Resident Biden’s Prostate Cancer - and My Own (RNS)

 

(RNS) — The news of President Biden’s prostate cancer diagnosis hit me hard. Last December, I discovered I have a particularly aggressive strain of prostate cancer — only slightly less aggressive and slightly less advanced than Biden’s. Several weeks ago, I had surgery for the removal of the diseased gland and surrounding tissue. I am still recovering, but the prognosis is good.

Not being a former president, I had to wait a few agonizing weeks for the biopsy that showed aggressive cancer and tests that would let me know if the cancer had metastasized. A full body “PET” scan indicated the cancer, while present outside the prostate, had not spread to lymph nodes or bones, increasing my odds considerably of living a full life and, as urologists like to say, “dying of something else.”

I’d be delighted to die of “something else,” but the main thing is that it be “some time else.” Preferably, let “something else” be a malady that hasn’t been discovered yet, say, “Moses-Nebo Disease,” which only infects people over 120 who have a thing for hitting rocks and smashing tablets.

I don’t mean to make light of my diagnosis. Admittedly, though, it’s hard to think of a gland that generates more giggles than the prostate — especially how it’s examined. As one comic remarked, “Now I know what it feels like to be a Muppet.” Gallows humor is a valued coping mechanism for Jews — and I recommend it highly to lighten the burden of existential dread.  

To be honest, I’ve spent so much of my life visiting hospitals and cemeteries that perhaps I’ve become desensitized to the kind of life-and-death challenge I’m now confronting.

Or, to put it more positively, I’ve gained perspective, and maybe some hope, from seeing illness and death as an integral part of being fully alive.

But suffice to say, I’ve had my down moments during this journey, particularly when the disquieting biopsy results were placed in my patient portal with no explanation, leaving me to Google my way into a frenzy, assuming the worst. 

And after the surgery, dealing with a catheter for 10 days was not fun.

Although prostate is among the most treatable cancers, as long as it is contained, it’s still cancer, and there are many unknowns. Even if the surgeon gets it all, as mine claims he did, it could well return. That remains a distinct possibility for me, so I hesitate to call myself a “survivor,” though I technically am.

A beloved congregant who eventually succumbed to lung cancer wrote this after he passed a major milestone of 11 years following his original diagnosis:

One thing you accept as a cancer survivor is the realization you can never return to life as it was before the cancer diagnosis. Now, I am Richard with lung cancer. I can never go back to being just Richard again. But being a cancer survivor doesn’t have to define my life. I choose to live a little each day than die a little each day. In the book, Seabiscuit, Laura Hillenbrand wrote, “You do not throw a whole lifetime away because it is banged up a bit.” 

I do feel grateful to have enjoyed a relatively healthy life to this point, know that I am very fortunate to have caught the cancer in time (hopefully) and am happy to have had very few symptoms and little discomfort thus far.

I’m going public with my diagnosis in part because I feel an obligation to remind men to have regular screenings to detect this disease early on.

I also want to use this space to refocus our attention on President Biden’s recovery and not be distracted by peripheral political issues. It’s really time to put down the cudgels and leave the man alone.

While my life’s work has perhaps desensitized me to the overwhelming presence of mortality, paradoxically it has also brought home on a daily basis the need to make every breath, every moment of life, count. And I’ve come to realize just how numb we’ve all become to the fragility of our mortal existence.

Did 7,010,681 COVID deaths worldwide really shock us? Have we become anesthetized to the pain and the beauty, the bitter and the sweet? Have we simply forgotten how precious life is?

When I awoke from my surgery, I turned my attention to two blessings from the daily morning liturgy — passages from the same page of the Talmud (Berachot 60b) that have never been more relevant for me.

The first thanks the Source of Life for renewing my life’s breath, my “neshama.” 

In Jewish mystical literature, God can be perceived as the life force embodied in every breath. God also breathes life into us just as the blower shapes glass — that divine breath is called “neshama.” That breath then takes a more human form in our bodies, invigorating us with life.

The breath we then exhale, projecting it back out into the world, is called “nefesh.” The give and take of God’s breath and our own, neshama and nefesh, bespeak a very dynamic way of being human.

For we really aren’t human beings. We are human becomings. We are constantly evolving, growing and connecting to everything around us. There’s a little bit of each of us in that plankton and in that tree, and certainly in one another, and in every human being on this planet.

While in surgery, I had a tube down my throat and my breathing was regulated by human beings. But at the moment I came to, this primal human act became, once again, a partnership between myself and God. In saying this prayer, I reacquired control over my humanity.

