The problem with criticism of Israel is not the criticism, per se. The problem is lack of contextualization, inaccurate comparisons, and exaggerated or misused language. In any authentic democracy, the responsibility of informed citizens is to support, debate, or protest policies or actions by its government. What we’ve seen in Israel over the last weeks is an extraordinary example of a vital democracy in action. So, when I criticize Israeli governmental policies, and I have much to criticize, I am obliged to do it with all the passion that is called for AND place that criticism in its proper context. That context is within the Middle East— where there are no other democracies that insure its citizens the right to assemble and protest.
Personally, I am deeply worried about the right wing shift of Israel’s government. I am concerned that Netanyahu’s proposal of “reforms” are a smoke screen that would likely lead to an erosion of democracy. I am deeply troubled by the growing power of both the nationalists and the religious right eroding more and more rights of liberal Jewish religious denominations. I am angry at Netanyahu’s betrayal of an agreement he once signed onto with the Women of the Wall. But my protestations need to be placed in their proper perspective.
When I put my criticism, anger, and complaints about this or that Israeli policy in context to the rest of the Middle East, I clearly see that Israel is exhibiting the struggles of any vital democracy. We know that Israel is the only pluralistic democracy of its kind in the Middle East. Especially as a rabbi, I would never simply criticize Israel without honoring its democracy, and the vital role Israel plays in inspiring democratic movements throughout the Middle East. Nor would I fail to mention the very undemocratic Palestinian governments (the PA and Hamas). At the same time, I would never blindly support “Israel, right or wrong” without my obligation as a Zionist to criticize and protest policies I disagree with or even find appalling.
Exaggerated language is the other issue that concerns me, especially for those of us who are Jewish leaders. The use of words like apartheid, racist, authoritarian, colonial, or fascist to describe Israel are simply (and dangerously) wrong, and mislead or confuse those in our communities whom we hope to educate about what is happening in Israel today. Because we see racism in Israel does not make the entire nation racist. Israeli policies may anger and upset me (and many of them do in the current government) but I believe it is incumbent upon me not to make public statements without putting my criticisms in proper context, and watching my own tendency toward exaggerated language, rooted in my personal frustration. Israel is a wonderful, inspiring, startup nation, and a democracy. It not only needs our criticism now, more than ever, but also our love and support. The two (love and criticism) can be written about and spoken about in the same statement.
The light of you bent back, reflected from a far star years away has reached my eyes today seen only in the darkness of the night tonight.
I swear that what I see is now but know that what I see is light bent back from far off long ago.
And now my light reflected from this star here, our sun, will travel far to meet your eyes someday in the darkness of the night somewhere, somehow. To you it will be now in years to come you’ll swear. When I say “I recall” and you say, “Now I see!”
This I’ve learned: my past is your tomorrow, as yours is my today. And now I see what was so long ago to you, to me is now. And so I say, “In the darkness of my life, now, I see!”
When I see the light that shines on you, what I see now is stored in me as memory. Someday (a long time off please God) one of us will say kaddish for the other retrieving that light within memory and leaving the realm of the here and now in space and entering the realm of the there and then in time.
Kaddish – a time machine whose wheels and wings are words that take us back to souls that once were here and now are there coming back to here in the light of our remembrance as we say those now familiar words: Yitgadal v’yitkadash shemay rabbah
Kaddish brings their souls back from there to here, to here and now for just a moment to guide us, love us, and bless us now where time meets space within us now and then and we say “Amen.”
by Rabbi David Zaslow with help from Devorah Zaslow
In the Kaballah, the force of expansion is represented by Hesed, and personified by the angel Michael. In the diagram of the Kabalistic tree of life, Hesed, meaning “kindness and “mercy,” resides in the right side of the body – the side from which most of us greet each other and shake hands (before Covid 19). The contrasting force of contraction is represented by Gevurah and personified by the angel Gabriel. Gevurah, meaning “strength, discernment, and boundaries,” resides on the left side of the body from which most of us protect ourselves by fending off incoming attack.
When Hesed and Gevurah are in balance, the energy of the equilibrium awakens Tiferet, which means “beauty.” Today, no matter where we stand in our political beliefs most of us would agree that our nation is terribly out of balance. Important issues like immigration reform, climate change, and racial equity have polarized many of us within our communities, and even within our families. I believe that Tiferet is calling us to regain our equilibrium. In the language of our sages, the Shechinah is in exile as long as we are out of balance.
Now that the election is over it is time for all of us to do our part in making our way toward the balance that will ultimately express itself in beauty. If we look at politics kabalistically, we see the the qualities of Gevurah represented by the need for boundaries, and support for our military and police. On the other hand, the qualities of Hesed are expressed in our compassion for the poor, immigration reform, and police reform. Obviously, neither political party is completely one way or the other, just as each of us is a mixture of Hesed and Gevurah. No matter which side of the political spectrum we align with, the other side will not, indeed cannot, disappear. If we see it from the perspective of Kabbalah, Gevurah and Hesed are built-in to the hard drive of creation and will always be seeking equilibrium and balance.
At this moment, after the election, it doesn’t matter which political point of view you support, or which policies you want to see enacted. In the Executive branch of the government the die is cast for the next four years. What matters now, as President-Elect Biden spoke about in his acceptance speech, is not allowing ourselves to see those we disagree with as our enemies. Hesed and Gevurah need each other. Kindness must have healthy boundaries and limitations. Strength must be mitigated by compassion. Both Hesed and Gevurah seek justice, the justice at the root of Tiferet, beauty.
Tiferet is represented by the archangel Raphael who brings healing into our lives personally, communally, nationally, and on a planetary level. How do we evoke this ideal of justice and beauty? The answer lies in what rabbinic Judaism calls a machloket l’shem shamayim – “a dispute for the sake of heaven.” When disputes are made “for the sake of heaven,” a proponent of a particular political policy will not debase her/himself to the level of exaggeration, lying, bullying, racism, or bigotry. In other words, we engage in civil discourse with curiosity and empathy for views of the other even as we vigorously advocate for our own positions and beliefs.
Who will guide us toward such a Utopian vision of balance between opposites? We have an angel for that too, whose name is Uriel – the angel of light, the angel we can envision to guide us toward a better future. Now that the election is over, I pray that all of us can follow the lead of our better angels who want us to debate, who depend upon our passionate advocacy, but who caution us against mockery and demonetization of the “other.”
Sometimes the hardest mitzvah to fulfill is v’ahvata l’rayacha kamocha “loving your neighbor as yourself.” Such a mitzvah does not arise out of legislation from any branch of government or ruling from any court. The siddur directs us to make the promise to fulfill this mitzvah every day in our morning prayers. Then we can imagine the light of the angel Uriel guiding us to implement it in our interactions every day. Loving our neighbor, especially those we disagree with, must begin with me, with you, with each of us, now.
May the Holy One bless our nation on its way to healing and beauty. If you agree please say “Amen!” Awareness of the opposing forces of Kabbalah can help us engage in healthy discourse, leading us to build a brighter future together. May we see the light of Tiferet, the holy balance of beauty, speedily in our days.
For the cloud of the YHVH was upon the tabernacle by day, and there was fire therein by night, in the sight of all the house of Israel, throughout all their journeys.
In Hebrew the same word is used to mean both “eye” and “well” (עַיִן ayin). Which meaning came first? That’s hard to tell, but the metaphor embedded between the difference in meaning between these two words travels both ways. An “eye” is the “well” of a person’s face, and, a “well” is the “eye” of the earth.” For centuries scholars have considered the possible connection between the Hebrew words for “cloud” עֲנַן and “sight” עֵינִי (as in Exodus 40:38 above). Although their etymological relationship probably cannot be proven, they certainly seem like lost cousins when the words are reduced to the two-letter root ע•ן ayin and nun. Just as in English, the Hebrew word for “cloud” is been used to mean both a physical “cloud” and the metaphorical “cloud” meaning “obscure” or “unclear.” We say we have “cloudy vision” both English and Hebrew, or when two people understand each other they are said to see “eye to eye.”1 and there is no reason to think that the Biblical writers did not see this association the two words that have very similar spellings except for the very soft consonant י yod, which is comparable to the English letter “y.” In Hebrew prayer books two יְיָ yods are used to represent God’s name. So, on a poetic level we can say that when we insert God’s name into a “cloud” we have “sight.”
According to the speculative two-letter root studies of Fabre d’Olivet the words for “eye” and “cloud” do have a common linguistic ancestor. In addition, according to d’Olivet, one of the Hebrew words for “sin” also shared this root.2 The word עָווֹן avone is a “sin” that can “cloud” our “eye” from properly seeing. The word עָוֹן avone is often translated as “iniquity,” and literally means “twisted, perverse, bent, and deviated.” Arising out of a twisted and distorted view of reality an avone is an immoral sin arising from out of control emotions or lust. An avone is often committed out of a weakness in character, and not necessarily in conscious defiance of God. This type of sin is associated with many addictions. The person committing this ind of sin is often self-deluded, and may even believe that he or she has good reason for the behavior. For example, vengeful thoughts and most forms of gossip fall into this category of sin.
The Gesenius Lexicon reminds us that עָנָן anan meaning “cloud” was also used in the Bible to mean “divination.” Was this kind of soothsaying classified as an avone kind of sin by the Hebrews? Or, were the shape of clouds used as a means of divination in Biblical times? It is possible, although Dr. Ernest Klein says that “most” scholars have given up this latter association. However, Dr. Klein then goes on to associate the word for “cloud” to anna, an Arabic word for “appearance” which once again brings in the possibility that the sight of an “eye” is associated to both “cloud” and “divination.”
With a bit of poetic license we can give at the above verse from Torah (Exodus 40:38) a unique interpretation. Here is an example: “when that which obscured the vision of the the people ascended, they could move journey (lit. “pull up their tent stakes”). But when their sight was obscured by cloudy uncertainty, they remained at the same camp.” Besides the moon what brings sight to people during the night? A good fire, torch, or lantern. So even at night the Israelites were permitted to see what was ahead of them. What is the underlying principle of movement and rest during the Exodus? First, the cloud (uncertainty, doubt, obscurity sight) must ascend so that we can move forward. Then at night, we are given a vision of tomorrow by the light God’s holy camp fire. This is what guided the Israelites for all forty-two journeys during all forty years in the wilderness. The Israelites learned how to read the clouds, just as today we are learning how to “read” our emotions. We are learning how to “read” that which obscures us from making clear-sighted decisions as we move forward in our lives.
The Paradox of Clouds
I’ve looked at clouds from both sides now
From up and down, and still somehow
It’s cloud illusions I recall
I really don’t know clouds at all
by Joni Mitchell
In popular American culture we extend the meaning of clouds to situations that are sometimes negative and sometimes positive. We speak of someone’s thoughts being cloudy (meaning “unclear” or “obscure”). Just look at the idiomatic expressions about clouds that have a somewhat negative connotation. We say that “every cloud has a silver lining” as if the cloud were a entity symbolic of painful situations. We tell someone, “get your head out of the clouds” as if clouds were a symbol of unrealistic thinking. We say that someone is “under a cloud of suspicion,” implying that the opaque nature of clouds is represents a way of hiding guilt.
On the other hand, when someone is happy we say that they are “on cloud nine” or “walking on clouds.” So, what it is? Happiness or obscurity? Although Biblical Hebrew also had this same duel notion in the extended meaning of the word “cloud,” the Torah speaks of clouds in their protective capacity. For example, “And the YHWH went before them by day in a pillar of cloud, to lead them the way; and by night in a pillar of fire, to give them light; that they might go by day and by night (Exodus 13:21).” The cloud protected the Israelites in the desert from the heat of the day, just as the pillar of fire warmed them in the cold nights in the Arabian Peninsula. An an equally positive quality of clouds is seen when Moses is told, “Behold, the Glory of the YHWH appeared in the cloud (Exodus 16:10).” In its protective capacity the cloud is identified as a kind of protective covering, or roofing, in the sacred meeting place. The Torah declares, “And the cloud covered the tent of meeting, and the Glory of YHWH filled the tabernacle. Exodus 40:44.”
On the other hand, in the great vision of the prophet Ezekiel, just before he beholds the mystical chariot, he describes a cloud that Rabbi Aryeh Kaplan teaches about. Rabbi Kaplan writes that in the Zohar the cloud Ezekiel saw was emblematic of obscurity. The prophet reports, “And I looked, and, behold, a stormy wind came out of the north, a great cloud, with a fire flashing up, so that a brightness was round about it; and out of the midst thereof as the color of electrum, out of the midst of the fire (Ezekiel 1:4).” Rabbi Kaplan writes,3 “The Zohar teaches that the ‘stormy wind,’ the ‘great cloud,’ and the ‘flashing fire’ refer to the three levels of the husk that it is root of all evil. These confuse the mind, and serve as barriers to one who would ascend into the spiritual domain.” He continues that the great cloud “…is an opaqueness of the mind, where nothing can be seen or experienced, and it will discourage the prophet if he does not have the will to proceed further…he must work and strive to penetrate the cloud.…While the cloud is an obliteration of sensation, the fire is an overabundance of sensation, which threatens and repels the prophet. The cloud shows the prophet that one who is not worthy will see nothing, while the fire indicates that there can be great danger as well.”
Although in the Book of Lamentations the prophet Jeremiah cries to God that “You have covered Yourself with a cloud so that our prayer should not pass through (Lamentations 3:44)” the prophet Isaiah celebrates the cloud when God proclaims that “Like a thick cloud I have blotted out your transgressions, and your sins return to me as a cloud for I have redeemed you (Isaiah 44:22).” So, we clearly get the the Bible shows us the two sides of the symbolism of clouds. On the one hand it is protective, and creates a covering for the Tabernacle. On the other hand, the cloud represents that which cannot be penetrated, obscuring sight.
Pardon the paraphrase Joni, but I have looked at clouds from both sides now… and it is cloud illusions that I am recalling here. And, I must admit that I too don’t know clouds at all. But I do know paradox, and I think the answer (עָנָה anah) to the secret of the cloud (עָנָן anan) may be hidden in the mystery. Have you ever walked in a misty, foggy field or forest with a friend? Do you remember how quietly your friend could speak and her voice was audible a hundred feet away? Fog, as we know, is a excellent carrier and transmitter of sound. Even our whispers are carried long distances when we enter a fog. Yet, as sound is carried, sight is limited in the midst of a fog. We say “we are in a fog” when we can’t think very clearly. In nature, fog decreases the sense of sight but amplifies the sense of hearing. In the Torah (Deuteronomy 6:4) Moses doesn’t say to the Hebrews, “See O Israel,” but rather, “Hear, O Israel” as if sound were the preferred sense through which to experience the Divine. There is a mystery in limiting sight in order to increase hearing, and so we close our eyes when chanting the Shema.
The mystery seems to have to do with what we perceive as being near and far. Just as the fog conducts sound and obscures sight, so sound seems to brings close that which is actually far. Try listening to someone you care for speaking with your eyes are open. The words you hear may be inspiring or beautiful, but sight creates a sense of the “reality” of your separation from that which is outside of you. When you listen with your eyes open you have what Martin Buber would call an I-It relationship with the person speaking. Now try listening to that same person speaking with your eyes closed. Something mysterious happens to your depth perception. It is more difficult to discern how far away the person is to you without your eyesight. In fact, if you have ever been led in a guided meditation by someone you trust and who has a soothing voice, it can seem as if the words are coming from inside of you rather than from someone else. On a allegorical level Rabbi Shlomo Carlebach taught that this is the reason we involuntarily close our eyes when we kiss someone we love. It’s as if our whole being is saying, “You’re part of me, I’m part of you. We are one. I love you!”
A cloud is a protective barrier in the desert – it is often a welcome sign holding the promise or rain in dry lands. It’s no wonder that the extended meanings of the word “cloud” in the Hebrew mind had to do with “cover” and protection, and did not have the same kind of negative connotation as it does in English. As we said, God appears in a cloud, and the cloud is indicative of the resting place of God’s Presence. Metaphorically, we can say that God appears within obscurity. When we clear we become rational and are a bit separate from the divine in our lives. When we are a bit lost, and unclear there is a greater opportunity for us to sense the Presence of divinity. We think we need God less when there is clarity in our lives, but when something obscures our vision we are drawn closer to the Divine.
A related paradox regarding sight is that we see farthest at night. We think that light permits us to see, and on one level it does, but light only illuminates that which is close to us. In fact, light actually prevents us from seeing the farthest distances. When can we see stars? At night, when there is only darkness between our eyes and each star. As fog conducts sound, so darkness conducts sight. At night we can see stars that are light years away. During the day the sunlight prevents us from seeing those great distances. The light of the sun obliterates any possibility of seeing the stars. Light permits us to see that which is close to us. As the prophet Joni taught, “It’s cloud illusions I recall.” And in the end I must admit, “I really don’t know clouds at all.”
——————–
1 In Isaiah 52:8 the watchman are said to see ְּעַיִן בְּעַיִן eye to eye concerning Jerusalem.
2 Most etymologists agree associations between all words sharing the ע•ן Ayin-Nun root are not necessarily cognates. Whereas the Hebrew words for “eye” and “well” are cognates, the association between “cloud” and “eye” is speculative.
3 From Meditation and the Bible by Rabbi Aryeh Kaplan, Samuel Weiser, Inc., p. 39-40. Rabbi Kaplan is citing Zohar 2:81a, 2:203a, 3:123a, 3:227a, and Pardes Rimonim 25.7.
Listen to any of Rev. Martin Luther King’s speeches and you hear the voice of Moses and echoes of the Exodus. His prophetic sermon, often referred to as the Mountaintop Speech, was delivered on April 3, 1968 at the Bishop Charles Mason Temple in Memphis just hours before his assassination the next day:
I don’t know what will happen now. We’ve got some difficult days ahead. But it doesn’t matter with me now. Because I’ve been to the mountaintop. And I don’t mind. Like anybody, I would like to live a long life. Longevity has its place. But I’m not concerned about that now. I just want to do God’s will, and he’s allowed me to go up to the mountain. And I’ve looked over. And I’ve seen the promised land. I may not get there with you. But I want you to know tonight, that we, as a people, will get to the promised land.
Rev. King, like Moses before him, knew that the oppressed could never be free from the effects of racism until the oppressor was also free from being racist. Moses worked for the redemption of Egypt from its oppressiveness just as King worked for the redemption of White America from its racism. On many occasions King let his listeners know that he was also praying for White American, that they too needed to be liberated.
This same principle is taught by the Dalai Lama and other visionary Tibetans – that the Tibetan people can never be free from the oppression of the Chinese until the Chinese themselves are free from being oppressors. Visionary Israelis and Palestinians also understand this principle in regard to Middle East peace – that Israel will never be free from acts of terror, and that Palestinians will never achieve statehood, until groups like Hamas, the Muslim Brotherhood, and Hezbollah are liberated from the hatred that cause them to commit these acts of terror. Israel and the Jewish people must uphold this vision of the prophets and loudly proclaim it’s interdependence with the children of Ishmael, our cousins. When we are angry and think only in binary terms this principle of interdependence is difficult to comprehend. In the mid-1950’s Rev. King taught:
Let us remember that as we struggle against Egypt, we must have love, compassion and understanding goodwill for those against whom we struggle, helping them to realize that as we seek to defeat the evils of Egypt we are not seeking to defeat them but to help them, as well as ourselves.
Exodus 9:27–28: “Then Pharaoh summoned Moses and Aaron, and said to them,
‘This time I have sinned; the Lord is in the right, and I and my people are in the wrong.
Pray to the Lord! Enough of God’s thunder and hail! I will let you go…'”
When Pharaoh finally sees the error of his ways, it feels like a miracle. But no sooner has he let the Israelites go than he changes his mind. The Torah says, “When Pharaoh saw that the rain and the hail and the thunder had ceased, he sinned once more and hardened his heart … and he would not let the Israelites go” (Exod. 9:34, 35). Many of us, like Pharaoh, have learned the hard way that repentance is not a straight path from sin to atonement. More often it’s two steps forward and one step back.
Rameses II was raised to believe he was the incarnation of the sun god Ra, with power and wealth beyond anything we can imagine. When his ego is challenged by his stepbrother Moses, he must be thinking: who is this Moses that I once foolishly called my brother? A Hebrew from an enslaved people! Not even a real, true-blooded Egyptian! For Rameses’s heart to open again, something tragic will have to happen.
It is only after the tenth plague, when he feels the heartbreak of his own firstborn son’s death, that Rameses yields to the God of Israel and liberates the Hebrews. Yet within a week of their emancipation, he regrets his decision and sends his top charioteers after them. Two steps forward, one step back. He is clearly in the throes of inner turmoil. As we know, the sea parts for Moses, the children of Israel cross in safety, and the Egyptian soldiers drown.
One Midrash suggests that Pharaoh was actually the lone survivor of the charioteers. The famous “Song at the Sea,” chanted with Moses leading the men and Miriam leading the women, includes the words “Who is like you, O Lord, among the gods? Who is like you, majestic in holiness?” (Exod. 15:11). A Midrash proposes that Moses chanted, “Who is like you, O Lord, among the gods,” but it is Rameses who responds with the second part of the verse, “Who is like you, majestic in holiness?” This is a transformative moment for Pharaoh as he repents for his arrogance right there. In his emotional torment, still mourning the deaths of his son and soldiers, he calls out to God, “Who is like you, majestic in holiness?” He finally recognizes the God of his brother, the God of Israel, as the true Deity. In this Midrash, there is liberation for the oppressed and the oppressor.
If we accept the possibility of Pharaoh’s survival, the question arises: if he did live, why does the Torah never mention him again? A second fascinating Midrash suggests that after the incident at the Red Sea, Pharaoh flees Egypt to later become king of Nineveh, the Assyrian city God would later be sending Jonah to. Dr. Raphael Zarum teaches: “When the prophet Jonah showed up, Pharaoh immediately led a national repentance movement….Thus Pharaoh becomes the paradigm of change that we read about and learn from every Yom Kippur.”
Unlike Amalek, a character whom the rabbis deem as the archetype of unredeemable evil, Pharaoh is considered the model of a bad person who is capable of change. In his moments of passion and emotional wavering throughout the Exodus story, he reveals an inner torment that is recognizably human. The Midrashim of his atonement tell a parallel tale of metamorphoses from tyrant to liberator, and ultimately to leading a national redemption movement. These interpretations, as farfetched as they may seem, reflect back to us the remarkable possibilities of rising above our own limitations.
On Friday, December 30, 1994, I drove to Canterbury, a beautiful 48-acre Episcopal retreat center in Oviedo, Florida, to what promised to be a historic gathering between Jews and Christians inspired by my teacher, Rabbi Zalman Schachter-Shalomi. It was just months before my rabbinic ordination, so I was especially eager to observe my mentor interacting with Christians in an intimate, weekend-long retreat. Reb Zalman was co-leading with his wife Eve Ilsen and Father Edward G. Zogby, who was vice president of Fordham University in New York City. The retreat was called “Dance around the Midnight Pole; Happy Birthday, Jesus”—a title typical of the wry humor and fearless innovation that Reb Zalman always brought to his work.
On the Eastern Orthodox, Catholic, Anglican, and Lutheran calendars, January 1 is a special holiday called the Feast of the Circumcision. Count eight days from December 25, the day Jesus’s birthday is celebrated, and you arrive at January 1, the date Christian tradition assigns to Jesus’s ritual circumcision (brit milah). The day we celebrate the secular New Year is actually a commemoration for Christians of Jesus’s first religious ritual as a Jew. Reb Zalman had proposed this Sabbath retreat many months before, planning to use the sacred technology of the Passover seder to enhance the celebration of the New Year at midnight on Saturday. He believed a commemoration of Jesus’s brit milah on New Year’s Eve would offset the secular tradition of a party based on merriment and drinking.
The plan was that on Saturday afternoon the Jews would teach the Christians the structure of the Passover seder: the four questions, the telling of the Exodus story, four glasses of wine, a festive meal, and lots of singing. In this retreat, though, the story told would be about the birth of Jesus, and how the Gospels helped change the world. The four questions would relate to Jesus’s life, and the four cups of wine and festive meal would be integrated into a formal Catholic Mass commemorating the body, heart, mind, and the spirit of Jesus indwelling in every Christian. The Mass itself would begin at midnight, followed by an all-night study, prayer, and meditation vigil in the manner of the Eastern Orthodox Church. The vigil would culminate with a traditional Jewish morning worship service at sunrise led by Reb Zalman.
There were approximately two hundred participants— Jews, Catholics, Episcopalians, and Methodists. After welcoming the Sabbath with traditional blessings over the candles, wine, and bread, Friday evening was spent chanting and singing songs from the Psalms in Hebrew, Latin, and English led by Reb Zalman and Father Zogby. It was magnificent. But after a long day of traveling we retired early knowing that they next day would be mysterious, long, and filled with surprises. We would not be disappointed.
After a morning service of Jewish prayers and Catholic chants, Reb Zalman read from the Torah portion that describes Moses’s intimate encounter with God at the burning bush. This was followed by deep teachings from Reb Zalman and Father Zogby on the Jewishness of Jesus and the birth of Christianity. We were then asked to take some time alone to contemplate how we might overlay the template of the Passover seder onto the story of Jesus’s birth in a way that was authentic and respectful of the key differences in each of our religions. We all sensed the historic nature of the weekend. This was clearly not just a meeting with brothers and sisters of another faith, but an unexpected encounter between ourselves and God.
