Our Roundtable explores the relationship of memory to repentance and also the notion that one needs to be in a state of temptation to wrestle with and overcome one’s impulses. Collective sin and repentance are addressed both in the Roundtable — in discussions about South Africa and Rawanda — and in a piece by Daniel Weiss who writes, “Each member of Israel therefore bears responsibility not only for sins committed in his or her own name, and not only for sins committed in the name of other individual members of Israel, but also for sins committed in the name of Israel as a whole.” For the full issue—or for bulk copies of the issue for your board or organization—contact MARKETING.

Living on the cusp of the second decade of the 21st century, we Jews are accustomed to the tripartite division of Judaism that Franz Rosenzweig articulated and popularized: creation, revelation, redemption. This division, which both carries and constructs a narrative arc, has served well in popular thought to limn Jewish theology and practice. It might be somewhat jarring then, that on one of the holiest days of the year, the focal prayer of the day —  the musaf of Rosh Hashanah, the home of the shofar blasts on the “day of shofar blasts” — is divided into three sections that are not necessarily familiar or comfortable for contemporary sensibilities. This, though, is not a bad thing. Prayer is not only the moment when we retreat into the security of the safe and familiar. Prayer is also an act of engagement and confrontation. I find that prayer, to roughly paraphrase Kierkegaard, is the existential suspension of the ontological. To actually pray, I need to abandon the safe ground of “how the world is” and be open to experiences grounded in a very different world of assumptions. Prayer comes out of the struggle between these two places: the place I live and leave (and will return to with the three steps that I take to end the amidah, backing out of the place where transcendence is available) and the place I enter.

Stretching back to at least the third century, the three sections of the musaf — mentioned and debated in Mishnah Rosh Hashanah — are those found in our liturgy: malkhiyot,* zikhronot, and shofarot. Malkhiyot is rendered by Herbert Danby, the early-20th-century Anglican Mishnah translator, as “Sovereignty verses.” Under this rubric, the liturgist, following the Babylonian Talmud, gathers ten verses (three from Torah, three from Psalms, three from the later Prophets, and then a coda from Torah) that invoke God’s sovereignty over Israel, all nations, and the world.

One is hard pressed to find a coherent narrative articulated in these quotations. The first verse is from Exodus, from the Song of the Sea (one of the oldest texts in Torah), yet it points to God’s eternal reign: “The Lord shall be king for all time!” The collection of kingly verses sticks to the prophetic and the salvific. The penultimate verse, from Zachariah 14, points to that day when “there shall be one God with one name,” while the ultimate verse is the most present of invocations, the Sh’ma — God’s oneness invoked here and now.

The second section, zikhronot, which Danby translates as “Remembrance verses,” invokes God’s memory of the covenant — seemingly in order to once again jog the divine remembrance and bring redemption speedily in our days. The three, three, three, one series of verses is repeated here, though with an interesting twist. The third Torah verse quoted is from Leviticus 26:42: “And I will remember My covenant with Jacob and also My covenant with Isaac and also My covenant with Abraham I will remember, and the land I will remember.” Though this sounds promising, the context is Israel’s abrogation of the covenant. Memory of the covenant here has a dark edge to it. The ultimate verse in this section speaks of God reinstating the covenantal promise of redemption. Here, for the educated pray-er, the passage of time from the abrogation of the covenant by Israel to its later reaffirmation by God is indicated by the intervening verses and even the summary prayer.

Finally, the shofarot section partakes of the imagery of Sinai and the end of days, the themes of trepidation and extreme joy before the divine and in holiday community. This section’s concluding prayer deepens those themes with a plea for God to sound the shofar of our freedom and redemption; to lead us to Jerusalem in joy and song and to re-establish the sacrificial service in the rebuilt Temple.

One of the glories of the Rosh Hashanah liturgy is the sounding of the shofar, which can be allegorized and metaphorized but not domesticated. It is a bedrock religious moment in that it touches a deep and visceral chord in us that has not been smothered by any layers of bourgeois worshipfulness. It is important for me to confront and embrace, however tentatively, God as sovereign. It is important to me to lie face down on the floor, relinquishing any notion of control over the world for a brief moment. It seems to be important to fervently hope that redemption may one day wend its way toward us.

God as sovereign. God as author of the covenant. God as the triumphalist redeemer sounding the shofar. These concepts are not easily set aside. We may need to violently throw them over — however, we evade that moment of engagement at our own peril and loss.

* This is the pronunciation documented in the earliest manuscripts, though in contemporary literature, it’s often malkhuyot.

Pray for the welfare of the government. If it were not for fear of it, people would swallow one another alive. Mishnah Avot 3:2

A few months ago, I changed the signature in my email to include the above quote. Its tone and message are not as uplifting or inspirational as other quotes I have used in the past. Indeed, friends questioned my choice. Governments are guilty of so much evil in our world — unnecessary wars, unfathomable corruption, waste. Why pray for their wellbeing?

Rabbi Hanina Reserve High Priest, who authored this statement — possibly as a response to witnessing the destruction of the Temple at the hands of the brutal and miserably corrupt Roman government in the year 70 C.E. — was not praising the Romans. Rather, his comments may have been aimed at the civil war he witnessed leading up to the destruction. The zealots in that war justified their rebellion under the rubric, “We have no king other than God.” (Josephus, JW II, 116, 433) The Romans may have been terrible, but they were better than anarchy.

A similar debate currently rages in the religious Zionist community. Many religious Zionists once saw the State of Israel as the “beginning of the sprouting of our redemption.” Now, in the wake of the disengagement, some religious Zionists have adopted a slogan of sectors within the anti-Zionist, ultra-Orthodox community: “We don’t believe in the rule of the heretics, but only in our Father in Heaven.”¹

While the weekday amidah yearns for the restoration of the Davidic kingdom as a harbinger of messianic redemption, the passages about kingship in the Rosh Hashanah musaf amidah seem to scrupulously avoid invoking any earthly king. The authors of the liturgy explicitly speak about God alone as king, apparently adopting the position of the ancient zealots and contemporary ultra-Orthodox that any authority other than that of the King of Kings should be shunned. However, a closer look at the disagreement cited in the following Mishnah about the structure of the silent prayer of the Rosh Hashanah musaf service (charted here for easy reference) shows that the situation is more complex.

The order of blessings [for the Rosh Hashanah amidah] is as follows: One should say [the blessings for] the forefathers, the mighty deeds and the holiness of God, include kingship prayers with it but not blast. [One should continue with] the holiness of the day and blast, the remembrance blessing and blast, and shofar blessing and blast. One should then say the blessings for temple service, thanksgiving, and the priestly blessing. These are the words of Rabbi Yohanan ben Nuri.

