You Kant always get what you want

This post continues Mah Rabu's coverage of the minutiae of the independent minyan scene, as in the Hilchot Pluralism series or the Hanhu Chavurata column. This post addresses the darker side of minyanim, discussing relatively trivial issues and using them as a jumping off point to rant about economic, political, and moral philosophy. The airing of these unsavory aspects of independent minyanim should not be seen as a condemnation specific to minyanim; all of them (except perhaps the last one) are as bad or worse in mainstream synagogues, but I'm not writing about synagogues because they're not on my radar.

Consider this dialogue between a little kid and his/her parent:
"Stop doing that."
"But why??? Johnny's doing it too. Why don't you tell him to stop?"
"Because I'm your parent, and I'm not Johnny's parent."

So I'm writing about independent minyanim because that's what I have a connection to; synagogues might as well be on Neptune for all the relevance they have to my life right now.

***

I've posted in the past about laissez-faire economics as a desirable model for the Jewish community. While it may work for "the" Jewish community on the macroeconomic scale, I don't think it's such a good model for individual Jewish communities' internal affairs, or for, well, actual economics.

Adherence to laissez-faire economics is in part a positive (as in "descriptive", not as in "good") belief and in part a normative belief. If you say "If the market is left to run on its own without intervention, this will result in the optimal outcome", you are both making a prediction about what will happen under certain conditions, and a normative statement about what outcome is preferred.

So I'm not sure which of these I'm actually disagreeing with when I say that an unregulated free market doesn't work. If I say "An unregulated free market results in vast income inequalities and in the concentration of power in the hands of a few large corporations", am I making an empirical claim contrary to what laissez-faire economists would claim, or would they agree with the empirical claim but disagree with my normative statement that this outcome is unacceptable? Maybe it depends on which laissez-faire economist you ask (a clueless one or a malicious one). But either way, I'm going to say that an unregulated free market (the actual market, not the minyan market) doesn't work. Assuming certain agreed-upon definitions of "good" results for society as a whole, I claim that if individuals are permitted to pursue their rational self-interest without regulation, then this will lead to an overall result that is not the "best". (I'm not claiming that I've found an internal inconsistency in the economic theories, only that the theories' assumptions don't reflect real-world conditions.)

There are two alternative ways to achieve society's goals, if the invisible hand isn't going to do this on its own:
1) Regulated capitalism. Through the political process, society decides on its objectives and creates a government to carry out those objectives. By creating enforceable laws (taxes, tariffs, zoning ordinances, appropriations, etc.), the government alters the incentives, so that individuals can go ahead and maximize their utility (taking into account these new incentives), and this will result in the outcome that society has decided on.
2) Individual moral choices. Rather than pursuing their self-interest, individuals make their own economic choices based on which choice will result in the best outcome for society.

I think that "compassionate conservatism" claims, on paper, that #2 can solve the problem without the need for #1 -- voluntary private-sector philanthropy can compensate for the shortcomings of the free market without the need for governmental intervention in the economy. (This is more nuanced than the pure free-market view, because it recognizes that the free market doesn't work perfectly on its own.) However, the magnitude of what can be accomplished by the private sector is so much smaller than the magnitude of what needs to be done that it's not clear whether the proponents of these ideas are simply deluded into thinking that their policies will have the (supposedly) desired outcome, or whether they don't actually care if this outcome is achieved. (The Republican politicians themselves are clearly in the latter category, but the people who vote for them are some of each.)

(Of course, in practice, the Bush administration is anything but fiscally conservative (compassionate or otherwise), but that's a story for another time.)

On the flip side, Jim Wallis (The Soul of Politics) criticizes liberals for relying solely on #1 at the expense of #2. I'm not so sure that this criticism is accurate. But if, by criticizing both the left and the right and thereby appearing to be evenhanded and nonpartisan, he can get his fellow evangelical Christians to read his books and learn that they have a religious obligation to pursue economic justice (and not merely to oppose stem-cell research and marriage equality), then as far as I'm concerned he can say what he wants.

I think we need both.

The "compassionate conservatives" are wrong (insofar as even they believe their own rhetoric) for a whole host of reasons if they believe that the shortcomings of the free market can be solved solely by individual "points of light".

One reason is the sheer scale of the problems in search of a solution. Just as private industry could not have produced the Interstate Highway System or the Apollo program without coordination and resources from the government, private volunteerism could not have created Medicaid or Social Security.

Also, the prisoner's dilemma makes it difficult for people to do the right thing when there is a clear incentive to do the wrong thing. For example, in the absence of minimum wage laws (and assuming that the market wage is below a living wage, otherwise minimum wage laws would have no effect), employers could still choose to pay their employees higher than the market wage. But they would leave themselves susceptible to being undersold by their less scrupulous competitors, who pay lower wages and can thus charge lower prices. The industry could decide collectively that it's going to pay a living wage, but in the absence of a coordinating mechanism such as government, there is nothing to prevent individual businesses from defecting. Yes, consumers can choose to only purchase from socially responsible businesses, but again, the consumer is forced into a difficult choice.

By relying entirely on individual moral choices, this system depends on suppressing the yetzer hara (evil inclination) entirely, and assumes that we are all capable of being angels (and policy experts), an unrealistic goal. Regulated capitalism, in contrast, harnesses the yetzer hara in the service of the yetzer hatov (good inclination), by formalizing our social contract in the form of law and government. If society makes these moral decisions collectively, then individuals are not faced with the question of whether or not to act in society's interest.

In smaller groups, such as a family or the old-time communities where everyone knows each other, much of the social contract can be unwritten, and formal regulations are less necessary. But in a nation of 300 million people, it's much more difficult for individuals to see themselves as responsible for every other individual, so we need more structure.

Wallis's straw-man liberals (who, like true "compassionate conservatives", may or may not exist) are also wrong. It's impossible for government to regulate everything, or to enforce all of its regulations, and therefore, even in the ideal case where all the right laws are passed, it's still going to be possible to beat the system without getting caught, and people will still have a moral obligation not to. This is the type of case where the Torah says "v'yareita meiElohecha" - "you shall fear your God". Rashi says at Leviticus 19:14 that these cases are not enforceable by human authorities, and no one is going to know whether you've done the right thing, but you still have a responsibility before God, who knows what you're thinking.

Furthermore, the political process is slow, and government cannot respond instantly to new realities, and individual initiative is necessary to plug the gaps.

***

What is a moral choice?

Let's go with Kant's definition, and define it as a choice in line with the categorical imperative:

Act only according to that maxim by which you can at the same time will that it would become a universal law.

This has nothing to say about how we determine what the universal laws should be, but it does tell us how to act once we've established those laws.

This definition of "moral" is very different from the definition that prevails in contemporary American politics and media. When they talk about "moral values" as a campaign issue, they're restricting "morality" to issues related to sex and fetuses/embryos, while turning a blind eye to the Republican policies in other spheres that are actually immoral.

When GWB lost his veto virginity this week, he said that the bill allowing federal funding of resarch on new embryonic stem-cell lines would be crossing a "moral line". But there isn't a moral and an immoral side to this issue. Both sides are acting morally, but they disagree on the universal laws. One side thinks that saving lives of living, breathing humans is more valuable than preserving an embryo in a petri dish (which is going to be thrown out anyway). The other side thinks that the embryo is more valuable. Given these inputs, both sides are pursuing policies consistent with what they would will to be universal laws. I know where I stand on this one (and you can probably guess), and I think the other side's universal laws are horrifyingly wrong.

Likewise, the "homosexual relationships are immoral" accusation just doesn't compute. People who are in same-sex relationships (other than closeted Republicans) generally believe that everyone in a same-sex relationship should have the right to engage in the debauchery of filing a joint tax return, so there's no disparity between their own actions and their preferred universal laws. Again, people have different views on which universal laws are correct, and again, it should be clear where I stand on this one.

So my main points here are:
1) Acting morally is necessary but not sufficient. It's possible for an action to be both moral and wrong. Determining standards of what's right and what's wrong are outside the scope of this post (which is about morals, not ethics).
2) Despite the baggage associated with this term in our culture, "immoral" isn't the worst thing in the world. Many actions that are immoral by the Kantian standard (such as the utterly trivial actions discussed below) are still much better, from a right-and-wrong point of view, than other actions which are moral by the Kantian standard yet based on FUCKED-UP universal laws.

***

Now that we've addressed the big issues, we're going to talk (as promised) about independent minyanim, and consider issues that are not only utterly trivial in comparison with finding cures for Alzheimer's or market failures, but utterly trivial in their own right. But that's what blogs are for. Remember: while "immoral" is (ceteris paribus) less good than "moral", I'm not using this word as pejoratively as it is usually understood in our time. So I'm about to call all of us immoral.

In today's emancipated societies, Jewish communities are voluntary associations (unlike society at large), united by some common thread -- in addition to being Jewish, a community might be unified by geography, ideology, aesthetics, etc. Each community gets to decide, through whatever process it uses, what objectives it wants to achieve. (To keep things simple, let's assume that everyone in the community agrees on these objectives.) If these objectives are achieved spontaneously by everyone acting the way they want to act, then great! This community is a n instant success! I've seen it happen.

However, sometimes it's not that easy. In that case, there are two options (as outlined above) for how to bridge the gap between individuals' behavior and the community's objectives:
1) The community (acting on behalf of its constituents) can impose regulations on the individuals to compel them to act in the community's interests
2) Individuals can make moral choices so that they will act in the community's interest (seeing the community's objectives as the "universal law" to which their actions must conform)

And, because the issues discussed below aren't so important in the grand scheme of things (unlike the issues of life and death discussed above), and aren't so ethically charged, there is also a third option:
3) The community can revise its objectives to be more in line with the result that would arise spontaneously from the desired actions of the individuals, to reduce the effort that needs to be put into #1 and #2.

I think there's a place for all three. #2 is nice work if you can get it. But people don't always act morally (said in that friendly non-judgmental way), and don't always act according to that maxim that they would agree would be swell if it were a universal law (in this case, the unanimously agreed-upon community objectives). So if that's the case, the community has to rethink things and decide whether it's worthwhile or feasible to maintain its objectives. If so, then #1 is in order, and if not, then #3 is the way out.

Often, in our small and informal independent communities, #1 doesn't really make sense in our culture, so it's a question of #2 (which can be enforced socially) or #3. Larger, more institutional communities attempt #1, often in vain.

So let's consider some of the nuts-and-bolts issues that every independent minyan (and other communities too, I hear) has to deal with.

