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Oct 2001-September 2002
Most months have a late and an early letter home. Dear friends, We are in the middle of what are called the "intermediate days of Sukkot"... Not really holidays but not really "not holidays"... and they are followed dramatically with Simchat Torah - the Celebration of the Torah - the moment when we finish the Book of Deuteronomy - dance and sing and start all over again in Genesis with that strange and wonderful Creation story. It is really our richest time of year. Sukkot is only peripherally what I want to write about and I also peripherally want to talk about my son Sam and why he hates Shakespeare and I promise it all connects because in reality I want to talk about this moment in Jewish time. Last Sunday I was rambling on at an Education Committee meeting (my colleagues and friends allow me enormous slack) about the concept of "ushpizim" or visitors who are part of the mystical side of Sukkot. The tradition instructs us that we are to invite the "ancestors" into our sukkah, or open-air hut, to join us each evening to further our Jewish learning. This tradition is first mentioned in the Zohar, the ancient Kabbalistic text, and we were instructed to invite the Patriarchs - Abraham, Isaac and Jacob as well as Joseph, Aaron, Moses and David to share this time with us. Some families included the Matriarchs, Sarah, Rebecca, Rachel and Leah. I, of course, think the concept is ripe for continuing reconstruction. Here we are. Fresh and new from the Holy Days. We have reflected. We have reviewed. We have repented to whatever extent we chose. We have refreshed ourselves and the slate is clean. At the very least our awareness has been heightened to our own shortcomings. What better time to think about opportunities for "do-overs" then during the intermediate days of Sukkot? We are theoretically sleeping under the stars in a temporary hut. We are theoretically having conversations with the greatest minds of all time. We are empowered to invite in to our presence people with answers. People who confronted all the big questions and somehow found the big answers. We have a chance to say, tell me what it was like, please. Tell me how I can live a more meaningful life? Tell me how to pray without feeling ridiculous? Tell me that there's more to life than just putting one foot in front of the other and slogging through the wilderness. Tell me it was worth it. My discussion with my colleagues on Sunday wasn't about what they would ask Aaron or Leah (although my list of questions for them would be quite long) - but about who, in all of history they would choose to help guide them towards who they want to become - and also who played roles in making them who they are. Who would they invite into their personal sukkah to talk to and get to know? Who would you invite? My first choice for my son Sam's sukkah (if he had one) is William Shakespeare. Sam hates Shakespeare because Shakespeare rewrote history in order to get his work performed. For Sam that is selling out and there is no possible excuse for it. No matter how good his work, Shakespeare is condemned to Sam-hell. I very much want Will and Sam to have a conversation about this because I can't talk any sense into Sam. There's a lesson I want Sam to learn here about compromise that I think I can't teach. Sam's hatred for Shakespeare has created a whole new justification for ushpizim, as far as I'm concerned. Let's give Will a chance to explain himself! Maybe Sam will forgive him. I have different people I need to talk to and learn from - with Sisyphus way up high on my list. I also want to sit across the table from my great-grandfather Daviditchi Glukovsky, who was a Rabbi in Russia and I'd like to talk to him about God, the universe and everything. I also wish I had a chance to study with Heschel. I'd have loved to be in the presence of the Ba'al Shem Tov and listen to him tell stories. I also confess to a real fascination with the monk Thomas Merton. In reality though, the people I am most interested in having in my imaginary sukkah are people I have already met but somehow didn't take enough time with so far. I have had teachers that in hindsight were extraordinary - and I treated as ordinary. I have had classmates and acquaintances that I thought I'd get to know some day and never did. I have had invitations I wanted to return and didn't. I want all those people (one or two at a time) in my imaginary sukkah for a cup of coffee or tea and a late night conversation. I want to grow from them. I know I could have and I didn't the first time - but this is our chance for a do-over. So, when making my list of Ushpizim, I know in reality Sam won't sit down with Will and the Ba'al Shem Tov won't be telling me a story but maybe you and I will have that cup of coffee we've been putting off for two years or take that walk on the beach or even exchange a personal email or you will pick up a phone and call the friend who always makes you feel better but six months has passed since you called or you'll go to a high school or college reunion or send a note to a teacher who changed your life or... well, we all have potential ushpizim in our lives... people who with a visit could make us better, stronger, more than we were without them... we need to acknowledge their importance in making us who we are and who we can become... This is one of those things we all know - and our tradition demands we honor (with a little reconstruction....) Chag
Sameach,  Dear friends, As I said in my last email, this one will be sort of about preparing ourselves for the upcoming holy days. We are now in the month of Elul - the end of our year when we've got a lot of work to do for the season ahead. Because the month of Elul happens while most of us are on vacation or dreading the start of school again or just in a time when many of us detach a bit from our synagogues, the charge to spend this time in preparation for the self-assessment of our sins that the holy days require has not been part of our regular Jewish yearly ritual. In traditional synagogues during Elul, at the end of daily prayers (not on Shabbat) the shofar is blown to remind us that this task before us, this assessment, should be underway. An amazing thing just happened to me. As I was writing I could hear your voices saying to me - nah - if I'm willing to not go in to work on Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur - that should be enough. Other voices are saying - I go but I just hate it. It goes on forever. Other voices, actually voices I resonate with too, are challenging me on the language of this time of year. What is this sin stuff? What are confessionals? How can this possibly be Jewish? How can you ask me to get more into something that just doesn't feel meaningful to me? I'm going to talk about these words and concepts in a way that I hope will enrich this season for you. First is the hardest word and truly the hardest concept of all. The word/concept is sin. I don't believe that it would be so tough if we could just call it things we've done wrong - but our tradition is clear - we sin. In the Reconstructionist Daily Prayer book we find a reading for Elul that we have to keep in the forefront of our meditations. It goes like this: Everyone is given free will. Anyone who wishes to turn to the good way and be righteous can do so. Or anyone who wishes to turn to the evil way and be wicked has that power too. Thus it is written in the Torah: "Behold, the man is become as one with us, to know good and evil (Genesis 3:22)." Humanity has become unique in the world. We are the only species that by our own knowledge and reason knows good and evil. W can do whatever we wish. No one can hinder us from doing good or evil. The reading reminds me of a cartoon I once saw that showed two dogs talking (well, it was a cartoon) and one dog was saying to another, "My name is ŒNo, no, bad dog' - what's yours?" The point is clear. The dog didn't have a clue. Call your child "No, no, bad kid" and they'll do whatever they can to rename themselves. So, we sin. There are the big sins - the murders, rapes, robberies -- but there are also so many others. Lashon hara - evil speech -- is one we all fall victim to - even if it's a really juicy tale of someone's foolish behavior -- it's a sin. Saying no when you could say yes when someone really needs your help -- it's a sin too. Children are capable of sins as well, although the tradition doesn't hold them accountable until they have reached moral adulthood at age 13. However, in a good discussion with a bunch of first graders you can see beyond a shadow of a doubt that they, too, know what a sin is - even if it's borrowing a sister's sweater without permission. So I think the real task is in finding within ourselves where our sins rest. Each of our behaviors that fall short can fit in that category. And a sin for me might not be a sin for you. If a student came up to me and said she really needed to talk to me and I said no - that would be a sin - because I've presented myself to the students as someone who will always be there for them. If that same student asked a rock star at the stage door after a concert and got a no - well, you get my point. Elul is the time to