{"id":42327,"date":"2018-10-18T16:16:51","date_gmt":"2018-10-18T13:16:51","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/wp.929.org.il\/?p=42327"},"modified":"2022-05-15T09:03:34","modified_gmt":"2022-05-15T06:03:34","slug":"when-the-rabbi-got-it-wrong","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/wp.929.org.il\/en\/when-the-rabbi-got-it-wrong\/","title":{"rendered":"When The Rabbi Got It Wrong"},"content":{"rendered":"
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Some Biblical rules like slavery don\u2019t stand the test of time, thus it is no surprise that many rabbinic sermons also fail.<\/span><\/p>\n

On Friday January 4th 1861, Rabbi Morris Raphall ascended his pulpit in the second oldest synagogue in New York, B\u2019nai Jeshurun. Just days earlier President James Buchanan had proclaimed the day as one of \u201chumiliation, fasting, and prayer,\u201d because the country was \u201cthreatened with alarming and immediate danger,\u201d due to slavery. Buchanan implored Americans \u201cwith deep contrition and penitent sorrow, [to] unite in humbling ourselves before the Most High, in confessing our individual and national sins,\u201d Raphall disagreed.<\/span><\/p>\n

In a lengthy sermon, later published in a forty plus page pamphlet, Raphall argued that slavery has existed since earliest times, and is \u201can integral part of the social structure.\u201d Not only is it not a sin, but \u201cslave property is expressly placed under the protection of the Ten Commandments.\u201d He called Noah\u2019s cursing of his grandson Ham a bitter curse that \u201cto this day remains a fact\u2026 the unfortunate negro is indeed the meanest of slaves.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

Raphall\u2019s views were met with \u201cfiery attacks and declamations,\u201d but he insisted that facts are facts, and wrote in the preface to the publication that his \u201cdiscourse will not fall, for it embodies the word of our God, which standeth good forever.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

Of course, there were other voices. David Einhorn, a German born Rabbi and the leader of Reform Judaism in America, disputed Raphall\u2019s arguments. He reasoned that our history as slaves in Egypt should make us more sensitive to the predicament of slaves. He dismissed the assertion that the ten commandments defined slaves as property, and argued that biblical precedent could not justify slavery, just as it couldn\u2019t defend bigamy, even though Abraham had two wives.<\/span><\/p>\n

Sometimes the rabbis are spot on, but the congregants fail miserably.<\/span><\/p>\n

Einhorn delivered his response when he was the rabbi of the oldest continual Reform congregation in America, Har Sinai Congregation in Baltimore, Maryland. Lying south of the Mason-Dixon line, Maryland was a slave state. On April 19<\/span>th<\/span>, 1861, just a week after the Civil War officially began, a riot broke out and Einhorn was forced to flee his home. Nearly two decades later, a New York Times obituary described how \u201cthe night before he left Baltimore a number of his friends had to surround his house to prevent his enemies from mobbing him.\u201d He relocated to Philadelphia, a city that lacked both slaves and mob “justice.”<\/span><\/p>\n

image: ‘Am I not a man and a brother’? Society for the Abolition of Slavery in England in the 1780s. This woodcut accompanied John Greenleaf Whittier’s anti slavery poem, ‘Our Countrymen in Chains’ of 1837. 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