Conversion Class

We haven't been having conversion class the past couple weeks.

Yesterday, it was decided that the class would disband in favor of individualized instruction.  This is probably a very good thing, because as it stands, there are three candidates (including myself), and we're all very different.  One is converting in order to start a Jewish family, and it's a very beautiful thing.  The other seems to be more interested in the etherial, whereas I'm a bit more practical and philosophical, I think.

Now, we will be meeting with the Rabbi on an individual basis, once per month.  Because of this, the study will have to be much more independent, and I will try very hard to make more frequent updates.  I will also be more diligent in writing about the services I attend.  I know I've said it before, but I really mean it this time.

Conversion Class

Again, I was the only student in attendance, so it was just me, the Rabbi, and our songleader meeting in the Rabbi's office.  If it stays like this, I think I'll like it.  The discussion has been very informal, with the Rabbi quizzing me about the week's topic to figure out how much I already know, and then we talk about the rest of what I need to learn.  And then we talk about other things.

Today's talk was about Purim, which is a celebration of the Jews' victory over the evil Haman.  Except for it may not have ever happened...  The story goes that the King of Persia, needed a wife, so naturally, he held a beauty contest.  He found a very beautiful woman named Esther, who just happened to be Jewish.  She didn't tell her husband that she was Jewish, on the advise of Mordecai, as there was a lot of persecution of the Jews going on in Persia at the time.  Eventually, Haman asks the King to order that all Jews should be killed.  The King goes along with this, and Esther and Mordecai have a problem with that idea.  So Mordecai talks to Esther, and convinces her that she's in a position to save the Jewish people, as long as she risks her life by revealing her true identity to her husband.  She does this, and the King gives a very illogical answer: that he cannot reverse his original decree; he can only order that the Jews have the right to defend themselves.  Esther and the king also host a dinner and invite Haman.  They get him drunk, and then they kill him, as well as all of his sons.  After that, the army goes out after the Jews, and they fight back, and there's a bloodbath, with thousands of Persians dying left and right.  

The Jews survived, so now we eat and drink to celebrate.  And since Haman was brought down with a plan devised by a woman, we mock him roundly.  Every year on Purim, the book of Esther is read to the congregation.  Every time Haman is mentioned, the crowd is supposed to blot out his name by booing, stomping, or using noisemakers.  My Rabbi likes to have people cheer when Esther's name comes up.  

Another Purim tradition is that everybody dresses up in costumes.  Some congregations only dress up the children.  Others restrict the costume choices to characters from the story.  Our Rabbi likes to have everybody dress up, and they should wear whatever they want.  He said that he's gone as a Renaissance figure, a Star Wars character...lots of things.  Some Jewish families also use Purim as an alternative to Halloween.

A vital part of the Purim celebration is eating and especially drinking.  Lots of drinking.  It is said that we should drink until we can't tell the difference between "arur Haman" and "baruch Mordecai", which mean "cursed is Haman" and "blessed is Mordecai", respectively.  That's pretty drunk.   It's a day of merrymaking and mockery, and it's kind of like a Jewish Mardi Gras...back in the day when Mardi Gras wasn't about pure debauchery.

Purim is also the only Jewish holiday which prescribes gift-giving.  Traditionally, food-gifts are given to friends and family, and money and food is given to charity.  It's a mitzvah to give those gifts.

Conversion Class

I went to class again today.  It had been cancelled last week due to a Shabbaton celebration.  I was the only one who attended today.

We talked a bit about Havdallah, which is the ceremony that ends Shabbat and begins the regular week.  It's celebrated with wine, spices, and a braided candle.  The wine is just a standard Jewish thing, according to my Rabbi.  He says that any time there's a celebration, there's wine, and there's no special significance to it in this case.  The spices are because Jewish tradition holds that we are granted a special extra bit of soul to help us celebrate Shabbat, and at Havdallah, it departs from us.  Usually, when your soul departs, if you don't die, you feel faint.  When you faint, you get smelling salts to bring you back....in this case, the spices are meant to stand in place of the smelling salts.  The braided candle is symbolic for a number of reasons.  The two that my Rabbi pointed out to me (that were significant to me) were that Shabbat begins and ends with lighting candles, and that this candle is braided, or woven, to represent paths we take in life, and how we're interdependent.

