I have been invited to respond to ten questions by Rav Ari Ze’ev Schwartz of Yerushalayim. I have agreed to answer them honestly and to the best of my ability.
For question 6, see https://www.cardozoacademy.org/thoughts-to-ponder/my-fascination-with-the-chaotic-world-of-the-talmud-ten-questions-for-rabbi-cardozo/
Question 7
Rabbi Ari Ze’ev Schwartz:
You are known for your incredibly controversial articles about religion and ethics. In one article, you write about the spiritual danger involved if wearing a kippah becomes robotic and meaningless; you discuss the possibility of taking off one’s kippah from time to time in order to feel more spiritually connected to it. Even though you end up deciding against this possibility, the very raising of the question is highly thought provoking. In another article, you criticize Orthodox rabbis for being too afraid to speak at Limmud, a conference that includes Conservative and Reform rabbis. You write that if Orthodox rabbis were confident in their own beliefs, they wouldn’t be afraid of speaking alongside leaders of other religious denominations. Rav Kook, after the founding of the State of Israel, showed enormous courage in supporting the secular Zionists even when he was severely criticized and rejected by the Chareidi world for doing so. Where do you get your courage to write these controversial articles? Do you ever worry about the consequences? Or is this something that you have learned to ignore over time?
Nathan Lopes Cardozo:
When I was about fourteen years old, I was drawn to Judaism for reasons I have discussed earlier. We lived at that time in a small town called Aerdenhout, 20 kilometers from Amsterdam, and I attended a non-Jewish high school, known as a gymnasium. The school, Het Jacques P. Thijsse Lyceum, was housed in a beautiful castle on magnificent grounds. It was known around the country as an exclusive school where, besides core subjects, we also studied Latin and Greek, and whoever wanted could learn classical Hebrew so as to ready themselves for studying the great classics at the best universities.
I was the official representative of our class, which meant that I was the go-between for the class and the rector, the headmaster, and the management of the school. This was a great privilege with many responsibilities.
All of my friends were non-Jews. We often had social evenings at the homes of some students. There was food, drinks and dancing with the girls. While “incidents” occurred, they were innocent compared to what happens today at such gatherings. The Netherlands has legalized soft drugs, which are very popular, and “getting high” is not a big problem. So the Dutch count among their citizens a large number of elevated people! You can buy all sorts of drugs at any corner “coffee shop.” Coffee, however, is not served!
While I was a child with little courage, I now had to prove myself, to stand out and become a bit of a strange bird. I could no longer eat the non-kosher food and refused to dance with the girls. (Some were very beautiful!) To this day, I find dancing a strange pursuit. But this is, lehavdil, also true about Chassidic dancing with great religious fervor. So there is much more to it. Why do human beings constantly need to move and jump, unable to stay put? Why do we need to walk back and forth, even when we’re in the middle of a thought? What is the religious meaning of this, and why are Chassidim very devoted to it? Is there a connection with sexuality, which clearly has a deep religious meaning, as Chassidic teachings have emphasized? An interesting topic that we need to discuss one day!
When I suggested to my fellow students that perhaps I should step down from my role of representative and not come to these evenings anymore, they didn’t want to hear of it and insisted that I stay. They brought me fruit, and the girls understood and respected my request not to dance with them. This was a strange, uncomfortable experience because I was the only one sitting on a chair in the corner while everybody else was swaying! It made me feel like a stick-in-the-mud and a stranger. What I think kept me popular was the fact that I asked the most unusual questions and caused fierce debates that everyone loved. To have a strange and constantly challenging fellow student, who also happened to be Jewish and becoming religious, gave certain uniqueness to the class, which I think made them proud.
I felt a need to explain myself to my non-Jewish friends. I believe that this was the first time in my life that I had to have the courage to elucidate why I was trying to become religious and what it meant to be religious. But by doing so, I was turning myself into an outlandish fellow. This was a completely secular school in the extreme! Fierce debates often erupted with strong opposition to my religious inclinations, but it also elicited a lot of admiration for my willingness to explain and defend a highly unpopular view on life that was no doubt disturbing to them.
