The Improbable Rabbi

...People are clothes to be washed out and dried and used again...

...But you're an Orthodox rabbi, Adin...

...Adin's whole philosophy stands in stark contrast to the perfect state of bliss and contentment offered by the Western versions of Eastern religions...

...Copyright © 1980 Lesley Hazleton...

...Of course, as long as I'm a Jew I'm fighting," he replies...

...We also thank him for facilitating our study with all the modern pedagogic devices that he has introduced: illuminated charts and maps, cross-references, guides to further study, summations of the Halakhah, and complete indexes of subject matter, personalities and sources...

...Adin nods, smiling...

...The content of the story is not in the length of it, but in the process of it...

...Oh yes, it's very tempting...

...i ? J ¦ji s a. The scope of the work, let alone the pace of it, is stunning...

...I love the Jewish New Year in Israel, for example, coming as it does at the end of the long heat of the summer...

...When I mention this, though, he is not at all amused: "If people see me as a guru, then they are surely people who have never met me...

...Since its sources are so ancient, the Hebrew parts of it, let alone the Aramaic parts, are difficult even for Hebrew speakers...

...Like breath, this is life...

...the more you try, the more you understand the distance, yet the more you yearn for it...

...it is death...

...This article is reprinted from the July/August issue of QUEST/80 by special permission...

...He found religious teachers, and his amphibian existence began...

...Tolstoi once said that there is no such thing as a Jewish nonbeliever...

...Those who do have it have a very strong feeling that there is a 'what for,' and that without answering it their lives are not worth living...

...There are Jews who regard the pages of the Gemara as sacred as the Scrolls of the Torah...

...And nearly every issue includes a story by the 18th-century mystic Rabbi Nachman of Bratslav, with a lengthy commentary written by Adin...

...That's a good family tradition...

...You won't find it that often," he says, puffing on the pipe, "because people are tired and overworked and they just don't have time to think about it...

...If we have to die," he continues, "then that is certainly the nicest way to do it...

...But when they do, the idea of simply living, just making a good living, seems pointless...

...Max J. Routtenberg Max J. Routtenberg, a past president of the Rabbinical Assembly, is Rabbi Emeritus, Congregation B'nai Sholom, Rockville Center, New York...

...The Talmud is the vast body of the oral law (as against the written law of the Pentateuch) together with commentaries and discussions on it...

...But I cannot help wondering aloud if there is not a large element of hubris here, if Adin is not taking the messiah complex too literally...

...Fighting it means that you are active, not passive, within it...

...Despair is one of the supreme sins, because a despairing person ceases to struggle...

...Even Israelis forget that the very name of their country means "one who struggles with God"—the name, given to Jacob after his night-long wrestling with God (Genesis 32...

...It has a feeling of completeness to it, closely connected to smugness: the despairing person makes no attempt to move from the point he is at—no attempt to change himself or the world—and this completeness is a Moment/19 "If people see me as a guru, then they are surely people who have never met me...

...Dying is completion...

...The traditional Jewish way is one of struggle and curiosity, he emphasizes, of always reaching further—and never being satisfied...

...For this alone he deserves our gratitude...

...The dark is kind to him, hiding some of his fraility...

...The whole structure is obvious to them...

...they have no questions, they accept everything, and nothing bothers them...

...We can now read the talmudic text fluently and accurately...

...You know, one of the most beautiful mystic writings is the story of the Sin of the Sons of Aaron, who died in a religious ecstasy...

...In fact, He rather likes people who fight Him...

...But there is little question that he is a man of dramatically growing influence, whose diverse disciples see him as a towering figure of our time...

...There's a medieval saying that if you knew the Lord, you'd be Him...

...Adin rummages through the drawers or his pockets for bits of tobacco to stuff into his pipe as he thinks...

...He once felt as I do...

...Steinsaltz s most significant and enduring contribution to the study of the Talmud lies in his monumental commentary...

...He is "the teacher'par excellence and he has taught all of us how to swim with ease and enjoyment in the vast sea of Steinsaltz's Talmud...

...It is an incessant struggle...

...I was bored with it," he recalls, "and I wanted to explore...

...They are all in struggle, and this is what makes them great...

...No, they finish what they have to do and then depart!' "The idea is that if you have nothing more to do and have fulfilled what you had to do, that is the end of the story...

