Category: Books

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Books

Who Is Wise? One Who Learns From All.

In anticipation of the release of CCAR Press’s newest book, Seven Days, Many Voices: Insights into the Biblical Story of Creation, we’ve invited several of the book’s contributors to share excerpts from the book. The book is now officially available to order!

The opening words of the Torah are iconic, and they mark the start of an iconic narrative, namely the Torah’s account of how God created our world. Centuries later, these words continue to carry power and resonate broadly. However, those first six days, presented twice in Genesis, tell of much more than the beginning of day and night, skies and seas, animals of earth and air; they provide us with a touchstone to return to once and again over the course of our lives. When we dare to investigate the intricacies of the Creation text we come to see not only ourselves, but the imperatives with which we live as Jews: to care for the natural universe, to take responsibility for ourselves and those around us, to lift up the Sabbath as a holy day, and to always remember our ever-profound origins.

We might also argue that never before have there been greater misgivings regarding Creation. At a time when considerable skepticism is aimed at religious institutions and tradition at large, the early chapters of Genesis are easily cast aside as antiquated, even irrelevant. And yet, even when placed beside the realities of scientific discovery and evolution, those chapters remind us in the most succinct fashion of precisely what is so ennobling regarding religion and religious life: ritual, poetry, coexistence, tradition, and the underlying belief so many of us carry in a benevolent Creator manifest in our daily lives. It is true that if the Creation story is going to withstand the test of time, it is not only because of its literary prowess and magnitude, but because it consistently renews our commitment to faith itself.

In an age of dire pace and frenzied obsession with technology, holding fast to our beginnings matters greatly, for us and our children. Rather than fixate forever on what’s next, and whose social media status garners greatest attention, Creation has us consider who we are at our most fundamental. They are verses to which we are meant to pay attention.

Seven Days, Many Voices: Insights into the Biblical Story of Creation, a new publication from CCAR Press, started as a mere idea three years ago.  It has now become a very exciting reality.  When I proposed a book that would explore the great range of thought around the Torah’s Creation stories, I never imagined the far-reaching scope achieved by the nearly fifty essays.  Indeed, included in this collection are the diverse perspectives of awe-inspiring colleagues and teachers, each of whom have wrestled with Creation in their own right.  The end result is an anthology that captures the layers and complexities of Creation in new and fascinating ways.  At the start of this project I believed, and still believe, that we honor Creation most when we allow ourselves to see it in the most complicated light, rather than rushing to simplified, easy readings.

The book’s contributors challenge many of the common conceptions around Creation. They urge readers to see Creation not only as a story about how God formed our world in six days, but what it means to have faith, what it means to be a Jewish parent, what it means to care for the environment, what it means to protect the most vulnerable among us, what it means to think deeply about gender and sexuality, and what it means to observe Shabbat.

I am proud to align myself with a community that allows for and encourages diversity of thought.  To include authors that span the ideological spectrum within one anthology, sometimes in near total opposition to one another, speaks to the adage from the Mishnah: “Who is wise?  One who learns from all.” Perhaps one of the great victories of this book, therefore, is that it reminds us to learn from those not altogether like ourselves.

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Rabbi Benjamin David serves Adath Emanu-El in Mt Laurel, New Jersey.  Rabbi David is also the Editor of CCAR Press’s newest book, Seven Days, Many Voices: Insights into the Biblical Story of Creation, now available to order.

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Books

Male and Female God Created Them: The Everyday Life of the Creation Myth in Israeli Society

In anticipation of the release of CCAR Press’s newest book, Seven Days, Many Voices: Insights into the Biblical Story of Creation, we’ve invited several of the book’s contributors to share excerpts from the book. The book is now officially available from CCAR Press. 

“So God created the human beings in [the divine] image, creating [them] in the image of God, creating them male and female.”  (Genesis 1:27)

Every society for which there are records has its version of a Creation myth. These myths serve as important allegories and help the society tell its own story. They present a microcosm of society, of the way men and women relate to one another, and of the place of humans in the world of nature. It is essential that we understand the values projected in creation myths in order to transform power imbalances.

While Jewish tradition has several Creation stories, I will focus on the ways in which the Creation story in Genesis 2 establishes the patriarchal order of our Jewish history. Plants could not grow because man was not there to till the ground, which is why God created the mist to water the earth, and man to cultivate it. Following the creation of the garden, plants, and rivers, God guides man around the Garden of Eden and instructs him on cultivating and keeping the earth.  God then creates all the animals to help man and save man from being alone. Man sees and names them and finds no help through them.  So, God creates woman from man’s rib. According to this story, man has an essential role in Creation, designated to him by God. The entire plant and animal kingdom is dependent on man, while woman is created to support man’s welfare.

After eating from the Tree of All Knowledge, Adam and Eve become aware of duality (which had been not present before) and man and woman realize they’re different. God and man then come into conflict, as they, too, are different. In that conflict, woman (paired with nature) is the cause of the first sin. Knowledge therefore comes not only out of the realization of good and evil, but also out of the differences between male and female.