When I explained to them that I would no longer pick up the phone on Shabbat, I was attacked for wanting to return to the Middle Ages. I told them that the opposite is true and that I’m far ahead of our times. After all, we are becoming completely enslaved to all the devices we create—whether it is the phone, computer, car, or other items—with the disastrous consequences that we have no time any more for our own lives and those of our spouses, children and friends. When I unplug my phone Friday afternoon and don’t drive or write, I liberate myself from all these items and create space for many more important and existential matters. So who is enslaved and still living in the Middle Ages—they, or I? This caught them totally off guard!
It strengthened my very being and gave me a lot of courage, which I’ve carried with me throughout my life. Since those days, fear has never stopped me from having courage. I do, however, remember serving in the Israeli army (I was already over 50 and a grandfather) and being taught how to shoot an Uzi submachine gun, which could kill another soldier or other innocent people, including children—the nightmare of any Israeli soldier, even if they are children of the enemy. The thought that I would make a mistake, or have no other option but to fire (collateral damage), made me quite anxious, but I persevered and pulled through. I never forget the quote attributed to Golda Meir: “When peace comes, we will perhaps in time be able to forgive the Arabs for killing our sons, but it will be harder for us to forgive them for having forced us to kill their sons.”
But my time in the army turned out to be one of the most remarkable experiences in my life. The feeling that I was defending the Jewish people was worth the risk. It was a privilege, and there was a metaphysical dimension to it. And so the fear did not engulf me and ultimately was turned into pride!
At the beginning, I found army life difficult since nobody gave us, older people, any mental training. (I served with about 150 Gerrer Chassidim, many of them grandparents!) We were thrown into this with no mercy or consideration. And the age of about 50 is not the best phase in life to adapt to entirely new, often tough but necessary conditions, which I was not at all used to. I had grown up as a spoiled child, educated to behave properly and be refined and polite. I had never encountered or even contemplated war conditions, although I had heard and read a lot about it when studying the Holocaust. I understand that today this is handled much more sensitively by the Israeli army, and nobody gets called up after the age of 40. In my days, people were called up to do miluim (a month of reserve duty) until the age of 54.
I remember that once at 5:00 a.m. we had to appear in front of our officer, who was many years younger than most of us. When he started using foul language, I stepped forward and said in my broken Hebrew that we who were born outside of Israel were not used to this kind of language and would not accept it. I surprised myself for speaking up, and to my utter astonishment, after being stunned by my remark the officer apologized instead of reprimanding me.
I’m not afraid to die, something I learned from my mother, z”l, who risked her life to save all of my father’s family in the Holocaust. I just hope that I won’t become a burden to my family when I’m very old. I often see other families who suffer terribly when their parents are no longer able to look after themselves due to Alzheimer’s, cancer, or other terrible illnesses. While one can often not prevent these situations, it’s unfair to the children who have their own families and worries. I pray every day that my wife and I will die without any complications, hopefully in our own beds and with a divine kiss. (But let me be clear: I’m not planning to die, and when it happens it’s not my fault! It’s a waste of time and spoils the entire day!)
I am often attacked for my views, and I understand that. To get people, including ourselves, to think and to question our views with the implication that we may need to change our ways is not always pleasant. But if we want to make sure that Judaism has a big future, we have no option but to take that road. The new always carries a sense of violation, a kind of sacrilege. But we need to destroy the security of all conventional knowledge and undo the normalcy of all that is ordinary if we want to move forward. “All noble things are as difficult as they are rare,” said Spinoza (Last line in his Ethics).
But it’s also important not to obscure the real idea of growth, which is not to leave things behind us but to leave things inside us.
At the same time, we are forced to question some components that are now seen as essential parts of Judaism but may, after all, not qualify as such. We must be careful not to embalm Judaism and claim that it is alive simply because it continues to maintain its external shape.
It is a great pity that most of the time those who attack me do so out of ignorance and perhaps jealousy. I have been busy studying the Jewish tradition for over 50 years and have discovered that it is much more profound than I imagined and much more “pluralistic,” with many fascinating ideas that the average rabbi, yeshiva student or religious person doesn’t know. (Neither did I when I was learning in yeshiva.) Some of them are surely much greater Talmudists than I am, but I know a lot about the Jewish tradition that they have never heard about. To say that a great Talmudist is by definition also a great Jewish religious scholar is somewhat misleading. There is much more at stake. The opposite is also true. Without proper Talmudic knowledge one cannot judge or appreciate Judaism. (Spinoza’s huge mistake!)
