Before Shabbat

Whenever I read about such criminals I try to imagine what they’re thinking. I try to discern their logic and their values. I truly wonder what motivates them to threaten young lives.

Try as I might, I can find no entry point to their minds. To peer inside their world is to enter a place darker than a cavern in which illumination is impossible. Their up is my down. Their universe rests on a foundation of self-aggrandizement that clearly sees 2 kinds of people: those who believe as they believe and those who do not. As long as the “believers” dress a certain way and talk a certain way and adhere to the same ideology, all is well. But those who do not accept the same code for their lives are written off as dangerous and worthy of scorn, derision, and violence. That is, the non-believer is an enemy when he/she dares to voice another version of reality.

In the dark world of these kidnappers there is no such thing as an innocent life. And so these three boys are now in danger’s way. We don’t even know who kidnapped them. The Netanyahu government accuses Hamas of the crime and Hamas denies involvement. But no one in fact has stepped up to take responsibility, which is odd. Odd, because terrorists generally kidnap in order to broker a swap of imprisoned compatriots.

We don’t know where the boys are, a fact that is frightening, given Israel’s amazing abilities to use intelligence in the Occupied Territories. There are those who think security tightened too quickly for the kidnappers to leave Israel. Others suggest they were spirited out and may be in Iraq or Syria or even Iran.

Of course there are loads of facts that are all very top-secret. Whatever the military and the government are doing, they have been doing with grim purposefulness. There are a lot of sleepless people in Israel this week.

As I’ve read about Naftali, Gilad, and Eyal, it strikes me how different they are from my sons. Their parents and I probably have differences of opinion on everything from Jewish observance to the legitimacy of Reform Judaism to a two-state solution to the legitimacy of Israeli settlements in the Occupied Territories. It is likely that we would never meet, so different are our worlds and our social circles. Yet for all the ways we are on opposite sides of so many issues, on one we are united: those boys are our children. We pray for their release.

  
Shabbat Shalom

rebhayim

There are lots of temples that celebrate Jewish holidays not on the day they fall, but on the Shabbat closest to the holiday, in order to assure at least someone is observing it. I hear about this happening with Sukkot and Purim and Simchat Torah. It’s all about the convenience factor.

We Americans love convenient. We love easy. Why not? But here’s the problem. When the actual day of the holiday is no longer special, then we lose its essential sacredness. Our week is disrupted, and things are thrown off. Which is the point. We’re supposed to be a tad inconvenienced for the greater good of a sacred observance.

Those who practice the “holiday by convenience” argue that if they didn’t do it that way, then they wouldn’t even get enough people to make a minyan. I’m sympathetic to that position. But I think it’s ok to demand more of ourselves as Jews. It’s ok to say I have to leave work an hour early or write a note and tell the teacher it’s a holiday and my kid may not get to his/her homework that night. It’s ok to acknowledge – what? – 4 times a year? – that I have to make a special effort. Everything isn’t supposed to be easy. Sometimes we have to show allegiance to more than just “what works.”

Memorial Day started in the late 1860s as a response to the horror and grief left in the wake of the Civil War.  600,000 soldiers died in that war and it traumatized our nation. Memorial Day was first called Decoration Day, an allusion to the annual custom of going to the graves of dead soldiers and decorating them with flowers.

Memorial Day was on May 30^th every year. But in 1968 Congress passed the Uniform Monday Holiday Act, which established Memorial Day as the last Monday in May in order to create a three-day weekend for federal employees; the change went into effect in 1971. The same law also declared Memorial Day a federal holiday. This created the 3 day weekend for Federal workers. It also was a shot in the arm to businesses.

The late senator from Hawaii and decorated war hero, Daniel Inouye, tried every year until he died in 2012 to return Memorial Day to its original May 3oth date. Inouye lamented that “in our effort to accommodate many Americans by making the last Monday in May, Memorial Day, we have lost sight of the significance of this day to our nation. Instead of using Memorial Day as a time to honor and reflect on the sacrifices made by Americans in combat, many Americans use the day as a celebration of the beginning of summer.”

As Kurt Vonnegut said, “So it goes.” I’m not expecting any big calendar changes any time soon. Memorial Day is too commercialized to move. As for the Jewish holidays, you will find me here ready to daven on all of the appropriate holiday evenings and Yizkor services as they fall on the Reform calendar. Maybe it’s a bit quixotic, but these days truly are holy.

The ADL just published a most significant survey of international antisemitism. Their finding? Over 1 billion people on the face of the Earth harbor antisemitic feelings. That’s about a quarter of our planet. How to get on the antisemite list? Agree with 6 of the following statements:

* Jews are more loyal to Israel than to [this country/the countries they live in].

