Tag Archives: Ethics

A 400 Year-old Reflection about Paris – John Donne

16 Monday Nov 2015

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“…all mankind is of one author, and is one volume; when one man dies, one chapter is not torn out of the book, but translated into a better language; and every chapter must be so translated; God employs several translators; some pieces are translated by age, some by sickness, some by war, some by justice; but God’s hand is in every translation, and his hand shall bind up all our scattered leaves again, for that library where every book shall lie open to one another; …

No man is an island, entire of itself; every man is a piece of the continent, a part of the main; if a clod be washed away by the sea, Europe is the less, as well as if a promontory were, as well as if a manor of thy friend’s or of thine own were; any man’s death diminishes me, because I am involved in mankind, and therefore never send to know for whom the bell tolls; it tolls for thee.”

MEDITATION XVII. Donne, John (1572-1631). From The Works of John Donne. vol III. Henry Alford, ed. London: John W. Parker, 1839. Pages 574-5.

Note: I have not changed the original English nor adjusted the gender exclusivity of John Donne’s original.

The Paris Tragedy – Religious Liberty in Israel – The Troubled Obama-Netanyahu Marriage

15 Sunday Nov 2015

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I recommend the following three important articles published this past week, all of which add insight in these troubled times.

  1. Five Lessons From the Paris Tragedy – Times of Israel and the Algemeiner – David Harris of the AJC important lessons from the terrorist attack on France this past week.https://www.algemeiner.com/2015/11/15/five-lessons-from-the-paris-tragedy/
  1. Netanyahu, Don’t Surrender to ultra-Orthodox Ultimatums – Haaretz‎ – Rabbi Eric Yoffie challenges PM Netanyahu to stand his ground before Israel’s ultra-Orthodox Rabbis regarding religious equality and diversity in the state of Israel. http://www.haaretz.com/opinion/.premium-1.685825
  1. Scenes From a Marriage, Huffington Post –Amir Tibon and Tal Shalev offer an in-depth dissection of the difficult relationship between President Obama and Prime Minister Netanyahu. http://highline.huffingtonpost.com/articles/en/bibi-obama/

A Weeping Isaac Alone in the Field – A Paradigm for Our Times

06 Friday Nov 2015

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Chayei Sarah is a monumental Torah portion in the Book of Genesis (23:1-25:18) that establishes Hevron as one of our people’s holiest cities in the land of Israel and tells the story of the betrothal of Isaac and Rebekah. Thus, for the first time in Jewish history we witness the passing of the baton of history from one generation to the next.

We, the current generation, however, have yet to fulfill our Jewish destiny. Hevron today is a hot spot of Palestinian and Jewish rage, of extremism and violence, of polarization and hate. Until there is peace (shalom) between the tribes of Israel and shalom/salem (not hudna – i.e. “quiet”) between Israel and the Palestinians, we will not have fulfilled our raison d’etre as a people to be rod’fei shalom, pursuers of peace.

The current violence cannot be the way forward, nor can suspicion, distrust and hatred of the “other” define the character of our people’s and the Palestinian people’s hearts and souls.

I offer a poetic midrash on Isaac’s and Rebekah’s encounter leading to their marriage. I love this story because their meeting is pure and sweet, and it suggests a paradigm of what is possible not only between individuals, but between the tribes that comprise the Jewish people today (e.g. Haredi, Orthodox, Mizrachi, Ashkenazi, Reform, Reconstructionist, Conservative, secular, atheist, liberal and right-wing Zionists, American, Israeli, European, Latin, etc.), and the peoples of the Middle East who know far too much polarization, suspicion, distrust, and hatred of each other.

A Weeping Isaac Alone in the Field

To be alone amidst shifting wheat / And rocks and sun / Beneath stirred-up clouds / And singing angels / Audible only by the wind.

I’ve secluded myself / As my father did / When he went out / Alone leaving all he knew / For a place he’d never been / That God would show him.

