Are You Ready To Humble?

Not too long ago, I discussed Isaiah 7:14 and the prophesy of Immanuel’s birth, which Jews and Christians read quite differently. The passage speaks of a child to be born to either a young woman or a virgin, depending on the translation. If the folks on the other side of the theological divide are right about this, we Jesus-deniers have some hellfire in store. But fear not! I called upon my limited language skills and concluded not that the Christians are wrong but in this they are a little weak on being right.

I’d like to look at this controversy from a different perspective, and something else I described in an earlier chat can be instructive. On my way to visit a friend, I noticed a humongous yard sign that shouted out in bold letters: “Boys have a penis, girls have a vagina.” Next to the main message, but in smaller type, it read “Teach Your Children…”, giving appropriate credit to Crosby, Stills, and Nash. The neighbors all had those “Hate Has No Home Here” signs, and I can only imagine how much fun they must have at their block parties.

I reached out to Graham to see if he endorsed this use of his lyrics, and one of his posse told me that “it is very difficult to police every misrepresentation of his material.”

Some weeks later, I noticed that the transphobic sign had been defaced, and I shared this bit of news with a few of our shul mates. One of them, a gentleman I admire very much, responded that the message was not in fact transphobic. Not surprisingly, I didn’t agree.  If you plant a sign like that in front of your house, you’ve moved a step or two beyond kumbaya.

Nonetheless, our friend is of very high moral character and is not in the least bit batshit crazy. Which leads me to ask, can you reject the notion of gender identity being distinct from biological sex and not be transphobic? I might feel differently if I were trans, but I think it’s possible. After contemplating my navel – an innie, not an outie – I’ve come up with three groups that might fit the bill.

First, suppose you’ve never crossed paths with anyone who wasn’t cisgender. You might not have any strong opinion about bathroom bills, although you can see both sides. Perhaps you even sat through our shul’s pride panel, listened to the dolls, tried to keep an open mind, and still came out unconvinced. I think you’re wrong, but wrong is not the same thing as hateful.

Alternatively, let’s say you don’t accept the science. At first glance, it seems that you might be on shaky ground. There is a growing consensus that gender dysphoria is real and has a strong biological component. For that matter, the same can probably be said about sexual orientation. Still, there is probably a double-blind repeatable peer-reviewed study out there suggesting that a vanishingly small percentage of people with certain genetic markers and exposed to specific environmental factors can in fact pray away the gay. As anyone who’s ever watched Star Trek can tell you, we’re only one mad scientist away from having our understanding of the universe overturned. If that’s where your head’s at, I think you’re wrong, but wrong is not the same thing as hateful.

Finally we come to those whose faith leads them to reject any possible haziness relating to male and female. In this case, it’s not my place to call you wrong. Just as it is hateful to me to be disrespected for any reason, I try to avoid disrespecting anyone for their faith or their identity. I don’t always succeed.

And this brings us back to Isaiah 7:14. Christians would explain that faith assures them that Immanuel is Jesus. It’s in one of their Christmas carols: “O come, O come, Immanuel, and ransom captive Israel, that mourns in lonely exile here, until the Son of G-d appear.” Seems definitive. For sure, whenever Christians read something about wood or water in the Tanach, they’re sure it’s a reference to the Cross or Baptism. It seems a bit much to my Jewish ears, but some of our own midrash can be imaginative.

Am I making too much allowance for faith? Faith can be a fig leaf for bigotry. It can also short circuit critical thinking. Some fine folks don’t give a second thought about forcing their own faith on others. Who wouldn’t want Hashem on their side? Of course, Honest Abe did say something about praying he was on Hashem’s side, but that’s just too woke for the current zeitgeist.

Still, faith can be wonderful. One of my favorite stories from Hebrew school is about Nachshon. When Pharoah had the Israelites trapped between his army and the Sea of Reeds, Moses called upon the people to march into the water. To be sure, this was a problem. I doubt that there were any JCC’s in Egypt, meaning our ancestors hadn’t learned to swim. But no fear! Nachshon was there to lead the way. He marched right in. As soon as the water was just past his chin, the sea split. We hear the echo of his gurgling and near drowning every time we excerpt the Song of the Sea in the daily Shacharit and Maariv services. May the Almighty grant me such faith.

