Rationalist jews: what's your opinion?

amother

Sat, Jun 22 2019, 11:38 pm

https://www.jpost.com/Opinion/.....93049

By ALAN DERSHOWITZ

I am a pragmatic rationalist. I calculate the costs and benefits of most of my actions, especially when I am representing a client. For the 50 years I was a professor at Harvard Law School, my goal was never to teach the students what to think, but to teach them how to think. I employed the Socratic method in my classes, demanding rational responses from my students. I have never thought of myself as a spiritual person, because for me spiritual was the antithesis of rational.

But recently a Torah – a parchment scroll containing the five books of Moses – was dedicated to me for my pro bono work in defending indigent and other prisoners. The ceremony was held at Chabad headquarters in Brooklyn, with hundreds of people dancing in the streets to honor a new Torah. I accepted the honor because I wanted to help the group – Aleph – that I worked with on many of these cases to raise needed funds to continue its work. I fully expected to enjoy the dedication, because members of my family, old friends and colleagues would be there. I did not expect to feel a spiritual connection with the Torah that was being dedicated.

A TORAH is completely handwritten by a trained scribe – a profession going back to the beginnings of Jewish history. Every letter must be perfect. It takes months to write the hundreds of thousands of letters that compose the Torah. If one letter is wrong or smudged, the entire Torah is invalid.

When a Torah is near completion, the tradition is for the scribe to allow the person to whom it is dedicated to fill in the last few letters (what pressure!). The last word in the Torah is “Yisrael” – the Hebrew for Israel. As the scribe and I filled in these final letters, with the scribe guiding my hand, I felt a deep connection to my heritage. Part of it was rational – after all, I did grow up in Brooklyn as a Modern Orthodox Jew, and this event took place just a few blocks from the high school I had attended. Nostalgia is a natural, indeed rational feeling. But there was something else. Something deeper. Something unexpected.

My hyper-rationalism requires me to be skeptical about everything, including the divine origins of sacred texts, but for a few moments my rationality was suspended in favor of spirituality.

I looked at the familiar words of the Torah, words I had chanted many times during my adolescence, both in preparation for my bar mitzvah and for the dozen of years thereafter that I remained strictly observant, regularly reading from the Torah. Even in recent years I have been called to read from the Torah during my periodic visits to my local synagogue. While getting an aliyah – a blessing over the reading of the Torah – I once again viewed the beautiful calligraphy of the Torah’s words. I admired the beauty and the craftsmanship that had obviously gone into creating these letters. But I didn’t feel the deep connection to them that I felt during the dedication of my Torah.

I held the quill in my hand. The scribe dipped it in special organic ink. Then together we filled in the last letters, each of which I dedicated to the memory of departed family members or the refuah shleima (full recovery) of sick friends. I felt a sense of overwhelming connection, not only to my past, which goes back only 80 years, but to the thousands of years since the first Torahs were written by the first scribes. One does not have to be particularly religious or naturally spiritual to feel this connection.

Participating in the writing of an ancient Torah – on parchment, which will endure physically beyond my life, the lives of my children and grandchildren, even the lives of my great grandchildren – gave me a strong connection to the arc of Jewish history. I imagined all the Dershowitz’s and Ringels (my mother’s family) who had read from Torah scrolls over the centuries. I had a harder time imagining future generations of Dershowitz’s being as connected to the Torah as past generations had been. Rationally, I understand that things change. Spiritually, I felt sadness about change. At that moment, spirituality trumped rationality.

When I looked around me and saw hundreds of young children in baby carriages and strollers walking with their parents, joining in the festivities and kissing the Torah as it passed by, I realized then – both rationally and spiritually – that the tradition would endure, though my descendants might not be part of it, at least not in the same way that these hassidic children would be part of it.

Soon the dedication was over and I traveled from Brooklyn to Manhattan. The trip took me from a visit to a world of spirituality, in which I was temporarily immersed, back into my world of rationality, where I will spend the remainder of my life. But I will never forget that spiritual moment.

