In previous posts, I discussed the murky historical origins of counting the omer and Shavuot. I also discussed how this is reflected in textual ambiguities and confusion. In this post, I would like to examine how people have come to create meaning for this ritual. This historical gloss---wholly apart from any underlying original meaning of the ritual---is in fact what most of us who count the omer experience when we count the omer.
Various midrashim (and later the Zohar) state that the Jews had descended to the 49th level of impurity in Egypt. Another midrash (Ecclesiastes Rabbah 3:11 and Song of Songs Rabbah 2:5, included in Bialek's Sefer HaAggadah, p. 78, no. 25) states that the Jews could have received the Torah on the day they left Egypt, but they were physically weak and needed a few months to recover. In both cases, they needed spiritual or physical healing, and this took place during the time between Passover and Shavuot, or during the omer-counting season.
This idea gave rise to the kabalistic tradition of assigning the seven lower sefirot (or emanations of God) to each of the seven weeks and days, giving 49 combinations. The details of this idea are pretty well known and covered in many places on the web. Aish HaTorah has a good explanation. The basic idea is that just as the ancient Jews spiritually improved themselves from the degradations of slavery to the holiness of a people ready to receive a direct revelation from God, we too can improve ourselves during the omer-counting period.
This is actually quite a useful activity. I have had some great conversations with my kids about real examples of the omer count of the day (one of which---pertaining to a baseball game---I recounted here). And I have had some more serious adult discussions and introspections about the different sefirot.
But there is an important aspect of all this that should not be overlooked: it has nothing to do with the original understanding of counting of the omer. No early text mentions the sefirot or anything similar. These are all later creations that were linked to the counting of the omer, and because of their cleverness, wisdom, and utility have become widely accepted.
There are many other examples of this. For example, Chief Rabbi Jonathan Sacks has a thoughtful discussion of how the omer counting reflects two different ideas of time: cyclical time and linear time. (Joni Mitchell picked up on the same theme, more or less, as I discussed here.) Like most of Rabbi Sacks' commentary, this one is really insightful. But it is an analysis that is prompted by the omer counting rather than solidly contained within the omer counting.
One final example. Pirke Avot is a volume of the mishnah with collection of wisdom sayings. Pirke Avot 6:6 states that "Torah is acquired through 48 things" and then lists 48 character traits, such as "study, attentiveness, orderly speech, an understanding heart" etc. Rabbi Noach Weinberg, the Rosh Yeshiva of Aish HaTorah, picked up on this idea and linked it to the counting of the omer. He called it the "48 Ways to Wisdom" and this set of teachings is one of the central study units of Aish HaTorah. Each of R. Weinberg's "ways to wisdom" is a contemporary version of the methods of acquiring Torah from Pirke Avot 6:6. These can be studied, one at a time, during the omer counting period. The webpage with all the information is here.
R. Weinberg developed a smart and useful set of wisdom ideas, and this is and well worth studying. But a few aspects of this stand out for our purposes here.
The first one is the discrepancy in the numbers. There are 49 days of omer counting but only 48 methods of acquiring Torah. R. Weinberg neatly solves this problem with "Organization" as the 49th way: review what you have learned, memorize it, keep it in a logical order, etc. And there is a 50th one of the 48 ways as well: "gratitude" on Shavuot itself.
But a more interesting issue is the differences between Pirke Avot's 48 ways and R. Weinberg's 48 ways. Many of these are the the same, and R. Weinberg simply elaborates on Pirke Avot. For example, the first method of acquiring Torah is "study" (or "talmud"), and R. Weinberg's first way to wisdom is "being aware every minute," which is a form of studying life itself.
But in several instances, R. Weinberg reverses the plain meaning of Pirke Avot. For example, the 14th way of acquiring Torah in Pirke Avot 6:6 is "a minimum of business activity." This method of acquiring Torah is followed by five other "minimizations": a minimum of preoccupation with worldly matters, a minimum of indulgence in worldly pleasure, a minimum of sleep, a minimum of conversation, and a minimum of laughter. These six collectively paint a stark image of a Torah scholar: minimal involvement in worldly affairs and pleasures, and instead long hours studying Torah. This is how great Torah scholars become great Torah scholars, but this is not a message that will sit well with Aish HaTorah's key target audience: non-Orthodox Jews who are thinking of becoming Orthodox. Americans are not into austerity.
Rabbi Weinberg deftly handles this problem. For example, he recasts the first method "minimizing business activity" as "Apply Business Accumen To Living." He starts off by noting briefly that we need to work to earn a living, but we should not overdo it and should also work to acquire wisdom. After this initial nod to the original text, he then notes that we can use some of the tools of business to do so. The rest of the article is a elaboration of these tools: operate efficiently, commit to goals, etc.
He does the same with the other minimizations. Instead of minimizing pleasure, we have Harnessing the Power of Sex (in the context of marriage) and The Use of Physical Pleasure. A "minimum of conversation" becomes The Art of Conversation. And a "minimum of laughter" becomes Laugh at Your Troubles.
I certainly do not have a problem with any of R. Weinberg's teachings here. They seem wise to me, and in many ways fit more comfortably with my worldview than the original Pirke Avot teachings. I am not a hedonist, but I am not ascetic either. I simply note here that several of R. Weinberg's ideas are not quite the same as the original teachings in Pirke Avot, and do not have any inherent connection with counting the omer.
