April 25, 2010

I took the red-eye from LA to New York right after Shabbos. I hate red-eyes. But I decided I had to present for the RCA convention, which will begin in about an hour.

As has already been reported in the Forward, there is something worrisome and dramatic that threatens to unfold over the next two days. As the rules of the RCA stand right now (and have stood since the beginning of time), there is no one transgression that automatically triggers expulsion from the organization. Not the repeated failure to use the RCA pre-nuptial agreement when performing a wedding, not the performance of conversion outside of the RCA system, not the halachik theorizing that there could be circumstances under which the Israeli government could be labeled as illegitimate, not even the public desecration of Shabbat. There is of course a committee empowered to discreetly investigate and punish “unbecoming conduct” on a case-by-case basis, as any organizational code of ethics demands. But there’s never been any one transgression considered so heinous, so threatening, so horrible, that it needed to be prohibited by the Constitution itself, under the penalty of immediate expulsion. But if things go badly over the next two days, there will suddenly be one. It’s not murder or adultery. It’s not tax fraud or child-abuse. It’s the ordaining of a woman.

There’s also a companion constitutional amendment being proposed. This one declares that any rabbi who merely belongs to a group that advocates for a leadership position for women that that the RCA doesn’t endorse, is disqualified from being an officer in the RCA. You can be an officer if you belong to a group that believes that the Mashiach has already come, or to one that advocates that Hesder students may disobey the orders of their commanding officers. Just not if you belong to one which pushes the envelope on women’s leadership.

As I’ve written in an earlier post, I believe, for Orthodox sociological reasons, that the time has not yet arrived for women’s ordination. Our community is just not there yet, and probably won’t be for a generation. What’s at stake over the next couple of days is not whether or not there will women rabbis today, tomorrow, or next week. What’s at stake is the humiliating possibility that the RCA will reveal itself to be single-mindedly obsessed with the fear of women in positions in leadership. This would discredit the organization in the eyes of so many progressive Orthodox Jews, and in the eyes of Jews who might be contemplating Orthodox affiliation. And these amendments, if passed, would likely leave in its wake, an RCA membership that is virtually indistinguishable from that of Agudah.

So I’m here in NY to cast my vote. I believe in my heart, and I pray, that the organization will do the right thing, and reject these amendments. I’ll keep you posted. .

Last week I wrote that it seemed from the torah that the goal of the Jewish people to be a “blessing to all the peoples of the world” as God tells Abraham, can only happen by going to the “land which I will show you,” and there becoming a “great nation.”  Why is it that being a Jewish landed nation is important beyond the obvious reason that the world and its nations can see us more clearly as a national example on par with other nations?  Is there something uniquely spiritual and holy, something uniquely “torahdik” about being a nation in a land? The following quote from Rav Kook I think may shed some light (my thanks to my teacher Rabbi Israel Samet for the quote):

אורות עמ’ קד
בראשית מטעו של העם הזה, אשר ידע לקרוא בשם הרעיון האלהי הברור והטהור בעת השלטון הכביר של האליליות בטומאתה-פראותה, נתגלתה השאיפה להקים צבור אנושי גדול אשר “ישמור את דרך ד’ לעשות צדקה ומשפט”. זוהי השאיפה, שבאה מכח ההכרה הברורה והעזה והתביעה המוסרית הכוללת והרמה, להוציא את האנושיות מתחת סבל נורא של צרות רוחניות וחמריות ולהביאנה לחיי חופש מלאי הוד ועדן, באור האידיאה האלהית, ולהצליח בזה את כל האדם כלו. למלואה של שאיפה זו צריך דוקא, שצבור זה יהיה בעל מדינה פוליטית וסוציאלית וכסא ממלכה לאומית, ברום התרבות האנושית, “עם חכם ונבון וגוי גדול”, והאידיאה האלהית המוחלטת מושלת שמה ומחיה את העם ואת הארץ במאור-חייה. למען דעת, שלא רק יחידים חכמים מצויינים, חסידים ונזירים ואנשי-קדש, חיים באור האידיאה האלהית, כי גם עמים שלמים, מתוקנים ומשוכללים בכל תקוני התרבות והישוב המדיני; עמים שלמים, הכוללים בתוכם את כל השדרות האנושיות השונות, מן רום האינטליגנציה האמנותית, הפרושית, המשכלת והקדושה, עד המערכות הרחבות, הסוציאליות, הפוליטיות והאקנומיות, ועד הפרולטריון לכל פלגותיו, אפילו היותר נמוך ומגושם.

“At the beginning of this nation’s formation, it knew how to call in the name of the pure idea of God at the time of the controlling ideology of idol worship, there was revealed in it them a desire to form a large human group that would “guard the way of God, to do justice and righteousness.”  This is the desire that comes from the clear, subtle, ethical recognition of the need to take man from under the terrible burden of physical and spiritual pain and to bring man to a life of freedom full of grace and kindness, in the light of Divine ideology, and through this to redeem the whole person.  But to fulfill this yearning there must be a community that has a politic, country, and culture.  A “big nation that is wise and intelligent.”  This encompassing divine ideology must rule there and enliven the people and its land in its light in order to know that not just wise and holy individuals alone live in the light of this Divine ideology but also whole nation with elaborate cultures and a functioning society, from the intellectual, holy, and aesthetic to the vast systems -social, political and economic, to the proletariat and all its sub-sections, even the lowest and poorest of them.”  (Orot 204)   

Rabbi Kook here seems to be saying that the torah and a relationship to God and Godly ideas can not be achieved solely as an individual or even as a community.  It takes the complexities and structures of nationhood to truly achieve it.

In addition to this second outwardly oriented national reason for the importance of a Jewish nation state in the Land of Israel, another important reason for the existence of a Jewish nation state I think, is as a light unto itself.  Some have argued that the Torah, though given in the desert, is clearly written for the Jewish nation living as a people in the Land of Israel, and thus can only truly be observed as just that.

The Ramb”n is the most famous opinion who holds that mitzvoth kept outside of the Land of Israel are not truly obligatory mitzvoth.  That settling the Land of Israel is equal to all the mitzvoth and that outside of Israel mitzvoth are done only so we do not forget them but are not really an obligation in the same way as those performed within the land are. 

Why is this so?  It’s a holy land but how does that change the nature of specific person oriented mitzvoth such as matza, shofar or tifilin?  Such mitzvot do not seem tied to the land. 

Perhaps if the mitzvoth are not just meant to be about an individual’s soul and relationship to God but about a landed nation’s function visa via other peoples, this would explain why each mitzvah, how each citizen acts, is in turn an inextricable part of the whole, like a mosaic or a Surat painting, together coloring the world in the shades of Torah.