When we gathered again in the afternoon it was time for the Jews to teach the Christians about the structure of the seder and how we blend rituals and symbols into the telling of the Exodus story. Then the Christians would collaborate with us on how to incorporate the story of Jesus into their own Haggadah (a booklet that tells the story) that would be read that night as part of the Midnight Mass. Of course, the sacred task of creating an authentic Christian seder took many hours. We had a light dinner together and retired to our own rooms for rest, knowing our Midnight Mass with seder would last until sunrise.
When we came together at 11:30 pm it was with a sense of anticipation and awe. We knew that in the 2,000 -year history of the church and the synagogue, no rabbi or priest had dared to create this kind of ceremony. This was not a hybrid or fusion, but rather a “new thing” like the prophets Isaiah and Jeremiah had spoken about, lending one religion’s template to the telling of another religion’s sacred story.
We started slowly, easing into the ritual with Hebrew songs from the Psalms, as we had the night before. At midnight Father Zogby, who by that time we were addressing affectionately as Father Ed, began leading the mass. Our role as Jews was not to participate, but to be sacred witnesses to the ceremony of our Christian friends. At Reb Zalman’s request the Mass was chanted in Latin with line-by-line English translations.
Father Ed: In nomine Patris, et Filii, et Spiritus Sancti.
In the name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit.
Christians: Amen.
The Mass continued with the doxology known as Gloria in excelsis Deo, a powerful ceremony of confession, and then we reached the canon.
Father Ed: Dominus vobiscum. May the Lord be with you.
Christians: Et cum spiritu tuo. And also with you.
Father Ed: Sursum corda. Lift up your hearts.
Christians. Habemus ad Dominum. We lift them up to the Lord.
Father Ed: Gratias agamus Domino Deo nostro.
Let us give thanks to the Lord our God.
Christians: Dignum et iustum est. It is right to give thanks and praise.
Then Father Ed fell silent. He had been leading the service in Latin from memory with no missal (prayer book) in his hands. The silence grew until everyone knew something was wrong; the priest didn’t know what came next. There was a kind of collective bewilderment as we waited for him to recover. It occurred to me since he was now an administrative priest at Fordham, he wasn’t leading Mass on a daily, or even a weekly, basis. This could be a long pause.
Suddenly another voice rang out, “Pax Domini sit semper vobiscum. May the peace of the Lord be always with you.” We all stared as Reb Zalman, sitting next to Father Zogby, smoothly supplied the next line. The Catholics chanted back, “Et cum spiritu tuo. And also with you.” It was as if the whole room let out a breath of relief, and then we all laughed at the wild wonder of this moment.
The evening continued with the reading of the new Haggadah the Christians had created to tell their story. It was glorious and unforgettable, but what stood out most in all our minds was the miraculous instant when the rabbi sang out the Mass to help his friend, the priest.
Later that night, I leaned over to Reb Zalman and asked, “How did you know what to say?” He explained that decades earlier he’d memorized large portions of the Mass in Latin as a tribute to his deep respect for Catholicism beginning in the 1950s and his personal friendship with Thomas Merton, with whom he used to take summer retreats at the Abbey of Gethsemani in Kentucky in the 1960s. With a twinkle in his eye he leaned in and whispered, “Baruch Hashem! Blessed is God! It sure came in handy tonight!” I laughed, feeling grateful again to have this courageous, once-in-a -generation rabbi as my teacher. The weekend ended with a sunrise service in Hebrew, and as we left on January 1, we said goodbye to each other with “Shana tova, Happy New Year.”
Anti-Semitism, like all prejudices, is an equal opportunity yetzer ha-ra, “ evil inclination.” Today it afflicts people on the far left as well as the far right. This has, in fact, been the historical pattern of prejudice against Jews. Before World War II Stalin and the Communists claimed that the Jews were capitalists trying to take over the world. Hitler and the Nazis claimed that the Jews were communists trying to take over the world. The language is a little different today but the beliefs coming from both extremes of the political spectrum are the same.
Two years ago our synagogue put in an alarm system and cameras surrounding the building because of threats we perceived to be coming from anti-Israel activists in our town. For the past 15+ years I have seen an uptick in anti-Semitic attitudes arising from the BDS (boycott, divestment, and sanction) movement that we’ve heard so much about especially on college campuses throughout the country. Threats from the radical left really doubled in 2015, mostly as threats to the safety of Jewish students on college campuses. According to AMCHA, nationally there were 467 anti-semitic incidents in 2015, and 618 in the election year of 2016. In 2017 so far 97 incidents have been reported. From news reports in recent days it seems that another 200+ threats and incidents have yet to be recorded for this new year. There has been a clear increase in the number of incidents of threats, grafitti and cemetery desecrations in the last few months. And there was a clear underreporting of incidents in recent years because the incidents were focused on Israel rather than directly on Jews and Judaism, as we are witnessing today.
As a rabbi I don’t care where the prejudices are coming from – hatred is hatred, and hatred breeds more hatred. Yet it’s important to understand the roots of anti-Semitism. As Easter is approaching many of us recognize that the Passion story told on Good Friday in almost all churches squarely puts the blame for the crucifixion of Jesus on the Jewish people – the New Testament clearly says of the Jewish people that Jesus’s “…blood is upon us and our children.” The scapegoating of Jews can be traced farther back to the story of Esther that we’ll read about on Purim. Haman was upset by immigrant Jews who were living in the Persian Empire.
In the book of Exodus Moses was being trained by God to realize that the emancipation of the slaves from oppression was not enough. More than seven times God expresses concern to Moses about the liberation of the Egyptians from their oppressiveness. The liberation of the oppressor and the liberation of the oppressed go hand-in-hand. This is the very same teaching that Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. adopted in the civil rights movement. He taught that it wasn’t enough for African-Americans to be freed from oppression, but that white Americans needed to be also freed from being oppressive.
On May 17, 1956 in NYC at the Cathedral of St. John the Divine in New York City Rev. King declared:
“Let us not despair. Let us not lose faith in man and certainly not in God. We must believe that a prejudiced mind can be changed, and that man, by the grace of God, can be lifted from the valley of hate to the high mountain of love. Let us remember that as we struggle against Egypt, we must have love, compassion and understanding goodwill for those against whom we struggle, helping them to realize that as we seek to defeat the evils of Egypt we are not seeking to defeat them but to help them, as well as ourselves.”
In a wonderful book written for Christians called Common Prayer: A Liturgy for Ordinary Radicals, the authors offer these wise words:
“Peacemaking doesn’t mean passivity. It is the act of interrupting injustice without mirroring injustice, the act of disarming evil without destroying the evildoer, the act of finding a third way that is neither fight nor flight but the careful, arduous pursuit of reconciliation and justice. It is about a revolution of love that is big enough to set both the oppressed and the oppressors free.”
I can’t begin to tell you how inspiring these words are to me. We must act on behalf of of the immigrant who wants to come to the United States to be part of a democratic society. We must act on behalf of minorities who are mistreated; on behalf of the LGBT community; on behalf of transgender youth; on behalf of our police who risk their lives to serve us; on behalf of African-American young men; on behalf of women’s safety and rights; on behalf of our environment; and on behalf of our own Jewish community that is now being threatened much more than in the recent past. But let’s not settle for easy scapegoats. Let us analyze the situation today with nuanced analysis rather than simplistic, easy answers that we get from the internet.
In the past three months I’ve been chanting the words from King David to a melody by Rabbi Menachem Creditor – olam hesed yibaneh, “the world is built from love.” Olam hesed yibaneh does not mean that we are not to be activists, but it means that our activism must be informed by prayer; must be informed by kindness; must be informed by compassion and love. This is what Moses taught. This is what Martin Luther King taught. This is what the Dalai Lama teaches. And this is what I am trying to practice myself.
The cultural shift from shepherding to private property, farming, and ranching had immense ramifications for the rest of the world, and all this is all hinted at in the allegory of Cain and Abel. How do we know the Cain and Abel story is based on history rather than being a literal chronicle of a single historical event? The etymologies of their names give us a hint that this story may never have been intended to be taken as an historical account. Cain’s name in Hebrew is קַיִן Kayan (Strongs # 7014) comes from קָנָה (Strongs # 7069) kanah, meaning “possessing” or “acquiring.” Eve explicitly bases Cain’s name upon the notion of acquiring: “Now Adam knew Eve his wife, and she conceived and bore Cain, and said, “I have acquired1 (קָנִיתִי kaniti) a man from the Holy One.” In order to farm or ranch Cain needs to “acquire” tools, animals, and the land itself – a new concept in history.
Although Cain’s name has the primary meaning of “acquire,” the word that his name comes from (קָנָה kanah) also means “to erect, to found,” and “to create.” In Genesis 14:19 we see various translations describe God as either the “Possessor of heaven and earth” (King James Bible, New American Standard Bible, Webster‘s Bible Translation), or “Creator of heaven and earth (New Living Transation, New International Version). Both words “Posessor” and “Creator” are translations of the same word קֹנֵה konay, a cognate of Cain’s name Kayin. So, besides being the “acquiring” brother, Cain might also be thought of as the brother who “creates.” Abel is satisfied to experience the world as it is, whereas Cain wants to build, create, and change the world around him.
We can see anecdotal evidence of Cain’s ability to create after he is cast out of the Garden. The Torah tells us (Genesis 4:17) that Cain marries, then builds a city named after his son חֲנוֹךְ Hanoch (or Enoch in English). Enoch’s name is derived from the word חָנַךְ hanakh which means “dedication” (as in the Festival of Hanukkah), or “education.” Can we infer from this that when Cain named both his son and his city “Dedication,” he is rededicating himself to God? Or was he thinking that he would name his son and the city “Education,” to imply that God had offered him profound education after he killed his brother?
A fascinating aside is that almost two thousand years ago in the Talmud, the word קַיָּן kayan is descriptive of one who has “large testicles.” Using today’s vernacular we might say that Cain had “a lot of balls” because of his acquisitiveness and capacity to create. An entirely different interpretation is offered by Melissa Carpenter, who points out that Cain’s name might also be a cognate to the word קִינָה kinah, meaning “dirge” or “lamentation.” She writes: “After Cain kills his brother, his life is like a very long dirge. He is mourning the loss of his own innocent desire to make an offering to God, and the loss of his home and farming enterprise, as well as the unexpected death of his brother – which affects him all the more because he was responsible for it.”
Abel is הֶבֶל Hevel (Strongs # 1893) in Hebrew, and his name is derived from a root meaning “breath.” It has the associative meaning of “gentle breeze.” The Gesenius lexicon says it is “commonly used of anything transitory, evanescent, frail.” It may be used to mean “vapor,” implying that which is ethereal and impossible to grasp. The same word, hevel, embodies the central theme of Ecclesiastes, where we read about King Solomon’s aching desire to understand God’s purpose in his life. He writes, “הֲבֵל הֲבָלִים hevel havaleem…” which is commonly translated as “vanity of vanities.” This, however, is only one translational possibility in the multi-leveled language of Biblical Hebrew. An alternative translation could be “vapor of vapors” or “breath of breaths.” A richer translation might try to show that the our experiences in the physical world are impossible for the mind to fully comprehend, and that any attempt to do so leads to frustration, absurdity, meaningless assumptions, and some degree of ego-driven vanity. I prefer rendering King Solomon’s words into modern English as “Ethereal, the most ethereal…” or even “Transitory, oh so very transitory…”
Abel, Hevel, seems to represent that which is evanescent, frail, vaporous, ethereal, and transitory. He has no conceit, but he is very vulnerable, someone who permits himself to be in a position where he will be taken advantage of. He is also, as the saying goes, “behind the times.” Abel represents the old economy of shepherds and foragers who were being pressured by the institution of land acquisition to step aside. Abel’s world follows the natural rhythms of grazing sheep, rather than the more predictable cycles of planting and harvest. He lives in the old realm of kairos – a Greek word for non-linear thinking, holy time, with its concomitant spontaneous approach to life. Cain represents the invention of chronos – the ancient Greek way of describing the sequential, orderly, and precise measurement of time (another historical first). In our era, some have called this Industrial Time as opposed to Indigenous Time.2 Cain represents quantity, whereas Abel represents quality. Cain represents product, whereas Abel represents process. Cain represents doing, whereas Abel represents being. Cain wants to acquire and possess, whereas his ethereal, “spaced out” brother simply wants to be in the moment.
It seems clear that the Cain and Abel story can be reasonably interpreted as representing the two extant economies that historically did co-exist together in the Fertile Crescent for thousands of years during the early stages of civilization. But why does God accept Abel’s offering and reject Cain’s offering?
The Torah says that “Abel was a keeper of sheep, and Cain was a tiller of the ground.” Cain brought “of the fruit of the ground” as an offering to God, whereas Abel “brought of the firstborn of his flock and of the fat thereof.” What is the difference? The Torah is ambiguous, but it seems that Abel brought the best of his sheep. The word בְּכוֹרָה b’khorah, “firstborn,” symbolized the primogeniture birth-right, and therefore probably represented the best of his herd. Cain simply brought something he harvested, but not the first, or preferred, crops.3 This seems to be the reason that the Holy One did not accept Cain’s offering. Cain’s offering is like someone making a donation today only after he/she has calculated the tax deduction. God might accept that kind of donation from most people today, but regarding Cain, the son of Adam and Eve, God does not accept an offering that calculates personal benefit.
Abel, on the other hand, is innocent, pure, and guileless, and when he brings an offering to God only the best will do. Abel is not trying to possess land, or grasp at “the” ultimate truth. Abel is Hevel, an “evanescent, gentle breeze” of a man, and it is he who gets murdered. The story seems to imply that God favors the old way. Or, if God does not favor the old way, then God is cautioning humanity to proceed into the world of power and proprietary ownership with a good measure of caution.
Cain represents humanity’s first experiment at cultural advancement through the conquest of nature and the private ownership of land. The experiment didn’t go well for Abel. But by telling the story, we hand on an ancient object lesson about the importance of human responsibility and interdependence. Abel represents humanity in a more sublime, humble, and primitive state. He is a symbol for the earlier economy that did have a sense of land ownership, or the control nature. Tragically, he becomes the victim of his own naivety, and the story has been playing itself out with the genocidal decimation of indigenous peoples all around the planet over the past four thousand years. Humanity is still trying to achieve the sense of brotherly, sisterly, and neighborly obligation implied by this story. Is Cain still asking God if he is his brother’s keeper? It certainly seems so. Does not Abel’s blood cry out from the ground today too? It certainly seems so.
God’s acceptance of Abel’s offering and rejection of Cain’s offering seems to tell us to hold onto what is emotionally and spiritually functional from the past, and not sacrifice our ethereal (spiritual) view of the world for one of acquisition (materialism) alone. Knowing that Cain and Abel are brothers, the Torah may also be teaching us that these two men are actually two ways of viewing reality (the material and the spiritual, or the acquisitive and the ethereal), and that they are forever “brothers,” interdependent upon one another from birth. Psychologically, Cain and Abel are two complementary approaches to life that seem to be hard-wired within each of us, and within every culture.
—-
1 Also translated as “gotten.”
2 For centuries before the beginning of the common era, Jews tried to hold onto their indigenous Hebraic sense of time, in contrast to what has been called Hellenistic Time. They did this by refusing to discard their “old time” lunar calendar for the more accurate solar calendar that the Romans were perfecting. Measuring time and religious festivals by the moon more closely matched emotional and creative cycles for the Jews.
3 Some Christians retain the erroneous belief that Cain’s vegetable offering was of a lower order than the blood sacrifice that Abel brought. This is inaccurate. There was no hierarchy in the order of Temple offerings. Atonement was procured through many mediums besides blood sacrifices. Additionally, even in the Temple system, it was the intent of the offerer that God judged, and not the value of the offering itself. This also seems to be the case regarding God’s acceptance of Abel’s offering.
Just as there are certain times in our lives when we have peak experiences, so there are certain times of the year when nature affords us the opportunity to have exalted spiritual experiences. In Judaism, we think of lifecycle events as turning points that represent a pinnacle in our lives. Brit milah, naming ceremonies, bar and bat mitzvahs, weddings, and memorial services all represent times when our physical existence reaches to the heights of our souls. In our communal history we can think of Mount Sinai as the “peak” experience (pun intended) of the Jewish people.
A few years ago Debra and I were performing a wedding in Vermont. When we checked into the hotel in Burlington the concierge pointed out that we just missed the peak of the autumn leaves by two days. In New England the change of leaves from the green of summer to the yellows, oranges, and reds of autumn is measured and marked with precision. Autumn foliage, in that region, is a tourist attraction. Scientists can tell you the exact day that the trees in a particular town or forest are at their peak. From Canada to New England, and south into New York and Pennsylvania, the changing of the leaves makes a descending wave, leaving in its wake some of the most gorgeous colors exhibited by nature anywhere in the world.
Although we missed the peak in Burlington by two days, the autumnal scenery was spectacular anyway. The next morning as we drove south to the wedding on Highway 100 we passed through the very woods where Robert Frost wrote some of his most famous poetry. Later that day as we checked into our hotel in Pittsfield the desk clerk informed us that the peak colors would be arriving on Wednesday. We told her that sadly we were only staying through Monday.
So there we were in Vermont – two days late for the peak in Burlington, and leaving two days early for the peak in Pittsfield. So, I figure that somewhere on the drive from the north to the south we must have driven past the elusive “peak.” Of course we were so busy enjoying the beauty of the ride that we never said “oh, look, this must be the peak.” No road signs announced, “You are now having a peak experience, don’t take this moment for granted. Soak in the colors in front of you, behind you, to your left, and to your right. You won’t see colors like this again until next year.” No, Debra and I were so busy enjoying the experience that we never knew it was happening.
What a metaphor for life! While traveling from north to south each of us is certain to pass the peak. The concierge in the north might tell us we missed it, and the desk clerk in the south might warn us that if we check out too early we’ll miss it there as well. Yet if we’re living life fully, in joy, with gratitude to God and each other, does it really matter if we’ve marked the peak?
Certainly, rituals are markers help us recall our communal peak experiences, which is part of the beauty and power of our Jewish tradition. But what matters most is our ability to simply be in the moment when the experience is happening, whether we know the exact moment of the peak or not. Maybe now, as you are reading these words you are at a peak in your life because of the deep inner work you did during Yom Kippur last week. There is no need to capture it or even note it – just enjoy it and give thanks! May the Holy One bless you to enjoy the colors of autumn, and the opportunity to dwell in the Sukkah in the days ahead.
Israel: Hatikvah – Singin’ the Hope
by Rabbi David Zaslow
Dedicated to the holy work of Evan J. Krame
At the Reb Zalman Shabbaton on May 4, 2014 I spoke of the PTSD that impacts most of the Jewish community around the world. From the pogroms in Eastern Europe in the 19th and 20th centuries, to the Holocaust that took one third of the Jewish population, to the ethnic cleansing of Jews from their ancient homes in places like Iraq, Iran, Syria, and throughout North Africa which occurred after World War II. These massive population movements and traumas cannot have anything but a negative impact on the soul of the second, third, and fourth generations born after these events.
This trauma impacts the way we see ourselves. Two thirds or more of the Jewish population really want very little to do with “organized” Judaism, and I have great empathy and compassion for this segment of our population. In my early 20s I was part of the post Holocaust generation that rejected the stiffness, formality, and lack of spirituality in the synagogues we grew up in. I ran as far away from Judaism is possible. I was fortunate to have found a way to back to my faith and heritage when my daughter was born in 1981. But many of my friends remained, and remain, alienated from the rich heritage of our spiritual practices and culture.
In fact, it is so sad to see a small segment of this population not just passively alienated from the traditions of their birth, but actually antagonistic to it. This, many of us believe, is a direct result of the PTSD suffered from the traumas of the twentieth-century – and this PTSD plays itself out in a number of ways. Right now I just want to deal with the issue of Israel. The United States, European nations, and Israel share a common heritage that can be called “Western democracy.” I like to call it “the best of the West.” Naturally, there are flaws, and terrible errors made through bigotry and corruption in all Western democracies. America, for all its greatness, was born out of the yearning for religious freedom for Anglo-Europeans, but was built upon the genocide of many Native American tribes and the enslavement of millions of Africans. Yet as we reach “toward a more perfect union” we acknowledge that our “union” is not perfect. We’ve come a long way in dealing with civil rights, but as recent news events have shown we have a long way to go. And, we will go “toward” that “more perfect union.” From women suffrage, to the union movement, to the civil rights movement, to the environmental movement, to the gay-rights movement it clearly is two steps forward even when there is one step back.
Israel is no different. Would you like a laundry list of all the errors that this nation has made in its 66 years? Just ask any Israeli of any religion and they’ll gladly fill you in. But right now let’s just say that Israel, too, struggles to better itself every day. People protest, people go to court, people form activist political groups of every sort, and have the right to redress their grievances to the government. That’s all Israel promises. Not perfection. But a process of elections and judicial access. Who are the people who are most critical of Israel? It’s Israelis themselves! That’s their civic duty. But their criticism comes as insiders; as citizens who love the nation and simply want to see it get better and better.
A word of caution to outsiders who criticize Israel. Don’t be an outsider! Love Israel first, come inside, and then your comments and critiques, lawsuits, civic activism will have an impact. And another word of caution: before your criticize, express your gratitude. Say what you like about Israel first. Sing Hatikvah with the rest of us, not because Israel is perfect, but because Israel needs your voice of hope in song, anthem, prayer, and protest alike. Now, I realize that this is challenging for those of us who are struggling with the real effects of PTSD. And I’m telling you from my own experience the best way to begin healing PTSD is to breathe, pray, sing, and express gratitude. Be part of the community you disagree with. Debate, yes, but stand up for all that is good in Israel. Be grateful for its diversity, its environmental movement, its gay-rights movement, its unbelievable religious tolerance and diversity, and its unbelievable technological genius that is helping change the world. Don’t let Israel’s flaws steal from you your sense of gratitude and love.
So long as still within our hearts the Jewish soul is true,
So long as still towards the East to Zion looks the Jew,
Two thousand years of hope not lost to be free in our land –
To be a free people in our land. The land of Zion and Jerusalem.
In 1958 I was about to meet Max and Mutte.
My mother told me,
“If you see numbers on their arms,
don’t look. Don’t ask. Don’t say a word.”
I was twelve but I understood.
There was something sacred there.
A sacred object carved on flesh
that I dare not look upon.
Enter with humility.
Like Moses, go barefoot – avert the eyes.
But Mutte knew that it was time
for her to talk.
It was thirteen years after that Event.
They were released, stateless,
and lived in camps for the stateless
another five years.
Five more years
until, in 1950,
they came to America.
Mutte,
everyone calls her Mutte, mother.
Even my mother calls her Mutte –
rasied Christian, married Max
and converted to Judaism.
They kept her in a special camp
because her eyes were blue.
Today her deep blue eyes
draw from Miriam’s well
and from the flames
of that unspeakable Place,
Today, in remembering,
Mutte speaks easily.
Max, God rest his soul,
never uttered the Amidah
without remembering,
but not so easily.
Mutte speaks easily though.
She knows the inner meaning of memory.
It is not something from the past,
it is her air.
The air of a German blue sky
and the rising smoke filled with ashes.
She permits us to to breathe
this air today,
so that we might remember,
and know it when we see it
in Rochester, or Brooklyn, or Ashland.
To know it when we see it
and not deny it, or run from it.
To know it when we see it,
and to never permit it to be forgotten.
To know it when we see it,
and never let it lose its sacred meaning.
To know it when we see it,
and never let it happen again.
Never again. Never again.
With God’s help,
through our eyes;
with God’s help through our voices,
never the silence again.
Mutte says, “The question
is not ‘Where was God?’
The question is ‘Where were our friends?’”
Never again?
Mutte says, “Don’t say
‘God willing.’
Ask, ‘Am I willing?’”
The Jewish Exodus story was used as a template for the first Europeans who came to America in search of religious freedom. Subsequently it was used by the first Mormons who fled Illinois in search of their religious freedom and the promised land for their people. In our time it was the freedom story used by Martin Luther King in the civil rights movement. The Passover story teaches that there are many levels of freedom. One person is free on the outside and bound on the inside. Another is bound in chains yet free in her soul. Passover in Hebrew is “pesach” and the word has its etymology in the leaping or skipping movement of lambs. The translation “Passover” is the simple definition but “The Festival of Leaping Over” might be a more accurate translation for our springtime liberation festival.
Leaping implies that the obstacle is still there. The journey from here to there, from slavery to freedom is one that we all make, and sometimes we don’t eliminate our obstacles, we simply leap over them. Maybe the term “a leap of faith” comes from this notion. How do I get out of my chains, habits, negative attitudes? How to I remove myself from the forces of the Pharaoh that are within me?
In Hebrew Egypt is “mitzrayim” which means “tight, narrow places.” So, the spiritual question that we ask ourselves during this season is “how do I get out of my private Mitzrayim?” The answer may be in our biologies. Birth requires the infant to make his first major journey. From the womb into the world of gravity the infant must travel through her first narrow place. From birth on, movements and changes will not be so easy. Yet the remembrance of our birth will shape our destiny; will be a determinant factor in the way we handle problems and challenges throughout our lives.
Pesach, the season of our liberation. All the stories in the book of Exodus come into play during the springtime. We want to get outside. We want to be free. We yearn to fall in love. The festival of Passover is a marker for what is already happening biologically and in nature. The seder dinner is not just a reenactment of a historical event, but a dress rehearsal for what we are each going to do in our lives the morning after the celebration.
