Dream,
I don't know what this is in reference to. Do you mean booing during the Torah reading? It's a practice in at least one synagogue, and a visiting rabbi praised it. I think it's very holy to do so. There was a hasidic rebbe who put G!d on trial. I think that's holy too. It's in line with Abraham challenging G!d, and Moses. I don't see Judaism as a religion of submission to dogma, but instead of wrestling with dogma and growing due to it, a religion built on challenging ideas and adapting to changing circumstances.
If I never heard of the destruction of Amalek, I would not have opposed the attempt to justify it. That is one of the valuable things I find in wrestling with Torah honestly. Torah reflects both the positives and negative of human nature and it can be very empowering to challenge it when it is wrong and act on that. Knowing the way my ancestors demonized Amalek, how can I let myself do the same?
No impact on my rejection of supernaturalism which has nothing to do with ethics. You must remember, I was raised in a liberal community. As I invested myself into Judaism and spirituality much further than other members of my family, I found myself moving further to the left, first toward reconstructionism (naturalism, mitzvot are folkways, Judaism is an "evolving religious civilization", tradition gets a "vote but not a veto") and then toward Jewish Renewal when I found too much emphasis on culture in Recon and found myself continually gravitating toward mysticism most especially in neo-hasidic and syncretic guises.
All of the modern movements except for Orthodoxy consider modern biblical criticism a valid approach to Torah. That means that it is valid within most of Judaism to speak of P and J or of propaganda and polemic on the part of various figures and how some of this might show through in texts that are traditionally considered to be earlier. None of the liberal movements consider the written and oral Torahs to have been literally received at Sinai. Further, it is a Jewish tradition to challenge things that don't make sense. The Talmud includes a statement by R' Akiva which is usually translated as "The Torah speaks in the language of man." It's a beautiful innovation that I think is widely applicable to translate antiquated G!d-language into a modern idiom. Rambam used this statement to back up his understanding that all G!d-language is entirely allegorical and G!d is not anthropomorphic. This is however a creative interpretation. In context R' Akiva is referring to a figure of speech stated by a human being in the Tanach. The phrase is just as easily, and in context more realistically, translated as "The Torah is speaking in the language of man." Rambam of course was the person who applied Aristotle -- very en vogue at the time due to the Muslim translation of greek philosophy into arabic -- to Torah and is considered one of the greatest rabbis of all time. His son would go on to lead a community of Jewish sufis in Egypt that continued for a few generations.
There is a midrash about Avram in his father's shop where he built idols. He smashed all of them and placed the hammer into the hand of the largest, which he left standing. His father came back and Avram pointed to the idol: "He did it." That kind of iconoclasm is central to Judaism as I experience it. One of the interesting things about that passage, in the end there's still one idol standing, hammer in hand. Most people reading that passage will certainly think it's silly that a stone statue could do such, but then they erect their own idol, an invisible one, to whom they attribute great power.
The prophets regularly challenge existing religious norms in addition to the ethical ones they are sometimes more recognized for. The Torah spends a lot of time detailing the Temple Cult. And yet there are prophets who say G!d doesn't want qorbanot. As I read that, they're admitting that some passages in the Torah are limited to a particular place and time and way of doing things.
One important principle in rabbinic Judaism is that "it's not in heaven" or rather, that since Sinai Torah is in the hands of man to do with. I'm sure you know the context in which that statement originally appears and that this is a fairly liberal interpretation. Yet for Judaism to grow beyond the paradigm of the Temple Cult it was a very important interpretation to make.
My own perspective is more in line with these principles:
http://www.ohalah.org/guidelines/aleph_principles.pdf
though there may certainly be places that I would disagree or interpret differently than others. It is all placed in a certain mythical context that I think is very healthy but at the same time don't think should be taken literally.
I like the translation of Yisrael as G!dwrestler. I think it is something very necessary in this day, to challenge the status quo. And I think it is very Jewish to do so.
-- Dauer
I don't know what this is in reference to. Do you mean booing during the Torah reading? It's a practice in at least one synagogue, and a visiting rabbi praised it. I think it's very holy to do so. There was a hasidic rebbe who put G!d on trial. I think that's holy too. It's in line with Abraham challenging G!d, and Moses. I don't see Judaism as a religion of submission to dogma, but instead of wrestling with dogma and growing due to it, a religion built on challenging ideas and adapting to changing circumstances.
