JewsByChoice.Org

Cross-posted on True Ancestor

More often than not, banning books only tends to bring them more readership and their authors more attention and acclaim. And you can only hope that’s the case with Making of a Godol, a book by the son of a world-renowned rabbi and Torah scholar — a rich and unusually historically faithful look at the vanished world of the Lithuanian yeshiva.

The book has been banned by certain influential ultra-Orthodox and haredi sects, and even burned. The reason, apparently, is that a less-than-idyllic and idealized view of the Torah world threatens the Orthodox view of “the Sage as Saint.” These were real people, living real lives and struggling with real issues — issues like the burgeoning Communist movement, the universal appeal of and truths to be found and pondered in Russian literature, and the need to go out and make a living.

The ultra-Orthodox have banned or brow-beaten books before, and not just in the distant past. In 2002, an Orthodox and a Reform rabbi wrote One People, Two Worlds: A Reform Rabbi and an Orthodox Rabbi Explore the Issues That Divide Them, a book exploring the divide between the Orthodox and Reform movements. The Orthodox rabbi, Yosef Reinman, was prohibited from accompanying his Reform co-author, Ammiel Hirsch, on a book tour.

More recently, Nosson Slifkin, also known as “the Zoo Rabbi” for his knowledge of and love for the natural world, had his books banned because his knowledge was at odds with ultra-Orthodox positions on the age of the planet and evolution.

Rabbi Akiva Tatz, my co-author on Letters to a Buddhist Jew, carefully vetted his idea with his ultra-Orthodox mentors before working with me to turn our correspondence into a book. The Orthodox community was eager to hear why Jews were drawn to Buddhism, but not always eager to hear from me personally. I was pointedly not invited to an Orthodox outreach conference shortly after the book was published.

More recently, though, I was invited to speak, with Rabbi Tatz, at the Jewish Learning Exchange in London, where, I’m told, I was the first non-Orthodox Jew ever invited to speak (and certainly the last). Some in attendance at JLE wanted to know why my exposure to Rabbi Tatz had not “converted” me to Orthodoxy. Perhaps if I had been younger when I had met Rabbi Tatz — whom I love as a human being and admire as a scholar and teacher — I might have been influenced in that direction. But I live in a Jewish community that lives in the larger world, and I am too old and, I suppose, too contrary to be converted, to anything, by anyone.

I also knew of the bans on Slifkin’s books and the denunciation of Reinman’s collaboration with Hirsch. I could never join or willingly remain within a denomination that censures and censors people in that way.

On the other hand, some wanted to know why I hadn’t stood up to Rabbi Tatz and told him what a lot of crap Orthodoxy is for insisting on the hegemony of its own worldview and excommunicating those who don’t strictly adhere to it. The main reason I didn’t was that our book wasn’t banned (it’s gone into its third hardback and second paperback printings. The hardback is sold exclusively through Jewish outlets). The Orthodox community understood that Jews are leaving in droves, and they knew that Judaism has its own meditative traditions and disciplines. Someone in attendance at our talk JLE asked Rabbi Tatz why Jewish meditation wasn’t widely taught, and why JLE didn’t teach it. Rabbi Tatz said he didn’t know why, and he didn’t see why JLE couldn’t teach it. It was important — quietly revolutionary — that Rabbi Tatz said this before his colleagues and several hundred other people. Orthodox teachers know that there are legitimate Jewish meditative practices that can be studied, and learned, and taught. And that night, they admitted as much.

Banning and burning books is too reminiscent of the worst oppressive traditions for any Jewish denomination to sanction or practice it. Obscuring our view of Torah sages as real human beings is a disservice to Jews everywhere. Of course, banning book-banning might be fighting fire with fire. But Jews everywhere should be gravely concerned for our future whenever a Jewish movement bans a book.

And we should express our concern by running out and buying that book.