David Hazony

The End of the Beginning

Sometimes, if you want to understand the beginning, it helps to skip to the end. In the case of this week’s reading—the opening chapters of the book of Genesis—the end is a dark note indeed: the utter corruption and wickedness of newly created humanity, to the point where God “repents” for having fashioned man in the first place:

And the Lord said, I will destroy man whom I have created from the face of the earth: both man and beast and creeping things, and the birds of the air. For I repent that I have made them. But Noah found favor in the eyes of the Lord. 

An important question pops out of the text: what is this passage doing in B'reishit? It is, of course, the lead-in to the story of Noah that forms next week’s reading, in which God will indeed destroy everything and start all over again. Wouldn’t it have made more sense just to start the next reading with these verses? After all, Torah readings usually start and finish in logical places with respect to their content, and rarely in the middle of a story. Might understanding the inclusion of this paragraph in this week's reading shed light on the deeper meaning of the first chapters of Genesis—and, by extension, the Hebrew Bible as a whole? 

The opening of the Bible includes some of the most famous stories about Creation: the seven days, at the climax of which humanity is depicted as the pinnacle of all of God’s works; the Garden of Eden, where we learn that man’s role is to “work” the world “and keep it”—and where we also see that the quest for moral understanding gets us thrown out of paradise and into the real world; the story of Cain and Abel, which includes the first-ever mention of sin, and real life is revealed as a chain reaction of disillusionment, violence, and decay.

I’ve always read these stories as possessing foundational wisdom about man and the world—an inherently humanistic reading that seems to work well with the Hebrew Bible’s overwhelming interest in persons, history, and real-life morals. This is, after all, the reason why all the great figures of the Bible are deeply engaged in worldly affairs; why there are no descriptions of Heaven and Hell, no otherworldly experiences detached from human fate, no stories of God or angels except as these relate to the standing and destiny of living human beings; and why the only stories about people trying to escape human affairs end in failure—think of Jonah, who tried to flee his responsibility to his fellow creatures and ended up stuck in the belly of a fish until he recognized and accepted his mission. 

In this light, it does stand to reason that the opening chapters of Genesis should end with a coda about the implacable poverty of the human spirit, the collapse of Creation, and the run-up to the Flood—reaffirming the sense that all of the stories of B’reishit are really about man’s tragic nature. And not just these stories.  

Our weekly reading, it turns out, comprises no less than a microcosm of the Hebrew Bible as a whole. Its three main stories—Creation, Garden of Eden, and Cain and Abel—are a triptych whose narrative arc moves from a massively optimistic, miraculous intervention by God to create the human world, to a stumbling of human nature that ends with Adam and Eve leaving the Garden and entering the real world, to the onset of sin, corruption, and eventual catastrophic collapse. These are the same three stages we encounter in the narrative of the people Israel: the optimistic and miraculous Exodus, in which Israel is created as a living nation; the stumbling and failing that end in the people’s leaving the paradise of the desert and entering the real world of human history in the book of Joshua; the sin, corruption, and eventual catastrophic collapse that end in the destruction of the kingdom and the exile of Israel from the land.

Yet at the same time—and just in case there is any doubt about the parallelism—both narratives, despite everything that has come before, end on a surprising note of renewed optimism. In B’reishit, the final verse tells of a single man, Noah, who “found favor in the eyes of the Lord” and who alone will serve as the basis for the rest of human history. At the end of the Bible, the final verse of the final book (II Chronicles 36:23) is a declaration by Cyrus, the Persian king, heralding the return of Israel to rebuild Jerusalem after the Babylonian exile, an event that alone will serve as the basis for the rest of Israelite history: “Whoever is among you of all his people—the Lord his God be with him, and let him go up!” 

