Wednesday, August 30, 2017

Shabbat-O-Gram for Aug 29: A Flood of Biblical Proportions

Shabbat-O-Gram

Shabbat Shalom

I'm sending this week's O-gram out early in anticipation of the long holiday weekend and in response to the terrible flooding in Texas and Louisiana.  Join us for services this Friday night at 7:30 and Shabbat morning at 9:30. Minyan on Sunday and Monday this week is at 9 AM.

  • Last Shabbat morning's Shabbat-in-the Round has drawn rave reviews - and it also drew nearly 50 people!  It filled a need that we have been wanting to fill for a long time.  There's lots more to say about it but I will leave that for next week. Meanwhile, we've scheduled a number of other "Shabbats-in-the-Round" for the coming months.  Look for them!  And click here for last week's pre- High Holidays study packet on self-evaluation.
     
  • Join us for our Europe group's report on our recent trip this Tuesday at 7:30.  Given the hate-filled graffiti discovered at the AITE this week, along with events in Charlottesville and elsewhere (including surging rates of anti-Semitic incidents in the US this year), what we learned now has even more relevance.  The incident at AITE was troubling on a number of levels.  Local authorities and the ADL are "on it," and we stand ready to help out if needed.  I am a co-signatory to the Interfaith Council's Letter to the Editor on the topic, also released by the UJF:
The Interfaith Council of Southwestern Connecticut and the United Jewish Federation of Greater Stamford, New Canaan, and Darien strongly condemn the defacement of the Academy of Information Technology and Engineering building in Stamford with Nazi and racist symbolism.

This action denigrates our community and all efforts to live peacefully, respectfully, and honorably. We stand with those communities targeted and threatened by such actions, particularly the Jewish, Muslim and African-American communities.

We will not remain silent when these affronts to our common humanity occur. Our religious traditions call us to speak out and to act. When one of us is attacked in such a way, we all are attacked.


A Biblical Flood
 
It's telling that whenever we hear that something is "biblical" it usually means it's really bad.  No one ever says, "That rainbow was biblical!"  "That meal was biblical!" "That sunset was biblical."  Or "That sermon was truly biblical!"  No, when we call something biblical, it usually involves Sodom and Gomorrah or Noah's Ark.

While as a rabbi I would prefer that the Bible not be seen simply as a book where horrific events occur, there is almost no other way to describe what is happening along the Gulf Coast, particularly in and near Houston. We are witnessing scenes that we never imagined could happen, as one of America's great cities has literally been submerged.  We've also seen acts of unbelievable bravery and tragedies of bottomless sadness.  Our hearts go out to everyone suffering there.  We at TBE, remembering how we had to open up our synagogue to refugees during Sandy, feel their pain.

This prayer was written on their behalf by my colleague, Rabbi Menachem Creditor:

Elohei haRuchot, God of the Winds,
Fixated as we are by incalculable losses in our families, our neighbors, human beings spanning national borders, we are pummeled into shock, barely even able to call out to You.
We are, as ever, called to share bread with the hungry, to take those who suffer into our homes, to clothe the naked, to not ignore our sisters and brothers. Many more of our brothers and sisters are hungry, homeless, cold, and vulnerable today than were just a few days ago, and we need Your Help.
We pray from the depths of our souls and we pray with the toil of our bodies for healing in the face of devastation. We join our voices in prayer to the prayers of others around the world and cry out for safety. We look to the sacred wells of human resilience and compassion and ask You for even more strength and hope.
God, open our hearts to generously support those determined to undo this chaos.
God, be with us as we utilize every network at our disposal to support each other. Be with First Responders engaged in the work of rescue as they cradle lives new and old, sheltering our souls and bodies from the storm. Be with us and be with them, God.
Be with those awaiting news from loved ones, reeling from water and wind that have crippled cities, decimated villages, and taken lives. Be with all of us, God.
Be with us God, comfort us, and support us as we rebuild that which has been lost.
May all this be Your will.
Amen.
While the devastation has affected everyone, as Jews it is natural for our concern to focus first on "our own" and then for it to radiate outward.   The rule of thumb, as delineated in the Talmud (see the verse) is offer charity first to the "poor in your town" and then extend the caring to places farther away, with the exception being those who are in the Land of Israel, who also receive priority attention. So let's draw those circles of caring, beginning with our fellow Jews.

