Knowing and Understanding

  Good Morning,  It is Sunday, March 24.  I do not know if anyone is aware that I re-started the blog and changed its name.  Since I am retired from Barrack, I did not think I should have the name of the school in the title, or say it is the thoughts of students at the school.  In fact, I do not know if any of the current students know me.  

I have been doing a lot of reading lately.  My brother-in-law is a psychiatrist and psychoanalyst, and he has inspired me to study the writings of and about Sigmund Freud.  As I usually do, I attempt to understand what I read from a biblical and Jewish perspective.  I am know reading a philosopher, Ludwig Feuerbach, who had a great influence on Freud and Marx.  The book is called, The Essence of Christianity.  After this book, I plan to read Freud's The Future of an Illusion.  Once I have finished both of them, I will discuss my ideas about them in a future blog.

At the moment, though, there seems to be more going on in the world around us that I can understand.  I am attaching my views on this below.  Between politics in the United States and the war in Gaza, it seems to me that our world has gone beyond the ability to comprehend it.  And so, I will let my writings try to describe my feelings.

I have been a teacher my whole adult life. There is a statement in the Talmud (Ta’anit 7a) attributed to Rabbi Chanina, “I have learned much from my teachers, more from my colleagues, and most from my students.” I agree with Rabbi Chanina. I am indebted to all those teachers, from kindergarten through graduate school, who taught me how to learn. Through numerous conversations with my colleagues, I learned how to teach better. From my students, I learned what are the most important things to teach.  

The two most important lessons I learned from my students were to have patience and to smile. If you do not have patience, you will never make it as a teacher. As much as we test students for their knowledge, they test our patience. If you do not enjoy being with them, and a smile is the clearest indication of that, then I suggest another occupation. During a question-and-answer session with the student body, I was asked what in teaching makes me afraid. A number of teachers were seated on the stage in our auditorium. I answered stage fright. Actors on the stage have a script and rehearse for hours before they perform. Usually, they have a different audience every performance. Teachers have no script, little time to rehearse, and have the same audience for an entire school year. My fear was whether I had the acting ability and the spontaneity to keep my audience engaged. Sometimes I succeeded, sometimes I failed. I learned two other important lessons from them. 

One is the necessity to define terms. The other is to try to expose underlying assumptions. My subject was the Hebrew Bible. Trying to define what the Hebrew words meant was essential. Biblical scholars debate when the texts of the Hebrew Bible were written and codified. If we accept the idea that they are eye-witness accounts, then some of them may be four thousand years old. The final codification was probably in the first two centuries of our era, making the text almost two thousand years old. Language is fluid. Words do not mean the same thing now as they did years ago. For example, I watched cartoons as a child. At the end of “The Flintstones”, we heard “we’ll have a gay old time.” Then, I knew it meant happy. Today I wonder about Fred and Barney. 

 If words change their meaning over decades, how can we be sure what they mean after millenniums. And within the Hebrew Bible itself, which covers over 1500 years, do words mean the same thing? We have many tools at our disposal to try to help us determine their meanings, such as rabbinical commentary, comparative Semitics, and the plethora of documents that have been excavated and translated from the Ancient Near East. Using these tools, scholars have attempted to perfect the art of exegesis, trying to determine what the words meant in the mind of the author. If that is not possible, and I doubt if it truly is, then are we really performing eisegesis, which is putting our own meaning into the words. For example, when I look at the first chapters of Genesis, I can see modern theories, such as the Big Bang and Evolution. The Big Bang explains light on day one and the stars on day four. On days five and six, life begins in the sea, evolves to birds and land creatures, then humans. We also see the evolution of human technological skills, starting with Adam and Eve sewing garments to cover their nakedness, Cain building a city, and the sons of Lemech, Yaval, founding animal husbandry, Yuval, music, and Tuval-Cain, metallurgy. If the Big Bang and Evolution are the most logical interpretations of the early chapters of Genesis, does this point to a text with divine origins, or am I reading my ideas into the text because that is what I want it to mean? 