Rabbi Akiva said to him: If shofar blasts do not accompany the kingship prayers, why bother mentioning them? Rather, one should say the forefathers, the mighty deeds, and the holiness of God, and include kingship prayers with the holiness of the day and blast, the remembrance blessing and blast, and shofar blessing and blast. One should then say the blessings for temple service, thanksgiving, and the priestly blessing. (Mishnah Rosh Hashanah 4:5)

A quick glance at the chart shows that Rabbi Akiva and Rabbi Yohanan ben Nuri disagree about whether kingship verses should be included in the third or fourth blessing. However, Rabbi Akiva’s verbal objection to Rabbi Yohanan ben Nuri — “If shofar blasts do not accompany the kingship prayers, why bother mentioning them?” — does not seem to correspond to the adjustment he recommends concerning Rabbi Yohanan ben Nuri’s order of prayer. If the kingship verses must be connected to a shofar blast, the natural response should be to trumpet the shofar in the third blessing. Why does Rabbi Akiva insist on moving the kingship prayers rather than the time of shofar blowing?

Apparently, Rabbi Akiva shares a set of assumptions with Rabbi Yohanan ben Nuri that have not been made explicit. Both rabbis accept the now familiar three-part structure of the tefillah. The first section opens with praise: of God as the God of history (avot), nature (gevurot), and transcendence (kedushat Hashem), and the last closes with what is generally classified as thanksgiving: commemorating the temple service (avodah), giving thanks (hoda-ah), and the priestly blessing (birkat kohanim). In its core, where supplications are made on weekdays, the Rosh Hashanah prayer focuses on three blessings particular to the holiday: commemorating the holiday (kedushat hayom), recognizing the God of remembrance (zikhronot) and celebrating the shofar (shofarot); each is accompanied by shofar blasts.

Rabbi Akiva and Rabbi Yohanan ben Nuri also seem to agree that shofar blowing must be restricted to the middle section of the tefillah, the section reserved on regular days for entreaty before the Almighty. Blowing the shofar in the first section is impossible, because the shofar blast is a plea rather than an act of praise. The shofar is our way of wordlessly beseeching God — a desperate crying that cannot be put into words.

If so, this is the essential distinction between these two sages. According to Rabbi Yohanan ben Nuri, these prayers belong in the initial section of the amidah — exaltation. We laud God for God’s royal standing and majestic position that both transcends and controls the world. We join the angels in declaring God’s kingship. Just as they responded to our acceptance of the yoke of the kingship of heaven with the declaration of the Sh’ma by calling out “holy holy holy,” today we join their daily declaration with special aplomb.2

Rabbi Akiva seems less confident. No doubt that God reigns as the King of Kings, but sometimes the world gives the impression that the King has not taken control in the necessary ways. According to this model, we cry out to God, desperate for Him to reveal Himself and act as king over us, just as we begged Him and Samuel to appoint a human king over us 3,000 years ago. If God is in control, why, I imagine Rabbi Akiva crying, do the Romans appear to rule rather than Bar Kokhba? True dominion is something we yearn to experience. We long for a day of absolutes, when right and wrong are clear, and recompense is made. Only on that day, as it says in the climactic Aleinu prayer and one of the ten kingship verses, can God be One and His name One. (Zech. 14:9)

Our traditional liturgy integrates aspects of the thought of both Rabbi Yohanan ben Nuri and Rabbi Akiva. However, the verses about malkhuyot, kingship, are found together with the shofar blasts in the fourth blessing (kedushat haYom), where we beg for a day in which God and true justice will rule alone. In the meantime, it seems to me, we best not give up on the centrality of the earthly government.

¹ http://sf.tapuz.co.il/shirshur-264-125590284.htm

Dear Sharon,

I feel privileged to write to you regarding issues of authority and directions in the North American Jewish community today. You are surely one of the most serious and innovative young Jewish leaders of our time, and the community you have forged in Los Angeles at IKAR offers one of the great rays of hope for the ability of Judaism to engage this and future generations in meaningful ways.

I am of a different generation than you. I am now 62 years old, and my own Jewish path has wandered in many directions during my lifetime — from an Orthodox childhood in a small city in Virginia, to life on a Hashomer Hatzair kibbutz in Israel, to participation in the then “counter-establishment” culture of the New York Havurah, to rabbinical and graduate school at the Hebrew Union College-Jewish Institute of Religion and Columbia University, to a career as an academic, and to service as president of HUC-JIR. My life has traversed many Jewish boundaries and I have tried to adapt and guide — in some small way — the course of modern Jewish life through the education of religious leaders like you.

As an academic focusing on the modern Jewish experience, I have often analyzed the conditions that led to the transformation of Jewish life in the modern setting. I have analyzed how the modern world brought about the collapse of the political structure of the pre-modern Jewish community and, with it, an attendant loss of the traditional boundaries that framed the community and the “coercive legal authority” that the rabbi formerly exercised within it. This does not mean that the contemporary community has no borders, nor does it indicate that the modern rabbi has no authority. However, it does mean that our modern community is a voluntary one and that the rabbi now can exercise “influential authority” alone. Suasion, not coercion, is the operative word of our time. I do not lament these changes even as I am not totally sanguine about them. As the Yamim Noraim approach with their invitation to reflection both personal and communal, I would like to offer some of my own thoughts regarding Jewish life and authority.

I recognize that the contemporaneous challenges that confront our people require fresh vision. The era of “ethnic Judaism” that accompanied my immigrant forebears to this country and that forged me and gave rise to the different organizations that dominate modern day Jewish life is surely past, and the nature of denominational and communal commitments on the part of your generation is surely different than it was for mine. Intermarriage is commonplace. Commitment to the State of Israel is affected by intellectual currents that sway young Jews in new and — in my view — often ominous ways. Technology allows us to communicate in ever-expanding ways, yet may significantly alter and arguably undermine the nature of Jewish communal borders and authority as I have known them. I look forward to our exchange.

In friendship and respect,
David

•••

David,

It is an honor to be in this conversation with you. Over the years, my admiration and respect for you have only grown as you lead our community with passion, vision, and moral courage.

Like you, I studied at Columbia University, but my background was High Reform (my synagogue was known as the Church on the Hill) in suburban Jersey and it took only a few weeks in college for me to realize that for all of my interminable hours in Hebrew school, I was functionally illiterate as a Jew. Wounded and embarrassed by this realization, I fled from the organized Jewish community. Eventually, I was drawn back to Judaism, learning initially in chevruta with a young Orthodox woman. One week we came to the narrative of Rebecca and Isaac meeting and falling in love, and my chevruta partner pointed out that, according to Rashi, Rebecca was only three years old at the time. “That’s absurd!” I said. “Based on the text, she is clearly a grown woman.” “But Rashi says that she was only three; that’s the way the rabbis have always read it,” she insisted. “I don’t know who Rashi is,” I said, “but he’s clearly wrong!” And then we both devolved into tears. I cried from embarrassment: How could it be that I had never heard of Rashi, a Jewish voice so important that even when his opinion defied reason it had the power to instantaneously silence thoughtful discussion? And I cried from confusion: Did being a good Jew require acceding to irrational viewpoints, just because they have persisted for 1,000 years? My chevruta partner cried because she grew up in a world in which Rashi was never wrong, even when he couldn’t possibly be right.

