Category Archives: Jewish-Islamic Relations

“INJUNCTION IS HEREBY GRANTED” – A First Amendment Establishment Clause Victory

10 Sunday Apr 2016

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

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On February 6, 2014, I joined with eight other plaintiffs representing Jewish, Christian and Muslim communities in the County of Los Angeles in a law suit against the Los Angeles County Board of Supervisors alleging that the Board’s January 7, 2014 motion approving the restoration of a Latin cross to the official LA County seal violates the separation clause of the United States Constitution.

The nine plaintiffs include Reverend Father Ian Elliott Davies, Reverend J. Edwin Bacon, Jr., Shakeel Syed, Rabbi Harold M. Schulweis (z’l), Rabbi John L. Rosove, Reverend Tera Little, Reverend Peter Laarman, David N. Myers, and Rabbi Amy Bernstein.

The Federal Establishment Clause prohibits the government from making any law “respecting an establishment of religion” or undertaking any act that unduly favors one religion over another, and we nine religious and community leaders were convinced that our rights as citizens of Los Angeles County and the rights of millions of LA county residents were being violated.

At the time, the LA County Board of Supervisors consisted of Gloria Molina, Mark Ridley-Thomas, Zev Yaroslavsky, Don Knabe, and Michael D. Antonovich.

The following is a review of events concerning the LA County seal, edited from the final court judgement:

On January 2, 1957, the Board of Supervisors adopted an official seal for the County of Los Angeles that depicted an image of the Hollywood Bowl, two stars, and an unadorned Latin cross. The Hollywood Bowl represented LA’s cultural tradition. The two stars represented the motion picture and television industries. It’s unclear whether the unadorned Latin cross was meant to represent “the influence of the church and missions of California,” or, more simply, religion.

In addition, the 1957 Seal depicted an image of Pomona, “the goddess of gardens and fruit trees,” to represent agriculture; the Spanish galleon San Salvador, which sailed into San Pedro Harbor on October 8, 1542; a tuna, to represent the fishing industry; the champion cow Pearlette, to represent the dairy industry; engineering instruments, to represent the County’s “contribution to the conquest of space”; and oil derricks, to represent oil fields discovered on Signal Hill.

The 1957 Seal served as the County’s official seal until 2004.

On May 19, 2004, the ACLU sent a letter to County officials stating that the presence of the cross on the 1957 Seal “reflects an impermissible endorsement of Christianity by the County” and was unconstitutional.

On June 1, 2004, the five members of the Board voted 3-2 to instruct County Counsel to “negotiate with the ACLU” to determine whether the ACLU would refrain from filing suit against the County.

On June 8, 2004, at one of several public meetings when the Board discussed potential revisions to the 1957 Seal, the Board heard testimony from members of the public, many of whom objected passionately on religious grounds to the removal of the Latin cross. Comments included the following:

“This is an attack on the body of Christ.”

“My Lord and Savior died on that cross and it would be horrible for me to just let it be erased.”

“The cross represents not just the passion that we are presenting today but the passion of Christ and [that] this is a Christian nation.”

“It’s a symbol of the love of Christ.”

On September 14, 2004, the County Chief Administrative Officer sent a letter to the Board recommending that it approve and adopt a proposed new County seal that (1) removed the Latin cross from above the Hollywood Bowl; (2) replaced the image of the oil derricks with a sketch of the eastern façade of the San Gabriel Mission, without any cross atop its roof; and (3) replaced the goddess Pomona with an image of a Native American woman carrying a basket.

During the public meeting, the County Administrative Officer stated that a “good figure” for the estimated cost of adopting the 2004 Seal throughout the County was $800,000. Ultimately, the Board voted 3-2 in favor of the proposed revisions, with Supervisors Burke, Molina, and Yaroslavsky voting to pass the motion, and Supervisors Antonovich and Knabe voting against it.

On October 26, 2004, the County Chief Administrative Officer sent the Board a final cost estimate of $700,000 to replace the County seal on County owned and leased facilities, decals affixed to County vehicles, and all computer applications, including websites, electronic letterhead, and software. Thereafter, the 2004 Seal was adopted throughout the County.

In 2009, a Latin cross was placed atop the eastern façade of the actual San Gabriel Mission. The original cross had been removed following an earthquake in 1989 (see motion below).

On December 31, 2013, Supervisors Antonovich and Knabe introduced a motion to add a Latin cross atop the depiction of the Mission on the 2004 County Seal.

Their motion read:

“The current rendering of the Mission on the seal is aesthetically and architecturally inaccurate. At the time that the seal was redesigned in 2004, the cross had been missing from the top of the mission since 1989 when it was taken down to retrofit the structure after damage from the Whittier Narrows earthquake. The cross was returned to the top of the Mission in 2009 after being lost for decades.”

The motion did not address the accuracy of the other images on the 2004 Seal, and Supervisors Antonovich and Knabe proposed no other changes to the seal.

