attitude to thinking about and understanding our lives, as Jews living in a contemporary world. We are not a community for those who wear intellectual blinkers.

Being open-hearted is an attitude towards the gift of life. It’s radically amazing to be alive. Gratitude should infuse everything we do, from the way the office is staffed to the way life-cycle events are celebrated. We live in a world that can depress. Shul should be a source of joy.

That’s what we are, that’s who we want to be. If you know anyone for whom this sounds persuasive, let me know.

Robert Frost and Revelation

Revelation by Robert Frost

We make ourselves a place apart
Behind light words that tease and flout,
But oh, the agitated heart
Till someone find us really out.

'Tis pity if the case require
(Or so we say) that in the end
We speak the literal to inspire
The understanding of a friend.

But so with all, from babes that play
At hide-and-seek to God afar,
So all who hide too well away
Must speak and tell us where they are. 

I think we are done, don’t you, with the question of whether this is, or is not, the letter by letter, word, by word record of some divine dictation.

Long done.

There’s a lovely passage comment in the Talmud Yerushalmi that imagines Moses taking dictation from God on top of Sinai, writing away in black fire on a scroll of white fire, when, sweating from the heat of the fiery letters he mops his brow on his sleeve and some of the fiery ink rubs off on his forehead – and that is why the Torah speaks of Moses having horns of light – carnei or.

The sort of thing pictured by ... well everyone.

This is Jose de Rivera’s image

But this tale of the fiery quill isn’t meant to be taken literally.

It’s a poetic image.

And revelation is always going to come down to a matter of poetry

Light words that tease and flout ...

'Tis pity if the case require
(Or so we say) that in the end
We speak the literal to inspire

The greatest problem I have with the notion that this, all this, represents some letter by letter record of Divine dictation is not based on Biblical archaeology or Ancient Semitic philology or Higher or Lower literary Biblical criticism or fossil records or astral physics or anything like that.

The greatest problem I have with the notion that all this represents some letter by letter record of Divine dictation is theological. If the will of god, revealed to humanity, ultimately boils down to a bunch of letters placed in order, then the will of God ceases to be something infinite, touching the heavens, beyond human ken, and becomes instead something ultimately two-dimensional and all too simple for a true encapsulation of what is willed for our existence.

It’s more than the sort of theological problem that should be filed with the question of how many angels can dance on the head of a pin. People die because other people think that the will of God is really encapsulated in a series of letters so that they can claim some kind of monopoly on an understanding of God’s will. They think they can know what God wants and it’s at that point that other people start getting excluded from being important in God’s eyes. Other people end up getting hurt, excluded, killed even.

'Tis pity if the case require
(Or so we say) that in the end
We speak the literal to inspire
The understanding of a friend.

‘Tis pity indeed if we make the mistake of thinking that God’s will is capable of being trapped by printing presses, ink scrawls of pixellated imagery. Revelation is poetic, not literal speech.

I know the letters, in the order in which they fall, are capable of revealing the most extraordinary truths about the nature of human existence. I love the stories; I live my life by these stories, and the commands and all of it. But that’s not because of the precise letter by letter nature of how these verses appear in the good book. It’s because of the way the letters open up something that is beyond the letters themselves. It’s not that the letters are the product of revelation, they are the symbol pointing to the reality of revelation; a reality that can never be pinned down, like a lepidopterist’s butterfly.

This is Abraham Joshua Heschel, ‘ The nature of revelation is something words cannot spell, which human language will never be able to portray. In speaking about revelation, the more descriptive the term, the less adequate the description.’[1]

In other words if you make a point about something being literally revelatory, you fail to understand what revelation actually is – it’s beyond.

So therefore we are all, seeking after that which is beyond all letters. And the role of the letters becomes not encapsulating the will of God, but pointing instead at that which is beyond all letters.

To put it another way, in the words of the very Sidra we read today.

Vchol ha’am roim et hakalot – ‘All the people saw the thunder’

That’s impossible, of course, or rather it requires a blending, a bending, of sensory perceptions.

It becomes poetically possible as it is literally impossible.

Is this a little highfalutin, I’m sorry. But this is important. This is who we are, as a faithful, non-fundamentalist community.

Maimonides[2] puts it like this.

We believe that the Torah has reached Moses from God in a manner which is described in Torah figuratively by the term ‘word’, but nobody has ever known how that took place except Moses to whom that word reached.

Those words – the words that were heard on Sinai are not the same kinds of words I’m using today. That revelation is quite unlike anything I can articulate.

Or another Midrash. There is a tale of the way in which the letters of the Ten Commandments were carved into the Shnei Luchot – the two tablets Moses brought down from the mountain.

