OzTorah

Chapter 12 of Sh’mot names Nisan as the first month of the year. For other purposes Tishri is the first month, making it one of four New Years listed in the Mishnah Rosh HaShanah. The choice of Nisan to head the list of Hebrew months is because that was the month when the tribes of Israel became a people and set out on their journey through history.

We appreciate the logic in the choice of this month, but we often fail to notice that the command to place Nisan on a pedestal and celebrate the redemption of the Israelite slaves was given whilst they were still in Egypt in a state of bondage. The Exodus event had not yet happened, but they were already told to celebrate it. It is not simply that the slavery was visibly winding down and the people’s release was inevitable.

The Torah was not just thinking pragmatically but spiritually. Its message was one of faith: “Know that God has heard your cries and will redeem you and protect you!”

It would be a terrible anticlimax if the time of bondage came to an end and the people were left to pick themselves up and fend for themselves. There was a Divine promise: they would march boldly out of Egypt, cross the sea and move into the future with the Almighty smiling upon them and holding their hands.

The Israelites were told (Ex. 12:44) that the eating of the paschal lamb was restricted to those who were circumcised.

According to the Midrash (Ex. Rabbah 19:6), it was like a king who arranged a banquet for his friends and told his servants, “Unless the invited guests show my seal on the invitation card, they cannot enter”. Thus God said to the Israelites, “Unless you possess the sign of Israelite identity you cannot eat my paschal lamb”.

The Midrash goes on to say that the uncircumcised elements who accompanied the Israelites immediately sought to be circumcised, and God took each one, kissed him and blessed him. One could suggest that whenever there is a party everyone wants to be there, and that’s how to explain the whole episode.

But the Midrash is probably saying something much more serious, that being Jewish brings with it both agonies and ecstasies. People who did not go through the times of suffering cannot hope to enjoy the times of fulfilment. It seems something like the Biblical law of the Sabbath (Ex. 20): “Six days shall you labour and do all your work, and (if you have carried that out) the seventh day is the Sabbath of the Lord your God”.

There are, for example, many well-intentioned Christians who say they would like to take part in a Jewish Passover celebration and of course we admire their good will, but a person who has not lived through Jewish history cannot possibly really appreciate the full spirit and meaning of the Seder celebration.

Q. Your recent answer about gay marriage prompts me to ask what a synagogue should do if a homosexual applied for membership.

A. These are some principles that I would propose:
1. Synagogues should not ask members about their sexuality.

2. They should not debar a homosexual from being a member, or from being counted to a minyan or receiving an Aliyah.

3. They should however object if a person uses synagogue involvement in order to make a statement or promote a militant cause.

Jewish teaching prohibits many kinds of activity but it still expects the people concerned to participate in and maintain Jewish observance. It deals with acts, not ideations; people’s minds think of many forbidden things but what creates a problem is if they act upon the thoughts.

It is concerned at any form of sexual (including heterosexual) obsession, and indeed at all forms of obsession (including money, status and violence). It is also concerned at any form of selfishness and self-centredness; it sees (heterosexual) marriage as balancing the self and the other, and using this balance to construct the future.

Q. Are rabbis the only type of Jewish spiritual leaders?

A. Judaism has always had its priests, poets, prophets and pedagogues, its masters and mystics, saints and sages, charismatics and characters. The destruction of the Temple replaced the kohen (priest) with the sage, later called the rabbi.

Some rabbis were also kohanim or poets. Some had a prophet-like quality. But their chief characteristic was not lineage but learning, not poetry but pedagog.

Rabbinic ordination, s’michah, the “laying on of hands”, linked every rabbi with Moses, the first rabbi. The original s’michah lapsed, but the rabbi was the scholar in residence, the student, the teacher, the exemplar of Torah.

At first rabbis did not take a salary. They were scholars who followed a range of trades and professions. Hillel was a woodcutter. Shammai a builder. There were blacksmiths, bootmakers and even a gladiator. Only in the 15th century did a salaried rabbinate develop as a reluctant concession to the conditions, but the rabbinic emphasis was still academic. Rabbis were scholars and teachers, writers and judges. Few were preachers in the modern sense.

With the 18th century came a new type, the Chassidic tzaddik. The masses in Europe felt alienated by rabbinic intellectually. They needed motivators and inspirers. There was a tug-of-war between rabbis and tzaddikim and their respective followers, until a modus vivendi recognised that both were imperiled by the same Haskalah.

About a century later, German Jewry developed the Rabbiner, moulded both by traditional texts and the modern intellectual challenge. Anglo-Jewry for its part created the minister, usually called Reverend. He looked, dressed and acted like a pastor. He had preaching and pastoral skills, but he often lacked halachic knowledge.

The post-Holocaust era has seen a resurgence of halachic study as the keynote of rabbinic leadership. In some circles, this is unaccompanied by general education, but usually the rabbi learns to unite the terminology of the Talmudic text with the idiom of the modern intellectual. In many cases the rabbi is also a minister, but the rabbi prefers to be a rav, and the community is thirstier than ever before for the tradition to which the rabbi is the key.

There were times when you could not recognise the rabbi from his appearance. He looked, dressed and acted like a pastor. A beard is still not the universal adornment of every rabbi. Nor does black have to be the dominant colour of his garments or hat.

So how do you recognise a rabbi? There is a Hebrew phrase, tzurat harav, “the shape of a rabbi”. In some cases it is a physical, visible characteristic. More important is the moral tzurat harav, the rabbi who earns respect for Torah by his integrity and way of the life, and the intellectual tzurah, the rabbi who knows who does not know it all, the rabbi who may be learned but, more importantly, is constantly learning – a Talmid chacham, not a finished product.

Moses & Pharaoh's magicians (Gerard Hoet, 1728)

In the end, as we all know, the magicians had to give up the struggle, told the king that they were battling a higher power (“It must be the finger of God!”: Ex.8:15) and the plagues took their course.

An ancient contest, but history repeats itself in the idiom of every generation. Our version is the battle between character and charisma, between logic and magnetism.

In a synagogue I knew they rejected an applicant for the post of chazzan, not because he was insufficiently pious or learned or could not sing, but because a different candidate had more television presence. What have we come to if we want the magicians more than Moses?