Angelic intermediaries and appropriate anthropomorthism

The period leading up to and including Rosh Hashana and Yom Kippur is one during which observant Jews traditionally scrutinise and attempt to improve in all areas of their religious conduct. It is common to find minutiae of laws and stringencies which are disregarded for most of the year suddenly becoming the focus of attention as people make special efforts in order to secure a favourable judgment.

Set against this backdrop, I have long been surprised by the widespread willingness of worshippers to recite prayers in the Selichot which many of our leading rabbinic authorities have declared to be deeply problematic. One who petitions an angel in prayer appears to be in breach of Rambam’s fifth Principle of Faith which demands that one who prays direct all his thoughts to God, and not to angels – even to act as intercessors. Nor can this be regarded as a Maimonidean peculiarity based on any alleged rationalist or philosophical agenda. One of Rambam’s most fierce critics, Ramban, writes similarly that “The third form of idolatry is considering angels capable of serving as intermediaries between God and His worshippers. Realise that even to pray to them for this purpose is forbidden to us.”. Other significant figures who have expressed opposition to these prayers include Maharal (who amended the wording) and Chatam Sofer who did not recite them.

While it is possible to draw support for this practice from various aggadic sources (a methodology which itself can be strongly questioned) my difficulty remains. At a time of year when we are adopting stringencies and striving for perfection – why do so few people appear to be concerned with prayers which many of our most revered sages categorise as idolatrous?

When it comes to the Machnisei Rachamim passage, I can understand the position of those who consider that this falls outside the parameters of prayer to an intermediary. The prayer opens by requesting that those who bring prayers of mercy before God should “usher in our [plea for] mercy before the Master of mercy”. This can be understood to embody a rhetorical flourish to the effect that the process already in place for prayers to reach God should function in the correct way. For the avoidance of any doubt, the passage concludes with a direct request to God “Speedily answer us, O God…”. More troubling, however, is the ”Malachei Rachamim” piyyut, which openly implores angels to entreat God on our behalf and contains no direct prayer to Him.

The broader feeling among those who support the saying of these prayers is partly motivated by an unwillingness to tamper with and remove parts of a liturgy which have been popularly recited for many centuries and which are an established part of the service. In addition, they add that these passages are a small part of a greater service which is clearly addressed to God; they serve to stir the heart and emotions and sometimes have moving melodies attached to them. Should such popular expressions of religious fervour therefore be sacrificed merely to appease those who indulge in an over-zealous philosophical witch-hunt?

This debate echoes another fundamental discussion over the role and proper place of anthropomorphism within Judaism. In Judaism Reclaimed I contrast the approaches of Rambam and Rabbi S. R. Hirsch to this matter. Rambam dedicates most of the first section of his Moreh Nevuchim to a sustained attempt to decode and minimise scriptural references to God engaging in physical activities such as moving and seeing. While such descriptive terms where necessary in order to convey the Torah’s message in a way in which people could understand, Rambam places them in the category of “necessary evil” and requires those who are capable of more profound understanding to distance themselves from rendering them literally. Crucially, this is not an area for compromise or concession: since our connection to God is dependent on our conception of Him, any false notion of a quasi-physical deity could be deeply damaging.

Responding to this immense Maimonidean project, Rav Hirsch writes:

“Scholars have philosophised about these expressions [anthropomorphism], in order to keep us far from ascribing to God material features. This gives rise, however, to the danger that the Personality of God will become increasingly blurred and indistinct to our perception. Had that been the Torah’s intention it could easily have avoided such expressions … Belief in the Personality of God is more important than the speculations of those who reject the attribution of material features to God.”

In a similar vein, Rav Hirsch was firmly in favour of the recitation of these Selichot passages – even attacking those who criticised a “widespread theme of piyyutim” on the basis of mistaken theological concerns.

On a personal level, I think that those searching for seasonal stringencies could do far worse than strengthening the boundaries which separate Judaism from idolatry. Justifications and reasonable sources may be found to excuse those who recite these prayers. But, in an age in which pilgrimages to graves and establishment of shrines are becoming increasingly popular among those seeking spiritual experiences, and with the distinctions between proper and improper prayer often blurred, my personal stringency for this year will be an attempt to state and emphasise publicly the words of Ramban that “The third form of idolatry is considering angels capable of serving as intermediaries between God and His worshippers. Realise that even to pray to them for this purpose is forbidden to us”.

First posted on Facebook 18 September 2022, here.

