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Jan 21 2012
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I Read the News Today

This past week a teacher from a local grade school pleaded not guilty in a West Roxbury District Court to charges of indecent assault and battery on a child under 14 and posing a child in a state of nudity. He also pleaded not guilty to related charges of possession of child pornography in Brighton District Court.  Anyone who reads the news is used to reading/hearing such stories.  The recent Penn State Jerry Sandusky scandal splashed around all kinds of salacious, shocking stories for days.

We may be used to shocking news stories involving inappropriate physical contact between adults and children, but we are hardly inured to them.  The sexual exploitation of children is so heinous that mention of it causes us to recoil in pure revulsion. The betrayal of trust, the psychological and physical injury, the cynical use of power and fear to intimidate the child victim – all these reasons and so many more make us feel sick and angry.

This story has some added dimensions for me.  Since I first heard mention of it on the radio, I’ve been reeling. Because the teacher in question taught one of my daughters at Underwood School for second grade.  Because the teacher in question is a bright, friendly young man.  Because the teacher in question was always the quintessential nice Jewish boy.  Because we had the teacher in question at our home for various Jewish holidays.

I feel utterly torn apart by this turn of events.  As a father, a rabbi – a human being for God’s sake! – I am unequivocally enraged by Mr. E’s conduct, and if he is guilty, I want him to be prosecuted to the fullest extent of the law. [By the way, I’m calling him Mr. E, the name by which he’s been known for years; I won’t use his full name because, quite frankly, it hurts me too much.]

But in addition to my rage and disgust, I have a deep sadness.  I always felt so happy to see Mr. E around town.  My daughter and her classmates had so much affection for him, and their feelings led me and almost all of the parents of his students to also feel positively disposed towards him.  He seemed to be such a good guy…

And there’s the utter paradox.  Mr. E was a good guy.  And at the same time, he engaged in behavior that was both immoral and illegal.  What does this mean?  Well, for one thing it means that we can never really know another person.  The human mind is capable of twisting itself into the darkest of places.  The private obsessions, the dreams and nightmares we live with can destroy us.  The enormous pull of addiction, the emptiness we can feel and what we may use to try to fill it… all of this can plague us endlessly.

My heart aches for Mr. E’s parents.  I can’t even imagine what it must feel like to see your grown child brought down so low.  They believe he’s innocent – I hope he is.  But reading the charges leads me to suspect that Mr. E is guilty.  And if so, that means Mr. E’s parents have to acknowledge how little they know their own flesh and blood.  And of course my heart aches for the victims, the scared, scarred children used and abused by Mr. E and others.

And so on this Shabbat I pray for justice and for mercy.  I pray for openheartedness and forgiveness.  I pray for strength as I continue to walk through this wild maze called Life.

Jan 13 2012
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What I Receive from the Black Church Experience

After a recent workout at the JCC, I showered, dressed, and entered the lounge area with my lunch.  I was alone and so had the full run of the television.  That meant I could surf the channels just the way I like to do and I would drive no one crazy.  So I spread out my meal and started clicking.  Within a minute or so I stumbled into the religious channels.  I stopped on one them: it was a black preacher giving a Bible lesson.  I don’t remember his name.  But I do remember that he had on a great suit, and that the church where he was preaching was beautiful.

The preacher’s clothing was nice, but hey, I have some nice suits.  And even though the auditorium sat 1500 people, we can seat a thousand for the High Holy Days.  What drew me in wasn’t even the preacher himself.  And I love the style of black preachers: the drama, the power, the charisma?  It drives me wild, and I could listen and watch all day.  The rhythm and the alternating gentleness and loud declaration remind me of good jazz.  In that regard, the extemporaneous mixed with the written is something I have chosen to emulate over the decades.

What drew me in was the congregation.  A PACKED auditorium of mostly black man and women over 45 (the kids and teens have their own simultaneous service/study in another part of the building; the session I watched was for the grown-ups).  They were exquisitely dressed and of course speaking up regularly, encouraging their preacher with “Amens” and “Yessir”, and “Halleluyahs” and the like.  But here’s the best part: everyone in that auditorium – EVERYONE! – had a Bible.  And they followed along, avidly taking notes.  I was so envious.

As I watched a man came in and sat down.  He looked at the tv and then he looked at me.  He sat quietly for a moment, perhaps scanning the room for the channel changer.  “Uh, Rabbi?  What exactly are you doing?”  “What am I doing?  I’m learning some Torah.”  The guy laughed.  “No, really.  This preacher is amazing!  And look! There must be 2000 adults learning with him.”  I think he got nervous, and being that this was not a tv show with commercials, he got up and left.  At least that’s what I assume.  I wasn’t paying attention to anything but the preacher, his congregation, and the Torah he was teaching.

Now look: I understand that the history of the African American religious experience comes from a very different place than the Jewish experience.  I know that our roots are very European and our worship style has one foot in Hasidism and the other in German Lutheranism, and maybe an arm in Litvak yeshiva formalism.  I know that men and women singing together and even sitting together are relatively new on the timeline of Jewish history.  I’m not advocating that we worship in the manner of the folks I watched on the JCC tv.  What I am saying is that we could learn a lot from that black preacher and his congregation of learners.  What inspires adults who work hard all week to go to church, personal Bible in hand, and really learn some Scripture?  What is the particular call of that community?  Is it the sense of connectedness?  Is it the sense of acceptance and safety?  The joy shared by the preacher?

