Six Sigma: define, measure, analyze, improve, control

Six Sigma (6σ) is a continuous process improvement program for the workforce. It’s all about finding and eliminating waste within a business or organization. There is a lot of statistics and data-driven analysis in 6σ, but the mathematics really its secondary focus. The primary focus is finding the common practices and ensuring those practices are done the same way every time.

One of the very first concepts you learn in 6σ, is the phrase operational definition. Operational definitions are ipso facto fuzzy things. They are an understanding within an organization that everyone within that organization agrees to. If operational definitions were concrete, we wouldn’t need them. The primary importance of an operational definition is to demonstrate the myriad assumptions we make a priori as part of our routine decision making. When we find two or more employees with differing operational definitions, what we really mean is that we are exposing different underlying assumptions.

An example. I have been a member of many musical ensembles in my life. In one group, the director says the start time is 6:00 pm. That means we will begin rehearsing the first song at 6:00 pm. You are expected show up as early as you need to get yourself ready: put your instrument together, warm-up, tune. You are expected to have already practiced the music on your own time, and now you’re ready to put your part together with the rest of the ensemble.

Another group was far more casual. No one practiced outside of rehearsal. Start at 7:00 really meant that warm ups would start between 7:05 and 7:15, depending on how much chatting and lollygagging is also happening. As much as the group is musical, it is also very social. In fact, I would suggest that it is the social engagement of the group that binds the group far more than the group’s shared musical talents.

Neither of these are professional ensembles. None of the members are getting paid. They are both affiliated with religious organizations. Both are elective membership, although some proficiency is required. And, to the point, these two groups have varying operational definitions of start time.

We all have assumptions that go into our definitions. If we didn’t have these basic assumptions, we couldn’t function. This same phenomenon is happening in our time in a much larger social, political, and religious forum:. We are disagreeing on our operational definitions, which really means that we are disagreeing on our fundamental assumptions.

Within religion, this conflict is not new. It has existed for at least 2500 years. The ancient Greeks taught that something was divine because it represents the structure of nature of the cosmos. God is nature, and nature is God. They called this theos nomos — divine law. Divine law is permanent because the laws that govern nature are permanent. It is perfect; it is unified; it is impersonal; it is non-mythological. Anyone can look at it and come to the exact same conclusion. There is no need for divine to law to be written down.

On the other hand, the Jews defined human positive law. Human positive laws are the opposite of natural laws. These are the laws that tell us how to dress, what to eat, what rituals to perform and on what days to perform them. We do them because we are told to do them. We stop at a red light because we get a ticket if we don’t. There is no natural reason to do this. We do this because it is externally enforced.

We need human positive law. Being human, instead of divine, does not mean it is any less necessary. We need to teach it to our children, and we need to agree to it. If we don’t agree how traffic lights are supposed to work, the result is a chaotic commute, possible injury, and — in the greatest extreme — death.

Macedonian Empire

Between 400–300 B.C.E., Alexander the Great conquered the Persian Empire, creating a single territory that stretched from Greece and Turkey, south to Egypt, and east to India. This opened up trade and cultural communication between many types of people.

To the Greeks, the Jewish Biblical commandments were human positive law. There is no rational, logical, and universal reason to not eat shellfish, perform sacrifices in a temple, or circumcise infant boys on the eighth day. In fact, Torah itself tells us that it is not rational! “You [the Jewish people who follow these commandments] shall be holy to Me, for I the Lord am holy, and I have set you apart from other peoples to be Mine.” (Lev. 20:26) God is telling His people that they will be set apart — different. Different how? Without this Torah, rational, logical people would not come up with this set of laws, this halacha, on their own!

For the Talmudic rabbis, this was an unacceptable definition of divine law. The Talmudic authors were well versed in Hellenism. By the time of the Talmud, the Greeks and the Jews have been intermingled for 500 years. The rabbinic response: a rejection of the Greek definition of divine law. This rejection is really a rejection of the underlying assumption that divine law doesn’t have to be taught, that it would be obvious and rational.

Why are any of these 2500 year old definitions important today? They continue to shape our decision making processes. Western thought is still wrestling with these competing definitions, this cognitive dissonance. Furthermore, the extremes are growing. In the United States, we have seen both a rise both in the number of people who recognize themselves as atheist, agnostic, or secular humanist (irreligious) and the number of people who believe in a Biblical, six days of creation that took place in the last 10,000 years (creationist).

