Bechukotai

I am not optimistic about peace in the Middle East.

The Palestinian Authority’s Prime Minister, Mahmoud Abbas, will soon unilaterally declare a Palestinian State defined by Israel’s pre-1967 borders. Despite his distortions of history, many nations will undoubtedly recognize this declaration. Some will not. The Palestinians continue to appeal to the United Nations for support. Meanwhile Israel’s Prime Minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, appeals to the US Congress for support. They do not speak to each other, instead only to their supporters. Israel of course can always count on my support, but peace will not be achieved if Israel and the Palestinians refuse to speak with each other. (Tom Friedman is correct on this point.)

This week’s protests commemorating Al Nakhba offer further discouraging signs. Make no mistake. Marking the creation of the State of Israel as “the catastrophe” does not signal Palestinians coming to terms with the modern Jewish state. It suggests that the “stalemate” is not in truth about the 1967 borders but those of 1948. It should be remembered that the Jewish leadership accepted the 1947 UN partition plan and the Arab leaders rejected it. The catastrophe could have been averted then and there. The Palestinian Authority’s recent accord with Hamas is also deeply worrisome. Hamas is committed to Israel’s destruction. How can Israel make peace with such partners? How can there be peace with someone who is pledged to your destruction?

Looking from the side on which I sit, Netanyahu is either unable or unwilling to marginalize those Israelis who believe that the land of Israel is only meant for the Jewish people and no other people. Israel must divorce itself from these internal radical forces. It must do so not only for the sake of peace but because these modern day religious zealots threaten the democratic Jewish state. Make no mistake again. Discussions about this settlement or that are a diversion. It is instead the ideology of many settlers that is corroding Israel’s soul. Israel must uproot this ideology from its midst. It must do so first and foremost for its own sake.

Years ago when studying in Jerusalem during my first year in rabbinical school, I volunteered to tutor Arab high school students in English. Once a week I traveled by myself to the nearby village of Beit Safafa. It is an interesting village. It is located near the current Jerusalem neighborhood of Gilo. Prior to 1967 Beit Safafa was a divided village. One half sat within the newly created State of Israel. The other half in Jordan, in what is called East Jerusalem. After the Six Day War the village was united and all its residents became Israeli citizens.

There I met with my students at one of their homes. Often we sat in the backyard eating sweets, nuts and fruits and of course drinking tea infused with mint leaves. Every week they laughed when I first sipped my tea. They exclaimed, “No sugar in your tea?” At the end of the year they presented me with a gift, a pen with my name inscribed on its side. “Steve Moskovitz” it read. I did not tell them that my name was misspelled. I did not tell them that I received five of these very same pens on my bar mitzvah. This present remains among my most treasured gifts.

I think of those moments as I eye the pen sitting on my desk. I have long since lost touch with my students. I wonder what has become of them. By now I imagine that they are married and have children. I wonder about their feelings and especially of those of their children. They would have come of age during a different time, during in particular the intifadas, the first of which began the year after I finished my studies in Jerusalem. Would they wish to live in a Palestinian state? Have some become radicalized? Have others left to make their lives in the United States or Europe?

Two weeks ago, Nicole Krantz spoke to our congregation about her recent experience with Seeds of Peace. As I listened to her speak about the friendships she formed with Israelis and Palestinians, I thought again about my students. Nicole spoke passionately about the power of Seeds and how it could perhaps transform the Middle East by changing ordinary young people. She was realistic about achieving peace. She recognized its challenges and difficulties. Yet she held fast to hope. She continued to believe that a few “seeds” could change the equation. I hope and pray she proves right. I wonder if Nicole befriended one of my student’s children.

I resolved to find my students. I will continue to search for peace.

This week’s portion, Bechukotai, declares: “I will grant peace in the land, and you shall lie down untroubled by anyone; I will give the land respite from vicious beasts, and no sword shall cross your land.” (Leviticus 26:6) The Torah’s words will forever remain my prayer.

Take Back Zionism

This is a powerful video about the humanitarian impulse of  modern Zionism.  It is produced by a new organization, Take Back Zionism, an advocacy group formed by alumni of Birthright Israel.



I remember  years ago when Menahem Begin was Israel's prime minister.  In 1977 an Israeli cargo ship came across a boat of Vietnamese drifting in the ocean.  The Israeli captain offered the sixty some people food and water and then transported them to Israel.  Begin granted these Vietnamese "boat people" Israeli citizenship, comparing them to Jewish refugees, many of whom had struggled in vain to escape Nazi occupied Europe. Begin was himself a Holocaust survivor.  In the end approximately 300 Vietnamese were granted Israeli citizenship and found a home in the Jewish state.

Where human beings suffer a Jew must take action.  I am proud of how frequently Israel has taken up this cause and sought to relieve the suffering of fellow human beings.

Unemployment and Torah

Yesterday I had the privilege of delivering the D'var Torah at the local Connect to Care town hall meeting and networking opportunity.  This event was for those who have found themselves unemployed or underemployed because of the recent economic crisis.  I am proud that my synagogue was one of the event's co-sponsors. 

Thank you Jim Krantz.  Thank you to all of the organizers of this Connect to Care event: UJA-Federation, Sid Jacobson JCC, Jericho Jewish Center and my congregation and its leadership.

This week’s Torah portion is Behar, from the book of Leviticus.  It is a portion decidedly focused on eretz yisrael, the land of Israel.  In particular it outlines two laws.  It first details the sabbatical year, shmita, the seventh year in which the land must remain untilled.  We are commanded not to work the land during this year.  We can only eat what grows on its own. 

The spiritual intention of this law is clear.  Everything is deserving of menuchah, rest.  In addition it reiterates the age old Jewish principal.  Everything belongs to God.  Just as you can’t do whatever you want with your bodies so too you can’t do everything with your land.  Everything is borrowed.  Everything is on loan.  In a sense on the sabbatical year the landowner and the landless are on equal footing.  Both can only take what the untilled earth offers. 

The second group of commandments makes the point that all belongs to God even stronger.  It is the law of the jubilee year, the yovel.  In the 50^th year three things are to occur: 1. the land is again to lie fallow (by the way that would mean that the earth would remain untilled for two years: on the preceding sabbatical year and then the jubilee year), 2. Hebrew slaves are to be set free and 3. all properties sold must revert to their original owners.  This combined with the commandment detailed in the book of Deuteronomy that not only is the land to lie fallow on the seventh year, but that all debts are forgiven on that sabbatical year, are indeed worthy of further examination at this moment when we gather as a Connect to Care community.

To be honest it is doubtful that these practices of the jubilee when all land reverted to its original tribal owners and the remission of all debts were ever practiced.  As they say in modern terms, that might bring the economy to a standstill.  Nonetheless the ideal offers us an extraordinary teaching.  The Torah here suggests that not only does the land belong to God but also our wealth.  Even our money is in a sense God’s.  All our worldly accumulations belong to God.  

What is the goal of these biblical laws?  So that we might better share with others.  So that we might not measure ourselves by the acres we own or the wealth we accumulate.  The Torah wants to draw a circle around the community.  It seeks not fence others out, but to fence all in. 

