Good God: Faith for the Rest of Us

Radbam February 23rd, 2009

Prague 2/23/09

Rabbi Loew and the Golem by: Mikolas Ales

It’s one thing to learn about the Golem legend through its modern incarnations in the hip, urban revisionings of the new generation of Jewish authors. The Clay Giant’s saga impressed American popular culture early in the 20th century, as it did the young lives of so many as Superman, the hyper-anglicized, ethnically deracinated Man of Steel.

It’s another thing entirely to walk the stone lanes where the legend lived, and where the Golem’s creator, Rabbi Judah Loew, reigned as Rav Supreme. The tale is a local variant of mass messianic movements, but with an admonishing twist. The Jews of Prague needed a hero (without the disco back track) to defend them against the forever simmering and often devastating anti-Semitism that lay beyond the quarter’s walls. But we are a cerebral, pious people, little schooled in the Charles Bronson vein of vigilantism. So the Jews did the next best thing: the faithful, scholarly leader Loew created a monster/robot (Czech word)/redeemer called the Golem to save the day, protecting the Jews while introducing the concept of deterrence and mutually-assured destruction to the Prague community centuries before the Cold War.

End of story? Hardly, for no Jewish narrative can conscientiously close without a strident moral message and tip of the kippah to rabbinic authority.  Loew brought the being of Vltava river mud to life by inscribing 3 Hebrew letters on its forehead: aleph-mem-tav–Emet/Truth. When the Golem went off script and off the reservation, ransacking homes and lives as the embodiment of pure, unqualified violence, Loew, its only master, scratched off the Hebrew letter aleph, leaving the word met/death, thus ending the Golem’s sacred spree.

On one level, it’s a reaffirmation of the scriptural dictum-turned-cultural imperative: Not by might, nor by power, but by (My) spirit alone…But perhaps a less obvious lesson involves the essence of Truth. While it can set you free, any absolute taken out of context or employed without measure can be counterproductive at best, destructive at worst.

My minyan (+1) of fellow travelers have reached the boundary of the Promised Land of adult freedoms and responsibilities.  Perhaps their most trying challenge will be to grow beyond the sureties of absolutes (a capacity lost to fundamentalists of all makes and models) to confront, even to embrace, the power and purpose of living life in the gray zone. Gray, the color of the Golem’s muddy form, the tenor of evolved ethical struggle, and the foggy but freeing pathway to moral resolution as our true, ultimate redemption.

• Judaism , Popular Culutre , Travel
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Radbam February 21st, 2009

Vienna 2/20/09

I never quite got Westminster Abbey. Why take a perfectly good (actually, fairly remarkable) House of Worship and surround it with an indoor cemetery.  Pews sidle right up to graves in a scene only Stephen King could love.  Sure, it might enhance the prayers of some to be surrounded by the likes of Charles Darwin, Isaac Newton and David Livingstone (I presume). But for weekly, communal worship, the creepiness factor probably keeps away all but the most star struck and eccentric.

We met the inverse, but no less creepy, in Bratislava, Slovakia en route to Vienna. There, a small remaining plot of the 17th century cemetery containing the remains of the eminent Orthodox sage, the Chatam Sofer, has grown a visiting center and synagogue around it. While on many levels this is patently un-Jewish, as averse as we are to cults of the dead, especially when impressed into bondage to construct their stagecraft (I’m looking at you, Pharoah!), the ultra-pietistic and unapologetically anachronistic take great license in venerating the relics of the righteous.

Moses Shreiber, aka The Chatam Sofer, made his mark by drawing a line in the sand—resisting the modernizing pressures on tradition and the community for a Judaism relevant to the evolving cultural sensibilities of the emancipated Jew. Though more generous and well-intentioned in his approach, he is part of a long, gray line of reactionaries, some benign, some bellicose, futilely seeking value in recreating an imagined past at the expense of a more meaningful present and secure future.

