And yet further: Ellis had the courage to take these ideas to the place that few in the Jewish world were willing to go.  If we truly believe in the God of liberation, if our sacred tradition truly demands of us that we stand with the oppressed, then the Jewish people cannot only focus on our own oppression – we must also come to grips with our own penchant for oppression, particularly when it comes to the actions of the state of Israel. And yes, if we truly believe in the God of liberation this also means that we must ultimately be prepared to stand with the Palestinians in their struggle for liberation.

When I first read Ellis’ words, I didn’t know quite what to make of them. They flew so directly in the face of such post-Holocaust theologians as Elie Wiesel, Rabbi Irving Greenberg and Emil Fackenheim – all of whom viewed the state of Israel in quasi-redemptive terms. And they were certainly at odds with the views of those who tended the gates of the American Jewish community, for whom this sort of critique of Israel was strictly forbidden.

Over the years, however, I’ve found Ellis’ ideas to be increasingly prescient, relevant – and I daresay even liberating. As a rabbi, I’ve come to deeply appreciate his brave willingness to not only ask the hard questions, but to unflinchingly pose the answers as well. And it is not at all surprising to me that we are now witnessing a new generation of rabbis and young Jewish leaders starting down the road he has paved for us.

All this to say I am profoundly sorrowed to learn that Ellis is currently under threat of losing his job at Baylor University due to an investigation led by new university president Ken Starr.

By every appearance, Ellis has had a distinguished academic career, having taught at Maryknoll School of Theology, Harvard Center for the Study of World Religions and Florida State University.   Thirteen years ago, he was appointed Professor of American and Jewish Studies at Baylor, where he founded Baylor University’s Center for American and Jewish Studies and currently serves as its director.

There is ample reason to mistrust the academic validity of this investigation.  According to a new petition now being circulated by Cornel West and Rosemary Ruether:

Marc Ellis was brought to Baylor in 1998 and all previous presidents supported his dissident voice. After Ken Starr (nemesis of Clinton in the White House) became president in 2010 the attacks started. During the last year Baylor lawyers were instructed to communicate with many of Marc’s colleagues, past students and staff. The objective was to request all of them to report all “abuse of authority.” Most of us explained to the lawyers that was a lost cause because Marc has been an exemplar colleague, professor and mentor.

But starting this Fall he was separated from his classes, his center closed and a hearing scheduled to take place some time in this academic year. As far as we know the accusations are about abuse of authority but we are not aware of the details because they are part of the internal legal process. Obviously it is about something else: Marc’s dissident voice. We will inform all of you as soon as we know more information.

In a statement released yesterday, Ellis commented thus:

Given what I currently understand of the rules of the Baylor process I will, for now, honor the process by not discussing the specifics, except to say that I believe this is a pretext to silence an independent voice at the place for which I have had deep appreciation.

I write now to ask you to please join me in signing this petition in support of Ellis – an important Jewish dissident thinker and (as his many academic colleagues are now attesting) a truly distinguished scholar. I would add: even if you don’t personally agree with all of his ideas, I urge you to support his cause. It is high time for us to stand down those who would trample academic freedom, shun open discourse and debate, and muzzle those with whom they simply disagree.

I’ll end with Professor Ellis’ own words, all too sadly apt under the circumstances:

Prophetic Jewish theology, or a Jewish theology of liberation, seeks to bring to light the hidden and sometimes censored movements of Jewish life. It seeks to express the dissent of those afraid or unable to speak. Ultimately, a Jewish theology of liberation seeks, in concert with others, to weave disparate hopes and aspirations into the very heart of Jewish life.

(“Toward a Jewish Theology of Liberation,” p. 206)

The most memorable aspect of my Pesach this year? A combination Passover – Good Friday service JRC held together with the wonderful folks at Lake Street Church of Evanston.

The whole thing was hatched somewhat by chance. A month or so ago I was having lunch with my good friend Reverend Bob Thompson of Lake St. Church (appropriately enough at Evanston’s Blind Faith Cafe) and our conversation turned to our respective upcoming rites of spring. Bob mentioned to my surprise that he hadn’t celebrated Good Friday at Lake St. in quite some time – mainly because he simply couldn’t abide by blood atonement theology – the notion that God would somehow require the bloodshed of one man to atone for all of the sins of the rest of the world.

