Friday, May 25, 2012

Israel's (Other) Refugee Crisis

Israel has another refugee dilemma, one that doesn't involve Palestinians, but rather African migrants.  It boiled over this week in South Tel Aviv and the topic fits in nicely with themes of Shavuot (see: Ruth, book of).  We'll be discussing it on Shabbat morning.  See the study packet, consisting of articles and texts.

Thursday, May 24, 2012

Shabbat-O-Gram for May 25


Memorial Day and Shavuot: Imperfect Together?
One holiday features dairy foods and the other barbecues.  Unless you are into barbecued blintzes, it seems like a mismatch. 
But Shavuot and Memorial Day have more in common than we would think.  For one thing, both celebrate the unofficial beginning of summer.  For another, they are both curiously neglected and rarely are they observed as originally intended. 
In the case of Shavuot, the celebration of the giving of the Torah at Sinai was a later insertion of history into what was essentially an agricultural holiday.  These days, most Jews are unfamiliar with Shavuot altogether, as it gets the least attention of all Jewish festivals (here's a funny quick primer, "The Idiot's Guide to Shavuot" ).
For more - see my blog post: Subversive Shavuot: Our Most Radical Holiday
 
Memorial Day, meanwhile was originally a day to remember war dead ("Memorial" Day...get it?), before it became an occasion for car sales, beach trips and barbecues.  Maybe this year we can regain some of the deeper meaning of each festival, now that we'll be celebrating them together. 

All weekend long, ironically, our cemetery will be officially closed because of Shabbat and Shavuot. I can't recall a time when our cemetery has been closed on Memorial Day. But on Memorial Day, the second day of Shavuot, we will recite Yizkor prayers at our morning service, and at that time, I'll be reading the names of some American Jewish soldiers who have died recently in Iraq and Afghanistan.  This weekend, I hope that each of us will take a moment to recall those who have made the supreme sacrifice.

For a history of Memorial Day go to the History Channel website and to the official US Memorial Day site. And as I have in prior years on Memorial Day weekend, I share with you the words of Rabbi Roland Gittlesohn in a speech delivered in dedication of the 5th marine Cemetery on IwoJima, in March 1945. It has been called one of the great battlefield sermons to come out of World War Two. 

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SHABBAT MORNING, CAMP STYLE

Weather permitting, we'll be holding Shabbat morning services OUTDOORS this week, in honor of the beginning of the summer season (which Memorial Day and Shavuot both mark, unofficially). Look for us to the left of the office entrance, in the shady area with tree stumps.  If this works out, we'll do it again during the summer.  Dress is campy-warm weather-casual.

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READ JAN GAINES' "LETTER FROM NETANYA"  SENT ON JERUSALEM DAY.

Also, see the new videos from ELI Talks. It's the Jewish Version of the TED series.  I've embedded two of them, one on "What is a Jew" and the other, "Innovation, Revolution and Tradition."  Perfect for Shavuot!

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NUMBERS and NAMES - a TEXT Message for this week's portion

I've had the honor of being included among dozens of rabbis, educators and other Jewish leaders who have contributed to the new book "Text Messages: A Torah Commentary for Teens," being released this week by Jewish Lights. It so happens that this week's portion of Bamidbar is the one that I wrote about.  Nice timing!  With permission of Jewish Lights, I share it with you here.

I've never been great at math, but I've always had a fascination with numbers.

"Who knows one? I know one!" we sing at the Passover Seder-  the same event that boasts four cups, four children, four questions, three matzot, and ten plagues.

Come to think of it, Jews are obsessed with numbers. We even have an entire book of the Torah called Numbers, though in Hebrew it has an entirely different name-Bemidbar, "in the wilderness,"
which is also the name of this Torah portion.

Bemidbar contains a count of the Israelites. It is very rare for the Bible to contain a census, or count, and Jews have always been a little nervous about such counts.  But wait: how could a tradition so obsessed with numbers be so afraid of counting people?

Here's the answer.

We don't want to turn people into numbers.

In the haftarah (the prophetic reading) that goes with this Torah portion, the prophet Hosea seems to be sending that message when he states that the number of the people in Israel cannot be counted, much like grains of sand. Rashi, the great medieval commentator, says something similar in a commentary to Exodus 30, which also contains the story of a census: "The evil eye controls something that has been counted." The Talmud echoes the idea that God only imparts blessing to that which is not quantified. In very traditional Jewish worship services, when people calculate whether there is a minyan (quorum of ten worshippers), they'll count "Not one, not two, not three ..." to fool that "evil eye."

Yes, that practice probably seems superstitious, but what is it really saying to us? It is saying something very big and very valuable: a human being is more than the sum of his or her parts. We can't be reduced to merely our statistics: our age, our phone number, our Social Security number. We are more than all of that.

