Adam Schiff

Adam Schiff, the new senator from California, always has my attention. Enormously well spoken, with simpatico politics, he’s the kind of person who rings many of my bells.

But it was a recent decision that really sealed the deal. As many of you have read, he took his senatorial oath of office on a twelfth-century edition of the Mishneh Torah. That would be the Mishneh Torah of Moses Maimonides, one of the first post-Biblical codes of law in Jewish history.

I’d love to know more about the promptngs for this decision, but the episode has been flatly reported. There have been a couple of comments from Schiff-office spokespeople, but I haven’t discovered an extended explanation from the senator. If you happen to know Adam Schiff, yourself, I’d appreciate your asking on my behalf.

In the meantime, this all feels powerfully right to me. The Mishneh Torah is most certainly not the Torah, but rather a distillation of the entire literature of the Talmud. It’s all the laws and none of the storytelling, everything boiled down to the practicalities of behavior. Maimonides was criticized in his time for his hubris. He didn’t include any of the original sources. You couldn’t tell how he derived his conclusions. Many people thought it would mean the end of Talmud study.

The title itself was a bold intellectual move. How could he call his own work a Torah, even if the title actually means a “recapitulation” of the Torah, implying that the original Torah required a “re-freshment,” that the process of writing it was never really done. It’s a useful reminder by Schiff himself that an originalist approach to any legal document is no way to honor its living essence. That includes the American Constitution. This may be farfetched, but it sounds to me like a shot over the bow. Schiff is a serious student of the Constitution, and he seems to be speaking to the faction on our own Supreme Court which argues that its decisions must mirror the legal thinking of the Founders. Anything else is after the fact. For me, that’s the path to irrelevance and fossilization.

The other thing I like is Schiff’s assertive particularism. The Jewish world is more complicated than before. Rising displays of overt anti-Semitism have left many of us feeling shaken and unsure. How much self-display can we tolerate? Is it safe to advertise our quirky identity and commitments?

To this, Adam Schiff offers a plainspoken yes, affirming his Jewish knowledgeability and his heritage. His decision to swear in on a stack of Mishneh Torahs is a vote for the particular historical circumstances of the Jews. Clearly he has decided not to blend in, but to say that he values what is different about his identity. I think that’s the right and healthy thing for all of us.