The Jewish community of Houston has been devastated by the storm and its aftermath, and the extent of damage is still not known.  There is no more Kosher food to be found in the city - a relatively small nuisance, when compared to concerns of life and death, but indicative of how desperate things have become.  The Jewish Federation of Houston's Facebook page can give you the latest information on what is happening, what the community needs and where to donate.  Amazingly, they are open today.
Steve Lander has heard from the exec of one of Houston's Conservative shuls via the executive director's listserv.  Here is today's dispatch

Still raining, but beginning to taper off in Houston.  Waters subsiding in most places.  Storm is sliding east toward Louisiana.  East Texas and West Louisiana are getting what we got.  Wishing and praying for them.
Now that the roads are clearing somewhat, the work is beginning.  We started drying the synagogue (Beth Yeshurun) today.  This will continue for several days.  Then the demolition of damaged areas, and after that the renovations.  Days will turn into weeks, weeks into months.
Larry's synagogue (Brith Shalom) is hosting us this weekend for our Bat Mitzvah.  Thank you, Larry and Brith Shalom.  We are still trying to figure out the future.  We won't be in our own shul for Rosh Hashanah, but we'll be somewhere.  Can't move the date so we'll have to move the congregation.
Many of you, and others around the country have asked about how to help, both with donations and volunteers.  Our community is still assessing the volunteer issue.  Until it's safe for people to drive everywhere, volunteers will have to be patient.  Based on the last couple of floods, we'll need volunteers for a couple of weeks.
The donations issue is different.  In the past Beth Yeshurun has always been in a position to help others.  Now, we need help.  The question of where to donate has to be answered by the donor - help individuals (by donating to the community fund - our Federation at houstonjewish.org) or help the synagogue.  We don't know exactly what our needs will be.  We have good insurance, but it won't cover everything, and our indirect losses will be substantial.  If people would like to donate to the Beth Yeshurun for synagogue needs, we will be accepting donations to the Beth Yeshurun Flood Recovery Fund, c/o Congregation Beth Yeshurun.
Thanks for all of your prayers and support.  Houston will recover.  Hope to see you in Israel.
Lu Dorfman, FSA
Executive Director
Congregation Beth Yeshurun
4525 Beechnut Street
Houston, TX. 77096
The circle grows wider, to include people of all backgrounds who are living in that region.  Be careful in giving, as there have been several scams.  Click here for an extensive and vetted list of organizations helping the people (and pets) of that region.
And the circle gets wider yet, for there is one additional region of concern this week. The relentless monsoon flooding in South Asia has resulted in well over a thousand deaths thus far.  Many have been quoted as saying, "We're used to flooding, but we've never seen anything like this in our lives." 

If it is hard for you to summon up just a little more compassion for people half a world away, watch this BBC video.  And to emphasize that we are all connected, read from the Times of India about how Indian students had to be evacuated from their living quarters in Houston

One wonders, evacuated to where?  If they are headed home, I'd keep the boots on.

This has certainly been the summer of living biblically.   

When we are routinely talking about one-in-500 year events and 1000 year events, as we are, we know that something scary is happening to our planet.  We at TBE have been doing our part to raise awareness, through our award winning solar roof project and our upcoming endowment and capital campaign that will focus on sustainability, but recent events signal that much more needs to be done in the face of a truth that is not merely inconvenient - it is incontrovertible

For now, though, the focus remains on the immediate needs of those who are trapped, hungry, wet and cold, as we do all we can to return a sense of normalcy to their lives.

We read in Psalm 18:16-17

וַיֵּרָאוּ, אֲפִיקֵי מַיִם,    וַיִּגָּלוּ, מוֹסְדוֹת תֵּבֵל
מִגַּעֲרָתְךָ יְהוָה--    מִנִּשְׁמַת, רוּחַ אַפֶּךָ

Then the channels of waters were seen, and the foundations of the world were discovered at your rebuke, O Lord, at the blast of breath from your nostrils

יִשְׁלַח מִמָּרוֹם, יִקָּחֵנִי;  יַמְשֵׁנִי, מִמַּיִם רַבִּים
God sent from above, took me and drew me out of many waters.

