Much has been learned from the plight of Brother Daniel, but what can we learn from Akhan, the prototype of apostasy? Akhan’s story, according to Rabbi Feinstein at least, may not be the actual legal proof text for the immutability of Jewish identity, but it is still the place where the Talmud felt most appropriate to canonize this message. Why Akhan, though? Why did this seemingly insignificant sinner become the narrative anchor for the adage “although he has sinned he is still a Jew”?
Normally, Talmudic hermeneutics avoid attributing sin unnecessarily to biblical figures. Aside from one exception, the Talmud (Sanhedrin 106b) explains, you should not negatively interpret verses about anyone except for Balaam. Curiously, however, Akhan seems to be a major exception to this rule invoking a veritable Talmudic pile-on. It wasn’t just the spoils of war, interprets the Talmud; he also violated the entire Torah. What message did the Talmud hope to impart by establishing his story as the model for the immutability of Jewish identity?
Rabbi Zadok of Lublin has a counterintuitive approach to the Talmud’s presentation of Akhan.238 A plain reading of the story of Akhan does not yield the dastardly deeds that the Talmud later ascribes to him. The Talmud, however, was not interpreting his narrative negatively but in fact was implying a message of consolation within the concept of apostasy. The Talmud heaped upon Akhan seemingly unnecessary sins not as a sign of negativity for him but as a symbol of optimism for the Jewish people. Once God referred to Akhan as “Yisrael” even following his sin, the Talmud wanted to emphasize the lengths to which the immutability of Jewish identity is applicable. Each sin the Talmud ascribed to Akhan effectively extended the boundaries of the possibility for Jewish redemption. The further from God the Talmud described Akhan, the closer it allowed future generations to feel—regardless of their sins. If Akhan, given the litany of sins attributed to him, could still be described by God as one of “Israel,” there was a measure of optimism for future sinners as well. The Talmud was not casting out Akhan but rather extending the strength and boundaries of Jewish identity. Akhan was not just the prototype for apostasy; he was also the prototype for the resilience of Jewish identity.
Some scholars attribute the second paragraph of the prayer Aleinu to Akhan.239 Beginning “Al Ken Nekavah”—“Therefore we hope”—the paragraph describes the anticipation and longing for a future redemption. The first three letters of that prayer, Al Ken Nekavah, spell Akhan. Apostasy is destructive, but it is also a reminder of our individual resilience. So long as our Jewish identity can never be eradicated, there is always cause to anticipate a future redemption. True, as the decision in the Brother Daniel case reminded, “experience teaches us that apostates are destined to be cut off completely from the nation’s family tree.”240 But that likely outcome does not prevent optimistic anticipation so long as it is not realized. The apostate, aside from representing the worst of Jewish decisions, is also a reminder for the best of Jewish hope. If there did indeed exist a boundary from which we could never return, beyond that point any longing would be futile. But the apostate reminds us that wherever we may find ourselves, there is also a way back. No matter how far we drift, there is always reason, however small, to anticipate a return.
8
WHEN LEADERS FAIL
All men have stars, but they are not the same things for different people. For some, who are travelers, the stars are guides. For others they are no more than little lights in the sky. For others, who are scholars, they are problems …
—Antoine de Saint-Exupéry, The Little Prince
Religious Oppression and the Grand Inquisition
One of the most profound discussions of religion in literary history is presented as a story inside of a story. In Dostoevsky’s The Brothers Karamazov a poetic story known as “The Grand Inquisitor” is retold that imagines the return of Jesus to earth during the fifteenth-century Spanish Inquisition. The story, which is told by the religious skeptic and pessimist Ivan to his brother Alyosha, an aspiring priest, left a lasting impression on religious discourse. Elie Wiesel once told his class that if he could take only one piece of literature on a desert island it would be this story. (He quickly corrected himself, adding that this would be the case so long as a Talmud and siddur were already present on the island as well).241 Essentially, the story presents Jesus’ imagined return to the streets of Seville in Spain, where he is initially adored and followed by the local Christian community. Shortly afterwards, however, Jesus is locked up by the leadership of the Inquisition. Of course, this is a puzzling development. Why would members of the Inquisition, a movement that was established to combat Christian heresy, imprison their savior? As Jesus lies in prison he is visited by the Grand Inquisitor, the chief Church leader of the Inquisition. The Grand Inquisitor explains in a stunning revelation why the Church officials decided to detain Jesus and sentence him to death. He tells Jesus:
Perhaps it is Thy will to hear it from my lips. Listen, then. We are not working with Thee, but with him—that is our mystery.
