Rabbi Benjamin Adler |  THE TANNERY AND THE SCHOOL

In December at my monthly Ripped from the Headlines class at Panera, we discussed the issue of hydrofracking, the process of injecting water and sand mixed with chemicals into the ground to break up rock and extract natural gas. The method is controversial because many believe that the process contaminates ground water and causes small earthquakes. We focused on an article from the December 1, 2011 issue of the New Jersey Jewish News, "Fracking a wedge issue among Jews." The piece mentioned a group, Jews Against Hydrofracking, whose member violated one of my pet peeves about Judaism. She was quoted as saying "fracking does not align with any Jewish values". What values is she talking about? Who defines these values and how do we agree on them? Unfortunately it is all too common today to hear people say "Judaism stands for this" or "Jewish values support that". To me this is lazy and distorted thinking. Judaism is a diverse tradition; it does not speak with a unified voice on almost anything. There is no one way to look at an issue from the Jewish perspective.

I don’t mean to pick on Jews Against Hydrofracking, especially because I share many of their concerns about the process. But why does the group have to focus on Jews? Why isn’t it called Human Beings Against Hydrofracking? What is specifically Jewish about a concern for the environment? In fact, Judaism has much to contribute to the question of ecology, but it doesn’t all fall into the pro-environmentalist camp. The Jewish approach to any issue is to balance competing values. In the case of environmentalism, Judaism takes into consideration the needs of the community, the needs of the businessperson to conduct a livelihood, and the needs of individuals to lead pleasant lives.

Take for example the case of your local tannery. We get our leather from the department store packaged nicely and neatly into coats and shoes. The animal from which it came was probably killed and processed hundreds or thousands of miles away. But in the ancient world leather was produced locally, and that process, owing to the many chemicals used, is a smelly one. The Mishna, the ancient code of Jewish law, declares that a tannery must be placed at least fifty cubits (about 80 feet) east of a city (Baba Batra 2:8). Why the east side? In ancient Israel, the winds blow in from the west, from the Mediterranean Sea. If your local tannery is on the west side, you are likely to smell curing animal skins all day long. Not exactly a boon to economic development or tourism for the city.

So it would seem that Jews, or at least the rabbis of the Mishna, really are against fracking, or any kind of industry that would degrade the quality of life for residents of an area. But the tradition is not so simple. What if the activity that is bothersome also serves a critical function for the community? The Mishna (Baba Batra 2:3) also brings the case of someone in a common courtyard (essentially a modern-day apartment building) who wants to open a shop. The neighbors can protest on the grounds that they will not be able to sleep with all of the people coming and going. This seems to reinforce the message of the case of the tannery. But then the Mishna says that no one can protest "because of the noise of children." What does this mean? If someone wants to open a school in a common courtyard, no one may protest, even if the sound of the schoolchildren will bother them. The community values the education of its children and individuals must live with the inconvenience of the noise they make. That is the price one pays for living in an educated society.

What does this have to do with fracking? Judaism balances conflicting values. On the one hand individuals are entitled to live without pollution of water, air, or sound waves. On the other hand society must be allowed to develop, whether through industries like tanning or through education. The question that animated the rabbis thousands of years ago, and us today is, how do we best balance these conflicting interests? What do we value more? Our need for energy or our need for clean water? The answers are not so simple. Everyone wants clean drinking water, but are we willing to diminish our consumption of energy? Will we commit to driving less, using less heating or air conditioning?

Jewish texts and tradition are useful tools in modern debates like the one over hydrofracking not because they provide easy or pat answers. They are helpful because they can clarify the questions and force us to confront the precise values under discussion. Just like the rabbis 2,000 years ago, we struggle to find balance in a world of extremes.

Bivracha,
Rabbi Benjamin J. Adler

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January 2012
In the Name of the Father

In November, over a dozen members of our community made a trip to Morristown to visit Our Place, a drop-in center for the homeless. It was a special night, one we will not soon forget. The center is run by Muslims Against Hunger, and at the event were Jews, Christians, and Muslims. Some of us were there as part of the Weekend of Twinning between synagogues and mosques. Others were there to get a warm meal on a cold night. Together we made a statement that people from different backgrounds, circumstances, and religions can come together to serve a meal, listen to each other, and reach out beyond our community.

With so much keeping us apart today, now more than ever we need reasons to get together with those who are different from us. Interfaith work is a great way to do that. Often, we try to bring religions together by emphasizing something we share in common. For Jews, Christians, and Muslims, the common denominator is our shared forefather, Abraham. We all have a reverence for this beloved ancestor. But as the Biblical scholar Jon Levenson has pointed out, Abraham is truly the point of departure for the three religions. Abraham has represented the ways in which our faiths are so different, not the same. We all revere Abraham, but if you asked a Jew, a Christian, and Muslim to describe this person you would get three different portraits of the man.

We call Abraham the first Jew when in fact, according to the plain meaning of the Torah, he did not form a new religion at all. Instead, Abraham was January 2012 White Meadow Temple  The Bulletin Tevet/Shevat 5772

the first to establish a family that was committed to a covenant with God. Even though Abraham could not have been a Jew – there was no Jewish community around to join, and no Torah to follow – nevertheless our tradition holds that he was the founder of our religion. How is this possible? According to the Midrash, Abraham followed the Torah, both the written and the oral, and understood all of Jewish tradition before it was given at Sinai. Of course, this is a fanciful notion, but it is important in understanding the rabbinic view of Abraham as the founder of our people. If Abraham was beloved by God without upholding the Torah, why should we make sacrifices for the Torah?

