Portraits of the Holy Land – Sefirah Study
A CCAR and HUC-JIR Joint Commission Program

Week 1, Digest 1 - Messages:

From: Paul Golomb
Subject: On B. Ketubot 110b-111a

From: Dan Fink
Subject: Rabbi Yael Mizrachi, newly ordained at HUC-Jerusalem, enters Kaffit

From: Barry Chazan
Subject: Ketubot 110, Adin Steinsaltz, Hannah Senesh, and more

To add to our discussion, email your comment or question to sefirah@huc.edu.

I appreciate the notion of putting a diverse collection of individuals in a coffee house for a conversation.  When I gave talks on behalf of ARZA Canada, I would begin with imagining Rav Kook, Ahad Haam and Jabotinsky at a similar Jerusalem 'beit café.'  Of course, one the key elements in this exercise in creative imagination is that the personalities would actually engage in friendly and civil discourse.  That might unfortunately be a stretch beyond credulity these days.

In reacting to Prof. Chazan’s nicely constructed colloquy, let me focus on the talmudic passage that is only alluded to.  The gemara at the end of B. Ketubot (110b-112b) is generated by a mishna that states: One may be compelled to move to Eretz Yisrael, but may not be compelled to move away.  The sugya then includes this baraita: “One should always reside in Eretz Yisrael even in a city that is predominantly Gentile (idolators), and not live outside the Land, even in a city that is predominantly Jewish.”  The baraita reinforces its point by claiming: “For those who live in Eretz Yisrael are like those who have God, while those who live outside the Land are like those who have no God."

The lines Prof. Chazan quotes from 111a are part of a discussion between R. Zeira and R. Yehuda as they apparently react to the baraita.  The gemara first exclaims: “Could it be that those living outside the Land have no God!?”  R.  Yehuda goes so far as asserting: “Those who emigrate from Babylonia to Eretz Yisrael are transgressing a positive command.”

Even in Chazan’s gathering at Kaffit, the Sages serve a pivotal role between the biblical positions of Abraham and Isaiah, and the modern sensibilities of Herzl, Ben Gurion, Etgar and company.  The fundamental question is asked: what about the Land?  What exactly is its relationship to the people Israel?  Is it the place where God dwells (whether the people are there or not), an instrument for marking God’s plan for redemption (i.e. until ‘geulah’ there is ‘galut.’), or a pragmatic location for maintenance of a historic community (everybody has got to be someplace)?

In my admittedly limited reading of talmudic sources, I think the rabbis put forward all these questions, and then let the tensions remain within our hearts and minds.  At the Kaffit as well, I would imagine that all participants had their say, and then someone ordered another round of drinks, as someone else idly hummed ‘Am Yisrael Hai.’

Paul Golomb
Poughkeepsie, NY

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The party at Kaffit is interrupted by the arrival of Yael Mizrachi, a young Israeli rabbi newly ordained at HUC-Jerusalem.She orders a double shot of espresso and joins the conversation.

“Gentlemen, I see you are enjoying this beautiful spring evening.And what a fascinating discussion you are having. But what a lot of testosterone you’ve got here!Aren’t you missing the voices of half of am yisrael?Abraham, why didn’t you invite Sarah?After all, she made the same journey to the land that you did—without the benefit and security of having heard the promise directly from God. Isaiah, couldn’t you have extended an invitation to your fellow-prophet Devorah? After all, she fought hard for the land, and loved that little spot of it under her own palm tree.Rabbis, where are your wives and daughters, who loved eretz yisrael not as some theological abstraction but as stone and soil?And where are all the modern poets and politicians, Zionists all: Rachel and Zelda and Henrietta and Golda? Maybe if all of you guys would stop talking so much and listen to them you might learn something that isn’t written in all of your old books but is no less real for being between the lines.

“And as for that material from Rabbi Steinsaltz—I’ll have nothing of it!I get enough of that kind of anti-progressive, reactionary, essentialist naarishkeit from the rabbinate in this country! What is it doing here in a sefirah study for Reform rabbis, when it would posit that we are all just a bunch of pretenders?

“You know what really bugs me about R. Steinsaltz? He presents this material in a tone that claims a kind of encyclopedic objectivity. This is entirely disingenuous, for his writing is, beneath that façade, highly polemical.

“It is also simplistic. Do we really believe that a Jew is, at his or her core, just an (Orthodox) Jew and all the rest of who we are is just a bunch of superficial trappings? Is my being Jewish any more my essence than my being a woman? An Israeli? A musician?Life is much more complicated than this. My Jewish identity interacts with the other parts of me, and each part shapes the other. Out of this incredibly complex blend of experiences, desires, fears comes me: a Jew, an Israeli, a woman, a rabbi, a sister, a daughter, and so much more.