I think about this when I see our fenced in backyards. We work to keep our neighbors out. The Bible worked to bring our neighbors in. The Torah wants us to share with others. It wants us to include others. The Bible wants to instill in our hearts the idea that nothing is mine and everything is God’s.

As I read the Torah portion’s words I think to myself what it might be like to sit where many sit.  Far too many are unemployed and far too many are underemployed.  What an extraordinary opportunity it would be to have the jubilee this year, to have this ancient do-over when all debts would be wiped clean and each us would have the opportunity to start over.  Too many feel that they are not even returning to the starting line, but instead beginning yards back because they are suffering under crushing debt.  I wish I could proclaim the jubilee for all.  I wish I could blow the shofar and announce that jubilee and say we are all starting over.  Everything and everyone is back to the beginning.  It is good to dream—especially when it is the Bible’s dream.

I of course have no such power.  Not only am I poor shofar blower, but such power belongs to no one today.  Long ago we lost count.  And the 50^th year was never again proclaimed.  But each of us has the power to transform our own souls.  Each of us has the power to proclaim such a thing to ourselves.  Each of can say to ourselves that my wealth is God’s. 

If the Torah is right, and I believe it to be so, that land is not truly mine, but God’s then I can never lose.  I am only a tenant.  Each of us is only a tenant.  Holding such a belief in our souls might prevent us from becoming broken.

As a rabbi that is my most fervent hope and prayer. Despite all difficulties and struggles may our souls forever remain whole.  Kein y'hi ratzon.

Behar

“It’s the ground that can never be replaced…  They don’t make any more ground, and this ground in the spillway is the best in the world.”

Last week the Army Corps of Engineers dynamited a hole in the Mississippi river levee, flooding the spillway, in order to save a small town.  In the process they sacrificed precious Missouri farm land.  The New York Times (May 3, 2011) quoted one farmer’s words of praise and reverence for the land he and his family farmed for their entire lives.

Years ago when my family and I used to boat on the mighty Mississippi we would marvel at the homes on the river’s banks.  Why would people build on a flood plain?  Every year the Mississippi river floods.  Every year the river nourishes the surrounding farm lands.  Some years the floods are greater than others.  Precious land comes at great cost.  Apparently this is nature’s equation.  And so every year families have to flee their homes.  There is pull of the land that defies reason.  There is the pull of an ancestral home that surpasses explanation. It is the sanctity of the land that pulls families toward it.

This week’s Torah portion, Behar, is about the sanctity of the land of Israel.  So revered is this land that it alone is granted a sabbatical year.  “When you enter the land that I assign to you, the land shall observe a sabbath of the Lord.”  What is the purpose of this sabbatical year, a year in which the land must be allowed to lie fallow?  Its purpose is twofold.  On the one hand it is a reminder that only God truly owns the land.  There is in truth no property ownership.  The land is lent to us by God.  On the other hand the sabbatical year teaches us that everything, that all of God’s creations, must rest.  Menuchah, Shabbat rest, is a universal right.  It is not just a Jewish obligation, but instead a right that every living thing must enjoy. The land as well is a living and breathing creation.

Thus the sabbatical year of the land should rekindle in us a reverence for the land.  To be sure the Torah’s focus is the land of Israel and its inherent holiness.  Nonetheless we learn from this portion that land is sacred.  And we must therefore regain a reverence for the land and nature.  There is a majesty of the earth that is lost to many of our contemporaries.  We appear only to revere nature’s awesome power.  These recent storms remind us however not only of nature’s fury but also of its grandeur. The sabbatical year and the river’s flooding remind us about nature’s cycle that we try in vain to defy.  

We must say as well, along with farmers, “The ground beneath our very feet is the best in the world.”

The Zionist philosopher A.D Gordon once wrote: “At times you imagine that you, too, are taking root in the soil that you are digging; like all that is growing around, you are nurtured by the light of the sun’s rays with food from heaven.  You feel that you, too, live a life in common with the tiniest blade of grass, with each flower, each tree; that you live deeply in the heart of nature, rising up from all and growing straight up into the expanse of the world…” 

Gordon’s primary concern was the spiritual power to be found in working the land.  But his lesson is still apt for our generation.  Each of us must find a way to reclaim the earth as our own, to regain a sacred connection to the land.  It should not occur to us when the land is washed away.  We should recognize it and proclaim it each and every day.

Testing Limits

Testing the Limits - by Marjorie Ingall; Tablet Magazine
This is an interesting article about standardized testing. Given that our children are now in the thick of taking standardized test the author's thoughts should give us pause. Is there a correlation between improved teaching and standardized tests as politicians argue? I think not. I have always found these troubles. How can one objectify learning. Does a 5 mean you have learned more? Does an 800 mean you are a better writer? Such scores are pyrrhic victories. The notion that all students, especially young fourth graders, can be placed on the same level and evaluated by objective measures is impossible.

Ingall writes as well about what should be our communal concern:

As Jews, we dig community. Al tifrosh min hatzibur, we’re told: Do not separate yourself from the community. Our prayers are written overwhelmingly in the first person plural. But standardized testing is the furthest thing from communitarian. Wealthy families buy tutoring. Upper-middle-class kids come into school with the huge advantage of being read to more often at home. Testing enforces existing divisions and even increases them. And being Jewish means you shouldn’t just worry about your kids; you should be concerned about everyone’s kids. That means working to improve all schools—yes, even if your kid goes to Jewish Day School—in meaningful ways, because that’s part of the responsibility of living in a democracy.

The increasing attempt to reduce to numbers what is a subjective endeavor is a doomed enterprise. Teaching can never be quantified. It is an art. It can only be measured in the transformation of a student's soul.

Happy Yom Haatzmaut!

Today is Yom Haatzmaut, Israel Independence Day.  63 years ago, according to the Jewish calendar, David Ben Gurion proclaimed the creation of the modern Jewish state with the words:

[W]e, the members of the National Council, representing the Jewish people in Palestine and the Zionist movement of the world, met together in solemn assembly today, the day of the termination of the British Mandate for Palestine, and by virtue of the natural and historic right of the Jewish people and of the resolution of the General Assembly of the United Nations, hereby proclaim the establishment of the Jewish State in Palestine, to be called Israel.

We live in remarkable times.  Few generations of Jews have shared in the privilege of living alongside a sovereign Jewish state.  When we look back through the lens of history we realize that this blessing is unprecedented.  It is unrivaled. 

Most people think that our community is affluent because of its material success.  The Jewish community has indeed achieved unprecedented levels of wealth, education, and stature, especially here in the United States.  Our riches however are better measured not by these successes, but instead by the achievement of our age-old dream.  The modern State of Israel represents the greatest riches we have ever realized. 

Abraham Joshua Heschel once wrote in what has become a classic, Israel: An Echo of Eternity (1969):

The return to Zion is a creative challenge to stabilization, shaking up inertia, a challenge demanding new action, new thinking.

Well-adjusted people think that faith is an answer to all human problems.  In truth, however, faith is a challenge to all human answers.  Faith is a consuming fire, consuming all pretensions.  To have faith is to be in labor.

