Post by Rabbi Neil on Jul 6, 2018 22:59:40 GMT
This week is an extremely poignant one for me as a Rabbi. This weekend, thirteen years ago, I became a Rabbi. It was almost exactly three years after the murder of one of my colleagues, Student Rabbi Andreas Hinz. I was ordained by my Rabbi of 18 years, Simon Franses, who himself also died the same week only four years later. This sermon is dedicated to those two men, without whom I would not be standing here today.
Rabbi Simon and Student Rabbi Andy were similar but also very different. They both believed that Jewish tradition should be more accommodating to the needs of those who had previously been oppressed by it. For Simon, it was converts and Jewish women, for Andy it was gay Jews. Both of them pushed me, but in differing ways. Where Andy guided me with gentle education and his own personal experience, Simon was not subtle. He would openly curse at me, once even reducing me to tears, but would then also guide me gently in my Jewish and even in my personal journey. He would invite me to lead services and give sermons, trusting me to speak without previous supervision, and he would speak to me about the Rabbinate years before I finally committed to it. He knew when I was a teenager that I would be a Rabbi, and he prepared that Rabbi through love, albeit sometimes tough love. Simon was also strongly involved in interfaith work, and I almost certainly learned the importance of love of those of other faiths in a professional context from him from a very early age. Andy, too, was heavily involved in interfaith dialogue, and some of my best memories of him are at the Jewish-Christian-Muslim conference in Germany. Both were also noted for their exceptional scholarship. And when Simon gave me s’micha this week in 2005, a particularly poignant ceremony because of the terrible absence of Andy, he whispered words to me that I still try to live up to. Indeed, when things became difficult in my first community, some of what he had said to me through the years helped me through.
So, this week not only do I tend to reflect on what kind of Rabbi I am, but also on what it means to be a Rabbi. I always used to see the traditional s’micha in some sense as an affirmation that someone can be trusted to maintain Jewish tradition. I used to understand that in a rather conservative way, in that the Rabbi must help the community hold onto the ways of the past and relate to them even in a changing world. Maintaining the Jewish tradition meant looking back. But now I find myself wondering whether maintaining Jewish tradition means maintaining the essence of that tradition. There’s a difference. One means keeping on doing the same things but in differing ways, the other means doing differing things but connected them through the same themes. This comes back to my sermon from last Yom Kippur on Evolution or Revolution? I used to think my job was to help Jewish tradition evolve, but with every passing year I become more convinced that mere evolution is not enough to ensure Judaism continues into the future. When Simon laid his hands on me to ordain me, I felt imbued with the responsibility to preserve. Now I wonder if in fact he was handing down the authority to innovate. Or maybe both.
One of the rules of Biblical interpretation accepted by the Rabbis was the concept of s’michut, which is when two passages appear next to each other and therefore must be related. In this week’s sidrah, Pinchas, two stories appear in Numbers 27. The first is that of the Daughters of Zelophehad and then that is immediately followed by Moses giving s’michah to Joshua. The Daughters of Zelophehad is a short but notable narrative. Five women – Machlah, Noah, Choglah, Milkah and Tirtzah – approach Moses with a question of law. Their father has died… and just in case, they make it clear that he wasn’t one of Korach’s followers who rebelled and was killed. He had no male heirs, so they were concerned about inheritance. They ask, “Why should our father’s name disappear from his clan because he had no sons? Give us property among our father’s relatives” (Num. 27:4). Moses brings their case to God who says that the women have made a valid claim and that they should be given inheritance. This is a development in the law of inheritance as previously described in Torah.
Immediately following that, God tells Moses to go up to his death place. Moses first asks God to appoint someone to lead over the community so God says the following, “Take Joshua, son of Nun, a man in whom is the spirit of leadership, and lay your hand upon him. Have him stand before Eleazar the priest and the entire assembly and commission him in their presence. Give him some of your authority so that the whole Israelite community will obey him” (Num. 27:18-19)
I can see two reasons why this passage suggests innovation rather than preservation. The first is that it immediately follows the Daughters of Zelophehad, and therefore implies that halakhic creativity and leadership need to go hand-in-hand. Indeed, the fact that God’s decree is such that it protects those who were previously unprotected by the law suggests that it must constantly develop in order to never oppress, and that the role of a leader is to ensure such development. The other reason this passage suggests innovation rather than preservation is in the nuance of a word. God tells Moses to invest some of his authority. This is actually rather surprising since one would assume he would have invested all of his authority. But the fact that the passage says some means that no one leader can truly fully preserve that which came before. The act of fully preserving Jewish tradition as it was is, it seems from this text, a futile one. We can never preserve all. If that is true, then, we must innovate, otherwise with every passing generation Jewish tradition would only lose a little of that which came before without gaining anything new. In the end, it would be a meagre, impoverished tradition.