I can do nothing else / Because Father broke my heart / And crushed my soul / When he betrayed me / By stealing me away one morning / Before my mother awoke / And nearly offered me to his God.

When my mother learned / Her soul passed from the world.

O how she loved me! / And filled me up / With laughter, love and tears.

Bereft now / I’m desolate in this world / And this field.

O Compassionate One – Do You hear me / From this arid place / Filled with snakes and beasts, hatred and vengeance?

I sit here needing YOU.

As if in response, / Suddenly from afar / Appears a caravan / Of people and camels, / Led by Eliezer, Abraham’s servant, / With a young girl.

Isaac, burdened by grief / Neither looks nor sees.

He sits still / Lasuach basadeh / Meditating / And weeping / Beneath the afternoon sun / And swirling clouds / And singing angels / Whom he cannot hear.

Rebekah asks: / ‘Who is that man crying alone in the field?’

Eliezer says: / ‘He is my master Isaac, / Your intended one, / Whose seed you will carry / Into the future.’

“Vatipol min hagamal – And she fell from her camel” / Shocked and afraid / Onto the hard ground / Yearning.

She veiled her face / Bowed her head / And Rebekah and Isaac entered / Sarah’s tent, / And she comforted him.

Watson – you see but you do not observe! Parashat Vayera

29 Thursday Oct 2015

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This week’s Torah portion Vayera reminds me of Sherlock Holmes’ famous statement to his loyal friend Dr. Watson: “Watson – you see but you do not observe!”

Most of us are like Watson. At first sight, we see only the surface of things, an object’s size, shape, color, line, texture, and form.

Jewish mysticism teaches, however, that nothing is as it appears to the eye – every physical thing is but a reflection of something deeper, more complex, wondrous, and enriched than we imagine it to be.

The great Jewish scholar, Dr. Jacob Neusner, described the 2nd century law code, the Mishnah, as an ideal spiritual architecture underpinning the physical world. Every letter, word, phrase, and law, he said, embraces the seen and the unseen, the explicit and implicit – all existence.

This week’s Torah portion, Vayera, is about seeing in all its dimensions. It concerns especially what God sees and what God wants us to see;  the physical and the metaphysical, the material and what can be grasped only through intuition.

The 3-letter Hebrew root of the title of Vayera (“And God appeared…”) is resh-aleph-heh. The root appears 11 times in the portion in a variety of forms (Genesis 18:1-22:24). In 9 of the 11, it is used in connection with God and angels (i.e. God’s messengers).

Abraham greets three God-like men who ‘appear’ near his tent. God goes to Sodom and ‘sees’ whether the people have turned away from their evil. Lot ‘saw’ two of God’s messengers. Sarah ‘saw’ Ishmael and feared he had receive the inheritance in place of her son Isaac. Hagar ‘saw’ a well of water that would save her son, Ishmael, from certain death. Abraham and Isaac both were able to ‘see’ the cloud hovering upon a mountain called Moriah, the place (Makom – another word for God) where there would be ‘vision.’

In those 9 of 11 occurrences, there is divine revelation. These chapters of Vayera point to our patriarch Abraham as a grand ‘seer’ graced with intuitive insight. In every one of these spiritual encounters, we sense newness and spiritual awakening, and that phenomenon inspires within the heart the virtues of appreciation and gratitude and within the soul the experience of awe and wonder.

When the heart opens this way and the soul ‘sees,’ we mere mortals are drawn more deeply into what it means to be human and to sense what God requires of us ethically and spiritually in the world.

Abraham, the prophet and patriarch, must have had a highly developed intuitive sensibility. If only we could hear God’s voice and know what Abraham experienced in those moments!

The 18th century British poet and painter, William Blake, in his book The Marriage of Heaven and Hell, imagined a conversation with the prophets Isaiah and Ezekiel:

“…the prophets Isaiah and Ezekiel dined with me, and I asked them how they dared so roundly to assert that God spoke to them; and whether they did not think at the time that they would be misunderstood…?  To which Isaiah answered: ‘I saw no God nor heard any in a finite organic perception; but my senses discovered the infinite in everything.”

