The Wandering Hebrew

'The Faces of Deer' by Mary Oliver

2009-06-23T20:39:00.001-04:00

The Faces of Deer
Mary Oliver

When for too long I don't go deep enough
into the woods to see them, they begin to
enter my dreams. Yes, there they are, in the
pinewoods of my inner life. I want to live a life
full of modesty and praise. Each hoof of each
animal makes the sign of a heart as it touches
then lifts away from the ground. Unless you
believe that heaven is very near, how will you
find it? Their eyes are pools in which one
would be content, on any summer afternoon,
toswim away through the door of the world.
Then, love and its blessing. Then: Heaven.

More Birkat Hachama resources

2009-03-12T10:09:00.008-04:00

See http://www.blessthesun.org/ and the Birkhat HaHammah blog http://coejlblog.blog.com/4360537/ for a compilation of resources.

For a copy of the Cleveland communitywide celebration flyer see http://jrf.org/birkat-hahammah.

For traditional sources and the complete ritual service see www.berachot.org/halacha/24_birkathachammah.html#4.

For a Song for the Sun performed by Rabbi Shawn Zevit see &feature=channel_page">www.youtube.com/watch?v=629JxUYTlFk&feature=channel_page>&feature=channel_page. It's beautiful!

Calculate the timing for your local gathering for the ritual and education about solar energy at www.timeanddate.com/worldclock/sunrise.html.

Jewish population declines to 1.2%

2009-03-09T14:25:00.008-04:00

The number of Americans who identify as Jewish is continuing to fall. According to the American Religious Identification Survey, which has just been released, 1.8 percent of the American population identified as Jewish in 1990. Last year, only 1.2 percent, or 2.7 million people, considered themselves Jewish.

Researchers plan a broader survey on people who consider themselves culturally Jewish but aren't religious.

The report from The Program on Public Values at Trinity College in Hartford, Conn., surveyed 54,461 adults in English or Spanish from February through November of last year. It has a margin of error of plus or minus 0.5 percentage points. The findings are part of a series of studies on American religion by the program that will later look more closely at reasons behind the trends.

To read more, visit: http://news.aol.com/article/religion-in-amerca-survey/374444

Purim: disturbing history or dramatic literature?

2009-03-08T11:03:00.002-04:00

Two years ago, when I began a job as the education director of a congregation in Allentown, I was assigned the task of preparing the Purim celebration. I started hunting around the Internet for an abbreviated version of Megillat Esther (the scroll of Esther), which I would divide up and email to our volunteer readers before the spiel. The scroll in its original form was much too long, and I was hoping for an easy way of cutting it down.

And that’s when things got interesting.

There are, I discovered, plenty of shortened versions of Esther to be found on the Internet. The problem is, they all came from Orthodox-run websites and proudly tout that they are “true to the story!”

They are true alright. And if you’ve ever looked closely at the details of the Purim story, that’s actually not a good thing! Here are just some of the perturbing aspects of the story, which I, for one, would never want recited in front of my daughter:

1:20: When Vashti refuses to obey the king, the king sends out a decree to the countryside ordering that “all women will respect their husbands” and that “every man shall be a master in his home.”

2:3: The King’s attendants sweep the countryside looking for “virgins” to add to the King’s “harem”. Esther didn’t so much “win” a beauty pageant as be forcibly selected and “taken” to the King’s palace.

7:8: When Esther reveals to the King that Haman’s edict to kill all Jews means she too will be killed, it appears that Haman tries to sexually assault her. Haman is then sent to the gallows and hanged.

8:11: Rather than merely nullify Haman’s edict, the King issues an edict allowing the Jews to “to annihilate, kill and destroy every army of any nation or province that might attack them, [including their] children and women, and to plunder their possessions.”

8:17: This bloodlust is celebrated a few verses later, where we read that: “In every province and city to which the king's edict and law reached, there was happiness and joy for the Jews, a celebration and a holiday. Many of the gentiles converted to Judaism, for fear of the Jews had fallen upon them.”

9:6: The Jews of Shushan kill 500 men, and then a few verses later, Haman’s 10 sons are hanged at the gallows.

It might bring you comfort to know that no one worth their salt believes there is any historical truth to the events recounted in Esther. The narrative, which takes place in the time of the ancient Persian empire (539 BCE – 333 BCE), is rife with chronological problems, which are too numerous to list. Furthermore, no evidence of the key events of the story has ever turned up in biblical or extrabiblical sources, including from Persian literature, much of which has been preserved.

The author of the book does show some familiarity with details of life in the Persian empire. The author knows, for example, about its size, its postal system, and a considerable number of details about its court life (3:13; 8:10). The story uses a number of words and a few names of indisputable Persian origin.

But there are other parts of the story that contradict what we know about Persia, or simply strain credulity. Esther herself is a historical improbability. According to Herodotus (3:84), the Persian king could only marry within seven noble families, and there is no reason to think any of them were Jewish. There is no evidence for the existence of 127 provinces or satrapies (1:1; 8:9) in Persia. It doesn’t make sense that a decree go out in a multitude of languages, when the only language spoken was Aramaic (1:22, 3:12, 8:9). And how could a banquet last 180 days (1:1-4)?

The book of Esther is best seen as a historical novella set within the Persian empire. As the authors of Etz Hayim We: Megillat Esther (The Reconstructionist Press) explain, “This is not to say that the book is false, only that its truth, like the truth of any piece of literature, is relative to its genre, and the genre of Esther is not that of the historical annal, even though it sometimes imitates the style of a historical annal.”

Image above: "The Cracow Wedding" Purimshpil

Birkat Hachama: Blessing the Sun

2009-03-01T12:27:00.012-05:00

This is the my April newsletter column, written for the Temple where I am a rabbinic intern:

How do you feel about the sun? Do you like it? Are you glad it’s here?

If you answered “yes” to any of these questions, take note: On the 8th of April this year, you will have a special once (or twice) in a lifetime opportunity to bless the sun in an official Jewishly sanctioned way! The holiday of Birkat Hachama will be here, and it’s a holiday that only happens once every 28 years!

Birkat Hachama is a special blessing made on the “anniversary” of the sun’s return to the position that it was in when the universe was first created. (The rabbis of the Babylonian Talmud, circa 500 C.E., determined when that was.) The Talmud says: “Our Rabbis taught: One who sees the Sun at its turning point should say ‘Blessed be the One Who effects creation’. And when does this occur? Abaye said every 28 years when the cycle begins again, and the Nissan equinox falls in Saturn, on the evening of the third day going into the fourth day.”

The full blessing they are referring to is as follows: Baruch atah adonai, elohanu melech haolam, oseh ma’aseh b’reisheit. Blessed are you, HASHEM our God, King of the universe, who effects the work of creation. This blessing is also recited on other occasions of natural phenomena, such as witnessing lighting, comets, meteor showers and even wondrous natural topography, such as great mountains, rivers and vast wildernesses.

For the day of Birkat Hachama, however, other passages and prayers are recited in addition to this blessing, largely from psalms and the prophets. The structure of the prayer service was set down in the Shulchan Aruch, a codification of Jewish law written by Yosef Karo in the 16th century. The service generally includes the following:

• Quotations about the sun from the Tanakh
• Four verses from the Tanakh, which spell out the Tetragrammaton
• Some of Talmud Berachot 59b
• Parts of Psalms 148 and 90
• The blessing recited on natural phenomena (Baruch Atah...ma’aseh b’reisheit)
• Psalms 121, 8 and 19
• The hymn El Adon al kol hama'asim (normally part of Shabbat services).
• Aleinu
• The Mourner's Kaddish

The Internet is teeming with creative Birkat Hachama services, which are roughly structured on this outline, but vary in the addition of other texts or songs. Jewish ecological groups in particular are seizing on this unique opportunity to teach about the ecological values of our tradition.

How can you observe Birkat Hachama? Here are some ideas:

* Download a service off the Internet and get together with some friends for your own potluck and service

* Join the Birkat Hachama group on Facebook: www.facebook.com/group.php?gid=20544854723

* Chabad has put together a handy website of information, which includes a “global event finder” where you can find a Birkat Hachama event near you.

www.chabad.org/library/article_cdo/aid/817861/jewish/Birkat-Hachamah.htm.

