This week, after a good two-month vacation, our children will return to their classrooms and again continue the development of their minds and spirits. It will be a momentous occasion, no doubt, for the children themselves. These past few days they have probably been busy purchasing school supplies, arranging programs, discussing new teachers and bubbling over with enthusiasm in anticipation of the new school year. I am sure that we all remember how we felt when we started our new terms back in elementary school. We felt as if we were setting out on a new path, full of hidden dangers and pleasant surprises, and we acted as if we expected a succession of mysteries and miracles at every step. Today’s children feel the same way about it. It is a challenge and an adventure.But while our children are going to be busy being enthusiastic about a hundred and one things, let the parents not forget to take a long look at themselves and their progeny. On the first day of the term, ask yourself what progress your child’s teacher will report on the last day. Will your boy or girl forge ahead, or remain just a dull average? Will he swim, or will he just float, carried by the educational tide? How many parents wonder why their child does no more than float in school, sometimes a “dead-man’s” float, he is passive in his studies, he goes through school without school going through him. They are prone to blame it on his IQ, and then discover that his IQ hits 130. They blame the school or Yeshiva, and then discover that their neighbor’s little boy attends the same school, nay – the same class, and is performing miracles in his work. And they are stumped. Why, after an extensive Jewish education, such parents might ask themselves, should my child remain apathetic to anything with Jewish content? What is it that he lacks? And if the parents are intelligent people, they will ask not “what does he lack” but “what do we lack?” “We have bought for him all the books he needs, a Jewish encyc…

One of the most perplexing problems currently being grappled with by some of our more serious educators, thinkers, and generally mature people, is the problem of teaching Communism in our public schools. The question is not a political one, since both proponents and opponents detest communism. If it were a political issue, it would not be discussed from this pulpit and by this Rabbi. The question is even more than a purely technical one to be discussed in the obscure jargon of professional educators. It is basically a moral problem and is therefore open to a religious evaluation.It is not an easy problem to solve. Both opposing points of view seem to have merit. It is our task to weigh the merits and the faults carefully, from the points of view of the American tradition of democracy and from the point of view of plain common sense, and then to draw upon the fertile resources of our faith to see what it has to say.Those who are against teaching Communism in our schools, and we speak here of intelligent opponents, not hysterical bigots, are concerned with the danger of our students being convinced by it. Play with fire long enough, and you are bound to be burned. Teach students Das Kapital and The Communist Manifesto, and they will wind up materialistic atheists with an allegiance to the Kremlin. Communism is an attractive theory, and it may claim many victims. The danger is too strong and the likelihood too great. Let them learn of other things. Don’t teach them communism.Those who maintain that the theories and actualities of communism should be taught, counter that argument by saying that all knowledge is, in one way or another dangerous. The knowledge of mathematics can lead to an atom bomb, the knowledge of philosophy to heresy, and the knowledge of chemistry to poison gases. Yet that does not mean that we should abandon these studies. It depends upon who studies, how it is taught, and the moral tradition in which the studying is done. Surely, speaking from a J…

1. Sidra smbodies some of Jsm’s loftiest ethical insights – so much so that if Jews or non-Jews with latent anti-Torah tendencies were to read this portion carefully, they would be convinced error judicesof their pre…2. Perhaps some of greatest ethical insights: משוח מלחמה. Thus exemption for kerem. Even more – כל הירא ורך הלבב… R. Akiva: literally, But רבי יוסי הגלילי: מפני עבירות שבידו.

Sidra embodies some of Jsm's loftiest ethical insights – so much so that if Jews or non Jews with latent anti-Torah tendencies were to read this portion carefully, they would be convinced even of their prejudices... Perhaps some of the greatest ethical insights: משיח מלחמה. Thus: exemptions for כרם-את-אלה. Even more – כל הירא ורך הלבב... R. Akiva: literally. But רבי יוסי הגלילי: מפני עבירות שבידי – fuels self morally inadequate to stewed in camp והי' מחנ-ך קדשך, refuses endanger others and self because of own guilt.

