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Jerusalem – A City of the In-between and Not-Yet Peace

15 Friday May 2015

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Jerusalem, itself on a mountain, is made up of a series of mountains. On top of each mountain is an important symbol sacred to a religion or people. Taken together, these multiple symbols represent perhaps the most significant city in world history.

Har Habayit – The Mountain of God’s House, also known as Har Moriah – The Mountain of ‘Sight’ is, of course, the most sacred place in Judaism. Legend teaches that the dust that formed the first human being, Adam, was gathered here, and this mountain top is the place on which Abraham bound his son Isaac. It is here that King Solomon built the First Temple and King Harod built the Second Temple.

Har Habayit- Har Moriah is the gateway between heaven and earth, the umbilicus through which the milk of Torah flows from the Divine breast to the children of Israel, where there is Divine sight and insight.

This most ancient of Jewish mountains is claimed by Islam as its third most sacred site after Mecca and Medina. Muslims call it Haram al Sharif – The Noble Sanctuary where Quran says Mohammed ascended to heaven.

On another small mountain is the Church of the Holy Sepulcher, now shared in a delicate and sensitive balance among Armenian, Greek Orthodox, Coptic, Roman Catholic, Syrian, and Ethiopian Christians because Jesus was crucified there.

To the east is Har Hazeitim – the Mountain of Olives at the foot of which is the Garden of Gethsemane where Jesus prayed and his disciples slept the night before their Lord’s crucifixion.

Har Hazeitim contains the most holy Jewish cemetery in the world, the closest burial ground to the “The Golden Gate” of Jerusalem that was sealed by the 16th century Ottoman Qalif, Suleiman the Magnificent, because he feared that the Jewish Messiah would pass into the holy city through this gate in the end of days. Jews have been burying our dead on the Mountain of Olives for centuries so their souls would be close and ready to follow the Mashiach.

Just south of the Old City walls is Har Tziyon – Mount Zion from where the prophets Isaiah (2:3) and Micah (4:2) said that Torah and God’s word came into the world. For Christians, Jesus and his disciples celebrated the Last Supper here.

A few miles west is yet another mountain made sacred by Zionism and the state of Israel, Har Herzl, on which is built the military cemetery for those who died in the defense of the state and the nation’s leaders. Har Herzl is walking distance from Yad Vashem, Israel’s Holocaust Memorial and museum.

Thirty-four times since the age of David Jerusalem has been conquered. It is arguably the most famous and fought over real estate in the world. It is a city of the in-between. It embraces old and new, past and present, east and west, reason and faith, earth and heaven, this world and the world to come, imperfection and messianic dreams, temporal and divine power. It has been and remains the symbol of a history of intensely competing interests.

Israel celebrates “Jerusalem Day” this Sunday, May 17 (28 Iyar), marking 48 years since Israel reunified the city after the 1967 Six-Day War. Though Jerusalem has rarely known peace, it is an enduring symbol of our people’s yearning for peace nevertheless.

What is to become of this sacred city for so many going forward? Most Israelis do not want it ever divided again. For the past 48 years Israel has maintained the peace and security of Jerusalem and free access for peoples of all faiths to the city’s holy sites.  Yet, distrust and hatred fills still too many hearts and pollutes too many minds. Spitting and shoving, vandalizing and threats, provocation and incitement, violence and murder continue despite efforts by Israeli security to prevent it.

The problems that continue are compounded by the absence of a two-state solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. East Jerusalem’s Palestinian Arabs, non-citizens of Israel who live under Israeli military rule, do not share equal rights with Israeli citizens, nor is their property necessarily respected by Israeli military law and ultra-Orthodox Jewish squatters who use every opportunity to occupy Arab homes.

Two different sets of law are enforced and non-Israeli citizens almost always come up short.

For Israel’s sake as a Jewish and democratic state and for the sake of the Palestinians the status quo is unsustainable, and if Jerusalem is to be the beacon of and symbol for peace throughout the world, it will take our two peoples, Israeli and Palestinian, every ounce of courage, patience, creativity, understanding, and mutual respect to make it happen.

I believe, despite the deep distrust and hostility, that there is a solution, but that will take the willingness to compromise and accommodate the needs of the “other” not as some kumbaya liberal dream, but for the sake of peace, security, the survival of and the dignity of all peoples.

