Shalom Hartman Institute

Pesach: a tale of two stories

“The Crossing of the Red Sea” by Nicolas Poussin, 1634. (photo from wikimedia)

We are a people with many memories, many stories, and who we are has been shaped by the stories we remember and tell.

More than any other holiday, Pesach is about remembering and passing that memory down to the next generation. Every Jew is commanded to see themselves as if they came out of Egypt, and to tell their Egypt story to their children. The telling of this story is not mediated by teachers or rabbis, nor is it told in a communal framework. The setting of the seder is one of family and immediate friends, and the responsibility is upon every one of us to decide how we convey the story.

What makes this particularly challenging is that, beyond the complicated family dynamics, a Haggadah that is deeply problematic and different sensibilities with regard to what needs to be done, we have inherited two different stories. The challenge is not merely how to tell the story, but which story to tell.

One story, which dominates much of the Haggadah, not to speak of the story as told in the Torah, focuses on Pesach as a story of exodus, of the Jewish people being freed by God from the slavery of Egypt. “I am the Lord. I will free you from the labours of the Egyptians and deliver you from their bondage. I will redeem you with an outstretched arm and through extraordinary chastisements. And I will take you to be my people, and I will be your God.” (Exodus 6:6-7)

More than freedom and salvation, Pesach is a story of the election of the Jewish people, as God pours down God’s wrath on those who enslave the chosen ones and redeems us out of the hands of Egypt to be God’s chosen people. Each plague, told and magnified, is an expression of love, a gift of betrothal of God to us, an offering that bonds us to one another. “I the Lord am your God who brought you out of the land of Egypt, the house of bondage: you shall have no other gods besides me.” (Exodus 20:2-3)

One of the core consequences of this election narrative under Jewish law is the sanctioned discrimination between Jew and non-Jew, between the Children of Israel and the nations of the world. Because God saved us, all of us, from the slavery of Egypt, Jews are all equal, and no Jew can take another Jew as a slave. However, those who are not the recipients of the gift of exodus, the non-Jews, can become our slaves (Leviticus 25). When we go to war, even wars of aggression, the God who took us out of Egypt will always fight on our side, because the moment of election creates an us-them dichotomy in which God is always with us (Deuteronomy 20). Idolatry is neither false nor futile. It is the worship allotted by God to the non-elected. We, the chosen people, are alone commanded to worship God. The God who saved us in Egypt is our God alone (Deuteronomy 4).

This tale of the story of Egypt finds its culmination in our traditional Haggadah, in which one of its concluding prayers is a petition to God to “Pour out your wrath on the nations that do not know you…. Pursue them with anger and destroy them from beneath the heavens of the Lord.”

There is a second story of Pesach, a story in which neither the exodus nor its accompanying plagues takes central stage, but rather the hundreds of years of our subjugation in Egypt. It is to this memory that the core symbols of the holiday – matzah, the poor person’s bread, charoset, the paste that resembles mortar, and maror, the bitter herb, which cause us to relive the experience of pain – all direct us.

It is this memory that shapes the most-repeated commandment in the Torah: “The stranger who resides with you shall be to you as one of your citizens: you shall love him as yourself, for you were strangers in the Land of Egypt.” (Leviticus 19) The story of Egypt is not one of us-them, but of us being them, of us being members of the community of the downtrodden, and the subsequent obligation to treat all who are in need, Jew and non-Jew alike, as equal members of our society.

In an interesting twist on this story, the Ten Commandments obligate us to rest on the Sabbath, “so that your male and female slave may rest as you do. Remember that you were a slave in the Land of Egypt, and the Lord your God freed you from there with a mighty hand and an outstretched arm: therefore, the Lord your God has commanded you to observe the Sabbath day.” (Deuteronomy 5)

It is not merely that because we once were slaves we are bonded to all those in need. The redemption from Egypt is no longer exclusively the moment of election of us, but rather an expression of God’s care and compassion for all who are enslaved. Both our slavery and our salvation unite us with God, in a common mission to bring freedom and equality to our world.

It is with this idea that we begin to tell the story of Egypt in the traditional Haggadah. “This is the bread of affliction that our forefathers ate in the Land of Egypt. All who are hungry let them come and eat.” All, and not merely fellow Jews.

Pesach is a tale of two stories. Each has shaped who we are. As we tell our stories and pass them down to the next generation, it is our obligation to take responsibility for what will define us in the future and what will determine our religious and national identity. The choice is ours. As you tell the stories this year, choose wisely. Our future and the future of Israel depend on it.

Rabbi Dr. Donniel Hartman is president of the Shalom Hartman Institute and author of the 2016 book Putting God Second: How to Save Religion from Itself. Articles by Hartman and other institute scholars can be found at shalomhartman.org.

Pesach: story of a people’s birth

God Almighty Herself induces Egypt to give birth. We simply need to listen for the birth mother’s screams in the delivery room. We hear the screams throughout the plagues, as they become increasingly intensive, starting with the first plague, blood. (illustration by Nina Paley)

The idea of the Exodus as a birth story begins as Shemot (Exodus) begins. The first chapter brings us into the atmosphere of a giant delivery room. Things have gotten out of control: “And the Israelites were fruitful and increased abundantly and multiplied and grew exceedingly strong and the land was filled with them.” (Shemot 1:7)

The Israelites are having children all the time. There’s this anonymous, collective mass of people that are steadily spreading out. The only two figures mentioned by name are the midwives, Shifra and Pua, and there’s a reason for that. The book is telling us: “Pay attention, readers. We are entering a delivery room, and so the most important figures are the midwives. You will feel this sense of birth.”

If one didn’t get this sense from Chapter 1, take a look at Chapter 2. It begins with the personal birth story of Moses, the story of a natural, biological birth, in which a woman becomes pregnant and has a son. A few verses later, the mother places the baby in an ark, or basket, and, when Pharaoh’s daughter comes by, she takes him in and becomes his adoptive mother. She, too, has a birth story. There’s a womb – the ark. There’s water – the Nile. She sees the womb, the ark. She opens it and she sees the baby. She, too, is portrayed as having given birth. If we saw a portrait of the natural, biological birth by the Hebrew mother, we also have a portrait of the Egyptian adoptive mother who takes the child.

This “birth” mindset will intensify and be actualized through this grand metaphoric story we call the story of the Exodus from Egypt. There was a famine in Canaan, so the Israelites went to Egypt to buy grain and find seed. They stayed. Scripture tells us how they “were fruitful and increased abundantly and multiplied and grew exceedingly strong, and the land was filled with them.”

