The start of one new year necessarily means the end of the old. To say so, however, is to create a dyad of old/new, casting the previous year in the unflattering light of irrelevance and decay. More accurate to say that the new year brings the unknown and change to a continuum of the known and the past.

So it is with Zeek. For eighteen months, Zeek has shared this space with Jewcy.com, running our content on the Jewcy server. We came to Jewcy thanks to the visionary offer of Tahl Raz and Joey Kurtzman, who imagined Jewcy as a kind of Jewish public square in which a variety of media would proffer their content. We believed--and still believe--in the value of sharing ideas in a rich context, and thank Tahl and Joey for this opportunity. We also would like to thank Craig Leinoff, whose technical expertise made the Jewcy back-end so easy to use. Finally, we would like to give a special thanks to current Jewcy editor-in-chief Lilit Marcus for her help and commitment to our partnership.

As of today, Erev Rosh Hashanah, Zeek will cease publishing on the Jewcy site. We welcome you to join us on Monday, October 5, when we will relaunch with a new partner, the Forward, at www.zeek.forward.com. We look ahead to a new year of discussion and debate, online and in our print edition. We still believe online media, especially Jewish media, should share space and share conversations, and hope to engage in such conversations both with our new partners and, across websites, with Lilit and the writers at Jewcy.

Until then, l'shanah tova, may you have a sweet and healthy new year.

Sincerely,

Zeek Editors


p.s. You can always find Zeek by going to www.zeek.net

 

The voice on the other end of the phone was completely incredulous, "How could a decent Jewish girl, a rabbi no less! be living out in the middle of nowhere?!"  I had sent a box of the CDs I produce to my distributor on the east coast and they had arrived damaged. "Why can't you send them UPS?" he had sputtered in frustration.  I calmly explained that I lived in the country more than an hour's drive to the closest UPS center, so I sent them via the US Postal service. "And it's not the middle of nowhere," I added. "It's the most beautiful and sanest place I could ever imagine living...Why are you living in the middle of such craziness?" This high-powered east coast Jewish businessman paused for a moment to consider this, and then slipped back into puzzled incredulity.

When I hung up I realized that my distributor had just given voice to what so many urban Jews had been just too polite to say. Jews belong in the city, at the heart of sophistication and culture, certainly not in the wilderness.

Yet our foundational story, our entire journey from slavery in Egypt to the flowing milk and honey of the Promised Land-takes place in the wilderness. It is in the wilderness where we encounter God and receive the Torah. It is in the wilderness where we so carefully construct the Mishkan (the portable sanctuary where the Presence of the Divine can dwell) which represents the structures of a holy life.  The word for wilderness in Hebrew is Midbar, which can be understood as the place without (mi) speech (daber). It is the place of silence from which all speech, all meaning is born.

Our central prayer in Judaism says, "Shma!" Listen! Then you will experience the Oneness and Unity of all Reality. And then you will love God/Reality with all your heart, all your soul and all your might.

The perception of Unity and the Love that flows from that perception begins with listening. A practice of deep listening therefore seems to me to be an essential requirement of a Jewish life. The wilderness is the place where the skills of deep listening are refined. In the wilderness we listen to God's voice as it speaks to us directly through the miracles of Nature. And we cultivate enough spaciousness and silence so that the "still small voice" within can be discerned and followed. In order to love with all my heart, all my soul and all my might, I must have a rich inner life. How else can I explore the reaches of the heart, the expanse of the soul or the strength of my humanity? When I look out my window at the sweeping vistas and wide expanse of red rock mesas, cottonwood valleys, and open skies, I am sent to the spacious inner landscape, where the Great Mystery reveals itself again and again with each breath.

I spend about half my time traveling and teaching in communities around the world, mostly in cities where the complexities of meaningful speech are always in high demand. I am a lover of words, of music, stories, text, philosophy...and I spread that noisy love wherever I go...But when I return home to the Jemez Mountains of northern New Mexico, I am nurtured by the silence, by the wilderness. I am completely inspired by the birds and chipmunks that play at my feeder. I am startled into reverence for all Life when a bear lumbers casually onto my deck.  When a storm blows up the valley, I stop and gather up all of my senses in witness to Majesty in Motion.

Each day I am surprised by the dawn's magic as it lights up the mesa.

Then I return to my holy text and say, "Of course...this is what I've been praying about!"

