Saturday, September 28, 2019

5780: Regression from the meanness (Times of Israel)

FEATURED POST

5780: Regression from the meanness

The future looks bright: instead of crying the 'oy gevalt' of Jewish victimhood and self-pity, Jews took to the streets this year, with a growing resilience and courage
A Jewish woman holding a candle, with a "We Will Outlive Them" banner in the background, at a New York vigil for the victims of the Tree of Life synagogue shooting in Pittsburgh. (Gili Getz)
A Jewish woman holding a candle, with a "We Will Outlive Them" banner in the background, at a New York vigil for the victims of the Tree of Life synagogue shooting in Pittsburgh. (Gili Getz)
This coming week, for the first time in history, American Jews will be flocking to High Holidays services while residing in an America where Jews have been murdered while at prayer in their synagogues. This past year has been marked by the Pittsburgh and Poway pogroms, along with a jarring increase in the number and brazenness of anti-Semitic attacks. Our safety can no longer be taken for granted.
It was a year marked by unprecedented levels of meanness, punctuated by the president of the United States accusing American Jews of ignorance and disloyalty. Partly due to our divider-in-chief’s efforts to turn Israel into a wedge issue, internecine squabbling has intensified within the Jewish community as well. The old joke about “Two Jews, three opinions” has been adjusted to, “Two Jews, and they’re not talking to each other.”
So it would seem that things could not get meaner. On one level that’s true. But something else is happening. 5779 was a watershed year for American Jews, both because of Pittsburgh and how we responded to it.  Rather than subscribing to the “oy gevalt” school of Jewish victimhood and self-pity, Jews took to the streets and their synagogues with a growing resilience and courage, forming new alliances with their non-Jewish neighbors and reaffirming ties to their tradition.
I’m sure there was a good deal of fear, just as there will be next week.  Face it, the events of the past year, when combined with the lack of a strong anti-hate message from the White House, give us little reason to believe there won’t be some attack on Jews somewhere in America over the coming holidays, possibly several. What we’ve seen is in fact a full-scale regression from the meanness. I first noticed it on the weekend after Pittsburgh, a time when it would have been logical for Jews to lay low in their bitterness and fear. Instead, they showed up at their local synagogues in extraordinary numbers. Spurred on by the AJC’s “Show Up for Shabbat” campaign, hundreds of thousands of American Jews emerged from their psychological bunkers on that watershed week. My own congregation was packed that night, filled with people who wouldn’t have been caught dead in a synagogue the week before, coming to honor 11 innocents who were shot dead in theirs.
We have the honor of being despised by the extreme right and the extreme left — by extremists who happen to be Muslim, extremists who happen to be Christian and extremists who happen to be secular. We are, in fact, the glue that brings the far right and far left together.  Jeremy Corbyn, the Ayatollah Khomeini, Louis Farrakhan and David Duke don’t have much in common, except that they all hate us and they think the Holocaust never happened. If they were ever stuck in an elevator together, that’s what they would talk about.
Despite this, Jews are continually taking the high road, demonstrating to the world that the ends don’t justify the meanness. This past year, the old post-Holocaust mantra “Never Again!,” created in the 1970s by Meir Kahane’s Jewish Defense League as a call to vigilante vengeance, was usurped by young progressives who established “Never Again Action” to defend migrants facing deportation. “Never Again” had already found its way to the streets of America a year before, in the cries of the Parkland students and the anti-gun-violence movement they spawned. And now, the Kahanists have yielded that post-Holocaust refrain to the spiritual disciples of Heschel and MLK on the streets of American cities. Simultaneously in Israel, the one clear message of last week’s otherwise inconclusive election was the decisive rejection of the Kahanist Otzma party.
“Never again,” Jews everywhere are declaring; will Kahane’s racist vitriol be allowed to infect the Jewish soul.
The response to cruelty is visceral and universal. One photo of a dead girl and her father in the Rio Grande outweighed a thousand presidential tweets warning of an “invasion.” In July, xenophobia in this country hit a new low with race-based attacks that included the charge from the White House bullying pulpit that several people of color — elected representatives — should go back “from whence they came.”
In Pirkei Avot 3:1, Rabbi Akvaya gave perhaps the best Jewish comeback ever to that hateful assertion:
Reflect upon three things and you will not come to sin. Know from where you came and where you are going and before whom you are destined to give account and reckoning. From where have you come? —from a putrid drop. Where are you going? — to the place of dust, worm, and maggots. Before whom are you destined to give account and reckoning? — before the Holy One, blessed be God.