The Church, the Grand Inquisitor explains to Jesus, is not working for the sake of God but has sided with the devil. Mankind would not benefit from the freedom Jesus offered. Rather, mankind would have more to gain from the ignorant bliss of a dictatorial Church leadership in league with Satan.
Usually, this story within a story is used as a lens to discuss the religious philosophy of freedom and free will. The Grand Inquisitor also provides another moral. It is a poetic depiction of the capacity of a messenger to betray the values of the message. A Church in league with the devil to protect mankind is the ultimate betrayal of religious responsibility. Christian leaders should ostensibly have allegiance to Jesus. Instead, they decided that they understood what mankind needs better. The leaders betrayed their founding values and more importantly, the trust of their followers. It is a cautionary tale of failed religious leadership.
Unfortunately, unsavory religious leadership is not just the purview of nineteenth-century novelists. Over the years, many religious leaders—rabbis, priests, imams—have breached the trust of their congregants. Sometimes, like the Grand Inquisitor, it is because they think they know better. Religious authority can intoxicate the judgment of leaders, especially when they see themselves as the sole arbiters of authenticity. Other times partnership with the devil comes in more subtle ways. Religious leaders are as subject to human temptations and error as any other religious practitioner. The stakes, however, of religious failure are much higher for religious leaders. In the wake of religious leadership it is not just the soul of the leader that is at stake—their followers can suffer even greater losses. Betrayed religious trust is hard to ever heal. What is a religious community to do when they discover that their leader was not “working with Thee, but with him”? What happens when leaders fail?
Learning from Broken Vessels
Jewish leaders who fail are as old as the Bible. When enumerating the different sin offerings, each offering is prefaced with the qualifier “if.” If a Kohen sins, if the Jewish people sin. Except one: The leader’s sacrifice.242 When presenting the possibility of a leader’s bringing a sin offering, the Torah writes “[w]hen a leader sins,”—not “if” a leader sins. To some degree failure is an inevitable component of leadership.243 Aspirational leaders will always fall short of ideals. There will almost always be stumbling as the vanguard steers its constituents to higher ground. Nearly every major biblical figure committed some serious sin or had some serious failure. Avraham was criticized for lying. Moshe hit the rock. David saw Batsheva.
Still, there has been a reticence in rabbinic thought to ascribe sins or imperfections to biblical characters. Part of the traditional rabbinic conception of biblical leaders is their seemingly unreachable greatness. Certainly, educators of young children normally present stories that emphasize the near infallibility of biblical characters. Writing to a group of Jewish educators, Rabbi Jacob J. Schacter posed the following questions regarding ascribing failures to biblical characters:
&n
bsp; Is it now appropriate to ascribe whatever “faults, errors and weaknesses” we want to the patriarchs? Is there a line to be drawn beyond which such ascriptions are inappropriate? Where do we draw the line? …Clearly we assert, and to my mind must genuinely believe, that they are just not like “you and me;” indeed, they are much, much greater, an entirely different dimension of being. In the words of Gary Kamiya, “To feel the pedestal is to call the very idea of the pedestal into question.”244
Over the years, educators have given different answers to these questions. Dr. Zev Eleff in his article “Psychohistory and the Imaginary Couch: Diagnosing Historical Biblical Figures” recounts some of the more sensational polemics associated with some of the questionable character analyses of biblical characters within the Orthodox world.245 He rightfully concludes that such character scrutiny “cut at the very core of Orthodox values and its historical memory.” Aside from Orthodox values, such inquiry may also tug at our conceptions of leadership. Do we fashion our conception of religious leadership from the same psychological materials, replete with all of its imperfections and deficiencies, from which we develop our own self-conceptions? Or do religious leaders perhaps emerge from a more refined place? One Talmudic approach sets a high bar.
