Ask The Rabbi: Am I A Bad Jew?
Since my interviews last
year, I have consistently maintained that if there is something odd or
confusing encountered in any of the changes to our services that have come up
while I have led services, that I would much prefer that the questions be asked
directly to me than spoken about in frustration where I am unable to aid in the
dialogue. If something comes up, I encourage you to email me at rabbi@sinaileeds.uk with
the heading “Ask the Rabbi” and I will happily answer them in order in this
space. This week, the question was “Am I a bad Jew?”
OK, full disclosure, this question wasn’t really asked, at least not in
this way. This formulation is more of a response to a variety of conversations
over the last weeks regarding specific halakhic (Jewish legal) customs,
rulings and interpretations. Although seldom said directly, this pattern of
thought comes in response to one of several prompts: being told by someone that
self-identifies or presents as “more observant” (there is so much behind that,
that it is worth an entire conversation if not an entire adult education
series) that we are doing something wrong/don’t know what we are doing, not
following through some Jewish ritual set by family parents (e.g. synagogue
attendance or home ritual such as candle lighting), or personal disappointment
for not following through with a goal set after a moment of strength/weakness
where we said, for example, “This year I will read the weekly parashah
without fail!” Of course, there is also the “I am a bad Jew” response after
getting caught enjoying a ham sandwich.
So, the
easy answer is, “no,” but not necessarily for obvious reasons. More than anything,
I wish to help us all enter into a different type of dialogue when we have such
unspoken thoughts. This does not mean I am saying, “Go and find as many ways
possible to contravene Jewish tradition,” or even, “Let’s see what happens when
we eat a bacon double cheeseburger with prawns, bugs, and oyster sauce.” I
believe strongly in the mitzvot as a pathway to societal and communal
cohesion in addition to personal spiritual growth. I just believe that a
certain type of flagellant reaction to Jewish law ensures that no mitzvot
are fulfilled, rather than encouraging more exploration of Jewish tradition and
sacred obligations.
The
underlying assumption of the “I am a bad Jew” trope is that halakhah
and/or tradition is binary: Either I am following/fulfilling or I am not. That
is the first thought-trap that needs to be let go. Judaism of today is based on
rabbinical Judaism—the Judaism of the Talmud. In Reform we often focus more
intensely on Torah, which from a legal standpoint is the foundational constitution
of Temple Judaism, something that ceased to exist when the Romans destroyed the
second Temple in 70 CE. The Talmud and subsequent documents in dialogue with
the Talmud were an attempt reset our legal basis to the reality of a diaspora
community without temple, king, priests or prophets. Yet the Talmud itself is
not a code of Jewish law, rather it is a sometimes-fantastical record of
dialogues about legal issues between hundreds of rabbis over the course of
centuries. For every legal question that is posed, roughly half are left with
discussion but no definitive legal answer. Half. That begs the question as to
whether rabbinical Judaism is actually about a functioning legal system or if
it is about the presentation of a dialogic process.
The second
thought trap, intrinsically intertwined with the first, is that there is a
definitive single right way of fulfilling a mitzvah. This is also a much larger
discussion, but in a nutshell, the result of the dialogic nature of the Talmud
was that it did not serve the practical purpose of providing an easily
accessible legal reference. In the centuries after the compilation of Talmudic
documents, numerous attempts were made to re-organize Talmudic jurisprudence
into a “look-up” codex. Of course to do this, you need to choose among the
options presented in the discussions with no definitive answer, removing the
underlying dialogic structure and replacing it with the perception that there
is a definitive answer. The most authoritative of these attempts, the 16th
century Shulkhan Aruch, took definitive rulings from three earlier
authoritative sources (in addition to an added gloss from an Ashkenazi source
to point out different interpretations from Sephardic ones) to create a
one-stop-shop pre-internet halakhic look-up. And it is incredibly useful! If I
get a question about how much honey I can put in challah before it is mezoines
(no longer “bread”) I know that the answer with be somewhere in Yoreh De’ah,
the section dealing with issues of kashrut (in addition to conversion,
mourning, and family purity.) I don’t always want to take the time to study the
entire process by which Jewish tradition evolved to come up with that ruling, I
just want a quick answer. The problem arises when I then tell someone else that
uses a different ruling (Ashkenazi and Sephardic Jews have differing answers to
the question of sweet challah) that they are wrong. That single
statement and the chutzpah that any of us feel that we can easily make
such a statement in an offhand manner based on personal tradition, experience,
“how I learned it,” or “that’s just how it is done here,” is exactly what
begins the thought process that leads up to “I am a bad Jew” and often
continues to the process of disenfranchisement. “Well, if I can’t do anything
right, why bother even trying.”
The beautiful irony of this is how early Jews recognized the danger of codex
thinking versus dialogic thinking. The Maharal (Rabbi Judah Loew ben
Bezalel), a contemporary of Joseph Caro and Moshe Isserles (the authors
of the Shulkhan Aruch and the accompanying Ashkenazic gloss
respectively) wrote:
“To decide halakhic questions from the codes without knowing the
source of the ruling was not the intent of these authors. Had they known that
their works would lead to the abandonment of Talmud,
they would not have written them. It is better for one to decide on the basis
of the Talmud even though he might err, for a scholar must depend solely on his
understanding. As such, he is beloved of God, and preferable to the one who
rules from a code but does not know the reason for the ruling; such a one walks
like a blind person.”
This is,
in my most non-humble opinion, the single most important quote in halakhic
studies that is seldom taught. It flies in the face of every single time any of
us have ever felt justified passing on a received position or opinion of Jewish
law to another with the intentionality of weaponizing our interpretation. “I am
right and you are wrong.” Jewish law is simply too complicated to be distilled
into a sound-byte, and doing so obfuscates if not destroys the entire
underlying ethic and aesthetic of Judaism: to be in dialogue and to never stop
learning.
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