This little nucleus, the embryo that first descended, is developing within this large Egyptian womb, Israel’s “surrogate mother,” which nourishes this fetus. The time comes for the birth. As in any case of surrogate motherhood, there is difficulty. On one hand, it’s not my baby. I want it out. On the other hand, there’s emotional difficulty. I nourished that child. He’s part of my body.

From the perspective of the child, there will be problems, or challenges, of attraction and repulsion toward the surrogate mother in whom he developed. The Children of Israel grew and developed in that womb, and it must be taken out. But the Egyptian mother refuses to begin the birthing process.

Enter the most powerful midwife imaginable – God Almighty Herself. She induces Egypt to give birth. The entire story is described in this manner. We simply need to listen for the birth mother’s screams in the delivery room. We hear the screams throughout the plagues, as they become increasingly intensive. Blood. Frogs. Lice. Beasts. Pestilence. Boils.

We’re standing next to the birth mother, saying, “Push! Push! Scream! Scream! Let this baby out!” Just before the birth, a moment before the Children of Israel emerge, they are commanded to paint the doorposts with blood. Soon after, this people will pass through this doorway.

They will reach the waters. And the waters will descend, as well. Then the sea will split in two, and the Children of Israel will pass through the waters on dry land, through the birth canal that has opened for them. At the end of the birth canal, who will be waiting for them? The midwife, ready to grasp them and teach them to walk.

This story, this birth story, is the powerful story of the birth of a people. But, beyond the importance of hearing this story, it can also explain what happens later, during their travels in the desert.

Like any newborn baby, the people will cry and scream for their most immediate needs – water, food. Moses and God will provide for them because that’s how you take care of an infant. You give water and food. You can’t expect anything else. Slowly but surely, he will be taught to walk. Slowly, he will learn rules. He will be given laws to follow.

When we meet this child in Bamidbar (Numbers), once he has grown, he will make the same requests that he made in Shemot as an infant: water and food. But God’s response will be different, because we don’t have the same expectations of a little baby that we have from a growing child. We expect something different.

How do we connect this to the seder night? The Exodus, first, is a story. There is a strong emphasis on telling the story. It has all the detail it needs, and all the drama we want. These are what make this story a foundational story, one that can be transmitted generation after generation.

We sit around and tell our birth as a people. We try to impart it to the next generation. When we tell the story with all its detail, it excites us once more. But why is this done over matzah?

God planned the Exodus from the time of Abraham: “Know that your seed will be a sojourned in a land not theirs; they will serve them and be tormented by them for 400 years. But then they will go out with great wealth.”

It’s all planned, down to the moment. God tells them to have their loins girded, their bags packed and their food prepared and, when I say so, leave. Everything had been planned. So what happened? Why couldn’t the dough rise? Why couldn’t they have fresh rolls?

This is a precise dramatization of a birth story. If you want it to be credible, it has to be exact. As in the story of any birth, everything is planned. There’s a due date. There’s a packed suitcase, a list of phone numbers to call. If it’s not the first birth, there are arrangements for the older kids.

Yet labour will always be unexpected. It’s always sudden. The water breaks suddenly. Contractions come suddenly. Suddenly, it’s time to go. That’s birth. Everything is planned, but the moment arrives suddenly. This is the meaning of eating matzah. It’s as if we are saying, everything was there, everything was planned. This birth was a major event and, like every other birth, it was unexpected. Despite all the preparations, we had to run, we had to leave. The dough did not have a chance to rise. All that could be made from it was matzah.

Ilana Pardes’s book The Biography of Ancient Israel describes this as the story of a collective persona, the people of Israel: “The Israelites are delivered collectively out of the womb of Egypt. National birth, much like individual births (and all the more so in ancient times), takes place on a delicate border between life and death. It involves the transformation of blood from a signifier of death to a signifier of life. It also involves the successful opening of the womb, the prevention of the womb’s turning into a tomb…. God performs a variety of wonders in Egypt (the 10 plagues in fact are perceived as such), but the parting of the Red Sea seems to surpass them all. It marks the nation’s first breath – out in the open air – and serves as a distinct reminder of the miraculous character of the birth. Where there was nothing, a living creature emerges all of a sudden….”

As we sit around the seder table, around the matzah, telling the story of our birth each year, you may want to read from the poem, “Miracles,” by Yehuda Amichai: “From a distance everything looks like a miracle / But up close even a miracle doesn’t appear so. / Even someone who crossed the Red Sea when it split only saw the sweaty back of the one in front of him.”

Ask every participant at the seder to think of something that happened to them during the year, something that, because the individual was part of it, they “only saw the sweaty back of the one in front of him.” If we were to take a step back and look at things from a distance, we could have said to ourselves: “I’m living through a miracle. I’m passing through the sea, on dry land. I’m undergoing the process of birth, right now.”

It is worthwhile, and it even brings joy, to mention this miracle and think about it at this event celebrating the great miracle of the nation’s birth.

Dr. Orit Avnery is a research fellow at the Shalom Hartman Institute. She received her PhD in Bible studies at Bar-Ilan University. Her dissertation is entitled The Threefold Cord: Interrelations between the Books of Samuel, Ruth and Esther. This article is based on a talk she gave in Hebrew. Articles by Avnery and other institute scholars can be found at shalomhartman.org.

Jewish identity and Chanukah

“The Triumph of Judas Maccabeus” by Peter Paul Rubens, between 1634 and 1636. (photo from Wikimedia Commons)

One of the richest statements found in the Talmud about the meaning of Jewish identity is the following: “He who does not feel shame and humility before others, does not show love and compassion or abundant kindness to others, such a person is not from the seed of Abraham.” According to this statement, Jewish “genes” are as nothing without Jewish ethics. To be counted among the seed of Abraham, one’s character structure must reflect the values by which Abraham lived.

Maimonides was fully in accord with the talmudic concern with action rather than descent, with purpose and commitment rather than race. He expressed it as follows: “The distinguishing sign of a child of the covenant is his disposition to do tzedakah.” Placing action at the centre of Jewish identity mirrors a fundamental characteristic of the Judaic tradition.

For Aristotle, the peak of human perfection was to be found in thought. Man perfected himself to the degree that the objects of his thought were perfect. God – the most perfect being – was engaged in thought upon His own perfect self. In the biblical tradition, human perfection was realized in moral behaviour. Not thought but action; not knowledge of the cosmos, but involvement in history. The prophets condemned the community not because of their failure to become intellectuals, but because of their failure to feed the hungry, clothe the naked, care for the lonely and protect the socially vulnerable.

