Fitting COVID into our Jewish Story: Incorporating Life's Tragic Dimension Into Liberal Jewish Thought and Practice
On the eve of the most recent winter solstice—the longest night of the year—The New York Times published an opinion piece by hospice physician B.J. Miller entitled, “What is Death?” which begins as follows:
This year has awakened us to the fact that we die. We’ve always known it to be true in a technical sense, but a pandemic demands that we internalize this understanding. It’s one thing to acknowledge the deaths of others, and another to accept our own. It’s not just emotionally taxing; it is difficult even to conceive. To do this means to imagine it, reckon with it and, most important, personalize it. Your life. Your death.[1]
For a Jew, this feels like having to confront Unetaneh Tokef every day: “Who shall live and who shall die? Who by fire and who by water? Who by plague and who by pandemic?”[2]
How do we as Jews, and particularly as Reform Jews, fit this moment into our master narrative—the mythic stories that we tell ourselves about who we are, where we come from, what are our vision, purpose, and aspirations that make meaningful sense out of our lived experience and provide us with a compass for going forward?[3] How, too, must we adjust that narrative to encompass our current reality? To make sense out of tragedy and uncertainty in our lives, we are fortunate to be able to draw on a tradition that has been doing this in both profound and troubling ways for millennia.
Both biblical religion and its rabbinic reinterpretation are rooted in a tragic metaphor of (divine) love and loss, home and exile. The biblical literature, collected and canonized as Tanakh (the Torah, the Prophets, the Sacred Writings), bears the indelible imprint of the lived experiences of both the destruction of the Judahite state and temple and ensuing Babylonian exile in 586 BCE and the imperfect restoration that took place roughly seventy years later.[4] Trauma lies at its very heart.[5] The Torah’s warning that “When you have begotten children . . .and are long established in the land, should you act wickedly . . .you shall soon perish from the land; . . you shall not long endure in it but shall be utterly wiped out” (Deuteronomy 4:25-26),[6] while framed as Mosaic prophecy, is, in fact, a meditation on what has already taken place and an attempt to make sense of it: “On account of our sins we were exiled from our land.” Similarly, the prophetic writings that have been preserved are those that warned the smug inhabitants of Israel and Judah of impending disaster on account of their misdeeds and improper worship practices, and later those that comforted the despondent exiles with the hopeful promise of God’s redemption if they be truly penitent.[7] No prophetic utterances sanctifying the status quo before the destruction were included.[8]
While, by interpreting the destruction and exile in this way, the victims were (in our eyes) effectively blaming themselves, this schema nonetheless allowed them to retain some agency: their territorial deity had not been defeated by the gods of Babylonia; rather Nebuchadnezzar was simply the tool of Israel’s God. And if Israel’s God was powerful enough to exile them for their transgressions, then that same God was powerful enough to return them to their land if they truly repented.
The arc of the biblical mythic narrative, shaped by this trauma, is all about entering and settling the promised land, being exiled from it because of disobedience (as the literature construes the meaning of the Babylonian conquest), and returning to it chastened and penitent. The story has a reassuring conclusion.
“The arc of the biblical mythic narrative, shaped by this trauma, is all about entering and settling the promised land, being exiled from it because of disobedience (as the literature construes the meaning of the Babylonian conquest), and returning to it chastened and penitent. The story has a reassuring conclusion.
But, of course, the story—and history—did not end there.”
But, of course, the story—and history—did not end there. As noted, the actual restoration did not live up to the idealized expectations of the returnees who continued to feel that they remained in a condition of exile even while in the land; consequently, much of the literature that survives from the Second Commonwealth period bears a heavily penitential tone. The Judeans remained under the imperial sovereignty of others—Persians, Greeks, Romans—and then their state and temple were again destroyed and their population exiled from Jerusalem and Judea. Surviving literature from this period indicates that some Jews did indeed give in to despair:
Blessed is the one who was not born, or the one who, having been born, has died.
But as for us who live, who unto us
Because we see the afflictions of Zion and what has befallen Jerusalem . . .