My advice to my opponents is to go back to the drawing board. Start learning again; not just Talmud but also much of the literature that is post-Talmudic, which is nearly infinite. In fact, Talmudic study alone could stifle the mind and spirit if one doesn’t know how to approach the text and how to read between the lines. (I have already written about this but will still write about it in a future essay.) Even until today, many Talmudic students have fallen victim to this.
Let’s not forget that it’s not even a text but a transliterated voice that one needs to learn how to hear. There is a very good reason why the Talmud was written in a kind of Aramaic telegram style, where words are deliberately left out to be filled in by the imagination of the student. It is made up of highly unconventional debates, most of which remain oral. There is nothing like this in all of world literature.
The wonderful philosopher Ludwig Wittgenstein once said, “The limits of my language mean the limits of my world” (Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus, tr. by C.K. Ogden, Dover Pub., NY, 1999, p. 88). In other words: People’s mental capacity is restricted by their command of language. This is very well described in George Orwell’s novel 1984, in which the totalitarian state bans words so as to limit the intellectual capacity of its citizens, which limits their scope of creative thought. This happens in Talmudic circles as well. The less one reads between the lines, the less the capacity to increase Talmudic and halachic possibilities.
I must confess that my essays are often removed from the “parashat hashavua pamphlet desk” of the Modern Orthodox Zionist synagogue where I pray. At first, I found them torn up and dropped in the trash can; now they occasionally disappear altogether. I’m sure that it is a fanatic outsider who is guilty of this and not a member of the synagogue. But the fact that this is tolerated is most unfortunate. What’s even sadder is that all of my 13 books, which I gave as gifts to the synagogue, have been removed (by whom?) and I am no longer invited to speak Friday night after Kabbalat Shabbat or after the Shabbat morning service when one of the synagogue members gives a short lecture. I can’t say for sure that this is deliberate, but it is striking that this happened after I had given a short lecture on the views of the famous kabbalist Rabbi Moshe Cordovero (1522-1570), who suggested that one can read the Torah on a metaphysical level and that not all the stories in the Torah actually happened. (See Chesed L’Avraham by Rabbi Avraham Azulai [1570-1643].) In other words, there may be too much literal-mindedness in today’s Orthodoxy, and literal meaning is only the minimal possibility and completely misses the boat on what the Torah tries to convey. It seems that several of my listeners became nervous, were perhaps irritated by these observations, and objected.
I don’t mind that I am no longer allowed to give these short lectures, since it takes a lot of time to prepare them properly on the level I demand of myself. (Remember the famous words attributed to Winston Churchill who apologized for having written a long letter since he had no time to write a short one!) But what I do object to is that nobody has the courage to tell me to my face that I am no longer allowed to teach. This is cowardly and does not befit my good friends.
But again, it may be purely accidental. And my reaction may be the result of a misunderstanding on my side. I am, however, not prepared to get into a discussion about it with the hanhala (the lay-leadership, or the rabbi). It would probably embarrass them, and I consider them my best friends. It’s strange, though, that nobody in the synagogue has asked me why I no longer speak. (Surely there must have been a discussion about it!)
I mentioned all this to some of my close friends who told me that I should leave the synagogue and pray somewhere else, since it’s an insult. But I don’t see it like that, and leaving this community would be a reflection of small-mindedness, which doesn’t solve the problem. I’m not made of that stuff. Much of the objection to what I have to say is the result of ignorance and fear, not willful intent. What’s needed is a different educational approach, which will remove this fear of anything that seems unconventional.
I am telling you and my readers all this, because it’s very sad that a Modern Orthodox synagogue seems to fall victim to fundamentalism. I hope that my words are a warning and will serve as a call and plea that this has to come to an end before things get worse within the Modern Orthodox, so-called open-minded communities.
