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

A Miracle: Real or Fake… Does it really matter?

Wonder of wonders, miracle of miracles-
I was afraid that God would frown,
But like he did so long ago, at Jericho,
God just made a wall fall down!
When Moses softened Pharaohs heart, that was a miracle.
When God made the waters of the red sea part, that was a miracle too!
But of all God's miracles large and small,
The most miraculous one of all
Is that out of a worthless lump of clay,
God has made a man today.

Those are the words that are sang by the tailor in the movie Fiddler on the Roof.  The tailor is rejoicing over having been brought together with the woman he wanted to be his wife.  The word miracle here is being used to demonstrate a very human emotion and a very human action.  The tailor and Tevye’s daughter were responsible for their upcoming union.  The tailor and Tevye’s daughter worked very hard at becoming a couple and ultimately securing a future together.  They did not leave it in God’s hands… they made it happen.

 

But lets talk about another movie.  A movie with a one word simple title: Miracle.  In the late 1970s America was depressed. 

The 1970s began with our country still entrenched in the Vietnam War.  In 1970 we invaded Cambodia.  The protests that were happening all across our country were very anti-US policy and created a great divide between the members of our armed forces and our general population.  Members of the military were returning home, often times injured, and were being greeted by very angry civilians who did not cheer their return.

The 1972 Olympics in Munich witnessed the barbaric and tragic murder of innocent Israeli athletes.  But it all witnessed the United States basketball team being defeated by the Soviets.

Watergate took place in the early 70s and this triggered even greater disenchantment with the government. That same government was forced to scale back funding for NASA and thus ending a great source of pride for our country.

In 1975 the US loss the war in Vietnam and was forced to flee in retreat from the capture of Saigon by the North Vietnamese.

There were oil embargos and the price of gas was through the roof. This only added to the great struggle for the average American who was already contending with very high inflation. The energy industry was a further source of negativity when the Three Mile Island incident occurred and faith in Nuclear power along with faith in the authorities capabilities to keep us safe was greatly shaken.

The 1970s came to a close with the Iranian Revolution and the ensuing hostage crisis involving the American Embassy.  To make matters worse the attempted rescue of the hostages resulted in a number of deaths and a failed mission. 

All of these events produced a very depressed United States of America as the 70s were closing.  The Cold War had been raging since the end of World War II and so while we were divided and suffering here in the US we had one common rallying point and that was the Soviet Union was the enemy.  That is the background that we need to understand the movie Miracle and why I am writing about it today.

As many of you know about me, I am a very serious hockey fan and live and breath it.  But I am in a minority in the US.  Sure in areas like Detroit (my hometown), New York, Boston, Minneapolis, Chicago and other northern cities hockey is an enormous thing.  But the majority of the US is not in those places and thus hockey has not become as entrenched as some of us would like to see.  And yet on February 22nd in the evening our country suddenly was enthralled in this great sport.  The Soviet hockey team was made up of a great number of active military members and almost all played in very elite leagues in the Soviet Union that offered world class training facilities.  Since the 1960 Olympics the Soviet team had gone 27-1-1 and had outscored their opponents 175-44.  They were a force to be reckoned with and we were about to do just that.  To make matters worse at that time the NHL did not send players to play in the Olympics.  Instead our team was made up of great college hockey players.  All of these players played for rival teams and played under varying philosophies of play.  No betting person would have taken a bet that the Americans would win a game between the Soviet Union and ultimately clench the gold medal. 

In the season that this epic battle would take place the USSR team had gone 5-3-1 against NHL teams and had beaten the NHL all-stars 6 to 0.  Leading up to the Olympics the two teams had an exhibition at Madison Square Gardens and the Soviets won 10 to 3.  Certainly there was no way that the Americans would be successful. There was no chance.  All of the odds were stacked against them.  It is for this reason that as the game was coming to a close and Team USA was about to win Al Michaels, the TV announcer, said: “11 seconds, you've got 10 seconds, the countdown going on right now! Morrow, up to Silk. Five seconds left in the game. Do you believe in miracles?! YES!!!”  Do you believe in miracles?  Do you believe in miracles?

