As Elul approaches, our Contemporary Talmud pages return to Kaplan’s clarion call that “Torah is lifelong moral education” is the centerpiece of this page.
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. We are indebted to Rabbis Sid Schwarz, David Teutsch, Mira Wasserman, and Drs Eric Caplan and Mel Scult for adding depth, nuance, and contemporary context to the dialogue.
We thank Rabbi Mira Wasserman and the Ethics Center of Reconstructionist Rabbinical College for co-sponsoring this edition of the Contemporary Talmud Page.
We also thank Julie Dean and Rabbis Les Bronstein and Jacob Staub for the most recent contributions to 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 thingification 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
Tosafot – Dr. Eric Caplan on Moral Reflection about our Collective Jewish Behaviors
“But to qualify for participation in this struggle, Jewry must set its own house in order.” Peticha (opening) from the Contemporary Talmud page
Mordecai Kaplan’s seminal ideas—for example, his definition of God as the Process that makes for Salvation, his assertion that Judaism is the evolving religious civilization of the Jewish people—have garnered so much attention that his contributions to social justice thought have gone almost unnoticed. Yet Kaplan argued consistently that the main goal of Judaism must be to “render [the Jew] allergic to violence, corruption, exploitation of every kind,” and suggestions for how the Jewish community can achieve that are central to all of Kaplan’s books from Judaism as a Civilization (1934) to The Religion of Ethical Nationhood (1970). Indeed, for Kaplan, “the problem of serious-minded religionists is not: How can we get people to become religious? But, how can we get religion to make people better?”
The quote from the Future of the American Jew included on our Talmud page constitutes part of Kaplan’s solution to this “problem.” Kaplan recognized that a person’s ethical sense is first formed at home in childhood and is then further developed and tested within the communities in which they participate outside the home. The Jewish community remains one of the most significant communities for many Jews. If the Jewish community were to more effectively utilize its resources and institutions to foster ethical sensitivities, standards, and behavior among its members, Jews would be more likely to partner with others to apply these norms to national and global challenges.
As an example of how this would work, Kaplan explores the core value of truth. Looking at the behavior of Americans in the 1940s, Jews included, Kaplan concludes “that a cynical contempt for truth prevails among us” and that this seriously challenges any attempt to develop “ethical personality and decent social relations” within our society. Jewish education should thus center on texts that explore the value of truth, and the community should develop a set of standards concerning truthfulness that apply in all its institutions. In a Jewish community committed to reinforcing truth in American life, a person guilty of a serious “breach of contract, or of repudiation of a sacred pledge” could not lead a Jewish institution.
Kaplan’s commitments to honouring Shabbat and seeking personal development do not conflict with his social justice commitments: all are essential parts of the journey towards a better world.
Tosafot – Rabbi David Teutsch on the Multiple Influencers of our Jewish Moral Behavior
“The purpose of Torah is lifelong moral education.” Peticha (springboard) from Contemporary Talmud Page
Ethical attitudes and behaviors are formed primarily in immersion in family, peer group, and community. In those contexts, they are taught- by example, by language, and by practice. In a religious community, there is at best a mutual reinforcement between religious rites and ethical behavior. Reconstructionists, for example, have long worked for full women’s equality. Counting women in the minyan, ordaining female rabbis and including the matriarchs in prayer reinforce that moral commitment. For Jews, well-done study reinforces community belonging and deepens moral dialogue, which in turn fosters moral behavior. The same moral behavior is also maintained by group pressure.
Even a cursory study of Jewish liturgy reveals values statements, ideals, and behavioral reinforcement. The pause on Shabbat not only creates opportunities for re-engaging with them; it also teaches that work is a means to a higher end and not an end in itself. Furthering our spiritual lives within a morally concerned community has considerable power. Every time I finish praying the Amida, I mull over the meditation that follows: “My God, protect my tongue from evil and my lips from speaking lies. May I turn away from evil and do what is good in your sight.”
