Before Shabbat

I’ve lost count of the number of times I’ve been in Israel. I know my first time was in 1972 when, after high school, I went on Young Judaea Year Course. To say it was a wild and crazy experience is the height of understatement [can an understatement have height?] My most recent time in Israel was last February with our 10^th graders on the TBA annual Boston-Haifa excursion. Francie Weinberg (our fabulous youth educator) and I, along with our wrecking crew, bounced all over Israel and had a ball.

As for the intervening 44 years, I just don’t remember. That truth is not meant to be braggadocio. If anything, it is a sign of my increasingly unreliable memory… But I can say with authority that I was excited and very enthusiastic about every trip, whether with a large temple group, a gaggle of 10^th graders, a sabbatical trip with my wife and a few kids in tow, CCAR conventions, and so forth.

The promise of the state of Israel resides deep in my heart. From my first nickel in the pushke (the blue and white tin for donations to the JNF) at my Uncle Izzy’s sandwich shop in East Pittsburgh, to Sunday School classes looking at pictures of kibbutzniks with rifles in one hand and shovels in the other, to the Six Day War, I was all in. My Jewish identity was, and is still, inextricably tied to a beautifully naïve, sincere Zionism. Like many baby boomers and older folks, the roots of my Zionism were unsullied by Israeli intransigence, triumphalism, and profoundly dysfunctional governance at every level.

But that was then, and this is now. It is this terrible yin/yang effect that so hurts my soul. All of those dreams of the mythic Israel are shattered. Read Shavit’s book, My Promised Land. Read David Grossman’s shattering novels or Amos Oz. Read Chemi Shalev or Brad Burston. You will discover that the dream known as Israel has become a much more complicated place when it comes to democracy and plurality and equality. The Israel of today is more than a great start-up nation – and less. The Israel of Bibi and the religious right and the security guards who strike Reform rabbis and men and women who dare to walk together with a Torah towards the Western Wall; the Israel that is deporting Africans who walked across the wilderness seeking asylum there.  This is the Israel we did not hear about in temple growing up.

That’s a problem because the cognitive dissonance between the faded mythic representation of the Jewish state and the real-time nation is creating a generation of American Jews who feel misled, or worse by their Zionist elders. There are Millennials who loved Birthright, but still wonder why they were never told about the complicated stuff. They feel alienated by the things they read and see. Of course, there are lots of unflattering hyperboles and outright lies about Israel and the Jews. But the stuff we read is not all anti-Zionist and anti-Israel. To disregard it all is to live with the myth alone, and that isn’t sustainable. No nation, no people can live with a two-dimensional framework.

The Israel dream that sustains me on every trip is one I cannot forget. Whenever I get upset with some outrageous act or statement by a fascistic alt-right racist or a fawning politician, I reread the Bill of Rights. It reminds me that the USA, at its very core, is built, not on the hate and ignorance that spews out of certain places like toxic fumes from a sewer, but rather it is built on the ideals of freedom and justice for all.  Whenever I read some rabid hate speech directed to my Reform community and me by an ultra-Orthodox rabbi, or hear a press conference by a smug, triumphalist Israeli political hack, I reread the Declaration of Independence of Israel. The part I almost know now by heart is as follows:

The state of Israel will be open for Jewish immigration and for the Ingathering of the Exiles; it will foster the development of the country for the benefit of all its inhabitants; it will be based on freedom, justice and peace as envisaged by the prophets of Israel; it will ensure complete equality of social and political rights to all its inhabitants irrespective of religion, race or sex; it will guarantee freedom of religion, conscience, language, education and culture; it will safeguard the Holy Places of all religions; and it will be faithful to the principles of the Charter of the United Nations.

 These words are the hope for the future of Israel and the Jewish people. These words define my definition of progressive Zionism. For the rest of my life, for as long as I have the true blessing of going to Israel, whether as a group leader or a group participant, I will visit the places and people of Israel who best exemplify this spirit of openness and freedom, of bridges and not walls. I will always honor the myths of Israel and how they inspired me. But I will not pretend that they are the foundation of Israel. The foundation is still being built.