This is not a criticism. R. Weinberg and R. Sacks and the kabbalists did what Jews have always done, and in fact have done it better than most Jews. They created new ideas full of wisdom and insight and linked them to existing ideas or ritual---here, the counting of the omer.
The meaning or importance of counting the omer does not lie in its original context. Best that I can figure, that original context was a way of setting a late-spring wheat offering relative to the date of an earlier early-spring barley offering. That does not carry much significance for me, a lawyer living in Los Angeles in the 21st Century. The importance lies in the layers of meaning that subsequent generations have added to this earlier ritual: the bridge between freedom from slavery celebrated at Passover and the holiness required for the giving of the Torah celebrated at Shavuot, personal growth and spiritual improvement and wisdom, and God and godliness refracted through 49 separate paired combinations of seven aspects of God and godliness, and themes of historical and cyclical time.
At the beginning of this series, I noted that many Jews have problems with relevance and authenticity. I think counting the omer shows a way around this problem.
Counting the omer seems to be inherently irrelevant: counting to 49 one day at a time. The best argument for its inherent irrelevance is that no one other than Jews does this. But the relevance of a mitzvah like this comes from the inherent importance of the ideas and themes created over time and associated with this mitzvah.
The authenticity of the ritual comes both from its relevance and its long historical tradition. People do not passively receive and understand a tradition; they also help create it. The great thinkers that have come before us have developed some pretty great ideas, and those ideas have become part of Judaism, regardless of whether they were there initially. (We also have had some terrible ideas that have been discarded along the way in the gale of creative destruction.) These all are an authentic part of Judaism.
Here is my humble addition to counting the omer. I told my kids that if we counted all 49 days without missing one, we could go out for ice cream after Shavuot. My older son stopped counting somewhere in the 30s, but I finished last night and my younger son (whose bedtime is before it is completely dark) finished this morning. We did it.
So in addition to relevance and authenticity, counting the omer---properly construed---also involves ice cream.
Chag sameach.
Tuesday, June 7, 2011
Counting the Omer - The Creation of Meaning (Part 6)
Monday, June 6, 2011
The Historical Confusion - Counting the Omer and Shavuot (Part 5)
In the previous post, I discussed the textual confusion about the date of the omer-counting and Shavuot. The historical record is similarly muddled. Let's start with what the Torah says about the date of the giving of the Ten Commandments and then see how early Jewish communities understood this
The Torah never states the date of the giving of the revelation at Mount Sinai. The Torah explains that the Exodus from Egypt took place on the 14th day of the first month. (Exod. 12:17-18.) After crossing the Reed Sea, the Israelites went to Elim (Exod. 15:27), then to the "wilderness of Sin, which is between Elim and Sinai, on the fifteenth day of the second month." (Exod. 16:1.) ("Sin" is a Hebrew word, not the English word.) After an indeterminate stay, they then went to Rephadim. (Exod 17:1.)
Exodus 19:1 then states, "In the third month after the children of Israel were gone forth out of the land of Egypt, the same day came they into the wilderness of Sinai." It is not clear what "the same day" of a month means, although it arguably means the first day of the third month (later called Sivan). They then camped before Mount Sinai for some indeterminate amount of time (Exod. 19:2). Moses speaks with God (Exod. 19:3), then speaks with the people (Exod. 19:7-8), and then speaks with God again (Exod. 19:9-11). God tells Moses to tell the people to ready and on the third day, he will come down. (Exod. 19:11.) It is not clear from the text how much time this camping, and speaking took, but in any case the people do what they are told, and God appears on the third day. (Exod. 19:16.)
The rabbinic tradition is that the revelation on Mount Sinai occurred on Shavuot, which was 50 days after the second day of Passover, or (after some arithmetic, left as an exercise for the interested reader) on the 6th of Sivan. But as noted in earlier posts, this does not directly follow from the text. Shavuot in the Torah is an agricultural holiday and (unlike Passover) is not linked at all to the revelation on Mount Sinai (0r anything else, for that matter), and in fact its date---seven weeks and one day after "the shabbat"---is also not clearly specified.
Given this, it is not surprising that there were early alternative traditions as to this date and the dating of Shavuot. The book of Jubilees was probably written in the second century BCE. It begins, "And it came to pass in the first year of the exodus of the children of Israel out of Egypt, in the third month, on the sixteenth day of the month" that God tells Moses to come up to Mount Sinai. The book later put Shavuot in the middle of the third month (and states that Isaac was born on this day): "And she [Sarah] bare a son in the third month, and in the middle of the month, at the time of which the Lord had spoken to Abraham, on the festival of the first fruits of the harvest, Isaac was born." This puts Shavuot 10 days later than the traditional rabbinic account, and thus the counting of the omer began 10 days after the traditional day, or on the 25th of the first month. Apparently, the author of Jubilees used a solar calendar where days fell on the same day of the week, and the 25th of the first month was the Sunday after the last day of Passover.