Well-meaning people used to say that a Jewish state would be an answer to all Jewish questions.  In truth, however, the State of Israel is a challenge to many of our answers.  To be involved in the life of Israel is to be in labor.

What is the meaning of the State of Israel?  Its sheer being is the message.  The life in the land of Israel today is a rehearsal, a test, a challenge to all of us.  Not living in the land, nonparticipation in the drama, is a source of embarrassment.

Each of us could participate in this drama far more.  Each of us must participate in this drama far more!

Yom HaZikaron

Today is Yom HaZikaron, the day we remember those soldiers who gave their lives defending the State of Israel.  They are far too many for such a small nation.  To mark this day I share Natan Alterman's "The Silver Platter."

The earth grows still
the lurid sky slowly pales
over smoking borders.
Heartsick, but still living, a people stand by
to greet the uniqueness
of a miracle.

Readied, they wait beneath the moon
wrapped in awesome joy, before the light.
A girl and boy step forward,
and slowly walk before the waiting nation;

In work garb and heavy-shod
they climb in stillness.
Wearing yet the dress of battle, the grime
of aching day arid fire-filled night.

Unwashd, weary unto death, not knowing rest,
but waring youth like dewdrops in their hair
silently the two approach
and stand,
are they of the quick or of the dead?

Through wandering tears, the people stare.
"Who are you, the silent two?"
And the reply, "We are the silver platter
upon which the Jewish State was served to you."

And in speaking, fall in shadow at the nation's feet.
Let the rest in Israel's chronicles be told.

May there soon come a day when no more will be offered on the silver platter!

Yom HaShoah Sermon

What follows is the sermon I delivered when we observed Yom HaShoah on April 29th.

Our sacred task in the face of the Holocaust is the pursuit of memory.

I have been thinking about the question of justice.  This year is the 50^th anniversary of the Eichmann trial and I have been reading Deborah Lipstadt’s The Eichmann Trial.  I urge you to read this book and to watch some of the video clips posted on this blog.  Perhaps you might even want reread the controversial Eichmann in Jerusalem by Hannah Arendt.    

Here is my question for this evening.  Is justice possible?  I believe justice is about rebalancing the scales.  It is about two things: 1. punishment and 2. restitution.  With regard to both of these categories it is impossible to rebalance the scales—in the face of the Holocaust.  Perhaps it is possible with regard to punishment for our tormentors.

This is why Israel’s punishment of Eichmann was so appropriate.  There is only one capital crime in the modern State of Israel.  It is the crime of genocide.  Eichmann was hanged and his body cremated.  The ashes were scattered in the Mediterranean Sea beyond Israel’s territorial waters.  In the Jewish imagination there is no worse punishment than to have your name blotted out.  And so his name appears on no gravestone!  

In terms of the second category of restitution it is impossible.  How can there be recompense for the suffering of six million victims?  So many millions can not even be represented?  How can such suffering be rebalanced?  How can there ever be adequate payment for such extraordinary suffering?

This does not mean we should give up our pursuit of the tormentors or their accomplices or the companies and leaders that enabled them.  But these pursuits are more about remembering and telling the story than the pursuit of justice.  This is because the pursuit of justice in the face of the enormity of the Holocaust is especially inadequate and imperfect.  So our pursuit must be more about the pursuit of memory.

I believe remembering can serve to inspire.  It must serve to inspire us to better our world.  We must therefore speak out against suffering—wherever and whenever it might occur.  One of the most powerful exhibits at the Glen Cove Holocaust Museum is the final pictures.  One picture is the most powerful of all.  It tells the story of a friendship between an elderly Holocaust survivor and a young woman who survived the Rwanda genocide.  A Jewish man from Europe and a black woman from Africa together speak out against genocide and hatred.

This is also the power of our Torah portion’s words.  “Lo taamod al dam re’echa.  Do not stand idly by the blood of your neighbor.”  There is a famous midrash about the first murder, that of Cain killing Abel.  The Torah states: “kol dmay achicha tzoakim elai.  The voice of your brother’s bloods screams out to Me.”  Why is blood in the plural, the rabbis ask.  It is because murder is not just about the murder of an individual but the destruction of all their potential descendants. 

I imagine this is what Israel’s attorney general had in mind when he opened the prosecution of Eichmann fifty years ago.  He said, “Damam tzoek.  Their blood cries out, but their voice is not heard.”

Each of us has a duty to save another human being in distress.  We cannot say as Cain did, “Am I my brother’s keeper?”  This of course is what Eichmann also failed to understand.  His notion of morality was to follow orders whatever they might be.  Our belief by contrast is that each of us has a responsibility to other human beings.  We are responsible for others!  Wherever and whenever another cries out we must not be silent.  We must rise up to help them.

That is what the memory of the Holocaust must inspire us to do.  And that is what we must pursue each and every day of our lives.  We pursue memory so that we might better our world and alleviate suffering!

Bin Laden is Dead

This week's news was extraordinary, although surprising.  Nearly ten years after 9-11 the principal architect of these terrorist attacks was killed.  There should be no moral qualms about our efforts to hunt him down and finally kill him.  Punishment is served.  Deterrence, we hope and pray, is also achieved.  That his punishment is just does not mean as politicians and pundits now pronounce that justice is also served.  There can really be no justice in the face of the deaths of thousands.  I doubt very much if the families of those murdered feel any more sense of closure now that this architect of death and destruction is no more.  To my mind justice is also about re-balancing the scales.  How can this be achieved when so many have been murdered, so many still suffering and countless more terrorized?  For that matter, how can there ever be such an accounting when even one life is taken?

This as well does not mean that we rejoice over his death.  We belong to a tradition that teaches that we never celebrate death, even that of our self-proclaimed enemies.  The Talmud declares: If someone comes to kill you, get up earlier to kill him first.  Had we followed this dictum and killed bin Laden 12 years ago, or immediately following the bombing of the USS Cole, now that would have been cause for rejoicing.  We would not then be celebrating his death but the saving of so many lives.  Our cause would have been equally just at that time, but far more difficult to explain to the American public.  We would not even have known then what were celebrating.  Those were innocent, and naive, years.  I also celebrate the decision to send commandos to carry out this mission rather than bombing from the air.  I recognize that the decision may have had more to do with the desire to prove bin Laden's death than the preservation of civilian lives.  Nonetheless I rejoice that civilians were not killed during this justified raid.  Such things are what we celebrate.  I do not dance when another human being is killed.  Even a just punishment is never reason to celebrate.

Today nearly all recognize that bin Laden needed to be killed and his ideology needs to be eradicated.  All that is, except for the likes of Hamas.  Ismail Haniyeh, prime minister of Hamas ruled Gaza, said: "We condemn the assassination and the killing of an Arab holy warrior. We regard this as a continuation of the American policy based on oppression and the shedding of Muslim and Arab blood."  Reason appears to fail such leaders.  Even though bin Laden was responsible for murdering Muslims as well, it is wrong when a non-Muslim kills a Muslim.  Apparently it is only right when Muslims kill non-Muslims.  Such appears to be his view.  It is a contorted morality.  It is twisted reason.  And this is the leader with whom Mahmoud Abbas and Fatah have signed an accord.  Such actions indicate that the West Bank's leadership prefers Palestinian unity over all else--even the possibility peace with the State of Israel, even the establishment of a Palestinian State.  This accord makes such achievements far less likely. 