Given it’s from Chabad, my guess is they will only include Orthodox-sponsored events.

* Check your local Jewish newspaper for other events that might be happening in your area.

Shomer Israel song for Tachanun

2009-02-03T12:56:00.018-05:00

In preparing to lead mincha service at Elat Chayyim in a few weeks, I've had the great joy of discovering this beautiful song written by Shlomo Carlebach from the first line of the Tachanun prayer. Known as "Shomer Israel," it can be used at any service in which Tachanun is recited.

Thank you, V, for sharing this jewel with me! I can't stop playing it!

http://www.imeem.com/elinka/music/pHK-dnnH/shlomo_carlebach_shomer_israel/

You might also enjoy this beautiful version sung by his daughter, Neshama Carlebach.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ogxxf66nWqE

Is the sky falling?

2009-01-30T20:57:00.013-05:00

Today, amid the grim economic news President Obama reported of the highest unemployment claims to be filed in history, and a 3+ percent contraction of the economy during the last quarter of 2008, I heard word that really made my heart heavy: my beloved Denver dive shop might be closing its doors soon.

This is the dive shop where I learned to dive, where I got my friend Marcus hooked on diving (he went on to become a Dive Master there), and the shop through which we took that great dive trip to St. Lucia. One of my good buddies from massage school works there; what is he going to do if it closes? Lord knows there isn't any massage work these days.

Technically, this "news" is just a rumor. Also in the rumor category is that the graduating class at my college is finding a sharply reduced number of job offers coming through the placement office. Some soon-to-be-graduates are thinking about doing a yearlong CPE (clinical pastoral education) rotation at a hospital just to have something to do. In other words, they are finishing the equivalent of a doctoral education and going out and working for $30,000/year in a chaplaincy internship.

Still more rumor, but the word too is that our incoming class is looking very lean on numbers. The class that entered the year after my class was half the size of my class. The class that entered this year was even smaller than the one before it. Apparently next year's might be still smaller.

Grim, grim news all around.

My friends at the Rocky are still waiting to see if they have their jobs. The Dallas daily paper has apparently announced layoffs of their own. What can any of us do but shake our heads?

Tonight I watched our beautiful little daughter fall asleep -- like I do every night -- and watched her little fingers as she rubbed her eyes and sucked on her bottle. It's so precious watching this little person, so blissfully ignorant of all the hardships going on around her. She makes a little grunt here and there, tosses a little from one side to the next as she drops off, all the while snuggled warmly in her mint green blanket.

Do you remember very well, that element of childhood where you were peripherally aware of the problems of the world -- but not really? How you'd catch glimpses of them, but then you'd safely retreat into a world of make-believe and imagination, where everything felt safe? I have the dimmest recollections of those feelings; like probably most grownups, I wish I could remember them better.

God and the Obama inauguration in 2009

2009-01-25T19:45:00.017-05:00

For those of you who Facebook with me, you already know that I was impressed by BOTH ministers who gave addresses at the inauguration on Jan. 20. Yes, I was even impressed by Rick Warren. His anti-gay rhetoric still leaves much to be desired, but fortunately, this kind of intolerance was missing from his speech. He did a commendable job of being inspiring without being offensive -- and his talk went the extra mile to put in certain touches that a Jewish audience in particular would recognize. I noticed too, that his one reference to Jesus was clearly done in a personal, rather than a universal, context.

I did not realize until I received the following email from the Shalom Center, however, that Warren's speech also was inclusive of Muslim faith communities. Yasher Koach, Warren, well done. You've proven yourself to be far savvier and more sensitive (when you want to be) than I, at least, would have ever given you credit for.

Here, Rabbi Wasgow explains in further detail why Warren's speech was so excellent -- at least as measured by the interfaith barometer -- as well as some of the reasons Lowery's speech was equally masterful:

I thought God - the real God, the One Who cares passionately about justice, peace, and diversity - came out rather well in the Inaugural ceremonies.

God's official spokespersons did better than I had expected. Rev. Rick Warren - whose choice I had strongly criticized because of his views about gay and lesbian sexuality - did far than I had feared. I was especially moved by his speaking, in English, the Jewish "Sh'ma" about God's Unity and the Muslim "Bismillah Er Rachman Er Rahim" -- "In the name of God Who is Compassionate and Merciful." I doubt that most Christians knew what he was doing in either case, but Jews and Muslims did.

And I respected his going out of his way to affirm that he spoke in Jesus' name not as if Jesus were the self-evidently, universally accepted God Incarnate but rather, explicitly that Jesus is the aspect of God that Warren himself feels called by. I also appreciated his effort to contextualize Jesus as both actually a Jew and in Muslim eyes a prophet by saying his name in both Aramaic and Arabic as well as in the Greek by which most of the Christian world knows him.

And though Warren did not confess and repair the sin of his attacks on gay sexuality, his words were in general pacific.

As for Rev. Lowery: He moved me to tears and to delighted laughter too. Tears when he began with a passage from a poem/song by James Weldon Johnson, "Lift Every Voice and Sing," long known as the "Negro National Anthem." Not only the words of the song but its melody move back and forth from grief to hope, as they reflect on the past and future of black life in America.

I know the song and so do my adult children, who learned it in mostly black schools in the District of Columbia when they were growing up. Indeed, I sang it last Sunday morning when I preached on Martin Luther King and the American future at Old South Church in Boston, and the church leadership chose it from the hymnal of the United Church of Christ to end the service. I thought then, "Every Black church in America is also singing that song this very morning!" But it had not occurred to me that Rev. Lowery might use it.

I am sure that few American whites know it, or understood what Lowery was doing.- But practically every Black American did.I laughed out loud when Lowery then turned upside down the despairing and cynical old Black patter about "black, brown, yellow, red, white." Who could have imagined these in-group cultural artifacts, these nearly secret rituals of Black life, coming out of the closet in such a public way on this most broadly American occasion? As for President Obama himself, any God worth the salt that was spread upon the Temple offerings would have smiled benignly as he mentioned "Christians and Muslims, Jews and Hindus - and non-believers." Monotheists, polytheists, and atheists all included in our community. (Maybe Obama, like many Buddhists, sees Buddhism as a philosophy, not a religion.)

As for much of the content of Obama's speech - for example -- ''A nation cannot prosper long when it favors only the prosperous": it seemed secular on the surface but at least to my ears bespoke an implicitly religious sensibility. Some of the immediate post-ceremony TV commentary heard the speech as prose rather than poetry; but as I read it later, that line and others seemed to me to glow and chime as poetry. God shining through.

Shalom, salaam, shantih, namaste, peace.

- Rabbi Arthur Waskow

How to hug a baby

2009-01-22T08:08:00.014-05:00

(Pulled from an email)

1. First, find a baby.

2. Second, be sure that the object you found was indeed a baby by employing classic sniffing techniques.

3. Next you will need to flatten the baby before actually beginning the hugging process.

4. The 'paw slide': Simply slide paw s around baby and prepare for possible close-up.

5. Finally, if a camera is present, you will need to execute the difficult and patented 'hug, smile, and lean' so as to achieve the best photo quality.

What 'voluntary simplicity' means to me

2009-01-21T11:54:00.013-05:00

What do these things have in common?

The movies: Surfwise

and Into the Wild

The song: “Society” by Eddie Vedder (in video above)

The blog: Cage Free Family

This recent article in O magazine: “Back to Basics”

When you line them up, it’s obvious, but it’s actually taken me several years to realize how deeply and spontaneously drawn I feel to a philosophy or a movement that I only recently learned the name for: Voluntary Simplicity.

In recent months, there’s been a notable upsurge of articles on this topic in the mainstream media, no doubt spurred by our ailing economy and people’s tightening finances. But maybe, too, I hope, this might also be a reflection of a culture shift in our society -- a growing awareness of the damages caused by our society’s love affair with consumerism.

It isn’t just about wastefulness and its ecological impacts (which are very real and important). I think it goes deeper than that; it gets into what happens to our spirits when we spend so much energy worrying about things. It’s about the mental feedback loop we create for ourselves when, as the lyrics to “Society” say: “You think you have to want more than you need; until you have it all you won’t be free.”

