OzTorah

The foolishness of the people of Israel was unbelievable.

After being redeemed from slavery and experiencing the Revelation on Mount Sinai, their sin in making a golden calf was the height of irresponsibility.

But Moses was a patient man. Even at that moment he could find it possible to ask God to forgive them.

“Why, O Lord,” he prayed, “does Your anger burn against Your people whom You brought forth out of the land of Egypt?”

The commentators wonder why he mentioned the going out from Egypt. What was its relevance to his prayer?

The Midrash suggests that what Moses was implying was this: “Master of the world, from whence did You take your people out? From Egypt, where everybody worships cattle.

“Of all places in the world You found no other country to enslave Your children but Egypt, whose people exerted so much pressure on Your people that, against their will and better judgment, they too learned to worship a calf.

“Remember from whence You took them out!”

There is something almost impertinent in this Midrash. Blaming God Himself for putting the people into the situation of such irresistible pressure that it was no wonder they sinned, shifts the guilt away from those who actually committed the sin.

But the Midrash, sensing our surprise at its approach, offers a simile.

A boy got involved in bad company and committed a transgression and his father screamed at him, “I’ll kill you!”

The scene was witnessed by a friend who objected, “How dare you scream at your son? You yourself corrupted this boy, and now you yell at him? Of all trades, you apprenticed him to a frivolous occupation; of all locations, you selected for him a disreputable district… and now you’re blaming him because he could not resist temptation?”

The theology of the Midrash is a major problem. It suggests that whatever we do can in the end be sheeted home to God because wherever we are, in some sense God bears responsibility for putting us there.

But if we can limit our response to the Midrash and concentrate only on the human situation, there is an extremely pertinent lesson we can learn. For there is a Talmudic principle, “The mouse is not the thief – the hole is the thief!” (Gittin 45a).

If a mouse steals cheese, why only blame the mouse? Why not also blame the hole in which the mouse is hiding?

Likewise, if a person commits a wrong, why only blame the person concerned and not also the circumstances that made it possible for them to sin?

This reminds me of how aptly the Talmudic phrase was applied in 1972 by a leading preacher, who said that those who assassinated the Israeli athletes at Munich were not the only ones to blame; part of the guilt had to be ascribed to those nations that trained, harboured or condoned terrorists and made their crimes almost inevitable.

The world has changed since 1972, but there are still nations and peoples that have not learned the lesson.

Q. What are the main beliefs of Judaism?

A. There are two answers. One follows the approach of Maimonides and other great Jewish philosophers.

Maimonides’ thirteen principles are found in the Siddur in two forms ­- Ani Ma’amin and Yigdal, though both are later reworkings of the author’s own words.

Lists of Jewish beliefs were also made by Saadia Gaon, Yehudah HaLevi, Joseph Albo and others.

All are philosophical analyses, spelling out the nature of God, Torah, reward and punishment, etc. Influenced by the philosophical mood of the time, they try to express Judaism in formula form.

But they have their drawbacks. They imply that one has to assent to set formulas in order to be a Jew, and this is not the way Judaism has usually worked.

More: they are clinical and theoretical; as a student once said to Hermann Cohen, “You have told us about the God of the philosophers, but what about the God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob?”

The second approach is that of living Judaism. You do not find it in any one list, but it is everywhere in the Bible, Talmud and Midrash.

It is “Hear, O Israel! The Lord is our God, the Lord is one” … “Love the Lord your God with all your heart, soul and might” … “Love your neighbour as yourself” … “Love the stranger, for you were strangers in the land of Egypt” … “What does the Lord require of you, but to do justly, love mercy and walk humbly with your God?” … “Keep far from a false word” … “Beloved is man, for he was created in the image of God”…

According to Rabbi Simlai, the 3rd century sage, it was the prophet Habakkuk who best summed up Judaism when he said, “The righteous shall live by his faith” (Hab. 2:4).

The main thing is thus not the acceptance of a set of rarefied propositions but living out one’s faith in the real world.

Chasdai Crescas put it this way: “Salvation is attained not by subscription to metaphysical dogmas but solely by love of God that fulfils itself in action.”

Hence Samson Raphael Hirsch’s famous assertion, “The creed of the Jew consists of his calendar”: i.e. look at how a Jew lives, and that will show what he or she believes in.

Q. Is there any issue with Jews listening to the compositions of antisemites like Wagner?

A. In Israel, music lovers often debate whether to ban Wagner’s music from public performance.

Was Wagner worse than other antisemitic composers?

My answer is yes. His ideology was crucial to the German nationalist movement. Hitler saw Wagner as his predecessor as leader of the Nazi revolution.

Wagner argued that Jews were the enemies of humanity. Previously they had been branded Christ-killers; now they were so hungry for world domination that they would crucify mankind as a whole.

Despite the fact that Wagner died in 1883, 50 years before Hitler came to power, there is a violence in Wagner’s music that is almost Nazi in its intensity.

It is because of what Wagner symbolises that many in Israel want his work to be banned. Outside Israel it is a matter of personal judgment. No-one is forced to attend a Wagner concert.

The day before Purim is called Ta’anit Esther, the Fast of Esther.

Despite the popular view, it does not commemorate the three-day fast described in the Megillah (Esther 4:16).

Three days cannot be telescoped into one day, and in any case our Fast of Esther is not mentioned in the Megillah or ordained in the Talmud.

The late tractate Sofrim (21:1) does state that the sages of the Land of Israel did fast for three days before Purim, but not on consecutive days because such a long period of fasting would constitute a danger to life.

According to the Bet Yosef (Orach Chayyim 686), the one-day fast was introduced by the medieval ge’onim to recall a pre-Purim fast of the entire Jewish people, ordained to pray for protection from antisemites like Haman.

The name Ta’anit Esther is said to have come about like this: those who were involved in the fight with Haman’s supporters had to eat and drink in order to keep up their strength; Esther, safe in the royal palace, did not fight and was able to fast, which she did for the sake of her fellow Jews.

So Purim benefited everyone, but the fast was Esther’s fast.

Rabbi Adin Steinsaltz regards the festival of Purim as the festival of the Diaspora and the Book of Esther as “the scroll of the Jewish people in its exile”.

In the Diaspora the challenges were sometimes physical, sometimes spiritual, and sometimes both. What preserved us was centuries of sheer miracles.

Rabbi Steinsaltz writes, “This book (the Megillah) is the essence of Jewish life in exile, and of the faith that, behind all external causes, hides the ‘guardian of Israel’.

“The Megillah teaches us that the Jewish people must learn to live this sort of life, expecting miracles… not miracles like the parting of the Red Sea, done ‘by a mighty hand and by an outstretched arm’, but rather miracles hidden within the tortuous, winding ways of history.”

It is an inspiring thought, but how does it square with the rabbinic notion, “We do not rely on miracles”?

Perhaps the answer is that we should never consciously place ourselves in a situation of peril, asserting blithely, “Don’t worry; God won’t let us down”.

We have to opt for the least risky Jewish environment and exert ourselves to be the best possible Jews we can be, maintaining the faith that God will operate through “the tortuous, winding ways of history” to preserve us and protect His heritage.

It may not always happen in open, obvious and immediate fashion: God has to work in His way, even if it takes longer than we expect.