A few thoughts on Ki Tisa

In reading over Ki Tisa, I feel drawn to a piece of commentary that, it seems to me, every year, I come back to again.
In the episode of the golden calf, in Shmot 32:1 it says:

“Arise and make for us elohim that they will go before us, since this man Moshe who brought us out of Egypt, we don’t know what has happened to him.”

The Chasidic commentator R. Meir Simcha says that Israel didn’t really want to make an idol. Rather, Israel thought that Moshe was so far above them that when he disappeared, they thought God would no longer come to dwell among them. As Hirsch also comments, the people didn’t believe that God came to them, but that Moshe brought God to them.

The Torah tells us that Israel said that Moshe was “the man who brought us out of Egypt.” That means that Israel did know that it was God who brought them out. Israel didn’t confuse Moshe and God – they knew that Moshe was doing God’s work, and they heard and saw all the miracles that God did for them.
– So, after Israel made the calf, they said (32:5)

“Tomorrow shall be a festival for God!” and in 32:4, just the verse before, they announced, “This is your God, Israel, that brought you out of Egypt.”

They didn’t think that the calf was a god, they were trying to make a place for God to dwell, or perhaps a footstool, a statue of precious metals that would be sort of like the cherubim that were on the ark, which was “God’s footstool,” so that God would dwell there. Israel had the idea that Moshe was the path to God. You see, with Moshe gone, they just knew that no mortal person was good enough for the shechinah to hover over. God was not with them, God was brought by Moshe.

This should give us pause. It is so very close to the idea of God requiring a mediator in Christianity (or even multiple mediators, first, their Xristos, and secondly in some sects, the priests) – or closer to home, the idea that Rabbi Schneerson is the messiah, who will be revived from the dead. Perhaps it is a natural human feeling to want a person who is better than us to serve as a channel to the divine, perhaps it is natural to feel that we are not good enough to bring God amongst ourselves. But this is contrary to what Judaism tells us. We do not know the place of Moshe’s burial because God was concerned about this sort of idolatry.

And make no mistake: it was not the calf which was the idolatry. We don’t have to worship something as God or as a god for it to become idolatrous. It is the act of removing responsibility from ourselves to connect with God that is the essential act of idolatry. Believing that only Moshe can bring God to us, that’s idolatry, because God is not at the beck and call of a person. Any person. Our connection to God is part of an ongoing relationship that we have to build both as individuals and also as a people.

Shmot Rabbah 44:1 says:
Another explanation of ’Thou didst pluck up a vine out of Egypt’. …Thou wilt also verify the explanation: ‘Just as the living vine is supported by dead stalks, so Israel, alive and eternal, lean upon their patriarchs who are dead.’ You will thus find that Elijah offered up many supplications on Mount Carmel for the fire to descend, as it says, Hear me, O Lord, hear me (I Kings 18:37), but the Lord did not hearken unto him. As soon, however, as he mentioned the dead, and said: O Lord, the God of Abraham, of Isaac, and of Israel (ib. 36), he was immediately answered; ... Moses, likewise, after Israel had committed that act [the Calf], stood for forty days and nights pleading n their behalf, but he was not answered; but as soon as he made mention of the dead he was immediately answered, as it says, REMEMBER ABRAHAM, ISAAC, AND ISRAEL, THY SERVANTS. What follows?--AND THE LORD REPENTED OF THE EVIL WHICH HE SAID HE WOULD DO UNTO HIS PEOPLE. A proof that just as the vine that lives receives its support from dead stalks, so do living Israel find support in their patriarchs long dead;- hence REMEMBER ABRAHAM, ISAAC, AND ISRAEL.

Israel does honor those who came before, and we depend upon the merit of our ancestors. But this is a world away from considering them the saints through whom God comes to us. The reason that the image is of a vine is that the vine appears dead, but it lives, and that is why the vine can continue to be fruitful. But that doesn’t mean that our ancestors are literally alive, nor chas v’shalom, that we should expect their resurrection to bring moshiach. To the contrary, it is because the vine that is green is part of the vine, just as the part that appears dead is part of the vine. It is only that the core of the vine is alive throughout the vine. Without that green sap and core, none of the vine will exist or bear: and what is that vine? It is God and Torah within all of us. When we depend upon the merit of our ancestors, it means that we recognize the Torah within them, and let it flow through us as well. But what happens if you think that the older part of the vine will be revived, and the green, new parts doesn’t have to bear new fruit? Well, nothing. That part of the vine is no longer the part that bears.

The problem is when we become emotionally attached to the fallacies of the idolatry. When there is comfort in an imagined past in which everyone knew their place and were rewarded for it, in which we view with sentimentality the way people lived, and disregard that which is before our eyes as sin and wrong, we are already setting ourselves up for failure. There is no one who should come between us and God. God does not require a footstool, Moshe is a leader, not a channeler, and certainly not a magician making the spirits do his will. To excuse oneself from the duty of bringing moshiach because someone else is there to do it, or be it, that's idolatry.

Rebbe Smackdown

New York's supreme court ruled that two of the three main bodies of Chabad have the right to expel Congregation Lubavitch - the messianist faction- from the synagogue in the bottom of 770. Apparently this struggle has been going on for about 15 years (actually, this makes me feel much better - I hadn't known that there was much of anything going on opposed to the crazier factions of the movement, which, from all accounts now make up, at least half of Chabad) but the suit stems from when some member/s of the messianist group defaced a plaque that referred to the late Rabbi Menachem Mendel Schneerson as "of blessed memory" because that's not what Congregation Lubavitch believed was the current state of said rebbe.

