Category Archives: Stories

Twinship

14 Tuesday Nov 2017

Posted by in American Jewish Life, Beauty in Nature, Divrei Torah, Stories

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The following are the thoughts of Rabbi Jacob J Weinstein (z’l) whose daughters Judith and Deborah were identical twins. I return every year to his reflections about his daughters during the week of Parashat Toldot (Genesis 25:19-28:9), the story of two other twins, Jacob and Esau.

“Job said that there were some things which he could not understand: the way of a ship upon the sea, a coney on the rocks, and the way of a man with a maid.  How then can I understand the super mystery of twinship?  A Rabbi — like other carers of souls —becomes a chameleon and takes on the coloration of the confessor, and I have sometimes felt the kick of the child in the pregnant woman who comes to relate her fears of childbirth. But I have never been able to enter into that very special intertwining relationship which governs twins. Where does one find a scalpel keen enough to sever an invisible umbilical cord?

Your description was about as close as any I have heard in capturing the inwardness of that shifting half-separation and rebounding amalgamation which takes place between the Jacobs and Esaus, the Judiths and Deborahs of our world.

You both will find it hard to realize that separate parachutes may be the only means of salvation at certain times — that there must be spaces in our togetherness, that the oak tree and the cedar do not grow in each other’s shadow.

While this may be a constant source of danger and will require a degree of special awareness, the compensations are more significant. Your twinship will have reduced to a minimum that fear of relatedness, that reticence in sublimation, that inability to put yourself into another’s shoes, or skin or heart or mind—which accounts for so much of the alienation, divisiveness, frigidity and uncommunicativeness in our society. I know that you recognize Mother’s and my wisdom in deliberately placing separateness in your togetherness, even as we recognize how wisely you have disciplined yourselves.

I know that having learned to respect each other’s differences and each other’s need to follow the compulsion and vagaries of your individual hearts, you will both be ready for that most crucial laboratory of relatedness, which is marriage. While you have at times condemned each other and bitterly pointed out faults in each other, you have never allowed these criticisms to dampen your affectionate acceptance of each other, and you have always and at times savagely resented attacks from any outside source (including your parents). If you can transfer that “acceptance” to your mate, you will have it made.”

From “Letters from A Father” – by Rabbi Jacob J. Weinstein, pages 10-11. These letters were privately published by his children, Ruth, Daniel, Judith and Deborah Weinstein in 1976 in Berkeley, California. 

Note: Judy and Deborah both became psychologists. Each was a remarkable woman. They died of cancer two years apart at the age of 48 and 46 respectively leaving husbands and 3 children between them.

Deborah was among my wife Barbara’s and my dearest friends. She was a force of nature, brilliant, passionate, socially conscious, a strong feminist, and kind. She loved us and we loved her. We miss her still nearly 24 years since her death. We knew Judy less well, but she was no less extraordinary. They adored each other. Witnessing them interact revealed the complexity that comes with the closest sibling relationships and  the joy that comes with the deepest intimacy.

 

 

 

 

A love story – Rebecca and Isaac

10 Friday Nov 2017

Posted by in Divrei Torah, Poetry, Stories

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To be alone in shifting wheat / On rocks in the sun / Beneath stirred-up clouds / And singing angels / Audible in the wind.

I’m alone / Like my father/ When he went out / Leaving what he knew / For a place he’d not been / That God would show him.

My father broke my heart /  Betrayed me / Stealing me away / Before my mother awoke / To be an offering to his God.

When Mother learned / Her soul passed away / Out of the world.

How she loved me / Filling me / With laughter, love and tears.

Bereft in this field / Compassionate One – Do You hear me / From this arid place / Of snakes and beasts?

From afar / a caravan appears / Camels, men and a girl / Like sticks standing in an oasis / That Isaac does not see.

Sitting still / Meditating in the afternoon sun / Beneath swirling clouds / And singing angels / That he does not hear.

‘Who is that sitting in the field?’ Rebecca asks.

‘My master Isaac, / Your intended one, / Whose seed you will carry / And birth new worlds.’ Eliezer says.

Then she fell from her camel / Shocked and afraid / Onto the hard ground.

She veiled her face / Bowed low her head / Together they entered Sarah’s tent / And Rebecca comforted him.

 

Poem by Rabbi John Rosove

 

 

Kristallnacht, a small Torah saved from the fires – a Personal Account by Ruth Nussbaum z’l

08 Wednesday Nov 2017

Posted by in American Jewish Life, Jewish History, Jewish Identity, Stories, Tributes

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Nussbaum Torah

The small Torah, known as “The Nussbaum Scroll” (above) written on parchment no more than 12 inches wide in very small but exquisitely beautiful k’tiv (writing) was taken from the Berlin synagogue served by Rabbi Max Nussbaum as it burned on Kristallnacht (November 9, 1938). Max and Ruth smuggled it out of Germany in 1940 as per this account by Ruth Nussbaum. The Torah now occupies an honored place in the Temple Israel of Hollywood Sanctuary Ark.

The following account is that of Ruth Nussbaum, the wife of Rabbi Max Nussbaum, who served as Senior Rabbi of Temple Israel of Hollywood from 1942 to 1974. Ruth died in 2009, but she wrote a memoir and her account of of what occurred in Berlin on the 8th, 9th, and 10th of November 1938 during “Kristallnacht” is personal and riveting. It appears in an unpublished memoir in a chapter called “The Fire by Night and the Cloud by Day” (All rights reserved, 1985). The photo of the small Torah is in Temple Israel of Hollywood’s Nussbaum Sanctuary Ark.

“It was 2 o’clock in the morning, and we had piled pillows on top of the phone to muffle the sound, but to the group of people huddled in our quiet Living room it sounded shrill and startling enough. 