In the Bible, the story of humanity and the story of ancient Israel are the same story. Has anything changed in the intervening millennia? We are all born in miracle and optimism, all trudge through the painful process in which protected childhood gives way to hard adult reality, our illusions gradually peeled away along with our strength and youth and health until we end in decay and death. And yet, just as with these stories, we can never lose sight of that spark of hope and optimism at the end: a reminder of all the possibilities inherent in the next generation, in those who will come after and rebuild even when all has been destroyed—even when their works, too, will inevitably be subject to the same mortal law of achievement, disappointment, and promise never quite realized but always beckoning.

To read the original piece at Jewish Ideas Daily, click here. 

J Street Runs Both Ways

What are we to make of the recent revelations that J Street has been receiving large donations from George Soros? Critics say the organization previously lied when they said he wasn't involved, while J Street adamantly denies ever having denied it.

A stroll through J Street's "Myths and Facts" page on their website may shed some light. It is a study in double-talk. One "myth" disclaimed, for example, is that the organization "favors the US negotiating with Hamas". But after conceding that Hamas terror is "reprehensible", they quickly remind us that Hamas "has an important... base of support within Palestinian society", and that J Street "would not oppose" efforts by the US to "find unofficial, indirect ways to engage Hamas…"

More important is their effort to debunk the "myth" that J Street is funded by foreign sources. On the contrary, we are told, "Nearly all of J Street's funding comes from Jewish Americans." Yet according to IRS files revealed by the Washington Times, the largest single donation in a recent tax year - over $800,000 - came from businesswoman Consolacion Esdicul of Hong Kong.

So when J Street grapples with the Soros scandal - yes, it's already on their Myths and Facts page - we find exactly the same kind of obfuscation.

"J Street has always said that George Soros did not found J Street and did not provide its initial funding," we are told. "J Street has also always said that it would be very pleased to have funding from Mr. Soros."

Yet in the same breath we are told that "In fact, the organization has received approximately $250,000/year in funding from the Soros family since launching."

Since launching? That makes him look an awful lot like a founder. And as I understand English, "would be pleased" to have funding implies they are not currently receiving funding.

None of these are minor quibbles. Every act of double-speak belies their self-promotion as a pro-Israel product of the US Jewish community. It makes them look like they've been less than forthright about where the money's coming from. It is not a large step to wonder whether they've been straightforward about their aims as well.

People have a right to know the main sources of funding for publicly active organizations, especially those which might be trying to affect a domestic debate with foreign money. This is true for an Islamic Cultural Center at Ground Zero; it is true for the huge NGOs operating in Israel with massive European Union funding; and it is no less true for J Street.

To see the original piece in the London Jewish Chronicle, click here.

Dancing with the Stars

In all the religious ceremonies known to modern man, few are quite as presumptuous as dancing with the Torah.

That’s why we do it.

Many years ago I was a newly-minted yeshiva student still learning what it meant to be frum, visiting a Southern synagogue for Simhat Torah. About halfway through the festivities I found myself with a group of older fellows taking part in the venerable tradition of the “Kiddush club,” dutifully patronizing the liquor in the room adjacent to the synagogue’s main hall.

In walks the rabbi, steam pouring from his ears. With his aged finger pointed back out the door and his black caftan billowing in rage, he ordered all of us out to the hall, to dance with the Torah.

Few moments in a BT-bochur’s life are as shocking as to witness these men of valor standing their ground, refusing to budge until the rabbi agreed to join them. The rabbi, however, knew he’d been checkmated. A Hasid well-versed in Psalms, he recognized the spiritual value of occasional spirits.

More to the point, he knew he needed our spirits on his side. So he took a swift (and, it should be added, evidently well-practiced) shot of the most expensive Scotch at the table, and we all cheered and hooted as we followed him back out to the hall. We danced in his honor, the Torah’s honor, and our own honor as well.

For many of us, there is something intuitively appealing about a religion in which deference to clerical authority is sometimes taken with a grain of salt. For all the biblical exhortation to follow God’s commandments, servility has never really suited the Jewish psyche—or, at least, not servility to mortal men.

The assumption here is that everyone ought to know enough about God and Torah on their own to at least make a show of religious independence, to forge their own standing before the Almighty, without which we scarcely deserve to have been created in His image. If the Talmud can show God laughing at the rabbis who outsmarted him in argument and say “my children have defeated me,” the rabbi’s own attitude towards his congregants ought to be humble indeed.

