A thought provoking letter to the Kansas School Board

We urge you to read this letter sent to the Kansas School Board
You can find it here. Enjoy!

Brain research

I am reading (for the third time….) this very interesting book. Here is a quote from it, which that made me think of you:

The human brain runs first-class simulation software. Our eyes don’t present to our brains a faithful photograph of what is out there, or an accurate movie of what is going on through time. Our brains construct a continuously updated model: updated by coded pulses chattering along the optic nerve, but constructed nevertheless. Optical illusions are vivid reminders of this.

I am not telling you, at this point, who the author is or the name of the book. Only because the author and the book title may prejudice you against the content of the quote. If you have any comments, agree, or disagree or any other comments, please let me know.
Researching these things – which took a giant leap after having read “In Search of Memory” by Eric Kandel - thanks for the tip - is what really put spices in the dish of life.

Hope you are enjoying the hot summer….

Looking forward to hearing from you.

B’Shalom,

Richard
St. Louis
PS. One clue: The author of the above quote is a biologist.

To all my agnostic friends

Scientists distinguish between 2 types of agnosticism, TAP and PAP. TAP, or Temporary Agnosticism in Practice, is defined as a reasonable “fence-sitting” until more evidence is in, like the study of various ages of the pre-human history. It is OK and acceptable to say: “I am agnostic about this or that step in the pre-human evolution. Evidence is still pouring in”. That is being temporary agnostic, a condition that will be “cured” once the proof is in.

The other type, PAP, Permanent Agnosticism in Principle, is the type where we cannot answer a question no matter how much evidence we gather. An example of this (and again, one must be careful when using the term “forever”) is the way I see a color: I can see a red dot and you can see the same dot, but your brain interprets as green or as any other color combination. Philosophers cite this example as one that cannot be answered, at least not yet. Think about it, there is no conceivable way for me to “get inside your brain” and see that dot the way you see it.

Now when it comes to God, there is a lot of people who place the existence of God in the PAP category: “We’ll never know”. But to understand the background one has to be aware what people just 100-150 years ago considered “We’ll never know” types of facts.

What would be like for man to walk on the moon? We’ll never know. (We do now)
What is the biological and chemical makeup of stars far, far way? We’ll never know. (We do now).
Let’s back up further: The God Thor, in Nordic mythology is the one that causes thunder. Skeptics said: “Well. We’ll never know if that is true or not” – we do now!

Back even further: If we perform this particular dance, the rain god will be pleased and rain will fall. Are we agnostic about the truth value in that statement?

Bertrand Rusell’s parable about the china teapot revolving around the sun is so telling:

If I were suggest that such a teapot exists nobody would be able to disprove my assertion provided I were careful to add that the teapot is too small to be revealed even with the most powerful telescopes. BUT, if I were to go on to say that, since my assertion cannot be disproved, it is intolerable presumption on the part of human reason to doubt it, I should rightly be thought of as talking nonsense. If, however, the existence of such a teapot were affirmed in ancient books, taught as the sacred truth every Sunday, and instilled into the minds of children at school, hesitation to believe in its existence would become a mark of eccentricity and entitle the doubter to the attentions of the psychiatrist in an enlightened age or the Inquisitor in an earlier time. It is customary to suppose that, if a belief is widespread, there must be something reasonable about it.

So, to my agnostic friends, the question you must ask yourself, is this: are you a china teapot agnostics or are you an a-teapotist? The former is supported by the fact that we cannot know, for sure, that Russell’s China Tea Pot does not exist. But in Practice – we would most likely all be a-teapotsits.

Draw your own conclusions! And please submit your comments here!