On January 7, 2014, the Board held a public meeting and the ACLU opposed the motion saying:

“The government is returning a sectarian religious symbol to a seal less than ten years after its removal and one of the major objections to the removal in the first place [was] very strong religious objection.”

Zev Yaroslavsky, who a decade earlier had voted to remove the unadorned Latin cross from the 1957 Seal and to adopt the 2004 Seal, said:

“This is not just about history [aesthetics or architecture]; it’s about the cross.”

The Board voted 3-2 in favor of the proposed addition of the cross, with Supervisors Antonovich, Knabe, and Ridley-Thomas voting in favor, and Supervisors Molina and Yaroslavsky voting against.

Last week, on April 6, the Honorable Christina A. Synder of the United States District Court, ruled that the plaintiffs (i.e. the 9 representatives noted above representing Jewish, Christian and Muslim communities) have demonstrated that the addition of the cross to the 2004 Seal violates both the California and United States Constitutions, and that the County’s addition of the Latin cross to the 2004 Seal violates the No Aid and No Preference Clauses of the California Constitution as well as the Establishment Clause of the First Amendment to the United States Constitution, and thus the court granted a permanent injunction against ever adding a cross to the LA County seal.

At long last this controversy is over, and I want to express my deep gratitude to Judge Snyder, the ACLU attorneys, former Supervisors Zev Yaroslavsky, Gloria Molina and Yvonne Burke, and my fellow plaintiffs.

This decision is a significant victory for First Amendment rights.

 

“Defending Decency”

27 Sunday Mar 2016

Posted by in American Jewish Life, American Politics and Life, Ethics, Israel and Palestine, Israel/Zionism, Jewish-Islamic Relations, Social Justice

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Dear Readers:

The following is a piece posted this morning by J Street called “Word on the Street – Defending Decency” written by Alan Elsner, Special Advisor to the President of J Street and veteran journalist, on the AIPAC Policy Conference, the ISIS terrorist attack in Belgium, Donald Trump’s latest indecency, and on the lessons we Jews confront every year during Purim. Alan also offers us a link to register our voices to stand up against bigotry (see below).

 

“Word on the Street – Defending Decency”

Last week, in quick succession, we saw Donald Trump get a huge ovation at the AIPAC Policy Conference, were shocked by the latest awful terrorist carnage in Europe and observed the festival of Purim.

Listening to the traditional reading of the Book of Esther. I was struck by a verse in Chapter Three:

And Haman said to King Ahasuerus, “There is a certain people scattered and separate among the peoples throughout all the provinces of your kingdom, and their laws differ from those of every people, and they do not keep the king’s laws; it is therefore of no use for the king to let them be.”

“When Israel labels all Palestinians as enemies; when Palestinians label all Israeli Jews as occupiers … and when Trump and Cruz label all Muslims as potential terrorists, they are all doing the same thing.”

The Brussels bombings the day before prompted Republican presidential candidate Ted Cruz to suggest that law enforcement agencies should “patrol and secure” Muslim neighborhoods in the United States. He was swiftly followed by Donald Trump. Never mind that American Muslims — one percent of the population — are extraordinarily patriotic and productive members of our society.

Trump’s response to the attacks was characteristically to blame them on all Muslims. “I knew Brussels years ago,” he said in an interview with a British TV channel. “It was so beautiful, so secure and so safe. Now it’s an armed camp. It’s like a different world, a different place, there is no assimilation … Look at the cities where there’s been a large inflow and something’s different. There is very little assimilation for whatever reason … they want to go by their own sets of laws.”

In other word, “they do not keep the king’s laws. It is therefore of no use to the king to let them be.”

This was the same Trump who the previous day had received a rapturous ovation from many of the 18,000 delegates to the AIPAC Policy Conference, when he and his two Republican presidential rivals, taking their cue from one of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s favorite talking points, demonized the entire Palestinian people as a nation of terrorists with a “culture of death.”

John Kasich declared that “Palestinians cannot continue to promote a culture of hatred and death.” Trump said that Palestinian children are all “being taught to hate Israel and to hate the Jews.” Cruz talked of a “relentless campaign of incitement that has fostered genocidal hatred towards Jews.”

There’s no denying that incitement is a major problem in Gaza and the West Bank. When Palestinian leaders hail terrorist attackers as martyrs or murderers as heroes there is a problem. Responsible Palestinian leaders must confront this honestly. We cannot excuse incitement or violence, even as we also note that young Palestinians, like many young Muslims in Europe, feel hopeless, angry and frustrated and see no path to a better life. And yet, the vast majority of Palestinians do not dream of sending their sons and daughters to die in suicide attacks. It is their worst nightmare.

When Israel labels all Palestinians as enemies; when Palestinians label all Israeli Jews as occupiers, colonialists and oppressors; and when Trump and Cruz label all Muslims as potential terrorists, they are all doing the same thing. They are all scapegoating an entire community, religion or nation with one broad brush and giving their own supporters someone to hate. Hating others will not solve anyone’s problems. It will only create new ones.

