The Jewish Week, May 24, 2002
I am in a very precarious position at the moment. You see, I am a life-long Boston Red Sox fan living in Cablevision-land who happens to have access to something extremely valuable: Yankees games on the YES network. Ironically, I acquired a satellite dish a few years ago specifically to enable my children to grow up with their Sox on. DirecTV was my only hedge against their assimilation into Yankeedom. And it has worked. Now my kids have the pleasure of suffering both from an upsurge of global anti-Semitism and from not having won the World Series since 1918.
For me, this is a classic win-win. If the Yankees lose, the Sox gain ground. If the Yankees win, their die-hard supporters suffer from not being able to watch them.
But I've come to realize that it's not just Yankee fans who have been trying desperately to get to YES recently. It's been a very depressing year for all of us, a year when affirmation has seemed a distant dream.
Golda Meir once said: "Pessimism is a luxury a Jew cannot allow himself." We need, so desperately, to get to the kind of "Yes" that comes from deep within the soul, one that can overcome all the little things that get in the way, and the big things too, a "Yes" embedded in profound faith; a "Yes" that is embodied by the liturgical response "Amen."
"Amen" appears 30 times in the Bible, mostly in formulaic endorsements of blessings, curses and oaths. In our liturgy, the word almost always comes as a response to hearing a blessing recited. The custom of responding with "Amen" developed centuries before Gutenberg, when only the prayer leader had the written words in front of him, so the rest of the congregation had one chance only to state, unequivocally, that it endorsed every word spoken, by saying "Amen."
In the great synagogue of Alexandria, Egypt, two thousand years ago, the hall was so spacious that the people in the back couldn't hear the prayers being recited. So when a blessing was finished, the cantor would wave a huge flag and the people in the cheap seats would know that it was time to say, "Amen."
Jewish legend stresses the great religious value of responding Amen, saying it prolongs life and promotes forgiveness from sin. Even God nods "Amen" to the blessings offered up by mortals. "Whoever says Amen with all his strength," said the rabbis, "to that person the Gates of Paradise will be opened." That's where we need to get to - an "Amen" that forces open the Gates of Paradise.
The Jews of Alexandria couldn't hear all the words, but they knew what they were signing on to. So when they heard the Kiddush on Shabbat, they knew that this prayer is a testimony, that the Shabbat itself is a testimony to Creation and to a miraculous liberation from a place called Mitzrayim. When we say "Amen" to the Kiddush, we are affirming that there is a direction to history, a foundation for morality and a purpose for Jewish peoplehood. We are saying that miracles do happen if we work in partnership with God. We are signing on to all those things, we are sealing the deal, and we're even toasting the agreement.
We are getting to "Yes."
By saying "Amen" we are suspending some of our doubts and laying our cynicism and fatalism aside in order to be full participants in the cosmic experiment known as the Jewish people. We are taking a leap of faith. Every "Amen" is one more "Yes" to life that can counteract all the negativity that we hear out there. It's a "Yes" to being human, a "Yes" to cherishing every moment, every encounter, every morsel that we eat; it is a "Yes" to seeing all of life as a blessing. When we adopt this "Amen" mentality, we can begin to turn away from all that holds us down and really enjoy our few, fleeting days of life.
And now, the cry of our generation, our most sacred obligation of the moment, is for each of us to stand up unabashedly and say "Yes" in solidarity with Israel and against terror. We owe it to America. We owe it to Israel, to ourselves and our children, to the world.
But we have a problem. Judaism is a glass-half-full religion. Unfortunately, however, most Jews are glass-half-empty people, weighed down by our glass-mostly-empty recent history. Take a look at a recent American Jewish Committee survey of American Jews. Only 9 percent of those surveyed think anti-Semitism will decline over the next five years. OK, given how things are in the world right now, that's understandable. But look at this: fully forty percent actually disagreed with the statement, "Virtually all positions of influence in the United States are open to Jews." This survey was conducted exactly one year after an identifiably Jewish individual nearly became Vice President. How soon we forget! And this pessimism appears at a time when, according to the Wall Street Journal, high-ranking colleges are fighting to recruit more Jewish students to their campuses.
Abba Eban called us the people who could "never take "yes" for an answer." The Torah and the Jewish people seem to be the worst mismatch since, well, the Red Sox and the Yankees. Our tradition has provided us with an eternal hook-up to the YES network, yet far too few have subscribed.
We get another chance to do that now. As we prepare once again to ascend Sinai on Shavuot, we can't allow ourselves to wallow in pessimism and self-pity. Heck, even the Red Sox have a shot at winning it all this year. If they can do it, surely anything is possible. Neither Cablevision nor Arafat should keep any of us from getting to YES this year. As the rooters of that other New York team used to say, "You Gotta Believe."
Sunday, March 30, 2008
Full Circle, Halfway Home
The Jewish Week, November 1, 2002
I was walking on the Upper West Side just before Rosh Hashanah, reflecting on the fast-approaching midpoint of my career -- twenty years out of rabbinical school twenty years to retirement -- when I called to check my voice mail back in Stamford. There was a message from an old friend, the storyteller Peninnah Schram. So here I was, likely standing within shouting distance of Peninnah’s home, retrieving a message that she had called into my office 40 miles away.
Just as her phone message had come full circle, so had everything else: When I arrived in Stamford a decade and a half ago, I invited Peninnah to my congregation’s first weekend retreat. And these many years later, I can still recall listening to her magical tales through that lazy Shabbat afternoon, all the way to Havdalah.
So I called her back and Peninnah had an unusual request. Her son Mordechai had just taken on his first cantorial position and that day had performed his first funeral, a particularly difficult one. She wanted to lend him some support and asked if I might mail her a copy of an article called “A Young Rabbi” that I had written eons ago, shortly after I did my first funeral. Peninnah had shared it with friends over the years and hoped it might help Mordechai too. Prompted by this call out of the blue from an old friend, I was compelled to re-read the piece for the first time in years, and to re-discover my own words and feelings across a bridge spanning half a career.
“It is sad that so many Jewish communities seem to insist that their rabbis shed their youthful innocence as quickly as possible, not understanding that, once that innocence is lost, the childlike sense of wonder and basic human empathy so essential to the job are also left behind…Perhaps early career burnout would be less of a problem among rabbis – and other professionals – if they didn’t feel compelled to spend the first half of their careers trying to look older and the second half striving to regain the vitality of lost youth.”
I sent the article off to Peninnah, who had been by my side at the dawn of my career in Stamford, whose father, like mine, was a cantor; to give to her son, who is at the dawn of his career in New York and who is a cantor, in fact, on the Upper West Side, just a stone’s throw from where I happened to be when I was retrieving his mother’s message, and who in fact now occupies the pulpit of the West End Synagogue, which happened to have been vacated by the fabulous new cantor of my own congregation, Deborah Jacobson, who is now sparking a renaissance here, at the dawn of the Stamford portion of her career.
Got all that down?
Suddenly, this all was beginning to sound like a Peninnah Schram story, one of those heartwarming folk tales of simpler times, where everything seems to come full circle and, in the end, all the loose strands get neatly tied into a happily-ever-after bow.
For mid-career rabbis, things are typically much more complicated.
Much has been made recently of the difficulties of rabbinic life, most notably in the book, “The New Rabbi,” where journalist Stephen Fried highlights these complexities in discussing a rabbinic search process at a distinguished Philadelphia congregation. Beneath the book’s penetrating analysis and on-the-mark humor lurks a dark, unavoidable subtext: the American rabbinate is facing a crisis of morale matched only by the crisis of vision confronting many congregations. This congregation fails in its search because it has no idea where it wants to go. Consequently, the rabbi they are looking for isn’t so much a human being as a shredded fruit salad of contradictory skills and inflated expectations. There is no “happily ever after” in this searing expose.
A telling scene in the book has the author eavesdropping on an older couple conversing about their rabbis in the row behind him at a Shabbat service.
“I don’t like (Rabbi X).” “He’s too…well, something…”
“I like (Rabbi Y),” “He’s nice, friendly.”
“I don’t like him either. He’s too friendly. I don’t want a rabbi who’s friendly.”
That brief snippet points out the ludicrous state of affairs. Rabbis are expected to be: mature yet youthful, serious yet funny, principled yet conciliatory, sophisticated yet homespun, friendly yet firm, 24/7. It is not without reason that Fried’s research led him to the conclusion that the rabbinate (and not the American presidency) is the toughest job in the world. And no wonder, as Rabbi David Wolpe says in Fried’s book, “Vulnerable people in the rabbinate have a tough time.” The more human you are, the more exposed, the less chance you have of making it as a rabbi. If that is true, American Judaism is headed for disaster.
Until we turn to a new model of spiritual leadership, one that champions the idea of the rabbi as a vulnerable, striving-yet-imperfect human being, rabbis and congregations will continue to burn out prematurely. Peninnah’s request reminded me that life’s trajectory can be a thrilling ride, if we greet each day with fresh eyes. In Deuteronomy 26:16, it says, “The Lord your God commands you this day to observe these laws and rules, and to observe them faithfully…” Rashi asks why it says “this day?” Why not every day? The commentator’s response: Every day, every time one fulfills a mitzvah, it should feel as if it is the first.
In several weeks my congregants and I will host Peninnah Schram once again, completing yet another circle, at what has now become our annual Shabbaton. And I’ll echo the prayers of Rabbi Nachman of Bratzlav:
“Teach me, Dear God, to make a fresh start; to break yesterday’s patterns; to stop telling myself I can’t – when I can; I’m not – when I am; and I’m stuck – when I’m eminently free.”
I was walking on the Upper West Side just before Rosh Hashanah, reflecting on the fast-approaching midpoint of my career -- twenty years out of rabbinical school twenty years to retirement -- when I called to check my voice mail back in Stamford. There was a message from an old friend, the storyteller Peninnah Schram. So here I was, likely standing within shouting distance of Peninnah’s home, retrieving a message that she had called into my office 40 miles away.
Just as her phone message had come full circle, so had everything else: When I arrived in Stamford a decade and a half ago, I invited Peninnah to my congregation’s first weekend retreat. And these many years later, I can still recall listening to her magical tales through that lazy Shabbat afternoon, all the way to Havdalah.
So I called her back and Peninnah had an unusual request. Her son Mordechai had just taken on his first cantorial position and that day had performed his first funeral, a particularly difficult one. She wanted to lend him some support and asked if I might mail her a copy of an article called “A Young Rabbi” that I had written eons ago, shortly after I did my first funeral. Peninnah had shared it with friends over the years and hoped it might help Mordechai too. Prompted by this call out of the blue from an old friend, I was compelled to re-read the piece for the first time in years, and to re-discover my own words and feelings across a bridge spanning half a career.
“It is sad that so many Jewish communities seem to insist that their rabbis shed their youthful innocence as quickly as possible, not understanding that, once that innocence is lost, the childlike sense of wonder and basic human empathy so essential to the job are also left behind…Perhaps early career burnout would be less of a problem among rabbis – and other professionals – if they didn’t feel compelled to spend the first half of their careers trying to look older and the second half striving to regain the vitality of lost youth.”
I sent the article off to Peninnah, who had been by my side at the dawn of my career in Stamford, whose father, like mine, was a cantor; to give to her son, who is at the dawn of his career in New York and who is a cantor, in fact, on the Upper West Side, just a stone’s throw from where I happened to be when I was retrieving his mother’s message, and who in fact now occupies the pulpit of the West End Synagogue, which happened to have been vacated by the fabulous new cantor of my own congregation, Deborah Jacobson, who is now sparking a renaissance here, at the dawn of the Stamford portion of her career.
Got all that down?
Suddenly, this all was beginning to sound like a Peninnah Schram story, one of those heartwarming folk tales of simpler times, where everything seems to come full circle and, in the end, all the loose strands get neatly tied into a happily-ever-after bow.
For mid-career rabbis, things are typically much more complicated.
Much has been made recently of the difficulties of rabbinic life, most notably in the book, “The New Rabbi,” where journalist Stephen Fried highlights these complexities in discussing a rabbinic search process at a distinguished Philadelphia congregation. Beneath the book’s penetrating analysis and on-the-mark humor lurks a dark, unavoidable subtext: the American rabbinate is facing a crisis of morale matched only by the crisis of vision confronting many congregations. This congregation fails in its search because it has no idea where it wants to go. Consequently, the rabbi they are looking for isn’t so much a human being as a shredded fruit salad of contradictory skills and inflated expectations. There is no “happily ever after” in this searing expose.
