Thoughts on the Park51 Mosque

This is also going to function as my recording of "The Rabbi Speaks" on Sunday and my bulletin article for October, so apologies for those of you who tune in to either:

Last Shabbat started out so well. Services had gone well, as had Torah study. We had done a baby naming for a lovely 3-month old girl, and everyone was flying high. Friends from my former congregation had come down to visit. As I said, everything was going really well. Then I was speaking with a couple from my congregation at a luncheon for a baby naming. I had not met them before; they were charming, erudite, and seemed perfectly pleasant. Until they asked me the question that’s been on everyone’s mind.

‘So, what do you think about the ground zero mosque’.


I don’t like to talk politics. Or rather, I don’t like to talk politics in the synagogue. It’s not that I don’t engage politically: I’ve always been active, since my teens, both locally and nationally. I very much agree with Thomas Mann’s assessment back in the 30s that everything today is measured in political terms. But in the synagogue, I’d much rather talk about such things not in political terms but from a perspective of community engagement and social justice. The question for me is: what are our sacred and civic obligations to each other, rather than what is my obligation to the state and vice-versa.


At first, I tried to use humor to disengage through humor. “well you know it’s not actually at ground zero.” I said “And anyway, they’re building a strip club and a mcdonalds at ground zero. Isn’t that tackier than a house of worship? And besides that, they don’t even have the money to build!”


“That’s commerce” they replied. And it quickly became apparent that they weren’t interested in rapier wit. They were against the idea of a mosque near the site of the former World Trade Center, a place where thousands—including many arabs and muslims—died. And it became quickly apparent that they weren’t interested in any contrary thoughts on the matter. They challenged the idea that muslims died on 9/11, or any in great enough number. They were unimpressed with the idea that the Park51 Islamic Community Center might have a memorial to all those who died on that terrible day in 2001, as if somehow the attempt was cheapened by putting it in a muslim house of worship. A mosque near the site of ‘Ground Zero’ was an affront to Western Civilization, a way to mock the victims of that attack. “We side with the firefighters and policemen” they said, apparently in solidarity with those who were protesting against the construction.

Well, this got my blood boiling. I should have known better, I shouldn’t have engaged, but I did, and I let my temper get the better of me. No, no one got hurt and no yelling happened, but that perfectly charming Shabbat Morning was going quickly to the dogs.


I came back with arguments of the rights of all enshrined in the constitution of our country, that to allow a mosque to be built near that sacred ground was in fact a validation of our values, not a mockery of them. It was a way to honor the memory of those who died the best way we could, by not letting those extremists force us to surrender our values, but not sinking to their level of depravity and disregard of human life. As Jews, I argued, we knew better, and remember a time not so long ago when we were not allowed in many places in this country and even right here in Wilmington to build houses of worship, to live in certain neighborhoods, to build our synagogues the way we want. Did we want to return to that, to set that precedent?


They insisted that it was still true today that Jews couldn’t build anywhere they like; I’m hard pressed to come up with a single instance—except in areas where one wouldn’t be allowed to build ANYTHING, like a Superfund cleanup site—where a community prevented the building of a synagogue, Temple, Jewish Community Center, or the like.


Another congregant, who was overhearing our now heated engagement, joined in with a question: “Didn’t the Imam behind the project, after Daniel Pearl died, say that he too was a Jew, as an act of solidarity?”

The couple looked at this individual incredulously. They were sure no such thing had occurred. I professed that I didn’t know.


So I did some digging. In fact, Imam Faisal Abdul Rauf, the fellow behind the Cordoba Initiative, did say those words. In 2003, at a memorial service for Pearl at B’nai Jeshurun, a congregation in New York City, this Imam—a moderate, even liberal forward leading leader of the Muslim community—stood before a group of Jews and said the following:

We are here to assert the Islamic conviction of the moral equivalency of our Abrahamic faiths. If to be a Jew means to say with all one's heart, mind and soul Shma` Yisrael, Adonai Elohenu Adonai Ahad; hear O Israel, the Lord our God, the Lord is One, not only today I am a Jew, I have always been one, Mr. Pearl.