This paradigm led to the establishment of a Jewish society in which women could exist and function only in relation to their fathers, husbands, sons, or brothers. The paradigm has also led to the evolution of two separate sets of rules within our halachic systems, excluding women from all religious leadership roles, from major events within the Jewish community, and from the close and intimate disciplines of religious practice that are related to time and season.

This duality echoes another element of the Creation story, which is the connection between women and knowledge. In the story of Creation, the “basic” state of man is one of ignorance. He is commanded to refrain from eating from the fruits of the Tree of All Knowledge (Gen. 2:16–17). The only limitation placed on man is the restriction of knowledge. Woman (being tricked by the snake) tempts man to eat from the fruit, committing the first sin, and shattering his divine-intended ignorance.

In Israeli society today, religious and political rhetoric perpetuate this particularly misogynistic reading of sin, knowledge, and gender roles. Since 1999, there have been repeated demands made by members of the ultra-Orthodox leadership (the fastest growing community in Israel, averaging 6.9 children per family) to segregate men and women in the public sphere in Israel. These demands, following a decade of work by the Israel Religious Action Center, are now, thankfully, being rejected by the Israeli government. Beyond their lobbying, ultra-Orthodoxy’s social structures prevent adults from leaving the closed society through a gender-segregated school system that deprives boys of the educational tools that would enable them to sustain themselves and lead lives outside the ultra-Orthodox world.  Through the political pressure of ultra-Orthodox parties, the Israeli government sponsors such schools that in essence teach only traditional Jewish studies. Since the late 1990s, in order to support their growing society, ultra-Orthodox women have been leading a quiet revolution. They are lawyers, accountants, and software engineers. They are more educated and are earning more money than ever before.

We in Israel therefore find ourselves living with the Creation metaphor as an everyday reality: Man in a primal state, connected to God, and woman holding the forbidden fruit of knowledge, thus threatening the innocence of man. This ongoing reenactment of the Creation story is a major threat to the future of Israel. Twenty-seven percent of Israeli boys in first grade study in a public educational system that ostensibly sentences them to a life of poverty and binds them to the ultra- Orthodox community. As we continue to lead the legal and political struggle to improve the education of ultra-Orthodox boys, we need to both recognize the elements of our tradition that provide support for the current situation, as well as utilize the various traditional responses to support knowledge, education, and gender equality.

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Rabbi Noa Sattath is the a contributor to CCAR Press’s newest book, Seven Days, Many Voices: Insights into the Biblical Story of Creation, now available!

Rabbi Noa Sattath is also the Director of Israel Religious Action Center, the social justice arm of the Reform movement in Israel. She is charged with leading the staff of the organization, developing and implementing social change strategies in the fields of separation of religion and state, women’s rights, and the struggle against racism. 

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Books

The Animal Kingdom

In anticipation of the release of CCAR Press’s newest book, Seven Days, Many Voices: Insights into the Biblical Story of Creation, we’ve invited several of the book’s contributors to share excerpts from the book. The book is now officially available from CCAR Press. 

In all of Jewish tradition, the mitzvah of shiluach hakein—the commandment to send away the mother bird before taking the egg—is the most seemingly eccentric and confusing. To the enterprising mind, however, this supposedly ethical dilemma of shiluach hakein underlies the divine enterprise that the Creation story presents to humanity.

On that point, the fifth day of Creation presents the Jewish people with an overarching moral quandary. As we will discern, the universe would not be complete without the diversity of the fauna that roams upon the lands. The totality of Torah articulates a myriad of responsibilities that humans have for animals. These responsibilities are intertwined with opportunities for the cultivation of Jewish values. Perhaps the premier mechanism to cultivate reverence for the wondrous multiplicity of Creation is to avoid eating God’s creatures altogether.

Indeed, vegetarianism/veganism—and Jewish awareness toward the overarching umbrella of animal welfare—is the most dynamic and growing trend in the American Jewish community and has been for the past few decades. Yet, the biblical text presents us with a conundrum. In the latter part of the Creation story, humans are told they “shall hold sway over the fish of the sea and the birds of the sky, over the beasts, over all the earth, over all that creeps upon the earth” (Genesis 1:26). This seems to be in contradiction to the human obligation to emulate God’s ways and be “good to all” (Psalm 145:9). How could the consumption of God’s creatures be commensurate with the duty to uphold mercy?

The biblical history of animal consumption experienced three distinct eras. In the Garden of Eden humans did not consume animals. After the Great Deluge[1] and construction of the ark, God perceived the violent nature of humans and thus permitted meat consumption as a concession so they would channel their violent nature to kill animals instead of people. Finally, we come to learn that after meat was only permitted as a sacrifice to God, it later became permitted as a more regular staple of diets outside of sacrificial worship. These three eras mark the progression of an admittedly supernal ideal and evolution of a certain religious pragmatism. Are we now in a fourth era, and in the position to consider the well-being and rights of animals as comparable to the basic rights that humans are privileged to hold?