A few weeks later, I attended Friday-night services at B’nai Jeshurun in an effort to find some Jewish grounding and inspiration. In the midst of the service, rabbis Marshall Meyer and Roly Matalon stood up and proclaimed with fiery and prophetic certainty that as Jews we were obligated to engage in the fight against the spread of HIV/ AIDS. Obligation? I had never before considered the idea, and it cut against my understanding of what religion is about (individuals making thoughtful, autonomous decisions on personal spiritual matters.) But I liked it.

Much has been said about my generation — raised on the instant gratification of Starbucks, Twitter, and the iPod; we expect to have exactly what we want exactly when we want it. What interest could we possibly have in something that demands reverence and humility and a willingness to accept systems and ideas that don’t always fit comfortably with our values?

In my early days of religious exploration, I discovered an innate (and very Jewish) resistance to blind acceptance of norms simply because they were understood to be authoritative. But it also reflected a deep desire for a Jewish religious and spiritual life that is driven by the obligation to live purposefully in the world — even when that requires taking positions that are unpopular and inconvenient.

Someone recently criticized me for failing to promote a rally for immigration reform held on Shabbat. Indignant, she recalled Heschel’s comment that “we are to pray with our feet.” I argued that Heschel would have been in shul that Shabbat — praying and preaching and learning about immigration without violating Shabbat. I live now as a halakhic Jew, and in some ways that leaves me with an even greater responsibility to challenge assumptions and defy norms, because ultimately my rootedness in the tradition — and its authority over my life — are foundational.

At IKAR, we strive for a vibrant religious life that is reflected as much in a wholehearted and creative davening culture as it is in our community’s serious social and political commitments. I have found that the rigorous demands we place on people are precisely what this generation finds most resonant, even as they insist on the right to challenge back. I wonder if you think that the dissolution of communal and denominational commitments — which to me seems to be a natural and even healthy response to modernity — necessarily forecasts the dissolution of rabbinic authority altogether? In other words, could you envision a Jewish life that seriously challenges elements of an authoritative tradition, but at the same time is able to maintain its legitimacy, making very serious demands on its adherents?

I am eager to hear your thoughts.

L’shalom, Sharon

•••

Dear Sharon,

Thank you so very much for your response. Your own story and the questions you pose at the end of your letter focus precisely on the issues that most concern us in this conversation.

While the story of your chevruta partnership represents the two poles in modern Jewish life, your predicament — not being able to identify Rashi — is the product of a “thin Jewish culture.” I am afraid it is typical of most in your generation of American Jews. Clearly, we live at a time where communitarian obligation and commitment routinely fail to guide individual direction and choice. How could such commitments and obligations do so when persons are ignorant of them? Furthermore, ours is an age when individualism (e.g., most young people today create their own “playlists” of music) reigns supreme. A headline story in the New York Times reports that our “addiction” to computers takes a “toll on family life” and this “compulsion” promotes solitude and atomization even among persons who live together. Another news report indicates that “partisan political news programs” that confirm the already established viewpoints and preferences of individual viewers and listeners routinely drown out news shows that attempt to present a “broad array of perspectives.” You accurately observe that your generation expects “to have exactly what we want exactly when we want it.”

However, your story is both instructive and hopeful. Your spirit led you on a path toward a Jewish tradition that would prove to be “foundational” and “authoritative.” Your own life affirms that a “Jewish life that seriously challenges elements of an authoritative tradition, but at the same time is able to maintain its legitimacy, making very serious demands on its adherents,” is possible. Indeed, your trajectory and the congregation and community you have formed in L.A. serve as models for communities of serious and committed Jews “obligated” to our tradition.

Though I write of confidence and hope, I am also nagged by doubts and fears. I worry that the “triumphs” are all too rare and that a “vibrant and thick” Judaism is being created only for an “elite” of non-Orthodox Jews. I also am concerned that even when a committed and joyful Judaism is established, its spiritual focus is removed from what I regard as the nonnegotiable corporeal element of Judaism — the Jewish people and the State of Israel. Thus, I fail to recognize it as fully “authentic” even when I see its adherents championing an ethos of obligation that leads them to active engagement in social justice and joyful and meaningful worship.

While Jewish tradition itself asserts that a “she’ei’rit ha-pleitah,” “saving remnant,” has marked every generation, and my historical study informs me that one of the most creative Jewish communities — that of the Iberian Peninsula in the late Middle Ages — was relatively small in number, the prospect of a shrinking number of committed Jews informed by the full rhythms and content of Jewish peoplehood and history concerns me. What do you think this lack of socialization into a “thick Jewish culture” and the “authority and ‘taken-for-grantedness’ of Jewish peoplehood” on the part of most Jews in your generation means for the future?

I look forward to your response.

B’ydidut, David

•••

David,

Perfect timing for us to have this conversation, as we stand at the close of a year that was defined as much by the flotilla disaster in June as it was by Peter Beinart’s pointed piece in the New York Review of Books just weeks earlier criticizing the Jewish communal establishment’s engagement on Israel and Zionism. The crisis-driven agenda of the established Jewish community is tragically missing the mark, Beinart warns, and the result could be detrimental to both American Jewry and the State of Israel. David, you express concern about the disconnect many young Jews feel from “the non-negotiable corporeal element of Judaism — the Jewish people and the State of Israel.” I understand the concern, but personally feel heartened by the willingness in this generation to challenge old paradigms of engagement while working to claim new ways of being in relationship with Judaism and Israel. The generational resistance to the standard operating procedure on Israel is equally operative on questions of Jewish religious and spiritual attachment.

I, too, am concerned that a new generation of Jews will see themselves isolated from Israel and one another. But it is precisely the status quo, which is alienating young people from Israel and Judaism in droves, that will ensure that outcome. I have no doubt that a Zionism, indeed a Judaism, that is intellectually honest and morally consistent will win back the hearts and minds of those who now flee the Jewish communal structure.

I see disaffection from the established Jewish organizational world as a reflection of a will to live our Jewish lives with authenticity and integrity. We — the leadership of the Jewish community — have not behaved responsibly enough with our authority. We have failed to foster a real relationship with Israel — one in which we kvell over Israel’s breathtaking achievements and also call Israel to account for its mistakes; we have failed to capture the hearts of a generation of Jews less interested in gestures of Jewish solidarity than in working alongside partners – Jewish and non-Jewish — to carve paths toward a better future.

I feel optimistic about the future, but it’s not a blind optimism. There is a tremendous amount of work that must be done in order to craft a generation of “thick” Jews — those who are knowledgeable and engaged enough to be simultaneously humble and assertive, accepting and defiant. But I believe that we are up for the task.

L’shalom, Sharon

•••

Dear Sharon,

Our conversation began with a significant “concern” that the modern situation attenuated traditional Jewish notions of religious obligation and communal commitments among vast numbers of Jews. Yet, despite the “individualism” and “thin Jewish culture” among so many that marks our age, congregations and organizations of renewal and meaning have surely flourished in the contemporary setting. Persons committed to the Jewish future can only applaud these groupings and these trends.