The later Christians adopted a similar understanding, putting the holiday of Pentecost at 50 days after Easter. Counting Easter Sunday as the first day, that put Pentecost on a Sunday, seven weeks later. But in the conventional account, the first Easter was the Sunday after the first day of Passover which was on Thursday night / Friday day, not the Sunday after the last day of the 7-day Passover week, as suggested by Jubilees.
The Talmud contains a debate regarding this issue. In Menachot 65a-66a, the Mishnah describes an elaborate procedure for the barley offering, and then asks why this procedure was necessary. "Because of the Boethusians who maintained that the reaping of the omer was not to take place at the conclusion of the [first day of the] festival." (The Boethusians were a sect that was related in some way to the Sadducees.) Thus, the Boethusians, like the Christians, placed the beginning of the omer counting on the Sunday after the first day of Passover, not the day after the second day of Passover.
The Gemara then picks up on this debate. One foolish old Boethusian (described that way in the Talmud) offers a silly argument for Shavuot being on a Sunday (and thus "the shabbat" being on Saturday), and R. Yochanan ben Zakkai responds by calling him a "fool" and offering a weak but possibly sarcastically made argument. The Gemara then offers four other arguments for "the shabbat" being the second day of Passover, none of which are very persuasive.
The obvious dispositive counter-argument is that if Shavuot had in fact commemorated the revelation at Mount Sinai, then it would be on whatever day the revelation at Mount Sinai occurred. If that was on the sixth of Sivan, then that's when it was. But no one in the Gemara makes this argument, presumably because the Boethusians either (1) did not believe that Shavuot commemorated the giving of the Ten Commandments, or (2) did not believe that the date was the sixth of Sivan.
In Louis Finkelstein's book "The Pharisees", he picks up on this debate. (Chapter VII.B, pp. 115-118.) He notes that "nothing could be more trivial than such a debate" and correctly explains that "[t]he Biblical verses in Leviticus which give the provisions of the law are concededly ambiguous." He then notes that the Pharisees linked Shavuot to the revelation at Sinai. They were more separated from agriculture than the Sadducees and more interested in history and the Law. The Sadducees, on the other hand, did not believe the holiday had any historical significance, and they were more attuned to the agricultural aspect of the holiday.
The historical upshot is this. Neither the fixing of the beginning of the omer counting (and equivalently, the date of Shavuot) or the link between Shavuot and the revelation at Sinai are based on the text of the Torah. Both were the subject of considerable debate in the period before the Talmud was written.
One can certainly believe that there was a reliable unbroken oral traditional going back to Sinai that established both the relevant dating and the link between Shavuot and the revelation at Sinai. But if one does not believe this, then it the holiday must have evolved in the thousand years before the Talmud was written. The holiday initially began as an agricultural festival, vaguely set at 50 days after an initial barley offering. The omer counting was either just a way of establishing this date or perhaps required actual counting. But over time, the date became fixed, the actual counting of days became required, and this agricultural holiday was linked to the revelation at Sinai.
In future posts, I will look at how Jews have created more layers of meaning attached to the counting of the omer, including most importantly the mystical sefirot.
Thursday, May 19, 2011
The Textual Confusion - Counting the Omer and Shavuot (Part 4)
As noted in earlier posts, the Torah itself indicates that Shavuot is an agricultural holiday commemorating the wheat harvest and involving a grain offering. However, the later rabbinic literature links the holiday to the giving of the Ten Commandments (or perhaps the whole Torah) on Mount Sinai. This claim is found nowhere in the Torah or any early literature, and the precise date of this event was disputed from an early period. Let's review the facts and then figure out what to make of them.
As noted in the second post in this series, Shavuot is 50 days after the day after "the shabbat" after the barley offering. One key question is what does "the shabbat" mean here. The answer gives us the date of Shavuot, or if we know the date of Shavuot, reasoning backwards will give us the date of "the shabbat."
"Shabbat" usually means the seventh day, sundown Friday night through sundown Saturday night. But in some contexts, it means a generic day of rest. For example, later in Leviticus 23 (the chapter mentioning the counting of the omer and Shavuot), the Torah calls Yom Kippur a "shabbat shabbaton" or a "sabbath of complete rest." (Lev. 23:32.) Similarly, Leviticus 25 discusses the sabbatical year, where no planting or sowing is permitted and the land is to rest. God commands that the land will keep a "sabbath" (Lev. 25:2) and calls it a "shabbat shabbaton".
Back in Leviticus 23, there are three holidays mentioned before the omer-counting passages. The first holiday listed is shabbat, and it is decreed to be a "shabbat shabbaton." (Lev. 23:3). The second holiday is Passover, and it is decreed to be a "mikrah kodesh" (or holy convocation) and no work is permitted. (Lev 23:7.) Importantly, even though no work is permitted, the day is note called a "shabbat." The third holiday is the seventh day after Passover, and this too is called a "mikrah kodesh," no work is permitted, and is not specifically called a "shabbat." (Lev 23:8.) Then the counting of the omer and Shavuot passages noted earlier occur (Lev 23:9 ff), and this counting is to start the day after "the shabbat". Which one?
There are three possibilities: (1) the normal Friday/Saturday shabbat, (2) Passover, and (3) the seventh day of Passover.
