The JewBu's Guide to Eat Pray Love

Enjoyed reading this article.While I agree that Judaism is a wordly religion, I think that it is important to note that rabbinic literature is full of examples of tension that existed between emphasis on study and on deeds of loving-kindness (g’milut chasadim).  For example:    

A. In Kiddushin we read: “Which is greater—study or deeds? Rabbi Tarfon answered, ‘Deeds!’ Rabbi Akiva answered, ‘Study!’ The sages responded, ‘Study is greater since studying leads to deeds’ (b. Kiddushin 40b).

B. “These are things that a person enjoys the fruits of in this world while the principal remains for the world to come: honoring one’s mother and father, g’milut chasadim, and being a peace maker. But Talmud Torah is equal to them all” (m. Peah1:1). 

C. “He who engages exclusively in Talmud Torah is as one who has no God” (b. Avodah Zarah17b).  

The three quotes reflect a tension within us, and the ways in which our own logic can lead us astray.  All three quotes are definitive within themselves, taken together they are an exclamation mark that good deeds are more important and stronger than good thoughts.

Naftali I respectfully disagree.  The first quote shows us that the tension existed within Judaism.  Hence the debate and effort to please both akiva and Tarfon.  The second quote clearly favors study over good deeds. While third quote clearly favors deeds over study.  Taken together, I cannot see how you arrive at an "exclamation mark" favoring good deeds over study (btw, study is not the same as good thoughts).  Moreover, there are other quotes in favor of study that I could use - these three just came to mind.  

A question to consider:  What is wrong with recognizing that there exists tension within a tradition?  Not sure that you think there is anything wrong with it, but I am assuming because of your post.

Don't all three quotes support a balance--not a tension--between study and deeds? Note that the third quote condemns one who exclusively studies, not one who balances study and deeds. Similary, the second quote says that study is equal to deeds. The first quote says study is more important beacuse it will lead to deeds, but doesn't address the balance. The Rambam's middle path comes to mind here.

Gerson describes different religions (Judaism, Christianity, Buddhism) as being more focused on either good deeds or inner contemplation.

I think it would be more accurate to say that each religion has elements of both inner contemplation and outward good deeds.  The stereotypical American view of Buddhism may be one of "retreat," both as a philosophy and scheduled event.  But in truth there are many Buddhist and Buddhist-inspired organizations seeking to actively change the world in various ways, in this lifetime.

--Z

I hope you might one day put together a more auto-biographical piece.  I'd be really interested to see what led you from being a rabbi's daughter to an apostate, to a buddhist, and back to a rabbi.  I'd also like to hear how you'd make your congregation different from your father's (if at all), given your own less than positive experience.

--Z

I think we are describing two sides of the same coin.  I tend to read our scriptures as reflecting our own inner problems of logic and fragmentation, and how to put ourselves back in working order.

I like Yaakov's interpretation of the quotes--that however you get to deeds, get there.  If by study, fine.  But to study and not get to deeds, that's a problem. 

Yakov, even the very last quote, “He who engages exclusively in Talmud Torah is as one who has no God” (b. Avodah Zarah17b)." speaks of a tension.  Clearly there were some rabbis who thought that talmud torah was superior to deeds  - so much so that some of them engaged in it exclusively, while others simply put more emphasis on studying (like the giant figure of Akiva).  The very fact that some people favored studying torah exclusively (you do not cry out against something that does not exist) and that the rabbis needed to censure them, shows you that a tension existed. 

Naftali - I understand your personal reading of the texts.  You want the text to speak to you, and that is great.  But I hope you recognize there are other ways to read them.  

 That is all I want to say about this subject.  Did not mean to take away the focus from Gerson's excellent article.    

Yes, there are other ways of reading the texts, and then we talk, and sometimes argue, and a good time is had by all.  I'll finish here too.

What is the first thing you're going to tell your friend to catch her up what's happened during the last 3 years in the rest of the world?

This piece made me feel open, almost positive about being Jewish for the first time in a while. I've been retreating from it for reasons similar to the ones Gerson describes, and discovering something more attuned in Buddhism. I've heard that people who go through the sort of transformation that learning about Buddhism can bring often leave their original religion for a time, but eventually they make their way back in one form or another. I'm not sure I'm ready to come back yet, but I'll remember Gerson when I do...

I agree that it's easy to be reductionist about Buddhism: it's escapist, not "of the world," etc. Yet imagine if everyone in the world was encouraged to go on a (short-term) retreat: how much more people might be inclined to live their values!

The Jewish approach-- prayer interspersed with daily living and integrated into the rhythm of the day is more my cup of tea. Yet I am not one to undermine the power of affecting the world on the inner plains as well-- especially in tandem with action, organizing and repair of the world in between sessions on the meditation cushion.