We can learn this, terribly, from the Nazis. When the Nazis wanted to totally dehumanize someone, what did they do? They assigned him or her a number, and they tattooed that number on the person's arm. After all, if you can reduce an entire life to a number, then it makes it that much easier to erase that entire life. As someone who loves sports, I look closely at statistics, but I know that while a player's stats can be impressive, they never tell the whole story. A basketball player's scoring averaging doesn't
tell us whether he can block out, set picks, or make a perfect pass.

For me, the number "twelve" will always remind me of my favorite quarterback, Tom Brady, and "fifty-six" is Joe DiMaggio's hitting streak, but we cannot measure the accomplishments of these players in numbers alone. When we rate someone's looks numerically ("She's a ten!"), it may be flattering, but we have just turned that person into an object.

In the words of the theme song to the old television show Secret Agent, "they've given you a number, and taken away your name."

We live in a digital age. After all, when you really think about it, what are all of those photos on our computers, or the streaming music, or the text messages, or the Skype chats, or the Google searches? They are all based on computer language, and computer language is nothing more or less than infinite combinations of ones and zeros.

There can be something very powerful-even sacred-about the relationships and connections that we forge online in that virtual world.

But the Torah suggests that from time to time, we step back from the virtual to the real, the world of infinitely complex and infinitely beautiful human beings created in God's image. We are more than our numbers.


Excerpt from Text Messages: A Torah Commentary for Teens
© 2012 Jeffrey K. Salkin. $24.99.
Permission granted by Jewish Lights Publishing, P.O. Box 237, Woodstock, VT 05091
www.jewishlights.com


Let Them Eat (Cheese) Cake

And finally, join us on Sat. night for our "Food for Thought" panel (begins with a musical service at 8:30)

For the main course, we've got renowned food author Ronnie Fein, nutritionist Greta Meyers and Rabbi Michelle Dardashti discussing these intriguing questions, among others...

- What makes Jewish food "Jewish?" 
 - Is kosher/Jewish food healthy?
- How much is enough?  When should we stop eating?
 - Are Jews fatter than the general population?
- Is pizza on Friday night sacrilegious?
- Is the food the prime factor that keeps people identified as Jews?
- What's YOUR favorite Jewish food?

Click here for a complete study guide on "Jews and Food" and be prepared to come here and use your mouths extensively that night, for both talking and eating (yes, we'll have cheesecake!) and some praying too.

