Rabbi Brooks Susman was ordained at the Hebrew Union College, Jewish Institute of Religion in 1974 after receiving his bachelor’s degree at Ohio University in Philosophy and Political Science. In 1999, he received a Doctor of Divinity degree from his alma mater. During his years in seminary, he opened the draft counseling service. He worked as a counselor, especially focusing on family and marriage, problem pregnancies, homosexuality, and drugs.
Rabbi Susman has served congregations in New York, Pennsylvania, and Missouri. He is the founding rabbi of Congregation Kol Am, serving the Jewish community of Western Monmouth County, New York. He is on the Board of Directors of the New York Board of Rabbis, as well as the International Synagogue at Kennedy Airport. He is also on the Board of Directors of ARZA, the Association of Reform Zionists of America. He has served on the editorial board for the authoring of the books Gates of Mitzvah and Gates of the Festivals, two "how-to" books that show how one can follow the Jewish holidays and lifecycle events.
Rabbi Susman is the husband of Andrea. Together, they are the parents of four children and the grandparents of Carli and Andrew. An avid runner, Rabbi Susman’s interests include film, the Civil War, and the literature and history of the Beat Generation.
Shabbat Shalom*: Rabbi Susman, what does Abraham represent for you?
Susman: Abraham is the first individual who chose the religion of Israel, who chose a monotheistic God over the polytheism of the surrounding community, who chose a covenantal relationship, and in my understanding, a covenantal relationship is more than a master-slave relationship. A covenantal relationship means that both parties receive something in the bargain. God pledges to Abraham that He, or the Godhead, will protect Abraham and the children of Israel, which come from his seed. And Abraham also promises—because he is not a dummy—and says, “So I am giving you everything, Rabona Shalova, Master of the Universe; what will You give me?” And God says, “Not only will I give you the Torah, but I will bind Myself by that Torah.” God binds Himself to those laws. He will not arrogate to Himself extraordinary laws. The law becomes a natural concept where we become co-creators with God in the fulfillment of God’s creation, which in Hebrew we call tikkun olam, the repair of the world. There is a wonderful Midrashic extrapolation in which God, pointing to a tree, says to the angels, “What’s that?” And the angels say, “Master of the Universe, You who created all, who are we to tell You?” And He points to a cow and asks, “What is this?” Same answer. He goes to Adam, and He says, "Adam, what is that?” and Adam says, “That is a tree.” And He goes to Eve, Hava, and says, “What is that?” She says, “That’s a cow.” By naming the animals, God cannot become miraculous in turn, because if God doesn't have a covenantal relationship, those 613 commandments don’t tell us to be on our knees. I recommend it highly; it deals with the social order and with what I do in my fields for the poor, widows, and orphans. I can’t put a stumbling block before the blind. I can’t take a widow’s cloak; we complete creation. Abraham fulfilled that. Abraham helped to complete the creation and showed that the monotheistic God becomes, by that definition, nonsupernatural, because the supernatural, or a miracle, is nothing more than a suspension of nature. The covenant means forms that type of miracle than I If you look at Leviticus 19, which can do. I have to leave the corners as pawns. I can’t treat my neighbor in an unhonorable way. These commandments are anything but supernatural. When God says, “I will secure your borders,” God isn’t saying it in some supernatural way; God is saying, “You’ll follow My laws, which means you will watch out against the Visigoths, because if you become slothful, if you become lazy, if you become fat, they are going to overrun you. And you are going to be felled by wild beasts, disease, and outside forces.” This isn’t supernatural. This is absolutely a natural instinct.
Shabbat Shalom: So, would you say that Abraham was the first Jew?
Susman: Yes. Because of that monotheistic covenant. And this covenant has to do with circumcision, which is the sign of peoplehood. There was a quid pro quo. Abraham promises, but he also says, “So what will You give me? What will You, God, pledge in return?” And God pledges safety and security, not going beyond His covenant. It is a true contract.
Shabbat Shalom: Abraham is called the Father of the Believers. In what way is he the Father of the believers?
