Rabbi Harold M. Schulweis Sermons

Rabbinical Assembly Address - 2000

by Harold M. Schulweis

This is less an address than a rabbinic confession. Confession is good for the soul, if not always for the reputation. But before whom better to confess than before one's colleagues?

Late one night, after Yom Kippur I received a frantic telephone call. As soon as I arrived at the home, which was already filled with family and friends, I was told the tragic tale. I had known the family well. They were at synagogue services during Neilah. Their son Kenny, a teenager whom I had known from classes, insisted that he start out early for a post-Yom Kippur breaking of the fast with some friends in Malibu. His parents insisted that he should wait until the Neilah services were over. Kenny obliged them. As soon as the shofar was blown, he rushed off in his car and somewhere on a winding road a drunk driver plowed into his car. Kenny was instantly killed. When I walked into the bedroom Kenny's father was sitting on the bed, his head buried in his hands. He looked up at me. His face grew pale and his fists clenched, and he greeted me with a torrent of obscene curses. He cursed me and God and the synagogue and himself. Why in the world had he insisted that Kenny wait till the services were over? As if God cared. It's all a lie. I was false, God was false, the synagogue was false. The whole thing was stupid and cruel.

The room filled with people. Kenny's father's rage continued, everyone drew deadly silent. I had never been cursed this way before. I sought to speak to him. He was unresponsive. Kenny's father was inconsolable. "Tell him to leave,” he said, referring to me.

His wife took me into the kitchen and repeated over and again, "The whole thing is senseless. You knew Kenny. Kenny was a love, sensitive, kind, talented. It's not fair." She was embarrassed by her husband's curses and saw how upset I was. Before I left, she took hold of my arm and whispered "Rabbi, don't take it personally."

I did take it personally. The curses attacked the core of my rabbinic being. Kenny's father cursed me because he felt he was cursed by God. I was his rabbi and in his eyes, I stand for God and I failed him.

I tried to calm myself. I told myself that this was a natural reaction to tragedy and that time would heal. His "Why me?" does not require an answer. "Why" means "woe.” "Why me?" is not a cry for cognition but for recognition. What seems required from me was to be present, to place a supporting arm around his shoulder. When I put my arm around his heaving shoulders, Kenny's father threw it off. More than an arm was called for. Kenny's father wanted from me an honest Jewish theology.

Kenny's father's reaction was extreme but hardly unique. In my experience, it was the reaction of many people -- the parents sobbing over the infant's crib death, the husband of a young woman afflicted with cancer, the children mourning the death of a father killed in an airplane crash. And all were left with guilt, shame, blame and anger.

Should I not take it personally? Do I bear no responsibility for their reaction? Did I dare to think? Is there something wrong with conventional "theodicy,” the defense of God in the face of evil that leaves bitter ashes on the tongue of the mourners.

Somehow the bereaved have inherited a theology that insinuates that nothing happens by accident, that nothing happens without someone being guilty of some transgression, that every misfortune is an "act of God,” that catastrophe is "bashert,” fated, destined, decreed. Inherited a theology from whom? Do I not bear some responsibility for these conclusions? Have I not led the High Holiday services in which we recite "On New Year's Day the decree is inscribed and on the Day of Atonement the decree is sealed: who shall live and who shall die, who by fire and who by water, who shall be brought low and who shall be exalted?” And then the conclusion: "Repentance, prayer and righteousness avert the evil decree. However I twist it homiletically, I'm left with “decree, gezerah.” Is that my understanding of Kenny's death, that it was a decree, a verdict, a sentence from on high?

I thought forward toward the funeral. Will I have Kenny's parents recite "Baruch dayan emet" -- blessed is the truthful judge”? Is this death the sentence of a truthful judge? Will I include in the funeral the tzidduk hadin -- the prayer defense of God. "The sheltering Rock, perfect in all His works, for all His ways are just. Who dares to say to Him 'What are You doing, You who rule above and below, You who take away all life and gives it -- who brings down to the grave and up from there.'"

Will I at the funeral read out loud, in the presence of the assembly, Psalm 90: "In Your eyes we are consumed; in Your wrath we are overcome. You set our sins before You; our secrets are before Your presence. Your wrath darkens our days; our lives expire like a sigh." No consolation, no comfort here. Better read it in Hebrew, I thought. They may not understand its meaning. But I do. And that troubles me.

