What Do Jews Believe?

"Shema Yisrael, Hashem Elokeinu, Hashem echad…"

Rabbi Sacks: There are points of mystery where the infinite intersects with the finite.

And Revelation is above all that point of mystery. This, I believe with absolute passion. That when I read the Mosaic books, as a believing Jew, I hear the voice of God speaking directly to me.

Narrator: The first five books of the Bible are central to Jewish faith, and the second stage of our quest to understand what Jews believe has to begin here. Because, as the Chief Rabbi-elect of Great Britain and the Commonwealth, Jonathan Sacks, has just suggested, they provide a key to the special relationship between God and the Jews. The Five Books of Moses, the Pentateuch, make up the core of Torah, the Law, and without that, Judaism would not exist.

Rabbi David Goldberg…

Rabbi David Goldberg: The Law is the basis of Judaism. Its sense of definition depends upon the Law given on Mount Sinai by Moses, from God, to the Children of Israel. A covenant was entered into there which has bound all subsequent generations of Jews.

Narrator: The concept of the Law then unites all religious Jews. Its practise is something else, and has a tendency, paradoxically, to divide. On matters of interpretation, there are fierce, often irreconcilable, arguments worthy of the rabbis of old. But perhaps there's no escaping the dilemma. Perhaps argument, disputation, is an intrinsic feature of Revelation itself?

Jonathan Sacks…

Rabbi Sacks: The rabbis said two very interesting things. The first thing they said is Torah is from Heaven. But the second thing they said is Torah is not in Heaven, by which they meant that interpretation had to take place here on Earth. And that's what essentially Rabbis have done in every generation, to say what does this word of God mean to us here now?

Narrator: Receiving the Law was one thing, transmitting it another, and from the moment Moses descended Sinai, interpreting the Written Law became necessary. God had handed over His Word to Man, and the ineffable had to be translated into words people could understand.

As a result, human intellect came to bear on the Written Torah, and in time, as Orthodox Rabbi, David Bleich, explains, that tradition was codified by the Rabbis into volumes of interpretation known collectively as the Talmud.

Rabbi Bleich: The Talmud is the earliest record of the Oral Law. The Oral Law was originally designed to be transmitted verbally from generation to generation. And with the Roman persecution, this became a virtual impossibility. As a result of social upheaval, people were beginning to forget the traditions and hence it became necessary to record this material.

It was recorded in two major stages. The first was called the Mishna, and that was recorded by Rabbi Judah the Prince and was a very brief record of basic principles, laws, regulations… and this became the text that was studied in the rabbinic academies of the day.

Subsequently, these discussions were summarized and recorded in what was called the Gemara. Together, the Mishna and the Gemara comprise what is known as the Talmud, and together they form the first written record of the Oral Law.

Narrator: And it's in that record that Jews will find the various commandments, or Mitzvot, 613 in all, which they must, if devout, follow to the letter.

Orthodox Rabbi, Shlomo Levin...

Rabbi Levin: One of the features of Judaism is that it operates very strongly within the physical world. And the range of commandments that the Almighty has given to the Jewish people, these 613 – although there are many more than 613 – 613 are the 613 basic commandments, each one of which subdivides into many, many, many different tributaries and subcategories. But they are the commandments which define the way in which the Jew is to interact with the physical world around him or around her.

Rabbi Julia Neuberger: For Orthodox Jews, they're quite clear about what the 613 commandments are, you know, there's 365 positive and, you know, the 248 negative and so on, and they're quite clear about that.

Non-Orthodox Jews are not so clear as to what exactly the commands that you must carry out, the commands that you don't absolutely have to carry out are, because of the debate about the nature of divine authority. But, the idea that that system exists and that commandment as a concept is important and authority is important is there within any brand of Judaism.

Narrator: Liberal Rabbi, Julia Neuberger.

The laws themselves range over every aspect of life – spiritual, legal, sexual, social, political, ethical, ritual. Nothing – from dietary provision to codes of dress – is left out. In one breath, it will dictate the covering of the head or the wearing of tassels at the edge of ritual garments. In another, it will decree compassion for farm animals or the prohibition of certain food.