Brother or other? The evolving attitude to those who have left the fold

Identifying apparent contradictions in Rambam’s teachings and then proposing creative resolutions has long been a favoured pastime in the Yeshiva world. Regarding one such contradiction – which is of particular importance both in terms of the concept of repentance and for determining how to react in certain delicate family and community situations – we are fortunate that Rambam subsequently provided the resolution himself.

Rambam concludes his enumeration of various categories of heretics in the third chapter of Hilchot Teshuva by instructing us that

“If such a person repents from his wicked deeds and dies as a Baal-Teshuvah, he will merit the world to come, for nothing can stand in the way of Teshuvah. Even if he denies God's existence throughout his life and repents in his final moments, he merits a portion in the world to come…”

Yet in his Hilchot Avoda Zara (2:5) we find a very different attitude:

“Jewish minim are not considered to be Jews with regard to any matter. Their repentance should never be accepted…It is forbidden to talk to them or to reply to them at all…”

Responding in a letter to a questioner, Rambam clarified that a person who undertakes genuine repentance is always accepted before God and can therefore receive a portion in the World to Come. The Jewish community, on the other hand, is to remain eternally suspicious of such a person and their motives despite their apparent show of repentance.

Rambam’s hostile attitude to the returning apostate is surprising given some of his other better-known rulings which appear to encourage a more tolerant approach. First concerning Jews born into Karaite communities he considered that:

The children of these errant people and their grandchildren whose parents led them away and they were born among these Karaites and raised according to their conception, they are considered as a children captured and raised by them. Such a child may not be eager to follow the path of mitzvot, for it is as if he was compelled not to…Therefore it is appropriate to motivate them to repent and draw them to the power of the Torah with words of peace. [Hilchot Mamrim 3:3]

He also penned a heart-warming letter to Ovadia – a recent convert from Christianity – reassuring him that

“Know that our fathers, when they came out of Egypt, were mostly idolators; they had mingled with the pagans in Egypt and imitated their way of life, until the Holy One, may He be blessed, sent Moshe our Teacher, the master of all prophets, who separated us from the nations and brought us under the wings of the Divine Presence, us and all proselytes, and gave to all of us one Law. Do not consider your origin as inferior. While we are the descendants of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, you derive from Him through whose word the world was created.”

Putting these sources together, it would seem that Rambam’s suspicion and unwillingness to accept repentance is limited specifically to a previously believing and observant Jew who actively chose to break rank and leave the Jewish faith. This suggestion can draw support from the Kessef Mishneh commentary who identifies Rambam’s sources as Talmudic passages concerning “Acher” – the Tannaitic sage who is notorious for his public descent into heresy.

This all got me wondering about Rambam’s position and how it contrasts with the more prevalent attitude today in many circles to Jews who have abandoned their faith. Was the strong reaction to apostasism solely on account of the community’s dismay at the person’s theological realignment or was there perhaps an additional historical context?

For many persecuted Jewish communities struggling through the brutal medieval period, leaving the faith meant betraying their friends, family and nation, and crossing the lines to join the ranks of our oppressors. Many of our greatest antagonists in these centuries were apostates trying to prove their loyalty to their newfound gentile groups. Might this have contributed to the notion that Jews who have left the faith have opted for a path of no return?

It is interesting to note that how recent generations have seen a perceptible shift; we as a community became very cautious to judge those who lived through the Holocaust and its turbulent aftermath. My elderly great uncle recently recounted to me how his grandfather, who arrived in England from Russia, set shiva for a grandchild who married out and left the faith. In more recent generations, by contrast, my family has been far more tolerant and accepting of those who have pursued this path.

Is this because we live in a more accepting non-Jewish society and no longer see inter-marriage or leaving the faith as such a community betrayal? When viewed from the perspective of a high assimilation rate, this warmer attitude certainly leads to more pleasant family and community interactions – but does it ultimately harm Jewish continuity and by failing to discourage those sitting on the fence from contemplating making the jump out of the fold?

First posted to Facebook 18 September 2023, herehere. 

Yom Kippur: I would fast and pray but miss the point of the day

The energy levels had been steadily climbing over the last hour or so. As we approached the conclusion of Ne’ilah, the noise reached a deafening crescendo with many hundreds of swaying worshippers praying with intense fervour. I found my entire self – somewhat light-headed from a day of fasting – swept along in this wave of ecstatic spirituality that was about to reach its feverish peak. Suddenly I felt a sharp tap on my shoulder that jolted me out of my blissful meditation.