The Funeral of Rabbi Bernie Lipnick

Please take a few minutes (!) to view and listen to the funeral of Rabbi Bernie Lipnick. It is an experience. Just click here and have a lot of patience. But it is worth your time

A discussion on the roots of the Jewish culture

When talking about the Documentary Hypothesis, some people feel that this a controversial view.
Of course, for me, this way of looking at the source of Torah is not controversial at all, in fact, that is the only way to realistically look at it. As many have pointed out, it does not make the text less “sacred”.
The sacredness comes from the fact that a people has believed this for 2500 yrs and continued the tradition, although it has changed a lot,
So, the answer to the question: “How come the Jewish people/culture has survived when the Egyptian, Babylonian, Greek, and Roman and other cultures have died?” is what? The ability to adjust? The belief in a monotheistic God? Some orthodox would say “it is that monotheistic God who sustained us”. My thinking is since the existence of a monotheistic God is controversial (to put it mildly, thousands of years of wars and millions of dead in “his name”) a more general statement can be made that is “easier” to "prove":
“The Jewish people has survived all those other cultures because of a continuous belief in a Monotheistic God”
Note. This statement does not address the existence or non-existence of God. It merely states that the belief in such a God, in itself, has helped sustain this people/culture.

Summary of the three presentations:

Shemoneh Esreh
BSKI's Mission statement says that we are all about Torah, T’Fillah and Tikkun Olam.
We are great about Tikkun Olam, our great Social action Committee, and we have lots of opportunities of learning through our great Adult Education Committee under Marvin, so that takes care of Torah.
But what about that guy in the middle, the T’fillah, prayer?

Well, this program is about Prayer. Actually, the Shemoneh Esreh prayer is so central to the Service that it used to be called Ha’T’fillah, the Prayer. Because nobody was ever in doubt what prayer they were talking about. You can see in the Talmud how they just refer to Ha’T’Fillah when they actually mean Shemoneh Esreh.
Here is the agenda of the presentation:
1. S.E. Introduction
2. “Welcome to the World of Prayer"
3. How did it all come about? The History of SE.
4. A discussion of each prayer in the SE would take a minimum of 3 hours and we obviously don’t have that kind of time. So, we have to limit this presentation to one Prayer and for the sake of making things easy, I have chosen Prayer Number 1, Avot.


Who Wrote the Bible?
This is a popular summary of the Documentary Hypothesis and the history of the Bible research.
From the introduction:
The early discovery of problems with the notion that Moses wrote the “Five Books of Moses”.
There were direct errors, like the numbers of things were listed differently in different places, Joseph was sold into slavery to the Midianites or to Ishmaelites; or was it Reuben or Judah who saves Joseph from being killed by the other brothers. In Gen 36, there is a list of Edomite kings that include kings that reigned long after Moses lived. Or Gen. 12 where Abraham either came from Ur or from Haran., these first basic errors were discovered over 1000 years ago.
So, if you think that this model that I am about to describe is some modern concoction; rest assured that this is not the case.
And of course there is the story about Moses being the most humble man, but he wouldn’t say that he is the most humble man in the world. If he would say that he’s the most handsome, smartest or strongest man who ever lived, that would have been one thing. But the most humble man doesn’t describe himself as the most humble man. So, this was another indication that Moses didn’t or at least not alone didn’t write the entirety of the books that bear his name. And of course the description of his death was never easy to attribute to him.
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Then the presentation goes on to describe the era in which, per most researchers, the Bible was actually written. The tensions between Israel and Judah, the exile to Babylonia, the return, Ezra, who most likely is the person who knitted together the different strands into the book we now know as the Bible. A thorough description of the J, E, P and D sources. And implications in the 20th and in the 21st century.


The Philosophy of Rabbi Neil Gillman

A basic introduction to Rabbi Neil Gillman’s thoughts and definitions of terms that he uses in his books. An overview of his most important books, Sacred Fragments” (1990), “The Death of Death” (1997) and “Doing Jewish Theology” (2008) .
A detailed explanation of the key elements in understanding his philosophy, language, (“Speaking of God”), signs, symbols, metaphors, the concept of myth, a detailed explanation on why the dichotomy between “fact” and “myth” is false, understanding the will of God, revelation (“What actually happened at Sinai?”), what midrash has to do with it. How to do your own theology!