The rabbis understood that we all come from humble biological beginnings and we’ll all end up in the same maggot-infested place, six feet under. So if anyone ever has the insolence to tell you to go “back where you came from,” call ‘em a putrid drop. But do it politely.
And memo to anyone, of any party, who would accuse Jews of dual loyalty. We can love more than one country at a time, because we care for all of humanity. Loyalty never should  end with one’s own tribe. At the end of the day, there’s no “us and them.” There’s only an ever-expanding “us.”
In First Samuel 19:20, we read:
And Saul sent messengers to arrest David; and when they saw the company of the prophets prophesying, and Samuel standing over them, the spirit of God came upon the messengers of Saul, and they also prophesied.
Saul’s messengers came to harm David, but they were so taken by the pure, tender faith displayed by Samuel that these thugs instantly melted into angels of mercy.
If you take the numerical value of each Hebrew letter of that verse, using the kabbalistic tool of gematria, the sum total — which occurs for no other verse in the Bible — equals 5780. 
So let that verse inspire us to proclaim 5780 as the year when meanness will meet its match and kindness will at last prevail.
Rabbi Joshua Hammerman is author of “Mensch-Marks: Life Lessons of a Human Rabbi” (HCI Books) and “Embracing Auschwitz,” to be published in early 2020 by Ben Yehuda Press. This week he was awarded first place for commentary in the 2019 Religion News Association Awards for Religion Reporting Excellence.

