Sin-A-Gogue

by David Bashevkin

  Our Story, in Blurbs

  Nothing highlights our complicated relationship with religious narrative better than the narratives we tell about ourselves. But when, honestly, are we ever telling our narrative truthfully? The culprit for our narrative neurosis is the typical structure of our bio blurbs. You may have seen a bio blurb for an author or a scholar-in-residence. They look something like this:7

  After graduating from Harvard University, John Leiner received the prestigious MacArthur Genius Grant. A gifted teacher who has lectured throughout the world, Dr. Leiner is currently the CEO of the Leiner Foundation. His daily insights can be found at JohnLeiner.com.

  Sound familiar?

  I find bio blurbs very eerie, like looking at a photoshopped family photo. Vague phrases are always used like “sought-after speaker” and “internationally-renowned” that would seem narcissistic if spoken but are strangely accepted practice in bio blurb writing etiquette.

  The absurdity of the bio blurb is only fully realized after writing one’s own. The first realization that immediately descends is that everyone writes his own bio blurb. Granted, we collectively suspend disbelief and pretend it came from our personal PR department, but privately we all smirk as we imagine our friends and mentors struggling over which superlatives they could convincingly describe themselves with.

  As Orwell noted, “Autobiography is only to be trusted when it reveals something disgraceful. A man who gives a good account of himself is probably lying.”8 If good biographies tell a proper story of nonsequential success, bio blurbs are the fun house mirrors that portray success as a pristine linear progression without the blemish of failure. But a bio blurb that is merely successes—our own ESPN highlight reel—sends the wrong message to others and paints a stilted portrait of ourselves.

  Rabbi Menachem Mendel Morgenstern, the famed rabbi of Kotzk, once said, “I like to keep my good deeds private and my failures public.” Of course we should be proud of our successes, but both for a more honest reflection of life and as a sign of encouragement and solidarity to anyone who has just received a first (or fiftieth) thin envelope, perhaps we can do a better job of integrating life’s failures within our typically self-obsessed bio blurbs. It’s great to list all of your successes in three to five short sentences, but maybe if one of those sentences were a failed project, rejected application, or unexpected difficulty, even our successes would seem more lively. It may only take one sentence to remind yourself that you can laugh at yourself. It’s only one sentence to tell others that life will always have its disappointments. It’s a one sentence tribute to one of the thin envelopes you have received in your life.

  I am not suggesting a major revolution, just a cute little ploy that might help paint a more accurate picture of your life’s oscillating narrative.9

  In fact, I’ll start with mine.

  David Bashevkin is the Director of Education for National NCSY and is pursuing a doctorate in public policy and management at The New School’s Milano School of International Affairs. He was rejected from the Wexner Graduate Fellowship. Twice.

  SECTION I

  THE NATURE OF SIN

  1

  WHAT WE TALK ABOUT WHEN WE TALK ABOUT SIN

  “Say what you want to, but I know he loved me,” Terri said. “I know he did. It may sound crazy to you, but it’s true just the same. People are different, Herb. Sure, sometimes he may have acted crazy. O.K. But he loved me. In his own way, maybe, but he loved me. There was love there, Herb. Don’t deny me that.”

  —Raymond Carver, “The Beginners”

  Eskimos and Jews

  Franz Boas, the nineteenth-century anthropologist, was the first to suggest why Eskimos, given the Arctic climate in which they live, have an inordinate number of words to describe snow. He pointed to the distinctions within Inuit, the language predominantly spoken by Eskimos, for snow of the ground, snow that is still falling, and drifting snow.10 Boas was demonstrating how our environment and worldview affect the subtleties of our languages. One word cannot suffice to describe snow if it covers your entire world. This assertion—since questioned, if not entirely discredited—is still instructive in considering the many words for sin in the Hebrew language. Sin for Jews may be the linguistic equivalent of snow for Eskimos. Among the many words for sin in Hebrew, we have the biblical words het , avon , pesha , and the later more generic rabbinic term aveirah . What do these different words tell us about the Jewish concept of sin and what, indeed, are Jews really talking about when they talk about sin?

