A Pure Soul – A poem for Parashat Shmot in honor of Moses and Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.

12 Thursday Jan 2012

Posted by in American Politics and Life, Divrei Torah, Ethics, Inuyim - Prayer reflections and ruminations, Musings about God/Faith/Religious life, Poetry

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The Book of Exodus is essentially a story about God’s saving love for the oppressed Israelites. It begins with the birth of Moses and follows him as a young prince turned into a rebel and outlaw, then a shepherd, and finally THE prophet of God.

Why Moses? What was so unique about him that God should choose him to be His most intimate of prophets?

Moses is a complex man; passionate, pure, just, humble, at home no where, carrying always the burdens of his people and the word of God.

God identified him because he was unique, and that is what my drash-poem below is about; namely, the uniqueness that would draw Moses out to become the most important Jew in history.

Dr. Martin Luther King, though not Moses, was a prophet for our times, and on this weekend we celebrate his legacy.

—–

So often we walk about in a daze, / Eyes sunk in creviced faces / Fettered to worldly tasks / Blind to rainbows.

I imagine Moses, in Midian, like that, / Brooding in exile, / Burdened by his people’s suffering, / Knowing that each day / They scream from stopped-up hearts / Shedding silent tears.

A simple shepherd Moses had become / Staff in hand / Counting sheep / Until one day / Weaving through rocks / Among bramble bushes / The shepherd heard thorns popping. / Turning his head / His eyes were opened / And he would never be the same.

God had from his birth taken note of him / And waited until this moment / To choose him as prophet.

Dodi dofek pitchi li / A-choti ra-yati yo-nati ta-mati. / Open to me, my dove, / my twin, my undefiled one. (Song of Songs 5:2)

Moses heard the Divine voice / His eyes beheld angels / His soul flowed with a sacred river / Of Shechinah light.

‘Why me? / Why should I behold such wondrous things? / Unworthy am I!’

God said, / ‘Moses – I have chosen you / Because you are soft / Because you weep / Because your heart is burdened and worried / Because you know this world’s cruelty / Yet you have not become cruel / Nor do you stand idly by.

You are a tender of sheep / And you will lead my people / With the shepherd’s staff / From Egypt / And teach them to open their stopped-up hearts / Without fear.’

Trembling, Moses peered a second time / Into the bush aflame / Free from ash and smoke.

His eyes opened as in a dream / And he heard a soft murmuring sound / Like the sound breath makes passing through parted lips.

MOSHE MOSHE!—HINEINI!

Two voices—One utterance! / He hid his face / For the more Moses heard / The brighter was the light / And he knew he must turn away / Or die.

The prophet’s thoughts were free / Soaring beyond form / No longer of self. / To this very day / There has not been a purer soul than his.

God said, ‘Come no closer, Moses! / Remove your shoes / Stand barefoot here on this earth / For I want your soul.

I am here with you and in you / I am every thing / And no thing / And You are Me. / I see that which is and which is not / And I hear it all.

Take heed shepherd/prince / For My people‘s blood  / Calls to me from the ground. / The living suffer still / A thousand deaths.

You must go and take them out! / Every crying child / Every lashed man / Every woman screaming silent tears.

And Moses, know this / “With weeping they will come, / And with compassion will I guide them.” (Jeremiah 31:8) / The people’s exile began with tears / And it will end with tears.

I have recorded their story in a Book / Black fire on white fire / Letters on parchment / Telling of slaves / Seeing light / Turning to Me / Becoming a nation.

The Book is My spirit / The letters are My heart / They are near to you / That you might do them / And teach them / And redeem My world / That it might not be consumed in flames.

It’s the Republican Party – Stupid!

10 Tuesday Jan 2012

Posted by in American Politics and Life

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The press too often, in its extreme efforts to appear “non-partisan”, blames the Congress in general for the dysfunction of the government in Washington, D.C. The truth, however, is simpler. It is the Republican Party that is the cause of the dysfunction, and this piece by Jonathan Chait explains why.

President Obama is finally seeking ways to by-pass Congress in his appointments which have been held up for no reason except that the Republican Party, led by its extremist and cynical leaders, have refused to work with him and the Democrats since the day he took office. I wish the press would call it as it is and assess responsibility specifically instead of doing summersaults to appear above the fray thus ignoring the truth. Here here for Jonathan Chait! Let’s see if others follow suit.