“Racism and Gender in Israel” – Guilt and Accountability

10 Sunday May 2015

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Now that the new Israeli government will be sworn into the Knesset this week, an issue that has festered unchecked for too long needs to be addressed more extensively – racist and gender-inspired incitement against Arab citizens of Israel. Though President Reuven Rivlin began his presidency by shining a light on this scourge in Israeli society and initiated a nationwide conversation and campaign to emphasize that anti-Arab racism has no place in the democratic state of Israel, bigotry continues against Arabs, and in a different way against Ethiopian Jews. The large presence of Eritrean and Sudanese asylum seekers has, at the very least, exacerbated the problem.

The Israel Religious Action Center (IRAC) and the Israel Movement for Progressive Judaism (IMPJ) have published a report called “Racism and Gender in Israel.” It includes introductory remarks by Rabbi David Saperstein, formerly the Director of the RAC in Washington, D.C. and now a Presidential appointee as United States Ambassador for Religious Freedom, and by Rabbi Rick Jacobs, President of the Union for Reform Judaism (URJ). Anat Hoffman, Executive Director of the IRAC, wrote the Preface (see below to obtain a copy).

This 66-page pamphlet was written by Israeli attorney Ruth Carmi who notes that though the assassinated MK Meir Kahana was condemned for his racist and extremist remarks in the 1980s when he charged that Arab men were threatening to steal “our” wives and daughters, such comments today by the most extreme Hareidi rabbis are “no longer confined to the margins but are becoming increasingly common in Israeli discourse, and have even found their way into official debates in the Knesset…. [these comments pray upon] emotions exploited with the goal of imposing complete segregation between Jews and Arabs in Israel, isolating and humiliating the Arab community in Israel, and depicting it as a dangerous enemy against which defense is essential… The goal is to marginalize Arab citizens in Israel, to prevent coexistence between Jews and Arabs, and to impose a misogynist perception of women as passive pawns in the conflict who lack any will of their own.”

Racial incitement is prohibited under Israeli law as a criminal and a disciplinary offense.

The “Gender and Racism” pamphlet describes how extremist orthodox religious organizations, associations and some ultra-Orthodox rabbis in Israel have devoted themselves to a campaign to “defend the honor of Jewish women.” The primary offending organizations are Yad L’Achim, Lev L’Achim, Lehava, Hemla, Derekh Chaim, and the website Hakol Hayehudi, and the chief rabbi of Safed, Rabbi Shmuel Eliyahu, is most identified with this racist campaign to mark Arabs as schemers, seducers and abusers.

Carmi notes that “throughout history national humiliation has been closely associated with the sexual humiliation of women…and that a Jewish woman who submits to wooing by a non-Jewish man brings dishonor on herself and shame on the entire nation.” (p. 52)

“The woman’s body is the nation, and accordingly the war over this body is the war of the entire nation and becomes the focus of the conflict. Jewish women who have relationships with the enemy – Arab men – are perceived as contributing to the defeat of the Jewish people and the State of Israel and as humiliating Jewish men. The bodies of Jewish women become the focus of the Arab-Jewish conflict and ownership over these bodies determines the balance of power in the conflict.” (pp. 53-54)

This growing movement in Israel is promoted by flyers in Safed warning about “Arab Seducers,” posters in Jewish neighborhoods of Jerusalem and Beitar Illit opposing employment of Arabs, flyers in the Pisgat Ze’ev neighborhood of Jerusalem calling for the expulsion of Arab residents, and letters given to IDF soldiers declaring “The War is at Home.” Statements by ultra-Orthodox rabbis warn against encounters and fraternization between Jewish women and Arab men and against Arab students and letters by some Rabbis’ wives are posted and distributed beseeching Jewish women not to date Arab men. In Ashkelon, there are efforts to exclude Arabs citizens from local places of entertainment, and kashrut certification is granted to businesses that follow this racist agenda. On the Lehava website there is a “Page of Shame” that lists names of Jewish women involved in intimate relationships with non-Jewish men. An Informers’ Hotline enables people to report incidents of Arab-Jewish fraternization.

Violent attacks against innocent Arabs whose sole “offense” was to be present in areas where there is a Jewish majority, have all created “an atmosphere of terror and intimidation that serves the agenda of those organizations and individuals that advocate for the total segregation of the two populations in the State of Israel.” (p. 13)

It remains to be seen whether this new government including two ultra-Orthodox parties, United Torah Judaism and Shas, will prosecute this moral scourge in segments of Israeli society.

The Talmud is clear when it says “One who is able to protest against a wrong that is done in his family, his city, his nation, or the world and doesn’t do so is held accountable for that wrong being done.” (Bavli, Shabbat 54b).

