Writing a newspaper column is a different experience from delivering a sermon or teaching a class. Unfortunately, addressing the public in print denies me the opportunity to see your faces as we learn together. Of course, on the other hand, it spares me from watching your faces should my words serve instead as a soporific.
Nevertheless, the goal is similar in both writing and speaking, to establish a relationship and to disseminate my thoughts to you so that you can digest them and sharpen them with your responses.
As a rabbi, this is what I do. You may have heard the old saying that anytime you ask a question of two Jewish people, you will receive at least three opinions. This column will be based on the theological underpinnings of that perhaps overstated observation.
There is a Mishna, a rabbinic teaching from some time during or before the Second Century of the Common Era in which the rabbis explain that among the infinite qualities which separate human beings from the Divine is God’s ability to create each of us in the Divine image, and yet to render each of us unique. To illustrate this, the rabbis teach that when a mortal person creates many coins from the same mold, all the coins are alike, but God has created every human being from the model of Adam, the first human being, and yet no person is identical to any other. (After Mishna Sanhedrin 4:5)
This suggests that no one person, and not even any one community, constitutes a perfect facsimile of our Creator. Rather, the image of God is a mosaic composed of all of us. Further, the most accessible way for us to explore the breadth and the depth of our relationship with God, is to get to know as many different people and opinions and personalities as we can and to incorporate each of them into our conception of the Almighty — not a task for the faint of heart.
And yet that is the starting point of Rabbinic Judaism. The Talmud, the running commentary of ancient rabbinic wisdom, is at the same time the central legal text of the Jewish people and also an artistically rendered transcript of fractious rabbinic conversations that unfold over centuries. We are taught that some conversations and even arguments can be “for the sake of heaven,” and that two competing views can both the “words of the living God.”
In my tradition, truly holy communities are not cultivated by assembling only people who agree with each other. Sacred assemblies are constructed by bringing individuals together who are serious about living according their own perception of the truth of God’s existence, and who are, at the same time, equally serious about cherishing the truths and insights of others.
So, I’m not sure where this column will take us. I invite you to let me know if there are issues that you would like to learn about with a rabbi. I look forward to reading the columns written by my colleagues from other faith traditions. But most of all, I look forward to building a relationship with this on-line community and exploring the sacred together.
About Rabbi Eric M. Rosin
Rabbi Eric Rosin began his professional career as an attorney in Los Angeles serving the entertainment industry, but discovered he needed to be doing something he was passionate about. He left the practice of law and began studying for ordination at the Ziegler School of Rabbinic Studies in Los Angeles. After ordination, Rabbi Rosin served for two years as the assistant rabbi of Temple Beth-El in Richmond, Va., then assumed the pulpit at Kesher Israel Congregation in West Chester, Pa. in 2004.
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