Space:

I was at a minyan on a recent Friday night (I'll keep the specific minyanim anonymous) where the chairs were set up in a hybrid of the Single Direction Approach and the Concentric Circle Approach: The chairs were in three concentric (parallel) circular arcs, with each arc spanning about a quarter circle. The leader sat near the center of curvature (the place where the center of the circle would be if the circle went all the way around), facing the congregation.

I arrived at the advertised starting time; most people did not. (Grrr. See "Time", below.) I sat in the front row, to be a good citizen, and because we were already so far away from the leader. The other people who were there at the beginning sat in the second and third rows. As people steadily trickled in during kabbalat shabbat, the second and third rows filled up, and the first row remained completely empty except for me and one other daring person. So what happened after more people showed up? The Aufbau principle should dictate that they would sit in the first row, right? Wrong! They stood in the back. As even more people arrived, this group in the back became large enough that they started adding chairs from elsewhere in the room to create a fourth row. All the while, the first row remained stably underpopulated, and I felt like I was wearing a dunce cap. By the end of kabbalat shabbat, I had given up trying to fight, and abandoned my post and stood on the side for most of maariv.

If I had been an organizer at this minyan, I would have eliminated the first row (causing the second row to become the first row, etc.) once the second and third rows had filled up and it was clear that the first row had cooties. And if I had been the leader, I would have moved closer to the kahal once it was clear that they weren't moving closer to me. But I was a guest, so I kept my mouth shut.

The people at this minyan (including me, by the end) were acting immorally, in that Kantian way. Let us assume that the configuration of chairs (set up in advance) reflected the collective will of the community. (It's not what I would have chosen, but that's beside the point.) The number of chairs was a fairly accurate prediction of the total number who showed up by the end (the number sitting in the new fourth row was roughly equal to the number of empty chairs in the first row), and the spacing and orientation represented some set of collective preferences. Therefore, the moral thing to do would be for individuals to act in ways that respected these collective preferences.

I don't think the categorical imperative was meant to apply in ridiculously narrow cases. For example, if someone wants to sit in the third row, fifth seat from the left, this does not mean that s/he must also will that everyone sit in the third row, fifth seat from the left, because that's just crazy (and people act like fermions). However, in the absence of unique personal circumstances, each person should have a set of ranked seating preferences that would be consistent with everyone having the same set of ranked preferences. ("If it's available, I'll take the third row, fifth seat from the left. If that's already taken, I'll take the second row, all the way to the right. If that's already taken, ...")

It seems that most people in attendance that night had a similar set of ranked seating preferences: "I'll sit somewhere in the second or third row. Under no circumstances will I sit in the front row." This is, of course, mathematically impossible (outside of Chelm) if everyone abides by it -- the frontmost row where anyone is sitting becomes, by default, the front row. This would lead to infinite recursion were it not for the fact that people are willing to sit behind empty chairs. But even without any logical paradoxes, the summation of these individual ranked seating preferences is inconsistent with the collective preferences represented by the chair setup. If there is a front row (and no chairs that are intended to remain permanently empty), then someone has to sit in it. If the hospital or the power plant is open on weekends, then someone has to work the weekend shift.

Therefore, there are two possibilities:

• People were acting immorally (applying a different set of rules to themselves than they would apply to other people in the community) and/or irrationally.
  
• Our initial assumption was faulty, and the seating configuration was not an accurate representation of the collective will. For example, maybe people do prefer having a row of empty seats in front of the frontmost populated row, providing a security barrier between them and the leader. Or maybe people want there to be a huge gap between the leader and all of the chairs (even larger than the gap that was already there).
  

Of course, there are Jewish prayer spaces with an intentional gap between the leader and the congregation -- they're called synagogues. (And even there, with that huge gap, people still avoid sitting in the front.) But I think most people who go to independent minyanim are trying to avoid the synagogue aesthetic. They don't actually want this gap, they just don't want to be the ones to sit near the leader.

One solution (#2) is for individuals to decide to take one for the team and act morally and sit in the front even if it wouldn't be their first choice. Another is for someone to give top-down instructions, but, while this may work in a synagogue (the rabbi says "let's move closer" and people grudgingly comply), independent minyanim tend to have a less top-down culture (which is generally a good thing).

Another option is creative social engineering solutions, which could be seen as deception, or could be seen as helping the community carry out its own objectives. At Kol Zimrah, we might get 100 people, but there are more like 20 people at the beginning and the rest show up later. We use the Concentric Circle Approach, and people are likely to gravitate toward the outermost circles. So instead of starting with 100 chairs, so that people start out scattered on the periphery, we sometimes start by setting out fewer chairs than are needed, so that people can start out relatively concentrated, and then add more chairs on the outside as they become necessary. (This assumes that people will fill up the existing chairs before adding their own, an assumption disproven by the minyan discussed above!)

Another option is to plan around expected behavior. At the most recent Brooklyn KZ, I wanted to minimize the dead space in the center of the circles. So I made lots of circles, with the innermost circle unrealistically small. As expected, very few people sat in the inner circle, but lots of people sat in the second circle (who might not have if the inner circle hadn't been there), which, though obviously larger than the first circle, was still smaller than the innermost circle usually is, so our objectives were deviously achieved.

There's another minyan I go to that sets up chairs in the Single Direction Approach, with the leader in the center of the room. When they have lunch events, they put away the tables after lunch and do mincha, without setting up any chairs. Mincha is a short enough service (though always longer than you think) that people can stand for the whole thing. As usual, the leader and Torah are positioned in the center of the room. However, what typically happens is that almost everyone ends up standing behind an invisible horizontal line going through the leader, so that against his/her (and the community's collective) will, the leader effectively ends up in the front of the room. I'm not sure what the solution is. I suppose that after everyone takes their places, the leader could move to the center of the population distribution, but then people might reposition themselves (which is more likely if they're standing in a mostly empty room than if they're sitting), and this could go on recursively until we encounter degeneracy pressure (since people have finite size).

Then there's all the issues we encounter when we have Kol Zimrah in the park. There are many great things about davening in the park, but the acoustical quality is not one of them. In order for the acoustics to work at all, people have to sit close together. There is no other way. We've learned this the hard way, with a number of outdoor services where no one could hear each other. But this is not people's natural inclination. Since there's lots of space in the park, there is a tendency to spread out and fill the space (like the urban legend about goldfish), added to the usual phobia of sitting too close to the leader. As a result, the free-market seating distribution is highly dissipated, and (surprise surprise) there is a gap between the leader and everyone else. When I led one of these early unregulated outdoor services, I dealt with this by getting up and moving closer to the crowd (they were already settled on their blankets, so they didn't run away), but the distribution was still quite suboptimal.

Kol Zimrah generally strives to be non-coercive. We don't tell people when to sit or stand, what siddur to use, how to pray, etc. In order to pull off these services in the park, we make an exception. Now that we've learned our lesson, we have designated friendly-but-firm "fascists" who greet each person as s/he approaches the KZ clump. "Shabbat shalom, welcome to Kol Zimrah! Please sit right there. Thank you!" They make sure that people sit in a tight cluster, with the leader in the middle (not far away on one end). The initial nucleus (when the first 10 or so people are there at the very beginning) must be a cluster, not a circle with empty space in the middle, because the empty space will never be filled up. If you start with a circle, then people will arrive and sit behind it, etc. Generally we're opposed to fascism, but in this case, we've found that it's the only way.

Time:

I was recently visiting a Shabbat morning minyan where the population stayed in the single digits for all of pesukei d'zimrah, and we had to wait a while for a minyan so that we could start shacharit. Throughout shacharit, the spirit was anemic. After that, more people arrived, and the place was hopping by musaf.

There were two contributing factors to the lateness: the weather was inclement and people were walking a long way through the rain, and a number of people had (or were) young children. Because of the first factor, I'll give this minyan the benefit of the doubt and assume that this was atypical for them and that people are prompter in nicer weather. However, there are other minyanim and synagogues that fall into this pattern even in ideal weather conditions, including some where no one is there at the advertised starting time, so services always start late. And this minyan doesn't get a free pass for the second factor, because if people have young children this week, then they'll have young children (albeit a week older) next week, so this is a structural factor that the community needs to plan for, as discussed below.

Bishlama (granted), if a critical mass is always there at the beginning, then it doesn't matter when everyone else shows up, and there's no problem. (If a mikvah contains the requisite 40 se'ah of undrawn water, then you can add any amount of drawn water to that, and it will still be a kosher mikvah.) Hacha b'mai askinan, in a case where there isn't a critical mass at the scheduled starting time, so the service either starts late or starts lame.

Each community needs to decide what time it wants to start, and then actually start at that time. If each individual agrees that the community should start at a particular time, and if their presence is necessary to make that happen, then they have a moral obligation to be there at that time. But if the community starts at 9:30 AM and everyone would rather get there at 10:30, then the community (representing its constituents) should just start at 10:30! Problem solved.

Sagredo responds, "But if the service starts an hour later, then if you're still doing full liturgy, then it will end an hour later. This means that people will arrive even later, because people don't want to sit through a whole 2.5-hour service." If people don't want to be there for 2.5 hours, then don't have a 2.5-hour service!!! If the community isn't actually interested in full liturgy, then it shouldn't have it.

In the mainstream synagogue world, these attitudes often break down on denominational lines. The average Reform shulgoer wants to arrive at a late hour on Shabbat morning and be in services for a short amount of time. Therefore, most Reform synagogues have a late scheduled time on Shabbat morning and a relatively short service (shorter than full traditional liturgy). People arrive on time (or even early), the service starts on time, and people stay for the whole thing. The average Conservative shulgoer also wants to arrive at a late hour and be in services for a short amount of time. So he does. It's a free country. Except that the service has already been going on for several hours (with sparse attendance) by the time he gets there. Meanwhile, he considers himself Jewishly superior to his Reform cousins because his shul doesn't cut anything out of the service, even though he ends up spending the same amount of time (or less) in shul as they do at the Reform shul down the block.

I can't blame either of these fictional characters for their attitudes -- if I were going to services at either of their fictional average synagogues, then I'd have a hard time getting out of bed too. But which of them is being more honest?

People:

I've seen this issue come up in a number of different communities.

Given:

• Community C is volunteer-run
• There are n people volunteering, who can contribute an average of h hours of volunteer labor per month
• Community C wishes to maintain a level of activity that requires H hours of labor per month to maintain
• n*h << H
  

Then there are only four possible solutions:

• Increase n (get more people to volunteer)
• Increase h (get people to increase their volunteering commitment; depending on the initial value of h, this might be a short-term solution that leads to long-term burnout, so it's equivalent to a loan that has to be paid back later)
• Decrease H (scale back the community's activities)
• Make the community less volunteer-run by paying for labor (this requires money and a shift in culture)

This is simple math. There is no other way around it.

