Category Archives: American Jewish Life

A Dark and Heavy Cloud of Memory Hovering Over Budapest’s Jews

16 Sunday Nov 2014

Posted by in American Jewish Life, Book Recommendations, Jewish History, Jewish Identity

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I have been acutely aware of the Holocaust since I was a young child in the mid-1950s and first saw on my parents’ bookshelf a copy of Life Magazine’s photo display of the liberated death camps.

When I became a young adult I read and studied everything I could get my hands on about the Shoah, and over the decades I have seen countless documentaries and feature films on that singular tragedy in Jewish history.

However, when my synagogue group recently visited Central Europe, I felt overwhelmed in a completely new way by the dark clouds of memory that hovered everywhere we visited. I have found myself rethinking what it means to be Jew even now after all these years. Our journey to those places where Jewish communities once thrived but are no more, standing on the streets and in the plazas where Nazis deported and murdered Jews, where Hitler screamed at the masses and brown shirts burned books, where magnificent synagogues are now empty or were destroyed, and stood in the room where the Nazis decided on the Final Solution changed me. It will take some time, I suspect, for me to understand fully how.

Of the three major cities we visited – Budapest, Prague and Berlin (we also spent time in Bratislava and the Terrezin Concentration Camp), I was most depressed by what we found in Hungary. Despite its rich Jewish history dating back 1800 years and its once large Jewish population in Budapest and the surrounding country-side, today only 80,000 Jews remain in the city, and most are highly assimilated and elderly.

The Jewish community estimates that there are today only 8000 members of Jewish communal organizations, and only 500 Jews are active and regularly attend synagogue. There are, however, 1000 Jewish students attending Jewish schools. It is those children who offer the only real hope of any kind of Hungarian Jewish revival – such that it is.

Modern Hungarian Jewish history is well-known. Once the Germans invaded Hungary on March 19, 1944, Adolph Eichmann quickly and efficiently coordinated the liquidation of all the Jews in the Hungarian countryside. Within a year the Nazis, in alliance with Hungarian anti-Semites, murdered 700,000 of Hungary’s 800,000 Jewish population. Indeed, between May and July, 1944, the Nazis sent 12,000 Jews daily to the gas chambers all but extinguishing what had been the largest Jewish community in Central Europe.

During this onslaught some Jews escaped the terror in the country-side by flooding into Budapest, thus swelling that population to between 250,000 and 280,000 Jews. Though a few famous statesmen tried to save Hungary’s Jews (e.g. Raoul Wallenberg of Sweden, Charles Lutz of Switzerland, and the Italian businessman Giorgio Perlasco – along with the Jewish attorney Rudolph Kastner), Hungarian Jews were essentially doomed.

The Hungarians were among the most vicious anti-Semites in Europe. In Budapest, the Nazis stepped aside and allowed the fascist Hungarian Arrow Cross militiamen to do much of their dirty work. The Arrow Cross shot ten to fifteen thousand Jews in the ghetto and marched hundreds to the Danube River where they ordered the Jews to remove their shoes and then shot them into the waters that turned blood-red.

The “Shoe Memorial” of 50 bronze shoes, conceived by film director Can Togay and the sculptor Gyula Pauer, marks the place at the river’s edge just three hundred meters from the ornate Hungarian Parliament building where the crime was done (for photos, see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shoes_on_the_Danube_Bank). It is noteworthy, as well, reflective of Hungary’s refusal to take responsibility for its role in the Holocaust, that the plaque at this site mentions only “victims,” not “Jewish victims” of the Arrow Cross militia.

At the end of the war only 100,000 Jews were left alive in Hungary and only because the Nazis took over Hungary so late and didn’t have time to finish what they set out to do before the allies won the war. The Soviet Communists promised an end to all forms of discrimination thus giving Jews a measure of hope, but the persistence of Hungarian anti-Semitism resulted in 20,000 Jews (one fifth of the city’s Jewish population) fleeing Hungary during the 1956 uprising.

Today, the Hungarian government is right-wing and authoritarian. Though it officially condemns anti-Semitism, it has done little to stop anti-Semitic skinhead activity and the publication of anti-Semitic books and periodicals. Hungary has not at all processed the past and takes no responsibility for the crimes it committed, as has Germany. Nonetheless, the writer Eli Valley (see below) notes that since the end of the Communist era in 1989 all religious groups, including Hungary’s Jews, have experienced a kind of revival.

There are two small Progressive Reform Jewish communities in Budapest (see http://www.reformjudaism.org/budapest-culture-community) and there is a Jewish Studies program at the Central European University in Budapest that has taken on an important role in revitalizing Jewish studies in the former Soviet bloc (http://web.ceu.hu/jewishstudies/).

