In fact, our civilization is built on imagination. Without this capacity, no progress could ever be made—whether in science, literature, philosophy, art, music or commerce. Our world would be unable to sustain itself and develop properly if human beings did not continuously explore new and uncharted paths. It is for this reason that every generation must ensure that its youngsters are provided with enough opportunities to develop a healthy imagination.

Children’s toys have become a major industry. In the last few decades, we have witnessed a boom in the manufacturing of the most sophisticated toys. Today it is possible to buy dolls that can walk, sing, speak with other dolls, sleep, cry, smile, and even need diapers. No doubt, in just a few years the industry will confuse its clients with even more lifelike dolls, to such an extent that their manufacturers will rush to City Hall and register them as new births. Similarly, electric trains, boats, planes and other modes of transportation have become more and more like the real thing. Some of the electric cars available in toy stores can travel at a speed of 50 kilometers an hour, are equipped with radios, computers and windshield wipers, and can operate on solar power.

While our society welcomes these new innovations and regards them as greatly beneficial to our children and grandchildren, this is a major educational mistake.

The Torah is often referred to as a toy. King David said:

“Had Your Torah not been my plaything [preoccupation], I would have perished in my affliction.” (1)

This analogy is found a number of times in Tehillim. In the same way that playing brings joy to a human being, so does busying oneself with the Torah. But, what is this joy comprised of? No doubt, one of the many elements that contribute to the pleasure of playing is the use of imagination. Joy is the art of seeing great possibilities.

When people learn Torah, it is not just the information they assimilate that is enjoyable, but also that they thrive on the possibility of creating chiddushim (new insights)bydeveloping their own imagination in the pursuit of understanding the Torah. This is one of the reasons why the Oral Torah was never completely recorded, and why the Torah and later the Talmud were written in a most cryptic script, requiring the student to read between the lines in order to fully grasp the profundity within. This allows the mind to expand and demands much creativity. “It is impossible for a Beit Midrash not to contain a chiddush.” (2) One needs to use one’s own imagination to include what the text itself does not reveal.

One of the most important benefits of playing with toys is the fulfillment of children’s need to pretend. They do not play with the toy itself, but rather with what they imagine while they are playing. The greater the distance between the toy and the product of the child’s imagination, the more intensive and beneficial is this pursuit to the child. He will have to use all his imagination to create the world in which he wants to find himself and will have to, literally, think out of the box.

For this reason, it is highly undesirable for toys to approximate reality. A doll that can speak, cry or smile is not a real doll, precisely because it is so “real.” The child is unable to pretend because the manufacturer has already done it for him. Adults, who do not possess the same degree of imagination as do children, mistakenly believe they need to produce toys that look real. What they do not understand is that the children themselves will imagine the part that is missing. To be sure, the child will initially be very pleased with the state-of-the-art doll that can sing and smile, but a child is unaware of his own psychological makeup and will ultimately become bored. There is, after all, very little left to the imagination. In fact, more and more parents complain that the more expensive the toy, the sooner it is likely to be neglected.

Most Torah institutions today have fallen victim to the same problem as that of the toy industry. They now offer classes that are so well prepared that questions become nearly impossible. Instead of encouraging imagination, they kill it. The Torah, then, is no longer the great “plaything” but a sophisticated toy to which nothing can be added. And just as the child will drop the toy, so the student will drop the Torah.

Toy manufacturers are certainly making more money than ever before. Similarly, most yeshivot are producing more “Torah scholars” than ever. But are these booming industries serving the child’s and student’s education?

For a healthy future and Judaism, we will need adults who will be gifted with fertile imaginations. For that, we need simple educational dolls for our children, and Torah teachings that consist of open-ended inquiry and a willingness to undergo a renaissance.

Whether we succeed will depend on the toy industry and our yeshivot. After all: Toys R Us. And so is Torah.

Regards from Melbourne, Australia.

************************

1. Tehillim 119:92.

2. Chagiga 3a.

How does one master one’s desire for retaliation and not be destroyed by it? Is it possible not to bear a grudge? Feelings of revenge cannot be eliminated simply by denying them. They will surely explode, and the aftermath will be even worse than the original revenge one would have liked to take but suppressed.

How can the Torah forbid any form of retaliation? “You shall neither take revenge nor bear a grudge against the children of your people” (1). Is this not asking the impossible and is it not, in fact, dangerous? We might understand that one is not allowed to take revenge in the form of action,but not to even bear a grudge seems to be both impossible and counterproductive. One cannot suppress feelings and not expect consequences.

How did Joseph deal with his feelings of revenge after his brothers mistreated him and sold him into slavery? Did he really not take revenge or bear a grudge against them, as many commentators claim? Even the biblical text seems to present it as a possibility when it tells us how Joseph’s brothers were worried that he would hold their treatment of him against them after their father Yaakov died: “And Joseph’s brothers saw that their father was dead, and they said: Perhaps Joseph still bears a grudge against us and he will pay us back for all the evil we did to him” (2). 

“And Joseph responds: Fear not, for am I in the place of God?  Even though you meant to do me harm, God meant it for the good, to make it come out as it actually did on this day, to preserve the life of a great nation” (3).

Why, then, did Joseph not reveal himself at the first opportunity that his brothers stood before him? Instead, he teases them mercilessly. He bids them to come and then sends them away; accuses them after he has his royal cup and money placed into one brother’s sack so as to embarrass them; throws one of them into jail, and puts them all in a state of mortal fear.  If this is not revenge, what is? Commentators struggle with this episode and have come up with some brilliant, and some weak, explanations.

Joseph is a skillful psychologist. His self-perception is supreme. He realizes that revenge is a futile attempt to remedy past suffering. Vengeance cannot be defended as “teaching the aggressor a lesson,” or “getting even.” It simply doesn’t work.  Rather than bringing closure to the violence and injury, revenge spirals and escalates. But there also cannot be a suppressed anti-vengeance moral stand. It too will not work, for it is angelic, not human.

Instead, the rage that feeds vengeance should be restrained and redirected to positive thought and action. The impulse toward revenge must be weakened; in its place, genuine sorrow should emerge. The need for retaliation must be given time to slowly die out. It cannot be killed overnight.

At the same time, it must also cause the perpetrator to realize his mistake, make peace with himself and sincerely repent. Revenge can only be meaningful if it is healing to the victim and the perpetrator. As such, it is no longer vengeance but revengeful healing.   What Joseph does is set up a strategy by which both conditions are fulfilled.

Joseph does nottake actual revenge. All he does is allow his subconscious to have its way andbelieve that he is taking revenge.While his reason dictates not to retaliate, because it has no purpose, he knows that feelings of hate may be lurking in his subconscious even as he is unaware of them. His experience with dreams, via the baker, the wine butler and Pharaoh, has taught him how powerful the subliminal is. There is no escape, however much one would like to remove any feelings of vengeance. It must get its way. Otherwise, it may manifest itself in the most powerful manner and cause enormous damage.  To ignore it is a major mistake.  It needs to be treated. There must be revenge even if it goes against one’s better judgment. But it should never manifest itself; it can only be subconscious revenge.

Joseph is aware of yet another aspect of the need for retaliation. It is necessary for the perpetrators to think that he had his revenge, and after it has been executed there is full closure.

Thus, what Joseph does is most ingenious. He tricks his subconscious as well as his brothers by creating a strategy that makes all parties believe that he actually is taking revenge.  In this way, he satisfies all sides.

At the same time, he must make sure that his brothers have the opportunity to repent for their mistakes, and that can be done only if he creates a scenario in which they find themselves in a similar situation as at the time when they sold him.

“What constitutes complete repentance? He who is confronted by the identical situation wherein he previously sinned and it lies within his power to commit the sin again, but he nevertheless abstains and does not succumb because he wishes to repent…this is a true penitent” (4).

Aware of how terribly guilty the brothers will feel once he reveals himself, Joseph needs to create a situation to pre-empt this possibility.  He must set up a scenario that will once again incite hatred for one of the brothers, and it must again be Yaakov’s youngest and favorite child. This can only be Binyamin. Indeed it is he who satisfies all the requirements needed to bring about a serious dispute among the brothers.  And so Joseph sets Binyamin apart, making sure he is guilty of getting all the brothers into trouble—caused by the discovery of the cup and the money in his sack, which he seemingly stole (5)—and favoring him as their father Yaakov favored Joseph many years earlier (6). This gives the brothers good reason to hate Binyamin and abandon him. It is the ultimate test case. Will they let Binyamin down, or will they fight for him and not sell him to the enemy? If they choose the latter, it will finally give them peace of mind once Joseph reveals himself, and there will no longer be need for guilt feelings. They will know that they have repented! They have uprooted their earlier behavior in an optimal way.

In doing all this, Joseph satisfies the need of his own subconscious to take revenge and allows his brothers to believe that he had his revenge, while presenting them with the opportunity to do teshuva. All of this is accomplished in one brilliant move, carefully planned and executed.

What Joseph doesn’t realize is that the plan may not entirely work. Who says that the brothers will actually believe that after he has had his “revenge,” he will no longer consider them guilty and all will be well? Perhaps he will continue to take revenge now that Yaakov is no longer alive! And indeed this is what the brothers seem to believe. It creates an enormous dilemma for Joseph. How will he convince them that such is not the case? If he can’t persuade them of his sincere belief that there is no place for vengeance, then there is no chance that his relationship with them will, once and for all, be healed. The only thing he might be able to convince them of is that he won’t take revenge in deed, but he realizes that he can’t prove to them that he doesn’t bear a grudge. They won’t believe him.

Again, he makes a smart move. Instead of trying to convince them of what they believe is impossible, he asks them: What about you?  Don’t you have reason to bear a grudge against me even after all you have done to me?

Perhaps you were right in your animosity toward me. After all, my behavior was downright obnoxious. I spoke evil about you to our father (7). My dreams obviously distressed you when I announced that you would bow down to me. Who would not be upset? I understand that you felt mistreated when our father gave the many-colored garment to me and not to any of you. In many ways, I laid the trap that ensnared you. So why put all the guilt on yourselves? We are all guilty. Perhaps I made your lives as miserable as you did mine.  More than that, I know that you were looking for me when you came to Egypt. You didn’t come only to buy food, but also to find me and make peace with me (8). But I didn’t want you to have the satisfaction of finding me, so I set the stage—threatening you, putting our brother Shimon in jail and causing you enormous problems when dealing with our youngest brother Binyamin.

Are we not even, then? I live a life of wealth, of unprecedented power. I have servants at my beck and call. I am second in power, probably not only in Egypt, since Egypt is by far the largest empire in the world. So who has more reason to complain, you or I? You had to suffer through a terrible famine and live day and night with a depressed father, while I enjoyed myself as the spoiled second monarch of Egypt.

Is it not remarkable that you tried to harm me but it only partially succeeded?  Events turned in a way that nobody would have expected.  Your “terrible” deeds were actually instrumental in my becoming who I am today: a wealthy and powerful man, enjoying his life as few can. So why should I take revenge on you?  It is you who have good reason to take revenge on me!  You have made me a great, powerful and wealthy man. But what have I done for you all these years? I left you out in the cold, never stretching out my hand to you in the Land of Israel. I never tried to make contact with you and our father; and we would never have met had you not taken the initiative. It was not I who searched for you. I would have let you die in the famine!  Is that not as bad as what you did to me? In fact, it is much worse!

So, I should be thankful to you for what you did to me, even if the beginnings were difficult. Not only that: I wonder why you don’t want to take revenge on me now, now that you stand in front of me! I am most vulnerable. You could shout at me, injure me, and even kill me. There are no servants here; I sent them all away, to ensure that we would be alone!

Don’t you realize what outstanding tzaddikim you are?   I am by far inferior to you!  Because of what you did to me I can save our nation. So it is not I who is to be praised; it is you who brought all this about!  Looking even deeper, there is no other explanation for this unreal story but that God engineered it, and nobody else.

Revenge?? I don’t know what you’re talking about!

Arguing this way, Joseph not only convinces his brothers of their blamelessness, but he achieves his ultimate goal: convincing his subconscious.  By planning this whole strategy and contending that it is not he who should be upset but his brothers, it becomes clear that there is absolutely no place for revenge.

Not only will I not take revenge on you; I cannot even bear a grudge against you.

This is the ingenious chochma that Joseph demonstrates. He argues against himself and convinces himself that there is only One who is behind this story, and that personal feelings have no part in this.

Closure on all levels.

Regards from Sydney, Australia.

************

1. Vayikra 19:18.

2. Bereshit 50:15.

3. Ibid, 19-20.

4. Rambam, Mishneh Torah, Hilchot Teshuva 2:1

5. Bereshit 44:2.

6. Ibid, 37:3.

7. Ibid, 37:2 – See also Rashi.

8. Ibid, 42:13 – Rashi.

In Plato’s Phaedo, the metaphor used to describe the relationship of the soul to the body is that of a person locked in prison. Platonic philosophy aims at liberating man from the prison of the body. Only in that way can man achieve self-perfection. For Aristotle, although ethics and politics are serious issues, the essence of man—that activity which is distinctly human—is intellectual contemplation of eternal truth. The highest human achievement lies in the privacy of his thoughts. Its content has no practical human benefit. The most exalted human being is the philosopher. He must be free of the body’s demands, which interfere with contemplation.

In Judaism, this is not what life is all about. According to biblical thought, the body is not perceived as being in conflict with the soul. It is not an obstacle but a most welcome companion. Otherwise, what is the purpose of the body? Just to be a nuisance that we’d be better off without? Jewish thought holds that it can’t be God’s intention to create the human body so as to deliberately frustrate man. True, the body may sometimes pose challenges, but ultimately this is to allow the human being, not just the soul, to grow. The purpose of man is not to dwell in Heaven and contemplate, but to act and bring Heaven down to the material world in order to transform the world into a better place. The meaning of life is to be effectively realized by bringing about the interpenetration of the soul and the body. As such, man must be able to act, and he therefore needs his body.

The mind of man—the custodian of all spiritual and ethical values—is, on its own, incapable of action. On the other hand, all the forces and energy in the body are intrinsically completely indifferent to ethical or spiritual concepts. Only in a combined effort can they build the world.   All that man does must be able to permeate his thoughts, and all that man thinks must find a way into his body. While this might very well lead to disaster, it can also bring man to an exalted state of life. This is the task and challenge for which he was created.

Knowledge alone is never a cause for action. Western civilization has mistakenly believed that it is possible to educate the body by reasoning with it. So it continued speaking to the mind but never really reached the body. This has led to disastrous consequences. Many a philosopher has delivered himself into the hands of evil as a result.

The distinction between body and soul is similar to a difference in organic functioning; it does not reflect the radical dualism that is implicit in Plato’s prison metaphor.

