Commitment & Controversy Living in Two Worlds: Volume 4

By Jeremy Rosen

Can one reconcile a scientific, intellectual, cultural world view with a commitment to a religious way of life? Jeremy Rosen believes you can and should combine them. His goal is to educate, to present different perspectives and arguments, in the hope that his readers will be encouraged to think for themselves and choose a way of life that suits their personalities, their histories and their priorities. No two people are identical, either mentally or physically, so that choice is essential to fulfil one’s aspirations and maintain one’s integrity.
This is my fourth collection of blogs and essays covering 2019 through 2021. It deals with Jewish religious and political issues, Bible, festivals, culture and ideas, and anti-Judaism. These pieces are designed to instruct and entertain without being too heavy or technical. And I am always delighted to get feedback.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Xlibris US
• Release date: Sep 16, 2021
• ISBN: 9781664193444

Jeremy Rosen

Jeremy Rosen is an orthodox rabbi. He was born in Manchester, United Kingdom, and studied philosophy at Cambridge University and yeshivot in Israel and qualified as a rabbi while at Mir Yeshiva in Jerusalem. He has occupied pulpits around the world and was principal of Carmel College, professor at the Faculty for Comparative Religion, director of Yakar UK, and rabbi of the Persian Community of Manhattan in New York.

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JUDAICA

HERESY

June 2021

The word heresy that we use nowadays to label an opinion regarded as wrong or dangerous, traces its origins initially to the Greek hairesis which simply meant a choice, being able to choose an idea or opinion. The concept of dangerous thoughts goes back a long way. Think of poor Socrates, condemned to death because the Athenians did not like what he taught. However, it was the early Church, after the Council of Nicea (325 CE) that defined correct Christian religious belief and established orthodoxy as a thing! Either Jesus was God as Constantine preferred, or Jesus was a lower level as Arius (250-336 CE) argued. So that heresy turned into the theological concept we are familiar with today. However, now we seem to have reverted to its earlier usage of any idea we do not like.

The Torah as a pre-Greek document was primarily concerned to combat idolatry and pagan practices. Although it certainly established certain fundamentals, there was no stated punishment for thinking independently or for rejecting an idea. It concentrated more on actions and behavior. It was more concerned with how people behaved and did not attempt to define ideas the way theologians did much later. There was a difference between challenging a person in authority and questioning concepts.

If we look at the cases of dissent in the Torah, they fall into two categories. Those that challenged leadership and those that challenged the law. Miriam was punished for speaking out against Moses (Numbers 12) and Korach for undermining the leadership (Numbers 16), even if later the rabbis turned it into a challenge of the law over fringes. Otherwise, there were the cases of the man who cursed God in public (Leviticus 24.10); the man who gathered wood on Shabbat (Numbers 15.32), and those men or cities who turned to idolatry and persuaded others to do so and reject Torah (Deuteronomy 13).

In Biblical Hebrew, the word CHeReM which nowadays is often translated as excommunication, was used in the Bible to mean destroying idolatry and idolaters. It also was used to refer to property that was consecrated to the Sanctuary or God and not be used for other purposes. But there is no mention in the Torah of Cherem regarding banning or excluding a Jew from the community.

From the period of the Judges and throughout the two kingdoms there were divisions and conflicts over political authority and idolatry. The prophets challenged the corruption of monarchs and priests. But their main complaints were about ethical standards and religious hypocrisy. If only that were the case nowadays!

After the Babylonian exile and the return to Judea, different sects began to emerge within Judaism. Amongst the priesthood there were rival camps of the Zadokites and Boethites, both political and ritual There were Samaritans Kuti, and later other renegades, Min. The Talmud debates the status of each of these. But most of the discussion is about status in the community rather than theology. The term Apikoros (obviously derived from the Greek name Epicurus) was used in the Talmud to describe someone who had no respect for authority. Only later did it come to be the favored word to define a heretic. The various Dead Sea Sects and the early Christians were certainly rebels but there is no record of their being excommunicated.

Two thousand years ago the dominant philosophical influence was Greek. Its schools of thought offered different ways of looking at life and the world. philosophy with its rival schools of thought. Some pursued Eudaimonia, happiness. Stoics thought reason and self-discipline were the true paths. Cynics rejected pleasure, Hedonists indulged, and Epicureans focused on knowledge and rationality but not self-denial. And you can see how the rabbis of the Mishna responded to these challenges by declaring that certain ideas were unacceptable. But instead of saying that doubters had to leave the community, they simply said that if they rejected a spiritual option, they would simply forfeit a place in the spiritual afterlife.