...Indeed, it is the basic idea that kept the Jews from conversion and assimilation throughout centuries of suffering...

...But still you must understand why people would find such a relationship very tempting...

...A mischievous glint comes into his eyes...

...There are certain things that I don't know the answer to," he says, "and perhaps it is a source of pride for me that I can now say, 'I don't know.' "There's a story about a fool who asked the wise man of the village how far it was to heaven and how far to hell...

...Paradoxically— and suitably for a man who loves paradox—his first name means "gentle" in Hebrew...

...They fight basic ideas of right and wrong...

...And the purpose is not in the being up or the being down...

...In a certain way the difference between a saint and someone who is surely not a saint is not that the saint has no problems, but that he has more, and more elaborate, problems...

...As Adin sees it, the messiah complex is very deeply Jewish...

...Herewith, an appreciation of Adin Steinsaltz by a writer who is also his neighbor and friend...

...One who does is Adin Steinsaltz, an Orthodox rabbi who lives near me in Jerusalem's German colony, an area of old stone houses and shady gardens far from the fanatic claustrophobia of the ultra-Orthodox Me'a She'arim quarter...

...Adin leans back, arms behind his head, and is silent awhile, thinking...

...What do you think?' replied the rabbi...

...His bright red hair trails wistfully around his high forehead...

...Predictably, he is also the target of sharp criticism...

...Although this is one of the basic themes of the Jewish faith, few Jews consciously recognize it as such...

...He suffers from a rare genetic disease of the spleen, and since all manner of experimental treatments have failed, he is soon to undergo an operation to remove his spleen entirely...

...In many ways," he says, "I am an amphibian, living in two worlds: the world of the religions in the most traditional or strict orthodox sense, and the modern secular world...

...If so, I reflect, then I myself am quin-tessentially Jewish, since I too am deeply involved in the existential search for meaning...

...As though the Talmud project were not in itself a lifetime's work for a team of people, let alone one, he has also started an institute for Jewish studies in Jerusalem called Shefa, which means "abundance" or "plenty" in Hebrew, and in cabalistic literature refers to the divine source showering the world with abundant blessings...

...But I am also fascinated by what he calls "the messiah complex," the feeling that, as he puts it, "your life is not complete unless you perform a mission of saving the world in a bigger or a smaller way...

...Steinsaltz has put all of us in his debt by having the courage to vocalize and punctuate the text of the Talmud...

...even his peyes, his sidelocks, are meager copies of the more luxuriant growths of most Orthodox men...

...It represents the accumulated wisdom of rabbinical sages throughout the centuries since Babylonian times, ranging from legal discussions and rulings on every aspect of Jewish duty to biblical discussions, moral maxims, proverbs, prayers, parables, folklore, and customs...

...Basically it's revolting...

...One of the beautiful things about the exodus from Egypt is that before it the children of Israel 'embittered their lives.' Before they did that, they accepted the conditions of exile...

...Thus, those who define themselves as religious are often far more secular than the secularists, because they have no real connection to the religion...

...it's not a loving connection, but it's a positive one in that it exists...

...When I visit Adin we usually sit in the hut at the bottom of his garden, where he spends most of his time when he is at home—to the apparent bemusem'ent of his wife and two children...

...IMPROBABLE RABBI LESLEY HAZLETON Dan Segre, a distinguished professor of International Relations at Haifa University, has said of him that "Stein-saltz has the sort of mind that comes around only every couple of thousand years...

...There is always a question attached to your life, the question of 'What for?' Those who don't have the messiah complex don't accept this as a valid question...

...And then when you have already started, you are so busy working that you have no time to reflect on the size of it...

...his beard tries for the fullness of the classical rabbinical image but stops far short of it...

...Perhaps it was my form of rebellion...

...After graduating from the Hebrew University in Jerusalem with a degree in physics and mathematics, he took his rabbinical exams and spent some years as a full-time teacher—Jewish studies for adults in the evenings, and physics and math for high school students in the daytime...

...mark of dying...

...Then he goes on: "A famous rabbi was once talking of what a great, full life his grandfather led...

...His sticklike arms and legs push against the thin cotton of shirt and trousers, exaggerating the size of his swollen belly by comparison...

...it's a family tie, a cultural phenomenon...

