Judaism on One Leg- Introduction: The People
Link to the video of June 25
( Using extracts, from Encyclopedia Britannica ,"Judaism". Encyclopædia Britannica. Encyclopædia Britannica Online.Encyclopædia Britannica Inc., 2014. Web. 03 2014 . )
<http://www.britannica.com/EBchecked/topic/307197/Judaism>. Salo Wittmayer Baron-editor of the article Quotes are in
red letter font
Suggested Readings for
Beginners:
Here is one such list:
https://www.myjewishlearning.com/article/the-10-best-introduction-to-judaism-books/
If you want to create your own Jewish library:
https://www.myjewishlearning.com/article/top-100-jewish-books/
For access to all the key source texts of
Judaism in Hebrew and English translation:
Don’t worry- you don’t
need to build another bookcase-many of these are available for download!
If you want to watch and
listen:
https://www.bimbam.com/judaism-101/
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Al Regel Achat
I start my discussion with the
famous tale of “al regel achat”.
שוב מעשה בנכרי אחד שבא לפני שמאי,
א"ל גיירני ע"מ שתלמדני כל התורה כולה כשאני עומד על רגל אחת דחפו,
באמת הבנין שבידו
בא לפני הלל גייריה אמר לו דעלך סני לחברך לא תעביד
. זו היא כל התורה כולה, ואידך פירושה הואץ זיל גמור.
שבת · לא א
There was another incident
involving one gentile who came before Shammai and
said to Shammai: Convert
me on condition that you teach me the entire Torah while I am standing on one
foot. Shammai pushed
him away with the builder’s cubit in his hand. This was a common
measuring stick and Shammai was
a builder by trade. The same gentile came before Hillel. He converted him and
said to him: That which is hateful to you do not do to another; that
is the entire Torah, and the rest is its interpretation. Go study.
ISRAEL (THE JEWISH PEOPLE)
A triumvirate at the top:
ישראל ואוריתא וקודשא בריך הוא חד הוא
Yisrael vOraita vKudsha Brichu CHad
Hu-based on a kabbalistic statement:
The people of Israel- The Torah- and the Holy One, Blessed be He, are one.
In other words, all intertwined.
The opening of the Kuzari, by R Yehudah HaLevy
Philosophy can not be the source of truth, since all
arguments can be turned on their heads. Christianity and Islam claim their
truth from the account of the Jewish people. It is in the collective experience
of the people of Israel then, that we derive the truth.
Judaism means both a religion in the modern- sense- a
system of beliefs-and the totality of the creation of the Jewish people
as the response to its belief that it has a mission from the Divine and that
mission is embodied in the Torah, in its many manifest meanings. That puts us
radically apart from Christianity and Islam as well as pure philosophy. The “
faith” part of Judaism is not ours only- it is open to all. What is unique is
our path( halakhah) and our method (Torah).
So, we start with the people
CHOICE AND COVENANT
The line in the prayer book just before the morning
and evening Shma,” who has chosen thy people Israel in love” and “who loves his people Israel”
Made explicit in Deuteronomy 7:6–8 ( New Jewish Version):
For you are a people consecrated to
the Lord your God: of all the
peoples on earth the Lord your God chose you to be His treasured people.
It is not because you are the most numerous
of peoples that the Lord set His heart on you and chose you—indeed you are the smallest of peoples; but it was because the Lord loved you and
kept the oath He made with your
fathers that the Lord freed you with a mighty hand and rescued you from the
house of bondage, from the power of Pharaoh king of Egypt.
The background : disobedience of
humankind: Adam-Eve, Cain-Abel, Noah-flood,
Babel. God charts out a new path through Abraham and
his descendants are singled out not merely as the object of the divine blessing
but also as its channel to all humanity.
This obligation is expressed in the sense of, mitzwot, singular mitzwa, commandments- obligations= that are part of Torah.
Hence,
phrasing of the Torah blessings:“He who chose
us from among
all the peoples
and gave us His
Torah,” connects election with revelation ( some
movements in modern times, uncomfortable with this emphasis—Rabbi Kaplan- “
asher keravanu” who has brought us close- but that is a euphemism. “Chosen” can
be a problem, as Fiddler on the Roof= chose someone else.)
