What's In A Name (Part V)- Am I Still Pesach Sheini?

From time to time (although it's been a long time since the last one), I will be writing about my reasons for choosing "Pesach Sheini" as the name for my blog. The more I have thought about the name, the more I have felt that it chose me and not the other way around. What follows is the fifth installation. To read the first four click here. 

Dear Rabbi _________________,

After a recent discussion by email, you sent me an email where you spelled out your philosophical and theological views, and asked me to respond in kind; “And you, Reb Pesach -- how do the pieces of your worldview fit together?”. I responded that I was not sure whether I wanted to try and summarize my beliefs, but I would think about it. After much thought, I have decided to respond, with one caveat.

I cannot tell you how the pieces of my worldview fit together, as a unified theory is not something I seek to produce. I’m not sure if anything more than being mine, is what holds them together. One thing which came across quite strongly in your email is that your beliefs are long-held. I suspect, and please correct me if I am mistaken, that you could have used the same words to describe your beliefs five years ago, and probably much earlier than that. I cannot say the same for myself.

When I first started my blog “Pesach Sheini”, the name seemed to make sense. It was my way of saying that I had come through a long, complicated, and painful religious struggle, and that what emerged was a new me. While that was in many ways correct, I made the mistake of thinking that whereas before I had subscribed to certain philosophical and theological beliefs, which, like yours, I would call for lack of a better word, rational, now I had new beliefs which no longer fit that term. What I did not realize was that though I may not ever need a Pesach Shelishi, my new beliefs were not just different, but were also much more fluid.

By way of thinking about how to answer your question, I took a look at the sefarim on my bookshelf. I not only noticed the sefarim which get frequent use these days, those of the Piaseczna Rebbe, Rav Kook, and R’ Hillel Zeitlin, I also noticed the sefarim which I haven’t used much in a bunch of years, although they were helpful to me in the earlier stages of “Pesach Sheini”. Among those sefarim were those from R’ Isaac Breuer, Rabbi Eliezer Berkovits, and Rav Amital. This is not to dismiss any of them as having importance to me. Rather I use to point out that my hesitancy in answering your question is due to the fact that my religious understanding is anything but static. In fact, if you had told a year or two ago me that ideas from The Baal haTanya and Rav Hillel Paritcher would be part of my religious experience, I would have looked at you like you are crazy.

Please don’t mistake this as meaning that there are no core beliefs. I would be surprised if the Piaseczna Rebbe and his Torah ever stops being of great importance to me. I don’t think I could ever be a chasid, but if the Piaseczna Rebbe was alive, who knows. The same goes for Rav Kook’s and Hillel Zeitlin’s Torah.

As for specifics, beyond the fact that my worldview is mostly mystical, I’ll just share a few brief thoughts. While I understand the reasons why you and others try to take a more rational approach, that worldview has very little appeal to me. Ultimately, no how much we try to rationalize religion, it is anything but rational. It ultimately stands on a relationship with a God, who cannot be touched by the world of rational thought. As such, I take God at his word in the Torah, as did the rabbis in the Talmud, that tefillah is real communication, and that God is directly involved in our lives. While you are correct to note that this approach raises questions, all approaches do.

To sum it up as well as I can, and I do realize that I have left quite a bit unsaid, I try and stand in serious relationship to HKBH, and believe with every fiber of my being that it is a real two-way relationship. Does it all fit together? It does in the sense that this is me. I have no desire to convince anyone else of the correctness of any of my views and beliefs. My desire is nothing more than continuously try and think about, develop, and grow in my relationship with God.

Pesach

Looking More Broadly- On the value of chassidic thought for moderns (Part I)

It is well-known that Rav Yosef Dov HaLevi Soloveichik used to give shiur in Boston each summer to his talmidim. What is not as well-known  is that one year, The Rav, as he was colloquially known, decided to give shiur in Likutei Torah, written by the Ba'al HaTanya, a sefer for which he had a strong affinity, rather than in gemara. When his talmidim protested and said they were not interested, he said something to the effect that his talmidim want his head, and not his heart.