It is eerie as well that only a few days after writing about Eichmann's trial and punishment I am now discussing the death of another who professed a similar malignant ideology.  Like Eichmann bin Laden was buried at sea.  There is now no place to pilgrimage.  No country can claim his memory.  It is remarkable that the US made sure that Muslim rites were provided.  Even our enemies are guaranteed religious freedom.  That more than anything else illustrates the difference between us and "them."  We celebrate our differences.  We give honor to our differences.  Bin Laden wanted to eradicate differences.  He and those who subscribe to such ideologies of hate offer a stark choice. Believe and practice like me or be killed.

I am going to celebrate that even our enemy was granted the rituals important to him.  I am certain that he would not have done likewise.  I will rejoice that here in this great country differences are celebrated and not reviled.  I seek not to erase such differences.  I revel in them.  In my view the only infidels are those who scream at all but themselves, "Infidel!"

Yom Haatzmaut

These past weeks I have been reflecting on the unfortunate linkage of the Holocaust and the State of Israel.  Let me explain.  Many people argue, or imply, that Israel represents recompense for the suffering the Jewish people endured during the Shoah.  The State of Israel implied this when it rightfully tried and executed Adolf Eichmann fifty years ago.  (By the way this week’s burial at sea of Osama bin Laden was eerily similar to Eichmann’s.)  

President Obama also gave voice to this linkage when he said, two years ago in Cairo: “America's strong bonds with Israel are well known. This bond is unbreakable. It is based upon cultural and historical ties, and the recognition that the aspiration for a Jewish homeland is rooted in a tragic history that cannot be denied.”  Our enemies as well recognize the importance our minds ascribe to this connection.  This is partly why Iran and Hamas exert so much effort in denying the Holocaust.  They believe to deny this murder of six million Jews is to undermine the legitimacy of the modern State of Israel.

It is of course undeniable that had the State of Israel existed 78 years ago the suffering of Europe’s Jews would have been significantly ameliorated.  The Holocaust might even have been prevented.  Certainly there would have been a state that would have stood up and defended our people!  Most certainly there would have been a country that would have welcomed those of our people fleeing persecution!  Far less would have been murdered.  Fewer people would have suffered.

Yet the State of Israel is not about justice for the Holocaust.  Those scales can never be righted.  Israel is instead about an end to Jewish homelessness.  It is about our return home.  Now we no longer wander.  Now we always have a home. 

One might find this strange for an American Jew to say this.  How can I affirm a home where I do not (yet) live?  An analogy.  I live in a community where many people are privileged enough to own two homes.  Do they love one less than the other?  Likewise we are privileged to live at an unprecedented time when there is a sovereign Jewish state.  All Jews are today blessed to own two homes.  And so I believe that there is room enough in our hearts for more than one home.  Why must a choice be implied: Israel or America?  Why can’t we love two homes?

Yet we are so afraid of loving Israel as our home and claiming it as the Jewish homeland that we paint it as the answer to our people’s suffering in the Holocaust.  We justify its existence by speaking about past injustices and tragic persecutions.  We raise money and support for Israel by speaking of the continued threats Israel faces and the suffering it continues to endure.  These threats and suffering are of course very real.  But they must not become justification for the State of Israel.  Why do our hearts only pour out love in the face of a parade of victims rather than the beauty of what is indeed our home?    

So say this instead about the Jewish state.  Proclaim this about Medinat Yisrael: I have two homes.  One in which I spend most of my days.  The other I visit as often as possible.  Both I love with all my heart and soul.

That should be all the reason you need to celebrate Israel’s 63 years!

Emor

People long for decisive leadership.  President Obama is for example often criticized for being overly professorial, consulting with too many advisors, and weighing options for days or even weeks.  Often the press reports that the American people long for quick, for a leader who will stand up and offer us a single, unwavering direction.

Yet even the greatest of leaders, Moses, is lacking in decisiveness and occasionally turns to others.  In four instances Moses appears baffled by questions or situations and in fact asks his most trusted friend, God, for guidance.  Interestingly three of these four instances deal with death.  One deals with the question of ritual impurity brought about by contacting a corpse.  Two deal with questions of capital crimes and the final example regards laws of inheritance.  Here are those examples.

In Numbers 27 Zelophehad dies and leaves no male heirs.  His daughters approach Moses and ask that the family inheritance therefore go to them.  They argue that they should be allowed to inherit their father’s land.  Moses asks God for advice.  God responds: “The plea of Zelophehad’s daughters is just…”

In Numbers 9 some men were thought to be impure because they had come into contact with a corpse.  They therefore could not offer the Passover sacrifice.  Moses is unsure how to rule and says, “Stand by, and let me hear what instructions the Lord gives about you.”  God offers a compromise.  They can offer the Passover sacrifice but must wait a month.  They can celebrate Passover during the following month.

And in Numbers 15 and in this week’s portion, in Leviticus 24, questions regarding capital crimes are addressed.  In Numbers a man collects wood on the Sabbath day.  Is this a violation of the laws of Shabbat?  He is placed into custody.  Moses is unsure how to rule.  In Leviticus a man curses God.  He is also placed into custody.  What is his punishment?  Moses again inquires of God.  In both instances God rules harshly.  These are capital crimes punishable by stoning.   

Despite the troubling punishment for these apparent small crimes, I wish to draw contemporary lessons from these examples.  Here are the values I read from these stories.  It is especially good to pause and be deliberative when dealing with questions of capital crimes.  In these final examples it is not a lack of decisiveness but instead a deliberateness that Moses exhibits.  With regard to the taking of a human life, even when justified, and even when an enemy, we must be purposeful and deliberative.  Quick and decisive might be emotionally satisfying but they are not ethically justified.

And thus the tracking and killing of Osama bin Laden appears to live up to Moses’ example and the best in American values.  Yet I do not agree with our politicians and commentators that justice has been served.  A justified punishment has been rendered but justice for the victims and their families, or for that matter our country, can never be fully realized.  Perhaps we have gained a measure of deterrence.  A rebalancing of the scales however can never be achieved.

With regard to our leaders, no person is wholly righteous.  No president is perfect.  Still I desire a president who has trouble sleeping when he sends men into harm’s way.  I desire a leader who is thoughtful and deliberative.  Making a judgment of capital punishment must never be determined lightly.  It can only be made after consultation and deliberation. 

This is the lesson we glean from our Torah portion and Moses’ example.  We may have yearned for quick and decisive punishment, but after ten years we are instead left with slow and careful.  Furthermore, it will take even more slow, careful, and especially thoughtful work and many more years to rid the world of bin Laden’s memory and the ideology he represents. 

When speaking of our enemies and those responsible for great evils, Jewish tradition assigns the inscription, yimach shmo v’zichro—may his name and memory be blotted out.  And such is my wish this week.  May the memory of bin Laden be washed away by the ocean’s waves.  May the ideology he fostered be forever blotted out from our country’s shores—and every nation’s borders.