I don’t really know what it is, but I want to think about this some more.  I want to learn how to bring more passion, more joy, more!

Shabbat Shalom

rebhayim

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Dec 23 2011
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Courage is not a Miracle, It’s a Choice

I know we talk the miracle of Hanukkah story. You know, the cruise of oil that contained only enough oil for one day lasted eight days? Well, as you may also know, the historicity of this miracle is questionable. There is obviously no ‘proof’, no hard core evidence that supports this story. This is ok, because the story, true or not, reminds us of the need for perseverance, for having faith in God even when the odds are all against us. It is actually the quintessential Jewish story of believing in God’s presence in the darkest of places: Jerusalem in 148BCE, Mainz in 1096, Barcelona in 1492, Kishinev in 1903, Berlin in 1933: these places and a thousand thousand more were scenes when the end felt very close. That we keep going forward, that we survive to rise to greater heights, is like a cruise of oil for one night only that cannot be extinguished.
Tonight as Shabbes comes I’m thinking about another story. Instead of recalling the miracle of the oil, I’d rather focus on the human effort behind our survival. Because as much hope and courage as we get from God’s presence, it is individual Jews and their prodigious efforts that enable us to ultimately triumph. It is Jews who have stated to the world, in the words of Tom Petty, who, while not Jewish, does state a very Jewish ethic: Well I won’t back down, No I won’t back down/ You can stand me up at the gates of hell, but I won’t back down./ I’m gonna stand my ground, won’t be turned around/and I’ll keep this world from draggin me down/ and I won’t back down.
There’s no miracle here, just hard work and faith that the future will be better than the present. The courage to go on comes from the thrum of life that God plants within us, but that we must tune into it in order to hear the sounds of freedom that are so inspiring. It’s that simple. And that hard. Maybe it’s like football: God calls the play but we execute it.
Enjoy Hanukkah and Shabbat. Listen for the call and get in there and play!
Shabbat Shalom and Hag Sameach,
rebhayim

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Dec 09 2011
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Prayer Critic

Last week we exhibited the artwork of three congregants. Either through subtle genius (Carol Miller) and/or the guiding hand of the Holy One, each artist’s work exists in its own rarified space. Howard Fineman works in photography: paper. Bette Ann Libby works in mosaic and sculpture: clay. Iris Sonnenschein works in quilts and tapestries: cloth. Paper, clay, and cloth. Three absolutely different media. If you mush them together you get a mess. But if you watch how our artists work with their chosen substances of expression, you get to see profound things happen; things like art.
What makes art good art is, of course, the foundational kernel of art criticism. Men and women have, for centuries, relied upon the judgment of others to help them decide a) whether or not they should see a particular play or go to a particular exhibit, etc., or b) once they’ve seen a particular play or exhibit, what exactly they saw.
Sometimes criticism is vital. There ARE complicated pieces of art or films that are more fully appreciated when seen through the prism of a scholar/educated observer. I truly benefit from the criticism of Roger Ebert, for instance. He understands every aspect of filmmaking and therefore has a more complete sense of how editing moves a film along. And it’s true that if he writes a negative review of a movie, I will definitely not go to the cinema to see it. Maybe a glance when it comes on tv, but I won’t spend theater money. Ebert, like any great critic, is a mentor, a teacher.
I also like good art criticism because I never learned anything in college or rabbinic school about art. At all. It’s a gaping hole in my education, so I need a good guide to help me contextualize it . What are all of those objects doing on the canvas in Renaissance painting? When Jackson Pollock painted Blue Poles, was he primarily composing or was he feeling? Do abstract artists know what it is they are going to create? Did John Coltrane hear a solo in his head before he played it?
I am all in favor of the critic as Seeing Eye dog, as canary in the coal mine of culture. The critic is the priest, the intermediary between the art and the beholder/listener. I’ve wondered about this model for contemporary praying. Sure in the old days we had priests who were our intercessors. But maybe it’d be nice to have a prayer critic or coach – and I include myself as a person who could benefit. Where to focus our words, how to use meditation in our prayers, what some other models of prayer may look like?
Our relationship to and with God can be so deeply intimate. But if we don’t think about that relationship, if we don’t nurture it, explore its various dimensions, then it remains superficial and unsatisfying. We can better define and nurture our spiritual lives, but not alone. The more we can learn about our relationship to God, the more deeply powerful prayer becomes. Perhaps just by asking each other a question or two about how we pray – or don’t pray – we can shake loose some perspective that we haven’t had before. Not critiquing prayer styles, or absence of prayer styles, but encouraging with words of respect and curiosity. I don’t know how we might accomplish this, but it occurs to me that sacred people already have the tools: consciousness, empathy, tradition, knowledge.
In fact if we think of the art of prayer, it may give us the courage to mold our prayers like clay, to stitch together our prayers like fabric, to compose our prayers like a photo. We become the critic and the artist all at once.
Shabbat Shalom
rebhayim

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Dec 06 2011
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My Own Domain

I hope you will come here to check out my long backlog of work as well as read my new stuff.  I left the blogger.com address because it literally became too hard for me to navigate it.  So stick around…

Dec 05 2011
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