Can we go overboard with faith? I think we can find an answer in our most important prayer, the Amidah. Also known as the Shemoneh Esrei, the Eighteen. That’s a bit of a misnomer – there are nineteen blessings. It was originally eighteen. At some point, our sages included the “Birkat HaMinim” in which we praise G-d for humbling the arrogant.

I’ve heard three explanations for why this was added. First, it was an attempt to weed out those pesky adherents of the Jesus Movement. Next, it shamed informers who betrayed Jews to the authorities. Finally, there were schmucks at the doors of the sanctuaries taunting the worshippers, and this was a way of flipping the bird at the miscreants.

Those are all just dandy, but that’s not what I have in mind as I chant the Heretics Prayer. This is my own interpretation, so be sure to write this down and give me credit when repeating it to your own disciples. It’s my arrogance that needs a little humbling. May the Almighty prevent me from being too sure of myself. Especially when I express my opinions. Even more so when I couch opinions in terms of my faith.

Come to think of it, I sure do express a lot of opinions here at Torah on Tap. What’s going on with me? It should be obvious. It’s the same reason I leyn Torah nearly every Shabbat, and certainly the same impulse that drives me to sing in the shower. I just love the sound of my own voice. Check this out: Testing, testing, 1, 2, 3… The rain in Spain falls mainly on the plain. My dog has fleas. La, la, la! Oh, that’s beautiful!

It’s fascinating to consider the similarities and differences among faiths, and it’s particularly interesting to focus on those between Judaism and Christianity. I have been heavily and happily influenced by the writings of both Amy-Jill Levine, a nice Jewish girl who is a professor of New Testament studies at the Vanderbilt University Divinity School, as well as Diarmaid MacCulloch, who comes from a long line of Anglican priests but declined ordination himself due to a dispute over the sexuality of clergy. He bats for the other team. I’m talking about cricket – he is English.

If I say anything remotely scholarly about Christianity, it’s almost certainly from something I read in one of their books.

As much as I like discussing this stuff, I really hate attempts to convert me. These missionaries might assure me that it’s for my own good – after all, they just want to save my soul. But after all those forced baptisms, kidnapped children, censored liturgy, burnt Talmuds, squalid ghettos, not to mention occasional pogroms, I find it hard think about any good intentions. I respond the same way I do to all those cute gay guys who want to bottom for me: “Thanks, but I’m not interested.”

Unless I’m feeling a bit cranky. In which case it’s: “O, ye of little faith! You’re so unsure of what you believe that you’re trying to convince yourself by persuading me.”

But I digress. Don’t I always?

Devarim 18:21-22 states that we should only accept a prophet if his oracles come true; otherwise, he is false and not to be followed. Good stuff for sure, but it sounds like you should only bet on the Mets when they win. What about Nachshon? If the water hadn’t parted, he might have made it into our oral traditions for backing the wrong horse.

So, what about Isaiah’s prediction of Immanuel? I imagine that if you dipped into Sefaria, you could find all sorts of examples of the truth of this prophesy. Should the birth of Jesus be included in that list? There might be problems with that. Deuteronomy directions on separating the wheat from the chaff prophet-wise seem to refer to events that happen, if not in real time, then within living memory. The manger in Bethlehem was over 700 years later. So there!

Except, how about this? I am a Zionist through and through, all the way down to my missing foreskin. But I don’t accept that the 3rd Commonwealth is the fulfillment of Moshiach and the ingathering of the exiles. I’m hardly alone in that. Indeed, many Jews opposed Zionism because Theodor Herzl was clearly not the Messiah. The establishment of the Jewish State is the answer to our dreams, but not the consummation of prophesy.

But even if it were, this took place nearly 2000 years after Isaiah – hardly within living memory.

Christian theologians say that the New Testament is the culmination of what they call the Old Testament. I don’t buy that, but I don’t know how anyone could read Christian Scriptures without a good understanding of what we call the Tanach. This is especially true of Paul’s Epistles. Originally known as Saul of Tarsus, he has been described as intelligent, unyielding, driven, misogynistic, homophobic, and closeted. He had been studying to become a member of the Sanhedrin and was certainly familiar with Halachah and the many controversies of the Second Temple Period.

