Arthur Green - Judaism for the World

JUDAISM FOR THE WORLD

JUDAISM FOR THE WORLD

Reflections on God, Life, and Love

ARTHUR GREEN

Yale UNIVERSITY PRESS

New Haven and London

Published with assistance from the Mary Cady Tew Memorial Fund.

Copyright 2020 by Arthur Green.

All rights reserved.

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Library of Congress Control Number: 2020933184

ISBN 978-0-300-24998-9 (hardcover : alk. paper)

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10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

To my averim from our years together in Havurat Shalom

19681975

In enduring friendship

Contents

To the Reader

Welcome! The volume before you is a collection of essays, short teachings, insights, and readings of Jewish sources that have occurred to me after more than half a century as a Jewish seeker and teacher of Torah. These pieces are offered as a way of bringing you along on my own religious journey. Rather than providing answers to the great spiritual questions with which Ive grappled for so long, they are my way of sharing something of the feeling-tone of my own inner life and some ways I read the tradition that I have so long been privileged to teach.

I am an old guy now. The roots of my own journey go back even farther than the late 1960s, when spiritual quest first began to appear on the radar screen of an entire generation. Over the course of those years, I have taught Judaism, especially its mystical stream, to three generations of future rabbis and scholars. But I have also stood by, watching sadly, as three generations of Jewish seekers, in much larger numbers, have turned away from our native tradition and sought to sink spiritual roots elsewhere, primarily in gardens nurtured by teachings flowing from the East. I always carry such seekers in my heart when I write, partly because I feel myself to be one of them. Even though I did not make the journey eastward, I shared their sense of disappointment with the Judaism that we had once been taught. Fortunately, I was led early into the hasidic and mystical path, and that saved Judaism for me. But my heart still goes out to the many other Jewish seekers who were not given that opportunity. It is partly for them that I write.

A parallel group of readers I have in mind are seekers who do not come from any sort of Jewish roots, including Jews-by-Choice, others considering the path of conversion, curious non-Jewish seekers, and those of Jewish ancestry whose families are already so fully assimilated that they have lost any sense of meaningful Jewish identity. I have had the privilege of meeting many people coming from each of these groups, and I have taught quite a few of them. Each of these has found a way to Torah through a remarkable and unique personal journey. I treasure these students, and believe there are many more like them. If you are one of them, consider this a personal invitation.

In titling this book Judaism for the World, I am making a very specific claim, one that is obvious to me but needs to be stated clearly. I understand religion as a set of tools for the purpose of cultivating interiority, the life of the spirit. By this I mean an inward journey that leads one precisely toward self-transcendence, to an awareness of the universal Self in whose presence we exist. All the external forms of the traditionstudy, practice, prayer, poetry, music, celebration, rites marking the cycles of lives and the sacred year, and all the restare there in order to awaken a spirit that lies dormant within us, an inner self waiting to be called forth. The purpose of all true religion, including Judaism, is to help us discover and cultivate that divine spark, and then to build a society and civilization that recognize and treasure that spark in each human being. In the language of Judaism, both soul and image of God are used to designate it. Both of these terms are rooted in the opening narrative of Genesis, the tale of Adam and Eve in the Garden of Eden. By definition, then, they apply to all humanity.

This truth does not belong to Jews alone. I take it as my personal task to spread this understanding of religion as widely as I can. But I believe that is our collective mission as well. When we agreed to be called a kingdom of priests at the foot of Mount Sinai (Ex. 19:6), we committed ourselves to share the teachings we received there with all of humanity. In some of the dark ages of Jewish history (and there were many), voices arose that tried to apply terms like divine soul and image of God to Jews alone. They found it hard to believe that those who slaughtered and exiled us so mercilessly could be truly human, bearers of souls just as holy as our own. It is no surprise that ethnic and religious persecution should have given rise to xenophobia, the fear and hatred of outsiders. It is also no surprise that these claims should have gotten a new hearing in the years following the Holocaust. Brought out into the light, however, such narrowing views need to be seen for what they are: a violation of our Torahs truth. Why was Adam created singly? asks the Talmud. So that no person could ever say to another: My father is greater than yours (M. Sanhedrin 4:5).

Since religion is primarily addressed to this essential divine-human spirit, rather than to the rational mind, I understand its truth to dwell in an inner realm closer to art than to science. Religion has nothing it can prove; it can only witness. It is meant to be evocative, soul-awakening. Accordingly, I ask that you read what I place before you here as testimony, perhaps even as a work of art. You may find some parts of it surprisingly personal and revealing; it could not be otherwise. But it is also a reading of Torah, my language for that inward journey, as I have come to live and understand it over the course of a long lifetime, one filled with many blessings. I welcome you to come and read along with me, as I might welcome you to listen to my music or to view my set of paintings. I hope you enjoy this book and derive meaning from it, in your own way. But I hope for more than that. If my teachings speak to you, whoever you are and wherever you come from, I hope they will inspire you to create your own readings and understandings of this tradition. They will surely be different from mine, just as each of us is a unique human being. All our life experiences are there with us as we approach the world of Torah.

The language in which I write is very deeply and particularly Jewish. Although this book is presented in English and offered to the world, reaching beyond borders, I consider it to be an entirely Jewish book, and I look forward to offering it also in a Hebrew version. I have not watered down its Jewish content in reaching out to you. It is important to me that I speak to you from within the tradition of Judaism and Jewish mysticism. There may be concepts you encounter here that sound familiar from the study of other religions, or even from works of Western philosophy. Yes, I believe that truth is one, to be found in many places. But it is important to me that most of my insights grow out of my study of classical Jewish sources, especially those of the mystical tradition, and I seek to present them to you in a language derived directly from their own. Some readers, especially those new to Judaism and its forms of self-expression, may struggle here and there. Please stick with me; I promise you great reward. I have taken care to translate all the Hebrew terms, and there is also a glossary at the end of the volume. For those readers who are beginners to Judaisms spiritual language, I recommend my book