This morning the rabbi said there should be no time off from God.
He bemoaned how kids in his religious school were unaware of the Torah portions between the middle of Bamidbar (Numbers) and the beginning of Devarim (Deuteronomy) because they and their parents check out from serious religious observance and study during the summer.
I want to voice a contrarian perspective.
Orthodox Judaism demands so much that is not from God that I have sympathy for those who want to take a summer respite from the inane demands of the rabbis.
Let’s talk about yom tov sheni — the extra day of a Jewish festival because 2,000 years ago, the rabbis weren’t sure of their calendar calculations. That we still observe this restriction today — making Passover and Succoth into eight days instead of seven, Shuvuot into two days instead of one — is a clear violation of the Torah’s command to not increase or decrease its mitzvahs (commandments). Yet many Orthodox Jews go along with this extra restriction because it’s the price of belonging to an Orthodox community.
The prayers have only been multiplied over the years. They are beyond the endurance of mere mortals. The observant Jew has to pray for over an hour a day. That’s insane. This is time that would be far better devoted to studying the sacred texts rather than repeating by rote the inventions of some bloke a thousand years ago.
Rosh Hashanah morning davening goes for about six hours. That’s nuts.
We have this huge number of prayers to get through — so big that only the most pious can say any of them with any serious intention — because the rabbis don’t have the balls to cut back on the liturgy and to challenge the rulings of other rabbis a thousand years ago.
Laws that were made by man can be changed by man.
I’m fine with ascribing the Torah to God but don’t ascribe the rulings of Rabbi Shlemiel in the eighth century to God and don’t force me to repeat his poetry as part of the divine prayer requirement.
The average Orthodox Jew looks for ways to slack off that are communally permitted, and this means in the United States taking summer’s off from serious religious observance and study (while still keeping shabbat).
If God has a human bone in His body, He’ll respect this.
Don’t hate, HaShem, congratulate. Your children have defeated You.
If the rabbis want to keep Jews excited about Judaism over the summer, they need to offer more adult education classes. The most exciting part of Judaism is text study, particularly study that illuminates our lives, not meaningless ruminations on how Purim is like Yom Kippur etc.
Chaim Amalek emails:
I am in complete agreement with this piece save for its title – should it not be "Time Off From the Rabbinate?" Most of the ritual that binds orthodox Jews to one another comes not from God, but from rabbis who understood these restrictions as effective tools of communal control and hence of maintaining their power. They have nothing to do with God, and are so ridiculous (if not downright odious) to most people that the rabbis are naturally suspicious of why any gentile (like you) should want to adopt them as his own. I speculate that God, if he exists in the personal form posited by most Christian, Muslim and Jewish theologians, looks with intense disfavor on those rabbis who declare their words and dictates to be God’s words and commands.
Judaism needs its Martin Luther. Perhaps this is the role you are meant to have in your years on earth.