As a simple matter of textual interpretation, the first argument seems the strongest. After all, shabbat is the only day that is specifically called "shabbat." The second best argument is the third one. The holiday where no work is permitted that immediately precedes the omer counting command is the seventh day of Passover. The one the rabbis went with, Passover itself, is the weakest argument, at least as a purely textual matter. But of course there is a lot more to understanding the meaning of this passage than simply interpreting an ambiguous passage, and the historical tradition is quite important. I will look at that next.
Wednesday, May 11, 2011
Inauthenticity, Irrelevancy, and Counting the Omer: The Basics
In the first post on this topic, I laid out two basic problems that liberal Judaism seems to have. Jewish practice either seems to be irrelevant (or insignificant or unimportant), in that there does not seem to be much benefit in doing it. Jewish practice also seems to be inauthentic, in that we do not take seriously the traditional claim that God literally commanded us to do these things by speaking commandments on a mountain 3,400 years ago. That leaves non-Orthodox Jews in an intellectual mess, to say the least, and the result is what we often see in non-Orthodox synagogues: low levels of observance, knowledge, practice, and most of all enthusiasm.
I claimed in the first post that there is at least one way out, and I would use an odd and under-appreciated (and under-practiced) mitzvah---counting the omer---to illustrate this. In this post, I would like to explain the basics of counting the omer and its Torah origins. I will discuss the historical evolution of both the mitzvah itself and ways of understanding its significance in later posts.
The mitzvah of counting the omer is straightforward. After reciting a short single-sentence blessing ("Blessed are you, Lord our God, who sanctified us with His commandments and commanded us to count the omer"), Jews count the days and weeks, from the second day of Passover to the day before Shavuot. For example, on the second day of Passover, we recite the blessing then say "Today is the first day of the omer." The next day, "Today is the second day of the omer." On the seventh day, "Today is the seventh day of the omer, which is one week of the omer." On the 23rd day, "Today is the 23rd day of the omer, which is three weeks and two days of the omer." We continue until we reach 49 days. The next day is Shavuot.
Not very complicated. Here are a few additional rules. We should count the omer at night. Someone who forgets to count the omer at night can say it without a blessing the next day, and remains on track. But if someone forgets to count for a full day (that is, skips one day of counting completely), that person can continue to count, but without saying the blessing.
Aish HaTorah's website has a good page on the basics of this mitzvah.
This mitzvah is not complicated, and can be done each night in about 15 seconds. Non-Orthodox Jews cannot claim that the mitzvah is too difficult or complicated or onerous to do. The problem is that it seems silly.
Before jumping into the problem of significance, let's take a careful look at the historical origins of the mitzvah. And this requires a little bit of elaboration about Shavuot.
The mitzvah of counting the omer comes from the Torah. In Leviticus 23, God tells Moses to tell the children of Israel about several biblical holidays. After Shabbat and Passover (on which Jews are commanded to do no work), God then explains that when the Children of Israel enter the land of Israel, they should bring an "omer" of the first reapings to the priest as an offering. (Lev. 23:9-10.) (An omer is a unit of measure of grain.) After some instructions about this (Lev. 23:11-14), the Torah then explains the counting:"And you shall count unto you from the day after the shabbat [ha-shabbat], from the day that you brought the sheaf of the waving; seven weeks shall there be complete; even to the day after the seventh week shall you number fifty days; and you shall present a new meal-offering to the Lord." (Lev 23:15-16).
Deuteronomy contains a similar description of the counting, and explicitly identifies this second holiday as Shavuot. After discussing Passover (Deut. 16:1-8), Deuteronomy explains:"Seven weeks shalt thou number to yourself; from the time the sickle is first put to the standing corn you shall begin to number seven weeks. And you shall keep the feast of weeks [hag shavuot] to the Lord your God after the measure of the freewill-offering of your hand, which you shall give, according as the Lord your God blesses you." (Deut. 16:9-10.)
Just to clarify: the word "shavuot" literally means "weeks" and is related to the Hebrew worked "sheva" which means "seven." So Hag HaShavuot literally means the Festival or Holiday of Weeks, and this comes from the fact that it occurs seven weeks after, . . . well, something.
These two passages from the Torah raise (at least!) two important questions. First, what day does the counting start? Leviticus says it is on "the shabbat". Does this mean a regular Friday evening and Saturday day Shabbat, or does it mean more generally a day of rest? And if so, which day of rest? And Deuteronomy says from the time the sickle is first used, but what day exactly is this? Second, once we figure out when it starts, do people have to literally count (that is, say "one", "two", "three", etc., on each day) or is this instruction (count 49 days) just an elaborate way of setting the date of Shavuot as 49 days after the starting point. I will cover those next.
Tuesday, May 10, 2011
The Two Foundational Problems With Liberal Judaism (And the Solution)
Liberal Judaism is stuck between two foundational intellectual problems: inauthenticity and irrelevancy. They usually manifest themselves in an attack from the right and an attack from the left. I do not think the problems are intractable. But rather than arguing in generalities, I will take a ritual that is easily subject to both of these attacks---counting the omer--- and see if we can not only defend against the attacks but show how counting the omer can be meaningful and important, regardless of its historical origins.
Here's the basic problem. Liberal Judaism generally accepts the conclusion of modern Bible scholarship that the Torah was written well after Moses and by multiple authors. In doing so, it rejects the traditional historical claim that the Torah was literally written by God. It adopts a more flexible approach to halacha and rituals, and in doing so runs into two quite serious foundational problems.