(2 Baruch 10:6-7)
More consequential in the long run, though, were the responses of the nascent rabbinic group who believed that the mind and will of God could still be encountered in the act of studying and expounding Scripture even in the temple’s absence. They substituted words of communal prayer (“the worship in the heart”) for acts of sacrifice and likened one’s home table (“a small sanctuary”) to the temple’s altar.[9] By symbolically applying temple imagery to the ongoing life of the synagogue and the hearth, they made portable acts of worship that previously had been confined to the specific place no longer available.
This transformation (or sublimation, if you will) is symbolized in the rabbinic foundational narrative about Rabban Yohanan ben Zakkai’s escape from Roman-besieged Jerusalem in a coffin (signifying the death of the old ways) from which he rises like a phoenix before the Roman general Vespasian, whom he correctly predicts will be chosen as the next emperor. When asked to name his reward, Yohanan asks only that he be given Yavneh where he may teach his disciples and engage in the performance of mitzvot.[10] A similar tale of transformation is the following:
Once, as Rabban Yohanan ben Zakkai was coming out of Jerusalem, Rabbi Joshua followed him and beheld the Temple in ruins.
“Woe unto us,” Rabbi Joshua cried, “that this, the place where the iniquities of Israel were atoned for, is laid to waste!”
“My son,” Rabban Yohanan said to him, “Be not grieved. We have another atonement as effective as this. And what is it? Reciprocal acts of lovingkindness, as it is written, I desire goodness, not sacrifice. (Hosea 6:6)
(Avot deRabbi Natan, Version A, Chapter 4; ed. Schechter 12a)
While creatively adjusting to life without a central sanctuary, the Rabbis never gave up the hope for restoration of what was lost. Indeed, they built that longing into their daily prayers: half of the daily petitions in the Amidah deal with the restoration of Israel. The rabbinic Passover seder became a celebration not only of Israel’s past redemption from Egyptian bondage, but also an anticipatory experience of their future redemption from exile.
Rabbinic rituals routinely acknowledge the fragility of our existence. The joyous festival of Sukkot at the beginning of the rainy season was at the same time fraught with anxiety lest the rains not fall in the land of Israel and the crops fail. The Sukkah-booth itself must be an impermanent and exposed dwelling, reminding us of our vulnerability. An element of sadness and incompleteness remains in every rabbinic celebration, be it a wedding (breaking a glass) or building a new home (a small portion is left unpainted): this incomplete happiness is mandated as a remembrance of the destroyed temple and a recognition that Jews remained in exile. Audaciously, when interpreting Scripture, the Rabbis could imagine that the God who presided over their exile and Jerusalem’s destruction could also weep unconsolably for that destruction and go into exile with them.[11] In other words, they could imagine, in mythic imagery, that their suffering bore a cosmic resonance.
A recognition of the precariousness of life permeates rabbinic thought. The Sages of the Talmud ponder the meaning of the psalm verse, Serve God with fear and rejoice with trembling (Psalm 2:11). What, they wonder, does it mean to rejoice with trembling? Are not these feelings antithetical? Their response: In the place where there is rejoicing, there should also be trembling. This is illustrated with the story of Mar bar Rabina who made a wedding feast for his son. When he saw that the Rabbis were growing very merry (and presumably inebriated), he brought a precious cup and smashed it so that they became serious again. When asked to sing at the same wedding, one of the Rabbis began, “Alas for us that we are to die!” (b. Berakhot 30b). A tradition in the Talmud (Shabbat 153a) relates that in response to Rabbi Eliezer’s teaching that a person should repent one day before their death, his students asked him, “But does one know on what day they will die?” Eliezer’s response: All the more reason to repent today, lest you die tomorrow---thus one’s whole life would be spent in repentance. The Talmud also relates a tradition that for two and a half years, the Houses of Shammai and Hillel debated whether it would have been better had humans never been created. They finally took a vote and resolved that indeed it would have been better, but now that we have been created, we must examine our past deeds and our future actions (b. Eruvin 13b).
