Blogging Elul: Rosh Chodesh, Shoftim and choosing to Act

In the summer of 1958, Groucho Marx took his daughter Melinda, friend Robert Duan and Robert’s daughter Judy for a six week trip to Europe, including a visit to Germany. While in Germany, they attempted to visit the cemetery where Groucho’s grandmother was buried, only to find the entire Jewish section had been eradicated by the Nazis. A few days later, Groucho hired a car to take them to East Berlin, where he asked to see the remains of Hitler’s bunker and last resting place. They found it much the way it was right after the war; a heap of wreckage and rubble. Marx got out of the car, stood atop it, and proceeded to do a frenetic Charleston routine; an ultimate act of defiance. No one laughed. They left Germany the next day.

It’s worth reflecting on that image, of Groucho Marx literally dancing on the grave of Hitler, without even a hint of humor in the moment, as we continue to process the events of the last few weeks. Rabbi Koppel, in conversation with me, reflected that it seemed as if the march in Charlottesville sent the entire Jewish community into shock, and that we were—are—still wrestling with what we should be doing. I mentioned this to a non-Jewish colleague, who said that he shared with his congregation the following question, based on the prophets: are we responding to the Tiki-torch Nazis out of righteousness or out of rage?

We might ask the question whether or not it matters; why shouldn’t we respond out of our own rage and pain? Wouldn’t we be justified to react in that fashion? To meet the forces of evil—and lets be clear, we are discussing evil—in the same manner they approach us?

This week we read in our Torah those words that we as Jews, and especially as Reform Jews, have clung to for generations; tzedek tzedek tirdof, Justice, Justice you shall pursue. The Hasidic leader Rabbi Simcha Bunim understands the repetition of the word tzedek—Justice—to mean that we must pursue justice in a just way. We cannot, must not say the ends justify the means, for to do so means that we are no longer truly pursuing a just, compassionate and sacred world. Instead we are pursuing our own agenda, one filled with bad intentions. Or, through our actions, no matter our intent, instead of spreading justice, we create the fertile ground for more injustice in the world. We have seen this again and again as people who once pursued righteousness now seek to feed their own egos, or well-intentioned programs and efforts turn out to backfire on the very people they were supposed to help. So it is with us as well in this moment. I know it’s scary right now, and exhausting, and sad, and infuriating. The old punk in me would like nothing better than to curb-stomp some skinhead thugs. But that isn’t justice; it’s not even close. Surely the times demand that we act and act we must. But we won’t become them. We will not allow their hate, their penchant to violence, their disdain for justice to make us act out of fear and rage. We will not let them dictate the rules of the game. No; we will act with a defiant love in our hearts, a love for God and this world and our neighbors and our tradition as radical and provocative as dancing on Hitler’s grave. We will not shrink from our mission as Jews, but step forward, reminding others of God’s hidden light in the world, that will only be revealed when we lift up the poor, support the oppressed, and care for the stranger in our midst, for we know what it means to be the stranger. We will act with courage, but not hate, strength but not rage, justice but not zealousness. The moment is calling to us, and we must answer the call, to do justice justly in the world and cause the shadow of hate to crawl back under the rock.

In 1941 Woody Guthrie put the words “This Machine Kills Fascists” on his guitar. His music was his weapon against tyranny and hate. Groucho’s weapon against injustice was a crazy Charleston. Our weapon is Torah, guiding the work of our hands and the words we speak. We move forward, mindful of the words of the psalmist we say from now until Rosh Hashanah, Hope in God! Be strong and of good courage. Hope in God! Amen. 

Charlottesville, Eikev and Being In The Camp Bubble

I've been at Camp Harlam as faculty for the last week now. It's been amazing, as always, working with my unit and their staff, being with colleagues and comparing notes, focused on this cloistered microcosm of Jewish life here in the Poconos.

The emphasis is on the word cloistered. Even while taking the unit to New York City earlier this week it's easy to feel disconnected from the outside world. That is, as they say, a feature, not a bug; the point is to get the kids (and staff) to focus entirely on the Jewish world they're creating here in Kunkletown, rather than be distracted by what might be happening off-camp. Campers aren't allowed phones or connected devices, and staff are asked to keep theirs discreet and use them only for work or in their off hours. So it's easy to loss connection with the daily round, including what's happening in Virginia right now.

I was in Charlottesville for the first time only two months ago. I was down to do a wedding, and Marisa and I used the opportunity for a little R&R as well. While there, we toured the Old Grounds of the University of Virginia, and later (when my son arrived from my in-laws) Monticello.