We also talked about Tu B'Shvat, which is new year for the trees.  I really like this holiday, because of its emphasis on nature and hope (but not cheesy hope).  It celebrates the cycle of dormancy and growth, because it marks when the sap starts flowing through the tree again, bringing the tree back to life.  That's hopeful. It also celebrates that Spring is coming, which is huge for me.  Living where I do, Spring seems so far away...

My Rabbi also told me about a Kabbalistic seder that's done on Tu B'Shvat.  He says it's really beautiful.  From his description, there's lots of wine, lots of fruit, and then a meal.  And some readings to go along with it all.  If I can talk some of my friends into participating, I just might try it this year.

Conversion Class: 11-24-2007

Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur: the High Holy Days

These holidays are commanded in the Torah.

It was commanded that on the First day of Tishri, there would be a celebration, because that would be the head of the year.  Originally, this holiday was not called Rosh Hashanah, and it bore no connection to Yom Kippur.  It was merely commanded to be a celebration on that day which included the blowing of the shofar.  In modern times, it's the day to begin the process of repentance.  It's also a day that is associated with the creation of the universe, and as such, we are to repent with the intention of tikkun olam (making the world a better place).

Some rituals associated with Rosh Hashanah are the blowing of the shofar, eating honey with apples, making round challah, and tashlich.  Tashlich is the casting of crumbled bread into flowing waters; this is supposed to represent the casting off of sins.

It was also commanded that on the 10th day of Tishri that there would be a day of atonement.  Jews are called to straighten out their affairs with God and to afflict their souls.  In modern times, we afflict our souls with fasting.  To do that, we eat no food and drink no water.  

It is important to realize that Jews believe that God can not forgive sins committed against other people; only the person wronged can do that.  Therefore, today's Jews use the ten days between Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur to make amends with the people they may have wronged.  These days are called the "Days of Awe".

I skipped class and the service today.

I haven't been feeling well, so I decided to stay home and sleep, since I had the opportunity.  It was a blessing to be able to turn off the alarm clock and not care when I woke up.  I never get to do that.

Service probably involved a discussion of how the Judah and Tamar story depicts an inappropriate and incorrect application of levirate marriage and was probably intended to be part of a smear campaign on David.

Class discussion would have centered around sukkot, which I haven't done a fantastic amount of research on yet.

Conversion Class

In class, we talked about Hanukkah, and we covered a lot of the same information I had written in my previous post on the topic.

New information:  Hanukkah or Chanukkah are the most correct transliterations of the word.  If you want to be as correct as possible, it should be spelled without the C, but with a dot underneath the H.  Nobody does it that way, though.

A menorah is different from a hanukkiah, which is the menorah used on Hanukkah.  The menorah was a ritual item found in the Temple, and it had 7 branches.  A hanukkiah is meant as a callback to that item, but it has 9 branches and is specifically tasked for the celebration of Hanukkah.

We talked about the two miracles of Hanukkah, and that the military victory story is probably the most true.  The Rabbi pointed out that when Hanukkah was first celebrated, the Jews were under oppressive Roman rule, and a victory against the ruling military would, at that time, have seemed like a miracle.  Eventually, the story of the cruse of oil was invented in order to create a "legitimate" miracle.

The Rabbi also pointed out that Hanukkah doesn't appear in the Torah, but it does appear in the apocrypha.  They talk about the Maccabee rebellion in I and II Maccabees, including the idea that Hanukkah was originally celebrated as a kind of belated Sukkot.

Because the Rabbi is so very interested in history, he pointed out that the story of the Maccabees' rebellion indicates that the Greek army was very disorganized, and that the victory was...more than a little bit based on luck.

The Rabbi also said that he likes to ask his classes about why we celebrate Hanukkah.