Rabbi Sacks: Well, the Bible says very simply the dietary laws are to create a holy people.

The word holy, "kadosh" in Hebrew, means set apart, distinctive. Obviously, at a more functional, social level, they have been one of the great barriers against Jews assimilating and losing their identity. The mere fact that you were more or less bound not to be able to eat on a regular basis with your non-Jewish neighbours placed a kind of social distance between Jews and others, which was sometimes very controversial but did at least keep Jews as a people apart.

Narrator: Jonathan Sacks.

Flexibility in interpreting the rules is a sensitive issue. Too much, say Orthodox Jews, and you risk diluting the faith, rewriting the eternal words of the Almighty to suit human desire. A certain amount of flexibility, exactly how much being the subject of inexhaustible rabbinic debate, is permissible.

Ashkenazi Jews, from Germany and Central Europe, for example, will do things rather differently from their Sephardi counterparts, of the Eastern and Mediterranean tradition.

Rabbi Abraham Levy, himself Sephardi…

Rabbi Levy: The laws of Passover are very strict as to what we can eat and what we can't eat. We can't eat certain types of grain, like wheat and barley, but we are allowed to eat others. Now, the Ashkenazi Rabbis were worried that once you make a flour of these different types of pulses and grains, then you confuse one with the other. So therefore, they forbade any type of flour made of certain types of grains which were technically permitted but which might be confused with those that were forbidden. Sephardi Rabbis never took that stricture. And, for example, Sephardi Jews to this day will eat rice on Passover, which would not be eaten in an Ashkenazi household.

Narrator: To an outsider, it can all seem rather baffling. Why should such apparently trivial considerations be so important in this life, let alone in the context of eternity?

Rabbi Sacks: If you actually read a volume of rabbinic responsa – in other words, rabbinic decisions on matters of Jewish Law – I think you would be amazed by the range of questions – from very narrow, and apparently very minor, matters of religious ritual to questions of fertility treatment, medical experimentation, the ethics of business partnerships, how soldiers should conduct themselves in the course of war…

There is, as far as I can see, in principle, no limit to the scope of Jewish Law. And that is part of the Jewish belief that virtually every aspect of human activity is there to be sanctified.

Rabbi Neuberger: The commandments are actually about how you live your life now.

They are about how much charity you ought to give, how you ought to treat your husband or your wife, how often, for instance, you should have sexual intercourse. It's about things that are very practical, very personal, and about how you treat your fellow human being.

Narrator: Julia Neuberger.

Now there can be few non-Jews who would fail to see the importance of such ethical and social teaching. The difficulty arises, for outsiders at least, in fathoming the purpose of all the other arcane regulations which go to make up Halacha, Jewish Law, and which seem to have little relevance to contemporary life, still less to spiritual well-being.

I raised these questions in conversation with Abraham Levy.

Rabbi Levy: Judaism does not distinguish between ritual and ethics. The beautiful thing about Judaism is that in a chapter of the Torah, you can have a crucial law like "Love your neighbour as yourself," and immediately next to it, another law that you must wear fringes in your garment.

And there lies the genius of Judaism.

Judaism says you have to develop your soul and you've got to develop your personality. And you can do it by a combination of ethical teaching and ritual teaching.

Now, we don't understand why wearing fringes on our garments or eating kosher food makes us better people, but this is what we must believe. That doing these things does something for the soul of a Jew which makes him a better person. And it is my faith in God which enables me to observe these laws with the same passion as observing laws for which I can see an obvious answer.

Narrator: And yet you yourself choose, apparently – correct me if I'm wrong – not to observe certain of the rules. You shave your facial hair, for example.

Rabbi Levy: No, the law is quite clear on this. We are not allowed to bring a razor to our face, but rabbinic interpretation has accepted that the use of an electric shaver does not come under the same category.