This rabbi understood that these men were showing him the very same strength, humor, and stalwart reverence that Jews have always employed in standing before God.

And in dancing before him with the Torah.

We dance because we just finished a year-long reading of this long and often difficult text.

We dance because King David danced when he carried the Ark bearing the Ten Commandments into the city of Jerusalem—despite the objections of his wife Michal, who thought it beneath his dignity.

We dance as a spontaneous act of reverent reverie, dictated not by written law but by the fire in our souls.

We dance because in life there is a celebration and thrill that cannot be separated from the study of Torah—which, understood in its deepest sense, is the study of everything we are and all of Creation. By embracing Torah, we embrace the universe that God gave us, and we embrace ourselves.

But we dance above all because we’re still here, witnesses to thousands of years of such celebration, witnesses to human survival and Jewish survival, witnesses to life itself. Having been through all the hells that history can devise, we know how grand is the celebration of life.

And that’s the real point: On Simhat Torah we dance because if all the other Jewish holidays bring us to the divine through a combination of commemoration, contrition, prayer, feasting, fasting, and awe, only on this day do we allow ourselves to act in unalloyed joy, together with God and all that He created.

Sukkot is traditionally the holiday when we embrace all of humanity, ritually sacrificing a biblically mandated 70 bulls (back when there was a Temple) to symbolize the nations of the world. Simhat Torah, however, is for our people alone—God asks us to stay behind in shul after all the nations have gone home.

It is in some ways our people’s most intimate moment with the divine, more so than Yom Kippur precisely because it is a celebration of the life that goes on despite all the judgments, all the commemorations of suffering, all the pain and punishment that comes of our presumption. With Rosh Hashana and Yom Kippur behind us, we finish the cycle with the bottom line: Joy.

Such is love: In the moments of our most intense communion, there is, it turns out, nothing other than pure celebration. This is why the rabbi capitulated: His anger evaporated like the purest alcohol when he saw the joy in their hearts. “As the wine goes in,” the Talmud teaches us, “the secrets come out.”

To read the original piece at the Baltimore Jewish Times, click here.

Library Journal praises The Ten Commandments!

Here's what Library Journal has to say about The Ten Commandments:

Are the Ten Commandments simply a set of guidelines that had relevance in ancient times, or are they still significant? This is the key question here. Journalist Hazony (doctoral studies, Hebrew Univ., Jerusalem) approaches the Ten Commandments as a Jew, but he argues that they are relevant to others as well. He believes that these moral guidelines from ancient times speak not only to spiritual and personal relationships but also to societal ones. Thus, when he examines the ninth commandment, on bearing false witness, he understands this not just in the narrower sense of lying, but also in the broader framework of community fidelity. Hazony is particularly effective in drawing out the wider implications of the commandments, making them seem vital to the present time. Other good books on this topic include William P. Brown's The Ten Commandments, and Carl E. Braaten and Christopher R. Seitz's I Am the Lord Your God. Hazony's book complements them, particularly in its emphasis on societal relevance. VERDICT Persons with an interest in the Old Testament will find this a thoughtful and helpful book. - John Jaeger, Dallas Baptist Univ. 

TO ORDER THE TEN COMMANDMENTS NOW, CLICK HERE!

Strange, Sour Song

On the eve of the Israelites' passage into the Promised Land, Moses teaches them a song that marks the moment and that they themselves are to sing now and throughout the generations. It's only the second such song in the Torah—the first being the rousing tribute to God after the parting of the Red Sea back in Exodus: "I will sing to the Lord, for He has greatly exceeded." 

This time, the song could not be more different. Although it opens with predictable praise of God ("He is the Rock, His work is perfect / for all His ways are justice"), the subject quickly shifts to Israel's failure to keep the faith. "They are a perverse and crooked generation," we read, "Do you thus requite the Lord / O foolish people and unwise?"

