Mr. Speaker, I include in the Record remarks submitted at the request of a Virginia Beach constituent, Rabbi Dr. Israel Zoberman of Temple Lev Tikvah. and are a reflection of his views: The major celebration of the Jewish High Holy Days of…
Mr. Speaker, I include in the Record remarks submitted at the request of a Virginia Beach constituent, Rabbi Dr. Israel Zoberman of Temple Lev Tikvah. and are a reflection of his views:
The major celebration of the Jewish High Holy Days of Rosh
Hashanah (The New Year 5787) and Yom Kippur (The Day of
Atonement) are enhanced by a probing and provocative volume
of the quality of To Be A Jew Today (A New Guide to God,
Israel and the Jewish People) New York: Farrar Strause and
Giroux. The recent book by Noah Feldman, the Felix
Frankfurter Professor of Law as well as chair of the Society
of Fellows at Harvard University where he is the founding
director of the Julis-Rabinowitz Program on Jewish and
Israeli law.
Feldman raises fundamental and foundational issues that are
at the heart of contemporary Jewish identity that all
thoughtful and concerned Jews from throughout the wide
spectrum of Jewish affiliation and practice along with those
on the periphery of active Jewish life, would find both
meaningful and purposeful to wrestle with. Additionally,
Feldman's profound scholarship is not of the dry type, rather
perks intellectual curiosity while appealing in a clarion
call to a big tent approach, to pause and reassess core
Jewish themes in conversation with one who shys from being
authoritative. ``In the course of writing this book, I
intentionally have not flagged what I think is now in it. My
goal in that isn't to make what I write seem obviously true.
It's to allow you, the reader, to use your own reaction to
gauge and solidify what you think, not what I think. You can
certainly read this book by arguing with it. I read a lot of
books this way, and it often works for me. If you want,
however, you can also read this book not argumentatively but
introspectively--the way I wrote it.
Though the book is designed with a lofty and a bit
presumptive goal as ``A New Guide to God, Israel and the
Jewish people, ``It does reflect the author's own respect for
high academic standing and his heavy stake in reaching out
for a Jewish world in much disarray spiritually, socially and
politically with the shaking events he mentions of October 7
offering an urgent backdrop as a uniting Jewish factor. Thus
it is not happenstance that he refers to the ``Guide of the
Perplexed'' by the recognized giant Jewish thinker of all
times, the medieval Moses Maimonides, who reached out to his
own perplexed generation confronted and challenged by Greek,
Islamic and Pagan influences while attempting to secure and
anchor an authentic Jewish response and identity without
imposing his own perspective. Yet he aroused the ire of the
rabbinic establishment who called for banning his book but
might have resulted, surmises Feldman, in the Talmud's
burning by the Church in Paris in 1242.
The ``New Guide'' offered by the author is his own attempt
to follow on the Maimonidean model with reaching to his own
perplexed times in a way that clarifies without setting
himself up as the supreme arbiter of such an imposing agenda
of discourse. ``One initial aim of this book is to chart a
map of contemporary Jewish lives and ideas, a map the reader
can use not to identify bad Jews but to explore and
appreciate the many different ways Jews can be and think and
experience. It can be used as a field guide to Jewish people
and ideas as they exist today, and as they are being
transformed for the future.''
Feldman's embracing and inclusive approach focuses on the
notion that a ``bad Jew'' which is common, including the
author, to how Jews feel in relation to their demanding
heritage regulating Jewish conduct, is in fact alien to
Judaism. Given the trying circumstances of the historical
Jewish experience, including forced mass conversion of
Jews in the medieval era, the rabbis' impulse was not to add
misery to fellow Jews caught up in extraordinary painful
dilemmas of life and death issues but to allow them a
continued sense of belonging, though not in practice, to
their eternal Jewish covenant, with perhaps hope that their
oppressive condition might be altered. The concise and clear
Talmudic dictum. ``An Israelite though he has sinned, is an
Israelite,'' speaks volumes of paramount Jewish inclusivity
promoted by the author as a continued key principle for a
wide pluralistic system. Feldman proves for the sake of it or
plain survival, he is an iconoclast, criticizing the State of
Israel for not admitting Brother Daniel--the Polish Jew who
converted to Catholicism in the Holocaust's harrowing
circumstances--under the Law of Return. It does contradict a
hallowed rabbinic instruction though secular Israel's
decision was ironically influenced by its religious
establishment. Indeed there is a blurring of the religious
and national poles in Jewish identity.
Jewish survival as a tiny minority of some 16 million Jews
in a global population of 7.6 billion is a salient factor,
not lost on Feldman, which only strengthens his gentle yet
forceful argument for a wide framework for Jewish affiliation
and acceptance in an age characterized by global natural and
man-made threats to human survival along with radical
questioning concerning the applicability and relevancy of all
things Jewish. Surely the author's ``openness'' attempting to
overarch the denominational Jewish divide which risks
overreaching, would find fierce opposition from
traditionalists lacking his spiritual audacity and courage
for the sake of vital Jewish survival in face of assembling
mighty odds with modernity diminishing long held claims such
as heralded theme of Jewish choseness which the author fully
probes as he does with all that he skillfully analyses.
Feldman regards Jewish choseness as a major factor in
entrenched antisemitism, ``This choseness, I am suggesting,
is a provocation to anyone not so chosen, because it amounts
to the claim that the Master of the Universe has chosen me
and not you.''
As he points out, there is solid grounding as in the
universal proclamations of the prophet Amos, to tone down the
double edge sword of exclusive choseness giving rise to a
Baruch Goldstein, an American physician who committed the
infamous massacre in Hebron's Tomb of the Patriarchs that
houses a mosque. ``He was a Modern Orthodox Religious Zionist
who had been educated at a high school nearly identical to
mine. His actions had shaken my belief structure like no
other event in my life, before or since.'' The author
concludes his uniquely engaging book with a theme that runs
throughout, namely that characterizing any Jew as ``bad'' is
contrary to the hallmark of traditional Jewish inclusiveness,
and counterproductive to the cause of Jewish survival and
vitality. He raises as an example the complex saga of Elisha
ben Abuyah, the Other, as a case in point highlighting
multifaceted Jewish thinking which errs toward acceptance of
the Other in our own Jewish midst. He finds it kin to Jacob's
wrestling encounter with God's messenger. ``That struggle-
embrace with God lies at the heart of this book. It lies, I
have tried to show, at the heart of the Jewish past, the
Jewish present, and the hoped-for and possible Jewish future,
which we pray to be able to create. It can, I believe,
explain and engage and guide the ongoing encounter between
God, Israel, and the Jewish people.
This irresistible and indispensable treasure trove of
wisdom and guidance from a teacher par excellence who cares
deeply about the Jewish future while not mincing words, is a
most welcome new source for discourse, discussion, study and
growth. It is indeed a gift to both Jews and non-Jews for our
perplexed and perplexing times. We remember the 25th
anniversary of the 9/11 attacks with the Jewish New Year
coinciding this season.
