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Twenty-four hours with 5,000 Jews
Dinner with Sonja, my father, and his wife.
I managed to squeeze in time with good friends and colleagues, dinner with my father, a book signing, a panel presentation, and a pre-announcement announcement. (Look for more on that here soon.)
The Jewish Book Council had brought me down, as part of their partnership with the URJ, for a panel discussion along with Aviya Kushner and Michal Lemberger on “Rereading the Bible: Text, Subtext, and Filling in the Gaps in Between.”
Signing Books for the JBC at the URJ Biennial
We got the idea, of course, from the prophets of the first millennium BCE, whose vision for a better world lives on a hundred generations later.
Fittingly, the taxi driver to the airport had foreshadowed the acknowledgment of that achievement. A woman from Haiti, she heard us talking about this and that, and in response told us how much she admired the Jews and the way they kept their heritage alive.
What a thing to be a part of.
On Camp Eisner, Seeing the Future, and Combating Bullying
A trip to Eisner offers a glimpse into a glorious future framed by the perspective of our past. What else can you call it when hundreds of children, teens, and young adults from around the world gather in unpretentious worship to sing ancient words as given new voice with modern melodies?
I arrived for Shabbat morning services, held indoors, this time, in deference to the threatening weather. The predominantly musical morning was punctuated by short interpretations of Torah, each one presented by a group of three campers, and each one addressing the topic of promises.
A theme emerged: the promise not to bully. I happen to know that a sign in the dining room proclaims Eisner a bully-free zone. I didn’t know that campers, as part of a pledge they sign when they arrive, promise not to bully.
It seems that the plague of bullying is a modern one. There’s no ancient Jewish discussion of it. There isn’t even a Hebrew word for “bullying.”
But our sages were well aware of the power of words. Gossip, even based in truth, is likened to a capital offense in Judaism. You’re not allowed to speak ill of people behind their backs.
Equally, our tradition forbids unwarranted hostility, proclaims the absolute value of human dignity, and decries enslavement of any sort. Bullying aggressively boxes people into an ignoble cage of powerlessness. The Rabbis — who insisted that even if no one else is behaving well, you must strive to — would have been revolted. So like new melodies for timeless words, Eisner’s campaign against bullying is a new passion born of timeless values.
Visitors often want to bring home the beauty they find at Eisner. The campers at Eisner have suggested a first step: take an Eisner-like anti-bullying pledge.
Giving Students a Jewish Future: Three Clichés for Summer
A child visits our Sunday religious school planning to stay as briefly as possible. Once in class, she finds she likes school so much that she begs her parents to let her stay until the end.
A Hebrew school student on Wednesday afternoon spontaneously covers the whiteboard with graffiti: “I love this class.”
A student e-mails me to lament a canceled class.
A student guesses the password to my computer because I used a Hebrew word, and he knows it thanks to the effectiveness of his teachers.
A group of students asks if we can please extend the school year because they don’t want classes to end.
These are a few scenes out of many that remain prominent in my mind as I look back on the year now ending. They are, of course, just the tip of the iceberg.
I know. It’s a cliché. And “good writers” don’t use clichés. But I like clichés, because they tend to encapsulate important truths. In this case: the part you see is supported by a much larger part that you don’t.
Much of my job is putting in place the parts of the school-iceberg that you don’t see. The staffing (rare for a religious school, we have a waiting list of teachers who want to teach here), the training, the ambiance (treat everyone with respect), the policies (only make rules about things that matter), the materials, the schedules, the vision. It’s on my mind, because summer is when I focus most on these things.
I’ll meet with the heads of the textbook publishing houses to ask, “what’s your absolutely best material?” I’ll plan content that best matches our faculty and student body. I’ll ask what I can learn from the other religious schools that I’ve visited during the past year. I’ll revisit everything that didn’t work to see if we can do better. I’ll solicit direct feedback from students, teachers, parents, and the leadership. I’ll apply my experience and training to make sure all of our ducks are in a row.
I know. It’s another cliché. But three paragraphs later, I still like clichés. In this case, it may not matter which way any particular duck faces, but they do have to be aligned (for travel and for sleep, it turns out). In terms of our school, we face dozens of seemingly arbitrary decisions, but even though each one admits of many successful resolutions, they still have to work together to further a single vision: “Giving students a Jewish future.”
For instance, there are lots of good 4th-grade text books. And lots of people available to teach 4th grade. But there are fewer successful combinations of books and teachers. Our incoming 4th-grade, too, is unique, different from last year’s or next year’s; its particular nature further limits our choices. And the 4th grade has to take its place in a progression from kindergarten to 12th grade; that limits the choices even more. The 4th-grade school duck has to line up with all the other ducks.
