A Jew In The Box, And Why It's Not A Bad Thing

Friends:

Here's my sermon from this past Friday on this controversial subject that's making the rounds.

I’m sure by now you’ve heard this week about the new exhibit at the Berlin Jewish museum. There, starting this past month, is a glass box, with a chair, in which a member of the Jewish community goes and sits for some set amount of time. The individual—young or old, male or female—is allowed to interact with the folks at the museum, answer questions about Judaism. The sign asks a question: “are there still Jews in Germany?” This is the “Jew in the Box” installment, as part of the exhibit "The Whole Truth, everything you wanted to know about Jews", and it raises some fundamental questions. 

Now, there have been living exhibitions in museums before, including Jewish exhibitions. I’m thinking specifically of the soferet—the female scribe—who wrote a Torah while ‘on display’ at a Jewish museum in California, to show the scribal art and have people ask questions about the process. But this display and its implications are different, and as the reaction to the exhibit has made clear, more challenging. For one thing, the fact that this is on display in Berlin, in Germany, who under Hitler wanted to establish a Jewish museum for entirely different purposes, and who’s Jewish population is down to nearly nothing—a mere 200,000 among 82 million souls—not merely due to immigration or demographics but murder, makes the whole thing seem ghoulish to many. "Why don't they give him a banana and a glass of water, turn up the heat and make the Jew feel really cozy in his glass box," said one member of the Jewish leadership. "It's a horrible thing to do – completely degrading and not helpful," said another. 

And yet, as many of the volunteers have said, who among us has not felt like a museum piece, like a person on display? Who hasn’t had to answer questions, from the sublime to the ridiculous, acting as an impromptu expert on theology, history, the Holocaust, and a myriad of other topics? Right before Passover, Marisa was in the checkout line at Shoprite, and as she was ringing up her matzah and other Passover stuff, was asked by the cashier, “Is there some kind of holiday coming up?” and “Is this what Jesus ate?” The reality is, there’s a lot people don’t know about Jews and Judaism—the questions we get bely the questions we don’t get, the ones that are left unasked, and so, unanswered. The exhibit creates a ‘safe’ opportunity to ask questions that might not be asked in another setting. According to one article, one volunteer was asked about Shabbat, Judaism and homosexuality, and kippot. And if you caught the Good Morning America piece on Wednesday, another volunteer was asked by a teenager about the appropriateness of holocaust jokes (by the way: the answer was, yes they’re rude and no don’t tell them,  especially in Germany).  Now, you and I might think that should be self-evident, but spend enough time with teens and tweens, and you might instead be proud of the fact that the kid asked at all, and didn’t just let one rip in the cafeteria. 

So, was it a good idea? Should the museum have put on this exhibit? It makes us uncomfortable, doesn’t it? Then again, aren’t museums—isn’t art—supposed to make us uncomfortable? To prick at us and poke at us? What makes us uncomfortable, I think, is not so much the exhibit itself. It’s that sense of threat that Jews, and perhaps all minorities, carry around with them. That we’re one step away from some unspeakable horror, or worse, extinction. That we may someday be museum pieces, putting on Passover Seders like Native Americans put on pow wows or Hawaiians luaus. But what makes us uncomfortable, I think, is that the museum exhibit is pointing out what we ought to be doing. No, not sitting in a glass box, but going out and speaking about our Judaism. There was a time that we thought Judaism was the religion of enlightenment, and many of us still think about our faith and its creed as having vital, important truths to share with the world, and a viewpoint that is more empowering, more compassionate and creative than others. It’s the other side of the coin, why we privately crow about Jewish Nobel laureates. We should be promoting our values outward toward the rest of the world—are we not called to be a light to the nations, a nation of priests and a holy people? But we get another question about Chanukah being Jewish Christmas or why so many Jews vote for Democrats and we shrink instead. 

Our torah portion reflects this as well. Aaron lifts his hands up toward the people to bless them, steps down and goes into the tent of meeting with Moses, whereupon both come out and bless the people. Like Aaron, we step forward to share our blessing, our people’s blessing, with those beyond our four walls, but then we stop, and retreat to safety. What would it mean for us to be like Moses and Aaron together, proudly standing before the people, sharing the blessing? For we read, it was at that point that the divine Presence appeared. So the question takes on cosmic ramifications: do we, in our hesitance to ‘out’ ourselves, or answer questions, or engage in dialogue, in advocacy, with others, are we denying ourselves and the world the presence of God? 