For my part, I mentioned that Good Friday had not generally been so “good” to the Jews throughout history, since this was invariably the time in which the worst pogroms were perpetrated against European Jewish communities. As a result, for much of Jewish history Passover was a secret ritual: observed in fear and in private. Given our complicated mutual history, we both agreed that it would be enormously powerful to celebrate Passover and Good Friday together in a spirit of healing and hope.

So that is exactly what we did this last Friday. While Bob and I weren’t at all sure if this service would fly, it actually suceeded beyond our highest expectations. Hundreds of JRC and Lake St. members filled the sanctuary at Lake St. church. Together we celebrated with a service that mixed Hebrew and English, Jewish songs, Christian hymns and prayers for healing. We ended with a rousing “Down By The Riverside.” Afterwards, countless participants – both Jewish and Christian – told us that the service was an immensely moving and healing experience for them.

During the service, Bob and I had a conversation in which we both mused about what our respective holidays might look like if we recast them in the spirit of healing and hope. Bob began by saying the first thing Christians needed to do when celebrating Good Friday was to apologize to the Jewish community for the legacy of Christian anti-Semitism. He then went on to explore how Christians might recast the meaning of the crucifixion itself. Here’s what he had to say:

Every Good Friday well meaning folk gather to listen to priests and ministers talk about how Jesus was crucified, the “lamb of God,” to take away the sins of the world. In other words, Jesus died a sacrificial death to satisfy the God who demands retribution – the God who requires the shedding of blood for the forgiveness of sins.

Thankfully these days there’s an emergent form of Christianity – one that does not buy this “blood atonement theory” – and it is a theory. Today, more and more Christians are saying they do not believe that God requires the shedding of blood… The point is, violence is not a solution – it’s always a problem. We have to get to see that violence never purifies – it always defiles. In every form it is defiling.

That’s why if Jesus was standing here today, I believe he’d say, “don’t call me the lamb of God who takes away the sins of the world.” He might say rather something more like “I am a window to divinity and a mirror of humanity. What I came to do is to show you what it means to be open to the Divine and to reflect the best of who we are as human beings. And everybody can reflect this and be this window if only we have the spiritual vision to see clearly enough.”

In other words, Jesus, I believe, would not say that he suffered to keep us from suffering – he suffered because to be human is to suffer. Jesus hangs there because life is always hanging in the balance for all of us all of the time.

I was so taken by his willingness to take on the violence inherent in the crucifixion image – and I responded in kind with my remarks:

There’s no getting around it: to observe the Seder, you need to tell a story of oppression and violence. And you cannot get to what is for Christians resurrection and what is for Jews the Exodus from Egypt without going through that moment of violence…

I will also say I share with you, Bob, completely, that I do not view violence in any way as redemptive. I reject that categorically. I think we all have to. But we still have to struggle with the way violence affects us and what it does to us and what it does to our souls. We can’t ignore it. Even if we disavow it, we can’t ignore it.

As a Jew… I fear the violence that is embodied by the Seder and that has been waged against the Jewish people for centuries will turn us into a bitter people. That it will only cause us to have a sense of entitlement which means we use our pain as a weapon against the outside world because nothing we do to anyone else can be nearly as horrible as what’s been done to us. Or it will cause us to build bigger walls between us and the rest of the world and to instill a Jewish identity that basically says nothing more than “all the world really wants us dead, and that’s what it means to be a Jew. And we have to be forever vigilant because we live in a world that hates Jews.”

And while I’m not unmindful of this history and I do think we need to retell this history because those who do not study history are condemned to repeat it…I also think we need to look seriously at what this legacy of violence and oppression does to us and what we do with it.

And for me that means bearing witness to oppression in the world. If there is any sliver of redemption in violence, it means that it can open the door to empathy – and I would suggest that this idea comes from a very deep place in Biblical tradition – in the Torah.

The commandment commanded more times than any other in the Torah is some version of “Do not oppress the stranger because you were once strangers in the land of Egypt.” To me what that says is “you don’t take your pain and use it as a weapon against the outside world. You take your pain and use it as a tool for empathy with the outside world – and to bear witness against oppression no matter where it is fomented, whether it is in our community or it’s in any community.

We cannot hold on to our pain as uniquely ours, and I want to come back to something you said earlier, Bob: “We’re all in this together. It’s not some of us – it’s all of us. And violence against one people is violence against all.”

You can read some of Bob’s thoughts about our service on a piece he’s just written for Examiner.com You can also click below to hear an audio of the entire service. (The service itself begins at the 10:00 point).

