Answer

Hello X.
I’m glad my book got you thinking.
1. The forms used to describe God in the Torah are anthropomorphic, meaning they are phrased in human terms. The Torah addresses human beings, and it tries to explain God to human beings (usually in the terms of the period in which the Torah was given). It’s like a father telling his son that he is furious with him, where the goal is educational and not necessarily to express a real emotion. You should remember that the Torah was given in a period dominated by idolatrous conceptions (in the ancient mythologies, the gods act like human beings and are perceived in anthropomorphic forms).
2. A significant part of Jewish law was shaped in an ancient period, and one must be careful about anachronistic treatment of it (interpretation nourished by our own world). For example, in Jewish law a father is almost the owner of his daughter, which today seems problematic (also to me). But one has to remember that in the ancient period there was no place for a daughter or a woman on her own, and she was under the responsibility of her husband or father. The Torah places responsibility for her on them, and therefore also gives them authority that comes with that responsibility. That does not mean that in our time this would be realized as described there. Just as the passage about slaves will not necessarily be realized as described there. In that period, that was the correct approach. The sages of the generations shaped Jewish law in accordance with the needs and values of their generation in many respects. Some see this as though they are doing whatever they want, but in my understanding that is not true. It is a role that the Torah itself places on them, because it understands that things require shaping according to place and time (there cannot be a universal law that is correct in every place and time). These changes are applications of the same conceptual foundation under changing circumstances. I’m attaching an article (Enlightened Idolatry) in which I describe a framework for this kind of thinking.
Now this also has to be applied to homosexuality. In the kind of world that once existed, this may have been more problematic than it is today (and not only did it seem more problematic; the problematic nature depends on society and environment), and when there is an authorized halakhic institution I assume the attitude toward this will change (I have some proposals, but I am not entirely sure).
3. Here too we are dealing with anthropomorphism. Indeed, it is commonly thought that God does not need these praises. Human beings need to understand and internalize that there is something beyond them, wiser and stronger than they are, that can give meaning and structure to their lives and thoughts. To internalize that, one needs to turn to Him in a way that expresses such a perception and internalizes it. Only then is there meaning in turning to Him. I’ll illustrate this through a story the Talmud tells about a sage who was asked a question and replied to the questioner that he should first attend to him (=serve him), and only then would he answer him. One of the greatest commentators on the Talmud (in my view) wrote about this that if the questioner is willing to serve the one being asked, then he builds up an appreciation for him within himself, and then it is likely that he will give some credit to the answer he receives from him. There is no point in giving an answer to a person who gives no credit to what I tell him. After all, if someone gives me no credit, when I tell him X, if he agrees with what he hears then he will accept it, but it has taught him nothing new (he agreed anyway). And if he disagrees, he will not think about it again and change his mind, because he does not esteem me. I can only learn from someone I value. That does not mean I will accept everything he says, but if I do not understand him I will think and reconsider it again and again until I reach a conclusion. That way there is a chance I will learn something new. By the way, I always told my students that an argument in which I learned something is only an argument in which I lost. An argument in which I won is an argument I came out of exactly as I went into it (my views did not change), so what did I gain from it?!
 
I’d be happy to talk about whatever you find appropriate. By phone (052-3320543), by email, or to arrange a meeting. Don’t hesitate; I do this quite a bit.
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Questioner:
First of all, thank you very much for the quick and detailed response, I appreciate it.
 
You wrote about the fact that things were written in accordance with the period in which they were written, and that sounds logical to me. That’s exactly what I thought—how can you interpret all these things, after all they were written in periods when the world of values was completely different, and over time moral norms developed.
The issue is that I was educated to believe that the entire Torah, both the Oral Torah and the Written Torah, was given entirely by God to Moses at Mount Sinai. So were those prohibitions written by God only in accordance with the period? Isn’t the Torah eternal?
Actually, I browsed around your site a bit and in one of the responsa on the subject of faith you wrote that you don’t think that way… that different parts were written in different periods?
I’d be glad if you could explain that. Because if that really is the case, and everything was written in accordance with the social environment of the people who wrote the Torah… then what meaning does any of it have for our reality today? Do you believe the Hebrew Bible has historical significance? Or maybe only conceptual significance?
 
Another question I wanted to ask…
It’s a bit complicated to explain, but I’ll try. How do you conceive of God? Does He exercise providence? Does He intervene in creation?
Does prayer have any meaning at all?
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Rabbi:
Hello X.
I was also educated that way, but not everything I was educated with do I accept (and as I understood from your words, neither do you). Things have to be put through the crucible of criticism and a worldview has to be formed about them. Already the sages interpreted “an eye for an eye” to mean monetary compensation, along with other such interpretations, and they saw themselves as free to interpret and change the Torah they had received. As I said, the Torah is raw material and not a finished product. Its refinement is the kneading of the raw material through friction with the environment and changing circumstances.
This change does not mean that the Torah in our hands is not the Torah that the Holy One, blessed be He, gave. See the article I sent you, where I explain that tradition is dynamic (= raw material), and sometimes precisely the refashioning is the correct continuation of what was, while simplistic preservation of what was is actually taking it away from its true intention. Therefore the Torah itself gives the sages of each generation the role of adapting and interpreting the Torah in every generation. It sees itself as raw material and not as a finished product.
That is exactly the difference from fundamentalist religious conceptions (there is fundamentalism in Judaism too, in this sense), which think that what we have in our hands is what was given by the Holy One, blessed be He, to Moses at Sinai. That is nonsense that does not withstand any factual test (it is clear that most of what we have in our hands is later development, certainly the Oral Torah). And still, the Torah, which was written in the language of its time and place, has eternal meaning. I believe this is the right raw material, whose refinement (and not its simplistic application) will lead us to the proper way of life and certainly to fulfilling God’s will even in our day. For example, the laws of slaves are relevant to a world in which slavery exists. In such a world, halakhic slavery is a magnificent institution, and there is much to learn from it for our own time. Not to apply the laws of slavery simplistically, but to understand that offenders should be rehabilitated, and how subordinates are to be treated, and several other foundational ideas in the laws of property and the like. By the same token, the American Constitution was also written in a different period, and its applications today are different from what they once were, yet it is still an important and foundational document. For me, the Torah is not what was given to Moses at Sinai, but the form that this raw material took throughout the entire historical process down to me.
 
To the best of my understanding, God does not intervene in creation, except perhaps in very exceptional cases (which I do not detect). In any case, I do not rely on that. We plainly see that matters are conducted according to the laws of nature, and I cannot discern exceptions to those laws that depend on our commandments or transgressions, or on our prayers. Of course, one can always say that there are such things and I just don’t see them, but I have no indication whatsoever to think so.
As for prayer, requests to the Holy One, blessed be He, to intervene may have some point in extreme cases where there is no natural way to deal with the matter. And even then I would not count on being answered. But prayer has other dimensions as well: standing before the Holy One, blessed be He, self-examination, praise and thanksgiving for the world He created for us, and more. All of these are as relevant today as ever.
 
I am currently in the middle of writing a comprehensive work (3 volumes) presenting a comprehensive and up-to-date Jewish theology (and mainly a “thin” one, meaning without all the unnecessary and incorrect additions that were inserted in various ways into our theology and on which we were educated), in which I try to deal with all these questions systematically. These matters require much greater length.
 
All the best,
Michi