Oy. I briefly considered writing the word ‘oy’ a thousand times for this week’s Before Shabbat. Because that’s how I feel at the end of this week. I’d like to believe this dark, heavy feeling is due to the excess tryptophan from all that turkey last week. Or maybe I could blame it on the quiet house and the absence of my kids and grandkids after the Thanksgiving festivities – you know, those post-holiday blues.

Only I know that’s not it, at least, not entirely. For one, there’s the growing list of men who have sexually harassed and/or assaulted women or other men. I look at all of those names, and I feel so let down. Among them are men of renown. Trusted men of erudition and insight. Creative, enlightened men. Politicians who have worked for the empowerment of women and minorities in various contexts. Men of power and presence possessing true gravitas. Men who have debased women with an attitude and with actions that are shameful and narcissistic and some of which are criminal.

I don’t know how to understand this story, how to ‘metabolize’ it. It is complicated. But at the center of its dark heart, it is grim news.

Next, there’s the North Koreans’ latest missile launch which seems to prove that they’re getting closer to creating a way to nuke us. I’m not building a fallout shelter anytime soon, but it doesn’t make me feel good to have this on my anxiety radar screen.

Of course, there’s the President’s tweet the other day of unattributed violent anti-Muslim videos retweeted from a British alt right website. I would assume that even if you voted for the sitting president, you’d agree this latest round of tweets isn’t particularly good for our bond with the British. Why would he risk destabilizing our relationship with such a loyal ally? This unpredictability is sometimes nerve-wracking (see the previous paragraph).

I won’t continue the list, though you’re most welcome to send me your anxiety nominations. I will tell you that I went to http://www.globalgoodnews.com in desperate search of something cheery. This website, connected to the Mahesh Yogi’s Transcendental Meditation empire, seemed a bit sketchy at first. Their examples of good news stories included stuff like, “Growing demand for Spanish organic fruits and vegetables in Sweden,” or “Pennsylvania offers $30 million to create solar jobs”. This hardly counters the big-league negativity I’ve been complaining about. But… there’s also this: “Woman raises more than $60K for homeless man who gave his last $20 to rescue her”, or “Pioneering climate fund for developing world gets a boost at U.N. talks”. These articles prove that the world is only filled with bewildered innocents and horrible perpetrators of every imaginable sin.

I am such a dualist, a true Hegelian fascinated with and held prisoner by the endless dialectical Mobius twists. To that end, any news item that ends without bloodshed, arrest, or mendacity is worth looking at. I need it to gain some sense of spiritual balance. Good news never makes bad news better; it just reminds us that the light at the end of the tunnel is not a train – sometimes.

Shabbat Shalom

rebhayim

A few days ago, Rabbi Rick Jacobs, president of the URJ and, parenthetically, a longtime friend, was in Israel to celebrate the ordination of the 100^th Reform Israeli rabbi. For all Reform Jews, it was something to rejoice about. Here’s an account of the event from the Israeli newspaper, Haaretz.

“About 150 Reform Jews, both from Israel and overseas, arrived at the Western Wall in the morning to participate in a special prayer and Torah-reading service in honor of four new rabbis scheduled to be ordained by the movement at a special ceremony on Thursday evening. The delegation included the entire board of governors of the Hebrew Union College in Jerusalem, which ordains Reform rabbis in Israel.

Participants in the morning event first held a prayer service at the temporary egalitarian plaza located at the southern side of the Western Wall. Carrying eight Torah scrolls with them, they then proceeded to the upper plaza of the Western Wall – an area designated for national ceremonies. Security guards tried to stop them, and a scuffle broke out.

“Many of those holding Torah scrolls were hit and punched by the guards,” said Kariv. “I saw Rabbi Rick Jacobs taking the brunt of the blows.”