Rabbis hold that the carving went right through the stones and that it didn’t matter whether you looked one way on or the other way on at the letters

They still read the same way.

In other words they were nothing like the largely non-symmetircal letters we now know.

In other words it wasn’t written in the sort of letters we would consider letters.

One last example, my favourite.

From the  C19 Hasidic Rebbe, Naftali Tzvi Horotvitz of Rophshitz.[3]

What was heard on Sinai? Asks the Rophshitzer, ‘The sound of the first letter of the first of the Ten Commandments.’ Now that’s terrific. The first letter of the Ten Commandments is an Aleph. It doesn’t have a sound.

Or rather, maybe, it is the sound of a letter before there is noise, the sound that encapsulates all possibility of future sound, it’s the aural equivalent of a microdot in which contains all possible written information.

I’m trying to articulate an ambivalence, in the strict sense of the word – a simultaneous tug in two different directions – or valences.

On the one hand every revelatory text, every purported experience of revelation has to be tugged back down to its proper earthly station. By the time we, humans, are speaking about revelation it’s already gone.

On the other hand every text, every experience that point beyond itself towards something unknowable has to be cherished. These texts serve as pointers, a roadmap towards that which is beyond.

And the more these texts become used in this way, the more carefully and more profoundly their spiritual core is unpacked and used, in turn to point ever higher, the more important they become. They serve like spiritual ladders pointing away into the heavens. You climb them not to get to the top, but to be one who climbs, one who seeks out the heavens.

From the perspective of the heavens revelation works in the opposite way.

There is, somehow, some need of the Divine to disclose, to reach down, to share with us puny humans.

But as the information arrives it is whisked away, less we should find ourselves carrying too great a burden for our fragile human minds.

Those who claim to understand too precisely the will of God are dangerous, to themselves and others.

Frost again,

But so with all, from babes that play
At hide-and-seek to God afar,
So all who hide too well away
Must speak and tell us where they are. 

Are you still with me?

I know you don’t believe in the literal letter by letter version of revelation.

My hope, in giving this sermon is that you are with me in making two other claims.

I hope you don’t believe that what I’ve been trying to articulate is less profound, a sort of ortho-lite pseudo-faith. It’s not. It’s stronger and more holy than fundamentalism. It’s the very nature of what Jews, the most spiritually refined of Jews in any event, have felt about revelation and the letter by letter nature of this book.

I hope, equally, that you can feel, even if only on those fleeting moments, that there is something which is beyond, there is something all these letters and words point towards; not graspable, not capable of being turned into a plaything for humans to do their worse, but rather an invitation to turn towards the heavens and gaze on at the animating power of the Universe and the will for our existence.

Because a true Jewish sense of revelation exists in the middle of these two claims.

We make ourselves a place apart
Behind light words that tease and flout,
But oh, the agitated heart
Till someone find us really out.

'Tis pity if the case require
(Or so we say) that in the end
We speak the literal to inspire
The understanding of a friend.

But so with all, from babes that play
At hide-and-seek to God afar,
So all who hide too well away
Must speak and tell us where they are. 

Shabbat shalom

---

[1] God in Search of Man 184-5

[2] Perek Helek Principle 8

[3] Zera Kodesh Shavuot

Towards a (Conservative) Theology of Magic

The rare book room of the library of the Jewish Theological Seminary holds a manuscript of Sefer Gematriaot, a fourteenth-century esoteric work, where the following instructions can be deciphered.

‘Take virgin wax and make a female figure with the sex organs clearly delineated and with the features of the person you have in mind. Write on the breast X daughter of [father’s name] and X daughter of [mother’s name] and on the back, between the shoulders write the same and say over it, ‘May it be thy will God, that X daughter of [father’s name] burn with a mighty passion for me. Then bury the figure and cover it completely so that the limbs are not broken and leave it thus for 24 hours. Then bury it under the eaves, being careful that no-one witnesses your acts and cover it with a stone so that it does not break. When you disinter it, dip it carefully in water three times so it is clean, once in the name of Michael, again in the name of Gabriel and the third time in the name of Raphael, and immerse it in some urine. Then dry it and when you wish to arouse passion in her pierce the heart of the image with a new needle’[2]

I.

None of the cardinal works of Conservative Theology has chapters on magic. Emet v'Emunah is silent on the subject, as is the Sacred Cluster. The more popular theological works of Rabbis Gillman, Dorff, Jacobs, Kushner and Gordis (senior and junior)[3] likewise, have little to say on the subject. One gets the sense that a movement that owes its origins to the schools of Historical Positivism and Wissenschaft des Judentums often feels it has no need for a theology of magic. This, I argue, is both an error and a shame.

