Category Archives: Book Recommendations

When Religion Turns People into Murderers

12 Tuesday Jan 2016

Posted by in American Jewish Life, American Politics and Life, Book Recommendations, Divrei Torah, Israel and Palestine, Israel/Zionism, Jewish History, Jewish Identity, Jewish-Christian Relations, Jewish-Islamic Relations, Musings about God/Faith/Religious life, Social Justice

≈ 1 Comment

“When religion turns [people] into murderers, God weeps.”

So begins Rabbi Jonathan Sacks in his important new book (publ. 2015) “Not in God’s Name – Confronting Religious Violence.”

This rich volume is a response to those who believe that religion is the major source of violence in the world, that when humankind abolishes religion the world will become a more peaceful place.

Not everyone, of course, interprets religion this way. Yes, there are violent streams to be found in each of the fundamental texts in Judaism (Tanakh), Christianity (New Testament) and Islam (Qoran), but he writes: “Religion itself teaches us to love and forgive, not to hate and fight.”

He challenges all faith traditions to rethink their respective truths: “As Jews, Christians and Muslims, we have to be prepared to ask the most uncomfortable questions. Does the God of Abraham want his disciples to kill for his sake? Does he demand human sacrifice? Does he rejoice in holy war? Does he want us to hate our enemies and terrorize unbelievers? Have we read our sacred texts correctly? What is God saying to us, here, now?”

At its core, Rabbi Sacks affirms that religion links people together, emotionally, behaviorally, intellectually, morally, and spiritually so as to develop a sense of greater belonging, group solidarity and identity. Most conflicts have nothing to do with religion when understood this way. Rather, conflicts are about power, territory, honor, and glory.

Rabbi Sacks describes dualism as the primary corrupting idea within the three monotheistic traditions. It’s easier, he says, for people to attribute suffering to an outside evil force and not as something inherent within God and basic to the human condition. Seeing the world as “Us” vs “Them” and Good vs Evil may resolve inner angst and complexity, but it’s a false resolution of conflict. Taken to its extreme, fear of the “other” leads to hatred and violence, and when justified by faith results in “altruistic evil.”

“Pathological dualism does three things. It makes you dehumanize and demonize your enemies. It leads you to see yourself as victim. And it allows you to commit altruistic evil, killing in the name of the God of life, hating in the name of the God of love and practicing cruelty in the name of the God of compassion. It is a virus that attacks the moral sense. Dehumanization destroys empathy and sympathy. It shuts down the emotions that prevent us from doing harm…. Victimhood deflects moral responsibility. It leads people to say: It wasn’t our fault, it was theirs. Altruistic evil recruits good people to a bad cause. It turns ordinary human beings into murderers in the name of high ideas.”

Rabbi Sacks reflects on the history of the Jew as scapegoat and the role that antisemitism has played as a reflection of the breakdown of culture: “The scapegoat is the mechanism by which a society deflects violence away from itself by focusing it on an external victim. Hence, wherever you find obsessive, irrational, murderous antisemitism, there you will find a culture so internally split and fractured that if its members stopped killing Jews they would start killing one another. Dualism becomes lethal when a group of people, a nation or a faith, feel endangered by internal conflict.”

Rabbi Sacks sites the bizarre story of Csanad Szegedi, a young leader in the ultra-nationalist Hungarian political party, Jobbik, which has been described as fascist, neo-Nazi, racist, and antisemitic. One day, however, in 2012, Szegedi discovered he was a Jew and that half his family were murdered in the Holocaust. His grandparents were survivors of Auschwitz and were once Orthodox Jews, but decided to hide their identity.

Upon learning of his Jewish past, Szegedi resigned from the party, found a local Chabad rabbi with whom to study, became Shabbat observant, learned Hebrew, took on the name Dovid, and underwent circumcision.

Szegedi’s understanding of the world changed completely. Rabbi Sacks explains that “To be cured of potential violence towards the Other, I must be able to imagine myself as the Other.” Before Szegedi’s conversion, he could not empathize with the “other,” the stranger. Now he had become the stranger, the despised Jew.

Rabbi Sacks looks carefully at all the stories of sibling rivalries in the book of Genesis, and explains that God appreciates each child differently and for each has a blessing. The world as conceived in the Hebrew Bible is not a zero-sum game. The struggle for power, position and ultimate Truth is false. Whereas love characterizes relationships within a tribal unit, justice is the demand for humanity as a whole – and both can and must co-mingle thus allowing for individual/group identity and the greater human family.