A telling scene in the book has the author eavesdropping on an older couple conversing about their rabbis in the row behind him at a Shabbat service.
“I don’t like (Rabbi X).” “He’s too…well, something…”
“I like (Rabbi Y),” “He’s nice, friendly.”
“I don’t like him either. He’s too friendly. I don’t want a rabbi who’s friendly.”
That brief snippet points out the ludicrous state of affairs. Rabbis are expected to be: mature yet youthful, serious yet funny, principled yet conciliatory, sophisticated yet homespun, friendly yet firm, 24/7. It is not without reason that Fried’s research led him to the conclusion that the rabbinate (and not the American presidency) is the toughest job in the world. And no wonder, as Rabbi David Wolpe says in Fried’s book, “Vulnerable people in the rabbinate have a tough time.” The more human you are, the more exposed, the less chance you have of making it as a rabbi. If that is true, American Judaism is headed for disaster.
Until we turn to a new model of spiritual leadership, one that champions the idea of the rabbi as a vulnerable, striving-yet-imperfect human being, rabbis and congregations will continue to burn out prematurely. Peninnah’s request reminded me that life’s trajectory can be a thrilling ride, if we greet each day with fresh eyes. In Deuteronomy 26:16, it says, “The Lord your God commands you this day to observe these laws and rules, and to observe them faithfully…” Rashi asks why it says “this day?” Why not every day? The commentator’s response: Every day, every time one fulfills a mitzvah, it should feel as if it is the first.
In several weeks my congregants and I will host Peninnah Schram once again, completing yet another circle, at what has now become our annual Shabbaton. And I’ll echo the prayers of Rabbi Nachman of Bratzlav:
“Teach me, Dear God, to make a fresh start; to break yesterday’s patterns; to stop telling myself I can’t – when I can; I’m not – when I am; and I’m stuck – when I’m eminently free.”
Feeling the Power
The Jewish Week, January 30, 2004
Last August, my family traveled to the great parks of the American West. During those two weeks, we experienced incalculable manifestations of divine power. I carried around a blessings card provided by the Jewish environmental organization Hazon and challenged my kids to see if we could recite every blessing of wonder before the trip was done. They told me to "chill," but then joined me in the quest.
The first stop is Yellowstone. All around me is the most beautiful devastation I have ever seen, miles and miles of ashen, burnt-out trees destroyed by the wildfires of 1988, a conflagration that became catastrophic because generations of our hubris prevented nature from taking its course. In the brush there are young trees miraculously sprouting up amidst the devastation. I recite the blessing on fragrant trees, boray atzei besamim.
I stand by Yellowstone Lake looking out on Saturday night as wildfires rage over the east entrance to the park. Two intermingled bursts of flame lighting the distant sky look like some heavenly havdalah candle. We see lots of bald eagles and falcons, and herds of bison all across the hillsides. So I recite the blessing for extraordinary creatures.
We drive through the Grand Tetons, where snowcapped mountains pierce the sky — good for another blessing, oseh ma’ase breisheet, "Who makes the works of creation." Mountains have the power to awaken an overwhelming sense of the sacred.
Bryce Canyon, with its human-like rock formations, reminds us of how human hearts can turn to stone. And to be in at the canyon floor of Zion National Park, with walls of rock on every side, is to know what it must have been like to march through the parted Red Sea. The natural appears supernatural out there; perfection and balance are painted on an enormous canvas. The writer Linda Hogan has written, "The cure for soul sickness is not in books. It is written in the bark of a tree, in the moonlit silence of night, in the bank of a river and the water’s motion. The cure is outside ourselves."
By the time we reach the Grand Canyon, we have recited each blessing on the card, except the one for a rainbow. Looking over the south rim we see a beautiful sunset, and then we hear a thunderstorm. Sure enough, over to the right, miles and miles from the thundercloud, is a rainbow. It is about 7 o’clock on Friday evening. We recite the final blessing and Shabbat begins. Now I put down the blessing card and God rests.
Back on the first day of the trip, just after I watched Old Faithful burst out with steam shooting into the sky, I tried to call home for messages but my machine didn’t pick up. Only later did I find out why. While I was experiencing the greatest power display on earth, the entire East Coast had been thrown into the most massive blackout in history. Fifty million people stood helpless in the August heat, victims not of divine power but of a terrible man-made hubris.
Where were you when the lights went out? Were you in the subway? In an elevator? Were you sweating, exposed to the elements with no AC? Were you at the airport, grounded? Or stuck in the air? Were you in a hospital, at the mercy of tightly rationed auxiliary generators? Did you feel vulnerable? Did you fear terrorism? Did you understand, did you finally understand just how limited we are?
The fragile power grid is a perfect symbol of our folly, our presumed power, and of how instantly it all can come tumbling down.
On Sept. 3, Congress reconvened and Louisiana Republican Billy Tauzin, chairman of the House Energy and Commerce Committee, wasted no time in opening two days of showcase hearings. Ironically, a temporary audio failure in the hearing room muffled most of what Tauzin had to say.
We have all been humbled by the limits of our authority. The world’s greatest superpower has thus far failed to defeat small guerrilla armies of terrorists, despite its military capability to shock and awe. We have touched the moon and seen through Hubble’s eyes the farthest reaches of the universe, but we lacked the wherewithal to check the underside of Columbia’s wing before re-entry. Again and again we’ve been reminded of our limits.
When the lights went out I was at Old Faithful, where there were no subways, no high-rise elevators, no cable TV; where the sky was being lit up by the stars and the forests illumined by a thousand degrees of conflagration. How I wish I were back at Yellowstone right now, bathed in the mist of the geyser, warmed by the glow of a hundred-acre inferno a couple of miles away. Things were a lot less complicated there, where the deer and the antelope play, cradled in the womb of God. How terrifying it is to have the world on our shoulders.
But we’re all big boys and girls, and God his given us the keys to the Hummer. God has given us the intelligence to split the atom and re-cork a wine bottle. God has given us the power to topple a dictator. And we have done it.
We pray for guidance that from the current volatility that we be able to forge a better world for our children. And we give thanks. For God’s power is everywhere to be found. In each mountain, each lovely creature, each rainbow — and each human embrace.
Last August, my family traveled to the great parks of the American West. During those two weeks, we experienced incalculable manifestations of divine power. I carried around a blessings card provided by the Jewish environmental organization Hazon and challenged my kids to see if we could recite every blessing of wonder before the trip was done. They told me to "chill," but then joined me in the quest.
The first stop is Yellowstone. All around me is the most beautiful devastation I have ever seen, miles and miles of ashen, burnt-out trees destroyed by the wildfires of 1988, a conflagration that became catastrophic because generations of our hubris prevented nature from taking its course. In the brush there are young trees miraculously sprouting up amidst the devastation. I recite the blessing on fragrant trees, boray atzei besamim.
I stand by Yellowstone Lake looking out on Saturday night as wildfires rage over the east entrance to the park. Two intermingled bursts of flame lighting the distant sky look like some heavenly havdalah candle. We see lots of bald eagles and falcons, and herds of bison all across the hillsides. So I recite the blessing for extraordinary creatures.
We drive through the Grand Tetons, where snowcapped mountains pierce the sky — good for another blessing, oseh ma’ase breisheet, "Who makes the works of creation." Mountains have the power to awaken an overwhelming sense of the sacred.
Bryce Canyon, with its human-like rock formations, reminds us of how human hearts can turn to stone. And to be in at the canyon floor of Zion National Park, with walls of rock on every side, is to know what it must have been like to march through the parted Red Sea. The natural appears supernatural out there; perfection and balance are painted on an enormous canvas. The writer Linda Hogan has written, "The cure for soul sickness is not in books. It is written in the bark of a tree, in the moonlit silence of night, in the bank of a river and the water’s motion. The cure is outside ourselves."
By the time we reach the Grand Canyon, we have recited each blessing on the card, except the one for a rainbow. Looking over the south rim we see a beautiful sunset, and then we hear a thunderstorm. Sure enough, over to the right, miles and miles from the thundercloud, is a rainbow. It is about 7 o’clock on Friday evening. We recite the final blessing and Shabbat begins. Now I put down the blessing card and God rests.
Back on the first day of the trip, just after I watched Old Faithful burst out with steam shooting into the sky, I tried to call home for messages but my machine didn’t pick up. Only later did I find out why. While I was experiencing the greatest power display on earth, the entire East Coast had been thrown into the most massive blackout in history. Fifty million people stood helpless in the August heat, victims not of divine power but of a terrible man-made hubris.
Where were you when the lights went out? Were you in the subway? In an elevator? Were you sweating, exposed to the elements with no AC? Were you at the airport, grounded? Or stuck in the air? Were you in a hospital, at the mercy of tightly rationed auxiliary generators? Did you feel vulnerable? Did you fear terrorism? Did you understand, did you finally understand just how limited we are?
The fragile power grid is a perfect symbol of our folly, our presumed power, and of how instantly it all can come tumbling down.
On Sept. 3, Congress reconvened and Louisiana Republican Billy Tauzin, chairman of the House Energy and Commerce Committee, wasted no time in opening two days of showcase hearings. Ironically, a temporary audio failure in the hearing room muffled most of what Tauzin had to say.
We have all been humbled by the limits of our authority. The world’s greatest superpower has thus far failed to defeat small guerrilla armies of terrorists, despite its military capability to shock and awe. We have touched the moon and seen through Hubble’s eyes the farthest reaches of the universe, but we lacked the wherewithal to check the underside of Columbia’s wing before re-entry. Again and again we’ve been reminded of our limits.
When the lights went out I was at Old Faithful, where there were no subways, no high-rise elevators, no cable TV; where the sky was being lit up by the stars and the forests illumined by a thousand degrees of conflagration. How I wish I were back at Yellowstone right now, bathed in the mist of the geyser, warmed by the glow of a hundred-acre inferno a couple of miles away. Things were a lot less complicated there, where the deer and the antelope play, cradled in the womb of God. How terrifying it is to have the world on our shoulders.
But we’re all big boys and girls, and God his given us the keys to the Hummer. God has given us the intelligence to split the atom and re-cork a wine bottle. God has given us the power to topple a dictator. And we have done it.
We pray for guidance that from the current volatility that we be able to forge a better world for our children. And we give thanks. For God’s power is everywhere to be found. In each mountain, each lovely creature, each rainbow — and each human embrace.
Dressing Up as a Rabbi
The Jewish Week, March 5, 1999
Jews have long been intrigued by the curious connection between Purim, our most joyous holiday, and Yom Kippur, our most solemn, noting that one possible translation of “Yom Ki-purim,” as it is called in the Bible, is “a day like Purim.” Among rabbis, I daresay the most popular answer to this riddle is that on Purim Jews dress up as fools while on the Day of Atonement fools dress up as Jews.
I’m not sure who originated that quip, but I would expect that it was probably a pulpit rabbi; because this little snipe expresses perfectly the frustrations so many of us feel. Rabbis see first-hand the hypocrisy of those who don the mask of piety one day per year, yet we feel powerless to combat it. But the main reason for our frustration is our deeper awareness that we need go no further than the nearest mirror to find the real fools who dress as Jews.
I now understand why nuns call their attire habits, for clerical clothing is indeed habit forming. We’ve always got to look the part, whether on Yom Kippur, when we wear the most garish sneakers (unless we’re in a shul that for some misguided reason shuns sneakers, where we wear the shiniest patent leathers), or on Purim, when we wear the most outlandish costumes. We’re the ones who let people know that it’s OK to wear Nikes or dress like Barney the dinosaur.
Rabbis are the only ones who never get to dress as real people. Most Jews who wear a kippah in public do so purely out of personal conviction, often after much soul-searching. Most rabbis do too; but we all know that whether or not we desire to wear it, it is part of the uniform. Female rabbis especially need to don the kippah to be recognized as rabbis, but men also know that the kippah grants immediate recognition, and with that extraordinary power, whether in hospital wards, in the classroom or when stopped by the police for speeding. So I find myself wearing a kippah more often than not for professional rather than purely personal purposes.
That’s bad enough, but it gets worse. We have to wear rabbinic smiles too, and clasp with rabbinic handshakes and hug rabbinic hugs. We fume with rabbinic indignation and scratch our chins in rabbinic contemplation; we nod with rabbinic insight and rabbinically turn the other cheek when abuse is hurled. It is ever-so tempting to be cloaked in the garment of the role.
And when that happens, the fools are us.