Moses Mendelssohn, the father of all breeds of progressive Judaism, believed the more rationally he was able to explain Jewish behaviour and Jewish existence the more Jews and even non-Jews would accept his claims. His pursuit of rationalism, echoed in the work of Zecharias Frankel, left little room for the study of the mysterious and the magical. Gershon Scholem spent a lifetime railing against what he perceived to be the failure of non-Orthodox Jewry to devote serious effort to understanding the mystical, but on those occasions when Wissenschaft did enter the world of the esoteric, see for example Louis Ginzberg's extended essay on 'Cabbalah' in the Jewish Encyclopaedia, the subject was treated much as one might treat an area of Halachah such as sacrifices or ritual impurity. The Conservative Movement views the mystical as a historical curiosity, rather than a vibrant area of Judaism worthy of serious thought and capable of shaping the way Jews lived their lives. A few mystically orientated Jews have landed in the Conservative Movement, but they seem to have had a lonely time. Abraham Joshua Heschel was an isolated figure and, more recently, Art Green left to try and blend academic study and spiritual questing elsewhere. That said I know that without a way of articulating a theology of magic my Judaism is weaker, and I believe the same holds true for Conservative Jewry as a whole.

It is arguable that from the very earliest days of Progressive Judaism the lack of an articulated mystical vision has weakened the movement. It is well known that four of the children of Moses Mendelssohn left Judaism for the Church. Until recently I had assumed that since their Jewish practice had become so stripped of spirit they had drifted into an equally spiritless Protestantism. While this was the case for Abraham and Nathan Mendlessohn, Dorothea and Henrietta in fact joined, from a deep longing for spiritual sustenance, the ritually intense Catholic Church. [4] We see similar patterns today. While there are Jews who slip from spiritless Judaism to spiritless atheism, many leave their mother faith to find spiritual solace in Jesus, Eastern religions and even shamanism. Yet more leave Conservative Jewish homes in search of richer spiritual pickings in Orthodoxy, neo-Hasidism, Renewal and even the Kabbalah Learning Centre. This attempt to articulate a theory of Jewish magic is indeed based on the same desire to explain Jewish behaviour and Jewish existence that drove Mendelssohn. Where I differ from Mendelssohn, however, is in his most basic assumption. Whereas Mendelssohn believed the more rational he was able to articulate Judaism, the more successful he would be, I believe the more capable I am of articulating Judaism within the context of irrationality the more effectively I will be able to function theologically.

The idea that this Universe functions, at its very source, in an irrational manner is not a radical statement. Since Kant's Critique of Pure Reason the idea that in its purest form, we live in a world that is noumenal, non-phenomenolgical and indeed irrational has become widely accepted. This philosophical underpinning is a gift to the theologian. Even Isaac Breur, founder of Aggudat Yisrael, clearly understood the implications of Kant's withering critique of rationality, he claimed 'every real Jew who seriously and honestly studies the "Critique of Pure Reason" is bound to pronounce his "Amen" on it.'[5] Likewise the deep level irrationality of the Universe is recognised by pure science. Quantum mechanics simply defies attempts to apply classical rational rules to the behaviour of sub-atomic particles. Indeed we have reached a point where Kabbalists like Daniel Matt can quote theoretical physicists such as Steven Hawking and vice versa. All this I take to be good news. Indeed there are even traces of irrational thought in the corpus of works on Conservative Theology; the Creation of the Universe, Sinai and theodicy are often 'explained' with a nod to the irrational, but this is not enough. One cannot have a view of the Universe that is largely rational, apart from the bits that are not. If there is a shred of irrationality that exists in this Universe then all rationality is to be distrusted. The battle between rationality and irrationality is not a fair fight. Irrationality has an absolute advantage. The grains of irrationality articulated by Heisenberg and Kant and recognised in classic theologies, particularly in the field of theodicy, render untenable attempts to sentence our world to rationality.

Logic aside, it also feels somewhat bizarre to restrict the application of the irrational to only long since passed moments of mythic history and times of hardship (the election of Abraham and gift of revelation primary among them). The irrational, the mystical and the magic have the ability to bring joy and excitement to our everyday lives. We should not keep the nod to the irrational in a box only to be opened when all other attempts to explain have failed, rather, we should treat the irrational nature of the Universe as a primary source of theological succour.

In the course of this essay I intend to define magic and show its place within the corpus of our tradition. Secondly through an analysis of case studies, taken from disparate parts of the Jewish tradition I intend to articulate some principles of magic that we, as Conservative Jews, might be able to internalise into our own lives.