All the security guards at the site are employees of the Western Wall Heritage Foundation, the Orthodox-run organization that administers it.

The group participants ultimately broke through the guards and held a Torah reading service at the upper plaza that included women. They sang Hatikvah, the Israel national anthem, at its conclusion.”

There’s some video footage of the struggle online. It’s shaky – because it’s a riot… But what’s clear is that a bunch of security guards, with complete impunity, are working hard to take the away the Torah scrolls being held by our Reform leaders. In Israel.

My first response is my relatively new, dark take on big-stage politics. It goes like this: I have less and less faith in any national government – ours or

Israel’s – to effect true progressive change. In Israel, this relates to many things, from making peace to dealing with rising nationalist violence to acknowledging the presence and the rights of deeply passionate Jews who happen not to be ultra-Orthodox.

Given this “glass is half-empty” philosophy, I ask: why would Women of the Wall along with my friend, Rick, and great leaders like Anat Hoffman, waste their time at the Western Wall? Why try to further their agenda of inclusion and acceptance in a place where ultra-Orthodox bureaucrats, ensconced in positions of power, will do anything to stem the tide of Jewish pluralism? Why, my dear friends and Reform leaders, do we bother sticking our hands in a yellow jacket nest, knowing only that we will be stung, the press will gasp yet again at this internecine struggle, and the Israeli government will do nothing. Absolutely nothing. The security guards will not be punished. There will be no apology.

It just feels so futile, like a recipe for failure. There must be another venue where we can do something powerful and positive. Doing battle with our ultra-Orthodox brothers and sisters will only accentuate our religious disenfranchisement in Israel. It’s not good for the Jews…

And yet… Surely, Martin Luther King and the great civil rights leaders of the 60s and the anti-war demonstrators of the 60s and 70s felt themselves to be up against insuperable odds. And there were lots of naysayers in the black community itself, saying things like I’m saying.

Perhaps my politics of resignation and hopelessness are a sign of how tired I am of feeling like there’s so little recourse for change beyond the local. But I have to listen to my friend, Rabbi Rick Jacobs who says that the incident expresses “very loudly and clearly that we’re not going away. We’re not going to wait for our rightful place to be protected. Everyone has a place at the Kotel and should be respected… We will not accept anything less than equality at the Western Wall, equality in marriage, conversion and funding. Today is just another step in a long journey and millions of Jews walk forward with us.”

My second response to the violent handling of Reform leaders and rabbis is to double down. We know the ultra-orthodox are implacable foes in this arena. They will not move. Netanyahu will not move despite what he’s promised to the rest of the world’s Jews, which was to welcome all Jews at the Kotel.

So we will move. We will keep fighting the good fight. Because what we’re doing is the right thing to do. It is the Jewish thing to do. It is declaring that we are one people with equal access to public holy sites. It is time to knock down the walls of prejudice and ultra-Orthodox hegemony. No more status quo.

I’m not sure if this means the cup is half full. What it does mean is that we are committed to democracy in Israel, and here in America, too. It shouldn’t feel like a struggle. We live in a country that is built upon the ideology of freedom and respect for all. But we are being called upon to safeguard that ideology. It is no different in Israel.  Without that freedom, there is only darkness – and that cup is only empty.

Shabbat Shalom,

rebhayim

If I were elected to be king of the Jews, I would immediately invoke the 11th commandment: “Thou shalt vote.”  We Jews remember all too well the countless places where we lived and struggled.  There was no justice, no representation, no power.   We relied on bribes and payoffs and ransoms to protect ourselves.  We had nothing else. We were the hapless objects of history, moved around like pawns on a chess board.

The sense of powerlessness can become toxic. It sometimes rendered us as passive. We believed that there was no way to alter the game. It’s like that terrific scene in the Torah portion Shlach Lecha when the Israelite scouts return from their reconnaissance mission. They tell Moses and the Israelites, “We felt so diminished compared to the inhabitants of Canaan. We must have looked like grasshoppers in their eyes.” Notice that no Canaanite made that comparison. The grasshopper analogy was based on the scouts’ own fragile sense of vulnerability. It was about their lack of confidence. They assumed a powerless stance and could not move beyond it.