By now more than one person has asked me desperately: Rabbi, please tell me: what is the meaning of “The Goy’s Teeth?!!”

I know better than to even begin try and explain it. Even Joel Coen himself has described it as “an elaborate shaggy dog story.”

And given that “A Serious Man” is a retelling of the Book of Job, isn’t that sort of the point? Job is, if nothing else, a Biblical shaggy dog story of epic proportions. (In the words of Rabbi Nachner, “You can’t know everything…”)

Thanks to my friend Rabbi Nancy Fuchs-Kreimer for tipping me to this great clip: a homemade promo made by the 14 and 12 year old daughters of Samir Selmanovic, author of “It’s Really All About God: Reflections of a Muslim Atheist Jewish Christian.”

No matter what his kids say, I’m thinking I gotta get this book…

This particular Jewish claim is bandied about so much that I imagine it would some as a surprise to many that it is, in fact, a misrepresentation of the Torah and its teachings.

I would go farther and say this: this view is actually a betrayal of Jewish tradition – and has only become widely popular since the rise of political Zionism.

Let’s take a closer look at the texts in question:

Jewish fundamentalists and ultra-nationalists are fond of pointing out that God promised the land of Israel to Abraham in the book of Genesis:

On that day, the Lord made a covenant with Abram, saying, “To your offspring I assign this land, from the river of Egypt to the great river, the river Euphrates…” (Genesis 15:18)

Biblical scholars and commentators note that the covenant God makes with Abram (soon to be renamed Abraham) appears as a promisory covenant. In this early point in the narrative, the land indeed seems to be assigned to the people Israel with “no strings attached.”

Later in Exodus, however, once Israel has left Egypt and has become a nation at Sinai, God clarifies the terms of this covenant. It is spelled out in decidedly conditional language: if Israel follows God’s commandments, then they will indeed be able to live on the land that has been assigned to them by God. In other words, Israel now learns that their future on the land will be radically dependent on how they behave on the land.

As I see it, this is the fatal mistake made by those who claim that the land must ipso facto “belong” to the Jewish people. They focus exclusively on the Abrahamic promise, but neglect the critical next step: God’s conditional covenant with the Israelite nation.

In so doing, they pervert the Torah’s meaning – and do great damage to the central Jewish understanding of our relationship to the land. The land is not given to us unconditionally – we will only be able to live on the land if we prove ourselves worthy of it.

Interestingly, the Torah actually points out that previous inhabitants of the land had failed in this regard. Following a long litany of laws in Leviticus, we read:

Do not defile yourselves in any of those ways, for it is by such that the nations that I am casting out before you defiled themselves. Thus the land became defiled; and I called it to account for its iniquity and the land vomited out its inhabitants. (Leviticus 18:24-25)

In similarly colorful language, Israel is told that they might well meet the same fate if they do not keep God’s laws when they live on the land:

So let not the land vomit you out for defiling it, as it spewed out the nation that came before you. (18:28)

In another important verse from Leviticus, God makes it clear to whom the land ultimately belongs. In the discussion of the Jubilee year (in which landholdings revert back to their original owners) we read:

…the land must not be sold beyond reclaim, for the land is Mine; you are but strangers resident with Me. (Leviticus 25:23)

Notably, the Hebrew word for “stranger,” (“ger”) literally means “resident alien.” This word appears over and over throughout the Torah – particularly in admonitions to Israel not to mistreat the stranger, “for you were once strangers in the land of Egypt.” It is sobering indeed to learn that even after the Israelites enter Israel, they will still be, in effect, resident aliens on the land.

In the end, although many Jewish fundamentalists often treat the Torah as the Jews “deed of sale” to the land of Israel, it might be more accurate to describe it as a “lease” with very explicit conditions. In Deuteronomy, this conditional language reaches its apex. As the Israelites prepare to enter the land of Israel, Moses reminds them that they could be exiled from the land in an instant if they do not remain faithful to God’s covenant:

If you fail to observe faithfully all the terms of this Teaching…the Lord will scatter you among all the people from one end of the earth to the other, and there you shall serve other gods, wood and stone, whom neither you nor your ancestors have experienced. Yet even among those nations you shall find no peace, nor shall your foot find a place to rest… (Deuteronomy 28:58-65)

For the prophets and later the rabbis, the conditional covenant was central in understanding Israel’s collective tragedy: “mipnei chataeinu” – “because of our sins” we were exiled from the land. This in fact remained the normative Jewish understanding of our centuries-long sojourn in the diaspora until the advent of Zionism and the establishment of the state of Israel.