SHABBAT SHALOM - enjoy the holidays!
Rabbi Joshua Hammerman

Subversive Shavuot: Our Most Radical Holiday


On Shavuot we receive the Torah, but not that scroll behind curtain number one. What we receive is the freedom to interpret it, to develop its ideas, and the obligation to do so responsively. It is at heart the most subversive and radical of Jewish holidays – as revolutionary as Judaism itself.
Shavuot in Biblical times was exclusively an agricultural holiday.  The Mishna describes first fruits being brought to the Temple.  The inhabitants of the cities of each district  marched to Jerusalem.  An ox, its horns bedecked with gold and its head crowned with an olive wreath, led the way.  A flutist played as they marched and sang pilgrimage psalms.  As the farmers entered Jerusalem, dignitaries greeted them.
The first fruits would be transferred to the priest, who would wave them, and together they would recite the ancient declaration of Jewish origins, “My ancestor was a wandering Aramean.”  There was feasting, celebrating, sharing, a good time was had by all.
As the second Temple era ended and rabbinic Judaism developed, the purpose for Shavuot shifted dramatically.  At that time, there were two major political and religious branches of Judaism, the Sadducees and the Pharisees.  The Pharisees were in control of the Temple cult, they were the priests, the aristocracy, the rulers in Jerusalem.  Their interest was in keeping everything to the letter of the law, following the old ways as had been done for hundreds of years.
The Pharisees were the outsiders, the provincial Jews, and they affirmed that side by side with the written Torah from Sinai, there was also a body of Revelation of principles and methods of interpretation, the Oral Law, which they considered equally the will of God.  The Pharisees were very big on learning and the Torah as a way of life for all people, not just priests.
The power struggle between the two sects was long and bitter.  One, the Sadducees, said that the Torah is final and things can never change.  After all, they were in power and didn’t want things to change.  The other, the Pharisees, were for change, in fact, revolutionary change.
And Shavuot became the vehicle for expressing the Pharisees new ideology.  How?
Well, they counted the days that the Torah says it took for Israel to cross from the land of Egypt to Mount Sinai and they matched it to the already-existent festival of Shavuot.  It took some creative mathematics and interpretation, but they did it.
Now in the Torah, Shavuot was never connected to the Sinai Revelation, to nothing historical in fact.  So this was a revolutionary change, folks.
How many of us would dare to create a holiday?
And what in fact did they celebrate on Shavuot?  The very thing they were doing, the empowerment of human beings to share with God in a covenant of law and interpretation.  Shavuot doesn’t celebrate the giving of the written Torah at Sinai, but our right to interpret it in new ways, to develop it and apply it.  For the Pharisees, the whole world became God’s Temple, the Passover sacrifice was moved into each home and called a Seder; the laws of purity moved to each table and called Kashrut, and each of the holidays given new meaning.  But none more than Shavuot.
Thanks to the Pharisees, the historical dimension of Shavuot became apparent, and none too soon, because the Temple was destroyed in the year 70. Once that happened, there were a lot of unemployed priests and unhappy Sadducees.  The festive offering of the first fruits was discontinued, and the Pharisees picked up the ball and became the originators of a vastly new interpretation of Judaism.
And the Pharisaic leaders took on a new title: rabbi.
Now how did they prepare for Shavuot?  Matching the intensity of Israel encamped at Sinai in the book of Exodus, the three days before the festival became “Shloshet Y’mei Hagbala,”  Three days of intense preparation.  Everyone cleaned, bought new clothes, got haircuts, cooked, and most of all, studied.  Study is the only ritual connected with this holiday.  There is no Seder or Sukkah dwelling, no shofar or lulav, nothing physical.  The cantor might concur that there aren’t even many good songs for Shavuot.  There is nothing special to buy, except maybe blintzes.  The study and interpretation of Torah is all that there is.  It is the central focus.  It is the only focus.
Funny thing.   Imagine if a group of Pharisees were to do the same thing today.  Imagine what the reaction would be, if, say, someone were to, say, invent a holiday, and just slap on an old familiar name to make it look like it was there all along. Actually, that has already happened.  On Kibbutzim in Israel, they’ve reinvented Shavuot again, returning to the Biblical concept of celebrating this as an agricultural celebration.  In the 19th century, the Reform movement added the idea of confirmation to their celebration, and the mystics of Safed added the an all-night study session, or Tikkun Leil Shavuot, 400 years ago.
But no one has been as radical as the Pharisees.
How, then, do we prepare for Shavuot?  I suggest that we prepare by retracing the roots of this holiday, and then by reexamining our ways of looking at Judaism.  Do we see only the old ways as valid, simply because they are traditional?  This, I submit, would be a betrayal of the original rabbinic ideal.  Or, do we see the need to be partners with God in a Covenant, in the act of re-instilling the Torah with new life each generation?
My teachers at the Jewish Theological Seminary used to harp on the idea that Conservative Judaism is the true heir to this Pharisaic tradition.  There is much truth to that.  But I would rather not think in terms of labels, labels that might be in fact outmoded.  Because I also think Orthodoxy, Reconstructionist and Reform Judaism are legitimate heirs to the Pharisaic legacy.
The labels don’t matter.  What matters is that we understand that, at is very core, the Judaism of the rabbis was creative and dynamic – and remains so to this day.
So I prepare for Shavuot by thanking God for the gift of Torah, a magnificent package that we are forever unwrapping, receiving, and re-imagining, again and again.

Wednesday, May 23, 2012

Jan Gaines' Letter from Netanya: Jerusalem Day


Dear Friends,

  Today I cried. Several times. Well, not exactly cried. More of a tearing up. Because tonight and tomorrow is Yom Yerushaliam.  The day Jerusalem was unified in the Six Day War.  The day Israeli paratroopers fought their way through the Lion's Gate into the Old City and then to the Western Wall. The day Chief Rabbi Shlomo Goren blew that historic Shofar to commemorate the return of the Jewish People to its historic place.

 But it was also a special occasion for our beloved rabbi emeritus here in Netanya, Rabbi Ervin Birnbaum. Today he celebrated his first real Bar Mitzvah.  His 13 year old bar mitzvah was celebrated alone in Slovakia, during WW2 where he and his parents were in hiding in different locations. He was in his family home. He took out 13 glasses, found some slibovitz, poured a little in each glass and toasted himself by himself.  After the war, as an 18 year old, he traveled to Israel on the famous Exodus, sheperding a group of 9 and 10 year old Holocaust survivors. 

  Rabbi Birnbaum and his wife later made Aliyah from the U.S. with 3 sons. Those sons are grown and have produced 10 grandchildren.  Their youngest son, Danny, was just written up in The Jerusalem Report as the CEO of Soda Stream, where in 2 years he turned the company around. Danny also davens, along with his wife who is an Israeli folk singer, and their 4 children. They gave us rousing interpretations of Ashrei, L'Dor v'Dor, Ein Kehloheinu and more,.

  That was the first tearing up for me. The family Birnbaum is a beautiful unit, grandparents and grandchildren singing together in celebration of bar mitzvah and 82nd birthday of Zaide. They personify committment, love of the land, and joy at being here together. They epitomize what Israel is all about.

  Rabbi Birnbaum spoke of the meaning of Jerusalem to the Jewish people.  No other people in any land has maintained a historic connection to one place for 3000 years, as the Jewish people. And he repeated the vow of IDF commander Itzak Rabin who declared that "Jerusalem is ours forever."