People to the ends of the earth are overawed by Your wonders;
At the coming of morning and evening they stand up and sing for joy. (Psalm 65)

Our Jewish story begins with Abraham, who is told, "Lech L'cha!" Get going... literally, "Go to yourself." Abraham is commanded to leave his settled, comfortable urban life, and set out into the wilderness.

Each time we respond to the call of the wild, we are hearing God's command to leave the safety of the known... and venture forth into the unknown. As we step out into the wilderness we are also stepping inward, in to the wild of our own hearts. "Lech L'cha!" Get going... literally, "Go to yourself." I go to the wilderness to find myself, to know the wild and holy animal that is suffocating beneath layers of expectation, decorum, habit and distraction. There I will find the source of my vitality.

Our ancestor, Jacob, whose life like ours, was filled with complicated struggles, thorny deceptions and deep yearnings, was also sent out into the wilderness. He put a stone under his head as a pillow and was given a glorious dream of angels ascending and descending a ladder that stretched between Heaven and Earth. He woke up, received God's promise along with a moment of Awakening as he realized, "God was in this place all along. This is none other than the House of God. This is the gate of Heaven!"

His revelation, our revelation is given through the power of Place. God has been waiting in this place all along. But sometimes our constructs, our ideas, our elaborate civilization... keep us from experiencing the raw power of place. The word for place in Hebrew is Makom... which is also a secret name for God. When layers of civilized conditioning are stripped away in the experience of Wilderness, we remember that "This is none other than the House of God." We never really owned it. We are honored guests here and our host is the Lord of Hosts, welcoming us each day.

Our Jewish calendar is designed to connect us with the cycle of the seasons, with the waxing and waning of the moon, with the times of planting and harvest. Our prayer times each day are tied to the mysterious moments of changing light. Our celebrations connect us with the phases of the moon. And our lunar calendar is modified so that we can also be attuned to the cycles of the sun. Our religious life is meant to send us outside so that we can feel ourselves moving in relationship to the cosmos.

At the end of Shabbat I go outside to search the sky for three stars that signal permission to perform the ceremony of Havdalah. Yet so many reject the gift of the stars in favor of the authority of what is written in their calendars.

Looking up at the stars I can remember that "God was in this place all along," and that "This is the Gate of Heaven." I receive my inheritance as a set of tools that can connect me with a larger Reality. Our holy books are meant to send us to a place beyond words.

D.H. Lawrence expresses the sadness and exasperation I feel when clock-time and calendar-time supersede the Reality that is right in front of us, when we become imprisoned in the systems that were meant to free us.

"Oh, what a catastrophe, what a maiming of love

when it was made personal, merely personal feeling,

Taken away from the rising and the setting of the sun,

And cut off from the magic connection of the solstice and the equinox!

This is what is the matter with us: we are bleeding at the roots

because we are cut off from the earth and sun and stars.

And love is a grinning mockery because, poor blossom,

we plucked it from its stem on the Tree of Life and

expected it to keep on blooming in our civilized vase on the table." [1]

"Our civilized vase on the table"... may be the only life that feels safe and comfortable and we may even feel satisfied with these poor blossoms. Our religious lives, our intellectual inquiries, our sense of identity may also feel safe, comfortable, respectable and civilized. Then, we try to quench our deep thirst for vitality through various forms of entertainment, technology, food, sports, or vicarious thrills. Yet all our efforts are but a "maiming of love." All of our efforts leave us still yearning for raw truth, for the fullness of love.

In writing my book, Torah Journeys: The Inner Path to the Promised Land, I wanted to enter in to the landscape of Torah and let the power of the wilderness open me to the transformative truth that is hidden between the words, in the white fire that glows between the black fires of text. In writing Torah Journeys, I became aware of my own wilderness journey as a journey of awakening. The journey of Torah mirrors my own soul's journey as I step up to the challenge of becoming whole-hearted, of reclaiming the shadow-places inside me. Through Torah I experienced the places inside me that were both dangerous and wonderful.

The experience of wilderness reawakens our sense of wonder. It strips away our illusions of safety and puts us face to face with the truth of our fragility, our vulnerability. In that vulnerability, we find our true power, our true love. To live a Jewish life requires that we cultivate the courage to directly encounter the most awesome aspects of Creation.

Rabbi Abraham Joshua Heschel teaches us that, "Awe is an intuition for the creaturely dignity of all things and their preciousness to God; a realization that things not only are what they are but also stand, however remotely, for something absolute. Awe is a sense for the transcendent, for the reference everywhere to God, who is beyond all things."

