Category Archives: Stories

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

23 Sunday Nov 2014

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

 

Pavel Stransky – Terezin, Auschwitz and the Death March of a Survivor

18 Tuesday Nov 2014

Posted by in Jewish History, Jewish Identity, Musings about God/Faith/Religious life, Stories

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As we drove into Terezin where 33,000 Jews died and from which 88,000 were deported to Auschwitz, the place appeared as a charming medieval walled-town graced with a central square beneath gentle-leaved trees.

Terezin, a medieval town constructed by Joseph II for Maria Teresa, was established by the Nazis in 1940 to be a model camp used to persuade the International Red Cross that Jews were there for their protection and led a normal life.

The camp would receive 150,000 Jews including 15,000 children from Czechoslovakia, Germany, Austria, the Netherlands, and Denmark. Most Jews stayed 6 months before being transported to Auschwitz. The camp crammed 80,000 souls together. Today, 1000 people live there.

Pavel Stransky was one of only 17,247 survivors. At 93, this warm-hearted, articulate and loving grandfather guided us through the camp and shared his story.

He was born in Prague and met the love of his life, Vera, as a young Jewish girl in 1938. They became engaged but before the marriage could occur he was taken to Terezin in 1941. By chance, Vera and her parents were on the next transport.

Vera and Pavel married in Terezin on December 16, 1943 in a non-Jewish ceremony one day before he would be transported to Auschwitz. Not knowing what would meet them there, Vera and her mother (her father had already died) voluntarily joined him. Upon arrival, Vera’s mother was gassed. Pavel and Vera were selected for work and separated.

Pavel lost half his weight by the time he was liberated. At 70 pounds and starving, he was forced on a 150-mile death march from Auschwitz and back to Terezin before Soviet troops liberated him.

Of Auschwitz, Pavel wrote:

“Had Dante Alighieri seen the ramp in Auschwitz-Birkenau at the end of the night of December 20, 1943, he probably would have been ashamed of his sober description of Hell.” (Pavel Stransky – “As Messengers for the Victims”, publ. 2000, p. 14).

Before being deported from Prague at the beginning of the war, Pavel had fortuitously taken a teacher training seminar, a role he credits with saving his life.

“The Children’s Block [at Auschwitz] was conceived by Fredy Hirsch, a handsome man who … could have been a model in ancient Greece… Fredy loved children and they …worshipped him.”

In October 1943, Fredy asked Dr. Mengele to make a children’s block out of one of the barracks, and Pavel became one of the coordinators.

The Czech Israeli writer, Otto B. Kraus, tells the story of the 500 Jewish children who lived in the Czech Family Camp in Auschwitz-Birkenau in which Fredy and Pavel worked. The children’s instructors organized clandestine lessons, sing-alongs and staged plays and charades (all described in Kraus’ novel “The Painted Wall”).

Mengele sustained The Children’s Block to provide the Nazis with an alibi to refute the rumors of the Final Solution. It became a shelter and haven for the children, who would all eventually perish in the gas chambers. 83% of the 50 Children’s Block coordinators, however, were still alive in May 1945 because they had spent days inside and out of the bad weather. The coordinators’ mission to create a make-believe world for the children, humanize and bring happiness into the last days of life for the most innocent victims also helped sustain them. (Ibid., Stransky, pps. 44-45)

Upon liberation, Pavel returned to Prague and advertised in local papers with the hope that Vera survived. One day she knocked on his door. Ecstatic, they married a second time under a chupah with real wine and a glass for breaking, and they bore and raised four children and six grandchildren. Vera died fifteen years ago.