Notice how verse 17 completely reverses the sentiment of the prior verse.  God, the source of the raging waters, becomes the force within each of us that drives us to help, to reach out and save those who are struggling in those same waters.  And the word for "draw out" in Hebrew contains the root letters for the name Moses (Moshe), the one who was drawn out of the Nile by a total stranger - ostensibly an enemy - Pharaoh's daughter.  Our people's history began with an act of kindness by a stranger,  the saving of a child from raging waters, the same act being repeated time and again this week.

To live biblically is not to bear witness to divine rebuke, but to be an instrument of divine salvation, to help draw the suffering out of the waters.

To live biblically is to be part of the solution, not to add to the problem.

To live biblically is to save the suffering in Texas, India and everywhere else in our parched and flooded planet; because we have all become one community.  There is now really only one circle to draw, that beautiful blue orb called earth. (Click below to see a stunning time-lapse video of earth taken from one million miles away)



Shabbat Shalom and have an enjoyable Labor Day



Rabbi Joshua Hammerman  

Thursday, August 17, 2017

Confederate Idols

In Deuteronomy 12, the Torah’s zero-tolerance policy regarding idolatry is revealed.
  וְנִתַּצְתֶּם אֶת-מִזְבְּחֹתָם, וְשִׁבַּרְתֶּם אֶת-מַצֵּבֹתָם, וַאֲשֵׁרֵיהֶם תִּשְׂרְפוּן בָּאֵשׁ, וּפְסִילֵי אֱלֹהֵיהֶם תְּגַדֵּעוּן; וְאִבַּדְתֶּם אֶת-שְׁמָם, מִן-הַמָּקוֹם הַהוּא.
And ye shall break down their altars, and dash in pieces their pillars, and burn their Asherim with fire; and ye shall hew down the graven images of their gods; and ye shall destroy their name out of that place.  Deuteronomy 12:3
For the Deuteronomist and his ilk, the concern was that a divided kingdom had forged a distorted culture, one that strayed from the old, unifying stories and practices.  Deuteronomy reflects the thinking of King Josiah of Judah, who wanted to strengthen Jerusalem’s position as the capital, so that the temple would be unquestioned in its supremacy over other so-called sacred places.  
During the period when the nation was divided, which began after the death of King Solomon, there were two capitals, Samaria in the north and Jerusalem in the south.  They were geographically close together, like Washington and Richmond, but culturally worlds apart. The tribal nations of Judah and Israel each had their own heroes, cultural touchstones and religious practices. 
Although the northern kingdom of Israel was destroyed by the Assyrians in 721 BCE and its ten tribes dispersed forever, old customs died hard – in fact, they spread southward.  So when Josiah took over Judah half a century later, his country was not fully unified.  The remnants of Israelite worship remained, as was the temptation to decentralize worship, moving it away from the temple and Jerusalem.  The reforms of Josiah, as made clear in these verses, changed everything. 
It’s time for a similar reform here in America.  It’s time for the idols of the Confederacy to come down.
I always found the nostalgia for the Confederacy amusing, if misplaced.  But I was never a descendant of slaves having to look at a symbol of my great grandparents'  oppression while heading to work every day.  The Confederate flag was somewhat troubling to me, but no more than the bottle of Aunt Jemima syrup I gleefully poured onto my pancakes in the morning. Little did I know that the good auntie is actually a racist icon, simultaneously nostalgic and sinister. 
Maybe, I thought, it’s not so bad to allow defeated populaces to maintain a little of their heritage so that they might also hold on to a modicum of pride.  Let those southerners rail about the damn Yankees and gain some vicarious revenge in the annual Blue-Gray Football Classic (which disbanded in 2002).  And, OK, let them have a few statues too.
As Jews, we know all about the need for any group to be allowed the pride of maintaining peculiar customs and celebrating heroes.  We also know how offensive it is when your neighbor’s heroes are, for you, terrorists.  We feel the pain that many African Americans feel regarding the Confederacy when we see Palestinians naming city streets for terrorists who have caused us so much pain. I’m sure others feel the same way about the glorification of former Irgun and Stern Gang members in Israel cities.
But time can heal lots of wounds. There was a time when David Ben Gurion so hated Menachem Begin that he refused to call him by name. But now the two exist on maps, side by side - we can take the Begin Expressway on our way to Ben Gurion Airport.  And American tourists can walk down a Jerusalem street named for former arch enemy King George (who calls out to us as we exit the city, ”You’ll be Back!”).  Hey, there’s even a statue to Benedict Arnold in Saratoga – sort of.  When it comes to municipal memorials, the general rule seems to be, “forgive and forget.”
One could easily fall into Donald Trump’s slippery-slope line of thinking.  Yes, George Washington and Thomas Jefferson owned slaves and did some repugnant things.  Yes, political correctness run amok could poke holes in many of our myths.  So let’s just chill and not be so sensitive about Jefferson Davis and General Lee.  As the satirist Tom Lehrer used to say,  
When correctly viewed
Everything is lewd
(I could tell you things about Peter Pan
And the Wizard of Oz, there's a dirty old man!)
The distinction between heroes and villains can be dulled by nostalgia, sweetened by sentiment and blurred by the passage of time.  It all can get so confusing and complicated.
Which is exactly what feeds the narrative of the extremists. They rely on our equivocating, our hemming and hawing, to build up their idols, fortify their symbols and corrode our culture.
Despite all the pain they cause, perhaps the statues of Confederate leaders could have remained in place, like those statues of a discredited Napoleon in Paris.  But that became impossible the moment that the Alt Right draped itself around the stars and bars as the "true defenders" of the Confederacy.  When that happened, at that very instant, this thing was no longer about nostalgia, Aunt Jemima, Uncle Ben, Rhett Butler, Auntie Mame and the Little Rascals.  It was no longer cute and sentimental.  It was about potent, living imagery, symbols not of lovely old Dixie, but of whips, hate, murder and a racist ideology that still thrives in very dark places.  
Whatever they were before David Duke embraced them, these cultural symbols are now dangerous idols that threaten the unity and moral fiber of the American Dream.
There is no more banjo on my knee.  It's more like an infection.
Josiah had it right.  Even though the Israelite north had been destroyed many years before, its subversive legacy needed to be crushed completely.  And in America, where racist hate refuses to die and is currently, shamefully being nurtured at the highest levels, the same now goes for the symbols of the Confederacy.  General Lee might have been an honorable gentleman in his day, but he and his flag are now a wholly owned subsidiary of the KKK.
Sorry, southerners.  I really am.  But your symbols have been stolen by the Nazis.  They were always subversive, but now they've been stained irreparably.    
The graven images need to come down, now.

