I thought I would open this week of blogging with the story of how I began on a path to Jewish renaissance in my own life. For most of my adulthood I have been actively involved in work for the Jewish people. Yet for years I practiced almost no Judaism in my home, and my knowledge of Jewish history, texts, and ritual was minimal. It was only when I was in my sixties that what I consider my real Jewish education began.
The seed was planted in 1994, during one of the trips I made as president of the World Jewish Congress to convince Russia to establish diplomatic relations with Israel and to begin direct flights there. The day was Simchat Torah, the holiday that celebrates reading the end of the Torah and starting it again. Soviet Jews had been free to practice their religion since 1988, but for seventy years prior to that, Jewish ritual and Jewish education had been forbidden. As I was walking to a meeting, I saw literally thousands of Jews chatting as they milled about outside Moscow’s Choral Synagogue. I was amazed to see so many gathered there. How, after years of no religion allowed in the Soviet Union, had Jews kept their faith? What is it about Judaism, I asked myself, that has kept it alive through so much adversity while so many other traditions have disappeared?
On the aircraft on the way home from that trip, I encountered my first passage of Talmud. The text was based on a line in the Torah that states that if an ox kills three people, one must kill the ox. The Torah stops there. But the ox has value-skin, meat and bones-and the question the rabbis of the Talmud explore is who shall get what part of the dead animal. After some pages, the question is answered. At first this seemed rather arcane, but as I thought about it, I realized that all the rabbis were trying to do was to see to it that justice was done. That discovery gave me a pang of pride.
The pride I felt that day was the beginning of a new kind of Jewish life for me. I began to study Jewish texts. I began to observe Shabbat. I began to investigate what I could do to help the many disengaged American Jews to see the value in Judaism. Hope, Not Fear: A Path to Jewish Renaissance is the product of this journey.
Edgar M. Bronfman, author of Hope, Not Fear, is guest blogging on Jewcy, and he’ll be here all week. Stay tuned.
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