Cohen’s Neighborhood: Creativity and Atonement
Recently, in the spirit of continuing education and renewal, I enrolled in a course at the Academy for Jewish Religion in New York that I was unable to fit in as a rabbinical student, but had always yearned to take: The Book of Samuel and Leadership. This class, taught by one of the great teachers of Torah today, Dr. Job Jindo, examines political power, its efficacy, its temptations, its abuses, and how it sometimes induces leaders to fail and fall. Recently, I was witness to such a failure.
About six months ago, at a meeting of some of the most powerful professionals in the Conservative-Masorti movement, we were invited to share what was happening in our personal lives. I shared that I was separated from my partner and ultimately pursuing divorce. I explained that we still cared deeply for one another and were putting our children at the center. But no one asked me how I was feeling. No one asked what was on my heart. And there wasn’t really space in the meeting for that kind of conversation. The refrain was always: “What good news do you have to share with the group today?” But I was broken, and there was no place for brokenness. And I realized, as well, my own responsibility in creating a sanctuary prohibitive to the crushed, the fractured, and the struggling. I reflected upon how we “show up” for couples at the apogee of their happiness and not necessarily affirming or pastoring to them when they decide to part ways and how this lack of leadership is just one facet of our desensitization. We should remember that “both the whole and the broken tablets were included within the ark of the covenant” [Babylonian Talmud: Berakhot 8b].
But what paradigms can we turn to in order to truly build a “house of prayer for all kinds of people”, those who feel whole and those who feel broken and everything in-between, everything that touches the human condition? To imagine such a sanctuary, a true sanctuary, we’ll journey to the Neighborhood of Fred Rogers and of Professor Hermann Cohen.
I was fortunate enough to grow up with the palpable presence of Fred Rogers, minister, musician, psychologist, and television show host. Our circles overlapped. My piano teacher used to play duets with him and his wife, who were both classically trained pianists. In fact, Mr. Rogers composed the songs and incidental music that gave such dimension to both “The Neighborhood” and the “Land of Make Believe”. Later, I sang in a professional children’ s chorus in residence at WQED, where Mister Rogers’ Neighborhood was filmed. Joe “Handyman” Negri was the head of jazz guitar at Duquesne University, where I studied music. Eventually, while singing Bernstein’s Chichester Psalms, I met Mr. Rogers himself. He was completely present. His kind eyes never left mine. For those moments, it felt as if nothing else in the world required his attention.
That, I think, is what a neighborhood can be.
One of my mentors and greatest teachers, Dr. Job Jindo, who was my presenter at my rabbinic ordination three years ago, must have sensed a trace of Fred Roger’s influence on me. In his own words:
“Neighborhood”––yes. Michael reminds me of a great hero of this country: the beloved children’s television host Fred Rogers. Himself an ordained minister and a man of prayer, Mister Rogers, however, rarely used the word “God” in his television program. Instead, he taught children, including “children” inside the adults, in his profound simplicity, that its ok to be sad sometimes, to accept our brokenness, that it is important to appreciate silence rather than noise, and to manifest what Mister Rogers himself learned from his seminary teacher: that “there is one thing evil cannot stand, and that is forgiveness.”
In this age where we sense the increasing feeling of divisiveness everywhere, where many of us do not know what to do with the “the mad that we feel”, I think it is vital for us to restore the sense of care, acceptance, and pardon I’ve seen in Mister Rogers and as well as in Michael. Michael, our God-sent-angel, I look forward to learning from you, how we can all help each other, Jews and non-Jews alike, to understand the inner needs of “children”, yes each of us as children of God full of compassion, and to heal ourselves and others, so that we can make each day we live in our global neighborhood not only beautiful, but also wonder-full, and most importantly, holy.
Since that day, I’ve taken that mandate of creating “A neighborhood” seriously. As I, God willing, move into the role of spiritual leader in my community in the near future, as a teacher/mentor of many seminary students, and as a leader within the Conservative/Masorti stream, I’ve asked myself, what does a community look like in which “anything that’s human is mentionable and anything that’s mentionable can be more manageable” to quote the great cardigan-wearing inspiration. Or in my own words:
No topic is taboo
No person or creature unwelcome
All parts, identities, feelings, and thoughts are cherished.
