Tradition

"The historical school has never, to my knowledge, offered to the world a theological program of its own. By the nature of its task...it pays but little attention to purely dogmatic questions.... As far as we may gather from vague remarks and hints thrown out now and then, its theological position may perhaps be thus defined: - It is not the mere revealed Bible that is of first importance to the Jew, but the Bible as it repeats itself in history, in other words, as it is interpreted by Tradition." Solomon Schechter, as cited in Conservative Judaism: Our Ancestors to Our Descendants.

Tradition simultaneously frightens and relieves me. I am frightened insofar as custom (tradition's louder sister) can carry outdated and ignorant legacies into the present (sometimes well-beyond their shelf life), but I am relieved by the knowledge that the Biblical text isn't frozen in ancient past, beyond our ability to recognize both its impact on all of the generations before our own and the life that it can breathe into our own experiences here and now. This is the line in the sand dividing the polar extremes of fundamentalism and relativism. 

When my father would gather us together around the kitchen table for Saturday morning bible study, there was never an option to look at the scriptural text as anything but a literal, historical record of events. Certainly, allowances for miracles lent themselves to occasional mystical interpretations of events, but never was there more than just a very slight amount of elbow room given to questioning the facts of the narrative. An example: God created over a stretch of six days and rested on the seventh. This was to be taken as a very literal, 144-hour period. No serious debate followed. Forget evolution, forget what you've been told by the geologists... Six days and it was done. Here's another one: Methuselah lived to be 969 years old, dying just seven days before the beginning of the Flood. No significance to the numbers, no message behind the text... God said it, Moses wrote it down, the translators of the Bible ever since haven't changed, amended, or redacted the text at all since its final compilation. 

This is the familiar fundamentalist concept of the divinely inspired text. It matters little to those who identify with this school how the text has been interpreted and reinterpreted over the millennia, how the historical context of the writers and redactors (there were none of these, remember) influenced the compilation of sources, nor how theology and religious practice has evolved to interact with the text throughout the ages. I have always found this stubborn opposition to questioning the relevance of the scriptural text to previous generations and to our own times to be a source of great frustration and disappointment. After all, the scriptures remain central to our contemporary understanding of legal code, ethics, and concept of public morality. This, of course, sets up very deep pits of contradiction. 

Consider our present-day attitudes towards slavery, prostitution, the subordination of women, exploitation of children and oppression of racial, religious, and sexual minorities.... We do not live in a society where these customs are even begrudgingly tolerated, let alone justified and legitimized with the guidance of scripture. In fact, most of these are considered historical abuses and are cause for serious condemnation. But, as we know, this has not always been the historical reality. Every one of these abuses has at one time been given the blessing of interpreters of scripture. And these very same blessings have often proven to be the biggest obstacles to progressive justice.

So, how do we avoid sliding down the eaves on the opposite side of the roof into relativism? If we should not passively yield to Biblical text as it was applied among the ancients, what can and should we look to for guidance in our own time? How do we resist the urge to dismiss the entirety of Torah if many of its accepted standards and practices conjure moral repugnance and distaste in our contemporary sensibilities? Which parts of the law are worth keeping and why? What is the limit for speculation about the intents if the text?

Schechter has offered us a valuable insight into how Conservative Judaism navigates the narrow channel between the extremes: Tradition. That is, we shift our perspective of the Biblical text from its role as static historical document to one that is dynamic, elastic, and alive. It is a huge oversimplification to compare it to the U.S. Constitution, but there might be some merit in the comparison. The foundation document of American society is imbued with a very healthy dose of reverence for the intentions of the founders. However, it was created to reflect the image of the country well beyond the imaginations of those same founders and was accordingly made to contract and expand to meet the unforeseen needs of endless future generations. So while we recognize the evils of slavery that found protections in the Constitution and have moved to outlaw that institution and correct its many collateral consequences, we can and should look beyond the attachment of that provision to its roots in private property protection and use this as the basis for contemporary interpretation of their intent. In both legal and theological terms, this is phrased as "Spirit of the law versus letter of the law." Our judicial system works the same way, using legal precedent - analyzing the decisions of prior courts - to gain an understanding of the intent of legislation to see beyond its particular application in any given time period and evaluate its value and practice for our own time. The answer is never as simple as "this is what was originally written, so this is what we do." Precedent - tradition - is the unbroken link between us and the intents of scripture. As we look into how each successive generation has gleaned wisdom from its predecessor generation in interpreting scripture, we can follow the thread back to the source and honor it in our own contemporary understandings and practices.

"...It is not the mere revealed Bible that is of first importance to the Jew, but the Bible as it repeats itself in history, in other words, as it is interpreted by Tradition."