In this regard, it’s important to focus on the vision — giving students a Jewish future — and ignore the Siren song of programming.
Yes, I did it. Another cliché. The fabled Greek Siren, half bird and half woman, sang beautifully sweet songs that lured sailors off their safe sailing paths and into destructive island reefs. Many new programs are the same. Though individually attractive, their value is dubious if we let their beauty distract us from our vision. Or to look at things differently: Does a new program bring us closer to giving children a Jewish future? If not, our resources and energy are probably better spent elsewhere.
So even though I’ll examine dozens of new ideas, my enthusiasm will be reserved for a tiny fraction of them — the few programs or undertakings or materials that support the iceberg that lines up our ducks that point away from the Siren song. As I work on next year this summer, that will be my litmus test.
(Okay. So it’s four clichés.)
Originally published in the Vassar Temple monthly bulletin.
The Way of the Land: The Value of Doing Good
There are at least two reasons to do something in Judaism.
The first is because we must. We must welcome the stranger, celebrate the holidays, work for a better world, study Torah, even teach our children to swim, according to the Talmud. Each of these requirements is called a mitzvah (plural, mitzvot), though common usage equates that Hebrew word instead with “good deed.”
The legalistic nature of Judaism gives many of these do’s and do-not’s technical names, and then elaborates their nuances. For instance, speaking ill of someone else — gossip — gets the name lashon hara, and we’re not allowed to do it, whether it’s true or not, and no matter how much fun it might be. But what if you feel you need to warn a friend about something? What if you’re just so frustrated that you need to talk things out? What about earning a living as a political humorist who mocks public figures? Details like these are fleshed out in discussions, commentaries, discussions on commentaries, and (yes) commentaries on the discussions. This is what we mean by “Torah” in the broadest sense.
These mitzvot are parallel to modern laws, which likewise dictate appropriate and inappropriate behavior.
By contrast, the second reason to do something in Judaism is because we can. This category goes by the Hebrew name derech eretz, literally “the way of the land.” And it refers to treating one another with the sorts of decency and propriety that can’t be legislated but are nonetheless desirable.
There’s no Jewish law against whistling mirthfully at a funeral, an addition to the Talmud explains, but that doesn’t mean it’s okay. And there’s no Jewish law that requires us to tip a waiter, but that doesn’t mean we should skimp on tips, even though, of course, we’ll get our meal even without purposely paying an extra fifteen or twenty percent for it.
Unlike the American secular approach, though, Jewish derech eretz is on a par with Jewish law. “Derech eretz preceded the Torah,” according to tradition, which is to say, the path to the mitzvot of the Torah is paved with the practice of derech eretz. In America, “there’s no law against it” or “there’s no law making me” are often sound excuses. Not so in Judaism.
Curiously, this same term — “the way of the land” — also means “the way things work,” for better or for worse, as it were. In our hometowns, we are judged by our reputation. But — the Talmud warns — on the road we are judged merely by our clothing. Attire is rarely a reliable indicator of anything substantial, but that’s the way it works. Get used to it. It’s not going to change. Derech eretz.
Reading between the lines, we find a message in the way a single term refers variously to courtesy as well as reality. There’s an unspoken hope that the two concepts merge, that generosity, compassion, and civility become so ingrained in our society that we can’t even imagine things being any other way — a time when going the proverbial extra mile is so common that it’s no longer noteworthy.
Particularly at this season of Shavuot, as we acknowledge anew our acceptance of Torah, let us remember not to be satisfied merely doing the good things that we must. Let us also do the good things that we can.
[Originally published in the Vassar Temple Bulletin, June, 2015.]
Hanukkah, Miracles, Light, and Darkness (Or: “In Search of the Perfect Gift”)
December is practically defined by Hanukkah.
Though technically a “minor” holiday, Hanukkah in America is huge. Kids look forward to getting gifts. Parents plan out the eight nights. Friends and relatives schedule visits. Everyone anticipates the glow of the Hanukkah candles.
Yet December is also marked by darkness — physical darkness, to be sure, and also a kind of mental darkness.
The days are short. The nights are long. In the morning we leave the house in darkness and in darkness we return at night. For many people, that darkness spills over into the realm of the emotional, actually making them less happy. “Seasonal affective disorder,” it’s called, the condition’s acronym (SAD) reflecting the way darkness makes people feel.