Thankfully, at my congregation, the rabbi gets to be a person once a month, when the congregants lead the entire service. Last Shabbat, I dressed like a regular congregant and sat in the pews. True, I wore the same tallit and kippah I normally wear, but they felt different. The difference is that I was not wearing them for public consumption, although with my seat near the front I was still very much in the limelight.
Just after the Torah reading, my seven-year old son skipped into the sanctuary and sat next to me. “So this is what it’s like,” I thought, as I put my arm around him, enveloping him in my flowing tallit. He cuddled close. At some point between our belting out Ashrei together and the beginning of Musaf, I looked down and noticed that he was fiddling with my tzitzit.
A fiddler on the tzitzit? (Sounds crazy, no?) What’s the big deal? Well, if the goal is to occasionally get to dress not as a rabbi but as a Jewish human being, that objective is achieved by the simple act of wearing a large flowing tallit with your little kid attached to the end fiddling with the fringes. That is a very big deal. Ethan was playing with my tzitzit and it blew me away.
I never got to do it when I was a kid. My father was a cantor. I was very proud of that, but week after week my friends got to play with their dads’ fringes (moms didn’t wear them back then), and I could only fiddle with my own, and dream. Now, for the first time, my son and I were engaging in this primal Jewish parent-child experience on a Shabbat morning, and I realized what a fool I had been to deny this to him for so long.
Memo to congregation presidents: Insist that your rabbi sit in the cheap seats at least one Shabbat per month. Memo to rabbis: Don’t turn down the invitation. Memo to everyone: Purim reminds us that, if we want to avoid being fools, we have to take off the masks and dress like human beings once in a while. Come to think of it, that is exactly what we learn from Yom Kippur.
Jews have long been intrigued by the curious connection between Purim, our most joyous holiday, and Yom Kippur, our most solemn, noting that one possible translation of “Yom Ki-purim,” as it is called in the Bible, is “a day like Purim.” Among rabbis, I daresay the most popular answer to this riddle is that on Purim Jews dress up as fools while on the Day of Atonement fools dress up as Jews.
I’m not sure who originated that quip, but I would expect that it was probably a pulpit rabbi; because this little snipe expresses perfectly the frustrations so many of us feel. Rabbis see first-hand the hypocrisy of those who don the mask of piety one day per year, yet we feel powerless to combat it. But the main reason for our frustration is our deeper awareness that we need go no further than the nearest mirror to find the real fools who dress as Jews.
I now understand why nuns call their attire habits, for clerical clothing is indeed habit forming. We’ve always got to look the part, whether on Yom Kippur, when we wear the most garish sneakers (unless we’re in a shul that for some misguided reason shuns sneakers, where we wear the shiniest patent leathers), or on Purim, when we wear the most outlandish costumes. We’re the ones who let people know that it’s OK to wear Nikes or dress like Barney the dinosaur.
Rabbis are the only ones who never get to dress as real people. Most Jews who wear a kippah in public do so purely out of personal conviction, often after much soul-searching. Most rabbis do too; but we all know that whether or not we desire to wear it, it is part of the uniform. Female rabbis especially need to don the kippah to be recognized as rabbis, but men also know that the kippah grants immediate recognition, and with that extraordinary power, whether in hospital wards, in the classroom or when stopped by the police for speeding. So I find myself wearing a kippah more often than not for professional rather than purely personal purposes.
That’s bad enough, but it gets worse. We have to wear rabbinic smiles too, and clasp with rabbinic handshakes and hug rabbinic hugs. We fume with rabbinic indignation and scratch our chins in rabbinic contemplation; we nod with rabbinic insight and rabbinically turn the other cheek when abuse is hurled. It is ever-so tempting to be cloaked in the garment of the role.
And when that happens, the fools are us.
Thankfully, at my congregation, the rabbi gets to be a person once a month, when the congregants lead the entire service. Last Shabbat, I dressed like a regular congregant and sat in the pews. True, I wore the same tallit and kippah I normally wear, but they felt different. The difference is that I was not wearing them for public consumption, although with my seat near the front I was still very much in the limelight.
Just after the Torah reading, my seven-year old son skipped into the sanctuary and sat next to me. “So this is what it’s like,” I thought, as I put my arm around him, enveloping him in my flowing tallit. He cuddled close. At some point between our belting out Ashrei together and the beginning of Musaf, I looked down and noticed that he was fiddling with my tzitzit.
A fiddler on the tzitzit? (Sounds crazy, no?) What’s the big deal? Well, if the goal is to occasionally get to dress not as a rabbi but as a Jewish human being, that objective is achieved by the simple act of wearing a large flowing tallit with your little kid attached to the end fiddling with the fringes. That is a very big deal. Ethan was playing with my tzitzit and it blew me away.
I never got to do it when I was a kid. My father was a cantor. I was very proud of that, but week after week my friends got to play with their dads’ fringes (moms didn’t wear them back then), and I could only fiddle with my own, and dream. Now, for the first time, my son and I were engaging in this primal Jewish parent-child experience on a Shabbat morning, and I realized what a fool I had been to deny this to him for so long.
Memo to congregation presidents: Insist that your rabbi sit in the cheap seats at least one Shabbat per month. Memo to rabbis: Don’t turn down the invitation. Memo to everyone: Purim reminds us that, if we want to avoid being fools, we have to take off the masks and dress like human beings once in a while. Come to think of it, that is exactly what we learn from Yom Kippur.
Down is Up in America
The Jewish Week, September 3, 2004
A few months ago, “Saturday Night Live” introduced a new character that is certain to take her place along side such SNL immortals as Emily Litella and the Church Lady. She is Debbie Downer, the glass-half-empty girl who can drain the fun out of anything. Played to morose perfection by Rachel Dratch, the skit had the rare effect of throwing the entire cast into a giggling fit.
In the sketch, Debbie dampens spirits at her family’s Disney World reunion with interjections about Mad Cow disease, global warming and a Korean train wreck. She even manages to wipe the smile off of Pluto’s face with a remark about how theme park characters must live under the constant threat of terrorism and heat stroke.
What makes the Debbie Downer sketch so hilarious is that her behavior echoes something so recognizable in our own lives. There is a little Debbie Downer in each of us – and we all know someone who is Debbie incarnate.
One might say that Debbie Downerism has become pervasive in American culture. Pessimism is running rampant in recent national polls, regarding Iraq, terrorism and the economy. It’s even infiltrated the Happiest Place on Earth: Next summer, Disney is scheduled to release an animated version of “Chicken Little.” Many trace this negativity to the residual effects of 9-11, when the sky, did, in fact, fall. But I see it as yet another bit of evidence that America is, culturally speaking, becoming Jewish.
We are the people, after all, who invented pessimism. Think of the ten spies, who convinced their compatriots that it would be impossible to conquer the Promised Land. Golda Meir was right when she said, “Pessimism is a luxury that a Jew can never allow himself.” But it’s also an embedded characteristic that we can never shed.
Think about our love affair with that folksy favorite, the Evil Eye. The ayin ha-rah as it is called in Hebrew, appears in many other cultures. In Arabic, it’s called the ayin harsha; the droch shuil in Scotland, mauvais oeil in France, bösen Blick in Germany, mal occhio in Italy and in ancient Rome, the oculus malus. According to the Skeptic’s Dictionary, some folklorists theorize that the evil eye belief is rooted in primate biology, where dominance and submission are shown by gazing and averting the gaze, and it relates to our dislike of staring.
The Evil Eye was a Jewish concept long before it gained a starring role in “Lord of the Rings.” For Jews, the Eye became a subtler, safer substitute for fatalism and devil worship and an easy explanation for inexplicable calamity. The folk traditions that arose empowered Jews faced with continuous humiliation and powerlessness. Through the ages, Jews have gone to great length to distract the Eye from its intended victim, especially newborns. This has been done with the assistance of incantations, amulets (like the omnipresent ‘hamsa’), charms, and even inscribed bowls that were buried at the entrance to the home. While great rabbinic scholars were asking profound Talmudic questions in ivory-towered yeshivas, the vast majority of Jews faced one question only on a daily basis: How do we confound the Evil Eye?
When I was a child, nothing terrified me more than thunderstorms. There were times when I would be walking home from my synagogue – about five city blocks – and a sudden storm would trap me. With no place to hide, the only thing I could do to protect myself was, paradoxically, to assume that each bolt was aiming for me and me alone. It worked – I never got hit! I assumed that if I were to suppress my irrational fear, just once, THAT would be the time I would get struck.
I must have been a troubled child. My father used to call me “myiskeit,” “ugly” or “unfortunate one,” not because I was ugly or unfortunate, but because that’s how Jews deceive the Evil Eye. Spitting between the fingers has found its way to other cultures, but Jews do it with aplomb, often accompanying the act with the threefold “ptu” or the expression “Kein ayin hara,” which means “No evil eye.”
I couldn’t believe my ears when I heard a “Ken ayin hara” from none other ABC sportscaster Al Michaels during the last minutes of the NBA finals. Detroit was destroying L.A., but despite the lopsided evidence of supremacy, Piston coach Larry Brown was playing it as if the game were much closer. Michaels, noting Brown’s Brooklyn Jewish roots, said, "I think his mother taught him, ‘Larry, don't give yourself a Ken ayin hora.’”
One wonders how bad karma happens to good religions. Judaism is optimistic to the core, a faith based on messianic aspiration and a positive view of human potential. Yet lately we’ve become most notable for celebrities wearing red threads and great aunts spitting between their fingers. All the faith and hope – and even God – have been overshadowed by this optic immortal, the Bogey of Bogeymen, which is getting so big that we might soon have to call it the Elvis Eye.
So when a congregant who will soon be visiting Israel asked me why his terrified relatives are screaming about how crazy he is and begging him not to go, I immediately thought about my own childhood battles against heavenly demons.
“Your relatives are covering themselves,” I responded. “Not legally, but emotionally. There is little they can do to control destiny and reduce the danger, except to inflate it completely out of proportion -- in order to fool the Evil Eye. We ensure a positive result by expecting the worst.”
Makes perfect sense to me.
And now the rest of America is catching this myopia. We’ve buried Ronald Reagan and replaced him with Debbie Downer. Maybe its time to break out the Gipper’s old rose-colored specs and stopped paying such homage to the Evil Eye.
A few months ago, “Saturday Night Live” introduced a new character that is certain to take her place along side such SNL immortals as Emily Litella and the Church Lady. She is Debbie Downer, the glass-half-empty girl who can drain the fun out of anything. Played to morose perfection by Rachel Dratch, the skit had the rare effect of throwing the entire cast into a giggling fit.
In the sketch, Debbie dampens spirits at her family’s Disney World reunion with interjections about Mad Cow disease, global warming and a Korean train wreck. She even manages to wipe the smile off of Pluto’s face with a remark about how theme park characters must live under the constant threat of terrorism and heat stroke.
What makes the Debbie Downer sketch so hilarious is that her behavior echoes something so recognizable in our own lives. There is a little Debbie Downer in each of us – and we all know someone who is Debbie incarnate.
One might say that Debbie Downerism has become pervasive in American culture. Pessimism is running rampant in recent national polls, regarding Iraq, terrorism and the economy. It’s even infiltrated the Happiest Place on Earth: Next summer, Disney is scheduled to release an animated version of “Chicken Little.” Many trace this negativity to the residual effects of 9-11, when the sky, did, in fact, fall. But I see it as yet another bit of evidence that America is, culturally speaking, becoming Jewish.
We are the people, after all, who invented pessimism. Think of the ten spies, who convinced their compatriots that it would be impossible to conquer the Promised Land. Golda Meir was right when she said, “Pessimism is a luxury that a Jew can never allow himself.” But it’s also an embedded characteristic that we can never shed.
Think about our love affair with that folksy favorite, the Evil Eye. The ayin ha-rah as it is called in Hebrew, appears in many other cultures. In Arabic, it’s called the ayin harsha; the droch shuil in Scotland, mauvais oeil in France, bösen Blick in Germany, mal occhio in Italy and in ancient Rome, the oculus malus. According to the Skeptic’s Dictionary, some folklorists theorize that the evil eye belief is rooted in primate biology, where dominance and submission are shown by gazing and averting the gaze, and it relates to our dislike of staring.