This "sense for the transcendent" is awakened in us in the wilderness, in that place that is beyond our comfort zone. We are called the People of the Book. And sometimes we can get caught inside the pages, inside the ideas, inside our heads. We get fixated on the finger that is pointing to the moon, and meanwhile the moon shines on, her secrets secure.

Or, perhaps as The People of the Book, we can let the book send us to the place beyond words, where secrets are revealed. In the Song of Songs, the lovers know that they must venture out to the fields, to the vineyards, to the jagged mountains in order to find the fullness of love.

Will you dare to put your books down and be sent into the wilderness to encounter Your Creator directly?

I am my beloved's
And his longing is for me,
Only for me.
Come, my beloved,
Let us go out to the field
And lie all night among the flowering henna,
Let us go early to the vineyards
To see if the vine has budded,
If the blossoms have opened,
And the pomegranates are in bloom,
There I will give you my love.
The mandrakes yield their fragrance
And at our doors are all kinds of precious fruits,
Both newly picked and long-stored,
I have hidden them away for you.[2]

I am given as a gift to this life, though I resist.
My small life is a gift to the whole.
The cosmos longs to know itself through me.
I hear this longing in the call to adventure,
The call to journey within and beyond.
Come, my beloved,
Let us go out to the field
Come my beloved,
Let us leave the comfort of familiar habit,
Let us challenge these walls, fling open these doors,
Explode definition, shatter this outgrown identity.
Let us dare to disagree with the wardens of Time and Space,
Let us step outside possibility,
There I will give you my love.
Come my beloved,
Let us go down into the valley,
To see if the cottonwood has budded its new green,
To caress the feather of mountain mahogany,
And breathe in the butterscotch of pine-sap flowing,
My precious fruits, both newly picked and long-stored,
Have been hidden away too long.
Whatever I don't give away,
Will decay and fester and become misery.
Let us go out to the field
Where spaciousness can untie my tangles,
Where tantalizing fragrance can inspire my curiosity,
Where I can lose my apprehension, find my humor,
Play in the soil of the Ancestors, bury treasures for my descendents,
And open to my true desire.
There I will give you my love

 

---

 

[1] (D.H. Lawrence, "A Propos of Lady Chatterley's Lover." In Warren Roberts and Harry T. Moore, editors, Phoenix II: Uncollected, Unpublished, and other prose works by D.H. Lawrence. New York: The Viking Press, 1968).
[2] Song of Songs, Chapter 7, translation by Rabbi Shefa Gold

****

Rabbi Shefa Gold is a leader in Aleph: Alliance for Jewish Renewal and received her ordination both from the Reconstructionist Rabbinical College and from Rabbi Zalman Schachter-Shalomi. She is the director of C-DEEP: The Center for Devotional, Energy and Ecstatic Practice in Jemez Springs, New Mexico and is also on the faculty of the Institute for Jewish Spirituality. She is the author of "Torah Journeys: The Inner Path to the Promised Land" released in 2006 and "In The Fever of Love: An Illumination of the Song of Songs" released in 2008.

Photo is of the Jemez Mountains, courtesy of visitusa.com

Just in time for the holidays, Zeek editor Jo Ellen Green Kaiser talks to B'nai Jeshurun leader Rabbi Marcelo Bronstein about the declining role of men in congregational Judaism.

Born in Buenos Aires in 1954, Marcelo Bronstein was educated in Israel, Argentina and the United States. He holds an MA in Hebrew Letters from Hebrew Union College, where he also received his Rabbinical Ordination. He also holds a MA in Clincal Psychology from Belgrano University, Buenos Aires. In addition to his duties at B'nai Jeshurun, Rabbi Bronstein serves on the advisory boards of Human Rights Watch/Americas, Jews for Racial and Economic Justice, Soaring Words, and South Wing to Zion.

ZEEK: A recent study by Sylvia Barrack Fishman and Daniel Parmer (Matrilineal Ascent/Patrilineal Descent, Cohen Center for Modern Jewish Studies, Brandeis University, 2008) seems to show that men are leaving Jewish congregational life. Do you see that trend at B'nai Jeshurun?

Marcelo Bronstein: Women participate much more than men in our congregational life. Don't misunderstand me: we have a full congregation, full of life. But the core of what we are about is thanks to women. If not for our women, we wouldn't have hazzanim, daily minyan, shiva minyanim, or chevra kedisha.

