Paul writes – My US friend Chris Erdman directed me to an episode of Speaking of Faith that I’d missed last year. Chris describes it as:” a remarkable interview with a remarkable young rabbi… She witnesses to a real love for the text, a restlessness with trite answers, a demand to challenge the tradition while living fully and appreciatively within it. Much here about how Christians ought to encounter our tradition even while to press for an emergence from hidebound ways…”
Here’s the blurb on the show:
“[Krista Tippett and her guest Rabbi Sharon Brous] delve into the world and meaning of the Jewish High Holy Days — ten days that span the new year of Rosh Hashanah through Yom Kippur's rituals of atonement. [Sharon Brous] is one voice in a Jewish spiritual renaissance that is taking many forms across the U.S. The vast majority of her congregation are people in their 20s and 30s, who, she says, are making life-giving connections between ritual, personal transformation, and relevance in the world.”
I was particularly struck by the following excerpt:
“…Our rabbis acknowledge that the way to transformation of the world starts, it starts with the self, it's through the self. And so we have to, not only not disregard, but be truly attentive and sincerely attentive to really accounting for what's happening in our own personal lives first…”
And, this in relation to Scripture and Tradition
Ms. Tippett: You know; I have to say that, while I'm listening to your talk …I think about … the richness of Jewish tradition … the whole historic tradition … of the Talmud, of conversation across generations, of midrash and … of, making the story your own in every new generation.
… The way you're reading [the] story of the relationship … between Isaac and Ishmael [Brous had referred to this earlier in the conversation] is going to be different in the 21st century than a rabbi would have been reading it 50 years ago or, say, 60 years ago in the middle of … the Holocaust and World War II. I mean; it does speak to our dynamics in a completely new way, doesn't it?
Ms. Brous: … That’s what I think the rabbis meant when they said that the Torah was given down in fire, meaning on Mount Sinai. The mountain was on fire when the Torah came down. And in Torah, it has to be transmitted. And if we don't find some way to make this religious experience about more than just the memory of something that once touched our great-great-grandparents…
it’s simply not going to exist anymore. And so … what does it mean to me? And, by the way, not only does it mean something different to me than it meant to my grandparents, it means something different to me this year than it meant to me last year…
…the great power of a religious tradition. It's versatile enough to really sustain itself over the course of many thousands of years to say, you know, the text is the same every year, but we are different. That really is, there is something new born every time that I encounter this text …”
…What works for me now might not work for me next year. And what works for next year might not work for me now… There are things that happen in our lives and in the world that open us up to the possibility of …different interpretations of things. And so I don't take things out of the book. I struggle with things, and there are things that I scream out against… I see them and I think, oh, this, you know, this either just doesn't speak to me or this just seems wrong, but it's still in the book because next year I might get it in a different way. And I think that's kind of, its sort of some kind of religious humility in a way. It's to say, like, it doesn't work for me at all, and yet I'm going to continue to struggle with it, or I'm at least going to continue to keep it on the page…”
You can download the Mp3 by right-clicking here, or you can visit the web page of this show for other options and additional resources. It’s an excellent interview.
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