The Book of Doctrines and Opinions:

Three weeks ago I posted an interview with Mark Paredes at Mormons and Orthodox Judaism Part II. In turn, Mark posted selections from my post at his blog, which elicited comments. I am now posted a short interchange from his comments because of an analysis of what the Book of Mormon says about Jews and how contemporary Mormons explains their texts.

Mr. Paredes, you really are to be commended for promoting positive dialogue between Jews and our Latter Day Saint neighbors.

But Latter Day Saint scripture leaves no room for ambiguity on this topic, making the relationship between Mormonism and the Jewish People unique indeed:
Second Book of Nephi, Chapter 10, Verse 3: “Wherefore, as I said unto you, it must needs be expedient that Christ—for in the last night the angel spake unto me that this should be his name—should come among the Jews, among those who are the more wicked part of the world; and they shall crucify him—for thus it behooveth our God, and there is none other nation on earth that would crucify their God.”

Here we read in plain (Latter Day Saint) scripture that the Jews were the “more wicked part of the world” and that they had the unmitigated chutzpah to “crucify their God”! [exclamation point added] The scary thing is that I seriously doubt the general level of morality of Jews in Jesus’ time was any different than that of Jews today—we’re remarkably consistent—thus potentially keeping us among the more wicked part of the world. The only consolation I find is that (thank G-d) the Christian world has not incorporated Latter Day Saint scripture into its official canon. Otherwise, there would have been absolute carte blanche to do to the Jews what they will. You can’t kill G-d, and hope to get away with it.
Comment by Gavriel Abrams on 5/02/11 at 6:23 pm

Gavriel:
Thanks so much for your comment and for your readership. I believe that the following passage of scripture from the Book of Mormon is both better known and more representative of LDS feelings towards Jews, whom they have always respected and honored. Remember that Nephi lived around the time of Jeremiah, who had plenty to say about the Jews’ immorality and wickedness in his time. I have never heard the passage you cited used in any way to defame Jews.
2 Nephi 29:3-14: And because my words shall hiss forth—many of the Gentiles shall say: A Bible! A Bible! We have got a Bible, and there cannot be any more Bible.
4But thus saith the Lord God: O fools, they shall have a Bible; and it shall proceed forth from the Jews, mine ancient covenant people. And what thank they the Jews for the Bible which they receive from them? Yea, what do the Gentiles mean? Do they remember the travails, and the labors, and the pains of the Jews, and their diligence unto me, in bringing forth salvation unto the Gentiles?
5O ye Gentiles, have ye remembered the Jews, mine ancient covenant people? Nay; but ye have cursed them, and have hated them, and have not sought to recover them. But behold, I will return all these things upon your own heads; for I the Lord have not forgotten my people.
6Thou fool, that shall say: A Bible, we have got a Bible, and we need no more Bible. Have ye obtained a Bible save it were by the Jews? [7-11 edited out for posting]

12For behold, I shall speak unto the Jews and they shall write it; and I shall also speak unto the Nephites and they shall write it; and I shall also speak unto the other tribes of the house of Israel, which I have led away, and they shall write it; and I shall also speak unto all nations of the earth and they shall write it.
13And it shall come to pass that the Jews shall have the words of the Nephites, and the Nephites shall have the words of the Jews; and the Nephites and the Jews shall have the words of the lost tribes of Israel; and the lost tribes of Israel shall have the words of the Nephites and the Jews.
14And it shall come to pass that my people, which are of the house of Israel, shall be gathered home unto the lands of their possessions; and my word also shall be gathered in one. And I will show unto them that fight against my word and against my people, who are of the house of Israel, that I am God, and that I covenanted with Abraham that I would remember his seed forever.
Comment by Mark Paredes on 5/03/11 at 4:07 pm

Mark:
It was nice to read your thoughtful response to my comment. I can affirm that I have never heard a Latter Day Saint use any scriptural source – be it LDS-derived, or otherwise, to disparage Jews. The Latter Day Saints that I have encountered in my lifetime are among the most Philo-semitic people I’ve ever known. I completed my undergraduate and graduate studies at the University of Utah in Salt Lake City, and my experience there as a Jew in the midst of a predominantly LDS population was 99.9% positive.

I find the way that Latter Day Saints live their religion to be a marvel, especially when one considers that LDS scripture contains such unique precepts as G-d meting out dark skin color as a form of punishment (for native peoples of the Western Hemisphere), or His withholding of earthly spiritual opportunities as punishment for errors committed prior to being born (in the case of black Africans). In the hands of a people less inclined toward genuine kindness and hospitality, these precepts could become the seeds of terrible hatred.

What actually prompted me to comment on this blog entry, and the response to Question No. 6 in particular, was the statement made regarding the Talmud. I found what was said to be unfairly dismissive (though I don’t believe you intended to come across as disrespectful of something so fundamental to Judaism). My initial comment didn’t address the Talmud statement because I was reaching back further, searching for some underlying motive for making a statement such as this. Perhaps a people considered to be so wicked as to have killed G-d Himself, would also be considered more inclined to quarrel pointlessly about scriptural interpretation?

I’m about as unqualified as they come when it comes to Talmud scholarship, so here’s my take as a regular Yid: without the combination of the written Torah, and the Oral Torah (with its exhaustive exploration, or “quarreling” as you call it) recorded in the Talmud, I doubt we’d be having this exchange – the Jewish People would have vanished a thousand years ago, through conversion and complete assimilation.
Personally, I think a Rabbi from the Orthodox community would be better prepared to go into the Talmud with you in greater depth.
Comment by Gavriel Abrams on 5/03/11 at 7:47 pm

Gavriel – In a few instances in the Book of Mormon, when people collectively sinned against God, He cursed them with estrangement from Him. In order to prevent righteous people living at that time from mingling with them, He caused them to have dark skins. Does this mean that Mormons believe that people with dark skin are cursed? No, it does not. It means that for those peoples in those specific time periods living in a specific place, there needed to be a separation between people who were cursed and people who were not. However, once again, the curse was not dark skin, but estrangement from God.

Blacks were not denied the priesthood because of some residual issues from the pre-earth life. This is not an official teaching of the LDS Church. We don’t know why this happened, but I suspect that it was the same reason that the priesthood was denied anciently to everyone but Aaron’s direct male descendants. The reason? Because that’s the way God wanted it to be for reasons known to Him. Mormons believe that everyone living on earth is a child of God, and that we all sided with Him and chose to come to earth and live together.

My comment on the Talmud had nothing to do with killing God, and everything to do with authority. I would welcome the opportunity to continue this dialogue offline.
Comment by Mark Paredes on 5/04/11 at 8:48 am

Rabbi Arthur Green, Ph.D., Irving Brudnick Professor of Jewish Philosophy and Religion and Rector of the Rabbinical School at Hebrew College, presented the Graduation address at HUC-JIR/New York’s Graduation Ceremonies.

Some interesting points from his talk. First, Green gives his sense of nationalism.

First, we see ourselves as leaders of the Jewish people. We believe in ‘am yisra’el, a historic community that proudly bears an ancient national identity, one expressed in culture, language, memory, and attachment to an ancient and now-renewed homeland. Claims current in some post-Zionist circles that Jewish national identity is a nineteenth-century invention are as inaccurate as they are pernicious. Anyone who has ever opened a Jewish prayerbook (and indeed that may exclude some who assert these claims) will realize that we have seen ourselves as yisra’el ‘amekha, “Your people Israel,” for a great many centuries. Reform Judaism did well to rescind its demurral from that consensus many decades ago. We bear a deep connection to Jews around the world, including the State of Israel, as we do to Jews of past and future generations.

This means that we want to survive as a distinct ethnic as well as religious community. That will be an uphill struggle in this country, where non-racially defined minorities are unrecognized, where the price of white skin (that most of us still bear, though that is happily changing) has been an expectation of assimilation. We are an open religious and ethnic community, gladly embracing converts, welcoming them and their children to share fully in our collective national identity. This means language, text, culture, history, and all the rest, along with religion, the sacred calendar, and the Jewish life-cycle. To this end I believe that every synagogue needs to become an active bet midrash, house of study, where basic Hebrew, Jewish texts in translation, and great Jewish books, films, and works of art are actively taught, shared, and discussed. As a Jew deeply committed to prayer, I will nevertheless rejoice when the American synagogue comes to be known first as an active, bustling center of learning, where prayer services are also held on Shabbat, rather than as a temple for prayers on Shabbat, mostly closed on weekdays. Think about this when you lie down and when you rise up, when you design buildings and when you hire staff.

Second after discussing the role of rabbi as pastor, teacher, and halakhic rav, Green discusses the need to be a rebbe and inflame the community with spirituality of what he calls “the essence of a universalized Hasidic teaching.” It is quite a relevant list (1) mindfulness of God’s presence (2) Serve God in all your ways (3) Joy and wholeness-not guilt and bondage (4) The need for an inner life (5) The need to work on oneself.