Perhaps the most acute case of a man nearly losing his body while being religious is that of Yaakov falling asleep and dreaming of a ladder on which angels ascend and descend (1). The top of the ladder reaches Heaven, and God stands over it. The great German Lutheran thinker, Rudolf Otto (1869-1937), called this experience “numinous”: “a non-rational, non-sensory experience or feeling whose primary and immediate object is outside the self” (2). It consists of a mysterium tremendum et fascinans—a fearful, fascinating mystery; an altogether “other” circumstance of an objective presence that generates blank wonder, terror, awe and dependence, but also enormous spiritual vitality.

This, says Otto, is what Yaakov experiences when he falls asleep and dreams. There is no greater religious moment than that. It is an unprecedented encounter with God. But it is also extremely dangerous. The experience is so overwhelming that Yaakov runs the risk of losing his body. The dream carries him to a place where his body cannot dwell: to heaven. His body is paralyzed and nearly eliminated. Just before his soul lets go of its body, against all expectations and as through a miracle, Yaakov wakes up. His reaction is most telling: “Behold, God is in this place and I did not know it” (3). This is a moment of ultimate crisis. It is tremendous to have a religious moment, but what happens when it is impossible to handle! What am I going to do with this moment of intense unparalleled revelation in the real world?

The biggest problem is not the moment itself but how I can keep it alive and take it with me through the rest of my life in a way that is beneficial. And If I can’t, what then is the purpose of this moment? Why have it? Not only will it fade into oblivion but it will be a trauma that will haunt me for the rest of my life! It can easily turn into madness. Yaakov’s religious experience leaves him without solid ground under his feet. Plato and Aristotle would have been delighted, but Yaakov is scared to death. It is all meaningless unless I can translate this into the mundane.

While his mind and soul are still in heaven, Yaakov does the only right thing to do: he looks to the ground and picks up a stone. He wants to find the mundane because it is there that life takes place. And unless he can apply his experience on the ground, all of these heavenly events will have been in vain.

And Yaakov rose up early in the morning and took the stone that he had placed under his head and set it up as a memorial stone and poured oil on top of it….Yaakov made a vow. “If God will be with me,” he said, “if He will protect me on the journey that I am taking…then I will dedicate myself totally to God. Let this stone, which I have set up as a memorial, become a house of God. Of all that You give me, I will set aside a tenth to You” (4).

Not only does Yaakov root his heavenly experience in the ground by taking a stone to sanctify it with a physical substance, but more importantly, he links it to a mundane financial act. He translates it into ma’aser, promising that he will tithe all his physical possessions. He “de-religionizes” his experience. He understands that being religious cannot mean withdrawing from this world. It must mean to engage with this world and give it religious and heavenly meaning. He knows that his episode with the ladder is a slippery slope over which one can easily break one’s neck. To redeem this experience, it must be established in a specific space; in a physical act; in the ordinary; not by night, but by day when man is awake.

What Yaakov does is most remarkable. He introduces one of the great foundations of Halacha: to give a religious moment an ongoing effect it must be translated into the tangible, the mundane. It must establish patterns of bodily reactions and conduct, which testify to an acute corporeal awareness of a reality that is not body. To achieve an authentic state of religiosity, there must be an element of everydayness, of the commonplace, which often includes what others may call trivialities. There must be a finite act through which one perceives the infinite (Avraham Joshua Heschel). Every trifle is filled with Divinity.

Rather than ignore the body, Halacha draws a person’s attention to its complexities. It informs man not to fall victim to grandiose dreams. There are limits to human existence, and it is exactly this fact that makes life a challenge and a joy. The body places man firmly in a world that he cannot survive if he doesn’t act. Man’s view of the relationship between his body and soul reflects his attitude towards dependence on the outer world—is it embarrassing, or is it uplifting?

****

It is most telling that the world of dreams in the Torah comes to an end with Sefer Bereshit, in which almost everybody dreams: Avraham, Yaakov, and Yosef; even Avimelech, Lavan and Pharaoh. But once the Torah is given, there are no more dreams. It is as if the Torah teaches us that mitzvot (commandments) take the place of dreams. A dream is an expression of an illusory world. It represents dimensions of Heaven, where the impossible can happen; where time doesn’t play a role; where man is passive and things happen to him beyond his actual capability. Dreams that take place as a religious experience transform man’s world into a utopia for which there is no foundation, and those dreams have no chance of ever being actualized. They are unworldly and therefore dangerous. They are deaf and invulnerable to the cries of the real world.

But man needs to dream. Dreams allow him to be insane for a few moments. There’s a need for it, but it cannot be the foundation of his life. We must dream in order to demand of ourselves the impossible, so that it becomes conceivable, even if only once. It must have a link to reality, but once it is totally disconnected, it loses its purpose.

Dreams are also moments of anticipation—“I have a dream!”— and one way in which man can make his dream come true is by acting as if it is already taking place. Halachic requirements are often frozen dreams. They make man do things that he is not yet ready to do. They are still spiritually beyond him. An example of this is lighting the Chanukah menorah for eight days. We are required to add a candle every night and light it, as if we are ascending in spirituality throughout those eight days with the last night being the most intense and powerful one. In fact, though, it is the first night that excites most people. To the average person, the new is more exhilarating. So the Jew is asked to act as if in a dream: Light the candles as though you are becoming more and more exited with each day, so that one day you may really feel that the last candle is the most electrifying one.

Man is not asked to dream the totally impossible. He is asked to dream what is actually achievable. It is the Halacha that rescues man from unrealistic dreams, substituting them with those that are viable. Mount Sinai replaced impossible dreams with those that are possible.

*****************

1. Bereshit 28:11-12.

2. Rudolf Otto, The Idea of the Holy (USA: Oxford University Press, 1958) p. 5ff.

3. Bereshit 28:16.

4. Ibid. 18-22.

Who else ever had such a track-record of the most radical paradoxes? And this is not all. Things get worse. This God requires unconditional submission to His demands and threatens to wipe out His people if they do not listen to Him. To add to the confusion, He seems completely surprised when many of His creations start sincerely wondering why they should follow Him. It is especially the Jewish people, the “apple of His eye,” who constantly experience these devastatingly unsettling paradoxes. They pay the highest price, and the consequences are too overwhelming to deny: The Jews start asking themselves what they should do with this God. Many feel no longer obligated to observe His commandments. Some deny His existence, but most see this denial as a copout and conclude that He is indeed the most tragic figure in history, and one needs to show Him mercy and be somewhat obedient.

Such is also the history of the first Jew. Avraham is promised by God that he will give birth to a child who will father a special nation that will promote this God and His ethical demands. From the beginning it is clear that God is more in need of this nation than Avraham is. After all, His prestige depends on it. Through this nation, He and His purpose for the world will be known.  Avraham can’t wait to start his great mission, and once he has a son he will do anything to build up this unique nation for the sake of this God. Who would not want to serve such a God and take on this great assignment? Finally, Avraham gets his son, but the blow is not too far off.  Not only is it disastrous, but it seems set up to destroy any possible belief that this is a merciful and wonderful God. To his utter shock, Avraham is asked to sacrifice his son as a token of his complete commitment to this very God! The God, who is in dire need of this nation, and therefore of Avraham’s son, ruins His prestige and undoes his goals in one stroke—no son and no nation! And it is God who undermines Himself by doing so. He appears to be committing spiritual suicide. After all, what will become of Him without this nation?

What is Avraham to do now? Should he rescue God from Himself and refuse to give a hand to this suicide attempt? Or should he perhaps become an atheist? After all, such a God cannot exist! But Avraham goes for neither of these options. His total commitment to this God prompts him to make the greatest mistake of his life. He listens and is prepared to give up his son without even a fight, thinking that this is what it means to be really religious—even if it undermines God’s prestige and brings an end to His goals.

Avraham still lives in the world where man submits unconditionally to any god, whatever its demands. He is still a child of his times; subordination is seen as the pinnacle of religious devotion. Only when God, by way of His angel, shouts No! “Do not lay a hand on the boy” (1), just a second before his knife touches the skin of his son, Avraham wakes up from his so-called religiosity.

Avraham still has to learn that his willingness not to kill his child far surpasses his earlier commitment to make an end to his son’s life. The angelic messenger calls “Avraham, Avraham!” repeating his name twice because the command to desist and not sacrifice is harder to accept than the original commandment to kill. It goes against the trend of what it means to be religious. Yet, not to listen is greater proof of commitment to this “Jewish” God than is the willingness to sacrifice in honor of this God. The wake-up call is loud and clear! The impact of this message is far more shocking and forceful than that of the earlier call to kill. This God is an entirely different God. Capricious and unpredictable but, strangely enough, also demonstrating that human life is holy and may not be taken except in self-defense.

Until this incident, Avraham believed that it was only permitted to object to God if He was about to damage His reputation by doing a great injustice such as destroying the cities of Sedom and Amora. In that sense, he surpassed Noah whose reticence prevented him from even protesting when God told him that He would destroy all of mankind with the flood. Avraham had already realized that the Jewish God is different from all the other gods among whose followers he lived. To let the world perish is not what this God desires. So Avraham fights back. But once he loses the battle and is unable to convince God to leave these cities of Sedom and Amora alone, he concludes that Noah must have been right after all. There is no point in fighting God’s will.

What Avraham fails to see is that while he loses this battle, God clearly encourages Him to give it a sincere try so as to win. After all, God listens to his arguments. When Avraham contends that if there were to be 50, 40, 30, 20, even 10 tzadikim, then these cities should be spared, God does not respond by telling him to mind his own business. On the contrary, He clearly indicates that He might be convinced, if Avraham’s arguments were better or the circumstances different. But Avraham apparently fails to get this point. He seems to conclude that since he didn’t succeed, there is no point in arguing with God any longer. Why, after all, would God listen to man’s subjective arguments? What could man possibly know about God’s reasoning?

So Avraham doesn’t argue with God when He asks him to sacrifice his son. God may be incomprehensible, but He is consistent. He knows what He is doing. Who am I to argue?

This God, however, Who is the Creator of heaven and earth, teaches Avraham not to give up. He shows him that He is open to discussion and would have listened to his arguments in favor of his son. Now that Avraham is silent, God takes up the argument that Avraham ought to have made but didn’t. What Avraham should have done for God, God now does for him. He tells Avraham, You ought to have fought Me. You should have told Me, “Far be it from You! Shall the whole world’s Judge not do justice?” (2) God now needs to save Himself and His mission despite Avraham’s religiosity! He must ensure that the Jewish people will come into being, notwithstanding Avraham’s readiness to forgo that possibility.

Avraham is thus exposed to an aspect of God that is both blasphemous and ethical. This God appears to be unstable, but He is also a God of incomprehensible magnitude, power and moral supremacy: One Who is prepared to listen to man, take him seriously, and even be defeated by him! Who can make sense of this God? Avraham begins to learn that this God is tragic because He makes Himself appear as a God Who lacks all qualities of a real god, but in truth is greater than all idols.

God appears to experience all the human emotions: love; anger; involvement; indignation; regret; sadness; and so on. By so doing, He gives the seal of divinity to the very essence of our humanity. He implicitly says to man: “You cannot know what is above and what is below, but you can know what is in your hearts and in the world. These feelings and reactions and emotions that make up human existence are, if illumined by faith and rationality, all the divinity you can hope for. To be humane is to be divine: as I am holy, so you shall be holy; as I am merciful, so you shall be merciful.” Thus, there is only one kind of knowledge that is open to man, the knowledge of God’s humanity (3).

Suddenly, Avraham learns that to be religious is to live with a God Who carries contradictions and incongruities. Consistent gods are idols because they do not teach man how to live in a world that is full of dichotomies and inconsistencies. To be religious means to know how to navigate unresolvable conflicts, to be bold enough to negotiate, and to stand upright even when failing. It is in the unresolved that real life is lived. Only that can lead man to true religiosity. Avraham learns that a God Whom one fully understands is only half a God. Because a life without dichotomies is a life not lived. The overwhelming paradoxes are what portray life in its full force and reality.

Indeed, this God of many contradictions is the only God man can really worship: tragic, yet sublime. To serve Him means not only to obey, but also to protest.

At Mount Sinai, Moshe warned the Israelites, “Be careful not to climb the mountain and touch its edge” (4). How true is the Kotzker Rebbe’s interpretation—be careful when you climb the mountain, not to touch just its edge. Go all the way!

*******************

1. Bereshit, 22:12.

2. Ibid., 18:25.

3. Dr. Yochanan Muffs, “God and the World: A Jewish View,” in his book The Personhood of God: Biblical Theology, Human Faith and the Divine Image (Woodstock, VT: Jewish Lights  – Publishing, 2005) p. 177.

4. Shemot, 19:12.

Rabbi Cardozo will teach in Limmud from June  8-10.  Limmud Sydney  will take place in the University of NSW, Scienta Building. For information:  www.limmud-oz.com.au   Phone 9381 4160

The Cardozo’s will arrive in Melbourne  June 12^th, and teach on Sunday June the 16^th in the Monash University in Caulfield:  www.limmudoz.com.au

 The Journal of the Institute for Jewish Ideas and Ideals, Conversations,  May, 2013, New York

 by

Nathan Lopes Cardozo

Judaism, to me, is not about laws but about music and musical notes. In all of its laws, I hear powerful sonatas that transform my soul: Tchaikovsky’s Violin Concerto in D Major, Op. 35, with its heights of intensity; Johann Sebastian Bach’s Piano Concerto No. 1 in D Minor, with his iron fist, uncompromising dedication to detail, and strict adherence to rigid rules of composition, resulting in a phenomenal outburst of emotion. When I listen to these masterpieces, I encounter the thunder and lightning experienced by the children of Israel when God revealed His Torah at Mount Sinai. It feels like being hit with an uppercut under the chin and remaining unconscious for the rest of the day.

But I also hear Igor Stravinsky’s recreation of Bach’s cantatas and, even more, his Le Sacre du Printemps (The Rite of Spring). The scandal it caused when it was performed in Paris on May 29, 1913, led to a breakthrough in the world of musical composition. The music never had a chance as the audience erupted in riotous behavior almost from the first sounds. The weird resonance, the odd twists and turns of melody proved disconcerting to many. There were reports of fisticuffs, spitting, slapping and even threats of dueling. Still, Stravinsky won the day. His first performance may have lost the battle, but since then, this masterpiece generates ecstatic reactions among many music lovers.

It brings to mind the great debates of the rabbis in the Talmud who showed unprecedented courage by interpreting Jewish law and philosophy in infinite ways that caused major conflicts, many of which have not been resolved to this day. The spiritual riots and debates concerning the words of God at Sinai continue to keep Judaism ever fresh.