In less depressing news...

Only 3 weeks until the National Havurah Committee Summer Institute! Check out the latest post about it on Jewschool!

Lots of exciting stuff is happening. The Vulgar Bulgars, Virginia's hottest klezmer band, are confirmed to play at the Saturday night dance party. Scholarships are available for Shabbat if there is financial need. Read all about it!

This, too, is vanity

Don't get me wrong, I want the captured Israeli soldiers to be returned home safely. But all the prayers for these three soldiers that have been circulating this Shabbat and over the Internet might have made sense a few days ago, but now that the shit has hit the fan, I feel like we're in August 1914 and offering our most sincere condolences to the family of Archduke Franz Ferdinand on their tragic loss. It's so much bigger than the three soldiers now.

As for these rallies and other ways to show "support" for Israel: Elf recently posted about 17 Tammuz and quoted Zechariah:

When you fasted and lamented in the fifth and seventh months all these seventy years, did you fast for my [God's] benefit? And when you eat and drink, who but you does the eating, and who but you does the drinking (7:5-6)?

In other words, go ahead and fast if it's going to help you (and I did on Thursday), but don't fool yourself into thinking that your fast in itself has any effect.

Likewise, people can go to rallies if it's going to make them feel better, but it's not going to help the situation in Israel any more than going to a Red Sox rally will help the Red Sox win more games. At best, it's an opportunity to gather and commiserate with other Red Sox fans, I mean Israel "supporters", and at worst, it's an opportunity to yell "Nazi" at the New Israel Fund delegation (this happened at the DC rally in April 2002). But that's it.

Some say that the purpose is to sway US public opinion and/or policy. Suppose for the sake of argument that this is accomplished (in whatever direction you want, without loss of generality). Then what? The US doesn't have the ability to get Israel out of this mess. If it did, then it would have done so a long time ago.

The only way out of this mess is to follow this plan (and I don't know or care what order these things should happen in):

• Hezbollah and Hamas should stop firing rockets into Israel.
• The IDF should stop bombing Lebanon and Gaza.
• The three captive Israeli soldiers should be returned safely.

Unless that's going to happen, then everything else is a striving after wind.

Fuck this.

THIS SUCKS

As I posted on Jewschool, the subject line of this post sums up my thoughts on the situation in Israel and Lebanon. And I'm supposed to go to Haifa in November.

Autopilot

I can't be the only one who has had this experience. Admit it, it's happened to you too.

You're saying "יעלה ויבוא" from memory in the Amidah or birkat hamazon on some holiday or another, and you get to the end, "כי א-ל מלך חנון ורחום אתה...", and then instead of resuming where you left off, you go on autopilot and continue with "...ושמור צאתנו ובואנו".

So anyway, a variant of this happened to me today. They were using a tune for the musaf kedushah that was the same tune that I used for "א-ל אדון" the last time I led shacharit. So we sang "כבודו מלא עולם" to this tune, and then I almost continued "...דעת ותבונה".

Dirge and dance

Longer posts are in the works and coming at some point. In the meantime, I sent in my workshop description for the Institute:

"Baruch El Elyon" is a Shabbat song written in 13th-century Germany, whose seven verses are densely packed with biblical references from Genesis to Job. It can be sung to a complex five-part Chasidic melody that inspires strong reactions, both positive and negative. We will study the sources, structure, and meaning of the text, and learn the melody. In doing so, we'll think about how Shabbat has been understood from the Torah to the 13th century to the present, and prepare to sing this song on Shabbat!

Take me to the round church, where echoes resound and my spirit is found

Several weeks ago, ZT wrote a post about different seating configurations for prayer, which may seem too "inside baseball" for those who aren't independent minyan entrepreneurs and thinking about this stuff all the time, but I'm going to write about it anyway because, well, it wouldn't be the first time.

ZT contrasts two approaches, the Single Direction Approach and the Circle Approach (which includes Concentric Circles), and states the pros and cons of each one. Let's look at the various options and sub-options, and first whittle away the unacceptable ones.

First of all, for the reasons that ZT states, the single circle (with all participants around the periphery of the room, facing inward) is voted off the island. The giant acoustic void in the middle of the room makes it dead in the water. Concentric circles are still ok, because the innermost circle can be made arbitrarily small, eliminating the dead space in the middle, and achieving almost the same population density as the Single Direction Approach. Yes, aisles are necessary, but this isn't so hard to do; Kol Zimrah often has three or more.

Next, within the Single Direction Approach, we'll eliminate any sub-options where the leader is in the front of the room. There are two sub-sub-options if the leader is in the front: (1) the leader is facing the congregation, and (2) the leader is facing forward. (1) is unacceptable because it sets the leader apart from the rest of the community, and suggests a top-down style of leadership. The leader should be a member of the community, facilitating the others in prayer. (2) is unacceptable because it makes the leader unable to see the community, and it is harder to facilitate a community in prayer if you can't get any visual feedback from them. As ZT says, the leader is literally talking to a wall. However, a much more palatable option is when the leader is at the center of the room, as at Hadar or in Sephardi synagogues.

To review so far:

• I. Single Direction Approach
• A. Leader in front
• 1. Leader facing forward
• 2. Leader facing the congregation
• B. Leader in the center
• II. Circle Approach
• A. Single circle
• B. Concentric circles

So there are two viable sub-options. They both have pros and cons, but overall I prefer concentric circles, but not for the same reasons that ZT suggests. He says:

The Circle Approach proponents i daven with tend to talk about it in terms of emphasizing the value of the community and valuing the connections within the community. It demonstrates a caring about who is in the room and who is praying with whom.

In contrast, a commenter says of the Single Direction Approach that "the common direction gives a feeling of unification of purpose."

I think these philosophical approaches are nice, but secondary. I would focus first on the practical aspects, and if they're done right, then the rest will follow. If the configuration allows for spirited davening, then there can be a feeling of unification of purpose even in the Circle Approach, and there can be a sense of connected community even in the Single Direction Approach.

Philosophically, I'm with those who want a unification of purpose (I think prayer should be primarily about that purpose and not about connections with other people; the connections with the other people are a powerful means of achieving that purpose, not the other way around), but practically, I'm with the (concentric) Circle Approach, and here's why:

1) Being able to see the other people in the community is at best a mixed blessing, and can (as ZT suggested) feel intrusive. However, I think being able to hear the other people is very important, and assuming that we project our voices forward, the Circle Approach allows everyone to hear and everyone to be heard. In the Single Direction Approach, there are people in the back who can't hear others (except their echoes) and people in the front who are talking to a wall. In the Circle Approach, everyone can hear lots of other people.

2) As a frequent sheliach tzibbur, it is important for me to be able to see the community so that I can gauge their mood at each moment and be most effective in facilitating the community's prayer. This is somewhat possible in the Single Direction Approach with the leader at the center, but is more limited.

3) It's easier for the leader to feel like a member of the community this way. One of my best experiences as a sheliach tzibbur was last November at TLS/DCRC. We were in concentric circles, and the size of the crowd relative to the size of the room necessitated maximum chair density, so the innermost circle (where General Anna and I, as shelichei tzibbur, sat) was very small, like 6 people or so. We didn't feel like we were broadcasting into the void (as I sometimes feel when leading in a variety of different seating configurations), because this inner circle reflected everything right back, creating a resonant chamber (like the sound box of a guitar). After each prayer started, I didn't feel like I had to be "leading"; I could just jam. The intensity developed within this inner circle spread to the rest of the room. In JGN's lingo, we were a "circle facing outward", even if we were physically facing inward.

Some odds and ends:

Based on this approach, I don't think there's a contradiction (as ZT suggests) in sitting in a circle for most of the service but facing east for Barechu, Amidah, or other things. If the reasons for sitting in circles are practical rather than philosophical, then there may be times in the service when the philosophical value of a unified purpose may outweigh the practical value of sitting in circles, and the formal call to worship may be one of these. And for the Amidah or other parts that are said individually, none of the practical pro-circle arguments apply. That said, there's no good reason to face east for, say, Psalm 29, just because people happen to be standing.

Another commenter on ZT's post says:

An alternate approach to a circle, concentric circles, and everyone facing one direction is to put people in rows that are curved. That fosters the sense of community and closeness that a single circle does, and it allows for the group to face a single direction and unite in space and purpose. I love it because there is no way for someone to be at an edge or on the periphery of the communal prayer experience.

The problem with this approach is that there's no good place to put the leader. The options are:

1) The leader is at the end of the front (inner) row/arc. Then the leader does indeed feel like s/he is on the periphery, especially since other participants tend to avoid sitting near the leader (which I'll discuss in the next post).

2) The leader is at the center of the front row. Then the leader is facing the front wall and can't see the community so well, and we run into the same problem as I.A.1 above.

3) The leader is at the center of curvature (the place where the center of the circle would be if the circle went all the way around), facing the community. Then the leader is set apart from the rest of the community, and we run into the same problem is I.A.2 above.

4) I suppose the leader could be in one of the rows other than the inner arc, but this could still be awkward for a combination of reasons.

My soul hates your new moons and your seasons

I have a confession.

You know those people whose practice is not Orthodox by any standard, but who know deep down that Orthodox Judaism is the only authentic Judaism? (Call them "Israeli", or "Sephardi", or "Chabad donors", or whatever label you like.) I'm realizing that I'm the opposite. My Jewish practice may appear to 99% of the world (for these examples, let's say my non-Jewish co-workers) to be ritually stringent -- I take days off for holidays no one has heard of, I hurry home on Friday afternoons to go pray, I never eat meat out -- but deep down, I know that it all really boils down to ethical monotheism, and Classical Reform basically had it right.

Let me be clear: Classical Reform explicitly repudiated a number of religious practices, on the individual and communal levels, that I uphold, and that I intend to continue to uphold. My personal practices would have David Einhorn spinning in his grave. However, I make a distinction between my values (by which I make decisions about my own actions) and my meta-values (by which I coexist with people operating under value systems that differ from mine). (Of course it would be more convenient if everyone agreed with me, but I have to live in the real world.) While my own values and practices may not be in line with Classical Reform, the metric by which I assess others' values and practices is.

I don't eat shrimp, and I don't observe the 2nd day of Shavuot, and I have solid reasons for both of these practices, and consider these practices to be obligatory (for me). I know Jews who eat shrimp and/or observe the 2nd day of Shavuot, and I still consider them to be good people and good Jews. I can disagree with them insofar as we have basic tenets in common, but if their practice comes from a different set of axioms, I can't make a universal claim that their practice is wrong.