Rabbi Abraham Joshua Heschel echoes that reminder when he said, “We must continue to remind ourselves that in a free society all are involved in what some are doing. Some are guilty, all are responsible.”

Note: Contact the Reform Movement’s Religious Action Center for a free copy of “Racism and Gender in Israel” – 2027 Massachusetts Ave NW, Washington, DC 20036 – Phone: (202) 387-2800 – http://www.rac.org/.

“The Disaster that Judaism Won’t Survive” – A Response to Haaretz Op-Ed

06 Wednesday May 2015

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Tomer Persico is an Israeli intellectual, a popular blogger on religion and spirituality, an advocate for freedom of religion, and a serious observer of Israel’s religious life. When he writes, Israelis take him seriously.

Persico has concluded in a recent Haaretz op-ed (“The Disaster that Judaism Won’t Survive,” April 25  http://www.haaretz.com/news/features/.premium-1.653125) that after the shelving of the vision of a two-state solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, “Israel will not be able to continue being both Jewish and democratic.” He is alarmed that Judaism in Israel is increasingly being equated with autocratic despotism and oppression, and this turn away from both democracy and liberal Judaism to extremism will eventually lead to disaster for the Jewish people and state of Israel:

“When our best friends, the countries with which we like to boast that we share values, increasingly perceive Israel’s Judaism as an antithesis to the state’s democratic character and a threat to the liberal approach and equality of rights to which Israel committed itself in its Declaration of Independence – it appears that we are closer than ever to having the Jewish tradition relegated to the abhorrent status of Communism in the past and of Salafi Islam in the present. We are witnessing Judaism being tarred-and-feathered, and the charges will stick to it more than any anti-Semitic calumny in the past, simply because this time no blood libel will be involved.”

For an increasing number of Israelis, Persico says, Judaism is regarded as inconsistent with democratic values and when asked to choose one over the other, they prefer Judaism over democracy. He worries that when western Diaspora Jews fully understand what has happened in Israel they will separate their practice of Judaism from the state of Israel and turn their backs on Zionism and the Jewish state.

Based on data collected by the Israel Democracy Institute, he reports: “If in 2010, 48.1 percent of Jewish citizens replied that the two elements [Judaism and democracy] are equally important to them, in 2012 this fell to 41.9 percent, and in 2014, it was 24.5 percent. At the same time, the proportion of Israeli Jews for whom the Jewish element is the most important rose to as high as 38.9 percent; 33.5 percent of the respondents opted for democracy as most important.”

Despite these disturbing trends, I believe that Persico’s fears are overheated, exaggerated and misleading. Non-Orthodox liberal Judaism and interest in the study of classic Jewish texts are being embraced by significant numbers of Israelis who seek meaning in Jewish life-cycle and holiday celebration outside of Orthodoxy. These Israelis are western and liberal in outlook and they highly value the life that democratic institutions support. Nevertheless, Persico’s alarming conclusions have to be taken seriously because so many Israelis, fed by the settler movement, extreme right-wing orthodoxy, and the politics of fear, believe today that democracy and Judaism cannot co-exist.

The original sin leading to this polarized view was committed by Israel’s first Prime Minister David Ben Gurion who gave a monopoly of control over Jewish religious life to a then very small right-wing orthodox community. Successive Israeli governments have allowed the polarization to continue over the entire 67 years of statehood because of pragmatic coalition politics and the ruling party’s need to secure a majority of mandates in the Knesset.

The second sin was committed after Israel conquered the West Bank during the 1967 Six-Days War. Then Israeli right-wing religious nationalists, seeing God’s hand behind the redemption of Judea and Samaria into Israel proper, conflated Judaism with the Greater Israel movement thus morally justifying Israel’s occupation of the West Bank and giving the settlement movement religious and national credibility.

Historically, there has always been tension in Jewish tradition between tribal and universal impulses and values. However, we Jews need not have to choose between being patriotic to the Jewish state or being universal humanitarians concerned about justice for Palestinians and other peoples. We can be both. Each trend ought to be a check against the other’s excesses, and though Persico is right in his worry that the two-state vision has been shelved after the Kerry mission, the two-state solution is still the only concrete assurance that Israel can remain Jewish, democratic, just, peaceful, secure, and part of the family of nations.

It must be said that Judaism as a whole embraces both orthodoxy and liberalism. It’s neither a fair demand that all Jews be either liberal or orthodox. It’s also inaccurate to claim that Judaism can survive only if Jews become right-wing extremist nationalists or live in consonance with the left’s worldview as expressed regularly in Haaretz.

