The question of why I have abandoned my faith has been posed to me so many times, that the answer has been chopped down to a few very rehearsed and very vague lines. So today I will attempt to explore the process that began long ago in more detail.
It's not hard to fathom why someone would leave "the fold." Unsightly, not to mention uncomfortable, hemlines and necklines, those pesky dietary laws, and of course sex. So obviously most people assume that comfort and convenience were what I was after, but the truth is that I didn't find Jewish law to be restrictive at all. I thrived in that world. The Aramaic and Hebrew tomes of Halakhic work were my temple, and its practice was my prime mover. In retrospect, I'm not even sure God factored into it at all.
When I was still in the throes of my religious study, I was accused by a friend of mine in a different seminary of not being very "frum." When pressed to actually explain what she was talking about she managed to observe that despite my obvious fidelity to halakha, I was missing the warmth and passion that was associated with real frumkeit. To this day I have no idea what the hell she meant, but she definitely was right on some level. At the time I couldn't admit it. I spent hours frustratedly mulling over and writing about the subject. (It preoccupied me to the point where I literally had nightmares.)
If I remember correctly, I later came to champion this trait of mine. At some point being "not frum" evolved into "not shticky" which was certainly a worthy cause. However, I suppose I can admit that there is something to be said for the person teetering on the fine boundary between homo religiousus and cognitive man.
For those not familiar with Rav Soloveitchik's terminology, I will explain in short. Most of the Rav's philosophy is fixated on a duality that exists within a construct - be it man, community, or a halakha. In "Halakhic Man" he contrasts cognitive man and homo religiousus. Cognitive man is a logical individual who seeks to find order and law in the world around him. He is preoccupied with empirical evidence and solving mysteries. Homo religiousus is wholly preoccupied by mysteries and all that transcends the rigid reason which cognitive man so yearns for. He is not bound by concrete reality and wishes to abandon it for a loftier experience. Soloveitchik explains that the man who deals with halakha (yes, the heroic Halakhic Man for whom the essay is named) is a cognitive man. To him the performance of halakha is secondary to the construction of the theory and system of halakha.
To me, becoming halakhic man was the ideal. I endeavored to study enough of the Talmud that I could truly approach it like a scientist or a mathematician. My friend, however, was taught to relish the experience of religious fervor instead. To be clear, I am not blaming any educational system or institution. If I had been thrown into a school where girls sat in circles on the floor and sang of their God, I would have quickly availed myself of one of the other seminaries available. I only wish to demonstrate how completely unconcerned I was with the feelings one might associate with being religious and how purely intellectual a pursuit it became.
When I reached University and began studying for an academic degree in Talmud, the plethora of questions that had been nagging at me for years were pushed to the forefront of my mind. Suddenly the very seat of my religious devotion - my mind - was turned against halakha. My heart didn't factor into the equation for a moment.
That isn't to say that it wasn't a very emotionally difficult time for me. After all I had been chasing after halakha for as long as I could remember and it was revealing itself to be an illusion. However the moment I decided that empirical reality didn't align with observance, the religious experience became irrelevant. A few short months later I ate on Yom Kippur without so much as a pause or a shudder. Today I am actually shocked at how quickly it all unraveled, but at the time it made perfect sense. I remember discussing it with someone who was going through a similar transformation at the time. Her rebellions against religion came in sudden spurts of energy, one week she found herself wearing pants, the next not waiting between meat and milk and a few weeks later breaking Shabbat. She was deeply bothered by the existence of God and other theological and philosophical questions. I was struck at the novelty of considering God at all for I had been serving on the altar of my intellect the whole time.
Usually I like to tie up my posts with a nice bow at the end. Something learnt or something gained. I don't have any message to take away from this. Perhaps educators who read this will be able to use it to prove that hashkafa and the feelings of observance should play a more prominent role in Jewish education; and I could easily tell them that you could not have made me appreciate the classes with that aim. Others might point out that my story only demonstrates that women shouldn't be given unfettered access to the Talmud; and I simply don't have the energy to respond to such absurdity. In any event, I don't have a take away message, this is simply a descriptive post.
P.S. I keep referring to halakha and Talmud, but that's highly inaccurate. What I really mean is Jewish texts, for Tanach played an equally crucial role in my religion and subsequent denial of it.
P.P.S. If this post seems disjointed and unclear it's because I am writing it at a time of night which can only be described as morning on my iPhone. Sometimes thoughts bubble up until I just have to put them to paper and the hour and medium be damned. So sorry dear readers, you'll have to wait for my book to get a better version of this post.