He said that the most common answer is "to celebrate the miracle of the cruse of oil burning for 8 days".

After he asks, he likes to continue the class discussion for a few minutes, and then ask, "who believes in miracles?"  He says that nobody ever raises their hands.

I would have.  I totally believe, but I also believe that miracles aren't always supernatural events.  I believe that "miracle" is another word for "luck".  I just don't understand how people can have hope if they don't believe in miracles.  Lucky there's a holiday just to celebrate miracles.

Conversion Class

Today we talked about how Judaism represented a very different way of thinking about theology.

In Babylonia, they built ziggurats, which were kind of like step pyramids.  They had a house on top, which was also a temple.  The god lived in that house, and was often physically present in the form of an idol.  If you managed to destroy the temple, then you destroyed the god's home.  If the god was in the temple and you destroyed that, then your god was clearly stronger and more powerful than that one.

Judaism, however, did something a bit different.  Their temple was a place for God to be when he is on earth, but there was no image of him there.  His name was simply written on the wall.  If you destroyed that temple, then you simply wiped his name away, but you didn't destroy God.  This innovation also allowed God to be present in more than one place at the same time.  The Rabbi describes it as an intentional correction in theology that came in the book of Deuteronomy, with the quote "I will show you a place where my name shall dwell".  Not I.  Just the name.

There were also some technical terms:

Polytheism: a relationship with multiple gods.

Monotheism: only one god exists, and any others are not real.

Monolatrism: a relationship with only one god, but recognition that others exist.

Polytheism was the standard prior to Abraham discovering that you could worship only one God and still be fine.  This is often thought of as monotheism but according to what the Rabbi taught us today, that's somewhat of a misconception.

Judaism started out as monolatrism, recognizing that there are other gods, but that they are not as powerful or special as the God of Abraham.  Monotheism appears in the Biblical text in Isaiah, which was written after the Babylonian exile.

Conversion Class

Saturday's class started with an explanation of Minimalists and Maximalists, and how those points of view strongly influence a person's reading of the Biblical text.

First off, definitions.

Maxmialists believe that the Bible is literally true.  This group includes most clergy, Christians, and traditional rabbis.  The extreme maximalists will discount and/or attempt to discredit scientific discoveries in order to preserve their position.

Minimalists believe that the Bible is not 100% accurate as a historical document.  The extremists believe that the Bible was a created history.  These people place a high amount of value on recent archeological discoveries.

Now, the relevant part.

The Rabbi believes that minimalism and maximalism can be seen as a continuum.  He said that Reform (and Conservative) Judaism stand close to the middle of the continuum, attempting to find a balance between the traditional stories and the archeological record.  I can identify with that position, because I never could completely grasp the fundamentalist Christian point of view in that regard.

Speaking of which...

One of the tenets that the maximalist camp uses to justify their position is called "appearance of age", and believes that when the universe was created, it was created as if things had already aged and evolved, and light just appeared and didn't have to move at the speed of light to get from the stars to earth.

Of course, the Rabbi disagrees, and here's why.

Light was, as you may well know, created on the first day.  The sun, moon, and stars weren't created until three days later, on the fourth day.  He explained that this means that the depiction of the creation story was meant to be a poetic depiction.

On the first three days, God created things that are inanimate realms.  Day one was adding light to the darkness which already existed.  Day two was separating the sky from the sea, which apparently already existed.  Day three was rising the dry ground out of the sea, again, ostensibly pre-existing.  It is believed that vegetation came into the picture somewhere between days three and four, because it has some inanimate qualities, but is still somewhat animated.

On the second three days, God created things that move.  Day four was the sun, moon, and stars, which appear to move through the light and the darkness which we were given on day one.  Day five gave us fish and birds, in that order, which is a poetic reversal from the way things are described in day two, where we have the sky mentioned first.  Day six gave us land animals and humans, which rule over the dry land.

