TELL May - July 2012 - Emanuel Synagogue

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Rabbi Kamins More dangerous ideas 2 www.emanuel.org.au As we celebrate Shavuot, “the rejoicing of the giving of Torah” with our Third Festival of Dangerous Ideas, we stand firmly within the tradition of our ancestors – for the Torah itself is a festival of dangerous ideas, mostly positive, albeit a few negative ones that provide grist to the mill of those who enjoy denigrating Scripture. Let us turn our attention to some of our ancestor’s most dangerous ideas taught in Torah. In all this reflection, we must remember that the Torah comes out of a context 3,000-4,000 years ago when except for the rich and powerful of the great empires, life was ratheå hard work for most. That the opening story of the Torah is the story of Creation is already a radical and dangerous idea. The Torah teaches that there is one God, the Creator of All. Our recitation of the Shema twice daily reflects a core dangerous idea of Torah: Hear you people of Israel, Being is our God, Being is One. (The name for God, which we pronounce Adonai in the Shema, is a form of the Hebrew word “to be”). The implications of Being = One are enormous, still not fully understood by humanity. While our ancestors did not fully grasp the implication of that teaching, the notion of human dignity is stated directly, “The human being is created in the image of God.” A thousand plus years later, our Sages said, “This teaches that whoever destroys one life is as if they had destroyed the entire Universe; no one can say my blood is redder than yours.” Two thousand years after our sages, we stand in the place where we can say this teaching applies to those whose dignity may not be fully protected by the Torah and the tradition: women, gays and lesbians, gentiles. Nevertheless, in its context, the Torah extends justice and compassion far further than other societies of its time, “you shall not oppress the stranger, for you were strangers in the land of Egypt” and “you shall have one standard of justice for citizen and stranger alike.” As part of the opening story of Creation in Torah comes an even more dangerous idea: the Shabbat. Imagine again the world in which the rich and the powerful may have many days off throughout the year, but the average human being works from dawn to dusk, day in and day out, much like a beast of burden, until the moment their use by date is up. Our ancestors introduced the idea of the week to humanity, a unit of time that cannot be measured by the moon or any astronomical event in and of itself, but requires the effort of human counting. (As evidenced in the names of the days of the week in Hebrew: day one, day two, day three, etc.) The seventh day is not a natural unit in time, but one that in and of itself expresses human intention. What our ancestors taught with that intention is even more extraordinary. One day out of seven every member of society is to stop and re-soul. As the teaching is phrased in the giving of the “ten commandments” (at the heart of the celebration of Shavuot): “Remember to make the day of Shabbat holy. Six days shall you labour and do all your work, but the seventh day is a Shabbat of Adonai your God; on it you shall not do any work – you, your son or daughter, your male or female servant, your animals, or the stranger who is among you…” Today this idea remains revolutionary, especially in light of moves in Australia to turn all seven days of the week into times in which no business is closed and no bonus is paid for working weekends. Forget the minutiae of Shabbat observance – can you imagine your life with one day of seven where you just get to BE: to read, to sing, to eat and to drink, to rest, to walk, to love? That is Shabbat, and that is a dangerous idea. But there is more danger lurking in Torah – debts should be remitted, slaves should be freed, justice should be applied equally for rich and poor alike ….Yes, there is danger as well in the Torah’s demand for the death penalty for a series of crimes, including for perceived sexual transgression, but that is where we come into the story. For the Torah is not just a scroll that has been handed down through the generations for thousands of years, but also our living story. One of the most dangerous ideas of the Torah is that it is for each of us to learn from it and live by it. The teaching of God is “not too baffling for you, nor is it beyond reach. It is not in the heavens, that you
should say, ‘Who among us can go up to the heavens and get it for us and impart it to us, that we may observe it?’ Neither is it beyond the sea, that you should say, ‘Who among us can cross to the other side of the sea and get it for us and impart it to us, that we may observe it? No, the thing is very close to you, in your mouth and in your heart, to observe it.” The Torah encourages us to live by these teachings, countering those other passages that indicate that we are to kill by them as well. Which brings us to this year’s Festival of Dangerous Ideas. Torah, with its underlying and central presumption of the unity of God and the consequent idea of the sanctity of life, is the most dangerous “At Emanuel, we embrace the essence of Torah - challenging the status quo to enhance human dignity and sanctity.” idea of all, for it challenges us to think where we are failing as humans to unify and to sanctify. Over thousands of years, certain notions, under the weight of an experience of suffering, have crept into Judaism, and I would like to explore these years a few of those. This year my topics will be: “Arrogance and myopia: how the story of Jacob has been misread”; “Genocide and Judaism”; and once again, “Torah-latry: what happened to you shall have no other gods beside Me?” I look forward, as always, to learning with you and to growing Emanuel Synagogue as a community where we embrace the essence of Torah - challenging the status quo to enhance human dignity and sanctity. The more questions that we ask with open hearts and minds and good intention, the more we stretch ourselves and give ourselves the opportunity to connect to the wisdom of our ancestors and transmit their beautiful core values and aspirations to our descendants. Rabbi Jeffrey Kamins The 72nd Annual General Meeting of Emanuel Synagogue will take place on Tuesday 29 May 2012 at 7:30 pm, at 7 Ocean St, Woollahra. All members of the congregation are invited to attend. By order of the board of Emanuel Synagogue. N Elias Hon Secretary www.emanuel.org.au 3
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