Image source: filmup.leonardo.it/posters

By Simon Holloway

As some readers may be aware, the St Ives Jewish community has been petitioning the construction of an eruv for over two years now. A symbolic perimeter around an area, the building of eruvim dates back at least to the early third century, when their construction and maintenance was detailed in the Mishna. By allowing a public domain to be construed as a private domain (even if only in a purely symbolic fashion), the carrying of objects on Shabbat from one’s home into the street, and vice versa, ceases to be problematic.

The many and complex laws that pertain to these prohibitions, and the many and complex laws that pertain to the construction and maintenance of eruvim, have been such that many religious Jews continue to refrain from carrying on Shabbat, despite the presence of an eruv. Nonetheless, for many Jews in St Ives, the construction of a symbolic perimeter would be of tremendous benefit. Kuring-gai Council has been slow to approve it.

Those who wish to view a recent article in the North Shore Times about this eruv can find it here. The comments are, for the most part, appalling. Unable to draw a distinction between supporting local Jews and funding “Israel’s holocaust against the Palestinians”, several individuals (many of whom have wisely, if not cheekily, opted for anonymity) have decried the barbarous religious practises of rabbinic fanatics, and vociferously condemned the usage of public space for the construction of a ghetto.

Let me make this very clear. The eruv will not be noticeable. The eruv will not drive away people who are not Orthodox Jews. The eruv will not even attract additional religious Jewish people into St Ives. Orthodox Jews move to an area on the basis of the density of its community, the location and number of its synagogues, the availability of kosher food and mikva’ot, and the presence of a Jewish school. The existence of an eruv, while a bonus feature (and one that makes life better for those religious Jews who already live there), is not in itself a drawcard. To suggest that Jews will move to St Ives in greater numbers if the eruv is constructed, implies that they might otherwise favour an alternative suburb on the North Shore.

At the end of the day, this should never have been made public. Most of the decisions that the council makes get made without recourse to the knee-jerk opinions of the broader community. I emphatically do not watch TV, but my opinion was never sought as regards the construction of Foxtel cables throughout my neighbourhood. They are an eyesore and they required both the trimming of trees and disruptive construction work. It is absurd that the constituency of Kuring-gai needs to be heard as regards whether or not these cables may now serve a dual purpose. Shame on Kuring-gai council for their insensitivity, and shame on the North Shore Times for their deplorable “moderation” of comments.

Old and rare Jewish books*

By Simon Holloway

I don’t care how popular the iPad becomes, or even the ubiquitous E Ink devices: nothing will ever replace the joy of holding a book. The tactile and olfactory feast that is an ancient tome cannot possibly be exchanged for the cold glare of a lifeless screen. While carrying a library in my backpack might be handy on vacation, I hope that I will always be able to come home to a house filled with books.

At the time of writing this, I am in possession of well over a thousand texts, some of which are very old. The oldest volume that I have is a Hebrew Bible from 1701, but I also own large facsimile editions of the two oldest Hebrew Bibles ever written: the Aleppo Codex (10th century) and the Leningrad Codex (11th century). It is a guilty pleasure of mine to point to my large and densely packed Primary Literature shelf and to tell visiting non-Jews, “these are just the important ones”. To people unaccustomed to the Judaic reverence for printed literature, the sheer number of books that Jews hold dear must seem mind boggling and bizarre.

And yet, so many shake their heads. To many of the Christian faithful, Jews have it all wrong. Obsessed with the nuances of the language, we supposedly miss the spirit of the law. Being “religious”, they say, is all about one’s moral character. Do I reveal myself, then, as a bad person if I say that nothing strikes me as more vague and insipid? Sure, I’m not in the practice of defrauding my neighbour or slandering my peers, but what has that got to do with my religion? If the only reason that you don’t kill, rape or steal is because there’s a book that tells you not to do so, then I truly fear for your moral compass.

What makes the Judaic literature so marvellous is not its insistence on the ethical life (although yes, yes, that’s all very fine) but its complexity. Jewish literature is abstruse. It is esoteric. It is not something that can be picked up, one-handed, and casually mined for information while munching on a tuna sandwich. Unlike other examples of literature, it cannot idly be read. It demands to be studied, if its esoteric pronouncements are to be at all understood.

There are those who have suggested that this is the reason underlying the overwhelming Jewish presence on several major chess teams, physics and mathematics faculties, and lists of Nobel laureates. For myself, I find this rationale a little glib, if only because the overwhelming number of such people were not raised on Talmudic analysis and halakhic arbitration. Is the Jewish penchant for this literature another symptom of collective genius, alongside aptitude at chess, physics and maths? As somebody who neither plays chess, understands physics, nor is able to work out the change that he is owed without pulling a face, I am not so sure. What is more, assertions of Jewish intelligence have come from those who hate us so many times that I do not even know if they are necessarily a good thing.

What I do know is that, despite all of its complexity, its self-referentiality and its esotericism, Jewish literature is not the property of academics. It does not belong to the learned, nor to the devout. It is not owned exclusively by anybody: neither scholars, nor rabbis, nor even (we are pleased to discover) men. There is no correct way to understand it. There is not even a correct way to prioritise it. And contrary to what some will tell you, there is no injunction to agree with any of it, accept any of it or believe in any of it. Sure, some of the texts contain such injunctions, but that’s okay: you don’t have to agree with those bits either.