Recently, there was a thoughtful conversation on Facebook about the need to come up with a theology that speaks to the modern observant Jew. Being as I see this as a valuable goal, although not one I am qualified to contribute to, I will not make a suggestion of what it might look like. Instead, I’d like to suggest a less obvious source which could be of value in coming up with such a theology, namely chassidus. Over a series of blog posts, I’d like to flesh out the idea of why I find chassidus to be a valuable source for the thinking modern-Jew who is interested in theology. To begin, I will explain why it is an under-utilized source.

All or Nothing Thinking

There are aspects of chassidus than many moderns, myself included, will struggle to accept. Theurgical ideas, based on kabbalistic sources, often do not speak to many of us.The idea that our mitzvos create worlds or have some sort of effect on God is not one that speaks to many people who might otherwise find value in the ideas of chassidus.

It is a mistaken notion that chassidus is a package deal that must be entirely embraced or rejected. One can, as I do, find great psychological and theological insight in the writings of various chassidic thinkers, without embracing all that they wrote.

Confusion

When I speak with people about chassidus, they are often confused by what I mean. Some think of it as having to do with chassidic communities, dress and mores. Others confuse it with neo-chassidus, which, while it can be of value to some people, is not what I have in mind. Others think of the “Na-Nach” Breslovers and assume that somehow, that approach represents chassidus and/or the thought of Rav Nachman. Whatever the reason, many people who are certain that chassidic thought has nothing to offer them, are rejecting an incorrect idea of what chassidic thought is really about.

Lack of Familiarity

I live in a community which has a large sefarim store. There are all sorts of sefarim and books which can be purchased there, including some which deal with philosophy, kabbalah, and Jewish thought. The one near-exception are works of chassidus. Misnagdic institutions have decided that, even when they touch upon hashkafa, that chassidus is out. This is somewhat surprising considering that some Roshei Yeshiva from that world were influenced by chassidic ideas. To cite just one example, Rav Hutner’s Pachad Yitzchak, in addition to quoting ideas from the Maharal and Ramchal, contains chassidic ideas as well from Ishbitz and Rav Tzadok among others.Additionally, the misnagdic and chassidic worlds of day have more similarities than differences.

Language

Many chassidic works contain language and ideas which are not easy to understand for those who do not have some familiarity with kabbalistic concepts. Even when these concepts are not referred to explicitly, they are part of the background information needed to fully grasp the ideas. Just as one who is not familiar with Greek philosophy misses out when trying to study the philosophical works of the Rishonim, so too some basic familiarity with kabbalistic ideas is required in order to grasp  many chassidic ideas.

I’ve laid out some of the reasons that make chassidic thought something that many thinking Jews find either inaccessible or not worthy of study. In a future post, I will attempt to make the case as to how these challenges can be overcome and why it behooves us to do so.

W(h)ither Modern Orthodoxy?- Does Modern Orthodoxy still speak to us?

During the approximately two years during which I went through a crisis of faith, I spent a lot of time reading, as well as having conversations with many rabbis, academics and friends, in the hope of finding my way back to faith. Perhaps the most important piece of advice that I received was to go through the aspects of Judaism with which I was struggling, and figure out which, in fact, were essential to Jewish belief. Ultimately, I came to recognize that there was a much wider range of theological options available that could fit within a world of belief.

There was a time when Modern Orthodoxy was less doctrinaire. A perusal through the index of the issues of Tradition from the ‘60s and 70s shows that both in terms of content and writers, Modern Orthodoxy of that time had more theological room than does the Modern Orthodoxy of today. I will leave it to sociologists to evaluate the reasons for the change. Instead, I will talk about a way that we might go back to those more open days.