As with most things, SAD is a spectrum. Some people creep toward deep depression in the darkness of winter. Others just feel a bit down from time to time. But rare are the people who don’t notice the darkness.
So we have Hanukkah on one hand and winter on the other. The holiday of light and the season of darkness.
Alas, the bridge between the two in America is usually gifts. Things. Presents. Look at the packaging of almost any child’s game, and you’ll see the number one selling point: a photo of a deliriously happy family, bathed in several thousand watts of light that showcase an immaculately clean house in which children of various ages gleefully interact with their two smiling parents.
And there you have it. The only thing standing between you and that family is the right gift. The perfect gift, marketers like to call it. Find it, and your life, too, will morph into the one you see in the photo. The ideal gift doesn’t just banish the darkness. It fixes your life.
So most people spend December in search of that miracle cure. Good gifts abound, but are they good enough? Experience dictates that the perfect gift of advertising fame is elusive. Last year’s gifts didn’t do the trick, after all. So this year’s presents have to be even better.
It doesn’t work, of course.
There is no gift that will transform a life, no matter how much we might wish otherwise.
So I’d like to suggest another bridge, another way of mixing the season of darkness with the holiday of light: actual miracles.
Now, most people don’t believe in them. But then again, we know for sure that there’s no such thing as darkness. Darkness is just the absence of light — which is where we get the old joke about the photographer who opened the darkroom door and let all the darkness leak out. If darkness, which we know doesn’t exist, can have such power over our lives, perhaps miracles can, too.
Hanukkah, in fact, insists on it. The whole point of lighting the Hanukkah lights is to “advertise the miracle” of Hanukkah. This is why tradition prefers that the candles be placed in a window, where passers-by will pass by, see them, and be reminded of miracles.
Perhaps one reason most people reject miracles is that — as with the gifts — they expect too much. A parted sea, perhaps, or an unconsumed burning bush. Or at least a bit of oil that lasts longer than it should.
But I think miracles are more subtle.
So this Hanukkah season, give up on the perfect gift. And instead be on the lookout for a miracle coming your way.
[Originally published in the Vassar Temple bulletin, December 2014.]
The Bible’s Cutting Room Floor Goes On Sale Today
Ever wonder what happened to Adam and Eve after they left the Garden of Eden? There’s an answer, but it was cut from the Bible.
Curious about how Abraham discovered monotheism? That was cut too.
So was the once-popular Book of Enoch, written before the Book of Daniel and quoted in the New Testament.
Though they fell to the Bible’s cutting room floor, we still have the ancient texts that answer these and similar questions, filling in blanks in our current version of the Bible.
In addition, these fascinating writings from antiquity offer surprisingly modern insight into the nature of our lives as they explore good and evil.
These are the topics of my latest book, The Bible’s Cutting Room Floor: The Holy Scriptures Missing From Your Bible, which goes on sale today.
I hope you enjoy it.
President Rivlin’s Tragic Misunderstanding of Jewish History (Or, Will the Original Judaism Please Stand Up?)
The current president of Israel rejects Judaism as practiced by most of the world’s Jews.
Already, that is an unfortunate state of affairs. But what makes it worse in my opinion is that the president’s narrow-minded beliefs are based in misunderstanding and are the result of (probably inadvertent) brainwashing.
According to the JTA, President Reuven Rivlin told the Knesset in 2006 that “the status of Judaism according to halachah [Jewish law] is what has kept us going for 3,800 years. Besides it there is nothing.”
He is factually incorrect in many ways.
To start, halachah was born after the Jewish exile in the year 70, so it is, at most, 1,944 years old, not 3,800. Judaism did just fine without it for about a millennium, when Jewish service to God took the form of animal sacrifice. The enactment of halachah was a reformation of Judaism, or, as we call it more colloquially, part of a reform movement.
In fact, most of modern Judaism’s public symbols — thrice daily prayer services, Sabbath candles, current dietary laws (“keeping kosher”), the familiar matzah, etc. — didn’t exist 2,000 years ago. They were all reforms.
President Rivlin’s gross misunderstanding of the history of the country that just elected him might be forgiven — after all, he’s a politician, not an historian — except that he chose to present his revisionism before the Knesset, and continues to promulgate it in his official capacity.
President Rivlin, like many people, is suffering from a double misunderstanding. He thinks that Judaism has never changed. And he thinks that Orthodoxy is more authentic than its alternatives. In other words, President Rivlin wrongly thinks of Judaism as a straight line from antiquity to modern Orthodoxy, with deviations shooting off from time to time in the wrong directions.
A more accurate view sees Judaism as a continuous series of branches, with, in fact, four particularly rich periods of innovation.