This being said, I am afraid I still remain disquieted about aspects of such developments because so many persons involved in these clusters seem to lack what I feel is a needed sense of familial connection to the Jewish people, and that makes them all too often indifferent to Jewish peoplehood or only critical of the State of Israel. I feel that their criticisms and indifference frequently reflect a self-righteousness that lacks the pain that should accompany critiques leveled at “one’s own,” and that the lack of connection regularly displayed toward Israel and other Jews worldwide stems from a truncated spirituality that fails to recognize the centrality of the “corporeal dimensions” — people and land — of Jewish faith.

I appreciate why so many committed Jews are understandably distant from “an established Jewish organizational world whose policies of unquestioning support for Israel all too often fail to capture the[ir] hearts.” Jews cannot be asked to discard their deepest values — even when approaching “family.” Kinship can never justify xenophobia or tolerate immoral behavior toward the “other.” Criticism is demanded when the Jewish state and Jewish people fall short on these scores, and our Jewish establishment should understand and even encourage this. The universal ethics Judaism champions demands no less. As Rav Kook stated in Orot Hakodesh, “The love for Israel entails a love for all humankind.”

Nevertheless, this mandate of “love for humankind” that obligates Jews to be self-critical when we do not live up to the moral standards set by our tradition for ourselves and for others, does not legitimate a stance that has us stand apart from our people. In an American Jewish setting marked by freedom and openness, where traditional modes of authority are constantly and rightfully called into question, how to inspire our people so that they feel an obligation to live within the powerful Jewish dialectics of universalism and particularism, spirituality and corporeality, is the ongoing challenge that confronts us as leaders. I am grateful for the role you play in helping our community meet these demands and look forward to many more conversations and joint activities with you on how to fulfill these mandates.

In respect and friendship,
David

•••

David,

As I read your last letter I could not help but think of Jack Wertheimer’s piece in Commentary this past spring, not because you come to the same conclusions, but because he is animated by many of the same concerns. He, too, fears the lack of communal commitment among Jews and the diminishing connection to Jewish peoplehood. In his view, these are evidenced by a new generation of Jews more likely to channel resources to non-Jewish causes than attend to Jewish needs in the U.S. and Israel. His conclusion is that Jewish social justice organizations (like Repair the World, American Jewish World Service, and Avodah) are the culprits in the disintegration of Jewish peoplehood — diverting precious funds, volunteers, and interest from “Jewish causes,” especially Jewish day schools.

I believe that Wertheimer sets up a false opposition between universalism and particularism, in which we betray either the Jews or the world. But, for the sake of our discussion, I raise it because I am struck by the assumption of distrust that underlies his analysis of unconventional or untraditional efforts to engage Jews.

The reality is that the Jewish community is going through a paradigm shift. A generation of Jews feels at best alienated by, at worst deeply suspicious of, the communal agenda that many young and unaffiliated Jews see as narrow-minded, exclusivist, and morally inconsistent. But despite a pervasive sense of disaffection, clusters of young Jews are willing to devote their energy toward revitalizing the Jewish community — making Jewish principles and identity relevant once again by building communities and organizations that manifest the best of Jewish values. Through a sheer force of will, driven by creative discontent, the rules of engagement are shifting. You write that you are disquieted by the reality that so many people involved in efforts that challenge the authoritative structures of the Jewish community establishment “seem to lack what [you] feel is a needed sense of familial connection to the Jewish people, and that makes them all too often indifferent to Jewish peoplehood or only critical of the State of Israel.” With that analysis, I agree. These efforts are not perfect.  To me, some seem overly simplistic, self-righteous, and occasionally self-indulgent. But I remain optimistic because I also see in these efforts the roots of the next iteration of Jewish life in America — one that is characterized by creativity, open-mindedness, and rigorous engagement.

To be sure, a lot of work must be done to deepen the sense of connection and responsibility that young Jews feel toward the broader Jewish community, Israel, and the world. But rather than look at new efforts with skepticism, we need to help ensure that they provide opportunities for authentic engagement with our precious spiritual, cultural, and intellectual heritage. We need to move a generation of leaders to challenge assumptions and defy expectations — but to do so with humility, a profound sense of responsibility, and the kind of passion that is born of deep love. We need to help shape the conversation around the marriage of the particular and the universal, the spiritual and the corporeal. And, frankly, with you training the next generation of rabbis and communal leaders, we really couldn’t be in better hands to do this.

It has been a real honor to deepen our relationship through this conversation. I look forward to more.

L’shalom, Sharon

Or Rose: Teshuvah, often translated into English as repentance, is more accurately translated as “return.” Would you reflect on the place of return in the teshuvah process?

Michelle Friedman: Is teshuvah the return to something that had been broken, ruptured, or strained? Perhaps teshuvah can refer to a person’s relationship with another person, or a sense of internal integrity, or an individual’s relationship with a religious worldview. Return goes hand-in-hand with repair, working out what it was that went wrong, making restitution, asking forgiveness. But teshuvah can also be an internal process.

Sue Fendrick: When we’re engaged in serious teshuvah, we push ourselves to grow, to go to new places, or to go places in new ways so that they feel like new places. At the same time, we want to find ways to return to those places — metaphorically speaking — that serve as points of departure, but that we want also to be “home,” places we want to live. There is a tension between exploring new ground and wanting to come back to the fundamentals — running and returning.

David Ingber: Sue, I understand your comment on running and returning as a dialectic — a traveling back and forth between the new, the newly discovered, and the newly recovered. Teshuvah really is more like the spiral of return than the circle of return. There’s progress, but there’s familiarity at the same time.

Or Rose: Our rabbis tell us that, on the one hand, the gates of teshuvah are open every day, and yet we also set aside a holiday season for return or spiraling, as David put it (ala Arthur Waskow). How do you understand the relationship between these Days of Awe, the Yamim Noraim, and the rest of the year?

Sue Fendrick: I think that each of the holidays and seasons in the Jewish year gives us a chance to exercise a particular part of our Jewish religious lives, a particular aspect of our relationship with God. Some holidays — Yom Kippur, for example — are more retreat-like than others. There is an opportunity to exercise certain muscles, to recognize how important the work is — work that we need to be doing all year. We need a time when we can focus specifically on teshuvah; we have times to focus on joy, on learning, on liberation, and on Torah, but if we don’t have an intense opportunity to engage with the dynamics of repair, we’ll never get very good at it.

David Ingber: The Yamim Noraim are like a chiropractic adjustment on the Jewish spine. These days create the conditions for a very powerful awakening and adjustment in the “life force” of the individual, whose effects last throughout the year. After this awakening, what was stored densely in a “zip file” is unpacked over the course of the rest of the year.

Michelle Friedman:            The Yamim Noraim provide a large communal opportunity for people to come together and share in this experience. It feels to me as if an archaic power is invoked when the community responds to this ritual observance that’s gone on for such a long time.

Sue Fendrick: There might be a mutually supportive relationship between the journeying- returning dynamic, and the individual-communal dynamic. Both provide a holding container, a grounding, an anchor for work that is in some ways lonely, certainly solitary, and often very hard. Coming back to a place of collectivity, I think, helps support very personal work.