We need miracles in our world.  But not the grandiose ones that we read of from the biblical times.  We need miracles but not the earth shattering ones that change our entire understanding of science and the laws of nature/physics.  In the past few days we have witnessed tragedies that no author could concoct in his or her head.  We have witnessed horrors that are unimaginable.  First the world was tied to their television sets as an Islamic extremist held hostages and terrorized many innocent people. He also claimed to have bombs planted in places and this added to the fear. Ultimately two innocent people would lose their lives in this incident. Second, as those events unfolded a small community in a suburb of Philadelphia was dealing with a rampage that had left six people dead and one teen in serious condition.  This man killed his ex-wife and killed many of her relatives before killing himself.  He also left his two young daughters orphans as he had murdered their mother and killed himself.  The residents of the area that this all unfolded in were on lockdown for hours and hours.  The terror must have been immense.  And third, as if this all could get worse.  In Pakistan yesterday members of the Taliban, terrorists, broke into a school and murdered 145 people, 132 of which were children.  This disgusting act was justified by the Taliban because these kids could have grown up and become soldiers for Pakistan and could have fought against Islam. 

All of this is against a backdrop of us having just commemorated the two year anniversary of the Newtown massacre where 20 children and 6 staff members were murdered at an elementary school.  So much pain… So much destruction… So much hatred… So much violence.  It is so tragic that God went to such great pains to create humans and this is what we have grown capable of doing.  Yes we need to not only believe in miracles but we need to pray for one. And as I said, not the enormous type but mundane ones.  We need a miracle because look at our world.  It is at this time of year that Jews all around the world spin tops with the Hebrew letters: נ . ג . ה . ש on them.  These letters stand for the the Hebrew words: נס גדול היה שם, a great miracle happened there.  It is at this time of the year that Jews celebrate a miracle that is believed to have happened in the year 165 BCE.  Traditionally we believe that once the Jewish soldiers managed to fight off the the Greek armies they cleansed the Temple and found enough oil to light the sacred menorah for one day and yet the oil lasted for eight days.  This was an enormous miracle and one that historically has a great number of issues.  But we will save that for another time.  For now let us understand the true miracle that our ancestors needed then and we need now.  That is the miracle of תקוה and of אמונה, hope and faith.  Those two values or tenants are constantly under attack from all circles.  In a world filled with sadness and horror it is easy to stop having hope.  In a world where religion is besieged and treated as simple naivety it is easy to succumb to pressure and to lose faith.  It is easy and that is the essence of what we need now.  We need the everyday miracles to be clearly evident.  We need the power of hope to not be lost.  We need to believe that in spite of the horrors we have been exposed to that hope is still there. 

A team of college hockey players ignited an entire country when they managed to triumph over the incredible talents of a well trained national team made up of army soldiers and semi-professional players.  That miracle did not involve God changing the laws of nature or science. It did not require God changing the stance that the goalies took in the goal.  It required humans believing that the cards are not stacked against them and that they could indeed prevail.  All of this is by way of explaining the ritual of lighting the Chanukiyah during these eight days of Chanukah.  We begin with one candle and build towards eight.  As the world is dark at this time of the year for a great deal of each day we do not dwell on the darkness… we gather and bring more light into the world.  That light that we are bringing into the world is the light of faith and the light of hope.  That light is something that we need because without it there will never be any miracles to believe in.  Miracles happen every day around us.  It is upon each and every one of us to open our eyes and see them and what they do for each of us.  The darkness is dense and it is great. But the light and the hope and faith is greater.  Let us work to push darkness away and bring more light out.

 

חג אורים שמח

Life’s a Journey

I do not think that Aerosmith can truly be considered one of the more quotable groups in the music world. Their songs are not so deep on the surface.  But when we look further we find a great deal.  “Dream On” is a great example of this.  But I would like to quote their song “Amazing.”  One of the verses goes:

Life's a journey not a destination
And I just can't tell just what tomorrow brings

The entire song is all about not giving up on life and getting through the difficult times.  It happens to be a very meaningful song.  But I think the aforementioned words tell us so much about the week’s Torah Portion.  פרשת לך לך begins with a journey, the journey of אברם and שרי (Avram and Sarai).  God tells them to leave their land, the place of their birth and the house their father and go to some new place that He will show them.  The most interesting thing about these opening words are the words לך לך which literally translate and mean Go to yourself.  How does one Go to his or herself? 

Well lets begin with a Hasidic story.

We have a tradition that Reb Zusia taught the following: "When I will face the heavenly court after my demise, I am not afraid that they are going to ask me, Why were you not Moses, or the other great ancestors? I have no such fear for I am sure that they will not ask me these questions. However, I am afraid that I will be asked, Why weren't you Zusia, the Zusia that you could have been, the Zusia that we had planned for you to be through the talents, abilities, time and opportunities that were granted to you. That is what scares me.”

