Liberation and Law
While Jews now live between exile and return, they also live between liberation and law. In the Exodus narrative, Pharaoh takes the Israelites into slavery in Egypt and murders their male sons. One of these sons, Moses, escapes due to the compassion of Pharaoh’s daughter. As an adult, Moses returns to command Pharaoh to “Let my people go.” When the hard-hearted Pharaoh refuses, God sends down ten plagues. Eventually, Pharaoh sees the errors of his ways and agrees to let the Israelites go. But as they are fleeing, he changes his mind, sending his armies after them. At the Red Sea, it looks as if Moses and the Israelites are trapped. But God parts the waters, allowing them to cross over into freedom. He then commands the waters to return, drowning the Egyptians.
This saga of enslavement and escape belongs to the Jews, of course, but also to the world. No other story has been more influential in the United States. The Pilgrims saw themselves as the New Israel, Europe as Egypt, and the New World as a wilderness in the process of becoming the Promised Land. Over successive generations, black slaves, Mormons, civil rights agitators, and feminists would read their experiences by the light of this freedom tale. It must not be forgotten, however, that it was in the midst of this liberation story that God laid down the law.
Throughout the Tanakh, God and human beings enter into sacred contracts called covenants. God makes universal covenants with all of humanity through Adam and Noah. He later enters into particular covenants with the Israelites through Abraham and Moses. In these covenants, God promises blessings to those who follow His commandments and punishments to those who do not. The freedom won for the Israelites was not freedom to do whatever they wanted but freedom to become servants of God. So the climax of the Exodus story comes not at the far side of the Red Sea but atop Mount Sinai. Moses is both liberator and lawgiver. He inspires revolutions, but he also stands atop the U.S. Supreme Court building as the progenitor of the Western legal tradition. Similarly, the festival of Shavuot (Pentecost), which celebrates the giving of the Torah on Sinai, comes immediately after the festival of Passover. And after you have turned the last page of the book of Exodus, the book of Leviticus sets down the Torah in excruciating detail, with legislation regarding sacrifice and bodily discharges and male circumcision and atonement and idolatry and tattoos and prostitution and the Sabbath and food ways and male homosexuality (though not, it should be noted, lesbianism). And so, as memoirist Shalom Auslander puts it, “The Book of Freedom is followed by the Book of Submission. The Book of Possibility is followed by the Book of Do What I Say.”23
Jews have divided their 613 mitzvot into positive commandments (“Thou shalt”) and negative commandments (“Thou shalt not”). A more helpful division, however, is into ritual commandments (between the human being and God) and ethical commandments (between the individual and other human beings.) One of the distinctive features of Judaism is that its monotheism is ethical. God is not only all-powerful but also all-good, which is why Jews throughout history have kvetched at Him when He does not seem to live up to His own ethical standards. How can the Holocaust happen if God is really both omnipotent and good? Why do bad things happen to good people? For the prophets, ethics was central, and many Reform Jews have located the essence of Judaism in the Golden Rule. When asked to provide the first-century equivalent of a Twitter message on Judaism (by summarizing the Torah while a student was standing on one leg), Hillel replied: “Do not unto others that which you would not have them do unto you. That is the entire Torah; the rest is commentary. Now go and study.”24
As the litany of Levitical codes demonstrates, halakha (which is often translated as “law” but really refers to “way” or “path”—the Dao of Judaism) is not only about morality. It is also about how we should mourn, eat, and observe the Sabbath. In fact, most of the 613 mitzvot concern ritual rather than ethical life. Leviticus, for example, speaks primarily of ritual rather than ethical laws. Only chapter 19, which includes the admonition (delivered twice) to love the neighbor and stranger as yourself, attends to ethical laws, yet even there discussions of lying and stealing entangle themselves in discussions of beards and tattoos. So when Jews speak of observing the law, they are invoking not only the ethical but also the ritual dimension of religion.
