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Moving Beyond Ritual

Tue, 16 Nov 2010 00:01:00 -0500

There wasn’t much compassion when it came to bread. It was 2006, and I attended a fellowship of rabbinical students across denominations that met every week over dinner. Our purpose was to cultivate compassionate Jewish leadership.

For three months, we argued over the proper conduct of grace after meals ( birkat hamazon ). Was there a minyan (quorum under Jewish law)? With seven men and eight women did we have a quorum? Jewish law, or halakha , only counts men; the liberal Jewish denominations do away with gender distinctions.

Even if we had ten men and seven women, a quorum by any standards, who then would lead the zimmun , the invitation to the grace after meals”always a man (the requirement according to Orthodox Judaism), or sometimes a man, sometimes a woman? These questions dominated our conversations, until one week the group leader, a female Conservative rabbi, took away the bread.

Perhaps we require a different paradigm for Jewish inclusiveness. For a generation we have relied on shared ritual. But ritual runs directly into contentious issues such as gender separation, and leads to the stark contrast of the highest or lowest common denominator. The result is to uproot ritual”the articulation of faith as expressed differently by each denomination”from its foundations, and force a compromise with which no one is comfortable.

Rabbinical sources provide us with a better way to foster an inclusive Jewish community. The Mishnah (the first written compendium of rabbinical law) states in Tractate Avot (3.6) that when ten people are gathered to study Torah, the Divine presence dwells amongst them. In other words, there is holiness and authenticity in their endeavor. The Mishnah adds that this applies to groups of five, three, two, and even one person alone with the text.

This Mishnah is remarkable in two ways. First, it tells us that even a single person studying Torah is never truly alone. The moment a person engages the texts of Jewish tradition they enter into conversation with all who did so throughout the generations.

Secondly, the Mishnah does not specify what sort of people evoke Divine immanence. Ten learned people? Ten unlearned people? Ten men or ten women? The Mishnah is intentionally broad in its formulation. This teaches us that study of shared texts provides a higher order of inclusivity than shared ritual. And this suggests that shared study should be the foundation for strengthening Jewish community across denominations.

Torah study, properly speaking, does not oblige us to arrive at a single opinion or a definitive resolution. Tradition as embodied in the Talmud preserved many contending arguments to impress upon us the value of sacred argument, of considering all approaches to the text. In the words of the Sages we are called upon to find the space in our minds for both those who read a text to permit and those who read it to prohibit. Torah study requires of us to make our heart contain many rooms, that is, to value disparate approaches simultaneously (Tosefta, Sotah 7:12).

Each denomination makes exclusive claims on ritual observance, but no one denomination holds exclusive rights to the corpus of Jewish tradition. Indeed, the rabbis of antiquity even understood the revelation at Sinai to be one of a multiplicity of understandings and interpretations ( Pesikta de’Rav Kahana 12).

Only at great cost will we neglect the need for a new paradigm of shared Jewish community building. Rates of disaffection are climbing in the American Jewish community, and it does no good to compound the fracture. The Jewish community requires a culture of respectful discourse that both values and makes room for the denominational space of private devotion, while maintaining a shared global space of collective activity.

Placing ritual at the center of that global space hinders group cohesion. It is through shared Torah study that we can craft a solid and viable foundation for an inclusive Jewish community.

In the words of Rabbi Abraham Joshua Heschel in The Earth is the Lord’s , “In this hour we, the living, are the people of Israel . The tasks begun by the patriarchs and prophets and continued by their descendants are now entrusted to us. We are either the last Jews or those who will hand over the entire past to generations to come. We will either forfeit or enrich the legacy of ages.” And it is an opportunity that we must not forfeit.

Rabbi Ben Greenberg is the Orthodox rabbi of Harvard Hillel, Jewish Chaplain of Harvard University, and the Co-Director of the Seif Jewish Learning Initiative on Campus at Harvard. His latest book is Covenantal Promise and Destiny: Wisdom for Life . He lives in Cambridge, Massachusetts, with his wife Sharon.

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The Orthodox Moment

Mon, 01 Feb 2010 00:00:00 -0500

Orthodox Judaism was supposed to fail in America: Jews appeared destined to lose their identity in the melting pot along with other immigrants. America’s genius for assimilation persuaded Eastern European rabbis to denounce immigration; Jonathan Sarna of Brandeis University has translated a tract entitled “People Walk on Their Heads,” by a rabbi who visited America and was aghast at what he observed. Nor were these fears idle: Sarna cites a 1952 study claiming that only 23 percent of all Orthodox children planned to remain Orthodox; nearly half planned to join the Conservative denomination.

