RABBI ARTHUR SEGAL:JEWISH RENEWAL:JEWISH SPIRITUAL RENEWAL:Mishpatim:ETHICS

RABBI ARTHUR SEGAL:JEWISH RENEWAL:JEWISH SPIRITUAL RENEWAL:Mishpatim:ETHICS

A Short Snap Shot of Rabbi Arthur Segal

Rabbi Arthur Segal

United States

I am available for Shabbatons, and can speak on various aspects of Jewish history,(from the ancient past to modern day, and can be area specific, if a group wishes), Spirituality, developing a Personal Relationship with God, on the Jews of India and other 'exotic' communities, and on Talmud, Torah and other great texts. We have visited these exotic Jewish communities first hand. I adhere to the Mishna's edict of not using the Torah as a ''spade'', so while I do ask for expenses to be paid if I am asked to travel, I do not have exorbitant honorariums for my services. I am post-denominational and renewal and spiritually centered.   I am available to perform Jewish weddings, and Jewish inter-marriages (Jewish intermarriage, Jewish inter-marriage, Jewish interfaith weddings) My post-doc in Psych from Penn helps tremendously when I do Rabbinic counseling. My phone number and address will be made available once I am sure of one's sincerity in working with me.

Rabbi Segal is the author of three books and many articles on Torah, Talmud and TaNaK and Jewish history. His books are : The Handbook to Jewish Spiritual Renewal: A Path of Transformation for the Modern Jew, A Spiritual and Ethical Compendium to the Torah and Talmud, and  Spiritual Wisdom of our Talmudic Sages. The first two are published by Amazon through their publishing house, BookSurge.

 

 For information on how to purchase these, please contact RabbiSegal@JewishSpiritualRenewal.net and visit WWW.JewishSpiritualRenewal.Net.  

 

 Todah Rabah and Shalom v' Beracoth. Rabbi Arthur Segal ,( Dr. Arthur Segal )RabbiASegal@aol.com . 

View my complete profile

 

Parasha Mishpatim: Exodus 21:01-24:18

Rabbi Arthur Segal
Hebrew College, Newton Centre, MA, USA
Via Shamash Org on-line class service
Jewish Renewal
Jewish Spiritual Renewal
Hilton Head Island, SC;Bluffton, SC, Savannah, GA

Law And Order

There are many times when I remember feeling proud to be Jewish and proud of our vast traditions. Reading this parasha brings me to one of those exceedingly proud moments. Only two or so months have passed since the first Pesach, and we are taught by Moses' rules of societal behavior in the middle of the Sinai wilderness

As modern Jews we hearken back to the original late 1800s Pittsburgh platform of the first liberal movement making the ritual laws of '"man to God'" optional, but keeping and doing the mitzvoth of the "man to man" laws. While debate is certainly open to whether one should or should not obligate himself in all of God's mitzvoth, there is no doubt that our anthromorphic mitzvoth were far ahead of their time. In an electric letter received from Rabbi Fred Davidow of Atlanta, he states, "As a general rule, Reform Judaism would consider all the mitzvoth involving ethics and morals to be binding." This parasha is chock full of these '"man to man" laws. Most of them today, in one form or another, form the basis of Western democracies. We as modern Jews therefore might do well to study this portion carefully.

All of these laws today are studied and discussed in our Talmud. I urge you to read through a tractate or two. Perhaps you will be inspired to study Talmud. You will see that Judaism was always a living religion and a way of life subject to interpretation and adaptability over time and place. Many of these pasuks (verses) are discussed in volumes in our great rabbinic literature.

Questions pondered in the Gemora section of the Talmud are intense. In Exodus 21:23-24, does "life for a life, eye for an eye" mean that literally or do we mean monetary compensation? In Ex. 22:24, when the Torah says we should not charge interest for our loans, and not to pay interest on loans, is it "kosher" to invite your loan officer to your home for dinner? If there are so many laws that have the death penalty as punishment, why does the Talmud say that a court that issues a death penalty more than once in seven, or some rabbis say seventy, years is a "bloody" court?

Before one can even begin to understand these laws or to undertake an acceptance of these man to man ethical laws, we need to ask, "Why?" Why should we do good to our fellow man? Why can't we steal if we can overpower another? Why aren't our individual lives more important than another's? The answer lies subtly in the parasha of last week, specifically in the order of the Ten Utterances.

Before we can do good to our fellow man, we must accept God as the creator and true judge of all. If good and evil are separated from God, they become no more than personal opinion. We have seen too often in history that God without ethics and ethics without God has led to evil. So the first three commandments command us to know and love God.

In the 1,000-year-old text Duties of the Heart, which reads as new today as any self-help book, Rabbi Bachya Ibn Paquda, of Spain, develops his logical syllogism on the belief in God as the creator of all. Hence we are all His children, and by doing good with our trained hearts, we are doing God's will. Without God, no act is holy. With God, all of our acts can be made holy and can help us get closer to God and develop our own spirituality.