The more we have, the more we want; we never have it all, so we never have enough.

Even for people like Aaron and me, who have never been particularly materialistic and have always hated shopping (if only because of the crowds) – even we find ourselves sucked into this mindset sometimes. Even people who by their natures aren’t particularly materially oriented have to struggle against the huge, moving, oppressive message of our larger culture. Trying to raise children with this awareness, is, I think, even harder. I guess I’m about to find out!

Finally having a phrase for this concept – Voluntary Simplicity – really helps. At least it has helped give me a framework, a vocabulary, for these feelings I’ve been wrestling with for a long time.

What is the voluntary simplicity movement? Well, it has many definitions, but I like this one here, which is offered by a website www.simpleliving.net/main that collects resources on this topic:

“Simple living — aka voluntary simplicity — has just about as many definitions as there are individuals who practice it. Simple living is not about living in poverty or self-inflicted deprivation. Rather, it is about living an examined life — one in which you have determined what is important, or ‘enough,’ for you, and discarding the rest.”

"Living in a way that is outwardly simple and inwardly rich."
— Duane Elgin

I’d like to share a portrait of what this philosophy has meant to my family:

Before the baby came, Aaron and I went through several weeks of mental gyrations, distressed about how we were going to make room for her. Our house is 1,200 square feet, and we only have three bedrooms: one for us, one for his oldest daughter, and the third that was my office. Having an office isn’t just a luxury for me. When in school, I need a quiet place to study for 20+ hours a week. The bulk of my editing and writing work is also done from my office, and I need a phone to conduct interviews, and a quiet space without the sound of a television or household conversations to distract me.

Aaron also has an office, which he runs his camping stove business out of. It is stacked floor to ceiling with supplies, and a large shipping table, and a jeweler’s bench to do his sautering. All of that used to be done in the dining room in the middle of the house (and there was no real dining room). A year ago, he spent 6 months enclosing the back porch, to make room for his business, so we could have an actual dining room with a table.

The dilemma raised other issues for us beyond the immediate issue of a baby room. For me, it challenged what has been a concept of personal boundary that simply could not be sustained in this living environment. You see, even without the baby coming, moving into this house has been a challenge. I’m a Westerner, and I’m used to my space. I lived alone in a three-bedroom house in Denver, and grew up in a rambling ranch style home where you could cordon yourself off in a nook and spent an entire contented day in complete solitude. That most definitely isn’t possible here.

For Aaron, it challenged his notions of what it means to “be a provider.” Amid all of our talks of what we would do to solve our immediate space problem, he spent several weeks plotting different ways that we might be able to move into a bigger house in a few years – especially if we have a second child. What if he moved this money here, or refinanced that, or did this with his retirement money, or borrowed money from there? We had long talks trying to figure out how we would move into a bigger house because clearly (we told ourselves), it will never work with what we have now.

I won’t bother getting into the dozens of ideas we plowed through to arrive at a solution to our immediate space problem; suffice it to say we reached one. What is more important though, and the reason I’m writing all this, is to say that in that process, along the way, we both came to not only accept but joyfully embrace the fact that we actually can make this house work, even if we add a second child down the road, and even if we add a third (which is not likely).

I can’t tell you what a relief it is – to free ourselves from that feedback loop of “we don’t have enough.” How liberating it is to not be spending anymore mental energy trying to “figure it out” and “plot our advancement”! Every time the gas bill comes and we gasp – we also sigh with relief knowing that we have the smallest house on the block and everybody else has it even worse. Every time we feel burdened by the yard or the unending repair projects, we think about how much worse it would be if we upgraded. Every time the mortgage bill comes, we think about how the money we are saving by not having a larger house will be used to create memories instead of things: summer camp, road trips, time spent with our daughter (in the form of not having to work even more than we already do).

Instead of spending our energy toward more, we are spending our energy toward less: “How much stuff can we get rid of in order to maximize the space we do have?” Legions of people go on shopping sprees and revel in how much fun it is; we’ve discovered it is just as much fun (and immensely more rewarding) to go on divestment sprees, to see just how minimalist we can get.

I’ve sold off nearly half of my book collection; the only books that stay, after I’ve read them, are things I need for my resource library, or books I desperately love. Aaron bought a 5 gigabyte MP3 player where he has downloaded his entire CD collection, and we’ve starting selling off those. He is making digital recordings of all of his record collection, and those are going to go too.

The 10 shelves we spent storing CDs, books and records will now have cloth baskets on them to store Adi’s toys. And unlike Aaron’s teenage daughter (and myself growing up!), when Adi outgrows her toys, she will have to get rid of them. They can’t stay in her room, unused, for a decade, collecting dust. Because she might very well have a sibling sharing the space with her. We will, we hope, instill in her the same joy for living in uncluttered spaces, and the same philosophical belief in only having what you really need.

Is it really this simple? No, of course it isn’t. I wish I could say we’ve reached some higher, enlightened state of being in which we never fear or want for more, but that wouldn’t be true. It has meant compromises, and I’m sure it will present more of them. But we feel like we have made a start – an important start – in the right direction.

I continue to be drawn to stories of others, who are making even more radical steps than we are. The documentary movie Surfwise, which came out last year, told the story of this eccentric doctor with nine sons, who raised them all on a beach surfing. It’s quite a story and really worth renting, if you can find a copy. There were huge detriments to what he did (not the least of which was his children’s complete inability to ever enter high-skilled professions, because they never graduated from high school). But he also created many gifts for his children that most people in our society never experience.

I will continue to be a loyal reader of Cage Free Family, a blog kept by a family who is traveling around the country in a mobile home and living a natural lifestyle. Their model is not very replicable for most of us: The father obviously makes a solid living doing computer work, which he is able to do from anywhere. They live on a very slim budget, but few of us would even have the option of working on the road. I do, though, admire their sense of adventure and freedom, and their commitment to simplicity, and I envy the rich experiences they are able to give their children. Travel is one of the best things any of us can do.

And, finally, every time I run across news stories like this one

www.nytimes.com/2008/09/11/garden/11tiny.html -- about people who make my 1200-square-foot house seem like a palatial estate – I will always drop what I am doing and sit down and read. I’m truly fascinated by these folks, and genuinely admire them. Me, I like my flat-screen TV and my TIVO; I like having a proper kitchen with a stove, and a kitchen table where I can invite folks over for dinner. But my hats off to anyone who can live in an 80-square-foot house and be happy! If we could all learn even just a little bit from their example, it would be a very different country indeed.

“Society” Lyrics
Oh it's a mystery to me.

We have a greed, with which we have agreed,

and you think you have to want more than you need;

until you have it all, you won't be free.

Society, you're a crazy breed.

I hope you're not lonely, without me.

When you want more than you have, you think you need...

and when you think more than you want, your thoughts begin to bleed.

I think I need to find a bigger place...

cause when you have more than you think, you need more space.

Society, you're a crazy breed.

I hope you're not lonely, without me.

Society, crazy indeed...

I hope you're not lonely, without me.

There's those thinkin' more or less, less is more,

but if less is more, how you keepin' score?

It means for every point you make, your level drops.

Kinda like you're startin' from the top

...and you can't do that.

Society, you're a crazy breed.

I hope you're not lonely, without me.

Society, crazy indeed...

I hope you're not lonely, without me

Society, have mercy on me.

I hope you're not angry, if I disagree.

Society, crazy indeed.

I hope you're not lonely...without me.

Life update

2009-01-18T18:54:00.007-05:00

I have my last class for the semester tomorrow. And, in the way that things in life don’t always work out the way you plan, it turns out it will also be my last class for the year, as I am officially “on leave” for the remainder of the term.

“Things not working out like you planned” is probably the one resounding lesson I’ve learned from parenthood so far, six months into it, and it’s probably a good lesson to learn early. I’ve heard many parents utter this adage over the years, and this probably won’t be the last time I say it myself!

Many things have shaped up differently than either I or Aaron imagined them when we traipsed off to the fertility clinic 15 months ago, not really believing it would work anyway. I fully expected at the time (and even throughout the pregnancy), that I would continue on at school just as I always had; I would bring the baby to classes when she was very young, and then she would go to child care once she got too old to do that. This is the course of action my classmates follow, so I figured it would be the same for me.