This is a very old story — and Jews throughout our history have often been the victims. To give just one example, in 1919, Henry Ford began publishing a newspaper, The Dearborn Independent as an anti-Semitic mouthpiece. It blamed Jews for everything — strikes, agricultural depression, financial scandals and the decline of the dollar. “The International Jew: The World’s Problem,” blasted one typical headline on May 22, 1920.

Ironically, today Dearborn, Michigan is home to America’s largest Muslim community — which Trump and Cruz would no doubt fence off and subject to constant police surveillance and control.

We know where these things lead — and we have a duty to reject and oppose them — here at home, in Israel and in the occupied territory. We must stand together with other sane forces who favor dialogue and build bridges rather than walls.

While opposing terrorism and incitement and taking necessary and legal steps to combat them, we must defend our democracy, our decency and our humanity and band together with the vast majority of Israelis, Palestinians, Christians, Jews, and Muslims — who want to share our troubled world as peaceful neighbors and make it better for everyone.

– Alan

P.S. — Please add your name to stand up against bigotry. We know that Trump’s values are not the values of our community. If you agree, join thousands of others to demonstrate the real values our community stands for.

 

 

The Orchard of Abraham’s Children – Towards the Creation of a Shared Society

29 Monday Feb 2016

Posted by in Ethics, Israel and Palestine, Israel/Zionism, Jewish History, Jewish-Islamic Relations, Stories

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There are at least three nursery schools in that have Jewish and Muslim children enrolled together. One is in Jaffa, a mixed Arab-Jewish town, alongside Tel Aviv.

One day this past week, I went to visit along with 30 American and Canadian Reform Rabbis as part of our CCAR annual meeting in Jerusalem and Tel Aviv. We gathered in the school’s backyard garden and playground near a chicken coop with very raucous roosters. The school is aptly called “The Orchard of Abraham’s Children.”

Ihab Balha is the school manager, and he greeted us warmly. He’s in his early 40s, is tall with cascading long black-gray hair framing his handsome olive-colored face. He wore the long white robe of a Sufi mystic. He speaks beautiful Hebrew and he told us his unusual story about how this school came to be created.

Ihab grew up in the house in which the school welcomes the children each day. He is one of four or five children of a loving Palestinian Arab Muslim family. However, his father’s love only went so far. He hated Jews with an uncommon passion, and he taught his children to hate Jews as well.

When Ihab was 16, he attempted to fire-bomb a synagogue. When he was 20, he encountered Jews for the first time with a group of Palestinian friends. Each side took the opportunity to release their pent-up venom and rage toward the other. Something strange happened, however, in the verbal assaults. Ihab and the others (Jews and Arabs both) wanted more opportunities to be heard and to listen. Soon, they realized that their bigotry was not rationally based, that there was humanity in the other and that they shared far more than they had ever imagined. That realization launched them into a dialogue series that transformed them.

Ihab didn’t initially confide with his parents that he was participating in these conversations nor that his attitudes about Jews were changing. At long last he told his parents, but there was a serious fall-out with his father. They did not speak nor see one another for the next five years, a painful time for the entire family. For comfort and wisdom, Ihab turned to Islam and the Quran, and he became a Sufi mystic.

After the 2nd Intifada in 2002, Ihab attended a discussion between an Imam and a Rabbi, both of whom had lost children because of the violence. In 2006, Ihab helped to organize a conference of Muslims and Jews that was attended by 5000 Palestinian Arabs and Israeli Jews at Latrun on the road between Jerusalem and Tel Aviv, the site of an historic battle in the War of Independence. Around that time, Ihab reconciled with his parents. In 2008, his family made pilgrimage to Mecca.

At the age of 35, Ihab met and fell madly in love with Ora, an Israeli Jewish woman. They married two days after they met, and he struggled with how to tell his parents. Because Jaffa is a small town and his family is well known, everyone knew that he had married but no one knew who was his bride.

Ihab and Ora decided to introduce her to the family without revealing that they were, in truth, married. He brought her home along with a group of Jewish and Palestinian Arab “friends,” the first time Jews had ever set foot in the Balha home. Ihab’s father told Ora and the other Jews how he hated and resented Jews who he believed had stolen so much from the Palestinians during the 1948 War. He did like Ora – a lot.

His parents kept asking Ihab why they had not yet met his bride and when that would happen. At last, when cousins came to visit from Holland, using them as a buffer, one of the cousins told his parents: “You have met Ihab’s wife. She is  there (pointing at Ora)!”

Ihab’s father exploded: “You Jews have stolen everything from us, and now you steal from me my son!?”

Ora said, “I love your son.”

Ora was soon pregnant with their first child, and she and Ihab decided that they wanted to raise their son with Israeli Jews and Palestinian Muslim Arabs. They envisioned starting a nursery school but needed a building. Ihab’s parents volunteered their house. Today, the school has 200 children who come every day . They call the school “The Orchard Of Abraham’s Children.” Ora is the Director and Ihab is the Manager. Ihab’s father visits the kids each day and is a loving “grandfather” to them all, Arab and Jew.

