Being Jewish: Complex from the Beginning
In the beginning was the word. A word that didn’t quite make grammatical sense. B’Reishit. We usually learn it as “In the beginning.” In the beginning, God created. But technically, the form of the word reishit is only used for “in the beginning of”. So scholars modern and ancient suggest the text should read, “In the beginning of God’s creating…”
Textual emendation is nice, an apparent solution to a problem, but the deeper puzzle to chew on is why the text seemed wrong in the first place. While modern scholars assume a mistake, ancient scholars assume that even this - an apparent mistake in grammar - this too is Torah. This too has something to teach.
Or as Rashi (11th century France) puts it in a comment on the word, “אֵין הַמִּקְרָא הַזֶּה אוֹמֵר אֶלָּא דָּרְשֵׁנִי”, loosely translated as “This verse is screaming out: interpret me (darsheini, drash me)!”
So Rashi cites a midrash, the genre of rabbinic writing that does drash. Midrash “is an interpretive act, seeking the answers to religious questions (both practical and theological) by plumbing the meaning of the words of the Torah.” In Rashi’s paraphrase, the midrash teaches:
God created the world for the sake of the Torah which is called (Proverbs 8:22) “The beginning (reishit) of God’s way,” and for the sake of Israel who are called (Jeremiah 2:3) “The beginning (reishit) of God’s increase.”
For us, the practical and theological question this teaching responds to is an increasingly urgent and fraught matter of identity:
What does it really mean to be Jewish?
Some people think Judaism is a religion. I like to consider it this way: Judaism has a religion, but is so much more than that.
Jews are those who encounter and practice Torah, on the one hand; and Jews are those who belong to a family / people called Israel, on the other. For Rashi, this multifaceted identity is baked into the very creation of the world itself.
Some of us are left-handed, so to speak, and focus on religious practice and principles. Some of us are right-handed, defining ourselves as “cultural” or Jewish by identity and affiliation if not necessarily through any particular behavior. Collectively, though, we Jews are ambidextrous.
The key point is that we are a people and we have a set of practices. How we define the boundaries of our people and how we interpret and enact the practices vary widely.
There are many contested questions that arise from the tension between these two aspects of Jewish identity.
What does it mean to become Jewish?
Is conversion the right word (choosing one religion over another)? Or perhaps adoption, a change in status of mutual belonging to a larger family?
How do we account for the diverse and distinct cultural tapestries of Jews who lived in different parts of the world for many centuries?
Can you be a Jewish atheist who eats bacon on Yom Kippur?
Can you practice Judaism without identifying as part of the people?
I was very intrigued to see that California’s governor recently signed into law a bill that officially sees Jews as an ethnicity, and not just a religion. You can read more about the context and complications in this New York Times article. The hope is that by acknowledging this facet of Jewish identity, the full complexity of Jewishness can be brought into the conversation in legal, policy, educational, and community-building settings.
In a way, Jewish identity shouts out, darsheini, interpret me! As we begin a new year of reading Torah, I’d like to suggest we also spend a year “reading” our own identities, exploring our connection to traditions and rituals, and discerning how to live out our connection to other Jews nearby and around the world.
What questions do you have about identity and belonging? Which aspects come easily to you, and which feel difficult to imagine or inhabit? What excites you, raises your trepidation, or sparks your curiosity?
Rabbi Jay Levine