The other blessing I recited when I awoke focuses not on the soul, but the body, marveling specifically at the miracle of our internal plumbing, with all its exquisite complexity. The Talmud states:

Upon exiting (the bathroom upon awakening), one says:
Blessed …Who formed man in wisdom,
and created many orifices and cavities.
It is revealed and known before the throne of Your glory
that were one of them to be ruptured or blocked, it would be impossible to survive and stand before You.

My innards have taken a hit and have needed some assistance, divine and human, in order to function, but the process of healing is a miracle.

Rabbi Joshua Hammerman. (Courtesy photo)

To President Biden I say, let the healing begin!

(Rabbi Joshua Hammerman is the author of “Mensch-Marks: Life Lessons of a Human Rabbi” and “Embracing Auschwitz: Forging a Vibrant, Life-Affirming Judaism That Takes the Holocaust Seriously.” See more of his writing at his Substack page, “In This Moment.” The views expressed in this commentary do not necessarily reflect those of RNS.)

The best rabbi I can be now is a journalist RNS

The best rabbi I can be now is a journalist

Right now, as Jeremiah reminds us, the world needs truth tellers far more than a big hug.

Justice and Love mugs, from the Martin Luther King Jr. Center in Atlanta. (Photo by Rabbi Joshua Hammerman)

July 11, 2024

By Joshua Hammerman

(RNS) — As a rabbi/journalist, I am part of two complementary but ultimately incompatible professions. Where one speaks from a place of love and compassion, the other prioritizes the relentless pursuit of justice and truth.

For the first 40 years of my rabbinic career, I leveraged my journalistic training primarily toward rabbinic ends, as an advocate for Torah, Israel and spiritual matters. Despite that, I worked hard not to compromise journalistic integrity. But still, it was rabbi first, and journalist second. Like the medieval kabbalists, who saw justice and love as divine forces forging a precarious balance in the universe — but with love just a little stronger — my messages consciously leaned in the direction of compassion, comfort and hope.

But last week I became rabbi emeritus, and everything changed. Now, released from my pulpit responsibilities, I get to flip that script.

Over the past few years, the one-two-three punch of COVID-19, Jan. 6 and Oct. 7 forced me to write differently, seeking words to convey greater consolation rather than sharper truth. Clergy everywhere were forced to make hard choices. While the country was fighting sedition, we were called upon to provide sedation. Democracy under attack? Time for a group hug. Corpses piling up at the local hospital? Let me shift my virtual Zoom background to a sunset-in-Cancun. 

Even before COVID-19, clergy relentlessly strove to dull their pain and others’. There was Charlottesville and then the Tree of Life massacre in Pittsburgh, which occurred a day after my mother’s passing, a series of gut punches that left me shaken, wondering what purpose I was serving. At a loss for words, I found myself echoing the banalities of other lost rabbis, some of whom spoke with greater authority and even with soaring poetry, but I saw in their formulaic talking points hints that they too were lost. We all played the role we felt we were assigned — to keep things together. We kept on “teaching to the test,” preaching what everyone expected us to preach — all as we were being taunted by the right and betrayed by the left. 

A million Americans died of COVID. Say that again. I get paid for words — what words can address that reality? I was too spiritually fatigued to find them, so I fell back on scripted words of comfort, seasoned by a dollop of denial.

Seven million human beings have died of this plague — a million more than the Holocaust. But let’s move on.

Speaking of the Holocaust, 80 years after Auschwitz, we prayed the last of the survivors would be able to pass from this earth in peace and dignity, and an era of intense grieving would give way to a less intense but ineradicable memory. But suddenly, on Oct. 7, we all became instant witnesses to a pogrom so horrific, so immediate, so televised, so in-our-face as to leave an indelible mark on our souls and revive our darkest nightmares, thereby resetting the clock of Jewish suffering to here and now.

My whole career has been an orderly progression from darkness to light, from Shoah to rebirth. I narrated that heroic journey. I helped mythologize it. That’s what I did, in essay after essay, sermon after sermon, column after column, class after class. I got to scribe all the achievements of an unparalleled age in Jewish history, from June 6, 1967, to now, as a believer, an activist, a triumphant witness, a breathing stanza of “Hatikvah.”

Then it all came crashing down in a single day.

Still, I rabbi-wrote, ceaselessly, day after day, as best I could, seeking to forge order out of the chaos. The situation cried for comfort. My congregants begged for it, and that’s what I gave them. After Oct. 7, I soothed their souls.

