Shariah and Halacha

Ishmael and Isaac: Abq Jew recently had the pleasure - and the honor - to hear Imam Shafi Abdul Aziz, leader of the Islamic Center of New Mexico, discuss the important and intriguing topic of Myths and Misconceptions About Shariah.

The topic is important because of the hatred, violence, and subjugation that the news media have associated with Shariah. The topic is also intriguing - at least to Abq Jew - because of the similarities in world-view and approach between Islamic Law (Shariah) and Jewish Law - Halacha.

The class was held at OASIS Albuquerque, as Abq Jew announced in May. The classroom was full. Abq Jew was not the only one wondering - and eager to hear - what the Imam would say.

Myths & Misconceptions About Shariah
Wed 10 June @ 10:30 am - #90
Instructor: Imam Shafi Abdul Aziz

What It Is: In this class, we will examine the correct meaning and practice of Islamic Shariah to dispel popular misperceptions. Based on a belief system of a divine origin, Shariah envisages both a religion and a social order. 
Core textual, theological, and legal components, along with historical impact, will be discussed. We will examine different phases of Shariah through its sources and methodologies leading to development of schools of opinions and legal theories.

Here is Abq Jew's summary of what Imam Shafi Abduk Aziz said.

Shariah is today a "commercialized" and loaded term, but its true Arabic meaning is "a clear and direct path to faith."

Shariah offers Muslims practical guidance for everyday life. Shariah is not simply a legal system. Rather, it is a social system that provides a code of conduct that emphasizes faith, life, family, property, and intellect.

Shariah proclaims freedom of religion, sanctity of life, importance of family, security of assets, and the power of reasoning.

Islam, as expressed through Shariah, is not just a religion - it is a way of life. And, as the Imam also pointed out when he spoke at Congregation B'nai Israel a year or so ago - Islam is intended to be a peaceful way of life.

Here is Abq Jew's interpretation of what Imam Shafi Abduk Aziz said.

The parallels between Shariah and Halacha are astounding. Both provide law codes that deal with, for example, oxen that gore. But both are in their own views, much more than just law codes - they are ways of life.

Halacha as a way of life is easy for more traditional Jews to see. Judaism as expressed in Halacha is not just about when Shabbat starts or ends, or whether a chicken is kosher or treyf. It is also about how to treat your Jewish and non-Jewish neighbors. Judaism and Halacha comprise an all-encompassing view of how to live in the world.

And similarly for Islam as expressed in Shariah. And similarly for Christianity as expressed in Church Law.

Since the Reformation (or perhaps the Magna Carta), Christianity and Church Law are no longer synonymous. Since the Enlightenment, neither are Judaism and Halacha.

Where, Abq Jew asks, is the Islamic equivalent of the Reformation and the Enlightenment?

Both Christianity and Islam claim to be religions of peace. Yet Christians have fought Christians, Christians have fought Muslims, and Muslims have fought Muslims for hundreds and hundreds of years.

Peaceful Christians will say of fighting Christians,

"They do not understand the Savior's message." 

Peaceful Muslims will say of fighting Muslims,

"They do not understand the Prophet's message."

And yet, here we are.

There is, in Kabbalistic (Mystical) Judaism, the concept of tzimtzum. Wikipedia tells us:

The tzimtzum (Hebrew צמצום ṣimṣūm "contraction / constriction / condensation") is a term used in the Lurianic Kabbalah to explain his new doctrine that God began the process of creation by "contracting" his Ein Sof (infinite) light in order to allow for a "conceptual space" in which finite and seemingly independent realms could exist. 

This primordial initial contraction, forming a Khalal / Khalal Hapanui ("vacant space", חלל הפנוי) into which new creative light could beam, is denoted by general reference to the tzimtzum.

Here is Abq Jew's interpretation of the tzimtzum.

Through the means of the tzimtzum, the Holy One, Blessed Be He, withdrew Himself from a portion of His universe so the world could exist.

In a similar but lehavdil distinct fashion, modern Christian and Jewish people of faith withdrew from a portion of their all-encompassing view of how to live in the world so the modern world could exist.

