Monthly Archives: June 2016

How Trump can win the presidency

29 Wednesday Jun 2016

Posted by in American Jewish Life, American Politics and Life, Ethics, Jewish Identity, Social Justice, Women's Rights

≈ 8 Comments

Though rabbis have to be very careful when speaking and writing in support of Hillary Clinton, which I have decided to do in this presidential election for the first time since I was ordained a rabbi in 1979 (note: rabbis cannot speak from the bimah to advocate for a particular candidate, nor can we use our institutional stationary to endorse a candidate, nor our synagogue email address, nor any official venue in our synagogues and religious institutions lest we cross a line and violate our synagogue’s non-profit status as a 501C3 entity), as individuals we can speak out as long as we indicate that we are doing so as individuals.

I have not endorsed candidates for any office before (local, state and national), though I have spoken out on moral and ethical issues as related to public policy matters, and will continue to do so.

I have been tutored by rabbis far wiser than me, however, that in the case when a candidate is clearly a bigot and whose policy positions are contrary to most every position the liberal American Jewish community advocates, that we must speak against such a candidate with every fiber of our beings. The American Reform movement through the Union for Reform Judaism (URJ) representing 1.5 million Reform Jews, our social justice commission and the Religious Action Center (RAC) in Washington, D.C. (our movement’s social justice arm in the nation’s capital) has passed and advocated for many years through many resolutions on matters effecting economic justice, the environment, civil society, civil rights, embracing the stranger and immigrant, fair criminal justice reform, sensible gun control, condemnation of racism, misogyny, mocking the disabled, homophobia, and advocating on behalf of diversity, religious pluralism, and Israel’s safety and sustenance as a Jewish and democratic state.

In one recent poll, though Hillary Clinton was ahead by 11 points against Donald Trump in a two-party two-person race, when adding the Libertarian Party and the Green Party to the mix she was ahead by only 1 point – a virtual tie. Those other two parties will be on most ballots, and so we who protest everything that Trump is and stands for ought not assume that Hillary Clinton will win the presidency based on polls that consider only the two large political parties.

I am not one of those ‘Bernie or Bust’ folks who hate Hillary Clinton to a degree that is, frankly, confusing to me.

Recognizing that Hillary could well be our next President, a year ago I decided to read as much as I could about her. I read three critical biographies as well as two of her memoirs, and I have come to the conclusion that she is a principled public leader, driven by her faith from childhood and her high school years in a church youth group, and as smart and experienced a public servant as there is or ever has been in our national life. She is no doubt flawed and she has made some mistakes, but so are we all flawed. We are not electing a Pope. We are electing a President.

It is also clear to me that Hillary learns from her mistakes, even if she is not as publicly forthright as I or others would like to see her be when she does so. I do believe that she is decent to her core.

I know and respect people who have been supporting Bernie Sanders, and I understand why and respect them for their passion as I respect Bernie for his larger vision. I have always found him honest and refreshing. I also know people who don’t like Bernie and hate both Hillary and Trump, and have decided in disgust to sit this election out to avoid feeling corrupted themselves in supporting a candidate they do not like. I do not understand the depth of venom with which these folks despise Hillary. It does not seem normal, warranted or healthy to me.

I would urge those who refuse to vote for Hillary Clinton to think again and consider that their sitting this election out or their voting for one of the other third and fourth party candidates in protest could result in the election of a President Donald Trump.

I am particularly worried about millennial voters (ages 18-36) who have flocked to Bernie Sanders in large numbers. Surveys indicate that young people do not vote at the same rate as older people, which is one of the reasons that the Congress and Senate are now run by right-wing Republicans. Had young people voted in state races in 2000 and 2010 when legislatures redistricted according to the national census and according to which parties were in power (gerrymandering is legal but corrupt) and had they voted in the mid-term congressional races (the last time Democrats earned 2 million more votes than Republicans and lost the House of Representatives anyway), policy coming out of Washington, D.C. would be very different today.

This is an election that cannot go to Trump, and it is up to all of us who see him for who and what he is to do everything we can to elect Hillary Clinton as President.

Important disclaimer and note: I speak only for myself and not for my synagogue, its members or any other organization.

Our nation of immigrants is a good thing!

26 Sunday Jun 2016

Posted by in American Jewish Life, American Politics and Life, Jewish History, Jewish Identity, Stories

≈ 2 Comments

I love people’s stories. They say not only much about them, of course, but also about the nature today of the liberal American Jewish community in all its diversity.

This past Shabbat was no exception. I officiated at the b’nai mitzvah of two outstanding young people; smart, curious, thoughtful, empathetic, and wise beyond their years. They not only chanted Torah and Haftarah beautifully, but they delivered divrei Torah (reflections on the Torah portion) that were sophisticated and poignant.

The bar mitzvah is a jazz and classical music trumpeter and trombonist, serious and witty, who not only is graced with a high IQ but has a high emotional IQ. His mother’s grandfather was a strong Zionist who was intimately involved in the establishment of the state of Israel. His father comes from Irish stock as well as from Mexican and native American heritage. His parents are comedy writers who met at Second City in Chicago.

The bat mitzvah reads everything she can get her hands on, is a creative, imaginative and thoughtful writer who has read publicly her work at Barnes and Noble and other book venues. Her father is a second generation American Jew who grew up in an orthodox family in Brooklyn, NY, and whose parents are Holocaust survivors from Polish and German background. Her mother is a first generation Armenian.