Torah
was the formative principle. Israel was to be ממלכת כהנים גוי קדוש
a kingdom of priests and a holy
nation” (Exodus 19:6) functioning within humanity and for its sake
Isaiah 43:10
אַתֶּ֤ם עֵדַי֙ נְאֻם־יְהֹוָ֔ה וְעַבְדִּ֖י אֲשֶׁ֣ר בָּחָ֑רְתִּי
לְמַ֣עַן תֵּ֠דְע֠וּ וְתַאֲמִ֨ינוּ לִ֤י וְתָבִ֙ינוּ֙ כִּֽי־אֲנִ֣י ה֔וּא לְפָנַי֙
לֹא־נ֣וֹצַר אֵ֔ל וְאַחֲרַ֖י לֹ֥א יִהְיֶֽה׃ {ס}
אֲנִ֧י יְהֹוָ֛ה
קְרָאתִ֥יךָֽ בְצֶ֖דֶק וְאַחְזֵ֣ק בְּיָדֶ֑ךָ וְאֶצׇּרְךָ֗ וְאֶתֶּנְךָ֛ לִבְרִ֥ית
עָ֖ם לְא֥וֹר גּוֹיִֽם׃
I the LORD, in My grace, have summoned you,
And I have grasped you by the hand.
I created you, and appointed you a light of nations-c—
לִפְקֹ֖חַ
עֵינַ֣יִם עִוְר֑וֹת לְהוֹצִ֤יא מִמַּסְגֵּר֙ אַסִּ֔יר מִבֵּ֥ית כֶּ֖לֶא יֹ֥שְׁבֵי
חֹֽשֶׁךְ׃ d
Opening eyes deprived of light,-d
Rescuing prisoners from confinement,
From the dungeon those who sit in darkness.
Religious faith, far
from being restricted to or encapsulated in the cult,
found expression in the totality
of communal and individual life. …
One of the important recurring themes of the prophetic movement was the adamant
rejection of any tendency to limit divine
sovereignty to the partial
area of “religion,” understood as the realm
of the priesthood and cult….
Pharisaic Judaism and its continuation, Rabbinic
Judaism, resolutely held
to the idea of the all-pervasive functioning of Torah, …,
ISRAEL AND THE NATIONS
The Jewish people were not to be seen as controlling
the nations of the world, but of serving, “ Or LaGoyim”. 1) The non-Jew had, from Jewish perspective,
a separate path to God-7 mitzvoth benei Noach- a universal moral, not faith,
code.
.2) Membership in the community, at the start, was by
descent, eventually defined as descent through the mother
3) The non-Jew
would be absorbed through marriage and eventually, through a status of “ ger”,
the foreigner who has come to dwell in our midst ( individuals, sometimes, entire
towns or community). Most close example—US citizenship- passed on by birth to
US citizen or by naturalization.
Thus, Jews can not constitute a race; rather, the
similarity of DNA among dispersed Jews world wide reflects a common history,
without being exclusive and rejectionist.
THE SACRED LANGUAGE: HEBREW AND THE VERNACULAR TONGUES
Judaism
sees the language of the people as essential to conveying and expressing the
values of Judaism over the course of centuries and over thousands of miles.
Hebrew
is imbued with a “ mystical” status, seen as the language upon which the
universe is built (this is similar to position of Arabic in Islam). Thus, over
the centuries, a Jew could comprehend Biblical , and Mishnaic Hebrew from a
thousand and more years before, and with that, also study and pray with and
conduct business with a Jew from any other part of the globe.Note: Christians
could use Latin in Christian Europe, Muslims could use Arabic in North Africa
and Asia—but only Jews could conduct their business globally!
Aramaic, a cognate of Hebrew, functioned as the international or imperial language in official life and gained a foothold as a vernacular. The language of the Mishna, far from being a scholar’s dialect, seems to reflect popular speech, as did the Koine (common)
In each land, Jews were multi-lingual-1)
they used the Hebrew ( and Aramaic) in worship, study, and commerce, 2) the
local language,3) created a patois of their own( Judeo hyphen -Spanish( Ladino) German( Yiddish)
Persian(Dzhidi), Arabic (arabiyya yahudiya) , often preserving the original
language as spoken centuries before, in Hebrew script, with Hebrew loan words.
On of the greatest linguistic
feats of all times was the rebirth of Hebrew from mostly read=written text, to
an actively used modern language-within the course of a few decades.
THE PEOPLE OF ISRAEL AND THE LAND OF ISRAEL
Closely related
to the concept of Israel as the chosen,
or covenant, people
is the role of the land of Israel.
Promised to Abraham and Descendants
It is the goal of the Exodus
Many Biblical commands are specific to life in the
land of Israel-shmittah, jubilee,first fruit, sacrifice, gleanings.
However, in contrast to the pagans, the God of Israel
was God of all creation. When a city was destroyed, it was the local deity who
was destroyed. For the Bible, if the city or land was destroyed, it was the
result of the will of God, not from powerlessness.