The Evil Eye was a Jewish concept long before it gained a starring role in “Lord of the Rings.” For Jews, the Eye became a subtler, safer substitute for fatalism and devil worship and an easy explanation for inexplicable calamity. The folk traditions that arose empowered Jews faced with continuous humiliation and powerlessness. Through the ages, Jews have gone to great length to distract the Eye from its intended victim, especially newborns. This has been done with the assistance of incantations, amulets (like the omnipresent ‘hamsa’), charms, and even inscribed bowls that were buried at the entrance to the home. While great rabbinic scholars were asking profound Talmudic questions in ivory-towered yeshivas, the vast majority of Jews faced one question only on a daily basis: How do we confound the Evil Eye?
When I was a child, nothing terrified me more than thunderstorms. There were times when I would be walking home from my synagogue – about five city blocks – and a sudden storm would trap me. With no place to hide, the only thing I could do to protect myself was, paradoxically, to assume that each bolt was aiming for me and me alone. It worked – I never got hit! I assumed that if I were to suppress my irrational fear, just once, THAT would be the time I would get struck.
I must have been a troubled child. My father used to call me “myiskeit,” “ugly” or “unfortunate one,” not because I was ugly or unfortunate, but because that’s how Jews deceive the Evil Eye. Spitting between the fingers has found its way to other cultures, but Jews do it with aplomb, often accompanying the act with the threefold “ptu” or the expression “Kein ayin hara,” which means “No evil eye.”
I couldn’t believe my ears when I heard a “Ken ayin hara” from none other ABC sportscaster Al Michaels during the last minutes of the NBA finals. Detroit was destroying L.A., but despite the lopsided evidence of supremacy, Piston coach Larry Brown was playing it as if the game were much closer. Michaels, noting Brown’s Brooklyn Jewish roots, said, "I think his mother taught him, ‘Larry, don't give yourself a Ken ayin hora.’”
One wonders how bad karma happens to good religions. Judaism is optimistic to the core, a faith based on messianic aspiration and a positive view of human potential. Yet lately we’ve become most notable for celebrities wearing red threads and great aunts spitting between their fingers. All the faith and hope – and even God – have been overshadowed by this optic immortal, the Bogey of Bogeymen, which is getting so big that we might soon have to call it the Elvis Eye.
So when a congregant who will soon be visiting Israel asked me why his terrified relatives are screaming about how crazy he is and begging him not to go, I immediately thought about my own childhood battles against heavenly demons.
“Your relatives are covering themselves,” I responded. “Not legally, but emotionally. There is little they can do to control destiny and reduce the danger, except to inflate it completely out of proportion -- in order to fool the Evil Eye. We ensure a positive result by expecting the worst.”
Makes perfect sense to me.
And now the rest of America is catching this myopia. We’ve buried Ronald Reagan and replaced him with Debbie Downer. Maybe its time to break out the Gipper’s old rose-colored specs and stopped paying such homage to the Evil Eye.
Doing the Passover Shuffle: Matzah vs. Wine, via iPod
JTA, April 2005
As Passover approaches this year, I find myself particularly conflicted.
I am usually a big fan of matzah, that perfect embodiment of stability and steadfastness, that essence of uniformity and flatness.
Matzah never changes. Throw a box of Manischewitz in a time capsule, and in 1,000 years it will taste as fresh as the day it was made.
Matzah is indelible. Wherever it goes, it stays; whether that be on the dining room rug, the school cafeteria or the human digestive system. That’s why it is such a powerful visual aid in retelling the story of the Exodus. You can’t avoid it. Its crumbs are everywhere.
Matzah is the symbol of planned perfection. If the operative word for Passover is “order” — seder in Hebrew — matzah is quintessentially controlled; scrutinized closely from its formative stages through the baking process. And on the seder table it is handled delicately, uncovered ceremoniously and raised and broken with ritualistic precision.
When it is discovered that the middle matzah has been hidden, that is the one moment of the seder when all heck breaks loose.
Jews aren’t the only ones with an obsessive need for order. Life is chaotic, after all. Or, as the latest iPod ad campaign puts it, “Life is random.”
Therein lies my dilemma.
As much as I like matzah, I must admit it — I’m beginning to love my iPod even more. I’ve stored more than 1,000 selections on it, a veritable musical autobiography; songs from the pacifist anthems of my college days to the ones that pacified my kids on their high chairs.
In my iPod, David Broza lies with “The Lion King,” Cat Stevens makes way for the Palmach anthem and Kol Nidre shares some disk space with Gregorian chants. I’ve even downloaded the audio broadcast of the Super Bowl. And when I put it all in “shuffle” mode, these memories flow past me indiscriminately, the boundaries separating decades and continents dissolve and my whole life flashes before my ears.
There are those who claim that the “shuffle” is not so random after all. I must admit, it does seem strange that certain songs are repeated more often than others. My iPod seems to have a special affinity for Broadway.
“It’s part of the magic of shuffle,” Greg Joswiak, Apple’s vice president for iPod products, told Newsweek, assuring us that the algorithm that does the shuffling has been thoroughly tested. “Random is random.”
Technology writer David Bennahum said, “Life is random is a really great way of shrugging your shoulders in a Buddhist way of nonattachment.”
And Roger McNamee, a Silicon Valley venture capitalist, was quoted in The New York Times as calling the iPod ad campaign “existential marketing with maybe even a touch of nihilism.”
Doesn’t sound so Pesachdik to me.
Ah, but it is.
Right across from the matzah on your seder table is the wine. The wine is the counterpoint to that unleavened cracker, the yin to matzah’s yang. Ever changing, ever flowing, entropy in a bottle, it embodies randomness.
That line from the movie “Sideways” comes to mind, where Maya speaks sensuously of how a bottle of wine is actually alive, constantly evolving and gaining complexity.
The wine is there to teach us that Judaism, like life, is infinitely too complicated for human beings to be able to impose total order on it.
Judaism breathes through us. Watch how the wine and matzah vie for attention in the seder’s drama. When one is raised, broken or poured, the other is covered, ignored or left empty.
This epic battle between constancy and chance is like a blast of warm weather from the Gulf meeting a cold Canadian high over New England in early spring.
And in the end, look which one triumphs. No sooner are we finished with the bread of affliction, finishing the last morsel of the afikomen; then the third cup of wine is poured.
Serendipity gets the last word. The wine wins.
Maybe the message here is that what’s most constant, even in this world of extreme, superimposed order, is change itself. No matter how much we try to hermetically seal our lives from yeastiness, chametz happens. The perfection of matzah turns out to be the ultimate illusion — but that doesn’t prevent us from striving for it all the more.
My iPod’s song list is quirky, but there is an internal logic to my tunes. The only way to decode the randomness is to run each song through the prism of my life. When you do that, it all makes perfect sense.
Similarly, the uniformity of the Passover rituals masks the internal effervescence that is bubbling up within each participant, at every seder table, every year.
So, while I won’t bring it to the table, the iPod is definitely kosher. I’ve already downloaded “Dayenu.”
As Passover approaches this year, I find myself particularly conflicted.
I am usually a big fan of matzah, that perfect embodiment of stability and steadfastness, that essence of uniformity and flatness.
Matzah never changes. Throw a box of Manischewitz in a time capsule, and in 1,000 years it will taste as fresh as the day it was made.
Matzah is indelible. Wherever it goes, it stays; whether that be on the dining room rug, the school cafeteria or the human digestive system. That’s why it is such a powerful visual aid in retelling the story of the Exodus. You can’t avoid it. Its crumbs are everywhere.
Matzah is the symbol of planned perfection. If the operative word for Passover is “order” — seder in Hebrew — matzah is quintessentially controlled; scrutinized closely from its formative stages through the baking process. And on the seder table it is handled delicately, uncovered ceremoniously and raised and broken with ritualistic precision.
When it is discovered that the middle matzah has been hidden, that is the one moment of the seder when all heck breaks loose.
Jews aren’t the only ones with an obsessive need for order. Life is chaotic, after all. Or, as the latest iPod ad campaign puts it, “Life is random.”
Therein lies my dilemma.
As much as I like matzah, I must admit it — I’m beginning to love my iPod even more. I’ve stored more than 1,000 selections on it, a veritable musical autobiography; songs from the pacifist anthems of my college days to the ones that pacified my kids on their high chairs.
In my iPod, David Broza lies with “The Lion King,” Cat Stevens makes way for the Palmach anthem and Kol Nidre shares some disk space with Gregorian chants. I’ve even downloaded the audio broadcast of the Super Bowl. And when I put it all in “shuffle” mode, these memories flow past me indiscriminately, the boundaries separating decades and continents dissolve and my whole life flashes before my ears.
There are those who claim that the “shuffle” is not so random after all. I must admit, it does seem strange that certain songs are repeated more often than others. My iPod seems to have a special affinity for Broadway.
“It’s part of the magic of shuffle,” Greg Joswiak, Apple’s vice president for iPod products, told Newsweek, assuring us that the algorithm that does the shuffling has been thoroughly tested. “Random is random.”
Technology writer David Bennahum said, “Life is random is a really great way of shrugging your shoulders in a Buddhist way of nonattachment.”
And Roger McNamee, a Silicon Valley venture capitalist, was quoted in The New York Times as calling the iPod ad campaign “existential marketing with maybe even a touch of nihilism.”
Doesn’t sound so Pesachdik to me.
Ah, but it is.
Right across from the matzah on your seder table is the wine. The wine is the counterpoint to that unleavened cracker, the yin to matzah’s yang. Ever changing, ever flowing, entropy in a bottle, it embodies randomness.
That line from the movie “Sideways” comes to mind, where Maya speaks sensuously of how a bottle of wine is actually alive, constantly evolving and gaining complexity.
The wine is there to teach us that Judaism, like life, is infinitely too complicated for human beings to be able to impose total order on it.
Judaism breathes through us. Watch how the wine and matzah vie for attention in the seder’s drama. When one is raised, broken or poured, the other is covered, ignored or left empty.
This epic battle between constancy and chance is like a blast of warm weather from the Gulf meeting a cold Canadian high over New England in early spring.
And in the end, look which one triumphs. No sooner are we finished with the bread of affliction, finishing the last morsel of the afikomen; then the third cup of wine is poured.
Serendipity gets the last word. The wine wins.
Maybe the message here is that what’s most constant, even in this world of extreme, superimposed order, is change itself. No matter how much we try to hermetically seal our lives from yeastiness, chametz happens. The perfection of matzah turns out to be the ultimate illusion — but that doesn’t prevent us from striving for it all the more.
My iPod’s song list is quirky, but there is an internal logic to my tunes. The only way to decode the randomness is to run each song through the prism of my life. When you do that, it all makes perfect sense.
Similarly, the uniformity of the Passover rituals masks the internal effervescence that is bubbling up within each participant, at every seder table, every year.
So, while I won’t bring it to the table, the iPod is definitely kosher. I’ve already downloaded “Dayenu.”
Disengagement: The Package Tour
The Jewish Week, September 16, 2005
Several months ago, when I chose to bring a congregational tour to Israel this summer, little did I know that our journey would coincide with the Gaza disengagement. While Gaza was not exactly on our itinerary, every aspect of this trip suddenly took on new significance as we immersed ourselves in a bubbling cauldron of orange and blue.
Israel is a place where even the choice of luggage adornments has meaning. Our tour company innocently distributed orange luggage handles, all the easier to pick out on a baggage carousel. Orange, of course, has been the ubiquitous color of those opposing disengagement.
Concerned that we would be construed by El Al security as anti-government agitators flying to Israel a week before the D-Day, I hastily prepared talking points for group members to explain to agents that sometimes orange is simply orange.
Sometimes a visit to Masada is simply a visit to Masada -- except when, at the very moment my group was descending from the heralded rock in the desert, Masada's suicidal legacy was being played out in real time. First, a female settler set herself afire at an intersection near Gaza (the woman, Yelena Bosinov, later died of her wounds) and the madness continued as another settler, a man, dangled his baby Michael Jackson-style over the railing of his soon-to-be-abandoned home.
The "Masada scenario" was an oft-discussed topic during the weeks prior to disengagement. While no mass suicide-murder ultimately took place, the mere fact of it being discussed so freely attested to the grip ancient events have on the Israeli populace. Americans also invoke history freely, but we usually go back no further than a generation or two, to Vietnam or Watergate. Not so for Israelis, where ancient Herodian ruins are today's news and where the disengagement even before it had happened had already been rolled into the series of traumatic events recalled on Tisha b'Av.
The Palmach Museum in Tel Aviv celebrates the heroism of Israel's Greatest Generation, those who risked all to forge the new state. As my group learned about the internal conflicts between Ben-Gurion's centrist authority and the right-wing groups like the Irgun and Stern Gang, the Altalena incident was being re-enacted just a few miles down the coast, in Gaza. In 1948, you may recall, a ship loaded with weapons for the Irgun was sunk by Ben-Gurion's forces. And here, once again, an Israeli authority asserted its control over the far right using military might.