The Mishna (Avot 2.14) is the first example of the word Apikoros. "R. Eliezer said Know what to answer to the Apikoros." And the Talmud (TB Sanhedrin 38b)¹ describes an Apikoros as someone who challenges." It goes on to clarify that knowing what to answer applies to a non-Jew because if it is a Jew, he is simply stubborn in his refusal to listen because he opposes rabbinic authority. But most of the words commonly used in the Talmud to describe opponents to established Jewish authority are the Min, sectarian, the Mumar Rebel, and Kuti which terms came to be a code for Christian as Christianity began to censor Jewish texts.

The Talmud discusses the Mumar, the rebel as someone who rejects Jewish law. But divides the category into those who defy the law simply by giving in to physical temptation, the Mumar influenced by his desires, and on the far more serious problem of someone who refuses to obey Jewish law out of provocation, an ideological opposition (TB Horyot 11a).

The common examples of challenges to rabbinic authority are the well-known cases of Elisha Ben Abuyah, known as Acher, the other one, who turned away from Rabbinic law and yet his pupil R. Meir still studied Torah with him. Akavya Ben Mehallalel who disagreed over legal principles and refused to recant even when offered a top position if he did. Whereas R. Yehoshua and R.Yosi HaGlili disagreed but were prepared to bow to the majority opinion and to keep their dissenting opinions to themselves. The Rebellious Elder, the Zakeyn Mamre, was only defined as such if he continued to act on his minority opinion and insisted on its legitimacy in practice (Tosefta Sanhedrin 14.12). The reaction to those who refused to accept the majority opinion on matters of Jewish law was the term Nidui, which meant literally to be sent out to wander.

In other words, it was socialization and preserving rabbinic authority that were (and remain) the foundation of establishment opposition to different opinions. Not necessarily the ideas themselves.

Once Christianity and Islam arose in conflict with Judaism, they began to have an impact on Jewish communities and the ways they thought. They accused Jews of not having a ‘proper’ religious system of theology. This was why Maimonides felt obliged to formulate the Thirteen Principles of Faith.

The earliest statement of correct Jewish thoughts is to be found in the Talmud in Sanhedrin, where a list is given of prescribed ideas (TB Sanhedrin 86a).

The Mishnaic formulation is

"These are the people who have no portion in the World to Come. Those who say that resurrection is not to be found in the Torah, that the Torah does not come from Heaven, and an Apikoros (but there is no definition of what this means), R. Akiva says anyone who reads books excluded from the canon or is superstitious."

When the Gemara asks why the reaction was to say that such people have no portion in the world to come as opposed to being cast out or some other punishment, the reply is that since they do not believe in Life after Death, they will have no part in it." But notice there is no statement that they cease to be Jewish or that they are to be punished in any way in this world.

And when we look into the meaning of Apikoros the Talmud says that it applies to a non- Jewish Apikoros too, so that it seems the issue is a specific philosophical outlook. Then it goes on to say that it applies to anyone who rejects the Covenant with Abraham (which refers to the custom of trying to disguise one’s circumcision to compete in the naked Graeco-Roman games. But the Rabbis go further to describe the Apikoros as despising rabbis and their authority or their interpretations.

These were indeed important fundamental ideas that encapsulated Jewish traditional thought. But theological uncertainty or even dissent was not as serious in defining a Jew as adherence to the Torah in its written and oral form. The second reason is that as Marc Shapiro has so impressively illustrated in The Limits of Orthodoxy, many great authorities did not accept either the formulation or the number as being absolute. And Maimonides himself obscures the definition of heresy when he says in his Mishne Torah (Hilchot Mamrim 3.14) that "One who does not believe in the Oral Torah is not to be identified with the rebellious elder spoken of in the Torah but is classed with the epicureans (heretics).

During the post-Talmudic era, Judaism spread far and wide but still managed to establish a pretty universal coherent religious system and identity. The only serious internal schism in Judaism was with the Karaite movement that flourished in Mesopotamia around the first millennium (and still survives). They were a movement that rejected Rabbinic Judaism. But their impact soon waned. Within much of the Sephardi world, many authorities were happy to consider them as Jews who had strayed but remained faithful to Torah.

We have all heard of Spinoza being placed in Cherem in 1656. But what was that? Excommunication is not a Jewish concept. But communities did have the authority to ask someone to leave. During the Medieval era, Jewish communities came under the control of different political and religious systems. They were autonomous only regarding their internal affairs. The Kahal, the communal authority was powerful within Jewish life. Penalties were the only ways of keeping Jews living in their confined communities under control. The Cherem or the similar term Nidui, rejection, became the major tool of exercising authority by excluding a Jew from the community which in practice ended up denying him the services of the community. In exile, the only alternative was to join a different religion. Only after the misnamed enlightenment could Jews opt for a secular or solitary existence.