If the nadir of Jewish powerlessness was the Holocaust, then the life-altering rise to power was in 1948 with the birth of the state of Israel. That event changes everything. The world saw Jews in a brand new light. More importantly, Jews saw Jews in a new light. We were powerful. We were resolute. No one would mess with us anymore. The 6 Day war underscored that expression of power.

It is worth mentioning that Israel has shown us what happens when the exercise of power becomes hubris. When those in power become arrogant and make decisions utterly devoid of a desire for compromise or collaboration, it creates true obstacles to understanding that the other is us.

To live in an open and free nation is a blessing of profound dimensions.  To have a say in our political destiny is still rather new for us along the spectrum of history.  The 115th Congress’s freshman class boasts the largest percentage of Jewish members in recorded history, at 8%; we’re 2% of the total US population.  In the 114th Congress, just 1% of freshmen members were Jews. It’s truly a modern political miracle.

Only it doesn’t happen via miracles.  Campaigning is hard, sweaty, backbreaking, challenging work, regardless of the level of office. Ask any TBA member who’s run for local or regional office.

I love this country, and I love my city of residence. I am proud that TBA is a voting site. I don’t vote in the temple’s ward, and I’m sorry about that. I regard the voting stations like shrines to democracy, a system of government that eschews any co-mingling of church and state. No one is registered to vote by religion or race. All citizens are invited to the table of freedom.

I won’t tell you who I’m voting for in this Before Shabbat. Ask me in the parking lot… But I will tell you this: I am voting on November 7^th. I can also say to you, my beloved congregation, “Thou shalt vote!”

Shabbat Shalom.

rebhayim

I am so sickened by Harvey Weinstein and his plethora of stories. These sleazy, repugnant renditions of foul behavior continue to flow unabated, like a broken sewer main. Story after story recounts how this man used and abused women without regard for their feelings, their dignity, or their very personhood.

Every time I see Weinstein’s name or hear it pronounced, I feel a particular ache of anger and disgust. I want to yell, “Jewish men do not behave like this! How could you?” I know his Jewishness is not germane to the crime, but his transgressions tar us all. He’s a guy from our tribe. He should have known better. Weinstein’s transgressions are an assault on the primary values of our tradition.

I am not naïve. I know that there are most definitely Jewish men who behaved and behave like this. Being Jewish does not automatically inoculate anyone with a conscience and a sense of boundaries. Menschlichkeit: behaving with respect for all others who like us are created in God’s image, takes time and empathy to learn. It’s something Weinstein never learned. In public, he sought to project an image of decency and philanthropic excellence. In private he was a pig, a selfish boor whose only modus operandi was to use and abuse women.

As a part of the males of the world team, I get sick as I read the accounts of women who were treated so contemptuously by Weinstein, Bill O’Reilly, Bill Cosby, Roger Ailes, etc. Powerful men, studies show, overestimate the sexual interest of others and erroneously believe that the women around them are more attracted to them than is actually the case. Powerful men also sexualize their work, looking for opportunities for sexual trysts and affairs, and along the way leer inappropriately, stand too close, and touch for too long on a daily basis, thus crossing the lines of decorum — and worse.

How is that for thousands of years, men have behaved like this? Why have men gotten away with such contemptible behavior for so long? Perhaps because other men have not called them out.

Contexts of unchecked power make many of us vulnerable to, and complicit in, the abuse of power. We may not like what’s going on, but many of us wouldn’t do anything to stop it. This doesn’t excuse the rest of us any more than it excuses the powerful for their crimes, but it should prevent us from telling ourselves the comforting lie that we’d behave better than the people in The Weinstein Company who reportedly knew what Weinstein was doing and failed to put a stop to it.

