There have been three distinct moments since I began learning in the Jewish legal tradition that have significantly altered my perspective on the goals and intent of what we apply the blanket term, Halakhah. It is something that I struggle with on a daily basis and has a direct effect on my faith, my practice and my identity.

The first involved reading an article from Jewschool’s own Aryeh Cohen, on the “Talmud as translation.” Cohen sets out a fascinating take on the role of the Talmud as a means to understand and process the currents of time and the experience of exile, in other words, more accurately than a “commentary” on the Mishnah, the Talmud seeks to understand, integrate and translate the customs and norms of past generations. It is this approach to understanding our contemporary relationship with the Jewish legal tradition that inspired me to bring the quote above from one of the most influential postmodern thinkers, the Jewish French-Algerian philosopher Jacques Derrida. Cohen and Derrida alike demand of us to rethink our current role in our tradition not just in light of its self and its wisdom and obligations, but in light of history and our own personal experience and perspective.

The second occurred upon completing reading the Beit Yosef, Rabbi Yosef Karo’s 16th century masterpiece commentary on the Arba’ah Turim, Rabbi Yaakov ben Asher’s 14th century masterpiece legal code, on kibbud av v’eim, honoring one’s parents. After a long discourse on the various legal and social ramifications of not fulfilling the obligation of honoring one’s parents, Rabbi Karo informs his readers that “none of these things are punishable by an earthly court because the reward of the commandment is mentioned in the Torah.” There is a principle in the Jewish legal tradition that a ritual commandment for which the benefit or reason is stipulated explicitly, a court of human judges cannot adjudicate on the matter, rather it is left to the Divine court. However, if one were to look in Rabbi Karo’s own legal code which he based off of his commentary, the Beit Yosef, you will find reference to the inability to implement legal punishment at the beginning. What can we learn from this? The Shulhan Arukh was written for the practical application of the legal tradition where applicable. However, while there is practical law and legal theory in the tradition, there is a perhaps blurry distinction between the practical and the theoretical.

The third was during a recent teaching with Rabbi Brad Hirschfield, president of CLAL—The National Jewish Center for Learning and Leadership, author of You Don’t Have to be Wrong for Me to be Right: Finding Faith Without Fanaticism and a blog on faith at WashingtonPost.com. Any attempt to rehash or describe what was taught would fall miserably short of doing remote justice to what Rabbi Hirschfield imparted. Rabbi Hirschfield advocates inclusiveness through what he refers to as “postmodern halakhah.” Without getting into the merits and faults of the term, how I understood what he was saying is this, if one intentionally and consciously adheres to a praxis and feels it to be Jewish as they identify it to be, then they have a halakhah. It may not be my understanding, it may not be yours; but each individual, to use Derrida and Cohen’s metaphor, will be their own mediator or translator.

The journey of my own faith has been a pendulum-like adventure which, hopefully, is slowing down and settling in the middle. This is the struggle of the questions, does shabbos start when the sun goes down or when I light candles? What if I light candles one day before, or two hours after, the sun goes down? “Jewish law” interpreted by many says one thing, maybe it says something different for you. The question is, how do we as individuals constantly integrate our own knowledge and experience into our practice and identity. How do we continue to develop and grow our faith, while accepting others approaches and opinions? How do we learn from others, adapt and adopt belief and custom, and honor our differences while staying integral to ourselves and our traditions? All of these questions and more are at the crux of struggling with Jewish observance in the 21st century.

In my own opinion, and in my own experience, I have found that when I seek answers to questions of faith and observance, I end up in dark places. When I seek to give a definitive reason, or a definitive ruling, or a definitive justification, I darken and extend my blinders. And yet, when I seek only for more questions and only to expand boundaries, I sometimes find I may have nothing left at all. To use an overgeneralized metaphor presented by Rabbi Hirschfield, pure absolutists pull the trigger while pure relativists stand by and watch someone get murdered; or if you prefer a less graphic approach, he also presented that absolutists drive the bus with their eyes closed tight and by the time relativists figure out which bus to get on it has already pulled away. I do not feel comfortable telling anyone else how to understand their own identity and approach to the Jewish tradition, but for myself I am left with this struggle of understanding my obligation to the tradition in light of personal autonomy and the reality of a world that no longer supports, believes in or truly understands what it means to intersect law, ritual and magic (which means nothing more than the recognition that the laws of nature are permeable and able to be manipulated, a common held belief worldwide until VERY recently, in relative terms).