In the current climate of neo-atheism, too many confuse a rejection of traditional belief with a wholesale rejection of the traditional literature that testifies to it. While those who do believe in the truths of the tradition might be secure in their admiration for it, what is to be done with the growing number of disillusioned, disenfranchised Jews, who find neither the answers nor the questions in the books that “we” revere? Should they leave them all behind, in the spirit of the reconstructionists, and start again from scratch? Should they modify them willy-nilly, in the spirit of the reformers, and keep only that to which they don’t object? If they cannot believe in them wholesale, in the spirit of the very orthodox, and force themselves to accept what their minds otherwise cannot, then perhaps they should abandon them altogether and construct their identity from something else?

In our electronic world, where that which doesn’t have the immediate answer to our questions is neither worth downloading nor looking up, more and more Australian Jews are taking the latter path. This is a terrible shame, for as we become less secure with figuring out the answers for ourselves by wrestling with something difficult and abstruse, so our questions are fated to become simpler and simpler until these complex books truly are irrelevant. And no gadget in the world will ever replace the loss.

* Image source: lubavitch.com

Are there 'dirty words' in the Tanakh?

By Simon Holloway

In a Sydney synagogue, a local rabbi delivered a sermon in which he criticised foul language as essentially not Jewish. I will not question the fact that classical Jewish literature eschewed scatological and sexual innuendo, but many are unaware of the prevalence of such language within the Tanakh itself. I would like to look at one particular example, which can be found in Deuteronomy, Isaiah, Jeremiah and Zechariah. This word made people so uncomfortable that, believe it or not, the generation of scholars known as the Masoretes (c. 7^th-11^th centuries, CE) edited it out and replaced it with a gentler term.

Etymology is fascinating and, for that reason, I would like to present the origin of this particular word. Doing so should enable us to better appreciate the precise range of meaning that this word came to have in Biblical Hebrew.

First of all, what is the Hebrew word for palace? Well, that depends on whether you were living in the south of the country (scholars refer to “Judean Hebrew”) or the north of the country (“Israelian Hebrew”). In the south, the word was quite simply בית (house), or בית המלך (house of the king). In the north, where the language was heavily influenced by Aramaic, and even in southern texts that describe palaces in the north of the country, the word used was היכל (heikhal).

This word comes directly from Aramaic, but the origin of the Aramaic word is a little more complex. It derives from the Akkadian ekal, which in turn derives from two Sumerian words: É and GAL. In Sumerian, É means “house” and GAL means “big”. A “big house”, the house in which the king and his royal entourage lived, was a feature of Ancient Near-Eastern monarchic society, and the word itself made its way from Sumer, via Akkad, to Aram and, thence, to Israel. In other words, from Sumerian, via Akkadian, to Aramaic and “Israelian Hebrew”. In later years, היכל (heikhal) became the standard Hebrew word for palace, and the name of a branch of Jewish mysticism that focused on the heavenly palace of God.

Part of the royal retinue that lived in the palace was the king’s harem. This was made up of women, whose sole purpose was to gratify their august monarch. Reading the book of Esther, we are vouchsafed a glimpse into the lives of these “women of the palace”, who beautify themselves in expectation of their night with the king, and live to serve his every need. The job may have come with some very desirable perks, but it’s fairly safe to suggest that the actual occupation was not so highly sought – and was not the sort of job that one would hope for their daughters.

“Woman of the palace”, in Akkadian, is ishi ekal, but in Aramaic and Hebrew, this becomes contracted to שיגל (sheigal). As a noun, this occurs five times in the Hebrew Bible, both in Hebrew (Psalms 45:10 and Nehemiah 2:6) and in Aramaic (Daniel 5:2, 3 and 23), but it also occurs four times as a verb. What does it mean as a verb? Can you royally concubine somebody? I am almost certain that readers of Galus can come up with an appropriate English collocation to express this particular word, and I am positive that the word they alight upon will not be the sort of word that they would expect to find in an English translation of the Tanakh.

The prophet Isaiah (13:16) speaks, for example, of the terrible things that will happen on the “day of the Lord”. Children will be smashed to pieces before the eyes of their parents, houses will be plundered, and women will be… royally concubined. Likewise, Jeremiah 3:2 features the prophet’s indictment of the Judeans who sought allies from amongst the foreign nations. Likening them to whores who are prepared to have sexual intercourse with anybody, the author lambasts them: “Lift up your eyes to the high places! Where have you not been ‘royally concubined’?” Again, I am sure that we can all come up with more appropriate translations.

The problem is, nobody feels particularly comfortable with using more appropriate translations: the Tanakh is great literature, not a source of lewdness! Well, fear not: it would seem that the earliest scholars of the Hebrew Bible had a problem with it as well. One of the many things that these scholars did was determine where words were to be read in a manner that differed from the manner in which they were to be written. This is known as Qere / Ktiv (which is Aramaic for “read” / “written”), and anybody who has ever chanted from the Torah in a synagogue would be well aware of the phenomenon.

Modern printed editions differ as regards how to represent these, but generally you find an asterisk over the word in question, which links you to an alternate word in the margin, with which you are supposed to replace it. Most of the time, this is the simple result of an error in transmission: words lack the final heh to denote the feminine, or feature an extra vav, etc. Sometimes, however, the alteration is made on stylistic or theological grounds.