Of course I didn’t plan on having a baby who I couldn’t put down, even for one minute, the first three months of her life, making a 45-minute car ride to school impossible to do. I didn’t realize child care facilities charged $1,000 a month. I didn’t know I couldn’t use child care anyway because a baby who demands to be held all the time would never work in a center where there is one adult to every four babies.

I thought the college would give me more financial aid than they did. I didn’t know the pregnancy would leave me so out of shape, or that the C-section would still be hurting five months later (or even that I would have one). I didn’t know I would gain 50 pounds during the pregnancy, or just how many trips to the gym it would take to lose those pounds (40 down, 10 to go.) I never dreamed I’d have so many problems breastfeeding. Who knew it took so much time to breastfeed, or that I’d have “issues” that would stump even the state’s leading lactation specialist? No one knew Adi was all cockamamie in utero, and that her leg would break during labor, or that her hip joints would fail to form and I’d be driving her to Delaware for doctor’s appointments until she was 11 years old.

I didn’t realize babies took so much time to take care of; that probably sounds silly but it’s true! I thought they slept more than my particular baby does and that she’d sort of “hang out” quietly and let me study, which she rarely does. I knew babies woke up a lot as newborns, but I didn’t know she’d still be waking up every three hours to eat when she was five months old. I didn’t anticipate how hard this would be on Aaron, even though he’s not the one getting up; it disrupts his REM too, and then he has to go to work all day. And deal with a teenage daughter.

I could never have anticipated how much I love just staring at my daughter, watching her discover the world, and catching every tiny, incremental step of her development. Once her temperment made it possible to send her to child care, even if I could have afforded it, I wouldn’t have really wanted to. I didn’t know that my “plan” to work on schoolwork 50 hours a week and work at a job for 20 hours a week would become completely unthinkable after having a baby, because it would leave me mentally and emotionally too tapped out to enjoy her. I didn’t understand, until I became a parent, what I have heard other parents say for years: that becoming a parent changes you, it changes your priorities. You are no longer the center of your own world.

I don’t know what my classmates with children do – if they are studying and working 70 hours a week. But if they are, I think they must be crazy. Maybe they earn more for their work than I do, so they can work less. Or maybe their spouses earn more than mine does. Or maybe they can get by with less studying. Or maybe they have grandparents in town. I really don’t know! I recall one of my classmates, who graduated two years ago, actually had THREE children while she was in rabbinical school, and she still graduated in six years. All I can do is scratch my head. Maybe she was Wonder Woman in disguise? Or Wonder Rav?

I don’t know how any of them are doing it exactly; I just know that with my particular circumstances, I’m not able to do it at this particular moment in time.

My new plan is to stop planning. I don’t know what is coming in the next six months, or 12, or 16. Now that Aaron has earned is licensure, maybe he’ll get a great job, so I can return to school without needing to work. Maybe the recession will cause cutbacks at his agency, and he’ll lose his job. Maybe one of the job applications I have out there will land me a well-paying part-time job that enables me to return to school part time. Maybe I’ll get a great full-time job that enables me to start repaying my student loans aggressively and save up to return to school in a few years. Maybe Little Adi will get a brother or sister.

As of two weeks ago, Adi began sleeping through the night. I think I’m going to withhold mentioning that last “maybe” to Aaron until he’s had a few months to catch up on his sleep :).

While I don’t know have any Plan with a big “P”, I have lots of little plans that I’m looking forward to – things like doing more reading just for fun, dusting off some of my writing projects that have been shelved for 2.5 years, and most importantly, watching this little wonder of a person get bigger and discover her world. I will also continue to enjoy my work at the Reform temple, where I am an intern through May. My adult b'nai mitzvah class is going really well, and the work I'm doing with teens on their b'nai mitzvah dvars is immensely rewarding. I've also begun substitute teaching at another shul near my house.

Whenever I catch myself feeling sad about this situation, Adi makes it pretty easy to recover. All I have to do is think about how I have what is surely the most loving, brilliant and beautiful baby who was ever born, and I can't help but to smile!

Eulogy for Rabbi Lew

2009-01-16T14:58:00.003-05:00

The messages and blog posts keep coming -- in my email account, on my friends' Facebook profiles, on my college Listserv. Rabbi Lew touched so many people's hearts, and influenced the religious journeys of so many more.

I never met Rabbi Lew. Many of my friends and colleagues did. But I read one of his books and was touched deeply by it. Mostly, I'm saddened by the principle of his death: that in this world griped by bombing, war, financial collapse and ecological ruin, one of the "good guys" had to leave. I'm sad for the redemptive acts he didn't get to finish.

I wanted to share this beautiful eulogy, delivered at his funeral:

http://www.everydayzen.org/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=258&Itemid=38

Obama and the Ms. magazine brou-haha

2009-01-15T10:34:00.010-05:00

What silliness, this "controversy" over the new Ms. cover photo, which actually earned a spot on CNN's primetime coverage this morning! Men CAN be feminists, which is exactly what this cover is saying. The only tragedy is that so many men (not to mention women!) are still reluctant to use the dangerous "F" word!

I was a Hillary supporter in the primaries but I had no reservations at all about jumping onboard behind Obama when he became the Democratic representative. He didn't beat Hillary because he's a man, despite what the critics interviewed on CNN would have us believe; there were other factors at play.

The only argument proferred by these criticis was really nothing more than a whiny complaint: "Why do we need a man to be the face of feminism? Why couldn't a woman have been on the cover, like Hillary or Sarah Palin?"

Excuse me?!? Did they just say "Sarah Palin" and "feminism" in the same sentence? I guess what they are really saying is that the only thing that qualifies someone as a feminist is the presence of an X or a Y chromosome -- not what they actually believe!

It's ridiculous, and it's an insult to the growing numbers of men in the world who are women's greatest allies.

Baruch Dayan HaEmet

2009-01-13T11:00:00.003-05:00

Baruch Dayan HaEmet

The Jewish world has lost a remarkable teacher and writer, Rabbi Alan Lew, z"l. May his words and wisdom continue to inspire and enlighten the Jewish people.

Click on the link above to learn more about his work.

Masada: Myth versus history

2009-01-02T18:37:00.008-05:00

The topic of “Israel” tends to be a standard part of supplementary Hebrew school programs in the 3rd or 4th grade. I taught this topic a good six or seven years in Denver, and tended to approach the subject from a mishmash of angles: some history, some geography, some contemporary life, some politics.

Most of these years, I remember reading a picture book on the famous mountaintop retreat known as Masada, built by the famous King Herod, and regaling my students with the epic story of what happened there:

A few years after the Roman invasion in 68 CE, I told them, a group of nearly 1,000 Jews retreated there, fending off the Romans. Known as the Zealots, these Jews repelled the Romans for three years when, faced with the breaching of their walls, they all committed suicide rather than be taken prisoner.

It’s an impressive story, and I had not only read countless renditions of it, I had visited the famed site myself, on numerous occasions, when living in Israel. Armed with a full-color storybook illustrating the tale, it was a lesson that was always a big hit. And it always sparked meaningful conversations. Are there things worth dying for? I asked the kids. Do you think they made the right decision?

Recently, I learned in my Rabbinic Civilization class that this story isn’t really true. Quite a few details are wrong, which are actually some of the most pivotal details of the story.

For a thorough examination of the story – the real history according to biblical scholars and an analysis of how and why the myth evolved to take its place – I suggest you go to the source and read this article written by an anthropology professor at Hebrew University: www.bibleinterp.com/articles/masadamyth3.shtml

To hit the highlights though, suffice it to say this:
+ It was the Sicarii, not the Zealots, who were hiding out on Masada (and the differences between those two groups is not insignificant);
+ All of the Jews did not commit suicide and no one knows if even “many” of them did;
+ It took about three weeks, not three years, for the Romans to breach the walls;
+ We have ample evidence that the main contemporary account of the Masada story (by Josephus) is hardly an objective account;
+ And most of the “facts” we have to come believe and recount in the Masada story were not even professed by Josephus, or by another contemporary account written by a Roman who was there. They were invented in the 1920s.