So the disengagement was either the work of a conniving Judenrat or a heroic Haganah; take your pick. Our group could not escape the crossfire of historical analogies, which is just how we wanted it. We were anxious to learn as much as we could. We even arranged for phone interviews with a soldier at the front and a disengagement opponent who somehow had managed
to join his brethren in Gush Katif.
On the second day of the trip, we traveled about 40 minutes southeast of Tel Aviv to Bet Guvrin, just a stone's throw from where David defeated Goliath and now a popular archaeological site where tourists dig for a day. The site is dotted with hundreds of limestone caves that were used as homes by Idumeans during the second century BCE, a period when the descendents of
the Maccabees were consolidating their rule.
The Idumeans were resident aliens and the king, John Hyrcanus, gave them the choice to convert to Judaism, leave or die. Most chose exile, and since they didn't want their enemy to enjoy the fruits of their affluence, they dumped their household pottery and other possessions into big piles in their basements -- these caves. Ironically, this scorched-earth policy, which was intended to bury forever the evidence of their residence, has made it much easier for us to rediscover the Idumeans today.
Meanwhile, down the road, our modern-day Idumeans were turning the homes and synagogues of Gush Katif into tomorrow's Bet Guvrin.
Late in the trip we had a bar/bat mitzvah affirmation service at the Western Wall. Midway through there was a quick announcement in Hebrew and then a sudden explosion. This was a controlled explosion, the routine detonation of a nearby suspicious object, but there was nothing routine about the incident for us. Shaken but undaunted, and feeling perhaps more
heroic than deserved, we resolutely went on with the service. The big bang was a startling reminder of what it really means to be a Jew choosing to take part in the greatest drama Jewish history has ever known: the State of Israel.
That night, just as I was settling into my hotel room to relax, I heard another sudden explosion. I quickly looked out my window and it was one of the most spectacular fireworks shows I'd ever seen, right over the Tower of David. The display celebrated the opening of a major international crafts fair, formerly an annual event but more recently a victim of the Terror War. And I thought, "Why not! Why should Israelis be denied the simple pleasure of having an explosion be just a few fireworks from time to time?"
Sometimes an explosion is just an explosion. In Israel, that's what normalcy is all about.
Maybe now, orange can go back to simply being orange.
Several months ago, when I chose to bring a congregational tour to Israel this summer, little did I know that our journey would coincide with the Gaza disengagement. While Gaza was not exactly on our itinerary, every aspect of this trip suddenly took on new significance as we immersed ourselves in a bubbling cauldron of orange and blue.
Israel is a place where even the choice of luggage adornments has meaning. Our tour company innocently distributed orange luggage handles, all the easier to pick out on a baggage carousel. Orange, of course, has been the ubiquitous color of those opposing disengagement.
Concerned that we would be construed by El Al security as anti-government agitators flying to Israel a week before the D-Day, I hastily prepared talking points for group members to explain to agents that sometimes orange is simply orange.
Sometimes a visit to Masada is simply a visit to Masada -- except when, at the very moment my group was descending from the heralded rock in the desert, Masada's suicidal legacy was being played out in real time. First, a female settler set herself afire at an intersection near Gaza (the woman, Yelena Bosinov, later died of her wounds) and the madness continued as another settler, a man, dangled his baby Michael Jackson-style over the railing of his soon-to-be-abandoned home.
The "Masada scenario" was an oft-discussed topic during the weeks prior to disengagement. While no mass suicide-murder ultimately took place, the mere fact of it being discussed so freely attested to the grip ancient events have on the Israeli populace. Americans also invoke history freely, but we usually go back no further than a generation or two, to Vietnam or Watergate. Not so for Israelis, where ancient Herodian ruins are today's news and where the disengagement even before it had happened had already been rolled into the series of traumatic events recalled on Tisha b'Av.
The Palmach Museum in Tel Aviv celebrates the heroism of Israel's Greatest Generation, those who risked all to forge the new state. As my group learned about the internal conflicts between Ben-Gurion's centrist authority and the right-wing groups like the Irgun and Stern Gang, the Altalena incident was being re-enacted just a few miles down the coast, in Gaza. In 1948, you may recall, a ship loaded with weapons for the Irgun was sunk by Ben-Gurion's forces. And here, once again, an Israeli authority asserted its control over the far right using military might.
So the disengagement was either the work of a conniving Judenrat or a heroic Haganah; take your pick. Our group could not escape the crossfire of historical analogies, which is just how we wanted it. We were anxious to learn as much as we could. We even arranged for phone interviews with a soldier at the front and a disengagement opponent who somehow had managed
to join his brethren in Gush Katif.
On the second day of the trip, we traveled about 40 minutes southeast of Tel Aviv to Bet Guvrin, just a stone's throw from where David defeated Goliath and now a popular archaeological site where tourists dig for a day. The site is dotted with hundreds of limestone caves that were used as homes by Idumeans during the second century BCE, a period when the descendents of
the Maccabees were consolidating their rule.
The Idumeans were resident aliens and the king, John Hyrcanus, gave them the choice to convert to Judaism, leave or die. Most chose exile, and since they didn't want their enemy to enjoy the fruits of their affluence, they dumped their household pottery and other possessions into big piles in their basements -- these caves. Ironically, this scorched-earth policy, which was intended to bury forever the evidence of their residence, has made it much easier for us to rediscover the Idumeans today.
Meanwhile, down the road, our modern-day Idumeans were turning the homes and synagogues of Gush Katif into tomorrow's Bet Guvrin.
Late in the trip we had a bar/bat mitzvah affirmation service at the Western Wall. Midway through there was a quick announcement in Hebrew and then a sudden explosion. This was a controlled explosion, the routine detonation of a nearby suspicious object, but there was nothing routine about the incident for us. Shaken but undaunted, and feeling perhaps more
heroic than deserved, we resolutely went on with the service. The big bang was a startling reminder of what it really means to be a Jew choosing to take part in the greatest drama Jewish history has ever known: the State of Israel.
That night, just as I was settling into my hotel room to relax, I heard another sudden explosion. I quickly looked out my window and it was one of the most spectacular fireworks shows I'd ever seen, right over the Tower of David. The display celebrated the opening of a major international crafts fair, formerly an annual event but more recently a victim of the Terror War. And I thought, "Why not! Why should Israelis be denied the simple pleasure of having an explosion be just a few fireworks from time to time?"
Sometimes an explosion is just an explosion. In Israel, that's what normalcy is all about.
Maybe now, orange can go back to simply being orange.
Being Inscribed in the Video of Life
The Jewish Week, October 14, 1999
I am a rabbi – and I play one on TV. While it’s unlikely that you’ve seen me on your set, I’ve appeared in upwards of 500 televised productions – a number that includes the vast majority of life-cycle events I’ve conducted during my decade and a half in the rabbinate.
And these videos are passed down from generation to generation, lighting up the screen long after treasured copies of “Titanic” have gathered dust.
Videos of weddings, bar/bat mitzvahs and the even occasional funeral are one matter; but now it is conceivable that soon my every working moment will be on camera. As a result of recent attacks on synagogues, including my own, my congregation is considering installing a video surveillance system in the building.
My life is in danger of becoming “The Truman Show.”
Maybe that isn’t so bad.
A century ago, Rabbi Avraham Ya’akov of Sadigora said, “You can learn something from everything: From the railways we learn that one moment’s delay can throw everything off schedule. From the telegraph we learn that every word counts. And from the telephone, that what we say Here is heard There.”
During the Days of Awe, we speak of a “Book of Life,” where one’s deeds are inscribed.
Perhaps it is time to fine-tune that metaphor. I’ve nothing against books, but I’m discovering that it is on the “Video of Life” that our deeds actually are being recorded all the time. What we utter Here is being seen There. Jews have always sensed a divine presence overseeing our behavior; now God is joined by my congregants, my unborn grandchildren, the security guy at the parking garage and my bank teller in having available an instant replay of all I do and say.
When I first came to my current congregation, I wasn’t crazy about their allowing videotaping of Bar/Bat Mitzvah services. So much of life is staged, and our obsession with the historical record too often overwhelms the immediacy of the moment. But I have come to understand and harness the constructive potential of this technology. The congregants don’t see the camera, which peeps through a hidden window above the back wall of the sanctuary.
But I do.
The key is never to look at it.
And when I charge the Bar or Bat Mitzvah, I follow all the rules of the TV game. I try to be witty, personal, brief and most of all, to stay on message:
It’s immortality, stupid....
...the kid’s; the family’s; the Jewish people’s; my own; and the immortality of the words themselves.
The goal is to take this pre-pubescent human standing before me and link him or her to a transcendent destiny. But embedded in my message to the student is a subtle wink to the camera, especially when I remind the child how comfortable he or she is in the sanctuary, and how, no matter what, it will always be home.
“I was watching the Bar Mitzvah video the other day,” I hear in varying forms from so many grateful young adults, “and I don’t think I fully appreciated your comments at the time.”
That’s because you weren’t supposed to back then. My words, like time-released sinus pills, were intended to be digested by the aimless 20-year-old you are now rather than the 13-year-old jumble of hormones you were then. Back then you felt rooted. Back then you couldn’t understand why your grandparents were bawling in the front row or why I told you my door would always be open. Now you do.
With the cameras rolling, every word carries immense weight. Long after this student has left the fold, as so many do in their college years, my words might be the only means of reeling him back in. I go into each event knowing that a single slip is unacceptable, that this tape will be scrutinized as closely as the Zapruder film and Monica’s beret. “God lives in a Word,” wrote Abraham Joshua Heschel. In the end, the indelible Word remains.
We are not the first generation to play to the cameras for immortality. But our yearning to avoid the purgatory of anonymity drives us to do increasingly crazy things, like flailing wildly in the sub-freezing dawn outside the windows of “The Today Show.” At a recent birthday party, a group of young children were drawn to their images on my camcorder’s LCD monitor like moths to a light. My kids love to peer into security cameras at stores.
Rather than being threatened at the prospect of Big Brother watching them, instinctively children seek the enduring glory of being on the tube.
Come to think of it, don’t we all?
Television is not inherently evil. It provides a vehicle for our lives to echo through the vast reaches of time and geography. So we’d best choose our words carefully; all are being recorded on the “Video of Life.” And no matter what the medium, the message is still the message.
I am a rabbi – and I play one on TV. While it’s unlikely that you’ve seen me on your set, I’ve appeared in upwards of 500 televised productions – a number that includes the vast majority of life-cycle events I’ve conducted during my decade and a half in the rabbinate.
And these videos are passed down from generation to generation, lighting up the screen long after treasured copies of “Titanic” have gathered dust.
Videos of weddings, bar/bat mitzvahs and the even occasional funeral are one matter; but now it is conceivable that soon my every working moment will be on camera. As a result of recent attacks on synagogues, including my own, my congregation is considering installing a video surveillance system in the building.
My life is in danger of becoming “The Truman Show.”
Maybe that isn’t so bad.
A century ago, Rabbi Avraham Ya’akov of Sadigora said, “You can learn something from everything: From the railways we learn that one moment’s delay can throw everything off schedule. From the telegraph we learn that every word counts. And from the telephone, that what we say Here is heard There.”
During the Days of Awe, we speak of a “Book of Life,” where one’s deeds are inscribed.
Perhaps it is time to fine-tune that metaphor. I’ve nothing against books, but I’m discovering that it is on the “Video of Life” that our deeds actually are being recorded all the time. What we utter Here is being seen There. Jews have always sensed a divine presence overseeing our behavior; now God is joined by my congregants, my unborn grandchildren, the security guy at the parking garage and my bank teller in having available an instant replay of all I do and say.
When I first came to my current congregation, I wasn’t crazy about their allowing videotaping of Bar/Bat Mitzvah services. So much of life is staged, and our obsession with the historical record too often overwhelms the immediacy of the moment. But I have come to understand and harness the constructive potential of this technology. The congregants don’t see the camera, which peeps through a hidden window above the back wall of the sanctuary.
But I do.
The key is never to look at it.
And when I charge the Bar or Bat Mitzvah, I follow all the rules of the TV game. I try to be witty, personal, brief and most of all, to stay on message:
It’s immortality, stupid....
...the kid’s; the family’s; the Jewish people’s; my own; and the immortality of the words themselves.
