The torah portion begins with Moshe describing to the people the rewards they'll receive for following in God's ways -- people and flocks will be fruitful, crops will be bountiful, none will be barren, there'll be no sickness or plagues, and they'll be victorious over the other nations. This is one of several places where the torah describes rewards for doing mitzvot. This is hard to understand, though, because the world doesn't work this way -- we do have people who want children and are barren, we do have sickness, crops aren't always bountiful, and so on. The good sometimes suffer and the wicked sometimes flourish. So how are we supposed to understand this?

(Spoiler warning: I don't have deep answers to this age-old problem. I have some thoughts.)

One approach we could take is to place it in context. Moshe is speaking to the Israelites at the end of their 40-year trek to the promised land. They're standing on the shore of the Yarden, about to cross over and conquer the land after this speech. Perhaps Moshe is speaking to these people in this time. There's even an ambiguously-placed "in the land that He will give you" (in 7:13), so maybe this promise isn't for everybody forever.

That's not very satisfying, though. The torah is supposed to be eternal, for us and not just for them.

Another approach was taken by the rabbis at least as early as the mishna (in Pirke Avot): Olam HaBa, the world to come. If we aren't rewarded in this world, Olam HaZeh, then we will be later. There are even mitzvot for which we get rewarded in both; we list some of them in eilu d'varim in the morning service. We should still focus on this world, not obsess about an afterlife like some other religions do, but an afterlife gives another opportunity for reward. I'm not sure how satisfying this is to most people, either.

I'd like to propose two additional dimensions to what the torah says about rewards, two additional axes to consider.

The first is communal versus individual actions and rewards. Sometimes the torah addresses us in the singular and sometimes in the plural. Some rewards, like bountiful crops, are clearly communal -- it's pretty hard for me to have a good harvest with rain in its proper season and so on while my immediate neighbor has the opposite. Some rewards could be individual, like health. Obligations, too, come in individual and communal varieties; we all have individual obligations in the mitzvot, but the whole community together has some too, like setting up courts, bringing communal offerings, and conducting wars in particular ways. And sometimes individual obligations can bring communal rewards -- there's a rabbinic tradition that if every Jew in the world were to keep (the same) Shabbat once, we'd get the moshiach. Quite aside from the individual rewards for keeping Shabbat -- you get Shabbat, a day of rest -- there can be a big communal reward.

When looking for rewards for our actions, therefore, we should look to both our individual and our communal benefits. Even if you're not feeling personally rewarded for following torah, maybe you're helping your whole community live in safety, health, and comfort. That counts, too.

The second dimension is the question of whom we do mitzvot for.

The Reform movement is not a halachic movement. Ok, technically we do say that the ethical mitzvot are binding and it's only the ritual ones that are optional, but those ethical mitzvot align pretty well with values we already have anyway like not stealing, being honest in business, caring for the poor, and many others. Among the others, we choose -- sometimes as a community and sometimes individually -- which mitzvot have meaning to us and we do those. Many of us find meaning in Shabbat, in communal worship like our morning minyan, in study, in many social-justice pursuits, and more.

If our progressive values and halacha conflict, however, we reinterpret (occasionally) or set aside (usually) halacha. By and large, we do the mitzvot that we do for ourselves, for the good feelings they produce and the values they align with.

When we do mitzvot for ourselves, maybe that good feeling that we get is the reward for doing the mitzvah. That's fair -- we're rewarded here and now, in Olam HaZeh, for doing mitzvot. Isn't that what we wanted?

So we tend to do mitzvot for ourselves, but there's an alternative. If we believe that torah is mi Sinai, from God, then we should do mitzvot not for ourselves but for God. Even the goofy ones, the ones we don't understand and don't find personal meaning in. (I struggle with this, to be clear.) I don't know too many people who find spiritual fulfillment in sha'atnez, the law against combining linen and wool, but it's something God cares about. Last week a friend and I were talking about kitniyot, the additional foods that Ashkenazim don't eat during Pesach even though they're not chametz, forbidden grains. (A bunch of other foods got implicated by association.) My friend is a thoughtful, intelligent person who wrestles with torah and seeks to understand; he's not one to just say "tell me what to do and I'll do it". He told me that some of these decisions about kitniyot are clearly wrong -- but nonetheless the halachic system that God gave us produced this result, so he follows it. For God, not for himself.

