Hartman Lectures 2 and 3

LECTURE 2 COVENENTIAL CONSCIOUSNESS FEB 12.2007
Covenential Consciousness is an empowering experience that calls the individual to responsibility and free choices. These choices are independent of authority and authoritative guidance.

Halacha is the translation of Mitzvot (commandments) into an everyday reality. It is only a framework to guide us not an overarching authoritative structure.

We look as an example to Maimonidies in his understanding of the role of the convert within Judaism. In his letter to Ovadiah the convert (translated by Lorberman) Maimonidies wrote that there is no difference between the tribal ethnic Jew and the convert Jew. What makes someone Jewish? Is the covenant of Judaism able to supercede birth? Historically, no. Ideology on the choice to live a Jewish live was not the winning voice.

For Maimonidies the way ofthe Lord is natural morality. This is the way to God that Abraham taught. The unity of God and the aceptance of this as well as the morality was the way to enter into the Abrahamic mosaic.

Halacha is independent mosaic that followed the Abrahamic mode. For Hartman this is problematic for those who dictate their lives purely according to the Halachic model.

The Abrahamic comunity could not exist in a Pagan world. In Egypt they witnessed that you can't build your life purely on a philosophy/ideology. You need materialistic/tangible realitites to seperate you from the larger society to survive. This was the beginning of the Mitzvah/Halacha as a diciplined framework. What keeps people Jewish is the fabric in which they live by. People are not moved by ideas, but by behavior.

Abraham's belief was the rejection of idolotry and the unity of God. A religion of faith, not of rules. Therefore one who chooses faith shoudl be accepted as one who was born a Jew. "No difference exists between us and you" "Let not your geneology be a light in your eyes"-Maimonidies letter to Ovadiah the Convert.

What does this mean? The light in your eyes goes directly back to God. This covenant that the convert takes on shoudl be the overpowering strength of identity, feeling a part of the people. Unfortunately this is not the reality of today.

Genetic Jewishness can be first seen in the Mishna regarding the bringing of the first fruits to the Temple. Bikuim 1:4--When one who is born to a Jewish mother brings the first fruits he makes a decleration that 'My Father was a wandering Aramean'. When a convert brings the first fruits he states 'His Father was a wandering Aramean'. In the Talmud Yerushalmi it is stated that we hold according to R. Yehuda who believed that the convert too states 'My' since Abraham was the father of many nations. Maimonidies also holds like R. Yehuda.

There is a later tractate of Gemara (Babylonian Talmud) in Kidushin that states "Don't elect a King who is not of your bretheren by birth". Can we use the Aggadic motif of Maimonidies to challange this? Challenge Halacha? The Gemara? How can one say that a convert is not one of your brothers??

Do morality and deeper theological principles trump halachic tradition? Does it have weight in interpreting the law? For Maimonidies the law is what the Talmud and the tradition has enabled him to state it is. Even though he has an enormous amount of moral and deeply theological literature, he is unable to combat Halacha.

Can we challenge halacha? Ask the question of why it exists? Can I ask is this how God intended me to live? Do I have legitimacy to do so? Can my religious vision/weight or the choice of my relationship to God be the ground of my decision making process?Do I have the freedom of decision making based on my own moral basis? To what degree do theological and moral impulses play a role/have ground to determine Halachic practice?

No book can decide for me in crucial situations.

HARTMAN LECTURE 3 SEARCH FOR THEOLOGICAL & MORAL MOTIFS WHICH SHOULD BE THE GENORATORS OF HALACHA FEB. 26.2007

Halacha should not be self sufficient but a mirror of religious impulse. There is the need to confront tradition where the tradition itself violates moral and deeply religious impulses.

Individualistic thrust with Maimonidies is morality. Collectivity is the halacha. It is out of the community where his spirituality begins. Choosing Halacha is choosing the Jewish way.

If so, am I completely claimed by the community?? Sinai was the where sole individuals came to merge and mold into a collective. This collectivity can thrust out individuality, but how do you navigate this? How does one allow for individual choice in the face of authority?