I am a product of the feminist revolution, so the fact that women lead most of the activities of our congregation never bothered me. I have always thought that the people who want to get involved, will get involved. I never paid attention to whether those people were men or women.

But suddenly, I began to hear people talk, and began to listen to others and even pay attention to what it was in front of my eyes.  Also recently, I participated in a conversation at NYU on gender and education. Speakers said that finding a male educator, a male teacher in New York, would be very soon like finding a diamond in the street. They are that rare.

ZEEK: So, where are the men? Why aren't they participating?

MB: Well, that's what I wanted to find out. So I started talking to men.

When you ask men who have left the congregation, men who have married outside Judaism, they say that Jewish women are too strong. They say they want to find Golde, the old-fashioned Jewish woman, but they can't find any Jewish women like her, so they turn to Asian women, women from other cultures.

Several men told me that, which confused me. I replied that the Golde in Fiddler on the Roof was very strong. They say, yes, strong but loving. Well, that is another conversation, a conversation about what men want or think they want in a woman. I felt that the answers they were giving me represented their emotional feelings, but maybe were not the whole answer to why they left.

When women were not happy with Judaism, they stayed. They stayed behind the mehitzha until they tore it down. But men are leaving. I am very concerned about Judaism. I don't think this is good for men, for women, for anyone.

ZEEK: What can you do about that, as a congregational rabbi?

MB: Well, I started a men's group, not because the men asked, but because I noticed these things. When I started, six men signed up, but at the first meeting, sixty came. They didn't want to sign up, but they wanted to come. Since then, we have held the group once a month.

I should say that creating a men's group at my synagogue, a very politically progressive synagogue in New York, was very politically incorrect. I thought someone would cut my head off. I was afraid of my feminist members.

So, before starting the group I went to talk to a feminist friend. I told her I wanted to start a men's group, and asked her opinion. She said, I love what you are doing. Why, I asked. She said, In the beginning, feminists chopped the testicles off men. That was a necessary act of war. Afterwards, when we achieved some equality, we sat and cried. Where are the men? They oppressed us, so we castrated them. So I like that you are trying to celebrate the differences without imposing power.

ZEEK: Woah.

MB: Yes. In the beginning, I called some guys about coming to the group's first meeting, and they laughed. They said, Ok, we will come, but this can't be a rosh chodesh group. We are not going to talk about feelings, we are not going to cry. I put that in the advertisement. It became a kind of joke.

ZEEK: What did they want?

MB: They wanted to daven. They wanted to hear just male voices. So we met at mincha, Shabbat afternoon. We daven together, and then have whiske--a very good single malt scotch whiskey--and crackers and cheese. And then we have a conversation. At first, we did Torah study, but I realized that these men really wanted to talk. Recently, we talked about Esther Perel's book, Mating in Captivity.

She came to talk to the group. Men were mesmerized. Some men were crying, because they felt they were being understood and not judged. They wanted more of that.

I think Jewish men have not found themselves. This is something women did during the feminist movement. Women learned how to find themselves. In the Jewish world, women met in rosh chodesh groups, created rituals. They gained equality but also found a way to be Jewish women.

ZEEK: Yes, including writing liturgy for women's lifecycle events like menstruation and menopause. Lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender Jews are doing that now as well, with queer retreats like Nehirim and new LGBT siddurim. But men, well, men used to be the ones to say kiddush while women lit the candles. Now, women say kiddush. What is left for men to do? What is their role?

MB: Jewish men are lost. It's not clear to men what it means to be a man. If they listen to women, what it means to be a man is to be bad, aggressive, fascist. All their good qualities--tenderness, compassion, empathy--are called their feminine side. So what is my masculine side, what is good there?

I feel comfortable, personally, as a man, so I was surprised when a male congregant said I was a feminine rabbi. Why do you say that? I asked him. Well, he said, you cry, you talk about feelings, you hug. I can't relate to that. I was stunned. So I was thinking, what is a male role model?

ZEEK: That question reminds me of the poet Robert Bly, who wrote a memoir titled Iron John about his need to recover his inner warrior. Feminists criticized him for believing that the only way to be masculine was to be aggressive, a warrior. Can't men find a way to be manly without masculinity being associated with aggression and dominance?

MB: That is what I don't know. I do think, though, that we have an imbalance in Jewish life. I believe that men don't see a place for themselves in Jewish life. Men are not needed anymore basically for anything--not for the minyan, not for the reading of the Torah, not for witnessing. In life in general, men are not needed not as providers, or even as the ones that will impregnate women. Sperm banks do that too.

