This is Torah, and I Must Learn

This incident is indicative of the kinds of struggles that young Modern Orthodox men and women are facing. Contrary to what the Orthodox Union would like to imagine, they do touch each other and they do want to talk about it. Or they don’t touch each other and want to talk about it. Some of them want to wear certain clothing, sleep with serious partners, hook up at bars. They also want to keep Shabbat, eat in only Kosher restaurants, and pray three times a day. They want community and continuity but they struggle against their hormones. Many choose to get married very young, while others keep their sexual exploits quiet and hidden. Some feel tremendous guilt and leave the system behind all together in order to avoid internal hypocrisy.

B’nei Yisrael, the Children, or Nation of Israel, is what Jews were called before they became “Jews.” Yisrael, or Israel, means to struggle with God, as Jacob was renamed after his fight with an angel. In all of Judaism, the struggle that comes with observance and understanding is just as important as the outcome. The good that Jewish law does, the value it provides is of paramount importance, and yet sometimes the system that we have constructed around it creates so many barriers against possible transgression that many are left out in the dark when other legal, intellectually and religiously honest solutions are possible.

A young woman of my acquaintance posed the problem it perfectly when she said to me, “all last year I said, ‘I don’t touch boys that I’m not dating,’ and then I hooked up with five that year. There is what we know and believe and then there is what we do. You have to explain that disconnect.” Striving for a world where the struggle to find what is “right for me” and “right for my community” is a powerful thing, but we should work toward a world in which the gap between what we believe and what we do is far narrower.

So how do we go about it? How do we find the balance between what is morally compelling and what is religiously proscribed? Rabbinic Judaism is rooted in the idea of covenant between God and man and between man and man. This covenant is specific to Jews and is articulated across generations through sacred texts that are the perpetual foundation of Judaism. The rituals and themes that make up cultural Judaism are rooted in rabbinic Judaism, and without the textual connection, the rituals and themes of culture cease to hold meaning as Judaism. For Judaism is an “interpretive community,” and this ongoing interpretation must grapple with the concerns that arise in every generation as history trudges on. (72) Judaism must use and wrestle with the specific texts in order to move forward as a community and constantly evaluate and incorporate assumptions and modernity into praxis.

A sexual ethic that is morally compelling is indeed a necessary thing, for how else are we to follow it if at our core we are left bereft? And yet, it is important to recognize that a requirement for something that is morally compelling can “devolve into soft relativism” and desires for that which is comfortable, titillating, or narcissistic. “For [a religious ethic] to be morally compelling [and sustainable], it probably [also] needs to be deeply embedded in tradition.” (73)

Jewish philosopher Moshe Sokol views personal autonomy as important, “but not necessary or sufficient in itself.” In his worldview, in which Torah law and its byproduct, rabbinic law, are inherently Divine, “a law is binding whether or not it its autonomously imposed.” (74)

Returning to Winkler’s idea that God and religion aren’t always in sync, there is space to speak of a soft autonomy where shifting societal values and evolved sexual ethics are part the theory of cumulative revelation. Ross explains that there are three assumptions that are essential to understanding cumulativism. The first is that revelation is a continuing process, “a dynamic unfolding of the original Torah transmitted at Sinai that reveals in time its ultimate significance.” (75) The second assumption is that this revelation is presented as a series of “hearings,” but not in the sense of God expressing Godself through actual vocal cords or through a non-anthropomorphic “created voice,” but through a rabbinic interpretation of the texts which can be “accompanied by an evolution in human understanding, and through the mouthpiece of history.” Hearing can be semi-prophetic inspiration, or it can be fine-tuning laws and understanding so that they are in line with the “constraints of the era and the ideas that they bring forth.” (76)

The final assumption is that even though new ideas that come out of these “hearings” may see to contradict older ideas, they never actually supplant them. Rather, the older ideas are the filter through which we understand and utilize the new revelations. This continued Divine presence, adding up of revelation incrementally through the prism of history, is how we have shaped halacha and tradition from Sinai until today (77), conceived of all that came before them. However, that is not to say that this cumulative view in any way excludes the notion of a Godly text; it simply allows for it to indeed be an “etz chaim,” a living Torah that breathes and moves, expands and contracts, and strives to pursue an evergreater standard of justice in line with the advancing principles of its time. Judaism can keep the rabbinic nature of its law and value system while finding morally compelling and textually honest ways to find value and contemporary wisdom in the shifts of time. Textual sources abound that hearken back to a multiplicity of ideas on sexual subjects, and so modern values of sexuality can be ground in the legal framework of the Sages of the Talmud. In this way, the pitfalls of the “thinness of self-authorship” (78) and how the rabbis of the Talmud may be avoided.

Continue reading…