I am a neo-Hasidic Jew. It is the teachings of Hasidism that have kept me at home, choosing to cultivate our Jewish spiritual garden rather than turning elsewhere for sustenance, like so many others of my generation. Hasidism is a revival movement within Judaism, as distinct from a movement for religious reform. Revivalists generally are not interested in changing the forms of religion. It’s just that the spark has gone out of them and needs to be re-lit. Jews are like knishes, Rabbi Nahman of Bratslav is quoted as saying. The ingredients are all the same, but I prefer the hot ones. Since you are New Yorkers, even the non-Jews among you know what a cold knish might taste like. Reform movements dabbled with changing the forms – let’s start with organ music and sermons in proper German or English, for example. Let’s all turn to page 23 and rise together. But somewhere the fire began to go out. Now we reformers and post-reformers are struggling toward revival. Fortunately we have the legacy of Hasidism to help us. I want to summarize the essence of a universalized Hasidic teaching as I would adapt it for today, using a few phrases taken directly from the sources, with just brief comment.

1) Galut ve-ge’ulat ha-da’at. The true exile is that of the mind. Mindfulness, making ourselves aware of God’s presence within us and around us is the beginning of redemption.

2) ‘Avodat ha-shem be-khol ha-ofanim. God needs to be served in every way. Everything we do, see, encounter in life is an opportunity for serving God. Do not restrict your Judaism to the synagogue or times of prayer and study. Live in intimacy with nature, with family, with others you love. Seek out work in which you find fulfillment; a life, not just a livelihood. Help others to do the same. In all of these, see the divine presence flowing through and uniting them. Raise up sparks through all you do.

3) ‘Ivdu et ha-shem be-simhah. Serve God in joy. The spiritual life requires wholeness, self-acceptance, freedom. It must not become a burden or a source of oppression. Avoid religion based on guilt. Use spiritual awareness to help people become more free, to be liberated from their own inner forms of bondage. Y-H-W-H brought you forth from Egypt to become your God. That process of becoming never ends, so you have to keep coming out of Egypt. Make sure your faith is helping you do that, not holding you back from it.

4) Dirshu et ha-nekudah ha-penimit. Seek out the innermost point. Religion’s message is that every person can have an inner life. This requires cultivation, toward which we use the tradition. Shabbat, prayer, meditation, mitsvot, spiritual friendship and direction, are all tools toward this end. There is more to life than our profane and over-commercialized surroundings tell us. The addiction to “success,” the most prevalent drug within our community, can leave you as empty as any other addiction. Get a life. The mishkan or dwelling-place of God is there within your heart. Just take the time and have the courage to open that door. Always look deeper, beyond the surface – in yourself, in others, in the world, and in the Torah.

5) Arbetn oif zikh. To be a hasid is to work on yourself. We are imperfect beings. That is the way we were made. God was not happy just being praised by a chorus of angels. Real flesh-and-blood humans, struggling with temptation, doubt, with the daily struggle to survive, with mortality and all the pain and loss along the way – if these creatures could sing to God, that would really be something! It’s a beautiful goal, but not an easy one. It requires work, including honest struggle, every day. It demands tikkun ha-middot, improving all those qualities that make us human, the same ones that make us potentially God’s image on earth. Each day we work on doing it a little better – or least not worse.

These are the teachings. I say to you as I say to myself: Don’t be so afraid of being a rebbe that you avoid sharing them with those around you. They need to hear them, and they need you to be their bearer. Read Full Version Here

This is a much clearer document than his Radical Judaism and conveys a broader picture of his thought than the book. Any thoughts? Where would someone Centrist Orthodox go for Arbetn oif zikh? Could one have the hectic upper-middle class professional life required by Centrist Orthodoxy and still seek mindfulness of God’s presence (without resorting to emotionalism and aestheticism)?

I am back from Poland. Next week I hope to get around to posting some observations about the trip and maybe some pictures. I always mistakenly think that I will be able to continue blogging overseas. I still have to return and finish the discussion of Richard Miller. I am home and working at my computer the upcoming weeks, so expect a larger than usual number of blog posts.

Someone who spent Passover in Crete with the many other people who were there, went during Chol HaMoad to visit the cave that is ascribed as the mythic birthplace of Zeus.

When the person returned to the hotel, one of the Brooklyn Jews asked: “Who is Zeus?

What is the cultural literacy of the community. Old time Orthodoxy knew in a nerdy factoid way lots and lots of cultural knowledge and could compete in any college bowl type competition. Has Orthodox cultural literacy changed? Has it changed the nature of the community? People frame the study of secular studies in terms of value for an adult life and for thought, but what about basic elementary school cultural literacy? E.D. Hirsch, in his 1987 bestseller Cultural Literacy: What Every American Needs to Know claimed that cultural literacy is the ability to converse fluently in the idioms, allusions, and informal content that creates and constitutes a dominant culture. Is Orthodoxy outside of dominant culture and unable to answer basic questions? Does it put them in the same rubric as Snooki of Jersey Shore who cannot answer these basics?
What should be the role of cultural literacy?

Have any of my readers visited Izbica, the home of Rav Mordechi Yosef Leiner of Izbitz? If you have or know anyone who has, could you please contact me by email within the next 3-4 days?

In the winter, we were discussing Rawls and the need for rational universals. Here is the major post on the topic. Back on January 31, I posted:

To continue the discussion of Rawls and the creation of a fair Judaism that does not deny the humanity of others, I will do some posts on Richard B. Miller, Terror, Religion, and Liberal Thought (Columbia UP 2010). So AS and EJ you can have a chance to read it before I post.

Now, I am finally getting to it. I hope they had a chance to read it. For advanced warning, I will be discussing later this summer Oliver Roy, Holy Ignorance: When Religion and Culture Part Ways

Miller’s agenda is how not to get caught up in multicultural relativism even as we argue for respect for relgions. How can we give room for religious beliefs and not justify killing, lying or stealing as condoned by a certain interpretation of religious law.

This topic is also important for all the events making the newspapers in our community. How should we tell someone in our community that theft from gentiles or cheating to make a living is inappropriate when there are minority voices allowing it. Or how to reject statements about not selling apartments to gentiles in Israel . Doesn’t multiculturalism mean that I cannot critique their religious view?

I am not interested in the gossip and scandal elements of the crimes and inappropriate statements. I am not looking for the hock or to necessarily criticize anyone.

I am interested in how to set up the ethical equation. My question is: How do we express an ethical position without having to give into the rampant religious relativism by those most religious? If someone says that a position that involves stealing or killing is the true halakhah, then how can we answer their claim that there is no outside vantage point to judge? Can we formulate halakhic responses to positions that have a moral force?

Miller’s basic answer is that there must always be a fundamental intuitionism as the core of any religious position. One must have a fundamental acceptance of “Do not kill” and “do not steal” as an intuition or natural starting point. What Saadiah called the rational laws (mizvot sikhliot). If one accepts do not steal as an axiom then no amount of casuistry can overturn it. What Rav Kook called natural morality. Or as Rav Aharon has said repeatedly: “Gezel hagoy (stealing from gentles) should not come down to two opinions in tosfot.” There needs to be a fundamental universal of “Do not steal” as a norm within the system. It takes Miller until chapter three to get to this point. So hold off questions. I am only presenting here the first chapter and parts of the second.

The seven chapters of the book deal with why that fundamental intuition is necessary and sufficient. And in the last four chapters he explains why we do not need all the big guns and many premises and expectations of Rawls, Rorty, Macintyre, Habermas, Taylor and Waltzer.
This will take about three posts to finish, so be patient.

Chapter One – Indignation
The first chapter expresses the problem of multicultural relativism as a culture of excuse and apology. This approach to culture will not defeat the evil or offer moral standards . (Michael Waltzer) There is a need for feeling of indignation when injustice occurs.

If we value human dignity and respect, if we want a society of justice and equality then how do we affirm it against multicultural pluralism?

Miller’s first point is that we have to take extreme statements seriously. They become part of our culture and poison the atmosphere. If Bin Laden and his followers are in favor of murder then we have to take it seriously. What we should not do is say that Bin Laden is not really Islamic, so we don’t have to take it seriously. We should not create false liberal images of Islam or Judaism and then tell people to disregard the extremes, the unethical, and immoral. People follow these extreme positions even if they are not the best textual reading.

On the other hand, we should also not create a firewall between faith and ethics. We should not say whatever religion says is good and that universal ethics like stealing and killing have no place in the discussion. We cannot tell someone to listen faithfully to the shaariah or halakhah and ignore the moral imperatives.

We should not say that stealing and embezzlement is OK because a specific posak said it was OK.

We can acknowledge that Islam and Judaism have civil, economic, and political aspects and we should follow the arbitration and judgment of those systems but when is a position just plain aggressive or immoral?
Miller feels that we are stuck between the rock and hard place of offering a favorable judgment on demand to every religious group based on multicultural tolerance and the liberal ethnocentrism of not allowing religion into the discussion.