If you would like to look these passages up, there are four of them. Two are mentioned above (Isaiah 13:16 and Jeremiah 3:2), but the others are Deuteronomy 28:30 and Zechariah 14:2. In each of these instances, the Masoretes replaced the offending word with a verb that possesses the root שכב (to lie down). While “lying somebody down” may have similar connotations, it is markedly gentler than the original term. The original term could not be removed, for the Tanakh already enjoyed a sacred status at this point in its history, but it could be marked as something not to be read aloud.

The Hebrew Bible is by no means a “dirty book”, but to suggest that its language was never vulgar would be to never bother reading it. Whatever your feelings are concerning appropriate discourse, it’s interesting to know that they weren’t necessarily shared by those who actually composed Judaism’s most sacred texts in the first place.

By Simon Holloway

A story is told of a man who approaches his Rabbi with a question: “Rabbi, is there a Biblical source for wearing a yarmulka?”

His Rabbi nods emphatically. “Why, yes! The Torah says, ‘And Abraham went.’ Can you imagine that Abraham went… without a yarmulka!?”

This story is really just a bit of fun, but it highlights a neat distinction between what scholars refer to as exegesis and eisegesis. Exegesis is a familiar term: it refers to the process of finding information within the Biblical text. When the Torah says that one should cease from “labour” on Shabbat, and then goes on to relate the “labours” involved in constructing the Tabernacle, an exegetical reading derives the nature of the work that is prohibited on the seventh day.

Eisegesis, on the other hand, is the process by which meaning is read into the text. We start with a cultural practise (let’s say, lighting the candles on a Friday night), and then find a scriptural passage that might be taken out of context and utilised to serve as a justification for the practise that already exists. The rabbis of the Talmud referred to such a source as an asmakhta: literally, a scriptural support, on which the practise can “lean”.

I mention all this because sometimes (sometimes) people forget just which bits of their faith derive from the Bible and which bits derive from an external body of thought. This is not to disparage external bodies of thought! Ours, after all, is a religion of many books, of which the Hebrew Bible is merely one – albeit, perhaps, the most important.

Such is the power of these secondary interpretations that people often read them back into the original text. I often find that people commence by stating that “The Torah says…”, and then conclude by mentioning something not found within the Torah at all. An example of this is with the phrase, “The Torah is not in heaven.”

This phrase does appear in the Bible, but people who quote this phrase almost always do so with a passage from the Babylonian Talmud in mind. That passage can be found in Baba Metzia 59b, and concerns a small group of sages who debate with one another over the purity of an oven. Rabbi Eliezer, whose opinion is bolstered by earthly miracles and heavenly proclamations, is overruled by the majority, who then go on to publically humiliate him and ruin his life. As my good friend, CyberJew, has observed: the story concerns the tyranny of the masses. Nonetheless, the sad ending to the story is frequently overlooked, for such is the power of the story’s introduction. Witnessing the miracles that Eliezer produces in favour of his opinion, the other rabbis remain unconvinced and declare that “the Torah is not in heaven.” In other words, legal authority rests with the rabbis and not with continuing revelation from God.

This interpretation of the phrase is a radical departure from its usage within the Bible, and an equally radical departure from the Bible’s explicit message! The phrase appears in Deuteronomy 30:12, and I invite readers to look at it in context. It’s a beautiful chapter (one of the finest in the book of Deuteronomy) and, in this passage, concerns the ease with which all Israel should be able to perform mitzvot. Do not suppose that the Torah is too lofty for you! It is not in the sky that you should require somebody to bring it down to earth, and nor is it beyond the ocean that you should need a mariner to fetch it hence. On the contrary, it is within your own mouth and in the very core of your being.

The rabbinic interpretation glosses the word “sky” as “heaven” – which is to say, the emphasis is removed from the height-metaphor (‘Torah is too lofty for us; who will bring it down?’) and shifted to the God-metaphor (‘Torah resides in the same location as God, who alone is arbiter’). Nowhere does the Torah intimate that the law should be changed or adapted by future generations, so this rabbinic interpretation is eisegetical. That is to say, the rabbis had a tradition of reinterpreting the Biblical laws, and sought a scriptural passage that would serve as an asmakhta to their mandate.

When all is said and done, the rabbis were correct. Many of the laws within the Bible, if followed to the letter, would produce a society most barbarous by today’s standards. The sort of person who wishes to live their life in strict accordance with a literal understanding of such laws is not the sort of person you would want to count in your minyan! By providing themselves with the authority to recontextualise the Biblical message, the scholars of the Talmud turned Jewishness into Judaism. Those of us who love the religion that they founded owe them a debt of gratitude and, at the very least, the honour of recognising the nature of their work.

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You may also be interested in

• David Werdiger‘s article on the same talmudic passage – The Humanity of Halacha
• Yoram Symon‘s article, Who is a Jew and the Tyranny of Halacha

By Simon Holloway

Almost everybody who has been to Italy has seen it and those who haven’t, should. Sitting within a small church on one of Rome’s seven hills, the tomb of Pope Julius II sports a larger-than-life statue by the renowned sculptor, Michelangelo. The august proto-prophet sits nobly, a cloak draped over one knee and the two tablets of the law in his right hand. His head is turned thoughtfully to one side and, thanks to Michelangelo’s uncanny ability to coax fluidity from stone, Moses’ beard flows elegantly from his chin. Oh yes: and he has horns.