If the paradigm of the provider, the hunter, the dominant one is past, we men have to generate another paradigm that is liberated from patriarchal weight.

ZEEK: Western culture tells us that men are violent, aggressive and women are peaceful, submissive. Why does that binary have to define us?

MB: Well, what do you think, as a feminist, that men could learn from the feminist movement?

ZEEK: I'm thinking about the physical body. The early feminists, the first wave, often hated their bodies because they saw the female body as soft and vulnerable and what they wanted was to gain power. But once women began gaining more power in culture, we were able to embrace our bodies. I wonder if that is what men need to do? If they need to--well, to be graphic--to reimagine the penis not as a weapon, as a symbol of power and dominance, but in some other way? To find a way to be proud of hardness and strength without it being tied to dominance?

MB: Maybe. What we need is a role model for that. 

ZEEK: Yes, perhaps someone like King David, who was warrior and lover, king and poet.

MB: I love the David imagery. Yes he was a poet, a lover and a king, though for some, he was not a very good king--he was too controlled by his passions. David was human.

The issue that we cannot escape from is the issue of power.

Are men disappearing from Jewish life or from the world of education, social work, etc, because women came in? Because we men don't know how to be without being in control? If that is the case we desperately need to change the paradigm, because nobody is going back to the caves of inequality; that was a human's rights war and it was won.

In the equation of equal but different there is an answer, but I don't know which one is yet.

ZEEK: Thank you, rabbi.

 

**

The opening image for this essay is Tom Drury as Tevye in a 2003 production

"Your life takes precedence." Jacob Lamdan looked up from the heavily used volume of Gemara, the Babylonian Talmud, lying on his desk. "That's it. Your life." 

Jay stared across the desk. "I know. It's a famous Gemara, but...." Jay boyishly scratched his hair, the looping brown curls at the top of his forehead yielding to the straightness of the rest of his closely cropped locks.

His teacher, sensitive to the nuances of his protegee's voice, looked up from the page and focused his sharp blue eyes on Jay. " ‘Ein ha baishan lomed. The shy one will never learn.' What's your question?"

Jay gazed at his book, its ink less than ten years old, in contrast to the century old ink on Lamdan's full set of the Vilna Shas. Jay's volume had been purchased at the end of the two years he spent learning at Yeshivat Shalvei Olam, in the Etzion bloc. Jay remembered his nervousness going into the bookstore on Me'ah Shearim together with one of the guys on his program. They knew that the ultra-Orthodox owners would look down on them in their modern garb, and would withhold their best deals. The proprietor told them it was bad luck to buy for yourself; a Shas is what a father-in-law should buy when a bocher becomes engaged.

Lamdan's Gemara was from a different part of the world. A few years ago, he had decided to take his three children and their families back to his hometown in Hungary. They had wandered into an antique store near the town, and there was the same edition of Gemara his grandfather had owned. Lamdan had to have it, though the shipping cost more than the volumes, it was a tangible remnant of his pre-war life. The books were covered in sumptuous brown leather with gold lettering; the print was clear, the pages still crisp and white.

"It just seems selfish, not trying to save someone else. Honestly, Rav Lamdan, if I were in that situation I couldn't sit and watch someone else die while I drank my water."

"Don't you see, he can't save the other person if he doesn't take care of himself. They can't both live with that amount of water, better for one to live than both to die."

"It doesn't feel right."

Lamdan raised his eyes from the volume and waited for Jay too, to look up from his text. "Jay, I would like you to go see Rabbi Stone. I believe he can tell you something that may interest you."

Jay gave Lamdan a quizzical look. "Stone? I don't need another job, I have a fellowship. He began to worry, does Lamdan not think my work is good enough to finish my dissertation and get an academic job?

"Just go. Call his secretary for an appointment." Lamden scribbled a phone number on a piece of legal paper, tore it off.

"Are you going to tell me what it's about?" Jay asked anxiously.

"Talk to Stone. Now let's learn, nu? Read the Tosafot please."

Monday morning, after his teaching assistant duties for an Introduction to Judaism class, Jay pedaled his bicycle north on Princeton-Kingston Road to the Institute for the Legacy of Rov Firesztein. As Jay rode, he could hear Lamdan saying in his kind but firm Hungarian accent, "Hashem gave us these capacities, mind and body. For what? To use. We must use our bodies as much as our minds." In his sixties, Lamdan still swam four times a week.