Narrator: Now that seems… like now that hair splitting…

Rabbi Levy: Haha! Hair splitting…That may seem like hair splitting, but that is how Halacha develops. And that is the crucial importance of the Oral Law. The Oral Law is developing all the time. The word halacha means to go. It is going. It is moving.

Narrator: What would you say to the cynical, who might suggest from what you've said there that the laws are as much there for getting round as they are there for being observed?

Rabbi Levy: I believe that the crucial thing that that Law wanted to emphasise was that a human being had to protect his person and therefore not use a razor near his skin. So therefore, I accept that interpretation and I will shave. But there are many people who, though they may tacitly accept that interpretation, would never dream of shaving.

Narrator: Shlomo Levin puts it another way.

Rabbi Levin: Unequivocally for the Orthodox Jew, there is a validity and a meaning in all of the rituals, even in the mundane rituals. The Jew, in the first instance, does things because that is what he has been commanded, and the truth of the matter is, had we been commanded to go out to hew wood all day long, we would have done that as well.

Narrator: But still, the outsider asks why, what is the spiritual point of it all?

Rabbi Harvey Weinstein, lecturer in Rabbinics at the Academy of Jewish Religion in New York.

Rabbi Weinstein: The reasons for doing the commandments are not essential. The fact that we need to find reasons in order to make it more vital for us to do, or so that we can do those commandments with more passion, is something that is good for us to do, but it's not the principle. We really do them because we feel that we are submitting to the word of God.

Narrator: An eloquent answer indeed. Jews obey because God commands.

But why does the Almighty ordain such apparently trivial rules in the first place, when He surely has matters of transcendental importance to transmit to His creation?

Jonathan Sacks…

Rabbi Sacks: I don't really like the idea of God as a kind of crusty elder statesman who's only interested in the big things in life and really can't be bothered with the details which He delegates to somebody else. To my mind, the most beautiful aspect of Judaism is its capacity to see religious significance in very small actions, apparently very small actions.

Narrator: So let's put it another way. Are the minor rules about dress and diet, say, as important as the great ethical commandments concerning stealing, murder, lying?

David Bleich…

Rabbi Bleich: Are they of equal importance? The answer is both yes and no, and that may sound paradoxical. There's an anecdote that's well known in Jewish circles, of two individuals who come to the Rabbi, to arbitrate a dispute between them.

And he listens to the first person, he says, "You're right."

Then he listens to the second person and says, "You're right."

And his wife, who has been eavesdropping, pokes her head into the room and says, "But how can they both be right?"

And he looks at her and says, "You're right too."

The answer is that yes, every one of the commandments is the Word of God. Each one is an expression of the divine will, and as such, each is of infinite value.

Narrator: So, if Halacha is so important, are there penalties for failing to follow it?

Jonathan Sacks…

Rabbi Sacks: You see, there are punishments and there are consequences. Since punishments take place not in this world, but the next, neither I nor any other human being can speak authoritatively about them. We haven't been there and we don't know anyone who has.

Consequences are something else, and I think once dietary laws go, and the various other laws that keep Jews a singular people go, then Jews very quickly lose any sense of what makes them a distinctive people.

And those consequences are extremely apparent in today's Jewish world. Those consequences are mixed marriage, assimilation, secularisation.

Narrator: So far, we've looked at Halachic Judaism mainly from the Orthodox point of view.

Its adherents will follow every law to the letter and the spirit, believing them all to be direct links binding them to the Judaism of Moses' day and, by extension, to God Himself. Progressive Jews, who reformed the tradition over the past century or so, have a different emphasis, as David Goldberg explains.

Rabbi Goldberg: A Progressive Jew would draw more sustenance, let us say, from the prophetic writings of Isaiah or Jeremiah than he would from the laws of sacrifice in the Book of Leviticus. Undoubtedly, as far as a Progressive Jew is concerned, the Temple no longer stands. We don't mourn its passing because it was replaced by the synagogue, a much more democratic institution, and therefore it is of minimal interest to me, as a Progressive Rabbi,

to know or follow the laws of sacrifice as laid down in the Book of Leviticus. But of much more interest to me to hear what Amos or Micah, for example, might say about justice and mercy and looking after the poor and the widow and the needy.