We let it ring a few times, then I picked up the receiver silently, listening. A voice came over the wire, artificially eerie and hollow, repeating over and over in a slow, droning, melodramatic monotone: “Vorsicht, Vorsicht – caution, careful, watch out, watch out, watch out…”. 

…my husband shrugged: “Nothing really, just a crank call.”

It was the night of mass arrests of German Jews, the night of November 10, 1938. The place was our flat in the Lietzenburger Strasse of Berlin – West, and it had been a long day. 

It had started with another phone call, at five o’clock in the morning. The Shammess (sexton) of the “Friedenstempel” (Temple of Peace) – the synagogue closest to our home – had awaked us: “Come quickly, Rabbi,” he had whispered breathlessly, “our Temple is burning.”

Rabbi Max Nussbaum was a young assistant to Rabbi Leo Baeck, the titular head of the liberal rabbinic community in Berlin from 1936 to 1940.

“We dressed hurriedly, and rushed through the still dark streets of the quiet Westside of Berlin, down the Kurfeuerstandamm toward the Markgraf-Albrecht Strasse where the Temple was located. The sky seemed to show the first tinge of daylight – so we thought until we realized that the reddish, flickering glow spotting the sky over the city here and there was nothing as innocent as the dawn: it was the reflection of flames. 

… we saw the Friedentempel, our Temple of Peace, on fire. Clouds of black smoke fringed with red were billowing from broken windows and from the skeleton of the roof. A cordon of Stormtroopers and firemen were trying to put out the fire? Certainly not. The fire engines were idle, and the water hoses, unused as yet, were trained on the neighboring houses to protect their Aryan roofs from being ignited by a Jewish spark. No, unbelievable as it seemed, they were only trying to hold back the people who had rushed to gawk at the scene. 

There were crowds of people, in spite of the early hour. Neighbors, jovial burghers of Berlin, mostly women, wrapped in shawls against the morning chill, many of them holding small children in their arms or by the hand. We stopped among them – there was nowhere else to go – and unthinkingly I said to no one in particular something like “How horrible!” subconsciously expecting to get an echo from whoever was next to me, a normal human reaction to a disaster, like: “Yes isn’t it awful?” Or: “What a crime!” But no, not a word! 

Only then did I turn and look into the woman’s face, …; she seemed happy and excited, obviously having the time of her life. Surely this must be a case of singular human callousness.  

The expressions I saw in this moment of horror I shall never forget: they were all simply and honestly delighted, full of glee, thrilled by the spectacular entertainment, radiant with a kind of triumphant vengefulness, approving, applauding, lifting up their children so they would not miss this historic occasion: “Look here, Karle, look, they’re burning down that Jew-Church… Wake up. Frieda, come, take a good look, that’s the least you can do since Momma took you specially to see it…” 

I didn’t believe it. We had lived under Hitler for five years and not like some other people with our eyes closed or in a fool’s paradise. We had no illusions as to his and his cohorts’ capacity for evil. Nevertheless, I had preserved some of my innate faith in the basic humanness of the average person. Well aware that under terror he might easily turn into a dehumanized fiend I never thought he would do so on his own, by choice, voluntarily as it were. That moment against a background for which a Rembrandt might have mixed the colors out of fire and night with the weird palette of a Hieronymus Bosch supplying the faces, – that brief moment taught me differently, – a lesson never to be forgotten. 

“Wait here for me,” my husband said suddenly, very softly, barely moving his lips. “No, better go slowly toward the Kurfeuerstendamm. Wait for me at the corner. I’ll just be a few minutes.” He gave my arm a reassuring squeeze and slowly moved away from me, melting into the crowd. I was apprehensive but knew that any protest would have been futile and dangerous. 

After the twenty longest minutes of my life we met at the appointed corner. It was daylight now, the greyish, gloomy light of a November morning in Berlin, – and it was drizzling. We held hands and walked home, without looking back at the fire nor at its admiring audience.

We walked automatically, not thinking, not talking, and only came back to reality when something made a crunching sound underneath our shoes. We were stepping on broken glass. The shops we were just passing were some of the small number still owned by Jews, and sporadic looting had just started, although none of the perpetrators were in sight. Some windows had been smashed, window displays were gone, and shelves and racks inside looked suspiciously empty. 

The drizzle turned into light rain, and we walked as fast as we could without actually running. We were out of breath when we finally let ourselves into our flat; I locked the door behind us and leaned against it, exhausted and bewildered. 

Hannele, my child, burst out of her room and ran up to us, wanting to know where we had been. Our combination housekeeper – friend – and nanny had taken care of her and was about to take her to nursery school, so we hugged her and promised her a story for later on and sent her off. 

There was coffee waiting for us, and we sat down at our breakfast table, going through familiar motions, as if nothing had changed, knowing full well that everything had changed. 

Then Max told me: he and the Schammes had managed to rescue the smallest of the Torah scrolls from the Sanctuary. “How did you do it – and where is it?” I was incredulous. “Mr. N. seemed to know the guard at the rear entrance, – that’s how we got in. And he is going to bring it over to us later, for safe keeping…” 

It was about 9 o’clock then, and after a few phone calls and having listened to the official radio announcement, the enormousness of what had happened began to dawn on us: most of the synagogues of the German Reich had been burnt down during the preceding night (267 of them)…”due to the people’s indignation at the cold blooded murder on November 7th of a German consular attaché in Paris, a certain Herrn vom Rath, at the hands of a Polish Jew.”  

This was the gist of the official version. 

Added of course were the standard phrases always used to cover up acts of atrocity…: “Schlagartige Einzelaktion auf Grund der kochenden Volkssseele,” meaning … “Spontaneous, single acts caused by the righteous wrath of the soul of the people,” and not a master plan instigated and mapped out in Dr. Goebbels’ office.  