People appreciated it, but I knew I was, in the words of Jeremiah 8:11, “Crying ‘Peace! Peace!’ where there is no peace.” I was conjuring hope where there was very little. I was living in a world that no longer existed, an illusory tableau where we could blithely hop into kayaks and row down the Jordan from now-abandoned northern kibbutzim, dance horas in the Gaza Envelope or walk unselfconsciously down Broadway near Columbia wearing a yarmulke.

Sometimes I could bring comfort, sometimes not. Sometimes I could inspire activism. Sometimes not. Sometimes I could help people empathize with Israelis, Palestinians or Black Lives or immigrants or trans folks. Sometimes, I could even help them sense the divine as we waded through each thousand-year rainstorm relentlessly pounding us, one after another, week after week, with increasing ferocity.

Sometimes, when I was most inspired, I could help people to love one another more. To love the stranger, to love their neighbor, to love themselves. But sometimes, the price we pray for love is truth. I always tried to balance the two in my messages; but as a rabbi, I needed, like the kabbalists, to have a bias toward love.

My reservoir of love has not run dry. Far from it. But it’s become too daunting for me to continue to be an apologist, to split hairs between what is genocide and what is not, or ethnic cleansing, or antisemitism, or Judaism or God. I don’t know how many years I have left, but I can’t spend them all making everyone else feel better — even when they shouldn’t.

I can’t sugarcoat the evils of antisemitism and hate, the immediate dangers of rising fascism in America and Kahanism in Israel, the negation of science, the degradation of women and the Othering of refugees, simply for the sake of keeping congregants soothed. I can’t say “This too shall pass,” when in my ear Jeremiah is calling out, “‘Pass? Pass? There is no ‘Pass.’”

And that’s why it is time for me to transition to journalist-first. The rabbi will still be there but receding to the background a bit. You may not even notice. I won’t take it off my stationery letterhead. It’s a big part of who I am. But so is the truth teller. 

From here on, I speak for no one and nothing but the truth, as I see it. Not for God, not for Torah, nor for any political party.

At a time when the world is crashing, and with no indication that it’s going to get better anytime soon, right now the world needs truth tellers far more than it needs a big hug. I can’t be saddled with the role of priest-comforter when I need to be a prophet echoing the cry of my rebbe-of-truth, Jeremiah.

The best rabbi I can be right now is a journalist.

(Rabbi Joshua Hammerman is the author of “Mensch-Marks: Life Lessons of a Human Rabbi” and “Embracing Auschwitz: Forging a Vibrant, Life-Affirming Judaism That Takes the Holocaust Seriously.” See more of his writing at his Substack page, “In This Moment.” The views expressed in this commentary do not necessarily reflect those of Religion News Service.)

In This Moment: 110 Million Neighbors Looking for a Home; The "Great Replacement," Replacing Charlottesville with... Khan Younis?

 