The Torah’s concept of a limited monarchy, with a king subservient to the law and to God, is first outlined in this morning’s Sidra: כי תבוא אל הארץ… ואמרת אשימה עלי מלך ככל הגויים אשר סביבותי שום תשים עליך מלך אשר יבחר ה’ אלקיך בו. When you reach the Promised Land, and you will say, I wish to set over myself a king like all the other nations that are about me, then thou shalt set over thyself a king whom the Lord thy God will choose. Now the Rabbis faced a basic question in approaching this Biblical passage. Is this declaration of the Torah to be considered מצוה, an obligation, namely, that upon arriving in the Promised Land the people of Israel must establish a strong central leadership? Or is it to be understood as רשות, as a grant of permission, i.e. that in the event that the leaders of the people will decide upon a monarchy and request it, that the Torah does not object to such a strong government?This question was in issue between R. Judah and R. Nehorai (Sanhedrin 20b). R. Judah considered this a positive commandment, an obligation, while R. Nehorai regarded the statement as רשות, as permission, but not an absolute obligation. Most of our medieval commentators, the “Rishonim,” are of divided opinion as to the verdict of the Halakha; but the majority seem to favor the opinion of R. Judah who considers the passage concerning the king as מצוה, an obligation.Now, if indeed we consider the statement of the Torah obligatory, this raises a serious and perplexing historical problem. For we read in the Prophets (I Samuel, Chapter 8) that when the Children of Israel finally did request a monarchy, the Prophet Samuel was infuriated, and God Himself was highly displeased. The elders approached Samuel, and said to him, now that you are old and we can find no worthy successor to you from amongst your children, therefore עתה שימה לנו מלך לשפטנו ככל הגויים, set for us a king to judge us, like all the other nations. The Prophet was incensed and he prayed to God, Who answere…

It is very hard not to sound a bit over-sentimental and saccharine at a time of this sort. It is rather sad to close shop and call an end to our Seminar of 1968. These seven or eight days that we have been together at Camp Morasha have been a highly concentrated period, equivalent to a much longer time. We have gotten to know each other quite intensely. We have experienced much more in this week than people ordinarily do in weeks or even months. To an extent, this period may form a signifleant portion of our lives. I am fairly sure that there are people in this dining room tonight for whom this week represents a turning point in their lives. Something very decisive has happened to them. Henceforth their careers, their futures, their destinies, are going to be much different from what they would have been had they not been here today. So this evening is like the end of a chumash. When you end one book of the Bible and begin the next, there are three words that the congregation recites while rising: ”Chazak, chazak, ve*nitיchazek -- Be strong, be strong, and let us find strength in each other.” Chazak implies the strength of courage. That is going to be my theme for this evening -- the theme of courage, specifically three kinds of courage. The first form of courage that I recommend to you is the courage to grow up fast. There is no time to squander on leisurely -2- childishness in the world we live in. Socially, militarily, politically, and especially Jewishly, the stream of events flows too quickly to allow time for "kid stuff" for people your age. Our world is hungry for adult minds. Nature does not share our human prediliction for coddling people until they are eighteen or twenty. If the youngest of you here were a bird, by this age your mother would long ago have shoved you out of her nest and you would be on your own. If you were a member of any other species, nature would not tolerate that gap in age that we humans have invented and called "adolescence" or "tee…

The case for the ecological movement is be­yond dispute. One point, of the many co­gent ones made in the growing literature on the subject, is worth repeating here. Rene Dubos has reminded us that we still know precious little about pollution. Seventy per­cent of all the precipitate contaminants in urban air are still unidentified and twenty to thirty years hence those who are today below the age of three will undoubtedly show vary­ing signs of chronic and permanent malfunc­tion. Man is clever enough to conquer nature — and stupid enough to wreck it and thereby destroy himself.We have a concomitant danger in the theo­logical environment — a fall-out of silliness, if the reports of a theological conference on the subject are to be trusted. Most of the(Protestant) divines at the Claremont sym­posium were “with it,” from the crisp title (“Theology of Survival” — in an age when Portnoy’s Complaint is elevated into a “Theology,” why not?) to the conventional self-flagellation. After all, having written the obituary for the Diety and debunked His best-seller, what is so terrible about theo­logians asserting that religion is responsible for our dirty planet, and that the solution requires another one of those “major modi­fications” of current religious values?The starting point for a serious consideration of the religious view of man’s relations with his natural environment is the divine blessing to man in Genesis 1:28 — “be fruitful and multiply and replenish the earth and subdue it; and have dominion over the fish of the sea and over the fowl of the air and over every creeping thing that creepeth on the earth.” For years the Bible had been iden­tified as the major impediment to the progress of science. Now that science and technology are ecological villians, the blame for them is placed — on the Bible. “And subdue it” has now been proclaimed by theologians at the Claremont symposium as the source of man’s insensitivity and bru­tality. “Dominion. . .over the fowl of the …