...mistrust from those members of the Orthodox community who suspect his friendships with people like myself—resolutely secular and therefore anathema to ultra-Orthodox Jews...

...it is in the movement, which creates life...

...In our generation, a whole set of keys has been put into our hands by Adin Steinsaltz...

...His aim is to help bridge the gap between the religious and the secur lar...

...or perhaps there were only the desk and the chairs in the beginning, and the rest gradually accumulated and encroached on them...

...It's all interestingly presented in the Book of Job, where the Lord doesn't seem to want people to justify Him...

...Only with the beginning of his Talmud project in 196S did he finally commit himself full-time to Jewish studies...

...And this makes it a very complex attachment...

...none of them are restful, none of them without blame...

...Even the 300,000 people living in the city, myself among them, are touched by this image...

...for some, his translation of and commentary on the Babylonian Talmud is an act of intolerable hubris...

...It can be done, but you really have no idea of the true scope of it until you start...

...But it is still sin—it is ceasing to go on to the end...

...The implication is clear: one who struggles with God will, in the end, be blessed by God...

...I remember I once asked the Lubavitcher Rebbe in New York, who is considered such a guru by many people, about some aspect of drugs and hypnosis, and he replied: 'The whole aim of being Jewish is that one should be a master of himself.' When you use drugs or hypnosis or any more subtle form of the same thing, such as the guru relationship, then you loose the most important part of yourself...

...In the center, a space has somehow been cleared for a desk and two chairs...

...Because I don't find it at all amusing if people look at me with the calf s eyes of adoration that you see in Chagall's paintings...

...Who is not...

...It's certainly not a restful position to be in, but it does mean that I am one of the few who can create a gateway between these two worlds...

...Adin is also a regular participant in the Aspen Institute's Mideast seminars, and last year he went to Paris at the invitation of Jean-Paul Sartre and Simone de Beauvoir to meet Palestinian thinkers (a waste of time, he recalls, since even in private the Palestinians would not budge from the PLO line...

...That makes despair the ultimate defeat...

...Where the Mountains Roar: A Personal Report From the Sinai and Negev Desert, is being published this month...

...Sometimes among Jews there is a family quarrel, but it doesn't destroy the family or my connection with the family...

...today, nearly half the 33 volumes have been published or are ready for publication in Hebrew...

...The wise man replied that he didn't know...

...Adin's own messiah complex is expressed in his Talmud project, perhaps the most ambitious undertaking in modern Judaism...

...If the Talmud is the key to understanding Judaism, where is the key to unlock the Talmud...

...if I got paid for all the things I don't know, I'd be very wealthy indeed...

...In a certain way, the Jewish religion is not a religion at all...

...the best known in English is The Essential Talmud, a basic introduction to Talmudic study...

...Our talk often revolves around saints and sinners, Adin's eyes twinkling with enjoyment as he ponders the saints' capacity for sin and the sinners' capacity for saintliness, the latter a theme explored by Isaac Bashevis Singer in The Magician of Lublin...

...A second-century Talmudic description of a tzaddik [the closest equivalent in Judaism to a holy man] is that 'the righteous have no rest, not in this world and not in the other world.' This is a definition not of the wicked, but of the righteous, because they have so much to do that they can never be restful...

...I love hearing the cabalistic stories and legends of creation and existence, and exploring Jewish myths and ideas...

...Obviously, he is greatly indebted to the master commentator Rashifor his understanding of the text...

...The whole idea of Judaism is process: incessant oscillation, up and down, heavenward and earthward...

...it also includes a radical innovation—a third commentary by Adin himself...

...It is a dark wooden shack piled high with books, manuscripts, dust, and cobwebs...

...Life is to be lived and enjoyed, they say...

...You can see it in all the biblical heroes...

...Adin's own life involves what many of his friends consider too much movement for his health...

...the student was in his seventies), to artists, social scientists, and businessmen...

...If I do care about it, then I'll be questioning it, and I'll definitely have more problems with it because the questions lead to problems, not answers...

...He began the Talmud project IS years ago...

...A follower pointed out that his grandfather had died very young...

...Yet my Judaism is surely a pagan one...

...To a large degree, I agree with him...

...So long as you're struggling, quarreling, there can't be despair...

...If I don't care about it, then I have no questions, and if I have no questions, then I have no problems...