Blake’s way is also the way of the Jewish mystic who senses always the holy in the mundane and glimpses the Godly in the human situation. I suspect this was Abraham’s experience as he welcomed the three visitors to his tent. He saw them as human beings, but they were really angels. Thus, Abraham set the way of the Jew and became our example.

What does the recent violence tell us about a One State or Two State Solution? Report from Jerusalem #5

25 Sunday Oct 2015

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Those on the Israeli left are divided about the future with the Palestinians. One camp still desires to find common cause with the Palestinians, and the other says that this 67-year marriage must come to an end. One believes that marriage counseling is still possible; the other that only through divorce can there be a peace and security for both sides.

The violence we have witnessed in both Intifadas and in this recent wave of suicide knife-attacks has shown that the right wing direction has failed, that one state doesn’t work, that there can be no security without a political solution, that the occupation is unsustainable, that Israel needs to say ‘We are here, You are there’ and we need a permanent divorce.

Indeed, this violence may be the opportunity Israelis need to realign and make a political deal with the Palestinians.

In my taxi ride from Jerusalem to the Ben Gurion Airport, my driver, Mordecai (a 63 year-old descendent of Iraqi Jews), took me on a side road to avoid a traffic jam, and we passed by a maximum security prison that held about 400 Palestinian terrorists. Mordecai explained to me that the Palestinians are now controlled by the Islamists who do not believe that Jews have a right to be here, that they never will accept the state of Israel on “Islamic land,” that what they can accept is hudna (quiet) until such time as the Palestinians are strong enough to attack and destroy the state of Israel.

I have heard this argument before, most recently from Likud Knesset member, Benny Begin, the son of the late Prime Minister, who met with the ARZENU faction in the Knesset before the WZC sessions began last week, and eloquently explained why one state is the only solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. He emphasized that Palestinian citizens deserve full and equal rights and that those rights should extend to all residents living in Judea and Samaria (i.e. the “West Bank”).

Yes, of course, there are Palestinians who believe that Israel does not have the right to exist as the nation state of the Jewish people. PM Netanyahu made acceptance of Israel as a “Jewish state” a demand in the negotiations with the Palestinian Authority sponsored by the United States in 2014. At that time PA President Abbas said that though the PA had already recognized the State of Israel, the Palestinians would never recognize Israel as the nation state of the Jewish people.

At the time, I believed that Netanyahu was using this argument to make an agreement impossible. However, there is truth in his demand, and I have come around to the belief that a two-state solution requires the Palestinians to recognize the Jewish State of Israel that offers equal rights to all citizens of the state (Palestinians included) even as Israel recognizes the right of the Palestinians to a nation state of their own living in peace and security alongside Israel – peace, not hudna. (Note: Israel will always have to maintain military and strategic superiority over all its neighbors, including the Palestinians).

There are, however, many Palestinians who do not accept the Islamic view that the State of Israel is illegitimate, and particularly so many of those Palestinian-Israeli citizens who have lived in Israel since 1948. The danger of the status quo continuing is that Palestinian-Israeli citizens are becoming more and more identified with West Bank Palestinians under occupation.

There are, to be sure, many values that many Palestinians share with Israelis, and so the lines of conflict should not be drawn as Jews vs Palestinians, but rather as those who support a one-state option as opposed to those who want two states for two peoples. The latter is the only way, it seems to me, to save Palestinian-Israeli citizens as loyal to the state of Israel.

Simply and categorically said, we need a divorce and a two-state solution with lines drawn between Israel before 1967 with land swaps to include most of the large Israeli settlements in Israel, and a new state of Palestine in the West Bank and, eventually, including Gaza. Palestinians should, of course, have the right of return to Palestine and not Israel. Jerusalem will have to be shared as capitals of both nations with all appropriate security guaranteed.