As Jay progressed north, he grew agitated. Would he find the place in time for his meeting? As he rode his bicycle further and the homes grew larger, their grass visibly greener in relation to the ministrations of better paid and more highly skilled landscapers, he felt more and more out of place.

In this part of Princeton, no one rode bicycles. His stood out, black with chipping paint and the orange electrical tape his roommates put over the frame one weekend when he was away. The black of the frame was a faded and lackluster color that looked worse next to the brilliant hue of orange tape. But the orange and black, Princeton colors, jazzed the bike up.

Jay looked again at the numbers on the houses. The magisterial homes in this part of town were set so far back from the street that it was impossible to see house numbers. Finally, he saw the house numbers stenciled on the curb for the benefit of ambulances and deliveries; they were already larger than the one he'd been given.

Jay turned his bicycle around and retraced his steps. The numbers began descending closer to the address he'd been given. As he turned back en route, he began thinking about how a big part of the life of a graduate student was not knowing where one was going. Was it to a life of one year positions, moving from place to place in the hopes of eventually securing a tenure track job? Or, even with outstanding publications, references, and teaching evaluations would it be to the eventual defeat of law school, the need to make a living and get married prevailing over the desire to have an academic career? As he pedaled back in the direction of Rabbi Stone and his Institute, Jay remembered Lamdan's saying that what Stone had to say could help him.

Princeton was full of these institutes, for this or that person, all coveting the 08540 zip code. They all hoped to be mistaken for "The Institute," Princeton's Institute of Advanced Studies, where the Rov had been a fellow the last ten years of his life, after his wife passed away. It was unusual for a religious figure to be at the Institute, but Rov Firesztein, also had a doctorate in philosophy, and like his French counterpart Emanuel Levinas, was a pre-eminent figure in both the philosophical and literary worlds.

After the Rov died, a number of his students asked his disciple, Rabbi Stone, to open an institute dedicated to him. The Advanced Institute declined to allow Rabbi Stone space to continue the legacy of their deceased fellow, believing that continuing the work of another, even an Institute Fellow, was derivative. It was decided that Princeton was the appropriate locale both because it was the last place the Rov had lived, and because all his books and papers were there. It was also, conveniently, the home of its main funder, who quickly made some phone calls, got pledges and bought a piece of property. The Institute was born.

When Jay arrived, he wiped the sweat from his brow with a towel he'd stashed in the backpack. Where to lean his bike? There was no bike rack in front of the formally landscaped house. He positioned it carefully in front of the manicured hedges without disturbing any other plantings.

He went in the heavy wooden front double door to a space that was a collision of public and private. The foyer was the central area of the house and arrayed around it were different rooms. In front of him was a large desk, which seemed to signal a reception area though there was no one sitting in it now. The desk was in front of a set of mahogany doors, more elaborate than the ones on the outside of the house. Jay thought there was something menacing in their heft; they appeared heavy enough to crush a person.

Continue reading...

Modern Orthodoxy: to many non-Orthodox Jews, this phrase is simply a contradiction in terms. How, after all, could the belief in divine authorship of the Tanakh be compatible with "modern" ways of looking at the world, "modern theoretical" frameworks through which truth is found, and "modern" life in general?

The new film, "The Lonely Man of Faith: The Life and Times of Joseph B. Soloveitchik," reminds us that we have a guide in answering this question. The Rabbi Joseph Soloveitchik--the pre-eminient modern Orthodox scholar of the past century--helped lead the modern Orthodox over this interpretive divide. The film, produced by Ethan Isenberg, takes the Rav's most famous philosophical treatise for its title, and gives us an impetus to look at the thought of the Rav once again.

1. Doublets and DH

When examining the Tanakh, contemporary religious studies scholars--contemporary being perhaps a less loaded term than "modern"--and some progressive clergy, subscribe to the Documentary Hypothesis (DH), which states that there are at least four writers of the Torah, all of whom wrote separate works that were later pieced together by a redactor.

Such scholars often cite "doublets" in which two different versions of the same story appear. By thorough linguistic analysis possible only for those with an extremely intimate knowledge of ancient Hebrew, believers in DH cite turns of phrases, syntactic patterns, and units of grammar to distinguish between sections they believe were written by different authors. To the non-Hebrew speaker, and even to Hebrew speakers who only know modern Hebrew, it's all a bit too specialized and confusing to follow; however scholar Richard Elliot Friedman in Who Wrote The Bible argues the case compellingly by italicizing the verses written by one proposed author while leaving the other verses in their regular form. When one reads the italicized verses on their own, followed by the non-italicized, the result is what appears to be two disparate and smoothly executed pieces of writing combined into one that is comparably confusing.  

