OUR MOVE TO THE WILLOWS; PERSONAL IMPRESSIONS

Rabbi Rifat Sonsino, Ph.D

April 4, 2019

According to the Rabbis of old, at the age of 80, one reaches the stage of GEVURAH (“strength”), interpreted as “strong old age” or “the gift of special strength” (PA, Ch. 5). Obviously this was wishful thinking. In those primitive days of medicine, or even after, people did not live that long. For example, Spinoza died at the age of 44 (17^th cent), Descartes at 53 (17^th cent), and Mozart at 35 (18^th cent). So, as I was getting closer to my 80’th birthday, my wife and I decided to move to a retirement home in order to begin my own GEVURAH stage.

We chose the Willows in Westborough, MA, because of its good reputation and its proximity to our daughter’s house. A year ago, I had given a series of lectures there on the Dead Sea Scrolls, and I knew a little about it. When an apartment became available, we decided to take it. We moved in at the end of August, 2018. I think we did the right thing, and are happy with our choice.

We live in a large complex, which includes an independent living section of about 160 units. We have a two-bedroom apartment, with two baths and a balcony. It meets our needs. In the future, if we need to, we could be sent to the assisted living quarters and even to the long-term facility associated with the Willows. By downsizing, however, we miss our direct access to our covered garage in our previous condo in Ashland, MA, and my large library that I had to give up by donating or simply discarding all the books that I thought I will never use again. (At my age, I don’t think I need my Sumerian grammar and texts).

Most people in our complex are in their 80’s and a few in their 90’s. (Mr. Brown is 99, and is sharper than many of us). Ines and I could have waited a few years before making this drastic change, but we could not figure out when is the right time to make the switch. So, we took the plunge, and I think we were correct. We interact with the local residents on a daily basis, and find many of them very pleasant to deal with. About 10 per cent of the apartment owners/renters are Jewish, and the administration accommodates our needs. The local Reform Rabbi makes regular visits. I do not eat pork products, and so the kitchen, following the directives of the higher-ups, sets aside a portion of the food, usually the soup, without mixing it with ham.

Living at the Willows has made our life easy. We have our daily routine: Every morning, Ines drives to the sports club and I use the gym downstairs. We have breakfast and lunch at home or away, but go down to the restaurant for dinner. Ines will not have to cook supper anymore. The food is tasty and the deserts to die for. We have cocktails every day at 4.30 pm, and a song session on Fridays at 4 pm. Our apartment is cleaned once a week. We have a rich program of movies, musical presentations, outings and lectures. We have a library, a gym, a small store, a place for haircut and grooming, and various function rooms. Mail is delivered every day. The Sunday edition of the Boston Globe is placed by our door. The main lobby is nice, but could use some upgrading and refurbishing. (They expect to do that in the near future). They also plan to bring in a bank.  There is a nurse on call. The place is managed by a competent and professional crew. The kitchen and maintenance staff are fantastic; they respond to our needs quickly. If something has to be repaired, all you have to do is call the main office. They even clean our cars when it snows.

I realize that the Willows represents the last abode in my life. Getting older is not easy. I am now much more aware of my fragility. My hair and beard are whiter and thinner. My body is changing (as my son says, “all those pies!”).  I don’t like to drive in the dark anymore. My memory is not what it used to be. On the other hand, my mind is sharper and my answers more radical. I have little tolerance with ignorance and cannot accept violence as an answer. Thankfully, both Ines and I are in relatively good shape. Ines helps our daughter and grandchildren with various chores. I keep in touch with my kids and grandkids, and many of my old friends. I am still teaching at Framingham State University, lecture in various places around Boston, keep a blog (“SONSINO’S BLOG”), and continue to study with my colleagues at my former temple in Needham, MA where I am the Rabbi emeritus.

We are grateful for our life, take one day at a time, and give thanks to God for all the blessings that are ours.

LADINO IS DYING

Rabbi Rifat Sonsino, Ph.D.

March 1, 2019

“Keridos haverim. En tomando la palavra delantre esta asistensya siendo el dover de rengrasyar  nuestro karo professor…” (Translation: Dear Friends. As I begin to address this audience, I feel I need to thank our teacher…).