I was struck by two things while in Charlottesville. The first was the kindness and diversity of everyone I met: the woman who cut my hair the day before the wedding, the local friends of the couple, the folks we met in passing, the guy behind the counter at the used book store who clearly could spin a yarn,  the folks at the coffeeshop we had breakfast in. Sure, you might say, it's the South, of course they were nice. But it was more than that: they were kind.  There was a real sense of community in this town. A sense that all of us are in this together.

The other was how the city--and UVA--are still wrestling with race and the legacy of slavery. As someone who went to Oberlin, a school rooted first in the Underground Railroad and Emancipation and later the Civil Rights movement, it was hard for me to tour the campus and process how much slavery permeated the origins of the school. But to the school's credit, it was neither hidden away nor whitewashed; there were clear exhibits and displays discussing their "original sin" and its legacy.

So to see what's happening in Charlottesville today is heartbreaking. The hate. The bigotry. The violence and terrorism. The lack of shame on the part of those who fly the symbols of racism and rage and intimidation. And to be here, surrounded by children of every color of the rainbow and every orientation celebrating their Judaism knowing that only a half-a-day's ride, people are being threatened, beaten, or run over, makes me feel pulled in two different directions, groping for answers in the dark.

This week, in our Torah portion, we read: "Remember the long way that The Eternal your God has made you travel in the wilderness...[in order to] test you by hardships to learn what was in your hearts: whether you would keep [God's] commandments or not."(Deut. 8:2). Clearly we as a country are still in the wilderness, still tested by hardship; is this truly what is in our hearts as a country? Is this who we want to be? A place of fire and rage and hate and bigotry? Or can we find our way back on the path? At this morning's Shabbat service, the unit head and assistant unit head of Galil reminded us that our values are not goals to achieve, they are not things we are meant to master. Rather, we are presented opportunities to strive toward them, and while sometimes we succeed, sometimes we fail as well. But failure can lead to learning, can lead us higher, to strive harder for those moments where we might be our best selves. Today, as we continue in the wilderness of history, is a moment of failure. Today is a moment where we failed God's test. Not for Charlottesville or Virginia, but for all of us. Even those of us cloistered away at summer camp. But it will only remain a failure if we fail to learn from it, if we fail to act on that learning. Today is a day of hate. May tomorrow be a day of love, a day of peace--because we made it as such.

Parashat Mattot: Seeing The Other

The ad took up a full page in the newspaper. A prayer, a Jewish prayer, for soldiers going off to war, presented by the religious leader of the local community, beginning with the Shema in transliterated Hebrew, and ending with the words of the Psalms: “For thy salvation do I hope, O Lord!” The prayer, fitting a time of war, beseeches God to defeat the enemy, to inspire the young soldier and watch over them, and to watch over the welfare of the country and its leadership. The local Jewish community, having seen this prayer, watching their own children and their neighbors’ children go off to war, must have found it inspiring, and the Christian community, I suspect, found it encouraging as well.

The prayer I’m referring to is the Prayer for Confederate soldiers, written by Rev. M. J. Michelbacher, “minister” of the Hebrew Congregation, “House of Love” in Richmond Virginia, now headed by my colleague Scott Nagel. The enemy invoked in the prayer is, of course, the North, the Union…you know, the good guys. And here is a Jewish prayer celebrating what we know and understand, and what many of our Movement’s founders understood, to be the bad guys, the Confederacy.

It would be really easy for us to dismiss this as a particular stain of our history, but a minor one, that little shadow on the tablecloth where the wine got spilled at Seder once. We could blow it off, or explain it away, or justify it in a hundred different ways: a product of its time and place, the local Jews were afraid to speak out against injustice, etc. and so forth. Or we could just ignore it, and celebrate Jewish abolitionists and later civil rights leaders and pretend it’s not there. But there it is, beautifully and thoughtfully written by the local Jewish leader, publicized and memorialized at a time of great conflict, as Michelman writes, “this once happy country inflamed”.

That part should sound familiar to us. Perhaps you’ve moved on from the gnashing of teeth and bitter divide of 2016, and if you have, I commend you. I’m still a mess, and let me be clear; I’m a mess as much over the division between people—the anger, the howling rage and alienation—as I am over any particular policy or political stance. We are very quick to see one another as enemies instead of neighbors. We are being “Othered” from one another; along divisions old and new. And we are increasingly insulating ourselves from people who are different and with whom we agree, happily dismissing their lived experience. When the threat from the Majority leader in the senate is they may have to collaborate and compromise with the other side of the aisle, I think it’s safe to say that our ability to relate to each other is pretty trashed.