We are here especially to seek your forgiveness and of your family for what has

been done in the name of Islam.

Our conversations must continue where many end. Some of us may be suspicious

of the religious voices and believe that these voices ought to be kept out of public

discussion and policy. Others may fear that entering into constructive dialogue and

common ground with the “other side” must be wrong, sinful or at best useless and

naïve. We disagree.

Where once many of us may not have cared to speak, much less listened, to others,

now we must. We shall find ourselves with good people, of deep faith, and we shall

locate many important, shared values: justice, compassion, service, faithfulness,

and love. Though many of us may have come skeptically, we have all come seeking

to leave with hope and expectation of Your guidance, O Lord, and with a

determination to encourage others to embark on this kind of fruitful exploration. For

ourselves, and in different ways, we want to continue to convey the message not

only among us, but also in the communities and arenas of service to which we shall

be returning, that we are all create…in the image of God.

We intercede with You that You place us on the path of righteousness and direct us

towards actions done in fulfillment of the commandment taught by Your Great

Prophets and Messengers Moses, the Messiah Jesus son of Mary, and

Muhammad, which is to love our fellow humans as we love ourselves. Help us O

Lord, in courage and commitment, in reducing ethnic and religious hatred, strife and

violence, to build the kingdom of heaven on earth.

The skeptical among us might see duplicity here, saying one thing to a Jewish audience and another to a Muslim one. But I agree with Atlantic writer Jeffery Goldberg: that for this Muslim cleric to speak to Jews, never mind say these words, in our post-9/11 world, is to invite criticism and hostility and even violence from those most extreme members of the Islamic world. And to not only speak them in that moment but to repeat those values of dialogue, of acceptance, of cooperation and collaboration and REPENTANCE again and again, to Muslim as well as non-Muslim audiences, to American and foreign audiences, and to hope that building a center for dialogue and peace near a place of great violence might be a source of healing rather than hostility takes immeasurable courage and conviction. As a people, as Americans, we would be wise to learn from it.


I know these words won’t convince many; perhaps they will offend some, or seem like dreamy hippy nonsense to others. But these words are essential; for peace and justice must come in equal measure, and they don’t happen without hard work and the willingness to give something of one’s self. And the less we’re willing to listen, the more we’re willing to end conversations where they should begin, the longer that place in lower Manhattan will weep and fester as an open wound, and regardless of what building is erected, we will fail the memories of those who died that terrible morning nine years ago.

If you want more of the Reform Movement's perspective, go here.

What do you mean it's already August?!

Sorry for the delay; knee-deep in sermon writing (and that's going real swell, thanks for asking!). I'm hoping to post some Q&A I've been doing for CBE's online newsletter, the Beth Emeth News (BEN), but in the meantime, I wanted to put another question out there for you to generate some feedback and discussion:

I'm on the poetry committee for the new Reform Movement Mahzor (High Holiday prayerbook). How did I get on this? Well, at a meeting at the CCAR conference in San Francisco, I heard about some of the editorial ideas, and, frankly, didn't like what I heard. And then I started complaining with some colleagues. And then I realized that I was sounding like 'those people' (as in, "I don't want to be like 'those people', rabbi, but..."). I wasn't offering to help, I wasn't trying to be a part of the solution, I was just being a kvetch.

So I volunteered. I wrote my thesis on piyyutim and have tried my hand at liturgical poetry (among other genres) so why not? And to my surprise, they let me in (I keep waiting for the editors to realize their mistake, that they meant to grab Oren Hayon or something).

So now I'm going through the Birnbaum prayerbook and my old notes, as well as books like Weinberg's Jewish Hymnography. It's great fun and wonderful to be studying again. But it does lead me to ask a question, before I go too far down the piyyut rabbit hole:

What is it that you want in a High Holiday worship experience? What does your ideal Rosh Hashanah or Yom Kippur look like? Where does it take place? What is sung? What is read? How else do you want to experience it? What does God 'look' like on those days; how do you talk to God, and how does God speak back? I know what my answers are, but they're 'tainted', in that I'm so influenced by the tradition and my experiences as a service leader it's sometimes hard for me to remember what it's like to sit in the pews. So hearing your answers will be helpful (and for you as well I hope!).

