Before Shabbat

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.

In the opening sequence of the very noir movie Blue Velvet, the camera pans across a quiet, bucolic scene. But as the camera zooms in closer and closer and closer, we end up looking into the subterranean world below the pleasant scene. And there we see worms and centipedes and insects and rot. It is classic David Lynch imagery. Everything is fine, we say, but glance at the underbelly of the world and there find horror, or at least the very unseemly.

It’s a nihilistic notion that the world rests on a rotten foundation being eaten out from under us by voracious beasts, large and small. Because the decay is so far out of our reach, it seems unlikely that there’s a thing we can do about it. In such a hopeless world, does anything we do make a difference? Or can we just suck it up and learn to live with the rot?

These thoughts came to mind as I read yesterday’s New York Times. Researchers at Weill Cornell Medical College released a study on Thursday that mapped DNA found in New York’s subway system — a crowded, largely subterranean behemoth that carries 5.5 million riders on an average weekday, and is filled with hundreds of species of bacteria (mostly harmless), the occasional spot of bubonic plague, and a universe of enigmas. Strikingly, about half of the sequences of DNA they collected could not be identified — they did not match any organism known to the National Center for Biotechnology Information or the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. http://tinyurl.com/l6fu725  Almost half of the DNA found on the system’s surfaces did not match any known organism and just 0.2 percent matched the human genome [emphasis mine]. http://tinyurl.com/ls2fgme

What does it mean to live on a planet that has been researched and measured and analyzed, only to be told that almost half of a sample of DNA from a New York subway matched no known organism? Are their alien species taking the train to Brooklyn? What forms of life have we still not bumped into formally?

It’s a mean and angry world filled with fanatics who would burn us all alive. It is a scary world filled with fundamentalists of all stripes who denounce diversity as evil.  Do they outnumber us or we them? We can despair over the cooties, seen and unseen, and give in to the rot. Or we can just keep on keeping on. There are no guarantees. There are no neutral zones. There’s no such thing as true safety.

Jews have every reason to give up. We have every rational excuse to jump ship. History has pummeled us senseless. We have all heard stories of Jews who changed their names, who denied their Jewishness, survivors of various anti-Jewish violence who raised their kids as Christians because it was too scary to be “out”. We decry their behavior but we should instead acknowledge their fear as something real to be respected and pitied. The truth is that in the fight or flight equation, running away is a legitimate choice.

The guy who did the DNA subway research was inspired by watching his baby daughter at preschool, sticking stuff in her mouth and then handing to the next kid who does the same and so forth. He marveled at her resilience and wondered just how much contact we had with others. And apparently, even after subterranean contact with utterly unknown bacteria and other microbes on subway poles, humans manage just fine – even without Purell.

Yes we’re still here… Against all odds, despite all cooties.  Like a fiddler on a roof we struggle to keep our balance as we play our music. And not just because of tradition, though Tevye is correct… Long after other nations and peoples have risen and fell, we continue to exist because we have a story to tell, a story that acknowledges the rot while not being overcome by it. Life isn’t so great… but the alternative ain’t so hot.

The early mapmakers wrote in the unknown and unmapped regions, “Here there be dragons.” And do you know how the Jewish people respond? Full speed ahead.

Shabbat Shalom,

rebhayim

What would we be doing right now if we were a congregation in France? What would be the zeitgeist of our community? What kind of decisions would we feel compelled to make? How many new armed guards would we be hiring? What programs would be curtailed or outright cancelled? Would people come to services out of solidarity or stay home for fear of violence?

Whatever the complexities of these practical questions, I have no doubt that we would face them as resolutely as our French brothers and sisters at this moment. Whatever the answers would be, we would address them and then implement them without hesitation. We believe in the strength and the resilience of our people.

But there is another question French Jews are asking each other, THE question.  And we as American Jews have no analog experience from which to answer it: should we stay or should we go now? Or to state it in apocalyptic but honest language, is this the end of Jewish life in Europe?

The first evidence of Jews in France dates back to the 6^th century. Since then Jews have experienced horrors and honors, oppression and freedom. When Napoleon made Jews equal citizens of France after the French Revolution it was a new high water mark for Jewish life in the Diaspora. It spelled the beginnings of modernity and the possibility that Jews could enter the secular world as equals to their non-Jewish neighbors. When Alfred Dreyfus, an assimilated Jew and a career officer in the French Army at the end of the 19^th century was charged with treason on trumped up charges (as a Jew he was an easy target in the terribly antisemitic French army),  there were all kinds of antisemitic incidents. Dreyfus was later cleared, but what of the antisemitism? As always, a complicated story, but perhaps part of the answer is revealed in how many Jews were rounded up in France during the Holocaust. Or is it revealed in the way France alone amongst other European nations, came to Israel’s aid in the 50s and 60s?