This process is called secularization, and it leads to a philosophical construct that designates a portion of the world a place where God is kavyachol not involved.

Islam is now confronting modernity, and - just as Judaism and Christianity did in their times - trying to learn how to be both Muslim and modern.

On Sunday June 7 2015

members of Congregation B'nai Israel

led by Rabbi Arthur Flicker

and members of the Islamic Center of New Mexico

led by Imam Shafi Abdul Aziz

worked together to help Albuquerque Habitat for Humanity

led by Beth Goldman

build a home for a deserving family.

There is another principle involved here.

This is America.

When you come here, you are entering the New World.

If you have hatreds and prejudices that you acquired and nurtured in the Old World - kindly leave them there. Do not base your New World view on your Old World ways.

Abq Jew asks: Is secularization, a withdrawal of the holy from the profane world, the only way to achieve this?

Albuquerque Habitat for Humanity's website tells us

Greater Albuquerque Habitat for Humanity is part of a global, nonprofit housing organization operated on Christian principles that seeks to put God’s love into action by building homes, communities and hope. 

Greater Albuquerque Habitat for Humanity is dedicated to eliminating substandard housing locally and worldwide through constructing, rehabilitating and preserving homes; by advocating for fair and just housing policies; and by providing training and access to resources to help families improve their shelter conditions.   

Habitat for Humanity was founded on the conviction that every man, woman and child should have a simple, durable place to live in dignity and safety, and that decent shelter in decent communities should be a matter of conscience and action for all. 

Greater Albuquerque Habitat for Humanity, founded in 1987, is a locally run affiliate of Habitat for Humanity International , a nonprofit, ecumenical Christian housing organization.

The June 7 Albuquerque Habitat for Humanity project involved members of a Jewish synagogue working together with members of an Islamic center to fulfill the Christian values of the project's organizers.

The holy was not banished from the work site, yet the organizers and participants took a step back from rhetoric and polemic to allow the work to proceed - as if it were a secular undertaking.

Is this a way forward, toward the Besorot Tovot - Good Tidings - we all await?

We can hope.

There's A Bathroom

On The Right: This has nothing to do with building design, restroom accessibility, or home decor. Or, for that matter, politics. This, in fact, has everything to do with how we humans hear what we hear.

Oh, and life. This has everything to do with life.

Specifically, the life of Dr Oliver Sacks, one of the world's most prolific and fascinating writers. The man who gave us The Man Who Mistook His Wife for a Hat, Awakenings,  and other neurological gems.

Dr Sacks recently discovered that he has limited time left to live. From The New York Times:

My Own Life
Oliver Sacks on Learning He Has Terminal Cancer 

A month ago, I felt that I was in good health, even robust health. At 81, I still swim a mile a day. But my luck has run out — a few weeks ago I learned that I have multiple metastases in the liver. Nine years ago it was discovered that I had a rare tumor of the eye, an ocular melanoma. The radiation and lasering to remove the tumor ultimately left me blind in that eye. But though ocular melanomas metastasize in perhaps 50 percent of cases, given the particulars of my own case, the likelihood was much smaller. I am among the unlucky ones. 

I feel grateful that I have been granted nine years of good health and productivity since the original diagnosis, but now I am face to face with dying. The cancer occupies a third of my liver, and though its advance may be slowed, this particular sort of cancer cannot be halted. 

It is up to me now to choose how to live out the months that remain to me ....

Back to how we humans hear what we hear. Dr Sacks has something to say about that, and he took the opportunity to say it in The Times a few days ago:

 

Mishearings 

A few weeks ago, when I heard my assistant Kate say to me, “I am going to choir practice,” I was surprised. I have never, in the 30 years we have worked together, heard her express the slightest interest in singing. But I thought, who knows? Perhaps this is a part of herself she has kept quiet about; perhaps it is a new interest; perhaps her son is in a choir; perhaps .… 

I was fertile with hypotheses, but I did not consider for a moment that I had misheard her. It was only on her return that I found she had been to the chiropractor. 

