Are religious labels past their sell-by date? A defence of denominations in a post-denominational world

This is my piece published in this week's thejc.com - but unfortunately not yet in the online edition.

I’m about to head out to Limmud conference, where literally thousands of Jews of every conceivable stripe spent five days learning, debating, celebrating and socialising together.  Coming hot on the heels of that other winter highlight, Hanukah, Limmud set out a particularly fashionable message about contemporary Jewish existence. 

The Hanukah story is a narrative of cultural tension and ultimately civil war within the Jewish people.  Sectarianism threatened their existence whereas unity brought salvation.  So too, the Limmud version of Judaism preaches the values of coexistence, mutual respect and learning from each other as vital for the Jewish future.  In recent weeks, this message has had a galvanising effect: those Orthodox rabbis who called for a boycott of Limmud have been roundly criticised by most mainstream communal leaders.

This welcome support for better relationships among different kinds of Jews, however, reflects a more radical, controversial view: the idea that denominationalism is necessarily destructive.  In the face of exciting new cross-communal initiatives, traditional institutions such as Masorti, Reform, Liberal and the United Synagogue often seem to be on the back foot - if not actively softening at the edges.  Perhaps this explains the development of multi-denominational community centres in Oxford and Hatch End, the emergence of alternative, ‘partnership’ minyanim within Orthodoxy, or the fact that for the very first time, the Chief Rabbi felt the need to attend Limmud.

In the United States, denominational Judaism also seems to be in retreat.  The recent Pew Research Center’s survey, ‘A Portrait of Jewish Americans,’ shows that whereas 75% of Jews aged 50+ affiliate with particular denominations (Reform, Conservative, Orthodox or ‘other’), in the 18-29 age bracket that number shrinks to 59%, with the remaining 41% identifying as Jews of no denomination. 

While there is much to celebrate here - Jews getting along better with other Jews is certainly no bad thing - the post-denominational trend has a more troubling side.  The Pew figures show that as American Jews assimilate, they tend to switch allegiance from the traditional to the progressive strands of Judaism, from there to non-denominational affiliation, and finally to identifying as ‘Jews of no religion.’  This is not to say that you can’t be a committed Reform or post-denominational Jew – plenty of those certainly exist.  But the emergence of non-denominationalism seems primarily to reflect a process of disengagement from Judaism.  

But does assimilation leads to the loss of denominational identity, or is the relationship the other way around?  In a recent article, Daniel Gordis (a Conservative rabbi who has moved towards modern-Orthodoxy) blames the synagogue movements – and Conservative Judaism in particular – for failing to stem the tide of assimilation through their inability to articulate a compelling message for modern Jews.  Gordis believes that too much compromise and the abandonment of principles has driven people away.  Yet we’re all too aware that very few contemporary Jews want to engage with a Judaism they see as dogmatic or intolerant.

So what are our options?  Here and there in the Jewish world there are exceptions to the sectarian/assimilation polarity.  Chabad Hasidim, for example, are well known for combining passion and commitment with genuine love and openness.  But while Chabad’s outreach strategy reflects tolerance of all Jews, it does not imply a fundamentally accepting attitude towards different expressions of Judaism.  

My own movement, Conservative/Masorti Judaism, provides a different twist to this model.  A slightly cynical Masorti rabbi friend from Israel recently commented to me that our problem is that we invest all our energy in the future of the Jewish people, while neglecting our own movement.   It’s true that in the States, at a time when official Conservative Judaism is undergoing a period of organisational decline, hundreds of independent minyanim, educational projects and social change initiatives are being led by people who’ve grown up in Conservative synagogues and summer camps and who are now expressing their values in the wider Jewish world. 

In this country too, Masorti Jews are disproportionately represented in the leadership of cross-communal Jewish institutions of all kinds.  On a personal level, I’ve recently been part of the initiative to set up a new Jewish school – Alma Primary in Finchley.  Although many of the initial founders were members of New North London Synagogue, we took the decision to make Alma a cross-communal school, not a Masorti one. 

And, unlike Chabad, this commitment to diversity goes all the way down into Masorti theology.  Our rabbis are committed to the idea that halacha, Jewish law, is inherently pluralistic.  Masorti synagogues are well known for combining a clear, recognisable ethos with a remarkable tolerance for difference – often within the same community.  My own shul, New North London, has both traditional (separate seating, male-led service) and fully egalitarian minyanim, with very little tension between them.  And all this takes place in a synagogue community where people meet week in week out for prayer, Jewish learning and the building of meaningful relationships.  Are there any post-denominational frameworks in the country that can offer the same?

It turns out that there is a third option beyond intolerant sectarianism and the abandonment of specific ideological commitments.  The kind of ‘soft’ denominationalism represented by Masorti and other like-minded communities might be our best way forward.  Certainly without it, the post-denominational institutions we’re so proud of will have very little to sustain them.

Who do you want to get into bed with - Masorti or Haredi Jews? A question for my modern Orthodox friends

The organised Jewish community has become obsessed about who’s attending Limmud.  More specifically we’re preoccupied with which Orthodox rabbis are attending (or not attending) and more specifically still with what other Orthodox rabbis have tosay about Chief Rabbi Ephraim Mirvis who has finally done what his predecessor Jonathan Sacks should have done, and signed up for the conference.

I hate to add to the clamour by writing this piece, and I personally have no strong feelings about whether Rabbi Mirvis should attend.  I hope he enjoys Conference and feels he made the right decision.  But the episode does raise important issues of Jewish identity and Jewish peoplehood.

I recently stuck my nose into a Facebook debate in a groupcalled MO/OO – Modern Orthodox/Open Orthodox.  A call had been issued for modern Orthodox leaders to stand up for the Chief Rabbi and speak out against a group of ultra-Orthodox luminaries who’ve issued a public letter urging their followers to boycott Limmud.  I asked why only modern Orthodox leaders were being called on.  Shouldn’t Jewish leaders of every stripe rally round an institution that brings Jews together to learn?  How has the question of participation at Limmud come to be seen as an internal battle for people who label themselves with the ‘O’ word?

There’s a fundamental question here for people who define themselves as modern-, liberal- or open-Orthodox (or any other variant I have yet to come across).  Who is your coalition?  Who do you align with?  Who’s a member of your Jewish ‘family’?  Are you more at home with the people to your right – the ‘black’ and ‘grey’ worlds of more mainstream and ultra-Orthodoxy – or with those to your left – Conservative/Masorti Judaism and the more traditional fractions of other liberal Jewish movements?  Are the aspirations of MO/OO Jews best served by fighting over the future of Orthodoxy, or should they more profitably throw their lot in with the rest of us, ignore their own right flank, and focus on the future of the Jewish people as a whole?

Some people in the Facebook debate said we can’t ignore reality – whatever the similarities between us, Orthodox and Masorti are divided by a clear line: Orthodox Jews are obligated in a very practical sense to halachic observance whereas most Masorti Jews, however committed they might be to the halachic framework in theory, tend to give halacha at most a vote and certainly not a veto in their own religious decision making.  This difference seems to stem from a theological distinction: Orthodoxy of whatever persuasion ostensibly buys into the idea of a direct link between divine revelation and the halachic system, whereas Masorti/Conservative Judaism understands halacha as a human creation which evolves over time in response to changing historical circumstances and the Jewish people’s ongoing quest to articulate a meaningful response to God.

But the minute we look around us, we see this isn’t the case.  The (Orthodox) United Synagogue is full of Jews who identify as Orthodox but whose lifestyles don’t begin to approach the standards set out by halacha; you can’t even assume that committed members of US communities are fully observant.  I’d venture to say that not every member of the MO/OO Facebook group keeps all 613 mitzvot.  And I know for a fact that they (alongside many modern Orthodox academics and intellectuals) don’t all buy the official line that the Torah as we know it was given to Moses at Mount Sinai.  At my own (Masorti) shul, this diversity of religious practice also holds true – in fact, there’s no way of knowing who keeps what, and the fact that there’s no correlation between communal involvement, Jewish knowledge and ritual observance is one of the best things about the community. 

And even if we could draw a (blurry) line between Orthodox and Masorti Judaism in terms of practice or theology, should we assume that commitment to a certain style of observance is a necessary qualification for participation in the debate over liberalism and halacha?  To anyone who thinks it is, I’m tempted to respond that maybe a certain level of commitment to liberal values should also be a condition of entry.  In other words, if you think I’m not frum enough to participate in your conversation, maybe you’re not open-minded enough to take part in mine.