As we toured Terezin, Pavel told us that the Nazis’ intention wasn’t just to murder Jews, but

“…to systematically humiliate people’s human dignity …, until the person had been transformed into a starving skeleton that for days and nights without end longs only for a piece of bread… in order [for the Nazis] to hate and despise the product of their own perversion …No one who has not gone through it … can imagine how hours, days, weeks, and months of an empty stomach can hurt; how it can dominate all the thoughts of someone who is eternally hungry, and how it focuses those thoughts on only one thing: just once to eat one’s fill!” (ibid. p. 37)

Pavel showed us a most remarkable synagogue in the camp, one that was hidden from the Nazis and that he (Pavel) did not know existed when he lived there, a windowless 20 X 20 feet room at the end of a drive. Its interior was painted in beautiful Hebrew calligraphy with passages inscribed from Tanakh and Tahanun prayers. Here is but one inscription from the Shacharit service:

“Concerning our brethren from the house of Israel, who in sorrow and in bondage, who between the sea and dry land – May God be merciful to them and deliver them from hardship to ease, from darkness to light, from slavery to redemption, and let it happen speedily.”

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

06 Monday Oct 2014

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

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

Their titles and themes are:

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

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

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

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

 

 

 

Paul Wurtzel, Son of Hollywood Legendary Producer Sol Wurtzel, Dies at 92

03 Tuesday Jun 2014

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

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When I received a phone call last week from the great-grand-daughter of the first President of Temple Israel of Hollywood, Sol Wurtzel, who asked me to officiate at the funeral of Sol’s only son, Paul Wurtzel, her great-uncle, I could not say no.

I never met Paul nor his father, who died in 1958. But the “Wurtzel” family name is not only significant in the history of my synagogue, but in the history of Hollywood’s golden era of film-making.

Paul Wurtzel’s death marks the end of an era. Though he himself did not reach the pinnacle of power and influence that his father enjoyed, nevertheless, Paul was well-respected as a long-time assistant director of television series. His credits include hundreds of episodes in series such as The F.B.I., The Fugitive, Barnaby Jones, and The Thin Man, and he was the production manager on the 1980 television movie The Twilight Zone.

More than any of his television credits, Paul was beloved as a humble, unassuming, generous, funny, and gracious man. He married briefly, but had no children. Paul adored his sister’s four grandchildren and doted on them who considered him like a grandfather. His funeral this past Sunday was a veritable love-fest that attracted close to one hundred people – not a small thing for a 92-year old who had no children of his own.

At one point I stopped the service to share with those assembled that I have conducted many funerals in my 35 years as a congregational rabbi, and that the spirit at each is unique because the deceased and the mourners are unique. This one for Paul was memorable because of the palatable love, camaraderie and joyful banter amongst the mourners. I told them that their spirit was testimony to the positive and enduring impact of Paul’s life on each of them.

Paul’s youth and career could not have been easy for him. His father was a powerful man and his family shared with me that he was especially hard on his only son. Paul grew up in the lap of wealth in his parents’ Bel Aire home, but he had to rely upon his own resources. His family said Paul essentially raised himself. When he had knee surgery that kept him in bed for a month as a child, they took a six-week European summer vacation and left him with a care-taker.

Perhaps sensing that the young 8-year old Paul was unseen by his father, George Gershwin, a guest at the family home one night, told Paul to sit down at the piano after Sol had left the room for a few moments. Gershwin then played Rhapsody in Blue and quickly darted out of sight when his father returned only to see Paul sitting with his hands over the piano keys.

All that aside, Sol Wurtzel was one of the principle creators of the golden age of Hollywood of the 1930s and 1940s and had a significant impact upon the careers of some of its most illustrious stars.

Sol was hired in 1917 by William Fox, the founder of Fox Film Corporation, to be his personal secretary in New York. Fox, however, hated coming west to California, so he sent Sol to run production in Los Angeles.

Sol headed up Fox’s “B” rated movie division that included the popular Charlie Chan series and “Bright Eyes” (1934) starring Shirley Temple who sang “The Good Ship Lollypop.” He helped discover and make popular Will Rogers, Spencer Tracy, Rita Hayworth, Humphrey Bogart, Ray Milland, Glenn Ford, Ginger Rogers, Robert Taylor, and the young Norma Jean Baker before she became Marilyn Monroe. Sol also promoted the young director John Ford who became a multiple academy award winning director and delivered the eulogy at his funeral in 1958.