After the b’nai mitzvah read Torah and delivered their divrei Torah, I spoke openly to them about who they are as individuals and what becoming bar and bat mitzvah means today.

I first noted their family backgrounds saying:

“You represent the modern liberal Jewish community. Where else but here in the United States could your parents have found each other and then brought you into the world. You are together proof positive that immigration to America is good, that we are a nation of immigrants and that all this talk about the threat of the ‘other’ is nonsense. We benefit from the world wanting to live here and you are primary examples of why this is so.”

This was only the third time in my 37 years as a congregational rabbi that the congregation broke out into applause, clearly a reflection of how disturbed we are by the nativist, ethno-nationalist, exclusionary, bigoted, and hateful movement that has given rise to both Brexit and Donald Trump.

I was glad for our community’s response, and I pray that it may sweep over the dark side of the American psyche and bring this nation back to its fundamentally decent core in November.

The most humble man who ever lived – considered in light of the British decision to leave the EU

24 Friday Jun 2016

Posted by in American Jewish Life, American Politics and Life, Divrei Torah, Ethics, Musings about God/Faith/Religious life, Stories

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Introductory note: I was planning to post this d’var Torah before the British vote yesterday on whether to remain or leave the European Union, and decided to post it anyway after the fact because I believe that this decision to leave the EU will stoke an added measure of fear and uncertainty in the hearts of millions throughout the world, as is already reflected in the falling financial markets. This decision, for better or worse, will likely bring out the very worst in some people in Great Britain, Europe and the United States, as if we did not already have enough fear and anxiety as expressed in this presidential election campaign.

I know no completely righteous person in the sense that Rabbi Shneur Zalman of Liadi (1745-1812), the founder of Chabad Lubavitch who authored “The Tanya,” meant it. The Alter Rebbe (as he is known) delineates five moral/spiritual categories of people – the completely righteous (tzaddik gamur), the righteous (tzaddik), the completely evil (rasha gamur), the evil (rasha), and the “in-betweeners” (beinonim).

The vast majority of us are beinonim, and though many of us may strive to behave as a tzaddik (and even seem to be a tzaddik from the outside because of our kindness and good deeds), still the yetzer hara (the evil inclination) as opposed to the yetzer tov (good inclination) distracts and confuses us in our struggle to remain moral, kind, generous, empathetic, and spiritually pure.

The tzaddik gamur, the completely righteous person, is different from the ‘simple’ tzaddik in that still in the latter there is the taint of the evil yetzer. The complete tzaddik has successfully subsumed the evil yetzer in his/her heart and soul completely. Such a person is considered to be among the legendary 36 righteous human beings (i.e. lamed vavniks) whose presence in the world enables the world to survive. Such a person “pursues justice, loves compassion and walks humbly before God.” (Micah 6:8)

In this week’s Torah portion B’ha-a-lotecha (Numbers 8:1-12:16) it is written that Moses was “a very humble man, more so than any other man on earth.” (12:3) The Hebrew word for ‘humble’ is anav and appears only one time in the five books of Moses – here. Given Moses’ extraordinary career as prince, shepherd, prophet, liberator, chieftain, military leader, and judge, it’s legitimate to wonder what “humility” meant as it applies to Moses. After all, Moses was hardly a shrinking violet. He was neither self-effacing nor lacking in confidence, nor was he a pacifist. He killed an Egyptian, challenged Pharaoh, crushed a rebellion, killed through the sword 10,000 of his own people after the incident of the golden calf, spoke face to face with God, broke the divinely inscribed tablets, argued with and challenged God.

This passage from Proverbs offers a sense of the meaning of anivut: “The effect of humility is awe of God, wealth, honor, and life.” (22:4)

According to the Biblical and rabbinic traditions, humility is based in an awareness of one’s self that comes about as a function of our awareness of God, that is, our perception of the creative intelligent unifying power in and beyond the universe that transcends human comprehension and inspires awe and wonder, gratitude, generosity and love.

The Talmud and Midrashic literature categorically condemn arrogance and close-mindedness, the opposite of humility. Rabbi Yochanan said in Rabbi Simeon Bar Yochai’s name, “One who is arrogant is as though he worships idols.” (Babylonian Talmud, Sota 4b). Such a person is called a toevah – an abominator, someone who sees only him or herself and leaves no room for the Shekhinah, the Divine Presence.

A story is told of an American professor of religion who wished to meet a particular Buddhist monk. After the westerner’s long and arduous journey, the monk received him on a mountain top where he lived and welcomed him to sit quietly with him on his mat. Tea was brought and placed before the two men. The monk began pouring the tea into a cup – and he kept pouring until the tea overflowed the cup and into the saucer. The monk continued pouring the tea as it spilled onto the mat. At last, the professor could maintain his silence no more and said, “Master – what are you doing? Can’t you see that the cup is full and tea is pouring out everywhere?”

“Aha,” said the wise sage. “So too are you so full of your own ideas that there is no more room for anything new or different.”

Such is the nature of arrogance. It is closed, rigid and intolerant, presumptuous, prejudiced, fearful, and hateful, angry, self-centered, and nasty at its core. It is motivated by the yetzer hara (the evil impulse). The opposite is anivut, humility, which is motivated by the yetzer tov (the good impulse).

Our world and nation are in desperate need of this virtue. May it be nurtured in us all.

Shabbat shalom.

