Life in the Center is something to be proud of

I guarantee that the words of this blog post will upset people.  It is my sincere expectation and hope that one way that our country learn this important lesson.  The minute we are born we stop having a monopoly on our space.  The minute we are born we begin to live amongst others and so we no longer get to dictate that everything in the world go the way that we want them to go.  From an early age we learn the skill of negotiating and working things out with others.  This is a very important skill and one that we all need to work on from time to time.  But here in America we seem to live in a society where compromise is not a value… it is the antithesis of value.  We live in a society that sees everything is either black or white and no where in the middle.  It is a pity that that is the world we are building for our children.

Today we mourn nine lives that were stolen from us.  And we pray for another nine that are healing.  And rather than having a discussion about healing and helping curb our ills… we are too busy discussing why we cannot do anything to fix this stain on our society.  It is reprehensible.  Let me be very clear.  I do not like guns.  I do not support owning them.  And I do not agree that it is a sacred right.  BUT!!!!! I am one person with one opinion.  On the other side you have the polar opposite opinions and they are entitled to those ideas.  But that is not where we need to be.  We need to be in the middle… In the grey… Where we can work together to solve problems. 

The reality is that fixing our gun violence issue is not a simple task.  It is not something that background checks and limits on types of guns alone will repair. We need to recognize that the second amendment allows for gun ownership.  But we also need to see that no single amendment exists without limits on it.  The first amendment has limits and so do all of the others.  This is why I do not support the ACLU or the NRA or any body that sees the written word as more sacred than human life. 

It is time that more Americans make sacrifices to secure more of our population.  You can make believe all you want that owning a gun will make you safer but in reality it won’t.  We are not trained to shoot when we are being pursued… We are not trained how to shoot when innocent bystanders are near the culprit… We are not trained how to shoot from behind barricades and thus not be exposed to shots being fired back at us.  In fact unless we keep our gun out at all times and our finger is ready and on the trigger the reality is that the criminal will kill us before we get a shot off. 

I readily admit that we cannot take all of the guns away and that the majority of guns used in crimes are used by people who acquired them illegally.  But there are common sense options at our disposal:

1) Mandatory background checks for all guns sold in our country at the federal level so all states have the same info about all people.

2) Mandatory sale of gun safe sold with the gun. 

3) Informing the authorities if a gun is stolen from your house.  If you don’t inform the authorities you are held accountable for the use of that gun.  This is actually the way to get people to lock guns in safes and thus there will be no worries of theft and being held accountable for the use of the gun in a crime.

4) 100% parity of mental health coverage and a rapid destigmatization of mental health.

5) Media needs to be held accountable for the garbage that they manufacture and the violence that they encourage.

6) School based learning in elementary school about conflict resolution and also anti-violence education.  Schools should be zero-tolerance zones for violent behavior and talk.

There is so much more that we can do and we must do it because we are a society  that from 2004 to 2013 we have lost 316,545 lives to guns.  Some of those are suicides, some are accidents and most are violent.  And while there are other means of killing people that can be used… A gun makes it easy and makes it massive.  We have a war on terror and how many deaths have we had in our country during that same period from terrorism? 313.  For every American life lost to terror we have more than 1,000 lost to guns.  That isn’t just a problem… it is a tragedy.

Within the opening chapters of the Torah we learn of the first births followed very quickly with the first murder.  When God asked Cain where was Abel, He didn’t mean in a physical location sense… He meant where was Abel in Cain’s heart??? Why was he able to lack love or at least sympathy for his brother.  The Torah continues to speak to us today and so everyday God is asking us where are the other people in your heart and that you must make room in your heart for all of humanity.

We can do better and our souls and our God cry out to us to do better.

What is a Symbol?

What is a symbol? Why do they matter? Why do we rally around them? For years and years there has been a sort of division in the United States regarding an issue that might seem odd to some and sacred to others: flag burning. In particular we are discussing the burning of the stars and stripes… the American Flag. The amount of respect and care that is paid to our flag is enormous. As children we pledge allegiance to it and as adults we stand whenever we see it presented. Most Americans are aware that our flag has a special way in which it is to be folded. When we notice flags being flown at half-staff we recognize that something isn’t right and that we are saddened and/or in mourning.

Yes the flag matters an enormous amount to our country. I’ll be the first to admit that prior to this week I didn’t know we had a “flag issue” in our country. I didn’t know that it was still a practice in some areas of our country to display the flag of the confederate states from the Civil War. As a Jew I find this to be as insulting as a German institution flying the Nazi flag in Germany today. But what I find all the more remarkable is that for a number of years in this country… for generations… this flag was seen as an act of patriotism. Let me see if I have this correct: the crime is called treason??? Yeah that’s the one, you know the federal offense that carries the death penalty. Last time I checked the actions of the confederate states in the years leading up, during and after Civil War were treasonous ones. Abandoning our union and forming a new one and then taking up arms against our country… Abandoning the constitution and then creating a whole new rule of law for a “new country???” The confederate flag is a symbol of treason and should never be allowed to be flown in our country let alone by government institutions.