This story is remarkable in so many ways, most especially because it shows the transformation that can be experienced by enemies, and about what happens when we listen and seek to understand the “other.” It’s about learning the other’s narrative, and how empathy and compassion are critical in the building of friendship, community and a shared society.

After Ihab shared his remarkable story, I said to him: “Ihab – Your have experienced  great pain!”

“Yes,” he said, “but also great joy!”

“We sought to change the State of Israel, not to change Orthodox Judaism!” Rabbi Rick Jacobs after the Kotel Decision

04 Thursday Feb 2016

Posted by in American Jewish Life, Israel/Zionism, Jewish History, Jewish Identity, Jewish-Christian Relations, Jewish-Islamic Relations, Social Justice, Women's Rights

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This past Sunday, the government of the state of Israel, led by PM Netanyahu, took an historic decision to fund and create a new egalitarian prayer space at the holiest site in Judaism, the Western Wall, that will be characterized by gender equality, pluralism and a lack of segregation between men and women.

This new space will be overseen by non-Orthodox Jewish religious streams (Reform, Conservative) and Women of the Wall.

The following are highlights that I noted in an international conference call for the leadership of the Reform movement this morning, February 4.

Rabbi Rick Jacobs, President of the Union for Reform Judaism, Rabbi Gilad Kariv, Chair of the Israel Movement for Progressive Judaism, and Anat Hoffman, Director of the Reform movement’s Israeli Religious Action Center and Chair of Women of the Wall, discussed in detail the significance of Sunday’s cabinet decision.

Rabbi Jacobs thanked PM Netanyahu who made the establishment of an egalitarian section of the Western Wall an important part of his leadership, and he expressed gratitude to Attorney General Avichai Mendelblit, Jewish Agency Director Natan Sharansky, the Conservative movement, the Federations of North America, and Women of the Wall. He singled out Rabbi Gilad Kariv and Anat Hoffman, whose leadership has brought about this historic decision. Rabbi Jacobs, it needs to be noted, was also a central figure in effecting this historic compromise between the liberal religious streams and the Israeli government.

Though the final agreement is imperfect, it will allow the construction of a grand and fitting entrance to a new prayer space beneath Robinson’s Arch at the southern end of the Western Wall that will be visible to all. The decision establishes as a matter of law for the first time that the Kotel belongs to the entirety of the Jewish people and not just to the Orthodox.

Rabbi Jacobs emphasized: “We sought to change the state of Israel with this decision – we could not nor did we wish to change Orthodox Judaism. That’s for them to do!”

In reaction to the decision, hateful and inflammatory words have flown from the mouths of several government Ministers who disparaged the Reform movement. We have not taken their slanderous remarks lightly, and PM Netanyahu also condemned what they said as unrepresentative of the government of Israel.

Now, this agreement must be implemented and we Jews in the Diaspora, along with our movement in Israel, will need to maintain public pressure on the government to bring it about. The best way to do this is for groups of all kinds – Synagogues, Federations, Jewish organizations, NFTY, Birthright Israel trips, family b’nai mitzvah ceremonies, weddings, and individuals need to visit and use this new prayer space.

This government decision is but one step in a longer process of bringing greater religious freedom for all Jews in the state of Israel. Other challenges include our continuing to advocate for civil marriage, for non-Orthodox burial, for the elimination of the hegemonic Chief Rabbinate over the personal choices and lives of Israelis, and for a 2-state solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.

Anat Hoffman reviewed the history of this effort that commenced on December 5, 1988 when a small group of Diaspora orthodox women on Rosh Hodesh brought a Torah to the Kotel and then continued to do so on every Rosh Hodesh for the next 27 years. Anat characterized this as a precious gift that Diaspora Jewish women have given not only to Israel but to the entire Jewish people.

Rabbi Kariv shared three insights:

1. This is the first time in the history of the Israeli Reform movement that an agreement has been achieved by negotiations in the Knesset and not through the Supreme Court;

2. Israeli law recognizes that there is more than one way to worship God in Judaism;

3. The upper Kotel plaza has been removed from the purview of the Chief Rabbi of the Wall and has been reclaimed according to national democratic parameters that will allow women and men of the IDF to gather together there for ceremonies.

Other points:

• The Orthodox Rabbinate will maintain complete control over the traditional northern section of the Kotel;

• Notes can be placed in the new prayer section’s Wall as in the northern traditional prayer area;

• We are sensitive that this is an historic religious area for other faith traditions. We will be thoughtful neighbors and we will not ask Christians to remove their crucifixes when entering our prayer area, as they are asked to do in the traditional area (the Pope was asked to do so when he visited the Kotel);

• The National Antiquities Department Director promises that modifications to the Robinson’s Arch area for this new prayer space will not disrupt the archaeological integrity of the site or the Al Aqsa Mosque compound;

• There will be no modesty police overseeing people in this section as is the case in the traditional northern section;

• This area will be known as “The southern section of the Western Wall.”

