01 Monday Oct 2018
Posted in American Politics and Life, Ethics, Quote of the Day, Uncategorized
“A strong nation, like a strong person, can afford to be gentle, firm, thoughtful, and restrained. It can afford to extend a helping hand to others. It is a weak nation, like a weak person, that must behave with bluster and boasting and rashness and other signs of insecurity.”
-Jimmy Carter, 39th US President, Nobel laureate (b. 1 Oct 1924)
20 Thursday Sep 2018
“Give ear, O heavens, that I may speak, / Hear, O Earth, the utterance of my mouth. / Let my teaching drip like rain, / Let my words flow like dew, ‘ Like droplets on new growth, / Like showers on grass.” (Deuteronomy 32:1-2)
“Like an eagle protecting its nest / Over its young-birds hovering, / He spread out his wings, he took him, / Bearing him on his pinions.” (Deuteronomy 32:11)
“See now that I, am he / I myself bring-death, bestow-life / I wound and I myself heal, / And there is from my hand no rescuing! / For I lift up my hand to the heavens, / And say: As I live, for the ages.” (Deuteronomy 32:40)
These are among the fifty-two verses in this week’s Torah portion Ha’azinu (Deuteronomy 32), one of the shortest portions in the annual Torah reading cycle.
Though these verses are magnificent poetry, the Torah isn’t largely a poetic text. Rather, it’s a series of legal texts set in a narrative context. For poetry we have to search elsewhere in the Hebrew Bible – the soaring visions of the prophets, the yearnings of the Psalms, the saga of Job, and the eroticism of the Song of Songs.
Despite the Torah’s narrative and legal style, this portion closes in a burst of poetry as Moses nears the end of his life.
Essentially, Parashat Ha’azinu is a poetic meditation on the covenantal relationship between God and Israel. It’s graphic and written from the prospective of God, not Moses. Its themes dwell not upon the strength of the divine-human bond, but upon its weakness. Israel is characterized not as a covenantal lover, but as a treacherous adversary prepared to smash the covenant and cavort with other gods.
Towards the end of the poem, Moses shifts suddenly from speaking as a third-person narrator into the first person as God’s prophet. We envision an enraged God Who intends to hand Israel over to its most vicious enemies and its ultimate devastation. Fearing Israel’s demise to polytheism and oblivion, God reverses the divine decree, vanquishes Israel’s enemies and renews the covenant.
One scholar suggested that this poem is a CAT scan of God’s mind embracing the totality of divine rage, longing and love. Though God did indeed reverse the divine decree, it wasn’t because of divine compassion; rather, it was the consequence of divine pride.
There is something especially shocking about this poem, and that it’s missing utterly the idea of Teshuvah.
One would think that at the end of the annual Torah reading cycle that coincides each year with the close of the Yamim Noraim that Torah would affirm the covenantal bond between God and Israel as a consequence of Israel’s Teshuvah and return to God. But, the poem ignores the possibility of Israel’s repentance and presents a world devoid of the capacity of the people to alter God’s will through its contrition and Teshuvah.
It’s difficult to imagine living our lives without Teshuvah. Perhaps, that’s the point of the poem, to show us what such a world would be like without the possibility of our return, without the life-sustaining value of hope.
Judaism understands that Teshuvah is so indispensable for human welfare that the Talmudic sage Resh Lakish insisted that God conceived of Teshuvah before creating the world and wove Teshuvah into the fabric of creation itself.
The prophetic and rabbinic concept of repentance is among Judaism’s most ennobling and inspiring affirmations. Judaism rejects a fatalistic world, one in which what was will always be without the possibility of personal and communal evolution. Judaism affirms that we do indeed have a measure of control over our lives, that we can improve ourselves and be better morally and spiritually than we were. Though perfection isn’t the goal of the Yamim Noraim, self-improvement is.
Since our beginnings as a people we Jews have been buoyed by hope and messianic expectancy, all made possible by Teshuvah.
And so, perhaps, Ha’azinu is a warning about what our lives really would be like without the covenant and without our capacity to be better than we were.
Shabbat Shalom.
Note: Translation of the Hebrew are from “The Schocken Bible: Volume 1 – The Five Books of Moses” with a new translation and Introductions, Commentary, and Notes by Everett Fox
07 Friday Sep 2018
Posted in American Politics and Life, Uncategorized
From Politico
Barack Obama launched his midterm campaigning Friday at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign, arguing that President Donald Trump poses such a threat to America that it forced him to speak out in an unprecedented way for a former president.
“I’m here today because this is one of those pivotal moments when every one of us as citizens of the United States need to determine just who we are, what it is that we stand for,” Obama said. “As a fellow citizen, not as an ex-president, I’m here to deliver a simple message, which is that you need to vote, because our democracy depends on it.”