It is precisely for ethical reasons that Reconstructionists have abandoned the idea of chosenness, which all too often leads to triumphalism and claims to exclusive access to religious truth. The process of ethical striving is an ongoing one, and we have opportunities both personally and communally to continue that engagement.
Tosafot – Dr. Mel Scult on the Necessary Ethical/Kaplanian Dialogue with our Society
“The purpose of Torah is lifelong moral education.” Peticha (springboard) from Contemporary Talmud Page
I would like to comment on the matter of “Torah as life long moral education“ the theme of this page. Torah for Kaplan went far beyond the text and traditional commentaries. For him, Torah meant moral education and obviously referred to contemporary issues in general. The point is that Kaplan did not hesitate to discuss political, economic, and social problems from the pulpit and view them in their moral aspect.
Thus he talked about the controversial issues of his time, e.g. the support of unions, discrimination against negroes in government and business, and support of the anti lynch law of the early forties. One strong supporter approached him and asserted that he should “stick to religious issues,” which, of course, completely missed his point. He saw himself in the tradition of the prophets of ancient Israel who spoke out often about the contemporary sins of their time.
This approach was important to him because social matters always had moral implications; therefore, he believed that general issues were Jewish issues, and consequently, the fundamental principles of Torah should be brought to bear on all of them. Thus, in our day, he might give a sermon on immigration, the inclusion of LGBTQ+ rights on all levels, etc. He might even go so far as to criticize Trump and Netanyahu for their excessive pursuit of power.
In his time, many were upset with his willingness to confront contemporary issues. He once said that people preferred to think of religion as” other, “ meaning as divorced from everyday life and at the SAJ. They missed the true “otherness “of religion. Otherness is not about other worlds but the “others” in our world who make moral claims on our behaviors. The point is that religion and Judaism must not be irrelevant but rather at the center of our deepest concerns for freedom and justice for all.
Tosafot – Rabbi Sid Schwarz on Jewish Tribalism and Universalism
“The purpose of Torah is lifelong moral education.” Peticha (springboard) from the Contemporary Talmud page
I am intrigued by this excerpt from Dr. Kaplan’s speech at the dedication of the Society for the Advancement of Judaism (SAJ) on the upper West Side of New York in 1922—“The purpose of Torah is lifelong moral education.” Part of what drew me to Mordecai Kaplan’s thought as a young teen who was raised by Jewishly observant parents who fled Nazism to the U.S. and sent me to an Orthodox yeshiva, was the way he tackled the big questions of his time regarding Judaism in America.
Without being aware of this quote, I marveled at the similarity of the question to one that used as the take off point for my book, Judaism and Justice: The Jewish Passion to Repair the World (2006). The book’s first chapter begins with the question: “What is the purpose of Judaism?” The remainder of the book is my answer to this question. Here is the beginning of the answer.
Based on my reading of Judaism, there are two compelling answers to the question “What is the purpose of Judaism?” The first purpose is based on Genesis chapter 18, when God expands on his initial charge to Abraham to go forth from his land to the land that God will show him and there make Abraham into a great nation. In verse 18:19 God adds a critical prerequisite that will enable Abraham to fulfill his destiny. He is to obey God’s commandments and “extend the boundaries of righteousness and justice in the world,” la’asot tzedakah umishpat.
The second purpose is based on God’s revelation to Moses, which is recounted in Exodus 19:6. The Jewish people are told to be “a kingdom of priests and a holy nation,” a mamlechet kohanim and goy kadosh. The Hebrew word for holiness—kedusha—comes from a root that means separate and apart. The brilliant paradox of Judaism is that it combines a demand for holy apartness with the expectation that Jews will be totally engaged with the world around them. The observance of ritual laws must be combined with acting towards others with justice and compassion to be loyal to God’s covenant with the Jewish people.
We live in a time when some of the fundamental assumptions of American society are being challenged by the Trump Administration—fairness; equal protection under the law for all races, religions, and creeds; free speech; a home for those fleeing persecution in other countries; humanitarian aid for those in need around the world; and much, much more. Judaism’s historic commitment to tzedek and kedusha can and should be a moral Northstar for all who want to make America kind again.
