Rabbi Harold M. Schulweis Sermons

The Uniqueness Of Judaism - Lecture I  (1998)  

by Harold M. Schulweis

These four lectures are invitations to a pluralistic outreach that comprises seventeen lectures for two sets of seekers of Judaism , (1) for unchurched non-Jewish persons of other faiths who have indicated an interest in Judaism and some of whom have considered the possibility of themselves becoming Jews by Choice; (2) for Jews who have been disenchanted with their childhood education or their homes which neglected the transmission of Jewish faith, wisdom, ritual and ethics. For them, this is another opportunity to resurrect the prematurely buried questions of their youth and to rediscover the insights and values of Judaism in their mature years.

These seventeen lectures are offered by fourteen rabbis drawn from our major religious movements: Orthodox, Reform, Conservative and Reconstructionist, and they will cover the various aspects of that civilization. I hope you will take advantage of the offer that begins on Wednesday evening, February 25 at 7:30 PM.

"We are not born enough," said the poet Yeats. This is an opportunity to re-birth anew. To enrich your life, you have to unlearn some of the past and re-learn a past that will enliven your future.

May I offer you the counsel I give myself? First, do not be intimidated by the welter of facts, dates, language, information. Jerusalem wasn't built in a day. Being Jewish and becoming Jewish is a process. It is ascending the ladder rung by rung. The important thing is not on which rung you happen to stand, but in which direction you stand.

The important thing is not your age and not your background. The important thing is to begin. The Bible doesn't begin with the name of God. For God is the conclusion, not the introduction, of belief. The first word in the Bible is not the name of God, but the word "bereshith," which means "in the beginning.” With a beginning the world is created. But where do you begin and with whom do you begin?

Begin with yourself. For whatever may be your search, whether it is for God or an understanding of history or of ritual, you must begin with yourself. There are texts, books, facts, dates, and teachers but you and only you are the vital filter through which this information flows and which translates information into transformation.

Faith, religion, belief is about you. The Bible itself is not about God as much as it is about you. Said Menachem Mendel of Vitebsk, "All my life I have struggled to understand what man is. Now I know. Man is the language of God." The Bible is about you – Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, Sarah, Rebecca, Rachel, Leah. The patriarchs, the matriarchs, the prophets, the Bible is your family album.

And when we deal with the rites of passage from birth to brith, to Bar Mitzvah, to marriage, to death, these are ways of discovering who you are, to whom you belong, what is the meaning and what the purpose of your life.

THE BRITH-COVENANT

Let us begin with the beginning. A child is born, and if the infant is male he is brought into the room of family and friends on the eighth day of his birth.  Whether it is Sabbath or festivals, the brith covenant of circumcision takes place. But what we observe first at the brith is that when the child is brought in the room everyone stands up, everyone rises, the old and the young cry out "Baruch haba – blessed be the one who comes.”

Why do we rise? We rise because this infant is born with the imprint of divine image, what we call "tzelem Elohim,” which the philosophers call "imago Dei.” This tzelem is a cardinal conception that lies at the root of Jewish belief, ethics, theology, psychology and social action.

It is the most fundamental, unique aspect of Judaism. The verse comes from Genesis 1:27, "And God created the human being in His own image, in the image of God created He him: male and female created He them." Of no other creation is the language that of God's personal involvement in the creation of the human being. Nothing is a symbol of God, not a mountain nor a river, not an animal nor a statue, nor a temple, except the human being. The child who is born is to be covenanted with God and between God, and the human being is this common image.

Perhaps we can clarify the uniqueness of the Jewish covenant of brith of the eighth day by contrasting it with the baptism in the Roman Catholic church. I do not argue for superiority, I mention the difference between two views of human nature. In the Church, baptism is an exorcism. The infant in Church tradition is held to be born in the womb of inherited sin, born with the stains of Adam and Eve's original sin. In the baptism the priest blows on the infant's face and orders the Satan to depart. The priest moistens his thumb, touches the openings – the ears and nostrils of the infant and asks the sponsors of the child to answer on behalf of the infant, "Do you renounce the power of the Satan?"

According to the Church's Council of Trent in the sixteenth century, the fall of Adam caused the loss of original righteousness, the infection of body and soul, thraldom (which means servitude) to the devil and liability to the wrath of God.

Infants who die without baptism are punished with everlasting punishment in eternal fire, because though they have no natural sin of their own, yet the infants carry in them the condemnation of original sin from their first conception and birth. So, St. Augustine, not so coincidentally, helps explain the deep emotional attachment to the Church's opposition to abortion. Abortion in an important sense, is worse than murder. For without baptism the infant's soul is consigned to perdition.