The religious right argues this type of Judaism must be inauthentic. If liberal Jews do not believe in the literal historical truth of the foundational story of Judaism---God gave the Torah to the Jews on Mt. Sinai---then nothing solid remains of Judaism. Under that view, the Torah is just a bunch of stories and laws written by ordinary people a long time ago. There is no compelling reason to do any of it. Sure, it might contain some wisdom or good ideas here and there, but Jews cannot take it too seriously if they do not believe that God told us to do these things.
The non-religious left makes the opposite argument. Jews should do certainly do the parts of Judaism that are "good" ideas, like don't steal, be nice, and give charity. But one should do them because they are good ideas, not because Judaism says to do them. And there is no reason to do the "bad" ideas, or the "neutral" ideas, or most rituals. That knocks out things like keeping kosher, fasting on Yom Kippur, and putting on tefillin. And once a Jew does the good practices because they are good, and avoids doing the other practices because there is no reason to do so, there is nothing left of Judaism. Thus, the non-religious left argues that Judaism is irrelevant.
This is the scylla and charybdis of liberal Judaism: inauthenticity and irrelevancy. And these two manifests themselves in much of liberal Judaism. I attend a Conservative synagogue, and I certainly see both of them. Many Jews my age (mid 40s) simply opt out of many traditional Jewish practices. They do not keep kosher, attend synagogue, celebrate many holidays, daven, wear tefillin, etc. The attitude of many of my friends is simply that it seems irrelevant, sort of silly, and a little strange to do these things. After all, God did not literally said to do these things, and there just does not seem to be a good reason to do so. And when they do do these things (for whatever reason), it lacks authenticity. So someone might to go synagogue (say, for a bar-mitzvah), but will not feel elevated by the davening, does not know what the Torah parsha says, and does not expect these things. They feel a little like a religious tourist, watching and even going through the motions without really participating.
The result is what we see in the Conservative movement. Synagogue membership is declining, and adults who were raised Conservative become less religious and unaffiliated with a synagogue (in lots of cases) and Orthodox (in a handful of cases).
The solution to the twin problems of inauthenticity and irrelevancy is (not surprisingly, and, in fact, definitionally) authenticity and relevancy. The issue is how to achieve these.
For liberal Judaism to be relevant, Jewish practices and beliefs must reflect divinity (however understood), elevate us spiritually, help Jews live much deeper and richer lives, and contain some insights into life that are not generally available in secular culture. And to be authentic, it must not be dependent on the historical origins of the Torah, but on how it has evolved and been interpreted for the past 3000 years, regardless of its historical origins. Jews must be able to feel fully engaged when doing these things.
I think that Judaism for the most part meets these challenges. The problem, as I see it, is that most liberal Jews lack even the most basic education about what Judaism is, and this ignorance is too often (but fortunately, not always) fostered by ineffective religious schools. The problem is not inherent in liberal Judaism itself.
I have detailed some general thoughts on these ideas in many other blog posts. But rather than arguing from a general level, I thought I would take a particular example of a simple mitzvah and show this works in practice. My example is counting the omer. In the next few blog posts, I will explain the mitzvah itself, it biblical and historical origins, and its subsequent history. In doing so, I hope to show how this seemingly odd mitzvah is highly relevant to life and how liberal Jews can authentically count the omer.
Tuesday, May 4, 2010
Jewish Particularity: Can't We Live A Meaningfule Life Without Judaism?
Dan left a good comment to the last post. He agreed with my thoughts on God, but argued that this general idea of God has no relationship to Judaism in particular. In other words, one can simply lead a good life in all respects and blow of Judaism completely. This is a serious and important challenge, but ultimately one that I think comes up short. And Andre Ethier and the Dodger game on Sunday helps illustrate why.
Judaism is a derech or path or way of life. It is a way of experiencing the good things in life. It helps focus us and teach us, and does so as part of a community. Of course, there are many such paths, some better than others. But being on some specific path is necessary. We will lead a less meaningful and fulfilled life if we try to simply have general thoughts, or even general experiences, in the abstract.
For example, I can sometimes get some sense of the Infinite or God or Goodness. (For me, it usually involve both nature and bigness - think Yosemite or the ocean or space). I can act ethically, love and be loved, and experience beauty. But a Jewish path helps me experience these things better. For example, I know that freedom is a good thing, but having a discussion with family and friends about freedom during a seder, and realizing that this experience is being repeated (with lots of variations) all over the world, and has been done throughout Jewish history, and will be done into the future makes it a lot more special. Davening sometimes brings me closer to the things I find important. Hearing a clever d'var Torah sometimes brings an insight that I would not have thought about.
Here's a real example from last night. We counted the omer, and my kids and I (briefly -- school night, ya know) discussed the sefirot. Last night was the malchut (nobility) of hod (humility). In addition to the English rhyme (the Hebrew rhyme came the night before, with the yesod of hod), we talked about how being humble is also part of being noble. And we ended with with a great example.