Some non-Orthodox Jews love Torah despite its inconsistences; for other non-orthodox, DH can explain away the inconsistencies. For Orthodox Jews, however, Torah is the divine word of God. Inconsistencies cannot be explained away as the result of multiple authors. Their teaching is that there was ultimately only one Divine author and that the work, no matter how confusing, coheres into something comprehensible and profound.

This being said, it would be dangerously wrong to assume that Jews who acknowledge the divine provenance of the Tanakh are, or ever have been, passive in their approach to Torah study.  Historically, and still today, "doublets" give rise to midrash, interpretation. In the words of Dr. Jacob Neusner, professor of Jewish theology at Bard College:

Midrash minimizes the authority of the wording of the text as communication, normal language. It places the focus on the reader and the personal struggle of the reader to reach an acceptable moral application of the text. While it is always governed by the wording of the text, it allows for the reader to project his or her inner struggle into the text. This allows for some very powerful and moving interpretations which, to the ordinary user of language, seem to have very little connection with the text. The great weakness of this method is that it always threatens to replace the text with an outpouring of personal reflection. At its best it requires the presence of mystical insight not given to all readers.

It is through this lens that a Non-Orthodox Jew can begin to understand Joseph B. Solovetichik, author of The Lonely Man of Faith, a foundational text of modern Orthodox Jewish philosophy.

2. Becoming The Rav

Born in 1903 in the town of Pruzhany, whose governing state at the time was Russia, and today Belarus, Joseph S. Solovetichik was primarily educated as a child by his father Rabbi Moshe Soloveitchik, a highly respected Talmudic scholar of the time, but deeply influenced by his mother, Pesha, who impressed on her young son a taste for secular literature in multiple languages.  A scion of a rabbinic line on both sides of his family, the young Joseph Soloveitchik was also heavily influenced by his grandfather, Rabbi Chaim Soloveitchik of Brisk, who developed a revolutionary form of Talmudic learning. The "Brisker Method," as it came to be known, required Talmud students to divide copious tracts of Talmudic datum into clusters. Afterwards, these clusters would be examined and analyzed for precise definition, concept by concept. Before this point, contradiction and ambiguities were discussed and discussed and discussed until reconciliations could be found--or not found as the case might. Today, there are debates in the Orthodox world as to whether the Brisker method should be the sole method through which Talmud study should be undertaken. Its influence, however, is undeniable.

Forced to leave Russia, by foot, with his parents and siblings duing the Bolshevik revolution, the young Joseph would eventually land in Poland, where his mother, Pesha, prevailed upon her husband to allow their son to undertake a secular education. Later on, the Rav--an honorific recognizing brilliance amongst Orthodox Jews-- would study political science at the Free University of Warsaw, followed by philosophy at the University of Berlin. By this point, an ordained Rabbi, in Germany he come into contact with the works of Christian thinkers such as Søren Kierkegaard, Rudolph Otto, and Karl Bardt who followed the Neo-Kantian school of thought that stressed "the dialectical approach to reality."

In laymen's terms, "the dialectical approach to reality" means that opposing and contradictory ideas are not to be feared but rather need to be confronted head-on in order to find meaning, thus enriching religious life, not stifling it. Coming from a background of Talmudic studies, in which differing ideas and interpretations of Jewish law are central, it wasn't difficult for The Rav to apply neo-Kantian thought to Judaism.

3. Lonely Man of Faith

The Rav's most famous work, The Lonely Man of Faith, explores the meaning behind what Orthodox Jews might term the "seeming" contradictions in the two Adam stories in the book of Genesis, or what believers in DH would call "a doublet." The Rav alludes to DH early on when he writes:

We all know that the Bible offers two accounts of the creation of man. We are also aware of the theory suggested by Bible critics attributing these accounts to two different traditions and sources... we reject this hypothesis which is based, like much biblical criticism, on literal categories created by modern man.