In today's teaching, Canon 1247 requires all living fetuses to be baptized and the directions for hospital practice reads, "In the event of an operation for the removal of a diseased organ containing a living foetus, the foetus should be extracted and baptized before the excised organ is sent to the pathologist." Baptism is one of the seven sacraments of the church necessary for salvation. We have heard it often that in the case where either the mother or the unborn child is to be saved, the child is saved because without baptism the child forfeits the immortality of the soul. That same dilemma of saving either the mother or the infant is resolved in Judaism quite differently. The mother, who is viable, is saved over the unborn child. In Judaism there are no sacraments, no salvation because there is no original sin from which to be saved.

So to return to the "brith,” the rising of the guests and the greeting of the infant in Judaism demonstrates the belief that every child is born with a pure soul.

The soul which You have given me is pure. No original sin clings to the child. The child is not dominated by satanic forces and is in no need of exorcism.

It is in the rabbinic Midrashim, in the imaginative interpretations of the tradition that this principle is dramatically conveyed. A Midrash asks why the infant cries on exiting the womb, and answers imaginatively, “because the unborn child does not want to enter the world.” The infant pleads with God, "I am well pleased with the world in which I have been living. Why do You want me to enter this impure sperm, I who am pure and holy as part of Your glory?" This is God's response according to the rabbinic imagination, "The world which I cause you to enter is better than the world in which you have lived when I created you. Go into the world for it is this for which I have created you." So note that the Jewish child is believed to be born innocent, coming from a blessed world and entering a world with a greater task to fulfill than before.

The covenant of circumcision takes place on the eighth day. The child has lived through the Sabbath. The child is no alien, no stranger to the world. Not only does the child belong to this world, but carrying with him the "tzelem Elohim" – the divine image, he is considered to be a partner, a co-creator of the universe. And the circumcision on the eights day indicates that while he is part of nature he is more than animal. He is "shutaf la kodesh baruch hu" – he is a co-creator with God destined to help repair the world. So there is no original sin and there is no Satan in Judaism.

Still, according to Judaism, the world is not perfect. The world is incomplete. And the human being is created to help perfect it. As the Talmud puts it, "everything requires repair; the mustard seed needs to be sweetened, the lupine needs to be softened, the wheat needs to be ground and man needs to be perfected."

That is why the Midrash said that this world is better than the world to come and better than the world from which we came. For in this world there is something to be done, something to help God create a better universe. In The Ethics of the Fathers, we read that one hour in this world is better than the entire world to come.

Sense, then, the exultant "this-worldliness" of Judaism, and the exultation of the human being that is found in the stories, narrations and myths that are told. Another Midrashic tale tells us that the infant, before entering the womb, is taken by an angel and shown the truth of the world. Then just before he is born the angel flicks his finger against the upper lip of the infant and the infant instantly forgets all that he has been taught before his birth. This, the myth says, explains the strange dent on the upper lip of every human being. But why does the angel make the infant forget what he has already been taught in another world? Because what is important for the human being in this world is not to have the answers that are given but the questions, the quest whose answer the human is motivated to discover.

Consider if you will the radical significance of the "tzelem,” the notion that you and I and every human being – Jew, pagan, non-Jew – every single human being is created with the imprint of divinity. The tzelem tells you the direction toward which you are to look for God. Where are you looking for God? In what cavern, in what magical formulas, in what foreign lands, in what mysterious places? One Midrash puts it brilliantly: "The angels having heard that God planned to create the human being in His image, grew jealous.” What does mere mortal man have to deserve such a gift? The angels plotted to hide the image of God from the human being. One angel suggested that it be hid on the tallest mountain. Another suggested that it be sunk into the deep of the sea. But the shrewdest angel demurred. "Man," he said, "is an adventurer. He will climb the highest mountain. He will plumb the deepest ocean. But if we want to hide it from him let us hide the image in himself. It is the last place in the world that he will seek it."

So the tzelem in us is the closest thing that reflects God. We have been created with divine capacities to think, to feel, to reason, to act, to choose. This is the reflection of God in us. There is between God and me a covenant, a common universe of discourse which enables us to communicate with God to engage in dialogue with God, even to argue with God. Moreover, where there is imago Dei – the image of God in us, there is the possibility of immitatio Dei, the imitation of God's attributes.

You ask: "Where is God?" I answer:  “Where are you looking for God? above, below? where?”