I think of my non-Jewish friend who came to see me in the renowned Gateshead Yeshiva in England, the “Lakewood of Europe,” where I was studying at the time. He wanted to understand what a talmudic college was all about and wondered what I, once liberal-minded and secular, was doing in this “Jewish monastery.” I brought him into the Beit Midrash, where he expected to find a university-like, mannerly student body, speaking softly, whispering in near silence. What he actually encountered almost made him pass out. Hundreds of young men were nervously walking around, arguing and shouting at each other so that it was nearly impossible to hear one’s own voice. Turning to me in total astonishment, he asked whether this was a demonstration against the Queen of England or the British government. My answer shocked him even more: No, they are actually discussing what, precisely, did God say at Sinai over 3,000 years ago. I will never forget his response: “You still don’t know? “Indeed,” I said, “we still do not know!” Just as one can have major disagreements on how to interpret Bach or Brahms (Remember Glenn Gould and Leonard Bernstein?) so it is with Jewish law. There are many possibilities, and all are legitimate! We still argue about the words of God and have therefore outlived all our enemies.

I worry when people, including influential rabbis today, suffocate Judaism by seeing it as nothing more than laws to be observed. Every dispute must be settled; no doubt may prevail; every philosophical disagreement has to be resolved. It seems they are unable to hear its ongoing and astonishing music. They are spiritually tone deaf.

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I was born by breech delivery, a very painful procedure, which my mother endured with iron strength. We nearly did not make it. It was Friday night, the eve of Shabbat, and I was born to two marvelous people who by Jewish law would not have been allowed to marry. Theirs was a mixed marriage. My father was Jewish, my mother was not.

The physician was a religious Jew, Dr. Herzberger, who had to violate Shabbat to save our lives. It was Amsterdam, the 26^th of July, 1946, just after the Holocaust.

In many ways, both these facts—an unusual birth and being the child of a mixed marriage—have set the stage for my life. I often see things from a reverse position. What is normal for others evokes in me feelings of wonder and awe, and what others consider amazing I see as obvious. As the product of a mixed marriage, who converted to Judaism at the age of 16, I became somewhat of an in-out-sider. I had always seen myself as a “father Jew,” of zera Yisrael (Jewish ancestry) and therefore Jewish, but later on I learned that it did not make me a Jew according to Halacha.

My mother, while still a young woman, came to live with my father’s family once she had lost her Christian parents. So, she grew up in a liberal, socialist, Amsterdam-Jewish cultural milieu, where Friday night dinners were comparable to chatunot, though my father’s parents were not religious and as poor as church mice, as were most of Amsterdam’s Jews. My mother was completely integrated in this world and while she knew she was not Jewish, she was an integral part of the community, spoke its language and felt totally at home in this strange, secular but deeply Jewish world. It is no surprise, then, that she converted years later, when she was in her fifties, after I convinced her of Judaism’s beauty. After all, she had always been a Jewess. With the permission of Hacham Shlomo Rodrigues Pereira, Chief Rabbi of the Portuguese Jewish community in Amsterdam, my parents were married kedat ukedin (according to Halacha) by the same rabbi who married my wife and me three months later. There was, however, a small but crucial difference: my parents had been married for over thirty-five years, while my wife and I were just beginners!

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I spent more than 12 years learning in ultra-Orthodox yeshivot and received heter hora’ah (rabbinic ordination) from Rabbi Aryeh Leib Gurwitz, Rosh HaYeshiva of Gateshead, who was, in his younger years, the chavruta of Rabbi Elchanan Wasserman, the best-known disciple of Rabbi Yisrael Meir Kagan, also known as the Hafetz Hayim. I know this world better than many do, but I am still not fully a part of it. Nor do I belong to the secular Jewish world, and surely not to the gentile world. I continuously struggle with my Jewish identity and religiosity; and now, at the age of 67, I am perhaps more involved in this endeavor than ever before. Day and night, I am busy with my great loves: Judaism, Israel and the Jewish people. Yet, I am unable to feel at home in the world of mainstream Orthodox Judaism. For many years I was a real bachur yeshiva, who had bought into the chareidi philosophy, but much later I realized that it had become too narrow, too insipid, and often trivial. Today, I believe that Modern Orthodoxy, too, has for the most part become tedious. Even the famous Rabbi Joseph Ber Soloveitchik, head of the rabbinical school at Yeshiva University in New York, was not able to lift it out of its spiritual malaise. Conservative and Reform Judaism are not options for my soul. They are too easy, too academic and unable to create a spiritual upheaval. My Judaism is one of dissent, protest and spiritual war against too much conformity. Self-critique is the crucial issue, not self-satisfaction. Not clichés, but insight; not obstinacy, but elasticity; not habit, but spontaneity; these and deep religiosity are for me the great movers behind this magnificent tradition.

My atypical beginnings have influenced my thinking in unconventional ways and to this day get me into trouble with some of my rabbinical colleagues, as well as with religious and non-religious Jews.

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At the age of 21, I married a Jewish girl from an Orthodox home. We have been blessed with five children, special children-in-law, lots of grandchildren, and even great-grandchildren. All of them are deeply religious, love Torah and excel in a variety of professions. We have children who are rabbis, teachers, businessmen, and one who is an architect with a license in counseling! Some of my grandchildren wear black kippot, and some have pei’ot; others have colored kippot, small and large. Some are closer to ultra-Orthodoxy, others are Modern Orthodox; some fervent Zionists, others not. They all represent parts of my personality and I love the diversity.

My home is in Jerusalem, in an ultra-Orthodox neighborhood where I no longer feel at home. With few exceptions, I pray with people I can’t speak with and I speak with people I can’t pray with. Still, I love them all. They are Jews, so they are my family. But I do not share with them an intellectual or spiritual-religious language. I have little in common with the Orthodox or the secular Jew in the way I see the world, God and Torah. For some people I am much too religious; for others, something of a heretic.

This is my fate and I can live with it, though it sometimes feels a little, and at other times very lonely.

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My brother is 64 and although according to Halacha he is not a Jew, he is more Jewish than many Jews I know. For years he ran a kosher home with his non-Jewish wife, to accommodate our family visits. He nearly converted but never took the final step. He wants to be buried in Beth Haim, the Portuguese Jewish Cemetery in Ouderkerk, which is a small town just south of Amsterdam. But he knows that will be impossible.

When I suggested to him that perhaps he should be buried in the Reform community’s cemetery in Amsterdam, he told me that he only wants to be buried in the Orthodox cemetery; other streams of Judaism are not on his radar!

Knowing that he will not be buried in Beth Haim, or any other Jewish cemetery, pains me greatly. How will it be possible to bury him among the gentiles when he is one of ours?

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The Portuguese Jewish cemetery in Ouderkerk is full of contradictions and reflects the turmoil that existed within early Dutch Jewish society, which included many Marranos, also known as Conversos, who fled from the Inquisition and came to Holland but could not fit in. One will find there the extravagant tombstones of some of the most remarkable Jews in all of Jewish history: Don Samuel Palache, the Sultan of Morocco’s commercial and diplomatic envoy in the sixteenth century; the famous Doctor Ephraim Bueno, early seventeenth-century Jewish physician and writer, whom Rembrandt used as the subject of one of his paintings; Antonio Lopez Pereira, chief treasurer of the King of Spain; and many other famous Jews.

These remarkable tombstones are outstandingly artistic and somewhat un-Jewish, reminiscent of the Catholic Church whose influence had not yet weakened. They have images of biblical figures and their narratives carved in marble. There is even one with an image of God speaking to the prophet Samuel! This is in total violation of Jewish law and is a clear indication of the spiritual confusion in which these Jews, including my forefathers, lived. I realize that my brother and I are strange by-products of this turmoil.

Even the parents of the most celebrated Jewish apostate and world-class philosopher, Baruch Spinoza, are buried there. But the philosopher himself was laid to rest behind the Nieuwe Kerk (New Church) in The Hague. A sad reflection of what transpired in this unusual Jewish Portuguese community that was teeming with people who had split personalities and tried to reclaim their Judaism after having been forced to live as Catholics for hundreds of years. Paradoxically, while the Inquisition and subsequent expulsion from Spain made these Jews long for Judaism as never before, when they came to Amsterdam many of them could not adjust to mainstream Orthodox Judaism. Some became practicing Jews outwardly but remained Christian in some of their beliefs. They believed Judaism to be a kind of Christianity, but without the cross. Others became secular but outwardly conformed to religious observance so as to remain members of the “Portuguese nation,” as they called themselves. They attended the Esnoga, the famous Sefardi Synagogue in Amsterdam, but their hearts were not in it. They had nowhere else to go, and they just wanted to belong. What made it even more critical was that they could not and did not want to be part of the Christian community of Amsterdam. Nor did they want to walk in the footsteps of Spinoza who, though he never chose baptism, was happy to leave the community and never looked back.

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As a child, I was always overwhelmed by the extraordinary, which was seen by others as normal. Wherever I looked, I encountered the miracle of life. Whether it was watching the sun go down, or seeing genetic life under a microscope, I was struck with wonder and amazement. What is life and what is the meaning behind it? How is it that we are able to think? The most incomprehensible fact is that we are able to comprehend at all. Is the world not more a question than an answer? Why was I put on earth at this time and born into this family? Had I been dead for millions of years before entering this world? As Polish-born American theologian Abraham Joshua Heschel put it, “a perpetual murmur from the waves beyond the shore” was my constant companion, and it left me no rest.

I realize today that these questions laid the foundations for my religious and philosophical inquiries.

Our family lived a completely secular life, but within me, unawares, grew a spiritual consciousness that had religious implications.

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My father was an extremely nice man, always in a good mood and incredibly proud of his Jewishness, particularly of being a Portuguese Jew. I doubt that he could have married a truly non-Jewish woman. He could only have married somebody like my mother who was Jewish without being a Jew. I greatly loved my father. He was a business man but should have been a professor. He was of high intellect and very sharp. Since he was born into a poor, socialistic Jewish family, he was never able to study or attend university. At an early age he went into business as a sales representative and traveled around Holland. Later, after the Holocaust, he started his own business, in sewing machines, which proved very successful.

Somehow, he discovered Baruch Spinoza who had lived in Amsterdam in the seventeenth century. Spinoza had been a member of the Portuguese community and was put in cherem (a ban pronounced by the ma’amad—council of rabbis and lay-leaders—of that community) after he started to express doubts about the truth of the Jewish tradition. It became the most infamous and harshest ban in all of Jewish history: “Cursed be he by day and cursed be he by night; cursed be he when he lies down, and cursed be he when he rises up; cursed be he when he goes out, and cursed be he when he comes in.” In the words of contemporary English Philosopher Simon Critchley: “That’s quite a lot of cursing” (The Book of Dead Philosophers, p. 157). When my father began to study Spinoza’s critique of Judaism, he became a follower and decided to live a secular life. But, as with many Jews, he did not entirely succeed, for he was too much of a proud Jew and certain taboos remained. He would not eat pork; in fact, it never entered our home. Friday night was as it had always been. On Pesach we ate matzot, and in winter we sometimes had a menora and a Christmas tree lit at the same time. It was clear that what my parents had agreed on—not to allow any religious observance in our home—did not work from day one. No doubt that was partially due to our mother’s insistence on having a “Jewish home” and our father’s endless discourse about his Jewishness. It was completely impossible to remain neutral in matters of religion!

It took my father many years before he was able to see the beauty of religious Judaism, revealed to him by his son, who was on his way to becoming a full-fledged Jew and reintroduced him to the Jewish way of living.

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Gradually, I took an interest in religion. I asked many questions and could no longer remain indifferent. It had already affected my personality. I doubted whether a secular way of life would still be possible and indeed concluded that such an approach left too many questions unanswered, and that the lifestyle for the most part lacked spiritual depth. To drop religion was no longer an option. But which religion was the crème de la crème?

I started reading anything I could lay my hands on concerning other religions, including Christianity, Islam, Buddhism and Hinduism, but none of them inspired me. Both my Jewish background, which was deeply embedded in my DNA, as well as my father’s Jewish pride, had made a profound impression on me. Clearly, I was already under the spell of Judaism and believed that if any religion was close to the truth, this was the one. By that time, I was about 14 years old.

I began visiting bookshops looking for Dutch Jewish books, but there were very few. At home I read books on general philosophy by William Durant, who had written some splendid introductions to secular philosophy for laymen. They had been translated into Dutch and were part of my father’s small library on the subject. I was fascinated by many philosophers and found their books very illuminating, though there were parts I could not understand. It was also the first time I was introduced to Spinoza, and later my father told me more about his philosophy. We started reading sections of his works together: a chavruta of sorts.

There was one book I got hold of that completely captivated me. It was a Dutch translation of a Hebrew book, Dorenu Mul She’elot Ha-Netsach (translated to the English The Modern Jew Faces Eternal Problems), by Dr. Aron Barth, general manager of Bank Leumi in the 1950s. Reading this book was somewhat of a breakthrough for me. It introduced me to the world of Jewish religious thought, about which I knew very little. It discussed major theological issues through the prism of Judaism and dealt with many problems I was thinking about. It was deeply rooted in classical Judaism and written in a clear and lucid style. The author displayed much knowledge and wisdom in confronting major issues of the day. Although he was not completely honest when he tried to undermine every form of Bible criticism, he introduced me to some important challenges to Spinoza’s claim that the Torah comprised different documents authored by several writers, not by Moses.

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As I was becoming more and more involved in my journey, my school studies got in the way. They were boring and of little importance compared to endeavors I believed were of much greater value: Judaism and discovering what life was really all about. I began neglecting my secular studies, and my school marks went down the drain. In fact, it got so bad that I failed my tests and was not promoted to the next grade. Understandably, my father was very worried.

Although the gymnasium where I studied was a first-class school, where Latin and Greek were taught, I felt that most of the classes were hopelessly dull and monotonous. What was completely absent was the challenge to discover things on our own. Everything was spoon-fed to the students. The teacher would tell us how to read Shakespeare and how to dissect a fish, instead of letting us find out for ourselves and only giving us advice when we were really on the wrong track. The learning process lacked all creativity and did not speak to our imagination. Instead of sending us home with a question, encouraging us to struggle with it, the teachers felt it was their task to ask the questions and immediately answer them. They did not realize that a question should sometimes remain unanswered, because every answer deals a death blow to further investigation.

I shall never forget that when one of the greatest scientists of our day, Isidore Rabi, was once asked why he became a scientist, he replied that his Jewish mother gets the credit. While other parents would ask their children what they had learned in school that day, she would ask: Izzy, what good question did you ask today? Answers are great, but doubt is what gives you an education.

