The one thing I would most like to see change in Judaism over the next ten years is for Judaism to stop becoming a faith! Admittedly, this might sound strange coming from a rabbi. But the truth is that Judaism, for thousands of years, was far more than a faith in which one espoused a set of beliefs or ascribed to a certain cultural identity.  Judaism was a religion,  inextricably intertwined with an ethnicity, a culture, and a geographical (if not actual) home in Israel. Judaism was not something one proclaimed to be, or something one “practiced” at certain fixed times and places; it was a pervasive, all-encompassing identity.

Judaism in North America today is very different.  Many Jewish communal organizations have, for years, bemoaned the rapid rates of assimilation that draw Jews from a more insular Jewish context into secular American life. The impact of assimilation—for Judaism and for most religions in America—has resulted in dramatic drops in affiliation rates and other indicators of religious involvement.

But there is another, related development in American Judaism that gets less publicity but also represents a paradigm shift in Jewish expression: for those Jews who do continue to affiliate, Judaism has become much more of a faith than a religion.  A religion, according to one definition, is an "institutionalized system of religious attitudes, beliefs, and practices."  We are living in a paradox in which Judaism is both becoming more and more accepted in secular society than ever before (just look at your Town Green on Christmas/Hanukkah if you need visual proof) yet the Jewish product that emerges looks less and less like the Judaism of the past 3000 years.  We are Jews today because we say we want to be Jews, not because we fill our days with actions that identify us as Jews.

My goal, over the next ten years, is to work to reclaim the notion of a Judaism that permeates everyday life.  I want to help rebuild a Judaism that transcends both the physical boundaries of the synagogue and the temporal boundaries of holidays.  Judaism is a religion to be lived in the home, in the workplace, and, indeed, in all walks of life.

Please let me know what you think!!

So how do we sift through the cacophony of political commentary out there and actually pick a candidate?  Is there any sacred wisdom that we can draw from as we try to make an informed decision about the 2012 Presidential election?  In one of those delicious moments of serendipity, it turns out that the biblical reading in the Jewish lectionary for this past week, Parashat Shoftim (Deuteronomy 16:18-21:9), provides precisely such guidance.

In Deuteronomy 17, the Israelites are instructed that, when they enter Israel, they have the option of being ruled by a king if they so choose.  Several key prerequisites are then established for sovereignty.  First, the king must be an Israelite, not a foreigner.  Second, the sovereign shall not keep many horses or send people to Egypt to get him additional horses.  Third, he shall not have many wives nor amass excessive amounts of silver or gold.  Finally, when he sits on his throne, the king shall have a copy of the Torah written for him that he frequently reads and observes faithfully.

What are these prerequisites all about?  I see at least three considerations emerging from the biblical text.  Initially, the notion that the king must not be a foreigner suggests that the sovereign must share a connection with his subjects; he should see himself as one of them, not as different from them.  Additionally, the prohibition against keeping many horses, having many wives, and amassing excessive amounts of silver or gold all speak to the need for a sovereign not to focus on issues of personal self-interest such as the accumulation of wealth, nor take actions that require others to consolidate wealth for him.  Finally, the requirement that the king read and observe the Torah constantly reinforces the notion that the sovereign must rule not according to his subjective desires but subject to legal and moral constraints and in a spirit of humility.

So where does this leave us today?  Obviously, we are not picking a king but a president.  Moreover, we are not picking a Jewish president but an American one.  Nevertheless, I think the points above once again demonstrate that the Bible is far more than a repository of ancient rituals and practices.  It is a font of wisdom and tradition that has much to offer our contemporary reality.

Deuteronomy 17 elucidates values and perspectives that can help us identify the type of candidate that is consistent with the biblical understanding of a proper leader.  We should look for a candidate who sees himself (in this case) as one of, and therefore beholden to, the people, rather than someone who comes across as haughty or aloof.  To govern us, a candidate should be able to understand us; to connect mentally and emotionally with our struggles as millions of Americans continue to be mired in economic woes.  Second, and relatedly, we should make sure that the candidate is not interested in policies (wealth accumulation or otherwise) that only benefit those like him.  Third, we should seek a candidate who sees his role as part of a constitutional process in which he is beholden to the rule of law and the constraints of morality.  We should look for a candidate who doesn’t think he has a monopoly on the truth but is willing to learn and grow as a leader—someone who exudes humility rather than hubris.