Yesterday, the director Quentin Tarantino acknowledged in an interview with the Times, that, “I knew enough to do more than I did. There was more to it than just the normal rumors, the normal gossip. It wasn’t secondhand. I knew he did a couple of these things. I wish I had taken responsibility for what I heard. “If I had done the work I should have done then, I would have had to not work with him.”

Men have too often looked the other way at the demeaning behavior of men with women. The uses of sexual intimidation and violence can no longer be tolerated. We know too much. Brave women have dared to step up and accuse their attackers. Brave women and girls have written #metoo on Facebook in response to the recent stories by many victims of Weinstein et al. They are true heroes and champions, speaking truth to power in the strongest way possible.

Roxane Gay wrote an op-ed piece today in the Times. She said, “Men can start putting in some of the work women have long done in offering testimony. They can come forward and say “me too” while sharing how they have hurt women in ways great and small. They can testify about how they have cornered women in narrow office hallways or made lewd comments to co-workers or refused to take no for an answer or worn a woman down by guilting her into sex and on and on and on. It would equally be a balm if men spoke up about the times when they witnessed violence or harassment and looked the other way or laughed it off or secretly thought a woman was asking for it. It’s time for men to start answering for themselves because women cannot possibly solve this problem they had no hand in creating.”

I’ve never behaved like Harvey Weinstein. I’ve never engaged in sexual harassment, and I don’t have any friends who have done it. As a parent and a rabbi and, yes, a man, I must continue to explicitly speak up about having zero tolerance for sexual harassment of any sort. I must continue to speak out against the corrupt uses of power to hurt and abuse others.

I am not responsible for Harvey Weinstein or others of his ilk. But I am most definitely obligated, as a rabbi and as a man, for speaking up and out, for teaching boys and reminding men that there is never an excuse for objectifying girls and women. It’s time for some serious evolution.

It’s a crisp, clear Friday morning. Autumn is announcing its official presence. But for me, Fall comes, not with the equinox, the weather, the foliage, or the sudden omnipresence of pumpkins and Halloween decorations. I know it’s Autumn when I hear the shofar.

The tekiya is an unambiguous sound. It is loud and raucous – there’s nothing smooth or beautiful about it. Maimonides said it best: the sound of the shofar is an alarm, a wakeup call.

1. Hey! Guess what? You are mortal. You are finite. That means every day is a gift. That means what you do and say should not be nahrishkeit, Yiddish for foolishness. Everything counts.
2. You’re not perfect. In fact, you blew it this year. You hurt people’s feelings. You hid behind the “I couldn’t help it” banner. You didn’t always do the best you could do. Own it! Acknowledge it.
3. Say you’re sorry. Not like a little kid forced by parents to say the magic words, but like an adult with a heart and soul. Find the people you knowingly hurt and ask their forgiveness. Your partner, parents, kids, associates… whoever in the world you injured.
4. What about now? Make some decisions about where you’re going from here. How will you try to do better? How will you change to adapt to the needs of the people around you?

This is the agenda for tonight and tomorrow. Not an easy one. But I can promise you that if you do this work, if you think about this during services, by the time you hear the shofar on Saturday night you will feel exultant. You will feel nourished and alive – and that’s even after fasting!

It is that time for me, too. I want to ask your forgiveness, too. For times when I was not sufficiently attentive to your needs. For times when I was late responding to your call or email. For times when I disappointed you. For all these and more I ask your forgiveness.

Twenty years ago I walked into our sanctuary for Kol Nidre. Everything was new and beautiful. That first Yom Kippur is a blur. But I do remember thinking, “This feels right, this new marriage.” Twenty years later I will walk into that same beautiful, blessed sanctuary. It still looks good with all of its various renovations and enhancements. And it still feels right.

My friends call me the happiest rabbi in America, because… well, because maybe I am. I consider myself lucky and supremely blessed to be with you after all these years. And it’s all because of you. It’s because of your love and support. It’s because I have a staff that is nonpareil. Thank you.