In the Torah, God is an active being. He creates the world, He feeds the hungry, He is involved in the drama of history. Typical of the Judaic worldview is the midrashic “question: “What does God do now that he has created the world?” (Such a question could never have been asked by Aristotle.) The midrash answers: “He arranges marriages!”

In the Jewish tradition, God is the creator of life, and His message to humanity is expressed in the language of mitzvah (commandment). His presence in the world entails human responsibility to improve the conditions of society and history. In the Jewish tradition, we live in the presence of God when we hear a mitzvah that obliges us to act in a particular way. Maimonides wrote that God gave the 613 commandments so that a Jew can find one mitzvah that they can perform with love and complete devotion.

One of the distortions of modern existentialism is the exaltation of the virtues of sincerity, devotion, authenticity, etc., irrespective of their specific content. The sincerity of the Nazis in no way mitigates their barbarity and depravity. Subjective attitudes are important aspects of human behaviour, only if their content is worthwhile and significant. It is ludicrous to celebrate Maccabean courage without appreciating their commitment to monotheism, mitzvah and the dignity of Jewish particularity.

In celebrating Chanukah, therefore, we should direct our attention to the problematic issues involved in the spiritual survival of the Jewish community within the modern world. Many traditional Jews believe that Jewish particularity is incompatible with modern mass culture and that Judaic bonds holding together the community cannot bear the stress caused by exposure to the cultural rhythms of the larger non-Jewish society.

Those who accept this assessment of Judaism in the modern world turn to social and cultural separation in order to secure Judaism’s survival. There are others who are skeptical as to whether this ghettoization can succeed. Modern communication makes it impossible to escape acculturation to modern “Hellenism.” It is, in their opinion, futile to resist. We should accept our fate and accommodate ourselves to the inevitability of our eventual assimilation.

A third option, which defines the philosophy of the Shalom Hartman Institute, rejects the defeatism of the latter point of view and also the separatism of the former. We question the belief that Judaism has always survived because of its radical separation from the surrounding culture. Chanukah does not commemorate a total rejection of Hellenism but, as Elias Bickerman shows in From Ezra to the Last of the Maccabees, the revolt focused specifically on those aspects of foreign rule that expressly aimed at weakening loyalty to the God of Israel.

photo - A Maimonides stamp from Paraguay, 1985 — A Maimonides stamp from Paraguay, 1985. *(photo from Wikimedia Commons)*

Maimonides’ thought was clearly enriched by his exposure to the writings of Aristotle and Plato and Islamic scholars such as al-Farazi and Ibn Baja. Rabbi Joseph B. Soloveitchik was enriched by Kant and Kierkegaard. These two great halachic teachers are living examples of the intellectual and spiritual enrichment that results from exposure to non-Jewish intellectual and spiritual frameworks.

The major question that we must ponder on Chanukah is whether the Jewish people can develop an identity that will enable it to meet the outside world without feeling threatened or intimidated.

Can we absorb from others without being smothered? Can we appreciate and assimilate that which derives from “foreign” sources, while at the same time feel firmly anchored to our particular frame of reference?

In order to determine what we can or cannot select, it is essential that the modern Jew gains an intelligent appreciation of the basic values of their tradition. Learning was not essential for our ancestors, because they were insulated by the cultural and physical Jewish ghetto. For the Jew to leave the protective framework of that ghetto, it is necessary for them to have a personal sense of self-worth and dignity.

In celebrating Chanukah, we remind ourselves that our Jewish identity must not be grounded in biological descent but in a heroic commitment to a way of life. Our past, the memories we bring from the home we came from, are only the beginning stages of our spiritual self-understanding as Jews. How we live in the present and what we aspire for in the future must be the major sources nurturing our identity as Jews.

On the holiday of Shavuot, we remember how our people pledged to live by the Ten Commandments. On Chanukah, we remember how that commitment inspired a nation to engage in a heroic battle against religious tyranny. Today, the battle for cultural and spiritual survival continues.

In the Western, free world, the battle is against indifference, anomie and cultural assimilation. In Israel, the challenge is to do battle against making nationalism a substitute for covenantal Judaism. For Jews who live in the different areas of the globe, the memory of the Maccabees can be an inspiration to persevere and believe that, ultimately, they will be victorious in their struggle.

Rabbi Prof. David Hartman (1931-2013) was founder of the Shalom Hartman Institute. This essay on Chanukah, one of several on the holiday, dates to 1984. This and other writings have been brought to light by SHI library director Daniel Price. Articles by Hartman, z”l, and other institute scholars can be found at shalomhartman.org.

What does Chanukah mean?

The light of our chanukiyot must shine as a commitment to discovering a Judaism of ideas and values as an integral part of our journey. (photo by David Williss/flickr.com)

Chanukah is a holiday with an identity crisis. From the beginning, the rabbis had difficulty pinpointing what it was that we were celebrating. Was it the Maccabees’ or God’s military victory over the Assyrians? Was it a spiritual victory of Judaism over Hellenism? Was it the miracle in which one small jar gave light in the Temple for eight days? Or is it a holiday celebrating a victory of the Jewish people against religious oppression?

What we often do when we have many options is that we pick all of them. Instead of clarifying, however, this creates confusion and a lack of focus and a relegating of the holiday away from values to the realm of ritual observance alone. We light candles without really knowing why and celebrate without a clear understanding of the cause of our joy.

The identity crisis of Chanukah, however, comes from an even deeper source. Many of the above potential meanings for celebration are no longer compelling or meaningful. Military victories are wonderful, especially when one takes into account the alternative, but in a world in which Jewish power is integral to the Jewish experience, the celebration of a victory more than 2,000 years ago is not particularly compelling or meaningful. For a military victory to be memorable, its outcome needs to have produced a tipping point. The Maccabean victory was no such tipping point in Jewish history.

Today, however, we face an even more substantive issue. When Chanukah became a holiday, we lived in a world of dichotomies between Judaism and Hellenism, in which the lights of Chanukah symbolized a purity of faith and commitment to Torah free from Hellenistic influence and corruption. We spoke of Athens and Jerusalem as two alternative and mutually exclusive paths. One’s identity was either grounded in and nurtured by Jerusalem or was rooted and guided by Athens. Each creates a distinct and mutually exclusive identity. The victory of one is the defeat of the other.