The story of the Jews of France is filled with point-counterpoint. What’s undisputable is the impact Jews have had on the French Republic – and vice versa. And now, in the wake of the murders in the kosher market in Paris and other recent antisemitic violence, are the Jews of France at risk? Statistically speaking, the chances of being hurt or killed in a terror attack are still greater in Israel. A new Israeli citizen from France said, “But it’s not the same thing, because here, we look out for one another. There, the feeling is that nobody will protect us; we don’t know if people on the street will help us if something happens.”

“If 100,000 Jews leave, France will no longer be France. The French Republic will be judged a failure.” So said French Prime Minister Manuel Valls. And I would agree. A judenrein France would be the ultimate disgrace of a modern nation founded on the principles of liberty, fraternity and egalitie.

Would we do? Would we be planning our exit? Would we opt out? Of course I don’t know. Thank God I don’t need to answer that question. So I have the freedom to wonder: isn’t the exodus of French Jews to Israel exactly what these terrorists want? Isn’t scaring Jews to run away an old picture from a well-worn playbook? Isn’t that yesterday’s news? And isn’t it awful that in 2015 I have ask these questions?

I stand with my French Jewish brothers and sisters. If they believe that it is time for them to leave, then so be it. What would I do? As the son of a Holocaust survivor, I couldn’t bear being forced to leave a democratic nation, terrorism or not. I think I believe in making a stand. Either choice right now feels dangerous and fraught with meaning. No matter what, I am relieved that there is an Israel. I am relieved that Jews, thank God, actually have a choice. That’s the good news in all of this.

I had so hoped that this new year would somehow be better than 2014, a year that was filled with so much suffering and death. I don’t know why I let myself embrace that thought, but I did. And here we are, just inside the doorway of 2015 and the news from Paris is horrible and overwhelming. Of course I know there’s plenty of good news in the world. America has more jobs, the stock market seems secure and bullish, kids have gotten into college, the Ebola scare has been tamed, and of course, we’re here, breathing, living, connecting.

It’s not that there is bad news; it’s always been around. It’s the increasing virulence of the headlines and the worsening ways in which some humans extol killing and maiming innocent people as a statement of faith. This scourge of terrorism feels pernicious and long lived.

I actually chose the title of this week’s Before Shabbat 2 weeks ago while I was in Israel. I wanted to tell you a story about identity and Jewishness and Zionism and the different names we acquire at different phases of our lives. The title remains but the original story was wrested away in Paris.

Today I stand in solidarity with all of the journalists and writers and cartoonists and photographers and stringers and critics who risk their lives to speak out and share their thoughts and ideas. Je suis Charlie.

I mourn the loss of Stéphane Charbonnier and Jean Cabut and Georges Wolinski and Bernard Verlhac, Philippe Honore and Bernard Maris, Elsa Cayat and Mustapha Ourrad, Michel Renaud, Frederic Boisseau, Ahmed Merabet and Franck Brinsolaro, the 12 victims killed at the offices of Charlie Hebdo, a raunchy political newspaper. I honor them and their bravery to lampoon the status quo. I applaud their right to “go too far” in their statements or their imagery even when I am offended by their crudity. The world needs such people to remind us of our temporality. Freedom requires us to take a deep breath and not take ourselves too seriously.

Radical Islam is utterly unable to abide diversity of opinion and belief. Freedom of thought and expression are anathema to any totalitarian regime. The mere fact that humor and the act of laughing at oneself are unlawful in the eyes of radical Islamists is absurd. That political humor, even poor or low brow humor, might provoke assassination and mayhem is beyond belief.

As David Brooks wrote in the New York Times today, “…provocateurs and other outlandish figures serve useful public roles. Satirists and ridiculers expose our weakness and vanity when we are feeling proud. They puncture the self-puffery of the successful. They level social inequality by bringing the mighty low. When they are effective they help us address our foibles communally, since laughter is one of the ultimate bonding experiences.” http://tinyurl.com/o6wf2qt

I have another name today. Actually it is always one of my names but usually not in French. Je suis Juif. I am a Jew. I am one of the customers at the kosher supermarket purchasing last minute Shabbat wine and a challah. Je suis Juif. I’m buying Shabbat candles with my grandson, schmoozing with the cashier about Israel. I don’t have the names of the 4 dead yet, but I know mine. Je suis Juif. I am a Jew, a vulnerable person by virtue of my name and my history. For centuries I hid from the mercurial wrath of antisemites and their ilk. For centuries I tried to avoid trouble, to do the complicated Jewish equivalent of “putting on the ole master”.

But no more. Je suis Juif. I will not go gently into that good night. I will stand for justice and for freedom, for my people, for all people. I will speak out in the face of inequity: in the USA, in France, in Israel.

