Inside Out

July 15, 2008. My mother told me a few days ago that, while I was a bright child—reading at age three and loving school from the very first day—I have always been anxious about academic transitions. On the first day of first grade, my mother reports, I said worriedly, “But I don’t know that grade.”

Orientation begins tonight, and intensive Hebrew class (Ulpan) begins Sunday. I don’t know this grade, either, but my academic style has changed much since the age of six. I love school and I am confident in my academic ability. But this is a different kind of schooling, one that asks not only for intellectual mastery and growth but for spiritual exploration and personal development, for an expansion of head and heart.

In Hebrew, mind and heart are conveyed by one word, “lev.” A perpetual student like me needs to be reminded that the mind cannot guide the body alone; the heart must be deeply involved in any endeavor, and it is particularly necessary on the path to becoming a compassionate, effective,and knowledgeable rabbi. How do we locate the place of “lev,” of heart and mind together?

This past Erev Shabbat (Friday night, the Eve of the Sabbath), the incoming HUC students gathered in the Jerusalem residence of the College President, Rabbi David Ellenson. He shared with us some words of Jewish philosopher Franz Rosenzweig. Rosenzweig called for “[a] learning that no longer starts from the Torah and leads into life, but the other way round: from life, from a world that knows nothing of the Law, or pretends to know nothing, back to the Torah” – a path “[f]rom the periphery back to the center; from the outside, in.”

Who is an outsider? For Rosenzweig, the outsider is the Jew in the modern world, and what is required of that Jew is “a new sort of learning. A learning for which—in these days—he is the most apt who brings with him the maximum of what is alien. That is to say, not the man specializing in Jewish matters; or, if he happens to be such a specialist, he will succeed, not in the capacity of a specialist, but only as one who, too, is alienated, as one who is groping his way home.”

Groping my way through the crowded alleyways and covered markets of the Old City of Jerusalem, I entered the Church of the Holy Sepulchure, arguably the holiest site in Christianity, the place of the crucifixion and burial of Jesus. In the back of my mind, I had always known about this place, and considered the possibility of coming here one day. I never imagined the manner of my visit, the reason for my presence in Jerusalem.

It was strange, I admit, to look at the oil lamps, the crucifixes, the altars, and the intricate mosaics, as an observer, decidedly not a pilgrim. I respected the sanctity of the Church for Christians, stepping as quietly as possible and taking photographs only where permitted. My inside and my outside turned around on themselves like a Mobius strip: the inside of childhood piety now the outsider status of the convert; the outside appearing like a casual tourist mixed with the “inside” knowledge gained from Catholic school; the feeling inside of wanting to share this experience with my faithfully Catholic family and the feeling inside of contentment at being a Jew in Jerusalem.

Rabbi Ellenson in part offered us Rosenzweig’s words to warn us against measuring ourselves only against an academic set of standards, against worrying that those students with “Jewish degrees” somehow have an advantage over the rest of us, against assuming that an ivy-league degree and strong academic ability will be all HUC requires of us. The learning I am about to engage in is the learning of the “lev,” the heart-mind—the kind of learning that requires us each, whether raised Catholic or Jewish, whether perpetually constant in our faith or spiritual seekers, to approach the study of Judaism, Jewish history, Jewish religious law, and Jewish practice from the outside.

Learning from the outside cannot be the disinterested, dispassionate, cold observation of the scientist, but must be, as Rosenzweig urges, a “groping [our] way home.” Home: Jerusalem, Israel, the Diaspora, North America, Judaism, the synagogue, the Jewish people, Jewish text, tradition-based Jewish knowledge, compassion, open-mindedness (and open ears), and the family, too.