Sol was among a handful of founding members of Temple Israel of Hollywood in 1927. When the congregation moved in the early thirties to a building vacated by the Hollywood United Methodist Church (now at Highland and Franklin Avenues), Sol commissioned Fox Studios to create and build an Ark. When we moved from that building in 1948 to our current Hollywood Blvd facility, those Ark doors were stored and eventually installed in our synagogue’s small chapel in 1955.

Those Chapel Ark doors constitute the only Aron Hakodesh ever created by a Hollywood film studio props department. It graced our Ark continually from 1955 until October, 2013 when our Chapel was demolished as part of a rebuilding project to be completed before this coming High Holidays.

Though we will not be using these Ark doors in our new Chapel, we will display them as they are iconic to our congregation and they bear historic significance in the history of Los Angeles Jewry and early Hollywood.

In Paul Wurtzel’s memory, Zichrono livracha – His memory is a blessing.

“People’s Park” – An Enduring Memory After 45 Years

25 Sunday May 2014

Posted by in American Politics and Life, Ethics, Stories

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May 22 and 23, 1969 are days that I will always remember. I was a sophomore at UC Berkeley. The Vietnam War was raging. A third world college strike against the university had shut down classes earlier that year. Tension could be cut with a knife on the Berkeley campus and on campuses across the nation at the end of a tumultuous decade.

Several blocks south of the Berkeley campus and one block east of Telegraph Avenue an empty block of land owned by the University had been taken over by community folks who had created what is still known as “People’s Park.” It was a peaceful place. There was a vegetable garden, and play equipment and swings had been donated. Communal meals were cooked and shared. Some slept on the grounds.

A week earlier, on May 15 just before sunrise, however, University of California police had been ordered to evacuate the park and erect a fence. Word spread quickly and the community erupted. The Berkeley police department called for assistance from the Alameda Sheriff’s department, and Governor Ronald Reagan called up the National Guard. Overnight Berkeley became an occupied city.

Amidst the tumult that day, UC Student Body President Dan Siegel exhorted the crowd in Sproul Plaza to go “take back the park.”

The combined police forces responded by dropping tear-gas from a helicopter over the campus in violation of international law and by firing bird-shot and buckshot into the crowd killing one man, James Rector, who was innocently observing the march from a rooftop, and injuring dozens.

The over-reaction and death enraged the Berkeley community. A week later, on Thursday, May 22, a peaceful march was called and I decided to join it. Our purpose was to politely ask shop-owners in downtown Berkeley to close their stores for the afternoon in memory of the killed man and in protest of the police over-reaction.

As hundreds of UC students and faculty walked quietly and legally on sidewalks, we were directed by police from one street to another and finally into an open parking lot adjacent to the Bank of America. There, 482 students, faculty and (as it happened) one member of the media were surrounded. The police informed us that we were under arrest.

We were loaded into police buses to carry us one hour southeast to the Santa Rita Rehabilitation Center, a minimum security prison, in Pleasanton, California. Once we arrived inside the prison gates, the bus stopped and the door opened. A guard entered and screamed orders at us. He threatened physical harm to anyone who did not do exactly as he commanded. I descended dutifully into a fenced compound where I saw 150 others lying belly-down next to one another, much like a Vietnam War body count, in neat rows. Everyone’s faces were turned to the left and guards were slapping their Billy clubs into their hands while cursing us and screaming threats that should anyone move or lift his head he would be beaten. Some were.

I assumed my place in the body formation and, terrified, dutifully did not move for eight hours, the gravel digging into my face, my bladder bursting, the inmates surrounding the compound taunting us for hours (I would learn much later that the prisoners were promised time off for good behavior if they harassed us), and the guards always screaming threats. No guard ever spoke to us in a normal speaking voice. They screamed incessantly like drill sergeants.

