In the past, rabbis were staunchly against assimilation. This is no longer viewed as an issue to combat. The American Jew now identifies himself with his people – and even his tradition – with pride. He willingly and lovingly accepts his distinction as a Jew.But this is a major problem – he is only Jewish by distinction. Unfortunately, there is frequently a distinction without a difference. As Talmud students say – עס איז א חילוק אהן א נפקא מינא. In superficial manifestations, such a Jew distinguishes himself from the non-Jew, but deep down, there is no difference. In sum, the problem in 1952 is that there is a distinction without the difference. After the third plague, Moses said: ושמתי פדת בין עמי ובין עמך, “And I shall place a פדת between my nation and your nation.” What פדת means is a matter for debate. The English translation is “division,” but that is half the story. A disagreement between great classical translators points to a difference in outlook. The Syrian translation is פרשנא, meaning a distinction or separation. In this sense, Moses tells Pharaoh that G-d will make a distinction between our respective peoples.The Aramaic translations of Onkelos and Yonathan translate the verse as ואשוי פרקן לעמי ועל עמך, “I will redeem my people from your people.” פורקן is the primary intention here. Moses thus says to Pharaoh: “Do you think my people’s cultural level sunk to that of your people?פורקן, redemption, is not simple idea. To redeem physically, one must first separate from an entity, another cultural unit. This requires more than פרנשא, distinction. Distinction is superficial division. Redemption requires something deeper – it requires a real difference.To illustrate, I will provide some examples of a distinction without a difference.Cigarette brands may have packages with different colors and with different names. They are distinct from each other, but they are not different from each other. The matter only stops at פרשנא, the distinction without the diffe…

I. The “Fear of G-d” is to modern man one of the most mysterious of religious concepts. First, he asks, why should I be afraid of G-d? He is good, isn’t He? And secondly, how can I be afraid of a Being whom I cannot see, hear, or feel? Both questions can, of course, be easily answered. First, while G-d is good, He is also just; and since man does sin, he should be frightened when considering the consequences of his actions and the punishment G-d ministers. While G-d should not always be conceived of as a stern master, He should also not always be thought of as a sugar daddy. And, as for the second question, G-d is very real despite His invisibility. And perhaps because He is in a large measure unknown is He to be feared.But whatever answers we may offer, the questions are intelligent, and they point to the fact that we must try to understand the real Jewish meaning of Fear. Perhaps then we can eliminate the reasons for all these questions.II. The first point we must make is this: There are two ways of expressing the Fear of G-d, or yiras shamayim. The rishonim, or great Jewish thinkers of the Middle ages, classify them as yiras ha’onesh – “Fear of Punishment,” which is what most people understand by “Fear” – and yiras ha’hisromemuss – “Fear of Uplifting,” or, in one word, Reverence. And it is this second type of Fear of G-d, Reverence or yiras ha’hisromemuss, which is the preferred and distinctly Jewish type of Fear.Yiras ha’onesh means being terrified by the tortures of Hell; yiras ha’hisromemuss means being inspired by the beauty of the Heavens. Fear of Punishment means being frightened by the unknown dangers that lie ahead; Reverence means being awed by the challenge of the good life. The Fear of Punishment means being constantly aware of the Devils in Life; the Fear that is Reverence means being constantly thrilled by the Angels in Life. Fear of Punishment sees Sin as Dangerous; Reverence sees it as disgusting. Fear of Punishment means being horrified at the de…