Miller ends the chapter by asking: What does it mean to respect others and to offer a universal baseline ethic? We need both the acceptance of religious systems and offering them the benefit of the doubt as well as a baseline ethic.

Chapter 2 – Contextualization
In the second chapter Miller is bothered by how contextualizion is used to justify any moral wrong found in a system. If one goes back to any religious text, one can offer legal, historical, economic, and social explanations for what that immoral sentence was written but it is still on the books. You can justify killing heretics or stealing from gentiles based on a variety of contextualizations but if you then bring up the immoral law with a justification for it in conversation it is relativist or if you justify it for other people it is relativist.

(1) The first form of contextualization that Miller finds fault with is the use of historical arguments based on legal and doctrinal precedents to reject the immoral opinion.
For example, a historical approach to the law can claim that Bin laden is not Islamic based on prior sources. He made up new fatwa and makes assumptions not found in earlier sources. So he is not Islamic. Or you can declare the immoral approaches to halakhah as not really Jewish and not really halakhic.

But Miller cries out in his exasperation that telling me that Bin laden is a misuse of Muslim tradition does not deal with moral indignation and resentment of those who suffered an injustice.

Yes we now know from this act of contextualization that extremists have a narrow view of the tradition and ignore the richness of the tradition. But it makes the extremists guilty of reductionism of tradition rather than a moral crime.
Miller puts his finger directly on the problem. When Rabbi Aharon Lichtenstein’s Responded to the Letter Banning Sale of Homes to Gentiles, he writes

This pain stems from the shortcomings that the document manifests in precisely those areas that should have been its strong point. The document speaks in the name Halakha, and its signatories see themselves as its envoys and propagators.

But therein lies the problem; the prohibition of selling homes to gentiles is presented as the exclusive halakhic position in the manner at hand, and the voice that bursts forth from the throats of the signatories is made to sound like the single unequivocal word of God, that is, halakha. Here one asks, is that indeed so? Without a doubt, the position expressed in the letter is based on rabbinic sources and a long halakhic tradition. Yet taken as a whole, the document leaves one with the impression that its conclusions are based on presumptions that characterize a particular—but not exclusive—halakhic approach.

Miller thinks that Rav Aharon should not turn this into a problem of reductionism of tradition but he should directly invoke the ethical principles. There needs to indignation not just regret. Rav Aharon ended his letter “I conclude with what should be self-evident. At stake are key questions that involve meta-halakhic considerations.” Miller thinks the self-evident should be front and center. (Dont take as a critique of Rav Aharon in any way, rather take this as an example of Miller knowing how these protests sound and wanting the rhetoric to be more direct.)

Why does Miller think this?
First, because laments of reductionism of tradition are not indignation.
Second, it does not place the rejected opinion as off limits. It is not strict and does not offer sufficient limits.
Third, it is much too vague about the moral judgment at core.

2] The second form of misplaced contextualization are economic arguments in which the offending opinion is considered as due to economics and material concerns. They are only doing it out of desperation or need, or social hopelessness, or it was the way they acted in the old country, or they don’t recognize America is a different country.

Miller does not like placing economics over faith especially when they themselves are claiming that their decisions are direct due to religion. Miller also finds that many amoral religious do not have any social or economic desperation. Many of the criminal Jews are already wealthy. Economic accounts do not take them at their word.

To be continued in at least two more parts. Help me think this one through. Is he setting up the problem correctly? I will edit this first part as I gain clarity. Could Rav Aharon have directly and head-on dealt with the ethical and meta-halakhic issues? How is this multicultural relativism moving to occupy a default position within Orthodoxy?

After the three parts, we can go back to the classic essays like “Is there an Ethic Outside of Halakha? to see if we have gained any clarity against 21st century multiculturalism.

Which haggadot did I look at this year?

My pre-Pesah hagagdah was the Haggadah of the Shelah from Hebrew books.org. For the Shelah, the Seder is a means to fight the myriads of evil klipot and evil forces in the world. Destruction of hametz is a sympathetic action for the immense battle with the klipot. The Mizvot of Passover all have powers of the divine name to fight the dark side. The activity of reciting the seder at Bnai Brak was a time of new revelations of Torah, new hierophanies of the divine to fight the evil.

Reb Zadok in Resesai Laylah was an internalization of these ideas to apply to our inner evils of pride, lust, anger. Eating as a mizvah at the seder is a tikkun for our faults not the worlds.
In the Shelah, the halakhic part by the Nesivos mentions cleaning the walls, as is known. I should look into the reality behind that for next year.

I was handed at one seder the Riskin Haggadah from 1983 reflecting his late 1970’s sermons. It read as a period piece of his sermons, values, and issues. For example, Why does “they that stand up” ve he she-umda mean? He says that homiletically it means not God’s covenant is everlasting but that the cup of wine is ever lasting and that if we give up drinking non-kosher wine it will protect us from our enemies. It has all his sermons about the need living in Israel, the need for activism, and apologetics about Judaism’s attitudes toward women and gentiles. It also had in his own name his baby carriage story “Do you ever buy a baby carriage?” In public he tended to present it as a Hasidic tale but since the punch line is about the need for ordinary people to act- it is a very non-Hasidic story. Here he takes his credit.

The Uri LeZedek Haggadah supplement was a hugh success in my neck of the woods. When I looked at it I did not see much new Torah and I saw lots of derashot somehow trying to tie in Rav Solovetichik. But people loved it. They should expand it and produce a beta version of a full haggadah for
Pesah 2012 and then get it to market by Nov 2012 for the Passover 2013 orders.
They can commission more comments; collect everything relevant from past haggadot
They should include the Rav Yisrael Salanter stories on caring for your workers.
They should also include the midrashim on the nature of the work and slavery work that the
jaws did in Egypt (and include the Gra on 4 types of slavery)
They should look at the Historian Ben Zion Dinur who collected the statements on the role of work and working in hazal. And finally, they should get stuff from kibbutz hadati movement on the virtue of labor.

I was handed a dreadful Rav Soloveitchik Haggadah locally produced- stick to the Passover notes of Noraos HaRav by R. David Schreiber.

I was then handed a vanity press Rav Yonatan Eybeschutz Haggadah which I enjoyed for the author not the editor. It made me want to go back to the original as a teaching text. Every chance he could, Rav Eybeschutz brought in acute messianism and the need for sinning for the sake of heaven. Real Sabbatian proto-Izbitz. Lots of Eighteenth century issues like encouraging his congregants to keep the Sabbath (On the high deviance level of his community, see Azriel Shochat, Im Hilufei Tekufot)

Even though it is old hat at this point – Here is a round table discussion among the post-evangelical set about the predictions from two years ago.For those new to this blog, here are my original posts on the post-evangelical and post orthodoxy comparison – here, here, here and there were about six more posts that treated specific issues.

After two years it seems the issues are less theological and more about the hindsight glance at how they were so invested in specific cultural forms and now people know not to be invested in specific cultural forms. Evangelicals and Centrists did not grasp that they were just a another passing cultural form. Looking back, it was an age of emotionalism in relgion. Years in Israel were about singing from one’s depth. Relgion meant knowing songs, owning teeshirts and all the cultural materialism brought from Israel but one could still be unable to learn. Externals counted more than textual knowledge.  Similar to Evangelicals, The Centrist community lived in a bubble of all Jewish activities and even speaking Modern-Orthodoxese. None of this socialization had anything to do with actual Torah uMitzvot. Now they all recommend a need for basics of doctrine and the proper religious way of life. They all advocate the need to go outside the enclosed bubble. They also have the issue that people are creating worship in the house- not as shtibl- as a form of leadership-less group participation.

The one thing the round table seems to differ with the predictions of two years ago is the need for seminary training. Now they see that those without proper seminary are less effective, more shallow, and don’t impact world.

And in both Evangelicals and Orthodoxy the in-house fighting was terrible.

Writers’ Roundtable: The Coming Collapse Of Evangelicalism
28 Apr by Jeff Dunn

In January, 2009, Michael Spencer fired a shot across the bow of the evangelical church with a three part series, The Coming Collapse of Evangelicalism. (You can access all three parts here.) I have asked our iMonk writers to revisit these posts for today’s roundtable discussion. We are two-plus years removed from Michael’s predictions. Was he right? Is the evangelical ship still sinking, or is it finding a way to stay afloat?

Jeff Dunn: Michael wrote, “I believe that we are on the verge—within 10 years—of a major collapse of evangelical Christianity; a collapse that will follow the deterioration of the mainline Protestant world and that will fundamentally alter the religious and cultural environment in the West. I believe this evangelical collapse will happen with astonishing statistical speed; that within two generations of where we are now evangelicalism will be a house deserted of half its current occupants, leaving in its wake nothing that can revitalize evangelicals to their former ‘glory.’”

How does that make you feel? What is your first reaction when you read this?