In contrast, I will make the claim that a Jew (or a non-Jew) who steals or murders or furthers economic injustice is wrong. If they have a value system that permits these things, then I think their value system is wrong.

Thus, like the Pittsburgh Platform (and like the Mishnah, but more strongly), I make a sharp distinction between mitzvot bein adam lamakom (commandments between humans and The Place) and mitzvot bein adam lachaveiro (commandments between humans and their fellow humans). And I don't really make such a distinction between Jews and non-Jews. That is, I consider people (Jews or non-Jews) to be obligated by mitzvot bein adam lamakom only to the extent that they consider themselves obligated (in whatever value system they're using), and I consider all people (Jews and non-Jews) to be obligated by mitzvot bein adam lachaveiro regardless of whether they think so. "There will be one Torah and one law for you and for the stranger who lives with you." --Numbers 15:16

The Pittsburgh Platform (founding document of American "Classical Reform", adopted in 1885) often gets a bad rap, especially from people like me. But, to be fair, a lot of stuff in there is pretty good. For the rest of this post, I'm going to go through the Pittsburgh Platform section by section and comment on it. These comments will be primarily on the text itself, and not on the implementation. The Reform movement's implementation has had some problems; as Gates of Prayer itself admits on page 324, "Our failings are many -- our faults are great." But I'm not going to focus on the failings of Classical Reform in execution; beating a dead horse is considered rude. In a later post, I'll write about how the contemporary Reform movement fails to live up to its own ideals (which, on paper, are swell).

1. We recognize in every religion an attempt to grasp the Infinite, and in every mode, source or book of revelation held sacred in any religious system the consciousness of the indwelling of God in man.

So right off the bat, God is described as both transcendent ("the Infinite") and immanent ("the indwelling of God in [hu]man[kind]"), and there is a hint here (which I'm surprised isn't more than a hint) of exclusive monotheism -- all religions are experiencing the same God, even though the language is different.

We hold that Judaism presents the highest conception of the God-idea as taught in our Holy Scriptures and developed and spiritualized by the Jewish teachers, in accordance with the moral and philosophical progress of their respective ages.

Judaism's conception of the God-idea (God is One, we are created in God's image, etc.) is pretty cool. But is it "the highest" (holy brothers and sisters, mamash gevalt)? I don't think I've studied other religions enough to make that claim, nor do I think there's a point in trying to pick a winner. But it's good enough for me to stick with.

Mordecai Kaplan devotes Chapter IX of Judaism as a Civilization (which, apparently, no one reads anymore -- there are no Google hits for "Religious-Culturist" or "Secular-Culturist" outside of Mah Rabu) to a "Critique of the Reformist Version of Judaism". (He insists on "Reformist" for grammatical reasons, because "Reform" as an adjective is only correct in the original German. In a footnote he says "The term 'Progressive Judaism' would have been a more exact equivalent of 'Reform Judentum.' 'Liberal Judaism,' if not a happier designation, is at least good English.") Don't worry - "Neo-Orthodoxy" gets its own critique too. (Kaplan doesn't recognize Conservative Judaism as a coherent religious philosophy in its own right; he says that those who identify as "Conservative" are basically either Reformist or Neo-Orthodox. Plus ca change.)

Some of Kaplan's critiques are dead-on, but are more directed at the implementation of 1930s (and earlier) Reform Judaism than at the concept. But he also addresses the statement in the Pittsburgh Platform under discussion:

Reformism admits that the God-idea, as taught in Scripture, has always been "developed and spiritualized by the Jewish teachers, in accordance with the moral and philosophical progress of their respective ages." If this be true, then it was not always the Jews who evolved the most spiritual conception of God. On the contrary, they found it necessary to bring their traditional teachings in line with the moral and philosophical progress achieved by others. Such progress, according to the Reformist way of thinking, necessarily involves a better understanding of what God means and a deeper insight into his [sic] nature. The conclusion is therefore inescapable that there were frequent periods in the history of the God-idea when the Jews had to learn from the Gentiles.

So yeah, I'm not into the Jewish superiority part. But I'm still into the Jewish "God-idea".

We maintain that Judaism preserved and defended midst continual struggles and trials and under enforced isolation, this God-idea as the central religious truth for the human race.

This is an important point. On the surface it sounds like the opening sentence of a Federation appeal, until you realize that the thing that has been kept alive for all these centuries through all these tribulations, and is implied to be worth preserving, is not "the Jewish people" or "Jewish identity" or "Jewish continuity" or even "Judaism", but the "central religious truth" of monotheism. Jews are a vehicle for preserving the essence of Judaism; Judaism is not a vehicle for making Jewish babies.

2. We recognize in the Bible the record of the consecration of the Jewish people to its mission as the priest of the one God, and value it as the most potent instrument of religious and moral instruction. We hold that the modern discoveries of scientific researches in the domain of nature and history are not antagonistic to the doctrines of Judaism, the Bible reflecting the primitive ideas of its own age, and at times clothing its conception of divine Providence and Justice dealing with men in miraculous narratives.

I would expand this beyond the Bible to include rabbinic and later Jewish "instruments of religious and moral instruction" (up to the present), but I agree with everything here. Here they say that the science-vs-religion debate doesn't have to be a debate: obviously, the classic works were wrong about a few things (including, I would add, some things outside the "domain of nature and history" and more in the domain of "religious and moral instruction"), but the big picture is strong enough that dismissing these things doesn't invalidate it. They also foreshadow the Slifkin affair.

3. We recognize in the Mosaic legislation a system of training the Jewish people for its mission during its national life in Palestine, and today we accept as binding only its moral laws, and maintain only such ceremonies as elevate and sanctify our lives, but reject all such as are not adapted to the views and habits of modern civilization.

4. We hold that all such Mosaic and rabbinical laws as regulate diet, priestly purity, and dress originated in ages and under the influence of ideas entirely foreign to our present mental and spiritual state. They fail to impress the modern Jew with a spirit of priestly holiness; their observance in our days is apt rather to obstruct than to further modern spiritual elevation.

These sections may be the most frequently quoted parts of the Pittsburgh Platform. ("only such ceremonies as elevate and sanctify" has 71 Google hits, and "diet, priestly purity, and dress" has 105. In contrast, "highest conception of the God-idea" has 34, and "contrasts and evils of the present organization of society" has 36.) It's not surprising; it's human nature to focus on the elements that more people disagree about. These sections are quoted by contemporary Reform Jews explaining how the movement has changed, and they play a central role in the Conservative creation myth.

But even though I'm one of those contemporary Reform Jews (albeit an expatriate one) who disagrees with these sections, I'm going to be fair and say that I only half-disagree. These sections can be restated as a syllogism:

Major premise: If X does not "elevate and sanctify our lives" and "is apt rather to obstruct than to further modern spiritual elevation", then X should be rejected.
Minor premise: "Mosaic and rabbinical laws as regulate diet, priestly purity, and dress" do not "elevate and sanctify our lives" and "their observance in our days is apt rather to obstruct than to further modern spiritual elevation".
Conclusion: "Mosaic and rabbinical laws as regulate diet, priestly purity, and dress" should be rejected.

So I agree with the major premise, and merely disagree with the minor premise (and therefore with the conclusion). I agree that "ceremonies" have value if and only if they inspire us to be better people (whereas following "moral laws" ipso facto makes us better people). However, I think that some of the practices that Classical Reform rejected do in fact qualify under this test, and are therefore worth keeping around (and evolving). I won't say that they were wrong about what their "present mental and spiritual state" was in 1885; they would know that better than I would. But times have changed. In 1885, they faced a choice between maintaining particularistic Jewish practices and being full members of American society. In 2006, now that the melting pot has given way to the salad bowl, we can do both without contradiction. And before we trash the Classical Reformers for making the choice that they did, we should thank them for making our lifestyle possible. They did what they had to do to become fully American, and as mainstream American society expanded to include Jews, it became more multicultural, so that we no longer have to make the same choices.

I wish Classical Reform had been more self-reflective, and, over time, applied its methodology to itself. For me, "They fail to impress the modern Jew with a spirit of priestly holiness; their observance in our days is apt rather to obstruct than to further modern spiritual elevation" is an excellent description of prayer services with responsive readings and choirs. If Classical Reform still took itself seriously, then these elements would be axed in favor of practices more in line with "the views and habits of modern civilization". Instead, Classical Reform has become a small-o orthodoxy, maintaining its practices for the sake of tradition. For this reason, people have their directions all wrong when they label proponents of kashrut, Hebrew, etc. (such as myself), as the "right wing" of Reform. The "right wing" is those who hold onto antiquated practices (organ music, sexism, whatever) because that's the way we've done it, while the "left wing" is those who recognize the necessity of evolving and adapting to changing circumstances.

So anyway, even if the implementation went bad, I agree with the major premise that ritual practices cannot be seen as ends in themselves and must serve a greater goal, and should be rejected if they obstruct that goal. This position should not be mistaken for the straw-man position that each individual should be determining his/her own practice in a vacuum (rather, the way that ritual practices can "elevate and sanctify our lives" is often in the context of a community), or for the straw-man position that individuals/communities should determine their practice by picking and choosing individual practices from a list (rather, these practices can better "further modern spiritual elevation" when they are part of a coherent system, whatever that system is). I'm not actually making any claims here about the process by which it should be determined which practices are to be observed and how, but only about a goal that should be kept in mind during that process.

5. We recognize, in the modern era of universal culture of heart and intellect, the approaching of the realization of Israel s great Messianic hope for the establishment of the kingdom of truth, justice, and peace among all men. We consider ourselves no longer a nation, but a religious community, and therefore expect neither a return to Palestine, nor a sacrificial worship under the sons of Aaron, nor the restoration of any of the laws concerning the Jewish state.

Ok, here's one where they messed up. In my Tisha B'Av post last year, I pointed out that they were far too optimistic about how close we are to "the establishment of the kingdom of truth, justice, and peace". (They weren't alone. Physicists of that time also thought they were almost done discovering the physical laws of the universe.) It's going to take longer than we initially thought.

As Kaplan points out in his critique, both the paradigms of "nation" and "religious community" are too narrow to describe the Jews; I won't belabor this point, since the synthesis has long since killed off the thesis and the antithesis as Kaplan's "civilization" paradigm became mainstream. Nor will I belabor the reasons why "a return to Palestine" turned out to be necessary and a good thing. (I'll cut them some slack, since they were writing before the Dreyfus affair. I don't think anybody anticipated the breach of the levees.)

As for "a sacrificial worship under the sons of Aaron", I think they just didn't get the joke. Of course no one really wants to physically rebuild the Temple and start slaughtering animals in it. But that's not the point. It's a metaphor, which their literalist reading failed to pick up.