Rappel

Sun, Jun 23 2019, 12:15 am

That has to be one of the saddest things I've ever read.

PinkFridge

Sun, Jun 23 2019, 8:15 am

I think the universal immediate reaction is going to be sadness.
BTW, when I opened this thread I though you would be talking about the Orthodox Rationalist movement, which is a whole other kettle of fish.

But back to this post. The Megama song My Zeidy is anachronistic. Kids today - many of the grandparents! - don't have this mind's picture anymore. People of my generation and a little older, whose parents were traditional and who would never dream of buying outright tarfus and even make the effort to get food with proper shechita, are seeing their kids marrying out Crying

Cheiny

Sun, Jun 23 2019, 3:13 pm

amother [ OP ] wrote:

https://www.jpost.com/Opinion/Having-a-Torah-dedicated-to-me-A-deeply-spiritual-moment-593049

By ALAN DERSHOWITZ

I am a pragmatic rationalist. I calculate the costs and benefits of most of my actions, especially when I am representing a client. For the 50 years I was a professor at Harvard Law School, my goal was never to teach the students what to think, but to teach them how to think. I employed the Socratic method in my classes, demanding rational responses from my students. I have never thought of myself as a spiritual person, because for me spiritual was the antithesis of rational.

But recently a Torah – a parchment scroll containing the five books of Moses – was dedicated to me for my pro bono work in defending indigent and other prisoners. The ceremony was held at Chabad headquarters in Brooklyn, with hundreds of people dancing in the streets to honor a new Torah. I accepted the honor because I wanted to help the group – Aleph – that I worked with on many of these cases to raise needed funds to continue its work. I fully expected to enjoy the dedication, because members of my family, old friends and colleagues would be there. I did not expect to feel a spiritual connection with the Torah that was being dedicated.

A TORAH is completely handwritten by a trained scribe – a profession going back to the beginnings of Jewish history. Every letter must be perfect. It takes months to write the hundreds of thousands of letters that compose the Torah. If one letter is wrong or smudged, the entire Torah is invalid.

When a Torah is near completion, the tradition is for the scribe to allow the person to whom it is dedicated to fill in the last few letters (what pressure!). The last word in the Torah is “Yisrael” – the Hebrew for Israel. As the scribe and I filled in these final letters, with the scribe guiding my hand, I felt a deep connection to my heritage. Part of it was rational – after all, I did grow up in Brooklyn as a Modern Orthodox Jew, and this event took place just a few blocks from the high school I had attended. Nostalgia is a natural, indeed rational feeling. But there was something else. Something deeper. Something unexpected.

My hyper-rationalism requires me to be skeptical about everything, including the divine origins of sacred texts, but for a few moments my rationality was suspended in favor of spirituality.

I looked at the familiar words of the Torah, words I had chanted many times during my adolescence, both in preparation for my bar mitzvah and for the dozen of years thereafter that I remained strictly observant, regularly reading from the Torah. Even in recent years I have been called to read from the Torah during my periodic visits to my local synagogue. While getting an aliyah – a blessing over the reading of the Torah – I once again viewed the beautiful calligraphy of the Torah’s words. I admired the beauty and the craftsmanship that had obviously gone into creating these letters. But I didn’t feel the deep connection to them that I felt during the dedication of my Torah.

I held the quill in my hand. The scribe dipped it in special organic ink. Then together we filled in the last letters, each of which I dedicated to the memory of departed family members or the refuah shleima (full recovery) of sick friends. I felt a sense of overwhelming connection, not only to my past, which goes back only 80 years, but to the thousands of years since the first Torahs were written by the first scribes. One does not have to be particularly religious or naturally spiritual to feel this connection.

