Rabbi Danny Rich on the need to connect religious belief and personal behaviour
Tuesday, 18 May, 2010 - 22:20
A story is told of Rav Kook, the Chief Rabbi of Palestine during the British Mandate, who was touring the community and came to a kibbutz. He was greeted by the kibbutz Mazkir (Secretary), who proudly declared, ‘We may not be a religious kibbutz but we treat our Arab workers fairly, thereby fulfilling the Leviticus (19:18) injunction: ‘V’ahavta l’re’acha kamocha: You shall love your neighbour as yourself‘. Immediately Rav Kook responded, ‘Wonderful, but you have forgotten the second half of the verse – Ani Adonai Elohaychem: I am the Eternal One, Your God’!
On 19 May Jews celebrate Shavuot: Weeks. Shavuot is one of the three ‘pilgrimage’ Biblical festivals, all of which have their origins in the agricultural year and the harvest seasons. Shavuot marked the end of the barley harvest (commemorated 50 days before, at Pesach) and the beginning of the wheat harvest.
To each of the agricultural festivals rabbinic tradition added a layer of Jewish ‘history’, and, just as to the barley harvest of Pesach was added the recollection of the exodus from Egypt, so Shavuot came to be remembered as ‘zeman mattan toratenu’: the time of the giving of the Torah. The legend was further reinforced by the idea that the freed slaves needed a constitution to provide order amongst a mixed, wandering and frequently querulous people.
In addition to the reading of the Book of Ruth, the adorning of the synagogue with plants and flowers, the consumption of dairy foods and the custom of an all-night study, rabbinic tradition ordained that the Ten Commandments be recited during morning worship at Shavuot.
The Ten Commandments are by any standards an impressive basic constitution. They open with the statement ‘I am the Eternal One, your God’ and proceed with two requirements concerning The Eternal One including God’s uniqueness and the prohibition on invoking the Divine name for falsehood. The fourth commandment concerns Shabbat and calls for a weekly period of rest for every human being whether they be freeperson, servant or slave and regardless of national origin, and indeed domesticated animals. This is the ‘bridging’ commandment between the three previous commandments about God and the six which follow it.
In the two versions of the Ten Commandments different reasons are given for the institution of Shabbat – the Divine act of resting after the completion of Creation, and the human experience of slavery in Egypt.
The six Commandments which follow concern the behaviour of one human being to another. They prohibit murder, sexual crime, theft, perjury and coveting, and demand that we honour our parents.
The Ten Commandments are not in themselves a full charter of human rights but they represent, in some of the most ancient of Jewish literature, an attempt to regulate human behaviour, an effort to preserve the dignity of every human being, and an expression of the connection between religious belief and personal behaviour.
One of the saddest aspects of some examples of human conduct is the ability to somehow divorce religious belief from decent behaviour. Despite the texts of most religious traditions, which talk of the sanctity of human life and promote the value of peace, the world experiences too many examples of extremism in the name of faith.
Few faiths are exempt, and it will require a unity of purpose and a sense of humility by moderate advocates of all religions to condemn American Christians who attack doctors outside abortion clinics, to repudiate Iraqi Muslims who place bombs in the mosques of different sects, and to denounce Indian Hindus who set upon their neighbours.
The Jewish community is not exempt from its own advocates of extremism and intolerance. There is much to be admired about the instruments of democracy in the State of Israel including its courageous Supreme Court, the robustness of its free press, and its experience of working coalition governments.
Yet it was in the same Israel that the elected Prime Minister, Yitzchak Rabin, was murdered by a practicing religious Jew. And it is also in the same Israel that the vocabulary of public debate (in particular the recent attack on former Knesset Deputy Speaker, Professor Naomi Chazan of the New Israel Fund and particularly about the concept of human rights and the organisations which seek to promote them) has reached such a pitch that the dangers are more than obvious.
Whilst the language itself may not be murderous, nevertheless it should be of extreme concern that there are Jews in the State of Israel who seem determined to express themselves in the name of Judaism in ways that strike at the very heart of the sentiments of the Declaration of the Independence of the State of Israel, which calls for ‘foster(ing) the development of the country for the benefits of all its inhabitants’, and undermine the values of Judaism, which teach that every human being is created in the image of God.
In truth neither extreme secularism which elevates the human being but rejects God, nor extreme religion which celebrates God with fervour but ignores the value of each human individual can contribute to the betterment of society, and, as Jews celebrate Shavuot and read the Ten Commandments, it might be an opportune moment to reconnect passion for the Divine with a love for each and every human being.