In the Bible’s description of the seventh of the ten plagues which God brought upon Pharaoh and his Egyptians, the Torah employs a style which is somewhat different from the usual, and which therefore seems to indicate some special intention. The seventh plague, you will recall, was the Barad, the plague of hailstones which fell upon the Egyptians, their servants and their cattle, and killed all life that was unprotected. Now, before Moses stretched forth his rod and caused the hail to fall, he warned the Egyptians of what he was going to do. He warned them to withdraw indoors in order to save their lives. The reaction of the pagan Egyptians was to laugh at Moses, and, though six times previously he had predicted the act of the Lord, they ridiculed him, and most of them – excepting the very few who did believe in God – exposed themselves to the plague.Now here is how the Bible describes the actions of these two classes of Egyptians, those who took Moses seriously and those who did not: Ha-yarei et devar ha-shem, those of Pharaoh's servants who feared the word of God, gathered their slaves and cattle indoors and saved them. Va-asher lo sam libo el devar ha-shem, and he who did not put his heart to the word of God (i.e., he who did not pay attention to God), left his cattle and slaves outdoors to be slain by the hailstones. Notice that the two classes of Egyptians are not described in the same kind of terms. If the first Egyptians are Ha-yarei et de-var ha-shem, God fearing, the second should be described as Lo yarei et ha-shem (not fearing God), or Sonei ha-shem, (God-hating), or Aino Maamin (non-believer) or Chotei (sinner) or something similar. Instead, the Torah describes this second, evil, anti-God class as Lo sam libo, the kind that “doesn’t put his heart to God.” Why this stylistic awkwardness?The answer is that it is by no means awkward. It is people who are awkward, who are being criticized by the Torah. What the Bible means to tell us by this choice of wor…

A team of Yale University researchers recently conducted a survey of third generation American Jews in suburban Minneapolis. The survey has been published in a book called “Children of the Gilded Ghetto.” This survey study yielded paradoxical results. The conclusions were hopeful, yet depressing. Thus, 89% of the population studied was affiliated with synagogues, but only 5% selected the synagogue they worship in on the basis of conviction. So too, 90% thought that religious education was important for their children, but the overwhelming majority decided to give their children no more than Sunday school education. In the words of one man who was interviewed, “I don’t want my child to get too much religious training, just enough to know what religion it is they are not observing.”How can we account for this high rate of affiliation and low quality of conviction? How can we explain this phenomenon of belongingness without meaningfulness?From among a number of observations made by the authors, this one statement strikes home: “Judaism has become a commodity serving both the psyche of individual Jews, and the survival of the Jewish community.”No wonder the picture is so dim, no wonder there is so much shallowness! For our third generation Jews have been misled into a profound misunderstanding of the whole nature of religion in a most fundamental way. The fallacy lies in the new concept of religion: it is conceived of as a commodity, as if religion was made to serve man, to fill a need of man – and that is its justification: as long as religion fills a need, it is acceptable. Man has a need to establish his identity; religion fills the need. Men have a need for social solidarity; religion gives it to them. We all seek a way of being American in the social structure of our times; Judaism provides it for us. We seek consolation in times of grief, companionship in times of solitude, assurance in times of doubt; religion is here to serve us. Our children need a sense of c…

In a remarkable passage in the Talmud (Eruvin 54a) we find the Amora Samuel counselling his younger contemporary Rav Yehudah, hatof ve’ekhol, hatof ve’ishti, d’alma d’azlinan mineih ke’hilula dami – “hurry and eat, hurry and drink, for the world we are leaving is like a wedding.” What an unusual simile: all the world’s a wedding! What did the Talmud mean by that? According to some commentaries (Rashi and others), Samuel offered some sage and brooding advice: enjoy yourself with legitimate pleasures as long as you can because life is all too short, like a huppah which is put up and then quickly put away again; the wedding party doesn’t last forever. There is, of course, much wisdom in that remark. Some of us tend to put off enjoying life’s bounties, we begrudge ourselves G-d’s gifts to us. We keep on saving for a rainy day so intensely that we fail to enjoy today’s sunshine. What the Talmud means, then, is that what the Torah permits us to benefit from ought to be accepted cheerfully and happily. It is good Jewish doctrine.There is, however, a Hasidic interpretation of this Talmudic dictum that is somewhat different, and that illuminates not only an obscure passage in the Talmud, but an obscure aspect of our passage through life. All the world’s a wedding. At a wedding, there is much going on: food is eaten, drink is imbibed, cigars are smoked, toasts are exchanged, there is dancing to music and camaraderie and posing for photographers and admiring floral arrangements... a great deal of motion and activity. All of it is enjoyable and exciting. However, all of this is meaningful only if there is a groom and a bride, and if he says to her harei at mekudeshet li. If there should be no harei at, if there should be no act of marriage, then all the rest makes no sense; it is a matter of going through grotesque, empty motion. Then the guests have come in vain, the eating is gluttony, the comradeship is irrelevant, the toasting is a meaningless gesture, the dancing is weird…