Funeral Blues

The following article was also published in the anthology, Winter Harvest: Jewish Writing in St Louis, 2006-2011.

Even though I have served as a rabbi for over eighteen years, some of the most important and lasting lessons were learned in my earliest years prior to earning the title of rabbi.  Many times our first experiences teach us far more than we can then admit.  I still remember my grandfather teaching me how to ride a bike, his loving hand guiding me and his shouts of joy encouraging me. 

There in my mind is a tableau of first memories.  And so I continue to be drawn to the memory of officiating at my first funeral.

In 1987-88 I served as a student rabbi in Clarksdale, Mississippi, the birthplace of the Blues.  Since the 1870’s Jews had found a niche in this community and there thrived in many businesses.  Once a month I flew from Cincinnati where I was attending rabbinical school to Memphis and then rented a car, driving through the cotton fields of Northern Mississippi to Clarksdale.  There I served Congregation Beth Israel, a synagogue built in the 1930’s. 

By the 1970’s its membership was declining.   The synagogue could no longer afford a full time rabbi and so it became a training ground for young student rabbis, until ultimately closing its doors in 2003.  It was there, in Clarksdale, at the age of 23, in the first days of June 1988 that I officiated at my first funeral. 

Harry Lipson Jr. died after a long battle with cancer.  I carved out a few hours to visit with him and his wife Dottie during the course of my weekend trips.  At the funeral I recited the words from the perfect, unused pages of my new Rabbi’s Manual.  “Death has taken our beloved Harry.  Our friends grieve in their darkened world…”  Some of the words felt empty, and some even cruel.  “For when we die we carry nothing away; our glory does not accompany us.”  Others felt comforting.  On some words I stumbled.  On others I discovered strength. 

I have never before revealed this but the next day I returned to the cemetery and sat by myself at Harry’s grave.  The warm, humid Mississippi air was heavy with moisture.  I asked Harry to forgive me for being the first funeral at which I officiated.  I begged him to ignore my mistakes.  I apologized over and over again for all of my weaknesses and flaws.   I was overwhelmed by feelings of inadequacy and incompetence in facing death. 

And then I remembered that death is not a failure.  I recalled that I became a rabbi rather than a physician because I wanted to have a manual that worked for moments just as these.  I did not want to say, “There was nothing more we could do…”  but instead, “I am sorry.  I promise I will walk this path with you.  We will face this death together.  This is what our tradition says we must now do.” 

The pages of my Rabbi’s Manual are now torn and wrinkled from snow and rain.  The pages bear scribbling and notes as well as reminders that I no longer require.  There are a few pages wrinkled from my own tears, from funerals still too painful to recount.  Many have stood expectantly, looking up at me as I read from this small, holy book.  There were days when I did not know how I might summon the strength to greet these expectations.  Nearly every time I am drawn to remember Harry.      

I recall that there is no perfect path through the valley of the shadow of death.  I remember Dottie’s observation that the very words from our tradition that I found harsh and cruel she found soothing and comforting.  She explained to me that it was the comfort of a familiar voice reciting what generations of Jews have spoken for thousands of years.   I worried too much about the meaning of each word.  She listened instead to the voice.  I learned then that there is our tradition’s manual and its guidance.  There is the strength we draw from our community, from each other.

I still find it remarkable that people ask me to stand by their side at countless occasions such as these.  I am thankful that there have been far more simchas than tragedies in these eighteen years.  In these years I have studied Torah with over 200 b’nai mitzvah students and watched as their parents welcomed them into the age of Jewish responsibility.  I relish the smiles of parents and their tears of joy.  I find it to be an unparalleled privilege that my congregants want me standing there at the absolute best of times and the worst.  I am grateful that they see fit to call me rabbi.

I cannot promise that I will always say every word perfectly.  I can promise that I will continue to call it a privilege and blessing to serve as a rabbi.

And as I learned as well in the birthplace of the Blues, from the master B.B. King: “You better not look down if you want to keep on flyin’.  Put the hammer down.  Keep it full speed ahead.”

Modern Rendition of Psalm 150

My modern rendition of Psalm 150 was recently published in Winter Harvest: Jewish Writing in St. Louis, 2006-2011.  Other articles appeared in prior anthologies.

Here is the psalm.

Praise God

Praise God in the sanctuary and

            In the vastness of nature

Praise God for goodness and compassion

For blessings and wonders

Praise God with piano and song

            With guitar and cello

            With sax and drums

            With clarinet and violin

Praise God with an orchestra of sounds

            And a symphony of music

Let every soul praise God

Let every breath sing praises to the Lord.

The anthology will soon be available on Amazon.com.

Tornadoes

The following is a beautiful and moving article about the recent, devastating tornadoes by a colleague, Rabbi Jonathan Miller, of Birmingham's Temple Emanu-El. 

First, I want to thank everybody for your prayers and those who reached out to me and my community in Alabama.  Caring means so much, and when we are hurting, just to be cared for is all that we need for now.

These days after the storm are kind of surreal.  Those of us who are alright are living in an eerie kind of silence.  There is really nothing that we, the non-first responders can do.  So we sit around and live our lives as normally as possible.  It is a strange kind of silence.  Still today, some of the people who are in need are still not being heard from.  There is no power or telephones or ways to communicate.  So it is strangely silent.

I went to the dentist early this morning.  The receptionist lives in a mobile home that was on the path of the tornadoes.  Her home survived the storm.  Five lots away, homes are destroyed.  She comes home to her home, without power, and she sees the destruction her neighbors endured on the same street.  She doesn’t know where the neighbors are either.  My dental hygienist has a niece on the Tuscaloosa Police force who was sent to Holt, a neighboring community.  She walked the streets there and found dead children in the debris.  All she could do was cover them up.  One by one, the coroner has to identify the bodies.  The fatalities are not yet counted.  All you can do is cry.

It is odd.  My wife’s yoga teacher cancelled class yesterday.  Her parent’s house in the country was destroyed, and she was asking her yoga students if anybody knows anybody with a chain saw to cut up some trees so they can get out?  Yoga ladies with chain saws, go figure.

My cleaning lady came this morning.  “I am fine, but my church members have lost so much.  The Lord was good to me.”  And then what do you say?

The Maronite church in town has a local food festival.  I try to go to all the food festivals, and they come to ours when we have them.  Since the storms, the weather has been absolutely picture perfect.  I asked a friend how she was doing?  “Fine.”  “And your family?”  “Oh, my father lives in Pleasant Grove.  He lost his house.  Only the foundation is standing.”  “What can I do for you?”  “Nothing, they won’t let us into the neighborhood yet.”  And we go get our food and ate together and nobody talked about it.  What can you say?  Here is a family that lost everything they owned, and we are eating our baklava.  There is nothing they can do and nothing we can do, yet.