Many are unaware that Hermann Cohen, noted Jewish and Neo-Kantian philosopher, also created such a framework. Though an idealist in a long Jewish line of idealists from Philo to Maimonides, Cohen was hyperaware that human nature entails falling, failing, and rising up again and so, atonement is an essential concept of his philosophical system, particularly in his climactic work Religion of Reason Out of the Sources of Judaism. Those on the Jewish Left (myself included) tend to see ourselves as following in the iconoclastic footsteps of the prophets who in the words of Cohen are “politicians, are unable to develop religion in any other way than by participating in the conflicts within the state and society…[fighting] the priests, who are servants of the state and therefore also rulers of the state”. However, Professor Cohen in his own neighborhood, teaches that it is disingenuous and misinformed to neglect the prophetic voice that bends toward mercy in addition to the one that arcs toward justice. There are no purity tests and no barbarians in the world of the Unconditional One.
In fact, Cohen makes a cogent case that both social equity and action on behalf of one’s fellow-person and atonement empower us to correlate to the Transcendent God. In Cohen’s philosophical system there is no merging with the Deity, Who is wholly unique, Who is Being while we are becoming. We may, however, draw near to that which is greater than us, and we do that through human or even better, humane creativity and ingenuity. In the first correlation, we utilize our reason, which for the German philosopher entailed the synthesis of logic and ethics, or practical good judgement (In fact, the closest parallel to the German word, Vernunft that Cohen so prizes is the Hebrew word derech eretz). Intuiting the social and economic gaps of our era we utilize our intelligence and ethical will to bridge the gaps and meet the obstacles.
For Cohen, the second correlation, unlike the first, which occurs through the state and involves humanity more generally, is an intimate and personal act of redemption, entailing the human’s ability to reimagine and recreate oneself after missing the mark. Preventing a kind of unhealthy isolation from society, atonement draws the repentant near to the Transcendent One, for “to err is human, to forgive Divine”. There are those who sin, those who perpetrate a crime, those who murder, but Cohen and the prophets insist that there are no sinners, no perpetrators, and no murderers. No one is to be defined by their worst moment.
And yet, falling short of the ideal is human. Even the most compassionate fall into tribalism, temptation, and acts of selfishness. We wound our children, parents, friends, lovers, even if unintentionally. Yes, humanity in its totality strives toward progress, but the individual struggles with their yetzer ha-ra, their earthly darker impulse and the existential dread of carving out some meaning before death.
And atonement requires no mediator. Just as Torah is not in heaven [Deuteronomy 30:11], lest we require someone, Moses, Akiva, our rabbi, our cantor, to fetch if for us, neither is atonement. Just as Cohen, Ezekiel, and our sages bet on our ability to manifest attunement, assessing the needs of the moment and standing in the breach with creativity, compassion, and ethical will, likewise do they bet on a person’s ability to re-create and renew their identity after a moral failure that challenges their concept of identity.
No messiah is required for this activity. In fact, the quotation found at the very beginning of Cohen’s Religion of Reason is the following, bold and clear rejection of any Christ-like intermediary for repentance.
Rabbi Akiva said: Happy are you, Israel/God-wrestler. Before Whom do you purify/become clean of sin and Who purifies you? Your father who is in heaven, as it is stated [Ezekiel 36:28-29] “I will sprinkle pure water upon you, and you shall be purified: I will purify you from all your ethical defilement and from all your fetishes/images. And I will give you a new heart and put a new spirit into you: I will remove the heart of stone from your body and give you a heart of flesh”. And it says [Jeremiah 17:13] “A hope/ritual bath of Israel is the Unconditional”. Just as a mikveh purifies the ethically defiled, so does the Holy Blessed One purify Israel”. —Mishnah Yoma 8:9
The Divine knows our ambiguous nature. We fall again and again and are capable of rising up and walking erect again and again.
Thus, we chant in the Neilah service, the service of the closing of the temple gates:
אַתָּה נוֹתֵן יָד לַפּוֹשְׁעִים, וִימִינְךָ פְשׁוּטָה לְקַבֵּל שָׁבִים. וַתְּלַמְּדֵֽנוּ יְהֹוָה אֱלֹהֵֽינוּ לְהִתְוַדּוֹת לְפָנֶֽיךָ עַל כָּל עֲוֹנוֹתֵֽינוּ, לְמַֽעַן נֶחְדַּל מֵעֽשֶׁק יָדֵֽינוּ, וּתְקַבְּלֵֽנוּ בִּתְשׁוּבָה שְׁלֵמָה לְפָנֶֽיךָ
You extend a hand to the transgressors and Your right arm is extended to welcome returners/reptenants. And you teach us, our God, to confess before You all of our wrongdoing so that we may desist from the oppression of our hands/power, and You receive us in full repentance before You…
Despite our brokenness, despite our moral struggle, the Transcendent:
הִבְדַּֽלְתָּ אֱנוֹשׁ מֵרֹאשׁ, וַתַּכִּירֵֽהוּ לַעֲמוֹד לְפָנֶֽיךָ
Distinguished the human being from the outset and regarded the human being as worthy of standing before the Divine.