   That was my second tearing up.

   In the afternoon I turned on a TV channel called MEZZO from Europe which is the music and arts channel for Israel.

They were showing Claudio Abbado conducting Mahler's Symphony No 2, the "Ressurection Symphony". When he came to the final movement, I teared up for the 3rd time and stayed that way with goose bumps as the choir, soloists and orchestra gave an astounding performance.       

Could the MEZZO producers have deliberately scheduled that symphony for today, erev Yom Yerushalaim?  Could they have known that this symphony was peformed in celebration of the unification of Jerusalem, just days after the capture of the Old City.  Could they have remembered that it was Leonard Bernstein conducting the Israeli Philharmonic who created the same goose bumps in the audience as they celebrated the "Resurrection" of Jerusalem? Even at 45 years ago it still resonates in my memory, just from seeing the video and listening to recordings.

   And finally, how does it all come together, on this special Shabbat full of so much history and memory?

   My neighbor, a 59 year old "secular" Israeli, who kisses his mezzuzah every time he leaves his apartment but who hardly ever goes to synagogue, was discussing with me a coincidental item about our building. I said to him, "Nati, I don't believe there are any coincidences in this country. I think this is a place where there are small miracles every day."

  "Not every day, Jan" he said.  Not every day, EVERY HOUR. "

   And so it is. The enormity of the miracle of this re-created land, of its extraordinary people, is a small and large miracle happening every day.

  Jan Gaines

Tuesday, May 22, 2012

“They’ve Given You a Number, and Taken Away Your Name”

I've had the honor of being included among dozens of rabbis, educators and other Jewish leaders who have contributed to the new book "Text Messages: A Torah Commentary for Teens," being released this week by Jewish Lights. It so happens that this week's portion of Bamidbar, is the one that I wrote about.  Nice timing!  With permission of Jewish Lights, I share it with you here.


“They’ve Given You a Number, and Taken Away Your Name”
Rabbi Joshua Hammerman


Take a census of the whole Israelite community by the clans of its ancestral houses, listing the names, every male, head by head. (Numbers 1:2)


I’ve never been great at math, but I’ve always had a fascination with
numbers. 


“Who knows one? I know one!” we sing at the Passover Seder— the same event that boasts four cups, four children, four questions, three matzot, and ten plagues.


Come to think of it, Jews are obsessed with numbers. We even have an entire book of the Torah called Numbers, though in Hebrew it has an entirely different name—Bemidbar, “in the wilderness,” which is also the name of this Torah portion.


Bemidbar contains a count of the Israelites. It is very rare for the Bible to contain a census, or count, and Jews have always been a little nervous about such counts. But wait: how could a tradition so obsessed with numbers be so afraid of counting people?


Here’s the answer. We don’t want to turn people into numbers.


In the haftarah (the prophetic reading) that goes with this Torah portion, the prophet Hosea seems to be sending that message when he states that the number of the people in Israel cannot be counted, much like grains of sand. Rashi, the great medieval commentator, says something similar in a commentary to Exodus 30, which also contains the story of a census: “The evil eye controls something that has been counted.” The Talmud echoes the idea that God only imparts blessing to that which is not quantified. In very traditional Jewish worship services, when people calculate whether there is a minyan (quorum of ten worshippers), they’ll count “Not one, not two, not three …” to fool that “evil eye.” 


Yes, that practice probably seems superstitious, but what is it really saying to us? It is saying something very big and very valuable: a human being is more than the sum of his or her parts. We can’t be reduced to merely our statistics: our age, our phone number, our Social Security number. We are more than all of that.


We can learn this, terribly, from the Nazis. When the Nazis wanted to totally dehumanize someone, what did they do? They assigned him or her a number, and they tattooed that number on the person’s arm. After all, if you can reduce an entire life to a number, then it makes it that much easier to erase that entire life. 


As someone who loves sports, I look closely at statistics, but I know that while a player’s stats can be impressive, they never tell the whole story. A basketball player’s scoring averaging  doesn't tell us whether he can block out, set picks, or make a perfect pass.


For me, the number “twelve” will always remind me of my favorite quarterback, Tom Brady, and “fifty-six” is Joe DiMaggio’s hitting streak, but we cannot measure the accomplishments of these players in numbers alone. When we rate someone’s looks numerically (“She’s a ten!”), it may be flattering, but we have just turned that person into an object. 


In the words of the theme song to the old television show Secret Agent, “they’ve given you a number, and taken away your name.”


We live in a digital age. After all, when you really think about it, what are all of those photos on our computers, or the streaming music, or the text messages, or the Skype chats, or the Google searches? They are all based on computer language, and computer language is nothing more or less than infinite combinations of ones and zeros. There can be something very powerful—even sacred—about the relationships and connections that we forge online in that virtual world.


But the Torah suggests that from time to time, we step back from the virtual to the real, the world of infinitely complex and infinitely beautiful human beings created in God’s image.