Only after a divorce can our two peoples begin to rebuild relationships. At the moment, trust has been badly damaged. Nevertheless, it seems to me that there are enough Palestinians who agree with Israelis that the current violence is intolerable and the status-quo of occupation is unsustainable.

Kotel and LGBT Resolutions Pass WZC Committee – Report From Jerusalem #4

23 Friday Oct 2015

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It’s bad enough that Israel is being attacked by terrorists, now mostly in the West Bank and less in Jerusalem after Israel’s government imposed strong security measures separating East Jerusalem Arab neighborhoods from West Jerusalem Israeli neighborhoods. What is perhaps even more searing to the Jewish soul is the way some Jewish delegates at the World Zionist Congress behave towards their fellow delegates.

We of ARZENU (the world Reform Zionist movement) were warned that yelling and delaying tactics would be likely in committee meetings and in the plenary sessions, especially when discussing contentious resolutions. The warnings were prescient. Almost from the beginning of our committee meetings one Mizrahi (the nationalist right-wing religious delegation) delegate starting screaming from the moment the Chair, Rabbi Lea Muehlstein of the United Kingdom (an ARZENU delegate) opened the session.

The rules of debate in committees according to the WZC are determined exclusively by the chair. Roberts Rules of Order do not apply. Some chairs are more fair than others. The chair of this session gave all voices equal time, and when she thought the issue had been completely discussed she called for a vote.

The two most contentious resolutions were those concerning the “Establishment of an Egalitarian Prayer Space at the Western Wall,” introduced by ARZENU, and “Recognition of Support for the LGBT Community,” also introduced by ARZENU.

Jewish Agency Head Natan Sharansky, the Women of the Wall (WOW), the Conservative and Reform movements, and the Chief Rabbi of the Wall have already agreed that a third section in the Western Wall site would be established equal in size, funding and visibility for a dignified space of worship for the Conservative and Reform streams and for Women of the Wall. This WZC resolution was meant only to confirm what the Israeli government and interested parties have already determined, and to push forward towards the realization of this new prayer space.

After debate the resolution passed with a substantial majority. When I saw my friend and Chair of WOW, Anat Hoffman and asked how she felt about the good news, she said:

“John – nothing has happened to move this matter forward in the government over the past year and more, this resolution notwithstanding, and given the controversy over the Waqf charge that the status quo on the Temple Mount is being questioned, and given that the area we want for the egalitarian prayer site is only 50 yards from Al Aqsa, Israel isn’t going to touch this issue now.”

So much for that.

The LGBT resolution was the next especially contentious fight. The resolution commended the Education Minister, Naftali Bennett (the head of Mizrahi faction) for announcing an increase of support for the Israeli LGBT community. The resolution called on him to ensure adequate funding for “Israel Gay Youth” and other LGBT organizations so as to secure the role of members of the LGBT community within Israeli society. It also called on Minister Bennett to ensure that all Israeli students (and in particular in the Orthodox school systems) take part in programming that promotes diversity, inclusion and equality for the LGBT community, to support equal rights for the LBGT community in all Zionist entities and to encourage their activities within the national Institutions.

The right wing parties in our committee were strongly against this resolution and began immediately to challenge key elements of it. Some began a campaign of yelling and screaming to prevent us from having a reasoned debate ending in a vote. Orthodox delegates introduced several amendments, only one of which was accepted by ARZENU.

The most important amendment, however, we refused to accept because it gave license to Orthodox schools to choose to accept or to pass on tolerance education.

All the while, the disruption did not stop for a moment, and Rabbi Muehlstein finally ruled that anyone screaming would not have his/her votes be counted.

At last, a vote was taken and the resolution passed with about 35 votes, and 35 abstentions. Those in Mizrahi and Likud factions who negotiated with ARZENU on an amendment on which we found compromise language, in the end refused to vote “nay.” Indeed, they never intended to vote for a resolution no matter what it said. They only wanted to delay and water down the original resolution.