kind of figure it all out for ourselves. You can't do it in just ten days or during the two or three when you're actually in services. There's too much else to do. You have to hug folks you haven't seen in a while, follow directions, learn from the Rabbi's sermons and the Cantor's prayers and just read the words on the page. You need to come prepared. So, the second task is in preparing how we will try to return to our purer selves. I love the Star Wars image of the dark side -- that's where we all visit but know we shouldn't stay. We know where the side of good is -- we just have to figure out how to get there. That preparation is also part of our repentance - our teshuvah, or returning, to where we belong. If we really took a hard look at the past year, we know we all have teshuvah on our to do list. Redemption too is available -- and I actually have what feels like a real redemptive moment at the close of the day on Yom Kippur when the crowd has diminished - we're all a little nutty from fasting - and the power of the moment builds. I listen to the cantor and choir singing the Baruch Shem (that alone is worth the price of admission) and I am moved to tears year after year. Redemption doesn't have to be in the sanctuary though. It can't be, really, despite my love for the dramatic. Redemption is the feeling we get when we throw ourselves into the experience, acknowledge that the task is underway since it is never done, and welcome the sense of lightness we get from having done our best to get in touch with who we are and what we are capable of doing. That's really the greatest gift of Elul. We are told to start thinking in spiritual patterns. We are told that incredible possibilities are open to us. We are reminded that we are a people that knows we are flawed but also knows that we are capable of making things better. The following meditation for Elul in the back of our Shabbat prayer book is written by Martin Buber about one of my favorites of the great Chasidim, Menachem Mendl of Kotzk. "Where is the dwelling of God?" This is the question with which the Rabbi of Kotzk surprised a number of learned Jews who happened to be visiting him. They laughed at him: "What a thing to ask! Is not the whole world full of God's glory?" Then he answered his own question: "God dwells wherever people let God in." The only thing I ask of you between today and Rosh Hashanah is that you try and get comfortable with that idea. Can you open your heart? Can you ask yourself the challenging questions that sooner or later must be asked? Can you put aside the prejudice laden words and keep your eye on the target towards which we all want to aim? Are there any among you who doesn't want to climb one more rung on the ladder that leads you away from the dark side? With wishes for a peaceful Shabbat, a meaningful Elul and the end to world violence - Shanah
tovah - A good year,
Early August Dear Friends, This Sunday Im going to participate in two Dor Hadash Open Houses where the announced topic is "Interfaith Issues." I sometimes feel like the poster child for this particular subject because for 25 years (on August 14th) Michael and I will have been in a challenging and wonderful interfaith marriage that has the additional benefit of one of us being a Methodist minister and the other a Jewish education director. When we do interfaith, we really do interfaith. This can be a topic of great pain and real fear for many people, parents especially. Interfaith marriages are viewed by many as a threat to the very existence of Judaism. Interfaith marriages are perceived to be a failure, somehow. Some people see Jews who marry "out" as being full of self-hatred. Others see Jews who marry "out" as uneducated, as if the marriage wouldn't have happened if the Jew really understood the power of Judaism. We grew up with the stereotype of parents sitting shiva for their lost children who had the temerity to fall in love with one of "them." We grew up with the ghosts of the Holocaust in our dreams, telling us we must never forget. we must rebuild our numbers. The reality of interfaith marriages is somewhat different then the stark black and white of this stereotyping. Some of our marriages are unable to withstand the jarring differences that two cultures bring to the family home. Yet many of us have actually become stronger in our practice of Judaism as a result of marrying out. I know that's been the case with me. I believe, beyond a shadow of a doubt, that if Michael hadn't spent years asking me questions about my Judaism, I would not be working for Dor Hadash or as engaged in my personal Jewish study as I am. I would not have found it so essential to find a special Jewish community that would welcome my family and educate my children, if it were not for my marriage. I dont think we would have observed Shabbat in our home or filled our shelves with books on Judaism that challenge the adult learner if I hadnt been pressed to explain why Jewish continuity is so important to me. Studies are now starting to bear out what I knew instinctively when Michael and I married. Interfaith marriages can be the source of great Jewish strength and growth. We are part of an Interfaith Havurah at Dor Hadash. Each of us in this group made conscious adult choices to raise our children as Jews. Each of us engaged the topic, poked at each other to find out where the lines were drawn, and each of us kvelled individually and collectively when our children stood before this congregation and became Bnai Mitzvah. We are not naive, however. We are clear that we have faced hurdles that same faith couples do not. We have dealt with the issues of holidays (although I think it's easier, in a perverse way, to not have to worry about which grandparents get us for Christmas or Pesach). We have found ourselves spending a lot more time with the whys of Judaism in order to help our non-Jewish partners understand why we do what we do. As our children have grown, we have also spent time explaining to them why we chose Judaism as their path to their own understanding of God and faith. Nothing we have done Jewishly can be routine because we are challenged to answer the why of it all. What I wonder about is what it would have been like for me to not be confronted with all these questions. If I had married "in" would I have the same adult love and respect for Judaism? If I had married "in" would I have just shul-shopped for a neighborhood synagogue and let them take care of imparting Judaism to my children? If I had married "in" would I be continually engaged in the struggle with God that Judaism demands of me? Ill never know the answer to these questions, but the wondering remains. I find myself saddened when I realize that for many of my fellow Jews, membership in the tribe requires bloodlines rather than heart lines. I bog down on the peoplehood question not that I reject the notion of peoplehood, but I hate the idea that someone born of a Jewish mother who has no spiritual or behavioral tie to Judaism has full "credentials" in the eyes of many Jews. The child of a non-Jewish mother and Jewish father, however, must face conversion in many synagogues before credentials are issued, no matter how observant or educated the child may be. There's something wrong with this picture. We sit, as Jews, at a crossroads. Never before have we been as assimilated as we are in this country. In my lifetime I've seen a dramatic change in acceptance of Jews in all areas of American life. There are certainly bigots on both sides but by and large Jews have taken their rightful place in society and anti-Semitism has become a hate crime, not a norm. The question for us is, where do we go from here? Some Jewish movements are still very clear about their rejection of those of us who have married "out." I dont mean just the rejection of the non-Jewish partner, I mean the rejection of the Jewish partner who is no longer, in the eyes of some, a good role model. In some situations we are forbidden to teach in religious schools or take leadership roles in congregational life. In some cases our children must undergo conversion in order to be educated or involved in synagogue programming. We are being penalized for attempting to be part of a Jewish community without the proper credentials - our spouses are rejected and so are we. The ramifications of this position for the long haul are mindboggling. So, I have some questions for us to ponder. What would happen to Judaism if we put less emphasis on bloodlines and more emphasis on Jewish practice? What would happen to Judaism if "outreach" wasn't a euphemism for converting non-Jewish partners, but just meant opening doors? What would happen if we spent less time celebrating our ethnicity and more time celebrating Jewish practices in the synagogue and at home? What would happen to Jewish education if we focused more on God, prayer and practice? Would we lose something that is key to the survival of Judaism? Have we survived because we are an identifiable ethnic group that has the capacity to circle the wagons when times are bad? Does Jewish identity require knowing the difference between a bagel and a bialy? Does it rest within the meaningful chanting of the Amidah? Or does it rest someplace else entirely? Of course, we