Two examples demonstrate. The first concerns travel on the Sabbath, the second, the ceremonial skullcap commonly called a yarmulke or kippah.
Jewish law used to forbid travel on the Sabbath. Then transatlantic ships were invented, and Jews had a choice: they could refuse to travel from continent to continent (because the lengthy journey necessarily included the Sabbath). Or they could update their laws. They chose the latter, retaining only a nod to tradition in the form of not embarking or disembarking on the Sabbath.
A detail is equally to the point: The Shulchan Aruch — the 16th-century authoritative compendium of Jewish law — prohibits setting out to sea within three days of the Sabbath (Orech Chaim 248). The reasoning there was that the Sabbath shouldn’t be marred by the discomfort and confusion that accompany the start of an ocean voyage. But even modern Jews who follow halachah break this aspect of Jewish law.
The second example is the kippah or yarmulke. Common perception is that Jews are always supposed to wear a kippah in public. But, in fact, it wasn’t until the 16th century (in the same Shulchan Aruch) that the wearing of a kippah was codified. Before that, the 12th-century Maimonides ruled that a Jew’s head should be covered only during prayer. For most of Jewish history, Jews did not wear a kippah in public.
These two examples show that modern Orthodoxy sometimes ignores old laws and sometimes invents new ones. That’s fine, of course, and my point here is not to belittle Orthodox practice. But, equally, let us not believe that only progressive Judaism purposely changes the past, or that Orthodoxy most closely resembles what used to be. In this case (by chance), the progressive practice of donning a kippah for worship services is older than the revisionist Orthodox pattern of wearing one all the time.
But the details are only important here because of the larger pattern they demonstrate: Judaism has constantly evolved. The president of Israel does a disservice to everyone when he confuses his personal biases and preferences with objective superiority.
As it happens, Judaism has seen four particularly productive periods of innovation (as I point out in one of my most popular presentations, “Four Exiles and Four Spiritual Revolutions”). The prophets revised Judaism, broadening Jewish attention beyond the Jewish community. The Rabbis invented halachah. And the Kabbalists created a unique form of Jewish mysticism, to say nothing of the bulk of the Friday evening worship service.
We are witnessing the fourth major period of Jewish innovation in 3,000 years. Contributing to it are formal movements like Reform, Conservative, and Reconstructionist; philosophical approaches like Modern Orthodoxy; organizations like Chabad; populist movements that define many mainstream Israelis; and more. I am convinced that historians someday will look back at the 21st century with the same awe and reverence with which we now view the eras of the biblical prophets and the Rabbis.
It is a privilege to live through this incredibly exciting time.
And the president of Israel is being left behind. But it’s not too late. President Rivlin can still choose to participate constructively in the millennial Jewish dialog. Or, at the very least, he can stop trying to impede it.
The Heartbleed Bug Explained in Non-Technical Language
I’ve been asked by a lot of people to explain the “heartbleed” bug in non-technical terms. It’s really not complicated.
There are two parts to understanding what’s going on.
The first part is how computer memory works.
Computer memory is like a book of pages made from magic slates or mini whiteboards. Anything can be written on any page, and every page can be erased and overwritten with something new. The pages go in order, but the information doesn’t have to, which is why the computer constantly updates a changing table of contents to keep things straight.
For example, when you connect to, say, one of your bank’s computers to pay your bills online, that computer has to keep track of your name, your account number, your password, etc. So it puts all of that on whichever page is convenient — call it page 99 — and also makes a note in the table of contents so it knows where your information is.
The second part of understanding the heartbleed bug is knowing about an obscure part of the way computer connections work.
When your computer (or phone, or whatever) connects to your bank’s computer, you want to make sure that no one except you and your bank have access to the information you’re sending back and forth, like your password or your account balance. To make this possible, your computer and the bank’s computer work out what is essentially a brand new secret code, and use that to create what’s called a “secure connection.”
This process of negotiating a code is slow, so if you’re sending a lot of information back and forth (which you almost always are), you want a way of indicating that whatever you’re sending is part of an ongoing conversation. In other words, instead of creating a new code each time you type something or click on something on your bank’s website, you want some way of indicating that you want to keep using the code you have.
The mechanism for keeping a code active is called a “heartbeat,” and it’s pretty simple. You send an encoded message, and the other side decodes it and sends it back. It’s like you keep saying, “prove that you understand our secret code.” Because this is a code that you and your bank just created, no one else has it, so this is a pretty reliable system.
Of course, your bank’s computer has to write down your message on one of its pages. Let’s say it picks page 101. It writes down the message, then sends you page 101.