Many people have commented in the past upon this cornual indiscretion, and two suggestions have been raised. The first, and I am pleased to say the least popular, is that it constitutes an antisemitic slur. There is an old expression: “Speak of the devil and he will appear“. Wikipedia lists a variety of variations on this expression, from a total of 30 languages (including English). In Italian alone, the expression becomes “Speak of the devil and his horns will appear”. Is it a reference to Jews? Was Michelangelo equating Moses with Satan? I doubt it, but those who would prefer to believe that could certainly have some fun with the evidence in its favour.

In reality, the more compelling of the two explanations is simply that it’s a sloppy translation. Not Michelangelo’s sloppiness of course, but the sloppiness of St. Jerome, who translated the Pentateuch into Latin in the 5th century. When Jerome came across Exodus 34:29 (and, though slightly differently, verses 30 and 35), he rendered it as “cornuta esset facies sua“. That is to say, “his face became hornéd“. Everybody knows, of course, that that’s not what the Hebrew says. Or is it?

Exodus 34:29, according to the JPS Tanakh, reads as follows: “as Moses came down from the mountain bearing the two tablets of the Pact, Moses was not aware that the skin of his face was radiant“. This is more or less what the King James version has as well, when they translate “the skin of his face shone“. It would seem that Jerome was way off! Where did he derive this nonsense about horns?

Truth be told, both the King James version and the JPS are relying very heavily upon the earliest translation of this passage that was ever made: the translation into Greek. The Greek Septuagint (which was, of course, a Jewish translation) makes it very clear that Moses’ face was shining, and it is this translation that became standard in later Jewish interpretation. In fact, the Midrash goes even further by suggesting that Moses was radiant even at birth; and images of holy people with light emanating from their skin, so popular in the artworks of Renaissance painters, have their source in similar declarations. The Hebrew itself is not quite so easy to understand.

The problem is that of the three Hebrew words employed in the collocation, one of them doesn’t make much sense. The words are קָ֛רַן‭ ‬ע֥וֹר‭ ‬פָּנָ֖יו, and I include them with the vocalisation and accentuation that the masoretes gave them. For the benefit of those who don’t read Hebrew, the words read as qaran ohr panav and the first word (קרן, qaran) is vocalised as a verb. This is the first problem with the passage, because there are only four instances in the whole Tanakh when this word is a verb and of those four instances, three of them concern Moses’ face. The fourth instance is found in Psalms 69:32 and means… “to have horns”.

Okay, but surelyקרן‭ ‬ can also mean shine, right? I mean, this is the way the word is used in Israel today! Let’s have a look. As a noun, rather than a verb, the word turns up 90 times in the Bible, in 79 different verses. In every one of those instances, bar one, it either means “horn”, or it refers to something that is the shape of a horn, like the protuberances on the side of the altar. The one exception is Habbakuk 3:4, in which it appears to mean “ray of light”, although the context is non-literal. As if to complicate matters, the following verse (Hab 3:5) makes reference to two Near Eastern gods known as “plague” and “pestilence” (דבר and רשף) both being subservient to the god of Israel. It is therefore possible that the reference to “concealment” in verse 4 (חביון) might be also be an allusion to the hornéd demon known as Hebyon, and that the word קרן might therefore being implying “horns”, rather than “rays of light”.

Whether or not that is the case, the word does most certainly come to mean “ray of light” in post-Biblical Hebrew, but the corresponding verbal form (“to shine”) isn’t actually attested at all until the liturgical poetry of the mediaeval period! What is more, the usages of the verb with that meaning might have been back-formations, based upon the classical understanding of the verses that describe Moses.

The problems, unfortunately, don’t end there. If the passage simply seemed to be saying that Moses grew horns, then there would be a thousand better ways of saying so than “the flesh of Moses’ face horned.” What some scholars have suggested is that the passage was originally intended to have the meaning, “his face became a horn of flesh” – like the nightmarish vision that Daniel has in Daniel 7:8.

Feeling that this was possibly disrespectful, the Alexandrian Jewish community favoured an alternative reading tradition that they then reflected in their Greek translation. Following this tradition, the Tiberian masoretes vocalised the word as a verb, and punctuated it with their accent marks in such a fashion that, even though it’s an awkward reading, it favours the Greek translation over any other possible interpretation. Jerome, who sought a fresh translation from the Hebrew with little assistance from the Greek, hit upon an alternative, although equally viable reading of the text.

Of course, this is all theoretical. All that we have at our disposal is a complex Hebrew clause that seems to be saying something about horns, something about flesh, and something about Moses’ face. It’s easy to understand how there could be such radical disagreements regarding precisely what it was that all of that was supposed to mean.

There’s an old adage: do not discuss religion at parties. Having been burned a number of times, I tend to shy away from it, but am still a sucker for answering direct questions that are initiated by other people. One of the most complex, in my experience, is also the simplest: do I believe in God? I am never entirely sure how to answer this question and so I generally commence by telling them that I think they asked the wrong question. Things tend to go downhill from there.

You see, there are two ways of asking this question and, while the difference between them may appear innocuous, it is also rather staggering. “Do you believe in God?” is a question that relates to a belief in the existence of, and the actions and sayings attributed to, the main protagonist in the Hebrew Bible. I know this because the question lacks an article and so, when written, it would require the capital letter that designates it as a proper name. More often than not, however, people are really wanting to know whether or not I believe in a god. In other words, a prime mover; a first cause, responsible for creating the very notion of creation.