At this point I am forced to resign myself to say, like the Talmud, teiku, let it stand unresolved, or as others have ‘translated’ it as an acronynm, tishbi yitareitz kushiot u‘bayiot, Tishbi (Elijah the Prophet) will answer [unresolved] difficulties and problems. And others translated it even still, in modern Hebrew, to ‘a tie.’ Or, like Rabbi Hirschfield says, you don’t have to be wrong for me to be right. Teiku.

Say what you will about Jewish youth groups, but I met more interesting people through my involvement in USY than I have through any other activity I’ve ever been involved in. Among the very interesting people I have come to know over the years is Mimi Arbeit.

Mimi believes that sexuality education can be a vehicle for positive social change. Mimi also believes that sex ed shouldn’t end when we graduate from school. What’s more, she believes this can and should happen within a Jewish context.

Most importantly, Mimi has turned her dreams into action. Using the Unitarian Universalist book Our Whole Lives: Sexuality Education for Young Adults, Ages 18-35 as a jumping off-point, Mimi is launching a 14-session course discussing sexuality in our lives and society with progressive Jews in our 20s and 30s at Moishe/Kavod House in Brookline, MA.

She’s holding an introduction and information session on Sunday, November 22, 6:30 - 8:30 p.m. at the Moishe/ Kavod House: 165 Winthrop St., Apt B., Brookline, MA

Here’s what she has to say:

The sex ed class will be 14 sessions and begins in January. But don’t worry – the Intro Session will also include plenty of discussion about sexuality!

(Come early if you can to say hi to the Kavodnicks at the skillshare and to enjoy snacks and chill out with ME)

Come to the Intro Session to learn about:

• The curriculum we will use in the topics we will cover

• he values, assumptions and goals of our class
• The processes we will use to build a safe space and foster communal commitment and personal growth
• The resources we will use to make the class relevant to our community’s explicit dedication to Judaism and social justice

Please RSVP to mimi dot arbeit at gmail dot com.

If you would like to come to an Intro Session but cannot come on 11/22, please e-mail me ASAP.

To learn more about this project, check out my blog, and e-mail me with any questions, concerns, ideas or envisioning!

Tell your friends! Bring your friends! Spread the word!

Here’s to sex, health and conversation.
With love and excitement,
Mimi

And if that isn’t enough to make you write it into your calendar in pen, I want to add that Mimi assures me “the curriculum is explicitly queer-friendly, and my reason for doing this work is explicitly pro-queer.” She’s working very hard to create an environment where we can all talk about sex and sexuality, Jewish values and ethics regardless of what kind of sex we’re having (or, in many of our cases, what kind of sex we’re not having despite best efforts).

And this is at least partly because the leading Jewish organisations don’t see women as equal human beings, as demonstrated by the publicity for Birthright/NEXT’s upcoming Evening of Fashion and Passion event.

…an evening of fashion and passion presented by the Council of Young Jewish Presidents and Birthright Israel NEXT, NY. Hosted by Sports Illustrated swimsuit model Esti Ginzburg,

Fascinating if you get excited by the idea of a Sports Illustrated swimsuit model. Unfortunately, the effect of this sentence is to imply that the target audience is male and heterosexual. This is a problem when the nominal audience is “Jewish professionals,” since it exposes an assumption that Jewish professionals are male and heterosexual.

the event includes an Israeli wine tasting, a fashion show by hot Israeli designers, and an after party. Open to all young professionals,

If you’re a woman, you might think twice about going, since it’s really not at all clear whether your role is “Jewish professional” or “sexprop.” This is probably because the Jewish leadership does not appear to distinguish between “woman” and “de facto pornography.”

this is a major opportunity for guests to get a sense of the incredible variety of Jewish engagement opportunities in New York—

As long as you’re male. Ladies, hope you don’t think you actually had a serious chance at Jewish leadership!

and to party with hundreds of other professional, active, vibrant young Jews.

Swimsuit models, guys! Swimsuit models! Who knows - maybe the chicks will have got drunk at the wine tasting. You might even get laid!

Let’s see.

• Using the objectification of women’s bodies to advertise an event - check.
• Endorsing the idea that titillation is acceptable advertising - check.
• Assuming that readers find the idea of “swimsuit model” enticing - check.
• Implying that they are primarily interested in communicating with that segment of the readership which is male and heterosexual - check.
• Further implying that they are generally okay with the dehumanisation and inappropriate eroticisation of women - check.

