Present As Prologue: A Positive Approach To The Election

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Wed, 11/09/2016 - 12:25

Joshua Hammerman

Special To The Jewish Week

image: http://www.thejewishweek.com/sites/default/files/images/2016/11/hammerman-josh-new2008.jpg

Rabbi Josh Hammerman.

We woke up this morning to a Kristallnacht anniversary unlike any other.  Many historians believe that the pogrom of November 9, 1938, the night when Jewish businesses and houses of worship all over Germany were shattered by Nazi hooligans, paved the way for the Holocaust that followed.   Some say it gave license to the overt racism that fueled the Nazi machine, making the mass murder of Jews inevitable.

The irony of this timing is too juicy to miss, as hate groups today are celebrating across the globe.  And we wonder, what has become inevitable now? 

My answer: nothing.

There is no silver lining to be found in what has transpired; but, foolish idealist that I am, I grasp for some slivers of silver that someday might be sewn into a lining.  It’s what I do.  As a rabbi, in my dual role as one who afflicts the comfortable and comforts the afflicted, today is a day to focus on the comforting.  So, while straining to avoid Panglossian banalities, I grope (which, like “trump,” is not a verb I’ll never comfortably use again) for some slivers to offer, without disregarding or downplaying the well-documented dangers that a Trump presidency offers.

And the best that I can say is that nothing is inevitable, that past is not prologue. Just as November 9, 1938 did not have to lead directly to Auschwitz, neither is that unique historical moment a prototype for what we are experiencing now.   Today is decidedly not “Kristallnacht: The Sequel.”

It’s of small comfort, I suppose, that the most positive message I can muster is that when I woke up this morning, no Brownshirts had ransacked my synagogue.  But if we begin with the premise that present is prologue, today is not Kristallnacht II, nor even November 9.  Today is Day One.  The best way to prevent the apocalyptic scenarios envisioned of a Trump presidency is not to assume that they are inevitable and fall into a fetal position, but to work steadfastly to prevent those scenarios from being realized, day by day, one foot in front of the other.   If we do that, things will be far from perfect, but we still stand a chance of leaving this world a little better than we found it.

When we shackle ourselves to historical precedent, we fail to be prepared for the surprises that the world presents to us every day.  Hence the foolish reliance of Democrats on their 2012 playbook and their supposedly unbreakable Maginot Line of Rust Belt states.  While we should study history to avoid repeating mistakes, we shouldn’t assume that any precedent will automatically be prescient, as every pollster learned last night.

Some more slivers of silver:
• Before we pack our bags for Canada and bemoan the racism and misogyny of America, recall that many of the same voters who elected Trump voted for Obama twice.   Sooner, we can hope, rather than later, these same Americans will be out to drain yet another swamp.

• Before we assume that the end is nigh for basic human rights, recall that when the Supreme Court passed marriage equality, Justice Scalia was alive and kicking.  It’s not hard to imagine the damage the new President will try to do, but it’s hard to see him successfully accomplishing it.

• Despite what we’ve seen, love still trumps hate. Before we assume that America is on its way to becoming a more brutish society, where bullies will routinely prey on the enfeebled, we can be grateful that a culture of kindness can still be promoted on the local level and by each of us individually.  The power of the states, so brazenly championed by conservatives, will now provide some solace for those living in places where such a culture of kindness is championed.  States can mitigate some of the damage to our planet too.

• Mexico notwithstanding (because that wall will never be built) the wall that will matter most over the next four years is that hallowed wall of separation between religion and state.  I believe it will continue to stand tall.  That wall is what prevented me from officially endorsing a candidate in this race, and there were moments when it was pure torture not to scream in rage at the horrors I was witnessing.  But it forced me to be more disciplined in my message and to focus on areas where I could be more constructive.  While   everyone in Blue State America was railing in the echo chambers of the Internet about Trump’s racism, the Trump voters were watching Fox.  Were I to have climbed aboard that train, my voice would have just been one more among the millions in an echo chamber that only one side was hearing. 