The essence of the modern era, however, may be encapsulated as the period in which such dichotomies have come to an end. A modern Jew is one who has multiple identities and multiple loyalties. He or she is a traveler in an open marketplace of ideas in search of new synergies and meanings. What a previous generation would call assimilation – that is, the penetration of “outside” ideas and cultures within a Jewish one – the modern Jew sees as essential to building a life of meaning and a Judaism of excellence.

Whatever Athens or Jerusalem might have signified in the past, today they represent the notion that to be a Jew is to live in the larger world and aspire to create a new dialogue with that world in which both sides learn from and impact each other. As a result, Jewish identity has changed. We no longer see our identity as singular and unique, but as integrated and complex. Jews today see themselves as citizens of both Athens and Jerusalem.

What then does Chanukah mean? For many, it acquires special significance as a buttress to Jewish identity during Christmas season, when Christian identity shines. The chanukiyah is the antidote to the Christmas tree, and we can give our children presents for eight days and not merely one.

Far from ridiculing the above, I actually believe that therein may lay the beginning of a new meaning for Chanukah. Not, however, in its commercial sense or as an antidote to anything, but in its aspirations to create a space for Jews and Judaism within a larger world. We do not yearn to reject Athens or to go back to a singular identity. We celebrate the possibilities of engaging one of our identities with the other, one idea with another, to the mutual growth and benefit of each. The challenge, however, in a multicultural, multi-identity world is how not to descend into mediocre notions of common denominators and superficial syntheses.

If the real gift of modernity is the moral and spiritual consequences of having a complex identity and living in both the metaphorical Jerusalem and Athens, the challenge is how to sustain all the various features of one’s identity. Assimilation today is no longer the removal of dichotomies, but the abandonment of difference.

Our enemy is not outside but within. The purpose of lighting a candle is not to celebrate a miracle of yesteryear but to declare a commitment to ensuring that to maintain a Jewish identity is a part of my being. One is obligated to place the chanukiyah in a window where passers-by can see it and, in so doing, make space within one’s public persona for Judaism to shine forth.

A “good Jew” is no longer one who fights Hellenism but one who maintains a Jewish core within the multiple facets of his or her life. It was often much easier to be a Jew when we were fighting “them,” whoever “them” may have been. To maintain a Jewish commitment within a world in which dichotomies are gone requires a level of Jewish education and knowledge unparalleled in Jewish history. A dialogue between Jerusalem and Athens in which the value of each is maintained will only be possible if one knows what Jerusalem means and what values and ideas Judaism can contribute to living a meaningful life.

We are free today to light our chanukiyot, but the light must not only shine outside as a wall between us and them, it must shine within as a commitment to discovering a Judaism of ideas and values as an integral part of our journey.

Rabbi Dr. Donniel Hartman is president of the Shalom Hartman Institute and author of the 2016 book Putting God Second: How to Save Religion from Itself. This article was initially published in 2010, and updated and syndicated by Religion News Service in 2017. Articles by Hartman and other institute scholars can be found at shalomhartman.org.

Israel-Diaspora divide

Mattathias and the Apostate (1 Maccabees 2:1-25) in Gustave Doré’s English Bible 1866. The time has not yet come when we no longer need the warrior Maccabee. (photo from Wikimedia Commons)

Before the rebirth of the modern state of Israel and the unprecedented success of Jews in North America, Jews had very little to celebrate. After our triumphant Exodus from Egypt, it was more or less downhill and, in the competition between monotheistic faiths, we were always on the losing side. The God who chose us, to quote Woody Allen, was a consistent “underachiever,” at least when it came to looking after our interests.

One of the few exceptions in this tragic tale was Chanukah. For a moment, we won. Who we defeated and what we achieved are debated though. Were the Maccabees fighting a foreign, occupying force that wanted to deny the Jewish people their freedom and liberty, or was the war essentially a battle against Hellenization and assimilation? Was the miracle the military victory or a spiritual one? Before the 20th century, it didn’t really matter. We had won at something. Dayenu. The light of Chanukah illuminated the darkness that engulfed much of Jewish history, and gave hope that, one day, we would again prevail.

That hope came true in the 20th century, and both Israel and North American Judaism embraced Chanukah as the paradigm for their success. Each, however, tells a very different Chanukah tale and sees itself as combating a very different darkness.

Now, differences alone are not a problem, as long as they complement each other. In the case of Chanukah, however, these differences express a deep schism between Israel and North American Jewry. It is not hyperbolic to argue that, unless we learn how to share a Chanukah story, our shared enterprise and common identity are at risk.

In Israel, Chanukah is primarily a story of our military victory over an oppressive enemy that sought to destroy us. Zionists who wanted to re-form the Jewish psyche and heal it from its diasporic defeatism and powerlessness saw the foundation for the new Jew in the Maccabees of old – a Jew who was brave, a Jew who was willing to bear arms and, most significantly, a Jew who was victorious.

The Maccabean victory of the few over the many continues to serve as a dominant theme in Israeli discourse. In our experience, we continue to encounter forces of darkness who seek to destroy us. We are the light that they yearn to extinguish and, as we celebrate Chanukah, we recommit ourselves to the heroism and sacrifice that our survival requires and demands. If, in the past, our tradition commanded every Jew to see themselves as coming out of Egypt, in modern Israeli society, the demand is that every Jew commits himself or herself to being a modern Maccabee.

In North America, a very different Chanukah story is told. As paragons of religious tolerance, the United States and Canada have created an unprecedented environment for Jews to live and thrive as a powerful and beloved minority. There is no war of survival. Consequently, North American Jews have little personal use for the warrior Maccabee.

Through the North American lens, Chanukah celebrates the constitutional rights of all to religious freedom and to the fostering of religious tolerance. The war of the Maccabees was a battle against religious oppression, and the Maccabees were liberal warriors against the darkness of religious oppression and fundamentalism. Through the chanukiyah, which stands proudly side-by-side with the Christmas tree, Jews pledge to lead the fight to preserve the religious freedoms of liberal democratic life. The Chanukah light is the torch leading their way.

The beauty of religious symbols is that they have no inherent meaning, and the history on which they stand is but raw material to be molded by each generation and community in search of meaning and relevance. People in different times and circumstances will inevitably develop diverse understandings. The problem arises when these differences become expressions of value systems that are positioned as mutually exclusive.