David Ingber: Often, we give lip service to this notion that teshuvah is a practice for the whole year. It would be nice if we did call people back to their original commitments — letters they wrote to one another about what they were going to do throughout the year — if we had benchmarks. There should be a sense that what we began in Elul and Tishrei is extended throughout the year.

Or Rose: Following on the last piece of the conversation, I would like to invite you to reflect further on teshuvah as a group experience, whether as a family, synagogue, corporation, or government.

Jeff Helmreich: We now have corporations and countries that are apologizing and forgiving one another as institutions. Forgiveness and repentance in general are not states of mind. An individual can’t say, “I hereby apologize to you and guarantee that from now on I will have a properly remorseful state of mind.” Old bitternesses bubble up and return. Rather, repentance and, for that matter, teshuvah and forgiveness, are commitments — the kind of thing that we endeavour to do and we renew all the time. For that reason, groups and countries can do it as well. The ritual of repenting and then having the commitment to teshuvah in place is a stance that we adopt, not a feeling that overtakes us.

David Ingber: The Rambam asserts that true teshuvah is when one comes back to the same place and acts differently in a similar situation. There is a notion that even contemplating teshuvah can turn a rasha, someone who’s done evil, into someone who tips the whole world in the direction of good and compassion.

Michelle Friedman:            I think Jeff is saying that teshuvah has to have a starting point — a discreet X and Y coordinate — that will be part of a larger arc. And David, you’re saying that we have to begin with at least a seed of repentance that will grow into something larger.

In psychotherapy, we look at the individual experience as it’s housed within a communal or authority-driven, tradition-driven experience. We’d ask: Who is the locus of authority? What is the role of transference in the teshuvah experience? Is it to a sense of God or to some other agency outside of the self? What are the goals of the personally driven efforts in teshuvah? Are they limited to the realm of relieving personal suffering? Or is there a goal that relates to a larger sense? How much do the processes of psychotherapy and teshuvah overlap and how much are they parallel?

Sue Fendrick: The comparison between psychotherapy and teshuvah actually points to one of the reservations I have about the notion of collective teshuvah. Teshuvah has to be done by an actor, an agent. Though there can be teshuvah-dik, teshuvah-orientated, teshuvah-inspired conversations on a communal level, there needs to be an agent of change. It’s hard to imagine the Jewish people going into therapy.

David Ingber: As useful as that might be.

Sue Fendrick: We need to distinguish between a teshuvah-orientated process and the actual work of teshuvah. What does it mean to say that a group has done teshuvah? Though there are behavioral aspects of teshuvah that can be manifest in a group, I can’t imagine how the internal work would be accomplished by a collectivity.

Jeff Helmreich: As a proponent of the collective teshuvah model, reconciliation in a place like South Africa illustrates what might be meant by collective teshuvah. When we investigate those processes, it turns out that they involve a lot of the fundamental teachings of teshuvah, like committing to change, or acknowledging and taking responsibility for doing wrong; adopting a stance of regret, and acting toward the victim as someone who owes the victim penance.

These are fundamental features of teshuvah, and it turns out that they translate remarkably well on the collective institutional level. It doesn’t feel the same; there are differences, and yet the various stances we adopt, the commitment, the public acknowledgements can be performed at a collective level. This model can work when there are groups that have been aggrieved — even while we agree that it is ultimately just a model.

Sue Fendrick: In the South African situation, to the extent that we’re talking about a government or state, there is an agent or an actor saying, “We, this state of South Africa, has committed wrongs and we, as a state, are seeking to undo those wrongs.” This doesn’t mean that every member of that collectivity is brought along in the teshuvah process. When we say collective teshuvah, how do we understand the relationship between the individual and the collectivity?

Beyond the fact that the Truth and Reconciliation Commission heard what South Africa as an entity did wrong, was the fact that individual people told their stories and individuals apologized for the wrongs they committed. It’s worth noting the relationship of individual and collective teshuvah and change, how they might work together, and how they may be in conflict.

When Barack Obama was elected president, something fundamentally shifted in the United States (that can never be unshifted) in having elected an African-American president. At the same time, we shouldn’t be seduced by the notion that we’re done with racism, that America’s done teshuvah, and we can simply move on.

Jeff Helmreich: There are two different notions on the table of collective teshuvah. One is of a group that serves as an agent; it’s an agent made of many people like a government, a group doing teshuvah. The second model is a community of individuals that we might say did teshuvah, though some of the people may not have been brought on board. As with the election of Barack Obama or the Truth and Reconciliation Commission, teshuvah happens only later.

Today, there are tribunals in Rwanda in which people are being forced to confront victims and one another, and formally admit, forgive, and resolve to reconcile. This type of legal, institutional process takes time to filter down to the individual. But this illustrates how teshuvah is a starting point. Sometimes, formal processes and monumental acts, like the election of a president, are really just the beginning of what ultimately will become a change of heart in people. It’s interesting that we think of teshuvah as a monumental event. But the collective case illustrates the fact that teshuvah is not something that happens to us. Rather, it’s the commitment to begin a process that ultimately takes time; psychologically, it could take years for things like resentment and guilt to be replaced by reconciliation.

David Ingber: When Rav Kook wrote his book Orot Teshuvah (Lights of Penitence), he described two different modes of teshuvah, two different styles. One he calls teshuvah pit’omit, or sudden teshuvah, the kind of change of direction that begins with an epiphany rather than as a process. The second he calls teshuvah hadragatit, or gradual teshuvah, where repentance unfolds over time. Both of these have their place in the dynamic of personal relations. Rav Kook also speaks about a global level, called the teshuvah olamit, where the world “soul” does teshuvah, a combination of moments of epiphanies and the slow drip, drip, drip of how things eventually change.

Or Rose: One of the major motifs of the Yamim Noraim is memory; one of the names for Rosh Hashanah is Yom HaZikaron. What is the relationship between memory and teshuvah?

Jeff Helmreich: It feels like an impoverished attempt at repentance when someone says, “Let’s forget the past; it is water under the bridge that we can’t change. Let’s not dwell on what I did; let’s just move on from that.”

Michelle Friedman:            It doesn’t work, because the adage “forgive and forget” is completely untrue — both psychologically and Jewishly, where we take seriously the commandment to remember. One aspect of the Truth and Reconciliation Committee experience was that people felt validated for their suffering. Public acknowledgement, people bearing witness to horrific experiences, is profoundly important, something that, for example, has not occurred with regard to the Armenian genocide. As David mentioned, the Rambam commands that you be in the same place with the same temptation to be tested. It is not as though if one does teshuvah, it eradicates the impulse to wrongdoing. One must constantly work to chaperone those impulses differently going forward. In other words, you have to remember in order to do teshuvah.