What happens when we see each other as enemies? Our Torah portion gives us an example of that. Moses is preparing Israel to finally, finally enter the promised land, when the tribes of Reuben and Gad make a modest proposal. You see, the lands just outside what would be Israel happen to be great land for cattle, which was Reuben and Gad’s thing. They ask, rather than enter the land, if they could settle just outside, where it makes more sense for their livelihood. “It would be a favor for us” they say.

Well, they may have thought that was a reasonable request, but Moses instead hears treachery and cowardice. Moses accuses them of being rebels, just like the previous generations, letting their brothers in the other tribes go to fight while they betray their loyalty to God. They don’t want land for their cattle; they just want to blow up the whole enterprise and ruin Israel, just like the previous rebels did. That Reuben—the tribe behind the last rebellion—was asking for this favor didn’t help. It takes both tribes declaring that they would go into the land and fight in front of the rest of the tribes as shock troops, as the vanguard, to calm Moses down from his wrath and help him see that they in fact were not trying to betray Israel, but do what was right for their families.

Moses doesn’t see fellow Israelites looking for their own interests asking permission and blessing for their choices; he sees—through the lens of previous experience—enemies trying to destroy God’s people. In fact we see a role-reversal of Moses here; instead of being the gentle and understanding one who patiently explains God’s commandments to a rebellious people, the commentator Abravanel imagines the leaders of the tribe stepping forward and explaining again, quietly, so Moses understands the request, desperately trying not to embarrass him.

How often are we Moses, quick to anger, to assume we know the other’s motivations, and those motivations have to be harmful, or naïve, or foolish? How much easier is it for us to speak to like-minded people about how we see them, those who would harm us, rather than step forward to speak patiently, quietly with those who would disagree with us? We talk about loving the neighbor and the stranger, but do we practice what we preach?

In her book “From Enemy to Friend”, Rabbi Amy Eilberg talks about different spiritual practices, even simple ones, to help us get beyond seeing the other as “Other”. Deepening our curiosity rather than our defensiveness by asking questions, checking in to our reaction to conflict and being self-aware of how we viscerally respond to others, trying to speak as our seeming opponent and explain from her point of view, even something as simple as asking ourselves “Are you sure?” when our inclination is to dig in. Any of those would give us the tools Moses lacked in the parasha, to truly see and embrace the other, minimize stereotyping and blame, while still upholding our own values and beliefs, in order to come to understanding. I think it is possible, but only if we put in the effort, the spiritual work of slowing down our own gut reaction to conflict.

The Prayer for a Confederate Soldier begins and ends with the Shema, our prayer from Deuteronomy, reminding us that God is One. But Oneness is not Sameness, and the rabbis remind us that God’s greatness is that we are all, as different and diverse as we are, created in God’s image, and that makes us sacred. So I pray not for victory against enemies, but to help us see those differences as holy; not for victory, but for love, not for victory, but for understanding. Not for victory, but Wholeness, for Shalom. May it be so. Amen.

Parashat Metzorah, or When to Ask for More Spoons

Once Rabbi Elimelekh had his friend Rabbi Mendel as a guest for dinner. As it happened, that night, Rabbi Elimelekh’s servant forgot to set out a spoon at Rabbi Mendel’s place. Everyone was eating except Rabbi Mendel, who sat looking at his soup. The Tzaddik observed this and asked: Why aren’t you eating? Well, said Rabbi Mendel, I don’t have a spoon.

Look, said Rabbi Elimelekh, one must know enough to ask for a spoon, and a plate too, if need be!

There are two ways to look at this story. One is that Rabbi Elimelekh should have made sure that Rabbi Mendel had a spoon. Quite rude and unwelcoming. But the other is Rabbi Elimelekh’s point; that Rabbi Mendel, seeing his situation, should have asked self-advocated, and asked for help. We can’t wait for someone to notice whether we’re in distress; we have to ask.