For those who remain, there are only a few options to live a Jewish live in Budapest. However, most Hungarian Jews now wonder whether, indeed, they even belong in Hungary. Our Jewish guide told us that if conditions worsen she, her teen-age son and husband (a journalist who was fired when he reported candidly on the government’s right-wing authoritarian policies) will certainly, despite generations of their family having lived in Hungary, leave.

For a detailed description of the Hungarian Jewish community and its history, see the excellent work The Great Jewish Cities of Central and Eastern Europe: A Travel Guide and Resource Book to Prague, Warsaw, Cracow, and Budapest, by Eli Valley (publ. Aaronson, 2005). It is out of print, but can be purchased through Amazon.

Only the Guilty are Guilty – Reflections About Germany Then and Now on Kristallnacht

09 Sunday Nov 2014

Posted by in American Jewish Life, Jewish History

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Only the guilty are guilty.

I am not one who accepts the Biblical transference of guilt from one generation to the next (i.e. “…punishing the children for the sin of the parents to the third and fourth generation of those who hate me.” Exodus 20:5, 34:7, and Numbers 14:18).

Innocent children should not have to suffer punishment for the evil deeds of their parents.

My predecessor at Temple Israel of Hollywood, Rabbi Max Nussbaum (z’l), who served the liberal Jewish community of Berlin from 1936-40, would often travel the Jewish world and report back to our community about what he learned.

Max had become an international Zionist leader, and one year the West German government invited him to visit Germany. He returned and told our community, “It is not yet time for us to buy Volkswagens.”

My trip two weeks ago with 30 congregants to Budapest, Prague, Terrezin, and Bratislava was deeply moving and disturbing, yet in some respects also hopeful. (In future blogs I will offer more reflections).

I had visited Germany for the first time in 1969. As a college student, I crossed by train from Austria through East Germany into West Berlin, and then I walked through Check-Point Charlie into East Berlin and back. Thirty years later, in 1999, I visited yet again.

In each of the first two trips, I suspected any German over the age of 40 in 1969 and 70 in 1999 of being implicit in the murder of 6 million Jews and millions of others (e.g. Romas, homosexuals, Catholics, communists, the elderly, children, disabled, and infirm). I felt exceptionally uncomfortable spending any money in Germany at that time.

This time, I saw few people walking the streets over the age of 85 who might have been suspect, though the elderly I did see may have been Russian Jews who settled in Berlin in the last 25 years since the FSU’s dissolution.

This time as well, I was struck by how deeply Germany has taken responsibility for the crimes against Jews and humanity perpetrated by the Nazi generation. Memorials to the victims and museums commemorating those events are everywhere. The large Holocaust Memorial and museum, designed by architect Peter Eisenman and engineer Buro Happold, and located walking distance from the Brandenburg Gate, is a powerful statement of memory in the very heart of Berlin (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Memorial_to_the_Murdered_Jews_of_Europe).

The Berlin Jewish Museum, designed by architect Daniel Libeskind (http://www.jmberlin.de/main/EN/04-About-The-Museum/00-about-the-museum.php) is also a moving record of past and present Jewish life in Germany.

And there are other museums that highlight Nazi terror and former Jewish life. We visited the Wannsee Conference Center (now a memorial) where Nazi leader Reinhard Heydrich and the top leadership of the SS formalized plans to murder all Jews in German-occupied territory and beyond (the total was 11 million).

We visited the Berlin-Gruenwald Train Station (“Track 17 Memorial”) which between 1941 and 1945 was one of the major sites of deportation of the Berlin Jews to the ghettos of Lizmannstadt and Warsaw, and the camps at Terrezin and Auschwitz.

Of all the memorials in Berlin, however, the most powerful to me are the more than 40,000 brass-topped cobblestones (stolperstein – from the German “stumbling blocks”) created by German artist Gunter Demnig, who has installed these small memorials at the front entrance of the residence where a Holocaust victim last lived or worked before being deported. On each cobblestone Demnig stamps the details of the individual – the name, year of birth, the fate, the dates of deportation and death, if known. (see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stolperstein).

German school children visit all these sites as part of their curriculum and learn of Nazi crimes. Indeed, today Germany is the hope of Europe. Jews are more welcome there than in most other European countries.

US Ambassador to Germany John Emerson (friends to a number of us from his years living in Los Angeles) met with us at the American Embassy just meters from the Brandenburg Gate for more than 80 minutes. He described candidly a Germany that is not only a very close ally to the United States despite NSA eaves-dropping on German Chancellor Angela Merkel, but of Israel as well. He affirmed that there is little if any significant anti-Semitism in Germany, but cautioned against becoming complacent.

Despite this, I felt everywhere the ghosts of murdered Jews. On this anniversary of Kristallnacht 76 years ago today, I am grateful to the people and government of Germany for the t’shuvah they have sought to make.

I am grateful, as well, to the state of Israel for being our people’s refuge and strongest defense.