Following this reasoning, a midrash explains that Moses was chosen as the leader and prophet for the Jewish people because of his consideration for animals.[2] It is not only the prophets and kings of Israel who are so often portrayed as compassionate shepherds; this is also a popular way of personifying God: “The Eternal is my shepherd, I shall not want” (Psalm 23:1). This value is also reflected in one of the best-known instances of animal protection in the Talmud: That we may not eat until we have fed our animals (BT B’rachot 40a).

The Torah states, “When…you say: ‘I shall eat some meat,’ for you have the urge to eat meat, you may eat meat whenever you wish” (Deuteronomy 12:20). A commentary in the Talmud goes even further, interpreting the verse from Deuteronomy to mean that “a person should not eat meat unless they have a special craving for it” (BT Chulin 84a).

Throughout the millennia, Jews have yearned to return to the Garden of Eden. The Creation story is not the story of the Jews, but of every creature that God found worthy to exist. By being compassionate to animals, we not only fulfill the mandate of the Torah, but we regain our humanity. In fact, the great sages of the Talmud consider mercy and compassion to be essential characteristics of being Jewish (BT Beitzah 32b). Choosing not to eat meat for ethical reasons has the power to imprint the values of mercy and compassion deep within our souls. From the lowliest microbe to the most complex being, all gain life from the same holy source.

When we arrive at the insight that the world was not created for us alone[3]—that the mother bird and her egg are precious to God— and that we are not entitled to consume whatever we wish, we reach a powerful Torah ideal, one that may be the most spiritual ideal of all. We share this beautiful world with a remarkable diversity of life. We are only one aspect of this biosphere.  And when we respect it for what it is, we venerate that which brought it forth from the far reaches of time and space.

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Rabbi Dr. Shmuly Yanklowitz is a contributor to CCAR Press’s newest book, Seven Days, Many Voices: Insights into the Biblical Story of Creation, now available!

Rabbi Yanklowitz is also the President & Dean of the Valley Beit Midrash, the Founder & President of Uri L’Tzedek, and the Founder and CEO of The Shamayim V’Aretz Institute . Newsweek named Rav Shmuly one of the top 50 rabbis in America and the Forward named him one of the 50 most influential Jews.

[1] Also known as the Flood, seen later in Genesis 6–9.

[2] Sh’mot Rabbah 2:2.

[3] Maimonides, Guide for the Perplexed 3:13.

 

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Books

Music and The Punctuation of Time

In anticipation of the release of CCAR Press’s newest book, Seven Days, Many Voices: Insights into the Biblical Story of Creation, we’ve invited several of the book’s contributors to share excerpts from the book. The book is now officially available from CCAR Press. 

This is the story of a fourth day. From the mystery emerge years, seasons, nights and days, all with their own series of markers and movements in the sky. These patterns are the foundation upon which we build our lives. And because of the innate capacity for patterns to quickly progress from lovely routine to painfully boring rut, it is in reference to time, and specifically Shabbat, the seventh day, that we first engage with the word “holy” (kadosh) in Tanach. In order to make and take meaning from the random events of our lives, to vary the endless patterns, we must somehow mark one moment from the next, and also connect one moment to the next, in a way that makes sense over seasons, over years, over generations.

Music and time are inexorably intertwined.  Music that we see on a page is only a hard-copy representation of something that cannot exist without the passage of time. Music must move forward within the context of the passage of time, as must the planets and stars in their revolutions in the sky. The single notes, much like single stars, mean nothing unless connected to others.

The power of a single melody can send one hurtling back in time, and allow us to take others along. That’s the real meaning of the word “commemoration”: remembering together.  With a single melody, I can be transported, along with innumerable others, to another space and energy and emotional state. In this way, music helps us to both awaken to and immerse ourselves in special set times of celebration and commemoration, as well as to the k’doshim b’chol yom, the holiness inherent in every moment of every day. 

In their book Filling Words with Light: Hasidic and Mystical Reflections on Jewish Prayer, Rabbis Lawrence Kushner and Nehemiah Polen remind us that there were two splittings of seas in Tanach.[1] The Sea of Reeds story is one that we know quite well. Few, if any of us remember this second miraculous occurrence of Israelites crossing a sea on dry land, when “Adonai your God dried up the waters of the Jordan before you until you crossed, just as the Adonai your God did to the Sea of Reeds, which God dried up before us until we crossed” (Joshua 4:23).[2]

Rabbis Kushner and Polen share with us, from the teachings of Itturei Torah,[3] that the reason that one story is paramount in our people’s faith formation and the other has fallen by the wayside is because of song. And when we sing Mi Chamocha we are taken back, each time, to when we emerged from slavery to freedom.

The presence of music and the ways in which it moves our spirits has the ability to change us, as well as whatever comes after.  It connects us to our deeper selves, gives us insight into our past, and reaffirms our commitment to action. It causes us to reflect on our connection to each other, as well as our deep emotions in the face of art and beauty and song. All of these blessings that music brings somehow coalesce in the function of music in our ritual lives.

All faith and secular cultures mark the passage of time with ritual. Can you imagine an important Jewish ritual or holiday celebration without music? Although they vary according to region and origin, the specific modes and melodies used at different times of the year have helped Jews over the centuries to celebrate the patterns of their lives. Our music connects us not only to our present-day communities, but to Jewish communities across the millennia. As older melodies are, over time, replaced by more contemporary sounds, we also merge our unique stories of the past with the story of the communities in which we presently live.

