Orthodox

Why Study Talmud in the Twenty-first Century?: The Relevance of the Ancient Jewish Text to Our World

mandy — Mon, 24 Jan 2011 20:00:00 +0000

Lending a somewhat contrarian voice to this collection of essays extolling the virtues of Talmud study, the rabbi Dr. Pinchas Hayman takes umbrage at the question Paul Socken poses in the book’s title: “Why should the indescribable depth, beauty, and challenge of authentic Jewish literature require apologetic essays?” He concludes with his own “more relevant” and “far more difficult” question: “Who needs the twenty-first century if one learns Talmud?”

For Hayman, and several of the contributors to Why Study Talmud in the Twenty-first Century?, the life-long process of learning Talmud provides a safe haven against the threats and anxieties of contemporary life. Talmud study is, as Shaye J.D. Cohen puts it, “what a (male) Jew does.” For Cohen and others, the Talmud is a “feast for the mind,” a “brain teaser” that not only affords intellectual sustenance but also, in the process, constructs one’s Jewish identity. Another contributor, Michael Chernick, echoes Hayman in lamenting a “world focused on ‘now,’” one in which many Jewish people have found Talmud study “old-fashioned” and no longer relevant.

The first (and I believe most compelling) section of the book, though, is written by women who have taught and studied Talmud. As Chernick acknowledges, “patriarchal societies do not tend to preserve women’s thoughts and concerns more than they must,” and he acknowledges that while the view of Talmud as uniformly misogynistic is misguided, much of Talmudic law is problematic for women, to say the least. How do women devote themselves to the study of texts whose rules for women would seem to reverse what many who do live in the twenty-first century would deem desperately needed progress in the areas of women’s rights?

In responding to this question, Devorah Zlochower admits that Talmud study is “a mixed blessing as I find myself engaged in an impossible dance between delight in the tradition and its foundational texts and discomfort with its limitations and exclusions. It is essential for me to understand the texts of our tradition but I cannot do this without wrestling with the tradition simultaneously.” Her description of this uneasy dialog with the past is exciting and unsettling, and it is clearly informed by her twenty-first century feminism. In reading texts on marriage and divorce, and their asymmetric treatment of women, she refuses to ignore the “woman who is chained to a dead marriage by a husband unwilling to grant her a divorce.”

The most universally accessible part of this paean to these foundational texts of Judaism is the joyful and life-affirming process of study, the hard-won, patience-testing, identity-altering commitment to studying the Talmud, page by page, often in study groups and with a partner. The process teaches a tolerance for ambiguity, exercises the intellectual faculties in a way that is transformative, and places participants in a tradition that is thousands of years old. Devora Steinmetz compares the practice of regular study to prayer in a way that all those who interpret texts should be able to appreciate: “But study is different from prayer—or at least from the ways in which most of us experience prayer—in that in study I must open myself to the voice of the other.”

The book is intended primarily for Jewish readers. As Jane Kanarek puts it, “the Talmud gives me a place to be a Jew,” and the collection is a reminder of the “daily Sinai” of Talmudic study, a discipline that leads to revelation and, often, challenge to authority and received opinion. In their polyvocality and contradictoriness, these texts teach the kind of subtlety of interpretation, appreciation for challenge, and an awareness of the “minds of the past” that forged Jewish law and tradition. For non-Jewish readers, the sense of awe and discovery the writers describe as they relate their own experiences with Talmud study, even with brief examples of the kind of exegesis involved, must be taken largely on faith.

The reward for taking up this practice, according to several of the contributors, is a kind of direct access to the divine. While this sort of intense grappling with ancient and very difficult texts is not for the faint of heart, the rewards these writers describe are appealing to all who have felt the allure of textual criticism. Chernick writes, “There is a contemporary sense (malady?) that if a text is very old it must be irrelevant.” An even worse tendency is to view old texts—whether ancient sacred writing, Shakespeare, or the U. S. Constitution, for example—as inviolable, immune to multiple interpretation, subject only to some imagined “literal” meaning. This disciplinary model described here is one that promises to invigorate the study of virtually any challenging text.

As is often the case with such collections, the essays do not speak to each other very successfully, and the order of presentation seems somewhat haphazard. The pieces reflect many of the conflicts that have arisen between Reform and Orthodox Judaism, as well as the broader intellectual divisions of our time. But the book succeeds in making its invitation, and this ancient but vibrant dialectical tradition will surely endure.