Thus, with the
loss of land, the people did not lose their purpose. They were restored once,
after the first fall, and thereby found the strength to overcome the second
loss! (
Note- one Jewish family retained its roots in the
land over these 1000s of years. The related community of Israelites, the
Samaritans, never left, although they shrank to only a few hundred)
The daily worshipped reenforced this three times a
day:
תִּשְׁכּוֹן
בְּתוֹךְ יְרוּשָׁלַֽיִם עִֽירְךָ כַּאֲשֶׁר דִּבַּֽרְתָּ, וְכִסֵּא דָוִד עַבְדְּךָ מְהֵרָה בְּתוֹכָהּ תָּכִין, וּבְנֵה אוֹתָהּ בִּנְיַן עוֹלָם בִּמְהֵרָה
בְיָמֵֽינוּ: בָּרוּךְ אַתָּה יֻהֻוֻהֻ, בּוֹנֵה יְרוּשָׁלָיִם:
Dwell within Jerusalem Your city, as You spoke about, & the
throne of David, Your servant, speedily prepare it within it, & build it an
eternal structure speedily in our days. Blessed are You, L·rd, Who builds
Jerusalem.
At every wedding:Ps 137
אִֽם־אֶשְׁכָּחֵ֥ךְ
יְֽרוּשָׁלָ֗͏ִם תִּשְׁכַּ֥ח יְמִינִֽי׃
If I forget you, O Jerusalem,
let my right hand wither;b
The claassic definition of the the age of the Messiah is, in the words of Shmuel, one of the founders of what would become the Talmud:
דאמר שמואל אין בין העולם הזה לימות המשיח אלא שעבוד גלויות בלבד
Ain beyn yemot hamoshiach ele shibud galuyot bilvad( Shabbat 63a).
There is no difference between this world and the days of the Messiah except for the end of the servitude of exile.
Despite the Roman destruction of the Temple in 70,
and the crushing and genocide of Jews in 135 at the fall of Bar Kochba, the
Jewish community was able create the Mishna , the Midrash, the Talmud
Yerushalmi, and later, the key texts of later Kabbalah and the most wide spread
code of Jewish law, the Shulchan Arukh.
Best expression of longing:
ליבי במזרח / יהודה הלוי
לִבִּי בְמִזְרָח וְאָנֹכִי בְּסוֹף מַעֲרָב
אֵיךְ אֶטְעֲמָה אֵת אֲשֶׁר אֹכַל וְאֵיךְ יֶעֱרָב
אֵיכָה אֲשַׁלֵּם נְדָרַי וָאֱסָרַי, בְּעוֹד
צִיּוֹן בְּחֶבֶל אֱדוֹם וַאֲנִי בְּכֶבֶל עֲרָב
יֵקַל בְּעֵינַי עֲזֹב כָּל טוּב סְפָרַד, כְּמוֹ
יֵקַר
בְּעֵינַי רְאוֹת עַפְרוֹת דְּבִיר נֶחֱרָב!
My heart is in the east, and I in the uttermost west--
How can I find savour in food? How shall it be sweet to me?
How shall I render my vows and my bonds, while yet
Zion lieth beneath the fetter of Edom, and I in Arab chains?
A light thing would it seem to me to leave all the good
things of Spain --
Seeing how precious in mine eyes to behold the dust of the
desolate sanctuary.
There were constant attempts at
return, invited back by Saladin, then later by Sultan Suleiman the Magnificent
( to be fair, before modern times, Moslem leaders were often more welcoming
than their Christian counterparts). There was a wave of Hasidim that came in
the 1700’s, a Yemenite wave in 1881, the same time as Bilu, before there was a
Zionist movement. My father’s great grandfather and mother sold all their
possessions at the age of 80 and moved to Safed around that time ( only to be
murdered by the locals a few years later).
Modern Zionism- a consequence of
the fact that Europe could not tolerate its Jews in the modern nationalist
environment, something that would be repeated in the newly awakened nationalism
of the Arab world. What began as a trickle became a wave and then a flood, as
we all too well know. Eventually, both Europe and the Middle East would be
emptied almost totally of their Jews. The political movement of modern Zionism,
as envisioned and promoted by Herzl, became essential to Jewish survival. It
would override the belief of the Orthodox world. That only God would bring
about the return, at the end of days, and the belief of liberal and secular
Jews, that the new world of enlightenment and revolution would welcome Jews
with open arms.
In the 21 st century, it remains
to be seen if a large and identifiable Jewish community ( as opposed to people
whose ancestors happened to be Jews) is viable
and vibrant, outside of the land of Israel, or disconnected from it.