“The fire departments” so we heard on the radio, “had done their best, but alas, had not been able to prevent the partial or total destruction of most synagogues. Regrettably, but understandably of course” – so the radio version continued – “The boiling soul of the German people had then turned against the Jewish-owned shops, and much damage to property and decorum of the city streets had been done – all the direct result of the fiendish deed perpetrated by the Jewish conspiracy in Paris. It was obvious – and the Fuehrer in his wisdom would see to it – that the guilty party, namely the Jews of Germany, would pay in full for the damage done.…” 

Synagogues burnt, Jewish shops smashed and looted, and Jews to pay for the damage…It seemed the pinnacle of insanity.  

… the Jews of Germany were to pay the German Government immediately the sum of one Billion Riechsmark. … mass arrests were taking place all over the country. Jewish men were seized, rounded up and placed under “Shcutzhfat” – protective custody, a euphemistic term meaning jail or concentration camp. 

Now it was night again, and our living room was filled. … my husband was not a German citizen but had a Rumanian passport. Therefore our apartment was something like an asylum, offering just a little bit more security than the homes of most of our German-born friends and colleagues. 

About eight or ten of them had come to us that night, some couples who were lucky enough to be still together and at liberty… 

Earlier in the evening our good friend Louis Lochner, chief of the Associated Press office in Berlin, had stopped by…to give and get information and to offer help … He was one of those gallant Christians who constantly used whatever influence he had with German or American authorities on behalf of Jews in Germany. He often risked his position and his own safety by befriending us – a man whose courage equaled his kindness. 

On that night, our plea to him was mainly to discover the whereabouts of those who had been arrested and to find out, if possible, how much longer this wave of arrests would continue… 

I poured coffee. Voices were hushed for the walls had ears and we had good reason to suspect that the telephone was tapped… 

Ruth and Max Nussbaum - Wedding Day July 13 1938 in Berlin

Rabbi Leo Baeck had just officiated at the marriage of Rabbi Max and Ruth Nussbaum on July 13, 1938 in Berlin. Ruth told me that the Gestapo had permitted their marriage as a “wedding gift” to them. They are seen leaving the synagogue immediately following their marriage.

We were all tired and enervated…Max stood up, stretched, and yawned. “Time to turn in” he said. “Why don’t’ you all relax and spend the night?” 

…an uneasy quiet settled over the makeshift dormitory on the third floor of a quiet apartment house, in the heart of the capital of Nazi Germany. 

…the previous nights… proved to be the beginning of the liquidation of German Jewry… 

…the following morning…dispelled some of the dread of the night before; fortified by the irresistible combination of fresh coffee and hot crisp “Kneuppel” (“sticks”) as the Berliner calls his famous breakfast rolls…our friends left quickly, one by one, for their homes or offices. 

They had not been gone long – I had just bundled up all the linens and, luckily, sent them off to the laundry when the doorbell rang. A look through the peephole revealed an unmistakable Brown uniform.  

My husband was at the moment soaking in a hot bath, a therapy prescribed by me as an unfailing cure for a stiff and aching back which was the aftermath of a night spent on or rather between two equally stiff chairs. 

I opened the door and faced not one but two brown uniforms. Two young guys, probably not much older than me, Hiel Hitlered me smartly and one of them, studying a paper in his hand, asked: “Is Mr. Nussbaum at home?” I smiled my best drama-school-smile, thinking very very fast ‘this is no good, – how do I handle this?” trying to look honest but a little bit honestly confused – so I blushed – I know I blushed, I did it easily – and said: “Frankly I’m not sure. He may have gone out while I was out taking my little girl to nursery school.” 

…I saw they had their feet already in the door, so I smiled again and said: “Why don’t you come in?” figuring by invitation was better than by invasion. 

They seemed a bit perplexed – this …was not in their script – but after wiping their shoes carefully on the doormat they followed me into the living room. I left them there, while I aimlessly pretended to search the apartment, opening doors, closing doors, all the while talking very loud – so my husband could hear me and understand – “No, he is not here, I hope he’ll be back soon” – which on that day, when thousands of men had been rounded up and taken to concentration camps – might have been understood by them as the devout wish of a Jewish wife – – or not. 

…I had asked them to sit down…with this nice looking young woman who could have been a schoolmate of theirs a few years ago. I had gone to the kitchen and came back with some coffee and coffeecake.  

“These are some schnecken, my Mom baked them yesterday.”

“O your Mom makes them too?”

“Aren’t they delicious?” They were obviously bewildered, but they went for it. 

[Ruth then took the SS soldiers on a tour of her apartment avoiding the bathroom where Max was hiding and deeply afraid that Max would burst out “to rescue me.”]

“Na, alright Frau Doktor,” one of the guys finally said in his best Berliner accent, “must have been a false alarm.”  

They clicked their heels and clattered down the stairs. 

“I have a gambler for a wife,” said my husband. “How did you dare do it?”  

I denied it. We actually had nothing to lose, nor did I have any choice. Had they found him, all hell would have broken loose, so my way was our only chance. And it worked because I knew these kinds of boys. I knew how their dirty little minds worked; I spoke their language and could act the role of the “girl next door”, so yes, maybe it was a gamble, but a small investment for very high stakes! 

It had been an inconsequential incident, compared to the massive historic tragedy of taking place around us at the same time. But then our life under the Nazis was a succession of such insignificant incidents; fate did not deal us only the unspeakable and deadly blows which have become synonymous with the Third Reich but also aimed a steady barrage of tiny poisoned arrows at us – the pinpricks of destiny, the thousand-and-one chicaneries that beset us in every phase of our daily lives in those years.” 