Rabbi Sacks addresses his book to all the faith traditions, but most especially, he says, to the moderate Islamic world that shares with us our Jewish religious values, and he calls upon them to stand up against ISIS, Hamas, Hezbollah, Iran, and other purveyors of fear, intolerance, hatred, and violence.

It would have been worthwhile for Rabbi Sacks to ask moderate Israelis and the liberal Jewish community abroad to imagine what it is like for Palestinians to live under the Israeli military administration in the West Bank on the one hand, and to ask Palestinian moderates to imagine living with the constant threat of extremist Islam to destroy the state of Israel and the Zionist enterprise on the other. Perhaps, if more would do that, to step into the shoes of the “other,” a two-state solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict might come about more quickly.

Dr. Martin Luther King & the Jewish Community – Then and Now

28 Wednesday Jan 2015

Posted by in American Jewish Life, American Politics and Life, Book Recommendations, Ethics, Jewish History, Jewish Identity, Jewish-Christian Relations, Social Justice

≈ 1 Comment

This week I was interviewed by German Public Radio for a story on the Jewish community’s relationship with the civil rights movement as a consequence of my synagogue’s celebration last week of the 50th anniversary of Dr. King’s appearance in our congregation.

The role of Jews in the movement has been raised recently as well after the release of the film “Selma” and the omission of Rabbi Abraham Joshua Heschel’s image in the front row of leaders near Dr. King in the Selma to Montgomery march of 1965.

The film, of course, was not about Jews nor should it have been. However, Rabbi Heschel’s absence was a significant omission and could have easily been otherwise. I suspect that the film-maker was unaware of the significance of the Jewish role in the movement generally and Dr. King’s relationship with Rabbi Heschel specifically.

German Public Radio had no idea of the prominent role Jews played in the movement either, and so when their reporter, Kirsten Zilm Dunn, joined us at our celebration, she recognized that an important story needed to be told in Germany, as did her superiors in Berlin.

For the record, the Jewish role in Dr. King’s life and the movement as a whole was substantial. Dr. King counted Jews among his closest allies and he identified strongly with the historic experience of the Jewish people against oppression since the Biblical Exodus. He was openly supportive of the Soviet Jewry movement, of Zionism and the state of Israel, and he opposed anti-Semitism as it gained momentum in the African American community.

The relationship between Dr. King and Jews was reciprocal. However, the Jewish community’s engagement with the civil rights movement was complex.

The majority of the Jews who went south to help blacks, who demonstrated in their own communities on behalf of civil rights, and who gave money to the civil rights movement were neither rabbis nor Orthodox Jews. Most activist Jews were not religious. They were unaffiliated students, lawyers and others whose activism was based in the Jewish ethos of pursuing justice.

One half to two-thirds of all whites in the civil rights movement were Jews. Leaders of mainstream Jewish organizations (i.e. American Jewish Committee, B’nai B’rith, the Reform movement’s Union of American Hebrew Congregations, the Conservative movement’s Synagogue Council of America) railed against segregation and Jim Crow laws.

Here are a few of the most important Jewish leaders to back Dr. King:

• Jack Greenberg was head of the NAACP Legal Defense Fund;
• Rabbi Maurice Eisendrath, as President of the UAHC, supported the Montgomery bus boycott;
• Morris Berthold Abram, President of the AJC, helped passed laws against racism in the UN;
• Rabbi Jacob M. Rothschild, of Atlanta’s “The Temple,” preached against racism early on;
• Rabbi Israel Dresner was a Freedom Rider  and one of the Tallahassee Ten;
• Stanley Levison, a lawyer, was among Dr. King’s closest friends who spoke with him every day;
• Rabbi Richard Hirsch, the founder of the Religious Action Center of Reform Judaism in Washington, D.C., was a Freedom Rider and offered RAC offices to Dr. King whenever he was in Washington;
• Rabbi Arthur Lelyveld of Cleveland was clubbed in the south;
• Rabbi Joachim Prinz, President of the American Jewish Congress and a refugee from Nazi Germany, spoke at the 1963 march on Washington;
• Many young Reform rabbis were arrested at St. Augustine.

Most significantly, Rabbi Abraham Joshua Heschel and Dr. King were kindred spirits since the moment they met in 1963. Rabbi Heschel was considered the civil rights movement’s Jewish conscience, and Rabbi Heschel regarded Dr. King as a modern-day prophet whose voice equaled that of the Prophets of Israel, a sign that God had not forsaken the United States.

Not all Jews, however, were in favor of the movement. Many southern Jews were frightened to put themselves on the line and preferred neutrality. Dr. King criticized those who supported the movement in principle, but refused to become activists from fear.

