Who Is a Jew? The Supreme Court & The Supreme Judge (1970)

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Chutzpah: A Religious Analysis (1957)

Our Tradition paints a very gloomy picture of the frightening and catastrophic days preceding the coming of the Messiah. In addition to all the world upheavals and bloodshed and immorality expected in the Ikveta Di-Meshicha, in the era preceding Mashiach, our Rabbis predicted that chutzpah yasgai, that chutzpah will abound, that there will be an unnatural increase of brazenness and effrontery and arrogance (Sotah 49). And one may well wonder if the excessive haughtiness and obnoxious chutzpah we find so common in our world today is not the very thing our Sages were talking about. Perhaps if indeed chutzpah is to herald the coming of the Messiah, then the Golden Age cannot be far off.What is chutzpah? It is a universal quality, but a uniquely Jewish word. It is essentially untranslatable. You might say: boldness, effrontery, arrogance. It is all these things but more too. Chutzpah, a great Sage of the Talmud once said (Sanhedrin 105), is malchuta beli taga, kingship without a crown; it is authoritativeness without authority, dominion without dignity, ruling without right, arrogance without warrant, positive and dogmatic opinionation without basis – in short, a man acting the part of a king when he has never been entitled to the crown: malchuta beli taga.Chutzpah is, of course, an unpleasant characteristic. When we speak of a man a chutzpanick we pass an unfavorable judgment upon him. And yet chutzpah has a positive side too. Our Rabbis meant to praise Israel when they attributed to it the greatest amount of chutzpah from amongst all nations. There are times that chutzpah makes for survival, times that it expresses a profound loyalty to values which transcend ordinary politeness and courtesy, and even life itself. The chutzpah of the Jew in refusing to settle down and assimilate, his insistence that Torah must survive at all costs and in all environments, his persistence in the face of great odds that he is member of G-d’s Chosen People – that is a constructive and d…

Terumah

Why Synagogues Fail (1969)

Our Sidra’s key verse, ועשו לי מקדש, the commandment to construct a temple, offers us an opportunity to speak of the synagogue, which our tradition regards as a מקדש מעט, a miniature sanctuary. There are three conceptions of the function of a temple or a synagogue. The first is the common-sensical understanding, one that appeals to most of us at first blush. That is, that the synagogue is the source and origin of kedushah in the community. It is the provenance of spiritual values which radiate from the synagogue outwards in concentric circles. The synagogue, according to this understanding, is the wellspring of religious teaching for the entire community. The second conception is the classical Jewish view, which does not agree with this first idea. It maintains that the synagogue must not be the cause or source of holiness, but the effect and the result of the kedushah of all the people. The Rambam points to this idea as the reason for the portion of Terumah, with its commandment to build the mishkan, coming after the portions of Yitro and Mishpatim, which speak of the revelation of Torah and the system of laws and social justice which together qualified Israel as a goy kadosh, a holy nation. It is only afterwards, after we had already attained this level of holiness, that it became necessary and meaningful to speak of a mishkan, of a Tabernacle, which would focalize the preexistent holiness within the community and allow man to confront the Presence of God in a sustained and regular manner. Only through the study of Torah and the practice of mitzvot do we become a holy nation, and only then does a sanctuary become relevant.A temple or a synagogue, then, is not the cause of holiness but its effect, not its origin but its result. Therefore, a synagogue whose members do not observe the laws of Torah, or which is built by people who are in violation of the principles of justice and whose money was improperly acquired, is truly invalid; it is a sacrilege.This interpret…

Terumah