Questions about Judaism

[bananabrain]

[texts that]continue to have great potential to aid human beings in their quest for personal growth, empowerment, and healing

where this falls down is in the implication is that judaism is basically about self-actualisation. if that were the case then i feel it would be a very different religion. judaism must include an element of command, of obligation, both to ourselves, to our ancestors and our descendants, as well as to the keneset yisra'el and the wider world. it would be a mistake to reduce it to merely another philosophy of personal development - although it is undeniably able to act as such. to put the individual, rather than the community or the Divine at the centre is a peculiarly western, post-enlightenment chauvinism. in traditional judaism, the self has little meaning without a community and a nation attached. who can be a jew by themself?

those elements that are historically limited and need to be transcended.

as, i note, has been done many times even within the "four cubits of the Law"

[We will] decide what to draw on and what to leave behind.

and there's the rub. who is this "we" and what is its authority to do so? of course, we've talked about this a lot already and i am satisfied that there is, at least at senior levels, some feeling of reluctance to change merely for the sake of change.

Among our guides to interpretation of Torah [is] our own direct experience of the Divine.

and what of the hester ha-panim? is it saying that people working in renewal have ruah ha-qodesh? is there any discipline attached to this, as it is in traditional nistar?

We are committed to consult with other spiritual traditions, sharing with them what we have found in our concerned research and trying out what we have learned from them, to see whether it enhances the special truths of the Jewish path.

now here i am in 100% agreement - with the proviso that not all spiritual traditions are equally valid - but i am sure you're not suggesting that the "secret doctrine" of scientology counts as one of these....

I can't say that I disagree with anything there, although I might certainly disagree with some interpretations of what has been presented..

yeah, i guess that's my own "show me the money" - i could quibble with the semantics till the cows come home, but as long as the interpretations aren't too "woo-woo" (as my wife is fond of putting it) i will be quite happy with seeing renewal as a sort of religious r&d lab - the hesed in the sefirot of the jewish people.

I'd say that on some level, there actually is a lesser degree of authority and sacredness, because none of the stuff Jewish Renewal is doing right now would, afaik, anyone begin to think of as canon.

i suspected as much, which of course is reassuring!

I was just reading an article by a Jewish shaman about journeying up through the top of an aron kodesh to meet with the matriarchs and receive wisdom about women's spirituality that had been lost. It's not something I would readily buy into, but it is something that I would fully support.

it is, for me, logically quite acceptable to generate appropriate new aggadah - if we are willing to adapt the halakhah to reflect emerging knowledge - up to a point, that is.

This seems to me to conflict with how you had been speaking earlier.

i'm trying to express the nuances of my view.

Reform and Conservative Judaism have used approaches to halachah which are not valid according to halachah, Reform on a regular basis. Are you making a distinction between halachic Judaism and rabbinic Judaism?

yes!

Why?

because i think it gets at the heart of why i still see reform and conservative as jewish. i cannot in conscience turn round and exclude them from klal yisra'el - nobody who has really spent time in them and engaged with them, as i did until my mid-twenties, could fail to see what was jewish about them, even if i find it difficult to put it into words. the fact that they may hold heretical points of view doesn't stop them being jewish for me. i might disagree, but the fact is that r. meir still learned Torah from r. elisha ben abuya. that's how i understand it. hinuch - education - is our highest value and for the sake of both sides that is why the conversation must continue.

I guess I don't see the point in calling, Reform for example, rabbinic, unless of course we include both Jewish Renewal and Recon. What makes Reform rabbinic that would disqualify something else?

again, i don't have a problem calling renewal in itself jewish. it's obviously jewish - even if some specific applications and positions i might have a problem with or think of as heretical. recon i have encountered very little, so it's hard to say, but i've not seen anything which would put it in the same camp as, say, jews for jesus.

IIRC, we started talking about marriage because you offered it as proof of oral torah (the fact that the written Torah doesn't explain a ceremony.) All I'm doing is using the tools at my disposal to show that it's not actually a proof.

no, it's not a proof that the she-be-al peh (Oral Law) that we have is definitely the exact same she-be-al peh they had at the time of the Written Torah, but i still haven't seen proof that there was another. what is surely clear is that there must have *been* a she-be-al peh, so the question is whether the one we have is that one and, if i may appeal to the "occam's razor" principle, in the absence of another entity, i would suggest that we have a de facto winner, ladies and gentlemen. at any rate it's reasonable enough for me.

What's so un-Jewish about karaites and goddess worshippers (assuming that the goddess worshippers don't view this goddess as one of a pair?)

well, i guess that's kind of the point. the rabbis didn't (and still don't) prohibit marriage with karaites (all 2000 of them that are left) so clearly they're still jewish "enough", despite being heretics. that doesn't mean it's an approach one should encourage. and, as far as goddess worship is concerned, the closest it has been determined that it is possible to get is the vocabulary and symbolism of the Shechinah and the partzufim.

not to mention helenizers who really aren't so different from most Jews today.

well, the sages were obviously able to cope with that, whilst hardly approving.

Granted, I do think there are some people who are going to get off on pre-monotheistic Judaism, and I'm not sure there's anything wrong with that. There are also going to be Jews who see Jesus as something like a rebbe and I'm not sure there's anything wrong with that either (although once any type of divinity comes into play I'd certainly call it crossing the line.)

you see, this is where you and i would have a major disagreement. if we are not even monotheists, what is there left there for us to understand as jewish? now i can't understand the distinction *you're* making - if we can be comfortable with polytheism or idolatry, why can't we think of a human as somehow an incarnation of the Divine too? for me you are departing from the idea of kodesh - the very word for holiness which implies *separation* - between the OK and the not-OK. if we are unable to make this separation we are not acting as a) moral beings or b) beings with free will - in other words, it's back to the garden: free will is about the understanding that confers ability to choose between good and evil, without which there is no sin. for me, if you ditch the ability to make distinctions, you are ditching teshuvah as well and the concept of acting as a human being.

So who is to say that the prophets were speaking about all of the people? If I was God and I was sending someone to address the people, I would send that individual to address the wrong-doers.

now that's quite interesting - i suppose we could argue that there were always *some* people who remained relatively faithful, like the levites in egypt.

And while we're on this subject, what's the big deal with maintaining the practice of idolatry? As far as I can tell, the problem is not letting go of an old paradigm in order to embrace the new one.

because it's so defining. it's like christianity without jesus, or islam without muhammad.

Just because something can't be justified rationally doesn't mean it must be justified supernaturally.

if it *must* be justified (and in this case it must) then we must come up with a way for us to justify it to ourselves. in a similar way, when my wife and i were discussing taharat ha-mishpachah, we had to come up with a rationale that justified the discipline - and we did: that of personal space.

Some things may not be justifiable, or may need some adjustment in order to be justified.

in which case, you legislate the crap out of it so it becomes practical, as was done with the death penalty. amalek is actually a good example - although we've legislated the crap out of it so we can't define anyone as amalek any more, the law remains as an instructive paradigm; what to do if there is an evil so evil that we cannot tolerate it in any form.

It wasn't just "evidence of robust systematic thought." It was something much more. So I want to bring back that same sort of connection. Thus, renewal becomes an important factor in determining how I will approach Jewish life.

i need both the robust systematic thought and the connection, otherwise i am merely me'aseh without being me-shem'a.

Are you saying that I'm being excessively literal and contextually inappropriate or that you are?

i'm saying it's excessively literal in judging what actually happened, which is illogical, given that you have just questioned the veracity and accuracy of the Text. moreover, to judge those standards of behaviour by what is in effect modern human rights law is contextually inappropriate.

Are you saying that possibly relativism is all that we have?

i am saying that objectivity can't be proved. nothing can. therefore only subjectivity remains and all subjectivity is open to a charge of relativism.

On the use of modern methods of literary analysis on scripture as well as the incorporation of archaeology and etc:

Me: This is valid and can be holy work.

BB: It is not.

i'd say rather that it's not valid for judging how we ought to behave or interpret. it's interesting - but it can never be authoritative because it definitively discounts and rules out the possibility of anything beyond the rational and scientific, which i consider to be unreasonable. apply the same principles to art and music and see what you end up with.

BB: Syncretism is too risky.

Me: We can use syncretism to enhance Judaism by considering the universal truths revealed in other religions, but we also need to be wary of taking in any of the specific, cultural stuff that surrounds the real fruit.

i'd say that syncretism is all very well, but jews are not allowed to practise it. the study of comparative religion and interfaith dialogue need not lead to syncretism, nor does it require anything beyond a meta-language.

On mitzvah:

BB: God is the Commander behind the mitzvah.

Me: I cannot relate to the idea of God being the Commander behind a finite revelation. Mitzvah for me is much more like a guide to spiritual practice.

without the element of command and obligation, it is hard to see the point of all this stuff.

bob, poh - i'm glad you're enjoying the thread!

b'shalom

bananabrain

 

[dauer]

Pesach Sameach! I hope you have been enjoying sefardi charoset and soft matzah.

where this falls down is in the implication is that judaism is basically about self-actualisation.

It doesn't imply that. If you look at the full list of principles, you will see that when you get to asiyah it starts to talk more about action. And yetzira deals with some issues of relating, which are also outward. In fact I would say that everything you said in response to that one snippet is answered by reading the full 18 principles.

http://www.aleph.org/principles.html

and what of the hester ha-panim? is it saying that people working in renewal have ruah ha-qodesh? is there any discipline attached to this, as it is in traditional nistar?

Multiple disciplines, some traditional, some syncretic, depending on the path of a particular individual. And I think what could be said is that ruach hakodesh really never left. We just chose to give it different names and give ourselves less authority.

who is this "we" and what is its authority to do so?

Jewish Renewal isn't monolithic. I think the we shifts. It will be one community, or another community, or one couple, or another couple. And what is its authority? The same authority hazal had of course!

now here i am in 100% agreement - with the proviso that not all spiritual traditions are equally valid - but i am sure you're not suggesting that the "secret doctrine" of scientology counts as one of these....