As time passed, Dr. King lost influence with many in the black community as Malcolm X and the black power movement preached violence and anti-Semitism.

In 1967, polls showed that 47% of American blacks subscribed to anti-Semitic beliefs as opposed to 35% of whites. When Dr. King spoke against the Vietnam War in 1967, despite his close collaboration with LBJ leading to the Voting Rights Act of 1965, not only did the Johnson Administration and the FBI’s J Edgar Hoover’s turn openly against him, but many Jews distanced themselves as well.

Still, American Jews supported the civil rights movement and the non-violence of Dr. King’s religious and political agenda. Rabbi Heschel remained close to Dr. King and was the only rabbi to deliver a eulogy at his funeral.

Unfortunately, over time the close relationship between Jews and blacks deteriorated. Yet, the American Jewish community remained liberal on civil rights and has voted Democratic by wide margins in all presidential elections since World War II. Jews remain the most liberal voting bloc in the nation behind the African American community. The Black Congressional Caucus and Jewish members of Congress still work closely together on matters of justice, civil rights, civil liberties, poverty, anti-Semitism, and racism.

In 1958, Dr. King told the American Jewish Congress, “My people were brought to America in chains. Your people were driven here to escape the chains fashioned for them in Europe. Our unity is born of our common struggle for centuries, not only to rid ourselves of bondage, but to make oppression of any people by others an impossibility.”

Our shared story is hardly finished, as the celebration at my synagogue so clearly demonstrated.

Source: “Shared Dreams – Martin Luther King, Jr. & The Jewish Community”, by Rabbi Marc Schneier. Publ. Jewish Lights. 1999.

What Really Happened at Lydda in 1948? Ari Shavit and His Critics

23 Sunday Nov 2014

Posted by in Book Recommendations, Ethics, Israel and Palestine, Israel/Zionism, Jewish History, Jewish Identity, Stories

≈ 1 Comment

Ari Shavit’s “My Promised Land” is arguably the most important book to come out of Israel in the last twenty-five years (see my review from January 14, 2014 – https://rabbijohnrosove.wordpress.com/2014/01/14/the-most-important-book-to-come-out-of-israel-in-years-my-promised-land-the-triumph-and-tragedy-of-israel-by-ari-shavit/.

A number of Israeli scholars, however, have questioned Shavit’s characterization of what happened at Lydda during the 1948 War of Independence. Based on interviews Shavit conducted with the brigade commander and other eye-witnesses, the author concludes that the killing of 250 Palestinian men, women and children by Zionist troops was a necessary tragedy in the young state of Israel’s history:

“Lydda is our black box. In it lies the dark secret of Zionism. The truth is that Zionism could not bear Lydda. From the very beginning there was a substantial contact between Zionism and Lydda. If Zionism was to be, Lydda could not be. If Lydda was to be, Zionism could not be.” (p. 108)

Many of Shavit’s critics disagree. After reading the articles below (I am grateful to my friend Rabbi Uri Regev in Jerusalem for forwarding them to me), I am left with significant questions: Was Lydda really a “massacre” or a tragedy of war?” Were there 250 dead, or was the number closer to 100, or even less? What actually happened at Lydda and why?

The historian Benny Morris says that many Arabs were compelled by Israeli troops to flee their homes and villages, and many others fled from fear of what their own leaders claimed would happen to them should Jews take over their villages. He says that the evidence does not show the intentional creation of a massive refugee problem designed ahead of time by Israeli leadership, but rather a spontaneous response to military conditions by low-level commanders in the field.

The massive flight of Arabs from Jerusalem, Haifa, Jaffa, the Jewish Coastal Plain, and the Upper Jordan Valley began even before a formal outbreak of war, soon after the 1947 UN Partition plan (1948, by Benny Morris, p. 94). He writes that Ben Gurion considered Ramle and Lydda in particular as dangerous “thorns” in Israel’s side  threatening Tel Aviv. He called for them to be “destroyed” (Ibid. p. 286).

The Israeli poet Natan Alterman published his poem “Al Zot” (Davar, November 1948) describing the Lydda battle soon after the event occurred thus providing context and a sense of immediacy after the fact.

