The Chanukkah Rorschach Test

There’s a hilarious short story about Chanukkah that I love by the novelist Nathan Englander. [1] It tells the tale of a Jewish man named Reb Itzik, the leader of a small Hasidic shul in Brooklyn, who has come upon hard times and cannot afford to keep the lights on in his synagogue. In order to make a little extra money, Reb Itzik takes on odd jobs on the side, moonlighting in order to pay the synagogue’s electric bill.

On a recent December day, Reb Itzik notices a wanted ad in the newspaper. A casting agency is seeking an actor with a particular look for a short-term, seasonal acting job. And although Reb Itzik has no acting experience to speak of, he does indeed fit the look. The casting agency is looking for “a heavy man” -- and Reb Itzik is a bit round in the belly. And preferably, the actor they are looking for will have “a white beard” -- and Reb Itzik, an observant Jew, has never in his life trimmed his beard, which now, in his old age, has indeed faded to white. So Reb Itzik decides to go in for the audition. And before he even has the chance to recite his one and only line, Reb Itzik has been cast… as a department store Santa Claus.

There are many things to love about this story. But the thing that I love most is the way it captures the overwhelming force of the Christmas season. Even this ultra-Orthodox rabbi cannot avoid participating in it. The holiday of Chanukkah is never even mentioned in the story -- but to the perceptive reader, it hovers quietly in the background. A Jew trying to keep the lights on in his synagogue? Sounds familiar -- like the ancient Maccabees who, for entirely different reasons, also struggled to keep the lights burning in their sanctuary. The message of the story is clear: in the United States, Christmas is king, and Chanukkah rides quietly on its coattails. [2]

It might come as little surprise that Chanukkah gets a boost from American Christmas. After all, from the very beginning, Chanukkah has always been something of a chameleon holiday -- able to change its appearance in order to fit the society in which it is being celebrated.

Consider, for example, the story of the miraculous oil, which was only supposed to last for one night, but instead lasted for eight. It is so familiar that even the youngest learners can likely recount it. The only problem is that, if you read the Book of Maccabees -- the earliest version of the Chanukkah narrative -- you’ll find no such story. No oil. No menorah. No miracle.

The story of the oil does not make an appearance until the writing of the Talmud -- at least 400 years after the Maccabean Revolt. In order to understand why the story appears in that time and place, we must understand something about Jewish history. Like their Maccabean ancestors, the rabbis who wrote the Talmud had themselves just lived through a Jewish revolt against an oppressive superpower -- in their case, against the Romans. But whereas the earlier Maccabean revolt had proven successful, this more recent revolt against Rome was brutally crushed. The rabbis were living under Roman occupation -- and they could not afford to provoke the ire of their oppressors. To that end, the rabbis sought to downplay the story of the earlier, successful Maccabean revolt, and instead, to highlight a different story, now famous to us all: the story of the miraculous oil. [3]

Whether the rabbis invented that story from scratch, or whether its absence from the Book of Maccabees can be explained by other reasons, is beyond our purposes tonight. What is relevant is that in one era, Chanukkah was a story about a military victory, and in another era, it became a story about a divine miracle.

So it might come as little surprise that in our era, Chanukkah is largely a story about American Christmas -- and literally so, in the case of Reb Itzik. Chanukkah is a chameleon holiday, able to change its appearance according to the needs of the times. Or, in the words of Rabbi Yitz Greenberg, Chanukkah is “a holiday Rorschach test. Every community and every generation has interpreted Chanukkah in its own image, speaking to its own needs.” [4]

This evening, I’d like to explore three contemporary understandings of Chanukkah. If Chanukkah is a Rorschach test, then exploring how contemporary Jews see the holiday should tell us something about the Jewish world in which we live. We will examine Chanukkah through the lens of three major groups -- non-orthodox Jews, ultra-orthodox Jews, and Israeli Jews.

One caveat before we proceed: this analysis is purposefully overly simplistic. Each of us will likely resonate with parts of all three groups. The intent is not to pigeonhole any one group, but rather, to try and identify relevant themes that arise along the boundaries of contemporary Jewish life.

With that caveat in mind, let’s look at the results of our Chanukkah Rorschach test.

Let’s start with non-Orthodox Jewry -- a group that includes Reform, Conservative, Reconstructionist, Renewal, secular, and cultural Jews. Non-orthodox Jews tend to think of Chanukkah in spiritual terms. It is a holiday about bringing light into the darkest time of the year. Or, it is a holiday about justice -- about the oppressed overcoming their oppressors. Think, for example, of the lyrics to the Peter, Paul, and Mary song “Light One Candle”: “We have come this far always believing that justice would somehow prevail.” For non-orthodox Jews, Chanukkah’s spiritual message is universal -- applicable to all people, regardless of religious identity.

One particularly compelling example of the universal, spiritual message of Chanukkah comes from the Institute for Jewish Spirituality. Perhaps you remember in 2013, when the second night of Chanukkah coincided with Thanksgiving -- a concurrence that was cleverly dubbed “Thanksgivukkah.” The Institute for Jewish Spirituality sent out an email to its supporters, highlighting the shared spirit of gratitude between the two holidays. The email read: “Maybe the deeper ‘miracle’ of Hanukkah is [the way that the Maccabees reacted] when faced with an apparently insufficient amount of oil. Rather than despairing over what they lacked, they saw the good in what they had” [5] -- a posture of gratitude.

Incidentally, the Institute for Jewish Spirituality is not the first group to recognize within the Chanukkah story a theme of gratitude. The ancient rabbis associated Chanukkah with Psalm 30 [6] -- which is a psalm of giving thanks. The psalm tells the story of a person who has experienced a reversal of fortunes. His life had been a mess -- but by the grace of God, he is able to turn things around, and once again believes that life can be beautiful. In the words of the psalm: “[God] turned my mourning into dancing. I shall give thanks forever.”

While the particulars are different, the core messages of Psalm 30 and of the Chanukkah story are the same. In both cases, a bad situation took a turn for the better -- and as a result, we ought to express our gratitude.

These three themes -- light, justice, and gratitude -- exemplify the non-orthodox understanding of Chanukkah. These are universal, spiritual ideals. And indeed, non-orthodox Jewry does understand itself in universal, spiritual terms. Non-orthodox Jews tend to see Judaism as a religion with a universal message -- striving for the good of all people, with little concern for ethnic boundaries.

But this universal, spiritual message brings us face-to-face with our second group: ultra-Orthodox Jews.

Unlike their non-orthodox cousins, ultra-Orthodox Jews tend to understand Chanukkah in highly ethnic terms. To understand why, we need to understand what the Maccabees were fighting for, and what they were fighting against.

Clearly, the Maccabees were fighting for the freedom to practice their religion. Less obvious is that they were equally fighting against the spread of Hellenism. Hellenism was Greek culture, exported around the Mediterranean. Greek culture was highly sophisticated -- producing great works of art, literature, philosophy, and science. It believed in equality between people, and tearing down the barriers that divide neighbor from neighbor. It was the most advanced society that that part of the world had ever seen. In fact, the Greeks believed their culture was so advanced, they thought it was only fair that everyone deserved to get a taste.

The only problem was: not everyone wanted a taste. Regardless of how sophisticated Greek culture may have been, it was not the local culture of kingdoms around the Mediterranean. The Maccabees were fighting not only for religious freedom, they were equally fighting against the idea that everyone ought to participate in the supposedly superior majority culture. They were fighting against cultural homogeneity.