In his book Nothing Sacred, Douglas Rushkoff writes, “maintaining the free, open and intelligent conversation that expresses Judaism at any given moment isn’t easy. Still, more than any particular tenet or practice, this evolving conversation—and the right of every human being to participate in it—is the defining characteristic of this tradition.” So, the next time you feel like you’re the “Jew in the box,” the museum piece, remember—museums are meant to educate, and exhibits are meant to challenge. We carry a privilege and a responsibility, we nation of priests. Let’s live up to it. 

Isaac Mayer Wise and Me

My sermon for tonight, my BIRTHDAY! :)

Rabbi Yair D. Robinson
Congregation Beth Emeth
3/29/13
Isaac Mayer Wise and Me
 Today, this Shabbat, we commemorate the birthday of someone very special. A red-headed and red-bearded rabbi, a scholar, a prince of the Movement who is inarguably one of the most important Reform rabbis—nay, one of the most important rabbis, period, of North America. Amazingly, I’m not speaking about myself (though today is my birthday), but rather Isaac Mayer Wise, founder of the Reform movement we take for granted, who was born this date in 1819. Wise was a great publisher of scholarly texts, a Jewish paper, the American Israelite, still published today, and founded the Hebrew Union College, the Union of American Hebrew Congregations, now the Union for Reform Judaism, and the Central Conference of American Rabbis. While one could argue that there might have been Reform without Wise, it would not have been the Movement we know and love today.

If Wise could see today, what would he think of his Reform Judaism, or of the Jewish world in general? There are some things that would surely delight him. An advocate of Youth Engagement, who did away with the Bar Mitzvah and replaced it with Confirmation, and started Hebrew Union College originally as a high school and college program, he would be thrilled to see the myriad camps and youth groups, the energy put into reviving Jewish education and making it meaningful for a new generation. He would love Social Media: without a doubt, Wise would be tweeting away his thoughts to his public, blogging rather than publishing a newspaper. He would appreciate this prayerbook—his own siddur, Minhag America, is actually not so different, with Hebrew and English options, running commentary, and the option of making the service more or less traditional. And as someone who was politically active, and believed firmly that Judaism would be the religion of all enlightened folk, he would be proud of the fact that so many of our values are a part of the warp and woof of our society, proud of the work of the Religious Action Center, American Jewish World Service and the host of other Jewish organizations advocating for human dignity and freedom in America and abroad. And, likewise, we should take some measure of pride at our place in history. While, without a doubt we wring our hands over population surveys and demographic studies, as the Economist pointed out this past summer, never in Jewish history has there been so much vitality or creativity in our people—in social justice, in music, the arts, scholarship, worship, education, Israel and international engagement, the contemporary Jew has an embarrassment of riches when it comes to involvement, with a myriad of choices and opportunities to enrich and enliven his or her Judaism, should he or she choose.

 Yet, there are some things that would give him pause, and not the ones you might imagine. While he would be proud of the growth of his institutions—the scholarship of the College, the number of synagogues and individuals who call themselves Reform, the diversity and creativity of the Movement’s membership—he would still be disappointed. For Wise wasn’t interested in creating a Reform Movement, a separate stream of Judaism. Wise wanted to reform Judaism, to create an American Judaism that responded to the exigencies of modern reality, that was welcoming and embracing, moderate and pragmatic, democratic in nature that spoke to all Jews in the New World. There is a reason his congregational organization was called the “Union of AMERICAN HEBREW Congregations”; when we changed our name, we gave up hope on Wise’s vision, that there could ever be a unified American Judaism. And yet, we find again and again that Reform is on the right side of history—with egalitarianism, interfaith engagement, social action, Human and Civil Rights, LGBT issues, we find the other Jewish movements playing catch-up to us. And even as we “become more traditional” (or, as my teacher Shelly Zimmerman put it, “become more playful with tradition”, it is in the way Wise would have wanted, in a fully American fashion. Whether it is the wearing of ritual garb, the increase in Hebrew in our liturgy, use of music, or more recently the exploration of Jewish sacred eating, including kashrut, the Reform movement explores the issues through thoughtfulness, an invitation for self-exploration, a deepening of personal meaning, pragmatism, and finally, adopts the practice in a fully modern expression. While there has never been one American Judaism, we can take pride in knowing that ours is, perhaps, the most American expression of our faith—one that cedes ultimate authority, besides the Almighty, to the individual alone.