Somebody once remarked that to study Talmud properly one needs to be an apikores (a Jewish heretic). I fully agree with this. After all, the idea is not just to accept what the Talmud states but to question it, challenge it, and see whether or not it is still true in our days. The big question is: Would the Sages have commented and ruled today the same as they did in the days of the Talmud? Although one cannot compare religious insights to scientific investigation such as astronomy, we should still take an example from people like Copernicus, Galileo and Einstein who gave us new insights into our universe.
Sure, the mitzvot are divine and cannot be abolished (although the Talmud teaches us that sometimes the Sages “uprooted” a commandment, but that’s a topic on its own, which I have discussed in my book Jewish Law as Rebellion: A Plea for Religious Authenticity and Halachic Courage). But much of what the Talmud discusses deals with rabbinical laws that made sense at the time and were essential. Today, however, they may just stand in the way of protecting the mitzvot and moving Judaism forward. A famous example is the observation of the great Rabbi Menachem Meiri, who was one of the most outstanding Talmudic scholars of the 13th-14th centuries in France. He stated on many occasions that most of the laws related to non-Jews no longer apply, because the non-Jewish world has drastically changed and is no longer involved in idol worship. So, many of the Talmudic prohibitions that relate to them are irrelevant.
It doesn’t make sense to argue, as a few poskim (decisors of Jewish law) have, that we shouldn’t take Rabbi Meiri’s insights into consideration, since his commentary on 36 tractates of the Talmud was unknown for so many generations. That’s also true about many other manuscripts we have found, which we do make use of. Yes, one needs to have a lot of knowledge and have the Talmud at one’s fingertips, but it’s also essential to have a keen understanding of other (non-Jewish) areas of human knowledge in order to decide what should go and what should stay. Our generation is blessed by God with the availability of almost infinite Jewish and secular knowledge, and we should surely make use of it!
Most important is to remember that great controversies are also great emancipators. They give us new and fresh insights. We are in dire need of them. We should not only allow them but encourage our students to advance them!
But it is also important to remember that courage is resistance to fear, not absence of fear. “Courage is a kind of salvation,” as Plato said in The Republic (CreateSpace Independent Publishing, 2019, p. 74).
There was a time when I was afraid of the repercussions of expressing my observations. But that was a long time ago. I have now thrown off this fear; although that may not be a good sign. After all, fear keeps us watchful. And there is a great advantage to achieving wisdom won through pain. I always keep this in mind when I speak or write. I hope it keeps me humble.
Much of the criticism I sometimes receive is nothing more than the result of people not reading carefully what I wrote. Sometimes I get the impression that people don’t even read the essay at all, for fear that they may become biased and convinced! I often use unusual (controversial) titles so as to catch the reader’s attention, but for some it seems to be enough of a reason to disapprove and not even read the article.
Personally, I read every serious article at least three or four times so that I (hopefully) understand entirely what the author is claiming. Often I realize that I got it wrong the first, second and third times!
It is symptomatic that through one small remark some of my critics make, I know immediately that they didn’t have the slightest idea what I was trying to convey. If I’m in a discussion with them, I try to spare them the embarrassment. So I attempt to raise their comments up to a higher level so that they feel like they made a major point.
Still others may indeed make compelling observations and criticize me with very valid arguments. They do this with great erudition and integrity. I learn a lot from them and will frequently change my mind and thank them for that. I have no monopoly on truth. All I want is that people think about my ideas, not necessarily agree with them.
On several occasions I showed my opponents – including great rabbis who call me a heretic – that certain statements by the famous Rav Avraham Yitzchak Kook are much graver, and more controversial, exceptionally daring, and “heretical” than what I wrote or said. They are totally dumbfounded and don’t know what to say. (See, for example, Rav Kook’s astonishing work titled L’Nevuchei HaDor, especially chapter 13.)
My wife and children also don’t always agree with me and even object to my ideas. I delight in that, because I see it comes from a place of love, deep religiosity and halachic commitment.
This is the reason that I’m not always able to live by my own teachings. While I suggest that I would love to take off my kippah because it would enhance my religiosity (See Link), I decided not to do so because my younger grandchildren and great-grandchildren are not yet able to understand my motivation and would surely see it as my lack of dedication to a rich halachic life. I would then set a bad example, God forbid.
