Rabbi Harold M. Schulweis Sermons

The Uniqueness Of Judaism - Lecture II (1998)  

by Harold M. Schulweis

Every religion has its master story, some core event that captures the spirit and the thrust of its faith.

For Christianity, it is the story of the birth, the crucifixion and the resurrection of Jesus. It is around the story that the theology, the liturgy, the ritual is spun. The birth of Jesus is important and it shapes the Christian calendar.  This is 1998 A.D.

In Islam, the story revolves around the hegira, the flight of Mohammed from Mecca to Medina, which is dated 622 C.E. in our calendar but it is the first year in the Islamic calendar.

In Buddhism, the master story revolves around the journey of Gautama, born 650 B.C.E. , who journeyed through sickness, death and suffering toward enlightenment.

In Judaism, the master story is the exodus, the liberation from slavery and the journey toward freedom that culminates in the revelation at Mt. Sinai. It is not incidental that the Jewish calendar does not begin with any Jewish event, not with the birth of Abraham, or the birth of Moses but with the creation of the universe and the human being. Thus, this is 5758 years in the Jewish calendar. The story is basic. It is the nexus, it is the connection, the transmission of an event that will be commented on and which will be ritualized out of which will be formed the liturgy, customs, ceremonies, etc.

The power of the story is captured in a story that is told among the Chasidim. When the Baal Shem Tov had a difficult task to perform, he would go to a certain place in the woods, light a fire, and meditate on the secrets of his heart, and the prayer was answered.

A generation later the Maggid of Mezritch was faced with the same task. He would go to the same place that the Baal Shem Tov went and he would say, "We no longer know how to light the fire but we still say the prayer.” And it was done.

A generation later, Moshe Leib of Sassov, when he had to perform this task, went to the woods and said "We can no longer light the fire nor do we know the secret meditation of the prayer but at least we know the place.”  And it was accomplished.

In the next generation, Rabbi Israel of Rishin, when he had a problem sat down and said, "We cannot light the fire, we cannot speak the prayer, we do not place but we can tell the story of how it was done.” And the story had the same effect.

The story of Exodus is incorporated in the Haggadah, the name of the book that is read out loud and dramatized at the Seder. The whole notion of the narration at the Seder is based upon a number of verses in the Bible all of which begin, "If your child shall ask you"; that is to say it is your obligations as parents to tell the story and to know how to answer their questions.

We are story tellers. Parents are story tellers. In Hebrew the word for parent and the word for teacher comes from the same root. The word for parents is "horim.” The word for teachers is "morim.”

But where is this narration lived out? Not in the classroom and not in the synagogue and not by the rabbi nor by the cantor. But the story is to be enacted, explained and read out at home.

Why the home? The home is called "beth mikdash maat,” a sanctuary in miniature. Some things cannot take place in the synagogue. For example, you will notice that on the first two nights of Passover the recitation of the Kiddush, the sanctification of the wine is omitted in the synagogue. Why? It may be recited any other Friday evening or any other holiday but not on the Passover, because no one is to be left abandoned alone in the sanctuary, but one is to be invited by the family into the home. For what kind of freedom can be celebrated or what kind of story of liberation can be enacted when you are alone, institutionalized?

It is therefore the home that is the central place. And within the home it is the table that represents an altar and the parents are the priests, the tellers of the story.

What is the task of the narration and its ritual? It is to relive, to re-experience, to retrieve the past and bring it into the present. A classic expression of that is found in the Haggadah itself, "In each and every generation every person must regard himself as though he had come forth from Egypt as a slave." This requires imagination. We have to go back over three millennia ago and put yourself in the mind and the heart of the slave, of the one who is dominated, humiliated, subordinated to a master.

One of the ways in which the ethics, theology and history of the Passover is transmitted to the next generation is by symbols. At the Seder there is a Passover plate with a shank bone and bitter herbs and a mixture called haroseth, and some roasted eggs and four cups of wine, three layers of matzos, unleavened bread.

But as Israel Zangwill put it, "On Passover, Jews eat history." And I would add that on Passover, Jews drink theology as well.

Here I want to say a word about Jewish ritual in general. There are many people who see ritual as something totally divorced from ethics. In fact, sometimes they think of ritual and ethics as adversaries. There is created an either/or split thinking in people. They say either ritual or ethics. Why do I need the ritual, whether the ritual is prayer or whether the ritual is things such as the Passover Seder?  My contention is that there is an ethic in ritual. There is a ritual of ethics which has to be understood.

The Passover Seder itself demonstrates this interrelatedness. In every ritual gesture there are ethical values, and the ritual contains those ethical values. The ritual is the way that I transmit my values, my ethics and my theology to my children. I find one of the most discouraging things about Jewish teaching in that the ethics and the ritual are not taught together, but separated.

