Delivered at Westchester Reform Temple on Parshat Noach 5777.
For as long as there have been Jewish communities, there
have been Jewish communal conflicts.
My mom’s family are proud Greek Jews. My great-grandfather
Jessoula was a rabbi in the town Janina—a charming university town situated on
a lake in northwest Greece. When he arrived in this country in the early 20th
century, he established a small Greek synagogue on the Lower East Side, which
is still in existence today. There, every Saturday morning, a small minyan
meets to celebrate Shabbat in the Greek Jewish style—the only such minyan in
the world.
But in order for even this small Greek minyan to exist in
New York City, the Greek Jewish community had to undergo a centuries-long
communal conflict over the very fabric of their cultural identity.
Up until the eve of the Holocaust, the Greek Jewish
community was divided into two major demographic strands: Jews of Greek origin,
and Jews of Spanish origin. The Jews of Greek origin had been living in Greece
for nearly two millennia, since the destruction of the Second Temple in the
year 70 CE, while the Jews of Spanish origin had been living in Greece for only
500 years, since the expulsion of the Jews from Spain, in 1492. For nearly 500
years, these two groups fought each other to see whose culture would define
Jewish life in Greece. They disagreed about whose prayer book they ought to
use, whose dietary customs were more correct, and not least of all, in whose
language they ought to conduct Jewish communal affairs.
In the northern Greek city of Thessaloniki, the sheer number
of Spanish refugees eventually caused that Jewish community to adopt Spanish
customs.
In Janina, where my great-grandfather was born, the Greek
Jews were so concerned about the preserving their cultural identity that they
petitioned the Chief Rabbi of Constantinople to forbid Spanish Jews from
settling there. Their petition was not approved. The Jewish community of Janina
ballooned, so much so that a new synagogue was built on the outskirts of town
to accommodate the influx of Spanish Jews. Eventually, these two communities
found a way to get along. For communal events, the Jews would gather in the
pristine building of the new Spanish synagogue, but while they were there, they
would practice the historic Greek customs.
By looking at family surnames, I’ve hypothesized that my
ancestors in Janina were originally of Greek origin. Which leads me to wonder:
How well did my ancestors get along with their newly arrived Spanish neighbors?
Were they part of the group that petitioned to ban Spanish Jews from settling
in Janina? Or were they part of the historic compromise that enabled the two
Jewish communities to find common ground? In their historic Jewish culture
conflict, how did my ancestors behave?
This week, in Israel, we’ve witnessed a different historic Jewish
culture conflict—over who has the right to pray at the Western Wall, and how. Our
own rabbi emeritus, Rabbi Rick Jacobs, marched alongside other world Jewish
leaders in protest of the Israeli government’s failure to create an egalitarian
prayer space at the Western Wall. We should note that the struggle over Wall
itself is but one symbolic example of the many ways in which non-Orthodox forms
of Judaism are granted unequal status in Israel. Reform marriages and
conversions are not recognized as religiously valid by the Israeli rabbinate;
and while Orthodox institutions get state funding, non-Orthodox institutions,
with a few exceptions, are left to fend to themselves. With their protest this
week, non-Orthodox Jewish leaders declare: the existence of Israel unites the
Jewish people, but some of its policies religious divide us from one another.
Fittingly, in this week’s Torah portion, we read the story
of the Tower of Babel. As the story goes, human beings were united by a desire
to be like God, to make a name for themselves on earth and in heaven. And so,
they decided to build a tower that would reach the sky. United by their common
purpose, people from the four corners of the earth bought tools, skills, and
materials to aid in the Tower’s construction. But threatened by this upstart
human endeavor, God decided to confound the humans’ speech, such that each
person spoke a different language, and no one could understand the other.
A midrash imagines
that at the Tower of Babel, one worker asked another to pass him a brick. But
because, they didn’t speak the same language, the second worker brought the
first not a brick, but rather, a shovel. And when the first worker realized
that he’d been misunderstood, he took his co-worker’s shovel hit him over the
head with it. In this way, the Tower of Babel represents not only the origins
of the world’s many languages, but also the origins of cultural conflict.