“Shmuli – take me to toilet NOW!”

It was Chaim. A mentally and physically disabled resident of the area who used to join our Yeshiva activities from time to time. He particularly enjoyed the Yom Kippur service and was always made a big fuss of. I frantically scoured the room for members of his family or other people who sometimes assisted him before realising that there was no other option. As I helped Chaim slowly up the stairs and to the lavatory, I realised that my Ne’ilah was over. The heartfelt cries of “Shema Yisrael…Hashem hu Ha’Elokim” followed us up the stairs and crept into the heavily-overused bathroom – taunting me as I stood there helplessly, unable to participate

I was silently fuming. After an entire day of fasting and concentration I felt I had been cheated of my sacred spiritual moment – the climax of my religious year.

This episode took place close to 20 years ago. Approximately seven years ago I undertook to start studying Nach – the books of the Prophets – properly. Not just the dramatic storylines of Samson and Solomon, but to try to discern the profound religious messages and teachings that the prophets had confronted the Jewish people with thousands of years ago. This process turned my Judaism upside-down in several ways.

Most significantly, it opened my eyes to perhaps the most fundamental prophetic teaching – one that had actually been hand-picked by the sages in several Haftarot but that, as a yeshiva bochur I had paid scant attention to. Yes, my Yeshiva had always encouraged us to perform acts of kindness. But I had always viewed this as a matter of necessary compromise rather than a key religious activity. Soon after I noticed that the Yom Kippur Haftarah contained the powerful chastisement:

“Can such be the fast I choose, a day when man merely afflicts himself? Can it be merely bowing one’s head like a bulrush and spreading sackcloth and ashes? Do you call this a fast day of favour to God? Surely this is the fast I choose: To break open the shackles of wickedness, to undo the bonds of injustice, and to let the oppressed go free, and annul all perversion. Surely you should break your bread for the hungry, and bring the moaning poor to your home; when you see a naked person clothe him; and do not hide yourself from your kin.” [Isaiah 58:5-7]

It suddenly dawned on me that in that Ne’ilah many years ago, far from having been cheated of a sacred spiritual moment, God had actually been handing me one on a silver platter. I was once again silently fuming on Yom Kippur, but the target of my anger was now very different. I had been through over ten years of standard Jewish education followed by several years of traditional Yeshiva study. Yet it was left for me alone to discover and internalise the key message of the biblical prophets. Year after year school teachers had revised the precise details of the five afflictions of Yom Kippur; until which knuckle on our fingers we could wash. Graphically depicted the waving of chickens round our heads and emphasised the crucial importance of praying with fervour and teshuvah. But never once had I heard the message of this Haftarah – which the sages had clearly intended to associate strongly with Yom Kippur.

To an extent this new awareness and perspective permeated several chapters of Judaism Reclaimed which I had started writing at that time. I promised myself that, if I would ever be in a position to teach others about Yom Kippur, this is something I would seek to rectify. If there are any teachers or Jewish educators reading this ahead of Yom Kippur, this is a message that you should strongly consider sharing and spreading. Focusing Yom Kippur – and Judaism in general – back onto empathising and helping those less fortunate than ourselves should not be seen as a modern day “liberal social justice” ideology. It is a core and inalienable pillar of Judaism which is tragically under-emphasised in today’s Jewish education system.

Wishing all readers a g’mar chatimah tova. And asking forgiveness for anything I have written which has caused offense or upset.

Shmuli

First posted on Facebook 12 September 2021, here. 

Sinai: what happened -- and what was the point?

Yesterday’s Torah reading featured Moshe revisiting the Sinai revelation as he continues recounting major desert events on the Plains of Moav. While Sinai is widely associated with Lawgiving, Rabbi S. R. Hirsch points out that many laws and instructions had already been received by the nation before this event, and that laws continued to be revealed afterwards throughout the desert years. What, then, was the particular significance of this national revelation?

Two important functions are mentioned explicitly here by Moshe himself.

The first relates to Israel’s eternal unique status as a chosen nation. Even though Israel was destined to sin and suffer severe exile as a consequence, Moshe maintains that they can be assured that God will never abandon them; the eternal covenant will never be broken: “He will not forget the covenant of your fathers, which He swore to them.” After all “Did ever a people hear God's voice speaking out of the midst of the fire as you have heard, and live?”. As Rabbi Yehuda Halevi emphasises, this mass revelation represents a theological foundation for Christianity and Islam too. While these subsequent religions argue that Israel’s sins led it to be abandoned by God, Moshe – a prophet whose legitimacy they all accept – makes it unambiguously clear that the Jewish nation will never be replaced.