 

Why Bernie Avishai winces at the term “radical Islam”

21 Tuesday Jun 2016

Posted by in American Jewish Life, American Politics and Life, Israel and Palestine, Jewish-Islamic Relations

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I take seriously just about everything Bernard Avishai says and writes.

Bernie is an Adjunct Professor of Business at Hebrew University of Jerusalem, has taught at Duke University, the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), and Dartmouth College, and was director of the Zell Entrepreneurship Program at the Interdisciplinary Center Herzliya in Israel. A Guggenheim Fellow, Bernie holds a doctorate in political economy from the University of Toronto. Before turning to management, he covered the Middle East as a journalist. He has written many articles and commentaries for The New Yorker, The New York Review of Books, Harvard Business Review, Harper’s Magazine and other publications. He is the author of three books on Israel, including the widely read The Tragedy of Zionism, and the 2008 The Hebrew Republic. He lives in both Jerusalem and the United States.

Bernie doesn’t shoot from the hip. He knows what he is talking about, is honest, articulate, and wise. I am printing in its entirety his most recent article below because it is so important for us American Jews and so many Israelis to appreciate and understand, especially in this political season when fear-mongers and haters extrapolate awful events (i.e. the Orlando massacre) and judge the corrupted character of 1.5 billion Muslims.

Bernie explains why he winces when he hears the term “radical Islam.” Hopefully, the rest of us will wince along with him.

What Republicans Don’t Know About Islam

Posted: 20 Jun 2016 10:50 AM PDT

This is the week to say the things that go without saying. Mainstream Republicans—not just their Gorgeous George nominee, shock-radio echo-chamber, and Bibi cheerleaders—are mocking President Obama for speaking of terror and not “radical Islam.” The inference to be drawn is that Muslims, especially Arab Muslims, are predisposed to intolerance and violence, as if the Muslim religion is a subtle ideological toxin that can be managed in homeopathic doses, but is fatal full force. If we said “radical Islam,” presumably, then we’d be acknowledging the real danger, now suffered for the sake of political correctness.

For Muslims—so the argument goes—non-Muslims are infidels who must be either converted or killed. For Muslims, heaven beckons with sexuality (which is creepy back on earth), and the only law that counts is deadly, or maiming, and God-given. Terrorist acts, killing non-Muslims (or weak Muslims) at random, are, in this view, just Muslims at their most honest. The inference for action: strength, intimidation. We should carpet bomb ISIS, or send in the 101st Airborne, or leave Israeli settlers alone, or ban Muslim immigration “until we know what the hell is going on.” (Our side’s Bill Maher won’t go this far, but seems to suppose that, as long as mankind is ditching religion anyway, we should probably start with Islam.)

Now, the President has answered this claim about as well as it needs to be answered. The sociopaths want us to presume that they are cadres of the true Islam, much like Klan members in the sixties saw themselves as Christian crusaders, and, for that matter, the Red Brigades in the seventies saw themselves as “objectively” proletarian. Every religion has chilling texts, commandments, and supremacist claims that its adherents ordinarily ignore, suppress, or interpret into oblivion. The phrase “radical Islam” should offend us much like “Jewish extremist” applied to likes of, say, Yishai Schlissel, the maniac, a professed ultra-Orthodox, who stabbed six at a gay pride parade in Jerusalem last summer—and might have done much worse had he had access to an AR-15. Not every Jew has a little Schlissel struggling to come out. Omar Mateen was not a Muslim in the extreme.

But let’s assume that speaking of a religious culture is not just silly—you know, that we can extrapolate from the norms and practices of a religion to the expected political culture of a religious community. I have lived for much of my adult life in a city, Jerusalem, that is a one-third Muslim. I have spent months of days (going East to West) in Jordan, Egypt, Libya, and Morocco—let’s just say I have known a great many Arab Muslims. And when I hear Donald Trump, Marco Rubio, and others, insist on the phrase “radical Islam,” I wince, but also feel slightly bemused, sort of the way you’d feel around someone who speaks knowingly while getting things almost exactly backwards.

The Muslims I’ve have known, day-in, day-out, have a very abstract yet immanent sense of the divine, which leads them, not to any kind of fanaticism, but to an instinctive humility and acceptance of their fate. God is everywhere and nowhere, embedded in family love. Indeed, the family, and extended family, is an unrivaled preoccupation. Sexual mores mirror what Americans mean by “family values” (my oldest Arab friend in Jerusalem sent his daughter to a Mormon university in Utah); and the mosque takes over where fathers (and mothers) leave off. My Jerusalem Arab friends, reporting on some recent frustration, typically end their complaints with alhamdulillāh, praise be to God, and an embrace. A hope, or just the plan for a meeting, is accompanied by in’shallah, God willing.

This is a sense of family loyalty that is not necessarily extended to national claims. (I am reminded of nothing so much as my immigrant Jewish Montreal home, when I would visit my grandmother. There were few adult sentences that weren’t also prayers of a kind. Surrounding me were uncles, aunts and cousins. Every happiness was reported with Gott tzedank, “Thank God,” every plan or prediction with im yirtze ha’shem, “God willing.”) If anything, the practice of prayer in Muslim families, the visits and feasts of yearly festivals—all of these—breed in the bone a sense of obedience, propriety. They make commitment to honor and order, even political quiescence, far more likely than violence. As long as the home is safe, and family property is respected, there isn’t much debate about the specific public policies political leaders pursue. There is more concern for whether or not leaders are corrupt.