Reb Zusia is explaining to us that we spend so much time worrying about being as great as somebody else.  We spend so much time fearing that we will never measure up to our ancestors… The reality is that we do not need to because all we need to be is ourselves. This is no easy task.  We spend our lives trying to fit in with other groups.  We spend so much time trying to conform to the standards of our people.  And then we step back and ask ourselves what we ourselves would like to have and like to be.  Then we truly find our journey worth going on.

We should never spend our lives looking to find ourselves, we should spend our lives being ourselves.  We should never spend our days obsessing about what we are not… We should spend our days happy with who we are.  This all seems to sound so simple… Be yourself.  But if it were that simple then we would never have teenage drama and never have these feelings of emptiness inside of our cores.  It is not easy to be ourselves.  It is not easy to embrace the person in the mirror because we are our own worst critics.  What is easy is to take steps.  To start the journey to finding who we are and then begin being who we are.

When I was in High School I made a decision to wear a kippah all of the time.  Now in High School where everything is always being judged and where everyone is always caring more about what others think than what they themselves feel, this was a very difficult decision to make.  But I made it because I wanted to be me.  I wanted to shout out to the world who I am and be proud of it.  Over the years I have been more than aware of the kippah that sits on my head.  When I was in college and in a fraternity for a year it was odd for me to be at parties, but taking the Kippah off would have changed who I was to myself.  When I worked in a coffee shop and people would give me strange looks, it would have been easy to have said forget it.  But that was not going to be me being me. It would be me being something other.

The chorus of the Aerosmith song goes “It’s amazing with a blink of an eye you finally see the light.”  There are always going to be those aha moments when we see the world more clearly.  There are always going to be the transforming times where we finally get it.  Those moments are inside of each of us.  We need to be willing to be ourselves.  We need to resist the pull of the other and embrace the pull of self.  God is calling on Abram to be himself in his journey.  Because on this journey of life we do best when we resist trying to be someone else and instead we are our best selves.  

In verses after this command God explains that Abram will be blessed and be a blessing.  Blessing is too often thought of being wealth a physical objects that we amass.  Being blessed is actually better understood of being happy with what we have.  Being blessed is being able to see that we are good enough the way that we are.  Being blessed means traveling through our lives content and seeing that we have everything within ourselves.  Just remember: “Life’s a journey, not a destination.”

Here are some more thoughts on the current Gun Debate

Last year after the events unfolded at Penn State I wrote a blog about the sacrifice of children. You see Judaism was in part a response to the pagan world and the story of the Binding of Isaac was a response to the practice of child sacrifice that was so prevalent in the ancient world. Those students who rioted in response to the firing of Joe Paterno placed an American cultural value before a sacred religious one… And now today I want to know if we are doing the same thing again. I keep on wanting to sing Lee Greenwood’s God Bless the USA… I keep on thinking of all of the eulogies that we offer for soldiers and people killed in the line of duty… What are they defending? I believe the constitution to be a holy document… But the problem is that we are allowing it to be used for unholy things. Can we really be proud to be Americans when we advocate for dangerous tools of murder to be readily available? Can we really be proud of a document that is used to advocate for unlimited numbers of bullets to be placed into guns at a time? Can we really be proud when our one singular basic duty of protecting children is second to the second amendment? When does the madness end? When can we be safe from the bullets flying about our world? Judaism destroyed child sacrifice and America seems to have resurrected it… We must not allow for their deaths to have occurred in vain. We must push for the children who are still here to be safe because of those who died. After all, isn’t that the constant refrain for soldiers: (he died so you could be alive).

We live in a world that continues to victimize children on a regular basis. We live in a world that witnesses child prostitution, child marriage, child slavery, child soldiers and so many more evils. Children should be playing with toys, not attending funerals. Children should be stopping our lust for evil and power not being victimized by it. Children should be laughing and not crying. Schools should be safe and not dangerous. But all of these clichés have come to a screeching halt. All of these clichés are no longer the case. We in America brag about the quality of life we enjoy here, and we brag about freedoms unlike anywhere else in the world, but what freedom is there when even a five year old is not entitled to life and safety in a classroom? We all have some deep soul searching to do right now. We all need to come together and agree that enough is enough. For me it was enough when gangs were killing each other in the cities. For me it was enough when police officers were being killing while on duty. For me it was enough when people watching a movie were slaughtered. But I am just one person, we must all work together to see that the unthinkable has happened and that our children demand and deserve better. Kids should be at birthday parties, not at funerals. But the funerals will continue so long as we do not put their safety and well-being ahead of some words on paper that have been abused and misinterpreted for countless generations.