Damaris Zehner: The collapse of evangelicalism is not the same thing as the collapse of Christianity.  Cultural expressions of the faith come and go, and should.  I have never had any emotional investment in evangelicalism – I’ve struggled for decades even to find a conclusive definition of it – so I don’t feel strongly about its future.  If evangelicalism has become the whole of Christianity for some, it probably should die and force people to look more deeply and widely for the Church as C.S Lewis describes in The Screwtape Letters, the Church “spread out through all time and space and rooted in eternity, terrible as an army with banners.”

JD: Michael wrote, In what must be the most ironic of all possible factors, an evangelical culture that has spent billions on youth ministers, Christian music, Christian publishing and Christian media has produced an entire burgeoning culture of young Christians who know next to nothing about their own faith except how they feel about it.

What can be done to recapture these young people who can sing Christian songs by heart, but have no spiritual depth? Who have a closet full of Christian t-shirts, but have no skills when it comes to Scripture? Who know all the right things to say to sound “Christian,” but whose souls are lost?  Lisa?

LD: “Feel” is the key word here. Feeling is not a bad thing. God certainly formed us as emotional beings in his own image, but much of the time we’ve abandoned thinking for feeling, objectivity for subjectivity and theology for sentimentality. This trend wasn’t so much started in church, as it is a result of the church assimilating to a culture that always wants to feel good and be entertained.

AP: Well, I was one of those young people not so long ago. I DID have the closet (drawer, actually) full of Christian t-shirts. I had an exclusively Christian CD collection, purchased from the Christian bookstore where I worked. I listened to my Christian CDs on my way to the Christian university where I went to school, and on the weekends I spent all my time hanging out with Christians. I could quote the Bible and spoke fluent Christianese. I was so far into the bubble I could’ve been a professional gum-chewer.

I have five kids now, and my main desire for them is to avoid all the behavior-based Christianity I lived growing up. Yes, we teach them foundational, doctrinal things about why we believe what we believe, but ultimately my wife and I are trying to model an honest faith that is slathered in enough grace to give us freedom to wrestle with the tough questions.

Modern Christians need to consider what children really are and what they really need.  A few years ago, the church we no longer go to offered the junior high youth group an activity that consisted of eating melted chocolate out of diapers.  There must have been some token “Bible connection,” but what’s really shocking is what this reveals about the leaders’ philosophy about kids.  Kids like gross, revolting, shocking things.  Kids aren’t interested in ideas, or right and wrong.  Kids are really more like wild animals than adults.  And the more kids are treated like that, the more they become like that.

LD: Recently, I spoke with a guy who was trying to reach concertgoers who came to his area once a year and camped out for a week in a nearby farm fields. He kept trying to entice them into his church with free meals, but they wouldn’t come. Finally, he literally pitched a tent among them and cooked the meals on camp stoves. He was overwhelmed with takers – both of food and the Gospel. ‘Missional’ seems to mean more than inviting people to church now; it means taking church to them. If we’re willing to be open to going places we’ve never been and doing things we’ve never done, then “Christian vitality and ministry” can, and probably will be born.

JD: Michael saw a trend developing that others have predicted as well. I expect to see a vital and growing house church movement. This cannot help but be good for an evangelicalism that has made buildings, paid staff and numbers its drugs for half a century.

Aside from those folks, though, I think house church and small, intimate gatherings—even monastic-type communities—are becoming more acceptable and even desirable as a means of church expression. Relational currency goes a long way in my generation (and I say this knowingly as the youngest writer at the table here), and I think it goes even farther in the next generation, what with the popularity of social media and the desire to be constantly interconnected. The question becomes: what does church look like to them? They are the ones who are going to take over here in a few years. Any youngsters out there want to weigh in on that question? Perhaps through Twitter or a pithy text message?

CM: I disagree with Michael on this one. My perspective is that we will need seminaries more in years to come. In his book, To Change the World, James Davison Hunter has convinced me that serious study and education is essential. Think, for example, of the Protestant Reformation. On the theological and pastoral level, teachers in the universities led it.

However, from my own seminary experience, there is much to be changed in the seminary system if it is going to be truly effective. It must emphasize not only serious study of the Bible and theology, but also church history, liturgical traditions and practices, spiritual formation, and pastoral ministry. Stronger systems of apprenticeship need to be established so that students have spiritual guides and a vital community of prayer and edification throughout their seminary experience.

LD: I’ve been in a church led by a pastor who wasn’t trained in seminary. There was a definite shallowness of theology, so I would hate for the seminary system to be abandoned. On the other hand, even seminarians who go through internships meant to train them in the practicalities of ministry often seem to only be inculcated in how to be a church executive or how to run programs. A lot of pastors have so many “business” responsibilities that they don’t disciple those who will in turn disciple others.

So, I think it is a combination of seminary training, of being discipled and also discipling.

I would welcome the “collapse” of evangelicalism in many of its forms. You could close every Christian bookstore, cut off every Christian TV and radio program, cancel every CCM concert and get rid of every Christian band and song, and stop publication of the vast majority of popular Christian books, and it would not affect me one whit, nor do I think it would hurt the cause of Christ in the world in any significant way whatsoever. If all Christian politicians, pundits, and lobbyists who are out there in the media speaking out about culture war issues closed their mouths, I don’t think the country or the culture would suddenly go to hell in a hand basket.

First, that Christians have stopped leading culture in all its facets (art, science, literature, music, etc.) has had the dangerous effect of creating a vacuum that has been filled with … well, hostility. Not only are Christians not cutting-edge in leading culture, they are fair game for being ignored at best and victimized at worst. I fear we have settled for passivity and moderation in all things, including excellence and winsomeness.

Second, we Christians fight amongst ourselves way too much. Rousing discussions are one thing; vicious verbal assaults are another. Lack of unity in the Body of Christ destroys churches and the Church from within and does more to deter unbelievers from belief and than anything else in my opinion. Full Version Here

Posted on the local shuls yahoo group. The wonder worker Baba Baruch will be in town tonight.

It is with great joy that the ……. invites the entire community to welcome Baba Baruch, the son of Baba Sali Z”L, this coming Thursday May 5th Rosh Hodesh Iyar. Baba Baruch will pray Minha in The Sanctuary at 7:35 PM and will lead a Shiur (in Hebrew) afterwards. After Arvit, Baba Baruch will meet individually with anyone wishing to receive a Bracha. This is a special opportunity, and we hope that you will be able to attend.

I assume that most people go because they want the blessing. They dont look into his magical credentials or history; they accept his social role as giver of blessings. The sociologist Nancy Ammermann teaches that one needs to look at the actual lived relgion of a community. Going to Baba Baruch is part of the unified object of Bergen county Modern Orthodoxy. Their YU pulpit rabbis and teachers are against it but lived relgion needs its magic. As Bronislaw Malinowski wrote more than half a century ago:

magic supplies primitive man with a number of ready-made ritual acts and beliefs, with a definite mental and practical technique which serves to bridge over the dangerous gaps in every important pursuit or critical situation… The function of magic is to ritualize man’s optimism, to enhance his faith in the victory of hope over fear. Magic expresses the greater value for man of confidence over doubt, of steadfastness over vacillation, of optimism over pessimism.

For those interested in Baba Baruch’s background – see this article by Yoram Bilu and Eyal Ben-Ari

Rabbi Baruch (“Baba Baruch”) was far removed from his father’s lifestyle of learning, piety, and asceticism. Though raised and educated by his father in Erfud (in Tafillelt, southern Morocco), in his youth Baruch spent many years in Paris disengaged from the traditional ambience of his Moroccan hometown. Having followed his father to Israel in the mid-1960s, he decided to pursue a political career, and was soon elected to the post of deputy mayor in Ashkelon (another southern town in which Baba Sali lived before moving to Netivot). It was in this capacity that Baruch Abu-Hatzera was accused of corruption and bribery, found guilty and sentenced to a long term in prison. After being paroled (he received an early release after serving five years in prison) he joined his father and was with Baba Sali during the last three months of the saint’s life.

While Baba Sali’s lifestyle lent itself quite easily to aggrandizement and mythologization, his son’s notorious personal record as an ex-convict and an adulterer obviously was not the right stuff for sanctification. The intriguing question, then, is how could Baruch establish himself as his father’s legitimate successor despite his problematic past. In what follows we seek to elucidate the reasons for this astonishing success.

Once again, the cultural assumptions underlying saint worship in the Maghreb should be taken as a favourable starting point in the search for legitimacy. The notions of baraka among Muslims and of its Jewish counterpart, zechut avot (ancestral merit), connote a strong sense of inherited blessedness and ascribed virtue. As mentioned earlier, the Abu-Hatzera family figured as a most important, if not prime, example of line ancestry in which such sanctity was ingrained. The family’s accumulated zechut could thus prove a fortuitous starting point for Baba Baruch’s claims.
Yet despite the stigma that seriously corroded his public image and the existence of other (perhaps more) worthy contenders for succession within the Abu-Hatzera family, Baba Baruch has managed to take his father’s mantle and to step into his shoes

Second, having lived with killers, rapists, and drug addicts, Baruch presents himself as a person most fitting to deal with the wide scope of human misery addressed to him by those seeking his help. Time and again he plays up the idea that, following his prison experience, nothing human is foreign to him. Finally, he stresses the fact that his religious faith and moral commitment have been strengthened in prison rather than attenuated. According to his story, he was the prime agent responsible for a wave of religious revivalism there, having served as a ray of hope and comfort for the other inmates.