All of this leaves me with a deeply unsettling question: Why are we, as a people, continuing to tell this mythologized version? What can possibly be gained by perpetuating these fabrications, particularly in light of how much we have to lose (namely, our credibility!)

Part of what so deeply annoyed me and disillusioned me from Christianity was learning how much of the Christian story is based on myth that continues to be taught as historical fact – or historical fact that continues to be covered up and never discussed – (the “virgin” birth; Jesus’ Jewish roots and devotion to Jewish law and practice; the co-option of pagan holidays into Christian ones without ever teaching their real roots, etc. etc.) To see Judaism committing the same perversion of truth is deeply upsetting to me.

In the article referenced above, Nachman Ben-Yehuda gives a thoughtful explanation for how and why the Masada myth developed in the nascent state of Israel. The story, he explains, served a purpose and became a source of inspiration for a generation of new Israelis. All of that is fine and good. It makes sense, and I don’t begrudge those people who got the proverbial ball rolling.

But Israel has been around now for more than 50 years. The time has come to let it go. The time has certainly come to take down the blatantly untruthful plaques and “historical” markers at the site of Masada itself, which repeat inaccurate details of the story, and the time is long past to discontinue writing false information into children’s instructional materials.

Some day – hopefully sooner rather than later – I’m going to write a truthful, historically accurate children’s book on the Masada story, and submit it to some publishing houses. I have zero hope anyone will be interested in actually publishing such a book, but I will write it anyway.

Unfortunately, I fear that there is simply not (yet) a collective voice in the Jewish world right now, demanding historically accurate resources for our children – as evidenced by the fact that I am also unable to find historically honest accounts of the Maccabbee/Hanukkah story.

I hope that sometime soon, everyone will realize that we don’t need fabrications to make our history meaningful, compelling and inspiring. The truth is plenty rich on its own. And when myth and fantasy can make it richer – that’s okay – but what harm is there in admitting that is what it really is?!?

Disney, Harry Potter and the Brothers Grimm have regaled children for generations, and no one thinks any less of them because they don’t pretend to be “the truth”!

Let's support Amy's 300-mile schlep!

2008-12-29T09:51:00.004-05:00

If you are interested in supporting environmental causes in Israel and hunger initiatives in the U.S., please consider making a donation to my friend Amy, who is going on a 300-mile bike ride from Tel Aviv to Eilat to raise money for these causes!

The primary beneficiary of the Israel Ride is the Arava Institute for Environmental Studies, working on the serious environmental challenges in Israel by creating a leadership cadre of environmentalists, conducting research, and through public involvement. The Arava Institute draws students from across the Middle East, encouraging environmental cooperation between peoples, and working towards peace and sustainable development on a regional and global scale. http://www.arava.org/

The second beneficiary of the Israel Ride is Hazon, the largest and most innovative Jewish environmental organization in the United States. "Hazon" means vision. Hazon's vision is to create a healthier and more sustainable Jewish community as a step toward creating a healthier and more sustainable world for all. See www.hazon.org

With your generosity and Amy's pedaling, we can support Israel in this important work! You can donate by credit card by visiting Amy's rider page at:
https://www.kintera.org/faf/donorReg/donorPledge.asp?ievent=274621&lis=1&kntae274621=59BC3C849C594628914BDF9882D37485&supId=238813442

D'var Hanukkah: A teaching on Chag HaBanot

2008-12-28T07:43:00.004-05:00

I’d like to share some new things I learned about the holiday of Hanukkah this year. As you know, if you were counting your candles, tonight is the 6th night of Hanukkah, which means tomorrow is, of course, the 7th night.

Does anyone here know about anything specifically special the 7th night … ?

Well, until a few days ago, I didn’t either. But it turns out that in some parts of the world, the 7th night of Hanukkah is its own special and distinct holiday. Let me explain …

It is true that Hanukkah is mostly a holiday about warriors and priests, Maccabees and Temple rituals. But in some parts of the world, the holiday has also become associated with special traditions concerning women and girls, via the story of Judith.

As an apocryphal book of the Bible, the Book of Judith has the same status as the Books of the Maccabbees, which tell the story of Hanukkah. But unlike the Maccabbees, which contain a full cast of male characters, the Book of Judith focuses on the heroic acts of one single woman.

This woman does one small but very important thing, and that is she tricks a military general by plying him with a bunch of salty cheeses, which prompts him to drink way too much alcohol and fall asleep. What the general had been planning to do was have an amorous role in the sheep tent with Judith before slaughtering all the Jews. Instead, the poor general wound up literally losing his head to Judith’s sword, and in that way, she was able to save the Jewish people.

In the middle ages, perhaps because of the arisal of anti-Semitism, Judith became a foremost Hanukkah heroine. Her figure was frequently depicted on menorahs, and the tradition developed of eating cheese dishes, to commemorate her clever strategy.

How did Judith’s story become entwined with the Hanukkah celebration? No one really knows. It might be because of the thematic connection between Judith and the Maccabees, both stories are about overthrowing a malevolent enemy army. Or it might also be because Hanukkah is the only Jewish holiday that includes a Rosh Chodesh – the monthly festival of the New Moon, and Rosh Chodesh is the quintessential women’s holiday.

In observant communities today, Rosh Chodesh is very much a living and breathing holiday. On that one day each month, women essentially get a Get Out of Work free card – they don’t have to do any work (at least in theory). It is said that this “holiday” is a reward for the fact that women did not give up their gold to make the golden calf.

Rosh Chodesh always falls on the 7th night of Hanukkah, which is tomorrow, and for women in North Africa, it became a kind of holiday within a holiday called Chag HaBanot, the festival for daughters. On this day, girls and brides received special gifts, and families retold the story of the book of Judith.

In countries such as Algeria, Libya, Tunisia, and Morocco, a variety of customs surrounded Chag HaBanot evolved, which I recently learned about from some writings by Rabbi Jill Hammer. Unfortunately, because the Jewish populations in these countries have essentially died out, the traditions seem to have died out along with them.

One tradition was for women to come to the synagogue, touch the Torah, and pray for the health of their daughters. Mothers would give their daughters gifts, and bridegrooms would give gifts to their brides.

Another tradition was for old and young women would come together to dance, and for girls who were fighting to make extra efforts at reconciliation.

Often there was a feast in honor of Judith, where participants would eat cheese to remember Judith's subterfuge; and women might also take food from a ritual meal of Talmud scholars and give it to their daughters, to protect them from harm.

There was also a custom of passing down inheritances on Chag HaBanot.

While these traditions have largely gone by the wayside, I think we can use them as an inspiration or a genesis for new practices on the 7th night of Hanukkah. For example, we can use candle-lighting tomorrow as a chance to talk with our children or grandchildren about the contributions Jewish women have made to history – whether that heroine is Judith or Golda Meir, or even Ruth Bader Ginsburg.

At a minimum, since tomorrow is Shabbat and Hanukkah and Rosh Chodesh, I think it is three really great reasons not to do any work AT ALL. Drink some cocoa, take a walk, and make someone else do the cooking for a change!

Misadventures in Medicaid Land

2008-12-23T05:40:00.004-05:00

Have you ever had a really bad sore throat, which you figured was probably viral so there was nothing that could be done anyway, but you better go to the doctor just to be sure?

So you go to the doctor and the doctor tells you: "Yeah, your throat is really red and there's pus in there, and I'm worried it could be strep," and she then proceeds to tell you that she doesn't have one of those long cotton ball things on a stick to do a throat culture, so you'll have to go over to the hospital to be tested!?

Well, I hadn't either. Until yesterday. But that is exactly the crazy scenario that took place. From the time I took the baby to the sitter's (to keep her out of a waiting room full of sick people) until I got home from the pharmacy, the entire experience took four hours. For a strep test.

It's a crying shame I don't have a voice at the moment because shouting my incredulity would be much more satisfying than pounding it out on this keyboard...

The genesis of this story probably began five months ago, when I submitted a bunch of paperwork to get Adi onto the state's health insurance plan for children. Called CHIP, it is designed to make sure all children in the state have health insurance, and the premiums range from $0 to $50 a month depending on a family's income. Imagine my surprise, then, when Adi was denied enrollment in CHIP because we didn't make enough money (you know ... for the free state health insurance plan). Instead, both she and I were summarily placed on Medicaid.