What is, I believe, a certain threat to the Zionist enterprise, arguably the greatest single achievement of the Jewish people in two millennia, is the pitting of Israel’s Judaism against democracy and the continuing monopoly over Jewish life by the ultra-Orthodox political parties and rabbis.

The only way to buttress democracy in Israel is first and foremost to support the two-state solution, and at the same time encourage all efforts to separate church from state because that will also support the health and vitality of Judaism and Jewish life.

The New Israeli Government and Ultra-Orthodox Parties – More of the Same and It Isn’t Good

03 Sunday May 2015

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We Jews are good at worrying, and I’m worried.

When speaking about the state of Israel, American Jews always need to remember that we’ve chosen to live here and not there and so we must be deferential to our Israeli brothers and sisters who are on the front lines and not second-guess them. They are the ones who must make the tough decisions and live with the consequences. They have done so in free elections last March and are now forming a new ruling coalition government.

Though Israelis have every right living in a democracy to choose their leaders, what Israel does affects Jews living in the Diaspora too, and it is on this basis that we living here have a right to speak and be part of the conversation. This conversation, of course, isn’t easy. We are, after all, a complicated people living in a complicated time, and Israel is situated in a dangerous region of the world.

Though the Israeli right-wing prevailed in this last election, I don’t believe that liberal Zionism is dead. Liberal Zionist values are still held by the majority of Israel’s political center, center-right and center-left. Israelis still want a Jewish democratic state. Though racism and anti-democratic trends are intensifying in certain segments of Israeli society egged on by elements in political parties that will be part of the ruling coalition government, and extremism is growing, Israelis as a whole are neither racist nor extremist.

A free press and independent judiciary are still alive and well in Israel, and every issue is debated thoroughly out  in the open. Human rights organizations advocating and working on behalf of immigrants, asylum seekers, women’s rights, civil rights, religious freedom, democracy, and pluralism are doing their work without interference.

As he strives to form a government, Prime Minister Netanyahu is making deals with small parties in exchange for their support. My fear is what those deals mean for the health of Israeli society, its open Jewish character and its democratic institutions all of which will affect continuing support for Israel in the international community and in the United States, and that support has a direct influence on Israel’s security.

The last Israeli ruling coalition government, for the first time in Israeli history, included no Orthodox religious parties. Consequently, progress was made in the Knesset to reduce the amount of money automatically granted to support ultra-Orthodox synagogues and yeshivot. The goal of that policy was to force thousands upon thousands of non-productive Hareidi students to learn general studies in order to be able to enter the Israeli work force and thus reduce the unfair financial burden carried by Israeli tax-payers having to support them and their very large families indefinitely.

Prime Minister Netanyahu has brought back into power the very ultra-Orthodox Religious Parties (i.e. Shas and United Torah Judaism) that opposed this policy thus representing a major step backwards and a threat to social and economic fairness and equality, religious pluralism, and diversity in Israeli society.

Hiddush, an Israeli organization committed to the separation of church and state in Israel, just published an analysis of what the new coalition agreements with the Ultra-Orthodox religious parties mean. Among its findings are:

1. 4 billion NIS of Israeli taxpayer money once again will be diverted to ultra-Orthodox yeshiva students at a time when Israel’s middle class is squeezed and poverty in other sectors is increasing without equal redress. Unfair preferential and discriminatory use of public funds will be given to the Hareidi population, declared illegal by Israel’s High Court of Justice. Netanyahu’s agreement with these parties undermines efforts to reduce massive subsidies and removes incentives for yeshiva students to seek gainful earning potential and not rely on welfare thus handicapping them from integrating into an education-based workforce.

2. Public transportation – There is no public transportation available anywhere in the state of Israel on Shabbat and Holidays. Hiddush shows that public support (among the adult Jewish population) has reached an all-time high of 74% in favor of public transportation on Shabbat and Holidays including 72% of Likud voters (PM Netanyahu’s own party). This is important because the very people at the lowest end of the economic ladder who cannot afford a car are discriminated against. But the Orthodox parties are against it, and the current prohibition will likely continue.

These are but two consequences in bringing in the ultra-Orthodox parties back into the government. There will likely be more.