Jonathan Chait, New York Magazine
Chait writes: “President Obama’s decision to use a recess appointment to seat Richard Cordray as head of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau was a no-brainer – such a no-brainer, in fact, that many of us were racking our brains to figure out why he didn’t do it sooner. It’s an important move that brings together four important battles the Obama administration is waging:”
READ MORE – http://readersupportednews.org/off-site-opinion-section/72-72/9355-the-grand-strategy-behind-obamas-recess-appointment

Love the Stranger as Yourself – Racism in Halacha’s Name

09 Monday Jan 2012

Posted by in Ethics, Israel and Palestine, Israel/Zionism, Jewish History

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We Jews are like all people, only more so. Our talents are immense. Our hearts are huge. Our generosity as a people is probably the most pronounced of any people on earth. Our accomplishments are second to none. Our motivation to heal the world is not only a profound religious principle, but it becomes an obsessive fixation on the need for justice and compassion in the world. This is all to the good.

But, our stupidity is also legion; our fear, though justified by experience, leads us to say and do things that are self-defeating; our hatred and rage at the world as deep as any on earth; and of late our racism in Israel is a growing source of national shame.

The Reform movement’s Israel Religious Action Center (IRAC), based in Jerusalem, has taken the lead in calling out racist attacks on Arabs, misogynist policies against women, and irresponsible hate speech from ultra-Orthodox Rabbis against their perceived enemies.

Anat Hoffman (the Director of the IRAC) recently announced the publication “Love the Stranger as Yourself – Racism in Halacha’s Name” (http://www.irac.org/userfiles/racism-report.pdf) . The following is from the report’s preface:

“Love the Stranger as Yourself – Racism in Halacha’s Name is the first report of its kind collecting racist statements made by rabbis in general and by rabbis holding civil servants positions in particular. Rabbis making such statements are the minority in Israel. But their growing numbers and the legitimacy they enjoy must be a cause for concern and must be a spur to action. These rabbis undermine the foundations of Israeli democracy, incite hatred and fear, and besmirch Judaism as a whole with their message of Xenophobia.

It might be assumed that a person who devotes his life to sacred matters would be obligated to meet high standards of ethics and morality. In reality these rabbis are not called to account for actions that would be considered criminal offenses were they made by any other civil servant.

The Israel Religious Action Center is dedicated to fight against the government’s non-accountability with respect to racial incitement in the name of Halacha (Jewish religious law). Our commitment to this struggle stems from our profound commitment to Judaism and Israeli democracy.”

I applaud this work and the IRAC’s commitment to action, and I urge you to read the report in its entirety.

Twelve Lines about the Burning Bush – a poem from Yiddish

08 Sunday Jan 2012

Posted by in Divrei Torah, Musings about God/Faith/Religious life, Poetry

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“What’s going to be the end for both of us—God? / Are you really going to let me die like this / And really not tell me the big secret?

Must I really become dust, gray dust, and ash, black ash, / While the secret, which is closer than my shirt, than my skin, / Still remains secret, though it’s deeper in me than my own heart?

And was it really in vain that I hoped by day and waited by night? / And will you, until the very last moment, remain godlike-cruel and hard? / Your face deaf like dumb stone, like cement, blind-stubborn?

Not for nothing is one of your thousand names—thorn you thorn in my spirit and flesh and bone, / Piercing me—I can’t tear you out; burning me—I can’t stamp you out, / Moment I can’t forget, eternity I can’t comprehend.”

By Melech Ravitch (translated from the Yiddish by Ruth Whitman), based on Exodus 3:1-15, appears in Modern Poems on the Bible: an Anthology, Edited with an Introduction by David Curzon, JPS, 1994, p. 161.

Melech Ravitch is the pseudonym of Zekharye-Khone Bergner (1893–1976), a Yiddish poet, essayist, playwright, and cultural activist. Born in Radymno, eastern Galicia, into a home where the main spoken languages were Polish and German, Ravitch received a secular general education, including business school, and a limited traditional Jewish education. In 1921, he settled in Warsaw, and from the 1930s on, Ravitch lived in Australia, Argentina, and Mexico, until finally settling in Montreal. His main works include a comprehensive anthology Di lider fun mayne lider (The Poems of My Poems – 1954) and his two volume series Mayn leksikon (My Lexicon; 1945–1947) offer intimate portraits of Yiddish writers in Poland. His memoirs, Dos mayse-bukh fun mayn lebn (The Storybook of My Life; 3 vols., 1962–1975), describe his life in Galicia, Vienna, and Warsaw. These biographical notes are from the Yivo Encyclopedia of Jews of Eastern Europe.