During Yom Kippur we dwell on our sins. We chant “ahl chayt – I have sinned.” We take inventory of all that is inside. We mark each internal item with a label, “keep,” “discard,” “change.” We make new vows, dissolve the old ones, and methodically make a file of all transactions. Not so during Passover. Pesach requires action NOW. The angel of death will ride over our homes at midnight. Quick. Clean the house. Quick. Take the lamb of our innocence and streak its blood (our own anguish) on the doorposts. Quick. The dawn is coming. We leave in a hurry. No time for inventory and careful filing or analysis. Now is the time to make the leap, to make the skip.
Have a problem? Skip it! Have a old habit that you want to change? Skip it! Have a negative behavioral pattern? Skip it! The concept of the “Almighty with an out sretched arm and a Mighty hand took us out of Egypt” is an extraordinary template for new possibilities. So, when the moment comes at midnight of the next full moon when our people collectively hear G-d’s voice say “make the change,” there is only one response – LEAP! Blessings to each of you for a kosher and transformative Passover.
Passover and Easter: two moon linked sisters
who long ago stopped speaking to one another:
linked to the fullness in our hearts
and the fullness of God’s grace.
The moon of Sister Miriam desires freedom –
to rescue her people from the cruelty of Pharaoh,
by the outstretched, mighty hand of Adonai:
a hand of salvation reaching down from heaven,
and passing through my nation,
and down through yours,
and then to each and every one of us – so may it be!
The moon of Mother Mary desires to give her light
so that each man and woman might know
the power of the resurrection,
and the soil of death that holds the seeds of rebirth within:
a resurrection reaching upward,
passing through all nations and up to God Almighty!
Two celebrations: two women: Miriam and Mary,
who don’t even know they have the same name –
one in Hebrew and one in Greek –
yet inexorably linked to a single full moon.
And then we each begin to count:
we both count to fifty –
beyond the forty days of Moses on Mt. Sinai
and Jesus in the wilderness.
We go beyond, one cycle further:
to fifty, Shavuot, the Pentecost.
Ours to the revelation of Torah at Sinai.
Yours to the revelation of the Holy Spirit.
Freedom and resurrection. Revelation and revelation.
Twelve tribes and twelve disciples.
One moon, two traditions.
Two covenants, One God.
Shavuot and Pentecost: two cousins
who have just begun to speak.
And King David is singing to us
from his tomb today:
“Teach us to count our days
that we may open our hearts to Your Wisdom.”
Some of us, thank God, are listening
To be in the groove
means that the needle
rests in total stillness
while the record around it spins.
The turntable turns,
the record revolves,
but the point of contact
requires total stillness.
To be in the groove
requires a complete balance
between stillness and movement,
between diamond and vinyl.
For the needle to do its work
of reading the engraved cuts
within the grooves, it must be still.
Just like us – to hear
what the Holy One has engraved
in the groove of nature,
in the groove of our lives,
we can’t be turning.
We can’t be moving
to get out of the way,
or to get somewhere else.
We have to remain in place.
Totally in place.
Perfectly in place.
It is difficult to be still
when I want to weep
for those whose lives are lost.
It is difficult to be still
when I want to pray
for a future free of fear.
So I say my prayers,
chant the Amidah,
say Kaddish,
and then enter the stillness
like a needle in the groove.
Hanukkah and Christmas are two wondrous winter holidays that celebrate the light of God. The spiritual power of these festivals comes from the fact that they celebrate light at the darkest time of the year. For Jews the candles on the menorah represent freedom. After all, the success of the Maccabees in the second century BCE, Hanukkah represented one of the first successful recorded struggles for religious freedom. Today our menorahs are lit as a symbol for all people who struggle to overcome prejudice. Parallel to Hanukkah Christians celebrate the birth of Jesus as representing the birth of a new light that came into the world. Christianity and Judaism, represent two paths celebrating the same light through two uniquely different stories.
The time has arrived when Christians and Jews are beginning to have a new understanding of each other – the darkness of old prejudices is rapidly making way for the light of truth. Do we need to criticize each other’s faith in order to explain our own faith? I hope not. Do we need to “spin” descriptions of our own beliefs when comparing them to each other’s beliefs? I hope not. The word of God in each of our great religions needs no interpretative spin. What we need are more passionate, joy-filled discussions and dialogues with an underlying celebration of what we have in common.
To a Jew, Jesus can at most be a brother; a fellow Jew at the highest spiritual level who was martyred like millions of other Jews; a teacher of a group of devotees who wanted to see the prophetic dream of peace and justice fulfilled in this world. He was a healer in the lineage of Elijah and Elisha before him; a mystic like the Baal Shem Tov after him; an incredible storyteller in the tradition of the Pharisees. He was a good son, a good Jew, and what in Judaism we call a mensch, someone who lived up to his potential.
Yet to a Christian this can never, and should never be enough. To a follower of Jesus he is much more. He is one with his Father. He is the anointed one, the messiah who was spoken of in the Jewish prophetic writings, and he is the incarnation of the God – both Savior and Comforter. Without him salvation had not been accessible to the Greek and Roman gentiles. With him comes a covenant with the Living God. Through him there is hope for the coming of the Kingdom of God both in this world and in the world to come.
Herein lies the mystery: one Jesus, two understandings. The Jesus believed in and worshipped by the Church is the province of the Church. To a Christian he is seen as both messiah and Savior. To a Jew the messiah is an anointed person and God is the Savior. On these points we will probably always differ. But the historical Jesus, Jesus the man, the Jewish man, the rabbi – he belongs to both of us. Once free of missionary pressure the Jew may learn to see historical Jesus as he was – a Torah observant Jew and a martyr who died because of his fidelity to God and Judaism. But the Christian’s relationship is not based on the historical Jesus. It is primarily with the theological Jesus – the Christ who is mysteriously one with the Father and the the Holy Spirit. How can these two positions be reconciled?
Do they even need to be reconciled? I do not think they can be, nor do I think they should be. The contemporary mindset does not hold onto contradictions very well. We don’t have much room in our minds for mystery and paradox as we once did. We want answers. We pose our questions in black and white, either/or. A pastor once said to me, “Either Jesus is the Savior or he is a fraud.” I asked, “Why? Where did you come up with such a clear either/or choice? Maybe he is Savior to you and ancestor to me, and we’re both right.”
I don’t propose to minimize Jewish and Christian differences. On the contrary, I think it’s time to celebrate our differences. A healthy ecosystem is one where there is eco-diversity. Many of us sense that the same principle holds true between our faiths as well. In a most profound and mysterious way, we need each other. Certainly our theologies differ when it comes to describing Jesus. But this holiday season in particular, the light that seems to be entering the hearts of the faithful is one in the same – the light of tolerance, respect, and celebration of each other’s paths.
Jews and Christians celebrate the same moral light as well. We have a passion for justice and equality based on the prophets that is identical. We have parallel problems and challenges that face us both. We love and serve the same God. As the prophet Isaiah called out to us, come let us reason together! Though our sins be as scarlet the Holy One of Israel will make them white as snow! May our menorahs and the lights upon our trees shine forth in two directions – into the world to be a model for others, and into each of ourselves as well.
In poetry, when an innovation in the use of metaphor or rhythm is first discovered, it is called the breakthrough. After a breakthrough there will others who will do the work of interiorization. For instance, in the late nineteenth-century, the British Victorian poet Gerard Manley Hopkins made a breakthrough in the use of alliteration and rhythm. Yet it wasn’t until the mid-twentieth century that Dylan Thomas was able to interiorize the breakthrough made a century before. Until Dylan Thomas, Hopkins was treated as a kind of novelty poet since his brand of alliteration uses consonance and assonance in an aggressive manner – it and takes some getting used to. Here’s how the process of breakthrough and interiorization works.
In the poem called Inversnaid Hopkins wrote: “This darksome burn/ horseback brown/ His rollrock highroad roaring down/ In coop and in comb the fleece of his foam/ Flutes and low to the lake falls home.” Put the poem’s meaning aside for a moment – what a stunning and original use of sound! In Hopkins’ famous The Windhover he wrote “I caught this morning morning’s minion/ kingdom of daylight’s dauphindapple-dawn-drawn Falcon/ in his riding/ of the rolling level underneath him steady air, and striding ….” Along comes Welch poet Dylan Thomas who imitates and develops the novel style that Hopkins created. In his classic A Child’s Christmas in Wales Dylan Thomas writes: “All the Christmases roll down toward the two-tongued sea, like a cold and headlong moon bundling down the sky that was our street; and they stop at the rim of the ice-edged fish-freezing waves, and I plunge my hands in the snow and bring out whatever I can find. In goes my hand into that wool-white bell-tongued ball of holidays resting at the rim of the carol-singing sea, and out come Mrs. Prothero and the firemen.” Beautiful, yes? Can you hear the alliterative connection between these poets? One built upon the work of the other!
The same principle of innovation and emulation is true in religion. In the eighteenth century the Baal Shem Tov made a breakthrough in the Jewish approach to prayer that is still being interiorized today. In the 1960’s Rabbi Zalman Schachter-Shalomi made two breakthroughs that continue to transform the Jewish world. The first had to do with the full empowerment of women. The second had to do with an innovative approach to the relationship between Judaism and other religions. Reb Zalman’s breakthroughs are being interiorized, imitated, and developed in Reform, Reconstructionist, Conservative, and Orthodox synagogues throughout the world. Sadly, Reb Zalman and the Jewish Renewal sometimes don’t not get proper attribution, credit, or financial support for the courageous work that is being done on behalf of Judaism. Our shuls tend to be financially poorer because we have chosen the path of creativity, experimentation, and innovation.
Reb Zalman calls Renewal “the research and development department of Judaism.” From explorations in prayer, chanting, drumming, and liturgy you can see the impact of Reb Zalman’s lifetime work in synagogues everywhere. The Havurah is honored to carry on the breakthrough work of Reb Zalman, especially in the areas of joyful services, education, egalitarianism, and ecumenism. In one of his most popular song lyrics, Steve Allen wrote, “This could be the start of something big.” When it comes to Judaism, you really are part of something big!
Each of the four holy days in our High Holiday season goes deeper and deeper, higher and higher into the hidden realms of the psyche. We begin with Rosh Hashanah, the new moon, and a new year. It is a day of awe as we envision ourselves as being written, God willing, into the Book of Life for a good year ahead. Ten days later it’s Yom Kippur, also a day of awe but on this day the awe is mixed with wonder – we wonder if we will be sealed in the Book of Life for year of health, prosperity, and joy. If we are honest with ourselves we will recognize how fragile our existence on this plane really is, and we simply have to admit that we just don’t know what the year will bring.
The third holy day is really a holy time, seven days of Sukkot, the week of Thanksgiving and the joy of being able to be in community together in our beautiful sukkah. Finally, on Monday evening October 8th. we’ll come together to celebrate Simchat Torah when we’ll read the last words from the book of Deuteronomy and the first words of Genesis and the single breath – all endings and beginnings are connected. The end of one year is the beginning of the next year, the end of one cycle in our lives is the beginning of the next.
Just as Rosh Hashanah marks the time of return, return to ourselves to God, so Yom Kippur marks the time of wonder through an honest assessment of our personal live. We ask ourselves, “have I lived up to my potential this past year?” By the time we get to Sukkot time of return is over, and now it’s the time of being – simply and profoundly accepting ourselves for who we are, knowing that the year ahead is filled with possibility. And when we get to Simchat Torah we hopefully will have arrived at the end of an amazing, awesome inner journey. And what is the end? Joy, simple and magnificent joy. Joy that foretells the good year that lies ahead of us.
The deepest secret is that four holy days are really one. Awe, wonder, thanksgiving, and joy are all aspects of the singularity, of the One God. On the surface they seem so different like ripples on the sea, but beneath the waves the singularity of the ocean becomes apparent. The season is a movement of return to simple being, and even this movement is part of the greater singularity. There is no being unless there is leaving and returning. There is no joy without the deep, inner work of Yom Kippur which sometimes elicits our deepest and holiest fears and tears.
Judaism is a nature-based faith. Just go outside. There you’ll find the true synagogue. There you will be able to read the true Torah. There you’ll be able to hear the voice of God in every fallen leaf, in every seed ready to crack open to the promise of the spring. As outside, so inside. As above, so below. As you, so me. As us, so God. As nature, so emotion. As spirit, so body. As we chant in the Adon Olam hymn:
וְעִם רוּחִי גְּוִיָּתִי, יהוה לִי וְלֹא אִירָא
As with my spirit my body too. Adonai is with me, I shall not fear.
Each of these four holy days are steps that we take individually and as a community. May we all reached the level of pure and magnificent joy, and come together on Simchat Torah night to dance and chant with the Torah in our arms, saying “L’chaim! To Life.”
Last night President Obama reminded us that Osama Bin Laden was not a Muslim leader, but a mass murderer of Muslims and non-Muslims alike. Of course, there is no “right” way to respond to the death of such a tyrant. The issue of “rejoicing” over the fall of an enemy like Osama Bin Laden is complex. Many of us are not rejoicing over his death, but celebrating a renewed hope for peace. Rather than celebrating his demise, some of us celebrate the bravery and success of our Navy Seals, and wish to express our gratitude to those who executed this mission and returned unharmed. Many of us are not happy that bin Laden was killed, but are happy for what his death represents in terms of the demise of Al Queda that we hope will follow.
The somber reality of Bin Laden’s death becomes blurred with naturally positive emotions that are embedded in the gestalt of the situation. The Holy One created us with a three-layered brain, and when we look at brain anatomy the response to the death of a mass murderer is even more fascinating. At the level of the brain stem, what Dr. Paul MacLean calls the Reptilian Brain, we respond to a tyrant like Bin Laden in a fight or flight mode – it’s hunt him down and kill him first before he kills again. On hearing of Bin Laden’s death the brain stem responds with relief and a sense of “yes,” which emulates a sensation that feels very similar to joy. But it is not really joy, it is actually a relief that the danger may be over. It is very much like the indigenous hunter’s celebratory sense of victory – not a joy that an animal has been killed, but a sense of relief that the hunt is now over.
In the higher regions of the brain, the Neo-Cortex, we reason that with this death there will be a better chance that terrorism and religious extremism will go into rapid decline. The higher brain functioning helps us rationalize and apply logic to any emotional situation. Mediating between the lower and upper level of the brain, the Limbic Brain responds emotionally, i.e., from the heart. A situation like the news of Bin Laden’s death releases in most of us an odd mixture of fear, anxiety, excitement, hatred, revenge, and the odd sensation that seems to imitate gladness. Again, it is not necessarily gladness that the criminal has been killed, but an adrenaline induced relief that he will not be able to strike again.
If we were family members of a loved one killed on 9/11, certainly a sense of relief and “joy” that justice has been served is a healthy response. As a nation we saw this sense of relief played out at the gates of the White House, at the Philadelphia ballpark last night, in our own towns and cities today, and among some of our Twitter and Facebook friends. An emotional response to the relief of our nation’s pent up anger over 9/11 is natural. If the emotional response is limited and kept in check, it may even be healthy.
Last night our President’s body language displayed relief and a sense of victory without gloating. His words indicated that he believes, as many of us do, that a measure of justice has been served by this carefully executed military action to capture Bin Laden. On a personal level, who is not human enough to have experienced some of each of these emotions in the past twenty-four hours? Who among us can really judge how our fellow citizens are reacting to this news?
Collectively, many of us sense an overriding national unity coming from the news of Bin Laden’s death – an interfaith unity that is the seed of hope for a future free of tyrants, free of mass murderers, free of extremists who hide behind their religions to justify evil. As our cousins in Arab nations are putting their lives on the line for freedom in what some have called the Arab Spring, I am personally trying to lift all my conflicting emotions up to the Holy One. Yes, at the level of my inner reptile I am relieved and “glad” that Bin Laden is dead. I confess I even cheered (limbic brain) last night, and yes, I am making a more sober (neo-cortex) assessment of the whole situation today.
Today in our Omer count it is malchute sheh b’gevurah, the day when we take our G-d given strength, power, and discernment and connect it to the earth and our sense of grounding. Neither can it go unnoticed that Bin Laden was taken out on Yom HaShoah, the day we remember our six million. Regarding Osama’s soul, G-d will have to decide if redemption is even possible for a person who has caused so much destruction. Regarding our response to his death, let us all rededicate ourselves toward making peace in the world – toward being the peace we want to see in the world.
In Psalm 97:10 King David speaks to each of us when he says, “you that love the Holy one, hate evil!” Yes, it’s okay to feel enmity toward those who do harm. It’s unnatural not to hate evil. And on the flip side, it’s dangerous to permit hatred to turn into bigotry. Actions like killing of Osama Bin Laden must not be in the service of vengeance or arrogance, but in the service of G-d’s will, freedom, human rights, and justice for all. Let us not rejoice over Bin Laden’s demise, but celebrate the hope that peace may now be a bit more possible.
Judaism is not merely a religion, but a nature-based montage of spiritual practices we call mitzvot intended to elevate consciousness, and to help each of us to realize our own Divine essence, and unique destiny. Every lunar cycle is associated with some festival or holy day that helps each of us along our own unique journey toward self realization. To communicate directly with God one needs to go no further than taking a walk in nature. In reality, one needs to go no further than where we already are: sitting in our homes, sharing a meal with a loved one, or doing our daily prayers. God is in the synagogue, but not just the synagogue; God is is in nature, but not only in nature. Judaism celebrates God as being Omni – Omniscient, Omnipresent, and Omnipotent. No limit. No image. No form. Rather, God is imminent and all things at all times.
As we enter the month of Elul, our consciousness shifts with the season. We sense the early urgings of the oncoming Autumn. Our consciousness moves inward, and we begin the process of self reflection that marks the beginning of the high holiday season. As we enter Elul we are not just at the beginning of a new season, but at the beginning of the beginning. So, we ask ourselves “what am I beginning? What am I beginning to begin?”
I hope that the notion that consciousness is embedded in nature, in the season, will inspire each of us to follow the lead that God is showing us in the natural world around us. Our task is to begin to begin. Begin to go inward, and reflect upon the past year, and the new year ahead of us. Elul is coming. Soon we will sound the shofar each morning as a wake up call reminding us that God is as near as the next breath.
Time is a mystery. Time is precious. Time is a precious mystery. The unusual word “anamnesis” describes memory as an actual recall of a past event. When I say “actual” I mean that the event in the past is experienced as if it were still occurring in the present. To our Christian friends this sense of anamnesis is experienced at every mass. In Islam it is experienced during the Hajj. In Judaism this sense of actualizing the past is experienced on Friday night when we recite the kiddush over wine, and at our Passover seders.
With the month of Elul upon us this looking back and looking forward is a natural tendency in each of us. The Romans even thought of the sensation of looking at the past and the future as a god Janus was their god with two faces – one looking into at yesterday and one looking at tomorrow. From Janus we get the name “January,” the month that begins our civil calendar. At this time of year each of us is yearning, longing, and hoping. Yearning and longing for something in the past, and hoping for something wondrous in the future.
May the memory of all that is been miraculous and wondrous in your life be the Ruach spirit that guides us gently into the horizon of 100,000 tomorrows. May the teachings of all our rebbes be the guiding energy that links us in the deepest ways to our communities and to the Shekhinah. May God to bless each of with an incredible, miraculous, transformative, and healing Days of Awe. May the Holy One bless us to remember that memory is a living force; that memory does not die; they life is really light; that life is eternal; that light linked to life makes all our remembrances actual, really actual. May we remember that when we remember it is God’s guiding force moving through each and everyone of us, and that this force is especially discernible and available in the season we call the Fall, in the days we call the Awesome Days.
Beloved 85 year old Brooklyn Dodger pitcher Ralph Branca is an active Catholic. Last week he’s told by the reporter who wrote his biography that his mother was Jewish. I get called by the NY Times for my reaction. A small story that’s shaking up the baseball loving corners of the Jewish, Catholic, and old timer Baseball worlds.
At the same MOMENT the call comes into me from the NY Times (believe me, this is not a daily or weekly occurrence in my home) Devorah and I visiting with her cousin Bruce who was a pretty major UPI baseball and football sports photographer for the SF Giants and the Oakland Raiders. Ok, so what’s the big deal? Me and my cousin are discussion religion (he dislikes “organized religion) since he’s a professed athiest. His religion is the photo-shoot and his synagogue is behind home plate where he can get the best shot.
The call comes in to get my reaction to Branca finding out he’s Jewish. “Excuse me Bruce, I have to take this call from the NY TImes.” OK, I’m name dropping to Devorah’s cousin and I know it, but this “coincidence” is all pretty funny. Plus how often do I get to proclaim outloud “I Have to take this call from the NY Times?” This may be part of my fifteen minutes of fame and I do not want to waste it.
Now, the story beneath the story. Ralph Branca is famous for pitching what is called “The Shot Heard ‘Round the World.” In the final game of the 1951 pennant series Bobby Thompson of the NY Giants got a home run off Branca thus winning the series for the Giants. To us Dodger fans it was one of the worst moments of our lives (the others being when the Dodgers moved to LA and when JFK and MLK was shot). Believe me, his grief at giving up that home run was inconsolable. The moniker “The Shot Heard ‘Round the World’ has haunted him for 6 decades. I mean, it wasn’t just giving up a home run, it was giving up the entire pennant; giving up “our” chance to play the NY Yankees in the World Series. Sounds trivial to a non-baseball fan, but to a baseball nut this is still one of the most famous moments in baseball history. For real! Ask anyone who knows baseball…sixty years ago this October 3, and that one pitch by Branca will never be forgotten. It haunts him to this day. He is 85 years old.
85 and VERY actively Catholic. Was G-d punishing him for giving up that home run? Was this the “cross” he was destined to bear? Was this all a test of his faith? These are questions Branca has asked all his life. And now…now he finds out he’s Jewish. That his mother hid their family’s Judaism from him? That his aunt died in Auchwitz. That his brother suspected they were really Jewish. That the family should have known. Is this part of the “cross” he still bears? Is this part of some Divine plan to inspire the tens of thousands of lost Jews to somehow reconnect to their faith? Poor Ralph Branca. I davvened for him this morning. He must be shaken up to some degree. Jews want to reclaim him. Catholics don’t want to let go. Old time baseball fans are watching and going “wow!”
Here is what Jewish storytelling scholar Penninah Schram wrote to me this morning from NY: “May G-d use this little story for healing!” Here’s what I say, “Amayn!”
Just as there are certain times in our lives when we have peak experiences, so there are certain times of the year when nature affords us the opportunity to have exalted spiritual experiences. In Judaism, we think of lifecycle events as turning points that represent a pinnacle in our lives. Brit milah, naming ceremonies, bar and bat mitzvahs, weddings, and memorial services all represent times when our physical existence reaches to the heights of our souls. In our communal history we can think of Mount Sinai as the “peak” experience (pun intended) of the Jewish people.
Last month Debra and I were performing a wedding in Vermont. When we checked into the hotel in Burlington the concierge pointed out that we just missed the peak of the autumn leaves by two days. In New England the change of leaves from the green of summer to the yellows, oranges, and reds of autumn is measured and marked with precision. Autumn foliage, in that region, is a tourist attraction. Scientists can tell you the exact day that the trees in a particular town or forest are at their peak. From Canada to New England, and south into New York and Pennsylvania, the changing of the leaves makes a descending wave, leaving in its wake some of the most gorgeous colors exhibited by nature anywhere in the world.
Although we missed the peak in Burlington by two days, the autumnal scenery was spectacular anyway. The next morning as we drove south to the wedding on Highway 100 we passed through the very woods where Robert Frost wrote some of his most famous poetry. Later that day as we checked into our hotel in Pittsfield the desk clerk informed us that the peak colors would be arriving on Wednesday. We told her that sadly we were only staying through Monday.
So there we were in Vermont – two days late for the peak in Burlington, and leaving two days early for the peak in Pittsfield. So, I figure that somewhere on the drive from the north to the south we must have driven past the elusive “peak.” Of course we were so busy enjoying the beauty of the ride that we never said “oh, look, this must be the peak.” No road signs announced, “You are now having a peak experience, don’t take this moment for granted. Soak in the colors in front of you, behind you, to your left, and to your right. You won’t see colors like this again until next year.” No, Debra and I were so busy enjoying the experience that we never knew it was happening.
What a metaphor for life! While traveling from north to south each of us is certain to pass the peak. The concierge in the north might tell us we missed it, and the desk clerk in the south might warn us that if we check out too early we’ll miss it there as well. Yet if we’re living life fully, in joy, with gratitude to God and each other, does it really matter if we’ve marked the peak?
Certainly, rituals are markers help us recall our communal peak experiences, which is part of the beauty and power of our Jewish tradition. But what matters most is our ability to simply be in the moment when the experience is happening, whether we know the exact moment of the peak or not. Maybe now, even as you are reading these words you are at a peak. No need to capture it or even note it. Enjoy the colors of autumn. But since you’re here, try just saying “barukh Hashem, blessed is G-d!”
My friend and teacher Avraham Sand cites Tatiana Rona: “Do as Noah did and build an ark. An ‘ark’ in Hebrew is taiva – which means also a ‘word.’ Your ark shall be your words of meditation and prayer. Enter into your ark and let the waters lift you up, rather than drown you with everything else.”
Rebbe Nachman taught that when Noah built the ark, he built the prototype for the Torah. Torah is the “word” of the Holy One, what the Greeks and Christians later understood as the “Logos.” We don’t just read Torah, we enter Torah as we would enter Noah’s ark. Torah keeps us afloat when all else in our lives is being flooded. It rescues us. It holds us above the waters. On the deepest level Torah is our ark. Every word we speak is an ark that we build. It can rescue or keep afloat those around us.