  Gary Anderson, a Bible professor at the University of Notre Dame, wrote an intriguing analysis of the etymology of sin in his work, aptly titled Sin: A History. Anderson, based on the biblical usage of the term nosa avon , meaning “to carry iniquity,” focuses on the biblical imagery of sin as a burden. The implied weight of a burden, explains Anderson, reinforces the physicality of sin, or what he terms the “thingness” of sin.11 Joseph Lam, a professor of Religious Studies at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, also wrote a seminal volume on the different metaphors conveyed by biblical words for sin. Similar to Anderson, Lam explains that much of the imagery of sin is meant to depict sin as a burden. Such imagery, writes Lam, “lends itself potentially to this portrayal of the psychological effects of conscious culpability.”12

  After presenting proof texts for the metaphor of sin as a burden, Anderson turns to another common analogy for sin found in Scripture, namely sin as debt. As found in Isaiah’s consolation of the Jewish people (40:2), sin is a debt that can be accrued or, if merited, forgiven. Anderson gives the “sin as debt” metaphor the bulk of his attention as part of his ancillary agenda to reemphasize among his readers a sense of personal obligation toward tithing and almsgiving. If sin is a debt, he reasons, charity is the best way to repay it.

  The analysis of Anderson underscores a more important point about sin: metaphors matter. In other words, the way we talk about sin tells us a lot about sin itself. Anderson couches this emphasis in the philosophy of Paul Ricoeur, whose oft-cited aphorism states that “the symbol gives rise to thought.” Whether sin is seen as a debt or a burden, the way we see errors and attempts to rectify our errors tells us much about ourselves. Or as Lam writes, “metaphor is a way of imposing order on the world around us, or of grasping the world by means of the ideas available to us.”13

  Sin as debt can be seen as a potentially dangerous description. As Anderson cautions, some have pointed to the metaphor of sin as a debt to “draw an unflattering picture of rabbinic Judaism.” The financial metaphor, he writes, “seems to conjure the notion that God sits in heaven with his account books open and scrutinizes every human action with an eye toward properly recording it as either a debit or a credit.”14 This, Anderson reminds us, is a distortion:

  To be sure, God could be depicted as an imperious lending officer who would demand every penny he had coming. But he could just as easily be portrayed as a soft-hearted aunt who was prone to forget the money she had lent a favorite nephew.15

  The rigidity of the imagery of debt depends on the context. The great Hasidic thinker Rabbi Nahman of Bratslav employed the imagery of sin as a debt to validate his own spiritual activism. Unlike many other spiritual leaders, Rabbi Nahman was quite candid about his own struggles with sin. He used a story to address the inadequacy a rabbi preaching spiritual betterment may feel while himself struggling with sin. The story was about a rich man who loaned money to whoever was in need. After lending thousands of rubles, the wealthy man sought to be repaid, but none of his debtors appeared. Eventually, one remorseful individual stepped forward. He acknowledged the debt he owed his creditor while admitting that all the money he borrowed was gone. Dejected, the borrower did not know how he would ever repay the rubles he owed. The creditor, seeing how forlorn the borrower was, explained that the sum of money he owed as an individual was a pittance compared to all the money everyone else still owed him. “Forget about the money I loaned you,” advised the lender, “but help me reco
ver the other moneys I am owed. That will be a far greater repayment of your individual debt.”16

  This story highlights the spiritual leverage created by imagining sin as debt. As Arthur Green explained in his classic biography about Rabbi Nahman, Tormented Master:

  Here the personal meaning of the parable is quite transparent. How can one who is himself a sinner assume the mantle of God’s representative to others? Being a rebbe is nothing more than the way this poor sinner pays off his own debt to God, atoning for his own sins by bringing others to repentance.17

  If sin is a debt, then like a debt it can be collateralized and collectively repaid.

  Sin can be something carried, but it can also be something else. The word het appears in Judges 20:16 to describe a stone missing its mark.18 Although the term nosa avon describes the heaviness of sin, the word het describes sin as a missed opportunity. Here sin serves as a foil for a target, likely man’s own self-actualization. If self-development and actualization are the objective, sin is when that objective remains unmet.

