Sin-A-Gogue

by David Bashevkin

  Love,

  David187

  David finds someone to mail the letter and boards a train home. He is anxious of course, not knowing whether his father will welcome him back home. The train ride is a distance of a few days from his parents’ home and throughout the ride David is unsure if he will ever be invited back to the place where he grew up. Hundreds of miles of track separate David from the answer of his father. As the train approaches his home, David is simply too overwhelmed to look—will the white cloth be on the tree as a sign of his acceptance back home? Or will he just have to keep riding the train and find a new life for himself without his father’s love? Knowing his answer is only a few moments away, David becomes too frightened even to look. What if his father doesn’t want him back? What if instead of a white ribbon on a branch, “he would find, staring back at him, just another field, just another somebody else’s strange place?” David can’t bring himself to look. Instead the story concludes:

  Desperately, he nudged the passenger beside him. “Mister, will you do me a favor? Around this bend on the right, you’ll see an apple tree. I wonder if you’ll tell me if you see a white cloth tied to one of its branches?”

  As they passed the field, the boy stared straight ahead. “Is it there?” he asked with an uncontrollable quaver.

  “Son,” the man said in a voice slow with wonder, “I see a white cloth tied on almost every twig.”188

  Richard Pindell, a Binghamton University professor who taught writing and Civil War literature, has a knack for producing universalistic stories. He makes it easy for the reader to see themselves in David. Pindell himself acknowledged that “Somebody’s Son” is “far and away my most popular story.” Even if you have never run away from home or written a plea to a parent, Pindell frames the story in such a way that the reader can identify with David’s plight. Who hasn’t confronted a fissure with a spouse, ruptured a relationship with a parent, or become angry with a child? David’s story is the story of someone trying to bridge a gap and traverse a relationship that has become estranged. It is no surprise that this story has become exceptionally popular in religious circles. As it is most often told, David’s relationship with his father is a metaphor for the human relationship with God. “Somebody’s Son” is read as the story of a person on the path of sin who is looking for a sign that their relationship with God has not been permanently broken. All people want is a small sign—a white cloth wrapped on a tree to know that the relationship can still be salvaged. A patient and loving God wraps every twig with white ribbons. God wants every one of us back.

  Hurling Words Heavenward

  Sin is the mechanism that deteriorates our relationship with God. But is it possible that it can work the other way around as well? Can God sin and, by extension, repent? At first glance this of course seems blasphemous. A central tenet of Jewish thought is God’s perfection. God’s perfection should preclude any notion ascribing sin and repentance to the Almighty. Curiously though, the Talmud seems to suggest just that:

  Rabbi Shimon ben Pazi notes a contradiction: “‘And God made the two great lights’; as it reads, ‘The large light, and the small light.’ The moon said to the Holy One, Blessed Be He, ‘Master of the Universe, How can two kings share one crown?’ He said to her, ‘Go and diminish yourself!’ She said to him: ‘Master of the universe, because I said a logical thing before you, I should diminish myself?’”…

  The Holy One said, “I will bring an atonement on Me for I have diminished the moon.”

  And so that is what is meant when Rabbi Shimon ben Lakish said, “What is the difference in how the New Moon offering is written, ‘A he-goat offering on the new moon, FOR THE LORD?’ Because the Holy One is saying, ‘Let this he-goat be an atonement FOR ME, for the diminishment of the moon.’” (Hullin 60b)

  Only one time in the Torah is a sacrificial offering described as being “for the Lord.” Based on that description, the Talmud takes a hermeneutical leap and considers that the sacrificial offering for the new moon is actually “for the Lord”—it is atoning for God’s sin, if you will, of diminishing the size of the moon. Not surprisingly, many Talmudic commentators tempered the theological polysemy of this passage. Tosafot, for instance, explain that it is not God who needs atonement but the Jewish people. God is only responsible for establishing a consistent time to offer this sacrifice (i.e., on Rosh Hodesh when there is a new moon).189 Others insist that the term the Talmud uses for atonement—kapparah —does not mean atonement in this context but rather appeasement. According to this reading God does not seek atonement. How could he? God is perfect. Rather, this sacrificial offering is a measure of appeasement to the diminished moon.