According to Cohen, when one feels remorse, they cease to be merely a member of the totality of human beings, but become for the first time an individual. The primordial human beings in Genesis only become the individuated and named beings Adam and Hava through erring. When God asks the question, “Ayeka”, “Where are you?”, they disassemble. We disassemble. However, when we perceive that our path, like the famous parable of Hayyim of Zans and the man wandering trying to find his way out of the forest, no longer works, is hurting us and those around us, we must recreate ourselves. It is not enough to search out our ways. Rather, we must, in the words of the prophet Ezekiel.
הַשְׁלִ֣יכוּ מֵעֲלֵיכֶ֗ם אֶת־כׇּל־פִּשְׁעֵיכֶם֙ אֲשֶׁ֣ר פְּשַׁעְתֶּ֣ם בָּ֔ם וַעֲשׂ֥וּ לָכֶ֛ם לֵ֥ב חָדָ֖שׁ וְר֣וּחַ חֲדָשָׁ֑ה
Cast off all your wrongdoing which you have done from yourselves and make yourself a new heart and a new spirit.
According to Cohen, our capacity to turn away from one’s old ways and create and embark upon a new path empowers the individual to become an I, an independent actor in the world. And this process is infinite, happening again and again.
Moreover, Cohen has a bold and incredibly compassionate view on human wrongdoing. Due to lack of knowledge, limitations of human awareness, and keen insight into human emotional development and frailty, he teaches that all sin and error is shegagah, unintentional. Maybe the wounding act seems intentional, but the human actor is flooded with emotion, unable in the moment to empathize, unaware of the potential suffering that they will cause, so many possibilities. According to Cohen:
“Any sin of man because it is not entirely derailed from human tracks may be understood as shegagah. The sin of man, that is to say, the sin in which man is and remains, man, is shegagah. This is the condition under which he is not considered an animal or a monster.”
Cohen relies not only on Ezekiel to build his case for such a compassionate view of human beings, but also the pastoral presence of Psalms. One need only look, for example to Psalm 51. The very ascription of it speaks of when leaders fail and fall, find meaning in their failure, and a way to move forward.
מְנַצֵּ֗חַ מִזְמ֥וֹר לְדָוִֽד׃
בְּֽבוֹא־אֵ֭לָיו נָתָ֣ן הַנָּבִ֑יא כַּאֲשֶׁר־בָּ֝֗א אֶל־בַּת־שָֽׁבַע׃
For the leader, a psalm for David When Natan the prophets came to him when he [David] had come into Bathsheba.
This Psalm chronicles David’s process of remorse, repentance, reconciliation, and recreation after his act of adultery with Bathsheba and his manipulative sending of her husband Uriah to the front lines.
כִּֽי־פְ֭שָׁעַי אֲנִ֣י אֵדָ֑ע וְחַטָּאתִ֖י נֶגְדִּ֣י תָמִֽיד׃
הֵן־אֱ֭מֶת חָפַ֣צְתָּ בַטֻּח֑וֹת וּ֝בְסָתֻ֗ם חׇכְמָ֥ה תוֹדִיעֵֽנִי׃
לֵ֣ב טָ֭הוֹר בְּרָא־לִ֣י אֱלֹהִ֑ים וְר֥וּחַ נָ֝כ֗וֹן חַדֵּ֥שׁ בְּקִרְבִּֽי׃
For I am conscious of my transgression and my error is ever-present before me. Indeed, You desire truth about that which is hidden, teach me wisdom about secret things. You have created a pure heart for me, Elohim; A resolute spirit you have renewed within me. —Psalm 51
We as a Jewish people do so well with the s’machot, joyous events, and even, generally with rites of mourning, but what would it mean for our holy communities to be there for a person in all the moments: when passing one’s driver’s test, an unexpected DUI, a planned pregnancy and an unplanned pregnancy, happy marriage and separation/divorce, a couple celebrating 50 years of happy marriage, and a wife mourning and struggling after her infidelity? Those inhabiting Fred Rogers’, Hermann Cohen’s, or Ezekiel’s neighborhood may build such societies of creativity and compassion!