But it isn’t only a symbol of treason. It is a symbol of hate, oppression and of ugliness. Some in the South would like to believe it is a sign of pride in the south. What is that pride about? Is it about heat? Is it about peaches, oranges and cotton? Is the pride that they are espousing about the rich history of the south in terms of all that it achieved for humanity and for our country? No… it is not. It is a sense of pride in a legacy of standing up to the federal system. A legacy of free thinking and of marching to the beat of a different drummer. It is a pride in a legacy of self-improvement and of a historical connection to our countries past. I bet you all are thinking right now that that is what it is all about. You’re wrong. In the south they still from time to time refer to the Civil War as the “War against Northern Aggression.” In the south they still refer to us northerners as Yankees (and that isn’t said out of love).

I am penning these words from a camp in Northern Georgia. Just yesterday morning after we crossed into Georgia from Florida we saw an enormous Confederate Flag flying next to I-75. In the vicinity of where I am right now is a Mt. Rushmore-like monument to the leaders of the confederate states. By the way, a number of KKK members had a hand in its creation and used to hold rallies around it. And lastly, here in the south we do observe Memorial Day but we also observe Confederate Memorial Day. All of this is a long winded way of saying that you might very well want to whitewash (pardon the term) the pat and re- appropriate a symbol for good. But at the end of the day a flag is not just a flag and with it you have enormous baggage. In the south, where desegregation was fought to the bitter end. In the south where Jim Crowe was the law/practice of the land. In the south where voter registration laws have systematically disenfranchised African-Americans and other minorities… in that south the Confederate flag is not a source of pride so much as it is intimidation and insulting.

As I said from the outset: symbols matter. When the Torah is marched around the room we Jews reach out to touch it and offer a kiss. This act is one of faith and one of adoration. However, it is crucial that one understand the underlying reasons for this custom. If when one kisses the Torah they only think of the parchment on which it is written. If they only think of the wooden rollers on which it is held. If they only think of the clothing that covers it… Then they are simply practicing idolatry. When we kiss the Torah it is the message and the story that we are kissing. It is the history of our people. And that makes it a symbol that matters. That is why we fast for 40 days if it is dropped. Because the message behind it, the history behind it and the story behind it are central to who we were, are and will be. If the same is remotely true of that flag then it is worse than we thought at first. And if it isn’t than the argument is pointless from the outset.

The nazi flag has no place in Germany and the Confederate Flag has no place here. We believe in symbols and we protect symbols. But we only do this when the thing the symbol symbolizes is worth honoring. Fighting to keep a people enslaved and keeping them subservient is not noble it is a moral stain on our past. All of the confederate flags should go as that is not who we seek to be any longer.

Mistaking the physical for the meaning

We are all hearing a great deal right now about ISIS or ISIL, you pick which you want to call it.  2015 has witnessed terror attacks in the name of Islam against those who defame the prophet and/or the religion.  We have witnessed and are witnessing intolerance and hatred against the values of the west and of enlightenment.  All of this is quite disturbing and scary.  All of this is not what we had hoped for when we looked forward at Rosh Hashana or the secular New Years.  All of this was what we prayed would not happen.  We are witnessing the debate about the Iranian nuclear program and the clear and present existential danger that it poses to Israel.  These are not easy times…

Last week we read about the building of the משכן, the traveling tabernacle.  This week we begin to read about the work that was done in it in regards to the service of God.  I am struck by the physicality of the Temple system and the sacrificial system.  I am struck by the great amount of literalism that was normative Judaism at that time.  I am struck because what I am about to write might at first glance seem heretical but I ask you to please hear me out.

When we march the Torah around the sanctuary Jews reach out to kiss it.  They go out of their way to make sure they don’t miss that sacred opportunity.  When Jews enter a building with a Mezuzah on the door some will reach out to kiss that as well.  If a Torah scroll is dropped and it hits the ground we fast for 40 days as Moses had to do for the 40 days and nights while receiving the Torah at Sinai.  But here is the problem I have with all of this.  Are we kissing the physical Torah and ascribing some supernatural power to it?  Are we kissing the Mezuzah and ascribing something miraculous to it?  Are we fasting because something hit the ground that is physically sacred and holy?  A mezuzah case (the pretty container on our doorposts) without a parchment is meaningless.  Two wooden rollers with blank parchment attached to them is nothing special at all.  Fasting for that would be pointless.  This is because we are not kissing the physical or fasting over earthly holy objects.  No it is the opposite.  It is the words on the parchment that are important.  It is the writing on the scroll in the Mezuzah that means something.  When the physical is divorced from its meaning it is nothing at all.  Just kissing the Torah is nothing but kissing its message is everything.   Seeing the physical as the essence and not the message is dangerous to say the least.