Saturday, August 25, 2012
Thursday, August 9, 2012
The Romance of the Covenantal Community
When I was at the peak of my Torah study days I particularly loved studying from old books. I would breathe in that familiar aroma of decaying paper fibers and hear the creaking of the binding as I opened it and my thoughts would stray to those who had held the book before me. Finding notes in the margins, even if I didn’t understand them, was the absolute jackpot for me. This preoccupation with relics of the past stemmed from my understanding that those who came before me lent meaning to my scholarship.
The Talmud (Menachot 29b) documents a fantastic story:
אמר רב יהודה אמר רב בשעה שעלה משה למרום מצאו להקב"ה שיושב וקושר כתרים לאותיות אמר לפניו רבש"ע מי מעכב על ידך אמר לו אדם אחד יש שעתיד להיות בסוף כמה דורות ועקיבא בן יוסף שמו שעתיד לדרוש על כל קוץ וקוץ תילין תילין של הלכות אמר לפניו רבש"ע הראהו לי אמר לו חזור לאחורך הלך וישב בסוף שמונה שורות ולא היה יודע מה הן אומרים תשש כחו כיון שהגיע לדבר אחד אמרו לו תלמידיו רבי מנין לך אמר להן הלכה למשה מסיני נתיישבה דעתו
Rab Judah said in the name of Rab, When Moses ascended on high he found the Holy One, blessed be He, engaged in affixing coronets to the letters.Said Moses, ‘Lord of the Universe, Who stays Thy hand?’ He answered, ‘There will arise a man, at the end of many generations, Akiba b. Joseph by name, who will expound upon each tittle heaps and heaps of laws’. ‘Lord of the Universe’, said Moses; ‘permit me to see him’. He replied, ‘Turn thee round’. Moses went and sat down behind eight rows [of Rabbi Akiba’s students and listened to the discourses upon the law]. Not being able to follow their arguments he was ill at ease, but when they came to a certain subject and the disciples said to the master ‘Whence do you know it?’ and the latter replied ‘It is a law given unto Moses at Sinai’ he was comforted.
This short story arises in the context of a Talmudic discussion of the laws of what the letters in a Torah scroll should look like. A more cynical version of myself rejoiced in its absurdity. For starters, an anthropomorphic deity being delayed by the additional little details of calligraphy is beyond amusing. But on a more practical level, this story seemed to prove that even the Sages didn’t believe their recurring assertion that Moses was handed the Torah along with all its laws and customs directly from God.
However, there is a more romantic way to read the story.
Moshe receives the Torah in the most organic and natural way, through prophecy and directly from its Source. However, Rabbi Akiva, the father of the Oral Torah, has a less lucid interaction with the law. He does not converse directly with God, and must instead plumb the seemingly insignificant details of the document to uncover the law. Moshe is engaged in dialogue, while Rabbi Akiva is reading the transcript generations later. Of course Moshe could not understand Rabbi Akiva’s lesson, for he was never forced to rely on the seemingly extraneous details of a document. His only comfort is knowing that even Rabbi Akiva sources himself in Moshe, he is not creating something new, but endeavouring to arrive at the very same Source.
Well, in any event that would be the romantic way to read the story. The Scholars of the Talmud, champions of the Oral Law, envisioning God placing each detail into the text only so that they could uncover the law centuries later. Unfortunately this concept of tradition is no longer one that bears weight with me. In this story alone I might point out that the letters of the Hebrew alphabet underwent a tremendous evolution and that Rabbi Akiva’s letters bore little resemblance to the ones Moshe would have seen God write. I might also point out that Rabbi Akiva’s successors are the ones telling this legend, and as such they might have a vested interest in proclaiming that the methods of their teacher (and subsequently their own methods) were Divinely validated from the get go.
As an Orthodox woman and later on as I attempted to study the Talmud academically, (read: non-traditionally) Tradition was an enemy with a face. He chased, haunted, and berated me. People who would use Talmudic stories such as this one to prove that the Oral Law with all its trappings is an authentic reading of Torah would infuriate me. However, now that Tradition and I have not had much to do with each other for a few years, I can understand why there is so much comfort to be found in his arms and I might once again appreciate some romantic notions about him.
For an Orthodox Jew, the sources he studies are the same ones beheld by Rav Chaim Brisker, The Baal Shem Tov, Rav Yosef Cairo, Hillel and Shammai, Ravina and Rav Ashi and countless others. We all studied the same texts and all hoped that they would transport us back to the original meaning as understood by Moshe as he stood face to face with the Divine. The sources bind us not only with our Creator, but also with each other in an awesome community. I am humbled by my own infinitesimal existence as I consider myself against the backdrop of scholars who preceded me, but I am also aware that this past has allowed me to transcend myself and propels me into a deeper understanding of Torah than I would have been able to accomplish myself. There is solace there when faced with the crisis that is existence.