Postscript – Rabbi Max and Ruth Nussbaum remained in Berlin to assist the members of their synagogue community in attaining visas until 1940 when they got word that the Gestapo was coming to arrest them. In the middle of the night, Ruth and Max left their young daughter Hannah with Ruth’s parents (they had no visas so they could not leave all together), took the small Torah that Max had saved from his burning synagogue ark on the night of Kristallnacht, and fled to Amsterdam. From there they journeyed to New York. Rabbi Stephen S. Wise had secured a position as rabbi for Max in a small synagogue in Muskogee, Oklahoma. Before going there, Rabbi Wise had arranged an interview for them with the New York Times to describe the situation in Germany. Ruth spoke English. Max would learn the language in Oklahoma.  They met as well with Secretary of the Treasury Hans Morgenthau in Washington, D.C. who arranged passage for Hannah and Ruth’s parents who would join Ruth and Max in Oklahoma six months later.

In 1942, Temple Israel of Hollywood invited Rabbi Max Nussbaum to be its rabbi and he happily accepted bringing distinction to our congregation for the next 32 years. The small “Nussbaum Torah” (as we affectionately call it) remains in our Sanctuary ark, an icon of a memory of a story that can never be forgotten, thanks to Ruth.

 

 

 

God’s Promise and the Rainbow – A Midrash

19 Thursday Oct 2017

Posted by in Beauty in Nature, Divrei Torah, Ethics, Health and Well-Being, Musings about God/Faith/Religious life, Stories

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rainbow-sky-over-the-rainbow

God looked out upon creation and saw that violence, chaos and mean-spirited self-centeredness engulfed the human heart. There was neither kindness nor justice in the world. Empathy had ceased. Fear and hatred supplanted peace and love. In Divine disappointment and righteous rage God determined to destroy creation and return everything to primordial darkness.

The Eternal mourned and recalled how great was the effort to create the heavens and earth, give life to growing things, design and fashion the birds, sea creatures and animals in all their variety, shape, color, function, and form. That thought grew within the Divine mind, and so the Creator hesitated and stepped back from the brink thinking how great a tragedy it would be to destroy that which had once been thought “good.”

God wondered: ‘Is there one human on earth, different from the rest, who can still fathom Me, who hasn’t been consumed by the sitra achra, the evil that brought such darkness to My creation.’

God peered into every human soul seeking that one, better than the rest, who though not yet a complete tzadik might be good enough to hear the Divine voice and save what could still be saved.

To God’s relief, there was one human named Noah, so God spoke to Noah and told him to build an ark and save his family and two of every creature that all might not be lost and that the world might begin anew.

As the Eternal wept in contemplating the devastation, Divine tears fell heavily to earth and continued forty days and nights.

When finally God’s tear ducts were dry the waters receded, dry land appeared, and the ark docked. The Eternal God spoke to Noah:

“I am God, Noah, Who created you and brought you into this new land. Look around you and see the cleansed earth. The world is once again new. There is no longer rage or hatred, violence or hubris in the human heart. I will make with you a covenant marked by a sign that will remind us both how I created the world in peace, but then destroyed it, and then allowed it to begin anew that it should remain a place of peace for all time.

And the sign of this covenant will be a radiant smile that stretches across the heavens and fills the sky, an arc of light shining through the flood waters, a vision of loveliness that will inspire awe and love for Me. 

This promise, Noah, shall be called the ‘rainbow,’ and this bow in the sky will remind you, Me and your progeny that I will never again bring such devastation to the earth. 

Your duty and that of your children and children’s children must be to protect My creation, to preserve and nurture it, for there will come no one after you to set it right if you destroy it.”

Then God bent towards the earth and stretched the Divine arm mightily across the sky and made an arc. And just where God’s hand had been, there appeared a sheltering bow of every color spread out across the blue canvas of sky.

And God spoke of the colors and the sign of the rainbow:

“First comes red to stand for the blood pulsing through human veins that carries My Godly soul and makes all things live; orange is for the comforting warmth of fire and its potential to create, build and improve upon what I created; yellow is for the glory of the sun that lights the earth and gives vision to earthly souls that they might see Me in all things and live; green is for the grass and the leaves of trees and their fruit, that all creatures might be sustained in life; blue is for the sky, sea and rivers that joins air and ground and makes clear that all is One, divinely linked and a reflection of Me; indigo appears each day at dusk and dawn to signal evening and morning, the passage of time and the seasons, the ever-renewing life force that is intrinsic to all things; violet is for the coming of night when the world rests and is renewed, and it carries the hope that all might awake in the morning and utter words of thanksgiving and praise.”

God explained that the rainbow appears to the human eye as a half circle, and said to Noah:

“Do not be fooled, my most righteous one! There is more to life than what the eye can see. There is both the revealed and the hidden, and the hidden half of the bow reaches deep into the earth that you and those who yearn after Me might come and discover Truth, and reveal and make whole both the revealed and the hidden in My world.”  

God told Noah:

“Remember this blessing, My child, and you will remember My promise – Baruch Atah Adonai Eloheinu Melech ha-olam, zocheir habrit v’ne-eman biv’rito v’kayam b’ma-amaro.

Praised are You, Eternal our God, Sovereign of the revealed and the hidden, Who remembers, is faithful to, and fulfills the Divine covenant and promise.”

Compiled and written by Rabbi John Rosove. Inspired by classic Midrashim. First published in October 2010.

 

A Yemenite Jew who doesn’t want to get out of bed

14 Thursday Sep 2017

Posted by in American Jewish Life, Divrei Torah, Ethics, Health and Well-Being, Holidays, Stories

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At this season we Jews ask ourselves the most basic of questions:
 
Where am I? What’s the state of my inner life, my relationships with the people I love, with Judaism and tradition, and with God? How through habit and a lack of will have I strayed from a healthy, integrated, loving, and generous life?
The Torah this week (Parashat Nitzavim) reminds us that “This mitzvah that I command you this day is not too hard for you, nor too remote…” (Deuteronomy 30:11)
 
A wonderful Midrash from Yemen shines a light on what is common to everyone:
 
“They say to a person: ‘Go to a certain town and learn Torah there.’ But the person answers: ‘I am afraid of the lions that I will encounter on the way.’
 