Another boring aspect of my school education was that we were not allowed to come up with outrageous answers that would challenge the established system. If your answer did not fit the accepted scientific or literary framework, the teacher wouldn’t give you a second glance and would sometimes even punish you by sending you out of the room. I cannot remember how many hours I spent outside the classroom.

Years later, I was reminded of this while reading that the famous physicist Wolfgang Pauli once gave a lecture on elementary particle physics at Columbia University. Afterwards he asked Niels Bohr, arguably the greatest physicist of the twentieth century, whether he thought his theories were crazy. I do, replied Bohr. Unfortunately they are not crazy enough.

Encouraging students to be both curious and surprised is one of the great principles of good education. It is a sign of transcendence, the very foundation of authentic religiosity. Most of my teachers did not realize that and failed to adhere to the Greek proverb: Either dance well or quit the ballroom. 

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And so my education at school could not compete with my studies in Judaism. It became clear to me that Judaism is based on the need for constant questioning. I discovered that there are no absolute dogmas in Judaism, at least not in the way they are found within the Catholic Church. Maimonides’ famous Thirteen Principles of Faith, which are sung in nearly every synagogue on Friday nights, were never accepted as the final version of Jewish belief and were in fact heavily attacked and challenged by the greatest rabbinical authorities. Today, I see that Maimonides’ thirteen principles caused major damage to Judaism. It was the famous Professor Leon Roth who once remarked: “For this Hebrew of Hebrews had in many respects a Greek mind and through his sense of logic and his passion for precision, he brought Judaism into a doctrinal crisis, the echoes of which are with us yet” (Judaism, A Portrait, 1960 p. 122). How true! Judaism, while surely consisting of certain beliefs, is open to self-critique, debate and ongoing discussions that have almost never been resolved. This spoke to my imagination. A religion with no dogmas, always open to new ideas! What could be better than that!

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One cannot squeeze Judaism into well-established categories. It’s like trying to fit the ocean into a bath tub. Judaism is a way of living, accompanied by deep emotions and a strong religious experience. To argue that there are definite fundamentals of faith is to undermine authentic religious faith. It would be like arguing that musical notes are the fundamentals of music. They are not; they are only directions for the musician to follow, showing the way, but they are never das ding an sich, the thing itself. There are inexpressible dimensions of religious insights. Doctrines and creeds should never become screens; they can only function as windows into a world that is beyond definition. Faith can only be discovered in the light of one’s soul. It is a moment in which all definitions end, and any attempt to come to conclusive articles of faith can only yield stifling trivialities that become suspended in the heart of the man of real faith. Genuine Judaism can only be understood in its natural habitat of deep faith and piety in which the divine reaches all thoughts.

Even if dogma has a purpose, it can never function as a substitute for faith, only as a dry aspect of it, just as music is much more than what a musical note can ever convey. Basically, Judaism offers something that Christianity does not: a religion without a specific theology.

Halacha, while more down to earth—since it first asks for human action—is still open to various possibilities. There are many roads to God, as is abundantly clear after even a glimpse into the Talmud. Opinions abound on how to translate God’s commandments into down-to-earth deeds, which must be able to reveal the divine. In truth, we should each have our own individual Halacha, compatible to each soul and connecting it with one of the mitzvot. Mitzvot, after all, are a bridge to God, and since religion must be lived, and not just thought about or felt, it is the task of Halacha to translate belief into action.

Just as important is the need for people to live and worship together. This requires a halachic framework that ensures a certain level of conformity while simultaneously allowing an act to touch the spirit in each individual. But that can only be done if there are constant attempts to connect with that spirit. Just as the musician needs to repeat a music segment before he feels his soul being touched by the music, so it is with a halachic act. Like the musician who must know how to position his bow and move his fingers with great precision across the strings of the violin so as to draw the music out of the physical boundaries of the instrument, so the religious person must know how to release the deepest foundations of his soul via the halachic deed.

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I bought a German translation of the Talmud and then tried to decipher it. I peered into a world that had its own language, its own strange logic, one that was incompatible with anything the Greeks had offered. I soon learned that the Talmud discusses everything under the sun and is involved in trite trivialities, turning them into major issues as if life depends on them. Even more surprising was its frank discussion about sexuality. I’ll never forget the time I was in the middle of a tractate and the translation continued in Latin instead of German. I wondered why. Knowing some Latin, I tried it out and was totally surprised to discover that these passages advised women on how to seduce their husbands (Shabbat 140b). Where in the world would one find a book that discusses prayer, devotion to God, piety, and the art of sex on the same page? It is positively avant-garde! Many years later I saw that these matters were openly discussed by yeshiva students and nobody took offense or even realized that if these Aramaic passages were to be translated into English, they would resemble a form of “holy pornography.” But the truth is, this is Torah, it is holy, and sex has nothing to do with the vulgar associations conjured up in people’s minds. In Judaism, sex is praying with one’s body. According to chassidic teachings, this is clearly shown by the similarity in body movements of human beings when they make love and when they pray. In Ashkenazi circles, the latter is called shuckeling (swaying back and forth). (See Louis Jacobs, Hasidic Prayer, p. 60, and p. 171, note 33, where he brings the following sources: Tzava’at Ha-Ribash [Jerusalem 1948], p. 7b; Likutei Yekarim [Lemberg, 1865], p. 1b; Sefer Ba’al Shem Tov [Sotmar, 1943], vol. 1, p. 145, note 65.)

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Looking back at this period of my life, I realize how worried my father was. I was incapable of explaining what was going on, since I myself was too young to fully understand what was happening within me. One thing was clear: my schoolwork went down the drain. And not just a little bit. Although my father was a balanced man with an open mind, he must have panicked. What is my son doing? Not only is he neglecting his secular studies, but it is clear that this Judaism is drawing him to religious fanaticism!

It all came to a head when I expressed my wish to go to synagogue Saturday mornings, instead of going to school. My father, who by now felt that things were getting out of hand, would not hear of it.

I couldn’t persuade him to let me off, so I decided to continue going to school while simultaneously observing Shabbat. In Holland, everybody, including the queen would ride a bicycle, and I, being no exception, rode my bike to school every day. At that time we lived in a small town called Aerdenhout, 20 kilometers away from Amsterdam. We had to be in school at eight o’clock in the morning, which on winter days meant that I traveled in total darkness.  Though it was imperative that I ride with my lights on, I decided that since it was forbidden to turn on a light on Shabbat, I would do the 20-minute ride without it. It didn’t even last a day. That first Shabbat morning, as I was bicycling to school, a policeman stopped me and asked whether I had lost my mind. Driving without a light on a dark, foggy morning was tantamount to suicide. I was unimpressed with his argument and told him that we Jews are obliged to observe Shabbat and I could therefore not turn on any light. He stared at me in bewilderment, no doubt contemplating sending me to a psychiatrist, and then told me that if I wanted to observe the Jewish day of rest, I should walk to school. And so I did.

Arriving very late, I entered the classroom, explained to the teacher that a policeman had stopped me, and then sat down. Unfortunately, we had a written exam that morning, which I believe was on Dutch literature and which presented me with yet another dilemma. How was I going to write? This, too, would be a violation of Shabbat! There was only one solution:  I wouldn’t do it! So I left my pencil untouched. It didn’t take long before the teacher noticed and asked me why I was not writing. I explained in clear terms that I was a Jewish boy and could not write, and that I should actually not be in school at all but in synagogue. He looked at me with a big, sympathetic smile and said: Hmm. Okay, see me after class. I expected a really stern rebuke and perhaps a threat that if I would not comply, the school would expel me. I was ready for a fight and determined not to give in. To my utter surprise, the teacher, who was also vice principal, asked me to sit down. Amused, but in no way derisive, he asked me whether I was serious about this. Did I truly want to go to synagogue and no longer attend school on Saturdays, and was I really so interested in Judaism? Or was this just a whim? What was so attractive about Judaism? It was clear that his questions were sincere, so I took the challenge. It was to become my first attempt at explaining to an outsider what this Judaism was all about, although my knowledge at the time was, to say the least, bordering on total ignorance. To my astonishment, he showed a keen interest in what I had to say and sat a few minutes in total silence. Suddenly, he got up and said: Okay, I hear. I’ll speak with your father and tell him that you’re exempt from attending school on Saturday mornings. I could not believe my ears and warned the vice principal that it would not be easy to convince my father. Maybe he, the non-Jewish teacher, was convinced that I should go to synagogue, but my father would be an entirely different story! He walked up to me, shook my hand and said: Let me deal with it. But I have one condition. You will miss many important lessons on Saturdays and will have to catch up every Sunday on anything you’ve missed. I promised to do so and left his room. After doing a small dance of triumph outside, I walked home to tell my father that the vice principle would like to see him. A good sport as always, my father smiled, gave me a kiss and said he would go. No doubt he knew what was awaiting him, yet he had no option but to comply. Reluctantly, but smiling that his son had defeated him, he gave in. I believe he was actually proud! And that made me love him even more.

And so, I went off to synagogue, but this was no small matter. I had never been there and had no idea what to expect. I had read a book called Yom Yom, by Dutch physician Dr. David Hausdorff. It was written in a very clear style and provided me with some information on synagogue service. I was excited, but also apprehensive. How was I to behave? It was a 50-minute walk to the synagogue, which was located in Haarlem, almost 5 kilometers from our home.

When I entered the synagogue that Shabbat morning, I could not have known that the young girl I noticed, about 14 years old, would one day become my wife. Years later, she told me that I had appeared in my all-white tennis outfit—complete with shorts!—probably because I thought that was the most appropriate way to dress when going to a holy place!

Slowly I got used to it. They had services only on Shabbat mornings, with an average attendance of 25. It soon became clear to me that I could not be counted for a minyan, since I was not halachically Jewish. Freyda, the girl I had first noticed, took a real interest in me and so did the family of Rabbi/Chazan Michel Philipson who led the services and read the entire Torah portion perfectly and beautifully, in a way I have not heard since. He not only read it flawlessly but actually acted it out in a way that conveyed his emotional connection with the text, as if he were in the story. I found it very moving.

Rabbi Philipson and his wife Eva often invited me for Shabbat, and those visits brought me much joy. To this day, my wife and I are close friends with their daughter and two sons. I also received Shabbat invitations from Freyda’s parents, my future in-laws. It was there that my gastrointestinal tract was challenged when I was offered a piece of galerete, a gelatinous Eastern European dish, made from calf’s feet and considered a delicacy. My Dutch Sefardi stomach was too sensitive for this Ashkenazi cuisine. I was not sure I would survive, but being a good boy I complied. I faced a similar challenge years later when I studied at Gateshead Yeshiva and was served cholent every Shabbat. I solved that one by adding sugar so as to make it edible!

Since there were very few Jewish children in the Haarlem community, Rabbi Philipson tried to arrange a shidduch (marriage arrangement) between his oldest son and my future wife when they were both still babies. But, to my good fortune, my future parents-in-law declined the offer!

The rabbi had quite a large Judaica library, most of which I was unable to read because the books were in Hebrew. Within a short while, however, I became acquainted with the works of Rabbi Samson Raphael Hirsch. This, too, was a major discovery. Rabbi Hirsch was the great champion of Orthodox German Jewry and had in fact created a revolution with his booklet The Nineteen Letters, in which he presented his original view of Judaism in the form of a fictional correspondence between a young rabbi and a secular intellectual. He showed how Judaism was of great importance and relevance to the modern Jew and how it could help create a better world for all of mankind.

Rabbi Hirsch’s books were all written in hochdeutsch, a high, cultured German that was popular in the 19^th century. The Nineteen Letters, however, was translated into Dutch, and I devoured it. It was just what I was looking for.  Although it was nearly 100 years old by the time I read it, the book had not become outmoded; I even read it several times.

Rabbi Philipson owned all the books by Rabbi Hirsch, including his famous five-volume commentary on the Torah and his Gesammelte Schriften (Collected Writings), which covered nearly all the different aspects of Judaism. The problem was that there were no Dutch translations. Not only were they all written in hochdeutsch, they were also printed in Gothic lettering, a difficult typeface to decipher. One sentence could take up a whole page, if not more. By the time you got to the end of the sentence, you had already forgotten the beginning. Fortunately, I was studying German in school and my father—because of his knowledge of the language through business connections in East Germany and the Leipziger Messe (The Leipzig Trade Fair)—had helped me and my brother master it. So I took on Rabbi Hirsch’s Commentary on the Torah, his Gesammelte Schriften and his famous Horeb. I read and read, slowly becoming accustomed to the Gothic script. Rabbi Hirsch showed tremendous Jewish knowledge, had the entire Talmud at his fingertips and, above all, was very original. It was music to my ears. Later on, I realized that Rabbi Hirsch was a romantic, very German and basically an ultra-conservative. Still, his works are of great importance, his integrity untainted.

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My interest increased daily, and I started going to synagogue every Shabbat morning. However, I was still under the sway of Spinoza’s philosophy, and though deeply impressed by Judaism I continuously debated with myself on whether or not it was all true. I was definitely not convinced! Never will I forget an incident that took place in the Haarlem synagogue and opened my eyes to something I had not thought about before. There was a young intellectual who came to synagogue regularly, and before the services began he would loudly declare: You are all sitting here for nothing. There is no God. He would then walk over to his seat, take his tallith out of his small cabinet, say a bracha and wrap it around his shoulders. He would recite all the prayers with great fervor and carefully listen to the reading of the parsha. I could not make heads or tails of it. Why come to synagogue, pray with intense devotion as if life depended on it when you do not even believe in God? This went on week after week, and one day I could no longer control myself. I approached him, asking for an explanation, and will never forget what he said: Indeed I do not believe in God, but I do believe in Judaism. It is the greatest religion ever to appear on earth, it has contributed more to ethics than any other religion or culture, and we owe it to the world to keep it alive. If we Jews abandon it, the world will be so much the poorer. So I will come to synagogue, eat kosher and observe some of the laws of Shabbat. If I don’t, I will be guilty of destroying one of the most beautiful things the world has been blessed with. Whether or not it is God-given does not really interest me.

To this day, it sends shivers down my spine to think of these words of truth. I realized that this man’s words were also a harsh critique of Spinoza. Why completely reject Judaism, as he did, when it contains such profundity and presents the world with its greatest values, such as Shabbat, a healthy attitude towards sexuality, profound ethics, and so much more. I still wonder why Spinoza refused to make a bracha before eating. How, after all, can one consume tasty food without uttering a deep expression of astonishment at the very existence of food? Does one really have to believe in God to do so? This is not orthopraxis; it is a deeply spiritual experience that someone secular can also encounter.

