Name: Video: Judaism - Rabbi Patricia Karlin-Neumann in Conversation with Anne
Uploaded: 2017-07-14T04:36:35.134Z
Duration: 16 min 39 s
Description: Watch this video about Video: Judaism - Rabbi Patricia Karlin-Neumann in Conversation with Anne for Judaism in Love as a Force for Social Justice.

I'm very happy today to be having a conversation

with Rabbi Patricia Karlin-Neumann.

We're going to be talking about love of course -- agape love -- and

we're going to be talking about it in the context of Judaism.

And so I'd love to hear your definition of love from that point of view and

how love is expressed in the traditions of Judaism and by Jewish people.

>> So I think love is an emotion, a commitment and

a conviction manifest in action and devotion.

So let me parse that.

An emotion overflowing concern, respect and generosity toward another.

A person, the divine, the earth, a tradition, a community.

Commitment, emotion that's not backed up by action is thin.

I'm going to be meeting with a wedding couple after we meet.

And I'll explain to them that the Jewish wedding has two parts to it.

Erusin or Betrothal and Nesuin--carrying off--the love part.

So the Betrothal becomes the container for the relationship.

Our commitment to be there for one another even in moments when it is inconvenient or

difficult, or, when one doesn't feel all that generous towards one another.

So, I think the notion of having a container of helping people to understand

that love is not only that upswell of feeling,

but is a dedication and a devotion to

maintain a covenant, which is a central concept within Judaism.

Is very much part of how, within Jewish tradition,

we see that most essential of emotional attachments of love.

Conviction, a tradition of obligation or mitzvot.

Sometimes people think of the word mitzvah or

mitzveh and assume it means, good deed.

And indeed there are many good deeds that comes out of mitzvot.

But it actually means "obligation" or "responsibility".

And the responsibility that I think of when I think of love is vahavta l'reacha kamocha--

Love your neighbor as yourself,

there's a wonderful story that Yale Law Professor Stephen Carter tells

of being a young black boy when his family moved to a predominantly white suburb.

And he and his brothers were sitting on the steps thinking,

I know we don't belong here.

I know this was a mistake.

I know we shouldn't be here.

And, there was a next door neighbor who happened to see

these young black boys, waved at them, went inside her house,

came back out with cream cheese sandwiches and said welcome to the neighborhood.

And Stepnen Carter talks about how that act of civility,

that gesture of neighborliness, and generosity stayed with him.

The taste of that sandwich became for him, the expression of love and welcome.

And what he later learned is that that woman Sara Kestenbaum was an orthodox Jew.

So she was literally manifesting love your neighbor as yourself by

welcoming this family who felt that there would be questions about their presence.

So that has always been a kind of powerful manifestation of loving your neighbors.

Within the traditional sources, there are commentators

that will parse what love your neighbor as yourself means.

Two who are probably the most well known Medieval commentators Maimonides and Nachmanides.

Maimonides' interpretation of how one loves one's neighbor,

because he asks, "how do you turn this emotion into action?""

is to imitate God, just as God clothed the naked, so human beings clothe the naked.

We fulfill our obligations through actions.

And there's a text which talks about [how] these are things without measure and

their reward too is without measure.

And so many of those actions are actions that are not quantifiable but,

together, become a manifestation of love.

Nachmanides focuses on attitude.

He notes that the quote vahavta l'reacha kamocha "you shall love your neighbor as yourself",

has a kind of odd grammatical presence where instead of saying

vahavta et reacha you have to you shall love "et"

the symbol of the indirect object, "your neighbor".

He focuses on the fact it says, you shall extend love to your neighbor.

So what does it mean to extend love to your neighbor?

And he's less concerned with obligation and more concerned with motivation.

So he talks about the way in which one manifests

love is to hope for them the same things you hope for yourself.

So just as you want to be able to have dignity,

you offer dignity to someone else.

Just as you want to be able to have security, you offer security to another.

So in his sense of loving ones neighbors, oneself.

It's about reconsidering your attitude and

that becomes much more doable I think than our

reaction to how I do I love people that I don't like.

>> Yeah.

But if you think about it in terms of offering

someone the qualities of human dignity and

the qualities of human autonomy and security and

purpose, the things that we want for ourselves.

It makes a lot of sense to want that for someone else and

then it reflects a society in which people treat one another

with respect and caring and compassion and commitment.

Societies and communities can be holy but not simply for their own sake,

but as a manifestation of the potential for holiness.

In each of us and in our traditions.

And there's this quote from Lenn Goodman on loving the ethical.

In calling us to perfection and emulation of God's holiness,

the Torah asks us not to do the impossible, to become infinite or

disembodied, but to perfect our humanity Which Scripture calls God's image.

This we do by seeking out and cultivating what is best in ourselves, morally,

spiritually, intellectually, socially, artistically, and indeed physically.

Since our embodiment and that of others is the locus of that image.

The silvered glass in which God's face shines.