The name of our portion, Eikev, comes from the same root as Ya'akov, heel-grabber. I don't remember where I heard this idea, but perhaps this word is meant to remind us not to trample on mitzvot just because we think they're minor or goofy. Who's to say which ones God most cares about?

What's the reward for doing mitzvot for God and not for us? Is there a reward for putting up with ridiculous-seeming food restrictions for Pesach, for waving greenery around on Sukkot, for checking fiber contents on our clothing, for separating meat and milk dishes, and many other things? When we're not doing mitzvot for our own benefit the rewards can be less clear, but if we have faith that God gave us the torah at all, why shouldn't we also have faith that God will deliver on His promises in some way at some time?

When looking at rewards for torah, either individual or communal, perhaps we should have less focus on specific rewards for specific deeds. Instead, let us do right and trust God to respond.

On the job front there have been ups and downs but the year ended on an up. After thrashing about earlier in the year, being moved from one short-term or ill-defined task to another while people juggled charge codes and contracts, I finally got to settle into something (a) interesting and (b) that takes advantage of my particular specialty, and I rocked. I got a new manager mid-year (my first remote one, too; he's in AZ), which always carries some uncertainty, but he and I really click. He specifically appreciates what I do and wants to help me find more opportunities to do it. Excellent!

The cats have settled in well. I was only without cats for about 4.5 months, but they felt really empty. I mean, Dani's and my relationship is strong (no worries there!), but there was still something missing. That Erik, Embla, and Baldur all died within a span of 10 months (and the last on the day I returned from a frustrating trip to Israel) may have had something to do with that.

I continue to really enjoy my job as a moderator on Mi Yodeya, and last winter I was also appointed as a moderator on Writers (both Stack Exchange sites). On both sites I get to work with great teams on interesting content. I'm still trying to figure out how to increase the tech-writing content on Writers. I need to ask and perhaps self-answer some questions to nudge things along, I suspect.

2013 was a terrible year on another Stack Exchange site. What was supposed to be an academic-style biblical-studies site turned into a cesspool of Christian dogma. I know it's possible for people of different religions to have civilized, respectful discussions about the bible (and other religious matters); I've seen it. (I have thoughts on what makes it work when it works, but I'll save that for another time.) This site was supposed to be non-religious (though obviously most of its members are religious), like a secular university. But it didn't work out that way, and the evangelical moderators (there's no diversity on that team) either can't see or don't care about the damage being done. Everything I did to try to help get things back on course was thrown in my face -- with personal attacks, offensive (usually anti-Jewish) posts, and assorted misrepresentation. So I'm done with that; I have better things to do with my energy. There are a few good people there who are trying to turn some things around; I wish them much luck, but personally, I'm done.

I've had ups and downs religiously and congregationally. My rabbi is fantastic and I like my congregation, but there have been changes in how we approach services, and too many weeks I just don't go on Friday night because they're doing something kid-oriented or entitled (sisterhood service, Reform-style bar mitzvah, etc), and that's frustrating. The Shabbat morning minyan continues to be excellent and the spiritual high point of my week, so that's all good. I'm just trying to figure out Friday nights, and some of it is bound up in questions about whether the Reform movement is right for me at all (except I have this fantastic rabbi and he's worth staying for). It's just that sometimes, being rather more observant than those around me and caring about the halachic and other details that most shrug off, I feel like a mutant.

This year was the last Darkover Con, so On the Mark re-assembled to do a concert. That was fun, and it was nice to see friends I haven't seen in a while at the con.

I'm sure there's more, but this is what I've got right now. Happy 2014 all!

In an Orthodox service, the decisions made by the sh'liach tzibbur, the leader, pretty much boil down to what melodies to use. The actual text is fixed; you do what the the siddur tells you to do (and remember seasonal variations if the siddur doesn't mark them). I'm not saying it's easy, but I am saying it's not too complex. While (in my experience) most Orthodox Jews who would be in a position to lead services are thoroughly fluent, technically the leader doesn't have to know what it all means and why the service is structured that way and so on.

Now consider the Reform movement, which from the beginning declined to follow the fixed liturgy. The early reformers eliminated some parts of the service (like musaf and many of the kaddishes) because they were repetitive, changed the texts of some prayers for ideological reasons (like objecting to resurrection of the dead), and introduced English readings that did not necessarily strictly follow the Hebrew they replaced. My impression is that they did the vast majority of this thoughtfully; later generations might disagree with their reasons, but they had reasons.