Thus I began my talk on April 2, 1954 in a synagogue in Istanbul, Turkey. I was 16 years old. The language was Ladino (or, Judeo-Spanish), spoken in Turkey and the Balkans by Jews since their expulsion by the Spanish in 1492. Regrettably, after more than 500 years, the language is now dying for lack of use, and the younger generations’ preference for local languages.

In my childhood, we spoke Ladino at home and Turkish in the streets. Most of our friends and relatives were of Jewish descent, and spoke with each other only in Ladino. The lectures and announcements in the Jewish houses of worship were done in Ladino. We had a Jewish newspaper in Ladino. My maternal aunt was from Edirne, close to the Greek border, and she spoke Ladino with a slight accent.

There is a great deal of Jewish literature written in Ladino using Latin characters or Rashi script (a semi-cursive typeface). My father knew how to write in Soletreo, a special Ladino script, but I never learned it. The Meam Loez, a major kabbalistic (mystical) commentary on the Hebrew Bible, was written in Ladino by Rabbi Yaakov Kuli in 1730.We used to sing songs, like “Kuando el Rey Nimrod” (When the King Nimrod), or “A la una nasi yo” (I was born at 1), “Non komo nuestro Dio”(None like our God, En Kelohenu). Please note, it is DIO and not DIOS (as in modern Spanish), for Dios could imply plurality, which Jews rejected).

All this is disappearing. Younger generations in Turkey do not speak Ladino. Turkish is their language. My two kids, one born in Argentina and the other in the States, have no clue about Ladino. Because my wife is from Buenos Aires, at least at the beginning with our son, we maintained Argentinian Spanish at home, but that too soon disappeared. My children understand modern Spanish and my grandchildren learn it in school. Ladino itself is becoming a language studied only by academicians and historians. Even though some of my contemporaries still speak Ladino or understand it, at the present time, it is heavily saturated with Turkish words and expressions. The next generation is not likely to speak the language at all. Five hundred plus years of creativity will now be at the hands of a very few, if any.

Yes, there are attempt to preserve Ladino as a spoken language, but, I believe, the efforts, are in vain. Like many other ventures, this too will become part of history. At least I am glad that I was exposed to this very rich literature of the past in my childhood. The future belongs to my children and grandchildren. And this is the way it ought to be.

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WHAT IS GOD? MY POSITION.

Rabbi Rifat Sonsino, Ph.D.

Feb. 12, 2019

In the past few years, I have written a number of articles and books regarding the Jewish concepts of God, and indicated that, even though almost all of our sacred texts conceive of God in theistic terms (“a personal God”), many Jewish thinkers have advocated different points of view on this subject. I have not as yet presented a comprehensive picture of where I stand on this issue. This short blog of 10 points will attempt to do just that.

I grew up as an Orthodox Jew in Turkey but became a Reform Rabbi in the USA. Theologically speaking, I now consider myself a religious naturalist, and have been influenced by Rabbis like Roland B. Gittelsohn and Mordecai M. Kaplan.

1.     What is God? For me, God stands for the energy of the universe. Based on my observations of nature, with its continuous process of change, growth and decay of almost everything, I assume that there is a power that keeps the universe going on its course. It is to this internal energy that I give the name God. Our world was not created in the way in which the Bible describes it out of nothing. The answer to this puzzle must come from the world of modern science (Big Bang theory, perhaps). 

2.     What is my relationship to God?  God is not a personal being. God does not know me, care for me or responds to my prayers. God is also beyond gender, neither male or female.  God simply is the energy animating the universe. It is our duty to understand how this world operates in order to make sense of our existence.  All I want is to be given the sustaining tools of a meaningful life, the wisdom to accept my limitations and the skills to overcome them within nature’s possibilities. I hope for wholeness and contentment.

3.     Do I believe in miracles? The universe is a wonderful place. Every moment is awesome and note-worthy. I do not believe in miracles defined as an intervention by God into the normal workings of nature. When something incredible occurs, it is because we still have not learned how the world really operates or how the laws of nature made this change possible.

4.     Do I “believe” in God? Faith is often understood as a firm belief in something for which there is no proof. For me, however, “to believe” in God means to affirm convincingly God’s existence after careful examination of all the available data. 