“That’s why, ironically, Arab Muslims have been so patient with authoritarian regimes and long periods of colonial rule,” my friend Bruce Lawrence, the veteran Duke University historian of the Arab world told me. “They may be enraged by insecurity to their families, disorder, or anything that undermines their honor, but they are less animated by transformative political ideologies. Inequalities are tolerated, but not humiliations.”

Like Lawrence, I sometimes marvel at the rugged patience and generosity my Arab friends exhibit, not their volatility. They admire Israel’s social safety net, as if a work of charity. On a personal level, generosity is the norm, even from total strangers. Once I was driving in Beit Jalla and saw a weathered old man carrying a basket full of succulent apricots. I stopped my car and pointed at his basket, asking where he got them. He opened my back door and poured half the basket’s contents onto the back seat. In Tripoli, a colleague invited me to his home, and his six-year-old daughter, seeing me for the first time, greeted me with a kiss. A few months ago, I brought my car early to the garage and found it empty, but for an Arab watchman. I turned to him officiously and asked when the mechanics would show up. “Why do you not first say, ‘Good morning?’” he scolded me gently.

I lost a step-sister and cousin to the terror of Abu-Nidal. Please don’t lecture me about the things warped people do; Arabs are members of the human race, which is about the worst thing you can say about them. Last year, there was a knife attack ten-minutes from our home, in the German Colony. A block away is the former Café Hillel, which was bombed in September, 2003. The main street, Emeq Refaim (The Valley of the Ghosts), is another café, Caffit, where two suicide bombers were foiled on two separate occasions. At the summit of the gentle hill overlooking the valley, near Terra Sancta, in the Rehavia quarter, another café, Moment, was bombed in 2002. Walk another ten minutes, into the city center, and you come to a pizzeria that was bombed twice. The nearby Ben-Yehuda Street mall was bombed. When I draw an imaginary circle of a couple of miles around our neighborhood, it encompasses the sites of five bus bombings.

None of these atrocities cancel the thousands of heartfelt encounters I’ve had with Muslim Arab neighbors, friends, and tradesmen. When I hear the phrase “radical Islam,” I remember to say “Good morning.”

This has just been published at Talking Points Memo

Exagoge – The World Premier of an Ancient Play – Review

19 Sunday Jun 2016

Posted by in American Jewish Life, American Politics and Life, Divrei Torah, Ethics, Musings about God/Faith/Religious life, Social Justice, Stories

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This original, provocative and thoroughly engaging theatrical production, “Exagoge,” is a play written and directed by the award winning playwright Aaron Henne (LA Weekly and SF Bay Area Theatre Critics Circle Award) and artistic director of Theatre Dybbuk. It is based on the first-ever recorded Jewish play by “Ezekiel the Poet,” likely written during the 2nd century, BCE. This is a 269-line composition telling the biblical story of the Exodus in the style of a Greek Tragedy.

Seven actors of Theater Dybbuk (Rob Adler, Jenny Gillett, Nick Greene, Julie Lockhart, Rebecca Rasmussen, Diana Tanaka, and Jonathan C.K. Williams) make up the ensemble cast. Ten African American and Hispanic teen-age singers and a percussionist of the Harmony Project’s Leimert Park Choir in South Los Angeles (Musical Director is Ken Anderson whose choirs have performed at the White House, Kennedy Center, in London, and Copenhagen) sing the original score by Michael Skloff, composer, arranger, conductor, and producer of musical theater, stage, film, and television (Michael’s credits include the theme song for Friends, “I’ll Be There for You,” and, with his son Sam the music of the Netflix comedy series, “Grace and Frankie”).

Henne’s script is multi-layered and textured, and the action shifts back and forth from the Biblical era to the contemporary world. Moses is played by all the actors using a mask that they pass between them, and we hear Moses’ inner thoughts, conflicts, challenges, fears, and prophetic visions as well as the feelings, thoughts and perspectives of his Midianite wife Tzipora and father in-law Jethro, Pharaoh, and others from both the ancient and modern worlds including the struggles of Vietnamese, Mexican, Syrian, Holocaust era and Russian Jewish refugees who, though escaping the violence and oppression at home, encounter hardship, quotas, racism and discrimination in the United States.

The pull of nationhood and religion is fraught with tension when the characters consider their familial and tribal bonds and loyalties. The questions “Who am I?” and “Where/what is home?” are ever-present.

After forty years living happily and serenely the shepherd’s life with his wife Tzipora and his adopted Midianite family (the most open hearted and welcoming characters in the play), Moses returns to Egypt on God’s command to free his people. He remembers (memory is a central theme in the play) being pulled from the river, being raised in the Pharaoh’s palace, killing an Egyptian taskmaster, fleeing for his life to Midian, being taken in lovingly by Jethro and his people, becoming a simple shepherd, encountering God out of the burning bush, re-entering Egypt, escaping with his people through the Sea of Reeds, and slaying 10,000 of his own people by the sword for their crime of apostasy after the Golden Calf betrayal.

Moses loses many of his people along the way, as well as former dear ones who no longer are of his immediate world.

Tzipora loves her husband just as Moses loves her, but she resists leaving her tribe, family and children, and she challenges Moses and her father Jethro who together proclaim the virtue of human freedom but are dumb and blind to the  subordination of women in tribal society.

Women play men’s roles along with the men, not the other way around. The identity of every actor shifts on a dime, and for 110 minutes you better be on your toes because the dialogue and exhortations are tightly and well-written, and rapidly delivered.