If a Jew became a scientologist, and then left and found a home in Renewal, and he was talking to some friends, and he said, "You know, there was this one thing we used to do that was just so holy. I mean a lot of it was crazy but this one thing was really powerful." And he shared it and it really was something worthwhile, what is it they say about finding light in the dark places?

it is, for me, logically quite acceptable to generate appropriate new aggadah - if we are willing to adapt the halakhah to reflect emerging knowledge - up to a point, that is.

It wasn't a story. It was a shamanic journey she took in a semi-trance state. The difference between shamanism and channeling, according to the article, in channeling you bring some of the stuff of the Spirit World (I don't think she called it that) here, and in shamanism, you travel there. She was journeying to recover the lost wisdom and traditions of Jewish women of ages past.

but i still haven't seen proof that there was another.

I don't have to prove that there was another. I only have to show that the likelihood that there was another, that there was none, that Torah was never meant to stand as a complete system, or any other possibility, is just as likely.

what is surely clear is that there must have *been* a she-be-al peh,

That is not clear to me.

if i may appeal to the "occam's razor" principle, in the absence of another entity, i would suggest that we have a de facto winner, ladies and gentlemen. at any rate it's reasonable enough for me.

You're misapplying Occam's Razor. It was created to separate the supernatural from the natural, ergo we must first exclude Divine interaction, and at that point your argument begins to fall apart. The idea that an oral tradition survived, with all of its vital pieces intact, through the exiles, through many many generation, not being written down, is not the simplest answer. We could much more simply say that the oral tradition was a fiction created by the rabbis, for whatever reason.

and, as far as goddess worship is concerned, the closest it has been determined that it is possible to get is the vocabulary and symbolism of the Shechinah and the partzufim.

Renewal goes further sometimes. See this article:

http://www.havurahshirhadash.org/rebzalmanarticle1.html

. if we are not even monotheists, what is there left there for us to understand as jewish?

Shabbos, living by the cycles of the sun and moon, tzedakah, Torah, etc.

now i can't understand the distinction *you're* making - if we can be comfortable with polytheism or idolatry, why can't we think of a human as somehow an incarnation of the Divine too?

I was thinking more in terms of polytheism than idolatry. However, as a point of interest, there is a Renewal Shiviti using the Tetragrammaton in the form of a human being. I would say on one level that, accepting radical monism, we are an incarnation of the Divine. But not exclusively. And to say, for example, that a statue is uniquely Divine would be a problem. But if looking at an image helps someone focus on the Divine, fine. We do after all have all of that literature describing God's dimension's, plus there are some hasidic hanhagot which explicitly tell the hasid to envision God.

for me you are departing from the idea of kodesh - the very word for holiness which implies *separation* - between the OK and the not-OK.

Renewal is all about wholism, which I think is also connected to the radical monism. So this issue is often going to be dealt with differently. There's also ths issue of finite revelation from which this stems. If there is no absolute finite revelation, then we cannot rely on Torah for absolute moral or ritual law.

if we are unable to make this separation we are not acting as a) moral beings

From our perspective as human beings, most of the time, there is a distinction between this and that. And we are of course going to be making informed choices about what is right. The issue here is whether or not Torah is a source of absolute Truth. If I understand you correctly, your answer is that sometimes it is limited. So I ask you, then, how can you say "here we can say it is limited and not do any damage to Judaism, but if we say it here is is absolute apikoros nonsense."

beings with free will

How do you know we have free will?

for me, if you ditch the ability to make distinctions, you are ditching teshuvah as well and the concept of acting as a human being.

I never ditched the ability to make distinctions. I ditched absolutism.

now that's quite interesting - i suppose we could argue that there were always *some* people who remained relatively faithful, like the levites in egypt.

I would go further and suggest the possibility the majority were good. But the prophets would only address those who sinned.

because it's so defining. it's like christianity without jesus, or islam without muhammad.

I was talking about historically, which is why I said it seems to me to be a lesson about shifting paradigm.

if it *must* be justified (and in this case it must) then we must come up with a way for us to justify it to ourselves. in a similar way, when my wife and i were discussing taharat ha-mishpachah, we had to come up with a rationale that justified the discipline - and we did: that of personal space.

No, it need not be justified. There is no "must" here.

i need both the robust systematic thought and the connection, otherwise i am merely me'aseh without being me-shem'a.

Not if it's done through a process which involves connection to the Divine. If the answers come from God, the answers come from God.

i'm saying it's excessively literal in judging what actually happened, which is illogical, given that you have just questioned the veracity and accuracy of the Text.

It's my text. I carry it with me (not literally.) So I am going to be literal about judging these actions. I'm also going to consider the other possibilities, but since I'm talking to you it's the literal that presents itself most blatantly.

moreover, to judge those standards of behaviour by what is in effect modern human rights law is contextually inappropriate.

In that case I should excuse the Amalekites too.

but it can never be authoritative because it definitively discounts and rules out the possibility of anything beyond the rational and scientific, which i consider to be unreasonable. apply the same principles to art and music and see what you end up with.

I don't think incorporating it rules out the possibility of anything beyond the rational and scientific, just rules out the supernatural.

without the element of command and obligation, it is hard to see the point of all this stuff.

There's a difference between command and obligation. If I commit to a practice, I become obligated to it. This does not require commandments. If you can't see the point to all of the Jewish practices without a Commander ordering you to obey, I don't understand why you continue at all. And I am certain that for you there is much more than that.

 

[bananabrain]

sorry for the delay, but you're really making me sing for my supper.

In fact I would say that everything you said in response to that one snippet is answered by reading the full 18 principles.

fair enough - except that i still think the pieces ought to make sense to some extent, not just the totality.

And I think what could be said is that ruach hakodesh really never left. We just chose to give it different names and give ourselves less authority.

that's interesting. of course it suggests (correctly in my view) that authority is linked to level of prophecy. ruah ha-qodesh is a somewhat elastic term. perhaps one might categorise "progressive revelation" as somewhere on that scale.

And what is its authority? The same authority hazal had of course!

oh, come on. hazal were widely accepted and renewal is, as we have said, more like r&d. and the r&d function never runs the whole organisation - someone has to take care of finance, operations, sales, marketing and customer care. there is such a thing as *strategic* r&d where senior management is involved, but this could only be said to be the case for renewal if, say reb zalman was in constructive dialogue with senior figures with halakhic credibility. maybe not ovadia yossef, but perhaps r. steinsaltz. of course, this may well be the case. r&d proposes and suggests, but it does not grant authority. obviously there are people who would take figures within renewal as authoritative, but i'd say that was more similar to beta testing within a community of power-users as opposed to a formal release.

If a Jew became a scientologist, and then left and found a home in Renewal, and he was talking to some friends, and he said, "You know, there was this one thing we used to do that was just so holy. I mean a lot of it was crazy but this one thing was really powerful." And he shared it and it really was something worthwhile, what is it they say about finding light in the dark places?

do you know what those guys believe? how could something be holy if it was designed with those doctrines in mind? i would only be able to accept this if it could be shown that there was something sufficiently similar within judaism that we used to do and didn't any more. otherwise, there's not much to distinguish it from saying, "well, when i was a ba'al worshipper, it was all nuts apart from this really holy practice of slashing ourselves with knives, so let's just add some jewish kavvanah to that and it'll be fine".

She was journeying to recover the lost wisdom and traditions of Jewish women of ages past.

but where's the quality control? i am sure people would say the same thing of the theory behind automatic writing. unfortunately, in practice, it's pretty dubious. and, to be quite honest, before i could accept that the findings from this woman's trance were kosher there would need to be some reliable way to evaluate them. i mean, what's to stop someone saying "well, you just made that up." i know you'll probably say that the same thing could be said of the Torah but quite honestly if you can't tell there's a difference i don't really know what more i can say. you seem to be saying that because you can't prove anything, you should accept everything. i mean, what wouldn't you accept? i can't understand how you draw the line, other than "what works for you".

I only have to show that the likelihood that there was another, that there was none, that Torah was never meant to stand as a complete system, or any other possibility, is just as likely.

i really don't think you have. in fact, of all the possibilities that have i have so far discovered, the balance of probability and experience, together with what i found to be a supernatural congruence and integrity in the total system, pointed me back down the road to traditional mystical theology and thus "orthodox" practice of the mitzvot. the other options were far too value-free, relativistic and, ultimately, meaningless. it's like terry pratchett says, if you hit your finger with a hammer, you don't want to yell, "oh, fecking outmoded-concept-of-a-traditional-belief-system!!" scepticism is not a way i can live. at the end of the day you have to choose to believe and trust something, whether it's in rationalism, atheism, religion, science or whatever. my religion has gained my trust.

You're misapplying Occam's Razor. It was created to separate the supernatural from the natural, ergo we must first exclude Divine interaction, and at that point your argument begins to fall apart.

i've already said i can't exclude Divine interaction, so that entity must be part of the original consideration. i know you feel you must do precisely that but i can't accept your terms of engagement, because they require me to accept defeat before i have begun.

We could much more simply say that the oral tradition was a fiction created by the rabbis, for whatever reason.

you see, this is what really bugs me. as much as i have to rely on Divine Revelation as an axiom, you have ultimately only mistrust of and cynicism about our ancestors to fall back on. and i think they deserve better than this. i hope you won't take this flawed simile amiss, but it's a bit like those people who would have preferred to leave saddam to torture his people forever rather than accept the intervention of the west, however imperfect and self-serving that might have been. why give amalek the benefit of the doubt when you have a more (even if not that much more) deserving candidate for your support?

Shabbos, living by the cycles of the sun and moon, tzedakah, Torah, etc.

but you're saying Torah in its totality was a fiction of the rabbis! you can't have it both ways.

as a point of interest, there is a Renewal Shiviti using the Tetragrammaton in the form of a human being.

that is a monumentally uncontroversial insight. i could give you a far more controversial shiwiti which is a modification of the coin-hand-outstretched arm-receiving hand interpretation.

But if looking at an image helps someone focus on the Divine, fine.

that's the position of the me'iri, refuting ramba"m - 'idolatry is not merely a matter of statues'. hence the shi'ur qomah, as you said.