You know from the text that I offer in the class

there's a Rabbi named Margaret Holub who has been for

many years engaged in social justice.

And she had had the experiences that many of us do

of being engaged in social justice out of outrage and anger.

And noted that sometimes that fuel burns low and it's hard to sustain it,

but she talks about the fuel for social justice being what she calls Nefesh chaya.

Which literally means the animal soul.

It's the kind of, the life force that makes for

the energy to set the world right.

And it's about reaffirming and insisting upon creation.

So, if we have the opportunity to experience as we do today

a gorgeous day with the sun shining where at least for

some period of time, we might feel that we don't have cares.

That we want for other people to have that opportunity.

And so, she talks about that as the manifestation of love,

encouraging us to engage in social change and again,

I think that it replenishes itself.

It renews itself in a way that outrage and anger often don't.

>> I'm interested in where these ideas came from.

The almost rules about how to behave,

they seem almost to be a kind of guide to a stable society

as opposed to just a way of two people- >> Right.

>> Relating to each other.

And I wondered if you could comment on that.

>> Yes, that's very much the case.

And the text that I mentioned, vahavta l'reacha kamocha you shall love your neighbor as

yourself which of course is probably the best known Biblical manifestation of love.

Comes from a text called the holiness code and it's smack in the middle of the Bible.

Smack in the middle of the five books.

It's right in the center of Leviticus.

And that holiness code is an elaboration of what it means to create a society.

And there are a number of different places

within the holiness code where love is addressed.

One is, you shall love your neighbor as yourself,

the other is you shall love the stranger.

And, and that section begins "kedoshim tehiyu ki kadosh ani adonai elohecha".

"You shall be holy, for I will eternal your God am holy".

So embedded in the litany how to live ethically, and there's a whole

spectrum from honoring parents to leaving corners of the field and gleanings for

the poor, to refrain from placing a stumbling block before the blind,

and the tradition interprets that as before one who is blind in any matter.

To reproving those who are unjust and then it says,

you shall love your neighbor as yourself.

I am the eternal, and you shall love the strangers as yourself,

for you were strangers in the land of Egypt.

I am the eternal, so within that description

of how one is to be holy are a whole series of

rules and reflections on how we treat one another.

How we create community, how we create society.

>> You know this idea of love they neighbor

has expanded from Judaism through Christianity.

And Islam with almost the same words being used for that role, that guide.

And I wonder if you would comment briefly on the current

action by Muslims to raise money to repair

some of the (Jewish) cemeteries, >> And, and there have been Muslim

veterans who have offered to stand guard at Jewish cemeteries.

That's for me is, it bespeaks

not just recognition that we share common texts and

that we understand our obligations in similar ways.

But it also is, in my mind,

one of the best reflections of who we can be as Americans.

And I think in a moment when there's so much contention for

what American values look like, I think that those relationships.

And those outstretched arms toward

each others community has been very, very essential.

And of course, the counterpart is that when the refugee ban was first announced,

there was with one voice the Jewish community standing up and saying.

Not only our tradition but our history and

experience makes clear that this is something that cannot stand,

and we stand with our Muslim brothers and sisters.

Who are, who are being regarded as suspicious. And

of course in that specific experience there was the history of the St. Louis.

The ship that sailed from Germany that came to Miami and was turned away and

so all of the people who were on the ship returned to Germany.

And most of them lost their lives in the Holocaust.

So there's a very present and very real recognition

that in Proverbs just as face answers to face, so in the heart of human to human

and here's a manifestation where we recognize the face of our brother.

>> Yeah, yeah. Can you speak of the dark times and

how Jewish people have come through and how the traditional texts

have in fact encouraged Jews to survive?

>> Yeah, I think that that question of how one

maintains a sense of resilience,

a sense of optimism, a sense of hopefulness in a dark time.

One of the virtues, or silver linings I suppose, of having had a long history of

oppression, is you have to have some way of being able to believe in the future.

And there are a number of different thoughts I have.

One is Victor Frankel's work on man's search for

meaning is an attempt to articulate how one can maintain being hopeful.

The other is Rabbi Abraham Joshua Heschel, who was himself a survivor

of the holocaust, talks about being "an optimist

against his better judgement" and then the other is a

rabbinic text that during the time of oppression in Egypt.

When the Israelites were building the Pharaoh's pyramids,

there were women who brought apples to their spouses and

made love under the apple trees as a way of believing in the future.

And so they're regarded

as having had this special spark of holiness,

because they believed that there could be a future, and

I think that we all know that every time we bring a child into the world,

it's with boundless hope that their lives will be better than our own.

And so, I think having had

some significant moments of darkness within Jewish tradition.

There is such an explosion of happiness and

joy and appreciation and the welcoming of a new child

because it is an affirmation that there will be a future and it will be better.

>> Thank you very, very much for visiting with us today.

>> My pleasure. >> I appreciate it.

Thank you.

Video: Judaism - Rabbi Patricia Karlin-Neumann in Conversation with Anne

Love as a Force for Social Justice

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