And I am grateful to the United States for being a nation where Jews and every other minority and religious community can live and thrive unfettered.

I came across a moving poem by Kenn Allan remembering Kristallnacht (a term, by the way, that was coined by the Nazis – lit. “Night of Broken Glass” – and not by Jews. Jews call November 9, 1938 “The Day of the Pogrom”). See – http://kennallan.com/poems/time/kristallnacht.html

Zichronam livracha. May the memory of the righteous be remembered for a blessing.

Congressman Henry Waxman – An American Hero

09 Sunday Nov 2014

Posted by in American Jewish Life, American Politics and Life, Ethics, Health and Well-Being, Israel/Zionism, Jewish History, Jewish Identity, Social Justice

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Few in the history of the United States Congress have so positively impacted the lives of millions of Americans and changed the way the US does business as has Congressman Henry Waxman, who leaves office January 2nd after serving in the House of Representatives for forty years.

Henry has served the district of my congregation for most of that time, and this past Shabbat evening hundreds in our community came to honor him and express our collective gratitude for his life-time of service not just to us here in Los Angeles, but to the nation as a whole.

Henry is a strong and principled man. His Jewish values have guided him from his earliest years growing up in Boyle Heights, and he believes that good government can overcome any entrenched power that eclipses the public’s interest and bring important benefits to people all over the country.

One must wonder, however, in light of the current dysfunction of our federal government, how he has been able to be so remarkably prolific as a legislator. I believe he has succeeded for many reasons. Henry is legally and politically skillful, keenly intelligent, moral, savvy, patient, persistent, perseverent, and blessed with a quick wit and disarming sense of humor.

When Henry entered the California legislature as a young man, and then Congress in the post-Watergate years (1974), he also took seriously the challenge of mastering the legislative process. He became an expert in the health care system and the science of the environment, as well as a thoughtful advocate of the American-Israel strategic relationship. Henry also mastered the budgetary process and devoted himself as both a majority leader and then minority leader to government oversight. He reached out across the aisle and successfully included Republican co-sponsors in all legislation he authored (one of the secrets to his legislative success), except one, the Affordable Care Act, which frustrated him because so many of the ideas incorporated in the bill had been suggested by Republicans.

Five years ago Henry gave me a copy of his memoir The Waxman Report, (still available from his local office) a title drawn from his family’s early east Los Angeles newspaper called “The Waxman Reporter.” His book is a chronicle of the challenges, successes and failures that he faced in his 40-year congressional career and in the California legislature, and is a veritable guide in how to be effective as elected public servants.

Most members of Congress would be thrilled to claim success in shepherding one or two bills into law. Henry’s record of accomplishment is one of the most expansive and distinguished in the history of the House of Representatives. Here is a partial list of what he has succeeded in bringing into law:

• He challenged Big Tobacco, forced a showdown with the CEOs of all the major tobacco companies, shined a light on the threats to the health and well-being of millions of Americans by emphasizing the addictive character of nicotine and its many health risks, the tobacco companies’ deliberate marketing of cigarettes to children, their manipulation of the nicotine level in their products, the number of consequent deaths, and the drain on the America’s health care system;
• He passed bills to ban smoking in restaurants and on domestic airplanes;
• He passed the Clean Air Act limiting toxic air emissions thereby protecting the ozone layer of the atmosphere, limiting the release of cancer-causing toxic emissions and other hazardous air pollutants thus saving tens of thousands of lives;
• He expanded Medicaid coverage for the poor and elderly;
• He funded the first government-sponsored HIV/AIDS research;
• He passed bills lowering drug prices through generic alternatives thus saving the American taxpayer trillions of dollars;
• He fostered the development of hundreds of new drugs to treat rare diseases (Orphan Drug Act);
• He got nutritional labels placed on food packaging (Nutrition Labeling and Education Act; Dietary Supplement Health and Education Act);
• He passed laws to keep food free of pesticides (Food Quality Protection Act);
• He cleaned up the nation’s water supplies (Safe Drinking Water Act);
• He held hearings on steroid use in Major League Baseball resulting in the Clean Sports Act;
• He established federal standards for nursing homes to protect the elderly from abuse and neglect;
• He sought to stop taxpayer waste, fraud and abuse in areas from Wall Street to Hurricane Katrina clean-up, and to the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.

Henry Waxman has been as effective as any legislator in the last century of the American Congress. He succeeded because he and his staff were always prepared, always smarter and more skillful than his opposition and the most powerful special interests. No one ever intimidated him.

All the while, Henry attended to his district. Recently, a woman told me that she had approached Henry after her husband got sick as a consequence of his army service in the first Gulf War. He had lost his health insurance, the family had gone bankrupt and was on the verge of losing their home. He eventually died, but Henry saved this woman’s home from dispossession.

His support for the security of the state of Israel and for the liberation of Soviet and Syrian Jewry, distinguishes Henry as well in late 20th century Jewish history.

