Before Shabbat

It’s 57 degrees tonight. The chill in the air is a signal from the stratosphere that it’s transition time. Short sleeves to long ones. Sweaters out of storage. Jackets out of the closet.

Of course the transition is not only external, driven by meteorological factors. It’s happening in our souls, too. What’s your temperature? Are you feeling the warmth of connection, of family and friends? Do you feel the chill of separation? Do you sense distance between you and the rest of the world? Are there storm clouds of impending loss and dissolution? Is there a struggle going on in your soul, 2 competing weather systems bound to cause thunder and lightning?

Yom Kippur is the annual internal weather report for carefully tabulating the temperature of our souls. I know most of us don’t set a lot of time aside to do this. And I am certainly not going to try convincing you to start now.

So rather than make elaborate plans for what you’re going to do during services tomorrow night and all day Wednesday, let’s just focus on this moment of your reading right now and the immediate moments afterwards. Here are some questions to ponder:

1 What was a joyful moment in your life over this past year? Don’t get hung up in trying to choose the most joyful. Just pick one particular memory of the past year that still makes you feel good.
2 What was a terrible moment, one you’d rather forget – but you can’t?
3 What’s something you want to do in this new year, something that will make your life better? Again, it can be something small – it doesn’t have to be the cure for Ebola.
4 Who is one person you want to make things better with?
5 Who is one person you know you need to forgive?
6 Who is one person who needs to forgive you?

If you’re up late tonight, do this now. After all, if this is your only pre-Yom Kippur planning besides carbo loading and extra hydration, what have you got to lose? And if you are reading this before breakfast, wait until you drink at least half of your coffee. Some folks like to do this with someone else. Don’t succumb to that urge unless this person will hear what you have to say without judgment.

Listen: you are a precious soul blessed with the gift of life and the consciousness to understand just how extraordinary that fact is. Don’t waste it all on the superficialities western culture bombards us with 24/7/365. Resist the urge, for at least a few minutes if not more, to look at the world through no one else’s lens but your own. Embrace the joy. Acknowledge the struggle. Give in to the only thing we know about the future, and that is: we have no idea what’s out there, just beyond tomorrow.

Answer the six questions. Take the time to focus in a bit. Use this moment, at least this moment for some soul-searching and some soulful reassuring. Give yourself the expansiveness of mindfulness. Be worthy of this gift of life that is yours.

On early maps when cartographers drew up to the limit of what had been confirmed by explorers, they would write Hic sunt Dracones. Here be dragons. Well my dear friends and TBA hevreh, as I look out into the darkness of 5776, I say “Here be dragons!” And I say, “So let’s go.”

The Stern Gang and I all together pray that you have a meaningful fast and a promising weather report.

rebhayim

In just a few days, I’ll be standing on the bimah, wearing my kittel. It’s a 35-year-old traditional Jewish cotton garment that I put on for the first time as I stood under the huppah, waiting for my bride to walk down the aisle. And ever since I wear it every Passover Seder and every Yom Kippur. The last time I will wear it is when the Hevreh Kaddisha dresses me in it before they lay me down in my coffin.

Until recently, the fact that my kittel is my death shroud has felt very abstract if not surreal. I’ve talked about it from the bimah for decades without any kind of hesitation. But I must admit that it seems just a bit different these days. No, I’m not sick or enfeebled – in fact, I feel great! It’s just I’ve attained a growing recognition that I’ve lived the majority of my years.

I now understand why the rabbis suggested the kittel for Yom Kippur. Yom Kippur is a call to death. Throughout the 25 hours of this day, we descend into death as we fast, eschew bathing, and spend the day in the synagogue, turning our backs on the world. We leave both the natural and the material worlds, distancing ourselves from commerce and community, from the cacophony of the marketplace and the comforts of home. We enter into the subdued light of the synagogue, read prepared liturgies, and chant the Torah with the particular trope of these Awesome days. The day stretches on, and we go more deeply inward, discovering, perhaps, a well of quiet of which we were unaware… http://goo.gl/aDpNeD

In this peculiar and challenging space we have a few options. One of them is to truly contemplate the finitude of life. This can be instructive in that it forces us to reflect on what we’ve done with our lives. From this vantage point however, we can also encounter no small amount of despair. We can begin to count off regrets and failings.

Or we can use the time to say, in effect: Here I am. I acknowledge that I am mortal and that everyone I know and love is mortal, too. How do I want to live? There’s not much utility in actively contemplating all the ways I might die. But there’s a whole lot of things that can happen when I contemplate all the ways I might live.

