September 3, 2023|י"ז אלול ה' אלפים תשפ"ג Adam Sandler's Family Bat Mitzvah and Golda: To Be a Religious Jew and To Be a National Jew By Rabbi Jonathan Muskat

We find ourselves in the season of teshuvah, of trying to inspire ourselves to repent, to reconnect with ourselves, to infuse our lives with meaning and to return to God. In the spirit of this time period, let me talk about two movies. Not just any two movies, but two Jewish movies.

 

Adam Sandler and his family starred in a movie that recently began streaming on Netflix called, “You Are So Not Invited to My Bat Mitzvah.” It’s apparently a teenage drama about a girl who is planning her Bat Mitzvah. Interestingly enough, the movie seems to portray traditional Judaism in a decent light. There have been a number of recent Hollywood TV shows or movies which have portrayed traditional Judaism in a very negative light, like the TV series called “An Unorthodox Life.” Based on the movie reviews that I read, this movie celebrates Jewish pride and makes people feel good about Jewish rituals and traditions. A number of movie reviewers who would probably fit into the unaffiliated Jew or not so affiliated-Jew category wrote that the movie made them remember their bar or bat mitzvah with fondness. There were yarmulkas and Yiddish words throughout the movie and there was an emphasis on the rituals of a bar or bat mitzvah like the Torah reading and doing a mitzvah project. As an orthodox Jew, I obviously disagree with the belief system and many ritual practices of non-orthodox Jews. Nevertheless, in a world where there are so many anti-religious and unaffiliated Jews, it is nice for American society to watch a film that celebrates a positive connection to Judaism and it is nice to make Jews feel good about Judaism, Jewish tradition and Jewish rituals through watching this movie.

 

There was another movie about Jews that recently came out in theaters, “Golda.” This movie focuses on Golda Meir during the roughly three weeks surrounding the Yom Kippur War. It’s a little different than the first movie, not just because the first movie is a comedy and the second is a drama, or because the first is a fictional movie and the second is movie about actual events. I think that the two different movies emphasize two different answers to a very important Jewish question. The question is how do we define Judaism? Is it a religion or is it a nation?

 

What is the difference between a religion and a nation? A religion is a belief system that encompasses a set of beliefs, practices, rituals, moral values and spiritual concepts. It is about what I believe and it is about what I personally practice. Membership in a religion is typically a matter of personal choice. You can choose to adopt a religion or be born into it and you can choose to belong to multiple religions or none at all. However, a nation doesn’t refer to a set of beliefs. A nation refers to a large group of people who share common characteristics such as language, culture, history and often a geographic location. Membership in a nation is often determined by factors such as birthplace and ethnicity and is not always based on choice. If I was born in America, then I am an American. If I was not born in America and I don’t live in America, then I cannot become an American even if I identify with American values.

 

In this light, if we compare the two movies, the Bat Mitzvah movie is all about Judaism as a religion because it is a movie that celebrates connecting and finding meaning in uniquely Jewish rituals and practices. The Golda movie is all about Judaism as a nation because it is a movie about defending the State of Israel from its enemies. As Torah observant Jews, our challenge is to view Judaism as both a religion and as a nation. But what does it mean for us in practice?

 

To view Judaism as a religion means that I choose to connect to my roots and that I engage in uniquely Jewish practices based on a belief system. And that is a challenge for orthodox Jews as it is for non-orthodox Jews. Many of us struggle to find meaning in all of the rituals that we do, and some of us feel content with just engaging in religious practice so that we can remain part of our orthodox community, but we don’t allocate time into trying to make the practice meaningful and enjoyable. The Torah famously warns us in this week’s parsha that we will be exiled תחת אשר לא עבדת את ה׳ בשמחה , because we didn’t serve God with happiness. Now that’s a difficult proposition to accept. Let’s say we struggle to perform mitzvot and we do them, but we do not enjoy them too much. Is that a reason to be exiled?

 

The Yamim Noraim are coming up and I have many memories of the Yamim Noraim from my youth, some wonderful and some challenging. I remember sitting with my father on Yom Kippur with the Birnbaum Machzor counting the pages. It was hard for me, even as a teenager, to sit through the entire davening on Yom Kippur so I would constantly count the pages left and was so excited when someone announced that we were going to skip pages in the davening. When I managed to sit with my father for the entire Yom Kippur davening throughout all the struggles and the boredom, I felt pretty accomplished, like I ran a marathon. But I have news for you. That was an עבודה  that was not done בשמחה, with happiness. I suffered through a number of Yom Kippur’s sitting next to my father like this. Are you going to tell me that I would be exiled, that I would be punished, if I managed to sit with my father for the entire Yom Kippur davening, but I didn’t do it with simcha, with a sense of joy and happiness? Is that what this Torah passage means?