The goal is to take this pre-pubescent human standing before me and link him or her to a transcendent destiny. But embedded in my message to the student is a subtle wink to the camera, especially when I remind the child how comfortable he or she is in the sanctuary, and how, no matter what, it will always be home.
“I was watching the Bar Mitzvah video the other day,” I hear in varying forms from so many grateful young adults, “and I don’t think I fully appreciated your comments at the time.”
That’s because you weren’t supposed to back then. My words, like time-released sinus pills, were intended to be digested by the aimless 20-year-old you are now rather than the 13-year-old jumble of hormones you were then. Back then you felt rooted. Back then you couldn’t understand why your grandparents were bawling in the front row or why I told you my door would always be open. Now you do.
With the cameras rolling, every word carries immense weight. Long after this student has left the fold, as so many do in their college years, my words might be the only means of reeling him back in. I go into each event knowing that a single slip is unacceptable, that this tape will be scrutinized as closely as the Zapruder film and Monica’s beret. “God lives in a Word,” wrote Abraham Joshua Heschel. In the end, the indelible Word remains.
We are not the first generation to play to the cameras for immortality. But our yearning to avoid the purgatory of anonymity drives us to do increasingly crazy things, like flailing wildly in the sub-freezing dawn outside the windows of “The Today Show.” At a recent birthday party, a group of young children were drawn to their images on my camcorder’s LCD monitor like moths to a light. My kids love to peer into security cameras at stores.
Rather than being threatened at the prospect of Big Brother watching them, instinctively children seek the enduring glory of being on the tube.
Come to think of it, don’t we all?
Television is not inherently evil. It provides a vehicle for our lives to echo through the vast reaches of time and geography. So we’d best choose our words carefully; all are being recorded on the “Video of Life.” And no matter what the medium, the message is still the message.
9/11/613
The Jewish Week, January 25, 2002
We’ve heard so much about how America has changed following September’s terrorist attacks that it’s almost reached the level of cliché. Yet the evidence continues to show this on numerous fronts, including a seismic shift in the role of religion in our lives. According to a Pew Research Center survey released last month, fully 78% of Americans now say religion's influence in American life is growing up from 37% eight months ago and the highest mark on this measure in surveys dating back four decades.
Curiously, the Pew survey does not indicate a strong increase in attendance at religious services, nor have a large number of those not actively religious before 9/11 suddenly flocked to faith. But people are praying more, privately and publicly, and a small but significant minority (16%) does say they are attending services more now than before.
Of course any rabbi could have told you the same thing. Anecdotally, we’ve all seen at least a temporary jump in service attendance; but more significantly, we’ve seen a jump in our own significance. The Pew statistics are right on the money: it’s not simply a matter of how many walk through the door each week – it’s that the ones who are walking through are drinking up every word. Never in my lifetime has it meant more to be a religious leader, and, Jerry Falwell notwithstanding, most clergy have been up to the task.
That’s why it has amazed me to hear that a surprisingly large group of rabbis chose not to speak about the terror attacks last High Holidays. Sure, it wasn’t easy to rewrite sermons at the last minute, while simultaneously dealing with the immediate human fallout of the disaster. But such a response demonstrates a profound misunderstanding of what our congregants so desperately needed when they walked into services on Rosh Hashanah. Our job – and Judaism’s – is to take the temporal, with all its warts, add two tablespoons of Torah, and try to discover in the mix some semblance of eternal meaning.
I must confess that not only did I tie in the September 11 tragedy to each of my High Holiday sermons, I haven’t stopped since. While many are showing a desire to put the tragedy behind them, as I plough through each of the portions of the Torah cycle, I can’t help but read them all through the prism of the WTC “Churban.” I’m not doing it by design, but rather by my own lingering need to make sense of what has happened, as well as the lingering desire not to allow the world to forget about it.
I use the term “Churban” advisedly, for it is the Hebrew word most often employed in regard to the destruction of the Temple in Jerusalem 2000 years ago. While the WTC structure might have served a very different purpose from that of the Second Temple, the impact of these two cataclysms is analogous. The tears of Jerusalem’s survivors are chronicled throughout the Talmud; in fact, one could easily make the claim that the entire Talmud itself is a response to that disaster.
In Brachot 32 we read that when the Temple was destroyed, all the Gates of Heaven were closed except for one: the Gate of Tears. The Western Wall therefore became known as the Wailing Wall in recognition of all the tears Jews have shed there. Our own Wailing Wall-style memorial to destruction is now under construction, beginning with the new platforms erected near the Manhattan wreckage. During one recent news report from Ground Zero, I even saw a child inscribe a small note to leave at the scene.
We read in Sanhedrin 104b of a neighbor of Rabban Gamliel, who, upon the death of her child, wept so hard during the night that when Gamliel heard her wailing, he was reminded of the destruction of the Temple. Gamliel wept in sympathy “so much that his eyelids seemed to disappear.” We learn elsewhere (Lamentations Rabbah 1:16) that when the Temple was destroyed, large numbers in Israel became ascetics, unable to eat meat or drink wine.
Apparently the shock waves registered far beyond the earthly realm as well: we read in several places (including Avoda Zara 3b) that since the Temple was destroyed, “there is no laughter for Holy One, nor does the firmament appear in its full clarity.” Rabban Simeon ben Gamliel adds, “Ever since the Temple was destroyed, there is no day without a curse.” It is impossible to overestimate the impact of that catastrophe on the Jews of that time – and consequently on the Judaism they handed down to us.
The rabbis understood that such profound grief could not be minimized or denied. Rather, it had to be channeled into constructive, life-affirming activity. So they validated the mourning process by ritualizing it, for instance by mandating the breaking of a glass at weddings, and then they created a way of life that enabled them to transcend that sorrow, to turn tears into triumph.
Just as the sages were able to reinterpret Torah in light of that destruction, thereby gaining new inspiration from it, so is it necessary for us to do the same now. Rather than reaching for the Prozac, we need to confront our pain the old fashioned way: by wrestling with God. The Talmud speaks of one consequence of the Temple’s destruction being that a wall of iron was interposed between Israel and the Holy One. The only way to breach that wall is to fill with new meaning the space that exists between Torah and Terror, and for our tears to stretch heavenward.
Perhaps they might meet God’s tears somewhere in between.
We’ve heard so much about how America has changed following September’s terrorist attacks that it’s almost reached the level of cliché. Yet the evidence continues to show this on numerous fronts, including a seismic shift in the role of religion in our lives. According to a Pew Research Center survey released last month, fully 78% of Americans now say religion's influence in American life is growing up from 37% eight months ago and the highest mark on this measure in surveys dating back four decades.
Curiously, the Pew survey does not indicate a strong increase in attendance at religious services, nor have a large number of those not actively religious before 9/11 suddenly flocked to faith. But people are praying more, privately and publicly, and a small but significant minority (16%) does say they are attending services more now than before.
Of course any rabbi could have told you the same thing. Anecdotally, we’ve all seen at least a temporary jump in service attendance; but more significantly, we’ve seen a jump in our own significance. The Pew statistics are right on the money: it’s not simply a matter of how many walk through the door each week – it’s that the ones who are walking through are drinking up every word. Never in my lifetime has it meant more to be a religious leader, and, Jerry Falwell notwithstanding, most clergy have been up to the task.
That’s why it has amazed me to hear that a surprisingly large group of rabbis chose not to speak about the terror attacks last High Holidays. Sure, it wasn’t easy to rewrite sermons at the last minute, while simultaneously dealing with the immediate human fallout of the disaster. But such a response demonstrates a profound misunderstanding of what our congregants so desperately needed when they walked into services on Rosh Hashanah. Our job – and Judaism’s – is to take the temporal, with all its warts, add two tablespoons of Torah, and try to discover in the mix some semblance of eternal meaning.
I must confess that not only did I tie in the September 11 tragedy to each of my High Holiday sermons, I haven’t stopped since. While many are showing a desire to put the tragedy behind them, as I plough through each of the portions of the Torah cycle, I can’t help but read them all through the prism of the WTC “Churban.” I’m not doing it by design, but rather by my own lingering need to make sense of what has happened, as well as the lingering desire not to allow the world to forget about it.
I use the term “Churban” advisedly, for it is the Hebrew word most often employed in regard to the destruction of the Temple in Jerusalem 2000 years ago. While the WTC structure might have served a very different purpose from that of the Second Temple, the impact of these two cataclysms is analogous. The tears of Jerusalem’s survivors are chronicled throughout the Talmud; in fact, one could easily make the claim that the entire Talmud itself is a response to that disaster.
In Brachot 32 we read that when the Temple was destroyed, all the Gates of Heaven were closed except for one: the Gate of Tears. The Western Wall therefore became known as the Wailing Wall in recognition of all the tears Jews have shed there. Our own Wailing Wall-style memorial to destruction is now under construction, beginning with the new platforms erected near the Manhattan wreckage. During one recent news report from Ground Zero, I even saw a child inscribe a small note to leave at the scene.
We read in Sanhedrin 104b of a neighbor of Rabban Gamliel, who, upon the death of her child, wept so hard during the night that when Gamliel heard her wailing, he was reminded of the destruction of the Temple. Gamliel wept in sympathy “so much that his eyelids seemed to disappear.” We learn elsewhere (Lamentations Rabbah 1:16) that when the Temple was destroyed, large numbers in Israel became ascetics, unable to eat meat or drink wine.
Apparently the shock waves registered far beyond the earthly realm as well: we read in several places (including Avoda Zara 3b) that since the Temple was destroyed, “there is no laughter for Holy One, nor does the firmament appear in its full clarity.” Rabban Simeon ben Gamliel adds, “Ever since the Temple was destroyed, there is no day without a curse.” It is impossible to overestimate the impact of that catastrophe on the Jews of that time – and consequently on the Judaism they handed down to us.
The rabbis understood that such profound grief could not be minimized or denied. Rather, it had to be channeled into constructive, life-affirming activity. So they validated the mourning process by ritualizing it, for instance by mandating the breaking of a glass at weddings, and then they created a way of life that enabled them to transcend that sorrow, to turn tears into triumph.
Just as the sages were able to reinterpret Torah in light of that destruction, thereby gaining new inspiration from it, so is it necessary for us to do the same now. Rather than reaching for the Prozac, we need to confront our pain the old fashioned way: by wrestling with God. The Talmud speaks of one consequence of the Temple’s destruction being that a wall of iron was interposed between Israel and the Holy One. The only way to breach that wall is to fill with new meaning the space that exists between Torah and Terror, and for our tears to stretch heavenward.
Perhaps they might meet God’s tears somewhere in between.
On Holiness
Holiness happens in relationship.
If you look at the book of Genesis,
loneliness is the first thing that God called “not good.”
One might safely say that the opposite of holiness …
is loneliness.
If you look at the book of Genesis,
loneliness is the first thing that God called “not good.”
One might safely say that the opposite of holiness …
is loneliness.
Wednesday, March 19, 2008
Purim and Good Friday: An Unholy Alliance
Purim and Good Friday: An Unholy Alliance (my column in this week's Jewish Week)
http://www.thejewishweek.com/viewArticle/c55_a5355/Editorial__Opinion/Opinion.html
On March 21, for just the second time since 1910, Purim will coincide with Good Friday (the first was three years ago), leaving us with the oddest of bedfellows: Easter and Esther.
http://www.thejewishweek.com/viewArticle/c55_a5355/Editorial__Opinion/Opinion.html
On March 21, for just the second time since 1910, Purim will coincide with Good Friday (the first was three years ago), leaving us with the oddest of bedfellows: Easter and Esther.
It’s simply unnatural. Holy Week should coincide with Passover. That way, Jews and Christians can all celebrate common roots together, sharing interfaith Seders and the annual telecast of “The Ten Commandments.” The stars are usually aligned for this Paschal connection to occur. Easter occurs on the Sunday after the first full moon following the vernal equinox and that full moon usually coincides with the first day of Passover. During Jewish Leap Years, Passover is pushed back by one lunar cycle and on rare occasions when that happens, Good Friday must contend with Passover’s raucous little sister: Purim.
This year, the natural rhythm has been thrown off completely. While my Christian neighbors will be commemorating the crucifixion, I’ll be participating in a very different sort of passion play, complete with masks and groggers.
Purim is Passover in a funhouse mirror. One is noted for its levity while the other is completely unleavened. On Purim, boundaries dissolve, as Jews traditionally imbibe until, according to tradition, even good and evil are indistinguishable. On Passover, the theme is not liberation through libation, but rather liberation through intensified structure and discipline; its main meal is even called the “Order” (seder).