But this kind of small-mindedness is clearly fruitless.  I prefer the line taken by an (Orthodox) rabbinic colleague who told me he aspires to create a meaningful conversation about the future of what he calls ‘centrist Judaism’ in which anyone who connects with the term would be able to participate.  I take this to mean a conversation in which anyone who cares about halacha, Torah education, Jewish peoplehood and liberal values can take part – without strict entry criteria and without the problem of constantly having to look over our shoulders at people whose opinion we think we should care about but who are not part of the conversation.  Because this way, anyone whose opinion we care about will be part of the conversation, and anyone who chooses to stay outside can safely be left there.

One final point, and something I think all of us – Orthodox or not – can learn from the history of Conservative/Masorti Judaism (and emphatically not because Masorti Judaism is in any objective way better than the other streams).  Conservative Jews have always had as their first allegiance not their own movement, but the Jewish people as a whole.  Solomon Schechter, one of the founders of Conservative Judaism in the States, coined the term ‘Catholic Israel’ to refer to the collectivity of committed Jews of whatever denomination, in his eyes the historical agent which has the authority to shape and authorise halachic change.  Today, the Conservative movement in the States is in a period of numerical and organisational decline, but hundreds of independent minyanim, synagogues, educational projects and social change initiatives are being led by people who’ve grown up in the Conservative movement and who are now expressing their values in the wider Jewish world. 

In this country too, Masorti Jews are disproportionately represented in the leadership of cross-communal Jewish institutions of all kinds.  On a personal level, I’ve recently been part of the initiative to set up a new Jewish school – Alma Primary in Finchley.  Many of the initial founders were members of New North London Synagogue, but we took the decision to make Alma a cross-communal school, not a Masorti one.  In his sermon for Yom Kippur and in a recent address to a meeting of Masorti leaders from all over Europe, Rabbi Chaim Weiner, Av Bet Din of the European Masorti Bet Din, spoke about two exemplars of modern Jewish leadership: despite the ideological rift between them and Masorti, he chose to take example from Rabbi Ovadia Yosef and the Lubavitcher Rebbe.  How many Orthodox leaders would be open enough to publicly take inspiration from Leo Baeck or Mordecai Kaplan?

A slightly cynical friend – an Israel Masorti rabbi – commented to me that the problem with Masorti/Consevative Jews is that we invest all our energy in the future of the Jewish people, while neglecting the future of our own movement.  But in the present divided, fractious state of the Jewish community, I see this tendency in a much more positive light.  We certainly face a challenge in getting the balance right: how much do we invest in our movement as a vehicle for articulating the Jewish values we believe in, and how much do we act on those values through action in the wider Jewish community? 

And the same challenge is no less important for Orthodox Jews involved in leading Partnership Minyanim, championing Limmud, working for gay/lesbian inclusion or promoting critical, open-minded education.  I’d like to extend this challenge as an invitation to anyone who’s concerned with centrist, liberal, halachic Judaism, and the future of the Jewish people as a whole.  How can we work together and learn from each other, both within and across the denominational lines which ostensibly divide us, in pursuit of our common goals?  I’m waiting to hear ideas.

Lost rabbits and a dilemma about parenting

 We recently moved house and, in the space of a week, managed to lose our two guinea pigs and rabbit.  If you follow me on Facebook you may remember me scrambling around the garden to save one of these animals from a fox only a few months back.  The guinea pigs were the first to go.  Unused to having a lawn (our previous house had decking and a patio) we left the rabbit and guinea pigs in the run overnight.  The next morning, the rabbit was still there but the guinea pigs were gone.  The gashes in the grass led us to believe that the rabbit had dug a hole just deep enough to let the guinea pigs escape. Given that guinea pigs run more or less aimlessly when released from the hutch, we were under no illusions that they’d come back. 

We started being more careful with the rabbit after that, keeping him in his hutch rather than letting him run around the garden.  But he stopped eating and started to shed fur.  Whether this was from boredom or loneliness, we decided that pending the purchase of new companion guinea pigs, we had to let him roam around the garden, making sure to return him to his hutch at night time.  But the rabbit was hard to catch and impossible to retrieve when he hid in small, dark places.  One evening he escaped and hid under the shed.  We weren’t too worried about leaving him – this had happened before and he always emerged in the morning.  But in middle of the night we heard noises – some kind of screaming – from the garden.  I couldn’t really get back to sleep, and in the morning the rabbit was gone.  Only a few traces of fur were left in the grass.

I felt guilty about the guinea pigs (although the kids accepted their loss quite calmly) but we were all upset about the rabbit.  I looked for him in the garden for the next couple of days.  My four year old came home upset, having thought to pick dandelion leaves for him, then remembering he was gone.  I had a similar moment this morning when I cut the dry end off a cucumber I found in the fridge.

While I know this is trivial – animals die all the time – I’ve found the guilt surprisingly difficult.  I was responsible for a domestic animal who couldn’t look after himself in the wild, and allowed him to come to harm.  My wife (more upset than me – it was really her rabbit) said that’s just how it goes.  Animals are not objects, you can’t control them and you can only look after them while they’re with you.  Keeping a depressed rabbit cooped up in a hutch or run would have been the only other solution – and obviously no solution at all. 

I’m not sure I agree – there were other precautions we could have taken – but ultimately I accept that there’s a trade-off here: control and safety versus freedom and danger.  And the strength of my feelings shows that this applies not only to rabbits, but also in a more profound way, to parenting and our relationship with our children.  (Incidentally, I just finished re-reading Haruki Murukami’s Wind-up Bird Chronicle in which the disappearance of the narrator’s cat prefigures the surreal and unexplained disappearance of his wife). 

I let my kids do things (climb high trees for example) that I know make other parents quail.  I have a strong belief in letting children become independent and self-reliant, even if that sometimes means they face setbacks, get stuck or hurt themselves.  I focus on this belief as an antidote to my other tendency to protect and control.  But how would I feel if the independence I give one day confirmed my deep-seated fears by leading to real harm?

So an incident with rodents (and a leporid) has awoken existential angst about parenting which I don’t know how to solve.  In the meantime, we’re thinking about getting a cat.  You do have to let them out, but I think I’ll feel safer with a carnivore that can jump onto rooftops.

Royal babies, Republicanism and Torah OR why the Bible has a problem with royalty

I’m aware that any whiff of republicanism these days is considered to be outside the bounds of good taste – we all love the royal family now!  I'm going to risk unpopularity and perhaps scandal by relaying these thoughts which recently occurred to me.

Private Eye’s recent front page headline, ‘Woman has baby,’ naturally appealed to me but, although it points out an obvious truth about recent events, it also misses the point.  The new baby is not only a human being; the tremendous fuss around his birth is a reminder that he is part of one of the stranger British institutions – the monarchy.  The monarchy is strange because it exists within a democracy in which, notionally, sovereignty resides with the people.  Accordingly the queen (or king) has no actual political power – just a stack of land and money accumulated over the centuries, a generous taxpayer-funded remuneration package, guaranteed access to the media, and regular one-to-one, confidential meetings with the Prime Minister. 

A few weeks ago, the courts rules that correspondence between Prince Charles and various government departments could not be released under the Freedom of Information Act as publication could damage his position of political neutrality.  The implication was that Charles is not neutral, has clear political opinions and has taken advantage of his position to communicate these to government ministers; keeping his letters secret serves the purpose of maintaining the illusion of political neutrality while allowing him to go about his business influencing government policy.

You’d think that in a democracy people would notice this kind of anomaly, not to mention the clash between their enthusiasm for these symbols of privilege and the values we all supposedly believe in.  The fact that hardly anyone does is less surprising when you consider how shallow our democracy actually is and take into account the centralisation of power, the inequality and the social immobility which have increasingly come to plague us.  (On the same subject, see the excellent book The Spirit Level: Why Equality is Better for Everyone).   Public worship of the monarchy shows how successful the institution is at implicitly legitimising the status quo.

Next week we’ll be reading Parshat Shoftim (Deuteronomy 16:18 - 21:9) which, among other things, gives us the laws relating to the monarchy:

“If, after you have entered the land that the Lord your God has assigned to you, and taken possession of it and settled in it, you decide, "I will set a king over me, as do all the nations about me," you shall be free to set a king over yourself, one chosen by the Lord your God. Be sure to set as king over yourself one of your own people; you must not set a foreigner over you, one who is not your kinsman.  Moreover, he shall not keep many horses or send people back to Egypt to add to his horses, since the Lord has warned you, "You must not go back that way again." And he shall not have many wives, lest his heart go astray; nor shall he amass silver and gold to excess. 

