One of my favorite things about publishing the New Vilna Review is that it gives me the opportunity to explore similarities and difference between the ideas that formed the structure of Jewish life in the ancient world, and those which inform our lives as Jews today. In some cases there are stark differences (often occasioned by major events, such as the violent destruction of the Temple in 70 CE or Judaism’s encounter with the Enlightenment in Europe centuries later) while in other instances we can see how a particular idea or concept has held steady throughout the ages, helping to maintain a continuous connection across time and space between Jewish communities.

I thought of this again today as I was reading something that Professor Jonathan Klawans wrote in his book “Purity, Sacrifice and the Temple.”  At one point, in a section in which Professor Klawans is considering the different ways that the ancient Jewish sectarian community at Qmran may have conceived of notions of ritual and moral purity, he notes that “… we know from the archaeological record that the concern with ritual purity was felt well beyond the bounds of the Temple.”  This is a fascinating suggestion, because it implies that concepts of ritual purity were not only the minds of those who comprised the Temple Cult, but of concern to laymen as well. To me, this says that there was a sense among the people that they too shared in some responsibility for maintaining the purity of the community.

As usual, when I read this, I began to think about how such an idea might apply to us today as modern Jews. We no longer have the Temple in Jerusalem, we no longer have priests who are responsible for insuring the maintenance of a direct connection between Israel and the divine, but we do still have, I would argue, a sense that we should not limit acts of holy conduct to the times when we are firmly ensconced within the literal walls of a synagogue or the metaphorical walls of the Jewish community.

 I would even take this one step further, and suggest that what we can glean from this is that not only does the responsibility rest on Rabbis and leaders of the Jewish community to help maintain a sense of Jewish values and ideas in the world, but that it is actually incumbent upon every Jew to do so.  I realize that ritual impurity is not the same thing as moral impurity, and I am fully aware that we cannot say, unequivocally, that prayer or acts of chessed or tzedakha have somehow replaced the rituals of the Temple. That is not what I am saying – rather, what I am suggesting is that just as the Jewish communities in the ancient Near Easr felt a need to help maintain a sense of holiness and ritual impurity when the Temple was the main conduit for connection to the divine, now that we have placed at the center of our Jewish communities fixed prayer and the doing of mitzvoth and tzedakha, so too must we find ways to extend the principles that underlie these actions and ideas in our daily lives. In my mind, doing so not only helps to maintain our connections to the divine, but will ultimately serve, I hope, to make our communities and the world around us a better place.

-Daniel E. Levenson

Publisher and Editor -in-Chief

The New Vilna Review