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]
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[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.