We are more than our numbers. 



Friday, May 18, 2012

Shabbat-O-Gram for May 18


Shabbat Shalom

This is a big season for honoring cherished members of our TBE family.  This week I had the pleasure of attending the regional Women's League dinner (held here), Kulanu graduation and JCC Annual Meeting, at which many TBE members were honored or elevated to leadership positions.  On Sunday I'll be attending the Bi Cultural dinner.  Plus, there's our own Religious school closing session and, on Wednesday at 6, the Aliyah Service for our 7th graders.  Mazal tov to all!


BIRTHRIGHT ISRAEL'S BAR MITZVAH / TEEN ISRAEL PANEL

This month has been set aside by Taglit-Birthright Israel as a celebration of its Bar Mitzvah year.  Over 150 congregations from 42 states  will be participating in Birthright Shabbats, including us.  It is an anniversary worth celebrating, because nothing has changed the landscape of Jewish peoplehood over the past decade more than these free 10-day trips to Israel.  More than 300,000 young Jewish adults from 54 countries have experienced Birthright Israel, and studies show that the impact of on their life trajectories has been profound, particularly among those from less engaged Jewish backgrounds.  Birthright alums are much more connected to Israel than their counterparts and much more connected to the Jewish community. 

Click here to see my column on how Birthright has changed Jewish life in obvious and not so obvious ways, and the lessons it has taught us.  By far the biggest impact of Birthright Israel is that it has proven, once and for all, that no Jew should ever be written off

Back in 1999, the organizers of the program debated whether to focus on those still in high school or those over 18. I was one of those who felt that a highly subsidized high school trip was a far better investment than a 10 day college quickie.  Catch them before they leave the coop, I figured, so that their parents and rabbis can reinforce the message of peoplehood when the teens come home. Once they are in college, it's too late to reel them in, I thought.

I was wrong.

Birthright ended the "outreach" vs. "inreach" debate  for all time.  Game, set and match.  Outreach wins.

Ten days is all it takes.

Birthright is the 21st century version of the sage Hillel's conversion program.  He accomplished it all while standing on one foot. But then he added, "Go and study." 

The challenge, then, is one we face after any Bar Mitzvah.  We've got to keep them engaged and interested.  But Birthright Israel has given the Jewish community a precious gift - just when we thought they were gone for good, we've got another chance to reach out to them and welcome them home.  Ten days can ignite a flame.  All we've got to do is keep it burning.

Our community is proud to have one of ten pilot communities for the program.  We helped to get it off the ground, and what a difference it has made!  Click here to see why.

As part of the celebration of the Israel experience, at tonight's service we'll hear from five of our teens who have recently visited Israel on the "March of the Living" and "Write on For Israel" programs: Emilie Pollack, Lauren Pollack, Rachel Cohen, Sophie Koester and Brandon Temple.

Join us this evening at 7:30 and the Birthright conversation continues on Shabbat morning!


SEX ABUSE COVER UPS: THE MESIRA MESS

There has been considerable consternation about the recent New York Times front page expose of how child sex abuse cases are handled in Ultra Orthodox communities. Although this scandal has been discussed for years in the Jewish media, many were shocked to read how informants are routinely shunned and victims banned from reporting abuse to the authorities.  Anti-Semitic websites have had a field day, comparing this Jewish "code of silence" to the Mafia's. 

The Times article correctly pinpoints an obscure rabbinic prohibition as a major source of the problem:

"While some ultra-Orthodox rabbis now argue that a child molester should be reported to the police, others strictly adhere to an ancient prohibition against mesirah, the turning in of a Jew to non-Jewish authorities, and consider publicly airing allegations against fellow Jews to be chillul Hashem, a desecration of God's name."

It is important to emphasize that most rabbinic authorities concur that Judaism has no place for the protection of sexual predators.  Even for those who might otherwise support mesirah, the prohibition does not apply when there is a perceived public menace.  As Rabbi Moses Isserles states in his gloss to the Shulchan Arukh"A person who attacks others should be punished. If the Jewish authorities do not have the power to punish him, he must be punished by the civil authorities."

Click here to read about the biblical root of this dangerous concept and why I feel it is time to declaw it, so that Mesirah may never again be used to justify the protection of those who inflict suffering on innocent children.

A SPECIAL BIRTH ANNOUNCEMENT

I am proud to announce our first-ever live birth at our Shorashim nursery school. No we are not promising that all students in our program will graduate "Medical School Ready," but at 2:45 yesterday the students did get  to witness a butterfly emerge from its cocoon.  We don't know the sex, weight or length, but baby and students are all doing fine.

And while we are at it, Shorashim has also birthed a new website as of...right now! I was just the first one to click on it!  Go to http://www.tbeshorashim.org/ or simply visit our website's home page and click on the sunflower.  Tell your friends about our exciting new addition and find out why we are so proud of our newborn nursery school.