There is a world of difference between these two questions, and the difference is reflected in my answers to them. Do I believe in God? No, I do not. Not only do I think that all of the actions and speeches attributed to this character in the Hebrew bible belong within the realm of fiction, I also believe that any opinion that “he” expresses is the opinion of the authors of the text that records it. When God says that homosexuality is icky, that Canaanites deserve to die and that people who put cheese in their shwarma are bad people, what I have is a record of the sorts of thoughts and opinions that were current among particular communities of proto-Jews, over two thousand years ago. Do I have the immortal words of a eternal deity? Surely not.

Then, of course, there is the question that they meant to ask. Do I believe in a god? Do I think that the complexity of our universe, the complexity of reality itself, or – at the very least – the seeming complexity of our own minds in their appraisal of these phenomena, requires a deity? Perhaps it requires several deities, but that’s a scientific question, isn’t it? My answer is still no, but it’s now a different type of “no”: I don’t know whether or not there is a deity (or even an entire pantheon of gods, godlings and animal spirits) and, frankly, I also don’t really care. The nature of the creation of our universe, while fun to consider from time to time, is the occupation of physicists and surfies. The precise conditions under which our world came into being won’t interfere with my ability to catch a bus, sing a song, or eat a shwarma with cheese.

In other words, I believe with complete faith that even if this universe has a conscious creator, that creator did not write a book. I believe that it did not infuse certain individuals with a kind of cosmic fairydust that enables them to understand things hidden from us mere mortals. I do not believe that this deity chose a specific group of people, whose descendants (for no greater honour than having been born) would constitute the privileged few, destined to spread the word of the Lord throughout the earth. In fact, I do not even believe that these sorts of things can be believed by anybody except those who were raised in an environment conducive to their belief. Identification with such precepts is emotional and not intellectual, which is why almost everybody adopts the religion of their parents.

However, I believe very much in Judaism. I believe that the Hebrew Bible is a genuine work of literary creativity, and is deservedly famous as a result. I believe that many of our sages were genuinely inspired and genuinely inspiring. I believe that the religion that they created is a superb monument to the creative ingenuity of the human mind, and I think that any effort to cement it in a literal truth is stultifying. To paraphrase the late Douglas Adams, a garden can be beautiful and worthy of preservation without needing to believe that there are fairies in the bottom of it. Our texts, from the Bible onwards, are remarkable examples of human literature. To suggest that they were composed by gods, that they confer magical powers or that they presage the future would be like pointing to a garden and declaring it full of fairies.

Needless to say, I don’t really get invited to parties any more.

While it is my abiding interest that my contributions to this site do not become mere reflections on my own personal philosophy, a discussion that commenced in an earlier thread has tempted me to write a defence of Progressive Judaism. This is not to say that Progressive Judaism even constitutes “my” philosophy (it does not), but I think that “my” philosophy (whenever it sits still long enough for me to pin it to something) probably falls within that realm.

The comment that inspired this post was one in which the Progressive movement in Australia was mistakenly referred to as Reform. I noted on that thread that the Reform movement is an American phenomenon, which represents just one manifestation of the global philosophy of Progressive Judaism. Few people learn about Progressive Judaism in Australia, and it tends to be conceived as the “other”. In recent years, the Board of Progressive Jewish Education was formed, in order to fill the gap that was created by the Board of Jewish Education’s refusal to present Progressive Judaism in a more positive light.

In a nutshell, Progressive Judaism (like Orthodox Judaism) constitutes a spectrum of observance. Just as Orthodox Judaism might have “left-wing” Modern Orthodox at its lower end and “ultra-Orthodoxy” at its upper, so too is Progressive Judaism possessed of a spectrum that spans from Reconstructionist Judaism up to Conservative. It is a fair point to say that every movement is defined by that which exists at its fringes, so it is worth clarifying exactly what those outlying manifestations of Progressive Judaism actually are.

The difference, as with many of the differentiating factors within the Orthodox spectrum, hinges upon conceptions of the halakhic system. To what extent is a Jew today bound by edicts within the Torah? To what extent is he or she governed by the prohibitions of the Rabbis? A case study might enable us to appreciate various different approaches.

A Jew approaches his or her Rabbi with a question. This coming Shabbat, I would like to play the piano for my friends. Is doing so permissible? The Orthodox answer, of course, is no. While the Torah does not forbid the playing of music, the Rabbis understood the Torah to be forbidding 39 different categories of labour – one of which is “repairing”.

Given that singing and dancing may lead somebody to “repair” an instrument (which is to say, to hastily fashion one out of materials at hand), the Rabbis of the Talmud forbade such activity and, in later years, various Rabbis (chiefly of the Ashkenazi tradition) extended the prohibition to include playing instruments as well. As playing an instrument would inevitably lead the musician to tune the instrument (which, as far as these Rabbis was concerned, also constituted “reparation”), the playing of music became forbidden in order to further protect against the possibility of this infringement.

The Progressive answer, on the other hand, would be yes: you may certainly play the piano on Shabbat. Now, for many people, that constitutes enough of a differentiating characteristic between Progressive and Orthodox Judaism, but leaving that “yes” hanging there does not do justice to the various differences between those different non-Orthodox communities.