Even today I have my agnostic moments, especially when I am confronted with the intense suffering of children, such as in the case of terror attacks in and outside Israel, or when I read what happened to more than a million Jewish children in the Holocaust. For days, I can’t pray properly and I struggle with my belief in God. To this day, after a devastating terror attack I am astonished that religious Jews go to synagogue and instead of starting a demonstration against God they praise Him for His goodness. When I see a picture of a small black child in Africa who is weak from starvation and unable to move, I want to climb up to the heavens and protest. It is then that my friend’s observations in Haarlem’s synagogue save me from walking out on Judaism. At still a later stage, I realize that our love for God is tested by the question of whether we seek Him, or His goodness. The bottom line is there is no doubt in my mind that I will remain a religious Jew even if I were to become an atheist.

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While growing in my Judaism I was confronted with many problems that led to some of the strangest situations. Today I would call them hilarious, but at the time they were major concerns. When I accompanied my father to the Leipziger Messe, I wanted to eat kosher but there were no kosher restaurants.  So I ate fish or other parve foods. I clearly remember one Friday night when we ate in a tavern where the Germans used to drink their large mugs of beer, and some were even drunk. I put my kippah on my head and made kiddush over beer, to the total surprise of all the Germans present. I can still see their bewildered faces! On other occasions, such as our vacations in Italy, I would eat nothing but scrambled eggs for breakfast, lunch and supper, to the point where I could not swallow an egg any longer!

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Fortunately, I had already been circumcised, though the procedure was not done until I was about 10, and I remember being hospitalized for a few days. My brother, on the other hand, was circumcised as a baby. I think that by the time he was born, my father found it emotionally difficult to have uncircumcised sons. My circumcision was performed by a surgeon, not a mohel, and though I was put under anesthesia, it was quite painful afterwards.

As part of my conversion, I still had to undergo a procedure called hatafat dam b’rit, drawing a drop of blood as a symbolic ritual circumcision. This was done by Dr. Aron Rodrigues Pereira, President of the Portuguese Jewish Community in Amsterdam and brother of the Sefardi Chief Rabbi, Hacham Shlomo Rodrigues Pereira, who had agreed to convert me. Days before, I had to appear before all the chief rabbis in Holland and explain why I had decided to become Jewish. The most prominent among them, Rabbi Aaron Schuster, was the Ashkenazi Chief Rabbi of Amsterdam, a man with an imposing personality, who did not walk but had a long, decisive stride. Though he was very formal, having been educated in Holland, the warmth he exuded pointed to his Eastern European lineage. I found it difficult to answer his question as to why I wanted to become Jewish. And my reply was not completely rational. It had to do with some inner musical notes carrying words that are ineffable. Only many years later did I realize how difficult it is to express in human language a religious upheaval. Rudolf Otto, the great non-Jewish German thinker, tried to make sense of it in his most famous work, Das Heilige (The Idea of the Holy). Renowned American philosopher William James also tried to articulate the meaning of religiosity in his important book The Varieties of Religious Experience. But above all, it is the chassidic masters who dealt with this challenge, bringing unusual and original perspectives. Both Abraham Joshua Heschel and Martin Buber translated some of these ideas into German and English and explained them as best as possible.

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I remember undressing at the mikvah. I was quite nervous, but my dear father was right by my side, as always. I had learned that by immersing in the mikvah’s waters I would be reborn as a full-fledged Jew. Water is the symbol of life and growth, and immersion is like returning to the mother’s womb where the fetus is surrounded by fluid. Three rabbis were present: Hacham Rodrigues Pereira, Chief Rabbi Aron Schuster and Rabbi Benjamin Pels, a member of the Amsterdam rabbinate. I had to immerse three times, making sure that the water covered all my hair. When I got out, the Hacham gave me a towel to cover myself and told me to say a bracha. It is perhaps the greatest bracha I have ever said: Blessed is the Lord our God, King of the universe, Who has sanctified us with His commandments and commanded us on immersion. Immediately after that, the Hacham recited: May his name in Israel be called Nathan, son of Avraham Avinu. Nathan was my father’s youngest brother who was murdered in the Shoah. Later, after my mother converted, I changed this to Nathan, son of Yaakov, my father. I still tremble when I think about it. How many people have merited the opportunity to say this bracha on this particular occasion? I also said the bracha “shehechiyanu,” thanking God that I had arrived at this new and special moment in my life. Afterward, I got a kiss from my father, and a big smile. Although he had had reservations about my religiosity, he was pleased that I had now fully joined his beloved people.

Indeed the world looked different. I was delighted and beaming. The question that came to haunt me then, and still haunts me today, is how to keep such an exalted moment alive.

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Some of my encounters with Judaism’s demands were much more radical and sometimes downright problematic, if not unacceptable. Only a short while ago my dear brother, two years my junior, reminded me of an incident  that took place while I conducted the Pesach Seder  at my parents’ home when I was still unmarried and very fresh in my Jewish observance. Having just learned the law about yayin nesech, more correctly called maga nochri—forbidding Jews to drink kosher wine moved by a non-Jew once the bottle has been opened—I snatched a bottle of wine off the table, before my brother had the chance to pick it up and fill our glasses. I told my brother that non-Jews were not to move such a bottle, or the wine would be cursed. (In those days there was no yayin mevushal in Holland.)  Nowhere in all of Jewish literature does it say that the wine would be cursed, and this unfortunate event simply reflected my total ignorance about many things I had yet to learn. Only now, nearly 50 years later, did my brother tell me, with tears in his eyes, how much he was offended. This is a typical example of how Jewish law, in my opinion, has stagnated. The law concerning yayin nesech was enacted at the time when the Jews were in exile and many non-Jews were idol-worshipers, often immoral, and frequently anti-Semitic. The rabbis felt it would be inappropriate for Jews to drink wine that was moved by such vile people and forbade its consumption even when the wine was produced by Jews. In this way, they emphasized the need for Jews to distance themselves in general from these depraved people. Since it was primarily wine that was used in worship by Jews and gentiles, that was the only alcoholic drink to which the law applied. This is a typical example of defensive Halacha, which may have been necessary at the time, while living among these gentiles. (It reminds me somewhat of my youth when the Dutch, just after the Holocaust had come to an end, would refuse under any circumstances to buy German products or even have them in their homes. It was completely taboo.) Today, when Jews are living in a totally different society, where most people believe in one God or are at least civilized, this law has lost much of its purpose. (See Rabbi Menachem Me’iri’s (1249-1316) Talmudic commentary, Beit HaBechira, on Sanhedrin 57a, Avoda Zara,2a, 11b, 13a, 14b, 21a, 22a, 26a, 42b, although Me’iri himself does not mitigate the severity of the law of yayin nesech, see Beth HaBechira on  Avodah Zarah 26a.) When such a law offends another human being, as was the case with my brother, it does only harm and violates the integrity of Halacha and Judaism. (The reasons for forbidding yayin nesech are much more complicated than the one I mention. Many other issues are at stake. Still, I believe that this and similar laws need to be reexamined in light of the fact that the other reasons, as well, may no longer be relevant today. For an overview, see Encyclopedia Talmudit: Gentile Wine— for a discussion about the concern of Intermarriage and Idolatry.)

After all, rabbinical laws are not categorically sacrosanct, as are biblical laws.

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Halacha has been in a waiting mode for too long. It has become the “preserver of precepts” and now has to free itself from what was once important. It is imperative to move Halacha forward and respond to a new and different Jewish world, especially because the State of Israel has drastically changed the situation of world Jewry and created a state of affairs never before encountered by Halacha. The incident with my brother is merely a symptom of the major problem with its application today. We are asked to be “a light unto the nations,” and it is our duty to inspire them to come closer to God and adopt high standards of morality. This can be done only if we approach the non-Jewish world in a positive way. The law of yayin nesech and others like it are not conducive to reaching that goal. It is high time that our rabbis adopt an  approach similar to the one of Rabbi Menachem Me’iri. Surely we should continue to drink only kosher wine made by Jews, but we should, in my humble opinion, waive the restriction concerning non-Jews moving our wines.

What we are badly in need of is a humane but aggressive, proud and prophetic Halacha that does not look over its shoulder but moves the Jewish tradition to the forefront of the world as a leading guide.

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My exemption from attending school on Saturdays got me into trouble with one of the teachers. He was a highly frustrated man who taught us Latin and Greek, and nobody liked him, as he would constantly make obnoxious comments about us. He taught us twice a week, and one of those days was Saturday. Since I no longer came on Saturdays, he hated me with a passion. On one occasion, he asked me a question, which he knew I could not answer since it had been discussed on the previous Saturday and was not in any of the books I studied on Sunday. It was a deliberate act to embarrass me. When I could not respond, he was outraged, took the blackboard eraser and threw it at me. I ducked just in time, and the weapon shattered the large window behind me. There was total silence in the classroom, and the teacher turned pale. I got up, walked out of the room without permission and went to see the vice principle who had helped free me from having to attend on Saturdays. I told him exactly what had happened. He got up, walked with me to the scene of the crime, and ordered the teacher to leave on the spot. As far as I remember, he was fired—an act that propelled me to stardom. I became somewhat of a celebrity in school and made many more friends. This was quite remarkable since I was a quiet kid, rather formal and stiff (today, I am much more easygoing), although I was chosen to be the class representative for several years. This meant that I represented my class on various occasions and advocated for my fellow students if they were in trouble with the school administration. Though I had become somewhat of an outsider due to my keen interest in Judaism, I was never asked to step down—even when I told my friends that I would no longer be dancing with the girls at parties that took place in the homes of classmates. I had actually been to dance school and had learned the art! But I had to tell my friends that I would no longer participate since Judaism did not look favorably upon this activity. In all honesty, although I believe that dancing is an art and in fact very beautiful, I must admit that I never really enjoyed it. I also told my classmates that I would not be able to eat anything non-kosher. Yet, instead of excommunicating me, my friends always made sure that there was a fruit available or other article of food that I was permitted to eat. Now, so many years later, I wonder what went through the minds of all these young people who had such a strange bedfellow in their class.

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One of the most wondrous religious experiences in all of my life happened during my years at the gymnasium. While I walked around bareheaded in the school, I would put a kippa on my head whenever I ate. This was the greatest moment of my day. Covering my head was truly a religious experience; I felt as if I was taken to a higher plane. It was extraordinary. It was not wearing the kippa on my head that did it but actually putting it on. It was a daring act because by doing so I presented myself before God—a declaration that I wanted to live in His presence, not just as a spiritual condition but as an act of elevation, of spiritual grandeur. It was a happening. After all, the main purpose of the kippa, as with all of Halacha, is to disturb. To wake people up and tell them that nothing is to be taken for granted. In my case it worked miracles! It made me wonderfully uneasy. I remember that my hands trembled when I put my kippa on.

But it is this very kippa that now causes me problems. I have a love-hate relationship with it. Now that it’s on my head all the time, it has nearly lost all its meaning. It used to excite me; now, 50 years later, it deadens me. It has little to do with my awareness that I live in God’s presence and has become an act of mindless self-indulgence, just something to make me feel good.

Deep down I know what to do. In order for my kippa to remind me of God, I need to take it off so that I can occasionally put it on. Hopefully, it would bring back the religious experience and take me out of this dull place called religious observance. But what can I do? What would my grandchildren think? This has become a major challenge in my life, for the problem of the kippa is simply a symptom of something much bigger. I have become so used to living an observant life, by all the requirements of Halacha, that I sincerely wonder whether I am still religious. “Faith is not a state of passivity, of quiet acceptance….Faith requires action….bold initiative rather than continuity. Faith is forever contingent on the courage of the believer” (Heschel, A Passion for Truth, p. 192).

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Scientific research has often revealed particles of matter in our universe that can stir the heart of man in ways that were not possible in earlier times. Scientists dedicate their lives to the minutest properties of our physical world. They are fascinated by the behavior of cells, the habits of insects and the peculiarities of the DNA code. God is in the details, the saying goes. So, too, halachic authorities look for the smallest details to make man sensitive to every fine point of his life so that he may discover God. By demanding of us meticulousness in how much matza to eat, what size lulav to use, and to what degree our etrog should be spotless, they create a subconscious awareness in us that the so-called trivialities of life are really opportune moments to meet God. Halacha is meant to be a protest against all forms of spiritual dullness. It is the microscopic search for God. But it only works when you hear the music behind the law. That is art at its ultimate. But do we still listen?

One of the greatest challenges confronting Judaism is behaviorism. People get used to the way Judaism informs them to respond to all of life, and instead of being nothing less than extraordinary, life becomes ordinary and insipid. Halachic living becomes self-defeating. It actually encourages what it wishes to prevent. In the spirit of Nietzsche’s observation of how much wisdom lies in the superficiality of man, I would suggest that one of the great tragedies of today’s halachic man is his obliviousness to the profundity behind his halachic superficiality.

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After my conversion, I wanted to study in a yeshiva. I had read about such places and was deeply impressed. It seemed like a dream world to me, although I had little knowledge about it. I believed a yeshiva was a place where all the great questions about life and religiosity were discussed and where the debates were of a theological and philosophical nature—the topics closest to my heart. When I actually entered the famous Gateshead Yeshiva, Europe’s largest talmudic college, I was greatly disappointed to learn that most of the studies were about legal discussions in the Talmud. On top of this, I did not have even the most elementary knowledge necessary to participate in such discussions. I lacked all the basic tools. Only later did I realize that I knew many things about Judaism that the yeshiva students and some of their rabbis didn’t know. Matters related to the weltanschauung/philosophy of Judaism and the many schools of thought concerning its nature were never studied, or were given so little time that it was meaningless. The classic Kuzari, in which 12^th century Rabbi Yehudah HaLevi offered his understanding of Judaism, was not at all discussed. And certainly not Maimonides’ Moreh Nevuchim (Guide for the Perplexed) let alone later and modern classics. I was told in yeshiva that these works were of minor importance and what was really essential was the shakla ve-tarya, the give-and-take in talmudic legal discussion. When I asked what the religious and philosophical implications of all these talmudic debates were and how it touched their lives, there was total silence. I remember that when I asked how my fellow students were so sure that God exists, or that the Torah is min ha-shamayim (from heaven), most of them used poor arguments, if any, and were astonished that I dared to ask these questions. When I approached one of the main rabbis and asked him a question related to the German philosopher Leibniz, who had argued that this world was the best world God could have created, he told me in great humility that he had no idea what I was  talking about. It took me a long time to grasp that this was the wrong address for these questions, although I did still realize that the great legal debates made Judaism very special. Unlike other religions, they reflect the need for God to enter the marketplace, the courtroom and all that is mundane. Judaism is pragmatic, realistic and cognizant of the fact that to be a veritable way of spiritual living it needs to be available and attainable.