I have studied the conventional defense of God by many of the sages in the Talmud Berachoth. It is predicated on the belief that suffering implies transgression; that tragedy is either punishment or reward; that suffering is either a chastisement of punishment or a chastisement of love. In any event, it is traced back to divine decree. Do I believe it? Can I speak that way to Kenny's parents?

It is one thing to look at a text and another into the pained eyes of the afflicted. To repeat the arguments to Kenny's father and his wife is to rub salt into their wounds. Shall I, for example, tell them that the suffering is meant to test their mettle, or that sufferings in this world are hidden blessings enabling them to inherit the treasures of the world to come?

Should I use the classic medieval silver lining arguments, tell them that without poverty, there would be no charity; without illness there would be no motivation to heal; without the accident there would be no test of human resilience; without the Holocaust there would be no State of Israel. I have heard the argument – At birth deny a child vision, hearing, and the ability to speak, and you have a Helen Keller. But this has conscience and common sense against it. It is a perverse thinking that would justify every aberration, paralysis, deformity as good in God's eyes. Of course, some people sometimes can turn a tragedy into a blessing, but does that justify God's hand in the catastrophe? To justify unwarranted suffering turns God into a cruel and sadistic designer and the believer into a masochistic worshiper.

I could, of course, resort to the plea of theological ignorance. I can declare that God's ways are inscrutable and that while I do not know His will, it is all for the best. I can hear Kenny's father's sarcasm. "Come now rabbi, now that I need you to answer the questions, you turn agnostic on me. Now that I need explanations, you hide yourself in the sanctuary of ignorance?”

I took it personally because it's not Kenny's father that bothers me, not his curses, not his anger; but that I have failed him and that conventional theology has failed me. The rationalizations do not square with my sense of reality or morality.

Never mind Kenny's father. Before I can speak to Kenny's father, what do I say to myself? Am I stuck with conventional theology? Must I take it or leave it? It is a critical conflict in my own life as a rabbi and as a Jew. What am I to do if some aspect of Jewish theology seems incredible, worse, immoral? It lies at the root of belief and its branches are thorns in the side of prayer.

Am I alone in this conflict? Am I the only one with a moral sensibility? Have I no predecessors in the tradition? Surely I am part of that great tradition of Judaism which honors and venerates the moral question. That question canonized in Abraham's heroic criticism of God at Sodom and Gomorrah I have preached and heard it preached often. Abraham, on moral grounds will not accept the verdict of God to destroy the whole of Sodom and Gomorrah: "Shall the Judge of all the earth not do justly? That be far from Thee to do after this manner to slay the righteous with the wicked, that the righteous should be as the wicked; that be far from Thee; shall not the Judge of all the earth not do justly?" (Genesis 18:25) That heroic challenge is not regarded as heresy in the tradition. Abraham's cry is no act of treason, no lése majesté, no betrayal of God. On the contrary, Abraham's appeal to God elevates God who will not countenance injustice.

No! I am not alone in my spiritual discomfort and in the Jewish urgings for theological courage. I take heart from the record of the rabbinic moral dissent in Midrashic literature. Midrash Numbers Rabbah records a series of clashes between Moses and God, all of them concluding with an appreciation of the courage and morality of the religious hero and the instruction of God. To cite one stunning example of many, when Moses hears the second commandment that includes the statement, "I am a jealous God visiting the iniquity of the fathers upon the children to the third and fourth generation,” Moses rose to declare to God, "That is not fair. Sovereign of the universe, many are the wicked who have begotten righteous. Should the righteous bear the iniquity of the wicked?" Then Moses brought forth arguments against God's statement: "Consider Sovereign, that Terach worshiped images but Abraham, his son, was a righteous man. Consider that Achaz was a wicked king but his son Hezekiah was a king of great righteousness. Consider Amon, a wicked king, but Josiah his son was a man of righteousness. Is it proper then that the righteous should suffer because of their fathers?"