So they say: ‘You can go and learn in another town that is closer.’ But the person replies: ‘I am afraid of the thieves.’
So they suggest: ‘There is a sage in your own city. God and learn from him.’
 
But the person replies: ‘What if I find the door locked, and I have to return to where I am?’
 
So they say: ‘There is a teacher sitting and teaching right here in the chair next to you.’ But the person replies: ‘You know what? What I really want to do is go back to sleep!’ That is what Scripture refers to when it says in Proverbs 26:14: ‘The door is turning upon its hinges, and the lazy is still upon his bed.’” -Yalkut Midreshei Teiman
 
Do we recognize ourselves in this Midrash? Though the mitzvah refers to learning Torah its application is far broader. The protagonist lists one hundred and one ways why he can’t learn or find a teacher, mentor or guide to help him grow and change.
 
Are we not like the Jew in the story?
 
Like him, so often we just don’t want to get out of bed nor confront our shortcomings, inadequacies, and failures of will.
 
Like the Jew in the story, so often we’re accustomed to doing things the way we always have done them, even if they’re dysfunctional and self-destructive, and even if they’re the source and cause of our alienation from others and unhappy relationships.
 
Like the Jew in the story, so often we find reasons to avoid change.
 
Like the Jew in the story, so often we’re stubborn. Though there’s comfort in routine, a routine may keep us stuck in the past when we should be living our lives forward.
 
As Chassidic wisdom teaches, if you want to go east but are going west, all you have to do is turn around and take that first step.
 
This is the season of turning, and though changing direction may require an extreme act of will before taking that first step, once we do it, the second step is easier to take and the third easier still.
 
Shabbat Shalom.
Painting by Reuben Reubens

 

The Time for Forgiveness is Now!

03 Sunday Sep 2017

Posted by in American Jewish Life, Ethics, Health and Well-Being, Holidays, Musings about God/Faith/Religious life, Stories

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Forgiveness (i.e. forgiving others and forgiving ourselves) may be the most difficult challenge we ever have to face. However, we often make it more difficult than it needs to be because we misunderstand what forgiveness is and is meant to do.

Forgiving others doesn’t mean excusing their bad behavior or forgetting that they wronged us. Even if people who hurt us don’t apologize to us and even if they continue to justify what they did that is contrary to what we believe actually happened, we ought to forgive them not for their sake but for ours. Forgiveness means “letting go” of resentments because these negative and toxic feelings are damaging to us.

Having noted this, the ideal goal of forgiveness is to reconcile and reestablish some kind of relationship with the offending “other.” Let me be quick to say, however, that reconciliation isn’t always possible if, for example, the person who harmed us or we harmed is deceased, nor is it always desirable if the “other” is so incorrigible, narcissistic, and damaged that we have no desire for reconciliation.

Here, however, is one positive example of what forgiveness can do.

A woman in her 70s hadn’t spoken with her sister in forty years. Out of the blue one day her sister called to tell her that she was dying and wanted to see her. They met, her sister apologized for the wrong that caused the breach so long before, and asked for forgiveness. They wept together and reconciled. After her sister died the woman felt a heavy burden lifted from her heart, and the love she once felt for her sister returned.

There is no time like the present (in this season of Elul before Rosh Hashanah in particular) to summon the courage, take the risk, and seek forgiveness from those we’ve wronged even if the event occurred many years ago. Hopefully, those who wronged us will do the same. There is no expiration date nor is there a statute of limitations on forgiveness.

Michael McCullough extends the principles of forgiveness to groups, communities, and nations:

“The forgiveness instinct … can change the world. Groups can be helped to forgive other groups, communities can be helped to forgive other communities, …and nations can even be helped to forgive other nations. Leaders… can offer apologies on behalf of their people to groups with whom they’ve been in conflict. They can also offer … remorse and empathy for the suffering of another group, and they can provide compensation to groups of people whom they’ve harmed – just as individuals can. When they engage in such gestures, it is often to great effect.” (Beyond Revenge – The Evolution of the Forgiveness Instinct, [Jossey-Bass, San Francisco, 2008] p. 181-2)

Think of the power of Pope John Paul II’s apology to the Jewish people for Christendom’s participation in the Holocaust, the Japanese apology for war atrocities it committed against China and Korea, the United States’ apology to Japanese Americans interred in concentration camps during World War II, and the Irish Republican Army’s apology for the deaths of noncombatants during the war in northern Ireland.

Imagine Prime Minister Netanyahu on behalf of Israel and President Abbas on behalf of the Palestinians taking a similar step and apologizing to the other for the pain and suffering each people caused non-combatants on the other side. If this were to happen, if either took the initiative, I believe that a peaceful resolution of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict is possible.

Longfellow wrote: “If we could read the secret history of our enemies, we should find in each person’s life sorrow and suffering enough to disarm all hostility.”

Note: Selichot (the Holiday in which Judaism teaches that the Gates of Heaven begin to open to receive the petitionary prayers of the community) this year falls on Saturday night, September 16. Those who live in Los Angeles and are unaffiliated are welcome to join us at Temple Israel of Hollywood. We’ll convene for learning with the Rabbis at 8:30 pm considering all aspects of forgiveness, followed by a presentation by Theater Dybbuk on the theme of forgiveness, and then we’ll join together in the mystical service of Selichot in which we will change the Torah mantles on all our sifrei Torah to white. Come dressed in white.  

L’shanah tovah.

 

 

 

 

 

BEA WAIN, ‘GIRL SINGER’ FROM BIG BAND ERA, DEAD AT 100

24 Thursday Aug 2017

Posted by in American Jewish Life, Stories, Tributes

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images

Bea Wain was the mother of one of my wife’s and my dearest friends, Wayne Baruch and his wife Shelley. Bea is an American musical cultural icon, and she died earlier this week at age 100.