6. We recognize in Judaism a progressive religion, ever striving to be in accord with the postulates of reason. We are convinced of the utmost necessity of preserving the historical identity with our great past. Christianity and Islam, being daughter religions of Judaism, we appreciate their providential mission, to aid in the spreading of monotheistic and moral truth. We acknowledge that the spirit of broad humanity of our age is our ally in the fulfillment of our mission, and therefore we extend the hand of fellowship to all who cooperate with us in the establishment of the reign of truth and righteousness among men.

Great! No argument there. While the Jews have a mission to redeem the world, this mission is not limited to the Jews.

7. We reassert the doctrine of Judaism that the soul is immortal, grounding the belief on the divine nature of human spirit, which forever finds bliss in righteousness and misery in wickedness.

This sounds nice, but I have no idea what it means. Maybe it made sense in 1885.

We reject as ideas not rooted in Judaism, the beliefs both in bodily resurrection and in Gehenna and Eden (Hell and Paradise) as abodes for everlasting punishment and reward.

Oh snap! Not only are these beliefs false, but to add insult to injury, they're "not rooted in Judaism". As I said under #1, (Kaplan and) I think that being rooted in Judaism is neither necessary nor sufficient for a belief to be correct or worthwhile. And the rest of the text of the Pittsburgh Platform seems to suggest that its authors would in general agree, so this zinger may be a bit disingenuous, but it's a point worth making anyway. And I still agree with their rejection of bodily resurrection and of heaven and hell.

Writing about this, I have an uncontrollable urge to sing The Who:
"On top of the sky there's a place where you go if you've done nothing wrong
If you've done nothing wro-o-ong
And down in the ground there's a place where you go if you've been a bad boy
If you've been a bad bo-o-oy
Why can't we have eternal life, and never die?"

And then I realize that this contradicts earlier policy statements in this area: "Hope I die before I get old." Kashya Daltrey a-Daltrey. This also means I should finish this post soon.

8. In full accordance with the spirit of the Mosaic legislation, which strives to regulate the relations between rich and poor, we deem it our duty to participate in the great task of modern times, to solve, on the basis of justice and righteousness, the problems presented by the contrasts and evils of the present organization of society.

Word. This part is the punch line. Just like the Mishneh Torah (its rationalist predecessor), the Pittsburgh Platform begins with the "God-idea" and ends with the establishment of a just society. The purpose of religion is to get from one to the other. The Pittsburgh Platform and the Mishneh Torah don't agree on much in between, and what I would put in between differs from both. But I respect our differences about the intermediate steps as long as we agree on the end goal -- both the final goal of a world redeemed and the preliminary objective of preparing ourselves to act toward that goal (whether we accomplish that objective through ritual practice or by other means)

(Kaplan questions how much the Reform movement of his day was actually practicing what it preached. In a scathing endnote, he writes "Committees have been appointed and resolutions drawn up bearing on the strife between capital and labor. The Union Prayer-Book ... contains a trenchant statement on the question to be recited once a year. All these measures are, however, about as potent as whistling at a thundering express train. The frequent appeals for cooperation between workers and employers are mere verbiage. 'Cooperation toward what?' it has been asked. Each has his dominant objective: The employer asks for cooperation toward increased production; the worker toward increased wages. Just what, then, is implied in the appeal to cooperate?" Since then, the Reform movement has gotten better about this, though no one should stop where they are.)

In conclusion, let's keep working towards "the establishment of the kingdom of truth, justice, and peace", even if it's farther away than we thought, and let's do what we need to do to "elevate and sanctify our lives" so that we can accomplish this.

Cars trucks buses

I don't spend money on Shabbat.
I ride trains, buses, and cars on Shabbat. (No airplanes.) (I think I'm the only person who has read the Mar'ot Chayim, an illustrated commentary to Masechet Kelim, on a bus on Shabbat.)

Don't ask me to justify this by reference to the 39 melachot. That's not the system I'm operating under. The philosophical underpinnings of this practice can go in another post. This post is about the wacky practical consequences.

Because this is an unusual combination of practices, I get into all sorts of crazy adventures. When I went to Boston on Friday, I knew that if I Funged Wah after work, the bus would arrive after sundown, and then I'd have to get from South Station to my destination. Plus, the place I was staying was out of walking distance from the places I was hanging out. Fortunately, I still had a stash of T tokens from the days when I used to make this trip more often. So I did extensive research beforehand to confirm that these tokens would in fact work for all three types of transportation: T stations that still take tokens, T stations that have switched to CharlieTickets (the machines let you convert tokens into CharlieTickets), and buses that take change. The Boston locals I had asked didn't understand why I was so insistent about the questions I was asking. ("If you don't have change, just give them a dollar bill." "Just take a taxi.")

Past experiences include:

• Driving around Chicago in a non-I-PASS-equipped car and going out of the way to avoid toll roads.
• Unlimited MetroCards make it very easy to get around NYC.
  
• Four summers ago, I went to visit my brother at Kutz. For some reason, visitors are only allowed during the day on Shabbat. I don't have a car. I found a bus to Warwick, purchased a ticket before Shabbat, and called the camp office asking for advice on getting from downtown Warwick to the camp. They said I could call when I got there, and someone would come and pick me up. Uh....ok. Isn't the office closed on Shabbat? I arrived in bustling downtown Warwick, dialed the camp's number on my cell phone, and sure enough, no one answered. Taxis existed, but were out of the question. I went into a store and asked for directions to the camp, and started walking, periodically calling again just in case. I ended up walking the whole 5 miles. It was a beautiful day, and beautiful scenery.
• I've made kiddush on a number of moving vehicles, and not just Fung Wah trips as discussed above. I had a beautiful Shabbat lunch with NAF and SBN on a MetroNorth train in fall 2003.
• Then there was the trip to IT. The doors opened Friday morning, and the shows were on Saturday and Sunday nights. We decided to be foolish and go to the Camden show on Thursday night, then drive all night and arrive in the (temporary) largest city in Maine sometime Friday afternoon (or so we planned it). Did I mention that Maine is a really big state? Also, we didn't anticipate that the last 20 miles would take over 12 hours. I had packed a challah and a bottle of grape juice, planning to do Shabbat with any other Phish phans who were interested. When it became clear that we weren't going to arrive before sundown, I thought to myself "Fine, so this will take another hour or two, and then when we get there, we can settle down and welcome Shabbat." And then midnight rolled around. I don't know if you've ever been in a 12-hour traffic jam before, but the way it works is you sit for 20, 30 minutes with the car turned off, maybe you're outside the car strolling around, and then you see the car 10 cars in front of you turn its lights on, and that's the sign to get back in your car and turn the engine back on, and then all the cars start moving, and you move forward maybe a half mile, then hit the brakes, and then all the cars shut off again. Lather, rinse, repeat. Very slowly. So midnight rolled around, and we were hungry, and I said "let's make kiddush." As it happened, all four people in the car were Jewish, but I was the only one who was so gung-ho about making all this portable Jewish stuff happen. Bechol makom asher azkir et shemi, baby. But everyone was hungry, and I think some of them also wanted some spiritual sustenance after all these hours in the car. So we made kiddush, drank the grape juice out of the bottle (we didn't have cups. oops!), and immediately the cars started moving again. It was a sign! Unlike Shabbat itself, this sign did not last forever. The cars stopped yet again. "Ok, now let's do motzi." Before we said the beracha, I was fumbling to get the plastic bag open, and before I could get it open, the cars started moving again! One of my traveling companions said "God appreciates the gesture." And so it went throughout the night. We arrived in the morning, slept all day, and went to some amazing shows. I made havdalah during the set break between the second and third sets.
• Then there was Shabbat at Coventry. This time around, we weren't stupid, and left on Thursday and arrived on Friday morning (after a similarly awful traffic jam), well before Shabbat. We did kabbalat shabbat in the rain, and had a sumptuous tailgate Shabbat dinner on the hood of the car. Others weren't so lucky (or didn't plan ahead), but this story (involving the disciples of Rav Shmuel) deserves its own post.
  

Hanhu chavurata #4 (Independent minyan gossip column)

After independent minyan gossip columns #1, #2, and #3, Shavuot has inspired me to rename the column to "Hanhu chavurata" ("these chavurot"). Bonus points to the first person to identify the source.

• This past Shabbat, the minyan of choice for the chavurati was the Cambridge Minyan (in Massachusetts, not England). A certain local university attracted a number of out-of-towners for their 5th, 10th, etc. reunions, so founders of Kol Zimrah, Hadar, Tikkun Leil Shabbat, DC Beit Midrash, and of course the Cambridge Minyan itself (can anyone confirm any others? is Tehillah confirmed?) were all davening in the same room.
• Of course, the Hadar Shavuot Retreat was a smashing success as always, and Torah was received. But this year there was karaoke! After Shabbat.
• Beth Shekinah of Washington DC is disbanding, now that most of its members are involved with other Jewish groups.
  
• Techiyah of Harlem (NYC) is taking the plunge and moving from apartments to the Harlem Police Athletic League Community Center, having outgrown even the huge-by-Manhattan-standards living rooms of Harlem.
• Is B'Merkaz (Philly) changing its name and the date of its first meeting?
  
• Summer is here! What does this mean for independent minyanim? One of three options: (1) Continue operations as normal, (2) Decrease or suspend operations, or (3) Increase operations. And it's fascinating to see who chooses which of these. For example, our Boston correspondent reports that Tehillah and the Washington Square Minyan are suspending their Shabbat morning services for some or all of the summer, and meeting on Friday nights only, while the Cambridge Minyan is increasing its Shabbat mornings. Here in New York, Kol Zimrah is increasing its frequency (with more bonus services in Brooklyn), the Brooklyn Egal Minyan is going on hiatus for the summer, and everyone else (as far as I'm aware) is keeping their usual frequency. What factors go into these decisions? On the one hand, minyanim with large student populations have their regulars disappear for the summer. On the other hand, if many of the participants are on an academic schedule (students and teachers) and stick around for the summer (which may be more common in New York than in Boston?), then the summer means they have more time and energy to organize things for the minyan. Also, in cities like these, the summer exodus is offset by the influx of people who are in town only for the summer, or moving in during the summer for a longer sojourn. Each minyan has to make these calculations for itself.
  

Happy Brooklyn-Queens-Manhattan-Bronx-Staten Island Day!

Tomorrow is the little-known holiday of Brooklyn-Queens Day, aka Anniversary Day. This holiday, celebrated since 1829, commemorates the founding of the first Sunday school on Long Island in 1816, and the Brooklyn Sunday School Union will be holding its 178th annual parade. (Why don't they do it on a Sunday? For this question I was thrown out of the house of study.)