Susman: He was the first to accept the covenant, receive the covenant, and pass it on to all of his offspring, and I am one of his offspring.
Shabbat Shalom: Does that mean that outside the spiritual realm there are no believers?
Susman: There are believers. Absolutely. The Torah and the other writings form the basis of all Western religion. I can’t speak of the Taoists and the Buddhists and the Shintoists and the Muslims, although Muslim thought was based on Judaism and, by extension, Christianity. So the Torah is the basis of all thought. If you ask any believer or even nonbeliever what the basis of the moralistic structure of our society is, more often than not, whether they call it by its name or not, they will refer to the Ten Commandments. As for me, I extend that not only to the other ethical commandments, not the specific commandments concerning what one may eat or what one may not eat, but the ethical commandments, the commandments of how an individual feels vis-à-vis society, husband, wife. Leviticus 19 is the Holiness Code. If you think of holiness today, it means how we pray and how spiritual we are. However, the Holiness Code concerns very specific things. This has nothing to do with religious spirituality; it has to do with specificity as to how you deal with this world.
Shabbat Shalom: Would you say that to be a believer is more connected with the Torah than an actual line with Abraham?
Susman: It is one and the same.
Shabbat Shalom: In what way is Abraham your father?
Susman: Because I have chosen. It’s not genetic. I do not believe that religion is an accident of birth. Religion is a conscious choice.
Shabbat Shalom: How do you explain the conflict between the sons of Abraham? How could we explain that hatred disputes exist among the three Abrahamic faiths?
Susman: It was jealousy on the part of Sarah. It was a weakness on the part of Abraham. It was a pledge on the part of God that when Sarah said, “Throw this guy and his mother out,” and Abraham was willing to accede to his wife’s wish, God said, “Don’t worry, I will protect him. I will make of Israel a great nation.” Which leads me to what is going on in the Middle East. If we believe that the story of Abraham is basically true, or if we believe that the story of Adam and Eve is symbolically, allegorically, true—as Moses Maimonides recommended in the thirteenth century—than I believe is it true that on the allegorical level we are all brothers and sisters, and I can understand how brothers and sisters can have their own battles, though they still protect each other as siblings. So I believe the situation in the Middle East is the result of much politics and posturing.
Shabbat Shalom: Does this reference to Abraham affect your relationship with Christians?
Susman: I don’t see why Abraham would have any affect on my life vis-à-vis Christianity. If I were dealing with Ishmael, I’d be dealing with Muslims. The Ishmaelites and the Edomites are those who do not believe in the Torah as such. My relationship with Christianity has absolutely nothing to do with Abraham. It has to do with the Christian view of what they refer to as the Old Testament, which we refer to as the Hebrew Scriptures, and the way they view the covenant at Sinai and the commandments. With the advent of Jesus, some Christians believe that there is no such thing as the necessity to fulfill the commandments any more. They generally believe that Jesus, through His death, fulfilled them for us. I cannot accept that. It has absolutely nothing to do with Abraham. It has to do with a Christian’s view of the prophetic writings, which I obviously find problematic.
Shabbat Shalom: Which event in Abraham’s life touches you most? Why?
Susman: What is referred to as the Akedah, the binding of the son... In the book Fear of Trembling, it is noted that Abraham was a Knight of Faith, a knight-errant following the dutiful son of the dutiful master and demanding of his son Isaac to be the dutiful son of the dutiful master. There is a Midrash that says Abraham just didn’t listen. Abraham listened wrong. The term alah, to bring him up, also means olah, a fire or burned offering. Abraham didn’t hear correctly. And the reason we recognize this is that the most disturbing thing of all happens when Abraham comes back to Beersheva: Sarah dies. She dies of a broken heart. From the moment Abraham leaves Moriah, he leaves his son. He returns alone to the two servants. He and Isaac never speak and never see each other again as long as Abraham lives. This is the saddest story I can think of.
Shabbat Shalom: So it was more confusion than an actual act of faith?
