Our age is one of hand wringing. We fear for the survival of the Jewish people and our ancient civilization, and establish funds and committees devoted to the noble work of continuity. We read article after article predicting the extinction of the American Jewish community, chastising us for our lethargy, our tedium, and our mediocrity. Plans to turn our people around—through funding trips to Israel, use of Eastern meditation technique, strict observance of Jewish law (or its elimination entirely)—all promise to save us from our greatest contemporary enemy: ourselves.
Far be if from me to gainsay the wisdom of most of what is written on the subject. Great minds and caring souls have probed the demographics and the beliefs of our people and many of their solutions are worthy of our careful deliberation.
But one notes with some alarm a very different kind of so-called solution: the repeated implication that Judaism has entered an age in which one’s form of observance and content of belief doesn’t really matter much. Do what you want, think what you want, so long as you call it Judaism and identify with the Jewish community.
Indeed, the mantra of this fuzzy, feel good unity is itself an insistence that belief and practice don’t matter much. Some amorphous identity called “Judaism,” purged of a cogent and compelling doctrine, obligation, and implication, will replace the vigorous debates that enlivened Jewish denominational dispute over the past hundred years. And that will unite us for our own good.
While our respect for each other is indeed a crucial aspect of derekh eretz (decency and civility) and our common peoplehood, I would submit that a refusal to take ideology and practice seriously represents an unwillingness to take religion seriously. And that, the lack of passion about matters of Jewish belief and behavior, will erode even that fuzzy, shallow Judaism in the making.
What is the alternative to this lack of passion? Today’s Torah portion speaks to this very subject through the interpretation offered by the rabbis of antiquity. Following God’s gift of the Ten Commandments, the Torah notes, “God gave to Moses, when He had finished speaking to him upon Mount Sinai, two tablets of testimony, tablets of stone.”
The rabbis note that the term used for “he had finished” is ke-khaloto. Fully aware of Hebrew vocabulary, they nevertheless use a pun to make a serious point. They know that finishing ke-khaloto sounds a lot like a kalah, a bride. So they connect the giving of the Torah to that most passionate of Jewish commitments, a marriage: “When the Holy Blessing One gave the Torah to Israel, it was as dear to them as a bride is to her spouse.”
When God and Israel met at Mount Sinai, it was with the trepidation, exhilaration, and love of a bride and a groom on their wedding day. In fact, rabbinic midrash often speaks of what transpired on that momentous mountain as a marriage: the marriage of God and the Jewish people. In that scenario, the cloud of Glory was our huppah (wedding canopy), Moses was our Best Man, and the Ten Commandments were our ketubbah (wedding contract).
What that midrash suggests is that unless we approach our Judaism with all the specific passion of a newlywed, it won’t amount to very much. It matters who we are under the huppah with and what the terms of the ketubbah are. The Torah is no quaint relic, but the very foundation of our relationship with God. And God is no mere concept, but a living presence that enters every moment of our lives. Different groups of Jews differ precisely on how we understand God, Torah, mitzvot, tradition. Those differences are real and profound. To water them down into some homogenous mush is merely to continue to trivialize Judaism, something that no grouping would endorse. Instead of shallow sameness, let’s celebrate vigorous diversity. One can be a serious Jew, regardless of how one interprets that Judaism to be, and still honor those serious Jews whose Judaism looks unlike one’s own.
Rather than seek some false unity by imposing the uniformity of indifference, let us encourage our fellow Jews to cultivate cogent beliefs and implement those beliefs in practice even when we disagree with its content. If we really have faith in God and Torah, then we can afford to advocate our own best understanding of who God is and what God’s Torah means. So long as we also embody the best values that our Torah implies—values of retrained speech and love for our fellow Jews—the debate well joined will do more for Jewish continuity than any stuporous removal of content ever could.
Care to join me under the Huppah?
Shabbat Shalom!