There is a midrash about the binding of Isaac that he was blinded on that day by a tear drop from his father’s eye. Might we be doing the same thing? Might we be causing irreversible damage to our most precious assets because of our adherence to the second amendment? We as the adults are shedding tears, them as children are being permanently damaged. This is not right; it never was and never will be. Isaac survived with some scars. For all but 26 of us we are just as fortunate, but for the remaining 26 may we be wiser and move forward knowing that we have a responsibility to the dead to not have let them die in vain?

There are no answers, only questions. And right now we need to ask ourselves what we are doing to make fewer Isaacs and more children? What are we doing to regain our pride in being Americans? And lastly, at what cost does our freedom come? The answer can never be the lives of our young.

Where to Go From Here?

Okay, here goes nothing. I am not sure where this is going to go so hold on tight. Just the other day I threw out my nerf gun. I made a decision that I needed to be consistent, and I needed to accept that a gun was a gun. I cannot allow for a gun to be a toy... it is not okay. The last night of Hanukah, our synagogue had a great party at a family fun venue, which included laser tag. As I was suiting up, the person in charge was giving us instructions. Our guns had unlimited ammo; we could activate rapid fire. The whole thing was quite frightening to hear as we were all aware of the previous day’s events. I became very uncomfortable shooting a laser at these little kids and eventually left and did something else. It just felt wrong.

With regards to the plagues of our society we need to recognize that the problems lie all over the place. We are arguing over the first and the second amendments, and it appears as if most would rather be purists than have sensible legislation. The limit on the first amendment is accepted as being the idea that a person is free to swing his arms but that freedom ends where my nose begins. We also refer to the understanding that it is illegal to yell fire in a crowded theater. What is the limit on the second amendment? As it stands it is limitless. Might we suggest that the limit is your right to carry a gun ends where my right to safety begins? Might we argue that guns that can murder and maim mass numbers in a matter of seconds are the limit? If the first amendment has a limit, then certainly the second must as well. But we all seem to acknowledge that the problem is not only the actual guns. A major contributing factor is the glorification of guns and violence. I am a huge hockey fan... I actually have three religions: 1) Judaism, 2) Hockey and 3) Disney. With regards to hockey I love the sport, but Americans are destroying it. When I attend hockey games I am there to see skill and to see goals and stopped shots. I appreciate a good check and/or defensive play; I do not enjoy the fights. I am disgusted by the fan reaction to fights versus the fan reaction to goals. They cheer so much louder for fights. These players are on sharp skates and on slippery ice and they are boxing, it is dangerous and the fans cheer them on more than when they score a goal. We have some sort of obsession with blood and suffering. We have some sort of obsession with pain and agony. We have some sort of obsession with violence in general. I watched the first episode a few years ago of the show Boardwalk Empire. I never watched it again after the scene of the man beating the pregnant woman. It is all in the name of entertainment and I realize it is supposed to be make believe, but it is not entertainment to me. I have met too many battered women to know it is not make believe. When I wrote my paper on violent and misogynistic video games, I did so hoping to prove their legitimacy and innocence... I found quite the opposite. The paper is posted here:http://www.rabbinicalassembly.org/sites/default/files/public/halakhah/teshuvot/20052010/videogames%20Dorff%20Hearshen%20Final.pdf. Just because the first amendment gives us the right to make such material, does not make it okay. Just because studies on the real dangers of such games are inconclusive, does not mean that they are okay. And just because it is fantasy does not make it okay. There is nothing entertaining about dehumanizing women. There is nothing entertaining about murdering innocent civilians on purpose. There is no value in degrading our God-made souls and inviting in such lewd and violent images. I do not blame the entertainment industry for what happened in Connecticut, but they are not allowed to get away free from all of this. I love the words from a great poet/singer - Jack Johnson: 
"Cookie Jar"
Jack Johnson
i would turn on the tv, but it’s so embarrassing
to see all the other people, i don’t know what they mean
it was magic at first, when they spoke without sound
but now this world is gonna hurt, you better turn that thing down
turn it around
“it wasn’t me,” says the boy with the gun
“sure i pulled the trigger, but it needed to be done
because life’s been killing me ever since it begun
you can’t blame me because i’m too young”
“you can’t blame me, sure the killer was my son
but i didn’t teach him to pull the trigger of the gun
it’s the killing on his tv screen
you can’t blame me, it’s those images he seen”
“you can’t blame me,” says the media man
“i wasn’t the one who came up with the plan
i just point my camera at what the people want to see
it’s a two way mirror and you can’t blame me”
“you can’t blame me,” says the singer of the song
or the maker of the movie which he based his life on
“it’s only entertainment, as anyone can see
it’s smoke machines and makeup, you can’t fool me”
it was you, it was me, it was every man
we’ve all got the blood on our hands
we only receive what we demand
and if we want hell then hell’s what we’ll have
i would turn on the tv, but it’s so embarrassing
to see all the other people, don’t know what they mean
it was magic at first, but let everyone down
and now this world is gonna hurt, you better turn it around
turn it around