Tosafot – Rabbi Mira Wasserman on the Sabbath as Restorative Practice
“The purpose of Torah is lifelong moral education.” Peticha (springboard) from the Contemporary Talmud page
This page contrasts moral education on the one hand and the restorative practice of Shabbat on the other. The implication is that moral education is wearying. I think of the Torah’s moral education differently. I think Kaplan is here gesturing to Torah’s capacity to shape and sustain as in the fullness of our humanity. To engage in this kind of moral education does not drain one’s cup, but rather fills it up.
There is perhaps no better example of the distinctive moral education that the Torah offers than Shabbat. The rationale for Shabbat is presented in two different ways, in the two different versions of the Ten Commandments.
Exodus 20:11 reads: “For in six days YHWH made heaven and earth and sea—and all that is in them—and then rested on the seventh day; therefore YHWH blessed the sabbath day and hallowed it.”
This version of the mitzvah roots the Sabbath in the first week of creation, establishes a link between the human and the divine—just as God rested from the work of creation, so too does humanity partake of rest. Imagining this proximity between the human and the divine imparts a kind of moral education, elevating humanity and infusing it with dignity and holiness.
In Deuteronomy, the moral significance of the Shabbat commandment is even more explicit, as the rationale for the mitzvah draws upon the story of the Israelites’ exodus from slavery to freedom.
According to Deuteronomy 5:14-15, “You shall not do any work—you, your son or your daughter, your male or female slave, your ox or your ass, or any of your cattle, or the stranger in your settlements, so that your male and female slave may rest as you do. Remember that you were a slave in the land of Egypt and your God YHWH freed you from there with a mighty hand and an outstretched arm; therefore your God YHWH has commanded you to observe the sabbath day.”
Here, Shabbat abolishes social hierarchies and domination—if only for one day out of seven. Deuteronomy links the practice of shabbat to social justice, another aspect of moral education.
To study Torah is to discover what it means to be fully human. To keep Shabbat is to enact and embody moral values of human dignity and social justice.
Tosafot – Julie Dean on A Shlemut That Includes Personal Ethics
“The purpose of Torah is lifelong moral education.” Peticha (springboard) from the Contemporary Talmud page
By Julie Dean, Founder, Living Mussar
Rather than asking how to balance exhausting, argumentative times with periods of recovery, we might instead ask how to integrate both our inner and outer lives in service of a sustainable, effective, and spiritually connected path. Integral to living with conscious awareness, engaging in meaningful action, and cultivating a grounded moral compass is the quality of menuchah — life-giving rest. When we view rest and action, inner work and outward striving, as opposing forces rather than essential partners, we set ourselves up for exhaustion—whether in our pursuit of justice, spiritual growth, or daily responsibilities. Fatigue experienced by activists, educators, and seekers often stems from this misunderstanding. A nondual perspective affirms the interdependence of these energies and reminds us that rest is not the opposite of work, but its sacred companion. Just as tzimtzum served as a necessary catalyst for the birth of creation, so too must we integrate purposeful restfulness into our lived understanding of tikkun olam and Mussar.
During restorative rest, the mind, body and soul soften and expand, creating space for new spiritual insight and connection. As one pauses and slows down, this shift brings a change of consciousness, opening the way to reflection and renewal otherwise interrupted by the busyness of everyday life. During times of menuchah, we may ask ourselves the core question of the mitlamet/mitlamedet (self-reflective learner): “What am I learning from life?”
In the quieting and deep listening that follows, the seeker may hear valuable wisdom from within. Just as challah requires time to rise, so too does the soul need spaciousness to grow, elevate, and reach toward its potential. A vital element of this practice is gevurah – discernment around the right ‘‘measure’ of menuchah. When does my rest lead toward slothfulness? What measure replenishes and reconnects me to my sources of renewal? Asking these questions becomes as significant as their answers, for through mindful awareness and hitlamdut, one becomes their own best teacher.
