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From the Rabbi's Desk 1 - Heaven and Hell?

Many of you have suggested that others might like to read my response to a letter I received which I gave in the form of a sermon. It came from a woman in West Yorkshire and ran thus:

Dear Rabbi Janet Burden,
I am presently researching for my dissertation on the concepts of Heaven and Hell in the New Testament. Since Christians believe that their beliefs stem from Judaism, I was wondering if as a representative of Liberal Judaism, if you could answer two questions in order to help me in my research. I would be most grateful if you could respond in as much detail as you would respond if asked by a member of your synagogue.
• If a member of your synagogue or a non-Jew asked you to explain what Heaven and Hell were, what would you say?
∙ What teaching would you give on the afterlife?
Thank you so much for your help with this matter.
Susan

Dear Susan,
I have been walking around with your letter in my bag for almost a week, trying to decide what to do with it. Frankly, what you have asked of me is no small task, and it is hard for me to justify taking time out of my congregational responsibilities to answer your questions properly. Rabbis are hired by their congregations directly, and their primary responsibility lies in meeting the needs and expectations of those whom we serve. We have never even met; I know nothing of you or the nature of the research you are undertaking. I have no way of knowing if you will understand my responses or the theology that underpins them. All these factors would seem to dictate that I should simply ignore your letter or politely decline to respond as you have asked. I can’t do that, however. Something that I might call ‘God’ demands better of me. I have therefore decided that, as I am compelled to respond, I can do so most efficiently by turning my response into a sermon. The words that you are reading now will have been read to my congregation, as will your initial letter.

First of all, I would challenge your statement that Christian beliefs stem from Judaism, at least as you phrased it. Both Christianity and Rabbinic Judaism developed out of something we might call Biblical Judaism. Thus I would say that the relationship between our faiths today is more like that of siblings, not parent and child. The development of each is a response to the cataclysmic events of the first century, particularly the Roman occupation and the subsequent fall of the Jerusalem Temple. I personally think that if you want to understand more about the concepts in the New Testament, you should be looking at what both Jews (and non-Jews!) of that time were writing. You need to remember the intense levels of social and political upheaval, as the people’s lived reality obviously affected their theological perspectives.

In short, I believe that the concept of ‘Heaven and Hell’ came out of a world in which the prevailing view was that God directly rewarded good and punished evil. Despite the fact that the Hebrew Bible (which you call the Old Testament) presents God as acting in this way, the people saw little evidence for the belief: the wicked often prospered and the good often suffered. Positing an afterlife in which the injustice would be redressed was one way of solving the problem.

It is worth noting, however, that belief in an afterlife was not shared by all Jews even in Jesus’ time. The powerful and wealthy Sadducees denied the idea. Belief in an afterlife, and in particular in physical resurrection, were ideas championed primarily by the Pharisees, who generally worked among the poor. These community leaders wanted to give the disenfranchised hope. Although the Pharisees are presented in the New Testament as the implacable opponents of Jesus, many of his teachings come from the Pharisaic tradition, as the existence of many parallel texts indicates. It is important to remember that all four gospels were written decades after Jesus was dead, when the early church was trying to separate itself from the synagogue. The historical setting accounts in part for the polemical nature of the texts.

Of course, it is equally important to remember that the Hebrew Bible was also written by people, however much it has been presented as a text dictated to Moses on Mt. Sinai. It also contains problematic statements and ideas. I would say that one such idea is that of a God who directly rewards good and punishes evil! It should thus not surprise you to learn that I personally do not believe in the idea of ‘Heaven and Hell’ at all. To paraphrase Mordecai Kaplan, I believe that ethical living brings its own reward, which we can perceive in this lifetime: it is the satisfaction of knowing that you have done the right thing.

In terms what I would teach about an afterlife, I would say that my beliefs are well reflected in a meditation from Siddur Lev Chadash that we often read as a preface to our traditional mourner’s prayer:

Life is finite. Like a candle it burns, it glows, it is radiant with warmth and beauty; then it fades, its substance is consumed, and it is no more. Yet we do not despair, for we know that we are more than a flickering flame. With our lives we give life, something of us can never die. We move in the eternal cycle of darkness and light, of death and life…(p. 523).

I love this meditation precisely because it does not pretend to unpack the mystery of life and death. I suppose if I were to teach anything about an afterlife, it would be to learn to appreciate that mystery, but not to dwell on it. One tool I would use to do that would be the following parable by the Bostoner Rebbe, Levi Isaac Horowitz. It appears in a book by Joshua Haberman entitled The God I Believe In:

Once upon a time there was a king who wanted to give a treat to the workers in his diamond mine. He told them that, for three hours only, they could keep for themselves all the diamonds they could pluck from the ground. Some got so excited that, as soon as they found a stone, they would polish it and fantasize what they would do with it once the three hours were over. Others just tried to collect as many diamonds as possible, leaving the polishing and fantasizing to later. Needless to say, these collected much more than the others.