You can access Hiddush’s findings here:

1. “Hiddush analysis of new coalition agreement with United Torah Judaism”  

https://mail.google.com/mail/u/0/?ui=2&ik=c2d9440b24&view=pt&search=inbox&th=14d0d0c8bfef89ae&siml=14d0d0c8bfef89ae

2. “74% of Israelis want to change the status Quo – What gives Israel its Jewish character? Is it liberty, justice and peace, as taught by the Hebrew Prophets, or is it the lack of public transportation on Shabbat, which greatly restricts the weakest sectors of Israeli society?” 

http://hiddush.org/article-12729-0-Support_for_public_transporation_on_Shabbat_at_highest_level_ever.aspx

As My Mother Disappears Before My Eyes

27 Monday Apr 2015

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As my mother nears her 98th birthday in June, the dementia that has consumed her brain is taking more and more of her away. It’s as if there’s been an invasion of a body snatcher.

My mother is, on the one hand, still there. She sounds, smells and feels the same. But increasingly, she has entered into oblivion.

In my last three visits, she didn’t know who I was – I, her son of 65 years.

In my visits these days, I try and discover where she is and what she thinks about and remembers. I’m no longer asking her if she knows who I am. She may indeed know, but I don’t think she easily remembers my name.

One of the tragedies of advancing dementia is the utter isolation that sufferers progressively experience as they move through the fog left by lost memory. It’s also difficult and painful for us who love them because we can’t help but grieve as we watch them disappear.

My mother’s world has become so very small. She had always lived an active and fully engaged life invigorated by family, friends, people, Jewish community, causes, and ideas. Then, she began to forget things. She couldn’t find the words that had once flowed so easily past her lips. She couldn’t recall the memories that made her who she was and defined her world. She didn’t know the names of the people she loved. And she couldn’t recognize anyone in the room.

My mother has always been exceptionally verbal, and though she still talks up a storm, her words are nearly impossible for me to understand, and I know her better than most people.

I’ve asked myself what is actually left, what remains of all that she was, learned and knew. Thankfully, certain things haven’t yet left her. She retains her essential sweetness, gentleness, kindness, generosity, and joy when she looks into my face and has some recognition that I’m an important and familiar person to her, but I wonder what the content of the familiarity is.

For those who suffer with dementia, it’s as if the life cycle has been reversed. They undergo a great unlearning, an unmaking of themselves, a reversion to a uncluttered brain – but this time, the mind is shutting down and not opening up.

Sometimes, nevertheless, my mother offers a pearl of wisdom. Last week she said, “We all have to love each other – for what else is there!?”

Because my mother can’t hear, can’t see and can’t walk, I sit very close to her when we interact, touch her constantly, look into her face from five or six inches away, and speak very loudly into her left ear, the better ear of the two. If I’m able to break through the fog of her confusion, she may know me, but most of the time I’m not sure that she does.

In being with people with dementia, it’s important for us to remember that when the mind goes our bodies carry powerful memories too that may remain. A mother never forgets the vibrations, smell and energy of her child, and I, her son, certainly have never forgotten my mother’s vibrations, smell and emotional presence.

After all the years, what’s left between her and me has come down to this – the purity of a love between a mother and a son. I cherish this and pray that she still does too.

Each time I leave her I kiss her and say directly into her ear: “Mom – I love you!”

“I love you too,” she always says.

I hope she knows that it’s ME who has spoken those words, and not just some stranger showing her love and kindness.

Yom Haatzmaut – Reflections 2015

22 Wednesday Apr 2015

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Who could have imagined 67 years ago that Israel would become as economically viable, politically and militarily strong, technologically advanced, and creatively cutting-edge as it is today?

Who would have dreamed that Israel’s Jewish population would grow from 600,000 souls in 1948 to nearly 6 million today?

Who would have thought that after having had to fight seven wars, endure two Intifadas and bear-up against ongoing terrorist attack that the Jewish state would remain democratic and free despite little peace with its neighbors and no resolution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict?

All told, even with her imperfections and serious challenges, Israel is a remarkable nation, testimony to the spirit, will, ingenuity, aspiration, creativity, and sacrifice of generations. Today Israel is like none other in the world, more culturally, linguistically, and religiously diverse, more intellectually, artistically and academically productive. The depth and breadth of her accomplishments are nothing shy of breath-taking.

On the occasion of Israel’s 67th Independence Day, Jews the world over are well to take stock, celebrate her massive accomplishments, mourn and honor her dead, and ask what unique place the Jewish state holds in the innermost heart, mind and soul of the Jewish people.

This is no easy task. Permit me to offer some thoughts as I reflect on Israel’s meaning:

Israel is far more than a political refuge as envisioned by political Zionists. It is more than the flowering of the Jewish spirit as dreamed about by cultural Zionists. It is more than the fulfillment of Jewish memory and religious longing as experienced by the entirety of the Jewish people.