* Jews have too much power in international financial markets.

* Jews have too much control over global affairs.

* Jews think they are better than other people.

* Jews have too much control over the global media.

* Jews are responsible for most of the world’s wars.

* Jews have too much power in the business world.

* Jews don’t care what happens to anyone but their own kind.

* People hate Jews because of the way Jews behave.

* Jews have too much control over the United States government.

* Jews still talk too much about what happened to them in the Holocaust.

The details of the survey are on a fabulous website that displays and breaks it down. http://global100.adl.org/ . You’ll find, for example, that the worst antisemitism, by ADL’s definition, was measured in the Middle East and North Africa, from the West Bank and Gaza (93%) and Iraq (92%) to Saudi Arabia (74%) Turkey (69%) and Iran (56%). Laos has an infinitesimal antisemitic index of 0.2%. Of course Laos has no known history with the Jews and less than ten permanent Jewish residents.  But the scarcity of Laotian Jews does not explain the number. In fact, the survey says countries with more than 10,000 Jews tend to hold fewer antisemitic views than those with no Jewish population whatsoever.

The survey reports that only 33% of those polled have both heard of the Holocaust and believe it has been accurately described by history. Ironically, the highest percentage of people who think Jews talk too much about the Holocaust are from nations deeply involved with the genocide: Lithuania (65%), Poland (62%), Hungary (61%) Germany and Austria (52%).

There’s a lot of data here to mull over – I know I’m still considering it all.  But I have few preliminary impressions. First and I hope you don’t find it flippant, is to say that when I heard the results announced, I thought, “Only a billion people hate the Jews?” That thought comes from a son of a Holocaust survivor who was raised with the subliminal message that everybody hates us! That the majority of the world doesn’t hate Jews is a profoundly variant weltanschauung. I feel like paraphrasing Sally Fields Oscar speech from 1985: “You like us! You really like us!”

Second is to respond to the intense antisemitism of the West Bank and Gaza by saying, “Duh!” Of course the more Muslims, the more antipathy to Jews. And this antipathy is exacerbated in schools, the press, and the mosques.

Finally I wonder the purpose of this high level, high cost survey altogether. Is it Abe Foxman’s legacy after leading the ADL for 27 years and retiring next July, to say to the Jewish people, “See? I’ve warned you about antisemitism for decades and here’s the numbers to prove its capacious grip.” Is it a clarion call about international Holocaust awareness? It’s true the Jewish people say never again, but should it be surprising that 55% of Thais never heard of the Holocaust?

In the end it seems to me that we worry a lot about the opinions of non-Jews. What will they say about us? has been a consuming question of Diaspora Jews for centuries. American Jews under the age of 30 actually don’t ask that question nearly as much as it once was asked. To ask another centuries old question, is that good or bad for the Jews?

What do we do with this information?

Every day is Mother’s Day. That’s what they say. I’ve never truly understood the sentiment behind that claim. Do we praise mothers every day? Do they receive their just recognition every day? Of course not. But then again, neither do fathers.

It’s fair to postulate that no one gets sufficiently appreciated day to day. The ones closest to us often assume our presence and our contributions to their lives. No one gets a gold medal for taking the garbage. People rarely cheer when we do what we’re supposed to do – unless we’re throwing a ball for a living…

Let’s face it. Life is about doing what must be done. “Just do the work, Don,” Freddy Rumsen says earnestly to Don Draper. Just do your job.

When someone recognizes the effort it feels so good. But even with no one is watching, no one praising us: the work must get done. That’s just the way it is.

This Sunday, we are reminded by Hallmark, Godiva, and the floral industry, is Mother’s Day. Despite the commercial angle on this, it would be a wonderful thing to go out of your way and tell several mothers you may know how thankful you are for what they’ve done and how they’ve done it. For carrying then caring for children. For drying tears and packing lunches. For cradling fevered heads. For tuck-ins and for monster-free zones.

Every day is no more Mother’s Day than it is Purim. Every day is an opportunity to do the right thing for no other reason than doing the right thing. Not for flowers, not for praise. Just because. Every day is the right time to praise another human for helping carry the load.

On Sunday, praise a Mom.

Transition Time

Transition time is the time a dynamical system takes to switch between two different stable states when responding to a change in the input signal. In a logic circuit switching between its two valid states, the transition time is either the rise time or the fall time of the output voltage. It is therefore correct to speak of two types of transition times: transition time low-to-high, the rise time of a logic gate’s output voltage. And transition time high-to-low, the fall time of a logic gate’s output voltage. http://tinyurl.com/lf99pf4

The science of transition time is clearly defined here. It’s all about energy flow and its consequences. It just makes sense. And this is from a person who, as you may remember, has had no qualitative science class since sophomore year – of high school.