If there is no absolute finite revelation, then we cannot rely on Torah for absolute moral or ritual law.

i don't think that's what i mean either. absolute is not the same as finite. something may be absolute in the Torah without being finite, like interpretation - lo bashamayim hi.

If I understand you correctly, your answer is that sometimes it is limited. So I ask you, then, how can you say "here we can say it is limited and not do any damage to Judaism, but if we say it here is is absolute apikoros nonsense."

it depends on the case and - again - on the authority concerned. remember, there are all those mitzvot which are followed by "I Am HaShem", "I Am HaShem your G!D" and "I Am HaShem Who brought you out of the land of egypt" - this is taken traditionally to mean that denying or failing to carry out the mitzvot concerned is the equivalent of denying the associated declaration.

How do you know we have free will?

we have free will in the same way that G!D allows the world to function and noheg keminhago, as if G!D didn't exist. in other words, the Divine Perspective would not allow free will to exist, but this is because G!D is outside the five dimensions of the universe. if we could manipulate time the way we can in the other four dimensions, we would destroy our free will. any episode of star trek will tell you that. plus that's also why all miracles apart from the Revelation at sinai have an element of doubt attached, even the splitting of the sea.

never ditched the ability to make distinctions. I ditched absolutism.

look, if pessah is about anything it's about the meaning of freedom - and that what we gained was the destruction of the yoke of slavery in exchange for the acceptance of the yoke of the mitzvot and the paradoxical freedom this brings.

I would go further and suggest the possibility the majority were good.

the best i can do at short notice to refute this is point you to vayikra 16:17 where it clearly states that the kohen gadol has to make atonement for "all the people". i know there's stuff about "all the people have sinned", but i can't lay my eyes on a reference right now.

There is no "must" here.

there is if you are treating it as a Divine Command, but you know that of course.

Not if it's done through a process which involves connection to the Divine.

for me to aspire to direct connection to the Divine would feel not only arrogant but wrong. isn't this precisely what r. joshua means by rejecting the ruling of the bat qol in the episode of the oven of achnai? we can't spend our whole time waiting for a Heavenly Voice - we must instead deal with the interpretation of human beings. it's that principle that you seem to be rejecting.

In that case I should excuse the Amalekites too.

but they're the amalekites! should i excuse the nazis?

There's a difference between command and obligation. If I commit to a practice, I become obligated to it. This does not require commandments. If you can't see the point to all of the Jewish practices without a Commander ordering you to obey, I don't understand why you continue at all.

from my perspective, i was born under this obligation, otherwise i would still be a slave in egypt. therefore i am *already* obliged to commit to my acceptance of the commandments, whether i have formally committed to it or not. modim anahnu lakh and all that. only a convert can accept the obligation in order to thereafter treat the commandments as such. ultimately i have to obey whether i understand it or not. it is the process of reconciling myself to this that is the important internal tension that must be maintained, otherwise i really would be an 'absolutist', as you put it.

b'shalom

bananabrain

 

[dauer]

sorry for the delay, but you're really making me sing for my supper.

That's what makes this conversation most worthwhile, isn't it?

oh, come on. hazal were widely accepted and renewal is, as we have said, more like r&d.

They were not widely accepted from the beginning. And as has been just referenced, if authority is linked to level of prophecy, then it really doesn't matter whether Renewal is widely accepted now or not. If, as I have suggested before, a high level of prophecy is really available to all who are open to receiving it, then this would seem to justify seeing Renewal as having the same source of authority as Hazal. And the fact of the matter is that whether or not Renewal as a trans-denominational movement is accepted as widely authoritative, the liberal communities continue to be influenced by the changes, innovations, and emphases on otherwise ignored practices and changes of emphasis within practices made within Jewish Renewal.

and the r&d function never runs the whole organisation - someone has to take care of finance, operations, sales, marketing and customer care. there is such a thing as *strategic* r&d where senior management is involved, but this could only be said to be the case for renewal if, say reb zalman was in constructive dialogue with senior figures with halakhic credibility.

Zalman often talks using a Gaian paradigm. It's a part of his personal theology that isn't necessarily reflective of the thinking of all of Renewal. I, however, think it's very wise. So when he looks at a system, be it all world religions, or Judaism, he'll say that one part is the liver, one part the heart, one part the kidney, etc. And the body functions best when they're all working in harmony. They each have a different role to fill. I agree with you that Renewal is not meant to be some sort of absolute authority. It's also not set up to be such. Of course, from my perspective, "halachic" isn't more correct. Those in the halachic community are merely filling a particular need: the need to maintain, to keep things grounded, to preserve, to conserve. Renewal is filling an oppositional need to explore new territory, to renew, to evolve, to adapt. These oppositions work in tandem to create a balance.

Of course there's so much gray area. There's plenty of preservationism in Renewal, and plenty of wanting to be relevant in Orthodoxy. But we're talking about the issue of authority. So what's going on with Renewal in regard to authority? It's like a tree. On the edges there are always new rings being added, but as new rings become added the formely new rings, now old, are deep within the tree. What once was new now is old, and no longer is questioned.

And issue of paradigm shift, I have a mental block so I can't remember the term, but basically you get a new way of looking at the world. Let's say there are 10 people in the world, Minyan World. 1 person starts having a problem with the old way of looking at the world, knows she has to look at the world differently, starting to try and understand how. Now it's 3 people. At some point you reach critical mass where a good majority of the people are saying, "We're looking at things differently now. The old way doesn't work for us anymore, and we're beginning to find this new way." The critical mass hasn't been reached yet. Jewish Renewal isn't looking for a future where everybody belongs to Jewish Renewal. It's those who believe this shift in awareness, in thinking, whatever you want to call it, is happening, doing the early work to prepare for critical mass. Any expression of Jewish Renewal, whatever it is, is an attempt at finding a viable expression of Judaism within that new awareness, and that expression of Judaism need not be universally applicable to all Jews everywhere, as the new thinking would suggest more emphasis on individualism.

do you know what those guys believe? how could something be holy if it was designed with those doctrines in mind?

And you think Solomon was such a sweetheart? I'm not talking about the wholesale incorporation of Scientology into Judaism, and that is never the case of any sort of syncretism within Jewish Renewal. I'm saying if there's something worthwhile, why does it matter what the source is?

i would only be able to accept this if it could be shown that there was something sufficiently similar within judaism that we used to do and didn't any more. otherwise, there's not much to distinguish it from saying, "well, when i was a ba'al worshipper, it was all nuts apart from this really holy practice of slashing ourselves with knives, so let's just add some jewish kavvanah to that and it'll be fine".

Well clearly, if someone's slashing themselves with knives, that's going to be a problem. Again, I don't want to judge the source. I want to judge the practice. Do you have anything against prayer beads?

but where's the quality control? i am sure people would say the same thing of the theory behind automatic writing. unfortunately, in practice, it's pretty dubious. and, to be quite honest, before i could accept that the findings from this woman's trance were kosher there would need to be some reliable way to evaluate them.

My feelings almost exactly. At the same time, if it works for her, and if it's working for other people, especially if it's helping Jewish women reclaim spirituality, I'm all for it.

you seem to be saying that because you can't prove anything, you should accept everything. i mean, what wouldn't you accept? i can't understand how you draw the line, other than "what works for you".

I'm not saying that because you can't prove anything you should accept everything. I am saying that what is meaningful for you, what is helpful for you, what is a guide for you, what strengthens your religiosity and faith, what empowers you to act, that should guide you. That doesn't mean that I accept what you accept. But I don't have to. There is room within Judaism to accomodate varying views of reality, and contrasting Lurianic Kabbalah with Maimonidean rationalism should be enough evidence of that.

What wouldn't I accept? Most things. I probably won't let the opportunity to try some new expression of spirituality pass me by, to share in that intimacy with new people, but as I've said before I'm a weak agnostic. I just usually think within a monistic paradigm. And if I come away from an experience with something meaningful, good. Even then, I still probably don't accept it, because unlike Heschel, I am concerned with the limitations of subjectivity.

i really don't think you have. in fact, of all the possibilities that have i have so far discovered, the balance of probability and experience, together with what i found to be a supernatural congruence and integrity in the total system, pointed me back down the road to traditional mystical theology and thus "orthodox" practice of the mitzvot. the other options were far too value-free, relativistic and, ultimately, meaningless.

I know I can't prove to you that you are most likely wrong. You're convinced you have Truth, at least on some level. But this is your subjective experience. Look at the way you have voiced your understanding. You speak of supernatural congruence, and yet it is the nature of the mind to find patterns in the world, especially when we are looking for them. You also say that the other options were "meaningless" so, even in your situation, it was meaning that was largely a guide to your decision. You could not find the meaning you needed outside of traditional mystical theology, and so that is where you went.

i've already said i can't exclude Divine interaction, so that entity must be part of the original consideration. i know you feel you must do precisely that but i can't accept your terms of engagement, because they require me to accept defeat before i have begun.

In that case you cannot apply Occam's Razor. For clarification let me provide a quote, emphasis mine:

"Occam's razor states that the explanation of any phenomenon should make as few assumptions as possible, eliminating those that make no difference in the observable predictions of the explanatory hypothesis or theory. ...

Furthermore, when multiple competing theories have equal predictive powers, the principle recommends selecting those that introduce the fewest assumptions and postulate the fewest hypothetical entities. It is in this sense that Occam's razor is usually understood."

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Occam's_razor

you see, this is what really bugs me. as much as i have to rely on Divine Revelation as an axiom, you have ultimately only mistrust of and cynicism about our ancestors to fall back on. and i think they deserve better than this. i hope you won't take this flawed simile amiss, but it's a bit like those people who would have preferred to leave saddam to torture his people forever rather than accept the intervention of the west, however imperfect and self-serving that might have been. why give amalek the benefit of the doubt when you have a more (even if not that much more) deserving candidate for your support?