Danny Rich is the Chief Executive of Liberal Judaism, a magistrate, and a hospital and prison chaplain. He read Politics & Modern History at Manchester, Criminology at Leicester, and recently completed a certificate in Jewish/Muslim Studies at Cambridge. He is a Patron of JNews.
This article may be reproduced on condition that JNews is cited as its source
Rabbi Danny Rich on the need to connect religious belief and personal behaviour
On 19 May Jews celebrate Shavuot: Weeks. Shavuot is one of the three ‘pilgrimage’ Biblical festivals, all of which have their origins in the agricultural year and the harvest seasons. Shavuot marked the end of the barley harvest (commemorated 50 days before, at Pesach) and the beginning of the wheat harvest.
To each of the agricultural festivals rabbinic tradition added a layer of Jewish ‘history’, and, just as to the barley harvest of Pesach was added the recollection of the exodus from Egypt, so Shavuot came to be remembered as ‘zeman mattan toratenu’: the time of the giving of the Torah. The legend was further reinforced by the idea that the freed slaves needed a constitution to provide order amongst a mixed, wandering and frequently querulous people.
In addition to the reading of the Book of Ruth, the adorning of the synagogue with plants and flowers, the consumption of dairy foods and the custom of an all-night study, rabbinic tradition ordained that the Ten Commandments be recited during morning worship at Shavuot.
The Ten Commandments are by any standards an impressive basic constitution. They open with the statement ‘I am the Eternal One, your God’ and proceed with two requirements concerning The Eternal One including God’s uniqueness and the prohibition on invoking the Divine name for falsehood. The fourth commandment concerns Shabbat and calls for a weekly period of rest for every human being whether they be freeperson, servant or slave and regardless of national origin, and indeed domesticated animals. This is the ‘bridging’ commandment between the three previous commandments about God and the six which follow it.
In the two versions of the Ten Commandments different reasons are given for the institution of Shabbat – the Divine act of resting after the completion of Creation, and the human experience of slavery in Egypt.
The six Commandments which follow concern the behaviour of one human being to another. They prohibit murder, sexual crime, theft, perjury and coveting, and demand that we honour our parents.
The Ten Commandments are not in themselves a full charter of human rights but they represent, in some of the most ancient of Jewish literature, an attempt to regulate human behaviour, an effort to preserve the dignity of every human being, and an expression of the connection between religious belief and personal behaviour.
One of the saddest aspects of some examples of human conduct is the ability to somehow divorce religious belief from decent behaviour. Despite the texts of most religious traditions, which talk of the sanctity of human life and promote the value of peace, the world experiences too many examples of extremism in the name of faith.
Few faiths are exempt, and it will require a unity of purpose and a sense of humility by moderate advocates of all religions to condemn American Christians who attack doctors outside abortion clinics, to repudiate Iraqi Muslims who place bombs in the mosques of different sects, and to denounce Indian Hindus who set upon their neighbours.
The Jewish community is not exempt from its own advocates of extremism and intolerance. There is much to be admired about the instruments of democracy in the State of Israel including its courageous Supreme Court, the robustness of its free press, and its experience of working coalition governments.
Yet it was in the same Israel that the elected Prime Minister, Yitzchak Rabin, was murdered by a practicing religious Jew. And it is also in the same Israel that the vocabulary of public debate (in particular the recent attack on former Knesset Deputy Speaker, Professor Naomi Chazan of the New Israel Fund and particularly about the concept of human rights and the organisations which seek to promote them) has reached such a pitch that the dangers are more than obvious.
Whilst the language itself may not be murderous, nevertheless it should be of extreme concern that there are Jews in the State of Israel who seem determined to express themselves in the name of Judaism in ways that strike at the very heart of the sentiments of the Declaration of the Independence of the State of Israel, which calls for ‘foster(ing) the development of the country for the benefits of all its inhabitants’, and undermine the values of Judaism, which teach that every human being is created in the image of God.
In truth neither extreme secularism which elevates the human being but rejects God, nor extreme religion which celebrates God with fervour but ignores the value of each human individual can contribute to the betterment of society, and, as Jews celebrate Shavuot and read the Ten Commandments, it might be an opportune moment to reconnect passion for the Divine with a love for each and every human being.
Danny Rich is the Chief Executive of Liberal Judaism, a magistrate, and a hospital and prison chaplain. He read Politics & Modern History at Manchester, Criminology at Leicester, and recently completed a certificate in Jewish/Muslim Studies at Cambridge. He is a Patron of JNews.
This article may be reproduced on condition that JNews is cited as its source