In this edition of the Contemporary Talmud Page, we begin with an affirmation of Kaplan that “Torah is lifelong moral education.” But is this always true? How might the idea of shlemut (spiritual wholeness), the inward Jewish peoplehood character of tikkun olam, and an appreciation of Shabbat challenge Kaplan’s own assertion that we must always be engaged in moral education? We note that in framing the Talmud page this way, we recognize the complexity of Kaplan’s thought. To have Kaplan argue with himself is a supreme compliment to the richness of his thinking.
Our Tosafot selections begin with Rabbis Margie Jacobs and Richard Hirsh as well as Elizabeth Caplun, focusing on the shlemut and moral weariness theme of the Talmud page. In July, Tosafots by Rabbis David Teutsch, Mira Wasserman, and Sid Schwarz, as well as Dr. Mel Scult, return us to the affirmation that Torah is life long moral education that serves as the Mishnaic anchor of our text.
We thank Rabbi Mira Wasserman and the Ethics Center of Reconstructionist Rabbinical College for co-sponsoring this edition of the Contemporary Talmud Page.
The purpose of Torah is life-long moral education
(Kaplan’s address for the opening of the Society for the Advancement of Judaism, 1922)
Mel Scult on Kaplan
Perhaps the most important element in shlemut for Kaplan was integration. He pointed out that this exists on many levels. The first and perhaps the most basic level is the personal. The wholeness, the perfectibility, the integration of the self. For Kaplan, as for Emerson, the self was a process or a series of processes, not an entity. He has the wonderful word to “thingify.” We make processes into things. He pointed out our tendency to thingifciation in connection with Torah and with God and with Israel.
Future of the American Jew
But to qualify for participation in this struggle, Jewry must set its own house in order. The Jewish community is not free from the evils that beset society in general and must accept full responsibility for carrying on the fight against them on its own sector of humanity’s front. (Mordecai Kaplan, Future of the American Jew, 1948; page 54)
The Sabbath
In pursuit of other aims we frequently become so absorbed in the means as to lose sight of the goal… Here the Sabbath comes to our aid. An artist cannot be continually wielding his brush. He must stop at times in his painting to freshen his vision of the object, the meaning of which he wishes to express on his canvas.
“Living is also an art. We dare not become absorbed in its technical processes and lose our consciousness of its general plan… The Sabbath represents those moments when we pause in our brushwork to renew our vision of the object. Having done so we take ourselves to our painting with clarified vision and renewed energy.” (Mordecai Kaplan, The Meaning of God in Modern Jewish Religion, page 59)
Questions
1. These are argumentative, exhausting times. In and of itself, does this demand more “recovery sabbaticals”?
2. How do we pursue all these different goals in ways that are holistic and healthy?
3. Which of these selections would you make the Mishnah (anchoring) piece of your own Talmud page?
4. What might be the defining feature of a successful “sabbatical” from tikkun olam/ moral education?
Tosafot – Rabbi Margie Jacobs on Rest, Renewal, and Mindset
Tosafot – Rabbi Richard Hirsh on Kaplan’s Ambitious Moral Agenda, Stress. And Burnout
“The purpose of Torah is lifelong moral education.” from Talmud page
For someone often identified as a “pragmatist,” Kaplan has a decided tendency to make declarations about “can, should, must” that are often quite impractical–if, indeed, his assertion that Torah = moral education correlates with constant pursuit of social morality, an inference that seems to me neither necessary or obvious.
Using Kaplan’s subject-predicate inversion, by which he reads Psalm 19:8 — “The teaching of YHVH is perfect, restoring the soul” — as “THAT which is perfect and restores the soul IS the Torah of YHVH,” the distinction between “stress” and “burnout” may be helpful. I gleaned these insights from the now-shuttered congregational consulting organization The Alban Institute, whose “Torah” remains a vital resource.
“Stress” is an over-taxing of our capacity to care. It often results from too much flux, change or constant novelty. As a consequence, we may experience loss of perception, loss of options, regression, or illness of body and/or spirit. “Burnout” is an overtaxing of our capacity to cope. It often results from unending demands on us or from unending responsibilities. As a consequence, we may experience disillusionment, self-deprecation, cynicism, and fatigue of body and/or spirit.
Stress is not necessarily destructive; a total absence of stress might leave us spiritually sedentary. “Creative stress” can yield new options, new insights, and new energy. Burnout, on the other hand, does not admit of a “creative” dimension. It leaves us detached, dormant and depressed.
Here we might take comfort from the insight of Rabbi Richard Rubenstein, who helpfully noted that while the biblical prophets were relentless in their demand for an unattainable perfection of personal and social morality (= burnout), the biblical priests were accepting of the limitations and fallibility of humans, and had a sacrifice of one sort or another at the ready to help people reset and restore their convictions and commitments (= creative stress).
While Kaplan’s enthusiasm often leads him to rhetorical excess (“Nothing is more important than….; We must devote all of our energy to…”) his teaching that all things are simultaneously independent and interdependent (God as Cosmic Polarity) suggests that navigating the imperative to engage with and improve upon our self and our world has to be in balance with the responsibility of self-care (and self-control).
For Kaplan, God is, among many other things, what enables us to persist, even when we cannot persevere; to hope, even when we cannot heal; to engage, when we might prefer to escape. As Kaplan himself put it in his sweet prayerful poem “God, The Life of Nature,” when faced with challenge, “the soul is faint; yet soon revives, and learns to spell once more the Name of God across the newly visioned firmament.”
Tosafot – Elizabeth Caplun on Shlemut and Thingification
Rupture, in this sense, is not the opposite of shlemut but points to its asymptotic quality: one can only approach shlemut by letting the other in. Accepting the other, the different, the unknown, is integral to the process of attaining shlemut. This process, lest it become “thingified” cannot be accomplished alone.
What do peace and paying your bills have in common? For the Hebrew speaker, the answer is obvious: in Hebrew, shalom (peace) and leshalem (to pay) share the Semitic root sh-l-m, as in shlemut, and carry the general meaning of fullness, completeness or wholeness. In its most basic formulation, when you pay what you owe, you complete the transaction by which the person who provided you with something is made whole again, without delay. “ the wages of a laborer shall not remain with you until morning.” (Leviticus. 19-13). In the case of damage, even accidental, the obligation to make whole remains: “ one who kills a beast shall make restitution (yishalmeinah) for it: life for life.” (Leviticus 24–18).
In essence, the Torah is setting the stage for a shlemut-filled life in community, where parties recognize what they owe one another. The moral obligation to pay a debt is independent of the monetary value of the debt or the social standing of the other party. To become whole as a person, I must first and foremost recognize the other as a partner who deserves respect, justice, and well-being, no matter how different they are from me. My personal shlemut is inseparable from the shlemut of the other. I am closer to Shlemut when I respond “Hineini”.
To borrow from Levinas again, our human moral condition is one of indebtedness to the other. Hineini – declaring oneself ready to carry the burden of the other – is the cornerstone of our ethical obligations, regardless of what comes after we fulfill this obligation. Hineini makes us vulnerable to the unknown. But first, as we said at Sinai, we do.
When I celebrated Passover in the spring, I was reminded of a teaching about the ninth plague, the plague of darkness. It is written: “people could not see one another” (Exodus 10–23). The plague was not a blackout, teaches Rabbi Michael Strassfeld, it was that people did not see each other. By the time of the ninth plague, people stopped helping their less fortunate neighbors, and did not join together to mitigate the situation. The plague of darkness was every person for themselves. It was the end of any sense of society.
Sources:
Emanuel Levinas
Terry Vieling