In 1876 in his book The Cosmic God, Wise wrote: “I opened the Bible [and] read: ‘Unless thy law had been my delight, I should long since have been lost in my affliction’. It struck me forcibly. ‘There is the proper remedy for all afflictions.’ When those ancient Hebrews spoke of the law of God, they meant the whole of it revealed in God's words and works…Research, science, philosophy, deep and perplexing, problems most intricate and propositions most complicated…” In a world where we’re too often given the false choice of faith versus reason, where the idea of moderate or liberal religion seems oxymoronic, Wise reminds us that faith and reason, spirituality and liberalism, go hand in hand. In a world where we strive for democratic ideals expressed deeply and spiritually, and where we expect our Jewish values to be realized in modern and universal terms, Wise is there, urging us on. The world Isaac Mayer Wise knew is a world quite foreign to us, and vice versa, but today, on his birthday, during this week of Passover, we are reminded that his legacy is one that enriches us today, one that saw our tradition not narrowly, but as the means of enlightenment and redemption for the world.
 

A Short D'var Torah from Shabbat HaGadol

I don’t usually preach the night of Marriage Reconsecration, but tonight is also Shabbat HaGadol, the Sabbath before Passover, and I feel that at least a word of Torah should be shared. So permit me a vort.

When I was a rabbinic student a friend of mine served a pulpit in Paducah Kentucky. A non-Jew called him up and asked if he could come participate in the congregation’s celebration of Passover. After some chatting, my friend agreed. So on the first night, he showed up for the congregation’s Seder. Afterwards, he looked disappointed, and when my friend asked him about it, he said, “I don’t understand, this isn’t what’s in the Bible! I wasn’t expecting a dinner and storytelling! Where are the sacrifices?” Not actually knowing anything about modern Judaism, he expected the full Levitical routine of sheep offered up and roasted whole.

We laugh, and we sigh, and we slap our foreheads. We marvel at people’s ignorance and rejoice in our own redemption from ‘primitive’ or ‘primitive’ ritual. And yet, perhaps my friend’s biblical guest had a point. As Rachel Adler points out in the Women’s Torah Commentary, when we use the word ‘ritual’, we’re very quick to tack on the word ‘meaningless’ or ‘primitive’. We spend a lot of time and energy dismissing or apologizing for our traditions, or feeling somehow inadequate in their performance, and Passover is a terrific example. We clean our houses and bring up boxes full of half-remembered things, agonize over whether or not Pecans are Kosher or Kitniyot, or how this year we’ll keep Sephardi Kosher-for-Passover and have rice on the table. And then we’ll be sit down with friends and family and participating in the rituals of the seder, rituals that many people find ‘meaningless’, but nearly every Jew engages in, including and especially those Members of the Tribe who feel most distant from affiliation: the unengaged and uninspired.

Why do we do it? Because those ‘meaningless’ and ‘primitive’ rituals are also opportunities for holiness and elevation. They help us, as Elizabeth Ehrlich writes, “infuse the minutiae of everyday life with something more.” No, we don’t offer sacrifices anymore, but the Talmud reminds us that our tables at home are “Mikdash Me’at”, tiny sanctuaries. Which makes us the priests of those sanctuaries. Which means the effort we put in to preparing for the meal, from washing to cooking to setting the table, to the explicit rites we perform in the seder, to even the conversation around the table, is meant to lift us up. They become opportunities for spiritual integrity. So we write our own haggadahs, invite Jew and non-Jew alike to participate, share recipes and stories, even stories of boredom, not only as acts of friendship but acts of fellowship; not only because they are fun, but because they are sacred.

This week in Tzav, we’re commanded that the fire on the altar was to burn perpetually, not to go out. The fire of the altar went out nearly two millennia ago. But the fire within us to search for meaning and find it in our daily tasks—that fire burns on. May our own fire of devotion and holiness always burn. Amen. 

Hard Choices: Leviticus and the Death Penalty

My sermon of last week, also the text for "The Rabbi Speaks" this Sunday.