Ultra-Orthodox Judaism was born of a similar story. In the early 1800s, as the changes of modernity began to accelerate, as Jews across Europe were finally being emancipated from behind the walls of the ghetto, as Jewish thinkers began to broaden their intellectual horizons -- as these monumental changes were taking root, a rabbi in Hungary named the Hatam Sofer declared: “Change is prohibited by the Torah.” And with that, ultra-Orthodoxy was established. [7]

The Hatam Sofer based his prohibition against change on a well-known midrash -- which says that the reason the Israelites were redeemed from Egypt was because they never assimilated to the majority culture. Specifically: they never took on Egyptian names, wore Egyptian clothing, or spoke the Egyptian language. [8] The Hatam Sofer argued: just as the Israelites were redeemed from Egypt by virtue of their cultural distinctiveness, so too shall we be redeemed from the seismic changes of modernity by virtue of our cultural distinctiveness. And so still today, the ultra-Orthodox Jewish communities dress, speak, and name their children in the way of their European forebears -- despite what the supposedly superior majority culture might think.

We need only substitute Hellenism with modernity, and the Maccabees with the ultra-Orthodox, and the two stories are a near perfect parallel.

But the parallel doesn’t end there. Many scholars believe that the Maccabean revolt ought to be viewed as an internal Jewish civil war -- between those Jews who embraced Hellenism and those who resisted it. And while thankfully, Jewish in-fighting in our own time has never reached the proportions of civil war, it is easy to see the fault lines over which such a conflict would arise. The first group we’ve examined this evening, the non-orthodox, looks at the Chanukkah Rorschach test and sees a holiday that is about universal ideals -- like light, justice, and gratitude. Our second group, the ultra-Orthodox, looks at the exact same Chanukkah Rorschach test and sees the exact opposite message: a holiday that is about the triumph of the local over the universal. The fault lines have been drawn.

What does our third group -- Israeli Jews -- see when they look at the Chanukkah Rorschach test?

The early Zionists looked to traditional Jewish sources for symbols and stories that they could inherit as their own. And despite the obvious centrality of the Land of Israel to all of Jewish life, when the early Zionists looked at the Jewish calendar, they found surprisingly little material to work with. The Passover story takes place in Egypt; Shavuot and Sukkot take place in the Sinai desert; Purim takes place Persia; Rosh Hashanah is about the creation of world, which takes place everywhere; Yom Kippur and Shabbat are about the restoration of the self, which takes place internally. [9] Among all the Jewish holidays, only Chanukkah takes place in the Land of Israel. The Zionists had found their symbol.

Perhaps it’s no surprise, then, that travelers to Israel during the holiday of Chanukkah may return home with any variety of souvenirs -- but all are certain to return carrying an Israeli dreidel, which, unlike a diaspora dreidel, is not inscribed “a great miracle happened there,” but rather “a great miracle happened here.” Israel is the land of the Maccabees. [10]

But the connection is deeper than just geography. In his recent best-selling book, Catch ‘67, Israeli writer Micah Goodman describes Zionism in the following terms. For two-thousand years before the Zionist movement, Jewish communities had to rely on outside forces for their protection. There were two options from which to choose: rely on God, or rely on governments. Of course, history proved that neither the promises of the Torah nor the promises of kings, caliphs, tzars, and constitutions could ensure Jewish safety. So the Zionists decided to dispense with God and foreign governments. They would have to rely on themselves.

There are names for each of these moves. Giving up on God is called “secularism.” And giving up on governments is called “statecraft.” And indeed, the Zionist movement originated as a secular statecraft.

Let us deal first with the secular. There is a popular Chanukkah song that was written by an early Zionist poet. It’s call Mi Y’maleil -- or, as it is popularly translated into English, “Who Can Retell?” In Hebrew, the song features classical religious language. It speaks of the Hero of Israel, the Messiah, the Redeemer -- terms that, in biblical lore, are typically reserved for God. But in the song’s final stanza, the twist is revealed. In the Chanukkah story, the Redeemer of Israel is not God, but rather, the Jewish people themselves -- as we sing in the English lyrics: “But now all Israel must as one arise, redeem itself through deeds and sacrifice,” just as the Maccabees did.

Similarly, the “statecraft” component of secular statecraft took inspiration from the Chanukkah story. Theodor Herzl, founder of political Zionism, recognized that -- like the Maccabees, who were themselves guerilla warriors -- the Jewish people needed to take responsibility for our own self-defense. Herzl concluded his most influential book, The Jewish State, with the following sentence: “The Maccabees shall rise again.” Indeed, an early version of the Israeli flag featured the word “Maccabee” emblazoned in the center of the Jewish star.

The Zionist movement took the Maccabees as their inspiration as they founded their secular statecraft. They looked at the Chanukkah Rorschach test and saw a story of people who had taken responsibility for their own safety -- dispensing with God and dispensing with foreign governments.

The only problem is that, in so doing, they inadvertently drew two fault lines between themselves and the other two groups we’ve examined tonight. Ultra-Orthodox Jews do indeed rely on God. Non-orthodox Jews -- at least, those of us who live in the diaspora -- do indeed rely on foreign governments.

When contemporary world Jewry looks at the Chanukkah Rorschach test, what we see there are our divisions: three fault lines, that keep each group separated from the others.

***

The Talmud records a famous debate between the great sages Hillel and Shammai, over how the Chanukkah menorah ought to be lit. Hillel argues that we should start with one candle, and add one each night, moving progressively upwards to eight -- the way we light our menorahs today. But Shammai disagrees. He argues that we should start with eight candles, and remove one each night, until, on the last night, only one remains. Two sages, two opposing ideas, one an uncrossable fault line between them.

But I’ve heard it said: that, if only for a brief moment, on the fourth day of Chanukkah, late in the afternoon -- as Hillel is cleaning up his menorah from the night before, and Shammai is setting up his menorah for the night ahead -- for that brief moment, both sages are holding four candles.

If only we could make that brief moment last and last and last -- like a jar of oil that burns for longer than expected.