The discussion among Israeli critics raises a number of questions that have special resonance today: What should be the status of Israel’s Arab citizens? Are Arab citizens of Israel treated equally to Israeli Jews as Israel’s Declaration of Independence promised? What is the future of Arab-Jewish co-existence in Israel in light of our seminal sacred moral texts:

“The stranger who resides with you shall be to you as one of your citizens. You shall love him as yourself, for you were strangers in the land of Egypt. I am Adonai your God.” (Leviticus 19:34)

The following link will take you to the articles listed below. It is a lengthy read (40-50 pages) but for those seriously interested in the meaning of Lydda in the history of the War of Independence, it is a necessary read – http://njbrepository.blogspot.co.il/2014/08/what-happened-at-lydda-by-martin-kramer.html

What Happened at Lydda. By Martin Kramer. Mosaic, July 2014. In his celebrated new book, Ari Shavit claims that “Zionism” committed a massacre in July 1948. Can the claim withstand scrutiny?

The Meaning of “Massacre.” By Benny Morris and Martin Kramer. Mosaic, July 2014. The debate between Benny Morris and Martin Kramer over Israel’s wartime conduct enters its second round.

Distortion and Defamation. By Martin Kramer. Mosaic, July 2014. The treatment of Lydda by Ari Shavit and my respondent Benny Morris has consequences even they didn’t intend.

Zionism’s Black Boxes. By Benny Morris. Mosaic, July 2014. Martin Kramer shows how Ari Shavit manipulates and distorts Israeli history; but Kramer has an agenda of his own. 

The Uses of Lydda. By Efraim Karsh. Mosaic, July 2014. How a confusing urban battle between two sides was transformed into a one-sided massacre of helpless victims.

Lydda, 1948: A City, a Massacre, and the Middle East Today. By Ari Shavit. The New Yorker, October 21, 2013.

What Primary Sources Tell Us About Lydda 1948. By Naomi Friedman. NJBR, February 19, 2014.

Myths and Historiography of the 1948 Palestine War Revisited: The Case of Lydda. By Alon Kadish and Avraham Sela. The Middle East Journal, Vol. 59, No. 4 (Autumn 2005).

Operation Dani and the Palestinian Exodus from Lydda and Ramle in 1948. By Benny Morris. The Middle East Journal, Vol. 40, No. 1 (Winter 1986).

Ari Shavit with David Remnick: The Tragedy and Triumph of Israel. Video. 92nd Street Y, November 26, 2013. YouTube. https://mail.google.com/mail/u/0/?shva=1#inbox/14986978be7120d8?projector=1

 

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

≈ Leave a comment

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.

The Rider and the Elephant – Truth Telling During Elul

17 Wednesday Sep 2014

Posted by in Book Recommendations, Ethics, Health and Well-Being, Holidays, Jewish Identity

≈ Leave a comment

Tags

“What we are today comes from our thoughts of yesterday, and our present thoughts build our life of tomorrow: our life is the creation of our mind.” So it is written in The Dhammapada, a collection of sayings of the Buddha.

Was the Buddha right, that the mind can determine the nature and direction of our lives?

Jonathan Haidt, Professor of Ethical Leadership at NYU’s Stern School of Business, if I have read him correctly, believes that it can, but it isn’t so easy. He writes that the conscious, reasoning part of our mind has only limited control on what we think, feel and do, and that the mind is actually divided into two parts that so often conflict. He uses the metaphor of an elephant and a rider to explain.

The elephant, Dr. Haidt says, represents our gut feelings, visceral reactions, emotions, and intuitions. The rider is the elephant’s ‘presidential press agent’ whose job it is to rationalize and explain whatever the president (i.e. the elephant) believes, says and does.

The elephant and rider each have their own intelligence, and when they work together they reveal the brilliance of human beings. It is then that the individual is integrated in body, intellect, heart, soul, and spirit. However, these five classic dimensions of the human being do not usually work so easily or smoothly together despite that being a goal.

This month, preceding the High Holidays, is the season in which we Jews strive to make sense of why the ‘elephant’ and ‘rider’ within us are of different minds and not well-integrated together. It’s our time to seek greater understanding about who we are. It’s our opportunity to assess the nature of our thoughts, assumptions, feelings, intuitions, and beliefs and what impact they all have on our lives and relationships with others, with Judaism and with God.

Dr. Haidt suggests that when the rider and elephant are at cross purposes, and we wish to change one or the other to go in a different direction, we need to look first at the elephant and retrain the beast within and not the intellect. That is not so easy to do.

The elephant, after all, is wired by its nature, by how it was raised and by patterns long-since established upon which the conscious mind and reason (i.e. the rider) have little influence.

Dr. Haidt urges us to address directly the elephant and suggests three different means of doing so for maximum impact and productive effect:

The first is meditation or prayer, the goal of which is to quiet the mind, to detach from that which drives us towards dysfunctional and destructive behaviors, to be able to glimpse ourselves in a much larger context in which we are not the center of the universe but an integral part conscious of all the other parts.