True, my kittel is a reminder of death’s slow and inexorable approach. But it doesn’t have to be a garment of mourning. It reminds me that, like standing at the Sea of Reeds on Passover, like standing under the huppah, Yom Kippur is about redemptive moments yet to come. Rather than mourn about how little time I may have left, I can exalt in every minute that is about love and connection.

Today is what they call an overdetermined day. It is the last Shabbat of the year. It is a milestone marking an ending. How can it be that a new year awaits, just over the threshold?

It is three days until Rosh Hashanah. This is the day to prepare to celebrate the birthday of the world. And it’s the day to begin preparing ourselves for deep soul diving, that is, for making services count by using the time for reflection. It is the time to begin accounting for how we’ve treated others over the last year.

Today is the 14th anniversary of 9/11. And every anniversary brings a sense of deep sorrow. So many were lost. So much has changed since then, so much more distrust, and a growing edge of discord in the very fabric of our culture and even of our souls.

We mark this day with tears and laughter, with hope and despair. It is a time of endings. It is a time of beginnings. If one feels a bit teary and overwhelmed on this day, September 11th, 2015/28 Elul 5775, then join the club. It is the club of remembering and mourning.

The Psalmist teaches, “Teach us to number our days so that we may gain a heart of wisdom.” It all goes by so fast. The cruelest irony must be that by the time we truly comprehend just how fleeting this life is, we’ve already used up so much of it.

But I’m not complaining – not really… I’m just saying that today is an overdetermined day, filled with enough ambivalence and sadness and joy as to be utterly overwhelming. This evening, as Shabbat begins, we will sing together, thankful for our community, one of the few true constants in our lives. Our individual stories are all so different, our experiences so precious and unique. In the end, however, we are joined by a common sense of perseverance.

We are in this place, right now, giving thanks, seeking solace. Even as life accelerates forward, one way only, we are comforted to know that we are not in this alone. And that, by the way, is why one joins a synagogue – to be a part of a collective that stands together, that shares a sense of purposefulness and destiny. On an overdetermined day like today, the certainty that we are here for each other is a comforting balm.

Liza and I and the whole Stern Gang wish you a sweet new year. May it be a year of peace and wholeness and health. Yes, there will be bumps and jolts. But please God, may we gather next year and reflect on the end of 5776 together, remarking just how precious our lives are, especially when we live them together in our TBA community.

A viral YouTube post from yesterday shows Toya Graham, a very intense single mom of 6, yelling at her son. They are standing on an urban Baltimore street, surrounded by lots of adolescents and adults. Her son, dressed in black and wearing a hoodie and a mask, appears ready, along with some others, to begin throwing stones at the police. His mother does not approve. She begins to scream at him and he struggles to get away from her. Ms Graham does not back off.  She pursues her son and strikes him – hard – 3 times in the face. Again he tries to get away. His mom does not relent, striking him twice on the back and shoulders. Throughout this 45 second video clip Ms Graham is shrieking and swearing at her son.

What a fearsome experience to be in Toya Graham’s position. To see your child poised to do something that might have dire, even life threatening consequences. What can you do? What must you do?

Over 6.5 million views later, not a few have deemed Toya Graham to be “mom of the year.” They find her mother bear ferocity praiseworthy.  They find her unequivocal condemnation of her son a statement that more such kids need to experience. They find her moral courage to go grab her son to keep him out of harm’s way a true act of affirmation. Ms Graham’s son, they suggest, was getting what he deserved: a beating for a wayward son from a loving mother.

The notion that physical violence and public humiliation are a tried and true part of the armamentarium of parenthood is a commonly held belief. How many generations of children have been beaten because they needed to be punished? What are the ways children have been mortified, called ‘Stupid’ or ‘Fat’, or ‘Disrespectful’ by a parent because they had to be put in their place?

While one can empathize with Ms Graham’s situation and her fear, it is utterly unconscionable to treat another human being – particularly one’s own child! -like she treated her son. There is never justification to hit a child. Indeed, the moment that boundary is crossed, when a person of superior size or strength or age or status uses force, violence becomes a symptom of that person’s loss of control. This is true between parent and child. Ultimately it is also true of an armed policeman and an unarmed victim.

Perhaps this same principle extends to the death penalty. The state is in a superior power position to the prisoner. The state can potentially do anything, imprison you or beat you in the back of a police van. It can The state has the power to invoke the death penalty.

Isn’t the truest measure of mercy and compassion to be found not in the exercise of violence, but rather in restraint? Isn’t resorting to violence, not for self-defense but rather out of anger or racism, an abuse of power? To use violence indiscriminately is to be no different than the perpetrator of the crime itself. To choose to execute another human being is to emulate the murderer. Dzhokhar Tsarnaev may deserve to die. That’s not the point. The point is that we don’t have the right to kill him. A life sentence without possibility of parole yes.  