__________
[1] “Reb Kringle,” from Englander’s short story collection For the Relief of Unbearable Urges. My synopsis here is intentionally modified from the original story in order to capture the story’s comedic tone.
[2] Unlike Christmas, Chanukkah is a relatively minor festival. Chanukkah is theologically poor: unlike Passover, when God redeems the Jewish people from slavery, or Yom Kippur, when God forgives the Jewish people of their wrongdoings -- Chanukkah contains little theological material. Christmas, by contrast, is theologically rich: it tells the story of the birth of God’s son. Chanukkah is also unlike Christmas in that Chanukkah has not, historically, been a holiday of gift-giving. That ritual is traditionally reserved for Purim.
[3] Similarly, the rabbis of the Talmud chose as the haftarah reading for the Shabbat during the week of Chanukkah these pacifistic words from the prophet Zechariah: “Not by might and not by power, but by spirit alone” (Zech. 4:6) shall the Jewish people be redeemed from their sufferings. (Zechariah lived during the time of the Babylonian and Persian oppressions.)
[4] The Jewish Way, p. 277. With gratitude to my teacher Dr. Wendy Zierler for introducing me to that book, and in whose classroom many of the ideas found in this sermon first germinated.
[5] Rabbi Marc Margolius
[6] There are a variety of reasons why the rabbis might have chosen Psalm 30 for Chanukkah -- not least of all, because the psalm includes the word chanukkah in its opening verse, which caused the rabbis to believe (incorrectly) that the psalm was composed at the time of the Maccabean revolt. (Most scholars believe that the psalms were completed by the year 400 BCE; the Maccabean revolt began in 167 BCE.)
[7] This history is brilliant traced in Leora Batnitzky’s book How Judaism Became a Religion. For the story of Ultra-Orthodoxy in particular, see, the book’s conclusion.
[8] Nevermind that, despite what the midrash says, the Torah clearly demonstrates that the Israelites did indeed take on Egyptians names. Moses and Aaron are both names of Egyptian origin, to name but two highly significant examples. The irony deepens when one considers that on Chanukkah, our annual cycle of Torah reading brings us to the story of Joseph -- who, upon assuming the role of royal vizier, changed his name to an Egyptian name, married and Egyptian wife, and named his children with names that mean “I have forgotten my father’s house” and “God has made me fertile in a foreign land.” He is so deeply assimilated that when his brothers eventually come to Egypt to beg for bread, they do not recognize him. For more on this topic, see Arnold Eisen’s article here: http://www.jtsa.edu/joseph-hanukkah-and-the-dilemmas-of-assimilation
[9] While the holiday of Tisha B’Av does take place in the Land of Israel, it is a commemoration of defeat and destruction -- useless themes to the early Zionists.
[10] Additionally: perhaps it’s no surprise that the so called Jewish olympics held every four years in Israel is called the Maccabi Games, and that professional sports teams in Israel bear names like Maccabi Tel Aviv and Maccabi Haifa.

A Window, Not a Wall

I recently got a call from a close friend whose father had died several years ago. My friend and his family were now cleaning out his old childhood home, helping to prepare his mom to move into a smaller place. He was calling to tell me about the strange experience of cleaning the house, how he felt haunted by memories of his dad -- how old pictures, or handwritten notes, or school report cards, or art projects that had once hung on the fridge brought his father so vividly to mind.

My friend told me that it was a windy weekend while they were clearing out the house -- and that each time he stepped outside to load another box into the U-Haul truck, he felt as if his dad was swirling around him in the wind. And finally, when the last room had been cleared, when the boxes were all packed up and loaded into the truck, when the mezuzah had been taken down from the front door, he and his family went to close the door to his childhood home for what he thoughts would be the last time. But as the latch began to click into the doorframe, a strong gust of wind blew up from the street, and the door went flying open. It felt, he said, as if his dad’s spirit just couldn’t bear to leave the old house behind. My friend told me: “I know that my dad wasn’t actually in that gust of wind, but I couldn’t help but cry. It just felt so real. Is that crazy?” he asked.

We can’t say for sure where the dead go after they have died. It is perhaps the most perplexing problem in the human condition. It is not a question that can be answered by empirical observation. It is not a question that can be addressed by reasoning or logic. Any possible answers lie beyond the horizon of human understanding -- outside the boundaries of what we can know for certain.

Where empirical observation fails, faith and belief must suffice. Some anthropologists suggest[1] that this is the very basis of religion: the longing to understand things that are just beyond our understanding -- to know where it is that we come from, and where it is that we go.

Jewish tradition is full of images of how the dead continue to inhabit the world of the living. One tradition[2] teaches that in the days immediately after a person dies, her soul continues to linger on earth -- confused about how to exist without a body, unsure of where to go next, visiting the people and places that she knew in her life. Another tradition[3] teaches that by saying Kaddish, we, the living, help the souls of the dead to find their way to the next world. Still another tradition[4] teaches that the dead can visit us in our dreams, advise us in our affairs, even intercede on our behalf for the betterment of our lives.

Since the Enlightenment, many Jews have kept their distance from beliefs such as these. We have difficulty integrating anything that isn’t able to be proved.

But we don’t have to be naive or foolish to understand what it is that our tradition is trying to express with each of these images. We don’t have to take these claims literally to understand the message. Judaism affirms that the dead, even after they have died, continue to be present in the world of the living. In our memories, they are entirely vivid. When we long for them, they are present to us -- present, by way of their absence. They even continue to influence our world. Our actions continue to be guided by our memories of them. Our choices are still influenced by the place they occupy in our hearts.

Rabbi Zalman Schacter-Shalomi, of blessed memory, used to tell a story[5] of how his father continued to act in the world, even long after he had died. Schacter-Shalomi had a complex relationship with his father. When he was alive, his father would keep his feelings pent up, let them fester, and release them in fitful outbursts of anger. One afternoon shortly after his father had died, Schacter-Shalomi was driving down the highway, having just taught a class at a local yeshivah. He was unhappy with how the class had gone, and as he was driving, Schachter-Shalomi was stewing about the experience, letting his anger fester and grow -- just as his father had shown him to do. Immediately, Schachter-Shalomi pulled the car over to the side of the road, got out, and said out-loud to his father, as if he were standing right there next to him: “Papa -- you spent your whole life showing me how to explode with anger. But this is one lesson I don’t need anymore. This one, you can keep.”

Schachter-Shalomi felt full well his father’s still very real presence in his life. In releasing himself from his anger, in letting go, he continued to learn from his father -- in this case, by not following his father’s example. Is this not, on some level, a negative example of how the dead are able to intercede in the affairs of the living?

On Sukkot, we Jews participate in the practice of ushpizin. Ushpizin is an Aramaic word meaning “guests” -- and it refers to the practice, originated by the Kabbalists, of inviting guests into our Sukkah. In traditional practice, each day of Sukkot corresponds to one of seven biblical figures, whom we invite into the Sukkah on his or her particular day, in hopes that we might learn a spiritual quality from that guest. On the first day of Sukkot, we invite Abraham into our sukkah, in hopes that we might mirror his quality of hospitality to guests. On day two, we invite Isaac into our Sukkah, in hopes that we might learn from him how to feel awestruck before God. And so on.

On this last day of the Sukkot holiday, we might practice a different kind of ushpizin -- a different way of welcoming guests -- not by inviting biblical figures to come and celebrate with us, by rather, by inviting in our deceased loved ones to join us in this chapel. We invite her in -- and hope to mirror her quality of an inquisitive mind. We invite him in -- and hope to learn how not to let our anger fester and explode. We invite these ushpizin -- these guests -- into our celebration of Sukkot, because we know that they are with us, even when we don’t invite them in. They are with us, even when we are unaware of the role they continue to play in our lives. Our dead are never really gone, our tradition teaches. The space between the living and the dead is “a window, not a wall.”[6]

A short detour, by way of conclusion: Sarah Ruhl is a playwright who has published a book called One Hundred Essays I Don’t Have Time to Write. In that book, she writes about what happens when an actor opens up an umbrella on stage.[7] We know that it isn’t actually raining on the stage. But when that umbrella opens, it conjures for us the experience of rain. When the actor lowers the umbrella and shivers, we believe that she is getting cold and wet. We believe in the rain, even though we know plain and clear that the rain isn’t really there.

To ask, “Is it raining on this actor?” would be to ask the wrong question. That is a question of truth or falsehood, when the empirical truth of whether it is actually raining is entirely inconsequential. 

Instead, we ought to ask a question not of truth or falsehood, but rather, of meaning.[8] “Does watching this actor lower her umbrella cause us to shiver, to remember what it’s like to stand out in the cold and the rain? Does seeing this non-reality play itself out on stage allow us to access the actual reality of being soaked to the bone, of feeling exposed to the elements?” These are not true/false questions -- but rather, questions of meaning. Does the combination of that real umbrella and the false rain give us access to a meaningful experience?