When he is seated on his royal throne, he shall have a copy of this Teaching written for him on a scroll by the levitical priests.  Let it remain with him and let him read in it all his life, so that he may learn to revere the Lord his God, to observe faithfully every word of this Teaching as well as these laws.  Thus he will not act haughtily toward his fellows or deviate from the Instruction to the right or to the left, to the end that he and his descendants may reign long in the midst of Israel.” (17:14-20).

The important bit is not the Torah’s assumption that a king will be predisposed towards the accumulation of excess wealth, immoral behaviour and idolatry, nor the idea that the king has to be watched by the priests to ensure he keeps to the laws of the Torah.  The most interesting detail is the opening word of the passage – ‘if.’  The Torah’s message is, you can have a king if you want one, but you’ll probably be sorry as this is far from the idea form of government. 

Later (I Samuel chapter 8), we learn how the people rejected the direct rule of God as represented by the Judges, and begged for a king so they could be more like the other nations and have someone to lead them into battle.  The prophet Samuel, while warning the people of the likely outcome, reluctantly agreed.  The rest of the Bible describes how the Israelite monarchy descended into exactly the sort of corruption warned about in the Torah.

I would argue that the Bible is a republican document.  It believes in the direct rule of God and sees monarchy as a pragmatic solution designed to pander to the people, but one which will inevitably lead to bigger problems than the ones it was designed to solve.  In our context, the monarchy has no power to solve our problems, only the capacity to blind us to them.  Yet direct rule by God is also unavailable to us.  In the absence of prophets, when we all have equal potential for understanding God’s will (perhaps alternatively understood as the common good?), is democracy the best available alternative to biblical theocracy?  The fact that the people undeniably still want a king is another matter.

Why Rabbi Schochet's wrong about feminism

Rabbi Yitzhak Schochet’s attack on the Jewish Orthodox Feminist Alliance lays bare the rift in modern Judaism.  It’s not between the Orthodox and everyone else, but cuts across denominational lines, dividing people who want an insular Judaism to bury its head in the sand from those of us who want our tradition to embrace, critique and play a wholehearted role in the contemporary world. 

Rabbi Schochet advises Orthodox feminists not to push too far in their attempts to find equality in Judaism.  He notes that the glass ceiling has been shattered and women have achieved social equality, but religion is the wrong place to extend these rights further.  He argues that Judaism is about serving God, not ourselves and that halachah as a guide to God’s will is about obligations, not rights.  He claims that no Orthodox rabbi recognises ‘partnership minyanim’ where women read from the Torah and lead parts of the service.  He writes that the bat-mitzvah girl who wished her father could have been there when she was called to the Torah has ‘missed the point.’  Most strikingly, he believes that Judaism has never relegated women to the status of second class citizens. 

I have news for Rabbi Schochet.  We still live in a world of brutal oppression and growing inequality.  You don’t have to go to the wartorn killing fields of Congo and Syria or the misogynist tribal backwaters of the Taliban to work that out.  Even in modern civilised Western Europe and the United States we are beset by growing economic inequality, incitement against the poor, discrimination against immigrants and – yes – anti-Semitism.  If he thinks the glass ceiling has been shattered, he should count the number of women in Parliament or on the boards of public companies.  And all too often, both in the developing world and at home, rather than speaking out against oppression and inequality, religious leaders lend them a helping hand. 

In this context, we have to ask ourselves: which side do we want Judaism to be on?  It’s simply not good enough to argue that while we believe in equality, this value ends at the entrance to the synagogue.  If we believe in equality, the first place to go about realising it is in Judaism.  Anything else is a kind of doublethink which makes a mockery of our values. 

We should make no bones about the fact that the Jewish tradition is a product of a patriarchal era and, as such, has often cast women as second class citizens.  True, the rabbis of the Talmudic period instituted ground-breaking reforms to protect women’s rights.  But nowadays, the gap between women’s status in halachah and the principles of equality and justice is increasingly clear.  Halachic Judaism is built around the value of obligation or commandedness.  The more closely one’s life is aligned with the demands of the mitzvot the better.  But women are defined in Jewish law as a group which has fewer obligations and thus fewer opportunities to do mitzvot.  Less obligation translates into lower status.  This also excludes women from leadership positions in the synagogue. 

More importantly, women have been excluded from halachic decision-making.  It’s no surprise that a tradition shaped almost exclusively by men should turn out to be patriarchal.  This point is lost on Rabbi Schochet, of course, as he regards halachah as a pre-packaged statement of God’s will, transmitted through human beings who take no active role in shaping its contents.  But for most modern Orthodox –and all non-Orthodox – Jews, this is an untenable description of the tradition which contains many voices, has a history and is influenced by social conditions in every period (for more on this see Rabbi Louis Jacobs’ excellent book A Tree of Life).

If halachah is created or at least shaped by human beings, it can’t be expected to deal adequately with gender issues as long as women are excluded from the learning and decision making process. The case for women rabbis and poskot halachah – halachic authorities – is more than clear.  Rabbi Schochet’s point that women should not pursue equality in the synagogue because Jewish law prohibits it is flipped – until halachah can be shaped by women, how can it presume any authority over them?  And why, specifically, should women accept the lower level of obligation and the consequent limiting of their religious lives which has been imposed on them by generations of male rabbis?

JOFA is clearly worthy of support, as were similar movements that pursued gender equality in the Reform and Conservative/Masorti movement a generation ago.   But the fact that Orthodox feminism comes in the wake of its non-Orthodox counterparts offers it both a resource and a challenge.  For decades, Masorti rabbis have been formulating halachic solutions to issues of counting women in the minyan, egalitarian services, calling women to the Torah, women rabbis and witnesses, agunot, and so on.  These are legitimate, well-researched, scholarly legal resources.  At last year’s Limmud Conference, Rabbi Daniel Sperber commented that many Masorti rabbis are indistinguishable from their modern Orthodox colleagues (he meant it as a compliment).  So why let the fact that these solutions are branded with a non-Orthodox label stop you from using them as a resource?  Modern Orthodoxy has far more in common with Masorti than it does with Haredi Judaism as represented by Rabbi Schochet (see Rabbi Sacks' comments on this) – especially on this issue.  Isn’t it time to overcome the denominational divide and learn to work together in pursuit of a common goal?

How the rabbis overturned the Torah: on rebelliousness and religion

Here are my thoughts on this week's Torah portion, published by Masorti Judaism in Reflections.

Parshat Naso contains one of the Torah’s more disturbing passages – the laws relating to an ishah sotah or ‘wayward woman’ (5:11-31).  A man becomes jealous of his wife and suspects her of adultery; there is no evidence against her and she may or may not be guilty.  He brings her to the Tabernacle and presents a meal offering on her behalf.  The priest rips the woman’s clothing, dishevels her hair and makes her swear an oath, declaring that if she has indeed defiled herself, the subsequent ceremony will cause her thigh to fall away and her belly to swell and she will become a curse among her people.  The priest now takes a jug of water into which dirt from the Tabernacle floor has been mixed, blots the inky words of the curse - written on a scroll - into the water, and makes the woman drink it.  If she is guilty, the predetermined results ensue. 

The Mishnah modifies this procedure in several important ways.  Before a woman can be subjected to the ordeal, she must have been warned by her husband against secluding herself with a named individual.  Both the warning and the seclusion itself must be attested to by witnesses.  If such evidence exists, the woman is brought to the high court in Jerusalem where the judges implore her to confess her sins.  If she does so at any point before the curse is blotted into the water, her guilt is assumed and her husband may divorce her, but she avoids the ordeal.  And even if a truly adulterous woman goes through with the ceremony, the effects of the bitter water will be delayed by up to three years by any other good deeds she may have done. 

The contrast between the biblical and rabbinic accounts is striking.  As in other cases (laws relating to the death penalty, the execution of rebellious children, punishments of an eye for an eye) the rabbis, it seems, could not stomach some of the Torah’s more barbarous prescriptions.  Thus, while notionally respecting the sanctity and integrity of the text, they introduced so many procedural safeguards that in effect they reversed the Torah’s intention.  It’s reasonably clear that to the rabbis, the bitter water had no physical effect.  Rabbi Shimon hints at this in the Mishnah, arguing that if merit is understood to delay the punishment, guilty women will cease to fear the water and the reputation of innocent women, ostensibly cleared by the ceremony, may be called into question.  None of this would be the case if the bitter water worked, even occasionally.  Rather than a true trial by ordeal, the rabbis have rewritten the ceremony so as to protect women from arbitrary accusations and as a judicial – not magical - disincentive to adultery.