Rabbi Hugo Gryn: But certainly in the 19th century, the specialty of the house was Prophetic Judaism, and the fact of it is though that in Orthodox synagogues every Shabbat, the haftarah is a lesson from the Prophets.

And again, I don't think anybody can claim a monopoly on their attachment to the teachings of the Prophets, but to the extent that we find tremendous teachings of relevance to the contemporary scene from the very powerful social message of the Prophets, and to the extent that one of the ambitions of Reform Judaism is for Jews to live today in harmony with the spirit of the age.

Yes, to that extent, I think Prophetic Judaism suits our temperament well.

Narrator: Rabbi Hugo Gryn.

For Jonathan Sacks, however, the Law can hardly be a matter of temperament, still less something that can be molded to suit the spirit of the age.

Rabbi Sacks: When you make accommodations to the present, to what happens to be the mood of the moment, whether that means the legitimation of intermarriage or homosexuality or ordaining women as Rabbis, because that's the mood of the moment, then you lose something which is essential to Judaism. Mainly its timelessness.

It is an eternal people because it is a timeless religion.

Narrator: So, we have two distinct understandings of the nature of the Law. One supposedly fixed in history and tradition, and the other open to modification by new insights.

David Goldberg explains what happens in the Progressive Movement when these two notions collide.

Rabbi Goldberg: Where tradition, however venerable and however revered, comes into conflict with what we would take to be the truth, it is tradition that must give way.

One of the self-evident truths of modern life is sexual equality. And therefore, in Progressive Judaism, we have women Rabbis, and there we have modified traditional teaching to pay regard for modern knowledge.

Rabbi Weinstein: Where we part company is that they are not primarily a text-centred people, as using the text of the authority as the word of God. They use the text as a frame of reference. They give it a voice, not a veto, and for me, I submit to the authority of the text.

Narrator: Harvey Weinstein, with a restatement of the Orthodox line. I put it to him that the talk is constantly of the text of the Law, of the Book. Might it not be appropriate to ask where God fits into all this?

Rabbi Weinstein: Every time you do a commandment, it's a commandment from God.

You serve God through practise. You sanctify the One every time I eat an apple, right?

I say, "Blessed art thou Lord our God, King of the Universe, who created the fruit from the tree."

Before I'm allowed to take a bite, I have to acknowledge God in everything I do. And so therefore, you have this idea that it's a total way of life, that where does God fit in? In other words, where isn't God present is really the question.

Narrator: Point taken.

But I persisted with Rabbi David Bleich. Now the talk is of rabbinic rulings over this and that of legal interpretations of the revealed Word, of endless debate and argument over point A and point B. What would he say to an outsider who, on tuning in to such disputation, might feel that he wasn't among people of religion but rather eavesdropping on a law seminar?

Rabbi Bleich: I would say that the person has been very perceptive and has mastered the first and perhaps the most fundamental lesson of Judaism. And that is that Judaism is a religion of law.

Narrator: And if that same outsider goes on to say, because it's a religion of law, it becomes a religion of men, because though the Word, the revealed Word is from God, its interpretation is left to humanity, what would your reply be?

Rabbi Bleich: I would say that he has learnt the second lesson, and that that is absolutely correct. However, there is a caveat. The caveat is that this is a system of law in which original intent is the dominating concern. It's not a system of law that is subject to human manipulation.

Rabbi Sacks: Orthodoxy is that aspect of contemporary Judaism that maintains a strict continuity with the past, and to me that continuity is not a matter of choice or accident.

It's the very essence of Judaism.

Judaism is a religion that has somehow survived in its essentials unchanged for almost 4,000 years, and therefore, I can't see any other form of Judaism being true to that particular spirit.

Narrator: Jonathan Sacks.

Not surprisingly, Progressive Jews take issue with that, claiming that their brand of Judaism is as much a part of the mainstream as any other.