How does God respond? The Holy One said "You have taught Me --limaditani. By your life Moses, I shall cancel My words and confirm your words. As it is written, 'The fathers shall not be put to death for the children; neither shall the children be put to death for the fathers'" (Deuteronomy 24). Moses knows that the biblical statement attributed to God violates moral sensibility. He knows that the deepest honor of God is not a passive acquiescence to injustice but a morally courageous response with huge theological implication. God did not create robots, but human beings in His image. Tradition must be earned. Jacob must wrestle with the angel of God in order to find a nobler identity, a higher morality and a new revelation. Wrestling with the angel he emerges with a new understanding. No longer shall you be known as Jacob, but as Israel, "for you have wrestled with God and with man and you have prevailed."

My birthright is at stake as well. Belief in God is not delivered on a silver platter. It requires from me theological courage. I am a rabbi representing a Jewish world view challenged theologically by Kenny's father. And not with this question alone. but with related questions about the morality of theology, the efficacy of prayer and the role of the miraculous. I can, of course, dismiss the question as the outcry of the afflicted. I can ignore the call for Jewish understanding. I can pretend that Judaism is not interested in theology, in belief – only in deeds and performances. Lo hamidrash hu ha-ikkar elle ha-maaseh. But is that responsive and responsible response to the deep questions of my and their questions? Would I reduce Judaism to an orthopraxy, a ritual behaviorism and focus my attention only on the ritual and liturgical laws of mourning.

Evading or avoiding the kinds of existential questions in our people leaves in its wake a religious black hole. I fear that emptiness. The Jewish absence of belief creates a vacuum – and human nature abhors a vacuum. And that vacuum, left alone, will be filled with superstition and theurgy.

As C.S. Lewis observed, "He who ceases to believe in something does not believe in nothing, but believes in anything."

Too many Jews cease to believe. Too many Jews have become theologically mute, have joined the growing legion of the fourth son – "sheaino yodea lishol.”

Kenny's father has compelled me to wrestle with my own theological conscience. Do I have a credible Jewish theology that can speak to me so that I can answer Kenny's father and myself?

With deepest respect, let me share with you the way of my personal theological journey. In Judaism there is one God. There is no devil to scapegoat, no anti-Christ to blame for evil. Judaism is an ethical monotheism. God is one. But not coincidentally throughout the prayer and the Bible there are two names for this one God, two names that appear side-by-side. Baruch atah Adonai Elohenu -- two names for a single God: Adonai and Elohim. And in the celebrated Sh'ma once again two names appear side-by-side. "Sh'ma Israel Adonai Elohenu, Adonai Echad.” And again the last words of Yom Kippur declare the identification of the two, seven times "Adonai Hu Ha-Elohim.” Why not one name? Shma Yisrael Adonai Echad. Why two? I believe that the duality, not dualism, reveals two faces of one God, two understandings of the nature of one God, two aspects of divinity of one God that helps me understand the world and myself, and grapple with evil.

Elohim is the first name of divinity introduced in the first chapter of the first verse of the first book of the Bible. "Beresheet barah Elohim.” The name Elohim is used exclusively in the first chapter of Genesis. Here Elohim is the Creator of nature. The Creator of all things that are below and above the earth is the work of Elohim. Lions and lambs; serpents and doves; butterflies, and eagles. Elohim is the logic of the universe, the principle of causation in nature.

Nature is morally neutral. Elohim is the Creator of mountains and valleys, sunshine and darkness, earthquakes and droughts and floods and hurricanes. Nature is amoral. Not midat hadin, the measure of justice, but midat ha-teva, the measure of amoral nature. Here I am impressed by a remarkable passage in the Talmud Avodah Zarah 54b. There the rabbis ask, "If a man stole a measure of wheat and sowed it in the ground. It would be right that the wheat not grow. After all, it is stolen. But,” say the rabbis, “the world pursues its own course. This is the way of nature.”

Further, the rabbis ask, "If a man have intercourse with his neighbor's wife. It would be right that she should not conceive. But nature pursues its own course. And out of an adulterous relationship a child is born.”