There's just no way the creation story is literally true.  It's completely illogical.  We get light before we get the source of that light.  We get vegetation before we get the sun that plants depend upon for life.  It just can't happen that way, not even for a day or two.

Conversion Class

On Saturday, we started over with the Jewish History timeline, this time with a different approach.  The previous version was a pretty traditional rendering.  It assumed that all the events actually took place, and was reconstructed from clues given in the Bible.  This approach is consistent with Orthodox Judaism or Fundamentalist Christianity.

Here comes one of the more challenging aspects of Reform Judaism: the Bible isn't literal truth.  Reform Jews consider the Biblical record to be more along the lines of a collection of legends and folk tales meant to teach a moral or cultural lesson.  Think more along the lines of George Washington chopping down the cherry tree than Abraham Lincoln delivering the Gettysburg Address.

On with the show.

Even though Israel and the Holy Land are among Earth's hottest archeological hot spots, we can prove very few events recorded in the Bible.  We're talking about some stunners, too.  There's no evidence of King David.  Shocking, right?  Same with Moses.  In fact, there's no evidence of the Exodus from Egypt.

Since the Rabbi did his doctoral dissertation on the Exodus, we spent a lot of time talking about it.  We really have no idea when it happened, if in fact it did.  There are no references to it in any known Egyptian texts.

We do know that there were Semites in Egypt in about 1700 BCE.  They were called the Hyksos, but their documented story is very different from the Exodus story.  They were kicked out of Egypt in about 1600 BCE.  Not quite "let my people go".  Additionally, some of the places that the Hebrews wrote about during their 4o years of wandering have been found.  There's no evidence of an encampment.  Even some of the towns that were settled shortly after the return to Canaan have been excavated; they didn't find any artifacts that had Egyptian influence.

It gets pretty interesting when you carefully analyze the writings about the Exodus.  It seems that the Tribe of Judah was not involved.  They don't claim that their people were enslaved until after they start identifying themselves as Israel.  In their separate, nationalistic, identity, there's nothing.  Even people from the other Tribes leave them out.  It seems like a Tribe that's represented by a lion and known for their warrior ways would have done something worth mention.

After the Exodus came the battle of Jericho.  Despite what Joshua recored, the walls didn't fall.  There's not even evidence of the city having been occupied at that time.  In fact, there's no evidence of the conquest of Canaan.  See Israel Finkelstein's The Bible Unearthed (I haven't read it.  Rabbi mentioned it.  I do know that he was on Digging for the Truth, in the King David episode).

Speaking of David...

There's only one shred of reference to his existence, other than the Bible, and that's the Tel Dan Stele.  It's esstially a stone tablet, and one line reads "Beit David", which translates to "House of David".  It would be pretty convincing evidence, if only there were enough information to link that line to the Biblical King.  Alas.  All we can prove is that there was a King named David (This was also in Digging for the Truth).

In the end, you have to choose your path.  You can either have faith that the entire Bible is true and the science is fallible, or you can trust the science and understand that people have a tendency to exaggerate, especially when it comes to "my God can kick your God's ass".

Conversion Class

Notes from Saturday's class...mostly more timeline stuff.

First, we started out with a question from a classmate.  She had been involved in a discussion of a story involving Noah, his son, and incest.  She was questioning why tradition considered it incest, when the text merely said, "uncovered his nakedness".  She wanted to argue for a literal interpretation, that Noah was drunk and passed out and, you know, stuff happened.

The Rabbi explained that "to uncover nakedness" is an idiomatic expression used in the Bible as a euphemism for sexual activity.  To uncover a man's nakedness could mean to have sex with the man, or with his wife.  In this case, sleeping with the wife is logical, because in the morning after, Noah curses his son's sons.  If you go through ancient texts of Middle Eastern and Mediterranean origin, cursing your offspring doesn't happen often, and when it does, it's because he usurped the father's power, or his bed.

As far as the Rabbi's concerned, this very cultural explanation that should be proof enough.  I buy it.  The classmate did not, and respectfully agreed to disagree.  The Rabbi bought that.