Let me give you an illustration using the Passover.

The Passover narration begins when we raise a broken matzah. This is the bread of poverty which our ancestors ate in the land of Egypt. It is a broken matzah because poor people do not eat whole loaves. And when this bread of poverty is raised, the statement that follows is "Let anyone who is hungry come in and eat. Let anyone who is needy come in and make the Passover." So you cannot begin the Seder unless you have invited or called those who do not have to come and eat with you. There is a redundancy in this formula. It says "Let all those that are hungry come," and then it says "Let those who are in need come and eat the Passover." One of the great commentators says. “It is not a redundancy. The first call is for poor people who are hungry for bread and not for the word of the Lord. This includes people who are not Jewish. This includes people who may not believe in the Passover story. But it is important that they be there and its rationale is based upon a Talmudic principle, namely one must feed the poor of the heathen together with the poor of the Jew. One must comfort the bereaved of the heathen together with the bereaved of the Jew. One must bury the deceased of the gentile together with the deceased of the Jew. This is the first proclamation. The second proclamation, "Let those who need to celebrate the Passover" refers to those who want to celebrate the religious and ritual aspects of the Seder. But both of them are recited.

There is an interesting event which attempts to answer the question as to why this particular prayer of invitation is recited not in Hebrew but in Aramaic. In the Talmud (Sabbath 12b)  we read that the angels do not understand Aramaic but they do understand every other language. Why then recite this prayer in Aramaic? It is to teach us that when human beings are hungry and come to you, do not tell them to pray and do not tell them to rely upon angels to feed them. You must act as if there is no one in the world except you to feed them.

Another ritual is maror.  I remember this well because my grandfather, he with a long beard, would tell me that I must take the bitter herbs and chew it, not merely quickly swallow it. Because he said this is not something that one can talk about, but one has to experience it. He wanted me to taste it. I was a child of five, but I had to experience what it meant to be an embittered slave. Just as we fast on Yom Kippur to afflict our souls, it has to be experienced, not simply talked about. You have to go without food for twenty-four hours. This is not a diet. This is a fast of identification with those who do not have a meal.

What impressed me was that all these rituals including maror were intergenerational. It wasn't something that is done for the kids. It was done by my father, my mother, my uncles and aunts, my cousins and friends, and everyone.

As part of the ceremony the charosit, a mixture of cinnamon, apples and wine is mixed in with the marror. That too is to teach you that the entire world or the entire history is not just bitter. It must be eaten with a taste of sweetness to remind us not to forget joy and hope.

Dipping the egg into salt water was another way in which the tradition tried to transmit to the children, to remind them of the tears that are shed by those who are ground down into the dust.

Early on in the narration, the youngest child is prepared to ask four questions. The Talmud tells us that the child must be instructed by the father to ask the question. And so as important as asking the question is, the law states that even if two scholars are sitting at the Passover table, one must ask the other. Clearly, they know the answer but it is important to ask the question. Even if there is no one at your table, for some reason or other, and you are alone, you must ask yourself the question.

Why is this so important? Because slaves don't ask questions. Slaves obey. We are not slaves. We are free men and women. To express that freedom, which is not only a physical freedom, a freedom from fetters and chains and manacles, but also a spiritual and intellectual freedom, the question is critical. So much so that in the Haggadah itself we read, "We were slaves unto Pharaoh in Egypt. And our God took us out with a strong hand and an outstretched arm. If He had not taken our forefathers out of Egypt, we and our children and our children's children would still be enslaved...even if all of us were wise, all of us elders, all of us learned in the Torah, we would still be commanded to tell the story of the exodus from Egypt. And whoever enlarges upon the tale of the exodus merits praises."

The notion of freedom is taken for granted by those people who live in totalitarian societies. It is one of the most important understandings of Judaism. We recall that when the Ten Commandments is given, it is introduced not by a statement saying "I am the Lord your God who created the heavens and earth,” for that is an abstract and philosophical notion, but it is written "I am the Lord your God who took you out of the land of Egypt."

This is the collective awareness of the experience of the people.

The recognition that you and I were slaves, that we remember the lashes upon our backs and the manacles on our feet, the humiliation of forced labor, becomes one of the most important rationale for our behavior toward the stranger, toward the weak, toward the impoverished, toward the pariah. Thirty-six times in the Bible we have the same verse repeated, whether it is about the exploitation of the weak or the care for the orphan, the poor, the widow, the stranger. The rationale in the Bible is quite clear: "You shall know the heart of the stranger for you were strangers in the land of Egypt." Do not forget who you were. And thus, the Haggadah repeats "We were slaves in the land of Egypt."