Birthright, the Council of Young Jewish Presidents, and the other complicit organisations thus demonstrate that by default they think women’s main function in the Jewish professional world is as titty. That’s a huge part of why there are so few women in leadership, and why women are earning $0.61 to a man’s dollar. Until the leadership can understand why an event like this is deeply problematic (hint: it’s not about prudery) we’re not going to see much change.

You can buy all kinds of tacky t-shirts on the side of the street or in the markets in Israel. For example, as American oleh comedy blogger Benji Lovitt points out:

“IDF: My Job is So Secret, I Don’t Even Know What I’m Doing!”
“Don’t Worry, America, Israel is Behind You”
“Super-Jew”
And of course, rock bands which reached their peak twenty years ago.

Lovitt has a bold plan to combat this sartorial foolishness. Today, he unveiled at his blog, What War Zone?, a new line of tacky Israel shirts.

My favorite of Lovitt’s new shirts:

Check out the rest of the line here.

Last week in Toronto, the Union for Reform Judaism held its biennial convention, and as in past years, URJ President Rabbi Eric Yoffie delivered a sermon laying out goals and initiatives for the next two years.

The sermon began with a great shout-out to the Biennial’s host country:

We Americans, it needs to be said, do not know Canada as well as we should. [...] I have a question for the Americans sitting in this congregation: How many of you can name the last three Prime Ministers of Canada?

Well, we Americans need to do better. The Canadian political system is far from perfect, but remember this: it has well-regulated banks; tough gun control laws; legalized marriage for gays; and an excellent, publicly-run health service - all matters of importance to Reform Jews and worthy of emulation by the United States.

This American (who can name the last three Canadian prime ministers and knows all the words to “O Canada”) says hear hear! (However, I was surprised that this was the only mention of health care, an issue that was featured so prominently two years ago, given that this sermon was just a few hours before the House passed the health care bill.)

The major initiatives are about food and technology. David A.M. Wilensky has already weighed in on the technology part, so I’ll leave that alone for now. There’s a lot to say about food; I’ll just focus on two points.

First, kudos to Rabbi Yoffie for endorsing flexitarianism (though he didn’t use that word). “Flexitarian”, the American Dialect Society’s 2003 Word of the Year, refers to someone who isn’t fully vegetarian but eats mostly vegetarian. There are different reasons for not eating meat, and a flexitarian lifestyle makes sense under some of these but not others. If you’re vegetarian because of a categorical opposition to eating meat, then being flexitarian doesn’t make sense, since eating any amount of meat is wrong. But even if you’re not opposed in general to eating meat, there are solid reasons for eating less meat than the standard American diet, mostly based on the effects of meat consumption. And if two people cut their meat consumption in half, that has the same effect as one person becoming fully vegetarian.

Rabbi Yoffie lays out some of the reasons for meat reductionism:

My proposal is this: let’s make a Jewish decision to reduce significantly the amount of red meat that we eat.
[...]
[M]eat consumption in North America has doubled in the last fifty years, and we can easily make do with far less red meat than we currently eat. And contrary to what many think, Jews are not obligated to eat meat on Shabbat and holidays. The Talmud suggests that fish and garlic are the foods that we should serve to honor Shabbat (Shabbat 118b); it also instructs us to eat meat in modest quantities (Hullin 84a). Remember too that in biblical Israel, the common diet consisted of barley bread, vegetables, and fruit, along with milk products and honey. My point is this: for the first 2,500 years of our 3,000 year history, Jews consumed meat sparingly, and we can surely do the same.

And we must. The meat industry today generates nearly one-fifth of the man-made greenhouse gas emissions that are accelerating climate change throughout the world. According to a U.N. report, animal agriculture is responsible for more greenhouse gas than all transportation sources combined. And the preparation of beef meals requires about fifteen times the amount of fossil fuel energy than meat-free meals.
[...]
Professor Gidon Eshel of the Bard Center has suggested that the effect of reducing our collective meat consumption by twenty percent would be comparable to every American driving a Prius instead of a standard sedan. And this twenty percent reduction is something that every one of us - every Jew, every family, every synagogue - can do.
[...]
Perhaps we can begin by offering some Shabbat dinners and Passover Seders that will delight with their variety, creativity, and taste, and that will be a model for our members of healthy, festive, meat-free meals.

This is a way that non-vegetarians can make a real difference in our environmental impact and our use of resources. Vegetarian meals are already standard at public functions throughout much of independent progressive Jewish culture; this would be a welcome shift if the URJ brings it into mainstream Jewish institutions as well.