Halacha spins in it's own orbit. It no longer takes into consideration of where the individual is.

WHAT DO YOU FEEL??? THIS should be THE question. Can another tell you how to feel? How do you know th trust yourself?

Hartman is trying to find the person within Judaism. What do you feel when you stand before God? What do you feel about your religion?

There is a responsibility for Scholarship-educating onesself. Asking how you feel and then seeing if that music contains within it the tunes found with the framework of halacha. How does it play out?

Deep religous subjegation today comes in relationship to the State of Israel. For example: Yom HaAtzmaut (Israeli Independence Day). Does one recite Hallel or not? With or without a blessing? OR does one lament and mourn at the Kotel HaMaravi (Western Wall)?? All are realities. How do you feel?

The greatest Halacha for validity is personal feeling. Without it Halacha is producing drones. This cannot function within a living Judaism. It is only contributing to the death of Judaism.

Maimonidies would disagree. In the Guide to the Perplexed Ch. 3 he tries to offer an explaination to animal sacrifice within Judaism. For him there must be a need. For him there is no room for the possibility that anything that God asks is arbitrary. He deeply wants to translate will into wisdom. He explains that sacrifice either develops moral growth, communication, or social health. To say there is a law without meaning would make God arbitrary. Maimonidies wanted to merge God of nature (god of wisdom) with God of revelation (god of will).

His goal ws to protect God from the possibility of being arbitrary.

Torah cannot be seperated from te deep religious impulse to ween the Jewish people away from Paganism. Whatever the Pagans did, the Jews did the opposite. The Pagans worshiped the sun, the Jews worshiped the moon. Pagans exhalted animals, the Jews sacrificed them. As a weening process, the Jews were also used to sacrafice--it had been used in Egypt. It was the only expression of praise to God they were familiar with.

The nature of the people could not have been changed. God doesn't change human nature. Sacrifice became a restricted practice. It could only be done by the priests within the temple.

For Maimonidies there are 3 types of prayer:
1. Sacrifice: Pagan forms were restricted however sacrifice became included within Temple worship
2. Prayer as we know it today
3. Silent Contemplation

Sacrifice is the lowest form. Prayer can be done by everyone. How do we elevate people to silent contemplation?

Law of revelation was also given in a response to a historical reality. One must to listen to a people to hear what their needs are. For Hartman this is what Orthodoxy cannot accept.

The Torah became eternal not because of revelation but because it was re-interpreted. We make the Torah eternal--always taking it into context.

You can't have anything without relating it to the situation from where it comes.

Why does God allow the world to go in a way that is not perfection? He prefers to make us choose, to give us the opportunity to choose. The prophets made change through education and patience. God doesn't change nature, God doesn't legislate behavior.

In another text, the Mishna Torah Maimonidies seems to contradict himself in regard to sacrifice. Although it is the lowest form of prayer and a response for a specific time and people he still beleives that when the 3rd temple is rebuilt there will be the reinstatement of sacrifice. Why? Because for Maimonidies the only way to change law is through the Sanhedrin (the old high court) a centralized body that organized Halachic change. For Maimonidies there is no room for the individual to make these choics alone doing so would undermine the validity of Halacha. If the Sanhedrin had abolished it, it would be a non-issue.

Hartman: Man should move to a higher form of worship. why don't we use that as our guiding principle?

There may be reasons the necessity of the law. But once the law is created it functions in it's own orbit. It is seperated fom those reasons of creation (Solevechik).

Hartman: THIS IS CRAZY! Halacha is alive! You can't remove it from the reasons of why it was created, the moral impulses. Halacha is always anchored in both the reality in which it was created and the people who live it. Halacha is not an independent system. Rules are not a substitution for lived reality. The Torah is the first moment of the system, not the end. What makes the Torah so interesting is it's imperfections. We have to challenge humans to reinterpret and fix these imperfections. Just as future generations will reflect on us.

Holy is shaped by deep deep imperfections.