Judaism (340-20300 & 344-20300) |
 |
Judaism (340-20300 & 344-20300) |
|
1. What does the oneness of God mean to Maimonides in his Mishneh Torah (pp. 17-19 of the Course Reader)? Does God have a physical body? Is God like human beings? What should be people’s proper attitude towards God?
2. How does Abraham Joshua Heschel interpret the oneness and unity of God? (pp. 28-30 of Course Reader) How is God’s oneness a source of ethics? Compare his thinking to that of Maimonides – you will see that they have much in common, for example in their views on the transcendence of God. Heschel, however, insists on the presence of God in the world, among human beings, while at the same he says that “God is one means He alone is truly real.” What do you think that statement means?
On Heschel –
Rabbi Abraham Joshua Heschel was the product of two different worlds. Born on Jan. 11, 1907 in Warsaw, he was the descendent of a long line of outstanding Hasidic leaders of Hasidism, and grew up within the traditional piety of eastern European Jewry. He gained a comprehensive knowledge of the rabbinic tradition and an intimate knowledge of how it was lived. At the age of 20 he left Poland and went to Berlin to enroll as a student at the University of Berlin and the Hochshule für die Wissenschaft des Judentums. His studies concentrated mainly on Semitics and philosophy. His study on the Hebrew prophetic consciousness, Die Prophetie, earned him a Ph.D. degree at Berlin University. In 1937 he became Martin Buber’s successor at the central organization for Jewish adult education and the Jüdische Lehrhaus. In 1938 he was expelled together with other Polish Jews back to Poland by the Nazi regime, and taught there for eight months at the Institute for Jewish Studies. In 1939 he left Poland and went to England before the war broke out, and then in 1940 he arrived in the US to teach for five years in Cincinnati at Hebrew Union College. In 1945 he joined the faculty of JTS in New York. He played a part in the negotiations between Jewish groups and the Catholic church before and during Vatican II. During the last decade of his life he became involved in a number of public issues: 1963, pleas for Soviet Jewry; took an active part in the Civil Rights movement and joined the opposition against the war in Vietnam. He died in 1972.
3. How has the Havurat Shalom Siddur Project reinterpreted the three paragraphs of the Sh’ma? (p. 27 of Course Reader). What themes of the original Sh’ma reappear in the meditation, and how does the meditation transmute them?
On Havurat Shalom –
A havurah is a word related to the word chevruta (fellowship) and is very similar in meaning – it refers to a small, intimate group gathered for prayer or study. Many havurot (the plural of havurah) were founded in the late 1960s and early 1970s as a part of the counterculture, and exist to the present day. Others were founded as part of large synagogues, to provide a sense of home and intimacy in the middle of a large congregation. Havurat Shalom was founded in 1968 in Somerville, Mass. as one of the first havurot. Since the early 1980s members of the Havurah have been involved in rewriting the standard Shabbat prayer service to accord more with their egalitarian and feminist ethos. This Meditation on the Sh’ma was written as part of the Siddur Project.
4. As you read Marcia Falk’s version of the Sh’ma (p. 26), try to figure out how she has reinterpreted the first sentence of the Sh’ma – how does she understand the idea of the oneness of God? And how has she reinterpreted the next three paragraphs? Notice especially the grammatical differences between the traditional and the reworked version.
On Marcia Falk – She is a poet and translator who is close in her theology to the Reconstructionist movement (founded by Rabbi Mordecai Kaplan), which sees God in more immanent (present in the world) terms than the traditional transcendent (beyond the world) idea of God. Her Book of Blessings is a personal reinterpretation of the Shabbat prayers, intended to be used by people who want to experiment with liturgy.
This page maintained by: Rebecca Lesses
Last revised January 15, 2006