Adam the first, writes The Rav, is commanded by God "to fill the earth and subdue it" while Adam the second is "charged with the duty to cultivate the garden and keep it." Adam the first represents "the natural work community," a collective of people whose goals can be measured through quantifiable standards, while Adam the second represents the "covenantal community" whose concern is to stave off "loneliness."  In simplistic terms that truly do not capture the depth of The Rav's thought, Adam the first is pragmatic, and his interest and fascination in the cosmos is largely caught up in this-worldly activities that can be anything from running a successful business to developing cures for illnesses to exploring space. He looks to the religious community for comfort, and through the mercurial lens that treats religious faith like a transaction: what can Judaism do for me? 

Adam the first is interested in just a single aspect of reality and asks one question only-"How does the cosmos function? He is not fascinated by the question "Why does the cosmos function at all?' nor is he interested in the question, "What is its essence?"  He is only curious to know how it works.... He is complete utilitarian as far as motivation, teleology, design and methodology are concerned....

In contrast, Adam the second is arguably more child-like, more innocent. He is fascinated by the cosmos for its own sake. His longing for answers does not come from any desire to use them to any other end but to be close with God.

[Adam the second] wants to know: "Why is it? What is it? Who is it? He Wonders: "Why did the world in its totality come into existence ? Why is man confronted by this stupdendous and indifferent order of things and events?' He asks: "What is the purpose of all this? What is the message that is embedded in organic and  inorganic matter and what does the great challenge reaching me from beyond he fringes of he universe as well as from the depths of tormented soul mean?

Soloveitchik does not favor either Adam; he merely believes that humans in the modern era are overly concerned with the utilitarianism of Adam the first to the detriment of Adam the second, and that the fullness of religious life comes from balancing both.  As such, Jews who do not subscribe to Orthodoxy and who are more likely to ascribe the Adam doublet to DH can still enjoy, and in fact, be inspired by Soloveitchik's examination of the Adams as powerful archetypes. 

Does the Rav ever--to borrow a phase from Jacob Neusner--"replace the text with an outpouring of personal reflection"? The beauty of his work is that he doesn't.  His personal reflections do not amount to more than a single page in this extended book-length essay, and when they do they are honest and succinct, without being maudlin or saccharine , and are used only to create a solid base upon which to build a philosophy out of loneliness.

I am lonely because in my humble, inadequate way, I am a man of faith for whom to be means to believe and who substituted "credo" for "cogito" in the time- honoured Cartesian maxim. [italics added]

4. Isenberg's Film

Film is not the best medium for philosophy; those wanting to get a sense of his philosophy are much better off reading his books, preferably about four or five times since each additional reading will undoubtedly yield something new. The aim of the film instead is the impact of the man. What works so well is the combination of audiovisual sources, of sound and imagery. The footage of Bolsheviks on galloping horseback on their way to wreak destruction; the photos of the young Rav as a bold and dark-eyed, handsome clean-shaven student, minus the yarmulke and his beautiful wife to be, Tonya,  in round spectacles who, at the time he met her, was earning her doctorate in education; the narration by multiple-award-winning actress Tovah Feldshuh; the jazz score in combination with photographic cityscapes of Berlin.

In the midst of all this, the audience learns about the debates his father had with his students about the Maimonides, debated the Rav overheard as a child; his years as a philosophy student in Berlin; his move with his wife and daughter to New York City where his father was teaching; his clashes with ultra-Orthodox Jewish leaders who opposed Zionism on the religious grounds that the messiah had not yet comes; the kashrut scandal in Boston in which he exposed for the world to see both the exploitation of factory workers and the reality that kashrut standards were not followed; his fights with the Boston Jewish to create a Jewish day school at a time of rife anti-Semitism; and his insistence on girl's and women's education in the Orthodox community.  The details covered, that might have well been dizzying in the hands of an inferior filmmaker, could not have been more smoothly employed under Isenberg's direction. In simple terms, regardless of religion or religious orientation, the film is a joy to watch.

In terms of his philosophy, can it have an impact outside the Modern Orthodox Jewish community?  Yes, if one is willing to suspend religious skepticism long enough treat Adam the first and Adam the second as archetypes. Should the modern reader subscribe to the Documentary Hypothesis, the very theory Solovetichik rejected, he or she can gain a greater appreciation through Solveitchik for the beauty and artistry in which "the redactor," the mysterious person who compiled these disparate Adam stories together, knit them into a single text. The redactor, acting in the capacity as a modern editor, allowed for the full nuances of ambiguity to be explored, culminating into Solveitchik's brilliant and poetic casuistry that can enrich Jews of all intellectual and spiritual orientations, so long as the said reader can let go of the idea of there needing to be a completely consistent text.