5.     What is the purpose of prayer? There are three types of prayer: petition, praise and gratitude. For me, the purpose of prayer is to express gratitude for our existence and formulate praises for the magnificence of being alive. Petitionary prayers can at best be expressions of our wishes. I do not expect any divine response to my prayers, but I do feel the need to formulate prayers of praises and gratitude. They make me feel better.

6.     How do I explain evil? I believe there is such a thing as evil caused by human beings or nature: at times, saintly people suffer, the wicked thrive (e.g., The Nazi Holocaust), and volcanoes create destruction.  However, this is not because God is unwilling to respond to our pleas, but because God is neutral and operates according to set patterns. We do not always know why is the universe working in this way, and need to study nature harder to find the reasons for what we see as unfairness. Over the years, we have made a great deal of progress in our attempt to understand God, but we still have a long way to go.  I also maintain that human beings are not born with a sense of morality but are taught to become ethical individuals. Most of them achieve this high level, others do not. 

7.     How free are we? Past thinkers have debated the issue of determinism versus free will for a long time. I maintain that we are constrained by our limitations of time and place. We do, however, have some free will within our limits, and we should cherish that freedom.

8.     How do I read the Bible (or Torah)? I view the Bible as a great compendium of Jewish legends and teachings reflecting the time of its composition. Some parts are obsolete, but others still motivate me to moral action. As the early Rabbis did it in their time, we, too, need to reinterpret its message to make it relevant to our times, because the Bible represents our foundation and heritage. It made us who we are today.

9.     Do I believe in an afterlife? I do not believe in hell or paradise. Nor do I believe in the dichotomy between soul and matter. We are one unified whole. After I die, I will be buried in the ground, or cremated, and my bones will eventually disintegrate. Hopefully, my name, my reputation, and my writings will survive for a while, and I will continue to live through the memories of my children, grandchildren, friends and students. I do not expect anything else. I am grateful to be alive and pain-free for the moment, but will take whatever comes my way. I hope it will be meaningful and tolerable.

10.  Does religion still matter? Yes, it does, for it gives us a perspective on a meaningful life. However, it needs to be based on rationality and modern thinking. It should not promote fundamentalism and obscurantism, but encourage peace and mutual respect, allowing the free debate of all existential questions of our time. 

GREAT PEOPLE GENERATE GREAT LEGENDS

The more I study famous individuals who had tremendous impact on society, the more I realize that many legends were created about them after their death. Over time, they become super human beings. This happened to many people, including Moses, Jesus, Alexander the Great, Buddha, and others. 

Take the case of Moses, for example. There are no extra biblical sources that refer to him or to the Exodus. The stories about his infancy read like other birth legends of Akkad. Furthermore, was he an Egyptian? A Midianite? A Levite? The Hebrew Bible derives his name from the fact that he was “pulled out” (Ex.2: 10) from the Nile river. In reality, his name comes from an Egyptian word meaning “to give birth” or “son of.”  We do not even know his actual name. Granted, it is difficult to “invent” a personality like Moses. He must have existed but the details of his life are not available to us. He was a great leader about whom various legends were created, in time making him “a prophet…whom YHVH knew face to face” (Deut.34:10), a teacher par excellence (Moshe rabbenu –“Moses our teacher”), but not divine.

What about Jesus? A critical analysis of the New Testament shows that the Jesus of the Synoptic Gospels is very different from the Jesus of John. Besides, was he from Bethlehem or Nazareth? Philo of Alexandria, the Jewish-Greek philosopher, and the contemporary of Jesus, does not mention him. Josephus, the Jewish-Greek historian who lived around the same time, has two short references to Jesus (Antiq. 18:3/3 and 20: 9/1) but they are highly controversial. Most scholars agree that Jesus must have been a Jewish charismatic leader who was put to death by the Romans in the 1^st cent. CE. The details of his life and his teachings, however, are not known for sure. 