A state law requires that students in Brooklyn and Queens have the day off from school on the 1st or 2nd Thursday in June, whichever is 10 days after Memorial Day. (For our readers outside New York, no, school isn't over yet. We stick around until the end of June. High schools are in the last throes of classes before we adjourn for exams, and elementary and middle schools are still in the thick of things.)

Until this year, schools in Brooklyn and Queens were closed for Brooklyn-Queens Day, while the other three boroughs had a regular school day. Those of us teaching in Manhattan experienced nothing unusual on this day beyond our students' complaints about how their younger siblings back in the neighborhood had the day off and they didn't. Now, the new teachers' contract corrects this inequity among the boroughs, or destroys the Brooklyn/Queens cultural heritage, depending on whom you ask. Tomorrow, students in all five boroughs have the day off, and teachers in all five boroughs have to show up for "professional development". (It might actually be useful; my department is using the day to plan the curriculum for next year.)

Kenny Bruno of the Queens Ledger mourns the loss of Brooklyn's and Queens's specialness:

I suppose the single most delightful thing about Brooklyn Queens Day was that it was a day off from school for no apparent reason. Grownups had to work and therefore couldn't schedule any vacation-like activities. Unlike Christmas or Thanksgiving, there were no holiday curricula, no commercials, no traditions to uphold and no family events to attend. It came in June, during the best weather and longest days. The kicker was that no one else had this day off. You could actually go to Manhattan and see to it that your Manhattan friends, if you had any, would look enviously at you from inside their prisons.

So the students of Brooklyn and Queens keep the holiday but lose the bragging rights. Though I'm not sure Brooklyn and Queens can really claim underdog status anymore, now that they're the two largest boroughs by area and population, comprising a solid majority of the New York City population.

(On further investigation, Brooklyn and Queens have had a majority since the 1930 census, the decade that Brooklyn passed Manhattan to become the most populous borough. Queens passed Manhattan in 1960. The Bronx and Staten Island have always been 4th and 5th. But maybe the underdog mentality isn't about population, but about national and international attention, not to mention $$$$, so it still makes sense.)

[UPDATE: Correction: The Bronx was in 3rd place until Queens surged ahead of it in 1950. Ah, suburbanization.]

Meanwhile, other forces have conspired to make tomorrow likely to be a rainy day like today, lessening the possibility of a day of fun in the sun.

Whichever borough you're in, whether you're a student with a day off from school, or a teacher with a day off from teaching, take a moment tomorrow to thank Brooklyn and Queens for being who they are.

Hilchot Pluralism around the web

Mah Rabu's still-ongoing Hilchot Pluralism series, documenting and analyzing pluralistic practices in independent Jewish communities, has been making its way around the web, and even meatspace.

• Boston: Today, Knitter of shiny things reports on a "Reclaiming Mikveh" conference at Boston's liberal Jewish mikveh, Mayyim Hayyim, and discusses pluralism in the context of a mikveh that is used for Reform conversions as well as by Orthodox women observing hilchot niddah.
• Washington, DC: Tikkun Leil Shabbat links to Hilchot Pluralism in its FAQ when discussing the two-table system (which I learned about from the DC independent minyan scene in the first place), as well as under "How we think about pluralism".
• Philadelphia: ZT reports that Hilchot Pluralism was used in a mandatory workshop at the Akiba Hebrew Academy's 9th-grade shabbaton.
• New York: Later this month, I'm teaching about the Taxonomy at a session on pluralism for Hillel's CLIP interns.

Let's keep it going! With more exposure, we can continue to share ideas among our communities, and help more communities move to Stage 3. What issues belong in Hilchot Pluralism Part V?

49

...which are SEVEN WEEKS of the omer!!!!!

Peace out everyone, it's been fun. Next year may we merit to count the omer in a (figurative) rebuilt Jerusalem.

כאשר זכינו לספור אותו
כן נזכה לעשותו

Now get your rest; tomorrow night's a big night:

On the third day, as morning dawned, there was thunder, and lightning, and a dense cloud upon the mountain, and a very loud blast of the horn...

(Exodus 19:15)

...and you know the rest of the story.

It was not with our ancestors that God made this covenant, but with us, the living, every one of us who is here today.

(Deuteronomy 5:3)

We'll receive many commandments, including:

From the day on which you bring the sheaf of waving, the day after the sabbath, you shall count off seven weeks. They must be complete: you must count until the day after the seventh week--fifty days; then you shall bring an offering of new grain to God.

(Leviticus 23:15-16)

And so it continues in this recursive loop, this endlessly rising canon.

Regis Iussu Cantio Et Reliqua Canonica Arte Resoluta

48

Lost in translation?

Moses came down from the mountain to the people and warned the people to stay pure, and they washed their clothes. And he said to the people, "Be ready for the third day: do not go near a woman."

(Exodus 19:14-15)

47

...and the coal came home.

Something really big must be happening in three days.

God said to Moses, "I will come to you in a thick cloud, in order that the people may hear when I speak with you and so trust you ever after." Then Moses reported the people's words to God, and God said to Moses, "Go to the people and warn them to stay pure today and tomorrow. Let them wash their clothes. Let them be ready for the third day, for on the third day God will come down, in the sight of all the people on Mount Sinai. You shall set bounds for the people round about, saying, 'Beware of going up the mountain or touching the border of it. Whoever touches the mountain shall be put to death: no hand shall touch him/her, but s/he shall be either stoned or shot; beast or human, s/he shall not live.' When the ram's horn sounds a long blast, they may go up on the mountain."

(Exodus 19:9-13)

46

...and the coal ran out.

Happy Yom Meyuchas!

The adventure continues:

Moses went up to God. God called to him from the mountain, saying, "Thus shall you say to the house of Jacob and declare to the children of Israel: 'You have seen what I did to the Egyptians, how I bore you on eagles' wings and brought you to me. Now then, if you will obey me faithfully and keep my covenant, you shall be my treasured possession among all the peoples. Indeed, all the earth is mine, but you shall be to me a kingdom of priests and a holy nation.' These are the words that you shall speak to the children of Israel." Moses came and summoned the elders of the people and put before them all that God had commanded him. All the people answered as one, saying, "All that God has spoken we will do!" And Moses brought the people's words to God.

(Exodus 19:3-8)

45

Rosh Chodesh Sivan!

This Rosh Chodesh has its own niggun, written on this date in 1999/5759.

On this day:

In the third month after the Israelites had gone forth from the land of Egypt, on that very day, they entered the wilderness of Sinai. Having journeyed from Rephidim, they entered the wilderness of Sinai and encamped in the wilderness. Israel encamped there in front of the mountain.

(Exodus 19:1-2)

43

Worst president ever.

42

What do you get if you multiply six by nine?

We will return to you, children of the city, and the web of the scroll went up to itself

We finished Masechet Megillah tonight! And not a minute too soon, since MAK and RLK are packing up their apartment and almost ready to move out of NYC. Stay tuned for a siyyum sometime this summer, at which Rav Papa's sons will be invoked, and the One who is above all blessings (le'eila min kol birchata) will be blessed.

41

The best views in town, for functions or just a great place to eat. Your first choice for news.

"Pharaoh said to Joseph: See, I have put you over the whole land of Egypt."
--Genesis 41:41

Be that as it May

The following message comes to us from LRH, all the way on the west coast. You can email your submissions to lioracle at gmail dot com.

Dear Friends,

Welcome to the 4th annual celebration of National Subjunctive Month!

Hard to believe, but it was back in 2003 when I unilaterally declared for the first time that, come what may, each May from here on out would be marked as a celebration of subjunctives in every language. Why did I do this? Well, I noted that English by and large lacks a subjunctive--that "mood" which in other languages is used to express desire, hope, or uncertainty, and is employed for various and sundry grammatical purposes. Rather, in addition to some vestigial subjunctives like "I wish I were" and "Truth be told," English sometimes uses various constructions of the word "MAY" to express what other languages might express in the subjunctive mood (come what may, be that as it may, may the force be with you). Desiring to carve out some space to honor this much negelected mood, I thought May might be fitting.

Mighty May has returned! And it is time to celebrate with what has become an annual tradition on this ever growing and ever more national (and international) list. I ask you to dig deep inside your minds and send me back some combination of the following:

--Recall your favorite examples of subjunctive usage or misusage in English or other languages. (My longstanding favorite is from a goofy ad for Clorox bleach on the top of a cab, proclaiming, "if this cab was a floor, we'd clean it.")

--Provide explanations of how the subjunctive works in your particular obscure (or non-obscure) foreign language.

--Provide your bits of subjunctive thoughts about the year behind us or the year to come.
(I define "subjunctive thoughts" broadly: Subjunctive thoughts might start like this: "If only..." "I wish..." "I wonder..." These can be subjective, subversive, sublime, and/or subpar...)

The deadline for submissions is May 31 at midnight. On June 1 (or shortly thereafter), I'll send out a compilation of our collective subjunctive wisdom of 2006 to those who decide to participate in the festivities.

Thank you and happy May,

[LRH]

Independent minyan gossip column #3

• Minyan war in the City of Brotherly Love??? After years of discontent about the lack of independent minyanim in Center City Philadelphia (that's "downtown" to everyone else), someone had the idea to start one. And someone else had almost exactly the same idea at almost exactly the same time. There is a popular trend of giving minyanim names that translate English terms associated with the locality into Hebrew: in NYC alone, Greenwich Village has Kol HaKfar ("the Village Voice"), and Harlem has Techiyah ("renaissance"). Both new Center City minyanim hopped on this nomenclature bandwagon. Minyan Merkaz ("minyan of the center") is an independent traditional egalitarian Friday night minyan that has met a few times so far. Meanwhile, B'Merkaz ("in center" or "in the center of") is an independent traditional egalitarian Friday night minyan that has announced its first service for June 9, the same time as Minyan Merkaz's next meeting. According to Mah Rabu's sources, the two minyanim arose entirely independently, and were not aware of each other's existence before this week. What will happen? Will the two minyanim join forces? Will one of them change its name? Only time will tell.
• Kol Zimrah's style of musical prayer (called "spiritual, highly idiosyncratic" by the Forward) combines a diverse set of Jewish influences. This has the benefit of bringing together a diverse community of people drawn from the union of sets A, B, and C (Note: three is an arbitrary number here and has no deeper significance), but has the complication of restricting the pool of potential self-sufficient shelichei/ot tzibbur (service leaders) to the intersection of A, B, and C. In order to expand this pool and become a more participatory community, the Funk is launching a weekly workshop this summer in which KZ participants will exchange skillsets. Experienced guitar players will teach others how to play guitar, and experienced service leaders will teach others how to lead services.
• All of these independent communities are converging in August at the National Havurah Committee Summer Institute. As many as can fit, anyway. This year's Everett Fellows Program was more popular than ever, with 33 people applying for 18 spots. Unfortunately, this means that many qualified applicants had to be turned away due to finite funding. Someone reading this post must have some money lying around; would you like to fund some more scholarships so that all these great folks can come to Institute? In the meantime, regular Institute registration is still open (and filling up faster than usual), while supplies last!
  