This decision not only enhances the democratic character of the state of Israel, but it enhances the Jewish character of the state. It is an extraordinary example of partnership between the state of Israel and the Jewish people around the world working together on behalf of klal Yisrael.

To PM Netanyahu, the Jewish people owe you a debt of gratitude.

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

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“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.

North American Reform Rabbinate Passes Strong and Visionary Resolution on Israel

04 Monday Jan 2016

Posted by in American Jewish Life, American Politics and Life, Ethics, Israel and Palestine, Israel/Zionism, Jewish History, Jewish Identity, Jewish-Christian Relations, Jewish-Islamic Relations, Social Justice, Women's Rights

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In advance of the annual meeting of the Central Conference of American Rabbis (CCAR) in Jerusalem and Tel Aviv at the end of February 2016, the CCAR Board passed a superbly balanced, nuanced and comprehensive statement representing the broad consensus of the American and Canadian Reform Rabbinate.

The CCAR represents 2300 Reform Rabbis serving communities mostly in North America, but also around the world. Reform Judaism is the largest North American religious stream of Jews numbering close to 1.4 million individuals.

This resolution affirms the Reform Rabbinate’s strong support for and bond with the people and state of Israel as a Jewish and Democratic state. It strongly supports equal rights for all Israeli citizens (Jew, Arab and other) according to the principles of the Israeli Declaration of Independence, religious diversity and equal rights for all individuals and religious streams in the state, and a two-state solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. The resolution demands that Palestinians recognize that Israel is the nation state of the Jewish people and that Israelis recognize that the to-be established state of Palestine is the nation state of the Palestinian people. The resolution opposes the occupation of the West Bank and expansion of Israeli settlements there and calls upon the Palestinian leadership to cease all provocation and incitement against Israelis.

I am proud of the rabbinic leadership of my rabbinic association for its strong, just, compassionate, wise, fair, visionary, and comprehensive resolution.

https://ccarnet.org/rabbis-speak/resolutions/2015/ccar-expression-love-and-support-state-israel-and-/

Over the course of decades the CCAR has issued 322 resolutions on the state of Israel. They can be accessed here:

http://ccarnet.org/search/?q=Resolutions+on+Israel

What We Need to Hear from our Political Leaders

22 Sunday Nov 2015

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

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Much has been written about the politics of fear that has overtaken much of the country since the Paris ISIS attacks and specifically about the House of Representatives vote that would require additional stringent checks on 10,000 Syrian refugees who yearn for safe haven in the United States, even though this group of refugees already is the most vetted and reviewed population of migrants to come into the country.

In the last week we have heard rhetoric stoking the fears of many Americans who are worried that terrorists may slip into the country despite the already stringent reviews of asylum seekers. We have heard some of our political leaders play to racist and Islamophobic feelings directed at Syrian refugees specifically, immigrants generally and the Muslim and Arab communities of the United States as a whole (e.g. Jeb Bush said he would only support the entrance of Christian Syrians; Donald Trump said that all American Muslim citizens should be registered; Chris Christie said that if necessary even Syrian toddler orphans should be excluded from the US; Ted Cruz and Ben Carson have also made equally offensive statements).

In a House vote of 289-137, a new bill drawn hastily after the ISIS Paris attacks will require new FBI background checks and individual sign-offs from three high-ranking U.S. officials before any refugee can come to the U.S. from Iraq or Syria, essentially preventing the entrance of any of the remaining 10,000 Syrian refugees that still need to be admitted under the protection of political asylum. Every Republican representative voted in favor as did 47 Democrats. The new House Speaker Paul Ryan, using the language of reason, said this is simply a matter of “common sense” to protect Americans.

To the contrary, the motivations of those who voted for this bill and more than a third of the nation’s Governors who said that they would not admit Syrian Refugees into their states, isn’t about common sense – it’s about fear.

It isn’t the first time that American political leaders have played effectively to the xenophobic darkness in the human psyche. During World War II, President Roosevelt, the man who told America after the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor (“We have nothing to fear but fear itself!”) issued Executive Order 9066 that interned 120,000 Japanese Americans, of whom 62% were loyal American citizens, in concentration camps on the West Coast.

Rabbi Fred Guttman of North Carolina, wrote last week on the Reform Judaism website: “What we need from politicians now is not certainty but assurance, not rectitude but sympathetic concern. We need politicians who are willing to say, ‘I understand your fear, but….”  [We need our politicians to explain loudly and clearly that] “the U.S. has an extensive process for vetting refugees who desire to come to the United States.”

Further, we need our political leaders to remind the American people of the terrible cost of human suffering in the five-year Syrian civil war, that four million Syrian refugees have fled to Lebanon, Jordan, Turkey, and Europe, that eight million people have been internally displaced, that 200,000 have been killed and countless more injured.

Our political leaders need to remind the American people that we are a nation of immigrants ourselves, that ALL OF US come from someplace else, that so many of us, like the Syrian refugees today, were “the tired and the poor, the huddled masses yearning to breathe free,” as the Zionist poet Emma Lazarus wrote that grace the Statue of Liberty in the New York harbor.