Unfortunately, Rabbi Yoffie’s sermon goes downhill after that:

What about kashrut? This is not about kashrut. There are many Reform Jews who find meaning in the observance of kashrut, wholly or in part, and we deeply respect their choice. But it is not a choice that the great majority of us want to make.

In fact, the rejection of kashrut was long a hallmark of North American Reform Judaism. Kauffman Kohler, an early leader of the Movement, proclaimed that “Judaism is a matter of conscience, not cuisine.” Ours is an ethically-based tradition, and Reform leaders saw no connection between the intricate rules of kashrut and ethical behavior. Sadly, for too much of the kashrut industry, this disconnect still exists; in recent years, kashrut authorities have failed in their duty to treat workers, immigrants, and animals with compassion and justice. For that reason, we applaud the Conservative movement for creating a new system of kosher certification that takes ethical factors into account.

Nonetheless, we - as a Movement - have put kashrut aside, and kashrut is not the issue for us. We do not accept the authority of the kashrut establishment, and its problems are for others to resolve.

What is he trying to accomplish here? Is this just a “No Ortho” disclaimer to preempt reactions along the lines of “I’m Reform, so you can’t tell me what not to eat”? Or is there something more to it?

The reason I find this problematic is, of course, framing. One could advocate for the exact same practices, but frame it differently, and the way Rabbi Yoffie framed it seems like a big missed opportunity.

He does note that ethical eating is about “what is proper and fit to eat”, a translation of “kashrut”:

But we do now realize that we need an approach of our own–our own definition of what is proper and fit to eat. Because our ethical commitments remain firm, and we understand - as we did not a century ago - that Jewish eating has a profoundly ethical dimension. We now know that God cares what we eat, and that eating can be an entrance to holiness. We now see that when we eat with mindfulness, even the humblest meal can become a sacred act.

But rather than framing this sacred eating as a form of kashrut (cf. the framing of “eco-kashrut” and the “Hekhsher Tzedek”), he frames it as “not kashrut”, with no connection to the dietary laws in the Torah and Talmud (which are part of the textual heritage of all Reform Jews, regardless of practice). He could instead have framed it as a modern application of those laws — not only in the general category of sacred eating, but in some of the specifics. For example, I see a strong connection between my kashrut observance and my meat reductionism, and find that one reinforces the other. Kashrut sharply limits what meat I can eat (I can’t just pick up a McDonald’s hamburger, or french fries for that matter), makes meat less accessible and more expensive (more accurately reflecting the true cost of meat consumption), and makes me think twice about eating meat even when I have kosher meat available to me (since it means no dairy concurrently or for a while afterwards). The original kashrut in Leviticus 17 restricted meat consumption even more, limiting it to sacrifices (until Deuteronomy came along and loosened the rules). (To have a brief “No Ortho” moment of my own, I find that these restrictions on meat, which I think of as being at the center of kashrut, lose some of their power if everything, even vegetables, can be considered “not kosher” based on where it was cooked or whether it’s broccoli. But that’s not an important point.) So when Rabbi Yoffie cites texts supporting meat reductionism, it’s strange that he doesn’t include the Torah’s most obvious example of a structure limiting meat consumption. This structure can be an inspiration for modern efforts at meat reductionism, whether or not those modern efforts incorporate specifics of that classical structure.

Rather than framing kashrut as something that has multiple approaches (which might include vegetarianism, eco-kashrut, the inaccurately named “Biblical kashrut”, etc.), Rabbi Yoffie says “There are many Reform Jews who find meaning in the observance of kashrut, wholly or in part”, suggesting (again) that there is a well-defined external definition of “wholly” observing kashrut, and that other kashrut practices are merely “in part”, and everyone’s kashrut practice is on a linear spectrum from 0 to 100.

Of course I agree with his condemnation of Agriprocessors et al., but when he (as the leader of the largest Jewish denomination in North America) implicitly equates kashrut with “the kashrut establishment” (see the parallelism in “…kashrut is not the issue for us. We do not accept the authority of the kashrut establishment…”), he also grants power to that establishment and in a sense does accept its authority, in the sense that he does not challenge the connection between kashrut and that establishment.

Also, the frame of “rejection of kashrut” is strange in the 21st century. As Rabbi Yoffie notes, the majority of Reform Jews don’t keep kosher. This means that the majority of Reform Jews in this generation (unlike in Kaufmann Kohler’s generation) can’t “reject” kashrut, since they didn’t have it in the first place. See this post and this post for more discussion of this point.

Oddly enough, if Reform congregations follow Rabbi Yoffie’s recommendations and hold more vegetarian events, they’ll actually be more accessible to people with various kashrut practices, though this is apparently just incidental.