So what should we tell my friend who recently moved out of his childhood home? Is it crazy to think that the wind blowing the door open was actually his father?

We cannot say for sure. The answer is simply beyond the realm of human reasoning.

But maybe we’re asking the wrong question. Perhaps we shouldn’t be asking the true/false question of: “Was that actually my father?” Perhaps instead we should ask a question of meaning: “When the wind wraps itself around you, do you remember what it felt like to be held in your father’s arms? When the wind blows the door open, does the lifetime of memories created in that house come pouring out -- unable to be contained?”

These are questions we can answer. These are questions that, quite frankly, are far more interesting than a simple test of truth or falsehood. This is where feeling resides. This is where meaning is made. This is where comfort springs. This is where healing begins.

And so we practice the Jewish art of ushpizin -- of inviting our deceased loved ones into our sukkot celebration -- even though we cannot empirically prove that they have entered into our sukkah. Nevertheless, we sense them. Nevertheless, we feel their presence. We continue learn from their lives. We carry them with us always. We believe that, in some way, they continue to remain with us -- and that experience adds meaning to our lives. Why on earth would we need to prove that?

______
[1] Harari, Yuval Noah. Sapiens, p. 266-267.
[2] BT Sanhedrin 47b
[3] BT Sanhedrin 104a
[4] Finkel, Avraham Yaakov. The Book of the Pious, by Rabbi Yehudah HeChasid, p. 223.
[5] Schachter-Shalomi, Zalman. “On the Afterlife” (audio recording).
[6] Raphael, Simcha Paull. “Grief and Bereavement,” in Jewish Pastoral Care, ed. Friedman, p. 426.
[7] Ruhl, Sarah. One Hundred Essays I Don’t Have Time to Write, p. 6-7.
[8] For more on these competing frameworks, see Rabbi Larry Hoffman’s soon-to-be-published essay, “Limits, Truth, and Meaning” (originally delivered as a lecture at the Shechinah conference in the mid 1980s).

The Book of Life

For Gavi Yona, Nomi Yael, and their Papa Jonny, after whom they are both named 

Five weeks before his son was born, Michael Bahler learned that his mother was dying. She had lived with ovarian cancer for five years -- and now, just five weeks before she was supposed to become a grandmother, it seemed that the end was nearing.

Every day, Michael would visit her in the hospital. And every day, as he entered the room, his mother would summon the strength to lift her head off the pillow, if only for a moment, and ask, “Did the baby come yet?” “Not yet,” Michael would tell her -- and she’d sink back down into the hospital bed, her face a mixture of resolve and exhaustion.

A small clock-radio stood at his mother’s bedside, and on the antenna, Michael had taped a printout of his wife’s most recent ultrasound. It hung there like a flag, flown at full mast, urging his mother to continue onward. And although the hospital ethicist had encouraged them to begin end-of-life care; and although both Michael and his mother knew that all of her persistence had only elongated her suffering -- still, she clung to life.

A few weeks later, in the very same hospital, the baby was born. The medical team gave Michael permission to wheel his mother, in a gown and mask, up to the maternity ward. As she held the baby in her arms, tears in her eyes, she looked into her grandson’s face and whispered: “We made it.” She died six weeks later.

Perhaps you know a story like this one. Perhaps it is your own story: the wedding ceremony that is rescheduled to an earlier date so that a dying parent can be there; the bar mitzvah that is made bittersweet by the glaring absence of loved one; the grandparent after whom a new baby is lovingly named, an honor that the parents would rather not have to give.

“To everything, there is a season,” the author of Ecclesiastes wrote, “and a time for every purpose under heaven. A time to be born and a time to die. … A time to laugh and time to weep. … A time to dance and a time to mourn. … A time to seek and a time to lose.” [1]

If only our lives were this orderly. If only our experiences could be sorted into neat little boxes -- where the time for mourning never intruded upon the time for dancing, where the time for laughing and the time for weeping never touched, forever separated, like two sets of dishes for milk and for meat.

“Ecclesiastes got it wrong,” charges the Israeli poet Yehuda Amichai. [2] “A person doesn’t have enough time in his life to have a time for everything. He doesn’t live enough seasons to have a season for every purpose. He must love and hate at the same moment; must laugh and cry with the same eyes; with the same hands, must cast away stones and gather them.”

How are our hearts not to break? When the death of a loved one can interrupt even the happiest day of our life, how are we not to conclude that death is more powerful than birth? The High Holidays ask exactly this question. Rosh Hashanah is a symbol of birth; just ten days later, Yom Kippur is a metaphor for death. Taken together, these High Holy Days simulate what Michael Bahler experienced in real life: that the time to mourn does often intrude upon the time to dance.

The High Holidays test our resolve, asking us: do we dare to affirm that birth is more powerful than death?

***

Rosh Hashanah is a symbol of birth. It is our New Year -- and like a newly born child, we are reminded of our unlimited potential. Our prayer book calls Rosh Hashanah the day that humanity was born -- a metaphor for the day that human beings, with our capacity for change and growth, emerged from the spirals of evolutionary history. We eat pomegranates on Rosh Hashanah, a symbol of fertility -- a fruit so round it resembles a pregnant belly, a fruit whose insides are filled with seeds. We blast the shofar and it sounds like a baby crying -- a wordless, full-throated wail that wakes us from our sleep and calls us to our duty.

Many times over the past few months, my wife, Leah, and I have arisen from our sleep to the sound of a baby crying. We welcomed a new baby into the world this June. Holding our newborn, only a few hours old, we felt the sense of wonder that Rosh Hashanah seeks to inspire. Where did this new life come from? What adventures await her? Who is the person inside of this tiny body?

Author Annie Dillard [3] captures this sense of wonder in her book For the Time Being. She visits a hospital maternity ward, and observes the strange and marvelous things that take place there: the ritual of it all, at once ancient and modern; the doctors, nurses, and midwives dressed each in their respective uniforms, performing their sacred duties like priests in their vestments; the mothers like goddesses, with the power to create life; the newborns with wise eyes, who knew how to be born without having to be told. “This is surely the wildest deep-sea vent on earth,” Dillard writes. “This is where the people come out.”

Birth brings us to the precipice of life and allows us to soak in the breathtaking view. The Jewish New Year hopes to do the same -- to cause us to believe that anything is possible, that life contains limitless potential.

But even there on the precipice of life, we know the dark truth. All that is born must die. Even though our eyes may now be filled with tears of joy, there will inevitably come a time when those same eyes -- the only pair we have -- will be filled with tears of sorrow. And so, only ten days after Rosh Hashanah, we move on to Yom Kippur -- a day that is a rehearsal for our death.

On Yom Kippur, we do not eat -- making ourselves like corpses, who have no need for bodily sustenance. Some Jews dress entirely in white, evoking the white shroud in which they will someday be buried. During the Ashamnu prayer, as we recount our alphabet of shortcomings, we beat our chests with regret -- pounding upon our hearts, as if we were trying to resuscitate those parts of ourselves that have grown cold and stiff within. As the cantor intones the haunting Kol Nidre chant, we remove our Torah scrolls and stare into the open ark -- an empty wooden box, like the plain pine casket [4] that will someday be our final resting place.