I am having a hard time relating to your argument, which bothers me a little. I'd like to at least be able to entertain what you're saying. First, I think we should be honest about the language we use. You say, "mistrust and cynicism about our ancestors" when in reality it's a "general skepticism" about everything. I am not focusing on our ancestors, nor is there any intended malice. So let's not color the language to suggest it.

Now, you are equating my "general skepticism" with your belief in Divine Revelation. You know as well as I do that they do not equate. And once the misapplied malice and focus has been removed from my position, the rest of what you said is no longer appropriate.

Shabbos, living by the cycles of the sun and moon, tzedakah, Torah, etc.

but you're saying Torah in its totality was a fiction of the rabbis! you can't have it both ways.

It would be a problem for you if the Oral Torah was a creation of the rabbis, because you believe in finite Revelation. But for me, why should it be a problem? Torah is meaningful. And I will point out that even if the concept of an Oral Torah is a fiction of the rabbis, here I imply no bad intentions. I don't know what they were thinking, and by the time of the Gemara, the belief in an Oral Torah may already have been firmly in place among those in the rabbinic camp.

that is a monumentally uncontroversial insight. i could give you a far more controversial shiwiti which is a modification of the coin-hand-outstretched arm-receiving hand interpretation.

I think the human shiviti is more controversial, because it focuses on mankind's relationship to God, ignoring the rest of the world.

i don't think that's what i mean either. absolute is not the same as finite. something may be absolute in the Torah without being finite, like interpretation - lo bashamayim hi.

When I say finite revelation I mean happening in a certain time and place, and that being... "Revelation". If you can imagine majestic light coming from the word revelation and the sound of a shofar, that helps. I could only manage the quotes. So that is finite revelation, vs. something that is always happening, in all places, that we just have to learn to tap into.

The absolutism comes because, as you have said yourself, despite the freedom some might feel when it comes to interpretation, when it comes to halachah things aren't quite so flexible. I really don't think "lo bashamayim hi" is very relevant to the halachic community today. For hazal it was extremely relevant. They were constant innovators. But today I think it's more just a justification for the way things used to be done.

we have free will in the same way that G!D allows the world to function and noheg keminhago, as if G!D didn't exist. in other words, the Divine Perspective would not allow free will to exist, but this is because G!D is outside the five dimensions of the universe. if we could manipulate time the way we can in the other four dimensions, we would destroy our free will. any episode of star trek will tell you that. plus that's also why all miracles apart from the Revelation at sinai have an element of doubt attached, even the splitting of the sea.

Unless I am missing something, I didn't see you present any evidence for free will. You gave me information surrounding the issue of free will, like under what situation free will would not exist. But you did not present evidence for free will.

the best i can do at short notice to refute this is point you to vayikra 16:17 where it clearly states that the kohen gadol has to make atonement for "all the people". i know there's stuff about "all the people have sinned", but i can't lay my eyes on a reference right now.

That only implies that the people weren't perfect. It doesn't imply that they were corrupt idolators.

for me to aspire to direct connection to the Divine would feel not only arrogant but wrong. isn't this precisely what r. joshua means by rejecting the ruling of the bat qol in the episode of the oven of achnai? we can't spend our whole time waiting for a Heavenly Voice - we must instead deal with the interpretation of human beings. it's that principle that you seem to be rejecting.

A close reading of that aggadah reveals that it is an internal criticism of hazal. Anyway, if a person rejects supernaturalism, they're probably not waiting for a bat kol. It's more a matter of favoring right brain functioning over left, and creating a fertile environment for such activity based around that type of functioning to flourish. This doesn't mean waiting. It means acting.

but they're the amalekites! should i excuse the nazis?

And the Israelites are the Israelites! Look at what they did when they entered the land! Horrible people! You understand that there are people who think about the Israelites the way you think about the Amalekites? If we can excuse the Israelites for their behavior, surely we can also excuse the Amalekites, if of course any of it actually happened.

Dauer

 

[pohaikawahine]

I continue to read, follow this line of reasoning and dialogue and of course with great interest continue to learn .... haven't resolved where I am headed yet, but next Friday I will go to my first meeting with three female friends .... one is orthodox, one is a convert, one is a catholic, and then there is me (whatever I am) .... we will have dinner, begin our own dialogue, and then attend a synagog in the local area which is reportedly somewhat eclectic (orthodox, reform and a little renewal) .... don't ask me how this works out like this (I do not know) but this is what I have been told .... I have a strong tilt toward reform .... but I'm still open and will keep following this dialogue .... aloha nui, poh

 

[dauer]

BB, when I said:

I know I can't prove to you that you are most likely wrong. You're convinced you have Truth, at least on some level.

it came out wrong. It's not a matter of me being unable to prove that you are most likely wrong. It's a matter of me being able to prove that the issue is one worthy of some doubt. But the rest of it is as I meant to say it.

Poh,

good luck with wherever your road takes you. And please do let us know what the meetings and that shul are like. It sounds very cool.

Dauer

 

[bananabrain]

They were not widely accepted from the beginning.

but the thing is, haza"l have got a pretty dam' good track record. if renewal stands the test of time (and i'm thinking centuries rather than decades) then we can start talking real acceptance. until then, renewal is just a prototype.

if authority is linked to level of prophecy, then it really doesn't matter whether Renewal is widely accepted now or not.

umph. ok, the authority of Tana"kh is linked to that, so then it becomes a question as to the source of the authority of haza"l and what distinguishes that from the putative source of the authority of renewal and how it goes about being established. i think part of it is consensus-based, in a way kind of democratic. i think renewal has a lot of moral authority and authenticity but i think needs to build its constituency better. actually, there's a business book i can recommend which i think describes how fringe ideas create mass markets and whose principles actually apply pretty well to religion in general and to renewal in particular - it's called "the deviant's advantage". in a way, i think renewal will only become authoritative by sacrificing some of what makes it interesting (or radical, or scary depending on your PoV) in order to be less elitist. i think that authority's organic like that. i don't know if that's really the answer to this question.

If, as I have suggested before, a high level of prophecy is really available to all who are open to receiving it, then this would seem to justify seeing Renewal as having the same source of authority as Hazal.

oh, i see. well, i don't believe that the "all who are open" is a very large number. i think we're probably talking about lamed-vav, or certainly not much more than a sanhedrin-plus-benches-worth. and then we could dispute what we mean by a "high level". i think in terms of what you were talking about before with this shamanic journey thingamajig, i think i'd take some convincing that this person was sufficiently open. in fact, i'd go so far as to say that prophecy is probably linked to the ability to reach the levels commonly cited as being necessary before one can understand kabbalah properly. in other words, you have to really know your stuff. look at the qualifications for being on the sanhedrin.

And the fact of the matter is that whether or not Renewal as a trans-denominational movement is accepted as widely authoritative, the liberal communities continue to be influenced by the changes, innovations, and emphases on otherwise ignored practices and changes of emphasis within practices made within Jewish Renewal.

ok, i can accept that, certainly. in fact i could probably go so far as to say that renewal represents an important link between the liberal communities and the traditional communities.

Zalman often talks using a Gaian paradigm. It's a part of his personal theology that isn't necessarily reflective of the thinking of all of Renewal. I, however, think it's very wise. So when he looks at a system, be it all world religions, or Judaism, he'll say that one part is the liver, one part the heart, one part the kidney, etc. And the body functions best when they're all working in harmony. They each have a different role to fill. I agree with you that Renewal is not meant to be some sort of absolute authority.

actually, this isn't necessarily a gaian paradigm, whatever that means. the sefirot are also a holistic and conceptual model of the primordial body - so, in these terms, renewal are in the middle of the right pillar at the sefirah of hesed. you may be interested to know that in my analysis of organisations (which hopefully will end up being a book when i get it finished) this is also where r&d sits, so it does work out.

Of course, from my perspective, "halachic" isn't more correct. Those in the halachic community are merely filling a particular need: the need to maintain, to keep things grounded, to preserve, to conserve.

yes, i'd agree with that. it is unfortunately a sad fact that most halakhah sits in the left pillar nowadays, particularly in terms of gevurah/din, which is what makes it so necessary to look at things in a holistically integrated fashion. i must consider the entire system - but unfortunately some people are far happier just living in one part of it and ignoring the others, which makes for a very unbalanced, dysfunctional judaism - as we can plainly see! this is why it is important to see renewal in its context and see what it isn't as well as what it is.

Renewal is filling an oppositional need to explore new territory, to renew, to evolve, to adapt. These oppositions work in tandem to create a balance.

in other words, rebalancing the middle triad of the Tree to enable its resolution in tiferet.

There's plenty of preservationism in Renewal, and plenty of wanting to be relevant in Orthodoxy.

of course - remember we're in the 'omer, so this is gevurah she-be-hesed and hesed she-be-gevurah.

So what's going on with Renewal in regard to authority? It's like a tree. On the edges there are always new rings being added, but as new rings become added the formerly new rings, now old, are deep within the tree. What once was new now is old, and no longer is questioned.

yes, that works for me in terms of halakhah - but in this metaphor, it is the paradoxical, illogical, unscientific and ineffable Torah-me-Sinai that is the actual life within the tree.

At some point you reach critical mass where a good majority of the people are saying, "We're looking at things differently now. The old way doesn't work for us anymore, and we're beginning to find this new way." The critical mass hasn't been reached yet. Jewish Renewal isn't looking for a future where everybody belongs to Jewish Renewal.

oh i see. well, i can see how a paradigm shift happens for individuals and even groups. but then what is the critical mass hoping to achieve? i can understand it from the perspective of chabad, it's all about moshiach; i can understand what it is that i want, which is yihud in terms of klal yisra'el, but i don't understand what renewal wants to happen in implementable terms, unless its "all jews should be jewing it somehow".

And you think Solomon was such a sweetheart?

hehe. i know he certainly gets quite a pasting from haza"l. that's how i like my biblical figures, warts and all. doesn't make him any less cool, but it does make him more human.

Do you have anything against prayer beads?

not at all. that's just a physical mantra and, besides, muslims use them, so they are almost certainly ok.

