On Graduating from the University of Chicago

I graduated today from the University of Chicago Divinity School with an MA in Divinity. My sermon this week reflects on a few key themes that have animated my study at the university these past five years.

University Takeaways
 
It will surprise no one that I am thinking a lot about transitions these days. After all, as you know, we are about to say good-bye; and it will be a difficult farewell even though we’ve known this day would come all year. I’m speaking, of course, about Leviticus, my favorite book of the Torah, and the one we conclude this week.

As some of you may know, I’m also marking another transition in my life right now; but again, it’s probably not the one you’re thinking of. Earlier today, I had the very great privilege to receive the degree of Master of Arts in Divinity from the University of Chicago Divinity School. I’ve studied part-time for the past five years, commuting to and from Hyde Park, and today my journey is complete.
Over the years, people have asked me what led me to the Divinity School. It wasn’t part of a path toward a PhD, and it doesn’t qualify me for a different kind of job (even if I wanted one). I do think these studies have made me a better rabbi, but that actually wasn’t my motivation, either. The honest answer is that I love to study; and I’m not afraid of the cliché in telling you that my passion is the Torah. The opportunity to study Hebrew Bible with world-class academics at the graduate level was one I couldn’t resist; and if I thought I knew a lot about Tanach when I started, I’m amazed at how much I’ve learned these past five years.
 
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Perhaps most significant of all, my time at the university has helped me develop an orientation toward the Torah that I truly believe embodies the principles of Reform Judaism to which I have dedicated so much of my life. Chief among these is the assertion that knowledge and truth come to us not only from the traditions of the past but also from new sources—including scientific and historical inquiry—and the more we know about the world, the more we can know about Judaism and the place of God in our lives. And more specifically, the better we understand the Torah and its history, the better we understand what makes it a holy text.

I know that to some, thinking of the Torah historically threatens its sanctity. If the Torah wasn’t written by Moses or ordained by God, some would say, then it’s hardly any different from the Odyssey or Hamlet. But in truth—at least in Reform Judaism as I understand it—the essential principles of the formation of the Torah reveal to us its religious genius. Historical knowledge leads us to spiritual insight and strengthens—not weakens—our religious commitments.

Don’t take my word for it. Abraham Geiger, sometimes called the Father of Reform Judaism, wrote in 1838 about the basic requirements for what he called a “Jewish theological faculty” that would educate modern Jews about our faith. The historian Alexandra Zirkle summarizes his approach: “…biblical studies must form the foundation for any Jewish theology since the fact of revelation, central to the premise of a Jewish theology, emerges through systematic study of the Bible. Biblical studies so conceived would draw on philosophical, historical, and exegetical scholarship to evince and render comprehensible the Bible as a book of revelation.”[1] In other words, the Bible is at the heart of Reform Judaism, and the Bible cannot be fully understood without modern scholarship.
 
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There is one key idea at the heart of the scholarly study of Torah that I find both fascinating and inspiring. It is, in a nutshell, that the Torah is a unique compilation of four independent texts. These four complete documents were combined at one time and place into what we now know as the Five Books of Torah. There was some textual development before and after compilation, but by and large, the Torah had its origin in the combination of these four sources.

This is known as the Documentary Hypothesis, and it’s about two hundred years old. Though recent decades have seen other competing theories of the origins of the Torah, I still find it to be the most compelling account. And this approach is not only interesting; it also helps reveal the Torah’s underlying sacredness as well.
 
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There is no other piece of literature in the history of the world known to be compiled in the same way as the Torah, and its holiness is found in this process of compilation. Each of the Torah’s four sources was a unitary account, a single rendition of the history of our people. But through compilation, competing stories and ideas were held together as one. The Torah teaches us through its very form that contradictory ideas can all be true. Defying the principles of Western logic, Jewish wisdom shows us that truth is multivocal.

This week’s Torah portion is a powerful example of this dynamic.[2] Parashat B’chukotai expresses a series of rewards that God will bestow upon Israel אִם־בְּחֻקֹּתַי תֵּלֵכוּ, “If you walk in my laws” (Lev. 26:3). However, וְאִם־בְּחֻקֹּתַי תִּמְאָסוּ, “If you reject my laws” (v. 15), then God promises a series of cascading punishments. The whole passage is poetic oratory, rife with hyperbole and symbolism, and it ends with a magnificent reassurance: after Israel spurn God, they will, one day, return; and when that happens, God says, “I will remember in their favor the covenant with the ancients” (v. 45). God will be there waiting for us when we are ready.

A major theme of this text is brit, which appears six times in chapter 26. We usually translate brit as “covenant,” and we think of it as a mutual commitment. As we read in Exodus, right before the giving of the Ten Commandments: “If you will obey Me faithfully and keep My covenant, you shall be My treasured possession among all the peoples” (Ex. 19:5).[3] The covenant here is conditional—if you break the covenant, God breaks you.

And this understanding of brit is often imported into this week’s Torah reading. However, insights from the Documentary Hypothesis give us access to another interpretation. This passage is part of the Torah’s Priestly text, and in no other place in the Priestly source is God’s commitment to Israel conditional. Sometimes, and this is the case here, a brit is an obligation that Israel has, like the classic brit of circumcision (Gen. 17:2-14). Our chapter in Leviticus says that we may break our brit, our obligation to God, but God will never, ever violate God’s commitment to us.[4] As Jeffrey Stackert, my teacher and MA advisor, writes, “The rewards and punishments are conditioned upon Israelite behavior and align with the usage of ברית as obligation. The divine-Israelite relationship, however, is unconditional and corresponds to the Priestly usage of ברית as promise.”[5] In other words, the Priestly author asserts that God’s rewards are conditional but not God’s love. Once again, God is always there waiting when you’re ready to return.

What do we learn from this? There is a voice in the Torah—more than one, actually—that teaches that God’s relationship with Israel requires our right behavior: If we are not God’s people, the Eternal will not be our God. But the voice we see here has a different view: God will always be our God, no matter what. Without the ability to distinguish these voices, this unique perspective would be lost. And seeing these conflicting views side-by-side helps to teach us that Judaism has a wide capacity for different theologies. There’s more than one Jewish way to think about God.
 
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As I mentioned, this week’s Torah portion concludes the book of Leviticus. And so, it is fitting to turn the page on this chapter of my own studies as well. I am enormously grateful to this congregation to helping to make it possible for me to matriculate at the university, and I’m grateful as well that my studies have also been so enriched by the laboratory of learning we have here at Oak Park Temple. When we finish a book of Torah, we recite chazak, chazak v’nitchazek—“Be strong, be strong, and let us strengthen one another.” May this be our approach to our sacred texts in every chapter of our lives.


[1] Zirkle, Alexandra. “Biblical Hermeneutics: Between Wissenschaft and Religion.” Daat: A Journal of Jewish Philosophy and Kabbalah, No. 88 (2019), p. 18.
 
[2] The following insight is drawn from Jeffrey Stackert’s “Distinguishing Innerbiblical Exegesis from Pentateuchal Redaction: Leviticus 26 as a Test Case” in The Pentateuch: International Perspectives on Current Research, ed. T. Dozeman, K. Schmid, and B. J. Schwartz. (Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2011), pp. 369-386.

[3] See also Ex. 24:4-8.

[4] See especially Lev. 26:44.

[5] Stackert 381. See also: “YHWH is Israel’s god: he may punish them, but he will not cease from being their god” (380).