...Yet, Steinsaltz is unique among the commentators in the lucidity of his interpretations, the clarity of his understanding and his ability to cut through complex and intricate discussions and reduqe them to their basic elements...

...by embittering their lives, they could not stand it anymore—and this is the beginning of any kind of deliverance...

...there are no rosy pictures in the Bible...

...So you go into it out of ignorance...

...So trying to know Him is like trying to catch the horizon...

...But I think that every growth has the element of struggle, of detachment and attachment, all the time, and that pure attachment is a way of dying, not living, just as is pure detachment...

...Adin is therefore preparing his own version of the Talmud so that those who are not full-time Talmudic scholars will have easier access...

...But the basic reason that people who really know Adin could never see him as a guru is that he neither has nor pretends to have all the answers...

...Because if they had...

...Through the centuries, each generation of Jews has found one key or another to meet its needs...

...And it is definitely not a restful religion...

...None of us had a real religious attachment," he says softly...

...The institute's quarterly journal of the same name, published in English, reveals a wide range of Jewish thought: an article on the creativity and reversibility of time, for instance, written by a wellknown biophysicist, or one on Jewish political thought and contemporary politics...

...I point out the note of admiration in Adin's voice as he talks about those who fight God...

...But it is surely not a religious attachment, since I am secular...

...You're halfway through your own version of the Talmud, you're one of the most respected Jewish thinkers in Israel today . . . how can you be fighting God, fighting Judaism...

...To most Westerners, the very name "Jerusalem" evokes Blake-ian images of peace and tranquillity, despite the political turmoil that surrounds and always has surrounded it...

...If you are satisfied—things may not be so great, but they're tolerable—then you stay in one place, and there's no movement, no life...

...At the age of 43, he has inspired both veneration and mistrust: veneration from a large following ranging from the late president of Israel, Zalman Shazar (a student of Adin's when the teacher was barely over 20 and Lesley Hazleton's new book...

...Yet the stones of Jerusalem have witnessed perpetual struggle...

...He is the author of a number of books...

...You see, many of those who are secularists by their own definition are fighting with the ideas of the Jewish faith, but within the family framework...

...And Judaism is a matter of questions...

...You know, sometimes a thing is so big that you cannot grasp the size of it...

...The Steinsaltz Talmud not only revises the two main ancient commentaries...

...Of course I can see that it might not be everybody's temptation, but for some it does exist, like the Hasidic master who used to take out his watch and check the time in the middle of prayers: he felt himself being drawn out of the world, and he knew that he had to retain some kind of normality, had to reattach himself to the world...

...And the fool got angry and said: 'Why do people pay you for things you don't know?' Well...

...Of incalculable help is his translation of the Aramaic into fluid Hebrew...

...You can estimate how much needs to be done and conclude that yes, it can be done, just as one man can estimate what it takes to build a cathedral and conclude that yes, he can do it...

...Would anyone dare insert vowel points or punctuation marks in the Sefer Torah...

...It is small wonder, then, that Adin has begun to be something of a legend, both in Israel and now among young Jews in the United States...

...Those people who are really fighting with it may be far more within the mainstream of Judaism by virtue of their struggle...

...And I am thus very attached to the religion...

...There is a sense of privilege in living there, as though there were indeed some spirit of truth to be wrested from those stone walls perched on a mountain ridge between desert and coastal plain...

...He was born in Romania to secular socialist parents who moved to Jerusalem in the 1930s to help create a new Jewish society, one based on values other than religion...

...His voice, already thin and quiet, becomes yet thinner and quieter as he answers...

...I'm just paid for those little things I do know...

...In short, it contains the ethics and values of the Jewish people...

...His first contact with religious studies came during a year of truancy from high school...

...But surely, I object, such awareness of the impossibility of reaching the horizon could lead to despair...

...Occasionally, in what seems a minor miracle, the first rain falls on that day, and the smell of the rain, the sound of the birds reveling in it, the dampness spreading in gentle darkness over the scorched earth convince me that this is the beginning of a new cycle of growth, a truly new year...

...It is rather disconcerting to realize that each time I see him, his legend has grown, so that for some he even seems to be approaching the status of a guru...

...So sometimes the only way to move someone out of despair is to make him bitter, to force him to feel, to suffer, and thus to struggle...

...That's perhaps the highest form of sin possible, because the Lord wants our life, not our death...