Recognizing Remarks of Rabbi Dr. Israel Zoberman

Floor Speech

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Mrs. KIGGANS of Virginia. Mr. Speaker, I include in the Record remarks submitted at the request of a Virginia Beach constituent, Rabbi Dr. Israel Zoberman of Temple Lev Tikvah. and are a reflection of his views:

The major celebration of the Jewish High Holy Days of Rosh Hashanah (The New Year 5787) and Yom Kippur (The Day of Atonement) are enhanced by a probing and provocative volume of the quality of To Be A Jew Today (A New Guide to God, Israel and the Jewish People) New York: Farrar Strause and Giroux. The recent book by Noah Feldman, the Felix Frankfurter Professor of Law as well as chair of the Society of Fellows at Harvard University where he is the founding director of the Julis-Rabinowitz Program on Jewish and Israeli law.

Feldman raises fundamental and foundational issues that are at the heart of contemporary Jewish identity that all thoughtful and concerned Jews from throughout the wide spectrum of Jewish affiliation and practice along with those on the periphery of active Jewish life, would find both meaningful and purposeful to wrestle with. Additionally, Feldman's profound scholarship is not of the dry type, rather perks intellectual curiosity while appealing in a clarion call to a big tent approach, to pause and reassess core Jewish themes in conversation with one who shys from being authoritative. ``In the course of writing this book, I intentionally have not flagged what I think is now in it. My goal in that isn't to make what I write seem obviously true. It's to allow you, the reader, to use your own reaction to gauge and solidify what you think, not what I think. You can certainly read this book by arguing with it. I read a lot of books this way, and it often works for me. If you want, however, you can also read this book not argumentatively but introspectively--the way I wrote it.

Though the book is designed with a lofty and a bit presumptive goal as ``A New Guide to God, Israel and the Jewish people, ``It does reflect the author's own respect for high academic standing and his heavy stake in reaching out for a Jewish world in much disarray spiritually, socially and politically with the shaking events he mentions of October 7 offering an urgent backdrop as a uniting Jewish factor. Thus it is not happenstance that he refers to the ``Guide of the Perplexed'' by the recognized giant Jewish thinker of all times, the medieval Moses Maimonides, who reached out to his own perplexed generation confronted and challenged by Greek, Islamic and Pagan influences while attempting to secure and anchor an authentic Jewish response and identity without imposing his own perspective. Yet he aroused the ire of the rabbinic establishment who called for banning his book but might have resulted, surmises Feldman, in the Talmud's burning by the Church in Paris in 1242.

The ``New Guide'' offered by the author is his own attempt to follow on the Maimonidean model with reaching to his own perplexed times in a way that clarifies without setting himself up as the supreme arbiter of such an imposing agenda of discourse. ``One initial aim of this book is to chart a map of contemporary Jewish lives and ideas, a map the reader can use not to identify bad Jews but to explore and appreciate the many different ways Jews can be and think and experience. It can be used as a field guide to Jewish people and ideas as they exist today, and as they are being transformed for the future.''

Feldman's embracing and inclusive approach focuses on the notion that a ``bad Jew'' which is common, including the author, to how Jews feel in relation to their demanding heritage regulating Jewish conduct, is in fact alien to Judaism. Given the trying circumstances of the historical Jewish experience, including forced mass conversion of Jews in the medieval era, the rabbis' impulse was not to add misery to fellow Jews caught up in extraordinary painful dilemmas of life and death issues but to allow them a continued sense of belonging, though not in practice, to their eternal Jewish covenant, with perhaps hope that their oppressive condition might be altered. The concise and clear Talmudic dictum. ``An Israelite though he has sinned, is an Israelite,'' speaks volumes of paramount Jewish inclusivity promoted by the author as a continued key principle for a wide pluralistic system. Feldman proves for the sake of it or plain survival, he is an iconoclast, criticizing the State of Israel for not admitting Brother Daniel--the Polish Jew who converted to Catholicism in the Holocaust's harrowing circumstances--under the Law of Return. It does contradict a hallowed rabbinic instruction though secular Israel's decision was ironically influenced by its religious establishment. Indeed there is a blurring of the religious and national poles in Jewish identity.

Jewish survival as a tiny minority of some 16 million Jews in a global population of 7.6 billion is a salient factor, not lost on Feldman, which only strengthens his gentle yet forceful argument for a wide framework for Jewish affiliation and acceptance in an age characterized by global natural and man-made threats to human survival along with radical questioning concerning the applicability and relevancy of all things Jewish. Surely the author's ``openness'' attempting to overarch the denominational Jewish divide which risks overreaching, would find fierce opposition from traditionalists lacking his spiritual audacity and courage for the sake of vital Jewish survival in face of assembling mighty odds with modernity diminishing long held claims such as heralded theme of Jewish choseness which the author fully probes as he does with all that he skillfully analyses. Feldman regards Jewish choseness as a major factor in entrenched antisemitism, ``This choseness, I am suggesting, is a provocation to anyone not so chosen, because it amounts to the claim that the Master of the Universe has chosen me and not you.''

As he points out, there is solid grounding as in the universal proclamations of the prophet Amos, to tone down the double edge sword of exclusive choseness giving rise to a Baruch Goldstein, an American physician who committed the infamous massacre in Hebron's Tomb of the Patriarchs that houses a mosque. ``He was a Modern Orthodox Religious Zionist who had been educated at a high school nearly identical to mine. His actions had shaken my belief structure like no other event in my life, before or since.'' The author concludes his uniquely engaging book with a theme that runs throughout, namely that characterizing any Jew as ``bad'' is contrary to the hallmark of traditional Jewish inclusiveness, and counterproductive to the cause of Jewish survival and vitality. He raises as an example the complex saga of Elisha ben Abuyah, the Other, as a case in point highlighting multifaceted Jewish thinking which errs toward acceptance of the Other in our own Jewish midst. He finds it kin to Jacob's wrestling encounter with God's messenger. ``That struggle- embrace with God lies at the heart of this book. It lies, I have tried to show, at the heart of the Jewish past, the Jewish present, and the hoped-for and possible Jewish future, which we pray to be able to create. It can, I believe, explain and engage and guide the ongoing encounter between God, Israel, and the Jewish people.

This irresistible and indispensable treasure trove of wisdom and guidance from a teacher par excellence who cares deeply about the Jewish future while not mincing words, is a most welcome new source for discourse, discussion, study and growth. It is indeed a gift to both Jews and non-Jews for our perplexed and perplexing times. We remember the 25th anniversary of the 9/11 attacks with the Jewish New Year coinciding this season.

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