Two caveats; The sources analysed in this paper are chosen not for their historisitic accuracy, but rather as articulations of ways of thinking about the irrational, and the human's ability to shape it. Secondly, this is not an academic paper, rather a personal quest. The footnotes will not be of an academic standard and the argument cannot be as watertight as one might hope for in, say, an academic dissertation. Rather this is an attempt to end the sentence that should lie at the heart of all theological endeavours, the sentence that begins, 'I believe …'. 

II.

Thus far we have been deliberately imprecise in the use of the terms irrational, mystical and magical. Now we need a narrower focus. I intend, in this section, to examine definitions of magic offered by modern anthropology and psychology. I will attempt to illustrate these theoretical models with examples drawn from the corpus of Jewish practice. In the next section I turn to examine Judaism's self-confessed relationship with magic.

As a definition of magic, I enjoy the articulation of Marcel Mauss. For Mauss, magic 'is a giant variation on the theme of the principle of causality'. [6] An example will be helpful. Were I to lay my hand on a person's back their skin would depress, this would be a standard consequence of the theme of the principle of causation. If, as a result of my laying hands, the person recovered from some illness, that would be a giant variation on this principle. Of course, this articulation provides no way of gauging whether a particular effect is indeed a 'giant variation' on the principle of causality and therefore magic, or merely an oddity and therefore simply … an oddity, and indeed I will return to this question of quantitative assessment of magic later, but for now, I believe the articulation is helpful.

Magic, therefore becomes a method of cheating the Universe. Science would suggest that in order for a person to achieve effect E, he or she would need to access the causal mechanisms A,B,C and D. Magic is the short cut, a way of moving directly from A to E. Indeed, the idea of magic as short cut is well known to the Rabbis of the Talmud. The term used is kifitsat haaretz. In BT Sanhedrin 95a-b we find Avishai, King David's General taking a shower. As he washes his hair he sees blood and realizing his master is in grave danger he jumps on David's horse and sets off to rescue his King. As he does so, the Gemorah informs us, the ground collapses beneath him and by means of kifitsah he immediately arrives at his faraway destination and is able to rescue the King from the clutches of his enemy.[7]

Another key articulation is that of the father of modern anthropology, James Frazer. According to Frazer there are two principles of magic, the first, the Law of Similarity, claims that 'like produces like, or that an effect resembles its cause.' The second, the Law of Contact or Contagion, claims 'things which have once been in contact with one another continue to act on each other at a distance after physical contact has been severed.'[8] Both these principles are well known to Jewish practice. The act of smichah - the laying of hands - whether it be on the goat to be sent to Azazel,[9] or any of the various sacrificial animals catalogued in the opening chapters of Leviticus, or even the action of conferring Rabbinic ordination (also called smichah)[10] is predicated on the notion that touch imparts something from the toucher to the touched. The notion of Contagion is established in quantum theory and also documented in the field of twin studies,[11] but let us also consider a less rigorously scientific example of the power of touch. Surely anyone who has ever hugged or been hugged is aware of the operation of the Law of Contagion, but is it right to call this magic? Again our desire to retain clear distinctions between 'giant variation' and normal operation is thwarted.

Examples of attempts to influence by Similarity are also common in Jewish ritual. The pouring of water during the temple celebration of the Festival of Succot[12] seems an attempt to entice God into bringing rain for the Children of Israel by acting in a similar way to the way we wish the heavens to respond. Likewise, we can see in the mezuzah an attempt to gain divine protection through mimicking the acts of the ancient Israelites on the night the Angel of Death passed over their houses on the way to the houses of the Egyptians. Indeed, the very language with which Jews explain ritual suggests an awareness of the role of similarity. The word ta'm - taste - is used to express an almost homeopathic sense of mimicking cosmic ideas through patterns of ritual observance. Reams of exegesis are devoted to ascertaining tamei mizvot ­ the taste (or relevance) of the commandments, Shabbat therefore becomes a tam of the world to come and we observe it mimicking the resting of the Divine on the seventh day. The word cneged, literally meaning opposite, also lexicographically encodes a sense of the mimicry that  Jews perform in an attempt to win Divine favour. Thus the four cups of wine at the Passover Seder are explained to be cneged the four ways in which the children of Israel were rescued, saved, redeemed and taken out of Egypt.[13] When we, as Jews, do an act cneged an action of the Divine we have the opportunity to do more than merely encode as ritual non-corporeal sensitivities, we have the option to attempt to influence cosmic patterns through accessing the power of the Law of Similarity.