Let's do the time warp again

This is fabulous! Check it out before it gets fixed.

The Wikipedia article on Edward Morley (1838-1923), of the famous Michelson-Morley experiment, seems to be taken primarily from a (presumably now public-domain) biographical brief written during Morley's lifetime. From examining the article's history, it looks like the reference to 1895 at the bottom was a later addition. Otherwise, the article seems to have been written before 1887, so that it makes no mention of Morley's most notable contribution! (The 1884 collaboration with Michelson mentioned in the article was a different experiment.)

Highlights:

• "...and more recently they have experimented with a view of testing Fresnel's explanation of astronomical aberration. Their most recent work in this direction has been..."
• "At present he is engaged in redetermining the atomic weight of oxygen."
• "Professor Morley has collected a unique chemical library, and has the most complete files of chemical journals in the United States."

UPDATE: Tee hee! Someone (perhaps inspired by this post) has added the line: "It is anticipated that his studies in collaboration with Albert A. Michelson (completed in 1887) will lead to important conclusions regarding the luminiferous aether and its effects upon the velocity of light."

40

It rained and poured for 40 daysies daysies
It rained and poured for 40 daysies daysies
Drove those animals nearly crazy crazy

39

Things to do today:

• plow
• sow
• reap
• bundle sheaves
• thresh
• winnow
• sort
• grind
• sift
• knead
• bake
• shear wool
  
• whiten it
  
• comb it
  
• dye it
  
• spin it into thread
  
• stretch thread onto a loom
• make two loops
  
• weave two threads
• separate two threads
• tie
• untie
• sew two stitches
• tear in order to sew two stitches
• trap a deer
• slaughter it
• skin it
• salt it
• tan it
• scrape it
• cut it up
• write two letters
• erase in order to write two letters
• build
• demolish
• extinguish
• kindle
• hit with a hammer
• transfer from one domain to another
  

38

36

35

34

Miracle on omer street!

33

Thirty-three three-toed tree toads.

Pay no attention to the people that say the glass is half full. The glass is 2/3 full!

From last year: Why I don't observe Lag Ba'omer.

32

100000!

31

11111

29

Did you miss Pesach the first time? Tomorrow is Pesach Sheni, so you get another chance!

UPDATE: Bush at 29%!

Independent minyan gossip column #2

This week's big story comes to us from the colony of Washington DC. (That's right, this is the story from outside the fifty states that we hinted at last time.) I believe Mah Rabu is the first to break this story on the blogosphere. Tikkun Leil Shabbat and DC Reform Chavurah are merging! The new super-havurah will combine Tikkun Leil Shabbat's name, DC Reform Chavurah's space at the Religious Action Center, and both groups' passion for social justice activism and ruach-filled prayer. This is no shotgun marriage; the two minyanim have co-sponsored services in the past, including a combined service the weekend of the Darfur rally that attracted 115 people, beating out Kol Zimrah's 108 that same Friday night (or, more to the point, combining with KZ for a total of 223). In fact, there was so much overlap between DCRC and TLS that they decided that there was no point in having one group of people run two minyanim, inside sources say. The new TLS juggernaut will meet monthly or more, and will alternate between two "aesthetics": (1) musical instruments, sitting in a circle; (2) no instruments, facing east.

Why this is big news:

• The new TLS combines two (and possibly more) styles of services, in series rather than in parallel. This means that individuals can go only on the weeks that their preferred style is happening, or they can go every time. It sounds like many will opt for the latter. This bimodal distribution will allow each style of prayer to be fully actualized, rather than averaging the two styles for a half-assed "compromise". It also creates an environment for built-in cross-fertilization. The diverse community will be a laboratory for Stage-3 pluralism.
• The TLS juggernaut, with its increased size and frequency, instantly challenges the hegemony of DC Minyan (which, despite its website's uncanny similarity to the Kehilat Hadar website, isn't fully egalitarian) as flagship minyan of DC's young Jewish transient scene. The appearance of this second duumvir will lead to a healthier DC independent minyan scene all around, as the constellation of minyanim comes to more accurately reflect the Jewish identities of their constituent population.
• Kol Zimrah has a sister minyan on this continent!
  
• Self-identified Reform Jews are finally building up the confidence and social capital to join in the reindeer games of the funky pluralistic post-denominational Jewish world, rather than being the tiny invisible outcast minyan that the rest of Hillel never hears about. Sure, DCRC is dropping the "Reform" from its name so that the combined DCRC/TLS can appeal to people across denominational lines, but through this merger (which happened entirely naturally as a result of the strong connections between TLS and DCRC) the Reform influence will continue to be felt by people from a wide range of Jewish backgrounds, and through this merger the people from specifically Reform backgrounds can experience a broader understanding of what a Reform Jewish community can be.
  

The news from New York:

• The Hadar Shavuot Retreat is sold out. In other news, the sun rose this morning, and Generalissimo Francisco Franco is still dead. It's nice to see the universe following its natural order.
• The solid and growing Brooklyn delegation to Kol Zimrah has pulled off a benevolent coup. After three years of dedicated trekking to the Upper West Side, this March they invited the whole community to a bonus Brooklyn edition of Kol Zimrah, with assistance from the Park Slope Minyan. It was such a success that the Funk hasn't seen the last of Kings County. This summer, KZ will return to its usual stomping grounds in Riverside Park (hoping to decrease its historical rain-out rate of 36%), but there will also be special Brooklyn Funks in July and August. Which borough is next?
  
• Jew It Yourself is going to revolutionize the independent Jewish world when it goes live. But I can't say any more until then.

Keep the tips coming!

28

28 is the second perfect number, a number that is the sum of its factors!

1+2+3 = 6
1+2+4+7+14 = 28

Google is not AskJeeves

Yes, there really is a book called Google for Dummies. This is because not everyone knows how to use Google, and not everyone understands that you don't actually ask it questions or feed it complete sentences or clauses. I know this because, thanks to the good people at Site Meter, I can find out what search terms are leading people to Mah Rabu. Here is a sampling, all from Google, and all (obviously) not in quotes:

• Can you have a funeral on Purim?
• What does Reuven mean?
• What is an unaffiliated Jew?
• why can't jewish people turn on and off their stove on sundays
• is God really talking when there's thunder?
• does duane reade sell their chametz
• what is the difference between zav and
• why do action and reaction pairs of forces never cancel each other?
• how to compromise on issue of gender identity
• is arne duncan jewish
• about rav shimon ben lakish also known as reish lakish
• why was Nisan 27 chosen as Yom Hashoah
• articles about keeping a kosher kitchen what it means and how to implement it

27

"Do it, Lisa! You'll be greater than or equal to boys."
"Even though you're only 8, your possibilities are infinite."
"27!"

Self-sufficient prayer

Tonight on Jewschool, the Rooftopper Rav has an eloquent and thorough defense of stage-direction-free prayer, which started as a response to a comment on the Hilchot Pluralism series. Go read it.

In related news, I've been reading Douglas Rushkoff's Nothing Sacred.

Nano-review so far: I like the big ideas, but the small factual errors are driving me batty.

But here's an insightful excerpt that dovetails with Rooftopper Rav's post, about what went wrong with Classical Reform:

Traditionally, the rabbis' main function was educational. They spoke to the congregation in the synagogue only twice a year, before Passover in order to remind Jews of specific rules and again before Yom Kippur to explain the meaning of repentance. Otherwise, their job was to teach Torah study in a classroom around a big table. Occasionally, their knowledge of Jewish law would enable them to resolve a local dispute. Religious services were led by the cantor, who stood at a table in the middle of the room, surrounded by congregants and other laypeople.

By changing the role of rabbi to that of a minister and putting him on what amounted to a stage in front of the room, reformers inadvertently led congregants to think about their own role in services very differently. Rabbis were now intermediaries between Jews and the God and laws with which they had always enjoyed personal relationships. Instead of focusing on the community of congregants with whom they were worshiping, Jews faced a stage and listened to the words of their rabbi, engaged in responsive reading, or followed along in rabbi-led rituals.

Congregants couldn't help but regress into a more childlike relationship to their rabbi and the religion he ministered. They transferred parental authority onto the rabbi and expected him to exemplify the piety to which they themselves could only strive. This served only to isolate rabbis from the spiritual communities on whom they could once depend for comfort and support.

Relieved of personal, adult responsibility for their religious practices, Jews tended to perform rituals and observances in a more perfunctory fashion. The religion became less participatory and more talismanic. Traditions like the mezuzah on the doorpost or a skullcap on one's head now served not as a point of mental focus, but as a hollow, rote performance or compulsive superstition. Religious education stressed how to behave, but very rarely delved into why.

"Talismanic" is the best description I've seen for the approach to physical ritual in some Reform (and other) Jewish communities. The Classical Reform leaders tried to be iconoclastic by eliminating tefillin and such, but the masses still had a need for ritual objects, so they ended up fetishizing things like the Torah trimmings (we spent lots of time in Sunday school learning about the crowns, the belt, etc.). So the result, after this attempt at iconoclasm, is the same reliance on physical objects, but the situation has worsened, because the ritual objects are now up on a stage in the front of the synagogue, rather than wrapped around one's arm and between one's eyes.

Of course, Orthodox communities are no better. Some new minhagim surrounding kiddush seem to border on transubstantiation. I've seen people make kiddush on a cup of wine, then pour that cup back into the bottle, mix it up, then pour for everyone from that bottle, to make sure everyone gets some of the wine that had been "blessed". And there are other variants that also ensure that the transubstantiated wine makes its way to everyone. This is unnecessary! Jews don't bless the wine; we bless the creator of the wine. The blessing does not change the status of the wine; it changes the status of the person who makes the blessing (or the people who respond "amen" to it), so that s/he becomes permitted to consume the wine. Therefore, there's no non-superstitious reason against someone making kiddush on his/her own cup and everyone else responding "amen" and drinking from their own cups.

It is not in heaven, to say "Who will go up for us to heaven and get it for us and tell it to us so that we may do it?" And it is not across the sea, to say "Who will cross the sea for us and get it for us and tell it to us so that we may do it?" The thing is very near to you, in your mouth and in your heart, to do it.