By paralleling and making us mindful of time—its patterns as well as its passage—music allows us to go far beyond the spoken word. By adorning and providing  context  for the  ways in which we travel under the  sun, moon,  and stars created  on the  fourth  day of Creation, music has the power  to open  our hearts  to that  which is “within  our reach, but beyond  our grasp,” according  to Rabbi Abraham Joshua Heschel.[4] Music connects us to any human who has ever looked to the patterns in the skies and celebrated with instrument, rhythm, and voice; it allows us to reach upward and inward, simultaneously touching our individual souls, our shared stories, and our stars.

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Cantor Ellen Dreskin is a contributor to CCAR Press’s newest book, Seven Days, Many Voices: Insights into the Biblical Story of Creation, now available!

Cantor Dreskin also serves as Coordinator of the Cantorial Certification Program at the Debbie Friedman School of Sacred Music at HUC-JIR in New York. Ellen travels extensively to congregations around the country as a scholar-in-residence, and has taught for many years on the faculty of URJ Summer Kallot, Hava Nashira, and the URJ Kutz Camp Leadership Academy.  

 

[1] Lawrence Kushner and Nehemia Polen, Filling Words with Light: Hasidic and Mys- tical Reflections on Jewish Prayer (Woodstock,  VT: Jewish Lights Publishing, 2004),

[2] Adapted from JPS Hebrew-English Tanakh, 2nd ed. (Philadelphia: Jewish Publica- tion Society, 1999), 464.

[3] A. Chayn, Itturei Torah, ed. Aaron Jacob Greenberg  ( Jerusalem: Yavneh, 1987),

3:124.

[4] Abraham Joshua Heschel, The Vocation of the Cantor (New York: American Con- ference of Cantors, 1966).

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Books

The Third Day and Our Oceans

In anticipation of the release of CCAR Press’s newest book, Seven Days, Many Voices: Insights into the Biblical Story of Creation, we’ve invited several of the book’s contributors to share excerpts from the book. The book is now officially available from CCAR Press.  

We are not told that we hold sway over the sea.

We are told that we hold sway over the animals. When God creates humankind, God grants dominion over the “fish of the sea, the birds of the sky, and over every animal that creeps on the earth” (Genesis 1:28).

We are told that we may do what we like with the plants.  “These are yours to eat,” God says on the sixth day (Genesis 1:29).

Later, this relationship between human beings and vegetation is modified with the additional command l’ovdah ulshomrah, translated literally as “to work it and keep it,” and commonly known today as “to till and tend” (Genesis 2:15). Humankind is intended to take care of and partake in all animals and all plants.

Day three of the Creation story has two components. Before God established plants, God first collected the chaotic waters of the earth and designated these as “seas,” an area differentiated from “dry ground” (Genesis 1:9–10). The creation of each is concluded with a repetition of the central trope of Creation, “God saw how good it was” (Genesis 1:10).

These two acts of creation on one day create two parallel tracks for God’s contract with humankind as a partner in Creation. We are told that we hold sway over the animals. We are told that we may do what we like with the plants.

We are not told that we hold sway over the sea.

And yet, humankind has ruled over the seas. We have disrupted the boundary lines distinguishing sea from land. Whole populations will be displaced. Cities and states will be pulled underwater as the sea becomes entangled with dry ground. Further, rising sea levels are causing drinking water contamination and disruptions in agriculture, coastal plant life, and wildlife populations. In impacting the seas, we have also adversely affected life on dry land for humans, animals, and plants.

According to the Environmental Protection Agency, sea levels have risen approximately seven inches globally since 1900. Our industrial output of greenhouse gases has initiated global climate change and sea-level rise; we have failed to stay within the means of our God-given responsibilities. Climate change caused by human activity presents problems of an immense global scale with potentially infinite disruptive power. Rising global atmospheric temperatures in turn cause sea-level rise, disrupt ecosystems, limit crop viability, and lead to drought and extreme weather events. Many of our current international security and poverty crises can be traced back to these adverse climate change impacts.

These challenges have hopeful and plausible remedies. We can mitigate sea-level rise by investing in and advocating for the production and dissemination of clean energy technologies. Unlike clean energy’s fossil fuel counterparts, the mechanisms for extraction (solar panels and windmills) are not disruptive. While we cannot turn back the clock on climate change, it is within our power to ensure that the current impacts of sea-level rise are not dramatically worsened as we continue to use nonrenewable sources. We need only shift from greenhouse-gas-producing technologies to renewable energy in order to minimize our negative impact on the oceans.

On day three of Genesis, we read, “Let the waters beneath the sky be collected in one place, so that the dry ground may be seen!”—and so it was. And God called the dry ground Earth, and called the collected waters Seas. And…God saw how good it was” (Genesis 1:9–10).  As Jews, we can look at this passage, in both its description of separation and, later, our absence of active human obligation, to make the case for a Jewish response to climate change through renewable energy. By living up to our responsibilities on land, we can restore our seas. We can give back to them their autonomy as a space distinct from the dry ground. We must not hold sway over the seas.

