To Understand and Discern – להבין ולהשכיל

In his article “The Problem of the Form of a Jewish Theology,” our teacher Rabbi Dr. Borowitz likened doing Jewish theology to arranging items on a flowchart. He argued: When you examine what Heschel, or Kaplan, or Buber has to say about God, we find that they are all quite similar. The interesting differences between them become apparent only when we zoom out, and look to see where God fits among the other elements on each thinker’s flowchart. 

For example: Heschel arranges the elements thus: God → Torah → Jewish people. That is, God reveals the Torah to the Jewish people. Another thinker (Leo Baeck) arranges things differently: God → Jewish people → Torah. That is, God’s universal ethics are filtered through the particular lens of the Jewish people in order to produce the Torah. [1]

I’d like to make the case here for a flowchart that is informed by Kaplan: Jewish people → Torah → God. That is, the Jewish people has recorded our best (and sometimes our prickliest) ideas in our Torah tradition, which allows us to reach towards the divine.

Despite the natural human tendency to assign the greatest importance to beginnings and to endings, I do not by this arrangement intend to emphasize the Jewish people (our starting point) or God (our end point). Rather, for me, the most important element in the flowchart is the middle one: our Torah tradition. Our Torah tradition plays the critical, linking role. It is the bridge that the Jewish people continues to build in our ongoing quest for the divine.

To be clear, when I use the phrase “our Torah tradition,” I do not narrowly mean the Five Books of Moses, nor do I mean the broader corpus of the Hebrew Bible and Rabbinic Literature. Rather, I mean all kinds of Jewish critical thinking and creative expression: our people’s stories, songs, poems, essays, ethical dilemmas, political theories, mystical visions, scientific discoveries, and so much else – Isaiah as well as Einstein, Deborah as well as Dara Horn.

As a rabbi, I find that some of my best work is in doing talmud Torah – that is, in grappling along with our congregants with the best of Jewish ideas. I have found that 21st century American Jews sincerely want to explore the interesting Jewish ideas that they never encountered in their adolescence – and, moreover, that they want a Jewish framework for thinking about the most pressing questions of our times, not to mention the questions that are timeless.

Exploring Jewish ideas is a hallmark of Jewish life. Indeed, we believe it to be a commandment – that is, a sacred responsibility: v’dibarta bam b’shivt’cha b’veitecha, the Book of Deuteronomy instructs us. We believe that it makes our lives holy – that is, that it adds meaning to our existence: asher kidshanu, we say, before we engage in the act of learning. Although to the outsider, study may seem unproductive or pointless, we believe that it is as important as any of our ethical commitments: talmud Torah k’neged kulam, the Mishnah says.

Rabbi Joseph Telushkin [2] makes the case that one of the most salient differences between early Rabbinic Judaism and proto-Christianity was the Jewish emphasis on study and learning. The great Jewish sage of that era, Hillel, is famous for his maxims about study – such as: “Do not say, ‘When I have time, I will study,’ lest you never have time,” and “The rest is commentary. Now go and study.” Noticeably, he had very little to say about prayer. By contrast, Hillel’s younger contemporary, Jesus, had the opposite orientation – saying little about learning, and much about prayer: “Ask, and it will be given to you,” and “When you pray, go into your room and close the door. Then your Father, who sees what is done in secret, will reward you.”

For Hillel, study fulfills the same sort of spiritual function that prayer fulfills for Jesus. It is not merely an enriching intellectual exercise. Rather, it is a way to encounter the divine.

Israel Prize recipient Rabbi Aharon Lichtenstein [3] makes a similar point. Writing about the meaning of Torah lishmah [“study for its own sake”], he explains: “In part, talmud Torah is oriented towards accomplishment – with the acquisition of knowledge and skills being obvious goals. However the process is no less important than its resolution. Even if, after one’s studies, one has retained nothing, the experience itself – live contact with the epiphanous divine will, as manifested through Torah – can that be less than invaluable?”

Following our flowchart (in which the Jewish people comes first), we would reframe Rabbi Lichtenstein’s formulation. It is not: God → Torah → Jewish people. That is, it is not that the divine will is manifested through Torah to the Jewish people, as Rabbi Lichtenstein expresses it.

Rather, it is the other way around: Jewish people → Torah → God. That is, the Jewish people has created a record (our Torah tradition, we call it) of our quest for the divine – a record of our seeking after the ideals that we associate with God: truth, beauty, meaning, comfort, mystery, wonder, complexity…

And when we contemporary Jews engage with that record, we, too, might gain a glimpse of the divine. [4]

_____

[1] Not every example is linear in its organization. Additionally, some examples use categories other than God, Torah, and Israel.

[2] In his book Hillel: If Not Now, When? (2010), “Chapter 12: The Jewish Sage and the Christian Messiah”

[3] In Contemporary Jewish Religious Thought (1972), edited by Arthur Cohen and Paul Mendes-Flohr. See the entry on “Study.”

[4] Given more space, I would arrange the flowchart thus: Jews of the past / present → God → Torah; Jews of the present → Torah → God. || That is, the Jewish people of the past and the present have had encounters with God, and recorded those encounters in our Torah tradition. And Jewish people of the present can engage with our Torah tradition, and therein encounter God.