A second fundamental function of the Sinai revelation is also hammered home by Moshe in his introduction to the Ten Commandments: “And you shall guard yourselves very carefully, for you did not see any image on the day that God spoke to you at Horeb from the midst of the fire”. The human imagination has long dreamed up creative speculations as to the image of God and how He can be physically represented. As Moshe describes at length, humans are prone to “lift their eyes up to heaven” and attribute divinity to the celestial bodies, or consider that impressive “beasts of the earth” must be endowed with supernatural powers. The point emphasised by Moshe is that even in the nation’s most direct and intimate encounter with the Divine, no image was seen. God can most accurately be depicted in the negative – what could NOT be seen. The Sinai revelation thereby condemns any subsequent attempt to attribute a form of divinity to any physical image, object or even great sage as a product of human imagination – not the God who revealed Himself to the nation at Sinai.

A third vital function of the Sinai revelation is not mentioned here in Moshe’s recounting, but is stated by God before the initial account of the Ten Commandments in Shemot (19:9): "I am coming to you in the thickness of the cloud, in order that the people hear when I speak to you, and they will also believe in you forever". As analysed in Judaism Reclaimed, the primary purpose of the Sinai revelation was not the Ten Commandments themselves, but rather that – as explained by Rambam – the nation participated in a direct prophetic encounter between God and Moshe. Having witnessed such an extraordinary phenomenon they became aware of their own inability to maintain such a level of proximity with the divine and implored God to communicate with them instead through Moshe. This represented the ultimate authentication and vindication of Moshe’s prophecy through which the Torah was received.

Various questions have been raised over the ambiguity of the Torah’s accounts of the Sinai revelation. Which words, if any, were heard directly by the nation and what was conveyed instead by Moshe? If the collective national memory did not preserve such details, does this not undermine the force and significance of such a revelation?

Bearing in mind the functions of the Sinai revelation that we have identified explicitly within the Torah’s text, we can argue that the content of the Commandments – while obviously important – is not what makes this event so highly-emphasised and unique. Rather it is the implications that this revelation had for the relationship between God and His chosen people. First, we gained actual knowledge that His divinity cannot be represented by anything within the physical world and secondly that our relationship with Him is eternal and non-revocable.

Once the nation had been granted third-party participatory status and thereby witnessed Moshe receiving prophecy, his authenticity as an instrument of God’s word was now beyond doubt. The question of which parts of the Ten Commandments were heard directly from God and which via Moshe’s agency becomes far less significant.

First posted to Facebook 30 July 2023, here.

Grappling with suffering: will evil "evaporate like smoke?"

As I stood meditating over the Yom Kippur Amidah this week I was struck by the phrase “and all wickedness will evaporate like smoke when you remove the dominion of evil from upon the world”. These words were cited in A Guide for the Jewish Undecided a recent fascinating and thought-provoking analysis of the parameters of Orthodox theology by Rabbi Professor Sam Lebens.

In one of the later chapters of this book, Lebens looks to break new ground in theodicy – the old question of how to reconcile the religious notion of a good and loving God with the widespread evil and suffering that is very evident in this world. Having discussed why, in his view, traditional solutions to the question of theodicy fall short, Lebens proposes a radical new theory (developed along with Tyron Goldschmidt), built upon the premise that God’s omnipotence grants Him power to change the past: 

“Imagine that God gives us free will, and then, so to speak, He says, like a film director, “Take 1”. Then we live our lives. We do some good and we do some bad. All of it is of our own creation. At the end of time, God says, “Cut”. Imagine that scenes 1 and 3 are fantastic, but that scene 2 is horrific. Well then, wouldn’t God simply edit the film and cut out scene 2, because, even after the scene has happened, God can change the past? Admittedly, this would leave a gap in the history of the world. But then God can say “Scene 2, Take 2”. We’d then get another shot at linking scenes 1 and 3 together.”

