Knowing the Hebrew, continued

Well, apparently my question to the prof had a bigger impact than I had realized. He opened today's class with the statement, "Last session, we talked about the syllabus, and what we'll be doing in this class. But we didn't talk about the larger question: WHY are we reading this material in the first place?"

We then had a long conversation on halacha. It's often said that Reform Jews are non-halachic, that we believe in personal autonomy. But that's not quite true. We are not bound by the authority of halacha. But our lives as Jews are still based entirely upon it. It is relevant to us, because everything we do Jewishly revolves around the halachic writings. All the holidays, Jewish customs, and liturgy in Judaism are found in Talmud and post-Talmudic literature. As the prof put it, "The Bible is not a Jewish book until the rabbis got a hold of it. Before that it was simply an Ancient Near East cultic product. Other religions have it too, and they all interpret it differently. The rabbinic interpretation of it is what the Bible Jewish." We light Shabbat candles, have a chuppah at weddings, have a Seder plate at Passover, etc. We can't conceive of ourselves as Jews without halachic practices.

The opening words of the Columbus Platform in 1937, a statement put out by that era's Union of Reform Judaism, says that "Judaism is the historical religious experience of the Jewish people." The question at the heart of every Jew throughout history has been, how do we structure our lives so that we live them in accordance with God's will? We already know that the greatest energy of Jewish minds over the last 1500 years has been put into interpreting Biblical law, to creating this daily and communal life structure. We consider ourselves today to be the heirs to a Jewish historical experience, to be the latest link in a chain of tradition. But if we ignore halacha, we are denying that experience. We are creating a new experience for ourselves. It may be valid, but it's not historical.

Why do we study it in the Hebrew, specifically? For the same reasons that we want our physician to be aware of WebMD, but not base their entire knowledge of medicine upon it. The seminary balances the sheer amount of knowledge we can possibly learn in five years, with the want to be familiar with the source of that knowledge. Most people in our congregations won't know all the sources. But we need to, because we, as rabbis, are their conduit to Jewish culture and knowledge. It's not enough to simply know the rules of kashrut, for example. We need to know where they come from, and be able to read the original laws, because we, as rabbis (and as Jews) gain our authority from text. What does it say about us if our knowledge of text is second- or third-hand, gained only from a compendium? We would lose self-respect, as well as the respect of our congregants.

I have to say, I find all this fascinating. It also strikes a cord in terms of better understanding interfaith relations, because it contrasts so strongly with what I've been learning while doing my side research job. Although Christianity's structure depends quite a bit on the works of the early church fathers, much of Protestantism, at least, is Bible-based alone. A catchphrase of Martin Luther was "sola fide," through "faith alone" can people be saved. Well, to Lutherans, that faith is accessible through the Bible alone. I never realized before what a major difference that was between religions. This concept is foreign to Jews. We don't, and CAN'T, have the Bible without the commentary. (Who's ever seen a Tanach in a pew that was the text by itself, not in a Plaut commentary? Who's ever read Talmud without Rashi?) The rabbinic texts, not the Biblical texts, are what make us Jewish. So in order to be a rabbi, I need to know what the rabbis said. And in order to do that, I have to know the Hebrew, and be educated in a wide swath of material that spans the centuries.