But this kind of revolutionary reinterpretation goes back further than the Mishnah – right into the text of the Torah itself.  Academic Bible scholars have noted that the ritual of the sotah bears the marks of an earlier, pagan ceremony, which served as the vehicle for a new, monotheistic religious message.  The text itself appears to be fragmented: read chapter 5 verses 24-26 and decide whether the woman drank the water before the priest offered the sacrifice or vice versa.  This kind of repetition and inconsistency indicates to some scholars an evolution and editing together of older traditions into a new text.  Where once the bitter water was considered to have magical powers of its own, the Torah makes clear that its function is symbolic - any harm inflicted comes from God.  And while the procedure reflects patriarchal, sexist assumptions, it’s possible to read the biblical text as an attempt to alleviate some of the worst misogynistic excesses, providing a public, judicial alternative to the private and arbitrary punishment of wives by jealous husbands.

Masorti Judaism: between mitzvah and autonomy

Perhaps the most difficult issue for liberal halachic Jews is the tension between two core values: mitzvah (which I translate here not as an individual commandment but as the concept of commandedness) and autonomy.  Mitzvah is the most important principle of halachic Judaism while autonomy is the indispensable grounding idea of modern ethics.  I want to explain more clearly what these two values mean and why the contradiction between them is inescapable.

Commandedness is perhaps the most important principle of rabbinic Judaism.  For the rabbis, the value of performing a mitzvah is not only inherent in the act itself (and sometimes, as in the case of sha’atnez or tefilin for example, the act might have no intrinsic value other than the fact it’s commanded).  A mitzvah is important simply because it’s commanded and because we are under an obligation to perform it.  The Talmud (Kiddushin 31a) illustrates this idea with the story of a non-Jew, Dama ben Natinah, who was seen to have honoured his parents even at great cost to himself, and was subsequently rewarded by God.  Rabbi Hanina comments that if this happened to someone who honoured his parents despite having no obligation to do so, how much more would a Jew in a similar position be rewarded, as (this is the punchline) it is greater to be commanded and act than to act without being commanded. 

This flies in the face of common sense.  Why might it be the case?  The Tosafot (medieval Talmudic commentators) offer several explanations.  The pragmatic view is that a person who is obligated to do a good deed is more likely to act than a person for whom the deed is voluntary (on Kiddushin 31a).  A more principled explanation – and one that in my view goes to the heart of rabbinic Judaism – is that the value of performing a mitzvah is that in so doing a person negates her own desires submits herself to the will of God (Avodah Zarah 3a).  If so, demonstrating obedience rather than the content of the act itself is the vital component in any mitzvah.

In complete contrast, modern ethics is based on the value of autonomy, which literally means self-rule.  The eighteenth-century philosopher Immanuel Kant argued that any act which is impelled by a heteronomous (external) source of authority can never be described as moral.  The reason for this is that obedience can only be induced by fear of punishment or hope of reward: we pay tax to avoid being fined, we stop at red lights to avoid being injured or arrested and so on. Because morality is defined in terms of duty while heteronomous action is always a matter of self-interest, heteronomy can never be the basis for morality.  Moral agents are always by definition autonomous in that they make free, rational decisions as to how to behave, based on their sense of duty to others.

The clash between mitzvah and autonomy should now be clear.  Autonomy is about obeying our own, rational, self-imposed moral principles, whereas mitzvah means putting these to one side in order to obey God or submit ourselves to Jewish tradition.  Incidentally, this holds true regardless of whether or not we consider the Torah to be of divine origin: obeying God contradicts the principles of autonomy no less than obeying the rabbis.  Sometimes the practical results of these two principles coincide: either could lead a person to give tzedakah for example.  Less often they clash: when my son was born, I was acutely aware of my halachic obligation to perform a brit milah, whereas my moral sense was outraged by the thought of intentionally injuring a new baby.  But if intentions are what’s important, then the contradiction is always there.  I can’t act in order to realise my own autonomy and simultaneously aspire to overcome my desires so as to obey God or the rabbis, both heteronomous sources of authority.

Progressive and ultra-Orthodox Jews resolve this tension by prioritising one of the two principles.  For ultra-Orthodoxy, commandedness always holds sway and personal values and desires are to be abandoned when they clash with halachah; Progressive Judaism privileges autonomy and empowers the individual to selectively filter the mitzvot in light of modern, rational principles.  The challenge is most squarely faced by the centrist movements in Judaism, modern Orthodoxy and Masorti: neither are prepared to jettison their halachic commitment or sacrifice their modern, liberal principles. 

What might be a Masorti response to this dilemma?  How can we be true to ourselves, our passionately held values, and our sense of personal freedom, while at the same time upholding our commitment to Torah and mitzvot in the framework of halachah?  For my answer, I want to draw on the work of one of the most important of all modern Jewish thinkers, Franz Rosenzweig.  While Rosenzweig is not usually identified with Masorti Judaism, I believe that his commitment to liberal philosophical principles together with his profound commitment to the tradition makes him a particularly suitable role model for us.

Rosenzweig returned to Judaism after a period of assimilation but felt unable to submit himself to Jewish law as this would have compromised his freedom as an individual.  The solution lay in a distinction he drew between Law and Commandment.  Whereas Law is an objective set of rules whose imposition clearly compromises personal autonomy, Commandment is a personal directive issued in the context of a committed, loving relationship, where the power of the relationship enables us to hear and freely obey.  Rosenzweig’s insight is that a loving relationship dissolves the boundary between autonomy and heteronomy: if we are able to feel the power of the mitzvot, in other words to experience God’s love through them, we’ll be able to respond to the commandments without compromising our freedom.

But what if we don’t experience the mitzvot in this way?  What if observance still feels like an imposition and a restriction?  Rosenzweig’s answer is simple: the only way to open yourself to the inner power of the mitzvot is by doing them.  Our job is to experiment: take on a commandment, not because we feel obliged but as an experience, practise it, remain open to its inner power.  Gradually expand the role halachah plays in our lives, without any pretence or abandonment of personal integrity, but as an educational exercise.  Practising Judaism here takes on a double meaning: we practise the mitzvot in the sense of practising a musical instrument, and in so doing we develop our ability to practise them in the sense of practising medicine: performing them in the truest sense.

This seems to me to be the path Masorti Judaism would recommend: an incremental journey through the halachah, taking on practices, experimenting and learning and, as we begin to experience the inner power of the tradition, deepening our commitment and sense of obligation to the truly commanding voice of the mitzvot.

This is my recent piece published in Masorti Judaism's Reflections.

Jewish law is not morality - more on Torah, liberalism and sexual ethics

Here are two examples about the tension between liberalism and halachic Judaism I mentioned in my last post (dedicated to Alex Stein - see his blog at http://falsedichotomies.com/).

1.
Today I attended a learning session for Masorti Judaism staff led by Rabbi Daniella Kolodny. We were looking at a Masorti responsum on smoking by Rabbi David Golinkin (see volume 4) which, aside from unambiguously prohibiting smoking, attacked ultra-Orthodox poskim such as Rabbi Moshe Feinstein for failing to do so.  Just to be clear: I agree with the teshuva; it's clear to me that smoking is contrary to basis halachic injunctions to save life and remain healthy.  But I'm ambivalent about the value of applying halacha to this kind of issue.  I have ultra-Orthodox acquaintances who won't paint their house before asking their rabbi what colour to choose. I wonder whether applying the authoritative framework of Jewish law to a question whose answer is self-evident in terms of modern science and common sense is the start of a slippery slope which leads, ultimately, to this kind of self-abasement.  In other words, as liberal Jews, can we accept a pan-halachic perspective which holds that Jewish law has the capacity to dictate all our decisions, or should we limiting halacha to the areas where we actually need it (ritual matters, genuinely fraught ethical issues) and asserting our right to make our own decisions about most areas of life?