Rabbi Yair D. Robinson
Parashat Vayikra
3/15/13
 I’m not much of a video game guy, but I recently heard about a game that might interest you, especially if you’re a fan of games like Angry Birds or Fruit Ninja. It’s Leviticus, the video game. I’m not even making this up. It’s basically the same as Fruit Ninja, if you’ve watched your kids play, or are willing to admit that you played yourself. The purpose of Fruit Ninja is to wave your finger across the screen to cut up as many pieces of fruit as you can without accidentally hitting an explosive. In this game, you’re slicing and dicing, but they’re animals, trying to avoid those with blemishes or are unkosher, and only striking those that are perfect.

All I have to say is: what a mess. And that’s pretty much how we look at Leviticus—one big mess of blood and guts, animals being sacrificed, blood being dashed on altars, smoke rising to the heavens. We get a chapter or two into this book and we can hear Verna Schenker’s voice in our heads from the Yom Kippur Haftarah: “Is THIS the fast day I call for?!”
And yet, we get so focused on the blood, that we miss perhaps the most important part of the portion, the very beginning, the name of the book itself: “Vayikra Adonai”—God called. God, says Rashi, is calling to Moses the way a parent calls a child, or the way someone calls for help. God calls Moses, the midrash says, as the angels call to one another when Isaiah beholds them before the Throne, calling out “Holy!” to one another, and this call is for the sake of Israel. For what does God call us to do? To make “Korbanot”—a word that is usually translated as ‘sacrifices’ but actually means ‘acts of closeness’, for it comes from the word “Karov”, to draw near.
That call, like Leviticus, challenges us tremendously, for we are called by God not when it’s easy, but when it’s hard. For example, what happens when we’re asked to take a stand? Recently I’ve been advocating for repeal of the death penalty in the state of Delaware—to my fellow Jewish clergy, to our board, to you, fellow members of this congregation, and with our legislators. Like many of you, my feelings on the death penalty are nuanced: on the one hand, state-sanctioned death is too often applied to people unjustly—to those who cannot mount an effective defense, who are poor, who are people of color. Our Reform movement has been against the death penalty for over 50 years, and Jewish tradition is, at best, ambivalent on the subject, creating all kinds of obstacles to convicting one of a capital crime, and going so far to declare that a court that sentenced one person every seven years to death was considered bloodthirsty. On the other, there are a handful of crimes—crimes against humanity, terrorism, treason—that even I believe the only answer can be death. Nevertheless, I feel called to advocate for death penalty repeal. And yet, I know that putting that position—or any controversial position—out there can be like the blood and guts of Leviticus: it can distract folks from hearing the call to holiness themselves. So before I dove in, I had to ask the question, one posed frequently these days: should a rabbi, or a congregation more generally, take controversial positions?

For me the answer, despite the pitfalls, is yes. Despite the fact that it might alienate people, despite the fact that I will take more than a little heat, the answer had to be yes. On this position, in this moment, the answer had to be yes, even though it was hard.

But what, then, about those who disagree? Who feel their values are not reflected in the position of rabbi or congregation? If I hold a different position than them, or a different policy, does that mean I don’t value them? I think too often, that’s the attitude. We, members of the community, call to one another to be obeyed. We want our position to win; we want to get our way. But really, what we want is to be heard. We want to be valued, to know that, even if we don’t ‘win’, our position, our self, matters. We want to know that, even if the person across from us disagrees vehemently, we’re still heard. I’m sure we all tuned in or at least noticed the election of a new Pope—Francis I, the first Jesuit, and one of the values of the Jesuit tradition is cura personalis, care for the individual person. Disagreement does not mean lack of care. On the contrary, I can recognize your position and its value, that you have come to a position with thoughtfulness and care, even as I uphold my own. That is, after all, what it means to be a Reform Jew; to recognize that we all hear God’s call differently, and challenge one another to not only hear, but heed it meaningfully.
God calls to us and challenges us not when it’s easy, but when it’s hard. When taking a stand will cause us consternation, when we have to sharpen our sense of wrong and right, when the answers are nuanced and not self-evident, and when our choices may alienate others. But when we heed the call with full intent, and true respect and care for the other, we draw karov, closer to God, but also closer to one another. May we always hear God’s call, each other’s call, and answer it with love. Amen. 