On to the history portion.  We left off last week at about 920 BCE, and began this session at 905 BCE, when King David's son, King Solomon, died.

The monarchy is split into two factions, following a rebellion.  The Hebrews are now in two separate countries, Judah in the South, and Israel in the North.

The two exist in parallel until 722 BCE, when Israel is attacked by the Assyrians and falls.  You see, the Israelites and the Judeans had to pay tribute to Assyria, who were the powerful people in the area.  At some point, the Israelites had had quite enough of their shenanigans, and decided to rebel.  According to the Rabbi, the Assyrians were the first fascists, and Israel wasn't the only country to rebel against their rules.  Judah didn't join in the rebellion, and that's probably why they survived.

This becomes the time of the Prophets.

There were two early Prophets: Elijah and Elisha, who emerged around 850 BCE.

Around 750 BCE, you start to see more Prophets emerging.  There was only one Israelite prophet, Hosea.  The rest were Judean: Micah, Amos, Isaiah (up through chapter 30 or so).

Another wave comes in about 650 BCE: Ezekiel, Jeremiah, Joel.

Before the fall of Israel, the two groups are aware of each other, and the prophets wrote about each other's countries.  It is interesting to note that the Israelites referred to their country as "Jacob", "Ephraim", "Joseph", and "Sumeria".  The Judeans initially only referred to their country as "Judah", but in about 650 BCE, they co-opted that name and all the nicknames as well, in an effort to take on their identity.

We spent the rest of class talking about what the Prophets do, and what purpose they served.

Some people thought they could see the future.

Some thought they were scholars and politicians.

I thought they were particularly insightful teachers and leaders.

The Rabbi said that there were three words for "prophet":

Navi: to interpret

Ro-eh: to see

Hozeh: to view

He said that they were the analysts of the time, that they used their theology as a lens through which to view the events of the time and predict what could be expected in the future.

Conversion Class

Today's class focused on setting a framework for our studies in Jewish history.

We learned a bit about the geography, so we could place where the ancient places were within a modern context.  I can't do justice to that here.

We also started learning a timeline of sorts; we mostly learned a geneology today.

Jewish history starts with Abraham, some 4000 years ago.  He was born in Ur, Babylonia, which was probably in present-day Iraq.  He eventually settled in Canaan, which would be in Israel today.

Abraham had two sons, Ishmael and Isaac.

Isaac had two sons, Esau and Jacob (who was later re-named Israel).

Jacob had 11 sons, who became the patriarchs of the 12 tribes (well...sort of).  The sons were Shimein, Levi, Reuben, Dan, Judah, Benjamin, Gad, Naphtali, Issacher, Zebulin, and Asher.  Joseph had two sons, Ephraim, and Menasseh, who both had land.  This would make 13 tribes, and you can't have 13 of anything.  And so it became that there is no tribe of "Joseph".  The Levites did not own land, because they served religiously.

After that, there is little record of who did what.  Not until Moses comes along, in about 1300-1250 BCE.  Then the Hebrews are led out of Egypt and make their way back to Canaan.

After Moses comes Joshua.  He fought the battle of Jericho.

Then, for a while, the Hebrews have no strong leader.  They're ruled by the Judges, who unite 

the people against an enemy (usually the Philistines), and then everybody goes back on their merry ways.  These guys (and a girl) were charismatic leaders whom the community sought out.

Saul becomes the first united king of the Hebrew people.  He's incredibly popular, and powerful.  He started out as one of the Judges, but after the battle was won, the people anointed him king.  He eventually goes a little crazy.

Enter David.  He fights Goliath, is very popular, and is seen as an ideal king.  He becomes the leader of the tribe of Judah and captures Jerusalem.  He becomes king of the Hebrews.

Succeeding David as king comes his son, Solomon.  He builds the first Temple, and becomes the last ruler of the united monarchy.  The nation divides, because Solomon enslaves the Israelites in order to build the Temple, and they eventually decide that they have had enough and rebel.

That's as far as we got, which brings us to about 920 BCE.