We are at a crossroads in human history where we have gained rule over nature and have the responsibility and capacity to surrender that power. We have scientific evidence that we have created a problem. We have the global willpower to make the change. We are not told that we hold sway over the sea. We are told that God saw how it was. Now, we just need our energy industry and our policy-makers to catch up.

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Liya Rechtman is a contributor to CCAR Press’s newest book, Seven Days, Many Voices: Insights into the Biblical Story of Creation, now available!

Ms. Rechtman is also a Wexner Graduate Fellow/Davidson Scholar and Amherst College Graduate Fellow at Harvard Divinity School as a candidate for a Masters of Theological Studies with a concentration in religion, ethics, and politics. She previously served a consultant for the Interfaith Center for Sustainable Development, Manager of the Coalition on the Environment and Jewish Life and co-chair of the Washington Inter-religious Staff Council’s Energy and Environment Working Group.

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Books

The Second Day: A Pilot’s Perspective

In anticipation of the release of CCAR Press’s newest book, Seven Days, Many Voices: Insights into the Biblical Story of Creation, we’ve invited several of the book’s contributors to share excerpts from the book. The book is now officially available from CCAR Press. 

The second day of Creation supplies the world with a new device never seen before: an “expanse” that separates two domains, the heavens and the waters, from one another. The original Hebrew rakia, “something that is beaten or stamped out,” is like a sheet of metal an artisan has flattened into a thin layer to divide one area from another. Portrayed here as decidedly solid, later in Genesis (7:11 and 8:2), we learn that rain can descend from the heavens through windows or sluices, offering the fascinating possibility of trans-expanse communication: water could come down, and in certain very rare instances, people could go up.

In the early days of postbiblical literature, the idea of human beings ascending to heaven to access hidden secrets was all the rage. Enoch, Elijah, Moses, and just a few other characters were granted such supernal experiences, succeeding in their desire to gain divine knowledge in a way that even the subsequent mythical Prometheus would have envied. As a rabbi and student of ancient texts, and a pilot, I admit to feeling a deep connection to these ancient ascent stories.  We moderns, who leap routinely heavenward in complex tubes of beaten metal with sophisticated machinery unimaginable to the premodern mind, are often pretty blasé about what it takes to leave the earth’s surface, climb a mile into thin air, and land a thousand miles distant.

Focus, for a moment, on the intense harmony that must be achieved by the unstintingly complex mechanism that is an aircraft; the balance between going above and returning to below. In the complexity of flight lies another expanse we must cross: the expanse of reaching for expertise. Bringing oneself squarely up against a challenging task one learns to perform is a vital part of being fully human. Flying is but one of these sorts of tasks. The truth is we become fully human when we commit our entire selves to something that is hard and worth doing, when we know our limits, and when we take pride in what we achieve.

One lesser known form of aviation is soaring, also known as gliding. In soaring, a powered aircraft tows you up from a grass runway to a few thousand feet over the airport, whereupon the engineless glider and pilot sail free to employ the air around them to remain aloft as long as possible. The harmony that results from diverse parts that function together suggests a oneness to the universe that is both human and beyond humanity, existing both below the expanse and above it at the same time. As a glider pilot, I have personally circled in rising columns of air with families of hawks, climbed over ten thousand feet in just a few minutes in strong thermal lift, and remained aloft for hours traveling miles and miles powered only by the air. To be able to understand clouds and wind, lift and sink, terrain and airflow well enough to do this makes me feel as if I have access to secret knowledge; as if I have, like an ancient, gone on an ascent to the heavens and returned with secrets that surpass regular humanity. Once one has soared, one can never quite look at clouds and the sky in the same way again. Each glance at sky above fills me with a deep and abiding sense of gratitude that God has created a world in which this is possible for mortal human beings.

For the remarkable ability to fly, with all its beautiful complexity, and for entrée to the secret knowledge of an aviator in the heavens above, I am profoundly thankful. The Creation story in Genesis reminds us, at its core, that God’s handiwork is a gift God shared with us, which implies a duty of care and an invitation to investigate. Safe inside beaten metal thousands of feet above our normal dwelling place, we effortlessly cross expanses unimaginable to our ancestors, learning and growing as we go. This gift of ascent within God’s Creation, whether literal or figurative, is one we can never fully repay.

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Rabbi Aaron Panken is a contributor to CCAR Press’s newest book, Seven Days, Many Voices: Insights into the Biblical Story of Creation.  Rabbi Panken is also President of Hebrew Union College-Jewish Institute (HUC-JIR), North America’s first Jewish seminary, with campuses in Cincinnati, Jerusalem, Los Angeles, and New York.  

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Books

The Why and the How of Creation: Harmonizing Genesis and the Big Bang

In anticipation of the release of CCAR Press’s newest book, Seven Days, Many Voices: Insights into the Biblical Story of Creation, we’ve invited several of the book’s contributors to share excerpts from the book. The book is now officially available from CCAR Press. 