Statement read at vigil rally against hate, Aug 17


Remarks Delivered at Prayer Vigil / Rally Against Hate

Scenes from Omaha Beach and the American Cemetery,
taken during my visit in July. Click to enlarge




One month ago, I stood in the gas chambers of Auschwitz with a group from Beth El, and we redoubled our resolve to fight evil wherever it may appear.  The experience left an indelible impression. Two weeks later, I stood on the shores of Omaha Beach, where the forces of Nazisim were heroically overcome by courageous soldiers.  I was there, in the American Cemetery, perhaps the most tranquil place on earth – but today, the nearly ten thousand Americans resting there are not resting at peace.






Abraham Joshua Heschel said in his famous speech on racism in 1963 -  "There is an evil which most of us condone and are even guilty of: indifference to evil. We remain neutral, impartial, and not easily moved by the wrongs done unto other people. Indifference to evil is more insidious than evil itself; it is more universal, more contagious, more dangerous. A silent justification, it makes possible an evil erupting as an exception becoming the rule and being in turn accepted."

When we equivocate about evil we are enabling evil.  When we equivocate on hate we are enabling the haters.  A decision to remain silent because it is "political" is itself a political decision - and it is a moral decision.  And we will not remain silent.




Heschel also wrote, “Few of us seem to realize how insidious, how radical, how universal and evil racism is. Few of us realize that racism is man’s gravest threat to man, the maximum of hatred for a minimum of reason, the maximum of cruelty for a minimum of thinking.”  


The maximum of cruelty with a minimum of thinking.



Only a bare minimum of thought needs to go into calling out the racist agitators and domestic terrorists of Charlottesville.  Their anti-Semitic and racist chants cannot be ignored and can never be tolerated.  The murder of innocents cannot be forgotten.