A number of factors appear to have facilitated the dissemination and propagation of Baruch’s new image as born-again, as reconstituted in his father’s mould.
The second factor conducive to the propagation of Baruch’s image as his father’s inheritor has to do with the cultural practice of visitational dreams. In the context of Jewish Moroccan hagiolatric traditions, this psycho-cultural mechanism has been deemed the vehicle for transmitting knowledge and instructions from deceased sainted figures. Against this background, Baruch’s claims that his father frequents his dreams, providing him with reassurances that he is his legitimate heir, cannot be dismissed by Baba Sali’s adherents as a mere calculated fabrication.

The third factor is associated with the realization of the blessedness putatively promised in the dreams. The distinctive healing tradition of the family, based on uttering a special incantation over water which is thereby endowed with healing qualities, has long been one of the factors underlying their popularity and renown.

Within the seven days of ritual mourning after his father’s death, aptly dramatic and miraculously unexpected (for example, a paralytic rising from a wheelchair) stories of his power began to spread by word of mouth and through newspaper reports. The unprecedented publicity gained by these first cures should be carefully noted. In part, this publicity may have reflected a genuine need to find an effective substitute for the legendary healer; but more pertinent to our theses, it may be viewed as a manifestation of Baruch’s skills in creating favourable public relations and manipulating the media. Read the rest here.

There are lots of recent books on the Sefardi saints, graves, demons, magic and business. The most eye opening for someone not familiar with this material is Yorem Bilu, Without Bounds: The Life and Death of Rabbi Ya’Aqov Wazana

For a very good anthropology article with full literature on the new cults of saints – see Gil Daryn, Moroccan Hassidism: The Chavrei Habakuk Community and Its Veneration of Saints Full text pdf here.

Baba Baruch also tried to invoke Rav Ifergen (X-ray) in scandal- you can find it in a search.

Now to return to Bergen county. How does this wonder working play itself out differently in Bergen county? Jail time does not give one street credibility in Jewish Engelwood and visions and dreams are not part of Bergen culture. How will the attendees, especially those who paid 4 or 5 figures for a blessing conceptualize this powers? Will it just be last chance prayers for remission of cancer and real estate developers getting the power to close the deal? or will it be more?
What role does the year in Israel and it romanticism play here? Thoughts?

Here is a cute Haaretz review of some 16th century parody poems that appeared as pashkevils and become part of an anthology of mixed secular and religious given to a bride. I edited the review down and re-arranged parts. The review reads as if the author Roni Weinstein brought the poems to class and used them as a basis for a general intro to the culture 16th century bakhurs. Any thoughts on comparing our pop-culture to theirs?

Two Poems in Yiddish, Rhymes of an Ashkenazi Poet in 16th-Century Venicetranslated and prefaced by Claudia Rosenzweig, Bibliotheca Aretina

The word pashkevil (in the singular form ), long ago become part and parcel of the Yiddish and Hebrew languages, but its origin is Italian. The 16th-century Hebrew and Yiddish scholar Elye Bokher (pseudonym of Elia Levita ) wrote about it in his Hebrew dictionary “Sefer Hamedakdek”: “Yes, in olden times people who composed proverbs would write their works on the doorsteps of charitable people or secretly in busy streets, so that they could not be identified. That is the custom in Rome to this day and those things are called katavot [articles],” he noted.

And indeed, to this day one can see such advertisements, pasquinate in Italian, in various places in Rome, on the walls of houses or on statues, mainly with political satire.
Elijah, the son of Asher Halevy Levita Ashkenazi, also known as Elye Bokher, was born in 1468 in Ipsheim, Germany, and died in 1549 in Venice. During his lifetime, he managed to write what became some of the basic works of Yiddish literature: He compiled a dictionary, wrote poetry, translated holy books and he may be best known for adapting knights tales into Yiddish. The most famous of them were “Paris and Vienna” and “Bovo d’Antona.” The Jews of Ashkenaz (Germany ) and later of Poland were avid readers of stories about knights and kings, a tradition that lasted for hundreds of years. The 19th-century “Tales of Rabbi Nachman of Breslav” also include references to these stories.

It is no coincidence that Levita was called “Bokher” (lad ), which in the Hebrew spoken at that time meant an unmarried man or a yeshiva student who travels from place to place to learn Torah. Elye indeed wandered from Germany to Italy as he sought sponsorship. He found it among Jewish patrons of the arts and Catholic clergymen such as Egidio da Viterbo, for whom he copied several Hebrew manuscripts and also composed books about the Hebrew language.

In her book, Rosenzweig, a gifted researcher of Yiddish literature, translates into Italian two poems by Elye Bokher;
The first poem was written when Bokher was an adolescent, upon his arrival in Venice. There he had to defend his good reputation in the face of slanderous claims that he had joined other Jews in looting during a fire that raged near the city’s Rialto Bridge. After expressing his anger for being unjustly arrested, he continued with a bitter criticism of wealthy Jews, who seem to get away with perpetrating various injustices. In the final stanza he describes himself as one of the young adolescents who initiate and participate in the Purim festivities.

The manner in which Ashkenazim celebrate Purim offers fertile ground for the writing of witty and unbridled poems. As they developed in Germany during the Middle Ages – and then spread to other Jewish communities in the Diaspora, first and foremost to Jewish Italian communities – the holiday festivities were apparently modeled on the Christian carnival, with its own deep roots in pre-Christian pagan traditions. The latter carnival, and the Purim holiday by extension, was a time in which the boundaries between what is permitted and what is not, between the private and the public, between the shameful and the refined, are all broken down, and the body – full of vitality – shows all its aspects, including those that are usually concealed.

Young yeshiva students spearheaded the events of the Purim-style carnival in their communities in Ashkenaz. Young men in Italy, for example, would dress up as women and hold up masks – something that Rabbi Halevi Minz, one of the great Italian rabbis of the period, reported with much anger.

Nothing can be more harmful to an enemy’s image than to strike at his masculinity and sexuality, it seems. Such a goal was well served by witty poetry in a language that the Italians call, to this day, “biting” or “murderous,” be it orally or in writing, in pasquils displayed in the streets of a Jewish neighborhood and sometimes on synagogues’ walls.
This is reflected in the second poem by Elye Bokher, “Shir Hamavdil” – an ironic paraphrase of a liturgical poem sung on Saturday nights as the Sabbath ends:

He labels that person as a “complete goy,” one who “does not know how to pray, a failed teacher who misleads his pupils when he teaches them Hebrew grammar, (and one who ) gambles in card games.”

Bokher then goes on to a juicy part that most befits this genre: dealing with the enemy’s sex life as expressed in his failed marriages with three different women. He divorced his first wife without even touching her, which means he is impotent. The second wife was a young and pious woman with whom he, again, failed to have intercourse. She died of grief. Without waiting for the traditional seven mourning days to end, the man promptly started looking for a third woman. With her, too, he failed sexually and she ran away from him. The poem continues its slanderous tone by stating that the man has sex with cats and chickens. In the last stanza the author says he intends to go to the city of Pesaro, where the Soncino family has a printing press, and print the poem there so that he can post it on walls in public places.

How widespread was such poetry and who read it? …Groups of such young people “engaged in games and composed comic poems in the beit midrash,” according to the “Sefer Midot,” published in Yiddish in 1542.

One of the manuscripts in which the poems were preserved was a father’s wedding gift to his daughter. It also included a complete collection of practical essays for the young woman: a collection of traditions, material from contemporary guides called “women’s books,” translations into Yiddish of the five biblical scrolls (Ruth, Esther, Song of Songs, Ecclesiastes and Lamentations ), prayer and liturgical poems, a translation of Pirkei Avot, seven tales, a bilingual poem about the different ages of life, a poem about a competition between wine and water, a quiz and a wedding poem suitable for Purim.
The holy and the profane, the high and the low, the refined and the vulgar – all meet here more easily and with more joy than during the contemporary era, which is characterized by shame and modesty.

Hence, including such works in manuscripts given as a wedding gift to a young woman was not unusual in those days. It reflected a tradition that harks back to the Middle Ages with derogatory songs familiar to the Hebrew poets. In fact, the phenomenon was common to Jews and Christians in Europe, where one could find poems composed by young traveling priests, which dealt with love and bodily pleasures. Those novices also composed parodies about Christian liturgy in Latin or in a mixture of Latin and Italian – spoofs known as “macaroni.” Full version here.

Spiritual leader Sathya Sai Baba passed away a week ago on Apr 24, 2011, he had millions of followers across the world. But for our purposes he had many Jewish followers and was one of the leading gurus for Jews fleeing to India.