At one point, five of the most badly behaving delegates actually charged our table. I happened to be sitting two people away from Rabbi Muehlstein. I am not a violent person, but I was prepared to jump between them and Lea to protect her from their physical assault. It should be noted that she was a paragon of patience and brought dignity to the proceedings and to the ARZENU delegation.

I left the meeting feeling as though I needed a shower. Though justice was done in the resolution, we also witnessed the dark side of Zionist politics.
I heard that other committee meetings went far more smoothly and with good behavior by all. For me who attended the WZC for the first time, the bullying behavior of the right-wing did not have the intended effect of intimidating us. It had the opposite effect of my bearing down and committing to fight the good fight respectfully on behalf of compassion, justice and human rights within the World Zionist Congress.

See my earlier post titled “Non-Stop Zionism.”

Boggling the Mind – A New Super-Fast Camera

27 Sunday Sep 2015

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I recently watched a 5-minute piece of footage from PBS’s NOVA (from the 2013 season) about the development of “Super-Fast Cameras.” It not only inspired in me a sense of awe and wonder  about the character and behavior of light, but also about the current state of our technological and scientific know-how.

This video shows that which humankind has never been able to observe before – the fastest thing in the universe – light.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7Z8EtlBe8Ts

In the 1950s, a 2000-mph bullet was photographed passing through an apple. The video shows a picture of that bullet as if suspended in time, in one particular moment.

In the past 60 years, a new Super-Fast Camera has been developed that can break down what happens to a one-trillionth of a frame per second, thus enabling us to see, moment by moment, light moving into a scene.

We can even see the moment a shadow is formed after light hits an object, not simultaneously as we once assumed.

We can watch light traveling at 600 million miles-per-hour, and observe what occurs in one-billionth of a second.

This NOVA PBS segment offers suggestions about how this new Super-Fast Camera can one day benefit the fields of medicine and many other human endeavors.

We will read on Simchat Torah next week the mythic story of the Creation of the universe and the human being (Genesis 1 and 2). After seeing this video, I marvel in a completely new way at the workings of the universe and at our human capacity for invention on the one hand, and the experience of awe and wonder on the other, which leads me to an insightful analysis of the differences between the two accounts in the Hebrew Bible of the creation of the human being (Adam) that appear in Genesis 1 and Genesis 2.

The great scholar Rabbi Yosef Soloveitchik commented on the essential differences of these two creation narratives of Adam. He named the first Adam of creation “Adam I” (Genesis 1:26-27) and the second Adam of creation “Adam II” (Genesis 2:7, 18, 21-24).

“Adam I” of Genesis 1 is a utilitarian man/woman. S/he is charged with the task of ruling over the world, mastering and subduing it to his/her purposes. The man partners with the woman who are created simultaneously, and their goals are practical, purposeful and productive. They embody the principle that two are better than one, but each, by virtue of being created “b’tzelem Elohim-in the Divine image,” are empowered with intelligence and the ability to create and be productive. Such people through history have been farmers, artists, scientists, legal scholars, physicians, architects, builders, manufacturers, fashioners of institutions, and creators of community. They are this-worldly and are energized by virtue of being useful. They find meaning and relevance when they are productive, and as long as they are they are never rebellious nor ever lonely, for they do their work in partnership with others.

“Adam II” of Genesis 2 is an existential being. He/she is created from the dust of the earth (adamah) and is endowed with divine purpose by means of being infused with  divine breath (nishmat chayim). He/She does not lord over the earth. Rather, s/he watches over creation and protects it by virtue of being one with it. Nevertheless, s/he is alone and lonely and needs an intimate partner, to be in relationship with another. So God, the Creator, draws from Adam II a tzela (often translated as “rib” but it could also mean a side, part or aspect of the primordial human) to make woman-isha.

Adam II responds to the world spontaneously, and s/he yearns for intimacy and a life of quality and meaning. S/he is neither controlling nor power-centered. S/he intuits God’s presence everywhere and strives for “ach’dut-unity” with God. (i.e. to be at one-yichud with the root-shoresh of his/her being and life in God).