In the case of her care, this hasn't really mattered one way or the other. The list of doctors who take children on Medicaid was long and lush, and both my first- and second-choice pediatriacians were on the list. Her care, including a delayed vaccination schedule and the prosthetics for her dislocated lips, has been nothing short of wonderful.

In my case, the list of doctors who take adults with Medicaid was noticably shorter. Neither of the two doctors I have used in Philly under my regular insurance plans, nor any of the doctors Aaron has ever used, accept Medicaid. I wound up picking the only doctor who was listed in my ZIP code. Yesterday was the first time I had reason to pay her a visit.

I must say, the whole experience leaves me scratching my head. It looked like a normal doctor's office. She also accepted regular insurance patients, so it wasn't some inner city clinic for indigents or anything. But she couldn't even do a simple strep test!

Sending me over to the hospital, however, was like sending me to an inner city clinic because it was the unit of the hospital for the uninsured. I had to wait over an hour to be "registered" and then I had to wait 45 minutes for the lab to do the throat swab. Then, because Medicaid only covers labwork at one particular chain of labs, they had to send the swab out of the hospital to have it tested elsewhere, even though they had the capacity to test it right then and there.

The results will come back today.

I'm 99% sure I don't have strep. I haven't actually had it since I was a kid. Mostly I was just being a worried mom, worried about giving something so contagious to my baby. But this whole thing felt like a fiasco worthy of a Michael Moore movie; a case of the cure killing you faster than the disease.

Was Rome really the foundation of Rabbinic Judaism?

2008-12-19T12:49:00.004-05:00

Imagine if what we had been taught in religious school is that many of the fundamental elements we consider “Jewish” are actually attributable to the Romans. How would that affect what we call “traditional Judaism”? How would that shape our thinking of what defines Reform Judaism versus Orthodox Judaism?

What elements am I referring to? Well, ones like separating meat and dairy as a core element of kashrut. That practice doesn’t come from the Torah. The Torah only lists certain foods as being prohibited (like pork and shellfish) – it says nothing about not mixing meat and dairy. That notion evolved centuries later, out of the rabbinic tradition.

Or how about the Passover seder. That also came about in the rabbinic era, after the fall of the Second Temple in 70 CE, as a replacement for the animal sacrifices that used to be conducted at the Temple each Pesach.

Or how about the reams and reams of halacha, Jewish law, that govern everything in “traditional” Jewish life today like which days or weeks a couple cannot get married; what violates the biblical rule to not “start a fire” on Shabbat (light switches, ovens, car engines, telephones); how many days a mourner should sit shiva and when shiva is suspended, and from whom a person should sit shiva; etc. etc. etc.

All of it comes from rabbinic Judaism. And rabbinic Judaism owes its very existence, its very ascension to the forefront of Jewish life, to the Romans.

In my Rabbinic Civilizations course, one of our assigned books is From the Maccabees to the Mishnah by Shaye J.D. Cohen, which is a concise and fascinating history spanning from the end of the Persian exile to the 4th century CE. The rabbinic era spans the latter part of that time period: from the fall of the Second Temple in 70 CE through the writing of the Mishnah and Talmud in the 6th century CE (500s). As Cohen writes in chapter 7, the shift from Second Temple Judaism to rabbinic Judaism was not a mere chronological transition but a substantial change that laid foundational cornerstones still central to the Judaism practiced in our contemporary world.

As Martin Jaffee explains in his equally excellent book, Early Judaism, the Romans continued to control Judea long after the Temple fell. Their method of control was simple: Appoint Jewish institutions to administer over the daily affairs of their people, and allow the Jews to preserve their ancestral customs so long as they don’t lead to unrest or violate Roman law.

Rome named a Jewish appointee to be the “Patriarch” of the country – and this Patriarchate system lasted for more than 400 years. Although a second revolt by the Jews, the Bar Kohkba revolt, in 132-135 CE, represented an interruption of this policy, the interruption was brief. Once quelled, Rome simple renamed Judea “Palestine” (to name the land after the Philistines rather than the Jews), and re-instituted the Patriarchate.

Who was the Patriarchate? It was what would become known as “the Rabbis.” Its first holder, in 90 CE, was the rabbinic master Gamaliel b. Shimon b. Gamaliel and the office remained strictly hereditary for the next 400 years. Why did Rome chose a rabbinic family? We don’t know. Why was Gamaliel chosen from among the possible rabbinic families? We don’t know that either.

What we do know is the net effect of that policy: Slowly, over the course of hundreds of years, the beliefs and practices that represented a small, minority proportion of the Jewish people (the rabbinic class) increasingly dominated all sectors of Judaism and Jewish society, even those far out into the diaspora, until eventually, it became “normative.” What had been, in the time of the Temple, a minority group whose views were opposed by most segments of Jewish society [the wealthy, the priesthood, and the bulk of the masses (am ha’aretz) in both Israel and the diaspora], ultimately triumphed over their opponents and became the mainstream.

“The rabbis triumphed over their opponents among the aristocracy and the priesthood by absorbing them into their midst, or at least coming to terms with them,” Cohen writes. “The rabbis triumphed over the indifference of the masses by gradually gaining control of the schools and the synagogues. The exact date of the triumph is hard to determine, but it was no earlier than the 7th century CE.”

The rabbis didn’t invent the synagogues so much as take them over and use them as a means of advocating their own particular interpretation of Jewish law and practice. It took well over half a millennium for that to happen, and it could only happen because the ruling power of Rome established, sanctioned and supported their power.

How ironic, then, that these rabbinic views and opinions are what we all today, even we liberal Jews, identify as “traditional Judaism”!

Quote of the Day

2008-12-09T08:19:00.005-05:00

A: "Maybe we should turn the blanket so the butt nugget spot is down by our feet."

J: "Yeah, but the other side has the gack stain on it."

-- In a household with four cats, a discussion on which way to put the blanket

back on the bed after changing the sheets.

The real story of Hanukkah

2008-12-09T08:03:00.008-05:00

This is the third in a series of newsletter columns, written for the Temple where I am a rabbinic intern:

As the Bible’s favorite melancholist, Ecclesiastes, put it עת לפרוץ ועת לבנות -- there is a time to tear down and a time to build up (3:3). It’s a phrase that has crossed my mind many times in rabbinical school, where an inescapable part of the process seems to be learning that the “truths” we grew up with aren’t quite what they were cracked up to be.

In the first year of school, I learned the distinction between “law” and “tradition” (or minhag). Before that year, so many things that seemed sacrosanct, were, I found out, merely social customs that had evolved in certain parts of the Jewish world. This isn’t to say that traditions don’t carry weight, but the revelation opened up an entire range of choices that had never existed before – which is both freeing and frightening.

For years I had heard it was forbidden to name a child after a living relative. It turns out, that’s minhag, and minhag only among Ashkenazi communities. Sephardic communities consider it an honor to name a child after a living relative. What prayers we say during Friday and Saturday services are hugely dependent on minhag – so much so it can be challenging to lead services in liberal communities where people are open to experimentation. Figuring out which prayers you have to keep in and which are optional takes far more skill than the “traditional” mode of prayer where everything is done by rote.

The second year of school, during the second week of biblical history class, we were told that the Exodus may have never happened and that we didn’t emigrate from Egypt – the early Israelites were actually no different from Canaanites. Well, if that doesn’t constitute “tearing down,” I don’t know what does! Suffice it to say, we spent nearly an hour “processing” those tidbits of biblical scholarship and sharing how we felt about them.

Now, this year, in my rabbinic history class, we spent several weeks exploring the Hanukkah story, and learning all sorts of sordid details about the Maccabean heros that are conveniently left out of children’s stories.

The basics of the story are simple enough: The Maccabees were a Jewish liberation movement that won independence from the Hellenistic leader Antiochus. They founded a royal dynasty, called the Hasmoneans, and established independence in the land of Israel for about 100 years (164 – 63 BCE).