It gets much worse. After recalling the great deeds God did for Israel, we read that Israel "grew fat, and kicked. . . . They provoked Him to jealousy with strange gods. . . . Of the Rock that begot you, you are unmindful / and have forgotten God who formed you." God's rage is captured in blinding colors. "And He said, I will hide My face from them / I will see what their end will be. . . . For a fire is kindled in My anger / and shall burn to the nethermost parts of the earth. . . . I will heap mischiefs upon them / I will spend My arrows on them / They shall be sucked empty by hunger, and devoured with burning heat / and with bitter destruction. . . . For the day of their calamity is at hand. . . . I will make My arrows drunk with blood / and My sword shall devour flesh."

What is going on?

Understanding this sour song begins with the broader context of the last few chapters of Deuteronomy. Indeed, this is merely the latest in a string of similarly dour passages: the horrible destruction, detailed in Deuteronomy 28, that will result from Israel's failure to lead a moral life; the ceremony on the mountains in which curses are hurled on those who violate the moral code; God's telling Moses that after conquering the land, the Israelites will fail and face His awful wrath; and more.

Clearly, then, the song is part of a larger effort by Moses to convince the Israelites that they should be thinking less about the glories of their imminent conquests and more about the terrible possibilities that can result from their sins. But why now?

Every sentiment has its moment. If the previous generation's greatest sin was a failure of spirit, the lingering slave-mentality that filled them with terror at the prospect of any military confrontation, the current generation of Israelites faces a completely different threat: hubris. Fresh from their military successes, roused and ready to fight their way into their old-new land, they do not see, as Moses does, the powerful danger lurking: that their victories will go to their head, leading them to moral dissolution and causing them to lose sight of the very purpose for which they were brought out of Egypt.

The song, in other words, is tailored to the needs of a generation of Israelites primed for battle, ready to conquer the Promised Land. Yet the lessons it contains are no less apt for our own time.

Implicit in the song, and in the passages surrounding it, is a pernicious pattern of human endeavor. Failure leads to remorse and repentance, which leads to fresh resolve and success; success leads to arrogance and to forgetting how we grew strong and prosperous—which in turn leads to failure. Every human society—indeed, every individual—is prone to this cycle.

Can it be broken? It can be, we learn, if we maintain an everlasting respect for how bad things can be, a gratitude for everything we have received, and a recognition of the simple fact that it is all up to us. Just as God told Cain way back in Genesis: If we do good, that is fine. If not, sin crouches at the door. And still we may rule over it.

To read the original post at Jewish Ideas Daily, click here.

For the Sin of Biblical Illiteracy

This appears as part of The Forward's "Let Us Atone," a colloquium being published in advance of Yom Kippur.

As Jews, our greatest sin is the failure to know ourselves. And nowhere is this problem more acute than in our illiteracy regarding our original cultural wellspring, the Bible.

The Bible is the big blind spot of Jewish identity. Too often, we approach it with so much baggage — over-focus on authority or authorship, fearful associations with Christianity, embarrassment at passages that seem archaic — that we forget to make it our own. Even Orthodox yeshivas, where old texts are king, give the Pentateuch only a supporting role to the rabbinic legal works, while the rest of the Bible is mostly skipped. Even as we invest in education, we leave the deepest sources of our self-understanding to others to interpret.

Our Israelite past should be a source of pride, our ancient texts recognized as our greatest contribution to humanity, more so than even our scientists, novelists and comedians. Who would we be without the Tanach?

Can a Sacred Text Be Secular as Well?

The debate over the Ten Commandments is firing up again. Writing for the New York Times’s website earlier this week, veteran legal commentator Linda Greenhouse warns of “the continuing effort by state and local governments to post the Ten Commandments in public places,” as well as an upcoming attempt to overturn the Supreme Court’s 5-to-4 ruling of 2005 that barred the posting of the Ten Commandments before two Kentucky courthouses.