A presentation of the philosophy Rabbi Neil Gillman

This is a speech given at the BSKI Synagogue in August 2009. Speaker: Richard Gavatin

“Dvar Torah” Aug 29,. 2009

Shabbat Shalom

So, who wrote the Bible? What?! Sorry! Wrong speech

As you most likely know by now, the Adult Education Committee is presenting a Scholar-in-Residence Weekend November 13 -15. This has made possible through a very generous gift in memory of Cillia Rotman Haffner. Our SIR is Rabbi Neil Gillman of the JTS.

In agreement with both Rabbi Gillman and Rabbi Miller, I am now about to substitute the traditional commentary on today’s Torah portion, Ki Tetze, with a shameless plug for the SIR Weekend and the upcoming Book Club sessions.

Rabbi Gilman’s teachings are up there, with the other “names” you know, of 20th Century thinkers, Abraham Joshua Heschel and Mordecai Kaplan and others. Some argue that the difference between Gillman, on the one hand, and Heschel & Kaplan on the other, is that in Gillman vs. Heschel, Gillman is more understandable, and in Gillman vs. Kaplan, Gillman is more correct….

Rabbi Neil Gillman has written a number of books, all worthwhile reading, and highly recommended. He has been a SIR for the last 20 yrs and also taught in Israel and in Russia.

He has, in my opinion, a unique ability to teach. Highly complex thought processes and concepts are being served to us in easy-to-swallow bites. Does that mean that everything he says is understandable right away and is integrateable in your mind without effort? No and No.

It does take an effort and that is why the Adult Ed committee has planned a series of events to help you.

In addition to this short presentation, we’ve published articles in the Shofar, we’ve submitted articles to the Light and we have three Book Club Sessions planned.

We encourage you to get to know Rabbi Gillman’s teachings and what follows is a first installment:
In order to understand the Gillman philosophy, one has to look at the definitions of some concepts to make sure that we are comparing apples to apples.
The first pair of concepts consists of Signs and Symbols. An example of a Sign is a “red light” on a road. We know that the color red represents a command to stop the vehicle until the light changes.

But there is no inherent connection between “red” and “stop”, the color could have been blue or purple. A Sign therefore is a convention that easily can be changed.
Another example is an American Flag. The flag represents The US. However, the connection is tighter, than with a sign. A flag is considered a Symbol in this context, and not as easy to change. Just imagine the uproar if Congress decided to change the American Flag to a green cross on a purple background.

Symbols live and they can die. An example is the masculine quality of traditional Jewish symbols of God, a quality that many people these days replace with more gender-neutral language. Instead of saying “we trust Him”, we say “we trust God” and so on.

Religion consists of symbols as well, although there are technical differences. An example is that we speak of God as Avinu Malkenu (‘our father, our king’) where strong symbols familiar to us (Father and King) are used to represent our community’s experience of God.

Many philosophers claim that all religious language has to be understood as “symbolic” or “mythic”.

In Popular parlance, a myth is understood to be either a fiction (the myth of the invincibility of a sports team) or a legend (like the myth of Oedipus). Technically, it is neither of these, but rather a structure of meaning through which we make sense of our experience. Let me repeat that a myth is a structure of meaning through which we make sense of our experience.

The world out there does not come to us in a nicely tied up package of objective meaning. Before we can even see the world “out there” a process has to take place to interpret it. Rabbi Gillman writes that even a simple thing as a glass of water is a process that does not take place in our eyes but in our brain. Billions of neurons are in action for us to actually see what’s there, but also our background, culture, gender, education, age and more play a role. We are not passive recipients of a premade reality out there, we construct what we see. In other words, we read it.