Israel starts with the land, with Jerusalem at its heart, for the land has been a key focus of Jewish consciousness for three millennia. The land of Israel is at the center of our history and is an essential element of our Jewish faith. But Israel is far more than land.

Rabbi Abraham Joshua Heschel put it this way in his moving volume Israel – An Echo of Eternity: “Israel reborn is an answer to the Lord of history who demands hope as well as action, who expects tenacity as well as imagination.” (p. 118) “The inspiration that goes out of Zion today is the repudiation of despair and the example of renewal.” (p. 134)

In this spirit the Zionists sought to create a new kind of a Jew, at home in the land, self-activated, self-realized, independent, creative, and free. They understood, however, the limitations of their state-building endeavor. Heschel said: “The State of Israel is not the fulfillment of the Messianic promise, but it makes the Messianic promise plausible.” (Ibid. p. 223)

In other words, the political state is not and cannot be regarded as an end in itself. Rather, the Jewish state represents a challenge and a promise that will rise or fall based on how our people and Israel’s government uses or misuses the power that comes with national sovereignty. With this in mind a Jewish state that was founded upon the principles of democracy and that is worthy of its great mission must challenge our individual and communal ethics, our nationalism, our humanity, and our faith.

May Israel be an or lagoyim, a light to the nations, and may her citizens and all the inhabitants of the land know justice and peace.

What We Jews Can Do In Their Name

19 Sunday Apr 2015

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We Jews are living this week between two significant holidays of commemoration. Last Wednesday evening and Thursday the Jewish world mourned those who perished in the Holocaust on Yom HaShoah. This Wednesday evening and Thursday we will mourn those who died defending the people and state of Israel on Yom HaZikaron.

The breadth and depth of the losses of the Jewish people in the Shoah (The 6 million plus 5 million others) and the land of Israel since 1860 (25,000 Jews killed with many more thousands injured and maimed) to our people confounds the mind and breaks the heart. It doesn’t matter whether we were alive or personally affected in our own families by the events that these holydays commemorate. Just knowing about them creates familial memory.

We are a people defined, in part, by memory. The good and noble deeds our families and forebears performed during their lives, upon their deaths, pass to us as zechut (merit), and we live in the after-glow of their accomplishments, decency and nobility, and we dwell in the shadow of their suffering and unjust deaths.

How ought we to remember our people’s history of suffering?

In the wake of so much tragic history, how ought we to understand our lives today?

What ought we do to emulate that which was most noble in their lives?

The Talmud teaches that miracles ceased with the Temple’s destruction, but since, miracles of another sort have occurred.

When we’re seen and heard for what we really are as Jews, is this not a miracle?

When we love our people and tradition fully, is this not a miracle too?

Now that the Jewish people has lost so many innocent and righteous men, women and children to violence and hate over time, what ought we to do in their memory?

We can speak in their place, and pray in their name.

We can do what they are no longer capable of doing and let our lives be an extension of theirs.

We can learn and live our people’s tradition, language and history since they can no longer learn, speak and carry forward the life of our people.

We can love and support the state and people of Israel because their hands and hearts have been stilled.

We can comfort others who grieve loss because they can no longer offer solace.

We can be happy since they can no longer laugh, love our children and all children because they can no longer love, and carry their memory and good deeds forward so they will be remembered and the world will become kinder, more just, and more peaceful in their name.

Zecher tzaddikim livracha! May the memory of the righteous among the Jewish people be a perpetual benediction.

Vote ARZA Slate Before April 30 in WZC Elections

17 Friday Apr 2015

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If you have not already done so, please click now onto this link https://www.reformjews4israel.org, register and vote for the ARZA Slate (i.e. the Association of Reform Zionists of America).

As a delegate on the ARZA Slate (I am #25), we America Reform and Reconstructionist rabbis and leaders of the Union for Reform Judaism represent 1.3 million American Jews.

Here is the complete Slate of ARZA Delegates: https://www.reformjews4israel.org/slate/

There is a one-time only administrative charge of $5 for young Jews (18-30) and $10 for Jews (over 30).

I love this video by a fellow ARZA delegate – great video from slate member Yael Dadoun!

Questions and Answers!!!!

What is the World Zionist Congress? The Parliament of the Jewish People representing all of world Jewry.

What is the ARZA Platform?

  • Support for gender equality in the State of Israel
  • Support for religious equality in the State of Israel
  • Support for peace through commitment to a two-state solution of the Israeli-Palestinian Conflict

Why does it matter that you vote for ARZA?