In his bestselling memoir When Breath Becomes Air, Dr. Paul Kalanithi captures how the prospect of our death ignites an urgency for living. Kalanithi was a prominent neurosurgeon, who throughout his career frequently had to deliver the news to patients that they had late-stage cancer. Invariably, his patients would respond with one pressing question: How long have I got left? Not wanting to get pinned to a number, Kalanithi would regularly dodge the question, and instead advise his patients to take it one day at a time.

But only when Kalanithi learned, at the age of 36, of his own cancer diagnosis was he finally able to understand that his patients were asking about more than just a number. If he could know for certain how much time he had left, it would allow him to set his priorities straight. If he only had a week, he would spent it with his family; if he knew he had five years, he might go back to practicing medicine. The prospect of his death forced him to ask: Have I spent my time wisely?

Yom Kippur causes us to confront not only the prospect of our own death, but also the deaths of the people we love. During our Yizkor service, we recite aloud the names of people who have died since last we met on Yom Kippur -- those people whose presence in our sanctuary must this year be no more than a memory, no more than the empty pew where once they sat, no more than the soaring melody that once moved them to tears, and now, in turn, moves us to tears.

It’s been said that grief is the price we pay for love. Jewish tradition affirms that this is true. Our sages teach that the dead are never really gone -- that the space between the living and the dead is “a window, not a wall.” [5] Grief is love passing through that window.

But even this is only a cold comfort. Even if we might commune with them in our grief, our dead remain forever dead. Although we may carry them along with us to every family simcha, they cannot, in any real way, walk us down the aisle at our wedding or hold our newborn child. Their presence will always only be by way of absence -- which causes us to miss them all the more.

Where Rosh Hashanah raises up the potential of new life, Yom Kippur reminds us that we all must meet our end. Like Michael Bahler simultaneously preparing for the birth of his child and the death of his mother, we are forced, on the High Holidays, to face both the beginning and end of life.

When this happens, it would not be unreasonable to lament how quickly time passes -- how the 85-year-old great-grandmother holding a new baby was once a new baby herself. It would not be unreasonable to wish for a firmer boundary between joy and sorrow -- how on Monday, we might be digging in the sandbox with a favorite niece, shoveling sand into a toy dump truck; and on Tuesday, we are burying her grandmother, shoveling earth onto the lid of a casket.

In a way, it is this -- the problem of mortality -- that all religions, [6] at their core, seek to address. Many religions, from the ancient Egyptians onward, solve that problem by holding up the promise of an afterlife -- an eternal heaven that allows us to transcend our death. We Jews also believe that there is a gateway to immortality -- but we differ from other religions on one critical point. We believe that we achieve immortality not through our death, but rather, through our participation in birth. [7]

Birth, the creation of life, is our antidote to death. Birth may not allow us to live forever, but it does allow us to extend ourselves beyond our mortal boundaries.

By birth, we do not exclusively mean biological birth -- though that, of course, is certainly a part of our immortality. The children who carry our genetic code do, in a very concrete way, allow some part of ourselves to live even after we have died. We may stumble across an old childhood photo of our long-dead parent and startle at how much that face looks like our own child’s.

But our gateway to eternal life [8] is wider still than this. We human beings are more than just a face. We are made not just of our genetics -- but rather, of our ideas, values, and beliefs, our traditions, hopes, and stories. Equally to our DNA, it is this -- our humanity -- that we are able to extend beyond the boundary of our death. When our children inherit our values, when our students advance our ideas, when the causes we’ve championed are taken up by others, when our stories are retold by the people whose lives we’ve touched -- some part of us is reborn in the world, even long after we have died.

This, then, is our task: to create, to teach, to build, to serve -- to prove through our actions that birth is stronger than death. This is why, on the High Holy Days, we are forced to confront both the beginning and the end of life -- to force us to choose how we will live: in constant fear of our eventual death, or inspired by the fact that we ever were born.

***

“To everything there is a season, and a time for every purpose under heaven.” There is a time to be born. And there is a time to die. And in between them, there is a messier time -- where birth must collide with death, where joy must meet with sorrow, where victory and pain and defeat all must intermingle: a tangled, disorderly time known as life.

On the High Holy Days, we pray that we might be inscribed in the Book of Life. Like all good books, our lives must come to an end. And like all good books, our lives will contain many stories that are messy and left unresolved. But like all good books, even after they are finished and have been put back on the shelf, our life’s story can always be retold -- and in this way, it will outlast us. We may close the cover and kiss the binding, but the story is written forever -- forever inscribed, the Book of our Life.

__________
[1] Ecclesiastes 3:1-8
[2] “Adam b’chayav / A Man Doesn’t Have Time”
[3] I am grateful to my mentor and friend, Rabbi Ellen Lippmann, in whose writings I was introduced to Annie Dillard and Leon Kass. See, specifically, her “Sermon in a Dream” in her book Raising My Voice (CCAR Press).
[4] The Hebrew word for “ark” is aron; so too, the Hebrew word for “casket” is aron.
[5] Simcha Paull Raphael, “Grief and Bereavement,” in Jewish Pastoral Care, ed. Friedman, p. 426.
[6] Harari, Yuval Noah. Sapiens, p. 266-267: “Of all mankind’s ostensibly insoluble problems, one has remained the most vexing, interesting and important: the problem of death itself. Before the late modern era, most religions and ideologies took it for granted that death was our inevitable fate. Moreover, most faiths turned death into the main source of meaning in life. Try to imagine Islam, Christianity, or the ancient Egyptian religion in a world without death. These creeds taught people that they must come to terms with death and pin their hopes on the afterlife, rather than seek to overcome death and live forever here on earth. … That is the theme of the most ancient myth to come down to us -- the Gilgamesh myth of ancient Sumer. … He returned home empty-handed, as mortal as ever, but with one new piece of wisdom. When the gods created man, Gilgamesh had learned, they set death as man’s inevitable destiny.”
[7] This idea is articulated beautifully in Leon Kass’s article “L’Chaim and Its Limits”: https://www.firstthings.com/article/2001/05/lchaim-and-its-limits-why-not-immortality
[8] For a stirring narrative exploration of this theme, see Dara Horn’s novel Eternal Life.

Nomi Yael bat Daniel u-Me'irah

This afternoon, we welcomed our daughter Nomi into the covenant of the Jewish people and gave her her Hebrew name. Below are the remarks we shared about her name.

***

Our sweet Nomi,

Your name, Nomi Yael, is after two of the strongest women in the Hebrew Bible.

Your first name, Nomi, is a character in the Book of Ruth who discovers her strength through acts of kindness. Nomi’s life is one that is marked by tragedy. And yet despite her life’s many challenges, “nevertheless, she persisted.” Nomi finds strength through her relationship with her daughter-in-law, Ruth. The two women go through life caring for one another, and discover that acts of kindness enable them to overcome adversity and heal.

Your middle name, Yael, is a character in the Book of Judges. In Hebrew, Yael literally means “ibex” -- which is a type of mountain goat with great, majestic horns. Standing atop a desert cliff, guarding her territory with her horns upraised, an ibex is a symbol of might and power. So too with the character Yael. She is a symbol of power -- a warrior, who uses her cunning and bravery to slay her people’s greatest foe.

Nomi Yael. Your name carries the legacy of two strong Jewish women: Nomi, who symbolizes kindness, and Yael, who symbolizes power.

As Nomi shows us, we must learn to be kind -- to practice empathy, listening, compassion, and big-heartedness. And although these qualities might sometimes be perceived as “soft,” there is a true strength in kindness -- a gentle strength that can mend what has been broken.