  As instructive as metaphors can be in the analysis of sin, it is also important to keep in mind that the range of metaphors does not necessarily represent the collective scope of the meaning of sin. As Lam correctly notes, “The idea of sin in biblical Hebrew is no more encapsulated by the metaphors of sin is a burden and sin is an account than the notion of love is a journey, love is a physical force, love is madness.”19 A metaphor is a window to understanding, but it is important not to fixate on windows and to consider the words for sin from other vantage points.

  Defining Sin’s Severity

  Aside from the metaphors which emerge from a consideration of the biblical words for sin, the Talmud also considers its meaning. As mentioned, there are three primary biblical words for sin: het, avon, and pesha. For the casual reader of the Bible these words appear nearly synonymous. Ronald Youngblood, one of the original translators of the New International Version of the Bible, summarized the overarching meaning of these words as follows:

  The widespread use of our three roots for sin in connection with numerous roots relating to walking along a particular way or turning from a certain path serves to stress the fact that sin is comprehensively viewed in the Old Testament as the deliberate act of veering off the road that God wants people to travel.20

  There is certainly truth to Youngblood’s assertion, but he seems to have painted with too wide a brush. All the words for sin certainly connote some aspect of deviation, but how do they differ? If they all essentially mean the same thing, shouldn’t one word suffice? It is certainly easier to approach these three words like a Californian approaches snow, but for a more sophisticated understanding of sin in the biblical context, we will have to think like Eskimos and study the Talmudic explanation for sin as well.

  On Yom Kippur, when the Temple still stood in Jerusalem, there was a special service performed by the High Priest. Throughout the Day of Atonement, the High Priest confessed three times—twice on his personal sacrifice and once on the communal scapegoat. The confession began with a plea: “Please God!” The remainder of the confession, however, is subject to a Tannaitic dispute. Everyone agrees to the basic text of the confession, but the dispute surrounds the order of three important words: het, avon, and pesha. According to Rabbi Meir, the confession concludes as follows:

  Please, God, I have sinned , I have done wrong , I have rebelled before You, I and my family. Please, God, grant atonement, please, for the sins , and for the wrongs , and for the rebellions that I have sinned, and done wrong, and rebelled before You, I and my family.21

  According to Rabbi Meir, throughout the confession the synonyms for sin are ordered avon, pesha, and het. This, the Talmud points out, is a rational order given that it is the very same order found in the Bible’s thirteen attributes of God (see Ex. 34:7).

  The Rabbis of the Mishnah insist that the order is different: first het, then avon, followed by pesha. Their reasoning is that each of these words for sin connotes varying degrees of intent. A het is a sin committed inadvertently. An avon, explain the Rabbis, is an intentional sin. Pesha is a sin that is not only committed deliberately but also as an act of rebellion against God. As each word for sin represents a different degree of rebellious intent, it makes sense that they should be ordered in ascending order of severity.

  To summarize, Rabbi Meir and the Rabbis both agree that the various words for sin indicate different levels of severity.22 Their argument surrounds the order of the High Priest’s confession. According to Rabbi Meir the order of the confession is based upon the order as presented in the Bible.23 According to the Rabbis the order of the Priest’s confession is based upon which sins have the most pernicious intent.

  The linguistic distinctions presented by the Talmud are telling. Intuitively, we may have already assumed that not all sins are created equal, but how do we differentiate between sins of differing severity? We have categories that distinguish some sins. Idolatry, adultery, and murder are singled out by the Talmud as sins that require Jews to succumb to martyrdom rather than commit any one of the three. But such sins, while certainly severe, do not factor into the Talmudic classification of the different names for sin. Rather, the names for the different sins are based upon the motivation of the sinner. An otherwise minor infraction can be classified as a pesha if the sinner committed such an act as a marked act of rebellion against God. Conversely, an egregious sin can be characterized as a het if the sin was unintentional. If beauty is in the eye of the beholder, the severity of sin, according to the Talmud, is in the mind of the transgressor.