ARZA currently holds 39% of the US representation in the World Zionist Congress based on the results of the last election for the WZC. Consequently, over the past five years $20 million has been given to the Israeli Movement for Progressive Judaism (IMPJ) to support its programs, congregations, rabbis, outreach, and social justice work. The Israeli government has also provided 4 new buildings for Reform communities around Israel because of our large American Reform Zionist representation.

The government of the state of Israel does not give any money directly to the Reform movement except through special programs. However, the government does fund generously orthodox schools and synagogues. This is not only unfair; it is a violation of the spirit of Israel’s own Declaration of Independence. We American Reform Zionists support our movement and others in Israel struggling through the courts to be treated equally under the law.

In the meantime, we must raise money to support our Israeli Reform movement, and our success in this WZC election is one sure way to do that.

Note that the Israeli Reform movement is a significant leader in support of the Israel Religious Action Center in Jerusalem and our 45 congregations, 2 kibbutzim, strong youth programs, nursery schools, Tali schools, and pre-military programs all over the country.

Our movement supports civil marriage unions in Israel without having to involve the Chief Rabbinate, egalitarianism at the Western Wall, anti-Racism laws, anti-Poverty activism, and many other social justice causes.

A vote for the ARZA slate will also deny funds for settlement building in the West Bank.

ARZA needs your vote and I am asking that you and every Jewish individual in your household register today at the above site, pay the $5 or $10 administrative fee depending on your age, and then vote for the ARZA Slate. Thank you in advance!

If you have trouble voting, please call (844) 413-2929 or email AZM@election-america.com

Rabbi John Rosove, Delegate – ARZA Slate #25

When an Unsure Jew Falls in Love with a Religious Christian

09 Thursday Apr 2015

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This week I spoke with a young man who was raised in my synagogue but who I haven’t seen since he became Bar Mitzvah. He is now 24 years old, kind, openhearted, intellectually superior, and well-educated. He is a grandchild of survivors of the Holocaust, feels Jewish in his heart, but has arrived at an important crossroad, which is why he called me.

He is engaged to be married to a young woman who seems to be his equal in heart, mind and soul. She is a religious Christian whose father is a pastor of a small evangelical church. For two years they have been in love. In that time they have talked deeply about God, faith, the soul, love, and marriage.

He acknowledged that he is not knowledgeable about Judaism. He said that he believes in God and that Jesus is “the son of God.” I asked, “Does this mean that you believe that Jesus’ ‘essence’ is fundamentally different from the essence of any other human being?”

Classic Christianity affirms that Jesus was both wholly divine and wholly human, whereas all other people are wholly human but not divine. My young friend acknowledged that though he believed that Jesus was a deeply unusual and inspired man (according to Paul and the Gospel writers), he did not believe that Jesus was “divine” any more than he or I are divine.

I breathed a sigh of relief. I had feared that he had become already a religious Christian.

I have studied Christianity seriously and respect it as a substantial faith tradition. However, I explained to my former student that I love my mother just as he loves his mother, but I am not required to love his mother, nor is he required to love mine. In this way, Christianity is not mine for all kinds of good reasons, just as Judaism does not belong to Christians for an equal number of good reasons.

I told my young friend that based on his understanding of Jesus, he was not a Christian, and that he owed it to himself and to his fiancé to understand not only Christianity as deeply as he can, but Judaism as deeply and as fully as he can as well. I intimated that he simply didn’t know enough to honestly turn away from his own 3500-year religious, ethical and cultural tradition and history and take on another religious faith without serious thought and study.

I told him that there are some people who were born Jewish who now claim to be “Messianic Jews,” that is, they identify with Jewish culture and ethics but have accepted Jesus as the “Christ Messiah.” Those people, I explained, are, truth to tell, no longer “Jewish” by any Jewish definition despite their claimed origins. They are Christians, pure and simple.

Jews believe that the messianic coming will occur only when peace, justice and compassion characterize all aspects of human affairs, and not before.

I also explained that the reason we Jews do not accept the idea of God incarnate is because such a notion is, according to all streams of Judaism, idolatrous. For Jews, God is always beyond comprehension, beyond form, beyond concept, beyond ideas. God is infinitely and eternally greater than anything that even the greatest minds and spirits can imagine or intuit. Though the idea of God incarnate was a brilliant theological innovation initiated by Paul of Tarsus and developed by the Gospel writers and early Church Fathers in order to help people understand that which is beyond comprehension, it is not, for us Jews a true Truth.