At the same time, if it works for her, and if it's working for other people, especially if it's helping Jewish women reclaim spirituality, I'm all for it.

i'm all for it up to the point where her experience is used as authority to support a challenge to halakhah as opposed to theology or midrash or minhag or something. it's a bit like the orange on the seder plate - i understand the point they're making and i sympathise, but it's got nothing to do with the seder and is muddying the waters with an unrelated and highly emotive issue, simply because of a stupid analogy made by a silly old fool.

I am saying that what is meaningful for you, what is helpful for you, what is a guide for you, what strengthens your religiosity and faith, what empowers you to act, that should guide you. That doesn't mean that I accept what you accept. But I don't have to.

what i am objecting to is the idea that "it works for me" somehow has the same status as "it's kosher for everyone". there has to be some means of discriminating - i know you agree about that, but i think that where we disagree is on the level of autonomy to be ascribed to the individual.

There is room within Judaism to accomodate varying views of reality, and contrasting Lurianic Kabbalah with Maimonidean rationalism should be enough evidence of that.

exactly, but there are things for which there are not room within judaism, things which stretch the label too far - what interests me, as you know is where that limit is. otherwise you end up with what in my terms is known as a "bacon bagel". but possibly i'm starting to repeat myself.

unlike Heschel, I am concerned with the limitations of subjectivity.

i see - because i am very much with heschel on this!

You speak of supernatural congruence, and yet it is the nature of the mind to find patterns in the world, especially when we are looking for them.

yes, that's called "confirmation bias". but awareness of it is also a safeguard.

You could not find the meaning you needed outside of traditional mystical theology, and so that is where you went.

in fact, i could not find a meaning that reflected my experience of the world without a theology that could deal with paradox and the impossibility of proof.

It's a matter of me being able to prove that the issue is one worthy of some doubt.

hang on, though - i'm not saying that doubt isn't an issue. lack of doubt is far more scary. of course i doubt. and so i should. the moment i relinquished doubt, i would become a most unpleasant, rigid individual.

an aside - ok, yes, of course, occam's razor would discount the possibility of supernatural agency, but i am taking that as axiomatic, which you don't think i should. plus, i consider that the assumptions underpinning "academic" and "scientific" points of view are similarly axiomatic, so it seems we may be at an impasse over the use of this particular principle.

You say, "mistrust and cynicism about our ancestors" when in reality it's a "general skepticism" about everything. I am not focusing on our ancestors, nor is there any intended malice. So let's not color the language to suggest it.

fair enough. i myself have, as i've said, a general scepticism about academia and science and its motivations and drivers - not that i have a problem with these systems working to produce the conclusions justified by their internal logic. i suppose what i am suggesting is that i kind of feel that our ancestors deserve better than this general scepticism. it feels sort of ungrateful to me, not precisely "who breaks a butterfly upon a wheel", but just missing the point. of course scepticism is both praiseworthy and productive, but it can be misapplied. i call this the "angels don't show up on radar" problem, or, of you prefer, "all cats are bastards". i think it's acceptable to take a look at the historical context, but i don't think it's acceptable to presume a lack of trustworthiness. perhaps i might offer a more pungent but perhaps better metaphor. you and i are presumably both able to say that we are the products of, um, ah, conjugal affection. and, with some evidence, we can perhaps extend that back a couple of generations. however, it doesn't take long before we cannot tell whether our ancestors were happily married, unhappily married, or raped/rapists. we simply don't know. but what should we assume? should we assume that our ancestors were raped by cossacks or crusaders or janissaries or whatever? or should we just accept that we're not going to be able to tell and pretty much just assume it was straightforward. of course, someone could produce a document from a few centuries back which was evidence of this happening. we could believe that document. or we could question the motives and veracity of the writer. either way we cannot really know. but to insist that absence of confirmation is grounds for suspicion is, to my mind, unwarranted and, basically, icky. that's how it feels to me when people are probing around the, ah, haemorrhoids of history. it feels unreasonable. of course i accept that your intentions are honourable, but i myself would prefer to be able to try and find some beauty in my ability to believe. don't pick at it or it'll scar.

I think the human shiviti is more controversial, because it focuses on mankind's relationship to God, ignoring the rest of the world.

hehe. you haven't seen how this relationship is expressed in the other shiwiti.

If you can imagine majestic light coming from the word revelation and the sound of a shofar, that helps. I could only manage the quotes.

fair enough - i wouldn't patronise you by regret, but i feel lucky i feel the way i do.

So that is finite revelation, vs. something that is always happening, in all places, that we just have to learn to tap into.

it is possible that i believe in finite revelation within one context and the "always-happening-in-all-places" in certain interpretatory contexts.

I really don't think "lo bashamayim hi" is very relevant to the halachic community today. For hazal it was extremely relevant. They were constant innovators. But today I think it's more just a justification for the way things used to be done.

sadly, i am in agreement.

I didn't see you present any evidence for free will. You gave me information surrounding the issue of free will, like under what situation free will would not exist. But you did not present evidence for free will.

um, perhaps my logic's faulty. it seems to me that our free-will is evident from the operation of the laws of causality and our lack of control of the dimension of time. there's also a circular argument about sin - for sin to exist, free-will must exist. i daresay this isn't enough for you though. and don't forget that from the G!D-perspective, there is no free-will because of a control of time and a lack of sin.

A close reading of that aggadah reveals that it is an internal criticism of hazal.

please explain; you mean because G!D thinks they're wrong?

And the Israelites are the Israelites! Look at what they did when they entered the land! Horrible people!

yes - and they were punished for it and, moreover, hence the prophets were sent. in reference to the autonomy of the individual, remember the last line of shofetim: "in those days there was no king in israel; everyone did what was right in his own eyes".

You understand that there are people who think about the Israelites the way you think about the Amalekites? If we can excuse the Israelites for their behaviour, surely we can also excuse the Amalekites, if of course any of it actually happened.

yes, and we can excuse the nazis and suicide bombers and everyone else. but i'm going to remain resolutely one-sided, subjective and partial. in the end, i must pick a side. and, in the final analysis, i'm sure you'd be on it too!

b'shalom

bananabrain

 

[pohaikawahine]

Interesting bb that you are writing a book .... would be interested in it when it is finished .... personally I think you and dauer could write a book based on this dialogue, it is much needed and healthy .... I have question for both of you if you wish to respond .... regarding mysticism (or shamanism if you prefer) or even quabbalism (is there such a word?) ....and proof .... if you experienced it would you believe it even if you couldn't offer "proof" to another? I believe that the journey itself is very personal (there is no other way), but explaining it in words if not easy unless the other has taken the same journey .... if the regathering is spiritual and not material how do we give "proof" to each other that it is taking place and we will each go with the flow .... then we are not on one side of the other, we are right in the middle ... so I think my real question is what does each of your perspectives say about the regathering and do you agree on what it means given that we have no "proof" yet about its actuality .... for myself, I not only believe, I know (and not in an arrogant or dogmatic way) that it is happening ....I can't tell you in words how I know, I just know I know ....and I see its process in the torah .... aloha nui, poh

 

[dauer]

but the thing is, haza"l have got a pretty dam' good track record. if renewal stands the test of time (and i'm thinking centuries rather than decades) then we can start talking real acceptance. until then, renewal is just a prototype.

As Hazal was. And if there weren't people willing to work with that prototype instead of sticking with what they already had, it would have never floated.

in a way, i think renewal will only become authoritative by sacrificing some of what makes it interesting... in order to be less elitist.

How do you see Renewal as being elitist? In response to the rest of that, I don't think it's really necessary for Renewal to do that sort of stuff. Since it's transdenominational, people from the different denominations are going to take from it and do with it what they will. Those who affiliate with one of the denominations, or act like they do, while affiliating or borrowing from Renewal, I see as doing what you are suggesting, without requiring Renewal to change itself.

oh, i see. well, i don't believe that the "all who are open" is a very large number. i think we're probably talking about lamed-vav, or certainly not much more than a sanhedrin-plus-benches-worth. and then we could dispute what we mean by a "high level". i think in terms of what you were talking about before with this shamanic journey thingamajig, i think i'd take some convincing that this person was sufficiently open. in fact, i'd go so far as to say that prophecy is probably linked to the ability to reach the levels commonly cited as being necessary before one can understand kabbalah properly. in other words, you have to really know your stuff. look at the qualifications for being on the sanhedrin.

I really have to disagree with you here. I see the opening up as a shift in awareness, in thinking, in relating to the world, not something that falls on only a favored few. And I don't think one must even know Kabbalah in order to be open. Kabbalah is a finite expression of mysticism, as were heichalot and merkavah mysticism.

. in fact i could probably go so far as to say that renewal represents an important link between the liberal communities and the traditional communities.

It definitely does. For many reasons. And a good memory I have from EC was when a "hosid" and a vocal lesbian decided, during some unstructured time the Shabbos before Shavuos when Reb Zalman was teaching, to study gemara together. And then at some point they came across something in the text that turned into a dialogue on sexuality and gender issues.

actually, this isn't necessarily a gaian paradigm, whatever that means.

Well, he makes explicit reference to gaia when he talks about it. Usually he's using it to talk about the whole world, and at those times it makes more sense to relate it to Gaia Hypothesis. But he takes it a step further and relates it to different groups. I do not doubt that he is completely aware of the kabbalistic way of relating it. It's a thought that had actually crossed my mind before, and I think he's simply trying to speak in a way that's more accessible to anyone regardless of their education in Judaism.

Oh, and count me also as someone very interested in your book when you finish it.

in other words, rebalancing the middle triad of the Tree to enable its resolution in tiferet.

Yes. The one thing that I think can be gained by talking about it in kabbalistic terms is that you're going to get people's attention. Of course calling Orthodoxy gevurah is bound to make you less popular among some people.

yes, that works for me in terms of halakhah - but in this metaphor, it is the paradoxical, illogical, unscientific and ineffable Torah-me-Sinai that is the actual life within the tree.