The Reconstructionist would give assent because, even though the Torah says that one is not supposed to do any labour on Shabbat (and even though the Rabbis defined labour in such a way that they also came to prohibit the playing of instruments), the spirit of the Torah is such that relaxation is the goal. For that reason, given that we are no longer living in ancient Israel and given that ancient Israelite modes of conduct are no longer directly relevant to our own lifestyle, we are not obligated to imitate their particular customs and might fulfil our own personal interpretations of the Torah’s message, to whatever extent we personally deem sufficient. That would not only allow for a playing of the piano on Shabbat but, indeed, even the lighting of a fire – which is expressly forbidden in the Torah itself.

Reconstructionist Jews are so named because their intention is to reconstruct Judaism based upon their own conceptions of the spirit of the original texts. Where those texts reflect a spirit that is anathema to modern-day sensibilities, the text is simply expurgated. Higher forms of Progressive Judaism (if we are to consider this as a vertical spectrum leading up to total halakhic observance) would likewise eschew difficult passages, but would do so by reinterpreting them in such a fashion that they are made more amenable to modern sensitivities.

It’s along this broader spectrum of Progressive Judaism that things get rather complicated. (Un)fortunately, there is no codified system of Progressive halakhic exegesis, so different people hold by fairly different opinions. The Reform movement in America is renowned for being particularly lax, and many American Reform Rabbis would permit the playing of musical instruments on Shabbat (irrespective of the instrument) because this is only a fence around the Torah and not an actual Torah prohibition itself.

Many Progressive Rabbis in Australia also hold such an opinion. While they would feel particularly uncomfortable with the lighting of a fire (which is expressly forbidden by the Torah), and while they may (depending again on the individual) feel uncomfortable by things like writing (which are expressly forbidden by the Rabbis), the prohibition against instrumentation is “only” a means of protecting the law and not actually a law itself. Would they feel uncomfortable with tuning the instrument as well? Again, that depends on the individual, and some may well debate whether or not an untuned instrument is really “broken” in the first place.

Then, at the “top” end, there is Conservative Judaism. Conservative is so named because of its propensity to find ways of preserving the rabbinic halakha. Again, a Conservative Rabbi’s answer would be yes, but for a different reason yet again. Bearing in mind the fact that I am speaking of Conservative Judaism in theory (as in practise it is not always too dissimilar to “lower” forms of Progressive), the prohibition against labour on Shabbat is an everlasting prohibition, and the rabbinic interpretation of this prohibition as comprising 39 distinct categories of labour is likewise everlasting.

What is more, unlike mainstream Progressive Judaism (again, in theory), Conservative Judaism recognises the status of the “fence” that the Rabbis erected around the Torah. For that reason, playing any musical instrument that would require tuning (such as a guitar or a violin) is forbidden on Shabbat. Given that the piano does not require tuning (and that, if it does, it is almost never tuned on the spot or by the person playing it), playing a piano is an exception to the prohibition.

I would like to state again that I am not attempting to advocate Progressive Judaism. My point is simply that, just as many Progressive Jews are guilty of seeing Orthodoxy as a homogeneous entity, so too are many Orthodox Jews guilty of perceiving their non-Orthodox counterparts in a similar light. There is nothing wrong with utterly rejecting a particular philosophy, but a thousand things wrong with doing so from a position of ignorance. I hope that our community may remain just as theologically fragmented as it is today (for beauty lies in complexity, not in homogeneity), but that we might all learn to respect one another’s personal choices that little bit more.

A New World Disorder: Messianism and Fervour in Chabad-Lubavitch

by Simon Holloway

In the 12th century, Maimonides effectively created the first systematised delineation of Jewish dogma.

One of his thirteen “principles of faith” was the belief in the coming of the Messiah, along with the assertion that his arrival should be expected every day, irrespective of how long it takes. Such was the tremendous influence of Maimonides, many religious Jews today would not even think to question the possibility that every day is a day on which the Messiah may have only just arrived.

For members of the contemporary Hassidic group, Chabad-Lubavitch, this messianic expectation possesses a distinctly dynamic feel. With the belief that the Rebbe is always the Messiah of his generation, coupled with the belief that the seventh Rebbe (who passed away on June 12, 1994) is still the reigning Rebbe, many Lubavitch Hassidim today loudly proclaim their Rebbe, Menachem M. Schneersohn, as the Messiah, and await his “second coming”.

I would like it to be noted that I have referred to the Rebbe’s “second coming” honestly, and not in order that I might highlight the already obvious parallels with early Christianity. These parallels exist between every movement that possesses an immortal leader who suddenly… well, dies. Coming to grips with what happened on “Gimmel Tammuz”, the date of the Rebbe’s death, has proven an obstacle for many Lubavitchers, but an obstacle that is often circumnavigated. I remember, when I was attending a Chabad yeshiva back in 2002, my earnest answer to the simple question: “What happened on Gimmel Tammuz?”

“… Nothing.”

The reality is, for many Lubavitchers, nothing is indeed what happened. The number of Shluchim, sent by the Rebbe as personal emissaries around the globe, tripled within a short space of time. More and more people became observant (which is to say, Chabad) and, rather than abate, the messianic fervour with which many of his followers proclaimed him as their saviour increased seven-fold. All sevens are blessed, so they say.