The details get a little more complicated. While it is true that Antiochus was issuing ever-stricter edicts against the Jewish people, his actions were actually a reaction against growing nationalism and insurgency by small bands of what might be called Jewish “traditionalists” – Jews opposed to the Hellenistic (Greek-influenced) behaviors of the majority Jews around them. Antiochus' crackdown was basically an attempt to quell disorder and inter-Jewish conflict. As one of my classmate’s put it: It would be like a group of orthodox Jews today starting an insurgency against liberal Jews, believing they are behaving “too American.” And the orthodox winning!

With the establishment of the Hasmonean dynasty, a series of strict (and, we would believe) repressive laws were put into place against “progressive” (or Hellenistic) life. Worst of all, the Hasmoneans established illegitimate rule at the Jerusalem Temple, which caused conflict for generations.

“The Hasmonean experience was to have a profound impact upon Judaism in Judea and its environs,” explains Martin S. Jaffee in his book Early Judaism. “The bitterness spawned in the battle against Hellenism did not dissipate with the Hasmonean victory. To the contrary, as the Hasmonean dynasty wore on, it was routinely accused by outsiders to power of betraying the original ideals of the anti-Hellenistic revolution, of outdistancing even the ancient Hellenizers in diluting the pure essence of Judaism. Opponents could easily question the legitimacy of Hasmonean political leadership from two perspectives: as Kings, the leaders were not Davidic; as High Priests, they were not descended from Aaron through Zadok. From the mid-second century BCE and after … the Temple and its priesthood became a source of conflict… ."

So there you have it: the “real” story of Hanukkah! I think it illustrates beautifully why adult Jewish learning is so important. I love the children’s version, and would never want to change it – but look at how much richer and more textured the story becomes when we explore it as grownups!

Jewish-Muslim healing

2008-12-04T10:05:00.007-05:00

I felt very proud to read about the work the rabbi of my former congregation in Denver is doing toward improving Muslim-Jewish relations. To read more about it, visit:
www.ijn.com/features/563-colorado-muslim-society-bnai-chavurah-

This article reminded me of an email I received recently from the Shalom Center, a Philadelphia nonprofit run by Rabbi Arthur Waskow, which is dedicated to promoting peace throughout the world. The email, sent soon after the tragic terrorist attacks in Mumbai, included a reproduction of official condemndations sent out by Muslim organizations in the wake of the attacks.

The organization assembled this list because we Americans have a tendency of assuming that the Muslim world is staying silent in the midst of these autrocities. "Over the years, I have noticed a pattern like this," Waskow states. "When some terrorist group claiming roots in Islam commits a mass murder, Muslim organizations denounce those actions. The mainstream US media ignore such denunciations. Then some people denounce the Muslim world for the absence of condemnations against terrorism, and grow new fury against Islam. In the hope of forestalling this sequence, I am sending (below) some quotations and citations of Muslim responses to the Mumbai murders."

The content of these statements is less important than the fact they are being issued.

Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR)
CAIR Condemns Mumbai Attacks
Muslim Civil Rights Group Demands that Hostages Be 'Released Immediately and Unconditionally'
Press Release: Council on American-Islamic Relations
November 27, 2008

A prominent national Islamic civil rights and advocacy group today condemned attacks on a number of sites in the Indian financial capital of Mumbai that left at least 100 people dead and many more injured.The Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR) also called for the immediate and unconditional release of all hostages taken during the attacks. Witnesses say the attackers sought out American and British citizens.[ ...]
In a statement, CAIR Executive Director Nihad Awad said: "We condemn these cowardly attacks and demand that all hostages taken by the attackers be released immediately and unconditionally. We offer sincere condolences to the loved ones of those killed or injured in these senseless and inexcusable acts of violence against innocent civilians. American Muslims stand with our fellow citizens of all faiths in repudiating acts of terror wherever they take place and whomever they target."
The Washington-based group also asked the Indian government to protect all its citizens from the type of retaliatory attacks that have taken place following similar incidents in the recent past.CAIR, America's largest Islamic civil liberties group, has 35 offices and chapters nationwide and in Canada. Its mission is to enhance the understanding of Islam, encourage dialogue, protect civil liberties, empower American Muslims, and build coalitions that promote justice and mutual understanding.

Muslim Public Affairs Council (MPAC)
MPAC Condemns Mumbai Terror Attacks
November 26, 2008
The Muslim Public Affairs Council today condemned a series of seven terror attacks in Mumbai, India, which have left at least 80 dead, and more than 900 injured. According to media reports, about 40 British nationals and other foreigners are currently being held hostage at a Mumbai hotel.[ ... ] Those responsible for these brutal and immoral attacks should be swiftly brought to justice. Islam considers the use of terrorism to be unacceptable for any purpose.
"We at MPAC extend our heartfelt condolences to the families of the victims and the Indian people. As Americans, we are familiar with the imminent and the long-term repercussions of terrorism," said Executive Director Salam Al-Marayati. "Here at home, we remain committed to combating, rejecting and effectively countering the scourge of terrorism in all forms."
Founded in 1988, the Muslim Public Affairs Council is an American institution which informs and shapes public opinion and policy by serving as a trusted resource to decision makers in government, media and policy institutions. MPAC is also committed to developing leaders with the purpose of enhancing the political and civic participation of Muslim of Muslim American. MPAC offices are located in Washington, DC, New York City and Los Angeles.

Indian Muslim Council-USA
US Based Indian American Group Denounces Terrorist Attacks in Mumbai
November 27, 2008
Indian Muslim Council-USA
IMC-USA (http://www.imc-usa.org), an advocacy group dedicated towards safeguarding India's pluralist and tolerant ethos, denounces in strongest possible terms the terror attacks in Mumbai, the financial capital of India. IMC-USA empathizes with the families of victims, hostages and police officers killed in the attacks and hopes for the safe release of the hostages.
Rasheed Ahmed, President of IMC-USA said: "The perpetrators of these crimes against humanity should be captured and punished to the maximum extent of the law."
IMC-USA calls on the Indian government to find ways to increase the safety and security of ordinary citizens as well as provide immediate and adequate compensation to all the victims of this carnage. Recent years have witnessed an alarming growth in the number of groups committing mindless acts of violence against innocent civilians. In the past few months alone there has been a string of bomb blasts in many cities, ethnic cleansing and targeting of minorities, police harassment and scapegoating of innocent civilians and fake encounter killings.
"The Home Minister is responsible for this widespread deterioration of law order and security situation and should be held accountable," stated Rasheed Ahmed.
IMC-USA also calls on the Indian government to setup a high level commission to investigate the increasing scourge of violence and terrorism in the country and ways to engage the civil society in effectively curbing this menace.

Kashmiri American Council (KAC)
Mumbai Terrorist Attacks Reprehensible Crimes Against Humanity: Dr. Fai
November 27, 2008
The Kashmiri American Council (KAC) expressed its utter disgust at the terrorist attacks perpetrated in Mumbai, India. Condemning the bestiality in the strongest terms, the KAC pledged to contribute, in whatever form possible, to the rehabilitation effort of the affected families.
Dismayed at the photos displaying the carnage, fleeing victims and burning buildings, Executive Director of KAC, Dr. Ghulam Nabi Fai, prayed that the authorities would pursue all reasonable efforts to investigate, apprehend, and punish those who are guilty of committing these reprehensible crimes against humanity.
The KAC Board, in an extraordinary meeting, pledged to oppose those who would resort to violence in order to pursue whatever ends they claimed. Reports indicating that terrorists specifically targeted Western tourists further aggravate enlightened sensibilities. Targeted victimization of innocents has no justification and encourages retribution from any and all quarters. To that end, the KAC hopes that all India's citizenry allows for a cooling period and hopes that communal harmony prevails during this troubling time in India s history.