The revolutionary character of Judaism's emphasis on the centrality of freedom is not only a historical memory, it is as contemporary as current events. In the great literature of the world we find again and again this question of freedom repeated, and I will be making reference to writers such as Fyodor Dostoevski and Friedrich Nietzsche and Eric Fromm to point out how revolutionary the idea of freedom is and how it can be traced back to the story of Exodus in western civilization. I have read and re-read the remarkable chapter in Dostoevski's The Brothers Karamazov, especially the celebrated chapter that deals with the Inquisitor. The sharp point that Dostoevski makes in this remarkable drama in which the Grand Inquisitor Torquemada rejects the second coming of Jesus is remarkable. Dostoevski explains. "Don't you realize that people do not want freedom. They do not want liberation. They do not want choice. They do not want the freedom of their conscience. What people want is security. What they want is safety. What they want is servitude. What they want is big brother. What they want is the leader who will take from them all responsibility and allow the people to sell their freedom for a mess of pottage. People want to assume the fetal position to be taken care of.  This is the lure of totalitarianism. It is the lure of the cult." Dostoevski writes, "What people want is not to be freed. What they want are three things: mystery, magic and authority." They want what Thomas Hobbes the philosopher said, “security.” They will surrender their freedom for security and their joy is submission.

How else can we explain what happened in our century, the hundreds of millions of people who submitted to Hitler, to Stalin, to Mao?  For what? For security. For safety.

In ancient times, slavery was rationalized. We have to remember how even in this beloved country how recent it was that slaves were freed. Plato and Aristotle, two of the greatest minds of the ancient world, justified human slavery as something that originates in the way we are structured. Aristotle in the book Politics (I, 358) said,  "For that some should rule and others be ruled is a thing, not only necessary, but expedient; from the hour of their birth, some are marked out for subjection, others for rule...it originates in the constitution of the universe...it is clear then that some men are by nature free, and others slaves and that for the latter slavery is both expedient and right."

Let us recall that in Greek and Roman law, the fugitive slave who was recaptured is branded with a red, hot iron. The slave is the property of the master, and in Greece the slaves were regarded as "animated tools.” How remarkable then the Jewish Bible, which states, "You shall not turn over to his master a slave who seeks refuge with you from his master. He shall live with you in any place he may choose among the settlements in your midst, wherever he pleases; you must not ill treat him." This refers to a fleeing non-Israelite slave, seeking refuge in Palestine from the harsh treatment of an unjust master, Jew or non-Jew, outside Palestine. This is a revolution in biblical Judaism. For in the Code of Hammurabi, one of the oldest Codes in biblical times, we read that whoever shelters a runaway slave is to be put to death, and in the Code of Hammurabi it says that if a slave desires freedom, his ear is cut off.

In that context, listen to Exodus 21:5,6: "If a slave plainly says, 'I love my master. I will not go out free', then his master should bring him to the door or the doorpost (mezzuzah) and his master shall bore his ear with an awl." Do you see how that threat to mark the person who wants to sell himself is diametrically opposed to the cutting off of the ear of the slave in the Code of Hammurabi?

Rabbi Yochanan ben Zakai, one of the great Talmudic rabbis, explains this verse. He says, "Why was the ear singled out from all the other limbs of the body? The Holy One, blessed be He, said: 'This ear which heard My voice on Mt. Sinai when I proclaimed 'For unto Me the children of Israel are servants; they are My servants (Leviticus 25:55) and not the servants of servants', and yet this man went on to acquire a master for himself? (Kiddushin 22b).'" This is the consistent cry of Judaism  – you will not be a slave to slaves.

In Talmudic times, clearly there were people who were bankrupt, who owed money and who became servants to pay off their debts. But listen to the Talmud Arachin 30b: "The slave must be like you in food, in drink. You should not eat fine bread and he coarse bread. You should not drink old wine and he new wine. You should not sleep on a soft bed and he on straw. Hence it says whoever buys a slave practically buys a master over him."

On a personal note, I want to tell you about the first strike I was involved in that was motivated from this tradition.  When I was a busboy at the St. Charles Hotel in Atlantic City during Passover, together with the others would not tolerate the fact that the hotel proprietor would not give us the same food nor the same drink as we were to serve our guests.

We read in the Mechiltah 3:5-6,  "The servant must not wash the feet of his master, nor put his shoes on him, nor carry his things before him when going to the bath house, nor support him when ascending steps, nor carry him on a litter or sedan as slaves do. He cannot be forced anything other than work at his trade." Just because a man is your servant does not mean that he loses his dignity as a being created in the image of God.