Adam II is an existential being, a seeker and an appreciator, and s/he is ever-aware of God’s Infinity, Eternity and Ineffability. S/he aspires for the religious experience of community, sanctity and transcendence. S/he is faith-oriented, needs a soul mate (i.e. beshert) and a faith community.

I mention Adam I and Adam II in the context of the invention of this Super-Fast Camera because our human engagement with it embraces both Adam I and Adam II.

My brother, an awe-struck scientist, remarked to me when he shared this video with me that this Super-Fast Camera and what it can show about the behavior of light would “even boggle Einstein’s mind!”

Chag Sukkot Sameach.

High Holiday Sermons – 2015-5776

25 Friday Sep 2015

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For those interested in listening/watching on You Tube or reading the text of any of the three High Holiday sermons I delivered this year at Temple Israel of Hollywood on Rosh Hashanah evening, Rosh Hashanah morning and on Kol Nidre, they are now posted together in written form and on YouTube on the Temple Israel of Hollywood website (www.tioh.org) and can be accessed directly here:

http://www.tioh.org/about-us/clergy/aboutus-clergy-clergystudy

Erev Rosh Hashanah – “Radiance in this Austere World”

There is a vast difference between what I call “good speech” about others and gossip (l’shon ha-ra – the evil tongue). The former builds ethical relationships and the latter destroys them. There are no innocent by-standers when we gossip, so the rabbis teach, and we all do it – according to polls 80% of all speech between people is about other people, for better and worse. Recognizing “gossip” as a serious ethical challenge, Judaism has developed a rich series of rules governing our use of language, how we speak to and about others and what we choose to say or not say. My sister in-law put it well recently when she noted that “Candor is golden; diplomacy is divine!” The problem is that people say far too much to each other and about each other, and allow their anger, frustration and self-righteous belief that they are duty-bound to be honest at all times whether harm and hurt comes to others as a consequence or not. The High Holidays reminds us that not all thoughts ought to be expressed, written, shared, or read. In these days leading to the Presidential primaries, we are seeing far too much destructive speech coming from candidates, but that is just a reflection of the coarseness and insensitivity that is happening across society as a whole.

Shacharit Rosh Hashanah – “Fighting for the Soul of the Jewish People”

We Jews are living in a very difficult, threatening and complicated world, and we have been divided by our own extremists about what is in the Jewish people’s best interest relative to the State of Israel’s long-term security and peace as the democratic nation state of the Jewish people. The unity of the Jewish people is essential to our future strength and security, but policies of the government of the state of Israel, led by fear and arrogance and buttressed by an unholy political marriage between ultra-orthodox Hareidi Jews and right-wing one-state believing settlers has now gained significant influence in the policies of the government and threatens to take Israel over a cliff as it becomes increasingly isolated internationally and a source of consternation for the Jewish people in America. We risk losing a generation of young liberal Jews who want to love Israel but are increasingly torn between the values on which they were raised and policies that emphasize security to the exclusion of everything else. The recent battles in the United States over the Iran Agreement, the failure of the Kerry effort to forge a two-state solution, and the vicious attacks on liberal left Jewish supporters of Israel and on other pro-Israel supporters who have taken a different view by both the left and the right, but primarily by extreme right-wing Jews need to be stopped – and soon, or we could lose everything the Jewish people has striven to build since the beginnings of the Zionist movement.

Kol Nidre – “Six Life Lessons”

In this very personal sermon, I share my own spiritual journey and six life-lessons I have learned over the 65+ years of my life. These lessons have broad applicability.

For those interested, on the Temple Israel site are posted the sermons of my colleagues, Rabbi Michelle Missaghieh and Rabbi Jocee Hudson – all well worth reading.

L’shanah tovah u-m’tukah – A good and sweet New Year.