There are two ways of looking at life: the long view and the short view. The Long View sees people and events not as isolated contemporaries and disconnected happenings, but as part of a great drama being played out on the stage of history. It is a story which may be centuries in the making, where the meaning of the plot will not become discernible until the very end, in which the actors are propelled by destiny and attracted by fate, and in which the trivialities of the moment are absorbed into the higher significance of the over-all pattern of events. The Short View sees only the here-and-now, the immediate realities of biological, social, and economic life. It considers only what is right before us and nothing else. Two examples of these views would be Moses and Pharaoh as they appear to us in this morning’s Sidra. Moses is a man of the Long View. It is true that he does not overlook the Short View, the basic realities of his time, but he integrates them into a larger, overarching view. All his deeds, Pharaoh’s intransigence, Israel’s impatience and its fears – all these are part of the great drama of the Exodus, the redemption, and the giving of the Torah. Pharaoh is a man of the Short View. He entertains no Long View at all. Everything is reduced by him to power politics without purpose. The plagues are merely fortuitous accidents of nature. The Israelites are a bunch of lazy malcontents. Moses is nothing but the ancient version of an incendiary civil rights leader, an annoying trouble maker. This is the meaning of the phrase, so often repeated in this story, “and the Lord hardened the heart of Pharaoh” – God restricted Pharaoh’s vision and reduced his comprehension to a very short view indeed. The advisors of Pharaoh eventually were educated by the plagues to a longer view; that is what is meant when they declared, commenting upon the scene of Egypt's devastation by the plagues, that it is “the finger of God.” But Pharaoh would not learn: “and he heeded them …

A fascinating dialogue takes place between the mighty king of Egypt and the leader of the band of Hebrew slaves, as it is recorded in this morning’s Sidra. Moses says to Pharaoh, “Thus saith the Lord, let my people go and they will serve Me.” Pharaoh retorts with a compromise: You may perform your service to your God, but do it here, within the borders of Egypt, without leaving the country. Moses refuses to accept this response. “It is not proper to do that,” he says, “for we wish to sacrifice the abomination of Egypt to the Lord our God” – our religious festival calls for the sacrifice of animals, which animals are considered deities by the Egyptians, a fact which we consider abominable. “Lo, shall we sacrifice the abomination of the Egyptians before their very eyes, ve’lo yiskelunu, and they will not stone us?”On this answer of Moses – which, on the surface, seems reasonable enough – the late Rabbi Yaakov Mosheh Charlop, the greatest disciple of the late Rav Kook, of blessed memory, offers a comment which reveals new insights not only in this passage but in Judaism as a whole. Moses, says Rabbi Charlop, was speaking to an absolute monarch, a sovereign with unlimited powers over his subjects. If this Pharaoh assures Moses of his permission to perform the sacrificial service in Egypt, why should Moses be afraid of a few Egyptians who would feel scandalized by the slaughter of animals? Certainly it is within the power of Pharaoh to offer protection to the Hebrews, to call out a riot squad or encircle them with a protective cordon of troops against the wrath of the Egyptians. How, then, could Moses answer Pharaoh as he did, and why did Pharaoh accept this response?In his answer, Rabbi Charlop points to the Aramaic translation of the Torah by Onkelos, who renders the words, ve’lo yiskelunu, not as “and they will not stone us?,” but as: ha-lo yemrun le’mirgemana, “Will they not wish to stone us?” What Onkelos here implied is that Moses was not at all afraid of physical…