But let’s go back a few millennia before that. When G-d began to create heaven and earth, Adam and Eve were set down in the Garden of Eden. If it hadn't been for that woman, we’d still be there without giving a thought to the sweat of our brows. The Christians call that Original Sin. That’s where the Nazarene comes in. A little splash of water, or maybe some justification by faith, and we’re good to go.

However, we Jews don’t see it that way. Sure, we ruminate on the sins of the father being visited upon the son and just what that means, but we’re more likely to dwell on our ancestors’ merits. One of the prayers we say upon rising is to thank the Almighty for the pure souls we’ve been given. That means a clean start, but the rest is up to us. This might even have been a direct rejoinder to the idea of Original Sin.

Then there’s the Trinity. Some of our landsmen snicker at that – how could three for the price of one be monotheism? But we should notice the logs in our own eyes. Kabbalah describes the ten Sefirot through which the Almighty interacts with the world. And fun fact: not all people who identify as Christian accept the Trinity. Even those who do have spilt much ink over just what the Trinity is. I’m not going there. If we went down that rabbit hole we’d be here until Tu B’Shevat.

Let’s look at something a little simpler. Catholics in particular talk about Mary, Mother of G-d, and her Perpetual Virginity. Not all Christians believe that and picture Mary as another nice Jewish girl, just like Amy-Jill. The medieval scholar John Wycliffe compared Mary to a purse that once carried gold but is now empty. So, no special veneration required. Bernard of Clairvaux offered a counter-image of Mary as a sack that had held fragrant spices and retained their pleasant odor even after being emptied. Perhaps some special veneration is called for.

This brings us to the Immaculate Conception. Nice Jewish boy that I am, I always thought that this referred to the Virgin Birth. My bad. It’s all about Mary. If she gave birth to the Savior, what about Eve’s Legacy? Wouldn’t the child be blighted with it? Not at all! Mary was conceived without the stain of Original Sin – in other words, immaculately.

As it turns out, this wasn’t a part of Catholic dogma until about 500 years ago. The idea came out of the Franciscan Order. But, and this is a big deal, the Dominican Order really hated the Franciscans and were not so quick to go along with the innovation. The Dominicans claimed that there was nothing special about Mary’s conception. Rather, she was immediately purged of Original Sin after conception by Grace of G-d.

So, these guys were fighting over a few milliseconds. Forgive my blasphemy, but this sounds like rabbis arguing about how many angels can dance the hora on the head of a pin.

Now, back to the Virgin Birth. Of course, Judaism doesn’t accept the idea, but Moslems do. They consider Jesus to be one of the most important prophets.

By Islamic tradition, the Kaaba in the Sacred Mosque was originally built by Abraham and Ishmael. When Muhammad, peace be upon him, entered Mecca after the peaceful conquest of the city, he went to the Kaaba and cleansed it of all idols. He left up an image of Mary and the baby Jesus.

The Quran does accept the Virgin Birth, but not in the same way Christians do. That whole Son of G-d business – not for them. The notion that the Almighty inseminated Mary is way too anthropomorphic. If Allah wanted Mary pregnant, He would will it, and that would be that.

Onto another controversy over faith: the Eucharist is basically just the breaking of bread and is an important sacrament for many Christians. However, they don’t all think of it as something supernatural. Some view it as a symbol or reminder of the Last Supper and the misunderstood Jew’s suffering. In this sense, it’s not all that different from tzitzit, the fringes we are commanded to attach to our tallises to help us remember G-d’s many instructions.

But if you ask my Catholic wife about transubstantiation, she’ll tell you that it’s the miraculous transformation of the communion wafer into the Body of Christ. Something like that happens every Oneg Shabbat, when the Hamotzi miraculously transforms challah into bread. Well, maybe that’s a bad comparison – it’s sure to cost me a few nights on the couch. But you get the point. Or maybe you don’t. I usually don’t have a point, so let’s just leave it there.