Instead, on Rosh Hashanah, rather than railing about one candidate’s racist statements, I spoke very personally about racism.  Yes, there were clear allusions to  the campaign but I focused more on what has been endemic to our society for a long time and how each of us can combat it.  As a result, my message resonated on both sides of the aisle and I maintained a credibility that comes from at least trying to be non-partisan.  At a time of such intense heat, someone needs to stand above the fray and shine some light.  My congregants had no doubt where I stood, but were appreciative of my efforts to “go high” when so many were “going low.”

Thanks to that wall of separation, my role – and that of my clergy colleagues – has never been more important.  In the short term we need to comfort the afflicted and continue to act as agents of healing.  But over the coming months and years, we’ll need to continue to be the clear voices of conscience.

So I have no instant feel-good panacea to offer on this Kristallnacht, except that it is not Kristallnacht.

It’s Day One, and together, one foot after another, we will need to summon our wits and compassion to face an unknown future that is still ours to determine.

Rabbi Joshua Hammerman, a frequent contributor, is rabbi of Temple Beth El in Stamford, Conn.

Read more at http://www.thejewishweek.com/editorial-opinion/opinion/present-prologue-positive-approach-election#2hQjVyslsJjM1uTb.99

David Ortiz's Expletive: A Lesson From Leviticus (Jewish Week)

David Ortiz's Expletive: A Lesson From Leviticus

04/26/13

Rabbi Joshua Hammerman

Special To The Jewish Week

At Fenway Park, with Bostonians celebrating the end of their excruciating, week-long siege, Red Sox slugger David Ortiz wrapped things up in one brief exclamation.  "This is our (bleeping) city!" he cried, and the crowd went wild, while in bars across America, millions of people turned to total strangers and asked, "Did he just SAY that?"

Well, I taped the event and yes he did.

ESPN managed to bleep it out.  But NESN was not so fortunate.  Neither were the radio broadcasts and all the five year old children at Fenway that day; but that probably doesn't matter, because their parents weren't exactly covering their kids' ears.  Everyone was just happy to be happy, and Ortiz' expletive apparently was the most emphatic way to express that.

I admit. I was too busy laughing through my tears to worry about the ballplayer's proclamation, moved as I was by the pregame tribute and the indefatigable nature of my hometown, and relieved that the bombers had been caught.

But now, it's time to question whether we have gone too far, to the point where every (bleeping) conversation is beginning to sound like a Nixon tape.

​Why do we need to swear so (bleeping) much?  Have we lost the ability to converse, to articulate emphasis without resorting to insulting people's sexual behavior, especially in regard to their mothers?

Simon Critchley wrote recently in the New York Times, "We know swear words are literally meaningless... Yet they carry a force that compels us."  Thousands of years ago, Leviticus said essentially the same thing.  In chapter 24, two Israelites are having a fight.  One had an Egyptian father, which may have been the cause of some resentment or friction between the two.  Who knows?  But the end result was that one of them blasphemed, and the punishment was determined to be stoning. 

​On the face of it, the whole thing seems absurd, like the scene right out of Monty Python.  Come to think of it, this WAS a scene from a Monty Python flick.  But the deeper message of this passage, and of the entire book of Leviticus, is that words matter.  Jewish tradition compares the one who gossips to a murderer.  The very next verse, in fact, deals with the laws of murder, making this comparison most explicit, not just for the idle gossiper, but specifically for the one who curses God.

​For what does it mean to curse God's name? If, as we read in Genesis, every human being is created in God's image, that divine part of us that is the essence of our humanity.  To insult God is to debase our own innate godliness, our human capacity for goodness and kindness.  

Sometimes curses can be a creative way of dealing with powerlessness.  We see that in the colorful Yiddish curses that have sprung up.  And Jews have had good reason to shake their fist at the heavens.  When Job's wife implores, "Curse God and die," Job has every reason to do just that - but he refuses to, recognizing that God's blessings and curses are intertwined.  In fact, the very word translated as "curse" in Job 2:9 is "barekh", which also means to bless.  Job refuses to render God one-dimensional, the source only of evil and not of life's blessings too.