Written by: Rick Taylor, January 24th 2011

Eyes Wide Open

mandy — Sun, 16 Jan 2011 08:00:00 +0000

Directed by Haim Tabakman

First Run Features

Viewing Eyes Wide Open is like watching a wrecking ball swing towards a beloved old building from afar; you can see the destructive aftermath coming, but are powerless to stop it. It is a gorgeously filmed demolition, filled with exquisite tenderness and emotion, but a demolition nonetheless.

The story follows the love between two Orthodox Jews living in Jerusalem. Aaron (an amazing acting job by Zohar Strauss) is a butcher, content living a simple life divided between his wife, children, job, and religious study. When Ezri (played by Ran Danker), a young gay man, is in need of a job, Aaron takes him in and teaches him the butcher trade. Soon it is Ezri who is teaching Aaron—opening his eyes up to fun, the pleasures of sex, freedom, and real human connection. Aaron awakens to a life outside of religion, and fights to reconcile it with everything he has been taught. He struggles to deny his passion for Ezri, seeing it at first as a challenge from God, but soon is overtaken by his desires and finds himself having an affair. Eventually, Aaron’s wife and the rest of the community find out, and the two are ostracized and attacked.

When Aaron’s rabbi visits him and asks him why he does not tell Ezri to leave he responds, “I feel alive. I need him. I was dead, and now I am alive.” It is a quiet but powerful moment, representative of the best of the film. Eyes Wide Open is masterful at silences, using as few words as possible to get its message across. Although the characters say little, we quickly become attached to them and their story. This is due mainly to superb acting by Strauss and Danker, who are well cast and very convincing. The audience genuinely feels their temptation and pain, and is invested in the survival of their relationship.

The message that it is impossible for homosexual relationships to exist within strict religious communities is not a new one. What is unique to the film is that the townspeople are not just against homosexuality. They interfere in each others’ lives and with heterosexual couples as well. Anything deemed immoral is grounds for personal confrontation. Thus, the film is not just looking at how religion restricts homosexual love, but how it restricts everyone. Aaron’s wife suffers as much from his infidelity as he does and the torment he receives from his community for his actions seems a small price to pay for a break from his monotonous, bland old life.

Eyes Wide Open does not offer any easy solutions for integrating religion with personal sexual orientation. But it does indicate that greater acceptance for diversity within religion would benefit everyone. Maybe, the film seems to say, there is some way to stop that wrecking ball before it strikes. Maybe the destruction is not as inevitable as we assume.

Written by: Arielle Burgdorf, January 16th 2011

Holy Rollers

admin — Tue, 18 May 2010 05:43:00 +0000

Directed by Kevin Asch

First Independent Pictures

Holy Rollers is a story of sex, drugs, and Orthodox Judaism. In the late 1990s, a group of drug dealers used young Orthodox kids from Brooklyn as mules to carry ecstasy back from Amsterdam to New York City. On the surface, this fictionalized account of these real events seems so simple: the sinful preying on the innocent. The viewer is drawn in by the intrigue and deceit, yet is left thinking about religion and culture.

We are never told exactly which Orthodox community in Brooklyn Holy Rollers’ main character (and real life person) Sam Gold lives in, but I think that merely speaks to the fact that it could have been any of them. (Post-viewing research proves it to have been Williamsburg.) Sam is a prototypical, ideal Orthodox boy who is studying to be a rabbi, comes from a good family, and works in his father’s shop. Sam's only problem is that he dreams of something beyond his immediate surroundings, and sees money as the means to get him there. His material desire leads him to blindly follow his neighbor into the "easy money" job of bringing "medicine for rich people" back to the U.S. from Europe.

Playing with the inconsistencies of reality is what changes a good story into a great movie. Who would ever believe it was a Jew who instituted and ran such a scheme? Who used a shared faith to exploit young people? And who would think that so many lies could create a positive space from which to question one’s beliefs? I found myself sitting on the edge of my seat, praying that Sam and his compatriots wouldn’t get caught while simultaneously questioning prayer.

Watching Sam’s crisis of conscience made me see so much more than a bizarre news clip in an insular faction of American society. His is a life almost too close to my own, and, really, Sam’s story could be anyone’s coming of age: moving away from the world of your youth, finding who you truly are, and deciding if you want to stay in the place you’re from or choose another fate. Sometimes when we choose to leave, there is no space in our new predicament for who we used to be.

Written by: Nicole Levitz, May 18th 2010