This bespeaks a Jewish reality principle. Because it suggests to me a new missing category in Jewish theology that applies to "chol,” to amoral events. "Olam k'minhago noheg.” Elohim understood as the non-judgmental Author of minhag olam means that not everything that happens in this world is a din, a judgment from a moral judge. DNA is not din. The DNA we inherit is neither praiseworthy or blameworthy. It is simply a fact. A remarkable but nevertheless an amoral fact. Neither "din" nor "rachamim.” The shifting platelets beneath the earth that produces earthquakes are not judgments. They are not moral decrees. Earthquake is not God's verdict. The hurricane is not a punishment. A volcanic explosion is not a punishment. All of these are consequences of geological and atmospheric phenomena. They may be traced to the Elohim olam k'minhago creation. But crucially, consequences are not judgments and causes are not curses. When causes and curses, consequences and punishment are confused, every event is turned into a divine moral gezerah. Then every accident points to a sin punished. When John Kennedy Jr.'s plane crashed, media pundits began speaking about the Kennedy curse. Then, cause is turned into a supernatural curse and consequence into a divine punishment.

When, recently, the Alaska Jet airline went down, did we call for the passenger list to determine the ratio of righteous people to evil people in order to explain the crash? We called for the Black Box to determine whether or not the cause was human or mechanical. Newton's law of gravitation is not Moses' law of revelation. Gravitation refers to "what is.” Revelation refers to what "ought to be.” Olam k'minhago noheg. Elohim as the Ground of all that is expresses the Jewish reality principle: there is accident, there is contingency, there are natural laws in the universe that have causes and consequences, not curses or blessings, not punishments or rewards.

Hold on! Elohim is part but not the whole of divinity. To stop at Elohim is to be caught in the webs of idolatry. For idolatry is the worship of a part as if it were the whole. Elohim is part but not the whole of divinity. Something crucial is missing -- Adonai! We are first introduced to the idea of Adonai complementing Elohim in the second chapter of Genesis: "No shrub of the field was yet on earth and no grasses of the field had yet sprung up because Adonai Elohim had not sent rain upon the earth and there was no human being to till the soil." For there to be vegetation one needs something that is given and something that is to be transformed. Therein lies the crucial partnership between nature and humanity (Shutafuth la kadoth baruch hu b'maase bereshit).

This lies at the heart of the Midrash in Tanchuma 19:3. In that celebrated debate between Tineus Rufus and Rabbi Akiba, Rufus, the pagan, asks of Akiba, "Which is greater, the work of God or the work of man?" Akiba brings a sheaf of wheat and a loaf of challah before Tineus Rufus. "Clearly" Akiba says "Challah the work of man is greater." How do I understand Akiba's response? Is it a denigration of God? By no means.

Akiba is here rejecting the split thinking of either/or. Either God or man. Either above or below. Either Elohim or Adonai. What Akiba insists is that both are involved in the benediction of creation. God and humanity. In the motzi benediction, "Baruch atah Adonai Elohenu melech haolam ha-motzi lechem min haaretz," Elohim is revealed in sun, seed, water and soil, the raw material which none of us has created. Still the raw sheaf of wheat is inedible. One needs to have God-given human intelligence, human competence and purpose to till the soil, to pull the weeds, to water the ground, to grind the wheat, to bake the bread. The motzi blessing expresses appreciation of the transaction between God and man that transforms sheaves into bread. It blesses the union of facticity and ideality.

It is the same with the kiddush. Baruch atah Adonai Elohenu melech haolam borey pre ha-gefen. Blessed art Thou, Adonai Elohim who creates the fruit of the vine. But note the blessing is not made over the grape (though it will not stain the tablecloth), because the blessing of divinity requires the transaction between physical nature and human nature. The term "Adonai" is not introduced in the Bible until the human being is present. Why? It flows from that Judaic theologically revolutionary verse in Judaism (Genesis 1:27). "And God created the human being in His own image, male and female created He them." Of no creation is it said that the divine image is implanted in it except for the human being. If we are formed in God's Image, where else should one search to find the Image of God except in the human being? What is closer to God than the only creation whose divine spirit is blown into his nostrils? Transcendence and immanence are married in the tselem.

This is powerfully expressed in an imaginative Midrash. The angels hear that God intends to create the human being in His image. The angels are jealous and plot to hide the divine image. One angel suggested that the tselem be hidden in the mountains above. Another suggested that man is an adventurous soul and will most likely climb the mountains. Another angel suggested that it be hidden beneath the oceans. But a wiser angel suggested that man loves to explore hidden places and is apt to find the image in the waters beneath. They then conclude that the surest place to hide the divine image is within the human being, himself or herself because that is the last place in the world that man will look to find it. It is the first place to look. Not in the heaven above or beneath the seas.

