Born Again and Again

Many of us remember the first academic paper we got back from a college professor.  Accustomed to a more glowing reaction from our high school teachers, we may well have sadly surveyed a sea of corrections and a grade that we didn’t rush to share with our parents.   

There are times in our lives when we need to “kick it up a notch.”  Personally and professionally, we are challenged today in ways that defy yesterday’s solutions.  It sometimes feels like we’re in a giant video game.  The moment we think we’ve mastered one level, we find ourselves adrift in the next.

The Torah’s description of the Exodus from Egypt is replete with birth and birthing.  The midwives defy Pharaoh’s orders and save the male children whom they deliver.   The Hebrew word for Egypt, mitzrayim, implies a narrow place.  The Israelites’ departure from Egypt through the Sea of Reeds depicts the birth of a nation.

I don’t think that birthing is a one-time event.  Various life changes require us to reinvent ourselves.  When young children reach physical maturity, when high school students get a rude awakening in college, when a person experiences a change in personal status, when one’s work environment changes drastically, it can call for a kind of reinvention.

Brothers and Sisters

I’m nervous.  Last week, we spoke about an incident where some Haredi/ultra-Orthodox Jews in Israel were harassing young girls walking to school because they felt that they weren’t dressed modestly enough. 

Shortly after that episode took place, in response to demonstrations against their behavior, a small group had their children dressed in concentration camp outfits, including Jewish stars, implying that the Israeli government was persecuting them the way the Nazis persecuted Jews.

Both actions created a negative uproar, as well they should have.  Elie Weisel, quoted in Ha’aretz, said "I never thought they'd stoop to such a low. How dare they? To both desecrate the honor of the State of Israel and the memory of the Holocaust?"

Israeli government officials condemned the behavior, along with many Orthodox and ultra-Orthodox leaders. 

Rabbi Julie Schonfeld, Executive Director of the Rabbinical Assembly, wrote a reaction, as did Rachel Delia Benaim, news editor of the Yeshiva University Observer.  I want to give you the essence of their reactions and my sense of how they can each guide us moving forward.

Bring Back the Mystery

A classic scenario involves a small child watching a sunset.  His eyes widen to embrace the visual symphony of color and shapes.  He sits transfixed for several minutes as the scene intensifies.  As soon as the sun slips beneath the horizon, he starts to clap and calls out, “Again!”

The child is too young to understand that he will have to wait a full day before the performance repeats itself and it will be years before he grasps the scientific underpinnings of what he witnessed.

But a small child intuits that which scientific awareness sometimes dilutes, namely the inherent mystery of the natural world and of life itself.  

I recommend a recent book by Karen Armstrong called The Case for God.  Written in part as a response to the writings of self-described atheists like Richard Dawkins and Christopher Hitchins, it is less a defense of God than an historical overview of trends that characterize how God has been perceived.