26

Next time, won't you sing with me?

25

With your past and your future precisely divided
Am I at that moment? I haven't decided

24

What do you do between the hours of the day?

22

There was only one catch and that was Catch-22, which specified that a concern for one's safety in the face of dangers that were real and immediate was the process of a rational mind. Orr was crazy and could be grounded. All he had to do was ask; and as soon as he did, he would no longer be crazy and would have to fly more missions. Orr would be crazy to fly more missions and sane if he didn't, but if he was sane he had to fly them. If he flew them he was crazy and didn't have to; but if he didn't want to he was sane and had to. Yossarian was moved very deeply by the absolute simplicity of this clause of Catch-22 and let out a respectful whistle. 'That's some catch, that Catch-22,' he observed. 'It's the best there is,' Doc Daneeka agreed.

21

You must have been born on or before today's date in 5745.

Leviticus 18:22 according to Rabbi Ishmael

This Shabbat we read the portions of Acharei Mot and Kedoshim, containing the famous verse Leviticus 18:22:

וְאֶת זָכָר לֹא תִשְׁכַּב מִשְׁכְּבֵי אִשָּׁה תּוֹעֵבָה הִוא

"A male do not lie the lyings of a woman; it is an abomination."

If this English translation is less than lucid, then it faithfully transmits the clarity of the Hebrew original. Whether one agrees with Ben Azzai that the central principle of the Torah is Genesis 5:1 ("When God created humankind, God made it in God's image") or agrees with Rabbi Akiva that it is Leviticus 19:18 ("Love your neighbor as yourself"), one way or the other it is incumbent upon us to read Leviticus 18:22 in a way that is consistent with these Torah principles. Many such readings of this verse have already been proposed, often taking into account the historical context of the Torah text and/or our contemporary understanding of human nature. In this post, I will supplement these with a new reading that I believe to be consistent with the methodology of midrash halachah, the process by which the rabbis established a correspondence between the mitzvot as written in the Torah and the mitzvot as observed.

Rabbi Ishmael, the second-century tanna, listed 13 hermeneutical principles by which the Torah can be interpreted. Of course, little original work has been done in this area for the last 1800 years, but I'm going to try. I won't be so arrogant as to propose a new gezeirah shavah (R. Ishmael's 2nd principle: connecting the contents of two apparently unrelated verses because they share a common word), since classically a gezeirah shavah must come from a received tradition. However, the other 12 principles are fair game.

R. Ishmael's 6th principle is kelal ufrat uchlal i atah dan ela che'ein ha-perat ("general, specific, general - you can only infer [items that are] similar to the specific [items]"). As The Practical Talmud Dictionary explains:

When a general term is followed by a specific term (or terms) that is in turn followed by a second general term, the halakha neither includes the whole general class (since a specific term has been stated) nor is it restricted to the specific item(s) (since general terms have been stated), but it applies to all items that are similar to the specific term(s) stated in the Biblical text.

Let's apply this principle to the overall structure of Leviticus 18. The chapter contains a series of commandments regarding forbidden sexual relationships. All of the commandments are given in the second-person masculine singular, but all agree that these prohibitions apply to both men and women. For example, 18:9 forbids the male addressee from having sexual relations with his sister, but if such an action were carried out, both the brother and the sister would be culpable. (Leviticus 20:17 prescribes the punishment of kareit for both of them.)

Kelal (general): Leviticus 18:6 says אִישׁ אִישׁ אֶל-כָּל-שְׁאֵר בְּשָׂרוֹ לֹא תִקְרְבוּ לְגַלּוֹת עֶרְוָה -- "None of you shall come near anyone of his own flesh to uncover nakedness."

Perat (specific): Verses 18:7-20 list a series of specific sexual prohibitions, all referring to relations between a man and a woman. A man may not have sex with any of his close female relatives by blood or by marriage, or with another man's wife.

Kelal (general): Leviticus 18:22 says וְאֶת זָכָר לֹא תִשְׁכַּב מִשְׁכְּבֵי אִשָּׁה תּוֹעֵבָה הִוא -- "A male do not lie the lyings of a woman."

According to the principle of kelal ufrat uchlal, the general terms ("kol she'eir besaro / anyone of his own flesh" and "mishkevei ishah / the lyings of a woman") only apply to items that are similar to the specific items on the list, viz. incestuous and adulterous relationships. However, the general terms extend the reach of the specific list so that it includes some additional prohibited relationships in the same general category. Leviticus 18:22 says that the male addressee should not lie these mishkevei ishah with a male. Therefore, just as a man is forbidden from having sex with his mother, his sister, or a married woman, he is also forbidden from having sex with his father, his brother, or a married man. Likewise, since all of these commandments apply to women as well, we can derive an equivalent category of forbidden relationships between two women.

The other verse to address is Leviticus 20:13:

וְאִישׁ אֲשֶׁר יִשְׁכַּב אֶת-זָכָר מִשְׁכְּבֵי אִשָּׁה תּוֹעֵבָה עָשׂוּ שְׁנֵיהֶם מוֹת יוּמָתוּ דְּמֵיהֶם בָּם
A man who lies a man the lyings of a woman, they have committed an abomination. Both of them shall be put to death; their blood is upon them.

Rabbi Ishmael's 3rd principle is binyan av (constructing a prototype). In particular, we'll use binyan av mikatuv echad, constructing a prototype from one verse. A classic example is Deuteronomy 22:11, which forbids clothing of sha'atnez, a combination of wool and linen. This verse constructs the prototype that sha'atnez refers specifically to wool and linen, so that Leviticus 19:19 (which also refers to sha'atnez, with no further details) is also understood to refer only to wool and linen, rather than any arbitrary mixture of fabrics.

Likewise, Leviticus 18:22 (by way of the kelal ufrat uchlal that we have explained above) constructs the prototype that mishkevei ishah refers specifically to the incestuous and adulterous relationships of the sort listed in Leviticus 18, so that Leviticus 20:13 can also be understood to refer only to these categories of same-sex relationships.

***

Leviticus 19:2, at the center of the Holiness Code, commands "Kedoshim tihyu / You shall be holy", and a long list of positive and negative commandments, including the arayot (prohibited relationships) in Leviticus 18 and 20, explains precisely how to do this. The first part of the marriage ceremony, in which two individuals become consecrated to each other, is called kiddushin, sanctification. The blessing over kiddushin begins "...asher kideshanu bemitzvotav vetzivanu al ha'arayot" -- "...who has made us holy with commandments, and commanded us about forbidden relationships." Why are the arayot invoked in the blessing for marriage? Because just as the Torah's prohibition of certain foods sanctifies the act of eating, the Torah's prohibition of certain relationships emphasizes that the relationship between the two people getting married is not only permitted, but sanctified.

The juxtaposition of the arayot with Kedoshim tihyu and with kiddushin has long been understood to show that some heterosexual relationships are forbidden while others are sacred. Likewise, by reading Leviticus 18:22 and 20:13 to refer to similar classes of same-sex relationships that are forbidden, we see that this sanctity applies to two people of the same sex who consecrate themselves to each other.

Independent minyan gossip column #1

• Mah Rabu's attempt to enumerate the independent minyanim of New York City fell short by at least two. The list should be expanded to include two minyanim that (unlike everything on the list so far) are neither in Manhattan nor in parts of Brooklyn that might as well be Manhattan. The Tehillah Minyan is a new monthly Friday night "partnership minyan" in Forest Hills, Queens. Brooklyn Experimental Tefilah has been listed in the NHC's havurah directory for a long time, but I hadn't heard hide or hair about it in almost 4 years in New York, so I figured it was defunct. Not so! This "Renewal havurah" is still meeting for Shabbat morning services in homes in Brooklyn neighborhoods such as Kensington, which I hadn't heard of before. Any more minyanim to add?
  
• Which minyan has become the unofficial NYC Jewish blogger hangout? Kol Zimrah! This past Friday's service and potluck included a large chunk of the Jewschool team (yours truly, shamirpower, Ruby K, EV, and Rooftopper Rav), as well as a small contingent from Jewlicious (Esther), plus Ariel from Blogs of Zion, General Anna from Live the Questions, Drew from The Last Trumpet, Ahavatcafe, and probably more that I'm leaving out.
• Also, Kol Zimrah has been Shteeblehopped!
  
• Registration has been open for the Kehilat Hadar Shavuot Retreat for over a week, and it still isn't sold out! Does this mean that Hadar has jumped the shark? Or that people aren't interested in receiving Torah anymore?
  
• Hardly. Hadar celebrated its 5th anniversary this past Shabbat. They did a show of hands to see how many people were present at that first service in an apartment 5 years ago on the same auspicious parsha of Tazria-Metzora. I certainly wasn't. (Kol Zimrah and Darkhei Noam might be the only minyanim whose first meetings I have attended.) I saw two hands (though maybe there were more). One belonged to a Hadar founder who no longer lives in NYC and was back to visit, and the other belonged to someone who is moving away this summer. The haters will allege that this high rate of turnover indicates that the new independent minyanim aren't building sustainable communities. To that I say, humbug. The turnover is almost entirely geographic. [Anecdotal evidence: All of Hadar's founders, and most people I can think of who used to go to Hadar and don't anymore, no longer live in NYC. Most people I know who were in the room and didn't raise their hand didn't live in NYC five years ago.] People have been moving into NYC, staying less than 5 years, and moving away for a long time, long before independent minyanim existed, and will continue to do so regardless of the independent minyanim's fate. But these independent minyanim are finally creating meaningful Jewish communities that meet the needs of these thousands of transients, and should be commended for this. If anything, Hadar's continued successful operation in the face of almost 100% turnover is a sign of its strength, just as the fact that I probably contain none of the same carbon atoms that I contained 5 years ago is a sign that I am alive. I wish Hadar another 5 great years, regardless of whether I'm living anywhere near NYC for the 10th anniversary.
  
• Finally, Mah Rabu is sitting on a big big story from outside the five boroughs (outside the fifty states, in fact) that is still embargoed. We'll be right here with the story as soon as we obtain permission.

Send your tips and leaks to mahrabu at gmail, and we'll be back with more!

20

Happy 58th birthday Israel!

Last year's posts:

• Israel at 57: the geeky side
• Israel at 57: the political side
• Israel at 57: the religious side
• Israel at 57: the personal side
• Israel at 57: the culinary side
• Israel at 57: the political side vs the religious side

Since then:

• Disengagement
• Realignment
• Incapacitation
• Election

19

Tonight the State of Israel mourns all of its fallen soldiers, many of whom were only 19 at the time of their tragic deaths. Yehi zichram baruch.