A community is a collection of individuals who do not merely share common symbols. A strong and vibrant worldwide Jewish community is only possible if we share as well a set of common values. For North American and Israeli Jews to walk hand-in-hand, we cannot be alienated from each other’s values, but, quite to the contrary, we must respect and seek to embody them. In short, we must not only light the same candles, but strive to illuminate and overcome the same darkness.

Israelis must begin to fight against the darkness of religious intolerance. Religious freedom must be the foundation of Israel’s democracy, and Israelis must cease to vote primarily for the Maccabean leader who will lead us to victory against external foes, and instead seek a Maccabee who is devoted to creating a Jewish society where all forms of Judaism and all religions are supported and treated with equal respect. No North American Jew will in the long run have a relationship with Israel that does not strive to embody these values.

At the same time, the generation of North American Jews for whom the survival and power of Israel are a given, must learn to recognize and respect the real threats and dangers that their people in Israel experience every day. The time has not yet come when we no longer need the warrior Maccabee. While we share the same values of justice and peace, in the realities of the Middle East, their implementation is challenging at best. Israelis will not feel connected to a North American Jewry that does not appreciate the complexity of this reality.

As a people, we share the same Chanukah. To be a united people, we must learn how to share each other’s stories, share each other’s needs and values, and together fight to embody them in our lives.

Rabbi Dr. Donniel Hartman is president of the Shalom Hartman Institute and author of the 2016 book Putting God Second: How to Save Religion from Itself. This article was initially posted on the Times of Israel in 2015. Articles by Hartman and other institute scholars can be found at shalomhartman.org.

#MeToo and education

Lu Winters, academic and student wellness counselor at King David High School. (photo from Lu Winters)

In the fourth of a series of articles on sexual harassment and violence in the Jewish community, the Jewish Independent speaks with Lu Winters of King David High School, Elana Stein Hain of the Shalom Hartman Institute and Rabbi Carey Brown of Temple Sholom.

The first step in reducing bullying and other abuse in schools is to work with the students, said Lu Winters, academic and student wellness counselor at King David High School.

“I build connections with students in class,” she told the Independent. “And, with various groups in the school, I sometimes take them on trips. After the connection has been built, then the helping relationship can happen. It can happen one-on-one, in groups, in gender groups and through workshops.

“At King David, I’ve created a wellness program. Each grade receives a workshop, or two or three, depending on what’s going on during the year, on specific topics that I think are age-appropriate. I wish I could do every workshop for every single grade, but then the academic part of school would fall to the wayside.

“We run workshops on topics like LGBTQ awareness; healthy relationships with your body; self-esteem; stress and anxiety; drugs and alcohol; choices and values; and sexual health.”

Since the start of the #MeToo movement, Winters has seen some momentum. People have a lot to say about the movement, she said. “We haven’t had a specific workshop about it this year, but it’s on my radar for next year. During our sexual health education classes, we do address sexual harassment and consent, including talking about the roles of everyone involved, people’s faith, and making appropriate decisions for themselves at the right time … what to do if, G-d forbid, anything happens: who to talk to, what kind of support you can get.”

photo - Elana Stein Hain, scholar resident and director of faculty at the Shalom Hartman Institute — Elana Stein Hain, scholar resident and director of faculty at the Shalom Hartman Institute. *(photo from Elana Stein Hain)*

In the greater Jewish educational sphere, the Shalom Hartman Institute has produced a series of videos about related topics and examines how scripture has educated Jews on the subject over the years. Elana Stein Hain, scholar resident and director of faculty, has been leading the project.

“What we do is essentially develop curriculum around challenges facing the Jewish people,” Stein Hain told the Independent. “And I wouldn’t even say it’s about developing curriculum as much as developing conceptual frameworks for thinking about issues that arise. We’re an educational think tank. We ask ourselves what issues are now facing the Jewish people and consider how to develop educational material that deepens how we think about these issues. Then, we speak with change agents in the Jewish community about some ways of thinking.”

Stein Hain and her team began by looking for Torah teachings that address the topic of harassment directly. They came up with a three-part video series, which launched with a presentation that addressed the question of how, as a 21st-century teacher, you can educate people with our most sacred text and have the value proposition of our most sacred text being very important and continuing to give us the wisdom we seek, said Stein Hain. “And, also, we address the absence or relative absence of women’s voices and women as an audience.”

The next video talk was by Dr. Paul Nahme, a member of the institute’s Created Equal Team. He speaks on how definitions of manhood are dependent on cultural context.

“There’s this ‘boys will be boys’ kind of assumption and he says that, actually, there are places in Jewish tradition where that assumption had been challenged,” explained Stein Hain. “Young men were being trained to not be bravado macho, arrogant and assertive – to instead be trained to think about what it means to have doubts, to need someone else’s help. That was in contrast to what masculinity was understood to be.”

The last talk in the series was done by another member of the team, Dr. Arielle Levites, who discusses the portrayal of women in some Jewish traditional texts.

“It’s a deep folk story about women who try to move beyond their station or to move beyond the assumptions of them being portrayed as monsters,” said Stein Hain. “And she relates that to the … women who come forward with claims of sexual harassment or sexual violence who become seen as the offending party, getting questioned and vilified in certain ways.”

All of the videos can be accessed at hartman.org.il.

“The idea is really to get to the root of education,” said Stein Hain. “We are glad that people are going to do trainings on sexual harassment, on mandated reporting and on how to respond in the moment. We’d like to get to the root thought process of a culture that has come to this. And we want to learn how we can educate better, so we can have an adaptive change in the way people think, talk and act. Then, society and the Jewish community in particular can be built upon a different foundation.”

The educational realm within synagogues has also felt reverberations of the #MeToo movement, according to Rabbi Carey Brown of Temple Sholom.

photo - Rabbi Carey Brown of Temple Sholom — Rabbi Carey Brown of Temple Sholom. *(photo from Carey Brown)*

“I have seen an incredible amount of conversation among rabbis about this issue,” said Brown. “Some have been from within female rabbinic circles of women … some confronting it … things that people had kept within themselves for years or decades … and, now, gaining the courage to talk about it – everything from struggles to trying to understand the situation insofar as its professional implications for female rabbis … major discussions are being had on the topic at our annual conferences.

“Within the congregation, I haven’t had any individuals come to talk to me about personal experience,” she said. “But I have had a sense that women are feeling more free to bring up topics having to do with abuse, with safety, within the congregation, [at the] board level or [from a] staff perspective.”