Now that the highest courts in the land are studying the problem of President Nixon’s refusal to surrender the famous tapes, it is timely to inquire what other systems of law have to say about this historic confrontation between the executive and the judiciary. Can any wisdom be gleaned from the Hebrew tradition, one of the main streams that feed into Western culture and civilization? The Mishnah, the Jewish legal code redacted by Rabbi Judah in Palestine during the early part of the third century, teaches that a king may not judge and not be brought to trial; others may not testify against him and he may not be made to testify concerning others. The Talmud (the Babylonian commentary and extension of the Mishnah) limits this law to “Israelite Kings,” i.e. those who were not of Davidic descent. Kings of the House of David, however, are subject to judgment and may be compelled to testify.The Talmud then concludes that fundamentally the law requires that the king should submit to judgment and testimony, but that an exception was made in the case of the later Jewish Kings (“Israelite Kings”) because of a historic incident. In the first century of the common era Jannai was King, and the head of the Sanhedrin (supreme court) was the fearlessly independent Simeon ben Shetah. Now it happened that a servant of the King had been accused of committing murder. According to the law, the master had to be present during the trial of the slave. Jannai obeyed, and presented himself in court. But then Simeon informed Jannai that the law required the master to stand while the trial was in session. Aware of the sensitivities involved, Simeon hastened to assure the King that “you are not standing before us, but before Him who by His word created the world.” Here Jannai drew the line and hurled a challenge at Simeon: “not when you say so, but only when your colleagues will tell me so.” The shrewd monarch had made the right move. Simeon turned to his right, and his colleagues “buried the…

In preparing for the revelation at Sinai, Moses read the “Book of the Covenant” (from the beginning of the Torah up to that point) to the children of Israel. ויאמר כל אשר דבר ה’ נעשה ונשמע, “And they said: ‘all that the Lord hath spoken we shall do and we shall obey.’” Our tradition saw in these two words, naaseh ve’nishma, not just an indication of consent but a whole philosophy of religion. For the Tradition did not translate naaseh ve’nishma as “do and obey,” but as “do and understand.” It is the particular order of that expression, the priority of action to understanding, that was acclaimed by our Sages. They tell us that even God was overwhelmed: יצתה בת קול ואמרה מי גילה רז זה לבני שמלאכי השרת משתמשין בו? A divine voice issued from heaven and cried out, “Who revealed to My children this secret which only the ministering angels know of?”But we must be honest. If the Jewish tradition admires the response of naaseh ve’nishma and God was astounded that the secret is out, clearly we moderns are shocked for the opposite reason. The modern temper sees in this attitude a symptom of blind religion, of lack of understanding, of irrationality. Surely an intelligent person seeks to understand before he practices, he seeks to know before he commits himself.How then can we go along with Judaism’s enthusiastic approval of naaseh ve’nishma?We must understand that we here face two radically different approaches. The modern temper can be characterized as autonomous. Man himself must determine each act, each decision, each challenge. A demand must appeal to his intellect and to his emotion before he commits himself to it. He, man, is the measure of all things. What he does must issue from internal consent, and not be imposed upon him externally. Judaism, however, is theonomous. Naaseh ve’nishma implies not man as the center of all things, but God. It is the nomos of Theos, the law of God, to which we submit in humility. Judaism regards autonomy in religion as an act of intellec…

Psalm 27: הורני ה' דרכך ונחני באורח מישור למען שוררי. Beautiful, but difficult. First, isn’t דרכך the same as אורך מישור? Second, and more important: למען שוררי. Most translators render: “because of them that lie in wait for me.” Dr. Birnbaum modernizes this succinctly as, “in spite of my enemies.” This follows the interpretation of most commentaries. The idea is that שוררי comes from the word שור, which means look, i.e., those who look at me with hatred and wait for me to fail. However, the verb is not necessarily evil! Moreover, למען does not usually mean “in spite of,” but “because of.”Hence, permit this interpretation: שוררי means onlookers – neutral, or even those who look to me for guidance. Hence, David said: “Teach me Thy way, O Lord,” my intentions are noble. But sometimes man misreads the divine directions, and though he wishes to walk in the way of the Lord he chooses a road that is crooked and distorted, one that is misleading. Hence, lead me on the אורך מישור. Why is that so important? In order not to mislead the onlookers – למען שוררי, because of the onlookers.I refer, in this respect, especially to apologetics or טעמי המצוות, which have a long and honored history in Judaism. There are three attitudes with regard to apologetics: a) that the whole function of a Jew is to explain himself to his non-Jewish peers, and to those of his brethren who are alienated. Apologetics becomes the supreme religious activity. What is most important is the articulation of Judaism in an idiom comprehensible to the non-Jews. b) the second attitude is diametrically opposed: the commandments and all of Judaism are theonomous, and require no explanations. We do what we do only because we are commanded... c) the middle position, to which I subscribe, is that fundamentally the second opinion is correct: the "service of the Lord" is its own excuse. We do because we are commanded, not because we bring God and Torah before the bar of our esthetic and moral judgment. However, we s…