But even Christians who believe in transubstantiation can’t always get on the same page. Just like Jews, Christians were influenced by Hellenists. Some of them tried to explain it with reason, borrowing heavily from Aristotle. I won’t get into the nuts and bolts, but if any of you have a background in Java or C++, it sounds a lot like object orientation.

However, just like many Jews could not stomach Maimonides’ rational explanations of miracles, many Christians were shocked, shocked at any attempt to explain transubstantiation through anything but faith.

I suppose we could try to settle this by placing one of the transformed wafers in a mass spectrometer, but that would be quite dangerous. Many, many Jews were murdered over false accusations of desecrating the Host. And in any event, it might not be that useful. There’s still the unsettled matter of whether Jesus is present spiritually or in earthbound flesh. Go figure.

As you can see, there are a great many intersections, reflections, and complete incongruities between Judaism and the many flavors of Christianity. For that matter, when I first read the Quran, I didn’t see all that many differences between our faith and theirs. Perhaps I’ll delve more deeply into that at some time in the future.

After all this, what’s the bottom line? Are Christians right about Isaiah 7:14 or are they reading something into the text that just isn’t there? I’m not even going to try to square that circle. And I know what you’re all thinking. There I go again: rattle off a bunch of references, some of them obscure, throw in a few glib observations, just to leave you all hanging - another case of discourse interruptus. But it’s different this time. Take a closer look at my motive. Hopefully, I can manage some humility and avoid the arrogance inherent in trying to answer such a complicated and controversial question. How did I do?

Leaving the Nazarene aside, consider how some folks justify their opinions, whether based on experience, science, or faith. It’s not unusual to hear someone say: “This one detail explains it all. It’s dispositive. Here I stand; I can do no other.” That’s not necessarily a bad thing, although life can get complicated, and there may be other factors which need to be considered.

But: we live in a time of rampant disinformation. Patrick Daniel Moynihan, of blessed memory, may well have been wrong. Perhaps we are all entitled to our own alternative facts. Still, can judgement be clouded by motivated reasoning? Consider this example.

I’m probably preaching to the celestial choir, but the Holocaust was uniquely horrible. Furthermore, it in fact happened. Still with me?

A book recently came out: “Stolen Headstones: One Family's Forgotten Holocaust Story” by Ari Schneider. The author investigates his family’s past and discovers that his grandfather’s recollections of  atrocities he witnessed and acts of heroism he took part in were all made up. Sure, the old man had to hide with a gentile family during the war, and he lived through a frightening and dangerous time, but the rest of it was all embellished. Schneider hesitated before publishing the work – can’t you just picture some denier saying: “See, even this Jew admits that it was all a lie.”

The Germans controlled the ghettos though Judenrats, or Jewish Councils. Anyone who didn’t live through the Shoah should be very careful making judgements about them. After Eichmann’s trial, Hannah Arendt claimed that the Nazis could not have killed as many as they did without the Judenrats. I don’t know if she was speaking as a matter of fact or out of scorn. With my limited understanding of the events, I’m confident that Adam Czerniaków, the head of the Jewish Council in the Warsaw Ghetto, did the best that he could under the circumstances. I would not say the same about Chaim Rumkowski, the head of the Jewish Council of Elders in the Łódź Ghetto. This was related by Dr. Israel Milejkowski who was not enamored of Rumkowski:

“Rumkowski’s basic premise is that the Ghetto-form enables those in the position of leadership to do something creative for the Jews condemned by fate to live there. He holds that much can be achieved for the Jews. Indeed, they can be transformed into an industrious, productive and creative people. He justifies the Ghetto’s existence with its physical and spiritual walls, in that it can be useful for the Jews.”

So, not all different from work requirements for Medicaid.

As Europe emerged from the Middle Ages, the Jewish experience was filled with both the progress of Emancipation and regressive bouts of persecution. Our ancestors coped in different ways. Many shunned modernity entirely. Others assimilated, intermarried, or perish the thought, turned to the Reform Movement.

Rabbi Avigdor Miller, he should rest in peace, was very respected among the Haredim, other Jews, and by me. He considered the Shoah in light of these wayward Jews and decided it was all a kindness. The Almighty saved the victims from sin and ensured their reward in the World to Come.