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Why Jews Pray

Thu, 15 Oct 2009 01:31:00 -0400

It was Reverend Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. who said, “To be a Christian without prayer is no more possible than to be alive without breathing.” Prayer is arguably the most fundamental, intimate, and unique element of a life of faith. The way a person of faith is called to prayer, what words they articulate during prayer, and their thoughts and intentions while praying speak volumes about their particular faith. Prayer is the vehicle by which sages of any religion put to words their deepest hopes and visions for all of humanity. If you want to gain a glimpse into another faith, one needs only to turn to their prayer books.

Thus, the question arises of the nature of Jewish prayer. Why do Jews pray? If the method by which we understand any religion is by their prayer then it holds true that if we understand Jewish prayer then we can gather a much better appreciation for Judaism. First, before we can begin to look at the motivation for Jewish prayer, we need to acknowledge one crucial tenet of Jewish faith as demonstrated by prayer itself. Rabbi Sir Jonathan Sacks in the introduction to the Koren Sacks Siddur explains that:

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Women Orthodox Rabbis: Heresy or Possibility?

Thu, 01 Oct 2009 02:56:00 -0400

At an Orthodox synagogue in the Riverdale neighborhood of the Bronx, on March 22, Jewish history was made. Sara Hurwitz, a learned and devout Orthodox Jewish woman was conferred the new title of MaHaRa’T, an acronym for Manhigah Hilkhatit, Ruhanit, Toranit (for a halakhic spiritual and Torah leader) by Rabbi Avi Weiss, senior rabbi of the Hebrew Institute of Riverdale.

Some Jewish pundits ridiculed the invention of a new title. Jonathan Marks, for example, wrote: “Not only wasn’t it news, it has become increasingly boring to watch Modern Orthodox rabbis confer upon a woman scholar some Hebrew title that most people don’t understand and never will use.”

Others, however, praised this advancement of women in Orthodox Judaism. JOFA (the Jewish Orthodox Feminist Alliance) announced that it “celebrates an historic moment for the Jewish people-the ordination of Sara Hurwitz as a full member of the Orthodox clergy followed by the establishment of a new school to ordain female rabbinic leaders.”

The ordination of female rabbis troubles Orthodox Judaism in a way few other present-day issues do. Here on the First Things website, Rabbi Gil Student recently argued that both tradition and the demands of continuity in communal life will likely prevent the ordination of women. The difficulty of the issue is apparent even to a casual observer of Orthodox synagogues, where a physical barrier (the mehitza ) separates the sexes during services. The rituals within Orthodoxy are performed almost exclusively by men, and throughout the body of the halakhic literature, the assumed gender of the reader and interpreter of Jewish law is male. A persuasive case can be made”and Rabbi Student made such a case”that there is simply no space for women in the public spheres of Jewish communal life.

If this were true, a Jew who espouses fidelity to halakha and Jewish tradition ought to desist from all attempts to expand the role of women in Jewish life”especially attempts at rabbinical ordination. This, for example, is the argument made by Rabbi Harry Maryles , and it is shared by the fervently Orthodox, Centrist Orthodox, and more conservative elements of Modern Orthodoxy .

A strong case, however, can be made from within Jewish law and tradition that the ordination of women has a halakhic foundation. Changing circumstances in contemporary society can give way to changing halakhic opinions, and there are compelling precedents for such a change.

For example, according to halakha , a person who violates the Sabbath in public cannot be included in the count for a minyan , the ten-person quorum necessary for communal prayer. With the onset of European emancipation and the crumbling of the ghetto walls, however, large numbers of Jews began to violate the Sabbath publicly. Of those who publicly violated the Sabbath, many chose to continue to attend services at synagogue. And thus it would sometimes happen that there were only nine observant Jewish men present for the service, joined by Jews who had publicly desecrated the Sabbath. Was there a quorum for services or not?

This question was pressing and practical for nineteenth-century European Jews. Rabbi David Tzvi Hoffmann, a leading German rabbi of the mid-nineteenth and early twentieth century, was asked to rule on this question. His response illustrates the adaptive capacity of Jewish law:

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