I leave to you to determine which of our two candidates best embodies these values.  And, in the end, may God bless us with a President who will look after the best interests of this country with intelligence, compassion, and morality.

Image by Vectorportal, via Flickr Creative Commons.

My initial instinct has been discomfort, to say the least, with the adulation Tebow is receiving.  I have nothing against Tebow himself.  But I recoil at the thought, espoused my many, that Tebow is winning because of divine intervention in his football games.  For example, a recent poll found that 43% of people believed that divine intervention was responsible for at least some of Tebow's success (an article discussing the poll is available here. 

The theologian within me simply cannot embrace the notion that God cares about who wins which football teams because the consequence of this statement is that members and/or fans of the losing team are somehow religiously inferior to the winning team's members and/or fans.  Plus, given all the problems facing the world today, do I really want the God I believe in to focus attention on football games?

And yet, upon reflection, I realize that maybe I am guilty of over-intellectualizing God.  I claim that I do not embrace a God who directly intervenes in our lives anymore because doing so leads to the inevitable theodicy problem of an omnipotent God who allows evil to occur.  Instead, in my seminary studies, I have gravitated either towards a pastoral kind of God, i.e. a God who cries with us when we suffer and offers us support, or towards the kind of influential but not omnipotent God articulated within process theology.  The problem with this approach is that, while it enables me to feel intellectually honest when writing term papers, it doesn't account for why I do pray to God for specific things such as healing the sick or helping to eradicate poverty.  Nor does it explain the miraculous things that do occur in my life from time to time, the things which have no explanation but which I am loathe to chalk up to serendipity.

So perhaps I ought to revisit my feelings about Tebowmania a little bit.  While as a member of a minority faith, I am still wary of the Christian Evangelical fervor running rampant throughout American society, perhaps there is still plenty of good that can be gained from an enhanced belief in the possibility of divine intervention in our daily lives.   Maybe being open to this possibility will help us to get more in touch with our spiritual, prayerful selves, rekindle our faith and reassuring us that we are not alone in navigating the vicissitudes of life.  Even though Tebow and the Broncos are now out of the NFL playoffs, hopefully these lessons of belief, hope, and connection will continue to bolster us through the winter and well into the seasons (football or otherwise) to come.

No matter what I might say, it will invariably alienate some as being too sympathetic to Palestinians and others as being too pro-Israeli. But the recent prisoner swap with Gilad Shalit in Israel has provoked something in me that I feel bears mentioning.

For those who haven’t been following the news, here is a summary. Over five years ago, in June 2006, an Israeli soldier named Gilad Shalit was abducted by Hamas agents during a raid they made into Israel. He was held by Hamas in flagrant disregard of international human rights norms, including denied access to the Red Cross when it attempted to visit him. Last week, after years of intense negotiations, Hamas and Israel reached an agreement to release Shalit in exchange for 1,027 Palestinian prisoners being held in Israeli jails. The exchange took place on Tuesday, as Sergeant Shalit was returned home and the first wave of Palestinian prisoners were released. For both Israelis and Palestinians, it was a day filled with rejoicing.

So here is my problem: how is 1 Israeli life equal to 1,027 Palestinian lives? I tried explaining the logic behind the swap to my young son, but I couldn’t. There is no way to make sense of it. And this is not the only time such a bizarre calculus has been used in completing prisoner exchanges. As a recent blog post points out, “in Israel's nine prisoner exchanges with Arab enemies, dating back to the first, 54 years ago, Israel has freed 13,509 prisoners in order to win the release of a total of 16 soldiers. An average of well over 800 for each one.”

But my real issue is not with the incongruent math. Nor is it with the geo-political consequences of releasing admitted terrorists and murderers or incentivizing Hamas to kidnap more Israelis, which tens of thousands of Palestinians in Gaza are already urging Hamas to do.

Instead, as a seminarian, my problem is with what Hamas is saying about the value of human life by setting these terms. By demanding over 1000 prisoners for Shalit, the Palestinians are saying that the value of a single Palestinian is only 1/1000 of an Israeli; otherwise, it should be a 1:1 prisoner exchange. And it is this denial of the value of human life, this nihilist self-destructiveness, that legitimizes suicide bombers and terrorist attacks. This mentality makes peace talks impossible and further exacerbates extremists on both sides.