Homo sapiens is a violent species. We have learned to kill efficiently. And yet the hope is that whatever sacred and/or biological imperative keeps us evolving is moving us towards the ability to make peace and not to make war. The hope is that one day Toya Graham could say or do something to her son besides shame him and hurt him publicly or privately. This is not a lion laying down with the lamb kind of thing. This has to be more than some sort of Messianic wish. More than ever this is what we need. This is something we must do.

Shabbat Shalom

rebhayim

Bibi won. Not by a hair. Not by a long shot. It was not even close. Bibi won re-election in a decisive manner. With an unquestionable victory, Netanyahu is not expected to come under pressure to change his mind about forming a right-wing nationalist coalition with Kulanu, Bayit Yehudi, Yisrael Beytenu, Shas and United Torah Judaism, rather than a national-unity government with the Zionist Union. President Reuven Rivlin is to begin consultations with the elected parties Sunday, with the goal of appointing Netanyahu to form a government after official results come in next Wednesday. Netanyahu is to have then four weeks to form a government, ending April 22, the eve of Independence Day. He can ask Rivlin for a two-week extension, but sources close to him said he did not want to do so, because following his victory, he was in a position of strength. http://tinyurl.com/kmpzq25

Many people who describe themselves as politically progressive were heartbroken by the turn of events. They truly believed that Bougie Herzog and Tzipi Livni would lead a progressive centrist coalition. The polls backed up their hopes… until the results poured in.

Close Israeli friends of mine who watched the election results in Tel Aviv described feeling as depressed and let down as they were the night Rabin was assassinated. For them Bibi’s reelection was some form of betrayal, the snuffing out of a developing dream of moving away from a growing concern for the fate of a democratic Israel: “the resurgence of hate speech; attacks by settlers on Palestinians and their property in the West Bank; the Knesset’s attempts to rein in left-wing human-rights organizations; and, most of all, the unequal status of Israeli Palestinians and the utter lack of civil rights for the Palestinians in the West Bank. A recent poll revealed that a third of Israelis think that Arab citizens of Israel-the nearly two million Arabs living in Israel proper, not the West Bank-should not have the right to vote.”http://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2014/11/17/one-state-reality

Reading this quote from David Remnick from the November 17th New Yorker, it’s not surprising that Bibi’s last minute call to his base on Tuesday – as the vote was underway – in which he railed against what he called “left-wing organizations” that he said were busing Arab-Israelis to the polls in an effort to bolster the center-left and oust him from office, was so effective. In that same November article, Remnick masterfully detailed the many twists and turns for the state of Israel: “the persistence of occupation; the memory of those lost and wounded in war and terror attacks; the Palestinian leadership’s failure to embrace land-for-peace offers from Ehud Barak, in 2000, and Ehud Olmert, in 2008; the chaos in Libya, Syria, Iraq, and Lebanon; the instability of a neighboring ally like Jordan; the bitter rivalries with Turkey and Qatar; the regional clash between Sunni and Shia; the threats from Hezbollah, in Lebanon, from Hamas, in Gaza, and from other, more distant groups, like ISIS, hostile to the existence of Israel; the rise of anti-Israeli and anti-Semitic sentiment in Europe and its persistence in the Arab world; a growing sense of drift from the Obama Administration. All these developments have pushed the country toward a state of fearful embattlement. The old voices of the left, the “pro-peace camp,” have too few answers, too few troops. And so Netanyahu, the champion of a status quo that favors settlers and the Likud, retains his perch. His strategic vision seems to be a desire to get from Shabbat to Shabbat.”

Yes I am disappointed. Yes, I am worried that the prime minister’s official abandonment of the two state solution (I’m not sure he ever truly believed in it) and then his halfhearted clarification that he never abandoned it creates more cynicism towards his intentions. I’m worried that there is no easy rapprochement to be had between the US and Israel over Iran and how to handle the next weeks and months of nuclear negotiation. I’m worried that Abbas will turn to an ever more receptive European theater and seek international support, thus gaining real world legitimacy. I’m worried this election will even further speed the power of the BDS movement, in Europe and in the US, too.