I guess it was irrational to assume a new year would somehow bring us closer to a Messianic era. I see that the work for this year more than ever is to declare as did the Bratslaver rebbe, “Don’t despair.” It won’t be easy. But that’s a part of why we’re here. Nous sommes Juifs.

“True story of Hanukkah?” you may ask. “Isn’t there only one story?” You’d probably be referring to the tale of the Jewish festival of lights, which celebrates the Maccabean Revolt (167-160 BCE), and the narrative that Jewish rebel Judas Maccabeus vanquished the evil Greek emperor Antiochus and rededicated the Temple, at which the miracle of the oil occurred. Only… this isn’t the whole story. (For a great historical overview of the Hanukkah story click here)

But before I reveal the whole story, I share with you a thought. Why have we conspired to keep the story of Hanukkah in the dark? Why do we relegate it to a relatively juvenile passive tale of a miracle happening to us?

Hanukkah has become a significant festival only in the last 75-100 years in a desperate attempt to keep up with the ever more commercial mayhem that is Christmas. With advertising for Christmas starting the first day after Halloween, some Jewish parents need a counterweight, something to divert their kids’ attention to a Jewish theme. In the old days Hanukkah was about lighting candles, eating latkes, spinning dreidels, gambling with chocolate gelt, and maybe opening a tchotchke or two. Now it’s presents and more presents and an easily digestible story.

The Hanukkah story was all but lost by the second century. In fact someone asks the question in the Talmud, “What is Hanukkah?” This is not a pedagogic technique. I think the questioner sincerely challenges his colleagues to share their thoughts. It’s only then that we hear the story of the oil lasting 8 days hence 8 nights of Hanukkah… Nice story. Only…

Spoiler alert… Only the real story of Hanukkah is not about the miracle of oil. The eight days was all about the festival of Sukkot lasting eight days. Confused? It seems that in 164 BCE, when Sukkot time came along, the Temple in Jerusalem was in the hands of the enemy. Therefore our ancestors could not observe this 8 day holiday. We’re not in tune with the Jewish holiday cycle and its agrarian roots. But for our ancestors, the agricultural aspects were primary components of the holiday. Not to observe Sukkot, the festival of the Fall harvest, was experienced as bad form, if not bad karma. What if it cursed the harvest? When the Temple was reclaimed, our ancestors decided that they would start off the rededication by practicing Sukkot; better late than never.

Why does the miracle of the oil story hold sway over the ‘real’ story? At its heart the story of Hanukkah is about revolutionaries evicting a foreign culture and its acolytes. It’s about a corrupt institution (the Temple) being challenged by those who depended on its sanctity. It’s also about a people who were striving to hold the line against innovation and reform, who believed that any change was bad and destructive. All of which is to say that the real Hanukkah story is like lots of stories: good guys acting like bad guys and vice versa. It’s like the home team that slowly gets lazy and indolent and the outsiders prepare to pounce. It’s about how a small force can bring havoc down on the heads of a large established nation and its army. Do you see the problem? We love the Maccabees and their courage. We hate their fundamentalist coercion and their binary worldview. We applaud their audacious unmasking of the corrupt priesthood. We are appalled when the Maccabean descendants themselves become corrupt.

The real story leaves us with many more questions and dilemmas. Is it any wonder that our ancestors went for Hanukkah ‘lite’? It’s so much easier to take the story out of the realm of human foibles and greed, placing it instead in God’s hands, make about the triumph of light over darkness.

Just this morning I taught the TBA preschoolers the miracle of the oil Hanukkah story. That’s how our children should start learning about this holiday. But it does us no good to stay with that story alone. Our Judaism must be openhearted enough to embrace the subtle meaning of miracles of light. It must also be hardheaded enough to withstand the ambivalent message of how the Jewish people have sought to change the way we do things and how sometimes we are our own worst enemy.

Our only hope is to be honest and forthright about our past and to stand in the present with integrity. We cannot afford to wait for another miracle story. This time we’re the ones who must bring the light. We have to make the miracle with our own hands and love and sweat and pain. That’s the real Hanukkah story.

My nephew Ben, my sister Marta’s younger son, is an interesting guy. He is funny. He is sensitive. He is big. He is quirky. He’s on the spectrum. And he’s black.

Ben has been lurking in my consciousness for weeks and weeks now, sometimes on the edges and other times up close. I’m worried about him. In fact I fear for his life. Because he is everything that could turn him into a target of law enforcement attention.