Blogging the Exodus: Death Penalty Repeal

Today, in Dover,over 100 people rallied at Legislative Hall for the introduction of Senate Bill 19, a bill to repeal the death penalty in Delaware. I was invited to give the closing benediction. I've been happy to support this effort, given the Reform Movement's position on repeal since 1959, but it was humbling to be in a room with so many who had been fighting longer and harder for repeal than me (never mind the half-dozen or so congregants who couldn't be there who I know have been fighting for this cause for  more than 20 years). So before I prayed us out, I admitted my humility in their presence, and thanked them for their work.

Below you will find the text of my benediction (though I will admit the end was somewhat extemporaneous).

A Midrash—a parable—of the Exodus:

After Israel fled on dry land, and the Egyptians were drowning in the Sea, Israel sang songs of joy and victory. The songs went higher and higher until even the angels joined in, whereupon God Most High interrupted. My children are drowning, and you sing songs of praise?

Therefore we pray: God of Emet v’Tzedek, of Truth and Righteousness, allow us to love all your children, and to cease singing songs of praise over their deaths. Allow us to step away from the Mitzraim, The Narrow Places of vengeance and anger, and toward the wide places of Impartial and fair Justice. Be with the victims of violence; heal their hurt, sustain their faith. Allow them to know peace, for well we know that peace is violated by justice delayed and justice denied. Strengthen our civic leaders as they seek to serve their First State with honor and humility, to seek The Good and The Right, who seek the tools to hold those culpable of crimes accountable, while removing the human and economic toll of state-sanctioned death. Allow all our citizens to live in Liberty and Independence: liberty from violence, independence from unfairness.  Guide us that we may fulfill the words of your prophet Zechariah, to see that justice is done for ALL. May this be our prayer; May this be our mission, as we pray in all Your Names, AMEN. 

Should Rabbis Talk About Israel?

This morning when I checked Twitter I found an old picture of me and some colleagues making the rounds. It was from a few weeks before ordination, May of 2003. In it are myself, Michael Shulman, Dalia Marx, Debra Kassoff and Jon Linder. It was taken for a Cincinnati Enquirer photographer for an article about ordination. Boy, do we look good! And I'm happy to say that each of my colleagues have gone on to do meaningful work.

So I was surprised to find this picture attached to a blog post by Ben Greenberg, responding to Rebecca Sirbu's post. (the picture has since been taken down, but I include the Enquirer photo above. Nice looking crew, no?) The post, entitled "Why Rabbis Should Not Talk About Israel", suggests that to do so is self-defeating and not what our congregants are looking for:

The members of our community who come to synagogue at all do so either only once a week or perhaps just a few times a year during high liturgical moments like Rosh Hashanah or Yom Kippur. These are people who for the most part live an existence that is dominated by discussions of current events, domestic and international politics. Many of them attend Federation or AIPAC luncheons, where the topic of conversation is almost always on Israel, more than they attend a Shabbat lunch.

Torah is the heart of the Jewish people. When I use the word “Torah” I mean the age-old wrestling with our tradition, striving for a connection to the Divine and the encounter with holiness. We, as rabbis, have a limited time with our community. We have the opportunity to engage many of them for a few hours a week and the great majority only a few times a year. As we grapple with the limited time we have to impact our community, one needs to truly determine what is the best use of that time. I have come to understand that for my rabbinate talking about Israel, that is to say talking about the political realities of Israel, as important as that is, is not the most productive use of my time with my congregation in the context of synagogue.

I sympathize with Greenberg. There are lots of times when my congregants clamor for me to preach about Israel, not from a position of values, but geopolitics. My first Lunch & Learn at my current congregation, I spoke for a half-hour on Judaism and Ecology (the advertised topic), leading the group through texts, until I was interrupted by an older woman who said, "excuse me rabbi, while this is all very good, what's going on with Israel and Gaza?"

For a generation, rabbis were often the way Jews got their information about Israel: through congregational trips, sermons, discussions on Middle-east politics, Appeals for Israel Bonds and UJA, etc. Rabbis were expected to be knowledgeable about the subject. As rabbis increasingly gave voice to concerns about human rights, the peace process, the role of the Orthodox in dictating Jewish and personal life in Israel, etc., members affiliated with certain organizations asked rabbis to speak only about 'kosher' topics. This was true at last year's AIPAC conference, where our rabbinic affinity lunch was all about how Israel was surely going to bomb Iran and how we would discuss the subject with our congregants. Ze-hu. 