I told my young friend that, with respect, he needed to learn Judaism, and that both he and his fiancé needed to more fully understand each of their religious traditions and how they fundamentally differ from one another. I urged them to learn Judaism together, talk about everything honestly, openly and directly, and find a Jewish community in which to experience, as adults, the richness that Jewish religious life offers.

I recommended that they read a sermon I delivered on Rosh Hashanah in 2012 on intermarriage, its risks and dynamics, so that they could understand more fully the context in which my former student himself was living as an American Jew – See http://www.tioh.org/about-us/clergy/aboutus-clergy-clergystudy

I recommended, as well, two books that hopefully would stimulate their thinking and address the yearnings of their hearts and souls:

Christianity in Jewish Terms – Essays by Tikva Frymer-Kensky, David Novak, Peter Ochs, David Fox Sandmel, and Michael A. Signer. 2000. Westview Press. An exploration into the meaning of a set of Christian beliefs as understood by some of our most thoughtful Jewish scholars and thinkers.

God in Search of Man – by Rabbi Abraham Joshua Heschel. Among the most important rabbinic figures of the 20th century. Rabbi Heschel was a profound theologian, philosopher, rabbinic and mystic scholar, poet, social activist, interfaith and Zionist leader.

I invited my friend to call me any time, that I cared about him and his family, and wished him only happiness and fulfillment.

Hunger in America– For Your Passover Seders

02 Thursday Apr 2015

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In the United States, there are 48.8 million Americans (32.6 million adults of whom 6 million are seniors, and 16.2 million children – equaling 16.7% of all American men, women, and children – nearly 1 in 6 – 14.5% of all American households) who are “food insecure,” defined by the United States Department of Agriculture (USDA) as a “lack of access at all times to enough food for an active, healthy life.”

There are many government programs and charitable organizations that seek to address the “temporary emergency” that these 48.8 million Americans face every day. MAZON: A Jewish Response to Hunger reports that in FY2011, the Federal government spent $94.8 billion in food and nutrition assistance programs, and America’s largest hunger-relief organizations spent $1.2 billion, and still nearly 49 million Americans today are food insecure. Clearly, neither the government nor charitable organizations have been able to feed all those in need.

During the Passover Seder we say “Let all who are hungry come and eat!”

How are we to respond to this mitzvah?

The answer isn’t just to give of our charitable dollars to the poor and hungry in our neighborhoods and communities, but to support local, state and national hunger policies that seek to to make it easier for poor working families and individuals to get the food and nutrition that they need.

MAZON offers a reading for our Seder meals with specifics on what we can actually do in the fulfillment of the mitzvah to feed the hungry.

Ha Lachma Anya

This is the bread of poverty and persecution that our ancestors ate in the land of Egypt. As it says in the Torah, “Seven days shall you eat matzot, the bread of poverty and persecution so that you may remember that you were a slave in Egypt.”

Let all who are hungry, come and eat.

Let all who are in need, come and share the Pesach meal.

At its most fundamental level, the Passover Seder is meant to remind us that we know firsthand the suffering and degradation faced by those who are poor. We know the sharp pain of hunger, the slavery that is poverty and persecution; and we also know that this memory, this shared experience, compels us to act.

Ha Lachma Anya. This is the bread of poverty.

17 million children face a constant struggle against hunger, and hungry kids can’t learn or grow to their full potential.

Let every hungry child come and eat, with a Reauthorized Child Nutrition Act that improves and expands school meals and summer, afterschool and childcare nutrition programs.

Ha Lachma anya. This is the bread of poverty.

Six million seniors face food insecurity and 35% of seniors must make the impossible choice between paying for food and paying for heat/utilities.

Let every hungry senior come and eat, with a Reauthorized Older Americans Act that increases funding for Meals on Wheels and senior congregant feeding programs.

Ha Lachma Anya. This is the bread of poverty.

49 million Americans struggle to put food on the table and feed their families.

Let every hungry family come and eat, with adequate funding for SNAP (Supplemental Nutrition assistance Program).

Ha Lachma Anya. This is the bread of poverty.

This is Passover, we say Dayeinu.

We have had enough.

This year, we will work together so that all who are hungry can finally come and eat.”

Write your congressional representatives and ask them to support the tReauthorized Child Nutrition Act, Reauthorized Older Americans Act, and SNAP (Supplemental Nutrition assistance Program).

For more information, see Mazon’s website: http://www.mazon.org – Mazon: A Jewish Response to Hunger is the only organization in American Jewish life devoted solely to the issue of hunger.

Chag Pesach Sameah!