See you Shabbat - and at Saturday's night's Comedy Night!

Shabbat Shalom (and Happy Birthday Mara! J)
 

Rabbi Joshua Hammerman
  

Birthright Israel's Bar Mitzvah: Some Reasons to Celebrate


This month has been set aside by Taglit- Birthright Israel as a celebration of its Bar Mitzvah year.  Over 150 congregations from 42 states  will be participating in Birthright Shabbats, including my own, this evening.  It is an anniversary worth celebrating, because nothing has changed the landscape of Jewish peoplehood over the past decade more than these free 10-day trips to Israel.  More than 300,000 young Jewish adults from 54 countries have experienced Birthright Israel, and studies show that the impact of on their life trajectories has been profound, particularly among those from less engaged Jewish backgrounds.  Birthright alums are much more connected to Israel than their counterparts, much more connected to the Jewish community and about twice as likely to marry other Jews and have Jewish children.
I’m about to perform my first Birthright wedding. No, the couple didn’t meet in Israel – they weren’t even there at the same time.  But each of them came back so Jewishly charged that they signed up for Jdate, and, when they met, Birthright was that common emotional experience that propelled their relationship forward.  They followed the Birthright formula – the best way to fall in love WITH Israel is to fall in love IN Israel.  Even though they were back on American soil, Jerusalem had captured their hearts.
There’s something magical in the Birthright Kool Aid. It’s “Spring Break” for Jews, a ten day hook up party; only it’s free, Cancun has been transported 6,000 miles east, the hook up is with a country, and it’s not for one night, it’s forever.  Israelis love to make fun of the program and they’ve transformed the prevailing stereotype of the American tourist from a fat, ugly middle aged guy with a dangling camera around his exposed paunch, to a doe-eyed, wealthy Birthright coed, naïve and unschooled, easy pickings for soldiers, tour guides and fund raisers.  But whatever Kool Aid the Birthrighters are drinking, they come home and rave to about it to their friends and parents, the waiting lists keep getting longer and the kids just keep on coming.  And their elders are following suit.  Tourism to Israel hit record levels in April, a month that is not prime time for college students to travel.  Older adults have caught the bug.
While the program has no doubt increased the connection between American Jews and Israel, a significant majority of American Jews still have never visited the Jewish state, 59 percent according to the recentAJC survey.  But still, at 300,000 and counting, Birthright has reversed one of the many downward demographic trends in American Jewish life and it is changing the culture in numerous other ways.
Some of the ripple effects include:
  • A Jewish renaissance on college campuses. Hillel’s growth has been fueled by the Birthright phenomenon, which has enabled Jewish organizations to reach beyond the core activists to students who previously would never have wanted to identify actively as Jews.
  • Israel advocacy on campus has never been more vibrant and diverse, and despite the efforts of the BDS and “Apartheid Week,” never more successful. The growing presence of both AIPAC and J-Street on campus corresponds to the increased size of Birthright’s footprint.
  • The Startup Nation has birthed a Startup Culture.  Birthright Israel was the ultimate startup by a Jewish community that had become overly beaurocratized and cautious.  This partnership of mega donors, federations and Israel was unprecedented, and it worked.  As result, other startups have addressed a variety of pressing needs.  The results have been mixed but the entrepreneurial spirit has changed American Jewish life, weakening and decentralizing the federations while encouraging the private funders to take more risks in backing worthy projects.
  • The partnership with Israel in strengthening Diaspora Jewry barely existed before Birthright, and from a philanthropic standpoint, the program reversed the roles that had existed since the founding of the state.  The money now flows both ways.  Israel recognizes that a thriving Diaspora is essential to its long term survival.  American Jews, meanwhile, have come to recognize that the Israel experience is the only way to ensure a thriving Diaspora.
  • Great PR for Israel.  Young adults are getting the word out through their social networks that Israel is a great place to visit and an amazing country, period.  The trips have more than paid for themselves in hasbara value.  When I first spoke about the program to my teens thirteen years ago, they were floored that Israel cared enough about them to invest 70 million dollars in their future. What better PR can there be than that?
  • It’s hard to measure the impact on synagogue affiliation thus far, but millennials have never been joiners.  I am seeing an increased interest in community life and Jewish learning among young professionals, however, and Birthright has become a prime tool for recruitment.
  • Hummus sales have skyrocketed.    Blame it on Bar Rafaeli, Sacha Baron Cohen or the Zohan, but I think Birthright is the biggest reason why Israeli culture and cuisine have never been so popular on this side of the pond.
But by far the biggest impact of Birthright Israel is that it has proven, once and for all, that no Jew should ever be written off.  Back in 1999, the organizers of the program debated whether to focus on those still in high school or those over 18. I was one of those who felt that a highly subsidized high school trip was a far better investment than a 10 day college quickie.  Catch them before they leave the coop, I figured, so that their parents and rabbis can reinforce the message of peoplehood when the teens come home. Once they are in college, it’s too late to reel them in, I thought.
I was wrong.
As I look down the list of my hundred plus congregants who have been on these trips, there are several whom I’ve barely seen since their bar mitzvahs and I assumed might be lost to the Jewish people.  They are precisely the ones Birthright was created for, not those “core” Jews who have visited Israel often.
Those who opposed Birthright bemoaned the fact that cheap Israel trips are no panacea for assimilation.  They appealed for caution before wasting so much funding on “lost causes.”  They saw periphery Jews as a bad risk.  Such people would likely have advised Ben-Gurion to cut his losses, hold off on statehood and send it to committee.  Rabbi Yitz Greenberg says that a leader should aim to be at most 15 percent ahead of his people. I sense that in this case, the proponents of Birthright Israel were way ahead of the Jewish establishment, and right in step with the times.
The “outreach” vs. “inreach” debate is over.  Game, set and match.  Outreach wins.
Ten days is all it takes.
Birthright is the 21st century version of the sage Hillel’s conversion program.  He accomplished it all while standing on one foot. But then he added, “go and study.”
The challenge, then, is one we face after any Bar Mitzvah.  We’ve got to keep them engaged and interested.  But Birthright Israel has given the Jewish community a precious gift – just when we thought they were gone for good, we’ve got another chance to reach out to them and welcome them home.  Ten days can ignite a flame.
All we’ve got to do is keep it burning.
First published on the Times of Israel website.