A couple of months ago, the synagogue’s Men’s Club had a program on the #MeToo movement and sexual harassment in the workplace, including panel discussion on the topic in which Brown participated.

“I was really glad they took the initiative to have this program,” said Brown. “This didn’t come from the rabbis; it came from their leadership wanting to have an opportunity to talk about it. The conversation was really good and those who attended were very engaged and didn’t want to leave.”

Brown spoke about the Jewish perspective, discussing its tradition of values and ideas around sexual harassment, as well as her own personal experience with harassment.

“We talked a lot about consent,” said the rabbi. “A few different pieces of Talmud were discussed. We looked at this one that was about what happens if a man – one who counts money for a woman from his hand to her hand in order to look upon her – even if he has accumulated knowledge of Torah and good deeds like Moses, he will not be absolved from punishment.

“We talked about how, if someone even has a good reputation in the community, is known for their knowledge, good deeds and business … if they are abusive or using their power in a way that puts someone else in a position in which they are abused and powerless … our tradition says that, no, that is not OK.”

Abuse can be as simple as the way one person looks at another – if there is a misuse of power or position to objectify someone, Jewish tradition says that is not acceptable, stressed Brown.

“We talked about how we need to stand up when someone is being objectified, abused or put into a difficult situation,” she said. “That is part of our Jewish imperative – not to look away. It is part of what the Torah teaches us: that we can’t be indifferent and we must act.”

Over the years, Brown has had inappropriate comments directed at her. She said, “I’ve received comments like, ‘You don’t look like a rabbi’ or ‘If my rabbi looked like you, I’d have gone to shul a lot more when I was younger,’ or comments on my clothing and hair, and such.

“I mentioned at the event with the Men’s Club that my experience, both in Vancouver at Temple Sholom and in Boston, has been that the longer that I am the rabbi of a community, the stronger the relationships. And, I feel some of those things begin to fade away … within the regular, active population of the synagogue.

“It’s often when I’m in a new environment with people who don’t know me – at a shivah minyan, a wedding or something like that – my antennae go up. I’m very aware that it’s very likely I’ll get comments that are really inappropriate or that I have to psyche myself up a little bit to deal with.

“If I’m at a shivah minyan, I’m there to comfort the bereaved. I’m generally not going to confront in that situation,” she said. “I will take it with a grain of salt and maybe grumble about it to a friend. But, sometimes I’ll say, ‘That’s not appropriate.’ Sometimes, I’ll hear things like, ‘I’ve never kissed a rabbi before.’ And, I’ll say, ‘Well, we don’t need to kiss.’ I’ll push back a little bit to establish some boundaries.”

Rebeca Kuropatwa is a Winnipeg freelance writer.

What is freedom?

“Israel in Egypt” by Edward Poynter, 1867. (photo from Wikimedia Commons)

There is a certain inherent ambivalence when we think of the meaning of freedom and its association with the holiday of Pesach. One of the essential features of the liberation story is our freedom from human subjugation: “Yesterday we were slaves to Pharaoh, today we are free men and women.”

This freedom, however, did not come about as a result of a revolution instigated by the Jewish people but, rather, as the biblical story relates, through the redemptive hand of God. As a result, this physical redemption is often connected with a religious duty: “I am the Lord your God, who brought you out of Egypt, out of the land of slavery; you shall have no other gods besides me.” (Exodus 20: 2-3)

What is the nature of this connection? Is it an obligation or an opportunity? Is our commitment to God and the Torah a price we pay for the Exodus, or is it a gift – a gift made possible by our physical freedom, but one that we may choose whether or not to receive? The question we as Jews ought to reflect on this Pesach is whether the freedom from Egypt is limited to liberation from physical servitude, or does it include freedom of conscience and faith.

Historically, Jews did not engage extensively in questions of personal autonomy; at most, they spoke about what Isaiah Berlin referred to as “positive liberty” (Berlin, Two Concepts of Liberty). As opposed to the simple, more intuitive concept of negative liberty – “the freedom from” constraints or compulsion, positive liberty is “the freedom to” – the freedom to be all one ought to be, to do that which is the fullest expression of one’s potential. The notion of positive liberty is clearly present in the rabbinic tradition, in such statements as, “There is no free person but he or she who studies Torah.” (Avot 6:2) Freedom, for Jews, has traditionally meant “the freedom to” – the ability to achieve complete self-realization, through a firm, unwavering commitment to God and His word.

Standing alone, however, positive liberty is an extremely precarious concept. We need look no further than the 20th century, when different fascist leaders established their rule on a promise of positive liberty (the freedom to live in a stable society, the freedom to attain financial prosperity, the freedom to fulfil one’s destiny as a member of the master race), to appreciate the danger it harbours: the creation of oppressive, totalitarian regimes, violently trampling the rights of their citizens in the name of freedom. Without the underlying basis of negative liberty, positive liberty means nothing more than the freedom to do that which others determine you ought, to fulfil what others have decided to be your potential.

This question becomes all the more pointed in the context of the state of Israel. So long as Jews lived in Western liberal democracies, they vicariously inherited the value of negative liberty and functioned within its confines. But an essential question facing the modern state of Israel, the only Jewish democracy, is what concept of liberty does it officially espouse? Is Israel a “free state” that dictates the forms of Judaism that are most appropriate? Or does it guarantee its citizens the right and conditions to determine their own individual Jewish path?

If Pesach is going to be not simply a liberation story of our past but a modern, continuous liberation story “in every generation,” we must recognize that positive liberty is an incomplete liberty, that the freedom from Egypt – indeed, our very existence as a free people in our own country – must be accompanied by a commitment to religious freedom and the diversity it will engender.

The spirit of Pesach requires a national pledge to free Israeli society of all and any vestiges of religious coercion, including the manipulation of public funds in order to constrain spiritual choices. In the spirit of Pesach, we must commit ourselves to speaking only in the language of education, and never in the language of indoctrination and coercion.

One of the great paradoxes of Israeli society is that those who function in the name of positive liberty actively limit the actualization of the spiritual potential of Jews. Consequently, the state of Israel is one of the only places in which non-Orthodox Jews can barely receive a Jewish education. Religious coercion and legislation hasn’t furthered our marriage with God; rather, it has created an ever-increasing rift and divorce.