A distinguishing mark of our age is what has been called “The Politics of Confrontation” – the face-to-face encounter with forces considered immoral and corrupt, an encounter which leads to a test of will and endurance until one side wins. This replaces the older and more enlightened, more patient, and more rational methods that have generally made our democracy viable and famous: persuasion, compromise, petition, accommodation, and majority rule with minority rights.The forces of confrontation have abandoned these moderate ways in places such as the Democratic Convention in Chicago, on the campuses, in public schools, between Black and White, principals and supervisors, students and administrators, police and civilians, labor unions and the public – everywhere, indeed, that society tries to hold the line against civic chaos. Internationally too, the world has suffered from a series of confrontations throughout its history, and even today we are threatened by confrontations between Israelis and Arabs, in Vietnam, and in Czechoslovakia.Jewish life too has its share of confrontations – if not in its full violent form, then in a modified manner as noisy demonstrations. Thus, the lunatic fringe (or perhaps more than “fringe”) demonstrating at the U.N. against Israel and for DeGaulle, or worried and betrayed Jews demonstrating in front of the French Consulate for Israel and against DeGaulle, or unthinking hotheads demonstrating in front of a Manhattan Synagogue on West 86th Street against the choice of a director for an Israeli hospital.At times it seems that Confrontation is a gap over which the generations are divided. Strange clothing, long hair, and outlandish appearance may shock and annoy elders and certainly exasperate parents. But parents should not take it as a tragedy, because it isn’t. Indeed, assuming that the garb is modest and moral, who is to say that our esthetic standards have any greater claim to objective validity than those of the new generation? Why…

Our Sidra of this morning begins with a verse that is obviously meaningful, and, equally obviously, mysterious: וארא אל אברהם אל יצחק ואל יעקב בא-ל ש-די ושמי ה' לא נודעתי להם, “I appeared unto Abraham, unto Isaac, and unto Jacob as Sh-D-Y, but by My Name Havayah I did not make Myself known to them.” What is the importance of these Names, such that the Patriarchs knew only the first, whereas Moses knew the second as well?Rashi answers this question by ascribing the name Sh-D-Y to the concept of הבטחה or promise, whereas Havayah is related to קיום or fulfillment. The Covenant that God sealed with the Patriarchs included a promise which would not be realized until the dim future: that their descendants would return to this land and become the people of God. The making of this promise to the Patriarchs was an act of God which became known to them under the name Sh-D-Y. Moses, however, on the eve of the redemption, would be privileged to witness the fulfillment of that ancient promise, and this fulfillment is symbolized by the name Havayah.Jewish history is a drama of Promise and Fulfillment. It is a story of the tension between havtachah and kiyyum, the interplay between the two Divine Names Sh-D-Y and Havayah.Two questions, however, present themselves. First, what is the relation of these specific Names to the concepts of Promise and Fulfillment? Second, so what? Surely, if Divine Names are associated with these ideas, they must be more than just a convenient tool for the analysis of Jewish history, but they must have practical consequences.Permit me to endeavor to answer both questions at once.The name Sh-D-Y, according to our Sages, comes from the Hebrew word which means to wreck or smash: שודד מערכות הטבע, it is the aspect of God Who is above and beyond nature, Who sets the laws of nature and can at will smash them and overcome them. God is not subservient to nature; it is nature that is His creation and therefore must submit to Him.What, then, is the relation betw…

Were I to condense my three-month’s observation and assessment of the religious situation in Israel into one brief statement, I would say that despite the many negative features, the prospects for creative change and improvement are splendid; however, despite – or, perhaps, because of – all these promises, it is disappointing that so much more could be done than is being done at present. With all the beauty and naturalness of religion in Israel, there are, to be sure, occasional anti-religious expressions that are somewhat disturbing. It was reported to me quite casually, for instance, that in one mixed religious-non-religious neighborhood, non-observant children just recently come from Latin America often shout at their observant peers, “Shabbes,” the derisive term for Sabbath-observers. It is depressing that, in the Jewish state, Sabbath observers should find it difficult to obtain employment in certain branches of the communications media, especially television, and in the arts; in Israel one does not even have a law to which to appeal as we do in New York State. One often hears bitter criticism of religious Jews because Yeshiva students are exempt from the army. This is unfortunate, because it does not take into consideration the fact that the numbers involved are rather small; that Yeshiva students are exempt from military service in most countries in the Free World; that the Yeshivot face a severe problem because a three-year interruption does, indeed, make it difficult to resume Torah studies upon the discharge of the young man from the army. Most important, the criticism does not take into consideration the fact that the so-called “modern Yeshivot,” those that recognize the State and feel an obligation to and an involvement in it, have devised a system called hesder, according to which the student will spend his period of army service alternating with study at the Yeshiva. Yet, it remains a severe problem, and unquestionably the religious groups have not do…