Yesterday, talk radio left behind Rush Limbaugh and Glenn Beck to hear from local people calling in to tell their stories.  Parents were killed covering their children.  Pets are gone, and so are entire blocks of homes.  The stories were heartbreaking and numbing at the same time.  I had to turn the radio off.  How long can you listen and bear witness to this pain?  I came to Temple Emanu-El this morning (actually I slept here last night after my generator conked out—not the end of the world), and a Temple member whose family lives in Tuscaloosa told me that the people in the shelters need tote bags.  They go to the distribution centers for water and food and light clothing, but they have nothing to put them in.  So we are collecting tote bags.  Who would have thought?

We are beginning to plan a local interfaith service for to commemorate the dead, offer thanksgiving for being alive, and to build for the future.  We will do it next Wednesday, a week after the tornadoes hit.  Tomorrow morning we will do birchat hagomel.   And that is what we are doing.  And we are living in silence.  It is eerie and strange and sad.  Someday, we will all break down.  But for now, there is nothing else on our minds, and we don’t talk about it much.  What can you say?

My people in Alabama need God today.  They need God to get them through this devastation.  They need God to give them meaning when they suffer.  They need God to help them get through one lousy day after the next.  They need God to keep them sober and focused and good and generous.  They need God for all that stuff that makes life so damned difficult to get through.  I can talk to them about all the different God options that we have studied and discussed, and you know what they will say to me, “Rabbi, pray with me, pray for me, speak to God, let God know.”

For those of us who deal with people and not with eternal truths, we stop and pray.  We beseech.  We implore.  We turn to Avinu and Malkeynu.

We are blessed to have a generator at home to power the lights and refrigerator and TV.  Last night, I watched groups of people standing outside the ruins of their homes offering prayers of gratitude for being alive.  They proclaimed for the Channel Six and Channel 13 viewers that God is good and that life is good and that God is with them.  And I was very moved.  I was moved in ways that Rambam and Spinoza will never move me, not ever.

I don’t have it all figured out.  Not by a long shot.  But when the rubber hits the road, friends, lesser people like me and the people in my pews need a message of comfort and purpose and meaning.  And that is what I aim to give them.

I sent an email to my congregation this morning.  I asked them to do lots of things to help our community.  I invited them to a special service for Saturday morning.  I ended it with a religious message:

Finally, on a personal note.  As your rabbi, I cannot promise you that prayer will keep tornados away.  But I can promise you that prayer will help you endure the uncertainty with the knowledge that no one is alone, not now and not ever.  That people suffer in life is a given.  This seems to be our turn.  That our lives are filled with the prayers of others and with a caring God; this is an axiom of faith that gives us meaning and comfort.  Though we walk through the valley of the shadow of death, God is with us.  And we are with each other.

On the morning after, I think they needed to hear this.  And on the morning after, I think I needed to say this.
Pray for us and for the people who are suffering more than anybody should
ever have to suffer.

The Birmingham Jewish Federation has initiated a Tornado Recovery Fund to allow donors to participate in the rebuilding effort. Checks may be sent to:  The Birmingham Jewish Federation, PO 130219, Birmingham, AL, 35213. Please mark them for “Tornado Recovery.” In addition, contributions can be made by going to this link. Please indicate in the comments section that your contribution is for Tornado Recovery.

Yom Haatzmaut Article

What follows is an article about the upcoming holiday of Yom Haatzmaut that was recently published in The Orchard, a publication of the Jewish Federations of North America Rabbinic Cabinet.  Follow this link to download the Spring 2011 edition.  My article appears on page 19.

Why is tragedy compelling? Why is fear motivating? Why is mourning viewed as a greater obligation than celebrating? Why are more people familiar with the details of the Holocaust than the history of Zionism and Israel? These are the questions that occupy my thoughts as we approach Yom Haatzmaut, Israel Independence Day, and the celebration of 63 years of Jewish sovereignty.

To garner our support for the State of Israel we are inundated with images of Hezbollah missiles, Iran’s potential nuclear weapons, suicide bombings, divestment campaigns and in the estimation of many, dwindling support from the Obama administration. These are great worries to be sure. Israel does indeed face numerous threats. Some very real and some imagined. But my question on this Yom Haatzmaut is not about the dangers Israel faces, but instead about our personal connection to the Jewish state.

Why do we rally in far greater numbers when Israel is threatened rather than dance for joy each and every day that Israel continues to thrive? We live in an unparalleled generation of Jews. In our own day we find ourselves in a vibrant and successful diaspora community alongside a successful and vibrant Jewish state. Never before have these two co-existed. Either there was a thriving diaspora community as in Babylonia in the fifth century or a successful Jewish community in Israel as when King David ruled three thousand years ago. And so we lack historic parallels. How do we live and thrive side by side?

Of course we rise up when Israel needs us. Each of us knows how to stand by friends when they are in mourning, or experiencing tzuris. But why don’t we feel just as a great an obligation to celebrate? We should stand by Israel and sing and dance—each and every day. For two thousand years a Jewish state was only a dream. We live in a time when the dream is a reality. In a mere twelve hours (ok that is only the plane flight) you could be in Israel touching the very stones generations of Jews only dreamed of touching.

In Jerusalem in particular the air is thick with prayers. At first one thinks it is thick with the prayers of the thousands and thousands and thousands of ultra-Orthodox Jews running to pray. That is one’s first impression. It is true that a lot of people do a lot of praying in Jerusalem. I think it is instead that the air is thick with the prayers of generations. My great grandparents prayed that one day their people would return to the land of their ancestors. A hundred years later their great grandson visits there regularly. What a privilege it is to live in our generation!

In our own day our prayers have become reality. When we celebrate Yom Haatzmaut I plan to sing (and maybe even dance—watch out party enhancers!). On this day especially I don’t want my support for Israel to be motivated by fear, or tragedy. I want it only to be out how fortunate we are to live during these times. How blessed is our generation that we live alongside a vibrant and thriving State of Israel!

Yad VaShem Testimonies

In observance of Yom HaShoah read the testimonies of this year's Torchlighters.  Every year Yad VaShem chooses six survivors to light the commemorative torches.  I would also suggest that you watch the below video. I keep coming back to this testimony, but I cannot escape its closing words: "Shalom yeladim."   "....We never saw them again."



You can watch other video testimonies here. As Elie Wiesel said: "For whoever listens to a witness becomes a witness."

Yom HaShoah

This evening we will add special prayers and songs to our Shabbat Services in order to commemorate the Holocaust.  Yom HaShoah v’HaGevurah (Holocaust Martyrs and Heroes Remembrance Day) is officially observed on Sunday.  It is a day filled with special services, concerts and public ceremonies.  But no commemoration can adequately mark this tragedy.  Still it was not always the case that such services marked our calendar.

Fifty years ago Israeli agents captured Adolf Eichmann in Argentina and secreted him to the state for trial.  David Ben Gurion made the startling announcement to the Knesset and the world at large.  To mark this anniversary and prepare for our Yom HaShoah observances I began reading Deborah Lipstadt’s new book, The Eichmann Trial as well as rereading Hannah Arendt’s controversial, Eichmann in Jerusalem.  Arendt provocatively claimed that evil appeared so ordinary and banal in Eichmann’s visage.  Lipstadt expertly recreates the details of the trial in her gripping account.  So many years later we still fail to recognize the significance of Eichmann’s trial and the historic shift it represented.  It was pivotal in our understanding of the Holocaust and our formulation of modern Jewish identity.  It was the day that survivors’ stories began to be told—and heard. 