Of all the ritual commandments, Judaism’s dietary laws (kashrut) seem the oddest to outsiders. Almost all religious groups use food ways to distinguish themselves from their neighbors (halal rules in Islam, and vegetarianism for many Hindus), but observant Jews seem particularly strict when it comes to what they can and cannot eat. They consume only fish with scales and fins (so no eels or catfish), and they will not eat pork or birds of prey. Because meat and dairy cannot be mixed, many Jews have two separate sets of plates and flatware. Theories about the origins of these regulations abound. One, of course, is that they came from the mouth of God. Another is that kosher eating was God’s health plan, saving Jews from trichinosis carried by pigs. Anthropologist Mary Douglas has argued that Jews do not eat lobsters and shrimp because these animals, which live in the ocean yet crawl on the ground, are category busters that frustrate the neat tripartite division in Genesis of animals of the earth, water, and air. According to Douglas, male homosexuality is outlawed for the same reason; it, too, is a conceptual anomaly.25
Jewish law can seem irrational to outsiders, and the way some Jews follow the law can seem obsessive and hypocritical at the same time. For example, though it is not permitted to press an elevator button on the Sabbath (since the button operates an electrical switch and is therefore considered work), some buildings with Jewish residents have Sabbath elevators that stop automatically at every floor. A more widely publicized example is the eruv. Jewish law forbids carrying objects outside of the home on the Sabbath. So it is impermissible to carry an infant to a neighbor’s house or to push your wheelchair-bound grandfather there. In order to allow infants and infirm grandparents alike to enjoy the gift of Shabbat, Jews devised a creative solution to this problem: “a magic schlepping circle” called an eruv, which via wires between adjacent homes creates a symbolic fence, turning what had been a public space into a private one.26 Since 2007, an eruv has covered most of Manhattan. An “eruvitect” makes sure it remains in good working order, and updates on its status appear regularly online.
These may seem to be cases of people circumventing the law. But the real way to get around the law is simply to ignore it. In these examples, there is great respect for the law, though there is also much flexibility in interpreting it. Even observant Jews who use Sabbath elevators refer to them as legal fictions, and, Judaism being Judaism, there are debates about whether they are actually halakhic.
When I was last in Jerusalem, a Jewish friend showed me around the city. On two different days I offered to buy him ice cream. In each case, because of the dietary requirement not to mix meat and dairy, he had to recollect when he had last eaten meat (his community’s rule was a three-hour wait). This may seem irrational, but for him my offers appeared to engender Buddhist-style mindfulness, prompting him to be mindful of what he was thinking about eating and of what he had eaten in the past and when. More important, they prompted him to be mindful of God.
When Judaism Became Judaism
All this talk of Genesis, Exodus, and Leviticus may give the impression that Judaism is just about the Hebrew Bible. This impression is widespread among Christians, who often identify Judaism with what they call the Old Testament. Like Hinduism, which has its roots in the Vedas, Judaism has roots in the Tanakh. But the Tanakh describes a religion of priests and sacrifices that had already ceased to exist by the time this scripture was codified in the second century C.E. Judaism as we know it today developed between the time of the destruction of the First Temple by the Babylonians in 586 B.C.E. and the destruction of the Second Temple by the Romans in 70 C.E.
The destruction of the First Temple had provided the Israelites with a dress rehearsal of sorts for how to respond to the destruction of the second. In the wake of th
e Babylonian exile, Jews had developed the institution of the synagogue as a place for study and prayer. They had also started to collect the books that would constitute the Tanakh. These steps toward a more prayerful and portable religion accelerated after the destruction of the Second Temple. As the center of gravity of this tradition shifted from sacrifice to sacred texts during the first two centuries of the Common Era, the Israelite religion of priests performing rituals in the Jerusalem Temple gave way to a new religion of rabbis reading and interpreting texts in synagogues, and Judaism as we know it was born.27
The Tanakh was one of these texts, but as rabbis studied and debated its teachings, the fact that it could not serve as a comprehensive guide to Jewish life became plain. The Tanakh says almost nothing about such topics as marriage and contracts. It spells out neither when Shabbat begins and ends nor what sorts of labor it prohibits. So the rabbis got to the hard work of answering these questions, and the fruit of their labor was the Judaism of today.