The Jewish law is flexible, insofar that it is open to interpretation, and it is irrational, as a rational person would not come up with these laws on his or her own. For example, Numbers 30:3 states: “If a man makes a vow to the Lord or takes an oath imposing an obligation on himself, he shall not break his pledge; he must carry out all that has crossed his lips.” This is obvious: a man cannot break his own pledge. However, the rabbis still found a way around this. In the Talmudic tractate Nedarim the rabbis state that a person may have a sage may revoke for him.

And this is where things begin to get complicated? Does a reinterpretation of Torah change Torah? To dive into this question, let’s look at present-day, 21st century case law.

Presently in the United States, the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC) is taking the view that the United States civil rights law already covers sexual orientation and gender identity. You wouldn’t fire a woman for having sex with a man, so you cannot fire a man for having sex with a man. You wouldn’t fire a man for looking like a man and using the mens room, so you cannot fire a woman for looking like a man and using the mens room. The EEOC is circumventing the lack of a civil protections for LGBT by reinterpreting existing law.

Does this reinterpretation of law change the civil rights law? Does it add something that was never there? Does reinterpretation make a law more or less broad? The answer: it depends entirely on the law and interpretation.

What makes a law divine? Should an irrational law be followed? Can laws be both irrational and obvious? Or maybe we can more closely inspect our assumptions, and try to find interpretations that allow halacha to fit the Greek definition of divine law.

Woman at mikveh

When the Reform Judaism movement was founded, they published their Pittsburg Platform. They recognized that Judaism makes a legitimate attempt to be both historically bound and progressive. All religions are a way to grasp the infinite, and all religious text is an attempt to understand the “indwelling of God in man.” The authors simultaneously rejected the mitzvot related to food, ritual purity, and dress while stating that the highest ideal of God is very real and very present.

Can we, as Reform Jews, outright and wholesale reject kashrut and still claim to be religiously Jewish? If progressive Jews say “yes” to this question, it is no wonder why progressive and conservative Jews are in conflict. But, can we come together and discuss operational definitions? What does it mean to talk about pure and impure food?

Sure, we can have some fascinating scientific discussions. Are shellfish fish? Biologically, no. They aren’t even vertebrates! Scientifically, there is no discussion. But that still leaves such delicious marine life as catfish and eel. So shrimp is in, but eel is out. Is that it? No, of course not! In this case, science doesn’t really get us into the conversation of pure and impure food within a larger ethical and religious context.

More personally, what does it mean for a convert like me? These past few months have left me searching for an answer to the question, “What am I converting to?” Am I converting to a religion or a cultural legacy? But what do you do with a religion that leaves so much to the individual? And if it is so personal and so much is left to conscience, then why do I need a beit din to tell me what I believe or if what I believe is, in their collective opinion, Jewish enough?

I think — for me and for now anyway — this means developing a personal understanding of the yoke of the mitzvot. That means to learn what the mitzvot are, and then to establish a personal relationship with them. Be certain, I do not expect this to be an easy task.

Perhaps some commandments are relatively straightforward. Leviticus 23:22 tells us that when we harvest our fields, we should not reap the edges, leaving them for the poor and for travelers. With modern and compassionate eyes, we read this commandment and resolve that a certain amount of the food we purchase should be given to the hungry. I expect other commandments to be far more personally challenging.

I am not saying that all the wounds between the religiously liberal and conservative can be healed, but we can try. Instead of trying to find loopholes in halacha that allow some behaviors and forbid others, we should be focusing on different conversations. We should be focusing on the conversations that dig into our assumptions. What is the nature of God? What purpose does religion and spirituality hold for humankind? What makes something eternal? What makes something Biblical? What is the meaning of gender? What is the role for justice? What makes something an ethic? And, most importantly, how do we learn to recognize our own biases?

There are going to be those who firmly hold that written Torah is absolute, and that fact is indisputable. For the rest of us, on the left and the right of the conversation, there is so much ground to work with. If we want to begin to heal old wounds, we need to recognize the root cause of the instruments that hurt us. Our operational definitions expose our assumptions. These conversations will be quiet and slow, but they are the conversations that we need to have with each other and with ourselves.