How would Julia Neuberger counter the Orthodox claim that they alone are the legitimate guardians of authentic Judaism, as handed down to Moses and transcribed by him in the Pentateuch?

Rabbi Neuberger: I would say, you have no evidence of that for a start. Secondly, I would say you have a problem, it seems to me, accounting for the fact that, for instance, at the end of the book of Deuteronomy, we have the passage about Moses' death, and Moses is supposed to have taken dictation for all of this. Thirdly, I would say that you have to take a historical approach to all this. You can't ignore history. You can't ignore science. You can't say that God literally revealed both the Torah and the Oral Law, that is the mission of the Talmud all in one go, and you can trace the historical development through that. And indeed, you can see different and foreign influences of different periods in that. You can see a development throughout the Torah itself and the Hebrew Bible. You can see a development from the Hebrew Bible on into the rabbinic literature. To ignore that seems to me to be foolish and to deny the intellect.

Rabbi Sacks: Well, I think one of the important discoveries of modern philosophy, from Immanuel Kant onwards – and in particular I should say in the last decade – is a much more modest view of the scope of reason.

Reason of itself will not tell us what exists, in particular, whether God exists. Reason won't answer of itself the most important ethical questions. There is a very great difference between seeing reason as something outside of faith, which judges faith, and that I believe is just an error. It's a philosophical error. And there's something quite different, which is the use of reason within faith. To clarify it and to make it consistent. The Rabbis were passionate users of reason, and therefore the use of reason within faith is a vital part of Judaism and perhaps the most important.

Narrator: Jonathan Sacks.

But the issue dividing him from Julia Neuberger isn't new. The balance between reason and Revelation has exercised some of the finest Jewish minds of all time. The trouble is that Orthodox and non-Orthodox alike feel that they've got the balance right.

Hugo Gryn…

Rabbi Gryn: There is a great deal in the argument that the Revelation of Sinai stands for all time, and I actually believe that in its fundamentals it does. My concept of God is one that demands, insists, that God continues to reveal something of Himself through the succeeding generations and that it is an error not to be open to it.

Of course, the difficulty is that you very often hear things and you can so easily mistake the voice of God for perhaps nothing more than your own voice.

So it is, if you like, a risky business being a Progressive Jew. But I am one.

Narrator: But for Jonathan Sacks, it's a risk not worth taking, for it threatens to weaken the very foundation of his faith.

Rabbi Sacks: There are critics of the Orthodox view of Revelation who point out that some features of the Torah, like for instance, the law that a child who is Jewishly illegitimate can't marry someone else, seem unfair. Why penalise a child for the sins of its parents? And since they seem unfair to us, they must be human inventions.

My response to that is if the apparently unjust laws in the Torah are human, why not the apparently just ones? And if so, then maybe the whole Torah is human? And if so, maybe the whole Jewish destiny is only a fiction, a fantasy of some very ancient Middle Eastern Sages 3,500 years ago?

If that is my faith, I wouldn't be willing to devote my life for it and be willing to die for it.

Narrator: There are clearly serious issues at stake, and to some, different interpretations of Torah are not merely academic matters of tangential importance, but timeless spiritual concerns imbued with transcendental significance.

We could easily end this programme on a note of bitter division, but we won't. We'll end with an attempt at harmony.

Let us ask Hugo Gryn, a Progressive Rabbi, not what separates him from Orthodoxy, but what he has in common with it on that crucial issue of Torah.

Rabbi Gryn: Well, I like to think that we have a common love of it. I also like to think we have a shared knowledge of it, and I actually think that if you really immerse yourself in Torah, which is likened by our Sages to a sea. Well, I mean in the sea there is room for all sorts of creatures. Some float near the surface, perhaps I'm one of those. Others go very deep, and at the end of the day, I think we're all in it. So I… my feeling is that the Torah is as much mine – and I hope it will be my children's – as I know it was my father's and grandfather's and my mother's and grandmother's.

As it is to any other Jew.