These days, there are the so-called Meshichistim and the so-called anti-Meshichistim. It needs to be noted that the latter term is an out-and-out lie. The distinction between the two groups is so subtle that you need to actually be a Lubavitcher yourself in order to care about it. The Meshichistim chant “Yehi” (a chant that, in some communities, has become a creed: “Long Live our Lord, our Guide and our Teacher, the King Messiah for ever and ever!”), while the “anti-Meshichistim” don’t chant it. End of difference. Do the anti-Meshichistim deny the messianic status of their Rebbe? Don’t be absurd: the Lubavitcher Rebbe, according to the philosophy of Chabad, is the Messiah. Is it our obligation to impose this belief on the rest of the Jewish world? There, and only there, is the source of the debate – and the frequent antagonism between the two groups.

I often wonder now, as I wondered when I was a Lubavitcher myself, what the Rebbe would have had to say about this meshugaas. For much of the time, he was a staunch opponent of the addition “King Messiah” to the chant that his followers were singing, and the only time that he actively encouraged it was after his stroke. The Rebbe was in a vegetative state and his Hassidim, who could not (nor will not) acknowledge his inability to rationalise, were empowered by his sudden approval.

The story (for those of us who truly came to love the Rebbe) is a sad one. It is not, however, a surprising one. Rav Elazar Shach (whom I later came to realise was an absolutely outstanding Talmudic scholar – despite the fact that he has become a source of cheap ridicule by many Lubavitchers) opposed the adoration of the Rebbe from the beginning, and suggested in no uncertain terms that this was a development likely to lead them out of Judaism altogether. Such sentiments have been echoed in more recent years by another brilliant (although irritatingly polemical) scholar, Prof. David Berger. For some elements of Chabad, they may be correct.

There is a community in Tsfat whose adulation of the late Rabbi Schneersohn has reached epic proportions. Not content with denying his death, several individuals in this fervent city believe him to be alive and well, and living within the walls of “770″: the Rebbe’s offices in Brooklyn. Many such individuals refuse to visit the Rebbe’s grave (it is, after all, empty), address their questions to his books in a bizarre 21st century form of divination, and (in one dangerous instance) equate him with the corporeal incarnation of God. Coupled with the reverence given to his discourses (for which many neglect Talmudic study), the elevation of Sefer Tanya (the first Rebbe’s systematised theology) to the “Torah of Hassidus”, along with the highly sectarian nature of the Chabad festivals, the Chabad siddur, and the Chabad minhagim… maybe Rav Shach was not so off the mark?

Chabad-Lubavitch: moving forward in a new world

by David Werdiger

‘Gimmel Tammuz’ (as the day of the Rebbe’s passing is known) was a watershed moment for Chabad. Many Chassidim who had until then reasonably believed that the Rebbe was the Moshiach of this generation were challenged regarding how to interpret the event. In very simplistic terms, the Chabad community was split along what are known as “Meshichist/anti-Meshichist“ lines: those who believed that even after his passing, the Rebbe could still be Moshiach, and those who opposed that view, and felt the movement needed to accept that the Rebbe could no longer be Moshiach, and find a way forward.

The nuances of belief are far more subtle, and the perspective from the inside is that there are shades of grey in the spectrum of current Chabad-Lubavitch theology. There are extremists on either side of the fence, to the point where a small number believe that the Rebbe did not die at all, but rather was ‘concealed’ from us, and will soon emerge. Others believe that despite his passing, he is not disqualified as Moshiach, and through “tchiyat hameitim” (resurrection of the dead – one of Maimonides’ thirteen principles of faith), he can emerge as Moshiach. While this sounds a lot like Christian doctrine, there are some fundamental differences, and support for this notion among Talmudic scholars – here is not the place to expand upon that. On the other side, there is the firm view that the Rebbe is no longer Moshiach, yet there is no need to appoint a successor. There are variations within each broad faction regarding how to deal with the other. It is important to note that those in financial control of operations of Chabad are from the non-Meshichist camp (I much prefer non- to anti-).

There are no survey or census figures to indicate what proportion of the global Chabad community sits where. It is probably reasonable to assume that statistically it follows something like a normal distribution, with most people in and around centrist views, and a small number of (loud) extremists at either end.

For an organization that had such a cult of personality around its leader to continue its momentum some fourteen years after said leader is no longer around seems quite paradoxical. To significantly increase number of shluchim and new institutions that have spread through the world during that period despite a huge controversy that seems to have split the movement is truly incredible.

Some might say that the Meshichists believe the leader hasn’t left, and therefore they continue with the same fervour. However, the personal relationship with the Rebbe has long been gone, and many of the young shluchim currently being sent out would barely even have memories of any direct interaction. In any event, that does not account for the entire movement, and there is no evidence that one faction has been more involved in the ongoing expansion than the other.

It seems to me that despite the fact that the Rebbe was the driving force of Chabad for over forty years, the influence of his leadership went far beyond him as an individual. What distinguishes great leaders (be they of corporations, organizations, or movements) is that they sublimate themselves to the cause, the mission. That way, when the leader moves on (for whatever reason), the mission continues unabated. So whatever your particular sub-theology regarding the Rebbe and Moshiach, the mission of Chabad continues on. The continued progress and success of Chabad is evidence that this must be ‘non-core’ rather than a defining theology.

The direction for the movement was clearly set by the Rebbe, and has not substantially changed. There are many volumes of the Rebbe’s teachings and correspondence, and these continue to be studied and used as a guide by Chassidim.