Susman: That is the way I would see it. There is a wonderful book by Sholem Spiegel. It is called The Last Trial. It goes through all the Midrashic interpretations according to which Isaac truly was killed, went up to heaven, and God cured him and taught him Torah. Isaac indeed becomes a coconspirator in these explanations when he says, “Father, make it a clean cut; make it a kosher cut.” Because the slaughter, according to the kashrut, has to be a pure slice, it has to be a humane kill. The blade can’t have a notch on it, which might injure or cause pain. Isaac was a part of that relationship. However, I believe that we have to see the Akedah as a human document dealing with human beings. The beauty of our Torah is that it doesn’t deal with perfect people, because I am not a perfect person. It deals with human beings with the same faults that I have and the same right to touch perfection for a moment. Then I fall back into the muck and the mire with everyone else. I cannot follow a perfect individual because I am not perfect. The symbol of perfection for me is very difficult because I will never be perfect. But I can follow human beings who strive for that moment of perfection. Yes, Abraham tried. That’s all we can ask. He might have been misguided. He might have been right. It was a total and honorable commitment to his God. So also on the part of Isaac, who carries the means of his own sacrifice on his back. Now the political statement, which I think is beautiful in the Torah, and the reason that it so resonates, is that in a world where firstborn sons naturally and normally were being sacrificed to the gods, Judaism, as the first religion, said, “God says He doesn’t want human sacrifice of the firstborn." So on a political level, it’s a wonderful and revolutionary act that happens here. Abraham may have thought, “Oh, of course, I’m taking my firstborn son, the firstborn of this wife. Of course. That happens all the time.” Which is precisely why Ishmael could be cast out. He was being sacrificed to the gods, too.
Abraham fully expected him to die. Firstborn sons are given to the gods so that the gods will give you more sons. Judaism was saying, “We don’t do it.” It’s a brilliant statement; it’s a revolution. Judaism is a revolutionary religion because it broke all the bounds. It also said, on a revolutionary level, that the individual is responsible for himself or herself, not requiring the overlord, the master, to say, “You do this, you do that.” That’s the covenantal relationship. I make the covenant with God myself, not as a part of a corporate structure of Jews or Hebrews. Rather, this is my covenant—my individual covenant with God.
Shabbat Shalom: In conclusion, could you give us a last thought about Abraham?
Susman: The perfect story comes from the Midrash, where Abraham’s father, Terakh, is an idol-maker and wants to go to lunch. He says to Abraham, “Take care of the store.” A woman comes in and says she wants to buy an idol, and Abraham berates her. “How could you do this? This was just made. My father made it. I watched him make it. You’re buying this? Are you out of your mind?” And he all of a sudden realized this was reality, so he broke all the idols in the store except for one. He put a stick in that idol’s hands. Terakh comes back, and he says, “What did you do? You destroyed all the inventory. You destroyed all these gods.” Abraham said, “I didn’t do it. I walked out, and I came back in, and this one idol had destroyed all the others.” And Terakh said, “What do you mean? I made these. These are stones. They are no gods.” And Abraham said, “You see.” We don’t make God. God creates us. We then have the ability, through that covenantal relationship, to create our own lives within that covenantal structure. We are responsible for our lives. There is absolutely no predestination. None whatsoever. God knows all the possible paths that are the outcomes of our choices. God does not know what choice we are going to make. That becomes the essence of my life, and how much more does it resonate through the Holocaust? It was not God’s will that six million of my people died. It was the cruelty and insensitivity of human beings, and on the other hand, the absolute apathy of others. God did not permit these six million to die; we did. That, again, is the covenant. That is where Abraham resonates. Abraham chose to be self-fulfilled and self-fulfilling within the parameters of a relationship. For the laws of the Torah are nothing more—and I don’t mean that in any kind of even light way—than the maintenance of an ordered and orderly society that permits human beings to survive together.
Shabbat Shalom: Thank you very much for this interview, Rabbi Susman.
Susman: It is my pleasure. I am glad to have the opportunity to express to you my feelings about what I see as my tradition and my religion.
* This interview was conducted by Milton Marquez.
Image: Rabbi Brooks Susman. Pablic Domain.
