This morning in torah study we talked about this part of Nitzavim: "And not with you alone will I make this covenant and this oath, but with him who stands here with us this day before the Lord our God, and also with him who is not here with us this day" (Deut 29:13-14). The context is Moshe's final address to Israel; we can prety much take as given that this is not referring to people who slept in that morning. The rabbis understand this as a source for the covenant being binding on all Jews, the ones who stood at Sinai as well as those who came later. In other words, Judaism claims you by virtue of your birth. (I knew that, of course, but I learned a new term for it: "birthright dogma".)

This is hardly unusual; some other religions do this either as a birth condition or based on an action that your parents take very soon thereafter. We say "once a Jew always a Jew"; the Roman Catholic church says the same thing once you've been baptised. Surely there are others. (I'm not sure if Muslim status is automatic at birth; I have the impression it is.)

Some modern Jews have a problem with this, but I don't. We're born into other obligations that we got no say over; why should this be different? The issue to me isn't what you're born to but what you're going to do about it and what anyone else can or should do about it. As a convert from one "we claim you forever" religion to another, I find myself in an interesting position.

There are folks out there who try to preach obligation to the people they see straying -- and that just doesn't work. The church thinks I'm a lapsed, sinning Catholic -- fine for them, but I don't care, because I don't subscribe to their belief system. That they think they have a claim on me means nothing to me; I think they're wrong. (No offense meant to my Catholic readers, of course.) Any attempt to reach me via the "but you have to" path would utterly fail. (Ok, any attempt to reach me at all would fail now, but there might have been times in my life when that was not true.) And we have this in Judaism too; there are people who are very concerned with bringing back those who've strayed by going down the "obligation" path. Going down the "benefit" path is much more likely to be productive. You'll almost never succeed (long-term) in intimidating people, but if you can show them the beauty, fulfillment, or richness of a religion or tradition, you might hook them. Chabad, for all its other problems, gets this; the people who stone cars on Shabbat do not.

If status is forever, then we should be picky about entrance criteria when we can be. If a gentile eats bacon cheeseburgers on Yom Kippur, so what? But once he becomes a Jew, he's sinning. if the members of the beit din (the rabbinic court) think he's not committed, they can and should tell him "not now". This is part of why Judaism requires a significant period of study and evaluation, which can take years. The rabbis on the beit din need to assure themselves that they aren't making things worse for K'lal Yisrael (the community of Israel), while of course also weighing the issues of the individual candidate. As a candidate I expected that kind of rigor and would have been unhappy if I hadn't gotten it. (In fact, during my studies I met one local rabbi who said "I always say yes", and I made sure that rabbi was not on my beit din.)

Somehow from here we ended up talking about interfaith families, but that's another set of topics for another time.

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If you want a set of questions, leave a comment asking for some. (It may take me a few days to respond.)

This source tells a strange parable (a mashal). What follows is my translation, augmented by a few notes, from the Hebrew (he didn't give us English): One day [a man] crossed from place to place (that is, was travelling) and he saw a tower (birah) "on fire" (doleket). He said, this tower has no owner? [A man] peeked out and said "I am the owner". The parable ends here, without telling us why the man seems unconcerned that his tower is burning. Fortunately for us, the midrash doesn't end there. :-) It continues with a nimshal, an explication.

The traveller, the midrash says, is Avraham Avinu, who said: this world has no owner? And ha-Kadosh Baruch Hu, God, peeked out at him, saying: I am the ruler of this world. According to this midrash, God didn't reveal himself to Avraham until Avraham deduced that the world must have a creator/ruler and went looking. Avraham was a seeker; God didn't just speak to him out of the blue and say "lech l'cha" (go forth from your homeland to the land I will show you, etc).

We talked in the group about the alarming vision in the parable. The translation of doleket isn't entirely clear; Rabbi Green initially did not translate it (wanting to see what we would come up with) and then we more or less settled on "on fire" -- but he suggested that it could also mean "full of light" (think "blazing with light" in English; when you say that you usually don't mean a literal fire). "On fire" suggests brokenness in the tower; did Avraham see brokenness in the world? I suggested that seeing a tower "full of light" might inspire one to seek hospitality, a very different interpretation. (This seemed to meet with some approval.) Someone else in the group drew a connection between the birah doleket and the burning bush. Another suggested that Avraham's birah doleket could be an internal event, not a vision but a question he was "on fire" with. (Nice.)