Our leaders need to say loudly and clearly that it is un-American to reject those legitimately seeking political asylum here.

After the bill came to the floor of Congress, 81 organizations opposed it including the Union for Reform Judaism, the Anti-Defamation League, the American Jewish Committee, the Hebrew Immigrant Aid Society, the National Council of Jewish Women, J Street, and Ameinu, as did Christian World Relief, the US Conference of Catholic Bishops, the National Association of Evangelicals, Lutheran Immigration and Refugee Service, and the Church World Service. The religious community of America, by and large, has affirmed what are supposed to be the higher angels of our spirit as a nation, and those who claim to be religious and have succumbed to xenophobic fears and prejudice, ought to take note.

Among the most challenging of the 613 mitzvot (commandments) in the Hebrew Bible is to “welcome the stranger” with compassion, empathy and human kindness. Thirty-six times does this mitzvah appear in our sacred scripture, according to the rabbis, signifying how difficult it is for us to be able to regard the “other” as like us, created b’tzelem Elohim – in the Divine image.

All three of the great monotheistic faiths demand that we do so, but sadly, too many of our political leaders are failing not only their own religious principles, but our American principles as well.

In this spirit, if you agree with me, I urge you to write or call your Congressional Representative and Senators and either thank them for voting against this bill, or tell them how disappointed you are that they supported it.

Lunch with LA Islamic Center Imam Asim Bukosvoy

05 Thursday Feb 2015

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

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Educated, soft-spoken, kind-hearted, moderate, and charming – Imam Asim Bukosvoy believes in interfaith dialogue and in developing inter-ethnic relationships with all communities in Los Angeles.

This was my third meeting with Imam Bukosvoy. He was one of a number of clergy we invited from the Christian, Jewish and Muslim communities of LA – Latino, Korean, African American, white, and Jewish – to my synagogue’s (Temple Israel of Hollywood) celebration of the 50th anniversary of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. speaking in our sanctuary just prior to the Selma to Montgomery march in 1965.

Since our celebration I have reached out to all the visiting clergy who participated in this anniversary event to continue to build on our relationship.

Imam Bukosvoy hails from Istanbul, Turkey. He came to the United States 5 years ago to study, earn his undergraduate and then  Masters Degree in Religion from the Claremont Colleges. He is also working on his doctorate. He is 39, married with a 9 month-old baby boy, and when he speaks of his wife and young son a light glows from within.

Asim is articulate, intelligent, sophisticated, and painfully aware of the conflict confronting the Islamic world. He is a moderate, and he explained to me that the Islamic Center of Los Angeles, founded by the late Maher Hatout, established itself as a center to advocate for moderation and against extremist Islamic fundamentalism.

Imam Bukosvoy is deeply disturbed by ISIS, Al Qaeda, the Muslim Brotherhood, Hamas, Islamic Jihad and all political movements that claim Koranic text and Sharia Law as justification of their actions, which he believes is a distortion and manipulation of Islam for violent and hateful purposes.

I shared with him that I am an activist with J Street, that I am pro-Israel and a passionate American Zionist, who believes that the only solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict is in a two-state solution. I told that I am one of three national co-chairs of our J Street Rabbinic Cabinet of nearly 1000 rabbis, that close to 100 Congressional Representatives and Senators are J Street endorsed in Washington, D.C., that our goal is to advocate for an active American policy to help Israel and the Palestinians find a road to a two-state solution. I told him as well that I never hesitate to write or speak publicly about this issue.

Asim understood and seemed supportive of that view.

Then I said: “Asim – it is more important for people like you to speak out than for people like me.”

He looked at me quizzically. I explained: “Your faith is followed by 1.5 billion people; mine has between 15 and 17 million worldwide. The march in Paris following the murders of the 12 cartoon journalists and the 4 Jews in the kosher market included all French citizens, and many Muslim leaders.”

“What is necessary [recalling Tom Friedman’s op-ed in the NY Times] is not a million person march through the streets of Paris, but a million Muslim march against Islamic extremism through the streets of Paris and elsewhere.”

Asim listened. I acknowledged that “any Muslim leader like himself takes on far greater personal risk than a Jew who speaks out in this country. I am sure there are people who would not hesitate to strike out against outspoken Muslim leaders like you who advocate for a liberal interpretation of Islamic law.”

He agreed.

Our lunch went on for nearly two hours and I am pleased that we felt not only a warm personal connection that hopefully will continue to grow, but we shared common values about peace, justice, compassion, and the importance of inter-group dialogue and relationships.

I closed our lunch by saying the following to Asim: “You know – the opposite of peace isn’t war. It’s Truth. If we want Truth, then we must prepare for war. If we want peace, then we must prepare for compromise and honorable acceptance of the other. No one has all the Truth anyway – only God possesses that – and anyone who claims they do are essentially wrong.”

We parted and hoped for more contact soon.