At the heart of these new legal efforts is a caviat written into Justice Souter’s 2005 decision that seems to open the door for such displays if they are intended for a secular purpose — a sentence that many people, Greenhouse writes, wrongfully took “as a green light for gaming the system.” The Court, Souter wrote, did not “have occasion here to hold that a sacred text can never be integrated constitutionally into a governmental display on the subject of law, or American history.” The problem is not in the Ten Commandments themselves, we learn, but in the real intentions behind putting them on display — whether they be “secular” or “sectarian.”

Like many Americans, Greenhouse bristles at such a loophole, mainly because of how hard it is for her to imagine the Bible representing anything other than religion. “The prospect of watching lawyers and justices engage in still more contorted efforts to attach supposedly secular meaning to obviously sectarian objects and texts,” she writes, “is not a pleasant one.”

But is this fair? Can’t the Ten Commandments — indeed, the Bible as a whole, with its thousand pages of ancient stories, speeches, poems, proverbs, laws, and histories — have secular meaning?

For nearly two decades I’ve lived in Israel, where the Bible is seen very differently. A country founded on an ultra-secular socialism refused to cut itself off from the Jewish people’s ancient textual heritage. David Ben-Gurion, Israel’s first prime minister, himself fully secular, held Bible-study groups in his home and encouraged Israelis to read the Bible at every opportunity, without promoting any form of religious worship or observance. Today every Jewish IDF soldier gets a copy of the Bible upon completing basic training; and every Jewish high-schooler is required to study the Bible as a central part of the curriculum. Biblical idioms and allusions are found throughout secular culture, from music to literature to film. And when a nonobservant student took third place in this year’s national Bible quiz, his mother — Sarah Netanyahu, wife of the prime minister — proclaimed it as a lesson for all secular Israelis: that the Bible belonged to them no less than to the religious.

Could such an attitude gain traction in America? Many will be quick to point out that Israel doesn’t have a separation of church and state — the result of which is that an inflexible ultra-Orthodox minority continues to foster deep resentment, much of it justified, among the secular majority because of the rabbinic monopolization of marriage and divorce, burial, and conversions.

But this argument fails when looking at the role of the Bible in Israeli life, for the simple reason that, unlike Greenhouse, most Israelis don’t see the Bible as an “obviously sectarian” text all. They see it, rather, as a national treasure, a basis of identity, a rich collection of ancient writings that is of interest not so much because of its authority as much as for its wisdom and testament to a unique cultural heritage. In other words, they see it as a secular text — much as Americans view the Federalist Papers or the Declaration of Independence.

Ms. Greenhouse, of course, is far from alone among Americans in seeing the Bible as having “obviously sectarian” symbolism and nothing else — an attitude that effectively grants exclusive ownership of the Bible to the religious establishment. But there is another secular America, one that longs for fresh readings of our ancient texts without either the axiomatic assumption or the explicit repudiation of faith. Bestselling authors like Bruce Feiler, Karen Armstrong, and Jack Miles have succeeded precisely because they meet a growing demand for sympathetic yet non-faith-based readings of the Bible. Far from being a legal loophole, Justice Souter’s words suggest an acute longing that many Americans share for an approach to sacred texts that on the one hand protects our modern sensibilities — especially our right to a self-defined spirituality — while giving us access to something we suspect may possess far more cultural wisdom than we have been led to believe, something that lies at the core of Western identity, something that continues to resonate regardless of our faith.

The Bible is not just a sacred text. It’s also a major pillar of our civilization — no less so than the works of ancient Greece, Enlightenment Europe, or the American Founders. Biblical stories and figures were invoked in every successful progressive movement in American history, from the Revolution to Emancipation to women’s suffrage to the civil rights movement. To presumptively dismiss public presentation of the Bible’s most famous encapsulation, the Ten Commandments, as “sectarian” is to cut ourselves off from this great fountainhead of wisdom, history, and self-understanding that we desperately need in our constant search to understand what the experiment of modern democratic life is really all about.

My new book, The Ten Commandments, takes this ball and runs with it. It hits bookstores next week.

To see the original post at Contentions, click here.