In This Moment This Friday at services, join us as we welcome guests from Building One Community. Click here for more details about our guest speaker, Ivonne Zucco of B1C Born in tragedy, Refugee Shabbat honors our 110 million neighbors looking for a home February 1, 2024 By Joshua Hammerman (RNS) — This weekend (Feb. 2-4), as for the past six years, the immigrant aid organization HIAS and participating synagogues will observe Refugee Shabbat to reaffirm the Jewish value of welcoming and protecting the stranger. The event was born with a tinge of tragedy: The murderer who showed up to kill 11 Jews at the Tree of Life synagogue in Pittsburgh was fixated on HIAS (founded as the Hebrew Immigrant Aid Society) and the inaugural Refugee Shabbat, in 2018. This is all the more reason for us to embrace it. And this is also the right time to place the earth’s millions of wanderers at the top of our agenda. As a 2016 Pew analysis shows, since 2005 the world has witnessed an exponential rise in refugees, asylum-seekers and those internally displaced.  In the years since Pew did that analysis, the number of displaced people has increased even more dramatically, to upward of 110 million people as of June 2023, or more than 1.2% of the world’s population, according to the U.N. Refugee Agency. As the chart below shows, there was an enormous spike in 2022, which doesn’t even take into account the massive internal displacement in Israel and Gaza since Oct. 7. As we look around today, we see so many wandering far from home — those flocking to the United States’ southern border in record numbers; war refugees from Ukraine; people streaming from Venezuela, Myanmar, Sudan, Afghanistan and Syria. Hundreds of millions are climate refugees, from Bangladesh to California. According to U.S. Census Bureau data, 3.2 million U.S. adults were displaced or evacuated due to natural disasters in 2022, of whom more than 500,000 had not returned by the beginning of 2023. And let’s not forget those in America who are housing-insecure for financial reasons, a number that has been on the rise since 2017. It’s not just in California or big cities. Can this disturbing trend now be reversed? Perhaps it can, if these staggering numbers can help us to see this as a shared crisis, truly global and universal. Leaving home is a quintessential human experience. Even those currently at war with one another can relate, on some level, to those exhausted, bleary-eyed faces on the other side of the fence. Recently, I’ve been packing up my home of 30 years, in preparation for my retirement. I’m making no comparison between my situation and those of refugees and asylum-seekers. I am not suffering, not in the least. But, living in a parsonage I do not own, I have to move, with all the associated feelings of displacement and disorientation, where down is up, here is there and things feel out of whack. Each decision becomes an existential dilemma. Do I save or discard my fourth-grade math homework? What about that grainy photo of my great-grandparents that my mother left when she died? And when I get to where I am going, will it feel like home?  One can plausibly argue that the yearning for home is the strongest human impulse, an instinctive one. Whatever its basis, the restoration of “at-homeness” is a return to a sense of wholeness and balance. It is heartbreaking to see images of destroyed and uprooted communities in Israel and Gaza: children ripped from their swings and seesaws, Jews from their synagogues and Muslims from their mosques, farmers from their greenhouses, and people from houses where they had lived for generations. For Israelis and Palestinians alike, all the politics, all the fighting, all the turmoil comes back to one simple wish — to return home and be safe there, wherever home may be. Like many refugees from that region, I carry in my pocket every day the key from my childhood home that my parents sold 40 years ago. Let me state clearly that the brutality of the Hamas pogrom of Oct. 7 stands alone in its cruelty. But the experience of displacement is a fate that people on all sides of this conflict now share. From that shared suffering might possibly arise some sympathy and goodwill. The Book of Psalms is a remarkable collection of poems encompassing the full spectrum of life experience. Psalm 137 offers a GPS for dealing with displacement. It begins, “By the rivers of Babylon, there we sat down, we also wept, when we remembered Zion.” This Psalm takes us on a journey from exile to restoration, from homelessness to the promise of return. It begins by those rivers, where tormentors forced the Jews to sing songs of their home. But singing those songs was just what they needed. For in doing so, they learned how to sing the songs of God on alien soil. It’s not easy to do, but they did it. They set up entirely new institutions so that they would not forget Jerusalem. They called them synagogues. They set up Hebrew schools. They wrote down from memory all the stories and laws that had sustained them back home, all those things they took for granted all those centuries. They painted verbal pictures of what life was like back there in Jerusalem, so their children would not forget. They collected all these stories and laws and customs into a single scroll, which they called the Torah. And these people came to be known by an entirely new name — not Israelites but Jews. And that Torah they wrote would begin with the Hebrew letter bet, the letter that means and physically depicts “home.” All this happened by the rivers of Babylon. In the face of utter homelessness, they faced Jerusalem and held it up above their highest joy. Disregarding their sorry lot and defying their tormentors, they forged a new destiny. And then, the enemy was destroyed, and redemption was at hand. Psalm 137 is truly a snapshot of a single moment of triumph in Jewish history. The triumph of memory. This psalm marks the moment when the home team learned how to win on the road. Our planet is filled with people on the move. We have to learn how to survive on the go and then to help our neighbors survive — because our flooded shorelines, parched fields and heightened regional tensions over water and food supplies are only going to get worse.  