To articulations of Mauss and Frazer I wish to restrict the scope of this essay further. At present, I am only interested in magic as performed by human beings without ad initio Divine causation. I do not consider God, in deciding to split and splitting the Sea of Reeds, to be a magician, these ad initio Divinely caused miracles are not our present field of concern. I also am not discussing anything done on Divine fiat, God commands Moses to do something, he does it and the effect appears magical. So be it, but I am exclusively interested in those acts done by humans, inspired by human needs and human articulations. This is not to say, as shall become clear, that I do not intend to address the role of the Divine in magic.

III.

Judaism's self-confessed relation to magic is complex. 'A witch you shall not permit to live', says Exodus,[14] which sounds straightforward, until, in a discussion on that very verse the Rabbis of the Talmud are revealed to be using variations of letters to mimic the Divine act of Creation thereby creating a three-year-old calf which they would eat for Shabbat dinner.[15] We also gain a sense of the subtlety of the prohibition against witchery from the counsel of the Sefer Gematriaot, here the verse 'A witch you shall not permit to live' is suggested as an inscription for amulets to ward off the magic of others! As Levinas explains in his discussion of the talmudic episode of the magic creation of the calf[16] the Rabbis seem far more concerned with expunging idol worship from the Children of Israel than in removing from the individual human the ability to shake the standard principle of cause and effect. Magic is to be prescribed within acceptable borders of halachic monotheism, rather than proscribed out of the tradition altogether.

Let us consider the example of Elisha and the Shunamite woman. The wandering Elisha regularly lodges with one particular couple when he visits Shunem. As a mark of his gratitude for the couple's hospitality, he appears to arrange for the childless pair to bear a son. One day however, the child dies and the mother sends for Elisha demanding that he remedy the situation.

II Kings 4:32-35

Elisha came into the house, and there was the boy, laid out dead on the couch. He went in, shut the door behind the two of them, and prayed to HaShem. Then he mounted [the bed], and placed himself over the child. He put his mouth on his mouth, his eyes on his eyes, and his hands upon his hands, as he bent over him. And the body of the child became warm. Then he stepped down, and walked once up and down the room, then mounted and bent over him. Thereupon the boy sneezed seven times and the boy opened his eyes.

In this episode we see a number of issues illustrated clearly. We see Elisha making use of Similarity and Contagion, breathing into the child and pressing against him. We note Elisha calls on God using the tetragrammaton, thereby eliminating any suggestion of idolatry. And we also see the normal function of the principle of cause and effect is shattered, or do we? To the modern rational mind one could see in this tale an exaggerated retelling of a case of Cardio-Pulmonary Resuscitation. But is CPR magical? What are we to make of the medical ability to resuscitate - the human power to raise the dead? Yet again we are challenged by the desire to distinguish more clearly between 'giant variations' and standard unfolding of the principle of causation. Maybe the problem, instead of gnawing at us, should serve as an inspiration. I suggest the willingness to look at the oddities in the world and be moved by the gigantic nature of their oddness is close to what A. J. Heschel called radical amazement. When we begin to see magic in the world, our appreciation of the Universe and its ultimate cause is heightened. In this world where the power of perception, the subjective, is the only thing we can, objectively, be sure of, the ability to see magic in the world becomes not a mark of objective certainty (how could it ever be?) rather an act of faith.

Another example will further flesh out some of the themes I believe are present within the Jewish tradition. In Tractate Ta'nit the Rabbis discuss reactions to tzarah sba al ha tzibor - woes that fall on the community. With the exception of an excess of rain these woes are responded to with a blast of the shofar. The Rabbis illustrate the nature of this exception with a tale.

Mishna Ta'anit 3:8

Once the people said to Honi the circle drawer, "Pray for rain to fall." 

He replied, "Go and bring in the Passover ovens so that they do not dissolve." 

He prayed but no rain fell.

He drew a circle and stood inside it and cried out, "Ribbono shel 'olam, Master of the Universe, your children have turned to me because they believe me to be as a member of your house;  I swear by your great name that I will not move from here until you have mercy on your children."

Rain then began to drip, he said:  It is not for this that I have prayed but for rain (to fill) cisterns, ditches and caves.

The rain then began to come down with great force and he said "This is not the rain I prayed for. Rather rain of kindness, blessing and bounty."