Exagoge is an intelligent play, one that makes you think and that pierces the heart. When I left, there was much to consider anew about both the ancient story of the Exodus and those same themes as applied to the contemporary world.

Michael Skloff’s music is haunting with no instrumental accompaniment except a rhythmic drum beat and the non-verbal singing of the teen choir. One of the actors suddenly breaks from her monologue and chants the Torah trope from the first chapter of Genesis creation story.

The visual effects and lighting in our Temple Israel’s new chapel, converted into a state-of-the-art theater as designed by Koning-Eisenberg Architects, are stunning, and the sound is strong and clear even for the hard of hearing.

The premier performance of Exagoge at Temple Israel of Hollywood was made possible by The Rosenthal Family Foundation and was produced as part of the Temple Israel of Hollywood Arts Program.

THE ARTS@TIOH

Creativity. Compassion. Connection. Community – These are the qualities with which a handful of entertainment luminaries founded Temple Israel of Hollywood in 1926. For almost a century, writers, actors, directors, artists, musicians, comics, craftsmen, agents, and producers have helped make Temple Israel a center for deep spiritual meaning, mass social activism and unwavering human connection – all infused with the greatest of artistic expression and creative talent. The TIOH Arts Program honors this tradition of service with continued presentation of Jewish arts programs for children in our congregation and across our city.

“Love is love is love is love is love is love is love is love” – and a prayer for the ages

16 Thursday Jun 2016

Posted by in American Jewish Life, American Politics and Life, Divrei Torah, Ethics, Health and Well-Being, Inuyim - Prayer reflections and ruminations, Jewish History, Jewish Identity, Musings about God/Faith/Religious life, Tributes

≈ 2 Comments

As I watched Lin-Manuel Miranda accept the Tony Award for best musical “Hamilton” in New York on Sunday, I was struck not only by the beauty of his sonnet but by the passionate effect of his eight-time repetition of that simple four-letter word – “LOVE”:

“…When senseless acts of tragedy remind us
That nothing here is promised, not one day.
This show is proof that history remembers
We lived through times when hate and fear seemed stronger;
We rise and fall and light from dying embers,
Remembrances that hope and love last longer
And love is love is love is love is love is love is love is love
cannot be killed or swept aside…
Now fill the world with music, love and pride.”

Love knocked this week upon a calcified door and walked through reminding us who we are and ought to be.

Thousands lined up to give blood. Restaurants brought food. Hands touched hands and eyes beheld eyes. Hearts melded into one in Orlando and throughout the land.

The destruction of life by the hateful assassin begets profound mourning among us all, and it stimulates the resolve of all decent people to resist the hate and fear spewed forth by the politician’s crass and heartless rhetoric.

The truth is that love eclipses hate every time.

It happens that in this week’s Torah portion Naso, there appears the oldest blessing in Jewish recorded history:

“May God bless you and keep you;
May God’s light shine upon you and be gracious to you;
May God lift up the Divine countenance upon you and grant you shalom – wholeness and peace.” (Numbers 6:24-26)

Known as the Birkat Kohanim, the blessing of the priests, it is at least 3000 years old. The oldest copy of this ancient text was unearthed in the City of David in Jerusalem and is estimated have been written down around 900 BCE.

Rabbinic tradition of later centuries developed a rich mythology about the use of this blessing. The midrashim say that these words were invoked by God when contemplating the writing of the Torah and the creation of the universe, when the first humans emerged from the dust and were infused with Divine breath, and when Moses received the Torah on Mount Sinai.

The Kohanim (priests) and many rabbis today raise their hands in the form of the Hebrew letter shin (the first letter of one of God’s names – Shaddai) and bless the congregation on Shabbat and holidays, at a brit milah and the naming of a baby girl, upon b’nai mitzvah, Jews by-choice, and marriage couples under the chuppah at their weddings.

This blessing acknowledges the creation of something absolutely new, that never existed before, a blessing of hope and faith, a hedge against cynicism and despair.

Rabbinic tradition requires that the priest (and rabbis today) say these words ONLY when they love the people and the community upon whom they invoke this blessing. If there is even one person present about whom the priest feels no love and/or bears animus, that priest must defer to another priest to say the blessing.

Lin Manuel-Miranda had it exactly right – “And love is love is love is love is love is love is love is love cannot be killed or swept aside.”

Leonard Nimoy internationalized the hands of the priests in an iconic gesture of shalom in his greeting as Mr. Spock in Star Trek with the accompanying phrase “Live long and prosper.”

Leonard fondly remembered going to shul on Shabbos in South Boston as a child with his grandfather who told him to cover his eyes when the Kohanim ascended the bimah and invoked God’s blessing upon the congregation.

Leonard asked me years ago why his grandfather told him to cover his eyes, and I explained that at that moment of blessing tradition says that the “Shekhina” (the feminine Divine presence) enters the congregation. Torah warns that no human being can glimpse the Divine presence and remain alive, and so we cover our eyes as does the priest under the tallit when saying the blessing, much as Indiana Jones did when the Ark of the Covenant was opened in Steven Spielberg’s film “Raiders of the Lost Ark.”

Leonard, as a gifted photographer, was inspired to embark on a project that he called “Shekhina” in which he photographed nude women in ethereal poses wearing the tallis and t’fillin. I have one of Leonard’s photos hanging in my synagogue study, and I’m inspired every time I look at it, and my love for this man is rekindled.