I was booked and finger-printed at one in the morning and was led into a barracks as part of a group that included a reporter from the San Francisco Chronicle who had discarded his press identification when we were herded into the Bank of America parking lot. He was the first to be bailed out, and Saturday morning the Chronicle’s bold-lettered headline read – “I WAS A PRISONER AT SANTA RITA.” He described in detail everything that had happened in my particular barracks.

I was bailed out at two PM on Friday. Charges were eventually dropped for lack of evidence.

The intended impact of the experience, however, had registered. I had never before or since felt as frightened as I did on that day. One guard came within inches of my face and screamed that he was going to kill me. I learned that fear can lead us to feel and behave irrationally and against our own best interests.

Some regard fear as the most effective organizing principle in the building of community. This is a false belief. Rather, kindness, empathy and compassion are the virtues that not only distinguish us as human beings but are the essential building blocks for a community that values each individual as endowed with infinite value and worth by virtue of being created b’tzelem Elohim, in the Divine image.

When Our Parents Reach Extreme Old Age

22 Sunday Dec 2013

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

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My mother was once a beautiful, vital, vivacious, smart, intellectually engaged, and generous woman. She was strong-willed, independent, high-powered, and passionate. Her family meant everything to her and she had many devoted friends.

Today, at 96 she is nearly blind, nearly deaf, and has dementia. She can no longer read, hear music, listen to books on tape/CD, or watch television. She falls frequently and has many aches and pains. Most of her friends have died and all her nine brothers and sisters are gone.

Two years ago it was clear to my brother, me and everyone who knew her that she needed to move from part-time to full-time care, but she could not afford to have someone live in her home 24-7. We decided to move her from independent to assisted living, but she resisted mightily. At last we refused to take “no” for an answer.

Over these two years her situation has worsened. At times my mother knows who I am, but she forgets seconds later and wonders what strange man is sitting with her, and why. I remind her that I am her son, but she is now more often than not bewildered, frustrated and angry because she is aware enough to know how much mental capacity she has lost and of the dramatically shrunken world in which she exists.

Only two things sustain her these days. She has some of her long-term memory remaining, and so she recalls vividly her parents and siblings thus bringing them alive; and her knowledge that my brother and I we are well and happy offers her a measure of comfort.

I share my mother’s situation with you because I know that my brother and I are not alone. Many others also experience the disabilities that afflict their parents, grandparents and loved ones as they reach extreme old age.

In a lucid moment yesterday, my mother asked me, “What could I have possibly done that God hates me so much to make me so miserable!”

I took her hand and said, “Mom – How could God possibly hate you? You have always been loving and generous. You were always the first to respond to those in trouble and who needed help – to family, friends and strangers. You contributed to every good cause. You served the Jewish community devotedly. I cannot believe that God is angry at you. Rather, I am sure that God loves you. I love you. Michael [my brother] loves you. You are just very very old, and this is what happens when people get old like you!”

She listened but didn’t respond. I don’t know if she understood me.

What else could I say? She is miserable, and for good reason.

She spoke about another woman, Anna, who is a resident on her floor and a devout Catholic, and said that Anna has more reason than most to end her life because she is “even more miserable than me!” She added, “There are ways to end your life, you know. But she won’t do it, because she’s religious.”

“What about you, Mom? Do you ever want to end your life?”

“Yes, I want to die,” she said, “but I would never take my life for the same reason that she doesn’t take hers!”

I marveled at how strong, still, is my mother’s faith. From the time she was a child in Winnipeg, Manitoba she was a deeply spiritual and religiously inclined person. On Friday nights she secretly went to synagogue alone without her parents and siblings knowing because they thought religion was nonsense. She told them she was attending school events.

Every Shabbat for months I have been offering a mi shebeirach healing blessing for my mother over an open Torah; but of late, I have begun to wonder whether I should stop based on a famous story from the Talmud.