Rebbe Nachman also taught (in the name of his teacher, the Baal Shem Tov) that the “window” Noah was commanded to build atop the ark is from the word which means “light,” and which is related to the word zohar meaning “radiance” and “opportunity.” So as we build our arks out of our words, may our words keep us afloat, and may each word be radiant and travel across all the realms as radiant opportunities.
This week, let us build many radiant arks for one another. When you hear a kind word from a friend he/she is building you a radiant ark. When you speak a kind word you are building a radiant ark. Through this kind of sanctified speech we will help create many opportunities in each other’s lives. The mitzvah this week is for each of us is to build many arks with our words by speaking kindly. Suppress negative speech, critical judgements, and gossip. Join Noah and build your own ark.
Noah’s name means “comfort.” When you build an ark with your words the Holy One will bring out the comfort, the inner Noah, that is already deep within you. Noah’s name is a cognate of the words which mean “rest.” Every Saturday we yearn for what we call Shabbat menucha …Shabbat rest. But at the deepest level this rest is the not just the cessation of work, but the deep “comfort” of knowing that all our work is done – there is nothing more to do but to bask in the light of the arks built this week.
Good evening and welcome. I was born in 1947, and moved to Ashland to complete my graduate studies in 1970. When I first arrived here, at the height of the hippie movement, new friends would ask me “what’s your sign?” And I would answer “Jackie Robinson with Israel rising.” You see, my birthday is December 23, 1947 which is almost in the exact middle of when Jackie Robinson became the first black baseball player to play in the major leagues on April 15, 1947, and when Israel was reborn as a nation on May 14, 1948. These two events as distinct as they are from each other shaped my childhood, and influenced our nation as well.
This evening I want to speak about how Jackie Robinson changed not just baseball, not just major-league sports, but America itself. I’m not alone in the belief that April 15, 1947 marks the beginning of the civil rights movement that came into its maturity in the 1950s culminating in the passage of the Civil Rights Act in the mid-1960s.
How can a sport like baseball, and a team like the Brooklyn Dodgers, affectionately known as the Bums, be credited with having sparked what soon would be called the civil rights movement? It’s simple really. Social change does not begin in the ivory tower of academia. It does not occur because of postulates, theories, and suppositions made in doctoral dissertations. Rather, good doctoral dissertations and academic studies are reflections and analyses of what is going on in the lives of everyday people.
Often, sports, entertainment, science fiction, and religion are well ahead of the academic curve. Sometimes entertainment is a reflection of the current situation in society, but sometimes entertainment is at the cutting edge of social change. Sports like it’s literary and entertainment counterparts do the same. If segregation is the norm in society, then sports and entertainment will reflect that segregation. But sometimes, just sometimes, the commercial interests of the business of sports intersects with an urgent need for social transformation. That is exactly what happened to major league baseball after World War II. Branch Rickey knew they had to build up attendance at Ebbets Field or the Bums would be doomed to continue playing second fiddle to the great dynasty we know as the New York Yankees. And he knew that the secret to success would come from the untapped talent in the Negro League.
Not coincidentally, Branch Rickey’s personal Christian religious faith gave him an abiding belief in the equality of all people – Black, Asian, Hispanic, and those Anglo- Americans of European descent. So when he met with Jackie Robinson to discuss the possibility of him coming onto the Brooklyn Dodgers he didn’t ask this great athlete if he had the courage to fight for his right to play baseball, but if he had the courage not to fight. Both men knew that every despicable racist epithet imaginable would be hurled at Robinson, and that those first years would be torturous for Robinson. But they knew that he represented not just himself, but all people of color, and that his success and acceptance as a ballplayer would be measured not by a belief in civil rights, or theories of social justice, but by his performance on the field.
Robinson performed brilliantly as an infielder, at-bat, and holding the record for stealing home twenty times in his short ten year career in the Majors. What a metaphor, the first Black player in professional baseball holding the record for “stealing home.” Jackie was truly the catapult that hurled the Brooklyn Dodgers into history when in 1955 they finally defeated the great Roman Empire of baseball, the dynasty of dynasties, the team that gave us both Babe Ruth and Joe DiMaggio – the despised and fantastic New York Yankees.
Okay, so what is it with me in baseball? Big deal, I was born between when Jackie Robinson came into the major leagues and the birth of Israel. Truth be told, it’s a pretty personal thing to me, as it was to so many kids who were born in the wake of World War II and grew up in one of the boroughs besides the Bronx. Brooklyn hosted a huge immigrant population, a population of Irish, Italian, Jewish, Gypsy, Puerto Rican, and black first and second generation families who themselves identified with the seemingly hopeless struggle of the Dodgers to defeat the Yankees. In a way, identifying the Dodgers as “Dem Bums” was to identify yourself with the struggle to make it in America.
In the mythic decade of 1947 to 1957 the Long Island Expressway hadn’t been built yet, and urban flight to the suburbs hadn’t begun. Brooklyn was home, a city unto itself. Many of its oldest citizens still believed that building the Brooklyn Bridge, linking Brooklyn to Manhattan, was actually a mistake, and that Brooklyn should have never left its status as a separate city in the late eighteenth century.
It wasn’t so much that the Dodgers were bums because they couldn’t beat the Yankees, but that there was a little bit of the bum in every one of us, or should I say in every one of our parents and grandparents. If Brooklyn was our holy land, then Flatbush was Jerusalem and Ebbets Field was our holy Temple. Yeah, we were all monotheists, but rabbis and priests alike who visited this holy shrine worshiped the likes of Robinson, Da Duke, Pee-wee, Campy, Oisk, Gil Hodges, and Johnny Padres. We were not just fans, we were fanatics. True believers. Orthodox, ultra Orthodox. Missionaries. Crusaders!
In 1947 my brother, Jerry Stern, was twelve years older than I was. His new baby brother was like his little monkey, his little parrot, his 10 pounds of clay that he could shape it will. My first words of English, and this is no family legend, were the names of all the players on the Brooklyn Dodgers. My brother would bring me around to his teenage friends and show me off like we would a new iPad today. He would say Peewee and I would respond Reese. He would say Duke and I would respond Snyder. He would say Carl and I would say Erskine. He would say Jackie and I would dutifully respond Robinson. By the summer of 1950 rumor has it that he could do this forwards or backwards with me. He would say Furillo and I would say Carl, he would say Hodges and I would say Gil. He took me to my first games at Ebbett’s FieldI, and ingrained in me the ethos of civil rights. It sounds so naïve today, but in the early 1960s white Americans were asking the question to each other, “do you believe in integration?” We asked the question as if there really could be two possible legitimate answers. I was one of those kids in the 1960s who asked that question, and one of the ones who answered in the affirmative when asked.
Is it a coincidence that when my daughter graduated from college she moved back to Brooklyn after having grown up breathing the rarefied air of Ashland Oregon? And just last month she gave birth to my granddaughter, Amaya Zahar, my first grandchild with a Jewish mom an African American dad. How cool is that? My granddaughter born in Brooklyn, born in the wake of the civil rights movement, born just one mile from Israel Zion Hospital where I was born, and 1 mile in the other direction from Ebbets Field, where my conscience as an American was born and shaped.
So where does G-d come into all of this? The question really is, where is G-d not in all of this? Someone once asked a rabbi, “why do you always answer a question with a question?” The rabbi responded, “why do you ask?” G-d was everywhere in Ebbets Field when Jackie first stepped up to the plate on April 15, 1947. G-d was everywhere in the hearts of every Brooklyn kid, and dad, and big brother who rooted for the Bums, who usually ended the year with a broken heart, who said Hail Mary every time the Duke got up to bat. Even the Jewish kids knew how to say chant Hail Mary in Latin. Gd was in the incredible sense of common unity felt between every fan from every ethnic group imaginable that lived in Brooklyn after the war. The cries of “please Lord” or “Sweet Jesus” or “Ribbono Shel Olam” echoed like the sacred notes of the synagogue choir invoked on the Day of Atonement.
Where was G-d not in Brooklyn in those days? Robert Moses broke our hearts when he wouldn’t let Walter O’Malley build a new stadium for the Dodgers in the late 1950s. We boys wept when the Dodgers won the World Series in 1955. We were stunned into catatonic silence when the Dodgers moved to Los Angeles in 1958. We never forgave O’Malley, but the truth is we now know they tried to keep the Dodgers in Brooklyn.
For years we had no team to root for. Certainly we couldn?t root for the Yankees, or our National League rivals the Giants. We tried St. Louis but that didn’t really fit. The Cubs, the Red Sox – now those teams had some resonance to us (they were also bums), but they were in Chicago in Boston. Who could we root for?
Robert Moses got his dream and saw a stadium built in Queens, Shea Stadium. Many of the Brooklyn ballplayers who didn’t want to move to Los Angeles played for the Mets. They became the people’s team, a team we could root for. And today their new stadium is a veritable tribute in stone to number 42, Jackie Robinson, the Brooklyn Dodgers, and Ebbets Field. I haven’t seen the new stadium yet. I’m going back to meet my granddaughter for the first time in two weeks. So, don?t dare tell my daughter, but maybe I’ll take my granddaughter there this coming Memorial Day. Maybe I’ll teach her her first words in English. I’ll say Jackie and she’ll say Robinson. I’ll say Pee-wee and she’ll say Reese. I’ll say Roy she’ll say Campanella.
Rev. Martin Luther King used to teach that the liberation from racism was not just for Black Americans, but for white people as well. The religious leaders in the Civil Rights movement had the vision to understand that redemption is not just for the victim, but for the victimizer as well; not just for the oppressed, but for the oppressor too. This level of wisdom can help us understand the Purim and Passover stories as well as current events in our troubled world. In classical rabbinic commentary, Pharaoh was portrayed a stubborn despot whose heart was redeemable. Haman, on the other hand, is the archetype unredeemable evil whose name must be drowned out with shouts of protest. Why was Pharaoh redeemable and Haman not? Because as Pharaoh kept changing his mind between each plague he displayed doubt – an expression of humility. Haman (like Hilter, Stalin, Mao, Osama, and Sadaam) never even doubted his right to order genocide.
The job of Moses, Aaron, and Miriam was to liberate the Jews – this is obvious. But a closer reading of the Torah reveals that God wanted to be worshipped by the Egyptians too. God proclaims in Exodus 14:4 that “I will be honored over Pharaoh, and over all his army, that the Egyptians may know that I am the Lord.” There is a Midrash that postulates that Pharaoh repented in Exodus 15:11 after he saw his army drowning in the sea. He cried aloud “Who is like unto thee, O Lord, among the gods?” Judaism teaches that world redemption does not mean that everyone will be Jewish, Christian, or Muslim. Rather, everyone will follow the same high standards of ethical behavior: no murder, no terrorism, no suppression of minority rights, no lies about another’s history, no theft of truth. As God says in Exodus 9:16 “I have raised you up, to show in you my power that my Name may be proclaimed throughout the earth.”
This was a difficult notion for Christians to come to grips with, beginning in the eleventh century when they crusaded through Europe destroying Jewish and Muslim communities on their march to “liberate” the Holy Land from the infidels. They believed, as some still do, that the whole world must convert or be damned. At that time Islam was in a golden age of moderation, intellectualism, and tolerance for its minority subjects. Sadly, today Muslim extremists believe exactly what the Christian crusaders used to believe – that the whole world will eventually submit to Islamic law. They believe in their own form of violent, totalitarian exclusivity, and teach a twisted, anti-Semitic version of Jewish history in their schools. For example, they teach that Joseph was really a Muslim.
They have rewritten Torah stories and teach that Abraham brought Ishmael to Mt. Moriah, and not Isaac. A Muslim friend of mine actually was taught that our Torah is a “distortion” of an original Torah. These fundamentalists teach that their never was a Jewish Temple built by Soloman, and that if there was one it was a mosque. Finally, many people in the Muslim world are actually taught that the Holocaust was a hoax. Moderate Muslims, of course, reject this kind of twisted history, but too many citizens in Muslim lands believe it.
I heard this kind of distortion first hand just a few weeks ago from two wonderful Muslim students on my son’s tennis team. One nineteen year old girl from Bangladesh told me Jews were really Muslims at a lower level of spirituality. Another exchange student, who never met a Jew before he met Ari, told me that all of Israel (not just Gaza and the West Bank) is “really” Muslim land. Tragically, just coming to agreement about simple facts has become an obstacle to peace. Nevertheless, the goal of the Passover story is to liberate both the Jews and the Egyptians, and this should not be forgotten. I was honored to speak gently but clearly to the kids on the tennis team about a Judaism and a history they were never told about.
The world is at a tipping point: Will more nations move toward freedom and pluralism, or hold onto antiquated systems of governance, xenophobia, and sexism? As Americans we can hardly imagine what it must be like for a great people like the Iranians to live without the right to protest. We can hardly imagine what it must be like for Tibetans to realize that they are now a minority in their own homeland. We can hardly imagine what it must be like for Kurds and moderate Muslims who want democracy in Iraq to live with the fact that the insurgency is not just against the Americans, but against pluralism. We can hardly imagine what it is like for a Palestinian worker to be stopped at Israeli checkpoints everyday – checkpoints that were never needed before the terrorists became so active after Rabin made peace with Arafat. Pharaoh is the archetype of dogmatism, stubbornness, and short sightedness. But he is also the archetype of negativity that can be transformed. The prophet foresees the day when their will be a highway connecting Egypt, Israel, Lebanon, and Syria. It is written in Isaiah 19:25 “Blessed be Egypt my people, and Assyria the work of my hands, and Israel my heritage.” May we each blessed in our work of drowning out the name of Hamen, redeeming Pharaoh, and preserving Israel’s pluralism, security, and gratitude to God.
Sermon delivered to Trinity Episcopal Church by Rabbi David Zaslow September 10, 2006
In one of your prophetic readings this week (Isaiah 35:4) the prophet Isaiah instructs us on how to walk on what he calls the Highway of Holiness where “…the eyes of the blind shall be opened, and the ears of the deaf shall be unstopped. Then the lame shall leap like deer, and the tongue of the voiceless ones shall sing…..” Compare this to what Jesus’ brother James is saying in one of this week’s readings: “Pure religion, undefiled before God and the Father is this, To visit the fatherless and widows in their affliction, [and] to keep himself unspotted from the world (James 1:27).” He doesn’t offer us a creed to profess, or a series of theological ideas to memorize – but, rather actions, moral directives: take care of people in need.
The whole idea that James’ expresses is a perfect example of classic Jewish thinking – beliefs are fine, but they must be rooted in moral behavior. This is reinforced in another of your weekly readings. In Psalm 146: 1-9 King David invites his own soul to praise the Lord? How? By taking care of the hungry and freeing the oppressed. Listen to his words: “Praise the Lord! Praise the Lord, O my soul…Happy is he who has the God of Jacob…Who executes justice for the oppressed, Who gives food to the hungry. The Lord gives freedom to the prisoners. The Lord opens the eyes of the blind; The Lord raises those who are bowed down….” The connection is clear between Isaiah, James, King David, and Jesus – if religion is to be authentic it must be rooted in action.
Today, on the Jewish calendar, we are on the 17th. day in the month of Elul. Elul in Judaism is a 30 day period of deep, introspective reflection parallel in function to Lent in the Christian tradition. It is almost as if Judaism is a witness to the transformative beginnings of Autumn when the leaves fall, everything turns inward and a very special miracle occurs – the trees let go of their seeds. As the trees let go of their leaves and seeds, so we let go of our own. We shed those inner leaves which are no longer providing nourishment to our beings, and we cast our seeds that allow us to move into the next phase of our lives.
Christianity is a witness to emergence – the visible emergence of those very seeds dropped by each of us in the Fall. But now they have spent their season in the dank, darkness of the rainy season, and only in springtime are they able to open, sprout, and grow. Advent and Lent transform grief through the promise of the upcoming resurrection. Elul, and what we call the Days of Awe, transform grief through the promise of forgiveness and new beginnings. Elul culminates in the Jewish New Year, called Rosh Hashannah, which this year will fall on September 22. Some would say that Judaism and Christianity have opposite theologies. I suggest that we have balancing theologies – we need each other to stay centered and steady. We are witness to the transformative power of the Autumnal equinox, you are witness to the rebirth and resurrective powers of the vernal equinox. This morning I am honored to share with you some key concepts from Jewish theology about the nature and process of repentance – a process that religious Jews throughout the world are engaged in right now. This is the precise historic “action directive” that Isaiah, King David, James, and Jesus were involved with in their day at this time of year. After all, what holds us back from walking on that Highway of Holiness everyday of our lives? Sin – the sense of separation from God. What gets us back on that Highway? Teshuvah, repentance.
Rabbi Abraham Isaac Kook was the Chief Rabbi of what would later become the nation of Israel until his death in 1935. A brilliant scholar and mystic, Rav Kook struggled valiantly to bring together religious and secular Jews who were returning to the Holy Land from all parts of the world. Rav Kook wrote a book that was published by Paulist Press called “The Lights of Penitence” one of the most remarkable and beautifully written books I have ever read on the process of repentance, what we call Teshuvah in Hebrew. Rav Kook removes from the idea of penitence all negative connotations and makes it something desirous to experience. He does not use metaphor to decorate language, but to reveal deep spiritual truths and principles based on the Torah. His words and teachings are exquisite:
“The currents of penitence rush along. They are like the streams of flame on the surface of the sun, which in an unceasing struggle to break out and ascend endow life to countless worlds and numberless creatures. One is powerless to absorb the multitude of varying colors that emanate from this great sun that shines on all the worlds, the sun of penitence. They are so many, they come with such a mighty sweep, with such wondrous speed. They come from the Source of Life itself…the individual and collective soul, the world soul, each soul…cries out like a fierce lioness in anguish for total perfection, for an ideal form of existence, and we feel the pain, and it purges us….”
The Rebbe makes us want to repent and return to God as he describes how natural the process of Teshuvah really is, rather than something to be avoided: “At once the person senses negativity and…he/she is converted into a new being. Already he experiences…a complete transformation for the better….The higher expression of penitence comes about as a result of a flash of illumination of the All-Good, the Divine…Who abides in eternity.”
Rav Kook is so careful to emphasize that the act of penitence is not just some chore to accomplish during the Days of Awe, but actually has the most beneficial impact on the body. He makes the Hebraic link between soul, mind, and body when he writes, “Penitence is the healthiest feeling of the person. A healthy soul in a healthy body must necessarily bring about the great happiness afforded by penitents, and the soul experiences therein the greatest natural delight. The elimination of damaging elements has beneficent and invigorating effects on the body when it is in a state of health….How we need penitence, how vital it is to illumine the horizon of life!”
Finally, the desire to return and to permit God to transform our lives may come after years of practice, self-discipline, therapy, and spiritual practice – or it may come in a flash. Rav Kook teaches, “Sudden penitence comes about as a result of a certain spiritual flash that enters the soul. At once the person senses evil and the ugliness of sin and he is converted into a new being; already he experiences inside himself a complete transformation for the better…the higher expression of penitence comes about as a result of a flash of illumination of the All- good, the Divine, delight of Him who abides in eternity. The universal soul, the spiritual essence, is revealed to us in all its majesty and holiness, to the extent that the human heart can absorb it.”
Let’s take a deeper look at the process of repentance. The word “repent” comes from a Latin word that means “to feel pain.” When we make a mistake there is no way to obtain forgiveness and reconciliation with God without feeling the pain that we brought upon others and to ourselves. However, revisiting the pain is just the beginning of Teshuvah – a transformative process leading to the feeling of regeneration, renewal, and spiritual rebirth. The word teshuvah in Hebrew means both “return” and “answer.”
Teshuvah comprises of a “return” to who we really are, and to what we really are at our godly essence. But teshuvah is also is our “answer” to God’s call for each of us to come home to the land of the soul. Following is a simple, four-stage description of the teshuvah process:
1) Confession: From the thought that we are sinning we acknowledge our mistakes and errors beginning with words charged with regret, heartbreak, grief and sorrow.
2) Repentance: We take an nonest inventory of our soul, what we call heshbon ha-nefesh, and make a plan of action for change of destructive behavioral patterns.
3) Forgiveness: This is the Divine response to our confession and acts of repentance. The sense of God’s forgiveness gives us the courage to carry out the program of change we established in our lives, and to be on guard that our behavioral patterns are forever changed.
4) Atonement: This is the final stage in the Teshuvah process. Atonement, from the Anglo Saxon word meaning at-one-ment is parallel to state of sublime, joyous, ecstatic unity that we experience after completing our inner work. The Holy One blesses each of us with after we are forgiven…we feel at one with the Creator and creation.
What makes us human is that when given free will we make mistakes. So, the Creator has given us this profound process to rectify errors. After making a wrong choice, we repent, get “washed clean,” and begin again. According to Jewish tradition with every mitzvah we fulfill, the world gets a little closer to the days of Messiah. So, why on earth, would G-d have even permitted us to sin? Created in His image why are we not simply born to be sinless?” To make us human, the rabbis respond. To give us the true sense that we are not robots, but fully human, full partners with G-d in creation. We are born good, we sin, we do teshuvah, and we end up being better for the experience – even though it hurts.
May we all have the courage to improve and enhance the good that is within us during the Days of Awe and every day of the year. May we each recognize the spark of God that is the soul itself. May we wake up tomorrow morning and really recognize our true selves, our godly selves. The Kingdom of G-d is, indeed, at hand. But it will not happen by G-d’s actions alone. It is up to us to reach the heights of our human potential by taking the first step on that Highway of Holiness. So, what is a church or a synagogue? Simply a rest stop along the way.
by Rabbi David Zaslow and Rabbi Victor Gross
Spring, 2009
As the only democracy in the Middle East, Israel assures its citizens (Jewish and non-Jewish) the same rights and protection under the law. The question is not about Israel’s obligations to Arabs – that is clear. Under its constitution, Israel is obliged to treat its citizens fairly – which it valiantly tries to do under extraordinary circumstances.
In the Torah G-d commands us to treat strangers the same way we treat ourselves. We’re commanded to love our neighbors. In Torah the intimate link between brothers is clear – between Isaac and Ishmael, Jacob and Esau, and even Moses and Pharaoh. Each has a unique covenantal relationship.
Einstein said, “no problem can be solved with the same consciousness that caused it.” The relational problems between Arabs and Jews cannot be solved from the same level of consciousness that has existed for centuries. Both Arab and Jew must recognize their collective history and awaken to G-d’s promises as outlined by the prophets. Until people recognize, as Pogo did, that “they have met the enemy and they are us” they will continue to exist at the level that bred the problem.
We await the day when our cousins, the children of Ishmael, welcome us to our ancient homeland so we can coexist in peace. We look forward to the day when all shall live in peace, each under his/her own vine and fig tree, when none shall be afraid.
In the past year and a half I have approved of the insertion of a series of full-color brochures for our synagogue newsletter which are produced and paid for by AIPAC. AIPAC (the American Israel Public Affairs Committee) is the leading lobby organization in Washington, D.C., and its mission is to foster support for Israel by American elected officials. It is a non-partisan lobby group, and it’s supporters include liberal and conservative elected officials (e.g. Nancy Pelosi, Harry Reid, Ted Kennedy, Hillary Clinton, Barak Obama, John McCain, and everyone in between). Identical inserts have gone into hundreds of synagogue newsletters throughout the nation.
Why is such a lobby group respected by both Left and Right? Because it provides highly accurate, objective facts without partisan spin. AIPAC has a mission to support any elected Israeli government: left or right, Likud, Kadima, Labor, etcetera. When our elected representatives ask for “just the facts” about Israel, AIPAC has a reputation of delivering accurate and unbiased data.
A few members of our wonderful synagogue have expressed concern about the perception that our synagogue is supporting a Washington lobby group. I want to make clear as a shul we officially support no lobby group. As the most recent insert stated, “the views of AIPAC do not represent any official position of the Havurah.” But AIPAC’s unconditional support for Israel does represent my personal viewpoint, and that’s is why I have been honored to authorize the inserts for our readers.
In a perfect world I wish we didn’t need lobby groups at all, but our elected officials have become dependent (for better or worse) on lobbyists to provide them with information. Like it or not, that’s our system. There is a feminist lobby and a tobacco lobby; a pro-life lobby and a prochoice lobby. There is a Wisconsin cheese lobby and there may even be a “bring the Dodger’s back to Brooklyn” lobby – which I would also support!
Israel, as we are all aware, is under many kinds of attack. Kassam rockets have been fired into Israel on a regular basis from Gaza since 2000 (more than 500 in the past year alone killing innocent Israeli civilians in cities like Sederot and Ashkelon). Large quantities of arms are continually smuggled into Gaza from Iran through the Egyptian border with Gaza. There is a new buildup of short range missiles in southern Lebanon. Plus, verbal rockets of slander get fired against the very existence of Israel every day in much of the Arab press. Israel, like any nation, is imperfect and deserves appropriate criticism for aspects of its policies. Criticism of Israel is not anti-Semitism, but criticism of Israel using standards that are not applied to any other nation on earth need to be carefully reviewed for prejudice…and that’s the job of AIPAC.
When the United Nations declared that “Zionism is racism” under Resolution 2279 in 1975 AIPAC stood up and explained that if Zionism is racism then any nation’s independence must also be considered racist. If France or Jordan has the right to exist then so does Israel. After sixteen years he U.N. finally revoked its absurd resolution – but the damage had already been done.