The freedom of Pesach has multiple dimensions. It is our responsibility to ensure it is understood and employed as a catalyst for progress, as a basis for assimilating the broadest notions of negative liberty within our religious language and values. Just as we reject being enslaved by Pharaoh, so, too, must we reject the subjugation of our minds and souls to any authority. In the end, if God is to be the God of the Jewish people, if Judaism and its values are to shape our lives, it will not be because we owe God for our redemption from Egypt, but because we choose a life with God as free men and women.

Contending with contradictions

“The Four Sons,” Arthur Szyk, 1934. According to Wikimedia, Szyk “originally intended his Passover story of persecution and deliverance (told through the traditional text of the Haggadah) to be a strong statement against the Nazis, but no publisher in his native Poland dared take on a project with strong anti-Nazi iconography. He ultimately found a publisher in England. This image of the Four Sons … depicts the Wicked Son as an assimilated German complete with porkpie hat and Hitler mustache.” (image from From Arthur Szyk Society, Burlingame, Calif.)

The significance of the seder’s Four Questions should not be confined to being a concrete educational tool for the purpose of teaching historical information to children having a limited sense of abstraction and who bore easily. The questions are a characteristic of the adult intellectual culture during the time of the rabbis.

In the Mishnah, the child is the one who asks and the parent teaches, but, in the Talmud, another source is quoted that requires the adult to ask questions of him or herself: “Our rabbis taught: if his child is intelligent he asks him, while if he is not intelligent his wife asks him; but if not, he asks himself. And even two scholars who know the laws of Passover ask one another.” (Babylonian Talmud, Pesachim 116a)

Here the point is not to recount the story of the Exodus to children, but rather to create a dialogue of questions and answers among adults. The questions of the wise child may be thought-provoking to his or her parents; similarly, the questions of one colleague would be of interest to another. Someone who knows all the laws of Pesach is still required to ask questions, and scholars on their own at the seder are required to ask themselves questions. Why?

At a certain level, the questions serve as an external pretext to refresh the memory in order to raise the level of consciousness concerning the Exodus, even for those who have passive knowledge of the information. At another level, someone who asks himself or herself questions and then answers them, can delve deeper and discover new aspects of knowledge.

This is the educational method practised in the Lithuanian yeshivot – two students on the same level study the text by asking each other questions, raising hypotheses and debating the issues, without hearing lectures from a teacher “who knows the answers.”

This is common practice in universities, where a researcher finding himself or herself at an impasse takes a walk alone while conducting an internal dialogue, which may culminate with new insights into a subject with which s/he is very familiar. The question is a powerful tool for the advancement of the thinking of both the one who asks and answers it.

The rabbis identified a particular type of question, known as a kushiya. A kushiya queries a practice that contains an internal contradiction or which runs contrary to other authorized sources. Unlike the kushiya, an ordinary question generally begins with the word “what,” for example, “What time is it?” It is as if the object of the question has something, information, that the one asking the question needs, and that the one asked “lends” out (literally, sh’ayla, in Hebrew).

The formulation of the kushiya is more sophisticated: “One would expect that such a thing would happen or be written, but why has something else, something unexpected happened or been written?” The poser of the kushiya comes equipped with information and expectations for a certain world order, and this makes him or her aware of deviations, contradictions and the disappointment of expectations. “How is this night different from all other nights – on all other nights we eat leavened bread and matzah, but on this night we eat only matzah?”

The one posing the kushiya sees the whole picture and has expectations of a rational world order. That is why any contradiction requires a rational explanation. We might expect that the more one learns, the fewer questions s/he might ask, after all, s/he already has so much information. But the true intellectual will pose ever more kushiyot, because s/he is all the more aware of the complexity of the world, which is arranged according to so many principles. Curiosity is increasingly aroused and that is why the wise child is the one who asks the kushiyot of his or her own volition, while the younger children need the help of the parent to ask even the simplest question.

Paradoxically, the search for rationality is sustained by the unusual and not by the regular orderly routine. People do not query that which can be taken for granted, even if the explanation is unknown. For example, based on the experience of many Pesachs and seder nights, to the adult Jew, the youngest child asking the Four Questions is taken as a matter of course. But as soon as s/he discovers a different version of the questions, such as the one we saw in the Mishnah, s/he asks “Why do we ask these questions and not others? What is the reason?” or “Why does the Mishnah say the parent says Ma Nishtanah rather than the child?”

The search for rationality in our familiar world is sustained by the ability to imagine alternatives to the existing order. There is a set introduction to the midrashei halakha, homiletic interpretations and inferences of the rabbis (in the Mekhilta). It involves the raising of a hypothetical question, as in this example from the Haggadah. The rabbis wondered:

“You shall tell your child on that day: ‘It is because of this, that the Lord did for me when I went free from Egypt.’” Could this verse mean that you should begin to tell the story at the beginning of the month (in which the Exodus occurred)? No, for the verse explicitly states “on that day” (of the Exodus). Could that mean that we start when it is still daytime? No, for the verse explicitly states: “because of this.” “This” refers to matzah and maror laid before you (only on seder night) (Mekhilta).

“This” implies that the parents must point at the matzah and maror, and use them as visual aids to tell the story (Rabbi Simcha of Vitri).

“Could this verse mean” introduces an imaginative, alternative hypothesis based on the biblical text. “No, for the verse explicitly states that” is a strict construction of the meaning of the existent version of the text that neutralizes the feasibility of an alternative suggestion.

Indeed, the midrashei halakha ask even when no additional version has been found, and only an imaginative person could envisage other reasonable possibilities. There is no attempt here to undermine the accepted text or religious practice, but rather to understand what lies behind it.

If so, then the study method of the rabbis is seemingly founded on a paradox. In order to understand the reasons for the existing order of the customs or the words of the biblical text, we must be able to conceive of another order based on alternative logic. Only that which is not self-explanatory and is not accepted blindly as tradition can lead to a process of thought and discovery of the rationality it contains. The ideal scholar in the culture of the rabbis is not an authoritative figure acting on the basis of a simplistic faith who accepts basic premises without question.

Noam Zion has been a senior research fellow at the Shalom Hartman Institute since 1978, and he teaches in Hartman Institute rabbinic programs. He also works with the Muslim Leadership Institute, the Hevruta gap-year program for Israeli and American Jews, and the Angelica Ecumenical Studies program in collaboration with the Vatican University Angelicum in Rome. He has developed study guides on Bible, holidays and rabbinic ethics, has numerous publications to his credit and lectures worldwide. Articles by Zion and other Hartman Institute scholars can be found at shalomhartman.org.

What might the future hold now that the peace talks have failed?