When the great Rabbi Judah HaNasi was near death his disciples came to pray on his behalf in the courtyard below his window. His maidservant, hearing the desires of those “above” for Rabbi Judah’s soul and the desires of the students “below” decided to drop an earthen vessel to the courtyard stones hoping that the crash would at least momentarily distract Rabbi Judah’s students from their prayers. The noise indeed diverted their attention and they stopped praying. It was then that Rabbi Judah gave up his breath to God. (Talmud Bavli, Ketubot 104a). Rabbi Judah’s maidservant is regarded positively and with respect by tradition.

The Biblical Kohelet wrote that there is

“A season set for everything, / A time for every experience under heaven; / A time for being born and a time for dying…” (3:1-2)

When is my mother’s time for dying? Are my prayers on her behalf in any way sustaining her when she so deeply wishes and is ready to pass on?

Excruciating questions, and I have no answers.

Jewish Survival is NOT a Given – Miketz Meets Hanukah

29 Friday Nov 2013

Posted by in American Jewish Life, Divrei Torah, Holidays, Jewish History, Jewish Identity, Musings about God/Faith/Religious life, Stories, Uncategorized

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This week Joseph finds himself imprisoned on the false charge of trying to seduce Potifar’s wife. Already known as a dream interpreter, Joseph is called from the dungeons to interpret Pharaoh’s seemingly inscrutable dreams, and convinces Pharaoh that God has blessed him with far-sighted wisdom and the grace of success. Consequently, Pharaoh elevates Joseph to the position of the kingdom’s chief overseer, second in power only to Pharaoh himself.

In his position Joseph deftly manages the realm, and when the years of famine arrive as predicted, word spreads that Egypt has stockpiled an overabundance of grain, and that surrounding peoples can seek sustenance from the throne.

Suffering the effects of the famine along with everyone else, Jacob instructs his surviving older sons to procure food for the family, lest they all die, and they appear before Joseph.

In the dramatic conclusion in next week’s parasha, Joseph will reveal his true identity to his brothers and explain that their sale of him served his life’s purpose, that God had sent him ahead into Egypt as a slave to save his family.

Joseph is a key transitional figure between the patriarchal era in Genesis and the birth of the spiritual nation of Israel in Exodus. As such, he was the first court Jew in history. He understood Egyptian culture and society. He spoke the language, dressed as a native, took an Egyptian name, married an Egyptian woman, and sired children, the very first Hebrew children to be born in Diaspora.

Despite his acculturation, Joseph did not become an Egyptian, nor did he forsake his ancestral faith. Indeed, he is the prototype of a politically powerful leader who assures Jewish survival.

Fast forward to the second century B.C.E. For 200 years Greek culture had been spreading throughout the lands of the Mediterranean. Jews were attracted to Greek population centers, to the abstract sciences, humanism, philosophy, and commerce.

By the time of the Maccabees (165 B.C.E.), Jews living in the land of Israel had divided into three distinct groups; traditionalists living in villages who followed the priests and observed Jewish law; radical Hellenists living in the cities who saw no advantage in remaining Jewish, who named their children using Greek names, spoke Greek, stopped circumcising their sons, ceased celebrating Shabbat and the Hagim, and rejected kashrut; and the moderately Hellenized Jews who lived as Greeks but maintained their Jewish cultural identity.

When finally the radical Hellenizers conspired with the Greek King Antiochus IV to introduce a pantheon of gods into the Jerusalem Temple, including the sacrifice of the detested pig, moderate Jews were shocked and rose up to fight alongside the traditionalists and save Judaism and the Jewish people from destruction.

For Joseph, Jewish survival meant remembering who he was as an Israelite living in exile. For the Maccabees and their moderate Jewish allies, it meant war in the ancestral homeland.

In these opening years of the 21st century, we liberal American Jews are confronted with a serious challenge. Of the 5.5 million American Jews, 2 million identify with the liberal non-orthodox religious streams, 600,000 with the orthodox and the rest as “just Jewish” and marginal at best.

