Rabbis without borders?

This post is from Velveteen Rabbi, and I comment at length at the bottom.(I am never sure how many comments get through to Rachel the writer, so today to make extra sure I signed in via Type Pad and Facebook. So I am not sure how justified my frustration is. ie could be me pressing the wrong buttons)

Rabbis Without Borders: Who is your Torah for?

The last couple of days I've been at the second meeting of my cohort of Rabbis Without Borders fellows. It's been grand to see everyone again. One theme of our session was the rabbinate and expanding technology -- social media, its uses and misuses, who is our audience and how can we serve them, etc. I enjoyed the session with Allison Fine, author of The Networked Nonprofit; she had smart things to say. But as someone who's been active online for 20 years, and active in the Jewish blogosphere for almost a decade, I think I came to that conversation with a relatively high level of competency. So I was more excited about the other learning we did together.
For me one central question of the session came from Rabbi Brad Hirschfield: who is your Torah for? Over the course of his session, he said several things which resonated with me. He urged us to try to live in a way which acknowledges the need for walls, but keeps the walls lowered as much as we can bear. ("Walls keep us safe," he agreed, "but they can also become prisons.") He exhorted us to live in a mindset of abundance. To recognize that the spiritual and the material are always interconnected. To strive to live in a spirit of both/and rather than either/or -- and to bring the same compassionate both/and response to ourselves that we bring to the world.
We studied a short text from Talmud (tractate Avodah Zarah 2b-3a) about the question of for whom the Torah was meant. And R' Brad noted the fairly remarkable truth that although that text was written during a time when Jews were tremendously persecuted (and by and large had a lot of understandable anger and anxiety around that), the Talmud still presumes that the Torah is not ours alone, that access to God is not ours alone, and that anyone who studies Torah (in the language of the text, even an idolater) is as elevated as the high priest. Here are a few of the gems from that Torah study which I tweeted as it was happening:

The most iconic Jewish text we have (Talmud) was written not in Hebrew but the English of its moment: Aramaic.
Talmud (Avodah Zarah 2b-3a) teaches: there's no boundary b/w Torah and the peoples of the world. ALL of them.
In my wished-for world, the full dignity of the ultimate outsider is affirmed along with the full dignity of the full insider.

I think it's easy for people today who don't have familiarity with Aramaic to feel as though the Talmud is a kind of walled garden -- a Jewish treasure to which they don't have access. But R' Brad reminds us that Talmud was written in the vernacular of its day; it was meant to be accessible. It wasn't an ivory tower text designed only for the insiders. Beyond that, there's a thread in our texts, if we are willing to look for it and follow it, which reminds us that the wisdom we've been blessed to receive is not ours alone. This is the kind of post-triumphalism which drew me to Jewish Renewal, and which I also find in Rabbis Without Borders/Clal. R' Brad continued:

Of course you teach the Torah you most need. But it doesn't end there.
The unfolding #Torah of our lives is also a sacred text.
I "use Jewish" to serve people. That's who my #Torah is for.

The idea that we teach the Torah we most need to learn is one which was already very close to our hearts. And so is the idea that the unfolding Torah of our lives is a sacred text -- different from the written Torah we find in our libraries, but also holy. And the idea of "using Jewish" to serve people -- bringing Jewish wisdom, Jewish tools, to bear on the work of serving God and serving humanity -- is also close to my heart. We were all asked to ponder, and to answer, the question of "who is my Torah for?" As soon as I heard the question, my answer arose in me.
My Torah is for anyone who is thirsty. Anyone who's thirsty for connection, for community, for God. Anyone who wants to make their lives holy or to become more conscious of the holiness in the everyday. Anyone who wants access to the rich toolbox of Jewish wisdom and traditions and ideas which I am blessed to have as my yerusha, my inheritance.
And then I thought: that would have been my answer ten years ago when I started this blog, too. I started writing VR for anyone who was thirsty, as I was, for connection with God and with tradition. Maybe especially for those who felt marginalized, who didn't perceive that they had a place at the table but yearned to be welcomed in.
That in turn raises the question for me: has that changed? Should it have changed? In the last ten years I've gone from being an aspirant to being, thank God, an ordained rabbi. I've gone from being someone who felt that I was outside-looking-in to being someone who feels blessed to have access to these incredible riches of tradition.
But I think my answer is actually still the same as it was. Maybe this is integral to who I am. My Torah is for anyone who yearns. I have better access now to the tools my tradition gives me for helping to connect people with meaning, to connect people with God. But I still want my Torah to be for anyone who's thirsty. "Let all who are hungry, come and eat; let all who are needy, come and celebrate the Passover with us." That message from the Passover haggadah has long been one of my favorite things; and I think it shaped me more than I know. My Torah is for you who are reading this, whenever this is, whoever you are.

February 27, 2013 in Rabbis Without Borders | Permalink

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Comments

Gershon said...