At least since the publication of Gates of Prayer, a siddur that offered many (and quite varied) alternatives to the leader, Reform services have tended to vary from one time to another, skip some of the Hebrew readings, use very "creative" English readings, and vary the music (which sometimes means varying the text because you want to use so-and-so's setting and it's a little different). The publishers of the siddur stuck to the same service structure, but at least from what I've seen in the last 12 years or so (as long as I've been watching), leaders have used it pretty freely. So it wasn't uncommon to do the Sh'ma/v'ahavta in both Hebrew and English (despite the repetition) but skip ahavat olam entirely, for instance. (Why yes, that does bother me, but that's a different essay.)

Mishkan T'filah, the new Reform siddur, corrects some of the problems in GOP. The theory is brilliant: here is a two-page spread including the Hebrew, a decent translation, and some alternative English readings; choose exactly one thing from this spread and then turn the page. But some of the English readings really aren't connected to what's supposed to be going on at that point in the service, so I see leaders break the pattern -- skip a few pages, then do both the Hebrew and one of the English readings from one spread, and so on. (That the editors sometimes violated their own format doesn't help this.) I was recently talking with a lay person who sometimes leads services in her congregation, and she told me she picks and chooses "just like [she] did with GOP". She didn't realize that she was repeating some things and entirely skipping others.

Why didn't she realize this? Because she is not highly fluent in the service -- she doesn't understand why the (Shabbat) amidah has seven sections and what each of them is for (and why that one English reading is terrible in that place...), or that kri'at sh'ma has more structure than "something before, sh'ma, mi chamocha" and that skipping parts breaks the theme, or why the v'shamru earlier in the service doesn't cover you for the sanctification of the day later even though they're both "yay, shabbat" texts, and so on. She hasn't studied this stuff and doesn't engage with it like I do. And I realized: most Reform Jews don't study this stuff. In another movement they might not have to, but in the Reform movement, the leader is more likely to be making decisions about the content of the service and so, in my opinion, has an obligation to become fluent. By the nature of its siddur and its history, the movement imposes, or ought to impose, a higher burden of fluency than would have been necessary if we'd just stuck with the traditional text.

Of course our rabbis are fluent, and often they are the ones leading services. We have occasional geeks like me who are also fluent and have occasional opportunities to lead. But sometimes we have people who have occasional opportunities to lead who aren't fluent and don't even realize it matters. As a community we apparently aren't willing to say to those people "get fluent or follow instructions without varying or get off the bimah". So we get services that are sometimes haphazard and disjointed, which makes it really hard for people who do know what's going on to achieve kavannah (intentionality).

Once people know a little about the service structure I suspect they're more likely to not mess with it, but how -- aside from one conversation at a time -- do we get people to that "a ha!" moment that causes them to even notice the issue?

(There are other reasons, including that some of this tickles my "weird" meter, but that's a separate discussion. I mean, there's plenty of weirdness in mainstream Judaism too. Like, rejoicing while waving three branches and a piece of fruit around? Really? But I digress.)

A couple things have brought this to mind:

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I find myself wanting to write about this from time to time, so I'm recording my response to that message:

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velveteenrabbi

Day 1:

• The beginning
• Are dietary laws kosher for Reform Jews?
• Creating meaningful worship in small congregations
• Ruth Messinger

• Integrating social justice throughout the congregation
• What does it mean to be good?
• Innocence project and Rabbi Eugene Borowitz
• Worship
• How can Reform Jews encounter God?
• Plenary: Robert Reich
• Plenary: Robert Heller and Rabbi Michael Melchior

Ok, there's a lot more interesting-sounding stuff here than I would have expected. When the regional version of this conference was in Pittsburgh I looked at the program and it seemed, err, underwhelming. Either they save the good stuff for the national conferences or the Velveteen Rabbi is better at making the convention sound good than they are. :-) (Note: I didn't review the advance program for this one since I knew I wasn't going anyway.)

2. Both the reform and the reconstructionist movements hold that religious observance of halacha is nonbinding and voluntary -- what I find troubling is that lay reform and reconstructionist Jews often don't have enough of background to make meaningful choices. Do you see this as a problem? ( Read more... )

3. How did you get involved in gaming? What do you enjoy most about it? (I've tried, Lord knows, I've tried and my character is currently riding around in someone's sack.) ( Read more... )

4. Describe your favorite childhood comfort food. ( Read more... )

5. If you were given a year long all expense scholarship for Jewish study, where would you go? ( Read more... )