The recently published Pew Study of the American Jewish community makes it clear that if current trends continue, 30 years from now liberal Jews will diminish by 30% to 1.4 million total, assuming that our current 1.7 children per family birthrate continues and we do not reverse the loss of 75% of the children born to intermarriages who do not identify as Jews. The current intermarriage rate is upwards of 60%. The orthodox community’s birthrate is a shy less than 5 children per family, meaning that in 30 years orthodox Jews will double their numbers.

The declining birthrate in liberal American Jewry is a real threat to our survival. We will need to increase our birthrate, create a more compelling liberal faith that attracts more converts, more intermarried families, more LGBT Jews, and retains all who struggle with faith and claim to be atheists but who feel culturally, ethically and ancestrally Jewish. And we will have to educate everyone better than we do in Jewish history, literature, tradition, and thought.

The core of the challenge is as old as Joseph, and is as Ari Shavit writes in “My Promised Land – The Triumph and Tragedy of Israel”:

“…how to maintain Jewish identity in an open world not shielded by the walls of a ghetto,…[with] secularization and emancipation eroding the old formula of Jewish survival…”

and, I would add for those who have faith, that places God in the center of our people’s daily life and identity.

Hanukah and Miketz remind us that Jewish survival is not a given, that the State of Israel and American Jewry, especially now, need each other to thrive and depend upon each other to survive.

Shabbat shalom and Hag Hanukah sameach!

On Life’s Beauty, Meaning and Joy – In Memorial to Michael Weiner

24 Sunday Nov 2013

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I did not know Michael Weiner personally, but I wish I had. Since his death on Thursday of brain cancer at the age of 51, the eulogies have poured in from around the country, and by all accounts Weiner was the embodiment of what it means to be mensch.

A happily married man and a loving father of three daughters, Michael Weiner served as the Executive Director of the Major League Baseball Players’ Association (MLBPA) since 2009, and had been involved in the business of baseball for many years. He was most widely known, respected, admired, and loved as a professional of uncommon ability, skill, integrity, decency, compassion, empathy, and humility.

Michael Weiner loved baseball. He loved the players and recognized that without them there would be no game. The business of the game, though important, in his mind and heart was secondary to the integrity of the game and the well-being of its players. He was so effective at building consensus in labor issues and so deft at simplifying and making understandable to lay people (he was a Harvard Law grad) complex legal and contractual language, that of the four major sports in the United States only Major League Baseball has been successful in negotiating a collective bargaining agreement ensuring 21 consecutive years of labor peace, largely because of Michael Weiner.

As if all this weren’t enough, Weiner also taught Sunday School at the Jewish Center of Northwest Jersey, and, as one might assume, the children adored him.

As Weiner’s cancer progressed (he was first diagnosed in August, 2012) he reflected about his life. It is this statement that led me to write this blog of memorial to a man I did not know personally. Its message is what all of us ought to emulate:

“As corny as this sounds I get up in the morning and I feel I’m going to live each day as it comes. I don’t take any day for granted. I don’t take the next morning for granted. What I look for each day is beauty, meaning and joy, and if I can find beauty, meaning and joy, that’s a good day.”

Zichrono livracha – May Michael Weiner’s memory be a blessing, and may his family and loved ones find comfort among all mourners in Zion and Jerusalem. Amen!

Jacob’s Dream and Spiritual Leadership – Parashat Vayetze

08 Friday Nov 2013

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Jacob’s dream (Genesis 28:10-22) was his first encounter with the God of his fathers Abraham and Isaac, and is part of a narrative that culminates next week in a second meeting at the River Jabbok (Genesis 32). There, in the darkness of night, Jacob wrestled with a Divine/human being and became Yisrael, the one who struggles with God.

In these Genesis chapters, we watch Jacob grow into the Jewish leader he was destined to become. As a boy he was graced with great spiritual potential, but he was ethically challenged and needed a full range of life experience, including hardship and suffering, before he could assume leadership of the tribe.

