Life in the Styx, vol. II, no. 39 (Old Styx)

Hello everyone, Chag Sameach

I have been in the treacherous grasp of the nasty black-pig death flu.  Or at least it feels like it.  On the plus side, it has enabled me to get around much of the Pesach cleaning which requires higher computational power (I still need to behave as a pack animal, no dispensation there).  On the rather extensive downside, though, I have not been able to learn very much Torah nor write papers or write email letters -- hence the dearth o' Styxen in the past few days (which should be especially notable considering the heavy doses of sick weirdness which has afflicted the Jewish people.)

I did have some of the heavenly kosher Dunkin Donuts that are in the area, and I have re-read some of my Hunter Thompson stash, so my pleasant temper and equilibrium was restored somewhat; but it is very difficult to operate right now (and I dread the Seders). Anyway, I need to make up for some of the lost time, so...

BAD CRAZINESS

Was I sleeping when they allowed rabbis to act in a publicly disgraceful manner?  I know there's a heter for prime ministers to act like spayed swine but who allowed:

(1) the Agudas ha-Rabbanim trying to make up for all the peace and quiet that has existed for the past few years among the denominations by issuing rancorous statements of low-grade ignorance and thuggery,

and (2) Schorch, chancellor of JTS, in a vain attempt to show how Conservative Jews can be just as legitimate as orthodox Jews by being equally as rancorous and black-hearted taking the infighting all the more public on the front page of the New York Times (last Thursday, 4/17/97).

I'm sure we all feel proud.

It is especially ironic, as we rapidly scurry around in the Annual Pesach Prep Frenzy, the holiday of Jewish nationhood, of family, that we should take this opportunity to blast our fellow Jews with both barrels.  Rov Lamm, in the flaccidly impotent quarter-page ad in the NYT that was intended to counteract the blind bigotry of the Agudas ha-Rabbanim,  stated that in the song "Dayyenu" that we sing at the Seder, we claim that "Had He brought us before Mount Sinai but not given us the Torah, dayyenu -- it would have sufficed us."

But before we resort to puckish homiletics, we can learn "tolerance" just by looking at the Exodus as told through the Haggadah.  That is, the entire holiday of Pesach is about Jewish unity and spiritual equality.

PESACH, SINCERITY, HUMILITY & FEAR

Pesach is more than a holiday where you stuff 5 matzas in yer mouth in 2 seconds to satisfy some myopic shiur of kezayit ("according to modern scientific measurements, which we normally reject except when we need to be holier-than-thou, an olive weighed 35 lbs. and was the size of a woman's bowling ball").  Pesach is a holiday of humility.

We are told (by the Rabbis, go figure) that even though the Jewish people had reached the second lowest level of spiritual contamination possible in Egypt, we were still redeemed.  According to the Mishna, the story we tell at the seder should have the theme of "le-ganai le-shevach" -- from degradation to glory.  We are given two different ways of doing that -- (1) by showing that at one point all the Jewish people were slaves yet Gd redeemed us; or (2) showing that at one point we were all idol worshipers, yet Gd chose us.

The entire *message* of the haggadah is that at one point in life all Jews were spiritually bankrupt -- we were slaves, idol worshipers, "Arami Oved Avi" and all that jazz -- worse than we were ever worse before.  There are many reasons for this message (it shows the bounds of Gd's love; it shows the strength of the Covenant of the Patriarchs;  it shows that the one mitzvah we were given -- the korban Pesach -- was all it took to make us Chosen people again, just like one mitzvah can doom us, like the Garden of Eden).  But an essential message is of Jewish unity and religious humility.

UNITY

Even though this is taken to extremes by many segments, we are bound together as a people and we are responsible for one another as brothers and sisters. At the same time, let's not take Jewish nationhood or unity as the end-zone of all Judaism.  We are not defined by the same rules as an "ethnicity" -- Judaism is a religion, with a Gd, a set of laws, and a covenant.  Any conception of Judaism with fewer characteristics than that is doing the definition a disservice.

We see the direction of "religion as ethnicity" in today's (Monday, 4/21/97) NYT op-ed piece by Thomas Friedman.  I'm on record claiming that Friedman is too arrogant to be taken seriously.  I am surprised, though, that he has revealed himself far more in today's editorial than I ever expected.

He has the audacity to link Netanyahu's scandal to the orthodox drive to remain in control of the Israel rabbinate: "What this religious dispute and the current political scandal involving Mr. Netanyahu have in common is that they are both rooted in a disregard for the balances and red lines necessary to hold Israeli society and world Jewry together."

He shows the same religious insensitivity, in fact the same evil-spirited bigotry, that we all condemn in the Agudas ha-Rabbanim.  The orthodox rabbinate in Israel isn't small minded or foolish for wanting to exclude non-orthodox conversions, marriages, and divorces.  It is a natural outgrowth of orthodox belief to make these institutions definitionally rigid.  To delegitimize the orthodox belief that non-orthodox conversion is invalid is to delegitimize orthodoxy.  Which may be the end goal, but if so then we are in an impasse that can only be broken with recriminations and dirty tactics.