find our religious identity in all arenas - in study, in peoplehood and in faith. To dance the hora until you cant dance anymore is part of our tradition. To listen to the shofar blow at the end of Yom Kippur services when we are lightheaded from fasting is part of our tradition. To hug a grieving child at a shiva call is also part of who we are. I return again and again to our ancestor Jacob as I ponder these very difficult questions. When he was renamed Israel, the one who struggles with God, he became a symbolic guide for me. Jacob wasn't done after this encounter with the angel of God - Jacob was merely (or amazingly) empowered to keep up the struggle. He was given a cosmic o.k. By extension, that cosmic o.k. belongs to us all. I never expect clear answers to any of my questions. I never expect easy solutions either. What I ask for, as part of an interfaith family, is an awareness that today the rules have to change there are too many of "us" who are struggling to make our marriages to "them" work in an honorable and consistent way. We cannot allow the narrowness of the past to continue to define our future. We cant be ignored and we're not going away. Judaism, this evolving civilization of the Jewish people, will need to make room for us - and there's nothing that I can find in Torah that tells me it can't. This Shabbat begins the month of Elul, the month of personal preparation prior to the High Holy Days. This is a special time of self-reflection. Next letter I'll talk about that a little more, but you can get started without me. Barbara Carr Dear Friends, As you may have noticed, I'm taking it a little easy for July and letting Rabbi Lawrence Kushner do most of the "talking." One of the reasons I'm doing this is to give myself a little mental vacation, but a more significant reason is that I want to share with you some of the resources that have helped make my own search for meaning so wonderful. I also know that my search has had many false starts, or roads that unexpectedly do a u-turn, knocking me off-balance for a while. I think that's probably true for all of us and so finding a thinker like Lawrence Kushner who seems almost effortlessly to put me in a spiritual place is a true comfort. For the last few years I've spent a lot of time looking for new ways to feed my soul because I've been made acutely aware that each moment of my life (or any life) is a gift. The search continues to remind me of how precious each day is and how often the day to day tasks of our lives can be filled with holiness if we just look at them a little differently. Rabbi Kushner's work has been one of the tools I've used to help me clarify that gratitude and I return to his books again and again. No matter where you are in your own search for meaning, I know there is nothing more exciting then coming across a story or an idea that fills in some of the blanks or just raises questions that force you, I hope happily, to take another look at who you are. The story I want to share with you from his wonderful book Invisible Lines of Connection is long, but I think truly worth your time to read, think about, and maybe even play with a little bit. I hope, too, that you might choose to get your own copy of his book(s) and wander around in wonder and gratitude with me. This story is called "Virtual Reality." One of my sons brought home a new computer game. This was not one of those video arcade contraptions with primitive little animated characters chasing one another around the screen or space ships shooting at alien invaders. It didn't even require split-second visual reflexes. "It is a new breed," he told me, "called virtual reality." You play it by "entering" it. Your only chance at winning is by imagining that you are actually inside it. Instead of asking, "How do I win this game?" you ask, "What would I do if I really lived in this world? We are all connected -- and we forget that at our peril. We touch, we change, and we find years later that something we did, no matter how small, has changed someone or something else for all time. The burden sometimes feels heavy -- but if you take a deep breath and let yourself see and feel and celebrate the "luminous organism of sacred responsibility" the weight lifts and only joy remains. With
prayers for peace,
Early July Dear Friends, We have a great videotape of my oldest son's sixth birthday party (17 short years ago!). We had the party at home with about 10 of his friends and for some reason decided that this was the party to record for all time. (We borrowed the video camera, we didn't own one, so picking what to video was always a source of family discussion.) There are two high points on the video as far as Michael and I are concerned. The first high point is when we had a parade in the cul de sac with pots and pans and anything else we could lay our hands on that made noise. As the video rolls around the circle recording the children jumping up and down and dancing in the street, parents appear from each home to photograph the parade. The joy on everyone's faces is a delight to see. Another of our favorite parts is in our back yard where everyone is in a circle and we're teaching them the Hokey Pokey. I can't help laughing out loud every time I see it -- especially when our then two year old son Sam runs into the middle of the circle to dance alone… I bring this up because for our July letters home I'm going to share two stories from Lawrence Kushner's wonderful book "Invisible Lines of Connection -- Sacred Stories of the Ordinary" -- and he too is struck, for completely different reasons, with the hokey pokey. The story is called What It's All About. I was sitting by myself in a crowded downtown steak house waiting for an old friend to join me for dinner. The waiter had just brought me a glass of wine and I was going over photocopies of some Hasidic texts I planned to study with my rabbinic students the next morning. Despite the clatter and the noise and trying to concentrate on my reading, I became aware that the two young men behind me were talking about how one of them recently became a father. In addition to the videotape I cherish, and this wonderful piece of Kushner's, I also see on t-shirts and bumper stickers the simple question "What if this is what it's all about?" How we each answer that question is core to the quality of our lives. Expecting payback -- a lottery win -- adoring grandchildren -- or our fifteen minutes of fame -- makes the question a sad one. Living in the moment -- seeing ourselves clearly -- knowing that we are a piece of the great connected puzzle that is human kind -- allows us to answer that question easily. How much more delighted we could be with ourselves if we could answer, "this is as good as it gets -- aren't we blessed?" The second story will arrive soon…. With
prayers for peace, Dear Friends, I'm just getting in under the wire for late June... but it's a good discipline for me. I considered taking the summer off, but then realized that just showing up is half the battle. So here I am once again. My last letter on the subject of Hebrew in our liturgy, and as the language of the Jewish people, generated some really thoughtful responses from you all. No one had the nerve to actually end my letter (which I had offered up as an option), because implicit in ending the letter is the idea that some sort of conclusion has been reached. No conclusions really could be reached, I've discovered, because in all your responses there was an ambivalence, an understanding that we'd probably get more our of our prayer life if it were all in English, but an unwillingness to give up on Hebrew completely. One comment was that without Hebrew we might as well all be Unitarians (I believe that particular person was having a bad day), but I understand the instinct. What is it that makes Judaism special? What is it that causes us to have to work so hard to do it right? Others of you brought up the Latin mass and how the Catholic Church was able to switch to the vernacular without a whole lot of trauma, although some clergy were very resistant and some congregations resolved the problem with a Latin mass and a vernacular mass, both on Sunday, one following the other. We of course would have to spend all day in the synagogue to pull off sequential Shabbat services, one for the Hebrew-challenged and one the old-fashioned way. I was also reminded that the Orthodox have a "linear siddur" which actually translates word by word the Hebrew on the page. The Reconstructionist prayer book couldn't do that since many of our translations are not exact, but speak to the spirit of the prayers rather than the literal content. A colleague of mine from another synagogue wondered if we could ever really make English "the language of prayer." My most loyal respondent closed with "how wonderful if we could blend it (Hebrew) into the vernacular... what if it also had the effect of making us more comfortable with prayer in general and the structure of the service in particular?" This is obviously a topic that deserves to be out on the table for ongoing discussion. With that in mind, I want to tempt you with a book I gave to all the teachers in the Gesher School this year. It's called "These Are The Words: A Vocabulary of Jewish Spiritual