  This is not the only instance in rabbinic literature where God is described imperfectly, but it is likely “the boldest expression.”190 Professor Dov Weiss, who teaches religion at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, wrote a book about rabbinic protests against God entitled Pious Irreverence: Confronting God in Rabbinic Judaism. It is a remarkable academic work with a jarring thesis illustrating “how the rabbinic humanization of God provided the sages with a mechanism to anchor their confrontations.”191 Throughout the work Weiss cites rabbinic passages that portray rabbis protesting God or putting God on trial. Weiss demonstrates that in some instances protesting God is not only considered theologically legitimate but is a form of prayer.192 In one instance the Midrash Psalms (90:2) asks, “Are not their prayers forms of protest?”193 The Jerusalem Talmud (Berakhot 4:4) compares the act of approaching prayer to a soldier preparing for battle.194

  There is a great divide between the Jewish and Christian approaches to protesting to God. In Christian literature the concept of protesting to God is noticeably absent or, at the very least, deliberately muted. Weiss presents a few explanations for “the fact that, unlike the rabbinic tradition, the Christian tradition has generally speaking, not revived the biblical model that celebrates expressions of theological dissent.”195 Likely the Christian approach was a product of Augustine’s doctrine of original sin, which emphasized man’s responsibility for the world’s imperfection. God in Augustine’s view was entirely blameless for the world’s imperfection, making any protests to the contrary misdirected. Protesting and theological argumentation are markedly Jewish exercises. While such acts may be seen as dogmatic blasphemy, as Weiss beautifully expresses, protesting God is really a product of a rich experiential relationship with God. He writes:

  When a person’s life is infused with a consciousness of a providential and personal God, very real feelings of frustration and dismay are bound to surface. Indeed, disappointment is a typical experience in all loving relationships, and this certainly should be the case in the human-God encounter. Beyond being unnatural or even painful, holding back feelings of anger might even be detrimental to an honest and open relationship. To paraphrase Genesis Rabbah, “Love without rebuke is not love.” (Genesis Rabbah 54:3)196

  It is no wonder that protesting to God features so prominently in Hasidic literature. In a world where a vivid experiential relationship with God is sought, protesting to God is seen as affirmation of such a relationship—not its negation. Great Hasidic masters such as Rabbi Levi Yitzhak of Berditchev and Rabbi Klonymous Kalman Shapira distinguished themselves as traditional leaders who were unafraid to challenge God.197 The latter, much of whose writing was produced inside the Warsaw Ghetto, openly challenges God to realize that the Jewish people cannot bear such excessive suffering.198

  Forgiveness is Divine

  One of the more interesting features of Jewish protests towards God is the notion that God is bound to keep Jewish law. In general theological protests have an anthropomorphic quality, but the assumption that God is obligated in Jewish law provided rabbinic literature “a tangible mechanism to ground and justify their protests.”199 So in one instance the biblical obligation of restitution of damages is invoked to obligate God to rebuild Jerusalem.200 Another example has the Jewish people’s reminding God of the prohib
ition of seeking vengeance and beseeching God to withdraw his wrath on His people.201 The notion that God observes all of the commandments did not just appear in the context of protest. God wears tefillin.202 God keeps Shabbat.203 Basing his thinking on this foundation, Rabbi Zadok of Lublin asks, does God do teshuvah?

  The Talmud ascribes some notion of sin to God, as demonstrated through God’s offering an atonement sacrifice on His own behalf. We also find the notion of regret ascribed to God. Genesis 6:6 describes God’s reaction to the moral deterioration of man as follows:

  And the Lord regretted that He had made man on the earth, and he became grieved in His heart.