You ask: "Does God really exist?" I answer: "Do you really exist?"

You ask: "Does God really care?" I ask in turn: "Do you really care?"

You ask: "Does God raise up the fallen?" I ask, "Do you raise up the fallen?"

You ask: "Does God intervene?" I ask, "Do you intervene?"

They say that Jews characteristically answer questions with questions. But it is not a dodge, an evasion. As Heschel wrote, "Man's questions about God are God's questions about man."

And when I ask myself where I am, where I can be found, what I do, I appeal to the "tzelem" formula. I am created in God's image. There is no original sin that breaks that image. There is no demon and no Satan that stands in the way of my reaching God through touching the hidden divine image in myself.

Who are you? Who am I? I am the testimony of God's reality. The prophet Isaiah wrote, "You are My witnesses saith the Lord God" and the rabbis commented that this means that God says to the human beings "If you are My witnesses I am God but if you are not I am as it were, no God." The image of God in me, and with which I was born, I join a partnership with God. The "tzelem means I am supremely important. I am exalted. I am the verification of God, verification in the Latin meaning of that term. "Veri" which means truth and "facere" which means "to make.” I behave God. I am God's proof of His reality. You do not prove God by logical formula or arguments but by behavior.

The exaltation of the human being in Judaism is one of characteristic uniqueness. And with the exaltation of man comes his responsibility. Every question about the efficacy of prayer, every question about the goodness of God is reflexive, personal.

PERSONAL RESPONSIBILITY

To be exalted as a human being means to bear responsibility beginning with responsibility for myself. This is the meaning of Bar-Bat Mitzvah. I am accountable.

I count in prayer. Prayer, for example, in its Hebraic formulation, tefillah," means “judgment.” To pray means to judge myself, to measure myself against the tzelem Elohim. Tefillah – Jewish prayer ,means (and here too is its differentiation from other faiths) that there is no vicarious atonement and no vicarious judgment and no vicarious salvation. Nobody will cry for me. Nobody will atone for me, neither God nor priest nor rabbi nor biblical hero. No one will wash for me and thereby make me clean. No one will die for me.

Prayer, in biblical Hebrew, is called avodah, which means “work.” Prayer is not a surrogate for laziness. My prayer is not to move God, or you. Prayer is to move me, the worshipper, to act, to feel, to change.

The greatest obstacle to Jewish prayer is indolence, laziness. We want prayer to move God. We want magic. We want Santa Claus. We want shortcuts. We want faith healers. We want gurus. So, we shy away from the great elevation of the human being in Judaism. The psalmist knows the finiteness, the fallibility and the fragility of the human being, yet he sings out: "You have made him but little lower than God.” What we really fear is not the God who is holy other, remote, transcendent. What we fear is the God who is immanent. What we fear is not the faith that is distant, but the faith that is close to us. Consider the verse in Deuteronomy 30: "It is not in heaven that you should say 'Who shall go up for us to heaven? Bring it to us. Neither is it beyond the sea that you should say 'Who shall go over the seas for us?'”  No. The thing is very close to you in your mouth and in your heart to do it. So, despite what you have heard, the real stumbling block to belief and to prayer is our spiritual indolence, our craving for short cuts. We want magic. In the Jewish bible, Deuteronomy declares that it is not recondite, esoteric, foreign mystery.  "I call heaven and earth to witness against you this day that I have set before you life and death, the blessing and the curse. Therefore choose life that you may live, you and your seed." That is addressed to the tzelem elohim, the image of God within us which we bury, ignore and submerge with petty jealousies, mindless greed.

Of course we sin.  As the book of Ecclesiastes, 7:20, puts it: "There is no righteous person upon earth who does good and does not sin."

But if you sin you can repair. If you hurt you can heal. If you have robbed you can repair. You cannot pray to God without apologizing and repairing the injury done to his human creations. You cannot go to me, to a rabbi, to a priest, to a guru for confession. But you can call upon the tzelem in you, call it “conscience,” call it “moral sensibility,” to confess with your mouth and with your spine, with your heart and with your hands. This tzelem is not an icon. It is the power that enables me to change.

THE TZELEM AND THE BODY

The tzelem, the imagem is not some ethereal spiritual entity. The tzelem resides in your body. And the body in Judaism is not a material being in your way. You are a nefesh:   soul-body, the two belong together. The body is not to be punished, gotten rid of, denigrated. When the infant is named at the brith, it is blessed with a benediction that pledges,"As he has entered into the covenant so may he enter into Torah which is moral wisdom, and chuppah which is marital love, and maasim tovim - the practice of good deeds.