The book of Genesis, the foundation of all Abrahamic faiths, begins with the central premise that humanity was made “b’tzelem Elohim,” in the divine image. What that means is that each individual life is sacred, holy, and immeasurable. And the beauty of the Arab Spring, to me, was that it showed the Arab world that it did not need to resort to suicide bombings in order to affect radical political change. Non-violent protests in Tahrir Square which affirmed the dignity of long-suffering Egyptians, not terror strikes, led to the toppling of Mubarak.

It is my hope and prayer that Jews and Palestinians alike can re-claim this notion of the sacredness of all human life, to see themselves and each other as unique, holy vessels rather than as cogs in an endless political struggle.

Far from a full-fledged polygamist, Savage’s contention is threefold: 1) each partner in a marriage should try their best to satisfy the other partner’s sexual yearnings, no matter how unusual the request; 2) if one partner is not willing to satisfy the other’s sexual proclivities, the unsatisfied partner should have limited permission to find sexual satisfaction elsewhere while still remaining married; and 3) in general we ought to get less worked up about sex in marriage and focus more on relationships in general .

It is in striking contrast to Savage’s position that many (if not most) Jewish, Christian, Muslim, and other religious institutions take a strict stance on sexual fidelity.  Why do they do so? After all, biblical narratives are filled with examples of men having multiple wives and concubines.  Are they being inconsistent?

Abraham had Sarah and Hagar; Jacob had Leah, Rachel, and their two handmaidens; King Solomon allegedly had 1,000 wives.  None of them are chastised for their polygamy. To the contrary, we look upon these figures as paragons of virtue. To be true, these examples are all about having multiple relationships, not one-time trysts.  But the underlying principle is the same: the Bible makes no moral claim that a husband must be monogamous with his wife (though, of course, no such latitude is extended to the sexual desires of wives).

So here is the question: how should rabbis, priests, imams, and others engaged in marital counseling address extramarital sex?  To take it from the theoretical to the personal (as a future rabbi), do I think I should broach the subject of how best to handle infidelity when two doe-eyed, mutually infatuated, freshly engaged individuals approach me?

Unfortunately, I think the answer has to be yes.  If what I care most about is the development of a healthy, life-long relationship between the two, as opposed to strict adherence to a moral code (no matter how much I happen to embrace that code), I do think I need to address sexuality within and outside the marriage.

But that doesn’t mean I need to go the Dan Savage route of actually condoning extra-marital sex. Instead,  I should encourage the couple to have a frank, candid discussion between themselves about what they are and are not willing to do sexually for one another, and what they think should be done if one partner isn’t willing to meet the other’s desires.

Sexuality is interwoven into the fabric of any marriage; to ignore potential snags in the stitching is to unnecessarily risk the unraveling of the tapestry of the relationship as a whole.  What do you think?  Is sexuality still too taboo a subject to bring into the hallowed halls of premarital religious counseling?  Or is it high time we injected more reality—and perhaps address one of the root causes of our 50% divorce rate—into discussions about our sacred unions?  I look forward to your thoughts.

The immediate euphoria that broke out late Sunday night and into Monday reminded me of the Song of the Sea, Exodus 15:1-21, when Moses, Miriam, and the rest of the Israelites spontaneously extol God for drowning the pursuing Egyptians in the Sea of Reeds.  It is the expression of divine deliverance from pure evil, the triumphant end to a long period of suffering and bloodshed. In fact, the early Rabbis viewed the Song of the Sea as so essential that they included it within the daily morning liturgy, a liturgy we recite to this very day.  And, according to my dear friend Wikipedia, the Song of the Sea “also comprises the first ode or hymn of the Eastern Orthodox canon” and also forms part of the Roman Catholic liturgy, “where it is sometimes known as the "Song of Moses.”  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Song_of_the_sea#cite_note-0.

Yet this is not the only rabbinic take on the Song of the Sea.  In a famous midrash (rabbinic exposition of Scripture), God chastises angels who dance and sing as the Egyptian troops drown, saying “How dare you dance and sing as my children drown in the Sea?” (Babylonian Talmud, Megillah 10b).  Despite their evil actions, the Egyptians were still human beings created in the image of God.  Likewise, Proverbs 24:17 enjoins: “Do not rejoice when your enemy falls.”

So how, then, should I react as a “religious person” to bin Laden’s death?  Should I rejoice at his demise, happy that he can no longer inflict terror upon the innocent?  Or should I temper my jubilation, deeming it inappropriate to be happy about the death of another human being, no matter how reviled?