You see the problem is all of our problems; we are all guilty and have blood on our hands. We all have so much to do to make this better. The violence in media is a problem. The stigma of mental health care and lack thereof is a problem. The lack of laws to police these issues is a problem. The availability of deadly weapons is a problem. Our lack of collective memory is a problem. We have so many issues that we must contend with and we must overcome. We have to make this world better for our children and we must be willing to sacrifice some things to achieve such a world. What we have right now is not the right answer. What we have right now is a freedom that is leading to mass chaos, no discussion of issues and sole focus on the rights of the individual as opposed to the good of society.

What we got right in the past year

This year I made a decision in preparing for Yom Kippur that I did not only want to remind God of the bad things I had done in the past year.  I did not want to portray myself as a sinner exclusively… And I felt that the people in the room would agree.  And so I set out to write an additional confessional prayer for our services that allow for us to confess the good things we have done.  I come from a point of view that we choose to do what we do.  We all have choices and make them on a regular basis.  We will, at times, make the wrong one… But often we make the right one and we need to be able to rejoice in that.  It was in this spirit that I wrote the following words and now pass them on to all of you for your reflection and use.

יום כיפור 5773

רבונו של עולם, Master of the World:

Today is יום כיפור, the day that the books are sealed. We call today יום הדין the Day of Judgment. Today our people gather around the world to confess the times that we missed the mark and we are fully aware that there are plenty of such occasions. But God, is this really a fair trial when we are only allowed to testify our guilt and not our merits??? We have enumerated the case against us, now we must enumerate the case in our favor:

For the times we have run to do a מצוה rather than run away…

And for the times we visited a sick person rather than ignoring their loneliness…

For the times we stood up for the innocent when we could have looked the other way…

And for the times we celebrated Shabbat in any way shape or form rather than treating it just as an ordinary day…

For the times we studied your תורה rather than play games…

And for the times we smiled at strangers rather than walking right by…

For the times we said thank you for things other people did rather than nodding in acknowledgement…

And for the times we did the work rather than taking the easy way…

For all of these actions, O God, acknowledge them, count them and help us to multiply them.

For the times we recycled rather than throwing something away…

And for the times when our neighbor needed our advice and we gave it rather than saying we had no time…

For the time we gave clothing away rather than keeping it for ourselves…

And for all of the money for צדקה that we gave rather than keeping it in our banks…

For all of the holidays we celebrated with intention rather than going through the motions…

And for the times we told the truth rather than telling a lie…

For the times we told others how we feel rather than holding it all inside…

And for the times we looked at Your world and said wow rather than not even noting its majesty…

For all of the art that we have created to beautify Your world rather than junk it up…

And for all of the children we have educated rather than turning them away from knowledge…

For the times we recognized we had enough rather than coveting…

And for the times we called our loved ones rather than waiting for them to call us

For all of these actions, O God, acknowledge them, count them and help us to multiply them.

9/11 Time for reflection and courage

I remember as a child when I learned the important three numbers 9-1-1.  Our parents taught us these three numbers so that we would be able to call for help in case of an emergency.  I remember in 2001 when these numbers were stolen from our language and turned into the memorial that they are now.  No longer were the numbers 911 linked to life saving, they were linked to memorial and sadness.  They became linked to tragedy and bigotry.  I wonder if anybody who dialed 911 on that morning recognized the two.  Part of me also wonders if the cowards who carried out these terrorist actions saw this.  It is curious that our 911 is a symbol of our national collective belief in the sanctity of life and a communal view that all lives are worth saving vs. their viewpoint that there are infidels in the world that should never be saved and indeed should be murdered in cold blood.

We would be mistaken to believe that Islam is responsible for this tragedy.  We would be mistaken to assert that Christianity should be to blame for the Holocaust.  There are aspects that were used, but in reality they were abused by the criminals in both cases.  No religion endorses the murder of the innocent, and no believer in God will condone such heinous actions.  These were not religious actions, they were political and terrorist ones.