Transition time goes beyond logic circuit switching (whatever that is). Transition time is a fundamental aspect of human existence. At some point in the 80’s, parents were told that we needed to utilize principles of transition time when it came to how we were raising our kids. Announcing: “Bed time! Let’s go!”, rarely created a win/win environment. Kids would get oppositional and parents would get peeved, resulting in heated conflict along with an escalation of energy. Not exactly an opportune ambiance for tuck-in and sweet dreams.

But what if we treated this like a high to low transition? We were told that if we announced, “Ok, you have 10 minutes before bed” that there would be a much greater chance of tucking happier children into bed and being happier parents. And I think this was more or less the case. Bedtime could still be hard, but transition time made it a bit less painful.

As kids (and adults) get older, transition time also came into waking up in the morning. The military version of banging garbage can lids together and yelling as a way to start the morning could make for a rotten day. But what about low to high transition time logic? A soft wake up, a ten minute snooze period before the day truly must begin makes a huge difference. Again, it’s not a panacea, but it’s a start.

There is also spiritual transition time. Selichot, the Shabbat before Rosh Hashanah, helps us ramp up our rise time. It helps us pace ourselves to the first evening of the new year. Or take this period called the Omer which counts the days from Passover to Shavuot. It is actually a 49 day transition time from the celebration of the Exodus to Shavuot, the holiday commemorating when we received the Torah from God on Mt Sinai. But is Passover to Shavuot low-to-high? Or is it high-to-low? The way we celebrate Passover – and don’t celebrate Shavuot these days – feels like very high to very low!

Our tradition always wanted us to take the energy of Passover and not let it dissipate. Passover generates too much of a good thing to just let it all go. The sense of fellowship around the table, the sharing of our stories, the laughter, the resolve, even if for a moment, to acknowledge that we are free and thus responsible to help those who are not: all these things and more are powerful and central to our souls.

The transition from Passover to Shavuot is from high to higher (credit to YL Peretz and If Not Higher). Passover celebrates going free. Shavuot reminds us of our ongoing responsibilities of freedom. Shavuot challenges us to go from our liberation story to engaging in the universal liberation story. It reminds us that social justice is not merely an interesting topic; it is our duty as Jews to be involved in it. At Passover we recline as we eat, unhurried, unhassled. But Shavuot demands we get ourselves in gear. How can we blithely enjoy our freedom and success and ignore the needs of others? Answer: all too easily.

The Omer is the transition time for putting away all the seder plates and hagadahs and gearing up for the next round. This is our time to prepare to see the world differently, to embrace our common humanity, our shared world, and our responsibilities. Shavuot is time to say, “We forward in this generation triumphantly”. Will we ever reach redemption? Will all slaves finally be free? This Omer is the time to ask and then resolve to try to do something and then Shavuot is time to make the promise to act. Rabbi Tarfon says: It is not our responsibility to complete the task, but neither are we free to desist from it (Pirkei Avot 2:21).

Shabbat Shalom

rebhayim

We live at a time when the individual reigns supreme. We value everyone’s autonomy. We praise everyone’s uniqueness. We strongly espouse an ethic of individual rights. We live by the notion that no two snowflakes are the same; how much the more so when it comes to humans?

When we meet people for the first time, we often begin our line of inquiry from this perspective:  Where are you from? Where did you grow up? Where did you go to school? What do you do? That is, we begin with the microcosmic, our focus a tight close-up.

A generation or two ago, it was done differently. The first question would be, “Who are your people?” In other words, your individual life may be interesting, but the more important story is your family saga. How did your family get here?

We are the Jewish people. We share a common story and connect with powerful common symbols and rituals. When we lose that sense of peoplehood – and I think Jews all over the world have lost a significant sense of peoplehood – we lose an existential mooring to a common set of stories that join us together over time and space.

Our current lack of a sense of peoplehood comes partly from our great success in America. We are essentially free as Jews to do what we want wherever we want. Jews in America are prime example #1 of assimilation and acculturation. We have gotten closer to non-Jews – professionally, personally, intimately – than at any time in our history. A sense of expansive Americanness – to coin an awkward phrase – certainly trumps a less immediately accessible Jewishness.