I would like to suggest an alternative approach.  It just so happens that bin Laden was killed on Yom Hashoah, Holocaust Remembrance Day, and the day after the anniversary of Hitler’s suicide.  I cannot chalk this up to serendipity.  Instead, I think there is an instructive lesson here.  Jews and non-Jews alike commemorate Yom Hashoah not with jubilation or revelry at the end of the Holocaust and Hitler’s death, but with acts of remembrance.  It is a day of recollection, of story-telling, and of a firm resolve to never again allow mass exterminations of any people to take place.  We honor those who paid the ultimate price by recalling their lives and their legacies.  We focus on those who were lost, not on those who perpetrated the evil.

This, I think, should be the constructive way we channel our emotions in response to bin Laden’s death.  It might feel cathartic to chant “USA, USA” and throw back a few beers to toast the fact that we took out bin Ladin.  And, to a certain degree, it is good for us to find reasons for cheer and to celebrate the symbolic—though unfortunately not actual—end of a dark, awful period in world history as personified by bin Laden.  But any such celebration will inevitably be superficial and incomplete.  Ask anyone who actually lost a loved one on 9/11.  Instead, we should use this moment to remember and reflect.  We must remember the thousands who fell on 9/11 and the thousands more who have fallen ever since in the War on Terror.  Perhaps we can even make 9/11 into a national holiday for civic remembrance.  Bin Laden’s death won’t bring back any of the innocent victims he helped murder.  Let’s use his death as an opportunity to pay tribute to the fallen—to honor their memories and to rededicate ourselves to fulfilling the unrealized dreams they left behind.

Shockingly, in a recent decision, the European Court of Human Rights answered the last question in the affirmative. The court, in Lautsi and Others v. Italy, upheld an Italian law requiring that all public classrooms display a crucifix against a challenge that this law violated the rights of non-Christians. The reason I want to talk about this decision is not to get into a nuanced discussion of the differences between European and American religious jurisprudence. Instead, it is because I think this decision reinforces, and extends, a troubling development (from my seminarian perspective): the secularization of religious symbols.

As noted by Stanley Fish in a recent NY Times op-ed, the European Court reached its decision by holding that a crucifix has become a “historical and cultural” symbol that now has an “identity-linked,” not religious, meaning. The crucifix, by this reasoning, stands for “the liberty and freedom of every person, the declaration of the right of man, and ultimately the modern secular state.” In fact, the Court went so far as to pontificate that Christianity itself is not really a religion because it, amongst all world religions, does not espouse exclusion of the nonbeliever.

The spurious reasoning of the Court’s Christianity-is-not-a-religion contention doesn’t even deserve comment. Instead, I want to focus on the crucifix-is-not-religious argument. Normally, atheists or members of other religions who feel that their religious liberty is being impeded upon by the state bring legal challenges to the display of religious symbols. In this context, the crucifix certainly conveys strong religious imagery to non-Christians who would face seeing it in their classroom every day. It would reinforce, to them, their outsider status, perhaps also bringing to surface emotions connected to past persecutions of their faiths in the name of Christianity.

But today I am writing as a seminarian. The reason I am so frustrated at this decision, and decisions by American courts upholding as secular displays of the Ten Commandments, Christmas trees, and nativity scenes, is that these decisions fail to appreciate the power of religious symbolism. As both a religious person and a scholar of the phenomenology of religion, I don’t want to surrender the potential potency of these symbols and their ritualized use.

Rituals link one back to a sacred time and sacred story that transcends one’s own particular experiences. And the collective use of rituals and symbols help people feel that their lives are made meaningful in a set of shared cultural expressions. When they do so, they connect their mortal lives to something bigger.

Only ritual can do justice to this shared cultural vocabulary—to help people find themselves as Jews or Christians or Muslims or Hindis or Buddhists, and as human beings, in these events. So I hope, both for those who feel marginalized when other religions receive state endorsement, and for those who care about maintaining the power of religious symbolism, that we as individuals, courts, and the body politic, begin to see religious symbols and rituals for what they can be.