Sue Fendrick: Memory is so important to teshuvah for several reasons — all related to the fact that teshuvah is, among other things, about healing. Like when the body heals, in teshuvah, we return and restore something to the state that it was in when it was healthier. Second, it is a false kind of healing that happens if we refrain from looking honestly and squarely at what happened. This is also true in psychotherapy. The third way that memory comes into play is evoked by both the zichronot section of the Rosh Hashanah musaf and by Yizkor on Yom Kippur. God is remembering us, helping us remember what we are capable of. God has a wider view of us than we might have at a moment when we are focused on our sins. Memory here plays a role in that there is something more to our lives — and to who we are, how we are known, and what we can be — than what is captured in the present. And as we look toward growth in the future, we remember those who have known us in the past and who hold all that we are and have been — more than what might be present in that moment — and we bring these people and their relationships with us into the present as we work on teshuvah.

David Ingber: Based loosely on the thinking in Ernest Becker’s book, The Denial of Death, as well as the work of Otto Rank and other psychoanalytic thinkers, my thought is that Yom Hakipurim can also be translated as the “day of coverings up” or “substitution day.” In Zikaron is the sense of either a primal innocence or something that was known but forgotten that has been covered over that now has to be discovered and then recovered. Yom Hakippurim is a process of uncovering what usually replaces our deepest desires, intuitions, and yearnings. The remembrance that happens during the Yamim Noraim is a remembrance of a prior forgotten knowledge — an amnesia. The shofar blast teruah reminds us to remember.

Parokhet and kaporet use the same Hebrew letters; both are words for coverings, what separates and divides us from our own Holy of Holies. The Days of Awe try to awaken that memory.

I heard about a shul in Israel that holds a pre-High Holiday day of learning. As part of the experience, members of the community explore what will be the prayers of the kahal on the Yamim Noraim. In that way, when a person is crying or moved by the davening or drash, his or her neighbors on the bench can pray for the individual. We can open our hearts to breathe in what the other is breathing out, to take in their deepest need, their ultimate concern, and the yearning in their hearts. This practice can open our hearts and allow our deepest tefillah to emerge.

Sue Fendrick: In a lot of communities, when the aron is open at Ne’ilah, anyone who wants to can come individually, or as families, or in other groups, and stand and pour out their hearts. The kahal doesn’t hear what it is that people are praying for, but there is an awareness of the many deep stories in the room. Wherever we are, we’re not just saying our own prayers (fixed, spontaneous, or unspoken), but also on some level witnessing and accompanying others who are pouring out their own hearts.

Jeff Helmreich: The Gemarah says “Ain Yom Hakippurim mechaper ad she’yiratze et chavero.” “Yom Kippur does not bring about atonement for anyone until he appeases his fellow.” So the specifics of what happened — the particulars of a person’s narrative — have to be noted. Atoning is never routine; it’s the least uniform of any mitzvah in the Torah for that reason.

Or Rose: Finally, how do you understand your role in helping others in the work of teshuvah?

Michelle Friedman: I hope to help people feel trusting and vulnerable — that they can acknowledge their needs, their wounds, their sins, some of which may be egregious.

Sue Fendrick: I am not a congregational rabbi; right now my work is about encouraging teachers to research their own practice. Obviously, this has parallels in terms of the teshuvah process. Whatever we do in any context to make our work and endeavors safe and possible, and to give people tools for the kind of work that can seem scary, but that ultimately can be very healing, is incredibly important.

The most significant way that professionals — leaders, teachers, mentors, rabbis — can make the work of teshuvah possible is to model that kind of work. That doesn’t mean that we must do our teshuvah work publicly, but to the extent that we hold ourselves out as learning, growing people who, when given the choice, decide to look reflectively at ourselves, whether personally or professionally, we invite others into a journey of teshuvah. I know that when congregational rabbis choose to speak personally (if judiciously), about their own struggles, whether about observance or family relationships, the payoff is extraordinary.

David Ingber: During a sermon I recently gave, I apologized to the community for an oversight that had created pain to a group of members. For me, this was an exercise in teshuvah, and modeling the act of seeking forgiveness was important. Before the Yamim Noraim, we have opportunities connected with returning — returning to the body as Rav Kook wrote about in Orot Teshuvah. In coordination with a nutritional group, we offer a one-week cleansing ritual before the Yamim Noraim. We have text classes on various elements of teshuvah and the Vidui. And we help people understand that they do teshuvah throughout the year; this, though, is a time to intensify that practice.

Jeff Helmreich: I am writing my dissertation on apology, forgiveness, and reconciliation. But it has happened that when I apologize for something, someone will comment, “You are the one writing on apology and that is all you came up with?” Professionally, I don’t really help people with teshuvah, but I do think about it a great deal on a theoretical level. And one feature that I’ve studied has a lot of practical relevance. One can’t go into teshuvah thinking that you are entitled to forgiveness and entitled to a response. The only sincere apology is one that acknowledges itself as inadequate; it is paradoxical but a very important feature of teshuvah. To do genuine teshuvah requires not regarding it as genuine. I struggle with this all the time.

My heart tells me there is only one authentically Jewish response to the immigration debate raging in our country. The story of the immigrant, the stranger, the “other,” is our own story. As Jews, we can do nothing less than champion the needs of the immigrants in our midst with the full force of our spiritual and political power.

Do not oppress the stranger; you know the soul of the stranger, for you were slaves in the land of Egypt. (Exodus 23:9)

You shall not wrong or oppress a stranger, for you were strangers in the land of Egypt. You shall not ill-treat any widow or orphan. If you do mistreat them, I will heed their outcry as soon as they cry out to Me . . . . (Exodus 22:21-4)

My father was a fugitive Aramean . . . (Deut. 26:5)

When a stranger resides with you in your land, you shall not wrong him. The stranger who resides with you shall be to you as one of your citizens; you shall love her as yourself, for you were strangers in the land of Egypt: I the Lord am your God. (Leviticus, 19:33-34)

More often than any other mitzvah in the Torah, we are commanded to champion the needs of the vulnerable in society, including the “stranger,” the immigrant, and the foreigner, for we know deep in our collective being what it is to be the persecuted minority, the outsider
subject to prejudice and oppression.

Our story as a people began when our homeland was beset by famine and economic hardship. We migrated to the land of Egypt, where skillful governance had created more prosperity. Like the desperate immigrants of today, we were willing to suffer the loss of home and dignity, to risk everything by crossing into a foreign land, for our lives and the lives of our children depended on it.

The Torah commands us with resounding power not to turn our backs on these formative experiences. Rather, we are called to live out our empathy with the immigrants and strangers of the times and places in which we live.

Of course, our experience as a nation of immigrants did not end with our exodus from Egypt, but came to characterize much of our history. History relentlessly reinforced the lesson that God had commanded: We know the soul of the oppressed, the vulnerable, the “other.” This call to champion the needs of the victimized is central to who we are as Jews.

More broadly, a Jewish response to immigration must take account of Jewish sources on the central verse of the Torah, “Ve’ahavta lerei’acha kamocha,” “Love your neighbor as yourself.” (Leviticus 19:18) Our exegetical tradition contains different views on the scope of this commandment. According to one view, the verse applies only to one’s fellow Jews. But the strand of the tradition that resonates most deeply in today’s global reality declares with persuasive clarity that we are to love all people as our neighbors and fellow travelers on this earth.

