Rabbi Nathan Cardozo stresses the need for Jews to open their hearts beyond their own community.
By REUVEN BEN-DOVfor the love of israel 224.88(photo credit: )
Poetry, passion, pain and thinking out of the box - these are the hallmarks of Rabbi Nathan Lopes Cardozo's previous 10 books and a weekly Internet column (www.cardozoschool.org).
His latest work, For the Love of Israel and the Jewish People, is no exception and is perhaps the most exciting and inspirational of all his books so far. The author writes enthusiastically of the need to improve Jewish education and the religious and lay leadership in Israel. He agonizes over our tragedies. He glories over our triumphs.
Among the chapter titles are "Ilan Ramon: A Jewish Astronaut"; "Jewish Nobel-ness" (about Prof. Aumann); "Kreplach and Bissli: Revelation of a Language"; "The Failure of the Religious Parties"; "It Is Time To Go to the Synagogue"; Israel Is Gush Katif"; "The Tragedy of Arnona"; "Rembrandt; the Holocaust and the Making of an Enemy"; and "There Is No Mashiach without Song."
Nothing if not eclectic!
According to Cardozo, the religious Jew should not relate to the secular Jew in a superior way with the intention to convert him or her to a religious life. The author writes that "constant emphasis is placed on the need to cure the secular Jew's mistaken lifestyle. There is a need to celebrate the mitzvot that secular Jews have been observing, not their failure to observe others. Who will deny that secular Jews have no sense of mystery, forgiveness, beauty and gentleness? How many of them do not have inner faith that God cares or shows contempt for fraud or double standards?"
Religious Jews must also show the sensitivity of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob to non-Jews. After the tsunami, he says, the chief rabbis should have organized special prayers in the synagogues and perhaps a day of fasting. The yeshivot should have organized special study sessions dedicated to the victims. "Religious Jewry cannot permit itself the slightest impression of indifference even when it concerns those who have little in common with us and are no lovers of Israel. Instead of trying to discover textual hints for this disaster in biblical or Kabbalistic texts (which are mostly fanciful speculation and wishful thinking), religious Jewry should act responsibly, showing that they have not forgotten their duty toward all humankind."
Cardozo seeks a different kind of Jewish education which, in his opinion, is "in need of radical repair. We are living in a time when the Jewish religious imagination seems to be exhausted. Religious education must be like a work of art that is capable of introducing us to emotions that we have never felt before. It is boring unless we are surprised by it. Every thought is also a prison if it does not invoke an outburst of amazement within us," he writes.
In a different essay he concludes that "There is a need for spiritual audacity, educational guts and defiance."
Another theme in the book is the lack of Jewish identity and pride among Israelis. In his letter to President Shimon Peres published in The Jerusalem Post, he says he fears that many young people will eventually leave Israel because of their severe identity crisis. Human beings can starve from lack of identity as much as they can starve from lack of food. Without Jewish meaning, living on a "borrowed identity," we will be unable to improve the country and the world. "We cannot predicate our survival on remaining a culture, a constellation of fading memories or some kind of nostalgia, or even on the Israeli army or Zionism."
The book concludes with some in-depth studies, including one that compares the visual emphasis of Western civilization ("seeing is believing") with the stress in Judaism on hearing ("the Jewish people are not the people of the book but the people of the ear").
Another study promotes Cardozo's fervent desire for religious Jews to devote more time to the commandments between human beings. "There is no point in suggesting stringencies in the laws of Shabbat and kashrut if they are not accompanied by similar, if not stricter, stringencies in our relationships with our fellow human beings. There should be a national campaign to promote this idea, using every type of media. There could be billboard advertisements calling on readers to be more patient with each other, greet passers-by with a smile, show courtesy and make it a matter of honor and pride to be a real mensch."
The 54 essays, each one about three pages long, are culled from his previous writings. There is some repetition of themes, but this is a positive feature to emphasize his searing pleas for improvement in so many areas.
The author dedicates his book to the missing soldiers and has written a beautiful prayer for the Jewish soldier in the Israeli army.
Cardozo - Amsterdam born, Yeshivat Mir and Gateshead educated (earning a PhD on the way), Jerusalem-based global lecturer and founder and dean of an academy where rabbis and educators try to lay the foundations of a new Judaism based on classical sources - has two options: to become a Don Quixote tilting at windmills or a successful revolutionary.
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