Trump: Mystic, or Messiah?

An item in my podcast feed recently captured my attention – where two interesting people were having a conversation about an interesting topic. 

The interesting people were two New York Times opinion columnists: Ezra Klein and Ross Douthat – who, together, make an odd couple. Ezra Klein is a political liberal; Ross is politically conservative. Ezra is Jewish; Ross is a devout Catholic. But despite these differences, the two of them are often able to come together to discuss important contemporary issues in a thoughtful and nuanced way. But it wasn’t only the interesting people who caught my attention. 

Even moreso, I was intrigued by the advertised topic of their conversation. According to the episode description, Ross and Ezra were going to be discussing the surprising confluence of two wildly different phenomena. As the summary read: “This is a conversation about [on the one hand] religious mysticism – and the role it is playing [on the other hand] in the Trump administration.” 

In rabbinical school, I wrote my thesis on contemporary Jewish mysticism. So of course, I was intrigued by this podcast episode, and wanted to hear what Ross and Ezra had to say. 

In their conversation, they described how some supporters of President Trump view him as a quasi-mystical figure – a person who is so significant that he exceeds the expected image of your average political leader, and instead can best be understood in religious, mystical terms.

Ross and Ezra point out that, like so many mystical figures throughout history, Trump is seen – both by those who support him, and also by those who oppose him – as dramatically ushering in some new and consequential era on the world stage, whether for good or for ill. For his supporters, the story of his unlikely political comeback seems to have a certain mythic quality to it: from his seemingly having hit rock bottom on January 6, to his triumphant return to the White House in an electoral college upset. What’s more, when he was nearly assassinated this past summer, he just so happened (in the eyes of some of his supporters) to tilt his head ever so slightly in just the right direction at just the right moment, and instead of the bullet killing him, it only grazed his ear – as if he were being guided by the hand of a protective angel.

This mystical interpretation of President Trump is fueled by the sociological trends of our era. Ours is a time in which fewer and fewer Americans are affiliating with traditional religious institutions, like churches or synagogues. As many commentators have pointed out, Americans are, instead, channeling our religious instincts into a different outlet – whereby our political convictions become our new religion. Against this backdrop, it is easy to understand how, in some circles, President Trump gets elevated from merely a charismatic political leader into a figure with a much grander, quasi-mystical religious significance.

As is often the case, I found Ezra Klein’s and Ross Douthat’s comments on this matter to be incisive and clarifying. And yet, there is one thing about their analysis – one very important thing – to which I strongly object.

To be clear: I am not about to propose that I am a better interpreter of our political and social climate than these two New York Times opinion columnists. Rather, the piece of their analysis that I object to is this: they seem not to accurately understand the meaning of the word “mystical.”

I do not mean to quibble over religious terminology. Rather, I believe that something larger is at stake. The point is: by using the wrong religious term, Ross and Ezra have partly misunderstood what it is that some of Trump’s supporters see in him.

“Mystical” is one of those fancy religious words that is often said but seldom understood. It is commonly misused as a synonym for the word “magical” – as in: By some mystical power, the bullet only grazed his ear.

But in fact – as I learned while writing my rabbinical thesis – the word “mystical” does indeed have a specific definition. Mysticism is: the spiritual intuition that all things in the universe are one. In our day-to-day experience of the world, we perceive that the universe is comprised of many distinct and separate entities – that a tree is different from a cat, which is different from a rock, which is different from your house, which is different from your grandmother, which is different from the color blue, which is different from the planet Mars. But in the mystical religious imagination, all of these things – though they appear to be separate – are, at the deepest layer of truth, united in a single fabric of reality.

Jewish mystics find hints of this deep truth hidden in the words of our prayer book. For the mystical mind, the Shema is no mere claim that the Jewish people believes in only one God. Rather, it is a radical claim that all things in the universe are, in fact, One.

Would that Ezra Klein and Ross Douthat were correct! If only President Trump were truly a mystical figure! A president who recognized that, on the deepest level of reality, everything in the universe is united – now that’s a president I could (potentially) get excited about!

But Ross and Ezra mislabeled how Trump is seen by some of his supporters. What they described is not a quasi-mystical figure. What they described is, more accurately, a quasi-messianic figure.

Not to be confused with religious mysticism (which, again, is the belief that all things in the universe are one), religious messianism is the belief that some great and heroic figure – the messiah – will come into the world in order to save humanity. The messiah, it is believed, will overturn the corruptions of our society. He will usher in a better era, and take us back to the perfect world that we once inhabited in the Garden of Eden. To (perhaps crudely) blend a religious idea with a political slogan, the messiah will “Make the World Eden Again.”

When Ross and Ezra described the religious significance that some people project onto Trump, they were not describing a mystical figure, but rather, a messianic figure – and, specifically, a Christian messianic figure. The Christian messiah, of course, is Jesus. And just as Jesus was resurrected from the dead, so too has Trump made an unlikely political comeback. Just as Jesus was unfairly persecuted by the Roman Empire, so too do some of Trump’s supporters feel that he has been unfairly persecuted, by establishment politicians and by the liberal media. Just as Jesus’s suffering was intended to vicariously absorb the suffering of his followers, so too has Trump made a similar claim about the way that he has suffered political attacks – saying, in an almost direct quote of the Gospel of John (John 15:20): “They’re not coming after me. They’re coming after you – and I’m just standing in their way.”