  Seemingly, the term va-yinachem ascribes some sense of regret to God. Similarly, the Talmud in Sukkah plainly states that God has four regrets. How do the notions of regret and repentance apply to a perfect God?204

  Forgiving the Divine

  God may be perfect, but creation is not. Suffering and failure are inescapable parts of experiencing this world. Rabbi Joseph B. Soloveitchik (1903–93) explains that human limitation is the cause of God’s need for atonement. In his seminal work Halakhic Man, he writes:

  The Jewish people bring a sacrifice to atone, as it were, for God’s not having completed the work of creation. The Creator of the world diminished the image and stature of creation in order to leave something for man, the work of His hands, to do, in order to adorn man with the crown of creator and maker.205

  The diminished size of the moon represents the enduring imperfections found in creation. Ironically, the starkest example of creation’s imperfection is, of course, us. And here, too, we find none other than Moshe insisting that God assume some of the blame for man’s failures. Following the Jewish people’s sin with the golden calf, the Talmud records Moshe’s audacious insistence to God that He forgive His nation:

  And Rabbi Elazar said: Moshe spoke impertinently toward God on High, as it is stated “[a]nd Moshe prayed to the Lord” (Numbers 11:2), Do not read to [el] the Lord, onto [al] the Lord….

  Rabbi Hiyya bar Abba said that Rabbi Yohanan said: This is comparable to a person who had a son; he bathed him and anointed him with oil, fed him and gave him drink, and hung a purse of money around his neck. Then, he brought his son to the entrance of a brothel. What could the son do to avoid sinning? …

  This teaches that Moshe grabbed the Holy One, Blessed be He, as a person who grabs his friend by his garment would, and he said before Him: Master of the Universe, I will not leave You be until You forgive and pardon them. (Berakhot 32a)206

  God allowed for the possibility of sinning. In some instances it may even feel like we have no other choice. What could the son do to avoid sinning? Creating man with a separate sense of self and the capacity for free will, while necessary, obscured God’s presence in the world. Here we ascribe the notion of regret to God. In the aforementioned passage of Talmud, in fact, God is depicted as regretting His creation of the evil inclination. Metaphorically, is God asking Himself—did I go too far? Are sin and failure simply too accessible? Can man still reach out from the obscurity of the world and find a hidden God? God, so to speak, has remorse for the struggle his creations must endure.207

  Inviting God Back

  Who moved? When any relationship deteriorates, there is inevitably blame cast from both parties over who initiated the rupture. Normally, in our relationship with God we think of a person as moving away from His presence. A person likely thinks that human sin distances people from God. But perhaps the movement is not unilateral. God, we protest, also moved. God allowed us to sin with such ease. God created an imperfect world with the capacity for failure. Like the moon, human light is diminished and casts only a faint luminescence. God laments, “Is there more I could have done to help the son avoid sinning?”

  If this is divine remorse, then divine repentance is where God draws closer to man. Or as Rabbi Zadok explains, God generates within man thoughts of repentance that would have otherwise been lost. When someone becomes so distant from spirituality that even thoughts of remorse seem unattainable, God can still reach out and whisper to return. God’s repentance allows man to return when return seems impossible. Through His prophets, God gives people an assurance: “Return unto Me and I will return unto you” (Malakhi 3:7). It is not just man who can become distant—so can God. And just as every person can return, God can also return.208

  Let’s return to our story. Normally when we read a story about a son estranged from his father, the sensible analogue would be mankind as the son becoming estranged from God the father. The child has erred and has been cast away by the parent. Nothing, however, is quite as human as reimagining an analogy.209 Maybe when rereading Richard Pindell’s “Somebody’s Son,” the castaway David is not a symbol for man’s rebellion but rather God’s. The story can be reread of as a tale of God’s abandoning His people rather than His people’s abandoning Him. God metaphorically writes back to mankind and wonders whether He still has a home among His creations.

  I think about this reading of “Somebody’s Son” every Yom Kippur. As I read through the litany of sins from the previous year while solemnly beating my chest, I wonder (dare I say protest), “Why, God, has sinning become so easy?” Why does failure become so inevitable? Our reflections on the previous year are supposed to center around our transgressions, but sometimes my mind can wonder and consider God’s distance. Sure, doors were closed during the past year—but were all of them shut by me? Surely some people in shul today received diagnoses this past year that made them feel bereft of God’s presence. Surely God could have made it easier for the son to avoid sin. But every Yom Kippur I look around and consider that it might not be just man who is doing teshuvah—surely it is also God. Once a year, prayer becomes more instinctual. Once a year, His presence seems more attainable. And once a year, we imagine God is asking us that we let Him back into His world. And as God symbolically passes by the shul on Yom Kippur, He petitions His people, “If you want me back in your life—give me a sign.” And each year on Yom Kippur we all wear white so when God peers into our lives, wondering if the relationship can still be salvaged, we remind Him and ourselves that He is invited back. The whole shul is clothed in white.