The same is true for some of my friends who would love to use my thoughts concerning the kippah and other matters as a way to allow themselves to be less committed, so as not to look overly religious when with their non-religious friends. Sometimes this is clearly spineless. On the other hand, in certain specific Sephardic communities it is actually the custom not to wear kippot except when one prays or eats.
It’s what Jewish Russian-British philosopher Sir Isaiah Berlin said when dealing with moral problems: Often moral ideals clash. “…the idea of a perfect solution of human problems—of how to live—cannot be coherently conceived….there is no avoiding compromises; they are bound to be made: the very worst can be averted by trade-offs” (Ramin Jahanbegloo, Conversations with Isaiah Berlin, London: Halban, 2007, 142-143).
If I were living on my own, I would no doubt take off my kippah without any problem, because I believe that this is the correct halachic/spiritual approach for me, as I explained in my essay. To be honest, when I’m on my own I sometimes take it off so that I can put it on again with the right elevated sensation I so much long for. But I must admit that most of the time it doesn’t succeed and I don’t gain anything from it. I have become numb to this, which greatly pains me.
Claiming that I don’t dare to do so for religious reasons is really missing the point. It is educational reasons that motivate me. And so it is with many other suggestions I have made, some of which I actually implement. I drink kosher wine when it is touched by fine non-Jews, since I believe that the prohibition against drinking that wine when the non-Jews were idol worshippers no longer applies. It also doesn’t stop assimilation, which was in the past another reason for this proscription. Similarly, there are numerous other halachic prohibitions that I believe are no longer applicable. One day I will publish a full article with many examples.
I also believe that we have to make some new rabbinical suggestions to prevent certain acts that are not in the spirit of Judaism, even if they are now permitted. I mention only one: Reading secular newspapers on Shabbat. Although the actual Halacha does not consider them muktzeh (forbidden to be handled on Shabbat), and one can read or touch them , for me they are muktzeh and prohibited. It is a violation of the spirit of Shabbat. Even worse is when people start speaking about finances. I cannot understand how people who are often busy with finances the whole week continue to speak about it on Shabbat. Would they not prefer to take their minds off from their work and concentrate on something else entirely? As the prophet says:
“If you restrain your foot because of the Sabbath, from doing as you please on my holy day, and you call the Sabbath a delight and the LORD’s holy day honorable, and you honor it by not going your own way, by not pursuing your affairs or speaking idle words, then you shall delight with the Lord, and I will cause you to ride on the high places of the land, and I will feed you the heritage of Yaakov your forefather, for the mouth of the Lord has spoken” (Yeshayahu 58:13-14).
Those people also don’t seem to realize that they do great damage to their children who quickly realize that Shabbat is not their parents’ priority and that money is more important!
It is always interesting to note that those who don’t have the knowledge to criticize are the people who, out of frustration, sometimes use vulgar language and sporadically curse me. I laugh about it, because I’m blessed with a good sense of humor. But it’s obviously very, very sad.
I sometimes wonder if the reason I don’t get upset about it is nothing but arrogance. This is an old Portuguese-Jewish “malady,” which I probably inherited from my ancestors when they were dukes and lords of nobility in the days before the Spanish Inquisition. They were also often immensely rich. Today, the wealth is gone but the arrogance is alive and well in the Portuguese Jewish community in Amsterdam! I love that community dearly – not for its arrogance, but for its beautiful customs and “gravidade” (Portuguese dignity) with their top hats, style and allure. (It was this community that imposed a ban on Spinoza who, as anybody can read in his writings, possessed a great amount of superb arrogance!)
