The Movement for Reform Judaism

DATES

What is the right way of writing the date? Is today 22.5.04 or 5.22.04, as they would write in North America? On a day like today it doesn’t matter, of course, but things become confusing when American Independence Day looks like it’s been arranged for the 7th of April. Those of us in this room who use both calendars have probably been caught out more than once.

Like all differences between the European and American ways of doing things, both sides are convinced they are right. Since, in the course of history, both America and Europe have turned to the Bible for their mandate, we might ask how the date is typically mentioned in the Bible.

Sadly – or perhaps happily – there is no definitive conclusion to this cross-cultural conundrum to be found in the Bible. An American would take solace from the story of the flood, which we are told begins on the second month on the second day. Europeans and many others can turn to this week’s portion, Bamidbar, for support. This is the first verse of the Book of Numbers:

And God spoke to Moses in the wilderness of Sinai in the Tent of Meeting on the first day of the second month in the second year of their coming out of Egypt, saying…

Note the order - day, month, year. From the most specific to the most general. Note also, however, that in the dimension of space, the order is reversed, and we move from the most general – the wilderness of Sinai – to the specific –the tent of meeting.

The first verse of the Book of Numbers contains examples of apparently contradictory ways of marking out time and space, indeed – two approaches to life. From the outside in and from the inside out. These are two distinct ways of approaching reality, and it’s not surprising, for example, that there are acting methods which emphasize the inner person and others which pick up on the external reality and then internalize from that external point.

INNIES AND OUTIES

Some Jews are inside out, and some Jews are outside in. Let’s start with the outside in, according to the order presented by our verse. This image of beginning at a far point and approaching the center has become one of the most enduring motifs of the modern Jewish experience.
When Franz Rosenzweig addressed the opening ceremony of his extraordinary Lehrhaus adult education project in 1920 in Frankfurt, he used a metaphor which was to become emblematic. Asserting that alienation was part of the modern condition, Rosenzweig called for a concerted effort to move from the periphery towards the center. This act of will on the part of the individual Jew is at the heart of Liberal Judaism. Aware that we live at one remove from the rhythms and cadences of Jewish life, we embark on a journey wherein each of us at our own pace and on our own way can move from the outside in.

Rosenzweig was not prepared to give up on what the world outside Judaism had to offer. Nor did he suggest that we feel inferior to other, more “authentic” Jews. Instead, he turns to like-minded Jews and calls upon them to carry all the wonderful insights and sensibilities they have found on the outskirts of Jewish life or beyond its boundaries, and carry them towards the center.

It is the fate of the modern Jew to be in some sense on the outskirts of Jewish life. However, he believes there is a way of doing more than just keeping a little warm place in your heart for Judaism, a sporadic warm fuzzy feeling. We are called upon to take all that we find in the world outside and carry it to the heart of our own existence, to our Jewish heart. Not rejection of the outside, and not wholesale assimilation to it – instead a great and noble move from the outside in.

There are also voices which speak of the opposite trend, starting from within. Perhaps the most relevant one in our present context is the idea of the nekudah penimit, the inner point. This Hasidic notion suggests that we all carry around within us a nub, a core, and the time will come when this concealed heart will be able to express itself.

There is a Jewish vocabulary, then, both for the outside in and for the inside out Jew, and each of us here is invited to decide whether they are more of an inny than an outy, or vice versa.

RAFAH

It is incumbent upon us all to face up to what is happening in the world in which we live. From that general comment we can be more specific, and talk of Israel, and this week we can home in on a particular place, Rafah on the Gaza Strip. It is a liminal place, being on the border between Gaza, Israel and Egypt, and people there is a constant cross-border tension, arms being smuggled beneath the ground and bullets and shells flying in the air.

I want to relate to a statement reportedly made by Rabbi Dov Lior, the Chairman of the Council of Rabbis of Judea and Samariah:

The law of our Torah is to protect our citizens and our soldiers’ and this is the true morality of the Torah of Israel, and one should not feel any guilt as a result of foreign morality – musar nochri.

Lior makes a distinction between inside and outside. Inside is valid, outside is not. Any attempt to bring a set of values or ideals from outside is to be resisted. Rabbi Lior rejects the model of Judaism moving inside out and outside in.

This approach to the morality of the State of Israel is to be rejected out if hand, both for external and internal reasons. It is Judaism which proclaims:

Who is wise? The person who learns from all people.

It is Judaism which holds up repeated examples of ‘outsiders’ who help the ‘insiders’ realize how they should proceed – Abraham, Moses, Jethro and the prophets of the Bible.

The State of Israel is undergoing a rapid process of polarization, and just as there are some who believe that no ideas from the ‘outside’ should be allowed to penetrate to the inner core, there are those who contend that there is nothing in traditional Judaism worth hanging on to. Alienated and embarrassed by the institutional Judaism they see, they want to get away from the whole thing, abandoning the core in favour of any periphery they can find. Some are besotted by all things distant, and they seem to be heading not from the outside in but from the outside out.

We have to remember the structure of the first verse of this week’s portion, containing two complementary dynamics, from the outside in and from the outside in. Progressive Judaism strives to continue in the spirit of Franz Rosenzeig, encouraging everyone in this room who has passions and interests and fields of expertise to bring them along in their search for our Jewish hearts. Increasingly, it strives also to act on the spirit of those Hasidic masters who identified an inner center and strove for its outer expression.

PRAYER FROM WITHOUT AND WITHIN

Israel is close to the hearts of many, but geographically far. I want to come even closer to home, and talk about what happens in our synagogues.

A leading Progressive rabbi is quoted in this week’s Jewish Chronicle as condemning happy-clappy services as ‘displacement activities’ which come about “when people no longer believe in God.’ I read the dynamics of prayer differently. There are some for whom prayer is a response to external stimulation: the prayer book, the aesthetic of the service, the words of the sermon. For others, prayer is essentially about the song of the soul, about what is “in here” and longs for expression. Our prayer services should be a fulfillment of the dynamic described in the first verse from this week’s portion: from the outside in, and from the inside out.

TENT OF MEETING

Let’s look again at our verse. At its heart is the ohel moed, the tent of meeting. Maybe that is where the two tendencies meet – bringing wisdom from outside, and insight from within. To be a Progressive Jew is to seek to occupy that tent of meeting, where centripetal and centrifugal forces can meet. We need that meeting as we in Israel try to make the notion of a Jewish and democratic state a reality. We need that meeting here too, and wherever Jews strive to live full and rich lives out there and in here too.

To be a Jew is not to know if you’re coming or going. It is to be both coming and going, reaching in and reaching out.

So how do we write the date, from the outside in or the inside out? It doesn’t matter how we write the date. It matters what we do with this day and every day:

May the Lord guard our going out and our coming in from now and for ever.

Shabbat Shalom

TrackBack URI for this entry

Comments (0)

Subscribe to this comment's feed