Thursday, September 26, 2019

"5780: Regression from the Meanness" Jewish Week Op-Ed

OP-ED

5780: Regression From The Meanness

This coming week, for the first time in history, American Jews will be flocking to High Holidays services while residing in a country where Jews have been murdered while at prayer in their synagogues. This past year has been marked by the Pittsburgh and Poway pogroms, along with a jarring increase in the number and brazenness of anti-Semitic attacks. Our safety can no longer be taken for granted.
It was a year marked by unprecedented levels of meanness, punctuated by the president of the United States accusing American Jews of ignorance and disloyalty. Partly due to our divider-in-chief’s efforts to turn Israel into a wedge issue, internecine squabbling has intensified within the Jewish community as well. The old joke about “Two Jews, three opinions” has been adjusted to, “Two Jews, and they’re not talking to each other.
So it would seem that things could not get meaner. On one level that’s true. But something else is happening. 5779 was a watershed year for American Jews, both because of Pittsburgh and how we responded to it.  Rather than subscribing to the “oy gevalt” school of Jewish victimhood and self-pity, Jews took to the streets and their synagogues with a growing resilience and courage, forming new alliances with their non-Jewish neighbors and reaffirming ties to their tradition.
Joshua Hammerman
What we’ve seen is in fact a full-scale regression from the meanness. I first noticed it on the weekend after Pittsburgh, a time when it would have been logical for Jews to lay low in their bitterness and fear. Instead, they showed up at their local synagogues in extraordinary numbers. Spurred on by the AJC’s “Show Up for Shabbat” campaign, hundreds of thousands of American Jews emerged from their psychological bunkers on that watershed week. My own congregation was packed that night, filled with people who wouldn’t have been caught dead in a synagogue the week before, coming to honor 11 innocents who were shot dead in theirs.
I’m sure there was a good deal of fear, just as there will be next week.  Face it, the events of the past year, when combined with the lack of a strong anti-hate message from the White House, give us little reason to believe there won’t be some attack on Jews somewhere in America over the coming holidays, possibly several. 
We have the honor of being despised by the extreme right and the extreme left — by extremists who happen to be Muslim, extremists who happen to be Christian and extremists who happen to be secular. We are, in fact, the glue that brings the far right and far left together.  Jeremy Corbyn, the Ayatollah Khomeini, Louis Farrakhan and David Duke don’t have much in common, except that they all hate us and they think the Holocaust never happened. If they were ever stuck in an elevator together, that’s what they would talk about.
It would seem that things could not get meaner [in the country]. On one level that’s true. But something else is happening.
Despite this, Jews are continually taking the high road, demonstrating to the world that the ends don’t justify the meanness. This past year, the old post-Holocaust mantra “Never Again!,” created in the 1970s by Meir Kahane’s Jewish Defense League as a call to vigilante vengeance, was usurped by young progressives who established “Never Again Action” to defend migrants facing deportation. “Never Again” had already found its way to the streets of America a year before, in the cries of the Parkland students and the anti-gun-violence movement they spawned. And now, the Kahanists have yielded that post-Holocaust refrain to the spiritual disciples of Heschel and MLK on the streets of American cities. Simultaneously in Israel, the one clear message of last week’s otherwise inconclusive election was the decisive rejection of the Kahanist Otzma party.
“Never again,” Jews everywhere are declaring; will Kahane’s racist vitriol be allowed to infect the Jewish soul?
The response to cruelty is visceral and universal. One photo of a dead girl and her father in the Rio Grande outweighed a thousand presidential tweets warning of an “invasion.” In July, xenophobia in this country hit a new low with race-based attacks that included the charge from the White House bullying pulpit that several people of color — elected representatives — should go back “from whence they came.”
In Pirkei Avot 3:1, Rabbi Akvaya gave perhaps the best Jewish comeback ever to that hateful assertion:
“Reflect upon three things and you will not come to sin. Know from where you came and where you are going and before whom you are destined to give account and reckoning. From where have you come? —from a putrid drop. Where are you going? — to the place of dust, worm, and maggots. Before whom are you destined to give account and reckoning? — before the Holy One, blessed be God.”
The rabbis understood that we all come from humble biological beginnings and we’ll all end up in the same maggot-infested place, six feet under. So if anyone ever has the insolence to tell you to go “back where you came from,” call ‘em a putrid drop. But do it politely.
And memo to anyone, of any party, who would accuse Jews of dual loyalty. We can love more than one country at a time, because we care for all of humanity. Loyalty never should  end with one’s own tribe. At the end of the day, there’s no “us and them.” There’s only an ever-expanding “us.”
In First Samuel 19:20, we read:
“And Saul sent messengers to arrest David; and when they saw the company of the prophets prophesying, and Samuel standing over them, the spirit of God came upon the messengers of Saul, and they also prophesied.”
Saul’s messengers came to harm David, but they were so taken by the pure, tender faith displayed by Samuel that these thugs instantly melted into angels of mercy.
If you take the numerical value of each Hebrew letter of that verse, using the kabbalistic tool of gematria, the sum total — which occurs for no other verse in the Bible — equals 5780. 
So let that verse inspire us to proclaim 5780 as the year when meanness will meet its match and kindness will at last prevail.
Rabbi Joshua Hammerman is author of “Mensch-Marks: Life Lessons of a Human Rabbi” (HCI Books) and “Embracing Auschwitz,” to be published in early 2020 by Ben Yehuda Press. This week he was awarded first place for commentary in the 2019 Religion News Association Awards for Religion Reporting Excellence.

Sunday, September 22, 2019

Winners named in 2019 RNA Awards for Religion Reporting Excellence


Honored to have won first prize in commentary at the RNA (Religion News Association) Awards (that’s not me in the photo, as I was unable to get to Las Vegas for the conference). See the press release: https://www.rna.org/…/Winners-named-in-2019-RNA-Awards-for-…