A few days later, Kate jokingly said, “I’m off to choir practice.” Again I was baffled: Firecrackers? Why was she talking about firecrackers?

Back in 2010, Dr Sacks wrote a revealing piece in The New Yorker about prosopagnosia - also known as face-blindness.

Mild cases can seem comical, but severe prosopagnosia afflicts millions in the U.S.

Face-Blind
Why are some of us terrible at recognizing faces? 

It is with our faces that we face the world, from the moment of birth to the moment of death. Our age and our gender are printed on our faces. Our emotions, the open and instinctive emotions that Darwin wrote about, as well as the hidden or repressed ones that Freud wrote about, are displayed on our faces, along with our thoughts and intentions. Though we may admire arms and legs, breasts and buttocks, it is the face, first and last, that is judged “beautiful” in an aesthetic sense, “fine” or “distinguished” in a moral or intellectual sense. And, crucially, it is by our faces that we can be recognized as individuals. Our faces bear the stamp of our experiences and our character; at forty, it is said, a man has the face he deserves.

Abq Jew was so intrigued by this article that he took the test offered at faceblind.org by the Prosopagnosia Research Centers at Dartmouth College, Harvard University, and University College London.

The results confirmed what Abq Jew's family has long known:

Abq Jew can't spot people he knows in a crowd, and can't recognize people he has known forever if his line of sight is broken. His own family wears name tags.

But what was that middle thing again? Oh yeah - mishearing.

Abq Jew does a lot of that, too.

And then there's Bad Moon Rising, the seminal 1969 song by Credence Clearwater Revival. Wherein the verse

There's a bad moon on the rise.

is regularly misheard as

There's a bathroom on the right.

In 2014, WatchMojo.com ranked the mishearing #5 on Top 10 Misheard Lyrics.

What, Abq Jew hears you ask, was #1? 

That honor goes to Jimi Hendrix's Purple Haze. Wherein the verse

‘Scuse me while I kiss the sky.

is regularly misheard as

'Scuse me while I kiss this guy.

Which brings Abq Jew to the website KissThisGuy.com, the Internet's archive of misheard lyrics. Which of course has a special place for John Fogerty and CCR.

This phenomenon - mishearing -  Abq Jew must advise you, has its own name:

 mondegreen

Named for

Lady Mondegreen

who never existed. Wikipedia explains:

A mondegreen is a mishearing or misinterpretation of a phrase as a result of near-homophony, in a way that gives it a new meaning. 

Mondegreens are most often created by a person listening to a poem or a song; the listener, being unable to clearly hear a lyric, substitutes words that sound similar, and make some kind of sense. 

American writer Sylvia Wright coined the term in her essay "The Death of Lady Mondegreen", published in Harper's Magazine in November 1954.

The term was inspired by "...and Lady Mondegreen," a misinterpretation of the line "...and laid him on the green," from the Scottish ballad "The Bonnie Earl o Moray."

Ye Highlands and ye Lowlands,
Oh, where hae ye been?
They hae slain the Earl o' Moray,
And Lady Mondegreen.  

Wikipedia goes on to say that Ms Wright also appreciated the verse from Psalm 23:

Surely good Mrs Murphy shall follow me
all the days of my life

and further points out that

Sometimes, the modified version of a lyric becomes standard, as is the case with "The Twelve Days of Christmas". 

The original has "four colly birds" (colly means black; in A Midsummer Night's Dream, Shakespeare wrote "Brief as the lighting in the collied night."); sometime around the turn of the twentieth century, these became calling birds, which is the lyric used in the 1909 Frederic Austin version.

Non-English mondegreens are also possible. Wikipedia gives us two Hebrew examples:

Ghil'ad Zuckermann cites the Hebrew example mukhrakhím liyót saméakh ("we must be happy", with a grammar mistake) instead of (the high-register) úru 'akhím belév saméakh ("wake up, brothers, with a happy heart"), from the well-known song "Háva Nagíla" (Let’s be happy)." 