Rabbis should be like angels. Based on the verse in Malakhi (2:7) that states, “For the priest’s lips should keep knowledge, and they should seek Torah at his mouth; for he is a messenger [malakh] of the Lord of hosts,” the Talmud states, “If the teacher is similar to an angel [malakh] of the Lord, seek Torah from his mouth, and if not, then do not seek Torah from his mouth.”246 The standard for studying Torah from a Rabbi, then, is that his conduct should be comparable to that of an angel. Conversely, a rabbi who is not comparable to an angel should not be teaching. This Talmudic ruling is codified in Jewish law.247
Why angels? It is somewhat unusual that the standard for a proper rabbinic role is couched in the term angel [malakh]. Judaism does not normally regard angelic status as something that should be emulated. Sometimes man is considered even more elevated than an angel.248 Perhaps in this context the term malakh is not used just to evoke the purity and righteousness of “angels” but, more importantly, their loyalty to their mission. The term malakh derives from the same Hebrew verb meaning to send on a mission.249 The angel is the ultimate messenger. Many opinions, notably Maimonides, contend that an angel does not even have the capacity to alter its mission.250 The messenger remains synonymous with the message. Unlike the Grand Inquisitor, angels cannot betray the faith of their constituents. No matter what a rabbi’s personal questions or objections may be, a true teacher has fealty to the message. Such is the model of rabbinic leadership.
Historically, many non-angelic rabbis have emerged in the Jewish community. There have been a host of lines drawn to assess whether the teaching of such rabbinic leaders can still remain within the boundaries of the traditional Jewish community. Some consideration is given to the type of infractions committed by the rabbi and, notably, many consider making distinctions in the medium of the message—namely are the teachings of the disgraced rabbi written or oral? The aforementioned verse specifically notes that an angelic personality is needed to “seek Torah from his mouth.” Perhaps, some suggest, a written relationship is still sustainable.251 The greatest challenge, however, to the angelic standards of rabbinic leadership was a Mishnaic figure named Elisha ben Avuyah. He was a rebellious rabbi who embodied the prototypical sinful leader in rabbinic literature. He was unambiguously non-angelic, to the point where the Talmud asks how his student, Rabbi Meir, could even learn from him following his spiritual downfall. The Talmud insists that Rabbi Meir was the exception, given his ability to focus only on the proper parts of Elisha ben Avuyah’s teachings and discard the rest.252 For all other intents and purposes Elisha ben Avuyah was excised from the boundaries of the rabbinic community. In fact, he is no longer referred to by his name in Talmudic literature. He is simply called Aher—the Other.
Except the Other or Accept the Other?
There is little uniformity in the tale of how Elisha ben Avuyah became Aher, the Other. Several different accounts of the genesis of his heresy exist. Some of the episodes contradict each other; many can be read as complementary. Yet however they are read, the story of Aher has captured both scholarly and popular imaginations. Perhaps most famously in the fictionalized account in Milton Steinberg’s As a Driven Leaf, the story of Aher has become the central Talmudic case study in failed rabbinic personalities.253 Given the vast amount of scholarship dedicated to the life of Aher, one scholar described offering his own interpretation as “daring to enter the pardes of Talmudic scholarship”—the very undertaking, as we shall see, that doomed Aher.254 Still, into pardes we must veer. And hopefully, unlike Aher we will emerge unscathed.