Life," by Rabbi Arthur Green. This is another wonderful book from Jewish Lights Publishing. Green says in his introduction that he wrote the book for his sister, Paula, who did not have a traditional Jewish education and he invites us all to learn a little Hebrew with him as he defines what he chooses as a core spiritual vocabulary. Browsing the book allows us to understand the nuances of Hebrew in these familiar words as well, and those nuances are the reason that so many Hebrew-literate folks think we need to know the language to know the faith. I'm thinking I disagree. I do want to know what Arthur Green shares in this wonderful book though, because by using English words to explain the Hebrew, my appreciation for those Hebrew words soars. I'm going to quote directly from the book and let you share in the joy I felt when I stumbled across his work the first time. The word I've picked to share with you is "Yisrael" because the nature of the times makes it even more important than ever before that we understand what we're talking about when we encounter this word in prayer. Here is what Rabbi Green has to say on pages 188-189: "The Jewish people are called 'Israel' after our ancestor Jacob, who was also called Israel. We are called by his name, rather than that of the other patriarchs or matriarchs, because his entire progeny formed the Jewish people. Abraham is the father of both Isaac and Ishmael, traditionally the progenitor of the Arabs and by extension the Muslim peoples. Isaac and Rebekkah are the parents of both Jacob and Esau, the ancestor of Rome and, as later understood, of Christendom. Rachel and Leah each mothered only a portion of the tribes of Israel. The tradition thus recognizes the common origins of all Western religions. We Jews are spiritual cousins, 'fellow descendants of Abraham' with those who follow Christianity and Islam. But the immediate family of Israel is that of Jacob's children. Therefore we are called by his name. Back in my own voice now. I hope this whets your appetite to play some more with this issue. I think it's fascinating that in the last few years at least three books that attempt to define Hebrew words for the language-impaired have been successful. The first I came across is something called The Joys of Hebrew written by Lewis Glinert and published by the Oxford University Press. This is modeled after the very successful Joys of Yiddish with jokes included. The second is put out by The Jewish Publication Society and is called simply The JPS Dictionary of Jewish Words written by Joyce Eisenberg and Ellen Scolnic. This is a fairly straightforward reference book. Finally, and the one I like best, is Green's book, which is where we started. This increased interest in making Hebrew accessible makes me feel that the time is right for this discussion and I look forward to it continuing, via email, in person and in whatever other format you may choose. My next letter will be more focused on spirituality once again, but the responses I got on this topic were so intense, I couldn't walk away from the whole question of prayer language and how we make it work for ourselves. The fourth of July is just days away. Celebrate our freedoms with a shehechayanu this year, thanking God for bringing us to this moment. With dreams of
peace,
Early June Dear Friends, (This letter will just dribble to an end... I've spent days trying to end it... I can't do it... I don't have the words or the thoughts to tie things up in a neat intellectual package. Maybe one of you can come back with a concluding paragraph for me.) I want to talk about Hebrew. When I was growing up I knew that Yiddish was the language that Jews spoke at home and Hebrew was the language that was for prayer and study. In my particular family tree there was also Russian and English, and I still hold my grandparents' generation in awe for their facility with language. Yiddish was critical to the Eastern European Jew -- it was the tie that bound the people together. I knew little about the Sephardim, the Jews of Spain and North Africa, and even less about Ladino, their daily language that parallels Yiddish in importance to their sense of identity. The one thing I remember clearly from my early childhood is that Hebrew was like Latin -- the language of prayer --not the vernacular. Then came the founding of the State of Israel and the decision to bring Hebrew out of the prayer book and into the home. I'm old enough to have been part of the transitional generation of Hebrew students who switched from the Eastern European pronunciation of Hebrew (the Ashkenazi version) to the Sephardic version because that was the Hebrew of the Zionist movement and the new country of Israel. By dropping the "s" and substituting the harsher "t" sound (Shabbas to Shabbat) we were declaring ourselves connected to Israel in a whole new way. Sometimes when I'm at a B'nai Mitzvah celebration and I hear the Torah blessing being chanted by a grandfather I get tingles of my childhood the -- oy sound -- the sibilance of the s -- I'm reconnected with my youth. Now, I'm not a linguist. My knowledge of Hebrew is limited to sight reading and a fairly extensive vocabulary of ritual words. I know nothing of Hebrew grammar (although I can usually make a singular plural) and I can't understand Israelis in conversation. However, I find that I use Hebrew words all the time in conversations about Judaism and spiritual practice. There are many times when only the Hebrew word will do -- yet I'm a Hebrew illiterate. I've struggled with how that happened and what that means. Here's what I wonder about. I wonder what would happen if American Jews began developing a vocabulary of Hebrew words that could be utilized in spoken English? Would we find a richer religious life? If we took all the Hebrew words that have unique significance and anglicized them, made them comprehensible to English-only speakers, would our services be more meaningful? If we integrated Hebrew with English so that words like Tanakh, kadosh, aliyah, adon olam, all were completely accessible to us, what would our prayer life be like? In most arenas we only use words we understand. I have been struck again and again with the fact that when we pray in Hebrew the percentage of us that really knows what we're saying is miniscule. How do we get away with that? That's not to say that we don't know what the Shema means, or even the Ve'ahavta, but as we're speeding our way through the Amidah on Shabbat morning how many of us really know what those syllables mean? I used to think it didn't matter. I used to think of the Shema as a mantra -- the syllables themselves made me feel more whole and in touch with my faith. It wasn't until I began to use English words to increase my understanding of the Shema that I started to wonder about Hebrew as gobblygook. Where is the balance struck between tradition and comprehension? Where is the realization that although Hebrew is considered the spoken language of the Jewish people, very few of us speak it because there is no place, other than in our religious life, where we would use it? I don't really know where I'm going with this. Once again my thoughts are a work in progress. I just wonder if we wouldn't be better off focusing on an expanded spiritual vocabulary rather than conjugation of verbs? I think of the finite time we are willing to give our own spiritual development and don't think it should be spent on rote learning. It seems to be self-defeating to think that we have to master a language in order to pray in a meaningful way. If Reconstructionism is the uniquely American branch of Judaism, then perhaps we need to start asking questions about the role of spoken Hebrew in our practice. I know the national movement takes a clear position on this -- Hebrew is the language of the Jewish people -- but I also know that for many of us the Hebrew language is an obstacle, a source of embarrassment or as I said earlier, simply gobblygook. I hate the thought that something as rich as our Hebrew tradition can also be the wall we cannot climb to find comfort and spiritual relief. On the other hand (see, my Yiddish roots are intact) Hebrew also permits us to say things we might not comfortably say in English. Words like soul, angels, God and redemption do not come easily to us, but if we say them in Hebrew somehow they don't sound quite so anti-intellectual. What does that tell us about our relationship with the language of prayer? No answers, just questions. I'd love to hear your thoughts. With dreams of