“Rabbi Steinsaltz does what so many of you thinkers have done over the eons: looked for the essence of Judaism in his own image. Well, I don’t have a little Adin Steinsaltz hidden in the core of my selfhood. I’m quite happy enough being Yael Mizrachi, thank you. Get over it, guys.”

And in the offices and kitchens and from behind the mechitzahs and all the rest of the places where the too often unheard half of the Jewish people lived and worked and prayed, a chorus of “amens” and “you go, sister!” was heard to support Rabbi Yael Mizrachi’s words.

Davar Acher: The following is posted on behalf of my hevruta partner, Dr. Janet Kaufman:

First, it is striking to me that AS consistently finds fault with there being no central authority in Judaism.  I can't help feeling as I read this that he would like to be appointed as the central authority.  It always seemed to me like that's one of our great strengths and distinctions, that because we do not have a central authority we can continually invent and reinvent ourselves, as well as sustain and tolerate difference.  Not always, of course, and not always well, but I've always felt immensely grateful that we don't have a pope or a "prophet", as in the LDS church, giving us a single definition of what it means to be who we are.

Second, as I told you, I really like the idea of calling Judaism a family as opposed to a religion, race, ethnicity, etc.  It's a great way of thinking about our people.  I'll use this in talking to Rachel about being Jewish.  And in connection with the questions that Barry Chazan raises, I like thinking about what it means to be a member of the House of Israel (unlike what it might mean to be a member of the House of Saud, for instance).  But AS is a bit scary on this, too.  He dangerously inverts de Beauvoir's contention that one is not born but becomes a woman when he says, "A Jew does not become a Jew, he is born one" (28).  He says that "the belonging itself is not dependent on the personal will" (28). If we use the metaphor of the family, then any family that adopts a child (a convert), or any family like ours--that adopts grandparents, in-laws, children--immediately doesn't count.

Rabbi Dan Fink
Boise, Idaho

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Dear Sefirah partners,

Thank you so much for joining the evening at Kaffit. You got into the spirit, understood that our purpose is to begin to engage in a discussion, and that in the weeks ahead we are going to flesh out ideas and hear many more voices.

The Ketubot elaboration by Paul Golomb was so important. I’m not an historian but I suspect that the rabbinic period is seminal in the sense that it had to face the core question that remains ours: how does a people that lives all over and is at home all over relate to Israel? Their answers may not apply today, but they posed the presenting problem.We’ll be dealing with this in the coming weeks.

Rabbi Steinsaltz wasn’t invited (and I don’t know if he would drink at Kaffit) but he got involved because his new book is on Barnes and Nobles tables in the New York area. It is an interesting case of a clearly and overtly defined ideologue entering the Pardes of practical issues that is the bailiwick of those of us who work with twenty-first century Jewish life. I imagine that it is his questions that might be of interest as much or more than the answers. Three of his ideas worth thinking about might be his notion of family, lack of leadership, and Jews as an adaptive people.

Paul Golomb’s guests (Achad Haam, Kook, Jabotinsky) are great ones and they would have had Kaffit rocking. There are so many voices on this subject. Sometimes the politicians can get a bit loud and take over and maybe for that reason, I avoided several of them.

A twenty-one year old voice contacted me this week and said, “Your Kaffit evening sounded really interesting, but the table needs to be bigger. I know you can't invite everyone, but you did leave lots of us out and we too have voices and views. I won't go into detail about all of us that you left out (but please know that we exist and we have voices), but at least let me say that you Jerusalemites are truly a deprived lot because you forget that - as Mother Rachel taught us at the Kinneret - there is also water, sea, and waves in Israel:

It is my second visit to Caeserea and I am even more impressed than the first time…When you are on the seashore, you recall the past, you think of the future. The horizon seems to open before you and you feel more determined than ever to accomplish something great and beautiful… When I see with what fury the foamy waters rush against the shore, and how they become silent and peaceful upon crushing against the sand, I think our enthusiasm and anger is not much different. As they roll they are powerful and vigorous and when they touch the shore, they break, they calm down, and they begin to play like small children on the golden sand.”
Hannah Senesh, Caeserea, February 4, 1942

Dan Fink gave powerful and creative voice to Rabbi Mizrachi’s seminal comments. They reflect a personal mea culpa owed and, I fear, an historical mea culpa of our people. One contemporary note I would mention is that probably the best poetic voices today dealing with the big and little issues in Israel are those of women, and for the next two weeks, we will enjoy our coffee with poets. For next week, Dr. Stanley Nash has invited Shaul Tchernichovsky, Rachel Bluvstein, Isaac Lamdan, and Uri Zev Greenberg to our table as we examine “Fulfillment and Healing in Zionist Poetry.” In week 3, Ezra Spicehandler will explore with us “Contemporary Poets: Development of Feminist Themes.”

Ultimately by the end of our weeks together the key issue may be the need for each of us to find our own personal voice.Enjoy the remaining days of Pesach. See you next week on Emek Refaiim Street.

Barry Chazan

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