2.
But sometimes it's not clear what's a halachic issue and what isn't.  For example, our rabbis were recently asked to comment on the question of same sex marriage in the UK.  The Church of England and the Orthodox Chief Rabbi have come out against it and the Progressive Jewish movements (Liberal and Reform) among others have predictably been in favour. All the arguments for and against have been framed in moral terms: gay marriage is seen as either a good thing or a bad thing.  Masorti Senior Rabbi Jonathan Wittenberg issued a statement making clear that gay Jews are welcome in our communities, that he approved of same-sex civil partnerships, and that he wants to find a way of marking same-sex relationships with a religious ceremony.  The subtext of this statement is that allowing same-sex couples to undergo kiddushin (Jewish marriage) is not a simple proposition - in other words there's a gap between what's moral and what's halachic (on this see Rabbi Jeremy Gordon's article quoted in the previous post).

Kiddushin is the legal procedure whereby a man acquires a woman (in the language of the Mishnah) - as such, it simply doesn't apply to same-sex couples.  There's no moral judgement here, just a question of applicability.  On the other hand, when synagogues register marriages in the eyes of the State, they are performing what is by definition an extra-halachic act, as Jewish marriage is a private contract in which the State or even the Bet Din has no role.  To my knowledge, English law doesn't specify the form of religious ceremony people have to undrego before their synagogue can register them as legally married, and increasing numbers of straight couples are choosing alternative ceremonies in preference to kiddushin, which they see as patriarchal and sexist. What would happen if we instituted an innovative, religious commitment ceremony for same-sex couples, having nothing to do with kiddushin, but followed up by a registration of civil marriage under the auspices of the synagogue?

I'm not a rabbi and I'm certainly not empowered to influence this kind of decision.  I'm more interested in it as a thought experiment which might help us think about the question of what is a halachic issue and what is an extra-halachic one.  In most ways, halacha (and Judaism in general) plays too small a role in our lives as liberal Jews.  But all too often halachic categories are invoked to prescribe particular solutions to what could be seen as social or political problems.  I think we need to be very clear about which mode of thinking is relevant to which issue, bringing halacha to bear more intensively where appropriate, but fighting the corner for liberal values and autonomy wherever we can.

Why is it wrong for a person to marry their dog? Sex in the Torah and liberal values

We're in danger of reducing Judaism to a pale reflection of itself if we ignore everything about it that we don't like.

Last Shabbat's parshah (weekly Torah portion) was Aharei Mot - Kedoshim, a double parshah that sums up this dilemma.  Aharei Mot includes the Torah's laws about forbidden sexual practices, a vital part of Jewish law: don't have sex with family members, in-laws, menstruating women (the author clearly had in mind a male audience), animals or other men.  We still get the bits about incest, adultery and bestiality, but not the  ones about homosexuality or, if we're honest, about avoiding sex during menstruation.  More specifically, some people might want to avoid sex during menstruation but they'd be unlikely to back law enforcement on the subject.

Kedoshim, on the other hand, contains some of the Torah's greatest hits: don't curse the deaf, don't put a stumbling block in front of the blind, leave the crops at the corners of your fields for the poor, love your neighbour as yourself: I am the Lord.  This parshah also contains bits we don't like, but it certainly provides a good amount of material for left-wing, liberal and even secular sermon givers and doesn't make us feel embarrassed to be Jewish.

The other day a Liberal rabbi friend told me that readings from the book of Vayikra (Leviticus), rich as it tends to be with content that makes modern people uncomfortable, are often skipped over or de-emphasised by his colleagues.  While at Masorti we read every line of the Torah as part of the annual cycle, we can't deny that this temptation also exists for us.  A broader temptation for liberal-minded Jews (and I include Masorti in that definition) is to filter Judaism through the prism of our liberal values, simply ignoring the bits we don't like, and claiming that the result reflects an authentic interpretation of the tradition.

There are two problems with this: one has to do with liberalism and the other has to do with Judaism.

First, liberalism.  John Stuart Mill taught us that the State (or any other source of authority) has no right to coerce individuals other than to prevent them from harming others.  This is the basic justification for important progressive policies such as recognising same-sex marriage.  Thoroughgoing liberalism removes the need for value judgements or imposing our views on others.  It simply says live and let live.  If two people want to marry each other, we have no right to interfere.  Similarly, if someone wants to protest about same-sex marriage, they have the right to do that, as long as the protest doesn't verge on coercion.  The same applies to any other activities engaged in by consenting adults: hard drug use, incest, potentially even bestiality (as long as we could prove no animal cruelty was involved).

These examples show that the liberalism of most liberals is not all that thoroughgoing: most of us want to be able to make judgements, think about the kind of society we want to live in, and influence others in line with this.  Liberalism does not provide an escape from difficult, ideological, values-based debate.

Next, Judaism.  Judaism isn't interested in rights but in obligations.  As my colleague Rabbi Jeremy Gordon recently wrote in an article about Judaism and homosexuality (see page 22), halacha wants to control us from the time we get up to the time we go to bed at night, in every detail of our lives.  Judaism has been shaped by historical forces and shifting social values but if we try to reshape it in liberal, non-coercive terms we will be doing violence to its fundamental shape.  We need to hang on to Aharei Mot alongside Kedoshim.  This is important because Judaism has the potential to act as an effective check and balance against the excesses of liberalism taken to its logical conclusion.  Balancing ourselves between two such different ethical and political traditions forces us out of formulaic approaches and makes us think in an innovative way about each new issue we encounter.

This week

It's been busy.  Our professional staff have carried out a mid-year progress review and, while we face tough challenges in our efforts to grow the Masorti movement, we've made important achievements: expanding Noam's work in our communities and boosting summer camp numbers, running a successful Marom Lithuania trip and an international Marom Europe conference in London, finding ways to support Masorti rabbinical students, creating volunteer leadership teams for this year's Leadership Day (St Albans, 13th October - save the date!), our Annual Dinner and next year's Yom Masorti, creating a new Masorti corporate brochure to bring our message to a wider audience, and working hard to secure enough funding to expand our activities and achieve even bigger aims next year.

I've met with Charlotte Fischer, Citizens UK's Jewish Community Organiser to support her work with Noam and the Citizens' Group at New North London Synagogue, with Rael Goodman from the Jewish Agency to explore how to work in partnership to strengthen our relationship with Israel, and with Jon Benjamin from the Board of Deputies to find out how Masorti can get involved with the Board's new small community outreach programme.  I've also represented Masorti at meetings about the Jewish Leadership Council's Community Vitality Project and the professional advisory board of their leadership training initiative, LEAD; at a meeting of the Community Consultative Committee with heads of the United Synagogue, Reform and Liberal Judaism, and at the Israeli Embassy's Israel 65 reception.  And tomorrow I'm looking forward to running a shiur for members of New Stoke Newington Shul entitled 'Judaism Without God?'

Why Gove's got it wrong on (almost) everything

Education secretary Michael Gove has announced that he wants to shorten holidays and lengthen school days so that the UK education can compete more effectively against the Chinese and other east Asian economies.  He also wants pupil feedback to influence performance-related teachers' pay, believes students should study more British history and learn lists of important facts by heart, is set to mandate compulsory language learning (from a list of seven languages including Chinese but not Japanese, Italian but not Portugese, Spanish but not Arabic, and Latin and Greek but not Hebrew or Sanskrit) in primary schools and, while imposing these and a host of other new government directives, simultaneously wants to give schools more independence by encouraging them to convert to academies, opting out of local authority control and becoming directly accountable to central government.

I've already said what I think about Gove's proposals for language teaching and the negative impact this will have on Hebrew and Jewish education - ironically, seeing that Gove himself studies Hebrew and never misses an opportunity to profess his love and respect for the Jewish community.  See my piece here.  I also need to declare and interest (and perhaps a total lack of consistency): I'm a founding governor of a new school being set up under the goverment's Free Schools policy.

Gove's policies seem increasingly confused.  But running through them, I believe, are two entirely coherent and consistently applied principles.  One is a lack of respect for experts - and in the case of education, this means teachers.  The education secretary believes that government, not teachers, should dictate education policy and is endeavoring to drive through politically determined reforms at a breakneck pace.  Plans to lengthen the school day imply that teachers don't work hard enough.  He has been criticised for failing to consult over the new national curriculum.  And where he seeks to decentralise, his partners of choice are not teachers but parents, universities and business.  The Guardian recently reported as follows:

'Gove made an offer to unions who complain about his reforms: "Many of [the teaching unions] have very passionate criticisms of the model of education that I've outlined and there's an open invitation to the unions which is: prove me wrong, set up a free school.
"If the NUT were to set up a free school, we would find them a building, we would fund it. And I would love to see an NUT or another union free school." Turning down Gove's offer, a union spokesperson said: "The NUT is in a lot of places already. They're called schools."'