I’m going to let you in on a secret. The Bible is not a scientific textbook. Now, this might seem obvious on an intellectual level, but when people read the opening chapters of Genesis, emotions come into play. We grapple with the relationship between Genesis and the big bang, a relationship that at its core takes on the question “Where did we come from?” As such, we face a challenge: The Bible says one thing, and science says another.  So how do we make sense of Genesis 1 in light of big bang cosmology?

My organization, Sinai and Synapses, presents four different ways we can talk about science and religion in general: In conflict; in concert; in contrast; and in contact. Before we address how we can better understand both Genesis and the big bang, let’s first take a look at the more problematic understandings of this relationship.

This first model, “in conflict,” is the one that gets the most attention in the media and the blogosphere. Here, either science or religion is correct, and if we accept one, then we have to reject the other. The model of “in concert” is, in many ways, the flip side of the conflict model. The common refrain for this model is “We don’t know how long a day is. The Psalmist even says, ‘A thousand years in [God’s] sight are like a day that has just gone by’ [Psalm 90:4], so I can read the Torah in a way that doesn’t violate my scientific sensibilities.” This model is an attempt to fit science into the biblical narrative, but the problem is the Bible isn’t meant to be read scientifically. In the “in contrast” model, science and religion live in separate spheres, and so we end up bifurcating our sense of identity, keeping our science and our Judaism far away from each other. The “in contact” model helps us to reconcile Genesis and the big bang. Since, as Reform Jews, we shouldn’t read the Bible as a literal, factual, scientific account, we should instead see how scientific metaphors for God can be useful.

The big bang theory tells us what happened immediately after the universe started. This is similar to the classic midrash that asks why the Torah starts with a bet and not an alef. Rabbi Levi answers, “The bet is closed on three sides and open only on the fourth. This teaches that one should not question what is above or what is below, or what came before, but only what transpired from the day of the world’s creation forward” (B’reishit Rabbah 1:10). While the Rabbis might have viewed these as prescriptions, for us they might be descriptions—the only thing we can currently understand is what has happened after all time, space, matter, and energy began. The second law of thermodynamics tells us that from the big bang until today, the natural tendency of the universe is to go from order to chaos. The only way to move from chaos to order is to direct energy toward that task. This is exactly what we see in Genesis 1, where God intentionally moves from chaos to order. And so, if we view ourselves as being “in the image of God,” then our job, too, is to overcome the universe’s natural inclination to move toward chaos and instead strive to create more order.

The key phrase in the Genesis story is one that the big bang can’t address: “and God saw that it was good.” Leaving aside God for the moment, we can all agree that while science can tell us what is, only human intentionality and action can determine what should be. If the universe is “good,” then we have certain responsibilities to safeguard and protect Creation.

Ultimately, we may never be able to scientifically answer the question of how the universe began. Instead, we can read Genesis as a way to remind us to create more order in a chaotic world, and to ensure that the actions we take are “good.”  While the big bang can help us better understand ourselves and our world, it is upon us to use that understanding, in conjunction with Genesis 1, as a way to create more peace, justice, and goodness in our lives.

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Rabbi Geoffrey A. Mitelman is a contributor to CCAR Press’s newest book, Seven Days, Many Voices: Insights into the Biblical Story of Creation.

Rabbi Mitelman is also the Founding Director of Sinai and Synapses, an organization that bridges the scientific and religious worlds, and is being incubated at Clal – The National Jewish Center for Learning and Leadership. He has been an adjunct professor at both the Hebrew Union College – Jewish Institute of Religion and the Academy for Jewish Religion. From 2007 to 2014, he served as Assistant and then Associate Rabbi of Temple Beth El of Northern Westchester, and he appeared on Jeopardy! in March 2016.

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Books Israel

Fragile Identities in Dialogue: What is Zionism today?

I grew up in an age when the State of Israel was touted as the panacea for the lost American Jew. We celebrated Yom haAtzmaut as fervently as we celebrated Purim. The most exciting skits put on by our day camp counselors all ended up with the characters realizing they could just go to Israel. It was messaged, both subtly and not-so-subtly, that the greatest move we could make as a Jew was Aliyah. The State of Israel was a modern miracle. I do not remember the word Zionism crossing anyone’s lips, but I was certainly raised a Zionist.

When I ventured to Israel for the first time as a senior in highschool, I came back fully bought into the triumphalist Zionist narrative of the State of Israel as the culmination of all Jewish history; the reclamation of Jewish strength; the realization of Jewish sovereignty, and, soon, in vague whispers, the messiah. Then I went to college in Gambier, OH, and I found that there was another side to the story – a reality of oppression inflicted by the State of Israel upon the Palestinians that wasn’t justifiable.

In search of answers, I returned to Israel for my junior year abroad in 2004-2005, and now off the rails of the high school Israel-as-Disneyland experience, I was free to see a much broader spectrum of Israeli life. Busses exploded blocks from my dorm in Beer Sheva; religious extremists refused to leave their settlements in Gaza, threatening to tear apart the country; Bedouin were rounded up and forcibly settled in the Negev against their will, often in abject poverty. I returned from that experience confused and concerned. Why had I been taught this State was the answer to all my questions about Judaism? What even is Zionism, and do I want anything to do with it?