I also must admit that while I learn, work, read or write Torah, I sometimes listen to some former (political) humorists. Wim Kan (1911-1983) and Godfried Bomans (1913-1971), well known to all my Dutch readers, are superb examples. Wim Kan managed, as no one else did, on the last day of almost every December, in one hour, to ridicule and expose the entire Dutch government in such an unprecedented way that the minute he started his one-man show, there was nobody in the streets throughout the whole of Holland. Everyone was so glued to their televisions and radios that if the enemy would have come in with its infantry and heavy tanks, nobody would have noticed. All his masterly puns were clean and of high caliber satirically. While in those days other countries’ humorists would mercilessly target the government and politicians in small private gatherings, in Holland this was a national event in front of millions of viewers, and those ministers whose names were not dragged through the mud felt insulted! I know entire segments of these brilliant monologues by heart and still burst into laughter when I hear them again. Godfried Bomans was right when he observed that there was (and is) a psychological need among the Dutch for this. Holland is a flat country, without mountains and valleys, and this has a great influence on the characteristics of its inhabitants. The Dutch cannot live with people who stand out. So ministers and other governmental officials need to be equalized. Calling them by their first names and joking about them makes the Dutch feel better. The motto was that “Big” and “Important” people need to behave like anyone else. And anybody who lifts their head above the others needs to be taken down a notch. This is also the reason why most of the time Dutch Jewry couldn’t get along with their rabbis. The latter were (and still are) dealt with as employees who had to listen to their bosses, who often hadn’t the slightest idea what the task of a rabbi was, or couldn’t value a great sage among them. The rabbis’ lives were often made so unpleasant that they left. The most famous example is that of the great Rabbi Tzvi Ashkenazi, known worldwide as the Chacham Tzvi (1658-1718) who couldn’t stay in Amsterdam more than four years.
So I am often almost hysterically laughing while busy writing the most serious stuff. It helps very much to keep me in a good mood in my rather isolated life. This is besides my deep love for classical music and occasional jazz, or even the Beatles who were in my younger days seen as outrageous while today their music sounds antiquated.
Some of my readers may see this as sacrilege when I’m writing Torah at the same time, but for me these humorists were a gift from God to give so much joy and laughter to the people that I consider it a religious moment of great magnitude.
No doubt this fact has helped me immensely not to get upset, because when I hear or read some of these curses, I recall Wim Kan’s or Godfried Bomans’ puns that would make such fun of these curses that they then become hilarious.
Regarding the Limmud Conference in England, several powerful rabbis tried to stop me from going, since Reform and Conservative rabbis were also teaching there. Many years ago, when the Beth Din of the United Synagogue in England told me, as well as the famous Rabbi Dr. Norman Lamm, former president of Yeshiva University, that we were not allowed to go to Limmud, Rabbi Lamm and I wrote back that this “psak” (quasi halachic decision) did not make any sense. All it would do is deliver the entire Limmud conference into the hands of the Reform and Conservative movements. Nobody would hear an Orthodox point of view. This, we believed, would be a huge mistake – especially since nearly 3,000 people attended Limmud. We didn’t want to carry this black stain on our souls. In addition, such an attitude clearly indicates that Orthodoxy is afraid of the Reform and Conservative; and we would have no part in that. Rabbi Lamm and I went and even taught together, which was a great success.
I try to go as often as possible to these conferences and have been to Limmud in England, Australia, South Africa, Germany, Holland and Los Angeles. It is a marvelous experience, a real happening, although it’s true that there’s a lot of hot air and foolishness in what’s being taught there as well.
Many years ago, when Limmud invited an anti-Semitic British journalist to speak, I strongly disapproved and told them that I considered it completely unacceptable. In protest, I didn’t go that year. As far as I know, it never happened again. There are also some problems with lecturers who occasionally attack Israel in ways that are unacceptable. What I normally do is go to these lectures and then try to debunk them.
I always sit on panels with Reform and Conservative rabbis, and sometimes with atheists, which is great fun and a wonderful opportunity to show the profundity of Orthodox Judaism. Occasionally, however, I agree with my fellow panelists because their critique of Orthodoxy is right on target. It would be a good idea for Orthodox rabbis and teachers to listen to these critiques. There’s a lot to learn.
In any case, I have no problem with being controversial and although I’m an ignoramus compared to Rav Kook, I take an example from him. I just continue in my ways, as he did in his, despite the occasional outrage. Halevai (if only), may I be as religious as he was!
I am reminded of the famous quote by Franklin D. Roosevelt: “I ask you to judge me by the enemies I have made”!