And here’s the thing; we’re not good at asking for help. We’re great at offering help. I can’t tell you how many times I’ve visited someone in the hospital after surgery and asked if they wanted the caring committee to reach out, only to be told with a dismissive wave of the hand that they used to be on the caring committee. We’re happy to be the one who supports; we’re less thrilled to be on the receiving end. Maybe it feels infantilizing, or as Americans, it feels weak. I don’t know. What I do know is that our tradition teaches us that the point of being in community is as much to have a shoulder to lean on as it is to offer that shoulders to others. And that no one is keeping score. We see that in our torah portion, which talks about a person with Tzaraat; sometimes called leprosy but really some kind of spiritual skin disease. We are told right at the beginning that as soon as a priest hears about the person having tzaraat, he’s to go to that person outside the camp to address his needs. This tells us that someone had to tell the priest, and that the priest has to go to that person as soon as he hears of their suffering. I know that sounds self-evident, but too often I find that we’d rather suffer in silence or hope someone notices that we don’t have a spoon than admit frailty and get the help and support they need. And when we close ourselves off like that, in a way, we push our friends away, we tell them that we don’t trust them to be there for us. And we tell ourselves that we aren’t worthy of love and support.

Rabbi Mendel deserves a spoon. The metzorah—the person with tzaraat—deserves to be seen by the priest, to have his illness attended to so he can reenter the camp. And we are deserving of love and support. But sometimes, folks, we have to ask. Let’s be brave enough, trusting enough, to do so. Amen. 

We all need Shabbat this week.

It's been a hard week. A hard month.. A hard year (and it's only March!). Regardless of your political leanings it's clear that there's a lot of hurt right now. Too much pain, and fear, and anxiety.

Yet there has also been hope. There have been acts of kindness and solidarity large and small. Rallies. Calls for action. Notes and phone messages. Perhaps enough to fill in the cracks, perhaps not. But gestures of comfort and love nonetheless.

Tomorrow night begins Shabbat. That "palace in time" that comes every week for us as Jews. It is a chance for us to take a deep breath, to give ourselves permission to step away, if only for a moment, to cherish what is most holy in our lives. A reminder of why we do what we do the other six days.

As we look toward Shabbat, let me be so bold as to make a suggestion; find a synagogue, and go to services (we happen to have two tomorrow night, 6:30 and 8pm). Whether you're a regular or haven't been in a while. Or ever. Whether you're Jewish or not. Go and be in community. Go and be in sacred space. Go and simply be. Go and fulfill the words of the poet Ruth Brin:

God, help us now to make this new Shabbat.
After noise, we seek quiet;
After crowds of indifferent strangers,
We seek to touch those we love;
After concentration on work and responsibility,
We seek freedom to meditate, to listen to our inward selves.
We open our eyes to the hidden beauties
and the infinite possibilities in the world You are creating;
We break open the gates of the reservoirs
of goodness and kindness in ourselves and in others;
We reach toward one holy perfect moment of Shabbat.

Parashat Mishpatim: Cruelty or Solidarity?

If you went to Oberlin back in the 1990s then you would know that mild February weather would bring a special visitor to Tappan Square. Brother Jed. Who was Brother Jed? We never got his full name, but he was a part of a Christian religious organization where clearly part of the mission was to go to places of so-called godlessness and hedonism and bring the Gospel. So he would stand there in dress shirt and slacks with a sign quoting the Bible to justify some hostility to homosexuality (usually) and a Bible and would proclaim his values in a calm but loud voice. This being Oberlin there would be all kinds of shenanigans as a result: gay couples would frolic behind him, an Orthodox buddy from Hillel once stood about 15 feet away and countered his statements with quotes from the Talmud, a lot of people just ignored him. But a number of us would gather, listen, and debate and discuss with him. Sometimes for a few minutes, sometimes for an hour. This was a liberal arts college, after all, and at liberal arts colleges you engaged in discourse. One time, as Brother Jed was packing up for the day, he made an off-hand comment about how he loved coming to Oberlin. It was hard to tell if he was being sincere or sarcastic so someone asked him why that was. He said it was because we actually engaged with him and listened to him. We talked to him. At the other colleges and universities he went to, they would throw beer bottles, yell obscenities at him and one time even chased him. They were hostile, they were cruel. To be sure our discussions could get heated and no one ceded any ground, but at no point were we cruel.

We weren’t cruel. This week we read parashat mishpatim, the portion of laws. It follows right after the giving of the Torah at Mt. Sinai and it always feels, narratively, like such a downer. After this amazing transformational moment Israel gets to listen about personal injury law, property management, criminal justice, witches, sexual morality, how to care for a slave, animal husbandry, holidays, a whole potpourri of regulations that seem to have nothing to do with each other. Except they do. Taken together, they are all an exhortation against cruelty. How you treat the slave, the widow, the orphan, your neighbor, the stranger, the animal in the field, how you participate in communal life--all pointing to a life that minimizes cruelty to others. That to be God’s people, to live by God’s light, to receive God’s blessing, we simply cannot treat others as obstacles, as things, as objects, as enemies. As Monsters. But people. And people are deserving of respect and love. Again and again, exhaustively, as my friend Josh Garroway wrote this week in Voices and Values, our portion exhorts us to care for the least of us, to protect the least of us, to see them not as strangers but as neighbors, as brothers and sisters.