.



For our beloved nation, we pray that an end to this agitation and hatred will be soon at hand - and for our community, I pray that everyone, from all backgrounds and all points of view, will stand together in common cause, that we will never succumb to indifference and not thereby desecrate the graves of Auschwitz and Omaha Beach.

Amen  









Monday, August 7, 2017

Dispatches from Europe: July, 2017

TBE Jewish Heritage Tour Day 1  July 2, 2017




Israeli soldiers at Warsaw Ghetto Memorial




Ghetto Fighters Memorial, Warsaw


Greetings from Warsaw!

When time and exhaustion allow, I will be sending dispatches from our TBE Jewish Heritage Trip. I am very grateful to the twenty who have chosen to give up a little beach time to accompany Mara and myself on a journey that is the farthest thing from an R & R vacation imaginable – yet infinitely more meaningful.

Following exhausting travels and some delayed flights, there was no rest for the weary as our tour began right away with a stop at the Umschlagplatz, on the northern boundary of the Warsaw Ghetto, from where hundreds of thousands were sent to their deaths in Treblinka. The ghetto was completely destroyed in 1943, but memorials and markers can be found everywhere, including one just across from our hotel.

From there we went to the new museum dedicated to the long and complicated history of Polish Jewry. It is called the Po-Lin museum because, as legend goes, medieval Jews migrating east from various calamities and expulsions found solace in this place, where destiny called out to them to settle – in Hebrew, “reside here” translates to “Po-Lin,” which is the Hebrew name for Poland.

Before entering the museum, we stopped out front at the breathtaking Monument to Ghetto Heroes, which on one side depicts the fighters of the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising and on the other, the victims of the deportations. As luck would have it, we came just in time to view a group of Israeli soldiers posing on the side depicting the heroes. The monument will be familiar to anyone who has seen the replica at Yad Vashem.

In the museum, the complex relationship of Jews and Poland was laid out in all of its complexity. Some in the group were concerned that the museum has a not-so-hidden agenda of portraying the Poles as fellow sufferers rather than the raging anti-semites that so many think they were. Many historians see that as accounting for the fact that the Nazis chose to build their industrial complex of killing right here. Some 3 million Jews died here during the Holocaust, a million at Auschwitz alone, and another 900,000 in Treblinka.

The group has not yet had time to process and discuss what we saw today – we’ll have plenty of opportunity to do that on the bus this week. But from my perspective, the museum was not a whitewash at all. Among the photos I’ve included in our Heritage Tour album (link below) is one that speaks very frankly about the apathy of many Poles to the killings and deportations that they saw happening in front of them, plus some of the killings perpetrated by Poles themselves. Still, one unanswered question is whether Polish schoolchildren are taught to take some responsibility for what happened here.

The museum shares some basic facts that cannot be shoved aside even in light of what happened in 1939-1945.

1) Jews did thrive here as almost nowhere else in our history. Before the war, Warsaw was the second largest Jewish city in the world, trailing only New York, and the intellectual and cultural life here was unrivaled. Even now, it is impossible to find a place on the planet that teems with vibrant ideological debate and artistic creativity as the Poland of the pre-war period. This vibrancy also characterized early eras. Poland is where the early Hasidim found their roots, along with their ideological, rationalist opposites, the “Mitnagdim.” We saw the centerpiece of the museum, a breathtaking replica of a 17th century wooden synagogue from a shtetl called Gwozdziec – I was able to point out to the group where on the ceiling it instructs worshippers not to talk during the Torah reading.

2) Horrible things happened here to the Jews, but they happened to the Poles too, and the most vehement anti-Semitic episodes were not perpetrated by Poles. The 1648 massacre was Cossack driven and of course the Holocaust was in plan and execution entirely a Nazi production. The Poles in fact have much in common with the Jews. This land has been sliced and diced more than just about any other – other than perhaps the land of Israel. With empiric Russia on one side and aggressive Germany on the other, and throw in the Hapsburg empire for good measure, I’m not sure we give Poland its due for standing up to oppression as often as it has. One can make a solid claim that the two biggest root causes of the downfall of the Soviet Union were the worldwide Soviet Jewry movement on the one hand (and the accompanying US moves) and the Polish Solidarity movement, led by Lech Walesa, on the other. So I think it’s important to rethink this relationship. Before today, I never made the connection between the term “Slav” and slave, and in fact, more than once the Slavs have been treated as an inferior race by their neighbors.