Winners named in 2019 RNA Awards for Religion Reporting Excellence

Saturday, September 21, 2019  


COLUMBUS, Ohio. ­– Religion reporters from around the world won top honors Saturday, Sept. 21, at the Religion News Association’s 70th Annual Awards Banquet.
Cathy Lynn Grossman, formerly of USA Today and Religion News Service, was presented with the William A. Reed Lifetime Achievement Award for her exceptional long-term commitment and service to the field of religion reporting.
Manya Brachear Pashman and Jeff Coen of the Chicago Tribune won first place for Excellence in Religion Reporting—Large Newspapers and Wire Services. Sharon Otterman and Laurie Goodstein of The New York Times won second place. Third place was awarded to Sarah Pulliam Bailey of The Washington Post.
Silvia Foster-Frau of the San Antonio Express-News won the Cornell Award for Excellence in Religion Reporting—Mid-sized Newspapers. Kelsey Dallas of the Deseret News won second place.
First place for Cassels Award for Excellence in Religion Reporting—Small Newspapers went to Stacey Barchenger of the Asbury Park Press. Second place went to Catherine Godbey of The Decatur Daily, while Norris Burkes of The Ledger won third place.
In the Award for Excellence in Religion Reporting—Online-only News Outlets, first place was awarded to Hannah Allam of BuzzFeed News. Rachel Gross of Smithsonian Magazine and Undark came in second place. Third place went to Melanie Lidman of Global Sisters Report.
First place in the Supple Award for Excellence in Religion Feature Writing went to The Atlantic’s Emma Green, while Sarah Pulliam Bailey of The Washington Post placed second and Daniel Burke of CNN received third place.
Dake Kang and a team at the Associated Press received first place in the Gerald A. Renner Award for Excellence in Enterprise Religion Reporting. Manya Brachear Pashman and Jeff Coen of the Chicago Tribune won second place. Third place was awarded to The Philadelphia Inquirer’s David Gambacorta, and honorable mentions were awarded to Nicole Winfield of The Associated Press and Kelsey Dallas of the Deseret News.
First place for Excellence in Religion Commentary went to Joshua Hammerman of Religion News Service and The New York Jewish Week. Second place was awarded to John Gehring of Commonweal Magazine. Cathleen Falsani of Sojourners placed third, with Jamie Manson of National Catholic Reporter receiving honorable mention.
The Schachern Award for Excellence in Online Religion Sections was awarded to CNN, edited by Daniel Burke.
First place for Excellence in Religion News Analysis was awarded to Emma Green of The Atlantic. Second place went to Julia Bicknell and Barbara Baker of World Watch Monitor. Daniel Burke of CNN placed third, with Sarah Pulliam Bailey of The Washington Post receiving honorable mention.
Emma Green of The Atlantic placed first in the award for Excellence in Magazine News Religion Reporting. Tiffany Stanley of The Washington Post Magazine second, and The Christian Chronicle’s Bobby Ross Jr. took third place. Taha Anis of Moment Magazine received honorable mention.
The award for Excellence in Magazine Overall Religion Coverage went to Kurt Hoffman of The Forward.
First place for Excellence in Radio or Podcast Religion Reporting went to the Interfaith Voices team: Amber Khan, David Wynn, Laura Kwerel, Stephanie Lecci and Melissa FeitoJerome Socolovsky, Jason DeRose, Diamond Kennedy and Amara Omeokwe of National Public Radio placed second. Third place was awarded to Sonia Paul, Tommy Bazarian, Andy Newman and Jocelyn Gonzales of Studio 360 (Public Radio International).
For the Excellence in Short Religion Video Award, first place was awarded to Andrew Rush of the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette.
Liz Kineke of CBS received first place in Excellence in Television News Magazine Religion Reporting.
The award for Excellence in National Network / Cable News Religion Reporting went to Kane Farabaugh of Voice of America.
Kevin Krug of KMGH-TV received first place for Excellence in Television Local News Religion Reporting.
The award for first place in Photography: Single Image went to Steve Mellon of the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette. Second place went to Andrew Rush of the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette.
In the Photo Series category, the photo staff of the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette received first place. Alexandra Radu of Religion News Service was awarded second place, while the photo staff of the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette won third place. Alexandra Radu of Religion News Service received honorable mention.
The first place award for Excellence in Nonfiction Religion Book was presented to James Hudnut-Beumler and Mark Silk for “The Future of Mainline Protestantism in America.” Second place went to Stephanie Derrick for “The Fame of C.S. Lewis: A Controversialist’s Reception in Britain and America.”
In the Chandler Award for Excellence in Student Religion Reporting, first place went to Zachary Davis of Harvard Divinity School. In second place was Lauren Jackson of the University of Oxford. Hannah Bernstein of Northeastern University won third place. Russell and M.L. Chandler generously fund the Chandler Award, a student journalism contest.