peace, Dear Friends, I am a big fan of a publishing company called Jewish Lights based in Woodstock, Vermont. Their small list has, by my standards, the highest ratio of quality contemporary Jewish writing versus "same old stuff" that I have found. You can browse their website (www.jewishlights.com) and just get lost in the descriptions of their materials. One of their recent publications is a wonderful book put together by the National Jewish Center for Learning and Leadership (CLAL) and is called The Book of Jewish Sacred Practices: CLAL's Guide to Everyday and Holiday Rituals & Blessings. It's slowly climbing up my list of home library favorites. Each section is two or three pages long and covers practices ranging from Bringing Home A New Pet to Making a Shiva Call. The book offers a brief introduction of the topic to allow you to focus, a meditation, a ritual, a blessing and some teachings from the tradition. One of the topics they build a ritual practice around is "Making a List of Things to Do." Now, I have always been a list maker, and as many of you know, my Palm Pilot is now lovingly referred to as my external memory. The idea of my daily to do list as something sacred never crossed my mind until I stumbled onto this section of the book. Their meditation on the subject is as follows: To do: Teach children; Honor parents; Be where I am needed; Make study a priority; Welcome guests; Visit the sick; Help those who are starting out; Honor the dead; Pray with intensity; Make peace And, most of all, Talmud Torah k'neged kulam. Study Torah: the embrace of all life, leading to all that we value. The ritual, as the book explains it, goes like this: Imagine beginning your day by writing out a sacred "to do" list, reminding you that opportunities to perform life's holiest tasks are not beyond you, not "in the heavens," but are right here in your daily encounters with family, friends, and strangers. What if you made your own "to do" list and noted the deeper dimensions and ethical implications presented by your own tasks: buying groceries, calling a lonely friend, repairing the car, paying bills, going for a checkup? Start out with the traditional sacred "to do" list. Then add the specific tasks you must perform this day, each a sacred opportunity. When your list is completed, a simple prayer can be said: "Blessed are You who sanctifies us with mitzvot and commands us to make Torah concrete in our lives." Not all of the items on their list work for me nor will they work for you, but the exercise of writing down a sacred to do list can be enriching and appropriate to our own sense of self. Mine would probably start with being thankful for being alive and then move on to taking more time for acknowledging the grace I see in others, but my biggest to do would probably be something like "take the time to figure out what really matters on the rest of the list." Others could start with healing the world as best we can or all those other things we know we aspire to but we just don't have the time to achieve because we're so busy picking up the laundry. Realistically, we are probably not going to carry around post it notes with sacred practices listed in a 1-2-3 order (although it would be extremely cool if we did). I've got a vision of where this could go that might work, though. Our kitchens are full of "notes." Most of us have a refrigerator full of them, but for the more pristine kitchen keepers, there's usually a white board or corkboard where you keep the number for the pizza delivery guy and the poison control center. Think about what practices you know, deep down, would make you feel more in touch with your spiritual self. No matter how non-traditional you are, you know there is something that might work, even if it only works for you. Make a list. Post it to remind yourself that it is far more important to take a walk with someone you love then to go to Nordstrom's. Post it to remind yourself that you have daily options. Post it to remind yourself that your personal to do list has a vastly broader meaning then just where your body shows up. You want your soul to show up, too. I know conceptually that we struggle with words like sacred and holy and God and Torah and all that stuff. The discomfort level we have with those "religious" words spills over into "religious" acts (or vice versa). One of the great things about this book is that it demands that we think of the secular through spiritual eyes. The integration of both selves is the ultimate goal that is sought. It is incredibly easy to reject ritual practices when we see them as irrelevant to our daily lives. It is incredibly easy to write off the whole package because of a little glitch like not being sure you believe in God. However, if we, like Jacob, can exclaim "God was in this place, and I did not know it" we can also ask, why didn't I know? How can I be more aware? How can I acknowledge that I am capable of feeling the presence of something beyond myself? How do I put out the welcome mat? Now, as with all my "great" ideas, the odds on follow through are limited. I'm not a person who thinks that I have any real power to make anyone, even myself, do what I think might be moving or life altering or even life affirming. I do think that just voicing them, thinking about them, writing about them, can start a process. It might be the possible trigger for something completely different then a sacred to do list, but maybe something like the phrase "making Torah concrete in my life", will cause a flicker that leads to a small flame that burns somewhere within and keeps us warm. I'm personally wandering a bit in the wilderness these days. I hate that feeling because I know what it feels like to not wander, to be grounded in sacred time and space. It's a lot like a runner who has gone through an injury and just feels the limits the layoff has caused to her body. The runner knows that being in shape makes her feel better, more in touch with herself. Spiritual searchers have that same sense of loss when they drift away from the still core of belief, they know it can be better and desperately want it back. Much like a runner recovering from a layoff, spiritual recovery requires a gradual reestablishment of an exercise routine. You need to remember what it felt like when everything was working and aim to recover it. This book is one tool leading us back to, or ahead to, the spiritual space we seek. I hope it helps. With great
respect,
Dear Friends, Since I had the good sense to announce ahead of time that you would get these twice a month, but with no fixed arrival date, I'm in under my own defined time line (1st to the 15th counts as "early"). I was out of town for two weeks and I'm just getting back in rhythm... but with our yearly cycle moving toward Shavuot, here's my two cents. As a kid, Shavuot had little or no meaning to me. Although it's one of the three pilgrimage festivals listed in Torah (O.K. class, the other two are Sukkot and Pesach), it happens to frequently fall either on one of the last days of school or even after school has ended. So, it doesn't get taught (or observed) with the same regularity as the others. I actually figured that out the first time I was confronted with teaching the holiday and realized that I knew very little about it myself. As with Sukkot and Pesach, Shavuot is a harvest festival given additional meaning during the rabbinic period once the Temple in Jerusalem was no longer standing. Shavuot is called in the Torah the Festival of First Fruits. However, thanks to the wisdom of the post-Biblical Rabbis, it is also the Festival of the Giving of the Torah. That's where its great imagery resides. Shavuot was given a specific date -- 51 days after the start of Pesach -- and reinterpreted to be the day of revelation at Sinai. That day is the day God speaks to all the Hebrew people gathered at the base of Mount Sinai. From there, the midrash rich story of God giving the revelations of the Torah and the Jewish people agreeing to receive those revelations, starts to unfold. I love the image of God offering up the Torah and the implication that it was totally up to our ancestors to say o.k. or not. It reaffirms my own sense of seeking God's presence. That it is there for me if I am willing to acknowledge the existence of "the power that makes for salvation." I love the mystical imagery that grew out of the Kabbalists that calls this moment a marriage. A Ketubah, or marriage contract, between God and the people is even drawn and read aloud in some synagogues. The Sabbath Bride that we welcome each Shabbat is part of that same mystical package. I love the imagery of love that is also implicit in this whole celebration. God offers us the most precious gift of all, the Torah, and we must commit, each and every one of us, to love, honor and protect Torah so that we can bring it into our hearts and lives. This is the big covenant, in many ways far greater than the covenant of the bris or the flood. This is the gift of knowledge, of self-awareness, of ethical behavior. As the midrash tells us, we were all there, standing at the base of Sinai, and each of us could accept this proposal of "marriage" or reject it. The flood covenant was between Noah and God. The bris covenant was between Abraham and God. This covenant is ours to accept or not. Another piece of the Shavuot evolution is that it is absolutely essential to our ritual year to have an acknowledgement of the prime of life, and Shavuot is that acknowledgement. Pesach is our birth as a people and Sukkot is really the closing down of our year. We had to have something in between that represented us at our best. The acceptance of Torah at Mount Sinai is the Jewish people at their best. Throughout all of Torah our stiff-necked people have kvetched and complained -- it never stops, but at Mount Sinai we stopped for a moment and accepted a responsibility, an adult burden, with grace and honor. Now I'm speaking as if all this really happened as written and