 

In his sefer, Sha-arei Simcha (Parshat Bo), Rabbi Simcha Bunim Sofer writes that the Torah doesn’t mean that performing mitzvot without simcha is a reason for galut, for exile. Rather, the Torah is telling us that when we perform mitzvot as if they are a burden, then eventually it will lead to us not performing them at all and that will be cause of exile. If we don’t have pride and joy and feel religious when we observe our unique rituals, then we will find any and every excuse not to do them and either we will abandon them or our children who see our lack of passion will abandon them. To engage in teshuva as a religious Jew does not necessarily mean that I commit to do more, but it means that I commit to do what I already do with meaning, with passion and with joy.

 

But what does it mean to view Judaism as a nation as opposed to a religion? What does it mean to engage in teshuva not as a religious Jew, but as a national Jew? In 1840, the Muslim authorities leveled the charge of ritual murder against the leaders of the Damascus Jewish community. A Franciscan friar and his servant disappeared and Jews were implicated in their murder, being charged with a “blood libel.” In the Middle Ages in Europe, this had been a common charge, that Jews used the blood of their Christians victims to bake matzah for Pesach, but this was first time that the “blood libel” was used in Islamic lands. A false confession was extracted under extreme duress and the arrested Jews were sentenced to death. Seven leaders of the Jewish community were tortured in prison. Two died and one accepted Islam to save his life. 

 

The verdict aroused protests all over the Western world. Jews banded together from across the world to aid their brethren in distress. Prominent European Jews Sir Moses Montefiore and Adolph Cremieux were instrumental in having the Sultan drop the charges and free those Jews who had survived imprisonment. However, there was one notable exception in European Jewry who did not protest the Damascus Blood Libel, Abraham Geiger.

 

Who was Abraham Geiger? He was the leading or one of the leading reform rabbis in Europe in the middle of the nineteenth century. He viewed the arrested Jews simply as “human beings.” This was consistent with his view of Judaism as a religion and not a nation. He viewed Judaism simply as a private matter of conscience and he declared that the concept of Jews as a nation was null and void. Yes, non-orthodox streams of Judaism may believe in “tikkun olam,” in improving the world, but if we view Judaism merely as a religion then we have a negative attitude towards all manifestations of Jewish solidarity such as the 1840 Damascus blood libel and we don’t feel the pain when Corporal Maksym Molchanov was killed in a truck-ramming terror attack this past Thursday. To view Judaism as a nation means that I feel a sense of solidarity, empathy and connectedness with my fellow Jews.

 

But to be a national Jew means more than that. It means what Rav Soloveitchik wrote in his work, Kol Dodi Dofek about the covenant of Har Grizim and Har Eival commandment in this week’s parsha: “There is a special covenant of mutual responsibility among the children of Israel.  This covenant is expressed in the blessings and imprecations pronounced on Mount Gerizim and Ebal.  It is based upon the notion of peoplehood revealed to Moses in Egypt.  Out of this concept grew the covenant of mutual obligation…  Here the notion of shared fate was elevated from the plane of communal-political suffering to that of halakhic and moral responsibility.  We are all sureties for one other.” 

 

The covenant of Har Grizim and Har Eival was not a covenant that each member of the Bnei Yisrael would observe the mitzvot. It was a covenant of kol Yisrael arevim zeh la-zeh, of each Jew being responsible for each other Jew. Not only does the national Jew who stands at Har Grizim and Har Eival empathize with his fellow Jews wherever they may be, this national Jew feels a sense of responsibility to elevate and uplift and inspire his fellow Jews and the nation as a whole. The national Jew feels a sense of responsibility to influence members of our community to do better and to be better.

 

As we consider the time period in which we find ourselves, the time period of teshuva, let us consider the Bat Mitzva movie and the Golda movie representing two different ways that we should be thinking about teshuva, both as a religious Jew and as a national Jew. As a religious Jew, let us think about not necessarily doing more, but doing better, doing what we’ve always been doing, but with more meaning, more happiness and more excitement. As a national Jew, let us think about how we can shape our community, how can we inspire our community to be more of a community of Torah, tefilla and/or chesed – not what someone else can do or should be doing, but what each one of us can do that will benefit our community. Doing teshuva as a religious Jew and as a national Jew is not easy. It requires real, heartfelt introspection, disciplined action, resilience, and, most importantly, it requires each of us to take responsibility for our own lives and for the future of our community. I offer a bracha to each one of you that God should help you succeed in both aspects of teshuva during this very special time in the year.