Overcoming Despair and Beginning Again

13 Sunday Sep 2015

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The central theme of these High Holidays is teshuvah, a process that brings us back to ourselves, to our families and friends, to our community, Torah, and God. Teshuvah is ultimately an expression of hope, that the way we are today need not be who we become tomorrow.

Teshuvah is essentially a step-by-step process of turning and re-engaging with our most basic inclinations, the yetzer hara-the evil urge that is propelled by desire, lust and need and our yetzer tov-the good inclination that is inspired by humility, gratitude, generosity, and kindness.

A key beginning in the process that is teshuvah is, however, a sense of despair, hopelessness and sadness, the feeling that we are stuck and cannot change the nature, character and direction of our lives.

Judaism, however, rejects pessimism, cynicism and everything that impedes personal transformation and a hopeful future.

In the story of Jonah, to be read on the afternoon of Yom Kippur, we read the tale of the prophet’s descent into hopelessness and what is required for him to change direction.

Jonah is the epitome of a unrealized prophet who runs from himself, from civilization and from God. Every verb associated with his journey is the language of descent (yod-resh-daled). He flees down to the sea. He boards a ship and goes down into its dark interior. He lays down and falls into a deep sleep. He is thrown overboard down into the waters by his terrified ship-mates. He is swallowed and descends into the belly of a great fish, and there he stays for three days and nights until from that place of despair and utter darkness Jonah decides that he wishes to live and not die. He cries out to God to save him.

God responds by making the fish vomit Jonah out onto dry land. Jonah agrees this time to do God’s bidding and preach to the Ninevites to repent from their evil ways. While the town’s people are all putting on sack cloth and ashes and promising to change, God provides Jonah with shade and protection from the hot sun. Jonah, however, becomes mortified because he still believes that change is impossible and that the Ninevites are destined to fail. Their success, in his mind, makes him to appear the fool.

Teshuvah is never easy. It is for those of us who are strong of mind, heart and soul, who are willing to work hard and suffer failure, but to get up every time, to own what we do, to acknowledge our wrong-doing, to apologize to ourselves and others, and to recommit to the struggle, step-by-step, patiently, one day at a time, one hour at a time, and even one moment at a time.

When successful, teshuvah is restorative and even utopian, for it enables us to return to our truest selves, to the place of soul, to the garden of oneness.

Rabbi Joseph Soloveitchik taught that in teshuvah we are able even to transcend time itself. He said, “The future has overcome the past.”

L’shanah tovah u-m’tukah.
A good and sweet New Year to you all.

The Challenge of Contemporary Israel – What to do about Asylum Seekers?

07 Monday Sep 2015

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The establishment of the state of Israel fundamentally changed the situation of the Jew in the world, who we had been and who we would become. For most of the past 3000 years Jews lived in exile, subject to the rule of others, without national sovereignty and power of our own, without the enormous challenges that come with ruling a nation.

Today, Syrian refugees are desperate to find safe harbor outside of their tortured land, and many want to come to Israel for asylum.

Israel has been tested already over the last number of years about how to accommodate 50,000 Eritrean and Sudanese Refugees who had crossed the border into Israel from Africa seeking asylum from some of the worst dictators in the world.

Every nation has the right and duty to protect its borders. No nation as small as Israel can be expected to be the home for every suffering human being.  However, as we Jews know only too well what it means to flee persecution and violence, we might expect that the government of the state of Israel, of all nations given our most recent history of being a hunted people, would have in place a compassionate and reasonable policy to welcome refugees and asylum seekers that could enable these stateless people to live with dignity until conditions in their nations of origin change and they can go home without fear.

Rabbi Dow Marmur put the challenge succinctly this week as he reflected upon a new wave of asylum seekers from Syria seeking refuge in Israel:

“We Jews found it easy to preach morality when we had no power to put it into practice. Now with a state of our own and the paramount need to protect it, national interests seem to take precedence. The challenge of contemporary Israel is how to live up to the lofty teachings of Judaism while responding to the challenges of a modern democratic sovereign state surrounded by hostile forces.”