Rain then fell in the normal way until the Israelites in Jerusalem were forced to go up for shelter to the Temple Mount because of the rain…Then Simeon Ben Shetah said top him, "if you were not Honi I would excommunicate you, but what can I do to you who makes demands of Ha-Makom, God and he accedes to your request, like a son who makes demands of his father and he accedes to his request"

Again we see the very definite placing of this magical act within the Jewish corpus, Ribbono shel 'olam and Ha-Makom are both unambiguously 'kosher' ways of referring to the Divine. More importantly, we are also beginning to paint a picture of the magician within Jewish tradition. Both Elisha and Honi demonstrate significant chutzpah. They both rail against a numb acceptance of what appears to be the pre-ordained manner of unfolding of the Universe. We should note how Honi's oath, astoundingly, serves to bind, not Honi, but God![17]

Perhaps this is what makes us uncomfortable with tales of magic. In many ways we, as humans, enjoy thinking of our lives as tiny and meaningless. In the context of the Universe we are accomplished at believing we are 'but dust and ashes,' but Judaism provides a second model of living one's life in the context of the Universe - 'for indeed the entire world was created for my sake.' With this sense of the centrality of the Human the magician feels able to call on the world to be re-shaped around his or her demands. Jung defines magic as 'an attempt to enslave to human will forces that are thought to be beyond her control',[18] but this begs the question - how powerful is the human will, what is the level of our ability to act in the world? I suggest that magic is more than an undifferentiated element of a broader mystical outlook on life, magic is the articulation by action of a broad conception of the power of the human. I will return to this idea.

We also see, in the tale of Honi, two other key elements - the centrality of ritual and the beloved nature of the 'magician'.  I will begin by focusing on the nature of ritual. While kavanah - intentionality and meditation play a role in other mystical practice, in magic the role of ritual is elevated to particular heights. In both Honi and Elisha we have articulations of a connection between ritual and the human exercise of cosmic power. Ritual acts are keys by which humans obtain access to the cheating mechanism of kfitsat ha'aretz. The Han Philospher, Yang Hsiung (whose life coincided with the time of the redaction of the Mishnah) articulates the potential of ritual particularly well.

Tai Hsuan Ching - The Canon of Supreme Mystery

The good man learns to use ritual to effect a balance in ever wider circles within the family and society at large...The ritual act...partakes of divinity because it is categorically akin to the sacred Mystery in its operation. As an unseen motive force behind profound social change, the noble man mimics the cosmic mystery in its catalyzing activity. Through ritual the noble man takes on divine aspects.

I shall come on to discuss the relationship between these rituals and mainstream Jewish behavioral practice (halacha) later, but for at present I believe it is important to stress a theology in which our ritual actions are more than illustrations of our affiliation with the collective and more than the straightforward fulfilment of God's commandment as understood through the law codes of our tradition. Through ritual, we impact on forces that Jung suggests are beyond the control of the human will. Through the observance of ritual, or mimicry of cosmic mystery, the human cultivates the divine within him or herself.

In Jewish theology, these two ideas, the centrality of the human and the divine aspect of ritual, are linked via the concept of tzelem elohim - the image of the Divine present in every human. Masechet Sotah illustrates the point particularly well. Jews are commanded to bury the dead and clothe the naked, but the articulation of these commandments shows an awareness of these two ideas.

BT Sotah 14a

What does the verse, 'You should walk after Hashem your God'  (Deuteronomy 8:5) mean?…You should walk after the attributes of the Holy One Blessed Be He. Just as He clothes the naked, as it is written, 'And Hashem, God, made coats of skin for Adam and his wife'  (Genesis 3:21) so should you also clothe the naked. … The Holy One Blessed Be He buried the dead, as it is written 'And He buried [Moses] in the valley' (Deuteronomy 34:6) so should you bury the dead.

These ritual commands are made of us since we are created btzelem elohim, through fulfilling them we make ourselves closer to the Divine. Thus ritual becomes a way of connecting to the essence of the Universe. Let us take the example of ritual connecting Jews to the flow of time. The Harvest Festivals, the blessing of the new moon, the marking of each morning and evening are all methods, encoded within the Jewish tradition for enriching this connectedness within our own lives.

As we become closer to the Divine so we begin to reach an understanding of a third central element to the Honi narrative. In order for us to access the cheating mechanism of magic we need to be beloved. In the Honi tale, Honi is compared to a child of a Divine parent who, being loved, is able to make demands of his father and have the father accede to the son's request. It is through our use of divine mimicry in ritual, I argue, that humans can come close to God and it is through our divine mimicry that we become beloved and in turn this is how we begin to gain access to Divine powers.

