Before Shabbat

As I was doing last minute prep for my Bar Mitzvah – going over the Torah and haftarah, learning how to put on tefillin, reviewing English readings – Israel was under siege. We were all glued to every news report that mentioned Israel. And as you can imagine, it was mentioned with increasing frequency and urgency in the spring of 1967.

In mid-May of that year, President Nasser of Egypt started moving thousands of troops and armor divisions into the Sinai in direct violation of an agreement they made with the UN. He then ordered the UN to leave the Sinai Peninsula. Though Nasser had no authority to do this, The UN responded and withdrew their peacekeeping forces. And Jews everywhere began holding our breath, brooding over when Nasser would take his incendiary rhetoric about destroying Israel to its logical conclusion.

I always loved reading the news and listening to Walter Cronkite, so I was current on the situation. It was so long ago, yet I clearly remember that on June 1^st, as the situation continued to escalate, it dawned on me that there might be a war in Israel before my Bar Mitzvah. What would I do? Would the Bar Mitzvah be canceled?  Would something horrible, unthinkable occur?

I asked my tutor if there was some contingency plan for a canceled Bar Mitzvah. What if, I asked him slowly, what if Israel is attacked? What if Israel is captured? What would we do? Cantor Bernstein looked at me. tears welled up in his gentle eyes, and, in mine, too.  He was a Holocaust survivor, and he had family in Jerusalem. Cantor Bernstein told me that no matter what happened, my Bar Mitzvah would never be postponed. “Life always rolls forward. Shabbat comes, in good times and hard times. In peace there is Shabbat. In war, too. Even in Auschwitz, there was Shabbat.”

“Ok,” I said, “But what if something terrible happens? What happens if Egypt attacks and Syria and Jordan attack, too?” “Number one, you will have your Bar Mitzvah. Number two, Israel will survive whatever is going to happen next, because it has to survive. Because after what Hitler did, Jews can’t be victims again. We won’t be victims again.”

He seemed so sure of himself! I took his certainty and made it my own. When Israel launched the surprise air attack against Egypt on June 5^th, I somehow knew that, in the end, everything would work out. Because Cantor Bernstein said so. Because we could never allow for defeat.

In the few weeks that followed, the Jewish world reveled in the extraordinary victory of what came to be called the Six-Day War. My Bar Mitzvah ended up being a Shabbat of celebration. I talked about how cool it was for Jerusalem to be back in Jewish hands. I remember saying something about how one day I would pray at the Wailing Wall.  But I remember most clearly when the Cantor came up to me after the service and gave a bear hug. As he did, he whispered to me, “You see? We will never be victims again.”

I will always remember that hug. And I will always be grateful for Cantor Bernstein’s faith and strength. He enabled a frightened boy about to have a Bar Mitzvah, feel confident, not just about a ceremony, but most significantly about the future of Israel and the Jewish people.

That confident feeling I acquired 50 years ago still lingers, as does my great love of Israel. The hard truth, however, is that since the Six Day war, peace remains more elusive than ever. And in the end, Israel’s greatest legacy cannot be about a fantastically executed war. The only legacy that will have lasting meaning is to make peace.

When the temperature spiked this week from 45 to 90 degrees, it threw me off a bit. As if in a dream, I started packing for the Cape, our annual summer destination. This, in turn, activated a lot of signals to my hippocampus, awakening memories of what comes along with the Cape.

At the beginning of every summer for close to 40 years, I contemplate the upcoming new year.  I ponder so many different things. I think about my life as a pond with concentric ripples fanning out. The first circle is my immediate reality: my body, my choices. Next are my wife and kids, my relatives and oldest friends. Then comes my temple family, the people I work with professionally, and the congregation I serve. And then there’s the more diffuse local, regional, national, and international issues that involve and intrude on my pond, like a thunderstorm or a cool breeze or a blizzard, depending on who’s doing what where.

This is the pond into which I jump every day. But in the heat of these last few days, I’ve started to especially examine and reexamine the waters, as if Rosh Hashanah were around the corner. I’m not complaining – after all, a little extra time spent in reflection mode can’t be bad.

But it does make me wonder: what’s this world coming to? And what am I coming to? Surely with age comes an acute sense of limits and finitude. But just as certainly, with age comes wisdom. In fact, the book of Psalms, 90:12, suggests that acknowledging mortality leads to wisdom. “Teach us to number our days, that we may attain a heart of wisdom.”

Yes, there’s a beginning, a middle, and an end to everything – except God – and maybe the multiverse. As spring edges to summer, as summer pushes towards Fall, there is this sense that a personal account checking is in order. It’s time to explore our blessings and challenges of the past year and how we have responded to them.  What kind of connections have we made? What connections have we broken?  It’s a time to reflect on the fact that we live in relationship to each other and all the earth. And it’s a time for honest reflection, forgiveness, celebration and healing.

