A Wrestling Community-Rushkoff's Critique of Contemporary Judaism

Rabbi Dov Gartenberg, Dec. 6, 2005

One of the original visions of Panim Hadashot was the revitalization of the Beit Midrash-the house of study-as a living Jewish institution. Douglas Rushkoff, a media critique, wrote a no holds barred critique of contemporary American Judaism called Nothing Sacred. The first time I read the book I could not stand it. But that was when I was a pulpit rabbi. I reread it last month and found it prophetic and extremely timely. Below is an excerpt which conveys the need for the 'Beit Midrash'.

(p.227)The beit midrash, "house of study," was developed in the Second Temple period as a component of the synagogue. While the function of synagogue was to offer an opportunity for community worship beyond centralized Temple rites, the beit midrash was dedicated exclusively to the study of text. The synagogue liturgy was really just a substitute for sacrifices. The beit midrash gave Jews and, eventually, non-Jews alike direct access to the original source material informing the mythology, halakhah, rituals, and worldview that constitute Judaism. The talmudic sages stressed that Torah study takes precedence over synagogue worship, going so far to say that "if you are new to a town and learn of a synagogue, walk there. If you learn there is a beit midrash, run."

This emphasis held for quite some time, and although the Yiddish word shul acutally means "school," the unique role of the beit midrash was eveentually subordinated to that of the sanctuary. By the modern ere, beit midrash came to mean the library attached to the synagogue, where the most motivated members could seek out the resources they needed for independent study. As Jews lost direct access to Torah and grew increasingly disconnected from the spirit of inquiry, services became more about creating mood than inspiring the quest for knowledge and sense. Well-meaning rabbis were forced to fit morsels of Jewish education into their sermons , which took on the tone of moralizing homilies rather than points of intellectual or spiritual departure. People began to think of synagogues as a place to hear answers instead of a place to find new questions.

In order to fuel a renaissance in participatory Judaism, we will need to reverse this trend and reinvent a beit midrash for our age. If everyone's point of view is to matter, then everyone must be given the basic tools they need to generate an informed opinion. Although the private study of sacred texts and their commentaries can take a person a long way, part of the Jewish mandate is to wrestle not just with 'Torah, but with one another. There is no such thing as personal revelation or individual enlightenment in Judaism....Juduasim does not offer transcendence from the real world or the body through spiritual practice....This is meant not to promote materialism or a fixation on the sensual, but to maintain Judaism's emphasis on life-this life, real life-as the locus of our concern. Study must not be a retreat from community, but a way to forge one. (emphasis mine)