Now back to sermon writing etc. Will be posting those as well, but not until we get a lot closer. It's not even Elul yet, after all!

Why does it cost so much to be Jewish?

A few years ago, at a program at Barack Academy (nee Akiva) in Philadelphia, the outgoing head of school described how it was now cheaper to make aliyah than try to maintain a Jewish life in America. Between synagogue affiliation, day schools, camp, etc., it was becoming increasingly untenable for most families to maintain a connection to those institutions that connect us to Jewish life.

These were not news to me, really. I had often lamented that we talk about membership in the fall and revenues in the spring. At the time I shared what I heard with other Jewish leaders and they brushed it off as hyperbole or shrugged their shoulders as if to say, well, yeah it's expensive, but what can we do?

Well, this article raises the question again, but with very different economic circumstances surrounding us. So, have we fallen into a trap of self preservation, and if so, how do we climb out of it? How can we think more creatively about synagogue (and other Jewish institutional) finance, without losing quality?

Some thoughts as we approach an important anniversary

With Gilad Shalit now reaching 4 years in captivity, I thought I'd share my "The Rabbi Speaks" for next weekend here:

In my wallet, surrounded by pictures of my son, credit cards, receipts and other assorted flotsam and jetsam, is what looks to be a baseball card. It’s blue, laminated, and has a young man in a uniform on the front, smiling, frozen forever in his youth. He’s not in a baseball uniform, however, nor any other sports paraphenalia. He wears the uniform of an Israeli paratrooper. His name is--was--Michael Levin, and he died on August 1st, 2006, leading his men against Hezbollah in Lebanon.

Michael was an American, just 22 years old, from the Philadelphia region. While he was not a member of my congregation, I knew his family, their rabbi. Most of my congregants knew them, their kids had Michael as a summer camp counselor. Michael chose to make Aliyah, to immigrate to Israel, joined the army, earned the rank of sergeant, and was visiting his family while on leave when the war in Lebanon broke out. His friends told him to stay in the states, but he refused. His was an old-fashioned kind of Zionism, a love of land and people that could not be deterred nor minimized, and he was going to fulfill his duty to his people and homeland, though it would take his life. It was Israel where he belonged, alongside his men, and it is for Israel that he died, and in Israel where he is buried.

I think of Michael at this time of year, for this past Friday, June 25th, was the 4th anniversary of Gilad Shalit’s captivity. Shalit, of course, is the young soldier (he turns 24 this August) who was captured by Hamas in Gaza, after Israel’s disengagement and pullout from the Gaza strip. that event set off a chain reaction of kidnappings on the Lebanon border, causing Israel to move against Hezbollah and Hamas, therefore ending Michael’s life, along with the lives of many young people.

Full disclosure: I’m a peacenik, unabashedly so. I believe that there should be a Palestinian State, that Israel has a moral imperative to make peace with the Palestinian people. I believed in the Oslo process, what Yasser Arafat called “the peace of the brave”. I had hoped beyond hope for the Gaza disengagement to work. I want to see a smaller, more peaceful Israel, one that doesn’t have to send its children into harm’s way generation after generation. I cringe at the tone-deaf responses from an Israeli government paralyzed by its right-wing political parties and a military that is unmatched tactically and understands the immediate existential threat, but cannot see beyond the horizon to an Israel five, ten, twenty years from now and what is needed to fight and win then.

And yet, I am painfully aware of the double standard that Israel is held to, by both Jews and non-Jews. We expect and demand a Jewish state be somehow more ethical, more righteous, more perfect than any other in the world. I am aware of the latent anti-semitism that masks itself as a love of human rights or the downtrodden, that flinches at the idea of Jewish power. I am aware of a world that drinks in a sermon on ethical behavior from Turkey, a country that has perpetrated ethnic cleansing on the Armenians, and engaged in the surpression of the Kurdish people. I am aware of the pain all Israelis feel at Shalit’s captivity, for in Israel, which still maintains a national draft, he could be anyone’s son, anyone’s brother, anyone’s friend or partner.