Perhaps even more remarkable than Honi's action is the fact that the tale is deemed worthy of inclusion in the Mishna. Simeon ben Shettach is often considered the founding father of Pharisees, the representative of Rabbinic orthodoxy in the pre-destruction era. He sees Honi as an affront to Rabbinic piety. Hayim Lapin[19] and William Scott Green paint a picture of Honi as an itinerant Magic man, outside the cloistered world of Rabbinic scholarship,[20] why then has this story been included? I suspect the editor of the Mishnah shares the concern I outlined in the introduction to this essay. The Rabbis are aware of the presence of the irrational in the Universe. They are aware that there are competing claims made on the Jews, Christianity is offering its understanding of the miracle worker and even the more rationally minded Rabbis feel the need to allow a conception of magic to take its place in the earliest redaction of the oral law. More interesting still is to see the Rabbinic response to the tale in the centuries after its inclusion.

In the talmudic discussion of the tale we see Honi becomes co-opted by the Rabbis, several folio and seventy years after the potentially unrabbinic act of magic the Gemorah reports ‘the law is as clear to us today as in the time of Honi The Circle Maker for when he came to the House of Study he would settle for the scholars any difficulty they had.'[21] We see a deliberate attempt to draw this tale of weirdness into the rational world of Bet Midrash. Honi is rabbinised, Honi The Circle Drawer becomes Honi the Rabbi. In the eyes of the tradition, we are to understand Honi to be God's leading disciple on earth, and as such it is only to be expected that he should be capable of performing magic. The Rabbis wrap up the actions of Honi in halachic acceptability. In this Rabbinic wrap anything that increases the power of the Jew to connect and thus impact on the world is brought within the fold of acceptable Jewish action, as long as these actions are not perceived to be idolatrous.

IV

As a final case study I wish to look at what is probably the most quintessential and famous example of Jewish magic, the Golem. In the light of the preceding analysis I believe we can gain fresh theological insights from what might otherwise appear to be a mere fairy story. In particular I am looking for an articulation of the extent of the human will, an essential piece to our puzzle.

Leviticus Rabbah 29:1

In the first hour Adam ascended in [God's] thought. In the second he discussed with the angels. In the third he collected his dust. In the fourth he kneaded him. In the fifth he formed him.  In the sixth he made him a Golem. In the seventh he blew in him the soul. In the eighth he put him in the Garden of Eden.

The Golem is not a toy, made of something that has nothing to do with the human, rather the primordial human was a Golem before life was given to him/her. The idea is that the Golem is a step along the way to creation of human, a step that an omnipotent God can take, but man cannot. But we should see how capable a 'normal' human is, a human can have thoughts, discuss, collect dust, knead and form. The mystical literature goes on to suggest that particularly powerful humans can go on to even the sixth step - the creation of a Golem. In the eyes of R Joseph ben Shalom Ha-Arokh, Abraham and Sarah were such people, and like, every good exegete, he has his scriptural evidence.

Commentary of R Joseph ben Shalom Ha-Arokh on Sefer Yetzirah[22]

[Abraham and Sarah] combined the letters and [were] successful in creating a creature [Golem] as it is said "The soul they made in Haran" (Gen 12:5).

The classic commentaries ad locum attempt to release us from this beguiling pshat, 'the soul they made' is interpreted as the converts Abraham and Sarah attracted, but the magical reading is, it is submitted, a less forced read.[23] We also have a view of the magical potential of the righteous when we examine the context within which the Gemorah discusses the creation of a Golem,

Sanhedrin 65b

Raba said, if the righteous desired it they could create the world as it says "for their sins separate (mvdilim) you from God." (Isiah 59:2) Rabbah created a man and sent him to R. Zeira. He spoke to him and received no answer. Therefore he said to him, you are a child of magicians, return to your dust.

Jews are used to thinking that Shabbat rest is mimicking God, but weekday malachah is no less a copy. Just as the Shabbat is separated from the week by a hevdel, so too the human is separated from God by a hevdel. The extent to which this hevdel manifests itself in any one of us is dependent how far we fall short of Godliness. Idel's own analysis of the Golem tradition leads the normally conservative scholar to speculate, 'Man is empowered ex definitio with creative forces that are divine powers which cease to function only when he defiles his soul.'[24] Practically, we humans are able to do many of the creative acts of God, but we run out of creative ability at a certain point along the way to the full creation of humanity as modelled by God.

V

We are now able to offer some conclusions.

We have discussed the irrationality of the Universe. I believe that if magic is irrational then this is not a case of magic being apart from a rational world of knowledge, but rather the property of its very foundation - a world of interconnectedness and irrationality. I believe that if I see interconnectedness in all my actions, both rational and irrational, my awareness of the power of my own actions is heightened.

We have discussed the non-discrete nature of 'giant variations on the theme of the principle of causality'. I suggested that when we start looking at the world around us with the radical amazement demanded by A. J. Heschel, we begin to see traces of magic in many places. I believe that my sensitivity and willingness to believe in magic is conditioned by my ability to be radically amazed by the world.