The second principle is a tacit but extremely powerful belief that the only important goal of education is economic success.  This idea, widespread to the point of ubiquity in education policy across the industrialised world, is apparent in Gove's policies but even more so in his language.  The education system needs reforming so students can acquire skills to better compete in a global marketplace.

But if so, why the emphasis on English culture, English history, the rote learning of poetry, Latin and Greek on the list of mandated languages for primary school children, and the gift of a King James Bible to every school in the country?  On the surface it appears that alongside the desire for economic efficiency Gove wants to resurrect a more old-fashioned, classical education, grounded in the arts and humanities.   But this impression is misleading.  This kind of liberal arts education is about reading, thinking and understanding.  It values above all the richness of the tradition and its role in shaping good citizens, where citizenship means participating in public life for the sake of the common good.  But in Gove's vision, the ultimate authority is not pupils or teachers but government, and the aim of education is not cultural or political but economic.  Not only that, but the government's supposedly cultural educational rhetoric is actually tinged with racism.  An official commented on the latest plans to lengthen the school day: "We can either start working as hard as the Chinese, or we'll all soon be working for the Chinese."

This is what the government's educational vision seems to boil down to.  Children need to spend as much time possible studying at school so they learn the skills needed to spend as many hours possible working once they leave school.  They need to be immersed in a narrative of Britishness so they don't notice that they live in a global economy where the national identity of their employers matters less than the fact that profits keep rising even as average wages stagnate.  And they need to learn by rote and devote themselves to facts and skills rather than critical thinking, creativity and understanding in order to prepare themselves for lives as pliant employees and uncritical consumers.  Charles Dickens' Mr Gradgrind couldn't have wished for more.

How three Guardian articles on Israel made me a happy man

Thoughts about three articles in this weekend’s Guardian and Observer.

The first one was by Iain Banks, on why he won’t allow his books to be sold in Israel.  This is the kind of article I usually avoid as I find the badly-argued hostility and venom they usually contain, directed exclusively against Israel and therefore in some part of my mind against me personally, too much.  But I read this one, partly because it came out the day after Banks announced that he has cancer and only has months to live, an announcement in which he gave the impression of being a genuine, decent person with a sense of humour.  I also like his books. 

My immediate thought about pro-boycott articles –of which this is one – is why are you boycotting Israel and not one of the many other countries with far worse records of human rights abuse and illegal actions?  In the first paragraph my eye settled on, Banks explained that he would never allow his books to be sold in Saudi Arabia either but that the problem has never come up as they’re banned there anyway.  This seemed to reflect both balance and a certain awareness of the relative merits of Israeli democracy. 

Banks was also clear that his target was the Israeli state not the Israeli people.  He clearly respects and identifies with the Jewish people, even granting tongue-in-cheek that our contribution to world culture has been more important than that of the Scots.  And he took a subtle, friendly swipe at claims that any criticism of Israel is antisemitic (‘Israel and its apologists can't have it both ways, though: if they're going to make the rather hysterical claim that any and every criticism of Israeli domestic or foreign policy amounts to antisemitism, they have to accept that this claimed, if specious, indivisibility provides an opportunity for what they claim to be the censure of one to function as the condemnation of the other.’)  More than anything I was touched by his memories of boycotting apartheid South Africa (I too grew up in a home free of South African products), which he managed to evoke without implying any direct parallel between Israel and apartheid. 

Article two was by Canon Giles Fraser, entitled ‘Why Theodor Herzl's writings still have an urgent message: antisemitic attacks in Hungary illustrate the necessity of Israel.’  The headline really says it all.  One paragraph was particularly striking: ‘I am a Zionist. Not an Israel right-or-wrong type of Zionist. Not a supporter of the settlement movement type of Zionist, and absolutely not a supporter of the shameful treatment of Palestinians type of Zionist.’  A Guardian columnist admitting to being a Zionist is unusual itself.  The nuanced idea that you can be a Zionist and oppose the occupation – rare enough in our community, more so in wider British society – was even more so.

Finally, a report on an article by Amira Hass in Haaretz, Israel’s liberal broadsheet, which called for Palestinian schools to train their students in non-violent protest, including stone throwing against Israeli soldiers.  The article has provoked criticism (some within the pages of Haaretz itself), demonstrations and calls for Hass to be prosecuted for incitement.  The failure of successive Israeli governments (and their Palestinian counterparts) to end the occupation and the damage to democracy and human rights that go along with it, juxtaposed with the fact that a mainstream Israeli newspaper chose - and was allowed - to print such a trenchantly subversive piece, says a lot about the knotty nature of the conflict and the irreducibility of Israeli reality into black and white terms.

When I lived in Israel, I freely criticised the government, voted and even campaigned against it.   My commitment to Israel was never questioned – rather, the depth of my criticism reflected the depth of my commitment to Israeli democracy and by extension to Zionism itself. Since returning to the UK nearly five years ago I’ve become sensitive to the connection between criticism of Israel and attacks on the Jewish community – a connection which is all too prevalent.  But more important than the objective existence of this connection is a deep rooted feeling among UK Jews that protecting Israel’s image is essentially a form of self-defence.  It goes back to the Anglo-Jewish bunker mentality, a mentality formed as a result of the historical experience of living in an ostensibly tolerant society where subtle (and sometimes not so subtle) expressions of antisemitism were always close at hand.  This is the same state of mind that all too often inhibits us from engaging in important projects for the common good with non-Jewish colleagues.

Reading the papers this weekend confirmed me in my belief that while Israel (and the Jewish community) has enemies, we also have friends out there – and the depth of criticism is no indication as to the depth of friendship.  Ten years in Israel helped me step outside the bunker mentality and grow the Jewish self-confidence to understand this issue in a nuanced way.  I wonder how we can encourage the community down the same path.

This month

I’ve neglected my blog as I’ve been writing for other publications: an article for the Jewish News on some of the issues raised here, a piece for the Jewish Chronicle criticising Michael Gove’s decision to exclude Hebrew from compulsory language teaching in primary schools, and a long review of a number of recent Introductions to Judaism books for the Jewish Quarterly (forthcoming). 

At Masorti Judaism, between preparing for and recovering from Pesach, we’ve been busy.  My main task between now and the summer is to raise a chunk of new money to ensure we can achieve the goals set out in our strategic plan next year.  The big new projects are to start working with an outreach rabbi for students and new communities, build up a fund to support rabbinical students and bring them into our communities for placements, take on a new member of the professional team to manage leadership training, education and events, and to expand our communications work through publications and a new website.  To that end I’ve been working with lay-leaders on plans to hold fundraising events, approach potential donors, secure some corporate sponsorship, and begin planning this year’s fundraising dinner. 

The Marom (students and young adults) team have run a successful five-day training seminar for Marom leaders from across Europe and tomorrow 20 students will be heading out on the Marom trip to Lithuania.  Meanwhile, Noam (Masorti youth) have exceeded their target for numbers on this year’s summer camps and have begun raising money for the camp subsidy fund, to ensure no-one’s excluded because of inability to pay.  Next month we’ll all be running in the Maccabi GB Community Fun Run to raise more money for the fund – more details soon.

Ahead of the Seder - why do Jews obsess about rituals?

A few thoughts ahead of the Seder, based on last week's Torah portion, Tzav.

Tzav is one of the most difficult portions of the Torah for the modern reader: not only because the sacrificial cult is alien to contemporary religiosity, but because the general principles of sacrifice have already been laid out in the preceding parsha, Vayikra.  Tzav merely supplements the general commandments to the Israelite nation with more detailed instructions for the priests.  These regulations focus exclusively on ritual minutiae and show no concern whatsoever for theological or ethical matters.

This kind of obsession with ritual detail has a long history in Judaism.  Shabbat Hagadol was historically one of two annual Shabbatot on which rabbis would address their congregations (the other occasion was Shabbat Shuva before Yom Kippur).  Rabbis traditionally used their talk to deal with the intricacies of the Pesach dietary laws; it has been humorously suggested that the name “Shabbat Hagadol” – the great or big Shabbat – was connected with the length of the rabbi’s speech.  The prophet Malachi – the author of today’s haftara – was similarly concerned with punctilious obedience to the law, sarcastically condemning those with lower standards: “When you present a blind animal for sacrifice – it doesn’t matter!  When you present a lame or sick one – it doesn’t matter! ... This is what you have done – will [God] accept any of you?” (1:8-9).  Unlike the author of Tzav, Malachi had ethical concerns too (see 3:5), but his ultimate concern was for faithfulness to God, expressed through adherence to both ritual and ethical laws.

