I love when a bumper sticker gets your attention. The McDonalds yellow and red color scheme; the old-timey American church graphic simplicity; and the bent nail! Who hit the hammer? What organic material bore the hammer’s brunt? And the blunt yet tender directness of the message, delivered with a shrug of hard earned humility. The personal offering here is not the totality of the structure but the singular contribution — and even “just a nail” is bent, used, worn. But the provisions hold!
Walking amidst the awakening birds this morning in one of my favorite Milwaukee neighborhoods on the way toward a cup of coffee, the Messenger caught my eye. Young Evangelical? Black Pastor?
Nope.
Hiss Golden Messenger is the work of the artist M.C. Taylor, a singer and songwriter from Durham, North Carolina who is represented by Merge Records, and does a fine job of wearing his questions, his doubt-riddled faith on his sleeve. In the toxic sea of certainty that is drowning out so much discourse these days, it’s comforting and downright counter-cultural to see artists continuing to ask questions.
Questions for me are a kind of intellectual patrimony. Elie Wiesel famously said, “The essential questions have no answers. You are my question, and I am yours and then there is dialogue.”
This morning at the Yizkor Memorial service for the last day of Passover, I will say Kaddish for my father, mother, grandparents and great-grandparents; and I will remember my rabbis and teachers in loco parentis who insisted on sturdy questions, hammered with honesty, even love, into the house of study.
George Mosse’s class on Modern Jewry and Zionism began with the words, “A Jew is an outsider with a critical mind.” It’s easy to define Jewishness: Do Mitzvot. Be Kind to the Stranger. It’s harder to hammer away at your certainties, to admit what you don’t know, to water your growth with inquiry and a refusal to shelter beneath the shade of platitudes. After one lecture in which George quoted the Gospel of John about the radically different approach that Christians and Jews take to understanding the theological concept of the “word of God,” I approached the stage after class to seek clarification of his point. I was seeking reiteration. He was having nothing of it.
“Have you read the Book of John? Do you only read Jewish books? What are you afraid of?” I can still see the smile of an intellectual troublemaker as I type these words.
I spent an entire sophomore year of Friday afternoons studying the Book of Genesis with my teacher Dr. Irv Saposnik who ran the UW Hillel during my years in Madison. This private tutorial entailed reading the text alongside traditional rabbinic commentary; works of fiction and poetry; and copious references to Yiddish humor and Jewish American comedy. In search of the Divine, there was no shortage of irreverence. When the year came to a close and we finished Genesis, I was eager to turn the page and continue with a study of Exodus but was slated to travel to Jerusalem for the year. Irv demurred, counseling patience until I returned a full year later. “But let’s do what we can now!” I pleaded. “Why can’t you wait?”
In Jerusalem, I studied with Rabbi Hank Skirball, a bear of a man who, after each weekly session, shoved four to five books into my arms and commanded, “Come back next week with questions about each book.”
Only now, in our day, mired in the Certainty Trap that is the faulty foundation of our cultural underpinnings, do I realize just how lucky I was to have such training in breaking oneself down in order to build oneself up. To ask, to plow, to dig in order to grow.
בֶּן בַּג בַּג אוֹמֵר, הֲפֹךְ בָּהּ וַהֲפֹךְ בָּהּ, דְּכֹלָּא בָהּ. וּבָהּ תֶּחֱזֵי, וְסִיב וּבְלֵה בָהּ, וּמִנַּהּ לֹא תָזוּעַ, שֶׁאֵין לְךָ מִדָּה טוֹבָה הֵימֶנָּה:
Ben Bag Bag said: Turn it over, and turn it over, for all is therein. And look into it; And become gray and old therein; And do not move away from it, for you have no better portion than it. (Pirke Avot 5:22)
To you who claim to know the truth: to the MAGA Trumpies and Resistance Rejoicers of October 7; to the anti-Zionist “non-antisemites” and the rampaging Settlers Drunk with Messianic Faith; to the One State Two State Red Fish Blue Fish Believers in the Gospel of their own Perfect Solution, what can any of us ever really know with certainty other than what Rabbi Samuel David Luzzato taught about the Torah verse, “Let us make humankind after our image, in our likeness?” The 19th century Italian scholar wrote that in referring to the human as having been created in the “image of God,” we are at best a shadow, a sketch, a rendering, a human-mediated approximation of an ideal we strive for but never achieve.
The human suffering we are both witness and party to in the world today is unimaginable. Our failure at alleviating all of it everywhere is a burden we conscious humans share.
As a student of the Jewish tradition, I take the measure of humility at times like a harsh dose of medicine and at other times with inspiration, grace and love. I will leave you with both texts and ask a question: Which one means the most to you? And why?
עֲקַבְיָא בֶן מַהֲלַלְאֵל אוֹמֵר, הִסְתַּכֵּל בִּשְׁלשָׁה דְבָרִים וְאִי אַתָּה בָא לִידֵי עֲבֵרָה. דַּע מֵאַיִן בָּאתָ, וּלְאָן אַתָּה הוֹלֵךְ, וְלִפְנֵי מִי אַתָּה עָתִיד לִתֵּן דִּין וְחֶשְׁבּוֹן. מֵאַיִן בָּאתָ, מִטִּפָּה סְרוּחָה, וּלְאָן אַתָּה הוֹלֵךְ, לִמְקוֹם עָפָר רִמָּה וְתוֹלֵעָה. וְלִפְנֵי מִי אַתָּה עָתִיד לִתֵּן דִּין וְחֶשְׁבּוֹן, לִפְנֵי מֶלֶךְ מַלְכֵי הַמְּלָכִים הַקָּדוֹשׁ בָּרוּךְ הוּא:
Akavya ben Mahalalel says: Take to heart three things and you will not be brought to transgression: Know whence you came and whither you are going and before Whom you are destined to render judgment and accounting. Whence did you come? From a putrefying drop. And whither are you going? To a place of dust, worms, and maggots. And before whom are you destined to render judgment and accounting? Before the King of the kings of kings — the Holy One Blessed be God. (Pirke Avot 3:1)
and
הִגִּ֥יד לְךָ֛ אָדָ֖ם מַה־טּ֑וֹב וּמָֽה־יְהֹוָ֞ה דּוֹרֵ֣שׁ מִמְּךָ֗ כִּ֣י אִם־עֲשׂ֤וֹת מִשְׁפָּט֙ וְאַ֣הֲבַת חֶ֔סֶד וְהַצְנֵ֥עַ לֶ֖כֶת עִם־אֱלֹהֶֽיךָ׃ {ס}
“You have been told, O mortal, what is good,
And what GOD requires of you:
Only to do justice
And to love goodness,
And to walk humbly with your God.” (Micah 6:8)
And if today’s Omer Counting annoyed you, I apologize. I’m trying. I’m just a nail in the house of the universe striving to make sense of it all.
Your posts teach me so much: they get me to think more deeply and to question more thoroughly. Thank you.
Dear Andy,
From my tiny apartment in Mexico City, I send you greetings and a multitude of thanks for sharing your life and Jewish learning with us. I love today's bent-nail metaphor and will continue to do my share of God's work to keep the edifice from collapsing in despair.
Un abrazo,
Marsha Ostroff