Changing the Halakha

Judaism, Fall, 2001 by Irvin Brandwein

LIKE MANY, I VIEW WITH ALARM VARIOUS TRENDS IN Jewish religious life which have become increasingly severe and strict during the last half-century. Oddly, many recent changes in Jewish Law emanate from the extreme right. If we who occupy the religious center do not become as passionate, committed, and articulate in our study and teaching as the giants of the Hassidic and Yeshiva worlds, then we will have completely surrendered both the power and privilege to speak for Jewish authenticity. Total religious control will have been relinquished to a small but stalwart circle of "authorities" who have grown steadily in power. We will have yielded sacred ground. If we continue to allow a genuine and ancient tradition of liberal Halakha to lay dormant and forgotten, buried in the history of the vanished communities of Western and Central Europe, the Ottoman Empire, the Mediterranean, Asia, and the Caribbean, then we must acknowledge our complicity in ignoring some vital lessons of Jewish History and Law. Who defines religious authenticity anyway? How are the criteria chosen?

In North America, while many movements have researched and developed classical Halakha, too often we concede vast and crucial areas of Jewish life to the extreme right-wing. These include dietary laws, divorce, mikve, eruvin, mezuza, conversions, and circumcisions. By abdicating our duty to salvage, transmit and apply neglected but genuine traditions of Halakha, we allow only one model to represent Jewish authenticity and legitimacy for our children and the world. This is no longer tolerable. It is high time that we unite to lay the foundations for a new perspective.

Too many in the Jewish world accept the misleading notion that there is really only one way to be authentically Jewish. Their vision of Judaism is one of monolithic uniformity. However, if allowed to speak for itself, the Halakha (Jewish law) exhibits profound generosity, flexibility, grandeur, elegance, symmetry and an explicitly pronounced liberalism which remains loyal to our way of life. In fact, one can make a compelling case that the very term Halakha itself implies metamorphosis and change, for the word means proceeding, advancing, traveling, moving on a prescribed path.

Change characterizes our lives, and the Halakha has been supple as a guide. Unleavened bread (matzah) seems to have been at one time, the slave's diet and called "the bread of poverty." Later on in our history (at the very moment of the Exodus) it was to become the "bread of haste" (to be consumed in luxury while reclining) due to the sudden moment's notice given the Hebrew people to leave Egypt, allowing no time for the bread to rise. Similarly, "mezuzah" changes from being the symbolic blood on the doorpost intended to shield every firstborn from the tenth plague to its later incarnation as "scriptures on the gates of your house" (the Tetragrammaton appears ten times in the Mezuzah). Indeed, the Passover itself (the sacrificial feast), according to Halakha, may not be eaten in the manner specified by scripture ("wearing shoes, loins girded, staff in hand, with great haste," Exodus 12:11). Elsewhere, the Talmud insists that one who performs the duty of circumcision (the covenant of Abraham) in the same manne r practiced by our patriarch Abraham ("Mall Velo Parrah"-Yebamot 71b, Mishna Shabbat 19:6, Milla 2:3) has not fulfilled his obligation! No less an authority than Rabbi Akiva taught that the original sukkot (huts) sheltering the Israelites during the period of wandering differed from the regular sukkot required for the festival ritual (Sifra Emor 17, 103a, Sukkot 11b). (1) Movement, metamorphosis, and change are the very essence of Halakha.

Mishna is readily acknowledged to be the foundation and basis of all Rabbinic law (Halakha). The very name itself (Mishna) means, "change." The Hebrew root Sh-N-H, is richly nuanced and densely packed with meaning. Because it means both "repeat" and "change" it came, through a process of semantic development, to mean: "year." Among its other plain meanings are: two, double, second, teach diligently, study, repeat, memorize, cycle, sleep, alter, modify, mutate (as in the liturgy "Mishanneh Ittim," "Mishanneh Haberriyot," "Ma Nishtanna," etc.). All rabbinic students quickly discover that although the Mishna is the official commentary and legal interpretation of the Torah, it departs radically from scriptures in its form, content, structure, language, method, and style. The entire halakhic enterprise rests on the foundation of Mishna which is the quintessential reformation of Judaism.

During its long and complex history, the growth of Halakha has been dense, rich, uninterrupted, and even plural, as evidenced by the fact that some Jews are forbidden while others are permitted, according to Halakha, to eat rice, corn, and legumes during Passover. Across many centuries and diverse cultures of Jewish life various curious rulings were issued and have become a part of our historical/legal record. The Talmud warns us: "He who withholds even one single Halakha from the mouth of a student has robbed him of the inheritance bequeathed by his ancestors as it is written, Torah tzivah lanu Moshe." (2)