And we have to understand that despite our massive differences, all of us share an innate longing for home.  To read and share this article on the R.N.S. site, click here. The "Great Replacement," Replacing Charlottesville with... Khan Younis? At least someone in the Israeli government is doing some serious thinking about "the day after" the fighting in Gaza ends. Unfortunately, it's the right wing radicals, and they want to prove all the "Great Replacement Theory" conspiracists correct - not in Charlottesville, however, but in Khan Younis. This week, a group of right wing radicals got together in Jerusalem to discuss things like ethnic cleansing of Palestinians and resettling Jews into the godforsaken strip of land that no one has wanted to control since Napoleon.  This is part of the far right's master plan that also includes the "encouragement" of Palestinian emigration from the West Bank, which President Biden took a huge swipe at today. It looks some Jews want to replace other people after all. If this sounds shocking, giving all the pain this antisemitic - and false - theory has caused Jews over here, including acts of domestic terror and murder, then that explains why we should be so shocked that the Prime Minister of Israel hasn't shut down all talk of Gaza resettling and "encouraging" emigration. Thank God we have President Biden to stand up for Jewish values. This plan is equal parts reckless and ridiculous. But let me address the part that I'm most qualified to address: Gaza is not part of the Holy Land. It is primarily considered as being OUTSIDE of the land promised to our ancestors. Even if may have been tossed around in conquest conversations, it was never conquered. The proof that i was considered outside the territory is the rabbis allowed crops to be cultivated there during the Sabbatical years, when that was not allowed in the Land of Israel. Even if you believe that the West Bank cannot be relinquished because it is part of the ancient land of Israel (and I believe that it can be under certain conditions, because for God, human lives and peace are holier than land) - but even if you do feel that Hebron and Shechem are sacrosanct, when it comes to Gaza, the history is completely different. It is not part of the traditional land of Israel. it can't be gerrymandered in. Here are some excerpts from a JTA explainer on the topic, which came out at the time of Ariel Sharon's controversial disengagement in 2005. Sharon's move was a security mistake in retrospect, because Hamas took over a year later and we see what happened, but it was justifiable at the time. Gaza was an unnecessary burden and never part of the plan, even for those pulling for a "Greater Israel." IDF soldiers were put at risk to guard a tiny minority of settlers living among 1.3 million Palestinians. And Sharon's gambit could have worked out differently if the Prime Minister for the better part of the two decades after his sudden demise - Netanyahu - didn't give Hamas free rein to freely rain missiles on Israel. Here are excerpts from the backgrounder: Samson is the only biblical Israelite noted for having set foot there. In the 17th century the false messiah Shabbatai Zevi gave the area a bad name when he launched his movement from its shores. During biblical times, Gaza was part of the land promised to the Jews by God but never part of the land actually conquered and inhabited by them, said Nili Wazana, a lecturer on Bible studies and the history of the Jewish people at Hebrew University. Wazana, who is currently writing a book on the borders of the biblical Land of Israel, said there are contradictory references to Gaza in the Bible. One passage in Judges — often cited by Jewish settlers and their supporters — says the tribe of Judah took control of the area. But other biblical stories contradict this — a pattern typical of the Bible, she said. ...The one period when Jews appeared to have sovereignty over Gaza was during the time of Hasmonean rule, when the Jewish King Yochanan — whose brother was Judah the Maccabee — captured the area in 145 C.E. Haggai Huberman — who has written extensively on the history of Jewish settlement in Gaza over the centuries and is writing a history of the Jews in Gush Katif — maintains that the Jews who lived there always considered themselves residents of the Land of Israel. He says that Jews have lived on and off in Gaza since the time of Roman rule, their settlement following a pattern of expulsion during times of war and conquest and return during more peaceful periods. The remains of an ancient synagogue found in Gaza date to around 508 C.E. Its mosaic floor, unearthed by archeologists, is now displayed in the Israel Museum in Jerusalem. There reportedly was a large Jewish community living in the area when the Muslims invaded in the seventh century. The Jews were noted for their skills as farmers and for making wine in their vast vineyards. After the Spanish Inquisition in 1492, some Spanish and Portuguese Jews fled to Gaza. They abandoned the area when Napoleon’s army marched through but later returned in the early 1800s. When the first wave of Zionist settlers arrived in the region at the end of the 19th century, a group of 50 families moved to Gaza City. According to Huberman, they established good relations with local Arabs. The settlers stayed until they were expelled in 1914 — along with Gaza’s entire Arab population — by the Ottoman Turks during World War I. The Jews returned in 1920. But tensions simmered with Arab and Jewish nationalisms on the rise, and the relations with local Arabs