While I totally identify with and embrace the motives which underpin this theory – an absolute refusal to countenance any trace of evil or suffering to be ultimately caused by a benevolent God – the practicalities of what is proposed are mindboggling. I recall a favourite film from my youth, A Matter of Life and Death, in which a celestial mishap causes a jettisoning World War II airman to be missed by the grim reaper. By the time this mistake is registered, the airman has fallen in love with a local lady and the notion of extracting him from history without upsetting other divine calculations becomes incalculably complex. With this in mind, the proposition that God could edit scenes without irreparably ruining the whole script of human history is hard to imagine. Placed on top of this, Jewish tradition often acknowledges crucial benefits which are gained from certain instances of suffering; as Judaism Reclaimed explores, the “iron crucible” of Egyptian servitude and other such episodes of Anti Semitism may be credited with the continuation of the Jewish people itself.

While Lebens certainly recognises and proposes fixes for some of these objections, my personal feeling is that he is too quick to dismiss the “free-will” model, in which God is understood to have created a world in which the primary purpose is the free-functioning of human free will. Success, righteousness and heroism is only meaningful – and perhaps even possible – in a setting which allows for the genuine possibility of failure and evil.

Objecting to this model, Lebens quotes an atheist philosopher, Stephen Maitzen, who argues that:

“To put it mildly, there is something less than perfect about letting a child suffer terrible for the primary benefit of someone else – whether for the benefit of a bystander who gets a hero’s chance to intervene, or for the benefit of a child-abuser who gets to exercise unchecked free will.”

Yet isolating this single incident presents us with a severely skewed set of scales. It is not only the bystander or abuser who can potentially gain from the existence of free will. It is every single human being alive; every person who has ever lived and will ever live – including the victim of the offense under consideration. All of their lives, according to Jewish theodicy as I understand it only stand to hold any meaning if humans are free-choosing creatures – who can reliably trust that the fruits of their pursuits will not be interfered . Once we add into the mix the notion of a World to Come with the prospects of unfathomable reward and punishment, we cannot possibly even know how to set the scales to weigh up humanity’s free will with the very real suffering of such victims. (How this may fit with the notion of Divine Providence has been addressed in a previous post).

Revisiting the evaporating cloud metaphor, perhaps a more apt interpretation would be to compare it to how the same phrase is used at the end of the Netaneh Tokef where humanity’s fragile and mortal existence is said, among other things, to be like “dissipating smoke”. This to my mind does not mean that our existence will one day be retroactively erased, rather it implies that our lives are brief and insignificant when compared to God’s everlasting existence.

The same notion can be applied to what I understand to be Jewish theodicy’s approach to evil. It is real, it is truly awful – and therefore it is something to be fought with all our might and all of our resources. But were we in a position to fathom and appreciate the rewards and pleasures of the World to Come which our tradition states are even beyond the comprehension of our prophets – such evil would be “like an evaporating cloud”.

On a related note, while we rightly protest and pray to God for His assistance in overcoming the forces of wickedness who take cruel pleasure in oppressing and tormenting others, Rambam emphasises in Moreh Nevuchim that the predominant cause of evil is humanity’s own doing. Collectively we must work unceasingly to educate and inspire; to use God’s great gift to humanity of free will to bring about the Messianic era in which:

Through awareness of the truth, enmity and hatred are removed and the inflicting of harm by people on one another is abolished. It [Tanach] holds out this promise, saying “And the wolf shall dwell with the lamb…”. Then it gives the reason for this, saying that the cause of the abolition of these enmities, these discords and these tyrannies, will be humanity’s knowledge of God… [Moreh, 3:31]

The primary and perhaps exclusive causes of warfare and misery are obsession with and competition over material possessions, power and pride. Once humanity becomes aware of this folly, its energies and capabilities will be channelled towards achieving universal happiness, thus “they will beat their swords into ploughshares…” and “your sons and daughters will prophesy”. When God’s teachings will reign supreme and “the dominion of evil will be removed from the world”.

First posted to Facebook 26 September 2023, here.

Do any of us really have free will?

The opening verse of this week’s parashah describes Pharaoh having his heart hardened by God – his free will being withdrawn from him – a process which various commentators find disturbing. Without getting into any of their detailed responses to this specific event, what emerges is the centrality of free will to Judaism specifically and religion in general. Judaism Reclaimed traces the dispute between Jewish belief and proponents of determinism from its ancient pagan form through to the writings of Rabbi Sacks in the modern era.

In his Hilchot Teshuva (5:3-4), Rambam sets out exactly why free will is considered so important in Judaism:

“This principle is a fundamental concept and a pillar [on which rests the totality] of the Torah and mitzvot…Were God to decree that an individual would be righteous or wicked or that there would be a quality which draws a person by his essential nature to any particular path [of behavior]… how could He command us through [the words of] the prophets: "Do this," "Do not do this," "Improve your behavior," or "Do not follow after your wickedness?"…What place would there be for the entire Torah? According to which judgement or sense of justice would retribution be administered to the wicked or reward to the righteous?”