In recent years Jimmy Carter wrote a book with the inflammatory title “Palestine – Peace Not Apartheid.” Profs. Walt and Mearsheimer wrote a frightful book which distorts the reality of the Israel lobby. A teacher’s union in England tried to get away with boycotting of Israeli scholars when no other scholars are boycotted from terrorist-sponsoring nations like Syria or Iran. Mainstream American denominations (e.g., Presbyterian) divest themselves of stocks from companies that do business with Israel but not from companies who do business with regimes like those ruling China or Egypt. Other denominations (Episcopal and Methodist) are currently debating whether to adopt this kind of Israel-only divestment scheme.
AIPAC is not a partisan political organization. It is simply an effective lobbying group that stands up for Israel on behalf of all of us who want to see peace in the Middle East. It answers the Carters, Walts, and Mearsheimers of our country with cool, factual data. It’s okay to wish we didn’t need lobbying groups (I certainly wish that), but it’s not okay to say Israel should not be represented by lobbyists when there are foreign lobbies for most every other nation on the planet. If there is going to be a strong Egyptian and Saudi lobby surely there should be a strong Israeli lobby as well. If we are going to criticize and exaggerate the power of the Israeli lobby without a word about other powerful lobbies then we are coming very close to anti-Semitism. I am thankful to G-d that AIPAC exists to defend the spiritual homeland that we, as American Jews, so dearly cherish, and that most Americans cherish as a dear ally. In the spirit of education I hope you appreciate the value of the AIPAC newsletter inserts. To learn more about AIPAC.
I recently responded to an internet posting where a well known, peace activist, rabbi, and colleague of mine made a case for morally equivalency between the actions of Hamas and those of the Israeli military in Lebanon last summer. Many of us hear fallacious comparisons (Zionism is racism, Israel practices of apartheid, etc.) in discussions about Israel these days, especially in progressive circles, and learning the facts is important if we are to engage in civil and productive debates and discussions.
The rabbi made a series of crucial flaws in his argument. In any civil and criminal judicial rulings there is never equivalent comparison between the actions of the perpetrator of a crime and the self-defense of the victim. This, of course, does not get the victim totally off the hook for any defensive action he/she takes, but it places the defensive actions under a completely different lens. Let’s say that the victim of a robbery clobbers the robber with a stick to protect his/herself. His/her level of culpability is not the same as the robber, and a district attorney could not prosecute as long as reasonable restraint within the definition of self-defense was shown.
In acts of war the response of the victim to aggression and/or invasion is judged on an even more lenient scale. Last year Hezbollah violated the basic rights of a sovereign nation through terrorizing and invasive acts of war. The Israeli response was, by all mainstream news sources, reasonable and moderate. Israeli soldiers stood in front of its population to protect them from aggressive acts while the Hezbollah aggressors hid behind its civilians as a shield. This was a no-win situation for Israel whose military held back, leafleted civilian areas before bombing, made mistakes (as tragically happens in war), and by most accounts was not able to prevail against Hezbollah because it was not willing to be even more aggressive.
No one wants an end to war in the Middle East more than Israel. I do not believe for a second that all things are equal in the Middle East. There is no cycle of violence there. Rather, there is a cause and an effect. Hezbollah, Hamas and company (those who refuse Israel’s existence and/or a two-state solution) are the root CAUSE of the ongoing bloodshed while Israel has to constantly adjust its strategy in SELF DEFENSIVE responses. Has Israel made errors along the way? Yes, of course. So did the Allies during World War II, but mostly the Allies were RIGHT and mostly the German and Japanese governments were wrong. There was no moral equivalency between the actions of the Allies and the actions of the Germans and Japanese even though by today’s standards of military engagement we decry acts like the bombing of civilian centers like Dresden. The same is true today between Israel and its neighbors. There is absolutely no moral equivalency between what Hamas and terrorists do offensively and what Israel does defensively. Let us not apply a double standard against Israel that we are unwilling to apply to any other nation in equal measure.
Do most Jews and most Israelis all want a peaceful, two-state solution? Yes! So, let us put the pressure on those CAUSING the violence and not invent a false equivalency between the perpetrators (Hamas, Hezbollah, etc.) and those trying to defend themselves (Israel). The facts are so clear to 80% of Americans (liberal and conservative) and to 96% of Israelis – there is a primary aggressor and a primary victim in this whole mess. Comparing the situation to European victimization of the Native Americans – Israelis are the Indians in the Middle East. Ironically, so are the Palestinians, but they are victims of their own leadership and of other Arab countries, not of Israel’s existence.
Any nation not willing to recognize Israel as a nation after sixty years is a part of the problem. Any Palestinian sheikh or political leader still holding onto an absurd notion of a literal right of return of Palestinians into Israel (not to the future Palestinian state) is a part of the problem. Many of us may not be aware of the new far left-wing call for a single, binational state (instead of a two-state solution) which is now adding to the problem since it would certainly mean the end to the Jewish state of Israel. Fuzzy thinking and inaccurate accusations of moral equivalency only adds to the problem. Indignation against Israel’s faults while ignoring the far more grievous faults of the Palestinian leadership only adds to the problem. Certainly some of Israel’s more foolish policies (home demolition, certain settlement policies, cultural prejudices, missing opportunities for interfaith dialogue, etc.) have added to the problem but is clearly not the root CAUSE of the problem.
Just as Israel generally (and quite imperfectly) affords equal rights for its Muslim, Druze, non-religious, and Christian citizens, so we would expect that a viable Palestinian state would assure security for it’s future Jewish and Christian citizens. If some of the settlements end up in a future Palestine will the Jewish settlers be permitted to live in their homes? Would Jews even be permitted to live in Palestine? At this point it seems unlikely. Muslim extremists are triumphalists as well as historical revisionists. Today Christian Palestinians are being subjected to a slow ethnic cleansing from their homes by Muslim Palestinian extremists (look at what has happened in Bethlehem in the last four decades). Sadly, that is hardly reported. Almost every Arab nation is now almost completely Yudenrein (Jew-free) as they used to say in Europe. There is no moral equivalent for that kind of bigoted, criminal behavior in Israel. Israel is an imperfect society where prejudice against Arabs (Arab Jews as well) is all too real. But the level of prejudice in Israel, as obnoxious as it is, is not equivalent to what is happening to minorities in the Palestinian territories.
A number of years ago I had the honor of staying in the home of Rabbi Dovid Zeller z”l for Shabbat. As many of you know he lived in the settlement of Efrat, and he was the quintessential model of what a real settler stands for in the territories – he loved the land of his ancestors (Judea and Sumaria) AND he worked so hard to bring all the people (Jews, Muslims, Druze, and Christian) who love the same land together toward a lasting and dignified peace for everyone. He was a Zionist AND a pluralist. I learned the following from one of his wonderful neighbors that Shabbat. Trading land for peace is trading a tangible (land) for an intangible (peace). Once land is traded then who is to say the intangible (peace) will be given in return. First we have to see evidence of peace (the intangible commodity) or at least a series of sincere peaceful gestures from the Palestinian leadership. In the case of Anwar Sadat z”l it was clear to every Israeli that his gestures of peace were deep-seated and sincere.
Israel is correct to be cautious when it comes to trading the one tangible commodity they are in control of (land) for something as intangible as peace. It’s been said many times before – if Hamas laid down its weapons there would likely be a chance for peace. If Israel laid down its arms there would likely be no Israel. In 1978 Abba Eban said that Arafat “never missed an opportunity to miss an opportunity.” The same can be said this past year about the Palestinian leadership concerning the unilateral Israeli pullout from Gaza. This was a perfect opportunity for Palestinians to come together and demonstrate their willingness for form a just and civil government willing to live at peace with its neighbor. Sadly, the factions within the Palestinian world (those willing to make peace with Israel and those unwilling to make peace with Israel) are now at war with each other.
Israel and America are the scapegoats for both the internal religious reformation and the culture clashes that are going on within the Islamic world. Israel is the victim of a terrible form of xenophobia, scapegoating, and anti-Semitism that exists within many Middle Eastern nations. The irony is that the Palestinian people are equally victimized by these other nations, but this is rarely the focus of many peace groups. Just compare the way Lebanon treats Palestinians in its nation (no voting rights, no land ownership, restricted work policy, etc.) to Palestinians who are Israeli citizens. Israel is a convenient scapegoat for the following myths: if there were no Israel there would be peace in the Middle East. If there no Israel the Palestinian people who have a safe and secure nation of their own. If extremists on both sides would only stop being violent there would be peace. The actions of the terrorists and the responses of the Israeli armed forces are morally equivalent and has led to a cycle of violence.
Missiles fired on S’derot do not help the Palestinian cause. The inability of Fatah to control the extremists is not helping the Palestinian cause. Palestinians electing Hamas to its government is a signal for war, not for peace. Blaming Israel for the bankrupt Palestinian economy does not help the Palestinian cause. Blaming Israel for erecting a security wall and fence when the CAUSE of the barrier is terrorism, does not help the cause of peace. Unlike the Berlin wall which was created to keep the citizens virtual prisoners in East Germany, the security barrier in Israel was created to keep terrorists out, and to protect Israeli citizens – Jewish, Christian, and Muslim alike.
Some powerful groups within the American peace community (e.g. ANSWER which has been in control of most of the larger anti-war protests in America) are clearly anti-Semitic and unwilling to condemn Palestinian terrorism, and this adds to the problem. Blaming Israel for checkpoints when the CAUSE of the checkpoints is terrorism does not help the cause of peace. America has terribly frustrating and inconvenient checkpoints at every airport, yet we would never accuse the American government of harassment. No, we realize that our airport checkpoints are a response to terrorism, and NOT the cause of terrorism. The same is true in Israel.
If Israel trades land for peace in the future, that is their right as a sovereign nation. But let us not think for a moment that Judea and Samaria were not the homeland of our people, or we fall prey to the replacement theology that is inherent to Wahhabist and extremist Shiite theology today (e.g., Isaac was not the son on the altar at the Akeidah, Moses and King David were Muslims,, there never was a Jewish temple in Jerusalem, Jesus was a Palestinian, etc.). I know all to well from my firsthand connection to Saudi funded Wahabists that this form of replacement theology is widespread in much of the Muslim world. Just as I do not accept replacement theology from the Christians I may respect and work with, I am not going to accept it from Muslims either. It is historical revisionism, and it is dangerous for us to let statements of Christian or Islamic replacement theology be spoken with no response. The “old” Testament is not replaced by the “new” Testament, Isaac was not replaced by Ishmael, and there really was Solomon’s “Jewish” Temple where the Dome of the Rock now stands. There is plenty of land in G-d’s kingdom for all of us to live together – Elder and Younger Testaments, Isaac and Ishmael, Israel and Palestine, the Dome of the Rock AND Solomon’s Temple.
In summary: it is incorrect to say that the self-defensive measures that Israel took last summer against an illegal terrorist militia (Hezbollah) rises to a level even comparable to the homicidal, xenophobic, and Islamofacism of Hamas…a group that named itself honestly for what it stands for – violence. Look at what the Muslim extremists are doing to themselves in Gaza, in Lebanon, and Iraq. Islamic extremism is the root CAUSE of the problems in the Middle east and in almost every single conflict around the globe. This is the sad fact that too many good folks in progressive circles are slow to comprehend. Let us face this fact quickly and try to come up with visionary, creative, messianic, and realistic solutions instead of blaming Israel for its measures of self-defense.
Once we deal with the ROOT CAUSE of violence in the Middle East (Islamic extremism) then the effect (Israel’s defensive military actions) go away. If we all stand as one against terrorism, Islamic extremism, and recognize that this is the primary cause of violence in the Middle East we will be building a foundation upon which real peace, real shalom/saalam can stand.
Critics of Israel often point to the unequal military might between the Israelis and the Palestinians. From a micro-viewpoint this certainly true. However, take a look at Israel from a macro-viewpoint and you can see what a small nation Israel is compared to twenty-one Arab nations (and a dozen more non-Arab Muslim nations not even on this map) geographically, militarily, and economically. The Middle East is roughly the size of the United States and Israel is roughly the size of Kentucky. The economic might of oil rich nations cannot be underestimated, and the military might and threat to Israel by nations like Syria and Iran certainly cannot be underestimated. It is incorrect to look at the Israeli-Palestinian conflict outside of its full geopolitical and historic context.
Recently I posted the following response to two esteemed colleagues of mine…teacher’s whose Torah insights I study and often quote. Yet, regarding the dangers of Islamic extremism to Jews, Christians, and to mainstream, peace-loving Muslims, we have important disagreements.
One colleague wrote, “Are there some Muslims who claim the authority of God to kill and destroy? Yes. Are there some Jews who claim this? Yes. And Christians? Yes. What do we do about this?” A second colleague wrote in a separate posting, “Yes, there is obviously a grave and dangerously threatening element in the Islamic world, just as there are a number of other extremely dangerous “isms” and powers threatening us in the world today.”
1) DISPROPORTIONATE COMPARISONS: The above statements are prime examples of why I disagree with my colleagues on the question of Islamic extremism. I believe that the good rabbis are repeating a popular mistake of making implied comparisons that are disproportionate to the facts. I plead with my esteemed colleagues to consider that all things are not equal concerning all “isms” or when comparing the extreme wings of Judaism, Christianity, and Islam. For example, when we think of “Jewish terrorists” we have to dig back more than a decade to name criminally insane individuals like Baruch Goldstein and Yigal Amir, both of whom acted alone. They certainly emerged from extremist religious environments where hatred was tolerated and spread, but certainly not where murder, terrorism, or assassination was ever preached from the bimah. I know of a very small number of religious Jews in Israel and America whose bigotry appalls me. Yet, I know of no Jews who claim “God’s authority” to “kill and destroy.” Israeli self-defense, properly or even improperly executed is something completely different from carrying out the demands of Islamic extremists who openly and publicly call for the destruction of an entire nation (Israel) and the conversion of the world to their brand of Islam. Further, we cannot forget that the vast majority of victims of Islamic-extremism are moderate, normative Muslims from every branch of Islam.
I have heard the preaching of Sayyed Hasan Nasrallah where he calls for the death, murder, assassination of Israeli civilians. I have heard first hand the late spiritual leader of Hamas, Ahmed Yassin, justify suicide murder against Israeli children – while teaching his own children how to strap bombs on their bodies to carry out Hamas’ evil deeds. Whether we approve of Jewish settlements or not in the disputed territories there simply are no Jewish or Christian militias who preach and demand the kind of sociopathic, homicidal behavior we hear from Hamas and Hezbollah. Am I preaching prejudice against Islam here? G-d forbid! Am I preaching fear of Hamas and Hezbollah? I certainly am! They are to be both feared and militarily defended against.
When we compare two insane, psychopathic Jewish criminals (Goldstein and Amir) who acted more than ten years ago to the literally tens of thousands (hundreds of thousands? a few million?) of Muslim terrorists commanded to be violent by literally dozens of well funded and well armed militias (e.g., Hamas and Hezbollah) we can hardly make a proportional comparison to Jewish extremists with any degree of intellectual integrity. Fact: there is a massive amount of worldwide terrorism sponsored and/or condoned by Jihadists that has resulted in the deaths of tens of thousands of civilians (mostly Muslim) in the last fifty years.
Fact: there are NO Jewish terrorists sponsored by well funded militias or nations. And if there are Jewish terrorists, G-d forbid, they are almost definitely criminally sociopathic individuals acting under no denominational, sect, or leader’s command. Fact: there are Muslim nations (e.g. Iran) who officially sponsor and fund terrorism and/or military jihad in the name of Islam. Fact: there is no Jewish nation or even synagogue that sponsors or funds violence of any kind against Muslim, Christian, or Bahai civilians in the name of Judaism. When we go to airports and get our bodies and possessions searched and scanned it is not because of the threat posed by Jewish or Christian extremists. It is, however, because of the ever-present threats of war and violence made by Islamic extremists.
2) TERMINOLOGY: When scholars and Christians speak of the far right wing of Christianity (e.g., David Duke, the Ku Klux Klan, etc.) they often use the term “Christian Identity Movement.” There is not an iota of disparagement to liberal, mainstream, or conservative Christianity intended by the use of this term. It is simply a term that describes how a series of cults are trying to hijack Christianity for their own evil intentions. That is the context in which terms like Islamic extremism, Islamism, Jihadism, or even Islamo-Fascism arise from. I’m less concerned with the politically correct terminology than I am with the impact of Muslim extremists preaching death and murder in their mosques against other Muslims, gays, Jews, and anyone they perceive to be agents of Satan.
I would however, be quite concerned if these terms led people to believe that all of Islam or Arab culture condoned extremist hatred. I don’t see that happening in our nation or in Isreal. To our shame, many Americans were prejudiced against German-Americans and Italian-Americans during World War II. To our greater shame we rounded up Japanese-Americans and put them in internment camps during World War II. Since 9/11 I have been satisfied to see a somewhat “eager to learn” attitude by most Americans concerning Islam and Muslim-Americans. I live in a fairly conservative, Anglo, fundamentalist Christian region of the country, and yet most people get the difference between Muslims and Muslim extremists, and they generally go out of their way to distinguish Islam from Islamic extremism in their public statements.
3) WORDS MATTER: Certainly words matter. But because the term “Islamo-Fascism” is not a term directed at normative Islam, or most of Islam – this doesn’t mean the phenomenon does not exist. I have personally not heard the term misused to apply to Islam in general, and neither have I heard the term “Christian Identity Movement” misused to apply to all of Christianity. If I used the term “German fascism” it certainly does not mean that most German people are fascists But it would foolish not to use such a term for fear of its misuse.
Over the past decade many of us have had to learn many “terms of art” to describe both the brilliance and the shadow side that exist within the Islamic world. In our world today it is incumbent on all of us to learn the unique differences within that world, and to be able to distinguish their normative denominations (e.g. Suni, Shia, Sufi) from the armed extremist militias (e.g. Hamas, Hezbollah) from the extremist philosophical schools (e.g. Wahabism, Salafism on the Suni extremist side, and the Shiite extremism that arose from the Ayatollah Khomeni’s revolution in Iran in 1979).
4) THE FILM “OBSESSION:’ I have studied and fact-checked many of the major points made in the film “Obsession.” I have not found factual errors. The film interviews a moderate Muslim, a former Palestinian terrorist, the daughter of a Palestinian martyr, and other pundits – none of whom seem to have an ax to grind with Islam. The film begins by clearly stating that the subject is Islamic extremism and NOT Islam.
Did the film “scare the hell out of me” as one of my colleagues suggested in his posting? Yes, and I am as thankful for the wake up call. If, in the late 30’s, a “shockumentary” like “Obsession” woke people up to the world that was ahead of them many lives might have been saved in the 40’s. The good rabbi wrote that the film “…has no intention of presenting a balanced portrait of Muslims and Islamic culture….” He is correct since that was not the aim of the film. The rabbi then goes on to write that the film “…is meant to terrify Jews and Americans to such a degree that they will be more likely to support the Cheney-Bush program, including bombing and invading Iran (and possibly other Muslim countries as well).”
Wow! Where did he come up with that conclusion? The version of “Obsession” that our synagogue presented had no such explicit of implied meaning. There is not even a hint of getting Jews to support the bombing or invasion of Iran in the film. The Muslims who attended the presentation of the film in our synagogue were just as stunned by the facts and video clips of Jihadist clerics shown in the film as were the Jews, Christians, and members of the peace community who came.
5) ALL EVILS ARE NOT EQUAL: My colleague writes that there are other “isms” and “powers” that threaten the world. Of course there are, but not to violent degree that Islamic extremism threatens us in this day and age. I am a philo-Christian and yet do not hold back criticism of Replacement Theology within the Church (the Church is the true Israel) where it exists. I am also a philo-Muslim and do not hold back criticism of the Replacement Theology (e.g., the Jews never had a Temple in Jerusalem, Joseph was really a Muslim, there was no binding of Isaac, etc.) within Islam either. And I certainly do not hold back criticism of any religion where violence is preached from the pulpit. Today the pulpits where most of the violence is being preached comes from a significant minority (some estimate at between 15-25%) of mosques worldwide where radical Islamic theology (Wahabist, Salafist, Ayatollist, etc.) is promoted or at least tolerated. The Crusades ended hundreds of years ago. The genocide against Native Americans ended more than a hundred years ago. Colonialism ended eighty years ago. Racism, sexism, corporate greed, and consumerism are all too present in our society, but none of this compares to the immediate danger posed to all humanity by Islamic extremism. The greatest danger to the world today is no longer European colonialism. Corporate greed fed by consumerism is clearly a “power” to be tamed, but Islamism is a “power” that has declared violent and aggressive war on us. It cannot be negotiated with or tamed, but must be defeated and transformed as happened with Nazi Germany and Shinto Japan sixty years ago. In these two cases, America proved that is was not acting out of corporate greed, or ethnocentric and racist motives – our greatest enemies (Japan and Germany) became our greatest allies within a decade after the War. The same will be true, G-d willing, with all the Arab and Muslim nations. But first, the forces and groups behind the hatred and scapegoating of Israel, the West, moderate Muslims, and women must be soundly defeated.
The technologies used by the Jihadists include child abuse and forms of terrorism that have changed the very definition of war. Am I using scare tactics here? I don’t think so. Many of us are simply as scared as our fathers and mothers were before World War II. In 1938 the well intended Chamberlain naively declared “peace in our time” because of his pact trading “land for peace” with Heir Hitler. Mein Kamf literally means “My Struggle” and is the German equivalent of the word “Jihad” which literally means “struggle.” For G-d’s sake, let us not be fooled into inaction again as we were before World War II.
Jihadist theology, from whichever Shiite or Sunni extremist sect it comes from, is especially cruel to peace-loving Muslims. The greatest number of victims of Islamo-Fascism (call it what you want) are Muslims. In Gaza, in Syria, in Saadam’s Iraq, in Lebanon, in Iran, in Indonesia, in Sudan, in Chechnyia, in the Philippines, in Somalia the aberrant versions of true Islam are at war with moderate Muslims and the rest of the non-Muslim world. Their ideology is rooted in the most vile form of xenophobia, anti-Semitism, misogyny, and homophobia that has arisen since the Nazi era. There is a moderate, decent, quiet majority within Islam that is courageously working toward a pluralistic reformation within their faith. They deserve our full support. Confused and misguided (even when well intended) outside analysis of the ever-present danger of Islamic extremism only slows down that reformation from fully taking shape from within the Islamic world so that military intervention from Western nations will not be seen as necessary.
My synagogue produces programs on an ongoing bases that aims at demonstrating the innate brotherhood and sisterhood of Sarah and Hagar’s children. I wish I could believe in the potential for pacts with Hamas and Hezbollah, but I do not. In Torah it is just as much a mitzvah to hate evil as it is to love our neighbors. We can, and must, do both at the same time.
Please, Hashem, may the Israeli hostages kidnapped by Hamas and Hezbollah last year be returned to their families today! May the words of your prophets that give us so much hope for the reunion of Isaac and Ishamael, Jacob and Easu be fulfilled speedily in our time!
Martin Luther King Day Invocation
Delivered by Rabbi David Zaslow at South Medford High School Sunday, January 14. 2007
“Mee Kamokha b’ayleem Adonai.” This was the song that Moses sang to the children of Israel after they had crossed the Sea. The people thought that they were free – they didn’t realize they would have to wander in the desert forty years before they could enter the Promised Land. And even before the wandering began they were tested at the Sea which in Hebrew is called “The Sea Which is the End.” By faith alone they crossed, and the waters parted – not by might and not by power, but by the Spirit of the Holy One.
We shall overcome. How? With the technology of non-violence that Rev. King taught us to use. With the knowledge that it is by the Spirit of G-d alone that peace and justice can be achieved. Rev. King taught us all how to never let despair rule over hope. We shall overcome. Why? Because we refuse to be ruled by that which divides us. We give ourselves wholeheartedly to that which unites us: Black and Latino. Asian and White, Jews and Christians, Muslims, Buddhists, Hindu, Native peoples, peoples of all faiths, and people of uncertain faith.
We shall overcome. Overcome what? We shall overcome war, poverty, the ongoing racism that is endemic throughout the world. We shall overcome the reemergence of anti-Semitism that is once again scapegoating the Jews in the disguise of anti-Zionism. We shall overcome the unbalanced criticism and targeting the nation of Israel. We shall overcome sexism, misogyny, homophobia, and the destruction of our planet. We shall overcome religious extremism and secular extremism as well.
We shall overcome that within ourselves that creates enemies where there needs to be dialogue – between Suni and Shia, between liberals and conservatives, between people of good faith on both sides of difficult issues, between ourselves and ourselves.
G-d, Adonai, Allah, Great Spirit, Divine Knowing of the Universe, Melekh HaOlam bless us today as one, bless us as we honor the prophet of our generation who taught us the real meaning of shalom – wholeness and how we need each other…who understood the deep meaning of the Biblical story of Moses and Pharaoh, of Israel and Egypt – that by liberating Black Americans from their oppression White Americans would be liberated as well from their racism as well. Bless us today as we honor the Moses of our time who is still taking us to the Promised Land of hope, justice, liberty, and freedom. Let us cross the sea together now and sing together the words of Moses: “Mee Kamokha b’ayleem Adonai….Who is like you Lord among all that which is worshipped?”
by Rabbi David Zaslow, dedicated to Richard Seidman
December, 2006
I was born December 23, 1947 in the midst of an historic snowstorm that immobilized New York City, and at the exact midpoint between three great events: when Jackie Robinson joined the Brooklyn Dodgers, when my teacher Reb Zalman received rabbinic ordination from the previous Lubavitcher Rebbe at 770 Eastern Parkway, and when Israel was reborn as a nation. I was raised in the final decade of the Brooklyn Dodgers before Walter O’Malley devestated a generation of fans by moving our beloved team to Los Angeles for the 1958 season. This single fact, as unimportant as it may seem in the history of the cosmos, has had a profound impact on my life.