Over the years, Chabad has had no shortage of detractors and critics, and this certainly predated the Moshiach fervour of recent times. One of the teachers at the Yeshivah I attended in Israel over 25 years ago published dissertations, and proudly embedded in them his direct criticisms of various teachings of the Rebbe.  Rav Schach was certainly one of the most celebrated ‘anti-Lubavitchers’ of his time. I see parallels with the Slifkin controversy (particularly the excellent analysis Slifkin, Salem and the Senator), where a number of leaders of the ‘Yeshivah World’ sought to raise their profiles by jumping on the bandwagon of criticism of others.

What is one to make of this sort of opposition between Orthodox Jewish movements and theologies? The schism between Chassidim and Mitnagdim has been going on for centuries (interesting to note that the Mitnagdim (lit. opposers) define themselves by what they are not). The Chassidic movement posed a radical threat to the class-based world of Torah scholarship. But in the modern era, while most Chassidic groups kept to themselves and retained old-world garbs, Chabadniks dressed like contemporary Orthodox Jews and were unashamed to bring their message to the masses in a way the Jewish world had never seen. This certainly posed a renewed challenge to the ‘Yeshiva World’, and this should certainly be taken into account as at least part of the motivation for the ongoing opposition to Chabad.

The argument made from religion, however, is not so easy to deal with. There is no denying that Judaism (halakhically-speaking) forbids sexual intercourse between two men, and any attempt to legitimise gay marriage (where the partners are both male) must be fraught with the complications produced by this prohibition. Being neither a Rabbi nor a rabbinic scholar, it is not my place to suggest ways of doing this, nor within my ability to find avenues of permissibility for lesbians in love. Something that I would like to comment on, if only to explode a rather prevalent myth, is the perspective of the Bible itself.

The most extreme references to male homosexuality are found in the book of Leviticus. In two places (18:22 and 20:13), the author makes it clear that intercourse between two men is disgusting and, in the second of those two places, even recommends the death penalty (for both parties). Many ‘queer theorists’ have attempted to soften this indictment by taking the passage over-literally and suggesting that the Bible is only speaking of particular types of transvestitism. On the contrary, “lying with a man in the manner of a woman” is considered by most scholars to simply be a reference to gay sex.

What can be done about this passage? Well, if you are disinclined to believe that the first five books of the Bible were all written by the same individual, what we have here is merely the opinion of the author of (this part of) the book of Leviticus. Even if you do believe that the first five books were written by one individual (let’s call him “Moses”), and even if you believe that he functioned as a glorified secretary for the divine, we still need to bear in mind all of those many other things that are likewise called “disgusting”, and all of those very many other things that merit the death penalty. Is there ever any inner-Biblical indication that male/male love is worse than eating pig? Insulting your parents? Gathering firewood on Shabbat? Afraid not.

After those two verses, it gets a lot simpler. Genesis 2:24 states that, “for this reason, a man will leave his father and his mother and cling to his wife, becoming one flesh”. As I have heard opponents of gay marriage quip in the past: the Torah speaks of Adam and Eve, not Adam and Steve. Be that as it may, it should also be pointed out that the Torah speaks of Adam and Eve. In other words: not Adam and Eve, Susan, Deborah, Felicity, Monica, Tracy, Lisa and Pam. Nobody can possibly suggest that the permissibility of taking multiple wives derives from this passage in Genesis and yet, were it not for Rabbeinu Gershom in the 11th century, Ashkenazim might still be practising polygamy today. Genesis 2:24 does not allow for homosexual relationships, but the key point is that it does not forbid them. With no indication that the text is even supposed to be read prescriptively, one cannot make the assumption that a lifestyle not mentioned by the text must have been condemned.

Still in the book of Genesis, we encounter the story of Sodom and Gomorrah. Many fundamentalist Christians enjoy this one because it clearly shows a community of homosexuals being destroyed for their homosexuality. But does it? A similar story can be found in Judges 19, and the only reason that Christians fail to take that one as a polemic against the frightening spectre of sodomy is that God didn’t destroy that particular city. That God did destroy the residents of Sodom and Gomorrah for being gay is a very Christian exegesis, with the classical Jewish interpretation focusing instead on their disrespect for other people’s property. Yes, of course they were planning to rape two men. But isn’t the problem the fact that they were planning to rape two men?

There is only one other passage in the Bible that speaks of homosexuality, and how it makes the religious squirm! In the book of Samuel, the author tells us that David, soon to be the king of Israel, and Saul’s son, Jonathan, were in love. Oh, but this is not romantic love (shout the apologists). They loved each other as friends. Really? In 1 Samuel 18:20, we are told that Saul’s daughter, Michal, loved David. While nobody has ever questioned the romantic nature of her love, it is only twenty verses earlier that we are likewise told that Jonathan loved David (18:1), and that the two formed a lovers’ pact (18:3). Ultimately, in chapter 20, when they realise that they can no longer be together, we are presented with a drawn-out and tearful goodbye; the two declare their love again, reaffirm their pact, and kiss. Were we not so automatically sure that the author of this book is assuming knowledge of Leviticus, we might not be so quick to whitewash the affair as ‘just another quaint Middle Eastern custom’.

The reality is that, despite the stance that the halakhic system came to take, homosexual relationships are not expressly forbidden outside the book of Leviticus and, aside from the fact that they may be portrayed sympathetically in Samuel, their prohibited nature in Leviticus also needs to be borne in perspective. Whether I am preaching to the converted or flogging a dead horse, my message is this: nobody can stop anybody from disliking homosexuals. But please, let’s stop blaming the Bible for our prejudices.