Were today not Shabbat Hagadol, we’d be reading a different haftara, from the book of Jeremiah, whose opening stands in stark contrast to the accompanying Torah portion:

“Thus said the Lord of Hosts, the God of Israel: Add your burnt offerings to your other sacrifices and eat the meat! [Rashi explains this sarcastic injunction: as your burnt offerings are unacceptable to Me, why not use those animals for a sacrifice in which the meat is eaten following the ceremony; at least then the meat would not go to waste].  For when I freed your fathers from the land of Egypt, I did not speak with them or command them concerning burnt offerings or sacrifice.  But this is what I commanded them: Do My bidding, that I may be your God and you may be My people; walk only in the way that I enjoin upon you, that it may go well with you” (7:21-23).  While Tzav is all about ritual detail, Jeremiah condemns an exclusive concern for the letter of the law, insisting that sacrifice without obedience to the spirit of Torah is little short of blasphemous.

Tzav, it seems, does not reflect a monolithic Jewish voice which we must either accept or reject.  Instead, the Bible consists of a dialogue between different voices and positions, one in which we are invited to participate.  This diversity was celebrated by the seminal secular-cultural Jewish thinker, Ahad Ha’am, at the turn of the twentieth century.  Ahad Ha’am condemned the tendency of Jews (the ‘people of the Book’) towards a myopic sanctification of the letter of the law.  In “The Law of the Heart” (1894) he wrote: “The Oral Law (which is really the inner law, the law of the moral sense) was reduced to writing and fossilized ... not conscience but the book became the arbiter in every human question.”  He celebrated the prophets and the early rabbis as radicals who refused to submit to the authority of written texts or to allow the tradition to stagnate:  “If on occasion the spontaneity of thought and emotion brought them into conflict with the written word, they did not efface themselves in obedience to its dictates; they revolted against it where it no longer met their needs, and so forced upon it a development in consonance with their new requirements.”

How to community-organise middle class Jews?

A couple of weeks ago I attended a meeting of the Citizens’ group at New North London Synagogue.  The group is affiliated to Citizens UK, Britain’s largest broad-based community organising network which has close to 300 institutions in membership, ranging from mosques and churches to schools and student unions – and, more recently, synagogues.

Community organising focuses on issues which emerge out of the broad self-interest of community members.  Self-interest doesn’t mean selfishness – you can have an interest in an issue which benefits other people.  The important point is that the issues we think are supposed to concern us on ideological grounds very often fail to motivate to take action.  We’re too busy and we just don’t care enough, however much we think we should.

The idea behind self-interest is to build the habits of good citizenship and collective action by tapping into the issues which genuinely motivate people because they have something at stake.  Citizens’ Living Wage campaign was started by members of Citizens-affiliated churches in East London who had no time to spend with their families because they were working two or more jobs.  City Safe was initiated by families who had lost their children to street violence.

But while Citizens have been remarkably successful at identifying issues and building a campaigning network in disadvantaged areas of the capital, organising in the synagogue has proved in some ways a tougher challenge.  Last year, we conducted a listening campaign at New North London synagogue with the aim of identifying issues that connected with our self-interest.  While problems definitely came up – notably the problem of bad conditions in care homes where many of our members’ elderly parents live – nothing seemed to spark the kind of passion needed to generate leadership and kick-start a campaign. 

Some people think that as largely middle-class suburb-dwellers, our lives are simply too comfortable.  I think this prejudges the issue – the Jewish community is far more diverse than we think and the fact that disadvantaged people are less visible doesn’t mean they don’t exist.  Their invisibility could well be a symptom of their marginalisation.  But it also seems to me that maybe we just haven’t managed to articulate our issues properly.  So, while genuine issues need to emerge from our members, here’s a quick list of things I’d be prepared to do something about - and I bet other members of the Jewish community would too.

1. The pay gap and time poverty – yesterday’s Observer had a story about bankers’ (anonymous) responses to the proposed EU cap on bonuses.  Most seemed unfazed, saying that anyone who was affected would move into hedge funds or private equity, or that the banks would find a way around the cap.  They also said that a net pay cut of say £50k would be unlikely to make anyone with a seven-figure salary and a family actually relocate to avoid it.  Another article exposed the scandal of growing numbers of women being squeezed out or made redundant after takingmaternity leave.  The same paper’s editorial today focused on the ways new technology is changing the economy and society.  The bottom line was that more automation means fewer jobs but that ultimately unemployment will reduce demand and bring the economy to a halt.  It’s striking how few people point out the connection between rising pay inequality, unemployment and time poverty – ironically among the rich.  I remember reading in the 80s that advancing technology would create more wealth with less labour and would force us to consider how to spend increasing amounts of leisure time.  What’s actually happened is that working hours and inequality have both expanded, leaving us (and that includes the wealthy) busier and less happy than before.  Working to bring about a change of culture and employment practices to encourage part time and flexible employment could be a powerful issue for time-poor middle class families.

2. Schools – lots of people I know are nearly hysterical about getting their kids into the right schools.  Successive governments have emphasised choice and competition in education, rather than providing good neighbourhood schools for all.  Most schools operate distance-based admissions policies and this has created not only a post-code lottery, but effectively a system of selection based on who can afford to live near good schools.  This affects reasonably well-off families who can’t afford million pound houses as much as disadvantaged ones.  While we might not be able to take on the entire education system, what would happen if we campaigned for non-distance based admissions policies (such as that recently adopted by the new Alma primary school in Finchley), thus disconnecting the right to education from the property market and breaking the circle between rising house prices and improving educational standards?

3. Parking – everyone hates parking restrictions in boroughs like Barnet, seeing them as a council-owned racket for making money out of motorists.  But parking policy also impacts on shopkeepers and the local economy.  At a time when suburban high streets have taken on look made up of betting shops, payday loan shops, charity shops and boarded up storefronts, parking is not only an issue which affects everyone and could motivate them to get involved, but could also play a significant role in regenerating local economies and communities.

4. Community relationships – for many Jews, a real piece of self-interest is in building relationships with members of other communities.  Connecting synagogues with local churches, mosques and schools, welcoming their members in to our communities, visiting their and working on projects of common interest in inherently interesting and worthwhile.  Whatever other issues we choose, by working on them in partnership with others, we can find ourselves a constructive place as Jews in British society and begin to make our community more open-minded, outward looking and values-focused.

What other issues should we be taking on?  I’d love to hear feedback via Twitter: @MattPlen.

What’s the connection between the horsemeat hamburgers, the banking crisis and Lance Armstrong? Or why Judaism is the answer to all society’s problems

Some people really think that Judaism is the answer to all of society’s problems.  I once heard Chief Rabbi Lord Sacks argue that if everyone in the world kept Shabbat, the global warming crisis would be solved.  I don’t think he was entirely serious, and his audience of Jewish social activists certainly pulled no punches in taking apart his claim.  For me, Judaism is not a panacea.  The fact that every Jew makes something different of the tradition means ‘Judaism’ can never be imposed as a solution at all.  We read our own ideological predilections into Judaism to such an extent that solutions to problems are ‘Jewish’ only because Jews happen to have come up with them – not because they reflect some non-existent essence of Torah.

Having said that, I do think Torah has something of fundamental importance to say about perhaps the most pressing and deep-rooted problem our society faces.

There’s a connection between the behaviour of the people behind all the recent financial scandals, the horsemeat scandal, and the doping in sport scandal.  All three episodes illustrate what we all know – that in modern society, profit comes before ethics.  The quest for money and success has pushed all other values – professional ethics, pride in your job – to one side.

I recently read What Money Can’t Buy by Harvard philosophy professor Michael Sandel.  Sandel claims that economics and the values of the market have come to dominate our lives.  The principles of the free market have been applied to everything: children are given cash for achieving good grades, families are incentivised by governments to have a certain number of children, corporations are allowed to trade in carbon credits (essentially buying the right to pollute), and people have come to expect to pay for better healthcare, to drive on faster roads and to skip queues at the airport. 

This Saturday’s Guardian featured an article William Nicolson called ‘Because I’m worth it: the relationship economist’ which analysed dating – only slightly tongue in cheek – from the perspective of economics.  Should failure to get a girlfriend be understood as a lack of demand in the market, to be rectified by restricting supply by means of playing hard to get?  Or should it be solved using the Keynesian technique of boosting demand by displaying affection, thereby inspiring confidence?  The article ends: ‘Keynesian economics and love, it turns out, have rather a lot in common: they both work not by balancing budgets, or reducing supply to increase prices, but by inspiring trust. Economics did, in the end, provide me with an answer – just not the one I expected.’

