Post by Admin on Jul 9, 2016 13:19:14 GMT
COMMENTS, CLARIFICATIONS & ARGUMENTS (for the sake of heaven) ENCOURAGED
REVIEW OF PART I of Understanding Jewish Theology:
In Part I of Understanding Jewish Theology, Neusner focused on the “Theological Structure of Classical Judaism” focusing on the elements of God, Torah, and Israel (i.e. Am Yisrael, not the current State of Israel).
With regard God, Neusner introduced and presented two articles by R. Abraham Joshua Heschel. The first article , “One God” [excerpted from Man Is Not Alone] explored Jewish elements of monotheism. The second, “God in Search of Man” [excerpted from a book of the same title] explored the reciprocal and interactive relationship between the Holy One and human beings.
With regard Torah, Neusner introduced and presented three articles. The first, “Not By Bread Alone” [excerpted from Petuchowski’s Heirs of the Pharisees] used parallel analogies to remove the “burden of literalism” (as Neusner put it) from the Jewish concept of Revelation not only in the Chumash but also in Tanakh, Talmud, commentaries and even midrash.
The second article, “Tradition and Commentary” [excerpted from Scholem’s “Tradition and Commentary as Religious Categories in Judaism”] examined the source(s) of tradition in Torah and the issue of how tradition interacts with changing conditions over time, space and evolving culture.
The third, “The Study of Torah” [excerpted from Heschel’s The Earth Is The Lord’s] looked at how Torah study shaped the inner world of Jewish culture when eretz Israel’s religious academies functionally ceded their authority in the wake of European theological commentaries by RaSHI, the Ramban (Moses Maimonidies) and their successors. Their process of ‘commentary’, explained Heschel, enshrined learning as an accessible ideal for all Am Yisrael. This pursuit of the transcendent, said Heschel, became the heart of Jewish culture. Paradoxically, it was the unworldliness of Jewish preoccupation with the Divine that sustains Am Yisrael in times of extreme poverty and physical existential threat.
With regard Israel, Neusner introduced and presented two articles. The first article, “God, Israel and Election” [excerpted from Solomon Schechter’s Some Aspects of Rabbinic Theology] examined the intimate relation between God and Am Yisrael. Schechter is a proponent of reciprocity, stating that God wants:
• to be recognized by Israel as its father;
• will reward or sanction Israel as a father will to his children (even considering suffering to be a gift leading towards reconciliation ); and
• will never abandon His people regardless of their ‘stiff-neckedness’.
The second article, “Judaism and the Land of Israel” by Arthur Hertzberg [reprinted from Judaism, Vol XIX (4)] notes the special connection between worldwide Jewry and the State of Israel. He plumbs this connection as far more than one of a religion’s resonance with a modern political state but as a continuity of Am Yisrael’s Divine longing to return to Zion that first became manifest with the dispersion after the First Temple fell in 586 BCE … and as a continuity of our people’s beliefs:
(a) that we were chosen for a special relationship with the Creator (replete with oft-
challenging obligations as well as privileges), and
(b) that the literally Promised Land is a holy space given to (with residence required by)
our people necessarily linked with our obligations to pursue holiness and to extend knowledge of the Unity to the rest of the world through study, prayer, and deeds (al ha-Torah, v’al avodah, v’al gemilut chasidim).
Hertzberg traces the last millennias’ historic Jewish impetus to return “next year in Jerusalem” Return to eretz Israel, Hertzberg asserts, has always been the diaspora’s goal!
FOOTNOTES
1 (a) See article on page 67 of our text. (b) The view Schechter views of “affliction” being a path to reconcile God and man is one I find personally troubling. Though we’re taught that the fall of the 2nd Temple was due to sinas chinam (senseless hatred) amongst Jews and some <thankfully, few> claim that the Holocaust was punishment for Jews’ falling away from Torah practice and ethical behavior, my personal understanding is that such theology is more an artifact of the dominant western religion than it is of Judaism. To be discussed in class.
2 For me, such reciprocity is repeatedly manifest by Torah’s fateful, “Hineni” {Here I am”} that is part sacred myth of our collective past and part sacred direction for our individual moral and siritual behavior. Hineni is far more than an acknowledgement of presence but includes the sense in colloquial English, “Here I am, at your service” or “Here I am, I am ready.”