A few weeks ago, after the Gulf of Mexico became a code-word for ecological disaster, before the World Cup and Kyrgestan exploded in violence, before McCrystal lost his job fighting the forever war in Afghanistan, Gaza came into our headlines again, with the deaths of so-called peace activists sailing a fleet of aid ships to a blockaded Gaza. We were all horrified by the scenes of violence, at the idea of young soldiers and sailors, poorly briefed and ill-equipped, rappelling into a lion’s den of violence, forced to respond with brutal violence themselves, resulting in indelible images of bloodshed and Israeli oppression. The incident with the blockade runners calls Israel’s leadership into question and heightens the need for a speedy peace. It reminds us that a military solution, by itself, will not solve Israel’s future security needs. But it also reminds me of Shalit and his parents, wondering if they will ever see their son again. It reminds me of Levin and his parents, how they will never see their son again. And it reminds me of this prayer offered by one of Israel’s greatest poets, Yehuda Amichai:

Not that of a cease-fire,
let alone the vision of the wolf and the lamb,
but rather as in the heart after a surge of great emotion:
to speak only about a great weariness.
I know that I know how to kill: that’s why I’m an adult.
And my son plays with a toy gun that knows
how to open and close its eyes and say mama.

A peace
without the big noise of beating swords into plowshares,
without words, without the heavy thud of the rubber stamp;
I want it gentle over us, like lazy white foam.
A little rest for the wounds--who speaks of healing?
(and the orphan’s cry is passed from one generation to the next
as in a relay race; that baton never falls).

I want it to come like wildflowers
suddenly, because the field needs it: wildpeace.

Required Reading

My Bible professor, Dr. (Rabbi) David Aaron, gave the commencement sermon at this year's Hebrew Union College Ordination in Cincinnati. If it were up to me, it would be handed out with every ordination certificate from HUC forever, and I'm sorry I wasn't there to hear it in person. It is as powerful a statement of what it means to be a progressive rabbi for a progressive movement as I've ever seen, and I'm not the least surprised.

Changes on Intermarriage Policy

The following is a letter I sent out to my congregation this past week. I'm posting it here in case members of my congregation hadn't seen it yet.

Dear Friends:
I want to speak with you about something that is very near and dear to my heart, as well as to the mission of this congregation: our outreach efforts toward those Jewish families with a non-Jewish spouse.
At the Central Conference of American Rabbis meeting in March, the rabbis of the Reform movement had a conversation about reaching out to those whom we have often referred to as ‘interfaith families’, and what we must do, as rabbis, to welcome them into community. While officiating at weddings between Jews and non-Jews was among the topics, there was a general sense among all Reform rabbis that we must do more in general as clergy to hold out that hand of invitation that is so important.
As you know, we at Congregation Beth Emeth pride ourselves on our warmth, our welcoming nature, the way we invite people into our spiritual lives. For years we have exemplified this by permitting non-Jewish spouses and parents some role on the bimah for life cycle events and worship, accepting children born of either Jewish parent as Jewish and providing them an education, offering introduction to Judaism classes (along with the other rabbis of Wilmington), and providing opportunities for conversion for those who would choose Judaism.
This past year, we have moved toward being more welcoming; expanding the role of the non-Jewish parent at b’nai mitzvah¸ blessing interfaith couples about to be married with an aufruf on the bimah, and blessing the non-Jewish parents and spouses in our midst. However, there is more we can be doing.
As many of you know I do not currently officiate at weddings or civil unions where both partners are not Jewish. This is not because I feel that the couple is doing anything wrong, but merely speaks to my own sense of empowerment: as a rabbi, I do not feel that I am permitted to be misader kiddushin— the celebrant—at such events. Having said that, I always do whatever I can to welcome the couple to Jewish life, offering to do premarital counseling, encouraging the taking of introduction to Judaism, offering a blessing before the ceremony, to help them write a service that fits both their faith traditions, or find an alternative clergyperson. I know from my own family how important it is to have a Jewish clergyperson present, as Marisa’s parents were confronted with this exact issue when they married some forty years ago. While I am not changing my position at this time, I know there are Reform clergy who do feel empowered to celebrate and rejoice with our families at their sacred moment of kiddushin.
That is why I am (with the support of the board and the staff) bringing one more opportunity forward. Today, the clergy of this congregation (including future clergy) are welcome to celebrate life cycle events with our congregants so long as they follow certain guidelines, attached to this letter. I’m sure you have questions and would like to provide feedback. Please join me on Saturday, June 26th for a discussion after services about this change.