The scholarly search for Jesus, the man, began in the early 18^th century with Samuel Reimarus, a German scholar, who stressed the Jewishness of Jesus. Others followed, including Albert Schweitzer, who, in his book, The Quest of the Historical Jesus, questioned many of the traditions regarding him but emphasized his eschatological teachings. More recently, others proposed some extreme positions, such as Barbara Thiering , who in 1992, argued in her book, Jesus  and the Riddle of the Dead Sea Scrolls, that the historical Jesus was the leader of the radical faction of the Essenes, a Jewish group which, during the Roman period, lived in Qumran. It appears that it will be impossible to know exactly who Jesus was. Samuel Sandmel, a New Testament scholar, expressed his frustration when he stated that “the Jesus of history is beyond recovery” (We Jews and Jesus, p. 107). Jesus must have been a noteworthy Jewish personality about whom various legends were created. A charismatic leader, he ended up becoming divine for many. 

What about literary attribution to someone else? In the ancient world it was not uncommon to attribute a book to an outstanding individual who lived in the past. According to Jewish tradition, for example, the first Five Books of the Hebrew Bible, were written by Moses (e.g., Deut.31:9). Modern Biblical scholarship discounts this claim, and maintains that these books were written by scribes representing four different schools of thought (the so-called JEDP) over a long period of time, and then attributed back to the great Moses.

Similarly, the thirteen Pauline epistles in the New Testament present Paul the Apostle as their author. However, scholars agree today that many of these letters (e.g., Colossians, Ephesians) were attributed to Paul, not written by him. In Jewish religious literature we have the case of the Zohar, a medieval kabbalistic book, which, although written by Rabbi Moses de Leon (13^th cent. Spain), it was attributed by him to Shimon bar Yohay, a 2^nd cent. Tannaitic sage from Galilee, who was active after the destruction of the second temple of Jerusalem in 70.

Moses and Jesus were outstanding individuals who had tremendous impact on their society. Over time, however, many teachings were attributed to them. That says a lot about their teachings but very little about their personal life. 

Rabbi Rifat Sonsino, Ph.D

Rabbi Emeritus, Temple Beth Shalom, Needham, MA

Framingham State University, Philosophy/Psychology Dept.

NEEDED: A RELIGION BASED ON REASON AND RATIONALITY

This week, the Boston Magazine (Dec. 2018), published a powerful article by Erick Trickey, entitled “Has Boston Given up on God?” This is a devastating piece against old time religion. The author points out that “Religion’s importance in people’s lives is on the decline across the country,” evidenced by the fact that so many religious institutions are simply shutting down their operations. He also states that “people who say they are not affiliated with any religion, [is] at 32 percent of residents.” To counter this negative trend, Trickey points out, new belief systems are emerging based on “higher education’s critical thinking, science’s demands for evidence, technology’s drive for results, liberal politics’ notion of progress and social justice.” 

That is what I want from my Judaism. We have a long tradition and we want to preserve it by adapting it to the needs of the time, just as Rabbinic Judaism radically transformed biblical Judaism, and medieval Jews started to view Judaism through the prism of their time and place. Reform Judaism is one of the modern answers. I would argue that even Orthodox Judaism today has had to change since its medieval practices.

I grew up Orthodox, and was in fact the Hazan Kavua (permanent prayer leader) of my Junior congregation, but, after I went to law school, I simply could not abide by the theology and practice of my religious community in Istanbul, and chose Reform Judaism as my new path. It has been my salvation. 

In our time, we, too, need to stress the rationalistic elements of our Jewish tradition, because I believe most of our people now are demanding it.  We, too, must look at our religious patterns critically, and search for reliable evidence regarding our religious beliefs. Otherwise, we will lose our constituency that will go elsewhere for its spiritual needs.

Soon, in the Jewish community, we will be celebrating Hanukah. Pray, let us not retell the story of the so-called “Hanukah miracle,” that kept the candles lighting for 8 days, but, discounting this improbable rabbinic teaching in the Talmud (TB, Shabbat, 21 b), let us concentrate on the importance of the holiday as a festival of lights that figuratively opens the blind eyes, and deaf ears; and as the holyday that celebrates religious liberty.

Spirituality is the study of ultimate concerns, and there is plenty to discuss it within a rationalistic frame of mind.

Happy Hanukah.

Rabbi Rifat Sonsino, Ph.D.

Nov. 27, 2018.