Rabbi envisions a seeker-friendly Judaism

Reprinted with permission of The Bennington Banner
Sunday November 27, 2011

This is the second of two articles on Congregation Beth El, its recent dedication of a new ark for the Torah, and Rabbi Arthur Green, who was scholar-in-residence at the congregation.
MARK E. RONDEAU, Religion Editor

BENNINGTON -- At a recent talk at Congregation Beth El, Rabbi Arthur Green said he has been trying to create what he calls a seeker-friendly Judaism.

Green was scholar-in-residence at Beth El and Israel Congregation in Manchester during the weekend of Nov. 18-19. This coincided with the dedication of a new ark for the Torah at Beth El.

Green's topic for his lectures was "Hasidism for a New Era: Mining the Hasidic Tradition for Contemporary Meaning." He is the rector of the Rabbinical School at Hebrew College and the author of several books, most recently "Radical Judaism: Rethinking God and Tradition."

"Seekers are people who have more questions than answers, and they're questions that are not looking to be answered -- that's what many rabbis don't understand," Green said. "A seeker is not somebody who asks a question, you answer it, a satisfactory answer, and then the questions go away, because a seeker is going to be a person on a quest and a quest is something of a lifetime journey. It doesn't really have an answer to it; if it has an answer, it opens up another question at a higher level."

As it says in the Psalms: "'Seek God's

face always,' because the seeking is not something that comes to an end when the question is somehow answered," he said.
Green pointed to Abraham, the first patriarch, "as the paradimgatic Jewish seeker" and also the first one. "He is therefore by definition not a loyal Jewish boy. He doesn't do anything because his parents told him to. He doesn't follow the tradition of his ancestors," Green said. "He's a rebel."

Green quoted a Hasidic master that Torah stories such as Abraham's are "meant to tell us that Torah is made from the lives of people. People behave in certain ways and their behavior becomes Torah."

However, Green asked rhetorically -- "Doesn't Torah come from God, isn't Torah eternal?"

"The Torah existed before the world was created. Rabbis tell us, God looked into Torah and created the world. But the eternal Torah, the Torah that was with God from the beginning is nothing other than great light, nothing other than great mystery. We can't fathom that Torah," Green said. "That Torah, in order to become a human document, in order to become something accessible to human beings had to be dressed in the garb of human actions."

Israel from the time of Abraham dressed the mysteries of the eternal Torah in human stories, he said.

"So that out of the actions of human beings the mystery is made accessible. You know how to become close to God because you have living examples of things people did: Welcoming guests, challenging God -- that, too, is part of Torah, burying the dead, mourning, seeking a wife for one's son," Green said. "All these ordinary human actions become Torah, become the way in which the transcendent mystery somehow becomes accessible to the lives of ordinary people."

In the process of people encountering God and God encountering the people, Torah is created. "When Torah happens, God is transformed and the people is transformed. We are transformed because our words become Torah, our actions become holy," he said. "And God is transformed because God becomes accessible to people. God becomes something you can reach out to."

Green said that to the question, "is the Torah divine or human, the answer is 'yes.'"

We know through critical scholarship that the Bible and the Torah were written by many authors with different perspectives over hundreds of years. Though written by human beings, "Divinity is there in a subtle way," he said. "The presence of God is there between the lines, it might be there in the white spaces between the words." The presence of God is "hidden in subtle ways."

Green said the idea exists in Judaism that Abraham observed all the commandments of the Torah before they were given.

"How did he do it? He looked into himself," he said. "Just as dealing with our bodies we don't need to be told sometimes what the body needs, or the body needs rest or the body needs certain kind of food, or the body needs nourishment, or the body needs sun. So really we don't need to be told what the spirit needs in terms of the commandments, but most of us are so busy with our bodily needs, we never get to the spirit.

"Abraham was the first that transcended his own body, he was able to give everything and he discovered the commandments within himself," Green said. "He discovered all the commandments and didn't need revelation."

If this is so, why did God have to give the Torah?

"Because he says we can't always live in moments like that. There are great people and there are great moments when we know the whole Torah within ourselves and that's the ultimate religious experience, moments when the presence of God is so real to us and so palpable to us, there's nothing else that needs to be said," Green said. "We just discover that presence and that moment, the joy of that moment, the fullness of discovery. But we can't live like that all the time. We fall from those moments. So for those moments when we fall, God gave the Torah as well."

Concluding his half-hour talk, Green said this is what he wanted to say about creating a seeker-friendly Judaism

"The figure of Abraham, the first that turns inward and discovers the whole Torah. What's the message there? The real journey, friends, is an inward journey, the real journey is a discovery from within," he said. "Religion is there to help you do it, to back it up, to give you the toolbox with which to do the spiritual work. But the work still has to be done by every one of us and by communities that support the life of spiritual journey and spiritual adventure."

Reach Mark Rondeau at mrondeau@benningtonbanner.com