3) There are countries that we'll visit on this trip where Jews have returned in significant numbers. Poland is not one of them. So a city that was overwhelmingly Jewish now barely has any. That overwhelming fact will color this part of the trip. This entire country is a mass Jewish graveyard. So one purpose of our visit is to listen to the voices of those who lived here, created here, and who showed such courage. Many of those heroes have come to life again through this museum. Their quotes and poetry are inscribed on the museum's walls. Theirs is a legacy that will not die.

After the museum, we went in various directions for dinner, several of us enjoying the festive Sunday evening in the Old Town. A nice way to end a long, long day. If you are ever in Warsaw, plan to spend at LEAST three hours at this museum - and then have a bite at the cafe that I hear serves the best hummus in town.

Happy Fourth of July to everyone back home (or where ever you are!)

Anti-semitic figurines are ubiquitous in Poland


--------------------------



Maidanek, on the outskirts of Lublin

Gas Chambers at Maidanek

Bullying at Maidanek


Tuesday July 4 - Welcome from Krakow.

We arrived here this evening after a long drive from Warsaw, by way of Maidanek and Lublin. We had decided at the last minute to add Maidanek to our itinerary because it provides both a smaller-scale prelude for and a contrast to Auschwitz, where we will be later this week. Maidanek was liberated by the Russians with little warning, so unlike other death camps, it has been preserved in much the same form in which it was used. For the first time on this trip, our group stood in a place of unspeakable horror, the gas chambers and crematoria of a death camp.

Our photo album brings home just how close Maidanek is – and was - to the surrounding neighborhood, which brings up a major theme of our trip thus far. We have challenged our guides (who have been very good) on the topic of the guilt or innocence of the Polish people. Tomorrow we will have the chance to meet with a righteous gentile who hid Jews. Poland has more righteous gentiles at Yad Vashem than any other country – a future that is both laudatory and misleading, since the number of Jews who lived and died here dwarfs the other nations of this continent – fully half of the six million were killed here. One guide said that six million POLES died, of three million were Jews. It’s nice to hear the Jews spoken of as fully accepted Polish citizens, but we know that through the centuries, this has not always been Mister Rogers’ neighborhood for Jews.

Yesterday we had a lovely tour of Warsaw – we drove past the famous Warsaw Zoo and visited the museum of the Polish Uprising in 1944. We also saw the site of Mila 18, headquarters for the leaders of the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising. A highlight came early in the day with a visit to the orphanage of Janus Korczak, one of the great heroes of the Holocaust. The orphanage amazingly still stands and is still in use. Korczak is mistakenly assumed not to have been Jewish, since he was given the chance to escape the fate determined for his orphans. In fact he was Jewish - he had changed his name years before. His special treatment was due to his inordinate fame among the Polish people as an intellectual (a psychologist and foremost expert on parenting). But Korczak, when the time came to decide, chose to cast his lot not only with “his” children, but with his people. I found that an interesting response to those who claim that Jews who “make it” through assimilation are hopelessly lost to the Jewish world.

Korczac's orphanage


The admiration for Korczak’s work is a key differentiator between Polish culture and that of other nations. The Nazis burned books, but here in Warsaw, writers, musicians and artists are national icons. Last evening some of us went to a Chopin recital in Warsaw’s brimming-with-life Old Town (see my slice of life photos from there). There were actually competing Chopin recitals, in fact, and ticket sellers were vying for our attention and hawking tix – to a PIANO recital – as if they were standing outside Madison Square Garden a half hour before a Knicks game. I was so happy that the concert we attended concluded with Chopin’s “Promenade,” something my mom has played quite often and which I’ve also played for her more recently at the nursing home.

We also walked past some of Warsaw’s stately national shrines and idyllic public parks – keeping in mind that this was a city nearly totally destroyed 70 years ago. The Old Town looks old, but it's actually a replica. Still, lots of fun.

That’s all for today – and for all those who know people in our group, I can assure you that everyone is eating well!