 

 

The Imagination and the Ardors of Youth – Dvar Torah Vayechi

06 Friday Jan 2012

Posted by in Divrei Torah, Ethics, Musings about God/Faith/Religious life, Stories

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This week Joseph, hearing that his father Jacob is on the edge of death, brings his two sons, Ephraim and Manasseh, to see their old grandfather. Knowing that they stand before him, his eyesight failing, Jacob says that his grandsons will be no less “his” than his actual sons. Joseph positioned his sons opposite his father Jacob for a blessing, expecting that Jacob would bless the first-born Manasseh. But Jacob reversed his hands and blessed Ephraim instead. (Genesis 48)

This is not the first time that the younger son is favored over the first-born. The precedent was established with Cain and Abel and continued with Ishmael and Isaac, Esau and Jacob, and Jacob’s 10 older sons and Joseph.

Recalling “The Godfather,” Don Corleone loves all his sons, but he prefers that his youngest, Michael, become Godfather after him because he saw something special in Michael as the future leader of the family.

So too in the Biblical narrative – Abel’s offering to God was of a higher order than Cain’s. Isaac’s devotion to Abraham’s faith exceeded that of Ishmael. Jacob’s spiritual orientation was recognized by his mother Rebecca as opposed to Esau, a hunter and “man of the field.” And Jacob understood that Joseph was graced uniquely by God.

What about Manasseh and Ephraim?

Rashi (11th century, France) had this to say: “Ephraim was frequently in the presence of Jacob for the purpose of study.” (Commentary on Genesis 48:1) The great commentator suggests that Ephraim, the younger son, was essentially like Jacob who preferred the study of Torah with his father to other earthly pursuits. Rashi presumed that Jacob could not have blessed his younger son Ephraim unless he saw something unique and special in him.

Commentators suggest that Manasseh also had special gifts, but of a different kind. They say that Manasseh was a talented linguist and served as Joseph’s interpreter in Pharaoh’s court. Manasseh learned the arts of diplomacy, politics and statesmanship. Whereas Manasseh symbolized worldly wisdom, Ephraim symbolized Torah wisdom.

By choosing Ephraim over Manasseh, tradition ascribes to Jacob the understanding that a Jewish leader must be inspired by Torah learning, regardless of his/her brilliance in business, the sciences, or in his/her understanding of statecraft.

Despite the Biblical tradition of favoring the first-born, Judaism rejected consistently that the birthright should automatically take precedence in determining future leadership. Instead, leadership was to be based on merit and qualities of soul.

Tradition also taught that age can corrupt the imagination and cool the ardors of youth. There must come a time, therefore, when the dreams of the young take precedence and the old step aside.

From its beginnings, the American Reform movement measured its worth according to the ethics of the Biblical prophet. One of the American Reform movement’s great 20th century leaders, Rabbi Jacob Weinstein (z’l), put this idea eloquently:

“Israel should be understood as a permanent underground, the eternal yeast, the perennial Elijah spirit, ever willing to plough the cake of custom, to put rollers under thrones and give only a day to day lease to authority. Anchored to Torah, rooted to God, Israel feels free to dispense with human made hierarchies which would forever place the elder over the younger.”

To be a Jew has meant always to be dissatisfied with the world as it is and to strive to transform it into a more just, compassionate and peaceful society as guided by the principles of Torah. Jacob’s choice of Ephraim for the blessing represents this very promise.

Shabbat Shalom!

Rabbi Shlomo Riskin Condemns Violent West Bank Settlers

03 Tuesday Jan 2012

Posted by in Ethics, Holidays, Israel and Palestine, Israel/Zionism, Jewish History

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In an opinion column entitled “A Hanukkah Letter to the Hilltop Youth” that appeared in the Israeli daily Ha-aretz, Chief Rabbi Shlomo Riskin of Efrat criticizes violent settlers as acting contrary to Jewish tradition and values. Violent settler attacks on innocent Palestinians, their torching mosques, anti-Arab racism, and complete disrespect for the authority of the Israeli government and Israel Defense Forces (IDF) have challenged Israelis at last to begin to address settler hostility towards the State of Israel going back to the assassination of Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin.