The Seventeenth Century saw the increasing impact of the Inquisition in the Christian world and Shiite aggression in Islam. So that new heterodox Jewish schisms attracted much more aggressive responses. Whether it was Shabtai Zvi (1626-1676), Jacob Frank (1726-1791), Spinoza (1632-1677), The Baal Shem Tov (1698-1760), or Reform Judaism (and in no way do I intend to equate them all) they did all attract a Cherem. Nowadays, in Jewish life, the term Apikoros is bandied about all the time. It is used against anyone who someone else wishes to discredit. It has become in fact, as meaningless as any other curse. And I haven’t heard of anyone being put into Cherem recently

Any attempt to control how people think in a modern world with access to so many different ideas is bound to fail. If only because human minds function so differently. You can recommend, advise, teach, and persuade. But you cannot compel people to think. Only actions can be imposed, not thoughts. This has always been the Jewish way. It is not the thinking that is essential, but actions that count (Avot.1.17). As for the term heresy, I believe it is now so misused it either ought to be re-defined or consigned to the dustbin of theological history

MODESTY

Jan 2021

Once sexuality was something to be kept private, hidden, or restricted. But now, limits that were once imposed on what could be shown in public have slowly withered away or been diluted. Hardly a movie or TV series nowadays is without scenes of explicit and graphic sexual intercourse.

In the 1950s when TV began to expand its reach, many orthodox rabbis at the time publicly expressed their horror at this new medium and tried to ban it. My father wrote a letter to the press arguing that any medium can be distorted and misused, but that one ought to engage with its challenges, be selective, and learn how to evaluate good informative and creative programs from the dross. It is like driving a car. It is a useful tool if it is driven carefully, otherwise, it is a machine of death. It would be naive not to think that by hiding from television or the internet one can protect one’s children from its negative aspects. But of course, as with childrearing in general, if parents do not set boundaries and disciplines, their children will suffer. I do not think my father was wrong. But like us all, he had no idea the extent to which the dross would become so mainstream, so pervasive, so corrosive of human values.

Rabbinic bans and anathemas have done little to curb the use of the internet. Censorship has never worked. Banning always makes something more attractive. As the Bible says, stolen water tastes sweet, and food eaten in secret tastes better. I often saw young very orthodox children denied Television at home seeking out less strict relatives, standing watching public screens, and finding all kinds of stratagems to see what their parents had forbidden.

There are benefits of course in any new medium. Never, have so many people had such immediate access to so much information. The complete library of Jewish texts is online for all with the skills to see. Rabbinic opinions over thousands of years can be accessed by anyone. All without having to spend years memorizing, revising, and disciplining ourselves. And so many new opportunities are available to people, including the very religious, to make money and support themselves.

But it comes at a cost. We become reliant on our screens and less on our minds. Thank goodness for Orthodox law that insists we turn off our screens at least one day a week. Even so, we are constantly being tempted and seduced. All bodily functions have important, useful, and beneficial, but we do not show them all in public. Every one of them can be abused and misused. What gives pleasure can also lead to nausea. Sex is wonderful, in private. But now it is on display everywhere. It surrounds us in the environment, in public dress, on billboards and advertising, in theatres and entertainment, and now on our screens.

What should we do? Of course, we should teach and give our children the tools to deal with the challenge. Public sex has always been there, ever since pagan temple prostitution. Judaism has always advocated enjoyment and pleasure. But with constraints designed to enhance pleasure, not to deny it. One of the tools of constraint has been modesty. What does modesty mean? Can it be taught or legislated?

Modesty means, as the Talmud says, never saying or doing anything that makes you look over your shoulder to be sure no one is watching. But it is almost impossible to find a universal standard in practice even within Orthodox religion. Modesty is something that for all its importance is hardly regulated in ancient Jewish law. It is meta-legal, implied as a sense of propriety and restraint and variable. A society, each society, decides what is modest and what is not. Sadly, most western societies have now almost completely removed any sense of modesty. Quite the contrary, we are constantly being exhorted to flaunt it. And exhibitionism is now a badge of success and honor.