50th Anniversary of Dr. Martin Luther King at Temple Israel of Hollywood

21 Wednesday Jan 2015

Posted by in American Jewish Life, American Politics and Life, Ethics, Holidays, Jewish History, Jewish-Christian Relations, Jewish-Islamic Relations, Social Justice, Tributes, Women's Rights

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On February 25, 1965, only seventy-five days after Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. received the Nobel Peace Prize in Oslo, only four days after Malcolm X was assassinated in New York, and two months before his march from Selma to Montgomery, Dr. King spoke in the Sanctuary of my synagogue, Temple Israel of Hollywood under very tight security before fifteen hundred congregants about the state of race relations in America, the struggle for freedom, for equal rights and voting rights, and the need for partnership among all peoples of faith and good will to attain the goals promised to all Americans as declared the Declaration of Independence and the Preamble to the United States Constitution.

Dr. King was introduced by my esteemed predecessor, Rabbi Max Nussbaum, a refugee from Berlin who had fled in the middle of the night in 1940 to Amsterdam and then to the US with his wife Ruth to avoid arrest the following morning by the Nazi SS.

Rabbi Nussbaum was one of our g’dolei dor (the great rabbinic leaders of his generation), a brilliant scholar, activist and orator as was Dr. King, and they had much in common reflecting the common struggle of African Americans and the Jewish people in history.

This past Sunday evening, January 18, our synagogue joined with the diverse interfaith and inter-ethnic community of Los Angeles including Christians, Muslims, African Americans, Koreans, Latinos, and peoples from the Middle East to celebrate the fiftieth anniversary of Dr. King’s appearance at Temple Israel as well as his work, spirit and legacy.

I shared with the assembled 1400 people that just as Dr. King and Rabbi Nussbaum met at a difficult time in American history, we too were meeting at a difficult time filled still with so much injustice and poverty, alienation and insecurity, war and violence here and around the world, and that despite the passage of a half-century since Dr. King spoke to our community, and despite the many achievements made in promoting greater justice and human rights for Americans and peoples around the world, that we are in dire need still of the courageous and loving spirit of Dr. King, that it may penetrate our hearts, minds, and souls and stir us and all people to action that we may bend the arc of justice even further on behalf of others.

Dr. King understood that a people that fought for its rights was only as honorable as was its concern for the rights of all people, which is why we joined together earlier this week – to act on behalf of the rights of all people in America and around the world.

We were graced on Sunday evening with the presence of many distinguished clergy, community leaders and public officials including Father Ian Davies, Canon, of St Thomas Episcopal Church in Hollywood, Imam Sheikh Asim Buyuksoy of the Islamic Center of Los Angeles, the Reverend Dr. Ignacio Castuera of the United Methodist Church, Dr. John B. Cobb Jr., Professor Emeritus at the Claremont School of Theology and at Claremont Graduate University, Pastor Alan Wright of the Word Center Church in South LA, Pastor Sam Koh of Hillside Ministry of the Los Angeles Christian Presbyterian Church, Pastor Greg Bellamy of One Church International in mid-Los Angeles, Hyepin Im, President and CEO of Korean Churches for Community Development, West Hollywood Mayor John D’Amica, Cameron Onumah representing Senator Dianne Feinstein, and the Mayor of the City of Los Angeles, Eric Garcetti, who greeted us with special eloquence. NPR talk show host and author Tavis Smiley delivered the keynote address.

The evening was filled with music led by 86 voices of the Temple Israel of Hollywood Choir, the Leimert Park Choir and the Life Choir. We listened to the ethnic music of the Persian Lian Ensemble, a Mozart Mass performed by the Luminai String quartet and two sopranos, and the music of the Mexican ensemble Cambalache. We were treated to traditional Korean dance by beautifully costumed women and young girls from the Jung Im Lee Dance Academy.

All conceived, directed and produced by our synagogue’s Vice President of the Arts, Michael Skloff, a composer of Broadway and television music (e.g. the theme song for NBCs long-running hit “Friends”) and a video montage of the participating clergy overlaid with photographs and film footage from the civil rights movement and other American and worldwide human rights struggles as filmed and edited by documentary film-makers and Temple Israel members Roberta Grossman and Sophie Sartain.

The highlight of the evening was a tape-recording of Dr. King’s speech delivered fifty years ago in our Sanctuary (made possible then by Leo Wainschul who also captured the iconic image of Rabbi Nussbaum and Dr. King shaking hands together). I have transcribed Dr. King’s entire speech and it can be heard at this link – http://www.americanrhetoric.com/speeches/mlktempleisraelhollywood.htm.

For those wishing to watch the program itself, click https://new.livestream.com/tioh.

The event was covered in The Los Angeles Times – see http://www.latimes.com/local/lanow/la-me-ln-temple-israel-martin-luther-king-jr-20150118-story.html

and The Los Angeles Jewish Journal – http://www.jewishjournal.com/los_angeles/article/50_years_after_his_visit_a_multicultural_homage_to_mlk

We partnered on this King Holiday with “Big Sunday,” conceived and born at Temple Israel. Each Martin Luther King Holiday Big Sunday, led by founder David Levinson, hosts a breakfast and clothing drive at its offices on Melrose Avenue attended on Monday by 400  volunteers who provided clothing to nearly 6000 individuals.