We don’t have to be cruel. I have been thinking about the idea of cruelty more and more this last month, seeing families separated by religious bans, headstones overturned in Jewish cemeteries, as ICE agents take parents from their children at their kids’ football practices, and guidance come down reminding vulnerable transgender kids of their vulnerability. I’ve heard from teachers in the Christina school district that parents won’t come to conferences because they’re afraid it’s a trap set by ICE to take them away. The liberal thinker Richard Rorty often wrote that the choice before us wasn’t one of conservative versus liberal, but of solidarity versus cruelty. Were we going to, in policy, in behavior, in our the expression of our values, act out of cruelty, or were we going to stand in solidarity with the most vulnerable, the most exposed to harm. Is it possible to disagree about values and beliefs without resorting to open hostility and cruelty? Well, we did it with Brother Jed. Why couldn’t we do the rest of the time?

Our Torah declares: You shall not follow a multitude to do evil; nor shall you speak in a cause to incline a multitude to pervert justice. That text speaks volumes today. Our age is presenting us Richard Rorty’s question, his choice, which is also God’s choice, though I doubt he would have thought of it that way. Will we act out of cruelty, hate, anger, hostility? Or will we act in solidarity, recognizing the humanity in the other, refusing to make the other ‘Other’ at all? The desecration of Jewish graves in St. Louis was met by a Muslim organization raising over $100,000. The Muslim Ban and Refugee restrictions have been met by Jews and Christians, including in our own community, saying loudly and proudly you are welcome here. Linda Sarsour, one of the leaders of the Women’s March, has said “We can disagree and still love each other, unless your disagreement is rooted in my oppression & denial of my humanity and right to exist.”. We can disagree and still love each other. We can choose solidarity. We don’t have to be cruel. We can choose solidarity. We don’t have to agree, we can hold onto our beliefs and cede no ground, but we can do it with respect and compassion for the other. But only if we choose. May we choose wisely, amen.

Parashat Yitro: It is enough

This past Wednesday I was having coffee with a friend and colleague, and we were talking about how insanely busy we are, especially right now with all that is going on in the world. And he said to me something that resonated; he said that he felt that what he was doing wasn’t enough. No matter how many calls he made or marches he went to or anything else he did, it didn’t feel like it was enough.

Well, “It me” as the kids say.

And it all of us too. Because I think one of the hallmarks of this moment in history is that it doesn’t matter what we do, it doesn’t quite feel like enough. That our individual efforts are too small. That no matter how much we may put our shoulder into whatever we’re doing, it isn’t making a difference.

And that’s as true in our personal lives as in our tzedakah lives. Perhaps it’s even more true there. Did I spend enough time with my family? Did I make a difference to the people around me? Am I making a difference in my life? I think many of us wrestle with these questions even as we find ourselves busier and busier with our obligations.

 In Exodus 18, Jethro watches his son-in-law Moses adjudicating before Israel all day long.

One man fixing the world's problems. All day long.

Baffled, he asks Moses what he's doing and he gets a bunch of superhero talk: only I can do it. They people need me. You know the drill.

And what does Jethro say?

ויאמר חתן משה אליו לא־טוב הדבר אשר אתה עשה׃

"And Moses’ father-in-law said to him, The thing that you do is not good.

נבל תבל גם־אתה גם־העם הזה אשר עמך כי־כבד ממך הדבר לא־תוכל עשהו לבדך׃

"You will certainly wear away, both you, and this people who are with you; for this thing is too heavy for you; you are not able to perform it yourself alone."

So what?

That’s us. We’re Moses. We’re taking the world on our shoulders, feeling like no one else can do it, feeling like we alone are responsible, feeling like we have to keep ourselves going all day long.

And you know what? It's not good.

It's exhausting. For all of us.

And the Torah knew there would be moments like this, moments when we feel like Moses. So the text sends us Jethro to say:

You’re doing enough. And you don’t have to do it alone.

To say: remember your family, your friends, and your community.

To say: remember to pray, to sing, to breathe. To let others share the load; to trust others.

To say: go to shul. Call a friend you haven't talked to in a while. Break bread with some folks you like.

Jethro reminds us that Torah is not lived or fulfilled by one person, but by all of us.

All of us. Together. And that is good. May it be so for all of us. Amen.