The Third Opinion: Why Jews Value Dissent | Rabbi Angela Buchdahl | Yom Kippur 5782

the brand new rabbi was at a loss every shabbat when the congregation got to the shema a fight erupted half the congregation was standing and half of them would be seated stand up yelled the standers don't you know this is the most important prayer sit down yelled the sitters don't you know jewish law one day the new rabbi learned that there was a founding member of the congregation who was still alive so he brought a representative from each faction to the home of the 103 year old man surely he would be able to help settle the dispute one side asked the old man isn't it the tradition to stand for the shema no that is not the tradition he said aha said one of the sitters so we must all be seated for the shema no that is not the tradition please cried the young new rabbi to the old man just tell us what to do because right now my congregation just fights all the time one of them debating with the other where they should sit or stand exactly interrupted the old man that is the tradition now this is an old jewish joke but if you've ever served on a synagogue ritual committee right peter am i right you know how true it is this is why he got rid of committees now jews are famously opinionated argumentative stiff-necked it's a cultural disposition that goes back millennia now after the destruction of the temple in jerusalem when we could no longer commune with god by animal sacrifice we found a new pathway through rigorous debate modern judaism as we know it was created in a crowded noisy bait midrash where study became a divine calling never a solitary project jews learn in pairs called havruta and the most legendary havruta of the entire talmudic period was between the learned rabbi yochanan ben zakai who was head of the academy and lakish who was once a bandit had no formal education but was insatiably curious and street smart i want you to imagine albert einstein sitting down to study with al capone they were an odd couple but they were perfectly matched sparring partners because rashlakish was unafraid to challenge jochen and they always argued respectfully except for one time when johannan called up lakisha's sordid past as an outlaw lakish was so upset he took gravely ill and died jochen was inconsolable so his community brought him a brilliant new hivruta it seemed like a perfect match every time that rabbi yochanan would argue a point his hebrewta would find a text to agree with him it only took a few days before rabbi yochanan was exasperated i don't need you to tell me i'm right i already think i'm right he complained when i used to argue a point reish lakish would counter it with 24 other arguments and now we would eventually get to where the the idea became clear to both of us where are you rachel akish he cried in anguish but of course rashlakish was gone the talmudic story ends when rabbi yochanan loses his mind and he too dies you've got to love rabbinic legend now when i heard that story i finally understood the famous expression two jews three opinions that saying always perplexed me if the joke is supposed to remind us that jews always disagree it would suffice to say two jews two opinions where does that third opinion come from the story of yochanan and resh lakisha's hebrewta teaches us they would each argue their points until the matter became clear to both of them in other words they came to a third opinion only by listening to opposing views could they arrive at a conclusion that transcended either of their original positions now we sometimes lament two jews three opinions hurts us in the jewish community divides us but it is most certainly a feature not a bug it is in fact an intentional way that rabbinic judaism defined itself against early christianity in 325 ce a council of christian bishops codified a doctrine called the nicene creed it established uniform beliefs and practices mandated across the christian world now contrast that to our code of jewish law called the talmud also codified in the 4th century which decidedly did not establish uniform practices or beliefs instead the talmud reads like a transcript of greatest rabbinic arguments on legal matters it deliberately includes the minority position as well as the majority and it often answers a question with another over time the inquiries and the commentaries of the great rabbinic thinkers would be written in the margins so that when you study a page of talmud today you can even argue jewish law with rabbis across the centuries the talmud doesn't give us a creed to believe it gives us a process for how jews should debate and refine and finally come to our own beliefs the struggle for knowledge itself is holy now i know that engaging with those who challenge or oppose us is not easy we fight it with every fiber of our beings which is why the talmud warns us what could happen if we are not willing to engage in another story about reish lakish two rabbis are headed to the town of asea in order to set the lunar calendar with the right leap months reish lakish asks if he can help them and so the three rabbis set off together along the way resh lakish questions several things that the two rabbis permitted as they walked his inquiries persisted and persisted the rabbis grew so frustrated with him that when they arrived at asea they climbed to the roof of the building pulled up the ladder behind them and set the calendar without him now i get why they did it when someone challenges us over and over it's hard not to feel bothered and annoyed maybe even threatened it can feel good to climb up to some high place with our allies and pull up the ladder to avoid engaging with anyone who disagrees with us but where does that leave us comfortable and happy maybe but also stranded and isolated those two rabbis on the roof they never appear in the talmud again they disappear they become irrelevant whereas reish lakish goes on to become the steve jobs of jewish learning rabbi yochanan and rachel accused were willing to sit in the discomfort of their dissent and even doubt because they knew that their debates were in service of something much greater than themselves now i know all of this is much easier to preach than it is to practice in real life