The impression that one gets from Rambam’s maximalist position is that every aspect of human activity is believed to be governed by free choice. Other rabbinic thinkers, meanwhile, spell out a more nuanced position with Rabbi Eliyahu Dessler writing that, in practice, most of a person’s actions are determined by nature and habit rather than the operation of free will:

“Everyone has free choice – at the point where truth meets falsehood. In other words, behira takes place at the point where the truth as the person sees it confronts the illusion produced in him by the power of falsehood. But the majority of a person’s actions are undertaken without any clash between truth and falsehood taking place. Many of a person’s actions may happen to coincide with what is objectively right because he has been brought up that way and it does not occur to him to do otherwise, and many bad and false decisions may be taken simply because a person does not realise that they are bad. In such cases no valid behira or choice has been made. Free will is exercised and a valid behira made only on the borderline between the forces of good and the forces of evil within that person”. [Strive for Truth vol. 2]

Others have presented the notion of free will like a muscle that people can either exercise and empower to take control of their lives or allow to atrophy and descend into gradual enslavement to the demands of their animalistic physicality.

In the modern era, the notion of free will has increasingly been challenged from the fields of neuroscience and philosophy, which have produced claims that human consciousness in general, and free choice in particular are an illusion. What is really occurring, they argue, can be reduced to electrochemical brain processes meaning that, as Bertrand Russell phrased it:

“[Man’s] origin, his growth, his hope and fears, his loves and his beliefs, are but the outcome of accidental collocations of atoms; that no fire, no heroism, no intensity of thought and feeling can preserve the body beyond the grave…”

These arguments were given a boost in recent decades with a series of experiments performed by neuroscientist Benjamin Libet, which appeared to demonstrate that areas of the brain light up – showing mental activity – before a decision had been made to e.g. turn on a switch. What the experiment – as well as subsequent neuroscientific theories – has failed to show, however, is that the sort of painstaking moral dilemmas which we most strongly associate with free will can be traced to a pre-determined mental process. In the accompanying video we see Fagin in the Oliver Twist musical going back and forth as to whether to reform his criminal lifestyle and become an honest citizen. Are we to suppose that each stage of such difficult decision-making can be traced to an electrochemical prompt?

Science has nothing to answer to this question – at least for now. One thing that we can be sure of is that it will not discover any evidence for a spiritual dimension of a human being – a metaphysical soul which is capable of making choices. This should not be seen as a critique of the scientific process but rather as a recognition of its limitations from the outset. As Professor Sam Lebens noted on this group in a different context:

“Methodological naturalism rules out any theories that use God to explain phenomena. So you can guarantee, before you start your investigation into who wrote the Bible, that methodological naturalism won’t discover a Divine author. But its failure to find a Divine author is not evidence that God wasn’t involved. It’s not a finding. It’s not a conclusion.”

(https://www.facebook.com/.../permalink/3174484782780676/)

Those who reject free will with certainty, do so because they cannot make any sense of it within the confines of their parameters of investigation – natural physical phenomena. Refusal to consider the possibility of anything beyond physical cause and effect is not evidence that it doesn’t exist.

Yet on the other side of the equation is the most powerful human intuition – that of self-existence, thought and choice. While we may be prepared to accept that nature and nurture are able to influence and sometimes limit the scope of our choices, can we embrace the implications of our minds being fully governed by physical phenomena? It would seem that the social dynamics and legal systems of even the most secular societies are predicated upon the moral reality of free choice and humans bearing responsibility for the decisions that they make.

Reviewing the situation, here.

First posted to Facebook 22 January 2023, here.

Prayer in war and peace

Prayer in Judaism, while representing a core and fundamental religious act, takes on a surprisingly wide range of forms and guises. On Shabbat-Simchat Torah morning, my early morning outdoor service in central Jerusalem began with serene meditative prayer at sunrise – unaware of the horror unfolding less than 100km to the South. A mid-Haftarah rocket siren quickly snapped us out of our peaceful contemplation. As news of the “situation in the South” gradually filtered through, our prayers became more pointed and desperate – until I felt too sick and distracted to continue and went home to join and try to reassure our younger kids in the building’s shelter.