Though today we live in a radically different context than Ancient Israel, this question remains powerfully relevant: now that we have returned again to this land, how will we prove ourselves worthy of it?

Whatever our answer, this much seems clear: we will not be worthy of the land if we betray our own religious teachings and cling to misguided, exclusivist claims. The Torah teaches us still: if we insist that the land “belongs” to us and us alone, we will only endanger our collective future upon it.

OK, I’ll weigh in: I really, really like the new R. Crumb new version of Genesis.

When it was announced that the legendary underground comic book artist was going to take a crack at the Book of Genesis,  I’m sure that many expected it to be an exercise in post-modern Biblical irony. They needn’t have worried. Crumb has reimagined Genesis like nothing I’ve read/seen in a long, long time.

Some might quibble with his rendering of certain episodes (and I do), but I don’t think anyone can reasonably call this a novelty version. Crumb has definitely done his homework – and while he admits in his introduction that he does not regard the Bible as the word of God, he clearly has a healthy respect for its mythic power:

(The Bible) is a powerful text with layers of meaning that reach deep into our collective unconsciousness, our historical consciousness, if you will. It seems indeed to be an inspired work, but I believe that its power derives from its having been a collective endeavor that evolved and condensed over many generations before reaching the final fixed form as we know it during the “Babylonian Exile,” circa 600 BCE…

If my visual, literal interpretation of the Book if Genesis offends or outrages some readers, which seems inevitable considering that the text is revered by many people, all I can say in my defense is that I approached this as a straight illustration job, with no intention to ridicule or make visual jokes. That said, I know that you can’t please everybody.

Though it seems like an unlikely project for him, Crumb’s earthy, hyper-realistic style actually serves the Biblical narrative quite well. Many will undoubtedly regard his graphic representation to be reductionist or even idolatrous (the most obvious example being God rendered as a stern, old bearded man). I personally experienced his effort as “visual midrash” that has intellectual and emotional impact in virtually every panel.

There have been a number of worthwhile reviews of the Crumb Genesis. If you are interested in reading up on the critical reaction, I highly recommend Biblical scholar Robert Alter’s recent piece in The New Republic.

If the Torah teaches us that human beings are made in the image of God, which image of God will we proclaim? The God of fear or the God of forgiveness? The God of hatred or the God of compassion? The God of xenophobia or the God of justice? And if our answer is indeed the latter, then we must affirm it. We must bear witness to this image of God in no uncertain terms. History teaches all too well what the God of hatred can do in our world. Those of us who reject this theology must be ready to do so without hesitation – to actively promote the God of compassion.

Click below to read the entire sermon:

Those who come to Torah study will know this phenomenon well: we’re reading our weekly portion, I’ll share a rabbinic insight or two, things will be going along quite nicely…

… and then we’ll read a passage where God behaves really, really badly.

It occurs almost on a weekly basis. Out of nowhere God will act like an abusive parent or a jealous crusher of other gods, or as angrily punishing authority figure. And inevitably, our discussion flies off in a very familiar direction: this is my most sacred of texts? This is the God Jews are being asked to worship? This is the God I’m supposed to teach to my children?

It’s often even more confusing because there are also times in the Torah where God appears as the epitome of tolerance and compassion: the God that liberates the enslaved, who cares for the sick, who shows kindness and loyalty throughout the generations. This God usually prompts far less discussion – except perhaps for the comment that we wish God could always appear this way in the Torah.

To make matters even more confusing, sometimes these two Gods will appear back to back within the very same Torah portion. In Parashat Ki Tisa, for instance, we read the infamous incident of the Golden Calf.  In response to this act of disloyalty, God becomes infuriated and threatens to wipe all of the Israelites. Though Moses eventually gets God to back down, God later sends a plague upon the people as punishment.

A little later on, however, God is appears to have reformed completely. When God passes by Moses on the top of Mt. Sinai, God’s essential divine attributes are described: “compassionate and slow to anger, abounding in kindness and faithfulness, extending kindness to the thousandth generation, forgiving iniquity, transgression and sin.”

So which God is the real God? The punishing authority figure or the unconditionally loving parent? The angry warrior who demands that we crush the inhabitants of Canaan or the compassionate exemplar who commands us to love our neighbor as ourselves?