Upon closer examination, Purim and Good Friday are a match made in an unholy heaven. To my knowledge, no one at the Last Supper was asked to pass the hamantaschen. But there are significant associations to be made between the two holidays, and more specifically between the deaths of Haman and Jesus.
Ancient Aramaic versions of the Esther story employ the term tzalab, “crucify,” to describe Haman’s demise. The first-century historian Josephus did as well. While Jews have traditionally ascribed his death to hanging with a noose, historians doubt that such methods of capital punishment were used during that period. In his Sistine Chapel interpretation of Haman’s death, Michelangelo emphasized the Christological parallels, depicting a crucifixion rather than a hanging.
For Jews of the Middle Ages, who often suffered under oppressive Christian rule, the parallels between Jesus and Haman were more subtle. While Jews never vilified Jesus himself, the way they vilified the genocidal Haman, Purim gave them the opportunity to channel their fears into an annual celebration of epic triumph over an eternal oppressor. The rabbis called that oppressor “Amalek,” noting Haman’s ancestry that is recounted in the book of Esther itself. It is noteworthy that Amalek is introduced in Genesis as the grandchild of Esau, whose Edomite line was linked by post-biblical sages to Rome and later, to Christendom.
No wonder fifth-century Byzantine rulers proscribed the Purim custom of burning Haman’s effigy, suspecting that Jews were trying to satirize Jesus’ death. Just as with the Passion Play, the Purim spiel has carried the potential to incite participants and observers alike toward an intensified hatred of the Other. The most infamous Passion Play is the Oberammergau Passion Play, called by Hitler in 1934 a “precious tool” in his war against the Jews.
It is not coincidental that vicious attacks against Jews have often taken place during the Christian Holy Week — and that one of the most heinous attacks by a Jew, the massacre of 29 Muslims at prayer by Baruch Goldstein in Hebron in 1994, took place on Purim. Goldstein attended Purim services just before setting out on his infamous mission, undoubtedly drinking up the Megillah’s message of vengeance. Esther is meant to be read as farce, but taken literally, it is perhaps the bloodiest and most chauvinistic book of the entire Bible. The unholy alliance of Purim and Good Friday is an ugly tableau that appeals to the worst instincts of human nature, and that highlights the most dangerous traits embedded in both faith traditions.
These traits can be traced through liturgy, such as the Pope’s recent reintroduction of the Tridentine Latin Mass, which includes the prayer recited specifically on Good Friday “for the conversion of the Jews.” And in Jewish liturgy there is the original Alenu prayer, which chastises those who “bow to vanity and emptiness,” i.e., Christianity.
Despite it all, Jews and Christians continue to love these two holidays. That’s because, along with all the malice, Good Friday and Purim also reveal Judaism and Christianity at their most hopeful. The messianic themes so endemic to Easter are also on display in the Purim story. Echoing a passage from Book of Esther, “These days of Purim will never cease among the Jews,” Jewish tradition proclaims that of all our holidays only Purim will continue to be celebrated in Messianic times. Not Passover. Not Yom Kippur.
Just Purim.
And Good Friday?
Perhaps in that dreamlike end-time, even the boundaries between Easter and Esther will begin to dissolve and, to paraphrase Alenu, we’ll rally behind all that is good about our fellow human beings, even if we worship the same God differently. On that day, not only will God be One, God’s name will be One as well.
Thursday, March 13, 2008
Some Suggestions for Revitalizing the Conservative Movement
Some Suggestions for Revitalizing the Conservative Movement
With Arnold Eisen making his Fairfield County debut tonight at Beth El in Norwalk, I thought this might be the best time to dust off some suggestions I first made a year ago at lectures in New City and Palm Beach:
· Be “The Movement that Looks Like America” - Embrace Theological Humility and Intellectual Honesty
o Most Americans agonize over complex issues like abortion, capital punishment and sexual orientation. Their religion should, too. Americans are craving an authentic spiritual alternative to the so-called “moral clarity” of fundamentalism, a few questions to go with all the pat answers. This muddle in the middle is an uncomfortable place to reside, but it is equally a dynamic one. The strength of Conservative Judaism lies in the creative tension that is at its core. Like most of us, Conservative Judaism lives in a real world of tough questions. It thrives on the unresolved conflicts that force us to confront imperfection: Judaism’s, society’s and our own.
· Advocate “Passionate Centrism” – not Muddy Compromise
o Being a passionate religious centrist means affirming that even diametrically opposing positions can be the words of the living God. But it also means that at times compromise is impossible. When bold steps need to be taken, especially for compelling ethical reasons, the movement should accept them even without consensus.
· Champion Human Dignity – Become the Mussar (Ethics) Movement
o Rabbi Eliezer says, “Let your neighbor’s dignity be precious to you as your own. (Avot 2:10)
§ Gay decision based on this premise: a negative commandment can be overruled for the sake of maintaining human dignity.
§ Social action, yes…but Social INTERACTION even more crucial
§ We need “Behavioral Covenants” – create model communities
o “I’m a good person but a bad Jew.” – Render that statement obsolete.
§ Ritual (e.g. Shabbat and Kashrut) as means to ethical ends
§ Campaign against Gossip
§ Climate change and energy policy
§ Business ethics
§ Food and contemporary life
§ Privacy Issues and Relationships, “Shalom in the Home”
§ Redefined roles for men and women: modeling a proud egalitarianism in shul AND at home
· Be Less About the Brain – More About the Heart
o It’s not an ideology that we need – it’s a pulse!
o The movement has tended to shed its most passionate parts fueling its intellectual shell.
· “Sing Unto God a New Song” – Services should aim for authenticity, spontaneity and passion
o What people bemoan as clergy-centered "performance Judaism" has little to do with it being a performance and lots to do with it being a bad performance. The psalms themselves are imploring us, "Shiru L'Adonai, Shir Hadash," "Sing unto Adonai a new song."
o Shabbat services should be seen as a drama in 52 acts. It’s all about connecting individuals and forging community.
o Hebrew as strength (resonates with authenticity), not a handicap
· The Power of the Individual – One Size Doesn’t Fit All
o Synaplex / power of choice / multiple services / reaching people at different stages of the journey
o Acceptance above all – be a movement of LOVE, not rejection
o Every Jew is a Jew by Choice.
· Embrace the Sacred Journey – Welcome Fellow Travelers
o The journey is dynamic - the ladder of observance – 24/7 “striving Jew”
o Barriers to participation need to be broken down (“Judaism for Dummies”)
o “Keruv” extended to all – including non-traditional family units.
o Judaism is merely our language of expressing the universal experiences of being human. It is an exquisitely beautiful, textured language, derived from a history of astounding length, breathtaking variety and unmatched portability.
o Conservative Judaism is best equipped to draw from the wisdom of all dimensions of the Jewish experience, as well as other religious traditions.
o As we are on a journey, our operative direction should be neither left nor right, but forward.
o As a co-traveler and guide, the Rabbi’s role needs to be redefined and invigorated.
· Revelation is Here and Now
o “The classical Jewish view teaches “the decline of the generations” — since Sinai we have grown further from revelation and stand, as a result, on a lower level of holiness. The covenant does not fade or weaken with time. Our future is as promising as our past is powerful. For the Covenantal Jew, dialogue between the Jewish people and God began in the Bible and continues today.” (Rabbi David Wolpe)…Our own self image has impact on our self image as a movement – we’re the movement that is always slouching, the “ever dying people.” It’s time and stop slouching.
· “Apocalypse Later”
o “If you are planting a tree and the Messiah comes to the gates of the city, finish planting the tree, then go out to greet her.” (Talmud) It makes sense to finish planting the tree, for two reasons. 1) If the Messiah turns out to be Al Gore, you’ll get some real brownie points. And 2), because in rabbinic Judaism, the Messiah’s actual coming is beside the point. For the rabbis, the key to waiting for the Messiah was the waiting itself. They understood how dangerous it is when messianism gets out of hand – that’s why they call it messianism: because things get so messy -- and the Judaism that they created was expressly designed to prevent that from happening. But the rabbis didn’t dare eliminate the messianic strain entirely from Jewish tradition. The belief in some sort of end of days, the ultimate goal of a perfect world, a Nirvana -- is essential to all spiritual quests. So while we dare not eliminate speculation about the Messiah, nonetheless, authentic rabbinic Judaism falls squarely on the side of Apocalypse Later.
· “They Like Us…They Really Like Us!” We Need To Capitalize on Judaism’s Popularity
o …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. 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.” (Joshua Hammerman, “Bar Mitzvah Nation,” the Jewish Week, 5/7/04)
· A Life-Affirming Zionism – Israel (People, Land, and State) as a “Light unto the Nations” and a “Light unto the Jews.” Diaspora Jewry as Full Partners
o Connect American Jews to Israel in any manner possible, especially with trips to Israel.
o Israelis love everything American and they are also on spiritual quests – we can share our journeys with them
· Take “Yes” for an Answer
o Judaism is a glass-half-full religion. So why, then, do so many Jews tend to be glass-half-empty people, weighed down by our glass-mostly-empty history. Why does bad karma happen to good religions? On paper at least, Judaism is optimistic to the core, a faith based on messianic aspiration and a positive view of human potential.
Wednesday, March 12, 2008
Purim Torah: A Web Journey
With Purim just a week away, one can imagine how many Eliot Spitzer costumes are being spun as we speak. Purim's message is all about the fragility of fate, the illusary nature of power, the hypocrisy of the powerful and the speed in which everything can be turned upside down.
Before we set out on our way in exploring Purim Torah, some basic Purim links, for background on the holiday: A nice selection can be found at http://www.jr.co.il/hotsites/j-hdaypu.htm (Jacob Richman's Hot Sites) and also at http://www.etni.org.il/holidays/purim.htm. Some excellent articles from Yeshivat Har Etzion can be found at http://www.vbm-torah.org/purim.htm, and at Torah From Dixie at http://www.tfdixie.com/holidays/purim/
Among the most popular aspects of Purim is the satiric genre known as Purim Torah. On Purim everything is turned upside down. Even those phenomena that are normally venerated are turned on their heads, even the study of Torah itself. Purim Torah is rabbinic logic gone haywire, otherwise known as "pilpul" (http://www.jewishgates.org/history/jewhis/pilpul.stm). It's the Wise Men of Chelm (http://www.wzo.org.il/en/resources/view.asp?id=119) taking over the Yeshiva. It comes from a little too much wine ("Adloyada" http://www.ou.org/NCSY/projects/Purim/adloyada.htm), combined with a little too much of our natural Jewish irreverence. It's Rashi (http://www.us-israel.org/jsource/biography/rashi.html, http://www.fordham.edu/halsall/source/1105rashi.html) meets Mel Brooks http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fMMg-L7Lqu4.
Come to think of it, Brooks' hit "The Producers" is a classic Purimspiel (Purim Play) -- a classic reenactment of the story of Purim in a different context. "Springtime for Haman in Shushan" has a ring to it, but this journey is about Purim Torah, not Purimspiels. There is a connection, though, which is explored at http://www.ucalgary.ca/~elsegal/Shokel/880219_Purim_Parody.html. Some more about Purim Torah as it relates to the Megilla can be found at http://www.sichosinenglish.org/books/vedibarta-bam/purim-torah.htm.
Purim Torah takes many forms. Political commentary is almost always part of it, whether the politics be internal or global. Last week at services we discussed the Talmudic incident where Rabbah followed commandment to get so drunk on Purim that he couldn't tell the difference the evildoer Haman and the good guy Mordechai. As a result he "slaughtered" his drinking buddy Rabbi Zera. Fortunately, he was able to revive Zera. He then asked Zera whether he might like to join him next Purim and Zera replied that he'd pass, but thanks anyway. You had to be there -- it was funny to those who heard it here, and it must have been funny to the rabbis of the Talmud too. The sages probably knew Rabbah in the way that "Saturday Night Live" knows George W. Bush, and they also understood that even mandated rabbinic laws can be dangerous when taken to excess. So this story was what one might call an internal satire, a joke by the rabbis about their own methodology. For a more modern version, check out the 2006 Purim edition of Sh'ma, where the whole genre of rabbinic wisdom gets satirized smartly:
Rab Shamllel (who had been thrown out of both the House of Hillel and the House of Shammai at one time or another) used to muse, "You know, it's not what you know and what you don't know. What matters more is whether you know what you know and what you don't know. To know what you know opens the gates to confidence. To not know what you know opens the gates to indecision. To know what you don't know opens the gates to wisdom. And to not know what you don't know opens the gates to catastrophe. You know what I mean?"