The fourth commandment is about Shabbat. It is a gift from God. Granted, we know that historically the Babylonians set aside special days of the month on their lunar calendar (the 7^th, 14^th, 19^th, 21^st, and 28^th days). They could not cook foods, ride in a chariot, discuss work or politics, reveal oracles, or heal the sick. These were not Shabbats, not days of rest, but unlucky days to do the above mentioned tasks. If we do not love and accept God, we will not accept this gift of our Jewish Shabbat. And if we do not love ourselves to take time out for rest and our own soul's nourishment, how can we love another and do good for another?

The fifth commandment is to honor our parents. Can a person with self-hate, who doesn't believe in God, truly honor his mother and father? And can a person, who has no love for his parents, truly love strangers and see them as brothers and sisters of the same Holy Parent? Is this why these first five commandments are presented before the last five, which deal with relations between man and man?

Rabbi Samson Hirsh, a Frankfurt nineteenth-century scholar (and no friend of the German Reform movement), wrote that Torah (tav, vav, reish, hey) comes from the root word "to conceive" (hey, reish, hay). He says that the goal of Torah is to plant God's words in our minds and hearts so that we can cultivate them and manifest them in our good deeds. He says we must accept God outwardly and bring Him inside of us so that we can produce good deeds outside. He was in battle with the ethical humanists of his time, who cast off God given proscribed behaviors, and wanted to develop moralistic personalities from inside.

The role of Mishpat, from our parasha Mishpatem, is the performance of justice. The performance of justice is not just a divine occupation. The world without justice (tzaddakah) is rebelling against what Locke called Natural Law. When we perform acts of justice, we become a partner with God in doing Tikun Olam (repairing the world). We therefore are all elohim (dispensers of justice). "Every judge who judges with complete fairness even for a single hour, is as though he had become a partner to the Holy One, in Creation." (Talmud Bavli Tractate Shabbat 10A).

When we do good deeds to our fellow man, and follow the ethics in the Torah that we as liberal Jews embrace, we help bring the Shechinah (God's holy Presence) into the world, a Midrash teaches. Man has the capability of bringing the divine presence of God into each of our hearts by treating our fellow humans justly and with love.

The writers of the Kabbalah (Isaac Luria et al) described ten sefirot (levels) of God's nature that we should achieve for ourselves. The sefirah of judgment (din), also called gevurah (power), represents the fearsome powers of divine punishment and wrath in the world. This power, it is posited, is needed to maintain control over the universe. This power also contains the seeds of demonic evil, also known as the "other side" (sitra ahra). God's name when He dispenses din is Elohim. It appears on the left side of the kabbalistic "map." The sefirah of chesed (loving kindness, compassion, or love), also called gedullah (greatness), represents the generous, benevolent side of God, best shown in man by Abraham. God is known as El or El elyon when he shows chesed, and this trait appears on the right side in kabbalistic terms. Luria says there are seventy-two bridges of chesed. The right side represents attributes of chakmah (wisdom), chesed (love), and nezah (eternity), while the left side represents binah (understanding), din (justice), and hod (glory). We can see how the left side without balance from the right can lead to evil, while the right side without the left can lead to weakness.

Wisdom seeking, like a cave-dwelling monk without real life understanding, is not a Jewish concept. Knowledge without wisdom can lead to disaster. Too much mercy without justice leads to anarchy, while too much justice without mercy leads to totalitarianism. The middle column brings us tiferet (beauty) with a strong foundation (yesod), leading to a divine crown (keter), and a oneness with the Godhead, the Ein Sof, the Unknowable Infinite. This middle represents the ideal balance of mercy and justice. This harmony, the Kabbalah teaches, is important for the survival of the universe.

The beauty of this parasha is in its combination of everyday societal problems with a relationship with God. Judaism takes the everyday and makes it holy. We take what some religions consider profane and make it divine. The Talmud teaches that it is a sin to be offered a new fruit you have never tasted before and refuse it. Our religion glorifies relations between husband and wife. And we make holy our relationships with one another, when we truly are Keneset Yisroel, the people of Israel, the children of the One God. We need, as the saying goes, to think globally but to act locally.

Let's keep our eyes on our own behaviors instead of judging our fellow congregants, officers, rabbis, and cantors, and let's work to make our own synagogues places where the Shechinah would be happy to dwell.

Shabbat Shalom:

Rabbi Arthur Segal
Hebrew College, Newton Centre, MA, USA
Via Shamash Org on-line class service
Jewish Renewal
Jewish Spiritual Renewal
Hilton Head Island, SC;Bluffton, SC, Savannah, GA

WWW.JEWISHSPIRITUALRENEWAL.NET

 

The SPIRITUALRENEWAL mailing list is hosted by Shamash: The Jewish Network a service of Hebrew College, which offers online courses and an online MA in Jewish Studies, http://hebrewcollege.edu/online/

To unsubscribe email SPIRITUALRENEWAL-unsubscribe-request@SHAMASH.ORG
For other options go to: http://listserv.SHAMASH.ORG/

---

The year's hottest artists on the red carpet at the Grammy Awards. AOL Music takes you there.