Dr. Joshua Holo, the dean of HUC-JIR in Los Angeles, writes in the upcoming release from CCAR Press, The Fragile Dialogue: New Voices of Liberal Zionism, that Zionism “seeks to guarantee Israel’s existence and its Jewish and democratic character…(and) merely reflects the fact that Jews and Judaism are tightly bound up with the Land of Israel.”

Regardless of the inner conflict, the crack at the foundation of my relationship to Israel, I still feel bound up with the Land of Israel. After writing a graduate thesis on the development of secular Israeli identity, and spending my first year of rabbinical school in Jerusalem, I am no longer surprised by the disappointments the government of Israel consistently bring me. It no longer hurts when my very Jewish identity is denied authenticity by that same government. My anger no longer burns so strongly at the continued and worsening oppression of the Palestinian people at the hands of the Israeli government. It has all become old hat, and as predictable as the rest of the Jewish calendar.

Coming from the perspective of a Jewish educator, in her chapter from The Fragile Dialogue titled, “Educating for Ambiguity,” Rabbi Dr. Lisa Grant, writes, “Just as all would agree that God, Torah, and shabbat are integral to Jewish experience but that different Jews have different beliefs and practices, the same can be said about Israel. There is no one right way to engage with Israel, but engaging is an essential aspect of Jewish experience.”

Words are slippery creatures. Jewish tradition has spilled much ink arguing over the definition of one word or another. Once a word referring specifically to the lofty dream of a new nation State for the Jews, upon the accomplishment of this goal it has now spun into a multitude of different amalgamations: Religious Zionism, Revisionist Zionism, Classical Zionism, Anti-Zionism – and, as these writers discuss, Liberal Zionism.

I’m not sure if I’m a Liberal Zionist, but I am sure that no matter what I do, the State of Israel is as basic to my daily thoughts as Torah and the Jewish calendar. Although I no longer see the State of Israel as a miracle (just as I no longer think that Moses literally parted the Red Sea), I can not cut the ties that bind me to her. So I must join the conversation, and welcome all the voices, from Religious Zionists to Anti-Zionists, but also be willing to stand and put my own relationship with Israel into words.

During Purim we celebrate the story of the victory of the Jews of Persia over their oppressors, and also look critically, even ashamedly, at the end of the book of Esther in which these same Jews massacre 75,000 of their enemies. If we can manage this confusing and confounding tradition each year, we can celebrate the accomplishments within the contemporary State of Israel, as well as protest the moral failings we see in its government.

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Andy Kahn is entering his fifth year as a rabbinic student at HUC-JIR. He has served as the CCAR Rabbinic Intern and is currently the Rabbinic Intern at East End Temple in New York City. 

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Books

On Living Text

Our tradition teaches that there are seventy faces of the Torah. Originally, shiv’im panim laTorah  referred to the multiplicity of ways a single verse can be interpreted: pshat, drash, remez, and sod (Bamidbar Rabbah 13:15-16). It is mentioned later on in commentaries by Ibn Ezra, Nachmanides, and in the Zohar. Today, the Torah’s seventy faces often refers to the multiplicity of viewpoints within every community and gathering—the glorious tapestry that we know is our Judaism.

The 70 faces of Torah are an entry point into the tradition. But successfully claiming our inheritance from the tradition is most likely to happen when we are grounded in foundational Jewish knowledge. Exercising informed choice is only possible when we learn together and engage in discussion and dialogue. How do we offer our communities diverse ways to do this? How do we help our communities  experience the open, evolving Judaism which emerges when we live the texts, returning to the wellspring and renewing their relationship with the wisdom of our tradition? For just as the sages of the Talmud did for their times, we can (and must) bring our cherished values and hard won knowledge to the interpretation  of our tradition.

If you are looking to bring your community into the ongoing conversation, the CCAR, as your rabbinic membership organization, is continually creating new resources to help with this. That is why we are pleased to introduce the launch of Living Text, the CCAR’s presence on The Tent, the URJ’s collaborative workspace for lay and professional congregational and community leaders. Living Text’s mission is to foster ongoing discussion among scholars, rabbinic and cantorial leaders, educators, and community members, and to share ideas and resources on the CCAR Press’s newest works of thought and practice, as well as on Judaism’s rich library of wisdom literature, classic and contemporary. These texts will serve as the foundation for conversation as we navigate ways to meaningfully engage with Jewish tradition, bringing together past, present, and future.

Please visit, and join our forum. Our launch features Rabbis Rebecca Einstein Schorr and Alysa Mendelson Graf, editors of The Sacred Calling, who are inviting members to talk to them in real time, or view and download video interviews and study guides available on the group page. This is only the beginning. In the coming months, there will be resources for you on the themes of Creation, Israel engagement, and Reform Judaism, all of which will be available for teaching and learning within your communities.

Please explore Living Text, and let us know what you think. Post your comments and questions in the group, so that we can continue to develop new resources for community discussion and learning that you can use. We want to hear from you.

