Message from Scholar In Residence Rabbi Dana Evan Kaplan
This is a most unusual year to be a scholar in Residence at Congregation Beth Israel! Fortunately, we are now in the process of coming out of what has been the worst pandemic in any of our lifetimes. Nevertheless, it is still an ominous presence that will loom over us for months and even years ahead.
I have been doing talks and lectures over Zoom, Google Meet, Microsoft Teams and other such video calling programs this past number of months. The pandemic has made a big world smaller with the usage of video communications, with several reliable cloud platforms for group conferencing and webinars. It's been an unbelievable experience to talk with people in New Jersey, Texas, Mississippi, Florida and now California without having to get on a plane.
Admittedly, it certainly cuts down on the person-to-person interaction which is such a central part of the scholar-in-residence experience. I like schmoozing and one of the most gratifying parts of a scholar in Residence weekend is being able to talk with people in person face-to-face one-on-one. Despite its limitations, it is certainly a wonderful vehicle for communicating. You will be able to see my face clearly and I will be able to see all of your faces and so it's almost --- almost --- as good as being there in person!
The precautions that we have had to take to respond to the covid-19 virus have transformed our society and the after effects will be felt for many years to come. in our synagogues, we continue to conduct ritual but with most or almost all of the congregation observing from their homes. This is not just a small change but rather a transformative recalibration of the very nature of Jewish ritual. What does it mean to participate in Shabbat services when we are not physically in the same room (usually the sanctuary)?
I will be speaking a number of times over the weekend of March 19th. Friday night I'll be giving the sermon on ‘Parashat Vayikra - The Role of Ritual in our Lives as Reform Jews and as Human Beings’. We will follow that with a virtual post oneg study session ‘A Life of Meaning: Changing How We Think About God’. Most of us no longer see God the way that our ancestors did. If we are looking for God to be a particular thing, a particular type of being, such as the old man with a long white beard, then we are going to be disappointed. The Enlightenment has brought many new approaches to thinking about God, including deistic, pantheistic, panentheistic, just to mention a few.
We will discuss four main ways of seeing God and describe how populist religious meaning might lie within all four conceptions. Yet, it may be more effective for our purposes to focus more on the challenge of building a relationship with God than defining what we mean about God. We might think of God as a process instead of a being. One of our aims should be to discover historical and cultural truth and use it to obtain a God concept that moves us emotionally.
On Shabbat morning I'll be leading a virtual tour study session on Parshat Vayikra, the opening part of the Book of Leviticus, on ‘The Meanings of Sacrifice and Prayer’. Much of the Book of Leviticus describes how the sacrifices brought by the people of Israel were to be offered. Yet, the idea of sacrificing animals is repugnant to most of us today. How do we understand what the Torah was trying to convey, and how can we make sense of these writings for us today in our time.
On Sunday afternoon, I will be speaking on ‘A Life of Meaning: Praying with Purpose and Meaning’. There are multiple ways to approach prayer that can nurture spirituality without making us feel uncomfortable. Perhaps making prayer more accessible involves developing workable conceptions of God and a coherent understanding of the purpose of religion in the context of nurturing spirituality.
Prayer can make more sense as something that we can do without compromising our intellectual principles and core beliefs that modern assumptions about supposedly supernatural activities are deeply problematic. When it works, prayer can enable us to make our religious ideas concrete. Being able to see religious activity - including praying - in fresh ways, we have a better chance of breaking through our hard shells of jaded expectations. In this time of disruption and change, we can take the time to reflect on our religious lives and find that Judaism is richer and deeper than we ever imagined.
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