The roshei yeshiva and other rabbis showed incredible integrity, deep religiosity, and the total absence of any personal agenda. What counted was the service of God through the study of the Talmud. This monumental text took them back to Mount Sinai, and through its pages they relived the greatest moment in all of Jewish history. I have never seen anything like that anywhere else. Paradoxically, there was a certain naiveté, a withdrawal from the rest of the world, which made them seem like human angels while studying the laws of damages and injuries. Much later, I understood that even the brilliant legal discussions had tremendous religious meaning, but this was never discussed in the yeshiva. Once I understood that it was not philosophy but the legal intricacies of Halacha that kept yeshiva students fascinated, I was able to enjoy the studies. To this day, I get excited about Rabbi Aryeh Leib HaCohen Heller’s Ketzot HaChoshen and similar works created by other talmudic geniuses.

I spent 12 years in yeshivot, and today when I speak with many people who reject the yeshiva world and criticize it harshly for all its faults, I realize that although I agree with many of their critical assessments, they fail to understand the inner music of these institutions. They do not realize that this introverted but remarkable world somehow lifted the Jews out of their misery throughout history and gave them the strength to survive all their enemies under the most intolerable conditions brought on by anti-Semitism. It was this denial of time that made the Jews eternal. The yeshiva world was no doubt very small compared to what it is now, but up until the emancipation it was the pride of the entire Jewish world. The Talmud afforded the Jews wings, enabling them to fly to other worlds, to return to the past that no longer existed and to look toward worlds that were still to come. It became the Jews’ portable homeland, and their complete immersion in its texts made them indestructible even as they were tortured and killed. The Talmud became their survival kit, which ultimately empowered them to establish the State of Israel, nearly 2000 years after they were exiled from their land. This is unprecedented in all of the history of mankind. Regretfully, most Israelis do not realize this.

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We can no longer afford to have yeshivot teaching only Talmud, and the manner in which it is taught also needs to be drastically changed. Its many tractates must be made relevant by getting behind the text and understanding its music, poetry and, above all, its religiosity. This requires a radical restructuring of the yeshiva curriculum. We should challenge the more sophisticated students by studying secular texts with them—Spinoza, John Locke and many others—and see how the Talmud, the Midrash and all other classical sources respond to these important writings. In that way, one can reveal the profundity of these Jewish texts. Heschel, Buber, Rosenzweig, Berkovits, the great chassidic masters such as the Mei HaShiloach by Rabbi Mordechai Yosef of Izbitze, and many others should be carefully read. Students must learn how to convey to others why they are religious, and why Judaism is of vital importance not just for the Jews but for all of mankind. I often wonder: what if Spinoza had met these spiritual giants? Would he have realized that his interpretation of Judaism was based on a very rigid and faulty reading, part of which he adopted from his rabbinical teachers in Amsterdam and part of which was his own often deliberate misreading of the nature of Judaism? Would he have turned into a Sefardi Kotzker Rebbe with his near obsession for the truth and nothing but the truth? Would he have understood that all power corrupts, including the power of using reason exclusively?

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There was one philosophy text, of several volumes, that was extremely popular in Gateshead Yeshiva: Michtav Me-Eliyahu by Rabbi Eliyahu Eliezer Dessler (1892-1953), one of the most influential mussar teachers in modern times. But unlike other mussar books, this is a rare combination of philosophy, Kabbala, Chassidut, and Mussar. He even borrowed ideas from modern psychology. Its publication caused quite a stir, since the teachings contained therein were drastically different from anything known in the yeshiva world until then. These volumes opened a world well beyond the study halls of Gateshead Yeshiva. In fact, it laid the foundations for some radical thinking, far exceeding what Rabbi Dessler himself wanted to accomplish. It reminded me a bit of how Spinoza, lehavdil, had taken Maimonides’ ideas about God and radicalized them to the extent of ending up with a form of pantheism. Spinoza was not the greatest philosopher in history but certainly the most daring one, at least in classical philosophy. In some ways that is true about Rabbi Dessler’s writings and several chassidic texts as well.

Michtav Me-Eliyahu triggered some thoughts that would later lead me to form a different approach to Judaism, though still deeply rooted in tradition. A novel understanding of God, Torah min hashamayim, human autonomy, religious wonder, universalism, the problem of halachic behaviorism and much more were clearly alluded to in Michtav Me-Eliyahu. This despite the fact that Rabbi Dessler, an ultra-conformist, never moved away from the official yeshiva world. He never mentioned any of these topics in an unconventional way, but it was all there between the lines.

Interestingly, Rabbi Dessler reminds me of the famous Rabbi Avraham Yitzchak HaCohen Kook (1865-1935), who was the most powerful and perhaps most controversial Orthodox thinker in Israel. No doubt, Rabbi Kook was much more daring and universalistic than Rabbi Dessler, but one cannot deny the similarity.

While studying in Gateshead, I had never heard about Rabbi Kook; he was a Zionist and considered much too radical. The other great thinker never to be mentioned was Rabbi Joseph Ber Soloveitchik, also known as the Rav. He, too, was a Zionist, and he held a doctorate in philosophy! As such, he was persona non grata in Gateshead Yeshiva. I only discovered these great men when I came to live in Israel many years later. They, together with other philosophers such as Will Herberg, Eliezer Berkovits, Heschel, Norman Lamm, Michael Wyschogrod, Arthur Green and even the Israeli rebel Professor Yeshayahu Leibowitz, had a great influence on me. Included in this list are many profound non-Jewish thinkers as well, such as Paul Tillich and Reinhold Niebuhr.

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One of the major tasks of Jewish education is to deliberately create an atmosphere of rebellion among its students. Rebellion, after all, is the great emancipator. We owe nearly all of our knowledge and achievements not to those who agreed but to those who differed. It is this virtue that brought Judaism into existence. Avraham was the first rebel, destroying idols; he was followed by his children, then by Moshe, and then by the Jewish people.

What has been entirely forgotten is that the Torah was the first audacious text to appear in world history. Its purpose was to protest. It set in motion a rebel movement of cosmic proportions the likes of which we have never known. The text includes all the radical heresies of the past, present and future. It calls idol-worship an abomination, immorality abhorrent, and the worship of man a catastrophe. It protests against complacency, self-satisfaction, imitation, and negation of the spirit. It calls for radical thinking and drastic action, without compromise, even when it means standing alone, being condemned and ridiculed.

All of this seems to be entirely lost on our religious establishment. We are instructing our students and children to obey, to fit in, to conform and not stand out. We teach them that their religious leaders are great people because they are “all-right-niks” who would never think of disturbing the established religious and social norms. We teach them that they are the ideal to be emulated. By doing so, we turn our backs on authentic Judaism and communicate the very opposite of what Judaism is meant to convey

By using clichés instead of the language of opposition, we deny our students the excitement of being Jewish: excitement resulting from the realization that one makes a huge difference and takes pride in it, no matter the cost; excitement at the awareness that one is part of a great mission for which one is prepared to die, knowing that it will make the world a better place.

When we tell our children to eat kosher, we need to inform them that this is an act of disobedience against consumerism that encourages human beings to eat anything as long as it tastes good. When we go to synagogue, it is a protest against man’s arrogance in thinking that he can do it all himself. When couples observe the laws of family purity, it is a rebellion against the obsession with sex. The celebration of Shabbat must be presented as an enormous challenge to our contemporary world that believes our happiness depends on how much we produce.

As long as our religious teachers continue to teach Jewish texts as models of approval, instead of manifestations of protest against the mediocrity of our world, we will lose more of our young people to that very mediocrity.

Judaism is in its essence an act of dissent, not of consent. Dissent leads to renewal. It creates loyalty. It is the force through which the world is able to grow. To forget this crucial element is to betray Judaism.

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When my wife and I moved to Israel with our three children, intending to stay for two years so that I could continue to learn in yeshivot, I was approached by the administration of a well-known ba’al teshuva yeshiva in Jerusalem, for non-religious young people interested in learning about Judaism. The ba’al teshuva movement was not widespread as it is today, and I had never heard about such an institution. The directors asked me whether I was prepared to give some lectures. In response to my inquiry about the nature of the school, they told me it was an institution that functioned as a bridge between Harvard University and Ponevezh Yeshiva in B’nei Brak. The latter was then the most famous yeshiva in Israel. I liked the idea, it seemed to fit my way of thinking, and I started lecturing there on a daily basis. I had already begun giving daily lectures in a large ba’al teshuva seminary for women and greatly enjoyed it.

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While teaching in this yeshiva, I began studying more intensively the works of Heschel. His were some of the most remarkable ideas I would ever encounter. Heschel came from a deeply chassidic family and was surrounded by a great number of authentically religious people including famous chassidic rebbes. His great-great-grandfather and namesake was Avraham Yehoshua Heschel, the Apter Rav (1755-1825), known as the Ohev Yisrael (lover of Israel) who was an exceptional proponent of the mitzva of loving one’s fellow Jew. Heschel spoke their spiritual language but began writing in poetic, sensitive and emotional style once he came to the United States.

There was also Franz Rosenzweig (1886-1929), the great German Jewish philosopher who had nearly converted to Christianity, but changed his mind after attending Yom Kippur services at a small Orthodox synagogue in Berlin, which sparked in him a spiritual explosion. He devoted the rest of his life to teaching and writing about Judaism.

These philosophers opened a new world for me, and I began reading very interesting books by Conservative and Reform rabbis and thinkers. Some were outstanding and taught me a lot, although there were areas where I felt they were mistaken. My thoughts on Judaism began to change. I realized that it was actually even more beautiful and that the narrow reading of chareidi Judaism did not tell its entire story and even caused it to stagnate. At the same time, I understood that the existential problems that confronted Judaism and the Jewish people would not be solved by the Reform or Conservative movements. They required authentic, rebellious Orthodox Judaism that would correct its mistakes, stop acting defensively and start being creative and daring.

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I began to include in my lectures some of the ideas I had read. One of the rabbis at the yeshiva where I was teaching had shown me a Reform rabbi’s interpretation of a certain narrative in the Torah. I thought it was good and used it in one of my lectures, mentioning the rabbi’s name. The administration heard about it and was very upset that I dared to not only use an interpretation that was “not kosher” but to mention the name of the Reform rabbi as well. They questioned me about it, and I answered them candidly that I did not see anything wrong with the interpretation and that I thought it would be small-minded not to mention the Reforms rabbi’s name. This was not taken in good spirit and created much tension between the yeshiva rabbis and me.

On another occasion, I had defended Rabbi Shlomo Riskin who had published a piece in the Jerusalem Post and had written that Moshe Rabeinu was perhaps not the greatest communicator and teacher. This was anathema to the yeshiva heads. I believed that while one did not have to agree with Rabbi Riskin’s approach, he was definitely entitled to his opinion and it did not constitute heresy.

I once published an open letter in The Jerusalem Post to Shulamit Aloni, a secular, left-wing member of the Knesset. She had ridiculed Judaism for its backwardness. I wrote that all her arguments were outdated and irrelevant, and that I hoped she would come up with some substantial criticism that would dare the rabbis to rethink Judaism. My students at the yeshiva were very impressed by my letter and hung it up in the building where I taught. This, too, was not appreciated. I think that my willingness to reassess Judaism was too much for the leadership of the yeshiva to accept. It reached a point when they wanted to place a cherem on me, and due to my inexperience I made the mistake of fighting it. Nothing would have been more beneficial to me than to have been put under a ban. Many more of my books would have been sold and my ideas disseminated. But alas, I succeeded in preventing it. Still, all these unfortunate incidents led me to leave the yeshiva. I no longer felt at home, and the directors were uncomfortable with me teaching there. Looking back, I realize what a blessing it was. I was able to develop my ideas independently and felt great relief. It set me on a road that gave me the opportunity to discover new worlds. Most disturbing was the fact that with the exception of one, none of my colleagues at the yeshiva, including a former professor, had the integrity and courage to stay in contact with me. I never heard from them.

Still, I owe the yeshiva and the women’s college much gratitude since they gave me the opportunity to teach. Even more important, they sent me on lecture tours to the United States, Canada, England and South Africa, all of which opened new doors for me.

****

One of my daughters asked me whether I ever regretted my decision to become fully Jewish. I consider this a very important question. My answer is unequivocal: I have never regretted it. It’s the best decision I’ve ever made. Furthermore, even had I not been a “father Jew,”  and of zera Yisrael, and even had I not felt this Jewishness running through my blood, I have not the slightest doubt that I still would have fallen in love with Judaism had I encountered it. Once you discover it, there is no turning back! But would conversion in that case have been the right step? I have my doubts. What would have stopped me is the overwhelming notion that mankind is urgently in need of a new universal religion. Judaism gave birth to two most important and powerful religions—Christianity and Islam. But both have failed miserably.

And now there is a need for Judaism to once again give birth to a new religion for non-Jews. It has a wealth of resources to work with. I wonder whether if I had remained non-Jewish I could have been instrumental in creating such a religion, which would be something similar to Judaism. But today, as an Orthodox Jew, it is much harder to be fully involved in this. It requires a leader, a mover, and that means being fully dedicated to the religion that one has helped create, and living accordingly. That would be impossible for a Jew living by the demands of Halacha. It would involve violating certain commandments that only apply to Jews. Having been born into my family, my only choice was to go all the way and fully integrate into the Jewish people and Judaism. The joy it gives me is ineffable. The task of creating and leading a new religion must be left to others, although I hope to play a role from a distance.

The world is waiting for this. Non-Jews need a Shabbat experience, some degree of kashrut (dietary laws), taharat ha-mishpacha (laws of family purity and sexual intimacy between husband and wife) and even laws such as shmitta (the seventh year of the seven-year agricultural cycle, when one does not work the land). The latter could also be applied to the car and computer industries, as well as other technologies that are overproducing and creating financial instability. This religion would include all halachic requirements of the Seven Mitzvot B’nei Noach, the commandments that—according to the Talmud—were given by God to Noach as a binding set of laws for all mankind. As in the case of the Ten Commandments, they actually include numerous branches with many more mitzvot. Both these sets of laws are the grundnorm (fundamental norm) from which many other ethical and religious ideas follow.

A religion such as this would also need to build synagogue-like houses of worship for non-Jews and create rituals to inspire. Suggestions like how to perform marriages for non-Jews with some kind of Jewish ceremony will be very important. How Jewish should we make burial rituals for non-Jews? Should non-Jews make kiddush, refrain from driving, and limit their use of electricity on their day of rest? Should we introduce Rosh Hashana and Yom Kippur into this new religion, for are not all humans judged on these days? One cannot really answer or even contemplate these complex questions without a proper understanding of Talmud and the later authorities.