Adonai God is found and expressed in our hearts, minds and hands. It is because of the tselem, the potential divine image in man, that we are enabled to imitate the qualities of God, to visit the sick, to comfort the bereaved, to clothe the naked, to shelter the homeless. We are not paralyzed by the curse of original sin, but free to choose and to change.

If Elohim is the source of all that is, and is found in nature, Adonai is the source of all that ought to be and is to be developed and cultivated, in the human being, by actualizing the potentiality which is the divine image of the human being.

All of this is part of Jewish theology, the world created by Elohim is incomplete. Everything in the created world has to be perfected. In the language of the rabbis in Tankhuma, and in Beresheth 11:6, "The mustard seed needs to be sweetened, the lupine needs to be soaked, the wheat needs to be ground, and the human being needs to be repaired."

We are to repair the creation of Elohim through the transforming power of Adonai that lies potentially with us and between us human beings.

Elohim is the real. Adonai is the ideal. And when we recite "Hear O Israel, Adonai our Elohim is echad,” we mean that the real and the ideal, are one, "is" and "ought" belong together.

All of this is background for my own understanding.

If I could speak to Kenny's father, I would tell him, "I understand your anguish and your grieving. But do not be angry at me or at God, at the synagogue or yourself. For this event is a deep terrible tragedy but it is not a judgment, it is not a deliberate planned design. "Olam k'minhago noheg.” That does not erase the pain. I have no magic wand to wave, neither for you, nor myself. No miracles, no faith healing, no magic. The Jewish reality principle does not allow me to pretend that the pain is unreal. No matter how I desire it, I cannot erase the pain.

But I can erase the guilt, blame, terror of a punishing wrathful God, the tearing of the flesh. I accept the tragic without guilt or blame or shame. Religious life includes acceptance over that which I have no control.

The integrity of the Jewish reality principle teaches me that I cannot reverse this tragic event by prayer. The Chazal has taught me that time is irreversible. I cannot pray for that which has already happened. The rabbis in Berachoth say he who prays for that which already was prays a vain prayer. One cannot pray, having lost a leg, to grow a limb. But there are things that I can do. I can search out for a suitable prosthetic. I can in crises reach out toward Adonai to appeal to the curative and recuperative powers within me and among us as members of the community: the tselem in "me" and "between us.”

I can pray.

With Adonai-Elohim theology, I pray reflexively "ani mitpallel." When I ask: "Does God care?" Adonai responds: "Do you care?" When I ask, "Does God intervene?" Adonai asks, "Do you intervene?" I am able to internalize the question because God's transcendence is immanent within the tselem. I am a corollary of God because God's image resonates in me.

I can call upon my spiritual intelligence, upon resilient powers to rise above despair. I can for the sake of my family and friends refuse to lay a heavy stone upon them and myself. There are faith attitudes toward adversity that I can cultivate in my prayer. The Mourner's Kaddish is not recited supine. The ritual posture calls for me to stand on my feet. There are things I can do. There are God-given capacities that I can realize in facing tragedy. Like Job (29:13), I can be father to the poor and eyes to the blind, and feet to the lame. I can cause the widow's heart to sing with joy.

Adonai is the response of the tselem within me to the given world that surrounds me. The Midrash Tehillim comments on Isaiah's declaration: "Atem aydai neum Adonai v'ani el.” "You are My witnesses, says Adonai and I am God.” When you are My witnesses, I am God and when you are not My witnesses, I am, as it were, not God." We are the verifiers of God's goodness. "Verificare" -- to make true.

Colleagues, this theological approach may not be yours. I am not pleading for any particular theology, but I am pleading that we do not abandon Kenny's father to cursing God and Judaism in the dark.

And not just Kenny's father, and not solely our need to respond to the existential problems of evil. There are other religious root questions seething in our people. There is a spiritual hunger in our people that leaks out through closed lips. There is hunger for a responsible, sane spirituality. We must not be mislead. We are a thinking people and ours is a thinking faith. There is a spiritual yearning for more than red strings around the wrist, or the wearing of "kamea" amulets, more than a surrender of critical reason and a submission to the theurgy of gurus.