began to sour, Huberman said. The major Jewish presence in Gaza on the eve of Israel’s War of Independence in 1948 was a kibbutz called Kfar Darom, set up in 1946. It was evacuated during the war and was among the first places to be resettled by Jews after 1967. Initially inhabited by Israeli soldiers from the Nahal brigade, it soon evolved into one of several civilian settlements established in the 1970s as the settler movement gained strength. Wazana said present-day debates over territory mirror those in the Bible. “Descriptions of borders reflect different ideologies even back then,” she said. “People have put words in the mouth of God even in biblical times. If you have an ideology, you will find the right words to support it.” Some who argue that Gaza was not part of the biblical Land of Israel point to the fact that Orthodox Jews are allowed to consume produce grown in the Gaza Strip during shmita — the seventh, or sabbatical, year when fruits and vegetables are not to be cultivated in the Land of Israel, according to Jewish law. But Kamietsky said it is permitted to grow produce in the Gaza Strip because even though it is every bit “as holy” as the rest of the Land of Israel, it was not an area settled during the Second Temple period, when Jews returned from exile in Babylon. The logic of that last line is somewhat circular. If Jews didn't choose to live there during the Second Temple period, the last time Jews had sovereignty over the region, how could it be considered so holy? If the most famous Jewish residents of the strip were Samson, who died there and "brought the house down," and Shabbtai Tzvi, a 17th century heretic, along with Napoleon, this is hardly an all-star lineup. The great Jewish heroes have always lived on the outskirts of Gaza, in places like Yad Mordechai in 1948 and now, all those towns and kibbutzim attacked on Oct. 7. Resettling Gaza makes no sense, unless your goal is to destroy all chances for coexistence and eventually a little bit of calm, if not peace. If Ben Gvir and his cronies have his way, any chance for a positive outcome, like Napoleon, will be "blown-apart." To conclude, I leave you with these 18 biblical verses mentioning Gaza. This is all of them. Not exactly Jerusalem. It is a cursed land. Judge for yourself whether you would be rushing back in to settle that land like Ben Gvir. The only replacement we should be supporting is the replacement of him, from the government. Genesis 10:19 - Gaza is within the Canaanite border Friday's Front Pages Jerusalem Post Ha'aretz Yediot Ahronot Sunrise in Nepal, photo taken by me on New Year's Day, 2018 Is Groundhog Day a Jewish Holiday? For those who might be wondering if there is a Jewish connection to Groundhog Day...but of course. There's a Jewish connection to everything! Not that we are afraid to see our shadows -- I'm thinking of the other "Groundhog Day." The movie.  The Jewish response to Groundhog Day can be seen in a single verse from the prayer book, one recited each morning just before the Sh'ma, in the Yotzer (Creation) section of the service: "Ha-mechadesh b'tuvo b'chol yom tamid ma'ase b'reisheet." In the midst of thanking God for the gift of light, we also express gratitude to the One who "renews each day completely the work of Creation."  What is that saying? Not that we awaken each day to the same old nightmare, as Bill Murray did in the movie and we've done for the past four Covid years. How many times did you wake up and say, "Is this still happening?" (I did just this week - so much Covid out there again.) Jewish tradition takes precisely the opposite approach. Every day presents us with a fresh start, as if all of Creation is being renewed along with us. With that fresh start comes a second chance, and a third chance too. We can keep trying until we get it right. And if we get it wrong again, as invariably we will, well, there's always tomorrow. The alarm rings and we make a go of it once again,  A Jewish groundhog might indeed return to the hole if it sees a shadow. But it will be right back out there the next day, hoping the world will be a little bit better. And, as the Israeli song states, "V'im lo machar az machartayim," "And if not tomorrow, then the day after tomorrow." Hebrew song "Machar" - "Tomorrow" Harold Ramis, director of the film "Groundhog Day" (he also had a bit part), once compared his film to the Torah...sort of. He said, “One reason Jews respond to the idea is that the Torah is read every year — you start at the same place on the same day.” he said. “The Torah doesn’t change, but every year we read it we are different. Our lives have changed … and you find new meaning in it as we change.” He laughed. “I’m not comparing ‘Groundhog Day’ to the Torah ... but there’s something in it that allows people every time they see it to reconsider where they are in life and question their own habitual behaviors.” So Hag Samayach! And let's hope the groundhog sticks around for a while, to see the sun rise yet again, dawning on a new day. Recommended Reading This week's portion of Yitro is one of three portions named for someone who was not a member of the Tribe. Yitro features the Ten Commandments.  Click to see a comparative look at how the Ten Commandments are interpreted by major world religions. And click here to see a packet on the tenth commandment, the impossible one, the only one that prohibits an emotion, the one about coveting. A new Israeli ad makes Gaza look like a Mediterranean paradise — what’s the goal? (Forward) Biden said set to make push for demilitarized Palestinian state as part of new doctrine. See also A Biden Doctrine for the Middle East Is Forming. And It’s Big. (NYT - Friedman) 20 Black Jews You Should Know (MJL) Temple Beth El 350 Roxbury Road Stamford, Connecticut 06902 203-322-6901 | www.tbe.org    A Conservative, Inclusive, Spiritual Community

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