We should be very proud in the United States that we have a society that embraces religions of all shapes and colors.  We should likewise be proud that we have people who do not subscribe to any of these.  But we never should condone the drive to uproot faith from our public discourse nor from our society.  If people choose to believe they should be embraced and if people choose not to believe then they should be embraced.  People who try to stifle the viewpoints of other people are in a way taking a page out of the playbook of the people who committed these crimes: stifling discussion. I was reminded today of an ongoing debate over a cross from the World Trade Center site.  http://religion.blogs.cnn.com/2012/09/10/atheists-continue-battle-against-world-trade-center-cross-at-memorial/?hpt=hp_t2&hpt=hp_t2.  Why this is an issue is beyond me, but what upsets me is that there is a movement to remove God from the United States.  I am not a Christian, and yet I support the cross being there not because it is a Christian symbol, but because it is a religious symbol.  I would love them to make a Jewish Star and a Crescent Moon with it as well.  I would like them to make all other symbols of faith.  Because while everyone is busy blaming God for this and religion for this... What they are missing is that God was not in the planes going into the buildings... God was in the people running in to rescue the others.  God was absent in the hearts of the terrorists, but was alive and well in the eyes of the people crying in their living rooms asking why.  God was not in the Koran that was usurped and desecrated by Al Qaeda, but was in the scriptures of all of the people who went to Synagogues and Churches and Mosques afterwards to pray and be consoled after the tragedy.  There are people who want you to believe that God is the source of all hatred and war.  But when it comes down to reality the conflicts are over money, power and grudges.  The wars are not God made, they are human devised.  We must see that while we push God out of the world in our violence, we bring God back into the world when we embrace humanity and other people.  God is in the response and that is why the cross belongs there in the eyes of this rabbi.  I have no problem living in a majority christian country that provides me with the room to be a Jew.  I have an enormous problem living in a Godless country that drives God out of every public place.  Leave the cross there as it is a source of comfort, and continue to accept and acknowledge that there are multiple approaches to God, including none at all, and from there go forward and continue our healing from the time our sacred 911 was stolen from us.  Go forward and restore 9-1-1 into our national consciousness as the lifesaving numbers and not the ones that murdered.  May generations to come have faith in these numbers and that they will be there to lift us up and not tear us down.

May the memories of all of the souls lost on September 11, 2001 rest in peace and may their loved ones find comfort in their memory and their legacy. 

Parshat Shoftim in NYC

One of the first gifts our daughter, Ayelet, ever received was a Tzedaka Box.  It was one of the first gifts because it was given to us long before we were ever pregnant.  It was a gift from the manager of the Judaica store from the AJU before we graduated.  Since Ayelet was an infant we began to give her change and have her put money into the Tzedaka box to teach her the value of giving.  Last Thanksgiving we had a Young Family program here at MJC and we made Tzedaka boxes that looked like bagels, this was based on the wonderful book Bagels from Benny. Since she made that one she has wanted to use it every shabbat.  I realized around that time that we needed to teach her more about what this means.  Here was the problem, WE gave her OUR money and SHE placed it into some container that did not affect her at all.  She did not give anything up and she did not see where the money was going or who it was helping.  I began to bring her piggy bank down with us to the dining room and began to give her some money.  I would explain to her: “Ayelet, here is some change.  It is now yours and you can do with it as you want.  You can put it in your piggy bank and save it for you to buy something, or you can put it in the Tzedaka box and give it to somebody who needs help.  You may also choose to save some for you and give some to other people.” I was so impressed that she chose to keep some, because it meant that she understood the principle and that she still gave some away.  The thing about Tzedaka Boxes is that they are often too removed from the actual giving.  We are obligated to give, not because we are good people but because God commands us to do so.  Quite often we have these beautiful boxes that cost an enormous amount of money and we fill them up but we do not realize when we do so that ultimately that money will be given to a needy person or an organization.  It is too divorced from its reason, and we often do not actually play a role in the act of Tzedaka.  Tzedaka is not about charity, it is not about being a charitable person. It is about correcting the wrongs of this world not out of choice but out of obligation to God and to humankind.  That is why it is called Tzedaka/justice and not charity/choice. 