Contemporary Jewish life is rabbinic. Its exemplars are rabbis. It centers on books rather than altars. It sanctifies the world not through temple sacrifice but through words and deeds. These deeds constitute not just a religion but a way of being in the world—a way of cooking and eating and having sex and washing and speaking and working. This way of being is not restricted to any one place. And anyone can do it, not just priests. Jews today follow not only the Written Torah of the Tanakh but also the Oral Torah of the Talmud. In fact, very few of the 613 mitzvot prescribed for Jews today appear in the Tanakh itself. Most of them come from the Talmud, which serves as the textual heart of Judaism—“a masterwork,” writes Elie Wiesel, “unequalled in Jewish memory.”28
To refer to Judaism today is to refer to the “Judaism of the dual Torah” formed by rabbis in the first two centuries of the Common Era, deeply influenced by the Greeks and transformed, often quite radically, by successive generations of Jews.29 To put it another way, Abraham and Moses were not Jews. Or, if they are Jews, they are Jews by adoption, integrated by an act of the imagination into a religion born long after they had died.
The Sabbath and Minor Holidays
One continuity between Israelite religion and rabbinic Judaism is Shabbat, or the Sabbath. Although this day comes once a week—from sundown on Friday to sundown on Saturday—it is the most important holiday in a tradition built around sacred time. Shabbat harks back to the dawn of time, both recalling and reenacting God’s rest on the seventh day after making the world in the first six. It also commemorates the freedom from slavery described in the book of Exodus. Shabbat is the only holy day commanded in the Ten Commandments (which Jews refer to as the “Ten Words,” since there are 613 commandments), and it is discussed and debated repeatedly in the Talmud, which prohibits thirty-nine different types of labor on this day of rest—from cooking and sewing to lighting a fire and putting one out.
Although outsiders often think of the Sabbath as prohibiting work, what is actually prohibited are creative acts—mimicking the creativity God showed on the first six days. So each of the thirty-nine prohibited activities is a work of creation of some sort. Among outsiders, the Sabbath also conjures up images of “thou shalt nots”: negative commandments against turning on appliances or driving a car. But observant Jews usually think about Shabbat in more positive terms—as entering a sacred place set apart by time. On Shabbat everything slows down. Families gather around the dinner table, lighting candles, saying special prayers, drinking wine, and enjoying a special kind of bread known as challah, often shaped into braided loaves.
Although Hanukkah is the only Jewish holiday many Europeans and Americans can name, it is actually one of Judaism’s two minor festivals. Because it falls near Christmas and involves gift giving, it is often seen as a sort of Jewish Christmas. It actually commemorates the retaking of Jerusalem in the second century B.C.E. by Jewish rebels known as the Maccabees and their purification and rededication of the temple.
The other minor Jewish holiday is Purim. A raucous celebration that somehow recalls both Halloween and the Hindu celebration of Holi, Purim commemorates events recorded in the book of Esther in which the hero Mordecai foils a plot by the villain Haman to destroy the Jews. In a Purim sermon I heard once at the Wailing Wall in Jerusalem, an Orthodox rabbi spoke of driving into the city every day through an Arab section and greeting the people he saw there with joy rather than panic. He then urged his listeners to drink of wine and God until they could not tell the difference between enemies and friends, Arabs and Israelis, the cursed Haman and the blessed Mordecai.
