I read about yet another case in which a recalcitrant (allegedly) o'dox Jewish husband is refusing to give his wife a get & is blackmailing her for alot of money. (See here & here; these are from The Jewish Journal of Greater Los Angles; the second article has a link to a New York Times piece about the same case.)
Ugh. The whole thing is stomach turning. The NYT story quotes Rabbi Jeremy Stern from the Organization for the Resolution of Agunot as saying:
“The rabbinical court system is such an ad hoc system where any man is able to call himself a rabbi and any three rabbis are able to call themselves a court, so that even if it’s not accepted by anyone, he is able to hide behind this,”
Rabbi Stern has alluded to something that bugs the hell out of me about Judaism in general and o'dox/u-o'dox Judaism in particular, namely that we have no unified authority or spiritual leadership and the result (in divorce cases, in conversion, in kashrut, etc., etc.) is chaos in which many good people get hurt and many SOB's get away, in this case, with bigamy. Ugh, ugh and double ugh.
I will say again that one of the many things I admire about the Israelite Samaritans is that they have one spiritual authority that everyone accepts and the result is order, the kind that the Torah calls for, administered by the people whom the Torah calls to administer it (cohanim, i.e. Aaronic priests). I have to admire this. This is but one more instance in which we o'dox Jews have lost our way, lost the Torah's way, and could learn a thing or two from our Israelite Samaritan brothers.
Another issue, related to the upcoming Passover holyday. I do not want to count the Omer, at least not the way we Jews do. The controversy is well-known. Leviticus 23:15 says:
And you shall count unto you from the morrow after the Sabbath [mimacharat haShabbat], from the day that you brought the sheaf of the waving; seven weeks shall there be complete;
We Jews claim that the underlined/Italicized section does not mean what it says and that Shabbat in this case means the first day of Passover, meaning that the second day of Passover is the first day of the Omer. The Israelite Samaritans claim (wonder of wonders) that the Torah here actually means what it says, meaning that the first day of the Omer is the day after the first Sabbath that falls during Passover. I have the read the Jewish arguments in favor of the Jewish (duh) view and quite honestly they seem like so much contrived sophistry designed to prove that the text means something other than what it says (i.e. God doesn't tell it to us straight but rather teases us). I accept the idea of oral traditions (the Israelite Samaritans have them) but I cannot accept the idea that oral traditions can either contradict or add to the concrete, written Torah, such as in the case of counting the Omer or the number of days that a menstruating woman is niddah. As I noted in a previous post, the Torah explicitly says it is seven days. Our sages added five more days; how is this not adding to the Torah?
Back to the Omer. The Israelite Samaritan view takes the text at face value. So...
I do not want to count the Omer. Putting on tefillin every morning doesn't bug me so much (doesn't bug me so much now/yet); it seems harmless enough. But counting the Omer the way we do it seems to contravene the plain meaning of a Torah verse. What do I do? My quandary raises another issue. Do I, as an o'dox Jew, simply fall back on the wiser-men-than-I-have-figured-this-out-and-I-should-act-accordingly thing? This, in turn, raises another issue. Do I put the brain and the heart that God gave me on auto-pilot and just do as I'm told? This seems like mindlessly falling in with the hivemind/herd mentality. Are we so many spiritual lemmings??!!
I do not want to count the Omer; whether I will remains to be seen. I don't know what to do (yet).
I pray that God gives me guidance!
Well, the books (Samaritan Exegesis and The Israelite Samaritan Version of the Torah) have finally arrived! Thank God, at last!
I have read the forewords & introductions to the second book. I think I am going to read the Torah portions that match our weekly readings, to study how they compare and to note the differences.
I have read the first part of Samaritan Exegesis ("Mount Gerizim: The One True Sanctuary" by High Priest Amram Isaac and am about half-way through the second part ("The Book of Enlightenment: For the Instruction of the Inquirer" by High Priest Jacob son of Aaron).
High Priest Amram Isaac writes about Mt. Gerizim:
In the account (to which reference has been made) Jacob (upon whom be peace) is commanded to erect another altar on it, in order that the timid may be well assured that such a place is his refuge, for it is the house of God, the protector, (may He be exalted) who saves the one taking refuge in Him and seeking Him by faith, in this place.
I read this and tears welled up in my eyes. I am timid and the words of High Priest Amram Isaac reassure me. However imperfectly at this time, I take refuge in God and seek Him by faith (however imperfect, may He forgive me) in His place which is Mt. Gerizim. I must go back there and take my books and read and meditate there.
Now, more than ever, I feel that when I go to synagogue I am bowing in the House of Rimmon.
I've got to run. I will write more later.
NB
As I noted in a previous post, the Israelite Samaritans do not have professional holy men, i.e. all of their cohanim work and the young men of the (Holon) community serve in the IDF.
Unfortunately, sadly, apropos yesterday's demonstration in Jerusalem, this is not the case with us. It must be a gross distortion of Torah that so many healthy Jews use their Torah study as crowns to aggrandize themselves & as spades to dig with (see 4:7). Our eldest son (11th grade) is now going through the preliminaries vis-a-vis his eventual induction into the IDF for what should be at least 3 years of compulsory service. I served in the IDF reserves for 11 years (during which time I was in Lebanon, on the Egyptian border & in the Jordan Valley). How is it that our son and thousands of his peers should be the hewers of wood & drawers of water (to use a Biblical metaphor) for thousands of other(wise healthy) Jews who use (desecrate!) their Torah study to claim privilege for themselves??!! How is it that, when our son is inducted, my wife & I will have to live with the existential dread that the next knock on the door could be two officers from the Adjutancy Corps when other parents can rest assured that their children are safe & sound, far from harm's way, in some u-o'dox yeshiva? (Ditto for my wife/u-o'dox wives back when I was still doing annual reserve duty.)
Defending the Land of Israel and the people who live therein is holy work! The difference between the young man or woman in the IDF and the comfortable u-o'dox yeshiva student is that while the former are living up to the courage of their convictions (and may, God forbid, pay the ultimate sacrifice), the latter's convictions require no courage (and very little, if any, sacrifice).
No, I turn my back on the mentality that sees Torah-learning as the foundation of an aristocracy that claims privilege for itself (they're doing it for us, you see, and we should be grateful!) and deems itself worthy of material support from others' pockets. Quoth Abraham Lincoln's second innaugural address:
It may seem strange that any men should dare to ask a just God's assistance in wringing their bread from the sweat of other men's faces
Torah is life, life in this world, not apart from it in some cloistered study hall or in a privileged corner of it, but everywhere, even (especially!) in IDF service.
nb