I know, I know. I’m a little bit early. I’ve put away the summer clothes box and the Crocs. But I’m stuck with this looming sense of urgency ignited by the weather. I think I’m going to stick with it, see where it takes me.

Rabbi Eliezer taught “Repent one day before your death.” His students said, “Rabbi, how is that possible if one doesn’t know the day of one’s death?” To which Rabbi Eliezer responded, “Aha! Making amends and being in spiritual balance is not something to put on layaway! It must always be in your mind and heart.”

The rabbi has a point. What matters most, in the end, is not how many toys we have collected. What truly counts is to be wholeheartedly clear that, at the end of the day, we have done our best to do the right thing. How to be clear? That’s the work. And now that the heat has activated the High Holy Day prep syndrome, I’m on it. As Rabbi Eliezer indicates, it’s always the right time.

Shabbat Shalom

rebhayim

One of the things that attracted so many viewers to Mad Men, a series about advertising execs in the 60s and 70s, was just how well they captured that period of American cultural history. Every partner at the firm had a full bar cart in their office, stocked every day with ice, clean glasses, and bottles of whiskey. Smoking cigarettes was a ubiquitous habit in offices, restaurants, airplanes, hospitals, etc.

They got the clothing just right. The men’s suits, the shoes, the women’s fashions, and the hair-dos the props and continuity folks did their homework diligently and well.  The automobiles and buses and other vehicles were all properly placed. It was truly a flash from the past.

Whenever I talk to folks who were in the ad business then – or any other white-collar business – they mention how realistic Mad Men was, capturing so many of the unique cultural practices of that bygone era. They talk about the three-martini lunches, the extravagant office parties, the number of hours men were expected to be in the office, and the general attitude of the triumphalism of post-war capitalist America.

There are some other aspects of the early to mid-60s and forward that Mad Men also captures. There is, of course, institutional racism that African Americans had no place in corporate America unless they were cleaning up or running elevators. There was also institutional antisemitism, a clear line of demarcation for where Jews could work, where Jewish doctors could practice medicine, what country clubs we could belong to, and so forth.

Then, of course, there was the misogyny. The idea that rampantly pulsed through corporate America was that women were meant to remain at home to take care of the kids to fulfill their lives. If they had a job, it was only to save enough money to live in a decent apartment until they met a man who would save them. Women were not seen as intellectually competent, though smart enough to file and take dictation. Career women were to be mistrusted; there was something ‘wrong’ with them not wanting to be at home.

Along with this paternalistic attitude towards women was another dimension: that women were sex objects to be ogled, fondled, cat-called, and harassed – but all in “good fun.” Women were not to complain about this treatment; in fact, they were to feel ‘lucky’ and grateful when powerful men deigned to pay attention to them. Women were to be submissive, lest they lose their jobs for having a bad attitude.

I didn’t grow up in a house where women or girls were treated, spoken to or about as objects. Sure, as a teenager, amongst my male friends, we could be rude and crude, mostly about things we didn’t know or hadn’t experienced.  This kind of banter is called locker room talk, even though I spent little time in a locker room.

But we never demeaned or degraded women. We were very attracted to them and loved to look at them. But we knew the difference between looking and leering, between saying hello as a way of being friendly as opposed to being obnoxious.

Obviously, there are men who were not raised as I was. There are men who were not introduced to Germaine Greer and Gloria Steinem and Betty Friedan by earnest girlfriends or sisters. There are men who were not told by their moms or teachers or dads that, “We don’t know talk about women that way.” There are men who were taught that as white Christians with means they were entitled to rule the world.

But that entitled, triumphalist attitude about women and minorities no longer sits well with people and corporations that, until recently, subscribed to that same ethos of success. Companies like  Mercedes Benz and Aleve and other Fortune 500 companies dropped their sponsorship of Bill O’Reilly’s show after multiple complaints emerged regarding his sexually harassing women at Fox. The NBA left North Carolina when they denied the rights of transgender people to use the bathroom they preferred to use.

At some point down the line, the notion that we are all created in God’s image has to mean something. Otherwise, everything that follows in the Torah is nonsense. Either we together acknowledge the power and protection of American democracy, or we circle the wagons and wait. When American corporations intimate that they care about what is being said on their dime, I perk up. When the NBA draws a line for human decency, I am thrilled.

There are so many rivers to cross before we arrive at a place of true moral decency and equality. The power of antisemitism and racism and misogyny is still immense and still tolerated in so many places. This is why we speak out. This is why no one is free until all of us are free.