Passover and Major Holidays
Perhaps more than any other religion, Judaism orders the world in time. Its three pilgrim festivals (traditionally celebrated in pilgrimages to Jerusalem) commemorate key moments in the Jewish story: Pesach (Passover) for the exodus from Egypt; Shavuot (Pentecost) for the giving of the Torah to the Israelites on Mount Sinai; and Sukkot (Tabernacles) for the flight from Egypt into the wilderness. The other two major holidays are the High Holy Days of the New Year (Rosh Hashanah) and the Day of Atonement (Yom Kippur). Although these holidays are typically discussed in terms of sacred history and theology, they are also distinguished by their foods—apples and honey on Rosh Hashanah; stuffed vegetables on Sukkot; jelly donuts on Hanukkah; and matzo-ball soup on Passover.
Of these holy days, Passover is the most widely practiced.30 Every spring, Jews gather around a dinner table for this festival of family and food. They eat. They drink. They sing. They ask questions and play at trying to answer them. They remember the sweetness of the Israelites’ freedom march out of Egypt. They remember the bitterness of slavery and Pharaoh. And they remember the ten plagues. In the last of these plagues, aimed at the first son in every Egyptian family, the Israelites sacrificed a lamb and dripped its blood on their doorposts so that when the Angel of Death came he would see it and “pass over” their houses in peace. Celebrating the Seder fulfills the commandment to “tell thy son in that day, saying: It is because of that which the LORD did for me when I came forth out of Egypt” (Exodus 13:8). So like Judaism itself, the Seder is about both telling and doing, story and law.
The classic Seder food is matzo, unleavened bread prepared in large, flat sheets that snap when you break them. Matzo recalls the hurried flight from Egypt, when there was no time to allow bread to rise. So during the eight days of Passover leavened bread products are prohibited from Jewish homes. Other foods on the Seder table include: maror, a bitter herb that recalls the bitterness of slavery; and kharoset, nuts and apples ground up to resemble the mortar slaves used in their forced labor. There are also four glasses of wine, which are consumed at key moments during the Seder.
There is no faith prerequisite for participating in Passover. You do not have to believe in God. You do not even have to be Jewish. For the past few years I have attended a Seder with friends in suburban New Jersey. When I was young, I went to ersatz Seders—odd affairs staged in church halls a few days before or after Passover by rabbis and ministers open to interfaith dialogue. But the ones I attend now are honest-to-goodness Seders—family and friends converging from near and far, preparing food, opening wine, and gathering on one of the first two nights of Passover week in a small home around a huge table to retell an ancient story. Every year the family patriarch begins by saying that this is not just ancient history. To gather for Passover is to stand in a tradition of a people who have gathered for millennia to retell this story in their own languages and on their own terms. But if this story is not also our story, then it is not worth retelling, he says. “In every generation, each of us should feel as though we ourselves had gone forth from Egypt.”
Passover festivities center on a reading of the Haggadah (literally, “telling”), which recalls the story of the exodus of the Israelites from Egypt. Some Orthodox Jews insist on one official Haggadah. Other Jews revel in thousands of different versions, including the hugely popular “Maxwell House Haggadah” distributed by this coffee maker begi
nning in 1934.31 When I was teaching at Georgia State University in Atlanta, I asked my students to read a feminist Haggadah, and some of them were upset that Jewish women were playing fast and loose with their tradition. But in this case playing fast and loose is the tradition. At the Seders I have attended in New Jersey, the family uses a Haggadah written by their daughter, which understands the Exodus story through the prism of the civil rights movement, with a heavy dose of Jewish mysticism thrown in for good measure.
Seders typically begin with lots of discussion and end with lots of singing, including a seemingly interminable rendition of “Dayeinu,” whose lyrics go through each and every miracle performed by God in leading the Israelites out of Egypt. An even longer folk song called “Had Gadya” (“One Little Goat”) recalls the children’s book in which a frog ran from a cat who ran from a dog who ran from a pig who ran from a cow (and so on), only in this case a man buys a goat who is eaten by a cat who is bitten by a dog who is beaten by a stick which is burned by fire which is quenched by water which is drunk by an ox which is killed by a slaughterer who is killed by the Angel of Death who is himself done away with by “the Holy One, Blessed be He.”
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