Our tradition knows of the possibility of internal Jewish
culture conflict. It is perhaps for this reason that we can recognize two
schools of thought within our sacred texts: one that emphasizes what binds all
Jews together, and the other that emphasizes what makes each Jewish community
unique. The tension between these two schools of thought is illustrated by a
brain puzzle presented in the Talmud. If, God forbid, a Jewish house of study
should catch fire—asks the Talmud—and only half the books can be saved, which
books should be rescued: the books written in Hebrew, or the books translated
into the local vernacular? What’s most important, the Talmud asks: Hebrew,
which unites us, or the many other languages in which Jews have written
throughout the ages, which define, and thereby, often divide us? The Talmud, in
its characteristic style, gives no definitive answer, as if to say: “We must
strive to save them all.”
Indeed, throughout our history, the Jewish people have
written—and written prolifically—in many different languages. The core of our
tradition, Torah and the rest of the Bible, is written mostly in Hebrew. But much
of the Talmud is written in lingua franca
of the ancient Near East, Aramaic—causing rabbinical and cantorial students to
spend many late nights hunched over a trilingual Hebrew-English-Aramaic
dictionary. Many Americans may know a little bit of Yiddish—common words that
have floated into American English, mostly of a comedic flavor, like klutz, schlep, schvitz. But perhaps
they don’t know that beyond these jokey words lies a rich literary tradition of
Yiddish theatre, poetry, song, and fiction. Let us recall that Maimonides,
considered by many to be the greatest medieval Jewish thinker, wrote not in
Hebrew but in Arabic. And Martin Buber, one of the most influential modern
Jewish thinkers, wrote in German. I often wonder if, centuries from now, future
rabbis and cantors will spend many late nights hunched over some new trilingual
dictionary wishing that our great contemporary thinkers, like Brad Artson or Rachel
Adler, hadn’t written exclusively in English.
If, God forbid, the imagined Jewish library I’ve just
described were to burn down, which books, which languages, should we save first?
Should we save the books written in Hebrew or the books written in other
languages? What’s more important: Jewish unity, or intra-communal Jewish
distinctiveness?
When Leah and I were married, we decided to write our
Ketubah not in the traditional Aramaic, but rather in Hebrew and in English. We
wanted it in English so that we could easily read and remember what promises we
made to one another on our wedding day. And we wanted it in Hebrew so that if,
God willing, our future great-grandchildren should someday find our Ketubah, they
would be able, no matter what language they speak, to connect to their
ancestors. The English on our Ketubah connects us to the present; the Hebrew
connects us to the past and the future.
So let’s once again connect to the past—to my
great-grandfather Jessoula in Greece, and to his ancestors when the Spanish Jews arrived on their doorstep. Were
they with the group that wanted to keep the Spanish out? Or were they with the
group that wanted to welcome the Spanish in? Did they, like the builders of the
Tower of Babel, hit one another over the head at the first sign of culture
conflict? Or were they, like our imagined Jewish library, open to the cultural gems
of every Jewish place and time?
I can’t say for sure. Of course, I hope that they were
champions of Jewish diversity—just as I hope for the same in our day, this week
at the Western Wall in particular.
But I wonder. I wonder if they ever could have imagined that
someday, a descendant of theirs would live in a place called the United States;
if they could have imagined that he’d be the product of Greek Jews and German
Jews; if they could have imagined that his native language would be English—and
that yet, despite all these unimaginable differences, he, like them, would still
celebrate Shabbat, still know a little Hebrew. I wonder if it was some
unimaginable version of you and me that they had in mind when they decided to
settle their differences—to honor their Greek-Jewish heritage while welcoming
their Spanish-Jewish neighbors.
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I hope that Jewish diversity in Israel will grow. But more
importantly, I hope that we and Jews everywhere can recognize that what unites
us is as important as what divides us. I’m here because Greek Jews and Spanish
Jews learned how to get along. Let’s learn to do the same. The future is
counting on us.
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