and i experienced some of this discomfort myself recently last may i traveled to israel on a uga mission of new york rabbis right after the ceasefire israeli jews described to us their terror of having to rush their families into bomb shelters in the middle of the night palestinians and jews who had worked for years to create a shared society saw their fragile trust shattered overnight i felt like i was there to sit shiva with the country in the midst of all of this a letter signed by 90 american rabbinical students made front page news in israel they signed from conservative reconstructionist pluralistic and yes reform seminaries i understood why they were upset i too feel frustrated by the continued occupation and its costs but i was struck by how the letter accused israel of violent suppression of human rights and quote enabling apartheid i was also struck by what the letter didn't say it was silent on the terrorist leadership of hamas and its four thousand rockets it was devoid of any historical context and there was not one expression of compassion or empathy for israeli jews i was angry and embarrassed that in this moment these students would choose to send this message before i filed the letter away and i'm not proud of this i thought to myself i would not want to hire anyone who signed that letter but i also knew that dismissing these students was not the answer it wasn't very rabbinic on my part and it wasn't very jewish i was pulling up the ladder on a large swath of future jewish leaders and i'm not just talking about those rabbinical students but our own kids too so many of you have told me that it's become impossible for you recently to have a conversation with your children or your grandchildren about israel but the answer is not to shut the next generation down but to engage with them more deeply to listen to them and push back and wrestle until the matter becomes clearer to everyone the future of our jewish community depends on it and i dare say the future of our democracy will depend on our ability to do this as well i cannot think of a more important time in our country to promote the jewish value of vigorous respectful disagreement than right now our world has become frighteningly polarized you're either with me or against me on the left or on the right democrat or republican msnbc or fox news but we know there should always be more than just two opinions these positions are not just what we think they've actually become our identities in a recent pew report they found that it was significantly more important to jews that their future grandchildren share their political convictions than marry someone jewish think about that in identity politics whether you identify as a person of color or a socialist or a conservative or a zionist these communities often mandate that you take on a whole platform of beliefs wholesale the price of belonging is toeing the line now let's remember what our tradition teaches not what to believe but how we get to beliefs worth holding questioning is sacred descent is productive if you start to debate you may discover something that transcends the binary you may discover a third opinion and it will inevitably be wiser than either of the first two on this day of atonement in our restless return to our best selves consider committing to this core jewish practice seek out a havruta in your life not just the friend who tells you that you're right but a real sparring partner like lakish where the goal of your interrogation is not winning the battle but elevating your understanding where the baseline is decency and giving someone the benefit of the doubt this year instead of turning away from those difficult conversations could we with humility speak to that friend who was not comfortable getting vaccinated asked your colleague why she opposes the right to an abortion inquire why your neighbor supports defunding the police ask your fellow congregant why he supports a one-state solution having these conversations will make our democracy better it will make our country better and it will make each of us better we saw that with the greatest minds in the rabbinic era with yochanan and reish lakish and we also saw it two thousand years later with two of the greatest legal minds of our era justice antonin scalia and justice ruth bader ginsburg this saturday we will be marking the one-year yard site of justice ginsburg i remember so vividly hearing the news of her death right after heir of rosh hashanah services last year scalia and ginsburg had great affection for each other they were both native new yorkers best opera buddies and new year's eve revelers thirty years with their families but they also disagreed on virtually every substantive issue from same-sex marriage to abortion to the voting rights act scalia famously said of ginsburg what's not to like except her views on the law in the landmark virginia military institute case which allowed women to attend this historically male institution ginsburg authored a capstone opinion in her long career devoted to gender equality there was only one dissenter scalia now when scalia died in 2016 justice ginsburg deeply mourned the loss of her great hevruta at his memorial she recalled their vehement disagreement on the vmi case but she praised how he disagreed scalia had given her a preview of his draft descent full of barbs and disdainful footnotes ginsburg said he absolutely ruined my weekend but my opinion was ever so much better because of his stinging descent they might not have changed each other's thinking but they made each other think better judaism does not promote blind faith or uniform beliefs struggling for truth is a way of engaging with god that is literally what our name means israel one who struggles with the divine so let us all be seekers of wisdom and understanding modeling a different kind of discourse one that our ancestors took as a sacred pursuit one that they knew was a path to authentic beliefs [Music] the meditation of my heart [Music] be accepted before you [Music] my god my rock and my redeemer [Music] my [Music] [Music] is [Music] [Applause] [Music] they may [Music]

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Length: 21min 53sec (1313 seconds)

Published: Thu Sep 16 2021