So, for many rabbis, speaking about Israel has become (as one prominent New York rabbi said at a Rabbis for Human Rights-North America conference years ago) a 'third rail', touched at our peril. So why bother speaking about it? We're not experts on foreign or military policy; often our congregants want us to take positions we're not comfortable with, and when we do take those positions, we're criticized for talking 'politics' (as if taking a hard-line right-wing position was no less politics than a left-wing one).

And, as we all know, rabbis getting into hot water is a topic as old as the institution itself. We all know the stories of David Einhorn being run out of Baltimore for being an abolitionist or Isaac Meyer Wise getting into a fistfight with his Temple president over kashrut. The Israel 'thing' is only the latest in a long debate about whether rabbis have the freedom of the pulpit; that is, to preach freely.

You know what? Rabbis talk Israel. Rabbis talk 'politics' (at least, what people call politics--I call it human and civil rights). Rabbis talk about what is meaningful for them. THROUGH the lens of Torah, to be sure. I look at my ordination certificate and read the words yoreh yoreh yadin yadin v'yehi adonai elohav imo: "whatever he teaches, he teaches, whatever he decides he decides, and may Adonai be with him" (hey, it's my certificate, it says 'him').

To be sure we teach Torah, but we also get to decide how we teach Torah and about what, including how we feel and what we see about Israel. We get to walk people through our own internal process, to show nuance, to advocate for Israel, share our love of Israel, and also our concerns and loving rebukes about Israel. And our words, b'ezrat haShem, God willing, come out of a place that is authentic and true. This is no less true when I speak about homelessness, or the death penalty, or gun control, or economic policy, or caring for our elderly, or any other topic that gets to the core of what it means to be Jewish.

Yes, that means I will say things that will challenge--and sometimes offend--people. Good. Rabbis are supposed to challenge their communities. Not out of anger, or self-righteousness, but love. Love of Torah, love of Israel, and love of God. We have an obligation not only to our congregations but the Tradition itself, and that means bringing people, as Sirbu says, into the conversation. To simply turn a blind eye to part of it, regardless of Movement, is to surrender.

And to those who say that it threatens their job or their congregation's membership, I disagree. I have seen congregations over the last ten years offer free memberships, refuse to take positions on complicated issues, offer a whole variety of services and programs designed to market the congregation effectively. What works in the end, the congregations I have seen succeed, are the ones who have spoken to their core mission and vision and said, "these are the values we uphold. This is who we are. This is what we're about", often taking very strong "political" positions. Likewise, the rabbis I see succeed are the ones who cultivate the relationships to be sure, but also speak their mind freely and invite others to participate in the long conversation we call Judaism. People want to associate themselves with integrity, period. 

I had a conversation with some non-Jewish colleagues the other day, and we were discussing how whenever a professional class arises, a lay class appears as well, and the professional class too often infantalizes the laypeople. This cuts both ways; we as rabbis often infantalize our congregants, acting as if they're not sophisticated enough to handle a complex issue (i.e. let's just give them fun 'outreach' programs) and laypeople infantalize us back, telling us that we SHOULDN'T challenge them. I don't know how Michael, Jon, Dalia, or Debra (my friends in that picture) feel about this issue, but I'd like to think that all of us have worked hard to empower the members of our communities, to challenge them in healthy ways, to let them in on the process, to trust them. To say, "don't talk about Israel" is an act of mistrust, and I intend to trust my community. 

With that in mind, I've had my say--what do you think?

A little less rejoicing this Adar: The passing of David Hartman z'l and WoW

Today was Rosh Hodesh Adar, usually a time of frivolity and rejoicing. Adar is, of course, the month that hosts the holiday of Purim, with it's ribald humor, drinking, dressing up, gender-bending, and other insanity. But this Adar doesn't quite feel right to me. Some of it is because I'm the only one left standing (so far) who doesn't have the flu in my house (sadly, the vaccine-resistant kind). But much of it is because of two events in the land of Israel.