In 1961 Holocaust museums did not dot the landscape of American cities.  Yad VaShem was only established in 1953 and Yom HaShoah declared that same year.  The Eichmann trial brought the Holocaust to the world’s attention.   The Nuremberg trials that immediately followed the end of World War II did not do the same.  With the Eichmann trial the recent victims, now embodied in a fledgling state, tried their former tormentor.  With this trial the memory of the Holocaust was forever tied to the State of Israel.

The prosecution paraded 100 Holocaust survivors before the judges in order to add human faces to the millions of victims and the crimes of the accused.  Eichmann was one of the principal architects of the Nazi’s final solution.  One of the most famous of these survivors was Abba Kovner, Israeli poet and leader of the Vilna ghetto’s resistance.   While the intention of showcasing the testimony of survivors was noble and most certainly served to humanize the innumerable faceless victims, its long term effect may prove undermining to our future survival.  The parade of survivors suggested that the modern State of Israel represents justice for the Holocaust.

We have been living with this unfortunate linkage ever since.  We must stop perpetuating this myth.  The modern Jewish state is not recompense for the suffering our people endured in the Holocaust.  Israel is not about justice for the Holocaust.  It is about an end to Jewish homelessness.  It is about our return home.  By contrast there can never be justice for the Holocaust. 

Yes we must pursue Nazis and their sympathizers until they are no more.  We must redouble our efforts to recover lost Jewish property.   And we must always remember the Holocaust, but not as justification for the State of Israel.  Instead we must remember so that we may forever prevent another holocaust.  When others suffer we must speak out.  We must bring the likes of Eichmann to trial not so much in the pursuit of justice but instead in the service of memory.  Remembering can be ennobling and humanizing.  Punishment for our tormentors: yes.  Justice for the millions of victims: impossible.  I believe there can never be justice for the six million.  There can only be remembrance.

I have great faith in Israel’s judicial system.  (I also witnessed its court overturn a guilty verdict against John Demjanjuk when it could not prove that he was in fact Treblinka’s Ivan the Terrible.)   I believe Israel was right to capture and try Eichmann.  It was the only place where Eichmann could be tried.  Nonetheless the modern State of Israel must never be seen as justice for our suffering.  There can never be adequate payment or recompense for suffering.   Eichmann was found guilty, hanged and his ashes scattered in the Mediterranean Sea, beyond Israel’s territorial waters, thus denying a grave for his followers to pilgrimage and a country to claim his memory.  May his memory be erased by the ocean’s waves. 

Abba Kovner wrote of his sister who was murdered during the Holocaust:

My sister, in her bridal veil, sits at the table

alone.  From the shelter of the mourners

the voice of the bridegroom draws near.

without you we shall set the table

the ketubah will be written in stone.

May the memories of our murdered millions serve as a blessing, calling us to bring healing to our broken world.  May Israel forever remain our home.

Addendum: If you would like to watch attorney general Gideon Hausner’s opening statements at the 1961 Jerusalem trial of Adolf Eichmann, as well as some testimony by survivors, you may do so on YouTube:

Hausner proclaimed: “In this place, where I stand before you, judges of Israel, to serve as the prosecutor of Adolf Eichmann, I do not stand alone.  With me, here, at this very moment, stand six million prosecutors.”  I would also suggest that you visit Yad VaShem’s extraordinary website.

Kedoshim

This week’s Torah portion is brimming with ethical commandments, the most familiar of which is, “Love your neighbor as yourself.”  (Leviticus 19:18)  When the Torah scroll is unrolled to the middle this verse stands at its center.  Many have therefore interpreted this phrase to stand at the core of Jewish ethics. 

I have always found this verse perplexing.  Who is my neighbor?  What does it mean to love?  A prior verse offers needed wisdom and clarification.  Rendered literally it reads: “Do not stand on the blood of your neighbor.”  (Leviticus 19:16)  Most translators interpret the verse as follows: “Do not stand idly by the blood of your neighbor.”

Jewish tradition has understood this phrase to mean that each of us has an obligation to help others.  When someone is in distress we must try to help.  If a person is drowning we must try to rescue him or her, whether the person is young or old, man or woman, Jew or gentile, stranger or friend.  Failing to even try to save another human being in distress is likened to shedding blood. 

How often have we driven around an accident when we are rushed saying to ourselves, “I am sure the police were already called.”  Even though 911 is an easy phone call how many times do we assume someone else has made the call?  Yet we have a Jewish obligation to help others.  We need not jump in the water if we can’t swim, but we must help.  In our age it as simple as making a phone call.  Fulfilling this command is but two buttons on our cell phones.

Failure to help others transgresses Judaism’s most precious obligation to the world.  We are responsible for others.  I may have trouble understanding how I can love all people.  I have little difficulty understanding the idea that when I see another human being in trouble I am obligated to try to help.  This is what it means to be a Jew.  This is what it means to be a human being. 

This is part of what we remember as we mark the Holocaust this week.  Countless people, and far too many countries, turned their backs on the Jewish people.  At the Evian Conference when 32 nations, including the United States, met prior to Kristallnacht, in order to decide what to with Jewish refugees who wished to flee Nazi Germany, only the tiny country of the Dominican Republic offered to accept Jewish immigrants.  Later the passenger ship, St Louis, filled with German Jews, was turned away from our own country’s shores. 

Because so many turned a blind eye, the Nazis were empowered to murder six million Jews.  It was not just the Nazi regime’s murderous actions that led to the Holocaust. It was as well the world’s silence.  It was this deafening silence of the masses of humanity that allowed the evil few to perpetrate their crimes.  Can there be greater evidence of the meaning of the Torah’s command?  Do not stand idly by the blood of your neighbor! 

I may never be able to understand how to love all human beings, but I can say that all human beings are my neighbors.  As we commemorate the Holocaust we must learn to say that all human beings are my neighbors.

Ahrei Mot-Passover Sermon

This sermon was written for Friday, April 15^th.

Why is it that the holiday that celebrates the creation of the Jewish people appears today to give rise to far more divisions?  There is the Ashkenazi and Sephardi divide.  Do you eat rice on Passover?  Do you only cook with potatoes?  There are the Reform and Orthodox divisions.  Do you observe seven days or eight?  There are the endless discussions about kitniyot (legumes) and of course this year’s quinoa controversy.  Apparently rabbis have been dispatched to South America’s Andes to discern if there are wheat particles mixed in with the quinoa.  Personally I have been enjoying this gluten free grain for years.  I recommend the red variety in particular.  I recently read that there are even some who won’t eat meat, drink milk or eat eggs from animals that have been fed hametz.  (If you don’t believe me listen to Tablet Magazine’s Vox Tablet podcast “Against the Grain” here.)