Newspaper & Online-Only Awards
EXCELLENCE IN RELIGION REPORTING – SMALL-SIZED NEWSPAPERS (CASSELS AWARD)

EXCELLENCE IN RELIGION REPORTING – MID-SIZED NEWSPAPERS (CORNELL AWARD)

EXCELLENCE IN RELIGION REPORTING – LARGE NEWSPAPERS & WIRE SERVICES

EXCELLENCE IN RELIGION REPORTING – ONLINE-ONLY NEWS OUTLETS

Multiple Media Awards
EXCELLENCE IN RELIGION FEATURE WRITING (SUPPLE AWARD)

EXCELLENCE IN ENTERPRISE RELIGION REPORTING (GERALD A. RENNER AWARD)

EXCELLENCE IN RELIGION COMMENTARY

EXCELLENCE IN RELIGION NEWS ANALYSIS

EXCELLENCE IN SHORT RELIGION VIDEO
  • First Place: Andrew Rush, Pittsburgh Post-Gazette // Video

EXCELLENCE IN ONLINE RELIGION SECTION (SCHACHERN AWARD)

EXCELLENCE IN PHOTOGRAPHY: SINGLE IMAGE
  • First Place: Steve Mellon, Pittsburgh Post-Gazette
  • Second Place: Andrew Rush, Pittsburgh Post-Gazette

EXCELLENCE IN PHOTOGRAPHY: GALLERY
  • First Place: Photo Staff, Pittsburgh Post-Gazette
  • Second Place: Alexandra Radu, Religion News Service
  • Third Place: Photo Staff, Pittsburgh Post-Gazette
  • Honorable Mention: Alexandra Radu, Religion News Service

Magazine & Non-Daily Newspaper Awards
EXCELLENCE IN MAGAZINE & NON-DAILY NEWSPAPER RELIGION REPORTING

EXCELLENCE IN MAGAZINE OVERALL RELIGION COVERAGE
  • First Place: Kurt Hoffman, The Forward // Not available

Broadcast Awards
EXCELLENCE IN TELEVISION NEWS MAGAZINE RELIGION REPORTING
  • First Place: First Place: Liz Kineke, Elyse Kaftan and Yuti Joshi, CBS // Story

EXCELLENCE IN TELEVISION LOCAL NEWS RELIGION REPORTING
  • First Place: Kevin Krug, Teal Tyszka, Eric Lupher, Jaclyn Allen and Andrew Bray, KMGH-TV // Story

EXCELLENCE IN TELEVISION NATIONAL NETWORK/CABLE NEWS RELIGION REPORTING
  • First Place: Kane Farabaugh, Voice of America // Story

EXCELLENCE IN RADIO OR PODCAST RELIGION REPORTING
  • First Place: Amber Khan, Melissa Feito and Stephanie Lecci, Interfaith Voices // Story
  • Second Place: Jerome Socolovsky, Jason DeRose, Diamond Kennedy and Amara Omeokwe, National Public Radio // Story
  • Third Place: Sonia Paul, Tommy Bazarian, Andy Newman and Jocelyn Gonzales, Studio 360 // Story

Nonfiction Book Award
EXCELLENCE FOR NONFICTION RELIGION BOOK
  • First Place: James Hudnut-Beumler and Mark Silk, “The Future of Mainline Protestantism in America” // Book
  • Second Place: Stephanie Derrick, “The Fame of C.S. Lewis: A Controversialist’s Reception in Britain and America” //  Book

Student Award
EXCELLENCE IN STUDENT RELIGION REPORTING (CHANDLER AWARD)