This article was originally published in the Times of Israel the day before negotiations failed and the editing takes this into account. It is reprinted with permission.

As the current peace talks between Israel and the Palestinians have failed, we need to prepare for what comes next.

For some, this preparation involves preparing the public relations case for why “they” are to blame and shoring up our arguments and defence against a partial or broad boycott, divestment and sanction (BDS) campaign. It might also involve the circling of wagons around the “loyalists” and a legislative and communal campaign against the “outliers.” Who can march, when and where, who can speak, when and where, whose support is acceptable, and who is included under our “big tent,” are all going to be the subjects of ever-increasing and acrimonious debate, and some around the world might not take it as self-evident that it is “their” fault.

What happens after we accept that, for possibly the next decade, an agreement will elude us? What happens when our aspirational horizons are contracted and the status quo is all we can look forward to? Do we commence with punitive steps, such as annexing Judea and Samaria, expanding our hold on the land through settlement building and expansion, and a cessation of financial cooperation and support with the Palestinian Authority? Do these actions contribute to a stronger and greater Israel, to Israel’s vision of itself and relationship with world Jewry and the international community?

Like U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry, I, too, fear the consequences of an energized BDS movement. But, more than that, I fear the ghetto mentality and victimhood psychology to which it would give birth. As a people, we are well schooled in living in the midst of animosity and defensive responses are imprinted on our DNA. Instead of leading the Jewish people away from a Holocaust-centred narrative, Israel would be its new locus of operations.

All criticism will immediately be subsumed under the banner of antisemitism and the world will be divided between the stark categories of friend or foe, with the former an ever-shrinking category. Friends will be confined to those who do not merely support us but who agree with us and reaffirm our narrative. Our world will become smaller and our walls higher as we create with our own hands the greatest ghetto in Jewish history.

This is not the Jewish world into which I want to raise my grandchildren. This is not a Jewish world that has any chance of attracting Jews who are searching for the location of their primary identity. This is not an Israel that can lay claim to a leadership position in Jewish life and attract the loyalty of future generations. This is not an Israel that can build new bridges, whether spiritual, moral, economic or political, with the larger world and our Christian and Muslim friends.

The making of peace requires two sides. Whether we did everything in our power and whether the Palestinians did everything in theirs is a factual question and, as such, paradoxically, unresolvable, for we rarely shape our opinions on the basis of facts, and instead shape our perception of the facts on the basis of our opinions.

We need to ensure that the cessation of the current peace negotiations does not at the same time unleash an uncontrollable process and narrative that will create a broader reality alien to who we are and detrimental to who we want to be.

I am concerned with that over which we do have control – our values, principles and identity as a nation and as a people. We need to ensure that the cessation of the current peace negotiations does not at the same time unleash an uncontrollable process and narrative that will create a broader reality alien to who we are and detrimental to who we want to be.

We now awaken to a world where policy is not the barter of negotiations nor the payment offered for compromises from the other side. We awaken to a world where we have to negotiate once more with ourselves and discover what we really want and what we need to do to get there. Settlement expansion is no longer a Palestinian problem but an Israeli one; educating youth towards violence is no longer an Israeli concern but a Palestinian one.

The demands of the other have ceased to serve as the wall behind which we hide ourselves from our own values and interests. We discover that all the punitive threats of harm that we levied at each other during the negotiations, if in fact implemented, harm “us” at least to the same degree.

Together with the mobilization of our forces for the sake of public relations, we need a mobilization of our best talent and leadership to determine and implement our national policies. We need to lead and not be led.

While a unilateral withdrawal along the lines of Gaza is not prudent, a unilateral implementation of policies that serve our moral and political interests is not only prudent but critical.

Such unilateral policies, I believe, must first fortify our Jewish commitment to the equality of all humankind, to the treatment of others as we would want to be treated ourselves and to the disdain we feel in the role of occupying another people. As an expression of these commitments, we must first clarify the borders we believe are defensible and which at the same time will allow for a viable Palestinian state.

This must be followed by a cessation of all settlement expansion, let alone building beyond these lines. At the same time, this cessation must be accompanied by a gradual dismantling of those settlements that are outside our self-proclaimed borders: first, through stopping economic incentives; second, through the provision of economic incentives to move; and third, through the construction of viable housing alternatives to accommodate the inhabitants of these settlements. All this will undoubtedly take time, but now, in the days after, what we have in abundance is time.

Just as we built a massive infrastructure to support the safety of the Israeli citizens who live there, we must now invest heavily in roads, bridges and tunnels that will allow unencumbered and free passage, to the best of our ability, for Palestinian inhabitants.

As the role of occupier is prolonged, we must be ever more conscious of the effects that it has both on those who are occupied and on those who are occupying. We must engage in an ever more rigorous analysis of our military footprint in Judea and Samaria and minimize our interference in the everyday lives of the Palestinian people to pressing security concerns alone. Just as we built a massive infrastructure to support the safety of the Israeli citizens who live there, we must now invest heavily in roads, bridges and tunnels that will allow unencumbered and free passage, to the best of our ability, for Palestinian inhabitants.

As the occupier, we must realize that the cancer is not merely affecting a small group of radical settlers but us all. We must double and triple our educational programs geared toward increasing commitment and sensitivity to the equality of human beings and to their inalienable rights. We must fight any and all exhibitions of discrimination and national racism. If we are not at the present time capable of applying our values to the Palestinian people in Judea and Samaria, we can double and triple our efforts in implementing them toward our fellow Israeli Arab Palestinian citizens.

Finally, we must relearn the old Diaspora art of living with unfulfilled dreams. The success of Israel has lured us into believing that if we will it, it will become a reality. As a result, we articulate our aspirations but have difficulty holding on to them in the midst of our imperfect reality. If aspirations for peace, justice and compassion are going to continue to define Jewish identity, we must learn to talk about them, write and sing about them, dream about them, despite the pain and disappointment that accompany our inability to as yet fulfil them.

This is part of the Torah of Israel for what happens in the days after negotiations fail, a Torah that challenges us to implement our ideals to the best of our ability and which obligates us to hold on to them, regardless of the reality within which we find ourselves. This is a Torah that empowers us as a free people to shape the world in which we live, instead of merely being its victims. This is a Torah that can prepare us for all the days after.

Rabbi Dr. Donniel Hartman is president of the Shalom Hartman Institute (hartman.org.il) in Jerusalem and director of the Engaging Israel Project. He is the author of The Boundaries of Judaism.