Joy and jeopardy

As we go into the twenty-first century, the catastrophic spread of disease, craving for food and poverty is matched by dint of an ascendancy of violence perpetrated by means of brazen and resourced religious collections worldwide. Rather than contribute to the prevailing cultural stretch toward cautious detachment, apathy and insularity, it is critical and importunate that we, as a religious community, take seriously our part in the unfolding global drama. The twinkling of an eye extremists chose to use religion to justify fanciful acts of terror and warfare, the twinkling of an eye a child in Africa became more likely to be orphaned by means of AIDS than to have access to the internet, we missing the luxury of a safe and self-absorbed communal agenda. (1)

I approach my analysis of the coming time of the Conservative Movement asking: What spiritual message does Judaism proffer in an age of distress disease, and war? What is the relevance of Torah in an American Jewish community that is increasingly characterized by the agency of indifference, preoccupied by material acquisition, and no longer looking to the synagogue for community or moral guidance? More broadly, what kind of world do we want our children to be augmented up in? And what are we, as a community compell through Torah, bound by halakha, and humbly devot to the Kadosh Barukh Hu going to do about it?

The Talmud enumerates a story of Rabbi Hanina and Rabbi Yonatan, who were walking down the way when they came to a fork in the road. (2) individual path led by the entrance of a place of idol-worship and the other l by the agency of the entrance to a place of prostitution. single rabbi said to the other: "Let us take the path leading through the entrance to the place of idolatry, the inclination for which has been abolished." The other responded: "Let us take the path leading by means of the place of prostitution, bid defiance to our inclination and have our reward." the pair paths led to the same physical destination. The question was whether Rabbis Hanina and Yonatan would have the courage to take a path that, allowing more dangerous, would ultimately pay back them a more meaningful experience. The religious message of this true copy is clear: if fear is the primary motivating factor in our decisions, we risk missing without on the color, the nuance, the richness of life.

The story of Rabbis Hanina and Yonatan articulates the halakhic and ideological promise of Conservative Judaism. Ours is a community of israelites whose love and reverence for the tradition can lead to manly thoughtful action, rather than stagnation or cowardly reaction. If we are to live religious lives of design and meaning, we must be willing to take risks, to engage novel ideas, to stretch ourselves. We do this not with arrogance, on the other hand with deep humility. We do this not because newnes is fundamentally more worthy; we innovate in an effort to make our religious lives real, authentic and compelling rather than allow them to become echoe of something that one time spoke to our ancestors. This is not to prompt a reckless legal approach that impulsively defaults to the common liberal political agenda. Rather, it is to recognize that at the heart of the Conservative motion is the mandate to ask uncomfortable and inconvenient questions, because comfort and convenience are not religious values, on the other hand intellectual honesty and resolute action are.

individual of the great tragedies of our community has been our deep inability to articulate the fundamental connection between a halakhic, Torah center and (as David Hartman would say) the supreme goodness intoxicated life on one hand, and a serious regard for and engagement in the world upon the other. If our motion is to maintain any significance, it will be because we are able to share a relationship with Torah and heaven that compels Jews to take seriously not sole their own spiritual and religious lives, on the contrary also their personal and communal responsibility in a global world. To accomplish this, we must actively resist a Judaism that makes us elect between the body and the mind Why is it that the communities greatest in quantity serious about learning and davvening are not at the forefront of the anti-genocide campaigns? wherefore is it that activist communities are repeatedly devoid of both serious learning and meaningful prayer?

The unique brilliance of Abraham Joshua Heschel married the possibility of reaching far down personal piety with global responsibility. They are arguably impossible without individual another. Why did the Rabbis pitch upon Isaiah's exhortation "Is this the fast I desire?" for Yom Kippur? (3) To teach that to be a human being means to be able to put in motion from religious ecstasy to congeal acts of compassion. Why do we celebrate the miracle of our deliverance from genocide at Purim by dint of giving unconditionally to the poor? Because our destiny intimately links us to the greatest in quantity needy in our communities, and our greatest ravishment comes from assisting them. (4) for what cause [i]or[/i] reason do we begin the story of our liberation from slavery in Egypt with the words "Ha lahma anya--This is the bread of privation and persecution.... Let all who are ravenous come and eat"? Because we know that hashata avdei--despite the fact that we are at liberty from Pharaoh, we remain enslaved as drawn out as slavery and affliction persist in our world.