Realizing this fact has been in some sense liberating for me as a Rabbi, and in some sense challenging. It is liberating to be granted the authority to innovate, but it is challenging once that permission has been given because of how to know what is an authentic innovation? Perhaps that, then, is the primary role of the Rabbi – to guide the community authentically into a changing future as a sort of religious management consultant. Maybe that’s always been the role of Jewish leadership throughout our tradition, going all the way back to Moses, who has to negotiate, harangue, gently guide, rebuke, challenge, and inform the community in differing times. In the past, I saw Moses as the man who held the people together, but now I see him as the man who took a rabble and turned it into a religious community with a future.
So, this Shabbat, I take some of the authority handed to me by my Rabbi of blessed memory, and by his Rabbi in turn, but not all of it. I take the traditional rubric of s’micha from years ago - “Yoreh? Yoreh! Yadin? Yadin,” which means “May he decide? Yes, he may decide. May he judge? Yes, he may judge,” and I understand it anew. In the past, this meant deciding correct interpretations of scripture, and judging in matters of law. But when I sit in Torah study, I don’t decide what is an authentic interpretation, because our tradition openly says elsewhere that Torah has seventy faces. It is not a monolithic tradition. I can at least draw a boundary, a very wide boundary, on what is not an authentic interpretation, and perhaps that is as much decision as I can, or want to give, now in terms of interpretation. But what about judging? After all, I may decide and I may judge. Student Rabbi Andy, of blessed memory, taught me not to decide or to judge as a Rabbi, but to love. Or perhaps put another way, he taught me to judge love as more important than obedience. He taught me to love God, to of community, to love every individual, through Jewish practice. He taught me that the Rabbinate is fundamentally about love. He taught me that the authentic voice of Judaism is a voice first and foremost of love.
So, I decide to bring love, not law, to the forefront of my community. I judge love to be the central theme of Judaism today, not obedience. And I understand that it is my role to help this community to continue to weave that love through our Jewish practice in an authentic way in a way that will ensure we continue long into the future. With that in mind, may every interaction in our community, whether socially, in study or in prayer, be infused with love. In so doing, may we remember those who influenced me, and may we in turn influence generations to come with our love of God, of our tradition, and of each other. And let us say, Amen.
Rabbi Simon and Student Rabbi Andy were similar but also very different. They both believed that Jewish tradition should be more accommodating to the needs of those who had previously been oppressed by it. For Simon, it was converts and Jewish women, for Andy it was gay Jews. Both of them pushed me, but in differing ways. Where Andy guided me with gentle education and his own personal experience, Simon was not subtle. He would openly curse at me, once even reducing me to tears, but would then also guide me gently in my Jewish and even in my personal journey. He would invite me to lead services and give sermons, trusting me to speak without previous supervision, and he would speak to me about the Rabbinate years before I finally committed to it. He knew when I was a teenager that I would be a Rabbi, and he prepared that Rabbi through love, albeit sometimes tough love. Simon was also strongly involved in interfaith work, and I almost certainly learned the importance of love of those of other faiths in a professional context from him from a very early age. Andy, too, was heavily involved in interfaith dialogue, and some of my best memories of him are at the Jewish-Christian-Muslim conference in Germany. Both were also noted for their exceptional scholarship. And when Simon gave me s’micha this week in 2005, a particularly poignant ceremony because of the terrible absence of Andy, he whispered words to me that I still try to live up to. Indeed, when things became difficult in my first community, some of what he had said to me through the years helped me through.
So, this week not only do I tend to reflect on what kind of Rabbi I am, but also on what it means to be a Rabbi. I always used to see the traditional s’micha in some sense as an affirmation that someone can be trusted to maintain Jewish tradition. I used to understand that in a rather conservative way, in that the Rabbi must help the community hold onto the ways of the past and relate to them even in a changing world. Maintaining the Jewish tradition meant looking back. But now I find myself wondering whether maintaining Jewish tradition means maintaining the essence of that tradition. There’s a difference. One means keeping on doing the same things but in differing ways, the other means doing differing things but connected them through the same themes. This comes back to my sermon from last Yom Kippur on Evolution or Revolution? I used to think my job was to help Jewish tradition evolve, but with every passing year I become more convinced that mere evolution is not enough to ensure Judaism continues into the future. When Simon laid his hands on me to ordain me, I felt imbued with the responsibility to preserve. Now I wonder if in fact he was handing down the authority to innovate. Or maybe both.