As a kid the sense of betrayal I experienced, along with millions of other fans, remains one of mythic traumas of my childhood. When my parents separated in 1965 it really hurt, but somehow the loss of the Dodgers years before had prepared me for disappointments that would come later in my life.
Just ask anyone who lived in Brooklyn in those years what the sense of loss was like when the Dodger’s moved (we still say the mourner’s kaddish every spring). Over the years I’ve gotten over my childhood hurts and disappointments, but I still dream about the return of the Dodger’s to Brooklyn. My Christian friends speak about the second coming of the messiah. Me? I half kiddingly tell my Christian friends that I’m waiting for the return of Jackie Robinson to Brooklyn. In fact, whenever I teach about Jewish messianic expectations and prophetic fulfillment, I speak about the return of the Dodger’s and the rebuilding of Ebbets Field as proof that the Messiah will have arrived. Religious eschatology and our hopes for the Brooklyn Dodgers are really not so different.
I remember the endless comparisons that we New York kids used to make between teams like the Dodgers, the Giants, and the Cardinals. But the most contentious battles would erupt when we compared individual players on the Dodgers and our arch rival – the dreaded, indefatigable, incredible New York Yankees. Endless debates comparing batting averages, and arguments about the relative greatness of pitchers, first basemen, outfielders, and short-stops. It’s true, we Dodgers never had the likes of Babe Ruth and Joe DiMaggio, but the Yankees never had Jackie Robinson. Jackie was the first of all firsts, the Moses who led the people out of the Egypt of racism, and every one in Brooklyn knew it – whether they knew it or not. Jewish, Italian, Irish, Puerto Rican, and Black kids – we all shared Jackie Robinson. He represented all of us – he was the little guy, the immigrant, the outsider, the bum of bums. He was Brooklyn, not Manhattan.
Truth be told, there is no way to compare Robinson to DiMaggio – my two childhood heroes just don’t compare. They both played the same game, but they were simply two one-of-a-kind players. Statistics can’t tell you who they really were. Certainly batting averages will never tell you the real story behind Jackie Robinson and what he did for all Americans, of every color. When a single drop of Messiah’s anointing oil landed upon only one baseball player, it landed on Jackie Robinson. Ruth was the Babe and DiMaggio was the Clipper, but no one was Jackie Robinson – no one ever will be.
An aside: Besides a few million of us in Brooklyn (and half the kids on Staten Island and in Queens) guess who were the saddest people on earth to see the Dodgers leave Brooklyn? Yankee fans! They won’t admit it, but it’s true. In the world of baseball, rivalry runs deep but respect runs deeper.
Reprinted from Washington Jewish Week which printed this Op Ed on
February 2, 2006
The Palestinian people have just elected officials with the level of consciousness of Torquemada in the 16th. century who no more represented real Christianity than Hamas represents real Islam. Nevertheless when I met with Hamas in a small group meeting with Sheikh Yassin in 1998 I was profoundly impressed that while their theo-politics was based on xenophobia, misogyny, homophobia, anti-Semitism, and theocratic totalitarianism I found their leaders to be candid and honest. Sheikh Yassin was not duplicitous, compromising, or trying to be polite to his audience of 23 American Jews. He was candid and frank – no Israel; Islamic law must rule; no two states!
What impressed me even more was the group’s idealistic dedication toward social services and the care of the people. I sensed then, as I do now, that the PA’s corruption is just too much for the average Palestinian who have seen literally billions of dollars stolen by Arafat’s family alone. I sensed very little corruption in the Hamas organization who hosted our visit. After all, they are not just a political party, they are a religious group rooted deeply in ideals. I think that’s what Hamas leader Khaled Mash’al might have meant when he said on Al-Jazeera TV after the elections, “We are committed to…the resistance and adhere to its weapons… As for recognizing [Israel] and amending our Charter – Hamas is not the kind of movement that succumbs to pressure…we will not recognize it, no matter how much time passes….” The statement that “Hamas is not the kind of movement that succumbs to pressure” can be understood in terms of religious idealism rather than secular pragmatism that seeks compromise. With Hamas, as with any idealistic, religiously based group, the word compromise is not in the dictionary. The results of the Palestinian election seems to be a protest vote by the people against Fatah’s corruption, but I fear the people are playing with fire. I urge everyone to read the Hamas Charter to learn what Israel and Middle East is up against now. I urge everyone to listen to what they say in the next few weeks and take them at their word – they are not duplicitous politicians like we’ve grown accustomed to who say one thing and then change their minds.
After all my years of study, prayer, hope, disappointment I have come to a sad conclusion. It almost doesn’t matter what Israel does. She can stay in the territories, withdraw from most of the territories, come to an Oslo-like agreement again, keep the status quo. The religious factor is usually skipped over or ignored by many secular peace groups. Why? Because they just don’t get the power of fundamentalism. They get the abuse of it, but not it’s real power. Here’s my sense on Hamas – they are the real deal. They love Allah. They would die for Allah. They will continue to kill for Allah. They are idealists: visionaries, bigots, misogynists at the level of consciousness of the Crusaders in the twelfth century – they envision a whole world that will eventually become Muslim, or subject to Islamic rule. And at the same time they deliver the goods to the people. They are not duplicitous. And they will NEVER NEVER NEVER change their belief that Israel cannot exist. So, sadly, the next move is not on us. Sharon did a brilliant move by getting out of Gaza. He, in effect, said, “Ok, it’s up to you. Stew in your corruption. Elect fanatics. Become democratic. It’s in your hands.”
His next move would have been unilateral withdrawal from a big chunk of the West Bank and I would have supported him 100%. Maybe Kadima will do that now. But, bottom line is that Sharon was intellectually withdrawing from the notion that there is something that Israel can do. Israel can do very little. The Palestinian people must have an uprising from within and demand gay rights, women’s rights, a union movement, pluralism, the right to assemble, the right to protest, and egalitarianism. If they do it, there will be peace and two States. If they do not do it, they will stew in their own self-hatred and continue to scapegoat the Jews. Sharon was saying “Never again” in a new way. I agreed with him. The good news is that the media and many world leaders are describing Hamas in more accurate terms – a terrorist organization with no desire to compromise. What we all need to realize is that they are more than a terrorist organization too – like the Nazis before them they have goals, dreams, ideals, and a visionary view of fulfilling their charitable obligations through effective social service programs – and that’s what’s so alarming
Sha-alu shalom Yerushalayim – for Israel, for Ishmael, for the whole world. I have great hope for the ultimate reunion of Isaac and Ishmael but it just might have to wait a while.
Blind Isaac on his deathbed touches his son Jacob and says, “The voice is the voice of Jacob, but the hands are the hands of Esau.” Esau is the stronger brother, the hunter. Jacob, his twin, is a man of books and dreams. The two of them are an archetype of the twin parts of ourselves. For three thousand years this one line from Torah has been a shibboleth for people of Israel whenever we were on the verge of big trouble. Friends, Israel is on the verge of big trouble. We need to chant it again. By speaking with the “voice of Jacob” we never let ourselves become bitter or bigoted people. We hold onto our dream of a world where there is no hunger, oppression, or war. By having the “hands of Esau” we recognize that their are forces gathering bent on destroying Israel, and we must be prepared.
As a child I heard these words each Passover: “In every generation there are those who try to destroy us….” I never thought I would see the day when that terrifying line had meaning during my lifetime! “That was for my parents generation!” How naive I was to believe that I’d be part of the first generation in history when some monstrous power did not want to annihilate the Jews. The time has come for us to balance the dreams of our prophets with the reality of what Israel faces as a result of the Palestinian election of Hamas, and the recent proclamations by the President in Iran. The murder of athletes in Munich was just a beginning. Dozens of airline hijackings in the eighties – just a beginning. Terrorist attacks by Hamas escalated one-hundred fold after Rabin tried to make peace, and that was just a beginning. September 11 – just a beginning. The Taliban in Afghanistan were just the beginning. Arab (mostly Muslim) genocide against Blacks (mostly tribal or Christian) in Darfur – just a beginning. In almost all the local wars around the world there are Muslim radicals involved – just a beginning. Dutch filmmaker Theo Van Gogh’s assassination – just a beginning. Violent riots and dozens of people murdered in response to a cartoon in Denmark – just a beginning. Islam is at war with itself, and at war with the world. For the time being the terrorized, victimized, silent majority within Arab countries – the moderates, the women, the mystics, and my friends – are losing.
Wahhabi(1) ideology explicitly teaches that the world is divided into two parts. Dar el-Harb is the house of War – that part of the world controlled by non-Muslims (i.e. Europe, North America) which will someday be controlled by Muslims in its vision of world domination. Then there is Dar el-Islam, any land, especially Israel, that was once controlled by Muslims which must be “returned” to Muslims immediately. James Woolsey, former CIA Director under Clinton warns us,(2) “Wahhabi ideology is…totalitarian to a unique degree in its repression of women. In 2002…religious police in Saudi Arabia forced some young girls fleeing a burning school back inside to their deaths because they were not properly veiled. This is a fanaticism that knows no bounds….Christians, Jews, and other Muslims, followers of other religions, non believers – are under absolutely no obligation to accept the Wahhabis’ and their apologiests’ claims that they represent ‘true Islam.’”
American Sufi leader Sheik Muhammead Kabbani and a few other courageous Muslims have been warning us about Islamic extremism for a long time. Woolsey writes, “We must get over this reluctance to challenge the perpetrators of…theocratic totalitarianism….[whose] objective is to unify first the Arab world under theocratic rule…then those regions that were once Muslim (e.g. Spain), then the rest of the world. Such totalitarianism seems crazy to most of us; we thus tend to underestimate their potency….the Salafists’(3) theocratic totalitarian dream has some features in common with the secular totalitarian dreams of the twentieth century, e.g. Nazis’ Thousand year Reich, or the Communists’ World Communism. Salafists…exhibit fanatic hatred of Shiite Muslims, Sufi Muslims, Jews, Christians, and democracy….The underlying Salafist ideology being spread by the Wahhabis is fanatical and murderous, indeed explicitly genocidal.”
May Hashem bless us hold onto our dream as we awaken to what is really happening in our world. Just as the leaders of the Crusades and Inquisitions did not speak for true Christianity, so these new Crusaders do no speak for true Islam. When peace loving Muslims speak out on behalf of Israel or for brotherly relationship with Jews they are risking their lives, so let us be courageous as we stand by them. They are in what will probably be a long battle for the heart and soul of their faith. In the meantime, let us speak with the voice of Jacob and not be afraid of using the hand of Esau as we exercise our obligation to protect ourselves. Peace for Israel, Ishmael, and the world – That’s the dream! May the wall protecting Israel be even stronger – that’s the sad reality.
The day the Palestinian leadership declares an end to terrorism…the day the Palestinian people demand an end to their corrupt government…the day the Palestinian people declares themselves to be pluralistic, egalitarian, and democratic – on that day the Palestinian people will have their dreams fulfilled for a homeland and prosperous lives for its people. Does it seem naive that the solution should be so simple? Does it seem unfair that the responsibility for the misery of the Palestinian people is almost entirely in their own hands?
I have studied this conflict for decades. I have meditated, debated, spent Shabbat in Palestinian homes, prayed with Muslim friends, studied even more, and searched for a fair and objective understanding of the root of the Israeli/Palestinian conflict. Israel has made some foolish decisions along the way since its rebirth in 1948, and for decades I have condemned some of the unfair housing policies and cultural double standards that Israeli citizens (both Jewish and Muslim) of Arab descent have had to endure by the early Euro-centric Israeli leaders. I have publicly decried the counter-productive nature of most home demolitions, and other forms of collective punishment, in response to terrorist attacks.
But any objective analysis yields only one result – the misery of the Palestinian people has almost entirely been caused by 1) a corrupt Palestinian leadership which results in a lack of social service institutions; 2) a lack of democratic institutions (free speech, freedom to assemble, union movement, and free elections) in order for the people’s voices to be heard; and 3) the lack of religious tolerance, pluralism, and egalitarianism in otherwise medieval cultural structures (very few rights for religious minorities, women, and children).
There is no cycle of violence between Palestinians and Israelis. There is a cause and an effect. The Israeli’s have not brought violence upon themselves, and they have not incited terrorism. The few foolish policies of the Israeli government have no moral equivalency whatsoever to acts of terror perpetrated against civilians. The day the terrorism ends is the day the future of the Palestinian people begins. Let us be pragmatic in our political affiliations and opinions, but let us be visionary in our hopes for the future. The prophets spoke unambiguously of the destiny for both Palestinians and Israelis. Grounded by my faith I am certain of the eventual outcome – Israel will be secure. Palestinians will have a homeland. Freedom, democracy, and a women’s movement will sweep the Middle East soon. Actually, it is happening before our eyes right now. We just need to reach the tipping point for freedom, egalitarianism, and pluralism to take hold.
We live in a culture that is often so self-critical that we look for moral equivalencies where there are none. We ask, isn’t Hamas angry because they really have been harmed by Israel? Didn’t colonialism disempower the Arab world? Aren’t Western values corrupting Arab cultures? The answers are simple: no, no, and no. Hamas has no duplicity in their agenda. They represent Islamic fundamentalism that is at the level of consciousness where Christians were at the start of the Crusades. They will accept nothing less than a one-state solution – a Muslim state in place of Israel.
Western colonialism certainly cast a shadow upon the third world. But as colonialism ended between 1918 and 1950 newly freed nations like India opted for democracy and have prospered. Nations like Iraq, Iran, Syria, Saudi Arabia, and Libya opted for tyranny and have suffered. Finally, the only Western values that are “corrupting” Arab culture are ones that we hold dear: freedom, choice, and equal rights. These are threatening to the old patriarchal, hierarchical models of clan culture in most Arab nations. The violence and propaganda war against Israel is pure scapegoating. Jews are blamed for what most Arab citizens want for themselves. Keep hope alive for real shalom!
Late morning, May 11, 2005, lower Manhattan. Rachel and Debbie are inside Century 21, shopping for deep discount designer clothing. I’m across the street standing in front of the World Trade Center, or what once was the World Trade Center. I weep and davven there, praying and gripping the metal fence like a caged wolf on the outside wanting in. I want in – to walk the halls of this vast empty, urban canyon. I want in – to walk between what remains of the substructure and foundation descending three, four, five stories below ground level. I want to walk, if it is possible, within the essence of memory itself – to the very place where heaven meets hell on earth.
The cavern left by the removal of debris from the Twin Towers is the fullest emptiness I have ever experienced. Years ago at the Grand Canyon I was awed by the emptiness that defines the span between the majestic canyon walls. But the site of the Twin Towers is different. This is not majestic. It is not an empty emptiness like the Canyon, but, rather an emptiness filled with ghosts, memories of steel, concrete, and glass that once was, no longer is, and yet somehow remains. The air itself, the sky itself, seems to remember what was once there. The Towers remain – they remain and live in memory, catastrophic memory. They remain in the empty chairs in thousands of homes where children who call the name of a dead parent are answered only by memory, family stories, legends, home videos, CNN reports, and scrapbooks. And if I listen, listen between the voices of life on the streets around me now, I can hear, actually hear the emptiness itself.
A few nights earlier, I was in a Brooklyn bar listening to some great live jazz when I realized how much good living, holy living, really is like the needle of a record sitting in the groove. But what I hadn’t realized until I arrived at the site of the Twin Towers was that as a record in a record player turns, the needle is perfectly still. To be in the groove means to stand in total stillness while the record around you spins. The turntable turns, the record revolves, but the point of contact requires total stillness. To be in the groove requires a complete balance between stillness and movement, between diamond and vinyl. For the needle to do its work of reading the engraved cuts within the grooves, it must be still.
Just like us. To read what Hashem has engraved in nature, in our own lives, or in the emptiness of what once was the Twin Towers, we can’t be turning. We can’t be moving to get out of the way, or to get somewhere else. We have to remain in place. Totally in place. Perfectly in place. It is difficult to be still when I want to weep for those whose lives were lost. It is difficult to be still when I want to pray for a future free of terror. So I say my prayers, chant the Amidah, say kaddish, and then enter the silence. Silence in lower Manhattan is not an oxymoron. It is an honor.
I’m sure there are other great canyons, but there is something singular about the Grand Canyon. I’m sure there are many places of great emptiness where life has been destroyed, but there is something singular about the Twin Towers. Each of us contains within us something singular as well. Our fate is to find out what it is, and then face it with thanksgiving and hope, and then stand before ourselves and our God in silence.
From the earliest days of sound recordings people noticed something poetic about the way the needle stayed inside the groove as the record went round and round. In the 1930’s jazz musicians coined the term “being in the groove” to describe the sensation they experienced as they played – when the music seemed to have a life of its own, and everyone felt they were part of something bigger than themselves. In the 1960’s hippies applied the metaphor of “feeling groovy” to the state of feeling like the world was harmonious and whole.
A few years ago I visited my daughter, Rachel, in her Park Slope, Brooklyn apartment. On the first night she whisked me off to a local club called Barbes so we could get a seat for what she promised was going to be a great jazz jam. She told me that the guitarist was a young French virtuoso named Stephane Wrembel who played Django Reinhardt and gypsy-style music like no one else. “Yeah, yeah,” I thought, “like no one else? In Brooklyn? And what does my little girl know about great jazz anyway?” So I said, “OK, honey, whatever you want to do. It’s your Brooklyn now. I’m your guest!”
We arrived an hour early to secure a good seat and started drinking Brooklyn Lager. (They never had a micro-brewed beer when I lived there; the best you could do then was Schaeffer). May 8, 2005, at 9 PM: there I was on 9th Street on the corner of 6th Avenue, deep, deep in the old country where I grew up. The musicians arrived: Stephane, the young virtuoso; a female guitarist from Spain, maybe 20, whose last name was Cohen; another guitarist from London, a guy maybe In his mid-twenties; a bass player; and washboard master David Langlois. Washboard? Master? What was that homemade concoction of an instrument on his lap, anyway?
They started playing “Sweet Georgia Brown,” and within seconds (okay, two minutes) the groove was set. They followed with an unbelievable improvisation on “Bei Mier Bist Du Shayne.” Sometime during the first set I died and went straight to jazz heaven. And the music got better by the minute. (So did the beer). For three hours I experienced the jam of jams. I looked at Stephane and thought, “Who is this rebbe…this reincarnation of one of the great guitar tzadikkim? No one’s fingers move that fast without Divine intervention! And what about this percussionist who transforms finger tapping on metal and wood into exalted solos?” Gevaldt, they were good!
The next morning Rachel had to go to work at the Brooklyn Children’s Museum. On the way she dropped me off at 770. 770 is not just a number – it’s an entire universe. 770 Eastern Parkway is the home of the Lubavitch Hasidic movement. This was the very place where Reb Shlomo and Reb Zalman were ordained in 1947 – the same year I was born, Jackie Robinson joined the Dodgers, and Israel was declared a nation. It was a good year by all measures. The basement of 770 has been transformed into a huge synagogue where davvenen and study go on around the clock. Arriving at 11 AM I thought I’d be one of a few latecomers. But, no this is 770! Around the clock this shul is filled with men and women coming to make a deep connection to the Divine. By the time I arrived, the shul was populated by lean and pale-faced yeshiva students whose average age was maybe eighteen. Everyone was dressed in black and white – what a metaphor! Was I the only one in color there? I had just walked into the nineteenth-century world of Jewish men deep in Eastern Europe. It was Brooklyn outside but Lubavitch, Russia inside.
I put on a borrowed tallit and t’fillin and within seconds I was deep in ecstatic prayer – rocking and swaying back and forth; my eyes flying through the pages of the siddur – and then satori struck! Zap! The groove I was in the evening before was the same as the groove I was in during davvenen. My body rocked the same way during my davennen as it had rocked during the Stephane Wrembel jazz jam. Ecstatic jazz and ecstatic prayer were part of some secret, hidden oneness that only I was blessed to behold that morning. If I called out to everyone, “Hey, holy brothers, there’s a bar up the street that has this incredible jazz every Sunday night…” they would have tossed me out of the shul. And if I had gone to the bar and told the Django fans that there was this great synagogue down the street where the praying is as good as jazz, they, too, would have tossed me out.
Right now, I don’t care who tosses me out of their bars and shuls. I am just thankful to G-d to have seen that there is only one groove – one groove and many paths: the groove of great jazz on Sunday night at Barbes; the groove of great davvenen at 770 Eastern Parkway; and the groove of being with my daughter in Brooklyn on a beautiful week in May.
If you have RealPlayer you can listen to a 3 hour concert of the guitarist
Rabbi David wrote about at
In 1990, a group of us brought Reb Zalman to Ashland to lead a Shabbaton (weekend retreat). Rabbi Aryeh had founded the Havurah just five years earlier in 1985. Looking back as our community is getting ready to host Reb Zalman once again it’s hard to believe that it was that long ago – Reb Zalman was 65 at the time, I was 42. The Havurah was 5. Last summer Reb Zalman celebrated his 80th. birthday, the Havurah is about to celebrate it’s 20th. birthday. And this summer it will have been 10 years since I was ordained!
I started thinking about time a few weeks ago when I took my first 10% senior citizen discount at Señor Sam’s restaurant. I’m 57 and I was actually eligible for the “senior” discount two years ago, but I smugly denied my age each time I approached the counter to pay my bill. The cashier would ask, “Senior discount?” And I’d say, “Me? Are you talking to me? Of course not! I’m not eligible. Thank you very much!” A few weeks ago, however, Fate caught me by surprise. You see I had ordered lunch and as I was getting ready to pay I realized that I was short on change in my pocket…about fifty cents short. My bill was $5.13 including tax, and as I glanced down in embarrassment I received what I took to be a heavenly sign.
Actually, it was a very small sign by the cash register that announced “10% Senior Discount: 55 and over.” I thought, “Hmm, 10% off from $5.13 is exactly what I have in my pocket. Okay Hashem I surrender. I’m taking the ‘senior’ discount!” I must admit that I have avoided the senior discounts there for the last two years out of fear that I was signing onto something I wasn’t ready to agree to yet. Oddly enough, saving the fifty-cents was so much fun I went back there twice in the next few days just to tempt Fate a bit more. I told Hashem, “Okay, have it your way. I’m getting older, but I might as well enjoy every discount I can along the way” To date, I’ve saved $3.75.
In the Tenakh (Bible) time takes on a transcendental character too, just like at Señor Sam’s. The sense of time in the Bible is mystical and profound. Mary Ellen Chase, a great Protestant scholar wrote in “Life and Language in the Old Testament” that “The Hebrew language had no word for hour, and those who spoke and wrote it no idea whatever of such a period of time….To the ancient Hebrews a thousand years might, indeed, be as yesterday; or each of the six so-called days in which God created the heavens and the earth might mean to them an incalculable expanse of time. Nor must the events of their history be understood as in any sense dated by them, placed in any secure niches of time. These events are forever in their consciousness, constantly in their hearts and before their eyes, in their present as well as in their remote past. In other words, the happenings of their history were timeless to them….”
And King Soloman reminds us in Ecclesiastes 3:1 that “To every thing there is a season, and a time to every purpose under the heaven.” So now is the time of senior discounts. In five years I’ll be 62 and I get a discount at the Varsity. In eight years I’ll get them everywhere. May Time bring us more and more joy, and may we enjoy G-d’s discounts along the way!
Israel, 1990: Our Havurah tour group was boarding the bus to meet a renowned mystic in Tsfat who would reveal the hidden kabbalistic secrets of creation. Debbie, Judy, Claire, and Bill were staying behind in Tiberias where they would relax in the sun, be with the kids, or just enjoy the touristy boat ride across the Sea of Galilee. Debbie gave me her blessing to enjoy the teaching in Tsfat.
As I was saying good-bye, five year old Ari looked up at me with a gigantic tear falling down his cheek, and said, “Daddy, I don’t want you to go, I want you to stay with me today!” Oy, what should a would-be kabbalist do? How could I miss what was going to be the teaching of all teachings, the revelation of the secrets of creation itself? On the other hand, how could I say “no” to my son wanting to be with me? In less than a flash of an instant I said to Ari, “Okay, I’ll stay!” Bruce and Aryeh looked at me like I was crazy. Our little group boarded the boat for the ride across the Galilee.
To battle my doubt and despair at having stayed behind I went to the front of the boat, took out my guitar and the few remaining Havurahniks that stayed behind started singing “Hiney Ma Tov ” as we got underway. Suddenly a dozen members of a Christian choir from Spain joined in with exquisite harmonies. We spoke no Spanish. They spoke no English, but we all sang together in Hebrew. It was what we call in Yiddish a gevaldtik moment – powerful and inspiring. It was a taste of heaven! We kept singing as our Christian friends celebrated the place where Jesus walked on water, and where on a spiritual level we all felt as if we were walking on water at that very moment.
Last March Debbie and I stayed with Rachel in Brooklyn. From great jazz to the shul where Reb Zalman was ordained in the late 1940’s, all the way to the Twin Towers site – this trip was special. Except for one thing – I was dying to see a Broadway musical like Hairspray or the off-Broadway Elvis review called All Shook Up, but Rachel and Debbie would have nothing to do with my sentimental desires to relive my childhood. No, for these two urban sophisticates our night on Broadway was going to be meaningful – a drama! A drama? We’re in Manhattan for one evening and we’re going to a drama? Who was I married to? What kind of child did I raise?