“Why?” asks the rebbe, and answers: “Because they used the time for what was meant to be.”

Horowitz continues:

Life is not meant to investigate what is going to happen afterwards. If you spend time on that which happens afterwards, you’ll miss the opportunities that are here in life. There is so much to do while you are alive that while thinking about what is going to happen afterwards, you will be missing great opportunities of what is happening here at the moment…. The greatest moments are the moments that a person is alive. Concentrate on what you can take here; pluck as many diamonds as you can.

Susan, though I doubt that this letter is what you were expecting, I hope that these answers will be of some help to you. You can be sure that they are indeed an accurate reflection of the teaching I would give on the subject – in fact, I just have.

With all good wishes,

Rabbi Janet Burden

From the Rabbi’s Desk 2

I have always found it so appropriate that the Jewish people are referred to collectively as b’nei Israel, the children of Israel. This is not because I hold to the romantic notion that we all literally trace ourselves back to a single family. Actually, the notion of the 12 tribes developing from a group of brothers is almost certainly a fictional construct. But the historical fact simply doesn’t matter anymore. Jewish self-understanding has been shaped for centuries by the idea that we are of the stock of Israel, of the man who wrestled with both God and man, and survived.

Struggle is our way of being in the world – by fate, by choice and by temperament. Down the centuries, Jews have struggled with God. No other culture would have produced the Book of Job in quite the form it appears. Shall a human argue with God? Unthinkable within most religious frameworks! Yet even the most pious of Jews, the rabbinic sages of the period of the Mishnah and Talmud, allowed themselves to question and to challenge God, sometimes in more daring ways than we do today. We have never been the people who submit to God, as our Muslim brothers and sisters do. We don’t focus on ‘love’ like the Christians – though it is worth noting that the word appears many more times in the Hebrew Bible, the so-called ‘Old’ Testament, than it does in the ‘New.’ Instead, we focus on what it means to be a covenant people, a people bound forever in a relationship with a Being that we cannot even begin to understand. And yet we, like our ancestor Jacob, hang on and demand recognition – and blessing.

This dogged determination to struggle, and not to give in, is perhaps the defining characteristic of the Jewish people, both collectively and individually. And I believe one can see it just as clearly in those who come ‘from outside’ to join our people as in those who were born Jewish. People who are drawn to Jews and Judaism are often those who have had to struggle in their lives. Judaism gives meaning, purpose and structure to the struggle. But, perhaps most importantly, being part of the Jewish community gives us others to struggle along side. That is why it so often can feel like one is ‘coming home.’

All of us, even those who have a love/hate relationship with ‘official’ forms of Judaism, are forged by our struggles into one people. We are one in our search for meaning and for a way to build a better world. May that sense of belonging bring us strength as our wrestling with God continues.

From the Rabbi’s Desk 3

Do You Feel Commanded?

The language of commandment is a stumbling block for many people who otherwise are quite comfortable in the Jewish religious framework. I was discussing this problem recently with a couple of colleagues, and I was actually a bit shocked at their reactions. “It’s because we have created a society in which the self is the primary deity,” one suggested. “Yes,” the other quickly agreed. “People are quite comfortable with the Creator God – that God doesn’t require anything of them. But God as the One who commands, God as the Metzaveh – well, that’s really all a bit too much, isn’t it?”

Hand on heart, I couldn’t say that similar thoughts hadn’t crossed my mind. We do live in a society that encourages us to think increasingly only of our own wants and needs. Furthermore, our culture manufactures wants and needs endlessly through advertising and its obsession with the cults of celebrity and wealth. The immediate gratification of our desires is presented as the chief and highest good. I recently read what I thought was a rather good description of the ethos. “Does it melt your butter? If not, find something that does.”

Hmmm. I can see a bit of a marketing problem for us here. Somehow, I don’t think the concept of commandments, of mitzvot, was designed to melt anyone’s butter. It’s pretty low in the feel-good factor generally. But, to return for a moment to my colleagues’ analysis, I can’t help but wonder if they have identified symptoms, instead of the root, of the problem. Their core argument was that people today have become petty and selfish. But are we really so morally inferior to previous generations that we reject anything that might require us to think beyond our separate selves?