Sandel writes that the marketization of everything is a problem not only because in an unequal society it discriminates against those who are unable to pay, but because it undermines the values traditionally associated with important activities.  Healthcare comes to be seen as a commodity and a source of profit.  Rather than reading or studying for the pleasure involved, children understand that learning is no more than a means to a financial end.  Ends get mixed up with means and pursuing profit at any cost – even corruption – becomes not only normal but good.

But there’s a deeper problem going on here.  Money is only a medium of exchange, by definition a means and not an end.  Seeing everything in economic terms, as a means to the end of money, implies not only that we’re mixing up means and ends but that ultimately there are no ends, no goals and no ultimate values.  In a world without goals, we’re reduced to chasing our tails.  In this context, banks and other businesses maximising profits at any cost – and for that matter students cheating to get better grades – acquires a logic of its own.

20^th century left-wing philosophers like Hannah Arendt and Jurgen Habermas have critiqued this kind of ‘instrumental rationality,’ a mode of thinking which focuses on what is the most effective means to a given end, but fails to deliberate on what ends we should be pursuing.  They claim that instrumental rationality, which is intimately associated with western, capitalist modernity, leads us in particular to treat other people as objects to be manipulated in the pursuit of our goals (and where money is the goal, we end up exploiting others for no ultimate purpose at all).

Judaism makes an important distinction between performing a mitzvah lishma (‘for its own sake’) – because it’s inherently the right thing to do – and acting out of ulterior motives, for example the hope of reward or the fear of punishment – lo lishma.  But it’s not always clear whether lo lishma is always a bad thing or whether it can be a pathway to observance lishma.  To continue my habit of quoting Maimonides: in the Mishneh Torah, his code of Jewish law he says, ‘A person should not say: "I will fulfill the mitzvot of the Torah and occupy myself in its wisdom in order to receive all the blessings which are contained within it or in order to merit the life of the world to come…" It is not fitting to serve God in this manner’ (Laws of Repentance 10:1).  On the other hand, ‘A person should always occupy himself in Torah study, whether lishma or even lo lishma, for from lo lishma will come lishma’ (Laws of Torah Study 3:5).

I find the idea that we should order our lives not in purely instrumental terms but in line with ultimate goals, core values and a conception of what is right, to be one of Judaism’s most potent insights, and a valuable corrective to our profit-centred and outcome-driven market society.  It seems to me that we need to find ways of inducting ourselves into a purposeful, values-driven mode of existence without going down the dangerous lo lishma route.  In the Masorti movement we do this by trying to build communities whose role is not to further any practical or ideological agenda, but in which we learn to value our relationships with each other – as human beings created in the image of God – as the highest imaginable good.  I hope we’re making a small contribution.

THIS WEEK

We ran our annual Yom Masorti day of learning, with almost 300 people from 11 Masorti communities – and several Orthodox and Reform communities too.  It was an amazing day – thanks to all the staff and volunteers who took part.  Click here for a full report. 

Earlier in the week I participated in a fascinating Jewish-Muslim dialogue group, hosted by the Three Faiths Forum, where we discussed Zionism, Islamism and the place of Jews and Muslims in British society.  One conclusion: too much of the tension between our communities over Israel/Palestine has very little – if anything – to do with the Middle East, which several of the Muslim participants (all with origins on the Indian subcontinent) felt very little connection to.  Ironically, the clash has more to do with the common ground between us: it’s about Jewish and Muslim identity in Britain, specifically the need to defend and assert ourselves as minority groups.

‘Yesh Atid’ (there’s a future) – but what future have Israelis voted for?

All my left-wing friends were pleased about the Israeli election results last week, as they represented, we were told, a ‘swing to the centre.’  Strange that left-wingers would welcome a swing to the centre – no doubt a confirmation of the fragmented, dispirited state of the Israeli left (which I prefer to describe less charitably as being in a state of near total collapse since the outbreak of the Intifada in 2000 if not the Rabin assassination in 1995).  I was also pleased, mostly by Meretz’s electoral success, growing back to six seats in Knesset, guaranteeing that there’ll be at least a handful of Israeli legislators who won’t sacrifice their principles for a seat at the Cabinet table and who’ll work to make progress on equality and human rights, the values the State of Israel is supposed to be built on.

Something interesting has happened to the semantics of Israeli politics in recent years.  Once, political parties were called things like Herut – Freedom,  Mapai – Land of Israel Workers’ Party, Ahdut Ha’avodah – the Unity of Labour, and Mafdal – the National Religious Party.  In those days you knew where you stood and, even as late as the 1980s, Israeli politics was marked by a clear debate between the mainly social-democratic Left who wanted a two-state solution and the mostly capitalist Right who didn’t (plus the religious parties who didn’t fit into either bloc and pursued their own sectional agenda). 

These days, most of the right-wing and religious parties have gone for names which, to the uninitiated, all sound the same: Israel Beiteinu – Israel our Home, Habayit Hayehudi – The Jewish Home, Yahadut haTorah – United Torah Jewry.  Likud just means ‘unity’ and refers to the origins of the bloc in a merger between two smaller parties.   On the Left, we still have a Labour party (much like its UK counterpart it now has hardly anything to do with labour), but the most popular party names are things like Meretz – ‘energy’, Tzipi Livni’s Hatnuah – ‘the movement’, Kadima – ‘forward!’, and best of all, Yair Lapid’s Yesh Atid – which translates as the startling insight that ‘there’s a future.’ 

Rather than a swing away from the Right or towards the Centre (and a swing away from the Right and towards the Centre would actually, by definition, be a swing, however small, to the Left), I think the recent election confirms the trend away from meaning, ideology and vision in Israeli politics.  Every Israeli election in the last 20 years has seen the emergence of a new ‘centrist’ force, which proclaims its intention to clean up politics and take Israel in a new direction, scoops up a surprising number of votes, achieves nothing and vanishes within two election cycles.  Who remembers the Third Way or the Centre Party?  Who’ll remember Kadima or Hatnuah in 10 years’ time?  Who remembers the surprise victors of the election before last, the Pensioners’ Party? 

It seems that the Israeli electorate is suffering from two debilitating conditions: on the one hand collective amnesia which feeds a strange repetition compulsion, and on the other a desperate desire for change without any idea of what kind of change it actually wants.  We don’t know what we want other than it’s not what we currently have, and we know we don’t want the last people who offered this kind of change, we want new people to offer us a new kind change which, lacking entirely in content, is actually indistinguishable from the old kind.  A party trying to appeal to such an electorate could choose no better name than the evocative, noncommittal, and ultimately empty Yesh Atid.

All of which would be funny were it not for the fact that every Israeli government since the 70s, peace process notwithstanding, has promoted the settlement enterprise, the deepening of the occupation and the seemingly unstoppable process towards the one thing that almost no-one wants – a one state solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.  Let’s see what Yair Lapid plans to do about that.

LAST WEEK

I met with Charlotte Fischer, the new full-time community organiser who has just started work with Citizens UK, the country’s largest civil society organising network. Noam and Marom, as well as the Citizens’ Group at New North London Synagogue, are members of London Citizens, a broad-based network of churches, mosques, synagogues, schools, student unions and university departments, affiliated to Citizens UK. Charlotte will be spending a day a week working with Masorti young people and communities, getting them involved with diverse local groups in cross-London campaigns on issues like the Living Wage, street safety and crime prevention, opportunities for young people, affordable housing and care for the elderly. Charlotte will also be working within the Reform and Liberal movements and, for two days a week, with Jewish and non-Jewish communities across Barnet as the local borough organiser. Click here to learn more about the amazing work of Citizens UK.

PS Booking is still open for Yom Masorti - Feb 10 at New North London Synagogue

If you liked this blog post, come and hear Daniel Sokatch and Adam Ognall, CEOs of the New Israel Fund in the US and the UK on the Israeli protest movement, and a diplomat from the Israeli Embassy on Israel after the elections (full details to be announced).  You can also hear Mike Whine of the CST on the new antisemitism, Stephen Shashoua of the 3 Faiths Forum on Interfaith Innovation, plus dozens more sessions, the new show by Danny Braverman, and a full children/families track.  Click here to book or to see the full programme.