I don't believe that's true, as most of you know. What is true is the symbolism and genius of our stories. The many midrashim (pl. of midrash) of Shavuot are all teaching tools that guide us on the constant path of wrestling with who we are and why we're here. I love Shavuot because it resonates with me in a way that most other holidays don't. For some reason it is easier for me to picture myself at the foot of Sinai then it is for me to picture myself with unleavened bread baking on my back or living in a leafy hut for a week. I think that's so because I do remember falling in love with Torah as an adult and feeling absolutely that it was my choice. I do remember the sense of liberation I felt when I first realized that to love Torah doesn't mean loving the literal Torah. I love what it represents, what it teaches and how it has allowed my own love of Judaism to grow, far beyond the Seder dinners or the Purim carnivals. Torah was offered to me and I accepted its gifts. It's personal. It's an amazing holiday. The Megillah (scroll) that is read for Shavuot is the Book of Ruth, and for me, conveniently, there is a connection with Mother's Day (was there a more beloved mother than Naomi?) So, in closing, here is part of a poem by Marge Piercy: The Book of Ruth and Naomi May those of you who will be with your mothers on Sunday, say a little blessing of thanks. For those of you who no longer have mothers, say a blessing of remembrance. For those of you who are mothers, say a blessing of celebration. This parenting thing is as eternal as Torah. Finally, the blesing for the study of Torah. Baruch atah Adonai eloheinu melech ha'alom asher kidshanu b'mitzvotav v'tzivanu la'asok b'divrei Torah. Praised are You, Source of All, who makes our lives holy through mitzvot and calls us to study Torah together. Chag Sameach,
a good festival for you all, Dear Friends, I'm going out of town on Sunday and feel a little "under the gun" to get this out to you all and still walk away from the office with an empty inbox. The odds on that happening are slim, but I've always set a high bar and sometimes I even clear it with inches to spare. I'm in a think out loud kind of place at the moment. I'm in need of some spiritual sustenance to move me away from CNN and NPR, so I'm going to talk Torah. Whenever I get depressed about the stuff some people say in the name of Judaism I need to go back to the source, as it were. So here we go… This week's Shabbat portion includes Kedoshim (Leviticus 19:1-37), the Holiness Code, one of my favorites. Leviticus is generally an unpleasant and archaic book, but there's some really great stuff amongst the irrelevant (oops, heavy value judgment there). The book is all about the instructions to the priests on how to do what without getting zapped by God for making a technical error. (Take a look at what happened to Aaron's sons a couple of weeks ago in Shemini, Leviticus 9:1-11:47.) However, as with all Torah study, if we take a step back and look at the text through contemporary filters, we see that it has all kinds of great stuff in it. This is where we get our instructions on why we are different then the lower animals. We are told "You shall be holy because I, your God, am holy." What is that all about? Why does that get my blood pumping a little harder? That line and "Know before whom you stand…" are the two thunder clapping and lightning flashing Torah lines for me. Now generally speaking, I'm not a thunder clapping kind of Jew, but every once in a while, I need that power. When I first started teaching Torah and we would come to Yitro, the portion in Exodus when God gives Moses and the Israelites the Ten Commandments, I would make the students close their eyes and imagine Mount Sinai shrouded in darkness. Then with my best deep alto resonance I would read the verses, wanting them desperately to feel the power of the moment. Mostly the students would humor me, but it always gave me chills and every once in a while, a student would feel it too. That was enough. I spend a lot of time talking to folks who love being Jewish because it makes so much sense to them intellectually. Frankly, I'm getting a little tired of the arguments for the unique intellectual integrity of Judaism. I'm in a thunder clapping, earth shaking, irrational believing mood. One of the reasons I've got the students in the school embarked on a 100 Blessing Challenge (more on that in the May HaKesher) is that I think we all need to work on our nerve endings, rub them a little raw so they can feel again. Judaism is a whole body experience. So, let me share some of Kedoshim with you. The translations are from "Etz Hayim," the new Conservative movement Chumash (that's the weekly Torah and Haftarah portions bound together in order) and I've just picked a few great verses to share: "You shall each revere his mother and his father, and keep My sabbaths: I the Lord am your God… When you reap the harvest of our land, you shall not reap all the way to the edges… you shall leave them for the poor and the stranger: I the Lord am your God. You shall not steal; you shall not deal deceitfully or falsely with one another… You shall not insult the deaf, or place a stumbling block before the blind…You shall not render an unfair decision: do not favor the poor or show deference to the rich; judge your kinsman fairly… You shall rise before the aged and show deference to the old… When a stranger resides with you in your land, you shall not wrong him. The stranger who resides with you shall be to you as one of your citizens; you shall love him as yourself, for you were strangers in the land of Egypt…" These injunctions are amazing and progressive and compassionate. Of course, along with these you get all the stuff about animal sacrifices, having sex with slaves and not shaving your sideburns, but the times were different then. It's good stuff, powerful stuff, but not the real soul-opener for me. The soul-opener is wrapped up in the word "kadosh" or holy. The first verse of Kedoshim is the flat command. "You shall be holy for I, the Lord your God, am holy…" Rabbi Joseph Telushkin, in his wonderful book Biblical Literacy quotes Walter Kaufmann, the late professor of religion and philosophy from Princeton University, as saying about this command: "Perhaps this was the most revolutionary idea of world history." Telushkin says that this call to an entire people to be holy is the first time in recorded history that an entire nation is summoned to a life of sanctity. This is all about the spirit, not the letter, of the law. It is possible to observe all the mitzvot and still be a bad person. Telushkin tells us that the thirteenth century Bible scholar, Moses Nachmanides, or the Ramban, says the charge to be holy was necessary to obligate us to search out behavior that is of the highest level even when the situation may not be covered legalistically. This is where the intellect takes a back seat to the emotional. This is where the awareness of blessings in our lives resides. This is where each of us is on the spot. This is the self-assessment piece. This is what separates us from the well-trained dog or the killer whale. We all can talk the talk, to a greater or lesser extent. The challenge is to walk the walk. I'm working on figuring out what being holy is about for me in the here and now. I don't aspire to Buddha-hood. I aspire to living my life aware that there is a standard set that is higher than any I could set for myself. I want to feel the power of the command. I want to celebrate the genius in the idea. I want to continue to get in touch with the all-pervasive faith thing that doesn't require my checking a list to see what to do. I want to hear the thunder, see the rainbow, listen to the child's laugh and hug a friend all as part of my path to holiness. Those moments are my blessings. We are more than we think we are… With
continuing dreams of fulfilling the command,