Frankly, I just don’t think so. People today are very much like they were a generation ago, or even a hundred generations ago. Elders perpetually despair of “the youth.” Ascetics and puritans are always appalled at the excesses of the hedonists. The writer of Ecclesiastes could have penned the words today, “Ein chadash tachat hashamesh.” There truly is nothing new under the sun. That is one of the reasons that the Biblical stories can still speak so strongly to us. It doesn’t require too much of a stretch of the imagination to think of Adam and Eve as the first victims of artificially manufactured desire…. We are hot-wired to pursue gratification, it is part of the human condition.

So, if it is not a profound shift in human nature, what is making it so hard for people today to accept the notion of commandment? Rabbi Elyse Frishman suggests that it has to do with a paradigm shift. Commandment, she says, is the language of hierarchy: God is up there, infinitely removed from us, judging us and ruling over us. In previous generations, this was the sole image that many people had of what God was, or could be. But this, she argues, is only part of the picture of God in the Jewish tradition. It is the part that men, in particular, understand best: clear boundaries, set roles and expectations, tick lists to check off – in short, a neat control and command structure. Whilst I have some reservations about her gender-specific analysis, I can see her point. Certainly, those who shaped our tradition over the past millennium, almost exclusively men, were striving primarily for two things: clarity and consistency. You need think only of the writings of great rabbis like Maimonides and Joseph Caro to understand my point. And, on the whole, their models of God and the systems they created for the governing of Jewish community served us well for a long time. Perhaps, however, they are not the most helpful frameworks for us today.

I remember well when I personally first encountered the problem of the language of commandment. I had long before made a decision that, as part of my own spiritual practice, I would try to always say berachot, blessings, over my food and before performing mitzvot. I found this practice deeply meaningful and felt that it enhanced the quality of my life enormously. I started paying more attention to my actions and became more grateful for things that I had long taken for granted. The one thing I didn’t pay much attention to was whether I actually believed the words I was reciting. I used them more as verbal cues for what Buddhists call, “mindfulness.” Then once, after saying the blessing over candles, I was asked, point blank, “Do you feel commanded?” The question hit me hard. Did I feel commanded? Was that the right word? After a moment’s pause, I knew I had my answer. “No,” I said flatly. “I feel compelled.”

In a previous generation, that would have been a very disturbing answer. It certainly doesn’t fit into the command and control structure very well. Yet it was the only true response I could give. For a long time after that, I couldn’t help wondering if that made me a bad Jew. Eventually, I came to realise that it just made me a different kind of Jew. My models of God were different from those of previous generations, but no less valid for that. It just meant that my way of hearing God, and also of speaking about God, would equally be different. And I wasn’t alone. Over time, I have met many people with whom the phrase “I feel compelled” resonates as a description of their own relationship to the Divine. I have come to believe that this is the hallmark, the call-sign if you will, of the paradigm shift of which Frishman writes. She argues that we need to tap into other images of God in the Bible, other patterns for relating to God. Otherwise, the many good Jews out there who struggle with our classical framework of “commandment” and “obedience” will exclude themselves from the community of faith.

I hope that in the course of your busy lives, you can each take some time to reflect on your own way of hearing God – and of interpreting what you hear. I would ask you to sit in silence for a while and just listen. Don’t be too quick to decide that you don’t hear anything, just because the communication doesn’t take the form you have been led to expect. You just might be surprised at what you do hear.

MESSAGE FROM THE RABBI
Whether you are a visitor to London or someone looking for a Jewish spiritual home, WCLS would be delighted to welcome you. Why not join us for our unique 3 pm Shabbat service and get to know some new friends?

Shalom u'vrachah, Peace and blessings, Rabbi Janet

NOTABLE DATES

We regret that our synagogue is able to seat only a small number of visitors. If you will be visiting the London area during the High Holy Days, please contact Liberal Judaism's headquarters at www.liberaljudaism.org for advice.

EREV ROSH HASHANAH Monday, 29 Sept 6:30 for 7 pm
ROSH HASHANAH MORNING Tuesday, 30 Sept, 10:30 for 11 pm

Then Shabbat Shuvah, as normal at 3pm

KOL NIDRE Wednesday, 8 Oct 6:30 for 7 pm
YOM KIPPUR Thursday, 9 Oct 10:30 for 11, lasting until 7 pm or so
SUKKOT Tuesday, 14 Oct 3:00 pm

West Central Liberal Synagogue
The Montagu Centre, 21 Maple Street
London W1T 4BE
Phone: (020) 7636 7627; Fax: (020) 7631 9838; Email: wcls@liberaljudaism.org