It occurred to me in the days that followed that Jewish law contains two completely distinct modes of prayer which fulfil entirely different functions. Writing in Hilchot Tefillah, Rambam describes a very idealistic mode of prayer. Basing himself on an accumulation of various Talmudic teachings, he provides precise details of the various forms of preparation that one should go through in order to free one’s mind of worldly concerns and mentally attach oneself to the divine realm. Expanding upon this in the Moreh, Rambam understands that prayer in its essence is a contemplative intellectual exercise which offers crucial assistance to a person trying to enhance their providential relationship with God.

This sort of meditative prayer is not always recommended. In fact, writes Rambam, it is not permitted to embark upon such prayer at a time when one is troubled or weighed down by worldly challenges.

All of this describes the mode of prayer which I was attempting to pursue in the first half of the Shabbat morning service.

But there is also a very different model of prayer which Rambam introduces us to at the start of Hilchot Ta’anit:

“It is a positive Torah commandment to cry out and to sound trumpets in the eent of any difficulty that arises which affects the community, as the Torah states: "[When you go out to war... against] an enemy who attacks you and you sound the trumpets....", meaning to say: Whenever you are distressed by difficulties - e.g., famine, plague, locusts, or the like - cry out [to God] because of them and sound the trumpets.”

This second category of prayer is specifically designed to guide communal and national reaction to times of great distress and tragedy. Rather than a serene theological ascent to commune with the divine realm, it seeks to ensure that our primal crying out in fear and sorrow is directed to God – to know that it is our national covenant with Him which continues to determine our collective fate.

As Rambam proceeds to explain, this form of desperate communal crying out to God is intended, among other things, to direct our attention inwards and help us identify our own spiritual, moral and religious flaws which might have contributed to the crisis in hand.

In our particular situation, there is no great investigation which needs to be undertaken. The serious divisions and infighting which has rocked the country over the last year may well have damaged the army’s readiness, and reportedly was also a major source of encouragement for our enemies. From a spiritual dimension our tradition contrasts King David’s generation, in which many fell in battle since there was quarrelling and in-fighting with the more sinful generation of Ahab which was granted divine military assistance because of their great unity and commendable behaviour to one another.

Poignantly, this very lesson may be encapsulated in the fascinating halachic background to Tefillat Geshem – the prayer for rain which concluded the unusual service this Shabbat morning. Surveying the halachic literature on the subject, it seems uncontroversial that Jews in different countries and climates around the world should pray for rain according to the agricultural requirements of their particular locale. Yet the overwhelmingly prevalent practice over the last thousand years has been for Jews to follow the Talmudic prototype which contains minor variations for Jews in Israel and Bavel.

The Rosh, a leading halachic authority of the medieval period, describes in a responsa (10:4) how he initially pursued a strong campaign to correct this custom. Citing Rambam’s criticism of those who “pray with falsehood” for weather conditions that would actually harm rather than benefit their crops, Rosh consulted with Rabbinic leaders across Ashkenaz who all supported his view.

Nevertheless, the Rosh describes how his efforts to implement these changes provoked serious divisions and in-fighting within the community of Ashkenaz, with significant groups powerfully resisting his attempts to change what they saw as their ancestral custom. Setting aside both his pride and his strong personal feelings for what he believed to be correct practice, the Rosh publicly retracted his position in order to keep the peace and maintain communal unity. His private protest in the form of this responsa was restricted to a close circle of students which included his son.

How exactly this lesson can be integrated into 21stcentury Israel’s political and religious tensions is of course a complex and delicate matter. All sides could benefit however from internalising the spirit of the Rosh’s Tefillat HaGeshem compromise, sacrificing a cause so close to his heart on the altar of communal unity.

May God grant us all strength to cope with the horrendous and savage attack which has been inflicted upon our people and bring us absolute and total victory over our brutal enemy. May He watch over our soldiers going in to battle and bring back all of the hostages safely and speedily. And when this nightmare is over, may we be inspired to realise that we are one united people – notwithstanding our significant disagreements – and arise from this tragedy to rebuild Israel as a stronger and more cohesive society with all the blessings that this will achieve.

First posted on Facebook 10 October 2023, here.

Humans, demons and the depths of depravity

The indescribably brutal terrorist atrocities inflicted on Israeli communities a week ago are the sort of unfathomable events which leave many of us lost for words, despairing of humanity and the depths to which it is capable of plummeting.

Can people ever sink to such depths of depravity that they effectively lose their humanity? Or worse?

Such questions prompted me to recall a passage that I wrote in Judaism Reclaimed.