 There are many words and concepts that we think we know what they mean, but we may not truly understand them. For example, I know that E=MC2. Not being a physicist, I do not understand it. Another example, I know that people support Trump. I do not understand why. There are two concepts in the Hebrew Bible that I think I know what they mean, or at least I am capable of translating them, but I struggle to understand them. One is the concept of blessing, and the other is the concept of holiness. I go though the act of blessing on many occasions. Every Friday night, I bless my children, wine (or in my case, grape juice), and bread after my wife blesses the candles. Does my act of blessing bring about a state of holiness? My confusion comes from the fact that in addition to blessing my children, I am blessing God. Every act of blessing proclaims that God is blessed, with the words “Blessed are you, Lord, our God, King of the world/universe”. I do not understand how I have the power to bless God. Does my act of blessing make me holy? I can understand the concept of God as the bestower of blessing. As far as I know, I am blessed with this life, and this life only. What part God had to do with it depends on the belief in God. 

 God commands us to be holy. The only way I can understand that both God and existence is holy is imitatio dei, imitation of God. The prophet Micah tells us that God in addition to demanding holiness, demands justice, kindness, and humility. If I try to live with those attributes, am I holy? And if I am holy, what benefit do I receive from being in the state of holiness? The Hebrew Bible is based on a system of reward and punishment. From this perspective, I will be rewarded with blessings because of my holiness. These blessings are the promises God gave to Abraham, wealth, many children, and a land of our own. According to the Hebrew Bible, being just, kind, and especially humble leads to wisdom. 

 Wisdom is another concept that I struggle with. To be wise, one must have knowledge and understanding. But that, apparently is not enough. What one does with the knowledge and understanding matters as well. Can we call Hitler wise? He had the knowledge to make Germans hate Jews even more than they already did. He understood how to mass murder them. It was his lack of humility that cost him the war. Was the world just in its treatment of Nazi Germany? Millions of German citizens were killed. Were they innocent or were their deaths justifiable? Was the bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki just? Were the crimes of the leaders of Germany and Japan sufficient to warrant the suffering that their citizens endured? If we say yes that civilians may suffer for the actions of their leaders, then is it hypocritical to condemn Israel for the deaths its war against Hamas has brought about? If the citizens of Gaza celebrated the barbaric actions of Hamas on October 7, are they innocent? Abraham begged God to save the cities of Sodom and Gomorrah if there were ten innocent/righteous people in the cities. Apparently, there were none, and the cities were destroyed. Did Israel attempt to save the innocent? If you claim genocide, then the answer is no. If you accept the idea that Israel tried to save as many innocents as they could, then the answer is yes. Are these answers based on exegesis or eisegesis? 

 I support the existence of Israel, but I am not an apologist for its actions. I do not live there, and I have no say in deciding what it should or should not do. On the other hand, I expect Israel as a Jewish state to act a certain way. Do I expect them to be holy? Is that fair of me? Was there a better way for Israel to react? Did Israel do all it could to prevent civilian deaths? Did the actions of Hamas make that impossible? I am not a politician or an expert in military strategy, so I do not have an answer. If there was a way and Israel did not use it, them I can partially blame Israel. I do not see how Hamas is free of blame. Their acts of savagery and barbarity against innocent Israelis, their hiding behind their own people, their buildings of missiles and tunnels rather than an infrastructure for the people of Gaza is to be condemned. 

 During the months that we Jews in the United States have been tortured by events in Israel and Gaza, all I can think of is a line from a song by Stephen Stills, “nobody’s right when everybody’s wrong.” Does it make any sense to try to qualify who is more wrong? And so, I am at a loss for understanding what is happening and why. We look to our leaders for wisdom and guidance through these troubling times. Unfortunately, we have not seen a lot of it. The religious right has gained a great deal of power in the current government of Netanyahu. I expect more out of them. If they truly take the Hebrew Bible to be a divine revelation, then they must follow it—they must act with wisdom, justice, and kindness. Jesus proclaimed the Pharisees to be hypocrites. Can I make the same accusation against the current government of Israel?