That's what cursing does. It turns God into a stereotype.  Once "bleeping" becomes your only way of express passion, you are unable to communicate creatively, to probe the complexity of deeper feelings. 

Swearing takes the bedroom and turns it into the bathroom.  Rather than elevating the mundane experiences of everyday life, as the holiness code of Leviticus implores us to do, swearing does just the opposite.  It takes all that is sacred and holy and tosses it onto Job's ash heap.  All swearing is ultimately a form of blasphemy, a choice not for life but decay and stagnation.  To swear is to succumb to impulse rather than to rise above it.

​I confess.  I swear -- but only rarely.  So when I swear, you know I'm mad.  You can just ask my kids.  Sometimes we all lose control.  But when I encounter supposedly pious Jews with foul mouths, it makes me wonder how far their piety really extends.  If they are so abusive with language, so unable to control themselves from inflicting verbal blows on God, are they really able to control their gossip, their tempers, and even their physical abuse of others?  Can someone who has garbage constantly coming out of his mouth really be vigilant about the kashrut of the things that go into it?  Are people that needy of appearing cool? 

Everything that we hold sacred came into the world through divine speech.  And now we are losing the sanctity of speech. 

​I don't blame David Ortiz for this.  He didn't cause the problem  Even the FCC gave Ortiz a pass.  His passionate outburst did reflect how Bostonians felt after finally being released from the grip of the psychological - and real - pressure cooker of a horrible week.   

Studies show that our society hasn't gotten worse, at least since the Swearin' '70s, just that foul language has become less regulated since the days of George Carlin's pre-HBO "Seven Words you Can't Say on Television."   Nothing wrong with more freedom. What's wrong is, once the thrill of breaking one taboo is gone, it's all too easy to go on to the next one.

As our society rightly focuses its attention on our addiction to violence and guns, maybe we should spend a moment reflecting on that instant when that anger first gets out of control.  Long before the pressure cookers and semi automatic guns, long before the bloody video games, there is filthy, unchecked language.  Long before bullets, it is the words that wound. Creation began with words and social disintegration does too.

 ​In the Beginning, there were words -- and none of them began with an F.

The Fifth Child

The Fifth Child

(Special to the Jewish Week)

On Passover we read about the Four Children, each of whom approaches the Seder experience from a different angle. We are called upon to explain the Exodus story in the manner most developmentally appropriate for each child.

The Fourth Child is arguably the most challenging one, since that child doesn’t even know how to ask. I propose that this year we add a Fifth Child, updating a custom used back in the heyday of the Soviet Jewry movement, and more recently as a stand-in for Gilad Shalit or those facing debilitating illness. But now we have a new Fifth Child. Alongside the one who does not know how to ask, we must now include the one who can’t ask, not because she’s stuck in a Gulag or Gazan prison, but because she’s been killed, right here in America. This is the child whose inquisitive mind has been stilled forever by the magazines of a maniac’s assault rifle, or by the single bullet of a parent’s unlocked handgun, or at the hands of an abusive caregiver, or as the result of incessant bullying and unremitting cruelty. 

Deeply embedded in the Exodus narrative is a subtext, the idea that Egypt is not merely a place but also a metaphor. Rabbinic wisdom relates the Hebrew word for Egypt, Mitzrayim, to the term for “tight place,” in the sense of one’s being constricted. In this literary interpretation, the shackles of slavery are a reflection of our own narrow-mindedness. If Egypt is a metaphor, then we are enslaved not to Pharaoh, but to our own prejudice and anger — and to our pervasive culture of violence.

There are far too many Fifth Children out there, and we’ve allowed that to happen. We have produced a society where child sacrifice is once again in vogue. That child, though now residing in our cemeteries, deserves a place at this year’s table.

In this way, Passover is exceptionally relevant in the wake of Newtown. It points to the anger and violence that we are combating (I wish we could get beyond military terms.) in our society and within our hearts as well. The current struggle is about firearms for sure, but it’s also about our combustible souls.