In yesterday’s parashah, the Torah describes Adam’s son Shet as being in the image of Adam — a term which Rambam (Moreh 1:7) links to the earlier description of Adam as having been created "betzelem Elokim" (in the image of God). Rambam then cites a Gemara which states that, from the moment of his sin until the birth of Shet, Adam bore offspring which were not in his image but rather were "ruchot" or demons.

Tzelem Elokim — the element of humanity that can be said to be Godly — is identified with the intellect. It is through this uniquely human intelligence that people can make moral judgments to distinguish right from wrong, subdue their negative impulses and thereby direct their sophisticated intellectual capabilities so as to benefit the world around them.

In Rambam’s understanding, those who fail in their human calling to use their intellect to refine and control the animalistic aspects of their personality are considered behema betzurat adam (an animal in human form) rather than betzelem Elokim. Membership of this unesteemed group therefore can cause people to forfeit their human privileges such as divine providence and a share in the World to Come.

Far worse than this, however, are those who take this divine gift to humanity of a powerful intellect and use it to subdue and terrorise others. As history repeatedly demonstrates, the greatest misery and hardship experienced by mankind is caused by people who have used their intellect to devise ways of furthering human suffering. These are the sorts of “demons” that, in Rambam’s understanding of the Gemara, were said to have been sired by Adam prior to Shet. It can be presumed that Rambam would offer a similar interpretation of Talmudic accounts of demons who dwell in uninhabited areas, damage unguarded buildings, and attack those who travel unaccompanied at night.

Humans who have fallen to such depths might be viewed as even worse than animals who typically only catch and kill prey out of necessity.

Notwithstanding all this, Rabbi Yisrael Lau – Holocaust survivor and former Chief Rabbi of Israel – warns strongly against the inclination to regard these evil and brutal acts as the work of some kind of “inhuman monsters from another world. In his Out Of The Depths memoir, Rabbi Lau records his own passionate response to one of the witnesses from the Eichmann trial:

“If Auschwitz were indeed another planet, it would be easier to accept the Holocaust. But in truth, the disaster of Auschwitz is that it happened on the very same planet where we had lived before, where we live now, and where we will continue to live. Those who carried out the cruel murders of the innocent where ordinary people, who returned home from their murderous acts to water the flowers in their manicured gardens. They tended the flowers lovingly and carefully so they would blossom, just after they had torn infants to pieces and shattered the skulls of men and women.

Just after shoving thousands of people into the gas chambers to their deaths, they came home to play with dolls together with their little girls, and listen to classical music, eyes closed, engrossed in the uplifting spirituality of Bach and Beethoven…Those were people just like you and me, and that’s the whole problem. When you transfer all those horrors to another planet, you minimise the issue. You are saying that something like the Holocaust can never happen to us again. In my humble opinion, you are wrong…”

In responding to such an outrage – as we must – with full force, we must retain a clear and unrelenting distinction between our use of military power and that of our enemies. Despite the best efforts of foreign media and anti-Semitic critics abroad to blur the boundaries.

On the one hand we have those who idealise the power of the sword and turn it into a national ideology. Describing the traits that typify Amalek, Rabbi S. R. Hirsch writes that it bore a spirit which:

“chooses the sword as its lot, seeks renown in laurels of blood, and strives to realise the ambition of “Let us make for ourselves a name” with which Nimrod began world history. This ambition is realised by destroying the welfare of nations and the happiness of men.

This seeking renown by the force of arms is the first and last enemy of human happiness and Divine Kingship on earth…Amalek’s glory-seeking sword knows no rest as long as one free man’s heart keeps beating and pays no homage to it; as long as one modest abode and happy home remains standing whose residents do not tremble before its might.”

We must remember that our messianic utopia is not a bloodletting of our enemies – it is being privileged to live in a world peace – among nations – in such security that weapons will no longer be necessitated. While we must be uncompromising in responding to such attacks in order to wipe out the evil in our midst, we long for an era in which our swords can be beaten into ploughshares…

The Jewish use of military power, on the other hand is that of a necessary evil. A war to root out evil or defend ourselves against enemies is a great mitzva. But we truly years for a time when the world embraces the truths and teachings of God so that “no nation will lift up sword against nation” and allowing us therefore to beat our swords into plowshares, and our spears into pruning hook.

Until then we continue to pray for the protection of our soldiers in battle, the full healing of our wounded and the return of our captured brethren.

First posted on Facebook 15 October 2023, here.