Rabbi,
This is another great article.
I hope you do not mind a long story. When evangalists knock at my door, I invite them in. Some prefer to sit on the porch. I tell them I'm happy to read from the "Old Testement" with them without serious commentary by anyone. I ask if it is ok to read the Parsha for the week. One time, two men in their 50's came by in suits and we sat at my kitchen table for hours reading and drinking coffee. They were fascinated by hearing the Hebrew and the translation.
At the end, one of them said, "Why don't Jews evangalize door to door." Without thinking, I said "I sit at home and wait for God to send people to me."
Heaven forbid God should send someone to Torah and I should be the one to stand in their way. All I ask from people with other faiths is we do not debate. We can read and enjoy each other's company. I never say anything against their faith when we read.
Shalom,
Gershon

Reply February 27, 2013 at 06:45 PM

David Waterman said...

This Rachel is so true and I think that you live this out. There are multitudes of blogs out there but yours does, I think, truly stand out. You have a way of bringing insight from many aspects including Renewal Judaism and kabbalistic influences so that we may study Torah through the light of your teaching.
And the Torah is all of ours. Of that I am sure.
Thanks again

Reply February 27, 2013 at 09:27 PM

T Vinson said...

From a Christian perspective, ultimately Jewish of course:-)
All who are thirsty,
all who are weak,
come to the fountain,
dip your heart in the stream of life.
Let the pain and the sorrow
be washed away
in the waves of his mercy...
(by Brenton Brown)
Tom

Reply February 27, 2013 at 11:15 PM

Chris Welch said...

My experience on here has not been good. Rachel indeed has walls. In the world we are trying to create it is necessary to talk and maintain open lines of communication. Jews at the moment have been so used to being persecuted they are suspicious of too much cross border talk. In the book of Daniel it talks of a world that is completely overrun by a dark figure who uses manipulation to obtain total world rule. So we are NOT looking for a world where people manipulate the idea of Unity to form world government, we are looking for a world where that unity begins genuinely within and expands to encompass everything. The first form of government manipulates the Shiloh verse of the prophecy given to David...."until Shiloh come", the true unity  issues from the God of Psalm 19,who without speech daily declares His truths,dreams,desires, for those who are listening.Then adjustments will be made, that will again come from within, not by coercion. So Buddhists will turn and say....hey...you know what...those stirrings within while I was meditating were really from the Real God... And the Muslims worshipping Allah will realise that a lot of their prophecies about the End Times and a False Messiah, were indeed true and already in the prophetic scriptures of the Old Testament (And New ofcourse) and that the nature of Allah is actually quite different, and loving , and in truth an  Abba Father. And so on through every belief system.... gradually crumbling round the base of the false "New World Order belief system" to realise how life really works...
by faith
by faith Abraham received that Psalm 19 subterranean call and acted on it
but the promise was NOT given to manipulation via a servant to Hagar
and although Hagar then received her own prophecies ready for consummation in the end times...in other words God's Father heart is always there to carry up the effects of "manipulation", His original promises remain true.
But that is so, for every life on Earth, if they listen. The faith dreams will actually manifest if we carry on firm in our believing. It's not only Rachel and her Torah. Others indeed are allowed to share in this process of listening, hearing by faith and acting. This is just how life works. It's built into the fabric of this universe, whether people read it in a Torah, or Old and New Testaments, or any other book.
Rothschild may manipulate the Shiloh verse with his own trillions of dollars, but he is not hearing by God faith, because God has already declared who Shiloh is, and it isn't Rothschild's Shiloh.The Rothschild dynasty set up Israel, but they confuse the Isaiah scripture about Lucifer the lightbringer with the Mornng Star of the Messiah, and right there the inspiration behind everything they have done reveals itself. Is that a problem? No. Because God wrote it all thousands of years ago in Ezekiel 28. He writes about a King of Tyre. He writes that the first kingdom would be Sidon (Tel Aviv) and that this kingdom would be rebellious. But later
after calamity Israel will be properly formed and ruled from Jerusalem.
Now American Christians have it all lined up to do with a rapture...but did the God of the Torah say that?
What is clear and spelled out is that Israel and Jerusalem is the epicentre of interest for all the circling nations, and for God those lands are central to His Covenant keeping.But it His covenant keeping...NOT Rothschild's.
All this happened once before. The guy's name was Jacob. Which means supplanter,deceiver,usurper. Did that phase God? Nope. There was a wrestling match with an angel, or God in some human form at Peniel, and this usurper had his name changed to .....yup....Israel.
So is God phased by current Israel, the product of engineering ,usurping,manipulation on a world scale. Nope.
He wrote about it. And it is all dovetailed into the plan of waking mankind up, of tearing away his top surface blindnesses to see the One who is to be praised forever and ever. The One true vine, into whom has been engrafted now not one nation, but every nation. Not by manipulation,but because people want relationship FROM WITHIN.