One of the rules of Biblical interpretation accepted by the Rabbis was the concept of s’michut, which is when two passages appear next to each other and therefore must be related. In this week’s sidrah, Pinchas, two stories appear in Numbers 27. The first is that of the Daughters of Zelophehad and then that is immediately followed by Moses giving s’michah to Joshua. The Daughters of Zelophehad is a short but notable narrative. Five women – Machlah, Noah, Choglah, Milkah and Tirtzah – approach Moses with a question of law. Their father has died… and just in case, they make it clear that he wasn’t one of Korach’s followers who rebelled and was killed. He had no male heirs, so they were concerned about inheritance. They ask, “Why should our father’s name disappear from his clan because he had no sons? Give us property among our father’s relatives” (Num. 27:4). Moses brings their case to God who says that the women have made a valid claim and that they should be given inheritance. This is a development in the law of inheritance as previously described in Torah.
Immediately following that, God tells Moses to go up to his death place. Moses first asks God to appoint someone to lead over the community so God says the following, “Take Joshua, son of Nun, a man in whom is the spirit of leadership, and lay your hand upon him. Have him stand before Eleazar the priest and the entire assembly and commission him in their presence. Give him some of your authority so that the whole Israelite community will obey him” (Num. 27:18-19)
I can see two reasons why this passage suggests innovation rather than preservation. The first is that it immediately follows the Daughters of Zelophehad, and therefore implies that halakhic creativity and leadership need to go hand-in-hand. Indeed, the fact that God’s decree is such that it protects those who were previously unprotected by the law suggests that it must constantly develop in order to never oppress, and that the role of a leader is to ensure such development. The other reason this passage suggests innovation rather than preservation is in the nuance of a word. God tells Moses to invest some of his authority. This is actually rather surprising since one would assume he would have invested all of his authority. But the fact that the passage says some means that no one leader can truly fully preserve that which came before. The act of fully preserving Jewish tradition as it was is, it seems from this text, a futile one. We can never preserve all. If that is true, then, we must innovate, otherwise with every passing generation Jewish tradition would only lose a little of that which came before without gaining anything new. In the end, it would be a meagre, impoverished tradition.
Realizing this fact has been in some sense liberating for me as a Rabbi, and in some sense challenging. It is liberating to be granted the authority to innovate, but it is challenging once that permission has been given because of how to know what is an authentic innovation? Perhaps that, then, is the primary role of the Rabbi – to guide the community authentically into a changing future as a sort of religious management consultant. Maybe that’s always been the role of Jewish leadership throughout our tradition, going all the way back to Moses, who has to negotiate, harangue, gently guide, rebuke, challenge, and inform the community in differing times. In the past, I saw Moses as the man who held the people together, but now I see him as the man who took a rabble and turned it into a religious community with a future.
So, this Shabbat, I take some of the authority handed to me by my Rabbi of blessed memory, and by his Rabbi in turn, but not all of it. I take the traditional rubric of s’micha from years ago - “Yoreh? Yoreh! Yadin? Yadin,” which means “May he decide? Yes, he may decide. May he judge? Yes, he may judge,” and I understand it anew. In the past, this meant deciding correct interpretations of scripture, and judging in matters of law. But when I sit in Torah study, I don’t decide what is an authentic interpretation, because our tradition openly says elsewhere that Torah has seventy faces. It is not a monolithic tradition. I can at least draw a boundary, a very wide boundary, on what is not an authentic interpretation, and perhaps that is as much decision as I can, or want to give, now in terms of interpretation. But what about judging? After all, I may decide and I may judge. Student Rabbi Andy, of blessed memory, taught me not to decide or to judge as a Rabbi, but to love. Or perhaps put another way, he taught me to judge love as more important than obedience. He taught me to love God, to of community, to love every individual, through Jewish practice. He taught me that the Rabbinate is fundamentally about love. He taught me that the authentic voice of Judaism is a voice first and foremost of love.
So, I decide to bring love, not law, to the forefront of my community. I judge love to be the central theme of Judaism today, not obedience. And I understand that it is my role to help this community to continue to weave that love through our Jewish practice in an authentic way in a way that will ensure we continue long into the future. With that in mind, may every interaction in our community, whether socially, in study or in prayer, be infused with love. In so doing, may we remember those who influenced me, and may we in turn influence generations to come with our love of God, of our tradition, and of each other. And let us say, Amen.