From JTA

New York State’s Supreme Court ruled Thursday in favor of Merkos L’Inyonei Chinuch and Agudas Chassidei Chabad, two of Chabad’s three main bodies, giving them the right to eject Congregation Lubavitch Inc. from the synagogue located in the basement of 770 and 784-788 Eastern Parkway, in the Crown Heights section of Brooklyn. The sites represent the worldwide headquarters of Chabad-Lubavitch.

In that first case, the court ruled in favor of Chabad’s leadership, declaring in June 2006 that Merkos and Agudas are the rightful owners of the entire property. The current suit was brought by Merkos and Agudas in order to give them the authority to physically remove the opposing congregation, and its four gabbais, or trustees, from the premises.

but wait, there's more:
Apparently this is their fifteen minutes. Or something.

In Israel, apparently it's just gotten out that there may be problems with the beliefs of some Lubavitchers regarding their former (or not) rebbe. The Jerusalem Post reports that a former FSU immigrant who was not Jewish , but was eligible under the law of return, had become interested in converting and studied in a meshichist Jerusalem ChABAD yeshiva.

About two weeks ago, he appeared before a beit din (rabbinic court) for his conversion. He had nearly finished, when one of the rabbis asked him if he believed that the rebbe was the messiah. He answered yes, that that was what he had been taught, and the court refused to convert him.
The JPost says, "

... a source in the State Conversion Authority said that at least two leading religious Zionist rabbis ruled that messianic Chabad was beyond the pale of normative Jewish belief.

"They [messianic Chabad Hassidim] attribute to him supernatural powers years after he passed away. That is not Judaism. It's something else."

Chief Sephardi Rabbi Shlomo Amar will be asked to decide this weighty theological question and in the process pass judgment on thousands of members of the messianic stream within Chabad Hassidism who believe that Rabbi Menachem Mendel Schneerson, who passed away in 1994, is the messiah.

This according to the article; I have heard an (unsubstantiated as of yet) rumour that, in fact, Rabbi Amar has ruled against the conversion applicant, and thus, essentially declared meshichist Lubavitch treif. I am curious as to what effect will this have on ChABAD: Is this a recognition that some beliefs are outside the pale, even if the holder of said beliefs has the outer appearance of Orthodox praxis? What effect will this have on the yeshivot that are still er, offering this perspective, either in Israel or the USA?

By the way, speaking of treif, Rubashkin (who is owned by the ChABAD Lubavitch Rubashkin family just to be on topic), has apparently had its teudat kashrut yanked by KAJ (HT to Failedmessiah)

One last note:
First, England's Jewish Chronicle notes that England's Lubavitch movement is in some serious economic trouble: apparently because of pouring an enormous amount of money into a new club for young Jews that they opened this year. Apparently nearly all the donations they received this year went into said club, "including 'almost all' of this year’s £750,000 yield," leaving them £1.5 million (that's 2,959,951 dollars American) in debt - and of course, they've had to close the club, in addition to leaving their teachers unpaid since April (although donors have now stepped in to pay the teachers' wages).

An Interesting Letter

Dr. David Berger, recently appointed director of YU's Yeshiva College's Jewish Studies Department, writes a response to the accusation that he excludes a major Jewish group from Orthodoxy (the Lubavitchers) and requires members of the Chabad-Lubavitch communityat YU to "take some sort of oath declaring they do not believe the Rebbe is the Messiah to be considered accepted within Orthodoxy." This accusation, appearing in the Commentator
challenges Berger to be more open-minded - I suppose about whether or not it's okay to believe that the Lubavitch rebbe is either the messiah or divine.
The gist of his response is that "a large majority of Lubavitch hasidim believe that the Rebbe is the Messiah while a very substantial number believe that he is pure divinity. (For a succinct presentation of the evidence, see http://chareidi.shemayisrael.com/archives5766/pinchos/olubavtchpnc66.htm)," suggests that parties interested in the matter read his book, The Rebbe, the Messiah, and the Scandal of Orthodox Indifference, states that he is not calling for excommunication - comparing his call to be similar to that of moderate Orthodox to Conservative and Reform Jews, which tickles me in oh, so many ways.

He concludes, more or less,

We live in an olam hafukh, an upside-down world, where spokespersons for a movement permeated by Christian-style posthumous false messianism and even avodah zarah can accuse Jews who deny them automatic Orthodox legitimacy of violating Jewish values. This is how I formulated the point in the Hebrew book: "Chabad hasidim have largely succeeded in silencing their critics with the accusation that those critics are fomenters of strife who undermine Jewish unity and disdain the supreme value of ahavat Yisrael. Permission is thus granted to the destroyer (nittenah reshut la-mashchit) to hijack your religion as you watch, while you remain helpless-because you are a decent person who loves the Jewish people and shuns divisiveness."

Students in my Bernard Revel Graduate School course on messianism will testify that although I assigned some of my writings on Chabad-along with the works of Lubavitch hasidim-I kept classroom discussion as analytical and non-polemical as possible. As to Yeshiva College, it no doubt contains students who are not fully committed to Orthodox Judaism, and I do not see the need to ask questions of Lubavitch applicants that are not asked of others. But attending Yeshiva College is not the same as serving as a rabbi, a dayyan, a Jewish Studies principal, and, in the context of avodah zarah, a shochet, a sofer, and a wine producer.

Wow, and they say I'm blunt.

I'm curious to see what people think of all this - I'll probably update this post later to say more of what I think... the comments over on Jewschool have not at all been what I expected.

xp Jewschool