Here are the guidelines:

Proposed Guidelines for Congregation Beth Emeth Clergy Officiating at the Wedding of a Jew and non-Jew

A rabbi or cantor of Congregation Beth Emeth may officiate at the wedding of a Jew and non-Jew under the following circumstances:

• The couple must have a relationship with the congregation, either as current members themselves or be the children of members in good standing.
• The couple commits to establish a Jewish home and, if they are blessed with children, raise them exclusively as Jews, providing them with a Jewish education and identity, including appropriate life-cycle experiences (Brit Milah/Brit Bat, Bar/Bat Mitzvah, Confirmation, etc.).
• The couple agrees to complete an Introduction to Judaism class (either the RAD course or a URJ approved equivalent) and/or a program designed with a CBE rabbi/cantor.
• In addition to the initial meeting(s) with a member of the clergy, the couple agrees to meet with that clergy member on a regular basis, established by the rabbi/cantor, prior to the wedding date.
• The Ceremony will be a Jewish ceremony, inclusive of all rules and guidelines (e.g. cannot be on Shabbat or holiday, will only include Jewish liturgy, etc.)
• No non-Jewish clergy may co-officiate in the ceremony. Couples may opt for the participation of Jewish clergy who are members in good standing with the Central Conference of American Rabbis (CCAR) or the American Conference of Cantors (ACC). Clergy who are members in good standing of another rabbinical or cantorial association approved by a CBE rabbi/cantor may also officiate. No clergy other than those approved by a CBE rabbi or cantor may participate in the ceremony.
• The officiating CBE clergyperson must approve the liturgy to be used at the ceremony. No prayers or symbols or music of another faith may be part of the ceremony.
• If the couple does not meet these guidelines, the rabbi or cantor acting as the point of contact may choose to refer the couple to another rabbi or cantor, as described above, and/or to a Jewish justice of the peace (JP) who has a relationship with CBE.

The Kids Are Alright (?)

Just read this incisive bit of commentary by Jack Shafer on Peter Beinart's New York Times article, essentially poking holes in the whole 'young American Jews today don't care about Israel' trope. By now, it's a well-worn bit of conventional wisdom, that those Jewish kids today simply don't have the same connection as their parents and their parents did, yadda yadda yadda, cue shrying gavult and rending of cloth and saying kaddish over kids today. Then the complaints that it's the fault of the left, the right, the synagogues, the JCCs, Federation, Rock & Roll, Intermarriage, whatever.

But as Shafer points out, citing work by Theodore Sasson and Leonard Saxe, it's not quite that cut and dry:

Moreover, as we pointed out in our published response to the original Cohen-Kelman report, younger Jews have reported lower levels of attachment to Israel in most surveys going back as far as there are data to analyze. Younger Jews were less attached to Israel in the National Jewish Population Surveys of 2000 and 1990. They were less attached in the AJC surveys going back to the mid-1980s. If, in fact, young Jews are always less attached than older Jews, then the differences in age groups are likely related to lifecycle rather than generation. As Jews age, they become more attached to Israel. In other words, the younger Jews who reported a middling level of attachment to Israel in the mid-1980s grew up to become today's over 60 group, which reports a high level of attachment.

(their article can be found here)

So it may be that kids today aren't very connected...but our parents and grandparents are remembering the old days of American Zionism and their involvement through rose-colored (or white-and-blue colored) glasses.

So now let's ask the follow up question: if this is true, what role do Birthright and other such programs play viz. connection to Israelis, if not to Israel?

And after that, the more important question, the question we are almost too afraid to ask: if the young are automatically more detached than their elders from a Jewish state, but that attachment naturally increases with age and experience, rather than thinking of what Israel (or the Diaspora leadership) need to do to woo them back or vice versa, what kind of role should Israel play in their lives?