Natan Sharansky, formerly a Jewish refusenik in Russia championing civil rights and present-day Likudnik director of the Jewish Agency, flashed his crown as “unofficial” head of Soviet bloc human rights activists at the annual Jewish federations convention, the General Assembly. It’s a shame the crown is tarnished with a decade or two of being one of Israeli’s preeminent hawks and a pillar of Israeli Jewish-only nationalism. His words coming from anyone else would be soaring and inspirational, connecting the history of global Jewish tikun olam to the future:

“In the post-nationalist, post-identity world where people are once again asked to make a choice. Do you believe in the universal value of human rights you are told why do you hold onto individual nationalism. Do we really want to shelter ourselves in the cocoon of a Jewish state?” he asked. “When one young Jew believes he or she must make a choice that he or she cannot belong to both, then they make the choice in favor of universalism, then assimilation erodes our community. Our detractos sense our weakness and our hesitation.”

[...]

“Identity strengthening is the best answer in the struggle for the freedom of Israel,” he said. The most important thing today, like yesterday, 20 years ago is the return to our Jewish roots. Rebuilding our Jewish identity can allow us to fight for tikun olam everywhere, for justice and for freedom for everyone. (JTA)

How lovely indeed. But in the words of MJ Rosenberg, “The test of whether one is a human rights activist or one who simply uses the issue for political ends is that person’s willingness to apply the human rights measuring stick to his own people. It is pretty easy to limit your calls for human rights to nations other than your own. For Sharansky, concern for Palestinians is the test of whether or not his claim to the mantle of human rights activist is genuine…he fails—big time.”

He has shared podiums with politicians advocating disenfranchising Israeli Arabs, opposed a Palestinian state at nearly every turn, opposed the Disengagement on the grounds of giving up any land, illegally confiscated thousands of dunams of Jersualemite Arab land (since overturned by the Attourney General), and so on. He supports his party, Likud, in policies that stripped the social safety net and minimized the civil rights of non-Jews.

Some legacy. And the American Jewish community — being none too steeped in hypocrisy themselves — eats it up. May the big wigs at the General Assembly continue to eagerly lap up Sharansky’s cynical use of human rights language. It will assist their disenfranchisement from the bulk of American Jewish young people all the quicker.

There, in front of many witnesses, Ephron offers to give Abraham the field and cave, again for free. Once more, Abraham turns down the chance to use his privilege and power for his own gain and insists on paying the full price of the land. Ephron names his price, 400 shekels, and Abraham accepts. The Torah details how Abraham weighs out the 400 shekels of silver, “according to the weight current among the merchants.”

Why couldn’t the Torah just have stated where Sarah was buried? Why the need to go into so much detail about the offers, the price, the weighing of the silver, and the purchase?

One answer is that in a time of great personal loss and pain, Abraham is nonetheless meticulous about upholding transparency, honesty, and ethics in his business dealings. He passes several opportunities to exploit his privilege and power and take what is not rightfully his. The values and principles through which his descendants will bless the world, justice and righteousness, are not suspended in hard times. Rather, it’s in these times when ethics and righteousness are of most importance. That is why the Torah goes to such great lengths to describe the high ethical and transparency standard Abraham held in this story.

Every time we hire an employee, purchase a car, or bid on an online auction we enter relationships with our fellow human beings that hold tremendous potential for power imbalances, dishonesty, and exploitation. Let us strive towards Abraham’s example, upholding honesty, transparency, and fairness at work, in the home, and in the communities where we live. Transparency and ethical behavior are not luxury items - they are the way we are to lead our lives in times easy and hard. That is how we ensure we are children of Abraham and protectors of the blessing - to keep the ways of God and do righteousness and justice.

Updated: How does this trend relate to Hebrew uses of prefixes (and suffixes) in naming? KRG pointed out that there might be a bias towards French sounding names. Is that why this specific set of pre-fixes has emerged? BZ notes that his time as a public school teacher in NYC, like my time as a public school student in Philadelphia, has not led him to notice many people with this name pattern. He noted that it seems to be most pronounced in the deep south. Why would that be? Do most examples reflect patrilineality? Is this trend an alternative to Jr., III, etc?

Jews, in general, have been very slow to adapt to this cultural trend. I have yet to meet a Da’Shlomomit, JaShmuel, LeEytan, DeSharon, or a JaDavid. Not even a LaIrit. Although, come to think of it, we may have been ahead of the trend. Just ask L’Chayim.