In matters such as synagogue affiliation and attendance, marketing techniques and liturgical aesthetics will not fill the vacuity of belief. Behaving and belonging alone will not cover the nakedness of believing. Behaving and belonging call for believing. Liturgy cries out for theology. The presupposition of earnest liturgy is a credible theology. You cannot urge "pray" without guiding people to understand the character of the God addressed in prayer.

There is a hunger for authentic Jewish answers to such questions as the efficacy of prayer, the literal account of miracles, and revelation. You and I know that there are profound Jewish answers. There are authentic alternative Jewish theologies. But sadly they are not heard in the course of Jewish schooling.

How long shall we rabbis bear the litany of the complaints of adults who only recall their elementary religious school education as boring, irrelevant, unbelievable? How long shall we hear that college is "the disaster area" of our youth? Of course “disaster area”! They enter college theologically unprepared, without a credible mature Jewish theology. They enter the college intellectually vulnerable before the caricatures of Judaism portrayed by Spinoza, Kant, Hegel and Fichte, who reduce the philosophy and spirituality of Judaism only to obedience and observance. That our teacher, Abraham Joshua Heschel called the "Halachic heresy" -- to teach "dinim" and "minhagim" isolates from the philosophy of Midrash and aggadah.

Once when they were young, they did ask questions about reality, about serpents and donkeys who speak, about the ethics of the akedah and the miraculous brazen serpent. They sought from Judaism guides to identify what is real and what they can trust. But they were not answered. And if they were answered it was with the dead hand of literalist dogma or pushed aside with the whisper "shpeter" i.e. "later.” And later never comes. Certainly not in college.

Three weeks from tonight they will sit muted around the Seder table, "sheayni yodea lishol" -- the fourth son who cannot ask, not because he is simple or naive, but because he has long lost confidence in the moral and intellectual credibility of the response. Who were his teachers? Largely "dovray ivrith.” But linguistic fluency is no substitute for theological lucidity. The Hebrew teachers were taught and teach how to translate. They too were not taught how to answer.

The theological black hole creates a muteness. Our deepest challenge, At p'tach lo -- open them up.

We hear about "baale tshuvah," those who seek apodictic responses and mandates to obey and observe without question. God bless the "chozrim b'tshuvah.” But I see, hear, and meet a much larger potential constituency who have questions ignored. Young and old within us, who with our encouragement, can become "chozrim b'shelah,” "baale shelah,” those who seek to return with a recovered question. They are new spiritual seekers of our times, who ask not only "how,” "when,” "where" but "what for.” "What for" is the major "fragestellung" of our new age. The questions they ask are not only factual, but teleological. And therein lies the province of Jewish theology. My two teachers at the seminary, Mordecai M. Kaplan and Abraham Joshua Heschel, held different theological approaches to Judaism. But both bemoaned the absence of Jewish theology, the poverty of the God-ideas in our people's lives, the shallowness that reduced the spirituality of Judaism to "pots and pantheism.” When Heschel addressed the Solomon Schecter Day School principals, he said, it is demeaning to reduce the philosophy of Judaism to "shor shemogach et haparah" -- to the ox that gores a cow.

We must not succumb to the negators of Judaism -- a la Spinoza who maintained that Judaism is legalism, unconcerned with truth or ideas that addressed the existential promptings of the heart.

We enter a new era of search and choice that calls for a theological revival; to open up the prematurely buried questions of the muted and to resurrect the hidden texts of courageous Midrashim and pluralistic theologies from great Jewish thinkers.

We are products of a Jewish Theological Seminary. We must teach the teachers of our Hebrew Schools and our congregants a "blat" Heschel, a sugyah Soloveitchik, a "maamar" Kaplan, a "machlokes Buber and Rosenzweig; a "drash" of Rav Kuk and a "perush" of Samson Raphael Hirsch. Their theological "chidushim" should not be wasted. We need their spiritual courage and pertinence. We need a chevrah Aggadah in our communities to restore our theological dignity.

The Haggadah of freedom insists on raising the question. Slaves do not question. The road to Jewish revival begins with reverence for the question.

My zayda used to say "Fun a kashe ken men nisht shtarben"-- from a question, you cannot die.” He was only half right. "Fun a kashe, ken men leben" -- from a question you can begin to live again.

They are there in and out of our congregation. Together we can open them up. Let them learn to ask and together let us dare to answer.

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