At the core of his life was his relationship with his twin brother Esau, a relationship that was troubled from the start. Even before birth in Rebekah’s womb they struggled. Jacob emerged second holding Esau’s heel signaling both his resolve and his destiny to become the leader.

Rashi reasoned that Jacob’s apparent manipulation and deceit in attaining the birthright in last week’s portion Toldot gained for him what should have been his from the beginning. After all, Rashi explained, if you drop a pebble into a flask followed by a second pebble, and then invert the flask, what happens? The second pebble falls out first. Thus, though Esau was born first, he was conceived second.

As the boys grew, Rebekah understood as only a parent can that Esau lacked the necessary spiritual gifts to effectively lead the tribe, whereas Jacob possessed deep understanding of the spiritual world. She therefore compounded Jacob’s unethical behavior with her own, and orchestrated with him a plan whereby Isaac would bless Jacob as the first-born in Esau’s place.

Our commentators struggled with the deception. Some explained that Isaac’s old age, blindness and feeble-mindedness kept him from knowing which son was which, and so he was easily tricked in blessing the wrong son. However, all evidence suggests otherwise, that Isaac was not at all feeble-minded, nor was he confused. He had maintained and built upon his father’s wealth, and his blessings of his two sons in last week’s portion (Genesis 27:28-29, 39-40) were each eloquent poetry describing Jacob’s and Esau’s respective natures and destinies.

It seems to me that Isaac was a silent and willing partner with Rebecca in the ruse, that though loving Esau dearly, Isaac agreed that Jacob was the more fitting heir and leader. This was not the first instance in which the younger exceeded the older (e.g. Cain and Abel, Ishmael and Isaac).

Jacob’s dream of angels ascending and descending the ladder to heaven at Bethel signals the spiritual destiny of the Jewish people. Commentators note that the stairway (sulam – samech, lamed, mem) totals 130 according to the science of gematria that assigns number equivalents to Hebrew letters, just as Sinai (samech, nun, yod) also totals 130, thus linking Jacob’s dream-revelation and Moses communion with God at Mt. Sinai.

When Jacob awoke from his dream, he was astonished and said, “Surely God is in this place, and I did not know it!”

For the first time in his life Jacob experienced awe, wonder and humility, the quality of which he sorely lacked and needed to lead effectively his tribe.

Jacob’s faith was not yet fully evolved despite his powerful encounter with God at Bethel. Though moved, he vows his obeisance to God conditionally:

“If God remains with me, if God protects me …, and gives me bread to eat and clothing to wear, and if I return safe to my father’s house – then the Eternal shall be my God.”

Nachmanides (also Ramban – 13th century) explained that Jacob was not as deficient in faith as the narrative suggests. He doubted not God but himself, because he knew that he was a man prone to committing sin. Ramban says that Jacob’s conditional vow was a sign of his righteousness.

Among the great themes in the patriarchal and matriarchal narratives is that our Biblical heroes all suffer fear and a sense of inadequacy, as do each of us. Only the hardship that comes with life experience facilitates their spiritual and moral growth.

This week Jacob dreams, falls in love and is tricked by Rather’s father, Laban, to serve him for many years that he may marry Rachel. Laban made Jacob’s life miserable, and so at last he fled with his family.

In next week’s Torah portion, Vayishlach, Jacob’s spiritual and familial journey reaches a peek moment as he encounters for the second time a Divine/human being on the night before he is scheduled to meet the brother that he so wronged twenty years earlier. That night encounter and the next day’s meeting are among the most dramatic moments in all of Biblical narrative.

The story is not only about the meeting between estranged brothers. It is about each one of us. Stay tuned!

Shabbat Shalom!

40 Years Later – Memories of Jets and Sirens

11 Wednesday Sep 2013

Posted by in Israel and Palestine, Israel/Zionism, Jewish History, Stories, Uncategorized

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Forty years ago on Yom Kippur I was studying as a first-year rabbinic student in Jerusalem. I will never forget that day as long as I live.