This is not an either/or gambit. We are proud and free Americans. Thank God for that. And our doors open ever wider to non-Jewish partners and friends who want to draw closer to our unique heritage. But as American Jews we can also acknowledge that we come from someone and somewhere else. We can raise up our peoplehood as an essential component of our lives. In fact, our history, our sense of family, our centuries of dedication to justice, to learning, and to tradition, all can make us more sensitive human beings who richly contribute to American life – as Jews.

The Passover Seder is the place where a foundational tribal tale is told and retold every year. We are adjured to see ourselves as the very people who went free with Moses. We are not at the Seder table to tell their story. There is no they! This story is about us! Passover reminds us to celebrate our freedom and to recognize just how hard it’s been to achieve it. Crossing the Sea of Reeds after escaping the Egyptians, and throwing off the bonds of slavery, this was miraculous. Establishing the state of Israel 3 years after Auschwitz, this was the sign of peoplehood.

The Stern Gang wishes you a zissen Pesach, a sweet Passover. Tell our story well: the long version, the short version, just tell it. Celebrate the sweetness of our lives but don’t forget to acknowledge how much bitterness exists in the world. The Jewish people must not only give thanks for where we are. We are obligated to make the world better. Because we were slaves, we know in our hearts that slavery is a sin. There’s work to do.

Today is my last entry as Before Shabbat goes into summer mode. I’ll be taking several summer weeks away from the blog, though my idea folder will continue to be open and at the ready. I appreciate the weekly rhythm writing establishes for me. I can communicate with you and share reflections, reactions, and responses. It’s almost never difficult to come up with a theme for the week. The days are so long and so busy. There’s always a plethora of inspiration and news: local, international, Israel-related, good, bad, etc. I appreciate in the deepest and most profound way your readership, your comments, your kindness.
Tonight I will be blessing my son, Jonah, and his wife-to-be, Maggie, on the bimah, in honor of their upcoming July 1st wedding. In this quiet time prior to that big moment, I find myself feeling so full of joy and gratitude. Without being too maudlin, let me just say that I grew up without many expectations that I deserved good things.
Now as a man approaching 60, I find that my cup runneth over. It may just be possible that, as it also says in Psalm 23, “…goodness and mercy shall follow me all the days of my life.” What a turnaround! What a concept!!
Everyone deserves goodness and mercy. Everyone is due good things. It is equally true that there are no guarantees that we will get them. To live is to know suffering and loss and pain. I used to think like Alvy Singer, Woody Allen’s role in Annie Hall. Remember he said that he would only read books with the word ‘death’ in the title.
But there is more. Yehudah Amichai, the greatest modern 20th century poet of Israel once wrote a book entitled, Beyond All This There Hides a Great Happiness. If we can keep our hearts open, if we end up with the right partner, if we can find work that we love, if we can surround ourselves with family and friends whom we honor and who honor us, then we have a fighting chance. There is a great happiness. Have a healthy summer filled with relaxation, great books, good company, and love.
Shabbat Shalom
rebhayim

I wrote a poem this past week to honor Ruth Neiterman, a long time Hebrew teacher who tragically died of cancer. I read it at her funeral and several folks requested that I reprint it here.

For Ruth
by Keith Stern

Little Jewish kids are afraid of Hebrew
Who can blame them?
The sharp, scary letters
the gutteral challenge of a chaf
The laryngeal mystery of an ayin or a chet
The unnatural buzz of a tzade…
The blinding smear of dots
Flying across the pages like angry bees from a Hebrew hive
direct the destiny
Of random letters
Sussing or shushing
Being or ve-ing…
And all flowing backwards…

Hebrew spins off
Desiccated parchments and
Old rabbis wrinkled hands
Ancient dust devils
Swirling over the heads of little Jewish kids

Surrounded by dark primal sounds
Panicked by walls of alien symbols
They lift their eyes to the mountains
They say help!

And if they are very lucky
There is a teacher – a Hebrew teacher
A woman of patience and virtue
So much more than an eshet hayil
Who is not afraid of the letters
In fact she loves the letters
And she shows them to the children and she says
So calmly,
No don’t be afraid
Here look you can pet this daled
You can hold a final mem
See! You can do it!
The kaf won’t bite.

So they approach her
They look in her kind face
And the little Jewish kids trust her
They come closer
Pulled in by her gentle wisdom
And they know that this teacher
Will challenge the brightest student
And will wait for every ADHD IEP on-the-spectrum kid
Who’s lucky enough to end up in her class

There are little Jewish kids
Scattered all over the world
Grown men and women now in their 30s and 40s and older
Hundreds – thousands
Successful educated people
And if you ask them
Do you remember who guided them through the thicket of aleph-bet
They will say, it was Mrs. Neiterman
Who loved Hebrew letters
But who most of all
Loved us.