There is a famous story of the Jewish Mother and the Guru. She knocks on the monastery door, desperate to see the guru. Finally a monk answers, and she asks to see the guru. The monk allows her in, accompanies her through the monastery, and opens the shrine-room door to reveal a guru seated on a golden platform beside it. He will allow her to utter only five words to the guru. Parking her shoes, she ascends the long staircase to the golden throne, puts down her shopping bags, looks the guru in the eye and says: “Nu, Sheldon, come home already.”

In the 1960’s many American Jews ran to India seeking spirituality. To whom did they run? People know about the relationship of Baba Ram Das (Richard Alport ) and Neem Karoli Baba. But for many other Jews the destination was Sathya Sai Baba including Dr Michael Goldstein, the chairman of the international Sai Baba organization,

Sai Baba’s most famous follower among Orthodox rabbis was Rabbi David Zeller (1946-2007) of Jerusalem. David Zeller is another example of baby boomer who set out to the East and then ended his journey as an Orthodox rabbi in Jerusalem teaching healing mediations. His full story is set out in an autobiography and a memorial biography volume. Zeller submitted to many other gurus including Sri Pad and Mother. Zeller lived as an ascetic for a year. In 1982, Zeller brought Reb Shlomo Carlebach and Reb Zalman Schachter-Shalomi to a trans-personnel psychology conference to meet Sathya Sai Baba. Zeller was the Jewish representative for a Sri Baba conference in 2005 on love.

Sathya Sai Baba’s teachings were congenial to Westerners since he taught that there is one God and that there is a unity of all religions. He taught his followers that do not need to give up their original religion. The main objective of the Sathya Sai Organization, as Sathya Sai Baba himself says, “is to help you recognize the divinity inherent in you. So, your duty is to emphasize the One, to experience the One in all you do or speak. Do not give importance to differences of religion, sect, status, or color.
The principal objectives of Sri Sathya Sai Seva Organisation are:

1. To help the individual
* To be aware of the Divinity that is inherent in him and to conduct himself accordingly;
* To translate into practice in daily life, divine love and perfection; and therefore
* To fill one’s life with joy, harmony, beauty, grace, human excellence and lasting happiness;
2. To ensure that all human relations are governed by the principles of Sathya (Truth), Dharma (Right Conduct), Shanthi (Peace), Prema (Love) and Ahimsa (Non-violence).
3. To make devotees more sincere and dedicated in the practice of their respective religions by understanding properly the true spirit of their religion.

Ont he other hand Sri Baba, like many Indian gurus, could not differentiate Judaism from Christianity and had only the most confused notions of Biblical religion.

Back to Rabbi David Zeller- in his autobiography wrote that “becoming an orthodox rabbi had not cut me off from the other traditions. He defended on the need to accept different religious traditions:

Rather, I understood that each people and tradition had been chosen to do a particular task for all of humanity. Just as each organ in our body must fulfill its “destiny” and function for the overall health of the whole body, so each religious tradition has its function in the body of humankind. (142-3)

While I was on stage singing and teaching about Jewish mysticism and meditation, Swami Vishnu chimed in. “Oh Rabbi, this is just like we teach in yoga philosophy. You see, we really are all one, and all the teachings are here in yoga!” 193

From Rabbi Zeller’s web page – we have a nice example of his Sai Baba in Jewish terms.

For the most part, we live in a world that doesn’t acknowledge the existence of the Self, the Soul or of God.

My work is about bringing the soul from an intellectual concept to a personal and intimate experience. Haven’t we had enough focus about the soul? From a mental approach, yes. Now it’s time for one that speaks from the soul and to the soul and calls to and awakens the soul. It combines the religious, the spiritual, the psychological and the meditative.

The soul is not a divine or Godly spark flitting around the body like a fire fly. It is not the spiritual half of our physical body. It is not another name for Self or the archetype of God (with all due true respect and love for Jung).

The Soul, this Godly Presence, is all there is. It’s all we are.

Through teachings of the ultimate oneness of all energy/spirit and matter/body, through an understanding of the nature of Tree of Knowledge duality consciousness that cuts us off from that oneness, I try to present the teachings from the Tree of Life on how to get back to the Tree of Life. The Kabbalistic map of the Four Worlds can be taught linearly or holistically. We can learn it from the Tree of Life, seeing these worlds as simultaneous, overlapping, interpenetrating dimensions in our every day life.

This is the new education from the Tree of Life. This is the education of the Soul. Read more here

Nice interview with Zeller in a new age journal found here.

Video from India 1993

This appeared last week. What would your rabbi answer? What would an ideal rabbi answer?

A six-year-old Scottish girl named Lulu wrote a letter to God: “To God, How did you get invented?” Lulu’s father, who is not a believer, sent her letter to various church leaders: the Scottish Episcopal Church (no reply), the Presbyterians (no reply), and the Scottish Catholics (who sent a theologically complex reply). He also sent it to the Archbishop of Canterbury, who sent the following letter in reply:

Dear Lulu,

Your dad has sent on your letter and asked if I have any answers. It’s a difficult one! But I think God might reply a bit like this –

‘Dear Lulu – Nobody invented me – but lots of people discovered me and were quite surprised. They discovered me when they looked round at the world and thought it was really beautiful or really mysterious and wondered where it came from. They discovered me when they were very very quiet on their own and felt a sort of peace and love they hadn’t expected. Then they invented ideas about me – some of them sensible and some of them not very sensible. From time to time I sent them some hints – … – to help them get closer to what I’m really like. But there was nothing and nobody around before me to invent me. Rather like somebody who writes a story in a book, I started making up the story of the world and eventually invented human beings like you who could ask me awkward questions!’

And then he’d send you lots of love and sign off. I know he doesn’t usually write letters, so I have to do the best I can on his behalf. Lots of love from me too.

+Archbishop Rowan

But what the letter also tells us is that the Archbishop took the trouble to write a really thoughtful message – unmistakably his work and not that of a secretary – to a little girl. “Well done, Rowan!” was the reaction of Alex Renton’s mother, and I agree.

Original in The Telegraph h/t and edited version from here.

I had a conversation this week with a 52 year old Yeshiva College graduate, who is firmly committed to Orthodoxy and even hangs around his Orthodox shul to always be available to make a minyan or help the rabbi.

He said that he was glad to get back to eating bread and cookies and along the way mentioned that any matza upsets his stomach and that he avoids matza meal all Passover. I asked what do you do for the seder? I was expecting an answer on the relative merits of spelt or oats. He answered “I do nothing. When the matza is passed, I just pass on the matza. I just keep passing it. I have not eaten matza for 8 years already.”

Whenever there is a survey done of ritual practice in Orthodox synagogues and you usually get results like 92% eat matzah on Passover, 93% fast on Yom Kippur. I generally ascribed the non-observant percentage to the elderly, infirm, adolescent and college rebellion, divorce, and psychological stress. This is the first time I heard from an unwavering Modern Orthodox shul regular who is not gluten intolerant in any way and has no medical condition that “I just pass on the matzah.”

After my last post on Mormons and Orthodoxy, Mark Paredes the Mormon author of the column “Jews and Mormons” emailed me with encouragement. Mark seems to be a one man quest for Jewish-Mormon encounter.

Mark’s Wiki bio offers the following hurricane of productive activity.

Mark Paredes is the author of the “Middle East Matters” column for the Deseret News and the “Jews and Mormons” blog for the Jewish Journal of Greater Los Angeles. He served as a U.S. diplomat at the United States Embassy in Tel Aviv from 1994-1996 and the U.S. Consulate General in Guadalajara, Mexico from 1991-1993. He also worked as the press attaché for the Consulate General of Israel in Los Angeles, the National Director of Hispanic Outreach for the American Jewish Congress, and the Executive Director of the Western Region of the ZOA.

Jewish-Mormon encounter seems to be his special passion. A few weeks ago, he spoke at the Orthodox minyan at Harvard and the event was one of the best received that they ran all year, and got a glowing write-up by one of the participants in The Crimson, who dubbed it “one of the most profound interfaith events I’ve ever attended on this campus” due to its refusal to sidestep difficult issues, and cast it as a model for substantive interfaith work.

In the spirit of his passion, Mark answered a few questions about the Orthodox-Mormon encounter. Personally, I am fascinated by how a religion that accepts that there are many gods, accepts that god was a person who later became divine, has a wife, and that God has a body could be embraced by Orthodoxy. The obvious answer is that the common ground of family values, conservative politics, and banning gay marriage overcomes little things like the principles of faith. It even has them discussing their conflicting Abrahamic covenants.

Read on and then feel free to ask good questions that will open up the discussion. If I read Mark’s passion correctly, he will be checking the comments here eager to reply.