So last Sunday we were in NYC.  We were on 5th avenue, and in case you are not familiar with the types of stores on 5th avenue, they are very expensive ones and very busy ones as well.  Regardless, as in all places in the world poverty is still present and impoverished homeless people are there in large numbers.  As I was walking to meet Carrie and Ayelet I saw a homeless person and I was about to give him money and then I stopped and thought it would be better to have Ayelet do it, and so I waited.  When I found them it appears I was too late, Carrie had already done the same thing.  We had food with us for Ayelet and she was given the choice of keeping it or sharing it with the homeless people.  She asked if they were hungry and we said yes, and she said give them the food.  We had her give them them food as that was what we were trying to teach her.  She brightened their day and she provided them with some much needed food to get them through the day as well.  We also gave her some money to hand to them.  When we were on Madison heading to dinner we happened upon another homeless man.  We offered food and he said he did not want chicken or meat, and we told him we had yogurt and cheese, and he was so happy.  Then we realized we also had animal crackers left as well, and we handed those to him.  He refused them, and said “those are your daughter’s,” and she smiled at him and said she wanted to share them with him.  He was near tears and we were as well.

Here is the issue: we have made it a little to easy to dehumanize the homeless amongst us. We have demonized them, and turned them into pariahs.  Rabbi Abraham Joshua Heschel writes about the prophets and how they would decry a civilization that condoned one homeless person, what would they say today?  Are there homeless drug addicts? yes.  Are there homeless people with mental issues? yes.  Are there homeless people who have made bad decisions? yes. And if helping these types of people is wrong then I accept being wrong.  But who could argue helping a person with none of the above is wrong.  We must help the homeless reclaim their own humanity that our society has robbed them of, and in return we will regain a portion of our own humanity.

In this week’s Torah portion we learn the famous phrase: צדק צדק תרדוף, Justice… Justice you shall pursue.  Many wiser scholars have written on this verse: why the double of justice and why the pursuing?  The traditional answer is that the double use of justice is that justice must be carried out in a just way.  Robin Hood would not pass this test.  And the pursuing question is traditionally understood to mean that we must go out and make this happen, we cannot wait for the opportunity to perform this commandment to present itself to us, we must make it happen.

I believe these are both correct.  It is a non-religious idea that the ends justifies the means, and we must not allow ourselves to become complacent and to fall into the trap of doing bad because it results in good.  Likewise we must not sit idly by waiting for the opportunity to observe the mitzvah of tzedaka, we must go out and make it happen.  But how about another way of looking at it.  We are commanded to do it ourselves and we are commanded to lead our children to do the same.  Perhaps we could say the doubling of justice is to teach us to go out and double it through doing tzedaka ourselves but also by raising children who will do the same.  And with regards to pursuing, I think we might also be able to say that even if this act of giving could cause me to live without a little, and thus need to pursue more, or worse; leave myself feeling pursued… we must still do it.

Lets make a world worthy of our prophets and through doing so we will make a world worthy of God as well.

Who is to blame?

I want to begin with some beautiful words from Jack Johnson:

"Cookie Jar"

i would turn on the tv, but it’s so embarrassing
to see all the other people, i don’t know what they mean
it was magic at first, when they spoke without sound
but now this world is gonna hurt, you better turn that thing down
turn it around

“it wasn’t me,” says the boy with the gun
“sure i pulled the trigger, but it needed to be done
because life’s been killing me ever since it begun
you can’t blame me because i’m too young”

“you can’t blame me, sure the killer was my son
but i didn’t teach him to pull the trigger of the gun
it’s the killing on his tv screen
you can’t blame me, it’s those images he seen”

“you can’t blame me,” says the media man
“i wasn’t the one who came up with the plan
i just point my camera at what the people want to see
it’s a two way mirror and you can’t blame me”

“you can’t blame me,” says the singer of the song
or the maker of the movie which he based his life on
“it’s only entertainment, as anyone can see
it’s smoke machines and makeup, you can’t fool me”

it was you, it was me, it was every man
we’ve all got the blood on our hands
we only receive what we demand
and if we want hell then hell’s what we’ll have

i would turn on the tv, but it’s so embarrassing
to see all the other people, don’t know what they mean
it was magic at first, but let everyone down
and now this world is gonna hurt, you better turn it around
turn it around

 