I wouldn't go so far as Torah m'sinai, but I would say it differently. I mean the structure of the tree is maintained by the old wood. But the old wood is less fresh, less alive. So in the same as I said before, and you compared to the (other) tree, both are important.

oh i see. well, i can see how a paradigm shift happens for individuals and even groups. but then what is the critical mass hoping to achieve? i can understand it from the perspective of chabad, it's all about moshiach; i can understand what it is that i want, which is yihud in terms of klal yisra'el, but i don't understand what renewal wants to happen in implementable terms, unless its "all jews should be jewing it somehow".

Well, paradigm shift isn't something that anyone's trying to achieve. If indeed this is a paradigm shift, when critical mass is reached it will just win out. The same thing happened when Aristotle was allowed to influence Judaism. You have an idea of God that stands contrary to a straight reading of the Torah. Yet there was a paradigm shift. It took a while, but the old god wasn't working. In the face of philosophy, the new one made more sense. It was more "rational." And in that age, that was the most important factor. What do I personally think Renewal is betting are going to be key factors in what might be a coming paradigm shift?

Nothing less than everything is God, with the exception of the more traditional kabbalistic position (that would also be okay.) The general view in Renewal seems to be that literal tzimtzum is an awful lot of theological footwork that was really just done to avoid having to deal with the problems that can arise when everything is literally God. Personally, I think this is one issue that's not going to work for everybody because however "theotropic" humans might be, not everyone's into mysticism, even if it is made easily accessible.

More emphasis on individualism, shaping Judaism into something that, while wholely recognizable, can be addressed to each individual and his or her needs at any given point in his or her life.

Letting go of absolutism, be it by understanding that what one accepts as Truth is what one accepts as Truth and just that, or by approaching issues of morality without a uniform influence by whatever halachah dictates.

Finding non-triumphalist ways to speak and think about formerly triumphalist theology.

Complete embracing of gays, lesbians, transgendered people, and potentially polyamorists which includes recognizing that their lovemaking is also sacred.

Oh, and of course validating the importance of embracing feminism to repair the damage done by a patriarchal religion.

Now, I do think that there is a Renewal idea that almost equates with "all Jews should be Jewish it somehow." At the very least, they should make peace with their Jewishness. I read an article in a Renewal book by a woman who at the time was a practicing buddhist, but it recalled her journey between Buddhism and Judaism. And at the time of her writing it, she had made her peace with Judaism. But mostly, yes, all Jews should be Jewing it.

hehe. i know he certainly gets quite a pasting from haza"l. that's how i like my biblical figures, warts and all. doesn't make him any less cool, but it does make him more human.

So again, how can you be so critical of Scientology as to say that nothing they do could possibly be used for good?

it is possible that i believe in finite revelation within one context and the "always-happening-in-all-places" in certain interpretatory contexts.

If it's happening only in certain contexts, which I believe you mean are Torah-related contexts, then it is not always-happening-in-all-places.

um, perhaps my logic's faulty. it seems to me that our free-will is evident from the operation of the laws of causality and our lack of control of the dimension of time. there's also a circular argument about sin - for sin to exist, free-will must exist. i daresay this isn't enough for you though. and don't forget that from the G!D-perspective, there is no free-will because of a control of time and a lack of sin.

You're right. It's not enough for me.

please explain; you mean because G!D thinks they're wrong?

If you want to do a line-by-line reading in another thread, I'd love to. It's not because God thinks they're wrong. At EC I learned a method to study aggadah from Reb David, who learned this method at the liberal Orthodox yeshivah he attended. It applies modern techniques of literary analysis to the text, while trying to avoid the common tendency to drash.

So it might take into account things like,

What is the surrounding conversation in the middle of which this aggadah was placed? Does its topic relate? What are the names of the characters in the story? Do the meanings of their names relate to their roles in the story? How is this character typified in aggadic literature? What is happening in this scene? Where are they? What are their postures? What are they arguing about halachically, and does this halachic argument relate in any way to what's going on? Does this scene reference any other events? Of course, it's going to take a close look at the ever-present word play.

Suffice it to say, that aggadah is not a simple criticism. It is very complex, multi-layered, and powerful. I used to have a copy of that aggadah in linear English and Aramaic with a copy of some of the surrounding text and the original mishna on the oven of achnai. Some of the word play was color-coded. But I lost it. So if you want to do that, you would have to supply the text, in aramaic and translation.

The aggadah study was a wonderful experience. Once during the week and again Shabbos afternoon we would gather together to study aggadah, sometimes spending both of those sessions for just one story. And on Shabbos we would always go over. After davennen we would eat, and then we would do the aggadah study, with whomever was on retreat joining in. And that was a blessing too, because it brought so many different perspectives and some real talmidim chachamim. And we would usually not end until it was time for mincha. And when we did end, it would always feel rushed, like there was so much more we could say.

yes - and they were punished for it and, moreover, hence the prophets were sent.

So the Amalekites should forever be typified because we don't have records of their prophets?

in reference to the autonomy of the individual, remember the last line of shofetim: "in those days there was no king in israel; everyone did what was right in his own eyes".

I've always thought that refrain sounded awful like something a first-year college student would write. And I really think that it was put there by one of the king's propaganda machines, in shaping the popular view of history.

yes, and we can excuse the nazis and suicide bombers and everyone else. but i'm going to remain resolutely one-sided, subjective and partial. in the end, i must pick a side. and, in the final analysis, i'm sure you'd be on it too!

The difference here is that you take Torah as Truth and I don't, so I can't assume that what it says about the Amalekites is true. However, the historical record has a lot to say about the Shoah.

Poh,

if you experienced it would you believe it even if you couldn't offer "proof" to another?

I hope not. I don't trust my own subjectivity. I hope I never do. At the same time, I rely on the fact that many have had that experience as support for bothering with it in the first place.

so I think my real question is what does each of your perspectives say about the regathering

Do you mean the regathering of Israel? Renewal isn't interested in creating a lot of new dogma. If you have a novel view of the regathering, it may be something someone from Renewal has already considered, and if not, it will probably be warmly welcome.

do you agree on what it means given that we have no "proof" yet about its actuality

I don't really have any eschatological beliefs. I do hope for a better future. But I'm also not doom n gloom about our current present.

Dauer

 

[dauer]

...

 

[dauer]

BB,

everything I said in an attempt to further narrow down potential Jewish Renewal beliefs about what might be coming with a paradigm shift, you can entirely ignore that. I seem to have a habit of searching for more concrete answers when there are none. Certainly, there are people within Jewish Renewal who have much more concrete ideas about what a renewed Judaism might look like, but there are also plenty of people who have very little idea what it might look like.

 

[pohaikawahine]

[Do you mean the regathering of Israel? Renewal isn't interested in creating a lot of new dogma. If you have a novel view of the regathering, it may be something someone from Renewal has already considered, and if not, it will probably be warmly welcome.] quote from dauer

mahalo nui dauer .... I'm only going to add one small piece here and step out of the dialogue and back to the parsha with bandit (I don't want to interrupt the wonderful flow of ideas between you and bb) .... I just read a great commentary on the parsha Mayanot http://www.aish.com/torahportion/mayanot regarding the counting of days of the Omer, the 49 days between Passover and Shavuot, the day the Torah was given on Mount Sinai. Rabbi Weisz concludes (as far as I can tell) that the connection is spiritual and is "what we need to construct a spiritual vessel without hearts and minds" a "step-by-step learning process" as contrasted to the ecstasy of religious inspiration. But it seems to me that once one learns that process, which is outlined in the Torah, the meeting face-to-face with G-d does take place in a spiritual realm. I've spent well over 40 years studying this process in other paths and when I began the reading of the Torah, her process took on the same symbols and pointed to the same way .... I was captured by the beauty of the process and drawn to the Song of Songs and that part of Exodus 15:20 ....and "the women danced" .... it all relates to the regathering .... an internal spiritual process that must first take place within the human body or vessel itself, the first seven Sefirot .... we must pass through this in order to reach for the next three which will take us beyond the days of counting to the Jubilee era (beyond the realm of multiples of seven to the place where we meet G-d face to face) (the place of the pineal gland, or the third eye).... this is the regathering, in my mind, the process that makes the 12 pairs of cranial nerves work together to open the whole system .... taking us to the land of milk and honey, the promise land .... and the women danced as we left the wilderness and crossed over .... interesting in the commentary referenced above I never saw the connection to the parting of the "sea of reeds" until this very day .... in the mythology of the people of New Zealand (the Maori) it takes 12 bundles of reeds X 12 for each of the 12 men that are carried on the "reed" boat (the wa'a) that navigates one across the great expanse of ocean (across time and space) .... the symbol is in the "reed" .... this particular mythology also tells us of how to open the space above to ascend to the world of spirit .... if the countdown of days between Passover and Shavuot, the day the Torah was given on Mount Sinai, tells us about the process internally we all have the great potential to begin the paradigm shift in awareness and the seeds were planted in the Torah both in her oral and written forms .... in the consciousness of the chosen people. That's my small comment and I will return to the parsha with my friend bandit and continue to read the dialogue. aloha nui, poh

 

[bananabrain]

And if there weren't people willing to work with that prototype instead of sticking with what they already had, it would have never floated.

so, what we're saying is, critical mass is reached when critical mass is reached. it did with haza"l. what we're disagreeing about, it seems to me, is whether haza"l were a more impressive bunch than renewal are. i think they were and you, presumably, think i'm using rose-coloured spectacles. i think i'd be more inclined to your view if i could see more thought-leaders in renewal, rather than just zalman. i dare say you'll respond with a whole list of them, now!

How do you see Renewal as being elitist?

because it's too wacky, scary and influenced by non-jewish ideas for the mainstream to accept - at least at this point in its development. therefore understanding and working with it is necessarily the preserve of the avant-garde. that's necessarily not a bad thing, incidentally. helps keep the conversation together. religion for the masses necessarily requires a lower order of intellectual engagement imho. it's the same reason mass kabbalah is not really feasible without it turning into superstition or antinomialism - shabbetai tzsvi is a good example.