And as Yael shows us, we must also learn to embrace our power -- to be bold, to take a stand, to raise our voice, to protest and resist. And although these qualities are often perceived as brash when they are worn by women, the historical moment that you have been born into shows, maybe even demands, that women must step boldly into their power.

We have found, and we hope that you will find too, that life requires both of these qualities: both kindness and power, both the gentle and the bold -- Nomi and Yael.

***

Your middle name, Yael, is also after my [Leah's] dad, your Papa Jonny -- whose Hebrew name was Yonatan. 

Your Papa Jonny had a certain magic about him -- a spark that transformed even the most everyday of activities into the most amazing adventure. If he took you out to a restaurant, he called it not just a good restaurant or his favorite restaurant -- it was “the greatest restaurant in the history of the world.” He was so taken with the magic of the iPhone that he would call you from his iPhone just to tell you that he was calling from his iPhone. And he knew how to deliver a killer toast and write a heartfelt letter -- never missing an opportunity to put pen to paper and tell the people he loved just how much they meant to him. He believed that life can and ought to feel special, to feel magical, and he wanted everyone to come along for the ride.

This magic -- his gregariousness, his playfulness, his generosity of heart -- was magnetic. People were drawn to him because he made the ordinary feel extraordinary. He was beloved everywhere he went, but it was us, his family, who were the recipients of his most spectacular magic -- his everyday, ordinary love. And although he did have a tendency for the hyperbolic, he would have actually thought that you and your sister were “the greatest in the history of the world.” And I have no doubt that you would have felt the same way about him.

***

Nomi Yael -- we hope that like your biblical namesakes, you will cultivate both kindness and power, recognizing the strength in both.

And we hope that like your Papa Jonny, you will discover that life can, and perhaps ought to feel magical.

But most importantly, we hope that as you carry these names with you, that you will make for yourself your own name in the world.

We love you.

A National Treasure

Last week, we learned of the death of one of the great writers of our time -- the novelist Philip Roth. Roth was an American icon -- a national treasure. His prose was dark, funny, lyrical, and human. And although his stories often featured everyday people going about their everyday lives, he nevertheless managed to explore the deepest of human themes.

 But among all of Roth’s themes, perhaps none was as mysterious as the question of identity. Roth himself was Jewish. Virtually all of his novels feature Jewish characters and their Jewish neighbors living in Jewish cities and dealing with life’s Jewish dilemmas. And yet, despite the unmistakably Jewish content of his writing, throughout his long career, Roth continually rejected the claim that his books should be considered Jewish literature.

 Literary critics find this rejection astounding. Roth’s stories are deeply, thickly Jewish. And yet, Roth himself insisted that they were not Jewish literature. In this way, Roth’s work is a perfect example of one of the core challenges that literary critics face -- the challenge of defining what exactly makes Jewish literature. What requirements must a book meet for it to be considered not just any old book, but a Jewish book? It is a question that the scholar Hana Wirth-Nesher has described as trying to “Defin[e] the Indefinable.”

Some critics claim that the essential defining feature of Jewish literature is that it is written by a Jewish author. But this claim quickly falls apart. Maurice Sendak was Jewish. Does that mean that his children’s book Where the Wild Things Are is, by definition, a Jewish book? Other critics claim that a book becomes a Jewish book if it contains some obviously Jewish theme -- say, for example, the theme of striving to live an ethical life. But this claim, too, quickly falls apart. To Kill a Mockingbird is clearly about ethical living -- but it is clearly not a Jewish book. Still other critics claim that a book becomes Jewish if it is written in a Jewish language. But this claim, too, quickly falls apart. Franz Kafka wrote in German; Dara Horn writes in English. Are their books not Jewish books? And still other critics claim that a piece of literature becomes Jewish if it deals with Jewish religion. But of course, this claim, too, quickly falls apart. Emma Lazarus’s sonnet that is engraved on the base of the Statue of Liberty -- “give me your tired, your poor” -- is entirely secular in content, but it may be one of the most Jewish poems ever written.

It is nearly impossible to define Jewish literature. We might have to resign ourselves to saying that when it comes to Jewish literature, we just know it when we see it.

So what exactly, we might wonder, did Philip Roth mean when he said that his books were not Jewish literature? To answer this question, let us turn our attention to a recurring character who appears in several of Roth’s books, and who might provide us some insight into Roth’s thinking. Let us turn our attention to the character of Nathan Zuckerman -- Philip Roth’s alter ego.

Nathan Zuckerman appears in many of Philip Roth’s stories -- but we first meet him in a trilogy of books called Zuckerman Bound. The trilogy tells the story of a writer named Nathan Zuckerman and his lifelong conflict with his father. Zuckerman’s father is a first-generation American Jew, the child of immigrant parents, whose life has been defined by the struggle to find acceptance in American society. He is a podiatrist by profession -- though, as he often reminds his son, he would have been a medical doctor, had quotas on Jewish enrollment not prevented him from entering medical school. He believes that Fiddler on the Roof is the most important piece of theatre ever to hit the American stage -- because it will, in his own words, “win more hearts to the Jewish cause” (Zuckerman Unbound, 116). He is a man of principle, whose one and only guiding question in life is: Will it be good for the Jews?

But young Zuckerman finds his father’s worldview narrow and parochial. He resents his father’s Jewish anxieties, his obsession about feeling accepted in America. Zuckerman is interested in a world beyond Fiddler on the Roof. He yearns for the world of art and literature -- of Henry James, French cinema, fine wines, and obscure philosophers. To Zuckerman, the world seems enormous -- if only he can escape from the cramped jail cell known as Newark.

Zuckerman does eventually escape the confines of his hometown and he becomes a writer. In his books, he describes his childhood in Jewish Newark -- and in so doing, he paints the community there in a rather unflattering light. He unleashes his pent-up frustrations with his father. He portrays his Jewish characters as he remembers them from his youth. They believe themselves to be morally superior to their Christian neighbors, when in fact, they are mired in the worst of Jewish stereotypes; they are petty, status-obsessed, and vulgar.

Zuckerman’s books make him an instant literary celebrity -- but the Jewish community is outraged by them. They call him a self-hating Jew. They urge him not to hang Jewish dirty laundry out to dry in full view of their non-Jewish neighbors. He has broken every one of his father’s taboos, and he and his father find themselves estranged. And although he is filled with regret, Zuckerman maintains his course -- claiming that even fiction has a responsibility to tell the truth. Zuckerman chooses loyalty to his art over loyalty to his family -- and accepts the painful [1] consequences.

***

What does Philip Roth’s alter ego teach us about Philip Roth himself? What can we learn from Nathan Zuckerman about Philip Roth’s claim that he was not a Jewish writer and his books were not Jewish books?

An easy response -- but, I would argue, a sloppy response -- might charge that Roth was a self-hating Jew, that he avoided the label of “Jewish writer” so as to distance himself from his Jewishness. I do not find this argument convincing. If we are to take his alter ego as any indication of Roth’s own true feelings, we must note Zuckerman’s feelings of regret -- his pain over his estrangement from his father. What’s more, if Roth truly wanted to distance himself from his Jewishness, he could have written about any other myriad number of subjects. He could have buried his Jewish identity somewhere it would have never been seen, rather than writing more than 30 books, virtually all of which treat Jewish themes.

I think the answer to our question lies elsewhere. Late in his life, Roth did an interview with The New Yorker, in which he was asked if he liked being referred to as a Jewish writer. His response was short, simple, and telling. “I prefer,” he said, “to be called an American writer.”