Rosh Hodesh--the New Moon--has long been associated with women (for obvious metaphorical reasons) and Women of the Wall use it as an opportunity to come together at the Kotel, usually resulting in some number (at the very least, founder Rabbi Anat Hoffman) getting arrested. Today, despite 300 men and women coming together including nearly a minyan of the 1967 Six-Day War Liberators of the Kotel, 10 women were arrested, including two American rabbis (one of whom happens to be Sarah Silverman's sister. Yes, that Sarah Silverman).

Ironically, today also saw the funeral of Rabbi David Hartman, founder of the Shalom Hartman Institute. An Orthodox rabbi, he became one of the great progressive voices in Halakha, writing several books, promoting a progressive valuing of women within Halakha, and bringing rabbis of all stripes together annually for intensive and transformative study. That might not sound like much, but remember, a rabbi is first and foremost a student and teacher of Torah. To come together with a diverse group of colleagues who, under other circumstances, might NEVER associate with one another, and study a page of Talmud together over weeks at a time in Jerusalem, was to create understanding that might not happen any other way.

I never studied with Rabbi Hartman; with his son Donniel, on one occasion. But I read his books, and looked forward to a time (perhaps a sabbatical) when I could bring my family to Jerusalem and take the time to study deeply with people different than me, be challenged by those people, and come back to my congregation renewed. Frankly, reading his works renewed in me the sense that we as Progressive Jews have as much claim to the Halakha--to the Torah itself--that others would want us to deny. While certainly there are times when rejecting Torah can be justified (or at least feel satisfying), Hartman was one of those who taught me that it is that much more powerful to root progressive values in text authentically that is no less radical than the rejection thereof, and in fact may be even more radical.

So to have Hartman laid to rest the same day when women are arrested for wearing a tallit at the Western Wall because the garment is STILL associated with men, to me, marks a great sadness.

Shmuley Boteach, in an op-ed for the Jerusalem Post, lamented the lack of a "Jewish Billy Graham" or "Jewish Martin Luther King":

But one searches in vain for the Jewish Billy Graham or the Jewish Martin Luther King. Where are the great spokesmen of our people to teach the world of Jewish charity, Jewish education and Jewish values? Why are we not training a generation of media and press ambassadors to expose and reverse the fraudulent accusations against Israel that are daily occurrences at the UN, the BBC and the Arab press? A few years ago I was to meet the Jewish head of a national television network. The producer who had arranged the meeting with a view toward the executive buying into my idea for a TV show said to me, “The man you are meeting is very influential and very secular. He’s going to be wary of you as a rabbi so whatever you do, don’t mention anything religious.”

I understand that idea; just the other day I was speaking to my dad of how once there was a generation of rabbis (Roland Gittlesohn, Ferdinand Isserman, Joseph Soloveitchik, Abraham Joshua Heschel, Levy Olan, Abba Hillel Silver, etc.) who commanded a national presence in a way that few do today. Some of that is our more fragmented world; as Lena Dunham quipped in an interview : there is no such thing as a 'voice of a generation' today. And while Graham and King commanded a national spotlight, neither were perfectly loved throughout their ministries. I feel as if we have lost such an individual; that Hartman was a kind of Jewish Graham, if not a Jewish King. In The God Who Hates Lies, Hartman writes:

I developed a theology, based on the concept of covenant, that understands the relationship between God and the Jewish people as one of intimacy and partnership. This covenantal model—in which God not only tolerates but demands and delights in Jews’ taking of responsibility for ever-increasing dimensions of our individual and collective lives, infusing every element of human endeavor and experience with religious meaning and purpose—describes a religious anthropology characterized not by slavishness and a howling sense of inadequacy in the face of an infinite commanding God. Instead it resurrects the vital and precocious religious spirit of the Talmudic Rabbis, who understood that the implementation of God’s will amid the complex considerations of human society and psyche requires, at times, the full and fearless assertion of our intellectual independence. The covenant struck between God and the Jewish people was not exclusively a call to unconditional obedience; it was equally a call to empowerment and an affirmation of human adequacy.

That theology could--should--influence us today. We should see ourselves as partners, not called to obedience, but empowered, affirmed, to see halakha not as boundaries but as a jumping-off point, an educational model, a way to struggle with the moral and ethical challenges of our day, which are legion. If only more people would have listened to Hartman. Then we might all see that the idea of arresting a woman for wearing a prayer shawl and giving thanks to God would be preposterous, and Rosh Hodesh Adar would be a time to rejoice indeed.

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