To make things even more secure, you get to choose how long your heartbeat message is. It might be one page. Or it might be 64 pages. If it’s 64 pages, the bank’s computer writes the whole thing down and sends back all 64 pages.
And here we come to the heartbleed bug: The way they programmed this thing, the computer at the other end doesn’t check if you sent as much as you said you did.
So if you say you’re sending 64 pages and only send one page, the computer will write down your message on page 101, but send you back pages 101-164. This means that you’ll get 63 pages of other people’s stuff!
And this could be anything. It could be someone else’s account balance. It could be someone else’s password. It could be someone else’s PIN number for their ATM.
But none of those are the worst case scenario. The secret codes that make secure communication possible all depend on keeping special keys (as they’re called) secret. Here the details really are complicated, but the bottom line is that the security of the Internet depends on the secrecy of these keys
Your bank — and only your bank — has one of the keys, which is why you can trust your on-line banking. But if that key just happens to be on page 102-164, which you just stole, you can pretend to be your bank!
This means that even once the bug is fixed on your bank’s computer, you can’t know for sure if you’re sending your information to your bank, or to a guy in Africa who’s robbing you blind.
In short, because the heartbleed bug reveals random pages in otherwise-secure computers, it’s not hard for malicious computer users to grab your private information and to grab the secret keys that will let them masquerade as a site you trust.
What’s the Deal with the Camels in the Bible?
So far this week, the New York Times and Time Magazine, among many other usually respectable news outlets, have reported on scientific evidence that camels weren’t domesticated until about the 10th century BCE. That’s true.
They add that this is a problem for the Bible because Abraham and the other patriarchs, who owned camels, lived much earlier. This part is wrong. And it demonstrates a pretty surprising naivete on the part of these and other mainstream news organizations.
First of all, let’s be clear. According to Genesis, Abraham lived to be 175 years old, so it’s not the camels that are hard to explain.
But the real misunderstanding is demonstrated by this line from the New York Times: “Abraham, Jacob and Joseph […] lived in the first half of the second millennium B.C.” No they didn’t.
As I’ve explained in detail in And God Said — and summarized on-line for the Huffington Post (“The Bible Isn’t The History You Think It Is“) — the Old Testament is divided into three sections: the creation of the world (Adam up to Abraham’s father Terah), the creation of the Israelites (Abraham to Moses) and life in Jerusalem (after Moses). Only the third part was meant as history. The first two parts — Adam, Noah, Abraham, Joseph, and all the rest — serve other purposes.
So Abraham didn’t live in the first half of the second millennium, just like the heroine in Song of Solomon didn’t have birds for eyes, in spite of the poetic line in verse 4:1 that her “eyes are doves.”
Though I’m regularly surprised that so much misinformation surrounds the Bible, this kind of widespread mistake does help explain why many scientists don’t appreciate the Bible’s value, and why many religionists increasingly have no use for science.
The Surprising Value of Downtime at Work
To many outside observers, it’s a waste to have employees sitting around and doing nothing more than chat. But the outside observers are wrong, we learn from MIT’s renowned Dr. Alex Pentland, who has studied how to increase productivity and creativity at work.
Among his conclusions are that interaction among workers is one of the best predictors of overall work productivity.1
For example, he studied a call center at Bank of America. Call centers are interesting because they have exact data on productivity. They know how much each person gets done per hour. Call centers are also interesting because, at first glance, it seems that any time an employee is not working is time wasted.
But it turns out to be just the opposite. By increasing the time employees spent together on coffee breaks, Dr. Pentland increased each worker’s productivity.
To be clear, in this case he didn’t give the workers more downtime. He rescheduled their downtime so that they would have breaks together.
I think the lesson for organizations that value productivity is to make sure their employees get to spend unstructured time together at work.
Dr. Pentland didn’t just study call centers, and he didn’t just study productivity. For instance, he also looked at an IT support department, one which — like the call center — has clear records on productivity. He found the same thing: he could predict the employees’ productivity by looking at how much they talked to each other.
Dr. Pentland investigated creativity, as well, and found, again, that interaction was crucial: “the difference between low-creative groups and high-creative groups is their pattern of face-to-face exploration outside the group.”
All of this (massive) research points in a single direction: Giving people time at work to talk to each other is good policy all around.
1. Social Physics: How Good Ideas Spread — The Lessons from a New Science by Alex Pentland. Penguin Press HC, 2014. Pp 93-97.
On Sale Everywhere!
My Fiction
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Joel M. Hoffman, PhD 