Henry is blessed with an extraordinary wife and life-partner, Janet, who is as smart, sophisticated, insightful, astute, refined, and decent as he. Her support, counsel and partnership with Henry have not only served him well, but also our nation. Together, they have a wonderful family and are deeply committed and educated Jews.

My wife Barbara and I consider Henry and Janet Waxman as dear friends. As they begin a new stage of their lives together, I wish them good health, joy with their children and grandchildren (note: Henry is the only sitting member of Congress who has three sabra grandchildren), and their many friends.

Despite Henry’s retirement from Congress, something tells me that America has not heard the last of Henry Waxman. He has still much to contribute to the nation, and I suspect he will do so with his characteristic intelligence, passion and skill.

May Henry Waxman’s legacy of service to our nation be the standard against which all current and future members of Congress be evaluated.

The Jewish Vote in Mid-Terms – No Significant Change Polling Reveals

06 Thursday Nov 2014

Posted by in American Jewish Life, American Politics and Life, Israel and Palestine, Israel/Zionism, Jewish History, Jewish Identity, Social Justice

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Despite the successes of the Republican party in these mid-term elections resulting in Republican majorities in both the House and Senate, polls suggest that American Jews (representing 2-3% of the voting public) have not shifted in our attitudes and policy preferences over the last three congressional elections.

I participated today in a national J Street conference call featuring the Founder and President of J Street, Jeremy Ben-Ami, J Street’s Political Director, Dan Kalik, and Jim Gersten, a well-known and veteran pollster who conducted surveys on election night with 800 representative American Jews.

The following points were made:

1. The American Jewish vote is still a rock-solid Democratic constituency. 70% of American Jews voted for Democrats suggesting that efforts by those on the political right to score points by continually attacking President Obama in his relationship with the State of Israel did not resonate with Jewish voters.

2. 84% of American Jews support a reasonable deal with Iran in current discussions that would permit Iran to have use of nuclear power for civilian purposes as well as continual in-depth international inspection of Iranian nuclear sites.

3. 80% of the American Jewish community supports a two-state solution to the Israel-Palestinian conflict in theory. 77% support a two-state solution when details of an agreement are spelled out.

4. 57% of the American Jewish community gives President Obama a positive  approval rating, 16% greater than the American community as a whole. American Jews give the Republican Congress 18% approval and Republicans a 71% unfavorable rating.

5. 85% of American Jews support active United States involvement in seeking an Israeli-Palestinian two state solution. 72% of American Jews support the US publicly disagreeing with Israeli and Palestinian positions. However, if the US would publicly disagree only with Israel, 48% would approve as opposed to 52% who would disapprove, suggesting that American Jews do not like Israel being singled out unfairly for criticism.

6. 80% of American Jews still support a 2 state solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict despite this summer’s Gaza War.

The three panelists were asked what they thought President Obama would now do relative to foreign affairs having lost both houses of Congress. They reasoned that little will be done on the domestic front, but as other past presidents have focused much of their time on foreign affairs in their final two years in office, they expect the Administration to do the same.

Despite the current tensions between Israel and the Palestinians, a chief concern of the Obama Administration has always been that solving the Israeli-Palestinian conflict serves American interests in the Middle East. It is very possible, therefore, that the President will re-launch a new peace effort, despite well-known personal antipathy between President Obama and Prime Minister Netanyahu.

7. 53% of the American Jewish voting public favors Prime Minister Netanyahu, about the same as we favor President Obama.

8. When asked if Bibi’s policies have helped or hurt the US-American strategic relationship, 21% of American Jews say that it has not hurt the relationship; 40% say it has harmed the relationship; and 40% say it has had no effect. [Note: The figure that 40% believe that Bibi’s policies and treatment of President Obama have hurt the US-Israeli relationship is stunning in the history of American Israeli history. These statistics suggest that whereas American Jews respect the office of the Israeli Prime Minister, we do not necessarily respect his views, policies and behavior towards the American Administration.

In this election, J Street endorsed 95 candidates for the House and Senate and raised $2.4 million for races representing by far the largest single source of pro-Israel funds in the nation’s capital. Of the 95 races, 77 J Street endorsed candidates won their contests including both Democrats and Republicans. Candidates endorsed by J Street agree to advocate for a strong US-Israeli relationship and American engagement in advocating for a two-state solution to the Israel-Palestinian conflict.

A concluding thought: For Democrats, a certain amount of despair has accompanied this mid-term election. That being said, the results may be the very impetus the President needs to achieve foreign policy goals that include Iran, ISIS, Ukraine, and the Israeli-Palestinian Conflict. If that is the case, then this mid-term will not have had a negative effect on achieving important American foreign policy goals.

For all the polling data, see J Street’s website home page http://www.jstreet.org and follow links.

