Angetevka: It’s Relative

October 21, 2009

Begging your pardon in advance, this past week when I heard about a recent rabbinical ruling, a dirty joke popped into my head. Here it is:

What’s the difference between like and love?

Spit or swallow.

No, it wasn’t spilling one’s seed that was at issue (that is so first century). It was elevators. Last month, Rabbi Yosef Shalom Elyashiv, a well-respected, 99-year-old ultra-Orthodox scholar in Israel, signed a new law stating that Shabbat elevators are no longer permissible. This means that, for those followers of his who accept his word as Law, they have to use the stairs on the Sabbath, even if they live on the 10th floor and have eight children and two double strollers, even if they are housebound or broke a leg or an ankle…Doesn’t matter.

These ultra-Orthodox folks don’t represent the majority of Jews, and I’m aware that it’s not my business if they agree to blindly swallow every religious ruling that comes their way rather than exercise their free will to choose to spit it out instead. However, I wondered if the core belief behind these restrictive laws was a presupposition that saying no to something, being deprived, is more holy than saying yes, which to me is completely antithetical to Judaism and more akin to Christian ascetics and those who wear hair shirts and practice self-flagellation.

I was thinking of that ruling, which seemed petty and mean-spirited and punitive and plain stupid, when we went out to dinner with our cousins from Israel last week. I mentioned the elevator thing to them, and our cousin joked, “You know, there’s a chumra (stringency) of the month club.” Indeed, I often feel that for some rabbis, if it’s a choice between making Jewish law more nit-picking and difficult to comply with and just unpleasant in general, they would choose a chumra over a leniency every time. It’s not that I’m opposed, chas ve shalom, to the rabbis’ presumably sincere efforts to insure that Jews comply with both the spirit and the letter of the law. But when broccoli is considered a questionable food because it might contain non-kosher bugs which might then be eaten, or when schoolgirls are advised not to wear colorful hair clips lest they inflame the passions of the boys, you have to wonder if these rabbis are getting their jollies by taking things away.

Over dinner, our cousins compared this excessively stringent approach with that of their grandfather, a well-respected and well-loved scholar who didn’t believe that denying yourself indicated that you were more pious than your neighbor or that God loved you more. Our cousin recalled being with his grandfather one day in Jerusalem when a Yemenite man came right before Passover with a question. He’d packed up 30 biscuits for his baby for the trip to Jerusalem, only to realize that the biscuits weren’t kosher for Passover and would have to be destroyed. The rabbi listened and asked him if it would be a real hardship if the biscuits were burned and the man said yes. The rabbi left the room then came back and extended his hand and said, “I’m sorry, but you have to get rid of them.” In the rabbi’s hand was money to compensate for the biscuits. “The man cried,” our cousin recalled, some 50 years after the event. His grandfather was a man who believed that following the Torah strictly didn’t mean one must choose the most onerous and prohibitive interpretation of Jewish law.

The following evening, we were in Chicago at a Shabbat dinner sponsored by Meor, a Jewish organization on our daughter’s college campus. After dinner, the rabbi offered a spirited interpretation of the Torah portion of the week, Lech lecha, the words that God said to Abraham when he told him to leave Ur for Canaan. “Lech lecha,” he said, means “Go for yourself.” Go for yourself, not for God. The rabbi reminded us that the word “lech” is from the root, “walk,” and that halacha, law, shares the same root. He went on to say that the reason it seems there are so many prohibitions in Jewish law is because it’s easier to list what you can’t do than what you can do. However, the Torah isn’t about restrictions but about opportunities, with Abraham a case in point. God offered Abraham an opportunity to go for himself and, just as objects in motion tend to stay in motion, and objects at rest tend to stay at rest unless acted upon by an outside force, Abraham would have continued as he was without God’s prodding. What I took away from the rabbi’s explanation was that this Outside Force speaks to each of us individually and tells us to walk our own paths, for ourselves, with the Torah providing us with the opportunity to find that path.

In every religion there are extremists, and those extremists often seem to be a joyless lot. Pleasure and ease and comfort, for them, are suspicious. The Amish don’t use electricity, some Christians don’t play cards or dance or drink…there’s a whole host of things that are wrong and sinful, and the adherents of all of these rules can perhaps even legitimately find scriptural references to back them up. In the end, it’s all about interpretation and that’s really where my joke comes in. Who’s to say that, in order to prove that you truly love the Torah, you have to swallow everything? Love comes in many guises. (Pun intended)

Oh, and the 99-year-old rabbi? Also a relative. God bless his soul.

Angetevka: It’s Relative

Angela Himsel

Life and Action