A Scholar for Our Time

By LEONID FELDMAN

There are three major kinds of Jewish books today. First, there is the "internal" Jewish book, which explains Judaism to the already engaged. There are also books that reach out and try to make Judaism more attractive to the seeker, be she New Age, Buddhist, or more traditional. And then, of course, there is academic scholarship, which is generally far removed from the concerns and passions of the rest of the community.

There is a desperate need for a new kind of book. We are in search of new voices and new hearts, new thinkers who confront the very real angst of our generation.  This must be done through the prism of deep reading and wrestling with our sacred sources. Neither pop Judaism tracts nor obscure academic scholarship can quench our hunger. While both are important,  neither speak to the deeply yearning souls of this generation. We need the likes of an Abraham Joshua Heschel who gifted us with the very rare combination of daring activism, searing poetry for the soul, and deep scholarship.  We want someone who is deeply at home in the primary sources of the Zohar, Luria, Talmud, and Bible and at the same time understands the nuances of literature, psychology and physics of the postmodern soul.  It is such a voice that we begin to discern emerging from Mordechai (Marc) Gafni.

Rabbi Mordechai Gafni is an Oxford-trained scholar who heads the Bayit Chadash Jewish Renewal movement in Israel. A post denominational Orthodox-ordained rabbi, he is what is termed in the yeshiva world a serious talmid chachom (a gifted scholar) in both the hidden and revealed aspects of Torah. Unlike most of his peers, he is also an activist with an uncommon love and connection to what Hassidism used to call the pashute yid, the simple Jew. A scholar and wise man for the people, Gafni introduces himself at lectures as a "flawed by every striving" teacher. Gafni's voice is beginning to share with us the kind of music—like that produced by Martin Buber, Heschel, and Rav Kuk—for which our ears strain and our hearts long.

Rabbi Gafni is now engaged in writing a Jewish library in both English and Hebrew on three primary tracks. First, he writes formal scholarship. He is now completing a major academic work on Modechai Lainer of Izbica as the basis of new Jewish theology. At the same time, he is writing both more accessible books and more scholarly versions of those same books with extensive primary source footnoting and explanations. Gafni's first English book, Soul Prints, is a profound, beautifully written and penetrating series of meditations on the nature of biblical spiritual journey. This same work is now being released in Hebrew with a full set of scholarly footnotes.

His second English work, The Mystery of Love, is a truly wondrous volume and has received outstanding reviews from scholars and lay people alike. Don't let the title fool you; this is neither a fluffy exploration of romance, nor is it a detective novel. This a serious work of theological philosophy. It will be re-released as a two volume heavily-footnoted work, coauthored with Avraham Leader, entitled, On the Erotic and the Holy. Though Gafni's philosophizing is difficult to summarize, the book deals with the concepts of Eros and the nature of the divine. It uses traditional Jewish texts and Kabbalah to elucidate a theory in which Platonic Eros is equated to the traditional Jewish concept of Shechinah, the presence of God.  

As Gafni is writing a new kind of book, it is not quite possible to capture the full experience of reading The Mystery of Love—which is nonetheless an experience wondrous, intellectual, moral, and sacred in its nature. In Professor Peter Pitzele's words, "Gafni comes among us, a dancing ecstatic sage, gifting us with his exhilarated scholarship."