The tzelem expresses itself in relationship. The tzelem in me looks for the tzelem in you. "Love the other as yourself." And the paradigm of love is marriage. This is love. But in Judaism it has both spiritual and bodily meaning.

Here I introduce a deep myth based on the Bible. According to this myth, Adam, the first human being, was created bisexual. For it says, "Male and female created He him" in the first chapter of Genesis. Adam in this myth was originally an hermaphrodite, an androgynous. He has autoerotic  capacities. He is self-sufficient. He can embrace himself. But for all his self-sufficiency and bisexuality, he feels alone. According to the legend, God split this bisexual being apart into two halves – one male, the other female. Each is a half and each looks for the better half in the other. The object is to become whole, to unite the separate parts.

The human being is one of the very few animals who has coitus face-to-face. The tzelem is not a spirit, disembodied. The tzelem cries out for another, cries out for love which entails in Judaism, sexuality. Sexuality is far from evil.

I pause to point out that you can find out much about the nature of a religion by finding out how it deals with sexuality; or how it deals with sexuality is how it understands the body of the human being. In Judaism, the material dimension is not evil.

Yes, sexuality can be abused. It can provoke and tease and lead to violence. It can yield jealousy and murder. But at the same time it can express compassion, love, creativity, joy, softness. Here again, I want to contrast Judaism with classic Christianity in order to indicate where Judaism differed and differs. For it is important to understand while the mother and daughter religions have so much in common the hyphen between Judaism and Christianity is not an equivalence sign. It is unfair to mother or daughter, to Judaism or Christianity, to ignore the different perceptions, outlooks, and orientations of each faith's civilization.

I read Paul's I Corinthians 7 to understand the celibacy ideal in Christianity that is so foreign to Judaism. In Corinthians 7 we read, "It is good for a man not to touch a woman. Nevertheless, to avoid fornication, let every man have his own wife and let every woman have her own husband." Verse six: "But I speak this (marriage) by permission and not of commandment. For I would that all men were even as I myself." Verse 8: "I say therefore to the unmarried and widows it is good for them if they abide even as I. But if they cannot contain, let them marry for it is better to marry than to burn."

Divorce is prohibited, but "If she depart let her remain unmarried or be reconciled unto him."

Celibacy is idealized in the New Testament. We find in the book of Corinthians, verse 32, this explanation: "But I would have you without carefulness (free from anxieties).  The unmarried man is anxious about the affairs of the Lord, how to please the Lord, but married men are anxious about worldly affairs, how to please his wife, and his interests are divided. And the unmarried woman or girl is anxious about the affairs of the Lord, how to be holy in body and spirit; but the married woman is anxious worldly affairs, how to please her husband." Verse 38: "So that he who marries his betrothed does well, and he who refrains from marriage will do better." In this ideal of celibacy, one can sense the either/or choice that is given – either to serve God or to serve man; either to serve your Savior or to serve your family. Sexuality, marriage is a distraction from service to God.

In Judaism it is quite the other way. One loves God through loving the family. One loves God not by subtraction. After the injunction to “love God with all your heart, with all your soul and with all your might,” the verse continues that you are “to teach your children when you lie down and when you rise up.”  The choice is not to love God with all your heart and soul or might, or to love your neighbor as yourself, but indeed to love God through the love of your neighbor.

When, for example, Soren Kierkegaard who after betrothing his beloved Regina Olson, gave her up out of a desire for exclusive fidelity to his God.   Martin Buber, the Jew, responds that God wants us to come to Him by the Reginas; not by the subtraction of the human other, but by his addition is the religious equation formed. If the classic Christian ideal is celibacy, the classic Jewish ideal is marriage. Marriage is the way we enter the world of care and responsibility. Marriage is the way to come to God. "Would you believe?" asks Buber "Then love."

Jewish biblical psychology understands that man is born with a yetzer or with powerful inclinations, drives, impulses – with a libido.

The libido or the yetzer in Judaism is honored. Nowhere in the Jewish tradition will you find the counsel that is offered in the Gospel of Matthew, "To pluck out one's eye before the shapely form of a woman whom you desire. He who looks at a woman to lust after her has committed adultery already with his heart." Nowhere is Jewish sacred tradition do we find an act like one's self-castration for the sake of escaping the temptation of lust as praiseworthy.