We had gone to the Dodger game the day before, and I had read the kids the wrap up of the game in the paper. My 6-year-old explained that Andre Ethier (who had hit 2 home runs) mentioned that an important reason they won was the Dodger pitching. (Kuroda pitched 8 innings and gave up only 1 run.) My son noted that Ethier was being humble by talking about the pitching and not his own (amazing) hitting. And that humility made him more noble or admirable.
Now of course there are lots of ways of thinking about such virtues. Classical Christianity lists pride as one of the seven deadly sins and humility as one of the seven virtues. Other religions and philosophies and world views no doubt also discuss such things. But Judaism provides one particular way of doing this. And our tradition is to take seven aspects of God, generate 49 2x2 combinations, and think of them during 49 days between the second night of Passover and Shavuot.
One could throw out Judaism completely and simply acknowledge as an intellectual matter that humility is a virtue. The problem is that there is much more to life than asserting intellectual propositions, and Judaism also offers the rest. It offers particular ways to think about the idea, and particular times to think about it, and particular rituals associated with it, and particular teaching opportunities regarding it, and a community of people also interested in this.
We use this approach with regard to other abstract ideas. As a general matter, it is good that people should have a partner that they love. But I do not simply acknowledge the general idea. I also love my wife in particular. In doing so, I am not making a general claim about my wife (everyone should love my wife) or about me (I should love everyone's wife.) My relationship with my wife is one particular manifestation of the general idea, and another person's relationship with his or her partner is another.
But the bottom line is that Judaism, at least if done well, helps us get the most out of life.
Monday, April 26, 2010
Wagner Probably Didn't Count the Omer
It was an odd experience last night—returning home after seeing Gotterdammerung and then counting the omer. The juxtaposition heightened the difference between Judaism's and Wagner's weltanschauung (the word is wonderfully appropriate here.) But first, some background about Wagner, the Los Angeles Opera, and me and my (present in real life but largely blogo-absent) co-blogger Steve.
Two characteristics stand out about Wagner. He was a exceptionally brilliant composer and an exceptionally awful person. He is not merely another really good composer among many. He revolutionized music, especially opera (although he would not have used that word), in the 19th Century. (Many others far more knowledgeable than I am have written much about this; google him for details.)
At the same time, Wagner was reprehensible in pretty much every way. He was petty, vindictive, mean, a perpetual moocher, and an anti-Semite. His essay "Jewishness in Music" and later essays were exceptionally spiteful. And Hitler loved Wagner's music. Other than Wagner's musical genius—and genius is the right word—Wagner pretty much had nothing going for him.
There are some serious issues about whether Jews should listen to Wagner, given his anti-Semitism and the Nazi's love for his music. (The last piece the Berlin Philharmonic played in April 1945 was, appropriately, the final scene from Gotterdammerung.) I have never been particularly bothered by this. I never forget who Wagner was, but I separate the man from his music.
Wagner's magnum opus is a four-opera, 16 1/2 hour "Ring cycle", based on the Niebelung myths, the same Norse and Germanic myths that Tolkien used (among other things) for Lord of the Rings. The basic story involves magic gold in the Rhine, protected by mermaid-like Rhine-maidens. The gold can be made into a magic ring that will allow its owner to rule the world, but only a person who renounces love can take the gold. Alberich, an ugly dwarf, figures no one will love him anyway, and so he renounces love, takes the gold, and later makes the magic ring. Wotan the chief God wants the ring, as does a bunch of other people. The story rolls on through a series of adventures and misadventures, loves gained and lost, scheming, fraud, fighting, killing, betrayal, incest, and the obligatory slaying of a dragon (who actually used to be a giant - long story, don't ask). We have magic swords, magic apples, magic helmets, magic fire, and magic potions. The upshot: after far too much abuse of power, almost all the heroes, heroines, and Gods die, Valhalla (home of the Gods) burns down, the ring gets washed back into the Rhine, and (as Anna Russell put it) we are right back where we started 16 hours earlier.
Well almost. We've actually moved in a circle in one dimension but forward in another. The era of the gods is over, and the era of man has begun. Like Joni Mitchell, Wagner had a spiral view of time, not merely a cyclical one. In fact, "logo" of the Los Angeles Opera's production of this ring cycle is a spiral.
More background. In 1979, I took a great 9th grade history class, along with my co-blogger Steve (yes, we've known each other that long) and a bunch of other friends. The class covered the Renaissance to the present, and our teacher emphasized viewing the political and social history through a humanities lens; we studied the art, music, and architecture of the different periods and saw how it influenced—and was influenced by—the political and social history. It was a spectacular class, and made it clear that serious study of serious subjects could not be limited by a class curriculum. Everything was connected in very complex ways. In many ways, it was my first serious adult intellectual thinking.
Steve and I and a few other friends did a multimedia two-screen slide show (back before powerpoint) on Wagner, at the suggestion of the teacher. This was a very clever suggestion to several bright Jewish suburban kids: tell us about the brilliant composer and horrible anti-Semite. He knew exactly what he was doing (he is Jewish and designed a Holocaust curriculum, and has since trained countless teachers in how to teach the Holocaust.)