I really have to disagree with you here. I see the opening up as a shift in awareness, in thinking, in relating to the world, not something that falls on only a favored few. And I don't think one must even know Kabbalah in order to be open. Kabbalah is a finite expression of mysticism, as were heichalot and merkavah mysticism.

kabbalah is necessarily finite, as anything elite, complicated or constrained must be. what i'm talking about is what the effect on the mainstream/normative jewish world is. i don't know and i don't think you do either. what i do think is that "more judaism" need not be a bad thing, even though you and i might not mean exactly the same thing by it.

And a good memory I have from EC was when a "hosid" and a vocal lesbian decided, during some unstructured time the Shabbos before Shavuos when Reb Zalman was teaching, to study gemara together. And then at some point they came across something in the text that turned into a dialogue on sexuality and gender issues.

now that's an example of exactly why i think renewal probably *is* a good thing which puts me on the opposite side from the kiruv guys and fundamentalists.

Oh, and count me also as someone very interested in your book when you finish it.

*groan* it is taking an age. i started it in late 2003....

Of course calling Orthodoxy gevurah is bound to make you less popular among some people.

well, if it quacks like a duck... besides, gevurah is not necessarily a bad thing in context.

I mean the structure of the tree is maintained by the old wood. But the old wood is less fresh, less alive.

harrumph. that's me condemned to 'beat my wife' again - the equation of 'old' with 'less good' and 'progress' with 'better'. not that i would support the opposite either, unlike some people in the Torah mi'sinai camp.

The same thing happened when Aristotle was allowed to influence Judaism.

yeah, people tied themselves in knots for centuries trying to make judaism aristotelianism. a centuries-long fad remains a fad when your viewpoint is sufficiently long. same goes for rationalism or falsafa - from that PoV, s.r.hirsch and the maskilim are not much different from yehuda ha-levi: "G!D forbid that there should be anything in the Torah which contradicts reason". what an utterly misconceived remark. where i think renewal might be OK is its ability to graft itself onto authentic traditions of innovation which *have* caused a paradigm shift, such as the adoption of the zohar as canonical.

More emphasis on individualism, shaping Judaism into something that, while wholely recognizable, can be addressed to each individual and his or her needs at any given point in his or her life.

sounds good to me, as long as it leaves room for Commandment to remain the source of ultimate authority from outside the self.

Letting go of absolutism, be it by understanding that what one accepts as Truth is what one accepts as Truth and just that, or by approaching issues of morality without a uniform influence by whatever halachah dictates.

umph - i think that one needs some more work.

Finding non-triumphalist ways to speak and think about formerly triumphalist theology.

i don't know about this. unfortunately the track record of trying to do this tends to result in the eradication of folk culture on the grounds of its lack of political correctness. the depredations of the "melting-pot" idea of zionism on sephardic/eidot mizrah culture in israel up until recently is a case in point.

Complete embracing of gays, lesbians, transgendered people, and potentially polyamorists which includes recognizing that their lovemaking is also sacred.

the first three, i am fine with. it is polyamorists that are a step too far for me towards the "bacon bagel", although i have had an extremely cordial and productive dialogue in the past with a pagan polyamorist.

Oh, and of course validating the importance of embracing feminism to repair the damage done by a patriarchal religion.

as long as it's actually damage and not just a faddish rebalancing of a supposed injustice. for me, this has to be consistent with "tzedeq, tzedeq tirdof". blanket assumptions, condemnations and categorisations will do nobody any favours. for example, i'm buggered if i'm going to be forced to go to an egalitarian minyan. and if anyone starts tampering with the folk music because of its lack of political correctness i shall really have something to say about it.

So again, how can you be so critical of Scientology as to say that nothing they do could possibly be used for good?

show me something good they've done and i'll see if i'm prepared to moderate my position. so far, they seem to me like an unscrupulous bunch of charlatans intent on extracting the maximum amount of power and influence for very dubious aims.

If it's happening only in certain contexts, which I believe you mean are Torah-related contexts, then it is not always-happening-in-all-places.

i don't think that's what i mean. i believe there is a possibility of revelation to other religions, so it can't all be Torah-related.

If you want to do a line-by-line reading in another thread, I'd love to.

go ahead!

So the Amalekites should forever be typified because we don't have records of their prophets?

we're supposed to blot out their memory, not record their prophets! besides, didn't balaam hire himself out to them?

However, the historical record has a lot to say about the Shoah.

well, when the historical record has something to say about the amalekites i shall consider it. but given the debunking agenda usually associated with biblical archaeology, i shall treat it with similar scepticism.

I hope not. I don't trust my own subjectivity. I hope I never do. At the same time, I rely on the fact that many have had that experience as support for bothering with it in the first place.

if i didn't trust my own subjectivity (at least within certain clearly limited contexts) i would be a lousy musician. part of this is about believing in oneself.

i will continue...

b'shalom

bananabrain

 

[dauer]

so, what we're saying is, critical mass is reached when critical mass is reached. it did with haza"l. what we're disagreeing about, it seems to me, is whether haza"l were a more impressive bunch than renewal are.

I think the real issue of our disagreement has more to do with at what point a radically different idea can begin to be considered Jewish.

i think i'd be more inclined to your view if i could see more thought-leaders in renewal, rather than just zalman. i dare say you'll respond with a whole list of them, now!

Of course: Arthur Waskow, Art Green, Rami Shapiro, Mordechai Gafni, Gershon Winkler, David Cooper, Shefa Gold, Goldie Milgrom, Marcia Prager, Daniel Siegel, Shohama Wiener, and a handful of other people without mentioning anyone outside of the first generation of Renewal leadership.

because it's too wacky, scary and influenced by non-jewish ideas for the mainstream to accept - at least at this point in its development.

Maybe at its most extreme, but I see liberal Judaism in America becoming more and more accepting of forms of meditation with non-Jewish influences as well as yoga. I think you may not realize exactly how the syncretism effects Renewal, so some examples might be useful. Reb Rami created a fictional rebbe and wrote stories about him influenced by zen buddhism, some of which you can read here:

http://www.hasidicstories.com/Articles/Learning_From_Stories/virtual.html

As you can see, he's primarily dealing with Jewish concepts, although the way he's dealing with them is influenced by Zen. This shows far less influence by a foreign philosophy than Rambam did. You might want to make specific note of the stories "The Way You Teach" and "Prayer or Meditation?"

Another good example, perhaps even a better example, is Reb Gershon Winkler's book Magic of the Ordinary: Recovering the Shamanic in Judaism. Not only is ever chapter heavily footnoted with references to classical midrash, talmud, kabbalistic sources, and tanach, but the actual practices he suggests are usually fairly normative.

And as an example of non-syncretic renewal material, I would point you to Arthur Waskow's Godwrestling: Round 2. It's primarily modern midrash.

kabbalah is necessarily finite, as anything elite, complicated or constrained must be.

And one of the original goals of hasidism, which has been picked up by Renewal, is to make mysticism more accessible. It's been suggested that the reason many Jews headed East in the 60s is because the mystical there is so available, whereas in Judaism it is not.

what i'm talking about is what the effect on the mainstream/normative jewish world is. i don't know and i don't think you do either.

I'm not sure what this is in reference to. But I imagine that if I did I would agree with you that it's an unknown.

harrumph. that's me condemned to 'beat my wife' again - the equation of 'old' with 'less good' and 'progress' with 'better'. not that i would support the opposite either, unlike some people in the Torah mi'sinai camp.

Maybe if I gave a clear example of what I was talking about. We spoke earlier about how certain rituals had a powerful meaning for their original practitioners and, while having a sense of what this meaning might be can give a some sense of structure to the system of rituals, the lack of deep relevancy makes it less powerful for the modern practitioner than it was for those original practitioners.

New theology and new ritual practices envigorate the system. It is easier to change theology, but it offers less relevance. It is harder to change ritual, but it offers more relevance.

yeah, people tied themselves in knots for centuries trying to make judaism aristotelianism. a centuries-long fad remains a fad when your viewpoint is sufficiently long.

I don't think anybody's arguing Rambam's take on aristotelianism is right to a "T" anymore, but it sure helped wean Judaism off of the anthropomorphic God of the bible and the gemara.

where i think renewal might be OK is its ability to graft itself onto authentic traditions of innovation which *have* caused a paradigm shift, such as the adoption of the zohar as canonical.

I think more than adopting any particular text as canonical, Renewal is simply making the shift to say that real spiritual value can be found in all of the writings of the Jewish people, and I think that this is one of the things that helps to form a bridge between Renewal and the Orthodox community.

it is polyamorists that are a step too far for me towards the "bacon bagel", although i have had an extremely cordial and productive dialogue in the past with a pagan polyamorist.

What is the primary difference between a modern polyamorist and a polygamist, assuming that you would be more open to a man having multiple wives?

for example, i'm buggered if i'm going to be forced to go to an egalitarian minyan. and if anyone starts tampering with the folk music because of its lack of political correctness i shall really have something to say about it.

I've never heard of someone being forced to go to an egal minyan. My favorite compromise is, of course, the triangle mechitzah. I think the future of Judaism is more and more going to be about individual communities arranging themselves based on what works best for them, less about the standards of large denominations, and if there have to be two separate services running at once to accomodate everyone in a town, then so be it. My hope would be that someday, in every town, both will happen in the same building. There are shuls where this happens. Of course if it's a huge city let's build legions of synagogues!

And I really doubt anybody's going to tamper with folk music, lyrically. I love me some klezmer!

show me something good they've done and i'll see if i'm prepared to moderate my position. so far, they seem to me like an unscrupulous bunch of charlatans intent on extracting the maximum amount of power and influence for very dubious aims.

It was a hypothetical. I mentioned Solomon to point out that good can come from bad. The same could be true here, although I am in no position to prove it.

i don't think that's what i mean. i believe there is a possibility of revelation to other religions, so it can't all be Torah-related.

I thought you might go there. But you will still maintain that revelation to the Jewish people can only happen through Torah, yes?

If you want to do a line-by-line reading in another thread, I'd love to.

go ahead!