One last thing: “The Portage to San Cristobal of A. H.” by George Steiner is a work of counterfactual historical fiction in which Hitler survives the war and escapes to the jungles of South America. The Israelis catch up with him and instead of extraditing him, they hold an impromptu trial in the middle of nowhere. Hitler defends himself, claiming that the State of Israel could not have been created without him. In fact, that’s what he had in mind all along.

Perhaps there were some very fine Nazis after all.

Okay, this is all over the top, and I doubt I’ve changed any minds here. But it’s clear how someone on the Alt-Right could run with this. It’s recently been suggested that the Smithsonian is spending too much time on how bad slavery was. Perhaps Yad Vashem is overly focused on the Shoah.

So, garbage in, garbage out. Our biases can lead us to accept all sorts of bad information, which can in turn lead us to espouse all sorts of strange opinions. But what makes us want to express our opinions, strange or otherwise? Perhaps there’s no motive at all – just making conversation. Or we might be trying to convince an interlocuter of the rectitude our own truth. Could be we’re just trying to help someone out, like those friendly Christian proselytizers. On darker occasions, we may be in touch with our inner troll, trying to own someone on the other side of the cultural mechitzah. Now there’s a good reason to exercise a little humility.

Now before I finish, I’ll express one last opinion, and you’ll see how it brings out the velvet in my pitch perfect baritone. I’ll do my best to keep a lid on the arrogance.  Here goes.

No surprise here: I was never a big fan of Louis Farrakhan. Back in the eighties, he made the news by calling Judaism a “gutter religion”. He immediately claimed that he was misquoted and in fact said “dirty religion”. I was not impressed with the correction, but I won’t dwell on it here. At the time, I knew a wonderful Jamaican woman, and since so many people from her home and other Caribbean islands supported Farrakhan, I asked her about him. She explained that you had to understand just how good people felt after listening to Farrakhan. She was probably right, but I’m not sure where to go with that. History is surely replete with charismatic speakers who know just the right thing to say to an audience, and whom they should blame for their problems.

We’re going through a time in which White Christian Nationalism has taken control of the federal government, and it’s getting to be quite Nazi adjacent. There’s corruption, incompetence, grift, and cruelty on a scale not seen outside a bad comic book. Maybe you don’t agree with that characterization, and that’s fine. Or maybe you accept it but are willing let it go because the current administration is so good for Israel. That’s not quite as fine. We bleeding hearts used to get our panties all in a twist when our government supported repressive regimes because of geopolitical considerations. Should we let it go just because the regime doing the oppressing is our own American government?

A dear friend, who is batshit crazy and a few Jews short of a minyan, insists that Dopey Don is the best thing that ever happened to Israel. I don’t agree. Israel cannot be destroyed by its enemies. Israel can only be destroyed by Israel. And the Felon-in-Chief, with his swaggering claim of being a war hero, is playing into that. I am grateful for his role in the return of the hostages, but I think he’s engaging in a bit of truthful hyperbole when he says, “At long last we have peace in the Middle East”.  If it turns out that he’s right, I’ll buy one of those red hats. Of course, I’ll have to hide it from my wife.

But enough praise for the Orange Moses. I’m making myself sick.

Let me say it loud and clear: the American mind is capitulating. It is capitulating out of weakness, out of sloth, out of apathy, out of lack of imagination (it will be the task of some future generation to establish the reasons for this disgraceful capitulating).

Okay, I didn’t write that last part. It’s from “The Auto-Fe of the Mind”, written by Joseph Roth in 1933 during his exile in Paris. And he was referring to the European mind, not the American mind. My bad.

Of course, I imbibe nothing but fake news from the lamestream media. However, constantly complaining about fake news is a pretty lamestream way to avoid dealing with facts. And to borrow a phrase from Joyce Vance, that woke Jew lawyer you might have seen on MSDNC, I’m trying to convince the inconvincible, a lost cause. Which makes all this just rage and fury signifying nothing.

So, was I humble enough? Or maybe just a tad arrogant? I bloviate, you decide. It’s dandy if you disagree with me. It’s far less dandy if we’re so afraid to rock the ark that we won’t discuss these issues among members of our faith community.

Now, go and study.