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Rabbi Beth Lieberman serves as executive editor at CCAR Press.  Join CCAR Press in The Tent, in our new group, Living Texts.

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Books Israel

Swiftly Flow the Days

Stanley Davids
Rabbi Stanley Davids, celebrates 50 years in the Rabbinate.

In anticipation of the release of CCAR Press’s newest book, The Fragile Dialogue: New Voices of Liberal Zionism, we’ve invited several of the book’s contributors to share how the book came together. The book is officially available for pre-order now from CCAR Press. 

When I sat with David Ben Gurion in his Tel Aviv apartment in 1973, there was no doubt in “The Old Man’s” mind as to what Zionism was: To come to the Land.  To build and to be rebuilt.  To create a new Jew and a new Judaism in the Old/New Land.  He was bemused by the fact that there was push back from some quarters in the Diaspora.  All those ‘Zionists’ had come out to cheer BG in London.  But then he boarded his plane to return to Eretz Yisrael, and they returned to the London suburbs.  So what’s a Zionist?

And then there was the struggle with Jacob Blaustein of the American Jewish Committee.  All Israel’s founder had said was that Jews were obligated to settle in Israel. Blaustein strongly protested against this obvious denigration of the Diaspora, so the Blaustein-Ben Gurion Agreement was signed in 1951.  Blaustein would support the Zionist enterprise from afar and BG would not (often) criticize that distancing.  So what’s a Zionist?

In 1967, it seems that everyone was now a Zionist.  Following the victories of the Six-Day War, Jewish volunteers flooded Israel.  Youth programs expanded dramatically.  Israeli flags flourished on synagogue pulpits across the world.  Heschel wrote: Israel, An Echo of Eternity.  Soviet Jewry began to flex its muscles.  American Jewry was marked by parades, marches and other public events in which our Zionist identities were celebrated with pride.

But with the passing years there were increasing doubts and uncertainties and disappointments.  The world was moving away from the fervent nationalisms that described the mid-20th century.  Israel became controversial.  Some deemed its policy of Occupation to be colonialist or worse.  Ethnicity and peoplehood eroded as the individual was increasingly celebrated.  More wars.  Intifadas.  Ethiopian Jews confronted discrimination, as had the Mizrachim before them.  As do Israeli Arabs.  Reform Judaism was far too often treated as an unwelcome, alien presence.  Huge gaps opened up between the very rich and the very poor.  Was the bloom off the rose?

The nations of the world increasingly felt free from their burden of responsibility for having incited anti-Semitism over the centuries.  But now anti-Semitism was being cloaked in anti-Zionism.  And long suppressed arguments burst forth from within world Jewry.  Too easily accommodating to new norms for discussion, shouting replaced words; ad hominem insults replaced reasoned disagreement; rage replaced discomfort.  We refused to hear anything with which we disagreed.  By the second decade of the 21st century, Jews began boycotting Jews over arguments regarding who and what is a ‘good’ Zionist?  And whose views were the most likely to guarantee Israel’s security?  Battered increasingly from without, we turned on each other.

The Fragile Dialogue: New Voices of Liberal Zionism has the self-assumed role of trying to demonstrate that we Jews must and can learn how to speak with one another about core, existential issues.  This book is intended to be a model for Jewish disagreement about the meaning, purposes and goals of Zionism.  No more demonization.  No more exclusion or banning.  Neither Rabbi Englander nor I have any intention of attempting to define right answers, but only to demonstrate that strongly held positions from within the liberal Jewish community both need to be heard and must be heard.

Does anything go?  Frankly, No.  Our scholars and teachers had to meet one standard: they are firmly committed to the right of Israel to exist as a Jewish and Democratic State.

Some of our authors favor the possibility of a One State Solution.  Some favor Two States.  Some favor a nuanced imposition of BDS.  Some see Israel as a Divine gift.  Some reject any claim that Israel is “The beginning of our Redemption.”  Some want us to teach Zionism with an embrace of ambiguity; some see the survival of North American Jewry as dependent upon the survival of Israel as a Jewish and Democratic State.  They all have a place in this book; and they all have a place in our synagogues, campuses, and Jewish organizations.  Open wide the umbrella!

Enough banning of Zionist voices with which we are uncomfortable!  Hear each other.  See each other.  Greet each other with respect.  Make space so that our children can find their own, unique liberal Zionist voices – without fear of being ostracized.

In recent days, complaints against the Netanyahu Government over the Kotel and over Conversion have made this book even more important.  The language of liberal, religious Zionism can give us the power to state our demands while not encouraging even more distancing or, worse, indifference.

The liberal Zionist dialogue is fragile, but we must preserve it.  Larry and I have worked with that imperative firmly in mind.

Read as if our future depends upon it.  Because it does.

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Rabbi Stanley M. Davids serves as rabbi emeritus of Temple Emanu-El in Atlanta, GA. He is also a Co-Editor of CCAR Press’s newest book, The Fragile Dialogue: New Voices of Liberal Zionism, now officially available for pre-order from CCAR Press.