With all this disappointment and angst, I love Israel no less. In the midst of tremendous turmoil, nothing about my allegiance to the state of Israel diminishes. Let’s face it. I’ve had US presidents who I vehemently opposed, whose policies were abhorrent to me. I didn’t move away. I am utterly fed up with the current standoff in Washington and the Congress who seems to keep sinking ever low in polls and in stature. When a US president does something with which I agree, I am gratified. When a president acts in a way that draws my wrath, I speak out. When the US stands for justice and freedom, I stand tall. When the US acts in a way I deem as morally questionable, I will not be silent. So it is with Israel. I will not give a pass to Israel when there is injustice in its borders. I will stand with other Jews and Israelis who expect, who demand, more. Leaders come and go. Policies are passed or vetoed. Challenges are met with strength or with vacillation. I will never be silent about my nation or my people.

I am disappointed in the election results. And I know that some of you feel very differently. Some of you believe strongly in Bibi’s vision of Israel and support his decisions. And so we will continue to have a robust and respectful difference of opinion. Which is, of course, the foundation of democracy.

Am Yisrael Hai! The nation of Israel lives on!

Shabbat Shalom

Bibi had his day with Congress sans 50 or so folks who refused to grant the prime minister a full house. The applause was thunderous. The cheers were full throated and heart felt. Bibi’s speech was dramatic: his oratorical skills are legend here and back in Israel.

I must admit that I am no fan of Bibi Netanyahu. It’s not that I don’t agree with his politics. I’m not certain ultimately what his politics are, other than preserving the status quo.  And I emphatically believe that the status quo is slowly choking off more and more pathways to some beginning of a denouement with the Palestinians.

Perhaps we shouldn’t go there. I tend to veer away from overt political commentary, and I know that some of you may disagree with my positions on Israel. But remaining entirely silent about the prime minister’s speech is, I think, irresponsible. Because I think it created real fault lines in the otherwise strong US-Israel relationship.

For the first time there is an overt relationship being crafted between the Israeli prime minister and one American political party. For the first time an Israeli prime minister publicly dissed the president of the United States in his own capital.  And I wonder; was this the true goal of the speech? To make Israel a partisan issue like almost everything else in this country, from climate change to health care to gay marriage, and so forth? To shine up his image as a tough guy which will appeal to a part of his electorate back home that he needs to win for his reelection? To convince the world that he is right and Obama wrong? I don’t know but it is worrying.

An aspect of the prime minister’s speech that particularly irked me was when he pointed to Elie Wiesel who was sitting in the gallery. “My friends, standing up to Iran is not easy. Standing up to dark and murderous regimes never is. With us today is Holocaust survivor and Nobel Prize winner Elie Wiesel. Elie, your life and work inspires us to give meaning to the words, “never again.””

A BCC reporter is being criticized for describing this moment in a tweet as Bibi “playing the Holocaust card again.” But that is exactly what this was. Peter Beinart bravely called it like he saw it and was accused of belittling a man upon whom most Jews and Christians alike confer saintly credentials.  But the plain fact is that an aged Elie Wiesel has been co-opted by the prime minister. “I wish I could promise you, Elie, that the lessons of history have been learned. I can only urge the leaders of the world not to repeat the mistakes of the past.”

By drawing a direct correlation between Hitler and the current Iranian regime, Bibi infers that this is an all or nothing gambit, a notion his best intelligence officials reject. Teheran is not Berlin.

The Holocaust is a permanent part of Jewish life and Jewish history. It lurks in shadows. It is used and abused. Israel is of course the reification of ‘Never again.’ I get that. We live that. But are we not, at last, strong enough, secure enough, and clear enough, not to have to show the world our scars to justify our desire for safety and peace? After all the accomplishments of the Jewish people since 1945, must we still use Holocaust imagery in our statecraft?

So many issues to discuss. So much in the balance. Let’s never be afraid to discuss things in an honest and open way, even when we disagree.

The other day I watched the latest ISIS video on YouTube.  I found it horrifying, almost too gruesome to watch. It was not a beheading – that I will not watch. I would never want my clicking on it misconstrued as support for this kind of obscene brutality.

The video I viewed was of https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Kgvakdb-gBM ISIS terrorists, some clad in traditional Moslem garb, and others in secular garb, destroying ancient artifacts in an Iraqi museum. It made me feel ill to watch these statues and friezes getting smashed with tire irons and sledge hammers.

Why would anyone break into a museum – before it’s even opened to the public – in order to destroy large artifacts and steal smaller ones in order to sell them on the black market? What’s the motivation? These were beautiful relics from the palace of King Sennacherib and other recent archaeological finds from the ancient Assyrian empire. What could possibly be offensive?

The answer comes from the bottom of the screen where the following is written. “The monuments that you can see behind me are but statues and idols of people from previous centuries, which they used to worship instead of God. Those statues and idols weren’t there at the time of the Prophet nor his companions. They have been excavated by Satanists.”