What happens when the message is lost and the physical is all that remains?  Those physical elements are deified and made to be so sacred that they can be protected at the risk of losing lives.  If some group of bad people (trying to think of a good word) gets a Torah scroll and sets it on fire on TV I am not going to become a terrorist.  The reason is that through me being a terrorist I would negate the sacred message of our Torah for the sake of the physical scroll it is written on.  Pictures of Mohamed are being used as a pretext to claim that the Muslim people have the right and/or duty to kill the infidels.  When they begin to elevate the spirit and message over the physical they will begin to see that in their murderous actions they are negating all that has been taught to humankind and all that is part of the message of religion.  By their inability to see nuance and their inability to look for the metaphor in the writing they are allowing themselves to commit idolatry and in that idolatry they justify murder.  I am scared because we seem to try to bend to their idolatry and we seem to try to explain it.  But the reality is that life is not as sacred to them as their concept of sacredness in the physical realm is.  Life is the ultimate in sanctity and we must affirm that.  May more of the world begin to see that as true.

Yin and Yang

I understand that the title of this week’s blog post might throw some of you off.  Yes I know that Yin and Yang is not a Jewish philosophy… it is Chinese.  But there is so much to be learned from it.  There so much that we can begin to discuss around this concept.  How something can be both good and bad, blessing and curse, life and death.  It is not a simple puzzle to decipher but is a reality.  The greatest single example I can think of comes from medicine.  Think of the life saving work of chemotherapy.  Chemo is poison… It’s task is to kill the bad cells.  But it is poison and has very specific target and purpose. So in effect chemo is a poison that is used to save and/or prolong lives every day.  The same is true of other medical treatments.  Immunizations are often created by taking a certain dose of the very disease that the patient is being protected from.  And so in that way it is clear as well that the poisons can be used to save lives as well.  Why am I going on and on about this seemingly non-Jewish business? Two words: פרשת שמות (This week’s Parsha)

In this week’s Torah portion we find a king that was very afraid of a very rapidly growing population of foreigners that was in his midst.  Who were these people?  The Hebrews.  He orders the midwives to kill all male infants when they are born and let the girls live (we’ll save that for another time).  The two midwives: שפרה and פועה/Shifra and Puah, who are actually believed to have been יוכבד and מרים/Yocheved and Miriam, משה/Moses’ mother and sister… The two midwives refused to do this out of fear of God.  When the Pharaoh asks them why they did not follow his law they respond that the Hebrew women were not like the Egyptian ones… They were so strong and so mighty that they would give birth before the midwives could get there. This probably was not what Pharaoh wanted to hear and so he gives up on שפרה and פועה and commands the Egyptian population to take all Hebrew baby males and throw them into the Nile River to kill them.  So that was the law and we must assume that the Egyptian people did as was demanded of them.  יוכבד gave birth to her third child and saw that he was a boy.  She hid him from the Egyptians for three months but was no longer able to as the infant משה was likely making more and more noise each day and also not sleeping as much as newborns do. She did what any rational thinking mother would do and put her infant son into a basket and places the basket in the waters of the Nile River.  His sister watched him from afar to see what would happen. What happens next is the crux of this discussion.  Pharaoh’s daughter, or her maidservant, caught a glimpse of the basket and baby and went out and brought the infant out of the waters of the Nile River.  The Pharaoh’s daughter even goes so far as to announce that this was a Hebrew Boy.  His name was eventually given, משה, drawn from the waters (a remembrance of his origin story).

Why is this intriguing?  Why does this scream out to be explored?  Lets begin by seeing the irony of the characters.  The midwives that were originally to be the instruments of the death sentence became the instruments of the beginning of the redemption.  The law that was enacted by the Pharaoh was openly and clearly violated by his own daughter.  The text does not hide any of this and it can easily be assumed that Pharaoh was aware of all of this as well.  But even more important is that the Nile River was supposed to be the death of the Hebrew people as the males babies were to be thrown in there by the hands of the Egyptians.  Instead the Nile River became our salvation by the hands of one of the highest ranking Egyptians in the kingdom.  The Nile River can be seen as evil and can be seen as good.  The Nile River can be seen as our end and as our beginning.  And in essence it is the yin and yang… it is both.  It is life and death… blessing and curse… destruction and salvation.  This is something that we need to see in our everyday lives.  We need to see the fine line that divides the blessing and the curse in relationships, items and events.  We must see the fine line that determines our successes and failures.  We need to see the the role that we play in that as well.  We need to recognize that each day we choose how to judge and proceed… We stand metaphorically at Robert Frost’s “Two Roads” and we decide which to take.  The fork in the road that Frost speaks of is the line we are speaking about.  The fork in the road is the line between the Yin and the Yang. 

When we combine Frost’s two roads and the concept of the Yin and Yang we find the most important lesson of this very great reading.  With every decision and with every action we have potential to do good and to do bad.  For the two opposites are two sides of the same coin,  (Think Two-Face from Batman) and we do not need to leave it all up to external  forces.  The dividing line is where we stand and look and decide what will make the world better and our lives as well.  That line is the place where the Nile was either death or life.  The place where the Egyptians were either murderers or life givers.  That line is where we stand every day making choices whose impacts are greater than we can ever know.

שבת שלום