The second is cognitive therapy, the goal of which is to dig into our deepest emotional and psychological motivations, our unconscious impulses and hidden agendas, and to “unpack” all the baggage that we carry around with us, the memories, joys and injuries of childhood, our life’s successes and misfortunes, all of which taught us early on (for better and worse) how the world works and how we need to behave and think in order to survive in it.

And the third is biochemical support. I am not a psychiatrist nor a licensed therapist, though I have been a pastor for many in my role as a congregational rabbi and teacher for forty years. I have learned enough to know that in some cases medication for depression, anxiety and a lack of impulse control can enable individuals so overwhelmed and afflicted to more effectively address the dysfunction and unhappiness in their lives that they otherwise would be unable to do. Such individuals should consult with qualified mental health professionals to determine if such treatment is warranted.

The elephant operates from a powerful subterranean unconscious mishmash of forces, and given the beast’s size and weight, rational argument is mostly ineffective in addressing deeper non-rational forces except to better understand them. What is necessary for each of us is to retrain the elephant within that we might effectively break from repeating destructive patterns of thought, feeling and behavior that alienate us from those we love, from community, tradition and God.

Yes, life is what we deem it to be, an essential truth affirmed during the High Holiday season, and change is necessary because life is dynamic. But change and growth are never easy. That being said, we can indeed redeem ourselves – and that is precisely what we are meant to do.

Chazak v’eimatz – Be strong and courageous.
L’shanah tovah u-m’tukah – A good and sweet New Year.

Note: Jonathan Haidt is the author of two excellent works – The Happiness Hypothesis: Finding Modern Truth in Ancient Wisdom and The Righteous Mind – Why Good People are Divided by Politics and Religion

Negotiating with the “Devil” – 4 Book Recommendations

03 Sunday Aug 2014

Posted by in American Jewish Life, American Politics and Life, Book Recommendations, Ethics, Israel and Palestine, Israel/Zionism, Jewish History, Jewish Identity, Jewish-Christian Relations

≈ Leave a comment

I recommend four books that are helpful in probing, analyzing and addressing the stresses and tensions that develop in all kinds of relationships, within marriages and families, between siblings and friends, in the work place and community, between ethnic, racial, and religious groups, amongst nations and peoples, and in relationship to terrorist organizations.

At a time when crises increasingly define what transpires between nations, when polarization escalates in American partisan politics, when many media sources report biased and non fact-based reports in the service of partisan agendas, when so many interpersonal relationships remain dysfunctional and destructive, we individuals and our society need thoughtful guidance about how to effectively restore sanity, stability and integrity to our relationships and effectively reduce stress, tension, harm, and suffering to all concerned.

Difficult Conversations – How to Discuss What Matters Most, by Douglas Stone, Bruce Patton and Sheila Heen, Penguin, 2010 – A NY Times business bestseller that reflects fifteen years of research. The authors offer a step-by-step approach to reduce stress when tough conversations are inevitable, and to reach successfully new understanding and compromise in all kinds of relationships. This is a practical guide that analyzes the impact of what happens when conflict occurs and how to move through it productively and in one piece.

The Righteous Mind – Why Good People Are Divided by Politics and Religion, by Jonathan Haidt, Vintage, 2012 – A superb work that analyzes the moral presumptions (based on people’s genetic and psychological makeup, religious, national and cultural backgrounds) upon which we respond to events and form our relationships. The author explores how and why we do not understand others, judge and demonize them. Dr. Haidt is a Professor of Ethical Leadership at NYU’s Stern School of Business and earned his doctorate in social psychology from the University of Pennsylvania. He employs the metaphor of a rider (representing reason and logic) and an elephant (representing intuition and non-rational responses) and why the choice of the elephant is almost always determinative while the rider acts as a kind of adviser and “press agent” for the elephant and rationalizes whatever the elephant chooses to do. Haidt is persuasive in showing that in order to understand who we and others really are (friends and foes), we need to be able recognize what the elephant intuitively wants and how the rider rationalizes the elephant’s choices.