As I grapple with this question, myself, I’ve come to accept that whether we like it or not, both of these “Gods” represent aspects of our tradition. As much as we’d like to, we can’t wish away or surgically excise the nasty God from our sacred texts. On the contrary: if we really intend to be serious about Jewish spiritual life, I believe we need to be prepared to confront the more disturbing theologies in our tradition.

For me that means asking this question openly and unflinchingly: if the Torah teaches us that human beings are made in the image of God, which image of God will we proclaim? The God of fear or the God of forgiveness? The God of hatred or the God compassion? The God of xenophobia or the God of justice? And if our answer is indeed the latter, then we must affirm it. We must bear witness to this image of God in no uncertain terms. History teaches all too well what the God of hatred can do in our world. Those of us who reject this theology must be ready to do so without hesitation – to actively promote the God of compassion.

Of course, this is not only a Jewish problem – it’s a challenge to all people of faith. I’m often struck that Judaism is routinely stereotyped as the religion of the “intolerant Old Testament God” and Christianity as the religion of the “merciful New Testament God.” If truth be told, Christianity has been as responsible as any other faith for bringing religious intolerance into the world. No, this is not the problem of any one religion. It’s a universal challenge. At the end of the day, religion is only as redemptive or destructive as the human beings who practice it.

Last year I taught an Adult Ed series at JRC called “God Talk” – and the central premise of the class was that Jewish tradition does not have a central theological dogma.  Jewish theology has always evolved as Jewish history has evolved. The God concepts of the Bible, for instance, differ that the Rabbinic theologies of the Talmud, which in turn differs from the God of the medieval philosopher Maimonides or the Lurianic kabbalists, or modernist theologians, etc.

Any one of these theologies is important and edifying as far it goes, but in the end, I believe the continuum they represent is much more important.  We can learn a great deal by studying the tensions between these views of God, because I think ultimately these contradictory concepts reflect our own struggles to live up to our highest selves. I guess all this is my fancy way of saying that in the end, I’m not so interested in having a theologian tell me what God is. Like Jacob, I believe that God is meant to be personally wrestled with – not studied in a theology book.

In this regard, I want to share with you a taste of what I consider to be among the most exciting theological work being done today. Interestingly enough, it’s not being created by philosophers or theologians, but actually by scientists and neurologists. Over the past decade or so, physicians have been investigating the ways in which spirituality is rooted in the biology of the brain. By combining the fields of neuroscience and religious studies, they’re helping us to actually understand how the neurological makeup of our brains influences the ways we experience God.

I’ve been particularly fascinated by the research of radiologist Dr. Andrew Newberg, who is the founder of the Center for Spirituality and the Mind at the University of Pennsylvania. I first discovered his work several years ago when I read the book, “Why God Won’t Go Away: Brain Science and the Biology of Belief.”  This is Dr. Newberg’s basic premise:

Every event that happens to us or any actions that we take can be associated with activity in one or more specific regions of the brain. This includes, necessarily, all religious and spiritual experiences. The evidence further compels us to believe that if God does indeed exist, the only place he can manifest his existence would be in the tangled neural pathways and physiological structures of the brain.

Of course philosophers have held for centuries that our perception of reality is just that: our “perception.” There is no such thing as a “direct,” “objective” experience of reality.  In the field of religious studies, social scientists have been helping us understand the ways we construct our religious realities; today, physical scientists are increasingly weighing in on the God question as well.  As they are finding, the more we learn about how our brains perceive reality, the more we learn about how and why God is revealed to us.

For me, the most amazing findings of this research demonstrate the way God has evolved neurologically over the centuries. In his newest book, “How God Changes Your Brain,” Newberg makes the claim that different experiences of God actually correlate to the development of the human brain. Neurologically speaking, researchers have located the angry, authoritarian God in the limbic system, which houses the oldest and most primitive structures of the brain. This includes the amygdala – the little almond-shaped organ that generates our “fight or flight” response. The benevolent, compassionate God, on the other hand, can be found in our frontal lobes, and particularly in a structure known as the anterior cingulate. These are the parts of the brain most primarily associated with our experience of compassion and empathy. Compared to the ancient limbic system, these structures are the most recently evolved parts of our brain and they appear to be unique to human beings.

