Reading Jordanna Birnbaum’s post about a “rabbi roundtable” she attended, I was struck by the extent to which the role of the rabbi has changed, not necessarily for the better. Birnbaum relates that at the roundtable, rabbis from different denominations stopped at particpants’ tables one at a time, and fielded questions. A common denominator to all their responses was the focus on the individual as arbiter of the tradition, and of personal meaningfulness as the epitome of the religious experience.
Far be it from me to prefer a religion that is devoid of personal meaning, but meaning is not a static thing. One rabbi, for example, noted that he doesn’t like Rashi, and prefers to “look at the text and see what is says to me.” I don’t particularly like Rashi’s approach either, but ignoring him isn’t an option in Jewish learning. And even if it was, interacting with Rashi will lead you to discover new meanings in the text. Circumscribing your Jewish understanding so that it contains only that which you find unobjectionable and/or personally meaningful means living in a religious community of one.
And what of the rabbis in all this? Once, rabbis were figures of authority who compelled their followers in religious worship, ethical practice, and many other dimensions. At other times they were teachers, guides, counselors, and confidants. Today they are priests at the Temple of Me, serving as spiritual cheerleaders for congregations and individuals who feel empowered to celebrate their own ignorance of Jewish religious life, theology, and spirituality.
At the lay leadership retreat I recently attended at the Shalom Hartman Institute, Rabbi David Hartman spoke to the assembled congregation of both lay leaders and rabbinical leaders (who were on a simultaneous rabbinic retreat). Speaking to the rabbis, he said that in his shul, the board told him that if he wanted to receive a raise, he should begin to announce page numbers during the service. At this point, Rabbi Hartman became animated and roared “they wanted to turn me from a rabbi into a monkey!”
His message to the rabbis was courageous, powerful, and challenging. Reinvent yourselves! You are obsolete. Your ‘leadership’ over the last sixty years has led the Jewish community to its highest rates of disaffiliation, assimilation and ignorance. You have presided over a collapse, not a renaissance! Rabbis must teach Torah. Not just the parts that correspond to a congregation’s secular ethics or humanist leanings. The actual authentic Torah. Don’t like Rashi? Good. Go learn him and tell me exactly what you don’t like about him, and then go compare him to his grandson the Rashbam. Don’t want to follow halacha as written in the Shulchan Aruch? Don’t think it’s appropriate to modern times? How would you know, if you’ve never studied it? Rabbis have enabled this ignorance and abandoned their central mission in order to become fundraisers and salves to the conscience of Jews who will never flourish until more is demanded of them by God, by faith, and even, yes, by their personal sense of self-worth.
Rejewvenate! 
suitepotato said:
The problem with with Shulchan Aruch, Rashi, etc. is that they are all post-Torah. The Talmud itself is post Torah. When you ask about something, the answers given start with the Torah, and work forward in time from there, usually right to the Talmud and then on to the later works.
HOWEVER, if ANY of it even seems to contradict, what then? It’s been my observation that there’s usually an interpretation then to be made by the rabbi(s) at hand which becomes part of the way from then on.
However, the ultimate trump is supposed to be the Torah. Nevertheless, this is not always the case and numerous are the cases where we are less strict than the Torah would seem to indicate, and we then have one or more explanations in the Talmud for this.
There’s a slight bit of glossed over and swept under the rug inconsistency that becomes a problem when you insist on consistency and it gets there because the human heart for all its foibles and imperfections, when it is at rest and calm, keeps pushing towards leniency and loosening of standards, not tightening. I think also, that people have a natural desire like their Creator to investigate and think for themselves. I think this is why the Torah is so often cryptic or thin. If everything was stated to the last detail, we’d need not do anything but be slaves following commands.
The Torah necessarily draws us in by leaving mystery to come together to solve and flesh out the details. I firmly believe the rabbis of today should be taking part in the ongoing interpretation and that in the journey towards understanding are they made ever better and more like the sages of times past. Simple direction following doesn’t make great thinkers and those who set down the great works had to do a lot of thinking.
rejewvenator said:
I don’t agree with you on the specifics of the development of the tradition post-Torah. Most importantly, within the Talmudic and post-Talmudic world, the Oral Law trumped the written (eg. eye-for-eye not being taken literally, among thousands of other examples).
Consistency is not a virtue of the Torah or Jewish writing following it, a point I made in this post. It is a virtue of observant Jewish living, but like you said, the human heart and condition are not well-suited to consistency. It’s a good goal, but we acknowledge that we can never truly achieve it.
At the very least we can agree that the role of the rabbi should not be to issue directions and commands, but to encourage us to explore our tradition, interpret it, and live it.
Alan Abbey said:
David Hartman continues to be courageous. Look at his latest post on the Hartman website – Israel is not the messianic redemption but a place of opportunities and possibilities – http://hartman.org.il/
Garnel Ironheart said:
> Israel is not the messianic redemption but a place of opportunities and possibilities
Duh. That’s why the Mizrachi call it the first flowering of the redemption, because it’s not the redemption itself.
At any rate, one must remember that, at the root of it, the Rav is a teacher and judge in a community that is supposed to view education and learning as the highest value.
But in Western society, we have created a culture in which no one can be insult so even the ignorant have the right to an opinion on a subject they know nothing about.
Imagine a congregant saying “Well, this is what I think the pasuk means” and being told by the rabbi: “Well, since you can barely read Hebrew and can’t even spell Rashi, your opinion means nothing and you should go learn what the master commentators wrote”. That rabbi wouldn’t be employed there much longer, especially if the insulted congregant was a major donor.
This is the situation today’s rabbis, especially outside the yeshivish world, have found themselves in. But to change it doesn’t require a change in rabbinical style but rather a change in the attitude of us lay folk.