We were interested in seeing the Ring back then, but Los Angeles had no opera company. Well, the Los Angeles Opera opened in the 1980s, and last season they started their first Ring cycle. My wife categorically refused to see another Wagner opera after we endured a bizarre minimalist production of Parsifal, and so Steve and I got tickets. We saw the first two operas last season, and the last two this season. We saw the final opera, Gotterdammerung, yesterday. And we were fortunate enough to be joined—after all these years—by our 9th grade history teacher, now a retired principal and (as always) an opera fan. It took us 30 years to complete our Wagner project, but we did it.
By the way, the Los Angeles Opera has a few more shows of Gotterdammerung, and then is re-running the entire cycle three times in late May and June. If you are in Los Angeles (or anywhere close), I would highly recommend seeing this production. And Ring Festival LA is a loose collection of all sorts of events pertaining to the Ring cycle, and it includes several discussions and other programs exploring Wagner and his anti-Semitism.
Which gets us, of course, to counting the omer.
In the Ring cycle, Wagner pits love and power as irreconcilable opposites. Alberich must renounce love to get the ring and its power. The desire for the ring caused the giant Fafner to kill his brother Fasolt. Several other characters have their love cut short by power, or their power cut short by love.
This is a pretty dark view of the world. You can choose love, but then get clobbered the next time some powerful person rolls around. Or you can choose power, but you will have a miserable and loveless life.
Love and power are sometimes in tension. However, Judaism gives us a much brighter picture, as we are reminded when we count the omer. (I meant to post on counting the omer but never got the chance. I will try next year. Google it for details.)
All the seven "lower" sefirot are emanations of God (or goodness, if that is easier to think about), and we are reminded of each of the 49 combinations as we count the omer for 49 days. The first two sefirot are chesed (loving kindness) and gevurah (strength or power). And the first thing Judaism (but not Wagner) teaches about love and power is that they are aspects of the divine, and thus cannot be irreconcilably opposed. We can think of them as opposites in tension, but the resolution of that tension is itself the third sefirot, tiferet (beauty or harmony). That is, harmonizing these two is itself good and divine. Or we can think of them as complementary aspects of the divine. So, for example, a parent might be strict, but do so out of kindness. Or might be kind, by do so out of strength. The result is a much more optimistic—and I might add, realistic—view of both love and power.
Wagner's music is great. Go see the Ring. But when you think about love and power, remember the omer, not the gold in the Rhine.
Tuesday, May 19, 2009
Mitzvot - Which Are the Low Hanging Fruit?
Until fairly recently, the Conservative and Reform movements were comprised of people who had at least some knowledge of the basics of traditional Judaism. Many had more observant or traditional parents or grandparents, had grown up in more observant homes and in primarily Jewish neighborhoods, and in some way or another were exposed to the basic traditions, rituals, beliefs, and holidays of Judaism. However, many Jews today in these movements have virtually no knowledge of, or experience with, some of the basic ideas and practices in Judaism.
Fifty years ago and earlier, these movements could operate with what I will call subtractive Judaism. They could take the existing set of traditional beliefs and decide what practices to relax, modify, or eliminate. For example, the Reform movement in the 19th century could switch from Hebrew to English (or German) in prayerbooks. The Conservative movement in the 1950s could liberalize some of the stringencies of shabbat and kashrut. But in both cases, they were starting with people who observed, or at least were familiar with, the traditional way of doing things.
That is no longer true. A substantial percentage of people in Conservative and Reform synagogues simply do not have any substantial knowledge of Judaism. They have not read the Torah, have no idea what it says, have not read other traditional texts, do not daven, do not attend services, do not keep any level of kashrut, do not know about most rituals, and do not know about, let alone observe, most holidays other than Rosh Hashana, Yom Kippur, Chanukah, and Passover. The challenge facing the Conservative and Reform movement is not what to subtract from traditional Jewish practices. It is what to add to no traditional Jewish practices. In many ways, this is the same issue that Orthodox kiruv groups face.
Given that, what are the low-hanging fruits in Judaism? That is, what are some mitzvot, holidays, rituals, or types of learning that interested but not very knowledgeable Jews might do at relatively low cost and obtain relatively large benefits. Where do you get the biggest Jewish bang for the buck. This is really a very practical question.
For example, Chabad started a campaign 50 years ago or so to get less observant Jews to wear tefillin. My (no doubt ill-informed) opinion is that this is a really odd mitzvah to start with. Non-observant Jews often view tefillin as strange and meaningless, and it reinforces the idea that traditional Judaism is full of bizarre arcane rituals. But Chabad has had some success with this, so what do I know?
I have a few other ideas, and I would be interested in other people's thoughts.
Shabbat evening. It is simply nice to be with family and friends, to light candles, for husbands to say something nice about or to their wives and kids, to drink wine, and to eat challah. And maybe even talk about something important and meaningful.
Shabbat day. More of a challenge, given the rest of life. But carving out time to be with family and friends, not to answer phones or e-mail, not to be distracted by video games or television, and not to worry about work or chores is a good thing.
Sukkot. A really nice holiday. I have no idea why it has fallen out of favor with many Reform and Conservative Jews. It might have something to do with Jewish men and their inability to use tools, but now there are lots of nice kits around. (I like building my own sukkah, but I may be exceptional here. I think I am the only Jewish man on the planet with a tablesaw and several routers.)