I liked this article's attempt to bridge worlds-- indeed, there is more than one path up the mountain. We live in such a fractured world that our world needs all prayers and methods of striving out there for its spiritual and physical healing.

I love the comments this has sparked - especially the conversation in the early responses. Sounds like a beit midrash...

In any case, on this one, I'm going to have side with Yaakov. I think the texts are in favor of a healthy balance of Torah and good deeds...or tension. But I also think that in some ways the conversation above is a category mistake:  I'd make a distinction between study and contemplative pursuits - I didn't mean study when I was talking about contemplative practices and wasn't equating the two and though I know for some people they're the same, for the Jewbus like anonymous (and me) that are leaving (or left) the tradition for Buddhism, study doesn't = a contemplative practice, because if it did they'd probably be sticking around. (Instead, they're finding that something about Jewish contemplative/mystical practices open to them is insufficient...or inaccessible.) That's the tension I was talking about - between contemplation and action and though I tried to avoid reifying the obvious binaries here (i.e.-Judaism = non-contemplative, Buddhism = navel-gazing) -- I may not have been clear enough. 

I'm definitely aware of Engaged Buddhism, zbird (a la Thich Nhat Hanh and Bernie Glassman, who's one of my heroes - http://www.peacemakercommunity.org/about/bios/bernie_bio.htm). In any case, my Buddhism professor at HDS used to say that Engaged Buddhism in America and Europe was in part a result of the encounter of Buddhism with the West - with JewBus or Christian Buddhists who wanted to bring the activist elements of their Judaism or Christianity to their Buddhist practice. That's up for debate too, though - especially if you've been watching what's been going in Tibet over the past few weeks.

 Zbird, as far as the autobiographical piece, my memoir will probably be coming out in 2009/2010 (seriously). I'll keep you posted.

And the first thing I'll tell her is how and why we're still in Iraq three years after she entered retreat. I have a hunch she's going to be a lot more interested in what's going in Tibet, though.

Though an interesting article, the widely popular but (in my opinion) incorrect myth about Judaism being primarily concerned with 'repair of the world' and 'engagement' is once again recycled. Judaism is NOT about 'Tikkun Olam' and 'engagement with the world' as these terms are understood by modern liberal Judaism. Rather,  Judaism-as-social-action-tikkun-olam began in the 19th century, when people (primarily in Germany and Western Europe) no longer found either mitzvot observance or Jewish theology compeliing and, in order to retain something of Judaism, added a basically non-sectarian ideology of repair-of-the-world while dropping mitzvot/Torah-min-Hashamayim theology.    

      Tikkun Olam initally was a kabbalistic term that meant 'fxing' the world via the energetic/mystical effects of the observance of the commandments and prayer on the physical world. It ONLY came to mean social action when people stopped believing in or caring about mitzvot and Torah theology.

    To see this a bit more clearly, take a look at those who DO still care about mitzvot/Jewish theology FOR REAL - the Orthodox. Do Orthodox Jews care about tikkun olam in the social action sense? Not at all  - and the more Orthodox  the less they care (proceed directly to Brooklyn/Lakewood/Monsey if you'd like further elucidation on this point).

    It's not that liberal social action/political engagement  is bad - it is, in my opinion good. It's merely that teaching it as the essence of Judaism is apologetics pure and simple, which cover up the fact that the spiritual practices of traditional Judaism are no longer transformational for most Jews.

  It is also an unfair strawman to depict Indian spirituality and Buddhism as "narcissistic" and unconcerned with the world around them. Is the Budddhist idea of the bodhisatva - a spiritual practitioner who intentionally puts off full enlightenment in order to help others - narcissistic? And are the increasing number of groups in the West dedicated to 'engaged' Buddhism and yoga self-centered?

     It would be nice if Judaism was indeed about both a universal concern for repair of the world and a set of transformational spiritual practices - but it isn't. Hence, I do yoga.

Howie

Howie, 

There is a relationship between traditional Tikkun Olam and the modern (liberal social action) use of the term. In Kaballah, Tikkun Olam is achieved by doing mitzvos. To the extent that the word is a better place (in the modern sense) by a Jew doing mitzvos, the the trational and modern terms overlap.

The Torah includes many laws that are consistent with modern views of liberal social action. The fact that a particular Jewish group or groups in NY may not focus on those laws doesn't detract from this concept.

hkatz, I'm sorry, but you're mistaken. You say that "tikkun olam" originally meant Lurianic tikkun. However, long before Rabbi Luria lived, there was the Adon Olam. Kabbalah did not yet exist, but tikkun olam did. Rabbi Samson Raphael Hirsch holds by social-action tikkun olam, as does Rabbi Benzion Uziel. At Wikipedia's "Tikkun Olam", I show that Rabbi Hirsch held by social-action tikkun olam, and I am presently writing an essay that shows that in the Kuzari, Rabbi Hirsch agrees more with the Kuzar-King than with the Haver/Rabbi on the question of the value of mitzvot bein adam l'havero. Rabbi Yom Tov Schwarz, in Eyes to See, convincingly shows that for traditional Orthodox Judaism, mitzvot bein adam l'havero are paramount. That Orthodoxy today disagrees only shows that Professor Menachem Friedman is correct that there is little authentically Ashkenazi or Eastern European about Haredism.