An intriguing legend as to the nature of the human yetzer is found in the Tractate Yoma 69b. It tells a story of the rabbis fasting for three days and nights seeking to capture the yetzer ha-ra, the evil inclination which appeared to them in the form of a fiery lion from the Holy of Holies. Interesting, is it not, that the evil inclination hid out in the Holy of Holies? When at last the rabbis captured and imprisoned the yetzer ha-ra they were warned that in destroying it they would destroy the world. They decided therefore to imprison the evil impulse for three days, and for three days they searched throughout the entire land and could not find a freshly laid egg. You see, without the energy of libido, civilization is exhausted. Without the libido no eggs will be laid, no family will be formed, no business will be entered into. The drives and ambitions and energies of libido are not to be denied nor to be extirpated. So, according to the rabbis, who is strong? He who can control his libido. But never he who uproots it from his life. Therefore, it is interesting that even in the eras of pogroms and persecution when ascetic practices were not uncommon among Jewish mystics sexual asceticism was not countenanced. One of the distinguishing marks differentiating Jewish mysticism from non-Jewish mysticism, the scholar Gershom Scholem informs us, is the absence of sexual self-abnegation in the former.

LOVING

Marriage is kiddushin – sanctification. It has a cosmic significance. It is the mitzvah to see to it that the world does not die. The text that is repeatedly used by rabbinic commentators to sustain this stance comes from Isaiah 45:18:  "He created it not a waste, He formed it to be inhabited." The Hebrew term for bachelor is "ravak" which means literally "emptiness.” For the willful bachelor empties and wastes the world. Folk tradition dramatized this point by denying the bachelor the prayer shawl, which made him a marked man.

While the Nazarite in the Bible may observe his ascetic vows, he may vow not to eat meat or drink wine and may grow his hair long. But sexual abstinence he may not practice. For sexual abstinence inflicts suffering upon the wife. It would cause her tzarah de'gufah – pain of the body. Even in the most male dominated society of ancient times the Jewish tradition declared that simchat ishto –  the rejoicing of his wife –  is the moral duty of the husband.

In the thirteenth century treatise Menorat ha-maor popularly attributed to Nachmonides, we find a chapter dealing with the sanctity of sexuality in the relations between husband and wife. In the Epistle of Holiness,  the author addresses the husband. "Engage her first in conversation that puts her mind at ease and gladdens her. Thus your mind and intent will be in harmony with hers. Speak words which arouse her to passion, union, love and desire. Never may you force her for such a union the divine presence cannot abide. Quarrel not with her. Win her over with words of graciousness and seductiveness."

To those philosophers such as Maimonides, who fell under the influence of Aristotle and deprecated the sense of touch, the author serves admonition: "Let a man not consider sexual union as something ugly or repulsive, for thus we blaspheme God. Hands which write a sacred Torah are exalted and praiseworthy; hands which steal are ugly." So it is with the sexual organs of the body. All energies are ambivalent. There is nothing intrinsically contaminating or intrinsically good except the use to which that energy is put. While Peter Lombard and Pope Innocent III insisted that the Holy Spirit absents itself from the room where a married couple have sexual relations, there grew a tradition in the Church that on Friday one is to abstain sexually in memory of the death of the Savior, and on Saturday abstention in honor of the virgin Mary, and on Sunday in memory of the resurrection. In the Jewish tradition the holiness in sexuality are not contradictory. It is expressed in the Tractate Sotah 17a, "When a person and wife unite in holiness there the Divine Presence abides." The Sabbath is the celebration of the world. What more appropriate time to rejoice with one's wife than on the day set to remember freedom and creation?

Marriage and sexuality do not distract from God.

Marriage opens us up to God's world and to our responsibility as created in the image of God to repair the world. Therefore, at the end of the wedding a glass is broken. The broken glass dramatizes the fragmentation of life. The broken vessel symbolizes poverty, war, sickness and hatred. And the breaking of the glass means that the bride and groom, as a Jewess and a Jew blessed with love and each created in the image of God, acknowledge that task to make whole that which is broken, to bind that which is bruised. As the chuppah is open to all people, open for hospitality, so is the home open to those who are in need. The opening seven blessings that consecrate the union deals repeatedly with the creation of the human being. "Blessed are You our God, King of the universe who has made the human being like Yourself. Blessed are You Lord our God, King of the universe who brings life, joy and gladness, bridegroom and bride, mirth and joy, pleasure and delight, love, friendship and peace. Soon we pray may there be heard in the cities of Judah and the streets of Jerusalem the voice of joy and happiness, the voice of the bridegroom and the bride. Blessed are You O Lord who rejoices the bridegroom and the bride.”

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