As the Rabbi Said...
AS THE RABBI SAID... Rabbi's Dilemma about Interfaith Marriage I am desperately committed to Jewish survival. I am also committed to young people feeling good about the Jewish ethos. Whatever...
...How can we understand the Shema [the prayer commanding love of God...
...V'ahavta, usually translated as "And thou shalt love," is not written in the imperative but refers to future action...
...In Buchenwald there was no denominational segregation...
...Jewish children are educated in separate schools, raised in separate youth groups, separate neighborhoods and separate communities...
...The struggle is between those who confuse stringency and inflexibility with piety and those for whom accommodation and reasonableness are not apostasy but the genius that preserves Jewish continuity and identity, between those who function by exclusion and those who practice the art of drawing Jews closer together.tJoseph Green Congregation Moreshet Israel Jerusalem, Israel Do your rabbi's sermons make you sit up and take notice...
...We are supposed to be God's partners...
...Benjamin A. Kamin The Temple Cleveland, Ohio Israeli Apartheid We find apartheid in Israel and the United States...
...That is our sacred purpose on earth, to complete and perfect God's creation...
...Love on Command "And thou shalt love the Lord your God...
...It must be freely given...
...This world of ours may have been created out of chaos—out of some confluence of random gases and a big bang—but it is not God's intention that the world return to chaos...
...The person of faith can understand the Shema not as an injunction but as a reassuring prophecy...
...We who live in the wake of the destruction of European Jewry cannot be blamed if we believe God to be fundamentally unlovable...
...It would be better translated "You will come to love...
...Kenneth Cohen Beth Shalom Columbia, Maryland We Are God's Partners Whether you take the Hebrew story of creation literally or as a myth, there is wonderful truth in that phrase repeated after every act of creation: "And God saw that it was good...
...We were defined by a Jewish grandmother and by a common fate that transcended ritual laws and theological variations...
...It was not perfect, but it was good...
...My dear friend suggests we pay attention to the grammar and therein find an answer...
...20008...
...Whatever policy I adopt toward this culture and its near 50 percent interfaith marriage rate will be based on the best combination I •can develop of standards, pragmatism and compassion...
...We will understand that which perplexes us today, and we will come to love God freely...
...This world is now ours, a gift of God, and it is our sacred responsibility to preserve it...
...Simeon J. Maslin Keneseth Israel Elkins Park, Pennsylvania...
...The answer to a rabbi's dilemma about interfaith marriage is to abandon pat formulas, consider the big picture and consider—as Jewish leadership has for 20 centuries—what is the best response in the context of the times we happen to be passing through and the culture we are attempting to survive...
...It was left to us to perfect...
...But how can love be commanded...
...On the day when "the earth shall be covered with the knowledge of the Lord," we will be enlightened...
...If so, encourage your rabbi to send a sampling to Sermons, moment magazine, 3000 Connecticut Avenue, N.W., Suite 300, Washington, D.C...
Vol. 16 • December 1991 • No. 6