All of this resonates painfully in the era of COVID. But it is not the whole story---for the Rabbis also mandate that we take note of the small miracles of life that daily surround us: that we awaken each morning, that we can bestir ourselves, arise from ours beds and walk around, that our bodies function properly (when they do), that we can marvel at the grandeur of the world around us. None of this should be taken for granted—as we are so well aware today. All of it is occasion for gratitude and praise. Rabbinic culture, then, gives voice to the multiple paradoxes of our existence, not the least of which is that in the face of death, we affirm life. Rather than promoting stark binary oppositions through the law of the excluded middle, rabbinic legal theory delights in exploring the grey areas of intersecting discrete principles; in existential matters rabbinic culture affirms eilu v’eilu: both perspectives are true. There is depth here and purpose: the tragic dimension of life is acknowledged, though not allowed to have the last word.[12]
And how do we, as contemporary liberal Jews, relate to this legacy? Reform Judaism is a child of the 18th-century Enlightenment, a period of great faith in the goodness of a universal human nature, of reason, and progress—both scientific and social. With ghetto walls beginning to fall and Jews being allowed (often grudgingly) to participate in civil society as citoyens in the wake of the French Revolution, it seemed to many western Jews that the messianic age was just around the corner and that their exile had been transformed into a new diasporic home.
The United States, too, is a child of the Enlightenment, particularly of the political philosophy of John Locke. It is a grand experiment in reasoned self-government, resolutely propounding the belief in American exceptionalism and embodying the “can-do” pragmatic spirit of the frontier. It is no wonder that immigrant Jews would see in America the goldene medine where they could truly be at home. In the words of the first American Reform Haggadah published by the CCAR in its first Union Prayer Book (1892):
With deep-felt recognition of the divine kindness do we to-day give expression to our thanks that God has given us this land; that He has made us co-workers in and partakers of the liberty and the free government of this glorious Republic. Here is the haven of our peace, the opportunity of our mission, to teach by our own example the faith in one God, and the love of virtue as the common bonds of humanity.[13]
But the boundless optimism of the nineteenth century, with its expectation of perpetual progress, has been shaken by two world wars, the destruction of European Jewry, the threat of nuclear holocaust, and so many subsequent wars and tragedies from which the United States has not been immune. And at the personal level, even the exuberant postwar youth culture of the baby boomers eventually had to confront the infirmities and physical limitations of aging. It is not accidental that “healing services” were innovated in the late 1980s when boomers, entering middle age, were experiencing illness and loss. Debbie Friedman’s Mi sheberach, once characterized as “the anthem of the Reform movement,” was written in part as a response to her own struggles with the chronic condition that eventually claimed her life.
“The North American Reform Movement has been very successful in addressing the needs of adolescents through its youth movement and summer camps, building strong engaged communities that reflect youthful ebullience and optimism. But it has, I believe, been less successful in laying the foundations for a rich, “thick” liberal Judaism that draws heavily on all aspects of Jewish tradition and can address with nuance and depth the existential strains and losses of adulthood together with its peaks.”
The North American Reform Movement has been very successful in addressing the needs of adolescents through its youth movement and summer camps, building strong engaged communities that reflect youthful ebullience and optimism. But it has, I believe, been less successful in laying the foundations for a rich, “thick” liberal Judaism that draws heavily on all aspects of Jewish tradition and can address with nuance and depth the existential strains and losses of adulthood together with its peaks.
Liberal Jewish thought is not lacking the resources to do this. Consider the opening of Franz Rosenzweig’s magisterial work, The Star of Redemption, the writing of which was begun in the trenches of World War I:
All cognition of the All originates in death, in the fear of death. Philosophy takes it upon itself to throw off the fear of things earthly, to rob death of its poisonous sting, and Hades of its pestilential breath. . . . It bears us over the grave which yawns at our feet with every step. It lets the body be prey to the abyss, but the free soul flutters away over it.[14]
For “philosophy,” read “Judaism as a religious worldview,” and my point is made. But North American liberal religious thought has not generally taken this plunge. In stating this, I am agreeing with my colleague Prof. Michael Marmur’s assessment in this forum that:
. . .we will have to double down on a Judaism that takes words and texts and deeds and moments seriously. Doing this means going beyond the repetition of stock liberal mantras. It means embracing a Judaism that demands seriousness of purpose even when it does not require credulity or naiveté. It means doing more Torah, more practice, more transformative acts.[15]
And all of this means taking seriously the tragic dimension of human existence, of which COVID has provided an unwelcome reminder—facing up to it squarely and incorporating it explicitly into our mature worldview as adults. Paradoxically, what ultimately gives meaning to our existence and allows us to transcend an existentialist absurdity is precisely our insistence that our lives are meaningful and, as Jews, that a rich tradition of Jewish meaning-making supports us along our journeys. A rabbinic tradition maintains that Tisha b’Av, the saddest day on the Jewish calendar, is the day on which the Messiah will be born (y. Berakhot 2:3; Lamentations Rabbah 1:51). It is our heroic task as Jews to affirm hope in the face of tragedy and despair—but to do that, we must begin by seriously acknowledging them in our worldview.