From Enemy to Friend – Jewish Wisdom and the Pursuit of Peace, by Rabbi Amy Eilberg, Orbis, 2014 – Rabbi Eilberg is the first woman ordained as a Conservative rabbi by the Jewish Theological Seminary of America. She spent many years working in pastoral care, hospice and spiritual direction, and is a seasoned peace activist. (A personal note – Amy is a friend and a significant voice in the J Street Rabbinic Cabinet that I co-chair nationally. I would recommend highly this book even if I did not know her personally). Amy brings to her work high emotional intelligence and psychological sophistication. She non self righteously advocates for kindness, compassion, generosity, curiosity, and the softening and opening of the heart in all tough and contentious interactions with individuals and groups even as she advocates for courage, clarity, determination, and boldness in speaking and acting upon one’s own truth. Amy’s voice is deeply Jewish, and she utilizes a wide array of classic Jewish texts with sensitivity and skill as she lays out the necessary ground-work of peace-making, to which she has devoted her life. Taken together, these four books represent a mini-course on conflict resolution.This work ought to be translated into both Hebrew and Arabic so that it can be available for Israelis and Palestinians seeking ways to make peace with each other with mutual respect and a spirit of necessary compromise.

Bargaining with the Devil – When to Negotiate, When to Fight, by Robert Mnookin, Simon and Schuster, 2010 – Dr. Mnookin is chair of the program on negotiation at the Harvard Law School and has practiced and analyzed the art and science of negotiation in a wide variety of settings. He considers in depth seven polarized situations and the choices that were made. The seven include the Hungarian Jew Rudolf Kasztner’s choice to bargain for Jewish lives with the high Nazi official Adolph Eichmann, Winston Churchill’s decision not to negotiate with Adolph Hitler and instead to go to war, Nelson Mandela’s negotiations from prison with the Apartheid regime, a 1980s software war that challenged the budding industry’s understanding of intellectual property rights as it played out between an American and Japanese firm, contract negotiations between the San Francisco Symphony’s management and the musician’s union, a contentious divorce proceeding, and a sibling struggle over a father’s estate. Dr. Mnookin takes us through all the ethical, moral and practical choices involved in each case including the interpersonal dynamics involved and a cost-benefit analysis, and he explains how each incident resolved.

None of these four works argues that every hostile, tense and polarized conflict is able to be resolved in compromise. Yet, there are times when even bargaining with the “devil” (as Robert Mnookin described Rudolf Kasztner’s choice) is better than not doing so. Mnookin also demonstrates why refusing to bargain with the devil, as Winston Churchill did relative to Hitler, was the right choice.

Taken together, these four books represent a mini-course on conflict resolution.

Cynicism and Middle East Peace

03 Monday Feb 2014

Posted by in American Politics and Life, Book Recommendations, Ethics, Health and Well-Being, Israel and Palestine, Israel/Zionism, Jewish History

≈ Leave a comment

Tags

, , , , , , ,

I have discovered a small little book written by William George Jordan in 1898 that I recommend. It is called “The Majesty of Calmness” (published anew by Empowered Wealth, 2004). It is an elegantly written 62-page essay in which Jordan (a late 19th century early 20th century essayist and editor) opines on the meaning of failure and success, happiness and doing one’s best at all times regardless of age and circumstance.

I came across this little volume because it was favored by Coach John Wooden early on in his career and was a significant influence on him as he developed his educational philosophy and “Pyramid of Success.” Coach Wooden of the famed UCLA Bruins basketball team, has been called the greatest coach in any sport (college and professional) of the 20th century, but mostly he considered himself a teacher and a man of deep faith.

The following passage from “The Majesty of Calmness” is not only true for the individual, but is true in the world of international relations and diplomacy.

William George Jordan’s comments about the “cynic” and “cynicism” are particularly cogent and applicable to those within Israel and the Palestinian community who have been so hardened by fear, suffering and ideology that they cannot fathom an Israeli-Palestinian peace agreement and the normalization of relations between our two nations and peoples, despite the fact that contemporary history is filled with examples of reconciliation between former enemies (Germany, Japan and the West following WWII, etc.).

William George Jordan writes:

“A cynic is a man who is morally near-sighted, and brags about it. He sees evil in his own heart, and thinks he sees the world. He lets a mote in his eye eclipse the sun. An incurable cynic is an individual who should long for death, for life cannot bring him happiness, and death might. The keynote of Bismarck’s lack of happiness was his profound distrust of human nature [Note: Bismarck famously said – “During my whole life I have not had twenty-four hours of happiness.”]