As a secular woman, there is something empowering about being an individual. Going at the world alone, deciding for yourself what is good and what is evil. No one and nothing binds me and holds me back. But I would be lying if I said that I did not miss my little community of Tradition.
The Talmud (Menachot 29b) documents a fantastic story:
אמר רב יהודה אמר רב בשעה שעלה משה למרום מצאו להקב"ה שיושב וקושר כתרים לאותיות אמר לפניו רבש"ע מי מעכב על ידך אמר לו אדם אחד יש שעתיד להיות בסוף כמה דורות ועקיבא בן יוסף שמו שעתיד לדרוש על כל קוץ וקוץ תילין תילין של הלכות אמר לפניו רבש"ע הראהו לי אמר לו חזור לאחורך הלך וישב בסוף שמונה שורות ולא היה יודע מה הן אומרים תשש כחו כיון שהגיע לדבר אחד אמרו לו תלמידיו רבי מנין לך אמר להן הלכה למשה מסיני נתיישבה דעתו
Rab Judah said in the name of Rab, When Moses ascended on high he found the Holy One, blessed be He, engaged in affixing coronets to the letters.Said Moses, ‘Lord of the Universe, Who stays Thy hand?’ He answered, ‘There will arise a man, at the end of many generations, Akiba b. Joseph by name, who will expound upon each tittle heaps and heaps of laws’. ‘Lord of the Universe’, said Moses; ‘permit me to see him’. He replied, ‘Turn thee round’. Moses went and sat down behind eight rows [of Rabbi Akiba’s students and listened to the discourses upon the law]. Not being able to follow their arguments he was ill at ease, but when they came to a certain subject and the disciples said to the master ‘Whence do you know it?’ and the latter replied ‘It is a law given unto Moses at Sinai’ he was comforted.
This short story arises in the context of a Talmudic discussion of the laws of what the letters in a Torah scroll should look like. A more cynical version of myself rejoiced in its absurdity. For starters, an anthropomorphic deity being delayed by the additional little details of calligraphy is beyond amusing. But on a more practical level, this story seemed to prove that even the Sages didn’t believe their recurring assertion that Moses was handed the Torah along with all its laws and customs directly from God.
However, there is a more romantic way to read the story.
Moshe receives the Torah in the most organic and natural way, through prophecy and directly from its Source. However, Rabbi Akiva, the father of the Oral Torah, has a less lucid interaction with the law. He does not converse directly with God, and must instead plumb the seemingly insignificant details of the document to uncover the law. Moshe is engaged in dialogue, while Rabbi Akiva is reading the transcript generations later. Of course Moshe could not understand Rabbi Akiva’s lesson, for he was never forced to rely on the seemingly extraneous details of a document. His only comfort is knowing that even Rabbi Akiva sources himself in Moshe, he is not creating something new, but endeavouring to arrive at the very same Source.
Well, in any event that would be the romantic way to read the story. The Scholars of the Talmud, champions of the Oral Law, envisioning God placing each detail into the text only so that they could uncover the law centuries later. Unfortunately this concept of tradition is no longer one that bears weight with me. In this story alone I might point out that the letters of the Hebrew alphabet underwent a tremendous evolution and that Rabbi Akiva’s letters bore little resemblance to the ones Moshe would have seen God write. I might also point out that Rabbi Akiva’s successors are the ones telling this legend, and as such they might have a vested interest in proclaiming that the methods of their teacher (and subsequently their own methods) were Divinely validated from the get go.
As an Orthodox woman and later on as I attempted to study the Talmud academically, (read: non-traditionally) Tradition was an enemy with a face. He chased, haunted, and berated me. People who would use Talmudic stories such as this one to prove that the Oral Law with all its trappings is an authentic reading of Torah would infuriate me. However, now that Tradition and I have not had much to do with each other for a few years, I can understand why there is so much comfort to be found in his arms and I might once again appreciate some romantic notions about him.
For an Orthodox Jew, the sources he studies are the same ones beheld by Rav Chaim Brisker, The Baal Shem Tov, Rav Yosef Cairo, Hillel and Shammai, Ravina and Rav Ashi and countless others. We all studied the same texts and all hoped that they would transport us back to the original meaning as understood by Moshe as he stood face to face with the Divine. The sources bind us not only with our Creator, but also with each other in an awesome community. I am humbled by my own infinitesimal existence as I consider myself against the backdrop of scholars who preceded me, but I am also aware that this past has allowed me to transcend myself and propels me into a deeper understanding of Torah than I would have been able to accomplish myself. There is solace there when faced with the crisis that is existence.
As a secular woman, there is something empowering about being an individual. Going at the world alone, deciding for yourself what is good and what is evil. No one and nothing binds me and holds me back. But I would be lying if I said that I did not miss my little community of Tradition.
Thursday, August 2, 2012
On the Plight of the Orthodox Feminist
Every week a group of us in Tel Aviv get together to study Jewish History via texts written by different influential figures. Last week I facilitated the group and we covered Rachel Adler’s “The Jew Who Wasn’t There,” an article written by a then Orthodox woman presenting the problems of the conflict between Feminism and Traditional Jewish texts. In the article she details the ways in which the diminished status of women in the eyes of Halakha puts them in a difficult predicament of finding their place in Judaism. She bemoans the fact that traditionally women’s only role was vis a vis their family, husbands, home and community with no option for creating a personal relationship with their God. The models of virtuous women that have arisen through the ages are also found to be limiting for they are usually deemed “Tzaddikot” for their denial of their body, as opposed to the men who are viewed as scholarly and pious and each in their own way. Luckily, she proposes a solution which will save women from their tenuous position - re-reading texts with an empathetic ear to the plight of the woman and creating new precedent which will expand their position in the community.
One line in the article has clawed into my mind and has yet to be shaken free, “All of this can be quickly rectified if one steps outside of Jewish tradition and Halakha.” Since she is writing as a woman who is devoted to the text and to Halakha that is seen as an untenable solution, but she cannot help but note that her frustration and tension only exist if she maintains fidelity to traditional observance. (It is perhaps noteworthy that she eventually finds her spiritual home in the Reform community.) As the group analyzed her writings, my roommate commented that she thought that this position must be impossibly difficult, to reject the conclusion of the Rabbis and yet to remain bound to their word. How would that work? And why would you want it to?
Before I left Jewish observance this was an issue which haunted me. The tomes of Hebrew and Aramaic texts which comprise the Halakha were my primary mover and spiritual home. My goal was to be a Talmudic scholar. And yet, with every turn I found more doors closed to me than open. The troubling thing for me was not just the rampant chauvinism in the community, but rather that this view seemed to have more basis in tradition and Halakha than mine did. Or, to quote a letter I wrote at the peak of my struggles, “What if God really is a sexist?” I understood Adler’s solution of re-reading and re-interpreting texts to allow women to have a more prominent role in Torah and the community, but I was disturbed that special dispensations needed to be made at all. And no amount of apologetics could assuage the pain, for they lacked the history that those who sought to marginalize me had.
When I started on my path towards non-observance, I was spurred by questions that had arisen through my study of the texts and history. However, when I finally decided that my doubts were inextinguishable, I stayed away (and continue to stay away) mainly because of this issue. Why struggle to come to terms with a religion that denies me a place when I can live in a time in which my value is taken for granted?
One line in the article has clawed into my mind and has yet to be shaken free, “All of this can be quickly rectified if one steps outside of Jewish tradition and Halakha.” Since she is writing as a woman who is devoted to the text and to Halakha that is seen as an untenable solution, but she cannot help but note that her frustration and tension only exist if she maintains fidelity to traditional observance. (It is perhaps noteworthy that she eventually finds her spiritual home in the Reform community.) As the group analyzed her writings, my roommate commented that she thought that this position must be impossibly difficult, to reject the conclusion of the Rabbis and yet to remain bound to their word. How would that work? And why would you want it to?
Before I left Jewish observance this was an issue which haunted me. The tomes of Hebrew and Aramaic texts which comprise the Halakha were my primary mover and spiritual home. My goal was to be a Talmudic scholar. And yet, with every turn I found more doors closed to me than open. The troubling thing for me was not just the rampant chauvinism in the community, but rather that this view seemed to have more basis in tradition and Halakha than mine did. Or, to quote a letter I wrote at the peak of my struggles, “What if God really is a sexist?” I understood Adler’s solution of re-reading and re-interpreting texts to allow women to have a more prominent role in Torah and the community, but I was disturbed that special dispensations needed to be made at all. And no amount of apologetics could assuage the pain, for they lacked the history that those who sought to marginalize me had.
When I started on my path towards non-observance, I was spurred by questions that had arisen through my study of the texts and history. However, when I finally decided that my doubts were inextinguishable, I stayed away (and continue to stay away) mainly because of this issue. Why struggle to come to terms with a religion that denies me a place when I can live in a time in which my value is taken for granted?
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