“Love is love is love is love is love is love is love is love cannot be killed or swept aside,” ever!

Shabbat shalom!

Political paralysis and confusion in Israel – 3 articles worth reading

15 Wednesday Jun 2016

Posted by in Israel and Palestine, Israel/Zionism, Jewish History, Jewish Identity, Social Justice, Women's Rights

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The following three articles describe well the paralysis in Israel relative to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, the meaning  of the inclusion of Avigdor Lieberman’s Yisrael Beytenu party in the ruling Israeli government coalition, and Netanyahu’s failure to act on an agreement forged between the Reform and Conservative movements, Women of the Wall, the North American Jewish Federations, and the ultra-Orthodox Chief Rabbi of the Western Wall.

  1. Forget Diplomacy. Both Netanyahu and Abbas Need Some Serious Therapy, Forward by Jane Eisner, June 14, 2016

Jane Eisner observes, “there is something deeply psychological happening here, a profound refusal to see the world as others see it, and to acknowledge the lasting harm that nearly a half-century of occupation is doing to both peoples. It’s painful to watch a nation I love rule a people who are suffering, and not to know how to persuade either of them to move beyond their state of entwined paralysis. The contours of a diplomatic solution have been known for years. What the United States, the Europeans and other advocates have not found is the effective psychological tool to ignite action. This is most true for the Israelis and especially Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, who has repeatedly found excuses to maintain and strengthen the occupation while denying the way it is diminishing Israel’s moral standing in the world and corroding the soul of its own people.”
http://forward.com/opinion/israel/342289/forget-diplomacy-both-netanyahu-and-abbas-need-some-serious-therapy/#ixzz4BYKTTHfv

  1. Bibi’s Gamble – Netanyahu’s double play in appointing an extremist defense minister may mobilize and unify the center, left, and soft-right against him – Jerusalem Report, by Leslie Suser, June 13, 2016

Leslie Suser, always a keen observer of Israeli politics, does not disappoint. This 2400 word analysis describes the ins and outs of the recent negotiations between the Prime Minister and Opposition leader Yitzhak Herzog resulting in a last minute Bibi switch from moderation to extremism in the appointment of Avigdor Leiberman as Defense Minister, a move which stunned Israel’s security and military establishment. Suser reviews not only the events leading up to the inclusion of Yisrael Beytenu in the government coalition thus making it even more right wing, but the political reaction by former members of the Likud who Bibi forced out of the government, and efforts to create a centrist block to bring down this government and run as a group against Netanyahu.
http://www.jpost.com/Jerusalem-Report/Bibis-Gamble-455255

  1. On the Western Wall Deal, Will Netanyahu Be a Hero or the Great Betrayer? Haaretz, by Rabbi Eric H. Yoffie June 06, 2016 – Israel’s prime minister hopes to escape a major confrontation with Diaspora Jewry over the Western Wall deal by using the same tactics that he always uses: Delay and deceit.

In light of the encroachment this week of the Chief Rabbi of Jerusalem in the new Southern Kotel Plaza meant as an egalitarian prayer space for Reform and Conservative Jews and Women of the Wall, the Prime Minister has a choice, and Rabbi Yoffie (the former President of the Union for Reform Judaism and now a columnist at Haaretz) lays out that choice in strong words that Netanyahu will certainly understand.

“Let’s imagine that Israel had a prime minister with some principles. I am talking about a prime minister who cared about keeping his word; who had genuine respect for all of Judaism’s religious streams; who knew that the only way to deal with Jewish religious bullies and blackmailers is to call their bluff; and who understood that Israel’s task is to strengthen all Jews, whatever their religious outlook, who are fighting to keep the idea of Torah alive. 

If Israel had such a prime minister, we might imagine him saying in a statement, following his meeting last week with leaders of the Reform and Conservative movements, that enough is enough: The compromise that his government had endorsed on prayer arrangements at the Western Wall would be implemented immediately and in its entirety.” 
http://www.haaretz.com/opinion/.premium-1.723440

 

Journeys into Judaism – Shavuot Truths in the wake of Terrorist Desecration

13 Monday Jun 2016

Posted by in American Jewish Life, Divrei Torah, Ethics, Holidays, Jewish History, Jewish Identity, Life Cycle, Social Justice, Women's Rights

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The Shavuot experience I am about to describe was taking place at precisely the time of the terrorist attack in Orlando. The contrast of our experience against that hate crime is stark and devastating. I am posting this reflection only 24 hours after the carnage as a way to counter spiritually, emotionally, morally, and Jewishly the desecration and destruction of life and community that terrorism and violence represents.

The three speakers, Jews by-Choice, at our Tikun Leil Shavuot celebration told our community that they do not feel that they had left anything behind when they converted to Judaism. Rather, Judaism had become already an essential part of their identity by the time they underwent formal conversion.

Some had been married to a Jewish spouse already for years once they converted, but they were already living a Jewish life at home and in the synagogue and identifying with the Jewish community and people.

Others had met the love of their lives and decided before marriage that they wished to create a Jewish family and convert.

One grew up in Salt Lake City with a Mormon background and roots in America reaching back to the days of the pilgrims.

Another was born and raised in Texas as a Roman Catholic.

A third came from a non-religious home in the Midwest.