Happy 4th!

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Auschwitz-Birkenau








Our group visited Auschwitz today, capping what has been an emotional week.  Then, following a long ride though the Slovakian countryside, we arrived in Budapest this evening, where we will be spending Shabbat.  The trip is nearly halfway through.  See the entire photo album at https://goo.gl/photos/eW12dZJPcDnk82g57






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July 8



This anti Soros billboard was the VERY FIRST THING I saw as our tour bus crossed over into Hungary on Thursday.  It is everywhere. Our group spent Shabbat in Budapest, which included an unforgettable encounter with a local congregation that I cannot wait to tell folks back home more about - as well as a sobering assessment of the current situation here by a freelance journalist.

I was shaken more by what I learned here in Budapest this Shabbat than I was when visiting Auschwitz the day before.  The community here is genuinely concerned - though they put on a brave face. But in a Jewish community where everyone has a thousand yahrzeits every week, yet one that has done incredible things despite that, I could sense the fear.

The far right wing government has consolidated power by following a familiar playbook: demonize the  press, co-opt the judiciary and direct the anger toward familiar scapegoats - hence the none-too-subtle anti-Semitic overtones of this massive campaign against Soros (and many of these billboards have been touched up with blatantly anti Semitic graffiti).

All of these things are happening here, as well as dramatic changes in their constitution and - naturally -  cozying up to Russia.  And did I mention the delegitimization of human rights NGOs?  It's happening here, most recently  with the shutting down of the Aurora cafe, a local hangout for young Jews and others. Oh, and the intimidation and silencing of religious leaders.  That's the formula for threatening the underpinnings of a democracy.  Shake and stir.

Not everything happening here is applicable to America - or Israel, for that matter - but there is enough to be concerned about. I'm glad that after an embarrassing silence, Israeli authorities have returned to their sacred mission to defend Jews in distress, even those ruled by governments led by authoritarian strongmen.

I cannot emphasize enough the danger of what is happening here. I am encouraged by the courage of my rabbinic colleagues in the US to stand up against the cynical demolition of democratic institutions - particularly the intimidation of a free press - wherever it is found. I for one will be carrying that banner over the coming weeks.  I will not let down the Jews of Hungary or the values embedded in the faith I am duty-bound to protect.  Given what we have been seeing recently all around the world, an emboldened American Jewish leadership might just be a key to preserving the values we hold so dear.

I came here to help people back home remember the last Holocaust,  and I leave Hungary more determined than ever to prevent the next one.

Doheney Synagogue in Budapest

Shabbat dinner in Budapest at a Matzah-themed restaurant


Synagogue in Bratislava in Cubist style


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Dispatch from Berlin

Changing of the guard in Prague: 
At TBE, we march to a different drummer!


Old-New Shul in Prague


Secret Prayer Room in Terezin


Secret Prayer Room in Terezin


July 16

Our group's journey ended a couple of days ago, and still we are all only beginning to digest what we encountered. Below are just a few initial impressions...

By design, this trip began in the Jewish graveyard that is Poland, where few Jews live and where three million died, where the Polish population has tried, at times valiantly and at times insufficiently, to come to grips with their past. The journey took us through various iterations of Jewish destruction and revival, but in Warsaw, what we faced most of all was evidence of the former. In Krakow, Budapest, Bratislava, Prague and Dresden, there was a mix of despair and hopefulness, punctuated by bleak landscapes of death and fear mixed with oases of promise.

By design, we ended at the "beginning," in Berlin, the place where the Nazi ideology was allowed to incubate within a devastating economy and a zeitgeist of anarchy and despair, until it was able to slowly swallow up a country and a continent. Berlin is also a beginning in another sense, as we witnessed - at long last - a country willing to fully embrace its responsibility, not only learning lessons of the past, but intent on teaching them. We saw school children in one neighborhood take on the identities of young Jews who had once walked those same streets before being deported and killed. We saw a city and country that has - despite enormous pressures - chosen to embrace refugees, not because the Germans were once "strangers in the land of Egypt," as we were, but because they were Egypt itself. No other country on our itinerary has owned the Holocaust as the Germans have. They've turned entire neighborhoods into living memorials. Reminders are everywhere.