1] Which Orthodox rabbis are you friendly with or impressed with? why?
Rather than list specific rabbis, I’d prefer to list organizations with which I have worked. The OU, Agudath Israel, The Simon Wiesenthal Center/Museum of Tolerance, Jews for Judaism, the Sephardic Educational Center, Harvard Hillel and many LA-area Orthodox synagogues all have rabbis whom I know and admire. Last summer I conducted an especially meaningful dialogue with a Montreal Orthodox rabbi. I am very impressed by their dedication to Torah-based Judaism and Jewish values, and the way in which they use their influence both to strengthen their own communities and to work with people of faith to improve the world. I have attended OU seminars and lectures on kashrut laws and dina d’malchuta dina, welcomed the collaboration of the OU and Agudath Israel with Mormons, Catholics, Muslims, and Evangelicals to pass Proposition 8 in California, attended a luncheon sponsored by Jews for Judaism, taken a Torah class from an inspired SEC rabbi, and conducted a town hall meeting on gay marriage at a leading Orthodox shul.

2] What theological topics do you talk with them?

It’s hard to identify a common theme to my religious discussions with Orthodox rabbis. Together we’ve explored many topics: the obligations associated with the Abrahamic covenant, what it means to be created b’tselem, whether dina d’malchuta dina can ever trump Torah law, whether evil was divinely created, the role of Satan in Jewish thought, why certain prohibitions are contained in the Noahide Laws, and why religious Jews and Mormons wear sacred garments.

Two weeks ago, I had the distinct honor of giving the D’var Torah to the Orthodox minyan at Harvard University. After discussing lepers and cleansing, I thanked the Orthodox for standing for morality and Torah values in a world that sorely needs them. I’ll never forget this experience.

3] Why is Mormon-Orthodox Jewish dialogue important?

Mormons generally consider the Orthodox to be Jews who take G-d and their religion seriously. We have enormous respect for people who believe that the Hebrew Bible is a divine book, and that this knowledge obligates us to act in certain ways. On a personal level, I have found that Orthodox Jews are usually much more knowledgeable about their own faith than their Reform and Conservative counterparts.

Given that Mormons believe that they are modern-day Israelites and that their theology is far more complete than other Christian belief systems on the Abrahamic covenant, chosenness and Israel, the prophetic tradition, etc., it’s only natural that they would seek to dialogue with Jews who look to Judaism, not secular liberalism, for enlightenment on these questions.

The LDS Church as a whole is interested in working with other faiths in two areas: humanitarian aid and promoting religious freedom. At the grass roots level, however, Mormons love Jews, Judaism, and Israel, and any attempt by the Orthodox to engage in dialogue with us would be warmly welcomed.

4] Do the Orthodox rabbis ever learn about Mormonism and its doctrines?

I’ve fielded many questions from Orthodox rabbis on LDS beliefs and practice. On one occasion the local LDS Church’s public affairs committee invited a group of LA-based rabbis to visit the temple in Draper, Utah, before it was dedicated. An Orthodox rabbi was in the group, and he was very appreciative of the chance to learn more about our sacred rituals.

5] If there is one message that would give an Orthodox audience?

Mormons have enormous respect for Judaism and Jews, and we have more to say to religious Jews than do other Christians.

6] Where do you see the most divergence?
Mormons have temples, revelation through prophets, and the priesthood. We consider them to be both necessary and irreplaceable. When we read the Hebrew Bible, we see a pattern of G-d calling prophets, giving them His word, and the sending them to transmit it to the masses.

There are no authorized dissenting voices in the Torah. Therefore, when a Mormon reads the Talmud, with its quarreling rabbis and multiple interpretations of scriptural passages, it’s difficult for him to accept the rabbinic/Talmudic tradition as being a continuation of temple-based Judaism. For us, there can’t be a prophetic tradition without prophets.

7] Is there any advice that you would give someone who is not used to encounter with Mormons.
Mormons do not believe that Jews and others who reject Jesus Christ as the Savior are going to hell. [For us the deadline for accepting G-d’s truths is not death, but the olam ha-ba]. Finally, there is no room in LDS doctrine for replacement theology. The Abrahamic covenant is at the center of our temple worship, and children born to couples who have been “sealed” in our temples are said to be “born in the [Abrahamic] covenant.” To be sure, our definition of that covenant is more expansive than the Jewish one, but the idea that the Abrahamic covenant has been replaced by something else is antithetical to our beliefs. Does the covenant still apply to Jews? Yes. Are they keeping all of its requirements? That would make for a fascinating dialogue topic.

8] One of the student organizers of your talk at Harvard emailed me after the event to inform me about it. But he added “My only regret is that we ran out of time before we could ask about the Mormon corporeal conception of God… many Orthodox rabbis may not be aware of the problematic Avodah Zarah-esque (idolatrous) natures of many LDS theological tenets.” How would you respond to this student statement?

Site editor--For those not acquainted with Mormon belief about God, here is a neutral BBC article on the topic.
• God is not of another species
• God is an exalted, perfected man
• God has a physical body
• There is more than one God
• Human beings have the potential to become like God
• The Godhead consists of 3 separate and distinct beings, united in purpose
• Mormons believe that God is immortal and that God was once a man.
• God the Father is a being called Elohim, who was once a man like present day human beings, but who lived on another planet.
• Over time this man made himself perfect and became God, with a knowledge of everything, and the power to do anything.
• Jesus Christ is the first-born spirit child of God. He was the literal, biological Son of God, and of Mary
• They believe that after the resurrection, Jesus visited America, where he taught and performed miracles.

Answer- Instead of waxing indignant like some Christians do when they discover that the Talmud regards them as idolaters (I tend to think that the rabbanim were targeting the Roman-era Christians who were persecuting them under the guise of religion, but I digress), I’ve found that it’s easier to simply explain what we believe and let Jews come to their own conclusions. The BBC link is accurate, but a little perspective is needed.

For Jews, the concept of covenant Israel begins at Sinai. For Mormons, it is an eternal covenant that began in the pre-earth life when we lived with G-d and will continue into the eternities. We believe that the first covenant Israelite, the first “Mormon” if you will, was Adam. We also believe that all of the early patriarchs (Adam, Enoch, Noah, Abraham) held G-d’s priesthood and taught true worship of Him. In other words, we don’t believe that worship of the true G-d began with Abraham Avinu, though it may have been restored by him. While Jews tend to dismiss pre-Abrahamic concepts of G-d as idolatrous or benighted, Mormons see the ancient Near Eastern belief in a council of Gods reflected in the Hebrew Bible.

In Genesis 1:26, for example, we see the plural “us” used by G-d and we learn that we are created b’tselem, which Mormons interpret literally. Psalm 82:1 is another scripture that resonates with us.

We do believe that G-d is an exalted, perfected man who is the Father of our spirits. He is married to an exalted, perfected woman, and we are their spirit children. In LDS teaching, we are all literally brothers and sisters of G-d. We lived with our heavenly parents before we came to earth, and b’ezrat Hashem we’ll live with them in the olam ha-ba.

Mormons reject the concept of the Trinity, choosing instead to believe in three distinct divine members of a Godhead headed by G-d our Father.

One clarification is needed for the BBC article, one which may allay some avodah zarah concerns. Although we believe that there is more than one god, we only pray to our Heavenly Father (in the name of Jesus). In our modern scriptures, we learn that Abraham is now an Exalted Man who “Sitteth Upon His Throne,” but we do not worship Abraham.

Our relationship to G-d and other gods is analogous to a child/parent relationship: there may be many fathers walking the earth, but a child has only one dad that he recognizes as such.

Please let me know if you need more information. Clarity is always more important than agreement when it comes to interfaith dialogue, and this is especially true with respect to our concept of the divine.

The fifth installment of Daily Beast- Newsweek’s Top Rabbis list appeared last week. The co-creators were Michael Lynton —Sony Pictures chairman and CEO, and Gary Ginsberg, executive vice president of Time Warner Inc. Neither one seems knowledgeable or qualified to make such a list and Los Angeles is not known for culture. This year they brought in journalist Abigail Pogrebin, former 60 Minutes producer and author of Stars of David: Prominent Jews Talk About Being Jewish. She helped edit Lynton and Ginsberg’s brainchild. Where the prior lists seemed all wrong, this one has its finger on something correct—media is the medium.

James Hunter in his latest book (discussed here) asked: why religious groups do not change American culture if they are so prevalent and dedicated? His answer is that they do not play in the big leagues and confine themselves to their parochial culture. This list lets us know who is playing in the media league. And for many rabbis in the coming decade reaching people will involve media, social media, networking, and preaching to those in power. Since Jews have reached the highest levels of society in the last years and the greatest acceptance in society of any group then this public media faith may be the way of the future for those who want to influence society. CLAL is now training rabbis to use the media and preach to general America culture as a whole what it calls “rabbis without borders.”

But what about the list? Is this order indicative of anything? Others have done excellent jobs of fisking prior lists – here, here, and here.
My angle is to look at the trends and not to look at the ranking at all and more importantly, not to look at the names. Not more than 25 actually belong on the list. The other 25 could have been interchanged with other names. But the trends are correct.

What are the trends?
Chabad represents authentic tradition to most Jews and most American Jews have some involvement with Chabad. Jews in Reform Temples eagerly await their shmura matzah from the local shaliach. In the public’s eye Chabad is mainstream Orthodox and has pushed most other forms of Orthodoxy out of the picture.