Thursday, May 17, 2012

Sex-Abuse Cover Ups: The Mesirah Mess


There has been considerable consternation about the recent New York Times front page expose of how child sex abuse cases are handled in Ultra Orthodox communities. Although this scandal has been discussed for years in the Jewish media, many were shocked to read how informants are routinely shunned and victims banned from reporting abuse to the authorities.  Anti-Semitic websites have had a field day, comparing this Jewish “code of silence” to the Mafia’s. 

The Times article correctly pinpoints an obscure rabbinic prohibition as a major source of the problem:

“While some ultra-Orthodox rabbis now argue that a child molester should be reported to the police, others strictly adhere to an ancient prohibition against mesirah, the turning in of a Jew to non-Jewish authorities, and consider publicly airing allegations against fellow Jews to be chillul Hashem, a desecration of God’s name.”

It is important to emphasize that most rabbinic authorities concur that Judaism has no place for the protection of sexual predators.  Even for those who might otherwise support mesirah, the prohibition does not apply when there is a perceived public menace.  As Rabbi Moses Isserles states in his gloss to the Shulchan Arukh, “A person who attacks others should be punished. If the Jewish authorities do not have the power to punish him, he must be punished by the civil authorities.”

While unfortunately there is still considerable resistance in reporting dangerous behavior to secular authorities in the ultra Orthodox rabbinic world, the problem is less mesirah itself than how these rabbis choose to apply it.   Mesirah is a dangerous tool, but, to paraphrase the NRA, mesirah doesn’t harm people – people do, in this case insular and misinformed Jewish leaders.

That said, when you read Maimonides’ full explanation of mesirah, it gives one pause to wonder whether the time has come to eliminate it completely from the halachic lexicon.  Maimonides, after all, was neither insular nor misinformed, and he lived in a society that was relatively benign toward Jews.  Yet he writes:

“It is forbidden to hand over a Jew to the heathen, neither his person nor his goods, even if he is wicked and a sinner, even if he causes distress and pain to fellow-Jews. Whoever hands over a Jew to the heathen has no part in the next world.  It is permitted to kill a moser wherever he is. It is even permitted to kill him before he has handed over (a fellow Jew)… (Mishneh Torah, Torts 8, 9-11).”

Maimonides’ condemnation of the moser is reminiscent of the law regarding the rodef (the life threatening pursuer), whom one is also allowed to kill – this rabbinic concept was employed most infamously by those defending the murder of Prime Minister Rabin.  The moser and rodef are linked in a commentary by Rebbenu Asher:

“Thus, an informer is like a pursuer to kill someone and the victim may be saved at the cost of the life of the pursued.”

OK.  This is not a world most of us are living in.  We’re talking about a case where the molester is clearly the pursuer, not the guy who calls 911.  It is the cover up that shames the entire Jewish community, not the informant.  In a free society with just courts and equal treatment under the law, mesirah is a relic, a nice conversation piece from a more perilous past, like that section of the Haggadah where we ask God to pour out divine wrath against our enemies.

The idea that Jews should be protective of Jewish sinners stems from a longstanding mistrust of just about every government we’ve lived under.  The most obvious example was the Romans, who were not the most benevolent to their Jewish subjects. The rabbis had Rome in mind when they advised their students, “Love work, despise positions of power and do not become overly familiar with the government.”  But protecting Jews from secular authorities has extended to almost absurd extremes.  The principle of mesirah is has been used to dissuade Jewish auditors from reporting other Jews to the IRS for tax fraud and, as Rabbi Moshe Feinstein ruled, to prohibit us from turning a Jew in to secular authorities for fraudulent kashrut supervision. I for one am glad the Agriprocessors scandal was handled by the government and not kept “within the family.”