The Chatam Sofer’s sarcophagus is the physical center of the small patch of earth at the nexus of this spontaneous shrine. But just behind his large slab is a more modest, almost obscured marker belonging to a man named Herzl. The proximity of stones reflects an irony only the fickle finger of fate or Hollywood could conceive, for it was this Herzl’s great grandson who would forge a nationalistic Judaism exclusive of faith, and sow the seeds of a modern nation-state that would provide refuge for the remnants of European Jewry’s annihilation. Herzl’s, seminal, visionary work, Altneuland, the Old-New Land, saw fate writ large upon the continental politics of his day. This vision acknowledged the past, but invested heavily in the urgency of the moment and an unrealized future. The Chatam Sofer would be a scarcely remembered figure of a vanquished, absorbed people had not Herzl and those he inspired embraced the demands and possibilities of what lay ahead. His great-grandpa’s stone should get better placement in the complex’s next remodel.  (photo and internet access:  Kyle Stratiner

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Radbam February 19th, 2009

Budapest 2/19/09

A good guide strikes the right balance between insight and accessibility, depth of knowledge and knowing when to stop sharing it.  The really good guides sprinkle telling, poignant and personal stories through their standard, potentially stagnant rap, bringing a place to life beyond the limited benefits of a Let’s Go audio book.  Our guide Julia had just such a story.

As we passed the Hungarian Parliament, taking note of the European Union flag waving from the building’s façade, Julia recalled the day in 2004 when Hungary joined the Union. Her friend threw a party, celebrating a much-awaited and much appreciated stability after centuries of Imperial, Fascist and Communist tumult.  The host baked an ersatz flag cake, of yellow stars on a blue marzipan field, stoking the sumptuousness of the moment from mere national pride to sensuous sweetness.

As the pieces were passed, the host reached Julia’s father, a native Hungarian Jew who had perhaps earned the most reason to rejoice after enduring the darkest days of the 20th century. Cake came with a side of apology for a slice lacking a coveted yellow star of the New Europe. The old man demurred that he had had enough of yellow stars for a lifetime during the war.

In that one moment, in its time and as retold, the paradox and struggles, the inexorable move forward and the intractable ties to history that are the enigma of Europe and the human condition emerged in stark, inevitable relief. A short tale, a brief moment and a precious lesson. Perhaps missed by most of my charges. I hope noted by some.

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Radbam February 18th, 2009

Budapest, 2/17/09

Before the blog, there were vlogs—travelogues–accounts of journeys that filled the hearts and imaginations of millions unable or unwilling to risk travel at a time when the dangers of leaving home were legion, vastly different from the comfort and recreation of today’s intrepid leisure-seekers. And so, the Good God Blog will become a temporary vlog, recording my far-from-Keruoacian impressions on the road with my synagogue’s 12th graders.

The trip itself is a pedagogic carrot, committing increasingly over-programmed teens to stay connected to the community and our tradition amidst the temptations, distractions and demands of the ramp up to college and the good life it promises (hopefully in these trying times!) This year we find ourselves in Central Europe, in societies only now enjoying the fruits of social and market freedoms gained over the past 20 years since the Big Slavic Bear’s wall came tumbling down.

The purposes of the trip are social, cultural, educational and yes, perhaps even spiritual, as these just-legal adults encounter a Jewish context far older, yet far less able to take for granted than their own. They will find much museum-grade judaica, exotic artifacts that record a destroyed past, little reflecting a viable present. At times, it seems the synagogue buildings and 12-deep cemeteries outnumber the practicing Jews, though I’m told in Budapest this is less the case. Here, the vanquished Hungarian fascists and retreating storm troopers simply could not liquidate the Jewish masses fast enough. Elsewhere in the region, what Hitler didn’t annihilate, Communism assimilated into irrelevance.

My lion-hearted explorers, charting a course these 10 days that generations of their ancestors could scarcely have imagined, will confront their past, struggle with their present and re-imagine a future for themselves and the world—as individuals growing personally, and as global and generational citizens seeking a place for themselves and a part in our unfolding drama. I am privileged to be their guide, and fortunate to be their witness and their student.

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