Early April Dear Friends, This is not going to be my usual kind of letter... I had one almost completed. It was based on some of your thoughts in response to my "musings on mitzvot"... but the real world has intervened and I'm going to bite the bullet and take it on because it would be hypocritical to do otherwise... I'm talking, of course, about the tragedy that is going on in Israel — and by extension, the entire Middle East. I don't think there's a single issue that more galvanizes and divides contemporary Judaism than the State of Israel and its role in the lives of American Jews. Even when we think we know exactly how we feel, it's impossible to not have a "but" or a "why" in our thoughts at times like these. More than anything else I write about, I know this one is going to be painful and will come to no resolution. I'm not even sure I know how to go about this — but I'll follow my gut on it and if some of you are offended, please accept my apologies ahead of time. Once again, this is my personal opinion — an opinion that is completely in flux — and my goal is to allow us all to feel the pain in our own individual ways. I'm not teaching today. I was born in late 1947 and a few months later, Israel was born. I always felt a special bond with Israel because of that accidental connection. When I read Leon Uris' epic Exodus, I became a Zionist. When the various David and Goliath battles took place, I was a cheerleader for the State of Israel. When I went to college that began to change. Looking back, I'm sure that as with the Vietnam war, the "leftist commie conspiracy" — or the righteous anti-war movement — depending on where you stood — brainwashed me into thinking that perhaps Israel wasn't living up to my standards. After I got over the sloganeering and began really thinking about this Jewish/American/Israeli connection and what it meant to me as an individual, I felt cast adrift — insecure about my own feelings and desparately trying to find a place to stand that didn't feel like a sell-out, hypocrisy or blindness. Here's what I know. I know that when I was a child I heard from both my religious school and my youth group that if Israel and the United States went to war, I'd have to fight for Israel. I also know today that's such an absurd suggestion for me I can't begin to imagine how I could have considered that a possibility. I also know that Dor Hadash once (about 10 years ago) very briefly had a teacher in our school who told a class that same thing — which is very scary for me because it means some people still think that's true. I know that my expectations for a "Jewish State" were, and still are, unfairly high. I believed the prophetic dream that we were to be a light among the nations — not just a place to go when there was nowhere left to go. I know that I have no right to tell the State of Israel what to do— and conversely, the Israeli religious leaders, who are unfortunately often the political leaders as well, have no right to tell me what to do, or believe, or practice. I resent it beyond imagining when I hear people talk about what the American Jewish community wants as if it were some sort of monolithic entity. I especially resent my attitude towards the State of Israel being used as a litmus test as to what kind of Jew I am. I do not aspire to dual nationality. I'm an American who practices the religion that is Judaism. When I listen to Israeli or Palistinian news reports I don't believe either side. How did that happen? I resonate most with Rabbi Arthur Green's teaching that Eretz Yisrael, the land itself, is a holy place for all time — no matter who is in charge. Its spiritual history is mine. The State of Israel is a political entity that has all the flaws and strengths of any other country. I should not confuse the two. And yet... My heart is breaking for a dream that is lost. I don't know if it will ever return. This pain I feel lets me know that there is something buried deep within me that is conflicted and confused and I have no answers, no lessons to teach, just a sense of shared pain... In this season of redemption, I'm searching for hope.... If any of you know where there's some extra, please share... With sadness
and still with dreams of peace, Dear Friends, I was all set to write about Pesach. I've been doing some workshops and writing on the subject; it's the core story of our people; it's the most celebrated of all our holidays and festivals — a worthy topic — and then I decided to give it a pass (that's a pun I think). What I want to write about is a fragment from my Passover study that sticks with me - it's the whole idea of mitzvot and their relationship to contemporary Judaism. I grew up with the phrase, "come on, do it, it's a mitzvah." which is, in reality, the Yiddish approach and phrasing for the word. I thought a mitzvah was a good deed, and in reality, it is. A mitzvah, however, is far more than that — it is a commandment — a requirement — a have to — which can separate the faith versus action modes of Judaism. Believing, for many Jews, is the hard part of Judaism. Acting, as laid out by the mitzvot, is in some ways easier. I fall into the minority camp here — I think believing is a whole lot easier then the doing, but the doing informs my believing. We learn early on that some compulsive Torah scholar, actually someone called Rabbi Simlai, from the third century, totaled up all the mitzvot with the following statement in Talmud Makkot 23b: Six hundred and thirteen commandments were communicated to Moses; three hundred and sixty-five negative commandments, corresponding to the number of days in the solar year; and two hundred and forty-eight positive commandments, corresponding to the number of the parts of the human body. On my bookshelves are a number of books about these 613 commandments, some very formal and others "reconstructed." The important thing, however, is what they represent. These are our rules, the formal delineation of what we should and should not do in order to fulfill our responsibilities as Jews. However, on my kitchen bulletin board for a number of years was a small button that said simply "Question Authority." The 613 mitzvot are prime candidates for questioning. As with almost everything I learn about Judaism, the mitzvot make me crazy. This is not necessarily a bad thing. For me, the mitzvot are an ongoing challenge, an in your face list of things that someone at sometime decided would guide me on my search for the meaning of life. (o.k. Douglas Adams fans, the answer is 42) Empowering myself to ignore some of them is in many ways part of the engine that drives my continuing Jewish study. I can ignore the prohibition against eating the sinew in thigh meat (forbidden due to the angel and Jacob wrestling in Genesis and Jacob's thigh being permanently injured) because I know where it comes from and I think it's a little silly. I love the story — it's one of my favorites — but I don't think I'm failing to honor Jacob's struggle when I eat a chicken thigh. However, I know that somewhere buried deep in my unconscious (or subconscious?) mind is the story, the rule, and then the decision to ignore it. That hidden understanding is part of the continual process of my search for meaning in our tradition. My students always loved this enormous list of do's and don'ts. The first and most obvious reason is that there's a lot of sex in the old prohibitions. They also liked the list because it is so definite, even if the rules seem absurd. It's much easier to study a list of shoulds and shouldn'ts then it is to talk about spirituality. It's also much easier to throw it all out because some of it makes no sense, then to go through the list to see what it has to teach us. So to my Pesach fragment, which is what got me on this topic. We are commanded to tell the story so that everyone understands it and to tell the story in the first person, as if we too were there. These Pesach mitzvot are perfectly comprehensible to me. There's nothing more important then the lessons of Passover to the basic values of Judaism. These mitzvot guide my Passover preparation and my enthusiasm for the festival. So, where do I get the chutzpah to say yes to these commandments and no to thigh meat? I get the chutzpah from a very simple source, my own sporadic Jewish study. I believe that I have the right to utilize Jewish resources on my terms. I believe that we get in trouble when we forget about this "question authority" thing. I believe that absolute lists are only worthwhile when we're learning, but not when we're living. I can say to a child "we never hit." I, however, was blessed with a son who would counter with "but what if someone was hitting a little kid and I could only stop that person by hitting?" That exchange sums up the mitzvot for me. The basic value, not hitting, is an absolute. The situational ethics, the potential saving of a human life, is where the Talmudic scholars earned their keep. This absolutism reaches rock bottom for me when Torah is quoted as the final and non--negotiable authority. One of the most difficult mitzvot is in Deuteronomy when we're told that we can't add or subtract anything from the commandments in the Torah. On the other hand, one of the most liberating moments in my Jewish study was when I was told that Torah (in the abstract sense) was still being written today. Again, I could never see the power in that concept if I didn't understand how truly radical that was. To be told on the one hand that yes, these mitzvot are crucial to understanding Judaism and how it was created and is practiced and on the other hand, that Judaism is an evolving religious civilization puts me in the delicious and crazy making box called "what do I think?" I hope you can spend some time there, too. The rules exist to give us the parameters of our struggle. We need to look at rules and determine their worth. When I was a college student one of my class projects was to take a look at laws on the books of the great state of Pennsylvania and find absurdities. My favorite law was that if you were driving a horseless carriage on a public road you had to stop every 100 yards and set off a flare so farmers could herd their livestock away from the roadway so they wouldn't panic. The law was still in effect in 1968. No one obeyed it, but it was a wonderful gift to me. (I often thought about trying to obey it, but the guerrilla theater possibilities were too mind boggling to imagine.) To this day I can imagine the Pennsylvania legislature trying desperately to cope with what the internal combustion engine was about to do to their world, and how their solution tells so much about the pace of life and the role of the farmer in their society. So, on this first day of spring, I guess I want to celebrate the challenge to understand rules of all kinds. To understand that when I was in Egypt as a slave the rules I followed were the rules of people who owned me, my body and soul alike, and when I was redeemed, the rules came from my source of liberation, from my God, and I was made a partner in this process. What an enormous gift that is, unending, challenging, demanding and ultimately liberating. And, thank God, unique for each of us. Chag Sameach. May your festival be liberating on as many levels as you can discover, Barbara