Similarly, some commentators see the Torah’s command, “Do not hate your brother in your heart,” (Leviticus 19:17) as applying only to the Jewish family. In today’s world, many of us understand that the sacred call is to embrace every member of the human family as our own kin. Thus, the Torah expressly forbids the kind of hatred, prejudice, and racism that too often enliven the punitive voices in the immigration debate.

Surely, good people can and will disagree about how to translate the Torah’s broad ethical principles into wise contemporary public policy. Yet for me, the core truth of Jewish teaching is clear, as articulated in this remarkable midrash:

God gathered the dust [of the first human] from the four corners of the world — red, black, white, and green. Red is for the blood; black is for the innards; and green is for the body. Why from the four corners of the earth? So that if one comes from the East to the West as he nears the end of his life, it will not be said to him, “This land is not the dust of your body; it’s of mine. Go back to where you were created.” Rather, every place that a person walks, from there he was created and from there he will return. (Yalkut Shimoni, Genesis 1:13)

Who by Fire, Who by Water — Un’taneh Tokef, edited by Rabbi Lawrence A. Hoffman, PhD, Jewish Lights Publishing, 2010, 253 pp, $24.99.

Repentance: The Meaning and Practice of Teshuvah by Louis E. Newman, PhD, foreword by Rabbi Harold M. Schulweis, preface by Rabbi Karyn D. Kedar, Jewish Lights Publishing, 2010, 224 pp, $24.99.

Reviewed by Adena Berkowitz

Coming on the heels of Elul, Rosh Hashanah ushers in a ten-day period of deep prayer, introspection, accountability, repentance, and final judgment that leaves us with a gnawing feeling. What does the coming year hold for us? Do we approach it with terror and trepidation, awe and trembling? How can our faith carry us though our heartfelt repentance, our prayers, and our acts of righteousness?

These and other themes evoked by the High Holy Days are sensitively addressed in Who by Fire, Who by Water, a compilation edited by Rabbi Dr. Lawrence A. Hoffman that examines the text of Un’taneh Tokef. Forty rabbis, scholars, and lay people explore the prayer’s historic, theological, halakhic, and personal meaning. Essays range from analysis of the authorship of Un’taneh Tokef to the translation of key lines, to the overall theological meaning of the piyyut. Hoffman references the 12th-century book Sefer Z’chirah, which describes the martydom of Rabbi Amnon, who is traditionally viewed as the author of the prayer. He is called Rabbi “Faithful” because he’emin (he had faith in the living God) draws on the Hebrew pun for “faithful, neeman”; when the Hebrew letters are rearranged, they spell Amnon.

While some of the pieces seem to repeat themes and analyses, the wide range of theological approaches makes for fascinating reading. Many of the liberal contributors grapple with their personal struggles to accept the view of God as Judge sitting on high, determining our fate for the coming year. For example, Rabbi Sharon Brous writes that although life can appear at times as though it is being lived on the edge of an abyss, what we do can bring radical meaning into the uncertainty of our lives.

In analyzing the recurring line about prayer, repentance, and charity, the volume utilizes Dr. Joel Hoffman’s translation, “But Prayer, Repentance, and Charity help the hardship of the decree to pass,” as a meaningful way to understand the heart of Un’taneh Tokef.

Rabbi Reuven Kimelman explores the talmudic antecedents to the wording of the prayer, noting that the text of Un’taneh Tokef we recite lists teshuvah first, and changes the wording so that the harshness or misfortune that result from a decree can be mitigated. Prayer, repentance, and tzedakah do not cancel the decree but rather avert the severity of it. Kimmelman explains that mitigation happens through these acts either because they can lead to a reconsideration of the original judgment of Rosh Hashanah or because they provide the resilience to bear the ups and downs of life.

As Rabbi Margeret Moers Wenig and other contributors note, though we may not always be in control of our destiny, we do have the power to control our responses: “How we play the hand we have been dealt is up to us.” Rabbi Asher Lopatin, quoting the Rema, says that in the face of death, we can’t say, “Oy what can we do?” We can do so much. And as to our destiny? Rabbi Avi Weiss shares with us the rabbinic view that the mazel we are born with is elastic. Quoting Rabbi Yosef Dov Solveitchik, who teaches us to distinguish between goral, fate, and yi’ud, destiny, our mission in this world is to turn fate into destiny, from an existence that is passive to one that is active and influential.

Dr. Louis E. Newman’s book Repentance: The Meaning and Practice of Teshuvah is a unique mix of the scholarly and the personal, not only a well researched book but — referencing his own twelve-step recovery process — a moving account of the spiritual dimension of Jewishly transforming ourselves. It is a special blend of “how to do repentance” — that is, how to acknowledge our shortcomings, hold ourselves accountable, and truly turn from our ways. His explanations of soul reckoning, cheshbon hanefesh, of how our larger society confronts moral failings and of how Jewish tradition does teshuvah, are the keys to spiritual rehabilitation and reconciliation. Even long after we have committed a wrong, he shows us — through rabbinic and theological sources —how Jewish tradition teaches us ways to process and retrieve our sense of direction.

Among the many dimensions he explores are seven distinct steps to teshuvah: culpability, remorse, confession, apology, restitution, soul reckoning — a spiritual accounting — and transformation. If confronted with the same situation again, we would not behave the same way. His use of three words panah, sur, and shuv to describe turning is very evocative. Panah is related to the word face and suggests turning our gaze in a certain direction. Sur evokes turning aside; a person moving in a certain direction wavers or strays off course. Sur, he says, is neutral while panah has a negative connotation. Shuv refers to returning — back to our origins or to our proper natural place, to righteousness. This book is a spiritual GPS that reminds us where we might have made a wrong turn and how we can recalculate and get back on the right path — returning to our home.

The traditional wedding ceremony has two parts: kiddushin (betrothal) and nisu’in (the finalization of the marriage). Though nisu’in and its seven special blessings that are recited under the wedding canopy merit much discussion, this essay and issue of Sh’ma will focus on kiddushin.

Within the kiddushin part of the ceremony, the groom hands the bride a ring and indicates explicitly that he is doing so with the intent to betroth her and thus performs an act of acquisition, of kinyan. The Mishnah (Kiddushin 1:1) explains, “A woman is acquired [in marriage] in three ways…She is acquired by money, by writ, or by intercourse. ‘By money,’ the House of Shammai maintains, ‘a dinar or the value of a dinar.’ The House of Hillel rules, ‘a p’ruta or the worth of a p’ruta.’” This idea is developed in the Gemarah (talmudic discussion) on this mishnah, when it asks,

How do we know that money effects betrothal? By deriving the meaning of “taking” from the field of Ephron. Here it is written, “A man takes a wife” (Deuteronomy 22:13) and there it is written, “I give you money for the field; take it from me” (Genesis 23:13). Moreover, “taking” is called acquisition, for it is written, “the field which Abraham acquired” (Genesis 49:30). Or, alternatively, “They will acquire fields with money” (Jeremiah 32:44). Therefore, it is taught, “A woman is acquired”… The mishnaic voice initially uses the language of the Torah [that is to say, of acquisition] and at the end uses the language of the rabbinic tradition [that is to say, of kiddushin]. And what does the language of the rabbinic tradition connote? That he [the groom] makes her forbidden to all [men] [miKuDeSHet] like something that is heKDeSH. (Kiddushin 2a-2b)

The text tells us that a woman is acquired in the betrothal ceremony, which is now performed as part of a wedding, in very much the same way that one might acquire a field — using the same means: money. This text also makes explicit the meaning of kiddushin. Contrary to popular sentiment that kiddushin derives from kadosh, to sanctify and render holy, [l’KDSH], the betrothal ritual is a way of dedicating the woman (making her hekdesh), rendering her forbidden to other men, just as an object dedicated (made hekdesh) to the Temple is forbidden for all other purposes.