Jordie,

I enjoyed this; thank you. A few chapter headings which are occurring to me faster than I can organize them:

You note that Judaism doesn't want to remove us from life. I'm reminded of Rabbi Dr. Eliezer Berkovits writes in Towards Historic Judaism:
"Judaism looks upon life as the raw material which has to be shaped in conformity with the spiritual values contained in the Bible. Judaism is a great human endeavor to fashion the whole of life, every part and every moment of it, in accordance with standards that have their origin in unchallengeable authority. Its aim is not merely to cultivate the spirit, but to infuse prosaic, everyday existence with the spirit. Its great interest is not the human soul, but the living human body controlled by the forces of the soul. It is in and of this world. It will never yield to the obstinacy of that gigantic mass of raw material which we call life, and which so reluctantly allows itself to be molded by the spirit. It will never reconcile itself to a divided existence of which part is Caesars’ and part God’s. The whole of life is one piece; the whole of life is the testing place for man. Judaism is in love with life, for it knows that life is God’s great question to mankind; and the way a man lives, what he does with his life, the meaning he is able to implant in it – is man’s reply. Actual life is the partner to the spirit; without the one the other is meaningless."

And as Rabbi Berkovits says in Judaism: Fossil or Ferment?:
"In all its rawness and dark demoniac wildness, this world is extremely precious for man's salvation. The Spirit as such, in the realm of human existence, lacks efficacy. Faith alone will not move mountains; but faith will move mountains if it has hands and bodies and machines at its command. The physical, the material, the “mundane” are indispensable for the Spirit, if it wishes to take effect in this world. Only through the instrumentality of the Material can the conscious aspiration of the Spiritual find expression and realization in the life of men. A man cannot even think goodness with a brain; he can certainly not do good without a body. All energy and power in this world has its seat in the material and organic ground of life; all purpose and value, in its spiritual manifestation. The Purposeful, on its own, is powerless; the Powerful, by itself, purposeless.1 The greatest waterfall, left to itself, will only fall; the finest blue print, left in the drawer of the engineer, will not move a single wheel. The two realms find their salvation in their “interpenetration.” The Spirit alone may redeem the Mundane from its blind demoniac purposelessness; the Mundane alone may reciprocate by offering liberation to the Spirit from the prison of its powerlessness. The two realms meet in man; and in their interpenetration, through man, this world is transformed into the Kingdom of God. By investing the Mundane with value and significance and the Spirit with power and effectiveness, the act of interpenetration becomes the sanctification of life."

And who can forget that which was said by Rabbi Yehiel Yaakov Weinberg, the illustrious teacher of Rabbi Berkovits?:
התורה היא איפוא לדעת רשר"ה הכוח תצר צורה, והצורה אזל אריסטו פירושה: מהותו אין דרך ארץ אלא החומר אשר עליו פועלת התורה. “The Torah, then, is according to Rav Hirsch, the force that gives form; and form, in the Aristotelian sense, means: the essential nature of a thing (as distinguished from the matter in which it is embodied). דרך ארץ is simply the matter on which the Torah works.”

In Crisis and Faith, section 1 "Ego Loss", Rabbi Berkovits gives an incisive and trenchant criticism of both Eastern mysticism and the 1970s drug culture. Modern technology has made this world into a cold and impersonal environment, and man is left with no home. His solution has been - like Camus's Mersault - to make this impersonality into something positive, something good, something proper. If the world is cold and impersonal, then let man escape from this world and from his own personality and ego; if the world is inhospitable, let him negate his own personality and make homelessness become the proper state of things. Rabbi Berkovits, needless to say, takes this all as cowardice, and suggests a more G-d centered approach to the question of man's homelessness in modern scientific atheism.

hkatz,

Micha speaks of "G-d has told you what is good, oh man...", that G-d desires justice and righteousness. The same would be derived from Jeremiah, "Let not the wise man glory in his wisdom, etc., but let him who glories glory in this, that I practice justice and righteousness, for in these I delight, says G-d." G-d, reflecting on Sodom, says, "Shall I not tell Avraham? Have I not known him that he teach his household and his children after him the way of G-d (derech hashem) to do justice and righteousness."

In other words: G-d's very purposes in this world are for righteousness and justice. These constitute "the way of G-d". G-d does NOT say, "Let him who glories glory in this, that He practices sacrifices and prayer services". He does NOT say, "I have known Avraham that he practice the sacrificial service."