Rabbi Riskin is himself a “settler,” albeit a relatively moderate one, and his column reflects the growing revulsion among Israelis and many settlers towards this radical and extremist element in their midst. He writes:

“It’s impossible…to preach to people who believe that they are the holy defenders of the Land of Israel; that they wave the banner of the pure and genuine Torah [word of God]; that they are eliminating… the obsequiousness of thousands of years of exile. ‘Price tag’ rioters who attack [innocent] Palestinians, desecrate mosques and set fire to copies of the Koran see themselves [in the mold of] the ancient heroes of Judea, who fought against the Greek-Syrians [that] desecrated the Temple and forced them to bow down to idols. And so I say to you: You consider yourselves the new… Maccabees who do not bow their heads before the [Hellenizers], who today, you believe, wear the uniform of the Israel Defense Forces.

“Because you are convinced that all your deeds are [in the name of God], you will never admit that you have sinned… I am telling you that you are making a fundamental mistake. If a country can be sacred, if there is sanctity in earth and stones, then [how much more] sanctity [there is in a human being] – whether Arab or Jew – who was created in God’s image? Don’t you understand that [to use Job’s phrase] there is no ‘portion of God’ in furrows of earth, but that there certainly is in peaceful Palestinians? Do you have any idea how great that ‘portion of God’ is in… the brigade commander, …and in each and every one of his soldiers who daily risk their lives to defend yours and those of your families from terrorists? …How do you dare desecrate these holy people? How did it enter your minds to take on the role of… the terrorists [yourselves]? How did your love of the land become so distorted that it turned into love of bricks and cement and caused you to forget all the rest?

“You did not throw stones at me, and still you have mortally wounded me. You have stolen from me one of the assets most sacred to me. I love the Land of Israel with all my heart and all my might. I left the United States, my birthplace, to help to build my beloved city of Efrat and to be built up in it. Wherever and whenever I speak, I present myself as a ‘proud settler’. And you have robbed this pride from me. You have turned the term ‘settler’ into a dirty word. You have caused me to be ashamed of being a settler, to be ashamed to be called by the same name as those whose love for the land has turned into hatred of human beings. The Torah is filled with the praises of the Land of Israel, but it never commands us to ‘love’ the land. It commands us to ‘love thy neighbor as thyself’ (Leviticus 19:18). And since… the words that end that verse, are ‘I am the Lord’, the medieval commentator Abraham Ibn Ezra explains that ‘thy neighbor’ in that context is every human being created in the image of God… Don’t sell your souls, your portion of God from above, even in exchange for our holy land.”

“How Many US Casualties and Wounded in Iraq? Guess again!”

01 Sunday Jan 2012

Posted by in American Politics and Life, Ethics

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The Pentagon reports 4,487 American soldiers killed and 32,226 wounded in Iraq since the onset of the American initiated war in 2003. The piece below by Dan Froomkin, however, notes that this ‘official’ government figure of wounded includes only those “wounded in action” and is therefore a vast under-estimate of the true numbers of Americans injured.

Whereas the number of dead as reported is mostly accurate, Froomkin writes that in truth close to 500,000 of the 1.5 million American soldiers sent to Iraq have suffered injuries. When we add to the American dead and wounded the number of Iraqi dead and wounded the catastrophe of that war becomes at once clear and unfathomable.

Given the massive disinformation campaign perpetrated by the Bush-Cheney Administration on the American people in the run-up to the Iraq war after 9/11 it seems to me that those responsible for lying and deceiving Congress should be investigated for war crimes in the interest of justice, truth and moral responsibility.

Froomkin reports that injuries to American soldiers include but are not limited to post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD), major depression, traumatic brain injury, fibromyalgia (chronic fatigue syndrome), breathing disorders, substantial hearing loss from acute acoustic blasts, hepatitis A, B and C, leishmaniasis (also known as the “Baghdad boil”), malaria, memory loss, migraines, sleep disorders, and tuberculosis. Deployed soldiers also were exposed to many hazardous health conditions including open-air burn pits, infectious diseases, depleted uranium, toxic shrapnel, cold and heat exposure, and chemical agent resistant paint. Many wounds suffered in Iraq and Afghanistan will persist over our veterans’ lifetimes, and some consequences of military service may not be felt until decades later.