These times call us to courageous action – in the world and in our moral development. By interweaving rest and pause with action and transformation, we create a lasting foundation upon which to live, learn and grow. May we foster a culture of activism and spiritual development that integrates the mitzvah of life-giving rest as we engage in the holy work of tikkun halev, tikkun hanefesh and tikkun olam.
Tosafot – Rabbi Les Bronstein on Purpose or Purposes
“The purpose of Torah is lifelong moral education.” Peticha (springboard) from the Contemporary Talmud page
In true Tosafist style, let’s think about two specific words in the quotation rather than talking about the text as a whole. One word is “Torah” and one is “purpose.”
I think Kaplan is using the term Torah to refer to the process of teaching and learning the sacred lore of the Jewish civilization. He cannot mean the defined content of “the” Torah here. He refers to the activity of mind and spirit that conveys the Jewish worldview, which, in his experience, is a universal moral perspective.
In Deuteronomy 7, Moses speaks of the Torah as both b’rit (covenant, which are the laws and statutes of Torah) and hesed (compassion, which is the meta-textual ethos that accompanies the legal tradition). Kaplan must mean the latter, though the Torah clearly equates the importance of both notions of Torah.
Good for Kaplan to emphasize hesed in our modern era (“moral education”) over b’rit (legal rulings). He knew what we needed to hear in his day. Nonetheless, our Jewish civilization created the content as well as the means of transmission. Jews have used that content to constitute and re-constitute ourselves over millennia. What interpreters have made it say in each era matters. The Torah is, at its core, our Jewish national constitution, and what it says about matters of calendar, ritual, civil and criminal law, property, ownership, birth, marriage, death, and yes, morality, matters to our evolving self-definition.
As for the term “purpose”: Kaplan was no didact, but he often used proclamatory language to express what he wished were true as if it indeed was so. To say that the purpose of Torah is moral education is to ignore (I didn’t say negate) its other purposes: national, civilizational, legal, ritual. Torah as a curriculum for moral education leans into its universal purpose. Yes, that is one purpose of Torah, but not the purpose. Because Torah is every bit as particularistic as it is universalistic, its other primary purpose must be constitutional. Kaplan himself taught us this, following Rambam.
Rabbis and teachers of Judaism in every age rely on the particular Torah to shape the identity of Jews as Jews, and on the universal Torah to shape our particularly Jewish approach to ethics (centered on the concept of tzelem Elohim). In our era (nearly a century after Kaplan’s!), the thinness of Jewish identity calls on us not to stop emphasizing the moral vision of our tradition, but nonetheless to place that moral vision within the particular definition of ourselves as Jews. Kaplan the social thinker would surely agree that in our time, our morality is less in question than our Jewishness, and that something bold must be done.
Tosafot – Rabbi Jacob Staub on Kaplan and Change
“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.” from Talmud page
He pointed out our tendency to thingification in connection with Torah and with God and with Israel.
We remain profoundly in Kaplan’s debt for his steadfast insistence that everything is in process, that the human tendency to objectify is at odds with our calling to ethical action. Medieval Jewish philosophers believed that immutability was God’s primary attribute. We know better.
Judaism is not an unchanging thing; it evolves. The Jewish people are certainly not a united or homogeneous thing. Shabbat is not a collection of pre-set ritual things; it is an invitation to be altered as we interrupt the things that govern our weekdays.
We objectify out of fear, in self-protection, out of trauma, to simplify complex realities. The history of the ways that North American Jews have viewed Israeli Jews and Palestinians is as good an example as any. We have held up Israel as a beacon of morality, making it too painful to look closely at its moral shortcomings. Israel’s existence has been a balm against our fears of antisemitism, so that our post-traumatic need for safety renders it difficult for us to criticize it. And insofar as we view Palestinians as a threatening thing rather than as individual human beings, we can be led to support actions that violate the sacred values we hold most dear.
Moral behavior requires a comfort with nuance and subtlety. The rest of Shabbat is an invitation to breathe deeply and to be reminded humbly that the certainty that objectification yields may never be the way to becoming a “goy kadosh/holy nation.”
