Radical Judaism_ Rethinking God and Tradition - Arthur Green [91]
Agenda for a Radical Judaism
The need for ongoing human participation in the quest for redemption is the context of the volume you have before you. Radical Judaism means a reframing of our contemporary perspective on the great questions, a leap forward that shows we are not afraid to be challenged by contemporary reality, while we remain devoted to hearing the greater challenge of God's voice calling out “Where are you?” anew in our age. This means a Judaism that takes seriously its own claims of ongoing Creation and revelation, even as it recognizes all the challenges to them. To “take them seriously” in our day cannot mean simply holding fast to them without question, dismissing the challenges of science and scholarship or seeking to avoid dealing with them. It means rather to rethink our most foundational concepts— God, Torah, and Israel and Creation, Revelation, and Redemption, to ask how they might work in the context of what we really believe in our age, and thus how they might speak to seekers in this century. Going back to the mountain and hearing the Word again, hearing it with clarity as the eternal voice speaks for our own day, will require a new sort of listening, one that has never yet existed, unique to this generation and to this moment.
I said above that the covenant is our own creation in response to Sinai. I affirm that we are still committed to that covenant, still bound by it. The moment of Sinai is an eternal one. Whenever we open our hearts to God as Jews, we find ourselves still standing at that mountain. Torah is just this moment being given; our heart is forever leaping forth to receive it. How could we not want to live in faith with such a moment? The covenant ties us forever to that event. Here we are, just two months out of Egypt, having been given the great gift of freedom by a power that we are just learning to name. Now we together confront the question “Who do we want to be?” What kind of nation will be fashioned from these liberated slaves? What is the right way to live in response to the great and transforming events that have happened in our lives? How do we respond in gratitude? Recognizing God's image, love of God and love of neighbor, and the ten commandments are the right starting places. But do they suffice?
We are stillfaced with those questions. To be a heterodox religious Jew, as I clearly am, is to believe that those questions remain eternally unresolved. Yes, the rabbis have been discussing them for centuries, and all those discussions are part of our heritage. That is talmud: an unending conversation about how to live. The prior rounds of this conversation are to be studied, loved, appreciated. But they do not bind or foreclose the discussion. To be a Jew is still to think about the right way to live, to be challenged to respond. How do we live a holy life after the Holocaust, with a third of our people dead and so many wounded by cynicism and despair? How do we stand before Sinai as a people that fully includes the voices of women equally with those of men? How do we lift our heads in God's presence in a time when Jews are seen by many, and with some justification, as oppressors rather than victims? Our response needs to change shape and grow in each generation as it is confronted with new and different challenges, but it still faces the same question. Ayekah? Where are you?