It was a memorable day, punctuated by love and calling us all to renewed action on behalf of others.

 

Confronting Radical Jihadist Islam

16 Friday Jan 2015

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

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The more things change the more they remain the same.

As Jews read the story of the Exodus in synagogue during these weeks, our people living in France, Britain, Turkey, Belgium, and elsewhere find themselves confronting rising anti-Semitic passions stoked by radical Islamists and classic under the radar Jew-haters.

How ought we Jews to respond?

I am not one who believes that there is an anti-Semite lurking under every bed, nor do I believe that the world wants all us Jews dead. We have lots of friends and I believe that we are ill-advised to over-react. France’s Prime Minister Manuel Valls said last Saturday: “France without Jews is no longer France.”

Yes, there has been an increase in aliyah to Israel in the French Jewish community in the last two years, and it is likely that more will do so this next year, but most French Jews are staying put and have no intention of leaving.

European anti-Semitism, of course, is nothing new, though this year’s spike since the Gaza War and Israel’s growing isolation internationally is of increasing concern. At the same time, we can’t delude ourselves into thinking that anti-Semitism in Europe today is anything like it was in the 1930s when anti-Jewish riots were government sponsored and backed. They aren’t today.

What is new is the spread of Islamic fanaticism around the world. Here too we have to be careful not to over-react. The truth is this – the vast majority of the 1.6 billion Muslims in the world are peaceful, non-violent and want what all people want: employment, a decent living, education for their young, healthcare, and safety.

I have heard it said that since Judaism, Christianity and Islam all have sacred texts justifying killing, we can’t judge Islam differently than we would judge Judaism and Christianity. Though there are indeed such texts in all three religions, to ignore each religion’s separate and distinct historical and religious development is not only willful ignorance but dishonest.

Judaism’s most violent era occurred between two and three thousand years ago (1200 BCE to 70 CE) during the conquest of Canaan, the period of the Judges and Israelite kings, and foreign rule over the land of Israel culminating in the destruction of the Temple by Rome. From then on, Jews were victims until the establishment of the state of Israel which has been forced to defend itself against those who have sought its destruction. Though many harshly criticize Israel, wars of self-defense are morally justifiable in Jewish tradition and everywhere in the world.

Christianity too has a long and violent history beginning in the time of Constantine (3rd-4th century CE) and stretching through the period of the Church Fathers, the Crusades, Spanish Inquisition, medieval Europe, and into the twentieth century.

Islam after Mohammed (7th century CE) conquered with dizzying speed at the edge of the sword most of the peoples of the Middle East, North Africa and Spain killing anyone who didn’t convert. In the last half of the 20th century, some estimate that 10 million Muslims have been killed at the hands of other Muslims throughout the world.

Indeed, facts cannot be ignored. Since 9/11 more than 24,000 terrorist acts have been committed around the world in the name of Islam. In the past twenty years, there has arisen a fanatic, extremist, fundamentalist interpretation of Islam that has inspired thousands of cult-like loyalists to kill anyone they regard as infidels and strive to undermine and crush western democracies that they consider morally corrupt.

Though the vast majority of the world’s 1.6 billion Muslims are themselves not violent, Tom Friedman of The New York Times wrote this week that there seems to be ambivalence among too many “moderate” Muslims who may be partially sympathetic with the jihadists thus accounting for their silence in the face of so much terrorism.

What is needed now, Friedman wrote, is not a million person march of French citizens in support of tolerance, free speech and basic freedoms, but a one billion Muslim person march in protest against Muslim jihadist murderers.

I don’t know much about Islam, but a world religion that spawns so much violence has to be questioned.

Whereas both Judaism and Christianity have undergone religious reformations, Islam has not, and that fact combined with despotic rule over Muslims by oppressive regimes, a preponderance of poverty, illiteracy, and unemployment in many Islamic nations, make for a dangerous cocktail.

Ahmed Vanya, a courageous American Muslim and a fellow with the American Islamic Forum for Democracy, has written:

“Classical Islamic law…is definitely not peaceful or benign, and …not suited for this age; neither are its violent and grotesque progeny … Islamism and jihadism … it is the duty of us Muslims, using reason and common sense, to reinterpret the scriptures to bring about an Islam that affirms and promotes universally accepted human rights and values. It is our duty to cleanse the traditional, literalist, classical Islam and purify it to make it an Islam that is worthy to be called a beautiful religion.”

This weekend we celebrate Dr. Martin Luther King’s legacy and we read our story of the Exodus in synagogue. I welcome Ahmed Vanya’s voice and those like him in the Muslim world who speak in the true spirit of the prophetic tradition that is basic to all three great religions, for Vanya is clear as a true moderate and unafraid to stand up to the jihadists while affirming that the future need not be like either the present or the past.