Every time we have an instance of grotesque gun violence in our midst we hear the same refrains from all sides.  The left demands stricter gun laws and the right demands that safety is obtained when all can defend themselves in the same way.  We then enter the discussion of the violence in the media and media outlets bring in great psychologists to argue that there is no evidence that violent media leads to any of this… The other side really has no argument because, well that pesky lack of evidence.  In the words of Jack Johnson, “It’s so embarrassing.”  You know what is embarrassing is that Huey Long’s words of so many years ago, “violence is as american as apple pie,” still are all too true.  You know what is embarrassing is that instead of bridging the divide between the two sides we refuse any common sense legislation that could help. You know what is embarrassing. on the same day that families were being notified that their loved ones would never come home again, that while people were at the bedsides of their loved ones holding on for dear life… people in the media dared to ask: “what does this mean for the movie?”  And then the question of violence in video games came up and I could not stand it any longer.  I watched expert after expert explain how violent video games are simply an outlet… That they do not correlate with an increased likely hood of homicide, except for when they do.  But here is the question which they ignore: if we are what we eat, then are we what we consume? And if we are what we consume, then what does our massive consumption of violence in the media say about us.  I while back I co-authored a paper on this subject with Rabbi Elliot Dorff, here is the link to it. In that paper we laid out an argument as to why violent and misogynistic video games should be banned from the Conservative Movement and should be reconsidered on the whole. We understood that they are protected by the 1st amendment as has been upheld time and again.  However, that makes no difference.  You know what isn’t protected by the 1st amendment, yelling fire in a crowded movie theatre.  Very interesting that that is the paradigmatic example of the limits on the freedom of speech.  When the speech places people in danger we have a limit. 

We continue to pass the buck.  We continue to blame everyone but ourselves, and now we have done it again.  Lets be clear on one thing, the guilty person is in custody.  But lets also recognize that the guilt does not end with him, it begins with him.  Nobody can diminish his guilt we can only recognize our own as well.   We have allowed for a culture that glorifies violence to become the norm.  We have allowed for our children to be desensitized to violence and have somehow made it okay to see violence.  In researching the above mentioned paper I was shocked at the gross double standards that existed in the families of America.  Sex was bad, violence was either good or more likely: acceptable.  Nudity was off the table, guns and bombs were the table.  We have basically created an environment where the first wish of God, that we be fruitful and multiply, has become viewed with such bitter disdain while the antithesis of all human life has become a simple expression of free speech. There are rules of war in our world today and many people scoff at this because war is inherently the absence of all rules.  And yet there are rules.  The Torah also had rules regarding war and interestingly enough these can be seen as perhaps a desire to temper our violence in the world.  If God could not do away with all violence, then at least He could assure that there would be parameters.  But I think the issue goes back further.  God saw the world was falling apart at the seams and He needed to repair it.  His decision was that He would restart it by means of a flood. The evil that was in the world prior to the world is described after the flood through the new allowance that we could eat meat.  God gave us permission to eat meat because our bloodlust was so strong it was the only thing He could do to curb it. The definition of a Hasid is someone who goes beyond the bare minimum of the law.  We need to become hasids in our view of violence.  We must not just sit and watch as our society continues to glorify the destruction of God’s creations.  We must not allow ourselves to be conned into believing that it is okay to harm other people.  And this brings me back to the conversation of the media and violence.  When we think video games we need to recognize that a great deal of adults play them.  However, the primary audience has always been and will continue to be children.  When we look at the top selling video games we see the majority have both violence and misogyny in them. If we want to play innocent and act as if these games do not get used by children, then go ahead.  But in reality they are being played more and more often by younger and younger children.  If we are to teach our children that violence is bad and never allowed, then we must show them that violence is not only bad in real life… it is bad entertainment as well.   In the words of a report by the National Organization of Women quoted in a paper online: “…if the games are just an escape, what does that say about how we escape? Is this our definition of 'fun' now? Is this how we 'play'?”  I am concerned about what it means that we find degrading women and degrading human worth as entertaining.  I am worried about not so much the physical consequences but the spiritual and emotional ones.  There are mixed findings in the medical literature and there are valid arguments on both sides… But I would like to promote the argument that while the freedom of speech gives these companies the right to publish this material… the freedom of the market provides us with the freedom to buy something else. 

A gunman viciously murdered innocent people watching a movie about a man who puts his own life on the line to see to it that justice exists in this world.  That gunman is alone the guilty person to be punished for the crimes he committed.  We as a society have some important work to do as well.  We are not guilty but innocent we are not either.  We must work to make a society where entertainment is something that works with our values and not against them, where murder and maiming are not acceptable and where a better world could be created because of the art that is being produced in it.  It is up to us to fight violence not just in the streets but in our entire existence.  May the souls of the 12 victims rest in peace, and may those who were injured begin the long road back to physical and emotional well being.