One reviewer described her this way:

“Bea is considered by many to be one of the best female vocalists of her era, possessing a natural feel for swing-music rhythms not often found among white singers of the day. She excelled in pitch and subtle utilization of dynamics. She also communicated a feminine sensuality and sang with conviction in an unforced manner.”

Bea’s obituary in the Washington Post had a few inaccuracies, so Wayne, her son, edited it, as follows:

“Bea Wain, who started singing on the radio at age six, became a hit-making pop vocalist in the late 1930s, and performed into her ninth decade as one of the last surviving singers from the big-band era, died August 19 in Beverly Hills, CA.

Completely self-taught, Wain had an expressive but understated swing style that propelled her career. She performed in nightclubs and on radio programs before her breakthrough in 1937 [at the age of 20] when arranger Larry Clinton selected her as the thrush for a band he was starting. Clinton’s orchestra never achieved the enduring recognition of groups led by Glenn Miller, Tommy Dorsey, Artie Shaw, or Benny Goodman. But with superb arrangements, a tightknit group of players, and Wain out front, the ensemble had a solid commercial run with jukebox favorites such as “Deep Purple” and “Heart and Soul.” The band made its biggest impression adapting classical compositions into popular swing numbers featuring Wain’s interpretations, notably “My Reverie” from the Claude Debussy piano piece “Rêverie,” and “Martha,” from the Friedrich von Flotow opera of the same name.

In a 2007 radio interview, Wain said the Debussy estate in France initially balked when Clinton put words to the composer’s melody and no amount of money could change its mind. The band recorded the number anyway and shipped a copy to the estate. A message came back, “If this girl sings it, okay.”

Wain’s negligible pay of $30 per recording session began to grate on her. At the peak of her fame, she left Clinton and became a headliner on the college and theatre circuit. She also appeared regularly on the popular radio program “Your Hit Parade” where she became a friend of another guest, Frank Sinatra. Wain’s many and varied recordings from that period include the romantic “You Go To My Head,” the flirty “Kiss the Boys Goodbye,” the bawdy Andy Razaf/Eubie Blake number “My Man is a Handy Man,” and touching ballads “God Bless the Child,” and “My Sister And I,” a heartbreaker about war refugee children. She was also the first to record the classic “Over The Rainbow,” [1938] but MGM prohibited its release until “The Wizard of Oz” came out.

In 1939, a Billboard Magazine poll named her the year’s most popular female band vocalist. She ranked alongside the country’s most popular singers, including Billie Holiday, Ella Fitzgerald, Mildred Bailey, and Helen Forrest. She was in demand as a singer on radio shows hosted by Kate Smith, Fred Waring, and Kay Thompson.

Along with her husband of 53 years, radio announcer and commentator André Baruch, she co-hosted a series called Mr. and Mrs. Music on New York radio station WMCA in the late 1940s and early 1950s. They were the first husband and wife dee-jay team on the air. The show eventually migrated to ABC and NBC radio networks and included live musical performances by Wain. Later, they anchored a radio talk show in Palm Beach, FL, before settling in Beverly Hills, CA.” 

Because Wayne was one of the producers of the Three Tenors concerts at Dodger Stadium and many other concerts and telecasts featuring opera luminaries Luciano Pavarotti, Plácido Domingo and José Carreras, Wayne invited his mother to attend a master class with Pavarotti in Los Angeles. Afterward she found herself alone with the maestro.

“My son told him I was a wonderful singer,” Bea told Christopher Popa, a Chicago music librarian who runs the website bigbandlibrary.com . “So he said, ‘Oh, I’d love to hear you.’ I said, ‘Well, as a matter of fact, I recorded one of the songs that you sing, that was ‘Martha’ … I said I did a swing version of it. And he said, ‘Show me, show me.’

“And I started to sing it. And he joined in — it was adorable — and he pretended he was a trombone player, and I’d sing la-la-la-la” to his trombone sounds. “And we had a lovely time.”

Bea never stopped singing. I remember recently Wayne telling me that someone met his mother at her assisted living home and told her that he heard that that she was once a singer. Indignant, she retorted “I AM a singer!”

Indeed she was.

Listen to her beautiful voice in these You Tube recordings. You can see her sing “Heart and Soul” which she made popular in the United States.

Google “Bea Wain” and you can listen to your singing on YouTube.

When a Childhood Home is Demolished

05 Saturday Aug 2017

Posted by in Life Cycle, Stories

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Above photos – Michael, me, and our father – 1952 and view from the street today

Eighty-three years ago, in 1934, in the midst of the Great Depression, my childhood home in west Los Angeles was built.

It is a charming California ranch-style home of no more than 2100 square feet. According to neighborhood code, every home was set back 100 feet from the street.

When I was growing up, 15 mature trees populated the grounds. In the back yard, there were willow, palm, avocado, guava, kumquat, peach, plum, laurel, and lemon. In the front yard grew magnolia, jacaranda, paper birch, oak, pine, and maple. Alas, all are gone now except the maple.

As a kid, I loved climbing the tall oak or magnolia whenever I needed to be alone. I also loved to climb onto our tile roof being careful not to break the tiles, which I did from time to time.

My parents bought the home in 1949 just before I was born. My brother Michael left for college in 1966, and after I left in 1968, my mother sold the property. The family that bought it lived there for the next 49 years until this past year.

Last week the developers who bought it put up a green fabric fence signaling that demolition is imminent.

I loved that house. My very first memories are from the age of two. I played baseball with my dad and brother in the back yard. Michael and I dug holes lined with tin cans in the front yard so we could putt golf balls. In the back was a built-in red brick distressed barbecue. In the service yard behind the garage we inherited an incinerator from the 1940s and used it until the LA City Council banned them in 1957.