“The Pew Survey Reanalyzed: More Bad News, but a Glimmer of Hope” – A Must- Read for Liberal Jews

04 Tuesday Nov 2014

Posted by in American Jewish Life, Jewish History, Jewish Identity, Uncategorized

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In the next few blogs I will reflect on my recent travels with 30 of my congregants to Budapest, Prague, Terezin, Bratislava, and Berlin.

In a word, this was a trip of memory. The Nazis succeeded in wiping from the face of Central and Eastern Europe not only the Jewish people but Jewish life itself. Though some Jews remain in Hungary, the Czech Republic and Germany, and these three countries, to varying degrees, are honoring the memory of the murdered victims, there is meager evidence of vibrant Jewish life there, and it is questionable whether there is a meaningful Jewish future for those Hungarian, Czech and German Jews who are struggling valiantly to recreate Jewish communities.

Lest we think, however, that we here in the liberal American Jewish community have it made, a new analysis was published this week in the monthly on-line journal of Jewish thought “Mosaic” by demographers Jack Wertheimer and Steven M. Cohen who reanalyze last year’s Pew survey of the American Jewish community especially with regards to the state of the liberal Reform and Conservative movements  and the increasingly large portions of the unaffiliated.

Wertheimer’s and Cohen’s reanalysis is must-read for all rabbis, educators, Jewish leaders and synagogue boards, as well as the affiliated, non-affiliated, and intermarried families as a veritable wake-up call concerning Jewish identity and Jewish continuity in America, if the trends uncovered in this Pew Survey are to be believed and taken seriously.

Intermarriage, falling Jewish birthrates, large numbers of Jews remaining single, growing Jewish illiteracy, and dwindling congregations are facts that are dramatically affecting liberal American Jewish self-identification.

That being said, there are still effective responses that can reverse these trends including deeper adult and child education, Day School and family education programs, Jewish summer camp experiences, youth and college programming, and trips to Israel.

The article “The Pew Survey Reanalyzed: More Bad News, but a Glimmer of Hope” can be accessed at http://mosaicmagazine.com/essay/2014/11/the-pew-survey-reanalyzed/

I suggest passing this article around to your rabbis, educators, and synagogue boards, as well as to your friends, children, grandchildren, and those who are intermarried but feel strongly about Jewish continuity in their families.

An Israeli Reform Rabbi’s Response About Bibi Not Being Interested in a Two-State Solution

15 Wednesday Oct 2014

Posted by in American Jewish Life, Ethics, Israel and Palestine, Israel/Zionism, Jewish History, Jewish Identity

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The Reform Rabbinate has a private list-serve on which 2500 rabbis world-wide talk with each other about everything from contemporary religious and ethical challenges within Jewish tradition, Israel and our lives as rabbis in Jewish communities around the world.

I read these postings because I want to know what my colleagues are thinking. I often post remarks myself. One such posting was my blog from earlier this week entitled: “Two Veteran Journalists Raise Alarm Bells about the Direction of the Israeli Government.” (Monday, October 13) Ron Ben Yishai (Yidiot Achronot) and J.J. Goldberg (Jewish Forward) concurred that the Israeli government is no longer pursuing a two-state solution with the Palestinians.

I post below a response by a colleague on our list-serve who holds a very different position from mine on the meaning of the journalist’s revelation. I do so not only because his response is so clear, but it is refreshingly civil which, sadly, is not always the standard in the larger Jewish community.

I continue to receive nasty and personal attacks to my postings from people who first question my motives and my heart as a Jew and Zionist, my understanding of the situation, and then seek to slash and burn the messenger (i.e. me or anyone who holds such positions) because they disagree with the message. I never post their comments because they are insulting and degrading and don’t deserve to be posted.

I end this blog with my own reflection about the consequences of assuming the absolute worst about the Palestinians, which my colleague clearly does. I do not believe, according to polls and discussions I have had with Palestinians, that he is correct, but rather that the Palestinians, though guilty of much, also have reasonable and compassionate people (polls indicate that this is the majority of the Palestinian population) who want a state of their own and to live peacefully along-side Israel in an end-of-conflict two-state solution.

“Morei ve-rabotai,

Unusual for me, I thank John Rosove. He has called our attention to two smart observers – Ron Ben Yishai and J.J. Goldberg, who deserved to be listened to. Because they’re right, and it’s way past time the rest of the world – at least our world – woke up to the reality of what’s happening here.

What is happening here is that it is becoming more and more apparent that what was supposed to be the foundation of our policy vis-a-via the Palestinians, the two states for two people, is a dead idea. It never was alive, actually, and there had never been one shred of evidence that one of the sides ever really believed it. Certainly not Arafat and Abu Mazen or anybody else on the Arab side; they have not for one single moment recognized the legitimacy of our existence. But rather glorified murder, honored suicide bombers, killed more than 1000 Israeli citizens, named streets after martyrs, taught 3 generations of hatred to kindergarten kids, etc.