-William George Jordan, The Majesty of Calmness, (1898) published by Empowered Wealth, p. 57

“Jew-Free Palestine” – “Tension in Israeli Coalition” – “Israeli Manners” – “My Promised Land”

02 Sunday Feb 2014

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

≈ Leave a comment

Tags

, , , , , , ,

News, commentary, criticism, and reaction about the Kerry-Israeli-Palestinian Peace Mission are being written in great volume from every perspective within Israel and amongst the Palestinians. Among the most important pieces in recent days are these three that I recommend you read:

1. A Jew-Free Palestine – by Rabbi Donniel Hartman, Times of Israel

A superb and thoughtful analysis of the meaning of the West Bank settlements and their role in the future of the state of Israel. Rabbi Hartman says that Israel must now decide whether it wishes to be a Jewish democratic state or not.  http://blogs.timesofisrael.com/a-jew-free-palestine

2. Tension Builds in Israeli Coalition at a Critical Juncture in Peace Talks, by Jodi Rudoren, NYT

Where is Prime Minister Netanyahu vis a vis a two-state solution? Though his rhetoric is clearly in favor, his taking the hard decisions necessary to effect a concrete agreement will necessarily alienate his historic political allies. If he is serious, his compromises will reveal the extent of his political courage, which most Israelis do not believe he has. http://www.nytimes.com/2014/01/30/world/middleeast/israel.html?src=rechp

3. Israel Needs to Learn Some Manners – by Avi Shlaim, NYT

Avi Shlaim is an Iraqi-born British/Israeli historian and emeritus professor of International Relations at the University of Oxford. He is part of a group of Israeli scholars who have put forward critical interpretations of Israel and the history of Zionism (per Wikipedia). Shlaim takes Israeli right-wing government officials to task for their blatant, arrogant and dangerous treatment of Israel’s most important ally saying that these Israeli leaders (e.g. Defense Minister Yaalon, Likud leader Danon, and Bayit Hayehudi leader Bennett, among others) give chutzpah a bad name. http://www.nytimes.com/2014/01/31/opinion/israel-needs-to-learn-some-manners.html?src=rechp

Finally, I recommend “My Promised Land – The Triumph and Tragedy of Israel” by Ari Shavit (see review – Tuesday, January 14).

Shavit’s in-depth consideration of key events and phenomena that have shaped the history of Zionism and the state of Israel constitutes the most important and honest book to come out of Israel in the last 25 years. This volume will inform and provoke you, inspire you and break your heart. After reading it, your understanding will be far deeper about the meaning of the Jewish democratic state of Israel in modern Jewish history. In addition, his book will challenge your identity as a Jew, whether you live in Israel as a citizen of the state or in the Diaspora.

The Connecting Vav of Mount Sinai and Our Lives – D’var Torah Mishpatim

24 Friday Jan 2014

Posted by in Book Recommendations, Divrei Torah, Health and Well-Being, Inuyim - Prayer reflections and ruminations, Musings about God/Faith/Religious life

≈ Leave a comment

Tags

,

Last week’s Torah portion, Yitro, presented the Biblical equivalent of “shock and awe” like nothing that had happened to the Israelites before or since. Among the narrative’s highlights are descriptions of fire and clouds over the mountain, the descent of the physical manifestation of God upon Sinai, and the giving of Ten commandments.

This week, in Parashat Mishpatim, we shift from divine revelation to foundations in law. Fifty-three mitzvot are enumerated as part of “The Covenant Code” of Exodus, one of three law codes in the Hebrew Bible.

The parashah opens with the letter Vav – “And these are the judgments/laws/rules that you shall place before them…” thus connecting what came before with what will come.

As noted, the infinite God met the people personally at Mount Sinai – “N’vuah sh’mag’shima et otz’mah – What was spoken to Moses became manifest.” Rabbi Meir Leibush ben Yehiel Michel Wisser (the Malbim – 1809-1879) described that moment; “The people saw what could be heard and heard what could be seen, because of the inner awareness granted them at that time.”

That great event at Sinai opened the people’s consciousness to the non-rational realm of soul, spirit, metaphysics, and higher universes. Mystics of later generations experienced it, and in modern times we have many testimonies by those who have had “Near Death Experiences.” Among the most recent and remarkable is told by Dr. Eben Alexander in his book Proof of Heaven – A Neurosurgeon’s Journey into the Afterlife.

Dr. Alexander suddenly and unexpectedly was attacked by e. coli meningitis. For seven days he was into a coma during which time his brain’s pre-frontal cortex, the seat of consciousness, awareness and knowledge, shut down. His doctors and family expected him to die, but he survived and wrote this book telling of his experience.

He had been an atheist before, but this experience turned him into a God-believer. He was a trained scientist who valued reason above all else, but now he told of the existence of universes far greater than the mind. He wrote:

“Seeing and hearing were not separate in this place…. I could hear the visual beauty of the silvery bodies of … scintillating beings above, and I could see the surging, joyful perfection of what they sang. … you could not look at or listen to anything in this world without becoming a part of it … you couldn’t look at anything in that world at all, for the word at itself implies a separation that did not exist there.”