Denominational Rabbis are insulted that the Kabbalah Centre is on the list but the Kabbalah Centre, Aish, Chabad, and many other groups besides the major denominations have great influence over Jewish life.

If you are involved in an indie minyan then you are “in” this year. It does not matter which rabbi was honored.
If you are involved in Joshua Venture then you are honored.
If you are connected to the game changing foundations then you are on the list such as Bronfman, or Wexner. If the Jim Joseph Foundation had a rabbi in charge it would have been on the list, while if Wexner loses its Rabbinic director then it is off the list.

The list rewards interfaith work, involvement in politics, and those that criticize the system.

The list rewards anyone who is bringing change rather than having accomplished it. The prime case is that Rick Jacobs is on the list and Eric Yoffie is off even though Yoffie had another successful year of leadership. Something akin to the Obama peace prize.

Those proclaimed by the list are the members of the RVI who criticized the status quo of the Reform movement and seek to lead Reform into new terrains of the 21st century. But at this point, they are only critique not accomplishment. The list rewarded those who criticized the Conservative movement, even if the solution will not necessary come from those figures who issued the critiques. And it heavily rewarded Open Orthodoxy. This is a good chance for some of my readers to know what is going on in other movements. Go download their speeches and critiques. If Reform and modern Orthodoxy remade themselves in the 1980’s into success stories from their nadir, it pays to watch who emerges from the new Conservative and Reform initiates.
Many of the rabbis share the religious message of Oprah, the gospel of prosperity and individual growth. Religion relates to one’s own narrative. Many of the rabbis have appeared on TV or written plays or other forms of media.

Who are the intellectuals and authors that have broad appeal? David Wolpe, David Saperstein, Jospeh Telushkin, Jill Jacobs, and Arthur Green. The emphasis is on social justice, ethics, a narrative sense of religion. Note that Green is credited with environmentalism and pacifism, more ethics than pantheistic metaphysics. There needs to be more rabbis to step into the mass market book niche. More rabbis should be able to successfully have a public debate besides Wolpe. On the other hand, I wish someone more learned and bookish rabbis could learn to have an impact with their ideas.
Reb Zalman has been issuing a book every few months and is taking on a new following.
My readership does not first think of organizational rabbis or even synagogue rabbis but teachers of Torah in the broadest sense- Rabbis Green, Dorff, and Schachter.

And of course the first Rabbah is mentioned as an exemplar the way Sally Priesand was a celebrity as the first American female rabbi.

From this list, one sees that Open Orthodoxy has won the media war. American Jewry has accepted it and cheers it on. Returning to my point above from James Hunter, Open Orthodoxy may have lost the blog wars and the YI wars but blogs and the RCA are considered provincial and not competing in the main cultural arena. In the major cultural arena as defined by Hunter, Open Orthodoxy seems to have won.

But from where I sit and type, Open Orthodoxy seems to have few applicants and ever fewer strong applicants. It is struggling for legitimacy and is not getting major positions. Am I too far away? Too close? I dont see the change. And I found the choices idiosyncratic. The list is written as if there is a tidal wave of YCT rabbis reaching major pulpits. So I decided to directly ask one of the authors of the list who wrote a recent article on Avi Weiss.

Last year, the third member of the evaluation team Abigail Pogrebin befriended me on Facebook. Now what are Facebook friends for, if not for quick interviews on what they write? (For example, Peter Beinart on his Orthodoxy.)

1] I know that you wrote an article on Avi Weiss. Your list is heavily slanted in its Orthodoxy section to Open Orthodoxy.

It’s true that my reporting for the Avi Weiss story for New York Magazine made us more familiar with the leading figures in Open Orthodoxy but we didn’t decide to include them because we favor their philosophy necessarily — more because they’re clearly at the vanguard of a significant movement that both balances Orthodox requirements and re-envisions Orthodox learning and ritual. Avi Weiss and Sara Hurwitz were already on the list last year so there were some new additions, as was YU’s Hershel Schachter, who is as far from Open Orthodoxy as they come. It should also be noted that Schachter entered the list higher than Hurwitz and Linzer.

One thing that we think is important, is that it’s very significant that we put Krinsky first. So to those who feel that “true” Orthodoxy got short shrift, no ranking gets greater notice than the number one slot.

2] Do you think they have that much influence? And on whom?
I think there’s no question that YCT is having real influence because its graduates are going to some of the nation’s most prominent Hillels, shuls, and organizations –and they’re bringing their new approach to Orthodoxy with them. If you look at the job placement list of YCT’s graduates the last ten years, I think you’ll see what I mean. These rabbis are going to some of the top positions in Jewish leadership and clergy and they’ll have an impact on their students and congregations. I think there’s no question that many Orthodox Jews– who feel the old models are too fixed —have been responsive, despite the discomfort and criticism of others who think Open Orthodoxy isn’t Orthodoxy.

3] How did you pick the open and modern orthodox rabbis? It seemed arbitrary.
There are obviously too many rabbis to include — in every denomination — but we chose the rabbis on the front lines of this reinterpretation of Orthodoxy who have been most on our radar over the last year. Part of the goal of the list is to tell readers what is happening in the Jewish world in terms of new ideas and leadership– no matter how controversial.

Editorial distance is important because we aim to include rabbis who meet our criteria, whether we “like” them or not.

4] Does the list offer any insight in your mind to the future of the Reform and Conservative movements?
Absolutely, we think the list reveals the internal tensions and dissatisfaction in both movements. Peter Rubinstein’s Rabbinic Vision Initiative, which was launched in the last year to very strong reactions — positive and negative — represents a bold questioning of the URJ’s effectiveness and relevance, and involved the participation of several rabbis on our list, who have some of the largest Reform synagogues in the country, namely Rick Jacobs, Steven Leder — who almost quit the URJ because he’s been so frustrated, David Stern, and Stephen Pearce.
As is well known, the Conservative movement is also doing some serious soul-searching, since many of its leaders feel its definition and virtues have become perilously unclear. See especially Ed Feinstein, who sounded the alarm at the recent convention in Las Vegas, David Wolpe — who has said that Conservative Judaism needs a definition it can fit on a bumper sticker, and Julie Schonfeld — head of Rabbinical Assembly — who is taking this precarious moment extremely seriously as she travels the country to hear from 400 of her movements rabbis to try to address the malaise.

5] Do you have any criteria for what is Judaism?
That’s a very interesting question and obviously more complex than I can answer succinctly, but basically I think we know that we’re recognizing Jewish leadership in the pulpit, the seminary, and in organizations, but we’re not listing people according to observance or whether they’re meeting some standard of what it means to be A Good Jew, or an “authentic” or “Halachic Jew.” When most Jews think of “Judaism,” they think of the religious practice itself — not just worship but study of Torah and Talmud, observing Kashrut, Mitzvot, etc. I don’t think we’d ever begin to list people according to some standard of an authentic Jewish life.

6] What do you keep getting asked?
Why weren’t more women on the list? (Although many reporters have noted there were twice the number as last year — see Marc Tracy in Tablet, Debra Nussbaum Cohen in the Forward, and The Jewish Week)– and I would just like to remind those critics that 13 our of 50 women amounts to 26%, which exceeds the proportion of women in the rabbinate. We still want the list to reflect the reality of Jewish leadership, which doesn’t mean to suggest we don’t know there are plenty of other influential women rabbis doing significant, important work.

One side note from the list is that Rav Schachter is only being documented by his critics similar to the way the Hatam Sofer was only documented by those who opposed him. The Hatam Sofer was a strong leader of his rabbinical followers and offered appropriate leadership for his communities. But since his followers could only write hagiography we only hear the side of those authors with whom he differed. So too Rabbi Schachter is showing up in the history books as an opponent of people he disagrees with and not for his own sake. It is unfortunate that he is unlikely to produce a student to write a critical analysis.

If offered to fly out to LAX to work on next years list, I have in mind 2-3 Centrist and Yeshivish names that could be added to the list. In the meantime- Which Orthodox Rabbis have a national effect on all of America’s Jewry?

OK- now all those who emailed me that you wanted me to post on this topic, here is your chance to comment and discuss.

At this point when I see that my readership has all but disappeared for the holiday, I wish everyone a zissen pesach, a joyous and kosher holiday.

I do have new posts written which will go up on Thursday/Friday. Should I post my thoughts on the top 50 rabbis or let it go?
I post my comments on this year’s 2011 Haggadot after Passover.

For some prior posts.

Marc-Alain Ouaknin, Haggadah (This should have gotten comments)
Rabbi Eliezer Ashkenazi on Pour out thy Wrath
Pour out thy Love Upon the Nations and Miriam at the Seder-Updated (On Bloch’s forgery and that everyone even Rabbi Jonathan Sacks uses it.)
Haggadot 2010

And from elsewhere: Here are 42 traditional Haggadot, most from Eastern Europe of the 17th to the early 20th century. For those who think they are the tradition, spend some time with Shelah Hagadah or the Munkatz Haggadah.