I begin with a discussion of a theory put forth by Thomas Kuhn about paradigm shifts in science. For those who are unaware of the theory, the following is a summation of the theory from an article by Rabbi Dr. Joshua Berman of Bar Ilan University:

A mature science, according to Kuhn’s hypothesis, is one in which there exists a dominant paradigm—a conceptual framework that informs the scientist of what to expect as he engages in his or her scientific inquiry. It delineates the parameters of what can and cannot be considered acceptable solutions to a problem. Only that which conforms to the paradigm is deemed true. The training of scientists consists of inculcating them with the tenets of the paradigm, the rules of the game, before they embark on their own research. To engage in “normal science” is to endeavor to tie up loose ends and adjust the paradigm to reality. Paradigms introduce a sociological factor into science. To practice science is to engage the mysteries of the natural order not in unmediated fashion, but through the lens of the paradigm, itself a human construct. This dogmatic aspect determines who is considered “in” in the scientific community, and who is “out.”
Inevitably, results will begin to arise that are inconsistent with the reigning paradigm. At first these will be dismissed and faults will be found either with the method employed or with the assumptions upon which they rest. As these bothersome findings persist and accumulate, however, a creative scientist will come forward to challenge the axioms of the paradigm and propose a new one that encompasses the “problematic” results as well in a systematic fashion. Because the old paradigm is but a human construct, it is subject to human foibles: its articulators will typically dig in their heels, and the new paradigm will gain traction only as the masters of the old one pass from the scene. New paradigms do gain influence, but only slowly

Essentially, once a theory is accepted by the scientific community, it becomes a type of dogma which can not be challenged. Those who offer such challenges are ignored and/or rejected. Only when the challenges become strong enough, does the theory change. Although we are talking about religion and not science, the comparison is instructive. Jewish theology changes with the times. Throughout our history, challenges from within Judaism or from other religions have caused Jewish theology to pivot, as it were. While traditionalists at first fought back, eventually the pressure became great enough that change occurred. Even then, the change happened slowly, and usually, almost imperceptibly.

We live in a time when belief in Jewish dogma is very challenging. In various ways, scholarly or not, there have been those who have talked of these challenges and offered new ideas. As in Kuhn’s theory, these attempts have been rebuffed. Traditionalists have dug in their heels and insisted that certain beliefs are essential and not up for debate. Still, the attempts to spell out a theological approach that works for modern sensibilities, speak to some of the angst that is felt by many in our community.

So where do we go from here? Ideally religious thinkers from Yeshiva University, the institution that for many represents Modern Orthodoxy, would step into the void and try to address some of these concerns in a theologically sophisticated manner. Sadly, this has not been the case. Many of the roshei yeshiva are firmly in the traditionalist camp, and consider certain beliefs and concepts to be inviolable. Those roshei yeshiva and professors who are more open to modern sensibilities, have, to some degree, both in recorded lectures and in writing, addressed some of these issues, but there is yet to be an attempt at spelling out a full theology from those within the walls of YU. To some degree, some of the rabbis and students from Yeshivat Chovevei HaTorah have tried to bring about a paradigm shift, but in ignoring the idea contained in Kuhn’s warning that change occurs slowly in science,a truth that applies to the world of Orthodoxy as well, these attempts have failed to gain significant traction. I would hope that the leadership of YCT would think about why a community that hungers for a sophisticated more modern approach, has not taken to their approach. In America, new attempts are coming from the likes of Michael Fishbane, while the Modern Orthodox world fails to produce works along the lines of Rav Shagar’s works, which show how Orthodoxy might deal with the challenges of Post-Modernism.

Who, if anyone, will step into this void? If Modern-Orthodoxy is to stay relevant, a work will have to be produced that shows a level of theological sophistication, while, at the same time speaks to the layman. A new paradigm is needed for those, like myself, who passionately belief in the world of Torah and Mitzvohs, while at the same time recognize the challenges of the times in which we live.

Post by Pesach Sommer.