From: Arthur Waskow To: Daniel Bronstein Subject: Anything can be cheapened

Rabbinic Judaism is dead and needs earth lovingly placed upon its coffin. Only then can we turn toward a new kind of life. The depth of our grief frees us to do that; if we grieve well, we will not stay imprisoned in a dead version of the past, a dead idol that deadens us.

A new paradigm of Judaism must emerge, but I am not claiming that Jewish Renewal is the unique bearer of this step forward. Wherever there are Jewish feminists, Jews who affirm Islam and Buddhism as truth-bearing traditions, Jews who practice meditation as a new way to carry Shabbat into the week, gay and lesbian Jews who want to get married under a chuppah, eco-Jewish organic farmers and Beyond Oil organizers, and eco-kashrut mashgichim (certifiers), the new paradigm grows.

Jewish Renewal is neither utterly new nor utterly perfect. But it is a new approach to Jewish life. It responds to modernity in a fresh way, rejecting some and digesting some, in the process transforming Torah.

I am a little baffled by what you do with my writings about God in Godwrestling Round 2. You quote my caution about “inflating the ego” and then say there are dangers. Right. Of course. If there weren’t, I wouldn’t have suggested caution. Suppose the old roof on a house is leaking badly. The family proposes to re-roof, and discusses the danger that a roofer might fall and hurt herself. You seem to be saying that the very acknowledgement that there are dangers means we should not fix the roof.

Do you doubt the roof is leaking?

An example: Most Jews recite in their prayers “Adonai, Melekh ha’olam, King of the World.” Do you believe that the universe has a king, a lord who bosses us human nachschleppers around? I know very few people who believe that. I know many who feel that saying these words in prayer is silly and shows how silly Judaism is.

I also know many who find that breathing meditation, consciously joining in the breathing of all life, is a profound practice. I know many who resonate to the eco-truth that what we breathe in, the trees breathe out; what we breathe out, the trees breathe in. I know many who believe there is an intricate weave of life, of which the interbreathing of all life is both a real aspect and a metaphor. And I know many who believe that what is sacred in the universe transcends all nations, languages, and religions.

Jewish Renewal teaches that YHWH can be breathed but not pronounced, that it traverses all languages and life forms, that it invites a karmic rather than reward-and-punishment understanding of God.

We teach this way of perceiving God, and then encode it in our prayers. Why on earth would other strands of Judaism want to scorn such a poetic way of encoding the best of our biological/ecological knowledge?

And is it really dangerous? More dangerous than “melekh”?

And why is it dangerous to learn Kabbalah? You wrote how distressed you were to see a sign advertising a new “Kabbalah” energy drink. Jews who have no idea what Kabbalah is may feel attracted to that drink. But Jewish Renewal folks struggle with the serious meanings of Kabbalah and are the first to snort at such silliness. Do you prefer that all Jews remain ignorant of Kabbalah, or that it be studied (to parody the old rules) only by those who own a PhD and have sex no more than once a week?

Have you seen the ugly tchotchkes sold as sacred objects in many Jewish bookstores? Or the “kosher” soft drinks made of chemicals and sugar? Anything can be cheapened. You should be thanking God for the substantive and beautiful music, poetry, art, and midrash that have emerged from Jewish Renewal.

Shalom,

Arthur

From: Daniel Bronstein To: Arthur Waskow Subject: Buried Alive

Dear Arthur,

Who you calling a nachschlepper? And who in Sodom and Gomorrah ever said that PhDs only have sex once a week?

Although I am somewhat reluctant to do so, let me offer a serious response to your last e-mail.

We are in dialogue about whether the Renewal movement represents a new spiritual path or is instead
another manifestation of boomer narcissism. As with other modern movements in Judaism, Renewal deserves credit for its contributions to Jewish life. But you go further, generalizing about what you call “Rabbinic Judaism” and claiming the future for your own brand of Jewishness. As a trained historian, you can readily understand what Yogi Berra once said; “Predictions are hard to make, especially about the future.”

All sorts of predictions have been made about Judaism and the Jewish people. In the words of Judaic Studies professor Simon Rawidowicz, we are “Israel, the Ever-Dying People.” Just a few decades back, some of the finest sociologists of American Jewish life predicted the demise of Jewish Orthodoxy, but were, quite obviously, completely off the mark.

Around a century ago an “Orthodox” modernist, and one of the leading intellectual lights of Wissenschaft des Judentums, also proclaimed that it was his school of thought’s mission to give Judaism a decent burial. It’s fascinating that although professing to have transcended modernity you make the same argument decades later. Again, I am puzzled that despite your training as a historian you so capriciously make pronouncements on what actually happened in antiquity and claim to know how Judaism was “originally” practiced, or what certain rituals “originally” meant, despite our meager knowledge. The scholars of Wissenschaft, via their search for Ur-texts, made similar claims, but they, nevertheless, offered evidence for their theories.

The same prediction about the demise of Orthodoxy in the state of Israel also proved to be, how shall we say, shortsighted. So while you employ words like “arrogance,” “silly,” or “scorn,” I can think of few things as arrogant, scornful, or silly as proclaiming Rabbinic Judaism to be dead.

And is it not scornful and arrogant to write that “beneath” “Rabbinic Judaism” “lies an assumption of powerlessness?”

Let’s move on to God.

In the Age of Aquarius, some claimed that God was dead, but reports of this death were found to be greatly exaggerated. There are a lot of different “God ideas.” But before we shovel the dirt over those dead idols known as the rabbis, recall that the tradition teaches that we are created in the image of the Divine. On the one hand, that means that all human life is sacred. But on the other hand, the operative word is “image,” making it vital to acknowledge that while created in the image of God, we are human beings possessing all sorts of imperfections and flaws.

You feel that it is silly to recite the phrase “Melech ha’Olam.” I disagree: I don’t think the metaphor of God as sovereign of the universe is silly, and I don’t understand why conceiving of God as sovereign of the universe is any less valid than using circular or evasive language, or even talking about breathing. In fact, given the horrendous job humans are doing these days in managing the world, I would welcome being bossed around by God, especially since we are “scorching” the world.

Of course, none of us really knows the nature of God, and even Moses had to hide in a cleft of rock during his most intimate encounter with the Divine. I wouldn’t even say that the conflation of God with the Self is silly; but it is narcissistic and sounds a lot like good, old-fashioned idolatry. A sure roadmap to destructive behavior is the unwillingness to be humble before the Transcendent.

Hillel the Elder taught that “what is hateful to you, do not do to your friend.” Hillel did not cast this in the positive, (that is, “what is good for you, do to your friend”) because there are things that are good for oneself but bad for other people. Contrast this humility with “If it feels good, do it.”

Arthur, you are not trying to gently bury “Rabbinic Judaism,” you are not even giving it a decent burial; you are burying a living, breathing, thriving tradition alive.

Shalom,