The word we use for modesty in Hebrew is TSaNUah or TSeNiut. It emphasizes the value of human relations. It is not opposed to sex, quite the contrary. When the prophet Micah says that God requires of us three things, he says we must do justice, be kind, and walk before God in humility. He uses the word HaTSNeah. The same word as modesty. The root of the word means to protect or to cover. Behavior that should not be flaunted but kept under control. It can also mean cold, and icy. But I don’t think that this means we should all be frigid.

Most human beings are insecure, particularly teenagers. The pressure is to be part of the crowd, to conform. I remember from my days as a school principal, how often pupils used to suffer from peer group pressure and a desire to be liked and accepted. It was tough then. It is so much worse now. Selfies, of nudity or exhibitionism, are regarded as badges of honor and success. Our children are being shamed into being immoral and provocative. They are made to feel defective if they do not join in. People who dress in a sexually provocative want to be noticed, not as humans but as objects. Exhibitionism may gain the attention of others, but not the respect and love a person needs.

One can be elegant and attractive without having to reveal half of one’s body or more. If you doubt it goes to a Charedi wedding to see elegance, beauty, and modesty all in one person. When Psalms (Chapter 45) says the honor of a woman lies inside, it is not negating outward beauty. But insisting that beauty is enhanced by inner modesty. Rather than revealing all to the public glare. Modesty leaves room for fantasy, imagination, and above all respect. And all this applies to men just as much. Charedi men dress that way for a reason, even if as we know it does not always mean they behave.

Modesty may be unfashionable in many circles. We live in an increasingly pagan world. We must not allow it to drag us down to its level. Modesty requires us to be different.

ANGELS

February 2021

Abraham Lincoln at Gettysburg said that We are not enemies, but friends. We must not be enemies. Though passion may have strained, it must not break our bonds of affection. The mystic chords of memory will swell when again touched, as surely they will be, by the better angels of our nature.

Steven Pinker, not known for his religious faith wrote a well-received book The Better Angels of Our Nature: Why Violence has Declined. But I wonder, what did they or do we mean, when we talk about angels? Do they or did they ever exist?

When Jacob wrestled with an angel, described in the Bible as a man, what was it? The Torah says, And a man wrestled with him until dawn. And then whoever or whatever it was that he was fighting with goes on to say that Jacob will henceforth be called Yisrael, because "you struggled (Sarita) with God and man and survived." What does that mean? Fighting with God, as if God had a body to grapple with?

There is no word for angels in the Torah as distinct from a messenger. Both are referred to as Malachim. The great rationalist Maimonides thought that what we call angels were simply manifestations in human terms of the will of God. And in his Guide for the Perplexed, he said that Jacob’s encounter was a dream. In the popular description of the universe in his code of Jewish Law, the Mishneh Torah, he gave ten different levels of angels as being the ten emanations or manifestations of God. But they had absolutely no human form or identity.

Many commentators regarded angelic communication as no more than an imaginary encounter that could have just been in the mind’s eyes. A form of prophecy. What all this amounts to is that each one of us could be an angel in the sense that we might be playing a role in the unfolding of human destiny or some higher plan.

Yet for a thousand years European, Christian art, depicted angels as white-cloaked, fair-headed angelic beings, with magnificent, feathered wings and halos. Or as chubby little puttees, baby-faced naked babies with mini wings. You can see them in their thousands in art galleries and churches all around the world.

The portrayal of human and animal forms with wings goes back long, long before Christianity. In the Ancient Middle East winged humans and animals stood guard outside temples and palaces. They were symbols of power rising above and controlling human affairs. Or bestowing supernatural powers. Wings typically were ways of conveying something up there, in space, the heavens beyond the reach of humankind. In the way that to this very day, people speak about God being up there on in the Heavens. When logically God is just as much down there and in Australia!

Moses’s Tabernacle and Solomon’s Temple had golden cherubs, with baby faces and wings spread out across the Ark. They too were symbols of a higher power without giving it a precise human form. The Prophets used words such as Chayot, Serafim, Cherubim, and Ofanim in their dream visions of God’s court, to conjure up different intensities of the Divine. Angels with specific names, Gabriel, Raphael, Michael, and Uriel don’t begin to appear until the era of the Book of Daniel in Babylon.

By the time we get to the Talmud, not only are angels given persona with specific tasks, but they seem to be everywhere. Satan, spirits, shades, and all kinds of benevolent and malevolent forces shadowing our every move, pulling at our clothes, walking around our beds at night, and infecting water and our bodies. Sometimes protecting us and sometimes causing havoc and destruction. God was supposed to control everything in the world indeed. But seemed to use different agents to act on different occasions. In a way, it was very pagan. Different gods for