39/652 September 2008/ Tishrei 5769 shma.com

Inside Sin and
Sacrifice

Eliezer Shore

Sin and New Beginnings....1

Shaul Magid

Sin as Corrective................. 2

Jane Kanarek

Delimiting Boundaries ...... 4

Julian Levinson

An Inscrutable God ............ 5

Richard Hirsh, Ruth Langer,
Marc Margolius, Nehemia Polen,
Jan R. Uhrbach
Roundtable:
Thinking about Sin............ 6

NiSh’ma
Reflections on Sacrifice
in Art and Poetry.............. 10

What does it mean when we talk about sin? While “for the sins we have sinned before You” is, perhaps, one of the most resonant, haunting of prayers, the term “sin” feels so archaic, so static. And behavior once considered to be fundamentally sinful is now part of the daily life of many Jews who recite those words during the High Holidays. We begin this issue with explorations of the meaning of sin in the writings of four, vastly different modern thinkers (Nachman of Breslov, Rav Kook, Franz Kafka, and Judith Plaskow). We've also asked a number of rabbis and teachers to muse about the role sin plays in their thinking and teaching about guilt and repentance. Elsewhere in the issue, Steve Greenberg explores the changing meaning of sin and what occurs when behavior once deemed an abomination moves outside the realm of moral sin.

In his essay, Leon Morris suggests that we rehabilitate the essence of sacrifice (now understood as prayer and study). Drawing on a verse from the prophet Hosea, we observe — both in collaborative drawing and poetry — the language and rites of the Temple transformed, the essence of the sacrificial system reclaimed.

Shana tova—may it be a transformative year, Susan Berrin

Leon A. Morris
The Imaginative Power
of Sacrifice ........................ 13

Steven Greenberg

Sorting Sins....................... 14

Sin and New Beginnings:
R. Nachman of Breslov
Eliezer Shore
Edward Feld
A Prayer Book For
Our Time........................... 16

Aryeh Cohen

Sh’ma Ethics ..................... 20

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The weight of sin has shifted over the last few centuries. There was a time when sin was directed primarily against God, when it meant the throwing off of His yoke, or the betrayal of one’s nation or community. For the mystic, it was the cause of vast, often irreparable, cosmic damage. Sins weighed heavily upon people’s shoulders back then — like the burden of the tradition they had carried for 3,000 years, like the myriad spiritual worlds that rested upon each human deed.

Today, we look at sin somewhat differently, feeling the desecration of our lives more than that of the tradition, the debasement of our homes and families more than that of our nation. And, of course, we have sinned against the earth, the consequence of which now bears down upon us no less ominously than the supernal worlds once did.

Of all the great Hasidic masters, none felt the burden of sin more acutely than Rabbi Nachman of Breslov. Though raised in the traditional, Eastern-European world, he foresaw the rise of the modern era and its problems. His approach to sin is unique and original.

Whereas the entire kabbalistic-Hasidic tradition that preceded him saw sin as a concealment of God’s face, R. Nachman saw it as a moment of revelation — an encounter with the Divine that tells us as much about ourselves and our task in this world as any direct communication. For R. Nachman, the problem of sin is never in the act itself, nor even in the damage it causes, which is always repairable. Rather, it