This response says so much. “I prefer to be called an American writer.” Roth did not reject his Jewishness; he simply preferred to be known by another part of his identity -- that is, to be known as an American. And in making that preference known, Roth captured something that is deeply true about America: he understood that to be American means to have multiple identities.

Philip Roth was a Jewish-American writer -- a hyphenated identity, both Jewish and American, fully, and at the same time. His books were all about living in America with a hyphenated identity, and struggling to know when to choose one identity over the other. In Roth’s stories about Nathan Zuckerman, the struggle of hyphenated identity was indeed a Jewish struggle. But it is also a struggle that we Jews share with every other minority group in this country. It is a core truth of American life. 

So yes, in a very real sense, Philip Roth was a Jewish writer. But perhaps more importantly, he was a quintessentially American writer -- not just a literary giant, but also a national treasure.


------
[1] Literal pain -- both physical and emotional. In the trilogy’s third book, The Anatomy Lesson, Zuckerman is beset by an inexplicable physical pain in his neck and back. He wonders if it is a psychosomatic symptom of his rejection of his father and his Jewishness. The neck and back, after all, is where a yoke would lie -- and the obligation to Judaism is often described in the traditional sources (Mishnah Brachot 2:2) as “accepting the yoke of heaven.” Zuckerman’s emotional pain is also made clear in The Anatomy Lesson. In a moment of self-pity, Zuckerman reflects on his career: “A first-generation American father possessed by the Jewish demons, a second-generation American son possessed by their exorcism: that was his whole story” (p. 40).

[2] A final thought: in a twist of irony that only a literary genius could conjure up, the week in which Philip Roth died also brought with it another bit of news in the world of Jewish writers.

Michael Chabon (author of The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Clay and The Yiddish Policemen’s Union) had been invited to give the commencement address at the graduation ceremonies on the Los Angeles campus of Hebrew Union College-Jewish Institute of Religion -- the seminary of the Reform Movement. In his speech, Chabon made the case that Judaism is defined by the setting of boundaries. The Torah story begins, Chabon noted, with three cosmic acts of boundary-setting -- separating light from darkness, sea from sky, and ocean from dry land. We live our Jewish lives, Chabon continued, by observing the boundary between Shabbat and the rest of the week, the boundary between matzah and leavened bread, the boundary between kosher and not kosher, the boundary that is demarcated by an eiruv. In his remarks, Chabon challenged the graduates to push their boundaries, while continuing to maintaining their core commitments.

But on the internet and in the Jewish press, this central message was buried beneath what was otherwise only a passing segment of Chabon speech. In his remarks, Chabon was critical of Israel’s occupation of the West Bank (in which a boundary has been erected, in the form of the security barrier), as well as the Jewish community’s obsession over intermarriage (in which the boundaries of the Jewish people are at stake). These two remarks were, evidently for some, a boundary that Chabon should not have crossed -- a redline. For his remarks, Chabon was castigated on the internet -- with one website going so far as to call the speech anti-Semitic and to call Chabon a self-hating Jew.

And I thought to myself: if only Philip Roth were alive. I think he would be proud of Michael Chabon.

(Here is a response from the interim president of HUC-JIR and the dean of the LA campus.)

The Gospel of Judas

I grew up in a family that loved movie musicals. [1] The rack of VHS tapes underneath our television was stocked with all the classics: West Side Story, Singin’ in the Rain, Oklahoma! You name it, we’d seen it.

 But there was one musical that, although I had many opportunities to see it as a kid, I always backed away from: Andrew Lloyd Webber’s rock-opera Jesus Christ Superstar. Growing up in Tallahassee, Florida, on the edge of the bible belt, I felt no need to watch a musical about Jesus. I felt myself sufficiently surrounded by Christian religious influences. I did not feel the need to seek out more in my spare time.

And so it was somewhat begrudgingly this past Sunday evening that I tuned in to watch NBC’s live broadcast of the musical. And I have to say that, despite my hesitations, I really, really enjoyed it.

The musical tells the story of the final days of Jesus’s life: the last supper, Jesus’s arrest, his trial, and eventual crucifixion. Bible scholars refer to this story as “the passion narrative” -- where the word “passion” is used in its original Latin sense, meaning “suffering.” It is the story of Jesus’s suffering. But unlike most versions of that story, the musical is told not from the perspective of Jesus, but rather from the perspective of Judas -- the disciple who, according to Christian scriptures, betrays Jesus by turning him over to the authorities.

Through Judas’s eyes, we see a different version of the story than we may be used to. We see Jesus not only as a charismatic preacher who loves the downtrodden, but also, as the title of the musical suggests, as a “superstar” -- a pop-culture phenom, who quickly gets carried away by his own rising fame. Through Judas’s eyes, Jesus looks like a rockstar who is thrilled with all of his positive publicity and is veering dangerously close to believing all the hype about himself -- that he may in fact be the son of God. [2]  In this context, the 12 disciples become his groupies, more interested in riding Jesus’s coattails than in healing the sick. [3]  As Jesus’s popularity grows, so too do the threats against his life. And so Judas decides to turn his beloved teacher in -- with hopes that Jesus’s teachings, rather than his stardom, will live on.

In this way, the musical is like a familiar genre of Jewish literature -- the genre of midrash, in which events from the Bible are retold from a contemporary perspective in order to provide them with new layers of meaning. Jesus Christ Superstar is a modern Christian midrash -- and in my view, a powerful one.

And yet, watching the musical along with nine-and-a-half million other Americans this past Easter Sunday, I felt, at many points, uneasy. Because even when it is told from the perspective of Judas, the passion narrative presents what is, at best, an unflattering view of those Jews who did not follow Jesus. At worst, it flatly condemns those Jews for Jesus’s death. Consider the following narrative details that originate in the New Testament and find their way into the musical. We see Caiaphas, the Jewish High Priest, plotting for Jesus’s capture; the Sanhedrin, an ancient Jewish court, decreeing that Jesus is guilty; a riotous Jewish mob demanding that Jesus be crucified; and of course, there’s the villain himself -- Judas, the betrayer, whose very name could not be any more evocative of the Jewish people he’s made to represent.

For centuries, passion plays performed on Easter Sunday inflamed Europe’s Christian masses against their Jewish neighbors. Hitler famously described one particularly brutal passion play as “history’s most convincing portrayal of the menace of the Jew.” And although, in 1965, the Catholic Church issued a formal proclamation stating the Jews could no longer be blamed as Christ-killers, the epithet has continued to stick. Perhaps you remember Mel Gibson’s 2004 movie The Passion of the Christ -- and the controversy over whether the film carried a blatantly anti-Jewish message.

Consequently, mine was not the first set of eyebrows to raise over the possible anti-Jewish undertones of Jesus Christ Superstar. When the musical was first made into a film in 1973, it was sharply criticized by both the Anti-Defamation League and the American Jewish Committee. Despite its sympathetic portrayal of Judas, the musical is seemingly inexorably yoked to the anti-Jewish heritage of the Christian scriptures.

We cannot seek to rewrite the Bible. We can, however, seek to better understand the Bible, by exploring the historical circumstances in which it was written. We Jews are accustomed doing this with our own tradition -- reading the Hebrew Bible with a critical eye, employing the best of contemporary scholarship to help uncover the possible motives of the people who wrote it. [4]  We do this not to pick our tradition apart, or to devoid our people’s stories of their transformative power. Rather, we bring this critical lens to our biblical scholarship in order to add yet another layer of depth and understanding to the text we hold so dear. Especially in places where that text has been used not as a tool for spiritual elevation, but rather, as a bludgeon for denying the humanity of another human being, our scholarly lens is critically important.