Counting the Omer. My kids and I think it is cool, but my wife thinks it a bit silly. There's all sorts of interesting interpretations and things to think about while counting the omer, and it all makes you better and wiser. And I told the kids that if we make it through all 49 days withing skipping a day, we'll go out for ice cream after Shavuot. So far, we are on track.
Reading the Torah. No substitute for that. And lots of good English translations available.
A Really Interactive Seder. Seders do not have to be boring exercises where people take turns reading paragraphs from the Maxwell House haggadah. A little reading and planning ahead of time (and some willing participants), and it can turn into a pretty meaningful performance art, a fun time for the kids, and a great intellectual discussion on the ideas of freedom.
Any other thoughts?
UPDATE: (here's more)
The Rules of L'shon Hara. Judaism takes a very strong position against truthful gossip. One is forbidding to say something negative about someone, even if it is true, with some limited exceptions. (Saying something false and negative falls into a different and worse category.) American culture does not place much value on this idea. People gossip, and much popular entertainment is devoted to this. Judaism is refreshing counter-cultural here.
Thursday, April 23, 2009
New Understandings of Old Books
In the comments to the last post about James Kugel, SS raises an interesting question: how does a contemporary reader understand older commentators who had a very different understanding of the origins of the Torah. Suppose a person believes that the Torah was written after Moses by multiple authors, later compiled and edited, and then interpreted in new ways by later interpreters, including the rabbis of the Talmud. And suppose the person believes the Torah is in some way divine. (There are lots of possible approaches here, all of which I am skipping over.) How should that person read and understand traditional commentators and halachic works (Talmud, midrashim, Rashi, Shulchan Aruch, etc.), all of which were written with a different understanding of the origins of the Torah, namely that God literally gave the Torah to Moses and the Jewish people on Mt. Sinai?
SS argues in his comment that these modern ideas undercut these traditional works and thus Orthodoxy. That is probably correct. But I am sure that people like James Kugel and Louis Jacobs believed in both the modern approach and the continuing relevance of these classical works. I think there are at least four ways in which we can read these classical texts, and some of these may even be relevant to Orthodox Jews with a modern scholarly appraoch to the Torah. Let's take counting the omer as an example.
In the most literal and narrow sense, the texts implicitly assume that one should do a mitzvah because God told the Jews on Mt. Sinai to do the mitzvah. At that narrow level, that claim would be rendered false by modern scholarship.
At a slightly broader level, the texts explain how to do a mitzvah. For example, the Talmud in Menachot 65b and 66a contains a detailed discussion of when to start counting the omer. More specifically, it discusses whether the "day after shabbat" (when counting the omer beings) refers to the day after Passover or the day after Saturday. The Talmud concludes it is the former. Even if one did not literally believe in the traditional understanding of TMS, one could still find this discussion and this conclusion useful. That is when the Jewish community starts counting the omer.
At an even broader level, one could find the discussion of a mitzvah valuable on its own, regardless of the theologically assumptions behind the discussion. For example, the kabbalists derived the idea of using the 49 different combinations of the seven lower sefirot to correspond to the 49 days of omer counting. As a literal description of the metaphysical universe --- emanations of God and all that --- this is pretty kooky. But on a much more grounded and practical level, it is quite appealing to think about these combinations, and doing so certainly has the ability to enrich ones life and one's Judaism. (It certainly is sparking some interesting discussions at my house, as my 7-year-old and 5-year-old kids (and my wife and I) discuss the netzach of chesed (the endurance or persistence of kindness), the yesod of gevurah (the bonding of strength), all the other combinations, what they mean, and how they apply to our lives.) These discussions are interesting and informative, regardless of the fact that the 13th or 16th century Kabbalists and I have very different understandings of things.
And at a structural level, one could think about the relationship between the broader ideas behind the works and particular texts. The Talmudic rabbis were quite legalistic. The Talmud contains no discussion about why one should count the omer or what one would get out of the experience. The issue solely concerns a heated discussion with Boethusians over what day it starts. Rashi and Ramban both lock on to this technical legal argument.
The Zohar, however, is a much freer work. It has a complex allegory involving spiritual purity and sex. It notes that a woman counts seven days after her menstrual cycles, becomes spiritually pure, and then is sexually and spiritually reunited with her husband. During the exodus, the Hebrews were freed from slavery, became spiritually pure for seven weeks, and then were united in covenant with God. So (concludes the Zohar), during the counting of the omer, Jews reach higher spiritual levels, become spritually pure, and ultimately become reunited with God on Shavuot. The Zohar contains no technical legal discussions; only a metaphyical discussion answering the implicit question of why we count the omer.
Much later, Rabbi S.R. Hirsch was trying to explain to his 19th Century German-Jewish readers why they should continue to observe the mitzvot. He provides a rationalistic framework for the holidays, and uses omer-counting to link Passover and Shavout.
All of these texts were addressing the issues that were relevant at the time, and were relying on the weltanschaung of their times. The issue for us today (regardless of denomination) is whether we can understand particular mitzvot in light of our own understanding of Judaism, and seeing how previous generations dealt with these issues gives us some insight into a Jewish approaches to these issues, even if we would ask very different questions and come up with very different answers.
The bottom line is that there are lots of ways of approaching traditional texts, and many of these approaches are quite fruitful, even if we have different understandings of the origin of the Torah than the authors of those texts.
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