I left my student dorm near the President’s House in Rehavia at 5:45 AM that morning, and walked the quiet streets to the Kotel to pray. When I reached the bottom of the then undeveloped valley between the King David Hotel and Jaffa Gate, three US-made Phantom jets flew in formation going south over the city of Jerusalem.

I was stunned and wondered; ‘On Yom Kippur – the holiest day of the year over the holy city!? Where are they going and why?’

Eight hours later, just before 2 PM, the air raid sirens sounded throughout the country. I turned on a small transistor radio to learn on the BBC that 1300 Syrian tanks had crossed into Israel over the Golan Heights and that the Egyptian army had crossed the Suez Canal and breached the Bar Lev line in a coordinated surprise attack on the Jewish people’s holiest day of the year.

Israeli radio called up all units. Within 24 hours Israeli soldiers were in place and the fighting was intense. The civil reserve took up residence on the ground floor of my dorm in the event that Jerusalem would come under attack.

Classes ceased, and I worked throughout the war in one of Jerusalem’s two large bakeries producing 75,000 loaves of bread nightly. The only workers there were Jews over the age of 55 and foreign students. Young Israelis had been called up and Arabs were frightened to come in.

Each night I walked through blackened streets to a pick-up point, and worked the 8-10 hour shift until 6 AM.

Israeli casualties were high. By the end of the three-week war Israel had suffered 2656 dead and 9000 injured, equivalent  to 230,000 Americans.

Despite Israel’s heavy losses and the catastrophe of the war itself, the Yom Kippur War is considered the greatest of all Israeli military victories. In three weeks Israel pierced through Egyptian lines, built a bridge across the Suez Canal, surrounded the Egyptian army, and threatened Cairo.

In the north, Israel pushed the Syrian army back into its own territory, and threatened Damascus.

Secretary of State Henry Kissinger understood that hope for a future peace would require preserving a measure of Arab pride. Consequently, the United States forced a cease-fire permitting Egyptian President Anwar Sadat to claim victory. Five years later he traveled to Jerusalem eventually resulting in the Camp David Accords.

Historian and Israeli Ambassador to the United States Michael Oren spoke to American rabbis just before Rosh Hashanah this year and reflected on the Yom Kippur War’s 40th anniversary. He described four stages in the war against Israel.

The first stage constituted wars waged by Arab armies (1948, 1956, 1967, 1973).

The second stage was a war of terrorism that began soon after 1967. Prosecuted by Arab fedayin guerrillas and Palestinian terrorists, it includes the War of Attrition (1968-1971), the murder of eleven Israeli athletes at the Munich Olympics (1972), the murder of children in Maalot (1974), ongoing attacks on the northern town of Kiryat Shemona, two Intifadas, multiple suicide bombings, and rocket attacks from Lebanon and Gaza on Israeli civilian communities.

The third stage was the “internationalization of the conflict” in the United Nations using diplomacy with the intention to delegitimize the State of Israel.

Ambassador Oren says that we are now in the fourth stage, bi-lateral negotiations intended to end the Israeli-Palestinian conflict in a two-state agreement.

So much history has transpired during these past forty years. Israel is a very different place than it was then, as is the Middle East and the world as a whole.

This coming October 6 I will be once again in Jerusalem, and I expect I will ruminate on those three phantom jets flying over Jerusalem on that quiet Yom Kippur morning forty years ago and upon the piercing scream of the sirens that shattered the holiest day of the year and the hearts of Israelis.

I am bringing 23 members of my synagogue community with me to lend our support to the people of the State of Israel, and to meet with Israelis from all political points of view inside the Green Line and living in the West Bank to better understand their thinking and current state-of-mind, and we will meet with Palestinian leaders in Ramallah and Rawabi to learn more about who they are, what has been their experience under occupation, and what are their needs and dreams.

“Sha-alu shalom Yerushalayim – Pray for Jerusalem’s weal!” (Ps. 122:6 – The Book of Psalms, translated by Robert Alter)

G’mar chatimah tovah – May you be sealed in the Book of Life.