Elisha ben Avuyah lived in second-century Jerusalem around the time of the destruction of the second Temple. Both the Babylonian and the Jerusalem Talmud use a story from the middle of his life as a narrative point of departure.255 They offer differing accounts of what precedes and what follows this incident but establish the same middle point—the entrance into pardes. Four rabbis, we are told, enter pardes , literally translated as a garden. This, of course, was not any garden. It is either an allusion to a mystical vision or to mystical study.256 Once the quartet enter, each rabbi reacts differently. Ben Azzai glimpses and dies. Ben Zoma glimpses and gets injured. Aher gazes and uproots the sprouts. Rabbi Akiva exits safely. Interestingly, only Rabbi Akiva is identified by his name in this passage. The other three figures have already lost their names. Elisha became Aher.257
What does it mean that Aher “uprooted the sprouts”? The Jerusalem Talmud presents a few narrative explanations. In one passage it refers to Aher’s murdering young students of Torah. Another explanation offered is that Aher steered young students away from Torah study. In the Babylonian Talmud Aher’s uprooting is read more literally. During a rendezvous with a prostitute, in order to prove he was not the famed rabbinic figure, he uprooted radish saplings on Shabbat. Based on his open violation of Shabbat, the prostitute surmised, “You must indeed be another (aher).”258
Similarly, the Babylonian and Jerusalem Talmud differ in their accounts of what precedes the story of pardes. In the Jerusalem Talmud the seeds of Aher’s heresy are planted either through early questions he had with theodicy or, alternatively, they already existed in the womb—a product of his mother’s inhaling the spiritually poisonous fumes from a house of idolatry.259 Jeffrey Rubinstein explains that both of these explanations play important theological roles; the Talmud is trying to account for how such a serious Torah scholar could become so mired in sin. He writes:
The sustained interest in the provenance of Elisha’s sin and the multiple explanations provided are attempts to account for such a figure. The focus on the father (and/or mother) as sources of Elisha’s unfortunate fate is an effective strategy. Attributing the cause of Elisha’s sin to circumstances prior to his birth and out of his control makes it easier to accept that a sage could go astray. His sin was not only fated, but the Torah he learned was tainted ab initio and could not protect him from error. Combine these factors with the eternally difficult question of theodicy and one has a plausible account of the making of a sinning sage.260
Each of these accounts are attempts to reconcile the coexistence of sin and Torah in one individual. If Aher’s sin is predetermined, maybe the normal trajectory for someone immersed in Torah is divinely warped as well.
Aher does little better in the Babylonian Talmud’s presentation of his history. That narrative attributes the roots of Aher’s heresy to a divine vision he had while in pardes.261 Aher sees the angel Metatron sitting and writing the merits of the Jewish people. Normally such an activity would be reserved only for God, but unbeknownst to Aher, Metatron was given divine permission to partake in that activity. Assuming that God no longer had exclusive control of heaven, Aher becomes a heretic. Unlike the version in the Jerusalem Talmud, the Bab
ylonian Talmud does not include elements of theodicy or parental predetermination. Here Aher’s heresy is the result of a misunderstanding of the role of the angel Metatron in his divine vision. Still, a glaring emphasis is missing, namely choice. Both versions of Aher’s heresy dull the role of choice and free will in the narrative of his descent.262 The Talmudic texts seem unwilling to consider that a scholar of such renown could simply choose heresy and resolve never to repent. Instead, the arc of Aher’s narrative is already curved towards sin.
Nevertheless, following Aher’s heresy he remains in touch with his student Rabbi Meir. In one story found in the Jerusalem Talmud, Aher rides on a horse on Shabbat, a prohibited act, as he speaks to Rabbi Meir. Together they discuss the book of Job. Rabbi Meir cites Job 42:12, “The Lord blessed the latter days of Job’s life more than the beginning.” Rabbi Meir understands the verse to mean that God doubled Job’s money. Aher, citing Rabbi Akiva, counters with a more profound explanation:
Alas for things lost and not found. Akiva your master did not expound it like that. Rather, ’The Lord blessed the latter days of Job’s life more than the beginning’—on account of the mitzvoth and good deeds that he had done from the beginning.
Several other exegetical exchanges are recorded, each of which serves a dual purpose, as Rubinstein notes. First, all vignettes establish Aher as a superior and creative Torah scholar whose scholarship remained intact even after his heresy. Second, Rabbi Meir and Aher’s discussion of Job intentionally parallel Aher’s own odyssey. Both Job and Aher were wealthy: Job, materially; Aher, spiritually. Each eventually becomes impoverished from his respective wealth.263
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