If I never heard of the destruction of Amalek, I would not have opposed the attempt to justify it. That is one of the valuable things I find in wrestling with Torah honestly. Torah reflects both the positives and negative of human nature and it can be very empowering to challenge it when it is wrong and act on that. Knowing the way my ancestors demonized Amalek, how can I let myself do the same?
No impact on my rejection of supernaturalism which has nothing to do with ethics. You must remember, I was raised in a liberal community. As I invested myself into Judaism and spirituality much further than other members of my family, I found myself moving further to the left, first toward reconstructionism (naturalism, mitzvot are folkways, Judaism is an "evolving religious civilization", tradition gets a "vote but not a veto") and then toward Jewish Renewal when I found too much emphasis on culture in Recon and found myself continually gravitating toward mysticism most especially in neo-hasidic and syncretic guises.
All of the modern movements except for Orthodoxy consider modern biblical criticism a valid approach to Torah. That means that it is valid within most of Judaism to speak of P and J or of propaganda and polemic on the part of various figures and how some of this might show through in texts that are traditionally considered to be earlier. None of the liberal movements consider the written and oral Torahs to have been literally received at Sinai. Further, it is a Jewish tradition to challenge things that don't make sense. The Talmud includes a statement by R' Akiva which is usually translated as "The Torah speaks in the language of man." It's a beautiful innovation that I think is widely applicable to translate antiquated G!d-language into a modern idiom. Rambam used this statement to back up his understanding that all G!d-language is entirely allegorical and G!d is not anthropomorphic. This is however a creative interpretation. In context R' Akiva is referring to a figure of speech stated by a human being in the Tanach. The phrase is just as easily, and in context more realistically, translated as "The Torah is speaking in the language of man." Rambam of course was the person who applied Aristotle -- very en vogue at the time due to the Muslim translation of greek philosophy into arabic -- to Torah and is considered one of the greatest rabbis of all time. His son would go on to lead a community of Jewish sufis in Egypt that continued for a few generations.
There is a midrash about Avram in his father's shop where he built idols. He smashed all of them and placed the hammer into the hand of the largest, which he left standing. His father came back and Avram pointed to the idol: "He did it." That kind of iconoclasm is central to Judaism as I experience it. One of the interesting things about that passage, in the end there's still one idol standing, hammer in hand. Most people reading that passage will certainly think it's silly that a stone statue could do such, but then they erect their own idol, an invisible one, to whom they attribute great power.
The prophets regularly challenge existing religious norms in addition to the ethical ones they are sometimes more recognized for. The Torah spends a lot of time detailing the Temple Cult. And yet there are prophets who say G!d doesn't want qorbanot. As I read that, they're admitting that some passages in the Torah are limited to a particular place and time and way of doing things.
One important principle in rabbinic Judaism is that "it's not in heaven" or rather, that since Sinai Torah is in the hands of man to do with. I'm sure you know the context in which that statement originally appears and that this is a fairly liberal interpretation. Yet for Judaism to grow beyond the paradigm of the Temple Cult it was a very important interpretation to make.
My own perspective is more in line with these principles:
http://www.ohalah.org/guidelines/aleph_principles.pdf
though there may certainly be places that I would disagree or interpret differently than others. It is all placed in a certain mythical context that I think is very healthy but at the same time don't think should be taken literally.
I like the translation of Yisrael as G!dwrestler. I think it is something very necessary in this day, to challenge the status quo. And I think it is very Jewish to do so.
-- Dauer
I once thought of myself as a very sincere 'spiritual' conservative Christian child, and my first world excluded all 'unspiritual' people and 'non-Christians', rock'n roll, and anything scary, Satanic, or with kissing in it. At the same time I was proud to be part of a progressive interracial congregation (liberal?) which considered white and black as the same, yet ironically I remember burning rock'n roll media in a dumpster at a church event. (?) A few years later, I heard Madonna in cars that passed me going the other way, with their volume pushed to obnoxious levels. In the 9th grade I started attending public schools, and my bus driver played current 80's pop music on the radio (Bangles, Will Smith, etc.). Nowadays I'm flexible instead of fearful about what I see and hear, and I know that strict control of my environment or even of myself is not as productive as the appreciation of things and keeping productively busy. Control and rules merely deceive people into thinking that they have changed. Now I think that all people -- even the most conservative, internally consider themselves to be liberal, but how can beings subject to time and short lived ever truly overcome precedents? Won't that which was be again?