According to what I’ve read, there are two ways to say “I’m here” in Hebrew. The first is “poh.” It’s used for a roll call, or “I’m in here” – metaphorically, the pshat of presence. In contrast, Hineni has more complex, deeper meaning – metaphorically, the engagement with sod (mystical connection with God). When one says Hineni, There is no doubt that one is completely present, engaged and committed. Used fewer than a dozen times in Tanakh, each Hineni came at an axial moment –a defining turning point – in our ancestors’ lives, including:
• Abraham’s response to God’s command to bind Isaac as an offering (Gen 22:1);
• Jacob’s compliance with God’s angel’s instruction to leave Laban (Gen 31:11) and again to begin his travel to Egypt (Gen 46:2);
• Joseph’s accepting Jacob’s instruction to seek his brothers’ pasturage (Gen 31:11);
• Moses’ awe-filled experience listening to God from the burning bush and (notwithstanding his fears) undertaking the task of Israel’s liberation (Ex 3:4);
• The “lad” Samuel’s acceptance of) God’s prophetic call (I Samuel 3:1-10); and
• Isaiah’s full-throated acceptance of his mission (Isaiah 6:8).
Though the Prophetic era is long gone, we do not need to hear the voice of God as an auditory experience through our ears, for God’s “small still voice” (I Kings 19:12) remains timelessly within us as part of our being-hood -- b’tzelem Elohim (created in God’s image).
3 “It is insufficient that you be a servant for Me [only] to raise up the tribes of Jacob and to restore the ruins of Israel; I will make you a light for the nations, so that my salvation may extend to the ends of the earth.” (Isaiah 49:6)
4 Psalm 137 is the cry of Babylonian Jews who wept “by the rivers of Babylon” and declared, “If I forget you, O Jerusalem, let my right hand wither.” And even with a modern State of Israel, we continue to end the Pesach seder with, “Next Year in Jerusalem.”
Whether this means that all Jews need to return; that there be a dominant Jewish presence; or that it’s sufficient to have assured continual access remains a matter of debate within the Israeli and diaspora communities.
REVIEW OF PART I of Understanding Jewish Theology:
In Part I of Understanding Jewish Theology, Neusner focused on the “Theological Structure of Classical Judaism” focusing on the elements of God, Torah, and Israel (i.e. Am Yisrael, not the current State of Israel).
With regard God, Neusner introduced and presented two articles by R. Abraham Joshua Heschel. The first article , “One God” [excerpted from Man Is Not Alone] explored Jewish elements of monotheism. The second, “God in Search of Man” [excerpted from a book of the same title] explored the reciprocal and interactive relationship between the Holy One and human beings.
With regard Torah, Neusner introduced and presented three articles. The first, “Not By Bread Alone” [excerpted from Petuchowski’s Heirs of the Pharisees] used parallel analogies to remove the “burden of literalism” (as Neusner put it) from the Jewish concept of Revelation not only in the Chumash but also in Tanakh, Talmud, commentaries and even midrash.
The second article, “Tradition and Commentary” [excerpted from Scholem’s “Tradition and Commentary as Religious Categories in Judaism”] examined the source(s) of tradition in Torah and the issue of how tradition interacts with changing conditions over time, space and evolving culture.
The third, “The Study of Torah” [excerpted from Heschel’s The Earth Is The Lord’s] looked at how Torah study shaped the inner world of Jewish culture when eretz Israel’s religious academies functionally ceded their authority in the wake of European theological commentaries by RaSHI, the Ramban (Moses Maimonidies) and their successors. Their process of ‘commentary’, explained Heschel, enshrined learning as an accessible ideal for all Am Yisrael. This pursuit of the transcendent, said Heschel, became the heart of Jewish culture. Paradoxically, it was the unworldliness of Jewish preoccupation with the Divine that sustains Am Yisrael in times of extreme poverty and physical existential threat.
