[Avodah] Hashkafah and the Siddur

[Micha Berger via Avodah]

This is a comment on R Yaakov Jaffe's article at
http://www.thelehrhaus.com/scholarship/2017/6/13/get-your-hashkafa-out-of-my-chumash

Since the Lehrhaus doesn't take comments, I thought we could discuss it here.
(CC-ing RYJ.)

He writes:
   Lehrhaus
   Get Your Hashkafa Out of My Chumash!
   [R] Yaakov Jaffe

   ...
   It has become commonplace in Modern Orthodox circles to lament the lack
   of alignment between the beliefs of the movement and some of the
   editions, translations, and versions of ritual texts that members of
   the movement use. These critiques are often welcome, such as Deborah
   Klapper's[13] recent excellent essay about the Haggadah for Pesach, and
   tend to frame ArtScroll Publishers as the almost villain who has taken
   the ideologically open, natural, innocent, uncorrupted foundational
   texts of Judaism and colored them with an Ultra-Orthodox translation,
   skew, or commentary....

Okay, that's the general topic. Here's the point I wanted to discuss:

   For me, there is a more grave concern when Modern Orthodox Jews flock
   to a different ritual text because it aligns more purely with their
   own ideology, and that is that the ritual text ceases to be important
   for its own sake (as a Siddur, Humash, or Hagaddah), a vehicle for
   transmitting sacred texts and values through the generations, but
   instead becomes a mere bit player in a larger drama about movements
   and self-identification. ("I use this Siddur because in many ways it
   demonstrates that I am a proud Modern Orthodox Jew.") This carries the
   risk that readers will stop reading the text of the Humash or being
   taken by the poetry of the Siddur and instead become hyper-focused on
   ideological markers that appear in those ritual texts. And for reasons
   that we will demonstrate below, the subordination of prayer within
   the mind of the person at prayer, beneath the selection of outward
   identifiers of ideology undermines the very purpose and notion of
   prayer itself.

   In 1978, Rabbi Soloveitchik authored a[15] short essay entitled
   "Majesty and Humility" in Tradition, in which he poses a dichotomy
   critical for Jewish religious experience and prayer. He describes
   one pole as majestic humanity, striving for victory and sovereignty,
   as "Man sets himself up as king and tries to triumph over opposition
   and hostility." The other pole is humble humanity, full of "withdrawal
   and retreat," which appreciates the smallness of human beings in the
   scope of the cosmic order. In the essay, prayer is an example of man
   in the mood of humility, of withdrawal, who finds the Almighty not
   when humanity triumphs over the forces of nature, or in the scope of
   the galaxies, but when humanity recognizes its own limitations, and,
   as a result, causes that "God does descend from infinity to finitude,
   from boundlessness into the narrowness of the Sanctuary," or:

   All I could do was to pray. However, I could not pray in the
   hospital... the moment I returned home I would rush to my room, fall
   on my knees and pray fervently. God in those moments appeared not as
   the exalted majestic King, but rather as a humble, close friend.

   While at prayer, the individual is constantly focused on his or
   her own inadequacy compared to the Divine Creator and his or her
   own limitations. The individual cannot be engaged in the battles of
   denomination supremacy, as he or she is paralyzed by his or her own
   smallness while attempting to pray.

   Moreover, prayer is generally a uniquely unsuited vehicle for
   conveying specific, unique, or modern ideologies and beliefs. It
   focuses on requests and aspirations, not on statements of creed. The
   text of the Siddur also serves as a unifying tool for the Jewish people
   (given the enormous general similarity despite centuries of division
   and dispersal) and highlights what we have in common and not what we
   have apart.

  13. http://blogs.timesofisrael.com/a-haggadah-without-women-2/
  15. http://traditionarchive.org/news/originals/Volume%2017/No.%202/Majesty%20and%20Humility.pdf
  16. http://www.thelehrhaus.com/scholarship/?author=5886cfaabebafbcb2d43550f

My problem is that tefillah is all about ideology, and the siddur
runs from statement of creed to statement of creed -- Yigdal to Ani
Maamin. (Not saying AM is mandatory, but it's there...)

For example, RYBS's is one approach to prayer. It's different than that
of Nefesh haChaim, where the focus of baqashos are what the world needs
for G-d's sake, not our own needs for our sake. Curing the sick because
His Presence is enhanced when people are healthy. Etc...

It's different than RSRH's approach to berakhos, where they are
declarations of personal commitment. So that we ask for health so that
we can contribute to His Say in the world -- "berakhah" lashon ribui,
after all. Etc... (I think I dug up 7 different theological resolutions
to how to undertand "barukh Atah H'" given that ribui and HQBH don't mix.)

This is taking a specific hashkafah's side in order to argue that tefillah
shouldn't be taking a specific hashkafah's side.


As for Tanakh... It is true that in one community, maximalist positions
that magnify G-d's Greatness -- whether it's a description of qeri'as
Yam Suf or Rivqa's age at meeting Yitzchaq -- have a near-exclusive
currency. Saying that the sea simply split vehamayim lahem chimah miyminam
umismolam is seen as the product if ignorance; of course it split into
13 tunnels, each providing all of our needs, ready to be grabbed out of
the walls.

Whereas the other prefers more rationalist positions, and in any case
there is a broader array of Chazal's statements taken as possibly true.

Or, does an MO Jew relate to a chumash in which the only topic of
footnotes on the berakhos of Yissachar & Zevulun is their possible
precedent for kollel life? (Despite there never having been an entire
community where kollel was the norm until the past century.) In a
community where wearing hexaplex (the snail formerly known as murex)
dyed strings is a significant minority, isn't there more interest in
sefunei temunei chol than in a community where it's unheard of?

Then there is just different communities having different tastes in
what kind of Torah thought they find more appealing / satisfying /
moving. People who gravitate to the words of the Rav like the ideas
in Mesores haRav for that reason. Just as Chabadnikim are more
likely to find things to their taste in the Guttenstein Chumash than
in the Stone Edition. Shouldn't, then, all these options exist?

And is that any less true when thinking of how to relate to some
complex poseq in Tehillim or a line composed by Anshei Keneses haGdolah
(or the typical Ashkenazi paytan) to be a palimpsest of meanings?

:-)BBii!
-Micha

-- 
Micha Berger             What you get by achieving your goals
micha at aishdas.org        is not as important as
http://www.aishdas.org   what you become by achieving your goals.
Fax: (270) 514-1507              - Henry David Thoreau