And, the Agudas ha-Rabbanim aside -- since they are not the mainstream voice of orthodoxy, modern or otherwise (only the RCA & the OU can really speak for 'modern', and the 'Agudah' speaks for the Charedim; in fact that was one of the main crimes of the Agudas ha-Rabbanim, they had the hubris to claim they spoke for more people than gave them permission to do so) -- Chancellor Schorch joins with Friedman to delegitimize orthodoxy.

Take President Hertzog, who died earlier this week.  I have mixed feelings about lauding Hertzog as a hero because he was brazenly irreligious while his father was the Chief Rabbi of Israel.  If that isn't a symbol of Israel, I don't know what is.  But I don't *like* that symbol.  I don't like the idea that to be a modern Israeli hero you had to spit in the face of your father and turn your back on Tradition.

But here Friedman says: "Overlooked in all this legal brouhaha was the fact that Israel's former President Chaim Herzog died of a heart attack last week. Or was it a broken heart?"  To take the style of Friedman -- who is well known to role-play and address policy-makers personally in his columns in a vein attempt to be a policy maker himself -- "Yo Tommy!  Cheap sentimentalism and moral bankruptcy don't play well compared to the rest of your career!"

What's the broken heart?  Because, Friedman intimates, the state he built was being torn apart by the "desert of moral and spiritual leadership."  This sounds very similar to Schorch's claim that we need a "piety with sanity" -- as opposed to the orthodox in Israel.

HUMILITY

This brings us to the second message of the Haggadah: humility.  We need far more humility in Judaism today.  We need people to stop believing that they can hold a press conference and wave Jewish dirty laundry to the rest of the world.  We need the superlatively arrogant Prime Minister Netanyahu to start being competent instead of being pompous.  But most impotently we need religious humility.  And that is the core of the haggadah.

We all began as scum.  As idol worshipers and slaves.  Every one of us.  Therefore we cannot look to our fellow Jew and say that he or she is worse than we are.  (Note: some have called the trait of religious arrogance as "religious triumphalism" -- I find that buzzword so repugnant that I swear I'll never use it seriously (I may use it when a conversation has degraded to buzzword-level, but at that point our souls have been bought & sold on the open market, so asinine buzzwords would be the least of my worries)).

But humility is the key to understand part of the religious dispute within orthodoxy.  Liberal Orthodoxy, let's say in the issue of women's minyans, claims that it is 'sincere.'  And if someone is sincere, then that is the highest level a person can reach, right?

The problem is that sincerity is a cheap emotion because all 'sincere' means is that you are pure in your belief.  But if the belief is an incorrect one, then the sincerity is negligible.  What the frummies are claiming is that the Liberals don't possess enough "yirat-shamayim" -- fear of Gd, and fear of sin.  Rather liberals are sincere in being liberal; in wanting personal autonomy over religious authority, of have rabbinic will equal a halachic way (and all the rest of the triumphalist buzzwords).

But Liberal Jews logically respond, consciously or sub-consciously, that if what they see frummie-jews do is considered 'yirat-shamayim' then they want nothing of it.  Because 'yirat-shamayim' -- following the law to the utmost detail -- is often just a cover for aggressive, holier-than-thou, arrogance and pettiness.  I demand that my vegetables be checked with a Lakewood Super-Soaker 3000 not because I'm really worried about the bugs, but because I want to show that I am closer to Gd than you are.

And I can't say that both sides are wrong in their characterization of the other.  Nor can I say that the stereotypes are true.  We cannot afford to be naïve (everyone is a wonderful swingin' cat), nor cynical (everyone is out for rank and base desires).  We must be humble.  Humility means honesty -- honest in your beliefs and honest in your assessment of others.   And when you are humble, even though it means you may still, eventually condemn another person's practice -- you will be so busy criticizing your own shortcomings, you won't have time for anyone else.

Remember, the haggadah teaches us that:

(1) we are saved only when we do sincere actions directed purely towards Gd, no matter how small (like taking the Korban Pesach and sprinkling the doorposts), and

(2) no Jew can feel arrogant in being Jewish because at one point we were all the lowest of the low.

Ach!  Enough ranting before the holiday.  The above is ill-formed and filled with the combined frustration of the current evil state of affairs that we are bringing on ourselves as a people with the personal frustration of being consumed by this black-pig flu.  Maybe during chol-ha-moed I can make up for this bile and recrimination by writing down some more torah (there is a dvar-torah wrapped up in the above screed if you look closely).

Have a chag kasher ve-sameach.
And remember, only you can prevent forest fires.  Only you.

Styx :]

[Posted on Oct 17, 2013]