They dragged me to Doubt, the 2005 Pulitzer Prize winning play by John Patrick Shanley, that deals with an accusation of child molestation against a priest. From the opening scene when Father Flynn delivers a brilliant sermon on the nature of doubt, I was riveted. For the next ninety-minutes everything would get turned inside out. A priest who was kind, progressive, and who sincerely loves kids is accused of molesting a boy by a nun who had no proof, only what she called her inner “certainties.” She was the kind of nun that my Catholic friends hated when they were growing up: strict and arrogant. Yet it was that very arrogance that gave her the courage to stand up against the priest, and the whole Church establishment if necessary. But is Father Flynn really guilty? Is Sister Aloysius crazed in her arrogance? I’m not giving anything away, but the audience will never find out anything with certainty. You will be given the gift of doubt itself. Whatever opinions you have about the priest or the nun, your own sense of certainty will be shaken. The play is nothing less than a parable of life itself and will, I believe, become an American classic.
I had doubt about staying with my family at the Sea of Galilee in 1990. I had doubt about seeing a drama with my daughter and wife in 2005. Yet it was the very energy of my doubts that permitted me to transform my own self-centeredness into two special experiences. And isn’t that what the High Holidays are really all about? We come to shul with doubt about our own self-worth, about out ability to really change, about the power of God to forgive. So, we work with the doubt – we shape it, we battle it, we let it shape us, observe the battle within us, and then at one amazing moment we surrender control to something greater than ourselves. For just a moment in one of the services (we never know which one), in one of the prayers (we’re never told in advance) we let go of the reins and let Shekhinah guide us for a change. Literally, She guides us for a change! As the popular saying goes we “let go and let God.” May the High Holidays be sweet, profound, healing, and transformative for each of us and our loved ones. May we hold on to our doubts as long as necessary, and may we know when to let go!
levitraby Rabbi David Zaslow October, 2004
The spiritual work of autumn is to examine our inner lives. Springtime is all about changing the world. From a Jewish spiritual viewpoint we’d be better off holding elections in spring rather than autumn. Why? Because focusing on politics right after Yom Kippur can be a diversion from the inner work we need to do. An election in November can make us believe that we don’t even need to do inner work. We fool ourselves into believing that if the world was in better shape then we’d be better people. The teachings of Judaism, however, tell us that if we were better people then the world would be a better place.
The worldly, activist work of Passover is to topple the oppression of Pharaoh and deal with all the outer forces of liberation. The work of autumn is to deal with ourselves. The secret is for each of us is to learn when to focus on inner work, and when to focus on politics. Both inner and outer work depend on מוּסָר mussar, the Jewish ethical approach to everything we do. On Yom Kippur a few years ago I told the following story about Rabbi Yisrael Meir Kagan, one of the great luminaries in Europe before the World War II, and a founder of the modern Mussar movement.
Rabbi Kagen, also known as the Chofetz Chaim, hosted many teachers and businessmen from throughout the continent. Once a travelling businessman noticed how sparse the Rabbis’ home was, and said, “Rebbe, you are such a great teacher, you could have anything you want. Where is your furniture? The Rebbe turned to his guest and said to him, “Where is your furniture?” The businessman said, “Rabbi, I’m on the road, I don’t have any furniture with me. I’m just passing through.” The Rebbe turned to his guest and said, “Me too. I’m just passing through as well.”
Judaism upholds the paradox of two contradictory views of the world. The other-worldly view of Autumn affirms that we are all just travelers passing through. The worldly, activist view of Spring and Passover affirms the necessity of toppling the oppression of Pharaoh. The secret is for each of us is to learn when to focus on inner work, and when to focus on politics. But always, the thread that holds these two views together is mussar
In a profound way we are all just passing through. We are the spawning salmon; the migration of geese; the trees whose season is over; the plants in our yards that are destined not to survive the winter. After Yom Kippur we each die a spiritual death. What need did the Rebbe have for furniture? He knew that his entire life was simply and magnificently an act of “passing through.” The root of the word עִבְרִית “Hebrew,” eevreet, means “passing through” or “crossing over.” The Jews are the “passing through” people.
In this season we empathize with all those who are suffering from hunger, poverty, and war. A piece of their pain is our pain. We feel a little bit of the pain of the families whose loved ones have been murdered by terrorists. We feel a little bit of the pain of the families of our soldiers who died fighting for freedom this past year. With empathy for others, something within us changes – we become better people, and our “passing through” gains meaning. Atonement occurs. Attunement occurs. At-one-ment occurs. This is the deeper meaning of autumn.
Their are three primary forms of spiritual practice, and every religion utilizes all three in various combinations during worship. Within each religion are denominations that emphasize one or two forms of practice over the other. In fact, I believe, that the particular recipe of spiritual practice is the what defines a denomination. The three forms are:
1) Liturgical: a fixed body of chants, prayers, readings, and songs interspersed with specific rituals (standing, sitting, bowing, etc.). The liturgical approach is fixed in order to create consistency and a sense of safety for the each member of the congregation.
2) Ecstatic: an ecstatic experience of G-d is accomplished thorough a combination of movement, breath, and voice. It may contain a prolonged chant, or a chant in combination with a movement. It is unpredictable in length, and the actions of the participants are unpredictable. Some leap, somersault, circle, spin, or wave hands. But the result is the same: a sense of union with the Divine.
3) Contemplative: through one of many meditative practices (quiet chant, repetition of a syllable or word, silence, privately talking to G-d, walking, etc.) each religion uses some form of meditation in it’s approach to G-d or Reality. Sometimes the meditation uses some liturgy (I.e. chant); other times it silent and aims at emptying. In fact, the contemplative tradition itself has several categories: the emptying forms (i.e. Zen); the visualization forms (i.e. Lurianic Kabbalah and Tibetan Buddhism) and mindfulness (Tich Naht Han’s teachings, Japanese tea ceremony, putting on t’fillin, etc.)
Denominations can also be distinguished by their level of formality. Within Judaism, for example, some synagogues are casual, somewhat unpredictable, spontaneous, and informal (I.e. in hasidic and Renewal communities) even though they are following a fixed liturgy. Other groups are more formal and fixed (I.e., services begin and end at fixed times). But all our synagogues use some combo of the liturgical, contemplative, and ecstatic.
During Shabbat or any Jewish holiday, you will probably find yourself attracted to different forms of worship at different times. For example during Yom Kippor afternoon you might need more silent, contemplative time whereas the evening of Yom Kippor it is the predictability of the chanting and fixed melody of Kol Nidre that is just what your soul needs. Honor your instincts to shift and express yourself in words, chant, movement, and silence. If you are sitting in a group, for example, and you need to be alone in silence simply cover yourself in your tallis (prayer shawl) as a personal tent and mishkan (sanctuary). Or, if during the ecstatic chants or songs you are drawn to stand up and move, please do so on your own. As you are inspired by others around you, so you will inspire others as well. Measure for measure – as the congregation is an expression of many individuals, each in his/her own mode of worshop (liturgical, ecstatic, contemplative) all at the same time, so the multiplicity of the Divine’s thirteen attributes will pour down on each of us in a single and unified stream. The result of this kind of worship will be a heightened sense of the deep interconnection between self, community, nature, and G-d. May we all be blessed this year with great davvenen (prayer), deep listening, and profound personal transformation. And from these sacred personal states may each of us affect the world around us for life, health, peace, and good. Amayn!
by Rabbi David Zaslow June, 2004
Someone recently said to me, “Everyone who criticizes Israel these days gets accused of being anti-Semitic.” I told him, “That’s not true. The most intense criticism of Israel can be found in Israel itself. Israel is a thriving pluralistic democracy founded on Torah values. Self-criticism is not just a right, but a moral obligation.” What’s the difference between legitimate and passionate criticism of Israel and the kind that gets labeled by non-partisan watchdog groups like the Jewish Anti-defamation League as anti-Semitic? It’s simple: if the criticism is offensive due to hyperbole (i.e. Israel is fascist state, Sharon is like Hitler, Zionism is racism, the Israelis are rapists, etc.) then the comments are justifiably called anti-Semitic.
Secondly, if a double standard is being applied to Israel that is not applied to any other nation, then the statement should be subjected to scrutiny. For example, there are dozens of nations that call themselves Christian, and dozens of other nations that call themselves Moslem. There are a handful that call themselves Hindu or Buddhist nations, yet none of these nations are accused of being “racist” because they proudly wave the banner of their particular religious majority. Yet there are those who proclaim that “Zionism is racism” simply because one tiny sliver of a nation proudly proclaimed itself to be a haven for Jews fleeing persecution after the Holocaust.
Many of us grew up at a time when much of the world’s anti-Semitism came from the far right. Ideas about the Jews controlling the media and the banking system, and other conspiratorial fantasies, were plentiful. Much of the current wave of anti-Semitism is coming from the far left, and statements claiming Israeli “racism” and “Nazi-like brutality” are plentiful. Left or right, it really doesn’t matter – extremism, hyperbole, and false accusations are destructive forces. Extremist Arab propaganda would have the world believe that Israel is the root cause of the conflict in the Middle East.
As Haim Harari recently wrote, “The millions who died in the Iran-Iraq war had nothing to do with Israel. The mass murder happening right now in Sudan, where the Arab Moslem regime is massacring its black Christian citizens, has nothing to do with Israel. The frequent reports from Algeria about the murders of hundreds of civilians in one village or another by other Algerians have nothing to do with Israel. Saddam Hussein did not invade Kuwait, endanger Saudi Arabia and butcher his own people because of Israel. Egypt did not use poison gas against Yemen in the 60’s because of Israel. Assad did not kill tens of thousands of his own citizens in one week in El Hamma in Syria because of Israel. The Taliban control of Afghanistan and the civil war there had nothing to do with Israel. The Libyan blowing up of the Pan-Am flight had nothing to do with Israel…”
The bottom line is that Israel, like America, is despised by Middle Eastern extremists for its pluralism and democracy. The last thing Al Qaida wants to see is a thriving union movement in the Middle East, or a thriving ecology movement. Imagine the welcome that feminist ideas or gay rights are receiving right now in Saudi Arabia or Iran. The claim that Israel (code word for “Jews”) is the root of all evil is simply a smokescreen for the fear of the internal transformation that the Arab and greater Islamic world is now going through a transformation not unlike the Reformation and Age of Reason that Europe experienced a few hundred years ago.
May those who are working for change within Islam itself be strengthened, blessed, and protected. May those who are working for peace, pluralism, and democracy in the Middle East prevail.
The paper known as Nostra Aetate issued by the Vatican in 1965 created a revolutionary shift in the attitude of the Church toward the Jewish people. Pope John XXIII wrote, “Forgive us the curse which we unjustly laid on the name of the Jews. Forgive us that, with our curse, we crucified Thee a second time.” After the reunification of Jerusalem in 1967 many Evangelical churches became Israel’s most vocal supporters, and courageously remain so today in the face of growing anti-Semitism that is sweeping across Europe. Sadly, Mel Gibson’s father is a member of a small, break-away Catholic denomination that has rejected the new position of the Church toward the Jewish people. They remain dedicated to the position that the Church has replaced Israel and that the covenantal relationship of the Jewish people to God has been severed. This replacement doctrine has been rejected by most mainstream and evangelical churches who have worked hard in recent decades to teach the spiritual validity of the Jewish covenant.
Mel Gibson’s film “The Passion” is apparently magnificent in its presentation the gospel of Christianity, yet I understand that it cleaves to the mythic depiction of the Jewish people turning Jesus over to Pilate for crucifixion. The citizens of Jerusalem are portrayed as an angry mob representing the Jewish people, and the Roman Empire is portrayed as passive, bewildered, and not primarily responsible for Jesus’ death. Historically, this is far from the truth. But just as the film has the potential to stir up old wounds, myths, and stereotypes so it also has the potential to heal old wounds if it inspires honest dialogue.
For two-thousand years translational errors, and a lack of telling the Passion story in its correct historical context have caused certain groups to blame the Jews for Jesus’ death. Today, almost every pastor I know in our Valley teach that the death of Jesus was caused “by all of humanity” and that he “willingly gave his own life.” This, of course, is a higher level, modern interpretation of the text – for most of two-thousand years it was the Jews who were blamed for the crucifixion who were labeled throughout Europe as “Christ-killers” and the traditional of European Passion plays performed before Easter often led to anti-Jewish violence.
Most of the popular English translations of Christian Scriptures do seem to place the blame for the death of Jesus on the Jews. For example if Acts 2:36 is taken out of historical context is seems clear that “all the house of Israel” was responsible for the crucifixion. Paul writes, “Therefore let all the house of Israel know assuredly, that God has made that same Jesus, whom you have crucified, both Lord and Christ.” The same is true with many other passages as well (i.e. Matthew 27:20 & 25, John 19:6, etc.). The uneducated reader gets the sense that the “multitude” that handed Jesus over to the Romans represented all the Jewish people rather than a tiny minority of priests who were working for the Romans, and who themselves were disliked by the general Jewish population.
An objective knowledge of first-century Judaism is also crucial for understanding the Passion story. The theology of the priests and the Sanhedrin (Jewish court) was seen by most first-century Jews as narrow minded, and serving to further the Roman occupation. According to the Talmud, the Sanhedrin at that time was “bloody,” corrupt, and despised by most of the population. The puppet judges, priests, and scribes of the Roman Empire who were threatened by Jesus were also threatened by all the authentic Jewish teachers of that period. Thankfully, most American pastors and priests ceased blaming Jews for the crucifixion decades ago. However, in Europe, Latin America, and the Middle East the historical reality of Jesus’ life is not always taken into account when the Passion story is told.
According to the Roman historian Josephus the streets of Jerusalem were lined with Jewish martyrs who were crucified during a century of Jewish revolts. Somewhere between 50,000-100,000 Jews were crucified along with Jesus during that period, and more than a million Jews died of starvation or in battle against the Romans. The New Testament was written for people who knew the historical context, but today this context is lost without the commentary and courage of our pastors. The film, I am told, may accurately portray the teachings of the gospel, but it does not do justice to historical reality. The first-century sect that opposed Jesus’ teachings were known as the Saducees. This sect, in fact, was opposed to the teachings of most of the local rabbis who represented the general population. According to Jewish records the Saducees were the Temple leaders and had been corrupted by the Roman Empire in the decades preceding Jesus’ birth. Too many people for too many centuries have been mistaught that the “some” of the Jews (the Saducees) represented “all” of the Jews.
The curse in Matthew 27:25 is especially misunderstood, and has misled readers of the Gospel accounts to believe that the Jews have been eternally cursed for the sin of killing Jesus, a sin called Diecide (the killing of God) by early Church leaders. In the second century Justin Martyr wrote, “Those who slandered Him [Jesus] should be miserable….Jews suffer because they are guilty of not having recognized the One with whom they had to do in their own history. When he appeared, they killed him. Not knowing this One, the Logos, Jews fail to know God.” In the fourth-century John Chrysostom wrote, “It is against the Jews that I wish to draw up my battle… Jews are abandoned by God and for the crime of Deicide, there is no expiation possible.”
The Roman occupation was not passive, but brutal. Yet a New Testament reader may not get this crucial fact. Thankfully, many American pastors are now including historical context and alternative translations to the Greek text of the New Testament when they deliver their Easter sermons. I pray that Christian leaders everywhere will use this opportunity to advance the truth of the gospel, but also use the film as a starting-point to discourage anti-Semitism. If this is done, I believe, God’s will can be accomplished. From the last few decades of interfaith dialogue Jews and Christians are beginning to learn to not confuse the two ways Jesus is approached – historically and theologically. The Christian teaching that Jesus died for all of humanity needs to be understood by all of us who share our love and service to God with our Christian brothers and sisters – this is the theological Jesus. Conversely, Jewish sensitivity to the way the Passion story is told needs to be understood by our Christian friends, and this is where more learning about the historical Jesus is needed. The greatest gift of the film that I anticipate is patience, compassion, dialogue, learning, and greater understanding between Christians and Jews. That certainly will be the case for Havurah members and our friends at Trinity Episcopal Church since we plan on studying the film together this month.
שָׁלוֹם עֲלֵיכֶם, Shalom Alekhem, peace be unto you. The major theme of the Jewish festival of Passover is liberation: we were slaves but the mighty hand and outstretched arm of the Holy One set us free. Each year for the past 3,300 years Jewish people have gathered in their homes on the full moon in the month of Nissan to retell the story of our Exodus, and to make of that ancient story relevant to our lives today. When the youngest child in the household asks the formulaic four questions beginning with “why is this night different from all over nights,” a chain reaction of responses is set in motion. Each person at the seder table shares his and her own a personal response to the Exodus story.
Hebrew, by its nature, promotes interpretation, storytelling, and the extension of the plain meaning of the text into all its metaphorical and allegorical possibilities. For example, the word for Egypt in Hebrew is actually not that of a particular nation, but rather it means “tight, narrow, and restricted places.” The word mitzrayim implies that enslavement is not only caused by the external and oppressive forces of a regime like that of the ancient Egyptian empire, but that there is an internal source of enslavement as well. So, from ancient times to this very day Jewish people ask each other at the seder table, implicitly or explicitly, “What are the tight and narrow places that are holding you back from becoming the free, creative, joyous, and liberated person that God would have you be this year?”
Another interesting word to study is the word “Pharaoh.” We all know, of course, that pharaoh was the title for each of the various a monarchs in ancient Egypt. But the word in Hebrew can be translated as “a mouth of that speaks evil.” So on Passover week we examine the subtle ways in which our mouths and speech get us into trouble. And knowing how difficult it is to change old, negative behavioral patterns, we ask for God’s intervention and aid in liberating of us from our old ways that enslave us, especially concerning the ways we speak to and about each other. Bottom line – Passover, to each Jew, must be a modern, relevant, and challenging story to each of us and not merely the retelling of an ancient Bible story, no matter how beautiful that story might be.
The prophet Isaiah 43:18 is told by the Lord: “Do not remember the former of things, or consider the things of old. I’m about to make new; now it springs forth. Don’t you see it? I will make a way in the wilderness and rivers in the desert.” Is the prophet asking us to forgo the retelling of the Exodus story at Passover each year? No, but he is informing us in no uncertain terms that God does not need us to tell the old story unless its purpose is to make us new. Don’t we see it? All our old stories – national, tribal, religious, and personal – can become subtle idols at that we adore and worship, unless we permit our stories to touch us, heal us, and transform us. Only in this way will we discover that the wilderness of our lives has a way, a path, an invisible highway for us to follow, and that there is indeed a river flowing in the desert of our lives.
So here are the questions that we might ask ourselves this year: “Am I telling the same old story this year as I did last year? Am I telling my story as an excuse not to move forward toward my own liberation? Or am I telling my story and permitting God to make me new?”
The Christian story of Easter is the story of resurrection. It is not just Christ’s life that is central for you, and not just that he died for you. But it is in the resurrection that you are given the secret to God’s promise to make you new. If you only retell the passion story as a remembrance of things of old, if you only share the story of Jesus’ life as a history lesson, you are not doing the work that Easter requires of you. To find your way in the wilderness and make a river in your desert God asks each of you to explore the meaning of the resurrection in your own personal lives. What dream of yours has been crucified? What part of your life is on the cross with your Savior? What part of you has already died but has within it the promise of reawakening, of spring’s renewal, of resurrection?
Do you see the parallels in our two stories? They’re both springtime stories: ours is the story of liberation of the people to be interpreted and told as a story of personal liberation; yours is the story of the resurrection of Christ to be interpreted and told as the personal promise by God of your own reawakening. In Philippians 3, Paul says “I want to know Christ and the power of his resurrection in the sharing of his sufferings by becoming like him in his death if somehow I may attain the resurrection from the dead. Not that I have already obtained this or have already reached the goal, but I press on to make it my own, because Christ Jesus has made me his own.” Paul is not content with the story of things of old, or with the telling of resurrection of Jesus as a historical event. No, he strives toward his own resurrection; not just a resurrection after he dies, but a resurrection of things dead while he is yet alive.
Do you see what Paul is saying here? Precisely what the Prophet Isaiah was trying to say. Take your story and transform it into a living process; take history and make it present; take the enslavement or the crucifixion of others and make it personal and relevant. In Psalm 126, King David sings: “When the Holy One brings about our return to Zion, we will have been like dreamers. Then our mouths will be filled with laughter, and our tongues with joyous song. They will say among the nations: ‘The Lord has done great things for them.’ The Lord has done great things for us and we rejoiced. Turn again our captivity, O Lord as the streams is in the Negev. Though now he walks weeping carrying his bag of seed – he will return with joyous song carrying his sheaves.” May all of us who now sow in tears realize that soon we will reap in joy!
After our Passover, and after your Easter, with God’s blessing and with all the introspection and inner work that we are doing to make this season meaningful, may we meet each other in the street and be as dreamers who share a common dream. May our be mouths be filled with song and laughter! May we each return to the Zion of gratitude, happiness, health. God’s promise is that though we sow in tears, we are like the earth that has received the waters of the winter rains that have just passed, and through the rains, our tears, our joy is made possible. The equinox has passed, the full moon we both await is coming. It is almost Passover, almost Easter. We are readying ourselves for liberation and resurrection. Time will not wait for us. As the angel of death passes over our homes at midnight, may we mark our doorposts with the blood the lamb and be ready, in an instant, to be set free. God bless this church, our community, our nation, and our planet in this moment of renewal, liberation, and resurrection. Have a zisen (sweet) Pesach, and a transformative Easter.
There are really two wars in Iraq – a physical war and a spiritual war. Our sages teach us that events in our world are mirrored in the spiritual realm, and visa versa. Regardless of our political affiliations, I’m sure that we all pray for the safety of our soldiers, for their safe return, and for an end to terrorism. Since Biblical times the nation of Iraq (known then as both Mesopotamia and later as Babylon) was the quintessential archetype for the “place of confusion” for the Jewish people. The nation we call Iraq today was known in Biblical times as “Bavel,” and means both “confusion” and “withering.” In fact, the English word “babble” meaning “confused talking” comes from the Babylonian superpower that challenged Israel’s right to exist as a nation twenty-five hundred years ago.
In Genesis Chapter 11 a story is told that “the whole earth was of one language…. And they said, ‘Come, let us build us a city and a tower, whose top may reach to heaven….’ And Hashem said, ‘Behold, the people are one…nothing will be restrained from them which they have schemed to do….So the Lord scattered them abroad…and they left off the building of the city. Therefore is the name of it called Babel, because Hashem did there confuse the language….” Herein lies the secret for understanding the inner meaning of Babylon: it is a form of arrogance and confused thinking when any of us think we can “reach to heaven” with our material possessions and creations. The rabbis of the Talmud taught us to see Babylon as an archetype that could be applied to every generation.
The mystics in Jewish tradition teach us to take the archetype of Babylon one step further – right to our own personal lives. Babylon becomes the place of the confusion that each of us experiences in our own lives: spiritually, intellectually, emotionally, and politically. For instance, when we build towers to “reach to heaven” through an intellect separated from G-d we are, so to speak, serving the gods of Babylon. When we seek material possessions or power devoid of Torah ethics we are living in the confused world of Babylon. Yet, paradoxically, the land of Iraq (ancient Mesopotamia) was also a place of origin for the Jewish people. The Garden of Eden was partially on that land, and it was in the city of Ur where Abraham and Sarah heard the call to “go forth” to a land that G-d would show them. Later in Jewish history we were taken into captivity after Nebuchadnezzar destroyed Solomon’s Temple. He took tens of thousands of Jews as slaves to cities like Baghdad and Falluja which became the places of “confused” identity for our people. Why? Because as horrible as our enslavement was we were permitted to set up what became the greatest academies of learning in Jewish history. Even today the most popular edition of the Talmud is called the Babylonian Talmud.
In recent weeks the battle for the Iraqi city of Falluja has been at the top of the news. More than twenty-five hundred years ago, during the rule of the Babylonian empire the city of Falluja was one of the greatest centers for Jewish learning, and was known as Pumbeditha. It was there that we learned how to analyze and interpret – intellectual skills that later became a hallmark of Judaism. It was, in fact, in Babylon that the Jewish people gained detailed secular learning in subjects ranging from music to astronomy. Most scholars agree that Torah trope1 was developed in Babylon. Most agree that the names of the Hebrew months, and even the names of the archangels were learned in Babylon. What a paradox! Something bad (captivity) was transforming into something good (learning) – something that would help preserve the Jewish people for the next few thousand years.
I’m sure this transformation was “confusing” to our people, just as many of us are confused today when we hear the news. Yet, I believe that the Bible teaches that something good will also come from all this “confusion.” On the spiritual plane the second war in Iraq is a world war against both confusion and arrogance, and it could be that something incredible (peace and justice) will be coming out of all the pain and fear we are now experiencing. There seems to be a Divine message that arises out of the war in Iraq: whether you are conservative or liberal; whether you were for the war or against the war – do not be arrogant! Do not be confused! Rabbi Simon Jacobson recently wrote that “The real war – which is going on now for thousands of years, tracing back to the battles between Ishmael, Isaac, Esau and Jacob – is an ideological one: between matter and spirit, between the Divine and the universe – a war to make our peace with G-d and to discover unity between our natural lives and our Divine mission statement….Saying up is down and down is up, that’s Babel. Making absurd comparisons of Sharon to Hitler or Bush to Saadam, that’s Babel regardless of who you voted for.