****

A strong sense of mission overwhelms me. I realize that my life is different from most other people’s, including religious Jews. What I experience is the Hand from Above that gives me no rest and humbles me. I’m driven by it but do not always know where I am going. Often, I feel the need to step out of all this and start living a normal life. But, much as I have tried, it just doesn’t work. I am convinced that although I may never know what it is, there is great meaning behind this seemingly absurd life of mine. It is beautiful and demanding, yet quite frightening. I often wonder why God chose me to be born into this family, from a Torah-forbidden marriage, and why I had to encounter Judaism in such an unusual way. I realize that by biblical standards I should never have been. Am I the product of a divine comedy? And am I living up to it?

God has blessed me with the ability to inspire, and I try to not just convey my ideas in lectures but to actually live them, like a musician who lives his music. This has a lot to do with my background. There are moments when I feel like a Marrano; other times like a chassid in a state of d’vekut (religious ecstasy through bonding with God); and sometimes I identify with Spinoza’s level-headed sub specie aeternitatis! Inside me lives the arrogant Portuguese Jew with his joie de vivre, extravagant attire, top hat and tailcoat, praying in the Esnoga of Amsterdam and filled with Spanish gravidade (dignity). On some occasions I immerse myself in a mikva, longing for kedusha (holiness), which is nearly impossible to attain. But all these exceptional experiences are not of my making. I did not ask for them, nor did I work to achieve them. They are divine gifts, and I carry them with me. I only pray that all these different dimensions blend well and make me a balanced person.

****

I often wonder whether my non-Jewish grandparents, whom I never knew, have any connection to all this. I do not feel at all affiliated with them. They are complete strangers to me, and my mother never spoke about them. I do not say kaddish for them, nor do I even know when they died or where they are buried. Perhaps their graves have already been removed and I should have prevented it. But there is nothing internal that pulls me to find out or take action. Is this right? After all, am I not of their blood, and are they not part of my strange story? On the other hand, I love to meet my brother’s children who, while proud of their Jewish background, live in a non-Jewish world. My children, also, are in regular contact with them, and this gives me great joy. I even have two first cousins from my mother’s side with whom I stay in touch. So, why do I feel a kinship to them, but not to my grandparents? Am I the victim of Freud’s subconscious repression and denial?

We are all neighbors of ourselves, watching our own lives through a distant window. Do I even know myself? Although we are married more than 45 years, am I a stranger to my dear wife because I was incapable of telling her what was happening in my innermost self since the day I contemplated giyur? For years my giyur was absent from my conscious life. I had forgotten about it, and even today, when I hear Jews make discriminating remarks about gerim, it never touches me personally. I am a Jew like all others. So why do I suddenly feel a moral obligation to tell my story in order to inspire? And is the good Lord behind this?

My children and grandchildren are all aware of my background and do not seem to be bothered by it. They’re actually proud of it. But to what extent does my story play a role, perhaps subconsciously, in their lives? I will never forget when one of my daughters, as a child (now the mother of four), came home one Friday night crying and refusing to look at me. When we asked her what had happened, she said that her best friend had just informed her that her father was a goy! My wife and I then realized that unlike with our other children we had forgotten to tell her about my background. Only after we explained it all did she calm down and allow me to once again be her father!

When each of my children entered the world of shidduchim, I made sure the other party knew about me before the two would meet. When one of my granddaughters was rejected twice for a marriage proposal because of my background, it hit me like a bolt of lightning. I felt very bad for her, but it did not touch me personally. I view the people who rejected her, and those who advised them, as being guilty of violating Halacha and not having a clue as to what Judaism is all about.

****

I often ask myself why I have merited these many blessings: discovering Judaism just at the right time, when I was still young, unmarried and open to new ideas; being married to a wonderful woman; having the opportunity to learn, write and speak about Torah for most of my life; and, of course, living in Israel. It still frightens me when I think of how close I was to marrying a non-Jew. There is not a moment when I take it for granted that I have Jewish children, grandchildren and great-grandchildren who are all deeply religious. Could it be z’chut avot (the merits of our forefathers)? Or perhaps divine intervention? More and more, I believe it is the z’chut of my mother who had the courage to hide my father, his mother, brothers, sister and their wives and husband right under the noses of the Nazis in the center of Amsterdam, and saved all of them from the atrocities of Auschwitz. She risked her life several times, telling the Nazis that her husband and family had already been taken to the camps while they were actually hiding behind cupboards six feet away from where she stood. The same strength she displayed at my birth.

****

What I’ve learned over the years from my own story is that I don’t believe it’s possible to be steadily and persistently religious. One can only be in that state at certain moments, when one experiences a unique, ineffable encounter with God. All we can do is live in a religious context that will constantly remind us to long for that unparalleled moment. To be a Jew is so much more than just being part of the Jewish people, having a Jewish mother, or even converting. It is living in the spiritual order of Judaism; living through the Jews of the past, the present and the future. One becomes somewhat Jewish when one realizes there cannot be life in the absence of moral conscience and without an often complicated encounter with God. To be a Jew is to challenge the stabilization of accepted values; to live in dissent and protest; to overcome stagnation and move beyond trivialities and clichés; to be involved in radical thinking. It is to dare to stand before God and, if need be, to challenge Him. To be a Jew is to realize that we Jews are either indispensable or superfluous. Only when we comprehend this and live accordingly can we slowly grow into real Jews.

I am still on the road. When will I arrive and be an authentic Jew? Just as Judaism is still in the making, so am I.

****

With thanks to Channa Shapiro of Jerusalem for her editorial assistance.

*Soon to be published in Hebrew. If you would like to receive this auto biography as an attachment, please write to: nlc@internet-zahav.net

 *To receive Nathan Lopes Cardozo’s weekly Thoughts to Ponder, see:  www.cardozoacademy.org/

                                                     Benedictus de Spinoza, Ethics

A desert is a lonely place, completely forsaken. There is neither food, nor water, nor any other form of sustaining substance. There is only the unbearable sun and its heat. There is no grass, and there are no trees.  There are only deadly snakes and scorpions. In a desert, death stares you in the face. It is a dangerous place, unlivable and outrageous.

But the desert is also a magnificent place, filled with grandeur and full of life.  It is a place where many things can happen which are not possible in any other location. First and foremost, it is a place of authenticity.  Because it is a place where a sound, a Voice, can travel as in no other place. It has all the sound options that a musician can dream of. It can reach the deepest of its meanings and the highest of its dreams.  In a desert a sound can travel to the end of the world. There are no obstacles standing in its way. In a desert a Voice can turn in any direction it desires and take on any dimension with no fear of corruption.

In a desert there are no walls by which the sound will be cut short. It is, above all, a place where a sound will not be disturbed or troubled by other sounds that may overwhelm it or even silence it.

Why? Because a desert is a place of devastating silence. There are no distractions; there is no clash of voices. No “voice competition”.

If there is ever to be an authentic Voice to be heard, it is here in the desert. It can’t be undermined and falsified, using it for selfish purposes. It is because of the desert’s thundering silence that it is possible to hear a “still voice” with no obstruction. It cannot bear mediocrity, even when it is original and thought of as novel. Instead, it seeks singular excellence even when most men cannot recognize it as such. It protests against those who are appeased when they can find something old in the new, whereas it is clear that this old could not have given birth to this new.  

The Egyptian French poet, Edward Jabès, noted the relationship between the Hebrew words “dabar”, word, and “midbar”, desert. This, he claims, goes to   the core of what a Jew is all about:

“With exemplary regularity the Jew chooses to set out for the desert, to go toward a renewed word that has become his origin… A wandering word is the word of God. It has for its echo the word of wandering people. No oasis for it, no shadow, no peace. Only the immense, thirsty desert, only the book of his thirst….” (From The Book to the Book, Wesleyan University Press, 1991, pp 166-7)    

Here, in the emptiness and silence of the desert, the authentic Word can be heard. A Word stripped of all distractions. Naked, without any excuse.  But it can only be heard by a people of the wilderness; a people who are not rooted in a substance of physical limitations and borders; a people who are not entirely fixed by an earthly point, even while living in a homeland. Their spirit reaches far beyond the borders of any restricted place. They are particularistic so as to be universalistic. They are never satisfied with their spiritual conditions and are therefore always on the road, looking for more. A wandering people carried by a wandering Word which can never permanently land because the runway is too narrow and they cannot fit into any end destination. A people who always experience unrest because they carry the Word which doesn’t fit anywhere and wanders in the existential condition of an unlimited desert.  A Word which unnerves because it is rooted in the desert where, if not properly handled, it becomes deadly.

It needs a people who received the Word before having received their land.  More than that, a people to whom the Word itself gave birth. The Word is the mother of the people. A people who can make their land into a portable homeland, carrying it to any corner of the earth because their land is a Word. It is the land which depends on the Word and not the Word which depends on the land. Here the Word is the author of the people; the people are not the author of the Word. The homeland is the “Text”- the Word. (George Steiner) They dwell in the Word and become real, because the Word is the father of its readers and not vice versa.          

A desert is even more. It is a place where nothing can be achieved. In a desert man cannot prove himself, at least not in the conventional sense of the word. It doesn’t offer jobs that people can fight over and compete for.  It has no factories, offices or department stores. There are no bosses to order us around and no fellow workers with whom we are in competition. It is “prestige deprived”. In a desert there is no “kavod/honor” to be obtained. It doesn’t have cities, homes, fences.  Once it has these, it is no longer a desert. Human achievements will end its desert status and will undermine and destroy the grandeur of its might and beauty. Man can only “be” but never “have” anything in a desert. There is no food to be eaten but the manna, the soul food, and one can easily walk in the same shoes for 40 years because authenticity does not wear out. Men’s garments grow with them and do not need changing or cleaning because they are as pure as can be. And that which is pure continues to grow and stays clean. 

The desert is therefore a state of mind.  It removes the walls in our subconscious, and even in our conscious way of thinking. It is an “out of the box” realm. In a desert one can think unlimitedly.  As such, one is open to the “impossible” and hears murmurs of another world which one can never hear in the city or on a job. The desert allows for authentic thinking, without obstacles, and therefore it is able to break through and remove from us any artificial thoughts which do not identify with our deeper souls. Nothing spiritual gets lost in us, because the fences of our thoughts become neutralized and no longer bar the way to our inner life. It is ultimate liberty. It teaches us that openness does not mean surrender to what is most “in”, or powerful.  Nor does it consist of vulgar successes made into a principle.

This is the reason why the Torah could only have been given in a desert – Midbar.  Why did God not give the Torah in a civilized place? Had God given it on Wall Street, He would have had to decide who would sit on the Board of Investors. He would have had to deal with the “politics of friendships”   and personal agendas of how much interest to give and where to invest. Had He given the Torah in Israel, He would have had to decide whether to give it in ultra-Orthodox Bnei Berak, Jerusalem, High Tech Tel Aviv or a Marxist kibbutz. (1)

God didn’t want shareholders or agendas to pollute His words and make them “user friendly” in ways which would compromise His very Word. So He chose the desert. A place without any personal motives. The ideal place to fall in love because there is no competition. And because love is the irresistible desire to be desired irresistibly (Louis Ginsberg), only a Midbar can become the home of lovers – the Giver of the Word and the receivers of the Voice to be married under the canopy of authenticity.

“Anyone who does not make himself open to all (“hefker”, ownerless), like a wilderness, cannot gain wisdom and Torah” (Bemidbar Rabbah, 1:7) say the Sages.  

With this statement the Sages introduce a most important insight concerning God, the nature of Torah and the desert. They cannot bear artificial, unauthentic ideas which are sold in the superficiality of this world. 

In a Midbar one can hear an authentic Voice and immediately distinguish it from the artificial word, because the authentic Voice will protest without delay. It has no place to hide, so it will run up against a wall and instead of being silenced will become nearly violent and unrelenting. The wall will start to shake and will ultimately collapse because it is not really rooted in a desert.

The “authentic” is perhaps not to be found when deliberately pursued, but there is no missing it when it is present. As such, it will become a “commanding voice” which can make us nervous since it becomes disturbing and unbearable. It becomes a deadly, poisonous snake for those who have not shaped themselves as desert people.

A desert is still more. It is also a place where the word cannot be caught and locked up.  In can’t be framed and manipulated. Yes, to activate the world and make an imprint on it, it has to come down and respond to the “here and now”. It must allow for fences and limitations whenever needed. Limitations can be great emancipators. But it must always carry the “tomorrow and over there”.  To have any effect, it must borrow from the world of man and his language. But it needs to have an escape. It must be like a fishnet which captures its mundane needs, but with holes so that the ongoing flow of water will not get caught up in the net itself. It must be a thoroughfare for all genuine thoughts, always looking for a new destination which will allow for ever further lands in which to give birth to new philosophies, new Halacha (2) and spirituality. 

This is the purpose of a real Beth Hamidrash. It has to be a desert. Filled with possibilities of the Word, whose time may not yet have arrived butwhich are already in the philosophical and halachic air; or whose time has come but the listeners and “appliers” of Torah and Halacha have not been able to recognize.  They have become caught up in the fishing net and cannot free themselves because of their own self-imposed imprisonment. 

A real Beth Midrash is a place where the Word is able to breathe, where it can swim through the fishing net looking for new beaches. 

But how true it is that this road is full of snakes and other dangers. It is a risky place. To look into the future for the sake of the present always involves risks. To run up against the current waves of water is difficult and one can drown, but not to do so is to commit suicide.

The only quality which can save us from the snakes in this desert is the awe of Heaven. Only this quality can save us from falling into the hands of the serpent. But it can be done and therefore it must be done so as to reveal the Word given in the desert and to allow it all the space it deserves.

Avraham found God in the desert and so the people of Israel received the Torah in a place of ultimate authenticity: The Desert of devastating conditions and great opportunities. It is a dangerous place, but a desert it must be. Whoever thinks that the Divine Word is commonplace and easily lived by, has never been in the Ultimate desert of his life.         

***** 

*  Based on a lecture at the Beth Midrash of Avraham Avinu at the David Cardozo Academy, Jerusalem, 2013

(2)  Shavuoth, Anonymous, Amsterdam, 28.5.2009

(3)  See my “Towards a New Halacha”, audio lecture, Toronto, Sept 13, 2008, www.cardozoacademy.org/ audio.

The Shabbaton was also dedicated to two recently deceased exceptional Jewish figures: Rabbis David Hartman and Menahem Froman z”l. A broad analysis and critique of Rabbi Hartman’ s philosophy was presented by Rabbi Cardozo, and a Think Tank member rounded out the picture. The debates on his ideas, revolving around morality, halachah, intuition and submission, became heated, as members disagreed strongly on the value of such ideas. Another Think Tank member presented a talk on Rabbi Froman, a colourful and complex figure on the Israeli political and religious scene. Several ideas for possible activities in the broader public sphere emerged from the experiences in this Shabbaton.