The Israeli site dedicated to Hebrew mondegreens has coined the term "avatiach" (Hebrew for watermelon) for "mondegreen", named for a common mishearing of Shlomo Artzi's award-winning 1970 song "Ahavtia" ("I loved her", using a form uncommon in spoken Hebrew).

Don't remember CCR?

Don't remember Bad Moon Rising?

Here ya go! 

Yes, Abq Jew hears you cry, we have wandered a long way from Dr Oliver Sacks and his impending demise. Therefore, Abq Jew wishes to point out that:

1. Each of us has limited time left to live.
2. Jewish tradition forbids us from either hastening death or preventing its natural occurrence.

Which of course brings us to the old Jewish joke about ...

The old man is lying on his death bed, attended by his son. He says, “I can smell that your mother is making chopped liver. Get me a cracker with chopped liver.” The son exits to fulfill his father’s request, then returns and says 

“Mom says she is saving it for the shiva.” 

Welcoming the Bride in San Francisco

Modern Style: As the holy Sabbath approaches each week, Jews all over the world prepare to greet the Sabbath Queen, aka the Sabbath Bride.

Each Jewish community greets the Sabbath in its own special way: the Jews of Placitas, the Jews of Aberdeen; the Jews of Livingston, the Jews of Ashkelon.

And, of course, the Jews of that most special place

San Francisco

The City By The Bay

Lior Ben-Hur has a beautiful way of welcoming the Sabbath Bride. The website MyJewishLearning.com tells us:

With roots in Greece and Iraq, Israeli born Lior Ben-Hur is a San Francisco based musician and educator. His band Sol Tevel performs original modern global Jewish music.

And Lior's website further explains:

I am an Israeli living in San Francisco. Although I lead Shabbat services around the Bay on a weekly basis, I myself do not observe Shabbat the way my grandparents did in Iraq or Greece. 

My very secular celebration of Shabbat relates to the San Francisco Jewish experience. I drive to temple, play instruments and sign songs, and when the service is over, I might even go out for a drink in a bar – a far cry from how my ancestors observed this weekly tradition. 

Therefore, there is a transformation of the meaning of Shabbat in my personal experience from a very holy, almost solemn tradition of observation to one of celebration. I want to express this transformation in the music video and song composition. 

I often play this song on secular venues where people don’t necessary know the meaning of the text but they feel the energy of the music and dance as if they were in a Kabalat Shabbat service, anticipating the celebration of Shabbat and the change of pace to daily routine that it represents.  

The music video was filmed in an alley in North Beach with the goal of bringing the music to the streets to share with every day San Franciscans, and experience the reaction of strangers passing by as they hear the song. 

While the people walking by the alley did not know the Jewish meaning of the song they responded in a way that corresponded with its essence; the happiness and festivity of Shabbat. 

This spirit of shared, even viral festivity and celebration is captured in the music video.

Shabbat Shalom, New Mexico!

Good Shabbos, Albuquerque!

Advice from Notorious R.B.G.

A Moment of Wisdom: Moment Magazine, North America’s premier Jewish magazine, their website tells us,

was founded in 1975 by Nobel Prize laureate Elie Wiesel and acclaimed writer Leonard Fein. Fiercely independent, Moment is not tied to any organization, denomination or point of view and offers a balanced accounting of the Jewish experience in America. 

As Fein proudly declared in the premier issue, Moment would include diverse opinions “of no single ideological position, save of course, for a commitment to Jewish life.” 

Its pages have been graced by both well-known writers and emerging writers, including Calvin Trillin, Chaim Potok, Isaac Bashevis Singer, Abba Eban, Cynthia Ozick, Wolf Blitzer, Yossi Klein Halevi, Theodore Bikel, Jeremy Groopman, Ron Rosenbaum, Sherwin Nuland, Erica Jong, Dara Horn, David Margolick, Dani Shapiro and so many others. 