My dad played the violin and painted still life casein in the sunny lanai, a room he named for his pleasant experiences serving in the Hawaiian islands during World War II as a physician and lieutenant colonel in the US Navy. Our parents entertained with scotch and martinis before sit-down dinners. They drank their coffee black and hot!

My dad bought Michael and me our first bicycles. Mine was a red 24-inch Schwinn I called “Betsy.” His was black. We rode the neighborhood with gusto. I walked to the bus stop or the mile through back streets to school from the age of 6 without my parents expressing, to my knowledge, any worry.

Our house doors were never locked. Milk was delivered in bottles and placed in a small niche near the back door. The Good Humor ice cream truck drove our streets in the afternoon. I played outside until dark and came home filthy. I knew my neighborhood like the back of my hand and knew most of the neighbors. Dogs roamed the streets unleashed.

As a little boy, I remember following my dad (who I called “Daddy” and still do) like a puppy in the back yard picking up the clippings he pruned. I can still remember the smell of wet cut grass and eucalyptus from the adjacent property. We fed California jays (now called scrub jays) and had names for all of them according to their markings. We collected butterflies.

In 1953, my parents bought our first television set, a 24-inch black-and-white console. They put it in my dad’s study with his book shelves, medical journals, desk and two red leather chairs and ottoman on which my brother and I watched cartoons on weekend mornings, westerns in the afternoons, I Love Lucy when we were sick, the Friday night fights with my dad, The Wonderful World of Disney and The Ed Sullivan Show on Sunday nights.

In 1956, I remember the interview with Adlai Stevenson when the camera caught the hole in the bottom of his shoe. I recall also seeing Fidel Castro on Face the Nation in 1959 just after the Cuban revolution, JFK delivering his inaugural address in 1961, his Cuban Missile Crisis speech in 1962, Dr. King’s “I have a dream” speech on the Washington Mall in 1963, the entire weekend after Kennedy’s assassination in November 1963 including live the murder of Lee Harvey Oswald, LBJ signing the 1964 Civil Rights Act and the 1965 Voting Rights Act in the White House, and footage of the fighting during the 1967 Six-Day War between Israel and the combined armies of eight Arab nations who promised to “push the Jews into the sea.”

I emerged into political and historical consciousness in that house.

On August 10, 1959, my world changed irrevocably. Michael (a year older than me) and I saw our father for the last time that evening as he stood in the doorway of our small bedroom to say goodnight. He hadn’t been feeling well and while we slept an ambulance came to the house and took him at 2 a.m. to the hospital where he died 23 hours later from his second heart attack. He was only 53 years old.

My brother and I call that house “321.” It has been our link to our childhoods and father throughout our lives. I visited it from time to time and even knocked on the door 25 years ago and asked to walk through. The owners remembered my family and were gracious. Though it has been owned by others, Michael and I still feel that it belongs to us. I fantasized that maybe either of us would be able and want to buy it this past year when it was put up for sale.

One doesn’t say Kaddish over a house, but its demolition is a death for both of us. We’re left now only with, as Jim Croce poignantly said, “photographs and memories.”

Thanks to Michael for sharing his memories with me as I wrote this.

 

Devotion to the Innocent – An Essential Virtue for Leadership

07 Friday Jul 2017

Posted by in American Politics and Life, Divrei Torah, Ethics, Quote of the Day, Stories

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The contrast between Moses and the central figure of this week’s parashah, the Prophet Balaam, is as stark as one finds in all the Hebrew Bible and Jewish tradition despite the fact that both men were prophets.

It’s odd that among the most famous blessings in all of Judaism that appears in this week’s Torah reading “Balak”, was uttered by Balaam and not by Moses.

The portion, despite its title, is about Balaam and not Balak, the King of Moab who was so threatened by the Israelites that he sought to hire Balaam to curse them as they passed through his territory. God, however, put different words in Balaam’s mouth:

“Mah tovu ohalecha Yaakov mish’kenotecha Yisrael …..

How good are your tents Jacob, your places of dwelling Israel…” (Numbers 24:5)

Who was Balaam?

Rabbi Jonathan Sacks notes that an inscription was found on the wall of a pagan temple dating to the eight century BCE at a place called Dier ‘Alla that lays at the junction of the Jordan and Jabbok rivers. It refers to a seer named Balaam ben Beor (see “Lessons in Leadership,” p. 217).

The Torah notes that Balaam was an impressive religious figure with shaman-like skills and was a known miracle worker which is why Balak sought him out: “I know that whomever you bless is blessed, and whomever you curse is cursed.” (Numbers 22:6)

Our rabbis also recognized Balaam’s prophetic gift: “In Israel there was no other prophet as great as Moses, but among the nations there was. And who was he? Balaam.” (Sifrei, V’zot Ha-b’rachah, 357; Midrash Bamidbar Rabbah 20).

Yet, they note that Balaam had a physical deformity that reflected a spiritual deficiency: “Balaam suma b’achat m’einav hayah – Balaam was blind in one eye” and, they added, he was lame in one foot (Talmud Sanhedrin 105a). They wondered how such a prophet could be so foolish as to imagine that he could effectively curse God’s treasured people, the Israelites?

They concluded that Balaam was able to see clearly the world with his seeing eye but when considering the Israelites’ fate either he used his blind eye or allowed all the gold that Balak was offering him to blind him to the truth that he would not be able to curse Israel. The Mishnah explains that this deficiency of sight and insight was the reason Balaam was denied a share in the World to Come (Mishnah Sanhedrin 10:2).

Despite Balaam’s renown as a prophet, he had no followers at all. The rabbis read his name not as “Balaam” but as “B’lo am – without a people” (Rashi).