According to Slate, in the nearly three months from Newtown to March 7, guns killed 2,659 Americans. That running tally is incomplete, but it is illustrative, and that tally includes nearly 200 teens and children. So in the three months since the children died at Newtown, there have been effectively ten more Sandy Hooks in this country. 

And still, Congress hems and haws. 

Military assault weapons and high capacity magazines continue to be freely available in a civilian society where they serve absolutely no good purpose. Even after Newtown, the best Washington appears able to do is come up with a plan to enhance the system of background checks. Our reps appear stuck in these narrow straits of Egypt, addicted to our culture of violence, bound to these narrow straits by political arm twisting and pressure lobbying. It seems as if our representatives are voting, metaphorically, with a gun to their heads. There is no other way to explain the lack of outrage and moral resolve in preventing future Newtowns and eliminating the 10th plague of gun violence from our society.

The sage Hillel famously said, “If not now, when?” In Congress, prodded by the NRA, that rabbinic call to arms (oops) has been transformed into a sullen teenager’s “If not now, whenever!” I have news for everyone: this is the “now” that Hillel was talking about. If large magazines and assault weapons aren't curtailed now, they never will be. And if they aren’t, more children will die — and their blood will be on our hands.

I was one of 4,000 clergy to sign a letter written by Newtown clergy imploring senators to vote for strong legislation to prevent gun violence. Four thousand! In this country it’s hard to get 4,000 clergy to agree that the sky is blue, but the cause of ending gun violence mends denominational differences even as it rends families and communities apart.

Ending this plague is the cry of our generation, a moral imperative and a Jewish imperative. It is universal and particularistic.  Before Newtown there was Northridge — the JCC shooting in 1999. As a Jew, I care about all innocent human beings, but I also know that my own people are especially threatened by a gun-running culture that allows, through gun show loopholes, for white supremacists like Buford Furrow Jr. to procure unconscionably lethal weapons without a problem and blast 70 gunshots into a JCC  complex with the intent of killing lots of Jewish kids.

So this Passover, we need to wonder about who is not at the table.  The children of Newtown need a voice. So do the four children of Shirley Chambers, the Chicago mother who lost all four of her children to gun violence. All human life is of equal value. Let all those children now become the Fifth Child at our Seders  all children, everywhere, who have fallen victim to our society’s gun-sanity. They are the child who cannot ask because we have allowed them to be killed on our watch.

We are killing our own children because we are letting them be killed. 

This crucial issue is the real “right to life” movement, for no matter what our beliefs regarding the origin or end of life, everyone agrees that first graders have a right to live.

Together, let us search for a common path that will lead us from Egypt, from the scourge of violence that has plagued us for far too long.

Rabbi Joshua Hammerman is spiritual leader of Temple Beth-El in Stamford, Conn.

Bar Mitzvah Nation (Jewish Week)

 