Early March Dear Friends, I've started this letter a number of times because none of the topics that I began really sustained me. I found myself being teacher rather than shared wanderer... and that's not what I intended this process to be about. So, here's what's really getting to me. I want to talk about what makes a Jew. I don't want to talk about what makes a good Jew because that's too value laden a phrase. I want to talk about how we ever got to the place where someone else tells us what we believe and where we stand and therefore who we are. I also am absolutely clear that I have only my own answers to this — and those answers are in constant flux and the Rabbi shouldn't worry about me. My religious education taught me that Abraham was the first Jew. I found out later that Abraham was the first Hebrew — because there was no Judaism at the time, but what did I know. What made him the first Hebrew was his complete acceptance of the One God. However, if you look at the teachings of Islam, Abraham looks like the first Muslim, too. I also thought as a child that Noah was a Jew since he was in the Bible and everyone in the Bible was Jewish. (Noah comes before Abraham, but time line development was a skill that came later for me.) I finally found out that Noah was a "Righteous Gentile." Then I discovered that Jacob was the first Israelite — since he got his name changed to Israel and I could stop worrying that the people Israel were the citizens of a 50 plus year old country, and our prayers hadn't all been rewritten after 1948. Then I learned that to be a Jew you had to have a Jewish mother — of course that didn't take into account all the Jews in the Bible who had Jewish fathers but non-Jewish mothers (check out the maternal lines of the children of Jacob). Then I learned that as far as the Nazis were concerned, being a Jew meant one Jewish grandparent — forget maternal or paternal descent or whether or not you had converted to Christianity — that was really confusing. So, I grew up in a family that was all Jewish (well, I did have a first cousin who was raised as a Catholic, but we didn't talk about that much). Because of that, the question was moot in my family. No one (other than my one uncle) had married "out" — so the conversation never really arose. I knew about the Law of Return — knew that I was entitled to Israeli citizenship if I ever needed it —I won't go there — and had no ambivalence at all about who I was or how I was defined. Growing up when I did, I also was very clear that the Nazis considered me a Jew, as did the KKK and the John Birch Society. Anti-Semitism, in its own perverse way, empowered my Judaism by isolating me. There were clubs I couldn't belong to and sororities I couldn't join (Oy vey). Fast forward to my teen-age years. Unlike my own sons, I grew up in a time when anti-Semitism was still kind of o.k. I remember being invited by a very cool guy in high school to a dinner dance at a restricted country club. My mother, with her frustrating wisdom, told me the decision on whether or not to go to a restricted club was mine, but the decision was also a message I would have to live with forever, and I have. I didn't go and explained to this very special guy why. He never asked me out again. Fast forward again to my discovery of the enormous schism between what is called "liberal" versus "traditional" Judaism on the issue of who is a Jew. Reform and Reconstructionist Judaism accepts both patrilineal and matrilineal descent in determining what constitutes a legal Jew. This means that if either parent is Jewish and you are raised as a Jew, it's enough. The Conservative and Orthodox disagree, believing that matrilineal descent is the only legitimate line and children of families with non-Jewish mothers must undergo conversion in order to be considered Jewish. The State of Israel agrees with the traditional movement, so the Law of Return only applies to those who are born of Jewish mothers or are converted according to their very specific standards. Because I happen to be female and born of a Jewish female, despite my interfaith marriage I haven't had to think about whether or not my sons are considered Jewish enough. This isn't the case for the many Jewish men who are raising their children as Jews and are happily married to supportive non-Jewish wives. The status of their children as far as the traditional Jewish world is concerned, is clear. Those children are not Jews. That ticks me off beyond imagining. So I'm back to what constitutes "Jewish enough." Part of our dilemma, of course, is the unique status of Judaism, as both a people and a religion. The peoplehood requires some cultural/bloodline/relational connection that is far different then most other religions. In our history, again and again, our familial connections to Judaism were what defined us. Because of that we now sit in the 21st century with some very big questions to answer. Watching the Winter Olympics I found myself marveling, as did many others, at the melting pot of Americans that stood on the winners‚ platforms and accepted medals. We, as a nation, pointed with pride at our multi-cultural athletes. America has come a long way in absorbing our differences and honoring those who gave so much to watch the American flag be lifted in celebration of their achievements. As a nation there was a time when only white men could vote or own property. Today that idea is so repugnant, that even if some troglodyte actually thought it was a good idea, he/she would know better than to voice it publicly. I know clearly what makes me American enough. It's Election Day today and I'm taking my 18 year old to vote for the first time. We are citizens with the right to vote. Last night he called from his dorm and talked through the ballot propositions and the various candidates. He's excited, as was my oldest son when he voted the first time. I love this country because no matter who is in the White House, my voice counts, and if I am willing and able, I can make a difference. I want my Judaism to allow me the same rights. I want it to fulfill Kaplan's concept of "an evolving civilization" that takes into account the changes in the world out there. I want to see the more traditional movements understand that it is possible to be a Jew even if the blood line isn't pure (doesn't that image bring back bad memories?). I want to be able to answer the questions that continually poke at me. Why do we insist on Judaism being defined by who birthed us? Why isn't being observant (lower case O) enough? Why do we continually allow the most traditional Jews to define what is authentic Judaism? Why do we feel guilty when we sit on the liberal end of the religious spectrum and worry that others will call us "Jewish lite" rather than simply "Jewish"? Who empowered "them" instead of "us"? In dozens of other arenas, evolving into a more modern attitude is considered positive — think Civil Rights, the Women's Movement, poll taxes, slavery - but in Judaism we keep looking backwards as if we don't have the right to put our moral and ethical values into play as we define our religion. Why do we do this? What are we afraid of? Phew... Hope you all vote today! With dreams
of peace, Dear Friends, Thanks to Richard Warburton, I'm challenging myself once again to explain in adult terms another seemingly childish holiday experience — and you get to share. Actually, Richard braced me a long time ago on why so many of our holidays are the classic "they tried to kill us — they didn't — we eat" stories. The power of Richard's question sticks with me even though it probably was asked six or seven years ago and if I didn't keep reminding him of it, he in all likelihood would have forgotten it by now. Little did he know the question would become a filter through which I now view every religious holiday I teach and/or embrace. It's a compelling question with lots of little sub-questions that follow. I've come to believe that all of us need to continually challenge ourselves about the truisms of our Jewish practices/beliefs/behaviors. We need to ask these questions that Madison Avenue summed up so classically years ago in that annoying but unforgettable line, "Where's the beef?" I'm talking specifically today about the beef in Purim. This is one tough holiday to assess as something with spiritual worth. It's tough because the way we celebrate it (as with Channukah) has very little to do with what it's really about — or at least what I, with infinite chutzpah, believe it's about. The story is in the Bible, which gives it a certain legitimacy — or |