This is how Newberg puts it:

Something happened in the brains of our ancestors that gave us the power to tame this authoritarian God. No one knows exactly when or how it happened, but the neural structures that evolved enhanced our ability to cooperate with others. They gave us the ability to construct language and to consciously think in logical and reasonable ways…Without these new neural connections, humans would be limited in their ability to develop an inner moral code or a societal system of ethics.

And so the $64,000 question: does this research teach us how we can keep the more destructive God at bay?  Can we actually train our brains to favor the God of compassion?  Newberg answers this question by quoting a classic Cherokee folktale:

Once upon a time a young Indian boy received a beautiful drum as a gift. When his best friend saw it, he asked if he could play with it, but the boy felt torn. He didn’t want to share his new present, so he angrily told his friend, “No!” His friend ran away, and the boy sat down on a rock by a stream to contemplate his dilemma. He hated the fact that he had hurt his friend’s feelings, but the drum was too precious to share. In his quandary, he went to his grandfather for advice.

The elder listened quietly and then replied. “I often feel as though there are two wolves fighting inside me. One is means and greedy and full of arrogance and pride, but the other is peaceful and generous. All the time they are struggling, and you, my boy, have those same two wolves inside of you.”

“Which one will win” asked the boy.

The elder smiled and said, “The one you feed.”

Newberg suggests that much like the two wolves, there are two Gods competing with one another deep within our brains: the authoritarian, punishing God vs. the compassionate forgiving God. Which one will win? It all depends upon which one we feed.  Indeed, neurological research demonstrates that whenever we let our anger or fear overpower us, we tend to shut down the brain activity in our frontal lobes. When this happens, our “fight or flight” response is generated and it spreads rapidly throughout our brains.

We’ve long known that excessive anger or fear can cause problems like high blood pressure and cardiovascular disease. Studies also show that extreme anger can permanently disrupt structures in both our brains that control basic functions like memory storage and cognitive accuracy. In other words, when we indulge our anger, we feed the more ancient, authoritarian God.

When I read this research, I’m reminded of the central divine attributes in Torah known as “erech apayim” – being “slow to anger.” It also brings to my mind the famous dynamic between the Yetzer Hara (“the bad inclination”) and the Yetzer Hatov (“the good inclination.”) The rabbis made sure to point out that the Yetzer Harah was an essential aspect of our humanity. Whether we like it or not, these impulses are a part of us – much like our limbic system is an essential and necessary part of our brain. The point is not to deny or repress our Yetzer Hara, but to channel and master it. As the verse from Pirke Avot teaches: “Mi hu gibor? Mi’she kovesh et yitzro” – “Who is mighty? The one who masters one’s (bad) inclination.”

And how do we feed the God of compassion? At the risk of sounding too Pollyannaish, the answer is really quite simple: we need to consciously exercise our capacity for kindness. Believe it or not, science itself is proving that compassion and empathy can be neurologically contagious. Studies demonstrate conclusively that there is increased activity in the compassion center of the brain whenever we perceive others as being sensitive to our needs. Scientists have also concluded through research that the more positive contact we have with members of other different religions, cultural, and ethnic groups, the less prejudice we tend to harbor in our brains.

Another very effective way to feed the God of compassion is through the practice of meditation and contemplation. Many of you know, I’m sure that back in the 1970’s Dr. Herbert Benson of Harvard presented his first findings on what he called “The Relaxation Response,” demonstrating the power of meditation to reduce stress and lower our “fight or flight” response. More recent studies have shown that the meditation can enhance the neural functioning of the brain enough to impact its capacity for empathy, openness to different points of view, and tolerance for those who are different.

I want to say that up until now, I’ve been referring somewhat flippantly to these two different Gods.  I don’t want anyone to think that I’m a theological dualist – that I’m reducing the world essentially a battle between a force of good and a force of evil. What I am suggesting is that what we call God is something we perceive on a continuum – we experience a more ancient, primitive God concept at one end, and a more evolved, exalted form at the other. I would suggest that God isn’t really identified with either one of these poles, but rather in the forward momentum that moves us from one end of the continuum to the other.

And the way we attain this forward motion – the key to living a sacred way of life – is the same as it ever was: by mastering our baser impulses and nurturing our most exalted selves. By refusing to indulge our fear and anger and opting instead to feed our capacity for kindness and compassion. By being actively involved in the care and feeding of God’s growth in ourselves and in our world.  This is how we ultimately make God manifest in the world.