If America has learned anything at all from this immoral adventure (as if we should not have known it already) it must be that war is far too destructive, too deadly and too tragic to too many people on both sides to enter except in the most extreme circumstance of national self-defense, which Iraq was clearly not.

Froomkin does not discuss the numbers of Iraqi dead and wounded. The following chart detailing Iraqi casualties is taken from Wikipedia but does not include Iraqi injuries. If the ratio of Iraqi casualties to injuries is similar to American ratios, the figure of wounded in that devastated land are astronomical.  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Casualties_of_the_Iraq_War

 

Source

Casualties

Time period
Iraq Family Health Survey 151,000 violent deaths March 2003 to June 2006
Lancet survey 601,027 violent deaths out of 654,965 excess deaths March 2003 to June 2006
Opinion Research Business survey 1,033,000 deaths as a result of the conflict March 2003 to August 2007
Associated Press 110,600 deaths March 2003 to April 2009
Iraq Body Count project 103,536 — 113,125 civilian deaths as a result of the conflict. Over 150,726 civilian and combatant deaths[1] March 2003 to October 2011
WikiLeaks. Classified Iraq war logs[1][2][3][4] 109,032 deaths including 66,081 civilian deaths.[5][6] January 2004 to December 2009

FOCUS: How Many US Casualties in Iraq? Guess Again.
Dan Froomkin, Reader Supported News
Froomkin begins: “Reports about the end of the war in Iraq routinely describe the toll on the US military the way the Pentagon does: 4,487 dead, and 32,226 wounded. The death count is accurate. But the wounded figure wildly understates the number of American service members who have come back from Iraq less than whole. The true number of military personnel injured over the course of our nine-year-long fiasco in Iraq is in the hundreds of thousands – maybe even more than half a million…”
READ MORE http://www.readersupportednews.org/opinion2/266-32/9181-focus-how-many-us-casualties-in-iraq-guess-again

Dan Froomkin is the Senior Washington Correspondent for the Huffington Post. He previously wrote a column for the online version of The Washington Post called White House Watch.

 

The Measure of Our Success – Parashat Vayigash

30 Friday Dec 2011

Posted by in Divrei Torah, Health and Well-Being

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As 2011 comes to a blessed close, our world continues to escalate in its brutality, is more politically fragile, economically distressed, religiously challenged, and morally confused than ever before. In times such as these it is worthwhile for us to consider who we are and how we might measure our personal, societal and international successes and failures. In this I am reminded of Churchill’s words that a successful person will “be… able to go from one failure to the next without losing enthusiasm.”

This week’s Torah portion Vayigash has something to teach us about the importance of attitude in life. In these closing chapters of Genesis we come to the climax of the Joseph narratives. The crown prince meets his brothers after 20 years of exile and reveals himself to them. As they cower he forgives them and makes peace. Finally, he settles his father Jacob in the land of Goshen.

Pharaoh has occasion to meet Jacob in these chapters as well, and one old man asks another: “Jacob – How many are the years of your life?” He responds, “The years of my sojourn on earth are one hundred and thirty. Few and hard have been the years of my life, nor do they come up to the life-spans of my fathers during their sojourns.” (Genesis 47:8-9)

This seems an odd response given Jacob’s life. Recognizing Jacob as a kvetch, the Midrash (B’reishit Rabba 95) brings an incredulous God into the conversation:

“Jacob [says the Eternal]: ‘I saved you from Esau and Laban; I brought [your daughter] Dinah back to you [after she was raped and held captive], as well as Joseph [who you presumed to be dead at the hands of a wild beast] and you complain that your life has been short and evil?’ [If so] I’ll count the words of Pharaoh’s question to you and your response, add them together and shorten your life [by that number of years – 33] so you’ll not live as long as your father Isaac, who lived to 180.’ Jacob lived 147 years.”

What has happened to Jacob? He had 4 wives, 13 children and many grandchildren. His son Joseph had become the second most powerful man in the world and he himself had encountered God twice, in a dream and at a river, but Jacob can only complain!