We have discussed the problem of finding a role for God in a theology of magic. I have argued that the Rabbis wrapped up magic inside borders of acceptability. Jewish magic is not an attempt to confront the Divine by turning to other forms of ultimate power, rather an attempt to imitate God, a testimony to the greatness of creation. I believe magic per se is no more idolatrous than, say, prayer. I believe the encoded rituals of normative Jewish practice form a framework for allowing the Jew to mimic the Divine and thereby become Godly. I believe when I see halacha as a method of mimicking the divine and becoming Godly I begin to see Jewish practice not as a system of rules to be obeyed (or ignored) rather as a never perfect piece of art which I can spend my life improving.

We have discussed the nature of the Jewish magician and the extent of human power. I have argued human power comes, in part, from the notion of the creation of the human in the image of the Divine (we are after all only a hevdel away). I have also argued that magical power arises out of a combination of chutzpah and belovedness or righteousness. I believe 'the magicality of human beings lies in [our] embodied passionate existence toward others.'[25] I believe my willingness to hurl myself into the maelstrom of interconnectedness that is the world can force the world to listen. I believe that my ability to love (be it love God, my fellow humans or the world around us) is dependent on this belief in the power of a passionate existence.

Magic is not beyond us, as humans, it is merely the edge of our power. It exists on both sides of the gap between God and human. Again Yang Hsiung articulates the difference between Divine and human realms particularly well.

Tai Hsuan Ching - The Canon of Supreme Mystery

The way of the heaven is a perfect compass. The way of Earth is a perfect carpenters' square. The compass in motion describes a complete circle through the site. The square, unmoving secures things [in their proper place]. Circling through the sites makes divine light possible, securing things makes congregation by type possible. Mystery is the way of the heaven, the way of Earth and the way of Man.

At the meeting point between finite and infinite, the meeting point between the heavens and the earth, the rational and the irrational is mystery and magic. And yes, I do believe in magic.

---

[1] This paper is based on material first taught at the Limmud Jewish Education Conference in Nottingham, England in December 1999.

[2] see Trachtenberg, Jewish Magic and Superstition, p125

[3] Sacred Fragments, From our Ancestors to our Descendants, We Have Reason to Believe, To Life!, Conservative Judaism and A Still Small Voice

[4] See Meyer, Origins of the Modern Jew pp 89 and 101

[5] Quoted in Salomon Ehrmann, 'Isaac Breur', Guardians of our Heritage, ed L. Jung 624f

[6] A General Theory of Magic

[7] The notion of kfitsat ha'aretz is also applied to journeys of Eliezar (servant of Abraham) and Jacob ad loc.

[8] In The Golden Bough, Frazer takes twelve volumes to fully outline his theory. What follows is, for reasons of brevity, can only be a sketch of how these laws apply in Judaism.

[9] Leviticus 16

[10] Rabbinic ordination, by virtue of the laying of hands, died out in the aftermath of the destruction of the Second Temple, but see Jacob Katz's essay on 'The Dispute Between Jacob Berab and Levi ben Habib Over Renewing Ordination' in Divine Law in Human Hands.

[11] See the work on separated identical twins in Male and Male, Studies in Genetics

[12] Mishna Succah 4:9

[13] BT Pesachim 99b Rashi DHM arba' cosot

[14] Exodus 22:17, see also Deuteronomy 18:10-14

[15] BT Sanhedrin 67b. Note the use of the root form bra - creation, a term that specifically refers to Divine action.

[16] Nine Talmudic Readings

[17] Lieberman in, Greek in Jewish Palestine 108 n85 recognizes that 'if a Jew wished to adjure an angel in an incantation he might instead bind himself by an oath according to which the angel should and will act. If the angel acts differently he causes himself to perjure himself, which is not compatible with piety.' But this seems a step beyond this possibility.

[18] Basic Writings

[19] 'Rabbis and Public Prayers for Rain in Later Roman Palestine' in Religion and Politics in the Ancient Near East, ed Berlin

[20] The nature of Holy Men in Antiquity is a hotly contested subject for academic debate. See Richard Kalmin's paper 'Holy Men, Rabbis and Demonic Sages in Late Antiquity' presented at a recent conference held at JTS.

[21] BT Taanit 23a

[22] I found this reference in Moshe Idel's Golem

[23] Idel, in Golem, is convinced esoteric Jewish tradition considered Abraham a maker of Golems, this commentary is however his only textual proof.

[24] The Golem, p 129

[25] An articulation of Bruce Kapferer, Feast of the Sorcerer