I can’t help but think that this is yet another way might understand the Torah’s concept of Tzelem Elohim – the Divine Image. Perhaps our innate neurological capacity to grow in compassion, to empathize with others, to exercise kindness, to promote fairness and justice for people we might not even know personally – maybe this is all just science’s way of saying that we’re all made in God’s image.

It seems somehow appropriate to be having this discussion on Yom Kippur: the day in which we pray openly and unabashedly for God’s compassion in the coming year.  Perhaps on a very real level, this could mean that we are praying for the strength to grow the capacity for goodness in ourselves. To find the wherewithal to feed our capacity for kindness, to make the time to calm our minds and souls so that we might become vessels for compassion in our own lives. Because then, and only then will our prayers have a chance of coming true.

On this Yom Kippur, may we all find a measure of kindness in our lives. May it make all the difference for us, for those around us, and for our world.

Amen.

Rabbi Akiva says: “‘Love your fellow as yourself’” (Leviticus 19:18), is the greatest principle of the Torah.

Ben Azzai says, “‘When God created man, He made him in the likeness of God’ (Genesis 5:1) is the greatest principle in the Torah. You should not say: Because I have been dishonored, let my fellow be dishonored along with me…”

Rabbi Tanhuma explained: “If you do so, know whom you are dishonoring – ‘He made him in the likeness of God.’” (Genesis Rabbah 24)

In this classic Midrash, Rabbis Akiba and Ben Azzai are doing what Talmudic rabbis do best: playing a lively game of spiritual oneupsmanship. In this case, they are debating the central value of Torah: according to Akiba it is the famous verse from Leviticus, “Love your neighbor as yourself.” Ben Azzai counters with the insight from this week’s Torah portion: humanity was created in God’s image.

Rabbi Tanhuma’s final statement reinforces the weakness of Akiba’s claim: though it is certainly praiseworthy to love your fellow as yourself, this might imply that you only need to treat your fellow as well (or as badly) as you yourself are treated. Ben Azzai points out that if we truly understand that all people are made in the image of God, we must accept that any time we shame, insult or abuse another, we do the same to God.

I am particularly struck that Akiba’s statement expresses an essentially humanist point of view, while Ben Azzai’s is an inherently theological assertion. In a sense, Ben Azzai raises the moral stakes of the equation. As the saying (often misattributed to Dostoevsky) goes: “where there is no God, all is permitted.” This drives home the radical imperative in Genesis: if all people are made in the divine image, all people are of infinite worth; all people are deserving of dignity, respect and fair treatment.

The Torah thus begins with this foundational principle, which has both interpersonal/ethical as well as global/moral implications. As we start Torah anew yet again, we return to its central question: how can we find the wherewithal to treat everyone we meet as a fellow child of God? How can we, as Americans, as Jews, as global citizens find dignity and respect for all who dwell on earth?

Postscript: One powerful way you can honor Torah’s central principle: consider attending the Second North American Conference on Judaism and Human Rights on December 7-9 in Washington DC.

If you are interested in a decidedly different Jewish God concept, check out this wonderful article in the current issue of Parabola Magazine by one of my favorite rabbis, David Cooper. Rabbi Cooper is one of the world’s greatest teachers of Jewish contemplative practice and is particularly adept at teaching Jewish mysticism to laypeople in an eminently accessible but non-trivializing way.

Here’s what he has to say about the traditional Biblical belief system:

Belief in the biblical God has benefited many people with great comfort, good deeds, charity, loving-kindness, ethics, compassion, devotion, and so forth. It has also led to inquisitions, wars, intolerance, hypocrisy, triumphalism, witch hunts, terrorism, and holocausts. We must be circumspect when engaging any belief systems, especially concerning thoughts that are rooted in fear, greed, self-aggrandizement, and any other identities that tend to lock us in a sense of separation and isolation.

In the article, he offers the Jewish mystical concept of the Ein Sof (“Infinite” or “Boundless”) as an alternative to the problems of the traditional Jewish dualistic God concept. If this sounds like your cup of tea (or even if it doesn’t) you should read Rabbi Cooper’s article.

Speaking, personally, Kabbalistic theology – and in particular the conception of Ein Sof – gave me my first meaningful entry into Jewish belief and spirituality. Rabbi Cooper’s article offers a great introduction this powerful stream of Jewish thought that is fast becoming a hallmark of the new Jewish spirituality. (BTW: if you DO find this article to be your cup of tea, I recommend moving on to his book, “God is a Verb.”)