The Israeli side had one great believer, Shimon Peres, (whose track record has been spectacularly wrong for the past 50 years of his post-Ministry of Defense career) followed by a trail of intellectuals, a Prime Minister who got dragged into signing those dreadful, failed Oslo Accords, and a current Prime Minister who is smart enough to make all the right speeches and the right noises about 2 states because that’s what the world out there (the ones who pay a lot of the bills) require. While he knows as well as anybody that two states, if it was ever a live idea (it wasn’t), is a recipe for disaster. Need that spelled out? In shorthand: the PA on the West Bank means Hamas on the West Bank means rockets on the airport. Anybody having trouble understanding that is invited to write in and I will try to help out.

So it seems that John Rosove and I have the same information but two opposite emotional reactions. He sees the death of the Two-State Solution as a disaster; I see it as the best news I have heard in months!

Though the Palestinian Authority has not recognized the “Jewish state of Israel” (I have written about this before), they have for two decades recognized the existence of the state of Israel. Many informed observers believe that after all the other issues are settled (e.g. borders, refugees, Jerusalem, settlements, security, water, etc.) that this last demand of the current Israeli government that the PA recognize the “Jewish state of Israel” (no Israeli Prime Minister ever demanded this before PM Netanyahu) would be agreed to.

I’m reminded in thinking about the views expressed by my colleague and me of what Nelson Mandela once said:

“Part of being optimistic is keeping one’s head pointed toward the sun, one’s feet moving forward. There were many dark moments when my faith in humanity was sorely tested, but I would not give myself up to despair. That way lays defeat and death.”

Chag Sameach!

When Hearing An Ambulance Siren & Thoughts About Healing

12 Sunday Oct 2014

Posted by in American Jewish Life, Ethics, Health and Well-Being, Inuyim - Prayer reflections and ruminations, Life Cycle, Quote of the Day

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Following Kabbalat Shabbat services this past week a young woman, Hannah, asked me a question that had never been asked of me before. She wanted to know what blessing was appropriate to say when hearing an ambulance siren.

Hannah explained that she worried about the well-being of the individual for whom the ambulance was intended even though she had no idea who it was, and she wanted to be able to call upon whatever powers that be (e.g. physical, emotional, mental, and spiritual) that could possibly help the individual survive and cope with his/her ordeal.

The shortest prayer in the Hebrew Bible immediately came to mind – “El na r’fa na la – Please God heal her!” (Numbers 12:13) Moses had offered this five-word blessing on behalf of his sister Miriam after she had become leprous, and the Torah relates that Moses’ blessing was efficacious in Miriam’s healing.

Judaism understands that the human being is an integrated whole including body, mind, heart, and soul, and that all belong to God. As God’s “partner” in creation, Judaism obligates us to help others heal from injury and illness. (see Healing and the Jewish Imagination: Spiritual and Practice Perspectives on Judaism and Health, edited by Rabbi William Cutter, Jewish Lights, 2007)

I have written a Guide called “On Healing and Recovery” as part of a Transitions & Celebrations series of Jewish Life Cycle Guides that is available on the Temple Israel of Hollywood, Los Angeles website –

http://www.tioh.org/images/Worship/ClergyStudy/on%20healing%20and%20recovery.pdf 

In this guide I respond to many “Frequently Asked Questions” about recovery and healing and what to do and not do when someone becomes ill. I list relevant Jewish laws and traditions concerning the mitzvah (commandment) of bikur cholim (visiting the sick), as well as a glossary of relevant Hebrew terms and concepts and a list of resources for further inquiry.

I offer here a few reflections drawn from Jewish and world literature on the theme of healing:

“Rabbi Chiyya was suffering, and Rabbi Yochanan gave him his hand. Rabbi Chiyya was lifted.” (Babylonian Talmud, B’rachot 5b)

“I go to nature to be soothed and healed, and to have my senses put in order.” (John Burroughs)

“In the end, medicine will always be about one patient and one physician [or nurse] together in one room, connecting through the most basic of communication systems: touch. In an age of breathless innovation, this system is almost antediluvian. But medicine simply cannot be automated beyond this point.” (Danielle Ofri, MD, PhD – in Jewish Stories From Heaven and Earth: Inspiring Tales to Nourish the Heart and Soul, Edited by Rabbi Dov Peretz Elkins, p. 47)

“Abayei said, when a person comes out of a privy, that person should say: Blessed is God who has formed us in wisdom and created in us many orifices and many cavities. It is obvious and known before Your throne of glory that if one of them were to be ruptured or one of the blocked, it would be impossible for a person to survive and stand before You. Blessed are You that heals all flesh and does wonders.” (Babylonian Talmud, B’rachot 60b – Also in Asher Yatzar, a prayer in the morning liturgy)