In contemporary practice, this acquisition is generally executed by kinyan kesef [acquisition through money], most commonly by the groom’s placing of a ring (worth the value of a p’ruta or more) on the bride’s finger and reciting a formula of dedication/acquisition. The bride need not utter a word, as her silence is understood to be consent.

What is this acquisition? Some argue that the groom purchases the bride, noting the Mishnah and Talmud’s parallels to the acquisition of a slave, animal, or land. Others argue that he acquires not her entire being, but rather her sexuality, the right to monogamy. Still others argue that he acquires not her, but rather the obligations of husband to wife, including those to feed, clothe, and have intimate relations with her. (There is no parallel acquisition by the wife of the husband.)

Even in the best possible scenario, this process is decidedly unequal. The groom is actor and agent, acquiring responsibilities, and while the bride’s consent is required, her speech is not; she can be entirely passive. Few would agree that the husband’s acquisition of a wife is in accordance with our contemporary understanding of what marriage is or should be. Needless to say, the ritual also presumes the heterosexuality of the partners — their gender roles are necessary and built into the mechanisms at hand.

This issue of Sh’ma highlights some of the recent work on the kiddushin problem. Is there any way to have an egalitarian wedding ceremony in which nobody is acquired or, possibly, both partners acquire each other? What about a ceremony where both partners are actors, where gender is not the defining feature of the relationship or the ritual meant to formalize it? What recognizable features of the wedding ceremony might be adapted? How, and to what extent? At this point, there is no standard, no authorized formal ritual that a couple might undertake under the wedding canopy; we’re early in this process of study and experimentation. And given the range of ideas and attitudes about Jewish law, there may never be such a standard.

In rabbinical school, I became interested in this question and began cataloging through a blog* some of the approaches I was hearing and reading about and stumbling upon in my research; it was a way to make space for discussion and debate, to air the pros and cons, the problems and the potential applications of the various ideas being proposed. This, after all, is the age-old process through which Judaism grows, evolves, and reveals itself again and again.

*Her online notebook on kiddushin can be found at http://alternativestokiddushin.wordpress.com

The chuppah, or marriage canopy, is often likened to the home that the chatan and kallah, the groom and bride, are embarking on building together. However, not all traditional sources support this view. Halakhic sources depict the chuppah as a home, but it is a home that belongs to the chatan, and its role in the ceremony is to mark the transfer of the woman from her father’s house to her husband’s house. One must look to the aggadic sources for a view on the symbolism of the kallah’s entry into the chuppah that is more in line with our modern sensibilities. Within the aggadah, the chuppah represents the beginning of a mutual and equal relationship between the chatan and kallah, who are on the verge of establishing a home together.

The dominant view in halakhic sources is that the chuppah is the reshut, or domain, of the chatan, and this is why he enters it first and then brings the kallah into his home. According to the Shulchan Arukh (Even Ha-Ezer 55:1) the marriage has only taken place once the bride has entered his house, which in the halakhic sources is the symbolic purpose of the chuppah. This symbolism seems to be further reinforced by the minhag (a custom in which my husband and I partook at our own wedding) that the chatan enters the chuppah and then comes back out when the kallah arrives, in order to accompany her inside. This minhag is widely understood as representing the woman’s leaving the domain of her father and entering the domain of her husband. It is as though the groom, being a good host, greets the bride and says, “Welcome to my home.”

This interpretation of the chuppah can be extracted from certain aggadic (non-legal narratives) as well. When bnei Yisrael were about to receive the Torah at Mount Sinai, the midrash states that Moshe told the people to leave the camp and go to the mountain because God, the chatan, was waiting to meet His kallah, the people, in order to accompany them into the chuppah (Pirkei deRabbi Eliezer, chapter 41). A similar image can be found in the liturgy of Kabbalat Shabbat, “L’cha dodi likrat kallah,” “Come, my beloved, to meet the bride.” Like the halakhic sources, these aggadic texts portray the encounter at the chuppah not as a mutual meeting, but rather as the bridegroom’s welcoming the bride into his house.

The Song of Songs and the aggadic sources that expound upon it provide a different perspective on the role of the bride at the chuppah. The book in and of itself is understood by most commentaries as an allegory for the loving relationship between the nation of Israel and God, in which Israel is portrayed as the bride and God the groom. In Chapter 4, the bride sings out to her husband:

Awake O north wind, and come south;
blow [haphichi] upon my garden [gan], so that [the smell] of the spices may flow out.
Let my beloved come to his garden and eat from its choicest fruit.
I have come to my garden, my sister, my bride…

The kallah refers to the garden first as hers (my garden), and then as his (his garden). Only in response to the kallah’s offer does the beloved accept her overture and call the garden his own. Moreover, it is the kallah who is in the chuppah first, awaiting the arrival of her chatan.

Based on these verses, the midrash makes a statement that is radically different from the perspective found in the halakhic sources:

Rabbi Hanina says, the Torah teaches you appropriate behavior [derekh eretz], that the chatan should not enter the chuppah until the kallah gives him permission [reshut], as it says, “Let my beloved come to his garden” (Shir Hashirim 4:16) and afterward it says, “I have come to my garden” (Pesikta deRav Kahane, Chapter 1).

The need for the permission (reshut) of the kallah, as it is expressed in this midrash, suggests that the chuppah need not be viewed exclusively as the reshut of the chatan. Rather, it is a shared, mutual dwelling into which they are both about to enter for the first time. One can then interpret the minhag of the chatan meeting the kallah and accompanying her into the chuppah in an entirely different way. The concept — that the consent of the kallah must be granted before the wedding ceremony in the chuppah begins — alters the symbolism of this minhag. The minhag is no longer about the transfer of the woman from one man’s space to another’s, but rather is representative of the voice of the kallah, whose message is that she is ready to enter into and share a new home with her chatan. Instead of representing the striking absence of a role for the kallah at the chuppah, it symbolizes her noteworthy presence.

These sources make clear that different interpretations of the minhag can be drawn by different communities. From the halakhic material, one may derive a more traditional view of the chuppah as symbolic of the husband’s domain and the bride’s movement from her father’s to her husband’s house. The midrash and Shir Hashirim, on the other hand, offer a view of marriage as a joint endeavor, in which both individuals participate and share responsibilities. Far from representing the woman’s transfer from one domain to another, the chuppah in these sources signifies a home built on joint consent and mutual involvement.