Where’s the gratitude? That this conversation with Pharaoh should come just after Jacob had been reunited with Joseph, his favorite son, is disheartening and disturbing.

Truth to tell, we all know people like this who see their lives as through a negative prism: Parents who fixate on their children’s weaknesses and failings; marriages that dissolve because one partner won’t let go of past slights, the bad times and the other’s flaws; and our own refusal to overcome disappointments.

In his book The Seven Habits of Highly Effective People, Stephen Covey concludes that the most well-balanced, positive and proactive people, who live happily with others at work and home, are successful because they balance four dimensions of their natures; the physical, spiritual, mental, and social/emotional.

We may need to care more for our bodies, eat better food and less of it, drop excess weight, get sufficient rest, keep stress and negativity at bay, and exercise more.

Or maybe spiritually we’re closed to the experience of mystery, awe and wonder.

We may have become intellectually stagnant, our curiosity suppressed and our minds inactive.

Perhaps we’ve become jaded and numb to feeling, focused too much on ourselves and without empathy.

The Midrash surmises that Jacob’s negativity and propensity to complain, despite his many blessings, shaved years from his life. Writing 1500 years ago, the rabbis anticipated what psychiatrists and scientists would conclude today, that some illness and even early death can be avoided if we took better care of ourselves in body, mind and soul and paid more attention to our relationships with each other.

The 19th century writer Robert Louis Stevenson wrote this of a ‘successful life’:

“A person is a success who has lived well, laughed often and loved much; who has gained the respect of intelligent people and the love of children; who has filled his niche and accomplished his/her task; who leaves the world better than s/he found it, whether by an improved poppy, a perfect poem or a rescued soul; who never lacked appreciation of earth’s beauty or failed to express it; who looked for the best in others and gave the best s/he had.”

Wiser words have not been uttered.

Shabbat Shalom and a happy, healthy, meaningful, and balanced New Year!

“What a Wonderful World” with David Attenborough

26 Monday Dec 2011

Posted by in Art, Beauty in Nature, Inuyim - Prayer reflections and ruminations, Musings about God/Faith/Religious life, Poetry, Quote of the Day

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As the year 2011 comes to a blessed close, the lyrics of “What a Wonderful World” originally set to music by the great Louis Armstrong (lyrics: George David Weiss, George Douglas, and Bog Thiele) has been reinterpreted by David Attenborough on the BBC with exquisite nature photography – http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=B8WHKRzkCOY

“I see trees of green, red roses too
I see them bloom for me and you
And I think to myself what a wonderful world.

I see skies of blue and clouds of white
The bright blessed day, the dark sacred night
And I think to myself what a wonderful world.

The colors of the rainbow so pretty in the sky
Are also on the faces of people going by
I see friends shaking hands saying how do you do
They’re really saying I love you.

I hear babies crying, I watch them grow
They’ll learn much more than I’ll never know
And I think to myself what a wonderful world
Yes I think to myself what a wonderful world.”

Rabbi Abraham Joshua Heschel (zal), filled with wonder always, put it this way:

“Our radical amazement responds to the mystery, but does not produce it. You and I have not invented the grandeur of the sky nor endowed [hu]man[kind] with the mystery of birth and death. We do not create the ineffable, we encounter it.

The awareness of the ineffable is that with which our search must begin…The search of reason ends at the shore of the known; on the immense expanse beyond it only the sense of the ineffable can glide…reason cannot go beyond the shore, and the sense of the ineffable is out of place where we measure, where we weigh.”

May your soul rejoice and your heart sing!

L’shanah tovah chiloni

Rabbi John Rosove

 

“We are carrying torches” – Anu nos’im lapidim – a poem by Aharon Ze’ev

22 Thursday Dec 2011

Posted by in Holidays, Poetry

≈ 1 Comment

We are carrying torches. / In the dark night / the paths shine beneath our feet, / and whoever has a heart / that thirsts for light – / let him lift his eyes and his heart to us / and come along. / No miracle happened for us. / No cruise of oil did we find. / We walked through the valley, ascended the mountain. / We discovered wellsprings of hidden light.

We quarried in the stone until we bled: / “Let there be light!”

Aharon Ze’ev, 1900-1968