Canadian Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR-CAN)
CAIR-CAN Condemns Mumbai Attacks Islamic Group Hopes for Safe and Speedy Return of Hostages
November 28, 2008
The Canadian Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR-CAN) today condemned the attacks in Mumbai, India in which Montreal actor Michael Rudder and Toronto yoga instructor Helen Connolly were wounded. Currently, six Canadians are also unaccounted for and are believed to be held hostage.
Foreigners from diverse countries, including Canada, the U.S., the U.K., Sweden, Italy, Spain, Turkey, Yemen, Israel, New Zealand and Singapore, are among those being held captive according to Indian officials. "We categorically condemn the Mumbai attacks and demand that all hostages be immediately released. We also pray for the safe and speedy return of those held captive," said Sameer Zuberi, CAIR-CAN Communications Coordinator.
"Our condolences go out to the families of those victimized in these tragic events. As people of faith we must strongly speak out against the terrorizing and kidnapping of innocent civilians," Zuberi added. CAIR-CAN also called on the Canadian government to direct all resources necessary to assist those Canadians affected by the Mumbai attacks.

MuslimMatters.org
From Muslims Condemn Mumbai Terror Attack
By Brad A. Greenberg
Jewish Journal of Greater Los Angeles
November 26, 2008
www.jewishjournal.com/thegodblog/item/muslims_condemn_mubai_terror_attack_20081126/
Muslims worldwide have been denouncing the attacks, and not parsing their words. This condemnation is from MuslimMatters.org:
Regardless of who was involved, the people who carried these attacks out are animals, with little sense of humanity or morality. As Muslims, we condemn such senseless carnage against innocent civilians, wherever it may occur. This goes against the fundamental spirit of Islam, which promotes a culture of life and humanity, not bloodshed and violence. And another example of why extremist ideology, whatever that ideology may be, needs to be refuted and condemned. "Whoever kills a person [unjustly]… it is as though he has killed all mankind. And whoever saves a life, it is as though he had saved all mankind." (Qur'an, 5:32)
Today, we join all Indians in expressing our outrage and our condemnation of this senseless spilling of innocent blood.
May Allah grant patience to the victims of terrorism, and may He extract full justice against the perpetrators.

Leaders of Muslim Majority Nations, Arab League Slam Mumbai Terrorism
Agence Frances Presse and Africasia (UK)
November 27, 2008
http://www.africasia.com/services/news/newsitem.php?area=mideast=081127131945.2rm0mkv6.php

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Update from the field

2008-12-01T18:02:00.005-05:00

Saturday evening I officiated at my first wedding. ~whew~ ! All in all, I think things went pretty well, and what I am most happy about is that no one apparently noticed just how nervous I was!

They were a lovely young couple in their late 20s who had dated since college. She teaches music and he is a wedding DJ. About 150 people were in attendance (so much for starting with a small wedding!) and I was chagrined to discover, once I was on stage and ready to start, that there was no microphone. I projected as loudly as I could, but have no idea if anyone in the back could hear me.

Although I had done a mock wedding in my lifecycles class last year, doing one for real is naturally a very different experience. It was amazing how much time and work went into the preparation for what was only a 20-minute ceremony!

The couple (and one mother) met with me in person back in April, and between then and now, the bride and I probably exchanged at least 30 phone calls or emails with each other: proofreading the Hebrew of their ketubah and sending changes to the printer; proofing the ceremony flier and sending corrections to that; figuring out how to affix the tallit for the chuppah; sending the 7 blessings in English to their friends who were reading them during the ceremony, etc. etc. etc.

Eight months and an hour drive later, I showed up, waited around for an hour, oversaw the ketubah signing, which only took a few minutes, and then went downstairs for the ceremony. Twenty minutes later, the glass was breaking and people were shouting mazal tov!

I must say, being a part of a ceremony in which two people pledge to love and care for each other for the remainder of their lives is a genuinely humbling and moving experience. In between my jitters and moments of self-consciousness up on the bimah, I had an equal number of moments where I felt so lucky to be doing what I was doing.

Later, as I was driving home, I thought back to those times during recess at Glennon Heights Elementary School when I conducted funeral services for the dead birds I found on the playground, and day dreamed about how cool it would be to grow up to be a minister like Father Mulcahey on MASH. Getting to be a part of the lifechanging moments in people's lives feels likes such a privilege and such a blessing.

I learned a lot on Saturday, including many things to tweak and do slightly differently the next time. And I'm looking forward to when the next time will present itself!

Quote of the Day

2008-11-26T19:25:00.003-05:00

"I wish it were three hours later so I would have an excuse to go to bed."

-- Aaron, 6:15 p.m.

Yes, they are exciting times here on Delmont Avenue...

It's a rough road out there

2008-11-22T21:32:00.004-05:00

Sometimes, I have rather jolting reminders of just how insular and sheltered being in rabbinical school can be, and yesterday was another one of those reminders.

After dropping the baby off with her grandparents, I headed off to the train depot and took my first solo ride to Center City (downtown) for an interview for a massage job. I quit working at a spa near my house in April because of the pregnancy, and about a month ago, I called them and said I was ready to start picking up shifts again. They said: "Okay!" and never called back since.

I'll admit that a small part of my brain thought it was a little weird. Up until I quit working, I covered at least one shift every other week, and frequently more than that. Maybe they had forgotten? Maybe they thought I wasn't serious? Maybe I had teed someone off? So, I called back a second time and this time spoke to the owner, who congratulated me warmly about the baby, and assurred me he would call if they needed me.

The phone hasn't rung once. That's was sent me to Craigslist and browsing for other options.

When I showed up for the downtown interview yesterday, I was surprised to see that I was not the only one there. It turned out, they had decided to schedule two group interviews because "so many people" had responded to their ad. For the next three hours, I sat in a cramped foyer with all of the other "hopefuls" either waiting for my 3-minute solo interview or hearing a sales spiel from a rippley-muscled personal trainer.

What had been posted as a $35 an hour job was actually only $35 an hour if you could convince their personal training clients that they absolutely NEEDED to be getting regular massage as part of their fitness routine. If you didn't make the pitch successfully, you didn't get paid. And since their clients tended to come in at the usual times: 8 am, noon, after work beginning at 4, you would basically be hanging out at the gym for long LONG hours every day, with no people to even make the pitch to, waiting for their clients to come in so you MAYBE could get them interested.

I have no problem explaining to people the value of massage -- I really don't. I believe in it myself, or I wouldn't have spent two years going through the training. But I still shake my head when I think about the fact I basically spent half of my entire day responding to a massage job for a fitness business that doesn't have any clients. Who has ever heard of such a thing!? And who in the world would ever take such a job!?

Those three hours weren't a total waste. I had an enjoyable time getting to know the other CMTs, and a sobering time hearing their various states of woe. One guy got certified in June and has still never found any work. He's "on call" at two spas, but if his being "on call" is anything like my being "on call" -- I know what that means!

Another woman, probably in her late 40s, is working one day a week at a very high-end spa where I have also applied for jobs in the past. They only pay 25% commission (compared to the 40% I got at the last two places I worked), and they will not give her anymore shifts. Her husband just lost his job after 35 years with the same company. She could barely hold back the tears.

+++

None of this should really have been a surprise. I turn on the news and basically all I ever hear about is how decimated our economy is, and how bleak it will probably continue to be. It's always a different experience, though, when you confront it head-on, and hear people's stories.

Being in rabbi school feels insular because the reality is, none of us are in want for more work. The list of part-time job offers that comes through our school that are at least willing to pay us $20 an hour is long and flush, and some of them end up going unfilled. Our problem isn't a lack of work, it's a lack of time. If we are, on average, physically in lectures for 12 hours a week, and we are expected to study 4 hours for each hour of class -- that is 48 hours right there. Add in commuting time, eating, shopping, sleeping-- and there are only so many hours left in the week to actually do any work.

Most of us do work, of course, and most of us are simply very, very tired. But we aren't worrying about whether we are going to eat, and we aren't running around frantically applying to jobs.

Ironically, it's the whole time issue that prompted me to go interview for the massage job to begin with. There are any number of work options before me, but like most parents I suppose, my whole equation has shifted: Every hour I work is an hour I'm not spending with my daughter, so I want to work the least number of hours possible. And massage is my quickest way of doing that. Clearly, that way will not be an option in the forseeable future, but in this economic climate, how could I complain?

I left the interview and came outside to rainy skies. Jogging four blocks to the train depot, hoping to catch the last train before rush-hour rates kicked in, I felt very grateful that for the first time, my belly wasn't hurting. And I couldn't wait to get home to kiss two pink and plump little cheeks on what is, without a doubt, the sweetest little baby in the whole wide world.