Meeting of Minds: Study with Rabbi Yitz Greenberg
February 8, 2005

Judaism starts with the fundamental affirmation that life is precious and history is meaningful. Christianity, which grew out of Judaism's biblical phase, is also built on this core value . . . God's intended outcome of Creation is a world filled with life, life with conditions that completely sustain the fullest dignities of all life . . . The Bible calls this Redemption.
      -- Irving Greenberg, For the Sake of Heaven and Earth

I've been carrying these beautiful words in my heart since first reading them a few weeks ago in preparation for the ICJS clergy study day with Rabbi Greenberg, a day that left me with a deep sense of gratitude and spiritual joy, the graced experi-ence of learning with a teacher and scholar with a very large soul.

What is it about Rabbi Greenberg's presence and teaching that leaves such an impression? I find myself still musing over the dialectical opposites the rabbi holds together in his teaching and life. For example, Greenberg's compelling narrative about his immersion in Holocaust study, which left him at various points "drowning religiously" (p. 6), is only equaled by his insistence on a hopeful and meaningful covenant between God and human beings, in which God has self-limited in history in order to include human beings as more active collaborators in their own liberation and redemption. This same dialectic has been a motivating factor for him to investigate and criticize Christian history, theology, and practice insofar as it has contributed to or been complicit in violence toward the Jew-ish tradition and people. At the same time, along the way, he became a champion of honest, far-reaching and at times, painful Jewish/Christian dialogue. Unapologetically calling Chris-tians to task, he also cites certain Christians as spiritual resources for his own Jewish faith; utterly committed to his own Orthodox Jewish tradition, he has also endured wrenching battles within his own community as a result of his teaching and scholarship.

At one point during our study day, Rabbi Greenberg described Orthodoxy as "taking the entire tradition with you." At the same time, he emphasizes that perhaps the most elevated ethical capacity of a religious tradition is its ability to be self-critical, to grow, and to mature. At the conclusion of his public lecture at Chizuk Amuno, when I asked him to reflect on the impact of this dialectic with regard to the full dignity, flourish-ing, and authority of women within Judaism, his honest and open response -- saying that it was much easier for him, as a man and a rabbi, to remain within Orthodox Judaism than it has been for his spouse, Blu Greenberg (a scholar and feminist in her own right) -- again reflected what I interpret as an aston-ishing capacity to dialectically hold together convictions and commitments that have the potential to create tension and conflict, even as they also may yield immesurable creativity and insight.

Greenberg writes, "The deeper lesson is that every act of living can advance or set back the movement toward re-demption. A neutral or wasted life is one that does nothing to advance the cause of Creation" (pp. 56, 53). It is because we believe this that we protest against our own suffering and feel the pain of those around us who suffer. Jews and Christians alike know that God's intention is for our flourishing, and all people's, and the world's. This means rolling up our sleeves and getting involved in the muck of life, and doing whatever we can, whenever we can, to participate in the movement toward redemption. At the end of a day of learning with Rabbi Greenberg, one cannot come away without the distinct im-pression that this precisely is the meat and meaning of his own life; and having experienced such a witness, one comes away blessed and encouraged to do likewise.

Dr. Kelly Denton-Borhaug received her Masters of Divinity from Lutheran Theological Seminary and her Ph.D. from Graduate Theological Union. Next fall she will teach full-time in the Religion Department of Moravian College in Bethlehem, Pennsylvania.