For Christians, Abraham was the perfect man of faith. It was precisely because he did not have the Torah and its laws and yet still found favor with God that he holds a special place in Christianity. They point to Genesis 15:6, "And [Abraham] believed in the Lord; and He counted it to him for righteousness" as an example that Abraham was chosen by God only because of his belief, not because of any deeds that he performed. Abraham becomes the first Christian precisely because he had no need for the laws of the Torah.

Muslims do not count the Bible as a holy book, but Abraham does appear in the Koran, and in it he is a man who has accepted Islam as his faith. The Koran already knew of the debate on Abraham’s religious identity. "O People of the Scripture! Why will you argue about Abraham, when the Torah and the Gospel were not revealed till after him? Have you then no sense?" (Sura 3:58) In fact, according to the Koran, Abraham, in having passed many divine tests, was the first to submit to one God, that is, the first Muslim.

So will the real Abraham please stand up? In fact, there is no real Abraham. Or rather, there was a real Abraham who lived so long ago that his legend is more important than his reality. Our Abraham is different from our neighbor’s, which is why interfaith dialogue is so difficult. We can’t rally around Abraham because we can’t agree on his meaning. Abraham, as a symbol of each unique religion, can be a divider rather than a unifier.

And yet, we have to come together to find our similarities. Perhaps Abraham can be turned into a symbol not of unity but of change. The one thing that we can all agree on is that Abraham looked at the world and said, "This has to change. Everyone worships idols, but I am going to recognize one God." The details of how he got to God may be different depending on the religion, but we all agree on the importance of his monotheism.

When we look around today we can’t but echo the sentiment, "This has to change." We can’t keep going to war over religion. Instead we need to talk. This month we as a community have been invited to "Abraham’s Table", an interfaith dialogue and dinner with Jews, Christians, and Muslims on Tuesday, January 10th, 5:30 PM at the First Presbyterian Church of Rockaway (details later in the Bulletin). Come join me as I read one of the opening prayers and we try to overcome our millennia of differences in the name of Abraham, whoever he may be.

Bivracha,
Rabbi Benjamin J. Adler

December 2011
Looking Outward

Denominational Jewish life in America is under attack on a number of fronts. Because of the openness of this country, people have less and less of a need to affiliate with institutions that help them express their ethnic and religious identity. The economic situation in America has put pressure on so many of us to choose carefully the places we put our economic resources. We want to make sure we are truly getting something for our money. Unfortunately, the Reform and Conservative movements have not done a successful job at proving the worth of their services and programs, and so many communities and individuals have decided that affiliation is not necessary for their Jewish lives.

These trends affect every aspect of the Jewish community, from a small individual synagogue to the United Synagogue of Conservative Judaism, the large collection of hundreds of North American Conservative shuls. But what is to be done about this decline in affiliation? That is the $64 million question, and it has spurred major attempts at change in both the Reform and Conservative movements. But despite the effort, is anything really different?

I considered this question recently as I listened to a presentation by Yizhar Hess, the executive director of the Masorti/Conservative movement in Israel. The contrast between the transformation of the movement in Israel, and December 2011 White Meadow Temple  The Bulletin Kislev/Tevet 5772

the stasis in America is striking. When I lived in Israel six years ago, the Masorti movement was in trouble. There were no new Masorti synagogues being developed and the movement seemed to be foundering. Masorti (and to some extent the Israeli Reform movement) were associated only with the fight to win rights for non-Orthodox conversions, weddings, and funerals. Israelis looked at the Masorti movement as a group of English-speaking Jews with heretical religious views who wanted to bring alien values to Israeli society. At the time there was a group of younger Israeli-born Masorti rabbis who wanted to make a change. They felt that Israelis would never accept Masorti Judaism because it wins court cases. Instead the movement needed prove its worth in the Israeli court of public opinion.

Mr. Hess‟ presentation shows that indeed this transformation has happened. The Masorti movement has made great strides not by focusing inward, on the original English-speaking founders and communities, but instead by attempting to create a truly Israeli Judaism, one that speaks to the spiritual needs and values of the secular Israeli public. This role used to be filled by the religious Zionist movement in Israel, a collection of open-minded Orthodox groups who were interested not in maintaining their small slice of society, but rather with ensuring that all of Israel continue to be a Jewish state. But over the years the religious Zionist sector has been pulled apart by the growing influence of the ultra-Orthodox, who completely write off the secular majority, and the settler movement, which has polarized what once was an heterogeneous political coalition.

Israel needs a religious movement like Masorti that embraces traditional Judaism and modern Western values, and indeed the motto of the movement is Yahadut Yisraelit, an Israeli Judaism. One successful example of these efforts is a campaign of bus ads and posters, placed in ultra-Orthodox neighborhoods, styled as a yellow page ad (see the English translation, pictured). The entries on the page are rabbis from Jewish history who also had regular jobs like doctor, shoemaker, or vintner. The goal of the ad was to show that according to Jewish tradition, Torah study should be paired with employment. In Israel today, many ultra-Orthodox men are essentially paid to study Torah by the government and contribute nothing economically to society. Through the campaign Masorti started a conversation on the issue that showed that religion in Israel need not be represented only by those who wish to be subsidized by the state.

I hope that we in America‟ Conservative movement can learn from Masorti in Israel where transformation happened not by focusing internally, on how to better serve congregations, but by focusing outwardly on how our approach to Judaism can improve society. Obviously we cannot simply translate Masorti‟ success here. There are so many differences between Israel and America. But I do think that we can learn the following lesson: if the Judaism we believe in, one that embraces tradition but is open to scientific truth and humanistic values, is worth our time and effort, then it must have a wider application, beyond the walls of our institutions. We will only revitalize our movement if we can make the case that we are relevant to American and Jewish society at large.

Bivracha,
Rabbi Benjamin J. Adler