And yet, as a person of faith, I admit to being troubled.  There is, of course, a particular concern I have, as a Jew, regarding whether a new regime, especially one in which the Muslim Brotherhood play a predominant role, will prove disastrous for Israel's security.  But more broadly, as I have tried to contextualize the events in Egypt within my religious perspective, I have felt a sense of awkwardness because I am not sure whether democratic self-expression is actually a value that religious individuals should embrace.  Now at first glance I know this sounds like an odd statement.  But think about it--religion traditionally has always been about restraining one's individual wants and desires in favor of a greater sense of obligation.  Judaism, for example, is premised on the idea of being metzuveh--commanded--to perform (or refrain from engaging in) a myriad of obligations.  Likewise, one of the central tenets of Islam is submission (of one's prerogatives/desires/etc.) to Allah.  Even in Eastern religions such as Hinduism, one acts out of a sense of one's dharma (duty), not out of  individual desire.  If this is so, then the idea of challenging existing rules/obligations/governing structures in favor of some different ones that we like better isn't necessarily represented in our faith traditions ( I haven't commented about Christianity because I simply don't know enough about the relationship between autonomy and obligation--if anyone has thoughts on this, please do respond).  What's more, religious institutions are, if anything, even more inherently conservative.  They frequently prioritize continuity over innovation, tradition over change.

So how can I reconcile what my gut tells me is right--supporting the protesters in Egypt (not to mention Tunisia, Yemen, Syria, and elsewhere) with a sense of authenticity to my faith tradition?

The more I have thought about it, the more I have come to realize that my initial sense of religion's relationship with democracy was unnecessarily narrow.  Perhaps nowhere is this more clear than in the foundational act of the Jewish people--the exodus from slavery in Egypt.  In fact, the parallels between the Exodus narrative  and current events in Cairo are uncanny: in both cases, an oppressed people in Egypt sought to liberate themselves from a tyrannical despot, fleeing into an uncertain new paradigm of freedom and self-determination.  And the Exodus story is not the only narrative to look to in seeking examples of political reform and revolution.  From prophetic rebukes of royal misdeeds to Abraham's willingness to challenge God regarding Sodom and Gomorrah, there are a multitude of powerful examples I can fall back on in support of the Egyptian's right to seek democracy.

In the end, I am grateful that this struggle for authenticity has brought me back in touch with aspects of my faith that I had under-appreciated of late.  One need not choose between morality/instincts and faith; all too often, as in the case of supporting the Egyptian demonstrators, the two can, and should, go hand in hand.  May our brothers and sisters in Cairo, Alexandria, and throughout Egypt be able to realize through non-violent means their desire for democratic self-governance, and may the new government they construct be one that supports the ideals of this revolution--freedom, opportunity, and peace towards all.  I welcome your thoughts...

So I have been surprised at the degree of national anguish expressed over what transpired.  From talking heads on cable news to the halls of Congress, the impact of Tucson has continued to reverberate.  Why has the country reacted so strongly?  Somehow, this tragedy has ripped our collective moral fabric.  The reason, I think, goes beyond the first attempted assassination of a female Member of Congress.  It is as if the past months and years of growing public rage, vitriol, and unabashed political hate finally became anthropomorphized in the bloody figure of Jared Loughner and caused all of us to recoil in horror.  The simmering of discontent, building from 9/11, through the passions fueled over the Iraq War and President Bush on the left followed by the health care debate, T ea Party rallies, and anti-Obama rhetoric of the right, all wrapped up within the suffering brought about by the recession, has reached a near-boiling point in American society.  Regardless of Loughner's actual motives, we saw in his actions the endpoint of the dangerous trajectory we had been moving along.  And it shook us to our cores.

At times like these, I am grateful to be part of a faith with a rich history of dealing with personal and communal catastrophe.  When we reach points of civic paralysis and trauma, it is the spiritual resources of our religious traditions that offer rich resources to which we can turn.  Specifically, I think what we need now is a prayer for healing, not just for the local victims of the Tucson shooting, but for the country as a whole.  We need to start applying salve to the open wounds of our society, to begin the process of repair and restoration.  To that end, I would like to offer a variation of the traditional Jewish prayer for healing, the Misheberach.

May God who blessed our ancestors bring blessing and healing to the victims of the Tucson shooting, both those who were  present and those who, though not physically present, have nonetheless been shattered by its impact.  Though our collective spirit seems in tatters and our will close to broken, may You, God, Source of all resources, grant us a renewal of strength, vigor, and hope with which to face the future.  May we continue to recognize the multitude of resources You provide that enable us to navigate through the turbulent waters of life.  May You grant us physical and spiritual well-being, together with all others who are suffering.  And let us say, Amen.

p.s. I would like to dedicate my Misheberach to the late Debbie Friedman, z''l, a Jewish singer-songwriter extraordinaire who just passed away and whose own Misheberach has inspired myself and countless others.