Moses, of course, was entirely different. Not only did he lead a people, God’s people Israel, but he was completely devoted to their well-being. This moral virtue of care is an echo of Abraham who challenged God’s justice at Sodom and Gomorrah, that if there could be found even one righteous human being in those condemned immoral cities (Genesis 18:25), it would defy God’s own sense of justice to destroy them.

At the incident of the Golden Calf, again Moses pleaded with God to spare the innocent even if it meant blotting his own name from history: “… if You would forgive their sin, well and good; but if not, m’cheini na mi-sif’r’cha asher katavta – erase me from the record which You have written!” (Exodus 32:32)

Moses challenged God again when Korach and the tribal leaders rebelled against his leadership. Moses fell to the ground in prayer and said to God: “Ha-ish echad yecheta v’al kol ha-eidah tik’tsof – When one person sins will you be wrathful with the whole community?” (Numbers 16:22)

Moses also empathically forgave his sister Miriam who was stricken with leprosy when she and Aaron initiated a rebellion against their own brother saying “El na r’fa na la – Please God, heal her.” (Numbers 12:13)

Balaam was concerned only for himself. His chief goal was to line his pockets. He was available to the highest bidder even if it meant devastating other human beings. He lacked utterly in compassion and empathy. Self-centered and selfish, he had no integrity and no honor. He was morally, spiritually, and prophetically corrupt.

Moses’ utter devotion to his people, his consistent defense of the innocent, his absolute humility before God, his lack of care for self-enrichment, and his willingness to sacrifice his own life and place in history for the sake of the well-being of the people are the moral virtues that not only distinguished him as prophet and leader, but set the standard for all leadership to come.

Just as our ancestors needed inspired leaders, we too need leaders of moral virtue. Sadly, today, we especially deficient.
 

Israeli Bright Light #6 – An Ethiopian Israeli Woman’s Journey

21 Sunday May 2017

Posted by in Israel/Zionism, Jewish History, Jewish Identity, Stories, Women's Rights

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Batya Shmueli grew up living on the banks of the Blue Nile in Ethiopia. When her family landed at Ben Gurion Airport in 1991, she remembers that her grandfather bent down and kissed the runway tarmac to express his intimate joy for the land he had prayed for his entire life. She recalls being stunned to see white Jews because in Ethiopia all Jews were black. With her family, she lived in a caravan adjacent to a small town in the Galilee.

As a teenager, Batya sought to fully identify as an Israeli girl and leave behind her past as an Ethiopian Jew. She recalls rebelling against her family’s traditions and taking on all things Israeli. She learned Hebrew, did very well in school, had lots of friends, dressed and behaved as young Israeli teens do. Her new life, however, contrasted dramatically with the traditions of her family and most especially with her beloved Ethiopian Jewish grandfather who was not at all happy about the changes he witnessed in her.

After high school, Batya served in Israel’s Navy with an elite naval commando unit. ‎When she completed her military service and before entering the university, she traveled to New York but felt overwhelmed by the city, and then west to Los Angeles (a bit less intense) where she lived for a year in the Pico-Robertson neighborhood populated by thousands of Jews. She worked at the Israeli Haifa Restaurant, made friends, and attended an orthodox shul.

Being far from her family and friends Batya yearned to return home. However, her grandfather, whom she loved so dearly had died, and she regrets to this day that she didn’t reconcile with him and thank him for the Ethiopian Jewish traditions that he sought to sustain in her family.

Batya discovered much about herself during her formative years. Especially, she learned what it means to be Israeli with Ethiopian Jewish ancestry and roots. She learned that everyone is accountable, that playing the victim to outside forces that sought to keep her down is self-destructive, that she could create her own life anew. She learned as well the importance of placing value in her ethnic and religious tradition yet at the same time to participate fully in the general Israeli culture. As a young person growing up in Ethiopia and Israel, she learned how important it is to clarify her goals, to learn as much she could, and to work hard to fulfill her dreams.

Upon Batya’s return to Israel, she entered the University of Haifa, received her Bachelor’s Degree studying teaching and the history of the Jewish People. She married, became the mother of three children, and now serves as Resource Development and Community Relations Manager for Yemin Orde Youth Village in the Carmel region of Israel where she is responsible for finding established Israelis who are willing to give their time, experience and capital to help the students and graduates of Yemin Orde Youth Village succeed in Israeli society.

Batya is a bright, wise, thoughtful, practical, kind, and loving woman. She is one of several hundred full-time teachers and staff at Yemin Orde and is a compelling role model for the 435 teenagers who live there.

The students come on their own from Ethiopia, the former Soviet Union (Russian, Ukraine, etc.), Poland, Turkey, Zimbabwe, France, Argentina, Brazil, and other countries. There is also native Israeli youth who come to the village from broken and dysfunctional homes and from tough crime-ridden Israeli neighborhoods. For all of them (boys and girls ages 14-18) Yemin Orde is their home, the only safe and nurturing home they have in Israel. Even after graduation, they return and stay close to their teachers and mentors to whom they owe so much.

Batya told us that Yemin Orde helps students to become honest, responsible, and accountable for what they do and don’t do, to take appropriate risks and accept their limitations, to cope with failure, to handle themselves with dignity when they feel that their teachers, future commanders, and bosses don’t like them, to seek help when they need it from teachers and counselors, to refuse to think and act as victims, to look forwards and not backwards, and to pursue their interests with passion, perseverance and commitment.

The educational philosophy executed by talented Yemin Orde staff such as Batya actually saves lives.

Over the course of the 64 years of its existence, Yemin Orde’s graduates have served in elite units of the army, become leaders in Israel’s hi-tech industry, in the law, medicine, science, education, and business. Some have risen as political leaders and become mayors of towns and cities, and even as Members of the Knesset.

In her own life, as a teacher, counselor, and staff at Yemin Orde, Batya Shmueli is among the brightest lights that my synagogue leadership group met in Israel.