It all goes back to Moses. When he struck the Egyptian taskmaster, Exodus tells us that fellow Israelites began taunting him about the incident, which led Moses to become fearful that someone would turn him over to Pharaoh.  Rashi posits that Moses wasn’t so much concerned about his own fate; he was concerned that his act would lead “villains and informers” to turn him in, making them unworthy of redemption.  So he fled, not so much to protect himself as to protect his accusers from suffering the fate of the moser.

But change “Pharaoh” to “NYPD” or “FBI,” and the story reads quite differently.   If Moses had struck a cop not in Egypt but Brooklyn, wouldn’t it have been absolutely appropriate for a fellow Jew to notify the authorities? But replace “NYPD” with “Sheriff Clark,” and would you turn in Moses for striking a cop who was assaulting peaceful protesters in Selma?  Wouldn’t you want your moral code to protect him, despite the unintended death?

Yes, I know that one person’s freedom fighter is another person’s terrorist, but I can stand behind an objective moral standard that says that Moses was right, a child molester is wrong, and Pharoah and the NYPD are not created equal.  

In any event, we can both protect Moses and turn in the molester for lots of reasons, but in each case, the least relevant factor is that the perpetrator is mishpoche.  That’s mesirah’s fatal flaw. 

It’s time to declaw this dangerous concept, so that may never again be used to justify the protection of those who inflict suffering on innocent children.

Friday, May 11, 2012

Will Gay Marriage in American Lead to Civil Marriage in Israel?



On a week when President Obama took a genuinely historic step, this would seem an appropriate time to reprint a column I wrote a few months ago:  Gay Marriage: A Moral Choice.  When speaking of this complicated topic, it's important to understand that there is no monolithic Jewish view and that so many of us have been, like the President, evolving.
The Obama declaration, along with this week's formation of a broad-based unity government in Israel, accelerates the possibility of civil marriage in Israel.  Israeli opinion on this topic, like American opinion, appears to be liberalizing, albeit in fits and starts, and there is real hope that Israel will soon become a more pluralistic environment, Jewish in character but less beholden to the religious extreme.

It’s important to note that, in speaking of this complicated topic of gay marriage, there is no monolithic Jewish view and that so many of us have been, like the President, evolving.
Why might this week's news speed up that process?
1)    For one of the few times in its history, Israel now has a government that is blackmail-proof.
2)    Plus, the impetus that led to this week's political earthquake was the need to, at long last, integrate Haredim into national service and the military.  Right now it's about the Tal Law but ultimately it's about Israel's readiness to finally begin reassessing the "Status Quo" arrangements dating from state's foundingThe status quo is on shaky ground already, with the debate over Shabbat bus service in Tel AvivWhile the Tal Law is in some ways unique, it also could be the first of many dominoes to fall in a national reassessment of the role of religious authority in a democratic state.
3)    Add to that the curious position the LGBT community has in Israel.  Shunned by the rabbinic authorities, who control marriage, they are not allowed to marry.  But the state maintains a very liberal approach to gay rights, in large part because it helps Israel's "brand" both diplomatically and economically in appealing to liberals abroad, especially in the US. And it's worked, despite the occasional backlash.  No less a figure than liberal icon Barney Frank has championed Israel's gay rights record and Tel Aviv was recently named the world's best gay city.
4)     All marriages performed abroad are accepted by the state, including gay marriages - similar to the way conversions are handled.  A marriage or conversion I perform in America is automatically accepted in Israel (for now, unless the Rotem Bill once again rears its ugly head).  But one I perform in Israel will not be accepted, because the rabbinic authorities control personal status.  Inevitably, this inconsistency needs to be rectified.  It is only a matter of time before the forces coalesce to allow civil marriage in Israel, gay or straight, Jewish, non Jewish or mixed.  The forces are all in place, including the Russian immigrants, the secular parties and, because of this need to sustain the liberal brand re. LGBTs, even Netanyahu.
5)    As gay marriage becomes increasingly acceptable to Americans, and national polling trends are clearly and dramatically heading in that direction, Israeli leaders will increasingly see the light, in order to placate liberal American Jews and Christians.  Conservatives are already loyal to Israel and will not be turned off should Israel allow civil marriage - it is the liberals who need to be convinced. See how the Obama declaration has already sparked debate in the Knesset.  This will increase the momentum for civil marriage in Israel.  With a blackmail-proof government dominated by secular parties on the left and right, it might even happen...gasp...soon.
Thanks to President Obama, I may get to perform state-sanctioned weddings in Israel yet!
But I'm not holding my breath....