  SECTION II

  CASE STUDIES IN SIN AND FAILURE

  7

  ONCE A JEW ALWAYS A JEW? WHAT LEAVING JUDAISM TELLS US ABOUT JUDAISM

  I have been driven many times upon my knees by the overwhelming conviction that I had nowhere else to go.

  —Abraham Lincoln

  During these days of reflection, he said, he had been asking himself what makes us keep being Jews when it’s such a struggle, “And I found the answer in six words,” he said. “Six words in the Talmud, written by Rashi: ‘He will not let us go.’” It isn’t a matter of our choosing whether to quit God, the old rabbi explained; it is God who chooses not to quit us.

  —Stephen J. Dubner, “Choosing My Religion”

  A Monk Walks Into Israeli Supreme Court

  On November 19, 1962 a Roman Catholic monk appeared before Israel’s highest court. Wearing the traditional brown tunic and sandals, the man who stood before the court could not have looked less Jewish. But based on Israel’s Right of Return, the 1950 legislation that granted every Jew the right to live in Israel, Brother Daniel insisted that he should be treated as a Jew. Before becoming a Roman Catholic monk, he explained, he was born a Jew. Brother Daniel was once Oswald Rufeisen, a Polish Jew who was introduced to Catholicism while escaping Nazi persecution. His plea for immigration rights provoked Israel’s highest court to carefully consider the parameters of Jewish identity.

  A report the next morning in The New York Times emphasized the importance of Brother Daniel’s case: “His action is expected to lead for the first time to a formal and binding legal definition of what is a Jew within the meaning of the Law of Return, a question that has always agitated the nation.”210 The Law of Return raised difficult questions from the outset. The legislation that guaranteed “every Jew
has the right to come to Israel as an immigrant”211 never made the definition of a Jew entirely clear. Was a Jew to be defined based on their national identification? Or, perhaps, based on Jewish law? And as any question to be decided by Jewish law raises, whose interpretation of Jewish law would be favored?

  To clarify the ambiguities within the Law of Return, David Ben-Gurion asked Jewish scholars and leaders throughout the world to consider how Jews should be defined in the context of this legislation. His letter received responses from the entire denominational spectrum of Jewish leadership. The responses were later collected into the fascinating volume, Jewish Identity: Modern Responsa and Opinions, a documentary history compiled by Baruch Litvin and edited by Sidney B. Hoenig.212 Ben-Gurion’s question of “Who is a Jew” solicited responses that are a veritable “Who’s Who” of Jewish leadership. Despite the prestige of the questioner and the responses, however, Ben-Gurion’s questions did not really address Brother Daniel. Ben-Gurion was concerned about the issue of matrilineal versus patrilineal Jewish descent in establishing Jewish identity. His concern was regarding the definition of who was born a Jew, but he did not clarify whether those who are born Jews can lose their Jewish status. The novelty of Brother Daniel’s question was not about which parents create Jewish identity but whether Jewish identity can be lost.

  Apostasy: An Age-Old Issue

  The question Brother Daniel posed was certainly new for the Israeli Supreme Court, but the phenomena of apostasy—leaving religion—has been an issue for over a millennium. The Talmud is replete with references to those who abandon their Jewish identity. Referred to as meshumadim, from the Hebrew term meshumad, meaning to destroy,213 the Talmud placed several sanctions on such Jews, such as invalidating their ritual slaughter and prohibiting wine they have handled.214 But the Talmudic definition of a meshumad differed in some ways to our modern notions of apostasy. The Talmud evaluated the meshumad based on their actions—such as violating Shabbat, worshipping idols, or neglecting commandments—and intentions, either as an act of rebellion or moral weakness, but the Talmud did not consider the status of those who formally converted to another religion. Rabbi Louis Jacobs makes this point in his intriguing study on Christianity in Jewish law: