Hassagot השגות

Because of religious faith...in Trump

How do we explain the following phenomena of American life in the past months?

• Death threats against responsible election officials who maintained the integrity of elections in states which Trump won in 2016 and lost in 2020?
• Threats against responsible public health officials who insisted on the use of masking and supported the use of vaccines to fight covid-19?  
• The fight against scientific knowledge about covid-19 in general, including the pursuit of dangerous, unproven treatments?
• The insurrection of January 6 2021 and valorization of its perpetrators?
• An embrace of violent fantasies among partisans of Donald Trump?

Efforts to 'make sense' of these things--of partisan embrace of election conspiracies, of opposition to public health measures and medical knowledge, of a last ditch effort to undo the results of a fair election, of an embrace of violence--these efforts fail.  These things do not  'make sense.'  They reflect not rational considerations but rather flow from faith.

For many, Trump plays the role of a religious figure.  For them, he is a savior--a god.

Adherents of a god love what the god loves and hate what the god hates.  They love whom the god loves and hate whom the god hates.  They know what the god knows and know not what the god knows not.  If the god says it is true, it is true.  "It is a lie," it is a lie.  

For these adherents, there is no neutral zone between the blessed and the cursed.  

 

 

 

Ki Teitzei 2014 - Thanks-giving

At the inaugural session of the first Congress in September 1789, Rep. Elias Boudinot of New Jersey introduced a resolution “to request that [President George Washington] would recommend to the people of the United States a day of public thanksgiving and prayer to be observed by acknowledging, with grateful hearts, the many signal favors of Almighty God.”

Rep. Roger Sherman of Connecticut supported the resolution.  He felt it was “warranted by a number of precedents” in the Bible, “for instance the solemn thanksgivings and rejoicings which took place in the time of Solomon, after the building of the Temple.”  (Wall Street Journal, “Thanksgiving, 1789”, 11/20/12).  The resolution passed, and the first national Thanksgiving was celebrated on Thursday, November 26 of the same year.

Today, we read the first expression of thanksgiving in the Torah:  “Leah conceived again and bore a son, and declared, ‘This time אודה את ה׳ I will thank the Lord.  Therefore she named him Judah/יהודה” (Gen 29:35-6).  

A Midrash (in Bereishit Rabbah, 71:4) notices that Leah did not thank God after the births of Reuven, Shimon, or Levi.  The four Imahot Rachel, Leah, Bilhah and Zilpah anticipated that each would have three sons.  It was only when Leah gave birth to Judah, her 4th son, that she felt moved to give special thanks.  

The names of Leah’s first four sons suggest another way to understand her delayed thanksgiving.  Reuven means ‘Hashem has seen my affliction,’ relating to the eyes.  Shimon means “Hashem has heard that I was unloved,” relating to the ears.  After bearing Levi, Leah explains עתה הפעם יילוה אישי אליי “now my husband will escort me.”  Hizkuni explains that, now that Leah and Yaakov had three children, Yaakov would have to hold Levi’s hand and walk along with him!  The name “Levi” is related to walking, to the legs.  With the birth of Judah, Leah called attention to speech, an activity of the mouth.  

Eyes, ears, legs, mouth.  The names convey the sense of building the human structure.   With the birth of Judah, Leah felt complete.  A person who feels complete can express gratitude.  And one who feels incomplete cannot easily express thanks.

In our parashah, a sense of incompleteness is described as a kind of death.  

Seeing that her elder sister has borne four children while she has borne none, Rachel tells Yaakov הבה-לי בנים ואם-אין מתה אנכי give me children, or I shall die (30.1).    Rashi comments מכאן למי שאין לו בנים שחשוב כמת--one who does not have children is considered like one dead.   

Yitzchak (Isaac), Yaakov’s father, is also understand as being somehow dead:  God refers to Himself as Elokei Yitzchak, God of Isaac (Gen 28:13).  Rashi comments that it is inappropriate to associate God’s name with a living person.  However, Isaac was blind and locked up in his house, והרי הוא כמת, so he is considered as one dead.

Yaakov, himself, is also like one dead!  When he encounters his future wife, Rachel, for the first time, he cries.  Rashi explains that Yaakov was sorry that he had arrived empty handed.  On his way to Haran from Beer Sheva, his nephew Eliphaz encountered him with an instruction from Esav to kill Yaakov.  Eliphaz did not want to murder his uncle but felt the need to honor his father’s bidding.  Yaakov explained that Eliphaz might satisfy his father’s command by taking the possessions that Yaakov had brought with him, והעני חשוב כמת, for a pauper is considered as one dead (see on 29:11).  

In Hallel, we read, לא המתים יהללו י-ה, ולא כל-יורדי דומה the dead cannot praise God, nor any who go down in silence.  One who feels incomplete, for lacking children, losing his sight, or losing his possessions, is less able to praise God.   Leah felt sufficiently blessed to praise God.

A Midrash teaches that as Leah grasped פלך הודייה, the ‘spindle’ of thanksgiving, so do her descendants.   For example, King David writes, הודו לה׳ כי טוב, כי לעולם חסדו Praise the Lord for He is good, for his lovingkindness lasts forever (Ps. 107.1, etc.)  (Bereishit Rabbah 71.5).

Since the exile of the 10 lost tribes, the Jewish people are all associated with Leah and may follow in her footsteps.  Yet, as King David himself teaches, it is is sometimes difficult to feel that one is able to give thanks:  נאלמתי, לא אפתח פי “I am dumb, I do not open my mouth”  (Ps. 39.10).    With King David, we pray, ה׳ שפתי תפתח , ופי יגיד תהלתך  “O Lord, may you open my lips so that my mouth might recount Your praise” (Ps. 51.17).  

Leah teaches that, in order to open the mouth, one must feel complete even if one lacks.  (In her case, Leah lacks the degree of marital love she seeks.)  To praise God, one must feel that the blessings one has received exceed what one could have expected.  

Today is the first Shabbat after the American holiday of Thanksgiving and the first Shabbat in the month of Kislev reading up to the festival of Chanukah.  Then we will sing,

Maoz tzur yeshuati, the Rock of my salvation,

lecha na’eh leshabeach it is fitting to praise You…

Tikkon beit tefilati  may God’s house of prayer be established,

vesham todah nezabech  and there we will offer up a Thanksgiving offering.

May we often find the opportunity and the voice to “acknowledg[e], with grateful  hearts, the many signal favors of the Almighty God.”

-- David M. Rosenberg

Jan 20, 2013

Philosophical truths are timeless. They belong to a heavenly realm in which nothing ever changes. Philosophy is about truth as a system. The Bible is about truth as story. -- Rabbi Jonathan Sacks, "The Great Partnership," p. 140

Do we all not have one Father?

There is no god in the abstract.  God is G-d when one worships Him, when a community accepts Him as King.   

From the perspective of G-d, we all have one Father.   From our perspective, we have the G-d of our Fathers, that is, the G-d of our community.  We must come together as members of a community (that is, of communities) to greet G-d.   The community includes both those whom I can see, encounter, touch, and those who are no longer living.

In order to fully understand that G-d is G-d of all creation, one must first greet Him in the community.

-- H. A. Massig המשיג

Rabbinic Integrity

The website of the Rabbinical Council of America includes an important post on a matter of currency and moment in American Orthodoxy dated 29 December 2005.  A group calling itself "The Committee for Rabbinic Integrity" has recently opened a blog on the same matter featuring material from Orthodox sources to the right of the RCA.   For a perspective deeply critical of the RCA, see this piece (12/21/2005) from the Jewish Press.

-- H. A. Massig המשיג

To speak of G-d as father

This afternoon (Mon. 11/28/05) I heard a radio essay on NPR's "This I believe" by John W. Fountain entitled "The G-d who embraced me".  Rev.  Fountain delivered an inspiring account of his relationship with G-d as abba/daddy, a kind of substitute for his own, absent, father.

I believe in God, God the Father, embodied in his Son Jesus Christ. The God who allowed me to feel His presence -- whether by the warmth that filled my belly like hot chocolate on a cold afternoon, or that voice, whenever I found myself in the tempest of life's storms, telling me (even when I was told I was "nothing") that I was something, that I was His, and that even amid the desertion of the man who gave me his name and DNA and little else, I might find in Him sustenance.

I was struck by the reference to Jesus.  Why?  Rev. Fountain is a deeply committed Christian, and a reference to Jesus is surely to be expected.   Yet I was struck by the reference, and for two reasons.  One--it seemed to be a throwaway line in an essay that focused so strongly on G-d as father.  Second, because I understood that there is no access to "father" except through "son."

A father is father only by dint of having children.  For Christians, G-d is "father" as father of Jesus.   If it were not for Jesus, G-d would, so to speak, not be their father. 

How does this work for Jews?  G-d is our father because He has called us בני בכורי ישראל/beni bechori yisrael/Israel is my first born son (Exodus 4:22).  Jews relate to God as אבינו/avinu/our father because we are בני ישראל/benei yisrael/children of Israel [=Jacob].   [See also Deut. 14:1] In Rabbinic language this relationship is referred to as בנים למקום/banim lamakom/children of the Place [=G-d] (R' Akiva quotes Deut 14:1 in making this point, mAvot 3:17).

That is one reason why it is so essential for Jews to connect ourselves with the אבות/avot/[fore]fathers.  In the Tefilah/Prayer [=Shemoneh Esreh (18 blessings) or Amidah], we begin by presenting our credentials to G-d as א-להינו וא-לוהי אבותינו/elokeinu veilokei avoteinu/Our G-d and G-d of our fathers.

-- המשיג/H. A. Massig

What the Cathedral can learn from the Movies

A friend tells me that she and her friends have a Judaism without prayer.  I believe that they do not have a life without the movies.  I believe that movies feed them in a way that the Jewish prayer they know does not.

My advice to the houses of worship of their youth:  What Hollywood does unabashedly, you may too.  A century and more of cleansing Jewish life of ritual, of cultural material, has left so many Jews thirsty for transcendence.  Steven Spielberg obliges--he knows how to provide transcendence.  Here is a Jew who can teach rabbis something.

-- H. A. Massig המשיג

Only the Hardy Plants will Survive

In How Mainline Protestantism became sidelined, I suggest that a loss of common purpose led to the weakening of such Christian denominations as the Episcopal and Presbyterian.  I would like to make a stronger point in this post:  In our current theopolitical environment, only the hardy plants will survive.  In theological terms, only those religious expressions that are coherent and passionately held can last long in the environment of evangelical secularism that pertains in the West.  A theologically weak denomination cannot last against the waves of secularism and the countervailing waves of the theologically strong. 

Joshua Kurlantzick, writing in the December 2004 issue of Commentary magazine ("The Left and the Islamists"), lingers on the incongruity of leftists aligning themselves with Islamists who deny the validity of their positions.   Kurlantzick refers to the cozy embrace of the Presbyterians and Hizballah:

A delegation of the American Presbyterian Church met with Hizballah officials in Beirut and praised the terrorist organization. As one of its members helpfully explained on Hizballah television, “Relations and conversations with Islamic leaders are a lot easier than dealings and dialogue with Jewish leaders.”

(Compare my post, Do Presbyterians Talk Theology with Hezbollah?)

It strikes me that the Presbyterians who met with Hezbollah/Hizballah are like moths drown to a lightbulb.  The Presbyterians are no theological match for the much more dedicated, radical, and religious (!) Hezbollah.

My general point is that those forms of Christianity which have lost their faith and their nerve will naturally falter in the face of competing religious groups who retain their faith and nerve (whether Christian, Muslim, or other) on the one hand and secularism on the other.

--H. A. Massig המשיג

The Islamization of Europe? So what?

For the December 2004 issue of Commentary, David Pryce-Jones has contributed "The Islamization of Europe?". 

One may ask:  Is Pryce-Jones overreacting, or has he responsibly projected the growth of Islam in Europe?  And even if he is correct in his description, who cares if Europe [=western Europe]  becomes Islamic?

I believe that Pryce-Jones has got it right.  I also believe that it makes a great difference if Europe becomes a Muslim land:

1. Islam does not have a strong tradition of democracy.  Even granted that in Indonesia there are positive signs of democracy, the world of Islam is not comfortable with that form of government.  Islam in Europe is frequently associated with efforts to establish sharia as the law of the land.  If one believes that democracy, for all its attendant mediocrity (or because of it?), is worth preserving, an Islamic Europe is clearly a threat.
2. If Islam becomes predominant in Europe, it will not stop there.  I am not trying to be alarmist.  Efforts to Islamize North America and to further Islamize Africa would become much more pronounced.   Christianity, already weak in Europe, would wither precipitously.  The state of Israel would find itself in a much more tenuous position than it is currently. 

What is to be done?  I touch on that in another post.

--H. A. Massig המשיג

How Mainline Protestantism became sidelined

A colleague, having spent many years in the Episcopalian ministry, is retiring from his current position.

Speaking with a number of us at a farewell gathering, he described the transformation of Mainline Protestant denominations in the US since the 1960s.  He pointed out how special purpose groups have come to prominence in such churches (he mentioned particularly the Presbyterian Church).  Working within one denomination, different groups work on separate agenda: women's liberation, gay liberation, economic justice, racial justice, and so forth. 

As my colleague put it, a sense of common purpose was lost.  Funding choices reflected the particular interests of different groups within one church.

Speaking of his own denomination, my colleague pointed out the number of gray heads among priests.  A special group has formed for Episcopal clergy younger than 40.

Their loss of common purpose may go far to explain why it is that the Mainline churches have become sidelined.

--H. A. Massig המשיג