Participating in the writing of an ancient Torah – on parchment, which will endure physically beyond my life, the lives of my children and grandchildren, even the lives of my great grandchildren – gave me a strong connection to the arc of Jewish history. I imagined all the Dershowitz’s and Ringels (my mother’s family) who had read from Torah scrolls over the centuries. I had a harder time imagining future generations of Dershowitz’s being as connected to the Torah as past generations had been. Rationally, I understand that things change. Spiritually, I felt sadness about change. At that moment, spirituality trumped rationality.

When I looked around me and saw hundreds of young children in baby carriages and strollers walking with their parents, joining in the festivities and kissing the Torah as it passed by, I realized then – both rationally and spiritually – that the tradition would endure, though my descendants might not be part of it, at least not in the same way that these hassidic children would be part of it.

Soon the dedication was over and I traveled from Brooklyn to Manhattan. The trip took me from a visit to a world of spirituality, in which I was temporarily immersed, back into my world of rationality, where I will spend the remainder of my life. But I will never forget that spiritual moment.

My reaction is that his pintele yid reacted during the dedication of the Sefer Torah and he therefore he was deeply affected by those moments of spirituality. But his yetzer hara has unfortunately convinced him to abandon his roots, and opt instead for a life of fame, notoriety and wealth without having to be tied down to the responsibilities of a spiritual life. One never knows. As he grows older, he might come to his senses and realize the emptiness and futility of the type of life he’s chosen and he will hopefully do Teshuva and return.

amother

Azure

Sun, Jun 23 2019, 4:34 pm

People can be both rationalist and spiritual without being religious. His mistake is thinking that he can’t keep any connection to the culture and/or spirituality if he doesn’t observe halacha, “in Manhattan.”
There are many ways to be in this world; it’s never all or nothing.

amother

Royalblue

Sun, Jun 23 2019, 4:37 pm

amother [ Azure ] wrote:

My thoughts exactly. Life is too short to deny any part of yourself.

PinkFridge

Sun, Jun 23 2019, 4:57 pm

amother [ Azure ] wrote:

One can keep such an attachment but one can't pass it on to one's descendants. Not anymore, if ever.

amother

Royalblue

Sun, Jun 23 2019, 5:32 pm

PinkFridge wrote:

One can keep such an attachment but one can't pass it on to one's descendants. Not anymore, if ever.

Ones descendants can find their own spirituality and way to live their lives.

amother

Ruby

Sun, Jun 23 2019, 6:12 pm

I thought this would be a discussion of a group like the Humanistic Judaism group - I knew some older people who belonged to a group like this. Given that they weren't rich and famous like Dershowitz, I don't think they were succumbing to enticements of fame and fortune. One woman said she woke up as a child and realized there was no g----d. Her parents were Orthodox from that generation (emigrated to US prior to WW II) but she and her husband were not at all religious although they were culturally very strongly Jewish and did send their children to Sunday school although she did say she thought she should have sent them to a Workman's Circle school instead of the more traditional type of school.

Her son died relatively young but had joined a shul after the birth of his daughter although it was not an Orthodox style but more of a progressive type. She made a special effort to find the talilt he had received for his Bar Mitzva when she flew to him in the hospital.

FWIW, these are the principles of Humanistic Judaism - I guess Dershowitz's beliefs would be in line with these although he probably doesn't meet formally in a group like the people I met.

A Jew is someone who identifies with the history, culture, and future of the Jewish people;

Judaism is the historic culture of the Jewish people, and religion is only one part of that culture;
Jewish identity is best preserved in a free, pluralistic environment;

People possess the power and responsibility to shape their own lives independent of supernatural authority;

Ethics and morality should serve human needs, and choices should be based upon consideration of the consequences of actions rather than pre-ordained rules or commandments;

Jewish history, like all history, is a human saga, a testament to the significance of human power and human responsibility. Biblical and other traditional texts are the products of human activity and are best understood through archaeology and other scientific analysis.

The freedom and dignity of the Jewish people must go hand in hand with the freedom and dignity of every human being

PinkFridge

Sun, Jun 23 2019, 7:24 pm

amother [ Royalblue ] wrote:

Ones descendants can find their own spirituality and way to live their lives.