“The Torah gives permission to the physician to heal; moreover, this is a mitzvah and it is included in the mitzvah of saving a life; and, the physician withholds such services, that person is considered a shedder of blood.” (Shulchan Aruch, Yoreh Deah 336: 1)

“It is a positive rabbinic commandment to visit the sick, comfort mourners and serve in a funeral escort.” (Maimonides, Mishnah Torah)

“God’s word is the Source of all true life. Know and understand it. The word can heal your soul and unite it with its Source.” (Rabbi Nachman of Bratslav)

“Rabbi Abba son of Rabbi Hanina taught: The one who visits a sick person, takes away 1/60 of that person’s pain.” (Babylonia Talmud, Nedarim 39b)

“A man too busy to take care of his health is like a mechanic too busy to take care of his tools.”
(Spanish proverb)

“When one helps another, both gain in strength.” (Ecuadorian proverb)

“May the One who dwells in this place comfort you.”  (A message inscribed on Kings Gate in Jerusalem)

“The soul is healed by being with children.” (Fyodor Dostoyevsky)

“Be a lamp,
or a lifeboat,
or a ladder.
Help someone’s soul heal.
Walk out of your house like a shepherd.” (Jalaluddin Rumi)

“Sickness is a separation from God – Healing is returning to God.” (Shirley MacLaine, Out on a Leash)

“For with God there is steadfast kindness!” (Psalm 130:7)

10 Friday Oct 2014

Posted by in American Jewish Life, Beauty in Nature, Divrei Torah, Ethics, Health and Well-Being, Inuyim - Prayer reflections and ruminations, Jewish Identity, Musings about God/Faith/Religious life, Quote of the Day

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Sukkot so often is associated with ‘doing.’ The first thing observant Jews ‘do’ after Yom Kippur, the most ascetic holyday in the Jewish calendar, is get back to work and build sukkot. Beyond the doing, of course, is much meaning that gives the holyday its character, power and appeal.

The Sukkah

There’s a machloket (controversy) in the Talmud about what a sukkah represents. Rabbi Akiva said that it represents the booths our people lived in during the 40 years of wandering, thereby recalling the years of exile and suffering experienced by the Israelites who, despite God’s beneficence (per Rabbi Akiva), wanted to return to the Godless Egypt and attach themselves to the false physical comforts based in brick and mortar, as if there were any.

Rabbi Eliezer ben Hyrcanus disagreed saying the sukkah represents the ananei kavod (Clouds of Glory – i.e. God) that hovered over the people en-wrapping them with God’s self like a tallit, and providing them with food, water, protection, and safe passage in the desert wilds. The Clouds of Glory were a physical reminder of Divine-nearness that enabled the people to develop trust and faith in a redeeming God without fear.

We seduce ourselves into believing (per Rabbi Akiva) that any house, with its thick walls, gates and alarm systems, can guarantee safety. And so, the sukkah becomes our “house” during this season to remind us of our fragility, impermanence and the limits of the material.

Sukkot comes each year to break us of our illusions and to emphasize that real protection lies within God’s arms. This is the spiritual message of the sukkah, and it’s there that we live for seven days under the t’sach, God’s canopy, a sukkat shalom.

Our bodies are like a sukkah as well, a vessel within which the indwelling presence of God (i.e. the soul) abides. We know, especially as we age, that our bodies are not forever. They break down; we get sick and frail; and we die.

Our homes can so easily be knocked down by earthquake, tornado and storm, just as our bodies and the sukkah are subject to time’s vagaries.

Kohelet

The megilah (scroll) we read on the Shabbat of Sukkot is Kohelet (Ecclesiastes) and it emphasizes this theme of human impermanence and fragility. Kohelet says: “Havel havelim amar Kohelet – havel havelim hakol havel!” – ‘Utter futility, said Kohelet, Utter futility, all is futile!’” (Ecclesiastes 1:2)

A better translation of havel is “vapor.” We feel it one moment, and the next it dissipates much like Abel, whose Hebrew name was also “Havel,” for he left no trace when his brother Cain murdered him.

Most often we attach far too much importance to things – our home is important – our job is important – certain possessions are important – we’re important – everything feels important because we’re attached to, identify with and treat our possessions and self-made identities as extensions and reflections of ourselves, but the truth is that over time nothing tangible or created by human beings is ultimately important – “All is vanity,” like vapor dissipating leaving no trace.

That’s the disturbing side of life, and Sukkot reflects ultimate truths about the limits of materiality and the eternal nature of the spirit. The other side of the holyday, thankfully, empowers us because tradition calls us to rejoice in the very things that we know are impermanent which, like us, are the manifestation of divinity too.

The Four Species

The arba minim (the four species), the lulav, etrog, hadas and aravah plants, represent different aspects of the natural world. They symbolize also different kinds of Jews, the Jewish people as a whole, the oneness of humankind, and God’s all-encompassing unity.