There is not a less violent person than my nephew. Ben doesn’t act out or make a scene. But if you know autistic people then you know that one of the major issues in their lives is not being tuned in to subtle and not so subtle social signals.  For instance I could imagine a police officer coming over to him and saying, “What are you doing here?” The right answer is short and sweet; something like, “I’m picking up my brother from work”, or “I’m going to the movies.” The answer must not be even vaguely provocative. But I could imagine Ben answering something like, “I don’t know. What are you doing here?” Not because he wants to challenge the officer’s authority, but just because he might think it amusing. In such a situation it is almost inevitable that the situation would escalate. Ben doesn’t know the script or understand exactly just how dangerous it is out there for him. Because Ben wouldn’t know the proper thing to say. Because Ben is black.

We know how dangerous it is out there for my nephew. I’ve watched the You Tube clips that you’ve seen. I’ve read the articles about Eric Garner and Michael Brown and Tamir Rice and others, so many others. We are living in a time of tremendous cultural stress. The force that supports divisiveness is colliding with the progressive force that supports unity. An innocent black child with a pellet gun is shot and killed by police in a nation with a black president and a black attorney general. Are we in this together or is it the good guys versus the bad guys?

As a Reform rabbi, I am heartsick over the pain and the suffering of the African American community and all people of color. Rabbi Rick Jacobs recently wrote on behalf of the URJ: “We support Attorney General Eric Holder’s federal investigation. Systemic change is needed, and state, local and municipal governments are key partners, especially working with police and community representatives, to begin the process of healing and strengthening that must be done… While our institutions need critical reform, this kind of change must also be addressed through reflection and commitment – from individuals and a diverse array of communities – to transforming what is wrong in America regarding race. The religious community can and must lead this transformation, and we are committed to playing a leadership role to move the conversation, and our country, forward.” http://tinyurl.com/pg4vsdh As a rabbi with congregants of color, I am more committed than ever to assure that our temple will always provide safe, loving space. If people are interested in that discussion, I would welcome it with open arms. As a rabbi with young men of color who belong to our temple, I want to do something to help them so as not to be crushed by this dialectic.

As Ben’s uncle? I worry so much. Our nation grows less interested in connections and more in sides. I love that young man and find it heartbreaking that such innocence and naïveté in his black skin is a dangerous liability. I don’t exactly know what I can do to help, but clearly something must be done. As the husband of a black woman and the father of a black son, New York City Mayor Bill DeBlasio, said: “People need to know that black lives and brown lives matter as much as white lives.” http://tinyurl.com/m88enl6

Shabbat Shalom,

rebhayim

Throughout the centuries people have come up with lots of reasons as to why bad things happen to us. One explanation is that it’s payback: “what goes around comes around.” Another is from the book of Job. Humans, the limited mortals that we are, cannot ever know the reason for our misfortune. We must take it on faith that there is a reason for everything. A third explanation for our misfortune is that we live in a random universe and sometimes bad things happen because that’s the way it goes.

Interestingly there’s not nearly so much thinking about why good things happen to us… Do we even need an explanation or is it simply enough to know that we get good stuff in our lives from time to time? Does performing a good deed necessarily mean that we will reap benefit from it? Sometimes, though we all know the phrase “No good deed goes unpunished”…

Our lives are continuously buffeted by all the things that happen to us and around us. We are overwhelmed by the velocity of every day, every hour. It’s easy in this world to lose track of the good things that sustain us.

Alan Morinis, a leading thinker in the Musar movement (about which you will be hearing much more in the months to come), writes: “…The very essence of gratitude lies in the heart …. An inner attitude or stance of thankfulness provides us with resources that help us face whatever we encounter in our lives. A grateful heart is a platform from which to reach out to take care of others as well as ourselves because this orients us toward the resources we have, not what we lack…”

But in order to attain a grateful heart we have to actually direct ourselves to think and yes, behave in a new way. We have to express thankfulness to feel it. Saying thank you from a grateful heart fills us up with even more joy even as it touches another. A significant part of our liturgy is all about thanking God. Directing our hearts to that task instead of mindlessly reading words connects us to the gifts of goodness we receive every day.

Thanksgiving is an opportunity to speak words of gratitude for more than just the great turkey dinner or the football game. It is the chance to gather one’s thoughts about the past year and to select a couple of things for which you want to give thanks. Maybe you’re comfortable thanking God for the love you feel from others. Maybe you don’t believe in God at all. This does not preclude your actually thanking the people around you at the table for what they bring to your life.

In a way Thanksgiving is like the other side of the spectrum of Yom Kippur when we spend our time asking for forgiveness. It’s time to share our gratitude. Would the world be a better place if people spent more time giving thanks for what they had rather than complaining about what they lack? Undoubtedly. Would we feel better about ourselves if we could acknowledge that we were the recipients of good things and not just hard knocks?

Next Thursday, look around your table and say thank you to the people who have made your life better. Look into your heart and give thanks for your breath, your vision, your mind. None of this is promised to us. We don’t “deserve” good health. We don’t “deserve” a good life. So say thank you.

Shabbat Shalom