I've stayed in Berlin after the departure of the group - still here - and now I can understand more fully why so many Jews are moving here, especially Russians and Israelis, and why Germany has become the de facto moral leader of the free world, holding America's place until sanity returns to Washington. What an amazing irony it is that Jews are returning here, even moving en masse from England to retain EU citizenship, under a recent "law of return"- style edict that offers easy citizenship to those with German ancestry, the very ones whom the Germans once chased out and murdered. Germans have learned so much from their past that they are teaching the world how to embrace the same Syrian refugees America is now rejecting. And far right, xenophobic, Russia-supporting parties that could have ridden the refugee issue to victory in the upcoming German elections have been hemorrhaging support in the polls (especially since January, for some reason). The people are refusing to buy into the hate that has infected so many in our world. Germany has become the champion of tolerance.

This weekend, 350,000 supporters of the LGBT community descended on Berlin, the world's third largest LGBT city, for a mass celebration. This weekend there is also a large interfaith music festival here and Berlin is building the world's first house of prayer for three religions, containing a synagogue, a mosque and a church. It will be called the "House of One."  I'll bet a Conservative Rabbi might even be able to perform a wedding here and have it be recognized by the government! Berlin has truly become a house of peace. I can't bring myself to love the city. There's simply too much water under the bridge. But I've no choice but to admire it.

The world's turned upside down!

So our trip ended at the beginning. And along the way, we witnessed lots of walls and borders, good walls and bad walls, going up and coming down, amidst the continuous shape shifting of nations. We saw remnants of the Berlin Wall and explored that wall's meaning for our times. We saw the remains of the ghetto wall in Warsaw. We saw fences that protect synagogues, including one shul in Budapest built with an entire neighborhood surrounding it for protection. We saw the loving bricks of the children at that Berlin school as they endeavored to rebuild a synagogue that once stood where their school now stands, and we saw "Wailing Walls" in cemeteries in Krakow and Prague, constructed of dislodged and desecrated Jewish gravestones. We experienced the borderless EU nations and contrasted that free flow to the shifting, confusing national and ethnic boundaries of these nations, and the sharp lines of hate and suspicion they have for former occupiers, for Germans and Russians especially. And amidst all of this, the Jewish story played out, as we wandered from country to country, seeing how our wandering ancestors accomplishing so much and changed the world for the better in so many ways.

Dennis, our fantastic Berlin guide, reminded us at Olympic Stadium how the Nazis got Darwin all wrong. The survival of the fittest did not mean the survival of the STRONGEST. Darwinian theory is all about the survival of those species who ADAPT the best to changing conditions, not those who try to overwhelm obstacles with power alone. Darwin could well have gotten along with the prophet Zachariah, who said "Not by might, not by power but by My spirit, says the Lord of hosts."

One lesson we most definitely learned is that this Jewish struggle is not one that we have to fight alone - even in our darkest hours, there were others willing to fight with us. We met one of them, a woman who sheltered a Jewish girl escaping the destruction of the Krakow ghetto.

So what we gained on this trip was ultimately a very positive message. And our group, ever inquisitive, was able to refine that message with each stop. Jewish survival is an art that has been honed by centuries of displacement, and the more we've wandered, the better we've gotten at surviving each challenge. We even survived the greatest crime ever committed, and we are here to tell the next generation about it. We have now become experts in the art of telling both parts of the Jewish story: the tale of Night and the tale of Light. We have seen it all.

The Jewish community of Budapest will transcend its challenges, and the rebirth of Jewish life here in Berlin is just the latest example of how Hitler has been denied the last laugh. We shed lots of tears - some that were very personal and a few that wee very unexpected. But as they say, what happens on the bus, stays on the bus.

Photo link is below for the complete photo album of the 2017 TBE Jewish Heritage Tour. In this album you'll see photos from many of the events and places described above. Enjoy!!

Shalom from Berlin!

Rabbi Joshua Hammerman

German child dedicating a brick in memory of Jewish child who was killed. 
Bavarian Quarter, site of destroyed synagogue


Memorial at the site of book burnings, Berlin

A view through a crack in the Berlin Wall

Brandenburg Gate

Berlin Olympic Stadium

Click on photos to enlarge.  See the full photo album  and find our videos at our trip's YouTube site.