Each was attracted to Judaism because of our tradition’s emphasis on critical thinking and openness to questioning our faith tradition’s ideas concerning  ultimate issues of life and death, faith and God. They loved our people’s commitment to family, our tradition’s emphasis on high ethical living and the value we place as a people in performing acts of loving-kindness, on caring for the most vulnerable, on social justice and tikun olam. They are inspired by our people’s great thinkers and activists – Rabbi Akiva, Rambam, Isaac Luria, Martin Buber, Rabbis Heschel, Kaplan, and Cook. They identify with our historic struggle with God, and our aversion to accepting by rote any religious dogma.

They spoke about their feeling fully accepted for who they uniquely are in our liberal Jewish community. They understood, appreciated and identified with our concerns about preserving Jewish particularism and advancing our universal aspirations, that we care for and take responsibility for the character of own Jewish people and the rights and dignity of the “other.”

As we reflected on the meaning of covenant as it manifested at Mt Sinai and throughout the writings of our sages, and expressed in the Book of Ruth, these Jews by-choice understood that at the core of our people’s covenant with God is love, and love, and love, and love, and love some more – and that true religion must bring people together and not tear them apart.

As I sat and listened to these moving personal stories, I was deeply moved and inspired. We broke into chevruta discussion groups of 3 and 4 people to reflect about the transformative and transcendent moments in our lives and about how those experiences changed us and moved us forward on our respective Jewish paths, I heard that these people loved having found a liberal Jewish community that embraces without judgment and with full acceptance who they are as men and women, LGBTQ and straight, the faithful and the atheist and agnostic, the young, middle years and old.

When we reconvened, I observed how very different Jewish identity is today as compared to a century ago, and how much more embracing it has become of the uniqueness of the individual, but also that today Jewish identity is not a given.

Whereas the immigrant generation of our parents, grandparents and great-grandparents felt in their kishkes that they were Jews, many liberal Jews today come to Jewish life not from the shtetls and the pale of European Jewish settlement, nor from tightly bonded Sephardic and Middle Eastern Jewish families and communities, but from outside the tradition altogether. Consequently, every Jew must make the choice to be and do Jewish, and that takes learning and active engagement with Jewish communal life.

The words of Ruth to her mother-in-law Naomi after the death of her husband and two sons, one of whom was married to Ruth, go to the heart of Jewish tradition: “Do not urge me to leave you or to return from following you. For where you go I will go, and where you lodge I will lodge. Your people shall be my people, and your God my God.’” (Ruth 1:16)

Ruth’s love and commitment to the devastated Naomi healed them both and clarified the nature of the covenant forged between God and Israel at Sinai and between each of us – that we are a people meant to love and embrace each other, to care for each other and about each other, and to create and nurture communities that are worthy to stand in God’s presence.

Note: I am grateful to my colleagues Rabbi Michelle Missaghieh and Rabbi Jocee Hudson who conceived of and promoted this Shavuot experience.

The Wilderness Within – Parashat Bamidbar and Shavuot

10 Friday Jun 2016

Posted by in American Jewish Life, Beauty in Nature, Divrei Torah, Ethics, Health and Well-Being, Holidays, Inuyim - Prayer reflections and ruminations, Quote of the Day

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We celebrate Shavuot on Saturday evening and Sunday this week. In the spirit of this holiday celebrating the giving of Torah, I offer from the literature of our people, ancient and modern, gleanings that consider the meaning of the wilderness as the site of the revelation of God and Torah.

“And God spoke to Moses in the wilderness of Sinai, from the tent of Meeting…” Numbers 1:1

“God transferred the Divine presence from Sinai to the Tabernacle, from the Sanctuary (Mishkan) of Adonai which God’s hands had established to the sanctuary which Israel had made. Adonai would henceforth speak to Moses from the tent of Meeting and indicate to Israel by means of the cloud when to journey and when to encamp. The Tabernacle was a mobile Sinai in the midst of them, the heavens and heavens of heavens (the holy place and the most holy place) transplanted and brought down to earth.” Rabbi Benno Jacob (1862-1945) – Reform Rabbi and Biblical Scholar, Germany

“One should be as open as a wilderness to receive the Torah.” Babylonian Talmud, Nedarim 55a

“Torah was given in the wilderness because cities are filled with corruption, luxury, idolatry, and other evils…to be pure and ready to receive the Torah, one must be separated from all the vices of the city.” Philo, On the Decalogue I

“There is a wilderness within each person, a desert where selfish desires rule, where one looks out only for one’s own needs. No person is ever satisfied in the desert. There is constant complaining about lack of food and water, the scorching hot days and bitter cold nights. Anger, frustration, disagreements, and hunger prevail. The Torah is given in the desert to conquer and curb the demonic wilderness within human beings. If human beings do not conquer the desert, it may eventually conquer them. There is no peaceful coexistence between the two…” Rabbi Pinchas Peli – Jerusalem Post, June 1, 1985, p. 17

“To a people whose entire living generation had seen only the level lands of Egypt, the Israelites march into this region of mountain magnificence, with its sharp and splintered peaks and profound valleys, must have been a perpetual source of astonishment and awe. No nobler school could have been conceived for training a nation of slaves into a nation of freemen[women] or weaning a people from the grossness of idolatry to a sense of the grandeur and power of the God alike of Nature and Mind.” Nachman Ran, the Holy Land, p. V-27