06 Thursday Sep 2018
May we hold lovingly in our thoughts / those who suffer from tyranny, subjection, cruelty, and injustice / and work every day towards the alleviation of their suffering.
May we recognize our solidarity / with the stranger, outcast, downtrodden, abused, and deprived / that no human being be treated as “other” / that our common humanity weaves us together / in one fabric of mutuality / one garment of destiny.
May we pursue the Biblical prophet’s vision of peace / that we might live harmoniously with each other / and side by side / respecting differences / cherishing diversity / with no one exploiting the weak / each living without fear of the other / each revering Divinity in every human soul.
May we struggle against institutional injustice and governmental corruption / free those from oppression and contempt / act with purity of heart and mind / despising none / defrauding none / hating none / cherishing all / honoring every child of God and every creature of the earth.
May the Jewish people, the State of Israel, and all peoples / know peace in this New Year / and may we nurture kindness and love everywhere.
L’shanah tovah tikateivu
Rabbi John L. Rosove – Temple Israel of Hollywood, Los Angeles
03 Monday Sep 2018
Posted in Uncategorized
30 Thursday Aug 2018
Posted in Uncategorized
Race and bigotry are obvious themes in this year’s Primary elections leading to the Mid-terms. Here are some thoughts on Bias and Bigotry from a variety of American literary sources.
“The door of a bigoted mind opens outwards so that the only result of the pressure of facts upon it is to close it more snugly.” -Ogden Nash, author (1902-1971)
“The tools of conquest do not necessarily come with bombs, and explosions, and fallout. There are weapons that are simply thoughts, attitudes, prejudices, to be found only in the minds of men. For the record, prejudices can kill and suspicion can destroy; and a thoughtless, frightened search for a scapegoat has a fallout all of its own for the children, and the children yet unborn.” -Rod Serling, writer of the science fiction TV series The Twilight Zone (1924-1975)
“Let us consider that we are all partially insane. It will explain us to each other, it will unriddle many riddles, it will make clear and simple many things which are involved in haunting and harassing difficulties and obscurities now… That is a simple rule, and easy to remember. When I, a thoughtful and unbiased Presbyterian, examine the Koran, I know that beyond any question every Mohammedan is insane; not in all things, but in religious matters. When a thoughtful and unbiased Mohammedan examines the Westminster Catechism, he knows that beyond any question I am spiritually insane. I cannot prove to him that he is insane, because you never can prove anything to a lunatic–for that is part of his insanity and the evidence of it. He cannot prove to me that I am insane, for my mind has the same defect that afflicts his. All democrats are insane, but not one of them knows it; none but the republicans and mugwumps know it. All the republicans are insane, but only the democrats and mugwumps can perceive it. The rule is perfect; in all matters of opinion our adversaries are insane. When I look around me I am often troubled to see how many people are mad [gives long list]… This should move us to be charitable toward one another’s lunacies.” -Mark Twain “Christian Science” (1835-1910)
“If we were to wake up some morning and find that everyone was the same race, creed and color, we would find some other cause for prejudice by noon.” -George D. Aiken, US senator (1892-1984)
“The mind of a bigot to the pupil of the eye; the more light you pour on it, the more it contracts.” -Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr., poet, novelist, essayist, and physician (1809-1894)
“Racism tends to attract attention when it’s flagrant and filled with invective. But like all bigotry, the most potent component of racism is frame-flipping — positioning the bigot as the actual victim. So the gay do not simply want to marry; they want to convert our children into sin. The Jews do not merely want to be left in peace; they actually are plotting world take-over. And the blacks are not actually victims of American power, but beneficiaries of the war against hard-working whites. This is a respectable, more sensible bigotry, one that does not seek to name-call, preferring instead change the subject and straw man.” -Ta-Nehisi Coates, writer and journalist (b. September 30, 1975)
27 Monday Aug 2018
Posted in Uncategorized
This piece by Peretz is as clear an article about the Jewish democratic state of Israel within the Green Line as opposed to the non-democratic Israeli administration of the West Bank as I’ve read in quite some time. I highly recommend it.
24 Friday Aug 2018
Posted in Uncategorized
Forgiving those who have wronged us is one of the most difficult things we ever do. It is also one of the most healing.
The Reform Judaism blog excerpted a letter from my book “Why Judaism Matters – Letters of a Liberal Rabbi to His Children and the Millennial Generation” (Publ. Turner-Jewish Lights, 2017) on forgiveness – see https://reformjudaism.org/blog/2018/08/23/5-truths-about-forgiveness?utm_source=WU&utm_medium=email&utm_content=20180824&utm_campaign=Feature
23 Thursday Aug 2018
Posted in Uncategorized
Soren Kierkegaard said: “It is perfectly true, as philosophers say, that life must be understood backwards. But they forget the other proposition, that it must be lived forwards.”