This month Moment observes the 40th anniversary of its founding. In true Moment fashion, the magazine is celebrating with

40th Anniversary Symposium: 

Wisdom for the Next Generation

What life experience, advice or piece of wisdom
do you think is most important
to pass on to the next generation?

Here are a few excerpts of Abq Jew's favorites. You can examine the complete Symposium here.

Rabbi Lord Jonathan Sacks

Wisdom is free, yet it is also the most expensive thing there is, for we tend to acquire it through failure or disappointment or grief. That is why we try to share our wisdom, so that others will not have to pay the price for it that we paid. Judaism has taught me far more about life than the space allows for here, but I do want to share with you three key lessons I have learned.

First, use your time well. Life is short, too short to waste on television, computer games and unnecessary emails; too short to waste on idle gossip, or envying others for what they have; too short for anger and indignation; too short to waste on criticizing others. “Teach us to number our days,” says Psalm 90, “that we may get a heart of wisdom.”

But any day on which you have done some good to someone has not been wasted.

Rabbi Adin Steinsaltz

The best and the easiest piece of advice is to see, think and then speak. I try as much as I can to formulate an answer before answering a question about things I don’t have the faintest notion about. People should be careful not to confuse lack of knowledge and stupidity. Stupidity is not just a lack of knowledge but it is when you twist, misrepresent and do some damage to things.

Keeping quiet is a great art that should be cultivated. If you are a husband or a parent it is a big temptation to pretend you are wiser than you are.

It is very hard if you are in authority to say that you don’t know. In Jewish thought of the Middle Ages, there was an idea that the highest level of wisdom is to say, “I don’t know.”

Leon Wieseltier

Add caption

It is important to find ways in times of suffering to remind oneself of how big and rich the world is. That is how you recover your sense of possibility. Without that you are doomed.

There are many forces that operate against us—economic and social ones—and the most important thing is to protect that sense of possibility.

That’s hard to do when you are lonely, broken-hearted or disappointed. That’s why my advice when that happens is to put on something nice and get out of the house. Accept stimulation from the world so that you begin to live again.


But here, in Abq Jew's not always humble opinion, is the best!

Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg

Let me tell you about an experience I had. It’s a problem that still exists, although not to the same extent.

In the 1970s, I was a teacher at Columbia Law School. I got a call from the head of the lower school at my son James’s school asking me to come down to discuss my lively son’s latest escapade. I got those calls about once a month.

That day, I was particularly weary and I responded to the call,

“This child has two parents.
Please alternate calls. It’s his father’s turn.”

So they called Marty. What was James’s offense?

He stole the elevator.

It was one of those hand-operated elevators and the elevator operator had gone out for a smoke.

One of James’s classmates dared him to take the kindergartners up to the top floor, so he did. Marty’s response was

“How far could he take it?”

The school was much more reluctant to call a man away from his work. I think that young women with children are still experiencing that. They’re expected to do it all—do their job but take care of all the family things. The dental checkups, the new shoes.

If you see work and family as part of your life, of every human’s life, then the men should be involved in raising children … And a woman should not feel guilt that she’s working. Raising children is a shared responsibility.

How, Abq Jew hears you ask, did the Honorable Ruth Bader Ginsburg become Notorious R.B.G.? This article by Hunter Schwartz in Time Magazine sheds some light.

Ruth Bader Ginsburg goes full Notorious RBG 

Ruth Bader Ginsburg's photo for the "Time 100" is perfect. Wearing a glove, she holds her hand to her face with a slight smirk. The pose looks like something inspired by a rap album cover, and the glove evokes early Madonna. 

She looks like a justice, but she also looks like a rock star. It's the ultimate visual representation of the meme that has become "The Notorious RBG." 

Ginsburg's evolution into a progressive millennial icon has come thanks to her Supreme Court opinions and outspokenness. The "Notorious" Tumblr didn't hurt either.

However, as Abq Jew advances, day by day (the universally approved rate) on Old Age, his favorite picture of Notorious RGB may (that's a caveat) always be

'Notorious' Ruth Bader Ginsburg 'Wasn't 100 Percent Sober' at State of the Union