And let us not forget the revolution that was introduced in the commandment regarding the keeping of the Sabbath (Deuteronomy 5:13):  "Six days shalt thou labor and do all thy work but the seventh day is the Sabbath unto the Lord thy God.  In it that thou shalt not do any manner of work, thou nor thy son, nor thy daughter, nor thy manservant, nor thy maidservant, nor thine ox, nor thine ass, nor any of the cattle, nor thy stranger that is within thy gates, that thy manservant and thy maidservant may rest as well as thou. And thou shalt remember that thou wast a servant in the land of Egypt, and the Lord thy God brought thee out thence by a mighty hand and by an outstretched arm. Therefore the Lord thy God commanded thee to keep the Sabbath day."

I want to stress this notion of freedom because regrettably, sometimes there is so much emphasis on the detail, on the minutia, that we do not see the forest for the trees. The Jewish bible in ancient times and in contemporary times, Friedrich Nietzsche who in his Genealogy of Morals and other books, understood the radical character of Judaism which penetrated into its daughter religions, Christianity and Islam. Nietzsche says there are two different kinds of morality in history. One is called "herren morale"  – master morality, and the other is called "sklaven morale"  – slave morality. Herren morale is a natural morality, says Nietzsche. It is found among the healthy, the strong, the victorious, and the warriors. It is they who exercise their natural "will to power,” their will to dominate. Master morality, says Nietzsche, is found in our language. Why do you call some act noble? It is because it comes from the nobility. And why do you call some evil acts villainy? Because it comes from villain which means peasant.

In contrast to herren morale is slave morality which subverts natural power and force. It introduces what he calls an "umwertung der aller werte"  – the transvaluation of values. Judaism represents sklaven morality, the morality of slaves. Judaism sabotaged the power morality of the master by introducing such ideas as pity, compassion, mercy, and conscience. Listen to how Nietzsche explains what the Jewish bible and Jewish ethics has done to transvalue and turn over the master morality:  "The wretched are alone the good, the poor, the weak, the lowly are alone the good; suffering the needy, the sick, the loathsome, are the only ones who are pious, the only ones who are blessed, for them alone is salvation. But you on the other hand, you aristocrats, you men of power, you are to all eternity the evil, the horrible, the covetous, the insatiable, the godless."

This is important for the understanding of Judaism as a social ethical force. For Nietzsche is not alone. The social Darwinists, people like Herbert Spencer, William Graham Sumner, in the nineteenth century argue that if we follow evolution and if we follow nature we will see that nature read in fang and claw. They argued for the survival of the fittest, and they have little tolerance for softness and compassion.

Herbert Spencer asks, "What happens when a sow has a runt in its litter?  She eats it. What happens when wolves go out on a hunt, and they wait around for the old, weak, injured foxes? No, they leave them behind. What happens when a mutational chick is born? The mother hen pecks it to death. But we foolishly give the weak, the poor, the disadvantaged social welfare." Nietzsche traced sklaven morale to Judaism. And that which he condemned in Judaism I find to be its greatness. There is a rabbinic Midrash or commentary in which God says, "Be good to My children and I will be good to you. Who are My children? The widow, the orphan, the poor, the stranger in thy midst."

So Exodus is the master story. It is the root experience upon which Jewish social ethics is based. Our task then is to free slavery, to free those who are humiliated, to stand for the pariah. Judaism is concerned with the question because it fears servility.

It is based on this that one can appreciate the wonderful codification of rabbinic law that are found in Moses Maimonides, who comments on the verse in the Bible in which we are told that the Jewish people in Egypt were treated with rigor (Exodus 1:13). Maimonides defines what is meant by rigor. He says that to treat with rigor means to give work assignments to servants without fixed limits. For example, to order the worker to hoe under the vines until I arrive. Rigor means to assign a servant work that is unnecessary, to tell him to "dig up the place" when there is no need to do so. Or, "to warm or cool a glass of water" for him even if he does not need it. Let me conclude with a section from Maimonides that deals with the proper relations between masters, servants and slaves. According to the text, Mishnah Torah, we find, "One cannot speak to the slave cruelly. One cannot humiliate or shame him neither with your hand nor with your words. While the Bible allowed slavery it did not allow humiliation." And Maimonides ends with a quotation from the book of Job ,where Job confesses his conscience before God:  "Did I despise the cause of my manservant or my maidservant when they contended with me? Did not He that made me in the womb not make Him? Did not One fashion us in the world?"

I read Nietzsche with great appreciation for Judaism. He wrote, in Beyond Good and Evil, "It is the Jews who started the slavery revolt and morals; a revolt with two millennia of history behind it, which we have lost sight of today simply because it has triumphed so completely."

I conclude with the cup of Elijah, which is the symbol of the messianic future when all forms of slavery and servitude will be eliminated. I conclude with a remarkable ceremony instituted by Rabbi Naphtali of Ropschitz.

* This document, or any portion thereof, may not be reproduced without the written permission of the author.