Though we’re always living forward, the life lessons we learn help to shape our future. Since this is the season of self-examination leading to the High Holidays, I offer a list of 32 life lessons I’ve learned – there are others, but the number 32 is a significant one in Jewish mystical tradition. It equals the 22 letters of the Hebrew aleph bet plus the 10 “words” of the covenant, and it’s the number equivalent for the Hebrew word lev (lamed – bet), heart, which the mystics teach are the number of pathways to God.
I offer the following as a hedge against the toxicity in the political environment in this country in these days leading to the High Holidays. Some of these I’ve borrowed gratefully from a journalist named Regina Brett and published in the Plain Dealer from Cleveland, Ohio (hers are in italics).
They’re not necessarily a way to God, but a means to a healthier, wiser, and more sacred way of living, at least as I’ve come to believe in them.
Now, let’s live our lives forward.
21 Tuesday Aug 2018
Posted in Uncategorized
 I first met Rabbi Leonard I. Beerman when I was eleven years old when my mother, brother and I joined Leo Baeck Temple in Los Angeles in 1961. My father had died two years earlier and we needed a synagogue and a rabbi.
Meeting Leonard had an impact on me that I could not have anticipated. As a young boy I looked at him from afar with a sense of awe. His resonant voice and gentle manner comforted me, and his message stirred and lifted me to think about life and the world in a way that no one else did or has since. There was no Rabbi on the American scene like him. No one had as much moral courage and insight. No one was as principled. The only other Rabbi who compared to Leonard as a moral leader was Rabbi Abraham Joshua Heschel. Leonard Beerman became a father-figure for me but I didn’t realize it until I spoke with my wife after I had finished reading this volume “The Eternal Dissident – Rabbi Leonard I. Beerman and the Radical Imperative to Think and Act” edited by Professor David N. Myers, Professor of Jewish History at UCLA (2018). The book includes forty sermons and essays accompanied by commentaries by forty of Leonard’s friends, colleagues, congregants, and students from across the religious and political spectrum – I am one of them. Barbara said: “You know, John, Leonard was a father figure to you! You’ve always spoken of him that way since I’ve known you.” She was, of course, right. I suspect I’m not alone. In the last three years of Leonard’s life (he died in 2014), he and I had become close. We regularly met for lunch at his favorite Beverly Hills Tennis Club where he played tennis into his 90s. He had been reading my blog and liked the way I thought and wrote, so one day he wrote to me and I jumped at the chance to connect with him. Our friendship began and grew. He always said as we parted, “John – I’m an old man but you make me feel young again!” Leonard was like that. People felt seen by him, and they loved and revered him as a great moral rabbinic leader. He was as eloquent a writer and speaker as there was in the American rabbinate. Strangely, Leonard didn’t think he was a very good writer. He was so wrong. He was among the most thoughtful and moving writers and thinkers that there was on the American Jewish scene. Leonard drew liberally from the visions of the Biblical prophets and classic Jewish text while weaving poetry and other literary sources together as he reflected about what it means to be human, moral and accountable. He was tortured by the suffering of the innocent. He loved Israel but didn’t spared his moral critique of Israeli oppression of the Palestinians under occupation. Leonard served as a US Marine during World War II and he fought while studying at the Hebrew University in Jerusalem before and during Israel’s Independence War. I asked him about the impact of his military service in those two wars. He explained that he served twice to test himself, and he came away a confirmed pacifist. Reading “The Eternal Dissident,” especially at this time of year in the Hebrew month of Elul before the High Holidays, prepared me spiritually and morally to lead my congregation for the last time before I retire next year. Leonard’s soft yet powerful and resonant moral voice rings in my ears. Even in his death he has given me a precious gift. The last time we shared lunch together was only a month after the end of the fighting in the 2014 Israeli-Hamas War in Gaza. He and I both were preparing to speak about the war (we did so very differently). His sermon was highly critical of Israel even as he acknowledged the brutality of Hamas. For me, his pacifism was a conundrum of conflict. But he did not budge from his moral convictions. I wrote to David Myers (the editor of the volume and Leonard’s dear friend) and Leonard’s widow, Joan, when I finished reading the book this week to thank them for producing this extraordinary volume. A better model of a man, a more courageous religious leader, and a kinder, more sensitive and provocative rabbi there has not been in the American rabbinate in my memory. This book ought to be read by every religious leader in every faith tradition, and by atheists and skeptics too. Few works are as important as this one, and I recommend it without hesitation. You can find it on beermanfoundation.org. I mourn still the loss of Rabbi Leonard Beerman. His life, however, is impressed on my heart and in my mind and soul and always will be. In this I know I am not alone. |
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