My shofar alarm is ringing: time to get back to that agenda. Have an easy fast. Please stay for the last part of the service, Neila. It’s one of the best things that happen here.

One day a scorpion asks a Frog for a ride across the river. The Frog responds, “Are you kidding? Of course not! I know you, Scorpion, and you would sting me and I’d die. No way will I carry you on my back!” The Scorpion challenges the Frog, “Why would I do that? If I sting you and you die, we both drown. You have nothing to fear by carrying me across the river.” The Frog decides that what the Scorpion said makes sense, so he agrees to the request.

Midway across the river, the Scorpion stings the Frog. As the Frog gasps his last breath before drowning, he implores the Scorpion, “Why? Why did you sting me, knowing we will both drown?” The Scorpion replies, “It’s my nature.”

This well-known story is a proof text for a commonly held belief. We are who we are, wired from birth with our flaws and talents, likes and dislikes, and attitudes and character traits that are immutable. This deterministic perspective essentially seals us off from any true chance to alter the trajectory of our lives.

The notion that the die is cast from birth is so depressing. Jerry Maguire says to his recently wedded wife who sees their marriage tanking because he can’t open up his soul to her, “What if I’m not built that way”? In other words, what if his fear of intimacy is in his DNA? What if whatever he’s doing is all he can do?

Are our lives predetermined by our biochemistry?  Are we doomed just to keep kicking the same old dented can down the road? Is there nothing we can do about our rough spots? Is it all about repetition compulsion, just repeating the same mistakes over and over again?

While this debate continues in philosophy, psychology, and neuroscience circles, in our tradition there is no argument or ambiguity. Judaism teaches that we are a work in progress. We are not held captive by inborn twisted character flaws. “What if I’m not built that way,” doesn’t work in the Jewish tradition.

Judaism doesn’t work if we don’t have the freedom to choose right from wrong. God does not predetermine ANYTHING about what we do in the world. The Holy One provides an ethical foundation, and then it’s up to every individual to decide how to interface with that foundation.

It is, of course, no accident that I chose this topic for today’s Before Shabbat. With High Holy Days coming up, with all of our liturgical references to repentance and forgiveness, it’s worth reiterating that we truly do believe in this process. We can become better human beings. We don’t have to keep shlepping the angst and pain. There are no rewards for stubbornly sticking to one’s story, even when we know we’re maybe a little wrong. For the Jewish people, biochemistry aside, if you decide you want to change, then you can change.

This process of self-improvement, of repenting one’s sins and forgiving people who have hurt us, is not easy. In fact, it’s extremely difficult. We adopt so many bad habits. We pursue foolish goals that divert us from the task of living life to its fullest. We get caught up in the cycles of avarice and greed. We don’t take a stand.

And yet, all of this aside, we do have the ability to change, to reach for something more. We can be more than what we are. It “just” takes time and effort and dedication. This is a lifetime struggle, not just a quick reflection before the new year.

You can think and think about change, but ultimately you’ll have to start. Yes, change is hard. Yes, it involves taking responsibility for your life. Yes, it requires you to give up the familiar, which no matter how unpleasant can still feel comforting. And yes, change will put you face-to-face with loss. But what’s beautiful about this loss is that while you might have to give up the hope for a better past or a less painful present, the future is squarely in your court.

There is no finish line on this. There is no completion, no perfection. There is only free will and our courage and resilience to look in the mirror and acknowledge that we have lots to do to make the world – and ourselves – better, more viable.

The theme of Teshuvah – repentance – is not some hypothetical suggestion. It’s a real challenge to each of us. So come to temple. Come be inspired to stand tall. Come rededicate yourself to living a life of openheartedness and meaning. Come remember how to be a mensch.

Don’t forget that Saturday night is Selichot. At 8 pm there will be lots of contemplative space for prayer and meditation. Join us; it will absolutely put you in the right frame of mind and soul.

Shabbat Shalom,

rebhayim