With regard Israel, Neusner introduced and presented two articles. The first article, “God, Israel and Election” [excerpted from Solomon Schechter’s Some Aspects of Rabbinic Theology] examined the intimate relation between God and Am Yisrael. Schechter is a proponent of reciprocity, stating that God wants:
• to be recognized by Israel as its father;
• will reward or sanction Israel as a father will to his children (even considering suffering to be a gift leading towards reconciliation ); and
• will never abandon His people regardless of their ‘stiff-neckedness’.
The second article, “Judaism and the Land of Israel” by Arthur Hertzberg [reprinted from Judaism, Vol XIX (4)] notes the special connection between worldwide Jewry and the State of Israel. He plumbs this connection as far more than one of a religion’s resonance with a modern political state but as a continuity of Am Yisrael’s Divine longing to return to Zion that first became manifest with the dispersion after the First Temple fell in 586 BCE … and as a continuity of our people’s beliefs:
(a) that we were chosen for a special relationship with the Creator (replete with oft-
challenging obligations as well as privileges), and
(b) that the literally Promised Land is a holy space given to (with residence required by)
our people necessarily linked with our obligations to pursue holiness and to extend knowledge of the Unity to the rest of the world through study, prayer, and deeds (al ha-Torah, v’al avodah, v’al gemilut chasidim).
Hertzberg traces the last millennias’ historic Jewish impetus to return “next year in Jerusalem” Return to eretz Israel, Hertzberg asserts, has always been the diaspora’s goal!
FOOTNOTES
1 (a) See article on page 67 of our text. (b) The view Schechter views of “affliction” being a path to reconcile God and man is one I find personally troubling. Though we’re taught that the fall of the 2nd Temple was due to sinas chinam (senseless hatred) amongst Jews and some <thankfully, few> claim that the Holocaust was punishment for Jews’ falling away from Torah practice and ethical behavior, my personal understanding is that such theology is more an artifact of the dominant western religion than it is of Judaism. To be discussed in class.
2 For me, such reciprocity is repeatedly manifest by Torah’s fateful, “Hineni” {Here I am”} that is part sacred myth of our collective past and part sacred direction for our individual moral and siritual behavior. Hineni is far more than an acknowledgement of presence but includes the sense in colloquial English, “Here I am, at your service” or “Here I am, I am ready.”
According to what I’ve read, there are two ways to say “I’m here” in Hebrew. The first is “poh.” It’s used for a roll call, or “I’m in here” – metaphorically, the pshat of presence. In contrast, Hineni has more complex, deeper meaning – metaphorically, the engagement with sod (mystical connection with God). When one says Hineni, There is no doubt that one is completely present, engaged and committed. Used fewer than a dozen times in Tanakh, each Hineni came at an axial moment –a defining turning point – in our ancestors’ lives, including:
• Abraham’s response to God’s command to bind Isaac as an offering (Gen 22:1);
• Jacob’s compliance with God’s angel’s instruction to leave Laban (Gen 31:11) and again to begin his travel to Egypt (Gen 46:2);
• Joseph’s accepting Jacob’s instruction to seek his brothers’ pasturage (Gen 31:11);
• Moses’ awe-filled experience listening to God from the burning bush and (notwithstanding his fears) undertaking the task of Israel’s liberation (Ex 3:4);
• The “lad” Samuel’s acceptance of) God’s prophetic call (I Samuel 3:1-10); and
• Isaiah’s full-throated acceptance of his mission (Isaiah 6:8).
Though the Prophetic era is long gone, we do not need to hear the voice of God as an auditory experience through our ears, for God’s “small still voice” (I Kings 19:12) remains timelessly within us as part of our being-hood -- b’tzelem Elohim (created in God’s image).
3 “It is insufficient that you be a servant for Me [only] to raise up the tribes of Jacob and to restore the ruins of Israel; I will make you a light for the nations, so that my salvation may extend to the ends of the earth.” (Isaiah 49:6)
4 Psalm 137 is the cry of Babylonian Jews who wept “by the rivers of Babylon” and declared, “If I forget you, O Jerusalem, let my right hand wither.” And even with a modern State of Israel, we continue to end the Pesach seder with, “Next Year in Jerusalem.”
Whether this means that all Jews need to return; that there be a dominant Jewish presence; or that it’s sufficient to have assured continual access remains a matter of debate within the Israeli and diaspora communities.