Man is no longer able to struggle with his inner Self and therefore cannot deal with the biblical text. It stares him in the face, and he is terrified by the confrontation. All he can do is deny it, so that he may escape from himself. Since he knows that he must come to terms with himself before he comes to terms with the Book, he cannot negate it or disagree with it, as this requires him to deny something that he doesn’t even know exists.

Does that mean that this man is not religious? Not at all. Even the religious man is detached from the spirit. He has elevated religion to such a level that its influence on his everyday life, in the here and now, has been lost. It is found on the top floor of his spiritual house, with its own very special atmosphere. It has become departmentalized. But the intention of Torah is exactly the reverse. Its words, events and commandments are placed in the midst of the people, enveloped in history and worldly matters. What happens there does not take place in a vacuum but in the harshness of human reality. Most of the Torah deals with the natural course of man’s life. Only sporadic miracles allow us to hear the murmurs from another world that exists beyond. These moments remind us that God is, after all, the only real Entity in all of existence. But the Torah is the story of how God exists in the midst of mortal man’s ordinary troubles and joys. It is not the story of God in heaven, but of God in human history and personal encounter.

The art of biblical interpretation is far more than just knowing how to give expression to the deeper meaning of the text. It is, after all, impossible to treat the biblical text as one would any other classical work. This is because the people of Israel, according to Jewish tradition, are not the authors of this text. Rather, the text is the author of the people. Comprising a covenant between God and man, the text is what brought the people into being. Moreover, despite the fact that the people often violated the commanding voice of this text, it created the specific and unique identity of the Jewish nation.

That is precisely why reading the text is not like reading a conventional literary work. It requires a reading-art, which allows the unfolding of the essence and nature of a living people struggling with life and God’s commandments.

This calls for a totally different kind of comprehension, one that must reflect a particular thought process and attitude on the part of the student.

George Steiner expressed this well when he wrote:

The script…is a contract with the inevitable. God has, in the dual sense of utterance and of binding affirmation, “given His word,” His Logos and His bond, to Israel. It cannot be broken or refuted (1).

The text, then, must be approached in a way that reflects a human commitment to ensure that it indeed will not be broken or refuted. This has become a great challenge to modern biblical interpretation. Many scholars and thinkers have been asking whether the unparalleled calamity of the Holocaust did not create a serious existential crisis in which the text by definition has been invalidated. Can we still speak about a working covenant by which God promised to protect His people, now that six million Jews, including nearly two million children, lost their lives within a span of five years under the cruelest of circumstances?

The reason for raising this question is not just because the covenant appears to have been broken, but also because history—and specifically Jewish history— was always seen as a living commentary on the biblical text. The text gave significance to history and simultaneously took on its religious meaning.

Can the text still be used in that sense, or has it lost its significance because history violated the criteria for its proper and covenantal elucidation?

Not for nothing have modern scholars suggested that there is a need, post-Holocaust, to liberate ourselves from this covenantal text in favor of shaping our destiny and history in totally secular terms. The Holocaust proved, they believe, that we have only ourselves to rely on, and even the return to Israel is to be understood as a secular liberation of the galut experience.

It is in this context that “commentary” needs to take on a new challenge: To show not only how the covenant, as articulated in the text, is not broken or refuted, but how in fact it is fully capable of dealing with the new post-Holocaust conditions of secularity. Without falling victim to apologetics, biblical interpretation will have to offer a novel approach to dealing with the Holocaust experience in a full religious setting, based on the text and taking it beyond its limits.

It will have to respond to the fact that God is the most tragic figure in all of history, making the life of man sometimes sublime while at other times disastrous. The biblical text is there to tell man how to live with this God and try to see meaning behind the absurdity of the situation.

But above all, modern commentary must make sure that the Torah speaks to the atheist and the agnostic, for they need to realize that the text is replete with examples of sincere deniers and doubters who struggled all of their lives with great existential questions. The purpose is not to bring the atheists and agnostics back to the faith, but to show that one can be religious while being an atheist; to make people aware that it is impossible to live without embarking on a search for meaning, whether one finds it or not. It is the search that is important, the end result much less so. The art is to refrain from throwing such a pursuit on the dunghill of history throughout the ages. The struggle of homo religiosus is of greatest importance to the atheist.

That secular people no longer read the Torah is an enormous tragedy. The Torah is too important to be left to the believer. The beauty of day-to-day life takes on a different and higher meaning through the Torah, and that will evoke in the atheist a faintly mystical anticipation, which he will experience when he is alone or when he watches a sunset at the beach. A voice is born, and it speaks to him; he feels a melancholy that calls forth something far away and beyond. He happens upon a situation that suddenly throws him over the edge, and he gets taken in by the experience of a loftier existence. He realizes that the god he was told to believe in is not the God of the Torah. The latter is a God with Whom one argues; a God Who is criticized and Who wants man to search even if it results in man’s denial of Him.

This issue is related to other crucial problems. Surveying Jewish history we see drastic changes in how the biblical text was encountered. In the beginning it was heard and not written. At first, Moshe received the Torah through the spoken Word: “The Word is very near to you; it is in your mouth and in your heart, for you to carry out” (2). God may be unimaginably far away, but His voice is heard nearby and it is the only way to encounter Him.

At a later stage the Word evolved into a written form. Once this happened, there was a process by which the spoken Word was slowly silenced and gradually replaced by the written form. With the eclipse of prophecy, God’s word was completely silenced and could then only be read. As such, the Word became frozen and ran the risk of becoming stagnant. At that stage it was necessary to unfreeze the Word, which became the great task of the Sages and commentaries throughout the following centuries.

Subsequently, a third element gained dominance. The text must be relevant to the generations that study it, while at the same time remaining eternal. Commentators throughout the ages have struggled with this problem. How does one preserve the eternity of the Word and simultaneously make it relevant to a specific moment in time? Many commentators were children of their time and clearly read the text through the prism of the period in which they lived. This being so, the perspective of eternity became critical. It was often pushed to the background so as to emphasize the great message for the present. Much of the aspect of eternity was thereby compromised, and that caused a few to wonder how eternal this text really is.

Others wrote as if nothing had happened in Jewish history. That reflected the remarkable situation of the Jewish people in galut: its a-historicity. After the destruction of the Temple, Jewish history came to a standstill. While much happened, with dire consequences for the Jews, they essentially lived their lives outside the historical framework of natural progress. It became a period of existential waiting, with the Jewish people anticipating the moment when they could once again enter history, which eventually came about with the establishment of the State of Israel in 1948.

Inevitably, then, some commentators wrote their exegeses in a historical vacuum. They hardly emphasized the relevance of biblical texts to a particular generation. Therefore, the student was often confronted with a dual sentiment. While dazzled by a commentator’s brilliant insight, he was forced to ask: So what? What is the implication of the interpretation for me, at this moment in time? Here we encounter a situation in which relevance is sacrificed for the sake of eternity.

With the return of the Jewish people to their ancestral homeland, Jews are confronted with an unprecedented situation, which has serious consequences for biblical commentary. Due to a very strong trend toward secularism, caused by the Holocaust as well as other factors, the issue of relevance versus eternity has become greatly magnified.

Today, more than ever before, there exists a greater and more pressing need to show the relevance of the text. The radical changes in Jewish history call for a bold and novel way of understanding the text as a living covenant. At the same time, the drastic secularization of world Jewry and Israeli thinking requires a completely new approach on how to present to the reader the possibility of the Torah’s eternity. With minor exceptions, the religious world has not come forward with an adequate response.

Most worrisome is the fact that the majority of Jewish commentary books published today in Orthodox circles comprise compilations and anthologies of earlier authorities without opening any new vistas. It is as if new interpretations are no longer possible. The words of God are treated as if they have been exhausted. It clearly reflects a fear of anything new, or an inability to come up with fresh and far-reaching ideas. This phenomenon has overtaken a good part of the Orthodox scholarly world. Judaism is turning more and more into a religion in which one writes glosses upon glosses, instead of creating new insights into the living covenant with God.

No doubt, not every person is equipped with the knowledge and creativity needed to undertake the task. Years of learning are an absolute requirement before one can make a genuine contribution in this field. Still, one must be aware of the danger of “over-knowledge.” When the student is overwhelmed by the interpretations of others, he may quite well become imprisoned by them and so lose the art of thinking independently. Instead of becoming a vehicle to look for new ideas, his knowledge becomes detrimental.

What is required is innovation in receptivity, where fresh ideas can grow in the minds of those willing to think creatively about the classical sources, without being hampered by preconceived notions. Only then will we see new approaches to our biblical tradition that will stand up to the challenges of our time.

*****

1. George Steiner, “Our Homeland, the Text,” Salmagundi No. 66 (Winter-Spring 1985) p. 12.

2. Devarim 30:14.

What is the reason why more and more Europeans deny Israel’s right to exist and wish to boycott its universities and products? How do we explain that throughout the years, the United Nations has been condemning Israel for the “crime” of defending its citizens, while totally overlooking the most heinous offenses by other nations against millions of people? Why is it that so many are incapable of thanking Israel for fighting terrorism, even when they know that the same criminal mentality of Hamas, Al Qaeda and other militant Islamic organizations is threatening their own existence as well as that of the Western world at large, including some Arab countries?

In his book Moses and Monotheism, Sigmund Freud tried to understand Jewish history and the formation of the people of Israel and Judaism.   While, due to many unproven assumptions, this work has come under heavy criticism by eminent scholars, it is remarkable that numerous theologians and sociologists are in agreement with Freud’s understanding of anti-Semitism.

Freud suggests that anti-Semitism is the result and expression of resentment felt by many Christians who hold the Jewish people responsible for the creation of their own Christian religion:

They have remained what their ancestors were, barbarically polytheistic. They have not yet overcome their grudge against the new religion which was forced on them, and they have projected it on to the source from which Christianity came to them….The hatred for Judaism is at bottom hatred for Christianity…(1)

Freud is right on the mark. When carefully reviewing the history of Christianity and Western civilization, it becomes clear that both are deeply indebted to Judaism for many of their moral values. These Jewish values were often contested, ridiculed and fought against. Millions of newborn Christians raised in the pagan world of Rome were not able to extricate themselves from morally questionable practices and beliefs rooted in that world. As a consequence, Christianity throughout all of its history became entangled in many polytheistic beliefs, giving birth to a religious society that was never at ease with the fundamental concepts of monotheism. This resulted in a complex psycho-religious condition, trapping millions of Christians in an uncomfortable situation in which they were unable to distinguish between authentic monotheism with its moral demands on one hand, and pagan practices on the other. With the exception of some of Christianity’s erudite thinkers, most of its spokesmen could not free themselves from this influence.

In 1948, well-known Christian thinker Arthur Roy Eckardt asked whether the Christian Church could ever supersede the Synagogue in the struggle against paganism. His answer was no, because the church itself is subject to pagan distortions: “Against all idolatries Judaism protests: ‘Hear, O Israel, the Lord our God is one Lord’” (2). He and others, including renowned Protestant philosopher and theologian Paul Tillich, postulated that there would always be a need for Judaism, because it is “the corrective against the paganism that goes along with Christianity” (3).

Sigmund Freud’s observation is therefore not surprising. Not only was it a near impossibility for Christians to accept the oneness of God, but even more unsettling were the consequences. This God’s ethical demand on men required much self-discipline and therefore encountered strong opposition.  The bottom line was the awareness that Jesus was a Jew who incorporated much of Jewish ethical values into his teachings, and this turned many early Christians against their own religion.

In his 1940 study of anti-Semitism, Zionist leader and author Harry Sacher stated that anti-Semitism is “Europe’s revenge on the prophets.” The Jew is persecuted because he brought ethics and the conception of sin into the Western world:

The European Christian cannot forgive the Jew for giving him Christianity….It is not because they are ‘good Christians’ that the Europeans are instinctively anti-Semites. It is because they are bad Christians, in reality repressed…pagans (4).

It is of Jesus that the anti-Semites are afraid. They make their assault on those who are responsible for the birth of Christianity. They spit on the Jews not because they were Jesus killers, but because they are Jesus givers.

Part of the Western world has always tried to effect a divorce between Judaism and Christianity, since it cannot accept that Christianity is greatly indebted to Judaism. It therefore calls for the destruction of Judaism so that the uncertainty of its conscience and the reality of its guilt can be obliterated. Resisting its own destiny, it needs to destroy those who bring that destiny to mind. The Jew spoils the anti-Semite’s life by emphasizing the ethical demands of the Torah which, despite their often inaccurate absorption into Jesus’ teachings, still remind him of those demands. The anti-Semite therefore re-enacts the crucifixion of his savior by torturing and killing the Jew who represents the teachings that Jesus had adopted.

So, it is not surprising that when Jews are forced to defend their country and declare war on terrorists, many people are delighted at having found an opportunity to accuse Israel of war crimes. While they are fully aware that their own countries would have decimated a criminal organization that fired thousands of rockets on their own citizens, they cannot bring themselves to admit the legitimacy of such action when it concerns the Jews. They are the victims of their own subconscious animosity against Jewish values propagated by their messiah.

They cowardly take revenge on the Jews, whose biblical forefathers laid the foundations of justice and morality, which they now proudly use to condemn those Jews. What irritates them more than anything is the knowledge that Israeli soldiers try to do everything in their power not to hurt the general Palestinian population, in contrast to their own armies that would surely have taken much more aggressive action and left thousands dead.

Nothing infuriates the anti-Semite more than observing those he hates maintaining a strong moral sense, even in the middle of a war that could determine their very survival.

When looking at Europe, we see an increase in pagan attitudes and a decrease in Judaic values. Consequently, Europe is headed for more and more trouble, which will only be reversible once it understands that the delegitimization of Israel and Jews is its own undoing. It is the Europeans’ good fortune that there are still many non-Jews among them, including honest Christians, who fully understand this and try to turn the tide.

Above all, it is important for us Jews and for Israel to realize that we are hated because of Judaism’s stand on paganism and its unfaltering commitment to morality. And we should be proud of it. Let us at least be hated for the right reasons.

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(1) Sigmund Freud, Moses and Monotheism (New York: Knopf, 1939) p 145. See: Will Herberg, Judaism and Modern Man: An Interpretation of Jewish Religion (New York: Atheneum, 1973) p. 284.

(2) Arthur Roy Eckardt, Christianity and the Children of Israel (New York: King’s Crown Press, 1948) pp.146-147.

(3) Quoted by Eckardt, op. cit., pp. 146-147.

(4) Harry Sacher, “Revenge on the Prophets: A Psychoanalysis of Anti-Semitism,”  Menorah Journal Vol. 28 (Fall 1940) No. 3.