I like Jesus Christ Superstar -- as a musical, and as an ingenious work of modern Christian midrash. But if we are to love the show even despite its anti-Jewish undertones, then we had better bring our critical lens to the text that informs it. We had better understand the Christian scriptures and the world that created them. [5]

First, let us understand that, although the New Testament tells stories from the life of Jesus, those stories were not written down until many decades after Jesus died.

Second, and perhaps more important, Christian scripture, like the Hebrew Bible, is not one book, but rather is a collection of books that are all on the same topic. It is like a library -- with a variety of books, composed by a variety of authors, writing in a variety of different times and places. As is the case in a library, some of these authors drew upon each other’s work. Other authors unwittingly contradicted each other’s work. Thus, when we talk about “the passion narrative,” we are not talking about a single story told sequentially in a single volume, but rather, about a patchwork of disparate stories sewn together over time.

If we carefully take apart the stitching, we can trace how different versions of the same story evolved and changed over time. For a helpful example, let’s follow one story that is central to the musical Jesus Christ Superstar. Let’s trace the evolution of the stories about the Last Supper and Judas’s betrayal of Jesus.

The earliest stratum of the New Testament is the letters of Paul -- written around the year 50 of the Common Era. In these letters, the Last Supper is described, but the detail about a betrayal is conspicuously absent. [6]  What’s more, not once in all of Paul’s letters is the name Judas even mentioned. It seems that in the 50s of the Common Era, the story of Judas’s betrayal did not yet exist.

But just a few short decades later, all of that would change. The next-written statum of the New Testament is the Gospel of Mark, written around the year 72 CE. This book not only mentions a betrayal, it ascribes that betrayal to Judas. [7]  In still the next stratum of the New Testament, the story takes on even greater detail. The Gospel of Matthew [8]  picks up where Mark had left off -- and adds that Judas, recognizing his guilt, decides to take his own life.

Using our critical lens, we see that there is no one story of Judas at the Last Supper. Rather, there is a patchwork of stories that evolved over time, one building upon another, which were eventually sewn together into what we now call the Christian scriptures.

But we ought to wonder: what happened in those critical decades between the writing of the first stratum and the second? What happened that caused Mark to write a story about Judas’s betrayal when Paul, only twenty years earlier, had seemingly never heard of such a story? To answer this question, we need to understand the historical context in which the New Testament was written.

In the year 64 CE, a disastrous fire tore through the city of Rome. Perhaps you’ve heard the charge that the emperor, Nero, fiddled while Rome burned. That charge is debatable. But what we can verify [9]  is that Nero blamed the fire on the Rome’s burgeoning Christian community. Nero captured and killed Christians by the hundreds. Those that he didn’t kill, he tortured, and compelled them to turn in their fellow Christians who were in hiding. These events rocked the early Christian community, imperiling their safety throughout the Roman empire.

Meanwhile, only two years later, in 66 CE, a Jewish revolt against Roman rule broke out in Jerusalem. Rome bit back, and hard. And although the early Christians were not centrally involved in the revolt, they keenly felt its impact. Early Christians grew wary of being too closely associated with their rebelling Jewish neighbors -- with whom they shared a homeland, a religious tradition, and in many cases, family ties.

These events in the 60s of the Common Era -- Nero’s fire in Rome, and the Jewish revolt in Jerusalem -- destabilized the early Christian community. Naturally, they sought to ingratiate themselves to Rome and distance themselves from the Jewish rebels. What’s more, to buoy their strengths, early Christians needed a model for how a righteous person would respond to betrayal by a friend, as many of them were being betrayed by their friends unto Nero.

To address these needs, early Christians looked for inspiration to the book that they held sacred -- the Hebrew Bible. [10] They found there, in the Book of Genesis, the story of a group of twelve confidants, in which one of the twelve sold out another -- the story of Joseph and his brother Judah. [11] It was a perfect fit. The story of Joseph and Judah evolved into the story of Jesus and Judas.

The character of Judas quickly became the early Christians’ tool for distancing themselves from the Jewish rebels and ingratiating themselves with Rome. Other examples [12] would be built upon it, but the character of Judas would remain the symbol par excellence of the New Testament’s anti-Jewish sentiment.

And it is for precisely this reason that I love the musical Jesus Christ Superstar so much. Because, although the show may be prone to many of the New Testament’s regular anti-Jewish themes, the show also does something unique. It gives Judas a fair chance -- a chance to tell his side of the story.

As Jews, we, too, need to understand Judas’s side of the story -- not by writing a musical about him, but rather, by learning as much as we can about the Christian scriptures and the world that shaped them.

If I could, I would tell a younger version of myself not to back away from watching Jesus Christ Superstar, but rather, to lean in and learn as much about the story as possible. If I could, I would tell that younger version of myself that it is only by understanding the world that shaped the Bible that we can come to understand the world that the Bible has shaped.

------
[1] The title of this sermon refers to a non-canonical (Coptic) book -- pseudonymously ascribed to Judas, which is possibly dateable to the 2nd/3rd century CE -- entitled The Gospel of Judas. That book contains imagined conversations between Judas and Jesus, in which Jesus instructs Judas to turn him over to the authorities. The Gospel of Judas was published in English, with great fanfare, in 2006.
[2] See, for example, the lyrics to the show’s opening song, “Heaven on Their Minds,” sung by Judas: “You've started to believe / The things they say of you. / You really do believe / This talk of God is true. / And all the good you've done / Will soon get swept away. / You've begun to matter more / Than the things you say.”
[3] See, for example, the lyrics (which, to my eye, are intended to be understood as haughty) to “The Last Supper,” sung by the Apostles: “Always hoped that I'd be an apostle. / Knew that I would make it if I tried. / Then when we retire, we can write the Gospels, / So they'll still talk about us when we've died.”
[4] This method of biblical scholarship is broadly referred to as “source criticism.” For a crash course, see: Friedman, Richard Elliott. Who Wrote the Bible? San Francisco: Harper One, 1997.
[5] In this effort, I am deeply indebted to my teacher, Rabbi Michael Cook, Ph.D. Much of the research that follows is based on his book: Modern Jews Engage the New Testament: Enhancing Jewish Well-Being in a Christian Context. Woodstock, VT: Jewish Lights Publishing, 2008.
[6] See I Corinthians 11:23. Cook and others (The Jewish Annotated New Testament, Oxford University Press) argue that the word in that verse that is often translated as “betrayed” would be better translated as “handed over [unto death].”
[7] Mark 14:43
[8] Written circa 85 CE. See Matthew 27:3ff.
[9] Tacitus, Annals, xv.44
[10] The traditional Christian argument would be that the events in the Hebrew Bible predicted the events of Jesus’s life. A source-critical eye recognizes that it is far more likely that Christian scriptures borrowed motifs from the Hebrew Bible (just as the Hebrew Bible borrowed from its antecedent sources).
[11] See Genesis 37:26. The parallels continue. Judah, like Judas, betrays his brother/confidant: (1) at a meal, and (2) in exchange for a small sum of silver.
[12] For example: the Sanhedrin trial and the Barabbas episode. For a detailed discussion, see Cook, chs. 11-12.