Myths are the spectacles, glasses, if you will, through which we understand the reality out there. Myths are not the same as lies or untruths. Myths deal with beginnings. So, for example, the Jewish myth is the Exodus from Egypt and the receiving of the Torah at Mt. Sinai, which tells our community’s master story. This myth is then refined, shared and transmitted through generations. It becomes embodied in official, canonical texts. In its final form, it becomes authoritative, and quasi-invisible or implied.
Myths explain, account for, and give answers to questions like Why. In general, myths explain overt data by referring to an invisible or elusive world “behind the data”. This includes science. Take for instance the theory of quantum mechanics; it is not something you can see, touch or smell. So the theory of quantum mechanics is a myth that helps us understand a specific reality. Or Freud’s theory of the subconscious and his entire psychoanalytic theory. Or even astronomy. They are all technical myths. Again, that doesn’t mean they are untruths or do not exist. They are just ways to explain something that is “out there” and does not readily come to us right away, like the seeing of this glass of water. They need interpretation and that interpretation is what is called a myth.

A community is defined by its myth. What separates one community from another is their myths. Language, history, traditions, culture, music, and food, are all components that make up a community’s myth.

So, what is different with a religious myth? There are two ways that a religious myth differs from other myths:
One is that a religious myth addresses ultimate questions, like “Why am I here?”, “What happens to me after Death?”, “How do I live authentically?”, “How do I reach fulfillment?”, “What does salvation mean?” - In short, a religious myth provides answers to people’s intuitive, inherent search for meaning.
The second is that a religious myth, at least in the monotheistic setting, provides answers to these questions through viewing nature and history as the work of a transcendent God.
We can only, as humans, characterize God through the tools that we have at hand. We can only speak of God with the tools of language – that’s all we have. God is – in this setting – within the mythic structure that we associate with. In our case, the Jewish myth, speaks of a very specific God, Adoshem, that has all the characteristics that our tradition has bestowed upon God.

That is NOT to say that God is a fiction. Our ancestors no more “invented” God than Freud invented the psyche. I think we can all agree that there was a psyche long before there was Freud.
But our ancestors experienced God’s presence in nature and in history, and the source for this experience was the revelation at Sinai; Here is where you can clearly see that myth does not equal fiction.

The myth and the original experience continued to feed on each other: Quote: (from “The Seminary at 100” – a book celebrating 100 yrs of The Jewish Theological Seminary’s from 1987)

“ The mythic characterization of God shapes the experience (of the revelation at Sinai). But at the same time, the ongoing experience of God’s presence has verified the myth over countless generations” End quote.

In other words, a person who sees himself or herself as a believing Jew, continues to see God’s presence just as the ancestors did at Sinai.

Religious myths are canonized in sacred texts, like the Torah for us, the Book of Mormons for the Latter Day saints, and the Koran for the Muslims and so on. Although the book or books are sealed, the myth itself must be elastic enough so that generations can expand, change and revise the myth so that it, the myth, speaks to them. We Jews have a special term for his process. What is it?

We call it Midrash. Just think of the Akeidah, the near sacrifice of Isaac by Abraham, that in only 3 weeks, we will re-read on Rosh Hashanah. How many interpretations of that story have you heard throughout your lifetime? Just think about it.

Scholars claim that if we do not re-interpret our historic myths, they will die. That is, they become untrue or in other words they then become “myths” in the popular sense of the word.

An example of that is the ‘myth’ that six million people died in the Holocaust because God punished them for their sins. This is a myth in a technical sense. However, it is one that has “died” for most of us. In other words, here is an example of myth that is untrue because we no longer believe it. Needless to say that there is a minority of ultra-orthodox people who would hold this myth as true, but for the majority of us, this would be a non-functioning myth.

As you can understand, there is so much more to learn about this, and I encourage you to read the Book Club book, “Sacred Fragments”, copies of which I believe are supposed to be available in the Office. Please check with Harvey.

And please sign up for the Book Club sessions through the office. One more thing, we’re hoping that this weekend of Programs will attract people in the community who are interested in Jewish learning, We therefore urge all of you to, quote, “be part of the BSKI PR Committee” if not literally at least in action: Talk to friends, colleagues, neighbors, and let them know about the weekend. Please read the articles in the Shofar - this is an opportunity to show the St. Louis Jewish community what BSKI is all about.

Lastly I want to think Rabbi M for letting me advertise on Shabbat.

Shabbat Shalom