I'm used to thinking of Lech L'cha as God choosing Avraham, but maybe Avraham chose God first. I'm told that Heschel wrote a book that explores this question, God in Search of Man. That sounds like something I should take a look at.

My own quasi "lech l'cha" experience was not nearly so clear-cut as Avraham's (which is good!); now I wonder a little whether this interpretation applies a little to myself. Not consciously, for sure, but the subconscious is a funny thing sometimes.

Food for thought.

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I'm not going to do a detailed chronicle here, but I'll mention a few things that particularly struck me.

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I have heard the following story before, and my rabbi told it again at the shabbaton:

A poor man in the shtetl has a dream one night that he should go to a certain bridge in Prague and dig under it to find a treaure. The man shrugs it off. The next night he has the same dream, but it feels more urgent. He'd love to have enough money to feed his family, he thinks, and mentions the dream to his wife, but following a dream is silly so he shrugs it off again. The next night the dream is even more intense, metaphorically picking him up by his shirt, shaking him, and telling him to go to Prague and dig under the bridge. The next morning, over objections from his family, he says he's going to do this and sets out.

After several days he arrives in Prague and finds the bridge from his dreams. He feels embarrassed, and there's a watchman there, so he just stands around for a while. Eventually, overcoming the awkward feeling, he begins to dig in the dirt with his hands, at which point the watchman asks what he's doing. He answers evasively and the watchman summons the police, who escort the man to jail for loitering.

The police ask him why he was digging and eventually he says "this is really silly, but I had this dream that if I came to this bridge and dug, I would find enough money to feed my family". The guard laughs at him, saying: "Ha! Just last night I had a dream that if I went to the home of some stupid Jew 50 miles west of here and dug under his stove, I'd find a treasure! You don't see me doing that, do you? Dreams are just dreams. Go on, get out of here." And he sends the man on his way. The man, of course, goes back home, digs under his stove, and finds a treasure.

Sometimes you have to travel away from your home to find something that was there all along. This Shabbat was kind of like that for me.

( classes )

( Shabbat evening )

( Shabbat (day) )

2. What made you decide to convert to Judaism? ( Read more... )

3. What made you decide to keep Kosher?( Read more... )

4. When you're not listening to filk, what kinds of music do you listen to?( Read more... )

5. If you were stranded on a desert island with only the essentials and were told you could only have one musical instrument or device, what would that be, and why? ( Read more... )

Much of the feedback so far weighs in on the side of "required -- family is family". Someone cited honoring one's parents (the source of the request), and a couple people mentioned protecting a life (the sibling is apparently in real danger of injury without someone there).

I, on the other hand, am leaning toward "forbidden", though "permitted" is a possibility. Definitely not "required", though.

The issue is complex. While the sibling needs a caregiver, that's a service that can be hired -- so there's no apparent need for the poster to do it personally. Of course it's important to honor one's parents (this comes up a lot in text), but the talmud also teaches that if a parent asks you to transgress the Torah, you must decline (Bava Metzia 32a). This raises the question of whether attending another religion's worship service -- on its second-holiest day, to boot -- is avodah zara, forbidden worship. Is it enough if you don't intend to worship? What if you don't participate? What if you don't listen? That is a complex question with varied answers depending on circumstances, ranging from exactly what will take place to the strength of your own Jewish education and commitment, and you really need to ask your rabbi for a personal ruling.

I think the experience of facing this issue is valuable for the conversion candidate, actually. As a member of a minority religion (that sometimes faces hostility from others), sometimes you are going to have to make choices between your religion and your family/friends/society -- things like this, or resolving Shabbat issues with your employer, or various other matters. Finding out how you will handle those choices before it's "too late" -- before you convert and acquire new obligations -- seems useful to me.

I assume that most conversion candidates face some sort of religion-vs-world-at-large test during the process, but I don't actually know.