You can really start losing sight of the import of this holiday in its details.  These “kosher battles” and the accusations of who is more religious can diminish the ideal that we are supposed to be promoting.  We are one people despite our many different ways of observing.  All must hold fast to the idea that we are remembering slavery and celebrating freedom.  These are the essential messages of the Passover holiday.  The rest is commentary, or if you prefer decorations.  The potential small pieces of wheat in a box of quinoa or the microscopic bits of hametz in milk are not the essence.  By the way the left is not entirely innocent.  There is a restaurant that I read about, also in Tablet Magazine, which goes out of its way to make its food traif.  It serves matzah balls wrapped in bacon. (Again you can read that article here.)  Yes we are free and can eat whatever we want, but need we flout Jewish history and memory as well?   Bacon donuts might be one thing, but matzah balls dripping with pork fat seem an entirely different matter.

In case these differences are not enough, in this week’s Torah portion we find another law that divides us.  Ahrei Mot contains Leviticus 18, a detailed list of prohibited sexual relations.  So controversial was this portion that it is no longer read in the vast majority of synagogues as Yom Kippur’s afternoon Torah reading.  In all Reform synagogues, and many Conservative, Leviticus 19’s holiness code is read instead.  In this week’s portion it relates: “Do not uncover the nakedness of your father’s wife…or your sister… or your son’s daughter…”  These are of course not the controversy, although many seem to feel that all of this talk of nakedness is not befitting Yom Kippur.  The controversy is not about bestiality or incest but found in one verse: “Do not lie with a male as one lies with a woman; it is an abhorrence.” (Leviticus 18:22) 

This law is the biblical basis for the prohibition against homosexuality.  We should be careful to note that traditional Jewish law understands this to mean a prohibition against the homosexual act alone.  It is not a statement of feelings.  It is only about actions.  The Talmudic rabbis added a prohibition against lesbian sex.  Still the Jewish world remains terribly divided about this issue.  The Reform movement openly ordains gay and lesbian Jews as rabbis.  Some Reform rabbis officiate at commitment ceremonies.  Others do not.  The film, “Trembling before God,” explored the excruciating challenges of gays and lesbians living in an Orthodox world.   It is a wrenching film.  (You can watch the entire movie on Hulu.)  Years after first watching this film, I still find that it continues to have a profound effect on me.  I cannot forget the endless statements of abandonment and pain.  Parents shunned children.  Rabbis advised young people to remain celibate rather than transgress the Torah’s words.  Many expressed over and over again how they would choose another life if they could.  But their attractions could not be swayed, just like mine for a woman cannot be changed. “Why can’t I be both gay and Orthodox?” they asked.  “Why can’t the Torah’s words, like so many other verses, be reinterpreted?”

Rather than see these individuals, and couples, as human beings standing before us, Jewish leaders make rulings.  We rule and draw divisions.  “We accept you.”  And under our breath, we say, “We are therefore more compassionate.” Or we say, “We cannot accept your desires.”  And under our breath, we say, “We alone are the guardians of Torah true Judaism.”  We speak as if homosexuality is some theoretical issue about which we can agree or disagree.  But then lines are drawn across peoples’ lives.  We divide ourselves by our theories and interpretations, beliefs and ideologies.  We pretend that people are like bits and pieces of hametz.  And we therefore remain forever divided and fractured—and fellow Jews feel cast aside.  Can we still remain one people?  If we looked instead into the eyes of others perhaps we would be drawn together.

And that is what pains me the most during this year’s celebrations of Passover.  We are but 14 million people at best.  Rather than being drawn together we draw lines between us.  Why can’t we hear the command also in our Torah portion, v’chai bahem—live by them, as a command to our entire people?  We must live—together.  Instead we scream and yell at each other.  We believe that our way is the only way.  Only this week a Reform synagogue was vandalized in Tel Aviv.   Do we prefer violence and potentially even death to living together? 

It pains me that the holiday that made us one people today makes us even more divided.  But I will not let go of Ahavat Yisrael, love of the Jewish people.  We are one people.  Most people think that the Shema is only about proclaiming God’s oneness.  But it is also about declaring our people’s oneness.  Shema Yisrael is in the singular.  Hear O Israel is its opening words.  You can read this, as the tradition mostly does, as a statement made to each individual Jew who must hear this command affirming one God as directed to him or her.  I prefer instead to hear it addressed to the Jewish people when we stand as one.  God is only one when we are one.  When we stand as Am Echad, one people, then and only then is God one.

Only together can we proclaim God’s oneness.  We need each other.  We need less kosher for Passover products (although I really do like the jelly rings).  We need fewer divisions.  We need less looking over our shoulders at others, or looking down at others.  We need more standing together as one people.

On this Passover we need more unity and oneness.

Another Newsletter Article

And here is my article from the March-April 2011 Newsletter.

Continuing with the tradition begun in the last newsletter, here are some of our students’ “questions for the rabbi” along with my answers.

Were Adam and Eve the first people on earth?

According to the Torah Adam and Eve were the first people who were made by God. I think part of your question, however, is how come they teach me one thing in school and another thing in Religious School. How can science and evolution be true and religion and the Bible also be true? Evolution and science teach us how human beings came to be. Religion and Judaism teach us what the purpose of our life is. We don’t read the Bible as a science manual. Instead we read it to tell us what we are supposed to do with our lives. Only the Torah can tell us that God wanted to create human beings for the purpose of perfecting our world and bringing healing to the world.

Did any sport come from Hebrew?

The latest Jewish sport is Ga-Ga which is a friendlier and safer form of dodge ball and started in modern day Israel. But did you know that the entire roster of the first New York Knicks team was Jewish? Here is their lineup: Ossie Schectman, Stan Stutz, Jake Weber, Ralph Kaplowitz, and Leo "Ace" Gottlieb. The first points ever scored in the NBA were by the Knicks' point guard, Schectman. Take that Stoudemire! (Oops I forgot. He might be Jewish too.)

Can the fourth graders sing at services again?

Yes.

Is the Maccabees' temple still standing and is everything still in it?

No and no. But one of the really awesome things about visiting Israel is that you can touch parts of that ancient Temple.  The Western Wall contains some stones from that time. Recently they uncovered the steps that led up to the Temple. In Israel you can stand next to stones that are thousands of years old and touch our history while also enjoying everything that is modern, like a really great falafel or espresso (that’s Hebrew for strong coffee).

Are we going to get a temple?

Yes. And soon. But remember that a building is not the most important part of our congregation. Just like your house does not make your family, our building does not make our synagogue. It must always be first and foremost about the people.

Why can’t Jewish people swear?

Because it is really not nice to swear. It shows that you are angry and that kind of anger always gets you in trouble. But the most important thing about swearing is that you should never use God’s name in a curse or swear. God’s name should only be used in prayer, when saying thank you. God should lead you to do positive things.  Doing good things starts with positive words.

Since Jews can’t have tattoos, does that include washable ones?

No. You can get washable tattoos. The problem with tattoos is that they are permanent and we believe that our bodies are a reflection of God and you don’t mess with God’s image. We believe that you can’t do whatever you want even with your body. You have to take care of yourself and you should never do anything that might be dangerous to your body.

What is your favorite color?

Blue. But not Carolina blue. More like Duke blue which is close to the blue of an Israeli flag, which is supposed to be like the Bible’s techelet. So go (royal blue) Blue Devils!

Keep asking your questions. They are always the most important thing about being Jewish!