Isn’t “saying up is down and down is up” what we hear from commentators and representatives from both the Left and Right today? From exaggerated claims and scandalous comments made by members of all the political parties, to the near paranoid conspiracy theories one hears – this is all part of Babel; all a part of our personal exile into Babylon; in the inner land of confusion. Babel is a description of the archetypal energy that exists in every one of us, in every culture, and in every nation. It is the force that divides people through confusion. The opposite of Babel is shalom, the Hebrew word that comes from a word root meaning “wholeness.” Shalom means that the whole, both sides of an issue, must be accounted for, and that people representing each side of an important issue actually need each other in order to fulfill G-d’s will in our world. Babel is “babble” because it divides and polarizes people in ways that are counterproductive and destructive. Shalom brings people together, even people who disagree – especially people who disagree! That is why shalom is so important in our era and why Babel must be corrected and transformed.
The archetypal struggle between Israel and Babylon is a struggle between those of us willing to wrestle with the complex, in-between, grey areas of truth, and those of us who confuse complex issues with nasty language, half-truths, hyperbole, and sloganeering. Let us be very, humble and maintain hope for the great redemption and cultural transformation that is happening before our eyes. It is written in Isaiah 63:1, “Who is this coming from Edom2, with sullied garments from Basra3? For a day of vengeance is in My heart and the year of My redemption has come.” To those of us on the political left – our garments are sullied! To those of us on the political right – our garments are sullied! Isaiah’s words imply a profound, world karmic balancing when he speaks of G-d’s “day of vengeance,” and yet the message is ultimately of hope as he quotes G-d speaking of “the year of My redemption.”
The metaphor that Rabbi Simon Jacobson,4 uses is that Esau has “two faces:” a face of sanctity since he is the twin of Jacob and the son of Issac and Rebecca, and a face of materialism. Just as Issac and Ishmael represent the struggle between Jews and Muslims in the world today, so Esau and Jacob represent the struggle and ultimate reunion between Europe, America, and the West with the Jewish people, and all other minorities who identify themselves with Jacob. European nations have always had “two faces” when it came to the Jewish people. At times we were welcome in the countries where we lived after the Diaspora, at other time we were the victims of pogroms, ethnic cleansing, and ultimately the Holocaust.
During Talmudic times (two thousand years ago) the rabbis associated Edom with the Roman Empire, or any nation or individual who exalted materialism over spirituality, military might over reason, and personal gain over justice. Yet at the end of the Jacob and Esau story5 the two brothers seem to reconcile their differences, and they form a kind of truce or peace treaty. But the story has a dangling conclusion because their is implied a future reunion6 of the brothers which never took place during their lifetimes. There are many of who sense that the world is still awaiting the complete reunion of these two brothers, and that current events on the world scene may be pointing to such a reunion very soon.
It could be said that the repentance of Esau takes place whenever force (the aggressive and materialistic side of Esau) is used for a moral, G-dly purpose, such as the defeat of fascism during World War II, or in the Cold War against communist tyranny during the second half of the twentieth-century. According to Rabbi Jacobson, Esau today is represented by Western culture, and in particular by Christianity. We know from history that the West certainly has two faces: the shadow side of Christianity produced the Crusades, Inquisition, the near genocide of Native Americans, colonialism, the brutal enslavement of Blacks, and the Holocaust. Yet the other face of Esau has been the incredible side of Western culture that has produced all the Torah-based institutions and values we associate with our democratic systems of justice and governance: freedom to dissent, freedom of religion, freedom of the press, egalitarianism, pluralism, etc.). My teacher, Rabbi Shlomo Carlebach, may his memory be a blessing, taught that in preparation for this reunion the Jewish people should call Esau “Uncle Esau,” so as to welcome him back to the family. The suggestion made me laugh when I first heard it, but Reb Shlomo was serious – Uncle Esau, hmm!
In every instance where there is a successful struggle for civil and human rights in America (women’s rights; the union movement and worker’s rights; minority civil rights; environmentalism; handicap access, etc.) Uncle Esau takes one step closer to coming home. This submission to Holiness and Justice by Power represents the true reunion of Esau to his brother Jacob – of Christianity and Western culture to all minorities as symbolized by the Jewish people. The archetypal struggle between Isaac and Ishmael and Jacob and Esau is being played out before our eyes. America represents Esau in the process of redeeming himself and returning to Jacob. Europe, as portrayed by Rabbi Jacobson, represents the side of Esau that is still struggling with its own brutal past of religious and racial intolerance, and a very spotty record in regard to the Jews. President Saadat of Egypt, may his memory be a blessing, represented the possibility of healing between the Issac and Ishmael. May their arise in all the Middle Eastern nations, and among the Palestinians, Muslim leaders of such vision and courage once again!
Right now, regardless of our personal opinions about the war in Iraq, our soldiers need our prayers and gratitude; the citizens of Iraq need our prayers. President Allawi7 needs our prayers for the success of the upcoming elections. President Karzai8 needs our prayers for the success of the burgeoning and vulnerable democracy that is emerging in Afghanistan. Our president needs our prayers. Regardless of our personal political positions I hope that all of us can pray for the speedy capture of al-Zarqawi and Osama Bin Laden. I hope that all of us can pray for the emergence of democratic, visionary, and moderate leadership for the Palestinians. And we need each other’s prayers. We need to davven for each other especially when we disagree with each other – and not in a patronizing way, not in a haughty, arrogant, self-righteous way. We need to all humble ourselves before the Living G-d, and declare “May Your will be done!”
During the past few years I have heard comments about Israel from people with otherwise progressive political ideas that have deeply troubled me. Not because their comments were critical of the state of Israel – after all, the obligation of the citizen of any democracy is self-criticism. If you want to hear criticism of Israel you need go no further than Israelis themselves. They are the only nation in the Middle East blessed with a constitution that assures and protects pluralism, egalitarianism, diversity, freedom to dissent, freedom for all religions to assemble, and for the inalienable right and obligation to criticize and protest.
The comments that have troubled me have been based upon beliefs that are utterly confused, utterly from the spiritual realm of Babel! How can bright, emotionally sensitive people display such a dangerous confusion of emotion and reason; a confusion of facts with slogans? In this past year alone I have heard Israel accused of practicing ethnic cleansing, slave labor, racism, apartheid, Naziism, all sorts of brutal human rights abuses, genocide, and a holocaust against the Palestinians. All of us have reason to be critical of this or that Israeli policy under this or that Israeli Prime Minister. In fact our holy Torah commands us to be bold and courageous in the face of power when their is injustice in anyplace in the world. But slander, exaggeration, hyperbole, gossip, mockery, absurd comparisons, making statements of moral equivalency where there is no equivalency – these are symptoms of Babylon; these are the battles we must wage in our own communities in the second war in Iraq; and the war each of us must fight within ourselves against arrogance and confusion. Anyone who equates President Bush with Saadam Hussain, or Ariel Sharon with Hitler, is under the spell of Babylon.
Someday, G-d willing, Saadam Hussain will stand trial under a fair system of justice in a newly democratic Iraq. I hope that during his trial the handful of Jews who remain in Iraq, out of hundreds of thousands who once thrived there, will be able to come into the courtroom just to read the words of the prophet Isaiah9 who wrote, “That thou shalt take up this proverb against the king of Babylon, and say, ‘How hath the oppressor ceased! The golden city ceased!’” But even more, I hope and pray for a time of confession, forgiveness, and reconciliation for all the children of Jacob, Ishmael, and Esau in the Middle East – for the long awaited reunion of the children of Abraham.
Little by little this seems to be what is unfolding on the world scene right now. Our own inner work is simply to defeat our own confusion so that we can make the correct political decisions along the way. We need to be willing to form new alliances, and always follow the idealistic vision of our Torah – the vision that guided Rev. Martin Luther King in the Civil Rights movement; the vision that Moses followed when he confronted Pharaoh; and the vision that our father Jacob followed when he and his brother wept at their reunion. The Holy One is offering all the children of Abraham (Jews, Christians, and Muslims) a vision of justice and reconciliation once again. We, who are the living embodiment of Isaac and Ishmael, Jacob and Esau, Sarah and Hagar, have arrived at a pivotal moment in history. We seem to be enacting the final scene on the world stage that could lead to the messianic era of peace and justice that we all yearn for.
In Psalm 137 it is written, “By the rivers of Babylon, there we sat down and wept when we remembered Zion….If I forget you, O Jerusalem, May my right hand forget her skill…” The Psalmist calls us to remember Jerusalem, to remember, and not to be confused, and not to permit the fear and anger to guide our lives. Let us work for peace, pray for peace, and support our friends in Israel today who are living and dying for nothing less than peace. Let us support all our friends in all the nations of the world who are risking their lives for democracy, justice, pluralism, and freedom. Right now there are Muslims ready to die (and many probably will) for a reformation of their religion; and for true pluralism within their cultures; and for democracy within their governments. Let us keep these courageous children of Ishmael and Esau in our prayers, and pledge them our support. After all, they are our cousins! Ishmael was beloved by our father Abraham and Esau was beloved by our father Issac – we should do no less.
Finally, let us never forget the words of prophet Isaiah what he wrote10 regarding Israel, Egypt, and the nations that were once part of the Assyrian Empire (the land where the modern nations of Syria, Lebanon, Jordan, and Iraq are situated today) during the 9th. and 8th. centuries BCE. Let us raise this seemingly impossible prophesy as a banner of hope for all the children of Abraham: “In that day there will be a highway from Egypt to Assyria, and the Assyrian will come into Egypt and the Egyptian into Assyria, and the Egyptians will serve with the Assyrians. In that day Israel will be one of three with Egypt and Assyria – a blessing in the midst of the land, whom the Lord of hosts shall bless, saying, ‘Blessed is Egypt My people, and Assyria the work of My hands, and Israel My inheritance.’” May the Holy One bless each of us to have the courage to begin building that highway today – some of us through diplomacy and dialogue, others through music and art, and some through prayer. Please G-d, may Israel be seen for what it has the potential to really be – “…a blessing in the midst of the land.”
1The ancient system of musical notation used when chanting from the Torah 2In the book of Genesis Edom is another name for Jacob’s fraternal twin brother, Esau. 3Basra is an ancient port city in southern Iraq – close to Kuwait, and close to Abraham and Sarah’s home in the city of Ur. 4meaningfullife/gulfwar/Two_Faces_of_Esau 5Genesis 33:1-4 6Genesis 33:14 7The current, interim leader of Iraq 8The newly, democratically elected president of Afghanistan 9Isaiah 14:4 10Isaiah 19:22-25
by Rabbi David Zaslow
January, 2004
Contrary to popular opinion the Hebrew word shalom does not mean “peace,” at least not in the English sense of the word. It comes from a Hebrew root-word that means “wholeness.” And what is wholeness? In the Hebraic way of thinking, wholeness is the joining together of opposites. That’s why we say “shalom” when we greet friends and when we are wish them farewell. In the most opposite of situations (coming and going) we use the same word, “shalom.” There is a hidden connection to all our comings and goings; they are wondrously linked together. When I come from somewhere, I am going to someplace else. When I realize this, I feel “wholeness,” and that is the source of peace – the knowledge that all my opposing energies are somehow linked and part of a single whole. True peace must have wholeness as its foundation.
If I am a political left-winger I am only flying with one wing. If I am a political right-winger I am only flying with one wing; yet it takes two wings for an eagle to fly. It takes the integration of two opposing positions for there to be real “shalom.” The word dialogue comes from the Greek “dia + logos” meaning “across words,” or “across reason,” or “speech that goes back and forth.” It’s easy to have a left wing or a right wing “peace rally” with people who already agree with us. But this is not the wholeness that is implied in the word “shalom.”
In the Hebraic view, shalom brings the binary mind together, integrating the left brain modality of thinking (linear) and the right brain modality (intuitive). When I say hello to someone I say “shalom.” When I say goodbye to someone I say “shalom.” What is more opposite than coming and going? Hello and goodbye? Shalom is the most radical union of opposites imaginable. Shalom brings together people who disagree with each other so that each will listen deeply to the “other” side. It is the people you do not agree with who have the greatest gift for you – the gift of the potential for wholeness.
The peace movement I belong to is not liberal or conservative, it is both liberal and conservative. It is not left wing or right wing, it flies with two wings. It is not religious vs. secular, rather it integrates the genius of both science and spirituality. The peace movement I belong to refuses to create an “other” out of the people with whom I may disagree on a particular issue. To the contrary, the peace movement I belong to is one of dialogue: tough dialogue, heart-wrenching dialogue, gentle dialogue, but always dialogue – speech that goes back and forth – with each side constantly challenging, refining, and purifying the “other” until we recognize that the “other” is none “other” than a reflection of our own selves.
Reb Shlomo Carlebach z”l taught about Psalm 122 when he said, “A prayer for peace: Because of my brothers and sisters – not just me, but for the whole world, let there be peace! Do you know why there is no peace in the world? Because the world is into force. First they force war on each other, now they want to force peace upon each other. But it doesn’t work. Peace by force isn’t peace. Peace is the most non-force in the world.”
May God’s blessings flow upon everyone who is part of this unnamed and unnameable movement, wave, energy, and heavenly blessing that comes from God, the true Source of Shalom. In Jewish liturgy we celebrate God as the “Former of light and Creator of darkness, Maker of peace, and Creator of the whole.” Created in that image, may this wholeness manifest in our lives and within the world. Amayn!
If you accept the idea of Divine Providence then bear with my thesis for a moment even if you disagree with some of my conclusions. G-d spread the Jewish people out throughout Europe during the Middle Ages on a special mission. After the folly of the Crusades Jews witnessed how the Protestant Reformation created diversity and some degree of “people power” that was not being given by the Roman Catholic Church. And we witnessed how the Catholic Church benefited from the Reformation as well.
And then we witnessed a flowering of consciousness in the 16th Century which ultimately led to the great secular antithesis of religion called the Enlightenment. People got the idea that humans could take care of their own problems without the intervention of a divine power. And so, secular humanism was born; the Enlightenment arose; and the Industrial age began.
We Jews didn’t intend to be in the middle of all that social upheaval. We Jews didn’t mean to be influenced by the Reformation or the Enlightenment, but we were. Just as we were influenced by the genius of the outside world during the Babylonian exile twenty-six hundred years ago, so we were influenced by European social evolution in our own time. As a result of both these social upheavals (the Reformation and the Enlightenment) we have today, thank G-d, our own Reform, Conservative, Renewal, and Reconstructionist movements. The 16th. Century kabbalistic revival and the 18th. century Hasidic revolution arose from these European social paradigm shifts as well.
So what did the Ribbono Shel Olam have in mind after the Shoah? Maybe to send Jews back to the Middle East in order to plant the seeds of Reformation and Enlightenment. What the Muslim world has not gone through YET is a process that ultimately led to what is best in the West: pluralism, egalitarianism, and democracy. In the 20th century alone America had a woman’s suffrage movement, union movement, civil rights movement, woman’s movement, gay rights movement, and ecological movement. Six major civil rights struggles and our Constitution was flexible to accommodate them all. Lots of lawsuits, but a judicial system that was eventually able to come to the proper conclusions.
Certainly school desegregation was 100 years late, but our culture survived because p’shat (simple) readings of Constitution were challengable at higher levels. So “all men are created equal” eventually became “all black and white men” and then finally “all men and women,” and soon “all men, women, gay, or straight.”
2. Hatred of Jews Today
Jews are hated in Israel not for anything Israel has done. This foolish Israeli policy or that foolish policy are up for critique. But these policies are not the cause of the current intafada. Arab anti-Semitism today is based on a filtered and flawed view of reality. The Jews have come to the Middle East with the seeds of pluralism and democracy. Hamas knows it. Islamic Jihad knows it. Osama knows it. They are afraid that the union movement, and feminism, and gay rights movements are coming their way. And they are correct.
B’ezrat Hashem (with G-d’s help) these civil rights movements are coming to Saudi Arabia, and Syria, and Libya, and everywhere else. Fear of globalism is a cover for what’s happening under the surface. Sure folks blame McDonalds and Office Depot, but the abuse of corporate power was NOT the cause of the destruction of the World Trade Center. That was the excuse.
The cause that Osama stands for is anti-pluralism. And who is bringing pluralism into the Middle East? Jews and Americans, of course Osama may say that Zionism is a form of colonialism, but this is just an expression of the primitive way his mind is scanning the shifting paradigm.
Scapegoating the Jews is ancient. And it’s happening before our eyes. The desperation within the Arab world is really hatred against their own outdated paradigms of hierarchical, patriarchal, and dictatorial systems of governance. When this kind of hatred of your own “father” (i.e.. your own leaders) goes unconscious the Shadow comes alive. “It’s the fault of the Jews” they cried in Germany as their own economy faltered due to the punishing treaty they were forced to sign after World War I.
“It’s the fault of the Jews” some Arabs are screaming now due to the punishing effects of post colonial regimes established by the British and the French, and the punishing regimes maintained by their own leaders after the colonialists left. But their rage at the primary, core, energetic level is against their own fathers. Like all good unconscious behavior (seen in racists and bigots throughout history) the sick mind ingeniously finds someone else to blame it on. In Palestine and Israel its the Jews who are being blamed for the failure of the Palestinian fathers.
Look at some numbers for a moment. In 1993 about fifty-percent of the Palestinians were willing to finally share the land in the two-state solution that they rejected in 1948. Twenty-percent were uncertain. And between ten to twenty-percent outright rejected any kind of peace or two state-solution. Who were these ten to twenty-percent? Hamas, Islamic Jihad, Al Aksa Bridgade, Hezbollah, and the other various terrorist organizations.
These groups represent Islamic fundamentalism that CANNOT ever have Jews owning a nation in the Middle East. It’s impossible because on a p’shat level the Koran says so. ALL of Palestine is Dar el Islam. Jews were and are to the fundamentalist in the realm of Dar el-Harb, the House of War.
When I met with the spiritual leader of Hamas in 1998, Sheikh Ahmed Yassin, he was not a duplicitious character like Arafat. He was clear, honest, and straight-forward: ISRAEL CANNOT REMAIN A NATION. Who’s doing the suicide bombings? Not the fifty-percent of Palestinians who want a peaceful, two-state solution! Not the twenty-percent who are uncertain! But this huge minority of 10-20% represented by Hamas, Islamic Jihad, and Hezbollah.
Just think of America. We have a one-half of one-percent fringe between our extreme Left and Right. This tiny minority represents Ruby Ridge, Waco, the folks who bomb abortion clinics, the eco-terrorists who spike trees and burn the homes of rich people, animal rights terrorists who set fires in research labs, etc.
One-half of one-percent and America can barely keep track of them. Imagine if America’s fringe represented fifteen-percent. With this kind of huge minority it would probably be impossible for us to keep the peace. Even if a Palestinian moderate wanted to keep the peace, I think it would be nearly impossible at this stage in their social evolution. Socially they are at the level of Europe during the Crusades: pre-Reformation, pre-Enlightenment, pre-democratic, and pre-pluralistic.
The real martyrs among the Palestinians will be those willing to give their lives for peace by COMING OUT WITH THE TRUTH in public: that the murder of civilians by terrorists is a crime against Allah; that Palestinians are destined to live side-by-side with Israel; and that democratic and pluralistic institutions are the road to freedom for the Arab peoples. Arafat has already quietly killed hundreds of so-called collaborators since 1993 as an appeasement to Hamas in order for him to stay in power. Just before Passover he killed eight more “collaborators,” and who really knows what they were doing?
I DO JUST A LITTLE. I know a Sheikh from the West Bank. He came to the United States recently and offered prayers and teachings in several synagogues. When he returned to Israel he was warned that he couldn’t go home to his West Bank village. Why? Because Fatah had him on the collaborator list. You can read all about this courageous Sheikh in Yossi Klein Halevi’s book “At the Entrance to the Garden of Eden.” Halevi was forced to change the name of the Sheikh in the book to Ibrahim in order to protect his anonymity. Today, baruch Hashem, he is being protected in an Israeli city by Orthodox rabbis. What an irony, but I think G-d’s fingerprints are all over this.
3. The Religious Factor
Rabbi Menachem Froman works from the premise that beneath the politics this is essentially a religious war, a battle between two fundementalisms: the Jewish notion of eretz Yisrael, that all the land is ours. The other is that of Dar el-Islam, the Islamic notion that all the land is Muslim. The solution according to the rebbe? To lock fundamentalist Jews and Muslims in a room until they come to a solution based on Koran and Torah.
Rabbi Froman suggests that the problems with Oslo stem from the fact the religious factor was disregarded. The fundamentalists on both sides were not brought to the table. The result has been treaties made by secular pragmatists like Arafat and Rabin. But the solution, according to Froman, must include the idealists—the fundamentalist. Afterall, the ones doing the terrorism are not the pragmatists, but the religious idealists who CANNOT have a two-state solution.
I, personally, have come to believe that their is merit in his argument. The religious extremists might drive you crazy at the bargaining table with their rigid readings of Torah and Koran on land issues. But they are the ones that destroy the peace treaties when one is signed without their consent. Bring them to the table! Let us support Rabbi Froman’s yeshiva that he has been collecting funds for – one where the idealistic eretz Yisrael kids and the idealistic Dar el-Islam kids can fight it out over texts.
4. The Hope
As hopeless as things seem when hearing the horrific reports of suicide bombings every day, I am very hopeful for the long-term future. I get my comfort for the words of our prophets. Isaiah 19:21 reads, “In that day there shall be a highway from Egypt to Assyria, and the Assyrian shall come to Egypt, and the Egyptian to Assyria, and the Egyptians shall worship with the Assyrians. In that day shall Israel be the third with Egypt and with Assyria, a blessing in the midst of the land; Whom the Lord of hosts shall bless, saying, ‘Blessed be Egypt my people, and Assyria the work of my hands, and Israel my inheritance.’”
Blessed be Egypt? Egyptians are G-d’s people? Blessed be Syria? Syria, the work of G-d’s hands? These are radical words, and profoundly reshapes the notion of the ultimate relationships that are being forged in fire today in the Middle East. It is not easy to recognize the blessing within a curse, but we have no other choice. We are Jews, and that’s part of our job.
On a practical level I will continue to call for the democratization of the nations that surround Israel. I will help in any way I can to encourage free elections, the right to dissent, the right of a free and critical press, the rights of workers to unionize, and the rights of women to organize in Arab nations. I humbly submit that only with democracy will the citizens of these nations be allowed to make a lasting peace with Israel and have economic prosperity for themselves.
Contrary to popular opinion the Hebrew word “shalom” does not mean “peace,” at least not in the English sense of the word. It comes from a Hebrew root-word that means “wholeness.” And what is wholeness? In the Hebraic way of thinking wholeness is the joining together of opposites. That’s why we say “shalom” when we greet friends and when we are wish them farewell. In the most opposite of situations (coming and going) we use the same word, “shalom.” There is a hidden connection to all our comings and goings; they are wondrously linked together. When I come from somewhere I am going to some place else. When I realize this I feel “wholeness,” and that is the source of peace – the knowledge that all my opposing energies are somehow linked and part of a single whole. True peace must have wholeness as its foundation.
If I am a political left winger I am only flying with one wing. If I am a political right winger I am only flying with one wing, yet it takes two wings for an eagle to fly. It takes the integration of two opposing positions for there to be real “shalom.” The word dialogue comes from the Greek “dia + logos” meaning “across words” or “speech that goes back and forth.” It’s easy to have a left wing or a right wing “peace rally” with people we already agree with, but this is not the wholeness that is implied in the word “shalom.”
So what is the Hebraic view of shalom? Shalom brings the binary mind together, integrating the left brain modality of thinking (linear, logical, and rational) and the right brain modality (spiritual, intuitive, and creative). Shalom brings people together who disagree with each other in order to listen deeply to the “other” side. It is the people you do not agree with who have the greatest gift for you – the gift of the potential for wholeness.
The peace movement I belong to is not liberal or conservative, it is both liberal and conservative. It is not left wing or right wing; it flies with two wings. It is not religious vs. secular, rather it integrates the genius of both science and spirituality. The peace movement I belong to refuses to create an “other” out of the people with whom I may disagree on a particular issue. To the contrary, the peace movement I belong to is one of deep dialogue: tough dialogue, heart wrenching dialogue, gentle dialogue, but always dialogue – speech that goes back and forth – with each side constantly challenging, refining, and purifying the “other” until we recognize that the “other” is none “other” than a reflection of our own selves.
Rabbi Shlomo Carlebach taught, “The Baal Shem teaches that when people are happy they clap their hands. This is because joy is spreading throughout the entire body. But do you know what it is that I’m really doing when I’m clapping? A person is bringing the left and right to love each other. Let me explain. The right usually tells the left ‘Listen, you know you’re a leftist. I don’t want to have anything to do with you.’ And the left (hand) says to the right, ‘Who needs you? You’re so boring. You’re always doing something good. Who needs you and your mitzvot. I have no strength for you.’ So the right doesn’t speak to the left and left doesn’t speak to the right. But when clapping hands, the left comes close to the right and says, ‘Hey, you’re precious after all.’ And the left says to the right: ‘I love you.’ So let’s sing and pray that the Holy One stirs the eyes of our people so that we recognize that we are only one, a holy and sanctified nation. Then we’ll all see there really is no right or left, but just the music; music and the dance.”
May G-d’s blessings flow upon all my brothers and sisters who are part of this unnamed and unnameable movement, wave, energy, and heavenly blessing that comes from G-d, the true Source of Shalom. In Jewish liturgy we celebrate G-d as the “former of light and Creator of darkness, Maker of peace, and Creator of the whole.” Created in that image, may this wholeness manifest in our lives and within the world. Amayn!