[1] B.J. Miller, “What is Death?: How the Pandemic is Changing Our Understanding of Mortality,”
The New York Times Sunday Review, December 20, 2020, p. 4.
[2] See also the essay by my colleague, Dr. Jennifer Grayson, “What the World of the Cairo Geniza Can Teach Us About Responding to COVID-19,” which also references Unetaneh Tokef.
[3] I use the terms “myth” and “mythic” here in their anthropological rather than their popular sense. Instead of being “an untrue fiction,” a myth is a true (though not always factual) narrative that makes sense of, and gives meaning to, our experiences by weaving them together into a coherent pattern, albeit one we ourselves have constructed.
[4] The restoration was felt to be imperfect because the Davidic monarchy was not restored (indeed, the Davidic heir Zerubavel ominously disappears from the record) and the rebuilt temple was but a poor reflection of the destroyed one. See Ezra 3:12, Haggai 2:3, and Zechariah 4:10.
[5] See also the essay of my colleague Abraham J. Berkovitz, “Responding to Crisis and COVID-19: Echoes from Ancient Israel.”
[6] This passage is the traditional Torah reading for the morning of the Ninth of Av, observed as the anniversary of the destruction of both the first and second temples.
[7] See also the essay by my colleague Adriane Leveen, “Reading the Biblical Prophets During the Pandemic of 2020.”
[8] See, for example, Jeremiah 28, the story of the confrontation between the prophets Jeremiah and Hananiah, in which Hananiah prophecies that all will be well in Judah, while Jeremiah vehemently denies this, citing the prophetic tradition of rebuke and prophesying disaster. There is no biblical book of Hananiah because subsequent events proved him wrong. The fact that things could have turned out otherwise indicates the contingent nature of our scriptural collection: it is an ongoing series of responses to lived, historical experience.
[9] See Jacob Neusner, “Judaism in a Time of Crisis: Four Responses to the Destruction of the Second Temple,” Judaism 21.3 (1972): 313-27.
[10] I am referencing the version of this legend in Avot deRabbi Natan, Version A, Chapter 4 (ed. Solomon Schechter, 12a); version B, Chapter 6 (ed. Schechter, 10a). My colleague Prof. Haim Rechnitzer interprets the version in the Babylonian Talmud, Gittin 56b, in his essay, “Is There a Doctor in the House? –Yavneh Here and Now.”
[11] Lamentations Rabbah, Petiḥta 24; Mekhilta deRabbi Ishmael, Pisḥa 14, on Ex. 12:41. See also David Stern, “Imitatio Hominis: Anthropomorphism and the Character(s) of God in Rabbinic Literature,” in Prooftexts 12 (1992):151-174.
[12] See also the essay by my colleague Prof. Alyssa Gray, “Uncertainty, Action, and Faith: Talmudic Theological Musings for the Year(s) of COVID.” For further reading: Henry A. Slonimsky, “The Philosophy Implicit in the Midrash,” in Hebrew Union College Annual 27 (1956):235-290, and David C. Kraemer, Responses to Suffering in Classical Rabbinic Literature (New York: Oxford University Press, 1995).
[13]Union Prayer Book (1892), 241-42. The text is by Rabbi Isaac S. Moses, adapted and “Americanized” from the German of Rabbi Ludwig Stein (1841; revised 1882). This version of the Union Prayer Book, vol. 1, was subsequently withdrawn in 1893 and replaced with the more familiar version of 1895.
[14] Franz Rosenzweig, The Star of Redemption, translated by William W. Hallo (Boston: Beacon Press, 1972), p. 3.
[15] Michael Marmur, “The Horns of a Dilemma,” Scriptions.huc.edu.