It’s like what happens when creationists run into dinosaurs and realize that the very existence of these old bones means their version of creation doesn’t work so well. All of the statues and relics and idols in the museum signify that civilizations in the Near East existed 1000 years before Mohammed. For these men, such thought is impermissible. For them, history begins with Allah and will end with Allah. There can only be one path, one moral code, one way.

These frightening men believe that they are the sole arbiters of culture and religious belief. They think that they can destroy all notions of history and culture and art that do not align with their terribly narrow and toxic take on the universe. They want to obliterate the past and control the future.

Diversity is the enemy of ISIS. It is the enemy of all fundamentalist sects. Diversity destroys all totalitarian regimes. Diversity leads to equality: of men and women, of Christians and Jews and Moslems, of theists and atheists, of all humanity. Diversity is the champion of multiculturalism.

One of the things I love about progressive Judaism is our collective understanding that we alone do not determine the trajectory of the universe. We share in the travails and the triumphs of all humans. The central progressive Jewish lesson is the lesson our mothers taught us: “you have to learn to share.”

We must continue to uphold proclaim dignity for all human beings. We can’t let ourselves be led into cynicism and extremism by the actions of thugs and terrorists. We must be thoughtful and wise and openhearted without being naïve and self-delusional. That’s not easy. But in the end, we must continue proclaiming that everyone has to learn to share.

Of course Isis cannot control the ultimate warp and woof of history. They may destroy ancient artifacts, but they cannot destroy history itself. They will swing their sledgehammers. But in time, it is their ideology that will shatter. The oneness of God’s creation will win out, because it must.

Shabbat shalom

rebhayim

A friend of mine owned a Jewish bakery. One of his employees was very Orthodox, from an insulated Orthodox family and community. When the baker suggested creating a line of Valentine’s Day cakes and cookies, she was horrified. “This is a kosher bakery! You can’t display such a thing! It’s like puttingtreif in the window!”

Inevitably someone will call to ask me, “Rabbi? Is it ok if my kids exchange Valentine’s cards with other kids? After all, it’s a Christian thing, isn’t it?” This is a variation on the Halloween question as to whether it’s appropriate for Jewish kids to hit the streets on October 31st in search of tricks and treats.

My ruling on this is unambiguous. Valentine’s Day is as Christian a holiday as Halloween. Which is to say, not at all. There was at least one, if not more, saints named Valentine or a derivation thereof. They were remembered on February, as well as in July.

However, the connection with love and pink hearts is a totally secular phenomenon attributed to a few sources. The first source is Geoffrey Chaucer, the famed author and cultural icon of the Middle Ages who is credited as being the father of English literature. Apparently the Middle Ages was a time when there was a leisure class with time to dwell on romance and flowery language. Chaucer took advantage of this trend, creating a lasting connection between romantic love and chivalrous deeds.

The British, not generally known as the most passionate of people (or is this the influence of Downton Abbey?), are the second source of Valentine’s Day traditions. Valentine’s Day has historical roots mainly in Greco-Roman pagan fertility festivals and the medieval notion that birds pair off to mate on February 14. The history of exchanging cards and other tokens of love on February 14 began to develop in England after Chaucer, and then drifted across the Channel to France and eventually across the Atlantic to the US shores.

America was a ripe and ready market for European cultural transplants. Valentine’s Day, fuelled by the rise of capitalism and industry in America was a perfect match. Which introduces us to the third source of Valentine’s Day: the greeting card industry. Valentine hearts, candy, flowers and so forth, have been pushed at every conceivable commercial angle to the tune of billions of dollars in revenue.

To reiterate, there is absolutely no Jesus anything in Valentine’s Day. None. Whatever Jewish allergy to Valentine’s Day still exists, particularly among Orthodox and some Conservative Jews, has a lot to do with a fear of cultural assimilation. If a holiday or custom is safely located in Torah, it’s ok. But to take a secular practice and engage in it brings Jews right up next to non-Jewish activities that could be misconstrued as Christian. Therefor Valentine’s Day among traditional Jews is what is called pahst nischt, “not ok”.

Postmodern Judaism embraces full participation in secular American behaviors. July 4th, Thanksgiving, Halloween, and Valentine’s Day are all expressions of being an American. The idea of being included within a collective besides the Jewish experience is an utterly new thing in Jewish life. It is a true expression of inclusion and citizenship that is actually quite precious.

So by all means, enjoy Valentine’s Day if you choose. Just don’t use being Jewish as an excuse to short someone a box of candy.