“I saw the abundance of life throughout … countless universes, including some whose intelligence was advanced far beyond that of humanity. I saw … countless higher dimensions, but … the only way to know these dimensions is to enter and experience them directly. They cannot be known, or understood, from lower dimensional space.”

[What I learned is that] “You are loved and cherished…[with] nothing to fear. …Love is the basis of everything. … the kind of love we feel when we look at our spouse and our children, or even our animals. In its purest and most powerful form, this love is not jealous or selfish, but unconditional. This is the reality of realities, the incomprehensibly inglorious truth of truths that lives and breathes at the core of everything that exists or that ever will exist, and no remotely accurate understanding of who and what we are can be achieved by anyone who does not know it, and embody it in all of their actions.”

Dr. Alexander articulated what can only be described as divine revelation, available always, but hindered to most of us by the constraints of our physicality and the strengths of our reason.

This week’s Torah portion turns us towards the material world we inhabit and establishes just and compassionate rules to perfect our public and private behavior and to refine our sense of moral responsibility and accountability.

The world the mystic sees of divine unity and the one in which we live of disjointedness and brokenness are, in truth, of the same continuum. The God of revelation is the God of commandment. Mitzvot grow out of a metaphysical vision of oneness experienced at Sinai and by Dr. Alexander. That is why our tradition evolves into law, not as an end but as the means of repair (tikkun) and return to unity (achdut).

What is above is below. The mitzvot make God the center of our lives from the moment of birth to the moment of death and beyond. The Aleinu says it succinctly, “L’taken ha-olam b’malchut Shaddai – [that our purpose is] To restore the world in the image of the dominion of God.”

Shabbat Shalom.

The Most Important Book to Come out of Israel in Years – “My Promised Land – The Triumph and Tragedy of Israel” by Ari Shavit

14 Tuesday Jan 2014

Posted by in Book Recommendations, Israel and Palestine, Israel/Zionism, Jewish History, Jewish Identity

≈ 2 Comments

Tags

, , , ,

Much has been written already about  Ari Shavit’s “My Promised Land – The Triumph and Tragedy of Israel” (just published).  I have included the links to four reviews below, and I add my accolades to theirs.

This new book is a must read for anyone wishing to understand the complexity of the competing ideologies, nationalisms, politics, cultures, religions, ethnicities, histories, and narratives  that make up modern Israel. The left-leaning Israeli author shines a light as well on how the Zionist movement,  the establishment of the State of Israel and Israel’s wars and security concerns have transformed the Jewish people and state for better and worse, and impacted the lives and aspirations of the Palestinian people.

Ari Shavit is a veteran journalist at Haaretz, Israel’s equivalent of The New York Times. His book is not an historian’s objective record of events, though there is much history in it. Rather,  this is both a memoir and a journalistic investigation into the nature of modern Israel using hundreds of interviews of Israelis and Palestinians conducted over many years.

The strengths of the book are many. It is the story behind the headlines as told personally by the leading players. Whether Shavit agrees with them or not, he lets them tell their own stories. He is a gifted writer, and his depth of knowledge and insight into Israel’s history and into trends within the various narratives is second to none.

The book at once informs, enthralls, inspires, disgusts, and breaks your heart, whether you be an Israeli Jew, an Israeli Arab citizen, a Palestinian, an American, or anyone else who reads it and is open to Israel’s triumph and tragedy. Tom Friedman wrote in the NYT that everyone involved in the Israeli-Palestinian negotiations ought to read this book immediately.

Finally, if you are a Jew living in Israel or the Diaspora, this book will likely challenge the meaning of your Jewish identity – so beware! However, as a good friend likes to say, “Love is what remains when you know the whole truth.” I pray that she is correct in this case.

I believe that “My Promised Land” is the most important book to come out of Israel in many years, and I recommend it without hesitation.

Here are four additional reviews worth reading:

Dwight Gardner of The New York Times – http://www.nytimes.com/2013/11/20/books/ari-shavits-my-promised-land.html?_r=0

Michael Berenbaum of The Los Angeles Jewish Journal – http://www.jewishjournal.com/books/article/michael_berenbaum_review_ari_shavits_my_promised_land

Noam Sheizaf of +972 Magazine – http://972mag.com/book-review-on-ari-shavits-my-promised-land/83686/

Jane Eisner of The Jewish Daily Forward – http://forward.com/articles/187813/art-shavit-still-believes-in-a-promised-land/?p=all