I would prefer my descendants live their lives according to the same principles I've tried to pass down.
Of course they should do it their own way, not be a carbon copy (or korban copy) of us, their parents. That's the whole tzaddik ben tzaddik vs. tzaddik ben rasha thing. Not that I'm a tzaddik, but we learn from Yitzchak and Rivka that we have to forge our own path even while walking the same path.

imasoftov

Mon, Jun 24 2019, 8:00 am

PinkFridge wrote:

BTW, when I opened this thread I though you would be talking about the Orthodox Rationalist movement, which is a whole other kettle of fish.

amother [ Ruby ] wrote:

I thought this would be a discussion of a group like the Humanistic Judaism group

I thought the former, and that the question was, people who identify with rationalist Judaism (that's the name of R. Slifkin's blog to comment on Dershowitz's rationalism, and perhaps stemmed from a misunderstanding of how Slifkin uses it.

A clearer title might have been "What is your opinion of this sort of rationalistic Judaism?" Although it doesn't seem Dershowitz was attempting to represent anyone's views but his own so maybe "What is your opinion of this opinion piece?"

leah233

Mon, Jun 24 2019, 8:31 am

amother [ Ruby ] wrote:

There are plenty of other enticements out there other fame and fortune

Nobody just wakes up one morning and realizes there was no g----d.

No child knows enough about the topic that they can make an informed decision.

This article reminds of what Isaac Bashevis Singer (of all people!) wrote at the end of his life:

"When Chazal said that Reshoyim don't do Teshuva even when they are standing at the entranceway to Gehenim they showed more knowledge and understanding of human nature and psychology than all the Frueds, the Jungs and the Adlers put together..."

amother

Burgundy

Mon, Jun 24 2019, 9:10 am

I thought that was really lovely.

PinkFridge

Mon, Jun 24 2019, 3:29 pm

amother [ Burgundy ] wrote:

I thought that was really lovely.

Oh yeah. It was elegantly written and moving. And so so poignant.

amother

Burgundy

Mon, Jun 24 2019, 3:57 pm

PinkFridge wrote:

Oh yeah. It was elegantly written and moving. And so so poignant.

There was a lot of literary licence taken. AD didn't just wake up (or show up in Brooklyn) and realize his kids aren't frum, and Judaism may not continue through his direct descendants.

I don't find that depressing.

Some people lead their lives with the goal of ensuring their kids will be frum.

AD leads a different life.

PinkFridge

Mon, Jun 24 2019, 4:20 pm

amother [ Burgundy ] wrote:

There was a lot of literary licence taken. AG didn't just wake up (or show up in Brooklyn) and realize his kids aren't frum, and Judaism may not continue through his direct descendants.

I don't find that depressing.

Some people lead their lives with the goal of ensuring their kids will be frum.

AG leads a different life.

I assume you mean AD.
Yeah, he's leading a different life. And like many of his generation and shortly after, he had no idea how quickly things would accelerate. And now he's looking back and maybe, just maybe, second guessing himself. I call that painful. I can feel someone else's pain, even if he brought it on himself.

tichellady

Mon, Jun 24 2019, 4:25 pm

I don’t find this sad at all. I thought it was beautiful.

amother

Aqua

Mon, Jun 24 2019, 4:27 pm

There is no rational justification for rationalism.

amother

Burgundy

Mon, Jun 24 2019, 4:32 pm

PinkFridge wrote:

I did mean AD - will fix my typo.

You're reading this as an empath - I'm reading this as a rational.

He's saying - my blood line or not - Spiritual Judaism continues.... and he has a share in that.

PinkFridge

Mon, Jun 24 2019, 5:08 pm

amother [ Burgundy ] wrote:

I did mean AD - will fix my typo.

You're reading this as an empath - I'm reading this a rational.

He's saying - my blood line or not - Spiritual Judaism continues.... and he has a share in that.

Interesting. I should reread.