He used to sigh, "There are four kinds of car mechanics in this world: The first can fix your car, but can't take you until the Tuesday after Tu B'Shvat. Of these there are but few and what can you do? The second can take you today but are incapable of fixing your car. Of these there are many and they are to be avoided. The third can't take you until the Tuesday after Tu B'Shvat AND are incapable of fixing your car. They are called 'dealers.' The last can fix your car and can take you today, but none of them dwell within a five-hour drive from here."
Purim Torah can be sophomoric (http://www.radix.net/~jbachman/SPTI/Schlitz-home.htm -- is about the Schlitzer Rebbe. Get it?, and just plain fun http://www.radix.net/~jbachman/SPTI/glidot.htm (a new Talmudic tractate on how to eat ice cream: Rabbi Nahman said in the name of Rab, "It is forbidden to eat ice cream with the fingers." But the sages say, "[when it is] in a cone*, it is permitted [to eat this way]. But was it not taught, "Ice cream is finger food, you fool!" [Renee, Sig 2a]?# There is no difficulty. Here it is talking about ice cream, here frozen yogurt. One may not consume premium ice cream for it is written, "Only The butterfat you must not eat, [For it is to be burnt on the altar for atonement, (Lev. 17:10a-11a)]. Rav Sheset says, [this applied only] when the Temple is standing. *According to Rashi. Other Rishonim explain this as meaning a sandwich.)
In the end, Jews do on Purim what we do the rest of the year as well -- we poke a little fun at ourselves. On this most topsy turvy of days, we understand that the secret of life is to enjoy the ride -- and laugh a little all the while.
Before we set out on our way in exploring Purim Torah, some basic Purim links, for background on the holiday: A nice selection can be found at http://www.jr.co.il/hotsites/j-hdaypu.htm (Jacob Richman's Hot Sites) and also at http://www.etni.org.il/holidays/purim.htm. Some excellent articles from Yeshivat Har Etzion can be found at http://www.vbm-torah.org/purim.htm, and at Torah From Dixie at http://www.tfdixie.com/holidays/purim/
Among the most popular aspects of Purim is the satiric genre known as Purim Torah. On Purim everything is turned upside down. Even those phenomena that are normally venerated are turned on their heads, even the study of Torah itself. Purim Torah is rabbinic logic gone haywire, otherwise known as "pilpul" (http://www.jewishgates.org/history/jewhis/pilpul.stm). It's the Wise Men of Chelm (http://www.wzo.org.il/en/resources/view.asp?id=119) taking over the Yeshiva. It comes from a little too much wine ("Adloyada" http://www.ou.org/NCSY/projects/Purim/adloyada.htm), combined with a little too much of our natural Jewish irreverence. It's Rashi (http://www.us-israel.org/jsource/biography/rashi.html, http://www.fordham.edu/halsall/source/1105rashi.html) meets Mel Brooks http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fMMg-L7Lqu4.
Come to think of it, Brooks' hit "The Producers" is a classic Purimspiel (Purim Play) -- a classic reenactment of the story of Purim in a different context. "Springtime for Haman in Shushan" has a ring to it, but this journey is about Purim Torah, not Purimspiels. There is a connection, though, which is explored at http://www.ucalgary.ca/~elsegal/Shokel/880219_Purim_Parody.html. Some more about Purim Torah as it relates to the Megilla can be found at http://www.sichosinenglish.org/books/vedibarta-bam/purim-torah.htm.
Purim Torah takes many forms. Political commentary is almost always part of it, whether the politics be internal or global. Last week at services we discussed the Talmudic incident where Rabbah followed commandment to get so drunk on Purim that he couldn't tell the difference the evildoer Haman and the good guy Mordechai. As a result he "slaughtered" his drinking buddy Rabbi Zera. Fortunately, he was able to revive Zera. He then asked Zera whether he might like to join him next Purim and Zera replied that he'd pass, but thanks anyway. You had to be there -- it was funny to those who heard it here, and it must have been funny to the rabbis of the Talmud too. The sages probably knew Rabbah in the way that "Saturday Night Live" knows George W. Bush, and they also understood that even mandated rabbinic laws can be dangerous when taken to excess. So this story was what one might call an internal satire, a joke by the rabbis about their own methodology. For a more modern version, check out the 2006 Purim edition of Sh'ma, where the whole genre of rabbinic wisdom gets satirized smartly:
Rab Shamllel (who had been thrown out of both the House of Hillel and the House of Shammai at one time or another) used to muse, "You know, it's not what you know and what you don't know. What matters more is whether you know what you know and what you don't know. To know what you know opens the gates to confidence. To not know what you know opens the gates to indecision. To know what you don't know opens the gates to wisdom. And to not know what you don't know opens the gates to catastrophe. You know what I mean?"
He used to sigh, "There are four kinds of car mechanics in this world: The first can fix your car, but can't take you until the Tuesday after Tu B'Shvat. Of these there are but few and what can you do? The second can take you today but are incapable of fixing your car. Of these there are many and they are to be avoided. The third can't take you until the Tuesday after Tu B'Shvat AND are incapable of fixing your car. They are called 'dealers.' The last can fix your car and can take you today, but none of them dwell within a five-hour drive from here."
Purim Torah can be sophomoric (http://www.radix.net/~jbachman/SPTI/Schlitz-home.htm -- is about the Schlitzer Rebbe. Get it?, and just plain fun http://www.radix.net/~jbachman/SPTI/glidot.htm (a new Talmudic tractate on how to eat ice cream: Rabbi Nahman said in the name of Rab, "It is forbidden to eat ice cream with the fingers." But the sages say, "[when it is] in a cone*, it is permitted [to eat this way]. But was it not taught, "Ice cream is finger food, you fool!" [Renee, Sig 2a]?# There is no difficulty. Here it is talking about ice cream, here frozen yogurt. One may not consume premium ice cream for it is written, "Only The butterfat you must not eat, [For it is to be burnt on the altar for atonement, (Lev. 17:10a-11a)]. Rav Sheset says, [this applied only] when the Temple is standing. *According to Rashi. Other Rishonim explain this as meaning a sandwich.)
In the end, Jews do on Purim what we do the rest of the year as well -- we poke a little fun at ourselves. On this most topsy turvy of days, we understand that the secret of life is to enjoy the ride -- and laugh a little all the while.
Monday, March 10, 2008
Mind Your Manners (Online and Off)
I recently started a new adult ed class, “Being Nice: The Next Big Thing.” Our prime resource is Joseph Telushkin’s new “Code of Jewish Ethics.” The topics are “Being Humble” followed by “Becoming a Grateful Person,” then “Good Manners and Civility,” and finally, on April 6, “What is “Lashon Hara” and how do we avoid it?”
I’m discovering that this topic of etiquette and manners has become much more than simply a question of which fork to use or where to put the napkin. As basic societal boundaries have broken down, we’ve lost all semblance of civility. The “Wild West” cyber culture has a lot to do with it, though its impact has been just as profound offline as on. We are seeing a pandemic of shouting, threatening, and cursing. Rap lyrics have become the stuff of common conversation. I’ve spent much time observing Facebook and other social websites lately, and frankly it is scary. Even Facebook is beginning to understand that.
Internet civility was a prime topic of the Jewish Week panel discussion I recently took part in. You’ll be happy to know that appearance received rave reviews at some of the more cutting-edge Jewish sites, such as Jewlicious. Well, sort of. The blogger wrote, “Rabbi Joshua Hammerman was very Rabbinic and while I wanted to dislike him based on some of the things of his that I read, well, I just couldn’t.” I love it! But that review was a veritable love letter compared to the online vilification I’ve receive from time to time for articles that I’ve written. The only good thing I can say is that these criticisms are in the distinct minority and seem to come equally from the right as from the left. I must say, the left is more creative (I’ve been called “deranged,” and my looks compared to a famous Jewish porn star). One blogger decided to dig up an article written for the New York Times over a decade ago (about circumcision), seeking new ways to vilify. It ’aint pretty.
Any rabbi – and any writer – puts himself out there. I consider it a special privilege to live at a time when people can have instant access to virtually anything I’ve ever written. In truth, what’s always been true for rabbis (that every utterance is amplified – every word counts) has now become true for everyone else: every word we put online now is there forever. I’m more than willing to take the punches from critics, knowing that so many others are impacted positively. We need to take such risks for our lives to make a difference. But there is a difference between punches and sucker punches. If you look at the coarseness of the cyber culture, two things emerge as particularly shocking: 1) the tone and the language of the comments that people make and 2) that so few stand up to it. The more things change the more they stay the same. Mob mentality rules, online and off. The harsher things get, the more afraid people are to do something about it. That is the problem we need to address.
I’m discovering that this topic of etiquette and manners has become much more than simply a question of which fork to use or where to put the napkin. As basic societal boundaries have broken down, we’ve lost all semblance of civility. The “Wild West” cyber culture has a lot to do with it, though its impact has been just as profound offline as on. We are seeing a pandemic of shouting, threatening, and cursing. Rap lyrics have become the stuff of common conversation. I’ve spent much time observing Facebook and other social websites lately, and frankly it is scary. Even Facebook is beginning to understand that.
Internet civility was a prime topic of the Jewish Week panel discussion I recently took part in. You’ll be happy to know that appearance received rave reviews at some of the more cutting-edge Jewish sites, such as Jewlicious. Well, sort of. The blogger wrote, “Rabbi Joshua Hammerman was very Rabbinic and while I wanted to dislike him based on some of the things of his that I read, well, I just couldn’t.” I love it! But that review was a veritable love letter compared to the online vilification I’ve receive from time to time for articles that I’ve written. The only good thing I can say is that these criticisms are in the distinct minority and seem to come equally from the right as from the left. I must say, the left is more creative (I’ve been called “deranged,” and my looks compared to a famous Jewish porn star). One blogger decided to dig up an article written for the New York Times over a decade ago (about circumcision), seeking new ways to vilify. It ’aint pretty.
Any rabbi – and any writer – puts himself out there. I consider it a special privilege to live at a time when people can have instant access to virtually anything I’ve ever written. In truth, what’s always been true for rabbis (that every utterance is amplified – every word counts) has now become true for everyone else: every word we put online now is there forever. I’m more than willing to take the punches from critics, knowing that so many others are impacted positively. We need to take such risks for our lives to make a difference. But there is a difference between punches and sucker punches. If you look at the coarseness of the cyber culture, two things emerge as particularly shocking: 1) the tone and the language of the comments that people make and 2) that so few stand up to it. The more things change the more they stay the same. Mob mentality rules, online and off. The harsher things get, the more afraid people are to do something about it. That is the problem we need to address.
Why This Blog?
Last month I participated in a Jewish Week panel discussion in Manhattan, “Is the Internet Good for the Jews?” (download audio here and video highlights here), so having been designated as an "expert" in the Jewish Blogosphere, I figured it was about time to have an official blog of my own. For years I've been posting comments in my weekly newsletter, the Shabbat-O-Gram and, of course, I've written lots of articles and sermons, but a blog offers me the chance to react more sponteneously, share my thoughts more widely and gain more feedback from a more diverse audience. I've always believed in an interactive rabbinate, with the ideal contemporary clergy model being not fire-and-brimstone-spewer-from-on-high but rather a co-traveler on a common spiritual journey. Mine is a synagogue without walls, where my congregants and I connect both virtally and in-the-flesh, with the one complementing the other. This blog gives me the chance to expand this wall-less synagogue even more.
I've been at my congregation now for over twenty years - a rich and rare blessing in this tumultuous world. In this blog I hope to share thoughts about all the things I try to juggle in my life: the weighty demands of an impossible vocation, the inherent paradox of being a professional human being, the shifting sands of Jewish identity, and the exhausting-yet exhilerating struggle to transform the routine daily drudgery into a life filled with sacred moments.
You'll see here some new thoughts mixed with old, things I've shared before with ideas seen here for the first time. I welcome your feedback.
I've been at my congregation now for over twenty years - a rich and rare blessing in this tumultuous world. In this blog I hope to share thoughts about all the things I try to juggle in my life: the weighty demands of an impossible vocation, the inherent paradox of being a professional human being, the shifting sands of Jewish identity, and the exhausting-yet exhilerating struggle to transform the routine daily drudgery into a life filled with sacred moments.
You'll see here some new thoughts mixed with old, things I've shared before with ideas seen here for the first time. I welcome your feedback.
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