I told you, I don't have the text anymore. If you can supply the aggadah in English and Aramaic, then I can start the thread.

we're supposed to blot out their memory, not record their prophets!

According to a biased text.

besides, didn't balaam hire himself out to them?

If I tend to be skeptical about the existence of other figures in the Torah, why would I automatically buy into the existence of Balaam?

if i didn't trust my own subjectivity (at least within certain clearly limited contexts) i would be a lousy musician. part of this is about believing in oneself.

As I've stated before, although I don't trust my own subjectivity, it's all I have to go on, because I deny there's any true objectivity -- although the word is still useful as a reference to a larger group's collective subjectivity -- and so I most certainly do act on it on a regular basis. But I don't believe it can accurately tell me about reality, only about my own perceptions of reality based primarily on what comes through the senses.

Dauer

 

[bananabrain]

I think the real issue of our disagreement has more to do with at what point a radically different idea can begin to be considered Jewish.

indeed - when is our "bacon bagel" not jewish any more?

Arthur Waskow, Art Green, Rami Shapiro, Mordechai Gafni, Gershon Winkler, David Cooper, Shefa Gold, Goldie Milgrom, Marcia Prager, Daniel Siegel, Shohama Wiener, and a handful of other people without mentioning anyone outside of the first generation of Renewal leadership.

ok, well arthur waskow i've met (too much of apparently a bonkers hippy to go over well in the UK, although i think he's a heavyweight in his own way) green, winkler, cooper, gold, prager and wiener i've heard of as influential without having read any of their stuff. goldie milgrom i've read - she's accessible, but i wouldn't call her a heavyweight. that might be my own prejudice though. mordechai gafni i've met and learned with. i can see why he'd be considered a heavyweight but all i can really say is that he is not approved of in my circles for reasons of conduct i'm not going to allude to in a public forum. suffice it to say that i find him troubling.

I see liberal Judaism in America becoming more and more accepting of forms of meditation with non-Jewish influences as well as yoga. I think you may not realize exactly how the syncretism effects Renewal, so some examples might be useful. Reb Rami created a fictional rebbe and wrote stories about him

you see, i don't think i'd call this syncretism - or problematic really. syncretism to me is something closer to "jewitchery" or, say, "zen judaism", or "jewish buddhism" or whatever. my criterion tends to be whether it is something that creates halachic problems down the line, particularly through intermarriage. ditto the way you describe winkler's work.

And one of the original goals of hasidism, which has been picked up by Renewal, is to make mysticism more accessible. It's been suggested that the reason many Jews headed East in the 60s is because the mystical there is so available, whereas in Judaism it is not.

it ought to be obvious that mass mysticism has a bad press in judaism for historical reasons. like i say, mysticism is an elite pursuit and when it becomes popular, it tends to turn into superstition. paradoxically, i am all for the popularising of its study, if only because it highlights the importance of traditional texts - the more you get into kabbalah, the more you understand how necessary the rest of it is; that's certainly been my experience.

We spoke earlier about how certain rituals had a powerful meaning for their original practitioners and, while having a sense of what this meaning might be can give a some sense of structure to the system of rituals, the lack of deep relevancy makes it less powerful for the modern practitioner than it was for those original practitioners.

what i would always suggest is trying to understand that deep relevancy and making that itself part of us. the best example i can think of is mary douglas' work on leviticus, which brought this to me in a way i didn't think was possible. obviously one could argue that there's no way to tell whether this is really the original meaning and i don't really know how to get past that, but it seems to match the mystical interpretations independently, which is why it strikes such a chord of authenticity for me.

New theology and new ritual practices envigorate the system. It is easier to change theology, but it offers less relevance. It is harder to change ritual, but it offers more relevance.

says you. i think changing actions are a lot more easy to do than changing the way people think.

it sure helped wean Judaism off of the anthropomorphic God of the bible and the gemara.

except i don't accept that this concept of G!D was explicitly anthropomorphic - except insofar as *we ourselves* needed the anthropomorphic concepts to understand what was going on - the "finger of G!D" was being used to illustrate quantity of plagues compared to the "hand of G!D" even at the time of the mishnah, so i don't think you can definitively state that haza"l thought in unsophisticatedly anthropomorphic terms.

Renewal is simply making the shift to say that real spiritual value can be found in all of the writings of the Jewish people, and I think that this is one of the things that helps to form a bridge between Renewal and the Orthodox community.

well, this is the complete opposite of the counterproductive standpoint one hears in the reform of texts being discarded as "irrelevant" and "old-fashioned" - and, as such i approve totally.

What is the primary difference between a modern polyamorist and a polygamist, assuming that you would be more open to a man having multiple wives?

it would still not be allowed. as you are no doubt aware, polygamy was banned by the herem of rabbenu gershom in the middle ages. now, considering that the shasniks and yemenis have adopted this as binding and not merely a question of minhag, i'd be inclined to think that there were other reasons than merely not wishing to differ from the hasidei ashkenaz - after all, that doesn't generally bother them. i would also be inclined to disapprove of it on grounds of dina de-malchuta dina on formal expressions of it such as bigamy. i'd put polygamy in the same category as "exterminate the canaanites" - it's no longer possible to do it correctly, so don't try or you'll be in breach of tzedek tzedek tirdof.

I've never heard of someone being forced to go to an egal minyan. My favorite compromise is, of course, the triangle mechitzah.

well, you can be continually told you're old-fashioned and sexist for wanting to maintain a single-sex environment. i do think the triangle mechitzah is clever, though.

My hope would be that someday, in every town, both will happen in the same building. There are shuls where this happens. Of course if it's a huge city let's build legions of synagogues!

it's about making a synagogue into a community centre - but there is such resistance to change over traditions that are in most cases less than a century old!

you will still maintain that revelation to the Jewish people can only happen through Torah, yes?

Torah is also an interfaith. what i mean by that is that non-jewish sources may speak to individual jews, but for them to speak to klal yisrael they must be filtered through the categories of Torah.

and yes. objectivity, subjectivity, very difficult. will never be solved.

b'shalom

bananabrain

 

[dauer]

I think the real issue of our disagreement has more to do with at what point a radically different idea can begin to be considered Jewish.

indeed - when is our "bacon bagel" not jewish any more?

No no. I mean in time. Hazal admit that what they were doing would have been alien to Moses.

suffice it to say that i find [Gafni] troubling.

You are not the only one. When he came to Elat Chayyim there were certainly some uncomfortable for the reason we won't get into, but others were also uncomfortable with the cult of personality that seemed to surround him, as well as with the way he intentionally models himself after Shlomo Carlebach. At the same time, the actual work that he is doing can be worthwhile. I especially think what he's doing with Integral Judaism could become important.

Arthur Waskow is definitely a bit of a hippy. He has also been recognized by the UN as one of 50 Wisdom Keepers.

you see, i don't think i'd call this syncretism - or problematic really. syncretism to me is something closer to "jewitchery" or, say, "zen judaism", or "jewish buddhism" or whatever.

Could you clearly distinguish the difference between the examples I gave and say, jewitchery or jewish buddhism? If you don't have a problem with the examples I gave, then it sounds like you don't really have a problem with syncretism in Renewal.

my criterion tends to be whether it is something that creates halachic problems down the line, particularly through intermarriage. ditto the way you describe winkler's work.

What does syncretism have to do with intermarriage?

it ought to be obvious that mass mysticism has a bad press in judaism for historical reasons.

And yet, after Shabbetai, hasidism was still able to successfully bring it to the masses. It also was much more widespread outside of the Eastern European communities, as I'm sure you are aware.

like i say, mysticism is an elite pursuit and when it becomes popular, it tends to turn into superstition.

The real issue here as I see it is for those who aren't so driven towards mysticism. Yet, there are people who yearn for it that still have no interest in such a complicated system as kabbalah. And there are also those who, once they've become involved in a simpler, modern mystical practice, become interested in kabbalah.

says you. i think changing actions are a lot more easy to do than changing the way people think.

Perhaps you've misunderstood what I mean. The rituals we have are all deeply rooted in our community's myths and ancient texts, and changes to them have happened very slowly. Yet, because of the nature of Judaism, our theology has been very fluid from age to age. If someone speaks in the language of the present generation, even if they're speaking outside of the language used by Judaism before, it will not be so difficult for that generation to accept.

But if someone then proposes, for example, that instead of keeping kosher we should all be vegeterians, this is going to be more difficult because the rituals are so deeply rooted.

except i don't accept that this concept of G!D was explicitly anthropomorphic - except insofar as *we ourselves* needed the anthropomorphic concepts to understand what was going on - the "finger of G!D" was being used to illustrate quantity of plagues compared to the "hand of G!D" even at the time of the mishnah, so i don't think you can definitively state that haza"l thought in unsophisticatedly anthropomorphic terms.

I think I'm on much firmer ground based on the fact that they, as well as the Tanach, speak in explicitly anthropomorphic terms without ever stating that it would be wrong to understand this at face value. God wears tefillin. He has emotions. He has a back, a hand, a face. He seems at times to occupy limited space. Definitely, the intention is there not to describe God's features. That was set very early on. And yet, God is still very human-like.

In fact, I could point to Rambam's need to reach beyond the peshat as evidence that God should not be understood anthropomorphically as proof that there was no real evidence and there was a real need to "find" some. Why would he work so hard to justify himself if it was understood that God is not anthropomorphic?

But no, I cannot state it definitively, just as you cannot state definitively that Amalek were evil, or that there was an exodus from Egypt, or that Homer was an actual historical figure and not a group of women who used one name for the works they wrote as a collective.

as you are no doubt aware, polygamy was banned by the herem of rabbenu gershom in the middle ages.

The ban (debatably) ended recently.

it's about making a synagogue into a community centre - but there is such resistance to change over traditions that are in most cases less than a century old!

and as you may be aware, the whole JCC movement was in order to create a sort of "secular shul."

Torah is also an interfaith. what i mean by that is that non-jewish sources may speak to individual jews, but for them to speak to klal yisrael they must be filtered through the categories of Torah.

That is what Renewal does.

Dauer