Thursday

Ask the Rabbis: Opinion time

Were humans created to "rule over living things," per Genesis? How to read the "conquer the Holy Land" stuff in the Bible? Schrödinger's "Who is a Jew"! The gap between Jewish leaders and lay Jews: What gives??

Rabbi Danya Ruttenberg

May 22, 2025 • 9 min read

In Moritz von Schwind’s Katzensymphonie (1868), ink drawings of cats of all sizes climb, tumble, and nap across the lines of traditional music scoring paper, producing a sonata. Katzenmusik is a German term for unpleasant noise, and Richard Wagner’s Kunstwerk der Zukunft (“Artwork of the Future”) might have been-- subtweeted, as the kids used to say more recently. More to the point, it was a gift to violinist Joseph Joachim honor of his appointment as director of Berlin’s music school. Both violinist and composer were part of Die Schwarzen Katzen, the Black Cats — a wine-centric group of musician friends who derived their name from a story about black cats sleeping on expensive wine barrels. Evidently this is what the score sounds like. Tracks, no?

A couple of weeks ago you Asked The Rabbi(s) and now it's time for the mailbag!

I asked a few friends for help; the wonderful Rabbi Megan Doherty, incoming CEO of the The Reconstructionist Rabbinical Association, (previously on campus, at HIAS, and elsewhere), and Rabbi Becky Silverstein, co-founder of the Trans Halakha Project and faculty at the queer yeshiva Svara, answered the call. (A number of other folks said they'd weigh in but then didn't, because your questions are good stump-y ones! But technically it's a Beit Din (rabbinic court) of 3, so.Our collective responses are below.

But first, it's time to...