“Rabbi Nachman of Bratzlav…contrasts the sanctuary offered by wilderness to society’s corruption…in his depiction, in the story the Master of Prayer, societies have sunk one step below evil – into insanity. The story describes a series of countries, each organized around its own made obsession. In one, money is worshiped so totally that it has become the key to human identity: ‘Whoever had more money was a human being, and those who were very wealthy were considered gods.’ The master of prayer subversively penetrates these societies and draws people ‘out of the settled places,’ into the wilderness and a life of prayer and meditation…Prayer is the antidote to society’s obsessions because it alone has the power to lift consciousness out of the web of socially conditioned desires into a new matrix whose center is God.”  Rabbi Micha Odenheimer, The People and the Book – “To the Wilderness” – The Jerusalem Report, May 19, 1994, p. 35

“The wilderness is more than a physical location. B’midbar depicts a social wilderness, a human wasteland. This is the place where everything falls apart. It portrays a people wandering, without a shared vision, shared values, or shared words – leaders attempt to lead, but no one listens. The people of this wilderness, driven by fear and jealousy, moved only by hunger, thirst and lust, have no patience for God’s transcendent vision. This is a book of noise, frustration and pain. B’midbar may be the world’s strongest counterrevolutionary tract. It’s a rebuke to all those who believe in the one cataclysmic event that will forever free humans from their chains. It’s a response to those who foresee that out of the apocalypse of political or economic revolution will emerge the New Man. Here is the people who stood at Sinai, who heard Truth from God’s mouth – unchanged, unrepentant and chained to their fears. The dream is beyond them. God offers them freedom, and they clamor for meat…At the end of the book we arrive in the Promised Land – exhausted, depleted, defeated – B’midbar gives way to D’varim – “words” – shared words, shared values, shared direction. Moses talks; people listen. Moses leads; people follow – now shared vision – now dialogue and consensus – the key word of D’varim is Sh’ma – D’varim is a book of listening. This is the Torah’s message of hope, that nothing worth doing in life can be accomplished without crossing the midbar. But the midbar isn’t the last word. There is a promised land of D’varim.” – Rabbi Eddie Feinstein, “The Wilderness Speaks,”  Modern Men’s Torah Commentary, edited by Rabbi Jeffrey Salkin, pps. 201-2013

Why the Kotel Agreement is so important to Israeli democracy and World Jewry

03 Friday Jun 2016

Posted by in American Jewish Life, Ethics, Israel/Zionism, Jewish History, Jewish Identity, Musings about God/Faith/Religious life, Social Justice, Women's Rights

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This past week the leaders of the Israeli and American Reform and Conservative movements and Women of the Wall met with Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Jewish Agency Director Natan Sharansky to emphasize how frustrated North American and Israeli non-Orthodox Jewry, including Women of the Wall, are with the delay in moving forward on constructing an egalitarian prayer space at the Southern Kotel Plaza following the January government agreement with all parties including the Chief Rabbi of the Wall that this would occur.

As the story below in the Forward indicates, the PM is committed to this plan, but the ultra-Orthodox members of his government want a renegotiation of the agreement they already signed only five months ago.

This is first and foremost a story about free and equal rights for Reform, Conservative, Women of the Wall, and non-Orthodox Jewry at the holiest site in Judaism. But it is more importantly a story about religious liberty in the state of Israel. The Muslim and Christian communities enjoy that freedom, but ironically we Jews do not. To date, all religious rights have been dominated by the ultra-Orthodox. The Orthodox has every right to observe Jewish tradition according to halacha and their interpretations, but they do not have the right in a democratic state to tell other Jews how to practice their Judaism.

The great strength of Jewish religious community in the United States is that each religious stream does what it wishes according to its interpretation of the tradition without government interference. It is not (yet) the case in Israel. And this is what the struggle at the Kotel is really all about.

Reform and Conservative Rabbis still do not have the right to marry and bury Jews in the Jewish state. Our religious streams receive no funds from the government, except for specific projects, as do the Orthodox to the tune of a billion shekels annually. The right of Israelis to marry civilly is also not given, and so hundreds of thousands of Israelis who do not wish to live as Orthodox Jews must leave the state to marry their beloved.

Many in the Knesset understand what is at stake, but they are by and large NOT in the ruling right-wing coalition, and so they do not have the numbers of Knesset members necessary to open Israeli democracy wider to accommodate the religious rights of all Jews there.

The Kotel agreement is symbolic and real at the same time. It is a message to the American Jewish community that we are one people that shares with Israel a strong personal and communal relationship to the people, land and state, and a spiritual and religious connection to our people’s holiest sites.

Prime Minister Netanyahu and JAFI Director Sharansky understand this, and they are to be commended for striving for years to bring about this agreement at the Kotel that would insure the rights of the non-orthodox communities to pray at our holiest site without interference from the ultra-Orthodox rabbis. Now is the time to move forward notwithstanding the threats from the Haredi community. Their political courage, will and understanding of the legitimate needs and desires of world Jewry hang in the balance.

See the Article in the Forward: “Benjamin Netanyahu Says He’ll Keep His Promise, Orders New Prayer Podium for Western Wall” http://forward.com/news/israel/341777/benjamin-netanyahu-says-hell-keep-his-promise-orders-new-prayer-podium-for/#ixzz4ATXvkhJD

The Israeli government will order a permanent bimah , the elevated platform on which a prayer leader stands, to be built in the southern section of the Western Wall holy site as a signal to American and Israeli non-Orthodox movements that it is serious about implementing its plan for an egalitarian prayer space there. The gesture comes at a time when American and Israeli non-Orthodox leaders are fuming over the plan, which was approved by a government cabinet in January, but has stalled amid ultra-Orthodox protest.