When we are able to more accurately name the messianic significance that some of Trump’s supporters project onto him, we might be better able to understand the implications of that terminology – some of which are alarming.

Many books of the Bible imagine what the world will be like when the messiah comes. We might be familiar with some of the more idyllic imagery: a world that will be tranquil and at peace, in which “nation shall no longer lift up sword against nation,” and “the wolf shall lie down with the lamb.”

But the biblical writers also imagined that, in order to bring about this idyllic world, the messiah would first need to wreak havoc and desolation: civilizations would be destroyed; humans would be subjected to immense suffering; the righteous would be vindicated, but the wicked would be condemned with terrifying scenes of fiery punishment.

Let us hope that those who understand Trump in quasi-messianic terms do not have this sort of process in mind.

Unfortunately, the problems with messianic thinking do not end there. As Rabbi Donniel Hartman has pointed out, messianic thinking is a way of retreating into a world of fantasy. On this score, it has two weaknesses. First: it imagines (unrealistically) that some superhuman will swoop in and solve the world’s problems for us. And second: it imagines (again, unrealistically) that a world without suffering is possible. This kind of magical thinking is impractical on both fronts: it both does too little, while also expecting too much.

It is perhaps for this reason that our Jewish tradition is, at best, ambivalent about messianism. It is true that Maimonides – widely considered to be the greatest Jewish philosopher of all time – did indeed include messianism among his list of the Thirteen Principles of Jewish Faith. But we should note that Maimonides advocated for a sort of restrained messianism. On the one hand, he believed that the messiah would come; on the other hand, he believed that the messiah would not be coming anytime soon. After Maimonides’ death, his students would summarize his thinking on the matter in the famous liturgical poem Ani Ma’amin. They wrote: “I believe with complete faith in the coming of the messiah – and although he may tarry, nevertheless, I wait.”

As Maimonides suggests: it is unlikely that the messiah is coming anytime soon in order to magically save us from all our problems. We should likely be wary of anyone who is believed to have such a purpose.

It is conceivable that someone with a mystical intuition – someone who believes that, at the deepest level of reality, all things are united – that a true mystic could potentially make a good president.

But we should, by contrast, be extremely cautious about how much political power we are willing to grant to a quasi-messianic figure. History – and especially, Jewish history – is littered with the carnage of would-be messiahs. Let’s not go that way again.

A Radical Idea to Save Shabbat

I think weekly Friday night Shabbat services are no longer the best model for the 21st century liberal American synagogue.

The honest truth is: in many communities, Friday night Shabbat services are the part of the week in which the congregation is least engaged in the synagogue. At Temple Beth Shalom (450 households; likely 1200+ people), if we are not having a special event, we are likely to see only around 15 people. I understand the argument that “the service was meaningful to those who attended.” But 15 people out of 1200+ is not robust synagogue engagement.

Instead of weekly Friday night Shabbat services, I’d propose: 

(1) Weekly 20-minute Kaddish ritual. Most of the people who come (to TBS, at least) on any given Friday evening are there to say Kaddish. Given this, we should do it as well as we can! Instead of 57 minutes of Shabbat, and 3 minutes of Kaddish, what if we built a brief, focused, weekly Kaddish ritual. Mourners would continue to get a personalized invitation when their loved one’s yahrzeit is approaching. We’d stand in a semicircle in front of the ark. We’d read poems, sing songs, have each person say the name of their loved one and share a brief remembrance, and offer the Mourner’s Kaddish together. If we did it well, my guess is that we’d see even higher participation among mourners than we currently do – knowing that the experience has been designed specifically with them in mind.

(2) Monthly, home-based, small-group Shabbat dinners. If we had only a 20-minute Kaddish ritual each week instead of a full service, this would free up resources to engage a wider swath of the congregation on Friday evenings. Imagine if every household in the congregation was invited to be part of a cohort with 5-10 other families. Each cohort would meet once a month in one another’s homes for Shabbat dinner and lively conversation. Meals would be potluck. Each month, a collection of short articles, essays, stories, and poems would be compiled and circulated to all the cohorts, as food-for-thought for the dinner table conversation. We could train congregants to be conversation facilitators. If we staggered the dinners so that they don’t all fall on the same week, the clergy could rotate among them from week to week. The meal would be ritualized – with Shabbat blessings, and with each family invited to share one thing that is happening in their lives. Over the course of the year(s), members of each cohort would feel a deep sense of belonging with one another.

(3) Monthly, community-wide Shabbat service. Once a month, all of the cohorts would come together at the synagogue for a celebratory, community-wide Shabbat service. Because it is happening only once a month, this service would be more intentionally and artfully crafted than a typical weekly service: with uplifting music, a smart and beautiful sermon, and roles for congregants to speak, sing, and chant Torah.

Doing this would allow us to: broaden engagement; deepen belonging; and do things well, not right.