Bar Mitzvah Nation

Joshua Hammerman

When we look back years from now, historians might decide that Sunday, April 25, 2004, was the proverbial tipping point when all of America became Jewish. On that evening, as Americans sat down to their nightly TV ritual, Krusty became bar mitzvah. For those who aren’t among the nearly 10 million who watch “The Simpsons,” Krusty, the rabbi’s kid turned clown, metaphorically represents the tragi-comic Jewish condition. In this episode Krusty, estranged from his traditionalist father (voiced by Jackie Mason), finally understands that one cannot be a Jew in name only. Seeking to earn his place among such Jewish luminaries as Sandy Koufax, Woody Allen and Lamb Chop, Krusty decides to take a hiatus from his show to do some serious grappling with traditional texts. My jaw dropped when I saw this. I’m more than a casual watcher of “The Simpsons” (principally because just about every bar mitzvah student is able to quote it chapter and verse), so when I tuned in I was expecting the same old shtick for Krusty’s bar mitzvah — an updated version of the excesses of “Goodbye Columbus.” It started out that way, but ended up with Krusty headed on a serious Jewish journey. The entire country seems to be on a Jewish journey these days. If you tired of Krusty on that Sunday evening in late April, you could have clicked onto Comedy Central’s “Bar Mitzvah Bash.” And several weeks ago, the Wall Street Journal ran a front-page article titled “You Don’t Have to Be Jewish to Want a Bar Mitzvah,” detailing the growing trend of non-Jewish children begging their parents for big bar/bat mitzvah bashes of their own. When non-Jews can so casually assimilate what has long been the decisive generator of Jewish identity, it makes us wonder what sort of monster we’ve created. A successful monster, that’s what. Think about it. Mainstream America is now so completely comfortable with Judaism that it can dabble in overtly Jewish symbols without denying their Jewishness. These kids aren’t clamoring for mere “parties” but for bar mitzvahs. Without batting an eye, they are choosing to live within the framework of Jewish idiom. All we have to do is add content and stir. Certain Jewish values are already built into even the most secularized and over-the-top bar mitzvah: the love of family, for instance. But the hard work has already been done. From a marketing perspective, bar mitzvah is becoming the Coca-Cola of American adolescent initiation rites. The most amazing thing is happening: Non-Jews are teaching Jews how to be Jewish. It used to be that Hollywood was filled with Jews pretending to be non-Jews, lining up to change their names from Goldfish to Goldwyn and from Birnbaum to Burns. Now the entire non-Jewish branch of the entertainment industry is going gaga over kabbalah, which W magazine recently called “Hollywood’s trendiest spiritual movement since A.A.” I remain wary of the kind of hucksterism that threatens to sever kabbalah from its authentic Judaic roots (the Kabbalah Center purportedly sells those red-yarn bracelets for $26, a ripoff, even if Britney Spears did wear one on the cover of Entertainment magazine). But there is nothing inherently evil about being trendy. When Madonna proclaims, as she recently did, that she will no longer do concerts on Shabbat, something profound is happening here. The singer announced through her publicist that she would instead be attending services on Friday evenings. The Jewish establishment scoffs at these statements when we should be embracing them. I doubt we would take Madonna seriously even were she to shorten her name to Maidl, but we who have been preaching the merits of Shabbat all these years — to those few who will listen between the yawns — have quite a bit of chutzpah (a word you can now look up in your American Heritage Dictionary) to pooh-pooh the cultural earthquake that is going on around us. Hello, my name is Josh and I am a recovering pooh-pooher. I needed to make that confession because for years I’ve come down hard on the superficiality of American Judaism. It was the Titanic-themed bat mitzvah party in Pittsburgh with the iceberg centerpiece that threw me overboard. So it was natural for me to perceive the shallowness of those who pose with red thread. But I’ve grown more tolerant since then. Two months ago my eldest child, Ethan, made his Sinaitic climb to the bima, and as I watched his Jewish destiny begin to unfold I experienced for the first time as an adult the full power of the bar mitzvah rite. Even in America, especially in America, I know how powerful Judaism can be, which is why I take Madonna seriously. She may not be Jewish — yet — but increasingly she is living a Jewish life. She’s even doing a concert tour of Israel this fall, and the morale boost Israelis will feel will be as real as the mitzvah she is performing. Madonna has a long way to go, but at least she is headed in the right direction: east. I guess you don’t have to be Jewish to be a good Jew. Demi Moore, of all people, put it best: “I didn’t grow up Jewish, but I would say that I’ve been more exposed to the deeper meanings of particular rituals than any of my friends that did.” As we celebrate 350 years of Jewish presence on these shores, some strange things are happening. While Jews have been focusing all of our attention on “The Passion of the Christ,” some of our neighbors have become mighty passionate about Judaism. New forms of Jewish expression are attracting Americans in droves. As they say in Hollywood, “They like us! They really like us!” Maybe Krusty’s bar mitzvah can mark a turning point for us, too. n Rabbi Joshua Hammerman is spiritual leader of Temple Beth El in Stamford, Conn., and author of “thelordismyshepherd.com: Seeking God in Cyberspace.” To contact him or sign up for his weekly “Shabbat-O-Gram,” go to rabbi@tbe.org.

God's Portal (Jewish Week)