  Contrast the Talmudic approach to the different categories of sin to the different categories of crime in American law: infractions, misdemeanors, and felonies. Most people have committed an infraction at one point or another, usually resulting in a ticket or minor fine. Misdemeanors are usually defined as crimes that are punishable by up to a year in jail. Felonies, the most severe, are crimes that are punishable by jail sentences exceeding a year or even, in certain states, death. Blurring the distinction between crime—categorized by the punishment assigned to it—with sin, which is gradated by the intention of the perpetrator, has warped our view of sin and crime. Dr. Karl Menninger, in his classic work Whatever Became of Sin, notes that in the public’s mind sin and crime have become nearly indistinguishable. “Many former sins have become crimes,” he writes, while some “former crimes have becomes sins.” The sociological shift that emerges from this confusion is that “[t]he policeman replaced the priest.”24 In replacing the priest or rabbi with a policeman, our understanding of sin has deteriorated. When sin and crime are confused we place a disproportionate emphasis on the role of punishment in evaluating the severity of sin. The proverbial lightning bolt from heaven is not what characterizes the most heinous sins. Crime, as immortalized by Dostoevsky, is measured by punishment. Sin, however, is measured by purpose. Of course, as we will consider later, the actual action associated with sin is of serious consequence, but in the Talmudic reading the heart of defining the different gradations of sin is not the commensurate punishment—it is the mindset.25

  A Word on the Rabbinic Word for Sin

  The Bible and later rabbinic works such as the Mishnah and Talmud do not always speak the same language. There are a host of Hebrew words that are frequently used in Mishnaic literature that are not mentioned anywhere in the biblical canon. Regarding sin, one word frequently used in Mishnaic literature is completely absent in the Bible—aveirah .26 For instance, when the Mishnah in Pirkei Avot instructs its students to flee from sin27 it does not use any of the more familiar biblical terms such as het, avon, or pesha. Instead, the Mishnah uses the term aveirah. Similarly, when describing sins between man and God and interpersonal sins , the Mishnah uses the term aveirah. The term aveirah does not appear in this context anywhere in the Bible. What does this rabbinic neologism tell us about the rabbinic concept of sin?

  The word aveirah is clearly derived from the biblical word la-avor , to
transgress. Although we do not find the noun aveirah in the Bible, we frequently find the term la-avor as a verb indicting that a sin has been committed. The absence of the word aveirah in biblical literature may be part of a larger biblical trend that avoids abstract nouns in biblical writing. For instance, in the Bible we find the term sho’khain , a verb denoting God’s dwelling, but only in later rabbinic literature do we find the conceptualized noun shekhinah , meaning the presence of God. Steven Fraade, Judaic Studies professor at Yale, develops the idea that many biblical verbs later emerged within Mishnaic literature as conceptualized nouns. He writes:

  My thesis at first appears to be simple: that nominalized verbs, that is, verbal nouns that follow from each verbal conjugation by fixed morphological patterns, often appear for the first time in early rabbinic literature (here focusing on the Tannaitic corpora) to denote newly concretized, or hypostatized abstract concepts, which previously could only be inferred from their verbal usages. I will argue that such morphological innovations may signal a conceptual innovation, or shift, that needs to be understood in its broader historical context. However, since the increased nominalization of verbs is a broader development both within biblical Hebrew and between it and its successors, and that the shift to more abstract meanings inhering in both verbs and their nominalized forms proceeds abreast, we might ask to what extent the linguistic innovations facilitate the conceptual changes, or to what extend the conceptual changes serve to accelerate the linguistic developments.28

  According to Fraade, Mishnaic times marked a shift towards conceptualization of many biblical terms as evident by the new conjugation of many words. From the verb —to transgress, emerged the conceptualized noun —a transgression. Sin, with this new word, was no longer an action; suddenly sinning had become a concept.

  It is not entirely clear why Mishnaic literature felt it was necessary to add another word for sin to the already robust catalogue of , and —but the word aveirah has certainly become a common term referring to sin.29 Grossman, in his exhaustive study of the word aveirah in rabbinic literature, thinks the word was used as a euphemism for sexual sins. He does not explain why this term became more popular and what its imagery represents.30 Certainly, it remains a curious question: why did the word aveirah, without any mention in biblical literature, become such a common term for sin in rabbinic literature? What additional conceptual imagery does this word convey about sin? Perhaps two new dimensions can be suggested.