And so, in this z’man simchateinu, this “time of our rejoicing,” we leave our homes and return to nature and the earth. We become more aware of what’s around, above and below us, and we become even more aware of who and what we are.

Universalism

Sukkot carries a deeply universal message. It’s not just for Jews – it’s for non-Jews too. We know this because in the Talmud 70 sacrifices were brought to the Temple during Sukkot, representing the 70 known nations of the world at that time (Bavli, Sukkah 55b). This festival is for the entire world, for everyone everywhere on the planet.

Redemption

Pesach, Shavuot and Sukkot is a triad of Biblical festivals celebrating three kinds of p’dut, redemption.

Pesach’s p’dut celebrates our people’s liberation from Egyptian bondage.

Shavuot’s p’dut celebrates our receiving Torah.

And Sukkot’s p’dut celebrates our redemption from ourselves, especially from the finitude and impermanence of our lives.

In Psalms (130:7-8) we read:

Yachel Yisrael el Adonai
Ki im Adonai ha-chesed
V’har’beh i-mo p’dut;
V’hu yif’deh et Yisrael mi kol a-vo-no-tav.

O Israel, hope in God
For with God there is steadfast kindness
And great redemption is with the Eternal;
And God will redeem Israel from all its wrongs.

Shabbat Shalom and Chag Sukkot Sameach.

Beware Pundits Who Make Sweeping Ignorant Statements About Islam

07 Tuesday Oct 2014

Posted by in American Jewish Life, American Politics and Life, Ethics, Jewish History, Jewish-Christian Relations, Jewish-Islamic Relations

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People with microphones and computers who think they are experts as they cherry-pick scriptural verse from the Hebrew Bible, New Testament or Quran, observe evil behavior of those who claim their respective religious text as authority, and then make outrageous claims about the nature of the other’s religion ought to pause before saying or writing anything. We who listen should change the channel immediately or delete such drivel from our computer screens.

The rise of ISIS, Al Qaida, the threats of a nuclear Iran, Hamas’ brutality, and the brutality and extremism in many African and Middle Eastern countries have given rise to pontifications and pronouncements by people who don’t know what they are talking about when it comes to the interplay of history, religion, politics, power, and human avarice. Their generalizations and cherry-picking of facts feed fear of the “other”, do harm to the good name of vast numbers of Muslims, Jews and Christians, destroy civil discourse, polarize people who otherwise would have much in common, and represent an assault on the truth.

“Fox News” is perhaps the most serious offender, but so are other media outlets whose “commentators” obsessively focus on religion as a principle culprit in world violence instead of more complex historical forces and simple greed and avarice.

I am attaching two articles by my friend and colleague, Rabbi Reuven Firestone, Professor of Medieval Judaism and Islam at HUC-JIR in Los Angeles (from the “Forward” and “Jewish Journal”), who I trust as a bona fide scholar of Islam and Judaism. I know enough about Judaism and Christianity (I am not a scholar of the latter) to know that the general points he makes in these two articles are true and important for all of us when thinking about the rise of radical Islamic groups around the world.

http://blogs.forward.com/forward-thinking/206518/no-pamela-geller-the-quran-is-not-anti-semitic/

http://www.jewishjournal.com/opinion/article/bennett_and_weston_the_politics_of_scapegoating

High Holiday Sermon Themes 5775 — The Meaning of Love – The State of the Jewish World – Soul Hunger – Never Forgetting

06 Monday Oct 2014

Posted by in American Jewish Life, American Politics and Life, Divrei Torah, Ethics, Holidays, Israel and Palestine, Israel/Zionism, Jewish History, Jewish Identity, Musings about God/Faith/Religious life, Stories

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I have posted the four sermons I delivered on Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur this season at Temple Israel of Hollywood. For those interested, they may be accessed by clicking the titles below:

Their titles and themes are:

“Love is the Only Road” – Erev Rosh Hashanah – I consider the many kinds of love and the yearning to belong that animates all. I focus on two powerful true stories that evoke what is core to the human condition.

“For Jews Despair is Not An Option” – Shacharit Rosh Hashanah – I consider four themes – Post-Gaza War – The Rise in anti-Semitism in Europe and Scandinavia – The Rise in Extremism, Racism and Hate within Israel and the American Jewish Community – And our Relationship as American Jews to the State of Israel.

“For What Do Our Souls Really Hunger?” – Kol Nidre – Reflections on Judaism’s understanding of what constitutes wisdom, strength, wealth, and honor in contemporary American western culture and thoughts about what the human soul really craves.

“Why I Don’t Want to Die” – Yizkor – Based on a conversation with my 97 year-old mother who is legally blind, nearly deaf and suffering from dementia but at times lucid enough to express her deepest fear in dying.