In 2:47, the Haver says,
Do you now think that closeness [to G-d] comes simply through humility, lowliness, and the like?

In 2:48, the Kuzar King replies,
When coupled with righteous conduct, yes! So I believe and I've even read this in your Torah. It says, "What does the Lord your God ask of you except to fear [Him]?' [Devarim 10:12] and it says, 'What does God request from you except to do justice and love truth [and walk humbly with your God]?' [Michah 6:8] And there are many other similar citations.

In 2:49, the Haver replies that the moral laws are merely utilitarian means to ensure that a type of stable society exists which is conducive to the practice of the ritual commandments. In other words, the ritual commandents are G-d's true concern, and the moral commandments are merely a utilitarian prerequisite, similar to eating and drinking and sleeping. However, we will see that this explanation is exactly the same as that offered by Rambam in his Introduction to Seder Zeraim, and all the massive amount of criticism directed at Rambam - whether by Rabbi Hirsch, Rabbi Yaakov Emden, Professor Harry Wolfson, you name it - all this criticism will be rightly directed at the Kuzar as well. With all due respect to Rabbi Yehuda Halevi, but the Haver is clearly mistaken here, and his student, the new convert to Judaism, has clearly more correctly ascertained Judaism's purpose.

If you criticize me for so casually dismissing the Kuzari, I will say that nevertheless, I prefer following Tanakh and Hazal over the Kuzari, great as the last-named work surely is. Rabbi Yom Tov Schwarz (in his Eyes to See) notes that in Mesechet Beitzah, we doubt the matrilineal Jewish status of anyone who is unkind; Rabbi Schwarz notes that no such thing is ever said of one who violates Shabbat. Similarly, he notes that according to Sifra, we were taken out of Egypt precisely for the sake of the mitzvot bein adam l'havero. (The Torah says something to the effect that we shall keep the laws of weights and measures, "...for I am Hashem your G-d who took you out of Egypt". Sifra says that Yetziat Mitzraim occurred for the sake of the laws of weights and measures, and Rambam says that weights and measures here stands for mitzvot bein adam l'havero in general.)

Now, surely the traditional ritual practices of Judaism are vital. Without getting into why, we certainly cannot ignore the fact that Isaiah says Im tashiv raglekha m'asot hafatzecha, etc. But to say that the mitzvot bein adam la'makom are the defining factor of Judaism is simply to distort Judaism beyond recognition.

According to Rabbi Marc Angel's description of Rabbi Benzion Uziel (the late Sephardi Chief Rabbi of Israel),
He felt strongly that Jews must be aware of their own national charter. Through this self knowledge, they would be able to conduct their lives according to the ideals set forth in the Torah tradition. This would lead to their own happiness, as well as to a positive influence on the world in general. Rabbi Uziel criticized those false ideologies which distracted the Jewish people from their authentic national charter. He rejected the assimilationists, since their strategy would ultimately undermine the true message of Judaism. He also chastised those who would restrict Judaism to the narrow confines of their homes, synagogues and study halls. This strategy would bury Judaism in a small inner world, cutting off its impact on society as a whole. It was necessary to steer a middle course between assimilationist tendencies on the left and isolationist tendencies on the right. Rabbi Uziel cited the verse in Mishlei (4:25) as a guide: “Let your eyes look right on and let your eyelids look straight before you. Make plain the path of your foot and let all your ways be established. Turn not to the right nor to the left. Remove your foot from evil.”
Only by focusing on the specific charter of the Jewish people-to create a righteous nation based on the laws of Torah tradition-could the Jewish people fulfill its mission. Through our creating a model Torah society, we would be seen by the entire world to be the representatives of God. Our Torah teaches us to live life in its fullness. It teaches us how to apply the highest moral and ethical standards to all human situations. Judaism is not a cult, but a world religion with a world message. “Our holiness will not be complete if we separate ourselves from human life, from human phenomena, pleasures and charms, but (only if we are) nourished by all the new developments in the world, by all the wondrous discoveries, by all the philosophical and scientific ideas which flourish and multiply in our world. We are enriched and nourished by sharing in the knowledge of the world; at the same time, though, this knowledge does not change our essence, which is composed of holiness and appreciation of God's exaltedness.” The national charter of the Jewish people is “to live, to work, to build and to be built, to improve our world and our life, to raise ourselves and to raise others to the highest summit of human perfection and accomplishment. (This is accomplished by following) the path of peace and love, and being sanctified with the holiness of God in thought and deed.”

Note the end of that quotation: the national charter of the Jewish people is to build and improve the world. As we say in Adom Olam, our task is "l'taken olam b'malkhut shak-ai." This has nothing to do with Lurianic Kabbalah, of course.

Again, if most Orthodox Jews eschew the path taken by Rabbi Uziel, this merely shows that most Orthodox Jews are not Torah-true Jews.